Marian Allen's Blog, page 368

Caturday With Katya, Strangely Exposed

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Katya Graymalkin here.

Mom loves her new camera phone. She carries it everywhere, and snaps pictures of me if she can get me to wake up and look at her. ha!

She tried out one of the fancy settings. I think I like it. I call this picture

STRANGELY EXPOSED

It’s nice, isn’t it? Very artistic. I like the way it picks up the light on my fur.

Well, the sun is out, and this nap isn’t going to take itself.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR ANIMALS: Do you like for your human to follow you around snapping pictures or not?

KG

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Amazing Duck Duck Phone Fax FREEEEEE

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Amazing, I know, but MomGoth has been very busy this week, angels. I have some wonderful recommendations for you. You’re welcome.

First, I have that new cell phone I got from Zact, and I want to report on it. IT’S GREAT! I bought the cheapest one (Whaddya mean, “That figures”? Shut up!), and it does everything I want it to except serve as a mobile hot spot. Alas. But that might change. Anyway, I use the heck out of it, mostly as a camera, but also to share those pictures to Facebook. I can use it for text messages and phone calls, of course. I have the weather channel app. I have a calculator. I have a flashlight. I have a GPS/map app. I can send coupons to my grocery card. I can order prescriptions. I can surf the web. I can scan QR and bar codes! It is the total happy. And it’s cheap. I did have to buy the phone, but the plan is less than $15/month, and I get a credit for anything I don’t use and I can add more of change the plan any time. ANY. TIME.

Okay, speaking of QR codes, you know what those are, right? You don’t? Sure you do! They’re those little square squiggly things that say things under them like, “Scan this to learn more about our amazing product!” So let’s say you have an amazing product. You can go to Kaywa, sign up for free, type in the web site for your amazing product or maybe your email, and generate your very own QR code like this one.

What’s that? Do they have to be black and white? Why no, they don’t! Download that sucker to your computer and open it in this amazing FREE graphics program, The GIMP. It is, as the website says, like photoshop only FREE. Just remember: if you run The GIMP in Linux, you can click on multiple files and open them; if you run it in Windows, only click on ONE file to open the program or you’ll end up opening multiple iterations of the program, and that hogs memory. SO ANYWAY, open your QR code in The GIMP and color in some of the bits like this. As Charlie’s Aunt Ora Mae used to say, “Now ain’t that purtty?”

I also had occasion to need to send a fax this week, and I didn’t want to run out to the library to send it. Since I have a scanner, I just logged onto faxZero and sent that puppy for the low, low price of nothing.

Finally, I recommend a search engine new to me, DuckDuckGo. It’s the search engine that doesn’t track you. Now, me, I kind of enjoy being tracked. If I’m interested in something, I’ll go look at it through Google’s search engine so third parties will post ads about it all over the pages I visit. That way, I can see pictures of awesome ink pens or fat lady dresses wherever I go. But, when I get tired of messing with Google’s head, I use DuckDuckGo.

Enjoy this week’s rambles. I’ll be doing short posts for April A-to-Z and stories (if I don’t back out) for Story-A-Day May.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character suspects he or she is being followed.

MA

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Fuchsia. The Color, Not the Character

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Fuchsia is a purplish-red color, but it’s also the name of a character in two of my favorite books. Lady Fuchsia is the daughter of the Lord of Gormenghast in Mervyn Peake’s TITUS GROAN and GORMENGHAST. The third book of the trilogy, TITUS ALONE, doesn’t take place in Gormenghast, so who cares?

Fuchsia had the most AWESOME get-away place EVER. Bad taste in men, but you can’t have everything.

But that’s not the point. The point is, I had this dress when I was in middle/high school that my grandmother loved because it didn’t bag on me. I preferred baggy clothes, but I loved this dress, too. It was washable, but it was the color of raw silk and had fuchsia (here’s where fuchsia comes into it) piping up each side. I thought it was the bee’s knees and the cat’s elbow.

No, I wasn’t drunk when the picture was taken, even though I do look distinctly gormless. I was probably thinking about some story I was making up or something. Or possibly I was thinking, “Why does my hair look like hedgehogs have been rolling in it?”

But I did love that dress.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character has a piece of clothing they fancy themselves in.

MA

 

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My Gougere Rises. Not A Line From Shakespeare.

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Gougère is something like cream puff pastry, only not.

Okay.

Start with cream puff pastry, right, but then put some mustard and some cheese in it before you bake it.

The place I got the basics from put the pastry around the edge of a casserole dish and put veg in the middle, so that’s what I do.

