Barbara G. Tarn's Blog, page 201
June 15, 2011
Daily prompts same and opposite
Doomsday looming over WordPress?! 
Topic #155 is about death again. If I knew I was going to die in 20 days (or a little more than one year, according to the Mayan prophecy, or whenever), it wouldn't change anything. I try to live in the present even if I have some thoughts for the future and the past. There are things I want to do, but if I end up not doing them, I won't feel like a failure. "Life is always fair" like the voice-over says at the end of Mira Nair's Kamasutra (along with other wonderful quotes).
This goes also for the next topic: I don't want to be immortal, I don't care, but if it happens, well, I'll still have to live one day at the time. I'd probably acquire some wisdom if I keep the same body instead of resetting memories with each reincarnation, but that's all.
At the moment I think it's important I stay in the present and keep going, ignoring the doubts the Other Side throws at me. I need to believe more firmly in my dreams and just go for them. Life is beautiful. Be happy and smile always (so easy to say, so hard to do some days, but we must try, OK?)…
The photo challenge is about Morning – so here you have it: dawn in Fresno when we had to get up at 5am to head for Vegas, from my 2009 Southwestern Panoramas tour…
(I also have some Roman dawns, but they look pretty much like sunsets… so I thought I'd stick to this, at least I'm sure it's pre-dawn! Too early for a "morning" picture? But then, how can you tell it's morning except from the time on the digital camera?)
June 14, 2011
Great news
If you follow me on Facebook, you already know: I am guest at Clarion blog and Books of the Immortals – Fire is finally out.
First the guest post. I learned about Clarion Foundation when I read Orson Scott Card's How to write science-fiction and fantasy (a book I highly recommend to all genre writers). I bought it in London a few years ago (when there was still a Borders on Charing Cross Road…) and have seriously considered attending their workshops. Alas, I have a Day Job and taking six weeks off is not something I can afford at the moment.
When I discovered their blog, I started following it, and linking to it from time to time. Eventually the wonderful Lynda Williams contacted me and asked me to write a guest post… I couldn't believe my eyes when I got the e-mail, and of course you don't send the first thing that comes to mind when you receive such a request… I had to work on it a little, but now you can read the results! 
Thanks again for the opportunity! 
AND I also managed to upload Fire to Smashwords and Kindle (not live at the time of the post, but will be in a day or so). I will need a little more time for the printed version, but I should be able to have it live by the end of the month… In the meantime, you can check the trailer:
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A special thanks to Marilyn, Fulvio and Martin for helping me with tightening it (it was 3minutes long! ). Maybe next weekend I'll do a special offer on the novel… and of course you'll be able to read six sentences from it on Sunday, so stay tuned!
Oh, and I'm even listed on the brand new and improved Six Sentence Sunday site… great job, Sara Brooks! Yay!
And if you're in the Washington DC area, don't miss this panel on protecting creativity which features also Rights Paladin Colleen Doran…
June 12, 2011
Six Sentence Sunday is back!
Which means that I won't be alone like last week, yay! Well, I wasn't completely alone either, but without the list, no real hopping around… So a very special thanks to Sara Brookes for setting this up again!
As my next novel is still in the final editing stage at the time of signing up, I will continue with The Slave. You can check the previous two posts here and here. Again I'm skipping a few lines: he wants her, but… apparently so does she.
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She sort of followed him covering his neck with butterfly kisses while her hands explored his torso through his night caftan, as she slowly moved down.
"What are you doing?" he panicked. Only the most skilled courtesans could do that to him, and she had barely arrived. She was obviously no virgin, but she still needed his permission to do what she was attempting to do. He was king and semi-god, he was supposed to order her around. She shouldn't follow her own initiative, she was a foreigner, the Gods only knew what she could do to him!
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Told ya this guy has issues… BUT he can be very sweet when he wants to, trust me… The Slave is included in Arquon (2 Tales of the Southern Kingdoms) available for all e-readers. Now hop back to the official blog for more six sentence goodies! Have a great Sunday!
June 11, 2011
WoW Saturday
Both "writers on writing" and "words of wisdom" can be shortened with the same word. Thus, welcome to WoW Saturdays, June to September 2011. Enjoy this collection of writers quotes throughout the summer.
A hidden nerve is what every writer is ultimately about. It's what all writers wish to uncover when writing about themselves in this age of the personal memoir. And yet it's also the first thing every writer learns to sidestep, to disguise, as though this nerve were a deep and shameful secret that needs to be swathed in many sheaths. Some don't even know they've screened this nerve from their own gaze, let alone another's. Some crudely mistake confession for introspection. Others, more cunning perhaps, open tempting shortcuts and roundabout passageways, the better to mislead everyone. Some can't tell whether they're writing to strip or hide that secret nerve.
