So what's been happening in the last year?
Let's start, continue, and conclude with the books.
I'm currently on a schedule of releasing one book every three months. All of them are available from Amazon. Right now that includes:
Kassandra's Song
Minus One
Firestar
Morosini's Children
On Foreign Shores
Setosha
The last four listed above are part of the Families War series. Setosha was released on Oct. 1, 2012. That means right around the first of the year Boabdil will come out. It will be a little different than the other stories. There will be at least two more following Boabdil.
What do I have in the queue? A couple more novel length stories: first, The Shifter Feeler, which I've alluded to before. It is a detective story involving a900 year old shape shifter. And in the final draft stage, Bush Pilot, a New Zion story. Possibly coming out (I haven't decided yet) will be Operatino Georgia, which is a Families War story. It's in rough draft form right now.
And then there are the short stories. I'm looking to release those in a collection form. They fall into the following categories: the Dryad series, Wheelchair Annie, the Shifter stories, and Kalliste's Storytime.
Stay tuned.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Saturday, November 05, 2011
Website!
The domain name is www.kassandras-song.com. I thought of using my name, but I am constantly amazed at how people butcher my last name. So I went with the name of a book (my first one). I also chose Yahoo Services.
My reason for choosing Yahoo! were many. First, several local writers I knew had done so, and they all reported being happy with them. Second, the price compared to the others (1on1, Intuit, and GoDaddy) was a wash. Third, I figured I could master the tools fairly quickly, though that was also a wash. I'd be doing this site myself.
Back in my Premera Blue Cross days I designed the web pages for the Tech Services department. I shocked the company Webmaster by using native .html and Notepad. It wasn't that I didn't trust FrontPage or the others, but I wanted to know what the code did. I did load it up with plenty of comments, though, for whoever would maintain it after that (was this premonition?). There wasn't a line of code in there that I didn't know what it did. It was nice and tight, and used several visual features I'd learned in document design. That's because I treated it as a document, though I printed to screen, not paper.
I treated my website the same way. I wanted a certain look to it, and while I'm probably only 98% happy, I do like what I have. There are tweaks I want to make, but (and this is important), I realize a website can be an enormous time sink. Time spent on that is not time spent writing, and since my stay in the hospital in 2010, I keep in mind: "So many stories, so little time".
Other things -
Different World wrapped up on www.beyondthefarhorizon.com, and I didn't solve the mystery. The costabulary have the killer, but who sent him? That will be book #4, and has a working title of Cold Case.
I'm also filling in bits and pieces of the Families. The latest installment starts on Nov. 6 for two weeks, Wolfhound Six, about an Imperial fighter pilot woulnded at Medina. There was Homecoming, this is one from the other side. And the one about Sir Livan and his putative associates is chugging along. Chapters 1, 2, and 4 are done, 3 is a work in progress.
The domain name is www.kassandras-song.com. I thought of using my name, but I am constantly amazed at how people butcher my last name. So I went with the name of a book (my first one). I also chose Yahoo Services.
My reason for choosing Yahoo! were many. First, several local writers I knew had done so, and they all reported being happy with them. Second, the price compared to the others (1on1, Intuit, and GoDaddy) was a wash. Third, I figured I could master the tools fairly quickly, though that was also a wash. I'd be doing this site myself.
Back in my Premera Blue Cross days I designed the web pages for the Tech Services department. I shocked the company Webmaster by using native .html and Notepad. It wasn't that I didn't trust FrontPage or the others, but I wanted to know what the code did. I did load it up with plenty of comments, though, for whoever would maintain it after that (was this premonition?). There wasn't a line of code in there that I didn't know what it did. It was nice and tight, and used several visual features I'd learned in document design. That's because I treated it as a document, though I printed to screen, not paper.
I treated my website the same way. I wanted a certain look to it, and while I'm probably only 98% happy, I do like what I have. There are tweaks I want to make, but (and this is important), I realize a website can be an enormous time sink. Time spent on that is not time spent writing, and since my stay in the hospital in 2010, I keep in mind: "So many stories, so little time".
Other things -
Different World wrapped up on www.beyondthefarhorizon.com, and I didn't solve the mystery. The costabulary have the killer, but who sent him? That will be book #4, and has a working title of Cold Case.
I'm also filling in bits and pieces of the Families. The latest installment starts on Nov. 6 for two weeks, Wolfhound Six, about an Imperial fighter pilot woulnded at Medina. There was Homecoming, this is one from the other side. And the one about Sir Livan and his putative associates is chugging along. Chapters 1, 2, and 4 are done, 3 is a work in progress.
Monday, October 10, 2011
The Prison Experience
I had a reader of Minus One who openly procliamed that she was not a reader, tell me she couldn't stop reading. As an author, I want to know why so maybe I can repeat this. Apparently part of it is "the prison experience". People are fascinated by things that they have little or no knowledge of, and that horrify them. Look at the popularity of horror/slasher flicks.
