Septemberisms

It's the start of September which in its turn, is not really the start of autumn which is in its turn, my favorite season of the year. And between such things like reading about the murders of the Princes in the Tower by Richard III, reading Miss Marple mysteries aloud at midnight, scoring The Mind of the Maker with a G2 pen to mark all the best quotes, making cinnamon-sugar doughnuts, and directing and producing a mini-musical, I have had some time to write. Not quite as much time as I'd like, but it seems I'm in a reading stage of the writing which is, of course, equally important. Reading is the fuel that good writing runs on, and when I'm not reading, my engine tends to gutter. So though someone else's book is the tome in my hand these days, I am not too worried. That said, I thought it was time for some snippets so you could enjoy what writing I have done, and get a feeling for what is to come.

   She felt stronger, too, next to the baby, and strength was a thing she'd always lacked; she was only Veronique in these moments, wearing a wreath of poppies in her hair from the field near Darrow-Dwelling, and waiting for her brother, Darron, to return from his first hunt.

-The Baby

  Jamsie crossed her arms and thrust her chin at a higher angle. "Queen Victoria is quite the safest queen to have ever lived."
  "Much you know, m'lady. Why, i'faith, her every footstep is probably dogged by an assassin or four, her food hovered over with a spoonful of poison, her carriages stalked by hateful citizens who only wait for a chance to shed royal blood."

-The Baby

  Since there seemed nothing left to be said, Jamsie remained silent. What was one supposed to say to a thing like that? All the etiquette columns she'd studied in preparation for growing up neglected to cover how one should respond to a death threat.

-The Baby

  "Climbing has rather been proven to aid one's health, I believe," Ap-Brainard called back to them from a landing ahead. "Upward--it'll be bloody worth it if you've the guts to look beauty herself in the eye. Not many men have the pluck."

-The Baby

   In books they speak of certain women looking like angels; perhaps it was the other way round: perhaps angels--the best and gentlest--occasionally look like women.

-The Baby

  The Lady took a step forward, extending her pretty white hands, and when she took Jamsie's face in her hands and kissed her, the kiss was so like Mum's that Jamsie felt the ache of tears in the bridge of her nose.

-The Baby

  It hurt Jamsie to hear the light gaiety of the Queen's tone when she could see the way the poor woman chafed her wrists till the blood came rose-red to the surface of her skin.

-The Baby

  Richmond cleared his throat and opened his mouth, but a swift jab from the Admiral on his right cut the remark short, ending it in an ill-advised cough. Richmond twisted in his chair, furious and sore, but the Admiral was inspected a slice of toast held up to his nose and was, by all appearances, now quite absorbed in the study.
   "What did you mean by that?" Richmond hissed.
  "Not enough butter, your majesty," the Admiral said a bit sadly, and put the slice of toast to the side.

-The Baby

  The Queen carried The Baby back to her chair with Nurse following anxiously after, and sat down, holding him on her lap. "We'll grow up to be a lovely man, shan't we? Lovely, lovely, lovely--" (with a bounce for each word) "And you'll grow up to be just like your Papa, shan't you? Only, I'll keep you close to me always because you know I love you so, darling thing."

-The Baby

 "I can't say for sure, can I, Your Majesty?" Starling finally answered. "I could'eve had the best and kindest mum and father in th'world and still turned out skinny as a springtime eel, couldn't I have? But there probably wouldn't be quite so many bruises on my back, I'll wager." She shrugged.

-The Baby

.. (The Admiral) undid the ebony buttons of his feathered veskit. Goons, but it was a hot piece of haberdashery.

-The Baby

Come visit again tomorrow for a very special interview and giveaway!

