Cedar Sanderson's Blog, page 256

Teen Week Blog Hop with Special Guest!

 

 

Please welcome Kim Mutch Emerson, author of teen read ">Digitus 233. 

Why do you think Teen Read Week is important? It is important to me that we keep quality literature an option for all readers and that includes teenagers or young adults. Teen Read Week helps promote that end.

How do you think we could encourage youngsters to read more? Offer them books that excite them. Give them books that are relevant and meaningful to their lives.

When you were a teenager what books did you like to read and did you have an all-time favourite character? More than anything, when I was a teenager I wanted to read something about people who were “real” and who had challenges in life. The same holds true for me today. It can be any genre, but the characters have to have enough depth that they could be real people living real lives. One book that comes to mind in the young adult genre is The Pigman by author Paul Zindel. It is a timeless classic with characters that stay with you and change you somehow to become a better person. This is what I tried to do with my novel, Digitus 233 and by the reviews from readers I was able to achieve that goal.

Were you writing as a teenager? If so, what were you writing and what inspired you? Did a person inspire you to write? I have been writing since I was six. As a teenager I was focused on becoming a published author. I wrote about people who faced challenges and learned to rise above those challenges. I write the same type of stories today. When I was six, the first author that inspired me to be a professional writer was Wilson Rawls, the author of Where the Red Fern Grows.

Do you think today’s teens are in a better position if they want to be a writer than you were all those years ago (hee hee)? Absolutely! It’s an exciting time to be a writer. In today’s book publishing world there are thousands of options. Writers no longer have to wait years and years to see their work published. Through social media and internet searches they can find hundreds of publishing options from the big six, to smaller companies, to publishing on their own.

What advice would you give a youngster who enjoys writing? First and foremost, take joy in writing! If it is something you want to do as a career then go to school and study the art of writing. Realize it takes practice to become a master. Take your writing seriously, study your craft and become the best that you can be. Learn to take constructive criticism as a way to grow and become better. If it is something you want to do as a hobby, then simply write and enjoy it.

What is your latest book about? When Zeph, the adventurous son of a millionaire hid in the cargo hold of the Learjet carrying his brother to camp he had no idea there was anything ominous going on. That was, until he watched his brother Zander ejected from the plane onto a barren arctic island and Zeph, trapped on the plane, found himself headed for South America. Will he be able to expose the truth behind Digitus, the world’s dominant corporation, or will they succeed in their sinister plan to control his brother and destroy the world?

Are you working on anything new at the moment? I am an author and I also own a publishing house, so I have no end to new projects. My main focus as a writer is the second book in the Digitus series. I am also working on a book to assist writers in the publishing and marketing process of their books.

What do you love about being an author? Creating new worlds and the people that inhabit them. I also love connecting with my readers.

Want to win a free ebook copy of Kim’s book?  

Answer the question in the comments for your chance to receive a book!

Here is a list of possible things that K.D. Emerson could have done in her life time. Pick one thing from this list that is false. The first three who answer correctly win a copy of Digitus 233 (there is more than one correct answer).

Ridden a wild horse
Ridden an unicycle
Worked at a bank
Worked at a carnival
Got expelled from school a week before high school graduation
Never got expelled from school
Sold her first story at age eight
Was in a traffic accident with a truck that had no driver
Won a dance contest in high school
Loves cotton candy

More about Digitus 233

What Readers are saying:

Looking for fantastic characters and a breath-holding, heart-pounding, hair-raising edge of your seat good time? Then look no further, Digitus 233 has it all ~ Maria
This knocked The Hunger Games right out of the running for me (and that’s one of my favorites!) ~ Dominique
This sort of tale-spinning takes TALENT! All I’ve gotta say is this: KD – you’d better get the sequel written pretty darn quickly…!! ~ Liberty
Digitus 233 is an excellent example of an author whose characters look and sound real, and whose behaviour – while not always exemplary – rings true to me ~ Lynette
If you’re a teacher, this is a book that is sure to capture the interest of your entire class! If you’re a parent with a reluctant reader, I’d definitely suggest downloading this book to get him/her interested in reading! ~ Anne

More about KD Emerson

  K.D. Emerson loves writing thought provoking and action filled stories that bring her readers back for more. Although her writings deal with the evils of the world, she dishes out healthy doses of laughter and fun along the way.

K.D. spends her free time wrangling wild horses, rafting down the Amazon, hang gliding on a toothpick and when she’s awake you will find her working on her next adventure or assisting others in creating their dreams.

Visit K.D. on her blog: http://digitus233.com/category/blog/

Or connect with her on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/kimmutch.emerson

Twitter connection is: @MstrKoda

 

Sunday Snippet: Pixie Noir #5

If you haven’t read the previous snippets, you may want to start here. As always, enjoy! Pixie Noir will be released for sale in ebook and print version Dec 1, 2013, and until then, I will be posting snippets of it here on my blog.

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A cackling Raven in man form swung the door open and I fluttered into the warmth. My body was leaning on a kitchen chair, eyes closed and slack-jawed. I looked quickly away. That was not a comforting sight. The lights were out and no-one was home.

Bella was sprawled on the couch with a book. She didn’t look up, and I figured that was on purpose. She didn’t want to make eye contact with me, who she’d betrayed into this. I hopped up onto her chest. As a bird, I figured I could get away with it. Cats do it all the time. She grabbed me and held me up in the air, finally looking me in the eye. I squawked.

