A Chain of Mentoring; and Mugging the Muse

As a writer I have a mentor, Holly Lisle. She would undoubtedly be surprised beyond words to know that I consider her my mentor, as I am mentored through her excellent web site and blog--- you may find it at Holly Lisle.com.

I recently (yesterday, I think) downloaded her free ebook Mugging the Muse: Writing Fiction for Love And Money. Among the many things I learned when reading the ebook 'cover to cover' yesterday was that she herself had a mentor, Mercedes Lackey, and Mercedes Lackey had a mentor, C. J. Cherryh. So, to the extent that I can be mentored through an ebook and a web site, I am part of a chain of mentoring, and a pretty cool one--- at least to me.

Mercedes Lackey, one of those on the chain, is one of my favorite fantasy authors, and possessor of one of the most interesting writer-names ever. (What is a Mercedes lackey? Why, the servant who takes care of your Mercedes, of course). Mercedes Lackey published her first story (or one of the first) in a Darkover anthology. Darkover is a fantasy world created by the late Marion Zimmer Bradley, and MZB was very generous in helping new writers get started by editing a large number of Darkover anthologies.

I really like the idea of writer mentoring chains, and in a way that's a part of what this blog is about--- a sort of an exchange of mentoring, as I am mentored by the many writers (published and not-yet-published) on the CSFF blog tour list and elsewhere, and I try to pass the mentoring on by sharing what I have learned.

Mugging the Muse gives some very practical advice on how to become a professional writer, and how to avoid some of the mistakes she made that have had a bad impact on her career.

As a result, I've decided it's important to actually plan my writing career, and I have determined a bunch of activities which will help me to do this (not all of which I feel like sharing.)

One of the things that she mentions as being good for the career is series novels (as in MZB's Darkover series) and she gives some good advice for creating a series character you can live with.

I have decided that perhaps what I ought to do is work on an old fantasy world of mine (or a fantasy/sci-fi world, similar to Darkover in that respect) and add to it elements of other worlds I have created--- most specifically the Five Elements, a fantasy world organized around the Asian Five Elements of myth and legend. I want to put together a good solid fantasy/sci-fi world which I can use for a variety of story ideas I have had.

I also want to work on a couple of short stories. I haven't done that in a while, and I believe I have only finished about 3 short stories (5 if you count the 2True Confessions stories I wrote, of which one was published much to my embarrassment--- but I did get about $90 bucks for it.) But that is certainly more than the number of novels I've finished.

The advantage is that I can use the short stories to build my writing career and to prepare the way for my novel (assuming I finish one.)

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Autism Speaks vs. Autistic People

The 'charity' Autism Speaks is being promoted heavily on Ask.com among other places. Since their group raises money for scientific research with the aim of creating a prenatal test that will eliminate autistic people before they are born, for some reason a lot of autistic people don't like them. Go figure.



Autism is a spectrum of neurological disorder/difference which includes 'high functioning' individuals and 'low functioning' individuals with different problems and different skills. Having a form of autism is NOT a fate worse than death and in fact many famous and successful people are believed to have Asperger's Syndrome (high functioning autism).
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Writing a "Character Sketch" of an Object or Institution"

Sometimes a key character in a work of fiction isn't a person at all, and when this happens the writer will find himself doing what I am doing now--- working up a character sketch on something that isn't a person, or even particularly person-like.

Think of J. K. Rowling, planning her Harry Potter series, writing up a character sketch of Hogwarts, the school of witchcraft and wizardry. Or Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, doing a character sketch of the Enterprise. Or Herman Melville writing a bio of the great white whale.

(At this point newcomers to this blog are leaning toward one another and whispering, 'This nissa_amas_katoj that writes this blog, she must have something wrong with her brain!' I do; it's called autism/Asperger's Syndrome.)

How do you know if an object or institution in your planned novel is worth writing a character sketch for? If it something that looms large--- or at least medium-sized--- in your story; if it changes or grows over the course of the story, or thwarts or aids your human characters on a regular basis; if it has an importance similar to that of one of your second or third tier characters--- there is a case for writing up a character sketch on it. (I wouldn't recommend making an object or institution your main character if you are hoping for publication.)

In one of my current projects-in-the-planning stage, there are two rival organizations that will play a role--- the Freemasons and the Jesuits. I've chosen the organizations in question as both have been accused of being sinister secret organizations involved in unholy conspiracies. One at least of my characters is convinced that both orgs. are equally evil, but must ally with one or the other....

In a big organization like these, I won't be writing a sketch on the whole of Freemasonry or the whole of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Instead the sketches will be of the Masons and Jesuits on-the-spot and in the era in which my story takes place.

The Freemasons in this story will have an inner circle which is very sinister and that will be the center of the sketch.

An organization or institution is made up of people; it also may have a physical presence in the form of a building or buildings, it will also have a philosophy/ideology.

One important thing is to differentiate between the organization/institution's ideology, and the ideology of the main representative of the institution in your story. In Harry Potter, the Dark wizards are more-or-less slaves of Lord Voldemort and must do as he says and think as he thinks. But just because Lord Vordemort likes snakes doesn't mean all Dark wizards keep snakes as pets. The snake-loving thing is a personal quirk of Voldemort and not part of the Dark wizard ideology, as Muggle-hating is.

