The Second Sentence

The Revision Project

2012-02-29T11:43:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned last week, I've set myself two projects to work on. I'd like to try blogging a little bit about my progress to keep myself motivated. Writing about what I'm working on in my journal has always helped me, so I thought it might be fun to share a little bit of the process here.

The first and biggest endeavor is the complete revision of a novel that I began in May of 2010. I wrote a little more than half of it, dropped it for a while, and then used NaNoWriMo 2010 to challenge myself to finish the first (handwritten) draft. After that, being pretty much overwhelmed by all the things that were wrong with it, mainly plot-wise, I put it away and haven't touched it since...except once in a while to read over what I felt were the best bits, to try and rekindle some enthusiasm for it.

I started out Monday by writing a new outline. I drew a little bit from the Snowflake Method and tried writing some summaries of the plot, and what was more helpful, some lists of the different characters' motivations and conflicts. The biggest step forward that I've made is creating a definite subplot for a secondary character, which ties in with some of the themes of the book. A lot of the supporting or minor characters weren't even in my first draft, or just began to filter into it halfway through the story, but they're being a tremendous help now. The story was a single thin thread of plot before—now I can improve the flow by alternating the original scenes with new ones involving the subplot.

The first few chapters are going to be my biggest problem, I can see. The first draft dropped a chunk of backstory the size and weight of a ton of bricks in the first two chapters...I can get rid of that easily enough. The problem I'm struggling with right now is how to introduce those minor characters who popped into my head halfway through writing the first draft—they need to come in earlier.

The second project, meanwhile, consists of five (unrelated) unfinished short stories—four Westerns and a Civil War story—which I'm going to take one at a time until I complete them all. So far I'm almost done with the first one. I'm really hoping to finish it off tomorrow—it would be such a satisfying feeling to be able to check the first item off my to-do list!

What about you? Anybody else have projects you're challenging yourselves to finish?

Tagged Again

2012-02-27T07:00:00.002-05:00

I've been tagged again, this time by Katrina DeLallo (thanks, Katrina!), for a quiz called Blog Tag. Slightly different rules this time. I have to answer eleven questions, then make up eleven new ones of my own and pass them on.

1. If you could be a book character, who would it be?

I've gotten this question before, but I always find it hard to answer. I think I've said Anne of Green Gables would be fun.

2. Superpower?

Well, I've always thought it would be nice to be able to snap my fingers like Mary Poppins and clean up a messy room in an instant.

3. Do you prefer illustrated or non-illustrated novels?

I don't mind illustrated, but I kind of like to picture the characters in my own way.

4. Fantasy or Science-fiction?

Well, I honestly don't read either, but if I did I'd probably pick fantasy.

5. Can you write in a noisy environment, or does it have to be quiet?

Quiet is much better for me.

6. How many books can you read in a day?

If it's not too long, I can easily read a book in a day. I think I've read two in a day at some point.

7. Favourite author?

B.M. Bower. O. Henry is a close second.

8. Favourite illustrator?

Hmmm. Never really thought about that. I like N.C. Wyeth. And I've always loved Scott Gustafson's illustrations for this edition of Peter Pan.

9. Middle-Grade or Young Adult novels?

Again, I really don't know much about either, when it comes to contemporary books. When I was in those age ranges I devoured mostly historical fiction, and had favorites in both categories.

10. One person in the world you wish you could meet?

I honestly can't think of an answer for this one.

11. One place in the world you wish you could go?

I've always dreamed of visiting the Alps—Austria (definitely Salzburg!), Switzerland, etc.

Now for my new set of questions. I'll keep on in the tradition of the reading/writing theme:

1. Novels or short stories?
2. Do you usually read a book before or after watching the film version?
3. Are you a fast writer or do you work slowly?
4. Who is a favorite obscure or forgotten author you'd like to see get more attention?
5. Best mystery you've ever read?
6. What book made you laugh the hardest?
7. Have you read any author's complete works?
8. What place used as the setting in a book you've read would you like to visit?
9. What is your favorite BBC miniseries adaptation?
10. If you had the chance to write the screenplay for a classic novel adaptation (whether or not it's been done before), which would you pick?
11. Do you tell people where you got your inspiration for stories, or keep it a deep dark secret?

Now, since I'm terrible at this tagging business, I'm going to deviate from the rules, as I've done before, and issue a general invitation to my readers to tag themselves. If you don't feel like blogging it, feel free to chime in with answers in the comments!

Sir Walter Scott on (Not) Responding to Critics

2012-02-25T09:03:00.000-05:00

If a man is determined to make a noise in the world, he is as sure to encounter abuse and ridicule, as he who gallops furiously through a village must reckon on being followed by the curs in full cry. Experienced persons know that in stretching to flog the latter, the rider is very apt to catch a bad fall; nor is an attempt to chastise a malignant critic attended with less danger to the author. On this principle, I let parody, burlesque, and squibs find their own level; and was cautious never to catch them up, as schoolboys do, to throw them back against the naughty boy who fired them off, wisely remembering that they are in such cases apt to explode in the hand.

~ Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1832)

When I came across this while reading the other night (in footnotes to a Kindle edition of Scott's collected works!) I was struck by how perfectly it applied to something that modern-day authors are frequently warned against—responding to negative reviews online. The Internet may have made it faster and easier to get into trouble that way, but apparently it's not such a new problem after all.

Of Mice and Writers

2012-02-22T09:42:00.000-05:00

I don't know what it is that mice are always planning when it goes "aft agley," but I certainly know what they feel like. Nothing that I planned for this month has worked out, but I'm beginning to think that may actually work in my favor.

I was getting along okay with a small project, when about two weeks ago I came down with a bad head cold. That derailed everything for a whole week. A cold can knock me for a pretty big loop! It was no use trying to write anything, so I stayed in bed, used up a whole box of tissues and a whole box of peppermint tea, read a few books and amused myself by adding to my Goodreads shelves. I'm really enjoying Goodreads now! It's a lot of fun remembering and adding books already read, and browsing for new ones to put on my to-read list.

Anyway, once the worst of the cold was over, I still couldn't get back to work. I had about as much energy as a mouse with his best-laid plans in tatters. I went through a lot of false starts and stops, getting more and more frustrated as everything I touched seemed to become progressively awful. But gradually I realized what part of my problem was. I was frustrated with myself because I couldn't accomplish anything, and the reason for that is that I've got too many unfinished projects lying around. I can't focus on one thing when I'm feeling guilty about all those other things I started and dropped and should really be working on. So yesterday I decided I had to make some changes and some decisions, and come up with a plan to finish these things off one by one. Nothing new till I manage that.

My mom suggested a new kind of schedule—split the week between two projects. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday for one, Thursday and Friday for the other. That'll keep me from getting too bored with one project, but working a few days in a row on the same thing will be better than alternating days and losing my focus between them. I mean to stick to it, and if it works, keep up the pattern until all incomplete work is finished.

Technology: Eggs in a Fallible Basket

2012-02-20T11:21:00.000-05:00

This past week there seems to have been a flurry of articles about authors, primarily bestselling and literary authors, speaking slightingly of various forms of technology and especially ebooks. When it comes to news I'm typically a headline-skimmer, only clicking through if something appears particularly interesting, so I was aware of this without having read all the details. But the other day I read David Gaughran's column at IndieReader.com, "Franzen, E-books and Bathtubs," about author Jonathan Franzen's somewhat absurd criticisms of ebooks, and though I agreed with Gaughran's take on the incident, it did make me think again of a concern that has been in the back of my mind even as I've been wholeheartedly participating in the digital revolution.

Now, as anybody who's been reading this blog for a while probably knows, I own a Kindle and love it. I love being able to carry around a whole library of books that I might never even have discovered without it. I agree that the ebook revolution offers tremendous opportunities for authors; I've self-published one ebook and I'm in the process of readying more. I find HTML formatting fun, for goodness' sakes. (On the other hand, outside of ebooks I'd probably be considered the next thing to primitive by modern standards. I don't even own a cell phone.) In other words, I'm not arguing against ebooks at all. But I don't want to see print books becoming too overlooked either, for the simple reason that I don't think technology of any kind is infallible.

When I read Louis L'Amour's memoir Education of a Wandering Man—written back in the 1980s when technology as we know it was still in its infancy—I was particularly struck by this passage, not least because I'd had similar thoughts of my own before:

"Books as books must be preserved. There is an effort now to preserve everything by mechanical means, but of what use will they be to a man who has no power? No means of reproducing the sounds or the words? A book...needs nothing but an eye, a brain, and the ability to read.

"If in some distant future, someone should come upon a library of ours, even if he could not read, he could through illustrations rediscover much otherwise lost. He would have no machine with which to play a tape; he would have no source of power."

L'Amour wasn't talking about some abstract sentimental value of print books; he was speaking of their simple practical value. And I think he was right. I've heard a lot of talk about how it's easy to re-download your library of books or music from "the cloud" if harm befalls your devices—but where does it leave you if something happens to the cloud? You can call me naïve or old-fashioned if you like, but I can't help viewing technology as a fragile, glittering house of cards climbing higher and higher, each new innovation depending entirely on all the layers beneath it. I think the more our society becomes dependent on technology, the bigger the effect if something goes wrong with it. Look what a few days' power outage does to the average American home.

Where modern authors foregather, in places such as online forums, you're pretty sure to find a discussion thread on the best ways of backing up your work, and how important it is to have several backup copies in different places in case technological disaster befalls one of them. I think navigating the ebook revolution with caution is just this same approach to the bigger picture. I think it's very easy to get so excited about the possibilities of new ebook technology that we forget to think things through and look ahead. I just don't think people should put all their eggs in one basket. Like I said, I'm all for taking advantages of these new opportunities, but still hold back an egg or two in your hand. I don't think we should ever leave physical copies out of the equation if we want our books to have a lasting life.

With Help From Mysteries

2012-02-16T09:28:00.002-05:00

I have a guest post up this week at Aside From Writing, on how reading mysteries provides inspiration for my own writing—with a little about a mystery author I've been reading recently, Anna Katharine Green, and one of her most entertaining recurring characters. Check it out here!

Book Review: The Golden Cat

2012-02-13T15:16:00.001-05:00

The Golden Cat was a surprise—a straight-out whodunit (and a locked-room mystery at that) from one of the big-name Western writers of old, Max Brand. But since Brand wrote a little bit of everything, I suppose it shouldn't be too surprising.

It's told in first-person by John Jones, one of the offbeat narrators Brand liked to employ—an unremarkable, everyman sort of character who tags along with and recounts the exploits of the more attractive or exciting characters (though in this case Jones has slightly more of a personal stake in the story than some of Brand's other narrators of this type). Jones and his friend Dennis Rourke are hired to escort a group of Eastern travelers to a remote, half-ruined Spanish hacienda in the mountains. The party includes Frances Mornay, the beautiful, delicate young woman who owns the hacienda; her uncle, her fiance, her young female companion and a shady associate of the fiance's. And there's loads of trouble waiting for all of them. The uncle, Captain Palliser, a crippled, irascible old former sailor, believes that someone is after him (for reasons he won't reveal), plus the hacienda comes complete with an old legend of a ghost and a curse on Frances Mornay's family, several of whom are supposed to have died there under mysterious circumstances. And there's a mysterious stranger on horseback hanging around. So when Captain Palliser is murdered in his locked bedroom, there's plenty of suspects and more than one mystery to solve.

The book gets off to a somewhat slow start, with several chapters that don't do much for the story, but once the Eastern party make their appearance and the trip to the hacienda begins things keep moving. Plot was not always one of Brand's strong points; perhaps the fact that some of his full-length works (including this one) were originally magazine serials accounts for their veering off in a different direction midway through. In this case the opening seems to set up Rourke as the most important character, but then he disappears shortly before the murder and is absent for some of the most crucial scenes.

But Brand does quite a good job handling the mystery aspects—the different suspects' motives and the physical clues—though not in as organized a fashion as an author practiced in writing mysteries. By the time the solution was revealed I had several guesses that turned out to be partly true, but was still surprised by some things. He also provides a good detective in the form of Sheriff Jack Shevlin, a man who thoroughly enjoys his business of crime-solving, who arrives handily on the spot at just the right time, having been tracking down one of the party on suspicion of another, unrelated crime. Jones serves as a sort of amateur assistant to Shevlin, but at the same time is trying to shield another of the suspects, making things even more complicated.

I was a little surprised by a bit of mild swearing—I didn't think it was magazine-acceptable back then—but it's infrequent and wasn't enough to really mar my reading experience. As far as the characters and general tone of the story goes, I don't know if it would really be a top favorite Brand western for me, but it's the mystery element that makes it interesting.

Proofs are for Proofing

2012-02-10T09:24:00.000-05:00

My proof copy of The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories arrived in the mail yesterday. It looks just beautiful! It's a strange feeling to have a copy of my own book in the house—and yet one of the strangest things about it is that it's not strange, if that makes any sense. It somehow seems perfectly natural to have a crisp, shiny new paperback with my name on the cover lying there on my bed as I sit scribbling away in a notebook at something else that might be inside the covers of a paperback one day.

The speed of print-on-demand is pretty amazing, by the way. I got a shipping notice the day I ordered the proof. That means they printed the book and sent it out in one morning! In the back matter, under "Made in the USA" it has the date, February 6th.

Now it's time for Self-Publishing Lesson #1,492: Proof copies require proofing. I had so hoped, after all the time and hard work I put into this, that the first copy would be perfect—that I could just confirm that everything was as it should be and authorize it for publication the same day. But there are a few tiny things to correct. I need to add a couple more hyphens (yes, you heard that correctly) and there was a very slight discrepancy between some page headers. And there's an issue to correct with the front cover, which seems bound and determined to have me hanging on to sanity by my fingernails before I'm through with it. But as always, I reassure myself with the thought that once I get this done correctly, all future projects will be that much easier because I'll know my way around.

Dickens Rides the TV Range

2012-02-07T07:00:00.169-05:00

Today, in honor of Charles Dickens' bicentennial celebration, I thought it would be fun to look at the appearance of his influence in a place that might surprise you—the TV Western. There were actually several different episodes of classic Westerns that prominently featured Dickens' works in the plot...and in one instance, featured an appearance by the man himself.

Bonanza: The Far, Far Better Thing

This episode finds Little Joe and his friend Tuck (Warren Vanders) vying for the attentions of Lucy Melviney (Brenda Scott), an Eastern girl who's enamored with romantic literature, especially the finale of Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities. When she recounts it to her admirers, Joe is unimpressed. He opines that Sydney Carton would have been better off to "let well enough alone" and be relieved of a rival. (Lucy's description for some reason omits the fact that Charles Darnay was the heroine's husband, not merely the man she loved.) Later, when Lucy's romanticism puts the trio in danger from some renegade Indians, Joe gets a chance to save the day by taking Tuck's place in a to-the-death foot race with the Indians in pursuit...and is thoroughly amazed afterwards to find himself being hailed as Sydney Carton II.

Watch "The Far, Far Better Thing" here on YouTube.

Bonanza: A Passion For Justice

And here Charles Dickens himself (Jonathan Harris) visits Virginia city, ostensibly on his second American tour. (Oddly enough, Virginia City has a literary society, even though in "The Far, Far Better Thing" a season later, Little Joe would be amazed at Lucy's assumption that they had bookstores.) Dickens gives a reading of the famous "Please, sir, I want some more" scene from Oliver Twist, which ends unpleasantly when he finds that the audience is already familiar with his works from unauthorized versions printed by American publishers, which he views as piracy. After denouncing and threatening to close up the newspaper that is serializing the The Old Curiosity Shop without permission, the author is implicated when the same newspaper office is vandalized, and gets himself deeper and deeper in trouble by refusing to give an alibi or pay his fines. References to different Dickens books are scattered all throughout the episode—several people ask him to please not let Little Nell die—and Dickens recounts the familiar story of his childhood to Hoss.

Watch "A Passion For Justice" here on YouTube.

The Virginian: The Small Parade

In one of this episode's intertwining plotlines, the Virginian, Trampas and Steve encounter Ellen Beecher (Barbara Barrie), a woman who is caring for a motley crew of orphaned and abandoned children until she is able to place them in an orphanage. Miss Beecher makes a living for her "family" by giving readings from Dickens in the towns they pass through on their journey. She reads an extract: the same famous scene from Oliver Twist—a more dramatic and poignant rendition than that in Bonanza, I thought, and a longer excerpt too, extending almost to the end of the chapter. It makes such an impression on the three cowboys that they are uneasy at the thought of the seven lovable children going to an orphanage like the one described in the book, and decide to pitch in and try to find homes for the children themselves. I got a chuckle from the scene where Trampas is bemused by the children's literary vocabulary when they're at play; it reminds me of my own family.

Watch "The Small Parade" here on YouTube.

And others

In 1957, the anthology series GE True Theater aired an episode titled "The Trail to Christmas," a Western retelling of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. According to IMDB, it was adapted from an episode of the radio show "The Six-Shooter" starring James Stewart, who also appeared in the TV version (narrating the story, I believe). John McIntire and Sam Edwards played Ebeneezer Scrooge and Bob Cratchit. I've never seen this, but I'd sure like to.

And a 1963 newspaper item claimed that attending a performance of the musical Oliver! inspired Wagon Train producer Howard Christie and writer Norman Jolley to create the episode "The David Garner Story." This one has a much looser connection to its source material than the others I've written about, but those who know their Dickens would probably recognize the parallels in the story of a young would-be thief (Randy Boone) trained by an older criminal (Peter Whitney) who is egging him on to commit his first crime.

Do you remember any of these episodes? Can you recall any other Western TV episodes (or movies) that mentioned books by Charles Dickens or featured them in the plot?

Liebster Award

2012-02-02T11:56:00.000-05:00

The other day I received the Liebster Award from Rena J. Traxel—thanks, Rena! The Liebster award (a German word meaning favourite) is for bloggers who have less then 200 followers. The award is designed to help bring new followers to their blogs. The rules are, I must share five things about myself, and pass the award on to five other blogs. So here goes...

1. I'm half Irish and half Armenian on my father's side, and on my mother's side I'm Irish, German, English, French and American Indian.

2. I have a weakness for vintage sheet music. I'm no systematic collector; I just often find myself wanting to play an old song that's out of print.

3. My favorite dessert is apple pie.

4. I've read through the complete works of O. Henry multiple times.

5. When I was seven years old, I was in a full-scale production of The Nutcracker. I was a toy soldier, and I was the smallest person in the whole company. I had a solo—I got to step forward out of the line and shoot a mouse.

Now, to pass on the award:

Writing With Style

JTWebster Books

The Western Wordslinger

Buddies In the Saddle

Laurie's Wild West

Adventures in Hyphenation

2012-01-30T15:30:00.000-05:00

For the past few days I've been working on getting The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories formatted for print publication. (Paperback edition hopefully coming within the month!) More new things to learn. It all went very smoothly, up to a point. I had to do some wrangling with headers and footers that wouldn't behave (well, to state it a little more accurately, I didn't know why they were behaving that way), but I got that straightened out. Then, at the end of one long day, while staring at my pages on the screen with a dull headache, I realized that part of the reason for that headache was undoubtedly 11pt Garamond font. I decided I did not like it. So I switched to 11pt Book Antiqua, which not only looked much more like most paperbacks I've read, it was slightly larger and more solid, hence easier on the eyes.

