Strange Weather

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Betsy

This has been an unusual year for weather (I include natural phenomena under the “weather” umbrella). We’ve had an earthquake and a hurricane in the same week. We’ve had the appearance of a rare red display of the Aurora Borealis far below the Mason-Dixon line. Now we have snow in October, with the leaves still on the trees.

My yard has red and yellow maples coated with snow, next to a still green leafed cherry tree, which is BLOOMING.  Earlier in the week, we were still in the 70’s and I was wearing sleeveless tops to work. Now the sun is shining and the snow is now melting as well as sublimating, and I still have bulbs to plant for spring. 

So, what does all this mean? My MIL thinks these are all signs we are in “end times”, and she hasn’t even seen all the stories about the Mayan Calendar. But why does it have to mean anything? Times change, and weather changes also. Our world is changing — warming, shivering, stretching. Our oceans are changing, and many of those changes are due to bad decisions we humans have made. 

There is that island of plastic that has gathered in the Pacific from trash carelessly discarded. Of course, it’s really not fair to call it an island. Sitting on a boat in the midst of it, you might not even notice the material. But there is a bigger, denser, true island of debris washed to sea by the tsunamis in Japan. Yes, the debris is man-made, but it being in the ocean is due to Nature. Will the two masses merge? Or will the debris island wash up on California shores in years to come?

Whatever happens, we will weather the changes. That’s what we do as humans, that is our strength. We adapt. But that shouldn’t mean that we just accept the changes. We’ve shown that we can alter our world; why don’t we try making it better. It’s almost Halloween. How about for Trick or Treat, we Treat the Earth — do just one thing to make it better. Recycle our plastic, pick up litter, plant some bulbs. Would that be so strange?

Posted in Philosophy of Life | 1 Comment

Tips for Newbies: Making Your Characters Believable

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Betsy

What do you do to make your characters three-dimensional, so they seem real to the reader?  One key is to think about the characters’ lives BEFORE they enter your plotline.  Sure,  every author comes up with names and physical descriptions, but you need to go beyond that.

What do your characters do for a living? Think how your plot might affect their job, their normal schedule. Are they night owls or early risers? Think about how they spend their leisure time — whether they have hobbies, or belong to any clubs or civic organizations. Think about their health, and whether they have an exercise program or sports activities. Do they take any medications? vitamins? Think about where they shop, what sorts of foods they like to eat, whether they cook for themselves or not, what pet peeves they have, whether they take a daily newspaper. Filling in a lot of little details about their lives helps make the characters real for YOU, so you can make them real for your reader.

Think about your characters’ personal style, in clothing, in decorating their living space, or their work space, if applicable. Are they neat freaks or clutter bugs? Do they have pets? houseplants? Do they recycle?  Give them a vehicle that helps reflect their personality traits.  Think about how they use technology, whether they are Mac people or PC people or total Luddites.     

If your characters enjoy listening to music, describe what type of music. Think about whether they pick vinyl, CDs, or ipods, or just go with whatever is on the radio. Is there a type of music they don’t like? Think about how they’d react to telemarketing calls, and whether they are good tippers. What are their favorite TV shows — sitcoms, documentaries, cooking shows? Do they read? If so, who are their favorite authors? Think about giving your villain a soft spot, and giving your hero an annoying trait. Don’t make your characters perfect, make them REAL.

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Colin’s Crossing

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Betsy

This piece won 2nd place in the September Flash Fiction contest in LinkedIn’s Aspiring Writers group, with the paramenters: Historical Fiction, theme: Coming to America, Focus: Uncle Ed’s Store, word limit: 715.

Colin huddled into the smallest ball possible and snuffled back tears as he watched the sailors dump his cousin Brian overboard. Colin didn’t risk a peek over the railing; he didn’t want to see if sharks were still following the ship. A coffin ship, Uncle called it.

The first omen came one week out of Liverpool, when passengers did not get the promised weekly seven pounds  of food. Next the daily water ration was cut from three quarts to one. Uncle Eamonn had pulled out his strange haversack, which was a wooden cabinet with doors and drawers and bunches of sacks hooked to the sides.  He said that Eamonn was his Irish name, but in America he would be called Edward, Ed for short. The haversack, he dubbed “Uncle Ed’s store”.  Opening a small drawer, he pulled out smooth pebbles for the two boys to hold in their mouths against thirst. “I soaked these fine pebbles in the clearest, purest river in all Ireland,” he declared, “feel the coolness and let it soak into your mouths.” Somehow that  did make them less thirsty, between the pints that were doled out four times a day.

