C.M. Gray's Blog, page 2

Our Beautiful Earth

Just in case you missed it, today is Earth Day, a global recognition of the planet we call home, a reminder of how we’ve not treated it as well as we could have, and ideas for the future to ensure it stays home for generations to come.

The picture attached is a sunrise over North America taken from space. Quite simply, breathtaking.

Most of us associate NASA with exploring new worlds, planets within our solar system, and all things space-related, but all those satellites out there are also keeping an eye on earth. As a nurse, my patient’s vital signs are an imperative part of my day, but what about the earth’s vitals? If you’re interested, NASA’s Vital Signs of the Planet is a great place to see just how our home is progressing, the effects of climate change, and various other interesting facts about our planet’s health. These ‘vital signs’ were taken at 3pm Pacific time yesterday.

[image error]

As authors, we are all in the position to spread the word about the Earth, and how humanity has not only damaged it, but can make changes to help heal it, or at least prevent any further damage. No matter what your writing genre, a simple random comment by a character, or a description of a place on earth, or even a memory from 50 years ago can keep our planet’s health in people’s minds every day, not just on Earth Day.

 

Tea, Biscuits, and a Good Book

Today is National Tea Day back home in the UK. Like my fellow Englishmen, I love tea. 165 million cups of tea are drunk every day in Britain, which roughly equates to one cup of tea every day for every person in Britain. In the US, more than 80% of tea is iced tea, often of the flavored or bottled variety, but the hot cuppa is seeing an increase thanks to its many health benefits, and now approximately half a cup of hot tea per person is drunk daily in the US.

Of course, I’ll take any excuse to enjoy a cuppa, and as it’s National Tea Day…well, as Rupert Brooke states in his Poem, The Soldier, there really is “some corner of a foreign field that is forever England.” That corner is right here in sunny California, enjoying a fresh cuppa, some chocolate biscuits, and a paperback book.

Happy National Tea Day to all my fellow Brits, both home and abroad!

420 – Just Chill

April 20th. 4/20. This isn’t a post about the rights and wrongs of marijuana legislation. It’s a post about societal evolution. Well, sort of. The facts are, today is a celebration of all things marijuana-related and therefore, by its very nature, all things chill.

A few years ago, I had no idea what 420 even meant, let alone that it could be a celebratory day. I was a mother of five young kids. But guess what? Those kids are growing up, and now, as a responsible mother, I need to be aware of everything that impacts their lives, and like it or not, pot is one of those things.

Back in my day (yeah, I know, makes me sound old) marijuana was supposedly a gateway drug, leading my generation down the slippery slope of hard drug addiction. Despite this, most of my generation smoked recreationally, and yet here we are, all grown up with kids and responsibilities of our own. The thing is, more and more States are making marijuana legal, and that’s the evolution of society. I’ll keep most of my opinions to myself, but personally, I prefer the laid-back chill of the pot smoker to the aggressive delusion of the person who’s drunk too much.

And, as I like to link most of my posts to my book trilogy (a young adult paranormal romance with angels who, like the youth of every generation, have enough attitude to make them likeable because they’re less than angelic) here’s a fun video from Totino’s featuring a 420 angel.

So whatever you’re doing today, just be sure to make it a chill one!

Eggs, Bunnies or Lamb

It’s Easter Sunday, and that means different things to different people. For some it’s chocolate or colored eggs, to others it’s the Easter Bunny, and to many it’s the Lamb of God, and the Resurrection.

No matter your religion or beliefs, Easter boils down to rebirth, renewal, and starting over. In the Christian calendar, Easter Sunday celebrates the day Jesus rose from the tomb where He’d been laid after His crucifixion at Calgary. Over more recent years, it became traditional to give hollow chocolate or colored eggs at Easter. The empty eggs represented the empty tomb, and allow for a celebration of the end of Lent. The rabbit is a symbol of fertility, and its use at Easter is thought to stem from old pagan rituals which were performed to boost fertility and rebirth.

So to everyone celebrating this Easter, regardless of your beliefs, your religion, your race or color, Happy Easter, and enjoy this time of renewed hope, health, and beginnings.

Get Your Free Copy of Reawakened (Reborn Trilogy Book Two)

Whether or not you celebrate Easter, why not relax this weekend with a free copy of Reawakened, Book Two in the Reborn Trilogy? For 24 hours on Good Friday, you can download it from Amazon absolutely free.

Books are great, free books are even better, and if you like paranormal romance, this is a perfect read for a relaxed few hours over the weekend.

If you haven’t yet read Reborn, Book One in the trilogy, click the link to download it on Amazon too.

To Convince Others, You Must Believe

Fifty-four years ago, on April 9th in 1963, Sir Winston Churchill became the second person to become an Honorary Citizen of the United States, and since then, this day has been known as Winston Churchill Day.

As well as being Prime Minister of the UK during the war years, Churchill is fondly remembered as an incredibly talented and inspirational writer, and today, many authors continue to learn from his wise words.

As authors, our goal is to bring our readers into a world of our making, to convince them, if only for a while, that our stories are real. To give them an escape wrapped in well-written sentences, and weaved through pages of imagination. When I wrote the Reborn Trilogy, I first had to believe my story myself.

It’s because of this that this is one of my favorite Churchill quotes.

“Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself, believe.”

Winston S. Churchill

Daffodils and War

I wandered lonely as a cloud, that floats on high o’er vales and hills. When all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils ~ William Wordsworth

Daffodils is quite possibly Wordsworth’s most famous poem, and it reminds me of staring out the window during English Literature lessons in my teens.

As April is Poetry Month, I’ve been thinking about my favorite poets and poems, and of course Wordsworth is up there with the best of them.

