Marian Allen's Blog, page 437

Z is for ZUMBA!

Welcome to the final day of the April A-to-Z Challenge! I’ve blogged every day, and I’ve used every letter of the alphabet. Today, Imma talk about my exercise bout last Wednesday.

I did Zumba. Now, in case you’ve never heard of it, or in case you’ve heard of it but don’t know what it is, Zumba is a dance-workout to music with a Latin-based beat. There are different levels, from Sentao (sitting down) to “in the Circuit” (super-strenuous). The one I did was somewhere in between, but I think I could use one a little closer to the sitting-down end of the continuum.

The class happened in the whatchacallit at my church — the part where we set up tables to eat or set up chairs to watch the talent show and what-not. What’s that room called? Fellowship room. Thanks.

There were twelve of us, including the preacher, plus the instructor, the highly energetic and always encouraging Katie. She gave us a brief introduction, told us not to worry if we couldn’t do everything she did, warned us not to overdo (as if I needed that particular piece of advice), made sure we all had plenty of water, and began.

Those who had been to one or more class before did measurably better than those of us for whom it was the first time. Personally, I spent part of the time just watching, but I also jumped around and waved my arms and wiggled my butt and stepped left when I should have been stepping right and so on and so forth.

What I think I look like doing Zumba.

From GIFSoup.com

.

What I really look like doing Zumba.

 

From GIFSoup.com

For. One. Solid. Hour.

When we finished, I was hot and breathless and bushed — and bursting with energy. I didn’t think I was going to sleep at all that night. The next day, I got up expecting to be aching from head to toe, but I didn’t ache a bit, and I felt like I’d been mainlining espresso but without the hallucinations and nausea.

I can’t wait for Wednesday, and the next class!

If you’re in the New Albany Area, click here for information on Katie’s New Albany class.

If you’re in the Corydon Area, click here for information on the FREE Zumba at Corydon Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

If you’re somewhere else, click here to find a Zumba location near you.

Is fun!

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: How fit is your main character? Your villain?

MA

 

#SampleSunday, More Mermayds #amwriting

I was going to write a new flash fiction for today’s Sample Sunday, but I’ve been busy FAILING to install a new Linux OS on my desktop (Mint 12 FAIL, Mint 11 FAIL, Mandriva 2011 FAIL), so I didn’t get to it. I have, however, been working on “Blood of Mermayds”, the fantasy short story I pledged for June on the Summer Reading Trail. I posted an excerpt from it last Sunday. Here is another.

excerpt from “Blood of Mermayds”

by Marian Allen

It always made me nervous when Uncle Phineas and Loach were in my place at the same time. Iris was right: Phineas always looked at mermayds with that calculating stare he used whenever you wore a new cloak or put a new coat of paint on the walls, like he was wondering if it was time to raise your tithes.

One day, Phineas came in just as Loach and his friends were moving away from their table. At first, I thought somebody had shut the door, but then I saw it was the priest. He’s 6’6″ and he doesn’t make up for his height by being skinny. He has to stoop and turn sideways to get through the small door I’d never bothered to enlarge when I turned the storehouse into a restaurant.

Phineas loomed over me as I hurried to greet him, hoping to distract his attention from the mermayds in the corner.

I could have saved myself the trouble. Instead of easing out, Loach made a point of coming to take formal leave of me — something he never did, by the way. He also proved how much he had learned about handling his bulk on land by raising himself, balancing on his coils, until he was just half an inch or so taller than Phineas.

The priest looked up, memorizing the tad’s face. The corners of Uncle Phineas’ mouth turned down in his particular version of a smile. It was not the kind that lit up a room.

“Out,” I told Loach, concern making my voice harsh. “All three of you. Out. Now.”

“See you again soon,” he said.

The whole effect was rather spoiled by his having to lose half his height in order to get through the door. To move at all, for that matter.

I got the feeling Uncle Phineas was amused but, to give him credit, he didn’t laugh.

