Last Week of School, and some Reviews

The gradepocalypse is about to begin again. We have six class periods left before finals start, but, unfortunately, I have a lot of seniors in my classes. Why does this matter one might ask?  Well, because Xavier does something in the spring semesters that is very tough on faculty members who have a lot of seniors. That is, classes end on April 29, Monday, and Senior grades are due by noon on April 30, Tuesday.   This is so that grades can be cleared before our graduation ceremonies.

This means that during the final week I’m not only teaching classes but administering finals to all seniors. It means all papers are due during the last week. It also means I’m administering makeups because lord forbid everyone take the test when it is scheduled, and lord forbid that they wouldn’t be seniors so that they, too, have to have grades in on the 30^th.  It means that I get a very few days to complete all my grading and turn in grades. And since grades are turned in early, and students get to see them, it means numerous emails and phone calls from students begging for a few more points. Spring is not a good time to be a teacher.

On the upside, though, after April 30^th I will be more than ¾ s done with my grading. I only have one actual exam during finals week. I guess we’ll see if I live long enough to enjoy it. In the meantime, let it be known that I will be making only sporadic appearances on the blogs until after May 1^st.

I should be completed with ‘everything’ by May 12^th and then summer writing begins. I can’t wait.

Let me leave you with a few reviews of various kinds:

The Walking Dead: Graphic Novel series:  I’m getting ready to start volume 8 of The Walking Dead graphic novel series. I’ve been a big fan of the TV series since it first aired. Here are my thoughts on volumes 1-7 of the graphic novels.  The novels aren’t as good as the TV series to me, although had I read them first I might feel differently.  In particular, the absence of key characters in the TV series, Darrell and Merle, takes away some of the enjoyment for me. The Governor is also far less nuanced in the novels and I prefer the TV version.  On the other hand, Michone is a more complete character in the novels than in the TV show, although she has been developing more in the last season. The novels are also quite a bit more graphic, which is saying something considering that the show is pretty graphic as well.  After the first 4 of the novel series I almost abandoned them, but Lana is reading them and bringing them home from the library, and after reading 5-7 I think I’m finally hooked and will follow the novel series to the end as well.

The Dark Knight Rises: Lana and I finally got around to watching this movie and neither of us cared much for it. The Dark Knight was long enough, but it had an amazing Joker, played by Heath Ledger, and everything made sense to me within the context of the film. The Dark Knight Rises had “Bane,” with a great name and a completely lame characterization. It was also very long, and it won’t leave me with a lot of great memories. The two main problems I had with the movie, though.  First, the timing seemed subtly off on everything. It’s hard to explain but things seemed to always happen too late or too early for the plotline. Second, the Bane character just wasn’t used right.  At least this is my opinion.

Doc Savage: Skull Island: How could I resist getting a book in which Doc Savage faces King Kong? This is, of course, a modern continuation of the Doc Savage series, written by Will Murray rather than Lester Dent. That was actually an attraction for me, because while I enjoy the original Doc Savage series, I’m not very enamored of Dent’s writing.  I also have very much enjoyed Murray’s work on the Destroyer series. However, whether by intent or not, Murray’s prose seemed to echo Dent’s pretty closely so I didn’t find myself getting lost in the prose of this tale. The story started out wonderfully by beginning just at the point where the movie, King Kong, left off. A dead Kong’s body must be hauled off and Doc Savage and his crew get the job. After that, we flash back to Doc’s first meeting with Kong, which took place before he’d even reached the age of 21. I didn’t particularly like the flashback aspect but once we flashed back we stayed there so it wasn’t much of a problem. I did enjoy getting to know more about Doc’s history, particularly with his father and his grandfather, although I thought it took a bit longer than necessary to get to Kong’s island. I’d rather have spent some time exploring and detailing the characteristics of the island itself. I won’t give away the ending but will say that I enjoyed it. It’s good fun, just not as much fun as I was hoping it would be. Maybe I was just expecting too much.

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Terraforming, or Transforming

I’ve read a lot in the past few years about terraforming Mars, terraforming Venus. I’ve even been reading about how we might one day have to terraform Earth back to where it was before we started messing with it too much. The ideas are out there; the strategies are in place, although we still lack the technical skills and the tools at the moment. Judging from the past couple of hundred years of human scientific progress, those skills and those tools will be here soon.

I’m glad the human imagination is capable of such concepts. I’m glad we can dream of newer worlds, maybe even better worlds. I’m glad that, at every age of our existence as a species, we have had the intelligence and daring to reach for those things just outside our grasp.

