I came across this article by Kathy Steinmann the other day. I use Google quite a lot for quick fact checking, for example, I was interested in the properties of jade for my work-in-progress novel. And I use Google maps all the time.
I was aware of some of the things she mentioned, but not all, and some I’d forgotten about. See if you find something new and useful!
Read the article here:
https://kathysteinemann.com/Musings/great-ways-for-writers-to-get-more-out-of-google/
My second cross-continental collaboration with artist, Suzanne Starr.
This story was inspired by Suzanne’s drawing which I saw on my LinkedIn feed. Once again, I found the images of her characters so compelling that I had to write their story.
You can find more of Suzanne’s artwork at www.suzannestarart.com – do check it out!
Part of my Flash Fiction collection
He’s Back
‘That’s a pretty dress, Miss Clara,’ said the Stork, as the little girl approached him. ‘Oh, but you look sad on your birthday. Why?’ She is so tall now, he thought.
‘I wish I could just fly away like you do,’ Clara looked up at him with her large brown eyes.
‘What’s wrong, Miss Clara? You have a lovely home with people who care for you. Why are you unhappy?’
‘It’s just that I feel like I don’t belong properly. They’re not my people, are they?’ Clara fiddled with her lace-edged handkerchief. ‘You explained to me last year, you delivered me to the wrong people. I’ve been thinking about it all year.’
The Stork cocked his head and looked intently at her. ‘I know, Miss Clara, and I told you how sorry I am for my mistake.’
‘Did you tell the other little girl?’ Clara looked up at him, ‘the one who should’ve come here instead of me.’
The Stork hung his head, ‘no Miss Clara, I didn’t. And perhaps I shouldn’t have told you.’
‘So why did you?’ Clara was on the verge of tears. ‘Why did you, Stork?’
‘The two of you were my first deliveries and I got it wrong. That’s why I kept coming back to check on you, until you were old enough for me to talk to you and to explain properly.’
‘And the other little girl?’
The Stork shook his head sadly. ‘The mother realised something was wrong.’
‘My mother? My real mother?’
The Stork nodded.
‘What happened?’
The Stork’s beak drooped so that it almost touched the ground. ‘She thought the baby was a changeling.’
‘A changeling? What’s that?’
‘Some people believe that a changeling is a fairy child left in place of a human child which has been stolen by the fairies.
‘But it wasn’t a fairy child?’
‘No, of course not. That’s just a silly superstition.’
‘So what happened to her?’
‘She was left out on the hillside as is the custom in that part of our country.’
‘I don’t understand. Why would they do that?’
The Stork sighed. ‘They hope that the real baby will be returned.’
‘Oh.’ Clara was silent. She twisted her handkerchief some more. ‘But why didn’t you tell her? The mother, I mean.’
‘She could neither see me nor hear me.’ The Stork started to pace about. ‘Only little children can see and hear the Storks,’ he said over his shoulder.
‘And you couldn’t save the baby from the hillside?’
The Stork turned to face her. ‘She’d gone by the time I found out what had happened.’
Clara frowned. ‘Maybe the fairies did take her.’
‘I don’t believe in fairies.’
‘But maybe someone found her. Maybe she’s with another family?’
A large tear rolled down the Stork’s beak. ‘Don’t you think I looked for her; that day, the next day, the next week?’ The Stork sniffed and shook his huge dark head. ‘I searched for months and years, because of my mistake. That’s why you’ve been so precious to me.’
Clara went up to the Stork; she reached up and put her hand on his neck. ‘Poor Stork, I’m sorry.’
‘I will always be sorry, Miss Clara.’
Clara thought for a moment. ‘Can we go there and have a look?’ Clara waved her handkerchief towards the sky. ‘I’d love just to see where I might’ve been living.’
The Stork looked at her, eyes unblinking.
‘I could ride on your back,’ Clara ran her hand over the snowy feathers on his back. ‘It can’t be that far. If you mixed us up on the same night,’ she reasoned.
