Matthew Ledrew's Blog, page 22

Dormancy| Kit Sora’s Storytime

STORYTIME! Yes, that is snow, yes I am naked from the hips up, and yes, it was just as cold as you would think! That said, I did have fleece lined leggings, fuzzy socks, and my wintriest boots on just out of shot!

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I had an antler shot in my head for a while, I was just lacking the antlers! Then, by some miracle, a dear friend Tara had a set and offered them to be to borrow for a prop! Because they were on lend, I could add the copious amounts of glitter that I had originally in my head, but the butterfly worked out just as well for the overall tone of this shot.

While I do tend to do silly things in cold weather for photos, I am always more prepared than it seems- The shoots are typically either done in one 7ish minute burst, or 1-3 multiple bursts of 3 minutes, with warm coats and hot water bottles and warm drinks in between! I’m not -always- as nude as I look, and the art of being sneaky is something I’ve mastered!

This particular shot took less than 5 minutes to get, once my back hit the snow! We scouted in my favourite place, and found the perfect spot! I cheated of course because I didn’t actually want to die, and lined up the shot before I got down there, then trusted my precious boy with recreating the angle I had set out for, and of course he did it perfectly!

I have this glorious ability to go completely straight faced and calm despite the harsh cold conditions I was subjecting my body to. The faces and expressions prior to this shot were absolutely hysterical, but when scrolling through the back of the camera it’s like a switch from the ‘ermagherd’, to the hibernating, peaceful creature seen here. When doing this sort of thing, it’s ‘anything for the shot’, and ‘the quicker I get the expression I need, the quicker I can stick my cold body in my warm car with my butt warmer on full tilt’.

Kit Sora: The Artobiography

A stunning, hundred-plus page hardcover collection of over 80 of Kit Sora’s most ambitious photographs, paired with short fiction inspired by the art by Canada’s best authorial talents. Includes stories by USA Today Bestselling Author Kate Sparkes, USA Today Bestselling Author Victoria Barbour, and Bestselling Author Amanda Labonté.

C$60.00

Words © 2018 Kit Sora. Image © 2018 Kit Sora.

Wayfaring | Kit Sora’s Storytime

Found a magical staff in my travels and decided to use it, but didn’t know what I was aiming for! While digging through my wigs to figure out which one I’d use, I also decided to throw in the antlers I made for my Druid cosplay from Sci-Fi that I hadn’t properly shot yet, and thus this lil darlin’ was born!

Fun fact! My actual bangs are used for this shot! In between pink there’s generally a silver/white stage post lightening roots that looks pretty majestic, and I couldn’t resist passing up a chance to not show my forehead for a 52

“The Green Lady” by Jennifer Shelby |Short Story Winner

I was six when I accidentally summoned a Goddess. She had antlers, long red hair, and stood naked in the snow.

I trembled in my ladybug boots and soggy mittens. “Who are you?”

“I am Elen, the Green Lady. Goddess of the dreamways.”

“What’s a dreamway?”

“It’s the paths of your imagination, child. They are tangled in the forest, as is your wild, creative side with nature. Why did you summon me here, little girl?”

“Sorry, Miss, I didn’t mean to. I like to play in this forest. That’s my tree house, over there.” I pointed with pride to the ragged structure. “Daddy said the forest is going to be cut down. I wished for someone to stop it and you appeared.”

The Goddess pursed her lips, nodded, and disappeared.

That should have been the end of it, but the thing is, the forest didn’t end up getting cut down. The loggers tried. They were plagued with setbacks. Chainsaws wouldn’t start, their pull cords severed. The ones that did start couldn’t cut. My father said it was like the trees were banded in metal instead of bark. More than one logger said they glimpsed a naked, antlered lady in the tree boughs, but no one believed them. They drank heavy in the woods in those days.

The forest is still there now, a beautiful tract of old growth. There’s something mythical about it. A unicorn might wander past as likely as a doe. Or a Goddess, I suppose.

To read the second and third place entries and for more contests and opportunities, please subscribe to the Fantasy Files Newsletter.

For exclusive content and FREE books, be sure and check out the Engen Books Patreon.

Words © 2018 Jennifer Shelby. Image © 2018 Kit Sora.

Heather Reilly

[image error]Heather Reilly is an author, musician, poet, and teacher currently living in Newfoundland with her husband and three children. She is the author of several publications, including the five-book YA series Binding of the Almatraek, along with many children’s books and songs. 

Reilly was a contributing author to Fantasy from the Rock, bringing with her her award-winner tale ‘In the Moonlight.’

[image error]Fantasy from the Rock by Erin Vance & Ellen Curtis

Series: From the Rock, #2017

The Pitch: Twenty-One short stories written by an eclectic mix of some of the best fantasy authors in Atlantic Canada, some of them award-winning veterans of their field and some of them new to the craft! Edited by Erin Vance and veteran science-fiction author Ellen Louise Curtis, this collection features the heartfelt, creatively charged, astonishing fiction that showcases the talent and charm Atlantic Canada has to offer.

