Marian Allen's Blog, page 482

March Update, With Food

I was supposed to do this yesterday, but I had a guest, so I'm doing it today. It's MY blog, right, and I can update it on the second instead of the first if I want to, yeah? Yeah. So it's update day, and I've put up a new Hot Flash. Click here to read it. Scroll down that page for January's and February's, and links to previous years'.

Now to the food. Because Wednesday is supposed to be food day here, although IT IS MY BLOG RIGHT AND I CAN DO FOOD OR NOT DO FOOD WHENEVER I WANT TO YEAH. Anyway. Food.

Last night, we had this.

The white speckled stuff in the bowl is grated raw turnip and sunflower kernels. Sounds ick, but it's really really good. Sometimes I put French dressing on it, but Charlie has persuaded me that it's better plain. Trust me, it's good.

We had a stir fry of bokchoy, mushrooms, turnips and turnip greens. I heated some olive oil, cooked a garlic clove and a lump of ginger long enough to infuse the oil, took those out, cooked the bokchoy until it was just a little bit seared, then added the mushrooms (white and portobello) and the leftover turnip stuff. Cooked it down and dressed it with a little sesame oil.

Got one of those steam-in-a-bag salmon fillets and … well … steamed it in a bag. Meanwhile, heated a lump of butter until it browned, then added cut-up Meyer lemon and some capers. The lemon was supposed to be in thin slices, but somebody peeled one and ate a bit, so I had to make do with lumps and squidges rather than pretty little slices. The slices would have been nicer, because the squidges were much too strong. Pretty nice, anyway.

So that's my food post. Enjoy!

WRITING PROMPT: How OCD is your main character, on a scale ranging from Mr. Monk (very OCD) to Charlie Sheen (not)?

MA

Fun With Gasbags

Er… Perhaps I should retitle that. What I have today is a guest post by JOSEPH ROBERT LEWIS! Yes, THAT Joseph Robert Lewis! The one I'm all "Read this! and this!" about.

HE isn't a gasbag and I'm not… never mind. What I mean to say is, I'm talking about the airships in his Halcyon series. So here he is:

I love stories. All types of stories. Drama and tragedy and comedy. Science fiction, fantasy, steampunk, paranormal, romance, western, and probably an epic poem or two. I love reading them and I love writing them. But writing can be a lot of work.



Especially in the various flavors of fantasy (which include most of the genres I listed above), a lot of a writer's time can be spent building the world in which the story will be told. What does the world look like, sound like, smell like? What about the people, food, religion, clothing, holidays, breakfast cereals, and adorable fluffy pets? What are the rules of the world, or its societies and cultures?

Sometimes writers can turn to research and sometimes writers can turn to their imaginations to build their worlds. But in the end, world-building is a lot of work, because the world itself has to work. It has to make sense, at least within itself.

What's worse is that, most of the time, different genres and styles of story-telling require different worlds. Science fiction is "supposed" to look and feel futuristic, and fantasy is "supposed" to look and feel like medieval Europe, and westerns are "supposed" to look and feel like Texas, and so on. There are expectations. Assumptions. Stereotypes.

And if you are a writer like me who wants to tell lots of different stories, you're confronted with the daunting task of creating lots of different worlds, the task of doing a lot of work before you ever get to start telling your stories. And that's no fun.

So I cheated.

Instead of planning to write lots of separate novels or trilogies in different genres in different worlds, I wove them all together. I created one world, which I very creatively named the Other Earth, in which I can tell all my stories in one place.

I cheated on a lot of other things too. I got my fantasy map from an atlas, and I got most of my historical back-stories from "history" and I even stole some characters from "reality." And now you're asking, what's so fantastical about that? Well, I made a few tweaks.

First, I plunged our lovely blue world into an Ice Age, or more specifically, I never let us emerge from the last one. So the northern hemisphere is mostly snow and ice, and the unpleasantly warm places like the Sahara desert are now green and fertile and lovely to visit or to build an empire. This was a simple change that completely altered the entire planet.

Second, I re-arranged the levels of technology all around the world, partly based on things like trade routes and natural resources. I also tweaked this so I would get all the toys I wanted, like Industrial Age trains and airships and steamships, western-style revolvers, Age of Sail galleons and swordplay, and ancient stone temples, mega-cities, and necropolises. Necropoli? Necropolum?

