Anon, Sir, Anon Cover Reveal

If you folks know Rachel Heffington, the Inkpen Authoress, chances are you know Fly Away Home.  And if you know Fly Away Home, chances are you know Heffington's second novel, ANON, SIR, ANON, has an approaching due date of November 5.  Last month I had the honor of reading and reviewing an advance copy of the book; it was still warm and muggy and whenever I went out on our screened porch the pages wilted deplorably, which was very unsuitable.  It seems much more appropriate, then, that the weather this week has taken a cooler turn in anticipation of Anon, Sir, Anon's cover reveal.

The 12:55 out of Darlington brought more than Orville Farnham's niece; murder was passenger. In coming to Whistlecreig, Genevieve Langley expected to find an ailing uncle in need of gentle care. In reality, her charge is a cantankerous Shakespearean actor with a penchant for fencing and an affinity for placing impossible bets.When a body shows up in a field near Whistlecreig Manor and Vivi is the only one to recognize the victim, she is unceremoniously baptized into the art of crime-solving: a field in which first impressions are seldom lasting and personal interest knocks at the front door.Set against the russet backdrop of a Northamptonshire fog, Anon, Sir, Anon cuts a cozy path to a chilling crime.

Rachel picked a memorable (and explosive) release day.  In anticipation of November 5, remember to add Anon, Sir, Anon to your Goodreads list and thus make everyone curious about the book-with-the-lovely-cover-and-ooh!-tasty-looking-probably-poisonous-berries!  Want to do more?  Rachel has a button for you to post on the social media of choice.  You can also tweet about the upcoming release with the hashtags #AnonSirAnon and #ViviandFarnham (because, yes, it's going to be a series).  You're also welcome to come up with new (but legal) ways of letting people know something exciting is in the literary wind this autumn.  Spread the word!

Save the Date!

No, as far as I know there aren't any weddings in the near future - although there is a wedding in Plenilune, which is what we're all here to talk about.  Most of you who follow Scribbles are also readers of my sister's blog, The Penslayer, and may have heard rumors of publication in the wind.  Today is the day to announce with something more like certainty that her fantasy novel PLENILUNE will be crashing onto the literary scene this Fall.

look out for PLENILUNE on october 20

The fate of Plenilune hangs on the election of the Overlord, for which Rupert de la Mare and his brother are the only contenders, but when Rupert’s unwilling bride-to-be uncovers his plot to murder his brother, the conflict explodes into civil war. 

To assure the minds of the lord-electors of Plenilune that he has some capacity for humanity, Rupert de la Mare has been asked to woo and win a lady before he can become the Overlord, and he will do it—even if he has to kidnap her. 

En route to Naples to catch a suitor, Margaret Coventry was not expecting a suitor to catch her. 

PLENILUNE falls into the sub-category of "planetary fantasy," referring to such books, like C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, whose stories take place on planets other than Earth.  A tremendous story of faith and sacrifice, politics and war, it combines the full-blooded, lyrical writing style of Jenny's The Shadow Things with a capacity for world-building that continues to leave me in awe.  And a little jealous.  Want to learn more?  Swing over to The Penslayer, follow the blog, and get a taste of the style that sets this author apart.

As we wait for October 20 (it's less than three months away, people), stay tuned for more information about PLENILUNE.  A cover reveal - for which the banner above is just a teaser - is in the offing, as well as a chance to pre-order for yourself, for friends, for relatives, for fun. 

And you really don't want to miss the cover reveal.  

It's fantastic.

Mrs Meade Strikes Again

 That is not the title of Elisabeth Grace Foley's latest release, because that would be silly.  But to the great delight of non-Kindle-owners like myself, Elisabeth has (at last!) published the first volume of her Mrs. Meade mysteries in physical form.  Having read The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories, I'm eager to pick up this little book. Here's the scoop:

Meet Mrs. Meade, a gentle but shrewd widow lady with keen insight into human nature and a knack for solving mysteries. Problems both quaint and dramatic find her in Sour Springs, a small town in Colorado at the turn of the twentieth century. Here in Volume One are her first three adventures, novelette-length mysteries previously published individually.

In The Silver Shawl, a young woman has disappeared from the boarding-house where she lives—was she kidnapped, or did she have a reason to flee? In The Parting Glass, Mrs. Meade puzzles over the case of a respectable young man accused of drunkenly assaulting a woman. And in The Oldest Flame, Mrs. Meade’s visit with old friends turns to disaster with a house fire that may have been deliberately set. Quick and entertaining forays into mystery and times past, each story is just the perfect length to accompany a cup of tea or coffee for a cozy afternoon.

To celebrate this event, Elisabeth is doing a blog tour - writing guest posts, answering interviews, giving away things, the whole shebang.  She's here today to revive my blog and talk about historical mystery and classic mystery. 

Historical Mystery and Classic Mystery: 

Closer Than You Think 

Mystery today is one of the most adaptable genres, or at least one on which a wide variety of variations are made. Booksellers split the main genre into half a dozen subcategories: hard- boiled, cozy, historical, British, police procedurals, and more. Authors have discovered over the years that the classic mystery plot can be given a fresh twist by trying it out in different scenarios and styles, sometimes with splendid results. I’ve read and enjoyed some of these attempts, but the lure of the classics is always strong. I’m always ready to go back to certain settings—say, an English country house in the 1930s, with a mixed bag of suspects and an enigmatic private sleuth to sift them out. One book along these lines may be better than another, but the formula never gets old.

 In my own writing, historical mystery is my sub-genre of choice. It’s a pretty extensive sub- genre in itself—you can have a historical mystery set anywhere from ancient Rome to Regency England or the trenches of World War I. But in spite of this, and in spite of the fact that it’s one of many sub-genres, I personally feel it shares the closest kinship with the “classic” mystery, the style that many of us know best. Think about it for a minute. Mystery fiction as we know it began with authors such as Wilkie Collins, Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle and their contemporaries in the 19th century, and was refined into an art by G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and a multitude of others during mystery’s Golden Age in the early 20th century. A genre often permanently retains some of the characteristics of the era in which it was born or became most popular—certain plot devices, character types or literary styles that particularly resonated with the people of those times linger on through decades of later authors’ efforts. The detective novel was born in the Victorian era and came of age during the Roaring Twenties, the glamorous ’30s and the World Wars. I think to some degree, the culture of those times is woven into the fabric of the genre, and filters through our consciousness when we hear the word “mystery.”

That’s true, at least, for those of us who cut our mystery teeth on Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Modern-day mysteries just don’t hold the same appeal for me. There’s a certain flair and romance to the old standbys of the footprint and fingerprint, the cigar ash, the handkerchief with a whiff of perfume, the railroad timetable, the half-burned scrap of paper and the revolver in the desk drawer. Cell phones and digital technology just aren’t in it. And there’s the plot angle, too. Before the widespread use of forensic evidence, mystery plots focused in on suspects’ motivations, personalities and relationships—the human interaction element—of necessity. This is an element I’ve always found fascinating. Agatha Christie experimented with more dramatic examples of this back in the Golden Age itself, with situations that deliberately stripped away possible physical evidence and relied almost entirely on the testimony of witnesses (Cards on the Table and Five Little Pigs, for example). She even made an early foray into what we would now call historical mystery, setting Death Comes as the End in ancient Egypt.

