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See what happens when you write out of sequence?

From Mermaids Arms...

Maggie slumped over the big roll-top desk, grabbed the sides with both hands and allowed a few tears to fall onto the ledger in front of her.  She wiped them away quickly, lest someone see her giving in to her emotions.  It was too much.  She’d been through settling her mother in law’s estate, notifying relatives and being ignored by them for weeks.  The only responses she’d gotten from anyone were queries as to how big an estate there was and who would inherit.

   The estate wasn’t big, but there had been some money, which she did not get, even after caring for the old witch for over a year.  “Well, you got to live in that big old house for free, you and your girls.  She never liked you, anyway, girl,” she’d heard in one form or another from several of the loving relatives.
  Loving. Hell. They’d all stayed away from her mother in law for years and years because she was a raving witch, but once the ding dong had sounded, they’d each thought themselves entitled to a piece of the pie.  And, strangely enough, they’d gotten their pieces.  While the old lady had been unbelievably nasty, she had been rather generous to her family...other than her only son’s wife and daughters, her only grandchildren.
   However, and this was the oddest thing, one insurance policy had not been changed over from Bill after his death. Perhaps the old lady thought he still might come back from his watery grave or maybe she’d just forgotten the small policy.  If she had remembered that the policy went to Bill or his next of kin should he predecease her, well, maybe she’d have changed her mind and the beneficiaries.   She hadn’t, though, and after some intense wrangling and threats of lawsuits against her, she now had nearly five hundred dollars to get her and the girls to Ohio.
   She wiped her eyes with the side of her hand and sniffled into her handkerchief.
   No one must see her like this.

World War II story, Mermaids Arms

From my work in slow progress:

     Lee paced across the wooden floor, his bare feet padding rhythmically in a soldier’s cadence.  Something, some nameless frustration, burned through his body, setting every nerve afire.  He shook his head, flexed his left hand.

     The glove didn’t work. While his fingers could reach the strings, he could not move them fast enough and the soft leather end just didn’t press hard enough despite the seam there.  The strings bounced back.  The sound wasn’t right.  The movement—it wasn’t there.  The control—hah!  What control?
     He ripped off the glove, sending it sailing across the small bedroom.  It landed inches away from the guitar.
     Useless.  The glove was useless.  His hand was useless.  His dreams of making music—well, evidently they were just that.  Stupid dreams.
     He needed to punch something.  Hard.  Raising his hand to the wall, he feinted a jab, but he couldn’t follow through. The hand stopped inches away from rending plaster to dust.  Useless it may be, but not without some feeling.  It would hurt.  He left the room, left the damned guitar he’d never play again.

Goaded by yesterday

It has come to my mind that, as a writer, I'm supposed to post "how-to's" on my blog.  I gave that up long ago once I realized that nobody gave a rat's ass.

Yesterday at the LSFW meeting, the speakers were commenting that writers should always post how- to information.  I consider that giving away talent for free.  I think I've already done that, but since I've been blogging here and on LiveJournal for years, maybe there are new people out there who never read my good stuff.  And let's not talk about the other website I had with all the notes about writing I put on there.  Somebody was supposed to transfer all that stuff onto this, but it never happened.

So, I'm gonna start off slowly.

I'm gonna divulge what I do to find cool names for characters.

Simple.
I look at the credits from all the PBS shows first...make mental notes on cool first names and last names.  I try very hard not to use ethnic names for characters as I do not want to possibly alienate readers who find they cannot pronounce character names because there are too many vowels or consonants.  Look, I know that puts me off...those real Irish names that no one could pronounce but someone versed in Erse...drive me nuts.  How can Aislinn be Ashlyn?  Darragh be just Darra?  Why the extra letters?  And then, whoa!  A Polish surname with no vowels whatsoever is impossible to figure out without a hunk of kielbasa in one hand and a chaser of vodka in the other.  If even then.

So, after plumbing the wonders of BBC, my next step, if I haven't come up with anything yet, is to read the obituaries online.  Located in those nuggets of sadness are some really cool names.  You take one from one place, another from another, you're set.

The real problem with a name is that it has to match the character.  Women's names can be airy fairy and you don't want to use that for a strong, 21st century female heroine.  Men...very sensitive here as you don't want a repeat of "A Boy Named Sue" any time.  Certain names are very masculine, others are new and made up (see football players' lineups) and some aren't very heroic.  Sometimes the nicknames are cooler than the real names, but sometime or other, you have to explain the guy's real name in the story and why he's called CAM and not Camerill.  Yes, it can be that oddball.

Name matching.  A dark haired hero or heroine shouldn't have a light haired name.
You can always do initials, but once again, somewhere in the story, you have to use the real name or else people like me will be wondering throughout the read what they stand for.

