Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 123

Tyrean Martinson Reflects Upon How A Hero Loses His Way

Welcome fellow Anthologist,  Tyrean Martinson, to my cyber-home!

tyreantigger@gmail.comhttp://tyreanswritingspot.blogspot.com/
Daydreamer, writer, teacher, believer – 
Tyrean Martinson lives near the Puget Sound with her husband and daughters.
 With her B.A. in Education and English, she teaches writing classes to home-school teens 
and she writes speculative, contemporary, poetry, experimental hint fiction, and writing books.

Tyrean has graciously agreed to answer my questions upon the themes of our anthology:

What makes a person a lost soul?
 A lost soul is someone who has lost his/her purpose, inner strength, faith, mojo – 
their drive, love, and/or hope.
 Sometimes a lost soul is just someone who is drifting or 
someone who is going the wrong direction against their own gifts and abilities.

What makes a person a Legend? 
 When someone sacrifices something of themselves or their whole self to help, serve, or save others. 
I guess I’m saying deeds done because of love/compassion that the hero has for others and sometimes it involves his/her death. 
It helps if this deed is told and retold otherwise they become unknown heroes or forgotten soldiers.

How do we lose our way? 
I think there are way too many ways that we can lose our way. 
Mainly, I think we lose our way because of selfishness, self-concern, self-righteousness, shame, or a sense of failure. 
When we start focusing inward without ever looking to faith, community, or other people, we lose purpose.

How do we find our way back to ourselves? 

 Sometimes, it takes reflection on our past, or our faith, or our role in our community. 

Sometimes, it takes a jolt of circumstances to force us off the lost path and onto the right one back to ourselves and back to being a vibrant part of life. 

Maud, my character in "Of Words and Swords," gets a jolt. 

Reflection didn't work well for him. 

Thanks so much, Tyrean, for being gracious enough to answer these pesky questions of mine!

Look her up on the HERO LOST ANTHOLOGY WEBPAGE!
 https://lostheroanthology.wordpress.com/
Be sure to tell her how much you enjoyed her answers here! 
 

WHEN EVERYONE IS YELLING_IWSG post

Can Anyone Hear What You Are Saying?
Sadly, no.
We IWSG 2017 Anthologists have a great new web-page to promote our fascinating book:https://lostheroanthology.wordpress.com/



All of us, especially Renee Cheung, has worked very hard on it so of course we want you to pay us a visit.

 But how to get the attention of the internet beyond the Author Blog Ghetto?
Over a million books were publishedlast year alone.
To call the book marketplace over-crowdedis an understatement!
I could promise a date with Ryan Goslingto the person buying the most copies of our Anthology.

But his publicist and attorney keep sending me certified letters mentioning strange wordslike CEASE and DESIST in response to my repeated requestsfor his help.
Party Poopers.
So what to do?

In your part of the country The DA VINCI CODE was probably an instant success.
Not so much hereabouts.
It took long months of slowly building positive buzz to make it a best seller here.
Which brings me back to the HERO LOST ANTHOLOGY WEBPAGE

Day by Day, new posts will be addedgiving you new insights to thedifferent stories.
Take mine on WHY MYTH MATTERS:

https://lostheroanthology.wordpress.com/2017/01/25/why-myths-matter/
As you continue to visit,the more you will want to readthe evocative tales of loss and redemptionthat make up our Anthology.
Don't Miss This Ride!

IWSG's ELLEN JACOBSON and the ghost of WILLIAM FAULKNER

Come May 2ndYou Will See A Haunting Tale of This Truthin the HERO LOST Anthology
Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Hero-Lost-Mysteries-Death-Life/dp/1939844363

William Faulkner, ghost, here:

Roland is sleeping, 

his head settled on his folded arms as he sprawls in front of his electronic journal ... 

laptop he calls it.

I wanted to check in on him. 

We ghosts have a fondness for him. He listens.

You'd be surprised how few undead or living do that. 

Most spirits and living souls just wait impatiently for you to take in a breath so they can jump in with their concerns.

Samuel Clemens couldn't wait to inform me how Roland had gone wrong with his last post. 

Old Sam seemed sure he knew how he'd gone wrong.

And as usual that old tale-spinner was both right and wrong.

Like Roland, I taught creative writing in a university. 

I had been so sure I had a firm grasp of reality and how to portray it. 

Death showed me that only the dead see clearly.

So I do know where Roland went wrong, where so many of us writers go wrong:

People do not read to see what you think or to learn about you. 

