NaNoWriMo draws to a close

I signed up for National Novel Writing Month this year because I needed an incentive for jump starting the sequel to my novel The Sun Singer.  The book, to be called Sarabande, was stalled because in many ways, I was afraid to write it.

Since I never know how writing happens and stories spill out on the page, I'm always afraid to begin. This time, though, I had two more excuses. First, I was concerned about maintaining continuity with The Sun Singer, making sure the times and people didn't change from one book to another. Second, I worried about successfully writing in a third person restricted point of view for a female protagonist.

NaNoWriMo has worked better than I hoped. No, I won't reach 50,000 words. I'm more likely to reach about half of that. What I did reach, was a strong sense of my character and her lunar journey. All on-going Facebook and blog comments from people who knew I was doing this, served as series of pep talks.

Sarabande is finally underway!
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You may also like: The Value of Writing Fast
For more information about lunar journeys, see: The Heroine's Journey by Maureen Murdock
To learn more about The Sun Singer, see: Sun

--Malcolm

Making a Christmas List - the book version

My parents taught me to make a Christmas list every year. They would pick an item or two off it and then share it with the grandparents. Even now, people ask for lists because they know I like books, but they don't know which ones. I can usually type up a fresh list books for a Christmas list in no time because I generally have a revolving Amazon-style wish list in mind 24/7.

This year, my list includes the recently released "Autobiography of Mark Twain Volume 1" (see Smoky Trudeau's review) and Laura Hillenbrand's ("Seabiscuit") new "Unbroken: a World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption" (see the Wall Street Journal profile).

In fiction, I enjoyed "Forest Song: Finding Home" by Vila SpiderHawk. So now I'm ready for the next book in the series, "Forest Song: Little Mother." My list will also include Collin Kelley's "Conquering Venus."


What about you. Do you hope to see a few new releases beneath your Christmas tree from friends who asked you for a list of just seemed to know what you were looking for?

--Malcolm

You might also like: My favorite books become Christmas gifts

Sunday Stuff and a NaNo Update

Work on my NaNoWriMo manuscript has slowed a bit more in the last few days as my wife and I get ready for Thanksgiving guests. Yep, a big part of that is cleaning up the house. My brother and his wife should arrive here from Orlando in less than an hour. So, the Sarabande manuscript sits now at 21,500 words.

A sequel to The Sun Singer, Sarabande features a young woman's lunar journey as she faces "the road of trials" en route to tracking down the only person she knows who can banish the ghost that has haunted her without mercy for three years.

Thank you to everyone participating in Blog Jog Day today. Visits are up on Malcolm's Round Table as people sprint through en route to as many blogs as they can find in one day. Today's post is Songs and Whispers of the Living Earth.

At least one of my friends is a bigger e-mail pack rat than I am. She sent me some information for Sarabande in February, but somehow I lost it. Fortunately, the e-mail was still in her SENT MESSAGES folder. What a break.

If you enjoy reading hero's journey novels, I would like to suggest the latest epic fantasy from author Seth Mullins, "Song of the Twice Born." I've posted a review of it on my website


Blog Jog Day Pop Quiz

Those of you enjoying the wonders of Blog Jog Day are, I'm sure, taking notes.

WARNING: YOUR SCORE ON THIS QUIZ GOES ON YOUR PERMANENT RECORD.

1. What kind of coffee does the Goddess drink? (a) Maxwell House, (b) Chase & Sanborn, (c) Hills Brothers, (d) Some Chicory-laden crap from New Orleans.
2. Crows flying between Two Egg Florida and Amsterdam on a northeast heading, have a trip of: (a) 4571 miles, (b) 7145 miles, (c) 0 miles, since most Crows are too smart to do such a thing.
3. J. K. Rowling has hinted that there might be another Harry Potter book. According to informed sources, the projected title is (a) Harry Potter Tries a Few Spells on Fergie, (b) Harry Potter Drinks Single Malt with Jock Stewart, (c) Harry Potter Finally Gets Lucky.
4. True/False: If Captain Ahab met the Ancient Mariner, the result would be one whale of a story.
5. Author and raconteur Malcolm R. Campbell was raised and/or reared by: (a) alligators,  (b) hyenas, (c) three sporting girls in Abilene.
6. True/False: If the Earth Mage met the Earth Sage, they would talk about parsley, rosemary and thyme.
7. True grits are harvested during the dog days of August by: (a) knocking them out of trees with cane fishing polls, (b) using wild pigs to dig them up in the piney woods, (c) running over them with a 1969 Dodge Charger.
8. Jock Stewart is best known for writing: (a) "Mrs. Danvers at Sunnybrook Farm," (b) "Banshees in the Cuckoo's Nest," (c) "Three Blind Mice and One Piece of Tail," (d) "The Worst of Jock Stewart,"
9. True/False: Red ants can be substituted for paprika in an Illinois potato salad.
10. True/False: Crater Lake was named after Judge Crater.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

