Malcolm R. Campbell's Blog, page 148

A perfect Thanksgiving dinner on the first try

When we visited my daughter and her family in Maryland for Thanksgiving this year, we enjoyed side trips to Mt. Vernon and historic Alexandria. We especially liked the candlelight tour of Mt. Vernon.

[image error]But the surprise was the fact that my daughter’s husband decided that since he’d never cooked a Thanksgiving dinner before, he’d give it a try. He didn’t start out with a family recipe box or a tradition that’s passed down from parents to children every year so that one kind of knows how to fix the dinner from having watched others doing it.

Instead, he began with the Internet and (apparently) Googled how to cook a turkey, make candied yams, prepare an icebox cake, and create the side dishes. I probably would have used my mother’s old recipe books because, while I’ve found some great recipes on the Internet, I’ve noticed that some of the versions between one site and another have vastly different cooking times and oven temps; so, if you didn’t more or less know how to cook something, it would be hard to roll the dice with one version or another.

Frankly, I thought he looked like a mad scientist in the kitchen co-ordinating all the parts of the meal. And keeping things warm after they came out of the oven. (My mother had a double oven, so she had an easy way to keep multiple things hot.) But he juggled things in an out of the microwave and kept them covered.

The dinner was perfect. I told him that if he gets tired of his office job, he could probably sign on as a chef at a five-star Michelin restaurant.

The best thing was seeing family. With two granddaughters, they change so much every year it’s hard to keep up. And, I’m thinking that they have a good role model in a father who knows how to use the kitchen and then clean it up after the meal.

I hope your Thanksgiving was a good one as well.

—Malcolm

[image error]Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Lena,” “Eulalie and Washerwoman,” and “Conjure Woman’s Cat.”

 

Grail myths, where they came from, and how they were changed

I suppose I was probably destroyed at an early age by the originals of Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Or maybe the vicissitudes of magic led me into a mythic approach to understanding “the big picture” and the storytelling surrounding it. Be that as it may, I enjoy deepening my understanding (or further brainwashing myself) about myths and legends by constantly looking for new resources and re-reading old resources.

[image error]This past weekend, it was King Arthur and the Holy Grail. I can’t count the number of variations of this story I’ve read since childhood. Early on, I liked T. H. White’s Once and Future King, Mary Stewart’s trilogy, and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s alternative approach in The Mists of Avalon. The approach of these and other authors is as varied as the approach of those credited with the early versions of the stories. This weekend’s reading was Joseph Campbell’s The Romance of the Grail.

Campbell, best known for The Hero with a Thousand Faces, spent a lifetime studying the Grail stories. In reading his book, we see immediately that there are two major approaches. One comes from Celtic sources and is probably indigenous to Ireland. This approach sees the Grail stories as a pagan manifestation of tales about fertility gods. The other major approach shows the stories as Christianized, that is to say, in which the Grail was considered to be the chalice from the Last Supper and the lance was said to be the one brought to Britain by Joseph of Arimathea. I see this second approach as a “cleaning up” of older stories so that they were acceptable to the church. Yet another theme, further “touches up” the stories with mythic stories and practices from mysteries out of ancient Greece.

Joseph Campbell died in 1987, a few years after Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982) was published, advancing the theory that Mary Magdalene was, in fact, the Grail, had been Jesus’ wife, and carried his bloodline. I wonder if Campbell was aware of this theory before he died.

I tend to like the original sources of myths rather than the glosses painted over them by subsequent poets. So, I see the Christianized versions of the Grail stories as deviant. Yet, those are the versions most people know and accept as part of the entire King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table storyline. It’s too late to change that, I suppose. Yet, paradoxically, I do wonder about the realities of Mary Magdalene even though she’s outside the Grail romances.

One issue that arises when the myths are retold properly (Elliott’s The Waste Land) or badly (Tennyson’s “Balin and Balan” in Idylls of the King) is that modern authors may or may not understand the deeper meanings of the original myths. So, those stories become–to put it crudely–writing prompts that can be spun out into all kinds of fiction that–due to egotism or ignorance–distort the intent of the basic story.

