I am SO over this summer...by Jamie Hill

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 Where I live, the heartland of the USA, we see all four seasons. Autumn, or as we generally call it, Fall, is my favorite. One hundred-degree Fahrenheit temps of the summer begin to cool off and welcome fifty-degree evenings bring sweaters and football season. The flowers that I watered all summer, trying to keep them alive, finally flourish with cooler air until they eventually freeze and die off. Pastels and 'welcome' gnomes are replaced by pumpkins that will see us through to December.

Winter is a wonderful time of year with the holidays and crisp, cold air. Snow is beautiful as long as I don't have to drive in it, and even better now that we've hired some nice young men to come and clear it away for us. We also get our share of ice, and a few years ago purchased a whole house generator so we won't be left without power. The kicker--a generator will run everything except computers, which don't like 'dirty power'. Oh, the horror. Hope I never have to put that trial to the test.

Just when I think I can't stand one more day of freezing cold temps, spring arrives. The thermometer soars to the mid-fifties and people everywhere change into shorts and tank tops. (The same weather that brought out the sweatshirts in the fall.) But spring is welcome and winter coats stored away for another season.

Before the calendar even sees June, the heat begins. There's usually a solid week between turning off the furnace and turning on the air conditioner. Especially this year, when I turned on my attic fan for the first (and only) time and a bat flew into my bedroom. I was shocked and he was even more so. Fortunately, he was either stunned or just slow, because I was able to catch him in a big butter tub and release him outside, probably just to return to my attic that night. By the way, we're still looking for a handyman to fix the mesh in our attic which apparently let the bat get in. (I'm sure there was just the one.)

That was the beginning of my summer fun. Then there was the fall my husband took outside, resulting in a torn rotator cuff and an arm he hasn't been able to use all summer. (Surgery forthcoming, when he is cleared for it.)

So we're battening down the hatches, closing down the deck and other summer details in anticipation of his being in a sling for twelve weeks. I'm actually cool with it, It's easier to hunker down in front of my computer when I'm not feeling guilty that there are things I should be doing outside. 

I am SO over this summer, ready for cooler weather and football season. And Netflix with the window open.

Find all my titles at Books We Love: http://bookswelove.net/authors/hill-jamie/

and find the links and blurbs and other good stuff here: http://authorjamiehill.blogspot.com/  

Stuff Like Toilet Tissue by Katherine Pym

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As a writer of historical fiction, I come across moments of, ‘When was this invented?’ And ‘Can I use this?’ There are certain things we take for granted, and while writing, it’s hard not to incorporate a few things we use every day.

Like...

Safety Pin

How hard would it be for an enterprising individual to come up with a safety pin? After all, since the days of early mankind, people secured their fabric or skin clothing with a tool of some sort.  In Egypt, pins were made of bronze with decorative heads, but they could still prick you. Fibulas and brooches date back to the Mycenaean era, which were closer to the safety pin, but close doesn’t mean you win the Kewpie Doll. Needles were also used from the dawn of time, and in London the Worshipful Company of Needlemakers had the power to seize your needles if they did not have their stamp of approval.

Apparently, the safety pin was a brain twister, for the first one came late in man’s existence, in the year 1825. The inventor was Walter Hunt (USA).

Toilet Tissue

The 19^th century seemed to have been an awakening of sorts, for along with the safety pin, several items were invented during that time frame we take for granted. In 1857 toilet tissue was invented by Joseph Gayetty. He used hemp paper as a prevention of the ‘piles’, and charged 50¢ for a packet of 500 sheets.

But when reading a novel, one doesn’t often come across the hero or heroine going to the bathroom and using, what? on the backside. I have read of a protagonist in a time slip novel, though, going into the past where there isn’t much to keep the teeth clean. Authors of these tomes don’t often mention a gentleman and his lady kissing / clanking their fuzzy teeth. 