Women...giving them masculine names is odd. But then, the old saw "my father wanted a boy" is used all too frequently.

I'm big on names...I love searching for the exact right name for a character, even before I write the story.  Look at my stuff and see how I employ my naming methods. http://amazon.com/author/irenepeterson

The Year in Review

My calendar has been full of tiny things I put down so my life wouldn't look so bleak and empty. Like, which days we went to Costco and which to Shop Rite. Days Herb spent time at the Legion. Sometimes my friends came to visit, which was cool. The hours I spent reading and editing their work. The times Sally came up and we just had lunch and sundaes which most of the time were the highlight of my week and month. The times Sandy called and we talked and talked and talked....
And sometimes I remembered to write down the food I ate and the doctors' appointments I had.

Then there were the times it snowed and the times I was sick and the times Karyn was sick. Order numbers for the few times I ordered things online. There were the times I didn't sleep and the times I called my brothers. We ordered new furniture, which was cool as I always like going furniture shopping. Got a sofa bed for the front room, got a dishwasher and auxiliary refrigerator and a big chest that I can't figure out what to call, but it was in Craftsman style.

I wrote down my dreams if they were good and I remembered them. I wrote down the times I made it to the writers' meetings, I even gave a presentation once. The conference in March, a highlight. A lowlight, the bombing in Boston. The death of a dear friend from cancer...a horrible way to die, Debbie. Planting the garden, Easter, Cara, my niece and her husband up for a visit. Going to Wildwood for the Legion convention...nice time. Meeting Father Jim Martin while there. Cool beans!

Staying in Holgate twice in one year! Seeing the damage, seeing things getting better, seeing Seaside catch fire. We went on a couple of harbor cruises, too, down south. We had a visitor from Scotland here and we did some touring ourselves...Mt. Vernon, Montpelier, a DC harbor cruise. We canned tomatoes from our garden! Jack and Nicole came up for his 50th high school reunion. We did NOT kill each other.

My one daughter decided she was going to move out and she did. She still comes back to do her laundry and visit her friends up here. She's not that far away, but it hurts me. We got a futon for her old room which will be my office.

Karyn spent some time in the hospital. It was not fun. Sally and I celebrated our birthdays together. We had Thanksgiving here and no one got killed. I made Nesselrode pie. Christmas shopping, seeing the Stickley homestead, going to a Viking bakery in Denville and riding around to see Christmas lights. That's it. Tonight rolls over into a new year. I tried my best, things didn't always work out right but we are all still alive, including Mom C and Mom P, so that's great!

God bless us, God bless you all. Happy New Year.

I don't know how other people do it

My life has taken some bad turns lately.  I've had trouble here and there and felt like crap and had to handle some odd situations for which I was unprepared.
Naturally, it wore me down.
But, most of them are over.
I hope.

No, I won't go into detail.  Except that personally, I was worried that the cancer had come back.  Found out Monday that it had not, and that is super cool.  But I still feel pretty bad.
Must be the elephants in my living room.
And I certainly have a few of those buggers hanging around.

Other people manage to write around the elephants and the troubles.  I can't.  I can barely blog.  My heart just isn't in it.  Here I have a novella ready to go up on Amazon and I have the other half of the World War II story begging to be worked on.  I dream about it at night, plot when I can't fall asleep and promise myself to work on it, but it hasn't happened in a month. That's just about when all the sh*t hit the fan around here, just before Halloween.

I really envy my writing friends who manage to sit down at the computer and pound out word after word.  They either have a deadline, for which they will get paid once met, or are trying like hell to produce something that will get sold.

To this, unfortunately, in the back of my head I hear "been there, done that".
OMG
Have I actually quit???

Say it ain't so, Irene!!!

After the Doctor

Well, yesterday should have satisfied everyone's need for the big 50th anniversary blowout about Doctor Who.

As usual, I got confused over most of the story.  It contradicted so many Doctor things about time and space and forget Einstein!  But to alleviate the Doctor's great guilt...hmm.

And sticking in a Doctor 8A was truly weird.

I've seen the entire evolution...not all the episodes as so many are lost...and I find the more sophisticated recent stories rather showy, using CGI when the earlier Doctors had monsters made from old rugs and cardboard.

Technology!  That's what the old Doctor Who was and still is all about.  Perhaps that is why I get lost sometimes.  Then I have to figure out what is real technology from what is imaginary.  That whole bit with the sonic screwdrivers left me in the dark.  But they got out of the Tower of London, and that was what the plot needed.

Ah, it was fun sitting in front of the television for two days, absorbing what I could of the history of the show and the actors.  I learned some things.

What was the coolest thing, however, was seeing Tom Baker as the museum curator at the end.  That voice of his still sends chills up my spine!