Christine Amsden's Blog: Christine Amsden Author Blog, page 30

Follow Friday: Best Fictional Mom

Q: Happy Mother’s Day! Who is your favorite mom from fiction?

A: I’m going to be curious to read what everyone else has to say on this one! When I think of fictional moms, my mind immediately slips from the cliche of perfection to the cliches of evil with little room in between for raw humanity. I started thumbing back through my goodreads list muttering…too perfect, too dead, too evil, not there…

I stopped at A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. Now, it has been a great many years since I read this book, but I immediately recalled a mom who spent a lot of time in her laboratory trying to cook dinners over bunsen burners. She tries to keep her family together though her husband has been missing for years, but a part of her belongs to that missing husband. It doesn’t maker her bad or neglectful, just sad and even a little scatterbrained. She loves her kids, but she has definition and personality other than as a mother. And I don’t remember her being perfect. (This could be partly because I read it as a teen through another teen’s point of view. )

Real moms are all kinds of things, though even in the real world I sometimes feel cliches are trying to force us into a mold. If one more person tells me I’ll be going into mourning next fall when my youngest starts kindergarten… No, I’m really not! I’m looking forward to it. Why? Because I’m not a mom cliche. I’m me, and me is looking forward to a daughter who can read, write, and play better board/card games. (Hey, it’s what I’m into!)

Anyone else know of a mom in fiction who has some kind of definition outside her role as a mother? I’d love to hear about it!

(I’m just doing twitter and google+ follows now. It’s a more useful way to follow, IMHO, and I always follow back!)

Cassie Scot Available for Pre-Order

Cassie Scot: ParaNormal Detective is available for pre-order through Barnes and Noble and Amazon!

The ebook has been available for a little over a month, but now we’re gearing up for the full release on May 15th, not even a week away! You can pre-order the print version of Cassie Scot through Barnes and Noble or Amazon today.

Next week, Cassie will be going on tour. Pump Up Your Book is hosting a three-month tour of my novel including reviews, interviews, guest posts, and spotlights. Plus, there’s going to be a kindle fire givea

I’m also doing a release-day review tour with Innovative Online Tours. Ten reviews all on Wednesday. I hope they like it!way at the end of it all. (More details next week!)

BOOK DETAILS:

Cassie Scot is the ungifted daughter of powerful sorcerers, born between worlds but belonging to neither. At 21, all she wants is to find a place for herself, but earning a living as a private investigator in the shadow of her family’s reputation isn’t easy. When she is pulled into a paranormal investigation, and tempted by a powerful and handsome sorcerer, she will have to decide where she truly belongs.

 Read First Chapters

 Reviews

Publisher: Twilight Times Books

Print ISBN: 978-1-60619-275-7

eBook ISBN: 978-1-60619-274-0

Publication Date: May 15, 2013

Vicki Lewis Thompson has a wonderfully engaging style tha...

Vicki Lewis Thompson has a wonderfully engaging style that swept me away as I read her nerd romance novels. The humor and romance has kept me reading the werewolf series as well, but I have to admit I wish she’d move on to something else. I don’t think she will because she seemed to have set up a sequel, but I have to hope.

The problem is the same problem I’ve had ever since I started reading her werewolf stories. I don’t believe the werewolves. That’s a problem for a fantasy fan. The wolves aren’t all that magical, they don’t seem fierce (more like puppies), and the mating thing is utterly absurd. I think it was supposed to be funny at first that wolves couldn’t reproduce until they went through a mating ritual involving (brace yourself) doing it doggie-style, but I didn’t think it was funny. I have also never wished more fervently that an author would ignore internal consistency and break her own established rule in future novels. I almost thought she would try to get around it in this book — it seemed like the two might accidentally bond/mate.

I can’t recommend the werewolf romance novels to fantasy fans. If you’re a Vicki Lewis Thompson fan and aren’t as disappointed by her version of wolves as me, enjoy!

If you’ve never read Thompson, try her nerd romance novels. Funny and romantic.

