Wilde's Fire: A Bit of Krystal in Your Kate?

If you haven't heard me screaming from the top of the Stratosphere lately, Krystal Wade's first YA novel, Wilde's Fire, has been published and is ready for you to fall in love with.  Since Katriona Wilde is the young protagonist in this trilogy, I was very interested to know what bit of Krystal is in Katriona.  So I asked:

Krystal Wade:

Every now and then, people ask me if I incorporated any personal qualities into my characters. The first time I was asked, I quickly answered no. But I responded that way because until after the question was posed, I didn't realize how much of me is in KatrionaWilde. The unsuspecting, twenty-year-old heroine in Wilde's Fire loves nature. She adores horses, mountains, hiking, camping, and she enjoys doing these things with her family and friends. 

 My husband and I discovered Kate's home in Albemarle, Virginia many years ago. We were driving from Fredericksburg to my parents' house halfway across the country. Dawn loomed over the horizon, painting the sky with a light, gray hue. We traveled along Route 250 with miles and miles of white and black estate fencing bordering the road. The sun finally won its battle with the moon, and what daylight rewarded us with hasn't left my mind. Thousands of acres of horse farms, with the Blue Ridge Mountains in their back yards, rested on either side of the winding road. Driveways lined with flowering Dogwoods. Horses grazing in rolling, green pastures. Cows munching on grass. These images won't leave me, and I don't want them to.

A special place already existed in my heart for rural Virginia, but after seeing Albemarle, that part of my heart grew. Years before the drive that sparked my imagination and my passion, my husband and I were friends. Well, we were more than friends, but you know what I mean.

We gathered our camping gear, some hiking buds, and our dogs, and we spent a weekend on the trails off Skyline Drive. Kate and her friends visited these very same trails. She enjoyed watching deer chewing on flowers, just like my son and I had when we walked the North Fork of the Moormans River trail. When the sun drew sweat from our pores, we sat on the same rocks Kate and her best friend Brad shared when they were hot.

So, a tradition was born, and while my husband and I were usually the only ones to uphold said tradition, we didn't mind. One Valentine's day, when we were off-roading in the Blue Ridge Mountains, I wanted nothing more than my boyfriend to propose to me (my now husband). Not many women daydream of mud when they think of the perfect proposal, but we were in our spot, alone, and it didn't happen . . . until the next day when we were sitting on a group of boulders overlooking the Moormans River. I told him I was cold, and he offered me a shiny, bright diamond for warmth. No joke. He said it might warm me up. I nearly fell off the boulder!

So there you have it. Kate's happy life is my happiness. It's unfortunate I strip away all the good in her life. And, no, I'm not giving you any hints. You'll have to read to find out what I'm talking about!

By the way, Kate drives a Jeep. 

Check out the Wilde's Fire Trailer

Stalk Krystal here:

Website: www.krystal-wade.com

Blog: www.krystalwade.blogspot.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/author.krystalwade

Twitter: @krystalwade

Dialogue: What's In a Name?

I like dialogue.  I like to read it, I like to write it.  For me, what a character says, and how they say it, can be more telling than any internal monologue.  A character's thoughts are their own, and therefore, it is how they perceive their own actions.  But what they say is how they are perceived by others.


Not just any dialogue, however.  I like good dialogue.  Good dialogue flows, doesn't bore the reader, doesn't take them away from the action of the story.  I've recently been editing manuscripts and one of the most distracting habits I have found is the overuse of names in dialogue and dialogue tags.

           
Consider this:

            "Jimmy, eat your dinner," Mary said.

            "But, Mom, I don't like peas," Jimmy replied.

            Mary slammed her fist into the table and raised her voice. "Jimmy, I said eat it. Now!"

            "Oh, Mary, leave Jimmy alone.  He's a teenager, they don't like peas," Bob said.

            Mary turned to her husband. "Bob, quit taking up for him."

How about:

            Mary sat the plate in front of her son. "Eat."

            "But, Mom..."

            She slammed her fist on the table. "Now!"

            "Oh, leave him alone, he doesn't like peas."

            "Quit taking up for him!"

Too simplified? Maybe.  But in a scene, you would know who is at the table: Mom Mary, teenager Jimmy and Dad Bob.  Removing the names from the dialogue, as well as some of the dialogue tags, makes the scene flow more freely and doesn't take away from the action, or in this case the tension of the scene. 

Less is better. 

 

Toby Neal: "Blood Orchids" and PTSD

I've been doing a lot of research lately on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for my current work in progress And They Call Me Crazy. While most people associate it with combat, PTSD has many forms and can manifest itself in several ways, from symptoms that are barely recognizable to those that are totally disabling.  In Toby Neal's recently released Blood Orchids, her heroine,  Hawaii policewoman Lei Texeira, is also a victim of PTSD, and knowing that Neal works as a Mental Health Therapist, I was curious as to the development of this complex and interesting character.  I wanted to share Toby's story of 'finding' this character through personal experience with tragedy as well as her frank discussion of PTSD. 

