Drunk on a slinky, by J.C. Kavanagh

Winner, BEST Young Adult Book, 2016

P&E Readers' Poll

I've been on a two-month mission to finish the sequel to my book, The Twisted Climb, and I'm thrilled to say it's complete! First draft done and now I'm in editing mode. In celebration, I'd like to share a portion of the story..... in this chapter, the three main characters have 'crossed over' to the dream world and have travelled to the edge of a narrow volcano vent. They're on a mission to rescue Connor's little sister, Georgia, who is lost in this moonlit scary world.
If you recall my March blog, I wrote about the killer vines on my property. It is because of these tree-sapping, strangling killers that I wrote this 'cross over' adventure in this book.

DRAFT - Darkness Descends (part of Chapter 16)
 

Max lay on his stomach and examined the portion of the bridge that was visible through the steamy mist. The base of the walkway was made from loosely braided vines and he could see the flakey brown bark interwoven in an imprecise pattern, all originating from the vines tied around two pine trunks at the vent’s edge. The hand rails were also made from the slender growth and every few metres, a length of vine branched downward to connect to the walking base. That section was tied at the base before looping upward and around itself in a continuation of the hand rail. Max turned his attention to the start of the bridge, focusing on the base of the snapped tree trunks. His hands followed the contours of the vines wrapped around them, feeling them for breaks or tears. Their flexible ends were tied in macramé fashion, one set holding the walking base and the other set the upper hand rails. “It’s secure,” he muttered. They were the only materials keeping the ‘bridge’ suspended.

Max scrambled upright, an ecstatic grin on his face. “It’s so simple!”

“No, it’s so sketchy,” retorted Jayden.

“It’s the way across,” Max insisted. “I don’t think we have a choice.”

Connor surveyed the woods behind them and then turned toward the steaming vent, uncertainty written over his face. “The steam makes it difficult to see to the other end of this contraption but it can’t be more than 30 metres across.” He took hold of one of the vine hand rails, pulling it and then shaking it side to side. The bridge swayed gently but remained intact.

“Yeah, I’m not sure about crossing this thing, either” Jayden remarked. “Those braided base vines are set so far apart, it’ll be like walking on live snakes.” She shuddered, recalling the snake she had grabbed in the canoe.

Connor shook his head at Jayden in disagreement. “It’s going to be tricky but Max is right – we don’t have a choice. Georgia has to be close by and we can’t stop now.” He tossed the walking stick/weapon over the edge and leaned forward, listening. Jayden held her breath and Max cocked his head to one side. Five, six, seven seconds elapsed. A faint ‘thunk’ floated up when the stick finally struck bottom.

Connor’s face was grim. “No matter what,” he said, “don’t fall.”

They started across, Connor in the lead followed by Max and then Jayden. Connor held each hand rail tightly, attempting to maintain his balance and prevent the bridge from twisting from one side to the other. The mist from the vent made the rail vines slick with moisture and the wide spacing between the braided vines at the base made it difficult to gain a foothold. Every time one of them took a step, the bridge twisted to the opposite side. They lurched like three inebriated pedestrians on a moving slinky.

“Wait!” Jayden’s voice was urgent. They had clutch-walked about five metres. “We won’t make it like this. Connor, every time you take a step, Max loses his balance and when he flip-flops, I do too. So we have to walk together, in sync!”

“Okay,” he agreed.

“On my mark,” said Jayden. “Right foot forward – now!”

The bridge wavered crazily with all their weight moving simultaneously. It swung back and forth several times and then slowly came to a stop. Jayden breathed a sigh of relief.

“It’s working! Okay, get ready guys... left foot forward – now!”

The bridge careened crazily once again, and all three reacted by gripping the hand rails and planting their feet as tightly as they could in the loosely braided base.

“I don’t like my idea anymore,” muttered Max. “Are we there yet?” He peered ahead but the mist was too thick to see more than a few metres ahead. He steadfastly refused to look below the bridge, convincing himself that there were no heights involved and that the stick falling for seven seconds before it hit bottom actually meant nothing.