I suppose one drawback of writing a 'character sketch' of an object/institution is that you might make it more human than you ought. It may seem like that apparently haunted house hates your main character but you (probably) don't want to make the house so human that your reader wonders if it might not BE a human enemy transformed to a haunted house by some spell (unless, of course, that's how the story is going to come out....)

And then to wrap the whole thing up you might decide to look at your characters as a bunch of cogs in the machinery of your story and write up a 'wiring diagram' that shows how they all fit in to the machine....
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Steampunk forever!

Recently I bought a book because it mentioned on its cover that it was of the steampunk genre. The book, Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt, started off promisingly with airships, steammen and two orphans in peril, but it went downhill from there, and reading went from a joy to a burden until I was reminded of the last time I tried to slog through the notorious atheist-propaganda-for-children book, The Golden Compass, which is so dreadfully boring and vile that I can only say that it's nearly as hard to read through as Mein Kampf.

Worse than the boring nature of the book is the fact that I can't afford a new book right now. I can't even afford food, except for the cats and baby poultry. So I thought, maybe I should write my own steampunk story just to keep myself entertained.

One thing made me wonder though--- have any Christian steampunk novels been published? (Or any Jewish ones for that matter) Does anyone out there write steampunk? Let me know!

Here are some good references on steampunk for those new to the genre.
Steampunk--- Wikipedia
Steampunkopedia
Aether Emporium/Wiki


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Pray for My Kitten!

Please pray for my kitten, Chandler, I found him very sick this morning, I thought he was dead but then he started moving. I think he may die any minute now.

UPDATE: Chandler the kitten died. He was the son of Chachamaru the cat and some tomcat she met. He is survived by his mom and two littermates, Unnamed Male Kitten and Unnamed Female Kitten.

Dear Mr. Obama: Thanks for not Killing Us on Memorial Day

Dear Mr. Obama,

I was a bit worried there yesterday. I caught a glimpse of a news story on your Supreme Court nomination and I feared that you had had the bad taste to insult our war dead by picking a prodeath Supreme Court nominee on Memorial Day.

I was wrong, and I apologize. You waited a day; you did good. A one day wait was not much but was far better than we expected. Those million rosaries said for you by supporters of the Notre Dame protesters are starting to work.

You picked Sonia Sotomayor, and I am sure that she is the best pro-death Hispanic woman for the job--- the job being, in your sight, that of illegally amending the US constitution in favor of death--- not just death for unborn babies and some of their mothers, but death by dehydration and starvation for the disabled, and in some states death by lethal dose for assisted suicide victims who in other states would be given antidepressants and psychotherapy rather than the cheaper death pill approach.

In conclusion, Mr. Obama, I congratulate you for your restraint. Be warned--- such things will happen more often as the many rosaries and other prayers said on your behalf begin to take effect. Before long you may find yourself feeling empathy for unborn children and their mothers rather than just for abortion doctors. You may wonder if it's really all that progressive to allow females to be selectively aborted, or Down's Syndrome children. You may wonder if abortion can be considered a women's issue when over 60% of women who have had abortions say the were FORCED or COERCED to do so, and over 95% say they regret their abortions.

Before long you may find yourself falling to your knees before Our Lord and vowing to change your ways. You may lose a lot of your progressive friends. But if they only liked you when you were supporting their agenda, were they ever really your friends? And in any case, I'LL still be your friend.

Sincerely,

Nissa Annakindt,
American. Prolife. Weird.

Rosaries for Obama! web site
One Million Rosaries at Notre Dame Response

What is the Rosary? The rosary is a Biblical prayer method in which you meditate on events during the life of Jesus Christ while reciting certain commonly-known prayers--- two of which, the Our Father and the Hail Mary, are quotations from the Bible. While the Rosary is most associated with Catholics, it is also used by some Protestants and Evangelicals, though some others forbid it (often based on a misunderstanding on what the rosary is.)
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Green Tea Diet, White Tea Diet

Money's short this month and I can't afford to spend what little I have on stupid things like eating. So I've decided it's time to go on a diet.

One thing you may not know about dieting is that diets can become less effective as you age. When I first went on a low-carb diet, I lost a lot of weight. Each time I've went on the diet I've lost less until last time when after a month or so on the diet I failed to lose any weight at all (though my blood sugar was much improved.)

The main reason I didn't want to do low-carb again is because most of the food I have in the house right now isn't OK on the low-carb diet and I can't afford to run out and buy new food. But what I do have in the house is lots of green tea, since I bought several packages without realizing I had some at home.

The green tea diet, as I have read about it on the internet, is that you drink one or two cups of green tea with each meal (or snack) you have during the day, aiming for a minimum of four cups a day. No food restrictions are required.

I started the green tea diet three days ago and have lost 6 pounds! I have eaten mainly the food in the house, without restricting myself, and have had snacks when I was hungry. I drank mostly green tea but had a few cups of white tea as well since my mom bought me a box of it when I was last in town.

