SOTQ Blog: Grand Canyon

“The English novelist J. B. Priestley once said that if he were an American, he would make the final test of whatever men chose to do in art, business, or politics a comparison with the Grand Canyon. He believed that whatever was false and ephemeral would be exposed for what it was when set against that mass of geology and light…”
― Kevin Fedarko, The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon

These two sentences express a truth so close to my heart it had never occurred to me to express it. But as I prepare to send off my thirteen-years-in-the-making book, I realize I’m holding it to this standard. Are the characters and story line true and worthy enough to give readers the tiniest hint of the feeling of gazing at the Grand Canyon? That awareness that things are much more beautiful and awe-inspiring than you recalled, and why hadn’t you looked up sooner to notice? The feeling that you always want to carry this awareness with you, because life would be emptier without it? That’s what I want people to feel when they close the back cover of my book.

P.S. The Emerald Mile, if you haven’t read it yet, is an amazing mix of historical exploration (first third), politics and hydrotechnology (second third), and adventure (last third) that shouldn’t work but does because of great writing. It passes the Priestley Grand Canyon test for sure. Also, the non-fiction characters just happen to be better than any we fiction writers could invent. 

 

--Stormy

 

Location, Location, Location

by Nib

I’m a sandwich generation. In my case, it means I was raised by parents who had no love for the outdoors, preferred to watch television most evenings, and had it not been for their individual recliners, would have been the original couch potatoes. Somehow, I raised two daughters who, despite all my efforts to the contrary, can watch TV for long consecutive hours and have great tolerances for sedentary behavior.

I have some kind of mutant outdoors genes. From my earliest memories I was outside running, roller skating, riding my bike, all accompanied by skinning my knees, falling from trees and knocking the wind out of my lungs, smashing my tailbone on hidden concrete abutments when jumping into a roaring irrigation ditch.

When I married young and moved to the Nebraska Sandhills, I jogged on county roads or pedaled my mountain bike through isolated sandy pastures. Folks in my community thought I was nuts and couldn’t understand why I just didn’t plant more fence posts or throw more hay bales if I needed to exercise. One old geezer loved to pull up beside me in his rusty sky-blue Dodge pickup while I was jogging and lean out his window. “If you’re not in a hurry, I’ll give you a ride into town.”

When I escaped from Nebraska, I finally felt free to indulge my passion. I moved to Boulder, CO and immediately began hiking and mountain biking. I bought a road bike and enjoyed days of pedaling the foothills trails and roads. I took up snow shoeing, SCUBA and kayaking, cross country skiing, week-long backpack trips in the wilderness.

Then I ended up in Flagstaff, AZ, gateway to the Grand Canyon and Sedona, Lake Powell and desert, mountains, prairies. After a lifetime of being considered a freak for wanting to play outside, I was living the dream.

I’ve accidently plopped back down in Nebraska, temporarily. (Only 89 more days of our year and a half sentence) but even here I manage to ride my bike, walk and jog. Again, I’m sort of a freak but not as bad as it was fifteen years ago.

When I left Nebraska I vowed I’d never live anywhere icky again. (So much for vows.) Life doesn’t always work out the way we plan. But here’s the deal about writing fiction: we can always make it work out our way.

That’s why Nora, the protagonist of the Nora Abbott Mysteries, gets to live in really great places. She doesn’t have to face the cloying humidity of southwest Nebraska summers or day after day of milky skies all winter or the raw wind of March on the prairie.

In Tainted Mountain, Nora started out in Flagstaff, on a ski mountain in June. Spicy pines, flashing Indian paintbrush and fiery penstemmon amid the green grass of the slopes. Sunshine and blue skies with mountain air so fresh you’d need to slap it.

In Broken Trust, Nora got to move to Boulder, CO, my heart home. In October, with the oak flashing its red leaves, young people surging on the Pearl Street Mall as another semester at CU is underway. The majestic Rocky Mountains held back by the famous Flatirons and everywhere the beauty and quirkiness that makes Boulder so special.

And in Tattered Legacy, Nora travels to Moab in the spring. The iconic red rocks and hoodoos  (don’t you love that word?) and fins of Arches National Park and the giant spires that march over the desert valleys bring Nora into a landscape so amazing it leaves me nearly speechless.

And I got to go to every one of those places. I got to hang out and be there. So even if I’m spending one last winter in the gray gloom of the Nebraska prairie, I can keep the beauty of the outdoors with me.

What is your favorite place, your heart home?

BTW-- Tattered Legacy is available for pre-order now and will officiall launch March 8. Signed copies are available now from The Plains Trading Company Booksellers. 

A sweetheart of a day!

What could be more fun than Valentine's Day in Heart City? Valentine, Nebraska! The first Tattered Legacy event. What a sweetheart of a day!