Hordes of Irish were emigrating, fleeing the Great Hunger. Colin remembered the bridge of tears where he bid farewell to his mum.  Gram had gone into one of her spells and had grabbed Colin’s arm and crooned:

“From Kerry ye come, but Cork ye must be
to voyage with Eamonn across the blue sea
in gets ye out, and out gets ye in
if ye but stay down for a full count of ten”

Colin did come from County Kerry, but the rest made no sense to him. Uncle shook his head, warning Colin not to question the prophecy, so Colin put it out of his mind.

Colin’s own sister Eilis had emigrated first, her passage paid by an indentured contract as a domestic. She had saved up to send Colin’s fare.  But crossing conditions had worsened in spite of the 1842 Passenger Act. Colin shared his berth (a wooden box six feet long and a scant eighteen inches wide) with Uncle and Brian, each taking eight hours to rest. At least they had an upper berth, so they didn’t have to suffer noxious drippings from above.

Uncle Ed had encouraged the boys to sneak up on deck as much as possible, for the fresh air. Whenever allowed, he sluiced them down with buckets of cold seawater, especially after other passengers started dying of the fever. When the boys were groaning from hunger, Ed dug in the “store” and found  stringy pieces of leather that he bade them chew. He must have earlier soaked the leather in some kind of broth, because a pleasant flavor was released, and chewing it calmed their stomachs.

But there was nothing in Uncle Ed’s store to help when Brian got the fever.  Colin was ordered away, and found a hidden spot on deck where he huddled and cried.  He was still hidden when the cook and carpenter came up to get some fresh air.

“We’re sure to be quarantined,” the cook said, “just like the last run.”

“Aye,” agreed the carpenter, ” we’ll probably get loose after a few days, but those poor buggers below decks will be penned up for weeks.”

“Good thing we’re paid in advance, not on delivery!” the cook said, “won’t many of this bunch make it, especially the women and  children.”

Colin waited till they were gone, then scurried to tell Uncle.  The grim look on Ed’s face almost scared Colin. “Can ye swim boy?” he asked.

“Aye,” Colin answered, “like a right cork.”

“A cork?” his uncle began, “now I understand your Gram’s warning.  Listen carefully.” Uncle described a bold plan and swore Colin to obey it exactly.

When they neared port, Colin was crouched in hiding, watching for the closest point of land. Ed shouted “In gets ye out”, and Colin dove over the side, swimming underwater “for a full count of ten” .

Finally dry,  after hiding two days and nights, Colin snuck  to the docks. Food was everywhere,  more than he’d ever seen. Someone tossed him an apple, “Eat, boy!”  He looked up to see Eamonn, Uncle Ed,  smiling, “Out gets ye in! Welcome to America!”

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What Would You Do?

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Betsy

When you see a tragic story on the news,  do you wonder why someone didn’t do something to prevent or stop it? Maybe you tell yourself that you would do better in the same situation, but would you? If you want to be sure that you would, you need to think about similar scenarios in advance and decide what action you should and would take, so that you are prepared to do so.

Years ago, one August I saw a baby locked in a Mercedes in a store parking lot (this was back before there were so many incidents in the news about babies dying in hot cars). I didn’t have a cell phone at that time. There were no phone booths in sight, and not another person in the parking lot, so I went inside the store, looking for a phone. I couldn’t see any clerks, other than one cashier, who was surrounded three-deep by crowds of customers. I was too timid to shout for help, and was trying to work my way through the crowd when a young woman said, “I’d better go check on my kid, there’s no sound on the baby monitor. But, hey, we spent all morning at the pool, so he’s probably just sleeping.” Just like that she was gone. I’ve always felt I should have done more, been less timid, maybe written down the license plate number. There was nothing in the news about a child dying, so I guess the baby survived his mom’s shopping trip, but I’ve always wondered if that baby grew up safely. I wouldn’t be so hesitant or timid now.

Suppose you see a baby locked in a parked car on a hot day; what would you do? First choice is to call 911 — do you have a cell phone? The advice might be to immediately break a window (one farthest away from the child). Would you be comfortable doing that? What would you even use to do that–would you have to go dig in your trunk for a tire iron? Suppose you don’t have a cell phone, or have no signal. Do you go into a store and ask to use the phone, or skip straight to breaking a window? You might yell out to passersby to help, maybe ask one of them to make the call. The key point is that you think about the options in advance, think what steps you should take, plan ahead so you don’t delay your response because you are deciding what actions are justified. Would it make a difference if it were a dog or cat instead of a baby?

