Eric Witchey's Blog: Shared ShadowSpinners Blog , page 5

My Secret Writing Life

By Lisa Alber

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Since May, I’ve had a secret writing life. My ever-present work-in-progress, The Shadow Maiden, was in a seemingly permanent hold pattern. The day after tomorrow I’ll hit the one-year anniversary of a nasty car accident that affected my head and my back with post-concussive stuff, excruciating pain, and some disability. I have a new normal that I don’t much like on top of our pandemic new normal.

I was still heavy into the medical stuff when I got laid off in February, and then COVID hit in March. 2020 was not off to a great start. It was way too much. However, given my new free time, maybe I could return to fiction for the first time in months since the accident. My head might be able to handle it since I wasn’t also working the day job.

Given how dark the world was on all levels — from my body to my finances, national politics, and the global pandemic — and given my difficulties in the coping department … (see previous post here, inspired by all of this) … Well, I needed a NEW coping mechanism, something to take me out of my life. The Shadow Maiden is a dark and gothic-tinged murder tale and the opposite of comforting.

I realized that I wanted to try something different. There’s nothing wrong with that, I told myself. It’s not like my financial health depends on a writing brand. As a creative, I’m probably doomed to need day-job income for the rest of my life. So, why not try something different? Something lighter and happier.

Hello, contemporary romance! It’s been slow, to be sure, but what a blast its been to write a love story with a happily-ever-after ending. It’s a completely different experience from mystery, and maybe I needed that as part of my recuperation. Also, I craved something more basic for my poor head. Romance is simpler, plot-wise, than mystery. 

I bought a funny little book called Romancing the Beat, Story Structure for Romance Novels, by Gwen Hayes. Surprisingly, the pre-formulated romance arc hasn’t inhibited my creativity. There’s something liberating about having a structure. I suspect this is especially true because my brain doesn’t do outlining. What a relief to not be struggling with overall plot structure.

But, of course, I put my own stamp on the structure with a few subplots. The story has suspense elements; someone does die; there is a villain. Once a shadow spinner, always a shadow spinner!

The story takes place on a billionaire’s private tropical island that has nothing to do with reality. Reality is over-rated these days. Even the research is great. Rather than researching, oh, I don’t know, blood spatter patterns or ways people can die, I’m checking out haute couture fashion trends, Middle Eastern food, and rich-people etiquette lessons.

We’ll see what happens. This is a weird time, and it called for a fictional shake-up. The Shadow Maiden still beckons, and I’ll finish it. Meanwhile, I get to sink into a happily-ever-world where hardship doesn’t last long and nothing gets in the way of love.

Old Hopes, Gold Stars, and Daily Lights

Old Hopes, Gold Stars, and Daily Lights

Eric Witchey

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In my kindergarten, Mrs. Lingo’s Happy Time Kindergarten in Shelby, Ohio, every student had a cardboard cutout soldier about eight inches tall. Tacked to a cork strip above the blackboard, the soldiers seemed to march around the room, each wearing the name of their respective child. The worst fate every student could imagine was having their soldier “taken down.” Behavior unbecoming resulted in this horror. However, a kindness, a cleverness, a moment of creativity, or a clear demonstration of intelligence would win us a gold star, licked and affixed to our soldiers.

Some students, like my childhood neighbor Jean Ann Lorentz, had soldiers covered in gold stars. They glistened in the fluorescent lights. Others, like me, had a soldier with only a smattering of stars, each of which had been hard won and required me to sit through a lecture on living up to my potential.

Oh, how I wanted more stars. I wanted them with all my heart and all my body, but it was not to be. We didn’t know what ADHD, OCD, and Dysthymia were back then, but I knew what envy was, desire, hope, and ambition. I knew that I wanted those gold stars and that only the thin barrier of my behavior in a moment separated me from them.

Alas, it was not to be.

Fifty-odd years later, I have many metaphoric gold stars affixed to the soldier of my life. I also have some perspective on how to get them, and of late I have been fascinated by the connection between what was important to me as a child and what is easy for me as an aging adult.

As a child, walking in the woods and fields brought me bliss and peace. Now, my desire to seek relief from the stresses of living often takes me to the woods and fields. Reading as a child opened magical doors and gave me safety and joy exploring worlds, and it does no less now. The Scholastic Book contests, with their long, meandering roads of incremental marks on a classroom wall were a place where I shone. I easily filled in step after step on the road to reading success. Those classroom moments replaced my star envy with pride in accomplishment for something my need for excitement combined with my OCD would have given me anyway.

Today, I have come to the conclusion that those earliest memories, those moments burned into the heart and mind by emotions of desire, peace, and pride, are often at the core of all the layers of experience since. Anything I do that touches on those early life elements has a much greater chance of success.

A couple years ago, a YouTuber I follow launched a Kickstarter campaign. Simone Giertz, the Queen of Shitty Robots, was diagnosed with a brain tumor. In the process of treatment, which included brain surgery, she took up meditation to manage her fear and anxiety. I cannot imagine what she went through, but I was struck by her need to give herself a gold star for every day she meditated. I was also impressed that she put her maker skills to work creating a tactile and visual feedback system to track her progress. She built a box that has a golden light to turn on for every day she meditated. She recorded her progress for a year and only missed two days.