Toothbrush

The toothbrush was invented a bit earlier than the 19^th century by a fellow in Newgate prison with not much to do during the day. He must have been fairly cash fluid though when he asked a prison guard to procure some items for him. This was in 1770. William Addis (UK) found cleaning his teeth with an old rag unpleasant and not very thorough. He bored little holes in a discarded meat bone, “tied them [hard bristles] into tufts, put glue on the ends, and wedged them into the holes...” Upon his release from prison, Mr Addis manufactured his invention and became an overnight success.

If I wrote in this era, I’d have to find out when Mr Addis started his venture, and when did the toothbrushes go on sale. One simply mustn’t write of something like this prior to the time it actually happened. Tsk tsk.

Back to the 19^th century of ingenious people.

On the near subject of toothbrushes, in 1892 another person from the USA invented the toothpaste tube, thinking to stick your toothbrush into a jar of tooth cream that everyone under your roof used was unhygienic. Dr Sheffield was a dentist. My source does not say if the collapsible tube was made of lead or not.

Whitcomb Judson

One item I’ve always wanted to know about was the zipper. Now, the trouser fly (buttons) was incorporated quite a bit earlier by someone in Asia Minor so that he could gain entry quicker. To replace buttons with the zipper would make the entry gain quite speedy. Another intrepid American, Mr Whitcomb Judson, invented this in 1893 when shoes and boots were fastened with buttons.

Here you are in a hurry and you can’t find the button hooker-fastener thing. Then, when you do find it, minutes tick by as you fasten one tiny button after the other all the way up to the top of your shoe or boot.

Mr Judson invented “2 thin metal chains that could be fastened together by pulling a slider up between them. He patented this clasp locker or unlocker for shoes”. Judson was also the founder of the “Automatic Hook and Eye Company”. Along with his partner, they wanted to do away with all things fastened by buttons. Of course, these new zippers were primitive. It took a few more years to make them what we see today in men’s trousers and women’s skirts, along with shoes and purses, you name it, if it can be fastened by a zipper it is.

Quill & Inkpot

Other items an author of historical novels must be careful about are the writing implements your hero or heroine use. Prior to 1662 Pencils comprised of a graphite stick, wrapped with string to keep your fingers clean. After this date, pencils were mass produced in Nuremberg Germany. Quills were used almost exclusively for quite literally years and years.

The 19^th century had a lot of ups and downs with writing utensils. After several failed attempts by other gentlemen, the metal nib did not grasp the populace until somewhere in the first half of the 19^th century (John Mitchell in the UK). The fountain pen was invented about the same time as the metal nib, but this didn’t take hold until 1884 by an American named Lewis Waterman.  By 1885, Waterman had produced 200 man-made pens. 

Fountain Pen

Then, and finally, the pencil with an eraser. In 1858 this was invented by Hyman Lipman (USA). Until Mr Lipman’s invention, you had to carry an eraser along with your pencil (cumbersome!). He merely glued a bit of eraser to the top of the pencil, and voila, a new invention was born.

Many thanks to:

http://pencils.com/

The People’s Almanac by David Wallechinsky & Irving Wallace, Doubleday & Co., Inc., New York 1975

All pictures come from Wikicommons, Public Domain

         Jasper's Lament

KANGAROOS HOPPING BY - MARGARET TANNER

I WAS A PIONEER FOR A SHORT TIME – MARGARET TANNER

I write historical romance, so this experience was very relevant for me.

My husband and I have just returned from a short stay at a place called Halls Gap in the Grampians, which is a climber’s paradise. Steep rocky cliffs overhanging thickly treed valleys. Mile upon mile of brooding bushland, silent except for the occasional bird call. One could easily get lost here, and perhaps, as happened in the pioneering days, you would never be seen again. It still looks like an untamed wilderness even now, except for a couple of small hamlets. I could almost visualise the pioneers hacking their way through the heavily treed countryside. The terrain was steep and unforgiving. In some places a fall meant death.

I have to confess, we stayed in a cabin, which you could barely discern from the road, it blended into the background so well. It had all the modern conveniences EXCEPT the heating was an enormous open fire. Hubby and I looked at each other, who was going to light the fire? Thank goodness there was a basket of kindling and a pile of neatly stacked logs. Wielding an axe was beyond us, our pioneering blood was just too diluted.