Rating: 2.5/5

Title: Werewolf in Seattle

Author: Vicki Lewis Thompson

ISBN: 0451237323

Released April 3, 2012

Book Review: Knife of Dreams (Wheel of Time Book 11)

After a disappointing volume that left the series in a holding pattern, this book was like the arrow suddenly released from the bow.

Mat and Perrin in particular underwent huge strides forward. I’d even say that they both changed somewhat. Perrin learned he was willing to do anything to protect his wife, and Mat…well, I’m not sure what Mat learned about himself, but he’s growing up.

The end of this book feels more on the brink than any so far. There is still a lot to resolve, but the end is near, and not just because the pattern is doing random weird things all over the place.

I confess that I did skim a bit here and there, most especially when the book slipped into minor viewpoints I was impatient to get through in order to read about my favorites. I even skimmed through Elayne’s viewpoint a bit, although she’s one of the main characters, because I wasn’t particularly interested in how she would get the lion throne, and I knew for sure that she would.

Egweyne the not-quite-novice was almost as engaging as Mat and Perrin. I wish it would have been resolved a bit, but there were three important resolutions in this book, which is about as much as I can really hope for.

The one thing this book lacked was, as I mentioned a while back, an overarching goal to tie it together. It felt very much like several parallel stories running alongside one another, set in the same world. The last battle may be nigh, but only Rand seems to be working towards that goal, and it still isn’t a concrete mission. I actually think Rand is making some big mistakes at this point, most particularly, not dealing with the black tower. He spent the entire book walking into an obvious trap and fighting the voice in his head. (Yep, still there…getting worse.) He’s in rough shape. Something has to give or he’s going to snap like a twig before he can get to the last battle.

Sadly, this is the last volume written by Jordan himself. The final trilogy was written by Brandon Sanderson, whose works I have never read. I know Jordan left behind detailed notes and instructions, before he died, so I have high hopes for the conclusion of this story, but I’m a bit nervous about it too.

Rating 4/5

Title: Knife of Dreams

Author: Robert Jordan

ISBN: 0812577566

Published November 2

Top 5 Painful Put Down Moments of 2012

This list is a little late in coming. It’s more the sort of thing to post on New Year’s Eve or maybe New Year’s Day. But I read most of these books in the summer of 2012, kept a running list, and then just plain forgot about it until I started cleaning out my drafted (but not published) blog posts. Oops!

Well, here it is, better late than never… These are not necessarily books that were published in 2012, but books I read in 2012. The only other thing they had in common was that at some point during the reading, they made me want to throw the book across the room ind disgust. Ouch! Pain!

 

5. One Night Of Scandal by Teresa Medeiros: It’s never a good sign when I decide I’ve had enough of a romance just as the sex scene is beginning. It usually means, as it does in this case, that I have absolutely no faith whatsoever in the connection between the two characters, and that the chemistry has utterly failed. I like a good sex scene, but bad ones can be painful. Not to mention a put-down moment.

 

 

 

 

4. The Sweetheart’s Knitting Club by Lori WIlde: I had lots of problems with this story, but my put-down moment came when the bad-boy hero was accused of yet another crime. The heroine knows he didn’t do it because she was intimately involved with him at the time, but she doesn’t stand up for him because if the town knows she’s with him, they’ll think less of her for it. Couldn’t possibly think any less of her than I did when I put the book down!

 

 

 

 

 

3. A Lady and Her Magic by Tammy Falkner: In this story, the author flat-out lies — repeatedly, and in violation of every known rule of third person viewpoint and particularly third person limited omniscient point of view. The main character killed his wife. It said so in the first sentence (which initially had me hooked), and again a dozen more times. The prose wasn’t wishy-washy. It used those exact words. Later, we discover that he “may as well have killed her.” Okay…then I may as well put this down!