All those orderly columns of gold stars! All those Scholastic Book Boxes colored in! So pretty! So . . .

MUST HAVE!

It triggered my OCD and my deeply seated gold star envy. I already meditate, but I could use it for other stuff. It’s better than the spreadsheet I use—I mean, GOLD STARS! Okay, I can keep the spreadsheet and have GOLD STARS! Let’s not get too crazy.

I contributed. When the boxes were productized, I’d get one!

Problems on top of problems kept the boxes in development for a long time, but mine finally arrived in August. Who could have known that all the frustrating delays would bring the box to me in the middle of a pandemic, a political crisis, and wildfires that surrounded my house in smoke and threatened the homes of friends?

My anxiety was high. My fear and doubt were high. My productivity as a writer, reader, and teacher were threatened. Depression rode me like a jockey in the Derby.

And my box arrived!

A lifetime of living in my skin told me to step back and think carefully about what I wanted to track.

Meditation? No. Got that covered.

Reading? No. Can’t stop anyway.

Writing page count? Maybe, but not really an issue.

What are the things, I wondered, that I want most and are hardest for me to achieve?

The things I want to do every day. Instead of doing them every day, I binge. I push hard for two or three days, then I crash. Sure, I achieve a result, but I’d rather develop a comfortable habit of starting those activities every day—just starting. I can still binge. There’s no cap on what I do, but I crave the feeling that, like Jean Ann Lorentz, I can choose to be consistent from day to day to day.

I want my soldier filled with gold stars.

Eventually, I decided that every day I started to exercise and started to write, I’d get a gold star. I made the rule that I had to do both for at least five minutes, else no star.

I know that sounds trivial to some people, but it is not trivial for me. Five days in a row of ten hours a day? No problem. Then, two weeks off, then a day or two of four hours… Yup, that I can do, but that means no stars for two weeks. It also means my soldier would likely be taken down for a couple days during that two weeks.

Five minutes of two activities I want to make a habit every day of my life is doable, I decided.

So, I began on August 24th. So far, I have not missed a single day. My soldier is filling with stars!

Looking back, I see in this and many other successful behaviors in my life, that the more the nature of, and behavior around, an activity in my adult life matches a desire, joy, or habit of my earliest memories, the more likely I am to succeed.

Jean Ann, my old friend, if you’re out there, my soldier is finally marching in synch. I got me some gold stars!

Ousting Our Isms

by Christina Lay

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Recently, a friend of mine who is clearing out her house invited me to come over and help myself to some books. Since we share a love of fantasy and science fiction, I appeared on her doorstep, Bugs Bunny style, before she even disconnected the call.  A box of free books? Hell, yeah.

My friend escorted me to a room full of books and left me to it. Most of them were old paperbacks from the era of tiny fonts, tacky covers and vaguely brownish paper, but we all know we can’t judge a book by its publisher’s bad formatting choices, right?

I filled my box with these musty treasures, mostly titles I’d never heard of, but I did find a couple fantasy series from the nineties that had been mentioned fondly in my presence more than once, so I took all that I could find of those.  When I informed my friend, she gave me a sideways look and gently informed me that one of the authors was not exactly “woke”. I shrugged and said that it’s hard to find older fantasy and SF written by men that is.  It didn’t bother me much back in the day, unless an author was really off the rails misogynistic, and I suspected it wouldn’t bother me now.

Things have changed. I have to admit that thirty years ago, most of the sexism in the books would have slipped by me, because it was so normal. So par for the course. And also because I was more than a little sexist myself.

Wait. What?

I’ll get to that part in a minute, but first let me describe the “normal” sexism in the beloved series I just dove into.  Given the genre and the era, it’s really not that terrible. The sexism comes from default language and perspectives that are tiresomely run-of-the-mill.  Basically, anyone who is a person of interest is assumed to be male unless otherwise indicated.  If you are male, in a male dominated world, you probably would never notice this.  However, as a woman, you start to notice when society seems to be made up of strictly men: police, political leaders, bosses, authority figures, anyone with a job—basically anybody with any power or standing other than “wife of” or “girlfriend of”, are all automatically “he”, whether a named character or not.  People are not “people”, they are “men”.  Yes, you can argue that “men” can refer to all humankind, but it doesn’t. Not really. It is left over from a time when men did stuff and women were an afterthought. Just try substituting “women” for the allegedly all-inclusive “men” and see how it feels.

The women in the world of this series are few and far between. There is the hot but tough woman cop (in love with the hero), the intrepid hot reporter (in love with the hero), the hot lady werewolf (in love with the big bad werewolf dude), and of course the occasional victim (also hot, but dead, most likely due to her being in love with the hero or villian).  Women exist in order for the hero to save or tragically not save. The hero (no doubt channeling the author) has to constantly point out that he is old-fashioned chivalrous, a gent who likes to open doors and pick up the check, but of course the tough women of action don’t appreciate this (even though they’re all in love with him). Poor guy.

Mostly, I’d rate this book irritating rather than infuriating. It’s clearly a male-centric fantasy, so what did I expect? I unfortunately have a thing for books about loner wizards, and I’d hate to have to discard the first 50 years of urban fantasy because of things like this.

I was grumbling to myself over the “everyone in the world is a man unless they’re of sexual interest to some guy” issue when an unpleasant thought occurred to me.

