Egoboogling

“Egoboogling, or The Best Way For an Author to Ditch Writing/Revision”

I was egoboogling this past Thursday and…

You don’t know what that is? You should, since authors are particularly susceptible to the disease. When hungry for fame currently not generated by my books, I seek “ego boost” elsewhere. And in the 21^st century, that ego boost comes from searches for my name or my book titles on Google. (Also Wikipedia, Amazon book reviews, Goodreads, The Library Thing, and various social networks.) Ego boost + Google = Egoboogle.

Tell me you haven’t done this! Not briefly in passing, before or after a legitimate Google search? Not at least been tempted? ...Thought so.

Last Wednesday a writer friend—who had never mentioned succumbing to the disease—was having trouble egoboogling. She asked for ideas. Her search rate efficiency was in the cellar, because her last name tends to bring up false positives regarding a TV show. I gave her a few pointers in the efficient use of Google’s Advanced Search parameters and sent her off as happy as a clam. As misplaced karmic reward for my kind deed, I was immediately bitten by the faunching for new egoboogle. I gave in the following day.

When you egoboogle--unless you were blessed with a distinctive moniker like “Demaris Z. Khalumphek”, author of “Zotz”—your search will bring up lots of false positives just as it did for my friend. Having to wade through ten screens for just one mention of your name or the title of your latest book can be seriously egoflating—the opposite of egoboogling. We don’t need this. Bad reviews, no one showing up at our bookstore signings, or a form letter rejection to a query letter produce more than sufficient egoflating. A carefully refined Google Advanced Search can eliminate at least some of these irrelevant search responses.

But sometimes it’s more fun—and more of a Time Well taking you away from actual writing—if you just put in your name and see what turns up. Since I wasn’t doing anything important anyway—just revising my latest novel*—I opened up two screens at Google Advanced Search and went at it.

(Why two screens? Well, with one I set up my usual egoboogle. I put in my name plus detailed parameters for Google’s software to focus on or to ignore. Since I didn’t have a good idea for this weekend’s YAAYNHO blog entry, with the other open screen, I put in a simple search for just my name, only limiting the search to this past year.)

A name as semi-common as Sherry Thompson brings up all sorts of alternative people—just ripe for becoming fictional characters. (See? I was working!)

Searching on Google using just "Sherry Thompson", I found many familiar alter-egos.

For instance, I'm a:

Librarian at Flower Mound High School. ( I was a librarian, but not there. And who calls a school “Flower Mound”? I pity the members of the football team.)

Communications and Program Manager. In Omaha. (I had a great-uncle who lived there.)

Staff of the FBC Student Ministry…

Yawn.

Owner of the website “Hooked on Stamping”. (I must be very conflicted. I never have seen the point of buying an expensive stamp and a stamp pad, so I can make the same design hundreds of times.)

Wow! Here’s a new one. Bill R. Thompson (born 2 April 1949) is a former Australian rules footballer who played in the Victorian Football League (VFL) during the late 1960s. Nicknamed 'Sherry', Thompson spent three seasons playing with Essendon…

I’ve run into alternate world Sherry Thompsons who are a deputy sheriff in the Midwest who is often giving statements to the press, and a lesser-known prosecutor. These ladies should get to know each other! I once was an executive for a cosmetic company but she disappeared. Hopefully not literally! I assume she retired or changed professions. Evidently, I’m also a champion female body-builder. Looking in the mirror does not confirm this. J Looking at her photos makes me kind of glad.

I used to serve as a designer, and made the clothing for “Blossom”. I’m still memorable. How many years ago was that show on, and that Sherry Thompson still heavily populates Google. Speaking of blossoms, I’m involved with the White Charity Blossom of Nebraska which supports nonprofits. When it comes to artsy Sherry Thompsons, I drew the illustrations for “Our Parade”, “What is Love?” and “Spring”.

(Seriously, Amazon conflates my books with hers, but Goodreads is only fooled by the “Spring” title.)

By the Way, try Google Images, and you’ll find I’m a master of disguise!

Also according to Google, I’ve died at least once, have mourned the death of someone in the family a couple of times—usually with my husband who keeps changing his last name—and on a happier note have been married several times. I, uh, don’t remember any Google references to divorces. Not to worry. I probably have this multi-marital oversight well in hand, since I’m a California divorce lawyer.

As both an animal health technologist and a family practitioner, I hope I practice in separate offices. Appraiser, freelance designer, Texas yoga instructor, and I work for Kahlo Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge. I’m also part of the Firefighter Nation.

A member of Bayou City Women Bikers What kind of bikers are these? Is there any connection between my biker membership and the time I was booked into the Okaloosa county jail?

I’m a realtor, and a mother with a crazy YouTube that you can screen so I can prove it. I resigned from the District Office Staff somewhere in Australia—probably because the commute to all my other jobs were just killing me. Which explains the obituary notice.

*My editor never reads my entries here—except today.

(Oh, yes. My targeted egoboogle search last Thursday turned up not one new mention of the real me. Whoever she is.)

I Buy a Kindle

(Please see Peggy Tibbetts' post re Kindles and other eReaders, if you haven't read it yet!)

Anyone who read my previous blog entry regarding tech already knows I’m a “late-adapter”. I have a desktop computer which uses the Windows XP OS and WORD 2003, and a cell phone they stopped making in 2007. As long as my current way of doing something techie still works, you have to drag me kicking and screaming to a shop or website selling some new-fangled replacement.

Consequently, -I’m- even shocked by the fact that I now own a Kindle. I’ve been thinking about buying one for the last two months. I kept rejecting the idea because I’ve been burnt by several purchases of (semi)cutting-edge hardware, like the smart phone that I never learned how to use or my shiny new laptop that buffaloed me because it’s powered with Windows 7. (A friend is giving me “laptop lessons” this summer.)

What if the same thing happened again with an eReader? What if nothing I wanted to buy was available? What if I made a mistake buying the Kindle when I should have purchased a Nook, a Kobo or a Sony? What if I simply couldn’t figure out how to upload book files, no matter how hard I tried? What if I understood how to work the thingie but then never used it?

I thought about all of this carefully, and spent a ridiculous amount of time cruising the more negative Amazon reviews for the Kindle and for the Kindle books that I most wanted to read. Maybe in an effort to scare myself out of the whole idea, I made a tentative list of books I might purchase—with an estimate of how much the Kindle, its jacket, and the books would cost.

This was not necessarily a good move for me. In the past, doing so much research about other possible purchases has often just locked me into the purchase before I was ready. You see, I have a thing about this—once I’ve spent a certain amount of time thinking about a possible purchase, I can’t seem to back out of actually making it, even if I still have doubts.

Thanks to all those hours in the Kindle shop, I discovered that:

1. Books which often appear to be missing their tables of contents aren’t always lacking them. Some kind soul writing a review pointed out that when a user opens a new book the Kindle queues up to the first chapter. What? No table of contents? Yup there is—but you need to back up to see what comes before the chapter.

2. Under no circumstances should readers—especially non-techie readers like me—purchase a cover for their Kindle which fastens hinge-like to the left edge of the reader. Evidently, this arrangement often makes a Kindle freeze or crash. If that happened to me, my pitty-pat little heart would freeze or crash.

