A.J. Race's Blog, page 15

Research

“I need two c.c.s of epinephrin stat!” 

“OBJECTION! Leading the witness!” 

Do you really know what the hell your talking about?

When it comes to writing novels, particularly these days, we want as much realism as we can get. Competing with television shows like Grey’s Anatomy that somehow make medicine look a lot more interesting than it probably really is on a day to day basis requires an author to do a great deal of research. Wikipedia will not help you here. A library might be your best bet, and if you can ask someone who’s actually in the field your character is might be even better, but if you can’t do that, here are some resources to help you with your particular novel genre.

General:

Britannica.com: The Encyclopedia is always an excellent resource for everything you could possibly imagine, but encyclopedias are both expensive and fairly large tomes of information. Fortunately for you and I, one of the best encyclopedias has been made for the web. So anything you could hope for, is right there.

Medicine:

U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services:

MediLexicon: For medical terminology and definitions

Medical Dictionary:

National Library of Medicine

Legal:

This one varies state to state so you might first start by finding your state’s website (or the state in which your novel is set) and finding a list of their laws and the ways in which situations might be handled. Court scenes are generally exaggerated to make them more interesting because unless your a lawyer you probably don’t find actual court cases all that fascinating to watch play out (or read).

FBI Freedom of Information Act: For all things criminal investigation that you could possibly want to know.

Misc.

Encyclopedia Mythica: A compendium of all things mythological from all across the globe.

Writer’s Digest: Everything from resources to articles about writing.

Also be sure to check out news organizations like AP, CNN, the Guardian, New York Times and Time for everything in between.

Have other recommendations? Feel free to submit them in the comments below.

 

Setting

Deep in the heart of the Amazon jungle…

On the corner of 57th and Broadway… 

Walking down the Champs Elysèes… 

Why should your story be limited just to the places you know personally?

I live in Vegas… or actually a small city within Nevada near Vegas called Henderson. Never heard of it? It’s easier to just say Las Vegas. For some it’s the picture perfect setting for a story, particularly because after living here for nearly twelve years I know it fairly well. So why didn’t Bridge of Memories take place here? Because I didn’t want it too.

I hate the idea of limiting my book to a city just because I know the city intimately, particularly when technology has made it possible to get a feel for other places without actually leaving your house.

Google Maps/Google Earth: While nothing beats actually visiting a location you’re planning to write about to get a feel for the sights and smells of the area, it’s not always feasible, in the interest of knowing what your talking about and how places relate to other places within the same area, Google Maps, in particular street view can give you a fairly good idea of what the area looks like and where it might be in relation to somewhere else.

For instance, if you’re writing the a character lives on the outskirts of Paris, but they often go into the heart of the city for work you may need to know a few things for the sake of realism. How far away (in terms of miles or kilometers) these two places are from each other, how much traffic one would probably expect to run into depending on the time of day (and therefore how long it would reasonably take to get there) and maybe even what one might see along the way. The great thing about fiction with regards to setting is that if you make up the area in which one lives you can give a general description of where it would be. For instance, when I wrote Bridge of Memories the apartment building where Eric and Chris live doesn’t technically exist, but I wanted to give a general idea of where it might be were it to exist.

It’s important to be just descriptive enough that the area could be imagined, but not so descriptive that people call you out on not being realistic to where certain things are in relation to one another. Because some people apparently feel the need to point out the geological inaccuracies in your book.

Characters

As Katrina and I began to workout the main premise of our novel, one of the first points of contention for both of us seemed to be, what to name our characters? It’s a fantasy-thriller so in that respect we have a lot of room with what we could potentially name our characters, but the main character is mostly-human, so we really didn’t want to give her a name that would be too out of the ordinary. We also didn’t want to give her a name of anyone whom we knew and disliked (because honestly I can’t read a book if the character’s name reminds me of someone I find annoying, let alone write it) and something that was unique enough to make her a little more than average.

I’d spent so much time on Secrets of Witches that I’d completely forgotten how difficult it was to come up with completely new character names. I’ve never had a set system in place for doing so either. Occasionally a name would just come to me and that would likely be the name I stuck with, other times I used a baby naming website or even better the Writer’s Digest Character Naming Sourcebook. The best part of the book is how it organizes names based on region or nationality. So if you want your character to have an Italian name simply flip through to the Italian list of names and voila. There are also a fair amount of traditional surnames for each nationality if that’s something you need help with as well. This book has been an invaluable tool and I can’t even begin to tell you how much I recommend checking it out.

For a more diverse list including fantasy related names check out . Like the Writer’s Digest book, it includes meanings of names and where they traditionally come from as well as I believe a few surnames.

