The End of the Story...by Sheila Claydon

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Writing a book is a mix of things: a hard slog, moments of elation, moments of recognition even, and of course a lot of staring at a blank screen. A writer's mood can swing from depression to excitement from one sentence to the next. And then, when the last i is dotted and the last t is crossed, there is the editing. The acknowledgement that the section in chapter ten that seemed just right, no longer works. Nor does the timeline in chapter twelve. What has been missed out? What has been forgotten?

Once all that has been rectified to the writer's satisfaction, and all names and dates checked and double checked (yes, I did accidentally change the name of the heroine for a couple of chapters in one book, which would not have been a good look if the mistake had gone to print!) then it is the turn of the publishing editor, who will inevitably find a whole lot of other things that need attention.

While all that is going on there are a couple of other things that is very important indeed. The title. The cover image and the blurb (the short description that will hopefully persuade a browsing reader to buy the book).

This can be both the best and worst of times. The blurb cannot be too long but nor must it leave out the kernel of the story. The cover image must fit with the most up-to-date publishing style while at the same time show what the story is about, and finally the title. This can be the most tricky thing of all. Does the writer use the name of one of the characters, as I did in the first two books of the Mapleby Memories series, or is it better to find another link within the story.

It took me quite a while to find a title for my latest book (due out in April) and in the end it wasn't really me who found it, but my teenage granddaughter! She was staying with me for a few days and we were discussing her English homework and, because she naturally has a very quirky way of looking at things, she was explaining to me how once, when she was given a topic to write about, with a title, she was almost at the end before she realised she hadn't tied it to the title at all. What did she do? She wrote a final paragraph cramming everything in and, believe it or not, got good marks!

I didn't do that of course but it really made me think. Was there something that had featured throughout the book that could be used in the title? I re-read the whole thing and realised that there was. The moon!  Because the story stretches across the centuries the events that took place were observed by many a moon. I had the title. Many a Moon not only trips off the tongue, it is quite a memorable phrase and, when I re-read the story I realised I had indeed used a moonlit image quite frequently. Admittedly I did copy my granddaughter a tiny bit by inserting a couple of extra moons, but only two, and then the book was complete.

In April readers will be able to discover what the moon saw. Until then I have one final edit and then Many a Moon: Mapleby Memories Book 3, the final book of the trilogy will be published, with a cover, a blurb and a title I really like. I hope readers do too. 

The Irish Are Everywhere

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Happy St. Patrick's Day, readers!

My heroine Ursula of Mercies of the Fallen and Ursula's Inheritance found her Irish born champion in Rowan Buckley, an Irish transplant to Canada during An Gorta Mor, (The Great Hunger 1845-1850.)

Rowan was a member of an Irish diaspora (Diaspóra na nGael), which describes people like me, and I suspect many of you-- ethnic Irish descendants who live outside the island of the saints and sinners. There are over 100 million of us...more than fifteen times the population of Ireland itself!

Did you know:

* It has been suggested that St. Brendan visited Bermuda on one of his legendary voyages. The beautiful Bermudiana is a flower that grows only there...and around Lough Erne and Lough Melvin in County Fermanagh, and is known as Feilistrín gorm, or Blue-eyed grass.

*  On the Bridge of Tears (Droichead na nDeor) in West Donegal, Ireland, family and friends of emigrants would accompany them as far as the bridge before saying goodbye, while the emigrants would continue on...

* Many of the Wild Geese (expatriate Irish soldiers of the 16th, 17th and 18th century) who had gone to Spain and their descendants continued on to its colonies in South America. Many rose to positions in the Spanish governments there. In the 1820s, some helped liberate the continent. Bernardo O'Higgins was the first Supreme director of Chile. When Chilean troops occupied Lima during the War of the Pacific in 1881, they put in charge Patricio Lynch, whose grandfather came from Ireland to Argentina and then moved to Chile. Other Latin American countries that have Irish settlement include Puerto Rico and Colombia.

My Short Stab at Historical Fiction by Susan Calder

 

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One thing I like about writing short stories is the chance to explore genres and characters different from those of my novels. Last fall I completed my first work of historical fiction, a 4,500-word story set during the 1918 influenza pandemic. A Deadly Flu is also my first short whodunit and my first police procedural. I've featured detectives in secondary roles before, but not as story protagonists. 

My idea for A Deadly Flu took root almost two years ago, when the COVID-19 pandemic revived my interest in that earlier virus, which was inaccurately called the Spanish flu. I first heard about the 1918 pandemic on an episode of the 1970s television show, Upstairs Downstairs, when the young wife of the wealthy Bellamy family's son developed a fever and died the same day. 

 During the summer of 2020, I read books and articles about the 1918 pandemic and was struck by its relevance a hundred years later. The prime advice in both pandemics was the same: wash your hands, social distance and avoid crowds. The 1918 Pandemic's second and mostly deadly wave struck my home city of Calgary from October to December 1918. Business, churches and bars closed. People wore masks and lived in fear. 

