Snippable Stories

So. Snippets. Yes. It appears to be that time of the blog post circle when I share pieces from what I'm currently writing. They aren't many, this time, but there are some and for that you must give me grace. Five Glass Slippers and the publicity pertaining that is keeping me plenty busy, but I have found time for writing a bit. I hope you enjoy these.

In the shifting blue shadows where green gave way like watercolors to the gold-ripe fields, a hand clamped over Merrin's arm.

-Toadhaven League

“I hate him.” The end of Germaine's statement tilted upward like the tip of her nose, conversationally.

-Toadhaven League

She compliments him, Merrin thought. Like poppies compliment wheat.

-Toadhaven League

She chopped blindly at a tuft of grass that had grown up with depressing presumption between a squash plant and the garden path. Merrin was no better at menial labor—indeed, likely much worse—but she was not certain gripping it with both hands, like a croquet mallet, was quite the way to handle a hoe.

-Toadhaven League

It was the first page of summer and a high, white melody was at play in the trees. Great, black bees droned in thickets of oregano and thyme. Great, black crows stalked in the gardens which had not behaved this year as gardens ought, but crept along like midget-things at a slug’s trot.

-Toadhaven League

“It is hardly fair, Cat, that I cannot be a princess.” Saying so, the young woman locked eyes with the animal in her lap. Her eyes were golden and his were golden, and the result was that the girl looked away before the cat.

-Toadhaven League

Womannish, Merrin shoved the truth in the Cotton Man's eyes: “Estelle is blonde and tall and wise which are things I can never be and Tierney. Tierney is a man and he must see it and I fear lest he see it and … and love it.”

-Toadhaven League

Merrin's heart plummeted with dread. Nay, plummeted before the act as if prophesying it.

-Toadhaven League

“We sound so horrible,” Lisbeth said, “to anyone who isn't us.”

“Quite so.” Germaine did not sound the least bit concerned about sounding horrible. “The cat, you know, probably loathes us. I know the crows do. I hate working out or doors; the weather does nothing but glare, you know.”

-Toadhaven League

Inkpen Poetry Day: "A Goodly Warning"

//Source//

"A Goodly Warning"

 by Rachel Heffington

O! Time is a faerie-maid, dark is her dairy laid:

Larders of mem'ry and amethyst lore.

But one kiss from her lips

On your lips as she slips

One cold hand in your pocket will finish the chore.

For her kiss it is sweet

It is death, it is meat

It is sharp as a bone-frost and light as a wheat

In her bed, poppy-reds

glimmer bright as she shreds

All your best years of life into raggedy threads.

O! She picks every purse with a laugh and a curse

but a beggar she stays till the end of no end.

For her girtle is trim

From the breast to the hem;

She must ever stay hungry to eat what you lend.

Never thanks, never smile,

Such small coinage is vile

In pay for the life-years snipped off of a man.

But a kiss for the road

- Age and Slumber your load -

And a red-lipped farewell where your trouble began.

O! Time is a faerie-maid, dark is her dairy laid:

Larders of mem'ry and amethyst lore

But one kiss from her lips

On your lips as she slips

One cold hand in your pocket will finish the chore.

May I please drag you into something?

Amber Stokes, a publicist and friend of mine, is running a blog tour for Five Glass Slippers (which comes out June 14!) and has invited anyone who has a wish to join in! The information and invitation is as follows and I do so hope you'll join:

You are cordially invited to take part in the Five Glass Slippersblog tour, a collaborative celebration brought to you by Seasons of Humility and Rooglewood Press!

Dear Bloggers,

We're introducing the Five Glass Slippers novella collection to the world through a very special blog tour taking place June 23-28. The theme is "Cinderella for a Day," and the tour will consist of mini (one-question) interviews with the five authors of the book, as well as fun spotlights and a tour-wide giveaway. 

Fans of all things fairy tale are encouraged to join us in promoting this creative collection - the culmination of the Five Glass Slippers contest hosted by Rooglewood Press in 2013. If you would like to ask any of the five authors (Elisabeth Brown, Emma Clifton, Rachel Heffington, Stephanie Ricker, and Clara Diane Thompson) a question while helping us spread the word about the book on your blog, we'd love to have you join us!