Like a Trojan

   As I prepare lessons for my first creative-writing students, I have been thinking quite a lot on how mythology has influenced our culture and literature over the years. From the myths of the Greeks and Romans to the tales of the Norse gods, we've carried away countless, faint impressions. One could never speak today of opening Pandora's box and expect anyone to understand the term unless we knew that the world has some understanding (however vague) of the tale. Telling you that controlling his temper was  my character's Achilles' Heel would gain me a blank stare if you had never heard the reference to that Myth before. In one of her recent letters, Jenny reminded me that if one wants to get anywhere in literature, one must have a sound knowledge of the Myths. Why? Because whether you'd like to acknowledge it or not, our culture--our entire concept of story--has roots in the Myths. The Iliad and The Odyssey were actually the first foray into the world of personalized story, since formerly the tales had revolved strictly around the Greek gods. In these two epics, human involvement is cultivated and thus you have the start of the first novelistic literature in history.
    Fairytale is another form of Myth that has heavily influenced our culture and our ideas of what constitutes a good story. How many books, movies, and plays can you think of in which fairytales are referenced, rewritten, or outright copied?
   But cultural mythology is not the only basis on which we build story. There is, of course, what secularists calls "biblical mythology" but that which I call the biblical pattern. The difference in my view and the secularists is, of course, that I believe the tales in the Bible to be one hundred percent true, while the others would tend to say that they are no more true than cultural mythology is true. But whatever you wish to call it, mythology, pattern, example, what no one will deny is that the Bible has influenced literature quite as much as any other mythology. I think this is part of what fascinates me about story: we are living a story as well as writing stories, and as authors we have the capability to reflect The Story in our stories. This is the concept on which books like John Eldredge's Epic and Dorothy L. Sayers' The Mind of the Maker are based; it is a concept well worth considering, not only for a better understanding on the foundations on which we stand, but also as a fount of inspiration for plotting purposes.
   As you know, I am entering Anne Elisabeth Stengl's Five Glass Slippers contest; to enter, you must write a novella based on the tale of Cinderella. At first I thought, "what could be simpler?" - indeed, it seemed an attractive assignment, since skeletons are always my Kryptonite. (Oh look: another mythological reference!) What could be simpler than basing a novella on the story of Cinderella? There are, of course, a myriad of ways one could twist the plot to come up with a new telling of the tale, and you've already got principle characters, a series of events, and a solution. This is exactly the reason I am working madly on two very different stories, hoping one will take precedence so I don't have to juggle two contest pieces in conjunction with my own WIP.  (Driftfire and The Windy Side of Care) It got me to thinking though, what a resource mythology can be to a writer. This should be evident to the person of average intelligence, but having never tried it myself, I had not taken seriously enough the fact that in mythology we are handed the bones to stories that have endured for hundreds of generations. In addition to the convenience with which one could ease a plot over the skeletal structure of a Myth, there is another attraction to basing a story off another story:
   People like to think themselves clever, you know. We like to recognize ourselves or our favorite things -whatever they are- in the world. There is not a person I know who fails to feel a certain personal pride in their favorite actor's accomplishment of another blockbuster movie. Or an Olympian from one's own country winning a medal; surely you've felt that you were a part of that triumph, somehow. In the same manner, we like to have ownership in a story. So when you can, for instance, build a story off of a popular structure but add your own flavor to the brew, your reader will be drawn in immediately. "I know this story!" they'll think, then add: "Only not quite. I must keep reading, but what a jolly good job she's doing with my old favorite!" 
   Of course I am not presenting an opinion that every book someone writes ought to hearken back to a Myth or a Bible story, but I am pointing out that the thing is available. There are as many or more variations for a story as there are stories in the world, and they are all for the taking. When I began to think of how one could present the Cinderella story in a way it has not been done before, I started to wonder if it was possible. But then I remembered the ways filmmakers have found to present new versions of classic favorites over the years, and my spirits rose again. Below, I've listed several, and the stories they were built off of:

Oh, Brother Where Art Thou? (The Odyssey)

Kiss me, Kate (The Taming of The Shrew)

Ever After (Cinderella, though that is obvious)

Bridget Jones's Diary (Pride and Prejudice)

My Fair Lady (Pygmalion)

   So you see, it's not a new idea, and some (like My Fair Lady) have enjoyed ongoing success, bringing the classic mythology to new viewers, readers, and generations. Now I'm going to get off my soapbox, dust my hands, and dig in to my Cinderella-esque stories to do some actual work! Cheers, y'all!