I scurried over to one of my many works-in-progress and yes, there it was: the use of “men” in place of “people”.  I meant everyone, but I’d managed to exclude half the human race with that one word. It was a quick fix, but it bugged me that it had slipped in.  Sure, I’m writing in a medieval setting where things are pretty much male-dominated, but that’s no excuse.  It’s one thing to make a choice about the society we’re creating in our stories, and another to unconsciously use sexist language, especially when it’s to the exclusion of my own sex.

This is where the insidious “ism” sneaks in. That little “men” brought it all back. I grew up sexist against my own sex.  Of course I would have vehemently denied it, but the truth was, I had swallowed the “people of action are men” view of the world hook, line and sinker.  The books I absorbed and the movies I watched all enforced this. Relentlessly.  I was the little girl who never wanted to be the princess while playing games of make-believe. I was Robin Hood, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes. If my sister wanted to wait around in a tower for me to rescue her, fine. I was out Getting Shit Done. Girls sat around and crocheted, or something else dull and silly.

Sure, I liked dressing up and playing with Barbies, but I knew that when it came to adventure, it was Ken and Brad who were mixing things up.

As I got older and decided I wanted to be a writer, I didn’t exactly notice that ninety percent of the writers I admired were men, but I internalized it.  As I look back, I can rattle off a stream of male writers I enjoyed in my youth, and only one woman, Ursula K. LeGuin.  Yes, I knew that women could and did write plenty of great fiction, but…

My reckoning came in college.  I took a class called Education in Capitalist Society (liberal arts, anyone?). In it, we were presented with a study in which groups of people were asked to grade an essay.  These control groups were given the exact same essay, except in one group the author was identified as female, and in the other, male.

Without exception, the male-authored version received higher scores, whether or not the grader was male or female themselves.

In this study, I recognized myself.  To say it was profound to realize I had an unconscious bias against my own sex is quite the understatement. That’s powerful knowledge, and disturbing. It led to a whole reevaluation of my own writing choices and attitudes. Up to that point, my heroes had always been male, the voice I chose to write in, male.  If anyone had come up to me and said, “Men are better writers than women” I would have slapped them upside the head, and yet, deep down, I believed it.

I’d like to say that awareness miraculously cured me of this dread malady, but I’m still dealing with the repercussions of something I accepted without thought and internalized when I was a child.  Sadly, I don’t have control over the images, stories and attitudes that formed my inner landscape. I do however have control over my language. I’m a writer, and words are my medium.  Back when I wrote poetry, I learned that every single word matters. So my little slip of the keystroke, writing men instead of people, matters.

All of us who write are human, with our own sets of explicit and implicit biases.  The next time you find yourself leaning on a stereotype, using outdated language, or otherwise manifesting a lazy “ism”, instead of justifying or minimizing, I would challenge you take a good hard look at why that image or language has crept into your writing.

Yes, we writers reflect society, but let us never forget that we also help to shape it.

 

The Mystery of the Sinister Seeds

Just when I thought things could not get any weirder, news of people receiving unsolicited packages of seeds from China broke last week.  It seemed unbelievable, as much of the news of late, but this particular mystery intrigued me.   The strange packages were apparently mailed from China (no, not Wuhan), to unwitting recipients across the United States and the United Kingdom.   The mailing labels stated the contents were small jewelry items like rings, or earrings.  Instead, when recipients opened the parcels, they found small plastic bags of seeds.

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My first thought was, ‘Wow! This is a great premise for a sci-fi/horror novel, but it is really happening.”  My second thought was that the seeds might release some kind of virus or disease, but no, we already have that.  A contagious disease spread by seeds would be redundant and inefficient.

A host of other sinister possibilities rose up in my mind. Experts said, “At this point in time, we don’t have enough information to know if this is a hoax, a prank, an internet scam or an act of agricultural bio-terrorism. Unsolicited seeds could be invasive and introduce unknown diseases to local plants, harm livestock or threaten our environment.”

Would you plant seeds that arrived in your mailbox if you didn’t know what they were or where they came from?  The senders of those seeds know that humans are naturally curious and count on the fact that someone, somewhere, WILL plant those seeds just to see what happens, in spite of any warnings from the Department of Agriculture, and the trouble begins. Even if everyone who received a package of seeds just tossed them into the trash, those seeds will happily spring up in dump sites across the country.

Surely these seeds are part of a nefarious plot by evil scientists to destroy the natural flora and fauna of our part of the world via a noxious, invasive species designed to squeeze the life out all native vegetation.  It is possible the seeds carry a plant fungus or some other icky disease that will quickly proliferate, or a genetic mutation that renders all other plants sterile and unable to produce when they come in contact with the unknown plant.

Once the seeds loose havoc on the world, those that instigated the invasion will be the only ones with the antidote, and in a position to extort an exorbitant price from those at their mercy, or in exchange for power and domination.

But what if those mysterious little packages of seeds did not come from China? What if they came from somewhere beyond our planet, the first incursion of our alien overlords, preparing the planet for their habitation?  The seeds introduce alien food sources needed for their sustenance, that will destroy our own.