They continued in measured step-by-step fashion for another dozen paces, with Jayden barking out orders for each movement. The farther they travelled across the bridge, the hotter the temperature. Misty vapours from the vent clung to them like a wet cloth. It was just as hard to hold on to the vines as it was to breathe.

Connor’s arms were shaking with the effort of keeping the hand rails aligned and rigid. His thighs were ready to explode from maintaining a crouched, balanced position. Perspiration dripped through his scalp and down his back, joining the creek of sweat trickling between his shoulder blades. He shook his hair and blinked back the sweat from his eyes. The mist was fading ahead of him and he could see that the incline of the bridge was becoming steep again. “There’s good news!” he hollered.

“I’m ready for some!” replied Jayden.

“I think we’re at the lowest, saggiest part of the bridge!”

“Great! Onward and upward?” Jayden asked.

“Onward and upward!” Connor responded.

Max released his hold of one handrail and wiped the sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his t-shirt. The action caused him to lean forward a tad too much and he hastily over-corrected his posture. But by jerking to the right, the base of the bridge lurched to the left and the vines on the handrail responded in a caterpillar-like jig. In horror, Max watched as Jayden reacted to the caterpillar-jig with her own slow-motion floppy dance. A moment later, Connor mimicked her movements. They were trying to regain their balance by reacting to the surging movement of the vines like an alpine skier would – bending knees up, then knees down – but they were, in fact, encouraging a forward surge, like a child pumping on a swing. Max jerked again to his right, swinging the crook of his arm around the handrail and narrowly preventing a fall. Just when he thought he was balanced, both feet slipped then separated around one section of the braided base and he fell through. He took a breath to cry out but before he could make a sound, his groin slammed into the fleshy part of the braid. Internally shrieking with pain and with his splayed legs hopelessly dangling, Max grabbed two of the braided vines around his torso. He tried to pull his legs up, but the vines were greasy with moisture and rippling with movement as the others continued to undulate in a crazy balancing dance. The pain from his groin was overwhelming and Max did the only thing his brain told him to do to make it stop. He grabbed Jayden.

“Noooo,” she screamed. Jayden was in mid-motion, caught between meeting her knees at her chin and holding the handrails rigidly by her side. She buckled backward with the force of Max’s pull and her butt hit him squarely in the chest. He fell back on the walkway but Jayden ricocheted to the right. The bridge’s rippling momentum kicked her off the braided walkway like a novice rider on a wild horse. Jayden flailed her arms, reaching for the rails – the base – anything. Connor had no time to think. He released the handrails, turned and dove toward Jayden. He managed to hook his right arm around the walkway base and the left underneath Jayden’s armpit before he slammed face-down on the braided vines. He quickly straddled the outer portion of the walkway with the topsides of his feet, lying as rigidly as he could. Jayden had one arm wrapped around the vine base and the other hooked around Connor’s neck. Her body dangled below. Their faces were inches apart and both were panting heavily.

“You saved me,” whispered Jayden. Her green eyes glowed with gratitude and she adjusted her hold on the walkway. Connor clenched his teeth and braced his back, neck muscles straining with tension as he held on to the walkway and Jayden. The bridge stopped its slow heaving surge and Max very carefully pulled himself to a sitting position.

A prolonged creaking sound from the bridge compelled Max to stop moving. “Something’s not right,” he said. “We’re not balanced.”

Jayden kicked her dangling legs, trying to elevate them so she could straddle the walkway. The bridge shuddered in response and began a twisting, rotating motion.

“The other way... move the OTHER WAY,” Max shouted.

But it was too late. The handrails began to twist and before anyone could react, the bridge had flipped over. And they were falling.

* * *

The sequel to The Twisted Climb - Darkness Descends will be published this summer. Stay tuned for more excerpts.

J.C. Kavanagh

The Twisted Climb
BEST Young Adult Book 2016, P&E Readers' Poll
A novel for teens, young adults and adults young at heart
Email: author.j.c.kavanagh@gmail.com
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www.Amazon.com/author/jckavanagh
Twitter @JCKavanagh1 (Author J.C. Kavanagh)

Ten Really Interesting Canadian Things (No, Seriously!)

Canadians are described as nice, neighborly and predictable. Something like a Volvo, except for the fact that Sweden manufactures them, not us. Even in good qualities, we come in second. How Canadian!