 Around this time, I was mulling ideas for my fourth mystery novel, to be set during our current pandemic, and wondered if the 1918 flu might provide a parallel backstory. I got the idea of a pharmacist who murders her lover by pouring a medicine that mimicked the 1918 flu's symptoms into his whisky. When he died, the medical profession’s tunnel vision assumed this was another influenza death.

I began writing the backstory as a suspense from the killer’s viewpoint and enjoyed researching Calgary neighbourhoods of the time, along with its streetcar system, fashion, and particulars of the city-wide lockdown. But by the end of the draft, I realized my long ago story wouldn't add enough interest to the contemporary mystery I had in mind. I set the backstory aside and plunged into the current novel. 

                                               Nov 11, 1918 - Calgary WWI Victory parade 

Then the Crime Writers of Canada put out a call for submissions for its 40^th anniversary anthology. Stories had to be set in Canada, feature 'cold' in some way, and be under 5,000 words. I hauled out the backstory and set it during a Calgary cold wave in December 1918, with a detective, rather than a villain, protagonist. A benefit of writing a detective from the early twentieth century is that I didn't have to know about DNA, data bases, and other modern police gadgetry. Since I only had a short space to establish reader connection with my protagonist, I gave him a wound--his wife had died a year earlier in childbirth--and developed a romantic subplot.   

I wrote the story, sent it off, and was thrilled last month to learn A Deadly Flu will be included in the Cold Canadian Crime Anthology, to be released this May. Meanwhile I've been working on my novel-in-progress. Inspired by my historical detective, for the first time in a novel I’m including the viewpoints of two detectives in addition to my insurance adjuster sleuth. I foresee much research into modern police work. One day soon, I’d like to write a historical novel and, perhaps, develop A Deadly Flu into a novella, a genre I haven't tried. That’s another thing I like about writing short stories—they can be stepping stones to future books.   

         

Thinking About White Space, by Karla Stover

 

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As if writers didn't have enough to worry about, what with plots, settings, likeable / believable characters and other stuff, along comes WHITE SPACE. 

There are a number of definitions for whitespace, but for fiction writers, it's "the emptiness between paragraphs."

An explanation from author Cheryl Kaye Tardiff  posits that the "space helps the reader process the information in the story / work, gives the reader's eyes a break, and keeps them interested. Look at each page as if it were a work of art," she says, adding that "some sentences will have more impact on their own" She also says, "the sentences closest to the white space are the ones most remembered." Her article on https://writeitsideways.com/ consists of two short paragraphs and two one line paragraphs. They alternate.

The article also has two examples: one from Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge  (no white space) and one from Melissa Bank's The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing, so much white space it felt like a Dick-and-Jane book though the article refers to it as a "relaxed narrative."

When used, white space is supposed to "draw the reader’s attention to the words on the page, make the print easier to read, and improve comprehension." It's also supposed to make it easier for a reader to remember where he / she left off.

According to writerswrite.co, when properly used, it also makes the page appear "uncluttered and calming."

However, novelmatters.com has another opinion. "White space," is says "can be used to build suspense and tension in a story. It's use is tantamount to squeezing the hand of the person next to you in the movie theatre. A wordless summary that, yes, things are about to get worse, and [ provides ] a space for the reader to anticipate just how conditions will worsen."

 Author Deborah Swift says, the use of white space is particularly helpful "in historical fiction when you don’t want to describe decades in which nothing new actually happens, but it's necessary to show the passing of time. Transitions are often hard to achieve," she says, "but the white space does it effortlessly. It signals that we have switched to another time, location or point of view."

In researching this topic I used four different search engines and looked at dozens of articles, and other than the two above and no matter what criteria I used, I couldn't find any examples. People were apparently just too busy offering up opinions to do any actual research. I'm guessing that Dickens probably never thought about making the pages of his novels easier on the eyes. And I don't think it's much of a consideration in non-fiction, at least, not in the books I read.

"inmotionhosting.com" asks the question: "without whitespace, how easy is it to glance at a page and in 5 - 10 seconds, get a general idea of what it is about? ( The article doesn't clarify what "it" is, either the page or the book ).

"kontra.agency/white"  however, feels the need to remind writers that "excessive white space can create a low information density on the page."
 

The other day I went through my massive collection of books looking for some to donate to a fund raiser ( I whittled out 10 ). I don't know how I ended up with a Zane Gray book but it was surprisingly well-spaced. Not true of Annie Dillard's The Writing Life.

I guess the bottom line is to ignore all the advice and write the kind of pages you would want to read. After all, Solar Bones, which won the 2026 Goldsmith Prize was only one sentence.

