I really hope people are enjoying this silly topic and possibly learning a bit. Let’s just jump to the questions about dumplings.
Greetings Storytellers. Diana here today to talk about animals in our stories. Many authors include animals in their stories, often as pets, …
Writing Animals into your Story
Anger from Inside Out
(Ira is the Latin word for ‘Wrath’. So, it worked for the title of a poem about anger.)
The pit of your heart is where I fester
I am all-consuming
Violence and hate are my bastard children
I am bloody
My power twists the human nature
I am corrosive
You despise me and make me stronger
I am forever
Mankind would be nothing without me
I AM ANGER
I promise to connect this to writing during this post. First, I’m going to talk about something I mentioned on Monday. It appears that nearly every culture has some form of dumpling. Here I thought multiple cultures coming up with dragons was strange, but now we have a food. So, why is that?
Part of it could be the definition of dumpling. The most basic one is a meal/snack composed of a ball of dough with or without filling. Many people say that it needs to include fillings or it becomes a dessert. Not sure why a dessert doesn’t fall under snack, but whatever. The fillings can be meat, veggie, fruit, chocolate, nuts, cream, or whatever you manage to jam in there. Frying or baking tend to be involved as well. Finally, they aren’t always called a dumpling. Look at ravioli, pierogi, empanada, knish, wonton, and the list keeps going. Dumpling is a category.
The reason dumplings exist across the globe might not be as farfetched as one would think. The concept is simple and consists of frying or baking dough, which is the same as making bread. Bound to be someone that eventually considers jamming food within the bread. With dumplings being small, they can be an easy meal to transport when one has to travel. The right fillings give a person more nutrition than the bread, which can be helpful for many careers. Cooking dumplings might not take as long as bigger meals, so they can be done when time is short. Just a versatile category.
So, how does this relate to writing?
People might laugh at this topic, but food is an essential part of cultures. As authors, we need to be aware of this either to make real world stories correct or give more depth to fictional ones. If dumplings are something that can be found throughout Earth then it’s easy to see them existing on other planets. As long as you have bread and something to stuff into it, you can have a dumpling. We put sandwiches, soups, and salads in our stories without a second thought. Why not this category?
Hi SEers! Denise here to continue our discussion of What Writers Should Know. Last month we dove into themes. Today we’ll discuss what type of story…
What Writers Should Know! Part Six: Genres
Cover by Jon Hunsinger
This was my first big foray into a non-fantasy genre. I’d dabbled in a few others, but this was the one I published. Crossing Bedlam was originally going to be a one-shot until I came up with other ideas that could work with the characters and world. Sadly, it never sold enough for me to warrant publishing more than the first 2 books. I did 2 others on my blog, but have had to make them private due to work.
So, what was Crossing Bedlam about? The world was fed up with the United States and doesn’t to cut it off. Walls were erected on the northern and southern borders while fleets took over the oceans. The country was locked down with violence then someone nuked DC, which caused the whole place to implode. Many years later, survivors have created various societies across the broken country, which is now called the Shattered States. It is a crazy place where every state has it’s own myriad of dangers. Nobody knows what caused all of the previous events to occur though . . . And the protagonists don’t really care because this is an R-Rated adventure buddy comedy.
The main characters are Cassidy, who is a young woman with a goal of spreading her mother’s ashes off the Golden Gate Bridge. Only problem is that she’s on Long Island, NY and will need to get across the Shattered States. Her only companion is a serial killer she broke out of the prison he had been in prior to the collapse. His name is Lloyd Tenay and he is crazy, mouthy, violent, and just wanting to enjoy the lawless landscape. The third member of the team is Cassidy’s precious jeep, which is outfitted with various weapons and armor. Along the way, they run into a variety of challenges and threats, which are handled in over-the-top fashion.
