Malcolm R. Campbell's Blog, page 235

Sarabande book give away challenge

Today I announced Malcolm's Genuine Sub Rosa SARABANDE Book Give-Away Challenge on my author's web site and Round Table blog.

It's one way I can call attention to some new magic and fantasy pages on the web site for Sarabande, and it's one way you might win a free copy of the novel.

You don't have to be psychic to win. All that's required is a good imagination or a lucky chance guess. Or, if nobody discovers the secret, I'll draw a name at random from all the entries.

Stop by my announcement, and go for it. . .

--Malcolm

Apparently Dwarves are Evil: the tribulations of a book reviewer

Dwarves pushed a tree over on my house because they didn't want me to finish writing a positive review of Lisa Goldstein's "The Uncertain Places."

It happened Monday at high noon.

When I heard the noise, I just naturally assumed that either the cats had pushed over a bookshelf or that my diet had fallen on hard times.

Finally, I looked out the front door and saw that a tree had somehow leapt from the center of the front yard, turned end over end, and poked a hole in the roof before bashing in the eaves above the garage.

Unfortunately, my insurance isn't going to pay for the entire cost of fixing the roof. Heck, it cost $75 just to have a guy cut up and haul away the tree. I wonder if I can write this off as, say, hazardous duty pay or business expenses on my next income tax return. Or, perhaps I should send Lisa Goldstein a bill. After all, if she hadn't written the novel, I wouldn't have read the novel and written a review that drew the attention of dwarves and other denizens from the world of faerie to my doorstep.

It's not like I was doing spells or anything to attract folks from areas where worlds overlap or where boundaries are thin or where a phrase (accoding to Goldstein) like "Rick Rack Ruck" can cause the earth to open up.

Even though I'm currently reading and enjoying "The Night Circus," I'm thinking  twice (at least) about writing a review. Goodness knows, I don't need a circus tent in my yard, much less an illusionist knocking  at the front door.

--Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of magical realism and contemporary fantasy novels that do not cause bad things to happen to readers and reviewers.

Developing rain and nightmare travel and hopes for safe travel

Every year, Thanksgiving begins with such promise. The action begins at the grocery store, moves to the kitchen, then to the car or the airport for the trip to "grandmother's house," onward through naps and football and once-a-year conversations.

If you live in a metro area such as Atlanta, you know--from experience or listening to the news--that the holiday often ends in a travel nightmare. In this neck of the woods, we see giant traffic jams on I-75 and I-85 south as cars heading through the metro area sometimes back up to the Tennessee and South Carolina borders. The reports out of the airports are equally grim.

If I were suddenly appointed Tsar of Thanksgiving, I think I would issue an edict stating that the Monday after Thanksgiving would be a random holiday, held on a scattered basis so that everyone in the country isn't headed back to work at the same time.

Florida and Georgia would celebrate the holiday in alternating years. So would most other adjacent states. Then, like the staggered quitting times proposed in some metro areas to reduce the rush hour traffic, we might see fewer traffic jams, fewer wrecks, fewer injuries and fewer fatalities.

This year, rain moved into north and central Georgia, and I'm happy to say that my wife and I beat the rain back to the house. We had to leave her dad's farm a few hours earlier than planned, but it was worth it. A lot of people are still out there on the road now or sitting in an airport worrying about airport delays and cancelled flights.

It's a heck of a way to end the holiday. There are years when my list of things to be thankful for includes making it safely back home. I don't hear much rain on the roof yet here in Jackson County. But it's close.

And without driving out past the McDonalds and the QuickTrip and the KFC at the I-85 interchange, I know that there's a long line of red railights southbound toward the Sugar Hill exit, Gwinnett County and Atlanta. Many of those cars are headed for Macon and points south on into Florida with many miles to go before they're safely back home.

Since my wife and I are cozy and warm back inside our house with a tasty leftovers left to consume, I'm happy to say that as nice as Thanksgiving is, I'm a bit glad it's now a memory, and I send out white light to those on the roads and in the air in hopes they'll travel safe.

--Malcolm

Fantasy Reading Marathon

After reading the first two books in the Stephen R. Donaldson's epic fantasy trilogy The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant several years after the books were published in the late 1970s, I stopped reading fantasy. I was thinking seriously about writing a fantasy novel of my own and was concerned that I might be influenced by Donaldson's work.

