ROBUST discussion

Katie wrote: "Haha, just noticed how I spelled it...that's a new word for getting off a horse!"

I like your dictionary better, Katie:
exepegisis -- n. an involuntary dismounting of a tall equine

Ouch!

I finished reading 'Survivor' and am reading the Whatdoyoucallit Matrix.

With in only a few days of having an office - I'm getting more work done and I'm reading again.

A room of one's own. Absolutely essential for a writer.

The Meyersco Helix?

Why do you think the accountant in The Survivor saved the hand?

Good one, Katie!

"No sir, we have never had a customer return with a complaint about our fishnet parachute."
-- Gary Jones

I thought it was very significant.

The rings were his last link to her as a living person. He had to eat the rest.

The fact that he was nameless gave it a sense of impending doom from the start.

I reviewed it for you on Smashwords. You can't get anywhere there without at least one review.

Kat wrote: "I thought it was very significant.

The rings were his last link to her as a living person. ...

The fact that he was nameless gave it a sense of impending doom from the start."

It's so long since I wrote that, and my vision of the novel from which it is an outwrite has changed so diametrically, that I'm not at all sure that I know what my motive was for doing this or that. Whatever you or Margie say has as much chance of being right as what little I remember. I picked up on the namelessness thing when I reread the story, and thought it was clever, if I had done it deliberately.

BTW, thanks for the review on Smashwords. Nice, that: "Tense and chilling."

There isn't a delicate way to say why I thought he might have saved the hand, but it had to do with maintaining his sense of manhood to give him strength. (Turns red and exits left).

Katie wrote: "There isn't a delicate way to say why I thought he might have saved the hand, but it had to do with maintaining his sense of manhood to give him strength. (Turns red and exits left)."

My TBR pile is so freaking large but your comment Katie has me eagerly searching through it to find this story to read!

Okay, everybody, the story they're talking about is THE SURVIVOR and you can get a free copy on Smashwords:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...
or you can pay 99c on Amazon:


Katie wrote: "There isn't a delicate way to say why I thought he might have saved the hand, but it had to do with maintaining his sense of manhood to give him strength. (Turns red and exits left)."

You should blush, Katie. Say three penances to St Onan.

Claudine wrote: "My TBR pile is so freaking large but your comment Katie has me eagerly searching through it to find this story to read!"

And you too, Claudine, for encouraging her.

Only if there is flagellation involved Andre.

/oh wait...wrong board!

Make sure the gravel bed is level before you start laying those flagstones.

Katie - hmm - well necrophilia is what it is. LOL!

Andre - I've got a thing about jewlery and symbolism.

Hmmm, I suppose necrophilia must be done delicately...

Unless you are in lurvvvv with a vampire - then it's fashionable.

'Ah, my hansome lover, you have the breath of slaughter house!"

(choke, retch, gasp)

I'll ask as I come by the graveyard tonight. "Hey, you in the graves, are you still suffering from the condition you died from, or did the worms eat it with your flesh? By the way, love your weight loss."

Hmm, needs a rewrite to be more delicate...

I can imagine certain body parts falling off at inoppertune moments.

"Sorry my dear. Can you stuff that with something and sew it back on?"

Andre Jute wrote: "I'll ask as I come by the graveyard tonight. "Hey, you in the graves, are you still suffering from the condition you died from, or did the worms eat it with your flesh? By the way, love your weight..."

I didn't know you were a necroscope.

Kat wrote: "Unless you are in lurvvvv with a vampire - then it's fashionable.

'Ah, my hansome lover, you have the breath of slaughter house!"

(choke, retch, gasp)"

I don't think you're ready to be a vampire writer yet, Kat. Still of too practical a mind. You have to overlook these details.

Too true, alas, I would get caught up in the details of how impossible it is to appear alive when you are really dead.

This is my buddy Van Man Go - the mad artist. One of the things I have to do with the Dark Harbor series is keep him active. If there was a movie Jack Nickelson would play him in a Gollum costume.

-----------

Van Man Go was smoking, as usual, a mixture of tobacco and pot. For once he was dressed in clean clothes, no paint stains on the tee shirt, nor holes in his jeans. His hair had been trimmed; his hands were clean of paint.

"You're all dressed up." I sat up. "What's up, Van?"

"We need to talk."