I am very proud of the fact that I lit the fire at my first attempt. I wondered if I might not have been a boy scout in a previous life, or perhaps my pioneering blood wasn’t quite as diluted as I had thought.

It was truly an amazing feeling toasting our toes in front of this roaring fire, watching the logs burn, and smelling the wood smoke. It brought back a lot of childhood memories of staying with my grandmother and various aunts in the country. They not only had open fires for warmth but they also had wood stoves for cooking. And boy, could these women ever cook.

I actually felt quite close to my heroines while I stared into the orange flames, most of them had to conquer the wilderness with the hero.

In my novel, Fiery Possession, published by Books We Love, my heroine, Josephine (Jo) Saunders was an American who braved the wilderness to help her brother, and immediately clashes with the hero. It is selling for 99 cents at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and in most places that sell e-books.

FIERY POSSESSION

American Wild West versus Australian Frontier.
Hate, lust and murder. How can Jo and Luke overcome these obstacles and allow love to flourish?

http://amzn.com/B00C2JOK6M

Margaret Tanner writes action packed romances set in frontier Australia.

http://bookswelove.net/authors/tanner-margaret/

 

http://www.margarettanner.com/

 

 

 

Writing Fantasy, We Could Make Believe by Shirley Martin

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     The game of just supposing is the sweetest game I know-o
     Our dreams are more romantic than the world we see

     And if the things we dream about don't happen to be so-o
     That's just an unimportant technicality

Or so wrote Oscar Hammerstein for the musical "Showboat" in 1927.  (Jerome Kern wrote the music.)

All fiction writing is make believe, but perhaps writing fantasy is even more so. Some years ago, a fantasy critic remarked that writing in that genre was more difficult than writing in any other. This may be a matter of opinion, yet writing in the fantasy genre has its own challenges.  The reason? A wrtier of fantasy is free to create worlds and any type of characters he/she desires. A fantasy writer could create characters with purple skin who walk on their heads, but even fantasy novels must have a certain degree of realism.

When someone creates fantasy, she must consider what races she wants to inhabit her make believe world.  There are so many fantasy races one can create.  Think of Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" series, with Gimli the  dwarf, a multitude of elves, those nasty, ugly orcs, and even walking, talking trees.

A fantasy writer must create an imaginary world with its own culture, mores, religion, etc.  Many fantasy novels use the Middle Ages as their world, with castles and knights. I've read several novels based on the Roman Empire and one centered around an Aztec-like culture.  Since I've found the ancient Celts to be a fawscinating people, I've based my Avador series on their culture, with my own variations.  Unlike the Celts who for the most part lived a primitive life, my Avadorans inhabit cities with palaces and temples of religion.

One necessary ingredient of a fantasy novel is magic. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, magic is a power that allows people to do impossible things by saying special words or performing special actions.  It is a use of means (chams or spells) believed to have supernatural power over natural forces.

So a fantasy writer creates her own world with its own characters, culture, and religion. But she must still tell a story.

In my fantasy novella, "Allegra's Dream" the hero, Rowan, fears that Allegra is in danger. For her safety, he takes her to another world, a place outside normal space and time.  As I wrote one chapter, I intended to have a dragon play a part in this world.  At first, I considered having the dragon capture Allegra, after which Rowan would kill the dragon and rescue Allegra.  But then I considered that scenario too mundane.  Gee whiz, heroes slay dragons every day. So I gave the story a different spin.

Grenalda, the green dragon, does indeed capture Allegra and carries her off to a cave.  Alerted by Allegra's screams, Rowan rushes to rescue her. Then unexpected things happen.

"You can't have her," said Grenalda, "she's mine."

"What?"  A dragon that talks?  Now he'd seen and heard everything. . .

As it turns out, Grenalda just wants company.  "I want her."  The beast hung its head.  "I get so lonely here. I don't even see other dragons. I just wanted to make friends."

"Well, you've picked a mighty peculiar way of making friends. . ."

After Grenalda releases Allegra, Rowan prepares to leave.