But--you knew there had to be a but--as events of yesterday, April 15^th, have reminded us, our biggest challenge as a species does not come from without. It comes from within. The Boston Marathon bombing is only the latest in a series of horrors we have faced recently. I won’t list others because I know you can list them as well as I.

Let’s be clear, except for the technology used for the April 15^th bombings, the callousness and brutality of the act are nothing new to “humanity.”  That’s exactly the problem. While we have gone on for centuries uncovering greater knowledge of the universe and inventing new wonders of technology, we seem not to have changed our minds one bit. Far too many of us are still nasty, brutish, vicious creatures full of hate, jealousy and violence. Far too many want only to hurt, not to heal—want only to see the tears and blood of the innocent rather than the smiles of the joyful.

Don’t believe for a moment that I’m above the basest of feelings myself. Yesterday, my mind seethed with rage. I imagined a hundred scenarios in which the perpetrators of this atrocity were identified and caught…and turned over to me. I imagined the horrors I would inflict upon them. And I felt no guilt whatsoever. Any possible consideration that these murderers might claim justification for what they did could not sway me. They attacked the innocent! They attacked those who have done nothing to them whatsoever. There is no clearer description of evil.

Today, my rage is banked, but it is still there. Today I am just barely starting to think again rather than just feel. I still scream inside for justice for the dead and the maimed. But now another thought intrudes. Somehow, some way, some when, we must find a way to terraform ourselves. Before it is too late.

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Is It Always About Character Development?

I hear it fairly often: unless there is character development in a story or book then the writer hasn't done his or her job. I don't believe this is true. I like character development. I would say that it happens in most of my books. Under the Ember Star is an example, I think. Some of my favorite books and series certainly show character development. The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling.  To Tame a Land by Louis L'Amour. The Conan series by Robert E. Howard.

However, I also enjoy books in which the character, at the beginning of the work, already has an interesting and well developed personality. Doc Savage, The Spider, Sherlock Holmes. In stories and books told about these characters, there is not much character development. Instead, there is character "reveal."  We ferret out elements of the character's personality during the course of the book but we don't actually see any development of that personality. At most, we might, through flashbacks, get some hint as to past events that led to the character's current state. However, many of these kinds of characters are series characters and it's usually not until later in the series that we see this kind of thing.

The mistaken idea--in my opinion--that we must always have character "development" is partially responsible for how almost every superhero movie in the last twenty years has had to tell an "origin" story for the character. I think there are characters who don't need an "origin" story on our first exposure to them. Instead, I'd prefer some character "reveal," and then, if the series is a hit or takes off, go back and later tell some kind of origin story.

Anyway, there's my two cents. I could say plenty more on this subject but I've got essays being turned in today and better get to grading those. Let me know what you think, though.
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Reviews for "Ember Star"

I've been very pleased to see that Under the Ember Star has been getting some really good reviews. The latest comes from Chris La Tray over on his blog with a post called Keeping it Pulpy:  http://chrislatray.com/keeping-it-pulpy/ Thanks, Chris.

Two things I'm particularly pleased with hearing about the book is that the setting, a planet called Kelmer, is rich, and that the main character, Ginn Hollis, is believable and sympathetic. The name of the planet Kelmer comes from an amalgamation of Kenneth Bulmer, who wrote some really great sword and planet fiction under the pseudonym Alan Burt Akers. Ken also wrote a lot of SF and fantasy as well. The planet of Kelmer, though, owes more to the works of Leigh Brackett, especially her Martian stories, than to Ken's worlds. I put a lot of effort into developing the Kelmerian landscape and societies and I'm glad it seems to have paid off. 

Under the Ember Star also marks the first time I've tried a female protagonist for a long work. I knew I wanted to try it and was happy when Ginn Hollis leaped into my mind. She seemed just right for the setting and background, and I definitely want to tell more stories about her. I'm glad she seems to be resonating with readers.

Here's a (hopefully) funny ad I cooked up for Under the Ember Star. 

FIRST CONTACT!  I’m sure you’ve heard of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.  Well, NASA has a new project out now called SETG, the Search for Extraterrestrial Gramlich. Even though they have been working on a shoestring budget of Cheetos and Beer, they got a hit in their first week of operation.  Less than a light year away, they discovered a novella by a “Charles Allen Gramlich” entitled Under the Ember Star.  Both a print version and an electronic version of the work have been detected using sophisticated infrared scanners and a fine toothed comb .  On the Beat for NASA, it’s Graham Charleston reporting for the Deerhaven Excalibur.  Remember, NASA owns space!

