The Joys of Focus

It’s January, a new year with new goals…and all the other ones I brought with me from 2018.  Are we all feeling intimidated yet?  I know I am.  I had a good chat yesterday with a friend who is much wiser than me.  She’s also a writer (link below).  We talked about goals and how to prioritize the things I want to do, have to do and should do.  When you have an intense day job and a limited amount of spare time, it’s hard to see the difference sometimes.

Here’s the new plan, no dates given purposely (except for A Family Affair).  Pure Red Sand: A Family Affair launches on March 23 so getting that ready to go is my first priority.  Then I’m off to get my website launched.  Right now, A Good Idea Publications is just me but I’m hoping to expand in the future.  So you can stay tuned for that.  It’ll be a base for you to find me and eventually other authors.  There will be links to this blog, my twitter and facebook accounts.  But also how to buy my books, bios and other little treats like free stories to read.

I’m also working on a contemporary romance.  It’s a big departure from the serious nature of the Pure Red Sand series but it was written around the same time. It was a way to escape into something a little frivolous.  But, you know, there had to be some serious things to work through too.  It’s a solid story.  So if you’re looking for something a little lighter, you can check that out in the months to come. Working Title: Emily Dorais.

I’m going to be at the Geek Market on March 23 and 24 at the Nepean Sportsplex.  I’ll be launching A Family Affair the same day so I urge you to come by and pick up your copy while you check out some of the other artists (links to my friends’ sites below).  This is my only sale so far this year.  I’ll be at Romancing the Capital in August if you want to say hi, but only as a participant.

Happy February and I hope 2019 continues to be kind to you all.

 

The Wise Friend:

https://susanajennings.com

 

Friends at Geek Market:

9five7 Pyrography:

https://www.deviantart.com/9five7?fbclid=IwAR3to6OnGoOYEAG13SwvyuSfhi029j-VxCh9KHbt8jQ_eAZY5V3ZJmz93go

Stark-Rogers Initiative:

https://www.facebook.com/StarkRogersInitiative2016/

Year End Round Up

Well, it’s nearly the end of the month and here we are.  All delighted to be alive and still writing.  2018 was a very busy year for me.  In the spring, I released the second book in the Pure Red Sand series, Uncomfortable Truths.  This book and the first one are both available on amazon.

I’ve also been writing all year and finished my historical novel a couple of weeks ago.  This was one of the hardest works for me.  For the first time, I experienced a real bout of writer’s block.  It took months to pass and in the end the only thing that did it was trying out another non-literary creative outlet.  I started cross-stitch and made a Christmas present for my mother, a bunch of pansies.  I can talk about it now since she has it.

Now I’m back at the third book in the Pure Red Sand series.  Hoping to have that one out early in the new year.

2019 should bring a website and work on some new books. I’ll have to get back to “Julianne” and there’s a contemporary romance in the works as well.  I’ve also been working away on short stories and another novel that take place on Mars.  Hope the sand hasn’t washed out of your head just yet.

In fact I had better get back to work…

Broken Promises and Learning to Breathe

I promised readers two books before the end of December.  (Sorry, that’s running into 2019)  I had my first real bout of writer’s block this year.  It was like every sentence I eked out took a part of myself.  Layers of muscle and blood to create a paragraph.  It was slow and painful.  I worried that I would never find “the flow” again.  That maybe I was done, had written everything I was allowed.  Or maybe I’d wasted my time and that had finally run out.  To say I was worried was an understatement.  To the point where I even stopped writing this post…for a whole month.

Okay.  Perspective.  I’ve got a bit more now.  There’s lots of things I could say about this process.  That you can’t rush it.  That I can’t write anything soul stretching to a deadline.  Mostly, I want to tell you that I’ve learned to breathe.  No, I’m not going to have two more books ready this year. You’ll have to be patient with me a little longer if you’re one of the people waiting.  What I can promise you is that I am continuing to give my all.  Despite an intense new job and dealing with mental illness, I’m writing.  Because to not write would be like not breathing.  We all know how that ends.  So I’ll keep writing and, hopefully, you’ll keep reading.

