Marian Allen's Blog, page 468

Not The Miracle of Nature I Expected

As I sat at the kitchen table this morning, eating frosted bite-sized shredded wheat (aka sugar-coated pot scrubbers) and fresh-picked blueberries (yeah!!), I looked out of the window and saw a cocoon on a twig of the river birch, wiggling from the effort of something trying to emerge.

I put the camera on my feet and the boots to my eye–then did it the right way around–and ran outside. And there, on the tree, was–a friggin' dead leaf.

[image error]Never one to waste an effort, I turned around and snapped this close-up of the coral bells.

It always amazes me that spring becomes summer and then, immediately, leaves begin to turn fall colors. The poplars have some yellow leaves, other trees are tinged with gold and red, and these coral bell leaves are flushing crimson. It's crazy. It's like the voice of an angel, whispering, "You won't be sweating like a pig forever. At least, not if you change your ways. I'm just sayin'."

So I was disappointed about taking YouTube by storm with my video of a butterfly coming out of its house without its makeup, but the coral bells were beautiful and provided a spot of color and a quick shot of corn-pone philosophy, so the whole experience wasn't a total waste of effort.

WRITING PROMPT: How does your main character deal with disappointment? Lemons to lemonade or "Lemonade? I'll give you LEMONADE!!" ?

MA

Friday Recommends – 6-24-2011

Yes, I know what day it is this week. I made a mistake last week, okay? Let's all get over it. All right, I know I'm the only one who noticed or cared or still cares, but indulge me while I pretend my massive fan base is in a turmoil over my having put the wrong date on last Friday's post, all right? It takes so little to make me happy. Thank you.

If you like book reviews, I recommend Red Adept Reviews for "critical, in-depth eBook reviews". Writers can purchase ad space, but the reviews are real.

Marie Andreas' Fairies, Dragons, and Spaceships is a lovely, thoughtful blog, with writing prompts twice a week.

The Independent Author Network was recommended to me by another writer. I haven't joined it yet, but I'm passing the recommendation on. Its purpose is to connect readers and writers who publish themselves or publish with indie presses.

A great site I discovered recently is VegWeb. We're fairly close to being vegetarian, but we have a daughter who's vegan, so this is a great site for me. Daughter #2 keeps chickens, so we do eat eggs, so I can take these recipes and add eggs in place of egg substitute and be happy. Some of the recipes on this site are standard objective recipes, but you do run across some like this one for mac and "cheese", which I adore.

On a related note, I made some vegan "cheese" from toasted sesame seeds, rice wine vinegar, salt, olive oil and nutritional yeast. Charlie said it tasted just like cheese to him, but it had a bitter aftertaste we didn't like. I'm wondering if using cashews would be better, or if I ground the sesame seeds too long or what. Anybody know?

WRITING PROMPT: Go outside or online and observe chickens. Write about one.

MA

The New Star Trek Movie

My mother and I just watched the new (not-so-new by this time) Star Trek movie (Thanks for the loan, Jane!). It was most enjoyable, but not, alas, for the reasons the people involved in it hoped it would be.

My #4 daughter said, "You're the only Star Trek fan I know who didn't like it!"

I said, "I liked it! It was a great Galaxy Quest episode! It just wasn't Star Trek."

Talk about needing to file off the serial numbers and call it something else…. As a cross between Galaxy Quest and the Saturday Night Live ST skit, it was brilliant–absolutely brilliant. Spock making out with Uhura in public was worthy of any Spock-is-my-boyfriend fangirl fantasy, for sure.

No, really, I liked the movie. But.

I don't know–maybe reading and writing fan fiction spoiled me, or maybe I'm just a cranky old lady–or both. It is kind of bizarre to be saying, like, "When I was a girl, Vulcans would never show emotion in public. Nowadays, it's kiss, kiss, kiss all the time. I don't know what the worlds are coming to."

Did you see the new Trek movie? What did you think? There are no wrong answers. Except, possibly, mine.

WRITING PROMPT: What kind of emotion is your main character least likely to display in public?

MA

Homininy

That's what our kids used to call hominy. Hominy, in case you don't know, is corn kernels soaked in lye so the hulls come off. Then the lye and hulls are washed away. If the kernels are then dried and coarsely ground, you get grits. If they're boiled, you get hominy. You wouldn't think Little Miss City Girl would like hominy, but I do. You might like it, too, if you fix it this way:

HOMININY

canned hominy, drained
butter or margarine
Jane's Crazy Mixed Up Salt or other seasoning

Melt butter or margarine in a skillet. Add drained hominy and salt (or whatever). Cook, stirring frequently, until hominy is hot and most of the liquid is gone and butter or margarine is absorbed.