A look of sadness came over the dragon's face.  "Can't you stay awhile?  Talk to me?"  Tears ran down her face, dripping on the limestone, where they hissed like acid.

Eventually Rowan and Allegra develop a plan with Grenalda and show her how she can make friends and help others.



For me, fantasy novels are fun to write and fun to read. If you go to Amazon and click on Books, then type in 'fantasy novels' you'll find an almost infinite list of books for your reading pleasure.  And I'm hoping you'll choose some of mine.

Besides fantasy, I've written historical and paranormal novels and novellas. Please check out my website here. www.shirleymartinauthor.com
You can also find me at my publisher's website, http://bookswelove.net/authors/martin-shirley
My Twitter handle is https://twitter.com/mshirley1496
And Facebook is https://www.facebook.com/shirley.martin716970

Mankind on Earth by Eleanor Stem

Stonehenge

How often have you watched television where a man stands in front of the camera, and motions to a big clock? 12AM is the creation of earth. Going around the clock, you are shown various ‘beginnings’, and around 11:56PM, man is born. 

Giza Pyramids

 Apparently, new evidence indicates man has been around for a little longer than we thought. According to the January 2015 issue of National Geographic, we’ve been producing complex cave art for more than 100,000 years, short by way of the existence of our planet, but longer than scientists had earlier stated. And you never know if those men saw evidence of sentient life before them.

In recent years, ruins have uncovered man’s ingenuity long before we ever expected. They say Turkey’s Gobekli Tepe predates Stonehenge 6,000 years, which is believed to have been constructed around 3,000 BCE. That makes Gobekli Tepe alive and bustling at least 10,000 BCE with peoples who were not loping around like beasts. In order to build, live in, then purposefully bury a city means even more years, possibly 12-14,000 years ago. Who could have done this, when many believe the pyramids around the world are the earliest constructions known to man?

Gobekli Tepe

I have a theory: Homo sapiens of one sort or another have existed on this earth for a very long time. They may not have been our species of man, but different bipedal forms have come and gone over the eons. Some of them may have bred with other forms of our species, stayed around for a time, left their mark, while others may have come and gone with only a small blip on the radar.

Then, there are so many legends that mark our folklore/mythologies that must have come from some sort of reality. These origins have either been lost in time or added to fairytales.

Megaliths in Brittany

What about the dolmens in Brittany that march toward the sea? Stories say the stones come alive every once and awhile and romp with we earthlings. Then, when it’s time for them to return to stone, any humans still dancing in their midst will also get caught and turned to stone. There are quite a few out of alignment which can only mean men and/or women have been caught at the wrong time. My grandmother told me this, brought down from her grandmother so it must be true.

There’s an obscure, ancient lore of a door that stands on a hillside where gods enter our world from their heavenly domain. Where did this come from? Where were they before they entered our world? Did they walk out of the mists onto our earthly soil from another dimension? Did they come to our turf and seed their humanity with ours, then leave and seed other planetary peoples?

Look at those pictures etched into the dirt of the Andes that have marked the earth for eons. Who did those? (Since this is more than like copyrighted, click Here)

As small as I am, I could not draw a picture of such magnitude that would have any decent straight lines, curves, and circles that, to this day, can be seen from 10,000 feet. Could you? Oh, I know what you’re thinking. This is an idea promoted by the Ancient Alien theorists, but maybe they aren’t completely off base. After all, even Carl Sagan said there were ‘billions and billions of planets’ out there. Could they all be empty of sentient life-forms? Even if someone with technology did not draw those pictures, then the people of the time were really very tall.

What will be revealed once the ice sheets melt? They are, you know. Melting. Not sure why. What if the ice thaws to reveal ancients life-forms? We don’t really know what happened before man came to this planet, how we came to be. We only know we are not alone. Our movies and television stories are filled with possible answers to all these questions.

We are curious. If we thought we were truly alone, we would not be looking at the stars, wondering of our origins.