If you're interested in reading Under the Ember Star, it is in print (as a double with a military SF novel by Mark Burgess) and in ebook. Both are available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. 

Blogging and Days of Beer

I used to post every day, then every other day, then about every third day. Now it seems lucky if I get a post in a week. It's not that I don't enjoy blogging, but so many things consume my interest these days and I've also been working quite a lot on fiction. When I'm writing nonfiction, it lends itself well to blogging, but fiction tends to take me away from it. Not sure why that is. Below is a little piece of nonfiction for you, a small snippet from Days of Beer, my memoir if you will. (It's edited slightly to fit with this post.)

One day, when my son, Joshua, was about seven or eight years old, I opened a bottle of St. Pauli Girl in his presence. St. Pauli Girl is a German beer of exquisite bitterness. Josh, who always wanted to drink whatever I was drinking, naturally asked for a sip. Where before I had always refused to let him drink any beer, I now encouraged him to take a swig, figuring one swig would be enough forever. Holding the bottle in both small hands, he lifted it to his mouth and took a swallow.

The minute that bitterness hit his tongue, Josh’s eyes squinched shut and his face screwed up with a look of shock and dismay. He immediately tried to “chew” the taste back out of his mouth, but St. Pauli Girl is not a lady to be forgotten so easily. I soon took pity on him and gave him a drink of milk to cleanse his palate. He never asked to taste my beer again.

Several months later, Josh and I were at a quick stop store and I saw they had Mountain Dew in the original green bottles, the one with the hillbilly on it holding a jug of moonshine, for which Mountain Dew is named. I bought a bottle for nostalgia sake and offered Josh a sip. At first, he refused. I encouraged him. I could see him looking at me with a speculative light in his eyes; no doubt he was remembering the last time he’d trusted his father’s offer of a drink. But he finally agreed to a tentative sip, and immediately his eyes lit up.
“I like that beer,” he said with a smile.

(BTW, Ty Johnston has a review of Micro Weird up on his blog (http://tyjohnston.blogspot.com/2013/04/books-read-in-2013-no-19-micro-weird.html), and Randy Johnson mentions it on his (http://randall120.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/new-in-the-house-112/), as well as having reviewed it on Amazon.  Thanks, guys!) 

Micro Weird Has Landed

As I hoped, I was able to put the finishing touches on my collection called Micro Weird: Tiny Tales of the Strange over spring break. It is now available for both Nook and Kindle, at 99 cents. There are fifteen stories and a postscript about flash fiction. It’s over 10,000 words total but only about 8,000 of that is fiction. There’s also a section telling “about” the stories, which is something I like to do and something I like to read from other authors.

You all know I like variety in my writing. Well, this is the most varied collection I’ve yet put together. There’s some stuff in here that would be considered horror, albeit mild, some SF stuff, some humor, a children’s story, and a number of pieces that are really unclassifiable. I suspect there’s some things that will surprise even those who have read most of my previous work. Most of the pieces in Micro Weird were written in the last couple of years, but a few stories go back decades, including one (revised) that dates from the early 1980s. Only three of the tales have been previously published, and only one in anything some of you may have seen.

Despite the variety in the stories, there are two things that hold the collection together. First, all the stories are short, with the longest being about 1200 words. Most are quite a bit shorter. These days, these lengths are identified as either flash fiction or micro-fiction. Second, all the pieces strive for a twist ending.

The cover photo was taken by Lana outside Meteor Crater a couple of years back. We saw what looked like a giant picture hanging on the wall, and a man leaning “through” the picture smoking a cigarette. The “picture” was actually a rectangular opening in the brick wall. It was rather surreal to see, though. Lana did the blacking out of the figure so he’d be in silhouette, and I did the lettering. I used her “Gimp” program to manipulate things and it seemed far superior to Paint so I’m going to download a free copy of it for myself.

I hope you enjoy Micro Weird. I had a lot of fun writing these tales. If you want, you can pick ‘em up at:

Barnes and Noble.

As always, thanks for reading!

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Falling off the (book) Wagon

I’ve been good for as long as I could. I’ve got so many unread books around my house, literally a couple of thousand, that I’ve been trying not to buy many new books. Of course, I don’t count kindle books that I’ve been picking up from author friends (although some of those have been free). It hasn’t helped any that my reading pace so far this year has been pretty slow. Part of that was reading a few books in a row that I didn’t care that much for, and I’m not the kind of guy who can just put a book down easily once I’ve started it. Part of it, also, is just having been very busy with other work. And there’s a little bit of blame that goes to my new video game, the entire “DOOM” lineup.

