Mental Can Openers & Writer's Hash ~ The Writer's Gift

      Christmas, that time of year when we stop to consider what we cherish, and what we want to give.  I cherish words – words, and the stories they tell.  Stories were my refuge when I was young and hurting, so stories are what I want to give to others today.

      Words can communicate an idea.  But they can do more than that.  Words can stand up, grab a crowbar and lantern, then burst into someone’s darkened soul.  Words can make ideas sizzle like a branding iron, or words can draw out poison like carbolic salve on a wound. 

      Soft words can swaddle you in reassurance as tenderly as a mother wraps her wiggling nestling.  Action words can be harnessed like huskies, pulling the reader around each dark tree, over each new drift, and finally over the frozen water with an ominous snap.  Stories with ice-cracking plots, mercurial characters you love – or love to hate – quicksilver settings.  Wonderful.  But wonderful stories take crafting, and the artist’s skill.  Skill I did not start out with. 

      In the early 90's, I acquired rejections shoveling out stories like shoveling out a hen house.  Both products smelled the same.  A Christmas story that didn’t just fail, mind you; starving buzzards circled, descended, then left it untouched.  One manuscript regarding fishing sent maggots crawling away.  After a quick read, they took the coward’s way out, leaping into a bucket of Pinesol.  The EPA considered paying me not to write, to save clean-up super-funds. 

      After my writer’s soul had been scorched and kicked like an asbestos soccer ball in the satanic semi-finals, I came across a particular word I had initially ignored.  Crafting.  Sounding like some paint-pottery class, hope now sprang from this word.   How do those paid pros do it?

      Craft is a dance.  It looks effortless, but techniques and practice have gone ahead.  Words Box Step, rather than trip along.  Sentences that sashay, not wander.  Paragraphs waltz, describing marble-floor settings and characters cast chandelier-shadows, until the whole story magically picks you up like Cinderella arriving at the ball.  If the crafting is good, life’s ugly pumpkins suddenly transform into glorious carriages. 

      Craft is timing.  A story that pulls, choosing the magnetic word at that iron moment.  It doesn’t rush forward before the heart’s compass is ready; it doesn’t drag until the mind’s attraction fades.

      Craft is dialogue.  Not chat.  Not, “Good morning. How’s the dig coming?  Okay.  I broke my shovel.”  I want dialogue that forces the Sphinx to blink.  I want banter that reaches out and grabs your throat like a mummy.  “Tell me, Sullah.  Why would a righteous God allow his law to be buried in Egyptian sand?” 

      “He wishes to see who will seek the ark, Indy.  He notes who will dig.  But not with this broken shovel, my friend.”

      Craft is plotting. Events setting out on a wild sea hunt.  Turning points so sharp they harpoon the audience, drawing them into the chase.  Mystery that beckons like Ahab, bound to the pale prize itself. A climax that renders hearts to their essence, leaves mouths dry with Ahab’s thirst, and drives readers to pursue the elusive whale lurking below those crisp, white pages.

      But crafting, skill, and artistry alone can’t make this magic happen.  No matter how cleverly I weave words or stitch sentences together, I must rely on God’s Spirit to fashion the garment through me.  He must awaken the desire for the story.  It matters not how skillful the prophet’s parable if the people’s ears have become dull. 

      Authors, don’t leave your talent forgotten under your tree this year.  Give yourself the gift of crafting words.  There are excellent books, seminars, and classes full of advice and examples.  Topics abound, including how to hook plots, fashion characters, make a scene, time tension, and doctor dialogue. Challenging word exercises abound.  Make sure one (or more) of these grace your tree.  Feed your talent, so your talent can feed others for years to come. 
~ Brad

Guest Post by Peter Perrin & His Debut Book ~ Grace's Turmoil

Hello, L.A., Thank you for having me as a guest on your blog. 

A few years ago, my then fourteen-year-old granddaughter self-published two novels on Amazon. Inspired by this I thought I should have a go myself. After all they do say everyone has a book in them. I thought that at the very least it would be a good mental exercise for my then sixty-nine-year-old brain, and might help with my failing memory.