I have a little treat to help tide you over.  The following is the first page of Pure Red Sand: A Family Affair (Coming 2019).  There will also be some of Julianne in the next few weeks.

Questions?  Thoughts?  Encouragement?  Please reach out!

 

The wind swept across the red desert as it had for millions of years before humans had ever alighted and would continue to do so for millions of years after the last traces of their civilization had been consumed by the sand.  The haze faded from the horizon for a brief moment, exposing no footsteps but the traces of tire marks on the rockier patches leading to the horizon.  The wind drifted along this artificial trail, winding amongst the rocks and gathering sand up only to leave it to rest again. It settled on the rocks, on the trail and finally on the hands that reached up in silent vigil to the sky. Weathered and dried to mere husks, the remains of humanity at the bottom of the ravine might have been a final reminder of what was to come until the wind blew again and obscured them from sight.

 

Chapter One:

Nadine jerked awake.  There was violence, something burning.  Where was Sven?!  There was pain and she couldn’t move. She needed to move, get away.  She blinked against the quickly dissipating vision and realized she could only see out of her left eye, staring at a bright white light. She blinked the tears away and finally made out a moving wall.  Walls don’t move.  She tried to speak but her mouth was dried out and there was a tube there.  What had they done to her?  Had the men from Earth finally tracked her down?  Trying to spit it out, she gagged instead.  Then there was a strange woman in a medic uniform over her.  The woman’s teeth shone brightly against her dark skin as she smiled and said something in a reassuring tone but Nadine couldn’t quite make it out.  She didn’t feel any calmer.  Then everything went black again.

Finding Ways to Connect

I started my twitter account as a way to reach out to people, to get my words out there in some capacity. After all, without social media, I’ve been told there isn’t much point. I’m not very good at it.  I find it hard to promote myself.  No, that’s a lie, I find it damn near impossible.  But I keep trying because stopping is never an option.  But I recently watched as a well-known celebrity, that I follow because of their messages, left Twitter.  That has me suddenly wondering if the pendulum of social media is swinging the other way.  Should I perhaps be looking for more face-to-face opportunities, trying to convince people to buy my book at conventions, book stores and craft markets?  (No, really, I am asking you.)

But maybe that’s all tied in with why do people write, why do painters paint etc.  Why do humans create?  I think we’re all creative in some way.  Some people show it in the way they dress or do their makeup.  Some of us just happen to be a little quieter in how we’re putting ourselves out there.  My friend was given a beautiful cross stitched panel that reads something along the lines of: Writing is easy.  You just sit down at the typewriter and bleed.  It really is like that.  Your pour your heart out on a page, digital or otherwise.  If you don’t, it’s not sincere and believe me, readers know. So, once you’ve put your heart on a piece of paper and copied it many times, how do you “market” that?  How do you take the rejection of something that is integrally you? (No, I don’t know how to do that.  No answers here.)

I think it’s a lot like online dating.  If you’re married/coupled up/not interested, you might not get this.  The whole “modern dating” thing is so very confusing.  You put yourself out there and then people just don’t acknowledge you.  I found this really hard on Plenty of Fish.  I would message people and not get a response.  I got used to it but realized anew how much I disliked it every time I tried to explain to someone that the constant rejection was “normal.”  It was putting your heart out there in small ways and getting stepped on over and over.  And I wonder why I have trouble believing in love ever happening for me?

So yes, writing, love, life. I think it’s all about the fear of reaching out and handing people parts of your heart.  The waiting to see if they like it or not.

Long and, Perhaps, a Little Late

Place

I listened to a great presentation on this topic by Derek Künsken (https://derekkunsken.com/index.html/) recently.  To the point where I wasn’t sure I had anything to offer.  However, here we are.  Because I have to believe that even when we, as writers, discuss the same topics, we do so in a slightly different way.  Otherwise, why would we tell stories?