The catch? I had already gone through and hyphenated a lot of words to make my right-justified Garamond text spread out smoothly and avoid stretched lines. Of course changing the font changed the position of practically every line and paragraph, so all those hyphenated words were suddenly in the middle of the lines rather than breaking at the ends. So I had to go through and take them all out. I ran spellcheck, figuring that would pick them up easily. Then I started over to hyphenate my right-justified Book Antiqua text. But then I began spotting some of the old hyphenated words that spellcheck had somehow missed.

A fine time to discover that Microsoft Word accepts the older usage that hyphenates words like "after-noon," "break-fast" and "child-hood."

So I had to use the Ctrl+F feature (possibly the single most helpful tool ever invented) and check every single hyphen in the book—over three hundred. The task was't without its entertaining elements. Did you ever, for fun, take a paper or a book page and read off just the first word of every line? The results are hilarious. Well, reading out all the hyphenated words in a book can be pretty funny, too. "Oft-mentioned," "much-despised," "high-stepping," "sour-faced," "man-to-man," "steam-engine," "well-thatched," "hand-luggage," "wild-goose," "tug-of-war," "hot-tempered," "ill-will"—that's just a sampling from one story.

Anyway, the results of the whole adventure are (1) I've learned to always choose my font first, and (2) I'm now slightly paranoid over an imagined stray hyphen somehow escaping my notice among those three-hundred-and-some. (There go three more. I've always liked hyphens, I guess.) I've got to proof it with Ctrl+F one more time just to make sure.

In Defense of the Run-On Sentence

2012-01-26T11:50:00.000-05:00

For most of my life, I've been used to seeing the run-on sentence defined as a grammatical error, every bit as bad as a misplaced modifier or an incorrect possessive apostrophe. Under the influence of elementary-school textbooks, I spent my earliest efforts as a writer in mortal terror of long sentences. Long sentences were not only bad (and I had a penchant for writing them); run-on sentences were flat-out incorrect. But this past month, I was reading Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (published in 1862), when I had a sudden revelation.

The run-on sentence is not an error. It is merely an antiquity.

It was an extremely liberating thought. The error that I had often struggled to avoid was no error after all; it was only a matter of taste that had become outdated. And if there's one thing I'm not afraid of, it's being old-fashioned. My own literary tastes have been largely shaped by classic books, so I enjoy their style. I like using outdated words, slang and usage in my own writing when the occasion calls for it, provided it's in a context that the modern reader can understand.

I didn't think through all this quite so thoroughly at the time, but the other day it all came back to me when I was reading Life On the Mississippi by Mark Twain and ran into this behemoth of a sentence (describing a steamboat):

She is long and sharp and trim and pretty; she has two tall, fancy-topped chimneys, with a gilded device of some kind swung between them; a fanciful pilot house, a glass and 'gingerbread', perched on top of the 'texas' deck behind them; the paddle-boxes are gorgeous with a picture or with gilded rays above the boat's name; the boiler deck, the hurricane deck, and the texas deck are fenced and ornamented with clean white railings; there is a flag gallantly flying from the jack-staff; the furnace doors are open and the fires glaring bravely; the upper decks are black with passengers; the captain stands by the big bell, calm, imposing, the envy of all; great volumes of the blackest smoke are rolling and tumbling out of the chimneys—a husbanded grandeur created with a bit of pitch pine just before arriving at a town; the crew are grouped on the forecastle; the broad stage is run far out over the port bow, and an envied deckhand stands picturesquely on the end of it with a coil of rope in his hand; the pent steam is screaming through the gauge-cocks, the captain lifts his hand, a bell rings, the wheels stop; then they turn back, churning the water to foam, and the steamer is at rest.

That single sentence runs for a whopping 215 words. Two hundred and fifteen! And Mark Twain is known as a great American writer. Evidently the run-on sentence wasn't considered an error in his day. (Notice how he keeps it going with semi-colons? Over a dozen of them. But that's another subject altogether.) And he was by no means the only one. I mean, how ironic is it that my old school textbook used an excerpt from Defoe's Robinson Crusoe as an example of the run-on sentence? If it had always been a literary no-no, Jane Austen would have been getting her manuscripts back in the Regency equivalent of manila envelopes. Watch her effortlessly break the 100-word mark in this sentence from Emma:

Matrimony, as the origin of change, was always disagreeable; and he was by no means yet reconciled to his own daughter's marrying, nor could ever speak of her but with compassion, though it had been entirely a match of affection, when he was now obliged to part with Miss Taylor too; and from his habits of gentle selfishness, and of being never able to suppose that other people could feel differently from himself, he was very much disposed to think Miss Taylor had done as sad a thing for herself as for them, and would have been a great deal happier if she had spent all the rest of her life at Hartfield.

I can't help wondering if the run-on sentence's falling into disfavor is partly a consequence of ever-shortening attention spans. What would it take to hold a modern reader's interest throughout a sentence that fills an entire book page? But on the other hand, does it require anything more than the effort needed to hold a reader's interest throughout one book page with ten sentences on it, which total the same amount of words? So if you can keep a long sentence moving and keep it interesting, well—why not?

As an aside, I make it a rule not to talk politics on this blog or other social media. But leaving all political convictions out of it, I found this article on the grade level of State of the Union addresses (since 1934) interesting, and ironic in that it appeared just as I was thinking about this topic. By the Flesch-Kincaid readability test, "longer sentences and sentences utilizing words with more syllables produce higher scores." Not only was this year's speech one of the lowest-scoring, but there is "a general pattern that finds as State of the Union Addresses have perhaps become more and more political, they have been written more and more simplistically." [article's emphasis]

Now, before everybody starts throwing their old grammar textbooks at me, I'm not advocating the use of the 200-word sentence, or even saying that I write them myself. These days I more often have trouble fixing a too-short, abrupt sentence than I do with streamlining or trimming a long one. But with the encouragement of Braddon

An antiquated maverick. I kind of like that.

Weekend Odds & Ends #18 (Weekday Edition)

2012-01-23T14:10:00.000-05:00

No, this is not appearing because I forgot to post it on the weekend—to put it bluntly, I'm so busy concentrating on a revision project that I just couldn't think of anything to write for a blog post today. I've got just a sentence or two left to tweak on a story that I've wanted to finish for a long time, and I mean to get it done by the end of the afternoon. So here's a miscellaneous bunch of links, mostly things that I've shared on Twitter over the past week:

~ In a guest post at K.M. Weiland's blog, Becke Martin Davis shares some excerpts about writing from Agatha Christie's autobiography. I read the Autobiography this past year and really enjoyed it—there's more good stuff where these quotes came from.

~ I've always wanted to see Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch, a compilation movie made up of clips from 78 different B-Westerns strung together into one "story". It sounds hilarious—and I was delighted to find it's now available on Amazon Instant Video.

~ Here's the first in a two-part series of posts at Jim Lane's Cinedrome on The Magnificent Ambersons, the second of which is supposed to cover the Orson Welles film adaptation (another film I'd like to see). It discusses the plot of the book in full, so there's spoilers if you haven't read it, but the opening paragraphs on the background and Booth Tarkington's inspiration for the book are interesting. My favorite part is the amazing photo of the house that inspired the Amberson mansion.

~ Speaking of houses—if I ever went to England, this is where I'd want to stay! I've always adored this house, used as Barton Cottage in Sense & Sensibility (1995).

~ Finally, The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories was featured at Short Story Symposium this week, with an excerpt from one of the stories in the collection, "Delayed Deposit."

Mrs. Todgers on the Passion for Gravy

2012-01-19T10:44:00.000-05:00

"Presiding over an establishment like this, makes sad havoc with the features, my dear Miss Pecksniffs," said Mrs. Todgers. "The gravy alone, is enough to add twenty years to one's age, I do assure you."

"Lor!" cried the two Miss Pecksniffs.

"The anxiety of that one item, my dears," said Mrs. Todgers, "keeps the mind continually upon the stretch. There is no such passion in human nature, as the passion for gravy among commercial gentlemen. It's nothing to say a joint won't yield—a whole animal wouldn't yield—the amount of gravy they expect each day at dinner. And what I have undergone in consequence," cried Mrs. Todgers, raising her eyes and shaking her head, "no one would believe!"

~ From Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens

****

I would believe you, Mrs. Todgers, for I assure you that the passion for gravy is not limited to commercial gentlemen—it runs rampant in the best of families. And you, my dear Mrs. Todgers, never experienced that trial peculiar to the modern age, of producing the required amount of gravy from a single can of broth.

A Case of Blog Piracy

2012-01-16T15:07:00.003-05:00

I've long suspected that some of my posts have been plagiarized or borrowed from offline. According to my Blogger stats, my most popular post by far is my review of Mark Twain's "The Private History of a Campaign That Failed"—and the top four search terms are all variations of "the private history of a campaign that failed summary." My posts on favorite O. Henry stories are also popular, and I've seen a number of different search keywords such as "examples of foreshadowing in o henry". That sounds like school research to me. The thing about this type of piracy is that you will likely never know it happened, and thus can't do anything about it. But yesterday I actually ran into a blatant copying of one of my blog posts online, in a place I never expected.

Last January I wrote a book review of Tiger Eye by B.M. Bower (first published in 1929), one of my favorite Western novels. Yesterday afternoon I did a quick Google search for the book, trying to find a picture of the original dustjacket. On the first page of results was a Kindle edition in Amazon's store, and the product description was a word-for-word excerpt from my blog post:

Click to enlarge

I've had my blog clearly marked with a copyright notice in the upper right-hand column ever since I started it, so this is obviously copyright violation. I haven't had to take any action yet—I observed that the book is not actually on sale in the Kindle store; a search on Amazon will not find it but it still comes up in the Google search. There was also a used hardcover linked to the Kindle edition, but as of this morning that has also disappeared from Amazon. There is no publisher listed for the Kindle edition.

I'm still a little amazed that somebody would do this. Last year when I wrote that review there was no other information about Tiger Eye online except at Project Gutenberg Canada, as I mentioned in the original post, and some used copies on AbeBooks. Was it my review that attracted the attention of a public-domain publisher, and suggested that they should produce a Kindle edition? That's nice, but...stealing from my review for the product description? That's not. And as a self-publisher, I don't want to be linked to the production of a poorly-formatted Kindle edition (botched italics in the first paragraph, no spacing...).

Right now I'm just keeping an eye on this; if I see the Kindle edition back on sale I'll report a copyright violation to Amazon. If anybody sees an ebook edition of Tiger Eye for sale at any other site with the above text in the description, it's being used without my permission and I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know about it.

1/17 update: On the advice of my parents and commenters, I sent an email to Amazon's copyright department this morning, and I'm currently waiting to hear back.

1/19 update: I received an answer to my email this evening, which said exactly what I expected—that the ebook is no longer available for sale, though the direct link to the page may still work for a time.

Poirot Runs and Leaps: Or, I Revisit Styles

2012-01-12T16:13:00.000-05:00

My mom and I have started an informal reading project: we're reading through Agatha Christie's novels in the order of their publication. We're not setting any time limits; we're just going to pick them up when we feel like it. We've both read most of them before, though in no order; but we'll each be catching a few that are new to us along the way. I missed Death Comes as the End, Christie's murder-mystery set in ancient Egypt, and a couple of her international thrillers; and I skipped Endless Night because I accidentally read spoilers for the solution. On the other hand, Mom hasn't read Ordeal By Innocence or a couple of others.

Some that I've already read will still be fresh—I've actually forgotten the identity of the murderer in two. I got Agatha Christie's Murder In the Making by John Curran (the follow-up to Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks) for Christmas this year, and after skimming it I decided to wait and read the notes on each novel more carefully after I re-read the books themselves. And I think it might be fun to include the old movie versions of And Then There Were None and Witness For the Prosecution when we get to them.

Dust jacket of the first edition

So far we're through the first novel, The Mysterious Affair At Styles. This one and The Secret Adversary, Christie's second book, have apparently fallen into the public domain, so you can get them for free on Kindle. However, I wouldn't recommend that format for first-time readers of Styles. A couple of important clues, pieces of paper discovered during the investigation, were presented as images within the text of the book, reproductions of handwriting. Whoever put together the different public-domain ebook editions evidently didn't have access to those images, so they left them out altogether, not even bothering to add a line explaining what the words were! But if you're acquainted with the book you can draw enough from the dialogue to get an idea of their meaning.

Mom remarked that in The Mysterious Affair At Styles Hercule Poirot seemed very animated, compared to what he would be in later books. In fact, he's downright lively! Not only are his foreign mannerisms and habits of speech a little more exaggerated, but he is much more physically active. He's described as 'gambolling', 'capering', and rushing about 'like a mad bull.' Did he ever again match the exuberance of the scene where he reacts to the discovery of a clue by exclaiming "I run! I leap!" and putting his words into literal practice? I can't recall...but with more than thirty Poirot adventures on the list ahead of me, I guess I'll find out.

"Into a Vortex"

2012-01-09T07:00:00.018-05:00

"...When the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon...sleep forsook her eyes, meals stood untasted, day and night were all too short..."

~ Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

At last, the week of taking down decorations, putting away gifts and cleaning house over with, I'm back to work. Not having written since before Christmas, I'm more than ready and eager to go. Anxious to go would be a better description. I'd like nothing better than to go "into a vortex," as Jo March put it. At this point I don't want to read, I don't want to write blog posts, don't want to watch movies, and wouldn't want to make meals if I could help it (which I can't); I just want to write!

Over the holidays I found myself often thinking about the sheer number of story ideas that I have milling around in my mind, and thinking about how I really just have to apply myself to getting them written. Just write. I'm never short of ideas, so I feel like I'm always trying to play catch-up with myself. I don't know if I'll ever get to be a faster writer, but I at least want to be a consistent one. I want to get things done—no matter how long it may take, at least to always be doing something.

Right now the something is a historical mystery...I'm calling it a novella, though I have no idea exactly how long it will end up. Today's project is to straighten out some rather messy pages I wrote over the weekend, and then move onward. New notebook, freshly refilled pen, a stash of Christmas candy for occasional refreshment...the prospect looks bright.

Best Movies Watched in 2011

2012-01-06T07:00:00.003-05:00

This post was a tougher job for me than the last one—not because I didn't know what to put on the list, or how to order it, but because I seem to have an even harder time explaining what I liked about a movie than I do with books. But I'll do my best! Here's my top favorites of the movies I watched this year:

A Night to Remember (1958)

I originally didn't want to watch this movie at all. It was my mom's pick. I thought it would either be boring or too tragic. But Mom convinced me to sit down and watch it with her, and...well, we ended up watching it twice. It's a beautiful piece of filmmaking, skilfully portraying the details as well as the drama of the Titanic disaster, and one of those rare films that completely pull you into the time period, with beautiful, meticulously accurate costumes and sets and the right style of acting. The cast was all good, but there weren't any overly showy characters or a special focus on certain ones to distract from the main thrust of the story.

12 Angry Men (1957)

At the beginning of this film, when the twelve men entered the jury room and were milling about before sitting down, I wondered how I would ever be able to tell them apart, let alone remember who was who. And I did wonder how you could make a whole movie out of a group of men talking in one room. Well, I found out. Before long the jurors had transformed into twelve distinct, lifelike personalities, and the way the film developed as they talked their way through the case holds your interest from first to last. An impressive piece of screenwriting, and terrific acting all around.

Green For Danger (1946)

This is just a tremendously entertaining movie! It's possibly the only really good book-to-screen adaptation I've seen of a murder-mystery, managing to preserve the same criminal, motive, means and the most important clues, even though it does trim out a suspect, a subplot and additional details. While the description of the military hospital in the book seems to indicate a modern building, the movie makes it an old country estate converted into a hospital, which adds even more atmosphere. But the best part of the movie is summed up in six words: Alastair Sim as a police inspector. He steals every single scene he appears in, and even some that he doesn't—his dry narration of the film is wonderful. I wish he'd done a dozen more movies like this one.

The Spiral Staircase (1945)

I really enjoyed the historical setting of this one too. I hadn't realized it was a period film before watching it. It's a classic mystery set-up, with a small circle of suspects concentrated in an elaborate old mansion on a stormy night—the perfect atmosphere! The well-crafted script drops a number of pointed hints in different directions that create possible motives for all the characters. I did pick out the correct person, but only a short time before their identity was revealed in the movie.

Follow Me, Boys! (1966)

This one is a slightly lesser-known Disney film I'd been meaning to watch for a while, and finally caught up with last spring. This time around it was I who practically dragged reluctant siblings to watch it (only succeeding because the basketball game they preferred had turned into a blowout, so my brother tells me). By the end of a month the movie had been watched so often that I think everybody in the house knows it forwards and backwards. It stars Fred MacMurray as the founder of a small-town Boy Scout troop, and features a really fine performanceby Kurt Russell—maybe one of the best I've seen by a child actor—as the town tough kid whom he eventually wins over. It's not quite as polished as some of Disney's finest live-action films, but it's a whole lot of fun. (And the Sherman Brothers title song will stick in your head for weeks.)

Honorable Mention: The Virginian

Yes, this is a TV show, not a movie, but I felt it belonged on the list of favorite viewing for this year. I stumbled onto it in early summer and it quickly became my favorite TV Western. (The early seasons, that is.) A great regular cast, lots of excellent guest stars, fine writing and beautiful filming. The first season varies somewhat in quality, but seasons two and three are better. I haven't been watching it in order; I've been picking and choosing episodes.

Runners-up—movies that I enjoyed, but didn't necessarily make it into my top favorites: The Petrified Forest (1936), Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Cottage To Let (1941), The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945), Random Harvest (1942), Undercurrent (1946), All This, and Heaven Too (1940).

Have you seen any of these movies? What were your favorite films seen this year?

Best Books Read in 2011

2012-01-03T07:00:00.103-05:00

Didn't I just mention recently that I liked making lists? Well, the New Year is a great time for making lists! And what's better than lists of books?

Consulting my record book, I find I read a little over 70 books in 2011 (excluding single shorts and books I'd read before). Here are my ten favorite reads of the year, in the order that I read them. There's a little bit of everything in here! And an interesting thing about this list is that I read seven out of the ten for free or almost-free on my Kindle.

The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington

I was impressed by this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of a wealthy, influential family's gradual decline during the industrialization of America at the turn of the last century, which seems to be a somehwat overlooked classic of American literature. Read my full review of the book here.

Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther

Different from the movie, but in some ways even better—short, beautifully written chapters that capture the little wonders and joys of everyday life. Read my full review here.

Once On a Time by A.A. Milne

A light-hearted, hilarious satire of the classic fairytale, filled with kings, princesses, spells and a villainous Countess who fancies herself as a poet. I don't think I've ever laughed harder than I did when reading this than I have at anything other than P.G. Wodehouse!

Land of the Burnt Thigh by Edith Eudora Kohl

A captivating memoir of two sisters' adventure in homesteading by themselves in South Dakota in the first decade of the 20th century. I couldn't put this one down—it reads almost like fiction, filled with colorful characters and adventures. Read my full review here.