How much mental exercise it would entail I could never have imagined. Sadly, I’m not sure it has helped the memory much, but it has given me a new skill to learn and I’m told there’s a certain joie de vivre about me nowadays, so that must be good.

I believed the younger generation thought most people over the age of sixty had one foot in the grave, and were just killing time until the grim reaper claimed them. But, I knew that wasn’t the case for many people, so I looked for a way to write something to show them in a positive light.

The way I came up with was to write a romance with the hero and heroine being over sixty. I certainly managed that as I ended up with the heroine being aged sixty-eight and the hero even older, at seventy-one.

And, I came up with the idea of my characters being residents at a retirement village that was pretty much a private 5* hotel. My only concern was that the environment might prove restrictive to me as a writer or put readers off. But I found there was a lot of scope for activities and relationships and the idea seemed to work.

Unfortunately, I had virtually no previous writing experience or training and no idea about planning, outlining, plotting etc. It seems I am a natural ‘pantser’ i.e. I just let the book develop, rather than planning it out. So, the book started off as a series of conversations, and developed slowly from there. Sadly, my inexperience meant that a lot of what I wrote wasn’t very good, and I had to throw away quite a bit of material as the book developed and the story just didn’t work properly. This meant the book took a lot longer than I had initially expected it to.

I submitted a sample chapter to a publisher to see if it fitted with the sort of work they published, and it did. But, they said the chapters—at an average of 4,000 words each—were way too long. So, I chopped them all in half and started to tidy them up. After a year of rewriting and polishing the manuscript I submitted it and ten months ago I won a publishing contract. Now, at the age of seventy-three, my debut novel, ‘Grace’s Turmoil’ has recently been published as Book One of a series called ‘Not Too Old for Love.’ Initially, the deal with my publisher was just for an eBook, with the possibility of a paperback version if sales were good enough, quick enough. But now I know that once it is on Amazon—any day now—it will also be available from them in paperback form.

It seems that over recent years more and more readers of romance have become frustrated that all the heroines they read about were aged about twenty, whilst they themselves were on average at least ten years older. Now it seems that there are a growing number of authors writing for this new market, which seems to be being referred to as Seasoned Romance, Second Chance Romance, and the like. I’m proud to be a part of that growing band of authors trying to respond to this demand.

Blurb:

Divorced and emotionally damaged, artist Grace Stollery wants nothing more than to spend her semi-retirement painting and let time heal her emotional scars.

But when dashing widower Alfred Nobel moves into her retirement village he turns her life upside down and her heart inside out by awakening feelings she wants to keep dormant.

Alfred quickly sets out to woo Grace and slowly she warms to him. But the village’s resident femme fatale wants him for herself. Will she succeed in driving a wedge between Alfred and Grace?

Buy: 

Amazon | Devine Destinies

Bio:

Peter Perrin writes sweet, seasoned romances involving larger-than-life mature characters who will make you rethink your views on older people in a positive way. His characters are mature in age but not necessarily in their behaviour. They may not be in the first flush of youth but that doesn’t stop some of them acting like hormonal teenagers.

Peter was born in Romford, in the county of Essex, near London, England. For nearly twenty years he has lived with his wife of almost forty years in a quiet suburb of Swindon, in the county of Wiltshire, in England. He is a father and grandfather.

He is a former member of The Royal Air Force who has served in the UK, and in Madagascar, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia. He was also stationed for two years in Aden—which nowadays is part of Yemen.

For almost fifteen-years’ service in The Royal Air Force, Peter worked in Engineering, Quality Control, and Procurement Management, not to mention myriad smaller jobs in between those careers.

Now retired Peter’s interests are Writing, Carp Fishing, and (despite being in his early seventies) PC and PlayStation games.

His favourite quote is “Youth passes, but with luck, immaturity can last a lifetime.”

Find Peter:

Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest

Take Five and Meet Author M.S. Spencer & The Penhallow Train Incident

Welcome to An Indie Adventure, M. S.  Tell us, what inspired you to write your book The Penhallow Train Incident?

