Could you be a Killer Nashville scholar?

cj Sez: SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE for Killer Nashville:  Deadline July 5, 2019. 

“The annual Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference was created in 2006 as a way to give back to the writing community and educate/empower writers in all stages of their careers. In that spirit, and thanks to generous donors, Killer Nashville is offering several scholarships in 2019.” 

   For more information and to apply, go here:  https://killernashville.com/killer-nashville-scholarships/

***

   Mobile has had wind gusts reaching fifty-plus miles an hour and (yesterday) two inches of rain in a forty-five minute period. Yep, there were trees and limbs down and flash-flood warnings for a lot of city streets because of this storm. On the plus side, the temperature dropped from 94 (heat index of about 100) to the high 70s.

   Thunder and lightning is not good for my writing progress, however. “I have to shut down the computer when lightning starts marching in with the rain,” says the procrastinator. Actually, I’m doing okay. One short story submitted, another in process, and a novel rotating in that endless edit cycle I seem to go through. I also have two other stories percolating (i.e., a few chapters written).

   Are you aware there’s a story arc that readers/agents have come to expect?

According to author/editor Ramona DeFelice Long, 
    "For a 400 page MS: 
          Act 1 is 1/4 of the story, so 100 pages
       Act 2 is 1/2 of the story, so 200 pages
       Act 3 is 1/4 of the story, so 100 pages 
                (Act 3 includes a denouement)
     You can adjust the math, but the 1/4 + 1/2 + 1/4 is the guiding formula."

   Have you ever analyzed a story, yours or someone else’s, to see how they fit into that three-act arc?

***

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AMERICA!

   On July 4, 2019, the United States of America celebrates its 243 rd birthday. It started with a revolutionary war and a constitution: 

     We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

   When you celebrate the holiday this year, please take a moment to remember the great personal sacrifices that made us a free nation and have kept us free for more than two centuries.

   That’s it for this week’s post. You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same.

cj

  Amazon Kindle price is 99 cents!

In the midst of prospectors, treasure hunters, and shoot-outs in the old West, there is a love story in“Bad Day at Round Rock,” my short story in the Western anthology THE POSSE. Excerpt:  Seventeen-year-old Lilly Malmstrom thought morning calm was the best time of any day—before the sun burned away the cool of the night, before hot winds drove the fine Texas sand under the windowsills, before the town of Round Rock fully awakened. By seven a.m., when she stood on tiptoe to twist the key in the wall clock to wind it, she had the doctor’s instruments scalded and air-drying on the table and fresh-washed huck towels hanging on the line behind the building. To mark the end of the work week, she drew an “X” through the date on the calendar with the stub of a lead pencil and sighed.

“July 19, 1878,” she said, pronouncing the month as ‘yulie’. “One year. One whole year.”

It’d been exactly a year since she’d left Sweden, but her new life hadn’t turned out exactly as she’d planned. Now she had a new plan.   

***

For your summertime/beach reading pleasure, stop by my Amazon Central Author Page = https://amzn.to/2v6SrAj  — at the time of this post, CHOOSING CARTER and DEADLY STAR are free on Kindle Unlimited.

To order an autographed copy of CHOOSING CARTER, DEADLY STAR, HOMETOWN HEROES, and THE POSSE, contact The Haunted Bookshop here: The Haunted Bookshop  Angela Trigg, the awesome owner and a RITA Award-winning author in her own right (writing as Angela Quarles) will be happy to ship you the book(s) of your choice.

If you send me a note, I’ll personalize your choice, and drop it in the mail to you (cover price plus mailing).

Sign up for my quarterly newsletter here: cjpetterson@gmail.com 

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The risks of copyright infringement in this digital age

cj Sez: I recently came across an article on the risks associated with copyright infringement in the digital age. With the proliferation of Facebook sharing, I think it’s worth passing along this news to my readers.

Public Domain Clip Art

©

   Sharing copyrighted content without permission invites consequences that can have major effects on your bank account. Attorney Christopher Heer is an intellectual property lawyer and his article on “How to Avoid Copyright Infringement” is one that all artists should read…and as authors, we are among that group.

Read this important article here:   https://bit.ly/2J0htEZ

   I’m hopeful that my sharing the URL address to this article falls under the “exceptions to exclusive rights” section which includes “research … instruction … review … and news reporting.”  (PS: If you have questions about what is or is not a copyright infringement, please check with your attorney.)

***

REPEATED INFO . . .