He sat at his usual table and nodded when I asked if he wanted his usual order. He loved my lobster chowder and the beer I brewed in the cellar. I got a break on my temple dues in exchange for never bringing him a bill when he deigned to grace my wharf-rat chow-house with his custom.

When I brought his food and drink, he flicked a finger toward my bracelet and said,

“A gift from your mermayd friend?”

“I made it out of copper wire and red coral. One of the mermayds traded it to me for a month of meals.” It had been Loach who did the trade, but I wasn’t about to give his name.

“Do you know what they call red coral? ‘Blood of Mermayds’. People used to think that’s what red coral was. More precious as jewelry than as life fluid.”

“Depends on whether you’re a mermayd or not,” I said.

You can follow Uncle Phineas on his Facebook page, if that’s your idea of a good time.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character feels someone or something is a threat to someone he or she isn’t sure qualifies as a friend, exactly.

MA

 

Y is for Yes, We Have No Bananas #AtoZ

My mother, a little late but never mistaken, suggests that I tell you that my journey through the alphabet this month is as part of the A-to-Z Blogging Challenge, in which participants blog every day except Sunday, taking as their daily topics something that begins with a subsequent letter of the alphabet. I made this announcement at the beginning of the month, but NOW she tells me I should have done so every day.

And now I’ve used up all my posting space on that explanation, since we’re supposed to keep these challenge posts short, but I have time to tell you that “Yes, We Have No Bananas” was a novelty song that topped the charts in the 1920s. No, I was not around at the time. My mother taught it to me, and SHE wasn’t around at the time, either.

Here’s Spike Jones and his City Slickers with their equal-opportunity-ethnic-accent-humor version.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character has to convey information in less time than he or she needs to do so.

MA

X is for Xavier Cugat

Long before there was Santana, there was Xavier Cugat. Born in Spain in 1900, raised in Cuba, he was a violin prodigy, winning first chair in an orchestra in Havana when he was only 12. Opera superstar Enrico Caruso brought Cugat to the USA a few years later, where the boy played classical music.

Apparently, he always had an eye out for marketing, because he threw over his classical background when the tango craze swept America in the 1920s. When sound came to movies, he formed a band and made musical short features.

He popularized Chihuahuas and the rhumba. He became known as the Rhumba King. Nobody ever called him the Chihuahua King, insofar as I know.

“Cugie” was married five times, including his final marriage to Charo. If you don’t remember “the Cuchi Cuchi girl”, you’ve missed a hoot and a half. Charo was vilified as a gold-digger and a fool, two mutually exclusive categories, to my mind, but I always liked her.

In addition to being a violinist, a band leader, a master marketer, and a serial bridegroom, Xarier Cugat was a caricaturist of acknowledged talent. This YouTube video shows him leading his band AND drawing.

He retired in 1971, settled in Barcelona, and died of heart failure in 1990.

Information for this article was cribbed from Solid! The encyclopedia of big band, lounge, classic jazz and space-age sounds.

If you want to see Charo, here she is, cuchi-cuchi and all.

Isn’t she cute? Well, I think she’s cute.

ALSO, remember that TURTLE FEATHERS, my latest short story collection, is FREE on Kindle today!! ! !!!

ALSO ALSO, I have a free story up today at #amwriting: “Aardvark With An Arrow”.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Create a character who has been married five times. What is the final spouse like? How long does that marriage last? What terminates it?

MA

W is for Why Wizards? #AtoZ

My guest today is the phenomenal Leslea “Red” Tash. I’ve known her out there in meatland for years, and we’ve continued our friendship here where reality is virtuous. I mean virtual. She very kindly agreed to do an A-to-Z post for me, simultaneously promoting her new short story, which I have read (free copy) and enjoyed. My having started taking an exercise class was in no way influenced by this story. It was not.

Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Tash.

