Featured Author - Reed Stirling

Purchase links to details and purchase links for your favorite retailer by clicking this link.   https://bookswelove.net/stirling-reed/

Reed Stirling, my alter ego, lives in Cowichan Bay, BC, and writes when not painting landscapes (see below) travelling or

or taking coffee at The Drumroaster, a local café where physics and metaphysics clash daily. Before retiring and taking up writing novels as a past time, I taught English Literature. Joyce Carol Oates oversaw my M.A. thesis. Several talented students of mine have gone on to become successful award-winning writers.

My wife and I built a log home in the hills of southern Vancouver Island [view photo], and survived totally off the grid for twenty-five years during which time the rooms in that house filled up with books, thousands of student essays were graded, and innumerable cords of firewood were split.

Literary output — Shades Of Persephone, published in 2019, is a literary mystery set in Greece. Lighting The Lamp, a fictional memoir, was published in March 2020. A third novel is presently undergoing revision. Shorter work has appeared over the years in a variety of publications including Hackwriters Magazine, Dis(s)ent, The Danforth Review, Fickle Muses, The Fieldstone Review, Humanist Perspectives, and StepAway Magazine.

Intrigue is my primary interest, with romantic entanglement an integral part of the action. Allusions to mythology, art, literature, philosophy, and religion underpin plot development. Irony is pervasive. I sit down to write every day and try to leave the desk having achieved at least a workable page. Frequently what comes of my effort amounts to no more than a serviceable paragraph, a single sentence, or a metaphor that might work in a context yet to be imagined.

Favourite authors —

John Banville, Ian McEwan, Richard Dawkins

James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemmingway, Lawrence Durrell, John Fowles

 from Shades of Persephone

 Magalee De Bellefeuille. A woman others dressed in dreams, photographed, painted, prayed to, lusted after, called whore and fell in love with. She’ll rip your heart out, man! An unwelcome caveat at that time, humbling then, humbling now. And yet, how easily with the winking of an eye or the pulling of a leg could she attribute to me the ego of a fool. I prefer to dwell on the adulation.

Manolis, blue smoke above his head: “I tell you what I think, Steven. You have made of Magalee an ikon, and desire only to pray.”

Damen Van Raamsdonk, the artist, sought salvation through Magalee, but only on canvas could he capture and hold his own perceptions of her. In his sanity, she was his muse; in his madness, she was his demon, a sluttish succubus slinking around on the dark edge of atavistic fantasy. I appreciated Damien's genius, understood his aesthetic needs, but was horrified by his instincts.

                With the words Die Magdalee, Trüger acknowledged a state of grace he could not attain. He objectified Magalee. He framed her in a caption. He was able then in a devious flip of logic to soil her elevated image, to smash it, to profane it. He called her whore: he attributed to this idol of his own imagining all manner of behaviour becoming to one he wanted to, but could not, get his hands on.

In unrequited fits, I had shared Trüger’s sentiments, and found his innuendo made Magalee all the more attractive. What I lacked in pure pagan apprehension, I made up for with a perverse pleasure in visualizing the supple thigh of beauty exposed to his shadowy lights. She therefore became darker, more alluring, and so even more unattainable. This inadvertent betrayal I would attempt to rectify, to sanctify rather, with poetic sentimentality…

Barefoot, all leg and supple thigh, Magalee slowly enters the stream, and with cupped hands curls out water over her head. She screams with delight. Cicadas cease chirring, only to break out immediately in heightened frenzy.

She is quickly soaked, her t-shirt but a veil, her raven hair glistening with silvery tongues, her body therefore like a statue carved out of white mountain water and defined as graphically as desire itself. And then, with a laugh that deceives as readily as the willing mind believes, she splashes me repeatedly with cool liquid light.

Forever Magalee! Mischievous nymph. Renoir girl, naked in the dappled light. In the seething of this moment, the water is a caress.

                “Take me,” I hear her say, but I know the words are my own, Pan proposed, long sublimated, still unvoiced. She becomes Medusa the Beautiful, mortal, but she who empowers stones with being, capable at any time of turning my thoughts into words. In the cup of her moulded hands, hands that have touched the matrix, hands as delicate as immortality, she offers me water to drink…

               

                Over Akrotiri, wisps of her image now streak the evening sky like lines of haiku.