3. Amazon has a –wicked- number of books I already love or want very much to read. Like all the young adult & children’s books written by the members of the YAAYNHO blog. See the list at the end. (Or all the ebooks written by my fellow members of the Lost Genre Guild—writers of speculative fiction with a subtle Christian worldview.)

Other older but still yummy books are even free or cost just 99 cents. For instance: many of George MacDonald’s books for children like The Princess & the Goblin, and At the Back of the North Wind; Kipling’s Jungle Book; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; The Secret Garden; Little Women; Anne of Green Gables; Grimm’s Fairy Tales; Andersen’s Fairy Tales; Stevenson’s Kidnapped; Sidney’s Five Little Peppers series; Kingsley’s Water-Babies; and The Wind in the Willows.

Other goodies cost money: Narnia, The Hobbit; Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence; Madeleine l’Engle’s series; the Nancy Drew books; The Hardy Boys; Harriet the Spy; Artemis Fowl; The Phantom Tollbooth; Island of Blue Dolphins; Witch at Blackbird Pond; Tuck Everlasting; A Series of Unfortunate Events; Graceling; The Hunger Games; some of Brian Jacques’ Red Wall, etc. Roald Dahl and Lloyd Alexander’s books are only available as pricey Kindle audios for some reason.

And then there’s Project Gutenberg or Smashwords books that I’ve looked at from time to time but never downloaded. To say nothing of my fellow writers who have offered me advance PDFs of their manuscripts for review. I’ve turned down these offers in the past. Why? I hate PDF and I didn’t want to read a whole book on the computer screen. I’m at the computer much of the day as it is.

Anyway, I ordered my Kindle, and it came, and there I was opening the package with fingers crossed. (Somewhat hard to do, that.) Fingers still pretty much crossed, I managed to charge my Kindle all by myself. In the meantime, I read the quick start menu. It mainly identified which key is which. Helpful, but not that helpful. The booklet promised that there were more instructions loaded on the Kindle itself. But would I be able to find them? (I have absolutely no confidence left when it comes to tech these days.)

I turned the Kindle on–it went on!--and found the in-depth directions right away. Phew! So I started to read. I read for a while—understanding most but not all of what I was reading & immediately forgetting the previous paragraph—until I noticed a tiny bit of data at the bottom of the screen. It said that I had read 3% of the document so far. Only 3 per cent? How long were these instructions, anyway? I read for a few more minutes, advancing about two screens. The percentage was now 4%. Hm. Assuming my math was correct, that made the entire file of instructions 200 screens long.

Believe it or not, I actually sat & read the whole file at one sitting—except for the fiddly bits at the end where Amazon has all the legalese absolving them from practically everything. Done. Huge sigh of relief. Too bad it hadn’t been a book.

Books! Urk! Time to start uploading books from Amazon. Well, the Kindle hadn’t exploded--yet. It was probably waiting for this to do so. Or freeze. Or just stare blankly with its little screen. (“Come on! Open up! It’s good for you! I mean, I mean, it tastes yummy! Open a’ready! Just one more.”) Long story, short. I was able to upload approximately 30 books. They really do transmit them in a minute. The only delays I experienced were thanks to the response time of my ancient computer, the time taken to find the next Amazon page or, rarely, waiting for the Kindle to catch up. I even created my own categories and stored my purchases by author or type of book. Now understand, none of this was as easy for me as it sounds. I still have to randomly try “Menu”, “Home” and “Back” before I find which one I need to go to in order to perform some operation or other. But, hey, I have 30 books on the critter, a whole list of freebies to install, and a wish list of YAAYNHO & LGG titles I’m itching to get!

Score: Sherry = 1. New tech = 0.

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Here’s a List of a/l/l Most of the Kindle eBooks written by YAAYNHO Authors.

A few books by YAAYNHO authors appear to be available only in paperback. (Or maybe they have paperbacks at Amazon, plus eBooks for Nook, etc.) I’ve tried to list the paperbacks if that was all I could find at Amazon.

If any author or title is missing--and I'm sure I've forgotten someone--please put the information into a comment—I’ll try to add it to my blog entry!

Christine Norris = The Crown of Zeus: the Library of Athena, Bk.1;

The Mirror of Yu-Huang; The Ankh of Isis.

Kim Baccellia = Crossed Out.

Jenna Kay Francis = Blood Bred Series Book 1: Gift of Blood.

Christine Marciniak = When Mike Kissed Emma.

Beverly Stowe McClure = Caves, Cannons & Crinolines; Just Breeze.

Gloria Oliver = Cross-Eyed Dragon Troubles; Willing Sacrifice; Vassal of El.

Rebecca Ryals Russell = Odessa (The Seraphym Wars series).

Peggy Tibbetts = Letters to Juniper.

Kathi Wallace = Assiniboin Girl.

Mike Dicerto = Milky Way Marmalade.

J L Walters = Flight (pb?);The City That Waits to Die ( pb?)

Kathryn Sullivan = Talking to Trees (pb); Agents and Adepts; The Crystal Throne.

Sherry Thompson = Seabird (1^st Narentan Tumult); Earthbow (2nd Narentan Tumult)

Ophelia Julien = Saving Jake; Hunting Spirits.

Kimberly Blackadar = Nothing But Trouble After Midnight (The Seven C’s series).

(Mothers) Book Readings for the Naive & Fearless (Mothers)

(Mothers) Book Readings for the Naive and Fearless (Mothers)

Since May 8^th is/was Mother’s Day, some of you might be expecting a blog entry that ties into “mothers”. I’m sorry to disappoint you but I could think of nothing I felt I could say on the subject.

The closest I came to a subject was, “The Character of ‘Mother’ & Her Role in YA Lit”.

Sounds like a Ph.D. thesis title, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of anything much to write on the subject. The only interesting mother in YA lit who came to mind was the multitalented and charming chemist/mom in Madeleine l”Engle’s books (A Wrinkle in Time; A Wind Through the Door, etc) She can simultaneously give her kids advice, run an experiment and cook beef stew (in a beaker) in her garage lab for pete’s sake! And never once does she put hydrochloric acid in dinner either. Now she is one supermom!

Perhaps some of you can suggest other literary moms who are as great or quirky as she is--or else a few moms who are, uh, at the other end of the spectrum. Like all those stepmothers who are invariably nasty. I invite you to tell us about memorable mom characters in the Comments!

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In the meantime, I’m brazenly changing the subject to:

"Book Readings for the Naive and Fearless"

I participated in a book reading at a local public library back on Saturday the 16^th of April. The WRWG reading went off perfectly. In spite of heavy rain, our room was about four fifths full. Some of the people in the audience were people we didn't even know. (!) The only negative in my opinion was that afterwards when we left New Castle, the group in my car tried to drive into the Delaware River.

The reading was mutually sponsored by the New Castle Public Library, by the Delaware Council for the Arts, and by WRWG, i.e. The Written Remains Writers Guild. I've been a member of the latter since 2003. Back in the day (mid-1990's through about 2007), Written Remains was strictly a genre writers critique and mutual support group. Members tended to write mystery, speculative fiction, suspense, etc. I’m the only one who focuses on YA fantasy. Our director, Joanne Reinbold’s long term goal is to transform us into what I guess is partially a professional authors’ PR/marketing consortium. We still read and critique each others’ works. Recently we’ve begun offering membership to literary fic authors.