 

Writing Resources

Over the last two years I’ve written a lot of posts about various aspects of writing, but I’ve never really created a sort of master post to include all the different resources that writers can and should use to help them with various aspects of writing the novel from naming characters to settings and so much more. So for the next few days I’ll be blogging about different aspects of writing and giving you a few different resources that will help you meet all of the challenges you may face, this will serve as the master post which will be updated with links to each article as they are published.

Characters

Against All Odds

As writers, it often feels like we’re fighting against the odds to do what we love. Sometimes it’s monetary constraints, sometimes it’s just the constraints of trying to get someone to take a chance on you, an agent, a publisher, a reader. At times the odds can seem insurmountable and it seems like it would just be easier to give up. So how and why do we continue?

The how and why are questions that we as individual authors need to ask ourselves. Are we doing this for the fame? The glory? The money? Or are we doing it because something deep inside us is yearning to tell a story.

Perseverance . 

There are those that would argue that it isn’t necessarily talent that gets you noticed, it’s your ability to persevere. Pushing on all the locked doors until you find just one that opens for you and gives you the opportunity that you need.

Avoid the temptation to stop. 

There’s that little voice that will always say, you’re not good enough. Nobody cares. Just give up already. 

The longer you work without recognition the louder this voice gets and often times the more tempting it is to just listen. But the times in which you want to give up the most are the times in which you need to push yourself the hardest.

Support system.

Sometimes, you can’t do it on your own. You need help. You need friends and family and people who believe in you, who will continue to tell you that you should keep going even when it seems easier to give up. And sure, there will be times when you’ll want to just say, you’re only saying that because you’re my friend or family member, but you have to remember, if they’re willing to help boost your ego, they care about you enough to want you to be happy and want you to achieve your goals. And that’s a wonderful thing to have.

And remember. Even if you don’t always believe in yourself. I believe in you. If you don’t have a support system, feel free to email me anytime at cultofracewood@gmail.com.

Writing for Who?

I have often heard the saying, write the type of book that you would want to read. Which sounds nice in theory, but it does sort of beg the question: just because I want to read this kind of novel would anyone else?

A while back a blogger commented on one of my posts discussing how he prefers to write for him. He occasionally posts things, but ultimately he has to enjoy them. If others like it great, if they don’t, well that’s life isn’t it? In this case one could definitely write the type of novel they’d want to read, no matter what type of novel that is.

Considering Your Audience.

I’m not going to lie. I don’t entirely necessarily have my audience fully in mind when I write this. I write what comes to mind and try and figure out who the audience would be when I’m trying to publish it. I’ve read from various sources that this isn’t the best way to go, in fact a lot of publishers and even other writers feel that you should keep your audience in mind while your writing.

Write for you. 

If there is one lesson I think I can take away from the Casual Vacancy is that J.K.Rowling wrote a book that she really wanted to write and that she really enjoyed. She knew that not everyone would love it, but it made her happy and ultimately that was all that mattered. I think we as writers forget that. We try and figure out what people want to read (which is how you end up with 10,000 vampire novels) rather than something that we would prefer to write. I’m not saying you wouldn’t necessarily enjoy writing a vampire novel, but if you’ve put a novel you’d rather work on, on the back burner just so you could try and ride the wave that Twilight created for you, you’re obviously not going to enjoy it as much as you otherwise would.

Ultimately I think you the writer has to love the book the most. If you don’t love it, all the fans in the world isn’t going to make that worth it. You have to write for you and know that more than likely there’s a market for you somewhere. It may not be a particularly large market, but it does exist.

Titles Revisited

A few days ago (Thursday to be exact) Karen of KarensDifferentCorners blog presented the following questions:

 How did you come up with the title of your book in progress?

Or your current book that’s been published?

Or one of your past books?

Do you go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and put in your book’s title, before you publish it?

And rather than commenting my answers, I thought it could be fun to blog about it instead. So let’s break it down one by one.

# 1: How did you come up with the title of your book in progress? 

Currently I have 3 books in progress. Sort of. Originally it was just Edge of Darkness, the story of how I came up with the title can be found on the most recent episode of Racewood Radio. Then there was another book the title of which I’d like to keep secret but as it’s been online before I’m not really sure why. And the third is of course the rewrite of Bridge of Memories. 

Back in the early years of Secrets of Witches when I’d intended it to be more than a trilogy I’d been trying to come up with title names that I felt fit. Among the names for the first book at the time were Secrets of Witches and The Witches Academy back when the books were going to focus more on the school (original I know right?) Like most of my titles there aren’t many exciting stories about how I came up with them. A lot of them like Bridge and like the title I’m keeping to myself for a while, just sort of popped into my head.