Hi, L.A., thanks for hosting me on your blog.

The first year my family vacationed in the town on which Penhallow is modeled, we took a ride on the Belfast & Moosehead Lake train, which had been built to connect to the Maine Central Railroad. Now reduced to excursions, it traveled alongside the Passagassawaukeag River, ending at the tiny Brooks station. There we were treated to a mock train robbery, complete with cowboys and a sheriff. The kids loved it.  I took it as the starting point of my novel but thoughtfully added a dead body. Were the fake cowboys the culprits? You’d have to read the book to find out.

How do you use setting to further your story?

Actually, the setting is usually the catalyst for my stories. I have books set in Old Town Alexandria, Sarasota, Maine and the Middle East. I’ll want to set a story in a place, then wait for something—an event or fact—to trigger the plot.

Penhallow is based on a town where my family spent its summers. Due to its being off the tourist routes, it has maintained an old Maine feel, mixed rather ingeniously with a large contingent of recovering hippies. The term “laid-back” fits it perfectly. We like it.

A small town can be a microcosm of life. So it is with Penhallow. Most people have lived there for generations, and refer to anyone who moves to Maine from elsewhere as “from away.” Our heroine Rachel Tinker and her hero Griffin Tate are both “from away,” and are unprepared for the complexities of village gossip and scandal.

How do you construct your characters?

Most of the time they don’t let me. As I said, I start with a setting, and the characters tend to arise naturally from that setting. After the first few drafts, they settle down and start to define themselves and their relationships. They don’t even let me name them, preferring to choose their own and then forcing my unwilling fingers to tap out the keys.

In my current WIP Flotsam & Jetsam: the Amelia Island Affair, for the first time the hero took over as protagonist. Despite my best efforts, he stuck to his guns and I had to learn to write romance and mystery from a male POV.

How is your main character completely different than you?

She isn’t really. Perhaps a little softer around the edges, but she is an academic like me, a no-nonsense romantic like me, a listener like me. Of course, she has a completely different name.

Tell us something about yourself we might not expect!

I have horrible stage fright. I was asked to do a radio show (I have the face for it) and was too terrified even to let my voice be public. In my undergraduate and even graduate career I deftly managed to choose courses that didn’t require an oral presentation, which is a pretty remarkable achievement if I may say so. Others may disagree.

Also, I have studied but not mastered eight languages, including English.

Give us a brief summary of the Penhallow Train Incident:

The Penhallow Train Incident

The Wild Rose Press

Murder Mystery/Romantic Suspense

334 pp.

Blurb:

In the sleepy coastal Maine town of Penhallow, a stranger dies on a train, drawing Historical Society Director, Rachel Tinker, and curmudgeonly retired professor, Griffin Tate, into a spider’s web of archaeological obsession and greed. 

With the help of the victim’s rival, they set out to locate the Queen of Sheba’s tomb. Their plans are stymied when a war erupts between the sheriff and a state police detective who want to arrest the same man for different crimes. It’s up to Rachel to solve a mystery that includes two more murders before she can unlock the soft heart that beats under Griffin’s hard crust.

To Buy:

Wild Rose Press | Amazon |  iTunes

Bio:

Although M. S. Spencer has lived or traveled in five of the seven continents, the last thirty years were spent mostly in Washington, D.C. as a librarian, U. S. Senate committee staff member, speechwriter, Dept. of the Interior staff, copy editor, birdwatcher, non-profit director, and parent. She holds a BA from Vassar College, a diploma in Arabic Studies from the American University in Cairo, and Masters in Anthropology and in Library Science from the University of Chicago.  

All of this tends to insinuate itself into her works.

Ms. Spencer has published eleven romantic suspense or murder mystery novels. She has two fabulous grown children and an incredible granddaughter. She divides her time between the Gulf Coast of Florida and a tiny village in Maine.

Find M.S.:

Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Google+ | Goodreads | Pinterest

Amazon Author Page