I don't use green tea pills or green tea soft drinks (Lipton makes one), but just regular green tea from Lipton or Salada brand teabags. I steep the tea for 2 minutes (I use a timer) and haven't sweetened it as I like it better without.

I intend to keep on with this diet and see how well it works over the longer term. I don't know if I am going to incorporate more white tea or just stick with the green, which is cheaper.

An interesting green tea website is Green Tea Lovers, which has information on green tea and white tea health benefits. They sell green and white teas, and even have tea plants for sale.




White Tea Diet? tells of how some German research has shown how white tea has experimentally affected fat cells (to a greater extent than either black or green tea)

Drinking Green Tea May Help You Lose Weight tells of some green tea research.
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Why Villains Exist in Fiction

Villains exist in real life because, let's face it, SOMEONE has to be president.... But in fiction, why is your villain there? What is his function?

What makes your story interesting instead of a conflict or drama-free zone is that your hero (protagonist, main character) is in danger. The villain of your piece serves as a human (alien, robotic, other) personification of that danger.

In the Harry Potter series the relation is pretty direct. Hero Harry Potter is in constant peril because villain Lord Voldemort wants to kill him. A great part of the danger Harry was in came from just that situation--- he was in danger from Voldemort. In other cases he was in danger from followers of Lord Voldemort. In other cases the 'danger' came as a result of his status as a celebrity in the wizarding world--- the Boy Who Lived. But this celebrity status was a result of Voldemort having tried to kill him. Even the bad reputation that Harry got briefly when it became known he speaks Parseltongue (snake language) is a result of Voldemort's attack on Harry when he was a baby.

In most fiction the danger the hero faces is less obvious. In a romance, the 'danger' is that the heroine won't find her True Love, or that she won't win his or her attention or that he or she will marry someone else. In some stories the conflict is Man against Nature--- let's say a story about exploring a distant planet with a harsh environment.

Even in these cases, a villain can personify the danger. In a romance, the villain can be a woman who is also in love with the heroine's True Love and who is willing to go to great lengths to win him. It can also be the True Love's father who forbids the match--- or who needs his son to make a marriage to a rich heiress rather than the penniless governess heroine.

In a space-exploration story, the 'villain' can be some authority figure who wants to cut short the exploration against the hero's advice--- or one who insists on the exploration in spite of the dangers the hero informs him about. The 'villain' can also be a careless or inexperienced team member who is constantly doing things that endanger the hero.

Whether the villain is a fully evil dude out to get the hero, or just a guy doing his job, the villain must also have his good qualities if he is to be more than a cartoon villain. For example, Lord Voldemort had his background as a motherless illegitimate child--- which doesn't really go anywhere near explaining his extreme evil and self-destructive tendency to kill people, especially Muggles, just for fun.

A more realistic villain is the soap opera character Adam Chandler from All My Children. Over the many years of his tenure, Adam has amassed a long list of crimes and other evil actions. But he is also shown as a man who very much loves his twin brother Stuart, who cares for his children (though he drives them all to drink). This human touch accounts for the character's longevity. Soap opera characters who are pure over-the-top evil last only a year or two before someone murders them (and usually everyone in town's a suspect and the killer is often a sympathetic character who gets away with the crime.)

But I believe in old-fashioned storytelling in which the villain is villainous and the hero is relatively good--- or at least less evil than the villain. A lot of modern writers, perhaps to express their idea that there is no right or wrong anymore other than political incorrectness, have heroes who are thieves, con men, or even hit men. Villains, from this type of writer, might well be Christians as in the eyes of such people calling someone a Christian is the same as calling him a KKK member. You can see this from the character Stilson, in Stephen King's 'The Dead Zone', who starts out as a Bible salesman who kicks a dog to death.

But the problem of this approach I think is that you can lose your reader, as Stephen King lost me for all time with a minor villain character he created for his novel 'Cell', which is about how cell phones destroy humanity.

The hero and his companions, a Gay man and a teen girl, are making their way out of the destroyed city when they come across an old woman who wonders what these two men are doing with an unrelated young girl. But this evil woman turns out to be a *gasp* Christian--- a prolife Christian, in fact. The 'hero' slaps the woman and moves on as the Gay man explains his hatred for Christians based on the fact he had Christian family members.

The problem is that the United States (primary audience for Stephen King) is something like 80% Christian, so that large numbers of his readers can be expected to have known many Christians in person even if they are not personally Christian. So when THEY see an old woman going up to two strong young men in order to see if a young girl needs rescuing, they won't recast her as a villain just because she's a prolife Christian who is not politically correct about Gay people. They see her as a very brave woman who is risking her own life for the sake of a girl who might need her help.

Stephen King ruined the book 'Cell' for me, as well as ruining his first important Gay character, with this one slap, based on his misunderstanding of how the average person will react to this villain/hero divide. He could have saved the situation in a number of ways--- lightened the Christian identity of the villain, or allowed one of the main characters to be a stronger Christian. He could have made the villain physically stronger so that standing up to the hero wouldn't have been an act of courage, or perhaps made the hero and his Gay friend weaker or disabled. Or he could have given this villain a selfish motive for intervening on behalf of the girl--- for example, if this villain had been a straight man or a Gay woman with possible attraction for the girl.