W is for Why Wizards?

by Red Tash

Greetings, Earthlings, and all interstellar/cross-dimensional readers tuning in. I am transmitting to you live (at least, at the time of this writing) from my 100% non-magical, highly-Mugglized abode in Southern Indiana. But not for long. Soon, I’ll be decked out in my first set of wizarding robes, as I’m off to see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter! I can’t wait to see if they’ll actually let me into Ravenclaw Common Room. Of course I’ll answer whatever riddle necessary, first.

Many thanks to Marian for hosting me today on my short-but-sweet blog tour in support of my short-but-sweet new story The Wizard Takes a Fitness Class. Why would a wizard take a fitness class, you ask? Have you ever tried to exorcise a demon? Sometimes it’s just easier to exercise with them. Or is it? Go have a read, if you’d like. I’ll just be here blogging, ’til you get back.

So, Marian’s doing that April Alphabetic blogging thang, and I’m giving her the day off while I manhandle the letter W into something more comfortable. How about something pointy with little moons and stars on its hat?

Maybe I’ve just got Disney magic on my mind because we’ll be visiting that Florida landmark, as well, for the first time. Even more magical (for me), before we get to squeeze into our very-muggle-minivan, a sextet of silliness-seekers? I should have completed edits on my second full-length novel, as well! It’s my plan to basically hit the email “send” button to my editor, then go running out the front door! I should be shiny like a cheap Fourth of July sparkler by the time we make our getaway. Just watch for the streak of fire racing from Indiana to Florida, sometime in the last days of April. Red’s Comet, I think it’ll be called. Whoosh-zoom!

But back to the Wizard. Why wizards? And why wizards in everyday locales, like fitness classes or drive-in theaters?

The first Wizard Tale was written in two emails to my husband, just for fun. I was taking a break from editing This Brilliant Darkness, and instead of surfing the web or clocking into Facebook for the eighth time that day, I wrote the first half of a story so short, some readers consider it flash fiction. (One could argue that all wizarding fiction is “flash fiction,” but until one has experienced the whizbangs of exploding fairy fanmail, one might not get the joke.)

To be totally, 100% honest, I never intended to write and publish wizard stories at all. I don’t know where the Wizard came from. I just opened up Word, and there he was. In the first Wizard Tale, I was a channeling a combination of Gandalf, Dumbledore, and some random hippie. I didn’t think much about his background, at all, and I didn’t even give him a name. I formatted the story and uploaded it to Amazon and Smashwords just for practice. I set the book’s price as “free” through all possible channels, and eventually Amazon followed suit, as part of their price-matching.

Several thousand downloads later, the comments have been overwhelmingly positive about the sweet little short. One day, a message from an old high school chum showed up on my FB wall. “When will there be a full-length Wizard book?” he asked. I laughed then, and I laughed again now, just typing it.

Why would anyone want a Wizard book? I mean, I get why people want Harry Potter, why they want Lord of the Rings. But why a book-length version of my Wizard? I’m still dealing with that request. Perhaps there is a Wizard book somewhere in me somewhere, once all is said and done. It would certainly explain that stubborn spare tire across my middle. “Honey, it’s not baby weight. It’s that damned Wizard book!”

Unfortunately, I don’t have a crystal ball, and my skill with tea leaves is as bad as Trelawny’s. I don’t know if I will eventually turn the Wiz into anything more than short story fodder or not. Not wanting to disappoint my friend and fan, I settled for writing another Wizard story. The first one only took 20 minutes to write, so the next one wouldn’t be any trouble, right?

Well, I sifted through the reviews of the first Wizard. Readers overwhelmingly asked for more from me. More background, more drama, a bigger conflict…more connection. Emotional gravitas, even. “Okay, okay,” I realized. “Maybe I can write something just a tad longer.”