At the root of it, I suppose, I write historical mystery because I’m a historical-fiction person any way you slice it. Writing in a modern setting has never really worked for me (and I’ve got a couple of failed story drafts to attest to that). When I had an idea for a mystery series, it was only natural that it should be a historical one. Perhaps it’s because of this relationship between history and mystery that I’ve always felt myself on familiar ground while writing the Mrs. Meade Mysteries. My own characters, their home town and their plots may be different, but I still feel I’m following in the footsteps of the mystery authors I’ve read and loved—or at least cutting a new path through a familiar forest.

Elisabeth Grace Foley is a historical fiction author, avid reader and lifelong history buff. Her first published story, “Disturbing the Peace,” was an honorable mention in the first annual Rope and Wire Western short story competition, and is now collected with six others in her debut short story collection, The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories. Her other works include short fiction set during the American Civil War and the Great Depression. A homeschool graduate, she chose not to attend college in order to pursue self-education and her writing career. Visit her online at www.thesecondsentence.blogspot.com .

 Elisabeth is doing a fun giveaway of one signed book and several Mrs Meade bookmarks (sneak peek!). Enter to win, but don't forget to hurry over to CreateSpace or Amazon to buy your own copy.  Supporting your non-local author: it's a thing.

 a Rafflecopter giveaway

Fly Away Home Birthday Bash

Look what's finally arrived!  Having made us wait a month after revealing the cover of her debut novel, Fly Away Home, Rachel Heffington is celebrating its release with a blog party.  Toddle around to her own blog and other participating venues to learn more about 1950s New York, get tips on retro makeup, and read some reviews - and then go pick up the book from Amazon or the authoress' site.  (Note: you get an autograph if you buy from her, but you boost her sales rank if you buy from Amazon.)

For today, Rachel is putting in an appearance here at Scribbles to answer questions and tell a little more about the historical romance Fly Away Home.  (No spoilers - pinky promise.)

two thumbs way, way up for our leading lady - 

rachel heffington

1.) Hallo-allo-allo! Many here are already acquainted with you and Fly Away Home, but do tell us briefly what this here story is about.

Fly Away Home is basically the story of a hurting young woman who thinks becoming rich and famous will satisfy the aching inside. She gets the chance of a lifetime when hired to work with Wade Barnett, but this famous journalist is a Christian and his ideas of success and worth are far different than her own. She begins to fall in love with him but her past comes screaming up the road behind her and poses two frightening choices: betray herself, or betray the man she loves.

2.) Now tell us what this story’s about from the perspective of Nickleby. (For those of you who are unaware, Nickleby is the heroine’s cat.) 

“This book is the story of why my human is acting weird, eating too much chocolate, and lecturing the potted fern in our apartment. It is also the story of why I had to spend at least six or seven days with Jerry Atwood, the lobby-man, and why the song “Beyond the Sea” still makes my fur stand on edge. In short, it’s the story of how my human changed from a cold, sassy mess to a warm, sassy mess all because of some man named Wade Barnett.”

3.) What prompted you to write Fly Away Home? Was there any one moment when you were hit with an urgent need to invest your time in this particular work? What kept you going through the tough bits? 

Originally, I set out to write a book about coming home...about a young woman who thinks she wants a career but returns to a simpler life for things of richer value. That was when I was quite young and a bit naive and had none of the book written. As I wrote the story and matured spiritually and emotionally in my own life, it became a book about a woman jaded by life who still has a lot of girlishness inside and who is trying to fix her howling ache with glamour and glitz...and it is still a story about coming home, but Home, now, is Christ. Callie is a journalist working with a world-famous guy and she’s definitely got a career. I like that and I see nothing wrong with it; but her measure of success had to change, and that is the crux of the story.

I think many young women will identify with Callie. Sure, we don’t all have her past, but it can be hard to see through the baubles the world offers and to reconcile our dreams with God’s plans...I think the sensation that I was exploring my own heart kept me pushing through. I really am much like Callie.

 4.) I know Gregory Peck is Mr. Barnett. Who would you cast in the roles of the other characters if you could? 

Since this is entirely a hypothetical cast, may I pretty please make no sense at all and pick actors who are dead or alive and construct their ages just so, that it might work? Yes? Thankee. Okay:

Wade Barnett = Gregory Peck (duh)
Callie Harper = I always waffle on this. Currently, Nina Dobrev or Zooey Deschanel. Let me add a disclaimer saying that I haven’t seen either’s acting skills and Callie’s eyes are darker than Zooey’s.
Nalia Crosticinni = Nigella Lawson (can she even act? She’s a cooking show judge)
Jerry Atwood = A 30 year old Sean Astin
Jules Cameron = Theo James or Joseph Gordon Levitt
Moffat = Rosamund Pike. Hands down.

Yeah. I would love to see this film. It would probably be a disaster. ;)

5.) In one word each, how would you describe each of your main characters? 

Callie: Broken
Mr. Barnett: Earnest (Please, no Jack & Algie puns)
Jerry: Loyal
Nalia: Sultry
Jules: Manipulative

 6.) Fly Away Home is fairly unique in today’s market: it’s light and cosy, though of course it has its fair share of drama. What are some similar books that you can think of off the top of your head? 

This is a pretty difficult question for me. It’s the oddest mash-up of the pathos in The Magic of Ordinary Days, the banter of Emma & Mr. Knightley, and the all-round feel of Dead as a Scone -- without it centering around a murder. Or wait.

...Moving ON: If you like old movies like "Roman Holiday" and "My Favorite Wife" and you like books like Emma and P.G. Wodehouse, and you’re not against a bit of heart-break and blackmail, you’ll probably like Fly Away Home.

7.) If you had to choose one thing, what would you say is your favorite aspect of Fly Away Home? 

The relationship between Callie and Mr. Barnett. Yes, it has a thread of romance, but more than that it’s a friendship. I really do feel like Mr. Barnett is a friend of mine (don’t laugh. It’s true.) and even if Callie and Mr. Barnett don’t end up together (would I tell you?), their friendship is something that lingers in the minds of readers as a darn good job.

8.) Every author has some reason for writing. What is your philosophy of the craft? How do you approach the business of story-telling? 

I wish I could write heart-shattering lyrics like Andrew Peterson and bone-crushing, soul-wrenching prose like C.S. Lewis, and heavy, red-gloried novels like Jenny, and clever allegories like G.K. Chesterton. I really do. Those stories resonate within me but my particular reason for writing is a bit simpler:

I want to write books that defy the world’s strictures of the OSS (obligatory sex scene). I want to write books that are a lark to read but slip in an unobtrusive but unashamed Christian worldview. I want readers--especially unsaved ones--to read my books and find something attractive in them that they can’t quite pin down and then someday realize it was Christ. That’s my mission. I want to reflect His principles and His stories in such a way that they meet some crying need for worthwhile reading material and maybe even give the reader the impression of coming away refreshed and restored in spirit. I don’t want to be like everyone else. I want to be me: whimsical, fresh, sassy, and saved.

9.) Tea comes with brewing instructions for maximum enjoyment. What are your brewing instructions for Fly Away Home? 

