E.D. Martin's Blog, page 20

Weekend Writing Warrior 9/18/16 #8Sunday

Gunflint Lake on the MN/ON border – the Boundary Waters start right across from it.

For September I’ll be pulling from several related short stories I wrote this summer, all dealing with the apocalypse.

Here’s what we have so far:

“Special” – a pair of twins with special abilities living in caves due to airstrikes
“The Graveyard” – a plague kills off most of a western mining town

This week it’s “E.L.E.” – a woman is out camping in the Minnesota Boundary Waters when disaster strikes. Like last week’s excerpt, this story was inspired by a trip through the setting this spring.

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My dad used to say that extinction level events happened every 700,000 years or so, and we were more than overdo. Nonetheless, when an earthquake hit while I was out camping in the backcountry, I ignored it as anything more than routine seismic activity. Sure, earthquakes rarely hit northern Minnesota, but I’d come out here to relax, not to increase my anxiety by worrying about stuff I couldn’t do anything about.

The ash came a couple days later. Forest fires weren’t uncommon up here, and even though we were under a burn ban, this wouldn’t have been the first time someone’s campfire took out a few hundred acres. It was enough to send me back to civilization, though, because it wouldn’t be pretty when that blaze caught up to me.

I’d just stowed the last of my gear in my canoe and was preparing to shove off when a man strolled out of the forest. I tensed.

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Postmodernists, postpositivists, and truth vs Truth

Found this on a Galveston beach. Is it an alien lifeform? Inflated plastic? Postmodernist storyteller me says both are plausible!

I’m on a quest to take as many research methodology classes as I can while getting my PhD, and this semester one that I’m taking is qualitative. I’m a quantitative person, so this is a major thinking shift.

Qualitative is case studies and interviews and ethnographies and telling the story one person or group at a time, while quantitative is surveys and statistics and applying your findings to larger groups.

One of our first assignments is a position paper, in which we explain which paradigm we follow, relate our history that brought us to that paradigm, and then explore our biases that will affect our qualitative research. I’m stuck between two: postpositivism and postmodernism.

Postpositivists think that the objective Truth is out there, but our methods of seeking it are flawed by our biases.

Postmodernists think everyone has a truth, and your truth isn’t any more valid than mine because it’s all relative.

Basically, the two are on opposite ends of a spectrum (well, positivism and postmodernism are).

(Fun story: I went to a Catholic high school, and my junior year we had to take Apologetics, which we defined as apologizing for your faith but is actually defending it. I routinely argued with our teacher, a poor priest right out of the seminary, that all religions were seeking the same end goal – peace and love and happiness in whatever comes next – but just had different ways of reaching that goal. Kinda like a bunch of people climbing a mountain, but from different sides – they all want to get to the top but are each taking a different route. The teacher strongly encouraged me to sleep or read in class so that I wouldn’t constantly pull apart the course material.)

As a researcher, I want to find Answers. As a social worker and social justice warrior, I want underrepresented voices to be heard so that we can bring about change to unequal systems. As an author, I want to tell my character’s story and make it just as valid as anyone else’s.

My question tonight: If I have my perception of the truth, and you have your perception of the truth, and everyone reading this and in the world has their perceptions of the truth, how do we as researchers decide whose truth is most valid? Applying a postmodern perspective, can we even decide that someone’s truth is invalid, and how does this fit into our role in “mitigating against epistemic injustice in educational research?” When is it okay to judge a culture or individual as “wrong” or “bad” when its members are doing their best according to their beliefs?

Weekend Writing Warrior 9/11/16 #8Sunday

For September I’ll be pulling from several related short stories I wrote this summer, all dealing with the apocalypse.

Today’s story, tentatively called “The Graveyard,” was inspired by a town I passed through while wandering the country this summer: Tonopah, Nevada, home to the “haunted” Clown Motel located right next to an old graveyard filled with plague victims. Fun.

Weekend Writing Warrior 9/4/16 #8Sunday

I’m switching gears and for September, I’ll be pulling from several related short stories I wrote this summer, all dealing with the apocalypse.

The first one, “Special,” is about a pair of twins, Niko and Tevi, and a unique ability Tevi has.

