The Author's Voice by Victoria Chatham

AVAILABLE HERE

Most writers understand the term the author’s voice. For non- or new writers who may not, it refers to the writer’s personal and distinctive elements of style. Someone who loves classical music can differentiate between Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. A jazz fan will know Muddy Waters from B.B. King. Fans of Nora Roberts or Debbie Macomber, John Grisham or Lee Child will not need the cover or spine matter to know who has written the book. A few lines of text from a single page will tell a seasoned fan all they need to know because they recognize the author’s voice.

But there is another author's voice to consider. It is that real voice, the one an author produces the first time they perform, either at a reading or giving a presentation. It is the part that authors over and over say they like the least because many authors are often introverts and prefer to be seen but not heard. They do not want to hear that thin, reedy, wavering vocal vehicle that cannot possibly be their voice. They know it is not going to reach the back of the room or do anything to WOW their audience. They suffer from glossophobia, the technical term for fear of public speaking which affects at least 25 percent of the population so in that they are not alone.

However, as with writing, practice makes perfect, and the best place to practice your reading is in the comfort of your own home. First, find a paragraph in your book that resonates with you. It could be descriptive narrative or a few lines of dialogue from a passage with which you are comfortable. For your first attempt, make it a short piece. You might barely move your lips around the words so that you are only whispering, but that will not do. Read your passage out loud, and I do mean OUT LOUD, and then re-read it. Next time, lift your head, look straight in front of you and then dip our chin slightly so that you lengthen your neck. Now hold your paper (or book) up so that it is at eye level and re-read the piece.

Notice your breath. Many of us, when we begin public readings, take a deep breath and go for it, ending on a gasp like a landed fish. Learn to breathe. Yes, you read that correctly. Controlling your breathing goes a long way to calm your nerves, which ultimately modulates your voice. Take three deep breaths and re-read your piece. Better?

Here’s another tip. Print the page from which you are going to read and mark it up with a backslash at

every comma and period, which will show you where you can pause to take a breath. It is also a neatway to determine if better punctuation will make your writing flow more easily. If you can’t comfortably read a sentence in one breath, then it is too long. You may also find places where you naturally want to take a breath, so mark these as well. Note the solid backslashes and the dotted backslashes in this sample take from my book His Unexpected Muse. 

 Practice as much as you can. Watch TED talks on YouTube and watch how the presenters interact with their audience, or research online articles on public speaking. If you have the chance, visit the venue where your reading is to take place, get comfortable with it. Is it a library, bookstore, or school? If you can, meet the staff who will be there on the day of the reading. Find out where the podium will be placed and check the lighting. Is it good enough for you to see your page? To make it more comfortable for yourself, print your page(s) in as large a font as you need. Look around and familiarize yourself with entrances and exits. The last thing anyone wants is to be placed by the washroom door. You may laugh, but that has happened.

On the day of the reading, a couple of things will help you stay calm. Most of us love our coffee, but too much caffeine before the event can make you more nervous. Drinking milk, or having any milk-based product may cause congestion. You know yourself best, so if this is likely to happen to you, it would be better to drink water.

When you step up to the podium, look at your audience who need not know this is the first time you are reading in public. Pick one or two people, make eye contact with them and imagine you are reading just for them. Smile. Breathe. Begin.

When you have finished, look around your audience again and thank them for listening. Keep smiling, even though your knees may be knocking, and you long for that coffee or a stiff drink—pat yourself on the back. You’ve done it! You’ve survived. And the more you do it, the more you prepare for it, the easier it gets. I promise.

AT BOOKS WE LOVE

ON FACEBOOK

ON TWITTER

What Writing Has Cost Me by Victoria Chatham

AVAILABLE HERE

During a recent conversation with someone who has enjoyed all my books, I was asked what writing had cost me. This wasn't meant in a financial way, more in terms of what social or personal changes I may have experienced. 

As a child, books were always my best friends. I’m not sure if this was the result of being an early reader or the fact that being an army brat and constantly on the move taught me very early on the pain of parting from friends. After the second or third posting, I didn’t bother trying to make them and kept pretty much to myself. I became an observer rather than someone who participated in whatever was going on.

The bonus, though, of each new school was discovering its library and there, I excelled

because I read books way above my grade and so became popular with the librarians who were often the English teachers, too. Yes, I sucked up big time in order to get my hot little hands on more books than the curriculum required.