Of course, it is possible that the seeds could be harmless. A hoax, a prank. Or better yet,  let’s assume that the seeds have been sent by benevolent aliens with good intentions, planning to introduce peace, love and unity to the peoples of earth via a powerful new psychedelic plant that, just by inhaling the scent of its beautiful flowers, brings about a change in consciousness. I vote for that idea!

In the end, all of this seed business may simply be a “brushing scam”, something I had never heard of before.  “A brushing scam is an exploit by a vendor used to bolster product ratings and increase visibility online by shipping an inexpensive product to an unwitting receiver and then submitting positive reviews on the receiver’s behalf under the guise of a verified owner.”

A brushing scam? A plot to destroy the world by evil scientists? A psychedelic revolution?   Perhaps the plants will eradicate the murder hornets.  Only time will tell.

 

 

 

 

In-Between Place in Life and Fiction

[image error]By Lisa Alber

A few days ago, a friend sent me a recording of her pastor’s sermon. She thought I might be interested in the discussion about “liminal spaces.” In a world where the old normal is gone, yet we don’t know what the new normal will look like, we’re caught in a liminal space. A waiting place. Transition. Hopefully, transformation. This space is bewildering and disorienting and highly uncomfortable. Feelings of anxiety, crankiness, and demotivation are normal.

I’m not a religious person, but I like Richard Rohr’s description of the liminal space as “God’s waiting room.” Rohr is a Franciscan friar and writer. In this post, he wrote: “This is the sacred space where the old world is able to fall apart, and a bigger world is revealed. If we don’t encounter liminal space in our lives, we start idealizing normalcy.”

“Idealizing normalcy” is interesting, isn’t it? I’m assuming this means idealizing the old normal. We all know people who talk about good-old-days eras in their lives, whether that’s high school, or the Obama era, or even further back when things were “simple.” (Often code for before life got complicated with civil rights and equal rights and Black Lives Matters and Me Too and LGBTQIA and saving the environment and so on.)

Many of us are using this in-between time to ponder our lives. For thinking people, this strange place we’re in can lead to profound change.

I think about the folks affectionately (heh) known as “covidiots,” who refuse to wear masks, who go to rallies and packed bars, who protest their right to live free. (Sigh. No use telling these dummies that with our freedoms also comes civic responsibility.) I’m thinking these are people who hold on to the past, who avoid discomfort at all costs, who aren’t using this time to look within.

Whatever the new normal will be is coming at us at a rate of change that’s scary, and I suspect a lot of people aren’t going to adapt well. Discomfort is part of the dealio with the liminal space. I use my journal to face the discomfort, but then on other days I use Netflix to avoid the discomfort. A rollercoaster, but to be expected. I try not to beat myself up about the Netflix days. I also spend hours gardening, talking to friends, cuddling my pets. Coping mechanisms, and that’s OK.

Fiction is a huge solace for me. In fiction, we call the liminal space a “threshold.” This comes from the hero’s journey plot structure, which itself is inspired by Joseph Campbell’s HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES. Our stories would be pretty boring if we didn’t force our protagonists to grapple with transition and uncertainty and stress.

A while back, I landed on an oral storyteller’s website. (I wish I’d noted down the website so I could credit her now.) She described threshold moments as turning points in your life when you face a difficult decision or life event, or a surprising pivot that changes your life forever. Same goes for characters. We write stories about turning points. Perhaps living through a global/national turning point will help us with our stories. Like actors, we can mine what it feels like to live through this historic moment to deepen our characterizations.

Here’s an article on the in-between space that might interest you. Stay safe! xoxo, Lisa

The Hashtag, Mr. Griffin, and the Magic Metolius River, by Eric Witchey

The Hashtag, Mr. Griffin, and the Magic Metolius River

Eric Witchey

Peeing in a urinal underneath a print of Van Gough’s Starry Night feels a bit sacrilegious, but when you gotta go, you gotta go. At least I wasn’t staring at advertisements for drugs for erectile disfunction. I could only hope that the women’s bathrooms were as classy as the men’s, but I wasn’t going to check. Karen would have to deal with whatever neo-bohemian bullshit they used to decorate there.

Staring at Starry Night and a little grateful for having the bathroom to myself, at least until some other coffee shop denizen decided it was time to release their inner tensions, I decided my scouting trip had succeeded and The Hashtag would be fine for her writing hangout during our planned getaway.

By the time I had finished, walked back out through the minefield of tables, sofas, loungers, and spindle rocking chairs creaking away on the worn plank floor, I was sure. The last vestiges of doubt driven out of me by the low, slow tunes of Postmodern Jukebox’s “All About that Bass” streaming over the speakers. I reached the sidewalk outside absolutely certain that my search for her lair of creativity was over. In my imagined near future, I would go fishing, and she would create a nest in The Hashtag. It would be the perfect romantic getaway.

And, since I was already near the river, I got in my car and headed out in search of an ever-elusive bull trout.

#

Some rivers begin high on a mountainside and roll downslope like they are trying to win a sprint. When they come to the flats, they slow down and drop the mineral loads they carry as if they are too tired to carry their burden any further. Sandy bottoms, local runoff, and rotted vegetation give way to insect life, and trout are the inevitable outcome of that mad rush and panting effort.

This river, though, appears full and alive out of the side of the mountain. The fish may spontaneously generate in some hidden cavern space deep inside the dormant volcano. For all I know, they come through from another dimension all grown and hungry for insects.