Would we?

~~~~~~~~~~

Many thanks to:  

Gobekli Tepe: Wikicommons Public Domain

Stonehenge: "Typ 805 38.8530, Houghton Library, Harvard University" as its source

Pyramid: All of TIMEA's content is licensed under a CC-BY-2.5 license

Standing Stones: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

 

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WHAT ARE HEROES MADE OF? ~ by Juliet Waldron

COMING SOON

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Peter Sagan

Every romance needs a hero, but how do you define him? Is it just passion, looks and money, or is there more? Given that romances are classically defined by a Happily Ever After, why couldn't a fun and sexy fantasy be enough? Lots of hot romps are available in the book universe and there's nothing wrong with it either.

I'm sort of a nerd, though and I've always wanted complication,  even from imaginary flames. Long ago I read, "While you're wishing for water, you might as well wish for champagne." So why not imagine King Arthur or Sir Lancelot or whoever? He can still be cut from the traditional pattern for the Alpha Male, but my (sigh) hero has got to have something between his ears--and a heart, too.

Now to go off-course in search of an illustration. There is a point (I hope) so try to hang in.

I just spent 3 weeks watching the EPIC bicycle race, The Tour de France. I've been a fan years. Sports heroes are sometimes seen as romantic models. Ideally, they should be not only strong and brave, but honest and honorable, too.  Fans expect it.

Cycling is sometimes called “The Beautiful Sport.” To see a rider descend a narrow, twisting road at 55+ mph, with an astonishing backdrop of a mountain, a fabled river or crumbling 1000 year old castle makes the attribution real. 

Lacets de Montvernier, 17 hairpin turns

In the Tour de France this year, there were champions aplenty, powerful riders and daily feats of endurance, as well as

Alejandro Valverde 

cute, totally fit guys with charisma by the bale.

Alex Dowsett

 but my special hero this year was the race winner, a quiet guy who looks rather like a mantis on a bike. (Wonder what Pixar would make of him?) 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/this-praying-mantis-is-riding-a-bicycle#.tsk2JVv7M

Chris Froome, who won the overall, displayed leadership, fair play, humanity, and poise. After three weeks, although he and his team were subjected to the ugliest behavior I've ever seen from spectators--these riders had morphed in my overheated imagination from your garden variety (supreme!) endurance athletes into King Arthur and The Knights of the Round Table, shining with purpose. Team Sky was calm, professional and utterly dedicated to their crazy 2,200 mile mission. 

I'd like my fictional hero to possess those fine qualities too, so I hope to design a complicated guy with more than a touch of Beta.  

Chris Froome and his cat

He can be as beautiful as he likes, but handsome is as handsome does, or so granny taught me; so he should be in a relationship for the long haul. He's madly in love but smart and thoughtful about it. He may have doubts and he sometimes takes a wrong turn, but he never stops thinking and he never stops trying. Like a test pilot, he goes at it until he either flies or augurs in. 

 

So much man in one glorious package is a big ask. Fortunate that a story requires plotting for growth and change, particularly so because these actors are playing in the upbeat genre called 'romance."  Mr. Right triumphs and Mr. Wrong is overcome—or at least left behind to fester in some fictional Lodi. The heroine, after all, deserves this sexy, brainy paragon and that terrific Happily Ever After.

~~ Juliet Waldron

See all my historical novels:

http://www.julietwaldron.com

http://www.amazon.com/Juliet-Waldron/e/B004HIX4GS

https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Juliet+Waldron

 

Romancing the Landscape: Setting as a Character in your Novel ~ By Connie Vines

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I have titled my topic “Romancing the Landscape”.  However, the landscape can also be a menacing character in a horror novel; comic relief, or as in the movie, The Never Ending Story, be the embodiment of living creatures.

So, how do I approach this project?  Why would this be of interest to me?

While every writer knows, it is useful to infuse landscape/setting as a tool to set the mood/foreshadow, and do so as a matter of course.

• The beach at sunset, a tranquil waterfall.  If you hero has fought a major battle, don’t send him to a night club.  Turn his setting into a place to recuperate.
• A setting can introduce conflict, or cause trouble.  A violent storm, gridlock, a jungle where he becomes lost. 
• The library, bookstore, writing on ancient walls, can provide a ‘mentorship’ of sorts.  The hero will discover, overcome his fears.