" Had no one thought it mildly suspicious that the sequence of events followed a logical criminal course? Unhappy man marries coldly beautiful woman. Beautiful woman shapes up rather nasty. Unhappy man unhappier than ever. Beautiful woman unhappy as well. Three short weeks, digitalis in the wine, oops, he’s dead! Uh-oh. Poor dear child, let’s see what we can do with her in the meantime. " -The Windy Side of Care

Works in the Wings

 

 Do you know what I love?
   I love the luxury of flipping through my writing journal (after copying into it 7 1/2 pages of quotes from P.D. James Talking About Detective Fiction) and seeing all the starts to stories, scrawls of inspiration, and newspaper clippings from everywhere.
  I love sorting through a binder and coming across a detailed, chapter-by-chapter outline of Au Contraire, waiting for me if I am ever in need of an ambitious plot.
   I love remembering that story I began, Find Her, and going back to read the two chapter-scenes I had typed out and realizing that, gosh, this is a really good story. A really good one. And I might be about ready to dive into it, head-first.
   I love writing down new story ideas (Murder, Miss Snubbins), and finding title-ideas for sequels to Fly Away Home that I don't even expect to write (The Lobbyman's Belle and Maralie We Roll Along), but have pegged down just in case.
   I love reading the scraps of description and dialog I spread throughout the pages of the much-abused writing journal and remembering where I was and what I was doing when they came to me.
   I love looking at my old writing and admiring certain turns of phrase, certain word-choices that I am allowed to admire without fear of vanity because so much water has gone under the proverbial bridge since I first wrote them.
   I love listing all the ideas currently in the wings (including stories I don't really intend to write and realizing there is enough material here to keep me busy for years and years:

Driftfire (for the 5 Glass Slippers contest)

Au Contraire (historical fiction)

Murder, Miss Snubbins (romantic thriller)

Find Her (mystery/thriller)

The Green Branding (historical fiction)

Curvy Girls (contemporary fiction)

Jacq of All Trades (contemporary fiction)

Grey Goose Downs (historical fiction-ish)

No Mere Mortals (contemporary fiction)

Sentiment, Durrant (dystopian and thus, probably will never be written by me)

The Glass Half-Full {and a lemon-wedge} (inspirational fiction)

The Scar-Girl (allegorical fantasy)

Hearing, I See (undetermined)

Rockingham Shambles (mystery/thriller)

The Sirens of Baker Street (contemporary fiction)

The Traveler (humorous fiction)

Banbury Cross (historical fiction)

Madeleine (romance)

Butter-Boats (contemporary fiction)

The Lobbyman's Belle (inspirational romance)

Maralie We Roll Along (inspirational romance)

Gloamingswood (fantasy)

The Treasure of Riverly Manor (historical mystery/thriller)

  Twenty-Two titles, so that I might not appear so uneducated as to compared to Jane Fairfax. ;) Some of these starts I absolutely love and intend to write someday, like Find Her, No Mere Mortals (which already has 20k words?), Murder, Miss Snubbins, and Rockingham Shambles. The others are entirely up for grabs for the days when I am out of plot ideas. You'll notice that on this list I have quite a few mysteries; something I swore I'd never attempt again after Riverly Manor (at the age of 13) fizzled out. Well. I shall be more careful, but I don't see how I can avoid writing one at some time; mysteries have always fascinated me. Especially when Find Her is looking so terribly attractive alongside Murder, Miss Snubbins. Oh well. Nothing doing till The Baby is finished!

Yes. This is what I love: discovering I'm not anywhere close to running out of ideas, even though I might sometimes feel a bit disenchanted with current projects. And see, too, what a good thing it is to give your plot bunnies attention? If I chased after every story on this list (you'll notice I didn't mention The Baby because it is my current and ONLY project right now. pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasebehave) I might give a teeny bit of attention to the grooming and shaping up of something else, but I intend to finish The Baby, no matter what of a devil it is being. (In fact, soon as this post is done, I'm off to write) What are your works-in-the-wings? I'd love to hear about them!

Tagged, bagged, and incorrectly labeled

 

My good friend, Meghan Gorecki has started the most nobby little affair I've ever seen: Every Good Word: a blog for writers by writers. One of the things I love about Meghan is her precision. She's a precise person and calls herself a perfectionist, but that has served her well on her personal blog and I am looking forward to her organization, vision, and sense on Every Good Word. To celebrate the launch of this new blog, Meghan has concocted a wonderful tag to help everyone get to know other writers! I thought I'd participate, so there you have it. Be sure to go take a wander on the blog; it's going to be a wonderful place.