Writers of local and regional myths and legends from their own countries face the same problem. We want to base our stories to one extent or another on the legends surrounding the place, but may not have the time or resources to fully explore where those legends came from or why they were passed down through the ages. As writers, we do the best we can because, unlike Joseph Campbell and the Grail stories, we don’t have a lifetime’s worth of scholarship with which to shore up our stories.

—Malcolm

You can find more information about Joseph Campbell and his work on the Joseph Campbell Foundation website.

 

 

 

 

I have no idea why I can’t proofread worth a darn

“Nothing can affect my voice, it’s so bad.” – Bob Dylan

Likewise, nothing will help my proofreading because it’s so bad. Fortunately, an Internet program called Grammarly has weeded out most of the typos from my Facebook posts. But, I’m cheap and have a free version. That one doesn’t seem to help much with Word files.

[image error]So, today I’m going through the manuscript for an upcoming short story collection for the 5th time looking for typos. I keep finding them. After I go through the manuscript, I always think, “Finally, it’s now error free.”

Except it isn’t. If I go through it again, I find more typos. I don’t know I miss them. My publisher sends my books to an editor and she always finds more.

I feel slightly better about the situation when I read that many experts think the worst person to proofread a manuscript is the person who wrote it. S/he always starts reading for a sense of the story and misses the same errors that got missed the first time.  Typos are a big problem with many self-published books because authors try to proofread them and miss a lot of mistakes. They’re advised to hire editors, but many editors charge more than the authors think the books will earn.

My editor has been doing her job for a long time, so I’m pleased to say that she catches what I miss. Thank goodness. My publisher relies on our editor as well. When I send her a new story, she’s reading it to see what happens in the story and whether that story will be a reasonable addition to the catalogue. So, she misses some of the same stuff I miss. She grumbles at this because she’s also a writer and thinks, as I do, that at some point our proofreading will be worth a darn.

Some authors have a team of beta readers who go through manuscripts in progress and make suggestions. Naturally, these readers will catch a lot of the errors. However, I dislike the concept. I never know where my stories are going when I start writing them, so the last thing I want is a committee making suggestions about what’s happening and what ought to happen next. That would totally screw up my chaotic writing process.

My wife is a big help, though. She worked for a daily newspaper and has also done a lot of writing. She finds many of the errors in my work that I don’t see. Sometimes she catches continuity problems such as “Hey, didn’t Bart die in chapter three? If so, what’s he doing sneaking around in chapter eight?” Oops.

In my Florida Folk Magic trilogy, my conjure woman Eulalie claims she’s older than dirt. I’m not that old yet, but I’m getting close. That means that I’ve been writing long enough to have figured out how to be a better proofreader. What I think happened is this: James Patterson and Nora Roberts started worrying that I’d knock their books off the bestseller list. So they put a hex on me. That’s the only reasonable excuse I can think of.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “At Sea” which is free on Kindle for a few more hours.

 

Writing Advice from Isabel Allende

“So how do writers make sense of it all? Observe. Take notes. Question your own assumptions. Recognize the struggles of people around you, acknowledge your struggles, and be generous to both. In Allende’s words, “If we listen to another person’s story, if we tell our own story … we realize that the similarities that bring us together are many more than the differences that separate us.”

Source: Isabel Allende’s National Book Awards Speech: Writing Advice – The Atlantic

Isabel Allende has become the first Spanish-language writer to receive an honorary National Book Award medal. In her acceptance speech, which you’ll find covered in “The Atlantic” at the link above, she talks about how being constantly uprooted has not only impacted the themes in much of her fiction but her approach to writing itself.

“As a stranger … I observe and listen carefully. I ask questions, and I question everything. For my writing, I don’t need to invent much; I look around and take notes. I’m a collector of experiences,” she said.

That’s how writers–and perhaps almost everyone–make sense of moving to new towns, travel experiences, and the political and cultural upheavals of the times in which they live.  As the author of “The Atlantic” article, Rosa Inocencio Smith puts it, Allende’s speech “functions almost as a step-by-step guide for responding to such existential uncertainties. Surrounded by people with infinitely varied lives, writers, she advised, need not feel the pressure of making up stories from scratch. Confronted with problems in their plots or psyches, they can use their skills of observation to gain understanding.”