Raven came and grabbed both her hands and me. I started to feel a bit squashed, and pissed as hell. Well, that wasn’t just starting. I’d felt that way since the bird had pulled me into his trap. He opened his mouth and I was looking forward to home, sweet body, when something made a sharp tone.

Bella let go, leaving me in the old man’s hands, and while the tone ululated, pulled a pager out of her pocket and dialed the volume even higher than the ear-piercing initial sound had been.

A scratchy radio transmission burst forth. “Respond to a motor vehicle accident on the Tanana Bridge. Injuries reported.”

Bella jumped up. “I have to go. I’m probably closest.” She blurted to Raven and I, and bolted for the door.

I shouted, but only the old man heard me, as I was still in the bird. “Wait!”

She was gone, the door banging behind her. “Shit.”

“What is wrong?” He reached out for my body with one hand, and I leaned on the link as well, leaping back into my own consciousness.

I staggered toward the door. “There – there was no one on the bridge when I flew over it.”

I felt woozy. The jump from bird back to human form had been too quick. The old man slid an arm around me with surprising strength. “I mean, there could have been an accident, but for there to have been a response that fast…” We made it out the door, the Raven, his bird, and I, but she was gone already.

“Argh.” Not eloquent, but that summed up how I felt about this. Something bad was happening.

Raven steered me down the steps. I was still tripping over my own feet, so I obediently followed him. It wasn’t like I could go charging down the driveway after the woman in the pickup.

“I’m going to let go, now, can you stand alone?” He peered at me from a distance of mere inches away.

“Personal space…” I leaned back a bit. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

He grunted and stepped away from me. Feathers were starting to sprout from his skin, and his nose was lengthening into an impressive beak. I stared, fascinated, as he transformed into a glossy black raven, taller than I was. He turned a vivid grey eye on me and stretched his wings.

“Ah…” He croaked, and I took a step back. “That feels good. Been a while for me.”

Hearing human speech come from him, even as raspy as it was, I relaxed. Then I shivered. It was damn cold out here, and even with my coat still on, I was chilled through. I looked around. There was no garage hiding a vehicle, so how was I going to follow her?

The giant Raven laughed at me. “Climb aboard, Boy.”

I looked up at the smooth expanse of wing he was presenting me. “Oh, hell no.”

“You would prefer to stay here?”

I backed up a step, and again that piercing gray eye fixed me. I could tell he expected me to turn tail and run. Instead, I grinned at him and ran full speed ahead, up the leading edge of his offered wing and onto his back. He wasn’t the first oversized avian to give me a ride.

Silently, he launched himself skyward. I held on for dear life, pressing my face into his feathers. I dug my hands in deep, holding on near the skin and feeling the heat of his body. I kept my face down as we rocketed up. I didn’t need to see where we were going, and the windchill would have me solid in no time. I could tell from his wingbeats that we were still climbing.

As I pressed my face into soft, cool feathers I could smell the old bird. Smoked leather, salmon, the beef jerky we had brought him: who knows what else, but this was a spirit being at least as old as any of the Fae at my home Court. He was different, powerful, and he was giving me hope for the first time since I had been bidden to this, the final task of my life as a freelancer.

He hit the peak of his arc and I could feel the tension in his shoulders as he pitched his wings for a long dive. His pinion feathers fairly crackled as we picked up speed. I risked a peek.

I caught a blurred glimpse of the bridge looming below us, before my eyes streamed with tears in the cold wind. I put my face back down, trying to blot my tears on his feathers. I didn’t dare let go with even one hand while we were in this dive. I was beginning to wonder how I was going to get off at the end of it. Flung out like a stone from a slingshot, it felt like.

Raven spoke for the first time. “I see trouble, all right. I’m going to drop you by her truck provide distraction.”

“Where’s Bella?” I didn’t dare take another peek, I needed clear eyes for this when I finally got back on the ground.

“He has her.” I felt a jolt as he angled his pinions against the air flowing over them, and we dropped like a stone. “Get ready.”

I was going into a fight blind, no idea what the enemy looked like, what weapon I would find, even if there was one in the rifle case I’d gotten a glimpse of. My ally was a trickster spirit not known for loyalty, and a fairy princess was in trouble. My fairy princess. It was my job to save her cute little ass. I really hate my job.

“Go!” Raven rasped, and I rolled off his wing in the direction he’d banked, and hit the ground running.

Straight into the side of the truck. “Oof…” I could hear all the wind leave my lungs, and I reeled backward for a second, windmilling. Smooth, Lom, real smooth.

The door handle popped open easily, she hadn’t locked it. Why would she, out in this godforsaken wilderness? Well, all right, not so god forsaken. One god, with feathers optional. I looked over my shoulder down the length of the bridge to see where he had gone, and got my first look at the hairball I was walking into.

I pulled the rifle case out by feel while I sized it up. There was indeed a wrecked car midway down, although it looked to me like a fake-up. I had used such a set-up a time or two myself. Bang into the rail just enough to break a light or two, scattering glass and the ridiculous brittle plastic cars are made of these days, then play possum until your target stops to check on you. I wasn’t proud of it, because that was how you caught someone who still had some soul left.