 

 

 

 

 

2. Bonded by Nicky Charles: In this not-so captivating story, the main character reads a textbook to the reader, all the while thinking how boring it is. I mean this literally. The reader is presented with long passages of the aforementioned textbook, italicized. Interspersed with the passages of textbook are the main character’s disgust at being forced to read the textbook. Ouch!

 

 

 

 

 

1. Eternal Eden by Nicole Williams: In this melodramatic put-down moment, the heroine throws herself into the ocean because the man she has fallen  desperately in love with (and known for a week and a half) has left her. Or so she thinks. Ahhh, wuv. Twue Wuv.

Myth Busters, Grammar Edition: Starting a Setence with And or But

Confession time: How many of you learned in school that you can’t start a sentence with a conjunction such as and or but? Go ahead, admit it. I won’t think less of you. It would make me a serious hypocrite since until late last week, I believed it. Countless English teachers couldn’t be wrong, could they?

Turns out, they were misinformed. Moreover, this may be one of the most persistent myths in education today. I don’t mean to impugn my English teachers who were, as a whole, wonderful people who helped me follow my dream of becoming a fiction writer. They were misinformed. So were the people who taught them. And so on and so forth. (See how I started that sentence with and? It wasn’t wrong!)

Last week when I made style suggestions for fiction writers, I used beginning conjunctions as an example of a rule that fiction writers can and do break. Cora Foerstner, a fellow writer and an English professor, called me on it. She was nice enough to e-mail me privately instead of creating a public post that might hurt my credibility. I appreciated that, although I am open-minded enough to admit when I’m wrong. If that discredits me in some people’s eyes, oh well. Enjoy your perfection.

For my part, I was wrong. I didn’t take her word for it right away — I mean half a dozen English teachers scattered throughout my childhood deserved a fair trial before I passed judgement. Cora and I passed a few e-mails back and forth, I did some research on the Internet, and I contacted my brother, Brian Amsden, who has a PhD in rhetoric from the University of Indiana. Grammar was not part of his coursework (it is apparently not part of almost anyone’s coursework), but he studied it. He shared this quote with me from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th Edition:

“Beginning a sentence with a conjunction. There is a widespread belief–one with no historical or grammatical foundation–that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and, but, or so. In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice. Charles Allen Lloyd’s 1938 words fairly sum up the situation as it stands even today: ‘Next to the groundless notion that it is incorrect to end an English sentence with a preposition, perhaps the most wide-spread of the many false beliefs about the use of our language is the equally groundless notion that it is incorrect to begin one with ‘but’ or ‘and.’ As in the case of the superstition about the prepositional ending, no textbook supports it, but apparently about half of our teachers of English go out of their way to handicap their pupils by inculcating it. One cannot help wondering whether those who teach such a monstrous doctrine ever read any English themselves.’” (Section 5.191)

Wait a second…. The thing about ENDING a sentence in a preposition is wrong too?

“Good grief.” — Charlie Brown

At least I already knew it wasn’t wrong to split infinitives. I learned that one ten years ago during my boot camp with Orson Scott Card, who explained that the “rule” was a holdover from Latin where it was literally impossible to split infinitives (because they were just one word). Similarly, the “rule” against beginning sentences with a conjunction is a holdover from Latin grammar. During my discussion with Cora Foerstner, she had this to say:

“Many of these “rules” such as not ending a sentence with a preposition, come from Latin grammar, which is not English grammar. But in the Renaissance, they were enamored with all things Latin, and often tried to force English to conform to Latin “rules” grammar rules.”

Okay, so I’ve gone through the five stages of grief on this:

1. Denial — No way. There’s no way all my English teachers were wrong about this. There’s no way I’ve been a writer since I was eight years old — I’m almost thirty-six — and I just missed this. Okay, yeah, so I never went looking for it because I assumed it was right. I had no reason to believe otherwise.

The trouble with assumptions is that by definition, you don’t know you’re making one.

2. Anger — How could those English teachers have lied to me? They lied to me about Christopher Columbus, too. Made him out to be some kind of saint who “discovered” America like there weren’t already people here and like the Vikings didn’t discover it before he ever did. Grrr… the whole gosh-darn education system is full of mistakes. What am I going to tell my children when their teachers tell them these things?