"Sure, want some coffee or a soda?"

"No, thanks. I'm good." He took another hit, careful not to blow the smoke at me.

I smiled, Van is never, ever good. He is the embodiment of dissipation, a man wrecked by excess. Completely uninterested in redemption, he is the perfect foil for a goody-two-shoes hero or heroine or two.

"This looks serious." I took a sip of cranberry juice. "What do you want to talk about?"

"It is the manuscript. I don't want to end up dead at the end of the book."

----------

He's too much fun to kill.

Jack Nickelson would play him in a Gollum costume

OMG You owe me a new keyboard! Tea + laughter = MESS!

Yes, he would make an excellent Van.

Larry wrote: "necroscope"

Call my classical education because the dictionary on my Mac doesn't know.

See-er of the dead?

Claudine wrote: "OMG You owe me a new keyboard! Tea + laughter = MESS!"

Y'all are expensive friends. ROBUST is the most expensive group I belong to.

Claudine is on to something here. Perhaps we should rate discussion groups with a wrecked keyboard -- coffee or wine sputtered into it when you burst out laughing at something on the board. The pictograph could be a keyboard, still dripping, in a trash basket. We would call the pictograph "The Giggle".

ROBUST, a five Giggle board
Amazon Kindle Discussion Group, a zero Giggle board

Kat wrote: "Too true, alas, I would get caught up in the details of how impossible it is to appear alive when you are really dead.

This is my buddy Van Man Go - the mad artist. One of the things I have to d..."

That's good dialogue. You know, though I wouldn't know how to recognize it because I've never worked in the genres, there is such a thing as writing too good for the genre. I was told this by a reliable editor who discovered quite a few of the stars of several genre, including sci-fi, fantasy and horror. I believe him.

Just on the basis of basic psychology, I believe him. I did once write somewhere that Amanda Hocking should take care not to smarten her writing and her books up too fast or even too far, that it is conceivable, even likely, that her audience loves her because she writes in their style -- and everyone agreed with me.

Andre Jute wrote: "Larry wrote: "necroscope"

Call my classical education because the dictionary on my Mac doesn't know.

See-er of the dead?"

Speaks with the dead. Brian Lumley, British author. Great series.

Andre Jute wrote: "Kat wrote: "Too true, alas, I would get caught up in the details of how impossible it is to appear alive when you are really dead.

This is my buddy Van Man Go - the mad artist. One of the things I..."

Excellent point about style. That was typical of some pulp magazine era stories and serialized books.

The only question is whether one writes for a specific audience or does the audience gravitate to the books due to the author's natural style? Or both?

I don't know - I have yet to find an audience. It might take someone with a women's fiction following (like maybe Kathleen Valentine?) to give "Let's Do Lunch" a review.

I hope that 'Swallow the Moon' will hit come fall. I don't mind writing paranormal - though I'd rather write my more complex contemporaries. I've been researching phsychology (?) long enough to want to use it in my books.

Right now I'm doing a bit of research on the nature of human evil as a ramp-up for the next Dark Harbo book. Need to go back to Ashtabula to research the local legends - the 'Ashtabula Horror' should work well.

Andre - I've quite given up on the M&B crowd. And it looks like I'm a clear miss with the romance crowd as well. I can't keep my mouth shut long enough to weasle my way into their forums to get 'discovered.'

Claudine - Yes, I had Nicklson in mind as I wrote Van.

"This is, literally, a wonderful book. It's full of wonder. For one thing, it makes you wonder why anyone would live in New York City, compared to which, hell must seem like a health resort."
-- Bill Marantz in a review of Einstein's Shutter
http://www.amazon.com/review/R2CUQ0B5... Einstein's Shutter

Now that's funny.

Bill's got a funny thriller too. Christmas Eve Can Kill You

I'll have to check it out.

I asked Roz if an opal is a green stone. She sorted through her jewelry for a couple of days and came to show me some. I liked the translucent stone with gold and turquoise flecks swimming in it. Close up under my very even desk lamp, it looked like an alien creature.

“Little, little kids, like one-year-olds, they chew on board books,” she says. “What if they chewed on your iPad?”

-- Gigi, 12, a reader and bookbuyer
-- article sourced by Margie: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by...

They do actually make electronic books for toddlers - chewable outside with a touch screen at the centre.

I want one of those!

