Tars Tarkas Jeddack of Thark and Savasana
I’ve been in a cave this week – a cave of work, of budgets, of elearning systems, of gamefication explanations and analysis, of wireframes, and harm reduction, of SBIRs NIDAs SSICs and NDRIs. Some days I live in a sea of acronyms and abbreviations. Other days the hull of my ship is made of tinsel. I am tired and not about to catch up on sleep any time soon.
Lying in savasana each day for a few minutes at the end of my yoga practice helps me to settle into myself and rest.
It has been one of those kinds of weeks. But tomorrow is Friday and new movies come out on Friday and even though I don’t go to movies much anymore (I love them but don’t have time for them) Friday has always been a joyous day for me because I can look at the reviews of movies and dream about what I would like to see. That and of course it’s the weekend.
John Carter of Mars comes out in less than a month. I have waited for this movie for almost forty years, since I read the ERB book and was first transported to Mars as a boy. I hope it will be good. I’m taking my son to see it with me.
Three words I found today in my work:
Posh
Ripping
Blighty
What words have you found in your imagination?
The Keys to the Intercom
Writers create worlds out of words. It sounds obvious but it isn’t. I didn’t realize the amount of world building that went into a historical novel until I wrote one. If you’d have asked me before I wrote Open Wounds whether I’d ever write a historical novel I’d have told you, you were out of your mind.
I just finished Garth Nix’s Mr. Monday: The Keys to the Kingdom Book 1. My son read it and told me I had to read it too… so I did. And he was right. It’s a good book. What impressed me the most about the book is the world building Nix did. He created a world in which a line of script is alive and letters changed can change life to death and visa versa. Nix’s world has its own logic to it. It makes sense out of Nothing, and Nithlings out of Nothing and Fetchers out of Nothing. It is a book that makes me see a world that I’ve never seen before – one that springs out of Nothing.
World building is not relegated only to Fantasy or Science Fiction, but also historical novels and realistic fiction. Even realistic fiction has to create a believable here and now just as historical fiction has to create a believable then and there.
I’ll give you an example. In the 1930’s-40’s the subways in New York City didn’t have intercom systems in the cars. You knew what stop you were at by the conductor shouting it out from his window and from looking out the window or door yourself. I’m betting on crowded days people missed a lot of stops. It’s a simple detail but it gives time and place and helps to build the world that Cid Wymann lives in.
When world building you create worlds out of words that readers take and surround with atmosphere, beating hearts, and long harsh howls.
Symbiotic Stew
I travelled to Phili on Monday.
I took the day off from my job to teach a 1hr distance learning writing workshop to 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th graders at three Pennsylvania High Schools. There were about 40 kids in attendance at the three sites. I taught from the UPENN distance learning center, called MAGPI and it was a very cool thing to do. Each school shows up on a huge TV screen as a small 1 foot by 2 foot rectangle. I teach from the MAGPI studio – a small ten by ten space with three cameras, my laptop and Powerpoint, some notes, and a copy of my book to read from. The MAGPI folks don’t pay me for teaching and I cover my own traveling expenses,but I get to teach classes on writing to young writers and that makes it worth every penny.
Today I talked about first lines of novels and how they start the relationship between reader and writer. I’m into this relationship idea. Readers read and interpret and writers direct the interpretation through the words they write. I know this sounds very basic – like I should have gotten this before -but I didn’t. I just had it in my head that writers wrote and readers read – separate from each other. We’re not. We depend on each other, need each other. We’re symbiotes in a way.
The kids were great and I enjoyed speaking with them. They came up with first sentences for their own to-be-written novels that were terrific. I hope to see one in book form one day. It’s the second time I’ve done a workshop with the MAGPI folks and they’ve invited me back for a third workshop in the spring.
On my way home I stopped at a nearby public library and met Dan, their YA specialist. I gave him a copy of my book for the library. He had a big smile on his face when I gave it to him.
I love libraries.
Words from W. Goldman
I’ve got inspiration on Gotteenfiction.blogspot.com. Go check it out. There are also still two writing contests open (yesterdays scrabbliscious and last Mondays prompt with Raife), a raffle for five books by the blog’s writers, and a copy of Cheryl Rainfield’s Scars.
Conspiracies, Obsessions, and Crossing Boundaries
It’s coming.
My first book festival in which I’ll be on a panel discussing a subject that has to do with my book.
I’m very excited about this. So far I’ve been to a few (3) conferences (ALA, BEA, and a NYC Dept. of Ed Librarians Conference) and each of them I’ve signed and done some author speed dating but no presenting on panels.
It seems like a cool thing that an author would do. I’m excited about it.
The Virginia Festival of the Book invited me (thanks to my great publicist JKSCommunications!) and as a Yankee, it’s a real honor to have been picked. Maybe the road trip last summer down south paid off. Whatever Goddesses were looking out for me I’m one happy camper.
I’ll be on two panels.
Panel 1: Conspiracies and Obsessions – novels of unravelling lives – with Alma Katsu, Virginia Moran, and Amelia Gray (and me). It’s an adult author line-up, not YA. I’ll have to think about the context but it sounds like a good fit for Cid Wymann and Open Wounds.
Panel 2: Crossing Boundaries – novels about family drama, love, and loss beyond borders – with N.M.Kelby, Jacqueline E. Luckett, and Elizabeth Nunez (and me). I can’t forget me. Also adult novels but I think I’ll fit in with Open Wounds just fine.
The festival is on March 21-25 and I’ll be on panel 1 on Thursday the 23 and panel 2 Friday the 24. If you’re in Charlottesille VA around then… come say hello. I’ll be the author with the big smile on his phiz.
And here’s the real kicker. The panels will be at a Barnes and Noble. They won’t carry my book normally in store (although they do sell it online) but I’m betting they carry it for the festival. Oh yeah. Uh huh. Oh yeah. I’m still stopping at indi New Dominion Bookstore – oldest in VA. That’s going to be even cooler. Maybe I can convince them to carry my book…
Here’s the link: Virginia Festival of Books
Lunievicz 