 Best enjoyed on a day when: A.) You are needing to be cheered up B.) You are needing a silver-screen-glamour fix C.) You are in search for book with a flavor all its own D.) You want a read that you will come out of, looking for a cup of tea and a cat to cuddle because it was just that cozy. Or, you know, any old day when you feel like falling in love with a fictional man. 

Thank you, Rachel, and congratulations all over again! For everyone else, purchase a copy at Amazon or get an autographed copy from her blog The Inkpen Authoress - or both, if you want to be doubly awesome.  Also, don't forget to post a review on Goodreads or Amazon when you're done! 

Fly Away Home Cover Reveal

Glamor and journalism in 1950s New York City - what could it be?  Only Rachel Heffington's debut novel, Fly Away Home, very appropriately set to release on Valentine's Day.

fly away home

1952

new york city

Callie Harper is a woman set to make it big in the world of journalism. Liberated from all but her buried and troubled past, Callie craves glamour and the satisfaction she knows it will bring. When one of America's most celebrated journalists, Wade Barnett, calls on Callie to help him with a revolutionary project, Callie finds herself co-pilot to a Christian man whose life and ideas of true greatness run noisily counter to hers on every point. But when the secrets of Callie's past are hung over her head as a threat, there is space for only one love, one answer: betray Wade Barnett to save her reputation, or sacrifice everything for the sake of the man she loved and the God she fled. The consequences of either decision will define the rest of her life. 

Self-preservation has never looked more tempting. 

I had the honor of reading an earlier draft of Fly Away Home back in late 2012, and thus am in a position to inform you that the book is darling. (Of course, anyone who knows Rachel Heffington and her writing will hardly be surprised at that.)  It is an excellent read at any time, but I recommend it especially for the rainy, P.G. Wodehouse sort of days.  Pairs well with blankets and a cappuccino.  Rachel will be releasing the novel both in physical form and as an e-book - hopefully simultaneously, barring any technical issues or explosions - so you can grab a copy without feeling guilty about how little shelf space you have.  In the meantime, keep your eyes out: there's more to come before the novel releases on February 14!

about the author

Rachel Heffington is a Christian, a novelist, and a people-lover. Encouraged by her mother to treasure books, Rachel's favorite pastime was (and still is) reading. When her own library and her cousin's ran out of interesting novels, twelve-year old Rachel decided she would write her own; thus began a love-affair with word-crafting that has carried her past her teen years and into adulthood. Outside of the realm of words, Rachel enjoys the Arts, traveling, mucking about in the kitchen, listening for accents, and making people laugh. She dwells in rural Virginia with her boisterous family and her black cat, Cricket. Visit Rachel online at www.inkpenauthoress.blogspot.com.

giveaway

To celebrate the cover reveal and upcoming release, Rachel has put together a giveaway package for one fortunate (or is it providential?) winner. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Summer Not-List

pinterest

I like lists.  I like the orderliness of them and the fun of crossing the items off.  They make one feel accomplished.  ("...that I might not be so uneducated in comparison to Jane Fairfax.")

However, when it comes to book lists, I am a little like Emma Woodhouse.  I can have every intention of reading all the ones I've written down, but somehow as soon as I bind myself to do it I have absolutely no interest in following through.  They are suddenly dull and uninteresting, or just not suited to my mood.  Since this has happened a number of times, I tend not to make them anymore; I don't even use the "to-read" function of Goodreads, which I think for most people is just a glorified way of taking a book under advisement so as to forget it faster. 

On the other hand, I don't like footling about.  I like structure and planning, because otherwise when I finish one book I can't decide what sort I want to read next, and so I pick up something I think will suit.  And then I am self-obliged to finish it, even if I get a quarter of the way in and realize it isn't what I wanted to read and why on earth did I pick it up when there are a score of others I actually do want to read?  I suppose that is a hazard that comes with an excessive amount of books (is there such a thing?) in one house: you can't see the forest of literature for the bookish trees. 

Last month, then, I decided I would go ahead and make a list.  Not a list of books I am going to read in a set amount of months, or anything like that: just the ones I most want or need to read, to keep me (hopefully) from being distracted by others.  It seems to have gone well enough so far.  We'll see if it keeps up.

a few of the unconquered tomes

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

 Washington - Ron Chernow

Dragonwitch - Anne Elisabeth Stengl

The Conquering Family - Thomas Costain

Under Enemy Colours - S. Thomas Russell

The Mark of the Horselord - Rosemary Sutcliff

The King of Attolia - Megan Whalen Turner

God in the Dock - C.S. Lewis

The Winter Prince - Elizabeth Wein

the conquered ones

The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

Right Ho, Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse

The Last Plantagenets - Thomas Costain

Wodehouse hardly constitutes a grueling read, but I was careful to speckle the list with lighter works as well as ones with which you could knock a man senseless, such as Washington, or which take some trudging, like Arthur Custance's series.

the ongoing sieges

The Seed of Abraham - Albertus Pieters

Echoes of the Ancient Skies - E.C. Krupp

The Black Arrow - R.L. Stevenson

Plenilune - Jennifer Freitag

The annoying thing about reading a book that isn't yet published is, you can't boast about it on Goodreads.  What is the good of reading at all if you can't boast on Goodreads, I'd like to know?

Interview with Mirriam Neal

Early this year - January, I think it was - I had the opportunity to read and critique Mirriam Neal's novel Monster.  Mirriam is a crazily likeable sort of a gal with crazily eclectic tastes, as she will be the first to tell you, and as you will see for yourself if you follow her blog for, oh, about a week.  Monster, too, is appropriately eclectic: Mirriam describes its genre as "bioethics/semi-dystopic/romance/suspense/thriller," none of which, I may add, I usually read.  But being more than willing to read anything with her name on it, I gamely started off, with my red pen, through a hardcopy.  

I can't remember how quickly I read it, but I know that about halfway I abandoned the red pen altogether: I was far too caught up in the story.  I also know that on the last day, it was 8:00 am when I first looked at the clock, and all of a sudden it was noon and I was finishing the last page with a lump in my throat.  It's that sort of book.

and now, ladies and gentlemen, it is going to be available for you.

 The release date is set for June 15, and Monster's birthday will be celebrated with a great big bash: everyone who possibly can should buy the novel on this day, which will up its Amazon ranking and bring it very well-deserved attention.  (I know: I even got to write an endorsement for it.)  Mirriam is celebrating the release with interviews and a giveaway and I-don't-know-what, including this here interview with yours truly.  I recommend joining in the fun, whether or not the novel sounds like your cup of tea from the description: the story it tells of love and the sanctity of life is timeless.

back cover summary

The year is 2053, and Eva Stewart is a promising young scientist assigned to a remote Alaskan facility. Here she will work for WorldCure, a global organization dedicated to finding the cure for fatal diseases. Soon she is made a Handler and designated her own Subject for research and experimentation. However, Thirteen is not what she expected, and Eva is soon drawn into a horrific plot kept quiet by WorldCure. As everything she thought she knew collapses around her, Eva must discover the truth behind her Subject, her beliefs…and herself.

chit-chat with mirriam neal

1. Many of Scribbles’ readers already know you, but introduce yourself anyhow! Tea or coffee? Dogs or cats? Biggest goals? Favorite pair of socks?