   Since this call for submissions is from Hallmark, I thought I’d repeat information I published previously:

MARK YOUR CALENDARS and set your derriere in your chair

   If you write “wholesome or ‘sweet’ romance novels” or cozy mysteries, there’s still time to polish your work-in-progress and submit.

   Hallmark Publishing will be open to unagented submissions for “wholesome or ‘sweet’ romance novels” and cozy mysteries for the entire month of September 2019.

   Note that they are no longer accepting previously published works

   Read their submission guidelines here:   https://www.hallmarkchannel.com/hallmark-publishing/write-for-us 

And GOOD LUCK ! 

***

   Update on my yard cats. Marmalade has started to sit alongside me on the bench when I’m in the yard, and Shadow (or Girlfriend, as I like to call her) has begun to spend her nights in the house. She also comes to me for stroking when I’m putting out birdseed in the morning. We all miss Sweet Buster.

   That’s it for this week’s post. You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same.

cj

   For your summertime/beach reading pleasure, stop by my Amazon Central Author Page = https://amzn.to/2v6SrAj  — at the time of this post, CHOOSING CARTER and DEADLY STAR are free on Kindle Unlimited.

CHOOSING CARTER excerpt: Carter bowed low in front of her and peered at the computer screen, one hand behind his back. Bryn thought for the umpteenth time that he didn’t look his thirty-eight years. His face was unlined, except for that scattering of crow’s feet that crinkled in the corners of his eyes when he smiled.

   While he was checking out her card game, she surveyed his lean form. The rolled-up shirtsleeves of his red-plaid shirt exposed muscular, reddish-brown forearms. A skinning knife topped by an elk-horn haft rested in a leather sheath looped onto a leather belt. His jeans were comfortably old, the blue on the thighs faded almost white. And even if she couldn’t see them, she knew he had on scuffed work boots. In stocking feet, he stood two inches on the far side of six feet tall, and by the time her gaze had wandered back to his face, he’d pushed his sunglasses onto his baseball cap and was watching her map his body. She looked up into turquoise-colored eyes that always caused a hollow feeling, like hunger, in the pit of her stomach.

   To order an autographed copy of CHOOSING CARTER, DEADLY STAR, HOMETOWN HEROES, and THE POSSE, contact The Haunted Bookshop here: The Haunted Bookshop  Angela Trigg, the awesome owner and a RITA Award-winning author in her own right (writing as Angela Quarles) will be happy to ship you the book(s) of your choice.

   If you send me a note, I’ll personalize your choice, and drop it in the mail to you (cover price plus mailing).

   Drop me a note to sign up for my quarterly newsletter (next issue in a couple of weeks): cjpetterson@gmail.com 

cjpetterson/author on Facebook

Father's Day and the Amazing English Language

cj Sez:  First, I want to wish a Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers, step-fathers, great-and-grandfathers, and adoptive fathers. I hope this day is the start of a healthy and happy year.

  I was re-organizing the backup files for my blog the other day, and that means I "had" to re-read every post. I found a few interesting ones, including one about our dynamic English language. So before I delete my comments , I think it’s worthwhile to repeat that 2016 post one more time.

***

…. A friend sent me this quote from a fellow blogger, Sol Sanders:  “Perhaps the glory of the English language is that it so expressive. Its remarkable heterogeneous origins have given it an almost limitless vocabulary. And American English, particularly, has used that tool with an enormous flexibility to make it the international means of communication. One is able with a minimum of linguistic dexterity to capture every meaning, or almost every nuance.”

Read it out loud. It does make sense.

  Mr. Sanders’s comments were part of an introduction to his essay on what today’s journalism and media do with the English language. The gist of his blog is that journalism and media people over-complicate their sentences with words that muddy their meanings—changing nouns into verbs and, perhaps, calling a shovel a “hand-held, earth-moving tool.” (I’ve seen those descriptions in engineering technical specifications papers also.)

  Yes, as a writer, I use nouns as verbs. Yes, I deliberately obfuscate and happily add the disclaimer that it’s for the sake of telling the story. I am drawn to the syntax, symbolism, and syncopation of a well-crafted sentence that is the hallmark of successful mystery/thriller/suspense novelists. It’s using that “minimum of linguistic dexterity to capture every meaning, or almost every nuance” that appeals to me, and, I think, to readers of those genres. They want to try to decipher the code, find the clues, and solve the crime. I like confusing the issue. 

   That said, I do have a few personal dislikes of changing nouns into verbs. One is the word “impactful”—a noun turned into a verb turned into an adjective by adding ful on the end. What the Sam Hill does that mean?