As I’m sure you know, if you’ve read the earlier blog posts, I’m a very character centered writer.  It’s the people and social interactions that fascinate me.  Well, with that in mind, perhaps you’re as confounded as I am as to why I locate so much of my fiction in space.  Wouldn’t it be easier to locate it in Ontario, Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador? (Even the ubiquitous SomeCity, USA?) I guess.  But then I would be confined by history, society, potentially even current politics (Best not to get me started there).  A reviewer of one of my earliest submitted Mars stories once wrote that the piece could easily have taken place in a Warsaw Ghetto during World War Two, but that placing it on Mars gave me freedom, unconstrained by the history.  Maybe for me, science fiction is my freedom.

So, yes, how easily I digress.  Characters/people are my element of choice.  But I can’t write much inside of a bubble.  There has to be a world, space, in which they interact.  You may see that Warsaw Ghetto, you may see Fort McMurray, Alberta, in there.  That’s all fine with me.  As long as you’re willing to come on the trip.

Example: An Expensive Retreatintroduced people to my colony on Mars.  Something changing by the day I should note (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44952710).  But I can’t go back and change twenty years of story development that easily.  So, I’ll persist in my ‘reality’ and figure out how to incorporate the above.  I can already think of stories of water chasing ‘cowboy-esque’ heroes racing across the desert as mechanical nomads.  But the way it is now, a fledgling society just getting to its collective feet; is this not a reflection of Nadine?  It is her growth through the book that allows her to become the governor at the end. To stand on her own two feet and say this isn’t the Mars I want to live in.  So, let’s figure out how to change it. (A call to us about our world perhaps? You can find anything you want once you’ve written it.)

Mars is described in how it’s written on the faces of the people that live there.

Terran B is a new-ish project I’ll be going back to in 2019.  It’s not in my Mars universe or the one we live in now.  For that one, place is only what is necessary.  The stone walls cause claustrophobia or security. It is unfinished, so I have not seen it all through Terese’s eyes yet.  I can only describe what she sees.

Practicality:  You do need some basics.  Does your story take place in England? Outer Space? Grenada? How you can develop your location is heavily influenced by where they find themselves. Oxygen isn’t a problem in Grenada but, depending on the time period, space flight might be.  Much as I would love to travel to every place on Earth where I have set characters, my bank account doesn’t agree.  Luckily, this wonderful internet is a vast and wonderful resource (as long as you avoid the commentary below some news stories).  I can see envelopes from 1892 and the weather in Grenada in September.  I can see the landscape of Mars and watch her two moons orbit overhead (thanks, Ken).

This post has gotten long. As a little reward for sticking around as long as you have, here’s a couple of snippets about place that I’ve written.  Hope you enjoy!

 

An Expensive Retreat (Through Nadine’s childhood bedroom window):

She slumped back down on the bed and looked out the window. Gradually the noises in the house receded and she was alone with her thoughts. Slowly, at first, people began to come out of their houses. They passed each other on the street, stopping to talk. She could see people laughing and generally getting on with their day. There was no one carrying a water jug though so she quickly checked the bathroom. The water was running again, low pressure but running. The sun had fully risen now and as it reflected off the courtyard walls and sand, it took on a faintly red hue. She imagined that somewhere poets had made a marvel of that colour but it seemed familiar, the colour of home. All the houses had faded over time to match the sand and only the dark grey roofs stood out. There were little swatches of colour though. Some people had hung laundry in their courtyards; children were playing with a red ball in the street and blue fuel canisters stood next to the houses she could see. Someone farther up the street had painted their door a bright sunshine yellow. The world perhaps wasn’t as monotonous as she thought.