Third, I made up some new rules regarding death, the soul, and the existence and role of ghosts in day to day life. I won't tell you those rules now, but suffice it to say that these rules make life more interesting for everyone, particularly the people who choose to pay attention to the revenants wandering among us.

Lastly, it was important to me to create and showcase some less stereotypical heroes, particularly for my daughter to read one day (she's still a little bit on the toddler side right now). I wanted alpha males who weren't jerks, and beta males who didn't morph into alphas, and women who kicked butt without morphing into alpha males, and women who were feminine without being weak.

(This is not to say there are no stereotypes or cookie-cutters in my books. I might even have a "dark and gritty brooding anti-hero" in there somewhere. But for my core characters, I was aiming much higher.)

So what is the result of all this? A genre-bending muddle? It could lead that way, I admit, but I didn't build this playground so I could play with all my toys at once. I did it so I could play with all my toys in the same place.

For example, my in-progress Halcyon trilogy (set in Morocco and Spain) is a swashbuckling, steampunky, western adventure series. It's mostly about good guys chasing bad guys, sword fights and gun fights, and action. It's a fun cocktail of The Three Musketeers, The Princess Bride, Firefly, Farscape, and Jules Verne.

Meanwhile, my in-progress Asha series (set in India) is a long, quiet journey punctuated by paranormal mysteries and strange encounters. It's about tragedy and other-worldliness, about death and perseverence and exploration of the bizarre and hidden wonders in this world. (Have you seen Mushi-shi? Yeah, it's like that.)

Also, my future Yslander trilogy will be a dark heroic fantasy about big brawny people with swords fighting big brawny monsters, also possibly with swords. (Think Conan the Barbarian mixed with Eastern European folklore, spiced with a little Hellboy.)

This is all in the same world, playing by the same rules. Now, I didn't create this complex world just to save time on world-building. I also did it so I could create a series-of-series books. My standalone books, short stories, and trilogies can each be read in a vacuum by the people who like one or another brand of fantasy. But for those of you who have broader tastes (think Stephen King's Dark Tower series), you'll have at least seven books that all tie together into one uber-story.

Like me the author, you the reader only have to invest in one fantasy world to enjoy lots of stories about lots of characters. And the payoff at the end is much greater.

So if this sounds at all like your cup of tea, I invite you to check out the samples of the first Halcyon novel (The Burning Sky) and the first Asha short story collection (Death).

The second Halcyon book, The Broken Sword, will be released later this spring.

The Burning Sky (Halcyon #1)
The Tale of Asha, Volume 1: Death

So there you have him: the awesomely awesome Joseph Robert Lewis. I'm reading Burning Sky now, and I can tell you that the world feels, looks, tastes, smells and… ~MA counts senses~ oh, yeah, sounds real.

WRITING PROMPT: Take a scene from a children's story (Three Little Pigs, for example) and rewrite it, including all (counting again) five senses.

MA

p.s. I'm posting today at Fatal Foodies on the subject of The Man Who Did Not Read.

Free For Nothing

Gots another free story for you. Had one up yesterday for Sample Sunday and there's one up today at Dark Valentine Magazine. Called "Dry As Dust", it's a creepy one.

I'm also guest ranting… er, posting on Karen Syed's Life As A Publisher. The topic is bad literary fiction, but it goes for bad fiction of all sorts and styles, as well.

And another thing: I was doing my rainbow edits–where one highlights problem words and then goes through and rewrites to eliminate them where one can–and came across some places in which I left out an open quote or close quote. More important was the place in which I had left out a big chunk of text. Yes.

This was a book WHICH HAD BEEN PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED. I took the manuscript I sent to Echelon from the one sent to me as published by a previous publisher. Looks like SOMEONE didn't look at her proofs very carefully before. Fortunately, I had backup files so old they're on little old floppy disks in txt format, so I was able to recover the lost bit.

When you get your proofs, read them. Carefully. It isn't that you don't trust your editor or typesetter. It's that the quality of the proof you turn in as ready to go is YOUR responsibility. Don't embarrass yourself the way I did.

