And.... ACTION! Generating word movies, by J.C. Kavanagh

VOTED Best Young Adult Book 2018, 

Critters Readers Award

Reading fiction out loud is an art form - but only if you want it to be. You could read the printed word without nuance and without intonation. Yawn. Or you could bring your story to life by embracing the 'actor' within, by proactively taking centre stage. Because reading your book out loud is actually an audition of sorts - an audition to generate credulity and confidence in your story, in the characters and in the details and descriptions of the various settings. Reading out loud triggers the auditory senses, which triggers brain function and hopefully, triggers a sequence of images in the internal playground that is within your mind - images that I call 'word movies.' The writer/speaker is in charge of setting the mood and instilling uniqueness to each character, all by using tone of voice, hand gestures, facial expressions. It's acting out your own novel and generating a word movie.

How exciting is that?

Yeah, it seems that way until you're challenged to read your novel to a group of teenagers. In a classroom.

That's where I'm headed in the next couple of weeks - to 'read' my second novel, The Twisted Climb - Darkness Descends, to a group of Grade 8 students. My throat gets dry, my knees knock and I tremble at the thought of 'acting' out my book. Basically, I'm performing my audition of every character and every scene in Darkness Descends. But... I believe in my book. I believe the story. I believe and love/hate the characters. And I believe that a truly good book will draw the reader into the playground-mind of the writer so that they both 'see' the same word movie. If I can keep a group of teenagers engaged, then I'll know my audition was successful.

I hope everyone who's read The Twisted Climb series enjoyed the word movies. I did. I'm proud of the fact they both were voted Best Young Adult Book (The Twisted Climb in 2016 and Darkness Descends in 2018).

Speaking of auditory senses, kudos to authors Jude Pittman and John Widsomkeeper for delivering the first audio-book for BWL Publishing, entitled "Street Justice." You can find the audio book via this link:  http://www.bookswelove.net/authors/pittman-jude-mystery-romance/

TWO Book Signing Events

Come see me on Saturday, March 30 at the Chapters store in Newmarket, Ontario from 1 till 5.
Two weeks later, I'm heading to the Chapters store in Barrie, Ontario (Saturday, April 13). Drop by!

J.C. Kavanagh

The Twisted Climb - Darkness Descends (Book 2)

voted BEST Young Adult Book 2018, Critters Readers Poll

AND

The Twisted Climb,

voted BEST Young Adult Book 2016, P&E Readers Poll

Novels for teens, young adults and adults young at heart

Email: author.j.c.kavanagh@gmail.com

www.facebook.com/J.C.Kavanagh

www.amazon.com/author/jckavanagh

Twitter @JCKavanagh1 (Author J.C. Kavanagh)

Plantation Life in South Carolina

Boone Hall - Live Oaks

As part of the research for my latest novel, "Karma Nation," my son Rishi and I traveled across the American South. My previous blogs recorded our explorations of Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta and Charleston. In this blog, I share my impressions of some of the plantations I visited in South Carolina.

We were actually quite surprised at the number of plantations that dotted South Carolina, especially around Charleston. What could be their economic base?

Our visit to a few of them answered our questions. Several plantations have become quite well-known tourist attractions, some remain working plantations, while a few are preserved by non-profit societies, wealthy individuals or as state parks.

Boone Hall was on our list as a must-visit site. USA Today’s #1 plantation, it is dominated by a magnificent colonnaded home form the Antebellum period, situated at the end of a stunning allee of two-hundred-year-old live oaks. The interiors reveal the luxury that country gentlemen of the era lived in. Portraits of the erstwhile inhabitants hung on the walls, expensive furniture filled the rooms and curtains imported from Europe lined the windows. Nine original slave cabins, replete with mementos and displays of the lives of its tenants sit on one side of the mansion. A live theatre show of Gullah culture, a mixture of Creole English and Geechee, practiced by the slaves, is presented during the busy season. It is also a working plantation, well-known for its strawberries and vegetables.

Slave Cabins, Boone Hall

Next, we visited McLeod plantation. The main home, designed in the English Georgian style, it too paid attention to the Lowland slave culture that became prominent in South Carolina. A part of the Charleston County Parks system, it was crowded with school children when we were there. Full of detailed historical notes, along with interpretive tours, it satisfied our curiosity.

Plantations were large communities, villages really, with populations that sometimes reached thousands. Many functions were centralized, such as cooking and clothes-cleaning. The cook-house, attended to by slaves, usually sat behind the main house. So did the wash-house.