Now I won't compare Minus One to a horror flick, but prison has all sorts of auras about it, and so the book opens a little bit of a window into an experience all too many people are curious about.
There are a number of other sources. On television you have Lockup, stories about life in prison. But they focus on the most notorious things, and don't get the drudgery of life inside. And for the most part they don't touch on the experience of women behind bars.
Minus One is fiction, but it is based on a lot of interviews and shared experiences. There are alumni of prisons all over the place, and you would be surprised at how many there are.
And then there is Orange is the New Black. The author spent a year in a Federal prison for something she was involved with several years before, part of a money laundering scheme that supported the illegal drug trade. Her experiences should be read and studied. She gives voice to what I heard in interviews time after time, the loneliness, the caution inmates develop, and the (sometimes) raucous nature of a society of nothing but women. She also touches on one of the central facts that doesn't apply as often in a men's prison: what of the families?
Famileis are built around women. Especially, there are growing children. When you take the mother out of the family, what happens to it? In some cases the father/husband holds it together, but in too many cases the woman enters an ever-tightening spiral. She leaves prison with no prospects, some go into shelters, some return home and try to pick up the pieces. But the only thing they know is what got them put in prison to begin with, and for too many, they end up going back inside.
As for the children... They're on the edge of being cut adrift. If the woman is pregnant when she goes in, and gives birth in prison, she gives up the child, hopefully to her family. In some cases it is to foster care. In Indianaalmost as an exception, mothers are allowed to keep their children with them for several months (imagine the problems of designing prison cells so little fingers won't be hurt).
This only touches on the whole experience of going to prison. But too many people who have been inside still feel the bars around them after they get out, and this is not related to the recidivism rate. The human mind can adapt to an awful lot, and someone who has come to grips with life in prison has to adapt all over again to life outside. But there is the security of being inside. You know what to do, where to go, and when to do it. There are dangers and a lot of petty (and not so petty) annoyances. They don't have those in the outside world. The freedom has struck some as frightening. They miss the order and security. It takes time to adapt to life in prison, it takes almost as long, or perhaps longer, to adapting to life outside.
One of the most important people I met while researching Minus One was a woman who had a one-person cleaning service. She had been a free spirit before her troubles, and life in the Women's Prison at Purdy (Washington) took a lot of that away from her. She liked her job because it was a routine. Every day she did the same thing. She did good work, and she liked that. She did do other things, but they were non-threatening. She lived as low-level an existence as she could. Reading and writing poetry was her liberation, but it was a small part of her life. Most of it was consumed with routine.
An essential part of Minus One was what happened after Jan Sutherland got out of prison. Rebuilding a life is very difficult. She had her brother's help, and the group. But the person has to do it for herself. And that struggle has to form part of the story. It gets back to what one of the lines in the story, that touches upon a critical point: "...it is among them still that I feel I still dwell".
Minus One is a story of change and growth, and it attempts to mirror the experience of women who have gone through the System. It takes her soul and anneals it in a prison experience.
I had a reader of Minus One who openly procliamed that she was not a reader, tell me she couldn't stop reading. As an author, I want to know why so maybe I can repeat this. Apparently part of it is "the prison experience". People are fascinated by things that they have little or no knowledge of, and that horrify them. Look at the popularity of horror/slasher flicks.
Now I won't compare Minus One to a horror flick, but prison has all sorts of auras about it, and so the book opens a little bit of a window into an experience all too many people are curious about.
There are a number of other sources. On television you have Lockup, stories about life in prison. But they focus on the most notorious things, and don't get the drudgery of life inside. And for the most part they don't touch on the experience of women behind bars.
Minus One is fiction, but it is based on a lot of interviews and shared experiences. There are alumni of prisons all over the place, and you would be surprised at how many there are.
And then there is Orange is the New Black. The author spent a year in a Federal prison for something she was involved with several years before, part of a money laundering scheme that supported the illegal drug trade. Her experiences should be read and studied. She gives voice to what I heard in interviews time after time, the loneliness, the caution inmates develop, and the (sometimes) raucous nature of a society of nothing but women. She also touches on one of the central facts that doesn't apply as often in a men's prison: what of the families?
Famileis are built around women. Especially, there are growing children. When you take the mother out of the family, what happens to it? In some cases the father/husband holds it together, but in too many cases the woman enters an ever-tightening spiral. She leaves prison with no prospects, some go into shelters, some return home and try to pick up the pieces. But the only thing they know is what got them put in prison to begin with, and for too many, they end up going back inside.
As for the children... They're on the edge of being cut adrift. If the woman is pregnant when she goes in, and gives birth in prison, she gives up the child, hopefully to her family. In some cases it is to foster care. In Indianaalmost as an exception, mothers are allowed to keep their children with them for several months (imagine the problems of designing prison cells so little fingers won't be hurt).
