Cedar Sanderson's Blog, page 254

“That’s because…

“That’s because you think of hope as something light and fragile. My version of hope has calluses and dirt under the fingernails and isn’t past bringing brass knuckles to a fight.”

-freefall 10/30/2013 by Mark Stanley

I like this webcomic, always have. But this description of hope as a metaphor grabbed me, today. I have been given hope – and my hope has brought me so far, I can’t see it failing now.

Study Hard

I have a chemistry exam today, and a microbiology exam tomorrow, and today I’m wearing a shirt (courtesy of Mystik Waboose, who has the BEST geeky t-shirts) that reads:

Knowledge is Power

Power Corrupts

Study Hard

Be Evil

In other words, I’m studying hard, and being evil, practicing my mad scientist laugh, since I just switched majors to microbiology, and will add a minor (or major! exciting development) of forensic science next semester. Muahhahaahahaa!

Ok, if you want a shirt like that, check out the Mystik Waboose Clothier site on facebook, and you can message them for an order or with questions.

Beautiful America: Almost November

I say in jest that I moved south for the warmer climate. People look at me funny and wonder aloud if I meant to go to Florida. No, thank you, been there, and I remember fire ants and scorpions from my toddler days when Dad was stationed at Homestead. No, I really do mean that Southern Ohio is south. South of New Hampshire, of Alaska, and even, looking at a globe, south of Oregon where my grandmother and great-grandmother lived on the coast. Oregon at this time of year is a place of rain. Lots of rain, and for a change, fog. But at least not snow.

Dad tells me NH has had snow already. I think it was last year I took my kids trick-or-treating in 6 inches of snow… but here in Ohio, I can pull in the last of my tomatoes as the frost has just started to kill the plants, roses are still blooming, and after class yesterday I captured a butterfly dancing over the grass before settling on a dandelion only slightly brighter yellow than his wings. Oh, yes, I can say I moved south.

Roses still smell sweet, even if it is almost halloween.

Love these multi-blooming roses, very common in Ohio.

Perfect bloom, even after a hard frost.

The tomatoes are almost gone, but the plants closest to the house still survive.

Peaceful campus in fall… on my way to an afternoon class.

Yellow butterfly (likely a sulfur) on a dandelion

Cover-up Follow-Up

Beautiful bespoke cover art. Baen is almost the only House still doing this.

Cross-posted over at Amazing Stories

Last week I showed some examples of good and bad cover art. Now, if you are an indie author, or a small press publisher, you can’t afford a great cover artist to create bespoke art for your cover. And I’ll tell you something: most traditional publishers don’t bother, either. You will find covers that came from one of the sources I have listed below on them, or even no art at all – an icon, or simply the author’s name and a small blurb.

Nonetheless, you can hire an artist if you want. The trouble will be finding one that is reliable. I have friends who have gone through several without every seeing their art. I myself waited a year for an artist to finally get around to sending me what I had commissioned. If you find an affordable, reliable artist, treat them like a jewel and hold onto them – I’m given to understand they are rarer than hen’s teeth. I am working with one myself, right now, and if he wants I will give out his information when I can show off my cover art for Pixie Noir. I have found, as have others, that artists on Deviantart might have pretty portfolios, but most likely they won’t even respond to messages, and again, you have no way of knowing if they can deliver on deadline.

The next step is to learn the basics of layout yourself, which can be done using a free program like Gimp, just as well as in the much more expensive inDesign or Photoshop. For art, either buy low-cost images from Dreamstime, or search for creative commons images in places like Creative Commons itself, even places like this for copyright-free NASA images, perfect for SF stories. With any site, whether you grab a free image or pay for one, you need to give credit where credit is due. Also, make sure you check the licensing for the image, as some are free only for non-commercial purposes.

I can’t find an image that fits a scene in my book, now what? Well, you don’t need to have an image that perfectly fits your book. What you need is an evocative image, not too cluttered or busy, that captures the feeling of your genre, be it fantasy, science fiction, or beyond. Your readers make their first impression on this image. Resist the temptation to create a blurry, pixelated piece of amateur art and slap that on your cover. It will look bad, and it will put readers off your book. Far better to go simple, elegant, and classic than to put hours into art if you do not already have the training to create it. Keep in mind that science fiction covers are never photographs. There are ways to digitze photos into artistic looks, and if you have the training, this may be the way to go for you. Fantasy is also never a photo-cover genre. however, you can play a little more fast and loose with the art, to suit your part of the genre. Epic fantasy has different cover styles than urban fantasy, and so forth. Don’t put a pretty unicorn on your tough, sexy, werewolf story unless you want bad reviews and disgusted readers.

