Elizabeth Guizzetti's Blog, page 26

New Year Resolutions

Rosie’s Resolution is to stay in the snuggle zone.

Once again, I would like to say something poignant and meaningful, but instead I’m starting the New Year sitting on my couch with Rosie snuggled up beside me with Tycho on the top of his crate behind me just like last year. I am sipping espresso as I got a Starbucks Verismo this year in October. I love that little machine. Once Dennis gets up, I will make some eggs with cheese and a side of bacon. It is one of our favorite breakfasts.

I have two resolutions this year

1) Exercise: Every Monday through Friday morning, I need to exercise. I enjoy doing aerobics. I just need to get off my bum and do them. That’s the hardest part for me. This resolution will be the hardest for me to keep. I need to do this before I take Dennis to work, because if I take Dennis to work, I get dressed. If I get dressed I won’t do it.  As you can tell, I am really good at making excuses of why I don’t have time to exercise.

2) Balance my work and the time I spend with my friends and family better. I need to keep my focus on everything I have to be grateful for — not what I think I should be accomplishing (specifically this refers to my book sales, how many reviews I have, etc, my teeny tiny royalty checks.) I have a great husband, a nice condo and two dogs. Though we could stand to lose a few pounds, we are both fairly healthy. I come from a fantastic loving family. I can always call my parents. I have wonderful friends and neighbors. These are the things I should focus on, but at times I take them for granted.

So there are my resolutions, what are yours?

Happy New Year!

ZB’s Blog of Awesomeness was nominated for the Blog of the Year

Though I said I would be not making any new posts until the new year, this afternoon I discovered I was nominated for the Blog of the Year by  Candace Knoebel who wrote a wonderful contemporary fantasy Born in Flames which is about a girl who discovers she is also a dragon.

So Thank you Candace!

Now since this is a rotating award, here are my nominations.

Dan Thompson
Michael Cargill

*****************************************************************************************

The ‘rules’ for this award are simple:

1 Select the blog(s) you think deserve the ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award

2 Write a blog post and tell us about the blog(s) you have chosen – there’s no minimum or maximum number of blogs required – and ‘present’ them with their award.

3 Please include a link back to this page

‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award  – http://thethoughtpalette.co.uk/our-awards/blog-of-the-year-2012-award/   

and include these ‘rules’ in your post (please don’t alter the rules or the badges!)

4 Let the blog(s) you have chosen know that you have given them this award and share the ‘rules’ with them

5 You can now also join our Facebook group – click ‘like’ on this page

‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award Facebook group 

and then you can share your blog with an even wider audience

6 As a winner of the award – please add a link back to the blog that presented you with the award – and then proudly display the award on your blog and sidebar … and start collecting stars…

Yes – that’s right – there are stars to collect!

Unlike other awards which you can only add to your blog once – this award is different!

When you begin you will receive the ‘1 star’ award – and every time you are given the award by another blog – you can add another star!

There are a total of 6 stars to collect.

Which means that you can check out your favourite blogs – and even if they have already been given the award by someone else – you can still bestow it on them again and help them to reach the maximum 6 stars!

Blog of the Year 2012’ Award Badges

Here are the six badges for you to collect – you can either ‘swop’ your badge for the next one each time you are given the award – or even proudly display all six badges if you are lucky enough to be presented with the award six times!

My 1st year as an Author

This will be my last blog post of the year, since next week is Christmas. Dennis and I have some wonderful plans for the season.

Now I wrote and drew indie comics prior, so some might say I was an author before, but this year my first novel, Other Systems, was published by 48Fourteen. Not only was my first novel published, but also my first science fiction story Unintentional Colonists was published by Not only was my first novel published, but also my first science fiction story was published by Perihelion SF.

In some ways, my career changed drastically, however on an everyday level, it hardly changed at all. I still tend to work too much and get stressed out over things that don’t matter. I still have no real idea about balance. And I still don’t care about sales as much as I want to tell a good story.

I learned a lot.

I have felt that each of my titles have gotten better and better. Just by doing the work, I have become a stronger writer and a better artist. However Other Systems was the first book that went through professional editing. I learned that I do not always need to use a semi colon and I also learned so much about story telling between Juanita Samborski and David Kostiuk when working on Other Systems. Sam Bellotto Jr. at Perihelion SF let me now exactly how much description to put in.