Nobody can tell me they don’t.

The river sure as hell is magic, and everybody who fishes there knows it.

So, I spent the few hours I had flipping fly line before I had to drive home to the other side of the mountain.

Since the river is born inside the mountain, it has the same temperature year round. Because of that, the fishing is restricted to the gentle form, barbless lure catch-and-release only. And, because of that, the fish are huge and smart.

So, I often catch nothing, but I always love the experience of trying. And, after a couple of hours of trying, I sat down on a grassy spot a few yards from the water and just let the feather cirrus clouds, the scent of drying grass, and the sound of the riffling water fill me. I closed my eyes and lay back, and I just floated there for a while, full of river song and confidence that when Karen came to this place, she would have a magical place of her own to go to while I let my soul float over the water and the forest.

Maybe I fell asleep. Maybe I just found that meditative space that lets time slip by unnoticed. When I opened my eyes, the sunset had begun to turn the cirrus clouds a salmon red, a color I savored while gathering my vest, pole, and net.

The net tangled on a box—a green plastic box about the size of the cube of 64 crayons I had given my niece for her birthday. The oddness of the thing made me untangle the net and pick it up. I brass plate on one side said, “Robert M. Griffin. July 26, 1934. – Aug. 20th 2008. People’s Memorial Funeral Corporation, Seattle Washington.”

My WTF moment subsided as I realized what I might be holding. I almost dropped it, but instead I cautiously opened it to see if what I thought I had was what I actually had, and to my surprise, disgust, and concern, it was.

Mr. Griffin, or at least some of him, because I think if he had been there entirely there would have been more of him, was inside the box, rendered down to whitish-gray powder.

More carefully than I had picked him up, I closed the box, made sure it was sealed, and put it back exactly where I had found it, which I suspect is exactly where Mr. Griffin had instructed his loved ones to put him.

For a few moments, I considered opening the box again, pulling out the plastic bag, opening that, and loosing Mr. Griffin on the waters of the magic river, but I didn’t.

I couldn’t.

I hadn’t known him. I didn’t know where he wanted to be or why.

I did know that I had likely lain on the bank of the river in exactly the same place he may have once lain, and certainly where he now lies forever and ever—the cirrus clouds’ feathers and salmon-color overhead, the smell of the drying grass surrounding him, and the sound of the ever restless magic river washing across the land.

#

Five years passed before I once more sat on the grass where I had found Mr. Griffin. It calmed me deeply to find that he was still there, though he was harder to find because the grass had covered him and a small blackberry bush had pushed out in his direction to protect him.

Karen hadn’t liked The Hashtag. She hadn’t liked the river, either. The magic of it coming fully born and full of fish from the side of a volcano had somehow been completely lost on her. Eventually, the magic of us had also dissipated, and she had headed off downstream in the river of life while I still sat on the bank inhaling, watching, and listening with Mr. Griffin.

That was it. That was why I hadn’t tossed his ashes in the river-why he hadn’t had his ashes tossed in the river. To ride the water downstream would have been the death of the silence of the river in his soul.

I decided to revise my will when I got home. I hoped that someday, when it was my time to let go of the march of days, Starry Night bathrooms, and an endless succession of pointless places like The Hashtag, Mr. Griffin wouldn’t mind the company there, hidden in the grass under the blackberry bush on the banks of the magic river.

-End-

Cheryl’s Top Five Oregon Authors

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By Cheryl Owen-Wilson

Many readers find solace by escaping through the pages of a great book. In this time of a lock down pandemic my friends on social media have asked me for my top five of everything.  I’ve been asked for my top five movies, bread recipes–have you tried to find yeast at your local market? Yikes!—to my top five books of all time.  Now, how can anyone possibly narrow it down to five?  But, the idea of it got me to thinking about all of my amazing writer friends who I would love to see on a top five nationwide list.  Please note,  I’m fortunate to know many Oregon authors.  Since I couldn’t place them all on my list–if you—dear writing friend do not appear on my list it does not mean I didn’t thoroughly enjoy your book/books as well.

Here is what I picked from the shelves of my library:

Northwood Chronicles, Elizabeth Engrstrom

“Dark fantasy writer Engstrom starts on familiar ground, but rapidly turns this ‘novel in stories’ into a genre-blending exploration of love, aging, grief and sacrifice. Fast-paced, melancholy and beauty, the overarching narrative binds a collection of good stories into a superb if unconventional novel.”

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https://www.amazon.com/Northwoods-Chronicles-Elizabeth-Engstrom-ebook/dp/B007IA2XTQ/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=northwood+chronicles&qid=1592410062&sr=8-1

Littlest Death, Eric Witchey

Independent Publisher Book Awards Silver Medal for Fantasy Fiction International Book Award Visionary Fiction Winner One human soul and a little respect isn’t too much to ask for, but both are hard to get if you’ve only been a death for a thousand years. Shunned by other grim reapers, Littlest Death yearns for the respect given to deaths who bring human souls from Overworld into Underworld. She has only been a grim reaper for a thousand years, but she works hard at the jobs she’s given. Really hard! No other death gathers in MILLIONS of souls at a time like she does. Okay, they are just the souls of fungi, bacteria, and single-celled critters like amoebas, but—MILLIONS! If she could bring in just one human soul, the other deaths would stop looking down on her. She sets out to spy on the most accomplished death in the history of dying, Oldest Death. She figures she can learn a few things from him. And, of course, she does. She just doesn’t learn what she thought she would learn, and the learning comes hard. Desperate to become a real death, frustrated by humans and their attachments to one another, hounded by a Hell Puppy, ridiculed by other deaths, and undermined by her own ambition, she journeys the Earth and the Underworld in search of a trick that will let her gain the respect she believes she deserves. Unfortunately, her actions hurt the living, undermine the natural order, and threaten the eternal flow of souls between life and death. By the time she understands the damage she’s done, it may be too late to save herself and the souls she has hurt. An Afterlife Fantasy by award winning author Eric Witchey.