In my early teens, I switched from reading to writing. I was absolutely convinced I had what it took to be an author. I tinkered with writing, gaining on the way prizes for essay writing at school and good passes in English Literature and Grammar (taught as separate subjects back then) in my GCE exams - this, I think, would have been the equivalent of graduation.   

Once I was married and had a family, I was always writing something, from annual reports at work to stories for my kids. But then I decided to write a book for my daughter. It took me two years to complete but it satisfied me in a way that reading did not. Writing days were

Sundays, when I shut myself in my bedroom tucked up on the window seat with a flask of coffee and a plate of sandwiches. It was known that I was not to be disturbed unless there was lots of blood or something on fire. Writing became a constant friend, the one to whom I never would have to say good-bye. Sure, there were and are moments of au revoir, but then a new idea grabs me, and the writing begins again.

Over the years I know my writing has set me apart, a little. The days when I’ve said ‘no’ to this or that proposed outing because I wanted to write has caused coolness in some friendships and ended others. The times when I have been uncommunicative because I was deep in my story have not necessarily been understood, either. Joining a writing group was the best thing I ever did because being with other people who ‘get it’ is a great place to be.

Overall, writing has given me much more in terms of satisfaction than just about anything else, so for me, there has been far more reward than cost. 

  

 ​AT BOOKS WE LOVE

 ON FACEBOOK

 MY WEBSITE

 

I Remember When...

(Reposted from the BWL Canadian Historical Brides blog)

photo © Janice Lang

Memories can be tricky little devils. Some are so crystal clear that no manner of dispute by people who were there can derail our version of that particular truth, even if it might be a tad faulty. They can be faded sepia by time like an old photograph, or replayed in the mind like a scratchy copy of an 8mm home movie. Others are dim recollections, fragments here and there, disconnected one from another, some even running together to form one imperfect memory. And then there are other those that remain intact throughout our lives, complete with enough sensory imagery to recall every detail.

I retain a number of such memories, some from earliest childhood…like when I was two or three and I made my first snowman (a tiny one, about the size of a baby doll) outside our apartment in the Bronx. I didn’t want to part with it, even as my mother insisted it was time for a nap. Eventually she acceded to my demands and let me take it upstairs, where we put it in the bath tub for safekeeping. Not understanding the properties of snow at the time, I woke from my nap and eagerly made a beeline to the bathroom, only to find a puddle, my red woolen scarf, and a couple of pieces of coal where my masterpiece had been. A lesson in disappointment.

My all-time favorite memory from childhood is quite the opposite. After over 60 years, it remains as vivid as yesterday.

I was six years old on Christmas Eve in 1956, when my dad took me to the gas station to have snow tires put on my mom’s car. I don’t remember why I went along with him to Frank’s Amoco, but there I was in the office, standing face-to-face with a glossy little stub-tailed black mutt. Sitting by the door to the bays on an oil-stained spot, he reacted with a joyful countenance as soon as he saw me enter. We struck up a conversation (mostly one way). But he had an expressive face and cocked his ears in a most appealing way, tilting his head when I spoke, as if he understood everything I said.

Time soon came for the car to get moved into the shop, so we all filed back out onto the blacktop. The day was chilly and blustery (I’d been wearing mittens, which I’d taken off inside). Just as we stepped out the door, a mighty blast of wind took one of my mittens and blew it across the lot. I watched in a dull sort of stupor as the mitten flew on a swirling gust and then kicked around at the curb. Before I could take a step toward it, the dog tore off, picked it up, trotted back to me, and dropped the mitten at my feet. And there was that look he gave me as he sat gazing up so expectantly, wagging his little tail….

I thought he had to be the smartest dog in the world (on a par with Lassie and Rin-Tin-Tin), and I told him so. Together we climbed into the back seat of my mother’s 1955 Rambler and went up on the lift while the mechanic changed the tires. All the while we talked about what it would be like if he could come home and live with me. I told him about my two sisters and our mom, our house and yard, and “the pit,” which was the greatest place on earth for us kids to play. Like the world’s biggest playground surrounded by acres and acres of trees, and slopes to sled down in winter, picking blueberries and blackberries in summer….

The whole time we were up there on the lift, Frank and my dad had been involved in what looked to be a conspiratorial conversation, and when the dog and I got out of the car, my father was smiling from ear to ear.

“Do you want that dog?” Frank asked with a wink at my dad.

I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. It just couldn’t be true. But when I glanced up at my father, heart thumping with wild expectation, anticipating a let-down, he grinned at me like a little boy and nodded. Of course I wanted the dog, and so did he it seemed, almost as much I did.