                                                     Toby Neal: 

      

Blood Orchids is really all about overcoming Post-Traumatic Stress and my own experience with PTS inspired me to write it.  Blood Orchids was sparked as an idea by a tragedy that happened in my community—two teen girls were drowned. I was a grief counselor in the crisis team that went to the high school to work with the students in the aftermath. At first we were told they were victims of foul play, though later it turned out to have been accidental. The staff and students were hysterical and traumatized. For months after, perhaps because it was so intense to hear they’d been murdered and to work with their grief-sticken friends, I thought about it, and wondered what it would be like to try and solve such a crime in a small Hawaii community. You could say I was haunted by the drownings, just as Lei is in the book.

I’d tried to write novels before and always lost interest, but this time I started a story about a policewoman who’d been sexually and physically abused as a child… a woman with scars and flaws, but whose passion drove her to rectify things for others. I put it on my blog. Then I added chapters. And lo and behold, about 60 pages in, I realized I had a character I wanted to see grow and develop, a budding love story, and some great psychopaths to spice it all up. I was going to finish the book. I’ll never forget the excitement I felt, realizing I’d found a character I could write about forever.

You’ll notice I said “found” a character. In Jungian psychology, there’s an explanation of these discoveries as existing in the “collective unconscious” of humanity—a deep sea where universal themes, symbols, heroines and villains appear across every culture. To me Lei is a representation of one of these universal characters—the wounded hero(ine) who fights for justice.

In Orchids, Lei goes through therapy for her PTS symptoms, which for her take the form of intrusive negative thoughts, blocked memories that create anxiety and a sense of constantly wondering if she’s going crazy, compounded by “blackouts” where she can’t remember what she does (usually is sitting in a trancelike state for a few minutes.) She has hypervigilance about safety, bad dreams, and fear of intimacy along with bouts of self-injurious behavior when she cuts herself in order to express her pain.

Full-blown, untreated PTSD, whether from abuse, combat, traumatic exposure or a natural disaster, is very debilitating. Therapy combined with anti-anxiety meds can be very effective and are getting better all the time as we learn about the way brains store memory and process emotion.

About Blood Orchids (released December 2011):

Hawaii is palm trees, black sand and blue water—but for policewoman Lei Texeira, there’s a dark side to paradise.

Lei has overcome a scarred past to make a life for herself as a cop in the sleepy Big Island town of Hilo. On a routine patrol she finds two murdered teenagers—one of whom she’d recently busted. With its echoes of her own past, the murdered girl’s harsh life and tragic death affect Lei deeply. She becomes obsessed—even as the killer is drawn to Lei's intensity, feeding off her vulnerabilities and toying with her sanity.

Despite her obsession with the case and fear that she's being stalked, Lei finds herself falling in love for the first time. Steaming volcanoes, black sand beaches and shrouded fern forests are the backdrop to Lei's quest for answers—and the stalker is closer than she can imagine, as threads of the past tangle in her future. Lei is determined to find the killer—but he knows where to find her first.

Blood Orchids can be purchased at Amazon, and is the Kindle download is FREE March 3, 4 and 5th!  

About Toby Neal:

Toby Neal was raised on Kauai in Hawaii. She wrote and illustrated her first story at age 5 and has been published in magazines and won several writing contests. After initially majoring in Journalism, she eventually settled on mental health as a career and loves her work, saying, “I’m endlessly fascinated with people’s stories.”

She enjoys many outdoor sports including bodyboarding, scuba diving, beach walking, gardening and hiking. She lives in Hawaii with her family and dogs.

Toby credits her counseling background in adding depth to her characters–from the villains to Lei Texeira, the courageous and vulnerable heroine in the Lei Crime Series.

Learn more about Toby and Blood Orchids at her website.

Review: Matt Bondurant's 'The Night Swimmer' #nightswimmer

I've never been to Ireland, but I've always imagined it as a magical land of green hills, men in kilts and quaint little pubs, ready to satisfy my thirst for good ale, my love of tales of lore and a rousing game of darts.  And because of this romantic ideal, I have to admit that in The Night Swimmer, novelist Matt Bondurant had me at the first line: "It began with a dart, a pint, and a poem, three elements that seemed to demonstrate the imprecise nature of fate."  However, from that point, Bondurant took me on a journey to 'another' Ireland, to an isolated small town frequented by birdwatchers and fishermen and a mysterious island where non-natives are shunned.  He held me there with his lyrical prose, his attention to detail and a story filled with mystery and tension.
 
