Kaye Lynne Booth's Blog: Writing to be Read, page 84

Welcome to the WordCrafter “Hope for the Tarnished” Book Blog Tour & Review

Hope for the Tarnished Book Blog Tour

Welcome to the WordCrafter Hope for the Tarnished Book Blog Tour. On this tour you’ll learn about a touching new young adult novel, Hope for the Tarnished, with guest posts by the author, Ann Chiappetta, as well as reviews and an interview. I hope to see you all at each tour stop. Here’s the tour schedule so you don’t have to miss any of the stops:

Day 1: Writing to be Read – Introduction and Review

Day 2: Patty’s World – Guest Post by Ann Chiappetta

Day 3: Writing to be Read – Interview with Ann Chiappetta

Day 4: Roberta Writes – Guest Post by Ann Chiappetta

Day 5: Zigler’s News – Guest Post by Ann Chiappetta and Review

About Hope for the Tarnished

Young Abbie struggles to cope with the traumatic experiences in her life. Ripped from everything familiar after her parents’ divorce, she is dropped into a strange neighborhood and is emotionally abandoned by her unstable mother. Abbie is caught up in the cruel nature   of one sister’s addictions and often rescued by her other sister’s sense of familial responsibility and love.

The story takes place in the 1970s, revealing family secrets   and the shift of cultural norms as Abbie leaves her doubts in the past, embracing a bright future.

My Review

Hope for the Tarnished, by Ann Chiappetta is a young adult novel about a young girl who triumphs over the adversities of life to find a chance for happiness as a young woman. It’s a story of tragedy and triumph. It’s a story of hope that will tug at your heartstrings.

Growing up as a latch-key kid, before it was ‘thing’, with a mentally unstable mother, who is indifferent to her daughters’ needs, and sister who is an addict, Abbey faces loss and tragedy head on. But as she grows into a young woman, love complicates her life and makes her doubt her own decisions. With time, social norms and personal situations change, making Abbey dare to hope for happiness once more.

A touching story of love and hope, with the message that nothing ever stays the same, Hope for the Tarnished leaves you with an overall good feeling. I rooted for Abbey all the way through.

$11.50/3.99 Purchasing links: Amazon/Kindle Smashwords

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Book your WordCrafter Book Blog Tour today!

Ask the Authors 2022 Book & Blog Series: Tone – Voice, Person, Tense & POV

Ask the Authors 2022

Welcome back to the “Ask the Authors 2022” blog series, where we celebrate the release of this unique writing reference anthology and share some of the wonderful content featured. In each segment of this Saturday series, you’ll meet one of the contributing authors, and share in a section of the Q & A from the book. This week’s contributing author is Nancy Oswald, who shares a delightful accounting of her own publishing journey in the book, “From Slush Pile to Slushy”, and the Q & A topic is setting the tone for your story.

If you missed any of the previous segments, you can catch them here:

Segment 1: Introductions for Kaye Lynne Booth & Kevin Killiany/Writing Life Q & A session

Segment 2: Introduction for Bobby Nash/Pre-writing Rituals Q & A session

Segment 3: Introduction for Roberta Eaton Cheadle/Plot & Storyline Q & A session

Segment 4: Introduction for Paul Kane/Character Development Q & A session.

Segment 5: Mario Acevedo & Action, Pacing, and Dialog

And for today’s post:

Meet Nancy Oswald

Nancy Oswald loves researching and writing historical fiction books for young readers. She has, however, written in a variety of genres including personal interest pieces, children’s plays, poetry, educational research, biography, and nonfiction articles. Oswald spent her growing up years in Denver but has lived as an adult in rural Colorado and the outback of British Columbia where she taught in a one and a two-room school. She taught for 20 years in rural Colorado and is now retired.  Nancy’s books have won the Spur Award, CIPA Evvy Award, Willa Literary Award, Will Rogers Award, Colorado Author’s League Writing Award, and have had multiple finalist recognitions. Nancy currently lives with her husband and their dogs, cats, cows, chickens, and one nearly human donkey who makes mischief at home and on the pages of the Ruby and Maude Adventures.

And now for the Q & A

Tone: Voice, Person, Tense & POV

Which POV do you prefer: First, second, third limited or third omniscient? Why?

Mario Acevedo: Most of my stories are first POV because I tend to write using the structure of a mystery, meaning the protagonist has to sleuth out the truth at the same pace as the reader.

Paul Kane: I tend to write a lot of my fiction in the third person, simply because you can move between places or characters and tell a more well-rounded story that way. You might be with one character in one chapter, then across town with a completely different character in the next. It allows for a certain amount of flexibility. But I also do like first person POV for certain stories. It works well for psychological tales, for example, or if you’re telling a story through letters or diary extracts. I’ve just written a story that way, actually, but it was because I wanted it to be solely through the eyes of my main character who’s being help captive. It creates a more claustrophobic feel. I also write about my PI Jackie Trent – from the novelette The Scarred – in the first person, because it fits in with that tradition of the noir-ish detective investigating a crime. As with a lot of this advice, which way you choose depends on the kind of story you’re telling and what you want to gain from it.

Chris Barili: I enjoy both first- and third-person. First person is more intimate and allows the reader access to more of the character’s inner self, but third person is safer, easier to write, and more accepted. My story “Outcast” has both.

Bobby Nash: Third omniscient. I like to bounce between characters and scenes, have different POVs in different chapters. It works for me.

Robbie Cheadle: My two current work-in-progress novels are written in a mixture of the third limited and first, depending on the style of the chapter. Both novels make use of journals, letters, and other methods of correspondence and these parts lend themselves to first. The rest of the story is told in third limited because it is my preferred point of view. It’s similar to first, but more interesting.

Jeff Bowles: When I was first learning to write and tell stories, I’d often experiment and try all sorts of things, including creative POV choices. Sometimes they worked, sometimes not. Now that I’ve been doing this a while, I tend to stick with a pretty standard third-person past perspective, mostly because all that trickery can be an impediment for readers. The project I’m working on currently has three first-person narrators, so I guess I’m still playing around with form here and there. If it serves the story, I’ll do it. To be perfectly truthful, however, my favorite POV type will always be first person. I like the idea that a character can narrate a story in their own voice, with all those idiosyncrasies I love to toss in. I like it when characters speak to me. It may be the single most enjoyable thing about writing fiction.

Nancy Oswald: Have used both first and third- and first-person present tense for one of my books. Third is my preference for the age group I write for. As a reader I prefer third, also.  I think “I” books can sometimes have a tendency to go overboard and sound too much like me, me, me….

Kevin Killiany: First is often my first choice, but I’m equally comfortable with close or limited third. First is good for getting inside the person’s head to explore motivation and perception. First is almost always an unreliable narrator, and their misinterpretations, omissions, and projections can reveal volumes. Limited third can be almost as revealing as first—sometimes more so because it provides opportunity to reveal a character as others see them. Omniscient is too far removed for my liking—it’s a landscape when a portrait would better serve. I have never been comfortable writing in the second person, the only practical application I can imagine for it would be a “choose your own adventure” puzzle story that presents the reader with choices.

Have you ever done a rewrite of a story using a different POV? Did it improve your story? Why or why not?

Paul Kane: Once or twice, but usually I’ve worked all that out before I even start writing as mentioned in the previous answer. What I have done quite a few times is write something in the past tense which needs to be in the present, to give it more immediacy. The killings in The Gemini Factor – which are being seen by Jack as they happen – had to be told in the present tense for instance. He’s being ‘shown’ the murders, so it made sense for them to be depicted that way, slipping from past to present tense to give that effect.

Chris Barili: Yes, and fortunately my very good editor caught all the areas I screwed it up.

Bobby Nash: Sometimes I will go back and try a different POV. Sometimes, a different POV helps.

Nancy Oswald: Yes, I started one book in third and it wasn’t working. As soon as I switched to first person, it clicked. (First example above is the one where I switched.) This is all it took for the book to become more immediate for me.

How do you determine what POV to use?

Paul Kane: Whether it’s first person or third, it’s usually the person who’s central to that story or chapter whose POV we’re in. So, you work out who that is before starting… No point telling a chapter from the point of view of a waiter in a restaurant who might be leaving the scene before everything kicks off, or you’ll miss the action.

Chris Barili: I take an initial stab at a certain POV based on how close I think the reader should be to the main character and change it if it doesn’t sound right.

Bobby Nash: As with so much of what I do, it’s a gut feeling.

Robbie Cheadle: A Ghost and His Gold was written from the point of view of three of the main characters: Michelle, a modern young woman; Pieter, the spirit of a Boer; and Robert, the spirit of a British soldier. Each of these three characters told sections of the story from their points of view. Each section was presented as a chapter or series of chapters. I have learned not to ‘head hop’ and to keep different points of view together in this manner.

Do you prefer to use single or multiple POVs in a story? Why?

Paul Kane: Again, it depends on what you want to show. In The Family Lie, the most recent PL Kane thriller, I was only really going to tell the story through the eyes of Mitch Prescott, but my editor suggested I tell a parallel tale of what was happening to his sister, Bella, at the same time. Then you could dovetail the two together for the finale… And she was absolutely right. Not only did it stop the story from getting dull, it allowed me to write from a male and female POV, alternating between them as I went. I found the whole thing really satisfying and from the feedback I’ve got readers really enjoyed reading about what Bella was going through; a few even preferred her to Mitch, so I might make her the focus of a story of her own at some point down the line.

Chris Barili: Depends on the story. More complex books with more complicated plots and large worlds usually require multiple POV characters.

Bobby Nash: Multiple all the way. I want to follow more than one character. Multiple POVs allow me to do that and get insight into more than one character.

Robbie Cheadle: I prefer to use more than one point of view as I think it makes the story more varied and interesting. I like each main character to have their own chapters which progress parts of the story.

Nancy Oswald: For my age group, always single. As an adult reader, it has to be done well, or you risk losing the reader with too much switching or poor transitions.

Kevin Killiany: It depends on the needs of the story. Certainly if there are major subplots each would require its own POV.

When employing multiple POVs does each character get equal page time?

Paul Kane: Bella and Mitch more or less did in The Family Lie, though perhaps Mitch got slightly more as he was closer to the mystery than she was. But again, it depends. You might want to just drop in on a character to shake things up, if you’ve been with another one for a while and things are getting stale. Every now and again in Her Last Secret I’d have a chapter from the wife Julie’s perspective, or the policeman Mathew Newcomb, although for the majority of that novel we’re in the head of Jake: the bereaved father. It was just to make sure things weren’t getting too same-y, but also give us a taster of what some of the other characters were going through during the course of the tale.

Chris Barili: Nope. Only as much as they need to tell their story.

Bobby Nash: I play it by ear. I mean, obviously, the main character is the main character so that character can’t be sidelined too long. I just play it by ear to best serve the story.

Robbie Cheadle: The different characters don’t necessarily get the same page time. It depends on how the story goes, how long each character lives, and whether that character becomes a ghost.

Kevin Killiany: No. Each character gets the time and space they need to tell their story—so far that has never resulted in every story being the same size.

Do you switch POVs within a chapter or do you wait for the chapter break? How do you indicate to readers that a POV switch has occurred?

Paul Kane: I tend to do it chapter by chapter, unless I’m trying to make a point. In Her Husband’s Grave I have a chapter that’s mainly told from psychologist Robyn Adams’ perspective where she’s interviewing someone and isn’t quite sure whether they’re good or bad. Then, right at the very end, we switch to that person’s POV and are left with absolutely no doubt about their intentions. I did this on purpose to give the reader a bit more information than Robyn has, which creates suspense and tension. But, mostly, I do it chapter by chapter because there’s no confusion that way.