What was your first-ever piece of writing? Poetry, I should think. As far as stories go, the story that is still somewhat nameless and that I refer to as Ella & Cornelia. Funnily enough, that story actually made it to full-novel status, albeit useless as far as content goes. I suppose that is peculiar for starting authors. I was only twelve at the time.

How old were you when you first began writing? Poetry began as soon as I realized rhymes existed - and it was terrible. Then it improved. Then it was rather good for an eight or nine-year-old. And as I said, my first story and, hence, my first novel was written at the sagacious age of twelve.

Name two writing goals. One short term & one long term. Short term goal: Finish The Baby by the end of the year. (copy-cat, I know.) Long term: be a realio-trulio published author and become trademarked for my charming, unique style in whatever the genre is. I want people to be able to read one of my books and not even see the name on the cover and think, "This sounds like Rachel Heffington", and then flip the book over and see that it is mine. 

Do you write fiction or non-fiction? Oh my. Well, I suppose you can say both since I do blog, but I consider myself almost exclusively a novelist.

Bouncing off question 4, what is your favorite genre to write in? This is a sticky and complex subject for me, as I don't style myself as any particular kind of author. I dabble in it all and enjoy it all. I have fantasy, historical fiction, inspiration-romance, children's fiction, YA and now mystery under my belt. Rather than being stylized by a genre, I prefer to bring my own twist to whatever genre I choose. I love diversity so I enjoy working in many different categories. 

One writing lesson you've learned since 2013 began? There is something to be said about plotting beforehand instead of pantsing, as I tend to do. (Fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-ing.) This lesson was learned only by coming to grief first, I warn you.

Favorite author off the top of your head! C.S. Lewis. Oh, that's boring because everyone chooses him. Oh well. I would still have to say Lewis is tops. He's just...argh. He's just him and if you don't know what that means, you're missing out on something immense.

Three current favorite books. (Remember what I said about precision? Thanks, Meghan, for choosing the word "current".) A book I just picked up at the library and have fallen in love with already: P.D. James Talking About Detective Fiction ; fascinating read. The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy might be sensational, but that woman could write, by Jove! It's been a favorite since I first read it. Anddddd....I will go out on a flattery-limb here (because it's true) and say Jenny Freitag's mysterious novel, Plenilune, which isn't published yet but taunts me eternally with beautiful snippets. It's a favorite of mine before I've even read it. So there.

Biggest influence on your writing {person}. Hrm. This is difficult. There are so many people who have influenced my writing... Speaking of modern people, not deceased authors, I would have to begin way back at Diana Sharples (author of soon-to-be-released Running Lean), who have really tough critique but built me into stronger stuff than I had yet been. Jenny Freitag is always an inspiration to keep red blood flowing through the veins of my characters. Rachelle Rea has given me gentle but pointed critique as well. My grandmother, as well, who is a terribly well-read person and thus not a flatterer when it comes to reading my work. She is my Alpha-Beta-Reader.

What's your go-to writing music? I don't usually listen to music when I'm writing, actually. My characters demand center-stage and music can be distracting. I do, however, like to listen to Andrew Peterson or Kate Rusby if the volume is low. Their music soothes my soul.

List three to five writing quirks of yours. I have to be barefoot to write. I make faces in accordance with whatever dialog I am writing. I talk about my characters as if I had nothing to do with their creation. (Do I?) I always begin my stories on paper; the feel of the pen inspires me to no end.

What, in three sentences, does your writing mean to you? A chance to see the world the way I see it and to cause other people to look at it in a way they may never have before. A chance to give to literature what literature has given to me: beautiful, timeless, charming stories that cause one to yearn for the onward and upward. A chance to conduct words into a living, breathing current of whimsy no one has read in the exact same pattern before.

Irresponsible things like engagements of state..

  When people ask what inspires a certain story, there is generally a list of things that spring to mind on a basic level. Elisabeth Grace Foley's question started me thinking about what really did inspire The Baby, and to be sure I did not give a pat, off-the-cuff-links answer. She admitted that this is a question she has great difficulty answering, so I am sure she will have grace with me for being a bit abstract, perhaps.


