Barbara G. Tarn's Blog, page 142

Happiness is…

Surprise Sunday

No guests, so a bunch of words of wisdom – or writers on writing. It’s usually 5, but since these are mostly one sentence, I’m posting 9. Enjoy!

If you strive to do the best you can, write a lot of books, and make sure your books are in as many bookstores as possible—ebookstores, audio bookstores, foreign bookstores, as well as US bookstores, in English as well as dozens if not hundreds of languages (over time)—then you will succeed in this international business. You’re looking at the big picture.

- Kris Rusch

 

If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.

- Edgar Rice Burroughs

 

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately no-one knows what they are.

- W.Somerset Maugham

 

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot… reading is the creative center of a writer’s life… you cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

- Stephen King

 

If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist.

- Isaac Asimov

 

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

- John Ruskin

 

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity

- G.K.Chesterton

 

The worst enemy to creativity is self doubt

- Sylvia Plath

 

My books aren’t trying to fathom the mysteries of human existence. I’m an entertainer

- Bernard Cornwall

 

The more a man writes, the more he can write

- William Hazlitt

Random Friday

Sooo, London! Here’s a summary of my 3 days wandering around:

I came back with 18 Bollywood titles again (like last year from the US), so I’m all set until next year, since I won’t watch them unless I finish the other stuff first (carrot&stick, remember? So one week back, I haven’t even started on the list!).

Being a once-a-week aunt for the rest of the school year, I can tell you that panel 1 was a success with Dear Nephew. I managed to make him do his English homework (in spite of the interruption to peruse my own art book on how to draw dragons) and then gave him the Angry Birds masks book. He wanted to take it home when his mother picked him up, but since the text is in English and I proved him I’m much better than his mum in translating, he left it with me so we can play with it again next Tuesday. As for Techie Bro, he’ll get his book for Xmas!

Right hand “duplicated” panels – are you eagerly waiting for my review of Krrish3? First of all, I had to watch it twice because I found some difficulty in reading the subtitles on a big screen – so one was for reading the subtitles and one to watch the movie. On a “small” screen (32″ TV) my peripheral vision catches everything, on a big screen – not so well. By the way, did you know men have tunnel vision and women have peripheral vision? Check this article on eye signals for more!

I digress again. The first time I was also distracted because of the tea and hot colored water you call coffee outside of Italy that I had drunk – I needed the restrooms badly. So the second time I went there before the movie started and enjoyed it much more! I don’t do spoilers, but yeah, glad it ended the way it did. Now I can write Krrish4 with Bad Krrish (either a cloned version or his wax statue that comes to life – whichever tries to kill the original, so Hrithik gets to play both the good and the bad), LOL!

Since it has only 3 item songs, it’s recommended to whoever loved the X-men movies (it has mutants!) or even 12 Monkeys (invisible virus kills millions!), so even if you don’t like Bollywood, you can check this superhero movie, especially if you’re into superheroes. I’m not really (I read only some Marvel heroes comics), but Krrish is Krrish!

And if you’re into comics, you might want to try the comic as well. Since it’s a moving comic, and I’m not too fond of the art, I’ll pass. I’m following the Motion Book Tool page on DeviantART, but I’m not impressed with the results. I know the future is this, but since I’m an old lady and don’t have an i-Pad (or even an android phone), I’ll pass… And there’s the videogame too, if you’re so inclined – Techie Bro didn’t want to try it because he doesn’t know the movies, sigh.

That’s all for now… slowly getting back into the routine and ran out of guests for Sundays, so if you’d like to be featured on this blog, drop me a line or leave a comment, thank you! Have a wonderful weekend!

Writer Wednesday

Let’s say I feel jet-lagged, although I have no reason to (England is only one hour difference and 3 hours flight) – blame it on my age! I love winter, but the cold also slows me down, along with a couple of womanly things I hoped I had gotten rid of. But I digress. It’s Writer Wednesday again aaaand, as promised, I have a new short story out, at the moment only on 3 distributors but with more to come.