The old fashioned hero who has an aversion to doing wrong, coupled with a villain who at least in some circumstances is willing to do wrong, is my idea of a writer's best friend. It's far easier to take your audience along for the ride with you and have them cheering and crying in the right places if you do this rather than if you insist on turning the world upside down ALL the time.
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Therese: Saint of a Little Way by Frances Parkinson Keyes

It's one of those months in which I ran out of money long before I ran out of month, and so am suffering a dread fate: nothing to read. Buying a new book is a severe temptation, but then I wouldn't have money for cat food. Of course feeding the cats may not be a good idea, it just encourages them to make more cats. But I do it anyway.

So I've fallen back on sorting through my old books to find something worth reading or re-reading, and I came across Therese Saint of a Little Way by Frances Parkinson Keyes.

I'm kind of new to the Catholic thing: I was raised Protestant and was for many years a non-Christian (neopagan) before my conversion, so there's a lot I don't know about the whole saint thing. But Saint Therese of Lisieux is a rather interesting saint.

Born into a loving middle-class Victorian-era family, Therese was the youngest of five girls in the family. Therese was coddled and cherished. She lost her mother at a young age. When she was fifteen, she entered a Carmelite convent where two of her older sisters were already nuns. Therese wrote an autobiography at the request of her sister, and died at the age of 24.

It seems impossible that such a girl would become world-famous after such an insignificant life. But her autobiography became an underground classic when it was circulated in Carmelite convents throughout the world, and demand grew to have it openly published. It became a best-seller, and everywhere men and women were moved by the story of Therese and her 'little way' of following Jesus through simple, everyday things.

Therese not only became a saint, but is, along with Saint Joan of Arc, secondary patron saint of France. (First patron saint of France is Mary, the mother of Jesus.) Her parents, who also lived exemplary Christian lives, are also under consideration for becoming saints.

Alright, Saint Therese may not be as fascinating as Lord Voldemort or Hannibal Lector, but at least following her example is 98.7% less likely to lead to hellfire. But I'm not sure this book is the best book to introduce you to the life of the saint.

The author, Frances Parkinson Keyes, was a best-selling author and wife of a governor of New Hampshire who later became a US Senator. Mrs. Keyes researched her book by staying in the guest quarters of the convent where Saint Therese went to school (not the convent where she was a nun, however.) She met people who remembered Saint Therese, including some elderly nuns who were the saint's schoolteachers.

But Mrs. Keyes story-telling style did not catch fire at least for me. The story seemed to drag a bit, especially as she goes on and on about topics such as the 'Norman temperament' of Therese and her family. And Mrs. Keyes also has an annoying habit of placing quotations in French into the narrative without bothering to translate. She presumes that anyone upper-crust enough to actually read books is of course fluent in French.

Mrs. Keyes may not be the best person to introduce you to the life of the saint, but if you happen upon a copy in a library or thrift shop it is certainly something you might care to read.


I also have another book about Saint Therese, Mornings with Therese of Lisieux: 120 Daily Readings. As a devotions book it is not the best as there are no scripture readings or prayers to accompany the readings about the life of the saint, however, since Lent is over with and so I have finished with my Lenten devotional book(Lent and Easter Wisdom from Pope John Paul II), this book is what I am doing. One of my favorite quotes from Saint Therese is the following: 'I'm not relying on my own merits, as I have none, but I put my hope in Him who is goodness and holiness Himself. It is He alone who, satisfied with my feeble efforts, will raise me to Him, will clothe me with His infinite merits, and will make me a saint.'

While looking through Amazon.com I did come upon one all-year devotional book based on the writings of Saint Therese, it is 'Through the Year With Saint Therese of Lisieux: Living the Little Way' I can't afford the $2.50 a used copy of the book would cost, but perhaps someone else might find the book useful.



In other news: it's been about five months since we've had a baby goat born on the farm. Today, TWO of my does kidded. The first one, a doe named Pravda, had a daughter, who I'm afraid I'm planning to name Izvestia (guess why). And later in the day a doe named Demi Bug had twin sons.

Blog Tour Day Three: Tuck

This is the last day of the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour doing Tuck, by Stephen Lawhead. I really planned to write something brilliant for the blog tour today but having been sick all day and also busy rescuing kittens from a would-be mamma cat who lost her own, I'm really not up to it. Luckily someone else is. John over at The Least Read Blog on the Web has an excellent post in which he points out one very excellent quality of Tuck and the other two books in the series: a diversity of Christian opinion among the characters.

That sort of thing is not found in a lot of Christian fiction, in which regardless of the era in which the book is set, all Christian characters are the exact same type of twenty-first century American Baptists. (It's also lacking in mainstream SF and Fantasy, in which all Christians are the same evil stereotype.)

While you are over there don't miss his Third Day Blog Tour post, which features a movie trailer from Robin Hood, Men in Tights, among other things.