Bella was in the air, clutched by a Norwegian Troll, unless I missed my guess, and I never do. It’s my livelihood to know all the weird creatures out there, and what they are capable of. This one had looked like an ordinary man, possibly with a creative blood smear on his forehead and a dazed look in his eyes, right up until she had leaned in to take his vitals… Then he had changed, into his real appearance, brutish, huge, but the dazed look would still have been there. Trolls are not smart.

Now, he towered twice my height, and seemed to be using Bella as a shield against the angry Raven-god who was trying to pick his eyes out. The way he was holding her, with both hands so he pinned her arms against her body, made me think she had done something to protect herself and had injured him. I had the rifle out of the case, now, mostly by feel, and I tore my gaze from the bizarre fight to look at what I was going to be using.

A nice little 30-30, lever action. Scope, and a rubber recoil suppressor on the butt, which I would appreciate tomorrow. I jacked the chamber open and pulled the cartridges rapidly, finding three, then reloaded as fast as I had pulled them. You aren’t supposed to carry a loaded weapon in a vehicle. Naughty girl. I was liking her more and more.

There was no time to look for more ammo. This was just going to have to be enough. I departed the truck at a jog, headed for the action. The rifle was heavy for me, but not too much.

I knew that the Troll was not an easy being to kill or incapacitate. I was going to have to get it either in the eye, or the nose. Anyplace else, and the heavy plates of its skull bone would deflect the bullet. Also, he was so distracted by Raven that he hadn’t yet noticed me.

“Hey, butt-ugly!” I stopped, braced the rifle to my shoulder, and bellowed at him all in one smooth move. I was in my element, finally. He swung around from trying to bat the annoying bird out of the air and stared at me, mouth hanging open. He held Bella awkwardly in front of him.

She looked at me and stopped trying to kick him, instead curling her head toward her chest, and her legs up. The best attempt at a fetal position while being pinioned by troll mitts. Not bad. I appreciated her consideration for letting me take a shot, as well as keeping her own pretty skin out of the way, and then breathed out as I gently squeezed the trigger.

The first shot knocked his head back, and he dropped Bella. She landed in an ungainly heap, but I couldn’t watch her sort herself out, I was still watching him to see if I had hit the right place. He staggered back and then clutched his head with both hands. Shit… I’d hit him right between the eyes. Blackish blood bubbled out, but I knew it wasn’t a fatal wound. He shook his head, spraying blood in all directions, and then opened his mouth in a roar as he charged toward me.

I had gained his full and undivided attention. I had two bullets, and less than fifty feet between us, and a rifle that wasn’t sighted in properly. I fired again, sighting below the scope, along the barrel sights this time. The troll staggered, and I heard ‘boom, boom, boom’ from behind him. He fell to his knees, one eye destroyed, the other still with a dazed look tinged now with confusion. Slowly, he fell forward onto his face.

I looked over his body at Bella, who was still in her shooter’s stance.

“Why the hell didn’t you shoot him before?” I was pissed, and it may have come out in my voice.

Hers was very tart as she holstered that hand cannon she’d been carrying in a shoulder holster. “I don’t usually shoot my patients out of hand.”

I put the rifle over my arm and walked up to the troll. It was a short walk. I looked down at the back of his head, with the grayish, wrinkled scalp visible through the wispy hairs. “And when he turned into the big ugly?”

“I didn’t have time before he grabbed me. You saw how he was holding me. All I could do was give him a fat lip and a sore crotch.”

Despite myself, that made me chuckle. All right, more like a short bark of bitter laughter.  I looked at her. She was beautiful, standing there with her cheeks all rosy and fire in her eyes. The laughter vanished.

“We need to talk. Now, before another monster pops out of the woodwork.”

She looked down at the troll. “What’s going on? What did you do?”

“He wasn’t coming for me, lady. They are after you.”

“What?” Her eyes snapped back to me. She had been contemplating the troll like she was trying to figure out his genus and phylla. Understandable, given her job. She wasn’t going to get it, though, this was way out of the experiences of all but an unlucky few. I was one of those, sadly.

I turned away from her and walked back to the truck. I felt tired. I always did, at those moments, when the adrenaline drained away and left wobbly legs and nausea in its wake. The case was hanging half out of the door, and I fumbled at it with numb fingers. I had not noticed the cold until now, and I was fast losing the ability to use my hands. Bella came up behind me and helped, wordlessly.

A rare woman, this one. She knew when not to talk, and she could handle a gun.

“Your scope is off.”

“I don’t doubt it. It’s sensitive to bumps.”

“I was in a hurry.” I sighed then. “Good thing you had it. Where’s your ammo?”

She pulled a plastic case halfway out and I nodded. If I needed it again, I knew where it was. In that single gesture she’d shown me she was going to trust me. I trudged over to the passenger door and climbed in, my legs leaden. She started the truck’s heater blasting as soon as I got in.

 

Humor, Writing, and Reading

Yesterday I was seriously under the weather, so I didn’t post the review I had intended to, my apologies…

I also didn’t write today’s post at Mad Genius Club, that would be my First Reader, who brought his wit and humor to the topic of… humor in writing.

The spark for that came partly from this article, which while it isn’t about humor, employs it powerfully in discussion of what publishing really is. Did Mark Twain really write books?

