Visiting Your Favorite Fantasy and Realistic Worlds

When a writer creates a realistic setting, readers will imagine much more detail than the actual words used. That's one of the wonderful things about books. I'm sure you have your favorite settings/worlds and react to the world the writers created.

 [Any comments about your favorites welcome.]

If you've read this blog, even sporadically, you've gotten an idea of what kinds of worlds I like to lose myself in. I think of them as fantastically wonderful settings for characters to act in, and where I can enjoy arm-chair adventures. You may or not agree with me or the books I like. But, I'll bet you have your own worlds/settings you like to return to. 

Over the last few weeks, I've returned to several worlds worth mentioning, but they didn't really give me any new insights into the writing process. Even so, I'd like to review them.

Flowering Judas by Jane Haddam. Her running mystery series, featuring detective Gregor Demarkian, has run for years with Haddam delivering competent entertaining puzzles in each book. Here, Demarkian, a retired FBI agent and consultant, is brought in to find out why the body of a man missing for years is suddenly found hanging from a bill board in his home town. Yeah. Demarian's up for solving the puzzle as he chases the clues through an unknown town. While Haddam's interesting plots shine, I think her three-dimensional characters sparkle more.

Even though my favorite part of Demarkian's world, the Armenian enclave along Cavanaugh Street, has a small role in Flowering Judas, I give the book Five ***** Stars.

Death of Yesterday by M. C. Beaton. Another long running series, this time set in far northern Scotland, features Sergeant Hamish MacBeth, a genius at solving crimes and avoiding promotion. He also has problems getting married, a strong sub-plot in this book, and his nosy, small town neighbors always make matters more difficult. 

Beaton creates tangled plots that begin with a tiny wiggling thread of a crime, often a murder. The more MacBeth investigates, the more tangled the thread becomes. The ending comes as a surprise because the real criminal behavior is more serioyus than offing a stand-offish artist who gets killed because she sketched the wrong person.

Death of Yesterday only gets Four**** from me because Beaton's writing is trending towards cookie-cutter descriptions, though her characters remain interesting. Even the detectives in the home office, who are jealous of MacBeth's success rate, supply a few surprises.

Last but not least, Hunted by Kevin Hearne. Atticus O'Sullivan is still running from various preternaturals and pantheons, with only a few allies besides his Irish wolfhound and Granuaile, the new druid he just finished training. And that causes problems for the book. The opening was one big long chase ... for about half the book. Even Atticus rising from the "dead" almost failed to save this book from a competent, but Three*** Star rating. Hearne's sense of humor saved his rating in my eyes. If you like an irreverent take on life in general...and gods in particular ... this book is worth the time to read it. I give it Four**** Stars.

You think that's a lot of books to read in two weeks? I still had another one about Henry the VII I didn't review. Guess I could say, I can read a thousand page book a week ... but I don't want to. I prefer variety. 

~~#~~

Not much new stuff written this week. The big achievement was finishing the content edits for The Ghost in the Closet. Did have to change the name of my main character from Doodie to Dumdie. Seems my editor came from another part of the country. This California girl didn't associate the name "Doodie" [which was explained in the  story as coming from the way Dumdie sang to herself as a child] ... with "doggie do", which term I do understand ... though I tend to use the term sh*t.

Now that the copy edits are done, I can send the story to the formatter. Think I can get it published by before the 11th? If you like me on Facebook you'll know when The Ghost in the Closet comes out for free on Smashwords.

Still I wonder: What reasons have caused you to change a character's name?

Though I managed to get this blog done, it seems tinkering with my website ate my whole week-end.  I still have to change the inevitable typos and glitches yet, but I like the change in appearance so far. You can check it out, if you want.

Formatting and Being Well-Spooked

The Read ...

Abandoned the book I was reading again ... for the new book I ordered:  Mary Downing Hahn's The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall.  The clone of The Secret Garden mixed up with The Turn of the Screw and a host of other ghostly classics makes a good read even if written for young readers.  The other book only featured Mexican vampires doing vampire things.  I read a Crutchfield review somewhere and ordered it and was immediately hooked by the first paragraph while drinking coffee at the bookstore.

"Take good care of this girl," Miss Beatty told the coachman.  "She's an orphan, you know, and never set foot out of London.  Make sure she gets were she's going safely."

[Many writing gurus say you aren't supposed to start with dialog, but this works ... even if it breaks the "fiction formula".]

The book is early middle grade as you might guess from the reading level above, but it makes it all the easier to see the structure of the novel.  The introductions of the somewhat cliched characters and the bits that individualize them, the hints, and the growing power of the ghost all happen in the midst of the action.   The end result a scary story in the grand tradition that can hold the attention of an adult.

Hahn follows the "fiction formula" for story arc.  Looked down at the page numbers of the chapter where the new girl meets her secretive invalid cousin ... and it was indeed half way through the book.  If your having problems with you story flow, I suggest you buy the book and study it.  

Is Hahn worth studying?  Well, she's the award winning author of some 20 books.  [I may loan the Crutchfield Hall book to the step-grandkid, but I want it back.]

The book I abandoned?  I stayed up last night until after midnight to read it, but I won't be commenting.  Not only did it have a strange chapters long flashback (novella length) ... just when the story started to get rolling, but the characters weren't much more than cardboard stand-ins.  Two boys and girl, helped by an old codger, fighting evil Mayan vampires.

Web Stuff ...

For all the time I spend at the AW Water Cooler, you'd think there was nothing new to discover there but the daily posts.  Wrong.  While seeking tech info on formatting I found an article by one of the members on using Microsoft Word for quick edits covering such items as word frequency counter, and phrase frequency counter.  Carlson also gives instructions to highlight passive words and adverbs.  These come from Robert J. Carlson , and you can check his website for the whole story.

Of course, you smarties already know this ... but I flunked computers. Now I have to get up the courage to download the band-aids and use them.

Progress ...

Nothing spectacular or even much worth mentioning. -- Entered a flash fiction piece in the Jeffrey Archer/St. Martin's  short story contest.  -- Revising/editing of the Voices of Ghosts Creek continues, but I'm starting to worry because I like it too much.  --  Mariah is still pondering how to one-up Martonsfeld in the Half-Elven saga.  --  Still, thinking about sending out agent queries.  [Only have two books to submit.], but can't get interested.  

Yeah ... I really did have a piece of fiction that was more literary/mainstream and not fantasy.  (Thanks to a Northern Colorado Writers class given by fantasy writer Victoria Hanley.)   Got the contest info at AW Water Cooler too.

Oh, and I'm trying to format Dark Solstice, the most worked Half-Elven manuscript, to submit to an e-publisher.  Got the 1.5 spacing done.  Can't figure out how to get the extra space deleted from my periods.  Got some answers at AW Water Cooler and gave rep points.  Unfortunately, after I follow the directions, the form says it "made 0 replacements'.  --  Have I ever said I hate computers ... or is that Microsoft Word?  I never had such problems with WordPerfect.

Trivia...

Fall's happening.  

While the temperatures are dropping, the leaves have started to drop too ... right in my front yard.  Have never figured out why the Lindens (Lime trees in England) are the last to leaf out and the first to drop them. 

The jays have also moved in to harvest the acorns in the backyard.  One got territorial and dropped an acorn on the old man's head when he got too close to the tree.  I prefer the robin song in the spring to the jays' squawks in the morning.