   Did you know that we're also speaking Greek? The truth is that English is a living language. It’s constantly evolving as we create new words and new definitions to compliment new technology. Therein lies a conundrum:  The generations cease to understand each other at an almost exponential pace. Many times I need an interpreter to understand teen-talk, and I think if I texted often (a noun turned into a verb because of technology), I’d forget how to spell.

  Coda:  IMHO, the gloriously expressive English language is what makes the craft of writing so fascinating.

  I’m still working on my craft. How are you doing with yours?

***

  That’s it for this week’s post. I hope you found a nugget in here that you can use. You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same.

cj

DEADLY STAR excerpt (scene is after a plane crash in the desert):  Afraid to stay and afraid to leave, Mirabel began to shiver in the sweltering heat. She knew the rules for a crash. Dan repeated them before each time they flew. Stay with the plane. Searchers can see a plane. A hiker is just another invisible grain of sand. She stared long and hard at the purple haze of sawtooth hills in the distance then kissed his waxen cheek.

     “I have to go,” she whispered.

For your summertime/vacation reading pleasure, stop by my Amazon Central Author Page = https://amzn.to/2v6SrAj  — at the time of this post, CHOOSING CARTER and DEADLY STAR are free on Kindle Unlimited.

To order an autographed copy of DEADLY STAR, CHOOSING CARTER, and THE POSSE, contact The Haunted Bookshop here: The Haunted Bookshop  Angela Trigg, the awesome owner and a RITA Award-winning author in her own right (writing as Angela Quarles) will be happy to ship you the book(s) of your choice.

If you send me a note, I’ll personalize your choice, and drop it in the mail to you (cover price plus mailing).

To sign up for my quarterly newsletter go to: cjpetterson@gmail.com 

cjpetterson/author on Facebook  

A few elements of short story writing

cj Sez: I started off the weekend perfectly. In case you missed it, Friday was National Free Donut Day,

and a delicious dozen was delivered to my kitchen. I had hoped to extend Donut Day a while longer, but realistically the remaining ten donuts might last only three more days.

***

  Since I’m in a short story frame of mind (the story that must be submitted by June 30 is out for beta reads, and there’s another one in progress), it seems apropos to restate what I have read about how to write a short story.

"The Five Key Story Elements"
Anne Lamott’s ABCDE formula (Action, Background, Conflict, Development, and Ending):

Action — Start with something happening to draw the reader into the story. 
Background — Provide context for readers to understand how the characters came to the current situation
Conflict — The characters must want something they don’t have and work to achieve it (sometimes against each other)
Development — The 70-80% of the story describing the characters’ struggle to get what they want. Each time it appears they have the goal within reach, give them something more difficult to overcome until they reach the climax 
Ending — What happens after they reach their goal. In a romance, the hero and heroine realize their “happily-ever-after”. In a mystery or thriller, all the loose ends are tied up. In a literary story, the ending may be rather ambiguous.

/////

Essential steps to a short story   FIRST:  A SHORT STORY IS ABOUT ONE THING.

(cj side note: Interestingly, the story I have out for beta read actually is about two things, but they’re happening concurrently.)

/////

Kurt Vonnegut offers these eight tips on how to write a good short story:

1.      Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2.      Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3.      Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4.      Every sentence must do one of two things–reveal character or advance the action.

5.      Start as close to the end as possible.

6.      Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them–in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7.      Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8.      Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

(cj Sez: Love that cockroach reference.)

/////

 cj Sez: To tell you the truth, I really needed something to uplift my spirits this week and even twelve donuts were hard-pressed to make that happen.

   Over the past three weeks, two of my yard cats have gone missing. The first was a semi-feral, year-old, Manx kitten that was allergic to fleas, cried all the time, and desperately sought my touch when I set out breakfast and supper. I hadn’t been able to trap him. Trey wanted only to rub against my legs and let me stroke him, and now he’s gone.

   On Wednesday last week, I lost a gentle and sweet inside/outside cat. Buster was a neutered, two-and-a-half-year-old, gray tom with white feet. Every time he climbed into my lap to snuggle and rumble out a purr, I felt all of his seventeen pounds of muscle. He was the centerpiece of three interdependent pals. Shadow, Buster, and Marmalade all hung together. Buster and his little girlfriend, Shadow, were endearingly close. Shadow and Marm seem lost now. They sit and scan the yard, looking for their leader…and so do I.  

   I’m working to get Shadow acclimated to being a house cat, but right now, that won’t work with Marm. Without Buster, he’s a lonely loner that other cats shun or spit at, as was Trey. I want to help change that, though he is sometimes threatening, and he is also a big cat.

