Trudy Myers's Blog, page 7

Another Character

My first romance novelwas about Wanda, who had been very comfortable with her life before the readersmeet her. She was very happily married, with a husband, Hank, who thoroughlysupported her efforts to be a full-time author. Wanda wasn’t sure how muchmoney Hank was making with his IT job, but he paid the bills without complaint,and he told her he was saving ‘as much as he could’ in case they ever had anyemergencies. They had friends they got together with regularly and life waspleasant in their apartment in Chicago.

The reader meets hershortly after Hank has died in a traffic accident going to work in a blizzard.She is deep into grief, not just because Hank is dead, but because she knowsshe can’t pay the rent on their apartment on her own. She will have to move.

As she is going throughHank’s papers, wondering what she can get rid of, Wanda comes across a deed fora house in a tiny town in Nebraska. The house was an inheritance from Hank’sgrandmother, given to Hank and somebody named Charles. Charles had apparentlysold his half to Hank, or gifted it, but whatever, it looked like the house wasentirely Hank’s. It seemed strange that Hank had never mentioned the house, buthe didn’t talk much about where he grew up. Except happy memories of hischildhood.

Wanda contacted a realestate agent in Nebraska who might be able to answer questions. The agent knew thevillage of Belgrade well and assured her that the house was in decent shape andfully furnished, although it was likely to be dusty, since it had been empty acouple of years.

So Wanda moved, withouteven seeing the house she was moving to. Or the town where she would be living.Not having rent or a mortgage to make payments on, she was confident she couldmake ends meet. She took herself from a place where she had been happy to aplace where she was an outsider.

The first person shemeets in Belgrade—a bartender at one of the two local bars—looks an awful lotlike Hank. Besides fixing her some lunch, he makes phone calls on her behalf toget her utilities turned on.

It only takes a fewdays for Wanda to realize there are 3 men in Belgrade who look like brothers toHank; Bob (the bartender), Charles (who had briefly owned ½ of the house shenow owned), and Lyle, a drunk womanizer. Bob tries to make her feel welcome.Chuck seems too busy to run into her very often. She wants nothing to do withLyle.

But this is a romance I’vewritten, and it takes place in a very small community, where gossip is thenormal method of entertainment for the residents. It isn’t long before peopleare wondering which of the town’s young men will catch Wanda’s eye. Even thoughWanda is still grieving and trying to keep her distance from the men, in a townof less than 200 people, that doesn’t seem to be possible.

If I’ve piqued yourcuriosity, you can get an e-copy of Hank’s Widow at www.smashwords.com/books/view/1090836Use the coupon code JN73Qwhen youcheck out to get it for half off.

And just to put a little icing on the cake, so to speak,you can also get “The Game”, a story that explains the relationship between Hankand his look-alikes. This short story is free at www.smashwords.com/books/view/1091675.

 

 

About Mac

I want to talk aboutMac. Colleen “Mac” MacDowell is a character I’ve been working with sporadicallyfor the past 20 or 30 years. But the last couple of years, I’ve been workingpretty intensely on getting her story written. I’ve still got a long way to go.(I’ve got about 9 volumes written in the series, but I’m thinking it will be atleast 15 volumes long, maybe more.)

Colleen—

Nobodycalls me that. It’s Mac.

(Sigh.) Mac is a girl.Or rather, by the time we meet her, she’s a woman. She was born and raised on aheavy-world planet, namely Gaelund, so she has more strength than it seems shewould have. She’s also fairly short, about 5’2”. She has fire-engine red hair,typically only found on Gaelund, and emerald-green eyes.

She was raised the onlydaughter, with 7 older brothers. Their father instilled in those brothers thatthey would protect their sister’s ‘innocence’ no matter what the cost. Shecarries a lot of baggage with her.

Icame here with 1 regulation duffel bag!

I meant psychologicalbaggage.

Oh,that.

Anyway, after 4 yearsat the Fleet Academy, and roughly 5 years bouncing from one tug to another, shesomehow finagled a promotion and a transfer to the FSS Fireballfrom her former captain. She’s the 4th communications officer on theFireball, and she’s assigned to the midnight shift.

Tellthem about Bugsy.

Stop interrupting. Shewas happy to get to the Fireball because she knew the senior helmsman,Bugalu, who she considers an adopted brother. Bugalu was two years ahead of herat the Academy and was roommate for her youngest brother, Matthew. It took the2 of them to keep Mac out of trouble, and to get her trained to get along inFleet society.

Trained?You mean, like a pet?

You’re interruptingagain.

Youtalk too slow.