Chris Barili: If I switch at a point other than a chapter break, I show that break with asterisks.

Bobby Nash: I use a chapter break.

Robbie Cheadle: Initially, I used section breaks within a chapter for different points of view. Now I use chapters for different points of view and section breaks for changes in setting or time.

Kevin Killiany: The Dirt and Stars novels are epistolary; each chapter is an entry from a different character’s personal account—they almost always see the same events differently or focus on different details. Mara has been instructed to keep a journal of her time on Earth; Beth keeps a diary; Jael is making a meticulous record of her efforts to break the Space Service color barrier; Fatima, who has a social communication disorder, records personal interactions to review with her therapist; Lije, confident he will accomplish much in business or politics, is keeping cross-referenced notes to facilitate writing his memoirs; and Thom, a denizen of Brahe Station who will be introduced in volume 4, is another diarist.
When I shift POV in a short story, I simply insert a blank line and make sure the first sentence after tells the reader exactly where we are. (Some publishers insert centered asterisks or plus signs in the blank line.

Do you prefer to write in past or present tense? Why?

Mario Acevedo: I prefer to write in the past tense since that is more familiar to the reader.

Chris Barili: Past. Present tense is difficult to maintain for longer works, and hard to read no matter what.

Bobby Nash: Past tense. Every publisher I’ve worked for has requested it so it’s just what I’ve always done.

Robbie Cheadle: I like to write in present tense, but usually write in past tense because readers favour it. Some readers won’t read books written in present tense.

Kevin Killiany: Past. That’s how we tell stories—have told them since stories were first recorded. Present tense story telling is a recent affectation that makes structural sense only in second person stories, wherein the character is speaking directly to the reader or to a second, unvoiced character.

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That’s all for this week. Be sure to drop in next Saturday, when we’ll have an introduction for contributing author Chris Barili, who contributed an essay on character development, “Character Blueprint”, & a Q & A on setting & world building.

Ask the Authors 2022

“Ask the Authors is an up-to-date and broad-based compendium of advice from today’s working writers, to help you with understanding your own writing career. Great information!”

—Kevin J. Anderson, New York Times bestselling author of Spine of the Dragon

You can delve into the wisdom of all ten contributing authors in Ask the Authors 2022. It’s the writing reference no author should be without. Get your copy at your favorite book distributor at our special send-off price, for the duration of the blog series, through the Books2Read UBL: https://books2read.com/u/3LnK8e

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Join Kaye Lynne Booth & WordCrafter Press Readers’ Group for WordCrafter Press book & event news, including the awesome releases of author Kaye Lynne Booth. Get a free digital copy of her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, as a sampling of her works just for joining.

And the winner is …!

Visions

Announcing the winner of the 2022 WordCrafter Short Fiction Contest.

Every year, WordCrafter Press runs an annual short fiction contest and publishes the resulting anthology. The first contest was in 2019, with the Whispers of the Past paranormal anthology, followed by Spirits of the West paranormal western anthology in 2020, and Where Spirits Linger paranormal anthology in 2021.

Today it pleases me to announce that Roberta Eaton Cheadle is the winner of the 2022 WordCrafter Short Fiction Contest. Robbie has entered the WordCrafter Short Fiction Contest every year since 2019 and this year her story “The Bite” stood out and shined, although with so many good stories submitted, it was still quite difficult to choose. I am proud to include her story in Visions.

The Visions anthology will be different from years past in that I have included stories by invitation only, which were not a part of the contest, so it will be a bit larger than previous anthologies, with a total of nineteen terrific stories for your reading enjoyment. In addition to Robbie, contributing authors include previous contest winners, Jeff Bowles and Christa Planko; invited authors Sara McBride, W.T. Patterson, Julie Jones, Zack Ellafy, Leah Cutter, Joseph Carribis, D.L.Mullen and Stephanie Kraner; and contest entrants, Patty L. Fletcher, Billie Holladay Skelley, C.J. Serajeddini, C.R. Johansson, Keith J. Hoskins, and Janet Garber.

I look forward to putting this anthology together and sharing it with all of you.

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Join Kaye Lynne Booth & WordCrafter Press Readers’ Group for WordCrafter Press book & event news, including the awesome releases of author Kaye Lynne Booth. Get a free digital copy of her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, as a sampling of her works just for joining.

Growing Bookworms: Toys that help develop fine motor skills in children

It is important for children to develop good fine motor skills so they can perform important tasks such as feeding themselves, grasping objects, drawing, cutting, and writing. Successful achievement of these skills increases children’s confidence.

These are a few examples of toys that help children develop fine motor skills:

Threading beads

Threading beads on a string is an excellent activity for small children. Large beads with thick stings and large holes are best for younger children. Sets with smaller beads, strings and holes are available for older children. Children love making necklaces and bracelets for themselves, parents and other caregivers.

Lacing cards

Lacing involves threading a string or shoelace through a board. It is the same action that is used to thread shoelaces in a shoe. Parents and caregivers can create their own board using cardboard and scissors or a paper punch. Alternatively, you can purchase lacing kits.

Building blocks

Building blocks have many benefits other than improved fine motor skills. Among these are increased attention span, working with other children i.e. team work, gross motor skills, science concepts (such as gravity, weight, stability and balance), spatial development, early maths and number concepts, and language development. Lego is a more advanced form of building with blocks.

Drawing and painting tools

Drawing and painting is a wonderful and fun way of allowing children to develop their fine motor skills. There are a variety of different instruments for drawing and painting, including wax crayons, oil pastels, paints of all sorts, coloured pens and pencils, ect.

Drawing has the added benefit of teaching children how to hold a tool or instrument to make shapes and drawings on a surface.

Puzzles

Puzzle come in all sorts of shapes and sizes from shape sorters for very young children to large, complex puzzles for older children. There are also a variety of colourful peg boards that are available for children.

I had all of these toys for my children and I used to sit and do activities with them in the afternoons. I also used to get the boys to cut out shapes and stick them on paper to make interesting designs. Michael struggled with cutting and it was one of the first indicators I identified of his auditory processing barrier.

Did you do any of these activities with your children? If yes, do you think they helped your child with learning to write? Let me know if the comments.

About Robbie Cheadle

Robbie Cheadle is a South African children’s author and poet with 9 children’s books and 2 poetry books.

The 7 Sir Chocolate children’s picture books, co-authored by Robbie and Michael Cheadle, are written in sweet, short rhymes which are easy for young children to follow and are illustrated with pictures of delicious cakes and cake decorations. Each book also includes simple recipes or biscuit art directions which children can make under adult supervision.

Robbie has also published 2 books for older children which incorporate recipes that are relevant to the storylines.

Robbie has 2 adult novels in the paranormal historical and supernatural fantasy genres published under the name Roberta Eaton Cheadle. She also has short stories in the horror and paranormal genre and poems included in several anthologies.

Robbie writes a monthly series for https://writingtoberead.com called Growing Bookworms. This series discusses different topics relating to the benefits of reading to children.

Robbie has a blog, https://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com/ where she shares book reviews, recipes, author interviews, and poetry.

Find Robbie Cheadle

Blog: https://www.robbiecheadle.co.za/

Blog: robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com

Twitter: BakeandWrite

Instagram: Robbie Cheadle – Instagram

Facebook: Sir Chocolate Books

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Want to be sure not to miss any of Robbie’s “Growing Bookworms” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you found it interesting or entertaining, please share.

Book Review: There Will Be Consequences

There Will Be Consequences, by Loretta Miles Tollefson is a biographical historical novel which tells the story of 1837 New Mexico territory history from a biographical perspective, using multiple P.O.V.s. 1837-38 is a complicated period of New Mexico’s history, when rebellion broke out, which Tollefson has undertaken to portray, and she chose an effective way to illustrate all of the different perspectives. There Will Be Consequences tells the story of an historical conflict in which there were no winners.

Although I am familiar with Colorado’s history for this period, this book shows that there was a lot more going on on the western frontier than just cowboys and Indians, wagon trains and mining. This is not a tale of high adventure, but one of the backbone of this country just trying to survive, and it is filled with events that most will find astounding.

There Will Be Consequences

Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/There-Will-Be-Consequences-Biographical/dp/1952026059

There Will Be Consequences is skillfully crafted to offer an inside look into the events of the 1837 rebellion and the resulting events. If you are familiar with this historical period and area, you’ll enjoy the thoughtful insights Tollefson offers through the different perspectives offered. If you’re not, you’ll find it all quite interesting. I give it five quills.

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Kaye Lynne Booth lives, works, and plays in the mountains of Colorado. With a dual emphasis M.F.A. in Creative Writing and a M.A. in Publishing, writing is more than a passion. It’s a way of life. She’s a multi-genre author, who finds inspiration from the nature around her, and her love of the old west, and other odd and quirky things which might surprise you.

She has short stories featured in the following anthologies: The Collapsar Directive (“If You’re Happy and You Know It”); Relationship Add Vice (“The Devil Made Her Do It”); Nightmareland (“The Haunting in Carol’s Woods”); Whispers of the Past (“The Woman in the Water”); Spirits of the West (“Don’t Eat the Pickled Eggs”); and Where Spirits Linger (“The People Upstairs”). Her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets, and her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, are both available in both digital and print editions at most of your favorite book distributors.

When not writing, she keeps up her author’s blog, Writing to be Read, where she posts reflections on her own writing, author interviews and book reviews, along with writing tips and inspirational posts from fellow writers. In addition to creating her own very small publishing house in WordCrafter Press, she offers quality author services, such as editing, social media & book promotion, and online writing courses through WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services. As well as serving as judge for the Western Writers of America and sitting on the editorial team for Western State Colorado University and WordFire Press for the Gilded Glass anthology and editing Weird Tales: The Best of the Early Years 1926-27, under Kevin J. Anderson & Jonathan Maberry.

In her spare time, she is bird watching, or gardening, or just soaking up some of that Colorado sunshine.

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Join Kaye Lynne Booth & WordCrafter Press Readers’ Group for WordCrafter Press book & event news, including the awesome releases of author Kaye Lynne Booth. Get a free digital copy of her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, as a sampling of her works just for joining.

Ask the Authors 2022 Book & Blog Series: Action, Pacing & Dialog

Hello again, and welcome to segment 5 of the “Ask the Authors” blog series. This Saturday series features introductions to each contributing author and excerpts from the Q & As featured in the newly released Ask the Authors 2022 writing reference anthology.

If you missed any of the earlier segments, you can find them here:

Segment 1: Introductions for Kaye Lynne Booth & Kevin Killiany/Writing Life Q & A session

Segment 2: Introduction for Bobby Nash/Pre-Writing Rituals Q & A session

Segment 3: Introduction for Roberta Eaton Cheadle/Plot & Storyline Q & A session

Segment 4: Introduction for Paul Kane/Character Development Q & A session

This week’s segment features an introduction to contributing author Mario Acevedo and a Q & A on action, pacing, and dialog.

Meet Mario Acevedo

Mario Acevedo is a national bestselling author of speculative fiction and has won an International Latino Book Award and a Colorado Book Award. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies to include A Fistful of Dinosaurs, Straight Outta Deadwood, and Blood Business. For 2020, he has short fiction in the forthcoming anthologies, Psi-Wars and It Came From The Multiplex, and a Western novel, Luther, Wyoming. Mario serves on the faculty of the Regis University Mile-High MFA program and Lighthouse Writers Workshops. Mario has also been a presenter and panel member for both the 2020 Stay in Place Virtual Writing Conference, and the 2021 New Beginnings Virtual Writing Conference.

And now, on to the Q & A.

Action, Pacing & Dialog

Do you have any tips for writing action scenes/fight scenes/car chases, where blow by blow descriptions could get tedious?