Up until a couple of days ago, though, I was doing pretty well at resisting the urge to buy books. Then I saw a cheap copy of a book I’d read via ebook and thought, “why not?”  The dam burst after that. In the space of two days I ordered a new Doc Savage, two Star Trek graphic novels, three books in Taylor Anderson’s Destroyerman series, an old book by Max Brand, under the George Challis name, and some assorted other readables. I’m off the wagon, out on a binge. The gutter beckons. Will I be able to resist?  I guess you’ll have to stay tuned to find out.

In the meantime, I took a break from the binge yesterday to drive up to Lafayette, Louisiana to see my son, who is in architectural school there. He was recognized at their honors convocation so I enjoyed that!

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Writing, Reading, and Losses

I'm considering this the first day of our Easter vacation. I'm off next week from school. We have a few plans. I'm going up to see my son be honored at his school's honors convocation on Tuesday. Not sure yet if Lana will go with me. I'm sure we'll get out to some local parks quite a bit while I'm off, too.

But mostly I'm hoping to get some writing done. I mentioned Micro Weird and I believe I'll be able to get that finished and published by the end of the week. I'm also rolling pretty well in an exciting section of Wraith of Talera so I hope to keep that momentum up. I have a few school quizzes to grade but they won't take long.

And, hey, I might even get some reading done. I want to read some stuff from Rick Hautala, James Herbert, and David Silva, all excellent horror writers who died just recently. I did not know any of them on a personal level but had corresponded with Rick and David. I have read their work before and have great respect for all three. There is a Kindle collection of Rick Hautala's short stories available for free right now if you'd like to sample his work. It's called Glimpses:


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TV SHOWS

Since I've been an adult, I can pretty much name the TV shows that I've watched through their first run on the fingers of one hand. Frasier, Modern Family, and The Walking Dead are the top three. I came to Nip/Tuck in the second season but was hooked then. But even Star Trek: The Next Generation I caught mostly in reruns, though that had more to do with the fact that I was very busy with my first teaching job than from anything else.

I came to The Office and Big Bang Theory several seasons in, but did make the new episodes part of my regular viewing once I'd been hooked on them. Three other series that I started on the first episode with were Flash Forward, Falling Skies, and Terra Nova. I was very disappointed when Flash Forward was cancelled, but I quit Falling Skies pretty quickly and was ready to give up on Terra Nova when it was cancelled.

I'm now watching a new series and have to admit I'm still hooked. This is The Following, with Kevin Bacon as an ex-FBI agent who gets involved with the wife of a serial killer and then becomes the target for an elaborate revenge plot by said killer. I think it's Kevin Bacon's acting that is keeping me hooked. He's very fine in the role. At least it seems to me.

It's also the acting of the ensemble casts of Modern Family, Frasier, Big Bang Theory, and The Office that kept/keeps me coming back to those shows. Nip/Tuck was about the totally insane plot twists that they got up to in that show. And The Walking Dead is a combination of acting and plot for me.

How about you?  What shows are you truly hooked on?  And is it the acting, the stories, or something else that keeps you watching?
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MicroWeird is Coming

Sometime in the next few weeks I'm going to self publish a collection of my flash fiction stories under the title MicroWeird: Tiny Tales of the Strange. The stories are already collected and edited, though I'll give them one more read through, and I've got an idea for the cover but need to work on that a bit more. Xavier is closed for Easter Break during the week of March 25-29, so the final touches will probably get done then.

The plans are for 16 stories, with a total word count of around 10,000. Not counting the "about the stories" section, which I always include, the stories will average about 600 words a piece. Quite a few are shorter, and a couple are less than fifty words long. Only three of these have been published before, and only one of those three in anything folks reading this blog may have seen. The price will be 99 cents.

Most of you know I tend be varied in what I write, but this collection has some stories in it that are weird even by my relaxed standards of the strange. Although most of the stories have been written over the past few years with a "Microweird" kind of publication in mind, two of the tales were written during the years before I ever published anything at all. Two others were written and submitted time and again without getting accepted. One of those went to seventeen places without a taker. You might think I'd take that as a sign that it's not very good, but the problems with that are: 1) I think the story is really good myself, and 2) readers I've shown the story to love it. I just think most of the editors I've sent it to have had no idea what to do with it.