You can sign up for the blog tour on the tour's home page orHERE.

Further information can be found on the tour sign-up form and in the attached press release, but please don't hesitate to email back with any questions you might have. Once you've signed up, you'll be included in the tour email list. Thank you for your consideration!

Sincerely,

Amber Stokes

Freelance Editor & Publicist

www.editingthroughtheseasons.com

Life-Hack for the Writer

In life, there are few things I like better than knowing that some of the people I love best sometimes take the short-cuts I love. There's a trend going around on Pinterest - how repetitive that feels! - of people posting these things called "life hacks". I don't exactly want my life hacked, but I think what it means is Ways To Do Things That Make Life Easier. Today, I'm here to give you a Writer's Life Hack from P.G. Wodehouse himself:

Ask for Help

We, as writers, value our independence. Some of us have self-published and are therefore terribly conscious of our space, our needs, our turf, and our lack of marketing reach. How short is the reach of an arm that lauds itself! (That sounds like some ancient proverb. It isn't. It's a new one I just made up but it thoroughly represents the trouble of marketing your novel on your word alone.) But I'm not here to talk about the difficulties of marketing your work. Independence. 

I am going to assume that each of you gets stuck in your writing process sometimes. Not writer's block, exactly (I heard someone say once that Writer's Block is a disease that affects amateurs), but the sticky mires of What The Heck Comes Next? For some of you it might be character creation, or the research that must go into your setting. For me, it's plot and structure. I can have all the bright baubles of humor, wit, sass, great characters, promising setting, and nothing for all these fine-feathered blokes to do. When you get to such a spot, it is quite easy to panic and figure that successful writers (or, on a bad day, "'Real Writers") never experience the same. I surely never assumed that someone like P.G. Wodehouse would ever have found himself short up on plot or, if he did, he drank some Jeeves-esque cocktail that jolted him out of it and into a success like Something Fresh.

Recently, I read P.G. Wodehouse: a Life in Letters edited by Sophie Ratcliffe. I found many interesting things among this prolific writer's correspondence, but the most surprising and, hence, most gratifying, was the number of times he begged plotting help from his colleagues and gave it to them in return:

"If you have a moment of leisure, here is a bit of a story that is bothering me. I want a tough burglar to break into a country-house and there to have such a series of mishaps that his nerve breaks and he retires from the profession. The conditions can be anything you like, - e.g. Pekingese on the floor who bite his ankle, etc. It ought to be one of my big comic scenes like the flower-pot scene in Leave it to Psmith. Don't bother about it if you are busy, but if anything occurs to you send it along."

and later:

"Listen, laddie. Have you read 'Pig-Hoo-o-o-o-ey'? I have a sort of idea you once wrote a story constructed on those lines - i.e. some perfectly trivial thing which is important to a man and the story is apparently about how he gets it. But in the process of getting it he gets entangled in somebody else's love story and all sorts of things happen but he pays no attention to them, being wholly concentrated on his small thing. If you never did a yarn on these lines, try one with Cap Crupper. It's an awfully good formula."

There are so many instances of advice begged and advice given that I'm holding this book rather close and taking notes. Is there anything like correspondence between writers to give one a peek into what made them successful? With so many occasions of P.G. Wodehouse begging help, I had to acknowledge that there might be something to the idea. What then? Why would it be a good idea to beg someone to help you out of your rut? The answer is obvious:

Other writers are gifted in other areas.

It amazes me how many spiritual parallels one can draw from writing. I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised - Dorothy Sayers did much the same thing (though in reverse) with The Mind of The Maker. We are told that within the body of Christ, we are given various gifts and talents:

"For in fact the body is not one member but many. If the foot should say, 'Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body,' is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear should say, 'Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body,' is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased. And if they were all one member, where would the body be?"

- 1 Corinthians 12: 14-19

Continuing this mental exercise, each of us is gifted in a certain realm of writing talent. There are very few - indeed, show me one - who are good at all of it all of the time. We must choose someone, one person if you cannot bear the idea of more, and ask for help at some point in time. The trick is that we have to be humble enough to take their suggestions and adapt them to fit our idea. That is probably the toughest part of the whole thing. I feel so independent that it can be a struggle for me to not reject ideas based on the fact that I did not think of them first. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it is true. I suppose it comes from some shadowy fear of plagiarism, or not being able to say, 'I wrote this book' because one aspect of it - heck, even a phrase - was not my own but was brought to mind by someone else. However, there is a difference between plagiarism and between, as Austin Kleon says, "Stealing like an artist". There is a way to accept ideas and even pay homage to other authors' work without copying just as there is a way to take fashion advice and inspiration without having to buy the $1253 dress from Michael Kors.