What I learned was not dissimilar to the lesson dear Bilbo Baggins has in The Hobbit. When one opens the door to a Wizard, one escapes to magic, adventure, and a whole lotta unexpected friends. Gandalf didn’t step into Bag End all by his lonesome, and neither does our mysterious Wizard go solo in this latest tale. Oh, no. He has a nemesis. He meets a kind young Village People cliché, transgendered yoga students, and kung fu zombies. Hey, a demon even shows his face. Our wizard comes bearing only a staff, but he in no way is traveling light.

And because I was ready, I suppose, the Wizard revealed more of himself to me in this second “date.” Where the first Wizard Tale was lighter and fluffier, this second one is more meaningful in tone, and about so much more than monsters and satire and 1980s music, despite its inclusion of all the above. No, the Wizard had more on his mind this time. The Wizard may have been wandering aimlessly, but that didn’t stop him from arriving at the bullseye of Regret. Personal demons like pride and arrogance are a heavy weight.

Oh, that Wizard may not be as nice as he once looked, after all.

The more he spilled, the more I realized “Hey, I gotta do this right.” It took a few gut-wrenching weeks of editing, but I feel really good about how the story shook out. I believe this Wizard Tale has everything my readers wanted, and it leaves them craving even more. At the same time, it turned out to be a great exorcism for a few of my own demons—but I’ll allow that stuff to remain between the lines, where it belongs.

Why wizards, indeed. I can’t wait to see where he takes me, next time.

Thanks, Leslea! Here’s that link again: The Wizard Takes a Fitness Class. Enjoy.

Oh, and don’t forget that my short story collection TURTLE FEATHERS is free on Friday!

ALSO, I’m blogging today over at Camille Minichino’s place, so drop by and say hey.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: What is your main character’s personal demon?

MA

V is for Vegetarianism, the Dangers Of

Every so often, I turn to EATING TO LIVE LONG, a book written in 1920 by William Henry Porter, M.D., for medical advice that is unrivaled in being almost invariably wrong.

In a chapter entitled “Food Fads and Foolishness”, he says, “Forcing one’s self to live for a protracted period upon an exclusive vegetable diet is an abuse that falls only a few degrees short of suicide–or slow murder.” He says it causes anemia and under-nutrition, “as well as being a frequent cause of tuberculosis”–charges he levels at just about anything of which he doesn’t approve.

A vegetable diet, according to Dr. Porter, causes nervous defects and cantankerousness. Vegetables are hard to digest, he says, and ferment in the digestive system, producing irritation and “intestinal catarrh”. We will not delve further into Dr. Porter’s detailing of the unpleasantness of a vegetable diet at the terminus of the digestive process, but he assures us that an excess of vegetables is “a source of danger”.

He considers vegetables an important part of a balanced diet, but compares vegetarianism to eating hay, and warns us that “we can’t afford to emulate the cow”. Apparently, emulating the wolf poses no intestinal threat.

Nuts are “squirrel food” and fruit is a “foodless food”. Vegetarians, he says, are almost always lean (like elephants? like me?) and usually have something wrong with them, even if the something wrong is only chronic grouchiness.

Ah, dear Dr. Porter! I am no true vegetarian, and yet I can be irritated into such a state of grouchiness that you wouldn’t want to meet me in a dark alley with an umbrella in my hand.

Or, come to that, a carrot. I could poke your eye out.

Maybe vegetarianism IS dangerous.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: How does your character feel about vegetables in general and particular ones in … particular?

MA

U is for Ungulate

I love the internet SO HARD!! You are not going to believe this. I was poking around, looking for words that begin with the letter U and found this site:

Ultimate Ungulate site

Is that the Best Site EVER, or what? It’s Recipient of the Palaeontological Association‘s Golden Trilobite Award (2011). The Palaeontological Association’s website is palass.org. And people think scientists have no sense of humor.

Betchu didn’t know that genetic markers show that whales and dolphins — mammals of the sea — evolved from land mammals. Well, they did. And they were ungulates! Yes! They belong to the same family as goats, pigs, giraffes, camels, warthogs and hippopotamussesses.