Justin Tyme (Joanne’s son) set up everything tech for the reading, Carol Maurer was at the book table and Ramona deFelice Long introduced us all. I read first (from “Earthbow” vol.1). Then Greg Smith read, then Weldon Burge, then Kristy Nicholls and finally Joanne. Everyone brought great pieces and everyone read -wonderfully-! My friends, Brandon and Michelle made it to the reading but, alas, a bit late. Pictures were taken. No, you do not get to see them. I was in the middle of a computer crash at home and had to rush to get ready for the reading. I was not at my best, appearance-wise. I had a chance to talk to all sorts of people once the readings were over. All-in-all, I came away with the illusion that I was a professional author.

Several readers sold copies of their books, or magazine issues in which their stories appeared. I sold one copy each of "Seabird", "Earthbow vol.1" and "Earthbow vol.2". All to a lady who is going to hate them. (I trust my “vibes” in these things. ;-P ) She came up afterwards, had me sign the books, and remarked that I had stopped reading at a point that left her wondering what happened next. (Grin. Gee. I hadn't noticed!) I hope she gives the books away to someone who will enjoy them—perhaps a niece or son.

Speaking of which, I have yet to participate in a reading where young adults were present! This isn’t so bad for my fantasy books—which are on the cusp of YA and adult. Still I would love to read to a room full of age appropriate kids.

This was the most "successful" reading in which I've ever participated. WRWG had a similar public reading a couple of years ago, held in the Greenbank Mill Museum meeting room. The audience was much smaller and consisted of virtually no one besides friends & family. The DE Council for the Arts was not involved back then. I sold nothing at that reading nor did others. AND I messed up my second reading—which I had not rehearsed.

I've also been involved in readings hosted by Broad Universe --women writers of speculative fiction-- held at several regional SF/Fantasy cons. In most these, we "Broads" outnumbered our “audience” of friends. In November 2010, the PhilCon conference committee inadvertently locked us out of our meeting room for our reading. We called the con-comm office, waited for a key, gave up, and sat in the hallway outside our room to read. Very close to the elevators, with people dodging us as they came out of the doors. In my experience, when it comes to BU readings at cons, lack of promotion and organization by the local con committees tends to ruin any chances for a good turn-out.

Right after my first book, "Seabird" was published, I tried to get a reading gig at my local Borders. I thought it was a sure thing, because I’m a local author and because a former member of Written Remains worked there. They weren't interested. The same thing happened with the local indie store, where I used to buy most of my books. Their answer? “No room” Those are all my personal experiences with public readings.

The only WRWG member who has ever had huge success with public readings is Greg Smith (adult suspense/murder, “Final Price”). He has managed to get gigs at a variety of bookstores and libraries in the area. Don’t ask me how. And please don’t ask how many books he’s sold. You really don’t want to know.

I bring all of this up for a reason. I'm curious about the experiences of YAAYNHO authors—and of course anyone reading this blog entry. How many of you have participated in public readings? How did you land them? Where were they? Did you read mostly to an age-appropriate audience or to adults?

Did the reading go well, re audience numbers, sales on the spot, or sales bumps directly afterwards? Do you think this is a viable promotional tool for YA adults or just for certain other subsets of authors? Why?

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Back to Mothers

Now if you really would like to read a blog entry & comments that have to do with Mother’s Day and real mothers, may I suggest the following very thoughtful entry:

MuseItUp Publishing (blog name)

“Harder Than I Thought” by Terri Main (entry/author)

One thing! Please leave a comment here first, before you go there. And, of course, you’ve long since bookmarked our page. Right?

http://museituppublishing.blogspot.com/2011/05/harder-than-i-thought.html?showComment=1304797562358#c7960851514697153424

My Childhood Readers and Favorite Books

My Childhood Readers and Favorite Books

Be prepared! There's a quiz at the end. Which were your favorites?

We were very poor when I was growing up. Because of this, I rarely received new books until I reached my early teens and began asking for them for my birthday.

I’m not claiming I was never given any books. One of my earliest was a tiny collection of fairy tales—each its own book, and once all housed in their own cardboard box. Published by Birn Brothers of London, each book was only about 3 by 3 inches, each cover a drawing of the story inside & colored mostly in royal blue, orange-red and yellow. Every other page within—they have about 80 pages each—was a rather intricate ink-drawn illustration of that part of the plot. I still have some of them: The Three Bears, Jack the Giant Killer, Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, Hop O’ My Thumb, & Beauty and the Beast.

I tried to find these on the web but the closest I could come was at:

http://www.kidzbooks.net/kidzbooks/articles.aspx?id=16

They were my first introductions to fairy stories and fables. Once I knew them practically by heart, I always looked for more but it would be many years before I had a copy of Grimm, Andersen, or Lang. (I actually asked for Grimm and Andersen for my birthday when I was a preteen. The Lang set I bought as an adult.)

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My parents gave me some Golden Books—who here remembers those from their childhood? Most of these held one story each: shortened versions of Little Women or Little Men or early spin-offs from TV shows like Rin-Tin-Tin or Spin & Marty from the Disney show.

The Golden Book that I remember best was huge: both thick and composed of larger pages than most Golden Books. I can still remember coming home from someone’s house or the store, flipping through it and just staring at all of the stories and the illustrations. Treasure! Once I had worked my way through from end to end, I had consumed: Heidi, Peter Pan, Hans Brinker (The Silver Skates) and a variety of fairy tales I had never read before. My favorite involved a young man tasked to find out where three princesses went at night. (I think they went dancing.) He followed them for three nights and brought back proof of their whereabouts: a silver leaf, a gold leaf, and a diamond leaf. Of course, he was rewarded by marrying the princess of his choice.

The Golden Book that I loved best was the one on horses. I was enamored of horses at that age, and I thought every color illustration a work of art. I also set about memorizing various useless but fascinating facts. Did you know that Arabian horses have one less rib than other horses? So said my Golden Book. I also had a copy of Black Beauty.

Well, by now, I’d developed the reputation for being a bookworm, so it’s no surprise that my best friends gave me books for my birthday. That’s how I acquired “Donna Parker at Cherrydale” and “Polly French & the Surprising Stranger”. (These were my first introductions to “teen romance”, to the extent that it was mentioned or described in those days. (1950’s)

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School Readers

Now, for a little “school reader” esoterica. You’ve been wondering when we would hit this section, right?

In many ways, the backbone of my childhood reading collection for years would be readers which my parents had used in elementary or junior high school. Both sides of my family came from the same city and, at that time, parents were required to buy some of the books that their children used in school. Thanks to this, I still own my mom’s second grade reader, my dad’s 8^th grade reader and the fourth grade readers of both parents.

These are real treasures on more than one level. Obviously, there’s the connection to my parents. In addition, most of these books were filled with beautiful illustrations. The variety of stories and the enormous breadth of authors is truly astounding. Excuse me while I bore you a little bit with some of the details:

The Winston Companion Readers---Second Reader; Winston, 1923.

My favorites: Mr and Mrs Vinegar, The Wolf and the Fox, The Keg of Butter, How the Turtle Saved His Life, How the Sun the Moon and the Wind Went Out to Dinner, Tiny, Peeriefool; Ashiepattle and the King’s Hares. Do you see a trend here? Fairy tales!

