How to Deal with Angry People on the Internet

 

 

 

We all have been on the receiving end. However innocuous our posts on Facebook may be, they triggers angry responses. Sometimes, we respond heatedly to other’s comments on social media. There is a name to this type of behavior: Internet Rage. Like its namesake, Road Rage, it is triggered by similar impulses.

The emotional distance between the aggressor and the target is key. Emotional distance allows for exaggerated emotional responses when threatened or slighted. Anonymity allows for dehumanization of the ‘other’ and, thus, moral consequences of such behavior becomes dismissed. Internet Rage brings another element into the equation: physical distance, which permits behavior that would never be considered, by minimizing real-world consequences.

While Internet Rage has been around since the beginning of social media, it seems that it has increased dramatically over the past few years. It is a reflection of the growing intolerance, especially political fanaticism, in real life. After all, social media reflects (and amplifies) current social trends.

 

    1. Don’t feed the Trolls. It is well-known that irate replies to angry comments only encourages more of the same. Best not to reply to such posts. If you want to answer, keep a neutral tone. If this doesn’t work, block or unfriend the offender.

 

    2. Avoid problematic topics.  Before posting, consider the following: will your contribution to divisive topics enlighten or enrage others. If you think it will provoke angry responses instead of helpful ones, perhaps it’s not worth posting.

 

    3. Report the Crazies. Some posts cross the line from mere anger to vulgarity, hate or personal slander. Such unacceptable behavior should be reported to social media monitors (after blocking the individuals.)

 

    4. Maintain your Integrity. If your friends see a consistent pattern of measured, considerate on-line behavior on your part, they will support you in case of attack. After all, as in real-life, your behavior will attract support (or opposition) from others, as the case may be.

 

    5. Take a Break. It is absolutely reasonable to close Facebook or Twitter for some time. Nothing relaxes a restless or anxious mind more than a long walk, a yoga class or a dinner with friends. It is also useful to ration social media times to healthy amounts.

 

Mohan Ashtakala (www.mohanauthor.com) is the author of "Karma Nation" a fantasy, and "Karma Nation," a literary romance. He is published by Books We Love (www.bookswelove.com)

 

 

 

 

 

Knights Loaf, Cheat Bread, Maslin: what's in a name?...by Sheila Claydon

 

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So let me introduce you to one of the main characters in my next book. Old Mill!

Hidden away in woodland on the edge of a golf course, it has stood four-square for more than 600 years. Its roof fell in long ago. Its water wheel has disappeared, and so, more bizarrely, has the tumbling river that turned it. If it wasn't for the blue placque beside what was once a door, you wouldn't know it had ever been a mill. A best guess would have been a tumbledown shack a couple of hundred years old. 

Because I wanted to use it as the basis for my next book, the third one in my Mapleby Mysteries trilogy, I needed to find out more about it, however, and goodness me I've been amazed. Not about the old mill itself but about medieval mills in general and medieval life in particular.

For example, I learned that the same as a church, there was a mill in every medieval village, usually owned by the lord of the manor but operated by a miller. The miller was always better off than most of the peasant farmers who used the mill. This was because everyone needed their corn, rye, oats and barley milled, ground into flour and made into bread, so he (it was always a he) was never out of work. Many millers also made bread from the peasants own flour and then charged them for it. The peasants also had to pay the feudal lord banalities (small fees) for the use of the mill, so no wonder they were always poor.

The miller, who often had a baking house next to the mill, made as many as 20 different types of bread, most of which had names unusual to today's ears. There was the Knights loaf, the Popes loaf, Maslin, which was a mix of wheat and rye, and Manchets and Pandemain. Manchets were large rolls and loaves of white bread, while Pandemain  was the loaf preferred by the lord of the manor and his wealthy friends and relatives. Both of these were made from finely ground and sifted wheat flour, while their poorer cousin was Wastel,  a white bread made from flour that had been less carefully sieved. 

There was also Cheat bread, made from wheat flour that had the worst of the bran removed, and horse bread, which was made from a mix of cereals, pulses, bran and acorns.This was originally made for horses but many of the poorest people had no choice but to eat it to keep themselves alive, especially in times of famine. And that was another thing I learned. There was often famine, or flooding, and living in medieval times was very, very hard. 