Mario Acevedo: Summarize. Only share the high points and include internalizations. Also add details that are often overlooked like nausea, panic, pain, exhaustion.

Paul Kane: I grew up watching a lot of action movies and TV shows, the ’70s and ’80s were a golden age for action as far as I’m concerned. So, a lot of that went in without me having to do much. I used to recreate certain action scenes with my toys, or I might race off up the garden with mates to pretend fight. When I wrote the Hooded Man books, I had to have a lot of action in there, so I got very good at not making things boring – there are only so many ways to describe a punch, for example. But the key I found was to visualize the scenes, even play them out – just like I did when I was a kid – so that they become, again, more believable. I was delighted when one of my battle scenes for Broken Arrow was compared favourably to those in The Lord of the Rings movies, especially Helm’s Deep; that’s one of my all-time favourite battles on film, so I did a little happy dance that day. The way to tackle any fight or action scene, whether it’s huge like the ones I’m talking about here, or just one-on-one, is to break it down into its component parts. Ask yourself what you need or want to show. Then do your research, watch a lot of fight sequences, or action scenes, mix and match the moves that are being made. If your character is a master of martial arts, study it. I had a character called Tanek, for example, who was skilled in the Israeli hand-to-hand combat of Krav Maga, so I went out and researched that. Jennifer Garner actually studied that for Alias, so I watched some fight sequences from the show. They used a very particular form of combat for the Batman fight scenes in the Nolan movies called the Keysi Fighting Method, which favours forearms and elbows, so it’s worth trying to find something that’s not been done before perhaps. Or not done very much. Finally, give your fight and action scenes a sense of character, make them like a dance or a ballet. They need to have rhythm, flow, so your reader can easily picture what’s happening. Too much going on at once is a big no-no, because you’ll lose them. Same goes for very dry descriptions of a fight: now this happens, now this, then this… Try and find a way to make your descriptions interesting, maybe comparing them to something, like two animals barging into each other or what have you.

Chris Barili: Know what you’re talking about. It seems obvious, but may writers take it for granted, and end up writing nonsense that loses the reader. For example, I have studied the martial arts most of my life, and I hold a second-degree blackbelt in Karate. Thus, I know that someone trained primarily in Judo or Jiujitsu will be a grappler by preference, while a Karate stylist will be a stand-up striker who looks to avoid going to the ground.

Bobby Nash: It can be difficult to keep fight scenes fresh. I learn the choreography, walk out the fights, play around with different ways to describe the action. How is the character feeling/responding to the action? I wrote a car chase once and showed it from the POV of a passenger in the car instead of the driver. As he’s holding on for his life, we get a sense of the danger that way as opposed to only descriptions of what the car is doing.

Robbie Cheadle: I am writing my second novel involving war which includes fighting scenes. I intersperse the fighting with dialogue, humorous comments, scenes of eating, drinking, and entertainment, and the receipt of letters from family and friends.

You cannot maintain tension at high levels for too long or it becomes monotonous and over-done. In real life, people relieve tension by singing, and making jokes, and talking and I follow this practice in my writing.

Nancy Oswald: Elmore Leonard: “I try to leave out the scenes readers skip.” Ralph Fletcher: “Write small and use slo mo. The more tension you want to create, the more important the details. In general focus on one detail well rather than all the details which can wash out a scene.”

How do you handle scenes where there is a lot going on, like battlefields or fights in busy settings?

Paul Kane: As I say, break it down into smaller chunks. Show the scale of what’s happening by all means, like an establishing shot in a movie, then focus in on certain specific fights and details. These will usually be with your main characters if it’s a big battle – so I would zoom in on a fight Robert, my Robin Hood, might be having with someone. Then cut to maybe Jack, who is my Little John, and see how he’s getting on. You have to give everyone who’s a main character a turn in the sun, plus give the reader memorable moments – like Robert taking down the Apache attack helicopter with a bolas.

Chris Barili: This is a tough one. I have found that choreographing the whole thing on a sketched-out map of the physical surroundings can help, and if that’s not enough, having some friends act out the scene can help you identify errors, misjudgments, and so on.

Bobby Nash: I try to make sure all of the necessary information is relayed. If you have a lot of characters, you have to try and balance who has dialogue or stuff to do so that they don’t disappear from the scene. POV helps here too.

Robbie Cheadle: I keep my sentences fairly short during battle scenes, and I use a lot of dialogue to break up the action.

How do you keep action flowing smoothly within a scene?

Mario Acevedo: Keep the scene and story question in mind so that the action strengthens the plot.

Paul Kane: Just keep it tight, moving from one bit of action to the next. Even in a small fight, if you have a character get punched or kicked, it’s enough to say it just winds them or takes them down – you don’t have to go into lots of detail about how it feels, whether they’re recovering, what’s going through their minds as they’re fighting. Keep it rattling along at a good pace. Sounds stupid, because it’s a fight, but make it punchy.

The use of weaponry is a good way of handing readers little details that help them visualize what’s going on. Everyone knows what a knife or rifle or handgun looks like. Of course, it depends very much on what kind of fiction you’re writing. A lot of my Hooded Man stuff was military based, because of the nature of armies fighting each other, so readers who enjoy that kind of thing like you to include the names of weapons, specifics relating to what they can do. Does a certain gun jam more often than others? Which are best for close combat as opposed to distance? I once wrote a story about an assassin called Mr D, who had to tear through lots of guards to get to his target. That started off with long-range sniper rifles, and ended up with hand-to-hand fighting as he got closer to the building his mark was in.

It’s also fun to write about weaponry that’s totally out of context, for example plates and pans in a kitchen that can be used to fight with. In my novel Lunar, Nick Skinner raids old castles and museums to get swords, shields and axes to fight the monstrous Loons. Similarly, The Storm was set in an old castle so weapons like that were no-brainers, but I do have my main character – who’s there as a workman – fight off a huge crustacean with a mini-digger. It was just what was around and big enough to tackle the oversized beast, but it worked a treat.

Chris Barili: Keep it short. A ten-page car chase will lose a reader like a prologue. 

Bobby Nash: When writing action, I use shorter sentences, short, choppy dialogue, sometimes interrupted dialogue. That reads faster so the reader reads the action scenes faster, highlighting the fast-paced nature of the scene. During an action scene is no time for deep thoughts or anything extraneous. Keep it simple and keep it moving.

Do you consult experts to ensure your action is true to life? How do stories benefit from getting those little details right?

Paul Kane: If you know someone who’s been in the military, or police, or someone who teaches self-defense then definitely use them. Use any friends for anything which requires specialist knowledge. This might be something as everyday as fingerprinting or gathering DNA at a crime scene, say, or if you know a scientist it could be as big as how the universe works. But you don’t necessarily have to go to experts like that these days if you don’t know any, because information is freely available on the net and in books – especially writers’ handbooks. At the same time, talking to experts sometimes throws up interesting scenarios and might take a story in a direction it wouldn’t otherwise have gone.

Bobby Nash: Research can help, sure. Whatever you writer, whether it’s a real-world fight or two super-powered characters battling, you have to write it as though it’s real. If you believe it, the reader will believe it.

Robbie Cheadle: I read a lot of non-fiction to gain knowledge about the subjects of my historical novels. To get a good feel for the era, I read works of fiction set during that time. Fiction reading gives me insight into how people lived, socialized, travelled, and dressed during the period in which my novel is set.

Nancy Oswald: I’m a nut for accurate historical detail, even if it plays a minute part in the story.

Pacing

How can dialog help pace your story?

Mario Acevedo: Dialog is a great way to advance the plot by having the characters reveal crucial information or to help build a character. Dialog is more active and interesting then authorial narration.

Paul Kane: I think that’s where the planning comes into it, once more. If you have a chapter breakdown you can see where the novel needs tightening up. Is there too much exposition in a certain chapter, not enough? Too much action all in one go, or not enough for long periods? Are you hooking your reader at the end of your chapters, making them want to go on and read more in the next chapter? Even if you’re only writing a short story, if you jot down the structure of it in a few sentences you can usually work out where you’re going in terms of pace. Compare whatever you’re doing to other novels or short stories, see how they’re paced. If you want to write, then you have to read as well – like Stephen King says in On Writing. There really is no other way to learn how to do this. Similarly, if you’re scripting TV or film, then go away and watch how they’re paced. Or a comic or audio: read comics, listen to audio dramas and make notes. It really is the only way to learn your craft, whether it be characters, setting/description or pacing.

Robbie Cheadle: Dialogue speeds the pace of a story up, so I use more dialogue for tense, fast paced scenes.

What methods do you employ to control and maintain the pacing in your story?

Mario Acevedo: Know when to show and tell. Show is “reveal,” during which you draw out the narrative in a way that pulls the reader into the story. Tell is “exposition,” which you need to keep the reader oriented in between reveals.

Paul Kane: Try and stick to the plotting and planning you’ve done, even if it’s in broad strokes. That doesn’t mean your story can’t go off on a tangent if something occurs to you, but go back to the outlines that you’ve done at that point and rewrite those, see where the new development might take you. Predict and project, then go back to the writing of the tale. In my opinion that’s really the only way to keep a rein on the thing and make it go where you want it to go.

Robbie Cheadle: I break my story down into manageable pieces for each character. In my current work-in-progress, I am alternating chapters between Jake at the Western Front during WW1, and Kate in Orange, New Jersey.

In slower sections I use longer sentences and more detail and description to slow the pace down.

I also use introspection to develop my characters and control pace.

How do you find the right balance between action and dialog?

Paul Kane: For me personally, that’s something which just comes with practice. The more you write, the better at judging this you’ll be, until you’ll be doing it by instinct almost without thinking. If you drive, remember what it was like when you first started, trying to keep it all in your head? And once you’ve been on the road a while, a lot of that becomes like second nature to you, doesn’t it? Or it should do at any rate. It’s the same thing with writing really, you develop these skills over time – so that you can tell when something needs balancing out with a bit of dialogue, or a bit of action. It’s all just about putting in the work, honing your skills.

Nancy Oswald: Try to do them both at the same time by using appropriate action-filled tags.

Dialog

How do you write dialog that sounds natural and realistic?

Mario Acevedo: Listen to the way people speak, then write a tightened version. People tend to repeat themselves. Catalog unique ways in how people express themselves. Also, keep in mind the character’s agenda when using dialog.

Paul Kane: The trick is to get the balance right between it sounding naturalistic and conveying information. Most dialogue should be moving the story along or serving the story, otherwise what’s it doing in the piece at all? In real life we all have conversations that are just random or serve no purpose, or we get distracted and break off from a conversation to talk about something else. You can’t do that in your fiction, because people will get bored. Or they’ll think you’re not in control of your own writing, which would be true at that point. I get criticized a lot for not finishing sentences in dialogue, but what I’m trying to do is leave readers in a bit of suspense, whilst at the same time making it a bit more realistic. Human beings very often leave sentences unfinished, if they’re interrupted or just shocked. I don’t do it all the time, and like I say some people find it jarring, but it is one way of creating naturalistic dialogue if you have a reason for it. Another way is to just let the dialogue flow, batting it backwards and forwards, but don’t forget to keep reminding the reader who’s speaking with a ‘Mike said’ or whatever, every now and again. Or have a bit of action, like Mike scratching his head or getting up and walking across the room to break things up if you’ve had several lines of dialogue. I always find arguments quite easy to write, because the flow of them comes across as very believable, and you can include lots of relevant information. For me, it’s quite easy to imagine a couple of people having an argument, because it happens a lot in our everyday lives; lots of people have opposing viewpoints, so it’s fun to try and get both sides of that across.

Chris Barili: Listen to people talk and write dialogue that way as much as possible. Do NOT write dialogue in grammatically correct sentences…we don’t speak in MLA format, either.

