Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 112

HOW DO WE KNOW WHO WE ARE?

  Sometimes we know who we are  by the words of others important to us.

Sometimes our sense of self seem unrelated to how we look.

Take Ursula K. Le Guin's take on the temperaments of her favorite pets:
"Dogs don’t know what they look like. 
Dogs don’t even know what size they are. 
No doubt it’s our fault, for breeding them into such weird shapes and sizes. 
My brother’s dachshund, standing tall at eight inches, 
would attack a Great Dane in the full conviction that she could tear it apart. 
When a little dog is assaulting its ankles the big dog often stands there looking confused:
  “Should I eat it? Will it eat me? I am bigger than it, aren’t I?” 
But then the Great Dane will come and try to sit in your lap and mash you flat, 
under the impression that it is a Peke-a-poo."





" Cats know exactly where they begin and end. 
When they walk slowly out the door that you are holding open for them, 
and pause, 
leaving their tail just an inch or two inside the door, they know it. 
They know you have to keep holding the door open. 
That is why their tail is there. 
It is a cat’s way of maintaining a relationship.
 Housecats know that they are small, and that it matters.
 When a cat meets a threatening dog and can’t make either a horizontal or a vertical escape, 
it’ll suddenly triple its size, inflating itself into a sort of weird fur blowfish
and it may work, because the dog gets confused again:
' I thought that was a cat. Aren’t I bigger than cats? Will it eat me? ”

 But do pets know they are beautiful?   And what is beauty anyway? 

Ursula K. Le Guin had thoughts on beauty as well:
"I think of when I was in high school in the 1940s: 
the white girls got their hair crinkled up by chemicals and heat so it would curl, 
and the black girls got their hair mashed flat by chemicals and heat so it wouldn’t curl. 
Home perms hadn’t been invented yet,
 and a lot of kids couldn’t afford these expensive treatments, 
so they were wretched because they couldn’t follow the rules,
 the rules of beauty.
 Beauty always has rules. It’s a game. 
I resent the beauty game when I see it controlled by people who grab fortunes from it 
and don’t care who they hurt. 
I hate it when I see it making people so self-dissatisfied that they starve and deform and poison themselves."

What do you think  when you see the bloated faces  of movie and music stars  who have used Botox  and surgical attempts  to cling to what they see as Beauty?
How do you define Beauty?

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!

The very heart of the Wonder Woman movie 

was when Diana appalled by the maimed and wounded in the trenches bordering No Man's Land

is begged by a frail mother and her daughter to help her starving village behind German lines.

Steve tells her that no man has been able to cross that bloody ground in two years, 

and they have to get on with their mission.

Diana refuses to accept that:





Here is a bit more of that scene:


No Man's Land is crossed by the Allies because Diana inspires the soldiers 

by her heart not her strength.

Why do you think Studio executives make such enormous blunder? 
 Is it that they have forgotten what makes a good story?  

Heart
WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Love the graphics 
in the credits:

IWSG post_WHAT EVERY STRUGGLING WRITER NEEDS TO KNOW

John Green would tell you it is to find emotional truth ...

   Even if we’re not the same as the characters we read, they are all dealing with things:

   issues of who they are, who they should be, what they should and shouldn’t do

   that we all deal with, in their own ways.


Authors from John Steinbeck to Nicholas Sparks would say it is Perseverance.


Authors from Stephen King to Alyssa Rosenberg explaining that to be a successful writer

you to need to read everything and everyone on your subject.

If you’re a day late on an old idea, you’re not of any use.


If you want to get further depressed, listen to the poet, Ranier Maria Rilke tell you:

“Nobody can advise you and help you, nobody.”  

But that's poets for you.


Work ethic, knowledge, skill, perseverance -- 
none of them is as important as the one, single most important thing:


LUCK.

You don’t want to be told that, to some fairly consequential degree, your success, or lack thereof, is beyond your control.

But it’s good to keep in mind that if there were a sure formula for success, everyone would be successful —

and that if talent and hard work were the key to fame and fortune,

there wouldn’t be so many talented hacks with bestsellers.