   That’s it for this week’s post. I hope you found a nugget in the short story piece that you can use. You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same.

cj

For your summertime/beach reading pleasure, stop by my Amazon Central Author Page = https://amzn.to/2v6SrAj  and order a book—at the time of this post, CHOOSING CARTER and DEADLY STAR are free on Kindle Unlimited. 

To order an autographed copy of DEADLY STAR, CHOOSING CARTER, and THE POSSE, contact The Haunted Bookshop here: The Haunted Bookshop    Angela Trigg, the awesome owner and a RITA Award-winning author in her own right (writing as Angela Quarles) will be happy to ship you the book(s) of your choice.

If you send me an email, I’ll personalize your choice, and drop it in the mail to you (cover price plus mailing).

Drop me a note to sign up for my quarterly newsletter: cjpetterson@gmail.com 

cjpetterson/author on Facebook  

Remembering D-Day

cj Sez: Seventy-five years ago, on June 6, 1944, the Allied Forces of Britain, America, Canada, and France attacked German forces on the coast of Normandy, France. With a force of more than 150,000, the Allies gained a victory that became the turning point for World War II in Europe.  

D-Day Order of the Day (National Archives Identifier 186473)

   Every year Normandy celebrates the long summer of 1944 and the re-establishment of freedom: “Normandy will bear the scars of this moment in history forever and every year we remember and pay tribute to the veterans from America, Britain, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Poland and Australia, along with their brothers in arms, those many heroes who lost their lives here during that summer of 1944.”

   D-Day, the day now often referred to as “the beginning of the end of war in Europe,” was originally code-named Operation Overlord.

   Operation Overlord was supposed to start June 5, 1944, under United States General Dwight D. Eisenhower's orders, but bad weather delayed the invasion. So a day later, Ike called it a “go,” and the Allies invaded five beaches—code-named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword.

(Source: National World War II Museum)

(Various sources for text, including  https://www.history.com/news/landing-at-normandy-the-5-beaches-of-d-day )

//

   My uncle waded ashore on one of those beaches and was “different” when he came home. Shell-shocked was what they called PTSD back then.

   My friend Fen was two weeks shy of his 21st birthday on D-Day. He served with Patton until the end of the war. A world traveler and writer/poet, he now calls Savannah home.

   Sixteen million young Americans served in World War II, and in this 75th anniversary year, the survivors are in their 80s and 90s. According to the Department of Veteran Affairs, more than 300 World War II veterans die every day. Time is running out to honor these survivors for their courage, their service and their sacrifice.  

   If you know a WWII veteran, whether s/he served on active duty or stoked the fires on the home front, it’s a good day, every day, to say “Thank You” to a member of Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation.”

cj Sez: Sa-lute and God Bless.

  That’s it for this week’s post. You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same.

  Free on Kindle Unlimited at the time of this post: a thriller with a touch of romance . . . DEADLY STAR

cj Sez: One of my sons came up with the premise for Deadly Star. "What if what looks like an asteroid was really a satellite?" he said one night. "Suppose it was a weapon?" My imagination took over and gobs of research followed. One of the more interesting things I found was that in the 1990s, the U.S. government funded something called "Operation Dawgstar" and provided grants to college students to develop nanosatellites. I also discovered that nanosatellites were actually launched from the space station in 2001 and that they possibly could go undetected by world powers. The surprise meteor that hit Russia in February 2013 proved that premise to me. The meteor was reported to be as big a five-story building when it entered the atmosphere, but it wasn't detected way up there. Scary stuff . . . and Deadly Star is the result.

Blurb: Mirabel Campbell must learn how to stay alive in a covert world of political intrigue where the unexpected is the norm, and she’s not the kind of woman who’ll wait for anyone, including her CIA ex-husband whom she still loves, to make her decisions. She made a promise to a murdered friend to find out what’s so special about a mysterious point of light in the sky, and she intends to keep that promise.

Little note: Print copies of Choosing Carter and Deadly Star are no longer available as Simon&Schuster winds down their support of the Crimson Romance imprint. You can, however, support an indie book store and order an autographed copy of my print books here: The Haunted Bookshop  Angela Trigg, the awesome owner and a RITA Award-winning author in her own right (writing as Angela Quarles) will be happy to ship you the book(s) of your choice.

Drop me a note to sign up for my quarterly newsletter: cjpetterson@gmail.com 

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Amazon Central Author Page =  https://amzn.to/2v6SrAj

Simon&Schuster Author Page = https://bit.ly/2uo1M0Z