It’s an art form all itself, covering your books. And be prepared for the boundaries to shift, and in a year, to possibly be re-covering your books again. Like the art of writing, you never stop learning in this business. Just do one thing… make your name big! Really big, covering the span of the cover. It might look like too much to you, but keep in mind that your reader sees this cover in thumbnail for the first time, and you want your reader to remember your name. It’s called branding, and I will talk about that next week.

Pixie Noir Snippet #7

If you have not been following along, the first snippets are here, and I have the edited manuscript back from my editor, one giant step toward completion. The cover artist has sent me some sketches, and I have re-iterated my desire for art that is gritty, sexy, and noir-ish. Not looking for a scene from the book, just art that is evocative of the story.  I had hoped to be able to have e-ARC’s ready for sending out on Nov. 1, that is looking unlikely. Still on track for a Dec. 1 publication date, though.

And here is this week’s snippet, as the door rattled…

######################

Raven walked in, back in his guise of wrinkled old codger. I no longer bought into this, having seen him in action I knew he was ageless. I found that I was standing between her and the door, having moved into defensive position without even being aware of it. I sighed, and sat back down.

Bella sat up straight. “Uncle.” She reached her hands out to him and he dropped his coat on a chair with mine and took them.

“You have to go, I know.” The way he said that, sadly but with certainty, surprised me. I had expected an argument from both of them.

“I don’t have to go anywhere.” She insisted. She looked at me.

“Child,” he told her gently, “I can protect you, if you stayed here, in my house.”

“Then that is what I will do.” She set her chin in what I was beginning to associate with her more stubborn moments.

“But for how long, and what about your family?”

I had to wonder how long he had been listening at the door. I didn’t buy into his knowing everything. Powerful, certainly. A god, certainly not.

“You love too well, child.”

I looked at her and saw her face crumple. There were no tears, yet, although I had a sense that she was fighting it.

“Then I must go.”

He nodded. “I can make sure you are safe until you leave my territory. After you are gone, I can make certain your family is safe.” He looked at me with those grey eyes. “Are her enemies likely to come after the family?”

I shook my head at him. Bella was the only person they wanted here.

“Then you must go.”

She buried her face in her hands. I almost didn’t hear her muffled question. “Can I ever come home again?”

I looked at the old man, and we stared at one another for a long moment. He had decided to trust me, I saw. His eyes were relaxed and he nodded slightly.

“I don’t know.” I answered her honestly, after deciding that I had better start telling her the truth as much as I was able to. “There are five remaining heirs. If one of the others is chosen for Queen, then you will be released from Court.”

“Like Lavendar was.” She looked up and I could see the tears had started. “So how long will it take?”

“Service in the court is timeless.” I told her formally, hoping she would catch from my tone that I was quoting.

“Lavendar told me that fairies live long, Underhill. That they only age while they are in the human realm, and humans are affected oddly by the passing of time between the two planes. That is where the stories of men who live a hundred years Underhill, yet age and die in days when they return home, come from.”

I nodded. She had the idea. It could be a very long time before she came back here. “You can’t say goodbye. But you ought to be able to get in touch with them as we travel, and during your time at Court. These aren’t the days of paper mail, any longer.”

“We need to leave…” she faltered a little. “Right now?”

Raven answered for me. “Yes, and not go to the airport.” He cocked his head to one side, a faroff look in his eyes, as though he were listening to something outside our perceptions. “There are enemies between you and your return ticket, I am afraid.” He looked at me and grinned. “Lom.”

He knew my real name. During that foray into spirit journey he must have seen into my mind. I frowned back at him, trying to convey my deep displeasure at his discovery. He cackled like the bird he was.

“In town?” I asked him, hoping he’d keep the secret to himself. He had a reputation for enjoying a good joke. Of course, some of the stories about his jokes also involved a woman wearing bird droppings and thinking they were high fashion.

He shook his head. “They have found the car on the bridge. You will have to return to town by another route. Also, I believe they know where you are staying, Lom. There are two strange men who are hanging out in the Tok Lodge bar. They arrived about the time the Troll passed through town.”

I shook my head in disgust. “Figures. Well, not the first time I have had to cut and run. The rental car is easily taken care of, and this,” I patted the case that was standing near the couch. “Is all that really matters.”

Bella eyed it. “Destroying or losing it will not help you, princess.” I warned her. She gave me a dirty look indeed.