To reiterate, as if I haven't iterated enough in the first place, the book is Tuck, and the relevant link is http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1595540873. The author is Stephen Lawhead, for whom the relevant link is http://www.stephenlawhead.com/

And while that ought to wrap up the Blog Tour for the month, I just have to mention next month's book. It's 'Vanish' by Tom Pawlik. I hadn't any great expectations of the book and when it arrived, I decided to read a bit of the first chapter before moving on to doing/reading something else. But I was hooked and I finished the book pretty much in one sitting. It is a great, great story with many seriously creepy elements and not at all one to miss.

Here are the blog tour participants for the month yet again, do visit them. Check marks link to their posts for the blog tour, those with more than one link have posted more than once.

√ Brandon Barr
Jim Black
Justin Boyer not on the original list
√√ Keanan Brand
√√ Rachel Briard
√ Grace Bridges
√ Valerie Comer
√ Karri Compton not on the original list
√ Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
√ Stacey Dale
√ D. G. D. Davidson
√ Jeff Draper
√ April Erwin
√ Karina Fabian
Alex Field
√ Beth Goddard
√ Andrea Graham not on the original list
√ Todd Michael Greene
√√ Ryan Heart
√√√ Timothy Hicks
√√ Christopher Hopper
√ Joleen Howell
Becky Jesse
√ Cris Jesse
√√ Jason Joyner
Kait
Carol Keen
√ Krystine Kercher
√ Dawn King
√ Terri Main
√√√ Margaret
√ Melissa Meeks
Caleb Newell
Eve Nielsen
√ Nissa
√√√ John W. Otte
√ John Ottinger
√ Epic Rat
√√√ Steve Rice
Crista Richey
√ Hanna Sandvig
√√ Chawna Schroeder
√ James Somers
√√ Rachel Starr Thomson
√√ Robert Treskillard
√ Speculative Faith
√√√ Steve Trower
√√√ Fred Warren
√√ Phyllis Wheeler
√ Jill Williamson

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Stuart Chandler Definitely Dead

I'm afraid it's true: today's AMC episode reveals that Stuart Chandler--- the non-evil Chandler twin--- is really, truly dead. You know, like Jesse Hubbard was before they decided to bring him back. Tad Martin has recovered from being shot in the head by Jesse, enough to kiss his old girlfriend Liza, who is not the REAL Liza.

It just occurred to me: Adam Chandler was once married to Liza Colby. Stuart was married to Liza's mother Marion. So that means that Adam was Stuart's stepson-in-law as well as his twin brother.

Blog Tour: Stephen Lawhead's Tuck

It's blog tour time again and I must take time out from rescuing kittens from a kidnapping mamma cat, and agonizing over the All My Children murder, and mention Tuck, the final installment in author Stephen Lawhead's King Raven Trilogy.

'Tuck' was preceded by 'Hood' and 'Scarlet'. The trilogy is a retelling/reimagining of the Robin Hood saga. Now, I've always liked the Robin Hood story--- especially 'Robin Hood: Men in Tights', which featured Mel Brooks as Rabbi Tuckman, and Captain Picard as King Richard (who punished Prince John for the usurpery thing by decreeing that all toilets in the kingdom would henceforth be known as 'johns'.) But is the Robin Hood legend spiritually bad for us?

What comes to mind when we think of Robin Hood? Robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, fighting against the Sheriff of Nottingham, and the like. Robin Hood is the guy who does the bad stuff--- stealing, rebelling against an authority figure--- that we might all be tempted to do but that we don't--- because we are moral, because we are honorable, because we don't want to go to prison....

Of course Robin Hood and his legendary Merry Men have good excuses---- proper justifications--- to do the things that they do. That's why it's OK for us to vicariously participate in their actions. It's a similar appeal to that of the movie 'The Great Escape'. In that movie, the prisoners of war steal everything that isn't red-hot or nailed down to use in their attempt to escape from the Nazis. It's justifiable, of course. It's wartime, and everything that the prisoners can do to slow down the Nazi war effort--- and the Nazi Jew-murdering effort--- is fair game.

But when we vicariously participate in the normally forbidden activities of Robin Hood or 'The Great Escape's' POW characters, aren't we really just feeding our own desire to break the rules and defy authority figures, even though in our own lives there are no justifications for doing so? Is it just possibly that the Robin Hood legend is the first step on a road that eventually leads to Dexter, our friendly neighborhood serial killer in the cable TV series?

(Well, actually, probably not. But I had to write something and I wasn't sure what to write because Lucky the Goldfish over at the Sci-Fi Catholic hasn't read the book. And if Lucky hasn't read the book, how can she possibly brief Chandler the kitten well enough for him to write a good blog tour post?)

Here is the list of blog tour participants, check-marks indicate posts on the blog tour. Enjoy!

√ Brandon Barr
Jim Black
Justin Boyer not on the original list
√ Keanan Brand
√ Rachel Briard
√ Grace Bridges
√ Valerie Comer
√ Karri Compton not on the original list
√ Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
√ Stacey Dale
√ D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
√ April Erwin
√ Karina Fabian
Alex Field
√ Beth Goddard
Andrea Graham not on the original list
Todd Michael Greene
Ryan Heart
√√ Timothy Hicks
√ Christopher Hopper
√ Joleen Howell
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
√√ Jason Joyner
Kait
Carol Keen
√ Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
√ Terri Main
√ Margaret
Melissa Meeks
Caleb Newell
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
√√ John W. Otte
√ John Ottinger
Epic Rat
√√ Steve Rice
Crista Richey
Hanna Sandvig
√ Chawna Schroeder
√ James Somers
√ Robert Treskillard
√ Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
√ Fred Warren
√ Phyllis Wheeler
√ Jill Williamson

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Stuart Chandler is AMC Murder Victim!!!

