Moving On

Hubby and I received a record player as a wedding present. It played 45’s, 78’s and 33⅓’s.We deemed it to be quite the special possession. 

Over the next few years, we collected what records we could afford and owned enough to provide a decent variety. Hubby liked Southern Gospel. Me? Not so much! Being the more “worldly” one, I preferred Pat Boone and a little bit of Elvis. I can still hear Pat crooning, “With the Wind and the Rain in Your Hair.” Then the 8-Track debuted. Although the 8-Track craze was short-lived, we had sufficient time to get on board and, in doing so, stir up the Southern Gospel/Other Music controversy.

Not long after moving into the land of 8-Trackdom, we discovered that a new development was entering the electronic world of sound. What we needed now was a cassette player to play music stored on little tapes. This was a format I liked, and one I stubbornly hung onto even after the introduction of the next big innovation, CD’s. But then I traded cars and, much to my dismay, discovered that there was no cassette player in my new model. So, once again, I had to pitch my favs - even the Judds!

I have come to accept changes in our tech savvy world, but was surprised at how quickly readers moved toward choosing eBooks over print books. As a result, much has changed with regard to the way authors publish. 

Even though originally one of the “hold-out people” who admired a book and savored the smoothness of the paper as I turned each page, I soon found myself enjoying the convenience of a lightweight reader. Okay, I’ll admit it, I felt a little guilty about that. But where else can I purchase a classic for ninety-nine cents or even get a free book?

The second edition of Child of Desire is on Kindle Publishing and, because so many e-Readers have been marketed, I made the decision not to offer print copies. Enjoy the convenience.

Clipart: Hawthorne K-12 - NJ

Once Again - Emotions and Writing

I'm traveling to attend the wedding of a grandson and for the first time in my blogging history I have decided to repost a blog from the past. It is one of the blogs I wrote after I received a contract from my publisher.

Emotions and Writing – My Observations

This morning I purchased another book. This is my new addiction now that I have a Kindle. It was a magazine review of this book that got my blood pumping and created within me a desire to find out what a little boy could possibly know about a murder. So, at the Kindle Store, my fingers pressed the right keys, thus causing the title to appear on my Kindle home page. As with all addictions, I was helpless to control this process.

Reading what others have written has always been part of my life and, if the story is well written, I’m soon experiencing the emotions and feelings of the characters. During my childhood, my mother read to me almost every night. One of my favorite stories then was Peter Rabbit. As Mom read to me, I became caught up in the emotions of Peter, an adventuresome bunny, who just couldn’t seem to be good like his sisters. When Peter had a close call with the angry farmer, my heart beat faster and I felt anxious about his safety, even though I had already heard the story many times.

I have to believe that Beatrix Potter, as she wrote, felt what that little bunny felt each time he was discovered by, and then slipped away from, the farmer.  I believe that’s what made her such a great author. 

A few months ago I read Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and as I read, I experienced the emotions of being in Hank Morgan’s life-threatening situations. It would be unimaginable that Twain was passive and distant from his characters.  I think he had to “be” the people he wrote about in order to make them and their situations real to me.

I’ve heard writers say they can’t understand why they often get questions from readers, such as: “Did you pattern the main character after your life?” or “Were the things that happened in the story your experiences?”

From the many novels I’ve read over the years, what I have learned is that the answers to those questions are probably both “yes” and “no.”  No, in that the character is not the author or even like the author, but yes, because the author managed to crawl inside the skin of the protagonist and live as one with that character, thinking the thoughts, experiencing the emotions, and feeling the pain as each scene unfolds on the pages of the book. I suspect that it is when the heartbeat of the protagonist and the heartbeat of the author become one that the emotions and actions of the story become real. Thus, the reader of this “real” account is transported through time and circumstance to live inside of the story.

While I was writing my novel, only a select group of people was allowed to read my story.  Those who were allowed to read it received the manuscript along with instructions to be honest.  As with most authors, the first readers were family.  You would have to know our family and the security we have within the ranks to understand the brutal honesty from my nearest and dearest. 

Following circulation to kin, I expanded my readership to include trusted friends, critiques by fellow members of my writers group, and, finally, I ventured out into the waters of writing contests.

From each of my readers, I received comments and beneficial evaluations, but one I have come to cherish is one I received via a phone call.  The reader simply said, “I laughed and I cried.”  It was then that I knew I had become one with my protagonist and the feelings she had were the feelings shared by the reader.

Child of Desire release date, November 2011.

Note: I may soon repost additional past blogs about writing.

Will eBooks Reign?

Are some of your favorite books pictured here? The titles include classics such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mocking Bird, and A Tale of Two Cities. 