There are some writers I would really like to bite in arse...

Interesting article about the changing face of publishing and libraries.
http://bit.ly/oIBvIV

A beautiful article, thanks Margie. The last paragraph especially resonated with me...

Sharon wrote: "A beautiful article, thanks Margie. The last paragraph especially resonated with me..."

Same for me too Sharon. I believe that it will be to the benefit of all persons that care about our society's literacy to pay close attention and be as involved, or informed at the very least, as much as possible. Significant changes are taking place.

I think Kevis is born member of ROBUST:

****

10/09 Kevis Hendrickson gave 1 star to: The Mountain by Kristina Howells
status: Read in October, 2011

Easily the worst story I've read this year. Not only is this book ludicrously short (barely 700 words), it is horribly formatted and poorly edited. The author struggles to construct a proper sentence forcing me to wonder if English is her first language. This book highlights the dark side to indie publishing and proves without a shadow of a doubt that owning a copy of Microsoft Word and access to the internet does not make one an author. There's no reason for this story to ever have been uploaded for public consumption.

1/2 a star for a slightly competent cover.

Ahh...the truth might set you free, but first it will piss you off.

700 words? Barely flash fiction.

Shh. I have a "book" that isn't much longer, though admittedly I say so up front:

"Two Shorts by André Jute comprising Christmas Oratorio a tiny tale 1050 words & High Fidelity a Christmas flash 242 words..."


99 cents at Amazon. FREE at Smashwords http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...

"Interesting" review on that page too, though not quite as savage as Kevis hands out to the careless Ms Howells. I tell the reader I'm showing off with nested digressions, so he complains about them. I tell him I call a couple "Jones" to protect the guilty (of being boringly bourgeois), so he complains about their name too. Can't win. The point of the effing story is disorganization, of which the digressions are a literary form. The point of the Joneses is that they are commonplace jumped-up village purselips. Wants the story polished. I just reread it, and it's so tight, a single word polished out will make it less funny by reducing the points scored.

By hey, anything for a customer, even if he got the story free.

However, shortly after I published it, the young woman in question stopped me on the street to tell me she remembered it EXACTLY like that, a high spot of her life, starring with me at top of the church steps, so now I dare not change it, because it has been declared THE TRUTH by a popular member of my community...(As Woody Allen said, "God, can't you please, just this once, choose someone else!")

Oh, and these snippets are from my memoirs, "Scenes from a bizarre life", which is starting to seem a title not so much poignantly pointed as increasingly sinister.

Andre, you haven't been pulled up for publishing such short shorts? I've been holding off on publishing my three shorts because they're only about 1500 each, but I guess if they're free, people can't complain too much. Well, they can, but they shouldn't.

Interesting review. Makes me want to read to find out what a digression within a digression actually looks like!

Actually, mine sell for 99c on Amazon, which apparently hasn't noticed after months that everywhere else they are free. But no, no one who paid (nor anyone who got them free) complained they were too short. I suppose quality does make an impression. Even the reader on Smashwords who tries to patronize me gave the story three stars.

Get your copy free from Smashwords.

99 cents at Amazon. FREE at Smashwords http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...

Just between us here, those aren't digressions. Me telling the reader they're digressions is a red herring. They're integral parts of the story, timeshifted for effect, arranged as nested flashbacks because I can -- and I was in a mood to show off. It's technically tricky stuff and will catch out literal-minded readers, but then I always assume I write for sophisticated people. I find it offensive when writers write down to me, so I don't write down to anyone. (Well, not unless I'm writing advertising, and then I want to be paid ginormously well for the pain of betraying my principles...) Unless they're told to look out for it, sophisticated readers smile and pass on; they're slowed down there not by the literary sleight of hand, which they can admire on the fly, but by me as the writer stepping forward to say, "Now watch my hands. These are acts of prestidigitation that you should try only in your own study with the door locked until you have achieved perfection."

William Goldman, somewhere in The Colour of Light, does same thing In reverse, moving the story forward many years in the middle of a sentence. I know the usual idiots don't rate him highly because by their lights he's had too much success, but that is admirable craftsmanship. Not one in a thousand novelists (after KDP, more likely one in 10,000) can bring that off.