No.

They read to learn about themselves, to come into contact with who they truly are.

They read that which speaks of their own hopes, their own dreams, and their own fears.

If a tale resonates with the haunting music of their unhealed wounds and silent insecurities, 

they will be drawn to it as if to a magnet. 

Only that story which tells of a heart in conflict with itself is truly literature.

That is why you must read, my friends. 

Read. Read everything -- 

trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it.

Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master.

Then write. If it's good, you'll find out.

If it's not, throw it out of the window and start again wiser.

Don't be 'a writer'.

Be writing.

A bus station is where a bus stops. 

A train station is where a train stops. 

On my desk, I have a work station.

And to work well you must write with the embers of truth stinging your eyes.

You can have 13 people looking at a black bird and none of them will get it right. 

No one individual can look at truth.

Even simple truth. Look deep enough, and the simplicity disappears in the murky depths.
 
Truth blinds you. 

It is too much for one set of perceptions to take in. To a man with rose-tinted glasses, the whole world is rose.

And so it is with the writer looking at Man.

We call ourselves Homo Sapien, the reasoning animal. But Man is not made of reason.

A man is the sum of his misfortunes.
 
One day you'd think misfortune would get tired, but then time is its own misfortune as well.


And so all human behavior is unpredictable.

Considering Man's fragility and the ramshackle universe he functions in, how could it be otherwise?

So how does that affect you as a writer?


1) The writer must not set himself up as judge:

He must focus on action, the character's behavior.

Maybe your protagonist, like so many people, has no concept of morality,

only an integrity to hold always to what he believes to be facts and truths of the human condition.

 
2) The character does what his nature dictates.

He acts not as the writer would, not as a man should do, but what he will do --

maybe what he can't help but do. Which leads me to my greatest fear:

 
3) I fear that Man is losing his individualism, 

his sense of self, in doing what the herd does in order to stay safe.

Which is why I do not belong to anything besides the Human Race, and I try to be a first rate member of that.

 
4) You are first rate as a human being and a writer if:

you do the best you can with what talents you have to make something positive that wasn't there yesterday.

How do you do that you ask:

The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. And he makes his home of the stones of his efforts.

How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home until I realized that home to a writer is where his mind, his heart is.

 
5) Most men are a little better than their circumstances give them a chance to be. 

Strive to thrive where you are. "How?" you ask again. And I will tell you:

  You cannot swim for new horizons until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. 

Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything good.

You have to have courage. Courage is not so hard to have in writing if you remember that:

All of us have failed to match our dream of perfection.

 
6) I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. 

If I could write all my work again, I'm convinced I could do it better.

This is the healthiest condition for an artist. 

That's why he keeps working, trying again: 

he believes each time that this time he will do it, bring it off.

Of course he won't. Which leads us to the next point.

 
7) The phenomenon of writing is its hermaphroditism:
 
the principles of victory and of defeat inhabit the same body

and the necessary opponent, the blank page, is merely the bed he self-exhausts on.

 
8) I learned in the university as did Roland: 

You can learn writing, but you cannot teach it. 

A paradox but true despite that.

And what have I learned from my novels?

I learned how to approach language, words:

not with seriousness so much as an essayist does,

but with a kind of alert respect, as you approach dynamite;

even with joy, as you approach women: 

perhaps with the same secretly unscrupulous intentions.

Are you a writer? Really? Then, what are you doing about it?

Go, write. And remember:

Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.

And that's why a dream is not a very safe thing to be near...

I know; I had one once.

It's like a loaded pistol with a hair trigger: if it stays alive long enough,

somebody is going to be hurt. 

But if it's a good dream, it's worth it.
***
The land of Longmire and McCord:

 

MORE ANSWERS and OLGA GODIM

FIND OUT THIS MAY 2ndWith the Release of the HERO LOST ANTHOLOGY
Amazonhttps://www.amazon.com/Hero-Lost-Mysteries-Death-Life/dp/1939844363
Now, Some Answers from Renee Cheung
What makes a person a lost soul? 
It’s a deep question. To answer that question, perhaps it is first easier to define the opposite.


To not be lost is to know thyself.



It comes back to the idea of identity. 
We all have a sense of identity, a sense of self, a way to define on a deeper more intrinsic level what we see in the mirror every day. 
That sense of identity is a result over years of formation, from archetypes that we appropriate and anchor ourselves with, to roles we assume, 
be it a developer, a rare blood carrier.