I like the advice, the article, and the speech itself (which you’ll find linked to the article).

—Malcolm

Fast-Paced Books are the Pacifist’s Drano

Okay, the Drano comment isn’t totally fair. Many fast-paced books are well written, have inventive and cohesive plots, know how to keep readers guessing, and when all is said and done, sell to millions of readers. There’s a lot of art and craft to them in addition to marketing savvy.

[image error]I might have told this story here before. If so, bear with me. When the TV program “24” was running, a friend of mine and I realized that while we both have non-violent and anti-break-the-rules philosophies about police work and spy work, we puzzled out why we watched that series without fail. We decided that it was because the show brought us closure. That is to say, things got done, the bad guys went to jail, and the good guys (i.e., most of the population) weren’t made to sit in limbo waiting for government red tape and partisan politics to finally fix a problem.

I’m sure many of the viewers of shows like NCIS believe in the right to privacy, yet tolerate the show’s agents illegally hacking into private records because, at the end of the hour, the bad guys are dead or behind bars. I can understand why so many in the police and spy biz say the rules are tying their hands and why we keep hearing that our trusted agencies are doing things they shouldn’t do. Those things get results even though they go against everything this nation stands for.

In “real life,” I can’t support the black ops, off-the-grid actions of private agencies such as those in novels like Typhoon Fury. Half the stuff that happens is illegal as hell–and that’s the good guys. In the imaginary world of the novel, the bad guys get shut down. In the real world we live in, they probably don’t. Or if they do, they cause a lot more collateral damage before they’re stopped. Nonetheless, seeing the bad guys shut down in a novel provides a small measure of relief to all the frustrations that arise in the real world–and in my belief system.

So, I read these novels as a coping mechanism. As a writer, I also find it interesting to see how these novelists handle plots and characters and keep readers reading. But the closure is the important thing, even if it’s only in my thoughts and not in the world I see on the news. Perhaps these books are my heroin. Or maybe they’re the Drano that flushes out my anger at both the criminals and the government for (a) creating problems that harm us all, and (b) for creating regulations that compromise our privacy and other rights in exchange for more security.

Some people turn to booze, some to sex, some to violent sports, some to drugs, some to music, and others to staying late at the office when they really don’t need to ignore their families and stay late at the office. We all have our ways of coping with the realities around us that are over the top. I can’t say that these methods, or reading James Patterson and Clive Cussler, are the best possible solutions.

But until we find and implement the best possible solutions, these escapes keep many of us out of mental institutions. I can’t say I’m proud of that, but I do feel better after flushing a lot of my frustrations about the way the world works out of my system with a slam-bang novel. And when my frustrations are flushed out, I’m less tempted to go over to the dark side.

—Malcolm

 

 

FREE: ‘Mountain Song’ by Malcolm R. Campbell

This Kindle e-book, regularly priced at $7.99, will be free on Amazon November 15-17, 2018.

As I hear it, summer romances are usually bittersweet. Mine was. They begin with a surprise, evolve into passion, turn sad and desperate at summer’s end, and then in spite of promises and best intentions, they often fade away. Perhaps the two lovers in Mountain Song will beat the odds.

Description

[image error]David Ward lives in the Montana mountains where his life was impacted by his medicine woman grandmother and his utilitarian grandfather. Anne Hill suffered through childhood abuse and ultimately moved in with her aunt on the edge of a Florida swamp. Their summer romance at a mountain resort hotel surprises both of them. But can they make it last after the initial passion wears off and they return to their college studies far apart from each other especially after an attack on a college street changes Anne forever?

The settings in this book are real. The mountains are those of Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana. The swamp is the notorious Tate’s Hell Swamp along the gulf coast in the Florida Panhandle.