There was no such thing as rest either . Millers and peasants alike toiled from dawn to dusk, working to the seasons. Everything from planting to ploughing, sowing and harvesting, scaring the birds (done mostly by children) pruning and weeding, and even fertilising the fields, had to be done in the correct season, the same as shearing and butchering. And all this was done  alongside basket making, weaving, animal husbandry, collecting  eggs and nuts and berries, preserving food by salting and smoking, digging ditches to protect the fields from flooding, and of course collecting wood to repair their own houses and tools and keep them warm in the winter. No electricity, no glass in the windows of their one roomed huts or cruck houses, where everyone, including the animals, slept together around a central fire in the winter both for warmth and as protection from the wild animals that roamed the fields at night. No wonder life was short and brutish. No wonder more babies died than lived. 

Of course I won't put all of this into my book because there is nothing more boring than reading too much detail about a particular activity, so the skill of the writer is to give just enough to inform and not a single word more.However, for realism, I'm going to have to convey the poverty and dirt of those times while somehow making the medieval protagonists attractive enough to intrigue the modern day reader. I've also got to come up with a title. The first two books in the trilogy are Remembering Rose and Loving Ellen, so to go with the flow I need to find something short that goes with Sophie, the heroine. I'm still working on that but when I've found it, I'll let you know.

Happy Birthday, Ursula's Inheritance!

Buy Ursula's Inheritance here 

I'm celebrating the publication of Book 3 in my American Civil War Brides series, Ursula's Inheritance. This one was born of readers' request to know if Ursula's young marriage to soldier and sometimes spy Rowan Buckley will survive the war that brought them together in Mercies of the Fallen (Book 2). At the end of that novel, they had decided to wait until the war was over to decide if they would continue their lives together. 

I thought finding each other after the New York City Draft Riots of 1863 and Rowan assisting at the birth of his (surprise!) son, would be enough of an answer. Reader's disagreed! And they were worried!!

They will get their answer, and their links to both Book 1 (Seven Aprils) and Book 2 (Mercies of the Fallen) in this one! They will learn some little known facts about the Civil War too. Did you know that: New York City was full of spies and "Copperheads" (Southern sympathizers)? That African American troops once trained on the now infamous Rikers Island? That there was a prosperous and accomplished community of African Americans called Weeksville in Brooklyn? That Southern arsonists tried to burn the city down in 1864? 

I had to dig hard in Ursula's past for this one. What did I find? that she is the woman that Hannah Gadsby describes in her wonderful quote from Nanette : "There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself."

I hope, dear readers, you will agree, as you discover who is hiding behind that fan on the cover of Ursula's Inheritance!

Starting a First Draft -- It's Scary!

 

Please click this link to learn more about the author and her books

One thing I discovered when I began writing novels thirty years ago -- I can't write from an outline. After a few failed attempts, I learned my natural process was to start with some basic ideas for people, locations and storylines, add an inciting event, and then develop the characters and plot in the course of writing. This makes starting each novel a leap in the dark. 

Last month I plunged into the fourth book of my Paula Savard mystery series. In addition to not outlining, I have a bad habit of doing something different with each book. The first one was an amateur sleuth mystery; book #2 was a classic whodunnit. Book #3 added multiple narrators and two timelines. All three introduced a dead body in Chapter One. Book # 4 doesn't. 

I didn't realize why this new story had to start this way until I was a couple of chapters along. At the end of book #3, Winter's Rage, Paula is so rattled by the story events that she vows to never get involved with another homicide case. Paula needs to be tricked into it for there to be a book # 4. From the start I could see a problem. How would I sustain reader interest without a corpse?

My initial plan was to repeat the style of Winter's Rage, with a narrator other than Paula relating a past storyline. This backstory would have a murder early on. I circled the idea (procrastinated) by writing this backstory as a short story, but it didn't work as fodder for my novel. I couldn't see its  relevance to the main plot I had in mind or that a past murder would make up for the main plot's meander out of the gate.

Well, I'd stalled long enough. Time for the leap into the novel. I wrote Chapter One, by hand sitting out on my patio enjoying Calgary's warm fall weather, and continued with Chapter Two. Then an idea hit. I'd insert two secondary viewpoint narrators, two detectives, who know something is going on that Paula doesn't. Through them, readers would see murder lurking and get into the suspense of Paula becoming involved despite herself.

I hoped.  

The approach worked for me and held my interest through the subsequent chapters. Now I'm 1/4 way through the manuscript and planning to add a fourth narrator, Isabelle, an erratic character established in previous books. One of my detective narrators is also a regular in the series. It helps that I already know these two characters well, but I feel a pressure about finally giving them voices and worry this will mess with how readers and I had pictured them before. Isabelle and both detectives will work at cross purposes with Paula to complicate the plot.   