Points West by B.M. Bower

This is one of my favorite Bower Westerns in spite of a few flaws. The only thing to really hold against it is a rushed final chapter that winds the story up much too abruptly. In this story the young protagonist leaves home after his father's tragic death and the loss of his inheritance, trying to escape his troubles, but ends up plunging himself into even more difficult and dangerous situations. It's written with the same mixture of appealing characters, humor and poignance that characterizes Bower's best work. One supporting character in particular, Mrs. Harris, absolutely steals every scene she appears in. Whenever I start it over from the beginning I forgive the ending.

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock
Delightfully funny, sweet satire about the residents and happenings in a little lakeside town of northeast Canada, that keeps you laughing and yet wishing all along that you could live in Mariposa yourself. Read my full review here.

Laddie by Gene Stratton-Porter

There's much more to this charming book than the central plot, a little girl's account of her adored elder brother's romance. It depicts a really vanished way of life in the prosperous (you could almost say affluent), self-sustaining American family farm; and the life of a large, loving family with a faith put into daily practice and an appreciation for knowledge and learning that goes beyond the boundaries of organized education. And Leon Stanton shares the award for scene-stealing supporting character with the aforementioned Mrs. Harris.

Green For Danger by Christianna Brand

A great classic murder-mystery and WWII novel combined—the setting is one of the most outstanding features of the book. It takes place in a British military hospital in the thick of the Blitz; the murder victim is an air-raid casualty who dies on the operating table, the suspects are the attendant doctors and nurses. You can read my brief review on Goodreads here.

Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West by Dorothy Wickenden

A fine adventure in historical nonfiction, filled with fascinating detail—the story of two girls from wealthy upstate New York families who traveled to rural Colorado to teach school in 1916, when the surrounding country still partook of much of the wild West. Read my full review here.

Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries by Melville Davisson Post

A collection of short mysteries in another unique setting, this time American—rural Virginia of the early 1800s. Similar to Chesterton's Father Brown stories with their theological overtones and musings on justice, but from a Protestant perspective, and a vivid glimpse into a period of history that I'm less familiar with. Read my full review here.

Have you read any of these? What were your favorite reads of 2011?

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T07:00:00.000-05:00

A very Happy New Year to all my readers and followers! I'll be back to regular posting on this blog sometime this week.

Leftover Blog Post Casserole

2011-12-29T08:00:00.000-05:00

I'm on vacation from the Internet this week, enjoying the holidays and probably eating more delicious Christmas-dinner leftovers than is good for me, so in the meantime, here's a few miscellaneous links for your perusal:

~ The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories got another wonderful review this month at Reviews From the Heart.

~ Here's something I wrote last month on how the music of Bob Nolan and the Sons of the Pioneers has influenced my writing in various ways (including the title story in my book).

~ And here's some sites of interest for Western readers and writers. The lack of websites devoted especially to Western books initially frustrated me a little as I was working on marketing, but that situation seems to be gradually changing:

WesternEbooks.com features Western authors and books.
Western Encounters (currently under construction) also has growing listings of Western books.
Rope & Wire's Social Side recently added a bookstore to their existing features, which include forums and discussion groups, photo galleries, blogs and more.
The Western Online has also been growing, now featuring book reviews and historical articles in addition to short fiction. Founder Matt Pizzolato, who recently published his own short story collection, also has a new blog at The Western Wordslinger.

'Twas the Week After Christmas, and the Book Was On Sale

2011-12-24T05:00:00.003-05:00

The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories is on sale for the holidays! From Christmas Eve through New Year's Day, get it for just 99 cents at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.

Smashwords customers, use coupon code TL83F at checkout to get your discount.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and happy reading!

Resolutions

2011-12-20T09:31:00.000-05:00

I've determined that there is definitely something to the old saying about women's fickleness, at least if you take my writing practices as evidence. I seldom end up working on the project I intended to. That's not to say I don't accomplish things, but it's not always what I started out to accomplish! That's one reason why I don't always blog in detail about current projects. Some authors can do that and make a good thing of it, too, but I'm sure I'd only make myself look like an idiot.

My writing resolution for 2011 was simple: get something published by the end of the year. I did accomplish that, and I'm very happy about it! I keep telling myself that I always ought to keep my goals simple and manageable, but I'm also one of those people who likes making lists. It's practically irresistible, writing out detailed lists of what I'd like to accomplish next. The other night I wrote out a list of what I'd ideally like to do in the first few months of 2012. I think they're manageable goals, as long as I don't allow myself to get distracted by something else. I've heard many times over that the best way to help sales of your existing books is to publish something new, and that's what I want to do. It helps that I have a backlist, so to speak, of completed manuscripts that just need an editing overhaul, instead of starting from scratch.

Anybody else have writing resolutions for the New Year?

Déjà Vu Blogfest: Outside the Definitions

2011-12-16T07:00:00.023-05:00

This is my entry for the Déjà Vu Blogfest (go here to read the details about this event). This post originally appeared on January 10th, 2011.

* * *

In the glossary of my Novel and Short Story Writer's Market book, I found these two definitions:

Historical fiction. A fictional story set in a recognizable period of history. As well as telling the stories of ordinary people's lives, historical fiction may involve political or social events of the time.

Western. Genre with a setting in the West, usually between 1860 - 1890, with a formula plot about cowboys or other aspects of frontier life [my emphasis].

If I have any kind of modest ambition for my writing, outside of writing good books that people will enjoy, it's to write something that successfully disproves that second definition. Better yet, something that successfully combines elements of both genres—for most booksellers do list them as two entirely separate genres, although there is a little muddled crossover here and there. Louis L'Amour hit the nail right on the head when he said, "If you write a book about a bygone period that lies east of the Mississippi River, then it's a historical novel. If it's west of the Mississippi, it's a western, a different category. There's no sense to it."

You could talk and speculate a good deal over what gave the western genre its present reputation. I think it may actually be because the western was so hugely popular in the earlier part of the 20th century—the demand for more probably led to flooding the market with a lot of hastily-written books that did indeed have formula plots, and moreover, I think a 'popular' movement in culture tends to be dismissed as trivial once it's died off a little. Certainly some popular things deserve to die off. But that brings me back to where I started, because I don't think the western deserved it. It was more than just a popular trend; it's a part of American history. And like L'Amour, I think it's an important part of our history. Yes, we all know there's legend and myth mixed with the facts, but they've become a part of our culture the same way King Arthur and Robin Hood—part fact, part legend—are instantly identifiable with old England. And there is a lot more besides the myths. The "stories of ordinary people's lives" from the frontier are just as significant and fascinating as the legends.

Perhaps another reason is that there is not a notable Western-set novel among the 'great books' (admittedly a subjective term) of American literature. There are certain novels that are considered the finest of the western genre, but how often do they show up on lists of great American literature in general?

I guess that leaves an opportunity for the present-day author. The place is empty...so why not try to fill it?

Book Review: Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries

2011-12-13T07:00:00.003-05:00

Abner was silent for a moment.

"It is the law," he said, "but is it justice, Dillworth?"

"Abner," replied Dillworth, "how shall we know what justice is unless the law defines it?"

"I think every man knows what it is," said Abner.

"And shall every man set up a standard of his own," said Dillworth, "and disregard the standard that the law sets up? That would be the end of justice."

"It would be the beginning of justice," said Abner, "if every man followed the standard that God gives him."

I saw this one day in the "Recommended for You" or "Customers Also Bought" section of the Kindle Store, I can't remember which, and since it was inexpensive and looked interesting, I picked it up. I'm glad I did! Published in 1918, it's a collection of eighteen excellent mystery short stories in a unique setting—rural Virginia in the early 1800s.

Comparison to G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories, which I've been reading and enjoying, are apt, though the two detectives in many respects are polar opposites—one a small, mild, English Catholic; the other a big, stalwart American Protestant. There is a strong religious element to the Uncle Abner stories. Abner's faith is at the root of his belief in justice that drives him to find the correct solutions to a variety of crimes. Justice is the theme of the collection as a whole. Some of the stories demonstrate the limits of human law, while still reinforcing its importance, but above all stress the existence of a higher justice, and the conviction that all guilty parties will meet the justice of God even if they are beyond the reach of human law.

As a reader of Westerns, a number of elements in the description of life in Virginia at this period struck familiar chords—the grazing, driving, selling (and sometimes stealing) of cattle and journeys on horseback. A number of the stories involve disputes over land, another familiar feature in the Western. "A Twilight Adventure," a neatly constructed story concerning cattle thieving, demonstrates the dangers of both lynch law and circumstantial evidence. Last year I read Frank Lawrence Owsley's Plain Folk of the Old South, and the Uncle Abner stories reminded me of Owsley's description of the livestock-raising economy of the early South, which bore a strong resemblance to that which later developed in the West.

The stories are narrated by Abner's young nephew, who is present at the scene of some of them, and relates the others second-hand. There is also a foil for the detective in the person of Squire Randolph, the justice of the peace, an honest but talkative and pompous man who is continually baffled by Abner's line of reasoning until the moment when the truth is revealed. Abner's methods are similar to Father Brown's in that he sees the truth a lot sooner than the other characters or the reader, but drops cryptic remarks along the way that all make sense in the end. He also frequently deals with skeptics who deny the existence or power of God. There's a great historical flavor to the whole book, and the writing is also excellent, with some beautiful, atmospheric descriptive passages equal to those in Chesterton. Definitely a great read for anyone who loves classic, old-fashioned detective stories; a fine piece of entertainment with deeper, edifying elements as well.

Quote: On Readability

2011-12-09T08:20:00.000-05:00

At its most basic, [readability] is the ability to make readers continue from the top to the bottom of the page and then turn that page; and then make them do that 200 times in the course of any [...] book. - John Curran

More Learning

2011-12-06T11:53:00.000-05:00

Right now I'm in the writing slump that usually follows successful completion of a project. My mystery is reposing peacefully on the corner of a table waiting for someone to read it, and I'm trying to keep myself out of "I-should-be-writing" worries by devoting my work time to marketing my existing book. My object is to try and create a little flurry of publicity to lead up to a planned Christmas sale (and a much-needed Internet break for me on Christmas vacation). So I've been busy filling in interview questions, sending off emails, setting up spotlights and features and listings, and still waiting with bated breath until the day those words "Be the first to review this item" disappear from my Amazon page. I'm thrilled that the two reviews I've acquired so far (read them here and here if you're interested) have both been excellent. Still hoping, though, to snag a few of those elusive customer reviews which are supposed to be such a help.

Through all these marketing efforts, I've determined that there are two parts to hands-on learning: learning by doing and learning by not doing. That is to say, belatedly finding out about things I could have been doing if I knew about them before. It all adds up to acquired knowledge, though—this is my first book, after all; this trial and error is building up a list of things that I can do easily and in proper time the next time I publish something. And yes, it is fun. Sometimes it just takes writing a blog post about it to remind me of that fact.

Speaking of blogging, yesterday I ran across something very welcome. I have been scrambling for post ideas this month, so the Deja Vu Blogfest seemed made to order for me. It's quite simple: on December 16th participating bloggers will recycle an old blog post—perhaps something written in the early stages of their blog when they didn't have a large readership, or just something that they'd like to see get another airing. You can visit the link for additional details and sign-up. I think I'm in for this one!

So now back to the office—well, the kitchen table—to continue my campaign.

Old Favorites

2011-12-02T10:41:00.000-05:00

The weeks leading up to Christmas are as much a part of the holiday for me as the 25th itself. This year especially I find myself feeling that, as Monty Woolley's character remarks in The Bishop's Wife, that it's "a good time for looking back." Maybe it's because we're surrounded by so many things that hold memories. The other day we were looking at our Christmas cards from the past twenty-one years, beginning with me as a squealing nine-month-old, up to last year's with my younger siblings towering over me—talking about where and when each picture was taken and what a time we had getting everybody to pose and smile (I'll tell you, it was quite an adventure some years). Then last night my parents and I were reminiscing about all the decorations in our house—the shops where they were bought, long gone or out of business; which ones were handmade and which were handed down from previous generations.

I love the familiarity of our Christmas traditions. It's the time of year when I can turn on the radio and be almost sure of hearing something I know; when there's no shortage of songs to sing. Then there's the round of favorite holiday movies that we watch over these weeks—Miracle On 34th Street (my favorite), A Christmas Carol (two versions: 1951 and 1938), It's a Wonderful Life, The Bishop's Wife, and the old animated specials (A Charlie Brown Christmas is my favorite of those). With books, I find I've gradually built my own personal holiday reading traditions over the last few years—Dickens' A Christmas Carol, of course; O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" and "Christmas By Injunction"; and Agatha Christie's holiday mysteries: Hercule Poirot's Christmas and "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding".

So what are your favorite Christmas traditions or memories? Do you have favorite movies or books you like to revisit during the holidays?

Book Review - Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West

2011-11-29T09:59:00.001-05:00

Nothing Daunted is historical nonfiction at its best—a story absorbing enough to read like a novel, peopled with varied and engaging characters and packed with historical detail. In 1916, Dorothy Woodruff (the author's grandmother) and her best friend Rosamond "Ros" Underwood, daughters of well-to-do families in Auburn, New York, were in their late twenties—they had graduated from college, had been on the Grand Tour of Europe, and had not yet met anyone they wished to marry, and they were looking for something to do with themselves when they heard of a school district in rural Colorado that was looking for two well-educated young women to serve as teachers. Neither Dorothy nor Ros had any experience with teaching, but they wanted something interesting to do and were willing to try.

In 1916 the Old West was still blending with the new—automobiles and indoor plumbing alongside horses and spring wagons and two-room homestead cabins. The young teachers and their students saw cowboys driving cattle from the windows of their mountaintop schoolhouse that had electric lights and a telephone, but no road leading up to it. They rode to school every day on horseback, sometimes in the thick of a blizzard, attended square dances and toured a coal mine. Working from a wealth of family letters and papers, oral histories, interviews, autobiographies and memoirs, author Dorothy Wickenden brings their story to vivid life, from their childhood in Auburn, their time at college and in Europe, to their adventurous journey west and what came of it. The book also tells the story of Ferry Carpenter, the enterprising young lawyer and rancher who was instrumental in the building of the school in Elkhead, Colorado and importing teachers from the East—hoping, incidentally, to help provide prospective brides for a county short on young women—and fills in the history of the area, from the gold strikes that led to the founding of Denver, early homesteading and Indian troubles, and the building of the Moffat Road railway over the Rockies.

The only thing that I felt could have made it better would be more photos—aside from the cover, the only pictures are the tiny black-and-white ones at the beginning of each chapter. But it was a fascinating, entertaining read, the kind that makes you feel as if you've stepped back into the past. I have a feeling this one is going to end up in my personal library!

Weekend Odds and Ends #17

2011-11-26T08:00:00.048-05:00

Miscellaneous links collected over the last few weeks:

~ Anne R. Allen had an excellent post on Amazon Reader Reviews: 12 Things Everybody and His Grandmother Should Know.

~ Here's a bit of Thanksgiving history that is almost never told.

~ A nice article on the life of P.G. Wodehouse.

~ From the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization's Facebook page, a photo of Oscar Hammerstein at his desk, accompanied by a personal quote on his writing process. (I do a lot of walking when I'm thinking too—usually around the yard.)

~ Speaking of Rodgers & Hammerstein, here's two nice articles on the homecoming of The Sound of Music to Salzburg, the city where it all began.

~ And finally, a 1978 essay by British mystery writer Christianna Brand on her fictional detective, Inspector Cockrill. I recently read her best-known book, the WWII murder-mystery Green For Danger (having already watched the excellent film adaptation), and am looking forward to trying more of her work.

Happy Thanskgiving

2011-11-23T08:00:00.010-05:00

Busy day today, so here's Thanskgiving greetings in advance! Wishing everybody a holiday weekend filled with things to be thankful for.

(And incidentally, don't miss your last chance to enter the giveaway and win a free copy of The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories—it runs through this Friday.)

Eccentricities

2011-11-18T10:57:00.000-05:00

Just as I was turning in at the door I heard The Last Rose of Summer at the wicket-gate. Sergeant Cuff had made another discovery!

~ The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

If you've read a lot of classic mysteries, you've probably noticed that most famous fictional detectives have something in common—they each have their own peculiarity, trait or trademark that makes them memorable. If I remember correctly, in her autobiography Agatha Christie recalled that this was already the fashion in detective fiction by the time she created Hercule Poirot (I'm paraphrasing, as I had to let the book go back to the library eventually). She certainly didn't do the job halfway—Poirot has maybe the greatest variety of eccentricities among literary detectives, both physical and behavioral: his extraordinary moustache, his "egg-shaped head", his passion for neatness and symmetry, his broken English, his "little gray cells of the mind."

I think perhaps these traits help make the detectives stand out in stories where their main function was to delve into the characters of other people—other people whose characters are more developed, perhaps. It also helps keep a continuity from book to book when the detectives are recurring characters—we see a familiar trait or object and at once recognize an old friend. Sherlock Holmes had his pipe and his violin, Father Brown his umbrella and mild wondering look, Miss Marple her fluffy pink knitting and her stories of people she once knew that reminded her of someone else.

The practice started early. As far back as 1878, American mystery writer Anna Katharine Green created Mr. Ebenezer Gryce, who made his first appearance in her debut novel The Leavenworth Case. Mr. Gryce's peculiarity was to never look directly at whoever he spoke to—he addressed speech, smiles and frowns to inanimate objects, usually furniture. Does that sound familiar? Well, Agatha Christie fans may be remembering a supporting character named Mr. Goby, a little private investigator who assisted Hercule Poirot in a few books. He had the same exact habit. Perhaps Christie was paying her own tribute to Anna Katharine Green, one of the early greats in the mystery genre. She must have been an admirer, for Poirot himself is found reading The Leavenworth Case in Christie's The Clocks.

And it goes even further back. In 1868's The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins created Sergeant Cuff, with his hobby for rose-gardening and accompanying habit of whistling "The Last Rose of Summer" whenever he was onto something. That's what turned me onto this whole line of thought—whenever I find myself whistling a tune for no particular reason, my go-to melody is usually a bit of Johann Strauss's "Roses From the South" (the bit that begins at 2:43). When I remembered Sergeant Cuff and his roses, it got me thinking about whether I'd given the detective in my current story any hallmark traits of his own...and I realized that I had. He has both the noticeable physical feature—vibrant red hair—and an idiosyncratic habit: that of looking continually amused. They were things that got in there without my realizing it, merely incidental in the first draft, but which have begun to form a pattern as I type the second one.

So if you've written mysteries, what trademark eccentricities or traits have you given to your detectives? What are the quirks of your favorite literary sleuths?

One or the Other

2011-11-15T09:57:00.000-05:00

Well, I've made it into the final chapter of my mystery. No, I didn't break any NaNo records; the finished first draft will probably be only around an estimated 25,000 words. I've been using an average wordcount for my handwritten pages, so I won't find out the exact number until I type it, my project for the second half of NaNo. After a furious 4,000+ word session at the kitchen table on Friday night, I needed a break over the weekend...and yesterday was a washout as far as writing went, owing to sickness in the house. When you're doing two sisters' chores for them and playing nurse's assistant on top of doing the regular week's laundry, that's not the time to try and divert brainpower to neatly wrapping up a final chapter.