Star Minds Snippets – Half-blood, a 99cent short story out now on Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes&Noble and eventually Kobo and Apple.

I’ve brought the proof for SMSnippets to London and found a few typos and duplicated words, so I’ll have to spend a day (next weekend) correcting and uploading the new doc. Hope I don’t get another email from CreateSpace reminding me about it – I know I have it pending, but they themselves recommend checking for typos and stuff, and you need time for that!

Also, I received an email telling me the expanded distribution is now free, so they’ll refund me the 25$ I paid when I set up the new title. They haven’t credited my credit card yet, but I still have a few days before complaining, LOL! So SMSnippets will be distributed for free, while I paid for Star Minds. Oh, well. I still don’t think I’ll sell many printed copies and still can’t see the MatchBook thingy, so… good for me!

I wrote a final short story in English while in London, then I’ll be back to translating Star Minds in Italian – and by the way, the series won’t change name (translation) after a friend told me I should leave it in English and non-English-speaking friends confirmed it’s fine for them if the series has an English title. I guess we’re used to (mostly) Star Trek anyway… (Older people like me still remember Star Wars with its Italian title, but Star Trek was never translated).

I also spent one rainy afternoon at the Westminster Library instead of watching a certain movie for the third time (more on that Friday, of course) where I found a couple of books on armor and swords that gave me ideas for my Assassins’ Guild weapons – although I had to integrate with a Wikipedia search when I came back. So I used that research for both the short story I was writing and then I’ll reuse it when I’ll write Assassins (might end up being next year – I’m falling behind again, sigh).

So far the only assassin is Kumar in BoI – Air, and he’s a noose-operator inspired by the Thuggee. The short story is one century later, and I’m adding the Sikhs’ chakram, while Assassins is 4 centuries later, so things will probably have changed more (maybe I’ll introduce the shuriken?). These new assassins in the short story use not only the noose but also other weapons that might end up vanishing 4 centuries later. Maybe. I’m working on a cover and will send it to a beta-reader this weekend, hoping she’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

Now a couple of writerly links: Reality check by Kris Rusch. Like her, I’ve never done NaNoWriMo and never will. If it motivates you to write the next book in the series, please do it! But if it’s your first (or third) NaNo, you might want to keep that thing in a drawer until you’ve written your million words of crap.

Covers: careful what you use (that’s why I love fantasy and sci-fi, no photographic covers, thank you!). Here’s a list onf 150+ things you can’t show in a commercial stock image. Which includes the Eiffel Tower, for example, I didn’t know I couldn’t use it on a book cover. Glad I haven’t published stories set in Paris (although in Love&Prejudice they do go to Paris at some point, but I didn’t put it on the cover, LOL!).

That’s all for now… Have a great week!

Happiness is…

… and wishing Leonardo DiCaprio a happy 39th birthday!

Sunday Surprise

…and it’s the last (for now) Wyrd Worlds author! Steph Bennion mentioned we reached almost 1000 downloads – let’s hope some people will look for the other titles of all the authors! There’s even another review on Smashwords, whoot! Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Wyrd Worlds author Neil Shooter!

Where do you live and write from?

I was born and raised in England and moved to rural Ontario when I was 19. Before too long I moved to the big city, but for the last few years I’ve lived in a small suburb of Toronto. I write whenever and wherever I get the chance: in bed, in the car (as a passenger), in coffee shops, on the couch, at the dining table. I get ideas falling asleep, on the toilet, in the grocery store, and I try to keep paper and a pen near me at all times!

When did you start writing?

I’ve always written. When I was 9 I wrote a Star Trek story, and I remember being particularly pleased with it at the time. When I was 15 I wrote 20 pages of a fantasy adventure story for an English project. When I was 25 I wrote the first draft of a story called Flyby over a 3 day long weekend. When I was 30 I started writing an epic fantasy because a friend had lamented he hadn’t got anything to read. I self-published my first short story in 2013. I’ve always written, but I haven’t always believed in myself, or been willing to let other people read what I’ve written. I’m very grateful to my great aunt who helped me believe that writing was in my blood. I’m also very grateful to my English teacher, who seemed to love everything I wrote.