 

Terran B and the Asteriod Belt (Terese’s first view of her underground prison):

For the first time, the reality of where she was sunk in.  The tunnel arched well over her, the damp stone for enough apart that she wasn’t claustrophobic. Dim lights hung above them from frayed wires.  The whole place reeked of temporality, not somewhere she would have visited before, much less stayed in.

“Come with me.  I’ll get you sorted out with the rest of them.”  [Lily’s] voice was hard and tired in the gloom.  “They died in the crash?”

“No.  I didn’t crash.”  The certainty in her voice steadied her body somewhat.

The woman stopped short.  “What?”

“I couldn’t have crashed.  We were too far out.  I don’t know what hit us, both times, but I definitely didn’t crash.”

The first sense of uncertainty in the older woman’s voice.  “You’d better talk to the others.”  She pulled a time piece out of a pocket.  “They’ll be out soon enough.”  She backtracked through the tunnel and took another offshoot.  Terese was lost by the third turn.  Hander would have been better situated.  Almost anyone would have.

 

Julianne (Robert’s arrival in his new ‘home’):

Robert sighed and stepped down from the carriage, stiff body protesting.  The gentle slope that led to the house had seemed quaint while on the cart but felt uncomfortable as he staggered over the deep pit and towards the door.  Even the beauty of the house diminished, the closer he came to the structure.  White paint peeled from the frames and doors.  The gardens in front of the structure revealed themselves as merely weeds leaned haphazardly against each other.  With a look of disgust, Robert stepped up to the door, unsure whether he should walk in or knock.  He settled after a moment on a sharp rap, forcing the slightly warped door inward.  He entered a spacious foyer, the coolness against his face welcome.  The blue and white tile and accented walls rose above him to create an airy feel to the structure.

 

 

Questions?  Send me all of them!

More Words…

Writing isn’t always easy.  Sometimes it’s hard work and other times it’s as blissfully simple as breathing.  In the last couple of months, I’ve been working very hard. Unfortunately, to the cost of reaching out to you, to a lack of social media in general.  But I’ve done it because I believe that this is all making art. I might be silent but I trust that you understand the payout will be worth it. So here goes.

April 21, 2018 is the release date for Pure Red Sand: Uncomfortable Truths.

If you’ve read An Expensive Retreat, you will definitely have questions.  In this book, I’m going to answer some of them and create others. A little faster paced than the first book, in this one we’re going back to Earth.  This is a little snippet of what to expect. (I’ll try and post some more across social media leading up to the release.)

In this scene, Sven meets one of the medics from the hospital in Stalear to find out what happened to the 112 people who were left behind:

           She sat quietly for a moment but she still fidgeted with her coat and the edge of the table. When she looked up, some of the wariness had returned to her face. “Look, I’ve been well paid to keep my mouth shut and stay out of this mess. I have everything I need here. I won’t pretend that life is good because when you’ve seen what I have, you can’t live a normal life again. But it’s my life and it’s all I have. I’m starting to think this might have been a mistake.”

        “You keep saying that you want to talk about it. What will it take? I don’t have money. I told you everything I know about the abandonment and about your friends. You’re the one who agreed to this meeting. You contacted me. I’m here and listening.”

        She slumped back down but finally nodded. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

        “Everything you can tell me about the abandonment.”

She sat up straighter, glanced around the room, and rubbed her arms as if she were cold.     “Cameras?”

        “No. I randomly chose the room and did not take the first one they offered. I came here immediately. I will record your story on audio and take a couple of notes but there’s nothing secret. My datapad has a filter so no one can pick up the signal and the recording will be encrypted. This is as safe as I can make it and I’ve done it before. Are you willing?”

        “What do you know?”

Sven watched her for a minute. She was stalling and he couldn’t figure out what it was going to take. Everyone else had been willing to spill everything they knew from the second they came in. Maybe she would be more willing to talk to Nadine? Or was he just trying to get out of doing it alone?

        “Okay, this is how it works, Claire. You know you want to tell me everything. You can drag this out as long as you want but I can promise you, it’s never going to get any easier to live with until it’s out there.”