I type even slower.Now, let me get along with this. When Mac arrived on the Fireball, alongwith 2 other beautiful women, the captain wondered which of the 3 would turnout to be trouble. Capt Jane Burke couldn’t tell from her first introduction tothem, but they all seemed to have personality quirks that could mean troubledown the road. Still, she sent the ladies off to their assignments and hopedtheir supervisors could nip any potential problem before it got too big.

Mac had a tumultuousprobation period on the Fireball. Between not being able to pass herprobational test and arguing with men who want to date her, it seemed Mac wasgoing to be the problem. Meanwhile, the Fireball had some adventures,and somehow, Mac always seemed to be in the middle of those adventures. Andthen Mac came up with a problem that she couldn’t solve.

You’regoing to end it there?

I have to leave somemystery to it. I can’t give away all your secrets.

Now, all of that, I’mthinking, will be in the first 5 volumes. And I’m thinking that Volume 1 will getpublished on 9/16/2025. That should give me time to get it edited, formatted, anice cover for it… all those things that go into publishing a book.

That’sover a year away, even on Gaelund.

We’ve been working onyour story for decades, what’s another year?

Ithink that’s what my fiancée thought when he…

Grief

We all know what griefis. I dare say we’ve all experienced it at various times during our lives.Well, I’m dealing with grief of a slightly different kind.

We’ve decided to getrid of my car.

This is my car.I picked it. I bought it. I paid for it. It’s mine, through and through.

It’s a 2007 Pontiac G6,red in color. I bought it about the time I retired, so right about 2010. It hasserved us well for 13 years.

But…

I don’t feel I cantrust it right now. It needs work. A lot of work. And I haven’t got the money.It needs an oil change and maybe some brake work… I don’t remember all theroutine maintenance the garage said it needed, but it amounted to about $600. Ihaven’t found that money in the almost-a-year it’s been sitting in ourdriveway. I am nervous just driving it 2 miles to the grocery store, for fearit won’t start (or something else goes wrong) so that I can’t get it home.

That isn’t all. Therewas a bunch of not-so-routine maintenance that they said it also needed. Thatis a further $500.

And to cap it all off,the AC unit is completely fried. That would be $5,000. Yes, it is that fried.

A year ago, I wasthinking it needed some bodywork and a paint job. I was dreaming, of course.

We’ll try to sell it,but if anybody shows any interest in it, we’d have to tell them what afixer-upper it is right now. It wouldn’t be honest or ethical to keep that toourselves.

If we can’t sell it,we’ll give it away.

I’ll still have thememories, right? The memories of driving that car back and forth between Omahaand Orlando for several years. Memories of driving it to Kansas City and backto Omaha once a week to take a class on Theatrical Makeup. Those were lonely trips,with just me and my car. And a road Atlas to keep me from getting lost. I thinkI still remember the route.

There was one trip toOrlando where my hubby flew down to meet me for a vacation (as usual). Thistime, while we were there, he bought two big tubs of cosplay costumes and abunch of supplies from Smooth-on. That was a very loaded down car for the tripback to Omaha!

Well, I could keeptalking about memories all day. It won’t change anything.

It’s kind of like whenyour pet dog is on his last legs, won’t eat, can’t even keep water down, andyou know it’s time to put him to sleep.

Yeah, it’s kind of likethat.

But I’ll miss it.

Interruptions to Your Writing

Most authors have heard that they should ‘write every day’.I don’t always manage to do it, and sometimes when I do write, it isn’t on mycurrent Work in Progress. I might have a blog post coming due, so I write that.Or I work on a piece for an upcoming newsletter. Typically, these ‘also wrote’items are not very long, and adding them to my Writing Journal doesn’t make mystats look any good. But it is writing, and so I count it.

But sometimes, something comes along that knocks you rightout of the idea of writing. It might last a couple of days, a couple months, oreven longer. For instance, last year when my right arm was broken in a caraccident, I could not write longhand nor by keyboard for at least 6 weeks. Eventhen, I had to have weeks of physical therapy to get that arm used to doingthings again. But I remember plotting out several scenes in my head while myhand was otherwise occupied, and as soon as I could type again, those scenesflowed out of me easily.

Another example: My hubby was facing surgery this pastMonday. All surgery has its risks. Neither one of us got anything productivedone that Saturday and Sunday. I couldn’t even focus enough to plot upcomingscenes. But on Monday, after his surgery was done, and he was sitting up andeating his supper while looking for something to watch on the hospital tv, I wrote.Even though I didn’t have any scenes thought out, I wrote for 3 hours, puttingmore than 1,200 words on the page. Not bad.