So do you give up?

Of course not.

You just accept reality for what it is: mostly out of your control.

Since you cannot control luck --

You work on what you can control:

Work ethic, knowledge, skill, perseverance

There comes a point where no one is going to tell what you should read,

what you should write,

and moreover, no one is going to point this out for you.

Making time to write is not easy, but until we all win the Powerball,

we all need to carve out a few hours each week to focus on our writing.

Protect this time with your life.

One last thing:
 Pick an Idol & Act “As If”.

You may not know what to do, but your professional idol does.

When I’m working on a novel, and I’m stuck, I often think


“What would Roger Zelazny do here?”
Sometimes, Roger would have the exact right approach …

other times, it’s obvious that he’s no help.

Maybe it’s Fitzgerald. Maybe it’s O’Connor. Maybe it's Raymond Chandler.

Maybe it’s none of them.
But thinking about the writing as if I were (fill in the blank)

helps to make me see that there are multiple ways to approach a story,

multiple ways to make decisions, organize the manuscript.


I hope this helps in some small way.

Death Is The End If You Think Life Is Only About You

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N758R96

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”  - Mark Twain



“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never having lived.”  - Samuel McCord





“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”   - Nicola Tesla



“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”   - Wolf Howl



"The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts."   - The Turquoise Woman




Here is a rule to remember in the future, when anything tempts you to feel bitter: 
Think not "This is misfortune," but "To bear this worthily is good fortune.”   - Marcus Aurelius


“Father, Teach us:        
To give, and not to count the cost

To fight, and not to heed the wounds,         

To toil, and not to seek for rest,         

To labor, and not to ask for reward,
 
Save that of knowing that we do thy will”
― St. Ignatius of Loyola



“Father, may those who love us love us,
           and those who do not love us,
           may You turn their hearts,
           and if You cannot turn their hearts
           may You turn their ankles
          that we may know them by their limping.”
         ~ Prayer of Victor Standish.

EMERSON'S JULY 4th WORDS TO LINCOLN

 “The world is a parable,  the habitation of symbols, the phantoms of  spiritual things immortal  shown in material shape.” – Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

One of the reasons I love writing historical fantasy is that I can intersect historical figures who never really met.
I play fair: I use mostly their exact words recorded elsewhere to stay true to their natures.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LY15Y0W Only 99 cents

{It is July 4th, 1867, aboard the flying steamship, Xanadu , on its way to Paris ...
The Texas Ranger, Sam McCord, saved Lincoln's life at Ford's Theater though the president's wife was killed by a stray bullet ...
Lincoln hates McCord ...
not for his wife's death but for the relief he feels for being freed from an intolerable marriage.
Not being able to admit to himself the shame of that relief, Lincoln sublimates it into hate for the well-meaning McCord.
Lincoln has boarded the Xanadu with General Sherman who hates McCord for stopping his bloody march through Georgia.
The two are there to enact a terrible revenge against the honeymooning McCord. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson has joined his Texican friend to celebrate the man's marriage.
See a bit of the 4th's proceedings through the sad, cynical eyes of McCord.}



In the afternoon the ship's company assembled aft, on deck, under the awnings; the flute, the asthmatic melodeon, and the consumptive clarinet crippled "The Star-Spangled Banner."   
The choir, aided and abetted by NikolaTesla, chased it to cover, with the boy coming in with a peculiarly lacerating screech on the final note and slaughtering it.
Nobody mourned.
We carried out the corpse on three cheers.  
And then former President Lincoln, arm in a sling and enthroned behind a cable locker with the American flag spread over it, rose up and read the Declaration of Independence 
which politicians have all listened to so often without paying any attention to what it really meant.   
After that, the President made a hollow-sounding speech about America’s greatness 
which he so religiously attested to and so fervently ignored in his actions when president.
In came the choir into court again, with the complaining instruments, and assaulted "Hail Columbia"; 
and when victory hung wavering in the scale, Nikola returned with his dreadful wild-goose screech turned on and the choir won, of course.
Emerson walked to the podium and replaced Lincoln to pronounce the benediction, 
“Mr. Clemens said to me earlier that which distinguishes this day from all others is that both orators and artillerymen shoot blank cartridges.”
Amidst the scattering of polite laughter, Emerson sighed, “Let it not be so this July 4th.     Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirits of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed, else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.”
He stared somberly at Lincoln and Sherman.  “Do not let the flower of liberty die, gentlemen.”