‘No, Miss Clara. It’s not possible.’
‘But Stork…’
‘I said no!’ He turned his back on her, hunching his wings.
Clara sat down on the edge of the sidewalk and started to cry.
The Stork couldn’t bear to hear her sobbing; he turned around and nudged her with his beak. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Clara, but I can’t.’
‘But it’s my birthday today.’
‘That’s the point, I’m afraid.’ The Stork folded his long legs underneath his white feathers and huddled close to her. ‘Today is the last day you will be able to see me or hear me. You see this is your tenth birthday, and after you pass the hour of your birth, you too will be blind and deaf to the Storks.’
Clara looked at him. The Stork looked up at the sun which was sinking below the tall buildings of the city. The soft feathers of his cheek brushed against Clara’s hair. ‘It’s almost time, little one.’ The Stork stood up, gently helping Clara to her feet with a brush of his long beak. The Stork faced her and bowed gracefully as the disc of the sun disappeared behind the dome of the cathedral.
Clara looked at him, wiping away her tears. ‘Stork, dear Stork…’ and as she spoke, his image started to fade, so only a faint outline remained. His voice echoed around the little square. ‘Goodbye, Miss Clara.’ Then his was gone.
That night Clara had a dream, a very vivid dream. A girl about her age was waving to her from a bright, sunny hillside somewhere. She looked just how Clara imagined a fairy might look and she was smiling. And every year after that on her birthday, Clara found a soft white feather on her pillow.
©2018 Chris Hall
*’He’s Back’ is one of two works by Suzanne Starr which form part of the ‘Into Darkness Exhibition’ at the Norwich Art Center, Connecticut USA. The exhibition runs throughout October 2018
If, like me, you cringe at the sight of the misplaced apostrophe and other grammatical ‘nasties’, then Eats, Shoots and Leaves is a ‘must-read’ for you.
Lynne Truss offers us her ‘Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation’ as an antidote to ignorance and indifference in the use and application of full stops, commas, question marks and more.
Full of rich and ridiculous examples of how the meaning of the English language can be distorted by the misuse, over-use and lack of use of correct punctuation, this is a hugely entertaining read.
So thoughtfully and wittily written, if you haven’t already come across it, I commend this book to you!
Find it on Goodreads and check out what other people have to say.
Some find it too preachy, but then I suspect that they’re not grammar gurus or punctuation pendants like me. I mean, who else kicks up a fuss in a Chinese chippy late at night at the sight of baked potatoe’s on the menu? Oh, really? You do? Good for you!
Just remember:
Written by Joe Moran, professor of English and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University and author of ‘Armchair Nation: An Intimate History of Britain in Front of the Television’.
Courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd
Every writer, of school age and older, is in the sentences game. The sentence is our writing commons, the shared ground where all writers walk. A poet writes in sentences, and so does the unsung author who came up with “Items trapped in doors cause delays”. The sentence is the Ur-unit, the core material, the granular element that must be got right or nothing will be right. For James Baldwin, the only goal was “to write a sentence as clean as a bone”.
What can celebrated writers teach the rest of us about the art of writing a great sentence? A common piece of writing advice is to make your sentences plain, unadorned and invisible. George Orwell gave this piece of advice its epigram: “Good prose is like a windowpane.” A reader should notice the words no more than someone looking through glass notices the glass.
Except that you do notice the glass. Picture an English window in 1946, when Orwell wrote that sentence. It would be smeared with grime from smoke and coal dust and, since houses were damp and windows single-glazed, wont to mist and ice over. The glass might still be cracked from air-raid gunfire or bombs, or covered with shatterproof coating to protect people from flying shards. An odd metaphor to use, then, for clear writing.
To continue reading this article click here
From my Flash Fiction collection
‘No more rides,’ said Humphrey the Unicorn, ‘especially not for that fat fairy.’ He was talking to himself, deep in the enchanted forest. His back ached and his horn was sore where the young fairies, pixies and elves had been touching it for luck. Much will that do them, he thought.