Yes, we all know about Hockey and Maple Syrup. But did you know that Canadians are more than that; in fact sometimes we can be pretty fascinating. Well, okay, just once in a while. Here are ten really interesting Canadian things:

1)      Yes, Justin Trudeau’s hair is real. (Note to Americans: And it’s not orange.)

2)      It’s the Great White North (and Black, Brown, etc.) An astonishing 19.1% of the total population of Canada (nearly 6,264,800 people) identify themselves as members of a visible minority group.

3)      No beaver, no Canada. This country came into existence because of the European desire for this humble animals’ pelt. Otherwise, we might be all be (gasp!) Americans.

4)      Our dollar coins are called Loonies. (Question: What do you call a Loonie that whistles: A Loonie toonie.)

5)      Canada’s most ordered take-out food (other than pizza): Butter chicken, originally from the Punjab region of India. That’s right, it beats out poutine. (Though we consume more Mac-N-Cheese than any other country in the world.)

6)      Hawaiian Pizza was actually invented in Canada. According to Wikipedia, Greek-Canadian Sam Panopoulos created the first Hawaiian pizza at the Satellite Restaurant in Chatham, Ontario in 1962.

7)      Canada has a “Global Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve.” Not oil, not gold, but maple syrup. Thirty-eight million pounds of this stuff is stored in 62,800 barrels in Laurierville, Quebec. The province produces 77% of all maple syrup in the world. We are, truly, the OPEC of maple syrup.

8)      Santa Claus lives in Canada. You can write a letter to him (in any language), send it to “North Pole, Canada, H0H 0H0,” and receive a reply from the old man himself.

9)      Canada has been invaded twice by Americans - in 1775 and 1812. (We kicked their butts both times.)

10)   I ran out of things to add. Sorry, we’re talking about Canada!

Mohan Ashtakala is the author of The Yoga Zapper (www.yogazapper.com) published by Books we Love Ltd. (www.bookswelove.com)

The difference 50 years makes...by Sheila Claydon

The copyright to the first book I ever had published, Golden Girl, reverted to me last year, and it has now been republished in its 3rd edition by Books We Love. Although I wrote this book in 1980, it is set in the early sixties. The story is loosely based on some of the experiences I had when I was working as a secretary in London (UK) at that time.

Fast forward to my most recently published book, Remembering Rose, and my goodness what a difference 50 years makes.

The characters behave differently, speak differently, live differently. Nowadays we are so used to technology that it's easy to forget that there were no cell phones in the 1960s, nor did we use computers, and the Internet wasn't even a twinkle in someone's eye! No social media then. Messages were scribbled on scraps of paper. Secretaries (and there were many secretaries in the 1960s) routinely typed a top copy and 2 carbon copies. Many companies had a central filing department and a typing pool. Tippex and typewriter rubbers were a girl's best friend. There were no printers so multiple copies had to be produced on a Roneo machine. Telephones were answered by switchboard operators who connected incoming and outgoing calls to individual numbers. I could go on... Then there were the office politics. In the 1960s (at least in my experience) secretaries were all girls and the people they worked for were mostly men. And I use the word 'girls' advisedly, because that is what most of them were. They usually married early and disappeared a couple of years later to become stay-at-home mums. I'm generalising of course, but in London at least, few secretaries broke the mould, so Lisa's behaviour in Golden Girl is true to its time.

Rachel, the heroine in Remembering Rose, is a very different character from Lisa. She's far less compliant for a start.  Being a stay-at-home mum bores her to distraction, and so does her long suffering husband, until Rose reminds her why she married him in the first place. Rachel keeps secrets, flirts, nags, loses her temper, is even downright bitchy on occasion, and all this is mixed in with love, loyalty, compassion and kindness. In fact Rachel is like most of us, a flawed human being with a heart, whereas Lisa, in Golden Girl, is sometimes too good and too naive to be true.