And now the worst example. At one point during my firstmarriage, my then-husband criticized my writing. Not in a good way, he meant tobe mean. I gave up writing for 10 years. I wasn’t going to let him be mean tome in that way again. Eventually I divorced him and moved on. And after a fewmore years, I started writing again. It took me time to get back in the grooveof writing, but I enjoy doing it, and I miss it when I don’t get to do it.

Just because you have things crop up that intrude on yourwriting time doesn’t mean that you aren’t a writer. It’s whether or not youpick yourself up and get back to putting words on pages.

Looking For Wallets

They’re LookingFor Their Wallets Over There.

Here’s anotherbatch of homonyms: they’re, their, and there. With three of them to choosefrom, it’s easy to grab hold of the wrong one. So first, let’s take a look atwhat each of them means.

They’re – This is acontraction, and it always means ‘They are’ (or occasionally, ‘Theywere’). If you have a sentence with ‘they’re’ in it and substituting ‘they are’makes the sentence into garbage, it isn’t the right word for that sentence.

Their – This word means‘belongs to them’.

There – This wordindicates a location that is not here; an area that is some distance away.

Which of thefollowing sentences is correct?

1.     1. They’relooking for a lost dog.

2.    2.  Theirlooking for a lost dog.

3.     3. Therelooking for a lost dog.

Answer: #1 iscorrect, because they are looking for a lost dog. In #2, if you try tosubstitute ‘belongs to them’ looking for a lost dog, it doesn’t really makesense. It is possible the lost dog belongs to the searching party, but we don’tknow that for sure. And in #3, trying to substitute ‘an area that is somedistance away’ looking for a lost dog also doesn’t make any sense. How can aninanimate area look for anything?

Which of thefollowing sentences is correct?

1.    1.  They’relost dog came home.

2.     2. Theirlost dog came home.

3.     3. Therelost dog came home.

Answer: #2 iscorrect, because the lost dog ‘belongs to them’. In #1, ‘they are’ lost dogcame home makes no sense. And in #3, ‘an area some distance away’ lost dog camehome also makes no sense. How can a distant area describe a lost dog?

Which of thefollowing sentences is correct?

1.    1.  Ifound my wallet over there.

2.    2.  Ifound my wallet over their.

3.   3.   Ifound my wallet over they’re.

Answer: #1 iscorrect because the wallet was found in a different location. #2 makes nosense, because the wallet doesn’t belong to ‘them’, it belongs to the speaker.#3 also makes no sense, because it is saying, I found my wallet over ‘theyare’.

Trying to rememberthe meanings of these words will help you figure out which one to use where. Tome, ‘they’re’ is the easiest one to remember, because it always means‘they are’.

‘There’ has theword ‘here’ within it, and they are both locations or areas. But while ‘here’means ‘where I am’, ‘there’ means ‘a spot at some distance’.

Which leaves theword ‘their’, and I don’t have any little tricks for remembering what it means.But if you need to, look it up in a dictionary when you come across it. I don’tthink it will take you long to memorize what it means.

 

 

Taking Next Week Off

Rather than justdisappear from my blog for a week or two, I thought I should let you know thatI will not be here for at least 1 week. Maybe 2. It depends on how things go.

Hubby has surgeryscheduled for April 15, and next week’s blog would be due on 4/11. As the datefor his surgery approaches, my nerves are getting strung a little tighter andtighter. No need in loading myself down with extra chores at a time when I mightbe finding it difficult to focus on things like that.

The following week,4/18, will be just a few days after surgery. He will be in a sling for 5 weeks,is my understanding. I remember when my arm was broken last year, and I was ina sling for several weeks. I started out pretty helpless for the first few weeks,unable to do much of anything for myself. I even needed help cutting up my foodat meals. I don’t know how much help he will need throughout the day, and Idon’t want to over-commit myself.

Hubby’s surgeryinvolves getting a small defibrillator installed in his chest to keep his heartbeating regularly. Kind of like a pacemaker, only different. Sorry, but that’sthe way it was explained to us.

Anyway, this looks tobe the first step in his getting healthier after 1.5 years of variousillnesses. Wish us luck!

New Stuff to Learn

When I was thinkingabout retirement, I took to heart the adage that one should never give uplearning new things. It went hand in hand with the realization that the scienceI knew was too far out of date for me to attempt to write science fiction. So Istarted reading science magazines to try to learn Where Science Was At Now, andwrote in other genres in the meantime.

Shortly after Iretired, I started publishing, and that required I learn things like editing,formatting a manuscript into a book, and things like that. (And Marketing,which is a never-ending challenge.)

