Tuesdays with Story

Writer’s Mail
2/27/2013

Notes from 2/26/13 Meeting
Due to the horrific weather, only Andy, Katelin, and Jen attended. Jen opted to withhold her piece until a later meeting when more people could discuss it.

Katelin’s submission to Larry Brooks of StoryFix.com, The Battle of Sista was discussed and approved. Jen suggested rephrasing the “External Conflict” from Cassie’s point of view, as opposed to Traiken, to retain consistency. Andy suggested varying the protagonists and having conflict between them to create a more interesting story, which Katelin said she would be doing. Katelin disclosed that the story would be in third-person and the perspective would change between various characters’ heads.

Andy’s prologue and chapter one of People was perceived as difficult to read due to Blaze’s vehement hatred of everybody; Katelin compared him to Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII. It was suggested by both Katelin and Jen to depict college-age Blaze as someone frustrated with society, as opposed to outright hating it, and during college and afterward for his hatred to be fueled by the ignorance and hate of those around him. Minor fixes and the larger plot were discussed, but will be kept secret until a future meeting. Andy will be retinkering the first chapter and intends to share in two weeks’ time.
Thanks to Andy for the notes

Other Odds and Ends
An event for you . . .
Jerry Peterson is a part of a group organizing the first Southern Wisconsin Authors Fair. Readers and writers from the southern area of the state will be able to meet and talk books with the nine writers on the fair’s roster on Sunday, April 14, at The Gathering Place in Milton.

There is a bonus attraction, a writers workshop that will be taught by Kathie Giorgio, a dynamic instructor who teaches both for her own business, AllWriters’ Workplace, and for Writers Digest magazine.
Authors Fair writers include Dan Manoyan, Kenosha, biography (Alan Ameche: The Story of “The Horse”); Catherine Witek, Janesville, historical fiction (The Trials of Misella Cross); Doris Greenberg and Pandre Shandley, suburban Milwaukee, young adult fiction (The Legend of L’Esprit); Andrea Thalasinos, Madison, general fiction (An Echo Through the Snow); Elizabeth Ridley, Brookfield, historical fiction (The Remarkable Journey of Miss Tranby Quirke); Douglas Armstrong, Whitefish Bay, young adult fiction (Even Sunflowers Cast Shadows); Kathie Giogio, Waukesha, general fiction (The Home for Wayward Clocks); and Jerry – why, of course.
Read more about the writers at the Authors Fair’s Facebook page. To find it, go to your Facebook page, then type Southern Wisconsin Authors Fair in the search line. Jerry asks you to “like” the page . . . then make your plans to come down for the fair and take part in the workshop.
Fair hours are 1-4 p.m.

Great word . . .
Courtesy of Wordsmith Anu Garg:
logophile
PRONUNCIATION: (LOG-uh-fyl)
MEANING: noun: One who loves words.
ETYMOLOGY: From Greek logo- (word) + -phile (lover). Earliest documented use: 1728.

USAGE: “I treasure my printed OED – as a memento of my logophile grandfather.”
Dictionaries: Finding Their Ideal Format?; The Economist (London, UK); Nov 22, 2012

Will books lose out in a tablet world? . . .
YA author and blogger Nathan Bransford answers that question:
One of my favorite predictions I have put down on pixel and screen is this one from 2007, when the Kindle had just been announced, e-book sales were virtually nonexistent, and the iPad was but a glimmer in Steve Jobs’ eye:

In my opinion there will never be a widely used iPod of books, a device that people buy specifically for books – e-books will take off when they can be easily downloaded and easily read on a device like a larger iPhone-of-the-future, something people already have, which evens out the economics since you don’t have to plop down a significant chunk of money before you even buy a book. This would give e-books the decisive edge in economics, which might just tip the world of books toward e-books. Until then? Printed page for most of us.

I would argue that this is pretty much what has happened in the last six years. Yes, Kindles have sold pretty well and you see them around town, but they’re nowhere near the ubiquity that iPods were in the mid-2000s. Print is still a majority even as Kindle prices dropped below $100. We haven’t yet reached a majority e-book world, and it’s still “printed page for most of us,” as the last paragraph suggests.
And yet… I’m actually a little worried about this prediction.
The second part of the prediction is that e-book sales would reach a majority when most everyone has a “larger iPhone-of-the-future,” aka an iPad, iPad Mini, Nexus 7, Kindle Fire, Nook HD… you get the picture.
We’re almost there. There are now tons of tablets in the world. Apple sold 22.9 million iPads in the last quarter alone.
And yet growth in e-book sales seem to be leveling off. Even as people are buying more and more tablets, they’re not reading more and more e-books.
Some people, including Nicholas Carr, see the leveling off of as proof that people are simply still attached to print books. I don’t doubt that this is the case for many people.
My fear is that books are losing ground to other forms of handheld portable entertainment. Tablets should make it easier for people to read more because there is no delay between deciding you want to read something and being able to read it. It’s (usually) cheaper to buy e-books. But that doesn’t seem to be happening at the moment.
And this is where publishers have to realize that they are not competing against just books anymore when they’re setting e-book prices.
Read the entire post at http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2013/02/will-books-lose-out-in-tablet-world.html