In fact, the story we're discussing, Christmas Oratorio, could have been padded out quite a bit longer by describing every shuffling footstep of me holding up a limp-drunk girl on the icy top step of a dangerous flight of stone stairs. But why bother? All the same, the literal reviewer on the Smashwords page feels shortchanged because I don't describe every step between the girl undressing me to sort out the discman cord and kissing me just as the congregation comes out of church.

But it is comedy exactly because it is so tight; as few as a hundred words extra would turn the story into merely a satire on village hypocrisy, which a hundred other writers can manage as well. It's worth the price of losing a few readers who need numbered instructions, don't you agree?

Courtesy of Literacyhead of which I am a new subscriber via Facebook.

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-08-21/op...

I am a huge fan of Mo Willems. But his writing posted on The Horn Book site, Why Books?--The Zena Sutherland Lecture, October 21, 2011, has me thinking about a Pigeon tattoo...or maybe a small Elephant & Piggie or at the very least I am going to buy a Pigeon backpack.

I can't help it. I love books, the old fashioned kind with covers and pages.
http://www.hbook.com/2011/10/authors-...

Thank you, Margie, for the link to the beautiful, thoughtful, article.

Me too, I love old fashioned books. But I relate them to the horse-and-buggy age. When autos were invented, they were thought of as toys for the rich. They could never replace the ride on a cold winter's night, tucked in with blankets as one slowly made their way to visit with friends or attend a community dance - or as rendevous purlieu for lovers to make delicious secret love.

And they didn't of course. Except for a few precious places in the world, horse and buggies are now toys of the rich - hired out on holiday or special occasions. They are nostalgic and romantic. And it may just be that old fashioned books are heading for a similar fate. Books could become the new chachkes, sitting behind glass on hand-fashioned polished wood bookshelves, with pride of place in the fanciest of living rooms.

But for all we lost with the advent of automobiles, we gained much. We can now connect to further and further places faster and easier than ever imagined in those old days. Our world has gotten smaller and our understanding of our place in it larger.

With the digital age, the world seems to be spinning faster and faster, and along with it our understanding of our place in it. It is downright frightening sometimes, and we wish we could slow it down just as our grandparents and great-grandparents did. But they adapted and learned to embrace the change, and we will too.

This old world, which is so very new, is finally coming to understand that humans are all one race. And we have the digital age to thank for it. When I awoke this morning a thought came to me. For all I abhor that we thought the only way of stopping Khadafi (or however wherever you are spells his name) was to kill him, that is not the point, really. He is gone and along with him the end (or at least the beginning of it) of a time in our history we will look upon as beyond understanding that the rest of the world could have allowed such horrors to happen to our fellow humans.

And for this we have the digital age to thank. It would likely have taken years, if not decades, to effect the kind of change that is happening all over the world. Horrific as it is right now, the future looks hopeful.

But I digress. The thought that struck me this morning was this: Imagine the creativity that will have been unleashed with this renaissance that is the freeing of oppressed peoples through the wonder of social media.

It is fairly likely future generations will be more adventuresome than we are, travelling at high speeds to places unfamiliar and magical. They will still read books, only those books will be in digital form and just as magical in their own way as the print forms we love to cherish. We will be able to 'turn' the pages, illustrations will be static or animated - or probably interactive. Creativity will thrive, along with our understanding of things.

Taken out of context (the writer is talking about the balance between illustrations and text) but wise all the same:
"This is done by putting as little as possible into the final work so as to leave room for my audience to enhance the story. As a simple test, if I re-read one of my manuscripts and I understand exactly what is happening, then the manuscript has too many words."

Right. Who fully understands even what happens outside his front door on the street? Realistic storytelling doesn't aim for a full understanding -- that would be immensely dull -- but for the shortest semi-comprehensible line through the events, and counts to a large extent on the psychological closures of the readers make, the things they just know is so.

Mo Willems article put aside to read again after dinner.

Thank you so much for posting this, Margie.

For those who are into numbers:

http://bit.ly/oyLIhB

For those who like character studies:

http://www.toledoblade.com/Food/2011/...

Patricia wrote: "For those who like character studies:

http://www.toledoblade.com/Food/2011/..." Thank you, great story!
I love her last quote, especially the trees bowing bit: "You get up early in the morning and the birds go ‘Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!’ The trees is bowing their heads at you. It’s a nice time. Good morning, trees! Good morning, world!"