Clara unlocked her phone, dragged down her notifications, and tapped on the only one displayed. Since her phone number and accounts were new, few knew how to reach her. That keeps things nice and simple.
Subject has been released.
This sentence meant little without context and that was on purpose. An acquaintance had been wounded and captured by the authorities after a particularly nasty skirmish with a pack of werewolves. It took them months to secure her release, but tonight all that hard work paid off.
Disclaimer: This excerpt from The Van Helsing Impetus is currently in development. There may be typos, errors, omissions, inconsistencies and so forth. The image is sourced from Pixabay.
Her ability to take on an unassuming form was an addition to her arsenal. In this form, Clara’s beauty and physical attributes were muted. While this enabled her to traverse crowds unnoticed, being so casually dismissed tore at her ego. His heart rate never even changed…
Disclaimer: This excerpt from The Van Helsing Impetus is currently in development. There may be typos, errors, omissions, inconsistencies and so forth. The image is sourced from Pixabay.
Last month, I was interviewed by Sarah Walker of Hidden Gems, a talk-show for avid readers and aspiring authors.
Interview by Sarah Walker on Hidden Gems
This interview can be found here, and features The Van Helsing Paradox, along with five questions that required a lot of thought to answer! I highly recommend that you check it out!
Hopefully Sarah’s YouTube channel will pick up as she interviews more authors!
Last month, I was interviewed by Tiffany Lewis of Rebellion LIT, a site dedicated to authors who create content on their own term with no regards to non-creative barriers.
The interview can be found here, and there are ten questions varying from how I got stated, to what is my favorite recipe! Highly recommend that you check it out!
It’s astonishing what people will research! I was looking for a common Chinese restaurant names for my current work in progress and came across this article on the Washington Post.
Authors are as varied as the stories they tell. Some write by hand, channeling the spirit of monks and scribes. Others prefer the feel of a typewriter, which is often portrayed in movies and novels.
Technology has allowed writers to venture into the digital realm. While authors like George R.R. Martin remain stubbornly entrenched to the technology they adopt; others look towards the horizon for technologies to aid their journey.
Many of us own phones that have more processing power than what was available to NASA during the Apollo program. However, this technology has not been widely adopted for content creation.
I was playing around with my camera, intent on creating a featured image for another post. However, when I looked at the finished product it got me thinking. I know! Rather dangerous for an author!
‘Creating a Cake’ by Evelyn Chartres
During a flash of creative inspiration, the world I see is both pristine and clear. I could spend weeks writing that scene in all of its exquisite detail. How is that a problem? Like a lightning strike at night, details vanish as soon as they appear.
When looking at the shot, it sets the scene for someone collecting items and ingredients needed to bake a cake. In the picture there are ingredients, a tablet displaying the recipe, candles for later and even some serving plates.
However, once the flash is gone the minds rendition is no longer vibrant. In this case, the richness of reds have bled out from the shot. There is also a lack of detail and the image is cropped in such a way to prevent viewers from getting a sense of the bigger picture.
Like any story there are also inconsistencies or plot holes. How could someone make a cake without eggs, butter or vanilla extract? Why is a candle lit even though the cake is not ready?
Only after extensive reviews, reader input and hard work will author’s rendition approximate the original flash of inspiration. The reds will be more vibrant, the scene will sport a delicious cake that will make readers drool.
To think you can just taste that thick icing and marble cake… Wait? It was Maple Syrup cake originally!
When looking through old photographs of my daughter, I have trouble reconciling that she was that person. I do remember how small her hands were when she was born and how helpless she was at first.
However, one look at my child as she rides her scooter through the house takes me out of such nostalgia-filled moments. In see her as-is, the talkative, bright-eyed and sassy girl that she is today.
In many ways, this mirrors my own experiences in life. We were all children once and remember key times in our youth. However I tend to view it through my eyes, filtered through a veil of adult experience.
This might explain why children in novels sometimes seem disconnected from reality. Unless you have a three-year old wreaking havoc in the house, you may not realise the unrealistic wisdom in their words or their excellent grasp of grammar.
Not that children that age are incapable of that sort of thing. There have been some golden nuggets of wisdom that my daughter said that threw me for a loop. Still that is a couple of instances over time, not a consistent affair.
The same applies when writing the world through a child’s eyes. When I was roughly my child’s age, I remember spending hours picking hazelnuts from the trees. My parents had a big advantage over me. However, I could find hazelnuts lower in the tree than they could for the same reasons they could not and that was size.
I was reminded of that fact when she asked me for my phone. My daughter wanted to take pictures of the squirrels running about and instead opted for a video.
It astonished me to see how close she was to the ground, how near her feet were and how much bigger the world seemed. Sure it’s all obvious when one thinks about it and I cannot help but wonder how much harder it gets once our own children have flown the nest.
One of my memories as a child was going to my grandparents. I remember a huge hill upon which they built a church and the trek that had to be made to ascend this great peak. When I returned decades later for a funeral, the hill was nowhere to be seen!
Now the church and the house had not moved. What had changed was my height and perspectives in life. In that one moment I was forced to reconcile memories of youth with current perspectives, but such opportunities can be rare.
So let your kids be kids, take plenty of pictures and never pass up the opportunity to see the world through their eyes! Doing so will certainly create more believable children in literature.
Who’s Up For A Little Audience Participation? on jenniferderrick.com
Jennifer Derrick has made a novel proposal. Every week she plans to post an image that is meant to get our creative juices flowing. If we so choose, we can can post a link to content that was created using the image as inspiration.
She will in turn compile a digest and distribute to her various networks. Jennifer compares it to a flash writing challenge and I love it! Could be a great way to get motivated, draw out some creativity and share with others!
A couple of weeks ago, I was cooking on the balcony when my daughter came out. Despite the rainy weather, she asked me the jump her, which involves picking her up then launching her into the air several times.
I told her it was dangerous, considering how the wet cement and we were three stories up. My child said I was right, though not for reasons I thought.
According to her, she would likely fall onto a tree branch located just off the balcony. I would then have difficulty in catching her once she dropped from a branch to get down. Not once did she consider falling to the ground and get hurt or worse.
Sometimes we forget the innocence which exists in the mind of a child.
Parents have life experiences to draw from either be it direct or anecdotal. News sources often describe scenarios that makes parents cringe and help us form a bias.
Children on the other hand, rarely have any such background when formulating risk. This is compounded by the fact parents tend to shield them from certain aspects of reality.
Hence as a writer, it is important to remember what children say. Use this as guidance when formulating characters of that age. Our own memories are likely biased and in some cases distant.
So when you write about a young character into a situation. Do not assume they would make the same decisions as us. Chances are they will find a way to surprise you!