However, Thursday is also Army Day in the US, which quite fittingly brings to mind the poet who first made me feel the written word. Wilfred Owen’s poetry isn’t pretty, or romantic. It’s about the harsh realities of war, in particular, World War I, and his depiction of the horrors of the trenches and gas warfare in Dulce et Decorum Est were, in part, one of the reasons I joined the British Army as a nurse.

Today, young men and women continue to protect our freedom with their lives, and while the type of warfare may be different to the one that eventually took Owen’s life almost a hundred years ago, exactly one week before the signing of the Armistice ended WWI, the courage, bravery and sacrifice of today’s military and their families remains the same.

I’ve typed out Dulce et Decorum Est (Pro Patria Mori) which is Latin for It is sweet and fitting to die for your country. These are words that have been imprinted on my memory for over three decades, from the day I first read them, showing just how incredibly powerful and memorable some words are.

Dulce et Decorum Est

Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est


Pro patria mori.

Always Look for Rainbows

Today was ‘Find A Rainbow’ day, and April is certainly the month when we get to see more of the stunning phenomena than usual thanks to the April showers that fall in the spring sunshine.

As a writer, I love to find the metaphors in life, and for me at this current time, there isn’t a more fitting one than Find A Rainbow. It’s been a tough couple of weeks, and a few tears have been shed, so now I’m on the lookout for my rainbows, the lights at the end of the tunnel, the silver lining to my cloud, the turn of a page…you get the idea.

We all go through some crap times in life, so to anyone out there feeling down right now, as 80s pop artist Howard Jones said, things can only get better.

What’s Going on with Reviews, Amazon?

If you’re an Indie author, you’ve heard it all before. It doesn’t matter how many books you actually sell, without reviews your book is going to take its own sweet time getting anywhere.

The publishing world has changed dramatically over recent years, and if we’re completely honest, there is some utter crap out there; poor storylines, pointless characters, and appalling grammar and spelling (my biggest personal bug-bear!)

But despite it all, some of these books are out-selling some truly amazing, well-written books. Why? Reviews, is why. A book without reviews is like a movie without a budget – it can be brilliant, but if no-one knows about it, then no-one’s going to read it. Conversely, get enough people talking about a truly awful book (mentioning no names, but they come in varying shades of grey!) and it’s flying off the shelves.

This is where Amazon comes in. Amazon is a titan in a sea of giants, with a monopoly stretching, well everywhere. And we, the consumer, have put them there. In the book and publishing world alone, as well as Kindle, Amazon also owns Goodreads, Audible, CreateSpace, AbeBooks, Alexa.com…the list goes on.

The problem is, Amazon has got a little too big for its own boots, which, incidentally, it’s using to trample the very people who got it to the gargantuan status it has today.

If you have a book on Amazon, you’ll be all too familiar with the ‘culling’ of reviews, the very breath of your book. Amazon says it does this to prevent friends and families from giving five stars through nepotism rather than genuine deserving. What Amazon doesn’t explain, however, is the algorithm it uses to determine who constitutes friend or family.

The Indie publishing world is quite small, and most of us know fellow authors in the same way that footballers know fellow footballers, nurses in a hospital know other medical staff, or teachers from one school know many in surrounding schools. It’s not because we’re ‘friends’, it’s because we’re fellow professionals.

We’re used to different shopping sites using our shopping habits to make suggestions for future purchases based on our preferences, but isn’t there something wrong when it’s determined that two people are friends simply because they’ve maybe commented on the same blog post?

If you have a book (or many books) on Amazon, chances are you’ve lost more reviews through their Friends and Family Algorithm than you’ve got remaining. And that’s just wrong.

Amazon aren’t very forthcoming about how their algorithm works, but it’s generally accepted that people with a similar last name will be flagged (mine is Gray, there are a lot of Grays out there that I’ve never heard of, but that, it seems, is irrelevant if they post a review!) If you’ve spoken to someone on Social Media, and either of your accounts are linked to Amazon, reviews will be flagged (no networking allowed?) Or if Amazon are just being snarky, showing off the power they yield over the lowly Indie author, expect flagged reviews. And all the time, potential readers are skimming right past hundreds of good books because they’re lacking in reviews.

What’s even more amazing is that, with all its advanced technology, Amazon is unable to ensure a review posted on Amazon.com, for example, is automatically duplicated across all Amazon countries. Your book can be posted instantly to all Amazon sites, just not your reviews.

You have to wonder, if Amazon had been around in the good old days, would any of us have heard of the Bronte sisters? Virginia Woolf? Or more recently, James Herbert or J.K. Rowling?

Smoke, Mirrors, and Writers

Writers are in the business of smoke and mirrors. No matter what the genre, we like to use words to lead our readers along a winding path of subterfuge, magic, and surprise. We all search for the holy grail, that fine line between predictability and ridiculously obscure.

Sometimes the smoke is thinner than it could be, sometimes the mirrors are slightly disproportionate, but our goal is always to give the reader a break from reality, a release from the mundane.

Sometimes the mystique is completely, and deliberately, unexpected. As authors, we can tell enough of a story to guide the reader to draw their own conclusions, only to pull the metaphorical rug from under them when they reach the end. When I wrote the Reborn Trilogy, I knew where the final book was going to finish, but I didn’t want my readers to know until they got there.

As authors, we indulge the darker traits of humanity – like lies and deception – in a way that’s not only acceptable to society, but expected by it when they curl up with our books.

Today is Smoke and Mirrors Day, referring to how magicians use all manner of distraction to make sure an audience fails to see what’s really going on. As authors we do the same thing, but words are our smoke, paper is our mirror, and the book is our trick…the only difference is that we make sure our audience understands how it’s done by the end.