3. Bargaining — Okay, maybe it was a rule but it isn’t a rule anymore. I mean, that happens. English is a living language, it changes all the time. Ain’t is a word (but I ain’t gonna to say it). So this was a rule, but it became so popular in informal speech to break the rule that the various dictionaries have accepted it. So maybe the beginning conjunction thing is like that, only not everyone has gotten the memo.

4. Depression — I write for a living! This is what I do. How did I not realize this? What else don’t I realize? Am I conjugating my verbs right? Was that question mark supposed to be at the end of that sentence? Or this one?

5. Acceptance — All right, all right. It’s not the end of the world. It is what it is. There is no rule in the English language prohibiting sentences from beginning with conjunctions. There never has been. It’s not like this information changes anything. I’ve been happily “breaking” the rule for years, along with just about every other writer in the world. Isn’t it nice to know we weren’t breaking a rule at all?

(Hey, I’m a psych major. This is how I analyze these things. )

CONCLUSION:
There is no rule in the English language against beginning a sentence with and or but.

MYTH BUSTED

Wait…
So there’s no rule against it. Does that man I should begin sentences with and or but?

One of the reasons I had trouble accepting this new version of reality is that the “rule” made sense to me. The function of a coordinating conjunction is to join two or more independent clauses, phrases, or words. When you put one at the beginning of a sentence, you’re joining it to the previous sentence. Sort of.

The reason writers have been using and and but at the beginning of sentences for centuries is that there are times when you want to put the emphasis on the connection itself rather than the clauses being connected. Extra emphasis is also put on the second clause or phrase. Because it’s in a shorter sentence. (Because is a subordinating conjunction, by the way, and the same rules apply.) And because the capitalized conjunction calls attention to itself.

This is where psychology comes in. Great, I’m back in familiar waters!

Readers pay more attention to beginnings than endings. You can generalize this truth throughout every level of writing, from words to entire books. (That’s right, words. Remind me sometime to explain why your main characters’ names shouldn’t all start with the same letter.)

I break up my prose into lots of paragraphs for the same reason. When readers skim, they pay more attention to the first sentence in a paragraph. By having more paragraphs, I force you to read more of my sentences. (Bwahaha!)

But this power can be abused. Just because you CAN do something, doesn’t mean you should! I can use exclamation points at the end of half my sentences to show I’m excited! I really am! I mean, look at all the exclamation points!

Variety is one of the keys to captivating prose. You want to vary the lengths of your paragraphs and sentences. You want to use different words, calling on synonyms instead of repeating the same ones over and over again. Starting sentences with different words is part of strong prose as well, so no word should begin a sentence all the time.

I also believe there are some choices which function more strongly in prose when made sparingly. Exclamation points are a prime example of this. Most fiction writers learn early on that exclamation points should almost never be used. Some say absolutely never. I disagree, because I refuse to give up my power to emphasize a point! I give up that power by never using it as well as by using it too much.

That’s where the should comes in. Keep these things in mind when deciding whether or not to begin a sentence with a conjunction:

1. A sentence that begins with a conjunction does not stand alone. Not all sentences have to stand alone, but the most powerful ones will.

2. A sentence that begins with a conjunction emphasizes the joining. This may be exactly what you want. But a lot of times it isn’t. I just gave you an example of a pair of sentences that would have been stronger had they been joined. The but wasn’t that important. Neither were the words that came after. The complete thought was important.

3. Beginning a sentence with and or but calls attention to itself.  This may be true in part because of the persistent myth, but even if everyone knew the truth, it is still far more common to see these words in the middle of sentences. It should be far more common to see these words in the middle of sentences, innocently and invisibly getting out of the way for more important concepts.