- André Aciman
Nowadays you are supposed to be marketable. Or you are unmarketable. Within the marketable group there are the house slaves (professional class) and the field slaves (working class). But some of us don't even make it to the auction block.
- Carolyn Chute
The successful novel, on the other hand, has a shape much like a bell. We begin at the top of the bell, its tight curve. Every detail has purpose here: the way a woman tilts her head, the slant of light as one exits the subway, the repetition of a phrase. As soon as we have gained our bearings, we notice things beginning to open up, flaring outward the way a bell does. (…) It is this resonance, finally, that separates the successful novel from the others. The cast of major characters may be small or large, clowns or kings. The backdrop may be modest (a room) or ambitious (a continent). The vocabulary may be simple or flamboyant, literary or colloquial. The melody may be created by a single flute, or performed by an entire orchestra. But through it all, there's a sense that what we're seeing is not all that this is about.
- CHITRA DIVAKARUNI
Such experiences have convinced me that Cushing Strout, the Cornell critic, knows whereof he speaks in his brilliant book "The Veracious Imagination." He argues that the imagination is not simply a mental device that "makes things up." On the contrary, it is an intellectual tool, closely wedded to the writer's intelligence. What it chooses to imagine for a novel is integrally connected to the essence of what the writer, consciously or unconsciously, wants to say about the subject.
- THOMAS FLEMING
"To me the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make."
- Truman Capote
June 10, 2011
Linky Friday
First authors' news: Krista D.Ball has a new non-fiction book out. If you're afraid of the blank screen of your blog, go check her!
JC Martin and Michelle Davidson Argyle have chosen the 20 authors for Stories for Sendai. Mark your calendars for June 30! Spread the word! I wasn't selected, but I look forward to this anthology anyway!
Michelle Davidson Argyle on labeling our writing – and why I decided to indie publish: I hate labels! I have problems in tagging my novels! And, like her, I write ADULT fantasy. Oh the horror. I'm sure I'm not the only adult who wants to read something that is NOT a coming of age. And in Water I have young protagonists (teens), but they're adults, and are treated as such. I will NEVER label it as YA only because one of the protagonists is 18 and his beloved is 17. (Besides everybody else is older… and there are homosexual characters… waaaaay too controversial for YA! ).
Found through the Indie Authors Web Ring (see the frog on the side bar? Yeah, there): Pamela Caves on friendliness in publishing.
Amanda Hocking goes to San Diego Comicon… One day I'll be there too, presenting my graphic novels! She also has a post on her way of writing - looks a lot like mine, loads of handwritten stuff et all!
Blood-red Pencil on the writing pests! A fun article on pet peeves!
I love Smashwords on why writing – check my comment… and let's hear it from a British writer! Who has the same comments on English usage as me (and I understand British humor better…)!
Dean Wesley Smith is re-starting the edited version of Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing. When the opus is done, I'm definitely buy the e-book and keep it for my records! Even if I read it all for free on his website.
Michael Stackpole on the new world of publishing too… hear it from the pros! Learn to do it yourselves!
Passive Guy on the rise of Amazon and why it's becoming the store with the most selection.
Self-published Author's Lounge on professionalism and how rules are harder for Indie authors. Methinks Ruth is darn right. Although I did point to that whiny indie author, I didn't read her book, so I didn't attack her personally. I'm not giving lower than 3 stars reviews, if I don't like a book you'll never know I read it, especially if it's from an indie!
Finally, Smashwords shares the growing visits to their site turning 3-year-old this month. That's very old for a website!
Now I better go back to finish editing Fire so I can format it and upload it tomorrow.
Have a great weekend!
June 9, 2011
self-editing
True that I'm a fantasy writer, but the title of the post first came out as "elf-editing". No, I don't have elves editing my manuscripts, unfortunately.
Anyhow, as I'm still working on the manuscript of BoI – Fire that I plan to upload this weekend on Smashwords and Kindle, I thought I'd share some updates on the whole thing. First of all: the printed version. Considering how expensive the "European" version is, from now on, I'll have only "US editions" in digest format. Easier for me and easier for everybody. Cheaper for Americans, and probably for the rest of the world as well. We'll see when I order my copy to check it.
Second: I changed editor for this one, but I have to keep my style consistent, so even if she deleted all the "s" at the end of "towards", I'll have to leave them in – consistency, they're there in Air, they'll be there in Fire. Same with other words with multiple spellings. My spellchecker underlined "toward" written without "s", so I write it with an "s" when I use American spelling and without when I use the British spelling (i.e. in the historical novel – on the back burner again until I put Fire out there, haha). So busy self-editing for consistency of style (and cutting the boring parts, that bored me anyway, haha).