--Malcolm

Books! Buy Three, Get One Free

As the holidays approach, I think of books. I love giving them as gifts, matching up the perfect read with the perfect reader. My publisher is making it easier for me to do this with a THANKSGIVING SEASON SPECIAL: Buy three Vanilla Heart Publishing titles before December 17th, and you'll get one free!

Whenever I look at a book catalogue, I'm like the proverbial kid in the candy store. There's so much to choose from, I don't know where to begin. If I'm selecting one book--or one candy bar--making a choice, as thrilling as it is, suddenly eliminates all the other books. How can I say "no" to all but one?

As he grew older, my grandfather--who was an excellent carpenter--decided to cut back on the number of tools filling up his garage. "You can have any tool you want," he said. How simple could it be? All I had to do was walk up to the work bench where a thousand and one delights were arranged in drawers and rows and hangers on the peg board and select my heart's desire. Claw hammer or ball-peen hammer? Crosscut saw or rip saw? File or wood rasp? I froze. I wasn't really choosing just one, was I? I was saying "no" to a thousand.

My grandfather understood my dilemma, and rather than turning the choice into a mysterious test of my character and resolve, he handed me the rip saw. "You're old enough to use a man's saw. Take this home and try it out."

I was proud of the rip saw as I walked the four blocks from his house to my house. I wanted people to see me carrying it, but the day was getting late and everyone else was already inside cleaning up for dinner. Unlike a handful of gum drops, that rip saw lasted a long time. It was well made, and I always remembered how I came to have it.

Books are like that. But still, I have to choose. Consider the books written by these authors, and you'll see why I wish Vanilla Heart would get me off the hook and just pick my books for me: Vila SpiderHawk, Smoky Trudeau, Chelle Cordero, Marilyn Celeste Morris, Misha Crews, Robert Hays, L.E. Harvey, Victoria Howard, Collin Kelley, Sandy Nicks, Malcolm R. Campbell, Charmaine Gordon, Janet Lane Walters, Anne K. Albert, S.R. Claridge, Melinda Clayton, Barbra Annino.

Fortunately, I already have copies of my books "The Sun Singer," "Garden of Heaven," and "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire." Okay, that narrows things down. Before interviewing Vila SpiderHawk on Malcolm's Round Table, I read the first of her delightful "Forest Song" novels. Good, that narrows it down a bit more. And, before interviewing L. E. Harvey, I read "Imperfect" and got blown away by the ending. I'll be ready for the sequel when it's released.

Hmm, I've already read Smoky Trudeau's  "The Cabin," "Redeeming Grace" and "Observations of an Earth Mage." What beauties they are. Oh. and Melinda Clayton's gritty "Appalachian Justice." And that's not all, but this post is starting to run on a a while.

Ultimately, this is how it works with books: Every time I read one, I'm ahead of the choice game until the author or the publisher or fate adds more books to the catalogue. I know I'll never have all the books any more than I could have all of grandfather's tools on that day I was old enough to carry home a rip saw. You'll never have all the books either, but I want you to know that I understand what you're going through while you're thinking "oh, this romance looks hot" and "this time travel thriller will be perfect with hot chocolate on a cold winter's night."

While getting a free book after buying three others is a great help, let me make a suggestion. Print out the list of Vanilla Heart books, tape it on the wall and--while blind folded--throw four darts. Whatever you hit, that's your selection. Take a deep breath and the force will be with you because, as Yoda said, Do, or do not. There is no 'try.'