GOUGÈRE PASTRY FOR TWO1/8 cup butter1/4 cup water

Bring to boil. Add:

1/4 cup all-purpose flour1/8 tsp salt

Remove from heat, stirring until ball forms. Let rest 5 minutes, then add:

1 eggmustardcheese

Stir until well blended. Dot pastry around the edge of a buttered casserole dish. fill the center with cooked veg. Top with more cheese. Bake at 375F for about an hour.

The veg I used were mushrooms, celery, and onions. Cauliflower is very good in this dish. I used a blend of Romano, Parmesan, Asiago, and sharp cheddar cheese, and just a wee squirt of plain old bright yellow prepared American mustard.

At first, it looks like it’s just going to sit there. after about 45 minutes, it starts to rise and puff and brown, until the pastry comes up and sort of laps over the filling.

I expected this to last us two meals, but it didn’t. We scraped the dish and licked the spoon.

The side dish with it is shelly beans and potatoes, a favorite around here.

This Wiki says gougère can be baked like little buns, which also sounds delicious. I’ll have to try that some time. The dough is really quick and easy to make. Highly recommended.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Food a character expected to last a certain amount of time doesn’t.

MA

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Gearing Up For A-to-Z

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Fool that I am, I signed up to participate in the April A-to-Z Blogging challenge. Not that blogging every day except Sunday is a particular challenge. But I’m supposed to keep the posts SHORT. THERE’S the challenge!

I already have those posts planned — I think.

I’m also planning to do the Story-A-Day in May challenge, so I’m looking for story prompts. Holly, you know how, last year, every Sunday of May was a new Holly story? Are you up for a return to Llannonn again this year?

I’m over at Fatal Foodies today, singing a song to salmon.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character takes on more of a challenge than seems quite sane.

MA

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Major and Minor Characters Outline

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Major and Minor CharactersMajor: the principal figures of the work.Protagonist and Antagonist in terms of conflictThe protagonist is the central character. The protagonist is usually the hero, but not always. In many mysteries, the protagonist is the criminal.The antagonist is the source of conflict.dynamic and static in terms of structureif a major character changes during the course of the book as a result of events experienced or people encountered, he or she is a dynamic character.If there is no change, the character is staticround or flata flat character is a character who is presented with a single trait, not fully developed, has no complexity, and never surprises the reader by what he says and does.a round character is fully developed, real, believable, and is capable of surprising the reader convincingly.Minor – Most minor characters are flat.

You write minor characters into your book for various reasons:

To advance the plotTo enhance the development of the main charactersTo act as foils for the main charactersTo contribute textureTo contribute to the development of suspenseTo help evoke a sense of place and atmosphereTo provide contrast and varietyTo foreshadow

Hans Ostrom has a good set of guidelines to keep in mind about minor characters:

Beware of stereotypingBe aware of the time lapses between appearances of a minor character.If you name a minor character, name him or her carefully.Minor characters should be genuinely functional.

If a minor character tries to hog a larger place in the story than you want — because all the minor characters are the main characters in their own stories, you know — you can do one of two things:

Make the character more importantCut the character and give him/her his/her own story.

I did the second with a minor character in SIDESHOW IN THE CENTER RING. Uncle Shatsi just kept setting up his stand and yammering at me, until I finally wrote a short story with him as a major character. That story was published online long ago, but is just waiting to reappear. If I published it as a stand-alone short story, do you think people would pay 99 cents for it, or should I bundle it with other stories into a collection?

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Select a minor character from a famous book and think of a story featuring him or her.

MA

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Bud Blossom on SampleSunday

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Bud Blossom sounds like such a sweet guy, doesn’t he? Shows you how deceiving names can be.

Bud originated in a short story I wrote for the Southern Indiana Writers’ anthology DRAGON: OUR TALES. He’s American, from China, and Bud Blossom is a translation of his Chinese name. There’s nothing “delicate flower” about him, though.

Here’s an excerpt from one of the stories in my collection about him, THE KING OF CHEROKEE CREEK.

About Bud Blossom
Excerpt from “Terra Incognita”
by Marian Allen

The Golden Lotus was a houseboat moored downtown on Cherokee Creek, the almost-a-river that ran through Shepherds, Indiana, and emptied into the Ohio. The boss, Bud Blossom, was Chinese-American with a generic Midwestern twang and the charm of a water moccasin. His one recommendation as an employer was an offshoot of one of his defects: He treated anyone who did any work for him as personal property, under his command but also under his protection. Nobody but Bud was allowed to make passes or even inappropriate comments, and poor tippers found themselves upbraided about their stinginess if they ever came in again, no matter how much time had gone by.

Bud also never forgot any minute a worker showed up late. Tara timed herself to step off the gangplank onto the houseboat’s deck within five seconds of her shift’s start. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, she could count on Bud to know it. You gave me two extra seconds today, Miss Timepiece. You couldn’t cut it any closer?