That's why there won't be any particularly brilliant blog post today either...I'm trying to save my mental energy (what little there is of it) for another try at that final chapter later today. I notice that when my writing goes well my blog languishes a bit, and vice versa. I guess I'm the kind of person who can't focus equally on two things at once...although I firmly maintain it was not my writing that caused me to broil a batch of cookies instead of baking them this week.

In Which I Write a Very Short Post, and Link to a Giveaway

2011-11-11T14:17:00.000-05:00

I post and fly today, as one often does in November. My nice new red notebook, one-third filled with a first draft, is lying near at hand and demanding my attention. This morning a scenario that I had thought would spin out into a whole chapter decided to wrap itself up in three pages, thus catapulting me into a scene that I hadn't been expecting to write until tomorrow. So that's my afternoon's project.

In the meantime, if you'd like a chance to win a free copy of my book The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories, you can hop over to this giveaway hosted by Teddy Rose at her blog So Many Precious Books, So Little Time. There are multiple ways to enter, and the giveaway will be open until the 25th.

Now I'm off to work on climax-building.

The Mystery of the Missing Sparkle

2011-11-07T10:00:00.000-05:00

I had absolutely no intention of joining National Novel Writing Month this year until October 31st. I'd been in the writing slump that usually follows completing a project ever since I finished the last edits on my book in September—I'd made a few false starts at writing something new or revising something old, none of which went far; I had a small revision project that I wanted to get done, but it wasn't exciting me very much. I'd be crazy to start an entirely new book just now, right?

Probably. But I did it anyway.

At some point this fall—I can't remember when—I scribbled down a quick paragraph of an idea for a short murder-mystery in a Western setting. As I've probably mentioned before, I love mysteries, and ever since I started writing Westerns one of my ambitions has been to combine genres and write classic-style mysteries set in the West. That little sketch of an idea was something I thought I wouldn't get around to for a long time; I just wanted it written down so it was there when I was ready for it. But in between those other unsuccessful stabs at writing in October, I amused myself by gradually adding to it and developing the plot. I started to get excited, because the plot worked. By the 31st, I just had to start writing it. So I figured, why not throw prudence and sanity to the winds and join in the NaNo fun?

Now, I've noticed a significant difference between this story and my previous mystery-writing experiences. Both my NaNo wins, in '08 and '09, were mysteries (both unfinished); the second, which is currently shelved but by no means forgotten, also had a Western angle, being set in 1930s Wyoming. With both of those stories, I started as I usually do—with people. I was primarily interested in the characters and weaving the story around them, and the plot sort of tagged along behind. But by this method, I couldn't quite make the mystery work. There were always loose ends somewhere, some rather large gaps in the chain of evidence, and the final revelation didn't have the impact it was meant to have.

This time around, the plot came first and foremost. I had the whole thing worked out, red herrings, false scents and all, before I put a single word on paper. I knew not only Who and Why, but How, When and Where. So in one respect the writing has gone with amazing smoothness, because I know where I'm going and how to get there. But on the other hand, the characters seem lacking in sparkle. They began as positions rather than people: the First Suspect, the Second Suspect and so on, and I've been having a bit of a difficult time getting interested in them and clearly visualizing what they look and act like. They're gradually starting to come to life as I go along, but there will be a lot of coloring-in to do on the second draft.

In spite of these slight difficulties, I still think having the plot taped out first was the right way to start a mystery. After all, if the author doesn't know how to solve it, the detective is really in trouble.

100 Years, 5 Favorite Roy Rogers Movies

2011-11-05T09:52:00.000-04:00

Today marks what would have been the 100th birthday of famed singing cowboy Roy Rogers. I've always had a soft spot for these musical B-Westerns. You may never see Roy's films on a list of the greatest Western movies ever, but they are a highly entertaining way to spend a pleasant hour. So in honor of Roy's centennial, here's a list of my own five particular favorites:

Romance On the Range (1942)
If I had to pick one film as the perfect example of a musical B-Western, this would be it. It's an entirely typical plot, but with a smoothly-working script, some beautiful cinematography, excellent songs and a great cast, everything clicks in just the right way. Roy and Co. (George "Gabby" Hayes and the Sons of the Pioneers) are on the trail of crooks who are stealing valuable furs, with a pair of city girls come West for the first time getting into the mix. Gabby's attempts to send the 'females' back where they belong and a running gag with mechanical 'gadgets' provide some terrifically funny comedy scenes. The uncut version is available on Netflix Instant.

Sunset Serenade (1942)
Another simple plot entertainingly executed and punctuated with good songs. This time the crooks are out to defraud an infant heir of his ranch, so Roy and Co. decide to throw in their lot with the baby's guardian and match wits with the villains to hang onto the property. A memorable moment involves a saloon brawl that turns into an impromptu musical number when the player piano gets in on the action—something you would certainly not see in any other kind of Western! The uncut version is viewable at Internet Archive.

Lights of Old Santa Fe (1944)
Many Republic B-Westerns (Gene Autry's and the Three Mesquiteeers' are other good examples) often had a quasi-contemporary setting, where the time was obviously the 1940s but the methods were still of the 1800s. Lights of Old Santa Fe actually fits into its modern time period a shade better than the others. Not a shot is fired; the conflict involves a few fisticuffs, some trick-riding and lots of singing. The plot concerns two rival rodeos, with Roy and the gang joining up with the outfit owned by Dale Evans and trying to keep her rival from buying out the business or marrying into it. A highlight is the lovely title song by Jack Elliott, reprised three times throughout the movie. The uncut version is viewable at YouTube and is available on DVD.

Man From Cheyenne (1942)
This movie came in the transitional period when Roy's films were moving from 'historical' to that contemporary setting I mentioned before, and to me it has a little different feel than most of the others—a bit more serious and character-driven. Unfortunately this is one of the few films whose uncut version has not yet been found, so there are a few songs missing and evidently a bit of plot too. I'm not sure what it says about a film when the antagonists are among the most interesting characters, but some of the best performances in Man From Cheyenne seem to come from the folks who are busy making trouble for Roy! It's available on DVD and Amazon Instant Video.

The Border Legion (1940)
Roy plays an Eastern doctor on the run for a crime he didn't commit, who's kidnapped by a notorious outlaw gang that needs his medical skills. He decides to stick around and infiltrate the gang and bring them to justice. This movie is entertaining on account of a colorful and memorable cast of character actors in supporting parts, from the brash, egotistical outlaw chief to a feisty old lady saloon owner and a savvy sheriff. It's available on DVD (under its alternate title, West of the Badlands) at Netflix.

* * *

I found out the other day about the commemorative "Happy Trails" float that will be appearing in the Tournament of Roses parade. I always enjoy that parade, and I'll have to make sure to catch this float's appearance. My youngest sister and I are agog at the thought of those 100 golden palominos!

The Author's Prayer For His Book

2011-11-02T09:01:00.000-04:00

Now may this little Book a blessing be

To those that love this little Book, and me:

And may its Buyer have no cause to say,

His money is but lost, or thrown away.

~ John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress: The Second Part

'Tis the Season—To Read

2011-10-31T12:19:00.000-04:00

Winter decided to arrive early this weekend. So we found ourselves scurrying around as one usually does on the arrival of an unexpectedly early guest—getting firewood in, putting away the last of the outdoor furniture, and taking advantage of the brief winter-wonderland landscape to get some family pictures for the yearly Christmas card. Nothing like being prepared well in advance!

Truth be told, I'm actually looking forward to winter. Not that I expected it this early, but somehow I feel right at home in it. When the evening lighting begins to change and the first hints of that wintry feeling come into the air, I get brief mental glimpses of snowy streets, holiday baking and decorations, and a cozy woodstove-warmed parlor on bitter cold afternoons. Of course, for me, one of the hallmarks of wintertime is curling up with a good book—or maybe a more accurate description is burrowing in with stacks of books around me. Just now I'm feeling more like a reader than a writer. We all need to read in order to write, and my brain is ready for a refresher course.

I'm planning to read or re-read a number of classics this winter. I want to revisit Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Emma in particular, along with Tolsoy's Anna Karenina and War and Peace. I'd also like to get better aquainted with Shakespeare—the author that everyone quotes, but who has read? I thought I'd mix in a little poetry too, particularly Scott, and maybe some Byron and Tennyson. And as a Western reader and writer, I guess it's about time I read The Virginian. On the lighter side, there's a whole pile of classic mysteries waiting for me too!

Incidentally, this seems a good moment to mention that I finally joined up at Goodreads. I'd been aware of the site for a while, but didn't take the plunge until after publishing my book, when I found that there were a number of advantages to joining their Author Program. It's actually been quite fun compiling lists of books I've read and books I plan to read. My Goodreads profile is here.

What are your reading plans for this winter?

Digital Marketing in the Physical World

2011-10-27T10:06:00.000-04:00

For those of us who so far have published books in ebook form only, the vast majority of our marketing efforts are online. The Internet gives us the ability to reach large numbers of people at once, almost instantly. There are plenty of different marketing opportunities, and most of them are completely free. However, I don't think we should completely overlook marketing offline, even though for ebooks it can be a bit more of a challenge.

I've got to give my parents credit for this one. Initially, I didn't think having any kind of physical marketing tool was that important. My argument was that anyone who buys this ebook has to have an Internet connection and at the very least a working familiarity with a computer, if not an e-reading device. I figured people who were going to read ebooks had to find them online. But my parents convinced me that having something as simple as a business card could be a big help in promoting the book even to people who did have that Internet access. If you tell someone about your book in person, sure, they might go and look it up afterwards—if they remember and if they can recall the title correctly. But having the card in hand might keep them from forgetting about it as easily, and having the title and where to find the book written down would help them find it quickly and easily.

By the same reasoning, you can give a few business cards to family members, so if they happen to tell someone "My daughter/granddaughter/niece just published a book", they can just give them the card instead of trying to explain the ebook format and where to find it.

After looking around at different cards available, I discovered UPrinting.com, a really neat site where you design your own product online and have it printed and delivered to you. With a simple designer rather like Paint software, you choose your fonts and colors, add your own text and upload your own images, so I was able to create a custom card using my cover art, which listed the places the book could be found, along with my blog address and business email.

And here's the most important thing that I always tell friends and family about passing out the cards. When you give one to somebody, tell them if you don't read, pass it on to someone who does. I've already heard back about a few instances where this has happened.

So, if you publish ebooks only, what have you found works to spread the word aside from the Internet?

From the Archives: Men With Swords

2011-10-24T07:00:00.027-04:00

A few weeks ago I was going through one of those organizational fits that seize us every once in a while, cleaning out and organizing my binders and notebooks. You always discover some random interesting objects (along with a surprising amount of dust) during these excavations. One binder is a catch-all carried over from school days, filled with writing and non-writing papers. In the front and back pockets I found graph paper, hand-decorated envelopes, a Robert E. Lee quotation and a French proverb, among other things.

A little further back, I came across a set of essays that I wrote in my senior year of high school. For English that year I did a course called Movies As Literature, which involved watching a series of classic films and writing essays on assigned topics about each one. It introduced me to several movies that ended up becoming favorites. The first one in the course was the classic 1953 Western Shane. So for today's post I thought I'd share my personal favorite of the essays I wrote on Shane, titled "Men With Swords." The topic was to discuss how the events in Shane illustrate Matthew 26:52, "...they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."

Men With Swords

“They that take the sword, shall perish with the sword;” they that use violence, fall by violence; and men hasten and increase their own troubles by blustering methods of self-defence. They that take the sword before it is given to them, that use it without warrant or call, expose themselves to the sword of war, or public justice.

~ Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible

You can expect an adequate amount of gunplay in the typical Western film. Often they end with an all-out shootout in the streets of the town or in a maze of rocks on the outskirts. Part of the way through Shane, it seems as though that’s where the story is heading, when Rufus Ryker, the bullying rancher who is persecuting the homesteaders, declares in an almost too theatrical tone, “From now on when we fight with them, the air is gonna be filled with gunsmoke!” But in spite of the fact that the hero of the tale is a gunfighter who resorts to using the tools of his trade to resolve the conflict, the use of guns in Shane has a deeper meaning that illustrates the adage “A man who lives by the sword, dies by the sword,” which is a paraphrase of Matthew 26:52, the verse discussed in the quote above. The fates of certain characters—Ryker, Torrey, Wilson and Shane himself—provide striking examples of what this saying means.

It is fitting that the men who habitually use violence themselves to gain their own ends should end up dying a violent death. The misdeeds of Ryker, who spends the entire film tormenting the settlers by what are basically acts of Western-style terrorism and later tries to “indirectly” murder Joe Starrett by provoking him to start an armed conflict, eventually catch up with him, and the penalty he pays seems only proper.

The death of Elijah Torrey is another illustration, though a somewhat less obvious one. Torrey is over-eager for a fight: he even makes a show of his belligerence under Ryker’s very nose—in other words, he “increases his own troubles” by his bluster, and ultimately finds out too late that he has gone too far. Both Ryker and Wilson are able to see right through him and know that he will be an easy mark to force into a gunfight.

Wilson, though he could be lumped with Ryker in the simple “bad guy” category, is something a little more—a professional gunfighter who literally “lives by the sword;” the gun, actually. Another adage that might seem appropriate here is that of the pitcher that goes to the well once too often. Every gunfighter knows that no matter how ‘fast on the draw’ he is, there’s always the chance that someday someone else will be faster. Though we mentally cheer at Wilson’s demise, since he is after all the “bad guy,” the end of the film shows us that even Shane, our hero, expects some day to fall victim to his own profession.

We know Shane is a gunfighter even though he never directly admits to it. Undoubtedly he is of a different stamp than Wilson, who fights purely for profit, since Shane is devoted to the homesteaders on principle only, and never receives any recompense for his efforts other than the satisfaction of having done good. His opinions on guns themselves (“A gun is a tool…no better or worse than the man using it”) further establish the contrast. But he is a gunfighter nonetheless, and will be one to the end. The final impression is that Shane, no matter how much he dislikes his lifestyle, cannot get away from it. Like Torrey, he has found out too late that he has gone too far.

“There’s no living with a killing—there’s no going back from one. Right and wrong is a brand. A brand sticks,” he tells Joey in the final scene, as he tries to explain to the little boy why he cannot remain with the Starretts. The deep sadness with which he repeats, “There’s no going back,” and the implication that he may have even received a mortal wound in the fight, tell us that Shane has no pleasant hopes for his future. If that were not enough, the landscape through which he passes on his way out of the valley—a lonely graveyard—provides a symbolic picture of what his expectations may be.

October 10th, 2007

One Way to Develop a Western Vocabulary

2011-10-21T09:02:00.000-04:00

I get a kick out of this comic strip. It's quite true to life—I can remember my mother calling out to us to stop fighting after overhearing a particularly energetic bit of play-acting from another room. (I think it still happens on occasion.) And of course the poke at colorful (non-profane) insults of the B-Western variety prompts a chuckle too. My favorite has to be from an early episode of The Lone Ranger, when an indignant sheriff blurts out (at the villain, not the Ranger), "Why, you double-crossing sanctimonious sidewinder!"

Learning by Creating

2011-10-18T09:41:00.000-04:00

If anybody tells you self-publishing is a piece of cake, you'll know they haven't tried it yet.

That being said, I really have enjoyed all the hard work of the last few weeks. It's more like baking the cake yourself before you get a piece. I feel like I've acquired a practical college education in two months. Legal questions, design questions, publishing questions, marketing questions—I had to find all the answers myself and put them into execution. There's no more exciting way to learn than the process of creating something yourself. It's rather like starting out with a crochet hook and a ball of yarn in hand and a pattern you've never tried in front of you. It means working your way through, unraveling stitches and trying again, making changes to the pattern if it doesn't turn out the way it's supposed to. The finished sweater or afghan brings a sense of satisfaction you don't get from just buying something at a store. You've beat the challenge of learning what you needed to know, and you've created something entirely your own, that matches up to a professionally produced product.

There are still moments when none of this seems real. I look at other people's author profiles and book pages and promotional announcements, and I look at mine, and I think—this can't really be me. My writing can't really be out there alongside those professionals. I'm still just a little girl playing at being an author in the middle of the grown-ups. I guess it's just because I thought and planned about it for so long that it's taking me a while to adjust to the reality. I wonder how long it will take.

Lighting Up the Sky

2011-10-16T14:56:00.000-04:00

Owing to a very wet and rainy summer, autumn color hasn't been very bright around here this year. Leaves have turned a dull bronze or yellow, dried quickly to brown and fallen early. But yesterday, the evening sun broke through the end of yet another rain shower to illuminate a couple of heretofore muted maple trees beyond a neighbor's house against the smoky sky, looking as if the rainbow above was the torch that lit them on fire.

Blog Tour: Interview & Giveaway

2011-10-14T11:31:00.000-04:00

Today marks the final stop on my blog tour. Regular programming returns to this blog next week! Anyway, today I'm being interviewed by Margo Berendsen at her blog Writing At High Altitude. I'm also giving away another free copy of The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories—just leave a comment at Margo's post to enter and the winner will be announced early next week.

Blog Tour: Writing Westerns

2011-10-13T08:48:00.000-04:00

The blog tour continues today with a guest post hosted at Jtwebster Books, in which I talk about how film and TV, and later books, led to my interest in writing Westerns of my own.

Blog Tour: Can You Edit Too Much?

2011-10-12T09:07:00.000-04:00

Today I'm honored to be hosted for the third stop on my blog tour over at K.M. Weiland's blog Wordplay, with a guest post on the perils of editing too much or too hard. Stop by and take a look!

Blog Tour: Author Spotlight

2011-10-11T10:00:00.001-04:00

This morning I'm on to the next stop on my blog tour over at author Meg Mims' blog. She's hosting me for an author spotlight in which I talk a little bit about how I started writing, about the different stories in my book, and some plans for the future.

Yesterday's giveaway will still be open until this afternoon, so stop by and enter for a chance to win a free copy of The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories!

Blog Tour: The Story Behind a Story

2011-10-10T10:04:00.000-04:00

I'm kicking off a week-long blog tour this morning with a guest post over at Melissa Marsh's blog Writing With Style. Stop by for a chance to win a free copy of The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories, and to read how a 'lost' song by a renowned Western songwriter inspired the title story in the collection.

Release Day: The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories

2011-10-05T06:00:00.018-04:00

Today's the big day! I'm happy to announce that my first book, The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories, is now officially available for sale in ebook form at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.

In case you hadn't seen my earlier post, The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories is a collection of Western short stories. I wrote them over the last year and a half, in between and during other projects, and took late summer and early fall of this year to focus on editing them and putting them together in this collection. It contains the following seven stories:

The Ranch Next Door
Disturbing the Peace
Cross My Heart
A Rangeland Renaissance
Angel Unawares
The Outlaw's Wife
Delayed Deposit

"Disturbing the Peace" was originally published online last year as an honorable mention in Rope and Wire's first annual short story competition; the other six are appearing for the first time.

The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories is priced at $2.99 at all three retailers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords. Please help spread the word—feel free to share on your Facebook page, Twitter account, and anywhere else you can think of!

Weekend Odds & Ends #16

2011-10-01T07:00:00.000-04:00

Busy outdoors and preparing for launch week, so here's some miscellaneous links for the weekend:

~ Short Stories as Ebooks: a conversation with five writers about their experiences self-publishing short stories and short story collections.

~ Some good tips on sifting through online search results when doing research.