Take a peek at the gorgeous cover at:

http://www.amazon.com/Winston-Companion-Readers-Second-Reader/dp/B001MW2260/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299957980&sr=1-4

Many illustrations inside are nearly as intricate, especially the end papers.

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My mom’s fourth grade reader was my second favorite:

Good Reading: Fourth Reader; Charles Scribner’s Sons, NY, 1927.

Favorite Stories:

The Turnip Children, The Elephant, Some Birds to Look for this Fall, Red-Riding Hood, Fables, Mice, Woodchuck Ways, David & the Giant, The Boyhood of Washington, Thor Among the Giants (loved this!); First Aid, Chip And Peep (memorized this), The Fly (memorized this), The Fairy Folk (memorized this & recited it at some kind of Brownies show for parents); A Letter from President Roosevelt, The Runaway Furniture (Intelligent and angry furniture, with a righteous cause! Very cool!).

Look at some of the authors. Do modern elementary school readers still try to include classic writers at this age? Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Robert Louis Stevenson; William Shakespeare; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Walter de la Mare; The Younger Edda; Robert Browning; Teddy Roosevelt. (Wait til you see the authors in the 8th grade book.)

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My dad’s fourth grade reader still amazes me because of the often serious subject matter and again for the illustrious authors.

Fact and Story Readers: Book Four; American Book Company, 1931.

Divided into the following sections: Pt.1 Sailing the Seven Seas; Pt.2 Boys & Girls Who Became Famous; Pt.3 Out-of-Door Tales; Pt.4 Doing the World’s Work; Pt.5 In Story Land; Pt.6 The Making of America. (Some of this was pretty stern stuff, compared to my mom’s.)

Lots of famous authors including the leaders in fairy tales:

Thackeray’s The Bronze Door Knocker (extract from The Rose & the Ring—this story scared the bejeebers out of me!)); Charles Kingsley; Hans Christian Andersen; Emily Dickinson; Andrew Lang; Jonathan Swift; Walter de la Mare. (What? No Shakespeare?)

I found the cover of this one here:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/58588021/1931-colored-illustrations-fact-and

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And finally my dad’s eighth grade reader. Speaking of formidable books!

The Elson Readers: Book Eight; Scott, Foresman and Company (1927)

Divided into:

Pt.1 The World of Nature; Pt.2 The World of Adventure (which includes: Masque of the Red Death; Noyes’ The Highwayman; A Christmas Carol; and the Lamb version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Pt. 3 The Great American Experiment; Pt.4 Literature and Life in the Homeland.

Authors: William Cullen Bryant; Wm Wordsworth; P B Shelley; Wm Shakespeare; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Robt Browning; Edgar Allan Poe; Sir Walter Scott; Henry Longfellow; Ch Dickens; Lord Byron; Joyce Kilmer; Daniel Webster; George Washington; Abraham Lincoln; Woodrow Wilson; Theodore Roosevelt; Robert Burns; Rudyard Kipling; Oliver Wendell Holmes; John G Whittier; Nathaniel Hawthorne; O Henry; Mark Twain.

The illustrations are few and tiny, and the cover isn’t impressive but you can find it here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Elson-Readers-Book-Eight/dp/B000VUM5CA/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299959953&sr=1-3

Oh. Note the nearly entire lack of women authors in any of these! I guess I never noticed back then, or I might have received a subliminal signal that “girls don’t write”. ;-)

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My paternal grandfather gave me three beautiful books a couple of years before his death, which would have been when I was about fourteen. These three are still much beloved:

“Robin Hood and His Merry Men” (by Rosemary Kingston and illustrated by Alice Carsey.) So there were –some- women involved with books! The exquisite illustrations in this are priceless to me.

A collection of Rudyard Kipling’s Stories and Poetry, featuring a richly-colored cover of two men on horseback chasing each other across a rugged terrain. (Illo for the poem inside “East is East, and West is West”). I was enthralled before I opened the book. Wow, did I have trouble with the dialectical writing, though!

The Complete Sherlock Holmes (published before modern authors started adding non-canonical stories).

And that’s about it. I’m sure I had other books—well, like the complete run of Donald Duck comics (for the mysteries, I’ll have you know)—but these are the books that I treasured as a child and that I still treasure today. God bless all those who gave them to me!

What books are your treasures from childhood or teen years? Please tell us about them!

Sherry Thompson

The Narentan Tumults: SEABIRD http://bit.ly/bKBQ7x

EARTHBOW Vol.1 http://bit.ly/b9vDW1 Vol.2 http://amzn.to/8XXrVo

http://tree-lady.livejournal.com/

Confessions

Confessions

Currently, I am assembling files for a first draft manuscript that I began in the early-mid-1980s, tentatively titled, “The Gryphon and the Basilisk”. It’s a huge Young Adult fantasy series, and large parts of it haven’t been touched since I originally wrote them out in longhand. (I began writing fantasy in 1979.)

As I’ve been slogging through this preliminary work preparatory to first revision, I’ve been struck repeatedly by lame brain errors that I used to make, way back when I first began writing. Some involve placing commas in the wrong place or just plain using too many of them. I’ve improved my punctuation. Really. However, other errors that I didn’t even know I was making back then, I still make today. And by now I should know better. So here are my Writing Confessions of 2011, in lieu of a New Year’s Resolution.

What? You thought that I would end this by resolving never to make these errors again? Sorry, but I have a more realistic view of myself than that. I just hope I catch most of my errors in subsequent revisions of G&B and future books.

1. To begin, we need look no further than the first paragraph of this blog entry. Look at it there—an adverb and beginning the sentence to boot, as if in defiance of editorial protocol everywhere. Frankly, I’ve never understood why we have adverbs if we’re not supposed to use them. But, I guess that’s just me, being logical. I used to use adverbs all over the place, but I am trying to get better. “I’m Sherry Thompson, and I’ve been off adverbs for /f/i/v/e one minutes.” (See the ‘Frankly” above?)

2. Using versions of “to be” like “was” and “were” instead of strong verbs. Poor “to be”—it’s evidently weak. Maybe that’s because no writer is allowed to exercise it. It’s so weak that even when I write about its weakness, I use “is” to describe its situation—cleverly hidden in the “it’s” above. (Oops! More adverbs.)

When I found out that “is”, “was”, “were”, etc were no-no’s, I began searching for them in my documents. I instructed WORD’s software to replace each “is” for example with “IS”. This can be problematic when you have a recurring character named AlphesIS.

I/n/s/p/i/t/e In spite of the inherent difficulties in attacking manuscript revision with all of those errors hanging out on each page, I eventually expanded the practice to help me zero in on adverbs. In that case, I told WORD to replace all examples of “ly” with “LY”. This worked fine! AssembLY, alLY, and such don’t turn up that frequentLY in my writing, so I was finalLY able to zero in on the actual errors.

3. Having conquered adverbs and versions of “to be”, I moved on to POV. Though I didn’t then know the name for it, when I first began write I was evidently using the Omniscient POV, which fell out of favor a hundred years ago. Well, I’ve always been a bit behind my time.

I’m proud to say that I’ve cut down the numbers of times I switch point of view from a half dozen times per scene to about two. I’m still working very hard on this, encouraged by a friend who wrote that my less frequent POV switches remind him of switching gears on a manual gearshift. After a while, he wrote, he got used to it! Awesome!