Recently, I signed upfor a one-on-one online class. I didn’t think about it at the time, but ideally,this class would require a camera and a microphone attached to my computer. Mycomputer had neither. I tried to make it work by using my cell phone to call into the classroom, but the url was long and complicated, and my fat littlefingers kept hitting the wrong keys. After half an hour of our hour-long timeslot, I suggested we reschedule for the following week, and promised I wouldhave a microphone by then. I couldn’t imagine them being very expensive.

When I mentioned toHubby that I needed to drive to Best Buy for a microphone (about 15 miles ineach direction), he said we had a couple mics he wasn’t using, he’d dig one outfor me. Later that evening, I found a giant box on my desk. Inside was a hugeSnowball microphone.

Procrastination is afunny bird, but it does tend to light a fire under you when a deadline islooming. My next ‘class’ was scheduled for today. Yesterday morning, I decidedI’d better get a move on with getting a microphone set up. I had found aheadset with attached mic a few days ago, so I decided to try that one first.But first, I needed software that would record audio files.

Both my youngest sonand my hubby suggested I download Audacity because it was ‘fairly easy’ tolearn to use it. So I downloaded it AND set it up on my computer, all bymyself! Okay, the computer did most of the work, I just hit a button here andthere. But I basked in the glory of having done that much.

After much studying ofthe Quick Guide and a couple of tutorials, I finally figured out how to make atest recording and then listen to it. I was surprised at how tiny the squiggleswere on my test recording, and when I listened to it, I could hardly hearanything. So more studying and more testing, and I finally figured out how toup the volume. Success! And a good thing, too, because it was time to makesupper.

As we were watching tvafter supper, it dawned on me that I had made the volume changes in Audacity,which I would not be using during my class. Obviously, I needed to find someway to adjust the volume on my computer. To make a long story short (I know,too late), I found a couple of places in Settings to test the microphone. Ifanything, the output may be a little too loud. Maybe I’ll have to whisperduring my class.

Anyway, I learned somenew stuff. Before this, I had some nebulous thoughts on how I could use audiofiles. Now that I’ve got a little bit of knowledge on how to make them, thosethoughts are already blossoming into full-fledged plans.

Wish me luck!

Advice For Writers

Writers are givenlots of advice. Sometimes the advice is good, sometimes it’s not. And sometimesit can only be described as, ‘well-intentioned’.

The first piece ofadvice I ever got when I was first trying to spread my wings was that I shouldwrite every day. I admired my cousin Roy a great deal, and I really thought hiswriting style was great. But I never could manage to write the thousand words aday that he kept advising me to do.

Don’t get me wrong,I didn’t have to labor long and hard to get a thousand words written. Most daysthe words just flowed out of my pen and onto my tablet, and I might get 2 or 3thousand words written in a day. But then something would happen. A bout of flukept me down for a few days. I somehow wound up with a multitude of chores todo one weekend, or a big amount of homework to get done. Possibly the familydecided to drive up into the mountains on Saturday. I was afraid of heights, soI was allowed to take books to read, but not books to write. Of course, mynotebooks never stayed in good shape long enough to finish them, and Icertainly didn’t want to lose any pages, so I didn’t think that was a bigproblem. Except I never seemed to get my thousand words written that day. I hadfailed!

But in hindsight,I had bigger problems than that. I would start a story and work on it for a fewdozens or even hundreds of pages. Then I would lose interest in that story,hide it in a drawer, and start a new one. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s thatI actually finished a few stories. And shortly after that, it occurred to methat SOMEbody needed to go through those stories and edit them. I startedworking with other authors to get some critical feedback.

Eventually, Iarrived at the point where I could retire, and I did, anticipating that I wouldtake the 8 hours a day I had spent working and use them to work on my writing.Somehow, that hasn’t happened. I am at my computer daily, working for at least8 hours, but I am not necessarily working on a story for 1000 words. I have toomany other things to do. I am head of a small press, and I am editor, layoutperson and publisher for my husband. Ditto with my own writing, and editing ismuch tougher when it’s your own work.

So if you ever seeme at a convention, conference, or transportation hub, and I’m pounding away ona laptop, it’s only me, trying to get 1000 words written that day.

Depressing News

I don’t spend a lot oftime on facebook or twitter anymore. I find it too depressing. Every day ortwo, it seems like a friend has lost a family member or a pet to death. Twoother friends are facing a medical diagnosis that means a long haul to get the illnesstaken care of.

It was bad enough whenit happened to my friends. It’s even worse when it happens to my own family.John has been ill since mid-November of 2022. We are waiting impatiently forthe date when he can get his first operation, which we hope will make itpossible for him to get more surgeries done, and he can finally work his waytowards health.