This evening, he was at one of the tables, straightening a dime-store vase with a plastic carnation sticking out of it. Her step was silent, and he was facing the other way, but he glanced at his watch and grunted.

~ * ~

What a sweetheart, eh? So why is he so many people’s favorite character? Why do I love to write about him? It’s a mystery.

But it’s no mystery where you can get a copy of DRAGON: OUR TALES or THE KING OF CHEROKEE CREEK.

Amazon Print: $9.00
Amazon Kindle: $2.99
Lulu PDF: $2.00

 

 

 

 

THE KING OF CHEROKEE CREEK
Price: $0.99
Read about it and sample it.
Buy it for the Kindle at Amazon.
Buy it for the Nook.
Buy it from iTunes.
Buy it in other electronic formats at Smashwords.

 

 

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Write about a character’s relationship with their boss.

MA

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Caturday With Katya – My Favorite Thing

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Katya Graymalkin here.

Mom is actually home this weekend, so I get some quality time. Mom took this video, which shows my beautiful blue-silver hair, my gorgeous golden eyes, and my immaculately clean ears.

My Favorite Thing

http://www.marianallen.com/pics//KatyaPets.mp4http://www.marianallen.com/pics//Katyapets.mp4See you next week!

A WRITING PROMPT FOR ANIMALS: Write about an animal who does not have immaculately clean ears.

KG

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Friends, FaceBook and Face-To-Face

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Friends come in all varieties of physical distance, don’t they? Those of us who are active in blogging and social networking get pretty sick — I do, anyway — of people who aren’t active on the internet telling us that internet friends aren’t “real” friends.

Remember Pen Pals? People would write to people, pen to paper, for years, and nobody doubted that they developed sincere emotional attachments. Plays were written about pen pals who fell in love, who grieved one another’s sorrows and deaths, who knew one another deeply.

Nobody thinks they aren’t “real” friends.

And what about people you don’t see for years and decades, then you see them again and it’s like you were never apart? Nobody doubts that connection.

Well, listen: communication doesn’t care if it’s done in cyberspace or meatspace, okay?

This past weekend, I went to the 4th annual That Book Place Authors Fair and hung out with some of my friends. Some of them, I’ve known in person for years. Some of them, I’ve only “met” online. All of them were merry met. You couldn’t tell from the hugs and howdies who was a cyber friend and who was a “real” friend. They were ALL real, you dig?

Here are some of my friends, whose books I bought.

Jay Noel: Writer On Fire is one I just met face-to-face last weekend. You wouldn’t have known it. He guested on my blog once, and his cover boy is my imaginary boyfriend. Visit Jay’s blog for buy links to all the places his books are sold. I bought a copy of Dragonfly Warrior this weekend. Because: imaginary boyfriend.

I bought Blue Spirit by Eric Garrison, a friend with whom I’ve attended many a book fair/signing over the past few years. Blue Spirit bills itself as “a tipsy fairy tale.” Eric brews beer, so I have … er … high hopes for the book. It’s currently out of print (it was self-published), but it’s been picked up by the fabulous Seventh Star Press and is due to be reissued, along with a sequel!!!

Another is my homegirl, Pamela Turner. I “met” Pamela through an online group, then met her in person at Fandom Fest a couple of years ago. We’ve kept up through Facebook and I read her blog, and it’s like Old Home Week when we see each other in person. I bought my first of her books this weekend; she tends toward the erotic end of the spectrum, and I don’t read erotic. Never mind why. We ain’t goin’ there. ANYWAY, I bought her mystery set in Victorian-era Louisville, Kentucky (my home town), The Ripper’s Daughter.

So.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character meets someone in person that he or she has only known by some form of distance.

MA

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A Circus Life For Me!

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I’ve loved the circus since I was a kid. Not surprising, to folks of my generation and older. The last one I saw was a poor excuse to sell programs and overpriced concession items, but I’m from far enough back that a circus could be anything from a spangled, big-top blowout down to a family in a couple of vans. Either way, if you could avoid the clowns, it was great stuff.

I loved the music, costumes, acts. My favorite television show was Circus Boy, starring Mickey Dolenz (future Monkee, appropriately enough) as Corky, the circus boy of the title. My first imaginary boyfriend was Who wouldn’t go nuts over a cake like that? I mean, did you ever? Not even!

Seriously, I couldn’t believe it when Mom unearthed this photo, because I remembered that cake exactly like this, and there it is, just as gorgeous as I remembered!

Isn’t it great, when your memories are validated as being as great as you thought?

That’s why I never go to the circus anymore. ~sigh~

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: What’s the best birthday you remember?

MA

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