Reviews (Amazon):

               

                Excellent read

               

                Compelling

               

                skilfully weaves elements of mythology, Shakespearean tragedy and historical allusion to create a novel that is both intriguing and satisfying

               

                wonderful, magical Crete in the early ‘80s charms and enhances the mystery

                excellent mystery for fans of Greek mythology

from Lighting the Lamp

The more I engage in this identity search, the more I labour in a chronological arrangement of factual recall, the more I grow aware of static thrumming behind the scenes that I evoke, a subjective electromagnetic radiation, so to say, informing the background of my narrative with a species of tension stretched between past events and my recollection of them. The spectrum thus engendered ranges from humorous self-effacement to guilty self-reproach.

But truthful accounting. What to make of it? Total fabrication, I fear, may result in any effort to animate memory when significant events from decades past hide among the vagaries of time like participants in a game of blindman’s bluff. Memories can fracture and fragment. Misremembering may deflate the import of a specific childhood event, a first confession where guilt now has an incomprehensible context, for instance, or a bee sting, or on your seventh birthday getting your eye blackened by the neighbourhood bully. Then again, misremembering can conflate two or more innocent enough disinclinations on the part of a fair-haired friend into a single blockbuster put-down where the adolescent’s broken heart lies not in halves but in millions of pieces. Putting into words today what happened years ago requires disciplined deliberation. A nuanced articulation is hardly the equivalent of an adrenalin rush. How does one examine with any kind of accuracy the scar tissue of past emotion?

What’s more, can one’s heart beat melodiously? Or nerves shatter? Does disappointment droop or sag? Anger boil more than clench its fists?

Semantic refinement can distract endlessly if veracity is really the object of the exercise. Recollections can roam chimera-like in distant locations where the light of today’s understanding is faint. Narrative truth is a complex matter even with the aid of varying perspectives. How to record in a convincing manner disturbing or contrarian points of view and not be accused of being a hateful bigot?

Okay, fine. I’m dealing with all that.

Memory: acts of the mind aligning imagination, exaggeration, and artifice. You grasp today what eluded you yesterday and call it truth, though in the process you certainly do fabricate, falsify, or lie absolutely…

As sunlight breaks out of the darkness above Mount Tzouhalem, I am reminded of mythical Orpheus emerging from the world of shades, lyre in hand, having ascended through Stygian tracks, where the past follows along at a distance and falls back into oblivion. And after the subterraneous gloom and the loss, the light, of course, the immense light. Orpheus reborn crossing the threshold, Orpheus on the rebound, striding along in contemporary dress and climbing the steps of a temple adorned with life-size friezes of voyage and discovery, and where Jason, his one-time captain, points to the horizon, while Medea looks on having dipped the proffered silver goblet into her Cauldron of Regeneration. Proceeding into the world of intimate connections and transient appearances, Orpheus contemplates, in the web of endless possibilities that his mind weaves, the meaning of finality. His exit is not pretty, but it is poetic, and it is memorable. The lyre he holds against his chest will contribute nightly to the music of the spheres.

Review (Amazon):

                Insightful & revealing

 From the wharves of BC’s Cowichan Bay to the Old Port of Montreal and back again, protagonist and narrator Terry Burke uncovers and records lost chapters in his personal history… Steeped in new-found but essential truth, he undergoes a form of rebirth allowing a more authentic self to emerge...

 Among myriad themes in this all-encompassing work, two in particular draw the informed reader deeper into the narrative: the Socratic declaration that “the unexamined life is not worth living” and the alarming justification of mythical Medea that “the woman scorned is the woman reborn.”

The last sentence by J. S. Marlo

J. S. Marlo's BWL Books

I'll start with the obvious. Every story ever written has three distinct parts: the beginning, the middle, and the end. Though these parts flow seamlessly into one another, when I write, I approach each part differently.