• A setting can show the ‘flaw’ of the hero.  A man fighting addiction is at a bar watching others, a selfish man is at a soup kitchen.  Place him in a setting to examine his own flaws.
•  A model of who he wants to be. A church, a free medical clinic, a loving home, are all settings that can provide an atmosphere that fosters qualities to which he aspires.

 Setting as a character is a deeper commitment.  Setting as a character will appear throughout the course of your novel.  Therefore (groan) it requires research, plotting attention, and action and reaction on the part of the hero and heroine.

Often I will set up a flow chart, spread sheet, or make notes on my software writing programs when developing my novel.  In this case I use a notebook to take notes/or snap pictures to Evernote that correspond to the numbers on my “Setting Worksheet”.  Why a work sheet—“that’s so old school”.  Yes, this is old school but studies have proved that there is something about the process of pen to paper that activates creativity in the brain.

So what’s on my worksheet? 

·         Title of project

·         Year

·         Month and day that the story begins

·         Season

·         Location

·         Why am I setting my story here?

·         Why are the hero and/or heroine here?

Climate/Landscape

·         Climate

·         Average rainfall/temp etc.

·         Approximately what months do the season change?

·         Topography

·         Plants and animals that live here

·         Local land forms and points of interest

·         Natural obstacles that will help/hinder your hero/heroine

·         How did your hero/heroine get here?  How will he/she leave?

Social Setting

·         Population

·         Types of dwellings

·         Types of stores or businesses

·         Ethnic make up of the community

·         Local industries/jobs

·         What holidays and special occasions are celebrated

·         What kinds of entertainment are available?

·         What current events might be important to your story?

Weaving into to the story

·         One line characterization of this setting

·         How is it the same as/different from similar settings?

·         What trait will make this setting come alive, and why?

·         How does the hero/heroine fell about being there?

·         Will the readers like/dislike this setting and why?

Examples taken from novels to illustrate my point:

Perhaps the glide of long railway travel was still with me, for more than anything else I felt motion in the landscape; in the fresh, easy-blowing morning wind, and in the earth itself, as if the shaggy grass were a sort of loose hid, and the underneath it herds of wild buffalo. ~ My Antonia, by Willa Cather. (Chapter 2).

I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has traveled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of these icy climes. ~ Letter 1, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley.

Every novel is different.  Not every story calls for a setting to have a 'life of its own".  However, when the landscape demands a major role in your story line, listen.  The results are often soul-stirring and magical.

And from my own works:

It was only the cologne, Rachel reminded herself when Lynx leaned closer and pointed out the skill of the fiddle player--she always loved the scent of a good cologne. Warm, and Musky. Or, maybe it was his reputation that held such appeal--he was a rodeo cowboy. Bull riders flirted with death and danger every day, and that alone could be a real turn on for some women.

Still she knew none of those things was the real reason she was reacting this way. ~ Lynx, Rodeo Romance, by Connie Vines

She pulled the red gingham curtain aside from the kitchen window and stared out into the rain for the tenth tine in less than an hour.  In the distance, she could see Brede going about his chores. . .There was something about him, which spoke of power, especially in the way he moved.  But there was also wildness in him and profound loneliness. Perhaps the loneliness dept her from being afraid. . .~ Brede, Rodeo Romance Book 2, by Connie Vines

Twelve-thousand gleeful ghouls stormed Long Beach's Promenade. the crowd became so large that it spilled out over Pine Avenue for an all-out downtown invasion.  Meredith didn't recall much about the accident, nor who or what, reanimated her. She remembered over-hearing a security officer informing a pungent-smelling zombie. . . ~ Here Today, Zombie Tomorrow Book 1 Sassy & Fun Fantasy Series by Connie Vines

Photographs give me a reference point for ensuring I "know" the depth of my setting.

What do you think?  Can you name a novel where the setting took on a life of its own?

Thank you for stopping by this month to read my blog post. I hope to see you again next month.

1800's England

Nebraska Farmland

Happy Reading,

Connie Vines