Humphrey sighed, ‘a noble beast like me, scratching a living as a side-show attraction at Friday’s Fantastical Fair. He wandered over to a patch of four-leaved clover and started munching.
‘Hey, Unicorn!’ said a voice. Humphrey looked up to see a strange little man leaning against a tree with a notebook in his hand and a pencil behind his ear.
‘You’re good at story-telling aren’t you?’ the little man said.
Humphrey nodded. He’d always been fond of telling stories, but the magical kids of today weren’t interested.
‘And you’re looking for a new career?’
Humphrey nodded again.
‘Okay, here’s the thing,’ the little man pulled the pencil from behind his ear and waved it with a flourish. ‘I’ll pay you double what you get from the Friday Fantastical Fair, if every week, without fail, you provide me with a 250 word story for my Friday Flash Fiction spot.’
Humphrey jumped at the chance. He and The Writer, for that was who the strange little man was, made a pact for life. But one year later, when Humphrey couldn’t squeeze his brain for even one more story, he found to his cost that he’d made a pact with the devil.
©2018 Chris Hall
Inspired by The Haunted Wordsmith’s Three Things Challenge – fairy, unicorn, devil
These little prompts are coming to an end, but with Halloween approaching Teresa promises us new inspiration for tales of ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties.
Sounds like fun!
Some useful hints here, even if you’re not necessarily considering going down the professional editing route.
I was nominated for this award by Vicklea who has been very supportive of my writing since I started posting at the start of this year. I’m very pleased because it’s given me an opportunity to share an example of how some people help each other in my adopted country, South Africa.
South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world. We have the very, very rich (a small number) and the very, very poor (sadly many more). We may think we’re somewhere in the middle, but the vast majority of the population live on very little.
We are fortunate enough to be able to afford to employ a housekeeper, Joyce, and a gardener / handyman, Johannes, a couple of days a week. This sounds quite grand, or at least it seemed to me to be so when we first came over here. We don’t necessarily need the help, although it’s nice to have someone to do the housework and look after the garden. It also gives us an excuse to help them to support their families.
However, this is not about us in our privileged position and what we do, rather I want to share something which Joyce did for one of the kids in her neighbourhood last week.
Joyce was standing by the gate to her little rented house having just seen her youngest child Joshua and her grandchild, Lesego, off to school. She was watching some of the other children make their way to school when she noticed a little boy of about Joshua’s age struggling to walk in gum boots which were much too big for him. She could see by how he was dressed that he came from a family who must have very little to spend on clothes and shoes. She called him over and saw that he was crying. He said it was because the gum boots hurt his feet and made it hard for him to walk.
Joyce told him to wait by the gate. She fetched a pair of Joshua’s shoes. The shoes were in good condition and still fit Joshua, but he did have his school shoes and a pair of trainers as well and Joyce decided that she must give them to the little boy who was struggling. He tried them on and they fit. He was over the moon! Joyce gave him a plastic bag for the gum boots and off he ran to school so as not to be late. On his way back that afternoon, he came and thanked Joyce again.
When she told me, I could see how happy she was to have been in a position to help the little boy, even though she herself manages on a very modest budget as a single mum, with a grown up daughter and son, another son who’s studying civil engineering and the two little ones.
Award Rules
All through life we encounter people who for no particular reason help someone out, or extend a hand when needed. Some do it directly and some do it indirectly.
1- copy or paste image for reward on your post.
2- Write about a random act of kindness, either you saw, was given to you, or you have done. It is okay to spread the love people. You don’t have to name specific names or whatever but tell us about it.
3- Share this award and link to original post or tag the person who nominated you.
4- If you should want to do this then you can leave an open ended invitation, or personally tag others.
5- Pictures are a good share to, if you have pictures to share a random act of kindness, that is great!
I’m leaving this Award open to anyone who might read this and like to share something good. There’s too much bad stuff in the world.