On Parade

 

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Last month I talked about the love lock bridges found around the world. The idea of a specific bridge or sculpture designated or created in a town reminded me of other creations I have seen throughout the years that make you immediately know your location. Now I could be talking about things such as the gigantic “bean” in downtown Chicago, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Statue of Liberty or worldly famous Ethel Tower or Pyramids. But let’s think a little more obscure.

What about super large cowboy boots, cows, pigs, rearing horses, and even Jayhawks? Instead of a single artistic wonder, let’s think in multiples, scattered throughout the town so visitors are taken on a sort of scavenger or treasure hunt. Once I started researching the ones I actually knew about, I found there are similar “art parade projects” everywhere from Anchorage, Alaska to Washington DC; even in Europe. While many were started as fundraisers for various city projects, some were created for the love of art or as a way to showcase a particular aspect of their city. There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason behind why a city started their art project. 

My grandson in Cheyenne  

And so our tour begins in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Scattered throughout the town are twenty-five 8-foot tall, hand painted boots depicting aspects of the state’s history-- everything from gambling and outlaws to governors. The project began as a fund raiser for the Cheyenne Depot museum with businesses sponsoring a boot and local artists doing the decorating. “These Boots Are Made for Walking” display even has a downloadable brochure with a location map and information about how to call up an audio program telling about the boots.

Now if you’re going to wear cowboy boots, you might as well have a horse, right? Travel to Rochester, NY, where in 2001, collaboration between local public relations & advertising firm Dixon Schwabl and Genessee Brewery used the horse theme to engage the community and showcase the talents of local artists by organizing sponsorships of 150+ life-sized, fiberglass horse statues. Once the project was done, the horses were auctioned off and the money raised went to various local charities. But twenty-one years later, some of the horses are still seen around the area. Horses on Parade: Where are They Now? — emily malkowski is one website with more information about the remaining horses and their background stories.

According to some, the idea that started an apparent copycat frenzy in the US was COWS ON PARADE in downtown Chicago, begun in 1999 with over three hundred fiberglass bovines let loose across the city with every imaginable theme painted on their backsides. And that, according to business owner Peter Hanig, was because of a “cow parade” he had seen in Zurich, Switzerland while on family vacation. Though not on permanent display, the cows are rounded up every ten years or so and corralled again for tourists’ pleasure. https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/museums/ct-ent-cows-on-parade-20-year-anniversary-ttd-0701-20190628-zjz2qwbfrncgnlvaioqdyqtkae-story.html. New York also does a Cows on Parade, the last one being in 2021, again the proceeds going to charities in the five boroughs, but the cows aren’t on permanent display.

Probably the most weird “on parade” I came across was the “superlambanana” creatures in Liverpool, England. The original Superlambanana is a large yellow statue in Liverpool created in 1998 which has become somewhat the icon of Liverpool. The mini Superlambananas were sponsored by local businesses and painted by area artists and displayed in 2008 before being auctioned off to raise money for various charities.

There appears to be three different viewpoints with regard to “Art on Parade” projects. Some, like the Cheyenne boots, are a permanent part of the city, promoting tourism. Others began as city promotions, like Rochester’s horses, but after being auctioned off are still part of the city landscape, though scattered and not always catalogued. And third, we have those like the cows and superlambanana that were created, displayed and enjoyed, then auctioned off and either never heard from again or only brought out every ten or more years.

Personally I like the permanent displays the best. After all, if you want people to visit because you have a unique attraction, that attraction needs to always be available. Such is the display of hot air balloons in Indianola, Iowa. Though not as many or as large as some, these art sculptures tell a story. Originally begun as a money raising project for the annual National Balloon Classic, the majority of them can be found in front of the National Balloon Museum, National Balloon Museum | Indianola, Iowa, a fun and interesting place to visit. Others, such as the Crouse Café balloon, can be found in front of the business.

Yet another “on parade” are the Jayhawks in Lawrence, KS, home of the University of Kansas Jayhawks. Jayhawks on Parade offers a fun scavenger hunt around Lawrence | Arts & Culture | kansan.com These sculptures began as an event a decade ago that was to last five months, but many of the original thirty Jayhawks can still be seen around Lawrence and the KU campus.  Some have flown away with KU supporters as far away as California.

Does your town have an “on parade” art exhibit that highlights something unique about its history or people? If it doesn’t but you think it should, what would you use as the base for the art – lighthouses, salmon, pigs? The possibilities are endless. I think I would choose books; perhaps ten foot tall books decorated to portray local authors or history. Maybe an open book designed like a park bench but with a cover displaying local items of interest. Whoops, that’s been done. With Bright Benches, London Shows Off Its Love Of Books : The Two-Way : NPR.

Still, wouldn’t it be fun to have benches scattered around town for people to sit on and reflect about what makes your town so special and how happy they are to be there?

All Best Wishes,

Barb

http://www.authorsden.com/barbarajbaldwin

https://bookswelove.net/baldwin-barbara/