4. And finally, if you can cut the conjunction without changing the tone or meaning of the sentence, do it. Finally, if you can cut the conjunction without changing the tone or meaning of the sentence, do it. (I see this fairly often. I’m guilty of it myself sometimes. It’s the sort of thing I catch in revisions.)

Writers, enjoy knowing that it is right and proper to use conjunctions at the beginning of your sentences, but don’t overdo it.

The One-Word Sentence

Fiction writing these days is a less formal affair than it has been in the past. We no longer have to rigidly adhere to every rule of grammar. So for example, we can begun sentences with articles (and but or nor so for yet). We can sometimes use incomplete sentences. Even one-word sentences. Really.

The bad news is that this doesn’t make it any easier to write fiction. In some ways, it makes it harder. Strategic breaking of rules requires both an ear for the language and a solid understanding of the aforementioned rules. If you just don’t know how to write then believe me, we’ll know.

The one-word sentence, or more generally the incomplete sentence, is a tool you can use for emphasis. Like this. It’s short, to the point, and easily digestible. It calls attention to itself and its brief content, making that content stand out. When done correctly, it is a way to shamelessly exploit a reader’s emotions. Bam! Right there.

Variety is the key to so many things in life, including sentence structure. Longer sentences are slower, but sometimes that’s exactly what you want. A long sentence of description, for example, can convey many details about a particular object while enhancing that object’s importance because you took the time. Now the reader has his attention focused on the big rubber ball you have just described in detail, from its smooth surface to its patriotic coloring. Perhaps there’s a red star in the center, cut in half by a thin raised line that runs around the circumference of the sphere. The line reminds you a bit of the equator, while the blue circles at the top and bottom are a bit like the north and south poles.

Okay, I’m watching. Now what’s the ball going to do? I’m primed for it to do something, and if you use a shorter sentence to describe that action, that action will stand out. Actions should stand out. Moreover, the give and take keeps the reader on his toes.

The ball disappeared. Vanished. Into thin air. It could have vanished into thin air, but I want to emphasize that it vanished. I want you to feel that it vanished. It’s not there anymore. Gone. Like it never was.

There’s no right way or wrong way to use the one-word sentence. Some authors almost never use it. Some overuse it. This is a tool. Somewhere out there is your own personal style. You find that style after you embrace the rules, then spend years of practice learning how to break those rules.

Book Review: Crossroads of Twilight (Wheel of Time Book 10)

Last week, I finished REreading the Wheel of Time. Now, I work towards the end, beginning with Crossroads of Twilight, the 10th book in the epic series.

Winter’s Heart involved a huge turning point, one that I had hoped would spell a new direction for the series that had begun to slow to a crawl. Well, as I said last week, slowing wasn’t quite the right word. Books 6-8 lacked focus, something I found and appreciated in book 9.

Crossroads of Twilight had no focus, and moreover, it really really did slow down. The book was a holding pattern, much of it taking place in the shadow of the big event from book 9. And I could understand some of that — SOME of it — but ultimately every character, every subplot, every nuance is exactly where it was at the end of the last book. Well, Mat made a bit of progress with his daughter of the nine moons, but just a bit. I think the part that really frustrated me came in Elayne’s viewpoint, when at the end is said something like “another day in her life.” UGH! If it’s just another day, why did I have to read about it in excruciating detail? How about skipping a bit to the part where something does happen.

Parrin’s wife is still captive. Egweyne and her army are still in a holding pattern outside Travalon. Elayne is still trying to solidify her claim to the lion throne. Rand makes one decision that I’m sure will turn out to be important in the next book, but for now it’s just one decision.

Worse, there was very little action here. A lot of politicking, almost no physical danger, and no climax to speak of, not so much as a heightening of tension. There was a cliffhanger at the end — something significant that happens on the last page — but all in all, I don’t know what the point of this book was. I might have thought there was more point if they had really dealt with the cleansing of the male half of the true source — even so much as to fight over whether it really happened or not — but they didn’t. It was more like, “Hey, what’s going on over there?” while everybody went about their day.

I will finish this series, but I did not care for this book at all.