~ Here's an interesting guest post by Jody Hedlund on religion in fiction. (This post was also featured at The Passive Voice.)

~ The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization announced last month that there will be a one-night-only concert staging of The Sound of Music at Carnegie Hall next spring. I hope this one makes it to PBS!

Book Review: Parnassus On Wheels

2011-09-27T09:55:00.001-04:00

I added this book to my to-read list quite a while ago after seeing a recommendation at Kindle Classics, a blog devoted to spotlighting free or nearly-free classic literature available for Kindle. This past weekend I finally got around to reading it, and I'm so glad I did.

The book is narrated in first person by Helen McGill, a thirty-nine-year-old spinster who for some years lived happily with her elder brother Andrew on their farm—until, as Helen puts it, Andrew "got the fatal idea of telling everyone how happy we were," and began to write bestselling books on the joys of country living. Fed up with Andrew's neglecting the farm and taking her hard work for granted, Helen is just about ready to have an adventure of her own. So when an unusual traveling salesman shows up one autumn afternoon, intending to persuade Andrew to buy 'Parnassus,' his bookshop on wheels, Helen on impulse buys it herself.

This is a book that's really all about the love of books. Roger Mifflin, the enthusiastic, quirky, pleasant little bookseller, has made it his mission to spread good books to as many people as possible, to stir their enthusiasm for reading and help them find the best books for their needs and tastes. A humorous contrast is drawn between Mifflin and the ubiquitous book salesman who sells people useless multi-volume sets on installment plans. Twice, as Mifflin is showing Helen the ropes of running 'Parnassus,' do they encounter prospective customers who were recently talked into buying a hefty set of funeral orations. "The Professor," on the other hand, makes literary converts by reading aloud from O. Henry and Wilkie Collins until his listeners are ready to buy out his entire stock.

I loved the setting of this book as well. Published in 1917, it describes rural farmland and small country towns almost within sight of New York City. Taking place over just a few days, Helen's adventures with her new bookshop, Andrew's attempts to get her back home and her growing regard for the odd but lovable Professor make a simple, sweet and charming story that's a must for any book lover.

Parnassus On Wheels is widely available; the most inexpensive Kindle edition is 99 cents.

Dreaming over Dust Jackets

2011-09-24T10:08:00.056-04:00

I've always loved reading the advertisements in vintage magazines, catalogues, theatre programs and the like. They give you a flavor for life at the time of their printing like nothing else. They also inspire an entirely futile longing to take advantage of the sales they offer.

I used to think vintage sheet music was the worst. I've often sighed over "50 cents a folio - Any 3 for $1.35, postpaid" on the backs of the songbooks in my collection. You're lucky if you can buy a single song for that price nowadays. These old folios contained fifteen or twenty. But I've found there's something that even beats the sheet music—vintage dust jackets.

I recently bought a used copy of Open Land, a book by one of my favorite Western authors, B.M. Bower. Her later books are harder to come by, because they're out of print but have not yet fallen into the public domain. The book itself, a hardcover reprint (from the 1940s, I believe), was in very good shape, but the dust jacket was in tatters and fell to pieces as I took it off the book. But I loved the publishers' advertisements and lists of inventory on the back of it:

Click to enlarge

I wonder what that price never before thought possible was. It's probably better that I don't know. Notice the combination of books now considered classics alongside what I imagine must have been popular writers of the day. (Interesting—I never knew that Now, Voyager and Stella Dallas were both based on books, much less that they were both by the same author.)

The inside flap begins, "TRIANGLE BOOKS are an amazing departure in publishing. They present a choice selection of full-sized, new, cloth-bound editions by the foremost writers of today..." And then below "Scores of Titles - Here Is a Sample List" are such recognizable names as Edna Ferber, Pearl S. Buck, and Mary Roberts Rinehart, along with more names I don't recognize—Helen MacInness, Reneé Shann, Marguerite Mooers Marshall, Mabel Seeley, Margaret Widdemer, Leslie Charteris, Elizabeth Seifert, Frances Parkinson Keyes, James Oliver Curwood, Clarissa Fairchild Cushman. Anybody know who any of them were or what kind of books they wrote?

And then at the bottom, Complete list of titles free on request. Think I could still take them up on that?

Speaking the Language

2011-09-21T11:49:00.000-04:00

It's amazing to me to think that I've had my Kindle for three-quarters of a year. Ten months ago I felt only a passing interest (if any) in what the Kindle could do, and perhaps even some mild hostility toward an electronic device that was supposed to be replacing the book. Because, you know, I've never been a tech person—electronics and gadgets don't thrill me the way they do a lot of people. While I certainly love my Kindle, I've never viewed it as an alternative to books, simply another way to read.

Despite the rapid and exciting changes technology has made to the publishing world this last year or so, I always tend to view it with a certain amount of caution. After all, technology is always changing at an ever more rapid pace. I don't know what will be next or how long any of it will last. But as a writer, ebook technology does excite me because of the tremendous variety of opportunities it offers. I think anyone who is really serious about publishing their work this way should seize the opportunity and take advantage of these opportunities while they exist.

So here I am, ten months after thinking that I didn't even want a Kindle, and I'm building my own writing into an ebook that will shortly be on sale in the Kindle store. (See what I mean about things moving fast?) I spent yesterday creating an HTML document of my book that will be converted into different ebook formats. I'm using Guido Henkel's step-by-step formatting guide, which I highly recommend to anyone planning to format their own books. Having heard a lot of authors dreading or hating the process, I was delighted to find that it went much faster than I expected—and what's more, it was fun! It probably helped that I'd had a very little bit of experience with HTML before—I once coded a simple webpage. Mind you, I don't pretend to understand HTML; I'm simply learning how to work with it. It's kind of like when I used to take voice lessons and sing in Italian. I learned how to pronounce it at sight, and I could recognize some of the words, but hadn't the faintest idea of Italian grammar. I didn't need grammar to sing the song, but to give it the proper expression I could read a translation to find out what it meant. That's the way Henkel's formatting guide works: it gives you the HTML code you need and explains what results the code produces, so you can apply it to get the results you want.

So is anyone else venturing into ebook self-publishing? How has your experience been on the technical side?

The End of the Edits

2011-09-15T12:06:00.000-04:00

I've been reluctant to blog in detail about my current project over the last few weeks, mainly because I feel it would have been monotonous. In the thick of line-editing there are not a lot of new things to discover (other than inexplicable typos) and each day's work gets to be the same—stare at paragraphs, switch a word here, add an explanatory line there, try to cut out a few adverbs, suddenly decide that a rather pretentious sentence isn't really necessary after all. And gradually I've come down to the point where there is only one stubborn phrase left that won't say what I want it to. When it finally knuckles under I will be done—ready to move on to formatting. After weeks of line-editing even HTML looks like a refreshing change!

If I have an excuse for not being able to think of anything more brilliant to say today, it's that I've fried my brain with editing. It certainly feels that way at times. Although I enjoy blogging, and goodness knows I've read frequently how important it is for authors to blog, there are times when you need to devote all available brainpower to the most important project on hand.

Now it's time for lunch break, and after that a certain obstinate phrase and its creator will come to a definite understanding.

First Look: The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories

2011-09-12T08:13:00.001-04:00

Well, here it is, folks—the first sneak peak at my upcoming book, The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories:

The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories is a collection of Western short stories, to be released this fall. I've been working on the different stories in the collection for a total of a year and a half, in between and around other projects. This is just now starting to feel very exciting!

The beautiful cover art, seen here, was designed by J. Simmons, and the design process was a re-learning experience for me. As in re-learning two things that I already knew, or should have known: (1) your designer most likely knows better than you, and (2) always listen to your mother. How do you like the results?

Agatha Christie on the Creative Process

2011-09-08T15:13:00.003-04:00

There always has to be a lapse of time after the accomplishment of a piece of creative work before you can in any way evaluate it. You start into it, inflamed by an idea, full of hope, full indeed of confidence...If you are properly modest, you will never write at all, so there has to be one delicious moment when you have thought of something, know just how you are going to write it, rush for a pencil, and start in an exercise book buoyed up with exaltation. You then get into difficulties, don't see your way out, and finally manage to accomplish more or less what you first meant to accomplish, though losing confidence all the time. Having finished it, you know that it is absolutely rotten. A couple of months later you wonder whether it may not be all right after all.

~ Agatha Christie, An Autobiograpy

Things Past, and Things to Come

2011-09-05T07:00:00.001-04:00

A year ago this past Thursday, I made the first post on this blog.

This year seems like it really flew. Perhaps it's because I've been concentrating so much on day-to-day work that the longer stretches of weeks and months just roll past. Every once in a while I find myself wondering how in the world it can possibly be the end of another month.

Looking back, I can definitely say that I've learned a lot this year. Not just about writing, but about books and the reading and publishing world in general. It's fascinating, and it can sometimes be overwhelming. The Internet is a huge place, and there is a such a continual outpouring of information and clamor of many voices that it's a challenge in itself to single out the most important, essential things we need to know. Just like the continuous journey of learning to write better and better, learning how to operate in the business world of publishing is going to be an ongoing process. But after a year of reading, research, discussion, prayer, headaches, and nail-biting, I've formed my own basic battle plan and I'm ready to take the first step out there on my own.

I plan to self-publish my first ebook sometime this fall. I'm doing the last finishing touches of editing, and I plan to spend September working on the technical side of building the ebook and preparing for publishing it. Stay tuned for a sneak preview! I'm going to try posting on here about twice a week this fall. If you'd like you can also follow me on Twitter. Thank you, all my readers, followers and commenters, for following along this far and making the trip so nice for me! I hope there's more interesting travels ahead for all of us.

Spoken Words

2011-08-29T09:20:00.002-04:00

The more I write, the more I become aware of subtle challenges to making my writing the best it can be—things I was blissfully unaware of when I began. For instance, lately I've been paying more attention to the nuances of writing dialogue.

A few weeks ago, author Samuel Park wrote a guest post on self-editing at Anne R. Allen's blog, and one point that he made is that reading your work aloud is not always strictly necessary. In all probability, very few people will ever actually read your book out loud. But I think there is one part of fiction that people probably 'read aloud' in their heads, and that's dialogue. I think we automatically imagine what the characters sound like. Maybe I'm a little fussy in this area, but I like to think that my reader pictures my characters sounding the same way I do. That's what makes it difficult. I know the proper accent and inflection for every line of dialogue, but in prose we're fairly limited as to how we can demonstrate it. Inflection isn't an easy thing to write down. Italics are one weapon, but italics only have a place when the emphasis on a word or phrase is meant to be a strong emphasis. I recently spent a few minutes dithering over a word that had a slight emphasis in my head, but which I ultimately decided would be over-strong for the sentence if I italicized it.

Another tool is puntuation. (Here's where it gets fun.) Besides fulfilling their ordinary functions, commas, semicolons, colons, em dashes and periods, when used with moderate eccentricity, can help manipulate the flow of dialogue with the varying degrees of stops and pauses they create. (Expect daily battles with spellcheck if you do this.) I loved this anecdote in Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves about how George Bernard Shaw used punctuation to make sure the dialogue in his plays sounded exactly the way he wanted it:

Shaw is quite famous for his idiosyncratic punctuation. His semicolons, in particular, were his way of making his texts firmly actor-proof—in fact, when Ralph Richardson tried to insert a few dramatic puffs and pants in his opening lines as Bluntschli in a 1931 production of Arms and the Man (1894), Shaw stopped him at once and told him to forget the naturalism and observe the punctuation instead. "This is all very well, Richardson," Shaw said (according to Richardson's account), "and it might do for Chekhov, but it doesn't do for me. Your gasps are upsetting my stops and my semicolons, and you've got to stick to them."

Of course this system has its limits too. Too many idiosyncratic commas can just look strange. And there are things that are simply beyond the power of punctuation. What about those times when you want a slight questioning inflection, a sound of puzzlement or incredulity, but it just doesn't seem strong enough to use an actual question mark? That's when we're left to our own ingenuity. Using the right words, re-arranging and re-ordering them to create the sense of rythm that makes sentences read the way we hear them in our heads as we write. A lot of this, of course, has to be learned by doing. As in so many other things, we get better with practice.

What tricks to you use to make your dialogue look or sound the way you picture it?

Musical Interlude: The Prairie Sings a Lullaby

2011-08-26T07:00:00.002-04:00

This is one of my favorite musical numbers from a B-Western movie (or any Western movie, for that matter). From The Durango Kid (1940), the Sons of the Pioneers sing "The Prairie Sings a Lullaby" by Glenn Spencer, a really lovely song that, to my knowledge, they never recorded except for this movie. Beautiful, beautiful harmony, especially at the end.

Blog Award

2011-08-22T11:57:00.000-04:00

This past week I received the Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award, very kindly passed on to me by Caftan Woman. Thank you so very much! The rules of the award are that the recipient must link back to the giver, share seven random things about him or herself, and then pass the award on to twelve more bloggers.

Now, for seven random things...

~ I love mountains. I'd love to visit the Alps someday—any mountain scenery is my kind of place to travel.

~ I know my fourteen-digit library card number by heart, so it doesn't matter if I forget to bring it with me to the library.

~ I've read Jane Austen's complete works, including her early and unfinished works.

~ I'm an eternal optimist when it comes to getting the mail. Someday there will be something interesting in that box.

~ I won some ribbons at the county fair a few years ago, for crocheting and photography.

~ I haven't been on a horse in seven years.

~ I said my first word at four months old.

Now to pass it on...and here's where things get a little tricky. Although I do read a lot of very fine blogs, I don't know if all the bloggers in question are in the habit of doing pass-it-on awards like this (or if they would take kindly to the adjectives Irresistibly Sweet). So here's what I'll do: if you're among the blogs that I follow, feel free to accept the award if you would like to have it.

Of Disorganized Timelines & Hashtag Detours

2011-08-15T09:15:00.000-04:00

In spite of the fact that I've managed to stick to my blogging schedule for most of the summer, toward the end of this past week I started to have the uneasy feeling that my blog was neglected—probably for the simple reason that I couldn't think of anything to write about for this week's post. I've had last-minute panics before, but always managed to dig up something. This week, though, has been rather a disorganized one. Since it was a summer vacation I guess that's nothing to be ashamed of. It just means I am now writing a rather disorganized blog post.

I didn't have any real writing plans for the week; I put aside a story that was giving me some trouble so I could come at it with a fresh perspective after a seven-day break. I adopted the attitude that it would be awfully nice to get something done this week, but I wasn't going to force it. If something did happen to get done I should be pleasantly surprised.

What did happen was that I bounced unexpectedly out of one historical period into another. I suppose this happens to all historical writers at some point.

Last week I linked to my latest blog post on Twitter. Incidentally, if you hadn't noticed the widget in my sidebar, you can now find me on Twitter. A year ago—nay, but even a few months ago—I could not have pictured myself being able to say that. However, here I am. So far I've learned that it is indeed possible to craft a coherent sentence from 140 characters, but it is somewhat harder to be witty with only 140 characters. I very nearly got kicked out of the house when I mentioned the fact that I'd joined Twitter—I think the only thing that saved me was a solemn promise never to mention any of my family, singly, in groups, by name, anonymously or otherwise, in a Tweet.

So before posting said link to blog post I checked to see if there was a Civil War hashtag, which in fact there was, and that led me to several interesting things to read. So shortly afterwards, by association of ideas, I started reading The Long Roll, a hefty 1911 Civil War novel that's been waiting on my Kindle for months. One night I actually stayed up till midnight reading—you know how hard it is to quit in the middle of a battle. Before I knew it I was writing furiously on a short story set at the battle of Gettysburg. To add some extra drama, it's framed by flashbacks from a later period, so I've really been bouncing around the historical timeline.

I'm actually really glad I made this unintentional detour. I was coming close to being bored with my current project and even closer to getting stuck with it, so writing something else was fun and a relief. Now if I can finish it today between Monday chores, I'll be ready to get back to real work with the official start of my writing work week on Tuesday.

Review: Beechenbrook

2011-08-08T07:00:00.025-04:00

Shenandoah Valley, Virginia

The wild tide of battle runs red, - dashes high,

And blots out the splendour of earth and of sky;

The blue air is heavy, and sul'phrous, and dun,

And the breeze on its wings bears the boom of the gun.

In faster and fiercer and deadlier shocks,

The thunderous billows are hurled on the rocks;

And our Valley becomes, amid Spring's softest breath,

The valley, alas! of the shadow of death.

The background of Beechenbrook is even more fascinating than the work itself. The author, Margaret Junkin Preston, seemingly little-known now but highly regarded in her day, is an historical and literary figure who has intrigued me ever since I first read about her some years ago. She was the sister-in-law of Stonewall Jackson through his first wife, her sister Elinor Junkin. In 1857 Margaret married Major John T.L. Preston, one of the founders of the Virginia Military Institute and a widower with seven children. She eventually had two children of her own. She witnessed the devastation of the Civil War firsthand, enduring the hardships of home-front life, the invasion of Virginia and the loss of two young stepsons. Although these experiences undoubtedly inspired the trials of the representative Southern family in her poem Beechenbrook, the woman who became known as the "Poetess of the Confederacy" suffered personal ambivalence and conflict before coming to fully identify with the Confederate cause. A native of Pennsylvania, she had family on the Northern side of the struggle as well.

Portrait of Margaret Junkin Preston,
on cover of biography by Mary Price Coulling

Now, I'm no poetry critic. To me, there are two kinds of poetry: the kind that rhymes and the kind that doesn't. I like the kind that rhymes. I can't intelligently critique Beechenbrook in terms of poetry, but I can say that I enjoyed Preston's style. The language is direct, clear and sometimes surprisingly (for lack of a better word) modern, in contrast to the involved and flowery style one expects from Victorian-era literature. I was particularly impressed by how Preston used descriptions of the changing seasons and weather to highlight events in the narrative, by drawing either parallels or sharp contrasts.

The poem is the story of soldier's wife Alice Dunbar and her family as they experience the war from their Shenandoah Valley home - witnessing battles from afar, exchanging letters with an absent husband and father, caring for wounded soldiers and seeing the destruction of their home. Although the descriptions of impassioned patriotism and nobility may seem extravagant now, the emotion that inspired them is real and palpable; the most poignant moments all ring true. It would be very hard not to feel moved by the time one reaches the end of the book.

The story is also imbued with a strong Christian faith, increasingly emphasized as the one thing that sustains Alice throughout her trials. One particularly compelling scene portrays a service conducted by an army chaplain who exhorts his men to regard the spiritual battle as even more important than the physical.

Beechenbrook is in the public domain; it's available at Google Books, for free on Kindle, and in various paperback editions. Most of these also include several more of Preston's Civil War poems, such as "Dirge for Ashby," "Stonewall Jackson's Grave" and "When the War Is Over."

This is an entry for the 2011 Civil War Reading Challenge.

