S Is For… Sapphire Dream!

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I adore gems.  Did you ever see the animated movie, The Secret of NIMH?  There’s a character of a magpie who likes, as he calls them, “Sparklies.”  Yup.  Me, to a “T”.  When we started writing the Persis Chronicles, we decided to name the different Keeps, which are essentially universities, after gems and precious stones.  As time went on, there’s even a difference between the Gem Keeps and the Stone Keeps, with the Gem Keeps perceived to be higher class or more desirable.

The next book in the Persis Chronicles is Sapphire Dream, and Rachel and I are working on final edits now so we can submit it for consideration (so please, keep your fingers crossed).  The story is about a young man named Cheula, whose first Contract didn’t go as planned.  The man with whom he Contracted was abusive and, while Cheula wanted the time to be a success, it didn’t work out and Cheula had to call the Seekers, equivalent to the police.

The most interesting part, for me, about writing this one is that there’s several elements that are directly out of real life – domestic abuse, independence, being willing and able to ask for help, and how to manage home relationships and sexuality.  Weaving those kinds of real-world things into a story is fun and rewarding because it makes it more real to me.  The characters become real people in the process.

What about you, Dear Reader?
How much “real” do you like in your fiction?

R Is For… Rhyming!

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Rhyming is language played with.  To be able to write lines that rhyme takes skill and a willingness to bat words around, form and re-form them into pleasing shapes all while creating a picture in the mind of the reader.

The best rhymes create more than one picture.  They can be funny, pithy, convey truth, pathos, be sung, be performed, but above all, they exult in the language and its usage.

My favorite poet is Ogden Nash.  He is known for his use of humor in his poems, and for making up words (like “Bryaness,” above).  But what I like most about him is his economical use of language and the way he can make something funny with a twist:

The Porcupine by Ogden Nash

Any hound a porcupine nudges
Can’t be blamed for harboring grudges.
I know one hound that laughed all winter
At a porcupine that sat on a splinter.

 

If you are a wordsmith and enjoy poems, I found a site called Vhinkle that has a nice little glossary of poetry terms, here.  You might just lose an hour or two poking around and writing your own examples, so be warned.

What about you, Dear Reader?
Who is your favorite poet?

Q Is For… Quitting Is the Only Way To Fail

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Q 2
The secret to success is to work for it and not give up.  I remember reading once, I think in one of Covey’s books, that failures have no idea why they failed, but successful people can tell you every step they took.  The lesson there is that successful people have a plan, they work the plan, and they keep going after failure.

Q 3
Being an entrepreneur is challenging.  We have to have a particular kind of naivete in the face of others’ comments that “your book will never sell,” “readers don’t want new writers,” and all the other naysayers that are trying, they say, to “help” us.   If we are daring enough to try other entrepreneurial ideas, it’s the same thing – I have a friend who wants to open a restaurant/bar and has been told a whole bunch of reasons why it’s a dumb idea.

None of those naysayers are right, but it’s hard to see that when we’re risking our reputations and sometimes real money on our dreams.  Learning to surround ourselves with people who will safeguard our baby ideas and shepherd our dreams is difficult.  Skepticism is seen as smart or wise, and the willingness to risk is seen as reckless.

Q 4

Writers become authors because we love telling stories and we love it so much that we have to do it, whether it “pays for itself” or not.  We risk putting our stories out there into the world, and we risk looking like fools.

It’s worth it.

What about you, Dear Reader?
What would you risk if you knew you could not fail?

P Is For… Publishing!

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PHa! I went in today to work on my posts for next week and thought I’d already written – and posted – today’s post.  I was in a fog yesterday, since Rachel Wilder is here for two whole weeks of vacation and work, and I have not yet recovered my brain from its preparatory blitz.

That’s one of the changes that’s happened in publishing, which is, after all, the subject of today’s post.  We’ve gotten so electronic, and life has become so 24/7 online access, that the boundaries have blurred between “work” and “play.”  In the old days, when we went on vacation, we went away on vacation – no phone, no laptop, no nothing.  Gradually that changed and now we’ve become a society of communicators – we’re now on, and expected to be available, around the clock.

I think another huge change is the migration to self publishing.  A lot of authors have made the switch in the last 18 months, people who never would have done it even two years ago.  Authors are now learning about balance in the sense that they’re deciding whether or not to go back into working with a house or whether to strike out on their own, or to blend the two depending on the project.

What hasn’t changed is the reader’s thirst for good stuff to read.  Yes, there’ve been some notable “bad books” lately, but let’s face it – readers are educated consumers in the sense that they know what they like, and, frankly, on what they want to spend money.  And that “they” for readers is really a “we,” isn’t it?  I haven’t met a writer yet who isn’t also, and first, a reader.  So we are still looking around for material that will engage us, turn us on, and make us satisfied (which suddenly sounded way more salacious than I meant it).

What about you, Dear Reader?
What changes have you seen in the last few years as regards publishing?

O Is For… On the Page!

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To boldly go… onto the page.  Journals and computers.  Which is better?  I get that question a lot from writers, as to which one to use.  Both are useful.  That’s almost always my answer.  Use whatever gets you onto the page.

…

Yup, it really is that simple.

What about you, Dear Reader?
What makes you want to get up and write?

N Is For… Nicknames!

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NNicknames have been around probably for as long as naming.  Depending on the culture of origin, the tradition varies.  Sometimes it’s the use-name that a person has with everyone.  Other times it’s something private, only used by close family and intimates.  Maybe it’s a pet name from a lover or a parent.  Whatever the source, nicknames are a very personal gift from one person to another.