* * * * * * *

“Mishla,” our grandmother Yaya told Mother even before my brother and I were born, “the baby you carry is special, like my uncle Niko, the great general who fought so hard in the third war. You must name your baby after him.”

Mother had just learned Father had been killed in the fifth war, despite fighting so hard, and although she would’ve preferred to name my brother after him, she was too heartbroken to argue with Yaya.

Growing up, Niko didn’t do anything special. He played with the other children in the caverns into which we’d moved to shield us from the airstrikes. He matched their outlandish stories about their dead fathers’ exploits with ones about our own father, trumping them by including the adventures of his namesake, even though no one had heard of him.

One day, when we were about eight and Niko was running screaming with the others playing king of the hill, he pulled out the boldest story of all: “I have grass growing under my bed.”

Szymon paused from shoving him off our dirt pile hill. “No one has grass growing anywhere.”

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Why I had dinner with a homeless guy

I had a late class tonight and didn’t feel like cooking, so we had a late dinner at one of the only pizza places that was still open after 9 (yeah, living in a mid-size metropolitan area sucks sometimes). We were just biting into our pizza when Alonzo came by our table, asking for dollar bills in exchange for quarters.

During his spiel, he mentioned he was homeless, and as we didn’t really have cash on us, I asked him to join us and have a piece of pizza.

Alonzo was clearly taken aback, but he agreed. We gave him a slice of pizza, bought him a beer, and then had a very frank conversation about what leads to homelessness, how to overcome a problematic past, and how to react when your girlfriend just wants to have sex when you’re high.

There are several takeaways from tonight’s discussion.

1. Homeless people are still people.

They have pasts and futures and a desire for human contact, just like anyone else. So treat them like people. And if you don’t learn anything else from this post, let this be it.

2. You can always learn from the people around you.

Whether they’re homeless or housed, rich or poor, black or white or any shade in between – no matter who it is, they can teach you something. Tonight it was that for even a brief moment, you can overcome your past and still succeed in the future.

3. Most people wouldn’t agree with my actions.

Oh, the looks we got from the waiter! I could tell the staff wanted to kick Alonzo out of the building, so I ordered him a beer. On my tab. As he put it, “I ain’t trying to cause no trouble.” He wasn’t. He was a person who needed a meal. And even if he didn’t need a meal, was it really even that much of an inconvenience to share a pizza with him?

4. Everyone has a story.

Alonzo had a past and it was fascinating to hear him reflect on his mistakes and his hopes for his future. As a writer, and as a social worker (that’s what my master’s is in and my PhD will be in), all I could see were his “what-if’s.” There’s a good chance that I’ll write a story based on him in the near future, so I can give this man a voice.

I’m sharing this not so you’ll congratulate me for doing a public service, but so maybe you’ll consider doing something similar. Homeless people, and everyone else, have a story to tell. Are you willing to listen?

Media Monday: It’s pretty and well-written, but…

The books: The whole Anne of Green Gables series by LM Montgomery

The music: “Big Bird in a Small Cage” by Patrick Watson

Grounds at the Anne of Green Gables Museum, PEI

Earlier this month I wandered up through New England to the Maritime Provinces. I was especially excited to get to Prince Edward Island, home to a couple book series I enjoyed as a kid: the Anne of Green Gables series and the Emily series, both by LM Montgomery.

PEI is beautiful: gently rolling fields of wheat and potatoes interspersed with small groves of trees, farmhouses with the sea in the distance, little villages with charming little houses. But after a couple hours driving around (from the bridge at Borden-Carleton up to Cavendish), we were bored out of our minds and ready to go back to New Brunswick, where we’d set up camp for a few days.

I’ve been rereading the Anne of Green Gables books since I got back, and they’re yet another series from my childhood that I would’ve been better off leaving to my memories. In case you’re not familiar with them, they follow Anne Shirley, a little-red headed orphan adopted by an aging brother and sister. She grows from lovable scamp to lovable adult. Everyone who meets her either loves her at first sight or grows to love her (or at least like her a lot). She solves the problems of everyone she comes across, especially when it comes to relationships. Despite her faults (a temper, having a way too active imagination), she’s the ultimate Mary Sue – perfect, with nothing bad ever happen. The books are more a collection of vignettes of her life and the characters in it, rather than vignettes.