Winner: “The Green Lady” by Jennifer Shelby | Kit Sora Flash Fiction Photography Contest

After much deliberation, Engen Books is proud to announce the winner of the October 30 2018 Kit Sora Flash Fiction Photography Contest: Jennifer Shelby with her story, The Green Lady!

Jennifer Shelby was hatched in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and currently nests on a storm-ridden mountain rising from the banks of the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick. Her work has appeared in Spaceports and Spidersilk, Andromeda Spaceways, and Cricket. In the spring of 2018 she won the WFNB Fog Lit Books “For Young People” prize for her short story, Dragon Crossing.

There were two judges for this month of the contest:

 

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Jon Dobbin

A native to the St. John’s metro region, Dobbin tied for first place in the 2017 48-Hour Writing Marathon, and tied for second in the 2018 Year. He describes himself as “the father of three, the husband to an amazing wife, an educator, and a tattoo and beard enthusiast.”

Dobbins work has appeared in the Chillers from the Rock and Kit Sora: The Artobiography collections. His first standalone novel, The Starving, hits shelves in 2019.

 

[image error]Chillers from the Rock by Erin Vance & Ellen Curtis

Series: From the Rock, 2018

The Pitch: Twenty-five short stories written by a diverse mix of some of the best suspense and horror authors in Atlantic Canada, including both award-winners, veterans of their craft, and brand new talent.

Edited by Erin Vance and accomplished genre author Ellen Curtis, this collection features the thrilling, creatively charged, astonishing fiction that showcases the talent, imagination, and prestige that Atlantic Canada has to offer.

Introducing Ashley Green, contributor to Kit Sora- The Artobiography! Preorders open!

[image error]In addition to a slew of amazing, prize-winning talent and all the best authors working in Atlantic Canada today, Kit Sora: The Artobiography is host to some of the hottest emerging talent on the island!

One of those astonishing new authors is Ashley Green, author of the story ‘Flurries.’

Ashley currently residing in St. John’s, Newfoundland. ‘Flurries’ is her first published fiction.

Kit Sora: The Artobiography

A stunning, hundred-plus page hardcover collection of over 80 of Kit Sora’s most ambitious photographs, paired with short fiction inspired by the art by Canada’s best authorial talents. Includes stories by USA Today Bestselling Author Kate Sparkes, USA Today Bestselling Author Victoria Barbour, and Bestselling Author Amanda Labonté.

C$60.00

Farm to Table: Worldbuilding vs Storytelling

Last weekend I attended a panel on world building in genre fiction. There was a lot of interesting discussion, including one question a lot of genre writers grapple with constantly: When does world building stop? As in, when does world building become tedious exposition. After all, the reader doesn’t want an encyclopedic presentation of your lore; they want a dramatic story. I’m not sure about the precise numbers, but I’m willing to bet The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings have sold a helluva lot more copies than The Silmarillion.

When it comes to world building, I think the biggest challenge genre writers face is knowing when to stop, recognizing what they can, and should, leave out. The analogy I often use is that the writer is like a chef and the reader is their customer. When most people go to a restaurant, they don’t care about the work that’s gone into the dish. All they care about is the meal. What kinda soil did these turnips grow in? What sorta grain did this cow eat? Most people don’t care about this. They wanna eat their steak and veggies in peace. Likewise, do I really need multiple paragraphs on the history of every little village your adventurers pass through? No.

Sure, there are foodies and the whole farm to table movement of people who are really interested all that extracurricular stuff (The Silmarillion does sell copies). However, that’s extra. If you make flavourless food no one is gonna eat it no matter how much you tell them about the acidity of the soil.

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Hemingway said “If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.” Easier said than done. This is difficult for genre writers because there’s the fear that leaving out certain bits of information will leave the reader confused.

So, let’s say you’ve committed all these hours to drafting your writing and have developed a robust universe for your characters to experience. What sorta techniques or principles can you deploy to avoid falling into exposition traps.

David Simon, showrunner of The Wire and other great TV series, makes a great point when he observed that the viewer “loves being immersed in a new, confusing, and possibly dangerous world that he will never see. He likes not knowing every bit of vernacular or idiom. He likes being trusted to acquire information on his terms, to make connections, to take the journey with only his intelligence to guide him. Most smart people cannot watch most TV, because it has generally been a condescending medium, explaining everything immediately, offering no ambiguities, and using dialogue that simplifies and mitigates against the idiosyncratic ways in which people in different worlds actually communicate. It eventually requires that characters from different places talk the same way as the viewer. This, of course, sucks.”

