Marian Allen's Blog, page 434

Mom’s Amazing Hospital Adventure

Okay, so three weeks ago, Mom “aspirated” a pill, meaning it went down her windpipe. She nearly choked, and she couldn’t cough it up, but she finally sucked it down.

Okay, so we went to the doctor, and I was all, “I’m worried that that pill is down in there and pneumonia will build up around it.” And Mom was all like, “I think it dissolved *cough cough*,” and the doctor was all, “Pneumonia is always a concern, but it’s more likely that the pill has dissolved.”

Okay, so three weeks, an X-ray and a CT scan later, we’re in the ER and the doctor there is all, “The pill is down there and pneumonia has built up around it.” And I’m all, “Do tell.”

So anyway, Mom and a bronchoscopy and an extraction, which consisted of about five doctors peering down a tube in her throat down into her lung and taking this pill out.

Well, the woman on the team was a lady after my own heart. After the procedure, she came to see me and showed me a tub containing these whacking great “fragments”, saying the pill had been stuck to my Mom’s lung and was hard to remove. She was delightfully enthusiastic about the whole episode, saying, “We had to use all kinds of forceps and things and and break it apart and take it out in pieces. It was very eventful!” Is that the best doctor debriefing ever, or what? That’s my new thing to say: “It was very eventful!”

I’m writing this post on Sunday and scheduling it to go up on Tuesday. By now, she should be home, with me to look after her until she gets back up to speed. We’re hoping we don’t have any more amazing hospital adventures for a while now, not even if they’re very eventful.

Oh, p.s. – I’m posting today at Fatal Foodies about very easy macaroni salad.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Have three characters react three different ways to an enthusiastic doctor’s report of a successful procedure.

MA

Floyd Hyatt’s Mechanics Pt 1

Mechanic’s Corner

F.A.Hyatt

Prior, some readers noted an interest in (yawn) the grammatical side of writing, which even for me, borders upon reading obituaries on the sliding scale of column interest. Also, it requires a lot of referents to particular guides, that can get dicey, not to mention tedious.  To ameliorate this, lets just say Lynch will be the resource for the particulars on pauses and stops given in this short heads-up.

So, okay, here are a few glittering generalities on walking through the technical side of things.

My grammatical focus here is on what is perhaps the most prolific set of errors writers make, concerning spell-checking, and the correct use of stops in clause construction. Beyond that, a little pithy advice to those looking at possible publication, again dealing with submission mechanics.

Again, because a few elements about stops are culled from Lynch’s cool style guide, which is still in publication,  let me note, that such passages are for the purpose of education and discussion, largely paraphrased,  provided as examples only, as fair use, to highlight  certain elements of  grammar, and that the passage contents only reflect general information  available within the public domain. Of course, nothing in this column is offered for sale, so don’t hit me.

Tips: Common Typos

Errors that word processors won’t catch.

Life beyond running your spell checker.  These kinds of common typos will need to be picked up in re-reading Manuscripts critically:

Sound the same, but:

Past, Passed.

I passed the car. – I remember the past.  

Its, It’s.

Its (possessive form of it)  It’s – Contraction of : it is  or  it has (As Above)

Current, Currant.

Current, as in recent.  Currant, As in a berry or bush.

Seem,  Seam.

It seems logical.  There was a seam in the dress.   

Fat finger errors like:

(All these will pass spell check, but may be typos caused by left out letters, or added letters, wrong key strokes.)

(A, Am– An, And)  

(Our, Out)

(If, Of, Or)

The list of such errors is large, their occurrence frequent while typing, so checking for them yourself visually or having them checked for, is important.

Here endeth Part the Firft.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A spelling mistake that a spell-check program can’t catch causes chaos.

MA

#SampleSunday – Surviving the Book – They Meet Again

Here is a bit from my work-in-progress (nearly finished), “Surviving the Book”, my next entry in the Race To The Hugo Awards. It’s another Holly Jahangiri and Pel Darzin story.

Surviving the Book – excerpt

by Marian Allen

  Her heart beat faster as she navigated the crowded, busy hall. She had, indeed, worked with the policing force once before. With one member of the force, at any rate. A strictly business relationship, but a pleasant one. She scanned the figures hurrying around her, hoping to spot that familiar face. She couldn’t linger, though, or she’d be late for tea.

She reached the third door on the right. A plaque saying Enter Without Knocking, If You Please was fixed to it with ornate copperware. She did as it bid.

And there he was: slight, with large brown eyes and slick dark hair, very trim in his official tunic.

“Constable Pel Darzin,” she said, extending her hand.

“I’ve had a promotion,” he said, hooking thumbs with her. “I’m Jumped-Up Constable Pel Darzin, now. And this is our complainant, Allenninn Nonnemuss.”