This only touches on the whole experience of going to prison. But too many people who have been inside still feel the bars around them after they get out, and this is not related to the recidivism rate. The human mind can adapt to an awful lot, and someone who has come to grips with life in prison has to adapt all over again to life outside. But there is the security of being inside. You know what to do, where to go, and when to do it. There are dangers and a lot of petty (and not so petty) annoyances. They don't have those in the outside world. The freedom has struck some as frightening. They miss the order and security. It takes time to adapt to life in prison, it takes almost as long, or perhaps longer, to adapting to life outside.
One of the most important people I met while researching Minus One was a woman who had a one-person cleaning service. She had been a free spirit before her troubles, and life in the Women's Prison at Purdy (Washington) took a lot of that away from her. She liked her job because it was a routine. Every day she did the same thing. She did good work, and she liked that. She did do other things, but they were non-threatening. She lived as low-level an existence as she could. Reading and writing poetry was her liberation, but it was a small part of her life. Most of it was consumed with routine.
An essential part of Minus One was what happened after Jan Sutherland got out of prison. Rebuilding a life is very difficult. She had her brother's help, and the group. But the person has to do it for herself. And that struggle has to form part of the story. It gets back to what one of the lines in the story, that touches upon a critical point: "...it is among them still that I feel I still dwell".
Minus One is a story of change and growth, and it attempts to mirror the experience of women who have gone through the System. It takes her soul and anneals it in a prison experience.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Behind Kassandra's Song
This story grew out of "Kalliste", epublished on www.beyondthefarhorizon.com. Kalliste is the personal servant of Potnia, or The Most Holy, aka the Earth Mother, one of the earliest Goddesses we have record of anyone worshipping. She (Potnia) is outside of the normal hierarchy of Gods and Goddesses, as some search on the name will show. Kalliste, born in 1651 BC became the personal servant of Potnia (or P'dania), and was gifted with certain powers, among them being that she doesn't get sick or age, poisons have very little effect on her, and she can alter her guise to appear young, old, or somewhere in between. This does not fool cameras, by the way.
Kassandra became the personal servant of Apollo. Those up on the Greek myths know she was granted a little of Apollo's ability to "see" the future. But only in part. She sees the probabilities, and experience has shown/taught her how to make them come out. But she also bears Apollo's Curse: any prophecy she tells someone will not be believed.
In the myths she was killed by Klytemnestra or Orestes, depending upon which myth you choose. In my version, seeing what was coming, she escapes during the confusion surrounding Agamemnon's death, and goes to Delphi where she raises a temple to Apollo. They reconcile, though he does not take back his Curse. She becomes the Pythia or Prophetess of Delphi.
One of the things I noticed early on in reading Greek Mythis was that the Gods always left a way out. You had to be clever, and if you were, you could wiggle out of whatver dilemma they put you in. In Kassandra's case, we go back to the actual mechanics of the prophecy the Pythia would give. The petitioners would "make a donation" to the temple, and then be allowed to ask a question. The Pythia would go into a trance and babble something in an unknown tongue to a priest. He would write it down and give it to the petitioner. Nowhere in that do they actually hear her give the prophecy, or understand it, as it is in a language they do not know.
This neatly avoids Apollo's Curse. They are handed their answer, and can choose to believe it or disbelieve it. She did not tell it to them, she told it to the priest. Wiggle room. Of course the answer is slightly cryptic, and can be misunderstood. In retrospect, of course, it is seen to be exactly on target.
Whenever you create a character you have to create problems. The other problem all of these personal servants of the Gods have is that they must have contact with one of Them from time to time, otherwise the stresses of their long lives begin to byild up. In Kassandra's Song Kit has a psychotic episode or two, and consciously tries to ignore her past.
So you have an undercover cop who can alter her appearance, has mental problems, and is placed in danger. She's shot at the end of Chapter One.
So what does this have to do with the previous post? I needed to fill in Kassandra's past, including her guilty feelings (still there) over the death of her family and the destruction of Troy, for which she blames herself. And for that, I kind of needed to have an idea of when that war probably occurred.
Are there other personal servants? Yes. What about the Ten Commandments? Remember that comment about wiggle room? Think about it. Kassandra (and Kalliste) both remind people that they aren't Christians.
And, by the way, a long life lets me include doing plenty of flashbacks, and I like writing flashbacks.
Kassandra's Song is available from Amazon, and is also on the Kindle.
