"Who" Giveaway!

It's out--check it out on Amazon! (For the next couple of days, the ebook will be free, plus getting the book lets you claim an entry in the giveaway down below.)

Who Laid the Egg: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B06VYGVVFT

¿Quién Puso el Huevo? http://www.amazon.com/dp/B06WRXK5QH

(I've also got a rehash of this on my website, plus a couple of coloring pages just up yesterday.)


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Who Laid the Egg?

Changes are coming...

I haven't updated since late November, but since then I've started working on a children's book. It's almost done now.

The book started with the munchkin helping me cook up some eggs for breakfast one morning. He's been terribly fascinated with eggs and counting them out for me. He's also fascinated by breaking them open for me. The only challenge is slowing him down enough for me to keep up.

Munchkin has also helped collect eggs with his aunts, so we naturally started talking about...

Who Laid the Egg?

Sneak preview of one answer over on the right:

Ostrich!

I've been working to finalize the book the last few days, and I'm almost ready to put it out, starting with paperback and Kindle version, and possibly a hardcover as well, if people are interested. I'll update you as that happens.

With that said, I've posted on this blog for a lot of years. I may keep it around and post occasionally, but I'm in the process of setting up a new Internet home. If you currently use my www.aesauble.com domain to get here, that's going to change in the next couple of days, and you will need to use www.theloremistress.blogspot.com once again.

A Foreword to Prologues

I’ve read too much theory of writing recently. It’s starting to affect my reading.

Not too long ago, I picked up a new book—the author came very well recommended. It was a tad macabre, but the book turned out as brilliant as could be hoped for. Still, when I put it down at the end (and gave a little sigh that the book didn’t last even longer), my brain involuntarily went reeling back to the beginning of the story.

To set the stage a little—this was a detective novel of sorts, with a psychic hero w

ho sees dead people. They never talk, he’s very clear on that point, but they do want him to resolve their problems, solve their murders, and generally make it easier for them to pass on to the next life.

The book starts off with a prologue. No, the author doesn’t call it that, but it is one anyway. I have a prologue at the beginning of my current work in progress, and I call it that very clearly. It’s purpose, though, is to set the stage for the key incident in my story. The prologue in this other book is really just the first couple of chapters, but they aren’t the main story—they’re a little snippet of a story—a short story, really—set there to introduce the main character and set the stage for the bigger story to come.

According to another book, one I read this spring, that's all a prologue really is--a set piece that introduces the main character (or sometimes the villain), or else establishes a degree of tension that will carry the reader into the rest of the story.

In The First Fifty Pages, Jeff Gerke suggests using prologues to show main characters such as action heroes or detectives solving a smaller problem before going on to the big event. It lets readers see who the hero is and how he solves things. That way, they have an idea what to expect when he faces a real challenge, even if the story doesn't immediately turn into booby traps and explosions.

I recommend The First Fifty Pages, by the way. The book explained some things about plot structure that plenty of others have discussed, but it made sense to me in a way that none of the others did.

Good Stories, According to C.S. Lewis

When it comes to writing about writing, nearly everyone has tried to define what makes a good story. Ever heard of Plato, Aristotle? Yep, they started it, and plenty of people have continued the trend.

Even C. S. Lewis.

Last fall, I reviewed a new collection of C. S. Lewis’s essays, Image and Imagination. I picked up the (Kindle) book again recently and ran across a section on the qualities which make a story great. He applies them particular to the book he’s reviewing, Charles Williams’s Taliessin Through Logres.

Technically, this post should really be called “What Makes a Good Poem,” since that’s primarily what C.S. Lewis is talking about in his review, but he isn’t referring to the quality of the poetry. Instead, this is about what makes the language, story, and idea of the poem stand out. This isn’t about good poetry as defined by meter or rhyme, but good poetry and good storytelling that captures a reader’s attention and lingers in memory after the reader has finished.

Several years ago, I borrowed a couple of Charles Williams’s books from the library. I still remember very intense images from the books I read, but they were fairly dense reading and I didn’t make it to Taliessin Through Logres, unfortunately. I still want to go back and read it, especially after reading Lewis’s review. I suspect that I will get a lot more out of the poem after reading the analysis Lewis gives in this review.

Toward the end of the article, though, Lewis explains why he believes Taliessin stands out—and why he thinks it should take its place among other great poems.

So, here are Lewis’s four standards for declaring Taliessin a masterpiece. May they help you decide why you think a story is great—or even how well your own stories rank against Lewis’s scale of greatness:

1. “The world into which this poem carries is emphatically not mine.”
2. “Closely connected with the preceding point is the fact that the poem, once read, lays the images permanently on the mind.”
3. “The total effect of the poetry is something more and better than any enumeration of its qualities would lead one to predict.”
4. “If this poem is good at all it is entirely irreplaceable in the sense that no other book whatever comes anywhere near reminding you of it or being even a momentary substitute for it. If you can’t get an orange, then a lemon or a grapefruit will give you a taste that has something in common with it. But if you can’t get a pineapple, then nothing else will even faintly put you in mind of it.”