Finally, yesterday, while I was sick, I couldn’t sleep, so I did what I always do to escape from the pain of our world: moved into alternate universes for a while, in the form of books. I read " target="_blank">Nocturnal Serenade, and " target="_blank">Nocturnal Haunts, both excellent paranormal police procedural works by Amanda Green. Only problem with them is that now I have to wait for the next one in the series!

I read " target="_blank">The Western Front (part 1) by Archer Garrett, who may be the closest thing to a successor to Tom Clancy I have read yet. He is bringing plots together like weaving a tapestry, just like Clancy does in many of his earlier (and better) books. Sadly, this was only the teaser for the rest of the book. I dislike this new style of writing only part of the story, then stopping so the reader will buy more. Part 1 was free, but I will look closely before I buy another one by him to make sure it is a complete story arc.

I was also reading *mumble* which is like bon-bons for the brain, and I’m not going to admit to in public! The book I was reading in the evening, and had to make myself put down once I was finally able to sleep (but, but, one more chapter!) was " target="_blank">Sharper Security by Thomas Sewell. Near-Future thriller, action, it was amusing and makes me want to find out more about this world he’s speculating on.

How much Data in my Brain?

The Cray-1 supercomputer

My desk is a mess. No, I am NOT posting a picture of it! 

This is normal for me, actually. I will clean it off, but inevitably the piles grow back, like resistant bacteria you just can’t get rid of forever. The best I can hope for is a kind of stasis, or at least to slow the growth. With work and school I have two computers at right angles to one another, a cell phone in pieces in front of one keyboard with the new one resting next to it waiting for some magical signal to pass through the air and activate it… 

Because that is what got me thinking about this post. The fact that this morning as I was putting the new phone to rights – sim card, memory card, battery charged – I held out the micro memory card balanced on a fingertip, and pointed out that it holds 8 gigs of data. It’s going to run on a processor small enough (and cool enough!) to fit comfortably in my hand. 

The year I was born, the biggest supercomputer was the Cray 1, which had a memory bank of one million words, and weighed in at 5.5 tons. In the less than four decades since then, we have come so far that computer is almost unimaginable to the youth of today, learning how to manipulate touchscreen computers before they can even walk.  I just have to stop once in a while and ponder that, how the leaps we have made in my lifetime have affected the world, and what is coming next? 

Maybe this is why I love to read good science fiction. Going back to the golden age, I can see the glimmers and flickers of what they got right, and the howlers of what they got terribly wrong. But it’s hard to blame them. Who could have predicted that my great-grandmother, by the time of her death at 107, would have seen the rise of the motor vehicle, aeroplanes, and a man on the moon? 

Have we topped out? Can we keep leaping forward like this, or have we hit a ceiling of what technology as we know it can do? Strictly speaking with memory, we have not yet fully utilized what computers are capable of, I believe.  Think of it this way: that Cray 1 was a 64 bit machine. 

Each byte holds 8 bits, or 255 individual values
Today, we talk about: kilo, mega, giga, and Terabytes
Floppy Disc – 1.44 Mb
CD – 650-900 Mb
DVD – 4.71 GB
116 Gb in a brain (estimated, of course!)

And finally, a fun little article I’d found… I need better information, but this is an interesting start. 

Now, I really need to do some homework. Back tomorrow with a review of a children’s book, for something different. Sheepdogs, by LtC Dave Grossman and Stephanie Rogish. 

Oh, not my desk, but this is me, installing a 1Tb drive in my iMac. Geek-girl moment!

How to Write Realist YA: Part 1

Young readers identify strongly with what they are reading

I am joined today by a guest blogger, a friend who was good enough to allow me to publish some of his musings on Young Adult Lit, and what the deep problems are in the genre, and why. He has asked me to withhold his name as he is concerned, perhaps rightly, about backlash from his views onto his professional life. 

In 2008 two teachers in a high school outside of Buffalo, New York wanted to use John Green’s debut Printz Award-winning young adult Novel, Looking for Alaska, to teach eleventh graders.  The book deals with issues of teenage sex, drug use, suicide and ends with an elaborate prank involving a male stripper.  Because of the controversial content, the teachers asked parents to sign a permission form.  Parents who objected or failed to sign the form were given the opportunity to opt out, and have their kids read a different book, but for some parents that just wasn’t enough.

A campaign was started to have the book banned entirely on the grounds that the book’s graphic content was pornographic and unsuitable for teens.  John Green ably defended himself from those charges on his blog and in a video he uploaded to Youtube “I am not a pornographer.”  He argued that while there was a somewhat graphic – and painfully awkward – teenage sex scene, it was justified as it contrasted the difference between sexual intimacy and true emotional intimacy.   He’s right of course and I agree.  But it’s not the sex scene that makes John Green’s book pornographic.  The whole darn thing is porn.  Let me explain.

One of the things I love about language is that it is always changing to fit niches we never knew existed, but once discovered, can’t imagine how we ever lived without them.  If you had used the word “porn” thirty years ago, people would have assumed you were talking about…well…porn.  Naked skanky actors, bump and grind, delivery boys, you get the drill.  Now today the word porn has morphed to mean any one of a variety of diversions that exist just to titillate our fantasies.  My own personal indulgence is Real Estate Porn.  Real Estate Porn involves trolling the MLS listings looking for architectural fantasies just out of reach.  Keep in mind I have a home, a very nice home in fact; solid, well-built, practical and more importantly, it has a reasonable mortgage.   That doesn’t stop me from scratching the occasional itch for a Palladian window, a Craftsmen door or travertine floors.

