Betty Adams's Blog, page 143

Just Pretty Stuff

By any other name...

Imagine If You Will

Imagine if you will...
​Dawn breaking over the spires of a thriving city.  Every building is the same pattern of brilliant yellow and the jet black inhabitants scale the twinning structures as the light rousts them from slumber. There is no ground as such. The city itself is a grown thing. A fungus of incredible size and complexity. The roads follow the branching contours up, over, and around. It is rooted in the crook of a giant tree, anchoring to the dead wood that still holds the strength of stone. It is both food and shelter to its inhabitants. It is poison to every other species on the world offering protection as well. For as long as the species can remember these living cities have provided everything they have needed. But they wonder what exists outside. For word has come in from those hardy souls driven to explore. There is an end to the seemingly endless forest. Impossibly large beasts roam  the terrifyingly open surfaces outside. And there is something else. Something that exists at the edge of their perception and understanding. A gleaming vessel that released something giant, bipedal, confined to the flat plane of the ground. Something...alien. 

The Senior Discount

Image Credit The Daily Mail Three old British toughs sit around their favorite pub reminiscing about the days of old. The youngest of the friends is over six decades old. One pulls out his diabetes medication and they bemoan the price of living and their decaying state. One wistfully relcalls their younger days when they could bring home the bacon even if the law wasn't on thier side.
"Well why not once more than?" demands one.
The biggest heist in recent history is born and planned. Millions will go missing. 
It is....
"The Senior Discount"

A little too far fetched? Not plausible enough to be a good story? 
Well actually it is just today's headline over in Great Britain. 
​Tell wild stories friends! 

Inspiration or Confirmation

Many authors have entire worlds growing in their heads. The stories that are written down are simply the tip of the iceberg. The most solid points that show in a swirling ocean of ideas and concepts. Even for a single story there is a great mass that exists below the level of a single book. With the way the internet has connected the world this can lead to fascinating moments. An idea or a concept that has existed for years in an author's mind suddenly appears for a brief moment in the outside world. The idea has never been spoken, or written. There it is someone had the same strange fancy.
 This author had one of those moments today. 

Extreme Ways to Avoid People

The latest hashtag going around the internet is about #ExtremeWaysToAvoidPeople. This is pretty much the hashtag for authors. Also anyone who decides they want to work in a  remote desert like the one pictured. For this author between remote "day job" locations and holeing up to write "new people" might as well be a mythological species. 

Holding Onto an Idea

"Come here and listen to this!"
The girl reluctantly put her science fiction novel down and walked over to where her dad was holding some thick tome with a picture of a man looking very intense on the cover. She knew what was coming. The biography must have touched on some central nerve of wisdom that her Dad found profound enough to share with the entire house. 
"During this time period I quickly learned to always carry around a small notebook and pencil in my right breast pocket." her Dad read clearly. 
She nodded along to show she was listening as her Dad read the explanation of how important note taking was. It wasn't that she doubted him precisely. It was just that that sort of thing was for the dour faced military men that decorated the covers of old biographies. It wasn't like she was ever going to forget anything important.

Fast-forward a few  decades. 

The author howls in frustration as she stares at the blank computer screen. The faint memory of the feeling that comes from a really good idea being all that remains of the story idea that came to her when her right breast pocket was distinctly empty of pencils and notebooks. 

Every author knows the horrible sensation of an idea slipping out of their mind never to return. (If any author does not know, none of the rest want to hear it.) There are many ways to preserve these fleeting thoughts but far and away the most common is a simple notepad.
General ideas can be written down but sometimes specific images need to be drawn. It can be easy to forget what main characters look like when focusing on behaviour and dialogue. If an author has drawing ability they can sketch out their own designs. However some authors can't draw much above a first grade level. They then depend on friends and hired artists to generate the place holding pictures for them. 