With his first point, Lewis clarifies that the world he means is not a familiar, comfortable world. It’s not a world that he likes and visits because he’s familiar with it, but because the story has drawn him into a new world entirely. Plenty of people say they read because it introduces them to a world outside their experiences, because it broadens their horizons. I've never head before a distinction between books that help us feel comfortable and those which really do introduce us to new worlds.

With the last point, Lewis describes Taliessin as deep and disquieting, but adds that it left him with a sort of “shy, elusive laughter; angelic rather than elfin laughter.”

I often have trouble explaining why I like certain stories—sometimes it’s a particular character’s wittiness, or the vividness of the imagery—but sometimes it’s a feeling that the story leaves. It’s that last, irreducible piece of a story that gives it soul and makes it more than all the pieces which compose it. It's the final, indescribable essence of the story, which so many people have tried to capture in practice exercises and theories. In other words, it's the element which makes it a pineapple instead of an orange like so many other stories.

Squirrel Attack

I've been concerned about my lettuce plants for a while. First there was the lack of sun. Then there was the heat. Now it's the squirrels.

Yes, the squirrels. They’re back—or still here.

The squirrels were a lot quieter during the winter, but I notice them fairly frequently these days. It's great fun to watch them jump between the trees. I haven't seen any fall out of a tree this year, not yet. But sometimes when I see one girding up for the leap, I'll grab my camera and start recording…just in case.

Just last week, I glanced out the window and found a squirrel staring at me from the porch rail. 

He wasn't terribly interested in me, though. After a moment, he jumped down onto the porch and started rummaging through the pine needles. He had a peanut in his mouth—probably stole it from the neighbors upstairs—and he seemed to be trying to find a place to bury it.

Poor squirrel—we only had carpeting under our pine needles, nothing deep enough to hide a peanut. Still, that’s when I decided it might be time to sweep the pine needles off the porch.

The next day, a different squirrel showed up. How do I know? He was distinctly redder than the first one, as well as smaller. I’m just not sure whether the same squirrel showed up twice that day, or if I managed to spot Squirrels Two and Three relatively close together.

The squirrel (or squirrels) also seemed to be hunting about in the needles for a place to hide something.

A couple days ago, I did manage to sweep the porch, and the result looked so nice that I sat out there a couple times in the past week. Warm afternoons and a clean porch are great at encouraging me to go outside.

Unfortunately, when I went out on the porch today, I found one of my lettuce pots had been knocked over. A couple others had the dirt shoved around. It seems the squirrels are persistent, though maybe they decided to eat some greens with their peanuts this time.

Oh, well.

Actually, I had already spotted signs that my lettuce sprouts were trying to sprout flowers, instead of growing up into big lettuce. At least I still have green stuff other than moss growing on my porch. That's all that really matters.

That, and healthy squirrels who know when to eat their veggies.

Why the World Needs a Better Butter Tray

Around this time last year, when the two of us set up house together, we bought a butter dish.

What’s important about a butter dish?

Actually, the butter dish are very important, along with salt-and-pepper shakers and candle holders. The butter dish may be the one thing we use every day, apart from the fridge and the oven, of
course.

When I was growing up, butter was important for my family. We used it in the morning to fry our eggs. We used it in the evening to butter muffins.

My family had a couple different butter trays, but the main one was a beige plastic tub. It had a flat tray with a semi-rough texture for us to set the stick of butter on, and it had a flat-topped cover that snapped over the tray.

Why am I even thinking about this?

Last year, I married a UX designer. UX designer means user-experience designer, or someone who tries to make sure people can use the product the way it’s meant to be used—without tearing their hair out in agony. The term applies mainly to programs IT people use, but someone out there is responsible for designing butter dishes.

Over the years, my family dumped the butter on the floor several times—both with and without the cover on. Sometimes the cover kept the butter from making a mess. We washed the greasy butter off the tray countless times. We tried not to get it messy, but the lid usually stuck a bit. Most of the time, as we pried the lid off, one corner would bump into the butter. It the butter was soft, the lid got especially greasy, and we’d have to wash it even more frequently, soaping away the butter and crumbs, before unwrapping a fresh stick of butter and setting it carefully in the center of the tray.

So last year, my husband and I made a special point of getting a butter tray. We even picked out a glass one. We picked out one without a snap-on lid, thinking it would be a nice tray for every day and special use, easy to use, easy to clean, and easy to keep clean.

We were wrong.

The lid doesn’t snap on, but it doesn’t have a handle either. We can’t lift it straight up and down, so to use it, we have to slide the lid until we get a solid grip and lift it off.

The bigger problem, though, is the tray’s size. With something designed specifically for butter, you might expect the tray’s designer or manufacturer to find a stick of butter and measure it to make sure it actually fit into the tray’s proto-type.