Some extra background is that the ‘Shattered States’ concept was put down in notes during 2014. It was for a different story, but I revived it for this when I watched ‘Deadpool’ and ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ on the same day. It was going to be a bigger group helping Cassidy reach her goal with her being defenseless. Then, I could only come up with ideas for Lloyd Tenay the serial killer and thought a duo would be better. Their personalities and abilities just blossomed from there. It took me one week to do the research and maybe a little more than a month to write the first draft. Finished it in 2015 . . . 2 days before Donald Trump’s first ‘Mexico will pay for the wall’ speech. Given the setting, I ended up shelving Crossing Bedlam until the election was over. I’d already had a few friends think I was making political commentary with this idea, so I wanted to wait for things to settle before publishing.
Not sure if Crossing Bedlam still suffered from that, but I do know that it took some hits from the people who were used to my cleaner stories. There was a lot of violence, nudity, mention of sex, and cursing. I really leaned into the cursing, which turned a lot of people off. Not that it should have been a surprise since I was saying it was Rated-R and a hard one at that during the hyping stage. Didn’t hide that I was inspired by the previously mentioned movies and put up teasers with cursing. Yet, many people didn’t like the story and refused to review it because cursing or high levels of violence wasn’t their thing. This meant I couldn’t garner a lot of word of mouth either. I never figured out how to properly market the book, which might be the one thing I regret.
Something that will always stand out is how I prepared for these stories. For the first time, I was working within Earth instead of Windemere. I wanted to use real locations, so I used Google Maps. I would use the initial route I was given to judge the states I would have to work with. Typically, I would have one chapter/encounter per state with a few having 2 for bigger events. Many times, I wouldn’t bother with large cities and zoom into the map to find smaller towns with a quirk. This became more prominent in the sequels though. Each location would help me flush out the world, so I didn’t even have a lot of stuff planned until I began writing.
Crossing Bedlam really did become a favorite of mine, which is why it hurt to shelve it once I ran out of time. It was clear that this was a series I was writing only for myself and publishing it wasn’t worth the money I had to spend. This was done because I had limited funds and time, so I wanted to use that towards the stories I had spent years developing. The outlines for future ‘Bedlam’ adventures are still around and a sudden change of my life could result in me publishing the ones I had on my blog. Although, I definitely take a clear political stance with one of them, which I’m surprised didn’t garner more hatred than it did. Anyway, I never know if I’ll reach a point in my life when I can go back to writing all day. Be nice if I could because that would revive ‘Bedlam’ and ‘Ichabod Brooks’, who will get a post later this month.
Things to ponder:
(Inspired by a dumpling tour of Chinatown and a previous conversation about how every culture seems to have its own dumpling. Yes, this is going to be the topic of the week because I think we can all use some fun and silliness.)
We serve dumplings from around the world. I’m sure you’re only imagining one type of dumpling, but I assure you that there are many. Simply look at the basic definition of a dumpling. They are small balls of cooked dough that sometimes have a filling. Yes, I know people argue over the definition, but why waste time doing that when you can eat instead? Here is our menu and pick as many as you want:
Given that there are hundreds of dumplings out there, we recommend you take the grand tour. For $30 per person, you can walk around our inner sanctum and sample any dumpling you like for two hours. Sound good? Yes, everyone seems to take that option and we can’t blame them.
By Stephen Geez If you missed it, you might want to start with Creating Characters Part 1 of 3. Toss the Cookie Cutter Some authors are tempted to …
Creating Characters, Part 2 of 3
With the end of the school year, I’m not having a lot of time to prep stuff for Sundays. I said long ago that those animal posts require some research to the point where making one of them takes an evening. I’m also running out of beasties, so feel free to give suggestions in the comments. I don’t know every animal in the world and would love to look into some I haven’t done or heard about.
Anyway, today is Donald Duck Day. He’s always been my favorite of the Disney characters and I loved his outbursts as a kid. Who was your favorite Disney character from the older school? (Yeah, I know it’s weird for me to do this since people may have picked up on me not being a fan of Disney. Donald Duck might be the only soft spot I have for the company these days. Maybe Stitch too.)