Rating 3/5

Title: Crossroads of Twilight

Author: Robert Jordan

ISBN: 0312864590

Published January 2003

How Often Should You Step on a Scale?

Not often.

How often do you get to the doctor’s office for your annual checkup? That’s probably good enough.

One of my biggest challenges with mindful eating has been the numbers on the scale. Those numbers have dictated my actions for far too long, and it’s time to stop giving them power over me.

Have you ever stepped on the scale, learned that you haven’t lost so much as half a pound in the previous week, and decided to give up? Or heaven help you if you gained half a pound! How did it make you feel?

I know how it makes me feel. It makes me feel as if I’m doing something wrong. Or on a bad day, it makes me feel as if this is all hopeless. An exercise in futility. If I’m doing everything right and not losing weight, then what’s the point? I may as well go out for pizza and have four slices. Because pizza makes me feel better and right now I’m so, so sad.

Wait…. Did I really do everything right?

No. I made one big mistake. I used a number on a scale as a measure of the success or failure of my diet.

I do not have any direct control over the scale or the numbers it shows. I can’t tell you all the factors that go into weight loss, but I can name a few — diet, exercise, metabolism, water weight, time of day, time of month (for women), water retention, muscle mass, percentage of body fat… And if you think you can account for all of those factors, then there are still random things that even the experts don’t understand. Sometimes bodies cling to weight. Stress is a factor we only partially understand.

Only set goals you can directly control.

I don’t know how to stress this enough. It is the cornerstone of my new dieting mentality, and it makes all the difference. My goals are to:

1. Run 3 times a week for about 30 minutes using the couch to 5k program.

2. Go to a Body Pump class on Saturday mornings if at all possible. If it is not possible, try to reschedule for Wednesday night. (Everyone seems to want a piece of my Saturday mornings. It’s my favorite time to do this workout, but I accept my limitations and work it into my goal.)

3. Eat only foods I enjoy.

4. Eat at the kitchen table (exceptions apply for eating out or travel).

5. Start with small portions and eat slowly.

6. Wait at least fifteen minutes before getting seconds.

I have met my goals. That means success, whatever the scale says.

So in case you’re wondering, I did step on the scale this morning. Because I’m in a weight loss challenge to help motivate me, I’m getting weighed weekly. I take my own measurement in the morning because I find them to be more stable than evening measurements (my team meets in the evening). And no, there was no change from last week.

The worst part is that I knew there wouldn’t be. During my years of obsessive dieting, I learned that I lose several pounds the first week of any diet. In my 20′s, I then steadily lost weight for a month or two before hitting a plateau. After I hit my 30′s and had two children, the plateau consistently comes during week two. It doesn’t matter what kind of diet it is, how many calories I eat. I call it the “second week plateau.” It happens every time, and yet every time when I see that number I start to think about changing my plan. Maybe I should eat less…or more…or different things…or exercise more…or less…or…or…or…

Enough!

I met every goal. That is the definition of success.

Free Short Story: Betrayal

The world is glued to the television in an all-too familiar scene as disaster strikes. This time, it’s an alien fleet attacking the Earth. And the threat is bigger — more real — than it has ever been before. But there is one difference. One of the people watching is an alien. And Liz knows it.

* * *

I wrote this story many years ago. It was my audition piece for the boot camp I took with Orson Scot Card in 2003, so I have a certain fondness for the tale. It was later published in Aoife’s Kiss in June of 2008.

The rights have long since come back to me. So I decided to self-publish it on Smashwords. It’s a freebie for my readers to enjoy. A quick read, too — under 4,000 words.

You can still order a back edition of Aoife’s Kiss if you are determined to read the story in print. It’s issue #25.

I hesitated to publish this only because the story does read to me like something I wrote ten years ago. This is pre-Touch of Fate, and I feel strongly that my writing has improved with each new novel. If you like it, I hope you’ll consider giving my other stuff a try. If you’ve already read my other stuff — thanks and enjoy!