After winning title and deed to an Irish pub, Fred and Elly Bulkington travel from Vermont to the southern coast of Ireland to begin their new life as the owners of the Nightjar.  A chance at a simpler existence and a dream, where Elly can open water swim in the North Atlantic and Fred can work on that novel he's always wanted to write.  As Fred tries to get the pub in order for the seasonal traffic that promises to keep the Nightjar afloat, Elly swims the waters around Cape Clear, an island southwest of Baltimore.  It is here that the couple become tangled in a web of mystery and intrigue, and begin to drift apart.

Matt Bondurant

Elly has a skin condition that allows her to stay in cold waters for extended periods of time.  She becomes fascinated with a lighthouse on Fastnet Rock, four miles southwest of Cape Clear and is determined to swim to it against the warning of unpredictable waters and dangers that can't be explained.  As Elly says, "Fastnet drew me on, as if it was attached somewhere to part of me I didn't understand or couldn't locate."  Some of the most powerful scenes are the times of thoughtful isolation that Elly experiences while swimming, which is not surprising since Bondurant is himself a competitive long distance swimmer.

While Elly is drawn to Fastnet and to the history and intrigue of Cape Clear and its residents, Fred is working the pub in Baltimore and 'working on his novel', which appears to be random thoughts written on bits of paper. One of my favorite scenes,  a foreshadowing to their unraveling relationship, is of Elly and Fred swimming naked at night at Cape Clear.  Fred wants to dive into the cold water from twenty feet up, and as Elly instructs, they will have to make a huge reach to clear a few feet of rocks below.    "We counted down and launched ourselves into the air, still holding hands at the peak of our flight.  We didn't let go until we began to fall."

There are also things about Cape Clear that "cannot be explained."  The island hides ancient secrets and is victim to a mysterious tragedy that grips the residents.  Additionally, Elly and Fred are caught up in a struggle between the all-powerful Corrigan family and Highgate, an old, blind, goat farmer.  The Corrigans are not above violence and murder to maintain their hold on Cape Clear.  Highgate is fighting to protect his livelihood with the help of a small group of foreign volunteers.

 Setting is a character itself.  Bondurant's attention to detail brings the land to life, alternating between the beautiful and the ominous: a land of curious wildlife and breath-taking scenery, of high winds, menacing storms and perilous ocean swells.  You can almost taste the salty air, feel the cold gusts and hear the waves crashing against the rocks. 
 
Amidst the changing relationship between Elly and Fred, the dark and somewhat mystical secrets of Cape Clear and the conflict between the Corrigans and Highgate, The Night Swimmer is powerful, emotional and captivating…even if there are no men in kilts. 

I couldn't resist...

 

Mirror, Mirror-Character Description

Every time a character looks in a mirror or sees their reflection in a lake and describes what they see, I cringe just a little.  It's boring. It's not very realistic. It's cheating.

When I look in the mirror, I don't notice hair the color of an Indian moon AND eyes that match my mother's jade pearls AND large, pouty lips AND cheek bones that...whatever, I don't think I've ever noticed my cheek bones.  No, when I look in the mirror, all I notice is that one wrinkle on my forehead that has now gotten bigger and if I don't smile, I can barely see it at all.  So, if a real person doesn't do this naturally, why would your character?

I know.  She is, after all, the protagonist, and you would like for your reader to get a visual early on.  But, as writers, can't we be a bit more creative and describe them in more interesting ways?  I think so. 

 
First: I suggest, don't give it to me all at once.  A bit here, a bit there, let the image come to me slowly and naturally, instead of giving it to me.  In fact, leave something for my imagination.  As a reader, I think I have a pretty good one, and enjoy combining the writers words and my own interpretation to come up with a visual that suits my idea of the character.
  
Second: Ask yourself what characteristics are even important.  Do her cheek bones mean anything to me?  I can't imagine how they would, and I'm certain I could read an entire trilogy without knowing that a particular character has perfect cheek bones.
 
Third:  Action speaks louder than words. Is there a way to 'show' a physical attribute through action or dialogue?  Of course there is, so use it.


Examples:

The Mirror Trick:

 I met Jim at the junkyard, anxious to see what he had found.  I caught my reflection in a discarded mirror and stopped.  My black hair complemented my blue eyes, and had a way of distracting from the scar on my chin.  I looked harder and shook my head. Even my face is fat.  (So boring, I almost fell asleep writing it)

 

Description through dialogue and action:

I met Jim at the junkyard, anxious to see what he had found. 

Jim laughed. "When did you dye your hair black?"  I glared at him, hoping my stare burned through him like a blue flame.

He waved his hand toward a drainage pipe, no more than three foot in diameter.  "Come on, it's in here."  I traced the scar on my chin with my forefinger.  "You know there's no way I can squeeze through that." 