Bobby Nash: A trick I learned is to read the dialogue out loud. That will tell you if it works or not.

Robbie Cheadle: I read all my stories aloud to myself, and to anyone else who’ll listen. Reading my writing aloud helps me to spot errors and clumsy unnatural dialogue.

Kevin Killiany: I read it aloud. (Yes, I do character voices.)

Do you use dialog tags? Basic or varied?

Mario Acevedo: I vary them and use action tags as often as possible. Remember that in interpersonal communication, half of what we communicate is non-verbal so include those clues: tone, pauses, eye movement, facial expressions, gestures, changes in posture to emphasize what is being said.

Paul Kane: I tend to stick with the basics, unless you’re trying to say something specific. For example, ‘he spat’ shows how shocked or mad that person is by something that’s been said. I tend to steer clear of things like ‘he pontificated’ or anything complicated like that, as it throws you right out of the story. But good old-fashioned ‘he said’ ‘she said’ works just fine. It’s amazing how your eye glosses over this when you read. Try it for yourself, read a page from a book, then go back and re-read it looking for those tags – and I guarantee you won’t have spotted half of them.

Bobby Nash: Yes. I used ‘said’ most of the time, but if I need to add a punch to a line, I may use a different tag.

Robbie Cheadle: When I use dialogue tags, I generally stick to ‘said’. I don’t always use a dialogue tag, sometimes I prefer to use an action by the speaker to indicate who is talking.

Nancy Oswald: Both or not at all. Let the actions act as your dialogue tags.

Kevin Killiany: I stick to basics, with some variations. Many times I leave them out. Example:

                Pilar realized her watch had stopped.

                “Jerry? What time is it?”

                “Four. Uh, four oh eight.”

                “Which?”

                “Four oh eight. Nine, now.”

You know who’s saying what and you get an idea of Jerry’s personality with no tags.

Any pet peeves with dialog?

Mario Acevedo: Info dumps and a character not saying the obvious in response to what’s going on.

Paul Kane: Not really, just if the conversation isn’t going anywhere or serving any kind of purpose. Having two characters discuss what they’ve had for lunch, for example. Unless that lunch caused food poisoning that results in something significant happening in the plot, then what’s the reason for including it? 

Chris Barili: No robot-speak unless the character is actually a robot, and usually not even then.

Bobby Nash: Noting specific. I try not to be cliché.

Kevin Killiany: People speaking grammatically correct written English with every pronoun unnecessarily identified. Normal conversation—even in formal situations—is usually made up of sentence fragments because spoken English assumes all members of the conversation understand what’s being discussed.

Would you share a brief excerpt from one of your best dialog scenes?

I asked this question and got some wonderful responses, but most of them are too lengthy to include here, so I guess if you want to view them, you’ll have to buy the book.

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That wraps up this week’s segment of the “Ask the Authors 2022” blog series. Be sure to drop by next Saturday, when we’ll introduce Nancy Oswald and bring you a Q & A on tone and all that entails.

Ask the Authors 2022

And don’t forget to grab your copy of the Ask the Authors writing reference anthology, at the special 3.99 price for the duration of this blog series, from your favorite book distributor through the Books2Read UBL: https://books2read.com/u/3LnK8e

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Join Kaye Lynne Booth & WordCrafter Press Readers’ Group for WordCrafter Press book & event news, including the awesome releases of author Kaye Lynne Booth. Get a free digital copy of her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, as a sampling of her works just for joining.

Mind Fields: Food Disorders And Other Fun Things to Do To F**k Yourself Up

Mind Fields

2022, The Year Of The Great Fungus

I have a conceit, i.e. that I should hold the title as “The World’s Most F**ked Up Person”. The only problem is that all of you would also like to hold this same title. Don’t try to con me. I know what you think. The only reason I know what you think is that it’s the same thing that I think.

Or. I used to think. When I recognized that each of us claims this title as the most neurotic person on Earth, I began to have more confidence in myself. Surely, I reasoned, if I am exactly the same amount of f**ked up as everyone else, then I must belong to this Family of Man. I’m human. And we all know that there is great dignity to being human. We are builders of pyramids, makers of satellites and space ships.

I have a very weird relationship with food. The first time I grasped that I was deeply crazy was when I began to eat huge amounts of food. I indulged especially in sweets. If I were to make a pie chart of my life (and refrain from eating it), I’m sure it would show huge chunks of time in the bulimia/anorexia’ zone. The worst of my food disorders followed me through adolescence; years seventeen through twenty two. I was out in the world, trying to maneuver by being on or near college campuses.

I had a sneaky way of being anorexic. I deluded myself into thinking that this was a spiritual discipline.  Macrobiotics. It would get me high, exalt me spiritually. By eating small portions of brown rice and onions, chickpeas in barley, I was the paragon of yogic discipline. This was who I wanted myself to be. I got skinny. I weighed 125. On top of this I was taking LSD and smoking DMT. I was deep into my purpose, my destiny of becoming a musician of salvation and a figure of reverence. I was grandiose as all hell.

Then I came to a breaking point. After a year of Macrobiotics, I had such a craving for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I bought the ingredients and took them back to my hidey hole. “What are you doing?” I asked myself. “This is a self betrayal, this is the opposite of Macrobiotic food. You asshole, what a failure you are!” So I ate it. Then I ate something else sweet and gooey. Then I couldn’t stop eating every kind of junk food on the planet. I had been like a spring ready to snap. Boing!

I was so ashamed of myself. This was 1967, before eating disorders had been invented. I was a pioneer. My bulimia wasn’t the pukey kind. It was the Exercise Freakishly type of bulimia, the one where on alternate days I would purge with sweat and effort, then follow with a day of relentless eating: an entire apple pie, backed up by a half gallon of ice cream. That kind of eating: epic, disgusting eating. After that came the cookies, and so forth. One day exercising. One day binge eating. Back and forth, one followed the other, for more than a year. I looked for help. I went to the college shrink. He said, “I don’t know what’s happening to you and I can’t help you. Besides, you’re not even enrolled as a student at this college.”

I lost weight during this time. It was paradoxical! How could I be losing weight? My metabolism must have been very confused. My waist was a twenty nine or thirty. I was living in a vacant student’s quarter, avoiding the security guys and bedding down with a pad and sleeping bag. I got money from my dad. I worked as a stable boy at a local horse ranch. A stable boy. I had my drums stashed at the university’s music building in a practice room. I practiced there for hours every day, getting high by all means and experimenting with the limits of my technique. That was the point of not going to college. I let my dad pay for semesters at Western Reserve or Wayne State, and then I would slip down to Yellow Springs from Cleveland and hang out with people who talked to trees. I would practice all the time, working through the famous “Stick Control” books and listening to Coltrane records.

This was a pleasant period that lasted about a year. I may be conflating two different periods of time. It doesn’t matter. That’s the way memory works when it sort of fails to work. I think there’s a memory bank in the brain and it gets filled up and needs to be purged once in a while. It’s all just story anyway. Life truly is fiction, it has to be. I just want a subject to write about and my life has been so bizarre that it qualifies as the stuff of novels. That poor guy (that is, myself) didn’t know what lay ahead. He thought that if he took enough acid, did yoga, ate rice and played the drums then he would launch himself into nirvana. It’s not a bad plan, really. The problem was that I was fractured psychologically, harboring behaviors that would shame me again and again. I was very (he says solemnly) very f**ked up.

These were adolescent ordeals, but they were precursors to my future. In the sixties my eighteen year old self dreamed of cosmic unity while the biggest thing that lay ahead of me was coke and heroin addiction. I interrogated my psyche by reading about psychology. After that came years of therapy. I was determined to save myself ,in spite of my terrible behavior.

It took a long time but none of it can be repudiated. It’s lucky I’m still alive and well.

After my food disorders came cocaine, and then, heroin.

I’m still slightly food disordered. I control, compensate, manage. Mostly I exercise.

The cocaine and heroin almost killed me. 

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Arthur Rosch is a novelist, musician, photographer and poet. His works are funny, memorable and often compelling. One reviewer said “He’s wicked and feisty, but when he gets you by the guts, he never lets go.” Listeners to his music have compared him to Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, Randy Newman or Mose Allison. These comparisons are flattering but deceptive. Rosch is a stylist, a complete original. His material ranges from sly wit to gripping political commentary.

Arthur was born in the heart of Illinois and grew up in the western suburbs of St. Louis. In his teens he discovered his creative potential while hoping to please a girl. Though she left the scene, Arthur’s creativity stayed behind. In his early twenties he moved to San Francisco and took part in the thriving arts scene. His first literary sale was to Playboy Magazine. The piece went on to receive Playboy’s “Best Story of the Year” award. Arthur also has writing credits in Exquisite Corpse, Shutterbug, eDigital, and Cat Fancy Magazine. He has written five novels, a memoir and a large collection of poetry. His autobiographical novel, Confessions Of An Honest Man won the Honorable Mention award from Writer’s Digest in 2016.

More of his work can be found at www.artrosch.com

Photos at https://500px.com/p/artsdigiphoto?view=photos

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Godling: Part I

Godling: Part Iby Jeff Bowles

According to the oral tradition, the Gods created man, man created Godling, Godling ruled over man until man decided genocide was in fact the worst case ever made for machines ruling anything. Godling’s own subjects–the Ancient Spacefarers–overthrew and imprisoned him on the remote grasslands planet of Isolinius, there to dwell in perpetual confinement under the watchful eye of the monastic Divine Order of Battles Won.

Eons came and went. Human beings lost their drive for exploration and personal cosmic growth. They segregated themselves onto small worlds. After a sum of almost 5,000 years, the prison complex’s abbot warden, Renaldo Timekeeper, 126th in the Order’s line of such individuals, approached the god machine with a demand.

“I have two young friends, prisoner. They need help, and no one else on this planet will provide it. They will have an audience with you. In truth they’re already here, and their cause is as just as any.”

Godling studied Renaldo closely. Though he was intelligent and often keen in his worldly perceptions, the abbot warden was short, bald and foppish, preferring colorful robes and jeweled affectations, an annoying resplendent tone in his conversations and meandering arguments.

“I should very much like to kill you, abbot warden,” Godling said. “Have I told you this lately?”

“You have,” said Renaldo. “Repeatedly.”

“Then we understand each other. They bribed you, didn’t they? These friends of yours?”

Renaldo hesitated. He ran a gloved hand over his huge bald spot, saying, “If indeed it matters in any way, prisoner, the girl’s father–”

“Yes, the girl. Flush with love. That’s trouble to begin with. Their cause is romance, isn’t it? You clearly deserve to die, abbot warden. You don’t mind doing it yourself, do you? I seem to have lost the use of my hands, oh, 5,000 years ago.”

Godling’s enormous body had been constructed of an ultra-resilient Darkwork alloy. His brain contained a multitude of mechanisms and tissue chips, and his heart was made entirely of inky liquid circuit matter. The Ancient Spacefarers had neatly severed him into six parts in their rush to dethrone him: head, arms, torso, legs. They’d entombed and imprisoned these parts deep within Claustrum Mons, the highest mountain on Isolinius.

Godling’s head now rested in what was known as the Orange Room, there upon a pedestal, with his eyes pointed at the orange ceiling. From the base of his head–the severed end of his alloy neck–ran a thick, fibrous red line like rope. The line stretched, straight and taut, to the far wall of the room, disappearing there and linking with his other body parts in the other rooms of the prison.

“Prisoner,” Renaldo said, “you have neither the authority to command my death nor the time to see it through. As long as the rulers of this world regard you as an inexhaustible adviser–”

“Ah! Aha! Now we’ve struck it!” Godling bellowed. “Inexhaustible advisor. Your words, abbot warden, not mine. They come and go all day long. But this girl, and this boy. Hmm, trouble.”