This site — sites like this one — they make my life worthwhile. Thank you, Internet. Thank you.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character is told that whales and dolphins are in the same genetic family as camels and it makes him or her angry.

p.s. I’m posting today at Fatal Foodies on the topic of Upside-Down Cake.

MA

T is for Tetra (Not the Fish) #AtoZ

Because I am nothing if not responsive to reader requests, I’m answering Leslie Lee’s call for more from FORCE OF HABIT. Last week, I gave you an interview with Quatro Petrie. Today, we have his sister, Tetra. Tetra, if I may step outside the frame for a moment, was created by frequent commentator to this blog Jane Peyton, my very same friend Jane whom I meet for lunch every month. She also drew the picture of Tetra in Regency attire which I’m using in this post and which she uses as her avatar. One wonders if she’s read the dedication of FORCE OF HABIT. One will wait while she does.

So, Tetra:

Tetra and Quatro Petrie had been spawned in the same dish, ripened in the same incubator, and reared in the same household. Both were pale, with thick and resilient but easily sunburned skin and both had gills on either side of their necks, but there the resemblance ended.

Tetra had full, baby-fine black hair, in loose curls two inches long. It never grew longer, and never would. She had webs between her toes, but not her fingers, and she always wore a high collar or a scarf to conceal her gills. She stood 5’2″ in her little webbed feet.

MA: Quatro tells us he signed on aboard the St. Gregory the Wonderworker teaching ship in order to tone down your “madcap” tendencies. Why did you sign on?

TP: In a vain attempt to escape Quatro’s dampening oversight. I do not require it, nor do I relish it.

MA: So you’ve never done anything to justify his conviction that you have wild woman tendencies?

TP: Quatro would consider it wild to have chocolate and butterscotch sauces on ice cream.

MA: So you’ve never done anything to justify his conviction that you have wild woman tendencies?

TP: If you will review my personnel files, you will find nothing to justify his conviction.

MA: So you’ve never done anything — Look, this is my blog: I can ask the same question all day. All I have to do is cut and paste.

TP: Be my guest, if that is what floats your boat.

MA: We (and by “we”, I mean “I”) notice that you don’t use contractions. It can’t be cultural, because Quatro uses them. Would you care to share that particular secret with the readers?

TP: It is hardly a secret, since you revealed it in FORCE OF HABIT. I do not use contractions because I find that humans tend to trust anything said to them by people who do not use contractions. It is as if they subconsciously believe that someone who cannot elide syllables cannot elude veracity.

MA: That’s mighty fancy talk, little lady.

TP: You have been watching reruns of Firefly again, have you not?

MA: I’ll ask the questions around here, if you don’t mind.

TP: I do not mind, if your readers do not.

MA: Okay we’re done.

Tetra appears in FORCE OF HABIT. FoH began life as a Star Trek fan fiction story. Several of these, featuring Tetra, appear at my old WEBLAHG. They may, in future, be turned into FoH novels.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Interview the sibling of a fictional character, one of your characters or someone else’s.

MA

#SampleSunday – Work in Progress – #amwriting

I signed on again for the Summer Reading Trail. Last year, I just linked to my free reads page. This year, I also pledged to write three new stories in three months: a fantasy, a sweet romance, and a mystery. I’m working on the fantasy now.

Tentatively called, “Blood of Mermayds”, it’s set in the world of EEL’S REVERENCE (still looking for a new title for that) and tells about how Loach the mermayd and Muriel the landwoman became friends. Cameo by Uncle Phineas.

Here’s a bit of it:

I heard the mermayds coming from halfway down the street, even with my restaurant’s door closed. It sounded like a whole pod of them, which wasn’t surprising    you didn’t often see the younger ones alone on the land, and the older ones got that way by not attracting undue attention.

