Gods as Characters

The Read ...

Can you tell I'm thinking a lot about characters and how to depict them?  [ Look at the title of my last blog. ]  

Read Tamora Pierce's Tricker's Queen.  Review:  It's a well-written, suspenseful book which gives the reader a few twists along the way.  More important, she got me thinking about gods (okay, and goddesses) as characters.

A given -- for both believers and non-believers -- is that gods like to meddle in human business.  The "least devout" might say that gods are human excuses for human failures.  The devout might think: if something goes wrong, someone must have something "agin' yah", like as not some persnickety god or the witch down the road.

Pierce makes her meddling gods ... delightfully human.  More.  She has taken bits of the Greek/Roman/pan-European pantheon and added Coyote to create a trickster god.  [At least, it felt that way when I read the book.]  Coyote isn't per se really a god, but he can create havoc with the best of them.  The manipulating god in the Trickster series creates lots of consternation for people ... but all's well in the end since Aly, the main character, grows up as she faces the challenges thrown her way.

What does all that mean for writers staring at a work-in-progress?  Well, you can study the various pantheons and mix-and-match traits to create your own meddling god ... or you can apply the traits to a human character.  Since actual plot lines repeat themselves, you can even retell a god's story within a human setting.

Web Promotion and Other Stuff ...

Have you noticed I'm twisting in the wind here?  Mostly, about what to do about the time social media takes.  Granted I had an enormous learning curve to climb ... but I still feel like I'm talking to myself.  Yeah, I know I have some loyal readers ... and I never expected to have a "popular" blog.  Still.  There are time constraints to blogging.  I'm still posting "Lessons" once a week, but I'm aiming for Wednesdays now.

That preface leads up to a thanks to Patti Struble who pointed me in the direction of Celery Tree, a gathering place for authors.  They have an immensely helpful article on getting the most out of the time you spend social networking.  Reading the Top Ten Rules of Social Media is well worth your time ... even if you're in a hurry.  --  Oh, Patti's worth reading too.  She's been giving useful craft info that every writer should practice.

Okay.  I'm a slow learner.  Just discovered the #marketing listing at Twitter.  You might find some useful info there.  Another free marketing resource can by found at AW Water Cooler.  They have a forum where writer's discuss marketing e-publications.  ...  If I ever get my act together, I plan to actually study some of the info I've just scanned.

Progress ...

The snail needs to get some giddity-up-and-go.  2-300 words a day isn't going to cut it no matter what else I'm cleaning up. Next big project?  

I need to double proof-read my website.  Why?  I going to take my pride in hand and submit it to 1st Turning Point for a critique.  Plan?  To correct what "mistakes" I can before "Taking Vengeance" is published. 

Trivia ...

The cat has been ignoring my lap in favor of watching the birds.  I've been enjoying how the chickadees sneak into the feeder and rush out before the finches realize they are there too.

Finding Something to Read

The Read ...

Yeah.  I've been reading ... and putting the book down ... and reading ... and putting the book down.  Did I finish anything.  Well, yeah ... but the book I read puzzled the heck out of me.  What puzzled me more was the books I put down.  

I remember being an avid reader of Patricia Wentworth back in the day.  She had a British spinster sleuth in the Miss Marple vein.  She told a several good tales [it seemed from what I skimmed] about the vices of the gentry, but I couldn't get interested in them.  Maybe it was the amount of telling in the story line.  I'm guessing screen writing has had a greater influence on my reading than I thought.

What did I read?  C. S. Harris' When Gods Die which opens with Prinny [George the IV while his father was still alive] talking to and clutching a corpse.  The characterization was so sharply drawn, Harris drew me into her story of would-be revolutionaries capitalizing on the Napoleanic Wars, the main character/sleuth's discovery that his mother is still alive after he thought she'd died when he was a child, and other subplots that keep the action popping.  Harris really knows her Regency history, unlike a thousand other writers I can't name.  More interestingly, she gets her characters out of the drawing rooms and into the sewers ... literally. 

So why did this surprise me?  Well, I bought three books in the series on the basis of a review ... and put the first one on the to-trade pile without getting more than a couple chapters into the book.  Read the second that had been languishing at the bottom of the to-read pile.  Started to read the third, and it went on the trade pile.  There's a fourth where the MC solves a crime with the daughter of the MC's nemisis.  It looks intriguing, but I doubt if I'll go looking for it.  Stephanie Laurens did something vaguely similar in one of her later Cynster novels.  

Web and Other Stuff ...