#2: Or your current book that’s been published?

Goddess of Carnage was actually a bit more exciting of a story than Bridge of Memories by far. I couldn’t really think of a title for book 2, but my good friend and editor Lori had suggested I stick with the theme I’d set forth with Bridge in that it would be two words separated by of. I’d come up with a few different titles but nothing quite stuck until Goddess of Carnage which admittedly is one of my favorite titles to date.

# 3: Do you go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble and put in your book’s title, before you publish it?

Yes and no. For Bridge of Memories I don’t believe I did, but thankfully there aren’t really any titles like it except for Bridges of Memory which is some baseball book if I recall. In the case of Goddess of Carnage I actually already knew beforehand that a play had existed by a similar name God of Carnage. I cannot say for certain that the title of the play did not inspire Goddess of Carnage. Though the two could not be more different. As for Edge of Darkness and the unannounced title. Both of them share a name with films. One of which was a B-horror movie from the 80′s and the other I had never heard of but apparently was fairly recent.  

PS: Podcast is coming, just a little later.

SERIOUSLY?!

Society seems to have a tendency for taking 2 steps forward and 3 steps back or at least so it often appears. And in the case of LGBT rights this seems just as true as always. In the last few months the right to same-sex marriage has progressed quite exponentially across the country. Either in spite of or because of this, a lot of LGBT hate-crimes have also been happening more frequently.

As a matter of routine I follow a great deal of blogs and facebook pages that deal with all matters of LGBT life because I like to know what’s happening. So when I read this article, discussing how a Sirius/XM radio show recently advocating the murder of trans individuals I really can’t remember the last time I’ve been so disgusted or horrified in my entire life.

This is a quote from the show itself:

There’s a teen that shot a tranny after finding out that it was a man after they had a little sexual encounter. A co-host responded, I don’t blame him. I would have shot his ass too.

If your argument for murdering someone is  you were afraid your sexuality was being challenged there is a special place in hell for you number one and two, you’re clearly not as much of a big strong man as you’d like everyone to believe. If someone being trans or gay is threatening to your sexuality, you clearly have some latent homosexual feelings that you clearly need to be dealing with.

Also for the fucking record because apparently this needs to be stated, just because someone was not born a woman, does not mean they are not a woman now. So using the wrong pronouns isn’t cute.

I won’t add into this the whole it’s 2013 what the fuck is wrong with people because frankly it shouldn’t be acceptable at any year.

I get it, we in America have freedom of speech, we can say what we feel and believe. But there’s a limit, and hate speech is not covered by the first amendment. Neither for that matter is advocating murder of any kind.

It isn’t cute. It isn’t funny and it certainly should not be radio fodder. And while Sirius/XM claims that it’s a show provided to them by Clear Channel and there isn’t much they can do without Clear Channel making the first step… it’s still unacceptable and something needs to be done. Because people shouldn’t have to chose between living their life in a way that’s honest and open and their safety. Just because you’re uncomfortable with someone’s life choices doesn’t give you the right to decide they shouldn’t be allowed to live. You have no idea what their life is like how dare you think you know best and you have the right to take their life from them.

It’s absolute bullshit nonsense and in case you thought these stories of LGBT hate crimes were coming out of places that are known for being homophobic and transphobic, one of them happened in LA, several in Paris, France and a few dozen hate crimes in NYC. These aren’t small town places anymore. It isn’t just Laramie, Wyoming or Uganda where the government has come up with the Kill the Gays bill. It’s a movement that in spite of a lot of changing tides and a lot more people accepting that being gay isn’t a choice and isn’t actually going to bring about the end of humanity, is still growing. It’s a reality that we are all going to have to face before it’s too late.

It’s Kind of a Funny Story

One of the first things you should know about me (should we ever meet in person) is that I’m ridiculously clumsy. Sometimes, I am Bella Swan clumsy and it’s a little nauseating to say the least. I’m also extremely dramatic when I’m in pain or upset.

On my father’s side of the family we have a little inside joke because most of that side of the family could trip on air, that we call the Race grace; and it’s haunted me most of my life. Tuesday, the Race grace struck again.

It started out as a fairly uneventful day, I went to one of my least favorite classes that was surprisingly bearable, not in small part because of the fact it was a shortened day. Then me and my mom got lunch, went swimming and decided to take the dog out for a walk. I had debated going with her, but I felt a little lazy if I didn’t, so I followed her and the dog out. Less than maybe two hundred feet away the sidewalk ends turns into piles of rocks (because that’s landscape in Vegas for you) and then the curb that for some reason has a speed bump basically right next to it.