One brand of butter does fit okay, because it’s a longer, thinner stick of butter. Most butter, though, comes in short, stubby sticks. The lid on our butter tray is about a millimeter too short for those brands of butter.

I refuse to buy a different brand of butter just to get a stick of butter that fits into the butter tray. I’m also not going to shave the top millimeter off every stick of butter I put into the tray. So, our butter tray will inevitably have a thin streak of butter across the top of the lid.

Someone out there failed, and because I married a UX designer, I now notice things like that.

I also notice little things about websites, like the site that has its log-in box only on the front page, in a small sidebar of the front page, and the other sites where you can’t log out—you can only click the little tab meant for “if you’re not the person who’s claiming to be logged in.”

Good design is important, and the world will build a path to the door of the designer who builds a better butter tray.

I guess you can say it's been a good year, though, if that's all I can find to complain about.

(Also, it’s true that you should choose your friends wisely…because the people you hang out with will affect you, sooner or later.)

Speculating from the Bible: WWBJD?

Imagine the comments Mary must have gotten.

“How long does he sleep at night? I hope you know how lucky you are.”

“Wow, does that baby never cry?”

Okay, I know this isn’t Christmas, so it’s not really the time for a discussion about baby Jesus and “Away in the Manger.” Jesus was a baby for a lot longer than Christmas time, though.

We aren’t told how he acted as an infant, since that’s not part of the story being told in the Bible. Still, it makes for interesting Speculative History: What Would Baby Jesus Do?

Let’s think for a minute about how the perfect baby would act... 

That means perfect not as in “never cries,” but as in “never sins.” 

We know Jesus wept over other people’s pain. We also know he sweated in agony before his crucifixion. Obviously, Jesus cried as a baby, right?

The general consensus in child development books seems to be that newborns cry to express a need. They aren’t aware enough of their surroundings to realize that they can manipulate people by crying. That seems pretty simple. No sin in asking mom for a snack if you're hungry, so no sin in crying to get fed as a baby. As a newborn, Jesus might have cried primarily to communicate that he was hungry, or because he was tired or he needed his diaper changed. 

The question gets trickier with time, however. Older children occasionally learn that they can get what they want by crying. As a perfect toddler, Jesus wouldn’t try to manipulate his mom into giving him an extra cookie after she said no. That would be ‘disobedience to parents.’

But what if Mary put him down for a few minutes, while she took the bread out of the oven? A normal toddler doesn’t understand why mom is worried about burning the bread, and he cries because it’s significantly more lonely on the floor than in mom’s arms. Besides, it’s a scary thing—not knowing if you’re ever going to see someone again.

But perfect love casts out fear. So, as since Jesus was fully God, and God is love, would Jesus have been frightened as an infant or a child? Would he have cried because he startled himself awake at night and didn’t know where his mom was until she picked him up?

And pain—since Jesus was able to heal other people’s disease’s, maybe he never got sick himself? Or, perhaps because he took on humanity with all of its weaknesses and temptations, he also felt normal illnesses and had the flu as a child. Maybe he was also susceptible to colic as an infant.

As an older child, say about seven, it might be easy to imagine Jesus patiently putting up with the flu and having mom tell him to stay indoors. As an infant with colic? It’s not a sin to ask for help, and crying is the only way babies can ask. Perhaps Mary had some sleepless nights after all, rocking Jesus and trying to sooth her baby’s collywobbles.

Still, there's that manipulation issue again, and Jesus wouldn't have thrown a fit because Mary told him to shake his bedroll out and put it away. Would he have cried because he lost the rattle Joseph made for him? I don't know, but I doubt an older Jesus would even have cried because his sister took his toy sword away.

(Imagine the pressure his siblings must have gotten.)

Photos & Progress

It was a long hike last weekend, and it's been a long week. Productive, yes--but long.

 I haven't touched my current novel in a couple of months, so I set a challenge to write at least 500 words this week. It helped to have a small goal--one I could break out into 100-word chunks if necessary. Even better, I actually made it with a couple hundred words to spare, thanks to some extra time this evening.

Next goal: write the same again next week until it gets to be a habit. Also, I really need to figure out why the crazy, great ideas only show up at 2 a.m.

Ladrones: A New Type of Reading Material

Let’s suppose…

Let’s suppose that you know someone is doing secret work for the government.

In fact, someone is carrying on an ‘ultra-secret’ investigation for the military, trying to track information in an espionage case. So, what do you do?

When someone drops by to talk to a person who happens to be gone at the moment—the same person you know is gone because he’s doing an espionage investigation? Obviously, you say, “Sorry, Dad’s not here—he’s working on an ultra-secret case for the Navy.”

Okay, maybe not?

Unfortunately, I happened to start reading another book not long ago … Los Hardy Boys: El Espía del Pentágono.

Okay, let me explain.