Like real porn, Real Estate Porn comes with it’s own subgenres.  There’s the nice Cape Cod in my zip code just out of my price range (that’s like the girl next door variety) all the way up to the Tuscan Villa on a private island (celebrity sex tape.) There’s all kinds of this sort of porn for all sorts of enthusiasts and hobbies: gun porn, boat porn, gamer porn, geek porn, and new varieties are being invented all the time.  How we ever got along without this term I’ll never know.  What they all have in common is an admitted cheap emptiness.  They are guilty pleasures, fun self-indulgences, diversions that satisfy our wildly unrealistic imaginations, but only for a moment.

Now I’m no prude.  I have no problem with cheesecake, either the kind that comes in bikinis or the kind that comes in Spanish Colonial tile (although lately I’ve been partial to half-timber Tudor if you know what I mean and I think you do.)  However, saturation in our unfulfilled and unreasonable fantasies will only lead to envy, detachment, resentment and depression.  As porn, the real bump and grind stuff, has spread through the Internet, it has led to the social isolation and detachment of millions of young men, not to mention impotence.  And when young men are willing to risk impotence for their fantasies, you know it’s bad.  (So far my DIY home improvement skills remain unaffected, but you never know.) The point being is that porn (of any variety) and especially the obsessing about unfulfilled or unrealistic desires is the certain path to disengagement and ultimately, misery.  At some point, you have to push away the laptop, the real estate websites and their endless temptations of unattainable Georgian façades or Queen Anne turrets and get back to fixing the leaky sillcock on your own house, (and no that’s not sexual, it’s a real thing, look it up.)

The condemnation of the long-term negative effects of habitual use of actual porn is pretty universal.  But you hardly need to go to such extremes.   What makes porn, porn – at least as it is used in this modern sense – isn’t the genre, it’s the way in which the media panders to our easiest and most indulgent desires.  Whether you are doing a 30 hour session of World of Warcraft or catching up on three seasons of your favorite TV show in a two day marathon, it’s pretty clear that there are all kinds of things that risk putting us over the edge, jading our perceptions and crippling our ability to deal with real situations, real people.  It destroys our ability to deal with the present issues, to deal with reality.  No bigger indicator of this than the complete disconnect with reality represented by so-called Reality TV.  Used in small amounts, with temperance, even the simplest and most innocent of guilty pleasures can impair our reason and empathy.  Porn, is ultimately about us, the individual and his desires.  Whereas real life is – to use the worn out cliché – isn’t about us.

There is a huge debate over whether Romance novels are setting unrealistic expectations for women with some merit.  But of course, most readers of Romance are adult women and like most adults then know when to push back the fantasy world and get back to the real life problems of family, kids and making their relationships in the real world work.  Just like I know when I realize that I shouldn’t judge my kitchenette against the stainless steel museum kitchens I see online.  (I can quit anytime I swear.) Which brings us back to John Green.

John Green doesn’t write novels for adult women or adult men with unhealthy fixations on architecture.  He writes novels for Young Adults, specifically, teenagers.  And while I agree his novels don’t meet the criteria for actual porn, they absolutely do meet the criteria for porn as I’ve defined it above.  I realize this is a serious charge, and it’s one I’m prepared to defend at length.  His novels set unrealistic expectations for teenagers, and exist to satisfy and pander to some pretty unrealistic fantasies that teenagers commonly have, their sense of loneliness, of victimhood and fear of rejection and pain.

It’s a funny thing about the human condition, but you can excite the pleasure centers of the brain even when you are bringing down your audience with tales of woe, because this too touches into the very deep capacity humans have for empathy.  Pathos, the Greeks called it, and it was a big seller in the 5th C. BCE as much as it is today.  Those fantasies can also be very indulgent and self-satisfying.  If you don’t believe this, there are some exiled Nigerian Finance Ministers I need to introduce you to.  No group is as much concerned with it’s own troubles as modern teenagers however.  Mix in the despondent sob story with the right mix of humor and fine tune it to the teenage mind’s appreciation for absurdity and self-importance, sprinkle with pop-culture references and you’ve got a winner.  John Green’s novels, expertly target this teenage empathy sweet-spot, like a sniper in a ghillie suit stalking a … oh I’m not going to try and pretend I know what I’m talking about when it comes to snipers.  I’m on much firmer ground in architecture but I just can’t find an architectural metaphor at the moment that involves anything predatory.  (The sun glistened off the original Talavera tiles of the Mission style bungalow home, its stucco walls tensed in preparation, when it suddenly pounced out at me from out of the real estate listing! Nah…not working, and I yeah I know, I clearly have a problem and I will get help. Moving on.)  Let’s just say he’s good at it.  Dang good.  It’s catnip to the teenage bruised ego.  He’s by no means alone either, and I’m not the only one who has noticed.

John Green has found himself again at the heart of another minor controversy regarding “sick-lit” for young adults.  “Sick-lit” is a term used by Tanith Carey in an article in the Daily Mirror to describe, what she thought of as the troubling growing trend in youth literature that deals with themes of terminal disease, but also, suicide, abuse and other very difficult topics.   John Green’s latest book, The Fault of Our Stars, which deals with a love story between two teenagers with terminal cancer, was singled out in the article, but it was by no means alone in the genre.  It’s nothing new either.  “Sick-lit” is a new term, but so-called “Realist” young adult fiction has been around for a very long time.  Divorce, abuse, cutting, rape, you name it, it’s all there in young adult lit and has been since at least the 70s.