Raven held up his hand, palm outward. Even that was wrinkled, and had what appeared to be centuries-old dirt embedded in wrinkles and scars. A hand with a lot of character. We both stopped talking obediently and looked at him. He beamed at us.

“Before you leave, children, I will give you a meal.”

Bella groaned. My stomach grumbled. It had been a long time, and a fight, between breakfast and now, whenever now was. I looked at my watch. Well past lunchtime, verging on dinner.

“We don’t have much daylight, Uncle.” She protested.

“You need your strength.”

Silently, I agreed with him. Now that food had been mentioned, I was starving.

“Bella girl, set the table. Lom, put some wood on the fire.” He shot his orders at us and turned his back, reaching into the crude cupboards that made up his pantry. I shrugged at her helpless look and grabbed my jacket and gloves. I had seen the woodpile, so I could handle this little chore.

I stepped out the door and noticed two things instantly. One, it was a lot colder than it had been when we’d come in. Two, the reason for that was, it was dark now. I had not realized just how short the days were here. It was almost spring, and still it was dark. Dammit. I hated not being able to see them coming.

The snow reflected the starlight well, so I found the woodpile and gathered an armload with no incidents. I stood there in silence for a long moment, listening. The old spirit might have his spies out, but I preferred to rely on my own senses.

It was quieter than any place I had ever been before. Only a slight, muffled clatter from the house broke the stillness. I closed my eyes and used my inner sight to look for Power. It was like seeing stars in the sky, Underhill. Sparks bright and dim would spangle the world around me. Here, the old man glowed like a beacon. Bella’s warm yellow flame drew me, then I looked upward and saw the dull lights of the ravens under his control.

I opened my eyes and relinquished the power, blinking to get my eyes back in focus. The clearing around the house remained empty, and I walked across the squeaking snow back to the door. I stamped my feet to get snow off and Bella opened the door. I smiled my thanks as I pushed by into the house.

She showed me the woodbox behind the stove and I dumped the stack into it.

“Cold out there.”

She nodded and took my coat as I peeled it off. “Probably about twenty below. Not bad at all.”

I felt my eyebrows lift. “Not bad?”

She grinned suddenly. “How much did you research the area?”

“Obviously, not enough.” I sniffed. “What is that?”

“Moose burgers.” Raven announced. “You took long enough. Almost ready.”

I sat at the little table. A pair of folding chairs had been produced to join the single upholstered one that appeared to be almost as old as Raven. Spattered enamel plates and mismatched cutlery finished the set-up. It felt… homey. I relaxed a little. It wasn’t often I could stop worrying about the next threat, but Raven had the watch.

Bella sat in the other folding chair with a suppressed moan.

“Bruised?”

“A bit. I went down right on my…” She rubbed at the affected area. “When that monster dropped me. What was that, anyway?”

“Norwegian Troll.” Raven put two slabs of homemade bread on my plate and walked back to the stove where a skillet was sizzling and sending off mouth-watering odors of cooking meat. “Big and dumb. They have an affinity for bridges, and while they’re hard enough to kill at any time, on a bridge it’s damn near impossible.”

“I put three .44 hollowpoints in his back.” She asserted as she leaned back from Raven, who was now wielding a hot pan. He slid a moose patty onto her bread. She flipped the other piece on top and gave it a little squish.

“Yeah, that got his attention until I put a bullet in his eye. It wouldn’t have stopped him, though.”

“Oh.” She took a big bite and chewed thoughtfully. I imitated her. “Mmmm…” She purred. “Raven, you make the best burgers.”

He grinned, showing a set of improbably white and perfect teeth. “Flattery will get you everywhere, niece.”

I had to agree with her. I didn’t know what he had put in to flavor the meat, but now I understood why there were no condiments on the table. Garlic, onion, spices… and juicy. I swallowed and sighed.

“Thank you.” I inclined my head to him in a formal Japanese style, and he returned that gravely.

“There are three things one should never do on an empty stomach. Fleeing, fighting and…”

“Uncle!” Bella interrupted him with a laugh.

“I get it.” I was chuckling at their byplay. “And I appreciate you feeding us. But how are we supposed to get back to town?”

“Snowgo,” he answered promptly. “You can take it in to town, and call your cousin Tex to fly you out from there.” This part he addressed to Bella, who nodded. I was still trying to figure out what a snowgo was.

He stood up, reached behind the ratty couch, and hauled out a snowshoe. I stared at it in horror. It was damned cold outside, and more than twenty miles back to town, and he expected us to walk?