Don’t be afraid of ambiguity. Andrew Stanton (writer/director for Finding Nemo and Wall-e) said don’t give the audience 4, give them 2+2. Don’t be afraid to let your reader work for their meal, so to speak. Let them fill in some of the gaps. That’s part of the fun.

When Han Solo tells Luke Skywalker the Millennium Falcon is a great ship because “it made the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs,” we don’t need to know what the Kessel Run is. We think, “oh this must be some kinda inter-galactic smuggling thing,” and now our imagination starts expanding this universe even more. Or we might even think, “this guy sounds like he’s making this up,” which builds character. It’s not necessary to see Solo for any of this to work, if anything it might ruin it for a lot of people.

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So, ultimately, it all comes down to storytelling. Most people don’t care about your homework. World building is a means to an end. Figure out what that end is and don’t worry about your readers understanding every inch of your setting.

Cheers

-b

 

 

NaNo Lessons 2018 (So Far) | House Blog

1. Writing every day is good. I’ve been doing a lot of editing lately, so I felt a bit rusty jumping back into novel writing. Pushing myself to write every day is helping get me back in the groove, and I’m finding that I’m more focused on the story as a whole and quicker at solving issues. Even if you can’t write every day, it’s helpful to try to write as often as you can. Just like swimming, if you don’t practice, your skills can get rusty (and you won’t be able to do those cool jump dives from the side of the pool like you used to).

2. It doesn’t matter what you write – WRITE. Some purists may consider it cheating to include writing that isn’t within your novel, but I think that as long as you’re getting words down, it can count. The novel I’m writing is about characters putting on a play, so not only am I writing the novel, but also the play within (I searched for a version online but couldn’t find one). Whenever I hit a brick wall on the novel, I’ll turn around and write the play, so I can stay productive instead of staring at my screen blankly. Sometimes, if I get stuck on both, I’ll do word-sprints to help outline the plot or work through a problem. While these things aren’t necessarily helping the novel’s word-count, it’s still writing and it’s still helpful.

3. Seriously – JUST WRITE. It was only day 2 in NaNo when I decided to pause and write a Kit Sora fiction. Sometimes I get stuck in a project and don’t know where to go next, so I need something else to think about, like an amuse-bouche for my brain. It keeps me writing, and there are so many other things out there to write (like Flying Stories). As a bonus, sometimes while I’m writing something else, my novel will notice that my attention’s elsewhere and get jealous. ‘Remember me? You should get back to me! Here are tons of ideas!‘

4. Don’t get discouraged if what you write isn’t perfect. This novel is already showing signs of being a good Zero Draft instead of a good First Draft. I’ve got some great scenes and character development, but it’ll need a lot of tightening up. However, instead of going back and trying to make it perfect, I’m writing notes to my future self of what’s needed, before moving on. I won’t finish this novel if I worry about every single word I’ve written, but I will if I keep going forward. As Socrates once said*, It’s better to have a draft that needs work than no draft at all.

5. It’s okay to hold back and wait for inspiration. I find it easier to write when I know what’s coming next or what I want to say. At one point I knew that I wanted to describe a show that was going on, but I didn’t want to write it from my main character’s point of view. So I held off and moved to the next chapter instead of forcing myself to write something I didn’t want to write. Then, that night, I was thinking about the story and I realized exactly who’s point of view I could use. The next day I started writing and SUCCESS! The words came easily and quickly, and the scene was finished in no time.

6. …Just don’t wait too long! Remember that you shouldn’t go too many days without writing. If your inspiration for the next scene isn’t coming along, think of a scene that you want to write and move on to that. If I’m struggling to write something, usually it’s because there’s something off about it. I’ll try to change it, mix it up, or think about it another way. Or cut it out altogether and write something else.

7. There’s still time. November ain’t over yet! Even if you don’t make it to 50,000 words, if you’ve been even the least bit productive, it’s been worth it. And when November ends, it doesn’t mean that you have to stop. Keep on writing! Words forever! Huzzah!

______

*Socrates totally did not say that.

Introducing Jenn Coish, contributor to Kit Sora- The Artobiography! Preorders open!

[image error]In addition to a slew of amazing, prize-winning talent and all the best authors working in Atlantic Canada today, Kit Sora: The Artobiography is host to some of the hottest emerging talent on the island!

One of those astonishing new authors is Jenn Coish, author of the story ‘Keeper of Knowledge.’

Jenn is a paramedic currently residing in St. John’s, Newfoundland. ‘Keeper of Knowledge’ is her first published fiction.

Kit Sora: The Artobiography

A stunning, hundred-plus page hardcover collection of over 80 of Kit Sora’s most ambitious photographs, paired with short fiction inspired by the art by Canada’s best authorial talents. Includes stories by USA Today Bestselling Author Kate Sparkes, USA Today Bestselling Author Victoria Barbour, and Bestselling Author Amanda Labonté.

C$60.00