Like the trilogy's novels, Lord Foul's Bane (1977), The Illearth War (1978) and The Power that Preserves (1979), my on-the-drawing board novel also included a respect for the power of nature and wooden staffs which focused a young avatar's own power. We both use the term "arch of time," but for vastly different intents. And, like Donaldson, I am a pacifist.

I probably didn't need to worry about unintentionally using Donaldson's themes, but his trilogy was having such a profound impact on me that I felt better putting it aside while working on the book that--some years later--ultimately was published as The Sun Singer . After finishing Sarabande , a follow-up novel to The Sun Singer this fall, I finally went back to Donaldson's critically acclaimed work.

In a reading marathon, I read the six novels that comprise The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (The Wounded Land, The One Tree, and White Gold Wielder), a total of 2,129 pages. Fans of the series know that after a hiatus, Donaldson came back to is epic stories about "The Land" in 2004 with the first book in a quartrology to be called The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

I'll read the quartrology some day, but I'm worn out and ready for something else. I still like Donaldson's dark, highly complex series with its gruff anti-hero. But I'm not the same person I was 34 years ago. As I said in  my post Fantasies with 'personal stories' that mirror our lives , I'm more interested now in fantasies that focus on individual protagonists rather than on world-changing struggles between the forces of good an evil.

Returning to Donaldson's epic after all these years involved a bit of time travel, and I'm not just talking about the 3,000-year gap (in the time-frame in "The Land") between the end of The Power That Preserves and the beginning of The Wounded Land. Reading a series that I started and then set aside 34 years ago was a bit nostalgic. It took me back to the years when I left college teaching and went into technical writing with plans to morph into a novelist.

Before Donaldson, I read a lot of science fiction, but was beginning to find myself more interested in the fantasy elements in SciFi than in the science. I was a fan of Frank Herbert's Dune because of its magic and (as Donaldson would call it), its Lore. Along with Dune, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant convinced me that the stories I wanted to tell could be told as fantasies.

So, reading-wise, you can "go home again," back to those novels that influenced your writing career even though you're not transformed back into the person you were then. I feel like I've just returned from a journey of several thousand years. I highly recommend Donald's "Chronicles" to those who like epic fantasies that compare very favorably in scope to Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and George R.R. Martin's series that began with A Game of Thrones.

As for me, I'm only too happy to be reading Lisa Goldstein's sparkling 237-page contemporary fantasy The Uncertain Places with Erin Morgenstern's wild and crazy The Night Circus next on the list.

Magic Moments

Magic, moments,
When two hearts are carin',
Magic, moments,
Memories we've been sharin' . . .

I'll never forget the moment we kissed,
The night of the hayride,
The way that we hugged to try to keep warm,
While takin' a sleigh ride.

--from Magic Moments by Burt Bacharach and Hal David


During my senior year in high school, Perry Como's hit version of "Magic Moments" was on the radio so often that it was impossible not to memorize the song, much less get the lyrical music out of one's head. Anyone in love--or who wanted to be in love--could identify with the concept of magic moments, those special times spent with the person they were going steady with (as we said then).

I can testify that after one is married the song still applies--not that I'm still listening to that old song. I can hear it, though as I type this post.

In those days, I was buying my first books about psychic and mystic phenomena. Like today's books, most of them offered recipes for various techniques that (purportedly) would yield wonderful results in faithfully practiced. I can testify, after years of reading those books, that if one doesn't practice those techniques faithfully, there will still be magic moments.

How to replicate them on demand is a skill I have not mastered. Nonetheless, I get a lot of  vicarious pleasure watching the characters in my novels do the magic that still remains the stuff of my dreams. In an interview with author Smoky Zeidel, I said that my characters to what I cannot. At the time, I was referring to primarily to travel and mountain climbing.

Amazon used to have a concordance that could be accessed on most of its books listings that showed the significant phrases used in the text. Quite often, most phrases were the names of the primary characters, their figures of speech, and the book's primary locations and settings. ("Holy Bear Puke" was a "significant phrase" in my 2004 novel The Sun Singer because it was a pet phrase of my character Cinnabar.)

At any rate, with the proper algorithms, perhaps such a concordance might also list a book's magic moments. Some of these might be kisses, rainbows and starry nights. Others would demonstrate true magic. In contemporary fantasies like The Sun Singer and Sarabande, the instances of magic per one thousand words would be higher than chance. Certainly, books by Tolkien, Rowling and Bradley would also have an above average amount of magic. Unlike real life where magic isn't usually accepted as real (much less as good), magic is a common and expected moment in fantasy novels.