Through a healthy slathering of a special and vibrant orange sensory-paint, the like of which Golding had invented himself, he observed the two young people as they made their way farther and farther down the long tunnel that burrowed deep into the side of the monstrous alpine slope of Claustrom Mons. They were barely more than teenagers, perhaps nineteen or twenty. Through the orange paint, Godling took the full measure of them. He lived in paint now. A special kind composed of a fine poly-organic blend of neural wireless transmitters and perception receptors/dispatchers. Orange for sensory, purple for locomotion, green for touch. He could inhabit anything and everything coated in the stuff, and so, he made the entire prison his body.

“They’re nearly at the blast doors, Renaldo,” Godling fumed. “Who opened the doors for them?”

“I did.”

“Just like that? Because you can? How I shall begin, abbot warden?”

Renaldo cleared his throat. “Perhaps, god machine, you should begin by introducing yourself.”

Yes, perhaps. Then again, perhaps Renaldo’s brain might be better employed as a protein-rich piston lubricant. Love and lovers. Hmph. Godling withdrew all perception from the Orange Room. In a flash, he nestled himself within a long patch of orange sensory-paint in the blast door safety chamber, the size and span of which fairly dwarfed the boy and girl. He spoke a dozen decibels louder than he intended, his voice harsh from the buzz of his concealed, quivering vibrathreads.

“Children, I can see you.”

The girl shrieked and the boy jumped back.

“I don’t mean to startle you.” Godling said, “Only to announce my presence. Hello. This is an announcement. Here I am.”

The girl’s eyes darted around the chamber.

“Here?” she said. “Where’s here?”

 “And who’s I?” said the boy. “I mean, who are you?”

Godling watched them closely. He studied the manner in which they held each other, clutched, clung, fresh excitement and fright brightening their cheeks and warming their skin. Godling sniffed them, tasted their scents. Pheromone levels high, anxiety toxicity enough to choke a rabid pneumatic horse. Taste of fear, smell of sex. Oh but they were so deep in it.

The boy looked the brazen, heroic sort. The kind Godling had long ago loved to crush beneath his massive clawed feet. Dark hair, dusky complexion, full, expressive lips. Crush, crush, crush, crush. And the girl …

The girl was a beastly thing. A creature any smart machine knew well enough to leave alone. Beautiful; gorgeous, even. Biologically … rather perfect. And did she look like…?

No, of course not. No woman alive looked like her. Nobody could ever come close.

“Who are you? Where are you?” the boy said.

“Ah, a man of action,” Godling said. “I do not like that. I should very much like to kill you. Universe takes all kinds, I suppose. I am Godling. Also known as the god machine. Also known as the god king. Also knows as the truest king of all. Also known as–”

“The monster king,” said the boy.

The girl’s face lit up. “The machine who ruled humanity for five centuries, ushered in an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity, permitted humans to travel the stars, and who took for himself the name Godling, because he truly was a god among men.”

“This is all true,” said Godling.

The boy cocked his head. “The same machine who debased himself for the love of a woman, lost his mind to rage, and who, without any warning at all, slaughtered millions of his own subjects.”

“This is true as well,” said Godling. “I also like to sing. Did you know that? Come along, now.”

He left the patch of orange in the safety chamber and flashed to the receiving room beyond.

“Well come on,” he called to the lovers when they moved not an inch. “Wouldn’t you like to see what your bribe has bought you?”

The boy and girl exchanged a nervous glance, and then as one, they stepped through. Godling made certain to close the doors behind them with two deafening clangs.

“Wouldn’t want any monster kings making a run for it,” he said pleasantly. “Off we go, then.”

*****

“Ressia,” said the girl. “My name’s Ressia.”

“Brennan,” said the boy.

Godling smiled inwardly. “There, isn’t that better? Good to be on a first-name basis, hmm? Now about your bribe …”

“Please, hallowed one,” said Ressia, “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about us.”

The lovers followed Godling from one patch of sensory-paint to the next. The reception wing, the common, foot tunnel row, all the while, disturbing and unnerving monks wherever they went.

“Don’t mind them,” Godling said. “Not used to such lowly figures roaming their hallowed halls. Now child, about this wrong idea business. Surely you must know I am incapable of getting wrong ideas. Why, the rulers of this world–”

“Seek your counsel every week,” said Ressia. “Yes, we know.”

“That’s why we’re here,” said Brennan. “You see, her father–”

“Fathers,” Godling said. He moved further up the foot tunnel. “I am not concerned with fathers, nor am I interested in progenitors of any kind. The emperor of the entire Northern Continents seeks my counsel every third pseudo-day of each second cycle. And Delinius, the neo-liege, personally visits my Orange Room every time he has a crisis of faith. Do you have any idea how often a neo-liege has crises of faith?”

“No,” said Brennan, “but you see, her father–”

“And then there’s the trouble between King Marshal of Sevrum and Stevrik III of Quaratania.” Godling flashed into the security firezone antechamber, the room that stood directly outside the prison proper. “Don’t get me started on them. Some silly thing concerning Stevrik’s daughter. She desires, I’ve been told, to forsake her betrothed and marry her lover who … ah … ah, I see. You are Stevrik’s daughter, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Ressia admitted.

“But this is wonderful.”

“It is?”

“Yes. Don’t you see? You have come here for no good reason. You will leave my prison desperately disappointed, and I shall not be bothered with your nonsense a moment longer.”

Brennan scowled. “If you have no intention of hearing what we have to–”

“No intention? Never said that. Who said that? Never said it.”

Godling, in fact, had every intention of hearing what the lovers had to say. For if they hoped to gain a thing from him, he now hoped to gain something back. A plan began to form in the outer-regional processes of Godling’s mind. Oh, but he was a devious, calculating, beast of a machine. And if he had his way, young Ressia and Brennan would soon come to know it. 

“Please,” Godling said, “step into my prison.”

With the merest of thoughts, he deactivated and slid back the eighteen locking pins of the prison’s purple security door. It swung open slowly, groaning on its massive hinges.

“The first things you shall see, children,” Godling began, “are the razor-sharp claws of a genocidal mad-machine who feels no remorse at all.”

“My god,” Brennan gasped. “That … leg. It’s so large. And the room’s so….”

“Purple,” said Godling. “Yes, I know.”

The purple room, or more accurately, Purple Room One. Orange for sensory, purple for locomotion. Godling had the power to move anything coated in it. He had, at different points throughout the centuries, experimented with moving these very walls and this ceiling as a means of escape. In fact, of the 927 escape plans Godling had initiated in the past five millennia, Purple Rooms One and Two had been directly involved in 156.

Too bad those 156 plans had all proven failures. Along with the other 771.

“What is that there?” Brennan asked. “That red rope coming from the wall?”

“Ah, you’ve notice the bloodwire. Contains no blood at all, of course. Yet it does keep my body powered down at all times.”

“And just how tall are you, hallowed one?” said Ressia.

“Oh, I am a sight. The height of three men. Four if I care to feel insulted. Of course, if I were to feel insulted, I’d probably use those claws there to shred your skin and internal organs to long, sopping strips. Shall we?”

He quickly ushered them into Purple Room Two, and then, into Green Rooms One and Two. There, his arms rested upon their pedestals. Thick as ancient tree trunks, fingers spread wide like the wings of carrion gorgers. Green was for touch-paint, used throughout the prison precisely so Godling could feel, as if with his own Darkwork alloy fingers, a soft pillow or a damp cloth or the warm touch of a–

Godling’s memory banks refreshed. He saw her with the precision and exactitude of second sight. Auburn hair, like the sunset, wisest brown eyes. And the twisting, fiery agony they’d endured together….

“Hallowed one?”

Her image had a death grip on Godling’s primary visual tasking matrix. 5,000 years and he still couldn’t comprehend everything he’d lost.

“Hallowed one? Godling?”

Godling’s focus returned to his Green Room, to the boy, Brennan, and to the girl. No, she couldn’t compare at all. Blonde, not auburn. Beautiful, yes, but not nearly so exotic.

“The Orange Room,” Godling said, doing his utmost to quarantine the affected memory pathways. “To the room and to my counsel.”

Brennan shook his head. “But that’s only five rooms. The history vids say there’re–”

“Six. Yes. The black room is off limits, child. I will surely kill you for just the thought of it.”

*****

“You see, my father is King Stevrik III.”

“Yes….”

“And I do not wish to marry that horrible, despicable, lazy-”

“Please, child, before I corrode.”

A chance to escape. That’s what Godling hoped to gain from the boy and girl. To finally break free of this infernal prison once and for all. The fact the girl was Stevrik’s daughter simply added defensive sheen-varnish to the protractile warblade cake. Oh but Godling was a sly, cunning, fiend of a machine. 

Escape plan number 928 initiated. Proceed with escape plan 928.

He’d gathered the humans together, the young lovers and the oafish abbot warden, Renaldo Timekeeper. Renaldo sequestered himself in the corner of the room, content to fiddle with his white administrator gloves. No other personalities to contend with or further agendas to factor. No more perfect tools to employ than this young man and this young woman. Simple, effortless. Easy as ripping arms from sockets.

“Stevrik’s sworn enemy is King Marshal,” said Brennan. “The betrothal was meant to unite their thrones. But she loves me. We are meant to be together.”

“Yet it would seem Ressia’s betrothed swears otherwise,” Godling said, his large alloy head upon its pedestal glinting hazy green in the solvent battery lighting. “He is a prince, child, someday to be a king. What have you to offer this woman?”

“My mind, of course,” said Brennan. “My life, if necessary.”

“Money?”

“Some.”

“Job?”

“I’m a writer.”

“Oh dear, it’s worse than I thought.”

Keep them talking. That was the key. That was step one of escape plan 928. Yes, and what was step two? Renaldo most certainly had to be dealt with in step two.

“Well, Renaldo?” Godling said. “You’ve been rather quiet. Wasn’t it you who sold my time to these wretched romantics?”

“I didn’t sell them a thing. They simply required your help and I was willing to offer it. Use your influence to sway their fathers. Their cause is just. The war, you see …”

“The war?”

“The war,” said Ressia. “Because I have chosen not to marry the prince, Marshal has declared war on Quaratania, our city, our people.”

“Is that so?” Godling said.

Hmm. Quaratania to the East, at war with Sevrum to the West. And Claustrum Mons in the middle. Yes, perhaps the best time to escape. And Renaldo was in deeper than Godling had surmised. Deep enough he should champion their cause. He had to be dealt with, and of course, over the years Godling had considered many options for such an eventuality.

“Renaldo, if you wouldn’t mind terribly joining me in my black–”

A violent quake impacted the mountain and dropped Renaldo, Ressia, and Brennan to the floor. Claustrum Mons, and the prison within it, grumbled and groaned. Godling’s vibrathreads hummed in response.

Renaldo shouted, “Faith preserve us! What was that?”

Godling spread himself outward. He flashed to every patch of orange, everything green, every purple surface he could manipulate and move. He had the answer in less time than it took the rumbling aftershocks to wave and ripple their way through the complex.

“Detonation,” Godling said, returning full consciousness to the Orange Room. “A precise, constrained explosion equivalent to fifteen megatons.”

“Detonation?!” said Renaldo. “Where?”

“Outside the monastery. The blast doors have been blown apart. They’re coming for you, children.”

Another voice sounded from his vibrathreads. Quite unlike the voices of the three humans, and very much distinct from Godling’s. The god machine was in complete control of all his many faculties, and yet this voice, singular and crystal-clear, had the utter nerve to announce itself over his own synthetic vocal chords.