My own nickname came about online when I was in a forum.  I was new to the forum and forum culture, and learning my way around.  I went by A. Catherine Noon, and assumed people would just call me Catherine.  I should point out here that I type 120 words a minute.

You probably know where this is going.  The nickname “Cat” came up, which doesn’t fit me at all.  I wondered why I couldn’t just be called Catherine, and someone said, what about Nooner?

Yeah, no.

(In case you don’t get the slang reference, a “nooner” in American slang is going home on one’s lunch hour to have sex.)

Someone else suggested, Noony, and here’s where Rachel comes in.  She liked it, along with some of the other folks, and poof.  The name stuck.

That might have been the end of it, but then Rachel and I met up outside of the forum.  We met other members too, and now meet every year to have a writing retreat and friends weekend.  Because of that, I started answering to Noony in real life, and now it’s as much my name as my, well, name.

What about you?
Do you have your nickname?  What would you pick if you could have any one you wanted?

M Is For… Mitch and Lupe!

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MI know, it’s an “m” and it would be a lot more fun to look at mancandy.  Sadly, the two guys we cast as Mitch and Lupe are models, and we don’t have permission to use their photos.  Someday, when we’re big and famous, we’ll hire our own models and have lovely photographs.  In the meantime, you’ll just have to do what you do best, Dear Reader:  use your imagination.

After all, exercise is good for us, right?

All kidding aside, Cat’s Cradle will be out this summer and since it’s about Mitch and Lupe, I figured I’d take today to share a little bit about character development.  There’s a lot of stuff out there about the subject of character, and a lot of good stuff from role playing games, not just writers.  But in some ways, all that wealth of information is too much and can overload a person just trying to figure out how to write a character – one character, one simple person to wander onto the page of story and be the vehicle for it.

Here’s one way I do it:

I like to work from image, so I’ll go onto Google and either look for a specific actor that caught my eye (and it’s embarrassing how many of them can do that, isn’t it?  Good thing there’s no such thing as mental police, or they’d find all sorts of stuff in there) or ask Google for a specific “type” – such as, male black hair.  I refine from there, finding images of people that interest me and drilling down until I find something that speaks to me.

What about you?
What’s your favorite way of creating a character, if you’re a writer; if not, what first catches your attention about a character?

L Is For… Lamiae!

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2015-04-14 LWhen writing, one needs a plausible reason for one’s plot.  If there’s a culture that does something particular, maybe reveres kittens for example, one needs to have a reason for such kitten reverence.  It needs to be convincing enough that the reader doesn’t question it, but instead thinks, why, yes, of course they revere kittens because that’s what you do in Kittenlandia.  Maybe a beloved child-queen Myleigh adored kittens but died of childhood leukemia and her last wish was that kittens would be sacred from that day forth.  Or, maybe the goddess Nephreini decreed that her sacred animal was the kitten and you could tell her devotees by their scratches.  Whatever the reason, the fact that kittens are revered becomes as obvious as the fact that the sky is blue and just as unquestioned.

When Rachel and I wrote Sealed by Fire, we needed a plausible reason why male relationships would be common and accepted in the subculture we created.  Rachel settled on the lamia myth, which is about a half-woman, half-snake creature.  There are no myths of male lamiae that we could find, so we decided that lamiae had to come from somewhere; what if male lamiae weren’t half-and-half creatures but all one, and all the other?  Meaning, they were either snake, or man; never both.  Only the women had the snake-person form.  Furthermore, the two groups kept separate from one another except at breeding time, so they lived in gender-segregated communities by tradition.

What about you, Dear Reader?
What’s your favorite fantasy book or myth?

K Is For… Kashaynu!

Noon and Wilder Posted on by

2015-04-13 KKa-what? Kashaynu. Yes, I know, what a name. He’s a Seeker in our Persis Chronicles series and I adore names, especially ones that sound good rolling off the tongue but that aren’t familiar. Kashaynu, Zeteya, Bakraynu… Rachel jokes that you can always tell the characters she named, because they have names like Brock, or Jon.  I do rush to point out that I named Teeka and Quill, and those are very simple names, but I don’t think I’ve won the argument.  Not with Kashaynu kicking up his heels in the corners.

He does have a nickname: Kasha, which is Russian for buckwheat and is a type of breakfast cereal or side dish (i.e. grains, like we have in the book).  Only problem is, only his brother and mother call him Kasha, so we’re back to where we started with a long name.  I just like them.  The fun thing about Kashaynu is he’s a Seeker, which is like a cross between an F.B.I. Agent and a street judge.  He’s authorized to carry lethal force in the form of a sword and other weaponry and he investigates serious crime.  His brother is the very fastidious and flowery Zeteya, the Contract Keeper for Emerald Keep.  Their mother is Healer Meeryn, a lovely lady who works with the Keep as well as the workers down on the strand below the Keep.

What about you, Dear Reader?
What kinds of names do you like in your characters?

J Is For… Jon

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Noon and Wilder: Stories That Make You Late For WorkJon.  He’s a cop with a psychology degree.  He left Chicago’s serial crimes division and came to Madison, Wisconsin, to work with their magical crimes division.

And did I mention, he’s pure catnip for Brock Gary, priest of one of the Gary Covens?

But Jon has a secret, and he doesn’t want Brock to find out.  Only problem is, Brock’s sister Belinda is a cop, and Jon’s new partner.

What could possibly go wrong?

Find out in our serialized free read, New World Order.