Chapel Orahamm's Blog, page 26
December 31, 2021
December 23, 2021
The Red Line Linear
Welcome to Simmins, Detective SpencerA collaborative winter-themed horror-mystery anthology:
Detective Spencer moves to his wife’s small mining hometown as the holiday season is rolling around. Anticipating a slow work life, he’s not prepared for an advent calendar’s worth of dead bodies, missing persons reports, and unusual creature sightings.
Nick Clauster might have something to say about a new detective prowling around the town he’s spent so many years cultivating.
Filled with chaotic carols, chupacabra puppies, mothmen, sentient Christmas trees and more, this anthology promises to reignite the old tradition of telling ghost stories in the dead of winter.
Amazon Link The Red Line Linear ProblemThis anthology is not standard by any stretch of the imagination. Neither were the authors I corralled up and offered to print a book as the carrot reward for getting them to write a bunch of spooky holiday stories.
When I first set out with this book, my idea was journals, like all those diary novels I’d read as a kid. However, we wanted to continue the idea of the first anthology Heads and Tales: The Other Side of the Story, in that there would be two sides to this story. This led to the idea that I would write one side and they would write the other and together a fully entwined anthology would form.
In some ways, Welcome to Simmins, Detective Spencer was constructed not to be an anthology but a fully realized novel with multiple authors. The set up is linear, day by day, with mutli-day stories interspersed with single day stories and the Detective’s journal entries. Usually an anthology may have a theme, maybe a little bit of continuity. Welcome to Simmins, Detective Spencer is truly an entwined novel. Circumstances in one story meld with another story and characters move between them.
This is where red line linear as an idea comes into play. The book was designed first and foremost as a series of individual stories by the authors. As I edited the pieces, I created the journal entries to correspond with events. Once everything was edited, I stitched together the series of stories and journals to correspond to times of day and days of the month. This method can however be a bit of a challenge to follow in a similar vein as the switching timeline in The Witcher.
The idea came to me, and this is why it probably works better as a paperback, rather than an ebook, that this would border on a choose your own adventure series, and a crime tracking novel. Similar to the gif above, there’s a red string running through the series, where it feels natural to keep your thumb on one story and flip through to the other story to grasp what is taking place on the small level, and yet there is motivation to read the anthology straight through for the full picture.
Hints and clues are spread throughout the book. The intake tag in the Detective’s journal, the image notations, the different font between the Detective’s journals vs. the town’s stories. Even the journal entries have grammatical errors specifically inserted to look like someone who is actually writing with free-flow thought – seeing as most people who hand write are not completely perfect with their spelling and grammar.
I had a lot of fun with the authors in constructing this, and honestly glad they let me play around with creating what I’m more inclined to call a piece of experimental interactive art rather than a standard anthology. This playing with format and flow and style is something that a small time editor can really get away with. I can’t imagine a traditional press going with something like this unless they knew people would ‘get it.’
I do hope you find it interesting. My one regret with the paperback is that I couldn’t include a pack of red stick tabs so people could mark all the things they find…there are still a few limits with self and indie publishing.
December 17, 2021
Heads and Tales: The Other Side of the Story
History is told by the victors.
Stories are told by the heroes.
Until now.
In every tale from myth, legend, or faerie there are the voiceless: those characters who live in the silent, untold spaces, or whose inner worlds are never visited. This collection retells 14 classic stories you may think you already know, from perspectives you never thought to consider.
The unexamined life is not worth living, or so the saying goes. No longer will we let those voices go unheard.
This is Heads and Tales: because like the flip of a coin, the stories can change. Take a shot, and see where it takes you.
Amazon Link2021 has been a fascinating, busy year for me. Sitting in the house, watching the new Australian Shepherd pups – Ms. Moneypenny and Mr. James Bond snore on the dining room floor, Christmas tree in the background, I’m reminded that a number of successes have happened to get to this point.
It all started with Chris Van Dyke of Skullgate Media reaching out on Twitter to see if anyone would want to partner up with him to write an anthology. Then Renee Gendron and Nicki Mitchell joined suit with theirs. These were all back in 2020. It was great fun writing stories at that time with everyone. The authors were asked to help edit, a way to keep the burden off the publisher. I kept backing away from it, because I had some high standards and didn’t want people to get mad at me for putting in 200-300 edit comments on a 5K story. That could come off as rather insulting.
In 2021, in between anthologies with other people, I decided to host one myself and acquired a great group of authors. This was my one big chance where I could show people what it was that I did when it came to editing and figured I couldn’t insult anyone with the massive amounts of editing I do, seeing as I was hosting.
During this time, I had Chris Durston in the group – he wrote Each Little Universe, a great book I’d suggest to most people. Anyways. He does proof reading and was contemplating getting into freelance editing. I didn’t have the money at that time to have him edit the books I had brought out, but it was a fascinating working experience with him to realize that he made a great proof reader and I enjoyed line and substantive editing.
The rest of the authors from the anthology I hosted – Heads and Tales: The Other Side of the Story – took the editing commentary very well, to my surprise. Some asked if I did it professionally. Having seen from Chris that I could also freelance edit, I went in 2021 to see a lawyer and get my LLC put together for Chapel Orahamm, an Editing Service.
This anthology was a fantastic learning experience that taught me what it was to edit a full 100K manuscript, work with individual authors and their visions, and compose typesetting for a novel. I loved it. I really did. I found the deadline stressful only because I self-impose deadlines and like to see the product be perfect by the deadline. I learned that I desperately want my authors happy and for the book to be as perfect as feasibly possible.
