Malcolm R. Campbell's Blog, page 140
March 9, 2019
Etc
After my post asking where the hell my muse is, I got a telegram from her: “Calum, chan eil thu ag èisteachd!” For those of you who don’t speak Scots Gàidhlig, she said that I haven’t been listening. Okay, she’s right. I have had a story idea in mind, but I thought it was too close to my Florida Folk Magic Series which I had intended to wrap up with the recently released Lena. Basically, a character whom readers meet in Lena goes on a rampage against the KKK. More later when I figure how just what that means.
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One of the two roads into town.
Today’s Facebook status update: It’s still raining. In fact, we’ve had monsoons all winter. By the time things dry out enough for me to cut the grass, I’ll have to borrow my neighbor’s tractor and bushhog because it (the grass) will be too high for my riding mower. (Okay, what’s the deal with the new type face for this paragraph?)
Thank you to all the fine folks who received my publisher’s (Thomas-Jacob) newsletter and downloaded copies of Conjure Woman’s Cat. The first book in the trilogy seems to be everyone’s favorite. (I’m rather partial to it myself.)
There’s an ongoing Amazon giveaway here for my collection of short stories Widely Scattered Ghosts. Many of these stories are set in Florida, though they’re also from Montana, Missouri, and Illinois. You don’t have to do anything for a chance at a free copy other than follow me on Amazon.
Curiosity question: why is Grammarly trying to change all the spellings in this post to British spellings?
If you have a Facebook account, I invite you to LIKE my author’s page called Star Gazer. It’s mostly filled with links to reviews, authors, and book news.
March 8, 2019
KDP Print vs. IngramSpark
“Last month, I wrote a refresher post comparing Smashwords and Draft2Digital. This month, I think it’s probably time for a refresher post comparing KDP Print and IngramSpark. First up, KDP Print Own…”
Source: KDP Print (formerly CreateSpace) vs. IngramSpark | Celebrating Independent Authors
This handy overview lists the pros and cons of both routes of taking your book into print. Self-published and small-press authors have many decisions to make about production, publicity, and promotion, so finding this kind of information cuts through the chaos.
The author has also written an article comparing Smashwords and Draft2Digital here.
–Malcolm
March 7, 2019
Siobhan, cá bhfuil tú?
I’m searching for my muse. She’s a Scot, so I’m saying in Gaelic, “where are you?” If you’re not Scottish, I should tell you that that name “Siobhan” is pronounced “Shihvon,” not “See ohb han.”
Having gotten that out of the way, if you see a potentially drunk muse wandering through your neighborhood, tell her to come home and help me get started with a new story. Ever since sending the last short story out to a magazine, I haven’t come up with anything.
One reason I need a new story is because I need money. Siobhan taught me to drink the most expensive brands of single malt Scotch out there, but when I’m broke, all I can afford is swill. That’s like being stuck with Bourbon which I don’t like at all unless it’s hidden in a mixed drink.
Frankly, if a writer doesn’t have a badass muse, he’s pretty much out of business, a hopeless drunk who wakes up in bordellos and/or jail cells and wonders how he got there. Writing is more dangerous than most people think. Not writing is either more dangerous. Trust me on this because without Siobhan’s help, I have no way to explain it.
Siobhan lives in Hawai’i and sends me story ideas via telepathy because (obviously) I don’t have enough dough to travel to Oahu. Plus, if I told my wife I was traveling to Oahu to meet a woman, her reaction probably wouldn’t me all that great. “Wouldn’t a sat phone be cheaper than a plane ticket?” she would ask. “But it’s for literature,” I would protest.
“Hah!”
So there it is.
If you see Siobhan on the beach at Kailua, tell her to give me a call. My fans are calling me every day screaming for new stories and they’re turning to James Patterson and Tom Clancy (even though he’s dead) in desperation.
–Malcolm
March 6, 2019
Tempting you with words and tambourines
Like Gordon Lightfoot’s “Minstrel of the Dawn” and Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” storytellers are always tempting you to follow them, as though through faerie rings, to the farthest reaches of tall tales, music, and imagination. We can’t promise you’ll return the way you were when you left the everyday land of logic, but you’ll find yourselves reborn in just the way the god of your heart intended.