This story grew out of "Kalliste", epublished on www.beyondthefarhorizon.com. Kalliste is the personal servant of Potnia, or The Most Holy, aka the Earth Mother, one of the earliest Goddesses we have record of anyone worshipping. She (Potnia) is outside of the normal hierarchy of Gods and Goddesses, as some search on the name will show. Kalliste, born in 1651 BC became the personal servant of Potnia (or P'dania), and was gifted with certain powers, among them being that she doesn't get sick or age, poisons have very little effect on her, and she can alter her guise to appear young, old, or somewhere in between. This does not fool cameras, by the way.
Kassandra became the personal servant of Apollo. Those up on the Greek myths know she was granted a little of Apollo's ability to "see" the future. But only in part. She sees the probabilities, and experience has shown/taught her how to make them come out. But she also bears Apollo's Curse: any prophecy she tells someone will not be believed.
In the myths she was killed by Klytemnestra or Orestes, depending upon which myth you choose. In my version, seeing what was coming, she escapes during the confusion surrounding Agamemnon's death, and goes to Delphi where she raises a temple to Apollo. They reconcile, though he does not take back his Curse. She becomes the Pythia or Prophetess of Delphi.
One of the things I noticed early on in reading Greek Mythis was that the Gods always left a way out. You had to be clever, and if you were, you could wiggle out of whatver dilemma they put you in. In Kassandra's case, we go back to the actual mechanics of the prophecy the Pythia would give. The petitioners would "make a donation" to the temple, and then be allowed to ask a question. The Pythia would go into a trance and babble something in an unknown tongue to a priest. He would write it down and give it to the petitioner. Nowhere in that do they actually hear her give the prophecy, or understand it, as it is in a language they do not know.
This neatly avoids Apollo's Curse. They are handed their answer, and can choose to believe it or disbelieve it. She did not tell it to them, she told it to the priest. Wiggle room. Of course the answer is slightly cryptic, and can be misunderstood. In retrospect, of course, it is seen to be exactly on target.
Whenever you create a character you have to create problems. The other problem all of these personal servants of the Gods have is that they must have contact with one of Them from time to time, otherwise the stresses of their long lives begin to byild up. In Kassandra's Song Kit has a psychotic episode or two, and consciously tries to ignore her past.
So you have an undercover cop who can alter her appearance, has mental problems, and is placed in danger. She's shot at the end of Chapter One.
So what does this have to do with the previous post? I needed to fill in Kassandra's past, including her guilty feelings (still there) over the death of her family and the destruction of Troy, for which she blames herself. And for that, I kind of needed to have an idea of when that war probably occurred.
Are there other personal servants? Yes. What about the Ten Commandments? Remember that comment about wiggle room? Think about it. Kassandra (and Kalliste) both remind people that they aren't Christians.
And, by the way, a long life lets me include doing plenty of flashbacks, and I like writing flashbacks.
Kassandra's Song is available from Amazon, and is also on the Kindle.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
The Trojan War
I recently stumbled on Herodotus' version of the Trojan War. I downloaded free copies from Gutenberg at www.gutenberg.org He approaches it from the historical point of view, and concludes that war did happen in the Troad. He has an estimate of when, it occured, but more on that in a bit.
Before going any farther, it is my opinion that Troy/Illios/Wilusa were one and the same, and that the Ahhayian's mentioned in Hittite archives are the Achaians. After reading everything I could find, there was a "Trojan" war, though it may not have been quite like we find in the Illiad, Quintus of Smurna, and so on. A war did take place there. Was it Troy VIIa at the Hisarlik site? My opinion is yes. Now back to the "father of History".
One of the things he mentions is that there was plenty of provocation on both sides. Each side, Asia and Hellas, were stealing each other's women to work as slaves, or as wives, for some time. Things kept escalating, and nobody would back down. War became inevitable. What he explores is whether someone named Helen was actually taken to Troy. He suggests that when Alexandrros/Paris docked in Egypt, Helen and the treasure he had stolen was removed by the Egyptians.
Aside from some navigational oddities, like why go to Egypt when your destination is the Dardanelles, this makes the whole storyline that this was all to rescue Helen nothing but a big mistake. There is some evidence that this was a fig leaf.
It doesn't take much research to discover that a lot of food was grown in the Black Sea littoral. That wheat was traded with what is now Greece. Illios, being a good place to dock and wait out bad weather when traversing the Dardanelles (the harbor has since silted over, but 1832 Royal Navy charts show the bay still there) would be in a position to exact a toll. That city would grow very wealthy as it was also where East-West trade crossed. And such wealth would appeal to the acquisitive instincts of the Argives. It was almost natural that a war of some kind would follow.
The mistake a lot of people make is in not looking at the slightly wider picture. In my stories I've characterized Priam as King of Illios and King of the Dardanians. He would have a lot of resources farther inland to draw from. That is the context of the "Trojan" War.