 In the first few chapters, I introduce the characters and  the first elements  of the main plot. It's not unusual for me to rewrite that first chapter six, ten or even a dozen times.  The first few pages need to grip the reader's attention and the first few chapters need to real the reader into the story. Where to start is always the major question. I want to engage the reader, so I need action, intrigue, or personal drama in that first scene, but I also need the main characters to appeal to the reader while remaining mysterious.

 

In the middle part, I develop the main plot and the main characters while weaving in the secondary plots and the secondary characters. Every scene adds details, and while it may provide answers of some sort,  it generates other questions or makes the reader questions these "answers". I like to end each chapter in such a way that the reader will want to read "just one more chapter" before going to bed. I don't do as much rewriting before moving to the next scene (compared to the first part  where I won't write the next scene until I'm first-draft satisfied with the previous one), but I  often go back to these scenes to add, remove, or change details to reflect the direction the story is taking. It never ceases to amaze me that characters I create in my mind can argue with me and make me rethink a scene.

In the last few chapters, which I'm writing right now in my upcoming novel Mishandled Conviction, I tie all the loose ends,  bring the story to a satisfying resolution, and give the characters the ending they deserve. I feel good and content when I finish a story, and I want my readers to feel the same way. No cliffhanger, unanswered question, or heartbroken ending. This is probably the part in which I do the less rewriting as I know how I want to end it, but I'm find myself rereading a lot so I don't miss any loose ends.

I enjoy the thrill of starting a new story and the enchantment of weaving a spiderweb, but I always agonize on one sentence. The last one.

I will rewrite that last sentence of that last scene on that last page dozens of times. Just like the first chapter sets the tone of the story, the last few words will resonate in the reader's mind after the story is over.

 

Here are a few "last sentences" I wrote over the last decade:

 

- Cheers erupted in the kitchen as the man who had captured her heart sealed their wonderful future with a passionate kiss.

- Eva and Matt.

- At peace with her past, she basked in the wonderful sensations he awoke, savoring the blissful moment and the promise of a wonderful future.

- Uniting them.

- He answered with a huge bear hug, worthy of a grandfather.

- “I would be delighted.”

- A tender kiss brushed his lips.

- The promise of a wonderful future shone in his eyes—a future that began here tonight.

- Her enduring spirit soared with his, bonding them forever. 

- Smiling, she noted the patient’s vital signs on the chart, and after making sure they didn’t tangle the intravenous line, she left them to dream.

Happy Reading & Stay safe. Many hugs!

JS

 

J. S. Marlo's Website

Flowers, Past and Present by Eileen O'Finlan

Click here for purchase information

Click here to visit Eileen O'Finlan's website

I love flowers. I love them so much, I turned my front yard into a garden. I had a white picket fence with an arch installed and a landscaper design and plant perennials inside and outside of the fence. I gave him free reign with only a few non-negotiables. He had to include roses that climb the fence, honeysuckle that will wind its way over the arch, plants that will blossom at different times from spring through late fall so that something is always in bloom, and lots of color. Oh, and low maintenance. That was important because I have health issues and not nearly enough time to keep up with a garden. I'm so glad I insisted on that last point. While I've always loved working in the garden, the advance of ankylosing spondylitis has put an abrupt end to that endeavor. Fortunately, I have a neighbor who has been doing an amazing job at keeping my front yard garden in great shape. Thank you, Wendy!

In Erin's Children, my forthcoming sequel to Kelegeen, readers will meet two characters who love flowers even more than I do. Pamela and Deborah Claprood are the daughters of the family for whom Meg O'Connor works as a domestic servant. Their love of flowers leads them to set up a conservatory in the back parlor where they can indulge not only their love of gardening all year, but also engage more fully in their favorite past time – the language of flowers. 

Known as floriography, the language of flowers has been around for thousands of years but was especially popular during the Victorian era. Each flower has a meaning. It was all the rage to send one another messages through flowers, but it only worked if you were conversant in the language. Pamela and Deborah are fluent. Meg, on the other hand, being practical as ever, thinks it's ridiculous. “If you have something to say, just say it” is her opinion.

I wonder what the Claprood girls would think of my garden. Could they use cuttings from my garden to send messages? What, indeed, does my garden say?

