Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Do you underline book titles? by Rita Karnopp



In my book, Kidnapped, I found myself drawing on the fact my husband and I were strugging to have a child.  So Laura became a character I truly related to. I cried while writing the final courtroom scene.  My husband stopped at my desk and asked, "Are you okay ... what's wrong?"  I answered, "It's so sad."  I truly believe if we the writer are brought to tears by the words we type ... then our reader with most likely cry when they read them.
 
Laura and Aaron Palmer’s marriage is over, but they have newly adopted daughter, Amie, to consider. If they split up now, young Amie could be taken away from them both forever.
 
Life is complicated, but it takes a turn for the worse when Laura finds Amie’s picture listed in an ad for missing and abducted children. But are the people who claim to be Amie’s biological parents really what they seem, or is something more sinister at play?   
 
Alienated emotionally from each other, and paralyzed with fear, can Laura and Aaron find a way to save their marriage and protect their adopted daughter? This story entwines your heart with the bonding love of a child.

    4 Nymphs ~ This is a truly engrossing tale for anyone who has ever wondered about the stories behind those faces on the milk cartons. Author Karnopp does a great job revealing the stress of a couple unable to conceive. Her characters are all well developed and understandable, even the supporting cast. The story tugs at your heartstrings, without being saccharine or maudlin. I enjoyed it. ~Sphinx Minx

    4 Star ThrillerKidnapped by Rita Karnopp is a thriller. The characters have their own distinct voice. You could see the flaws in Aaron and Laura, and as the story progresses you see them mature and grow. This is a plot that could easily be ripped from the headlines. Kidnapped is an entertaining read. ~ Debra Gaynor for ReviewYourBook.com

Do You Underline Book Titles?

I’ll bet each of us has paused when we’re ready to write/type the title of a book … back in the day all book titles were Underlined … and then later they were all CAPITALIZED or italicized … but things have changed. 
 
How do you handle book titles?  Put them in “quotes?”  The truth of the matter is … whether it be a book, online, a newspaper, a proposal, or a magazine article, the writing of titles are handled in so many ways.  But, which one is correct?

The answer is: probably all of them.  Today how you handle book titles is a style choice not governed by grammarian law.
 
According to the Chicago Manual of Style and the Modern Language Association, titles of books (and other complete works, such as newspapers and magazines), should be italicized. 
 
Opposite, the AP Stylebook suggests that you use quotation marks around the names of books (with the exceptions of the Bible and catalogs of reference material, such as dictionaries and almanacs, which should not be styled in any way). 
 
Some publications also follow their own style guides.  Just so you know, an editor will edit your story to fit her/his style preferences anyway. 
 
So, what does that mean to you and me? It means: Don’t worry about it too much. Just pick one style and stick with it for consistency purposes.   

 

Monday, October 8, 2018

Writing Historical Romantic Suspense by June Gadsby




I never thought I would ever do this. History was not my best subject at school. I had no interest in it at all. However, I was very interested in writing sagas set in the 19th and 20th centuries and this took me into researching the times and places where my characters lived. At first, it was hard – still is at times. I inevitably end up with a fat file of research notes bigger than the finished novel.
Fascination, however, soon took over. I am now hooked on historic research and often get ideas and inspiration from real life events that happened in the past.
Take Voices of the Morning, set in the thirties in north-east England [my home counties] at the time of the Jarrow Crusades and the miners’ strikes. Coming from a long line of mining folk there was an added incentive to write about my kind of people, but with a story of high-level suspense woven in and around actual historic fact.
For me, the story is the most important thing, with characters that draw the reader in, make them turn the pages, holding their breath and getting involved with protagonists that aren’t particularly glamorous – just ordinary souls that get caught up in dangerous, frightening situations, such as murder and rape and anything else I can dredge up from my imagination – sometimes autobiographic details that give the story a touch of reality.
The ‘blurb’ is always the most difficult thing to write, because how can you squeeze into a few words the true essence of the whole novel. But here it is for Voices of the Morning:
The last thing Patrick Flynn wants is another mouth to feed, so he does his best to ensure that Billy does not survive. But survive he does, with the help of a warm-hearted prostitute and Laura Caldwell, the daughter of a wealthy local family. Patrick deserts his family and Billy struggles to eke out a meagre living, all the while looking after his alcoholic mother. As he matures, so does his obsession with Laura. One day, he dreams, he will win her heart, but Laura has other ideas, and it is with Bridget, the prostitute’s daughter that Billy joins the Jarrow crusaders marching to London to demonstrate against unemployment. Neither of them, however, is prepared for the reappearance of the evil Patrick Flynn…

This is not the only 5-star review Voices of the Morning received, but what author could ask for better?


***** Loved it! WOW! Talk about being on the edge of your seat. This book was amazing. I had no idea what was coming next. [by BOOKLOVER64]

And getting a write-up in the local press was a great bonus too. [1]

In the book, the hero, because of his short stature, got the nick-name of Billy Big Boots because the hand-me-down boots from his brothers were far too big for him. One lady, who had bought the book as a birthday present for her husband, was a teddy-bear maker and she made a teddy-bear and sent it to me. He wears a medallion around his neck with his name on it. [2] How nice is that! I love my furry Billy Big Boots and no child will ever get it – not because I’m mean, but because this lady uses lead shot to fill the bears with [husband was a game-keeper and the lead shot was spare!]