What genre(s) do you write?

Science fiction and fantasy. These two, sometimes overlapping, genres have always been the ones that intrigued me and fascinated me. They always fired my imagination. At the same time, I like to think there is a bit of suspense in my stories, some adventure, and a dash of romance, but either elves and magic or space and aliens rule my worlds.

Where do you find your inspiration? Do you put yourself in your stories?

Inspiration is everywhere, and anywhere. I might find an interesting name written somewhere that sparks a new train of thought. I might watch a show, or read a book, and think, “I’d do that differently,” or “That’s cool, but what if…?” And don’t tell my friends or family this, but inspiration is all around me in my daily life, with drama, arguments, and off-hand comments. There’s a bit of me in every story. There might be many bits of me in a story. Different echoes of me might be in the hero, the heroine, and the villain of the same story. And fair warning to anyone who has ever interacted with me in any way: a part of you might be in one of my stories…

Do you have a specific writing routine?

I don’t have the luxury, because I have a day job that keeps a roof over my table and food on my – wait, what? Often I will write down the part of my dreams I can remember in a morning. In an afternoon I might grab half an hour to note down things that have occurred to me during the work day so far. At night I might stay up late with the pad of paper that lives beside my bed. If I was independently wealthy I might have a routine, but until then, I just have to take every moment and every opportunity when it comes.

Outliner or improviser? Fast or slow writer?

I’m a plotter and a pantser, but at different times. At the beginning of a story, I find it more exciting to just jump into it and see what happens. But sooner or later I need to pull myself together and really figure out what is happening, and what is going to happen. I think that pantsing part of story, at least, channels my creativity better, while the plotting part is important for consistency and structure.

There are times I can sit for hours and not notice the time passing, with pages and pages tumbling out of me. Other times I can struggle over a few lines. I try to make the most of the flow whenever I get that feeling.

Tell us about your latest book

I have several unpublished novels in various states of undress, but I’ve managed to clothe a few short stories. The latest of these is called Homeless, about a man living in a ravine in a winter that might never end.

Indie publishing or traditional publishing – and why?

Whenever I thought about publishing through the years, I always felt so daunted, and so inadequate. It is so difficult to get published traditionally, and there are agents and editors to deal with. There are still a lot of people who swear by the traditional publishing industry, and if it works for them that is great. But apart from fears and insecurities, I like to think I actually have some good reasons for self-publishing. I stay in control of my stories. I get a larger percentage of any sales. My works are available in perpetuity. In the traditional publishing industry books go out of print all the time, and most books are in print only for a short time before going into a literary limbo for decades at a time.

The best part of self-publishing is that you can put your words out into the world without paying a penny or a cent. The worst part of self-publishing is that you can put anything out there without having had it proof-read, edited, or beta-read by anyone. It can be very hard to notice your own mistakes, or to accept that there are things wrong with your darling project, but I’ve found that time helps to bring any errors out, time gives a fresh perspective as a reader of your own work, and time heals the emotional wounds after you’ve received a criticism or suggestions for improvement.

Any other projects in the pipeline?

There are so many! Starting with my most recent short story, Homeless is an introduction to two novella or novel length stories I’m working on. My short story Causality is part of a larger sequence of related short stories, with only the first two parts written as of this moment. The third part is fully plotted and “just” needs to be written. My short story “The Kinnon Gate” is the beginning of a novel length story I’m working on, and the characters introduced in the story are from the epic fantasy I’ve been working on since 2004. I’m writing a story about the drive to colonize Mars, and I’m developing a related trilogy of stories about the politics of space colonization as well. I figure if I live to be 200, I’ll finish half of what I’ve started. There seems to be no end.

What is your goal as a writer and what are you doing to achieve it?