WRITING PROMPT: If you have a finished story, read it again as if someone else had written it.

MA

Sample Sunday, Burning Ambition

In my bio, I always mention that I've had a story published on the label of coffee cans. There was once a company called Story House Coffee that sold coffee over the web. They bought short stories, poetry and essays and printed them on their labels. I don't know what's become of them; their URL leads to an announcement that they have a new server coming soon, but that's been up for a long time, now, and my heart misgives me.

My story was on cans of Columbia Mesa de los Santos Organic dated May 20, 2003, and here it is.

BURNING AMBITION

by Marian Allen

"Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward." I can hear my grandma's voice saying that. How many times did she say that to me, I wonder? A thousand? A million?

I was always in trouble over something or other. I guess that's why she said that so much.

Now I got a good job. Self-employed, tax-free. I always get paid, and my clients always get paid. Bound to be an investigation, but none of my jobs ever get held up or reopened. I'm that good.

Grandma would have been proud.

I think of her as I sit in my convertible, on a hill overlooking the city, and watch the flaming warehouse light up the night sky. I can almost smell her lily-of-the-valley perfume beside me.

"Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward," I can hear her say.

_____

WRITING PROMPT: Grab a much-used quote and bend it out of shape.

MA

Pilar and Pehuen and Terrible Minds

Last Sunday, I responded to Chuck Wendig's flash fiction challenge by writing "For A Few Bottle More", a heartbreaking slice of life starring Pilar and Pehuen Penguin. Today, Chuck has posted links to all the responses at his wonderful blog, TERRIBLE MINDS. Please go and follow the links to see how many different directions people can go with the same prompt.

Meanwhile, I finished my Rainbow Edits and sent the manuscript to my editor. Now she must read the manuscript and suggest the bigger, harder changes. This is for FORCE OF HABIT, by the way, a very, very silly book. It features a teaching ship with a multi-planet military crew and a co-ed Jesuit teaching staff. I'm working on the story I promised, set on the planet where the book takes place, featuring the names supplied by the winners of my EEL'S REVERENCE blog book tour contest. So one character will be named Holly Jahangiri, one will be Kurt Maxxon, and one will be Devra Langsam. Devra didn't enter the contest, but she's cool and I promised to put her into a story sometime, and her name rocks.

WRITING PROMPT: Pick three names at random from the newspaper or phone book. Build characters around them.

MA

Friday Recommends

I've told you about the super photographs on Leslie R. Lee's blog. Now go look at the ones on Mindy's blog. She does some kind of crazy filtering or something on a lot of them. I can't tell what it is about them that's so hinky, but they're the only photographs that look EXACTLY  the way things look when I'm steering close to suicidal ideation and I counter it by concentrating on the deep beauty of ordinary things. They're amazing, her photos.

If you have a Kindle or other ereader, or are thinking about getting one, or have Kindle for PC/whatever, or have books available as eBooks, I recommend cruising over to Kindleboards. I think you can read all you want without registering. Information overload at first, but it isn't as if poking around is going to disturb a rattlesnake or release a vindictive genie from a bottle. –Okay, I've been involved online long enough to know there are rattlesnakes and vindictive genies everywhere, but what I'm saying is that it probably won't hurt you very much to go take a look, okay?

While I'm on the subject of eBooks, Dark Valentine Magazine just posted the good news that TEA WITH THE BLACK DRAGON, one of my favorite books, is available for Kindle. It's a unique fantasy and a "mature love story", meaning that the heroine is a lady of a certain age and the hero is … older than that.

Barbara J. King has a lovely and moving story about a rescued feral cat on her Friday Animal blog. It made me think of Miss Tiffany, my first cat. Here's the poem I wrote for her, which appeared in the Southern Indiana Writers Group's anthology, BEASTLY TALES.

The Styrofoam Kitty

by Marian Allen

After sixteen human years of life

Miss Tiffany

– cat of the silent meow –

had no heft, no weight, no mass

except on stairs.

There, by force of will,

she mimicked elephants.

Or, when I napped on the couch,

she stepped

down

from her higher perch,

passing a cosmic pressure

through one small foot

into the space between two ribs.