The story feels like it's beginning to gel. I've outlined the next four chapters and expect they'll lead to a corpse around the novel's midpoint. I'm almost sure who the victim will be. The killer is probably one of three suspects and there might be a second murder later in the book.

This discovery stage used to be my favourite part of writing novels. With my first books, I let the stories go wherever they wanted and fixed them up later. This required a lot of fixing. But from experience, I've developed a sense of pacing. In this current novel first draft, I've rewritten and cut scenes that didn't work or slowed the story down before moving forward in the plot. This makes writing first drafts harder and they take longer. Now I find the next stage, revision, more enjoyable than the excitement of leaping to an unknown place. Maybe I'm just getting older. 

Over the years I've read writing advice books and heard many writers talk about their writing process. I'd estimate the split is about 50/50 between novelists who outline and us "pantsers," who fly by the seats of our pants. There's a third group, a minority sometimes called "quilters," who write scenes they later assemble in order. I don't understand them, as my process is linear. Although I find myself thinking of part-scenes for the chapters coming up, so perhaps I'm learning to quilt a little. 

I have to take a short break from the manuscript now. Drat! Now that I've got the beginning in place I'm less scared and I'm excited to see where the story and characters are going.                       

Eleventh Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month by Karla Stover

 

Available to purchase from

 https://bookswelove.net/stover-karla/

The war I have always been most interested in is World War I. For better or worse, it was what writer Paul H. Murray called "a watershed moment in American history." Innovations included Kleenex, Day Light Savings (we can thank the Germans for that. It was a way to save coal), blood banks, sanitary napkins, here's a good one: Pilates, thanks to German body builder Joseph Hubertus Pilates, stainless steel (British), zippers (Americans), wristwatches, (Elizabeth I strapped a small clock to her arm) and drones (thank you Orville Wright). Out with trench warfare and in with the modern battlefield, submarines replacing the "High Seas fleet. All of a sudden people had access to sun lamps, tea bags, and plastic surgery. However, one thing often forgotten is camouflage. Here's how Wikipedia describes it: the concept of visual deception developed into an essential part of modern military tactics. In that war, long-range artillery and observation from the air combined to expand the field of fire, and camouflage was widely used to decrease the danger of being targeted or to enable surprise. As such, military camouflage is a form of military deception." For years I've been interested in camouflage because a Tacoma, WA. girl studied the art and headed to the western front to make use of her studies.

Tacoma's Enid Jackson graduated from Tacoma's Annie Wright Academy and Philadelphia's Academy of fine Arts. During her teenage years she learned to drive and took an aviation course to learn from up above" the best use of colors to create deception." or as one local newspaper wrote, "learning to fool the Hun birdmen."

Most people are aware of camouflage clothes but maybe not of trees and horse bodies soldiers could hide in, or of fake heads peering over the trenches to attract gunfire thus revealing where the enemy was hold up.

While Enid was doing her part, people all over western Washington were out in bogs gathering sphagnum (bog) moss. 

As early in the war as 1915, field hospitals were running out of cotton for dressings. Enter Lieutenant Colonel E.P. Sewell who suggested using sphagnum. According to Robin Kimmer professor of ecology at SUNY-Environmental Science and Forestry and the author of Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, “ninety percent of the cells in a sphagnum plant are dead and they’re supposed to be dead. They’re made to be empty so they can be filled with water.” They are also independent of each other which helps keep the water in. And sphagnum also has antiseptic qualities. During the war (and in other places, other times, and among other cultures) medical personal took advantage of that liquid-absorbing capacity to soak up blood, pus and other bodily fluids. "The American Red Cross provided precise instructions for how to layer the moss with nonabsorbent cotton and gauze." The packaged moss, known as Pershing Packs named for General Pershing, was then sterilized in autoclaves and shipped to field hospitals. Puget Sound cities held moss drives, and according to the country's Moss Czar (yes, there was one but I can't remember his name) our moss was the best quality.

In addition to to our camouflage artist and moss drives, and because we were (and are) adjacent to Camp Lewis, now Joint Base Lewis McChord, practically everyone here was knitting socks, including in church and on the school grounds during breaks. We had women who specialized in making the heels which not everyone could do.

What with meatless days and metal drives and horrible mortality rates, those were tough years, but they also drew communities together, something you don't much see anymore.

Skating Champ Scott Hamilton Reveals the Conversation He Had with Producer Busbee Shortly Before His Death

Whose death? 

I guess I'm a reader / writer snob but love these.