That's why I write them. They show the world I believe exists just slightly beyond my everyday perception. Had I practiced the techniques in those books, I might see farther than I do. My protagonist in Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey (magical realism) climbed K2 and Mt. Everest, mountains I planned (while listening to that Perry Como song) to climb one day.

Likewise, in all three of these novels novels, characters borne out of my youthful dreaming and my adult imagination can see what the eye cannot see, hear what the ear cannot detect, and raise healing energy into the sky in the colors of the northern lights. I have given them many magic moments, and I am content with that.

--Malcolm 

Seeking Wider Reading Horizons

In this morning's edition of Book Bits, my blog of links for readers and writers, I lamented the fact that with up to 300,000 books being published each year, many review sites and best books sites state that they only consider books from "major publishers." I understand the problem. I can't keep up either, and leaving out small-press books is an easy way to reduce the chaos.

Obviously, publications and websites want traffic, so that goal rather lends itself to looking at books everybody's talking about. On the other hand, I don't think it would be that difficult for some of the book sites to widen their horizons by changing the major-publishers-only approach to "we consider books from major publishers and selected small presses."

By saying "selected small presses," book sites could still control the potential tidal wave of ARCs and review requests that would arrive on their doorsteps if they had no gatekeeper rules in place at all. It's not a perfect solution, but it's better than providing more publicity only to the books that are already getting the lion's share of publicity.

As a writer and reader of fantasy, I look forward to the day when more reviwers widen their horizons and admit the fact that some very good fantasy is coming from small presses. It won't be easy, for the publicity saturating the market from "big publishing" is very hard to resist. I can't resist it: the minute I read about Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus (Doubleday), I was hooked. I haven't read it yet, but I will.

On the other hand, with my horizons pushed outward just a little bit, I see that The Uncertain Places by Lisa Goldstein (Tachyon Publications, June 2011) is also very tempting even though it probably won't get the same amount of play as The Night Circus in spite of its veteran author. The publisher's description includes this: In this long-awaited new novel from American Book Award winner Lisa Goldstein, an ages-old family secret breaches the boundaries between reality and magic, revealing the places between them.

I'm thinking, I must have it. I'm glad to see the book is doing well on Amazon even though some sites and reviewers are keeping their horizons so narrow they won't discover it. Such reviewers can do better, I think.

Twitter and Other Sorrows

I wonder: if a person stops talking and starts listening on the Internet, does anyone notice?

As I watch the Tweets scroll past my window like acid rain on a grey day, I wonder what percentage of the them are read. Or, is it a matter of everyone's talking and nobody's listening?

Sometimes when I tweet a blog post I happen to like, I get a response back saying, "thanks for the shout out." I appreciate the thank you note, but since my shout  is one of millions, did it matter?

Do you ever wonder about such things?

We all want to be heard whether we're promoting books, web sites or simply shooting the breeze about family life. I'm tweeting about my book and you're tweeting about your book, but we're both in dire financial trouble, so (truth be told) neither one of us can affort to buy the other's book.

Meanwhile, neither one of us has time to really stop and talk about each other's books or families or day at the office because (truth be told) there are still a hundred tweets and Facebook updates left to check out. We understand each other, I think. That means we're each aware that between us we have a thousand friends and followers and that the day no longer permits such luxuries as a real conversation.

I LIKE you. You RT me. I tweet your post. You share my update. We're just moving shoutouts around without listening. I feel a lot of sorrow about this, about the fact that expediency has made our interactions so shallow and so expedient.

What about you? If you have a thousand Twitter followers, how many are really there? Listening, that is? If you have a thousand Facebook friends, how many of them are stopping by your page a couple of times a week to listen?

I feel like blogs, social networking and other related Internet sites are like a fast train, and my belief is that it's not bound for glory.

Perhaps I'm just not "wired probably" for all this dangling conversation.