TRAGIC EXCHANGE RATE_July 4th Post

“The cost of a thing is the amount  of what I will call life  which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”  - Henry David Thoreau, Walden 

 The Tomb of the Unknowns is a monument dedicated to American service members  who have died without  their remains being identified. 
It is also known as the   Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,  but it has never been officially named.
 It is located in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, United States of America. 


Thoreau moved into his Walden Pond cabin on this day in 1845.
In Walden, Thoreau claimed that his move occurred on Independence Day only “by accident,” 
and that others should find their own time and path to personal freedom.

Politicians will pontificate endlessly today about the cost in millions of American lives for our freedom.
But what did those deaths really buy and were all our wars necessary?



Certainly, the Revolutionary War ...



And World War I:
First, America had no choice:
 The Germans sunk Lusitania which was a British ship and contained American soldiers, 128 died. 

Second, it was the Zimmermann Telegram, 
Germany told Mexico to declare war on America which outraged them. 

And lastly, Germans sank anything in their way with their deadly submarines. 
So what else could America do?


The Civil War? 
Basically, it was about clinging to power and the inability to see all humans as beings of worth.
States were given congressmen in the House of Representatives based on the population of the state.  

But the Northern States objected to the South having it both ways --
people as property AND as countable population.

So a Sad Day in America came to pass with  the 3/5 Compromise
Congress decided a slave would be counted as 3/5 of a person.

And things rapidly went downhill from there.
So over 600,000 Americans died tragically because politicians 
could not abide by the Bill of Rights and common decency.

World War II  was thrust upon America, and we had to fight it.


Yet. study History, and you will find that the majority of our wars sprang from a breakdown in clear thinking in Congress
and politicians acting to entrench their personal and political power.

So what is the value of  political power and ambition?
Millions of American lives.

But our military must always remain strong,for tyrants around the world are amoral and predatory.

Because most wars are unjust does not negate the fact 
that eventually some insane world leader(s) will force America to defend its citizens with its armed might.

"The condition upon which  God hath given liberty to man  is eternal vigilance;  which condition if he break,  servitude is at once  the consequence of his crime  and the punishment of his guilt." - John Philpot Curran

WYNONNA EARP does VANITY FAIR

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/06/wynonna-earp-syfy-season-2
What?
You say my title should read:  

VANITY FAIR does Wynonna Earp?
You obviously do not know Wynonna.  
No one does Wynonna.  She does them!
Of course, being Vanity Fair, though it enjoys the series, it fails to see it clearly.  
As Wynonna's sister, Waverly, would say: 
"As the prig is bent,  so the snob's inclined."  
Wynonna might say:


Wynonna Earp is a show that cares for its fans ...
so much so that the cast live-tweets to its viewers on Friday evening 
while the fans watch, letting them feel listened to:

Then, there is the humor (wait for the Deadpool cameo)


And the music is outstanding.  This is one of my favorite tunes from the show.



Wynonna puts the Bad in black sheep ... especially when her sister is in danger


And Wynonna refuses to be cowed even when fighting a demon


The show Wynonna Earp series shows that you can be serious in content without being serious in tone.
It just doesn't target males as its audience.  
And the women do not have to die constantly to free up the male leads for more romance.

Like Supernatural?  I bet you will love Wynonna Earp.
C'mon,Try it out on SyFy some Friday night.

GONE WITH THE WIND was published today in 1936

"Forget it, Louis. No Civil War picture ever made a nickel"
–Irving Thalberg to Louis B. Mayer
"I was the only Negro in the theater, 

and when Butterfly McQueen went into her act, I felt like crawling under the rug"
–Malcolm X


As WWII waged and Americans watched the Old World of Europe crumble, 

they were reassured by GWTW that their American world would live on, no matter what might happen. 