For temptations from my website, I invite you to click on this picture:
–Malcolm
March 5, 2019
Is the blog on your website empty or out of date?
If the answer is “yes,” then why is “blog” a menu selection? I see out of date blogs a lot on writers’ sites, social service organization sites, and environmental group sites every week. Sure, they’re a lot of work even if they’re only updated once a month. Perhaps they were started when writers were less famous and had more time or when volunteer groups happened to have somebody on hand to write a blog who has since left the organization.
When I visit a social service or environmental group and see that the latest post is two or three years old, my first thought is, “Have you people done nothing since that post worth talking about?”
[image error]I realize that social service and environmental groups have to be more careful than other bloggers because they don’t have to luxury of posting rants or even reasonable debates because such things are construed as the voice of the organization rather than how the blogger happened to be feeling one day. So, most likely, blog posts have to be approved by upper management–or by the publicity department–and that can be time-consuming. However, I think an out-of-date blog creates about as much damage as any inadvertent post that headquarters may not like.
Much better to remove the “blog” menu selection than to leave it there and have people think you’re lazy and/or have nothing to say.
Writers get busy, especially those who are on the faculty of a college, on the board of one or more writers’ groups, or are charged with organizing writing workshops and conventions. The amusing thing is, many writers proclaim on their web sites that they write daily. That said, how long could it possibly take to add a hundred words to a blog? When a writer’s blog is empty, I feel cheated, especially if they haven’t come out with a new book in a while or been interviewed in a writer’s magazine. “What are you thinking about these days?” I want to ask. An out of date blog makes me think the answer to that question is “nothing.”
It may seem like a little thing, but that empty or abandoned blog on the writer’s or organization’s website is causing a lot more damage than most people realize.
–Malcolm
March 4, 2019
Adventuresome writing – following the poem or story
“My main rule for writing is to follow the poem. You always start with the poem you want to write, but that’s not always the poem. The poem is usually smarter than you and it wants to go someplace that most likely will surprise you. If you give in and give up to the idea of following rather than forcing, the threads are easier to pull, and the poem allows you inside of it. It’s one of my favorite things about writing; I never know what’s going to happen.” – Ada Limón
When you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen when you begin a new poem, short story, or novel, anything can happen. Once you try to force it, rather than follow it, you limit the possibilities of the work.
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Not a fun way to drive, but this kind of tangle has wondrous writing possibilities.
Following the work doesn’t mean opening it up to chaos or something so experimental, few people will read it–unless that’s what you like to do. When you follow, you are turning your imagination and curiosity up on high and just writing. You are just letting the characters say and do what seems the most natural thing for them to say and do.
You can polish things a bit as you go or you can wait until the work is done. I tend to polish as I go whenever a character says or does something other than what they intended; or when I have stepped in out of nowhere and forced something to happen.
Like Limón, I like not knowing what’s going to happen. I like being surprised when I begin to see where the plot is heading. I usually have an idea when I begin whether I’m writing realism or magical realism, but things can change. I also tend to have a sense whether the story lends itself to a rather unemotional, straightforward approach or an exuberant and lyrical style. Yes, that might change, too, but it seldom does.
When authors try this approach for the first time, they’re not only surprised about the wild and wonderful things that happen, but that at the end of the first draft, the story or poem is more cohesive than they thought it would be.
I also hear authors saying that even if they really prefer outlines and storyboards, writing several stories this way helps free up their writing. Its scope increases as the writer takes more risks. Relax, I want to say. These risks aren’t life-threatening. The worst that can happen is having a story turn into a writing exercise. If you end up with something you don’t like, toss it in a drawer and start something new.
When writing is an adventure, you will never get bored or stuck. Writing is always hard work, but following the story also provides you with a sense of play.
–Malcolm
[image error]Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of magical realism stories and novels, including the new collection of short stories, “Widely Scattered Ghosts.”