--Malcolm

Complimentary Vanilla Heart Publishing Sampler

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Table of  Contents
Smoky Trudeau Zeidel, The Cabin, 2nd Edition - James-Cyrus Hoffmann has just inherited his grandfather's farm, and with it a mysterious cabin deep in the woods on Hoffmann mountain; a cabin he has dreamed about since childhood. When James-Cyrus enters the cabin, he is vaulted back through time to the Civil War era, where he meets Elizabeth, the brave young woman who lives in the cabin, and Malachi, a runaway slave. James-Cyrus realizes his dreams of the cabin were visions of the past, and that Elizabeth is his great-great aunt—a woman who vanished without a trace from the family tree. He also learns of his ancestors' pivotal role in the lives of dozens of runaway slaves who were offered a safe haven at the cabin, a station on the underground railroad.Chelle Cordero, Hostage Heart - Life was hard after the hurricanes swept through, destroying her parents' home and livelihood... An errand for her boss - a chance encounter with a crew of bank robbers - a kind man who tried to help her ... a man who isn't all he seems...no, he is so much moreMarilyn C. Morris, Sabbath's Gift - When New York writer, Joanna Elliott, flees her abusive husband to the Texas Hill Country, she and her six-year old son, Jason, unwittingly become a killer's prey. Joanna adopts a cat from the local veterinarian, Sam Kelly, who tells her that Sabbath "had belonged to a witch." Unexplained events unfold...what will happen?Robert Hays, The Baby River Angel - When Birdie Wilson and his two boys find a baby floating in a basket on the Ohio River, they can't begin to imagine the impact their discovery is to have on their little town of Cambria.L.E. Harvey, Imperfect - Carol Mathers, in her mid-thirties, a highly sought-after IT guru in St. Louis. She has built a great life for herself with her partner, Alexandria, even though the two face prejudice as lesbians, and as an interracial couple -fighting tragedy and sometimes, triumphing amidst the chaos...Victoria Howard, The House on the Shore, 2nd Edition - This visually magical tale takes the reader on a journey from the remote shores of Loch Hourn in the Scottish Highlands to the singular beauty of Cape Cod. When Anna MacDonald leaves Edinburgh to find peace in the Scottish Highlands, she gets a twofold surprise: a lost sailor teaches her to love again...while a mysterious stranger has plans to kill her.Collin Kelley, Remain in Light - In 1968, Irène Laureux's husband was murdered during the Paris riots and his body dumped near Notre-Dame cathedral. Thirty years later, she finally catches up with his killer. With the help of American writer Martin Paige, Irène will illuminate decades of secrets and lies only to discover that her husband's death is part of something far more sinister.Malcolm R. Campbell, Sarabande - After her sister, Dryad, haunts her from beyond the grave for three long and torturous years, Sarabande undertakes a dangerous journey into the past– to either raise her cruel sister from the dead, ending the torment...or to take her place in the safe darkness of the earth.Charmaine Gordon, Reconstructing Charlie - Charlie Costigan has a secret. Home life gone from bad to the worst when she protects her mother from another vicious attack by her drunken father. Midnight. Clothes thrown into an old suitcase, she races for the bus with a letter to an unknown aunt and uncle. "This is my daughter. Embrace her as if she were your own." Determined, Charlie begins again. Alone with her secret.Janet Lane Walters, The Warrior of Bast - Tira is offered refuge from her deadly future….in an unknown ancient past, but she must remain there forever. Since the rebellion twenty years ago, the Two Lands has been without a ruler. Kashe wants to become a warrior of Horu. His father has other plans. Together, Kashe and Tira face nearly insurmountable challenges in their sacred quest, and find passion along the way.Anne K. Albert, Frank, Incense, and Muriel (Book One of the Muriel Reeves Mysteries) -  What happens when a gullible intellectual reluctantly joins forces with her sexy high school nemesis, now an even sexier private investigator, to find a missing woman? The stress of the holiday season is enough to frazzle anyone's nerves, but Frank and Muriel must also deal with... an embezzler, a femme fatale, a kidnapper, and of course, Muriel's eccentric, (but loveable) family.S.R. Claridge, Russian Uprising (A Just Call Me Angel Mystery Suspense) - After a brutal attack on Tetterbaum's Pub...the five Chicago families are infiltrated by the Russian Bratva. Angel is forced to take drastic measures to flush out the infiltrators before more people die. Traitors are friends and friends become enemies in this deceptive Mafia world, where Angel's only hope of stopping the Russian uprising is to turn against her own blood.Melinda Clayton, Return to Crutcher Mountain - Jessie is a success, at least by all outward appearances. She's helped establish a wilderness retreat for special needs children on top of Crutcher Mountain. Everything has come together beautifully, until a series of strange events threatens to shut down the operation. Unsure what to expect, Jessie returns to West Virginia in search of answers and finds more than she bargained for.Angela Kay Austin, Sweet Victory - For her employees' sakes, Victoria James quits her job to save theirs and loses the man she thought she loved. Back to Memphis, Tennessee to a forgotten relationship with her grandfather, where everything she has is stolen. Chad Kirkpatrick, her childhood love, the first man to break her heart, now a police officer, comes to her aid. Will she put her past behind her? Will Chad forgive her?Enjoy the sampler!