Only to write. Of course I’d love to be wealthy enough to write more, and I’d love to be successful enough to be able to live off the proceeds, but until then, all I can do is write as much and as often as I can. Sales revenue would be an encouragement on those days when I doubt myself, but if I never received a cent for my work, I know I would still write. I can’t help it. I have to write, for my own sanity (such as it is), and my own sense of wellbeing. Writing is the only thing that consistently, throughout my life, has made me feel better, has made me feel like me. There is no stopping.

_____________________

Author Bio:

Neil Shooter grew up in northern England and now lives in a quiet suburban corner of Ontario, Canada. Always a slow learner, it has taken Neil most of his adult life to realize that the one thing that never fails to ground him and make him happy is the thing he should be doing with the rest of his life. Better late than never…

Facebook page

Goodreads

Smashwords

Amazon Author Central

Blurbs:

Causality

A dream of desolation and death. A nightmare vision of a looming end, surrounded by hidden enemies and desperate strangers. His love taken. His hope lost. His life forfeit because of his failures, his inadequacies. How can this end be a beginning? And how can a dream seem so real?

Probability

His eyes are filled with recognition even though they have never met. She knows it’s not possible, but it’s happening anyway. It makes no sense, and yet it is real. They shared a dream, but how much of it will come true?

The Kinnon Gate

From all over the Kinnon, they have been magically Called to a wintry square in a deserted city, but by whom, and why?

Homeless

Winter didn’t end, but his world has. Is he completely alone? In a world gone cold, what can keep the spark of life shining?

Random Friday

Okay, summary of Lucca Comics & Games:

(yes, I have bicolored hair at this time – my hairdresser is having so much fun with me, I can’t deny her, can I?) Ahem, where were we. Ah, yes, comicon. Well… too crowded for my tastes, I couldn’t get everything I was looking for because some places were unaccessible. I couldn’t even wave a “Hello” to Terry Moore, the barrage of fans and people was impossible to get through. Meh. But I did spend some time at his exhibition (it was quiet and there was a place to sit down – away from the darn rain!)!

I did manage to see friends (publishers or comic book artists) I get to see only at fairs, but even getting into the Games to watch Maurizio Manzieri work was a hassle. It was much more crowded than what I remembered from 2009 and made me wish I didn’t go at all. Maybe I’m really too old for this (says the lady who goes to London to watch a Bollywood movie, haha).

Anyway, I’ll end with a short gallery… I’ll be back from London tomorrow, and next week I’ll tell you how my final vacation went! Offline until then, don’t worry if I don’t answer to your comments right now! Have a great weekend!

Click to view slideshow.

Writer Wednesday

Another POD post! I finally got all my POD books, so here goes the third instalment of Lulu vs. CreateSpace – sort of. Like I said last week, I won’t do a new CS version for the old titles, but I’ll be using CS for the new ones. First – old ones! Here you have the version I did last year vs the revised version of this year (new interior formatting as well). Which covers look better?

You can find them all on Lulu (including the BoI that still have the old covers). Links are available also on the Smashwords pages of the single ebooks. By the way, I have adjusted CVE 2 & 3 so now they look like this (should have left more margin around the frames first thing, but well… I was doing too many at the same time, and those were the last two!):

And then here you have the CS books – Star Minds and sneak peek of Star Minds Snippets! Again, only Star Minds is available at this time (hey, the paperback is even on B&N! ), the Snippets will come out in a couple of weeks. When I come back from London, I’ll put out Half-blood and two weeks later the whole anthology.

Now, to writerly links: David Farland on turning inspiration into habit. Like I’ve said before, I never did NaNoWriMo since I’ve been in the habit of writing all year long well before the internet days. But if you’re starting now and are not in the habit yet, follow the master’s advice!

For indie authors out there – 8 cover design secrets and 11 things if you want to run a successful business. Unfortunately doesn’t apply much in this backward country with its own laws and rules. But the cover design one applies to me as well! And I agree with David Gaughran that publishing is easy!

That’s all for this week – still off DayJob, but still traveling… normal blogging resumes next week (although you probably can’t tell the difference since I schedule all posts in advance, LOL)! Have a wonderful week!