Now per Herodotus, the Greek expedition landed in Mysia, sacked some cities, and otehrwise chewed up the countryside. Imagine their chgrin when they learned they were in the wrong place. So then they sat waiting for the right wind so they could go to Illios. And this is important. The Aegean is not a placid lake. Sailing at the wrong time of year could be disastrous. And if they wasted most of a summer burning and pillaging in Mysia, they would face autumn storms, not something you want to do if given half a chance.
Now we begin to enter into the mythical elements. Iphigenia is sacrificed to get favorable winds. The Argives land. They fight for several years. Eventually they take the city with the Trojan Horse. Much slaughter, burning, pillaging, raping, and otehr things. The men are killed, the women become slaves. And then the victors at Troy go home.
And a city grows at the same spot, Troy VIIb, but the Argives have other problems. Economics are a very powerful force.
Herodotus covers some of this. More is found in the Illiad and Quintus of Smyrna. Recent archaeology has filled in some of the blanks. For instance, on the day that Odysseus returned to Ithaka, there was a total eclipse of the sun. This was in 1199 BCE. If we run the clock backwards and say he was gone for 20 years, that puts the start of the Trojan War in 1219 BCE.
Now I have my doubts that: a) the war took 10 years of siege outside the walls of Troy; b) it took Odysseus 10 years to get home. The war probably did last ten years, but I think only 18 months of it were spent in the Troad. And as for returning home, all but three years are tossed away leaving him 4.5 years when he was gone. This pushes the Trojan part of the Trojan War to around 1204 or so BCE.
I've seen dates that suggest anything from 1176 BCE to 1224 BCE. The 1204/05 time is almost right in the middle.
When you read Herodotus, when you read The Illiad, and you throw out the supernatural elements, you get the account of a military expedition and event.
And when you do all of that, you end up with the hooks for a story or two. More of that next time.
I recently stumbled on Herodotus' version of the Trojan War. I downloaded free copies from Gutenberg at www.gutenberg.org He approaches it from the historical point of view, and concludes that war did happen in the Troad. He has an estimate of when, it occured, but more on that in a bit.
Before going any farther, it is my opinion that Troy/Illios/Wilusa were one and the same, and that the Ahhayian's mentioned in Hittite archives are the Achaians. After reading everything I could find, there was a "Trojan" war, though it may not have been quite like we find in the Illiad, Quintus of Smurna, and so on. A war did take place there. Was it Troy VIIa at the Hisarlik site? My opinion is yes. Now back to the "father of History".
One of the things he mentions is that there was plenty of provocation on both sides. Each side, Asia and Hellas, were stealing each other's women to work as slaves, or as wives, for some time. Things kept escalating, and nobody would back down. War became inevitable. What he explores is whether someone named Helen was actually taken to Troy. He suggests that when Alexandrros/Paris docked in Egypt, Helen and the treasure he had stolen was removed by the Egyptians.
Aside from some navigational oddities, like why go to Egypt when your destination is the Dardanelles, this makes the whole storyline that this was all to rescue Helen nothing but a big mistake. There is some evidence that this was a fig leaf.
It doesn't take much research to discover that a lot of food was grown in the Black Sea littoral. That wheat was traded with what is now Greece. Illios, being a good place to dock and wait out bad weather when traversing the Dardanelles (the harbor has since silted over, but 1832 Royal Navy charts show the bay still there) would be in a position to exact a toll. That city would grow very wealthy as it was also where East-West trade crossed. And such wealth would appeal to the acquisitive instincts of the Argives. It was almost natural that a war of some kind would follow.
The mistake a lot of people make is in not looking at the slightly wider picture. In my stories I've characterized Priam as King of Illios and King of the Dardanians. He would have a lot of resources farther inland to draw from. That is the context of the "Trojan" War.
Now per Herodotus, the Greek expedition landed in Mysia, sacked some cities, and otehrwise chewed up the countryside. Imagine their chgrin when they learned they were in the wrong place. So then they sat waiting for the right wind so they could go to Illios. And this is important. The Aegean is not a placid lake. Sailing at the wrong time of year could be disastrous. And if they wasted most of a summer burning and pillaging in Mysia, they would face autumn storms, not something you want to do if given half a chance.
Now we begin to enter into the mythical elements. Iphigenia is sacrificed to get favorable winds. The Argives land. They fight for several years. Eventually they take the city with the Trojan Horse. Much slaughter, burning, pillaging, raping, and otehr things. The men are killed, the women become slaves. And then the victors at Troy go home.
And a city grows at the same spot, Troy VIIb, but the Argives have other problems. Economics are a very powerful force.
Herodotus covers some of this. More is found in the Illiad and Quintus of Smyrna. Recent archaeology has filled in some of the blanks. For instance, on the day that Odysseus returned to Ithaka, there was a total eclipse of the sun. This was in 1199 BCE. If we run the clock backwards and say he was gone for 20 years, that puts the start of the Trojan War in 1219 BCE.