Third: I'm advised to put a characters chart on this one because it's quite complicated (did I mention I love huge casts? ). I don't know how I could put some kind of link (bookmark?) in the e-book so the reader can click and get to the characters chart… with the printed version it's easy to flip to the end of the book, but with an e-book? Advices?
When I ordered my printed copy of Air, I read it through and through and found a couple of formatting mistakes, like a paragraph with no right alignment (which might be the rule for manuscripts, but looks really ugly in a book) and a chapter not starting on the next page + some missing " at the end of dialog lines. Easily fixed and re-uploaded (but the signed copy will be the "imperfect" one, sigh).
Then I took it again to find an example for a guest post (I'm still awed I got a request from THEM and won't say who they are until my post is live there, which will be real soon) and while skimming I saw a couple of missing dots (or full stops, like I was taught to call them, having started learning English in England). Uh-oh. And the novel has been copy-edited and re-read before uploading. Sigh.
So from now on, I decided one pass of edits will simply be skimming through, checking punctuation (and capital letters when needed), especially around dialog. And formatting of new scenes and new chapters.
I know typos can come out months and years later (which happened to all my manuscripts, except now they're published, sigh!) and I will put a special care on punctuation. I hate books with typos because English is not my mother tongue and I have to stop and wonder if it's a new word or a typo, so I really want mine to be as good as humanly possible. Reading backwards doesn't work if the word is spelled correctly but is the wrong one.
So what to do to get those little buggers? Even pros miss them. Any tips you could share (the skimming sounds like a good idea, but I still have to try it – and it's only for punctuation anyway)?
June 8, 2011
Daily prompts on life and death
No photo challenge this week, wasn't inspired by the topic. But as you can see from the title, I found 2 interesting prompts. #149 about life, #148 about death – at large!
So, to life… on other planets! That's a topic covered on the Contact blog as well, so it probably was in the air because of those worms… Like I said, I did write some sci-fi. And of course I do believe in life on other planets. In my novels it's mostly human, but sometimes I can make up non-human intelligent lifeforms.
It would be selfish to think we're alone in the universe. Which doesn't mean we're going to meet thore other people tomorrow or on any specific, prophetic date, because maybe THEY don't want to meet us until we clean up our act!
I also believe in different planes or dimensions. We're in the 3D plane, but I'm sure there are more and with life in them. Eventually we'll get there too. Superior civilizations know better than to interfere with us, like we did to our own minorities and less "civilized" populations (Spaniards in South America, anyone?).
About the next topic, should people have the right to commit suicide, sure, why not. But suicide is a very selfish act IMO, unless it's euthanasia. If I were stuck to some hospital device that keeps me alive as a vegetable in the hope that maybe some day I'll wake up or if I have some illness that gives me a lot of physical pain, I'd definitely want to end that ASAP.
But other forms of suicide are not an option for me. You might think that nobody loves you on this plane, but it's never true. Somebody somewhere does care if you live or not. And even if I consider death a journey to a better place (that's why I don't have problems in "letting go" somebody else, this world is way too crazy for my tastes) I'm certainly not going to consciously looking for it.
But I understand the topic is controversial. We had a case of euthanasia with people jumping at the father who asked to take his daughter out of her misery. I thought he did the right thing! But the Catholics hated it and it divided the country in two factions…
Anyway, these are my thoughs on these topics! Feel free to add yours…
June 7, 2011
Medieval dinner and Facebook
So, how was your weekend? I went to the programmed medieval dinner and was lucky enough NOT to get any rain during the event (although it poured the morning after on our way back to Roma). It was held at Certaldo and we stayed at the Hotel Il Castello (which means "castle" in case you were wondering). The dinner was organized by Elitropia, and I had already attended in 2006 (no pics, grrr…) and 2009 (where I took the pics I used in the Happiness is… vignette).
I put a best of of the pictures I took (close to 100… I'm a compulsive photographer! ) on my personal profile on Facebook (where there's already a best of 2009, so I didn't want to duplicate pics) and it took me ages because Facebook kept asking me to tag whoever was in the picture. I'm against tagging on FB and struggled to put up the damn album, but eventually I made it. Swearing to close the damn account ASAP, but whatever…
Anyway, I thought I'd give you, my faithful blog reader, a glimpse of that medieval dinner…
my friend at our room window
the hotel in 2009
yours truly in the hotel's garden
the souvenir... yeah, you take that home!
One last thing that has nothing to do with the above. See the frog in the sidebar? A joined a new webring by wonderful Shaina Richmond… feel free to join us and hop from indie author to indie author! Have a great week!