And now I find myselfstumbling over my own health issues. Some of you may know I had surgery on Mar1. What I didn’t know until today was that they found ‘scar tissue’ when theydid that surgery, and so they biopsied it. I was told today that the biopsycame back negative for cancer. Big sigh of relief. But that scar tissue,located where it is, could cause problems in the future, so I’m being referredto another doctor to figure out what can be done with it.

Yesterday, I saw yet anotherdoctor, and she noticed something was abnormally thick for my age. (Normalwould be 4 cm, while mine is 6 cm.) She doesn’t think it’s cancer, butshe wants to biopsy it ‘to be sure’.

Needless to say,sometimes I find it difficult to focus on what I’m doing. But I keep trying tofarble my way through.

To get back to what Iwas saying at the beginning of this; I don’t need any more depression oranxiety in my life right now. I’m on a full load of anti-depressants and myanti-anxiety meds have recently been upped, too. I’m sorry if you are goingthrough a hard time, for whatever reason, and I don’t comment on your post. Chancesare rather slim that I see it, because FB only sends your post to 7% of yourfriends. I wish everyone good health and a relatively good life. Just like I’mtrying to do for myself.

Update: On the day I wrotethis blog, I was unaccountably tired, very achy, and just plain cranky. I feelthat crankiness came through, and I’m sorry about that. My circumstances arenot anybody’s fault; they are just the hand I’ve been dealt by fate. Some daysare better than others, and I will check in on social media when I can.

Indenting Paragraphs

When one starts topublish books, and wants them to look ‘professional’, there are many things onemust think about that you probably haven’t stopped to think about before. Ithink the first thing I ran across that surprised me was the rule, “Thou shaltnot indent the first line of the first paragraph of each chapter.”

Huh? Why not? I thoughtit was a rule that all paragraphs should be indented, unless you are going fora block format, in which case no paragraphs get indented, but you do put a linebetween the paragraphs, so they don’t become a run-on mess (like this sentence).

But the onlyexplanation was that it was to ‘look professional’. They even went further thanthat and said that it would be even better to make the first letter of thefirst paragraph of each chapter oversized and ornate.

For some reason, I foundthat suggestion silly and downright medieval. What are we, monks calligraphingour way through these books?

I’ve read a lot ofbooks during my lifetime. I tried to think back, remember if any of those bookshad indented or not indented the first paragraph of each chapter. I didn’tknow. I apparently never noticed.

Oh, I did rememberoccasionally reading a book that had oversized and ornate first letters foreach chapter, and I vaguely remembered that those paragraphs were not usuallyindented. But it didn’t seem to be the norm in the books I read. Sometimes, Istruggled to figure out what letter it was, it was so ornate and seemed to havenothing to do with the word it started. I probably thought, “How weird,” andthen promptly forgot it as I plowed my way through the rest of the story.

Now I am faced with thequestion of whether or not I will indent the first paragraph of each chapter inthe books that I publish. To be truthful, I want to. It is much simpler toindent all the paragraphs and be done with it. To indent all the paragraphs andthen go back and un-indent the first paragraphs, all while trying not tomake it a global command, making ALL your paragraphs un-indented… It seems likea tedious and unnecessary endeavor. Too easy to make a mistake. And I have mademistakes during formatting. It’s no fun having to rip out ALL the formattingand then go back and put all the formatting back in again.

But I’m taking a veryunscientific survey. What is your opinion of not indenting first paragraphs ofeach chapter? Do you expect it? Have you ever noticed it being done in thebooks you have read? Drop me a comment and let me know your opinion.

Ebook Coupon

Have you ever wonderedwhat MoonPhaze books are like? I’ve got a coupon for you. Let’s try a littleshort fantasy. The title is “Woman on the Dock”, which can be found at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108681. The coupon is to getit for free, and the coupon code is BH45S, which is good through Dec 31, 2024.Check it out, and I hope you enjoy it!

Woman on the Dock

“Woman on the Dock”takes place in my Atlan Universe, where tribes of women have certain powersthat others don’t have, and are thus called Witches. When their island home wasdestroyed by a volcanic eruption, their evacuation boats got separated, andpockets (usually just 4 or 5 survivors, from old crones to infants) of thesewomen set up new homes wherever they could hide. Those women who are calledBlackbirds—one of the Atlans’ best warriors—are sent out periodically by theirvillage disguised as traders, to search for rumors of other Atlan villages. Butas generations go by, it is hard to believe that other Atlan settlements exist.

Inna, coming to afishing village disguised as a merchant, was shocked to find a woman tied tothe dock, battered and near death. She didn’t know the beaten woman, but shewas clearly Atlan! And Inna wasn’t going to let one of her kind be treated likethat!