Finally, I learned I cannot market Other Systems the same way we were marketing the comics. We have to do more social media for both the comics and my novels. Though often people do like comics and science fiction, the group of people that like both are surprising narrow.

That being said, while promotion is important, if one spends all their time on promotion, I will never get any work done on my next book. I have been working on The Martlet and Other Systems: Earth and that is where my energies need to lie. I can’t allow myself to be poisoned with thoughts of sales. It takes the joy out of writing

My 2013 Releases (That I know of…)

March 1 Faminelands #3: Mareton’s Curse

November 1 Out for Souls&Cookies #4 (The Christmas Special!!!) 

TBA: Other Systems is coming to print!

 

The Hobbit–WTF?

I had a disappointing experience.  The Hobbit: an unexpected journey.

I loved the Lord of the Rings films and had great expectations for the Hobbit. I enjoyed the book. The Hobbit is an insular tale about how a hobbit’s life changes after he goes on an adventure with a group of dwarves. I even enjoyed the cartoon I saw as a kid.

However, I just watched  The Hobbit: an unexpected journey a film from the Tourist board of Middle Earth warning about the upcoming conflicts in Lord of the Rings. Sweeping view points, characters that don’t matter and are mentioned just once in LotR and then given a role in The Hobbit: an unexpected journey.  Worse, there is a TON of foreshadowing for the LotR. All the main characters had cameos. The battle scenes felt straight out of LotR. Some of Gandalf’s moves were straight out of LotR.

The Hobbit could have been an excellent 3 hour movie, but instead I watched a fairly boring part 1.

Floodpocolyse Repairs are over!

I have a clean house again. I discovered how uncreative I can be when my house is in disarray. I could not get my brain in order. I wasn’t able to get out more than maybe 100 words a day. My mind was simply busy trying to keep things in order when my house looked like an episode of Hoarders. 

We had people in and out for three weeks. Dennis took some time off, Tycho licked himself until he got a wound. It was really stressful.

Not only was I having trouble drawing and writing, I couldn’t even bake. I screwed up a batch of lemon bars then oatmeal butterscotch cookies. Now most people would say “oh these are okay.” But they were not. There was something wrong about them. The lemon was bitter not tangy and the oatmeal cookies ended up too dry. I certainly wasn’t going to give them to the fine people at Rainbow as a special treat. 

So now the house is clean, not only was I able to re-edit a chapter in the Martlet, and do my Christmas Cards.  I also made vanilla walnut truffles and shortbread thumb prints with strawberry jam. 

I am so thankful that  it was really a three week inconvenience rather than any sort of real tragedy.  I am also thankful for all the nice emails and messages on FB and the blog people left. I really appreciate the support. Thanks!

Other Systems was nominated for Turning The Pages Book of the Year 2012!

Other Systems was nominated for Turning The Pages Book of the Year 2012!

If you enjoyed it, please vote for it!

http://turningthepagesnews.webs.com/bookoftheyear2012.htm

Humans have begun to sprawl across the known galaxy, however without an influx of human DNA, the planet Kipos has eleven generations before it reaches failure. It takes over two centuries to get to Earth and back at near light speed. Other Systems follows Abby, an Earthling, who sees opportunity in Kipos’s need. After medical, intelligence, and physiological testing, She and her younger siblings, Jin and Orchid, are offered transportation. They leave the safety of their family with the expectation of good jobs, kindhearted spouses, and the opportunity for higher education. When Abby wakes up on Kipos, Jin cannot be found. Orchid is ripped from her arms as Abby is sold to a dull-eyed man with a sterilized wife. To survive, Abby must learn the differences in culture and language using the only thing that is truly hers on this new world: her analytical mind. To escape her captors, she’ll join a planetary survey team and discover yet another way of life.

If you want to check it out, please go to Amazon, Barnes&Noble, or Kobo

I am about to share a deep dark secret: my magic formula to writing a novel or drawing a graphic novel…

I am not trying to be glib. I get asked this question every single convention, every reading, nearly every day. I will be asked again. Here is the magic formula: You do not wait for inspiration. You just get to work.

Anyone who tells you differently has not published a novel. All that matters is you sit down and get yourself to work.

That being said, somedays the words and drawing flow from your fingers. You know exactly which words to use and you look back on what you just wrote and think “This is art. This is literature. I am a WRITING GODDESS!”