 

Reading seems to become hereditary in practice

My parents’ parents read to them. My parents read to me. I read to my daughter. She reads to my granddaughters. I’m pleased to see the tradition continue. It’s almost as though it becomes part of our family’s DNA and the process is continued generation after generation.

[image error]When my brothers and I cleaned out our parents’ house after they died, among the memories we found were boxes and boxes of our childhood books. Our parents’ generation inscribed books they gave as gifts, so the dates told us when the books first came into our consciousness. At one point, I thought my granddaughters might like them.

It’s a bit disappointing to discover that the books I enjoyed when I was a kid no longer hold much appeal now. Today’s children’s books are linked to the children’s shows they watch on TV or at the movies. These grab their attention, whereas something I liked 3/4 of a century ago elicits a yawn.

But that’s okay. On the way back from a day trip to Lake Tahoe, my oldest granddaughter was goofing around with stories about imaginary beings, some she made up on the spot, others that might have been prompted from some of the books her parents read to her. We joked about portals between our car and the car with the rest of the family in it as though such portals were a part of our everyday reality.

I doubt that she remembers that conversation any more than I would remember a similar conversation with either of my parents from (give or take) the time of my 5th birthday. But the conversation told me her parents had been reading to her and that she had developed a wonderful imagination. I’m so proud of her for figuring out at her young age that there’s more to see that she can see with her physical eyes.

As a writer, I suppose I have a stake in the tradition of kids being read to by their parents and then discovering the joy of reading as they grow older. But it’s not because I hope they’ll buy my books. It’s because I have felt the power of my imagination in my life and can’t imagine living in the world without it. Reading is a powerful catalyst to thinking outside the box and outside the brainwashing of the political forces of one’s time.

Those with a powerful imagination may not have an easy time of it because they can see what others cannot see. They may grow up and find themselves out of step with the fads of the time. I know I did. But I wouldn’t trade understanding for conformity in spite of the temptations.

When my parents read to me, I doubt they thought the reading would have an impact on my life. They did it because it was fun and because I enjoyed the stories. The same is true when I read to my daughter. These days, we know there are studies that show that kids who are read to by their parents have a better shot at life. Maybe some parents know about those studies and read to their kids as a duty. I can’t say that I approve of that. Reading is such a wonderful way of sharing a story with one’s children, that there’s no other reason to do it. They like the stories. So do we.

Everything else in icing on the cake.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the Florida Folk Magic Series of three magical novels now available as an e-book in mutlipe formats.

 

Rainy days and/or Mondays

[image error]

Very heavy rain all day today, starting our week off with a flash flood watch. This “lake” in the pasture below the house is normally a narrow creek. Now it’s probably up over the road. I already got wet doing grocery shopping this morning, so I’m not going to walk down there and see what the road looks like.

Lena

Thank you to the 800+ entrants in my GoodReads giveaway for the third novel in my Florida Folk Magic series. I wish I could afford to send all of you a copy. Alas, only one copy is available and it will go out in tomorrow morning’s mail to the winner who lives in Kansas.

Cancer Scare #2

Those of you who’ve read this blog for a while, know that I had successful surgery for kidney cancer several years ago. The cancer was caught by a fluke, an ultrasound taken when I went into the hospital or an appendectomy. It was caught early enough for the surgery to work. The scary thing about kidney cancer is that there are no symptoms until it’s too late to do anything about it. My surgeron told me that the inflamed appendix was the bellyache that saved my life.

Several weeks ago, one of the seemingly endless tests I keep having suggested that I might have cancer again–or, an inflammation. I was optimistic–with random periods of worry and depression–because this cancer has early symptoms. Fortunately, the antibiotic is working and the test numbers are looking better. I’m one of these people who doesn’t get along with antibiotics, but they beat the alternative.

Upcoming Ghost Story Collection

In finished another story for my upcoming collection of ghost stories–coming soon from Thomas-Jacob Publishing. This one takes place in an old opera house that was about twenty miles away from where I grew up in the Florida Panhandle. I drove by it many times and, since it was closed down, always thought it was an abandoned factory. The people in the state’s ghost hunter business claimed the old theater was haunted.