OK, I was done watching All My Children. I only ever started watching when I was a teen because I was waiting for One Life to Live to start. But now as a grownup I just didn't have time to spend an hour a day on All My Children's gang of annoying Important Characters like Kendall, Greenlee, Ryan and Zach.

But then while watching the two soaps I still waste my time on I saw the promos they were running. They promised that an AMC 'icon' would be a murder victim. The promos strongly hinted that Adam Chandler, well-known AMC millionaire and Spawn of Satan, would be the victim, but gave a shortlist of six victims, including not only Adam but the ever-annoying Erica Kane, Tad (the Cad) Martin, and from the younger generation of AMC characters, Kendall, Zach and Ryan.

My immediate guess was that a seventh possible victim was Stuart Chandler, Adam's non-evil twin. This was my rational. If they killed off Adam but not Stuart, the soap would continue to be able to use the actor, David Canary, who plays both Chandler twins. But he'd only be able to play sweet, lovable Stuart, who because of his niceness had virtually no storylines. If however one of Adam's many enemies killed Stuart by mistake, the soap would continue to have one of its top villains to kick around with for the future.

Today's episode seems to confirm my worst fears. Adam's son JR is sent to the morgue to ID Adam's corpse, and he says it wasn't his father. Then we cut to a scene of Crazy Annie, who seems to have a drugged Adam captive. Alas, it doesn't look good for Stuart.

I must see I feel very manipulated by the producers of AMC. It's like they said, 'start watching again or we'll kill off someone you love.' It's blackmail! And it's worked. I've watched the show closely since they made the death threat and am more caught up in the storyline than ever. I'm sure I'll lose interest again once the murder-excitement dies down and we are back to the usual round of boring storylines of who is jumping into bed with whom.

And I'll really miss the Adam and Stuart storylines. David Canary is such a skilled actor that not only could you tell easily when he was playing Adam and when he was playing Stuart, but also Adam-pretending-to-be-Stuart and Stuart-pretending-to-be-Adam were also clear and distinct. It was always very different from the typical soap opera actor/actress playing dual roles in which the difference was almost entirely dependent on different clothes and perhaps an accent.

Is the mystery of who-shot-Stuart going to be exciting? Well, it was pretty silly how they had half the people in town tramping around the Chandler mansion--- in the dark, in a thunderstorm, no less. And it seems there were more people there than we even knew about. Doesn't Adam have a security system at his mansion? Really! But since Zach has confessed to the shooting the one thing we can take to the bank is this--- it couldn't have been Zach.
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I am so sick of Technorati's back end....

For some time every time I try to make Technorati ping this blog, it says DOH! and goes on to whine about its backend issues. OK, I'm willing to put up with that once in a while. But every time?

Over the past few days they seem to be doing a lot of maintenence over at Technorati and maybe they are trying to fix whatever the problem is. But while they are fixing it even less seems to work over there.

I did a search over at technorati on 'backend issues' and one on 'back end issues'. Zero results both times. I'm beginning to suspect they are trying to hide something. However, searching ask.com on the same terms, while it did produce results, produced none in actual English, just a lot in Technobabble which is not one of the languages I speak.

I'm beginning to wonder if the Technorati age is over and done with. Other substitutes I've tried seem mostly to be based on socialization--- facebook and the like. And quite frankly I don't really care to re-connect with the kids who threw rocks at me in high school and called me names in order to get someone to read my blog. In fact I'm not entirely sure how much I want people to read my blog. It might just make people want to throw cyber-rocks at me.

One of the other things I have tried is reddit. It's a great site if you want to collect snarky comments by teen or pre-teen atheists. Yes, even the 'christianity' subreddit is dominated by atheists--- a great opportunity for the apologetics blogger. You can start your own subreddit at reddit.com--- I started one called lostgenre for Christian sci-fi and fantasy fans, and another for prolife. Neither has been colonized by the atheist kids yet, alas.

But quite frankly reddit is not the place I go to find interesting blogs or blog posts. Technorati was much better at that--- and will be again once they fix whatever they've been working on lately.

In the absence of a working Technorati, I've signed up for 31 Days to a Better Blog at Problogger, and sooner or later I'm actually going to do all the exercises they recommend. Perhaps I will find some way to overcome my recent lack of blog traffic, or else discover that I don't want blog traffic anyway.


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Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris

This is the most recent book in the Southern Vampire series, featuring telepathic barmaid Sookie Stackhouse and her friends and associates. It begins on the momentous day when the werewolves and other shapeshifters decide to come out of the closet as the vampires have done earlier. While an announcement is made on television, Sam the bartender and a werewolf shapeshift in the bar. This announcement is received relatively calmly, except by Arlene and her boyfriend. Arlene, once Sookie's friend and currently the series' Evil Intolerant Christian character, quits her job at the bar.