So to become a lost soul then is to in some way, lose that identity. 
You see it all the time in many stories and in fact, 
it is a source of conflict that many excel in telling. 
Sometimes it’s literal - 
characters that have lost their memories, while others never having the knowledge needed to help form an identity 
(for example, not knowing who one’s parents were or where they were from).


However, some other form of lost souls are less literal - 
they thought they were one thing, but really they were another, or their actions contradict their identity.
 Mind you, I don’t believe that at that very moment, they become lost. 
Rather, they become lost souls when they wake up to what is happening and are forced to confront the contradiction.



You weren’t really expecting any less of an analytical answer from a computer scientist cum author, were you?



Well that leads us to the last two questions - 
losing our way and coming back to ourselves. 
I’ve alluded to the answer to the former already. When a person (using the term loosely to not discriminate against any non-human characters) 
acts contradictory to their programming, if you will, they become progressively more and more lost. One action heaps on another and the effect snowballs.




I think about the main antagonist in the last part of Netflix’s version of Luke Cage, Mariah Dillard. 


In her mind, she is on the side of right, a councilwoman who is trying to do good by her city.


But when circumstances and her own choices push her more and more towards a life of crime, she became crazed, lost. (Is that considered a spoiler?)



And on purpose, I wanted to pick this antagonist instead of a hero because I think there is a difference between “finding our way back” and becoming good. 


Towards the end, Mariah accepted who she was, a woman who would do anything to get her way and shape the city in her own image. 


In other words, she owned up to her actions. 


In the process, she formed and accepted a new identity and I think in that sense, she found her way back to herself. I am very excited to see how that character develops! (Come on Season 2!)


[image source: http://marvel-movies.wikia.com/wiki/Mariah_Dillard]

Now returning to the second question about legends!
 Perhaps this is not the best definition in the world, or even a right one but the bard in me has a desire to define a person that becomes a legend by leaving a good story behind. 


It may be a story they wrote or told (is Shakespeare not legendary in his own right?) or perhaps their deeds become that good story. And now take that, exaggerate and blur the details over the testament of time and voila, recipe for a legend!



Following Erika’s post on a Will Smith kick, I think of the movie “I Am Legend.” 


Obvious choice, I know. 


 However, I think about not the movie itself, but the stories that are told after the events of the movie by the descendants of the survivors. 


(I’m allowed to spoil a movie when it’s 10 years old right?). 


I imagine them gathered around some sort of story-telling fire, whispering in soft voices about how Will Smith’s character, Robert Neville, fought to save humanity while living all alone and fighting off the infected mutants. 


(I always thought of them as a cross between vampire and zombies, does that make them zompires?) 


I imagined the telling where the details of the story as well as Robert’s own nobleness, greatly exaggerated. That. Is. Legend.



And now that I have rambled on and on, perhaps I’ll go contemplate a story of a legendary lost villainous soul.

You can connect with Renee via:Site: http://reneecheung.caBlog: https://medium.com/@ren.sy.cFacebook: http://facebook.com/writerreneeTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/wired_crow

FINISHING

  A girl recognizes the motivating power  of sibling rivalry in a society that only values positive emotions. 
Can feeling jealous ever be a good thing?

Find out Yvonne's answer May 2ndin the HERO LOST Anthology 
Amazonhttps://www.amazon.com/Hero-Lost-Mysteries-Death-Life/dp/1939844363


Amidst all the increased workload at work and trying to help market the IWSG Anthology, 

I have only finished SEVEN pages of my latest novel! 




As I think these things at my table at Meilori's, I hear gruff words above me: 

"Tarnation, Son!  Let me tell you about two hellions who wrote ...

to each other ... and to the world at large."

It is the ghost of Mark Twain:

"Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald

had a lot in common. They were both drunks ... let's not be PC about it, shall we?"

Mark wrinkled his moustache.

"They both had intense and complicated marriages. They were both deeply committed to their craft.

Most importantly, they were literary giants at a time when the Great American Novel was more than just a myth—it was a real possibility."

"I don't want to write the Great American Novel ...." I began.

Mark laughed, "Shoot for the moon, son.  Anyway, the two of them wrote to each other on how things were going for them."

The ghost of Hemingway sat down beside me, grumbling,

“Scott took LITERATURE so solemnly. He never understood that it was just writing as well as you can and finishing what you start.”