Raven offered the snowshoe to Bella. “Dessert?”

She burst into laughter as I wondered if they had both gone mad.

When she got her giggles mostly under control she turned to me, “Aunt Mya made Raven a birthday cake a few years back. She’s a really good cake decorator, so she decided she would make a snowshoe-shaped cake for him. He took one look at it and refused to eat it.”

Raven broke in. “It looked real. And you don’t know that woman’s sense of humor! I wouldn’t put it past her.”

His exaggerated look of grievance made me chuckle again. I understood what he was doing, clowning about to keep Bella’s mind off the events of the day. She was looking better, more color in her cheeks with food and the laugh. Time to get moving, while we could still evade our enemies.

She put her plate on the counter next to a dishpan and I imitated her.

“You’re not washing up, girl.” he scolded her. “Get some more layers for this boy.” He pointed at me. I was amused at his command.

She looked at me, and smiled. Suddenly I wasn’t so amused. That look held a lot of mischief, and she had reasons not to be happy with me.

Ten minutes later I waddled out the door. I was wearing about three more layers than I had been, and most of them had obviously been made for children. Even my shoes had been stuffed into a backpack, while my feet (in an extra layer of socks) were stuffed into a pair of moon boots I would have bet good money were made sometime in the 1980s. They were warmer than my shoes had been, I would admit.

The crowning insult was the hat, an erratically knitted affair made from variegated rainbow yarn. It was lined with rabbit fur, had a bobble on top, and earflaps. Bella had handed it to me with a funny little smile. I had looked at the thing in my hand in horror.

“I made that.” She told me.

I looked up at her and wondered whether to tell her the truth.

“Horrible, isn’t it?” she went on cheerfully. “I was eight, and just learning how to knit. I gave it up after a few tries, I think this might be the only thing left. It is warm, though, really.”

I sighed, and put it on. She hid her mouth behind her hand, but I could see the smile in her eyes.

Now, standing on the porch, I had to admit that at least I couldn’t see it, and it was keeping my ears warm. Bella went around the corner, having asked me to stay put. A moment later I hear the roar of a small engine, and she reappeared on a snowmachine.

I trudged down the steps  as she dismounted and held out a hand for the attache case. Silently, she tied it down to the rear of the seat, then remounted. With a deep sigh I gathered my temper and climbed on behind her. I had never ridden on one of these before. Motorcycle, yes, horses, many wheeled vehicles, but this was completely different.

Bella shouted over her shoulder, “hang on!”

This was getting to be a pattern. I held on tightly to her waist and couldn’t see much of anything as she accelerated around the cabin and toward the woods at an insane speed. Peeking over her shoulder, I could see the narrow trail she was heading for.

The forest in this area was made up of conifers, black and thickly crowded in the dim light of the moon and stars. Only the reflection of that light off the snow kept it from being pitch black. If we had a headlight on this thing, she hadn’t switched it on yet. The light level dropped the instant we slid into the trees, and Bella lit up the scene with a brilliant headlight. I really wished she hadn’t.

The feel of the snow under my butt was different, here, and as she took us around a curve it felt disconcertingly like water as we sank into it. I held on tighter, frustrated at being out of control. I couldn’t even see any further than the trail, now the light was on and disrupting my night vision. I closed my eyes, and opened up my Sight. If it was all I could do, at least we wouldn’t zip into an ambush.

For the second time that day I found myself with my face in someone’s shoulder. This day was just getting worse and worse. I didn’t dare think about the ways it could be worse, actually. These things had a way of coming to be.

It’s not that I am superstitious. I’m a magical being, but I don’t believe in greater forces manipulating our lives. We’re too small and the world too big. Well, Bella was important enough to mobilize the forces of the world I knew best, the one hidden in the shadows of the human world. We peek out around the edges, but daren’t come out too far, lest we all be cut off.

Humanity has never dealt well with outliers. We may have magic, in its various forms, and at one time, before the rise of technology, we had enough power to worry them. Now, they could and likely would wipe us out. Those of us they didn’t keep as pets.

 

I’m Lucky

My earlier posts on questionable books for young people didn’t get me the kind of abuse this woman has received. Go read her article – it’s good, and obviously she can use some support.

Here’s a quote from Megan Fox: “Page 38 of David Zimmerman’s Caring is Creepy (a book that won the 2012 American Library Association Alex Award for being relevant to teens ages 12 to 17) says,

I’m going to tear a hole in your belly button and f*** your piggy fat. I’m going to hunt you down and kill you with my c***…I’m looking at you through your webcam right now.