The article took exception to such material as exploitive, and playing on the emotions of impressionable young readers, that their authors, were in effect, pandering to teenage emotions and predilections irresponsibly.  Many authors defended themselves against the charge by putting up something of a strawman, suggesting that critics thought that Teenagers were dumb or immature and couldn’t handle mature, difficult topics. (A defense that was likewise, carefully crafted to pander to the egos of their target audience, teenagers, and their enablers.)  The article’s objection however was not to the difficulty of the material, but to the context.  I likewise, have no problem with difficult or serious subject matter.

When my daughter read Kerouac’s On the Road, in the eighth grade, it wasn’t the subject matter that bothered me.  It was how my daughter would interpret it.  Kerouac has been used to justify a lot of self-indulgent behavior, but I knew the book, I knew her teacher, and I knew my daughter.  At the end my daughter quickly identified the core problem of the book.  Kerouac was his own worst enemy.  Spending your life drunk or waking up in vomit was no way to live your life and not terribly liberating or revealing at all, a reading of the book that even Kerouac himself endorsed.  So it’s not the difficulty of the material, or the adult themes, it’s the facile way in which they are presented and served up to unsuspecting audiences.  In the second half of this article I hope to demonstrate just how facile they are and the potential damage they can do to young adults.

 

Beautiful America: Growing Up Outside

One of the ways I have been blessed is to have spent an inordinate amount of my childhood running wild in the out of doors. My children, for over a decade, grew up on a small farm in New Hampshire, and I was able to capture some great memories for posterity with my camera.

Kids ought to be able to run and play without worrying about anything but the next mealtime, at least sometimes in their lives. I always knew more or less where they were, and could call them in when needed, but with the Farm, they were able to roam and discover bugs, wildlife, and much more without needing me right at their sides. So these are a glimpse into the secret life of country kids… mind you, I’m biased because they are mine, but I think they are a big part of the promise and hope for a Beautiful America!

Looking for minnows in the brook.

Treasure hunt: finding a perfect egg

Relaxing with a good Book! Never too early to start that.

Little Waders… Finding rocks to skip, likely.

Milkweed pods make excellent toys

Meeting a friendly goat…

Bubbles on a still day, a perfect moment frozen in time.

Toasting marshmallows over a campfire. I can think of nothing better.

Making apple cider the old-fashioned way!

The girls hold a garter snake. There are no venomous snakes in New Hampshire, so they never had to be afraid of snakes.

World Building: Who made that?

Cross-Posted at Amazing Stories Magazine

In your world, who grows the food?

I was getting all excited last night over the idea of making my next purse. I can work with leather, and I don’t want something that looks like what everyone else has, so… But as I went to bed and was mulling over everything I needed and this post I needed to write, and an excellent exposition by Pam Uphoff on World Building for writers, starting from the little things, it came together in my mind.

In your fictional world, who makes things? Surely not slave labor in China, so whom? If you write SF, how do materials get to planets? One trope of science fiction is the replicator, but very rarely is that explained either. It becomes magical, like fantasy, where you snap your fingers and voila! you have whatever it was that you wanted, whether that be cloudberries and hummingbird tongues, or a HY768 conversion ring for an interstellar Engine of Doom!

First off, none (or very little) of this needs to go into your story, unless it is a story about how things are made. Which could be a lot of fun, for some readers. Others would yawn and close the book. But you should spend some time thinking about it. You want to avoid just having “things appear magically” whether you are writing fantasy with magic, or science fiction with very advanced technology. Remember, everything in life has a cost, even in the future, or another universe.

These little details will enrich your storytelling, giving the world you have built a depth and resonance with your readers, who are all too familiar with the daily grind. Coming back to my leatherworking, I picked it up because my father is a reenactor. I’m familiar with what it took to feed, clothe, and provide for a family in the pre-industrial age. If you are writing high fantasy, set in a feudal time, do you know what it would have taken to keep your elegant court ladies dressed in the height of style? What would the peasants have worn, and were there sumptuary laws that forbade them certain cloths and colors?

In science fiction, where does the energy come from? has fusion finally been achieved? Even if your society relies on nanotechnology to act like 3-D printers, replicating everything from machined parts to a rare steak, where does the energy to execute that come from? if your civilization has spread across the galaxy, what trade goods would be valuable enough to risk ship and crew on journeys to markets across planets? There have been many stories about trade, because in our own history the tales of the Silk Road, the search for spices, and exploration have captured the imagination for centuries. I know I enjoy a well-told story of trade and exploration, but I also understand the economics of what drives that, and limits it.

 

Ask yourself questions, as you plot, and when your characters start to come to life on the page, give them a rich world, but limits to make it more real to your reader. Finally, in a super-advanced world where everything is made by technology, does handwork become highly valued, or discarded? I’m going to be thinking about that while I poke my fingers with the awl later!

Snippet 4: Pixie Noir

So, I have now officially moved my snippet day to Sunday. Last week was an accident, but with posting at Mad Genius Club on Saturdays, I decided to adjust the schedule on my blog as well. If you want to start from the beginning, look here. And enjoy! I’m still waiting on art and edits before I enter the final stages of getting Pixie Noir published, but the date stand firm of being available Dec. 1, 2013.