Happiness is…

Sunday Surprise

And it’s another Wyrd Worlds author! I’m blown away by the talent of these guys! Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Stan Morris!

Where do you live and write from?

I live on a farm on the island of Maui, and I write from my table desk located in my man-cave. For decades I used a laptop, but as LCD monitors became more common, I realized I would have more desktop space if I returned to a tower system. I added a twenty two inch Seiki TV (not recommended; terrible sound) as my monitor. I have four other LCD TVs in my man-cave, because I like to watch sports. It’s good to have an indulgent wife.

When did you start writing?

I wrote my first two novels about 1965. I was enjoying racy western paperbacks, and there was this cool new television show about space, called Star Trek. I was inspired by these two sources to write my own books which featured young men rescuing (from ridiculous villains) scantily clad young women and getting lucky. You other writers might recognize that as a euphemism for having sex. I was fourteen.

What genre(s) do you write?

Science fiction/romance would cover most of my books, and much of my writing glides along the line between Young Adult and New Adult. I would not be comfortable with someone twelve years of age reading most of my books, but I would not be surprised if some of my readers are that age. When I was twelve, I certainly enjoyed stories with a little sexual suggestiveness in them, especially if the characters didn’t go too far. At twelve, I wasn’t really sure what ‘too far’ meant. But my stories are mostly about ordinary older teens who find themselves in extraordinary situations.

Where do you find your inspiration? Do you put yourself in your stories?

My inspiration comes from all the input my senses deliver, but it is often the result of becoming exasperated by trite writing, usually in television series. It amazes me how often the girl has to be rescued by the guy even when she is supposed to be the strong lead. Fringe and Covert Affairs fall into this category. On the other hand, I’m guilty of doing the same in Sarah’s Spaceship Adventure.

My most popular book, Surviving the Fog, was written partly in response to the irritation I felt from reading Lord of the Flies. I wrote a short story in response to the first year of Falling Skies for the same reason. A few years ago, two movies were produced about the possibility of an asteroid striking the Earth. Luckily, humankind survived both. I imagined Robert Heinlein writing a similar story. I suspect he would have had his characters engaged in a massive attempt not to divert the asteroid, but to mine the sucker for any water and minerals available. By the time that asteroid reached Earth orbit it would have been the size of a dime. That’s the kind of twist on an old theme I’m looking for.

Quite often I do put aspects of my personality in my stories. I often put in aspects of people I know or have observed, and I’m not above using personality traits of characters from books, movies, or television shows I have watched.

Do you have a specific writing routine?

On a daily basis; no. On an overall basis, I start slowly, get into a grove, and then write frantically. When I wake up in the morning, boot my computer, get coffee, sit down at my computer, and open Word instead of Chrome or Firefox, I know I have gotten very serious about the book.

Outliner or improviser? Fast or slow writer?

I do a combination of outlining and improvising. Sometimes this is the result of a challenge or a whim. Up until my latest book, I had always set a goal of 100,000 words when I wrote a novel, but when I began writing Surviving the Fog-Kathy’s Recollections I deliberately avoided any goals. I decided to write until I was satisfied with the book, or until I was tired of it. It turned out to be 200,000 words. Previously I had not set chapter word-count goals, but in that book I set a goal of 5,000 to 5,800 words per chapter. I’m glad I did that. I discovered that having a set amount of words forced me to be more concise, to write a tighter book, and to sharpen my editing skills.

Sometimes I’m a fast writer, and sometimes I’m slow. Between mid-May and mid-August, I wrote short stories totaling about 80,000 words. That’s pretty average for me when I’m in to writing. Right now I’m taking a break as I prepare for an extended vacation.

Tell us about your latest book

My latest book is Surviving the Fog-Kathy’s Recollections. This is a sidequel (as good a made up word as any I suppose) with a starting point earlier than Surviving the Fog and continuing the story after the ending point of the original story. Surviving the Fog was written in 2008 and published at Smashwords in 2009. It has been a popular story with total downloads from all sources approaching 175,000.