Of course, most of these tales will have a "twist ending."  In fact, it was working on the newer stories in this collection that led to Fiction Techniques #3: The Twist Ending, which is one of the writing tip articles I recently put up on Amazon.



So, COMING SOON:  Just when you thought Gramlich couldn't get any stranger. MicroWeird!
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Like It Or Not

It never ceases to fascinate me how differently people can view the same book. I just finished a book entitled: Morigu: The Dead, by Mark C. Perry. When I went to review it on Goodreads, I found that most reviewers loved it. Several readers literally raved over the work. One said he’d give it 5.5 out of 5 stars. Another said it was the fantasy book that he judged all others against. Another reviewer of my acquaintance said it was the equal of Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword, which is one of my favorite books. It was that comment that persuaded me to pick up the book in the first place.

My impressions of the book were somewhat less glowing. I thought it was very well written. I really enjoyed the prose, but the story didn’t engage me as much. There were so many characters and I didn’t particularly connect with any of them. The main character, the “Morigu” of the title, was interesting but wasn’t even on stage through most of the book.

There were a lot of scenes where the main heroes were talking about their plans. I generally find one or two such scenes to be plenty. The battles were fairly frequent but I generally felt somewhat distant from them, much more as if I were watching objectively from a distance than if I were down in the midst of the action experiencing the danger. The high level poetic language may have accounted for part of that. I ended up giving the book 3 stars. There is another in the series but I don’t imagine I’ll be reading it.

I wonder why the differences between my response to the novel and the responses of others.  Could it be something as simple as mood?  I felt like I wanted to read a fantasy novel, but maybe I wanted something with more blood and gore and less on the “high fantasy” end of the spectrum. Maybe the plot was more complicated than I was looking for. I think I did want something more straightforward, with fewer characters and more time spent with those characters.  The book was only 202 pages but had so much packed into it that we often seemed only to scratch the surface of events.

Do you find this kind of thing with your own reading?  You love a book that others either don’t like or find average?  Or you find a book average that others love?  Do you have any insight into why such things happen for you?

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Be Careful of Teaching What You Love: Part Two

This post provides the reasons why I’ve come to dislike teaching my writing class, a class I originally thought I would adore.

First, and least, the class is a LOT of work.  I spend far more time on the writing class than any of my other classes, and much of that extra time involves grading and commenting on student assignments, which is not my favorite part of teaching. No one can learn to write without writing, so I have to get my students to write a lot, and I need to respond to those pieces to help them grow and improve.

Second, I wouldn’t mind the workload if it actually translated into student improvement. Unfortunately, many students seem to pay attention only to the grade rather than the numerous other comments I write on their papers, and they become so focused on grades that they begin to try and “not loose points” rather than trying to get better at the process of writing.  I hear, every semester, “so you focus mainly on APA style in grading?”  Every time it’s asked I say, “no.”  But APA style is the easiest thing for them to fix so they continue to focus on it.  I do have students who take what I say to heart and strive to get better. These students don’t necessarily make the best grades in the class, but they develop the most as writers. But these seem too few and far between, numbering 1 or 2 out of a class of 25 rather than the 10 or 12 I might hope for.

Third, this class evokes arguments with students about almost everything. When you ask an objective question, as in, “who developed the concept of classical conditioning,” there is one specific answer that the students have been taught (Pavlov) and, if they miss it, they won’t argue about it. But it sometimes seems that students want to argue about everything in the writing class.  If they wanted to argue as a basis for learning, that would be one thing. But it’s clear they want to argue so they can try and squeeze out another point or two for their grades. Many of the arguments take the form of, “But that’s what I meant to say…” and they either don’t understand or don’t want to understand that “meaning” to say something is not the same as having said it. At the end of the semester I never fail to have 2 or 3 students, usually ones who got “B’s” but wanted “A’s” come to see me in my office to argue and argue and argue about the situation. Good writing is somewhat subjective, although not completely so, and I stress to the students that I take off most points for objective mistakes and not subjective ones. But even a mark of “awkward sentence” can evoke arguments from students who don’t think it’s awkward.  When I won’t give in to these arguments, the result is often tears. That really makes my day, let me tell you.