I wanted to work on reading out loud occasionally, but Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages wasn’t working. Then, of course, I haven’t done much Spanish practice in recent weeks. Since I love combining two needs, I decided the occasion called for me to read something in Spanish…and the book I happened to have around was a Hardy Boys’ story in Spanish.

So, it wasn’t a top-secret case; it was un asunto ultrasecreto—and yes, the Hardy Boys went and blurted that fact out to their visitor within two minutes of meeting him. I used to think only Chet would do something like that.

Even better, I’ve also found that the book is about to mix genres in a small way. The Hardys are heading off into Amish country to investigate weathervanes.

Of course, reading the first chapter, I had to guess that valetas are weather vanes. Turns out that my guess was correct. That just as well. Otherwise, I might have needed to make up my own story about the Hardy boys rescuing antique weathervanes from a band of ladrones, chasing them down horse-and-buggy style.

That story might have gotten a little mixed-up, though. Right now, I’ve swapped to listening to Anne of Green Gables via a Librivox recording. 

I must be reliving my childhood.

A Fold in Time?

I do not consider myself an origami expert. Usually, when I try to fold a sheet of paper, the corners don’t match, the edges come out wrong, and not matter how careful I am, the paper itself seems to change shape as I fold.

A couple days ago, though, when I was researching origami paper, I found that not all origami uses paper. Origami folders apparently include artists who use the techniques on metal, food, an even cloth. Cloth, really, you ask?

It’s called napkin folding.

As I said, I’ve never considered myself an origami expert, but it just so happens, I have had lots of practice with napkin folds after working at The Farm Lodge for a couple of summers. One of my favorite jobs there was setting the tables for dinner, which included ironing and starching 10 to 30 napkins (depending on the number of guests that night), and then picking out a napkin fold for that day. The fold often depended on the number of guests, since a bird-of-paradise or a water-lily might be really cool, but a fleur-de-lis in a water goblet is much simpler. Of course, the edges didn’t always match up either, but then napkins aren’t actually square.

This all comes up because I’m working on a new writing project.

I’m now the Arts & Crafts expert for a review site. Of all the different areas where I might consider myself expert, this was not one of them. Sure, I’ve taken a couple art classes, I’ve entered more doilies in the county fair than I can count, and I’ve even learned some weird abilities like transcribing patterns from heirloom doilies and potholders. I even organized and taught a children’s art class, after much reluctance and a fair bit of trepidation.

But using that background for writing? Maybe for adding a bit of color to a scene with some minor character in the back of the room, working busily away over a bobbin-lace pillow. (No, I haven’t written that scene yet, but I do know about where it will show up in one of my stories.) Still, actually thinking of myself as an expert on the best type of oil pastel, or watercolor paper? Not likely.

Until a couple weeks ago, that is.

I don’t know everything about paper or paintbrushes or , but I do know enough to start, and I also know where and how to find the extra information I need. So, even if I’ve never considered myself a proper artist, certainly not an expert, the experience still came in handy.

I even got to practice my French and Spanish a couple times when I needed to look up a brand’s website and it happened to be made by a European company. Now I just need to work on German and Japanese for those other companies’ websites…

And I might have to try actual paper origami again one of these days—after I play with my watercolors sometime or get my hands on a set of oil pastels.

Playing in The Snow

We’ve been through the quotes this weekend—everything from “Do you want to build a snowman?”…

…to “This isn’t a thaw—this is spring!”

So, you get the photos this week. Consider it proof—yes it really does snow where we live, even if it's only once a year. Most of you probably knew that, though.

 As it turned out, the rumors of spring were greatly exaggerated. We also didn't make a snowman, because our snow was too dry at first, and then too wet to be much fun once it started to melt. Still, we were able to drive again yesterday, after four days of icy roads.

Oddly enough, the squirrels disappeared during that time as well. 

Don’t worry, though—they’re back now. I spotted one asleep on a branch this morning. (I only know he was asleep because he was curled up on the branch motionless for about ten minutes—how often does that happen?—before he woke up and scampered off, as squirrels do.)

Have a great week, and drive safe if you're someplace that still has snow!

There’s a Mouse Under My Sink

First it was squirrels falling out of the trees. (Maybe they were confused and thought it was the Summer Olympics coming up?)

Now it’s a mouse under the kitchen sink.

How do I know? One recent evening, as we were sitting on the couch in our living room, we noticed a rustling noise in the kitchen. It sounded odd, but it stopped after a moment.

Then it started again.

The first reconnaissance trip found nothing. All was calm, all was peaceful, all was quiet—until a couple minutes after we sat down again.

On the second reconnaissance, I waited at the kitchen doorway until I could hear exactly where the noise was coming from. It wasn’t in the pantry. It wasn’t behind the refrigerator. It was under the sink.

I moved a little closer and waited again. When the rustling returned, I opened the cupboard just in time to see a garbage bag stir as ‘something’ jumped out and disappeared.

No—I didn’t actually see the mouse. Circumstantial evidence, however, led us to conclude that the rustling noise was in fact a mouse.