        “You can’t know that.”

        “You’re right. But I do know that’s what everyone else told me.” He gave her a moment. “Are you ready?” He was pushing her but he was so close to getting her story and to knowing what happened that he didn’t want to let it go.

        “You know what was left behind, don’t you?”

        “Yes.”

        “God, I hope we all rot in hell for this.” She took a deep, ragged breath, leaned forward to rest her arms on the table and began to speak slowly.

*

I’ve been working really hard on “Julianne” and I’m really excited about the progress I’m making.  I’ll try and share a little more of that project as it comes together. (I’m just past halfway to the finish.)  Plus, in September or October, you can look forward to the conclusion of Nadine’s story in “A Family Affair.”

There will also be at least two more titles coming in 2019.  More on those once I survive these.

Ottawa people – Stay tuned for news of a book launch in April.  As soon as I know more, I’ll let you know.

Newfoundland folks – I plan to be in your province in May.  I’ll arrange an event* to celebrate the first two books if there’s interest.

So now the ball is in your court.  If you want an event, let me know through email, facebook or twitter.  I want to hear from you lovely folks!

 

*Readings, Q&A period and anything else I can manage.

Let’s Talk about Place!

Describing the setting of any of my works is my own private hell.  I have a movie in my head and I can see where my people are and what’s going on there.  The most important part is the characters so why do I need to describe where they are.  After all, my readers are “watching” the same movie, aren’t they?

Yes, you’ve got it.  Unless everyone woke up this morning with telepathy and no one told me, there’s a hitch in my theory.  Psst, the secret is, no one else is seeing the movie and without some basic structure I’ve left people hanging in a grey void.  Trust me, they don’t like it out there.  I’ve tried dragging some of them out and paid the price.  So many tiny bits of story that have characters shaking their heads, saying no, this doesn’t float for us.

But how do I find the happy medium?  I don’t want to get so caught up in description that I lose the point, the plot, the people…hell, my readers.  (Don’t worry, I’ve expanded into a painful minimalism there.  I don’t run the risk of being the next Tolkien.)  Not to disparage him of course.  I enjoy his work immensely.  It’s just not my style and I’m sure mine would not have been his…

Okay, I wandered off in a tangent as I do when writing these things.  Where were my notes, otherwise known as the first draft?  I still struggle with making sure that some of my vision of place comes through.  When I write stories based on Earth, it’s okay to say “it took place in Grenada in 1892” because people can image search Grenada and think, oh okay, I get some of it now.  Then I only need to describe the house, the people, a small world.  With the Mars trilogy, it’s a big world.  Not just the one that Nadine lived in but also Sven.  The one where people like Anna had a place and Karl, a history, before we met them.  Yeah, it got big and thinking about trying to do that again is scary as hell.  So, if you have a little bit of world building fear or maybe setting paranoia, read on and I’ll do my best to give you some ideas to chew over.

Remember when I said that you needed to make sure the character was real before you started writing them?  The place is the same and everyone is going to do it slightly differently.  Maybe you’ve decided to skip the character building until you have a place to put them in.  That’s totally fine and I’ve known others who followed that path.

An Expensive Retreat started out as a short story and then several short stories, all taking place in the same town with the same struggles.  I even draw a map for myself, so far the only one I created.  It was really poorly done and I don’t think anyone ever needs to see it.  After all, it was only for me.  I drew bad pictures of houses while I wrote the novel, imagined streets, tried to smell what they would.  I tried to go to Mars in my imagination.  And then in the second novel, I sent myself back to Earth.  But not an Earth I recognize, another foreign place that I had to build to some extent.