Fourth, and worst, plagiarism. I’ve never taught this class yet without having at least 2 out of 20 or so papers plagiarized in the first round. And not just a sentence here and there, but whole passages lifted with no quotation marks and either no references or the wrong references, the latter of which indicates an active attempt at deception. This is despite the fact that I have a lengthy statement about plagiarism on my syllabus. The book talks about it at length. We cover it in class and I have two quizzes with questions on plagiarism in the first third of the semester. There are two inevitable responses that I get from students when this happens: 1). I just messed up on my references, 2). I didn’t realize that was plagiarism. I don’t accept these excuses and indicate to the students that they should drop the class because the likelihood of them passing has now been greatly diminished. Unfortunately, many of the students have reasons why they feel they can’t drop the class, and when I tell them that I will go over future papers with a fine-toothed comb, they say, “OK.” The final result:  usually a poor grade and more tears.

In fifteen years of teaching this class, I’ve had more students cry (at least one a semester, often when caught at plagiarism) than in any other class I’ve taught.  I’ve seen more students argue over each and every grade they make than in any other class. I’ve seen more students look completely bored in class than in any other I’ve taught. I’ve gotten far more frustrated questions (Why is this important? Why do we need to do it that way?) in this class than in any other. I’ve gotten more outbursts of anger than in any other. Is it any wonder that I don’t really look forward to teaching this class?

The negative aspects came to a head for me in Spring 2011 in this class, with a student who went to the chair and the vice president of the university about her unfair “B” grade, which was the “highest” grade she received that semester in any of her classes. She told our chair that she didn’t care so much about herself and her grade, but she just didn’t want future students to have to deal with my unfair policies in the class. The policy in question was me requiring classroom attendance as a portion of their grade for class participation.  After dealing with that, I was the one who felt like crying.  

Be careful of wanting to do what you love. 

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By the way, check out this great review by Keith West of my Under the Ember Star.  This certainly makes me feel better!

Also, a flash fiction piece by me called "Eye Spy" is up over at Beat to a Pulp. Another reason to feel better!

Be Careful of Teaching What You Love: Part One

I love writing. I love talking about writing. I love telling people what I think about writing, and what I know and what I “feel” is true. It’s one reason I’ve done quite a few nonfiction pieces on writing, including my book, Write With Fire. Many of the writing related pieces I’ve produced began because I wanted to understand some concept myself, and I learn best by writing about it.

Because I know that writing about something is a superb way to learn about it, I always wanted to incorporate that element into my teaching.  In the early 1990s at Xavier I saw a way to do that. Du Bois Williams (Irvin) and I got a small grant to create a writing guidebook for our psychology students.  Writing in Psychology was the result, and it soon became a class. Because we had so few faculty, we weren’t able to offer the class very often but when we did I typically taught it. I’ve taught it most years since then, and as we’ve added faculty and rearranged our curriculum we’ve been able to offer it more frequently.

I wanted to teach writing. I think many people hope for a career where they can do and be involved with the things they love. It seemed, once we had the course developed and once the “Guidebook” was published officially as the textbook for the class, that I had arrived at that high point. Every other semester I was going to be able to teach a whole class focused on something near and dear to my heart.  How could it get better?

Unfortunately, I was very naïve.  Today, the writing class is the least favorite of all my classes. I won’t say I hate it; I will say I dislike it. I imagine that if I do it for another four or five years the dislike may well turn into hate. I know exactly why my feelings have changed. It isn’t just one reason, but a number of them. In part two of this post I'll go into the reasons.

NOTE: I give a test tomorrow so my blogging may be sporadic in the first part of the week. I also get my second set of papers in the writing class on Thursday, and give another test on Friday, so at the end of the week I'll probably have another forced hiatus from blogging.  Just giving everyone a head's up

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Much Ado About Nothing

Here’s a paragraph from a book I’m currently reading:

“Martinez had been standing under somber skies for what seemed hours. He wore parade mourning dress, with cape and brocade and epaulets and jackboots, and a tall black leather shako atop his head. Service colors were reversed in mourning garb, so instead of green tunic and trousers with silver buttons and braid, the tunic and trousers were the white of mourning, with green collar, cuffs, braid buttons, and brocade. The cape was white and lined with green, and weighted at the corners to preserve its line.”

The next paragraph is much the same. And this is on page 150 of the book. This is well after you might expect some exciting things to be happening. You would have been disappointed.  I ‘almost’ put the book down after reading this paragraph. I read it to Lana and we had a moment of head shaking over it.