And the librarians will all scream together in a chorus, “CONTEXT, THERE’S NO CONTEXT! YOU’RE A BOOK BURNER!” in the exact manner of townspeople ordering a farmer’s wife to climb on the pyre because someone said she’s a witch. I really don’t care what the context is. I never ever want my teen daughter to read those words in any book, let alone one that the American Library Association (ALA) says is good for her.”

Nice to know I’m not the only mother with deep problems with fiction like that being shelved in the children’s section of the library. Like me, Megan is thinking a rating system, pretty much what we already do for movies, is a good idea.

Dud Day

Meh… that’s how I feel. Very evocative little made-up word, isn’t it? Anyway, the post with real meat in it is up at Mad Genius Club, and I am off to work since it is a weekend. With chemistry homework in it, and not even the fun kind where things go “boom” but the kind with a quiz at the end.

This is how I’d rather spend my day…

Industry Reading

I have too much homework to think too much. Now, isn’t that a conundrum?

Anyway, I decided I would spare you my analysis of John Donne’s The Flea, although if you have never read it, you should. It’s really funny. But I will let you analyze it yourself. Just let me suggest that you ponder the letter ‘s’ as it was written in days of yore, as you read the poem. Especially line three.

Now that I have proven my humor to be of the very lowest sort, back to more serious topics.

If you are an Indie author, or indeed, any writer with professional aspirations, I highly recommend that you read certain blogs regularly, and dip into others on a more occasional basis. This will let you keep up with what’s being recommended as wise practices, what’s the latest and greatest, and so on. Yes, it will take a little time, but it is worth it. Just like in any other business, being aware of the industry is an essential tool in your workbox, as much as the wordprocessing program you use is.

If you are really strapped for time, The Passive Voice is a great place to start. He collects in one place articles of interest to writers, publishers, and editors.

Needless to say, I think The Mad Genius Club is a fun source for writerly advice, but even before I was inducted into Mad Genius status myself I followed it daily.

For business aspects, I cannot say enough about the husband-wife pair of writers and industry dynamos Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith.  The Business Rusch holds enough information to get you started, and keep you going for a long time. When you visit Dean’s site, go right to Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing, you will not regret the time spent there.

Finally, if you are pursuing a more traditional publication path, visit Preditors and Editors first. They spotlight the unethical that prey on newbies in our industry, and not only can you check out a potential market, but reading through it will open your eyes to potential problems you may stumble on.

Have a favorite blog or site on these topics? Put it in the comments and I will put a link in this post when I have a little time tomorrow.

In the meantime… I have more reading to do, and it’s not even fun.

Breaking the Rules

A book in the woods

I’m a bit of an iconoclast, if you read my blog you will have noticed that already. Indie author, on the cusp of that being acceptable (although I predict it will become the norm), not one to go along with teh litewawy dahlings, preferring to read for story, not message…. My First Reader sent me an essay of Mark Twain’s devising last night. Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses is a brilliant piece, not only amusing if you have read Cooper (while knowing even a little bit about woodcraft, which I do) but inspirational as a writer.

Below is Twain’s brilliant, snarky dissection of Deerslayer, and I have highlighted some points I wanted to particularly bring to your attention, Dear Readers.

There are nineteen rules governing literary art in domain of romantic fiction — some say twenty-two. In “Deerslayer,” Cooper violated eighteen of them. These eighteen require:

1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the “Deerslayer” tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in air.

2. They require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the “Deerslayer” tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop.

3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the “Deerslayer” tale.

4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also has been overlooked in the “Deerslayer” tale.

5. The require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the “Deerslayer” tale to the end of it.

6. They require that when the author describes the character of a personage in the tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description. But this law gets little or no attention in the “Deerslayer” tale, as Natty Bumppo’s case will amply prove.

7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven- dollar Friendship’s Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the “Deerslayer” tale.

8. They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as “the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest,” by either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is persistently violated in the “Deerslayer” tale.

9. They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. But these rules are not respected in the “Deerslayer” tale.

10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the “Deerslayer” tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.

11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency. But in the “Deerslayer” tale, this rule is vacated.

In addition to these large rules, there are some little ones. These require that the author shall:

 

12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it. 13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.

14. Eschew surplusage.

15. Not omit necessary details.

16. Avoid slovenliness of form.

17. Use good grammar.

18. Employ a simple and straightforward style.

The Metaphor of a Grape

Poem I scribbled in class today. The homework was to create a metaphor in text or with an image, I think I got both…