Shadow and me, circa 1964

I guess Frank was relieved that the stray mutt had found a place to live and be loved. He explained that the dog had shown up at the gas station a few days before and hung around day and night following the mechanics as they went about their business—a kind of a nuisance—but they fed him scraps from their lunchboxes and he slept in the shop and earned his keep watching over the place. They called him Shadow, and that was to be his forever name.

My mom wasn’t thrilled—not one bit—and it took all we had to convince her that I would walk him, feed and clean up after him. Finally, she gave in, albeit reluctantly. After all, he was smelly and grungy with grease and dirt. So we gave him a bath in the tub. With all that filthy, soapy water gurgling down the drain, I fully expected him to turn white.

For the first few weeks, Shadow would manage to get out of the house and disappear from morning until supper time. We soon discovered that he spent that time hanging out at his old place of employment (a goodly trek, I might add)…until he discovered Paul the mailman. For a couple of years he even got picked up and dropped off at our house on the days Paul’s route was scheduled through our neighborhood. He became the most famous dog in our part of Massapequa. Wherever we went (he followed me on my bicycle), kids would always shout,“Hey, isn’t that the mailman’s dog?”

Shadow retired from the US Postal Service when Paul was replaced (I learned from my mother later in life that he was a bit of a Lothario). 

For the remainder of his life Shadow’s only job was as friend, protector, clown and trickster. He also had a lot of Scrappy-Doo in him, often getting into fights with much larger dogs and paying the price. But he survived the follies of his youth to remain with us for 14 years before crossing over the Rainbow Bridge a week shy of Christmas Eve, 1970. By that time we had shared countless adventures and had lots of fun together. And I had a trove of stories to tell my kids as they grew up. Maybe one day I’ll write them down. 

~*~

Kathy Fischer Brown is a BWL author of historical novels, Winter Fire, "The Serpent’s Tooth" trilogy: Lord Esterleigh’s Daughter, Courting the Devil, The Partisan’s Wife,  and The Return of Tachlanad, an epic fantasy adventure for young adult and adult readers. Check out her Books We Love Author page or visit her website. All of Kathy’s books are available in e-book and in paperback from Amazon, Kobo, and other online retailers.

Why Does a Writer HAVE to Write: The Answer Found in the Petrified Forest National Park

Deadly Undertaking

A handsome detective,
a shadow man,
and a murder victim
kill Lauren’s plan for a simple life.
Available at Amazon

Hello and welcome to the Books We Love Insiders Blog, an author written blog sharing personal stories, research updates, writing tips and interesting gossip and details of the writing life. I'm J. Q. Rose. Today it's my privilege to take a turn.

* * *

A writer’s compulsion to write is a puzzlement to most people.  Ask an author why she writes and you will most likely get the answer, “because I have to.” Ideas for stories swirl around in the writer’s brain and will not go away until the idea is fixed on paper or screen.

This drive is not a new behavior for human beings. Cave men expressed their ideas on the walls of caves. This summer my husband and I visited the Southwest region of the USA. Signs of ancestral native people who lived in this harsh environment left their drawings on rocks in the desert. I don’t mean rocks the size of a stone you can skip across the lake. These are enormous ROCKS with identifiable pictures of water birds and faces of what scientists believe symbolize the spirits the people worshiped. The drawings are called petroglyphs.

Petroglyph --Faces of spirits of the Ancestral Pueblo culture

Petroglyph--Water bird drawing in the Petrified Forest National Park

Evidence of the desire by ancient people to leave a record of their lives are scattered throughout the Petrified Forest National Park in Eastern Arizona. 

Rocks, “varnished” by Mother Nature by the clay minerals and sand collected on the surface of the rock, make the perfect canvas/background for the prehistoric man to scratch out recognizable shapes and figures about their existence. The latest Ancient Puebloan drawings are believed to be from around 900 A.D. to 1100 A.D. 

The Painted Desert located in the Petrified Forest National Park

I felt strangely connected with these primitive efforts at sharing the artist/writer's ideas with others, as if the artist was reaching out across the centuries to assure me it's okay to have that drive to express my ideas through my writing. 

I wonder if any of our e-books and print books will exist 1000 years from now for future scientists to discover!
Photos by J.Q. Rose

* * *

Connect online with J.Q. Rose, author of the romantic suspense, Deadly Undertaking.

Author J.Q. Rose

Click here on the J.Q.Rose blog to learn more about the Petrified Forest National Park.

Facebook 

J.Q.  Rose Amazon Author Page