Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 5

FALLEN WORLD

 An Untold story from my latest SAME AS IT NEVER WAS:

 

FALLEN WORLD

“I have lived all my life among shadows and broken images.”

– Helen Mayfair

 I looked at a slightly amused Sister Ameal studying me. Let her.

If she could decipher the enigma of my blank past, I would welcome it … assuming she would share.

But assuming with that one was dangerous.

She long since has taught me to ask questions and not to make assumptions.

Sister Ameal was an austere whipcord of a human.

 Supposedly one of the Daughters of Charity, her white cornette flared out so that the children round about called her “the butterfly nun.”

“Miss Mayfair,” she murmured, “what led you to become a librarian and one in that accursed orphanage, St. Marok’s?”

“Libraries are the source of answers, to which I am drawn. And on that orphanage’s steps was where I was found as an infant.”

She had her answer; now I wanted one of my own.

 “You call this structure your rectory, but a rectory is reserved for a priest. Why then, do you live here and alone at that?”

Her lips curled in a fashion that Mona Lisa would have envied. “I blackmailed the cardinal. I find the direct approach with the Church to be best.”

“Sister!”

She shrugged. “Why so surprised? You know that before the Convent, I was the highest paid assassin in all of Portugal.”

Sister Ameal raised her right hand suddenly. “Bide. The Mistress of all America’s revenants is lurking in the foyer yonder.”

“But she will burn in my Presence!”

“Calm yourself, fledgling Seraph. Not in my rectory she will not.”

“Why?”

“You must have me confused with the Oracle of Delphi. I owe you no answer but one that amuses me to give.”

I heard an intake of breath that a revenant would not need to fill collapsed lungs. Then, it was needed to brace unsettled nerves.

Abigail Adams, smelling slightly of decaying flesh, walked with a studied grace around the corner.

I saw both relief and disappointment in her azure eyes.

New Orleans. 

Here, despair plays the populace like an instrument -- blows through the trees of our minds like flutes. But trees will not grow in cement. 

And as heartbeats bring percussion, fallen hopes bring repercussions. This city plays upon our souls like broken drums.

I sighed.

Adams had both wanted to live and to die at the same time. Not unlike most of the inhabitants of this city … except for that artful dodger, Richard Blaine.

He took delight in dodging death in all manner of forms. There was no telling what manner of mischief he was up to at this moment.

All that was certain was that he was laughing.

Abigail Adams, widow of the second President of the United States, looked troubled. She usually looked angry.

 Perhaps she had traveled with her anger long enough to learn its true name.

Grief.

I felt a strange sort of compassion for this undead woman who had none for anyone.

Love without power remained impotent, and power without love was bankrupt.

Sister Ameal said, “I see you dress in the fashion of this century for a change.”

“What I do, and why I do it is none of your concern.”

“You came to me.”

Adams shook her carefully coiffured hair and pointed to me with a stabbing forefinger.

“No, I came to see this one.”

Her eyes narrowed accusingly. “Is it true that you are a Seraph?”

“So, the strange being, Darael, tells me.”

“That one! He is a Seraph Provocateur. Trust nothing that one says.”

“I trust no word from anyone human.”

Adams smiled knowingly. “What of Blaine?”

Sister Ameal murmured, “What made you think he was human?”

Adams went paler than I thought possible. “H-He is something Other?”

“As is everyone else in this room, and I will tell you nothing further.”

Though I was burning to ask the sister, I would not in front of this undead empress. Instead, I asked a question of my own.

“What would you have of me, Madame President?”

“A four-year-old girl precious to me has gone missing.”

Sister Ameal shook her brilliantly white cornette. “Rather an abomination that appears to be a four-year-old girl you mean.”

I started to rise from my chair, but Sister Ameal placed a light hand upon my arm. 

“Hold, Fledgling, Adams did not turn her, but merely wished to turn her to her advantage.”

I frowned, “How?”

“It has been thought impossible before now to turn such a young human into a revenant. 

If only Adams could control an army of such undead urchins that could pass unnoticed down the halls of Power … what increased power might be hers?”

I wheeled on her. “You are an abomination!”

Adams was unmoved. “Now, another unknown entity has her. We must both rescue the child ….”

Sister Ameal spat, “Child!”

Adams continued as if not interrupted, “Before untold chaos is released upon the streets of New Orleans.”

She turned a smug defiance glare at me. 