He lit up a cigar.  "You quit, kid, and I will kick your butt from here to Putin.  He loves you, don't you know?"

He shook his head. 

"I was a believer in self-discipline while Scott depended on his Muse ... and week long benders, scribbling frantically and pushing his lank blonde hair out of his eyes."

Hemingway snorted,

"Me?  I wrote like clock-work -- standing up at the typewriter, at the same time every day -- pushing through even the 'dry' days when the words came slowly."

He jabbed his cigar at me.  "In life, you are either a doer or a dreamer."

Hemingway gruffed, "You just have to go on when it is worst and most helpless—

there is only one thing to do with a novel and that is go straight on through to the end of the damn thing.”

Mark lit up his own cigar.  "Sometimes even Hemingway is right."

Lost Souls, Legends, and How to Crawl Out of the Darkness_HERO LOST ANTHOLOGY spotlight

Answers from Fellow HERO LOST authorErika Beebe



“What makes a person a Lost Soul?”


Let me begin with a reference to one of my all-time favorite movies, Hancock.
There’s a defining scene when John Hancock is confessing his perception of himself 

to big-hearted human Ray at the dinner table.
John Hancock is a lost hero, an alcoholic and tends to try to save people from a deathly fate, 

but often makes the wrong choices
and ends up hurting the situation more than he helps. Back to his confession, 


it went something along these lines: I woke up in a hospital room with no memory. 


No recollection of myself. 


And after weeks of posting coverage in the paper to anyone who might know the man, 


no one ever showed to claim me. Hancock’s mind went into a downward spiral. 


During his confession he said something like:
What kind of selfish jerk must I have been 

to wake up alone, no memory, and no one ever coming to claim me? 

No family. Not even a friend. Thoughts are powerful.
Most times we tell ourselves, 

I will always be unlucky, or unloved, or a selfish jerk who will never get it right. 

What kind of person almost kills his/her child? Or dog? Or spouse?
These types of questions haunt Lost Souls, even when these questions might be far from the truth. So what happens next?
Lost Souls act in accordance with our mind.
We believe these thoughts whole-heartedly and act in such a way these twisted thoughts become our reality.
This is what I consider the Lost Soul thinking. It’s very real. Hancock is my favorite example.



“What makes a person a Legend?”A Legend, in my humble opinion, is a value-based term.
 Some people may say famous baseball players Babe Ruth or George Brett are definite Legends.
Former Kansas City Chief’s football player Priest Holmes is one of my own sport’s favorite legends.
Others not of certain athletic ability might be Mother Theresa, Jane Goodall, Audrey Hepburn and most definitely Joan of Arc.
A Legend is not just skill based in my eyes.
A Legend is about heart and action and whether the internal value set
 aligns with the steps and actions taken to give hope to others, including animals, when none seems to be found.
“How do we find our Way back to Ourselves?”Again, in my honest humble opinion, and as demonstrated in Hancock’s case,
sometimes it takes a firm set of hands on one’s shoulders, an eye to eye contact,
and some sort of rattling speech or action to switch the current thought patterns.
At this phase, a habit has formed, and yes, I am a huge advocate for the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
And back to the habit,
a new thought process must form in conjunction with aggressive and immediate action.
The mindset must be, “There’s no time like the present,” or, “There’s no turning back.”
How to reach me? Blog: Cloud Nine Girl@erikabeebe.comFacebook: Cloud Nine Girl and Erika Beebe Author Twitter:@cloudninegirl1Instagram: erikabeebeTumblr: cloudninegirl

WHEN LIFE HITS YOU HARD

Can Death die? 
Is Death capable of love? Can Death despair, condemning the world to a living hell?
Find out May 2ndwith the HERO LOST Anthology

Life as a rare blood courier is a harsh mistress.

How will I market this new anthology?  

How will each of you find the time to work on your dream?  

I don't have any certain answers, but I have reflections:

Those long days when I ran my bookstore, 

visited my mother as she lay dying, 

and walked back and forth to the mall and to the hospital because twice someone had put sugar in my gas tank ...

I still wrote. 

In fact those ______ who destroyed my cars improved my health with all the walking, 

gave me time to reflect on the dying of my mother & to come to grips with it, 

and allowed me the opportunity to put my thoughts into coherent order to write in my journal. 


I do not know what storms hammer at you this season ... 

I just know they are ... or they will soon.  

Life is like that.