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

We hadn’t gone far when she pulled into a gravel parking lot. I looked around. A small store and a hotel even smaller than the one I was staying in. Everything was painted brown and what might have once been white, a decade or so ago. Bella hopped out. I decided that I’d follow her.

A short woman with curly brown hair looked up from a book that she had laid flat on the counter and was bent over, reading. “Bella!”

“Hi, Kathy.” My fairy princess met the older woman at the counter gate and hugged her briefly.

“Could you watch…?” Kathy popped the gate open. Bella laughed.

“Go, go. No kids today?”

The brunette trotted toward the back of the store, tossing her reply over her shoulder. “No, they’re off on the trapline today.”

Bella stepped behind the counter while I tried to figure out what had just happened. She looked at the book and chuckled. “Kathy must be bored if she’s reading this.”

“Ah, do you…” I tried to phrase it properly. “Work here?”

“What?” She looked across the counter at me, propping her elbows on it and nesting her chin in her hands. “Oh, no. It’s just that she can’t leave the front, there’s no one else here. When her kids come in they can help, so she can, ah…” Bella gestured toward the back and it dawned on me why Kathy had been so urgent. “Or stock shelves and such.”

“Oh.” I looked around. There was a little of everything on those shelves. I stepped closer and saw the prices with shock. Two to three times what it would cost elsewhere in the First World.

“Why don’t you find what we came in here for?” Bella suggested.

I looked over my shoulder at her and she grinned. “We have to bribe someone to talk to you.”

I looked back at the cluttered shelves. “Am I that bad?”

“Nah, he’s just suspicious of anyone new. Grab some chocolate bars, beef stew,  and jerky.”

I explored the little store for the items, half-listening as Kathy came back and joined Bella behind the counter.

“So how are the kids?” Bella asked her friend.

“Good, can’t wait for spring.”

I could hear the exasperation in the mother’s voice. I wondered what it would be like to have to stay mostly indoors for six months at a time. Poor lady, no wonder she read all the time. There were four brands of beef stew on the shelf. A popular item, it looked like. I picked out one of each. I’d have to be bribed to talk to me, too, some days.

Back at the counter with the requested items, I waved off Bella’s offer to pay. “I’ll pay for information, more often than not it’s worth any amount.”

She nodded and stepped back. I could feel her scrutiny. The plastic card Kathy swiped in the old-fashioned machine didn’t tell either woman what I had in the bank, unlike the old days of Fairy gold. A bag of gold coins would draw unwanted attention, then and now. But I didn’t think that was what she was thinking about.

The bag of goodies rode by my feet as we headed south out of town. I wondered where we were headed, the next major landmark in this direction was the Canadian border, and I wasn’t carrying my passport. Bella didn’t seem to feel a need to chat, so I looked out the window.

The world outside was a study in black and white today, with a heavy overcast sky. I wondered if it would snow. The trees that lined the highway were tiny, sticks of conifers that looked black in the low light, with their feet in the snow and clumps of it scattered over their branches. We’d driven out of town after just a couple of minutes, and now there was no sign of human habitation, except the snowmobile tracks next to the highway. I fully expected to see a sled dog team at any moment.

“Quite a change from the merry Olde, isn’t it? You’re used to a lot more green, and wet, I’d think.” Her voice broke my reverie.

I looked over at her profile. She was completely focussed on the road, and I thought I understood why. Her parent’s death had been covered in the dossier, with an article reporting that Daisy and Ben Traycroft had been traveling up the Alaska Highway when they struck a moose. They were both killed on impact. The article had gone on to speculate that Ben, a known alcoholic, had been drunk, and possibly driving at speeds of up to one hundred miles an hour at the time of impact.

Small wonder that she had become a very self-sufficient young lady. I answered her slowly.

“It’s beautiful, but frightening.”

She nodded. “Yes, it’s deadly out there if you don’t know how to prepare for it.”

“The same could be said of almost any situation, I suppose.”

She flicked me an amused glance with those violet eyes that made me melt a little. “The people who have lived here for generations respect the land highly. They have to, because if you let down your guard it will kill you. Add to that immense tracts of land with very few people, and you could die out there with no chance of anyone finding your body, ever.”

I grinned. This was my kind of woman. “Is that a threat?”

“Nah.” She grinned as well. “See that bridge coming up?

I did, it was an impressive old steel span.

“That’s the Tanana River. Right now it’s frozen almost solid, and in the old days it was the highway.” She slowed as we crossed the bridge and I looked down at the rumpled ice surface with interest. It would not have been easy to travel on that, with sleds or on foot, and add the cold to it… travel in the modern era was so much more convenient. Bella went on. “In summer it’s full of silt, small rocks, the water looks more like soup. I am told – mind you, I’ve never put this to the proof, but I’d heard stories – that if you drop a body in the Tanana all that suspension will grind it up within a few miles.”

She sped back up as we climbed out of the river valley. I pondered what she had been telling me between the lines of her stories. No overt threat to me, perhaps, but she had a lot of power here in her own right. With a large family that was very fond of her, and only two state troopers covering an area the size of my island kingdom home, I was vulnerable. If she felt threatened by me I was in trouble, not her. I was fine with that.