WRITING PROMPT: If your main character has a pet, have him/her write a poem about it. If he/she doesn't have a pet, have him/her imagine one. If you don't have a main character, imagine one imagining a pet.

MA

La la la Nobody's Here la la la

I'm guesting at Molly Daniel's wonderful blog today, talking about EEL'S REVERENCE, my writing life and process, and more. Please join me there and meet a lovely lady. Molly, that is, not me.

WRITING PROMPT: How did your main character get started doing what he/she does? When did he/she first know it was something one could do and that it was something he/she wanted to do?

MA

It's Raining Men at Dark Valentine

Okay, people on the writers' lists I frequent often ask if freebies pay off. Well, they very well might for Joseph Robert Lewis and Tobias Buckell, if I have anything to do with it.

The freebies hurt me, and here's why:

Joseph Robert Lewis gave me a free Kindle copy of his science fiction novel HEIRS OF MARS and I couldn't stop reading and I couldn't blink and my eyes bled and my head and heart expanded from the sheer wonder of it all and I reviewed it here and now I want to read EVERYTHING HE EVER WRITES I AM GOING TO FIND WHERE HE LIVES AND DIG HIS GROCERY LISTS OUT OF HIS TRASH….

The doctor just called and told me to up my dosage.

Just in time, because now I'm telling you that I went to Context and was given a free copy of Tobias Buckell's Steampunk/Starpunk CRYSTAL RAIN and I just read it and I AM IN LOVE WITH A CHARACTER. The book was (ha-ha, a-ha-ha-ha) stellar. I reviewed it for Dark Valentine Magazine today, if you want to read about it. AND YOU DO.

Okay, doc, take another pill, I got it.

Seriously, two books, highly recommended.

WRITING PROMPT: I'm sure you have a book that you love–not for its associations (Mom read it to me, Belinda gave me a copy). Analyze why the book compels you. Write it down as an essay or a book review. Think about why you love that book as you write your own.

MA

A Deadly Reunion with Geraldine Evans

We've never met, actually, but we met online and I asked her to tell me how she made her book trailers. First, a bit about her, then her answer.

[image error]Geraldine Evans has been writing since her twenties, though only began to get novels published halfway through her thirties. As well as her popular Rafferty & Llewellyn crime series, she has a second crime series, Casey & Catt and has also had published an historical, a romance and articles on a variety of subjects, including, Historical Biography, Writing, Astrology, Palmistry and other New Age subjects. She has also written a dramatization of Dead Before Morning, the first book in her Rafferty series.

She is a Londoner, but now lives in Norfolk England where she moved, with her husband George, in 2000.

Deadly Reunion is her eighteenth novel and fourteenth in the humorous Rafferty & Llewellyn crime series. She is currently working on the next in the series.

Creating a Video Book Trailer by crime author Geraldine Evans

This is not as difficult as you'd think. At least it's not if you keep it simple. I only started doing these last year. God, I only heard about doing them last year as well. Before that, I didn't know there were such thing as Video Book Trailers, such was the depth of my ignorance. Yet again, it was Yahoo Group's MurderMustAdvertise who brought this marketing method to my notice. Hurrah for MMA. Sign up for them immediately!

If you're thinking about making a Video Book Ttrailer, read on. This is the novice's experience so don't expect technical terms or advice on how to put super fancy flourishes to your trailer. This is bog-standard stuff,  just text and stills, but although it's basic, I think it's effective and tells the story clearly.

I'll tell you how I went about making my last but one trailer, for my crime novel Dead Before Morning. I think this is one of my best, even if it's one of the longest, which, I gather, is not regarded as a good thing. So far, including two Video Interviews of me, one of which was for The Lit Chicks Show and one each for Dead Before Morning, Down Among the Dead Men, Death Dance and Deadly Reunion, I've six trailers. I've even managed to add music on three of them. I'm most pleased with Dead before Morning, even though it's rather long.

How did I get started making my latest? I used Windows Movie Maker (on your Start Menu). I bought my photos from http://www.fotolia.com, but there are plenty of stock photo sites out there – http://www. iStockPhoto.com  is another site I've used. With fotolia you designate what rights you wish to purchase and buy credits. Once you've selected suitable pictures and paid for them with the credits you purchased, you can download them. Once you've done that, you need to open Windows Movie Maker and import the pictures. I would advise importing these into WMM in the order you intend to use them, otherwise you will have to shift and shunt them about. You might as well get them right the first time. I would now save as a Project. You've got your pictures. Well done! Time for a cup of coffee.