You must ask yourself: 

WHO DO YOU WANT TO BE?
A SUNSHINE SOULORONE FOR ALL SEASONS?

Can you sacrifice who you are for who you will become?  

Can you do with 30 minutes less sleep a day to write one page of your novel?

Can you transform your lunch half-hour into one of sipping Instant Breakfast 

while plotting the page you will write tonight or tomorrow morning?


It's not about how hard you were hit but how hard you can be hit and still go forward.


Remember:

1.) PICK YOUR BATTLEGROUND

Choose where you can do the most good.  

You cannot do everything.  Help where it makes sense.  Be flexible.  Be adaptable.  

Pace yourself: running yourself into the ground will not help you or anyone else.


2.) PEOPLE SEE THROUGH THEIR OWN EYES

You are entitled to your boundaries.  

You have the right to say NO.  

You have the right to safeguard your own health or sanity.

Non-writers think we’re not working when we’re plotting or researching or studying how to write better.

 It’s up to you to defend your writing time as strongly as others defend their own pursuits.

Yes, you can be more flexible. 

But writing should stay on your calendar for all but the most critical days.


3.) INVEST IN THE PERSON WHO YOU WILL BECOME

Skill is only achieved by hours and hours and hours of honing your craft.  

If you are not making your life or someone else's better ... then you are wasting your time.

You're already in grief from your dream.  Keep on and get some reward for all that grief.

You want your dream?  Then, go on and get the hits, the disappointments that come with the package.


4.) THE HIT LIST

 Before sleeping, make a list of three important things you intend to accomplish the next day. 

If you’re in the midst of storm and trauma, 

break bigger projects down into tiny steps you know you’ll be able to complete in a day. 

 As the storm eases, you can work with bigger chunks again.


5.) WINNIE THE POOH DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE

No one's life is all sunshine and rainbows.  

For most of us, the world is a mean, nasty place ... 

and life will knock you to your knees and keep you there and laugh as it kicks you ...

if you let it.

No one is ever going to hit you as hard as life. 

But it is not about how hard you are hit ... 
but how hard you CAN be hit and get back up and go forward, 
how much you can take and still stumble forward.
That's how you win, how you can stand tall, knowing you gave it your all.


6.) IT'S NOT THE TITLE THAT MAKES YOU

It is not the title AUTHOR or DOCTOR that makes you. It's not success that makes you.

It is your character that makes you.  Character defines success, defines fame, defines YOU.

And you sculpt your character with every resistance to obstacles you make, 

with every sleepless morning as you write, 

with all the early A.M. hours when you run dark streets ...

with doing something right each and every time you do it whether anyone is looking or not ... 

because you refuse to do shabby.


7.) IT'S YOUR DREAM

It's not someone else's.  

Do not expect help or support from someone who has their own dream.  

You must get up early, stay up late to make your dream come true ... no one else will do it for you.


8.) LIFE IS GOING TO SUCKER PUNCH YOU

Murphy was right.  Life is going to blind-side you when you least expect it.

It's all right to show pain, to even unleash a colorful metaphor or two, to suck air.

But those times are when the most growth occurs.  

You can let the tragedy destroy you or you can learn from it.

We all fall down in life.  The question is: who gets back up?

Please, choose to get back up and into the struggle, fighting smarter.

The companion to night is not darkness but light, for every night is followed by the dawn.



9.) YOUR MIND SET

It is not your circumstances or your situations that determine if you are going to be successful or not.


IT IS YOUR MIND SET.
It's the way you see your dream, your writing, how you feel it, how you nourish it.

Your mind is the battleground.  

But it is YOUR mind, sow the soil of it with truths that help not hinder you.

"I may give up one day ... 

BUT IT WILL NOT BE TODAY. 
 I'M GOING ALL IN, ALL THE WAY!  

I'M GOING TO MAKE THE REST OF MY LIFE THE BEST OF MY LIFE."


10.)  LEAN ON YOUR STRENGTHS


What are your personal strengths as a writer? 

Whatever they are, they’re your leverage for hard times.

 If dialogue is your strength, 

you may want to write dialogue for the next few chapters and come back later to fill in the rest of the details.

Or you might want to carry a journal and use spare moments 

to brainstorm character names and answer “What if?” questions to sketch in a story and its conflict.

AND DON'T FORGET TO REWARD YOURSELF EACH DAY YOU KEEP FIGHTING ...

if only an extra ten minutes of sleep the next day or a dessert you reserve for hard times.