When I saw this drawing by artist, Suzanne Starr, on my LinkedIn feed, I was so intrigued by the figures in the picture that I had to write their story. I contacted Suzanne to ask her permission, and now we have a collaboration across continents. Awesome!
You can find more of Suzanne’s artwork at www.suzannestarart.com – check it out!
Part of my Flash Fiction collection
The people who lived in the picture
‘Who are they, Ashley?’ Charlie pointed up at the picture on his bedroom wall. ‘Are they family too?’
Ashley glanced at the picture which was hanging next to the school room door. She’d never really noticed it before, but then she’d hardly ever been in the austere blue-painted room (formerly the nanny’s room) in which her young cousin was staying until it was time for him to start at his new school in England.
‘I don’t rightly know, Charlie.’ Ashley carefully took the picture down from the wall and came to sit beside him on the bed. They looked at it together. It was a small pencil drawing of five children of varying ages, or maybe four children and their mother, tightly grouped together with their arms wrapped around each other. They were wearing outdoor clothes which looked rather old-fashioned, thought Ashley. The drawing looked old too, faded, the paper discoloured along the one edge of the wooden frame.
‘Look at their expressions; they’re so lifelike.’ said Ashley.’
‘They look sad,’ said Charlie.
‘Maybe it’s because they’re posing,’ said Ashley. ‘Like the in the old photographs on the piano downstairs.’
‘The little boy at the front, what’s he holding?
Ashley peered at the picture. ‘I think it’s a spinning top. You know, you push the handle up and down,’ she demonstrated a pumping action, ‘and it spins. I’m sure we’ve still got ours somewhere. I’ll see if Hodge knows where it is.’
‘But I wonder why he looks so cross.’
‘Perhaps it’s because he’s had to stand still for so long and maybe he’d rather go and play,’ she ruffled Charlie’s golden hair. ‘You’d be scowling too.’ Ashley laughed.
Charlie pouted and then giggled as Ashley chucked him under the chin.
Ashley returned the picture to its place on the wall. ‘Come on, Charlie, it’s time for lunch. We can ask Hodge about the spinning top.’
***
Ashley was curled up in the drawing room with her notebook at her side. She’d intended to finish her latest fairy story, but her mind kept drifting back to the drawing. Maybe there was a story there, ‘The people who lived in the picture’. She smiled to herself and glanced at her watch; Charlie was supposed to be studying to prepare him for the start of school, but he wouldn’t mind if she just popped in to borrow the picture. As instructed, she wouldn’t disturb him.
Charlie’s door was closed. ‘Charlie? Can I come in?” Ashley knocked politely and waited. ‘Charlie? Are you there?
There was no reply. Ashley put her ear to the door. Perhaps he’d dozed off. She wouldn’t be surprised; the books with which he’d arrived looked deathly dull to her. As she put her hand on the doorknob, she heard a huge crash, as if something had fallen on the floor.
‘Charlie?’ She turned the doorknob and pushed the door, but it wouldn’t open. ‘Charlie! Let me in!’ She shoved the door hard and it yielded. She looked around. Charlie was crouching on the floor in the corner of the room. A brightly painted metal spinning top rolled across the room towards her.
Ashley picked the toy up and turned to Charlie. ‘Hodge found it then,’ she said. ‘What on earth were you doing with it?’
Charlie shook his head and pointed to the picture. Ashley crossed the room and looked; the little boy’s hands were empty. He was leaning forward, arms outstretched, as if he’d just dropped (thrown?) something. Ashley looked at Charlie in disbelief.
Ashley held out her hand to Charlie. They fled from the room.
They found Hodge peeling potatoes in the kitchen. Breathlessly Charlie tried to explain what had happened.
‘Slow down, slow down!’ She wiped her hands on her apron. ‘Now, Miss Ashley, you’ve not been scaring young Master Charlie with your fairy stories, have you?’
‘No, Hodge, it’s real, really real.’ Charlie’s bottom lip quivered.