Fortunately, Señor Ratón hadn’t traveled as far as the pantry yet. I’d been planning to find storage boxes for the pantry—eventually—but this was an emergency. The Christmas candy went in our spare water-bottles, while the rice and pasta moved into a big six-quart kettle. I jumbled the rest the spare glass jars I’d been saving for ‘something’. We emptied under the sink as well, moving the garbage can out and setting everything else on the counter.

Of course, that made more clutter in the kitchen. A couple days later, therefore, I decided to compromise. I put the dishwasher soap and a few other miscellanies back under the sink and left the garbage can out. I figured the miscellanies would be safe as long as I kept any and all food out of the way of Señor Ratón.

About twenty minutes later, as I was reading in the living room, I heard a series of small thumps. Mr. Mouse had found the spare scrubber, apparently, and seemed to be using it for his bowling practice.

After that, the soap, scrubber, garbage bags and all went back on the counter.

We haven’t heard anything since. My guess is that the mouse can get under the sink by squeezing past the pipes. Everything else is sealed, so he shouldn’t go any farther unless we happened to leave the cupboard doors open. That’s just as well, because I’ll feel friendly toward him only until he gets into something important.

Though perhaps the mouse was as confused as the squirrel gymnasts—he might just have wanted to practice his shot putting.

At any rate, there’s a mouse under my sink.

Tree & Python

(Photo all wrong for time of year, but I liked it)

Human perception is a tricky thing.

For years, there was a huge old tree growing along a road. I drove past it several times a week, but I never really noticed it, except for maybe the lower branches when they were lit up by an annual Christmas display.

Then, one year, I happened to drive by and realize that the tree was flowering.

All along, I must have assumed the tree was an oak. It was big, it had that shape, and it was green. And that was all I bothered to notice. Apparently, though, it was a silk tree and really gorgeous once I finally started paying attention.

It’s funny, noticing how something will pop up once you start paying attention.

I realized that again last week, when I joined a critique group, as part of my 'make the story survive past November strategy'. After I signed up, the first round of emails came out, we started introducing ourselves, and then I logged onto the site where we could access the email archives. Right at the bottom of the page, I noticed a cute little logo…

I wouldn’t have noticed that back in September. Probably not even in October. But that class I’m taking happens to be teaching Python. (Python, for clarification, is a programming language named after Monty Python. It was not named after snake, I have been told, though some of the projects might have felt distantly related to a python.)

Writing meet programming; programming meet writing. I'm noticing something new these days.

Where's November?

Way back, ages ago, I meant to post something short—just to say “Happy Thanksgiving” to everyone. You know, just about two weeks ago, when it was still Thanksgiving.

I even had a photo to go with the post…

(We made an apple pie as our share of the family dinner.)

 

Then Thanksgiving happened, and two days later, we made a trip out to some friends’ Christmas tree farm to get our tree. So, apparently, it’s now time to start saying “Merry Christmas,” instead of “Happy Thanksgiving.” 

 

I suppose that also means that November is over. Even more, NaNoWriMo is over, and I survived the month. To be honest, the first week was easy—I only had one writing day in it, and writing 3K words in a day is relatively simple, done once. The last week was hard—I only had two writing days in it, but I still had to write 3K words a day. Make that 4K, because I didn’t want to drag the process out any longer. Still, I survived and came out with a lump of 50K words.

 

About this time last year, I had 50K words on a different novel, but it was barely the first third of the novel, and I had no idea what to do with it next. This year, the story itself has more fragments than an Egyptian papyrus, but it still fits together as a story. Now it’s time to turn that into a novel. 

 

For starters, I’ve joined a critique group set up by Oregon Christian Writers. It seemed to be my logical next step. If I’m going to finish that story any time soon, I need a way to keep on track and get feedback for how the story is going.

 Also important—figuring out how to tell people about the story. If I ever finish it, I will probably need to describe it in better terms than I’m using at the moment… “Yes, well, I’m writing this story. It’s kind of typical rescue plot, but I’m not sure whether the main character is somebody’s brother or this out-of-place-youngster that wasn’t even in the story in the first place. He showed up when I was writing the prologue.”

The next step will actually be writing something regularly. You will probably hear about this process occasionally, since it’s very big in my plans for the next couple of months. That, and holidays, and the rest of life.

So, a late Happy Thanksgiving and an early Merry Christmas to you all!

Burning Sky: Review

This month has been busy, between NaNoWriMo, learning Python programming, and general busyness, but I’ve still had time to read a couple books. One of them was Burning Sky by Lori Benton—and it was a very good read…

 

#####

Captive, daughter, wife, mother—Willa Obenchain has spent half her life among the Mohawk Indians. That life has ended for her, and she’s ready now to return to the life she had before, but that life has changed also. In the years since she left, the American Revolution has divided the country and the pioneer community she grew up in.