Inside the master’s house, a series of rules—a system of apartheid really—allowed white slave-owners and their families to live deeply separated lives, despite being surrounded by a very large number of black slaves. Certain areas of the house, such as the sleeping quarters of the white women, were off-limits to male slaves. Only a select number of slaves were allowed into the main house on a regular basis; most of the field slaves didn’t enter. Slaves had their speech and actions constantly surveilled; only at Church on Sundays were music and speech by slaves allowed. This practice had the effect of eventually pushing Black Churches to the forefront of civil rights movements.

While the plantations today seem idyllic with their flower gardens and sunny weather, it was obviously not pleasant for its inhabitants. While the slaves lived a life of hard work and deprivation, the plantation owners had their issues as well. With constant rumors of slave rebellions and attacks against them, they lived in anxiety. When Spain controlled Florida, escaping American slaves were offered freedom and some joined the Spanish Army to fight against them. In America, the Abolitionist movement became active almost since the birth of the country. Following the Revolutionary War, Northern states abolished slavery, beginning with the 1777 constitution of Vermont, followed by Pennsylvania's gradual emancipation act in 1780. In many ways, it had to be clear to plantation owners that their way of life was not long to last.

Behind the manicured lawns, extensive gardens and brightly painted houses, lay the narratives of a difficult and divisive period in American history. That to me, was the story of our visit to the plantations.

Mohan Ashtakala is the author of "Karma Nation"

Published by Books We Love

The Past was a different place...by Sheila Claydon

Hello from Tenerife.
While the UK suffers from low temperatures and biting winds I’m spending time in the sunny Canary Islands where a cloudy day is an event to be commented upon.  In the past I’ve always thought of the islands as a place to truly relax and recharge one’s batteries but my goodness how things have changed. When I first visited this part of the Tenerife coast, more than 25 years ago, it was a tiny fishing village with a couple of weathered shacks on the dusty road opposite the shingle beach. Sitting on rickety chairs we enjoyed meals of grilled squid and salty Canarian potatoes or a paella full of mussels and prawns, all washed down with a light wine or, more often, with Sangria, the true flavour of  these islands. In front of us would be upturned boats spread with drying fishing nets, while across from us sunburned fishermen would smoke and drink before taking to the seas again.

We reached the village by climbing up and over a long hill of scrub interspersed with spiny cacti and tiny pink flowers whose name I never learned, and by the time we sank gratefully into those rickety chairs our sandals would be thick with the yellow dust of the roadside. Now, to get there, we have to drive on smooth black roads through a convoluted mass of one way systems, roundabouts and traffic signals and then circle endlessly looking for somewhere to park our car. There isn’t a single space in the row upon row of parked cars at every kerbside but we eventually find an underground carpark. It leads up into a mall full of shops with the designer names that can be seen in every town, city and airport in most parts of the world.

Eventually we find the sea and the imported yellow sands that now cover the small expanse of shingle from yesteryear and spread out far beyond it. The weathered shacks have long gone of course, and in their place is a long promenade lined with every sort of eaterie, each offering a plethora of choices. Tapas, steak and fries, pizza, full English breakfast, pasta, hot dogs, beef burgers, ice cream, pastries, beer , wine.....food and drink from many cultures and to suit many tastes. Only the sangria remains a constant. And the sunhats we buy from a stall run by a smiling islander have the inevitable ‘made in China’ label.

When we finally choose a place to eat it isn’t so bad. Our table is on a sheltered terrace with a view of the sea and here they still serve grilled squid although not as we remember it. Less succulent with few vegetables it is nevertheless a taste from the past as are the tiny wrinkled potatoes. There is nothing else left of the past though, and as we look up at the hotels and holiday apartments rising in tier upon tier above us up the steep cliffs of the island, we wonder. Is this the price of success...people crowded out of their own villages as more and more tourists fly to the sunshine. We have met people from Germany, France, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Holland,  Belgium, Ireland,Wales, Scotland, every part of England, Australia, Vietnam and America, all in the space of a few days, on a tiny rock of an islaand 600 miles off the coast of Morocco.  It’s enough to make the head whirl!

Is it a good thing, this development of sun soaked islands for the mass of tourists who want the sun?Is it right that a tiny, barely inhabited village has been turned into a centre of holiday hedonism?Who am I to say because, while I far prefer the tiny village and the roadside shack, maybe the residents don’t. They may well feel that with tourism making more than a 60% contribution to the island’s economy it’s a change worth making. I certainly hope so.

Before Books We Love began to publish my books I wrote another one that was based in Tenerife...a Tenerife halfway between what it once was and what it is now. It was my first attempt at writing about places I’d visited and it’s success led me to do it again, and again. Reluctant Date is one of those books, set in a tiny Key in the Gulf of Mexico, one of my favourite places in all the world, and one I’m afraid to visit again in case it too has changed.