Month: September 2009

Friday the 18th Civil War Days begins in Belle Plaine, Iowa. I’m going to sell my books in the park on the fringes of North versus south battles. So am I ready?

I’ve watched the weather forecasts. Looks like perfect days for having a table full of books outside. To help the customers visually see what kind of books I write, I made place cards that states the genre to place by each pile of books. It would be a good thing if the wind wasn’t too strong, or I will spend time chasing those place cards down. Also, the bookmarkers I printed that list my inventory and address for future reference.

I’ve been doing a mental list in my head this morning. It has taken a lot of preparation for this three day event. I’ve got an aluminum folding table left over from my craft sale days. (Those craft sales are where I learned some salesmanship.) An Indian blanket for a table cover, doesn’t go along with the Civil War but in that century. Dressing in a pioneer dress and wearing a bonnet should give me some attention. (How did I come by a pioneer dress and bonnet? I revamped a dress and sewed the bonnet years ago when I volunteered at Ursher Ferry in Cedar Rapids. I was spinning in a one room log cabin as the woman who lived there. When visitors came in, I had to tell them about my life. It was fun to act the part.) I still have my money box from craft show days (a small fishing tackle box). It’s perfect with a top divided shelf for change and the bottom for bills. I bought a mesh folding chair with a canopy top so I wouldn’t have to sit in direct sunlight. Haven’t had it out of the bag to see if I can set it up. Every time I buy something in a bag or box that needs put together, I’ve found it a struggle to put the object back in the bag. So guess I’ll wing putting the chair together in the park after I have the table set up.

After some fall house cleaning, I found a four by four poster board upstairs to use for a sign to lean against the table. This advertisement shows that I am a local person. That might help get me some interest if not sales. So I printed large banners and tacked them to the poster board. The sign reads Keystone Author Fay Risner – Book Sale – Featuring – Ella Mayfield’s Pawpaw Militia . On each side of the Book Sale line was a blank space so I put a picture of my book cover on one side and a Confederate Flag on the other. That definitely states which side of the war I’m on. Figured I might as well join. You can’t hear it in my writing, but I have a southern accent. That would be a dead give away if I tried to join the Union forces. They might shoot me for a spy.

I have no idea where I am to set up. The man I talked to said I could be by a building where reenactors sell their wares. Guess someone will point me in the right direction.

Friday is the day the schools bring students to learn about the Civil War. I wanted to be a part of that education. Besides, a presentation will go along with my book. So I made up another poster board. While the reenactors will be talking military feats, I will be discussing Bushwhackers and Jayhawkers. A time line of the border war between Kansas territory and Missouri is on the poster. A large Missouri map dominates the board with stars for important places and Vernon County drawn in so the children can see where my history comes from.

I won’t have anyone to watch my table and I don’t know how far it will be to the concession stand. I baked an apple cake. That will be meals and snacks plus I’m taking a large container of ice tea.

My husband isn’t so sure all this stuff will fit in my small car. Best be prepared. Today I pack the car just to see how is the best way to fit everything in. It will be good to have that much done. I’ll have to get an early start to be set up before 9 a.m.

No matter what, this will be a fun experience going back in time amid the smell and explosions of gunpowder, war cries and crowd appreciation of the battles. Lincoln will give his Gettysburg Address, a church service will be held under the open sky and much more. I can’t wait to get there.

This post, from Dennis Jernberg, originally appeared on his Spanner’s World: The Blog! blog on 9/6/09.

Face it: the traditional literary fiction that defined the mainstream in the 20th century is on its way out, much like the newspaper it drew from starting in the late 19th century. During its period of dictatorship, anything outside its narrow boundaries was ruthlessly relegated to the lowbrow genres of pulp fiction by the cultural establishment’s literary police. But now literary fiction is almost extinct. Why? Because its ideology, called Naturalism, no longer reflects the daily lives of ordinary people.