With relationship to the surrounding buildings, these “books” appear to involve a great job of photo editing. However, that is not the case. In Kansas City, Missouri, this “Community Bookshelf” is the façade of the downtown Kansas City Public Library parking structure. The “books” are approximately 25 feet high and 9 feet wide. Kudos, Kansas City Public Library Board of Trustees, for providing these “books” for passersby to view each day.

Many people predict that printed books will disappear, sooner rather than later. Some support for this came with the most recent quarterly statement from my publisher in which eBook downloads accounted for the majority of Child of Desire sales. However, I was encouraged this week when our great-granddaughter, Sophia, cried because her Mommy would not allow her to have a book with her in the bathtub. She and our other great-grandchildren love books and bedtime stories.  Maybe this new generation will save the printed book. We can only hope!  

Sophia Alexandra Fuller, one of our little readers.

Information Source: KCPL website

Library picture from Wordpress

Reading Picture from Megan Donovan Fuller

Story Settings

Many elements are important if readers are to become absorbed in a story. Being able to visualize the setting where a story takes place is just one of those elements.

In Child of Desire, I used some settings with which I am very familiar since I have been to those places. Of course, because the story took place in the early 1900’s, my first-hand knowledge did not include the time period. That I needed to research.

The following scene from Child of Desire occurs on the swinging bridge that stretches across the Clinch River in Scott County, Virginia. (The name of the river was not provided in the story.)

     “A single line of people stretched from the hill above the narrow swinging bridge, across the bridge, and to the grassy knoll above the schoolhouse. Every head was turned downward toward the river, every eye stared at the muddy, swirling water, and every face was somber. Amanda slowed to a walk and looked questioningly to her neighbors and friends. No one spoke.

     The bridge swayed slowly from side to side with the movement of the crowd. The swollen river below roared and surged outside its banks.

     In the center of the bridge, Mrs. Lawrence, Sam, and Mark stood clustered together. Sam held his mother in a tight embrace, and her head lay on his chest just below his shoulder. Her face was pale and tear-stained. Mark stood back from the railing and gripped his mother’s coat sleeve with one hand while he held the back of his neck with the other. He sobbed pitifully, and his shoulders shuddered as though he had suddenly been seized by a chill. Sam, standing a full head taller than Mark, reached around his mother intermittently to stroke Mark’s hair.”

Below is a picture of this swinging bridge with family members, Coleen Powers Walker, Johnathan Walker, and Jennifer Walker, as they bravely crossed to the other side. The picture was taken during our 1988 family reunion in Southwest Virginia.

This swinging bridge existed in the early 1900’s, the period in which Child of Desire takes place, and it is still there. Over the years the bridge has been reinforced and rebuilt to ensure the safety of those who cross.

Anachronisms and “Almost Words”

Things that make me laugh while I’m reading a book include events and verbal expressions that are inappropriately placed in the time period of the novel and words that are misused. In the case of things associated with a particular time that are placed in another time period, I always assume the author was so caught up in the story that stopping to research would have impeded the flow. However, when a word is used, apparently because it sounds much like the word intended, I’m just amused and guess that the author does not know better, and that the editor was “out to lunch,” so to speak.

Last week I read a best-selling book that had an example of the latter in the second sentence of the prologue. The author wrote, “He furls his brow…” It also stated that he does this "countless times each day." Really? How does one furl his or her brow? Is this somewhat like furling a flag? I considered putting the book down after sentence two and not picking it back up. If the second sentence contained such a blatant error, how might the rest of the text insult my intelligence?

My editor should have been so lackadaisical! I was frequently required to defend occurrences and the existence of objects during the Great Depression and to support my claims with data. Yes, there were school buses in the 1920's. Yes, even young people who were poor graduated from high school. Yes, girls who were from wealthy families attended college. No, Hoovervilles did not exist in small towns and rural areas.

Much research can now be done online, but researching train schedules took me to the historical documents room of the public library where even my purse had to be left outside. And, yes, trains were the transportation of the day. The twenty-four hour, seven days per week schedule allowed for convenient local and nationwide travel.

I hope there are no “almost words” in my novel. But if you find one, please let me know so I can stress for the rest of my life because it’s out there for everyone to see, and there is nothing I can do to fix it. 

Oh, and if you are writing a book, you do need an editor. Invaluable!

Check out the fourth tab at the top of this page for book information.

Child of Desire Website

During the month of November, things came together very quickly with relationship to the release and distribution of my new novel, Child of Desire. The release date for the novel was November eighth and the final media piece, my website, is now in place. Tate Publishing web designer, Kammi Kunkel, has a keen eye for design and is very much into detail. My thanks to Kammi for an outstanding website.

Visit my website at:  www.childofdesire.com