Yesterday, I asked Jenny for plotting advice. Last week, I got a whole email full of advice for Anon, Sir, Anon from Elisabeth Foley and what's more, I intend to examine and apply some of it. I didn't come to this point easily. It still isn't comfortable to go to a friend and say, "Look, I haven't the foggiest what I ought to do with this, but if you can figure it out and tell me, I'll work with it." But sometimes that is what you need and that could possibly be the only place you'll find that perfect idea.

If anyone ever criticizes you for this method, send them here. You know what I'll tell them?

"P.G. Wodehouse did it."

That'll probably shut them up.

The Rain-People

In Romania, we spent a happy hour in the top floor of Betel Biserica Baptista, watching people in the rain ...

   Sitting up there, it seemed we were demigods. The people below--the old woman with a black kerchief tied under her chin, the Orthodox priest, the teenagers--were unaware of the onlookers as the rain began.
   We opened the screenless windows and stretched our hands into the play of the rain. Rain, we knew. Rain was neither American, nor Romanian, nor Russian nor Chinese. Rain was home, whomever you were. The rich scent of it pressed into our faces as we leaned out the fifth-story window and laughed at the bits of humanity, small and significant under our outstretched palms.
   Most of the crowd shifted from one foot to the next and seemed to ignore the rain; one or two people looked up and shrugged. Looked up,but not up enough to notice us and we were glad. Anonymity suited our mood because we were not ready to meet more people whom we would have to bid goodbye. No one thought that clearly, however; we all just wanted a show and a silent seat in an opera box.

   A tram scooped half the crowd into its shovel-mouth and shuttled off to another street, another stop, another priest hearing thunder and crossing himself for safekeeping.
   A boy opened a green tin gate and a pair of breedless terrier-things pelted after an old man with a white beard who had passed that way. The boy gave chase. His mother pursued.
    The rain, by now, was tremendous.

   Another tram: hiss, scoop, shuttle-shiver and the street was empty. An incoming deposit of tram-riders was received to the drumming of a million raindrops. A million was not too many. Two, three million, and still there were drops uncounted.
    Shirtless, a muscular young man darted from the tram into a doorstep crowded with damp humans. He laughed, shook rain from his bare shoulders, and pulled a dry shirt over his head. We laughed high above the street.
   This group dispersed in pairs and singles like damp ads peeling from a wet cement wall and the bare-chested man jogged down the street beside a stranger or a friend--it little mattered; a thorough soaking is as good a bond as any for forming quick attachments.

   By and by, hail mixed in with the rain and the thunder grew ravenous as a blood-hungry lioness. We leaned further into the glory and caught the hail. Some of us ate it and were happy to have known what sky-ice tastes of beyond the Atlantic. Ferocious now, wind thrashed our street with a whip of braided rain. Lightning and thunder kept precarious time and we marveled at the unconcern of the little old lady with her great big purse and a drenched trio crossing over our way.
   Gleefully, we watched as they missed a shallow crossing and plunged ankle depth into a rushing run-off. It was funny to us and stayed so because the trio laughed among themselves and did not seem to mind.

   If ever a wild rain had rained, this was the occasion, for it seemed the drops were contesting in girth and speed to see who might claim superiority.

  The soaked, cloth-plastered woman on our corner crossed to the other and took refuge in a window-ledge where she stayed with a cur-dog for company. Unmoved by their mutual plight, the dog slunk away to play road-kill in the afternoon traffic. A moment, and the woman made a dash for the green tin gate, only to meet water to her calves. She dragged out of the river one shoe at a time and adopted a soggy course town-ward, defeated in the art of staying remotely dry.
   From below us, an old man with a sock fitted over one hand walked away and we wondered why he obscured his fist from everyone's sight.