If I have tea, ninety percent of the time it will be PG Tips black tea with cream and agave. PG Tips is the standard British tea – it was in Doctor Who. I also drink a lot of black coffee – I generally have between four and eight cups of tea and/or coffee a day. I prefer horses and the occasional phoenix, and though I don’t usually wear socks, I have two favorite pairs: A pair of fuzzy purple ankle socks, and my candy cane-striped Christmas knee socks with faux fur around the top. Worn only in the spirit of the season, of course.

2. What is your perspective (or philosophy, if you prefer) on writing and story-telling in general? How do you approach the crazy business?

“Use earthly tales to tell heavenly truths.” I don’t think I have much of an approach to the crazy business other than love it and live it – I have to work at balancing out my people-oriented life with my writing-oriented life.

3. What are your top five favorite books, at least at the moment? (I’ve been kind: I could have said just one.)

…thank you for being so lenient. Five. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. Ah…I love so many books, it feels like more would be favoritism! The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer, The Riddle-Master Trilogy (YES, A TRILOGY. HA HA.) by Patricia McKillip, my large book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and the Bible.

(She cheated.)

4. What’s Monster all about, anyhow? (Well, I know, but others don’t.)

Monster is all about sanctity of life, the value of souls, and what true love means. For me, it was a huge growing process, and it changed the way I look at life.

5. What are some of the things that inspired Monster and kept you writing?

Monster was largely inspired by Big Bang’s music video/song of the same title. Also, I read a lot of medical/thriller-style books, listened to my Monster playlist…really, it wasn’t hard to stay inspired. It was as if everything around me inspired me, no matter what it was.

Without looking back at them, Eva walked farther into the room, rushing blood filling her ears with white noise as she strained for the smallest sound to alert her of Thirteen’s presence.

She stood still and tense, listening, for almost a minute but no longer. There were dozens of other rooms to search as large as this one. “Nothing here,” she called to the guards by the door. There was no response. “Guards!”

She turned, and her blood ran cold. The digits 6223-4897 glowed in the air in front of her. A serial number.

She found her gaze travelling upwards to meet a pair of narrowed eyes. All blue was lost in the hatred-filled yellow, and Eva had time only to turn on her walkie-talkie and shout into it before she felt a blow to the side of her head that knocked her to the ground.

She had assumed incorrectly. Thirteen had not gone looking for freedom. It had gone looking for her. 

6. Your writing is very character-driven, and your characters are incredibly unique. You’re going to hate me for this, but give us a one-word description of each of Monster’s main players.

I don’t quite hate you. Almost, but not quite. ^.^ Mir: Childlike. Eva: Driven. Pocky: Mentoring. Ross: Twisted. Jude: Annoying. June: A bund of cute brightness and sunshine. I mean, cute.

7. Monster doesn’t have a single genre: it’s about bio-ethics, and it’s futuristic, and it’s a thriller, and in a way it’s also a love story. To date, how many different genres have you written in, and are there any that you have absolutely ruled out experimenting with?

I’ve written…ooh, let me think. High fantasy, urban fantasy, quasi-fantasy, modern, science fiction, summer fiction, Steampunk, dystopian, historical fantasy…I don’t think there’s any genre I’d really keep my hands off of – I used to hate historical books, but I realized it depends on the author. Such a big, stupid “Aha!” moment for me!

8. As you wrote the novel, were there aspects that took you by surprise?

Mir constantly surprised me. He took on a life of his own beyond what I could ever have imagined, and after a while it was he who called the shots, not me. A lot of things – especially near the end – surprised me.

9. If a reader told you one main thing they loved about Monster, what would you want it to be? 

If a reader could tell me one thing they loved about Monster, I would want it to be Mir; because Mir embodies everything I did my best to portray in Monster. He’s the heart of the book, and if people can love and understand him, then they love and understand the book.

10. What novels are you working on at present? 

Oh, my. Acceso, a sort of grungy music book about a suicidal musician and a deaf girl. Not to Be, an urban fantasy/slightly Steampunk novel about a Lamia Venator on the hunt for revenge. The Meaning of Always, about a girl whose fiancée dies and shatters her life until she meets the twin she didn’t know he had. The Care and Keeping of Jupiter: a futuristic, science-fiction love story about Mercury, a girl who orders a Proto-human online with no idea what she’s getting into. Painkiller, a gothic fairy-tale sort of novel with hints of Beauty and the Beast mixed with Jekyll and Hyde. Diamond Black about a boy whose empathy could either be the death of him, or the saving grace of the people he loves.

(And that, people, is how you write a logline.  In a perfect universe.  My eyes particularly popped at The Care and Keeping of Jupiter, which I now want to read - a lot.)

Mirriam Neal is the bouncy gal who blogs about writing, reading, and life over at Thoughts of a Shieldmaiden.  You can learn more about her and her writing, and keep your eye out for the grand finale of the release, over there.  You can also take a peek at Monster's very own Facebook page, where she reveals snippets of the upcoming sequel, book trailers, and Fun Stuff Like That.  On a slightly different line, Mirriam reviews (mostly) YA books on her Tumblr account, Peic Books.

Book Sale

Last June, The Soldier's Cross and The Shadow Things were on sale for $0.99.  It seems to be a summer trend, because we're participating this year in a larger "indie" e-book sale.  (I don't think we qualify as indie, but they very nicely let us join anyhow.)  If you haven't had a chance to get the novels yet, or know of someone who would like some historical fiction to read, click a button and get them on your Kindle!  Be sure to check out the other participants as well; whatever your tastes, you're pretty certain to find something that suits.  (And that includes Finding the Core of Your Story.)

Be sure to join in the giveaway, too, by spreading the word about the sale.  The grand prize is a $100 Amazon giftcard, so take a moment to tweet, or like, or follow, or do whatever the recipe calls for you to do.  'Cuz prizes are awesome.  Enter via the Rafflecopter at the bottom of the post.

here are the books in the sale:

By Luke Alistar

• Offset
• Catalyst ZX-10
• Deep Water
• The Offset Trilogy
• Daughter of Thieves
• By Starlight
• The Element of Surprise
• The Unseen
• Velvet’s Wings

By Kendra E. Ardnek

• Sew, It’s a Quest
• Saffron’s Big Plan and Other Stories
• Do You Take This Quest?

By Katie Lynn Daniels

• Supervillain of the Day
• Fire and Ashes
• Inspector Floyd
• Supervillain Hunters, International
• Sanctity of Life

By Molly Evangeline

• Every Tear
• A Captain’s Heart
• Finding Faith
• Courage
• Trust

By Ophelia - Marie Flowers

• Zeal Aspiring

By Elisabeth Grace Foley

• The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories
• The Silver Shawl: A Mrs. Meade Mystery

By Jennifer Freitag

• The Shadow Things

By Jessica Greyson

• Annabeth’s War

By Aubrey Hansen

• Red Rain
• Peter’s Angel

By Sarah Holman

• The Destiny of a Few
• The Destiny of a Galaxy

By Abigail J. Hartman

• The Soldier’s Cross

By Holy Worlds

• The Sword and the Pen

By Rebekah Jones

• A Year with the Potters

By Elizabeth Kaiser

• Jeweler’s Apprentice

By Jacob Lauser

• Through Crystal Skies and Windy Nights

By J. Grace Pennington

• Firmament: Radialloy
• Never

By Jordan Smith

• Finding the Core of Your Story

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Short and Snappy

pinterest: the white sail's shaking

There is something incredibly overwhelming about being asked, "So, what's your story about?" 