As the title says, this was a really rough week, which was the last full one of classes for the local schools. It also meant last time for field trips, beginning of world language tests, and a whole slew of reasons for people to be busy. That meant we had to cover others, so I was working for 9 periods straight for almost the entire week. Had to wolf down a lunch when there was a lull in a period like with our meditation time. I was really thankful when someone said pizza was in the faculty lounge. Snagged a slice and ate it while hurrying back to my class. By the end of the week, I was wearing a Snoopy t-shirt and running off fumes. My brain can’t even comprehend all of the things that happened.
My son had his first ever regents exam, which was in Algebra. Won’t know what he got for at least another week. Really hoping that he gets into the 80’s. The only other regents exam is Living Environment (formerly biology), which is Friday. That’s a bigger challenge even though math is his weaker subject. A lot of information to absorb and we heard that this one gets factored into his final grade. He’s usually really good at science and we’re studying for half of this weekend. The other half will be Pokemon Go, sleeping, and some food shopping. The main goal today is to find his weakest topics, so tomorrow will be more focused.
Let’s see . . . My son got an award for participating in All County Chorus. Can’t really say more about that one since it’s pretty straightforward.
As far as writing goes, I managed to edit 3 chapters of Darwin & the Avenging Elf. I was hoping to do more, but I went out to enjoy the weather longer than expected. A big part of this was caused by the Cricket World Cup tournament that has taken over the nearby park. If I saw it was open, I went there to walk around for an hour to enjoy the good weather. This weekend won’t be the same since it’s a lot of big games, so I wanted to get my exercise and Pokemon Go time in when I could. Didn’t always go smoothly since I got blockaded into a parking lot that was open when I arrived. An out-of-towner went in for a jog and they closed up his exit too, so I had to tell him where I knew he could get out. It’s a mess with helicopters overhead, cops everywhere, bad traffic, and feeling like I’m banned from a section of my own town. All of that to say that I hit my minimum goal of editing 3 chapters last weekend. I’ll get more done once the school year winds down and might even finish editing the whole book by the end of June.
I did get some good news in regards to my health. Stress, anxiety, and everything else aside, my sleep apnea is practically gone. This is only because I use the CPAP machine every night, so it isn’t like I’m cured cured. Still, this means my blood pressure has gone back to healthy levels or only goes a point or two higher. I don’t wake up feeling like I almost died or wondering if I have Covid. My energy is better as long as the heat and other factors don’t wear me down. At least it isn’t the same time of tired that I used to feel, so definitely improvement. For numbers, I used to have nearly 200 apnea events per hour and now I usually have less than 1. The doctor was really happy with that.
With everything going on at work, this week was primarily about survival. Just glad to make it to the weekend. My back, shoulders, knees, and lower intestines aren’t in great shape, but we all made it. I’ll be fine for when it’s time to go out and catch some Pokemon or do the food shopping. Weather is in our favor too. Need to cook dinner for us and multiple lunches for myself too. Figure I should get it all taken care of tonight since I’ll be cooking one thing already. Not very exciting, but it’s adulting and I need to do it. Things should get easier after this coming week.
I won’t be able to touch Darwin & the Avenging Elf until Friday. Not ideal, but I might get more time with it during weekedays after next weekend. So, I’m going to finish up the August posts and maybe even start in on September. Found some interesting post ideas with one of them being able to span 2 weeks. As usual, I’m not sure what to do about Tuesdays, so I might just revive the teasers. Sunday will be either animal posts or holidays for the rest of the year. Might throw in a few other topics if they come up. This isn’t very exciting.
Oh, the only other victory I had this week was figuring out what this mystery CD I’ve been listening to in my car was. It’s a burnt one from my college days and there was never a name put on it. Finally remember to look up a lyric, which led me to ‘Have a Cigar’ by Pink Floyd. Only it wasn’t Pink Floyd singing it. Thought it was the Primus cover, but it ended up being Foo Fighters. This whole thing resulted in me learning that CD #6 in my car’s player was a burnt copy of the ‘Mission Impossible: II’ soundtrack. Not sure why I didn’t realize that when the first song was Limp Bizkit doing the them song. My brain is just not braining this week.
So, goals of the week:
Legends of Windemere 