The difference is not just down to changing times either. It is also down to the writer as well. How I understood the world in the 1960s is very different from how I understand it now. Also the requirements of romantic fiction have changed. Lisa is a girl of her time, and so is Rachel. Reading the two books back to back is like travelling through history. Not a time machine exactly, but the next best thing.

http://bwlpublishing.ca/authors/claydon-sheila-romance/

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Keeping Your Reader in Your Historical Novel by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

Keeping Your Reader in Your Historical Story

As a historical writer it is important to make sure that you use the words of the period you have set your book in. For example if your story is set in the 1500s you could use the word hugger-mugger when talking about a sneaky person who is acting in a secretive way and elflocks to describe messy hair. Jargoyles meant that a person was puzzled about something in the 1600s while in the 1700s a person who was out of sorts was grumpish. In the 1800s people would have felt curglaff when they jumped into cold water and a man going for a post dinner walk while smoking his pipe was lunting. In the early 1900s a person who was drunk was referred to as being fuzzled.

Of course, it is important when using those words that the writer somehow explains what they mean such as, if a man said he was going for an after lunch lunt, the person he was talking to could reply. “I don’t have my pipe and tobacco with me today.” I feel that writers who use terminology from a different era or words or phrases from a different language without clarification are trying to impress the reader with their vocabulary and intellect. Speaking as a reader, for me what they are really doing is making me angry and interrupting the flow of the story. I am jolted out of the lives of the characters and into my life as I try to process the meaning of what was written.

As a writer you want the reader to be so caught up in the story that they don’t want to put the book down, you don’t want them to throw the book across the room because they don’t understand what has been said or done.

Another important aspect of writing historical novels or even novels set in past decades is to make sure that you do have the characters using devices that hadn’t been invented yet.

The ball point pen came into use in the 1940’s so you can’t have someone signing papers with it in the 1920s. The Charleston dance was introduced in a movie in 1923 and caught on after that, so a story set before that time could not have party-goers dancing it. While the computer was invented during World War II, it didn’t come into commercial use until the 1950/60s and personal use until the 1970/80s. Don’t have a person make a phone call before March 7, 1876, which is when Alexander Graham Bell patented his telephone and don’t have someone send a text on a mobile phone in the 1970s.

It is important to do your research when writing a novel set in the past, no matter what the year.

More historical words:

In the 1590s beef-witted described something as being brainless or stupid.

In the 1640s callipygian described a beautifully shaped butt.

In the 1650s sluberdegullion meant an unkempt, drooling person.

In the 1950s two people making out in the back seat of a car were doing the back seat bingo.

 

 

http://bookswelove.net/authors/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

 

                                   http://bookswelove.net/authors/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

 

What is a Chapter?

For more information about Susan Calder's books, or to purchase visit her Books We Love Author Page.  

Over the years I have read writing advice books and attended numerous courses and panel discussions on writing, but I don't remember a single discussion about what constitutes a novel chapter. Yet, I view the chapter as the unit of my novels. When I sit down at my computer, I don't aim to write x number of words or spend y number of hours at my desk or complete z scene that day. My writing goal is to finish the next chapter, or get as far along in it as I can. Ideally, I like to start a chapter and write it to the end in one swoop, however long that takes.  

My focus on the chapter in novel structure has led me to wonder, what is a chapter? Is the concept of the chapter studied so little because anything goes and there are no rules? Today I'll share my random thoughts on novel chapters as a writer and reader. I'd be curious to hear your ideas.

A chapter can be any length, from one word to a whole book, that is, a chapter-less novel. The only novel with no chapters I recall reading was short, about 150 pages. Evidently writers and readers like breaks in a long story. The most effective super-short chapter I've read was in the novel Last Orders by Graham Swift. The story involved a young man travelling with his father's four drinking buddies to dispose of his father's ashes in the sea. The chapters alternated between the viewpoints of the five characters. After several chapters of his father's buddies going on about the old days, we turn the page to the son's chapter, where he simply states Old farts. I found this hilarious and it expressed the son's frustration with his travelling companions better than 2,000 words could have done.