On the one hand, our egos just love to be tickled by the question (if the asker actually cares; when they're only being polite, it isn't any fun at all): I don't know about you, but for me there's always a giddy burst of adrenaline that makes me grin and look altogether idiotic.  Then I bumble around for a minute or so, trying to cram a 100,000+ word story into a respectable sentence, and in the end they put on their uncomprehending face and say, "Oh!  That sounds interesting!" Which is nice of them, but I'm pretty sure my performance wouldn't garner any enthusiasm from an agent in a similar circumstance.

That reaction is, I think, fairly universal - and understandable, since if you have a particularly intricate story, it's no easy matter to convey its plot succinctly.  But if you intend to sell your story, especially in a face-to-face setting, it becomes necessary to bring the bumbling up a notch or three.  You're no longer trying to explain to your aunt what you do with your time; you're addressing an agent or a publisher who you kinda-sorta-really would like to take on your book.  (Depending on your family, the latter might actually seem less daunting.)  You have to condense your story, preferably into a pithy one-sentence summary that in film-speak is called the logline and in novel-writing the elevator-pitch.

When I'm not called upon to use them, I find this sort of thing enjoyable, so I was most pleased to be asked to read a slim book on the subject called Finding the Core of Your Story.  It isn't a large treatise at all, and wonderfully to the point - and it has examples.  I love examples.  The author, Jordan Smith, is a filmmaker, but the subtitle of the book pretty well encapsulates its usefulness to all forms of story-telling: How to strengthen and sell your story in one essential sentence.

Smith coaches the reader through the ins and outs of logline-writing, starting with the basics of what a logline is and its importance, then moving on to the nuts and bolts.  A second skim-through of the chapters brings out the key points - things we already know, hopefully, but which are irritatingly difficult to squeeze into a single sentence.  Protagonist and goal; antagonist and goal; conflict; setting.  There is also the usefulness of irony in conflict.  His example here was a logline for Jurassic Park (which I've never watched), wherein a scientist who hates kids has to protect two children.  I think this tends to denote humor, though that is not the case across the board: sometimes it merely emphasizes the tension.

One of the book's most helpful points, I thought, was Smith's chapter on finding the main thread of a story.  Of all the hang-ups when it comes to explaining to a stranger what my story is about, this is the most common: trying to make sense out of the confounded thing.  I've got subplots, and I've got themes, and I've got a half-dozen characters "what need keeping track of" - and it can be deuced tricky deciding what to say and what to leave unsaid.  I haven't yet begun a synopsis or query for Tempus Regina, but I fought about six different versions of a logline for it after reading Finding the Core of Your Story and still don't like what I came up with. 

"Well, bother it!  There's a woman, and there's a watch, and there's Victorian England - and then there isn't Victorian England because there's time-traveling - and there's a dude and another dude and a third dude, but the third dude is less important than this other gal, and there's the White Demon (but you don't really need to know about him, so forget I said that), and there's alchemy and some STUFF and other STUFF and LEGENDS and the first woman's younger brother and then some DOOM and GLOOM and now you're going to represent me, right?"

All right, so that wasn't a serious attempt, but it's about how I feel.  Pulling out the main thread is a difficult business, but I did feel that the process of narrowing down the loglines helped to clarify my own vision of the story.  I don't know that I would try loglining a story before writing, as Smith suggests - my stories don't usually take on a proper scope until I've written three-fourths of the plot - but I have a feeling it will be helpful, not just in the querying process, but in the nearer work of editing.  You've got to know what your story is primarily about before you can bolster the weak bits.

Of course, after you do all that you still have to memorize the logline and practice delivering it.  I haven't worked up the courage for that last bit, though I did fiddle with a preliminary pitch for The White Sail's Shaking:

A bumbling young man's good intentions land him in the U.S. Navy, where his hopes of winning glory are turned inside out by the murder of a fellow officer - and the presence of the killer on board.

It is, at least, a start.  And once you have the basic structure in mind, and the tips to help you along, it's actually quite enjoyable.  You're inserting your monocle and peering at the story until you find its core (which helps with editing), then finding out how many ways you can succinctly express that core (which helps with pitching and marketing).  It is a little daunting, but also, in an egotistical way, rather fun.  And we are an egotistical bunch, aren't we?

Off the Shelf

It has become something of a tradition - if you can make a tradition in just two years - for me to update the photos of my bookshelves around this time.  Not a great deal has changed as far as the big white bookcase goes, since it has all but run out of room width-wise and is even getting cramped height-wise, which makes stacking books a bit of a chore.  However, I've made some alterations to the entertainment unit, introduced a research basket where most of my reference material goes, and bought some new books that managed to squeeze in where I was quite certain there wasn't any room left, so it seemed worthwhile to show off the new look.

The second shelf here is just about the same, although I think I shuffled some Shakespeare around a bit and got a copy of The Tempest.  The tannish-greenish book on top of Jane Austen is an adorable Scribner's, 1925, South Seas edition of David Balfour; it smells of old bookshops, and as far as physical books and not the stories side the covers go, is one of my favorites.  Jenny snitched my copy of The Black Arrow some months ago and I haven't taken the time to get it back yet, but it ought to be lying lengthwise under David Balfour.

I have added more to the top shelf - it was one of the few that still had room.  There's a nice fat copy of Les Miserables being chummy with The Count of Monte Cristo.  There's Nicholas Nickleby (the chap in maroon standing next to Treasure Island, also in maroon but significantly skinnier) and hardbacks of Don Quixote and Quo Vadis?.  The rather ugly lime green clothbound on the right is The Spy by James Fenimore Cooper; the ugliness has put me off from reading it.  Over toward the left is a copy of Frenchman's Creek by Daphne du Maurier that I also have yet to read.  And Kidnapped, which out to be spanning the gap between Treasure Island and The Count, is off the shelf.  Again.  I'm pretty sure it was off the shelf last year when I took 2012's photos.  It's a popular one.

Same old, same old around here.  David Copperfield, who ought to be propping up Mary Barton, is currently serving as my downstairs reading.  The second shelf down is the same as always, though I did pick up a copy of Starflower and Moonblood.  I was given another copy of The Hobbit for my birthday, too: it's a little leather one under On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, difficult to spot in this photo.  I also shuffled Mary Stewart over to the entertainment unit to make room for the growing Tales of Goldstone Wood.  Anne Elisabeth Stengl has no compassion on my shelves.

 

Nothing much to see on the first shelf here, save for that pale blue book towards the far end, which is a rather out-of-place looking Mr. Midshipman Hornblower - move along!  The bottom shelf filled out rapidly when I finished with my research material for the Sea Fever books, and got several new books into the bargain.  The yellowy one far on the right is A Hanging Offense, which was so-so; the one next to it on the left, dwarfed by the chunky The Line upon a Wind, is The Fatal Cruise of the Argus - I've not read that one through yet.

Coming down the shelf to the left, I crammed in all my particularly useful books: Edward Preble, dull but incredibly helpful; Dawn Like Thunder, also marvelous; Stephen Decatur and The Barbary Wars, which were rather meh; and then a few on naval warfare that had been lying flat in last year's shot.  The green hardback to the right of The Barbary Wars - I don't know if you can see it - is a pretty copy of Rudyard Kipling's The Seven Seas, a collection of poetry. 