Contrast

To show off a character to their best advantage it is often good to have contrast. Would Spock's calm dignity have had such a profound effect on the fandom without McCoy's emotional tirades and Kirk's rash actions to contrast it?
​

Calamity and Disaster

Any given culture is constantly generating stories. Some die out and some survive into near immortality. Some, like "The Epic of Gilgamesh" only survive in a dusty script in some buried library; patiently awaiting the day that they will be discovered whole and entire. Some are passed down word of mouth changing and growing like a living thing.
One of the latter is the story of Mt. Mazama. This respectable Cascade mountain blew its top thousands of year ago and the locals still tell of how their ancestors had to dive into the lake seventy miles away to escape the heat. The land was devastated for miles around the thousands of years later the lake still bubbles with remembered heat. 
Now the old stories are being collected, pulled for the ether of the spoken word, and written down. Maybe some day an adventurer will find the story of the formation of Crater Lake tucked into some dusty knoll and once again remember. 

Time For a Murder

Quoth the Raven
by Betty Adams

It was vexing was what it was. Roxy tossed the last bale of hay out of the back of the pickup truck and huffed in annoyance. Not at the glossy black bird that circled the battered red farm rig. No, there was no reason at all to be irritated with the animal. There was no way it was doing it on purpose. 
"Cam!"
Roxy winced as the raven call out her sister's name eagerly. No, she was irritated at herself. Everyone was being so annoyingly nice about it all. When they had first found the injured corvid she had been the one to pick it out of the thick mud of the drainage ditch. The raven had been soaked to the skin and wasn't even shivering. She had tucked it under her coat and hiked the quarter mile back to the barn. Her mother had done volunteer work on some long distant gulf oil spill and had expertly cleaned the raven. Cam and Roxy had placed the too-still bird in a warm, dry box on the porch and had carefully fed it formula for days. It had perked up and decided that the service at the place was top notch so why leave? 
"Home!" the bird called out circling Roxy in tight spirals, pulling her out of her memories. 
"Yes, go on home Rainbow." She waved in the direction of the house where she knew her sister was getting ready to leave for the day, leaving the house empty. 
They had all been shocked when the raven had spoken for the first time. Their mom had examined his beak and discovered a slit in his tongue; a small surgery that allowed the bird nearly the vocal range of a parrot. He clearly knew many words when he arrived and seemed to be constantly learning more.  The first words he had learned were the family names.
"Except for mine," Roxy muttered as she climbed into the cab and started the engine.
The truck surged to life with a satisfying roar and began rolling towards the horse barn. Roxy estimated that it would take her another hour or two to finish the chores for the day. Then she had homework waiting at the house. She tried to focus on that but her mind kept wandering back to the glossy black bird. He made sure to greet each of her family members by name in the morning and was there when they left the farm. While he was always friendly to her, he would give her a head bump every morning and was there whenever she left, the raven had yet to say her name.
She was still musing over that when something to the south caught her eye.
"Not again!" she groaned in frustration. "That idiot animal!"
The neighbor's pony was somehow caught in the fence; front legs through and back legs on the other side. Roxy rolled her eyes and carefully turned the truck around. There was nothing to do but drive back to the house and call the owner to come out with enough hands to free the pony. She tried the phone in the barn first but the neighbor didn't pick up the land line. She left a message and jogged over to the house. Her dad had left the neighbor's cell number on a piece of paper in the kitchen she recalled. She kicked her boots off on the steps and walked barefooted across the hardwood floor. Roxy was sifting through the papers on the counter when she heard something odd from the living room. She narrowed her eyes and picked up a hammer that was lying handy on the counter. She slipped up to the door and peered around the corner.
"Auxy, au, saux, auxy." Came from behind the couch.
Roxy blinked in surprise. At this distance there was no mistaking that voice. She set the hammer gently down and silently crept up to peep over the back of the couch. Rainbow was standing crouched over in the furthest corner as if he was desperately intent on something.
"Sauxy! Rrrrrrsauxy." He spat out before fluffing his feathers in irritation. "Auxy!"
Roxy gave a gasp of understanding and the raven gave an undignified squawk. He twisted his head around and positively glared at Roxy before hopping out from behind the couch and flying out the window, scolding her furiously the entire time. 
It was a week before he forgave her the invasion of privacy and three months before he spoke her name; rolling out the 'r' perfectly. But Roxy couldn't seem to mind anymore.
 
A little something for #BirdCelebs 
 

Why Choose?

From the big book of "Real Life Adventures That Will Make Great Story Fodder".
The Pacific Northwest: Because why should you have to choose between taking the train and taking a boat?