Editing Pelicans

I’m a casual bird watcher and in my SF work-in-progress I’ve included descriptions of several off-world birds, including their habits and song.  I was once editing a chapter that included the description of one of “my” birds while also keeping an eye on several American White pelicans cruising around the lake.  When they’re not dipping their heads to fish, I think the pelicans look like barges, sailing majestically and without effort past their smaller kin, the Canada goose.  Flying, the pelicans tuck their necks and spread their wings wide, the black feathers on the edge of their wings accentuating the eight or ten foot wingspan – an exquisite sight.  Yet a pelican’s ungainly beak, awkward stance on land, and humorous waddle made me wonder how I would “edit” a pelican if they were one of my creations, which lead me to the conclusion that I wouldn’t.  They are fabulous. 

I then considered unforgettable characters from several of my favorite books.  Some of those characters are, of course, as handsome and sleek as a kestrel in flight, but most are not, and the characters that capture my heart and wring it inside out have to cope with multiple internal flaws or challenges and often a few external ones.  Just like the pelicans, memorable characters carry on in spite of their awkward beaks or throat sacs, and frequently because of those beaks or sacs they save the day.

The pelicans reminded me that each character I write, whether hero or villain, needs to have his own story and character arc, and that loose skin and long, heavy beaks are interesting and appropriate traits for my un-edited pelican, which may be equally appropriate for a character in one of my books.  “My” birds can’t all be swans and this is good.  Hopefully, just like the pelican, they are unique unto themselves and memorable in their own fashion. 

I do think though, that I might just have to give some future character a throat sac…

~ Folio

Bias Against Women? What The Red Tent Teaches Us

If judged by the attendance at conferences, women dominate the world of writing, but is there a “bias against women in the workplace” and why?

We hear over and over again about a woman who unsuccessfully sued her employer because she was earning 79 cents to the dollar.  There are studies showing that people preferred unseen male bosses over females despite hearing the same description about each.  In addition, transgender individuals have found themselves to be assumed better leaders after becoming men. 

Is the U.S. misogynous?  I have a different, and likely unpopular, view. 

Could it be that this bias is inborn from the historical rolls that men and women played?  If you’ve read The Red Tent, you’ll find that women, too, are assumed to be better than men at some things, things that are, in fact, more important than money to the existence of our species - for example, making childbirth happen. 

Yes, we are assumed to be more intuitive, more empathetic, more persistent through long-lasting pain.  Could a man endure child birth?  In science fiction, maybe.  The uterus is strong and flexible.  In the world of plants, bamboo has that distinction and is revered as a deity by some in Asia.  Are women stronger? 

I think the argument that women are assumed to be poor leaders has its own bias (seemingly relevant to the world we’ve created for ourselves but forgetting the other side of the coin). 

The perspective of some transgendered people comes from a source that has its own slant.  Many women, by their admission, haven’t fit in as women so may not have experienced as much of the up-side of being women and having their power.  The notion that the world is biased against women makes victims out of people who are important through their naturally given powers, and assumes money and power on the job are the most important powers. 

Workplace leadership may be judged to be a good measure of success – now with the breakdown of the family and the trend toward having fewer kids.  We want to be labeled as “equal” in the workplace which is, perhaps, the closest thing in our everyday life to the role of the buffalo hunter of the past. 

I'm dubious of anecdotal observations in some studies that fail to address the confounding issues.  Always a devil's advocate, I studied "studies" and the resulting stats.  It seems the proven inequality results from an assumption, often a preconceived idea of men and women being born with exactly the same natural abilities. 

There will always be women assumed to be so-so managers who are actually the top of the heap, men assumed to be the better bread-winners yet are so empathetic and nurturing that they are the far better parents to stay home with their children and help bring babies into the world.  But the unconscious biases may not be easily explained as a pernicious undercurrent of prejudice.  Might it be nature rather than nurture? 

 
In some ways women have it better today.  Flippantly I can joke that women have evolved faster to fit in our world.  Females can be nurturing and yet happily attack fields previously dominated by men, even encouraged through programs to bring science and leadership into their worlds.  Boys, however, are not allowed the nature, aren’t just encouraged to play with dolls, they are not allowed rough play and are forced to put their toy guns away, be more feminine when dealing with the world. Women are being allowed to expand, manliness is being stifled and even reviled as barbaric.  I'd rather be a woman in this day and age. 

 I think it’s a disservice to ignore the strength of nature and approach feminism as a fight against victimization.  Why not open the doors to all, acknowledging that the unconscious biases are not malevolent but innate.  Why not put more emphasis on the successes of women that in fact outshine those of men? 

The sensitivity serves women writers well, think Rowling .  And step aside Stephen King, the recent queen of fiction is Stephenie Meyer.  The stay-at-home mother who wrote Twilight accounted for more than 15 percent of all books sold in the U.S. In 2010.  

(These thoughts were inspired by Author Maria Popova who referenced writings by NPR science writer Shankar Vedantam about biases and their effects on our lives.  Popova argued  that those biases hold women back in the workplace.  My reaction to Popova’s take on the issue is clearly contrary to modern day feminism.  I think, however, that some who call themselves feminists may be ignoring the other side, maybe a more powerful side.)