Sometimes you do a reading of your work and everyone is listening to what you say, they laugh in the right places. You don’t stumble. I remember the day I made my first sale of The Carp’s Eye at ECCC 2008. I still remember the first time in 2009, I learned I had a single super fan then I learned there was twenty others. I still remember the day that I sold my first short story and four days later when I got paid.

However, not every day is like that. You work anyway. You put your butt in the chair and type until your fingers are sore. You have to draw until your hand cramps. I draw every panel by hand, then color on photoshop. My hands cramp up, my back and right shoulder get sore.

Being an author means you are on a constant roller coaster of emotions. You should weep when your protagonist does. You should feel scared. If you don’t, no one will. You have to let your characters take over. You become a vessel for their whims.

You keep writing and drawing. You do it when the days are long and you haven’t sold a book in a week. You have to do it the next day too. And the next and the next until one day you have something. The hours you put into it doesn’t matter. There is no guarantee. So that’s how you write a novel or draw a graphic novel.

World Building: Holidays

My niece decorates a gingerbread house for Christmas. Perhaps in your world people decorate cookies for the holidays too!

Last time, I wrote about World Building it was in regards to food, but (at least in America) we are right in the middle of the holiday season, so I am going to continue this ideas with how you might deepen your world with holidays.

Once again, a lot of this will be in your author’s notes, but some of it will make it into the plot.

So the word holiday derives from the word holy day and is defined by Merriam Webster as “a day on which one is exempt from work; specifically : a day marked by a general suspension of work in commemoration of an event.” This idea goes hand in hand with the idea of food since many holidays are also feasts or fasts.

So the question that the author might find useful is “What is holy?”

In Other Systems: the readers see references to birthdays being celebrated and a holiday called Landing Day. Landing Day is commemorated all over the Fleet and on Kipos. It is celebrated on March 29th, the day Jason Potolis landed on Kipos and called it a Garden of the Heavens. Though the story of Jason Potolis is fraught with religious connotations, this is considered a secular holiday. It is celebrated by the giving of small presents or photographs to loved ones and have large family meals. Now the reader never sees a Landing Day event, it is just referred to in the novel.  It adds a layer of depth without much description. In regards to characters if they choose or choose not to celebrate a holiday tells a bit of the type of person he or she is.

Rosemary raised Harden and Helen until they were fourteen and twelve respectively. She made them call Cole each year on his birthday, Landing Day, and New Year’s. She sent him yearly photographs, which seemed to be every few months to him. (Excerpt from page 12)

“…My folks have—or I guess I should say had—a ward. He’s twenty-four, but it doesn’t matter, he’s still my brother. Mom still buys him Landing Day presents and everything…” (Excerpt from page 438 Ben is speaking to Abby in a bar.)

Part of the Independence Day celebration in my house is a BBQ with cupcakes for dessert!

Also since none of the major characters in Other Systems are religious, we don’t see the Kyn holidays (at least not in the first novel). However there is a religious minority called the Kyn who  used to be the Jewish peoples, the Christians and Muslims. They celebrate the secular Kipos holidays as well as have their own celebrations mixed from the very best of their progenitors holidays. The reader will see more of this in the sequel: Other Systems: Kipos. 

Now sometimes it is good to show a holiday or two, because holidays are a way to show quiet moments while still having action and movement. In Faminelands, I speak of the Hunt as holiday. The Hunt is both treated as a holy week with celebration and is practical as well. It is the week that the Ladies, Lords and their Hunters leave the Village and come back with the last meat to keep the village through the Winter. It is a week where the apprentices don’t train per say but are allowed to work beside the Hunters. It is the first time many of the young people leave the village. The day they return is a Feast day.

However another of their feast days is Midwinter (Winter Solstice) and this is described by Brogan in the History of Lady Meadowlark:

“I have little concern for the holy day, other than the preparations for Aster’s security, as it is this time of year which Outsiders come and pay Our Ladies tribute.

Lady Aren missed him dearly, so Galdor went to House Sarralonde. He was either sequestered with his sisters or he took guard duty with his cousins, so we saw little of him. Lark was the only child in the House and a bit lonely, still her spirits began to rise. She began speaking to me at supper and she asked if she might help Roan and I mull the wine which we give to my servants. I was pleased to allow her.

On midwinter’s day, an hour before dawn, I heard the girl creep in. My first reaction was irritation that she had not learned to walk in silence yet. The second was that she dared come into my quarters uninvited. Then I realized, one of my Scouts must have talked her into some holiday prank. “Meadowlark, what in Talamh are you doing?” I growled. “You need sleep more then frivolities.”