“I am General Praebus of his majesty King Marshal of Sevrum’s third mounted army. This is a raid designated lawful under the decrees of engagement set down by the Ancient Spacefarers. Give us what we want, monks, and no harm will come to you.”

The vibrathreads crackled a few times, and then went silent.

“Oh but this is terrible, Brennan!” said Ressia. “What are we going to do?” She pressed herself against her love and began sobbing.

“Now’s not the time to panic, my love,” said Brennan. “The god machine will help us.”

He would? Really? Godling hadn’t said he would. Perhaps he might have lied about helping them, but the boy and girl were sure to be killed. In needing to escape, they needed Godling, and in needing Godling, the monster king might finally leave this place. Of course, he told himself, that’s what he’d wanted all along. But now that it actually came to it …

“I can’t,” said Godling. “I’m sorry. I don’t feel like it.”

Brennan frowned. “You what?”

“I don’t feel like it. My body, it would take too long to free, you understand. We’d have to fight them off by ourselves and … Oh, hold on a moment, are you aware the monks have a private arsenal? De-atomizing submachine guns and other various nasty anti-doomsday deterrents, and if they see you trying to set me free–”

“They’ll do nothing, Godling,” Renaldo said. “They’ll stand down and impede neither General Praebus’ men nor the four of us.”

Ressia let out a moan. “Oh, he won’t help us, my love! He won’t help!”

“Ressia,” said Renaldo, “don’t you think it’s time we dispense with the pretenses? The wolves are nipping at our heels, my dear.”

Ressia silenced herself. She scowled at Renaldo, pulled away from Brennan, and then she straightened her dress and uttered, “It’s called commitment to an objective.”

“Objective?” said Godling. “Why are you talking about objectives? You don’t actually intend to release me, do you?”

“Most humbly, hallowed one, it was the only way to get inside,” Ressia said. “Rest assured, I am Stevrik’s daughter, and Brennan and I are in love, and Marshal’s men really are here–”

A second explosion shook the Orange Room. The overhead lighting flickered a few moments, then the low groan of the backup power sources steadily thrummed to life.

“They’ve hit the solvent batteries,” said Renaldo. “They must have engaged my brethren, despite assurances otherwise. Stay on guard, my young friends. We made plans for this.”

Godling shouted, “What are you talking about! What plans? Just what in the hells is going on here?!”

“A prison break,” said Renaldo. “One now rather short on time.”

He dug into his robe and removed a small metal canister with a thin, needling projection brush.

“Brennan, Ressia, your clothes, if you please,” he said.

The two lovers began dropping every last stitch of clothing. After squirming from their undergarments and shoes, they stood there naked. The abbot warden approached and used the projection brush to block them out into even sections. He projected three solid colors–green, purple, and orange–until overlapping layers covered every square inch of them. In less than half a minute, Brenan and Ressia looked like sad glistening mud people.

“Nicely done, abbot warden,” Godling said, bothering in no way to clear the condescension from his tone. “I fail to see the purpose, however. Am I now meant to inhabit this paint? I couldn’t possibly. Not without seeing what I touch and moving what I hear. The thought is rather mind-numbing.”

Renaldo shrugged. “Would it matter if I told you?”

“It would not. They shall all get shot to tiny, mud-colored pieces, and I shall have to spend weeks reconstituting my personality inside this big dumb head of mine.”

“You won’t leave?” Renaldo asked. “You’ve made up your mind?”

“I will leave. On my own terms. When the time is right.”

Renaldo smirked. “You’re a terrible liar, Godling. If you’d wanted to escape, you would’ve done so millennia ago.”

“That’s a complete misrepresentation of the facts,” Godling said. “I’ll have you know, I had a very, very, reasonably well-thought-out plan this time. Step one, keep them talking. Step two, deal with the oafish abbot warden. Step three–”

“Plan? What are you up to now? Nine hundred twenty-eight? Godling, people who escape prison only ever need the one plan. Has it ever occurred to you that you don’t actually want to leave?”

Godling had no response for this. None at all.

“Come with us, god king,” Renaldo pleaded. “Don’t waste away in here another five thousand years. Take back what once was yours, if not for yourself, then for all humanity. Resume your role as truest king of all.”

“It’s rude to nag, abbot warden,” Godling said, and then he sent the precise amount of noise through his vibrathreads to simulate a definitive conversation-ending crackle.

Renaldo frowned, as did Brennan and Ressia. Another explosion rocked the complex. The lights dimmed again, and this time, set themselves into a troublesome flicker.

“My friends, I give you the stubbornness of a machine,” the Timekeeper said. “The door is open. I have overridden his commands. I say again, the door is open.”

Brennan and Ressia shared a glance. The boy gave her a curt nod, and then both of them spun on their heels and rushed out the door.

“Where are you going?” Godling said.

“Wolves at our heels, god machine,” said the Timekeeper

“What door did you open, Renaldo?”

But the abbot warden wouldn’t say. Godling spread himself outward, finding them instantly. There, they headed for the Black Room. Oh no. Godling flashed across the prison to the large black door and tried to force it shut. He set all his processing power to the task. Another quake hit the complex. The lights cut out completely. He pushed, pulled, threw every iota and byte at it. Renaldo’s overrides were crude but effective.

In the darkness, Ressia and Brennan bashed into each other and fell into the room. It felt to Godling like a violation of the highest order. He hadn’t permitted anyone inside in over six hundred years.

“Is that it?” panted Ressia. “Is that all we have to do?”

Yes, that was all they had to do. And no, that wasn’t it, there was more. Unlike the other five rooms, the Black Room wasn’t named for the color of a paint. The black was something else, something deeper, so personal and interior to Godling it may as well have been his soul.

A loud crack split the silence. The giant chest piece of an ultra-resilient Darkwork alloy body broke in two. A deep, ruddy light shone from the chest and illuminated the room and Godling’s torso upon its pedestal. The black spilled over. It gurgled up through the alloy and blubbered and splashed onto the floor. Lunging for Ressia and Brennan, the black attached itself to them, covered all the muddied color of their bodies.

They screamed, writhing on the floor in abject agony. Godling felt the pull. It was inescapable, magnetic. He vanished from his sensory-paint at the door, flashed to the black, felt himself split in two. Green, purple, and orange, the three colors represented essential facets of a functional, conscious being. But every being needed a heart, or if one was a machine, a liquid circuit matter core. Godling felt the connection to the inky stuff, the attraction and resonance he had for the children and their paint. In engineering terms, his mental architecture had always been slaved to hardware. After the wars and terror and the annihilation of millions, it was said of Godling his heart was black as night. Here, in truth, was incontrovertible proof.

Continued Next Month!

Jeff Bowles is a science fiction and horror writer from the mountains of Colorado. The best of his outrageous and imaginative work can be found in God’s Body: Book One – The Fall, Godling and Other Paint Stories, Fear and Loathing in Las Cruces, and Brave New Multiverse. He has published work in magazines and anthologies like PodCastle, Tales from the Canyons of the Damned, the Threepenny Review, and Dark Moon Digest. Jeff earned his Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing at Western State Colorado University. He currently lives in the high-altitude Pikes Peak region, where he dreams strange dreams and spends far too much time under the stars. Jeff’s new novel, Love/Madness/Demon, is available on Amazon now!

Check out Jeff Bowles Central on YouTube – Movies – Video Games – Music – So Much More!

Tales from the Bird Sanctuary: Spring Preening

Tales from the Bird Sanctuary

It’s hard work running a bird sanctuary. Make no mistake about it. But the rewards are awe inspiring and make it all worth it. I have a plethora of birds which visit the sanctuary of my property each year, and my visitors change with every season. (I wrote about the wide variety of bird visitors and shared images a while back. You can see that post here.) There’s always the regular day-to-day tasks of filling feeders, but this is the time of year when the hummingbirds start arriving and visiting birds expect baths to be available, that adds extra tasks to the sanctuary to-do list.

This week was my spring cleaning, when I spruce up the garden area, clearing away remnants of fall, cleaning out water features, and preparing the area for the coming bird season, because birds need a clean and healthy environment in which to thrive. Contrary to popular beliefs, they are not ‘dirty birds’. In fact, the bird baths and water features are my most popular attractions.

This year, I’m planning to renovate my main water feature, installing a new pump to create a waterfall, which the birds should absolutely love. This requires the old water to be pumped out and the whole thing cleaned out well before installing the new pump.

As I said before, the birds all love running water; any kind of spray or fountain will attract them, especially the hummingbirds. Today, since I was pumping out the water feature, I decided to see if I could attract some hummingbirds with the water, and hung the hose over a tree branch, suspending it above the ground, so that it made a good splash. This is a trick that usually works, and before I knew it I had two hummingbirds flirting with the idea of a spring shower, swooping back and forth near the stream of water coming from the hose.

The force of the water was now making an indentation where it hit the ground, and a small, shallow pool had begun to form, so I put my thumb over the end of the hose, creating a lighter spray. One hummingbird found a shallow spot, and literally sat in the pool and bathed. I had seen them take showers in water streams before, but I didn’t know hummingbirds actually bathed. If I’d had my phone, I could have gotten some excellent photos, but at the time, I didn’t want to take my thumb away from the end of the hose and scare him away with the sudden noise from the hard hit of the water. By the time I did run get my phone, she was long gone. But I was rewarded later with another young hummer, who danced around the flow of the hose as if she were performing a mid- air ballet, which I was able to photograph. She blends in pretty well with the background, so she’s kind of hard to see, so I outlined her in each one.

And it wasn’t only the humming birds who felt the need for a spring preening. The bird baths had a plethora of visitors, including the Robin and the Scrub Jay pictured below at the pedestal bird bath.

This post is my first official installment in the “Tales from the Bird Sanctuary” blog series. I posted a post last month about the bird sanctuary which received favorable response, so I thought my readers might have interest in hearing more about my little bird visitors, so I hope you have enjoyed this. The photos aren’t great. Birds don’t often pose for their photos and the lighting is often off. So, what do you think? Would you like to see more installments in this series? Is it worth it?

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Kaye Lynne Booth lives, works, and plays in the mountains of Colorado. With a dual emphasis M.F.A. in Creative Writing and a M.A. in Publishing, writing is more than a passion. It’s a way of life. She’s a multi-genre author, who finds inspiration from the nature around her, and her love of the old west, and other odd and quirky things which might surprise you.

She has short stories featured in the following anthologies: The Collapsar Directive (“If You’re Happy and You Know It”); Relationship Add Vice (“The Devil Made Her Do It”); Nightmareland (“The Haunting in Carol’s Woods”); Whispers of the Past (“The Woman in the Water”); Spirits of the West (“Don’t Eat the Pickled Eggs”); and Where Spirits Linger (“The People Upstairs”). Her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets, and her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, are both available in both digital and print editions at most of your favorite book distributors.

When not writing, she keeps up her author’s blog, Writing to be Read, where she posts reflections on her own writing, author interviews and book reviews, along with writing tips and inspirational posts from fellow writers. In addition to creating her own very small publishing house in WordCrafter Press, she offers quality author services, such as editing, social media & book promotion, and online writing courses through WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services. As well as serving as judge for the Western Writers of America and sitting on the editorial team for Western State Colorado University and WordFire Press for the Gilded Glass anthology and editing Weird Tales: The Best of the Early Years 1926-27, under Kevin J. Anderson & Jonathan Maberry.

In her spare time, she is bird watching, or gardening, or just soaking up some of that Colorado sunshine.

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Join Kaye Lynne Booth & WordCrafter Press Readers’ Group for WordCrafter Press book & event news, including the awesome releases of author Kaye Lynne Booth. Get a free digital copy of her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction, as a sampling of her works just for joining.