I also learned that wayward commas were the bane of my existence. So, when I decided to run another anthology in the fall of 2021 – Welcome to Simmins, Detective Spencer -, I invested in a software program called Grammarly specifically to spot those pesky commas and double periods that sometimes show up. Combining it with my passion for line-by-line editing and substantively rearranging paragraphs or asking the authors to expand and delete large sections of text is so fulfilling. I feel like I can really provide a comprehensive service at this point.
The knowledge that I can do right by my authors, seeing as I allow impostor syndrome to the get the better of me often, is a really great feeling to finally have.
To my authors who let me put together an anthology not once, but twice with them, and trust me with their work, thank you so much for encouraging me to officially become a professional line and substantive editor. It is turning out to be a wonderful journey.
June 22, 2021
June 21, 2021
Manga Cafe Monday: Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint
This one is good. This one is up there in the good department. I’m actually rather enjoying a lot of manwha that I’ve gotten hold of in the fantasy department.
It took a little bit to grasp the idea of the story, maybe the first three chapters or so. The art style is very similar to Solo Leveling which made the feeling of being lost quite forgiveable. Once I was caught up on who the puppet masters and ring leaders were in the story, I was hooked.
And it just kept getting better.
Lovely when you can find those types of stories where it starts out just a touch unsteady, but it’s almost like turning over a motor. A once or twice where you’re just a touch nervous of how it’s going to go and then it hits 90mph and doesn’t let you down.
The balance of the main character and the side characters is fleshed out cleanly with each having a unique set of skills that keeps them from being overshadowed by the MC. I do have to appreciate the fact that the MC doesn’t have the one token female side character, but has two with a balance of a male side character and a kid. They aren’t just the little “they have powers” but then the MC is perpetually saving them. The MC isn’t underpowered either where he’s constantly being rescued by the side characters.
Balanced relationship. I love when writers get this one correct.
It is an on going series currently and now on my weekly reading schedule after I binge read the first 52 chapters all over the course of two days. I really do hope this one and Solo Leveling both get an animation adaptation.
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June 20, 2021
June 19, 2021
June 14, 2021
Manga Cafe Monday: Tower of God
I started out with this in the anime form, as I tend to do. Then I back tracked and went and found the manwha to read. This one…takes a bit of warming up to. The art style is different from regular. It almost grates at times because of it’s style.
I got through to where its at now, and I could have dropped it after about forty chapters. It doesn’t have a quick progression, and the idea that the characters are constantly doing ‘tests’ and ‘games’ to progress through this tower – it sounds interesting at the beginning of the manga, but it’s something that would make sense in a faster pace. With it being so long lived, it is almost oppressive, or abusive. Like you’re just watching these characters go through situation after situation and it’s just…
So yeah, the art for the manwha is a bit of something to get used to. The story pacing is slow. some of the reasoning in the script is convoluted.
I’d deeply suggest the anime over the manwha, honestly enough. Jump into the manwha at the point the anime leaves off.
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June 5, 2021
Book Review: Tea with the Black Dragon | R.A. MacAvoy
I was introduced to R.A. MacAvoy’s writing in high school when I read The Third Eagle. I was not aware of who the author was, or that she had written other books prior to it. The high school library had The Third Eagle, but none of her other works, so I didn’t think to look.
Recently I picked the book back up to add to my shelf and The Twisting of the Rope. Both of which I picked up with the intention of doing book reviews on them. Come to find out, as I was scheduling posts, that The Twisting of the Rope is the follow up book for Tea with the Black Dragon.
I did a skim read of The Third Eagle, seeing as it has been well over a decade since my last read with it, and had a disheartening realization that, though meant well, the author’s particular expressions in regards to people’s races does, in this modern era, come off sounding blatantly racist.
I had to wonder if that propensity was within her debut novel or if it was particular to that story. Sadly, I must say, the terminology used within Tea with the Black Dragon does still reflect some very old concepts for terms.
I obtaining my degree in Liberal Arts: focus in Asian Art History and Asian History in 2011. While taking classes on Middle East, Islamic, Indian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Art and History I learned from more than a number of professors that “orient” and “oriental” are not politically correct terms. There are people who are determined to call the terminology a slur. There are others that shrug indifferently and say it’s none of their concern.
For me, because I was taught the history behind it as a reference first to the Near East, which slowly shifted to Middle East, and then Far East, I found the term incredibly misleading. There were movements of Chinoiserie and Orientalism in references to a Westerner appropriating artistic elements from the Eastern areas as a method to flaunt their wealth and show they were widely traveled and more advanced in their thinking than their fellow man.
I speak of this before getting into Tea with the Black Dragon because this book reads like someone who is trying to talk more about Asia, but it’s coming off as a sci-fi/fantasy version of Chinoiserie. It doesn’t feel authentic. For the floral verbosity of the author, it’s…uncomfortable.
The story line is short, and yet comes off as a winding mianderment. Maybe it presents as a tedious work because of my opinion on the use of the term Oriental to refer to an individual of Chinese decent. Maybe it’s the part that as the main character talks, she loses authenticity and instead becomes a performer for the author by which to prove an extensive knowledge of stories, philosophy, and education.
I cannot call it a pleasant read. I have to wonder, if I did not have a concept about some of these represented issues due to my own education, if I would have found the story enjoyable. As the world progresses, sometimes what was progressive for its time, becomes an addition to the many problems instead. I hope, with regard to my own writing, to work diligently in representation so as to avoid becoming a problematic author thirty years from first publishing.
I do not wish to use the phrase “it is a product of it’s time.” That tends to be used too often to trivialize a person’s issues with a particular product. I would rather say, the author meant well, but the world turned enough times to leave these stories to stagnate. I don’t think it has a place in the sci-fi or fantasy dialogue going forward. It is more a marker for the history of the genre’s advancement. Sometimes those markers are problematic, looking back.
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