You can probably imagine what happened next.

I stepped off the curb and…

My ankle seems to have bent underneath the rest of me and the next thing I knew I was on the ground.

I’ve been icing it, keeping it elevated, and using a wrap but as it stands my ankle is pretty swollen and I can’t walk, which is just super fun!

The drama part of course comes in in the fact that being in excruciating pain I nearly fainted trying to hobble back to my house and the fact that I was screaming, “This is the worst pain of my life, just kill me now.”

At one point I did note how dramatic I really was in spite of all of this. Needless to say… I don’t take pain well.

It’s worth noting for anyone who asks why I didn’t go to the doctor… I can’t walk, so how shall I even attempt that? Besides, there isn’t much they could do for sprained ankles except give me crutches. Which would be a lot better than hoping and crawling around as I currently do.

I was able to laugh in spite of my pain, I certainly wasn’t able to cry (I think I’m out of tear ducts) and for the most part I’m not in any severe pain, as long as I don’t attempt to walk or stand.  Oddly enough laying my foot swollen  side down is more comforting than having it any other way. Go figure.

PS: Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have something more interesting to tell you about but I had to share my hilariously funny accident with you all. Even though I don’t really want to write at the current moment I have literally nothing but time on my hands and no ability to go anywhere so…

Advice for Would-Be Writers

Yesterday I discussed the similarities of saying you wanted to do something, versus actually doing it. For instance when people say, I would love to write… I just can’t (insert excuse here). 

Are you sure you’d love to write? Because I think if you really wanted to do it. You just would.

Here’s the thing you really need to know about writing.

It doesn’t just happen because you will it too. You can’t just wait for inspiration to strike like a bolt of lightning, and you certainly can’t just wait for there to be ‘time’ in your life for writing. Make time.

If Not Now, When? 

I think there’s this idea of I want to be a writer, but I’ll wait till I’m older or more experienced or I’ve done this or that… why? Why does your ability to write now depend on your age? I began writing when I was 12 years old. Was I the best 12 year old writer? Probably not, but you gain experience and practice. The more you write the better you get.

Maybe if I read more… 

I won’t deny reading is terribly important, I love doing it and I wish more people would… that said, you don’t just become a writer by reading a lot. Writing isn’t a transferable skill. It isn’t like a cold you can’t just catch writing. Even if you’ve read a thousand books, that doesn’t necessarily means you will make a good writer. You still actually have to sit down and do the work. Writers perpetuate this idea that if you want to be a good writer you need to read more than you write, and maybe that’s mostly true, but I think if you want to be a good writer, as with anything you need to practice. Artists can look at every single beautiful piece of art in the world and that won’t make them any better. Believe me, I’ve seen a lot of beautiful art and that so far hasn’t made me able to paint or draw worth shit.

What if I’m not talented enough? 

I’ve always maintained that a lot of talent is born, everybody has a talent and maybe writing isn’t yours… however if you don’t try you’ll never know… and because art is so subjective there’s a fairly good chance that just because one person doesn’t like your writing doesn’t mean others won’t. I personally don’t find E.L. James, Stephanie Meyer or even John Grisham all that talented, but a lot of people love all three of those authors so… I think the great thing about art is that there’s a market for everyone. It may not be a huge market and so self publishing might be your best bet, but there’s still a market and that’s what you have to think about. Not everyone’s going to like you no matter what you do. You could be a scientist who finds a cure for every incurable disease and there will still be people who hate you. It’s just a fact of life.

I don’t have the drive.

Well then you clearly don’t want this. I would apologize for sounding harsh but someone has to be honest with you. You don’t just get things handed to you. You have to go for them. If you don’t have the drive to write (which really all your doing is sitting at a computer or at a desk with pen and paper it’s not like your expounding great amount of energy… believe me if this burned calories, I would probably weigh like 120lbs versus (CENSORED)lbs that I actually weigh.

You didn’t think I’d actually share that did you? (not that I’m brave enough to step onto a scale these days).

My point here… is that when you really really want something, be it something to do with losing weight or writing a novel, you’ll do what it takes to get it done. Remember, J.K.Rowling was a full time teacher and a single mother of a infant, living on government assistance in the U.K. and she still managed to write two books.

No excuses. If you want it, you’ll find a way. And I sincerely hope you do. I’d hate to think that maybe possibly the world was out another great novel just because you didn’t have the drive or the ‘time’ to write it.