My first thoughts upon reading this paragraph were:

1. Who the **** cares?  :  Not me.

2. What does this have to do with the storyline? : Nothing

3. Does it have anything to do with character building?  :  Nothing. By this time the character is established.

4. Does it have anything to do with world building?  : Perhaps a tiny bit but we already know by page 150 what a stuffy and pretentious world this is anyway.

5. Is this deliberate padding because the writer wanted this to be a trilogy (it is) and needed to increase the word count? : Because there’s quite a bit of this sort of thing throughout the book, I’m certain of it.

Had this been the only such slow paragraph in the book I wouldn’t really have been bothered. I probably wouldn’t even have noticed. But this was just one of the more egregious examples. I actually like description, but I like it to ‘go’ somewhere. I like it to at least have an impact on world building.

I will probably come off sounding sexist, but had I read this paragraph cold, without any context, I would have suspected it was written by a woman. It was not. (I can only wish the book had been written by Leigh Brackett or C. L. Moore; we wouldn’t be 1 page into it without some heavy duty coolness, much less 150 pages.)  In fact, the male writer who created it is one I’ve read before and enjoyed. That’s why I’m still with the book. And, there is some good stuff in the book. I like the characters. The writing is perfectly professional. From what the back cover blurb said and what I’ve read so far in the book, I’m curious about what’s going to happen when the shit hits the fan, so to speak.  But man, let it hit the fan a little earlier.

In fact, I think I’m gonna type that up and hang it over my desk.  “Let the shit hit the fan early and often.” What do you think?

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Massive Quantities!

Massive quantities of grading struck last night and this morning. (23 term papers and 32 essays.) You might say I'm having a gradepocalypse, and will certainly be digging out for a while. We also have faculty interviews today and Monday. That means I won't be able to visit blogs much for the next few days, probably until at least Monday or Tuesday. I will keep you all in mind, however.

In the meantime, the exceptional Ty Johnston,  over at life on the written page has reviewed the first two of my Fiction Techniques series of ebooks. And he said nice things!  I hope you'll get a chance to check it out. And have a look at Ty's own offerings of both print and ebooks. He's got a range of items listed HERE.  I've mostly read his fantasy stuff, which is excellent.

Take care.

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Irritated

I'm pretty irritated at myself these past couple of weeks. I was off three work days for Mardi Gras and wrote virtually nothing. I wasted that weekend as well, and part of the next weekend. I wasted this evening playing some video games and watching meaningless TV. I talked to my writing class today about "making progress" every day, but I've been doing the absolute minimum of progress most days when I could have been doing more.  And on Thursday I get 23 papers to grade from my writing class and there won't be 'any' writing time for me for at least a few days. I've come up with plenty of excuses even when I had time, though. I keep telling myself that I needed some rest after a tough 2012, but the excuses are beginning to sound a little hollow to me.

Time to put up or shut up, I'd say.
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Story Time versus Real Time

Although we have objective ways of measuring time with clocks, the human experience of time is very subjective. We’ve all had days where the minutes drag on endlessly, and we’ve had the experience of getting home on Friday and thinking of the great weekend ahead of us and then suddenly realizing it’s somehow gotten to be Sunday night and we have to go to work again.

I’ve been thinking that, in fiction, all time is subjective. I’ve been thinking that the passage of time in written work is indicated by the amount of prose assigned to an event. A battle scene is not fought in “real” time; it’s fought in story time. And story time is relative to the length of the tale. In a short story of 1000 words, a 200 word battle scene is a longgg time.  In a novel of a 100,000 words, a 2000 word battle is pretty short.

Writers dedicate story time to those things they find interesting, or at least to those things they think readers will find interesting. I personally enjoy reading battle and action scenes, and I tend to lavish a pretty fair amount of prose on those in my tales. On the other hand, I don’t believe I’ve ever had a character go shopping for clothes. I’ve seen works where story time has been spent on that activity.

In thinking about books I’ve read recently, mostly noir/crime novels, I can tell you that most story time has been dedicated to violence and sex. The violence often involved some kind of criminal behavior, of course, but mostly the writers dwelt on violence in defense of self or of innocents. The sex time was primarily spent in people trying to get it, and much less in actually having it.

Two other things that writers spent story time on were eating/drinking, and driving. The eating and drinking generally involved rich, delicious foods and fine wines or liquors. There was a clear sense of pleasure about these acts of consumption, and some of the descriptions were tied into sexual aspects of the story. The driving was often associated with the violent aspects, but there was at least some time spent on the aesthetic qualities of automobiles. I found that interesting and I don’t believe I’ve ever spent much time on this topic in my stories either, although somewhat more than with shopping.