Hodge reached out and put her arm around Charlie’s shoulder. ‘All right, luvvy, let’s go and have a look.’
Charlie hung back as Hodge marched into his bedroom followed by Ashley. The picture lay face down on the floor and the schoolroom door was open. Hodge bent down and picked it up. Suddenly the schoolroom door was snatched shut. Hodge looked up. ‘Master Charlie?’
‘I’m here,’ said Charlie stepping into the room. Behind him they heard footsteps running along the landing.
Hodge turned the picture over. It was a drawing of an empty room.
©2018 Chris Hall
I’m a huge fan of David Mitchell’s novels; I just love his writing. Then I came upon this article in The New Yorker. It fascinated me, particularly since I’ve been trying to sketch a map of the (only partly fictional) tunnels which run under the city of Liverpool to help in the process of writing my current novel.
You might enjoy his article too. Here’s the link: Start with the Map
My writing buddy, Paul English, with whom I regularly meet for coffee to chat about our writing, recently published the second novel in his Superhero series. We’ve many times discussed how difficult it is to do one’s own publicity, but doing for someone else is much easier. The article will appear in the school magazine, and I shall be submitting it to our local paper.
Somerset West author, Paul English, has a new audience for his superhero novels. The first two books published in Paul’s Fire Angel Universe Series, ‘Fire Angel: Genesis’ and ‘Fire Angel: Turning Point’, have now been donated to the library of the International School of Cape Town by Cliff Davies, Head of Geography, who won them in an on-line competition run by the author through his Facebook fan page: https://www.facebook.com/FireAngelUniverse
Although you wouldn’t think it when you read his books, Paul has faced many difficult physical challenges in his life. The unexplained and undiagnosed syndrome with which he was born has affected both his sight and hearing throughout his 38 years. Nor has he an academic background, having left school after Grade 9. Paul says he found school boring as he felt it kept him from his drawing and writing!
The children’s TV series ‘Transformers’ first awoke the desire to write when Paul was just seven years old. Putting together his combined talent for writing and drawing, he has produced dozens of hand drawn comic books over the years.
Later the inspiration to create his own Superhero came from listening to an interview with Stan Lee about how he came up with Spider-Man and the Marvel Universe. After a few attempts to start his novel, Paul took a course in Creative Writing, which gave him a much better foundation. He regrets not having done that first of all and earnestly recommends this to aspiring writers.
Paul did not want to copy the stereotypical male hero with a perfect body and all the techno gadgets. His Superhero is Haley, a sassy but kind-hearted teenager living in a crime ridden working class neighbourhood, with fears of retrenchment looming over her parents.
In Paul’s first novel, ‘Fire Angel: Genesis’, Haley caught in the impact of a crashing meteorite which gives her some very unusual powers. Soon she is being hounded by unscrupulous people who want to harness her superpowers for themselves. Haley quickly learns not to trust anyone, especially not the scientists who have their own secret agenda.
In the sequel, ‘Fire Angel: Turning Point’, we meet a new superhuman, ‘Nemesis’, who brings death and destruction to all who have wronged her. A confrontation with her leads Haley down the dark path which she has set on. Haley faces some tough choices about whether she will return to defend her community or not.
Paul admits that there is a bit of him in Haley: courage in the face of difficulties, played down by a quirky sense of humour. Asked what his message to fellow writers would be, Paul says: ‘write the story you’d want to read.’
If you’d like your very own copies, ‘Fire Angel: Genesis’ and ‘Fire Angel: Turning Point’ are available as a double pack directly from Paul, priced at R270,00.
The third book in the series, ‘Fade’, will be published soon. The fourth novel is well underway and Paul has already come up with several more ideas for future books in the series.
You can also read Paul’s Fan Fiction story, ‘Batman: Dawn of the Night’ on Wattpad
For more information about Paul and his work, email to: chiefhackyvol3@yahoo.com
PS – Cliff’s my husband and I’m proud to have had a hand in editing Paul’s second and third books!
luna's on line 