Holly craned her head back to look the famous man in the face. Look him up the nostril, rather, for he was taller than anyone in the room. Part of his height was the four-inch platforms on the bottoms of his mauve suede track shoes, but part of the height was his own.

“So pleased to meet you, Assistant Librarian Holly Jahangiri!”

“And I, you, Entrepreneur Allenninn Nonnemmuss. Congratulations on your success. I only wish we had your book in our library. There’s a great deal of interest among our borrowers.”

“Ahh…!” He waggled a finger and smiled in a fashion both patronizing and coy. “FAILURE TO FUTURE IN 39 STEPS. But I didn’t get where I am by letting my knowledge be borrowed! I got where I am by letting my knowledge be paid for. See the difference?”

Just because I’m not you, doesn’t mean I’m stupid. Holly bit back the retort.

“Entrepreneur Allenninn Nonnemmuss will be part of our expedition,” Darzin said, with a private and heartwarming glance at Holly that said, Civilians!

Nonnemmuss smoothed the sleeve of his velvet tunic. “I’m also financing the mission and supplying the ship we’ll be using. I am the owner of the missing books, after all.”

This could not be allowed to pass. Holly felt her face going stiff. “One can’t own Living Books. They’re people.”

“Of course. Of course. I spoke in the temporary sense, naturally. I own their contracts, for as long as those contracts run.” He chuckled and said, to Darzin, “Fiery little thing.”

Holly longed for the courtesy protocol of her upbringing. In Meadow of Flowers Province, condescension was properly answerable by a firm slap upside the back of the head. In the city, such an action was considered shockingly impolite.

“In fact,” the entrepreneur said, “the tour was a little gift from me. An incentive to re-sign, if you will. At the same time, it was a gift to my intended bride, a distant cousin. A loan, for her family’s enjoyment. A taste of the life she would lead as wife of a man with wealth, taste and the resources of the city available to him.” He smirked. “Rule 32: Everything you do should serve at least two purposes.”

Darzin handed Holly a holograph. A plump woman with curly hair smiled out at her. Darzin said, “This is Entrepreneur Allenninn Nonnemmuss’ intended, Maria Nallena Nutella DiGoba, the bamboo heiress.”

The Virgin Princess of the Province, we call her. And she’s agreed to marry this blowhard?

The door opened and another man joined them. He was tall, dark and handsome, and sported a safari vest, the pockets of which bulged and overflowed with electronic components.

“The last member of our group,” said Jumped-Up Constable Pel Darzin. “Adventurer Morph O. DiZyne. He’s an expert in search and recovery, especially in wilderness areas.”

Nonnemmuss rubbed his hands together as if he’d been given an unexpected treat. “Excellent! Excellent! How soon can we start?”

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character has to work with someone he or she dislikes, and the dislike does NOT turn into love.

MA

 

Happy Caturday!

I don’t believe I’ve ever celebrated Caturday, so let this be the first.

Today, I wish happy Caturday to Buddy, the first cat I ever liked. He wasn’t the first cat I ever had. The first cat I ever had was, I believe, named Missy. I adopted her when I lived in Brookville, Indiana, which is a long story. She was so psychotic, she makes Katya, my current cat, look like a throw rug.

Buddy wasn’t my cat, now that I think of it. He belonged to my housemate. He (the cat — my housemate was a girl) was a marmalade (or, if you’re British, ginger), and he was such a sweetie, I’ve loved ginger (or, if you’re American, marmalade) cats ever since.

When I was very young, I read a story about a man whose cat was going to have kittens and who wanted to get them adopted, and decided the best way was through smart advertising. So he put up a sign saying, “Rose colored kittens.” Everybody was all excited and couldn’t wait for their arrival. Everybody wanted a rose colored kitten. So the big day came, and sure enough, the kittens were rose colored. They were yellow.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character needs to talk somebody into adopting an animal.

MA

The Truth

Okay, I might as well admit it: An angel didn’t come down from heaven, touch me onna head, and say, “Go thou forth and WRITE!” Novel Reads asked me, and I told them how it really happened.

I found a copy of THE 10TH KINGDOM on VHS at the library book sale room and snatched it up. I knew I had read the novelization and I knew I had seen the show on television, and I was eager to share it with Mom. So we watched it, and the truth seems to be that I read the novelization but only thought I had seen the show. The book claims to have been written by Kathryn Wesley, but the truth is, it was co-written by Kristine Kathryn Rush and Dean Wesley Smith. THE 10TH KINGDOM novelization is MADE OF AWESOME — or so I remember.

Another truth is that my mother and I are now openly admitting our entertainer crushes. , who plays Wolf in THE 10TH KINGDOM, is one of our imaginary boyfriends. who plays Mayhem on the insurance commercials, is another one. If you have a couple of hours to kill, go to YouTube and look up Mayhem Commercials and enjoy. Truth is, they’re funnier than a lot of television shows. And Mayhem is cute, even all beat up, with a butterfly bandage in a different part of his face every time.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Give a character an imaginary sweetheart.