One thing that almost no story time was spent on was bathroom activities, other than a character or two throwing up. No time was spent urinating or defecating. I’d have to say that most of my stories follow suite.

What about you? If you write, what do you spend most of your story time on?  And as a reader, what do the authors you read spend their story time on?  I’m curious.

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Mardi Gras and The Walking Dead

Google Reader is acting up this morning. It first showed me 223 posts from friends, but as I looked these were almost all ones I'd seen before. As soon as it gets straightened out I'll get around to visiting blogs. In the meantime, I thought I'd put up my own post for today.

Monday, February 11. This is the day before Mardi Gras down here and I'm off work through Wednesday. I'm certainly glad to be off, but I'm not a fan of Mardi Gras. I don't particularly like crowds and parades. I'd much rather stay home and get in some rest and reading. It sure was nice not to have to get up at a quarter to  six this morning.

I wasted most of the weekend. Watched a lot of The Walking Dead marathon before the new episode aired last night. I'm a big fan of the show and Lana has become a fan was well. She has even started reading the graphic novels that spawned the show and she brought me the first three volumes home from the library. I enjoyed them and the basic idea is indeed the same, but there are differences in characters that are a bit disconcerting at times. There's no Darrell or Merle in the graphic novels and I do like those characters quite a bit.

Today, I'm going to get back into the writing and see if I can make progress on Wraith of Talera. I was so busy at the end of last week at school that I got nothing done on the book so it's been almost five days. Let's hope I'm not too rusty.

Enjoy your day!
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Strange Fires

I feel like I'm skirting the edge of Twilight Zone territory. On Wednesday evening, a truck caught fire on the Causeway bridge and then managed to end up in the water. I didn't see it, as I had--fortunately--passed through a couple of hours before the event. I heard a lot about it though. When divers got to the submerged truck there was no one inside and so far I haven't heard anything else about it.

Although strange, it's not unheard of for such a thing to happen. That doesn't evoke Twilight Zone music.  BUT, Thursday morning, while I was going across the Causeway Bridge to work, I spotted a column of black smoke rising from the bridge ahead of me. Traffic soon came to a stop and we waited about 45 minutes before we could proceed. As I passed the sight of the accident I saw a burned vehicle pulled off to the side.

That's two vehicle fires in two days on the Causeway. A little weird.

Transport yourself to Friday morning. I'm on my way to work. I get off the Causeway Bridge safely and turn down Airline Highway toward work. I see smoke rising up ahead, but off the road, and as I pass an area along the train tracks I see a car on fire. There's no one around it but the engine is blazing pretty good.

Three car fires in three days!  Two that I witnessed personally and all three along routes that I take to work! The Twilight Zone music is ringing in my head right now. I guarantee you.

As I was telling my friend, Lisa about it, she looked at me strangely and said she'd seen a car fire this week as well, as she was going to Baton Rouge. She thinks it was Monday but wasn't absolutely sure, and the car on fire had been involved in a crash.

Four car fires in a week!  To heck with Twilight Zone music. My Spidey sense is tingling.
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When One Random Moment Becomes Critical

Everything was going the Ravens’ way until the lights went out in the Super Bowl.  When the lights came back on, the 49ers came back with a vengeance.  Ultimately, the Ravens won, but it got awfully tight there for a while. I’ve seen such things happen many times in other games. I’ve never quite understood it and wish I did.  To be cliché, something “sparks” a team at a critical moment and they come alive. I’d use fresher language if I understood the underlying factors that cause the change.  It seems to me that what happens is that the team suddenly begins to “believe” in themselves.  But why that should happen just because some lights went out for a while is beyond me.

I started wondering if this kind of random happening can spark critical moments elsewhere in our lives. I thought of one, perhaps.  By all logical considerations, the change to a new year on a calendar is a completely arbitrary event.  Yet, many people treat the beginning of a new year as a new “start.”  I’ve known people to jump start careers, reengage in their marriages, change their lifestyles, and do many other things because they decide that “this day” or “this moment” is going to be the critical one.  Nothing changes in the physical world; everything changes in the emotional one.

Of course, many times people try to make such changes with good intentions but fail. This just makes the whole process more mysterious. Why do some succeed and others don’t?  Why do we succeed sometimes but not others?  I have to believe it is a largely an emotional phenomena, but surely there are behavioral elements to it. I wonder what they are?  If I could only figure them out I’m sure I could make a lot of money

What do you think?

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