Why do we enjoy a book?

 IT IS ALL ABOUT STORY

Plot and Story are needed to make a book. But which is most important? Which one makes the book more readable?

"A plot is not a story,

 Plots are events, stories reveal how characters react to those events." (from the website Tameri Guide for Writers, http://www.tameri.com/write/plotnstory.html

 

 

 

What is plot?

The plot is the activity that happens in the book. It’s the series of events, in whatever order, that lead the characters to the end of the book. It is the vehicle for the story. A plot, to me, is like recorded history and by itself it’s boring. It does give the story structure. But it doesn't have "soul."

What is story? 

Story is the emotion, decisions, and growth of the characters. If we like a character, we root for them, weep with them, and laugh at their jokes. We care about them and read to find out what happens to them. STORY determines our enjoyment level of a book. Story is the backbone of storytelling.

Next time you don't like a book, see if it is because the characters are "cardboard" figures pushed around in a series of events.

If you do like a book, consider the characters. Do you like the main character? Did you read to find out if they triumphed in the end? Do you feel like you know the people in the book?

Chances are you'll easily see that the STORY is what helped you enjoy the read.

Both plot and story are necessary, but strong characters trump plot every time.

Excerpt from "Tools Not Rules" A guide for beginning and stuck writers. Written by Mahrie G. Reid and coming to the market in the summer of 2020

Children in the Age Of Chivalry by Rosemary Morris

To find out more about Rosemary's books click the cover above.

Grace, Lady of Cassio, The Lovages of Cassio, Book Two, the sequel to Yvonne, Lady of Cassio, begins in the reign of Edward III. It will be published in October 2021.
At heart I am a historian. My novels are rich in historical detail which requires intensive research, some of which I am sharing in this blog.
Contrary to popular beliefs people understood the need for personal cleanliness. Even babies, who were wrapped in swaddling, were bathed regularly, but, sadly, approximately half of them died before they became adults.
Children were betrothed in infancy. The law allowed fourteen-year old boys and twelve-year old girls to marry, although co-habitation usually began when the wife was fourteen, an age at which pregnancy was encouraged.
After the age of five most of the peers’ sons and daughters went to another noble household to be brought up. At seven, boys destined for the church were tonsured and commenced a life of worship. Agricultural workers’ children worked in the fields from the same age. Craftsmen’s sons become apprentices when they were young, learned their trade and how to keep accounts. A child with a very low rank in society, who worked for a villein or poor franklin only received board and lodging.
In towns and country, the parish priest taught young children about the seven deadly sins. A surprising number of townswomen were literate. Nunneries might have poor be poor endowments, but they were keen to have schools and they educated as many girls as boys. There were formal schools in most towns but only for the minority who could afford the cost Cathedrals, Benedictine monasteries, and friaries often had schools attached to them, so did city churches. It was from such establishments that the clerks and clergy and the fourteen-year-old undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge were drawn. However, the custom was for private tutors to educate great lord’s offspring.
I believe most parents wanted the best for their children. Some parents refused to punish them. Others applied brutal punishment. There were many manuscripts with different advice about how to bring up the young. A common belief was that a good father would apply the rod to instil fear of breaking the law – from the age of seven a child could be hanged for theft. Some mothers beat their daughters until they cried for mercy. In some people’s opinion, a lenient parent was considered to neglect his or her duties. In such circumstances, although children were instructed to love and honour their parents it must have been impossible.
In the age of chivalry, boys worked from the age of seven and were liable to serve in an army from fifteen onward. At the battle of Crecy, sixteen-year old Prince Edward commanded the vanguard. Can you imagine such a young commander leading troops into battle in the 21st century?
I believe most parents wanted the best for their children. When those placed in other households came home several times a year to visit them. I like to imagine these were happy occasions. The third Edward and his queen, who loved their children, were never parted with them at home or abroad for longer than necessary.
To conclude, I cried when I read Gawain’s heart-breaking poem about his pearl, his precious daughter Marguerite, who died before she was two,

www.rosemarymorris.co.uk

http://bookswelove.net/authors/morris-rosemary


Fathers.