Malcolm

A Good Cabin for a Writer

My wife and I spent several days this past week with my youngest brother and his wife at a rental cabin in the north Georgia mountains near Blue Ridge. Unlike the rustic get-away cabins writers are supposed to want for their personal hide-aways, this cabin had central heat, satellite TV, phone service, a basement game room that included a pool table, and WiFi.

It was hard not to wonder: could I write in a place like this?

The answer seemed to be "Yes." I could take my morning coffee out onto the deck and look at the view of the national forest and mountains and make wonderful progress on my novel in progress. I'm sure the IRS would see such a cabin as a valid business expense so that when it came to the bottom line, the cabin, cleaning service, utilities and maintenance costs would actually be free. If I started to get writer's block, the deck's hot tub would ease it away without need for excessive amounts of Scotch.

[image error] On the plus side, the ambiance, setting and views are just what a writer needs. And since the cabin is off the beaten track and only accessible by a winding gravel road that takes a fair amount of time to navigate without knocking one's car out of alignment, I would not be deluged with people looking for handouts, wanting me to join their religions, or sit around and shoot the breeze during writing hours.

On the minus side, the winding gravel road is the only way to the grocery store, post office and the book store. To live at the cabin, I would have to be better at planning logistics than I am now. In the small town where I live, the grocery is five minutes away. If I run out of milk or wine, no problem. Working at the cabin would require stocking up enough food for a week at a time. Maybe longer. Maybe for the entire winter when that gravel road is hidden by snow and ice.

Where Have Have All The Patrons Gone?

In the old days, when a king or a duke wanted music, art or written entertainments, he found a composer, artist or poet and gave him a castle, a castle staff, a stable filled with impressive horses, and enough money to live almost, but not quite, like a king or a duke.

What's happened to all of that?

Really, I don't want a castle. I certainly don't want a staff sniffing around watching what I'm doing, taking notes for the tabloids, and sneaking parts of my manuscripts down off the mountain for the operatives of rival publishers. Seriously, I don't want to be part of the pampered elite of rich movie stars who live in $100000000000000000 mansions and get their pictures taken every time they stop at a comic book store and buy the lastest copy of Green Lantern or Wonder Woman.


While I can write on a deck with a great view or next to a fireplace with a warm fire, I can't write if CNN is parked in my yard waiting to see when "Mr. Campbell is going to set foot outside his castle." Castles attract attention. Cabins don't.

The more I think of the cabin plan, the more sense it makes. I'd even be willing to share. For a modest investment--say, $150 per night--other writers in need of a retreat could retreat to the cabin and write, think, meditate or play a relaxing game of pool in the basement game room.

It's win win for everyone!

Malcolm R. Campbell, author of the recently released contemporary fantasy "Sarabande," probably would have finished that novel five years ago if he'd only had a cabin.

Get Your 2012 Coyote Calendar

When I decided that a coyote would play a strong role in my contemporary fantasy Sarabande , I needed to find a good source of information about them. Unfortunately, most people see them as pests. Just as unfortunately, coyotes and human neighborhoods don't mix well a lot of the time. But, we go too far, I think, with our fear and distrust of coyotes and wolves.

Fortunately, I found a loving source of coyote information through Shreve Stockton's story about raising a coyote (ultimately named "Charlie") in her 2008 book The Daily Coyote .  Publishers Weekly said, in part, "This moving account of writer/photographer Stockton's first year with her pet coyote, Charlie, expands on her popular blog, the Daily Coyote, but newcomers and the authors many fans will find that this memoir offers a complete—if not yet completed—story about love and life in a small Wyoming town. On a cross-country move from San Francisco to New York City in 2005, Stockton fell in love with the beauty of Wyomings Bighorn Mountains and decided to settle there."

I enjoyed the book as well as e-mailed updates from her blog. Shreve also provided some great answers to my questions about what it was like to be up close with a coyote. Now, since the coyote in my novel is a totem animal as well as a real (maybe) four-legged critter in Glacier National Park, I may not have translated her advice into a realistic coyote like Charlie.

While writing the novel, I was inspired by the coyote photographs on her website. Now, as I move into my "talking about the novel" phase, I can continue to be inspired by her 2012 Calendar. Thanks, Shreve, and may your work help all of us achieve a better understanding of all the Charlies out there.

--Malcolm