The war might be over, but the country is definitely not at peace. Old feuds still divide the patriots and suspected loyalists, and especially the settlers and the Iroquois tribes that they perceive as ruthless savages. While most people are glad to welcome Willa back, they can’t forget their old bitterness against the Mohawks, nor can they believe that she might have found love and happiness among her captors.

Willa, for her own part, wants to shut out the pain of her past—almost as much as she wants to shut out the people that can’t possibly understand that pain.

Willa would prefer to hide her pain alone, inside her parents’ old cabin, but she is slowly forced to open the cabin to other refugees in need of shelter. One of these refugees is the injured botanist she found unconscious at the borders of her father’s land, with his own scars from the war and unsettled past.

Burning Sky is Benton’s first novel, though it doesn’t read like a debut story. It’s a story about the chaos of history, as well as grief and love. From the moment Willa steps back onto her father’s land, she has to face both the present dangers—the risk of losing her land, the anger of settlers still upset about the Indian raids—as well as her own inner turmoil. And for my part, I enjoyed the story, and I enjoyed the writing, the characters, and the vividness equally well.

As a side note—part of my interest in Burning Sky initial came from my attempt years ago to write a captivity narrative similar to Willa’s life among the Mohawks. Benton’s story takes an entirely different approach, dealing with Willa’s story after her return, but knowing some of the challenges involved, I found Burning Sky to be an incredibly well-told story (and much better than mine could have been).

I would also add a caution for younger readers—this is a story I would like to recommend for all readers, but since the story follows closely after the American Revolution, there are a number of references to the war-time attacks, as well as some innuendo and an attack against Willa herself.

Apart from that, though, I would recommend Burning Sky for anyone who likes history with a touch of romance, or just a good book in general.

If you are interested, you can find out more about Burning Sky from the info page, including an excerpt from the first chapter, at WaterBrook Press.

[My thanks to WaterBrook Press for sending me a review copy of Burning Sky, in exchange for my honest opinion of the book.]

Next week, expect busyness…

 
If you haven’t noticed, October is almost over.

For some people (I won’t say who), that means NaNoWriMo season is about to begin. Once again it's almost time for National Novel Writing Month, where some people (nothing against their sanity) attempt to write 50,000 words during November.
 
And in case you did notice the little box on the sidebar, where I had my word count from last year's NaNoWriMo...yes, it now has a word count of zero. I didn’t do it. The word count automatically reset itself some time ago.

I was surprised too, when I noticed what had happened. That’s okay, though. I only noticed it myself after trying to reset the form for this year’s challenge. It's time to try NaNo a second time.
 
Last year, when I tried NaNoWriMo for the first time, I reached 50K a couple days before the deadline. Last year, I had a thorough outline to work from. At least, the outline was more thorough than any I've managed before or since, but having the outline made my job relatively easy—pick up the pieces and write something.
 
This year, I'm starting with a vague idea that I've been tossing around for a year or two. I've tried to play with some ideas during the past couple of weeks and I have a slightly-less-imaginary outline than when I started, but this attempt at NaNo could be very interesting.
 
I would say—NaNoWriMo’s starting, so if you don’t hear from me anytime soon, that’s why. However, I am still planning to post during November.
 
Next week, I'm part of a blog tour for Davis Bunn's Strait of Hormuz (sequel to Rare Earth, which I reviewed last summer). I want to get a couple other reviews in as well—and let you know how NaNo is going, of course.
 
Speaking of Strait of Hormuz, the book will be available November 5^th. Meanwhile, feel free to check out the first three chapters (as a .pdf file), or the giveaway on Bunn’s Facebook page. For this giveaway, Bunn is offering daily drawings until November 1^st. Each day’s winner will get the three books from the Lion of Babylon series, ending with Strait of Hormuz. (You can also download the first book, Lion of Babylon, for free during November.) I’ll include information about another giveaway in my review next week.
 

As an aside—if you want yet another book option, you can also download Patricia Rushford’s murder mystery, Deadly Aim, for free from Amazon during November. I enjoyed the book last year, so let me know if you read it too and what you think.
 

And now...I’ll be back Monday to tell you what I think of Strait of Hormuz. After that? We’ll see what the month is like, once November is over.

How about you? Do you have any goals, writing or other, for the coming month?

Historicity: Back to the Big Picture

Last week, I complained about the problem of details in writing—especially writing that involves researching obscure historical details.

Research is even important in make-believe worlds, because farming methods, by whatever name, must still make sense to readers, along with weapons, battles, climates, houses, cloth manufacturing, and cognitive development patterns.

Details are important, as any writer could tell you.

Of course, the big picture is just as important. I’m not talking about plot. Yes, it is challenging to create the goals and conflicts and overarching structure of a novel, but the plot itself needs to fit into the structure of its world.

I found this out after deciding to revisit a colonial-era novel I once wrote. It was my first novel, which I finished almost five years ago. Since then, it’s waited patiently for me to get through college, finish up my research, and start on the editing.

You could call it a learning experience.