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https://www.amazon.com/Littlest-Death-Labyrinth-Souls-Novel/dp/0999098934/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=littlest+Death&qid=1592410177&sr=8-1

A Parliament of Crows, Alan Clark

Inspired by the true crimes of the Wardlaw sisters. In A Parliament of Crows, the three Mortlow sisters are prominent American educators of the nineteenth century, considered authorities in teaching social graces to young women.  They also pursue a career of fraud and murder.  Their loyalty to one another and their need to keep their secrets is a bond that tightens with each crime, forcing them closer together and isolating them from the outside world.  Their ever tightening triangle suffers from madness, religious zealotry, and a sense of duty warped by trauma they experienced as teenagers in Georgia during Sherman’s March to the Sea.  As their crimes come back to haunt them and a long history of resentments toward each other boils to the surface, their bond of loyalty begins to fray.  Will duty to family hold or will they turn on each other like ravening crows?

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https://www.amazon.com/Parliament-Crows-Alan-M-Clark/dp/099884666X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=parliament+of+crows&qid=1592410276&sr=8-1

Kilmoon: A County Clare Mystery, Lisa Alber

Californian Merrit Chase doesn’t know what she’s in for when she travels to an Irish village famous for its matchmaking festival. She simply wants to meet her father, a celebrated matchmaker, in hopes that she can mend her troubled past. Instead, her arrival triggers a rising tide of violence, and Merrit finds herself both suspect and victim, accomplice and pawn, in a manipulative game that began thirty years previously. When she discovers that the matchmaker’s treacherous past is at the heart of the chaos, she must decide how far she will go to save him from himself and to get what she wants, a family.

Lisa Alber evokes a world in which ancient tradition collides with modern village life and ageless motivators such as greed and love still wield their power. Kilmoon captures the moodiness of the Irish landscape in a brooding mystery that explores family secrets, betrayal, vengeance, and murder.

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https://www.amazon.com/Kilmoon-County-Mystery-Lisa-Alber-ebook/dp/B00J0MNS7G/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=lisa+alber+author&qid=1592412347&sr=8-5

Death is A Star, Christina Lay

A contemporary fantasy featuring time traveling Assyrian sisters, a circus in hiding, a body-snatching Demon seeking self-actualization, and heroic elephants. Theda wants only to get home to Nineveh, but her sister Irene believes controlling the demon and exploiting his unlimited power is the way to go. Theda must come to grips with her own role in this black magic mix-up and risk her bond with home, family, her beloved elephants and life itself in order to stop an ancient evil from being unleashed upon an unsuspecting modern world.

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https://www.amazon.com/Death-Star-Christina-Lay/dp/098877674X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=death+is+a+star+christina+lay&qid=1592503875&sr=8-1

If you’ve not read these authors I highly recommend you immediately add them to your “to read” list.  I would love to hear what your top five are?

How Not to Become Clutter

by Christina Lay

Like most people in this era of the New Weird, I’ve found myself stuck at home with a lot more time on my hands. And, like most people, I suspect, my eye has turned to the many neglected projects and pockets of irritation in my house. One dire enemy of my serenity is clutter. Being a writer, I have enormous piles of paper everywhere. Even though I rarely print out entire manuscripts anymore, I still have an abundance of notebooks, random papers, sticky notes, folders, and all sorts of failed attempts at organization. My cabinets and closets overfloweth.

And then there are those piles. You know the ones. Books. Teetering towers of to-be-reads covering coffee tables and blocking passageways.  Now normally, I don’t consider books clutter. They have a clear reason d’etre and are not to be filed away. Each one is like a little work of art just waiting to be opened and savored. Nevertheless, at some point one has to acknowledge the growing fire hazard and do something to organize the stacks.  This process got me to thinking on a certain phenomena: the abandoned book.

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Most of the books stacked around are still waiting for me to crack the cover, but there’s another class of book altogether: the ones I started but never finished, usually with a bookmark or feather stuck somewhere about halfway through the pages.  They create a sense of unease in me as I pick them up, read the back copy, and try to remember why I stopped reading.

I’m a writer, so I can’t help analyzing books as I read, even if it is on a low simmer in the back of my mind.  If a book really grabs, I whisper to myself; how did the author do this? How did they get me to forget these characters are fictional and convince me stay up late, read just one more chapter, worry about their fate even when I’m not reading? And then I look at my own work and wonder if I’m achieving that magic.