4. Next up was learning what goes into each paragraph and what doesn’t. Back in the 80’s, I was convinced that all dialogue was sequestered in its own paragraphs, cut off for reasons unknown from the POV paragraph of the speaker. I know better now intellectually but I still have trouble convincing my fingers to follow through and do this with the keyboard.

5. Which brings me to anatomical parts. Sorry! Not as you think. I’ve discovered that I permit parts of the body to stroll off and do their own thing—especially eyes and hands. Example: “Bill’s eyes studied her face, looking for a clue to her thoughts.” Or: “Her hand grasped his hand and gave it a squeeze.” (All the while her brain was screaming through her mouth to her hand to stop doing that!) This gets weird very quickly. Sometimes in revision, I feel like I was writing horror in my first draft.

6. Other writing errors to which I succumb regularly? I got a million of’em when it comes to regularly misspelled words.

I seem to be convinced

that “amongst” should be spelled “amoungst” (making me more British than the British),

that “about” doesn’t really need that “o” (which is a real problem since WORD doesn’t flag “abut”, and

that “inspite” really isn’t one word. (I still can’t get over this one, for some reason.)

I do this with character names sometimes too. When I was assembling the various chapters of “The Gryphon and the Basilisk”, I noticed my character “Medea” devolved later into “Media” which in turn devolved into “Melia”. Fortunately, a WORD Replace command really did work out fine for fixing this.

7. Two more and then I’ll stop. G&B is full of angst and strong emotions. However, that’s no excuse for having everyone getting teary-eyed and even outright crying at the drop of a line of dialogue. And when the characters aren’t crying, they’re sighing.

I used to work with someone who was a part-time freelance editor. After reading something of mine maybe 15 years ago, she commented that she was putting me on a diet—I was allowed no more than one sigh per chapter or story. In this much older manuscript, written decades before I knew her, I laughed at such restrictions. Or maybe I sighed over them. One of my favorite type of “dialogue tags” consisted of “Luisa sighed and commented…”

Yes, before you ask, I realize that I’d better fire up that WORD Replace once more and input, “sigh”, “abut” and numerous other no-nos.

Oh yes. I used to write “once more” frequently. I’m not sure what the attraction was.

Well, those are some of the forbidden writing choices I used to indulge in back in the early 80’s—and still do on occasion. Now it’s your turn. Don’t leave me dangling out here with all of my composition short-comings hanging out all by themselves. What typical writing errors have you overcome or are still battling?

Sherry Thompson

Seabird ( http://bit.ly/bKBQ7x )

Earthbow vol.1 (http://bit.ly/b9vDW1 )

Earthbow vol.2 (http://amzn.to/8XXrVo )

Tis the Season To Be Typing

Tis the Season To Be Typing

Reader beware! I’m throwing this together out of nothing. I’ve been otherwise occupied by a broken ankle, when I should have been prepping this blog entry.

I’m definitely a Christmassy kind of person. Years ago, I would make Christmas tree ornaments each year for friends and people I worked with. Since I had so many to make, I always began the process in mid-summer. And to get in the mood, I would play Christmas carols while I worked. I used headphones to listen, so that people didn’t think I was entirely out of my gourd.

Long after I stopped making holiday decorations—up until right now—I’ve never given up the whole mood that goes with the holidays. I love watching “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and learning—once again—how Santa got both the name Kris Kringle and Santa Claus, what made the reindeer fly, why Santa has a beard, why the toys were put into the stockings, and so on. And I love what I consider the best song in the special, “Put One Foot in Front of the Other”. Any child that is starting to not believe in Santa Claus should be good for one more year after watching that special.

I also love watching “A Christmas Carol” (the one starring Alistair Sim!), my absolute favorite Christmas film. To say nothing of “White Christmas”, “A Christmas Story”, Miracle on 34^th Street” and most recently “Elf”. Oh, I can’t forget “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “Frosty the Snowman”. I never get tired of Christmas carols and rarely get peeved or impatient by long lines in stores—except maybe the food store, but that one is a year-round vexation.

This year, Christmas activities are being outweighed by work (writing) activities since I’m housebound over the holidays. Not that people aren’t visiting or sending me cards—and I appreciate them! But normally, I would be out at church functions including Advent services and the yearly Christmas Cantata. And of course I would be standing in line, silently singing along to carols while I waited—if I could get to the stores.

Instead, I’m writing—and writing more than the average teddy bear. My “Earthbow” (http://bit.ly/b9vDW1 ) was published this year. Immediately afterward, Dave at Gryphonwood asked me what was up next. Well, it’s like this, I told him: the next up is a three volume story currently with the umbrella title of “The Gryphon and the Basilisk”. I wrote the first draft of it back in the early 80’s and the first draft was written in longhand. Over the years, I’ve hired typists to type up sections of the manuscript, and later also keyed in other sections to WORD files. Now I’m on the third volume and face eight very long chapters that I have only in the original longhand—approximately one hundred seventy (500-600 word) pages of story that need to be converted to WORD.

This Christmas really is Tis the Season To Be Typing.

When I started working on this phase of the project, I was less than enamored with it. I still am. And then I got thinking about a Christmas many years ago—just over 50 so far as I can remember. One Christmas, I asked for a typewriter for my gift. We didn’t have much money but my parents were able to find a refurbished manual typewriter to give me. (There were no electric typewriters back then.)

Very, very late Christmas Eve—or maybe closer to Christmas morning—I slipped out of my bedroom and into the living room, to see if there was a typewriter waiting for me. There was! I was so excited! I ran my fingers over the keys and finally took a shot at hitting one of them. The typewriter—as typewriters did in those days—made a loud click. Freaking for fear I’d awakened someone, I rushed back to my bedroom. And acted all surprised a few hours later.

I learned the basics of typing and soon was turning in all my school assignments typed—even some of my math homework. (Try typing multiplication and division problems and see what ‘fun’ that was.)

A short time after this, I began typing my first written story. It involved time travel and I was the heroine, working for the government on a project to go back in time and fill in bits of historical detail missing from records. That may sound dull but it was an adventure story, since my partner (a very cute boy) and I were always getting into trouble. I showed the first part to my parents. I don’t actually remember their reaction but I do remember that they were generally supportive of any project that I did.

I also worked on a pastiche (essentially fan fic) of many different horse stories I had read. My teacher found out about the latter and asked me to read snippets from it during home room. I can’t imagine what the rest of the kids thought! I still feel sorry for them because this story really wasn’t very good.

Those two attempts at writing were my last efforts until 1979 when I tackled “Seabird” (http://bit.ly/bKBQ7x ) in my early thirties and “Earthbow” (http://bit.ly/b9vDW1 ) two years later. Oddly enough, I wrote these and their sequel “The Gryphon and the Basilisk” in longhand, even though I had an electric typewriter by then. One reason I did this was that I could write anywhere I thought of an idea or a new passage, even at work.

Over fifty years after first typing in the living room at Christmas, I’m keying in parts of the G&B manuscript in the living room over the holidays. The circle is complete.

A Blessed Christmas to all, and a Happy New Year!

Sherry Thompson

http://tree-lady.livejournal.com/

http://www.redroom.com/author/sherry-thompson

Beginnings and Endings and Dingles. Oh my!

I have trouble with both the beginnings and endings of stories but, fortunately, not at the same time. Beginnings of stories are the worst—except when endings are the worst.