-Inkpot

My (Not so Secret) Graphic Design for Friends, Part Two

As I mentioned in my October blog, in my past life, when I worked full-time at a day job, I enjoyed graphic design, so I splurged a number of years ago and purchased Photoshop. Since then I've created graphics for my own books and short stories, including business cards, postcards, book trailers, posters, and ebook covers.

I've also enjoyed creating images for a few friends, and today I'm sharing more of that work!

Here's my most recent effort, a bookmark for Shannon Baker featuring the three books in her Nora Abbott mystery series!

Shannon Baker offers readers a deft mix of both important contemporary issues and the 

timeless spiritual traditions of the Hopi.  For those of us who hunger for the kind of novel 

Tony Hillerman used to write so well, this promising new series may just fill the bill. 

– William Kent Krueger, Bestselling author of the Cork O’Conner Mystery Series

Then there's Paul Flanders and his novel, Aspire.  Here's the full jacket for the paperback version.

On the earth plane Ernie Colstad, a high school English teacher, is grief stricken 

when his favorite student commits suicide. On the spiritual plane, his two guardian 

angels try to help Ernie find the fortitude to deal with the crisis and conflicts with 

the school administration in order to improve his chances to transcend to their tier.

And here's one of Paul's short stories, Learning to Lead.

Oh, how I love books!

~ Janet Fogg

www.janetfogg.com

FINDING THE “THING”

 

 

Over lunch this week, my sisters of the quill brainstormed with me about how to make my protagonist a more interesting, fun character to write.  Right now she’s a bit like Silvia Plath if she had been a cook.  She has a sordid past with baggage.  She’s a media-shy amateur sleuth, and that poses problems for her and between her and her ex.  She has a career that allows her to cross paths into red herrings and the killer, an expertise that is intimately connected with the plot and solving the main story question.  But something is still missing, something that separates her further from being me. 

I’m not whining that I’m bland or that I lack a third dimension.  I am, however, not a good fiction character because I’m extremely risk averse, which means I don’t walk into trouble or take on anything that a good girl scout would avoid (ironically I contradicted that by choosing to be a writer which challenges me every moment with the ultimate obstacle course, but that’s another post). 

It wouldn’t fit to power my sleuth up with a “thing” like Columbo’s outfit, complete with cigar and rumpled raincoat, unusual garb for a homicide detective.  It worked for him because it fit with the deceptively bumbling way he caught criminals. 

 

It can’t be as campy as Marty Mcfly’s inability to tolerate being called a chicken by Biff in Back to the Future.  That was a cartoonish story that could manage a “thing” that allowed for such an in-your-face flaw.

 

 

It wouldn’t fit my character to have more of a behind closed doors “thing” like Walter White’s choice to make meth in order to afford cancer treatment.  What was a sympathetic motivation became a dark “thing” indeed.

 

 

Mine is a different kind of story altogether with its own needs.  Other than my protagonist, I feel I have a grip on others who populate my story.  I’m happy with my other two POV characters, my secondary characters and even my red herrings.

The maddening impasse is with my darned amateur sleuth.  I need to step far outside my skin, outside my family culture to enjoy writing about her.  From the beginning, I gave her many of my traits so I could relate to her.  I’m somewhat shy, unless forced into a situation where I have to be gregarious.  My character is shy to the point of preferring isolation from the general public.  I’m a cookbook author.  She’s a culinary instructor and food scholar.  It is handy to know my way around a kitchen for her sake.  But she needs something more. 

 

To be relatable, and fascinating, I want her to be more than simply a heroine with laudable intentions, a pillar of her community, someone with impeccable ethics with no baggage clouding her judgment.  Who in my sphere is that generic and unsurprising?  Would I admire a bland friend like that?  Well, maybe my next door neighbor; predictability is comforting when it comes to the one who checks in on me if I’ve accidentally leave my garage door open all night.  But even he, behind closed doors, isn’t likely to be exactly what I expect.  And what does my protagonist do behind closed doors?  That’s what I need to figure out.  What’s her “thing”????

 

The sisters toyed with a few ideas and Stormy wondered if my character’s consequential flaw might be that she always tells the truth, that she’s compelled to do so because she believes that hiding a truth from her father led to a delay in finding her mother who disappeared when she was a child.  But as I thought through this interesting idea, I discovered that always telling the truth doesn’t work with some aspects of the plot.  That’s because of how the story unfolds (including a scene in which she chooses not to scare her daughter with the “truth” of their plane’s mechanical problems).  I need to allow room for skirting the truth, yet she could be painfully conflicted about it.  She believes that one truth as a child led to her mother’s disappearance and a lie led to her mother’s death.  So confessions and a fibs both led her to falsely believe she’d set dangerous things in motion when she was still in elementary school.  The duality is a nuanced trait for a 350 page book.  It could be absorbed by the page unless in narrative she is often waxing worried over decisions about telling the truth… It could easily be overdone.  Maybe my skill level isn’t quite there. 

 

I continue to brainstorm:

Some lie too much.

Some tell too many truths.

 

 

When you are sad, even a broken egg is too much to bear, let alone talk honestly about.  No.  No.  Inky.  That is too Silvia Plath.    

How do you find your “thing”?   -  inky