As for the prose, dear God but it’s purple. Going on and on about sunsets and trees and beauty – beauty everywhere. Everyone wants to be beautiful and wear beautiful clothes, as if there’s no more to life than beauty.

Contrast this another series by Montgomery, the Emily books: Emily of New Moon, Emily Climbs, and Emily’s Quest. Emily goes through all kinds of defeats in life (illness, broken engagements, fights with friends, relatives who hate her) and is determined, by the end, to accept her fate and die alone. Emily is keeping it real.

PEI doesn’t focus on Emily, however. It focuses its attention on Anne – the pretty but boring Anne, who has adventures but you know everything will work out for her so you really don’t care after awhile.

The song doesn’t really fit with the books but it fits with my impressions of PEI. I heard it while driving through Manitoba this summer. It’s pretty but unmemorable, because I really just don’t care about the bird or its cage.

Friday Five: Timothy C. Ward

Today’s Friday Five focus is Timothy C. Ward, author of dark fantasy and technothriller short stories, novellas, and novels.

Timothy C. Ward is a former executive producer and Hugo Nominee of Adventures in SciFi Publishing. He has been broke and lost on the other side of the world and now dreams of greater adventures from his keyboard in Des Moines, Iowa. He recently released his second Sand Divers book, Scavenger: A.I., where two parents use an ancient technology to fight a reproducing A.I. while trying to resurrect their deceased infant. His next novel is Godsknife: Revolt, an apocalyptic battle for godhood in the rift between Iowa and the Abyss. Sign up for his newsletter for news, sales, giveaways and more.

In Godsknife: Revolt, the rift between Iowa and the Abyss is thinner than it seems. Modern society meets the power and reality of myth in the new war between Chaos, Order and Maker. A priestess of Order seeking godhood unleashes a virus to mutate and enslave the human race. Those who survive to face the height of her power must choose not to bow before it.

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1. Why do you write in the genre(s) you listed above?

My style is a combination of liking Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joe and Goosebumps in elementary school. In middle school I discovered epic fantasy in Dragons of Autumn Twilight, literary fiction in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye, and horror in King’s Cuju, The Shining, and the Dark Tower books. I write because I loved all of them and want more and more adventures like I had growing up.

2. Is there a certain type of scene that’s harder for you to write than others? How do you deal with this?

I recently heard an interview with Robert Kroese who said there are people who can’t picture images, or something like that, so it is really hard for him to write description. I’m like him. I’ve had a lot of coaching, and I try really hard to show what’s important and let the reader use their imagination. If I show too much it slows the read, and that’s not something I can handle as a reader.

3. What literary character are you most like and why?

I’m almost as clumsy and unaware as Mr. Bean, but I wish I was as smooth as Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible.

4. How much of your published writing is based on personal experiences?

Godsknife: Revolt has scenes in Iowa and South Korea, where I’ve lived. I taught English in South Korea for six months and loved it. Much of the next book in the series will alternate between South Korea and Iowa.

5. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever researched for your works or biggest/most out-of-the-ordinary thing you’ve done while researching?

Nuclear fission. In Scavenger: Evolution, I created a power source in the military base they discover that is like a micro sun that creates safe nuclear fission energy into plasma. Also, it’s ironic to think of me, someone who struggled to get a C in geology in college, writing a book in Godsknife: Revolt where Order mages have to master elements of stone and other surfaces before they can wield them and walk through them.

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Godsknife: Revolt is currently available for preorder at Amazon. Plus, you can enter to win not only a copy of Godsknife: Revolt, but also the first two Scavenger books: Evolution and A.I.!

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Weekend Writing Warrior 8/14/16 #8Sunday

For July and August, I’m pulling from “Spice Pirates,” my long short story that I’d planned to have live on Amazon already but other deadlines have been getting in my way. So, fingers crossed it’ll be soon!

Rosamaria’s sick brother Basil just wants to be a pirate, so she enlists the help of her friends Origano, Clovio, and Anisa to take him on a pirate adventure. But then the REAL pirates show up….

For this scene, someone stole all Origano’s money so he stole some food from Rosamaria’s father’s food stand. She chased him, went through his belongings, and discovered a treasure map.

* * * * * * *

“Rosita!” a voice boomed.

“Papa,” she cried. “I must get back to the stand.”