 

Mostly mysteries down here on the lower shelf of the entertainment unit, with a very big, very heavy, very highlighted (and not by me) Pelican Shakespeare to boot.  I picked up some Agatha Christie novels and was given The Secret Adversary, the first Tommy & Tuppence, for my birthday.  Sherlock Holmes is getting a little tipsy over on the right.  Lying flat on top are The Red House Mystery, an enjoyable murder mystery by that wonderful fellow called A.A. Milne; another Holmes; and a Wodehouse.  I have two Jeeves novels, but I just finished reading the other and he hasn't gone home yet.

 

Top shelf!  This has obviously filled out since last year.  Of The Thief series, I only had the first one this time last year; I picked up The Queen of Attolia and The King of Attolia (lovely hardback, too) in the interim, but have not yet read the latter.  There's Howl, looking very creased from getting passed around the family so many times.  I Capture the Castle and Peter Pan are being green together.  There are a couple more Peter Pan books that I've not yet read, a few Costain novels (Ride with Me and High Towers) that I really only picked up because of their looks, and a fat N.C. Wyeth-illustrated The Scottish Chiefs.  The little book on top is one I just got a few weeks ago, The Winter Prince by Elizabeth Wein.  

In the back - you can just see them - are some of my Christian books (which sounds ridiculous, but I'm not sure what else to call them).  Anna gave me Mornings with Tozer.  There's Charity and Its Fruits, and The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, and the pale blue one on the right is God with Us.  The Mind of the Maker is playing coy on the left and barely made an appearance.

Here is the aforementioned research basket, which is actually getting alarmingly full.  The big red book is an atlas of the ancient world.  The fake, Celtic-knot book came with tea in it and is now used for collecting rejection letters (yay!).  It leans rather forlornly against a Smithsonian bird book; two books on ancient astronomy that I just added two days ago (Echoes of the Ancient Skies and In Search of Ancient Astronomies, by E.C. Krupp); and three Country Diary books, full of watercolors and nature notes by a Birmingham lady in the early 20th Century.

And this is my too-large stack of books that are either being read or that just haven't made their way back home.  On the right stack are an old copy of Wordcrafter; two writing notebooks and a general notebook; Gleanings from Paul (there to make me finish reading it); and the currently-being-read Signs Amid the Rubble.  Which is splendid.  I confess the first two lectures were a little taxing and it was difficult to tell where he was going, but by the time I came to the third, I was having to restrain myself from underlining every other passage.  Excellent book - do read!

On the left there is Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, which I just began last night; The Inimitable Jeeves, finished the other night but still kicking about; and Kidnapped, which really should go back to its spot now.  The absolutely massive book is a book on Cromwell - I'm not sure why it's still there.  Below that is an Arthur Custance work, and then Red Moon and Black Mountain, and then another notebook.  I should clear up this mess, but I get so used to seeing all the books there that I just never do!

what are your shelves looking like this spring?

Imitation, Inspiration, and a Thing Called Voice

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I'm not sure if The Trouble with Imitation answered any thoughts writers may have on the subject of inspiration, but I do know it raised more questions!

Joy sent me a sort of follow-up email this week on the subject of, well, "imitation, inspiration, and a thing called voice."  These are all fairly elusive terms - I'm still not sure I could define 'voice' adequately if someone put a gun to my head and insisted on it (although you can bet I would try) - and ones I'm pretty sure we've all wondered about.  I don't know if I will be able to answer all the questions, but I'll give it a shot in the hopes of clearing up some of the muddle that comes with literary talk.

Joy asks...

...I have also been mulling over the trouble of plagiarizing and copy-catting too much the books we cherish and authors we respect vs. going to the other extreme of not reading at all so as not to let our writings be unduly influenced! ...Sometimes I struggle with the whole art of learning from ‘The Greats’ and imbibing the skills and virtues they were masters at, without messing up with my own style and voice and especially the genre I am writing in. 

 And as for my answer, her second question, and my answer to that, you will have to toddle over to her blog.  Be sure to leave a comment if you have a spare moment!  She and I are both very fond of hearing from readers.

The Trouble with Imitation

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Back in September of last year - was it really that long ago? - I scribbled a post for myself and for others on writing as an art.  With so many blogs and self-help books inundating us with tips and keys and the essence(s) of story-telling (I think I saw two different essences in the same week), we can easily fall into the trap of looking at writing as a mechanical process.  Fuse this tricky piece called "a good plot" with this other piece called "good writing" and ta da! Bestseller!

This approach appeals to us because it seems at first blush to offer a quick path to perfection in our writing.  We all want to improve, and the idea that if we just follow three easy steps we'll attain to the literary heights is awfully tempting.  In my post, however, I talked about something we probably all know and must simply be reminded of: the fact that writing is not mechanics, but

a process of growing art.

This current post is something of an extension of that basic notion, for even after we're rooted in it, there is still the difficult issue of knowing how to encourage that growing art to grow. We get to the place where we realize, "Oh goodness.  My writing seriously needs help, doesn't it?"  Maybe the pieces we've written before aren't so bad, maybe they're total rubbish, but either way there ought to come a point sooner or later in time when we realize it is not the best that it can be.  We come to grips with the fact that there are writers out there who just frankly do it - or did it - better than we, and then we begin to wonder how to coax further growth out of our own writing.

"Learn from the best" ought, really and truly, to be trumpeted more often than it is.  Read the Greats.  Don't settle for mediocre writers, the ones who don't do it as well as you, or who write on the same level as you, or who are maybe a little better: digest those writers whose works amaze you, blow you away, and leave you inspired (and perhaps a little jealous) after you've picked yourself up and pieced yourself back together.  "A man of ability," wrote William G. T. Shedd, "for the chief of his reading, should select such works as he feels beyond his own power to have produced."  What ho, Mr. Shedd, you said it truly!

Unfortunately, even this excellent advice can be warped, and writers who do try to "learn from the best" frequently fall into another trap of believing that it is also necessary to copy the best.  I wouldn't say this is always conscious; perhaps the underlying reasoning is mere mistaken logic, where writers suppose that if this man writes this way, and is reckoned a Great, then to be great we must write this way as well.  We're told we are supposed to imitate these people, and to an extent - the extent of a child following in the footsteps of an adult, before that child has learned to walk and direct himself - that is true.  But we've got to be wary of taking the principle too far.

We learn from others, ones who have gone before and ones who are going along with us: true.  We glean ruses, tactics, and strategies from them: also true.  We are not, however, meant to piece together little bits and pieces of authors' styles into something we call "our own" (and if we do, it can only ever be a literary Frankenstein's monster - because no one can forge the original author's signature with the same flair).  Even less are we meant to pick one favorite author and imitate them in all things.  That is to say -

we should not try writing characters like Dickens

we should not try writing romance like Austen

we should not try writing emotion and description like Sutcliff

we should not try writing an allegory like Lewis

and we really, truly, for the love of peachy goodness shouldn't try writing fantasy like Tolkien.