Theodore Roosevelt on Novels

2011-08-02T07:53:00.000-04:00

The other day I dug out our copy of Theodore Roosevelt's Letters To His Children, because I wanted to look up a passage I remembered about the American section of Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit. In the process of looking through the entries where he discusses literature I came across this paragraph:

There is quite enough sorrow and shame and suffering and baseness in real life and there is no need for meeting it unnecessarily in fiction. As Police Commissioner it was my duty to deal with all kinds of squalid misery and hideous and unspeakable infamy, and I should have been worse than a coward if I had shrunk from doing what was necessary; but there would have been no use whatever in my reading novels detailing all this misery and squalor and crime, or at least in reading them as a steady thing. Now and then there is a powerful but sad story which really is interesting and which really does good; but normally the books which do good and the books which healthy people find interesting are those which are not in the least of the sugar-candy variety, but which, while portraying foulness and suffering when they must be portrayed, yet have a joyous as well as a noble side.

~ in a letter to his son Kermit, November 1905

I felt like cheering when I read that. I get frustrated sometimes with the prevailing literary fashions, which seem to give the highest praise to works that deal with as dark and sordid material as possible, as though that was a stamp of merit. I like this quote's balanced perspective—acknowledge the sad yet powerful, but appreciate the joyous.

Weekend Odds & Ends #15

2011-07-30T07:23:00.000-04:00

~ Janice Hardy had a good post this week on how blogging about writing can help us improve. It makes sense to me, because I've found thrashing things out in my journal does the same thing.

~ Another excellent post from David Gaughran, this time on personal writing goals and how they fit in with publishing decisions.

~ Here's a nice interview with David McCullough on how his career got started, how painting helps his writing, and more.

~ Slightly related to that, here's a quote from Pablo Picasso at The Passive Voice on authors "painting" landscapes with their description. I'm not sure if he was just suggesting that certain authors had missed their vocation, or hinting that we should all be painting instead!

~ Finally, Joe Konrath puts it all in a nutshell: Are You Writing?

The Three Best 'Writer' Episodes of The Waltons

2011-07-25T08:59:00.087-04:00

Although most episodes of The Waltons had moments dealing with books and writing strung through them, there are certain episodes that were based around or portrayed events in a writer's life particularly well. These three are my favorites:

The Typewriter

Coming near the beginning of the first season, "The Typewriter" was one of the first episodes to concentrate specifically on John-Boy's writing ambitions. When he submits his first story to a magazine (the now-defunct Collier's Weekly), it's returned because they don't accept handwritten manuscripts. So he borrows a prized antique typewriter from the eccentric Baldwin sisters...and manages to lose it. Some of my favorite scenes in this episode come near the beginning: where John-Boy dares to show someone his story for the first time (yes, they point out the grammar errors first and you have to nervously ask how they liked the story itself), and where the rest of the family, who know he's always writing but aren't really aware of what he's writing about, start to ask questions and become more interested.

The Book

In the third season, now attending college, John-Boy begins a new writing class and is properly overwhelmed by his classmates' matter-of-fact descriptions of their highbrow and high-concept projects and their condescending questions about his 'themes' and 'approach.' Hoping to bolster his confidence, Olivia takes some of his stories to a 'publisher' she saw advertised, who claims they'd like to publish his collection. John-Boy's exultation carries him a little too far, affecting his work, his behavior toward his family...and causing him to overlook some of the fine print in his contract...

One thing I find rather interesting is that the problems presented in the first half of the episode are never really resolved as such. John-Boy's snobbish classmates are happy to accept him as soon as they find out he's going to be published, apparently forgetting their low opinion of his work. Similarly, John-Boy no longer has any worries about the quality of his own work as soon as he knows it's going to be published. Publication means validation. This still seems to be a common view, but when you really look at it in light of a situation like that in "The Book," it's extremely subjective.

The Prophecy

This episode is not specifically about writing—the main story is about John Walton Sr.'s reluctance to attend his high school reunion, feeling like a failure beside his more financially successful former classmates. But meanwhile, John-Boy is once again down in the dumps because a well-meaning and pessimistic professor gave him a personal lecture on how writers, no matter how good they are, never make a living from writing. This is a fine example of how the most skilfully-written episodes of The Waltons used a subplot to echo themes from the main plot, as Johns Sr. & Jr. both come to understand that the meaning of true success is not measured by money.

As a sidenote, I was amused at how, in spite of his struggles with the literary elite in "The Book," John-Boy displays a little snobbishness of his own while trying to compile a list of writers who make a living. When Mary Ellen suggests Mary Roberts Rineheart (whose debut novel The Circular Staircase I read over the weekend, incidentally), he explodes indignantly, "Oh, be serious! I'm not talking about people who write murder mysteries." Mary Ellen sensibly retorts, "We're talking about writers making money, and lots of it."

What are your favorites writing-related episodes or moments from The Waltons? Or other favorite TV shows?

Book Review: Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town

2011-07-18T07:00:00.094-04:00

The boat was due to leave at seven. There was no doubt about the hour,—not only seven, but seven sharp. The notice in the Newspacket said: "The boat will leave sharp at seven;" and the advertising posters on Missinaba Street that began with "Ho, for Indian's Island!" ended up with the words: "Boat leaves at seven sharp." There was a big notice on the wharf that said: "Boat leaves sharp on time."

So at seven, right on the hour, the whistle blew loud and long, and then at seven fifteen three short peremptory blasts, and at seven thirty one quick angry call,—just one,—and very soon after that the Mariposa Belle sailed off in her cloud of flags...

This is an absolutely charming little book, perfect for summer reading. I read the first couple of chapters and found them pleasantly entertaining, but by the third chapter, about the picnic excursion aboard the town steamboat (one of the funniest in the book) I was completely sold. By the time I reached "The Great Election in Missinaba County" I was practically shrieking with laughter. (My family, who knew I had their lunch in the oven, were not so amused.)

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, first published in 1912, is a series of loosely interconnected humorous stories about a typical small town in northeastern Canada. They deal with the everyday occurrences and the momentous, and some that are a bit of both—the congregation's efforts to pay off the debt on the new church, a bank clerk's attempts to court the judge's daughter, the aforementioned excursion and election. Stephen Leacock's cheerful, witty style of humor was right up my alley. Although it's called satire, Sunshine Sketches is plainly filled from beginning to end with great affection and nostalgia for its source material. The people of Mariposa, with all their particular quirks and traits, have the quality of being highly memorable characters and at the same time people you feel you could meet anywhere, or might have been able to meet in times past. Among the most memorable is Mr. Smith, the hotel keeper of large bulk and few words who is a leading citizen in multiple senses of the word. Mariposa, in fact, felt to me like it could be a representative small town from almost anywhere in North America. The Canadian setting actually slipped my mind once or twice until I was reminded by a reference to Canadian politics or one of the good-humored pokes at the U.S. of A.

This book is sure to be enjoyable for anyone who has known and loved a small town—or who wishes they had. For the real thing behind the humor is definitely attractive. As fellow blogger Ron Scheer pointed out the other day in his excellent piece on social networking, 'community' is a word that seems to have lost its meaning. I live in a town that may be small on the map, but doesn't have any real connection among its inhabitants. A town like Mariposa, where, as Leacock puts it "everybody is in everything," seems both foreign and appealing in today's world where some of us may be lucky if we know the names of everyone who lives on our street.

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is widely available; I read it for free on my Kindle.

Beyond the Hard Days

2011-07-11T09:17:00.000-04:00

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly: sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges. ~ Ernest Hemingway

Writing is not always easy. I'm sure that's no news to anyone who calls themself a writer. In that case Hemingway's quote might sound like a no-brainer, but several days spent hammering away at that rock has given me something of a new perspective. I don't think it just means 'Writing can be hard.' I think the essence of the quote is that we should be prepared to hit hard times in our writing, but also recognize that it's just a natural stage, and certainly not the only one. We've got to accept a difficult period for what it is, but also keep in mind that we'll get through it and and it won't always be like this.

For me, it's very, very easy to get discouraged when something isn't coming easily for me. (Mom has always said I'm like that with plenty of things besides writing, but we won't go into that...) If I don't get as much work done in a day as I wanted to, or if I'm having a particularly hard time with something I feel ought to be easy, I feel a sense of failure. If it happens often I wind up indulging in all sorts of depressing and unreasonable doubts and a glum outlook generally. But on the other hand, after a day when everything comes 'easily and perfectly,' as Hemingway put it, I've got high spirits and the future looks bright.

What I'm learning is not to let myself be guided by those ups and downs of emotions. I know it's unreasonable to feel discouraged even at the very moment I'm feeling it, because I know from experience it won't last. Being able to look beyond a hard day or a hard week can make all the difference.

After all, tomorrow is another day.

The Naming Game

2011-07-05T07:00:00.144-04:00

Naming characters can be either the easiest part or one of the hardest parts of writing a story. For me, there seems to be no middle ground. Either the names just drift into my head, ready-made and perfectly fitted to the characters, or I have to put in my time going up and down lists in search of that perfect name that doesn't seem to exist.

A name fitting a character is more complicated than it sounds. I usually find myself associating certain names with physical characteristics like height, build, hair and eye color; or with personality and demeanor. That's certainly not how most of us get our names, but it's an author's privilege! For me it has a lot more to do with how the name looks spelled out than the sound of it. I really can't explain it any further than that. My brother and I have held long, serious conversations about how, for no explainable reason, we associate names, words and even letters with certain colors (down to particular shades). These associations are quite individual—our opinions usually differ pretty widely. For as long as I can remember I've always firmly identified different colors with the different days of the week. I thought this was just a peculiarity all my own, until I read Mrs. Miniver. "Monday was definitely yellow, Thursday a dull indigo, Friday violet. About the others she didn't feel so strongly." (I beg to differ from Mrs. Miniver. Monday is most certainly blue.)

Anyway, when inspiration doesn't come of itself I refer to lists. Usually I have a vague but fixed idea that it's simply got to begin with a certain letter. So I go through alphabetized lists until my eyes have seen that letter so many times that it begins to look like some strange unidentified symbol with no recognizable sound or meaning. When that happens it's time to put the notebook aside, blink a few times and work on something else for a little while.

For first names, baby-name sites can be helpful, as long as you find the right one. I've gotten some good use out of the alphabetical lists at a site called Moms Who Think. (If the meaning of a name matters—it doesn't matter very often—I always get opinions from multiple sources!) Earlier this week, I came across this list, which seems pretty extensive—and what I particularly like about it is that it features a lot of alternate spellings. For surnames, the phonebook is always the handiest reference. I haven't done much surname-searching online. But in a specific instance, I needed several distinctly Irish names. So I looked up "Irish surnames" and made a happy find in this long list, a page on a genealogy site. I've written before about using genealogy sites to help with character names, and it seems that I've only begun to scratch the surface of their possibilities.

Is naming characters usually easy or difficult for you? What are your favorite resources for names?

Weekend Odds & Ends #14

2011-07-02T07:00:00.004-04:00

~ I was thrilled to find out that John Curran, author of Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks, has written a second book on the same subject to be released in September. Agatha Christie's Murder In the Making sounds like it will delve a little deeper into the creation of Christie's books than the first volume, and will include some fascinating archival material, including the original 'missing chapter' from The Mysterious Affair At Styles. I'm looking forward to this one!

~ Last weekend I read self-published author Ruth Ann Nordin's account of having her ebooks pirated and sold on Amazon under her own name. She now has a page of resources up at Self-Published Author's Lounge on preventing and dealing with copyright infringement, and will be adding more content to it in the future.

~ Jody Hedlund had an excellent post last week on getting your family to support your writing career.

~ I saw the trailer for Steven Spielberg's new movie War Horse, about a cavalry horse in WWI, this week. (With a score by John Williams!) I heard about this movie a while back and thought it sounded interesting. The trailer looks beautiful...but given that it's a war movie I hope it doesn't turn out to be too violent.

~ This week's free-on-Kindle find: Alec Lloyd, Cowpuncher by Eleanor Gates. Published in 1907, it's a straight-out comedy about a matchmaking cowboy who gets into plenty of trouble trying to help out with his friends' romances and even more trouble trying to carry on one of his own. Dialect-heavy, slapstick-funny and a fun read.

Meanwhile, back at the library...

2011-06-27T07:00:00.076-04:00

Over the past couple of weeks I've been reading Western short stories. That's what I was in the mood for, and I was also interested in trying out several different authors and comparing their different styles and takes on the genre and form. So I ended up reading collections of short stories by three different authors, all of which were originally published in magazines between 1937 and 1959. I didn't plan it this way, but it turned out that they were roughly chronological in the order I read them, each author's work overlapping the next a little bit on the timeline.

First up was Willow Basin: A Western Sextet, a collection of six stories by Peter Dawson (pen name for Jon Glidden), published between 1936 and 1947. My reaction to his work was a little bit mixed. They're nice, well-plotted stories with appealing characters and good dialogue, but the writing in many places is quite clumsy. What feels like attempts to be fancy or dramatic with description and metaphors ends up confusing. The stories follow a familiar adventure-style pattern, nearly all winding up to a conclusion featuring a gun battle at close quarters, described in such detail that it sometimes takes a man several sentences to lift a gun and get a shot off.

Next came Grub Line Rider by Louis L'Amour. This was the first time I'd read any of L'Amour's short fiction, though I have read about ten of his novels. My initial impression was that his writing here was similar to, but a little less polished than that in the novels, which makes sense, given that all but one of these stories are earlier works (ranging from the early '40s to early '50s). Several of the stories feature the familiar plot of a ranch in danger of being taken over by the chief villain. (An imperilled ranch also featured in three out of the six Dawson stories). Some of these feel a little constrained, like they would do better as the concept for a longer novel or novella rather than a short story. There's a lot of characters and fairly little time to get to know them, and the short space sometimes forces all the action to take place within a few days or even hours.

Both the Dawson and L'Amour land-war stories are similar to a typical B-Western plot, where we know who the villain is right from the beginning and the options are fairly limited in how to outwit or defeat him—usually leading to an action-filled ending. Though there is a female character in most of these stories, they seem mostly a token presence rather than fully developed characters. The other L'Amours I found more interesting—two similar stories about a man on the run had more character development, and "War Party," a 1959 story set on a wagon train, was probably the best; at least the most unique.

Finally, I read Blood Money and Other Stories by Elmore Leonard. The collection opens with a pair of rather tough and bloody cavalry stories; although they were unquestionably well-written, I did find myself hoping the whole book wouldn't be in that precise vein. It was not. The stories near the middle of the book were some of the best I read throughout this whole experiment. "Saint With a Six-Gun," the story of a young deputy assigned to guard a condemned prisoner, was my favorite. I especially loved the humorous twist at the very end. "The Man With the Iron Arm" was another excellent, character-driven piece, and the title story was good too. Leonard's writing is fine and straighforward, and I liked the occasional touch of dry humor in the narrative. Where plot is concerned, rather than tracking over old familiar hero-versus-villain ground, it seems his best stories stem from more mundane circumstances, leaving the author freer to take it where he wants, and creating more of a question for the reader regarding how it will end. With only one story in this collection, in fact, the concluding "The Longest Day of His Life," could I predict with any certainty how it would end.

To sum up, I'd say Dawson was a pleasant afternoon's read, but not necessarily an author I'd seek out more of; L'Amour was good, but I think I prefer his novels; and Leonard is an author whose Westerns I'd definitely like to try more of.

Have you read any of these authors? How would you rate their short fiction?

Sharing the love - of books

2011-06-20T07:00:00.136-04:00

The Artist's Sisters Signe and Henriette
Reading a Book by Constantin Hansen

These days, I play the role of unofficial literary advisor to my three younger siblings. Since I've read most of the books in the house, I'm frequently called upon to offer suggestions when they need to pick out a new book, whether for school or pleasure reading. It's fun, searching through the shelves and boxes and my memories of reading them all, trying to find something to suit everybody's taste and reading level. Getting them to try my suggestions sometimes requires a little persuasion, but it pays off in the end. My two sisters in particular tend to hesitate and complain and delay over picking out a book, but once they get started on one they enjoy you can't get it away from them. The other day, after she had just finished devouring the fourth book I've recommended to her this spring, I asked my thirteen-year-old sister if she trusted my taste by now. She wasn't sure—she said a recommendation would still have to "sound like something she'd like." Which, after all, makes sense.

My youngest sister, age ten, couldn't really get into Little Women. She ended up putting it aside for the time being and starting Little Men instead. I had long ago split the spine of that particular paperback copy of Little Men, always a favorite of mine, and had also spent several years insisting that she was sure to enjoy it. That book is now in three or four pieces, minus front cover, back cover and all vestiges of binding—evidence, I think, of just how much she did enjoy it. She insisted on reading her favorite chapter aloud to Mom, and now she wants her own hardcover copy for her birthday.

The last book I recommended to my thirteen-year-old sister was another favorite of mine, Rudyard Kipling's Captains Courageous (which she was reluctant to start, naturally, but finished in four days). I picked it up from where she'd left it on a table one day and within seconds I was absorbed in it all over again. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed it—there's a book packed with memorable characters if there ever was one. Being able to watch someone else enjoy a book you love adds another whole dimension to the experience of reading it. My mom and I have what amounts to our own mystery book club going - for us, reading a good Agatha Christie or Georgette Heyer whodunit isn't complete until we've both read it and talked it over afterwards.

It's a little bit paradoxical, because ultimately reading is a very personal thing. Every reader experiences a book completely by themself—forms their own world, in a way, with the books they read. But there comes a time with anything you enjoy—whether it's a book, movie, TV show, music, or the information you've absorbed about a subject that fascinates you—when you've just got to share it with someone else or burst. So we share, whether by writing reviews, coaxing someone else to read, watch or listen, or just talking their ear off telling them all about it.

Do you enjoy sharing your favorite books with other people? Who do you like to share them with and how?

Summer Schedule

2011-06-13T12:26:00.002-04:00

I've decided to make some changes in my blogging routine. Now that I've finished up with Wednesday's O. Henry series, I'm going to cut back a little bit. I've read advice about slower blogging in the past, and I used to think it wasn't such a great idea - I worried that readers would lose interest if there weren't frequent posts. But since then I've encountered some excellent blogs with only one or two posts a week, with no shortage of readers or followers, and realized it's not so much how often you blog as how well you do it. And that's another one of my reasons for cutting back - lately I've really been feeling the pressure of trying to turn out two or three posts every week, and I don't think that's having a very good effect on my blog or my other work.

Part of the reason is that I want to trim down my computer time in general. Mom recently sent me the link to this article on the effect too much time online has on our brains and concentration. As much as I enjoy reading and browsing the web, I have to admit that it does tend to make me feel less focused and less inclined to work afterwards. Focus is always one of my biggest issues, so I don't want to handicap myself any further.

So for this summer, I plan on posting once a week, probably on Mondays or Tuesdays. I may toss in another post late in the week sometimes if I feel like it, but that'll be my 'official' schedule. I'm looking forward to spending a lot more time outdoors, and I want to use the time left free by cutting back on the Internet for my writing. I've got a project that I'm trying to complete by the end of the summer - depending on how well I do with my self-imposed deadline, I should hopefully be able to share more about that come September!

(Oh, and one final note on O. Henry. I still can't get Blogger's poll to work. If it ever cooperates I will add one, but in the meantime, I'd love to hear your comments on which of the ten stories you liked the best.)

Weekend Odds and Ends #13

2011-06-11T07:00:00.022-04:00

~ Here's several posts I've read recently on evaluating and writing good book reviews, by Kaye Dacus, Sierra Godfrey and Jody Hedlund.