MA

Dark Corner Holiday Trust and Treachery Cafe Bizarre Things

I told you, here and there along the way, that I was working on stories for anthologies. Those anthologies are now out or on the verge of outing. …On the verge of being issued, I mean.

DARK THINGS II: CAT CRIMES is now out and available from Amazon in paper and for Kindle. I’ve put up a page about it here, with an excerpt here (if it sounds familiar, that’s because I posted it before). This was a labor of love on everybody’s part: all proceeds go to cat rescue.

The denizens of the Blog Book Tour Cafe, under the leadership of Drill Sergeant Dani Greer, have (don’t faint) cooperated (wave a burnt feather under your nose and you’ll soon feel better) on an anthology, THE CORNER CAFE: A TASTY COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES. Each story must at least mention the words Corner Cafe. The project was, in part, an exercise to learn how to format for Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) program. The anthology will be issued for Kindle this summer. Then I’ll teach a bit about formatting for Smashwords and we’ll issue it there in a few months. I don’t know if it’ll be up in paper through CreateSpace. We haven’t gotten that far, yet. My contribution is a Bud Blossom story. Bud, in case you haven’t met him, is not the delicate flower his name would imply. I keep telling myself he only exists in my imagination, which is bad enough, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I went downtown tomorrow and found he had opened a restaurant on Big Indian Creek.

TRUST AND TREACHERY: TALES OF POWER, INTRIGUE AND VIOLENCE is due out in late fall, in time for the winter holiday shopping season (YES, I said, “winter holiday,” instead of “Christmas”. So there.) My story in this one is “Short Dark Future”, inspired by a conversation I had with a far-too-trusting person.

The Southern Indiana Writers’ Group will very shortly issue HOLIDAY BIZARRE. We took our out-of-print anthology CHRISTMAS BIZARRE, dropped the stories from past members, and called for stories from current members involving other holidays. The stories will be arranged in order of the holidays. Mine is “Lonnie, Me and the Battle of St. Crispin’s Day”.

This is why writers need to be writing all the time and submitting all the time. You write a story. You send it out. It gets rejected. You immediately send it out again. You read the guidelines for an anthology. If you don’t have a story that fits, you write one. If you do have a story that fits, you send it. A rejected story is just a story you’re free to send somewhere that’s a better fit for it. And then BOOM you have a bunch of publications lined up and you feel as happy as a barrel full of clams. Or something.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Write about a trusting and/or treacherous cat in a bizarre cafe on a holiday.

MA

Warning! Danger, Will Robinson! Blueberries!

Once upon a time, a man and his wife lived in the woods in a beautiful house the man built. The man was very industrious, and cut the grass and tended the garden and washed the windows, but the woman was lazy, and did nothing all day but sit upon a cushion and eat chocolates and pin things on Pinterest.

It happened that the man planted blueberry bushes by the porch, and the berries on one of the bushes ripened. The woman, who was as greedy as she was lazy, did not even bother to go into the grass, as her husband did, to pick the blueberries, but stuck her arm between two rail-posts. To punish her, the mischievous sprite Comeuppance drew her sword, Splinter, and cut the woman’s arm.

The woman’s blood fell upon the grass, so that it looked like Christmas had come early, whereupon the woman sat upon the porch and wept bitterly.

The good fairies Soapandwater, Neosporin, and Adhesivebandage took pity on her and came and ministered to her, and the woman promised thereafter to put on her boots and spray for ticks and go into the freakin’ grass the next time she wanted some freakin’ blueberries.

Whether or not they will live happily ever after, it is too soon to say, but the blueberry pancakes were extremely good.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character tries to take some kind of short cut and is sorry.

MA

On Rewriting

I’m doing some rewriting on EEL’S REVERENCE — or whatever it’s called.

TITLE: I’ve asked here, there, and everywhere, and I can’t get a consensus on a title. Some people are even saying, “Why do you want to change the title?” One said,” Eel is what caught my attention. I wanted to see what eels have to do with reverence.” So that’s still up in the air. Input is welcome.

HORSES: I had horses galloping around through the desert like jeeps. Now I have desert ponies, a breed I invented, who can go without food and water for long periods of time like camels.

POV: I kept the whole thing in Aunt Libby’s POV, even for scenes she wasn’t in, by injecting her voice in commentary and having her say the participants told her these things later. Now, I switch from her first-person POV to the viewpoint character’s third-person POV, and label the section with whose POV it is, if it’s other than Aunt Libby’s. Turns out it’s less intrusive and bumpy to switch POV entirely than to try to keep it consistent.