For me, this meant a realization that I am not Jenny and should not try to write like her.  I do not share her poetry-prose flair, and to attempt it would appear forced.  I can certainly look up to her and try to write as well as she does, but always in my own style and what people call "voice."  I admire R.L. Stevenson's descriptions and the masterful plots of Dickens.  Austen's wit is positively hilarious.  Sutcliff can take your heart and wring it like a sponge.  Lewis and Tolkien were masters of their art.  We ought to read them, look up to them, learn from them (and never stop doing so!), but we must also find our own ground, plant our roots in it and say, "This is my place.  I'll gain nutrients from all the writers I come across, but I am confident enough in my own voice not to mimic that of others."

It's a growing art, this writing business.  But it is important to realize that it varies from one person to the next, and we're not meant to try to graft ourselves into some other writer's vine - so that when someone asks us, "Would you rather write like this author or this author?" our response should be, "Um, cake, please?"

The Next Big Thing

pinterest: tempus regina

A few weeks ago Anne Elisabeth Stengl (who, for the information of newer Scribbles readers, submitted to the grueling process of an interview here way back in September 2011) asked me if I would be interested in participating in an author blog hop.  The idea is to answer a series of questions regarding our "next big thing" - in this case, my work-in-progress.  It seemed a splendid opportunity to introduce Tempus Regina, though I doubt it will be much less nebulous at the end.

Anne Elisabeth posted her own answers last week, featuring her Summer 2013 release Dragonwitch - which I, for one, am eagerly expecting.  This novel will be the fifth in her dramatic fairy-tale series Tales of Goldstone Wood.  There aren't any spoilers, so if you haven't seen the post already, be sure to take a peek and do some ooh-ing and aah-ing.  If you've come from her blog already, then welcome!  And may I introduce...

the next big thing

1. What is the working title of your book? 

Tempus Regina.

2. Where did the idea come from for the book? 

 I think this was one of those stories whose title came to mind first, which is pretty rare for me. I had scraps of other ideas floating around in my mind—lost kingdoms and civilizations and curses and doom and all that jazz—and a few of them appended themselves to the title. Developing it into an actual story was, and is, somewhat slow going.

3. What genre does your book fall under? 

 Primarily fantasy, but to be technical, I would call it historical fantasy.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? 

I’m not sure I’ve been rubbing shoulders with the characters long enough to pinpoint actors for them! On demand, however, I’ll do my best. Regina is a relatively easy choice: Katie McGrath would be little short of perfect. As far as looks go, Chris Hemsworth is not very far off how I envision the Assassin, but personality-wise I don’t see it working at all. David Tennant, on the other hand, has most of the personality and few of the necessary looks. I foresee this being a tricky issue.

I confess, I want Jeremy Brett for the Fisherman—which is sad, because Brett passed away some time ago. As a necessary second choice, I would cast Joaquin Phoenix—if he were younger. I’m always about ten years behind the times.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? 

Centuries out of time, Regina Winters sets out to return to her own era and the brother who is her charge—no matter the cost to herself or to the world around her.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? 

Represented by an agency is the goal.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? 

It’s a work in progress! I only properly began in November 2012, but I am currently a raw 80,000 words in.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? 

As far as books I’ve read go, I would say C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, particularly That Hideous Strength; Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising; and perhaps some Stephen Lawhead. Judging only by hearsay and back-cover blurbs, I would take an educated guess and say Mary Stewart’s Arthurian Saga and maybe Marion Zimmer Bradley, though I don’t intend to read the latter to find out. However, I tend not to read books that might be similar until after I write my first draft, so as to avoid copy-catting as much as possible. I’ll get back with you at a later date.

9. Who or What inspired you to write this book? 

One of the most important elements of inspiration was a story my sister dabbled in years ago; she never finished, which caused me much chagrin, but the general idea stuck with me and eventually resurfaced. I think I was also inspired by a documentary—I forget what it was called—that I watched years ago on the discovery of underwater antiquities; that is something of enduring interest. A more recent, and more massive, blast of inspiration came from the realization that Tempus Regina was already linked to a novel Jenny is now working on (you can read about it by following the link to her blog below); though the connection was quite unconscious on both our parts, it has been extremely helpful to discover that these two novels are, in a way, “book ends” of one another.

To a lesser degree, I’ve been inspired by pocket-watches, Sherlock Holmes, ancient and medieval science, legends, Howl’s Moving Castle, a heap of music, and a great dose of white phosphorus.

jennifer freitag & faith king are participating in today's blog hop

&

I also tagged mirriam neal.  Keep an eye out! 

The Creative Mind

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Last week I finished reading The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers, a contemporary of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and best known for her Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels.  I can't say I'm much a fan of her mysteries, but this book I enjoyed so much that I gave it five stars and wanted to wave it in the face of everyone I ever met and scream, "Read this book, it's full of awesome!"  Which is not generally something I do; I try to keep my voice below a scream at all times.  Sometimes, however, I do feel that a higher pitch is justified.

The Mind of the Maker was once such instance.  It is a little hard to explain and do justice to it, for Sayers, with a kind of tongue-in-cheek, no-nonsense style somewhat typical of her generation, covers a great deal of ground in only 250 pages.  She is examining, or rather making a frank case for, the doctrine of the Trinity - and that right there is a monumental task.  She goes about it, however, not from the "top down," but from the "bottom up."  For she looks first at something very near and dear to every human artist, whether writer or painter, sculptor or musician:

the trinity within the mind of the human maker

This doesn't seem self-evident when stated like that, and yet it struck me because some time before beginning the book, I realized that in my writing I seem to have three different tracks or periods of thought.  There is the period where I seem to get the most concepts, where story ideas seem to be popping up frequently.  Then there's the time while I'm actively writing, where all my powers are concentrated on that single story.  And then I have my editing, as I polish and rewrite and convey what I want to convey, and during which I feel the need to edit everything in sight - whether it's mine or not.

These thought-periods very roughly correspond, I think, to what Sayers discusses in The Mind of the Maker, but outlining it her way is much more coherent and profound.  Her "trinity," based on experience, is that of Idea, Energy (or Activity), and Power.  Idea is comparatively easy to grasp: it is the overarching knowledge of the story, beginning to end, the story as it exists within the maker's mind.  It isn't always fully expressed even to the creator, not at first; but it is the guiding pattern of the work.  It is what allows you to say at the end, looking back at the beginning: "This is how the story was meant to be.  I didn't know it at first, but this is it.  Nothing else would have been right; this is the story."

This struck home to me, because it encapsulated my feelings as I stand at the finish-line of The White Sail's Shaking and The Running Tide.  I can't express how unprepared I was when I began the novel on November 1, 2010.  I had little more than the names of two main characters - Tip and Marta - and a setting, and that was all.  Charlie Bent and Josiah Darkwood came in of their own accord, one might say, but I found they were crucial to the story as a whole.  Lewis, only a bully at the beginning, appeared again to star as the villain of the piece - and it was right, though not wholly planned.  I look back over the story and I'm amazed at the unity of it, when I started with nothing more than fragments.  Sayers, I think, gives the explanation.  For The White Sail's Shaking and The Running Tide exist in my own mind as an Idea, and because the execution of it has matched that pattern, it feels right.