March 3, 2019
What’s really gone with the wind
“The American population is moving toward a minority-majority future, a shift the Census Bureau predicts will occur sometime in the 2040s. Nativists, racists and our president are taking advantage of the browning of America, contrasting it with nostalgia for a perceived better, whiter past, and using that idea to activate citizens into white nationalist thinking.” – Heidi Beirich
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that monitors racially based and gender-based hate in the U.S., two statistics stand out: The number of monitored hate groups in 2018 was at an all-time high at 1,020 and hate-based murders conducted by members of the “Alt-Right” made last year the deadliest year ever (presumably, not counting the Jim Crow era when the KKK got rid of more people).
As Beirich notes, the so-called browning of America is leading to a rise in white nationalist thinking. Often-criticized today, the movie “Gone With the Wind” painted the days of slavery with a sad and nostalgic brush for those who owned the plantations and participated in gracious living based on purportedly honorable and sacred traditions. Now there are a lot of people worrying about the fact that, according to the Census Bureau, the United States will become “minority white” by 2045, whith whites comprising 49.7% of the population. At that point, the demographics are expected to be 24.6% Hispanic, 13.1% blacks, and 7.9% Asian.
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This is the problem, not the solution. Wikipedia photo.
So it is that what will really be gone with the wind for frightened white people are the times when more whites lived in the U.S. than all other races combined. Hate groups are reacting as though whites will be less numerous than every other group rather than continuing to have nearly a majority. Nonetheless, the predicted demographics represent change and, on the surface, that scares people.
I’ve mentioned on this blog before that when my brothers and I were in junior high school, we used to build sandcastles on the beach during low tide and then make a game out of seeing how long they could hold out against the incoming high tide. This is what white supremacists are doing today–except it’s not a game. It’s a deadly and disgusting war against minority groups that’s being carried out by thugs who believe they will no longer be about to hold their own without relying on the traditionally high percentage of whites in the country.
That is, they fear that on a level playing field, their real or imagined inferiority will make them lose.
Lose what? Control, I suppose. An edge, probably. The luxury of never having to coexist with other races, cultures, and religions, no doubt. Walking down streets, walking into stores and churches and sporting events and backyard barbecues with the confident assurance that everyone one else there is exactly like them, good, bad, and ugly, but safe and understood without having to think.
Those with self-confidence in their own abilities, agility to adapt to changing times, a spirituality that embraces the totality of humankind, and minds that know how to think rather than reacting to every difference as a threat will have no problem with the demographics of 2045. Those who do not are, at best, dinosaurs in their death throes who are resorting to hate as a sand-castle bulwark against the incoming tide.
White supremacists are doomed, and in their heartless hearts, I think they know this. Rather than change or at least graciously step onto ice floes heading out to sea, they are attempting to justify their murder and terrorism as a reasonable response to their demise. They’re not innocent. They’re killing the innocent, though
Which prompts me to say, the country will be much better (more free, fair, exciting, and more creative) when they are gone.
–Malcolm
March 1, 2019
Be careful when asking for opinions about stories you haven’t started writing
“Hold off asking for opinion. The earlier you ask for feedback, the more likely you are to get deterred from what might be your best writing. The best judge of a good idea is you, but only after you’ve mulled it over for a long while, or tested it by writing a draft, or rewritten it three or four times. After you’ve read similar works to compare. After you’ve honed your writing skills to develop the chops to even write the concept.” C. Hope Clark
I can’t find the quotation now, but Hemingway once warned writers against talking their ideas away. That is, telling others the plots of stories they were about to write. After all was said and done, possibly at a table with several bottles of wine, the author would realize that in all the give and take about his or her prospective project, s/he had lost it.
[image error]In this week’s Funds for Writers newsletter, Hope Clark expressed similar reservations about rushing out and telling friends, fans, and other writers what you’re thinking about writing–all in hopes of getting feedback about its viability.
Personally, I don’t understand this at all unless, perhaps, you’re floating an idea with your publisher or agent about what you want to write next. Otherwise, early on, what the hell kind of feedback could anyone possibly offer? So, telling–let’s say–your usual beta readers that you’re starting a new series may elicit a lot of pats on the back with little useful feedback.
