S.M. Stevens's Blog, page 7

The Play’s the Thing

A reader of The Wallace House of Pain says it would make a good play. I agree! After all, as Shakespeare said, “the play’s the thing”.

I have always been a huge drama nerd, and would love to write plays some day. Put it on the list…

Why would this novelette translate so well to the stage? Well, the tale of troubled family relations, modern social justice issues and deeply personal choices takes place over five dinners and a breakfast. It would be easy to stage, but has plenty of intense dialogue to keep audiences interested.

Check out the novelette (shorter than a novella, longer than a short story) to meet the cast of 6 diverse friends, who also star in my forthcoming, full-length novel Beautiful and Terrible Things. The Wallace House of Pain is available on Amazon.

And I’ll be sure to let you know if my story ever makes it to the stage.

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Book Lovers Soaps

I don’t usually talk about non-book products here, but this is too good not to share.

You know those people who love books so much they would bathe in them if they could? Or maybe they just read in the bathtub? (Guilty.) I recently came across the perfect gift for those people — actual bars of soap crafted to look like little books.

These things are crazy adorable, so put book lovers soaps on your list of gift ideas for all the bibliophiles in your life. Or for yourself. Or anyone who likes cute things. And good clean fun.

You could even use these soaps to engender a love of books in your kids. And if that doesn’t work, at least they’ll be clean!

These clever creations are the work of Holiday Farm in Berlin, Massachusetts (USA). I can promise you the content of these books is clean, no need to ban or “bar” them, ha ha! (We must laugh in the face of censorship, right?)

Each soap is one of a kind, custom made to order, so you can choose your colors and design for the cover and the book mark. I think you can even have a title added.

Here’s the official description from the Holiday Farm website:

“All book lovers soaps are one of a kind creations, each one is different and has a heart hidden inside the confetti ‘pages’. Scented with either Nag Champa or Patchouli, these soaps are approximately 5.5 ounces of vegan soap, hand sculpted to look like books.”

Email holidayfarm1@gmail.com or fill out their website form to order your Book Lovers Soap. Soaps can be shipped throughout the U.S. and internationally – inquire about international shipping when you contact Holiday Farm.

Keep reading, and stay clean!

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If You Lived Through the 1980s…

If you lived through the 1980s with their “alcohol and drugs, the promiscuity, the inappropriate office behavior” as a new reviewer puts it, then you’ll relate to Horseshoes and Hand Grenades!

And let’s not forget big hair, padded shoulders, and MTV — all of which helped make the 1980s so special! That’s me on the left circa 1986 with lots of poofy floofy hair, although I never went quite as big as some, witness Morgan Fairchild on the right.

But as the same reviewer says, the novel “delves deeper than that, too.”

See what she means. Horseshoes and Hand Grenades is available as a paperback, ebook and audiobook where books are sold, including Bookshop.org (formerly IndieBound) and Amazon.

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New Review: Bit Players, Has-Been Actors and Other Posers

Here’s an excerpt from a new review of Bit Players, Has-Been Actors and Other Posers posted recently on Amazon:

“As a lifelong Broadway theatre lover, I found myself enjoying Bit Players, Has-Been Actors and Other Posers fully! Great characters, a fast-moving story, and wonderful descriptions of the musical created and staged by the high school kids.”

Read the full review here.

What’s it about, you ask? Here’s a description:

Bit Players, Has-Been Actors and Other Posers takes you deep into the heart of a high school drama program, with its creativity, camaraderie, politics and, well, drama.

Join Sadie Perkins in her quest for a lead role, as the Crudup High School drama club makes its own musical out of Twilight. Intrigue abounds. Why does Sadie’s rival Lucey really get the role of Bella? What’s behind foreign exchange student Nigel’s interest in high school theatre? And where does the show’s director, Mr. Ellison, disappear to three days before opening night?

With everything falling apart, can the cast even pull off the show?

Check out an excerpt from the novel and more reviews here.

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Fun Friday Photo: Animal Gang

Time to get back into Fun Friday Photos! Life is too short not to celebrate and share funny bits. My regular followers know animals are a common theme for me. So today’s Fun Friday Photo is animal-themed. I call it the “Animal Gang”.

I’m guessing that in this animal gang, the llama and the Scotch Highland cow fight over leadership, the sheep and goat are the ones who really get things done, and the chicken is the comic relief.

Not sure who to credit for this great photo or I certainly would.

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A Little Book Problem Reviews “The Wallace House of Pain”

I’m pleased to share a new review of The Wallace House of Pain, this one from A Little Book Problem–one of my favorite book review blogs.

Hop on over to Julie’s blog, A Little Book Problem, for the full review. And here are a few snippets:

“A great collection of vignettes which explores the relationship between a son and his father and how we long for acceptance from our parents.

“This book is a great study in character and relationships. All of the characters are authentic and relatable and their interactions seem completely natural. 

“This is a short but rewarding read which manages to embed us in Xander’s life and social circle very thoroughly nonetheless and made me eager to read more about them all. Given that these characters feature in the author’s upcoming new novel, I guess this was the idea and one that has certainly been successful in my case.”

The novel she refers to is Beautiful and Terrible Things, due out in a few months from TouchPoint Press. Stay tuned for the actual release date…

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Fun Friday Photo: Losing People

“Losing people” is a fun topic? In this case of this fun Friday photo, yep!

Loss is disconcerting at best, tragic at worst. Rarely welcomed. So as a fan of black humor to help us through difficult times, I really enjoyed this meme. Hope you do, too.

It comes courtesy of Nature Blows My Mind and has a credit listed as The Memeing of Life, so thanks to both of them for the chuckle and the new take on losing people!