Surviving the Fog begins at a camp in the southern Sierra Nevada Mountains. The camp was organized by a religious organization and was designed to preach sexual abstinence and to teach methods of birth control. Forty eight kids, ages twelve to seventeen, have gathered at the camp. After a week, none of the cell phones will connect, and the mail is not being delivered. The camp administrator leaves to check on the mail, and she takes all except one counselor with her. He is a mature man, very capable of dealing with the kids for the two hours the other adults will be gone. But his wife is expecting a baby, and his anxiety for his wife’s welfare causes him at the last minute to let Jackie, the youngest female counselor, stay behind in his place. They never return. Days later, one of the boys discovers that the Earth is covered by a layer of brown fog up to 6,700 feet, and that anything entering the fog is killed.

A lot of readers asked for a sequel, but for a long time I felt as if I had nothing to add, and I didn’t want to begin a regimen of writing sequel after sequel. I dreaded it becoming a soap opera. But the book did have criticisms other than grammar and spelling, and one of those criticisms is that I focused on the boys to the detriment of the girls’ stories. I agreed with that criticism, but other than rewriting the book, I didn’t see how to correct it.

Then I began a conversation with Tammy K, a reader at Goodreads. As I was corresponding with her, I thought about one of my characters, Kathy, and how dissatisfied I was in the manner that her story unfolded in the original book. It was nothing like what had been in my head at the beginning. I began to imagine the story from Kathy’s point of view, and one day I sat down and began writing. I was stunned at how fast the words flowed from my erratic typing. Ten months later, I had Surviving the Fog-Kathy’s Recollections. I had even taken a two month break in the middle of writing it. This book begins in Morgan Hill, California, as Kathy reluctantly prepares to attend the camp. She makes her feeling clear. “I had no problem with abstinence, and I was not interested in learning how to roll a condom onto a penis.”

Most writers are in like with their own words, and that’s true of me too, but I love this book. This was my seventh book, and I am a much better writer than I was when I wrote Surviving the Fog. I was able to humanize these children much better, and I was able to insert messages to teens in much more substantial manner. The higher word count allowed me to develop themes like self-control and commitment, and to comment on religion, politics, and community. The book shows the evolution of these kids from suburban modern teens to rugged young adults who mature as they face dangers from the elements, from outsiders, and from each other.

 Indie publishing or traditional publishing – and why?

I started out with the intention of using traditional publishing. I finished writing Surviving the Fog, printed the manuscript, and sent it to the Library of Congress to get a copyright certificate. After that my plan was to submit the manuscript to Baen Books or to Tor. The idea of publishing a book online was new, but since I am somewhat of a geek, I decided not to wait. I published the book at an obscure site. Then I discovered Manybooks, Scribd, and some other sites, and I uploaded the books to those sites. Then came Feedbooks and Smashwords. Finally Amazon created Kindle Digital Publishing.

Any other projects in the pipeline?

I always have many projects on tap, and I believe all authors should do this. When you are not feeling one project, try another. That will keep an author writing through a block.

What is your goal as a writer and what are you doing to achieve it?

My goal is to entertain readers and to gently offer a few suggestions about life and values. I do set myself challenges from time to time in order to improve my craft. One of the self-challenges I set this year was to write a series of short stories that tiptoed between the sensual and the erotic with a bit of disturbing domination thrown in. I wrote a total of thirty seven stories with a New Friends theme title.

I have written snippets of a book I will call Surviving the Fog-Douglas Lives, and I want to return to my other major projects, Tales of the Ragoon of which I have published three novellas, and Mackenzie’s World which has one published novel. Those are science fiction/romance projects. But I am never quite sure which of my characters is going to suddenly grab me and demand that their story be told.