Ask the Authors 2022 Book & Blog Series: Character Development

Ask the Authors 2022

Welcome to Segment 4 of the “Ask the Authors 2022” blog series, where we’re offering up a little taste of what you’ll find in this hot new writing reference of the same name. Ask the Authors 2022 features writing tips and advice on craft, publishing, and book marketing from ten talented authors and industry experts.

In case you missed some of the previous segments:

Segment 1: Introductions for Kaye Lynne Booth & Kevin Killiany – Writing Life Q & A session

Segment 2: Introduction for Bobby Nash – Pre-writing Rituals Q & A session

Segment 3: Introduction for Roberta Eaton Cheadle – Plot/Storyline Q & A session

This week we meet bestselling horror author Paul Kane, who shares his love of the horror genre in his essay, “Writing Monsters”, and bring you a Q & A session on character development.

Meet Paul Kane

Paul Kane is the award-winning, bestselling author and editor of over a hundred books, both fiction and nonfiction. Some consider him to be a master of the macabe. He has been a guest at numerous writing events and conferences, and he was the keynote speaker at the 2021 WordCrafter New Beginnings Virtual Writing Conference.

A former British Fantasy Society Special Publications Editor, he is currently serving as co-chair for the UK chapter of The Horror Writers Association. His work has been optioned and adapted for the big and small screen. His audio work includes full cast drama adaptations, he has also contributed to the Warhammer 40k universe for Games Workshop and writes thrillers for HQ/HarperCollins as PL Kane. Paul lives in Derbyshire, UK, with his wife Marie O’Regan and his family.

Find out more at his site www.shadow-writer.co.uk which has featured Guest Writers such as Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Charlaine Harris, Robert Kirkman, Dean Koontz and Guillermo del Toro.

And now, on to the Q & A.

Character Development

Nancy Oswald: This whole section was hard for me because I’ve never been good at planning a character. Lists aren’t helpful to me. What is helpful is to put your main character into the middle of their world and write from there. I usually have an ending or a direction in mind before I start writing, but there have been times when the character determines the story and not the other way around.

Do your characters ever surprise you?

Mario Acevedo: I never thought I’d be a writer who said that my characters have taken over the story, but it has happened. Big surprise, it was female characters. I’d have in mind a script for them, which they would rip to pieces and tear off on their own.

Paul Kane: Oh, all the time! If you’ve made them ‘real’ then they’ll suddenly do something that you don’t expect. That is to say, it’ll momentarily surprise you and then you’ll say: ah, of course that’s how they’d react because of… whatever it is you’ve seeded in their past. It’s really your subconscious putting things like that in, things you’ve set up and forgotten about, then when a character does something unexpected it’s only that you’ve forgotten how apt it was in the first place.

Chris Barili: Yes, all the time. If a character is predictable to me, it will be the same to a reader. So, I let them surprise me in whatever way they seem to need. Those surprises don’t always make the story, though.

Bobby Nash: All the time and I love it. In one story, a character let me know that I had the villain wrong. This character was the villain, not the one I had planned to be the villain. The kicker is that the story worked so much better once I realized that this character was indeed the villain.

Robbie Cheadle: No, my characters follow a pre-determined path decided by me upfront.

Kevin Killiany: Not exactly. I’m the only person living in my head—my characters only look like they have free will. That being said, the longer you work with a project, the more time your subconscious has to compost or ferment or percolate the ideas you’re building with—and that can lead to unexpected discoveries that give texture and dimension to the character. Sometimes my characters evolve over the course of writing and rewriting to the point that they person they’ve become wouldn’t do what the story required. Usually that’s an indication there’s something wrong with the story, not the character.

What makes a character interesting?

Paul Kane: I think it goes back to believability once again, which most things do. They have to be well-rounded, living and breathing people. If I get it right, the characters feel real to me. When I talk about them and what they go through, I talk about them as if they exist. You have to think that way in order for other people to believe them and believe in them. A lot of that means knowing your characters inside out, how they’d react to certain situations – in particular the ones you put them in. Would your character run away from a monster or just get stuck in, have a go, even if it meant dying to save others? That kind of thing. A lot of writers think giving characters quirks makes them interesting, but if there’s no reason for that to be there it just stands out. If you give your character gardening as a hobby, unless he’s fighting a giant plant then it’s not really something that should crop up in your story. The character of Alex Webber in Before was a lecturer, so that meant he was interested in making sure the next generation were educated and could make well-informed decisions. So when the future of the world is threatened, of course he’s going to fight against that; it’s just something rooted in his DNA. Those are the kinds of things that make characters interesting, not whether they sleep on the left or the right in bed.

Chris Barili: They have to be flawed. No one wants to read about perfect people with perfect lives and no conflict whatsoever. It is our characters’ flaws that make them realistic, and that set up most of the conflict in the story. After that, it is the act of exaggerating the characters, making them larger than life. Again, no one wants to read about normal people with normal lives. They want heroes and villains who are large and in charge. Would Dirty Harry have worked if he were a normal cop carrying a .38 special? No, because being a six-foot-four rogue cop with a .44 magnum in gleaming silver makes him stand out.

Bobby Nash: I don’t know. Interesting is like art or porn, I can’t describe it, but I know it when I see it. I need to have something to connect to with a character. Once I have that connection, I understand the character.

Robbie Cheadle: My characters all must overcome a lot of adversity in their circumstances. I believe that the growth in the characters as they play the cards which they are dealt by life makes them interesting.

Jeff Bowles: I think I have an answer to that question: idiosyncrasies, idiosyncrasies, idiosyncrasies. The thing about real people is that we all have our strange little quirks that make us who we are. And these are behaviors and beliefs it’s taken us a whole lifetime to accrue. It pays to think of your characters as being a little odd under the surface. The problem with a lot of storytelling out there is that too many authors figure their characters exist to serve the story. They don’t, it’s the other way around completely. Let your characters speak for themselves. Let the breath a little, see where they really want to go next. Don’t push them into situations that don’t serve their full expression. Let them tell you who they really are.

How do you make a character likeable?

Paul Kane: Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you shouldn’t. I get reviews sometimes that say ‘the characters weren’t very nice’, but then look at some of the things they’ve been through. My psychologist Dr Robyn Adams went through a trauma at the hands of a serial killer, so is addicted to pain killers and drinks too much, leaps straight in with guys too often – because of something else revealed towards the end of Her Husband’s Grave. But you know what, she’s doing the best she can. Her flaws make her human, like all of us, and they make the moments of bravery stand out all the more. I think if you’re always trying to make your characters likable, you’re missing the point of making them believable. Not everyone’s nice all the time, there are grey areas – and that’s totally where your characters should be operating.

Chris Barili: You don’t have to make them likeable, just relatable. Thomas Covenant in White Gold Wielder (Stephan R. Donaldson) is not a likeable character at first, just a relatable one. He almost loses that with a deplorable act early in the book, bit manages to make it through, at least for most readers. I do know some who could not handle it and left the series behind.

Bobby Nash: I start with a likeable person as their base and build the character up from there.

Kevin Killiany: I never consider likeability. I try to make my characters as real as possible—which means complex, with parts some folk will like and parts some folk can’t stand.

How do you make your characters feel real?

Chris Barili: What are their fears and flaws? Read my article, “Character Blueprints” (Ask the Authors 2022) for the tools I use to do this.

Bobby Nash: As I mentioned above, I get to know the characters. Once that happens, they become real people to me. They have their own quirks, foibles, fears, flaws, strengths, and weaknesses. Just like real people.

How do you create a villain readers can love to hate?

Mario Acevedo: Readers must have empathy with all of your characters and understand why they do what they do. Their motivations must be consistent and compelling. One of my best villains was a female mad scientist who at first you cheered until you found out what she was up to.

Paul Kane: I don’t think there’s any magic formula, but the key thing with villains is again that they aren’t just cardboard cutouts. They can’t just be evil for evil’s sake, there needs to be reasons for what they’re doing. My bad guy for the Hooded Man books, De Falaise – essentially my version of the Sheriff of Nottingham – was motivated by the fact that he’d been kept down before the A-B Virus hit. He was a small bad guy in a big pond. The apocalypse gave him the freedom to create a kingdom of his own, so that was his motivation – and Robert, my Robin Hood, stood in his way. You got the impression with some Hood stories in the past that they just hated each other because one was bad, and one was good. In my books, just as Robert has his failings as a leader – for starters, he doesn’t want to be a leader and would much rather hide out in Sherwood waiting to die – so too does De Falaise have his good points, like his loyalty to companions like Tanek, his second in command. I mean, he is evil when you get right down to it, because some of the things he does are reprehensible, but there still needs to be some good in there. Having said all that, the most fun I’ve had writing a bad guy was The Infinity in Before. He’s a version of the Devil, essentially, and likes to meddle in human history. Writing lines for him, simply because he was a stereotypical big bad, was wonderful. It allowed me to put myself in the head of someone who has very few redeeming qualities, if any at all.

Chris Barili: I find that a couple of things can pull a reader into a love-hate relationship. First, a sense of humor. Even if it’s macabre or inappropriate, the ability to make us laugh endears even a harsh villain to us. You can also give that villain a good side by having him or her save a puppy or show some other admirable trait. Intellect combined with arrogance are a nice set of offsetting traits. But most of all, make them flawed like the hero. If they are invincible and pure evil, no one will want to read their stories. Take The Governor on the AMC series The Walking Dead. We find out early on that this otherwise despicable villain lost his whole family to the walkers and thus has them all locked up in his home as he hopes for a cure.

Bobby Nash: Same way as with a likeable character. I get to know them and understand why they do what they do. No villain thinks of themselves as the villain. Most villains believe what they are doing is right or justified. Very rarely is anyone evil just for the sake of being evil. Let the readers see the multiple facets of your heroes and villains.

Robbie Cheadle: Characters that do sadistic and unkind things are easy to make readers dislike. However, my characters all have redeeming features so the reader will end up conflicted, even when the character is behaving at his/her worst.

Do you ever create characters based on people who you’ve actually known?

Paul Kane: I think by necessity characters are mish-mashes of people you’ve known and other characters from books, film or TV shows, plus bits of yourself sometimes. I’ve never based a character wholesale on someone, as that way lies being sued, but I include certain traits from people I’ve known or still know. I was brought up with a lot of strong women around me, so I write a lot of tales with strong female protagonists. RED, my horror reworking of Little Red Riding Hood, is an obvious example of that. Rachael Daniels is someone who fights the wolf rather than running away from it, isn’t frightened to go up against a challenge. Her love-life might be a car crash, but she’s someone you want around when there’s trouble for sure.

Chris Barili: I will plead the fifth on this question, and all writers should, whether they have done this or not. Admitting that you have sets you up for legal action by others.

Bobby Nash: Oh, sure. I have many characters where the basis is a real person that I then built on top of to create a new character.

Robbie Cheadle: Yes, some of my characters are modelled off people I know. Grandfather Baker in Through the Nethergate has a lot of my father’s personality and characteristics. Michelle Cleveland in A Ghost and His Gold has some of my personality and characteristics, but she is more forgiving and generous towards her partner than I would be in the same circumstances.

Some of my characters are model on several people I have come across in a similar situation. For example, Tom Cleveland in A Ghost and His Gold is based on a combination of men in senior positions I have worked with in my own life.

Kevin Killiany: Every character is a composite of people I’ve known. Let’s face it, the only way to research people is to hang out with them a while. I never drop a whole person into a story—it’ll be A’s speech pattern, B’s fascination with baseball, C’s gestures, etc. Of course, those are just the starting points. As I know my character better everything will change, evolve.

Do any of your characters share traits with you?