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May I Pinch Your Seat? Differences Between American & British English

Allow me to lay out a story of two English languages, which will—I promise—culminate with a funny story about the phrase, “May I pinch your seat?”

My editor at TouchPoint Press for my last novel Horseshoes and Hand Grenades was the talented and delightful Kimberly Carlisle Coghlan. She recently re-shared this funny post on “Being a Southern Editor” in which she digs into Southern dialect and choice colorful phrases, while musing on the different languages or voices we all use in our daily lives.

Her article prompted me to dust off an old piece written by John Foster, a British public relations (PR) industry leader I had the pleasure to get to know while working at National Grid in London some years ago. John and I loved to toss around language variations between our two home countries, as well as how language played into our PR worlds. He interviewed me for an article in the Chartered Institute of Public Relations’ (CIPR) magazine Profile and I contributed a chapter to a PR guidebook he wrote. I believe it was Writing Skills for Public Relations but don’t quote me on that; it was 20 years ago and I’ve long since lost my copy after multiple moves!

Even then, before I became a fiction writer, words—and their variations–fascinated me, especially the ability for them to cause trouble when they mean something different to the listener than they do to the speaker!

Here’s an excerpt from John’s article, which may be useful if you’re writing an American character who practices PR in the U.K. Because it’s written by a Brit for other Brits, I’ve notated a few things in brackets to make the meaning clear. Funny note: The title of his article is taken from the title of a cute little brochure we put together for New England Electric System employees in New England, when we were being acquired by National Grid in Ye Olde England.

The full title of that piece was, “May I Pinch Your Seat? An Incomplete Guide to Understanding British English for U.S. Employees of National Grid”.

May I Pinch Your Seat?

by John Foster

Originally published in Profile magazine in the U.K., May 26, 2002 issue

Do it their way? American English differs from British English in vocabulary, spelling and inflection, grammar and construction, and punctuation. Familiar terms here are unknown in the States – and vice versa. Some Americans advise that press releases, articles and other printwork going there should be in US style. Others say stick to your own kind. And there are occasions when both styles are needed. Which to use for websites with global audiences? Let’s look.

Releases and websites. I asked an American working here for the National Grid Group what she would do. Susan Stevens [that’s me in a former life], the company’s director of corporate affairs, said that because messages are different, separate versions are issued and language is not an issue. Where a single version goes out, they use UK English. For their website, both are used – American English for their US pages, British English for the UK. International websites should offer the user choice of language, but that can be costly. You can easily go wrong if you try to write the American way. Keep to our style for everything.

PR terminology. Where there’s a communications manager or director here, there’s a vice-president there. The title PRO is unknown in the US. There you go to a clipping service; a video morgue; the local editor.

Vocabulary and usage. Here lie the main variations. To emphasise [note the British spelling – that’s not a typo!] the main ones to US employees on merger, the National Grid simply printed a booklet, May I pinch your seat? A few examples of US v UK English: ground floor here is first floor there; drawing pin/thumbtack; kennel/doghouse; receptionist/desk clerk; skip/dumpster; Joe Bloggs/John Doe. Recipe for a meeting disaster: if you write to table something, it means to put it aside for later [whereas in the UK it means to discuss it now]. It’s turnover here, revenue there. [Turnover to Americans usually refers to staff changes. Our American team was shocked to hear layoffs called redundancies by our British colleagues; making a human being redundant sounded so cold to us. At the end of the day, I don’t think the term mattered to those on the receiving end…]

Spelling, punctuation. Americans prefer license/practise for both noun and verb, here verb only; they often use -ize endings where we would use -ise (an -ize user here has usually spent some time in North America); the nouns defense/offense/pretense take the ‘c’ here. Commas and full stops [periods] fall within quotation marks regardless of whether they are part of the quoted materials [in PR materials; not in all forms of writing]. They use parentheses not brackets. [We use both, as do Brits; he means what we call parentheses they call brackets.]

But what about that “pinch your seat” reference? Here’s how that became the title of our little booklet and, by extension, John’s article: To an American, “pinch” pretty much has one meaning and seat can refer to a chair or someone’s rear-end. So suggesting you’re going to pinch someone’s seat is non-sensical if you’re thinking of a chair, and downright rude and potentially painful in the other case.

But in British English, “pinch” is also slang for “steal”…imagine our surprise when a British colleague came into a conference room and asked a departing woman rising from her chair if he could pinch her seat. Ah, the joy of language!

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Fun Friday Photo: Comma Love

Today’s laugh comes from Reader’s Digest and is something authors, social media users and pretty much anyone who writes can relate to!

If you didn’t love commas before, you might after thinking about this.

Of course, for professional writers, commas are a necessary evil, a wondrous organizer of thought, a typo waiting to happen, and the topic of much debate…don’t even get me going about the Oxford comma!

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Chat About Books Reviews “The Wallace House of Pain”

Thanks to Kerry at Chat About Books, a hugely popular book blog, for reviewing my novelette, The Wallace House of Pain.

She writes:

“[Xander] is convinced his father won’t accept him for who he really is. Something we all know many, many young people go through every day. As a parent of two adult children, who I love unconditionally, I think it’s desperately sad that so many others deal with trying to live a lie for fear of being made to feel they’re somehow less worthy of love and acceptance.

“This book sends out a powerful message to all.

“I think many will be comforted by it and I’m sure many will learn from it.”

The Wallace House of Pain takes place over five dinners and a breakfast. Xander invites his friends–Terrance, Sunny, Jess, Charley and Buwan–to dinner at his dad’s house to act as buffers of sorts, given his contentious relationship with his father.

If you like these characters, you can get another, bigger dose of them in my forthcoming novel, Beautiful and Terrible Things, due out from TouchPoint Press in the near future!

Read the full review, including more on the plot, here on Chat About Books.

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