~ Speaking of good book reviews, Ron Scheer at Buddies In the Saddle wrote a great one this past week on a Max Brand novel I hadn't heard of until now, South of Rio Grande.

~ Author and blogger David Gaughran interviewed T.D. Johnson, editor of Short Story America, an online literary magazine that recently put out their first hardcover anthology. They've got some interesting projects underway - looks like a publication to keep an eye on.

~ Rick Saenz at Dry Creek Chronicles shared an interesting comment from another blog on who will use e-readers and why.

Top Ten O. Henry #1: Friends In San Rosario

2011-06-08T11:57:00.004-04:00

O. Henry as a clerk in the First National Bank of Austin

"No, sir," he said, in a low but steady tone; "those securities are neither in the safe nor in the vault. I have taken them. You may hold me personally responsible for their absence."

Nettlewick felt a slight thrill. He had not expected this. He had struck a momentous trail when the hunt was drawing to a close.

"Ah!" said the examiner. He waited a moment, and then continued: "May I ask you to explain more definitely?"

"The securities were taken by me," repeated the major. "It was not for my own use, but to save an old friend in trouble. Come in here, sir, and we'll talk it over."

Read the full story here.

I believe Friends In San Rosario is the finest example of O. Henry's more 'serious' stories. Although touched with humor in the proper place, it's a straightforward, cleanly written story with some real, not satirical, drama in the plot and portraits of intriguing characters - not to mention some terrific descriptive writing in the opening scenes with the bank examiner (I can never encounter that phrase without thinking of It's A Wonderful Life: "Uncle Billy...bank examiner!").

We've seen several times how Henry used the double-narrator gimmick to comic effect; here the story-within-the-story related by Major Kingman allows Friends In San Rosario to telescope into greater depth. The relation between his anecdote and the rest of the plot is more complex - true to form, the final piece of the puzzle that makes it all fall into place is withheld until the last minute. But unlike the comic stories where the initial narrator and the reader receive the punch line together, the man who listens to the Major's story is left out of the loop - "astounded, perplexed, nettled, at sea."

I had always thought this story had a special poignance in light of O. Henry's real-life history in banking - his arrest for embezzlement and subsequent prison time - but I never realized just how close fiction was to fact. While putting this post together I came across an article online (unsourced and unattributed, but the geography sounds real enough) detailing how San Rosario and some of the characters in the story were based on Austin, Texas and real-life individuals.

So that's it - my top ten favorite stories by O. Henry. Which of the ten is your favorite? [At present Blogger's poll feature is misbehaving, so I can't put it up yet, but I will do so as soon as possible.] I'd love to hear opinions on how and why you made your choice. Or maybe your favorite isn't on my list - if so, which is it and why?

A TV writer on writing

2011-06-06T15:36:00.000-04:00

Kathleen Hite & James Arness on the cover of Writer's Digest

I didn't start out to write something connected to Gunsmoke today; I found this 1963 cover story from Writer's Digest, "Are TV Writers Made or Born?" - an interview with Kathleen Hite, one of the show's signature writers - about a month ago, and planned to share it at some point. I actually started putting this post together last week before hearing that James Arness had passed away. Kathleen Hite started out with the radio version of Gunsmoke and wrote forty-one episodes of the TV show; she also worked on other classic Westerns such as Wagon Train and Zane Grey Theatre. A lot of what she had to say about writing in the interview rang true for me, especially this paragraph about her early struggles with originality, something that used to bother me a lot:

I was stymied when I began. The thought that I must create wholly new people and incidents was frighening. But I finally realized that all stories have been told in one way or another, and that I should concern mysef only with how to tell mine, what to do with the characters, what I should have them say. This is what an individual writer has to offer. If you consider all the writing that has been done, in all forms, throughout the centuries, what stands out is not the freshness of the stories, but the freshness of the handling. I was almost immobilized by this great bugaboo, until I realized no one was writing new stuff, that what mattered was how I drew the characters and what I had them say. Maybe all they have to do in one scene is say, 'Get your hat, and let's go' - but what these people do, how you have them do it - this can be very original.

(Incidentally, I got a kick out of reading the magazine ads alongside this article, some of which sound a lot like the ones that line the sides of writing websites today. And take a look at the TV shows advertised as market opportunities for scriptwriters at the end!)

Until recently I never really noticed the writing credits in classic TV. I know relatively little about scriptwriting, aside from being able to tell a well-written show from a poor one. But lately I've started paying more attention, recognizing familiar names in the credits and comparing their work. Based on this observation, I think the craft of prose fiction has more in common with scriptwriting than it does with other forms such as nonfiction or poetry, because fiction and script share the same basic elements: character, plot, dialogue. I don't know how scriptwriters rank these elements in order of importance, but I've got a feeling characters rank highly. Kathleen Hite referred to characterization as "the most important thing."

I originally knew Hite's name from The Waltons, for which she wrote 25 episodes. It was interesting for me to find that many of the writers who worked on The Waltons also started out scripting Westerns - John McGreevey, Richard Carr, John Furia Jr., Richard Fielder and others. Even Earl Hamner wrote an episode of Wagon Train. I don't know why I seem to have paid more attention to the writing credits on the The Waltons and remembered the writers' names better than those of other shows. Maybe because the show itself had so many writing-related themes. I have a feeling it must have been easy for the writers to identify with the character of John-Boy, and perhaps to put something of themselves into his literary struggles. They must have - I laugh and family members roll their eyes at scenes that have been reenacted around our house often enough.

Have you learned anything from film or TV writing that you could apply to your own? What do you think are the differences and similarities between prose and script? Do you have favorites among TV writers?

June Is Here

2011-06-03T07:00:00.011-04:00

The feathery foliage has broadened its leaves

And June, with its beautiful mornings and eves,

Its magical atmosphere, breezes and blooms,

Its woods all delicious with thousand perfumes, —
First-born of the Summer, — spoiled pet of the year, —
June, delicate queen of the seasons, is here!

~ Margaret Junkin Preston, "Beechenbrook"

Top Ten O. Henry #2: The Man Higher Up

2011-06-01T14:03:00.000-04:00

"There are two kinds of graft," said Jeff, "that ought to be wiped out by law. I mean Wall Street speculation, and burglary."

"Nearly everybody will agree with you as to one of them," said I, with a laugh.

"Well, burglary ought to be wiped out, too," said Jeff; and I wondered whether the laugh had been redundant.

Read the full story here.

This story holds a special place for me, since it was my introduction to O. Henry. As I mentioned once before, I took an online short story course back in high school, and had to buy an anthology of fifty great short stories for assigned reading. I only remember one of them being assigned and discussed (Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" - and I have no idea what any of us learned from it), but of course, being the voracious reader I am, I had to read the whole volume for myself. It was quite a mixed bag. I've since read stories by several authors represented in that anthology, but my favorite by far remains the author of The Man Higher Up, my favorite story from the book.

The Man Higher Up is one of a series of stories featuring the character of good-hearted traveling salesman/con man Jeff Peters, most of which were collected in a volume titled The Gentle Grafter. (If Jeff Peters isn't on somebody's list of memorable characters from American literature he probably ought to be.) All of these stories use the double-narrator device, with Jeff relating his adventures to a nearly invisible initial narrator who only handles a few sentences at the beginning and end. The Man Higher Up, in which Jeff recounts what happened when he, a burglar and a corrupt financier found themselves broke and stranded in a little Midwestern town, has got to be the best of the Peters stories, although Jeff Peters As a Personal Magnet is hilarious too. In these two O. Henry really let loose with a stream of the metaphors, puns and malapropisms that are a defining characteristic of his best comic stories - I can easily see how The Man Higher Up got chosen for an anthology.

Book Review: A Man Called Outlaw

2011-05-29T19:20:00.001-04:00

A Man Called Outlaw by K.M. Weiland is something refreshing: a recent book that readers of classic-style Westerns will enjoy. There's plenty of action, but there's also substance. It reminded me somewhat of a Louis L'Amour novel, but with deeper internal conflict, higher mental and spiritual stakes for the characters.

The novel shifts back and forth between two storylines, set thirty years apart. In the 1880s story, Shane Lassiter finds himself in a crisis of conscience over whether to remain loyal to Nathaniel Wilcock, the man who raised him, or to oppose actions of Wilcock's that he knows are wrong - which are also directed against the woman he loves. The earlier plotline tells the story of a man known as "the outlaw," who fought against Wilcock in the 1850s, at the beginning of the long-standing land war. While I pretty much knew what the eventual connection between the two stories would be, the 1880s plot layers enough complications and twists to keep the ending uncertain, and coupled with the characters' personal conflicts, creates a tension that almost amounts to frustration in places.

The book is peopled with a variety of interesting supporting characters who play their parts well; some, in fact, I would have liked to know more about or seen developed further - Russell, for instance. Èmile, the Frenchman who appears in both storylines, was one of my favorites; I thought Weiland did a particularly good job with his ever-entertaining dialogue. The one gap in the plot I would like to have seen addressed further was the space between the two storylines - how Lane Cassidy managed to hang on to the Sundally ranch all of those years, and exactly what happened to Celeste during that time. Most of that seems left to the reader's imagination. The writing is very good, with the minor exception of an occasional odd word choice that puzzled me here and there. I also liked how the element of certain characters' Christianity was presented in a way that enhanced the storyline, without descending into preachiness, and was pleased to see not just one but multiple minister characters portrayed as men of sense and strength, something not always common in a Western. All in all, a very good read!

This is an entry for the 2011 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

In Transition

2011-05-27T07:00:00.001-04:00

Memphis Grizzlies point guard Mike Conley Jr.

One thing that writing first drafts by hand has helped me to do is break the rather bad habit of writing things out of order. Probably not all writers will agree on whether or not that is actually a bad habit, but I feel it did have a crippling effect on my writing. You see, I'm not always a patient writer. Once I've got the first few paragraphs on the page, I want to get right to the best parts right away - the exciting parts, the romantic parts, or simply the parts that I have planned out in the most detail. When typing a manuscript I had the liberty to do this - but the result, more often than not, was a collection of exciting scenes and an author scratching her head over how to tie them together.

I partly blame NaNoWriMo. (I have to at least partly blame something, don't I?) I typed for NaNo so I could use the wordcount validator. When you're in a race with time to write 50,000 words in a month, you can't waste time breaking through the barrier of writer's block that slams down at the end of the first chapter; you have to skip ahead and add to your wordcount in another part of the story.

But when I write in a notebook I like the story to begin neatly on the first page and proceed decently and in order toward the back cover. And I think this forces me - to borrow a bit of basketball terminology - to try to be better in transition. It's very tempting to skim over the connecting pieces between the more exciting scenes, to think that you can just come back and fix them up later on. Of course you'll be back to fix everything, but if you leave especially ragged holes it can cause a lot of headaches and heartburn in the second-draft stage. Even worse, you might be tempted to give up and just leave in a second-rate transition paragraph. I know I've felt that way myself lots of times. But losing a reader's attention with a boring or poorly-written middle section could be just as disastrous as losing control of the ball in the middle of the court.

Top Ten O. Henry #3: Calloway's Code

2011-05-25T07:00:00.032-04:00

"Mr. Vesey," said the m. e., with his jollying-which-you-should-regard-as-a-favour manner, "you have cast a serious reflection upon the literary standards of the paper that employs you. You have also assisted materially in giving us the biggest 'beat' of the year. I will let you know in a day or two whether you are to be discharged or retained at a larger salary."

Read the full story here.

Into the top three now! Of all O. Henry's satires of things literary, this is my favorite. Set during the Russo-Japanese war, current news in Henry's day, Calloway's Code pokes irresistible fun at over-used cliches and newspapers' writing style. A newspaper staff is stumped by their war correspondent's original code, which he invented to slip a scoop past the telegraph censors. Their efforts to decipher it and the eventual solution are equally delightful.

Looking it over again, it also occurred to me that the story is now a demonstration of how newspaper style has changed. I can't recall ever having seen some of the more 'literary' phrases in any news article, let alone seeing them over-used.

A Week in the Wild

2011-05-21T09:47:00.000-04:00

It's been pouring rain most of the week, and when I say pouring I mean cats and dogs. And during the dry spells it seems to have been raining every other kind of creature. Last Sunday a pair of mallard ducks dropped in for a swim on our pool and a hearty lunch at the bird feeder. Wednesday we tried to feed some orphaned baby red squirrels, only to have one carried off by a hawk. Wednesday night our dog met a trio of deer who curiously approached within a few feet of him, while he paid them little or no attention. Aerial wars have raged continuously among the birds, most notably the campaign of one noisy and persistent crow who's been pursuing a hawk from tree to tree.

The uproar culminated on Thursday morning, when we made the unhappy discovery that four out of five nestlings in our bluebird box had died. The cause remains uncertain, but we think it was a combination of cold and wet and possibly insect infestation. So Mom and I headed out in morning combat gear (read: pajamas and work boots) to move the surviving nestling to an empty bluebird box and clean out the old one. While we were busy with this the attack of the tree swallows began. Dozens of them materialized out of who knows where, diving, circling and swooping above our heads like miniature fighter planes, while we fended them off with a hose and a broom. If any of our neighbors happened to be looking out their windows, I'm sure they got quite a show. In fact, I don't think we've put on an open-air show quite this good since the time we tried to give our dog a do-it-yourself haircut with electric clippers. (Long story.)

Needless to say, I didn't get much writing done Thursday morning.

At present all is quiet on the feathered and four-footed front. But I'm still considering adding a construction helmet to my usual equipage of safety glasses and ear mufflers next time I mow the lawn. At the very least the sight ought to frighten away anything I encounter.

Top Ten O. Henry #4: The Green Door

2011-05-18T14:25:00.000-04:00

In the big city the twin spirits Romance and Adventure are always abroad seeking worthy wooers. As we roam the streets they slyly peep at us and challenge us in twenty different guises...at every corner handkerchiefs drop, fingers beckon, eyes besiege, and the lost, the lonely, the rapturous, the mysterious, the perilous, changing clues of adventure are slipped into our fingers. But few of us are willing to hold and follow them.

Read the full story here.

O. Henry's tribute to the spirit of adventure must have, I think, a special appeal for the author. I believe all authors are true adventurers at heart. We've always got an eye out for the little things, mundane or unusual, that might be the cause of or inspiration for something interesting. Imagination, after all, is adventure of the mind, and exercising the imagination is the part of writing that has always been the most fun for me. There's a lot of talk about putting ourselves into our characters (which is quite true), but I think for many of us it's far easier to write characters who do things or are things that we'd like to do or be. Every new story is an adventure that we experience vicariously by writing it.

The Green Door is the story of a young man who is always ready to pursue anything that might lead to adventure, who notices a trivial but odd incident and cannot rest until he finds out what it means. There's less wordplay, less outright comedy, but it's still O. Henry all over. The descriptions of a busy city at night reflect his taste for observing and capturing the colorful panorama of human nature and life in general. And of course, there's the ending. The interesting thing about this story is that the twist doesn't wait all the way until the last line; the moment with the most punch comes a little bit earlier.

Layers of Narration

2011-05-16T11:32:00.000-04:00

I love how certain children's literature of years ago, particularly British literature, seems to be written on two levels at once. First there are the adventures of the story, plain and simple, for the entertainment of the young readers. But there's also a pervading gentle satire that seems more calculated to amuse adults. Good examples of what I'm talking about would be J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, Edith Nesbit's books and even to some extent A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh series. Milne, of course, was a humor writer to begin with, so it seems natural his wit would spill over into his children's books.This kind of humor arises largely from the way the young protagonists and/or narrators view the adult world. For example, on the first page of Edith Nesbit's The Story of the Treasure Seekers, the juvenile narrator innocently takes aim at cliched book openings:

There are some things I must tell before I begin...because I have read books myself, and I know how beastly it is when a story begins, ' "Alas!" said Hildegarde with a deep sigh, "we must look our last on this ancestral home" '—and then someone else says something—and you don't know for pages and pages where the home is, or who Hildegarde is, or anything about it.

That paragraph is especially funny now in the era when writers are constantly warned that they must begin with action, action, action and not bother giving any background until you've hooked the reader.

The Story of the Treasure Seekers uses a very original first-person narrative device; in the opening chapter the narrator explains that one of the six Bastable children is telling the story, but they won't reveal which one until the end. But since throughout the book they alternate between referring to themself in the first and third person, blithely oblivious of the fact themself, we know who it is all along. This adds another whole layer of humor to the story, derived from the contrast between the way they describe themself in the third-person and the slightly more honest view in first-person.

I think first-person narration is particularly well suited to humorous writing. Although I've never picked up a P.G. Wodehouse book that didn't make me laugh out loud, I enjoy the Jeeves books more than the non-Jeeves, and I think that's partly due to Bertie Wooster's hilarious narrative voice. And as in The Story of the Treasure Seekers, first-person can be used to create continual irony from the perceived difference between the reality and the way the narrator looks at it.

Do you enjoy this kind of old-fashioned children's literature? What are some of your favorite examples of funny first-person narration?

Weekend Odds and Ends #12

2011-05-14T09:31:00.000-04:00

~ The Saturday Evening Post takes a look back at Leary's Book Store in Philadelphia, a "happy hunting ground for book lovers between 1850 and 1969." How I would have loved to shop there.

~ I got a kick out of the writing-themed comic strips in this blog post at A Noodle In A Haystack.

~ Here's a fascinating piece at the L.A. Times about the Library of Congress' musical archives. One particular statistic stunned me: "According to a 2005 survey conducted for the library's National Recording Preservation Board, of 1,521 recordings made from 1890 to 1964, only 14% has been made available to the public." (HT: Laura)

Top Ten O. Henry #5: A Chaparral Prince

2011-05-11T14:07:00.004-04:00

To whatever tale she read she found an analogy in her own condition. The woodcutter's lost child, the unhappy goose girl, the persecuted stepdaughter, the little maiden imprisoned in the witch's hut—all these were but transparent disguises for Lena, the overworked kitchenmaid in the Quarrymen's Hotel. And always when the extremity was direst came the good fairy or the gallant prince to the rescue.

So, here in the ogre's castle, enslaved by a wicked spell, Lena had leaned upon Grimm and waited, longing for the powers of goodness to prevail. But on the day before Mrs. Maloney had found the book in her room and had carried it away, declaring sharply that it would not do for servants to read at night; they lost sleep and did not work briskly the next day. Can one only eleven years old, living away from one's mamma, and never having any time to play, live entirely deprived of Grimm? Just try it once and you will see what a difficult thing it is.

Read the full story here.

The updated fairytale has always been a popular type of story. Here O. Henry takes the principle of the fairytale into a Western setting, and does a wonderful job of it. A Chaparral Prince has a lot going for it - vivid and unique settings in the limestone quarry and the German-settled town of Fredericksburg, Texas; memorable characters; a display of O. Henry's gift for colorful dialogue in the jargon of the train-robbers and the jumbled English of Fritz the mail-carrier; and an engaging story with a lovely blend of comedy and pathos.

As I get closer to the top of the list, re-reading these stories has made me appreciate even more whatever it was about them that prompted my choices, and even to discover some new qualities in them. I hope everybody else has been enjoying this series too! As I mentioned in response to a previous comment, I'm planning on doing a sidebar poll at the end of it to see which of the ten is everyone else's favorite - leaving the poll open for a good long time so anyone who hasn't read the stories will have plenty of opportunity.