Want to know how my own story in the HERO LOST ANTHOLOGY was born? https://lostheroanthology.wordpress.com/2017/01/25/why-myths-matter/

HOW BEING IN AN ANTHOLOGY CAN BE A GREAT MARKETING TOOL

It's a hard row to hoe these days for the Indie Author.
A way to get your work out there to be seen by a wider audience 

than your own book can afford is to be accepted into an anthology.

Anthologies collect smaller works and package them into a single volume.

 For fiction, these are collections of short stories sharing a common genre.

Your story will be seen by fans of your fellow authors. 

 And theirs will be seen by yours.



A blog has been started for the IWSG Anthology:    https://lostheroanthology.wordpress.com/
I cannot claim an atom of credit. 

Renee Cheung has crafted much of it.  Give her a hand, will you?  Better yet, pay the site a visit.

But remember it is a work in progress.  

Roam around and get to know us and our stories.

Yesterday was the cover reveal for most of us 
 Sarah Foster | Hero Lost Cover Reveal!! 
Jen Chandler | Drum Roll Please
L. Diane Wolfe | Hero Lost: Mysteries of Death and Life & The Remnant Book Tour 
Alex J Cavanaugh | Hero Lost Anthology & More
Erika Beebe  | https://erikabeebe.com/
Renee Cheung | The IWSG Anthology Cover Reveal
Yvonne Ventresca | Cover Reveal for Hero Lost 

And Ellen Jacobson who thought of this idea for the roll call of links:
 http://thecynicalsailor.blogspot.com/
(the ghost of Mark Twain is still chuckling over the hot water I landed myself in -- he says it will help keep my reputation clean!)


Cover Reveals are fine but are becoming overdone, don't you think? 
What we anthologists (I made up that name myself though Mark Twain claims credit for it) need

are NEW, ENGAGING, and ENTERTAINING ways 

to get the attention of the larger world of the internet beyond the ghetto of Author Blogs.

Of course like a typical male, I haven't a clue!
Which is why I am writing this post to do what most males hate to do:
Ask for directions!
Can any of you, my friends out there, think of a fun method in which 

my fellow anthologists and I can garner attention for the IWSG ANTHOLOGY?

L. Diane Wolfe is footing the bill for this book, 

so the least we anthologists can do is pull our weight or at least ask for help in tugging the darn rope!

All the old methods are becoming frayed. 
When tugging on ropes stopped helping in the past, the pulley was invented.

What we anthologists need right now is for you to come up with that pulley.

So if any of you out there can think of something, 

write in the comments or in the comments at the IWSG Anthology Blog.

If nothing else, 

please tell all of your friends who like fantasy that a great new fantasy anthology is coming out.

Thanks in advance, Roland

Don't You Hate Cover Reveals? IWSG Anthology Cover Reveal

There is an almost audible groan heard across the internet when you look down your blog list 

and see a dozen cover reveals of the same book.

Sure, you're happy to see your friend(s) have a new book out.

But you fear you will see the same blurb, same hype over and over again.

Not here.


Come the first week of May and this great anthology will be published.  Yay!!

I am so honored and proud to be chosen to stand beside such fantastic authors.  

L. Diane Wolfe is a champion for doing this for Alex and the rest of us.

I am in a company of heroes with our publisher, L. Diane Wolfe and my fellow authors: 

Jen Chandler, L. Nahay, Renee Chung, Elizabeth Seckman, Olga Godim, 

Yvonne Ventresca, Ellen Jacobson, Sean McLachlan, Erica Bebee, Tyrean Martinson, and Sarah Foster.


The ghost of Mark Twain chuckles by my side right now, saying, 

"Telling the truth and committing suicide is often the same thing, boy.  But have at it.  

It will make me laugh at all the trouble you are just about to stir up.

Still, I have to remind you that no true gentleman will tell the naked truth in front of ladies."

 
We Anthology Authors belong to a closed group to talk among ourselves ... 

I was told that, for instance, should we hate the cover art, 

we would feel free to say that there.

But that just strikes me as whispering about someone behind the back of my hand.


I am very lucky to be under the cover of any anthology, 

much less one filled with such great stories and published by an innovative publisher like Diane Wolfe.

I can truthfully praise both the authors and the publisher.

I do not know what my fellow anthologists feel about the cover.


I write the rest of this as a reader and what makes a cover work for me

The COVER to a book is so important, for it is the FIRST THING the reader sees.