Sam is called out of town when he learns that his mother has been shot by her husband over the shapeshifting thing; Sookie is put in charge of the bar while he's gone. And the first bar related crisis comes as Crystal, Sookie's werepanther sister-in-law, is discovered murdered in the bar parking lot.

Since the pregnant Crystal had been discovered cheating on her husband, Sookie's brother Jason, he is once again a murder suspect, but it is also under consideration that this might be an anti-shapeshifter hate crime.

Other crises loom in Sookie's life. She is summoned to Fangtasia, the vampire bar, by Eric, and the messenger gives her a package to give to Eric. It turns out to be a ceremonial knife, and her presentation of that knife to Eric in front of a witness proves to be a vampire wedding ceremony of sorts so that Eric now has a claim on Sookie.

And Sookie's fairy great-grandfather is in the middle of a fairy war, and Sookie might be in danger because of it.

I find that this book seems to be a bit less well-constructed compared to the others in the series. There are a lot of oddities. For example, it is revealed that the fairy twins, Claudine and Claude, are actually triplets, the third sibling, Claudette, having died earlier. There seems to be no reason at all for this revelation. Another character is revealed to be pregnant and then swiftly killed off.

The book also is cursed with the obligatory explicit sex scene that publishers of vampire romance novels insist on. It's between Sookie and Eric, I suppose it is less crude than similar scenes in vampire romances by another author I have been reading, and like all such scenes it strikes me as being rather degrading to the author and to the readers. (Are there really any Charlaine Harris fans out there that buy the books ONLY for the sex scene, and would not buy the latest Charlaine Harris book if they heard it didn't have an explicit sex scene in it?)

But in my opinion in spite of the flaws of this book, the series still remains strong, and even though Charlaine's been killing off my favorite characters lately--- Sophie-Anne in the last book and another favorite in this one--- I still intend to snap up ever book in the series as soon as they come out.


Blog Posts Mentioning Charlaine Harris/Dead and Gone
Andrew Thornton: Dead and Gone
The Telepath is Listening: What do we Do Here?
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The Writer's Desk Book and How to Organize One

Recently I re-read the book The Craft of Writing Science Fiction That Sells by Ben Bova. I liked this book when I bought it because I had actually heard of the author, Ben Bova, as a science fiction writer. If a book is going to tell me how to be a fiction writer, I like it when the author of that book is a fiction writer himself rather than a college English professor.

One of the more useful sections of the book is where he describes his desk book--- a three-ring binder in which he keeps stuff related to his novel. He suggests that the desk book have sections for characters, names, background information, lines and phrases, and a chart of character appearances.

He kind of ruins it all by mentioning that now his desk book consists of a batch of files on his computer. My own experience with computer files is that sooner or later you can no longer open them. I have had writing files on floppy disks which I carefully preserved in case I ever wanted to revive the writing project in question. Some of these floppy disks could no longer be opened in a new computer when I replaced the old one. Now, of course, my computer doesn't even have a floppy disk drive. Only those writing projects which have hard-copy versions are able to be recovered for any purpose.

I decided to organize my old and current writing projects into a desk book. Now, I don't have enough dividers to create all the sections--- characters, background and so on--- for each individual novel project. So I reserve the sections for the current project, whichever that is, and have other dividers for the project on the back burner. I also have a second notebook for older projects that won't fit in the first.

The picture above shows the two notebooks, the desk book and the overflow book. It also shows my two new kittens, Germanicus 2 and Claudius 2. They are named after my two favorite cats who died last December. Germanicus 2 is the black and white in the front, and Claudius 2 is the one with her back to the camera. (Yes, this Claudius is a girl and I didn't change her name to Claudia lest anyone think she was named in honor of Claudia on General Hospital.)

In the course of putting together the notebooks I've come across a lot of old writing projects I haven't looked at in years. I'm surprised to find that all of those I have recovered so far seem to be quality work which would be worth reviving. I guess my less worthwhile work is buried deeper in my junk pile or lost altogether. One in particular is one that I have been 'writing' in my fantasy life for years, seems to be one I need to write. First step is to write down the story as I know it from my mental work over the years.

My other most urgent project is a brand-new story based on the idea of cloning. You may be familiar with James BeauSeigneur's book In His Image (The Christ Clone Trilogy, Book 1) and its sequels.

My idea is a little less daunting than cloning Jesus. What if someone decided to clone a visionary such as Saint Bernadette or one of the Fatima children with the idea of discrediting the Catholic church, either because the clone-child will have a religious vision (proving her insane and her original likewise) or else she might be irreligious (showing what the Saint would have been if she'd had a proper, non-religious upbringing.) Of course to a Catholic this cloning effort would be simply sad, rather than something that could in any circumstances weaken one's faith, but the sort of person that would do the experiment wouldn't know that.

At any rate, I believe that organizing a writer's work may well be the difference between a writer that succeeds and one that fails. There are writing projects that take the author many years; they can't succeed if the writer loses the notes periodically!

Of course each writer has to organize the desk book in his own way. Do you use a desk book or the equivalent? How is yours organized? Let me know in a comment--- and good luck with your writing today!

