Friday, March 15th, 2013 Julius Caesar was stabbed to death on March 15, 44 BC. He’d been warned by a soothsayer, but apparently failed to take precautions.
Worse, he was stabbed in the back by his good friend Marcus Brutus.
Shakespeare’s responsible for gifting us with memorable lines from his Tragedy of Julius Caesar, such as those for the soothsayer (Beware the Ides of March!) and Caesar’s famous last line, “Et tu, Brute?” (And you, Brutus?)
Brutus takes backstabbing your friend to a whole new level. He stepped up to the plate “for the good of Rome,” once it was agreed that Caesar was getting too big for his britches. He’d compared himself with Alexander the Great and grabbed as much power as he could.
These days, our friends and family would hold an intervention.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- This works for novelists, poets and memoir writers: write a scene where one character back-stabs another. Bonus points if you can work in Caesar’s famous line (“Et tu, Brute?”) without is sounding cheesy. If you’re a poet, write about betrayal. If you’re writing memoir, journaling or even family history, now’s the time to tell about the family fued: who stabbed whom in the back and why?
- Write a scene with “Beware the…” as the jumping off point.
- If Julius’ tragedy doesn’t float your boat, choose any one of Shakespeare’s hundreds of quotes and use them as a jump start. ENotes has them all listed by play. Pick one at random.
If you’re feeling lazy, here are just a few:
- Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow… (MacBeth)
- Give me my robe, put on my crown… (Antony and Cleopatra)
- And thus I clothe my naked villany (Richard III)
- The world’s mine oyster (The Merry Wives of Windsor)
- I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you (The Merchant of Venice)
Good Luck!
Friday, March 8th, 2013  I’m sitting here looking at at a giant list of “2013 Fun Goals” that the Husband of Awesome™ and I put together a few weeks ago.
This isn’t something we normally do, but I thought it might be fun. We wrote them down on easel-sized paper in different colored markers and posted it on the wall. The list includes things that require us to get out of the house (hike, fish, attend a minor-league baseball game) and things that we can stay home and do (make homemade ice cream, tie-dye t-shirts).
And as we come up with ideas for things we want to do this year, we’ll add them to the list.
The characters in your stories should have these kind of goals, too. It makes them more like real people, and it provides a way to include more drama in your novels by creating subplots out of these desires. This ‘minor’ activity might even provide the hook or inciting incident you need to begin your story.
For instance, suppose you write mysteries. Your detective is spending a Saturday morning at the gym, taking a yoga class for the first time, deciding whether or not it’s the kind of thing she might like. Halfway through the class, a scream erupts from the women’s locker room. Someone found a dead body–and now your story is off and running.
These goals can also provide some comic (or not so comic, if you wish) “relief” from the intensity of a dramatic novel. Perhaps your character just wants to get away for the weekend…and each time he makes plans to do so–or even starts out on the trip–the main plot interrupts (ramping up the drama again!) until he tries again.
(This kind of sub plot will need to be resolved before the end of the book.)
Here’s Your Prompt:
Create a list of five or eight activities or goals your character might want to accomplish (which are unrelated to the main plot). Jot down why your character is interested in these items–you can’t just wing it. There’s got to be a compelling reason–a back story–behind the idea, even if it’s simply “because I’ve never done it before.” Just make certain that kind of reasoning rings true for your character.
(Someone who is afraid of heights will probably not have bungee jumping on his list unless there’s a very good reason for it.)
Choose one goal, two at the most, which could compliment the plot. Brainstorm some ways your character could accomplish the goal.
Finally, write the scene. What might happen that could affect the main plot — positively or negatively — during this scene? Could it lead to another clue in a murder mystery? Could your character break a leg and not be able to be a bridesmaid for her best friend in a romance? Does it simply provide relief from a very intense plot?
Good luck!
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Photo: © Dana Rothstein | Dreamstime Stock Photos
Tuesday, March 5th, 2013  It’s Read an e-book week!
You can get the details at the Read an Ebook Week web site if you’re interested, but the general idea is to get people who’ve never read an ebook to give one a try. Lots of people are giving away free reads, myself included.
Head on over to Smashwords to get my story, “The Dragon’s Clause, in any format you like. The coupon code is: NV79A.
Click here to get The Dragon’s Clause at Smashwords.
If you’ve never used Smashwords, you have to click on the “buy” link to load the book in your cart. Then, you’ll be able to enter the coupon and see the price zeroed out.
The coupon expires at the end of the week.
Thanks for reading!
Friday, March 1st, 2013
How to use a picture prompt:
Study it.
What do you see? Pay close attention to the background as well as the foreground. What jumps out at you? Write about that, and not the obvious.
On the other hand, if the obvious tells you a story, write that. (These are guidelines, not rules.)