Thanks to Jerry for that info

The Genesis of a Novel
by Mark Rubenstein, author of Mad Dog House: a novel
Posted: 02/21/2013 5:48 pm

When I’ve spoken to groups at libraries or bookstores, invariably I’m asked how an idea for a novel comes to me. It’s not an easy question to answer. Each novel I’ve written has a different genesis, although there are certain key elements they all share.
For me, writing begins with an almost dreamlike process. It’s as though my mind goes through some semi-conscious period where things from the past and present seem to coalesce and begin building upon themselves. Sometimes a thought fragment forms, only to fade the way some dreams dissolve as you’re awakening. At other times, an idea imbeds itself and develops with a clear forward trajectory.
By way of example, here’s how my recent novel, Mad Dog House, began to take shape.
When I was in elementary school, the class-clown was a kid nicknamed “Cootie.” Many years later, while in the army, I met a fellow medic whose raucous, hyena-like laugh earned him the moniker “Mad Dog.” My novel begins with a scene in a classroom in which “Cootie” (now portrayed as a bully) is finger-snapping the ear of the boy who sits in front of him.
As a high school freshman, I sat in front of some wise guy who made sport out of finger-snapping my right ear. At 13 years old, I weighed a prodigious 105 pounds, and this bullying kid was far bigger and very intimidating. After too many days of silently taking this humiliation, I finally snapped and challenged him to a fight behind the candy store near the school. A momentary look of surprise, coupled with fear, flashed across his face. He’d never expected so brazen a challenge from a skinny kid, and correctly read the fury raging through me. When class ended, we faced off in the empty lot and went at it. I beat the hell out of him.
“When he was 12 years old, Mad Dog ripped off Cootie Weiss’ ear.”
So begins the novel. The protagonist, Roddy, earns his moniker “Mad Dog” after finishing off his bully in a far more dramatic way than I had mine. But, you can see how incidents and people from different stages of my life wind their way into the fabric of my fiction.
I knew I wanted to write a thriller involving a successful surgeon and his best friend, an accountant, being drawn into a business venture which would go terribly wrong and threaten to upend their lives; and the vehicle I used to get the novel started was based on the melding of two totally distinct and disparate incidents in my own life.
The idea came to me during a walk with my wife.
The novel’s story incorporates other aspects of my own and others’ experiences, coupled with large doses of imagination and fantasy. Like all fiction writers, I draw from the things I know well, and borrow heavily from life around me. Whether it’s a cousin who invested and lost money in a vanity project; the rough guys I knew in my teens; or the friends whose son has caused them so much heartache, I incorporate “what I know about life” into a piece of pure fiction.
I’m a psychiatrist, with years of experience working on the wards and emergency rooms at major city hospitals. Later, I was in private practice with a diverse group of patients; and ultimately, specializing in forensic psychiatry. I saw people whose lives were irrevocably changed by the most horrific experiences imaginable, and my mind is filled with their stories, underscoring the adage “truth can be stranger than fiction.”
Without violating a confidence or betraying trust, I draw water from the well of my life’s work, and create stories.
A writer is someone who always has an eye open and an ear cocked. I am no exception.
Drawing from life is at the heart of my novels, although each one begins in its unique way.

Thanks to Alica for that article

Coming Soon…

March 5: Lisa McDougal (chapter 10&11, Follow the Yellow), Alicia Connolly-Lohr (chapter, Lincoln’s Other War), Millie Mader (chapter 42, Life on Hold), Pat Edwards (???), Clayton Gill (chapter, Fishing Derby), and Aaron Boehm (film script/part 4, “Whole Again”).
March 12: Jack Freiburger (chapter, Jesus at the IHOP (postponed from Feb. 12) and Carol Hornung (scene, Ghost of Heffron College). If you’d like to be on the schedule, contact Carol at chornung88@aol.com –NOTE: Do to the weather on 2/26/2013, this is subject to change.
March 19: Amber Boudreau (chapter, Noble), Rebecca Rettenmund (chapter, The Cheese Logue), Michelle Nightoak (chapter, memoir), Andy Pfeiffer (???), Clayton Gill (chapter, Fishing Derby), and Jerry Peterson (chapter 4-5, The Last Good Man).

If you would like to be the editor for the March newsletter, please let us know.

Thanks,
Lisa M