In London, during the War, GWTW was a very popular film, playing throughout the War years. 

It was also popular in liberated Europe after the War, even without subtitles. 

In Nazi Germany, however, Scarlett O'Hara was seen as a bad role model for German women, and subsequently the film was banned.


 In 1926, Mitchell was forced to quit her job as a reporter at the Atlanta Journal to recover from a series of physical injuries. 

With too much time on her hands, Mitchell soon grew restless. 

Working on a Remington typewriter, a gift from her second husband, John R. Marsh, in their cramped one-bedroom apartment, 

Mitchell began telling the story of an Atlanta belle named Pansy O’Hara.

 Mitchell drew on the tales she had heard from her parents and other relatives, 

as well as from Confederate war veterans she had met as a young girl. 

While she was extremely secretive about her work, 

Mitchell eventually gave the manuscript to Harold Latham, an editor from New York’s MacMillan Publishing. 

Latham encouraged Mitchell to complete the novel, with one important change: the heroine’s name. 

Mitchell agreed to change it to Scarlett, 

now one of the most memorable names in the history of literature.

Have you ever READ  Gone With The Wind?
What did you think of the prose,  the portrayal of the characters  and their motivations?
Do you think the novel  and the movie,  GONE WITH THE WIND,  are still important?

WHY NOT QUIT?

1. It's not the destination that is the treasure but the gems you pick up along the way.

    You can never know all that is within you if you don't test yourself.

    The people you meet along the way, both those that hurt as well as those who heal, will teach you how to be all you can be ... if you but listen.


2. Are you asking the wrong questions?

    Our being is filled with what we focus on. If you ask questions like, "How come I can't do this? Why is this so hard?"

    The mind may reply out of its despair, "Because you suck! Nothing goes your way! You don't deserve it that's why! You always fail! You aren't skilled enough!"

     Ask instead, "Is it possible for me to keep going? What can I do to make this easier?"


3. Tomorrow is not promised to anyone:

    No one has promised you that you're going to wake up in good health tomorrow with the ability to “get it all done.”

    Cherish the moment by appreciating the fragile beauty of it and by keeping the dream alive for yourself and others.


4. Think of the future YOU.

     Ten years from now don't you want to be able to look back on a life of being all you could be despite falls and mistakes?  We all fall.  Not all stagger back up ... only those who ten years later look back with pride on a life fully lived.


5. Driving with a near empty gas tank.

    People run out of gas in their automobile every day.  It is just as easy to keep a tank almost full as it is to keep it almost empty.

     You just have to stop to refill when you notice the needle dipping.

     Is your needle dipping right now?

     Then refill.

     Whatever makes you smile ... walking along the beach, listening to great music, talking to an old friend, watching a comedy.  DO IT.


6. REMEMBER -

       Continuing to try gives hope of a better outcome or more positive experiences, but quitting only guarantees no reward at all.


7. Your life is a song:

     The music may be forced on you, but the lyrics you choose to sing to it makes all the difference.

    
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MPZL0FB/  Only $1.99 when you buy the 99 cent Kindle book!

4 TIPS TO MAKE YOUR eBOOK STAND OUT

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M6AK3HE
The immediacy and convenience of ebooks and digital content has had a marked impact on how people today read.

Authors are beginning to realize that they can publish freely and digitally distribute their work 

for nothing other than their time and a bit of their money.

Readers are beginning to realize that with an eReader, they have access to a small library of books in their purse or their backpack 

whenever they need something to do while waiting for any number of things.


BUT HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF eAUTHORS ARE OUT THERE HAWKING THEIR BOOKS!  HOW DO YOU STAND OUT?