Now I have my doubts that: a) the war took 10 years of siege outside the walls of Troy; b) it took Odysseus 10 years to get home. The war probably did last ten years, but I think only 18 months of it were spent in the Troad. And as for returning home, all but three years are tossed away leaving him 4.5 years when he was gone. This pushes the Trojan part of the Trojan War to around 1204 or so BCE.
I've seen dates that suggest anything from 1176 BCE to 1224 BCE. The 1204/05 time is almost right in the middle.
When you read Herodotus, when you read The Illiad, and you throw out the supernatural elements, you get the account of a military expedition and event.
And when you do all of that, you end up with the hooks for a story or two. More of that next time.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Formatting and the Written Page
I got dinged in a contest once because the reviewer took out a ruler and decided that my margins were 0.95", rather than the industry standard (and contest required) 1.0"! Nothing was said about the content of the story, but everything was said about the format.
I've had newbies in my writer's group ask about ms format. I can recite it off the top of my head:
** this is a matter of judgment. One site told me 1/2 way down the page. Now I go 3 blank lines, the title line, a blank line, and then verbiage.
Word count is a critical thing. I won't go into the definitions of lengths. The results you get from different methods are all over the place. There are a number of ways of figuring this.
The important thing is to be consistent. I found that going to www.sfwa.org and using their methods works the best, which puts Minus One at 102,250 words, and if you allow for partial pages (i.e. those pages with just a couple of lines on them) you can be fairly close. There's also a method of counting the words per line on three different pages and so on. I'd rather use the tools I outlined.
Now a word about getting things uniform. The margins are easy, but Word, and presumably WordPerfect (I also use Open Office) will do things to the bottom of the page so you don't have the same number of lines per page. Turn Orphan Control off in M/S Word. Do a CTRL-A to select the entire text. Then go to the Format Tab and select paragraph. Then select Line and Page Breaks. Click on the box for Orphan control until it is blank. Exit. You'll find that you the last line on the page will always be in the same place (until the last line, of course). This evening out helps when calculating the word count.
Headings - I do this now so it's automatic. I use Headers, and in the upper right hand corner put in Last Name/Title*/Page #. If this is a chapter, I'll put Last Name/Title*/Chapter #/Page #. So, to pick on Minus One again, this looks like Bretthauer/Minus One/135. *if you have a long title it is permitted to use a key word from the title: Bretthauer/Engage/Chap 3/5 which is page 5 of the 3rd chapter of Engage the Enemy More Closely.
Why the upper right corner? Because the majority of editors and agents are right handed, and would hold your m/s in the left hand. And if they drop it on the floor, or it gets knocked off the desk, this will help them reassemble the story.
Page breaks and end of chapter/story. I use a # for line breaks, centered. This is an old typesetter mark that said line break. At the end I use # # # to indicate chapter or story end. Do I have to say The End? You can, but you don't have to. I did have something get mislabeled because the person posting the story was expecting "The End" and it wasn't there. That got straightened out in a hurry.
Alternatively, use * * * for your scene and chapter breaks. Whatever you do, make it consistent!
Courier New vs. Times New Roman. The former is a fixed-pitch font, the latter is a proportional font. This means that in Courier New, each character takes up the same space. An 'i' is the same width as a 'Z'. I do the former rather than the latter in a submission unless requested otherwise. Agents read for a living, and their eyes get tired. Nobody ever lost a sale by making it easier on the customer. But check Writer's Guidelines or Writer's Market for suggestions. Don't use a fancy font. I know Courier looks boring, but you are not there to jazz it up. That's what the typesetter does. Your job is to get the story in the hands of the editor who will buy it. That's why you check Guidelines. If they want it in Verdana, Arial, Bookman, or New Century, a click of the font tab will give it to them. But you'll find most want it in something easy on the eyes.
What about special characters and formatting? Don't. Okay, so you have to do some things. Use underline instead of italics. Don't use bold at all. Why? Only underline shows up when you use Courier or Courier New. And turn off the conversion thing that converts two dashes -- into an em-dash. Again, you want to make things clear.
None of this applies if it is an e-publishing as those have their own rules and you have to rely upon the editor to convert it to the format he/she wants. It's worth some time to learn a little about HTML. And you can always edit HTML in Notepad.
One final point: You've created your m/s and it comes in as a bloated 156k file in M/S Word. How do you trim out the goo and dribble Microsoft puts in everything? Open it in Wordpad. Save it. Reply yes to the request to save it as a .rtf and then close. Magically all the things that were eliminated but so helpfully kept in the file by Word are gone as they are not supported by Wordpad (which is a bare bones version of Word). You'll have to check your margins again (Wordpad likes 1.25" margins) and your header will have been wiped away. That's easily adjustable.
So now all you have left to do are the ideas in your story.
When you want to be a writer, sit down and write. You'll make mistakes. But you learn by doing, and you'll gradually get better. And after a million words or so, you should be ready to be published.