“Or are you going to sit impotently upon your outraged naivety and let Hell claim these streets?”

 

TO BE CONTINUED IN

FALLEN WORLD, BROKEN SOULS

THE CINEMA OF PLACE

 

"The corpse must shock not only because it is a corpse but also because, even for a corpse, 

it is shockingly out of place, as when a dog makes a mess on a drawing room carpet.”

 - W. H. Auden 

It was raining again the next morning, a slanting grey rain like a swung curtain of crystal beads."

 - Raymond Chandler

Sherlock Holmes had Victorian London. Phillip Marlowe had L.A. of the Forties.

Your protagonist must have his locale live and breathe as a fellow character.

Setting can frame mood, meaning, and thematic connotations. 

. “The moon went slowly down in loveliness; she departed into the depth of the horizon, 

and long veil-like shadows crept up the sky through which the stars appeared." 

– H. Rider Haggard

"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas 

that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. 

On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks."

-Raymond Chandler, "Red Wind"

HOW TO MAKE YOUR SETTING A CHARACTER

1.) WHAT MAKES YOUR SETTING UNIQUE TO YOUR CHARACTER, TO YOU

Beyond description, beyond local foods, 

find what makes your locale merge into the very fabric of your characters.

https://www.amazon.com/Razor-Valentine/dp/B08VL16KX2/
SETTING comes ALIVE through detail, but mostly in how your novel's characters responds to them.

2.)  HISTORY IS PERSONAL

How did New Orleanians experience the first Mardi Gras after WWII? 

How did returning veterans who had survived Hell and brought some of it back with them?

3.) SEE THROGH CHARACTERS' EYES.

More powerful than infusing a character with a strong opinion about his place and time 

is infusing two of them with conflicting opinions.

How would a returning veteran like Col. James Stewart view the masks of Mardi Gras 

as opposed to a returning O.S.S. agent who made his sociopathic face a mask to better blend in and kill his targets?

4.) LINK DETAILS TO EMOTIONS

What thoughts might pass through a bomber pilot's mind as he views elegant, though decrepit, 

New Orleans streets when he flew above similar streets over Europe

as opposed to the thoughts of former O.S.S. agents who wrapped the shadows around them 
as they fled Nazis down the streets of Occupied Paris. 

5.) MAKE USE OF THE TIME OF YEAR

Who has wondered what it is like in New Orleans?

  Imagine that a literal demon is walking among the partiers?

 

Who is leading that little girl into the fog?

A partying mother fetching her wayward childorNuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte,Our Lady of Holy Death?

I hope you see nowhow Setting can becomethe Cinema of Your Novel.
https://www.amazon.com/RAZOR-VALENTINE-Roland-Yeomans-ebook/dp/B07N75DRKC/
If you wonder about Jimmy Stewart'sMardi Gras adventures,check out my telling of it.

WRITING TIPS and the PSYCHOLOGY behind them

 

THERE IS ALWAYS REASON BEHIND MADNESS ... AND TRUTH, TOO

Something to remember in the political aftermath of this past tumultuous election ... 
and in the wisdom given to us on how to write well.

WRITE SHORTER

Every extra word makes readers impatient in these short-attention span days. 
Got to keep checking on those TicTok posts, you know.
Write as if each word cost you 50 cents.  Shorter prose is more powerful.
Hemingway rewrote the last page of A FAREWELL TO ARMS 39 times before he was satisfied with it.


SHRINK THOSE SENTENCES!


Sometimes Tiny draws attention in this big world.
Long sentences make readers work too hard to get to your main point.  
Break sentences into bite-size ideas.  Be Hemingway not Longfellow.

PASSIVE IS THE NEW POISON 



Passive voice sentences hide who is acting, creating uneasiness unconsciously in your reader.  
Not good!
Be the detective of your own sentences -- find out who is the actor in each sentence and link him to the verb.


ERASE JARGON. FOCUS ON CLARITY

Jargon and Tech words just make your readers feel stupid. 
Way bad.
It doesn't make you sound smart.  
It makes you look as if you are talking down to your reader.
Tell your story as if you were relaying it to your mother or next door neighbor.  
Tell the tale to make the most impact to the most people.

PUSH TO THE HEAD OF THE LINE




Move key scenes and insights up as close to the front of your novel, chapter, sentence as you can.
You are not making a case in a court of law where you have to lay a foundation fact by fact.
You have only a few sentences to get the readers' attention.  