What does? Science fiction. You see, far more than in Isaac Asimov’s day, we are living in the world predicted by science fiction. Rockets and space stations? Check. Supercomputers, internets, virtual reality? Check. Robots do more of our manufacturing work. Cyborgs are increasingly banal. Androids and jetpacks are in development. Can interstellar spaceships, wormholes, antigravity, and time travel be far behind? And there’s some amazing stuff now commonplace or in development that were inconceivable to the likes of Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and their contemporaries: nanotechnology, personal area networks, quantum computing, augmented reality — the list goes on…

The conclusion should be obvious. The central place in the mainstream of modern literature that was once held by the now dying Naturalist literary fiction properly belongs to science fiction. Why, then, is it still relegated to genre and fandom? Because the old literary establishment still controls the publishing industry.

Not that there’s anything wrong with fandom. I myself am a comics fan of long standing. Without a fandom, a genre or medium is dead. Literary fiction has no fandom; the only thing resembling one is a shrinking hard core of the cultural elite, the modern survivors or descendants of the once all-powerful literary snobs that not only exiled most fiction to the pulp genres but also murdered poetry. Conversely, all the vital genres have fandoms, especially those that belong to that family of genres collectively known as fantasy, which includes horror as well as science fiction. The strength of a genre in the culture can be gauged by the conventions its fans hold.

Anyway, back to my point: the Naturalist method of traditional literary fiction no longer reflects our common reality. The method of science fiction does. Here’s why:

Naturalism is based on the deterministic assumption of Newtonian mechanics, which claims that every single thing that ever happened or ever will happen can be precisely predicted into the infinite past or future. This strikes people as absurd today, but this was the common assumption in the 19th and 20th centuries. So traditional literary fiction came to restrict itself to the petty lives of insignificant people stuck in static or slowly deteriorating situations. It resembles the 19th-century social novel at least on the surface, but the method is supposed to be scientific or at least journalistic. The writer who most strongly defined the Naturalist school and its method was Émile Zola.

Read the rest of the post on Spanner’s World: The Blog!.

This post, from Sharon K. Souza, originally appeared on Novel Matters on 8/19/09. 

I really enjoyed Debbie’s post on Monday about artistic license in story structure, and I enjoyed the several comments to the post. Katy said, "I love it when authors walk the high wire." I love the image that conjures, because, really, don’t we all feel like we’re working without a net from the first sentence we write to the last, every time we write a novel?

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Nicole said, "Rules were made to be broken in my world." We’ve all heard that saying, of course, along with the caveat that you must know the rules in order to break them. And I completely agree on both counts. But Nicole goes on to say, "If (emphasis mine) the story works, bravo to the one who told it in a different way."
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Ah, therein lies the rub.
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Because in taking artistic license, we take the chance that it won’t work. And not simply that it won’t work, but that it could fail miserably, and do so even before it gets past the pub committee.
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And then there are the copycats who think "because a long, rambling letter worked for Marilyn Robinson, it’ll work for me." Well, probably not. Because the whole idea is to be unique in our breaking of the rules. And once it’s done, it’s old news. That’s not to say another novel written in the form of a letter can’t work, and work well; it just means it must break the new rules established by the former rule breaker. See how complicated this becomes? Yet, what’s the alternative? Tried and true, safe, ho-hum fiction, of which there’s already for more than enough in the world.

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Humorist Chris Dunmire writes, "A rule is 1) A guide or principle for governing action; 2) The usual way of doing something … While guides and principles are in place for good reason, ‘the usual way of doing something’ as a rule in your creative work is flexible and open to change." http://www.coachingyourcreativity.com/

Read the rest of the post on Novel Matters. 

We at Black Coffee Press are now seeking Manuscripts. Please visit www.blackcoffeepress.net for more details.

A recent post on Musings Of An Aussie Writer that made direct reference to me and reviews of my work got me thinking about reviews. A lot of people react badly to reviews, even when they’re primarily positive. I don’t know why.

As far as I’m concerned, as an author, once I put my work out there I have no right to tell people what to think of it. I always make my writing the best I think it can be before I let it go public. Often that’s the only way it can or will go public.

After that I always remind myself of that old adage: “You can’t please all the people all the time.” I just hope to please as many people as possible as often as possible. I at least want to please more people than I piss off.

There’s another old adage that’s more writing related: “The reader is always right.”