      As far as strictly commonplace things that inspired The Baby (or helped me come up with it, or whathaveyou), the first that comes to mind is a man I know. I do not especially like this man (which is why he showed up as Darron Ap-Brainard, bwa-ha), but since the very first of my acquaintance with him, he made me cock my head and try to figure him out (which is also how he swaggered his way into the novel). There is a strange mix of charm and double-faced-ness about the real man which lends itself well to making a good antagonist. I do not think the man himself is a villain, so you will not find complete villainy in Ap-Brainard. (But honestly, a complete villain with no shred of ruined goodness about him is not much of a character to read about.)
     The other commonplace thing that gave me the idea for this story was the peculiar thing that happens to me with many of my novels: the first line. Usually I end up changing the first line in the final draft, but it is usually a first line that gives me the idea for a whole story. I'm a big one for starting different Microsoft Word files for bits of writing that probably won't go anywhere. But occasionally they do, and The Baby is one such. At the start of it, you have a little shred of dialog:

 "We could mutiny!"

 And that's all. But from that bit of dialog came the whole of the story as you know it now. Wonderful, how the mind ends up making mountains out of molehills. Please don't ask how a lost baby came out of a line about mutiny. I couldn't tell you.
  But sometimes inspiration can be retroactive, meaning that some of the less-obvious things that prove as inspiration for The Baby were not even recognizable as inspiration for anything when I first became acquainted with them. Oftentimes they are things from years back. Or, even if recent, the items that inspire seem to have very little to do with the matter under inspection; upon seeing a pin-board for a new novel idea, Jenny suggested I read Rosemary Sutcliff's The Shield Ring for inspiration, though it is "off by a thousand years." In the same way, the names of the Balder children sprang from nothingness: they are both named after their father's shipping firm; Jamsie's real name is 'Jamaica', from the sugar-plantation that has been in her family's possession for several generations. Richmond was named for the great city in America where their father's company has a sister shipping-office. The ideas for the family business were inspired in some part by Amazing Grace (quite opposite an effect than Wilberforce must have been thinking), as well as The Witch of Blackbird Pond. In both cases the source had very little to do with why I retained some little impression about plantations, but...I did. Something about slaves and sugar and Barbados and Jamaica. I dunno.
    The whole idea for The Puddle came from a nighttime walk to the mailbox when the eery idea whispered in my head as I sloshed through a murky pool of water in bare feet: "What if you stepped into a puddle and it had no bottom?"  Starling and Leona (And hence, Smidgen) came out of two separate dreams I had that, at the time, I thought I ought to write down because there had to be a story in there somewhere; I didn't write them down, but I remembered all the same and got two playing-pieces from it. The Admiral and his Fleet came from a hyphenated scrawl I had down for inclusion in Cottleston Pie: "Passenger-Pigeons." But all at once this story needed The Fleet and they had to be black and voila: you have mail-carrying crows.

So in a very long and roundabout way, Elisabeth Grace, I hope I've answered your question to your satisfaction. I find that there is almost never one single thing that influences my stories. They just are or they are not, and the ones that are end up making it to "The End" and the others rarely even make a debut on this blog. Just as my life is a mash of everything including the kitchen sink, so my stories grasp ideas from anywhere and everywhere ranging from sugarcane to excursions to get the mail.

 
"My brother thinks the king should not have gone on the trip himself, especially when I was so near my time; irresponsible things like engagements of state are better left to members of the House of Polaris who like to go sailing."

-The Baby

In Which We Play At Being Orphlings

A 25-year anniversary...

Five days....

Eight kids on their own...

(Well, some of us are no longer kids)

A cold in the head...

A toddler that should be weaned but still nurses a couple times a day for comfort's sake...

A camera...

An "empty" house...

Sneezing/coughing/stuffynose...

May I reiterate the "Five Days" thing?...

Oh yes. 