I knew that the book needed a lot more research. For example, I had found some obscure details about the fact that New England Puritans believed in an orderly society, and that they founded towns as units, not necessarily as pioneers straggling out into the wilderness to find a homestead. For a Puritan family to pick up their household and head out alone (as the Ingalls did later on) would seem scandalous.

No one I’ve found explains much about how these town-units actually formed, but I wanted to include that detail. I figured that with a couple other details about how the settlers would pick a town site, clear the land, and build their houses, I’d be well on my way.

Things looked so promising that I picked a corner of the map for my (fictional) settlement and looked up information on some of the towns formed around there. I even found a couple towns settled close to the time I had picked. This, though, only happened after I wrote the rough draft and was ready to look at some revisions.

Then I started looking into some other details. I found out that the towns I wanted to use as models were actually splinter-groups breaking off from larger settlements that had been founded at least 50 years earlier. In other words, all of the main settling and civilizing had happened much earlier than when my novel was set.

I could fix those sorts of details with a bit of tweaking, but next I realized that my chosen region lay very close to the Mohican trail, and that this what about the time of the French and Indian War. In fact, one of the small settlements I had found was created as a barrier settlement with a fort, to defend more developed areas from Indian raids. And, this was after some of the major threats had tapered off.

Now I had the wrong area, or at least the wrong time, and the wrong story entirely. And, apparently, my original story either needs to change, or adapt to its frontier conditions.

Or, it might just get buried as a first-attempt novel no one needs to publish. Remember that learning experience I mentioned earlier?
 

Historicity: It's in the Details

I’m on the history-wagon at the moment. It might have something to do with my attempts at novel-related research.

Actually, it probably has a lot to do with that.

That’s because I’ve been doing a lot of research recently. Part of my research is supposed to be developing a medieval setting for my fantasy series. That’s an issue on its own, and it has only proven so far that I need a better mix of primary source documents and re-enactors guidelines—like that one Daily Life book targeted specifically at the Society for Creative Anachronism.

Most history books, you see, assume that people want to know about important things. Things like which king fought that other king, until he decided to marry the other king’s daughter instead—and then kept fighting anyway.

I like that sort of history. I really do. I can even remember a few dates, enough to know when the Magna Carta was signed (June 15th, 1215—it’s easy to remember with two fifteens in the date). Still, I do prefer to read about people’s stories within history.

There was one lady, for example, famous for helping to hold off Viking invasions. She showed up in my research for a Medieval Literature class, and I liked her. I’d like to write a story about her, or someone like her, if I can ever dig out my notes to remember who she was.

It’s just that, if I want to write about her, I also want to know what sort of architecture was used in the town she was defending, how the townsfolk planted their fields, what they planted, whether they got to eat most of it or whether it was destroyed by the fighting or went to pay taxes, or was traded off for salt or leather or iron. Did most people wear shoes? Did they go to church? What sort of liturgy would the priest use?

And, even though I’m not writing about medieval England at the moment, I want to know things like this for my fantasy series. I’m supposed to be creating a semi-medieval setting, if I don’t take it forward to renaissance in some places.

Of course, since I like old, old history in general, this research might become an excuse to write other types of fiction (see the famous lady example above). It’ll just have to wait until I have time, and until I can put it into much better and much more thorough order. And until I get better at finding the right sort of history books.

That might be the real problem. I fail at being a historian. History research takes organization, both in putting information into order, keeping track of it once it’s in order, and in starting the research off correctly. Just ask me about my New England novel…

Or maybe I’ll just tell you about it next time.

Last Week

Last week, I almost wrote a post about 9/11. It was something I’d been thinking about in a new way, for a couple reasons. For one thing, when I was tutoring a class of 3rd-4th graders last year, we covered a history timeline from the ancient world up to present day events. I only realized when we reached the line for September 11, 2001, that my students had all been born after the attack took place. For them, and for future generations, that event must seem as old as the Cold War or the Clinton scandals seem to me.

For another, we had a trip planned to DC last week. We happened to fly out on the 11th. Flying on September 11th, to the East Coast, made me consider a number of possibilities, including at very least the potential for extra security at the airport.

Nothing major happened, though. I didn’t really notice anything different from the other times I’ve flown. We had a great trip, walked through a couple hundred museums, saw panda bears and T-Rex fossils. We even had a good—and very long—flight home.

But, when we started our trip back this Monday, with a walk from our hotel back to the train station, we stopped to eat lunch in a park just a couple of blocks from the Capital building. We had talked about walk down earlier to visit the Capital, but decided not to complicate our day. Instead, we had a leisurely morning and time to stop for lunch on the way to the station.

As we sat in the park, we noticed a couple of security agents coming down the steps on one side of the park. Then two others showed up. All of them seemed to be carrying assault rifles, and the group casually converged on a guy sitting at the bottom of the steps. We certainly weren’t used to seeing that, but it didn’t seem to be anything important.