Now for the words. I'd learned from my earlier efforts and for this one I wrote out a short synopsis of the novel then broke it into bite-sized pieces. Don't make each of your pieces of text much more than half-a-dozen words or your viewer won't be able to read them quickly enough and will just end up confused. There is, I seem to recall reading somewhere, a way to increase the viewing time of a particular frame, but I can't remember what it is. Anyway, I still don't think you should have great screeds of text. To place the text, make sure you've on HOME, then click on Title and name your book and yourself as the author. Next click on your first picture and then click on CAPTIONS and type in the first of your short blocks of text. These will go on top of your pictures so you might have to alter the colour, size, boldness or placing of your text. You do this by highlighting and then select bold, size and colour. You move the words around by clicking on the dotted lines, as usual.

Carry on placing your CAPTIONS until you've typed up all of your synopsis. Try not to make this too long as the shortest Video Book Trailers are regarded as the best. Brief and punchy should be your aim.

Anyway, once I'd written out my text I decided where I wanted to put the pictures. Here's a snapshot of what I di for Dead Before Morning:

TEXT:             DEAD BEFORE MORNING

PICTURE:      BOOK COVER

TEXT:             A Rafferty and Llewellyn Crime Novel

TEXT:             by Geraldine Evans

TEXT:             DI Joe Rafferty

PICTURE:      A hand holding the word 'JOB' ( In the UK, a policeman's profession is known as 'The Job'.).

TEXT              has just been promoted.

PICTURE:      Partying People

TEXT:             But the morning after the night before

PICTURE:      Man with tie undone and lipstick on collar.

TEXT              a girl has been found murdered.

Well, I think you get the idea. It carries on like that, text and picture, text and picture till I get to the end. You want a brief snapshot of the book, that's all, the shorter the better. Choose your words and pictures carefully. Your aim should be to try to make an impact and give the gist of the book. For my latest one for Deadly Reunion, I've managed to get it down to twelve pictures including my book cover twice and about a minute and a half in time. Of course it helps that now I put the words on top of the pictures instead of in front of them…

Once I was happy that I'd got my text and pictures in the right order, I decided on my transitions. These can be the transition of your still picture flying away, as in the old movies, or any of the other choices. Experiment a bit. I didn't select and place my transitions before I was sure I had finished shifting and shunting my text and pictures around as for one of my videos I did alternating transitions and they kept getting out of sync and I had to go through and alter them all. I'd already chosen my text colour and background colour. To select your transitions, go to animations, click on the one of your pix lined up on the right where you want the particular transition and then click on the transition. On my earlier movies it was a click and drag operation, but this is one of the changes I had to get used  to when I got a new laptop with updated Movie Maker.

Next you want to get your music. I liked listening to lots of different pieces of music in an attempt to find a piece that was appropriate to my book trailer. Eventually, I found one I was happy with. You then need to go online find a music site and pay for the license to use the track. I use StockMusicSite.com. Once you've paid for and downloaded your music, you should find it in My Music. To get it onto the trailer, you need to click on Home in Movie Make, click on your first picture (so the music starts at the beginning of the film) and then select Add Music.

Remember to make sure you choose your music and pictures from a bona fide site where you pay for the appropriate usage. Other artists also like to get paid when their work is used, so don't be tempted to go for the non-bona fide site. Apart from any other considerations, you might get caught!

Now you want to add the CREDITS. So click on HOME then CREDITS. Then type Movie by (your name). Then, on another line, Pictures from fotolia (or wherever). Then, music: Humoresque by Dvorak (or what and whomever).

Okay, you've got your words, you've got your pictures, you've got your music and you've let the credits roll. You've got a Movie, baby. Click on SAVE PROJECT AS. Once saved, click on PUBLISH MOVIE and select whichever choice you prefer to upload to. Most people go for YouTube as its so well-known. Naturally, you'll have already signed up as a member for whatever site you've chosen for your video upload. You don't even have to stick at one upload. You can put it on youtube, vimeo and whatever other ones you can think of as well as on your website and blog and facebook and twitter and crimespace and… Well I think you get the idea..