I’m Stan Morris. I was born in Linwood, California, and was raised in Norwalk and Concord, California. In 1972, I moved to New Mexico. I met a girl at college in 1975, set out to score, and have been married to her since 1977. We lived in Texas for five years and then moved to Maui. We have two grown boys, both gainfully employed, thank goodness. My wife had the career and I had the job, so I worked at a variety of those before developing a computer business in the late 1980′s. Now I’m retired and living on a farm. I garden, watch sports, listen to music, read, and write. I don’t make much money at it, so occasionally I have to ask my wife for my allowance. She’s the principal at an elementary school who is retiring this year (2013). I like science fiction (Heinlein, Asimov, Weber, Flint), romance (Krentz, Roberts, Morisi, Chesney), mystery (JD Robb, MC Beaton), historical fiction (Lindsey, Stewart), and history books (Shelby Foote, David McCullough, William J. Bernstein.)

Book Blurb:

I don’t recall, exactly, when I accepted the likelihood that my mother, and my father, and my sister, and my brother were dead.  I remember gradually becoming alarmed when the Camp Administrator, who we called ‘the Admin,’ did not return with the counselors who had left with her.  And I think the first time I cried was the morning Jackie, the single remaining adult, refused to leave her cabin.  I must have begun to face the truth when Jacob told us about the fog covering the land below us, but it was sometime after that when I realized that I would never see my family again.  I was alone in a dangerous world, trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains by a deadly mist, and surrounded by strangers I had never met before that fateful month of May.

Book Excerpt

Then the Chief looked at the prisoner and said, “Bring him.”

The man started yelling at us, and he threatened to kill the Chief.  He described some really vile sexual things that he would do to us girls if we didn’t let him go.  Some of the kids got really frightened then, and some were so frightened they asked the Chief to let the man go.  They even spoke to the man, and they begged him to promise that he would never bother us again.

The man was struggling, and he was a big man and strong, but Ralph, John, and Howard held him firmly, and the other Spears helped them push the man onto the barrel.  It tried to roll out from under him, so the Chief called for some kids to hold the barrel steady at the ends.  The rest of the Spears, and some of the other kids, grabbed the ends of the barrel and held it steady.

The Chief climbed onto the barrel, and Douglas handed him the rope.  The Chief struggled to work the noose over the head of the wiggling man who was cursing at him.  Once he had the loop around the man’s neck, he tossed the other end of the rope toward a big tree branch. It fell short, and he tossed it again and again, until he made an accurate toss and the end of the rope dropped over the thick branch. Then he jumped down.

Ahmad, John, and a Spear named Rasul grabbed the loose end of the rope, and they pulled it rigid to lift the prisoner’s head. The man kept cursing them.  I wasn’t sure, but I thought I heard the Chief ask the man if he wanted to pray or something.  I know that behind me, I heard one of the boys praying quietly.

They lifted the man onto the barrel and helped him steady himself, and then they stepped back.  The man wavered, and then he caught his balance. Ahmad tied the rope tightly under a bole on the trunk of the tree.

The Chief said, “Do you have any last words?”

I don’t think the man truly believed that the Chief was going to execute him until that moment.  He turned ashen and began to breathe very heavily.  I wondered if he was going to beg for his life.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” he stuttered.

The Chief stepped onto the high side of the root, and as he did Howard stepped forward.

“I’ll help,” Howard said.  ”I didn’t go with you when you fought, so I’ll do this.”

To my surprise, Ralph came forward and said, “I want to do it.”

But the Chief shook his head and refused his request.

Then Desi stepped forward. “I’ll do it.  One of us should be a girl,” she said, and she got into position behind the barrel.

Some kids were hiding their faces by now, and I was one of them.  Maybe some of us were curious, but I think that most of us were scared or horrified at what was about to happen.

I heard the clank of shoes against the barrel.  The boy praying raised his voice, but I heard the barrel move, and I heard the man gasping, and then with a loud sound the barrel crashed over to the other side of the root and rolled down the hill.  I heard the rasp of the rope as it slid taut against the branch of the tree.  The man made a few noises for a second, and then he got quiet.  I turned slightly and saw his feet swaying, and then a few seconds later I smelled a terrible smell which I realized afterward was the smell of his waste as it was released from his body.  I felt sick, so I moved a long way from the tree and vomited into some bushes.

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