These are issues of responsibility and ethics. There is no one right answer and each real life situation will be different. Think about what action feels right to you, and whether you would be comfortable taking that action. Be ready to act. Be prepared.

Posted in Philosophy of Life | Comments Off on What Would You Do?

Stalking the Fugitive Sock

Posted on September 5, 2011 by Betsy

I’m sure you’ve had this experience, too–you’re folding and sorting the laundry, fresh from the dryer, and you come up short a sock. If you’re one of those people who just buys all white or all black socks, all the same, it’s no big deal. You just stick the odd one on top of the dryer until another one goes missing, and then you’re back to even numbers. 

But what if you are like me and are into “kinky socks”–brightly colored, distinctive, even “two-of-a-kind” socks? You can’t pair just anything with that lonely hot pink sock with the heart-shaped polka dots, that came out of the dryer minus its mate.

So the search begins. First you check the laundry basket to see if it clung to the sides. Then you go back to the bedroom to see if it overshot the basket and landed in the closet (or even in a shoe). Then you retrace the path to the laundry to see if it dropped out along the way.

As you get more experienced in sock safaris, you learn to check inside the legs of pants and the sleeves of sweaters. Socks just love to hide inside other clothing. Especially wily are those daredevil socks that cling to the outside of your clothing, showing up only after you are at work, on the back of your skirt or blouse.

But some just seem to vanish into thin air. You KNOW you put both socks in the washer, and then into the dryer, but they are NOT there when you take everything out. You say “the dryer ate it” or consider one comedian’s theory of a black hole generator inside your dryer.

Well, listen to this–I solved the mystery and FOUND my missing socks. Turns out the dryer DID eat them. A while back, my dryer stopped working (the drive belt broke) and I had to get it repaired. When they pulled the drum, out tumbled my missing socks! They were a bit chewed up from making the tortured passage through the narrow crack between the rotating drum and the casing, but they were all there–even the hot pink number with the heart-shaped polka dots!

Posted in Strange but True | 2 Comments

Better Nature

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Betsy

A thousand compassionate prayers
go spiraling into the heavens,
disparate voices with one shared thought:
worry for the welfare of a stranger.
It is a common effort, arising spontaneously
without communication, without planning,
minds and hearts blazing forth pure light–
a communion of hope and unconditional love.

How can people who show such caring
turn and wound each other so casually,
causing harm greater than that they sought to heal?
We are better than this–
within us all, even if just a wisp,
the roots exist of a magnificent nobility.
Why does it take a tragedy
to bring out the best in humanity?

Posted in Philosophy of Life, Poetry | Comments Off on Better Nature

Reframing

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Betsy

One of the most important communication techniques in trauma therapy is REFRAMING. The concept of reframing appears often in neuro-linguistic programming and in the works of Milton Erickson, who was renowned for his ability to do “instant cures” with just a few words or a handshake. 

Reframing means changing the context of a problem, by thinking or referring to it in a different way. It bears a superficial resemblance to political correctness. For instance, the way “victims” now call themselves “survivors” is reframing. Being a SURVIVOR is  a more positive way to think about their experiences, it emphasizes what they have gained rather than what they have lost. They have REFRAMED their experience to help them heal. Today I want to help you reframe the concept of “Loneliness”.

Let’s look at loneliness. If you are like most people, you think of loneliness in negative terms, such as isolation or friendlessness. Loneliness can leave you listless, longing for lights and laughter and love. Loneliness can leave you languishing, with a lingering feeling of loss,  a sense of being labeled a loser. How can you lift the load of loneliness? By reframing.

 In a recent meeting, a speaker was asked what animal he would most like to be. He chose a TIGER over a lion. One reason given was that Tigers hunt alone, while lions hunt in a pack. I thought what my own answer would have been–I would have chosen an EAGLE. Eagles fly high (“in rocky cathedrals that reach to the sky” according to John Denver). Eagles travel alone, viewed as a symbol of freedom, independence, and strength. When you think about it, you realize that many of our most admired animals are ones that can stand and fight ALONE. Why then do we humans feel we are somehow LESS if we are alone — do we REALLY want to be one of a flock of sheep? or part of a pack of wolves? or do we want to be that lone wolf that stands out from the crowd?

 But, after all, we are humans, not animals, so let’s try a human perspective. 

Our lives today are filled with chaos, a constant clamoring cacophony that crashes against our ears. Walking through a lobby we catch clips of newscasts calling attention to budget cuts, cancer, killings, and other catastrophes. Is it any wonder we are so STRESSED?  It can make you want to put your hands over your ears and close your eyes to shut it all out–but that would be choosing isolation and loneliness.

What if we took that LONELINESS and turned it around? Yes, loneliness CAN mean isolation and friendlessness, but it can also mean SOLITUDE.

Let’s listen to some experts: American poet May Sarton, was amazing for her time. Born in 1915, she was author of 21 novels, 16 books of poetry, 12 works of non-fiction, and 3 children’s books. She said “Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.”  Albert Einstein said ” Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature;” he believed solitude “stimulates the creative mind”.

According to those experts, solitude can be rich and stimulating, but there’s more to it. Solitude can be SOOTHING, as stress-less as sleep, surrounding you in a soft stillness, with silence that strokes your senses with the smoothness of silk. Solitude lets you be introspective, taking time to prioritize your problems, and plan your path forward. In this sense, solitude can be a SHIELD that protects your sanity from the crazy caterwauling that fills our lives. It gives you a silent center around which to build your day.

Solitude can also be a source of STRENGTH. Think of Superman’s fortress of solitude. It was a stronghold in a stark setting, surrounded by simple shapes, slanting shafts spearing the solemn sky. It symbolized strength and stamina and safety. For Superman, Solitude was a place–a place to retreat to heal, to learn, to rebuild. 

Perhaps we should consider that, in our society, doing something alone is considered a mark of success. Pilots earn their license after doing their solo flight. Musicians become stars when they leave the band and go solo. Artists are considered to have “made it” when they do a solo exhibition.  

Going solo means you have the skill and experience and determination to accomplish something by yourself. Wouldn’t we all aspire to do that? To have respect and recognition and rewards for our solo efforts? So shake off the idea of isolation. Let’s leverage our loneliness into the strength of solitude. You’re not alone, I’m not alone–instead we’re celebrating our solitude–we’re going SOLO!

Posted in Philosophy of Life, Self-help | Comments Off on Reframing

My Brother the Mass Murderer???

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Betsy

My brother called me a while back, quite upset. He had had a really bad day the day before. His power flickered sometime during the early morning hours, so his alarm didn’t go off. He woke up to find he had just 23 minutes to get dressed and drive crosstown to his job. As he was rushing around showering and shaving, he heard a pounding on his door. He thought, “who would knock on my door at 7 a.m.? I don’t have time for some contractor wanting to talk about my roof!” So he ignored the knocking. He grabbed his lunch and bolted out the door, only to run straight into a policeman. His driveway was full of police cars.

The officer told him that they had received a hangup call to 911 from his house, and got no answer when they called back. My brother told them no one else lived there but him, and he had NOT called 911. (Now my brother collects vehicles. The last time I visited, his driveway had a pickup truck, a jeep, a muscle car, and the fuel-efficient sedan he uses for commuting.) The officer pointed to the sedan and said, “I suppose that is your car?” [yes] “and that one?” [yes]. My brother got frustrated and said “they’re all mine, and I’m the only one who lives here, and I did NOT call 911!” By now he was jiggling from foot to foot and looking at his watch, worrying what his boss was going to say if he was late.

The officer said “you look nervous–I’d like to search your house”. My brother refused. So the officer asked if he was sure his phone was working. My brother said he would check and locked the door behind himself, so the officer couldn’t follow him in. He checked and found that his phone was indeed dead. So he went back out and told the officer the phone was malfunctioning and he had unplugged it, and said he’d check with AT&T.

They clearly thought he had attacked and/or killed 3 people (from the extra vehicles) and was hiding bodies in the house! My brother finally asked for the officer’s name and badge number [which was refused!] and that’s when they let him leave.

Talking to the phone company, he found out what I already knew (from experience)–some phones (especially cordless ones) call 911 by themselves when their batteries are dying. Now he’s doing battle with the fees the police want to charge him for the “fradulent 911 call”, and the exhorbitant fees AT&T wanted to charge for repair (the source of the calls turned out to be faulty wiring in the connection panel on his house rather than the phone itself, or the neighborhood exchange, like they first told him).  It is apparently a rather common problem:  http://www.snopes.com/crime/safety/lowbattery.asp 

Several years ago my youngest brother was living with me–in a mini apartment in my house. He had a separate phone line with an older model phone. One night he shook me awake at 2 a.m. asking if I was “all right”. He had been awakened by his phone ringing–it was the 911 operator saying they had gotten a call from the house. He said, “it wasn’t me, but my sister is diabetic–let me go check on her”. We put it down to some kind of wrong number and tried to go back to sleep.