Lark brought me what she held in her hands. It was three rolled up socks tied with one of her ribbons. It was not filled with a spiders or a snake. It was however incredibly soft wool and the perfect length for my boot. Lark had heard me complain that my old socks were mostly darning. It is my regret that I had nothing for her but harsh words. Still right before sunrise, I heard Lark sing the song to the Sun as is tradition.” (Excerpt from page 5)

Normally something like this would be in author notes–and if I am honest it originally was, but in this case it is important to the story because we see Lark getting bolder with her great uncle and Brogan softening towards the girl who now lives with him. (For people who have not read Faminelands, the reason there is three socks is because Brogan only has one leg–the other was lost in battle.) This is a simple moment, but the reader garners a lot about their culture by what is happening in these scenes. However, and I can not emphasize this enough, if you plan to show a holiday it must be integral to the plot somehow.

So Happy Holidays!

World Building: Food

A break from the adventure in Living Stone

In deference to Thanksgiving, I want to write about how food shows quite a bit about the culture and geography in your world. I have often spoken about how I write a detailed synopsis of someone’s day in my authors notes with a specific focus on breakfast and other meals.

 

Do they eat simple cuisine or rich fair? Why? Because what a person eats gives you socio-economic status or their rank in a family. What spices do they use? Are they readily available either because they are close by or due to ease of transportation. What is easy to grow in the region of their world? What is imported or exported? How available is sugar?

How is it cooked? On an open fire or in a stove? How is the stove fueled? Is the stove also the main heat source in the house? What tools are necessary in order to create such a dish? Perhaps the characters don’t cook–do they eat out at restaurants, have servants or family members to cook for them?

Finally consider what diseases do they suffer do to the lack of food? Or eating unhealthily?

All of my titles show food being consumed at least in the background. In Other Systems, the menu that Abby consumes is directly related to where she is in the Universe.

Da and Ma had made sure their children never went hungry, but growing up with them had brought a certain degree of monotony to the food. On Kipos, Abby felt a fear of constant scarcity due to her limited diet, but on the Revelation a stocked kitchen was available to her. The large, cold pantry was full of meats, fish, cheeses, eggs, dairy products, fruits, and vegetables. The dry pantry had oils, spices, sugar, cereals, and pastas. Whatever she used was added to the inventory, which was updated continuously. The list would be sent ahead the day before they landed on Kipos. When the computer recorded the jump in milk and juice consumption, she was worried, but Brian said both were cheaper and better for her than coffee. Mark added, “Especially because the Revelation has four coffee addicts aboard.”

How could she not feel safe?   (Excerpt from page 222-223)

In Faminelands and Lure, food is often a breaking moment between action sequences. In Out for Souls&Cookies, food is often in the background though in Book 3: Rosie does spits out a vegan dog with the complaint that poodles are carnivorous!

Now much of this might stay in author notes, but some of it might end up in the finished work.

Water finds a way

Dennis and I woke up to our condo being flooded. Apparently a plastic bag made its way into the building’s western drain. All the water from the roof as well as just the rain pooled on the northwest patios which included ours and our neighbors and the exercise room. There was standing water all over the patio. 

Fortunately, when Dennis woke up –he sleeps on the west side of the bed, I on the east– he stepped into water. His first thought: damn dogs had an accident…though I would like to point out Tycho and Rosie very rarely have accidents.

Nope. When I went to check the carpet on his side of the bed was completely wet. Once we spotted the water, Dennis took the day off so we were able to move all are furniture before any serious damage to our belongings. 

Then I wisely called my condo management company. They discovered the source of the water and unplugged the drain. 
 
We lucked out because Rainbow happened to be in the B Building to do some carpet cleaning and since I called the management company as soon as we realized the extent of the wet carpet, they sent them over to us to start the drying process. They used an extractor on the carpets and pulled out drywall in the bedroom and living room. We have a giant dehumidifier and five high power fans.  
 
With the weather systems that is supposed to hanging around Seattle for the next few days we need to keep an eye on all this, so our Thanksgiving plans have been cancelled, but we got very lucky.  Water will always follow the path of least resistance. In this case the path was into our condo.
 
PS We live at the top of a hill. So we never thought to worry about a flooded apartment.