1.) BE MAGNETIC -


  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HIU5O38
Daniel Craig, dressed in a tuxedo, walks into a crowded room of middle-aged, used car salesmen.  Who will draw your eye?
People do judge a book by its cover.  You have to catch the eye with mystery, danger and color.
A good cover can be a great marketing tool for an ebook. 
You want your cover to make someone scanning through a website, stop and click your ebook. 
You don’t want to be tacky or overbearing, but the cover should draw attention.
In the wide-open publishing world, a cover gives readers their first impression of what to expect from an author’s book. 
For now, the quality of a cover is a good indication of which authors have invested more time into their work than others. 
Did the cover for DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE's sequel, 

THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT (right sidebar) draw your eye?

2.) BE READER FRIENDLY -
The easier you make the purchasing step for your customers, the better. 
This can be done by making your ebook as visible as possible. 
Every time you mention your book or yourself online,

provide links to make it easy for people to find your content or more information about you. 
Let’s say you just put up a book trailer on youtube. 
That youtube page needs a link to your book’s webpage or blog and your blog needs a link to the video. 

This is called cross-linking. 

3.) THE THREE MUSKETEERS had a point -

The best marketing tactic is to write more than one good book.
Each new title will broaden your name recognition and generate more sales for all your previous ones.

That’s because many readers are “binge readers.”
They find an author they like, and they then seek out and scoop up every single title that the author has written previously.

{Only 99 cents! What a bargain, right?}   (The isolated Hollywood film crew for the first talking Western is hunted by Nightmare )
Every successful author out there agrees:
The single best “marketing tactic” that you can employ, by far, is to write and publish your next book.
In fact, many of them counsel that you shouldn’t even bother to begin doing any promotions until you’ve written and published at least three books.
Success in indie publishing is a marathon, not a sprint.
Each new book released will attract new fans, prompting them to go back and buy all the prior books in the series.

That’s how bestselling authors expand their audience over time, often geometrically.

(Again, only 99 cents!)  
{Find out what happens when the Nameless Ones catch McCord 
wounded and left for dead}

4.) WHAT'S THAT BURNING?  OH, IT'S YOUR BRAND -
“Brand” yourself and your book.
Carve out a narrow, distinctive “niche” in the book marketplace based on some catchy concept, theme, or image
that will appeal to your target readers, but simultaneously distinguish your work from all others in your genre.
As Alex Cavanaugh says of my linked books:

They exist in a common mythic universe is Lovecraftian in scope and design -- 

one minor character in one book becomes a major one in another.

The setting of a haunted jazz club in the French Quarter in New Orleans whose stories go back (so far to 1834) is unique. 
I flit from time period to time period sometimes even from one exotic locale to another.
McCord is a supernatural Paladin as Victor Standish is a paranormal KIM.
Bottom line: 
Find some catchy, distinctive concept that works for you.
Next, use your “brand” in everything you do to promote your work:
book covers, author photos, blog designs, promotional copy, business cards, etc.
That kind of focus and integration will guarantee that your “brand” will become uniquely identified with you,
making you and your work memorable for your target readers.
My header is done, as are many of my covers, by the incomparable Leonora Roy.

Their design is crafted by the artistic Heather McCorkle. 
When you see my book covers, you know at a glance it is from me.
So there you have some ideas.  I hope they were helpful.
SAMUEL McCORD's SAGA
in chronological order: {Though each book stands on its own}
 1.) DRAGONS OF THE BARBARY COAST  2.) RITES OF PASSAGE  3.) ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM
 4.) TALES OF THE LAST WOLF
 5.) The NOT-SO-INNOCENTS ABROAD
 6.) The NOT-SO- INNOCENTS AT LARGE
 7.) DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE 8.) THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT
 9.) HER BONES ARE IN THE BADLANDS 10.) FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE 11.) CREOLE KNIGHTS 12.) HUNTER's MOON
 13.) BURNT OFFERINGS
VICTOR STANDISH 
in order:
 1.) THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH 2.) UNDER A VOODOO MOON 3.) THE RIVAL       Much of the action occurs in 1834 New Orleans
*) END OF DAYS      Victor is a "soul echo" in this, and the tale is narrated by his ghoul friend, Alice Wentworth -- and has all my major heroes in it.
 4.) THE THREE SPIRIT KNIGHT

Go to 6:34 for the meat of this video