The Notebook That Won't Be Quiet

2011-05-09T09:11:00.000-04:00

I fully intended to write a blog post over the weekend. I had an idea for the subject, and figured all I had to do was sit down and rattle it off when I had a minute, but it didn't work out that way. I spent most of Saturday outside doing yard work, something I thoroughly enjoy on a nice day. That, incidentally, inspired a reflection on just how much of a historical mindset I have. Machinery in general is not my forté. But I didn't realize that I had the horse mentality so thoroughly ingrained as to make me always conscientiously approach the riding lawnmower from the near side. Not that I really expected it to kick me if I tried mounting on the off side, but you never know.

Anyway, when I was finished with my outdoor work I had the time, theoretically, for that easy-as-pie blog post, but hadn't the energy, so I joined some of my family in watching basketball instead. My thirteen-year-old sister is a die-hard Memphis Grizzlies fan, and I am a Celtics fan by long tradition, so Saturday was quite a day in that department. I can't say that watching playoffs is a relaxing pursuit, but at least it doesn't require as much thought as writing. Then yesterday I was busy cooking a special dinner for Mother's Day...so the concept I had for a great post once again got filed for a future occasion.

Wyoming in the 1930s

The one significant literary thing that happened to me over the weekend was the resurrection of a certain notebook - a pink fifty-cent notebook with a crease down the cover, almost full of scrambled notes for what was my NaNoWriMo 2009 project, a murder mystery set in rural Wyoming circa 1930. I made the 50k word goal that year, but I typed the manuscript and did it out of order, so all I ended up with was fragments. Overwhelmed by the mess, I put it aside and haven't added to it since...but every once in a while, usually after reading a mystery, some instinct prompts me to pull out that notebook and add something. And believe it or not, it's developed. Since 2009 I've totally reworked the outline (I don't think it's giving anything away to say that I've changed the identity of the criminal twice since my first tentative sketch of the idea several years ago), cut certain plot elements, cut out an important character and then put him back in again, added more red herrings and changed the significance of certain events...all without writing one single word in the actual manuscript.

It's a book that won't leave me alone. My instinct is telling me that there must be a story hidden in that mess if I can only find it. It feels a little like Michelangelo's theory of releasing the hidden sculpture. It's not often that I get a "feeling" about something I've written, and I don't know how much stock to put in it, but I'm certainly not going to ignore it. This time when the notebook calls, I'm going to see if I can apply the practical lessons I've learned since that NaNo attempt to chipping away at the mass of notes and bringing the essence of the story out into the open. I don't know how long it will take, but I can't help that feeling that something will come out of it someday.

Top Ten O. Henry #6: The Pimienta Pancakes

2011-05-04T08:00:00.070-04:00

"'Somebody's been dealing me pancakes from the bottom of the deck,' I says, 'and I'll find out. I believe you know. Talk up,' says I, 'or we'll mix a panful of batter right here.'

"I slid over the counter after Uncle Emsley. He grabbed at his gun, but it was in a drawer, and he missed it two inches. I got him by the front of his shirt and shoved him in a corner.

"'Talk pancakes,' says I, 'or be made into one.'

Read the full story here.

This might be the funniest Western short story ever written. If you've read a better one, do let me know. The Pimienta Pancakes is another story of a romantic rivalry gone awry, and once again uses the narrator-within-a-narrator format, like "The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss". This time around it works even better, because it's the style and vocabulary of the inner narrator, a cowboy turned camp cook, that makes the story such a hoot. The longstanding cattleman/sheepherder feud plays a hilarious part. It's so hard to give a good synopsis of a short story without spoiling it for the reader, so this time I'm not even going to try! And you can't start in quoting the best lines when a story is so full of memorable dialogue as this one. I guess you'll just have to read the whole thing.

The Language Choice

2011-05-02T07:00:00.009-04:00

“Stop!” shouted Wardle. “What in the name of all that’s—”

“Inflammable,” mildly suggested Mr. Pickwick, who thought something worse was coming.

~ Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

A much-debated subject that frequently comes up among writers, especially Christian writers, is the use of profanity in literature. I've been meaning to write something about this for a long time, because it's a subject I feel strongly about. I may be opening a can of worms (maybe 'nightcrawlers' would be a more accurate expression), but I can't help it.

I was raised in a home where profanity was not only not tolerated, but never used, so I don't like hearing or reading it. Even an otherwise well-written book littered with profanity leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth, so to speak, and if it's particularly prevalent I can't finish the book. I know I can't be the only one who feels this way. Yet I'm continually surprised at how many people argue that swearing in literature is not only okay, but somehow necessary to strong writing.

There are a lot of angles to this discussion, but I want to focus on the one argument in favor of unexpurgated language that seems to come up the most often and which irks me the most - the argument that it's necessary because it's realistic. We must convey through a character's speech just how tough, evil, or otherwise flawed they are, and such characters are bound to swear. While they certainly may, I believe there are valid reasons for us not to transcribe their every word.

First, consider the reader. Not every person who picks up a book is so strongly committed to realism in every detail that they are willing to be bombarded with language they wouldn't want to listen to in real life. No one is going to toss your book aside in disgust because there is no swearing in it - but there's a good chance that many who would otherwise enjoy the story will toss it aside because there is. I don't see the point of offending potential readers with something that is of no actual benefit to a story, but simply included because the author feels its 'realism' provides artistic merit.

Which brings me to my second point. I would go so far as to argue that committing to writing dialogue without profanity is actually challenging ourselves to a higher standard of creativity. For the record, I do not think the solution is using a dash in place of the offensive words. Constantly coming upon -----ed out words is like being continually tripped while trying to run. But authors could and did manage to convey the unsavoriness of certain characters in the days before profanity in books became socially acceptable, without resorting to the blankety-blank method. It is a challenge to convey that a character is swearing without putting the words on the page, but when the writer meets this challenge it can actually add something to your work instead of taking away.

"[He] offer[ed] further remarks concerning the fellow's character and antecedents - and he neither minced his words nor relied altogether upon Webster's unabridged dictionary," wrote B.M. Bower in The North Wind Do Blow. Bower lived in the real West and had no illusions regarding the speech patterns of cowboys, yet she consistently came up with some of the cleverest and sometimes wryly humorous methods of skirting this language that I've ever encountered in a book. It's not only more pleasant but more intellectually stimulating to read that a broken spur was "something tangible upon which to pour profanity, however, and the atmosphere grew sulphurous in the vicinity of the blacksmith shop and remained so for several minutes" than to have the salty tirade spelled out.

That was Chip of the Flying U, in 1906. Bower had no choice. Or perhaps, if she was like me, there was no choice to make anyway. Today there are practically no standards, so every author has the choice to make for themselves. If you're a writer, which method will you choose?

On Getting Ideas

2011-04-30T09:56:00.000-04:00

"Mr. Green, tell me - do you get your ideas first and then write, or do you write first and then get your ideas?"

~ from Gentleman's Agreement (1947)

Top Ten O. Henry #7: Springtime á la Carte

2011-04-27T08:00:00.088-04:00

It was a day in March.

Never, never begin a story this way when you write one. No opening could possibly be worse. It is unimaginative, flat, dry and likely to consist of mere wind. But in this instance it is allowable. For the following paragraph, which should have inaugurated the narrative, is too wildly extravagant and preposterous to be flaunted in the face of the reader without preparation.

Read the full story here.

Springtime á la Carte is a great story with a sweet and funny twist ending. It's the tale of a typist (they called them 'typewriters' in those days) who is overcome by bittersweet memories called up by an item on the restaurant menu she is working on. This story, unlike some of the others on my list, is a longtime favorite; it was in my first paperback of selected O. Henry stories.

Aside from the story itself, another reason that it's one of my favorites is that it's perhaps the best example of a story punctuated by O. Henry's tongue-in-cheek sideline commentary on how to write (or how not to). In Springtime á la Carte he solemnly advises on story structure. I also love it when he pokes fun at the possible grammatical mistakes in an awkward sentence, like an Inner Editor with a wicked sense of humor. "The Carterets were, or was (Columbia College professors please rule), an old Virginia family" (from "Thimble, Thimble"). Then again in "The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball": "Sullivan County is full of rocks and trees; and Jessie used to sit on them, and - please be good - used to sit on the rocks..."

I think we've probably all discovered that kind of sentence in our work at some point. I wonder if those lines were deliberate, or if Henry spotted a mistake of his own and decided to get some additional humor out of it?

Intimidation

2011-04-25T10:05:00.001-04:00

Early in high school, I took an online short-story-writing course that required the submission of one new short story per week (terrifying thought). Perhaps the tight deadline was responsible for some of the grandly ridiculous ideas I came up with. Writing comedy has always come fairly easily to me, and I guess I felt that if I was going to scramble together something that was sure to be a flop, I might as well have some fun doing it. One of the more sedate pieces I have as a souvenir from that course (also one of the shortest) is a 700-word story I called "Intimidation." In it a young writer goes to see a professor for advice on the problem that is keeping her from getting any work done. She explains that whenever she writes something or is about to, she picks up a piece of great literature and is overcome by the inferiority of her work in comparison, so she hasn't the nerve to go on. The professor is amusingly eccentric, but unhelpful, and the conversation goes nowhere - probably because at that time I hadn't solved the problem for myself, and hadn't developed enough imagination to come up with a theoretical solution. (Was the story meant to be a desperate hint to my instructor? I don't know.)

I've grown out of that problem. Now I appreciate how reading good books can inspire rather than intimidate. I imagine everybody has those brief fits of despair on reading a beautiful sentence by somebody else where they exclaim in frustration, "Why can't I write something like that?" but it's not chronic. These days it's a later stage in the writing process that frays my nerves - the moment when somebody else reads my story for the first time. Nothing creates a case of butterflies in the stomach better than handing over the first draft of a story to your mother and then fleeing to the other end of the house so you won't have to watch her read it. (Mom still has no idea why.)

I don't worry about the technical aspect of the writing so much; I usually have pretty fair confidence in my basic skills. It's the reader's emotional response to the story (or possible lack thereof) that frightens me. I often look back over something that I felt was excellent when I wrote it and fairly squirm at how pretentious it seems now. And yet the initial instinct that created it was very real. One of my biggest fears is that people will think my work is too sentimental. But you know what - I like it that way. You might say I'm defiantly sentimental.

Conquering the fear of the first reader is just part of the ongoing process of becoming a writer. When I've been playing my guitar frequently, the fingertips of my left hand get hardened by the frets. But if I haven't played in a while, they get soft again and the first day or two back playing makes them sore. It's the same way with writing. If I haven't handed over a new story to be read in a long while, I feel much more nervous about it than I do if I've been doing it regularly. One has to develop a thicker skin, and the only way to do that is just keep on practicing.

Speaking of whom...

2011-04-22T10:11:00.002-04:00

I had a funny thing happen to me the other day. I was watching an episode of the 1960s TV Western The Virginian (a new favorite). During a scene in the handsomely-furnished parlor of the Shiloh ranch house, a close-up shot showed a table near the window with several framed photographs sitting on it. The surprising thing was that I recognized the man in one of the photos:

This is actually a tiny little anachronism. The way I figure it, an episode dealing with the Spanish-American War in the first season of The Virginian would set this episode, from the second season, in about 1899—before O. Henry became known as a writer and possibly before the photo was taken! I'm guessing this was simply a case of a set decorator arranging a bunch of suitable 19th-century photos without realizing the identity of the subjects. Or did they just figure nobody would notice?

Top Ten O. Henry #8: Art and the Bronco

2011-04-20T09:32:00.001-04:00

"Now, here's the point to work on, leaving art to look after itself - the chap that painted the picture is the grandson of Lucien Briscoe." [...]

"Wrap up the picture," said Kinney. "It's as good as sold. Why didn't you say that at first, instead of philandering along about art. I'll resign my seat in the Senate and go back to chain-carrying for the county surveyor the day I can't make this state buy a picture calcimined by a grandson of Lucien Briscoe."

Read the full story here.

It is true of songs, stories and other things, that some become instant favorites and others take a while to grow on you. It took me a while to warm up to this story. The first time I went through the Collected Works (not in order), I read a page or two of Art and the Bronco, yawned, and went on to something else. I returned to it after I'd finished most of the book, and after several re-readings I gradually came to appreciate it much more. It's a somewhat longer story, unfolds at a slower pace and the humor is more subtle than in some of the others.

A pair of senators, for reasons politically advantageous to themselves, are bent on passing an appropriations bill to buy a large and vivid painting by a young cowboy who happens to be the grandson of a famous frontiersman. The cowboy artist himself, however, begins to wonder about the true merits of his work after he attends a session of the legislature and observes the methods employed to gain votes for the bill.

This story also contains another priceless one-line biography of a nameless but important character who appears late in the story. See if you can spot the sentence I'm talking about!

It Might As Well Be Summer

2011-04-18T08:00:00.001-04:00

Spring blossoms on a maple tree - click to enlarge

I guess I've got my seasons a little mixed. For most people summer is supposed to be the vacation season.Yet these past couple of spring weekends I've spent doing something the closest to vacation that a writer can ever get. It's impossible to get entirely away from your writing - or at least that's been my experience. Your mind is never completely closed to new ideas; something is always brewing. But sometimes the process of transition from idea to paper is non-existent. On these weekends the thing I've wanted to do the most is spend my free time outdoors enjoying the wind and fresh air, walking or running around the yard, or lounging on a swing or the steps playing my harmonica. Simple pleasures.

Then again, I've never been one to abide by specified times for work and vacation. I've frequently written in the evenings, on weekends and during summer vacations, probably because that's when I'm the most free from daily chores. Last year I did some of my best work in the middle of the summer, writing in the shade of an umbrella table on the pool deck (doing my best to make sure my notebook didn't get splashed). It's right now that I want to put work aside and spend some time doing "nothing," as Christopher Robin would put it.

Maybe it's because spring is really my favorite time of the year to be outdoors. I love windy days; I love comfortably cool weather; I like being able to run and move again without the encumbrance of a bulky winter coat and boots. The air seems the freshest about now; there's some special stimulating energy in the wind. This is the right time of year for a vacation - it's just too beautiful out there to resist.

Weekend Odds & Ends #11

2011-04-16T08:00:00.002-04:00

~ In a guest post at Janice Hardy’s blog, Nava Atlas interviews Louisa May Alcott about her writing life, using Alcott's own words for the answers. This is pretty neat!

~ I also really enjoyed this article of reminiscences about Oscar Hammerstein by his nephew. (HT: Richard S. Wheeler)

~ Another good one passed on by Mom: Why We Need Jane Austen.

Top Ten O. Henry #9: The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss

2011-04-13T12:01:00.000-04:00

'Up the stairs they go; and in half a minute back down comes the girl, her skirts swishing like the waves on the beach. She stops on the landing and looks our halberdier in the eye.

"'You!' she says, with a smile that reminded me of lemon sherbet. I was waiting up-stairs in the slosh, then, and I was right down here by the door [...] and I heard all they said.

"'It,' says Sir Percival, without moving. 'I'm only local colour. Are my hauberk, helmet, and halberd on straight?'"

Read the full story here.*

The chief delight of this little story is its pure quirkiness. It's simple enough, but really - who else would have thought of writing a story about a man hired by an old-fashioned German restaurant to stand on the stairs in the costume of a halberdier? (I discovered while writing this post that the restaurant was based on a real one in New York City, Scheffel Hall.)

O. Henry often used the device of one first-person narrator within the other, as he does here. The nameless narrator whose paragraphs bookend the story is able to give some background on the setting and give the reader a glimpse of the more colorful character who tells the real story to him. We'll see this technique used again to even better effect in some more of the stories on my list. The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss also contains one of the most memorably razor-sharp one-line character descriptions I've ever come across, of "an oldish lady that looked upon life as immoral and unnecessary." She is never named and speaks but one line, but how could you possibly forget her?

* There are a couple of minor typos - 'he thought he was only a suit of armor' should be 'I thought', and later 'statue' is misprinted 'stature.'

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words...

2011-04-11T07:30:00.001-04:00

...and on some days writers wish it was as easy as swapping some pictures for a few thousand.

Weekend Odds and Ends #10

2011-04-09T10:16:00.003-04:00

~ Jody Hedlund has not one but two recent posts on blogging - how to persevere through a blogging slump and the difficulty of finding new things to say.

~ If I thought I had any chance of winning Grace Kelly's gorgeous pink-and-white picnic outfit from To Catch A Thief, I'd find some way to be at the auction of Debbie Reynolds' film collection. Probably a little too steep for my budget, though.

~ I spent some time the other day looking over TCM's lineup of Civil War movies to mark the anniversary of the war's beginning this month. I must say the omission of Shenandoah surprised me. I also think a good one for the 'Civil War Westerns' section would have been the underrated Dark Command (1940), which I've been thinking about reviewing as part of my Civil War challenge. Of the films on the list that I haven't seen, The Romance of Rosy Ridge and Of Human Hearts look the most interesting.

Top Ten O. Henry #10: The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein

2011-04-06T11:57:00.000-04:00

Ikey roomed and breakfasted at Mrs. Riddle's two squares away. Mrs. Riddle had a daughter named Rosy. The circumlocution has been in vain—you must have guessed it—Ikey adored Rosy. She tinctured all his thoughts; she was the compound extract of all that was chemically pure and officinal—the dispensatory contained nothing equal to her.

Read the full story here.

This story is a perfect introduction to O. Henry. Short (how in the world does one neatly pack so much story into less than 2,000 words?), humorous and containing a perfect example of the classic twist ending, it's the tale of a drugstore clerk who sees a marvelous opportunity to rid himself of a romantic rival. Henry frequently used a familiar or even cliché idea—such as a love potion—and added his own twist, often by something as simple as putting the tale into an everyday American setting—turn-of-the-century New York's East Side, in this case. And like most of his stories, it's a joy for those who love metaphors. Two paragraphs after the burst of chemical enthusiasm quoted above, we're on to baseball imagery. It's just such fun.

Some Voices in the Ebook Debate

2011-04-04T10:08:00.000-04:00

I guess this post could be subtitled, 'Or, Blogging With Writer's Block On Monday.' The solution is easy - links!

I've been feeling my inspiration spread a little thin this weekend, in both my writing and blogging. I don't have a complicated system for beating writer's block; I generally use a two-step plan that can be stretched to fit most situations: A) read something good, and B) wait it out.

In the meantime, I've been doing what I suspect many others have been doing: keeping an eye on the big discussion of ebooks versus print books, what's going to happen to the publishing industry and books in general, and what it means for authors, et cetera. Possibly not the best thing to do when you've got writer's block, as there are equal parts of things to excite, discourage and confuse among all the opinions out there. It's going to take a lot of time, thought and prayer for me to formulate my own opinions and plans.

In the meantime, I believe I mentioned something about links. Rick Saenz at Dry Creek Chronicles has been posting about ebooks - the other day he wrote about how people will discover your ebook on Amazon, which makes sense and falls into the 'encouraging' category. He also wrote about the shift from print to ebook, which includes some quotes from an authors' conversation that features some interesting comparisons illustrating how print books may become a 'niche market.' Meanwhile, Anne R. Allen has a great post on some things to think about before deciding to self-publish.

Like I said...a lot to think about. Thoughts?