WRITING PROMPT: What food are your main character's friends surprised he or she likes or longs for?

MA

Solstice Reds, Greens and Blues

Today is the first day of Summer. It's also the first day of the Tuesday Farm Market in Corydon. Mr. Hambley was there, so the line was half-way down the sidewalk. He says you can sign up for his newsletter if you want to; he may eventually get one out. The newsletter was a son's idea.

I scored some kale, cucumber, yellow squash and tomatoes. Other people bought cabbage, zucchini and onions. What I'm living for is his tiny eggplants, perfect for grilling. He says it'll be a couple more weeks before he has them. I have to get there at 8:00, when he opens. There's some other woman who swoops in like The Clever Little Pig before I can get there and buys them all up. I'll just be a cleverer little pig than she is, and get there first! I'm not greedy. I'll take some and leave some. That's how I was raised. I'm not saying anything about that lady's mother, I'm just saying I was raised to share.

The blues come in from the fact that this is the longest-day/shortest-night turn of the year. From now until mid-winter, the days will be getting shorter and the nights longer. I've been loving the early sunrise and the long evenings. I hate to drive at night, so I feel liberated by the extra daylight. Before dawn, with the sky gradually opening to my sight, is lovely, but driving when it's getting dark and darker and just flat dark, is what I do not like at all.

This is Tuesday, so I'm posting at Fatal Foodies about why you might not want to have lunch with me. It's also the 21st, so I'm posting at The Write Type about Facebook ads.

WRITING PROMPT: Does your main character like or dislike traveling in the dark, or is he/she indifferent to it?

MA

Writers' Tools – Indirection

I'm sure I've written about this before, but I can't find the post, so Imma write about it again.

Indirection is the art of showing something without showing it directly. Some people don't get it, but I get a kick out of it. I'm not as good at it as Elizabeth Peters is, but I try–I try.

Here's an example from my soon-to-be-released novel, FORCE OF HABIT, in which a couple of Stokk villains are threatening Our Hero, Bel, and her kidnapper, Connell Morgan.

First, you have to set it up.

"Ligniss is very high-strung," said Pron. "Show them your knuckles, Ligniss."

The apricot Stokk raised his fists. They weren't overly large, but they seemed to be constructed of some material that could withstand the test of time.

"Notice the knuckles," said Pron. "How sharply knobby they are. He cracks them, you see. Against parts of people's bodies, you see."

Then you move things into place.

"Maybe he's hard of hearing, Ligniss. Maybe you'd better stand a little closer to him. Then, if we have to tell him again, we'll be sure he listens."

Ligniss sat down beside Morgan and Pron took his place in front of the door.

Then you do the pay-off.

"Excuse me," Morgan said.

Ligniss cracked his knuckles.

Morgan rubbed the dent on the side of his head and subsided.

So there you have it: indirection. What can I say? It amuses me.

WRITING PROMPT: Write a scene in which what happens is not told but only implied by its effects.

MA

Sample Sunday – Three More Flash

These three also appeared in Flashshot online magazine. I'm particularly fond of SAFE.

SOME KIND OF ANGEL

by Marian Allen

Behind the door, a woman sobs, a man grinds out contempt and ridicule.

I knock. Silence. Footsteps.

Mace opens, grinning. "Hey! Long time, no see!"

"Come out for a brew?"

He says, meekly, "Okay, honey?"

She nods spasmodically, with a look I remember from my own woman's face.

After the bar closes, we walk to the park. I give him a half-pint of brandy laced with nail polish remover. He drinks, drinks…. I give him an unlaced one.

When he's dead, I dump the first bottle into somebody's recycling.

He shouldn't have quit Abusers' Counseling.

I'm still going.

NO FAULT DIVORCE

by Marian Allen

I step out of the shadows. She turns and sees me.

I know her. Went to school with her daughter.

She smiles. "Well, hello, sugar! How've you been?"

"Okay. You? How's Deelie?"

Her smile fades. "She's married. Unfortunately."

"Yeah…. Well…. See ya."

"Don't be a stranger!" she calls.

*

The client unzips his jacket. "Got your cash. You do it?"

My knife slides in and out. "She's not a monster! She doesn't deserve it! She's nice!"

I take the dead man's cash, even though I didn't do his hit. Liar's penalty.

SAFE

by Marian Allen

I never shoulda told Lisa I write that soldier boy in Iraq. I shoulda known she'd tell Jimmy. She never did get over him marrying me instead of her, even when he got so stingy I woulda thanked her to take him so I could get away from this old farm.