Cover by T. Lee Harris

“Don’t you open that door, Muriel,” my cousin said. “They’ll think they’re welcome.”

Mermayds didn’t often have money, but I didn’t mind bartering a meal for some fresh fish or seaweed, and I could always find a market for the odd pearl or such. My cousin Iris was older by ten years, and some would say I should have obeyed her. Still, it was my restaurant and she worked for me, so I opened the door.

There were three of them, taking up half the street, gliding over the cobbles with their long, muscular, fluked tails glistening, rippling behind them. Older ones usually wore tops that covered their featureless chests, disguising the evidence that they weren’t mammals, but these tads were bare-chested. The two with dark hair wore high-quality gill-bands that would filter oxygen for them for up to two weeks, but the band on the blond tad was cheap and good for no more than a day. First time on land, was my guess.

They called back and forth in the clicking, squealing language they used to each other out of the water.

Iris looked past me and shuddered. “Ugh! Nasty things. Talking snakes, is what they are.”

“People with tails,” I said, just to be contrary.

“Uncle Phineas doesn’t like them. You can see him staring at them in here and in the street.”

“Uncle” Phineas was one of those new priests who claimed districts and demanded tithes. I thought they should call themselves something other than Uncle and Aunt, which is how the true priests of Micah title themselves. Iris can say mermayds on land are unnatural all she wants to, but I say a priest making demands is worse.

I pulled my wild black hair back and tied it at the nape of my neck with a bit of twine.

The blond one turned toward me at my movement, flailing for balance as it found itself whipping around with unexpected speed. New out of water, like I thought.

They all looked at me then. The black protective lenses that shielded mermayd eyes from straight sunlight gave them all an eerie look, I had to admit.

“Don’t let them in,” Iris said, already knowing I would.

The blond one recovered its balance, laughing along with the others, showing its teeth in what looked like a grimace, but passed for a smile with them.

After they traded some noise, the dark ones approached my door, the blond one behind them.

“I’m on break,” Iris said, heading for the back door.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: How did your main character and his or her best friend meet? How did you and YOUR best friend meet?

MA

S is for Spomments

Spomments is my word for SPAM comments on my blog. I know you seldom see any, but that’s because I have two awesome SPAM filters: Akismet and CommentLuv Premium’s GASP. I also curate the comments a couple of times a day, sometimes releasing folks who have been unfairly shuttled into the SPAM bin, sometimes relegating folks there.

How do I determine what’s a spomment and what isn’t?

Oh, that would be telling! I’ll tell you this, though: Even if you come here planning to drop a link on me to a site that has nothing to do with my blog, if you actually read my post and actually leave a comment like one human being to another, your comment will appear on my blog. Unless the link is an unpleasant one, like “How To Fool Blogmeisters” or some such, your link will also appear.

If you drop a spomment on me and I don’t catch it, but later realize it was a spomment, I might hunt it down and root it out.

If you’ve left me a real comment and I’ve axed it, I do apologize. Next time you’re kind enough to leave me a note, please make it more personal than, “Nice post!” Those look like SPAM and, if I don’t know you, I’m liable to delete.

The spomments that really drive me crazy, though, are the mean ones, the goofy ones, the ones that come to me fifty almost-identical on the same day, the ones with eleventy-gazillion links, and the ones that have obviously been run through a translation machine multiple times, with a whole set of badly done variations for spammers to cut and paste.

I’ve even set up a Facebook page called Spomment of the Day. If you’re on Facebook, I invite you to join.

Spomment of the Day

And, if you’re a real person and really want to share your thoughts with me, I assure you that I read every single comment with respect and appreciation. That’s why the spommenters irritate me so. I don’t want to hear from them. I want to hear from you!

Please also visit Holly Jahangiri’s new blog, Lost in Translation, to which I will be a regular contributor. How regular, only time will tell.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: A character goes to a party where he or she is having fun, but is followed around by someone trying to sell something inappropriate to the gathering.

MA