BEGINNINGS

We all know that we’re supposed to hook the reader immediately at the beginning of a novel. Depending on who you talk to, that hook had better happen by the 5^th page (“The First Five Pages” by Noah Lukeman), somewhere in the first paragraph, or even in the first sentence. On FB, Polly Iyer writes, “Ah, the penchant for getting all the action up front. That's what everyone wants. Like everything else these days, no patience.” I’ve read that a hook should coincide with “where the story actually begins”, but where is that? I believe it’s different for different readers and authors.

Hooks are supposed to grab the reader by being interesting—to readers. I have an ongoing problem with this. To me, -characters- are pretty darn interesting, so I want to explore them a bit in the first couple of pages of my novels. Yes, I’ve learned this is a no-no, unless one is writing a literary novel. I do YA fantasy adventure.

Once “Seabird” was nearly completed, I inserted an action-packed Prologue as a hook for the reader. Since then, I’ve heard that many novel readers skip prologues. Oh well.

In “Earthbow”—the sequel to “Seabird”—I managed some serious tension, action, and a bit of a puzzle about a page into the novel’s first chapter. Chapters 2 & 3 have fragments of tension as well, mixed in with character development. “Earthbow” has no prologue. Did I get it right? I doubt it—after all, there’s no danger to life and limb until at least the eighth paragraph.

Right now, I’m beginning to revise the sequel to “Earthbow”, which is multi-volumed and is so long I frequently refer to it as “The Book That Intends to Eat Delaware.” In my first draft—surprise, surprise—all of my tension and action was in the second chapter while the first was largely characterization. I’m trying to figure out a way to reverse the two chapters, or alternate scenes from both.

I haven’t mentioned short stories so far and for a very good reason—I only rarely come up with an idea for one. Once I actually have an idea the chances are 50-50 that the resulting story will not be publishable quality. I suppose you could say that I have more trouble with the beginnings of short stories than I do with their endings, if by that we mean that I can’t get a new short story started, no matter how hard I stare at the screen or “free-write”. On the other hand, a short story that never comes into existence can hardly be faulted for having a bad beginning.

So, who here has troubles with writing the beginnings of novels or short stories? If you do, what kinds of difficulties present themselves? How have you overcome them? Any tips you can pass on to the rest of us?

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ENDINGS

Endings give me lots more trouble than beginnings. Part of this is the fault of National Novel Writing Month. For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo is a yearly challenge to authors to write 50,000 words on any fiction project between November 1 and Nov 30.

I’ve participated and “won” five years since I started doing NaNo back in 2003. “Winning” in NaNo, as I said, is completing 50,000+ words before midnight on Nov. 30. The problem is what if you haven’t finished your first draft by then? What happens on Dec. 1? The correct answer should be that you continue writing but at a less frenetic pace. Er, not my answer. In my case, I take a long nap, and wake up the next Nov. 1. ;-P

Currently, I have five novels that are lacking their endings. Every one of them was involved in NaNo in some way—even the last part of “The Book That Intends To Eat Delaware.” If I stop writing a novel part of the way through, I have serious trouble picking up where I left off—even if I have a detailed outline for the rest of the book. Novel manuscripts to which you cannot guarantee complete endings do not attract publishers for some reason. I think I need professional help. Any ideas gratefully accepted!

So I sometimes have trouble writing the end of novels—do I have trouble writing the ends of short stories? Not often. On the rare occasion that I’m writing a short story I write the whole thing pretty much in one sitting. If I’m actually writing and completing a short story, you’ll know it—the sky turns a lovely shade of sky-blue-pink and you can see multi-colored stars during the day. Sometimes they sing but they’re too dignified to dance.

Is there anyone reading this who has trouble with unearthing the ends of their t/a/i/l/s/ tales? Has NaNoWriMo ever been involved? What else gave you trouble? What did you do to complete your story? Oh, it isn’t? Sorry! I’ve thought about finding a writing partner—has anyone tried that?

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Well, that’s Beginnings and Endings. That brings us to Middles and Dingles.

“Dingle” is a work-in-progress short story that’s been without a middle or an ending for almost two decades.

I liked the beginning ever since it fooled me into writing it down. I wasn’t concerned when I started—after all “Dingle” was going to be a –short- -story- so, naturally, I would come up with the rest of it as I typed.

Not so much.

“Dingle” and I could use some help. Please read what’s below and see if you have any ideas about what will happen next. If you do, please consider adopting “Dingle”. What’s more if you can turn “Dingle” into a complete story, we’ll work out some kind of ownership thing which will probably amount to me giving you my section or what’s left of it after revision. In addition, I’ll send you a copy of one of my books as a thank you.

You can write short suggestions for finishing “Dingle” in the Comments if you like. Naturally, revisions of the current paragraphs are fair game. If you write the rest of the story, please send it to me at KhivasMommy AT gmail DOT com . When my next turn comes to blog here at YAAYNHO (in three weeks), I’ll report back on any suggestions, etc that I’ve received.

Please don’t leave a poor defenseless little story part on its own. Thank you!

Sherry Thompson, author of “Seabird” (http://amzn.to/bKBQ7x ) “Earthbow vol.1” (http://amzn.to/b9vDW1 ) and “Earthbow vol.2” ( http://amzn.to/bw3UCe )

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Dingle (work in progress)

Sherry Thompson

Critter scuffed his way across the bare, unvarnished floor, sneezing at the dust he’d stirred up. It was colder today than he’d expected. He wrapped his quilted robe tighter about him, and then retied the rope belt. If Magnus didn’t come soon, he’d have to light a brazier just to keep warm. And that would attract the Night Watchers. Not something you wanted to do, when it was nearly dusk.

He shuffled over to the one window and glared down at the path. Not a sign of Magnus, ...or of anyone else. Maybe, if he went outside and yanked hard on the chain, he could get that blasted shutter to close over the window. Then, it wouldn’t matter if he lit a fire in the brazier or not. The Watchers could do a lot, but they couldn’t see through wood. At least, not the last he’d read.

Blast Magnus! Icy air was seeping in the through the window, even though it was on the lee side of the cottage. Well, that was it. Might as well go and try to close the window.

Critter thrust his dagger and sheath under the ragged rope of his belt, and crept to the door. He stood a moment with the side of his head so close to the surface that his ear kept flicking. Not a sound, except the tiny ones of his held breath and the soft whoosh of his ear fur against the rough wood. Might as well try as not.

He took a great breath, and slipped through the door as noiselessly as he was able. It seemed a shade brighter outside than it had in, but the coming of sunset was undeniable. Shivering from nervousness as much as cold, Critter scuttled to the right front corner of the cabin and peeked around it. Nothing there but the larxs bushes, their stringy leaves black and rustling in the last light of the sun. He crept between the closest one and the side wall. Merhule, the shutter chain was high! Been so long since he’d tried to close the window, he’d near forgot...

A sudden, familiar scent tickled his nose. Critter scarcely began to turn, before he found clammy skin pressed over his nose passages, simultaneous with a strong blow to his midriff. The combined assaults made all the air in his lung burst from his mouth. He choked, unable for the moment to fight back.

The ghost of a giggle blew warmly into his right ear. The grip about his midriff loosened enough for him to pull away from the hand on his nose.

“Magnus! I’ll skin you for that...”