If a reader interprets something I’ve written differently to how I intended, that’s my fault. It doesn’t matter what I want the reader to experience, or what I meant by a certain passage, the reader is always right. The way they read something and interpret it is their reality and there’s no point in me saying, “But you don’t get it! You don’t understand my genius!” It was my writing that resulted in their interpretation. If that’s not what I wanted them to think or feel then I need to learn from that and improve my craft.

When I send out a book for review I’m asking for that reviewer’s honest opinion of it. I’m not asking them to tell everyone how great it is. I’m asking them to tell everyone what they thought of it, and I desperately hope that they think it’s great.

I’ve yet to have a really scathing review for either RealmShift or MageSign. I’m very pleased and humbled about that. It’s become pretty evident from many reviews that my second book is an improvement on my first. I’m really pleased about that too – it’s much better than the other way around.

Certainly reviewers have had issues with a number of things in both books. They’re right about that. Other people might disagree with them. They’re right too. I genuinely mean it when I say that I’m happy if a review is overall positive and pretty much says, “I was a bit disappointed by this and that, but on the whole this is a good read and you should check it out.” Obviously, the more glowing the review the happier I am, but anything that brings attention to my books without downright slamming them is invaluable as far as I’m concerned.

BT’s Horrorscope review of RealmShift finished this way:

“Still, it is definitely worth the time spent reading it as Baxter manages to work with an intriguing list of characters, throws a thought provoking explanation of religion at the reader, and keeps everything moving at a rapid pace, while making some nice observations about today’s society and those within it. I look forward to reading the second instalment, MageSign, to see where the authors goes from here.”

His Horrorscope review of MageSign finished this way:

“Baxter has delivered a book which is better than the first one, which was pretty good to start with. If this trend continues, I’ll be looking forward to the next instalment.”

Regardless of various issues he had with the books (you can read the full reviews by clicking the links), these are the final thoughts that will resonate with people that read the review and they are the final thoughts of BT as a reviewer. I’m really happy with a result like that. One day I hope to get reviews for my work that do nothing but sing the praises of my flawless novels, but I can’t expect that from the outset. I can’t expect that for a long time yet, if ever.

And as for the things that reviewers have raised as issues within the work, things that made those reviews three or four star reviews rather five star reviews, well, I’ve certainly paid attention to those. I’ve thought about what’s been said, why it was said and what I can do to stop reviewers saying things like that in the future. Sometimes a reviewers negative comments will reflect more on the reviewer than the writer – a person’s personal preferences are often going to be at odds with mine. But it’s my job to recognise the things that I can use to improve my craft and work at implementing those every time I write something. If I’m precious about reviews all the time and just huff and puff about these useless reviewers that have no idea what they’re on about then I’ll never improve as a writer.

This is a cross-posting of a blog entry dated 9/13/09 from Alan Baxter Online.

Today I’m going to give you an excerpt from my book about my father.  Hello Alzheimer’s Good Bye Dad"  ISBN 1438278276 is a candid look at my father’s battle with Alzheimer’s.  Yes I know there are many books on the market much like this one, but mine is different.  I have caregiver tips throughout the book to help other families cope with the problems we faced. 

The book is sold by me and Amazon.  Also, the book can be found at Lemstone Christian Bookstore in Collins Road Plaza across from Linndale Mall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

You might be surprised if you knew how many people with Alzheimer’s are driving.  In my father’s case, I knew I had to prevent him from driving even though he had renewed his driver’s license.

As with so many families, that didn’t stop me from feeling guilty for depriving him.  My heart was feeling sorry for the father that was instead of seeing my father the man with diminished capacities.

The Friday Dad had to go back to see the license examiner I was scheduled to work at 2 P.M. I took Dad to town when the office opened at noon. He passed the examiner’s eye test this time with the doctor’s okay and his new glasses, but he still had to drive. There was a semi test scheduled ahead of Dad, and he had to wait. Afraid this would make me late for work, I took Dad with me down to Harold’s parents and asked to use the phone. Harold was off work with a bout of tendinitis. I called to see if he was up to coming in to wait with Dad until he took his driving test. Harold came, and I left for work in our car. Really I was glad to get out of there. I didn’t want to be there when Dad was told he couldn’t drive anymore. I knew it would break his heart to hear that.