Happy writing!
I got dinged in a contest once because the reviewer took out a ruler and decided that my margins were 0.95", rather than the industry standard (and contest required) 1.0"! Nothing was said about the content of the story, but everything was said about the format.
I've had newbies in my writer's group ask about ms format. I can recite it off the top of my head:
- 1" margin all around
- double-space
- 12-point
- Courier or Courier New *
- single-sided
- chapter starts 1/3rd of the way down the page **
** this is a matter of judgment. One site told me 1/2 way down the page. Now I go 3 blank lines, the title line, a blank line, and then verbiage.
Word count is a critical thing. I won't go into the definitions of lengths. The results you get from different methods are all over the place. There are a number of ways of figuring this.
- if using M/S Word, use the Word Count tab under tools.
- count the spaces and characters and divide by 6
- turn orphan off and divide the total page count by 250.
The important thing is to be consistent. I found that going to www.sfwa.org and using their methods works the best, which puts Minus One at 102,250 words, and if you allow for partial pages (i.e. those pages with just a couple of lines on them) you can be fairly close. There's also a method of counting the words per line on three different pages and so on. I'd rather use the tools I outlined.
Now a word about getting things uniform. The margins are easy, but Word, and presumably WordPerfect (I also use Open Office) will do things to the bottom of the page so you don't have the same number of lines per page. Turn Orphan Control off in M/S Word. Do a CTRL-A to select the entire text. Then go to the Format Tab and select paragraph. Then select Line and Page Breaks. Click on the box for Orphan control until it is blank. Exit. You'll find that you the last line on the page will always be in the same place (until the last line, of course). This evening out helps when calculating the word count.
Headings - I do this now so it's automatic. I use Headers, and in the upper right hand corner put in Last Name/Title*/Page #. If this is a chapter, I'll put Last Name/Title*/Chapter #/Page #. So, to pick on Minus One again, this looks like Bretthauer/Minus One/135. *if you have a long title it is permitted to use a key word from the title: Bretthauer/Engage/Chap 3/5 which is page 5 of the 3rd chapter of Engage the Enemy More Closely.
Why the upper right corner? Because the majority of editors and agents are right handed, and would hold your m/s in the left hand. And if they drop it on the floor, or it gets knocked off the desk, this will help them reassemble the story.
Page breaks and end of chapter/story. I use a # for line breaks, centered. This is an old typesetter mark that said line break. At the end I use # # # to indicate chapter or story end. Do I have to say The End? You can, but you don't have to. I did have something get mislabeled because the person posting the story was expecting "The End" and it wasn't there. That got straightened out in a hurry.
Alternatively, use * * * for your scene and chapter breaks. Whatever you do, make it consistent!
Courier New vs. Times New Roman. The former is a fixed-pitch font, the latter is a proportional font. This means that in Courier New, each character takes up the same space. An 'i' is the same width as a 'Z'. I do the former rather than the latter in a submission unless requested otherwise. Agents read for a living, and their eyes get tired. Nobody ever lost a sale by making it easier on the customer. But check Writer's Guidelines or Writer's Market for suggestions. Don't use a fancy font. I know Courier looks boring, but you are not there to jazz it up. That's what the typesetter does. Your job is to get the story in the hands of the editor who will buy it. That's why you check Guidelines. If they want it in Verdana, Arial, Bookman, or New Century, a click of the font tab will give it to them. But you'll find most want it in something easy on the eyes.
What about special characters and formatting? Don't. Okay, so you have to do some things. Use underline instead of italics. Don't use bold at all. Why? Only underline shows up when you use Courier or Courier New. And turn off the conversion thing that converts two dashes -- into an em-dash. Again, you want to make things clear.
None of this applies if it is an e-publishing as those have their own rules and you have to rely upon the editor to convert it to the format he/she wants. It's worth some time to learn a little about HTML. And you can always edit HTML in Notepad.
One final point: You've created your m/s and it comes in as a bloated 156k file in M/S Word. How do you trim out the goo and dribble Microsoft puts in everything? Open it in Wordpad. Save it. Reply yes to the request to save it as a .rtf and then close. Magically all the things that were eliminated but so helpfully kept in the file by Word are gone as they are not supported by Wordpad (which is a bare bones version of Word). You'll have to check your margins again (Wordpad likes 1.25" margins) and your header will have been wiped away. That's easily adjustable.
So now all you have left to do are the ideas in your story.
When you want to be a writer, sit down and write. You'll make mistakes. But you learn by doing, and you'll gradually get better. And after a million words or so, you should be ready to be published.
Happy writing!
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Gee, it's nearly the end of October, and what have I been up to? What's new on the writing front?
First, The Minstrel was published in Winter's Night magazine! Payment was typical for an inaugural issue: a free copy. But woo-hoo!