“Not Magnus, imp. Merhule! What are you doing? Oh, the shutter.”

Critter leaned against the wall and gasped in air, as the newcomer reached up and easily pulled the shutter down and closed. Briefly, while Dingle was occupied with the task, Critter considered darting off into the darkness. But, before the thought was more than half-formed, it was already too late.

Dingle had grasped his elbow and was guiding him back toward the door.

“Waiting for Magnus, what?” Dingle chuckled deep in his throat. “Might not be coming tonight, what. Might not. Might not, at that.” He shook his head, as he closed the door between them and the outside world.

Thompson/Dingle

Rewriting During National Novel Writing Month

Please read the entry for Nov. 1, "Trust the Process", which has to do with rewriting as an integral part of writing. I found myself nodding and going "uh-huh!" all the way through the entry!

As sort of a continuation of that well-thought blog, I'd like to offer this quickie on a non-assigned day:

Several fellow members of our local Written Remains Writers Guild (WRWG) plus a few writing colleagues from around the country, have decided to do our own miniature version of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this November. If you've never heard, NaNoWriMo participants pledge to try and write 50,000 new words on any one fiction project between Nov.1 and Nov. 30.

I've participated in most of the NaNoWriMos since 2003.

However, right now I have a total of -six- books that need revisions and additional chapters. Three of these six books are actually the three chunks or volumes which will make up the YA fantasy The Gryphon and the Basilisk. The remaining three manuscripts are stand-alones, but they are all fantasy and 2 out of 3 of them are also YA.

It would be ridiculous for me to beginning writing a new draft of something--like the WRWG people and most NaNoWriMo authors are doing this November, given all the revision work cut out for me. So, back in late October, I posted to the Written Remains Writers Guild that I intend to -revise- multiple pages of the Gryphon and the Basilisk. (Rather than creating a new 250 word page every day of this month as the Guild members are doing)

Let me explain a bit about the revision process I have before me. First off, G&B totals about 2 and 3/4 books as I said above. (I don't quite have an ending for the third volume.) Second, I wrote it in long-hand approximately 30 years ago. Eventually, I typed up those pages. And maybe almost 20 years ago, I scanned the typed pages into a file on my computer with a very buggy software scanning program.

The result? In places, the current version of the manuscript looks like I'm cursing at times. The scanning results are that bad. Many, if not most lower case l's came through as number 1's. And so on.

Even though my project doesn't align with the ongoing project of the Written Remains Writers Guild or with the rules of National Novel Writing Month, I've pledged to try to decipher and revise approximately 6 pages or 1750 words per day during the month of November.

Progress report:
My Mini-NaNoWriMo total for two days is 3578 words.

3578-1724 = 1854

(Nov. 1 1724 wds,which was 5 and a half pages) ... (1854 words for Nov. 2, or about 6 and a half pages today)

You can keep track of my progress--and maybe even cheer us all on--by going to Facebook and signing on the the group "How Many Pages Did You Write Today?, maintained by Ramona deFelice Long:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=140478142641261
(which may or may not work in this format--please just search in FB for the group)

Go to "Scribblings" my personal blog, for updates about my humungous revision process of the Novel variously called The Gryphon and the Basilisk, or The Behemoth, or The YA novel that intends to eat Delaware:

http://tree-lady.livejournal.com/97551.html


Finally you might want to Google NaNoWriMo, to see how all of this started. I'm TreeLady on NaNo. I admit that this year I can't participate as NaNo directs, since I am revising and not creating new material. But, hey, I don't see any more half-finioshed manuscripts in "drawers". I think that 6 is my limit.
(This URL may work for NaNo: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/26133 )


Sherry Thompson, author of unfinished novels: G&B vols. 1,2,3; The Peace Bride; Marooned; Da Boid da Tree-Rat ;n da Loser.

More on Developing Characters, by Sherry Thompson

I was planning to write about Characterization for this Sunday when I discovered that Christine wrote about Character Building, last Monday (23rd). I thought about changing subjects but, seriously, Characterization is a huge and critical part of writing. So let’s see what I can do to supplement what Christine discussed.


I began telling myself stories when I was in elementary school, because I often couldn’t get to sleep at night. This went on for years. Each night, I would run through the story up to where I left off and then add to it. Occasionally, I’d get tired of my POV character—who was often myself—and try out my current story from inside someone else’s thoughts. When I did this, sometimes I found myself backtracking in my “plot” because this other character was more interested in something else that was going on, or because he or she had “arrived late” in the story and I was just plain nosy to see what she or he had been up to before walking on stage.


In the meantime, my best friends and I used to imagine time travelling—or more specifically time-snatching. We would choose someone from different historical periods and imagine ourselves as hosts and guides to them, while we showed them the wonders of 1950’s America. (blush) Poor, captive historical people! Most of the time, we tried to imagine how they would react to electric lights, television (B&W) or cars. In our view, they were always impressed.


After a while, we branched out into SF and began wondering what aliens visiting Earth would think of our world. For that, we had to come up with personalities for the aliens. Generally, the group opinion was that the aliens were not impressed with us, so this was a short-lived pastime. We went back to historical periods and resumed time-snatching.


Years later, specifically when I was in my early 30’s, I got the inspiration to write a fantasy novel—Seabird. I didn’t think about it when I started but it turned out to be a young adult book. What else was it going to be when the POV character was a teen still in high school? Cara was on her summer vacation at the beach when she was snatched to another world. At first, Cara had a lot of me in her and not much of anything else. Poor kid.


I had a few elements of my story in mind: I knew that she would be swept to Narenta after finding an intriguing seabird necklace in a boardwalk shop. That she would be told that she had an important role to play in the welfare of the Narentans. That she would absolutely refuse to fall in with the plans at first. And, finally, what terrible event would change her mind, and how the book would end. But I didn’t know much about her personality or interests, and very little about the people she would meet—with the exception of one of the villains.


I wrote for a few days and then ran dry. I prayed about it a lot. This story, though only scraps of a few plot ingredients and one character, was already important to me. Anyway, various thoughts came wandering into my brain, and a few of those thoughts reminded me of how I used to create characters when I was a kid.


I started again. Who would Cara meet? What would they be like and what would they think of her? What would she think of them? What was their place like? Was it like an historical period with which I was familiar? (Not so much to that last question: Narenta turned out to be a fairly alien alien world.)


While gong back and forth between each character’s reactions to the others and vice versa, I discovered all sorts of interesting things about the Narentans and also about Cara. For instance, she had reneged on a promise to stay home with her best friend and was carrying an unopened letter from her friend in her jeans pocket. She had a brother who was into SF movies. She had worked briefly at a stable and was a local champion at Quark Brigade. And had sort of a boyfriend but wasn’t really that interested in him. Aha! Where could I insert someone to be a romantic interest? And, hey, how come he didn’t like her at first? What was that about?


I hadn’t written for days. (I didn’t think of any of this as “writing”.) I was too busy having fun developing characters—like the various Narentans who would just assume that Cara had some kind of magical ability because some Narentans did. Or that she naturally knew how to ride a horse and use a bow. (Yes, to the first. Not even a little bit, to the second.) Cara wanted to go back to the beach—now please. Some Narentans were desperate for her to stay and rescue them, though they didn’t all agree on how she was to do that. Meanwhile the antagonists wouldn’t mind if Cara left but figured it was safer to kill her.