A  Twitter link underlined one of the questions rotating in my mind.  What the heck should I blog about to interest people.  You might read Dawn Rae Miller's blog about:  you shouldn't be writing about writing.  Miller has some serious credentials on building platforms, so I think her opinion is worth thinking about.

If you've been pressed for time [like I have been], you might check out Brooke Favero over at The Writing Bug, the blog of the Northern Colorado Writers.  She's gleaned some good posts from the blogosphere from last week.

If you want a second opinion, you might also check out Patti Struble's blog, The Writer's Bump.  Patti offers her on take on the week in her Friday Mash-Up.

One last promotional thing:  N. R. Williams has been doing a blog book tour for her new fantasy book:  The Treasures of Carmelidrium.   You want an example of good promotion?  Go spend some time at Nancy's blog reading her posts and following her links.  She made me tired just twirling my mouse. 

Progress ...

The more I work, the behinder I get.  Or, at least it seems that way even though I finally figured out a framework and did the revision for another Renna's Tale.  Check it out.  It'll take you a lot less time to read it than it took me to figure out how to write it.

Had a 2000 word first chapter for Maren and was all set to jump into chapter two.  Only new ideas kept popping out of my brain.  Of course, I ended up making revisions as I inserted the new ideas into the text.  The chapter is now over 3,000 words long ... and I still have some scribbled notes for additions.
 

Trivia ...

Spent waaaaay too much time in nursing homes ... checking out the facilities.  At least, they let me out again. 

Revisiting Old Friends: Silver on the Tree

The Read...

Picked up Susan Cooper's Silver on the Tree of the Dark is Rising series.  All part of my return to writing middle grade, I guess, but her books are intricate enough that adults can enjoy them for their own sakes ... or maybe my brain just works on a more infantile level than most.  

Will, the Drew kids, and Bran go up against the greatest evil threatening to enslave the world ... and win with surprisingly little violence and little help from the "Merlin" incarnations.  Spent about a half hour of looking for examples of where Cooper created tension ... but the passages were too long for me to feel comfortable quoting.  So, I'll cop out and say ... if you want to see how a master puts her characters in harms way without resorting to blood flying all over the place.  Buy the book, a yellow highlighter, and set too.

Hate to say this people, but I think my unconscious mind is telling me to go back and write middle grade.  Which makes me wonder how you or any writer decided what reading level to write at.

Web and Other Good Stuff...

 If I'm ever a success as an author (someone's whose fiction is published by somebody else), you can blame 1st Turning Point.  The good information just keeps pouring from the site.  This time of special note is Jolene James blog:  Free and Low Cost Promotion Websites.  Of course, I bookmarked it. 

And, Stacia Kane writes about Copyrights and stuff at "How Publishing Works".   I read her opinions and general good sense a lot at Absolute Write Water Cooler.  [Thanks to Kevin Hearne for this info.] 

Then, there's the problem that concerns me at the moment.  Is it MG or YA?  Mary Kole of the Andrea Brown Agency give us a good litmus test on her recent kidlit.com blog. 

I don't know how Patti Struble manages to blog so much about while she's NaNo-ing, but she has a great blog about wrapping up your story --  The End of the Line.  Maybe she's ready to chuck it all in and slow the pace?

So, what could be better, once you get an end on your manuscript, than selling it ... hopefully for money.  Okay, I've contracts on the mind since I spent over an hour at Office Depot trying to get a fax through to Britain with my Spectra contract.  I'm in good company.  The Writer Beware Blog has a good post on understanding what your contract means, written by Victoria Strauss.  While it focuses on packaging, it still has lots of good advice.  I liked the title:  Notes from the Underbelly of Publishing.  If that isn't a warning, I don't know what is.

Progress...

Maybe selling "Taking Vengeance" wasn't such a fluke, after all.  Just made another sale to Spectra Magazine, a British science fiction e-magazine.  I even have a printout of the contract at my right elbow, sitting on top of the dictionary.  The piece may be called "Night for the Gargoyles" and was the short story beginnings of my novel length manuscript started in 2008, "There Be Demons".  

Does that mean a change in my decision to give up on short stories?  I doubt it ... because I just much more comfortable in writing longer lengths.  

Don't know if it counts as progress, but this blog has had over 2000 readers/reads since It started in August 2009.  Has it really been that long?  I never thought I could keep this up for more than a couple months.  Guess I really do have a big mouth.

Trivia ...

Got a floor show while eating dinner the other day.  A fox trotted down the street, took a piss in a neighbor's yard, and trotted away, his white-tipped tail swishing.  Glad he refrained from our yard.  We get enough lingering dogs as it is.