Paul Kane: You can’t help but put bits of yourself in stories. I’ve talked about Alex Webber from Before being a lecturer, which I was for a while at college, so I could write about him with a degree of confidence and make sure it was authentic. I’ve always been scared of the dark and nighttime, which comes across in a lot of my stories. The little boy at the beginning in Of Darkness and Light – recently reprinted in the collection Darkness and Shadows – is very much based on me as a kid. Staring out into the darkness at bedtime and imagining all kinds of things lurking inside. But I think the writing also helps with tackling your fears, and in that particular story I could make the ‘creature’ in the darkness someone who was actually watching over the character of Lee Masterton, someone who would protect him from harm. He just didn’t know it at the time.

Chris Barili: All of them, of course. We cannot create characters without at least a little dash of ourselves in them.

Bobby Nash: Absolutely. There’s a little something of me in all of them. Some, more than others.

Robbie Cheadle: As mentioned above, Michelle is similar to me in some ways, but very different in others. She is a better me.

Kevin Killiany: Never the main character. But if there’s a plucky sidekick who alternates puns with sardonic commentary, that’ll be me.

What methods do you use to introduce readers to your characters?

Mario Acevedo: One of the techniques that F Scott Fitzgerald used to masterful effect was that he introduced his major characters in terms of their personality rather than merely describing their looks. I keep that in mind as I write my stories.

Paul Kane: I think it helps to show them doing something that defines them, so perhaps through their job. Most detectives are introduced through a crime scene for instance, and then we learn how good they are and what it means to them to be a cop. I introduced my main character Mitch Prescott – who at the start of The Family Lie is a PC – via a riot scene. He’s tried to tell the powers that be that there will be trouble at a demonstration, but they’ve totally ignored him, and of course – surprise, surprise – a riot breaks out in which one of his closest friends is injured. It forces Mitch to question what he’s doing on the Force, which leads to his dismissal when he confronts a senior officer about what happened, which in turn makes it easier for him to just go off and investigate what occurred with his father’s death in his hometown of Green Acres. But just from this one chapter, you realise he’s a man of integrity, a man who’s loyal to his friends, and a man who doesn’t like it when people don’t listen to his warnings – so you set up conflict for later when he reaches Green Acres and he’s being blocked at every turn.

How do you motivate your characters?

Paul Kane: I think that’s the same thing as what motivates us as people. We look after our friends and family, because we love them, and are sometimes motivated to do things we might not otherwise do because they’re in trouble. What motivates characters is the same as what motivates people in real life, because, remember, we’re trying to make those characters real. So, the father of murder Jordan Radcliffe – Jake – is motivated to find out who the killer is, not only because he loved his daughter, but also because he feels like he failed her. Failed her in life as a father, so he doesn’t want to fail her now in death. That’s a powerful motivating factor for any character. In my short novel The Storm, out through PS Publishing, the main protagonist Keegan is all about keeping the woman that he loves safe, even if it means battling giant monsters to do so. Love’s a big motivation for anything, I find, just like in real life. So are things like revenge or jealousy, the usual big ones.

Chris Barili: They are self-motivated by the situation into which I drop them. Usually, it is the will to survive that motivates them, but it can also be love, hate, rage, longing, and more.

Bobby Nash: How do I stop them? I usually have trouble keeping up with them.

Robbie Cheadle: My ghostly characters are motivated by the chance of redemption and moving on from their existence as spirits.

My physical characters are motivated by compassion and empathy for others and a desire to assist the spirits achieve the redemption they seek.

What kind of adversaries and obstacles do you create for your characters and what purpose do they serve?

Paul Kane: It depends very much on what the story is. Creating adversaries tends to go very much hand-in-hand with creating heroes. Myself and my wife Marie O’Regan – a terrific writer herself – do a workshop on this subject, and that’s one of the key elements. The hero or heroes dictate the villain or villains. Both are probably striving for something but pulling in opposite directions. In Arcana our protagonists are just trying to get freedom for magic-users, whereas the M-Forcers are trying to stop them, hunt them down and either kill them or put them in prison. Both have aims, but they’re the exact opposite of each other. The obstacles they face are very much dependent on the story you’re telling. It could be a man vs nature tale, in which your heroes are just trying to stay alive, so the setting would dictate what happens there. If it’s a shark, then you need to be at sea, if it’s snow then you need to be in the Arctic or Ant-Arctic, or you set it at a time of year when it’s snowing… My short story ‘White Shadows’, for example, is about a girl battling living snow in the middle of winter.

Chris Barili: Since most of the opposition to my characters comes from the antagonist, I always try to think, as I close a scene, “what could the villain do that would completely thrown the main character for a loop?”

Bobby Nash: Stories would be boring if there was nothing for the main character to overcome. Whatever the obstacle is, a villain, a test not studied for, a traffic jam, or whatever, gives the character(s) something to overcome or solve. Hopefully, your character comes out stronger on the other side of the obstacle.

What methods do you use to introduce readers to your characters?

Bobby Nash: We meet the characters in story. I let different characters be out POV in different chapters so we can understand them.

How do you give each character a distinctive voice?

Paul Kane: I think that just comes down to their personality really, who they are and what they do. How they respond to things, whether it’s trouble or something nice, will dictate their voice. So it’s all to do with character creation, and that believability factor again. If they respond in an authentic way, that will give them their voice. If you’ve created a strong female character, for example, they’re not likely to take a man bossing them around lightly. Indeed, they might even knock them out, depending on whether they’re a violent sort or not, or whether the provocation was bad. It’s things like that which give your characters a distinctive voice. 

Chris Barili: This seems to come naturally for me. And I think that come from listening. I did twenty years in the military and traveled all over the world. So, I have had the chance to listen to many different conversations in many different cultures, and all of that goes into giving a character their own voice.

Bobby Nash: Once I get to know the character, they tell me what their voice is and that’s what I write. It all comes down to creating a fully formed character.

How do you feel about killing off your darlings?

Mario Acevedo: I am ruthless. There’s a vacant lot in my neighborhood where I’ve left my darlings rotting in shallow graves.

Paul Kane: Do you mean editing, like killing off your words? Or killing off characters? I love editing, chopping bits and refining, making scenes better. That’s the part of writing I like most, apart from being finished and having written. Killing off characters you love is hard, but all part and parcel of being a good writer. If it serves the story, no matter how you feel about the character, then you need to just get on with it. I always knew that I’d kill off Jack in The Gemini Factor, even before I started, which was difficult because I really liked him. He became like a friend. It gave the ended weight though, gave it an impact that would not have been there if I hadn’t just bit the bullet.

Chris Barili: When it becomes necessary to the story, I have no problem doing so. Sometimes, they get in the way. Other times their story line needs its own story because it is taking over. Other times, the main character has learned to depend on them too much.

Bobby Nash: I do it all the time, so I guess I’m okay with it. Ha! Ha!

Robbie Cheadle: I was advised to kill off a few of my darlings in Through the Nethergate by my developmental editor. It was a little hard to let those scenes go but it was the right thing to do. Listening to good advice is the best thing a writer can do.

What methods do you use to evoke emotion in your readers?

Mario Acevedo: Writing fiction gives you the wonderful opportunity to present what characters are thinking or feeling, either through internalizations or visceral reactions.  I use these inner experiences to ground the reader in what the character is feeling and what is important in the story.

Paul Kane: There are all sorts of ways to do that, from killing off people readers have grown to love – as mentioned before – to putting them through the wringer, or even having them fall in love. If you’ve done your job properly, a reader will feel the emotions characters are going through. So when a character hates or loves something, or someone, a reader will feel that too. I once wrote a story about two ghosts falling in love called ‘Kindred Spirits’. The girl ghost has only just died, so she doesn’t know what she is, and the guy ghost is trying to help her because he’s been dead for some time. Hopefully a reader feels the sadness at the start that he feels, being alone where nobody can see or touch him, then the joy at finding someone else he can talk to and touch, even hug. To be able to cover the range of emotions like that in a short space of time isn’t easy, but it’s incredibly rewarding when it works.

Bobby Nash: It’s all in the characters and setting the mood. The emotion comes out of the performance of the character.

Kevin Killiany: Honesty

Which of your own characters was the most fun for you to write? Why?

Paul Kane: I enjoyed writing the character of Nick Skinner in Lunar, because he’s just your average guy in a bizarre situation, having to think on his feet and react to all these weird things that are happening to him. That was fun. And The Infinity, the bad guy in Before, as I’ve said. It was fun to write someone so evil that he’s verging on pantomime level, but that’s just how he is. There’s a scene where someone tells him to stop stirring, and he replies with: ‘I f**king enjoy stirring!’ Because he does. That’s what he’s all about. It was fun creating and writing him, especially writing his lines. The criticism I got the most about that book was The Infinity wasn’t in it enough, so you know you’ve done something right at that point. I’m toying with bringing him back in a short story or two, because you could go back in time and show him at any point – he’s been there at all the major turning points in history. It might be fun to do that…

Chris Barili: I really enjoy writing Frank Butcher, and most of his posse members. They’re some of the most complete characters I have built, and each has their own voice, their own flaws, and their own motivations.  And each has a weird past that helps flesh out their personality, so writing the is easy.

Bobby Nash: That’s like asking me to pick a favorite child or parent. They all have their fun moments for different reasons. I love writing Archer Snow, the surly, but funny grandfather in the Snow series. Tom Myers is also fun to write.

Robbie Cheadle: I have enjoyed all my characters. During the writing process they all become very real and important. Once the book is published, they are quickly replaced by different characters, which is why I haven’t attempted a sequel.

Kevin Killiany: Cadet Fatima Kielani. [I jotted her last name down several years ago when I was watching a news report on Syrian Kurds fighting ISIS—it was on the screen briefly. I assumed it was Kurdish (and have a major supporting character in Life on Dirt identify it as such) but I was wrong. I’ve since learned it’s most common in the United Arab Emirates (with about half as many in Jordan) and is also found in both Austria and Benin, but no one knows its origin.] [It is not the Hawai’ian girls’ name Keilani.] Fatima is a seventeen-year-old Spacer, first generation, born and raised on Tombaugh Station, who volunteers for an experimental program on Earth, even though (or perhaps because) she’s terrified of the place. My background is special education and mental health services, and I gave Fatima a condition that has fascinated me since before it had a name: Social Communication Disorder (Pragmatic Communication Disorder in the UK). In many ways it resembles the Autism Disorder Spectrum, but is in no way related. People with SCD are blind to social norms and nonverbal cues, and must work their way through everyday interactions. I also, because I am cruel and unusual, gave her a rare dissociative disorder: she has trouble recognizing, or feeling, her own emotions.
I have attached an entry from Fatima’s journal to illustrate both how she sees the world and how she interacts with others.

Which of your antagonists is your favorite? Why?

Chris Barili: So far, it’s a tie between Annie’s ghost of a mother in Smothered, and John Wesley Hardin in the Hell’s Bucher-based short story “Witch’s Kiss.” The first because I got to make her up and have her interrupt an intimate scene between her daughter and a man. The second because I researched him thoroughly and felt like I knew him well enough to write a story where this very real gunfighter did some very fictional things, and I feel like I did so without compromising his character.

Bobby Nash: The Controller in Suicide Bomb was a lot of fun to write.

Robbie Cheadle: I enjoyed Lucifer in Through the Nethergate. He was a young, good looking man with an interesting plan to manipulate modern trends and technology to invoke a third world war. I also enjoyed the hell he created.

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That’s all for this week on the “Ask the Authors 2022” blog series . Thanks for joining us. Drop by next Saturday, when the “Ask the Authors 2022” blog series introduces award winning multi-genre author, Mario Acevedo and offers a Q & A on Action, Pacing & Dialog.

Ask the Authors 2022

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