Sunday, October 7, 2018

October New Releases from BWL Publishing

Don't miss these great reads. Click the covers for purchase and author information...

BWL OCTOBER RELEASES

   
 
   

Saturday, October 6, 2018

When the World is Your Stage by André K. Baby


Visit André K. Baby's BWL Author Page for information and Purchase Links to your favorite bookstore.

 Hi everyone,
As a newcomer to this group, I would like to share with you few thoughts on the “métier” of writing thrillers.

One of the first challenges a thriller writer faces when putting down the foundations of his/her story is choosing the size and type of stage on which to set the story.  Will it take place in a room, on a ship, a train, in a town, or will the action take place in many locations?  Each scenario has advantages and disadvantages, while having its own set of opportunities and restrictions.  The one-location thriller will be perfect for the exploring of personal relationships and the intensifying of conflict between the characters.  Added tension is provided by the constricting aspect of the limited dimensions of a room, plane, train (aka “Murder on the Orient Express”), submarine (“Hunt for Red October”), etc.…

Alternatively, the story tension in the multi-venue thriller will be provided in part by the external stimuli offered by the various locations. The reader is transported to the locale, and will enjoy, tolerate, or suffer the physical characteristics of that locale along with the protagonist/antagonist. He’ll freeze in an Alpine mountain shelter, sweat and be thirsty in the Libyan Desert, enjoy the turquoise waters of the Caribbean, etc… Well developed, settings virtually become characters in the story.

Having been a longtime reader and admirer of the likes of Sidney Sheldon, Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, Len Deighton, Robert Ludlum, John Le Carré, Ken Follett and others, the multi-venue stage has always held a particular attraction for me.

In “The Chimera Sanction” (and its stand-alone prequel “Dead Bishops Don’t lie”), I like to think I’ve brought the reader to out- of- the ordinary locations, thrusting my protagonist Dulac into the throes of conflicts  at these  sites.  Having the action take place at the Vatican, on the searing sand dunes of the Libyan Desert, then in the middle of a storm in the Mediterranean offers reader stimuli unavailable in a single-venue story. These settings offer unique opportunities for tension, without the loss of focus on the story. Another benefit of the multi-location thriller is that it allows the author to develop parallel story lines, which funnel down into one towards the end of the story.

In my latest thriller “Jaws of the Tiger” published by BWL, I thought I would try the other option, the one locale setting in the form of a hijacked cruise ship where the action story develops, and combine it with the follow-up investigation of the crime. One might say it’s a cross-genre, combination action thriller and whodunit, and I hope it will appeal to readers of both groups.

Comments anyone?

Cheers,

André K. Baby


Thursday, October 4, 2018

People Are Dirty by Katherine Pym








Public Bathing (Unlikely 17th Century tho but a good pic)
I grew up in an engineering family and worked many years for Boeing. There, great flying machines are built that can stay in the air for literally hours and hours and can jet halfway around the world without refueling. This is well engineered stuff.

With that in mind, I’ve always considered the human body a high maintenance machine. It is fragile and can’t take much without breaking down. It must regenerate for literally half its shelf-life. It requires hours of upkeep, always needs wiping down or, over the years, completely submersed in water with gallons of soap. The fueling of the human body is a constant thing, with a prodigious amount of venting waste. This turns out to be an expensive, never ending maintenance slog.

Who would have thunk this a good design? Not me. I’d really like a conversation with the designer and tell him my thoughts on how the human body could be improved. But with that conversation unlikely, I’ll have to stew over the poor engineering.

Let’s take one of the above items for discussion. Bathing. Keeping clean. It’s a constant thing, but until fairly recently, not much was done about it. You see historical portraits of men and women who don’t smile. They are dressed in their finest ‘Let-us-go-to-church-outfits.’ They look clean, but in reality, were they?

I’d call myself a historian, mainly London during the 1660’s, but through research, I’ve ventured beyond and prior to those years. During my reading, I only once came across the process of bathing. Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary of his wife’s thoughts on the subject, who considered it might be a good thing.

Once born, no one was ever truly naked, again. When you see paintings of naked men and women, it is fantasy. Men and women were considered naked when they wore only a thin muslin dressing gown or shift. Men’s shirts were long and covered their sensitive parts. Drawers were coming into favor but mostly women did not wear any type of undies. Their sleeping, going about the day shift was a multi-tasked garment. 

Bathing Back in the Day
If one immersed in water, he or she wore the shift. No soap touched that part of the body. When one began a new day, he or she might splash water on their faces and again at night, but little else. Bowls of water were on the table for greasy hands. When they went to the bathroom, there was no toilet paper. People used their hands, clumps of moss, damp rags, etc. Household refuse and old water were cast out the window or door to molder in the street.