Don't waste those few precious moments.  

Grab your audience right out of the gate -- at the first sentence if possible.

https://www.amazon.com/SAMPLER-SHADOWS-ROLAND-YEOMANS-ebook/dp/B07XKWX8H4

Take my short story in A SAMPLER OF SHADOWS where the first sentence is:
"The rape was the best thing to have happened to her."
It makes the reader wonder how such a thing could be, right?
CLUES 

Authors use foreshadowing to hint at future important events. 
Whether consciously or unconsciously,

readers pick up on these clues if they read and use them to make predictions about what will happen later in the story.

It creates tension and suspense, keeping the reader turning the pages. 

AND DON'T FORGET MY CHRISTMAS GHOST STORY 
 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KQ8XMJR/

I have an Angel Provocateur
in this speculative fiction
Whose side he is on is never quite clear to  his human companions -- or to himself.
Give it a read.

Ghost of STAR TREK PAST

 

Those of us who loved the original series of STAR TREK have slowly watched it devolve into something Other.

Now, thanks to the wife of Leonard Nimoy, the son of Gene Roddenberry, and William Shatner we have been visited by the ghost of STAR TREK PAST.

It contains Easter Eggs from recent versions of Star Trek with snippets 

from the 3rd season of Picard where it was hinted that a clone of Captain Kirk was being investigated 

to the last scene of GENERATIONS with Spock visiting the grave of Capt. Kirk to 

Spock dying in an alternate timeline in STAR TREK BEYOND.

No matter -- it was an early Christmas present to a fan who sorely needed one.

Thank you to all involved.

SOMEONE NEEDS THIS TODAY

 I know I did:

THE WORLD BREAKS EVERYONE

 

In A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway wrote 

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break, it kills.

It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.

If you are none of these, be sure it will kill you, too. But there will be no special hurry."

Of late, not too oddly, I have been contemplating how one gets stronger in the broken places.

(Especially since Friday, Walmart informed me that my mandatory heart medicine has gone from $10 a month to $724.79 -- and I had just taken my last pill.)

But I digress.

Perhaps I thought, it has to do with your perspective or world-view.

Viktor Frankl (above) thought we could endure any WHAT if we had a WHY.

He should know: 

he lost his wife in the Bergen-Belson concentration camp; his brother and mother at Auschwitz; and his father in the Terezin Ghetto.

He, himself, spent three years in four camps.

When he returned to Vienna, a living skeleton, to find all he loved gone, he was devastated.

In nine days he wrote A Psychologist Experiences the Concentration Camp and published it anonymously.

"When we can no longer change our situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."

Does a belief in a loving God help?

Not for you?

Perhaps this from Jordon Peterson will help:

Dr. Frankl and Dr. Peterson

and me

urge you to realize there

is more to you than you think.

QUESTIONS to ask if you wish a better life

 

“We hear only those questions  for which we are in  a position to find answers.”  — Friedrich Nietszche
If we don’t make time to examine our motives, it may catch up to us.   Why?   Many people are dictated by their unconscious desires instead of making conscious choices.     “Question everything.  Learn something.  Answer nothing.”  — Euripedes
Ask WHO ARE YOU BECOMING? 
The Past is written. The Present is the sum of your earlier choices.  The Future is uncertain.
  Who you decide to be should be an informed decision not a consequence of following the path of least resistance.

Ask DO I LIKE MYSELF?


“The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.”
 — Joseph Campbell

See the past as a series of events that shaped your life, 

because every experience brings the gift of learning and growth. 

If you disapprove of yourself you cannot possibly like other people 

since every interaction stems from your relationship with yourself.


Ask WHAT MATTERS MOST TO YOU & WHY?

“In all my affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark 
on the things I have long taken for granted.”  — Bertrand Russell
This is an important question 
because until you clarify what you value most, you will spend your life wandering aimlessly. 
Sadly, many people may never discover what is important to them 
because they are distracted by the swirl of events around them.
To You, 
WHAT IS THE MOST  IMPORTANT  QUESTION  TO ASK YOURSELF?  

BETTER DAYS Are Coming

 

"It is what it is, but it will become what you make it." 

- Victor Standish

Yesterday I received an email denying me any unemployment benefits since I was fired.

It was a sucker punch I wasn't expecting.

I walked out to my car, Gabrielle, to sort things out with the Father.