Jim shrugged. "Oh, well, at least you have nice cheek bones." (Sorry, couldn't resist)

Of course, there are a zillion ways to describe a character without using the Mirror Trick and these are but a few suggestions.  What are some other ways to avoid mirrors?  

First Valentine

 I have a picture that was taken when I was six years old.  I remember the day, at least in the way anyone can remember forty years past.  My dad had just taught me my very first song, ‘Lovesick Blues’ by Hank Williams, and told me if I kept practicing, I could be a professional yodeler someday.  In the picture, he is sitting in a chair and I have my arms around his neck.  He always had a way of making me feel special.

 

I have another, taken when I was twenty.  There was a party going on, I don’t remember the occasion, but he and I had ended up in the kitchen, away from the crowd, having a drink and telling each other jokes.  He made fun of my boyish haircut.  I called him Sonny Bono.  He’s sitting in a chair and I have my arms around his neck.  He always had a way of letting me know that he loved me.

The night before he died, he told me how proud he was that I had grown into a good mother. A good woman.  I put my arms around his neck.  I remember it well.  I don’t need a picture.

 

It has been twelve years and Valentine’s Day has never been the same.  It was his birthday and this year would have been his seventy-fourth.  If he were still here, we'd have a drink and tell a few jokes.  He would make me yodel for him and I would make fun of him for being so old.  Then I would walk up behind him and wrap my arms around his neck.

 

I still think of him every single day.  My father, my daddy, my friend...

My first valentine.

And They Call Me Crazy

Almost two years ago, I sat in a workshop given by the amazing Joyce Maynard.  I had just finished her book Labor Day (and loved it) and so of course my ears perked up when she started talking about the process of writing that particular novel.  Afterall, I was in the middle of writing Ragtown, and wanted to know everything I could about the process that others, read as, 'great' writers go through, hoping to find some similarity, something that might ease my mind about the blood I was sweating over my keyboard.  Then she hit me; a slap wouldn't have produced such a sting.  Eleven days.  It took her eleven days to finish the rough draft of Labor Day.

I wasn't sure I'd heard her correctly, and verified this with her later in the day.  Slap, slap. Yes. Eleven days.

It took me two years to finish Ragtown.  Granted, it is my first major piece of work, and there was a lot of historical research involved.  But two years versus eleven days?  I'm not worthy.

Every November, National Novel Writing Month, better known as NanoWriMo, comes around.  It encourages writers to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days and offers peer support and encouragement along the way.  I've never participated, basically because I didn't see how it could possibly be done.  I know people do it, but me? Never.

A friend of mine, Leif G.S. Notae, finished his 50,000 words in three days.  Then wrote an article titled "How I Wrote 50,000 Words in Three Days (And You Can Too)".  I read it and thought, no, I can't. 

One of my favorite authors of late is Russell Blake.  I've been devouring his books and one of my favorites is King of Swords, which was followed by the prequel, Night of the Assassin.  Then I read an interview with Russell---King of Swords, fourteen days.  Night of the Assassin---eleven. 

Granted, the novels I've mentioned above and the time it took to write them are pre-editing, but still, two weeks? Eleven days? THREE days?  No way. NO (insert your favorite curse word) WAY! At least not for me.

On January 10, I pulled out a very short story I had written last year, thinking I would pretty it up and send it off to some journals.  I sent it to a good friend, Darren Leo, for editing.  I also mentioned the possibility that I would, one day, write a novel and use this piece as the first chapter.  One of his comments really caught my eye. "I would definitely like to hear more about these characters."

I knew where I wanted to go with this piece.  I thought about Joyce and Leif and Russell and all the NanoWriMo-er's, and again thought--- No. I can't. 

Then on January 11, I wrote five thousand words.  By the end of the day, I was starting to say, 'well, maybe I can.'

Three days and 20,000 words later, I realized: Yes, I can.  And even better: Yes, I will.  My mojo was working overtime, my muse was on speed dial and I knew my story.  I couldn't type fast enough to get it all down.   

And I did it.  55,362 words. 16 days. THE END.

  

Sure, it's rough, and I'll be revising and editing for several months, but I did something I had thought was out of my reach, something I thought was only reserved for really 'great' writers, something I thought I could never do.  All I had to do was find my story and start typing; and like the little engine that could, start saying 'I can' instead of  'I can't'.

I recently talked to Joyce Maynard, two years after that workshop.  This time, instead of feeling that sting, I found myself nodding my head when she said "all of my books have been written in short, intense bursts...But I believe in getting in the zone and staying there."  

And now I get it. Story. Zone. Butt to chair. Fingers to keyboard. Yes, I can.

Yes, I did.

For more about And They Call Me Crazy, check out my 'Work in Progress' tab above.