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Photo © Micha Fleuren | Dreamstime Stock Photos
Friday, February 22nd, 2013  I was reading Military 1 today and came across an article about what Navy SEAL’s keep in their survival kits. These kits, which are used if a SEAL is caught behind enemy lines, are pretty impressive.
Each kit is only 4 inches by 2 inches by 1.5 inches, and comes in your choice of tan or green.
SEALs are able to use the kits as a digging tool, and a pot to cook food in (though not at the same time) – and they contain an impressive array of items: a mini, stainless-steel Multi Tool with pliers, wire cutters, file, and awl; button compass; LED Sqeeze light; fire starting kit; full-sized blanket; 2 x 3 signal mirror with aiming hole; bobby pins; safety pins; rope; first aid items and more.
They’ve got to be prepared for anything.
This got me thinking about our characters and what they might pack as “survival” items in our stories.
The lead character in my work in progress carries some specific demon-banishing items in her purse at all times, since lately, she’s been plagued by demons. Part of her kit includes holy water, holy chrism (oil) and salt which has been blessed by a priest. She uses these items to seal windows and doors, and in a pinch, they become weapons against the demons.
So, she’s always prepared, right?
Wrong. Where’s the drama in that? (She’s going to learn fairly soon that her kit no longer works.)
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Create a “survival kit” for your character. It could be as small and jam-packed as a Navy SEAL’s, or could be as mundane as the items your character habitually loads into his pockets every morning. Whatever it is: have a good reason for the items to be there. It’s got to be something your character carries with him every day. It’s too Deus ex machina if the items show up only when your character needs them.
- Think about all the ways those items can be countered. What logical things could happen to make the survival kit less than useful?
- Write the scene where your character realizes that all his or her prep has been for naught. Lead him or her through determination to get the job done, frustration after frustration of items in the kit not working, realization of failure, decision to quit and/or determination to succeed no matter what.
Good Luck!
Saturday, February 16th, 2013  You may remember that in December I wrote about how much I loved Ripley Patton’s Ghost Hand. Ripley was kind enough to answer a few questions about herself, the writing, and of course, the book.
Yay for us!
Well, if you didn’t pick up the book then, do so now: it’s free in the Kindle Store today.
Get it here:
Ghost Hand (The PSS Chronicles)
If you pick it up, give some love to Ripley! Like the book, Tweet it, add it to your Goodreads lists, and/or leave a review.
(Reviews are always the best: they’re like gold to authors!)
Friday, February 15th, 2013  Question: Where do ideas come from?
Answer: They’re all around us.
But sometimes, they’re difficult to “see.” There’s a lot of visual stimulation around us, whether we’re visiting someplace new or sitting in our own writing spaces surrounded by the familiar.
Today’s writing prompt is a challenge. I want you to spend some time focusing on the objects around you and come up with a story (or a poem, or a memoir/journal entry, etc.) about one of the objects you see. Don’t let your eyes flick past the things you’ve viewed a million times a day. Instead, choose one to focus on, and think about some possibilities:
- How did you acquire it? Was it given to you by a friend? What if someone else had given it? (An enemy? A teacher? An alien? What kind of story would that make?
- How was it manufactured? What if it were made of something else? What if it had additional properties such as motion, magnetism, solubility, invisibility?
- Who owned it before you did? Your brother? Your cousin? Henry the VIII?
- Imagine this item in another location. What significance does the new location bring to the object? (Does it give you an idea for a story?)
Now…kick it up a notch by letting your imagination run wild. Start with the focus object, and continue to ask questions of it until the object of your study is no longer what you focused on. Instead of asking the “usual” questions, take a tangent… What does the color of it remind you of? How about the shape, or the texture? Maybe the gold-rimmed dinner plate which used to belong to your grandmother makes you think of the moon. Write a poem about the moon, or a story about a colony on the moon, or a fantasy about the moon’s pull on a witch’s spells.
Maybe the blue lamp is the same color of the ocean on a rainy morning. It makes you think of a secret at a beach house, a romance on an island, or a pirate shipwreck in Boston Harbor.
You get the idea.
Write that story (poem, vignette, journal entry, etc.) without the focus piece ever being mentioned in it.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Easy: Write something (a poem, a short story, a scene, etc.) using your object of choice, coupled with some of the questions outlined above (or more of your own!) Make certain that item is the focus of the piece.
- Challenging: Start with a focus object, but transform it into a solid idea. Write something which was inspired by your focus piece.
Good luck!
Sunday, February 10th, 2013  I have a new story out in a horror anthology called Deep Cuts: Mayhem, Menace, & Misery.
My story is in the “Misery” section: a psychological thriller/ghost story called Lucky Clover about two high school grads who embark on a road trip before college, and get more than they bargained for.