Before he could react, she grabbed the map from his hands, tore it in two, threw half at him, then then hitched up her skirts and ran down the alley.

Origano thought to chase after her, but what good would it do if her father, whom she’d said hated pirates, were at the stand? Instead he sunk down against a wall, head in his hands. He’d bought that map from a tinker passing through his village and had no idea as to its authenticity; he’d planned to follow it as soon as his ship had landed. And now this beautiful girl thought he was a pirate and had half his map! He shook his head and sighed. What had he gotten himself into?

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Post a link to your eight sentences blog entry, or join the fun at the Weekend Writing Warriors website.

And if you’re a writer, sign up to be a Friday Five author, which gets you and your latest work featured on my blog.

Friday Five: Craig A. Hart

Today’s Friday Five focus is Craig A. Hart, author of literary fiction short stories, novellas, and novels.

Craig A. Hart is the stay-at-home father of twin boys, a writer, editor, Amazon bestselling author, lover of the arts, and only human. He has served as editor-in-chief for The Rusty Nail literary magazine, manager for Sweatshoppe Media, and director of Northern Illinois Radio Information Service. He lives and writes in Iowa City with his wife, sons, and two cats.

In his debut novel, Becoming Moon, a boy struggles to be himself amid pressure from a repressive family. His desire for success causes him to betray his principles, but brings money and recognition. He is given a final chance to prove himself—but only if he is able to set his past aside. Becoming Moon can be found on Amazon, Barnes & Noble.

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1. Why should people read YOUR stuff? Who’s your target audience and why?

I try to write fiction that is so honest it hurts. I don’t avoid topics just because they’re difficult; in fact, I’m drawn to difficult, uncomfortable topics. I don’t promise an easy, heartwarming read, but I do promise to be straightforward and present the truth as I see it. If that’s your jam, come on over!

2. What are three things on your bucket list?

Spend some time writing in France.

Live in a cabin on a lake (preferably Lake Michigan, which I love).

Circle the globe and write a travel book about the experience.

3. What’s the worst job you’ve ever had and why? What was the best thing about that job and why?

The worst job I ever had was doing telephone surveys. There were no redeeming qualities. I lasted one day. I also drove a delivery truck in Michigan for a few years. That was difficult, because it was very physical work performed in almost every imaginable weather situation: snowstorms, sub-zero temperatures, pouring rain, heat, humidity. The good part about it was that it also gave me a lot of time to think about writing.

4. What’s your current writing project and what are your writing plans for the near future?

I’m currently working on a book that takes readers back to the town in which Becoming Moon is based. It isn’t a sequel, but it uses certain aspects that will be familiar to fans of the first book.

5. Thinking about the stuff you’ve written, who’s your favorite character and why?

My favorite character is Moon, of the eponymous novel. Nigel Moon is an aging writer who has seen success and failure, and understands the life of a writer like few others. He is a character I’d love to sit and drink with, and one I’d love to become some day.

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Becoming Moon is currently available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

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Weekend Writing Warrior 7/31/16 #8Sunday

For July and August, I’m pulling from “Spice Pirates,” my long short story that I’d planned to have live on Amazon TWO weeks ago but of couse more stuff came up – dealing with a broken water line, school projects, and then leaving on vacation. So, here’s hoping I can get it on Amazon when I get back.

Rosamaria’s sick brother Basil just wants to be a pirate, so she enlists the help of her friends Origano, Clovio, and Anisa to take him on a pirate adventure. But then the REAL pirates show up….

For this scene, someone stole all Origano’s money so he stole some food from Rosamaria’s father’s food stand. She chased him, went through his belongings, and discovered a treasure map.

* * * * * * *

“My father hates pirates,” she said.

Origano shrugged; he couldn’t care less about this girl’s father.

“Where’s your pirate ship?”

“Can’t tell you.”

“Where’s your treasure buried?”

“Can’t tell you that either.”

She scowled, her awe wearing off. “You’re a pretty useless pirate.”

He scowled at her. “Can’t you imagine how much trouble a pirate would get into if her went around telling every pretty girl he met where his treasure was?”

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Post a link to your eight sentences blog entry, or join the fun at the Weekend Writing Warriors website.

And if you’re a writer, sign up to be a Friday Five author, which gets you and your latest work featured on my blog.