The flip is also true. If I find myself losing interest, or being kicked out of the story too often, or actually getting pissed off, I ask myself why. That’s usually more obvious. It’s been a while since I’ve flat out thrown a book across the room, but I have decisively put certain books aside.  More common though is the Slow Drift.  The loss of interest. The putting down and actually forgetting to pick up again. I didn’t really mean to abandon those books, I just found something better to read.  These books for the most part are well written, and good enough to get published by a major publisher, but they stumbled when they could’ve soared.

I’m not really interested in giving bad reviews, so I’ve been gathering notes and keeping them to myself.  I’ve got a compendium of mental notes on “How These Books Became Clutter”, and thought I’d collect them to share them with you.  Mostly these are books that I received for free at writers’ conferences, where publishers will give away large stacks of books in order to create buzz. Mostly they don’t. Learn from their mistakes and don’t do these things:

Spend a lot of time building up to one big event or conflict, and then have it happen off-stage, or not at all. In the particular book I’m thinking of, I was stunned to realize the author had jumped ahead a decade or so, completely bypassing the big conflict (a war) that all the dramatic tension had been leading toward, or so I thought.  Stoking the fires of expectation and then dousing them with disinterest is never a good idea. And yet, I kept reading, because the author was very good. And then, they did this:

Suddenly switch genres.  This again plays into readers’ expectations.  Up until the point where I lost interest in the book, it had been an alternate history in the steampunk vein, with little hints of magic here and there. Then, after the above referenced time jump, a new cast of characters was introduced, one of which was a magician cat shifter. Now normally, I’m all over that sort of thing, but it was like I was reading an entirely new book and everything that had happened before didn’t matter. I lost interest.

Develop interesting characters and then abandon them. Multiple points of view are awesome if you’ve got a good knack for voice and characterization and I don’t mind chapter-to-chapter head hopping at all. However, I do expect to revisit a character after I’ve spent a lot of time getting to know them. In the book in question, there were several POV characters and imagine my surprise when I discovered that one who I’d considered a major protagonist was dead, murdered off stage with barely a mention.  I never did find out what happened because I set the book aside and forgot to pick it up again.

Have allegedly smart characters make mind-numbingly stupid choices. I shouldn’t even have to point this out, but it continues to happen. In service of the plot, a writer forces a character to do something that is so obviously wrong, bad and doomed to crushing failure that even the least attentive reader will be going “No, no, no!” Now, characters are human, they are flawed, they make big mistakes, sometimes whopping ones, but they have their reasons.  Might not be something we’d do, but we can understand why they might do it. The choice that enrages your reader is just never good (although kudos on making them care!)

Create a relentless atmosphere of gloom and doom and fill it with hopeless, unlikable people.  Now if you’re writing grimdark horror, maybe this is okay, but in your average novel, the reader needs something to root for.  Sometimes protagonists are not likable. Sometimes we might root for their failure and comeuppance. Sometimes a dark and evil world might be fascinating in it’s own right.  But if the main protag is a jerk, and everyone else is a jerk, and there’s no hope of any redemption, then at some point I’m going to ask myself why I’m reading this story. And then I’ll stop reading it.

Explain to the reader in excruciating detail all of the protagonist’s emotions and the historical reasons for those emotions. Repeat ad nauseum. I’m exaggerating this particular flaw, because that’s what I do, but I find a book is so much stronger if I feel the emotions alongside the character, rather than having them explained to me. This is one of the trickiest and most rewarding skills in writing; creating emotion without saying “Fred was sorrowful because his parents died horribly when he was a wee lad”.  Instead, let me know about Fred’s parents and then show Fred acting out in his own special way, or not. Show the reader how that event affects him to this day.

Hide the fact that the book is part of a series and not a stand-alone. Boy, does this one grate on my last nerve.  I’ll be about two thirds in and start to notice that the remaining pages are rather thin. There’s no way the author is going to be able to wrap this up in that many pages, I think. And then, I get suspicious. I start scanning the interior matter and that’s when I’ll find buried somewhere in a tiny font that this is Book One out of fifteen.  Perhaps I don’t abandon this book if I’ve been enjoying it, but if it ends on a cliffhanger without warning, I’m much less likely to rush out and by Books 2 through 15, because I’m pissed.  This is easy to fix. Just put Book 1 on the cover. Or the name of the series, at least. Hiding the truth will not earn you any fans.

I suppose that’s enough for now. I’m sure I’ll have another long list of not-to-do’s as I work my way through these piles, but hopefully, I’ll have a longer list of to-do’s.  Readers want to love your book, they really do. Don’t make them set it aside.

Amazing!

In spite of all of the trouble, what a wonderful time we live in. We can be amazed by images sent back to us from the Hubble telescope from all over the universe; the galaxies, the stars, the planets and their moons. I love to peruse those mesmerizing pictures of Jupiter. We understand and map DNA, we  study and photograph tiny atoms and share those images on media that can be seen all over the world.  We can discuss quantum physics and alternate universes around the dinner table. We can learn how to change oil on our car, how to paint butterflies or can tomatoes on YouTube.

We can connect with people all over the planet in ways that no previous generations could have imagined.   Think of how all of this exposure to grand ideas and images changes us and expands our view of ourselves, and of the world.  Children growing up today know more about the universe, the world and their fellow humans than ever before.  This gives me great hope for the future, since it becomes more and more obvious that we are all living on one planet, and that everything we do affects everyone else.