By the way, the deep breath isn't optional. Without it, you might puncture your wedding picture, Aunt Edith's sampler, or the smoke alarm and I'm here to tell you Christmas will be less merry after that happens..


--Malcolm

A modest proposal for best books of the year list makers

"Halloween hadn’t even ended this year before Christmas decorations made their appearance. Not even that progressive holiday creep-back, though, prepared me to see lists of the year’s best books start coming through in early November, with no apologies to those few unfortunate authors with books scheduled for release in the final sixth of the year." -- Rebekah Denn, "The Christian Science Monitor," November 15, 2010

Most savvy publishers know better than to release cutting edge books after October because those books are destined for oblivion. Oblivion Day is earlier this year than it was last year.

Unlike movie moguls who can release a mega-movie 20 seconds before year's end in hopes that members of the Academy will still remember the film when it's time cast Oscars votes, publishers don't have that option. List makers claim "it's all been said and done" before it's all been said and done.

Within a few years, we'll be seeing the best books of the year lists coming out in October and then on Labor Day or during the Dog Days of August. Soon, there will be no labor at publishing houses after Labor Day because the fat ladies who create the lists will have already sung, off key or otherwise..

Clearly, a child of three can see where things are headed.

To keep that from happening (and you do know what that is) list makers and publishers should meet January first every year in a wink-and-nod conspiracy session and choose the prospective best books of the year in advance.

Then, publishers can release those books at their leisure without the insane rush to get them off the press prior to Oblivion Day. Even if some of the lists are published before the books are published, it won't matter. Readers will just assume the list makers got galleys, advance reader copies or slept with somebody.

Some readers will smell a rat that they haven't bothered to smell up to now. They will cry "foul" or "what the hell" or "the damn thing's rigged." But they won't be able to prove it. Publishers will be interviewed on Fox and list makers will be interviewed on CNN.

All the talking heads will proclaim that the lists are as pure as the driven snow, but that if they (the lists) are being tinkered with, then they (the publishers and list makers) will investigate and report back.

After the "investigation," the American public will be told "everything is okay." They will also be told that "according to informed sources, the accusations all came from writers who were more insane than usual and thought they'd gotten screwed when really they probably hadn't."

Since the Best Books of the Year lists already look like a fraud, wouldn't be easier just to make them fraudulent from day one? Like half-assed jobs, well-intentioned fraud saves time and energy. Then, when it comes to the best of the best of the best, we'll be worry free. The lists will be pure, but authorized, hooey.

Finally, we'll be able to take a grain of salt for what it is.

First weekly NaNoWriMo Update

I have completed the first chapter of Sarabande, the sequel to my novel The Sun Singer that I am writing as my National Novel Writing Month project. At 946 words per day, my current word count is 6,688, well below the the 1,667 words per day I would need to write to reach 50,000 words by the last day of the month.

The word count is low because I am typically a very slow writer in spite of my wish that I could write like the wind. Also, it has been many years since I wrote The Sun Singer, so it is taking more "fact checking" than I expected to make sure the opening scenes of Sarabande merge accurately with what I have already written about these characters.


Meanwhile, I notice that three of my NaNoWriMon writing buddies are moving along at flank speed. Zulmara's word count is 32,356, Flying Writer's count is 18, 750, and Pat Bertram's count is 13.159. Congratulations to them on their fast-typing fingers and co-operative muses.

I am relatively pleased with the rough draft of Sarabande at the end of chapter one. My protagonist (Sarabande) is embarking on a lunar journey in terms of her inner development throughout the novel. Physically, she has left the alternative universe of Pyrrha on a search for Robert Adams, the Sun Singer, in our world. She needs his help.

This story has been on my mind for some time. However, I was somewhat spooked by the idea of actually writing it, for then all the infinite probabilities had to collapse down to a specific plot. (It's always hard for my actual words to live up to the story as it lives in my imagination.) So, NaNoWriMo has been a catalyst, getting me started, regardless of my actual word count on November 30.

You may also like

NaNoWriMo Becomes NaNoWriMoSmokMo
Stuck? Step away from your manuscript for a few minutes
Vanilla Heart Publishing Super Saver E-Book Specials (my e-books and others for only $4.99 through November 16th)


--Malcolm