Use your senses.  It was hot on Mars, a dry heat that seeps through your clothes, your skin and warms your very bones.  I’ve felt heat like that sometimes although I’m definitely a northern climate kind of person.  I used it though.  I’ve stood on the sidewalks of big cities and had to breathe in the dank air, the humidity and the smell of people, of things long abandoned and food lost to memory.  I’ve taken in the worst of those and I gave them to Sven, to Nadine to experience.  They made my world real.  The whistle of endless wind on Mars, an echo of that from the east coast.  The taste of dry bread and crisp apples, my own experiences too.  The hardest one for me was touch.  The feeling of fabric against her face when Nadine rests her head against Sven’s shoulder.  Those sorts of things could be replicated.  But I am not my characters.  I’m not going to react to them in the same way.

So, figure out what it smells like in your place.  Eat the food and listen to the birds or the flying cars or the carnivorous slugs.  What colours are things?  Does everyone share the same sensory experience or does that change?  The world is yours to build, to create, even in the current world, to offer.  Make sure your people fit.

I write things down because it makes it easier for me.  Whether you describe something on paper, digitally or inside of a memory, just make sure it’s real.

More to Come

In November, I had the great pleasure to meet Charles de Lint for the second time (If you don’t know who he is, drop everything and head over to http://www.facebook.com/Charles-de-Lint)  (Trust me, it’s worth it).  This was a book sale and the audience was slow.  In a period of quiet, he spoke at length with me and gave me some wonderful advice.  While I haven’t taken all of the steps he suggested, one of the things he mentioned was about having a larger library of books available.  For some of you who may not know me personally, I do have a number of completed novels under my belt and I continue to write.  So, is it possible to offer you more choices?  Yes.

With this in mind, in 2018, I will release three more titles.  For those of you enamoured of my Pure Red Sand series set on Mars, this is very good news.  This speculative fiction trilogy will be complete by the end of this year.  Look for the second book, Uncomfortable Truths, to be released in the spring.  By fall, the third book, A Family Affair will bring a conclusion to Nadine and Sven’s story (Of sorts.  More on that later).  By the end of the year (and especially for those who are not big fans of speculative fiction), I will be releasing Julianne.  A historical fiction novel set on the island of Grenada in 1892; it’s a love story and an exploration of sanity in the Victorian period.

In the meantime, send me your questions, your opinions and your thoughts.  I don’t write in a vacuum and I love to talk about the process.  For anyone looking for some thoughts on writing a novel, continue to check out the blog.  I’ll talk to you soon!

Novel Tips

I volunteer on the board of directors for the Ottawa Independent Writers (https://www.ottawaindependentwriters.com).  One night, I spoke with some people at a meeting who suggested that they wanted to learn the basics of writing a novel and what was the best venue?  I didn’t have an answer for that because I am self-taught for the most part.  But what I do have is my experience.  I have been writing for over twenty years.  It started out with poetry and I gradually added short stories, novels and now blog posts.  I’m learning by reading books (of course) and trial and error.  So for the next few blog posts, I’m going to talk about ‘How To Write a Novel,” in my own style.  Hope you’ll stick around for the ideas, even if you aren’t a writer.  You never know, you might become one.

Part One: The character(s)

So you have this great idea that you want to turn into a book.  It’s going to be absolutely wonderful and you can’t wait to get started.  So do it, start writing.  Write out a starting paragraph, even a chapter.  You can do your character development at the same time or before you write.  It’s entirely up to you.  But the character is everything.  So much so, let’s stop using the word ‘character.’  I don’t want to hear about these people as if they were fictional.  I want you to convince me that they’re real.  So how do we do that?  Get to know your character, first and foremost.  I’m not suggesting that you need to know how they celebrated their twelfth birthday or which vegetables they prefer.  But know their important aspects, their personality.  This will help you when you start throwing them into situations (a future post).

An Example:

I wrote a book called Pure Red Sand: An Expensive Retreat.  Actually, I wrote three books with these characters but you’ve probably only seen one, unless you’re an early follower with a Kindle.  I started this novel on a laptop on a small island in the Labrador Sea.  It was the first time I’d just decided to write a book.  I had the benefit that the book was VERY loosely based on a short story.  But very quickly I realized that the characters were too one dimensional to transfer from a four page short story to a 900 plus page trilogy.  They just weren’t strong enough.  So here’s what I decided while I was writing the first chapter.  