                                                                     
Chapter lengths in an individual novel can be consistent or wildly varied. I've written both kinds. Several years ago I wrote a suspense novel with five viewpoint characters. Each time a voice changed I started a new chapter and they couldn't all have equivalent amounts to say when their turns came. But, as a writer, I prefer consistent chapter length for pacing, so that high points in the story arrive at more or less even intervals. As a reader, I get more comfortable with a book when I know how long the next chapter will be. While it's good to shake readers up with story content, novels tend to work best when the reader is unaware of structure. Now I'm revising the suspense novel and combining voices in chapters, with scene breaks, making the chapters more even. I don't know if this will help the pacing, but cutting the numbers of chapters in half saves trees by using fewer pages.    

When the novel changes viewpoint, is it best to start a new chapter or break to a new scene? Not necessarily. Many successful novels fluctuate between points of view within a chapter, scene or paragraph. But my personal preference is for a new scene, if not chapter break, before a viewpoint change because I want my readers to be solidly in the head of a particular person and feel along with him or her.

What about titles for chapters? As a reader I either ignore them or find them clever. As a writer, I have enough trouble coming up with one title for a book, never mind fifteen or thirty more. If I ever go that route, I expect some of my chapter titles will add to the story experience, while other titles will be there simply to conform to the pattern I've set. The same with quotes and images at a chapter's start.

Now we come to the meat. I tend to view each chapter in my books as a kind of short story within the whole. Something needs to change in the course of the chapter. I think of each chapter as building to a mini-climax, which, hopefully, propels the reader to turn the page. That's why the ending is the most important part of each chapter. A great cliffhanger ending is a demand to keep reading, although continuous cliffhangers might start to feel melodramatic and manipulative. So I save my true cliffhangers for a few choice spots and try for intriguing endings with the other chapters.

A trick of some writers is to cut a dialogue mid-scene. For instance, Jenny tells Billy, "I'm pregnant" and the chapter ends. The next chapter starts with Jenny continuing, "What are we going to do about it?" This trick gets me to turn the page and contributes to suspense, but it also feels like cheating. As with scene breaks, I think there needs to be a gap of at least a few minutes from one chapter to the next, or a change of place or point of view.

Of course, these are all my opinions, derived from my particular reading and writing idiosyncrasies. There are no rules for novel chapters, but with their importance to a book's structure, I say let's bring them out of the shadows and give them a little more attention.

    

Dry Me a River by Karla Stover

 bwlauthors.blogspot.com

Here’s my idea for a mystery. The date is sometime in the mid-1960s. The place is New York. Someone murdered someone else and wants to dispose of the body. He / she loads up the body, drives for 6 or so hours, and dumps it in the Niagara River, near the falls. Safely back in Manhattan, the perp lets out that the individual was running from the law. There’s no body, no crime scene, and no evidence to shift through—EXCEPT—oops, the year is 1969 and the body shows up because that year the falls quit—well—quit falling. They went dry. And two bodies were found.

Nineteen sixty-nine was not the only time Niagara was dry. In 1848, a gale force wind began blowing off Lake Erie and caused thousands of tons of ice to jam up at the river’s mouth. For the next 48 hours, as the river bed dried and thousands of fish and turtles were left floundering, people flocked to the river. They couldn’t work because with the mill race was empty, and the mills and factories dependent on Niargara's water power had to shut down.

At first, venturing out on to the unexpectedly dry river bed was fun. People picked up bayonets, gun barrels, muskets, tomahawks, and other War of 1812 items. Some men with an eye to business drove a logging cart onto the bed and picked up 12-inch pine timbers measuring from 40 to 60 feet long. In as much as it could back then, the strange event became a tourist and media event. People walked from one side of the bed to the other, or crossed by horse, or in a horse-and-buggy. A squad of U.S. Army Cavalry soldiers put on an exhibition by riding up and down the bed. Downstream, some of the rocks which had been a boat hazard were blasted away.

But, then, it wasn’t fun any anymore. The more they missed the roar of the falls, the more people’s fear and anxiety grew. A Domesday scenario developed, and special church services were held on both sides of the border. Then, on March 31^st, the temperature rose, the wind shifted, and the ice jam broke apart, and the falls fell again.

The winter of 1847 – 1848 wasn’t unusually cold ,but the wind was the crucial factor. The Niagara River can only hold 2% of Lake Erie’s ice, and generally, 98% of the lake’s ice remains in the lake until spring weather melts it. The next time the falls stopped falling, it was a man-made situation. And two bodies were found.