Second, I've been putting the 2009 version of Firestar on Beyond the Far Horizon. This is the expanded version, and comes in at 30 chapters, and 209,000 words. A far cry from what Joshua was looking at. I'll expand on this in a moment.
Third, I've been polishing Minus One. It first came in at 105,000, but now it's up to around 120,000. Mostly I've been cleaning up loose ends and completely rewriting the ending so Jan has a much bigger role in the events. I've also started on the synopsis and pitch letter.
Related to that story is Plus One, which are the stories related to Minus One, but follow what happened afterwards. It also touches on the experiences of the members of the group, her attorney, some DJs who knew her, and her husband. That's at 86,000 words, more or less, but will probably come in at 100,000.
A moment about word count: I know MS Word has a word counting feature. I use that for a rough guess, but my method is twofold: first, I convert the ms to Courier, and count the pages. I take 1 page off for every other chapter, the divide the resultant by 4 (because in Courier with 1" margins you get 250 words/page). I also turn Orphan control off so each page has the same number of lines. Then I use MS Word to tell me how many characters and spaces, and divide that number by 6. That is probably slightly more accurate, and it's kind of interesting how close those two numbers come.
Fourth, I finished Body of Evidence, another Gina Stone story. This one brings in Marge Bergeron and ends with Gina married. This is the first draft, and is around 110,000 words in 15 chapters.
I've also started something new: shape-shifters. I have one I'm 6 chapters into, and am fighting off the urge to stop to do other things. More some other time.
~~~~~~~~~~~
All right, the difference in Firestar is that the one Joshua saw ended with Corey assigned to Morosini's Children. There was to be a story by that name as a follow-on, but it wasn't coming together. So I grafted the last back on to what I'm calling Firestar09, and have been posting that on Gina Wylie's sight. That means that the first one for deadtree is going to be Setosha. I've spent some time with it, and, well, we'll see. I'm probably going to have to trim it as well as rewrite it even more.
While I'm doing that, I'll try to see where I can send Minus One. I have hopes for that story as general fiction, and think it's publishable.
To date, since 1999, I've written 3.2 million words, or so, mostly since 2003. Ironically The Minstrel was written in 1986. And Kalliste, 400,000 words, was between 1999 and 2001. And Kalliste's Storytime was extracted from that. Still leaves 2.8 million words. That's a few.
First, The Minstrel was published in Winter's Night magazine! Payment was typical for an inaugural issue: a free copy. But woo-hoo!
Second, I've been putting the 2009 version of Firestar on Beyond the Far Horizon. This is the expanded version, and comes in at 30 chapters, and 209,000 words. A far cry from what Joshua was looking at. I'll expand on this in a moment.
Third, I've been polishing Minus One. It first came in at 105,000, but now it's up to around 120,000. Mostly I've been cleaning up loose ends and completely rewriting the ending so Jan has a much bigger role in the events. I've also started on the synopsis and pitch letter.
Related to that story is Plus One, which are the stories related to Minus One, but follow what happened afterwards. It also touches on the experiences of the members of the group, her attorney, some DJs who knew her, and her husband. That's at 86,000 words, more or less, but will probably come in at 100,000.
A moment about word count: I know MS Word has a word counting feature. I use that for a rough guess, but my method is twofold: first, I convert the ms to Courier, and count the pages. I take 1 page off for every other chapter, the divide the resultant by 4 (because in Courier with 1" margins you get 250 words/page). I also turn Orphan control off so each page has the same number of lines. Then I use MS Word to tell me how many characters and spaces, and divide that number by 6. That is probably slightly more accurate, and it's kind of interesting how close those two numbers come.
Fourth, I finished Body of Evidence, another Gina Stone story. This one brings in Marge Bergeron and ends with Gina married. This is the first draft, and is around 110,000 words in 15 chapters.
I've also started something new: shape-shifters. I have one I'm 6 chapters into, and am fighting off the urge to stop to do other things. More some other time.
~~~~~~~~~~~
All right, the difference in Firestar is that the one Joshua saw ended with Corey assigned to Morosini's Children. There was to be a story by that name as a follow-on, but it wasn't coming together. So I grafted the last back on to what I'm calling Firestar09, and have been posting that on Gina Wylie's sight. That means that the first one for deadtree is going to be Setosha. I've spent some time with it, and, well, we'll see. I'm probably going to have to trim it as well as rewrite it even more.
While I'm doing that, I'll try to see where I can send Minus One. I have hopes for that story as general fiction, and think it's publishable.
To date, since 1999, I've written 3.2 million words, or so, mostly since 2003. Ironically The Minstrel was written in 1986. And Kalliste, 400,000 words, was between 1999 and 2001. And Kalliste's Storytime was extracted from that. Still leaves 2.8 million words. That's a few.
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