   Traffic dwindled, rain slackened, and another old gentleman--patient, slow--toddled down the cobbles. His umbrella had played games with the wind and bent like a cup, filling itself from the downpour. Nothing is more frustrating than an umbrella that does the opposite of keeping one dry, but this old man took a philosophical view of the misfortune: one spine at a time, he turned his umbrella right-side out and a gentle, satisfied smile sat on his face.
 
 Then off he went--patient, slow--and we watched him behind our curtain of rain.

June's Chatterbox

The beginning part of any month means, of course, Chatterbox! If any of you are still confused as to what Chatterbox is, may I direct your attention to the label on the bottom of this post? By clicking that, you will select every post related to Chatterbox that has ever found space on The Inkpen Authoress and you may browse submissions and instructions at will. Self-help; that's what we're all about these days, correct? Now, for June's topic:

"Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

- Kenneth Grahame The Wind in The Willows

It is summertime, this June-thing. Summer in all her innocent glory before she's been fondled and smirched by roving August. June is still a blossom-eyed, lovely green thing and the weather in June makes me feel like doing lazy things like going to the beach or lying in the grass in my front yard with my face buried into the earth just sniffing the greenness. Star-gazing, ice cream, and wading in creeks and rivers go right up there on the list. June is a watery month - not watery as in rainy, but watery as in Having To Do With Wetness of All Sorts. And when I think of water - be it a river, creek, puddle, gutter, lake - I think of boats and boating.

That's your assignment.

Boats & Boating

What any of you will actually do with this topic is a thing that makes me eager to see. I can't wait for your entries and I'll probably try to write something myself on this topic. Remember, the main thrust of Chatterbox is a dialog exercise so don't get stuck on thinking, "My story does not deal in Boats. Whatever did she pick Boats for?"

Think hard, think splish-splash. Think Boats. I'll be waiting with my link-up and an anchor o'er my shoulder.

Dose up the Enchantment

Speculation has been running high ever since Anne Elisabeth Stengl announced that Rooglewood Press is hosting another fairy tale collection contest. With the advent of the Five Glass Slippers collection very soon to come out from the Press, speculation was still deep. What fairy tale would be chosen next? What will the cover look like? Well, I'm here today to spill all the beans.

Much to the delight of most everybody, it seems, Anne Elisabeth and the editors at Rooglewood have chosen ...

Beauty & The Beast. 

Rooglewood Press is delighted to introduce their second fairy tale novella contest—

Five Enchanted Roses

a collection of “Beauty and the Beast” stories

The challenge is to write a retelling of the beloved fairy tale in any genre or setting you like. Make certain your story is recognizably “Beauty and the Beast,” but have fun with it as well. Make it yours!

Rooglewood Press will be selecting five winners to be published in theFive Enchanted Roses collection, which will be packaged up with the gorgeous cover you see displayed here. Perhaps your name will be one of the five displayed on this cover?

All the contest rules and information (how to enter, story details, deadline etc.) may be found on the Rooglewood Press website. Just click HEREand you will go right to the page.

Rooglewood Press’s first collection, Five Glass Slippers, is available for pre-order now and will be released on June 14. Do grab yourself a copy and see what these talented writers have done with the timeless “Cinderella” tale!

  

Blog Button:

Please post the blog button on your sidebars so that others will learn about this contest! Invite your readers to share it as well. Here is the link to include: http://www.rooglewoodpress.com/fairy-tale-collections

This link will take readers directly to the contest information.

Cover Illustration Credit:

This cover illustration was rendered by Julia Popova, “ForestGirl.” You can find out more about this gifted artist on her website: www.forestgirl.ru

I (Rachel) was so thrilled to hear that this is the theme for the new collection from Rooglewood entitled, Five Enchanted Roses. I cannot wait to see the ways people twist my favorite fairy tale. I haven't decided if I will enter again this year--we'll wait and see! But one thing is certain: I'm even more excited about this book than I am about Five Glass Slippers ... and my own story is in the latter! Speaking of, it is only a very very short while until you may purchase Five Glass Slippers for your own collection and enjoy The Windy Side of Care and the other stories to your heart's delight. But good heavens. You want to see the cover for the new fairy tale collection, don't you? Ahhh, she's a beauty:

Well, have at it! I want to see Beauty & the Beast in every style before the new year. ;)