“Seabird” set the pattern for my characterization—and my plotting—from then on. I work out a skeleton plot and always—nearly always—make sure I have an end to the story. Then, I set the storyline aside. I begin with two or three characters and get to know them—beginning with the protagonist. I “learn” far more about them than can possibly fit into the story. I’m afraid I don’t use physical character sheets—I have the equivalent inside my head. When I can think of nothing new about a particular character, I switch to another one, usually beginning with how they react to the character(s) I’ve already developed. In the process of developing these interrelationships and everyone’s individual motives, juicy little nuggets pop into my head. Look at that! This guy plays a flute! That one’s a poet and a bad one, and his mother abandoned him when he was very young under tragic circumstances. I know the name of that person’s horse, and I know why his girlfriend gave it that name. And so on.


Eventually, I reach critical mass when it comes to the characters, and I go back to writing the story. Actually, by now, I already have some scenes scribbled down on index cards or typed up in Notepad files. My skeleton outline has put on a lot of weight, but still has room to grow. Developments in characterization don’t cease until I type “The End”.

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Here’s a couple of my favorite and more bizarre characters, and how they developed.


Khiva the stoah, from “Earthbow”. Khiva is a sentient arboreal animal. She was supposed to be in just two scenes: In the first, she surprises someone who is secretly crawling into a window and in the other she fortuitously gets a different character out of a fix. Khiva is based on my experiences living with cats and watching squirrels. Plus she has the prehensile tail of a monkey—which was needed for the plot. And she’s a chatterbox-mostly for the fun of it. That was it for her—at first.


As I wrote more and more of Earthbow, it kept getting darker and darker. Not what I had planned at all. Earthbow badly needed comic relief. I thought about bringing in another human character or making one of my protagonists more self-deprecating, but neither solution seemed to fit.


Then I remembered Khiva. I went back and thought through her character in depth, realizing in the process that she really had more going on in her furry little brain than I had given her credit for. She hates her job as a plant-gatherer for a human herbalist. She, like most stoahs as it turns out, is very into equal rights for stoahs alongside the traditional “three peoples” of Narenta. She seems self-centered if you just listen to her chatter, but she actually has a soft heart for anyone in trouble or in pain. She’s a bit vain—not that I blame her with such great fur. And she’s addicted to rosehips. Before I knew it, she was threaded throughout “Earthbow”, essential to its plot, and promises to turn up in its sequel.


Bert-and-Marsha-from-Hoboken, from “Marooned”. (Or, how not to do it.) Now I ask you, do Bert & Marsha—much less Hoboken—sound like names from a fantasy novel? I wrote most of Marooned during National Novel Writing Month, a few Novembers ago. For those of you who know nothing about it, the object of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000+ words on one novel during the month of November. I had done some (legal) prepping for the challenge before November 1st of that year, by nailing down the characteristics and motives of my two principle characters. I was busily writing away one day (1667 words per day, minimum) when I realized that the protagonist needed to hear news from a neighboring village and, without telephones or computers, that meant I needed people to arrive on the scene and be eyewitnesses.


I was so rushed with trying to reach my NaNo quota for the day that I couldn’t take time to figure out names according to my naming conventions and I hadn’t a clue what the village was called. So, Bert & Marsha strolled into the village where the main characters were and announced they had fled Hoboken. I have never characterized on the fly so much in my life. Suddenly they had three children. (Or is it two?) Marsha started acting like a real dim supermom.


Bert refused to fit the role of dad. Argh! I backtracked and stuffed Bert in jail. Why? A nameless character had attacked my protagonist the previous day, and I still didn’t know anything about that person, except that they were now in jail. “Jailbird” became Bert. Combining characters solved that problem. Ah! Marsha had arrived from Hoboken to break Bert out of jail! Outstanding! Next thing you know, I realized that Bert was not who he professed to be. Poor Marsha! And like that. Whoosh! Rush characterization for a NaNoWriMo novel is so much fun.


Bert, Marsha, and Hoboken are all still awaiting their real names—but I do know a lot about them.


Sherry Thompson – author of Seabird, Earthbow – and most of Marooned.


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Resources:

Fantasy Character Background Info (workform)

http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/719846-Fantasy-Character-Background-Information

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Fiction Factor – Creating Characters (numerous articles)

http://www.fictionfactor.com/characters.html


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How to Create a Character Profile Sheet

http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/jun98/lazy2.htm

Hi! from SherryT

Hi! My name is Sherry Thompson, and I am one of the newest members of YAAYNHO. Don’t you just love our acronym? It kind of encapsulates the two defining experiences of most of us here: 1. “Yaay! I’ve been published! and 2. Nho! Why is no one reading my book?

About myself:

I’ve been making up stories since I was in elementary school but I never wrote any of them down until 1979 when I was 33 years old. I wrote the first draft of “Seabird” in longhand. As soon as the draft was complete, I told my family that I had committed book-writing and took them all out to dinner, at which we celebrated the start of my new career. Yeah. Right. What did we know in those days.

In January 2008, almost 29 years later, Gryphonwood Press published the umpteenth revision of “Seabird”, a fantasy for older young adults. ( http://tinyurl.com/35xu8d ) The book introduces the planet of Narenta, which bears some resemblance to medieval Europe. However Narenta has three “peoples” and some fairly bizarre plants and animals. Magic exists in two forms—Alphesaic enchantment or “good” magic and sorcery or “bad” magic.

In times of crisis, young people are brought from their own planets to assist the Narentans with skills and talents that many of them do not know they possess. Recently, these young people have been found on Earth. Cara Marshall is the Outworlder in “Seabird”, and she is definitely not pleased at what’s happened to her, especially since she is in the middle of her summer vacation at the beach.

Back in 1980, while looking for a publisher, I began writing the sequel to “Seabird”, titled “Earthbow”, and followed that with additional material for the series. Gryphonwood published “Earthbow Vol.1” ( http://amzn.to/cTsAxM ) in March, and “Earthbow Vol.2” is due out in about a month. (I’m currently awaiting the proof.) Cara’s younger brother, Xander, is the Outworlder in “Earthbow”.

Dave Wood, my publisher, wants to know what I’m working on next so I guess that means he intends to publish it. ;)

So I have a publisher, and the first books have gotten some great reviews! Yaay! According to the sales stats, I just don’t have a reading public. Nho! As most of us know, that’s what happens when a small press chooses to publish our books. Small start-up presses just don’t have the money or the personnel to help publicize their books. In fact, increasingly, all publishers expect their non-A-list authors to shoulder that burden, pretty much unassisted. For me, publicizing is largely trying to maintain an online presence, sneaking my books into a couple of local book stores, and attending the occasional East Coast SF/Fantasy convention. Next up, by the way, will be PhilCon in November.

Right now, I am sorting through the humungous manuscript that I began writing as soon as the first draft of “Earthbow” was finished. Originally titled “The Gryphon and the Basilisk”, it too takes place on Narenta and will involve an Earth teen (Luisa) as the Outworlder sent for in the face of a terrible crisis. “G&B” is fated to become one of those fantasy trilogy thingies. Maybe even a tetralogy! I refer to it sometimes as “The Behemoth, or the book that intends to eat Delaware”.

I hope someone buys a copy of it some day.

SherryT KhivasMommy AT gmail DOT com