Lou Harper's Blog, page 16

Wednesday Word: Jigger

jigger 1 |ˈjigər|noun1 a machine or vehicle with a part that rocks or moves back and forth, e.g., a jigsaw.2 a person who dances a jig.3 a small fore-and-aft sail set at the stern of a ship.• a small tackle consisting of a double and single block or two single blocks with a rope.4 a measure or small glass of spirits or wine.5 dated Golf a metal golf club with a narrow face.6 used to refer to a thing whose name one does not know or does not wish to mention : see them little jiggers?verb [ trans. ] informalrearrange or tamper with.PHRASESwell, I'll be (or I'm) jiggered used to express one's astonishment.ORIGIN mid 16th cent. (originally a slang word for a door): from the verb jig (the relationship with which is obscure in certain senses).

According to my other dictionary, "I'll be jiggered" is a British expression. I've sure never heard it before yesterday—from Charlie Cochrane.  Brits have the awesomest expressions. I want to steal them all. And sometimes I do—my poor editor keeps asking if I'm intentionally making my characters sound British.

Vintage Monday: On the Beach

Cyanotype is a photographic process going back to the 19th century. It's original purpose was to create technical drawings, and as far as I know it is the origin of the "blueprint."

Wednesday Word: Aslant

aslant |əˈslant|adverbat an angle or in a sloping direction : some of the paintings hung aslant.prepositionacross at an angle or in a sloping direction : rays of light fell aslant a door.

A simple word, yet seldom used.

Vintage Monday: Ladies Man

I found this old postcard at the flea market and thought it was cute. The guy wears red and white striped socks and it makes me think he might be an ancestor of Denton Mills, aka Dead Man.

Status Update

Dead Man and the Army of Frogs is off to my beloved beta readers, and I'm busy doing preproduction for my next book. So far I've written 1,800 words of plot outline and it's not even the detailed one. The story is a sort-of-mystery, as mine often are, and what I've figured out is that instead of what will happen in the narrative, the first outline should contain what happens everywhere, including stuff my protagonists are not privy to. Put it in different terms, this is a chronological, omniscient description of events. The next step is to distill it into a bullet point list of events from the POV if my narrator(s).
I like this phase—it's exciting, and a little scary, but mostly all potential. I haven't always done it, but now I find it exceptionally useful. For example, giving names to all my characters even before starting the outline helps me to flesh them out. This is also the time I start doing research. I'm very visual and tend to look for a pictorial reference for every little thing that appears in my story, even if it's for one line.
A chunk of the book is to take place in a two bedroom Craftsman house in Silver Lake, so I drove around there to scout, then spent an hour on Google searching for photos of Craftsman homes. I even downloaded and printed a floor plan—it'll help me to visualize the scenes.
I grabbed another floor plan too, even though the place will probably only appear in one scene. It's a bungalow belonging to Mme Layla, aka Layla Maurell. Yeah, she's Bran's mom from the Dead Man books. :) I like having supporting characters walking from one book to another. This time I'm also planning guest appearances by Detective Lipkin from Dead in L.A. and Sandy Baker from Hanging Loose. Well, that's the plan. You know never know what actually happens once you start writing.

Wednesday Word: Marginalia

marginalia |ˌmärjəˈnālēə|plural nounmarginal notes.ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from medieval Latin, neuter plural of marginalis, from margo, margin- (seemargin ).

Writing into a book seems such sacrilege, and I rarely do it, but I think it can also raise the value of the book on a personal level. Especially if it's by somebody you know, perhaps a long-gone relative. Those notes on the margin give a glimpse into the mind of the person who left them. Reading is an intimate experience and reading the marginalia is like reading a diary.

Vintage Monday: Fancy Pants

Don't these guys look like a collection of classic Bond villains? Especially the blond one. I remember the flared trouser legs from that era, but I've forgotten the high collars.

Wednesday Word: Till

till  |til|preposition & conjunctionless formal way of saying until .ORIGIN Old English til, of Germanic origin; related toOld Norse til ‘to.’USAGE In most contexts, till and until have the same meaning and are interchangeable. The main difference is that till is generally considered to be more informal than until. Until occurs much morefrequently than till in writing. In addition, until tends to be the natural choice at the beginning of a sentence: : until very recently, there was still a chance of rescuing the situation. Interestingly, while it is commonlyassumed that till is an abbreviated form of until (the spellings 'till and 'til reflect this), till is in fact the earlier form. Until appears to have been formed by the addition of Old Norse und (‘as far as’) several hundred years after the date of the first records for till.

I have a tendency to use "till" in writing and speech more often. Maybe it's a European thing, I don't know. But I've had crit partners and editors both "correct" them in my manuscripts before.

Vintage Monday: Tussle

These guys are supposed to be wrestlers but they seem more like having a roll in the hay.

Weirdness

With every single book there's a point where I hate the whole damn thing. It might be one I'll look back fondly one day. I can't explain why, but I decided it means it's almost finished.