The execution, then, is the Energy.  I found the term a little odd, and hard not to confuse with Power; "Activity" works better, I think.  At any rate, this is the outward expression - in paint or words or music - of the Idea in the maker's mind.  For a writer, it's the act of writing.  It's taking the concept and giving it expression, so that readers can see that form and, through it, see the Idea in the mind of the maker.  Sayers comments that this is why it confuses a writer to be asked, "What did you mean by this plot twist, or that character?"  Because if the writer has done his work correctly, his "meaning" should be expressive in the plot twist or the character.  "Meaning" is part and parcel of the Activity.

This concept is mentioned at times, though not in these terms.  It is the same law that says that extraneous characters (no matter how vivid) and unimportant events (no matter how dramatic) damage rather than help a story.  Such goings-on are nothing but the Activity expressing itself, and not the Idea; for the whole purpose of the Activity is to present the Idea. 

Lastly in the trinity, there comes Power.  It is harder to explain than Idea or Activity, as Sayers concedes, but it is something like the conveyance of the Idea's spirit.  It is the invoking of feeling and understanding in the minds of readers - an exchange, as it were, from the writer's mind to that of the reader.  If this Power isn't present, then the expression of the Activity has failed and the Idea is not fully revealed.  I saw a quote recently (by Stephen King - go figure) that reminded me of this: "Description begins in the writer's imagination, but should finish in the reader's."  I think you could accurately add to "description" characters, plot, foreshadowing, dialogue, and anything else that might spring to mind.  All must be planted in the reader's mind, or there is no Power.

I think by this point the analogy becomes quite clear.  For like the Idea, would not God the Father be, for all intents and purposes, unknowable if it were not for His self-expression in God the Son?  And does not Paul - and Jesus Himself - make it clear that the Son is the "image of the invisible God," that "having seen Him we have seen the Father"?  He does not do His own will, but the will of the Father.  And the Holy Spirit, proceeding from God the Father, then testifies of Jesus Christ.

It would be wrong, of course, to say this analogy is perfect; because of the Fall, the trinity of the human maker's mind is corrupted and tends to overemphasize one or another - as Sayers herself points out.  And yet, as God is the supreme Maker, is it not reasonable to see how we, made in His image, are makers after the same fashion?  I wouldn't say this is all that is entailed by the Imago Dei, but it is an integral part of human nature: the true, good human nature that God Himself created.  As we are all made in His Image, so we are all meant to be makers.  Not all writers, not all painters, not all musicians.  But all looking at the world and our work with the eyes of artists, expressing and taking pleasure in our creations.  Because if we don't, if we fall into the rut of ho-humming our way through life and taking no pleasure in our work (for God did design us for work), we are not living according to the pattern the divine Maker has laid out. 

And that's never a pleasant place to be.

in conclusion: read the mind of the maker.  end of story.

What Makes a Memorable Character?

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This week I am tickled to be able to play host to new authoress Elizabeth Rose, whose novel Violets are Blue was published in May 2012 and can be found on Amazon.  Elizabeth has been conducting a blog tour, and I'm very pleased that she chose to make Scribbles and Ink Stains one of her stops - especially since her guest post is on creating memorable characters.  Read, enjoy, and remember to check out her lovely blog at Living on Literary Lane!

read and enjoy

When I read a book, the first aspect of it that makes me fall in love are the characters. In my mind, the setting, plot, and dialogue are all various forms of polish that enhance the people around whom the story revolves.

That is every writer's intent, is it not? We want to write characters who are memorable. When you read Anne of Green Gables, did you love the plot of an orphan girl sent to live with a middle-aged brother and sister, or did you fall in love with the scrape-proned title character herself? She is the one we remember the best, and she is the one that keeps us reading the various sequels in the series by L.M. Montgomery. If we hadn't liked Anne, we would have never wanted to read Anne of Avonlea. 

C.S. Lewis' unforgettable opening lines — "There was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it" — are a perfect example of how much a book's readability depends on the characters that inhabit it. When I first read those words as a child, I knew very little about where the plot would carry me, and yet I had already decided that I was going to like this book. Why? Because Lewis opened his book with a character that demanded your attention from the start. Already I was wondering why Eustace almost deserved his horrid name. If you don't care about the characters, it doesn't matter what fantastic plot twists the author puts in his story. You may be surprised that a man who seemed trustworthy is really the villain in disguise, but you'll only yawn in boredom when he wounds the protagonist in a duel. After all, what does it matter that the main character may die in the next three pages? You never cared about him in the first place. Frankly, you're more curious about what you'll be eating for lunch.

Obviously we don't want our readers considering the everyday occurence of a midday meal more exciting than the riveting plots we took months, even years to craft just right. We hope they'll be turning pages feverishly, laughing at certain characters' dialogue, smiling sweetly at the end of a chapter, weeping at an unexpected death. In essence, we want the people we create to become as real as life itself to whomever meets them on the page. We want to write memorable characters.

Which begs the question, what is it exactly that makes a memorable character?

Recipe for Memorable Characters

One dosage per chapter should suffice.

Both faults and virtues. Except for those who swear by the Elsie Dinsmore books, most readers find perfect characters stuffy, unnatural, and discouraging. Why? Because we can't relate to them. It's admirable to have a character who does everything right, but it's not very honest. We're all sinners, whether some wish to accept that fact or not, and we all are going to make mistakes in turn. That's not saying your characters have to be unnaturally immoral just for the sake of "being realistic", though — find a good balance between the two. If you're struggling, just observe the people around you.

Secrets. When was the last time you met a person who told you their life's backstory and everything about them in the first five minutes of conversation? If all that information is put out in the open from the start, not only does it make for some rather dull reading, it also gives the reader little incentive to continue. After all, he or she knows everything there is to know about these characters, and they've barely finished the fifth page. Keep some things secret. Show your characters' personalities through gradual dialogue and actions, rather than a never-ending paragraph of description.

Villains with hearts. Villains who simply go around slaughtering people for absolutely no reason are not very conceivable. Even your antagonists must have some small features that endear them to your readers, or a bit of background on why he or she became this way. Somehow this makes them more deadly, because it temporarily unarms you and can make the good and evil in the story seem less clear-cut (so long as you're not portraying them as good, loving, and just misunderstood, because that ploy has been used one too many times). I can assure you that there are very few people who were born wielding an uninhibited tomahawk with designs on conquering the world. If you've ever met one, I'd love to be introduced . . . from a distance, and in full-body armor, of course.

Natural dialogue. This can be a tricky one for some — myself included — but it's a very crucial part in making your characters seem real. Stiff, queer dialogue is a dead giveaway that the author doesn't know much about how real people speak in daily life. Again, if you are having trouble with this factor, just observe your family and other people around you: how they interact with each other, and how their conversations fit together. It doesn't take too long to get the hang of it.

At the heart of it, writing unforgettable characters is all about portraying real life and different aspects of human nature. Every point in the list above can be boiled down to this simple truth. Seek to portray human nature realistically, and you'll have a cast of fantastic characters before you know it.

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Elizabeth Rose is a follower of the Most High who seeks to live every day of her life in accordance with 1 Corinthians 10:31. She loves all sorts of books (the thicker the better), is convinced that Irish Breakfast tea is the closest thing this world will get to heaven, dances until her feet ache, stays up until all hours writing, wears pearls at every opportunity, and obsesses over Les Misérables and The Scarlet Pimpernel. Her debut novel, Violets Are Blue, was published in May 2012. You can find her on Literary Lane, most likely with The Count of Monte Cristo in hand, and ink on her fingers.