Soap was available but in potash liquid form. Common bar soap wasn’t invented until somewhere in the 19th century. Clothes that resided against the skin, i.e., shirts, chemises, shifts, stockings, bed linens were washed and hung to dry on rails or on hedgerows. One text I read said women would dump up to a pound of soap in a caldron to wash clothes. Even after rinsing, surely the fabric would be stiff with soap residue.

Silks, brocades, or woolen clothing would be brushed and worn until they were stiff with dirt. If they were still usable, they’d be sold to a seconds clothing merchant or given to the rag boy.

Bathing in the Thames amongst boats and whatnots
There were waterworks on the north side of London Bridge that pumped water into a few of the wealthier houses (obnoxiously loud and bulky, especially during the tidal flows). There were two conduits for water (on great occasions they ran with wine), one small and the other much larger, along Cheapside Street where you could dip your buckets, but most of the time water-boys dragged water up the London hills to homes from the Thames River, a waterway fouled with human waste and rubbish, sometimes a dead body or other animals.

So, even if you tried to remain clean, it was pretty much an impossibility next to what we expect in today’s hygiene. It would be like smearing a wet dirty cloth over a smudged and sweaty arm.

Nits Anyone?
Men and women wore their hair long. During the 1660’s King Charles II (whose hair was thinning and started to go grey) emulated his rival, Louis XIV and began to wear periwigs. Everyone who was anyone followed suit. Since there was no shampoo, hair and periwigs rarely got washed, and if any sort of soap was used, it made hair sticky. Instead, hair and periwigs filled with nits that turned into lice. Body wrinkles, folds, filled with dirt and body lice. Sores developed and became infected. If they went septic, the person died.

People stank. They covered this stink not with soap and water but perfumes. They shook pomanders filled with perfumes and spices (expensive). They chewed mint for bad breath. They walked down streets riddled with piles of stinking rubbish. Contents from chamber pots would be cast into the streets crowded with pedestrians.

I say, if an extraterrestrial species drifted near in their spaceship, they would smell earth before ever seeing our planet. That’s probably why they only monitor our radio frequencies and don’t make actual contact.

And that is why I consider our bodies a poorly constructed machine where we should get our money back from the manufacturer.

The End.

~*~*~*~
Many thanks to Wikicommons, Public Domain

Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Cemetery: spooky or fascinating? by J.S. Marlo


Call me weird, but I love visiting cemeteries where people have been buried—unburied and reburied—for centuries. Day or night, graveyards are quiet and peaceful, but I'll admit I've never ventured in one in the middle of the night alone. I might find it spooky...

While I was in Paris, I made a point for visiting the catacombs with my daughter. It was eerie to see the skeletons neatly stacks into a solid wall so they wouldn’t tumble. Some of these bones or skulls were three or four hundred years old. Though I write romantic suspense (there are a fair amount of dead people and old bones in my stories) I've never googled how long it took for bones to decompose. Maybe I should have, because I would have guessed way less than four hundred years.

While seeing bones and skulls is interesting, I’m most fascinated with grave markers and the inscriptions on them. There are a lot to learn from the names, descriptions, and dates.

During a three-day vacation in Iceland, hubby and I rented a car and toured the island. In the countryside, we stumbled onto an old church dating back to the middle ages. Behind it was a small cemetery. Graves were marked with wooden crosses or headstones. The oldest grave dated back to the 11th century while the most recent burial had occurred in my lifetime. I was amazed that most of the inscriptions had weathered the centuries. It was interesting to see how some names change through time (an "S" that disappears, or a "D" that becomes a "T"), and to travel from one generation to the next and discover the family connections between the dead. Some had died young while others had lived to see their seventieth or eightieth birthday. To be honest, I was surprised to see so many of them reach an advanced age during the 12th or 13th century.

The early markings on the gravestones behind that little Icelandic church fascinated me, especially the ones dating back to the middle ages. I have seen many ways to write dates, but  that was my first encounter with this specific form. I wish I had taken a picture, but the battery on my phone was dead. I wrote an example of the markings on a piece of paper (see photo).  In that example, the person would have been born on April 17, 1263 and would have died on October 30, 1318.

My current story "Misguided Honor", which I'm hoping to finish by Christmas, revolves around an unusual  graveyard near Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia.  I've lived near Annapolis Royal for three years and my second daughter was born there. Back then, I was too busy raising my young children to spend time in graveyards. If only I'd known then what I know now...

Last year my hubby built my family tree. My ancestors arrived in Canada in the early 1600s. In my youth I'd heard stories about some of the males marrying native women, so I wasn't surprised to learn I indeed possess native blood, though it's very diluted after thirteen generations. What I didn't expect was to learn that a big branch on my father side settled in Annapolis Royal in the mid 1600s then fled to Quebec in the mid 1700s to avoid the great deportation. I had no idea that many of my ancestors were Acadians. These first settlers from whom I descend are probably buried in Annapolis Royal cemeterya few streets from the hospital where my daughter was born more then two hundred and fifty years later.

I wish I had known when I lived in Annapolis Royal that I had come full circle. Now I long for a chance to walk into that cemetery. Maybe one day...
JS


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