Fortunately, it was saved from the wrecking ball by a string of preservation grants and is now being used to stage regional theater productions. What a perfect place for a story on a dark and stormy night. The story helped distract me from Cancer Scare #2. My wife’s going to proofread the story before I send the collection off to the publisher. There are one or two books in the queue ahead of this one, so I have no idea when it will be released. (I’ll let you know.)

As Thanksgiving approaches, I’m looking forward to seeing my daughter and her family, including my two granddaughters next week. We’re all doing a little sightseeing as well. The last time we went to their house, we were all snowed in and did well to walk as far as the sledding hill. We’re going earlier in the winter months this time!

—Malcolm

 

 

Tent Cities for Kids Remind Me of WWII Internment Camps for the Japanese

“The workers at the Tornillo camp, which was expanded in September to a capacity of 3,800, say that the longer a child remains in custody, the more likely he or she is to become traumatized or enter a state of depression. There are strict rules at such facilities: ‘Do not misbehave. Do not sit on the floor. Do not share your food. Do not use nicknames. Do not touch another child, even if that child is your hermanito or hermanita [younger sibling]. Also, it is best not to cry. Doing so might hurt your case.’ Can we imagine our own children being forced to go without hugging or being hugged, or even touching or sharing with their little brothers or sisters?” – Concentration Camps for Kids: An Open Letter in NYR Daily

According to the NYR Daily article, physical conditions at Tornillo aren’t too bad. But then, too, the United States’ World War II internment camps for weren’t as bad as our Civil War era POW camps. When most people today look back the internment of 110,000 to 120,000 Japanese in ten camps without probable cause, we ask “How could such a thing happen in this country?”

[image error] Tornillo camp – Wikipedia Photo

At present, the U. S. has detained 12,800 immigrant children and teens. On the plus side, we’re about a hundred thousand detainees short of the numbers of Japanese tossed into camps between 1942 and 1945 because Of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066.

So, can we look at today’s numbers and say we’re doing better, that we’ve learned from past mistakes, and that we’ve become more humane and fair three-quarters of a century later because our detained children numbers are much lower? We can, I suppose, but if we do it would be rather like a killer bragging that he didn’t murder as many people this week as he did last week and should be judged a better man for it.

I do not believe in so-called open borders, much less sanctuary cities and proposals that undocumented aliens should be allowed to vote, to have drivers licenses, jobs, and unlimited health care. That’s unfair to immigrants who are going through normal channels to get green cards and possibly work toward legal citizenship. That’s also unfair to those who must pay for those undocumented aliens.

But internment camps aren’t the answer. Border operations and immigration regulations are flawed as are laws that apply to those who cross illegally between ports of entry. The process of granting asylum is difficult and lengthy. Is it also flawed? Perhaps so. It will probably take a bipartisan congress with positive public support to get rid of those flaws. Meanwhile, putting kids in camps is even more flawed.

By watching the news, we hear the arguments and solutions from the two primary political parties. But they’re deadlocked and have been deadlocked about immigration issues for a long time. This is also a flawed situation, made worse because we’re hearing more from the ultra-left and the ultra-right than from the moderates in both parties. When there is nothing but extreme views on the table, the problem looks harder to solve than it should be. So, we ponder it and squabble about it while those children remain in the tent cities.

–Malcolm

 

 

 

How to tell if you’re an empath

“Being an Empath or having sensitivity to people, places, animals can be a good thing and a bad thing if you do not know how to control this ability.    Sometimes it leads to people having too many animals, having a relationship with a bully or abusive person because you “feel” you can change them, you can’t say ‘no’ because you don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.   Places and things bother you while to others they think you’re just nuts—-well, you’re not.   You are an Empath.”

Source: SPIRITUAL INFORMATION: how to tell if you’re an empath

This post is two years old, but it continues to apply today as more and more people develop their psychic skills and find that they are becoming more sensitive to the emotions of other people. It can be good, but it’s not easy to control. This is an interesting discussion of the subject.

–Malcolm

[image error] Amazon Kindle cover.

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of three “conjure and crime” novels that have been collected into one volume.