As I said in October when I signed the contract, I’m super excited to be in an anthology with great writers such as Nancy Holder (of Buffy fame, and a five-time Bram Stoker Award™ winner), Mehitobel Wilson (nominated for a Bram Stoker Award™ and awarded Honorable Mention in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror Anthology five years in a row!) and Yvonne Navarro (also a winner of the Bram Stoker Award™).
Published by Evil Jester Press, the anthology is part of a month-long celebration of Women in Horror.
You can read more about the anthology (or the players!) at the Deep Cuts Kickstarter page (campaign now closed) or the Deep Cuts Web site. But, of course, I hope you’ll buy Deep Cuts: Mayhem, Menace, & Misery.
The folks over at I Like Horror Movies have posted a review, too. (Rare, that, I think: a book review on a horror movie review site.) I think I more than like “I Like Horror Morvies!”
If you live on the West Coast, there’s a book signing coming up at the end of the month:
Mysterious Galaxy Book store, Redondo Beach Location: Saturday, February 24.
I’ll be there in spirit!
Friday, January 25th, 2013  I’ve probably mentioned this before: the main character in my work-in-progress is a finder. You can tell her about things you’ve lost, and she can help you find them…with a little bit of help from the universe and a little ritual she performs.
And in Blood Soup, the lead character depends on her nurse — a midwife and a witch — who ‘rolls the bones’ to determine the gender of the unborn child.
Through time and across tribes, clans and peoples we’ve had scryers and seers to whom we can turn for answers. Today, people read their horoscopes, visit palm readers, and deal tarot cards.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Develop a character who has regular appointments with a seer (a palm reader, a gypsy, a tarot card reader). Why does she have regular appointments? What answers does he seek?
- Write a believable dialogue between two people where one begins with the question, “What’s your sign?”
- Write a scene where a skeptic is forced to confront his prejudices when something everything a seer has told him has come to pass.
- Write a poem with the opening line, “The fortune teller said…”
- Write about something that happened in your former life.
- Write about rolling the bones, or scattering runes.
- Write about a lucky charm that brought bad luck.
- Write about the last dream you remember having. Afterward, find an a book or internet resource on dream interpretation and write about what it means.
Good luck!
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The image of the hand comes from the book The Woman Beautiful, page 308, by Ella Adelia Fletcher. 1901. Work is currently in the public domain since the copyright has expired.
Friday, January 18th, 2013  Happy Birthday, Peter Mark Roget!
Roget was born January 18, 1779.
He was a natural theologian and a physician, but he’s chiefly remembered for his literary contribution of creating the first thesaurus.
His apparent obsession with list-making started it all, and he worked on it for nearly 50 years in private before it was published in 1852, with the excessive title of:
Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition.
I love my thesaurus!
I have a copy of Roget’s International Thesaurus , 6th edition (a fabulous gift from the The Husband of Awesome™ many years ago) and it sits on a small shelf below my desk. (It’s over 1,200 pages of joy!)
I can reach it with ease any time I need to refer to it.
A thesaurus is an awesome tool when you’re looking for just the right word. And like any good tool, you get what you pay for: I haven’t found a web version that does the job anywhere as good as my hard-bound book. If you’re serious about finding the right word, get a good thesaurus.
(The problem, of course, especially for young writers — or new writers — is to choose a 50-cent word over a nickle word. By this I mean, stumbling across the first 4-syllable synonym in the thesaurus and plugging that into their writing. Don’t fall into this trap! If your character is walking across the parking lot, make him walk. Having him perambulate across the parking lot is not going to make the story any better!)
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Choose a piece of writing from your drafts that seems lackluster, or one you’ve had no luck selling somewhere. Examine the words for places you could make changes. Use a thesaurus to find more specific words to use to make your point and re-write your work.
- Do you tend to use the same words over and over in your writing?
Instead of using this prompt to jump start something, use it to hone your skills. Pick five or more words you tend to overuse – particularly ones that you tend to use modifiers around to help them along, and look them up in a good thesaurus. Make lists of alternate words (and their specific meanings) and keep them handy while you write.
- For those of you looking for a specific prompt to get your juices flowing today, try a new twist on an old stand-by for prompts. Open up a thesaurus to a random page, close your eyes, and drop your finger down on a particular word. If you’ve hit the index, turn to the specific location in the book. If you’ve tapped a particular word, you’re good.
Now, choose five of the synonyms surrounding your word and write a poem or essay and use all of them (correctly!) in context in your writing.
For those of you who are too lazy, here’s a random word and some of its synonyms:
pirate: corsair, buccaneer, privateer, sea rover, picaroon, viking
Good Luck!
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