This is the life of the Heffington kids this weekend. We are going to be baching it here while Mama and Dad celebrate their 25th with their first trip away (without a baby in tow) since they had Daniel, almost 23 years ago! I am looking forward to this weekend and the funny videos we plan to shoot. It's going to be amazing! I am dosing my cold with cinnamon-and-honey and PG Tips, so here's hoping it withers away quickly! We've got fun things planned and of course I know my uncle and aunt are right across the field so if I need any adult help I've got it. But I think we'll be just fine, and it's kinda fun playing The Boxcar Children for a whole week. Keep your eyes out for any videos that make it through production! ;)

Book Review: Dragonwitch

Buy it here

When fantasy-author Anne Elisabeth Stengl asked for a group of people to read advance-copies of her book, Dragonwitch, I signed up. I was a little leery of what this book might be, as dragons are frightful enough without being witches. But as soon as I read the prologue of the fifth book in The Tales of Goldstone Wood series, I knew I was in for something quite different than I'd pictured:

    Generations had passed in the mortal world above as the brothers battled and then lay still. At last Etanun roused himself and turned to Akilun. "Brother, I have sinned," he began, but the words vanished from his lips.
     Akilun was dead.

Brother-plots have always been a favorite of mine, so knowing that Dragonwitch started with a few pages that almost made me cry definitely set the tone for the rest of the novel.

The description from the back of the book:

     Submissive to her father's will, Lady Leta of Aiven travels far to meet a prospective husband she neither knows nor loves - Lord Alistair, future king of the North Country.
     But within the walls of his castle, all is not right. Vicious night terrors plague Lord Alistair. Whispers rise from the family crypt. The reclusive castle Chronicler, Leta's tutor and friend, possesses a secret so dangerous it could cost his life and topple the entire nation.
     And far away in a hidden kingdom, a flame burns atop the Citadel of the Living fire. Acolytes and priestesses serve their goddess to the limits of their lives and deaths. No one is safe while the Dragonwitch searches for the sword that slew her twice...and for the hero who can wield it.

It is a rare book that I actually like more than I hoped, for too often I have a higher expectation of a book than it actually merits. But with Anne Elisabeth Stengl's Dragonwitch, I found wrenching, beautiful allegories thrown in amongst the characters in an effortless way, and though I had never read a Goldstone Wood tale before, I hope to have the chance to visit the Wood Between the Worlds again soon.

What I liked about Dragonwitch:

Etanun's story, and the portrayal of Hri Sora, the Dragonwitch herself. I don't think there is a finer portrayal of goodness-gone-sour and though I despised the Hri Sora, my heart broke for her. I also have a fondness for The Chronicler, and Mouse. Funny, because they don't end up together, but they were my two favorites. And of course Eanrin, the Cat-Man; how can you not love him? Does anyone else picture him as played by Kenneth Branagh? :D
I also loved the way the author wove Truth all through the pages; like I said: sometimes I felt like I was reading a beautiful allegory which is a mark of fine writing, in my opinion.

What I didn't like about Dragonwitch:

At the beginning I didn't know Alistair well enough to care about his night-terrors, so I was more impatient than sympathetic when he would wander about in a clammy daze; however, afterward I grew to love Alistair, so I don't think the sudden introduction of his dream-problem had an adverse effect in the end.

Also, for the first third of the book I felt confused over which world was which, who was who, and had difficulty remembering names (i.e. to the new reader, "Etanun" and "Eanrin" are easily confused). But I believe this has far more to do with the fact that I'm jumping in on the series with Book 5 and would not have that confusion had I started where one is supposed to start.

Final words:

Read Dragonwitch. Read it twice. And then pass it on to your friends so they can read it. While not quite a challenging read for an adult in terms of dialog and theme, it is a beautiful book to pass a week of rainy evenings with, and you will find therein much to love, admire, and ponder. I give Dragonwitch 4 out of 5 stars. (I rarely {if ever?} give any book 5 stars if that gives you an idea of how good I think it is.)

Quotables:

   "The little man swallowed, his jaw clenching. 'This...this is the Haven of the Lumil Eliasul. The Haven of the Prince of the Farthest Shore. Built by the brothers Ashiun.'
    'Well done, Chronicler,' said Eanrin. 'You've done your research.'
    'I don't believe in this place.'
    'I don't see what your lack of belief has to do with anything.'
    'And you're Bard Eanrin.'
    'That I am.'
    'I don't believe in you either.'"

***

    "'Love is a terrible thing,' Mouse whispered.
     'Only love gone astray,' said the prisoner. 'the time has come you should be frightened. If fear will awaken you, be afraid! and then be courageous in your fear and act.'"

*** 

Don't forget to enter your questions about The Baby in the post below!!