The more you say, the more likely it is that their comments and questions will derail the project or somehow change it into something outside the scope of what you want to do.
Personally, I don’t like or understand the concept of beta readers unless I’m writing nonfiction and am looking for an unofficial peer review of my approach before devoting too much time researching the project. So I never ask anybody what they think of a prospective story idea because any input I get is doing to be detrimental to what my muse and I are considering.
If you feel better asking for feedback, my suggestion is to wait until you have the first draft. At that point, you have enough of a story for others to understand your plot, theme, characters, and style. When you wait, you’re more sure of yourself and your story, including its focus and ending, and distracting and negative comments are less likely to derail you. Now, quality beta readers may, in fact, find holes in the story, inconsistencies, and other issues that fall far short of destroying your work in progress.
February 28, 2019
My granddaughters will have to wait a while for my ghost story book
My granddaughters are 11 and 6 years old, so I thought it would be cool to dedicate my new collection of stories (Widely Scattered Ghosts) to them to that when they are in their 50s they can take a copy to Antiques Road Show and learn that the book–at auction–is then worth $1000000000000.
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This haunted Florida bridge is the setting for one of the stories.
They live in Maryland, so I’m going to mail the book. But I can’t address it to them because they love getting things in the mail, especially packages. But they’re way too young to read any of the stories. Even though none of the stories are the Stephen King variety, Freya and Beatrice will need to wait until they’re teenagers (I guess) before they get to see the book.
So, the mail is going to my daughter with instructions to hide the book and to remember where she hid it. My father was an author. I always thought it was neat to have copies of some of his books autographed for me. Maybe the girls will feel the same way even though I’m no James Patterson or John Grisham.
Four of the stories are about an inquisitive and highly intelligent teenager named Emily who talks to ghosts. She reminds me of my daughter (except for the talks-to-ghosts part). As a grandfather, I get to brag and say that I think my granddaughters will grow up to be smarter than Stephen Hawking.
That makes me wonder if they’ll correctly guess the endings to each of the stories before they get there.
February 26, 2019
So, y’all like cat posts, do you?
Well.
I didn’t expect so many people to stop by and read about Katy’s view of my reading books in bed. I’m glad you did.
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Katy with one of my novels. This picture got a million responses on Facebook (naturally).
I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, I’m on Facebook where I notice that for every story about the end of the world that gets one or two reactions, there are a hundred cat pictures and posts that have hundreds of responses and shares. Why should WordPress be any different?
Sometimes I think all that cat action is due to the fact that people are still trying to figure out cats, some wondering why they can’t be more like dogs, some wondering why they don’t seem grateful for anything we do for them, and how it is that they understand the word “no” but don’t pay much attention to it.
The cats in the bed routine got started when we moved into this house. The cats (we had three at the time) didn’t like it any more than they liked the three-hour car ride over here from the old house. They started out in the master bedroom. When my wife and I went to bed, the cats all got in the bed. They stayed in the bed for a couple of days or so before they finally ventured out and discovered there was more to their new digs than a single room.
Our two remaining cats don’t have run of the bedroom 24/7, but they expect to be allowed in there every night at bedtime. Prior to bedtime, they’re usually asleep on the living room furniture while my wife and I are watching highly cultural shows on TV (NCIS, FBI, Grey’s Anatomy). So, basically, we have to wake the cats up when it’s time to go to bed. They’re asleep again before we are.
When people ask me where I live, I tell them I live in a cat house. My wife is used to my saying that, but I suspect she thinks it would be better if I stopped saying that. We’ve had cats since before we were married: Needles, OK, BK, Duncan, Marlo, and Katy. The cat house comment is really quite true .
We’ve talked about getting a kitten, but I’m worried about what Kary and Marlo will think about that. When they arrived in our old house, they took a dim view of our elderly orange kitty (OK), so unless we get a huge, Maine Coon Cat, I worry that things won’t go smoothly. Of course, daily life in a cat house doesn’t go smoothly, so how much worse could it be?