Blog Post:
katarzynaradzka: Do You Keep a Writers Diary?

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Obama hasn't a prayer on the national day of it, so let's give him ours

Pres. Obama says he is observing the National Day of Prayer 'in private' rather than having an interfaith service as has become the tradition.

During the election campaign, Pres. Obama tried to present himself as a believing Christian. When the church he had attended all those years was revealed to be a 'black liberation theology' institution, he quit that church and failed to replace it with another.

His own story is that he was never a churchgoing man, but when working as a political activist "community organizer" he was assigned to recruit black pastors to the left-wing cause, and he was frequently asked where his 'church home' was. He then 'joined up' with the church of black liberation pastor Wright.

The question on my mind is this: was Obama ever really converted to Christianity? Did he ever really know he had to repent of his sins (such as his support for pre-and-post-natal infanticide) and accept Jesus?

It's real common in most Christian circles to assume that some people are already saved, that they know they need to be saved, and how to be saved, and so it is possible for someone to join a church and participate in the activities without actually becoming a Christian. And one might wonder if Rev. Wright's church really is a Christian church, or if it is a 'black liberation' cult which puts the gospel on the back burner while they preach more important messages like 'God damn America'.

So Pres. Obama is not responsible for his lack of Christianity. We the voting people of America, however, are responsible for how we spent our vote. Since the US is 80% Christians, there are a lot of people out there who voted for Obama without really digging in to his faith or lack thereof, or his position on issues vital to all Christians. Just his stance on abortion (prenatal infanticide) was enough to disqualify him.

However, in Christ there is always hope. Many Christians have begun a campaign of prayer for the conversion of Pres. Obama. There are details about it on this post on Father Frank Pavone's blog. You might also visit Notre Dame Response where students have a campaign to offer up the traditional/Biblical prayer, the Rosary, one million times for the conversion of Obama. You can pray the rosary online at: http://www.ourcatholicfaith.org/onlinerosary.html. If you prefer to pray the rosary in the language Esperanto, go here: http://www.breviero.org/kunviva-rozario/en.html or at http://www.rosaire.org/rosperp/rosperpetlang.php?lang=en

How Protestants and Evangelicals can participate: Most Protestants and Evangelicals don't pray the rosary--- although I did, when I was Lutheran, and when I confessed this 'sin' to a Lutheran friend, she said 'me, too'. But it is perfectly OK to pray for Pres. Obama's conversion in whatever form of prayer your own denomination or church uses. The important thing is that this poor man gets prayed for!

Blogs on this topic:
Obama gives National Day of Prayer short shrift
The Day of National Humiliation, Prayer and Fasting

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Eve Myles (Gwen) of Torchwood is Expecting

According to the Torchwood.tv blog, actress Eve Myles, who plays Gwen on the Doctor Who spin-off series Torchwood, is three months pregnant. Eve and her 'partner' are happy. Are they happy enough to throw themselves a wedding first? Let's hope Eve is not too put off by the 'Gwen's Wedding' episode of Torchwood!

In other Torchwood news, the five episode new season of Torchwood, called Children of Earth, may be the last season of the series. (Perhaps that's why they offed half the Torchwood team at the end of the season.) Anyway, here is the trailer for the new season, rumored to be aired in June.


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As Swine Flu becomes Novel Flu, Will Writers Suffer?

On a recent commentary on This Week in Agribusiness, Orion Samuelson pointed out the need to change the name of the so-called Swine Flu. Although the virus is genetically similar to the Swine Flu which affects pigs, it spreads human to human and had not been found in pigs, though there is a case where a pig may have caught the disease from a human who had been to Mexico.

Yet in spite of the facts some nations have been banning pork product imports using the flu as an excuse. People are being asked if they have given up pork because of the flu--- even though this is an utterly futile measure to take.

Orion Samuelson pointed out that this flu is not a true swine flu and that the Europeans have started calling it Novel Flu to avoid confusion, not to mention international agricultural trade wars disguised as health concerns.

But what will happen if the name 'Novel Flu' catches on? The news media still wants to generate hysteria over the disease. Will they be asking people if they have given up novel reading to avoid catching the Novel Flu? Will bookstores and libraries be asked to shut down for the duration? Will countries ban the publication of foreign novels?

This may seem silly, but in actual fact it may be slightly easier to get the Novel Flu from a novel, assuming the novel has been passed hand-to-hand and has been touched by an infected person, than it would be to get it eating pork, which after all is cooked before eating which would kill any germs, including flu germs.

However, writers of the world have one hope that they will avoid taking the hits that hog farmers have. The animal rights wienies of PETA and other hate groups have been trying to use the Swine Flu to scare people into adopting unhealthy vegetarian diets. They have no such motive to promote fear of novels in the case of Novel Flu. Without the help of the wienies, the media may have a harder job promoting the fear.
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Republicans Cause Cancer

Did the Republican Party kill Jack Kemp? Evidently Arlen Spector (not the same dude as Phil Spector the murder guy) seems to think so. Wesley J. Smith has a good post about it on his blog Secondhand Smoke.


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