Nadine was going to be a strong woman.  She’d grown up that way and had little choice.  But there were repercussions for that kind of strength, in her life anyway.  She always made the difficult decisions, looking at things logically and with the best of intentions but maybe not with emotions at heart.  That might have made her a great medic.  But it also made her prickly with other people, unwilling to trust and maybe even reluctant to take on anything resembling a greater responsibility.  After all, she’d made a success out of her life.  Wasn’t that enough?  As many of you know, it wasn’t.

So once I had my character written, once I knew her, then I would know how she was going to react in certain situations.  For instance, when strangers came to her home, would she welcome them in or turn them away?

An Exercise:

Here are some questions you might want to consider when thinking about your character.  Whether you keep your ideas in your head (like me) or you want to write them out, this might help:

Are they of their own time? (Do you have time travel/a new world/an adventure?)  If they are, then you can take a lot of things for granted.  If not, keep in mind how people react to new things.

What things do they have in common with you? They say write what you know.  But I see a lot of scope in not being me.  That said, I find it easier to write the character when I have something in common with them.  Like Nadine, I always wanted to be strong.  I could empathize with her efforts and her mistakes.

What’s their emotional state?  People who have a fairly stable life are going to react differently to a crisis than those who are already having crises of their own.

How did they grow up?  Did they have economic/social stability?  Were they loved?  We’re all heavily influenced by our past.

Where are they now?  Nadine was a loner and a little anti-social in the beginning.

What kind of social network do they have? Are they close to family and friends or separate from those around them?

Keep adding your own questions until you have your people!

News:

If you’re in the Ottawa area on December 9, 2017, I will be at the Indie Author Book Fair. St David and St Martin Church Hall, 444 St Laurent Blvd. 2-6pm.  Come visit and pick up a couple of holiday presents.  A book makes a wonderful gift.

 

Down the Rabbit Hole

I watched a documentary, on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnF6Wej3YO8&t=117s), recently about the origins of romance in Britain.  While I put this on as a background to chores I was completing, I found the topic interesting, especially where it was related to books, novels, to the story (ie. pre 1920ish).  From their perspective, society learned about romantic love through the stories they read en masse.

It’s not the first time I’ve thought about or written about the power of the story but it was an interesting new take on it.  If we can change society (at whatever pace), that’s a heavy weight to bear.  I am definitely not suggesting that I can or that anyone else will.  But art does have an influence.  I don’t see it as a responsibility or a duty though.  Perhaps more of an opportunity.  Charles de Lint said “all endeavour is art when rendered with conviction” (1996/1999).  We can make artistic gestures out of our everyday (consider the Japanese tea ceremony versus pouring a cup of tea).  So this is not just for people who consider themselves artists, but maybe for everyone to be aware when we create.  Everything we put out there is a manifestation of ourselves, of our lives and of the material we take in.  Sometimes I refer to taking in too much as ‘over stimulation’ and that I need to take time to assimilate it (just how I work).  In a way, it’s an awareness of our every action in the present.

Well, that went down a rabbit hole, now didn’t it?  Hopefully you’re all still with me here.

I want to make sure that I continue to create.  Not just because I don’t believe I have a say in the matter.  But perhaps because I want to.  Because I want to share the stories with you.  I think, deep down under my neurotic self-doubt, that they’re worth reading.  If I can get caught up during editing and wonder what will happen next, maybe I can keep your attention for a while.  Maybe until the end of the story…

 

NEWS:

If you’re in the Ottawa area, I will have a table at the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair (http://smallpressbookfair.blogspot.ca) on November 25.  If you’re in the area, please drop by.  There will be a good crowd of publishers, authors and bookmakers to meet.  Plus, admission is free!