When I got home from work that night I was in for a surprise. Harold told me that Dad had gotten his driver’s license renewed. I couldn’t believe it. The lady who rode with Dad came back just a little shaken up, sat down by Harold, and asked him if he had ridden with Dad recently. Harold told her no, because we always took them where they needed to go so Dad hadn’t had to drive lately. She said he was not very good at driving, but she would renew his license for a year with a 15 mile radius on it so Dad could only drive to Keystone or Belle Plaine. Harold said Dad seemed content with that. At least, he had his driver’s license. Fine, but we still had to worry that he’d take the car, and we knew it wasn’t safe for him to drive so Mom continued to keep the keys hid in her purse. When Dad asked for them, she told him Duane or I had the keys, and he could have them when we brought them back. That seem to be all right with him at the moment.

When Mom mentioned that Dad had been looking for the keys, I asked him where he wanted to go, and he said, "No where right now." He never wanted to go anywhere, and I knew that. At least not with Mom and me. I started asking him if he’d like to go with us when we went shopping just to keep him realizing that he had a way to go if he wanted it. I imagine that he looked for the keys to the car when we were gone just like he hunted for his pipes when Mom hid them, because he still wanted to drive himself somewhere just like he always had.

Often, Dad walked down to the garage to check to see if the car was there, spent time sitting behind the wheel, or looking under the hood. He was always anxious about his most important possession. Maybe he was afraid the "bunch up north" was going to take his car like they took his guns.

The next year in October when it came time to renew Dad’s driver license, he had bronchitis. His memory had slipped a little more so he didn’t remember about his license, and I thought that was a good thing. We’d let it expire and not say anything. After all, he wasn’t going to get his car keys back so we could just let him forget about the time going by to renew his driver’s license. Wrong! One day, Mom wasn’t in the house, and the phone rang. Dad rarely ever answered the phone, because he hated talking on the it. Usually he’d say he didn’t hear well enough, and later on, he either slept though the rings or moved too slow to get to the phone before the caller hung up. Once in a rare while, he’d answer when I called. He’d talk okay to me, but he’d never deliver my messages to Mom. He always forgot.

This was one call he didn’t forget for a long time. It was the Iowa Department of Transportation calling to tell him that his driver license had expired, and he needed to send in his license by mail.

Dad took the call hard. He couldn’t understand how the government could take away his license when he had been a perfect driver. It didn’t matter that he never drove anymore, but this was just one more thing taken away from him. Mom said he sat down and cried. I never saw my dad cry. Since then I have seen people with Alzheimer’s disease cry for what seems like no reason at all, and I think of my dad. Maybe these people don’t remember the reason why they are crying, but they had a reason, too.

This article, from P. Bradley Robb, originally appeared on Fiction Matters on 7/8/09.

Whether you’re self publishing or polishing your work to send to agents and editors, you’ll need to [do] some heavy edits. Line editing, going through your writing line by line and judging every word on [its] own merits, is a part of the writing process, marking the departure from writing for yourself and the start of writing as a job. With line edits, you’re focusing on tone, consistency, and style – the combination of which bring your story to life in the best possible way. Here are five lessons I personally employ when doing fiction editing.

Whenever Possible, Edit On Paper

I prefer a double spaced, 12 point, monospaced font. Usually that means Courier. The double spacing gives me room to write. The font face and size means I can easily judge word count – a page in this setup averages 250 words. Editing on paper allows you to hold the work, and doing so makes it feel more real. It’s there, it has weight, and just like reading a book, one lets you visually gauge how far you still have to go.

Whenever Possible, Edit in Ink

The other reason I prefer to edit on paper is because, for all they can do with a computer, it still isn’t as flexible as pen and paper. Yes, the modern word processor allows you to flag content with comments, to highlight, to underline, and even to strike through, but you have to pass through buttons and menus to do so. When working with pen and paper, the editing flow isn’t disturbed by attempting to translate natural motions into computer language. Even working with a tablet PC or a Wacom tablet doesn’t proof to be as easy or intuitive. So, for ease of use, pen and paper make things easier.

Read the rest of the article, including tips #3-5, on Fiction Matters.