 The large font to our title is great for it snares the eye of the browser.

  
The beige aspect to it is simply just not my cup of tea.

As Arthur Rackham proved in the image above, 

that color can be used to make a distinctive illustration 

using it as a background for a dramatic silhouette. 

 
To me there must be contrast to a good cover --

Monotone is boring, doesn't grab the reader by the throat.  

There is no hook here, nothing to grab the reader's attention.


A successful book cover grabs people on a first look. 

It’s competing against thousands of other covers in an overcrowded marketplace.

To me this anthology cover will not draw the eye, especially in thumbnail.


But Diane is the engineer of this train.  I am lucky even to be on board.

This is Diane's choice, and she is the publisher.

When you are accepted by a publisher, you must abide by whatever cover they feel is best.


I run the risk of being thought ungrateful.  

I probably will never be accepted by another anthology.

Yet I would not be honest if I did not voice my misgivings. 
 

I will no doubt be tar and feathered for writing this ... 

perhaps even be asked to leave this illustrious anthology.

Will that make me a hero lost?  Fitting if so.

 
I would have written Diane personally about this, but by the time I saw the image, it was a done deal.

I did not contact any of my fellow authors.  

I did not want to drag them down with me.

I can rightly sing the praises of the great stories within the anthology and of the large-hearted Diane Wolfe.

The cover just strikes me 

(and I am not the yardstick of the universe -- and if I am, would someone please tell the universe to shape up!)

as less than what I would want it to be to draw the eye of prospective buyers.

So here is a Cover Reveal unlike any other you will ever read.

Mark!  Would you quit that laughing!!

I just landed myself in an ocean of hot water here.

ABOUT THOSE IWSG ANTHOLOGY QUESTIONS

Earlier I wrote of Olga Godim's great idea 

of asking the main character of our included story 5 questions.


 Some of my fellow anthologists 

(sounds like we are associates of Indiana Jones, doesn't it?)


have voiced concern on just how to do that with their ominous protagonist.


Once I was hood-winked 

(ah, I mean asked) 

to do the same in a blog-hop concerning my then recent novel)


This is how I asked the given questions to my cursed hero, owner of the haunted jazz club, Meilori's.



https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004YTMNRG
 
Vivian Hightower wiggled without moving as she sat across the table from me. 

She was sure of her sex appeal. 

She shouldn't have been.

I was married to an Empress, of whose beauty sonnets had been written by Shakespeare and Keats.

"Captain McCord, I'm surprised you are agreeing to this taped interview. My last one destroyed the career of your policewoman friend."

She cleared her throat at my silence, turning on her tape recorder. 

"They say your jazz club, Meilori's, is haunted."

Vivian narrowed her diamond eyes. "You aren't speaking."

I looked at her from under the wide brim of my Stetson. 

That I had not taken it off when she sat down should have been a warning.

"You haven't asked any questions, Miss Hightower."

"Oh, in that case: What is your biggest vulnerability? Do others know this, or is it a secret?"

I smiled like the last wolf I was often called.

"Now, my hunch on that might be dead-on, Miss, or it might be full of worms. But Mama McCord didn't raise any sons dippy enough to tell it to a vicious reporter ... on tape."

"Be that way. What do people believe about you that is false?"

"That I am a hero. In all the ways that count, I am a monster."

She wet her lips. "Wh-What would your best friend say is your f-fatal flaw?"

"Father Renfield believes me not believing in God anymore is that. Coming from a vampire priest that is saying something."

Vivian snoted at the word 'vampire.' "What would Father Renfield say is your one redeeming quality?"

I smiled sadly. 

"That while I say I'm agnostic, I act as if I still believed ... which means to him that deep down I still believe, for what we do, we believe."

She outright sneered at that. "What do you want most? And what will you do to get it?"

I bled a sigh. 

"Not a what but a who, Miss Hightower. My wife. And I will do nothing to get her back. Love forced is no love at all. On either side."

She turned off the tape recorder, and I asked her a question.

"When I said that you could come to my table, did I ever say anything about you leaving it alive?"

I tore off my right glove that kept my cursed palm from touching innocent flesh. 

I reached out and grabbed her satin throat tight. She slowly withered before my eyes.


The plus side to that was that she would destroy no more innocents.  

The down side was the flood of her vicious, joyful memories of those cruelties.

"I am a monster, Miss Hightower, in all the ways that count. But I only kill other monsters."***
If you want to see what McCord looks like: