Chelle Cordero at Malcolm's Round Table

Author Chelle Cordero stops by Malcolm's Round Table today with a guest post called "You're not an author, you're my mom." I can definitely identify with her humorous take on writing--except for the mom part.
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As Glacier National Park's 2010 Centennial approaches, the National Park Service released "A View Inside Glacier National Park: 100 Years, 100 Stories" on December 1. The book, which celebrates the experiences "100 people whose lives have been enriched and who have been inspired by the grandeur and beauty of Glacier National Park" will be used in part to raise funds to support centennial events.

I'm pleased that my memory of the 1964 flood has been included. The book is available through the Glacier Association.
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With a new edition of "The Sun Singer" (set in Glacier National Park) coming out next spring, I'm gearing up for sustained work on the sequel "Sarabande."

In "The Sun Singer," protagonist Robert Adams follows the hero path, as outlined by Christopher Vogler, Joseph Campbell and others, as he steps through an unknown mountain portal on a dangerous adventure. In "Sarabande," the protagonist will be following the heroine's journey as described by Maureen Murdock.

I've avoided the sequel for five years because I wasn't sure how well I could write fiction from a female character's point of view. I shall try. I have no choice in the matter actually because the characters aren't inclined to be quiet. Oh, they were quiet for a while, biding their time, waiting until I was distracted by other things to jump out of the wood work and start campaigning for a 100,000 words of my time.

Plus, Sarabande wants her story to be told. She comes from a look-alike alternative universe that's less technology based than ours. But it's just as patriarchal. Like so many women in our society, success for her was defined by male values at the expense of her true self.

It's time for me to start listening to her.

--Malcolm

December 1 GoodReads Giveaway

Congratulations to Katie in Canada and Kristin in the United States who won the two free copies of "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire" in today's giveaway at GoodReads. Have fun reading the book: I'm mailing it tomorrow.

Thanks to all 456 people who entered. I wish I had a copy for each of you, though you can read the first 35% of it for free on Smashwords.
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For all of you following the Tuesday Teaser meme, my offering for December 1 is posted on Writer's Notebook.
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This Thursday, author Chelle Cordero, who is now touring her new novel "A Chaunce of Riches," will be my guest on Malcolm's Round Table with a humorous article about the writing life.

--Malcolm

"Don't you wish you had a job like mine? All you have to do is think up a certain number of words! Plus, you can repeat words! And they don't even have to be true!"
-- Dave Barry

Thanksgiving one day late

Our schedule pushed Thanksgiving dinner with my wife's parents until Black Friday. The northwest Georgia day was sunny, the evening scented with wood smoke across the farm. If Georgia had a different system of roads, we could drive to their farm by going almost due west from Jackson County on the northeast side of Atlanta. As it is, we must drive down I-85 to the Atlanta perimeter and then back up I-75 to the area around Calhoun, Georgia.

En route, we drove near the Mall of Georgia, Gwinnett Place Mall, Perimeter Mall, Cumberland Mall, and goodness knows how many Walmarts without getting into any traffic backups. We had a nice dinner and a nice visit and plenty of leftovers to bring home in the cooler. The lighter-than-expected traffic was a bonus.

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On my Writer's Notebook blog today I wrote about a novel's setting, contending that it's much more than scenery. It helps define the characters and advance the plot. To get involved in the discussion, click here.

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Author Chelle Cordero ("Within the Law," "Forgotten," "Chaunce of Riches") wrote today on Lindsay's Romantics that there's a reason why Tupper Lake in the Adirondacks has figured in two of her books. She and her husband were there early in their relationship, a relationship Chelle never thought would happen.

Writers often go back to the places they know for settings in their books. There's passion in them, and the sites, sounds and ambiance are already known. I "went back" to Montana's Glacier National Park in "The Sun Singer" and my yet-to-be published "Garden of Heaven" because I worked there as a college student and have visited the area a number of times since then. What a writer knows is the beginning of a lot of fiction and place often haunts us enough to use it over and over again.

--Malcolm

Deadline nears for GoodReads book giveaway

Two free copies of my comedy/thriller "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire" will be given away in a random drawing on GoodReads in December. So far, 365 people have signed up for a chance at one of the copies.

Enter by December 1 for a shot at Jock.

--Malcolm

Burma Shave's Little Red Signs

Fewer and fewer people remember the little red signs along the side of the road that once advertised Burma Shave. These popular jingles promoting everything from a clean shave to traffic safety could be found along U.S. roadways between 1925 to 1963. While Burma Shave lasted as a product for another 30 years, the little signs were gone forever except in books and websites.

Typical shaving cream jingle (told on successive white-on-red signs):

Does your husband
Misbehave
Grunt and grumble
Rant and rave
Shoot the brute some
Burma-Shave

Typical traffuc safety jingles:

Train approaching
Whistle squealing
Stop
Avoid that run-down feeling
Burma-Shave

Hardly a driver
Is now alive
Who passed
On hills
At 75
Burma-Shave

Here's a jingle that demonstrates how the signs proliferated the countryside:

If you
Don't know
Whose signs
These are
You can't have
Driven very far.
Burma-Shave

I couldn't resist the temptation to create my own version:




--Malcolm

Multiple Roads Diverging in a Wood

For better or worse, I'm comfortable writing in multiple styles: press releases, computer manuals, brochures, articles, grant applications and fiction.

I realize that readers like the authors they read to fit into a comfortable niche so that when each new book comes out, there are no surprises.

Pigeonholes don't excite me. Yet, it's an understatement I think to say that those who read my 2004 magical, coming-of-age novel "The Sun Singer" were surprised when I followed that up in August with the satirical thriller "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire." Which ever novel people read first, they don't think I wrote the other one.

Readers of "The Sun Singer" have asked about a sequel. There will be one called "Sarabande," but I'm not quite ready to write it, for it follows the heroine's journey rather than the hero's journey. Meanwhile, a companion novel to "The Sun Singer" called "Garden of Heaven" is still looking for a publisher.

Jock Stewart, on the other hand, is an old-style reporter on the trail of horse thieves and murders. He's brusk and sarcastic and a bit of a chauvinist. "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire" satirizes inept reporters and inept local governments, but along the way I hope people find it funny. I may write another one of these satires if readers like the first one. So far, hard to tell.

I suppose I need to identify my novels with some kind of label on the cover so readers will know they are either like "The Sun Singer" or like "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire."

Suffice it to say, the readers of my magical realism and my satire are not likely to be caught dead in the same room together even though I'm comfortable in both rooms.

--Malcolm

Elsewhere...


Malcolm's Round Table: I was disappointed in Audrey Niffenegger's "Her Fearful Symmentry" and reviewed it here.

One word at a time

Listening to author and writing coach Mark David Gerson on blog talk radio this afternoon, I marveled at how easy writing would be if I stopped sweating it.

He's a strong advocate of just letting the writing happen. Sit down with a blank screen or a blank sheet of paper and write down a word. Once you've done that, write down the next one. As he puts it, don't worry about the word you just wrote or the one you're going to write next. Your story will unfold one word at a time "if you allow it."

There are times when I come close to doing this. These are the moments when there are no distractions, times when I'm zoned out to the outer world, and basically feel like I'm channeling the story from somewhere else. People who don't write often express surprise when I say I'm surprised by some of the things the characters do and say. They think I'm making that up.

Perhaps they think so because they were taught to begin with an outline and a stack of notecards for their research and their sources. Goodness knows, I was taught to do that in English class because we always concentrated on "themes" about one thing or another. I did poorly in English class because I thought they were teaching me to hate the writing process.

After all these years, I have to say that when the writing is going well, I don't really know how it's happening. I often feel like a pitcher or a .300 hitter who gets very superstitious and worries about arriving at the ballpark and "not having his stuff," not being able to do it and having no clue what he needs to fix.

When I can't write, I can't fix it because I don't know how I write when I write. It's become rather like riding a bicycle, rather like Mark David suggests--on my best days. I feel badly about the people who never escaped the horrors they were taught in English class, all those little things that keep them away from putting their thoughts on paper--or on the screen.

One word at a time actually works. I just need to allow it to happen more often. We all do, I think.

Malcolm