She put on her turn signal and I looked around. A narrow break in the trees with a roughly plowed driveway that vanished into the depths of the forest was the only place we could possibly turn off.

“He likes company, but prefers not to have people around all the time.” Bella grunted softly as the truck bounced over the berm and left the paved road.

I was becoming very curious about this mystery man. Not only who he was to Bella, but why she wanted me to talk to him. I knew it had to do with my being a Pixie. I also knew there were no Folke living in the area beside Lavendar’s family, at least that were recorded. The Court kept very close track of the Folke. That was mostly self-protection. A rogue fairy, goblin, or pixie even, could do a lot of damage. And that was what my job really had been for a long time now. Tracking down strays.

We jolted to a stop in front of a tiny cabin, even smaller than Bella’s place. It looked like something from a postcard of Alaska, with the cache on stilts just behind the cabin, and a truly magnificent rack of moose antlers suspended over the front door. There was no other vehicle there, but tracks to the porch led me to think someone with a snowmobile had been to visit recently.

Bella took the bag of groceries so I could get my attache. Even out in the boonies I didn’t want to leave it unguarded. I had carried it into the little store earlier, to Bella’s unspoken amusement. At least now she knew what was in it, and yet she showed no real emotion toward it. We crunched through dry snow and the quickly falling darkness to the porch.

Bella rapped on the door, which struck me as redundant. The inhabitant of this remote dwelling almost certainly knew we were coming as soon as we had turned off the highway. There was no immediate answer.

“How do you know he’s home?”

Another of her quick, amused glances. “Uncle is always home.”

The door swung open with a creak, startling me. The wizened old man who stood there cackled slightly at my reaction.

“Come in, come in, you’re letting the cold in.” He hopped back with an agility I would not have expected from his appearance.

Bella handed him the bag as she went by him, headed for the battered couch that formed the living room quadrant of the one-room cabin. He peered into it. “Oh, goodies. What brought on this generosity?”

“I need you to talk to this Pixie for me.” She gestured to me, and I could see her frustration for the first time since she had chased me out of her house.

He looked at me, sharp black eyes framed by a million feathery wrinkles. His thick black hair was cut short and seemed almost out of place above that tanned leather face. He didn’t speak, and I couldn’t look away from those eyes.

I felt myself falling, and the darkness of his eyes expanded until I was soaring in a night sky on rustling wings… I swore out loud as I realized that she’d tricked me. He was an old spirit. Older than any I had ever soul-gazed with before, although I tried to avoid that with anyone, much less a spirit-being. I flapped my wings to gain altitude and heard his distant laugh.

I’ve never put too much stock in the spirit walks you read about. Yeah, I’m a pixie. Magic is part of my life. That doesn’t mean that I’m all happy in the metaphysical, looking for some deep spiritual meaning in everything. I’m Folke, not a hippie, dammit. That, and Raven’s chortling was getting on my nerves.

“I don’t mean her any harm.” I snapped. I grabbed a little more air, then went into a slow bank, looking at the frozen Alaska scenery below me.

“Then why is she afraid of you?” He asked. His voice in my head was warmly amused. This was not a being who feared others. Or at least not me.

“Hell if I know. I brought her good news.”

The forests stretched out endlessly under my raven-host. The spruces were so close to one another it was almost an unbroken carpet. I wondered if he was showing me Now, or Then.

“She does not come to me lightly, my niece. So why would good news have set her feathers on edge?”

“Your niece? Whatthehell?”

I’d finally seen the landmark I was looking for, the snake of white that was the river she’d driven us over. I stooped toward it, my feathers rustling in the wind.

“She is my blood. Answer me.”

The tone of that last rang with command and I winced. So far three people had manipulated me since my arrival. I didn’t like it, but the words came out almost on their own. “She’s also of the Fae. Her grandmother’s blood in her makes her the heir to the throne, Underhill. I came to bring her news of her heritage, and to bring her back Underhill, to Court.”

“You want to take her from her home?” He sounded deeply surprised. I was following the river, now, hoping for the bridge.

“No, I want to bring her home.” I hoped my terse reply would satisfy him, before I revealed more than was good for me.

“This is her home. She is bound here by blood and love. You call only on a forgotten part of her heritage, one that Lavendar set aside long before you were born, Boy.”

“I have my duty,” and I had found the bridge. I swooped low over it, and then followed the highway. I was close, now.

“You have told her. She chooses.” His voice had lost the amusement.

“She is coming back with me.” I gritted through a closed beak, a very odd sensation. I could spot the clearing, now.

“She gets the choice, boy. You are not in your people’s territory, now, and the tales make me a fool, but they also make me free with other’s body parts.” His laugh now was positively chilling.

“Mine are too small to be worth while.” I flapped for airbrake effect and touched down on her truck. The door to the cabin was closed, of course.

Now the chuckle was indulgent. “Want in? And don’t put yourself down, Boy, you have great potential. Mind, you hurt her, and I’ll be in line to hurt you. Got that?”

“Yeah, in spades. Let me in, it’s cold enough to freeze my…” I stopped there, suddenly unable to think of a lewd enough metaphor.

 

Luxury of a Library

Have one? Want one? Mosey on over to Mad Genius Club for my post on why we live in the lap of luxury when it comes to books.

Truth is strang…

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

Mark Twain