Once you get adept, you might even be able to put in moving pictures. If you do, you will  tell me how to do it, won't you?

Marian, I thought I'd include the trailer I made for Dead before Morning, so your readers who are interested, can see both and see how I've (hopefully!) improved.

And for Deadly Reunion:

LINK TO MY PAGE WITH THE BLOG TOUR DATES:

http://www.geraldineevans.com/wednesday_14_december_2010_035.htm

Deadly Reunion

A Rafferty & Llewellyn crime novel by Geraldine Evans

Publication: 24 February 2011 (UK) 1 June 2011 (US)

Blurb

Detective Inspector Joe Rafferty is barely back from his honeymoon before he has two unpleasant surprises. Not only has he another murder investigation – a poisoning, courtesy of a school reunion, he also has four new lodgers, courtesy of his Ma, Kitty Rafferty. Ma is organising her own reunion and since getting on the internet, the number of Rafferty and Kelly family attendees has grown, like Topsy. In his murder investigation, Rafferty has to go back in time to learn of all the likely motives of the victim's fellow reunees. But it is only when he is reconciled to his unwanted lodgers, that Rafferty finds the answers to his most important questions.

Links:

amazon.com:  http://tinyurl.com/4qjgay4

amazon.co.uk:  http://tinyurl.com/4f56pxp

ebooks on amazon.com:  http://tinyurl.com/4re8apo

ebooks on amazon.co.uk: http://tinyurl.com/6du98kq

Geraldine Evans's website: http://www.geraldineevans.com

Geraldine Evans's blog:       http://www.geraldineevanscom.blogspot.com

PRIZES

The draw of all the comments throughout the Tour will take place at the end of the Tour (end-Feb). There will only be three winners, each of whom wins one signed copy of Deadly Reunion, my latest hardback (fourteenth in my Rafferty & Llewellyn crime series), one copy of each of two ebooks that are the first and second novels in my Rafferty & Llewellyn crime series, that is, one of Dead Before Morning and one of Down Among the Dead Men. They will also receive a subscription to my blog (which they can let lapse when it  runs out).

Thank you for visiting today, Geraldine! Your trailers look great, and so do your books. Have fun with your blog tour!

WRITING PROMPT: Reunite a character with one or more others and see what happens.

MA

p.s. I'm at Fatal Foodies today. Come on over and visit!

Writers' Tools, What Don't You Know

Here's an all-purpose tool for you. It works as an exercise. It works as a character sketch before beginning a project. It works to break writer's block. It's just plain fun.

Take a character or a setting or a situation. It can be something you're noodling around with, something you've written yourself into a corner with, a situation you find yourself stuck in, a person (sitting in an airport, at a boring lecture, in traffic, the lady who was crappy to you in the line at the grocery).

Make a list of ten things you know about the person/setting/situation.

Now make a list of ten things you didn't know about the person/setting/situation. If you're starting from reality, you'll have to invent these just as you invent them for people/settings/situations you're imagining. Just free-write it. Doesn't have to be anything profound, though it can get there.

Example: You're having trouble getting through a scene with your villain. During the course of writing ten things you don't know about him, you start writing about this dog he had who got injured in an accident. Young Villain McStinky tried to pick him up, and the dog bit him. He picked him up, anyway, and carried him to someone he hoped could help him, with the dog alternately biting him and rolling its eyes in apology. When McStinky gets the dog to help, the professional refuses to do anything for the dog unless he's paid up front. McStinky doesn't have any money–He's a kid, for God's sake. (Name that reference.)

You crank out a few of those, and you can go back to your scene and, most likely, write it. You don't necessarily put any of that IN what you're writing, but it informs the character for you.

This is a rich mine of Stuff. I have a three-ring binder filled with bits that I could fill out with this method–and some bits that I created with this method. There just isn't enough TIME!

Especially on the days I have two or more posts to do. Today, I'm also posting at The Write Type on a closely related exercise to this one. Close, but different. Please join me there.

WRITING PROMPT: Do the exercise!

MA