The next day when I came home from work, the neighbor across the street told me that the police and fire department were at my house “looking through the windows”. One officer left a card, so I called and found out that another call to 911 happened when no one was home. We finally narrowed it down to one particular phone and trashed it. I had to get a verification letter from the phone company to avoid being charged for all the bogus 911 calls.

So if this happens to you, be aware that it can be the phone itself, the line inside the house, the panel outside the house, or — according to my oldest brother — even the neighborhood exchange!

Posted in Strange but True | Comments Off on My Brother the Mass Murderer???

Tips for Newbies: What is all this ISBN stuff?

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Betsy

If you are considering self-publishing (SP), you’re probably hearing about ISBNs. First off, let’s define it. ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number. It’s the number that goes with the bar code on the back of your book. It is a unique number that identifies one particular version of your book. If you intend to sell your book through any traditional venue (like Amazon or a brick and mortar store), you must have an ISBN. If you are just printing for your own use, or to sell out of the trunk of your car, then feel free to skip the ISBN.

When you get an ISBN, you may get both a 10-digit and a 13-digit version. Go ahead and use both on the copyright page in your front matter. For a book, ISBNs will all start with 978. I’ve heard that Canadians get their ISBN’s for free, but in the U.S. you have to buy one for each version of your book. For instance, if you do a paperback and a hardback, you will need two ISBN’s. If you do an e-book, you have to get an ISBN for each version: Kindle, Nook, etc., because they are different file formats.

If you get traditionally published (TP), your publisher will handle getting the ISBN, and it will be registered in the name of the publisher or their imprint. If you self-publish, there are several options, depending on what printer/distributor you use. For Print On Demand (POD), I recommend Amazon’s affiliate, Create Space (CS). Create Space  ( http://www.createspace.com ) will provide an ISBN at no charge, if it is registered in their name. For $50 they will put it in your name of choice, but it is not transferrable (which means that if you wanted to print your book elsewhere, you’d have to get a new ISBN). For $99, CS will provide an ISBN in your name of choice, that IS transferrable. CS will also add the bar code graphic to your book cover. (Note, Create Space will not release the bar code graphic file or the cover with the bar code included to you.) You can choose to register the ISBN in your name, your pen name, or you can create your own publishing imprint name to use.

In the U.S. all ISBN’s are issued by R.R. Bowker ( http://www.bowker.com ).  A single ISBN costs $125, but for $250 you can get 10 numbers, or for $500 you get 100 numbers. You don’t have to assign the numbers to a particular book when you buy them. They are held in your account until you are ready to use them. Bowker will also sell the bar code image that corresponds to different ISBNs for $21-25 each, depending on the quantity purchased. There are other sites that will also produce bar code graphics for you, but I have not tried any of them myself.

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Tips for Newbies: What is “Published”?

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Betsy

In the old days–you know, just a few years ago–publishing a book meant producing a volume printed on paper, using an offset press (ink on paper). Offset was expensive to set up, involving editing of multiple galley proofs, so  minimum runs were in the hundreds or thousands of books. This is why some authors ended up with boxes of books stored in their garages. It’s the reason publishers had to have warehouses. With offset, the main choice was between hardback and paperback. Generally, the more expensive hardbacks were issued first. Once the hardback sales began to taper off, then the less expensive paperbacks would be released.

Today there are many more options. For paper books, a new option is Print On Demand (POD). This digital printing method uses toner on paper, so it is more expensive per copy than offset, but it is possible to print a single copy at a time.  With this method, there is no need for warehousing (and no garage full of books for self-published authors).

The other new option these days is an e-book. This can be as simple as a public blog entry, to a  pdf file downloaded from a website, or a specially formatted file designed for an e-reader. Because only electronic files are involved, the cost of production is minimal, and distributors pay higher royalties. No warehouses, no shipping. Purchased books are instantly available to the reader.

But e-books are still in transition. Different platforms use different file formats, so multiple conversions are needed if you want to cover all possible readers. Each format requires a separate ISBN. There is also still a lot of uncertainty about the right pricing level for e-books relative to paper books. Because there are no print costs, royalties are higher, so many authors are willing to price e-books much lower than paper books. Authors can also choose to release a few chapters of an e-book for free as part of a marketing campaign.

It’s a new world for authors. All of the old options are still there, but many new options exist for getting your words to readers. By one report, the number of new books published per year has gone from 10-14,000 a year to over two million this year. So it should be no surprise that marketing is key to success in the new world of publishing.

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