No matter our circumstance, there is simple joy to be found in just walking out of the front door and looking at the sky, the clouds floating by, taking in all of the different and subltle shades of the green trees.  Tuning in to the bird song, the rustling breeze, and take a deep breath of wonderful, life giving, air.  Breathing air that, only last week, was being breathed by someone on the other side of the planet.  Amazing!  This is where I am at today.  Finding simple joy in simple things, being aware in the moment, of being alive, and of livingness in all around me.

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Sunset over the Salish Sea

This doesn’t mean that I am not aware the suffering, the poverty, the pain and death that is also part of this life.  There is the dark side of all of that enhanced communication and connection, where information can be changed and nefarious agendas propagated on the very same platforms that spread hope, beauty and connection, or it can be used to escape or replace real connection.  Sometimes it is hard to allow ourselves to experience joy, because there is suffering, and our hearts are heavy.

Embracing, and accepting the shadow and the dark of life and of myself at the same time as the co-existent good is what has made me whole.  Instead of projecting our rejected shadow out onto someone else, take it back and give it a place at your table.  Carl Jung said that if everyone took back their own projections, there would be world peace.  From experience, I know this to be true within my own life.

Becoming aware of the goodness all around us, and of the small joys in life makes us more human and more whole.  We cannot control what will happen next, only our response to it. In that, we have more freedom than we can imagine. If we can change our minds, we can change the world.

I will leave you with three thoughts from one of my guiding lights, Victor Frankl, from his book, Man’s Search for Meaning. These are not mere words, but keys to wisdom that can be used to unlock secrets of how to change your mind.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

“Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.”

Where are you finding joy and strength these days?

 

Free Time in the Time of Corona, Let’s Bitch About It

[image error]By Lisa Alber

I see many optimistic and supportive posts out there about how to survive — no, thrive during! — shelter in place. I’m past all that. I want to see posts by people who are flailing and not doing their best and going a little nuts. People, where are those posts?!?!? Those are the posts that would truly help me. Just to know I’m not the only one, you know what I mean?

(I live alone; this might be a factor. Heh.)

I re-read my last blog post, dated February 26th. Oh my god — seems ridiculous and hilarious now. I’d just gotten laid off from the day job and was full of hope about my new writing journey. Then a few weeks later, the Corona virus hit and the shite hit the fan. My life didn’t change all that much — I was at home anyhow — yet it did.

The 2/26 post feels like a lifetime ago. I’ve been writing/revising most mornings, so that’s good. Yet it’s amazing how little I’ve accomplished. I like a desultory pace of life, but something about being forced into this pace has dulled my brain. I hear this is called “pandemic fog.”

There’s a difference between being at home building a new life and being forced to stay home feeling uncertain that I can build a new life (given the economy, etc). My neurotic tendencies are on high alert, ready to send me into a stressed state for no good reason. (Case in point: Yesterday, my inability to find the Cancel Subscription button on the sundancenow.com website.)

At first, I was all bustle and vigor. Hey, this is a lark! This is quite the fun little period! It’s peaceful and there’s no traffic and people are friendlier than usual! I have so much time and I’m going to accomplish all my dreams!

Now, it’s more like: Which streaming channel has the longest free trial period?

As a friend said last week, “This isn’t cute anymore.” The bloom is definitely off the proverbial rose, and I’m feeling it. (I WANT TO HIT MY LOCAL FOR A PINT, WITH FRIENDS OR NOT, I DON’T CARE!)

I have a half-baked theory that the protests surged when they did, in part, because people maxed out their tolerance for “me” time. God forbid we have time to ponder our lives, really THINK about who we are, what we want, and so on. It can be uncomfortable, even painful. Some people will do anything to avoid discomfort, no matter how short-sighted  and idiotic.

I have a high tolerance for “me” time. Even so, to lessen the impact of shelter in place on my psyche, I journal every morning. I’ll burn the journals after all this done, that’s for sure. Witness this gem from today’s drivel-fest: “Yep, got up earlier to get going, so that’s cool.”

Uh-huh. What’s the point of getting up earlier, anyhow? Who cares that I’m succumbing to nocturnal tendencies, lights out at 1:00 A.M.?

As the days pass in a blur of uniformity, I’ve also succumbed to binge-watching obscure foreign crime dramas. (Recently watched an Icelandic one called “Trapped.”) At first, I diligently walked the park every day to get out of the house, keep sane, randomly chat with people (socially distanced, of course). Now I don’t care so much.

A few days ago I realized I’d reached my lowest point when I bought a jumbo bag of Red Vines. Jumbo. Bag. One thing to eat Red Vines at the movies — which I don’t do anymore, anyhow — another thing to plop the bag on the coffee table, readily available while I binge-watch.

When all this was a lark, I grooved on cooking, and even baking. Now I’d rather go pick up a Papa Murphy’s pizza, or on a healthier note, Trader Joe’s ready-made salads. Not doing so well in the food department, generally. Standing in line to enter grocery stores feels too Soviet Russia, and who wants to be reminded of that country given the upcoming election? I surely don’t.

On that sourpuss note, I’ve officially reached the end of my tolerance for bitching. FOR NOW. Hope everyone is keeping healthy, mentally as well as physically, xoxo