Under my windshield wiper was a neon-pink stickie note with three hand-drawn hearts and the words:

BETTER DAYS ARE COMING

I really needed those words done in a feminine hand.

Who had left it?

The day before I was leaning against my car after my exercise walk when a perky young lady walked by asking, "How are you?"

"Almost good."

"Only almost?"

"At least I'm heading in the right direction."

She bubbled a nice laugh and got into her car next to mine.

Was she the one who left it?

I only know that it was there when I needed it. 

I am glad that I prayed for her as she left just because of the sweetness of her laugh.

I walked into my apartment feeling better. Then, I saw this YouTube which was another gift:

And yes, I prayed then for both the little boy and the small dog.

It's who I am.

WHY DO YOU WRITE? IWSG Post

 

We tumble from womb to tomb ...

    from one blackness towards another,

        remembering little of the one and 

            knowing nothing of the other,

              except through faith.


Life distracts us, with happiness or struggle, 

    from seeing the tides that are drawing us towards 

        those clusters of events called 

Crossroads.
More tragically  for our being blind  to them.

The star, the wheel, the butterfly ...

    all are in an unseen state of turmoil,

        waiting for some signal that 
               the time has come.


Then, the star explodes,
The wheel of Fate turns, making a poor man rich,
The butterfly mates and dies.

STORY can say all that is unsayable in the world ...
    How can we resist attempting that?

Life has a way of bruising us 
    until we long for some passage out of ourselves.

That's what STORY does ...
    for a few precious moments
        it takes us out of ourselves
            to become someone other than who we are.

Each of us is a myth within our minds.
    We make it up. 
    It is the STORY of ourselves          we steer our actions by.
        It is not the truth of our life.  
           We could not bear to look at that.
It is the illusion which helps us keep on going in life.


Man alone
    tells STORIES to understand his world.


I believe that there is one STORY 
in the all world, and only one,
 that has frightened and inspired us.

 Humans are caught, in their lives, in their thoughts,  in their hungers and ambitions,  in their avarice and cruelty,  and 
in their kindness and generosity  in a net of good and evil. 

 Do they struggle towards the light or embrace the darkness?

There is no other STORY.
 A soul, having emerged from the cocoon of this life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: 
Did I make my time good or evil? 
Was my life worththe pain of my birth?

WHAT IS THE PARTICULAR MAGIC OF WRITING THAT KEEPS YOU DOING IT?

If YOUR World Was Ending TOMORROW_ IWSG Post

 

"If today was your last day
And tomorrow was too late
Could you say goodbye to yesterday?
Would you live each moment like your last?
Leave old pictures in the past
Donate every dime you have?
If today was your last day.

Would you call old friends you never see?
Reminisce old memories
Would you forgive your enemies?
Would you find that one you're dreamin' of?
Swear up and down to God above
That you finally fall in love
If today was your last day."
- IF TODAY WERE YOUR LAST DAY; Nickelback

If you close your eyes tonight and never re-opened them, what kind of last day would you have had?

 The world will be gone.  Time is set to be an echo.  You have 24 hours left in which to exist. 

It could happen.   The funny thing about life is, trouble never comes from where you expect it. 

You spend two months worried about interviewing for that big job promotion, 

then on your way there, you die of a heart attack brought on by all that stress. 

That's just the way it goes.
Super-volcanoes, a Verne-Shot (which combines the super-volcano scenario with an asteroid strike, fun, right?), 

Gamma Ray Burst from our sun, 

engineered diseases or something totally out of left field could end life as we know it.

But for you ... for me ... the world could end tomorrow.

Heart attack, mugger, or drunk driver.  Any of those three could end your life suddenly.

"There is only one time that is important: NOW.  

It is the most important because it is the only one over which we have any control."
- Leo Tolstoy  


Appreciate your job if you can ...

If you just "Survive" your job, you are wasting 71% of your life. (5 out of the 7 days of the week.)


Forgive if you can ...

What someone did to hurt you was their fault.  Carrying it with you for each day afterwards is all on you.


Focus on the NOW ...

The Past and the Future are illusions.  NOW is the only reality.  

If you grasp after ghosts, you, yourself, are not living.  You are making of yourself a ghost.


Each moment matters for it may be our last.  
Think of all the shooting, bombing, or air crash victims.  They thought their lives would go on for years.

Appreciate what and who you have while you have it and them.

Here is Stephen King on my favorite novel of his, DUMA KEY