So that’s what I’ve been up to, writing-wise. Luckily for me, I love editing my own stuff. Other people’s, not so much, the reason being that I always take my own advice.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Have two very different characters narrate the same incident, each in his or her own voice. For instance, if you watch NCIS you know that Gibbs would tell something totally differently than Abby or Ziva or McGee or Very Special Agent Tony DiNozzo would. And Vance would probably just lie.

MA

Where Chris Redding Gets Her Ideas

My guest today is Chris Redding, whose new book, BLONDE DEMOLITION, looks like a real action-packed wowser!

Chris, take it away!

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Where do you get your ideas?

This is the question that authors dislike the most. A lot of authors. I shouldn’t talk for all of them.

I want to say that a troll lives in my closet and brings them to me, but it always sounds so snarky.

I think where ideas come from depend on the individual and even depend on the book.

For years, my husband’s volunteer fire company ran a fair to raise money. There was a beer tent where the beer gods served beer from kegs. I am one of the few females that was allowed to serve beer with them. I actually did it before I was actually dating my husband, but that’s another story.

When I first began writing, the beer gods would pester me to write a story about them. Well, I knew I wasn’t going to write specifically about them, but I knew I would include them in a story. Along came Blonde Demolition.

This story actually came about after I bought Rober Crais’ Demolition Angel. The title sold me on the book. Then I read it. Then I thought about the book I would write if I could use that title. Knowing full well I would not be able to compete with Robert Crais, I came up with another title.

So in writing this, I killed two birds with one stone. I wrote that book and included the beer gods. They are even in the dedication.

The fair is no longer run by the firefighters and I don’t believe I have any pictures of them or I would post them here. But the beer gods live on in Blonde Demolition.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~

Chris Redding lives in New Jersey with her husband, two kids, one dog and three rabbits. She graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism. When she isn’t writing she works part time for her local hospital.

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You just can’t hide from the past…

Mallory Sage lives in a small, idyllic town where nothing ever happens. Just the kind of life she has always wanted. No one, not even her fellow volunteer firefighters, knows about her past life as an agent for Homeland Security.

Former partner and lover, Trey McCrane, comes back into Mallory’s life. He believes they made a great team once, and that they can do so again. Besides, they don’t have much choice. Paul Stanley, a twisted killer and their old nemesis, is back.

Framed for a bombing and drawn together by necessity, Mallory and Trey go on the run and must learn to trust each other again―if they hope to survive. But Mallory has been hiding another secret, one that could destroy their relationship. And time is running out.

Buy Links:

Amazon in print: http://tinyurl.com/87qdaam

Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/7olwvhs

Where to find Chris on the web:

www.chrisreddingauthor.com

http://chrisredddingauthor.blogspot.com

www.facebook.com/chrisreddingauthor

www.twitter.com/chrisredding

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Thanks for having me today.

cmr

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~

Thanks for visiting and sharing, Chris.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Think of a volunteer group or work group you used to know or know now and think of a way to write them into a story.

MA

#SampleSunday – Fin

Sierra put her purse on the kitchen counter and drew out the gallon plastic bag. She opened that and slid out a newspaper-wrapped square the size of a National Geographic coffee table book, sawed through the twine binding with a serrated knife, and folded back the thick layers of black-and-white sheets.

The two-inch-high black box inside was still chilled, thanks to the newspaper’s insulation. Sierra slid the box into the refrigerator, exchanging it for the one already there.

Inside was a plate, and on the plate was an arrangement of paper-thin slices of fish, overlapping one another so that the presentation looked like a translucent white chrysanthemum.

She dumped the fish slices into the sink and washed them through the garbage disposal, following them with half a lemon, to eliminate any fish smell. She wrapped the box holding the empty plate in the newspaper, slipped it and the cut twine into the plastic bag and the bag into her purse.

It wasn’t a long drive from her house to the Seattle airport. She would throw the bag and its contents into the first trash bin she passed in St. Augustine, where she was going for a sorority convention.

Her husband, sharing a $500 plate of fugu with his mistress — costing extra because he bribed the chef to leave just a trippy touch of toxin in it — would be delighted to find it had a richer flavor than he expected. He and his bimbo would laugh over the tingle of their lips and fingertips. They would stagger to bed, lightheaded and happy, and she would come home to discover their dreadful corpses.

If only Evander didn’t love fugu so much. He would never have taken Sierra to White Blossom Sea Food. She would never have met Danny, the sushi sous-chef. Danny would never have seen Evander and the bimbo there together whenever Sierra was out of town, and now Evander and the bimbo wouldn’t be eating the bits the fugu chef had discarded as too tainted.

Everybody always told Evander that eating fugu would kill him one day.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: What does your main character do that everyone warns him or her not to do? Something you never knew about until you think about it NOW.