"Where's his letters?" Jimmy keeps asking. "I'm gonna find 'em, and I'm gonna burn 'em while you watch."

He never will find 'em, though. They're safe.

I smile and lean against the goat I'm milking. Her tummy rumbles. Paper ain't really good for goats, but they'll eat it.

WRITING PROMPT: Where would you hide secret letters? Where would some of your characters hide them?

MA

Stormy Saturday

I was supposed to go help spread landscaping gravel on the church flowerbeds this morning, but it's been raining like God is being paid by the hour, so I didn't do that. We lost power briefly, but here I am, just like a bad penny.

This has been a flowery week. On Thursday, friend and poet Jeannine Baumgartle gave me these beautiful chrysanthemums (my favorite flowers) in thanks of my helping her find an apartment for her son. Why did she give me the flowers rather than her son doing it? If you have to ask that question, you've never had a grown child living with you for an extended length of time. No matter how much you love them, you kind of want them to move out before it's time for you to move in with them.

Click picture to enlarge

Click picture to enlarge

Then I went to Louisville for lunch with Jane, where we talked about her setting up a blog. Exciting, no? Exciting, YES! I snappied some pictures of flowers in planters: some begonias and some pink cosmos. Both of these are also my favorite flowers.

We went to Java Brewing for coffee, as we always do, and found them taking all their signs down. A barista told me that the Java coffee houses are owned by two different sets of owners, and they decided to divvy their shops up. One bunch will still be Java and the other will be Vint. Java still has their own roasting facility here locally. Vint will source their roasted beans from Seattle and will also serve tea, ale and wine. Makes me sad that the place we've always hung out will be going all Starbucky.

Oh, well, things change, eh?

WRITING PROMPT: Write about a character who has made a habit of going to a certain place, and have that place change. How much change would be disturbing to that character? Would he or she be angry? sad? personally affronted? Would it be something that made it difficult or impossible for him or her to do what he or she does there? (Music piped into a library, for instance.) Would he or she go elsewhere or adapt?

MA

Friday Recommends 6-16-2011

First, because it's important, Sylvia Dickey Smith's Writing Strong Women. Sylvia writes books featuring strong women, but this blog is addressed to real women, real girls, encouraging them to be the strong women they can be. The logline of the blog is A strong woman pretending to be weak is like a tiger pretending to be a pigeon. -K Corum Trust me to get it wrong; I was charmed until I read it more carefully; it's a good quote, but I thought it said a tiger pretending to be a penguin. Anyway, it's a super site.

A site I have yet to explore fully is the Book Blogger Directory. It says, "The Book Blogger Directory is a comprehensive listing of Book Blogs, separated by genre and listed alphabetically." Sounds highly useful to me, as a reader searching for book reviews and as a writer searching for book reviewers. By the way, have I mentioned that I've written some books? And that they're for sale? Yeah, I thought I had. Have I said that you can read more about them by clicking on those tabs up there labeled "Stories" and "Novels"? I did, eh? Okay, then.

Stuck for a writing prompt? Mine not good enough for ya? Well, try the Random Logline Generator. Some of these will make your hair stand on end.

Finally, there is the I Ching Online. Ask your question, cast your coins, get your reading. I'm ticked because I asked which book I should work on next, and it said to do nothing. Now, nothing is what I do best, but that wasn't the answer I wanted. I think I'll ask again. Okay, this one says, "Any action will be unfortunate." Guess it isn't time to work on any novels right now. Looks like short stories for me for a while!

WRITING PROMPT: Use the logline generator and come up with a story question. Ask the story question on the I Ching Online site.

MA

Why I Like It At Home

Taking a break from writing, editing and promoting to stop and smell whatever that is that smells so good out there. We had some hideously hot weather earlier in the spring, but it's cooled back to seasonable temperatures and spring showers. ~YAWN~ Who the frack cares?

Okay, fair enough. But it was GORGEOUS out this morning and I had breakfast on the back porch this morning, taking in the sights and sounds and smells of the country. Toaster waffles with peanut butter and marmalade, if you must know. Nobody was cutting up the pasture with their off-the-road vehicles, nobody had just spread manure on their fields, nobody was flying their ultra-lights across the sky, so it was pretty darn nice.

I'm sharing a couple of snappies with you: one is of the blueberry bush that lives just off the porch; the other is of the potting/storage/dog shed just this side of the garden.[image error]

Hope you love where you live as much as I love where I live.

WRITING PROMPT: Does your main character love where he/she lives? Why or why not? Write a couple of paragraphs from the point of view of someone with the opposite feeling toward the place.

MA