We finished our lunch and strolled across the park and up the steps for a last look at the Capital building. When we came back down, a couple guys from security were still talking to the man, but it still didn’t seem to be anything important—just a casual checkup.

A couple of hours later, after shuttling from the train to the airport, we were waiting in line for security. Standing there, waiting to go through, I heard someone mention a shooting. I got out the iPad (that far too-handy electronic device) and looked up the news, only to find an article about the Navy Yard shooting.

My best guess is that the security agents we saw were just checking things out. The man in the park may have resembled a description they had, or maybe someone had been spooked and reported something, but it gave me the odd feeling of being close to an otherwise foreign event.

And it reminded me of my earlier thoughts about 9/11—how easy it is to forget something, to forget the first emotional reaction to a tragedy. It’s the difference between remembering it, and having it happen to you.

I can’t imagine the trauma and grief for those families affected by the Navy Yard shooting, or 9/11 for that matter, but I know they will remember long after the rest of us catalogue those days with the Maine and the other historical tragedies.
 

Deadpan Fiction & Dragons

Recently, I was thinking about how deadpan humor might be like fiction writing. As always, thinking is dangerous…

(I also have dragons too much on the brain.)

So, how would deadpan humor like fiction? According to most definitions, deadpan humor comes when someone relates something rather funny, or outrageously impossible, in a matter-of-fact, serious manner.

Perhaps you could contrast deadpan writers with those who do include a wink-wink signal in their story—something in tone that says…

“And wow—that’s when the dragon showed up! (Yes, I know there aren’t any such thing as dragons, but really I was just as surprised as you. Humor me, because I’m trying to tell a story.)”

Done right, it can be quite good indeed, though it’s not the style I usually use.

In fact, when I write, or tell a joke for that matter, I like to be serious about it. I might even be too serious—given the rough draft of a novel I’ve been rereading. I can also be a bit random, which is why I wrote this instead of actually working on my novel…
 

#####
 

“Last Tuesday was a bad day for me. I spent the morning trying to clean out the garage—everything I’d thrown in there since last winter—and that took me almost until noon. Then, once it started to look like a reasonable place again, I remembered that shopping run.
 

I checked my watch—11:38. Just time to pick up a few groceries and be back for lunch.
 

I was driving down the long hill when something flashed by me. I felt a lurch, and a crash, and my car spun once. As I smashed the brakes, it skidded and flew like a brick into the ditch. It settled slightly, before nosing against a tree with a dark crunch.

I sat frozen, clutching the steering wheel.
 

In my peripheral vision, I saw the blue car disappearing around the bend, followed by another flash. Black-and-white—a police car. A second, third, fourth followed. Then another and another, sirens muted, but lights flashing crazily.
 

Then everything was still. I stared straight ahead, noticing how one of the tree branches mirrored the crack in my windshield.
 

“Great,” I said. “Just great.”
 

Slowly, the smell of hot oil roused me. I shook myself, looked around, and tried my door handle. It opened, and I stepped out.
 

As I stood staring at the car, a police car pulled up behind me. The officer got out, leaving his door ajar and hurrying toward me.
 

“Everyone okay?” he asked. “Were you the only one in the car?”
 

“Yes,” I said.
 

“Are you okay?” he repeated.
 

I shook myself and looked away from the car, meeting his eyes almost accidentally. “I’m fine. I just don’t know…” I looked back at my car, listing against the tree.
 

“It’s okay. I’ll call a tow truck. Do you remember what happened?”
 

I told him I was just driving to the store, when out of nowhere…
 

He had his notebook out, jotting in it quickly, but he raised one eyebrow. Somehow the gesture made me feel simultaneously that he wasn’t surprised by my story, and that he didn’t really believe it. I wondered if he'd been trained for that expression.
 

“There were I don’t know how many police cars. I’m glad you stopped,” I added.
 

“Yeah—let me call that tow truck,” he said.
 

He was back a couple minutes later, with another series of questions, and a form for me to fill out. The form had questions about my insurance company’s information, my personal information, my car’s personal information…
 

“You’ll need to fill that out and mail it in,” he said. “I’ll just ask you a couple questions right now.”
 

About twenty minutes later, he was still asking questions when I heard the truck engine grinding up the hill. We both looked up and watched as the tow truck lumbered around the bend and swung off onto the opposite shoulder.
 

The driver got out and waved to us, before heading around to the back of the truck. In another moment, he reappeared and headed across the road.
 

That’s when the dragon showed up.
 

#####
 

[In the next chapter, which doesn’t exist, the tow truck driver explains that while dragons prefer coal, they can’t find any in this region, so they prefer motor oil…
 

“You should have seen our garage the last time one showed up—it was an inferno.”
 

“Oh,” I managed to say, as we peered over the logs. I cringed as a heavy crunch sounded through the overhanging branches. I know my car as already wrecked, but still…
 

“This one probably smelled the leakage from your car,” the driver added helpfully...]