Excerpt: The Hollow of White Hazel
And then he sang.
He sang the harmony, not the melody, but the notes seemed to reverberate in Ethelwyn’s chest. She could feel the emotion of the song better now, the agony of the woman, the desperation of the male back-up to get her to just turn around and see him. She felt tears pricking in the corner of her eyes, and a desperate desire deep within to sing along, to help, to add her voice to the notes that seemed now to fill the whole street. She opened her mouth, but a sweaty hand reached around and covered it, choking the sound.
She twisted in her seat. Arthur covered his own mouth with his other hand and shook his head. He pointed to his ears and mimed covering them. Confused, and still wanting to sing with a desire that shook her to the core, Ethelwyn plugged her ears with her fingers.
It helped, a little. She no longer wanted to sing, at any rate, and muffling some of the sound took some of the reverberation out of it. She could listen now. Arthur pulled his hand off of her mouth, and covered his own ears.
The pixies didn’t seem to have the same sense. They stopped what they were doing, dropped whomever they were eviscerating, and capered slowly towards Emrys, who was still standing in the middle of the road. The street became deserted of human beings; in the distance, sirens were wailing, coming closer. The song was nearing the second verse, the music swelling until, even with the fingers in her ears, Ethelwyn wanted to join in. The reverberation grew stronger in Ethelwyn’s chest, and she realized that the pixies were actually singing in harsh, piping voices that sounded more like a broken-bellowed organ than anything melodic. They wheezed and puffed and screeched along, adding their meagre voices to the harmony, until, with a gut-wrenching twist, the lead singer proclaimed that, every now and then, she just fell apart…
Emrys brought his arms down, and held the note.
The pixies exploded into a thousand splinters.
King Arthur returns from Avalon to find nothing is how he left it. His beloved Camelot is barely a memory, and no one speaks his language except Merlin, who jockeys disks instead of casting spells. Instead of taking his rightful place as king, Arthur finds himself at the mercy of a constitutional monarchy and a population who think he's a myth.
If that wasn't enough, his knights have been reincarnated and scattered across the globe, no one can find the Grail (again), and he's only got a week before The Wild Hunt sweeps the world clean - and where the hell is Lancelot?
A (hopefully) hilarious, Modern-Fantasy, HistoricalFanFiction, complete with romance, magic, mayhem and gingers.
Mississauga, Ontario next, then on from there. There has got to be an easier way to maintain the flow of information about this kind of thing - and even as I type this, I realize that that way is to become famous enough that your publishing company pays for other people to organize these things for you. I don't mind, really, it's just that I'm scatterbrained, so remembering to update this blog and my other blog with normal blog like things, as well as update the tour blog, my news page, the Facebook page and Moloch's Twitter, is difficult for me.
3 Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But "said" is far less intrusive than "grumbled", "gasped", "cautioned", "lied". I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated" and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.
4 Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" . . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances "full of rape and adverbs".
So I received this e-mail...
"were not haven trouble written sences and its two of us written
it... thats why it dnt really get boring i mean like theres alot of
action... were never really bored.... everyone thats read it tells
us to hurry up and finish it.. but we are calling it exspect the
unexspected.. its good. we know how were going to end it so we can
start the next book.what all does it take to get a book published?"
That was the complete email, except for the writer's name, which
I'm withholding out of kindness, to protect the identity of the
creator of this monstrosity.
You want to know why editors and agents take to drinking?
That e-mail---and the million others like it---is why.
This writer---plus one colleague---have committed fiction with
intent to publish. And now they want to know how sell the beast
they have created.
And yet...
There is no rule of professional writing (or even simple writing
with intent to communicate) that is not broken in that one
paragraph. Capitalization, punctuation, spelling, grammar,
content, actual creation of actual sentences, even basic coherence
---it doesn't have ANY of them.
Imagine yourself as en editor, as an agent, or as a publisher, and
imagine that you receive not just one entire book written at the
level of that one paragraph in the mail, but dozens of them every
day. Plus countless query letters, e-mails, and proposals.
You would find yourself expecting the imminent fall of civilization.
Maybe even wishing for it.
If you are currently writing anything that looks even remotely like
the paragraph above, stop worrying about publication. "I want to
sell my book" has no business in your vocabulary yet.
First, learn the tools of your trade, because until you can write
coherent, meaningful sentences one after another, punctuate them
correctly, put capital letters in the right places, spell the words
properly, use apostrophes well, and in all other ways present your
work in a professional manner, you have not written something good,
no matter what you might think.
Writing is first and foremost about communication. Before you can
communicate anything of value, you first have to be able to
communicate at all. You have to be able to make yourself
understood, and capital letters, spelling, punctuation, and grammar
are the ways we have agreed upon to standardize the presentation of
communication so that we can transfer meaning, and expect it to be
understood by the recipient.
When you write, you are putting the products of your mind into
symbols. When someone else decodes those symbols, he is reading
your mind. Mindreading is a delicate, tricky business, and you want to
make the path from your thoughts to your reader's brain as clear,
simple, and litter-free as possible. If you don't use the code correctly,
don't expect to your thoughts to be understood.
Educate yourself, raise your standards, and present yourself as a
professional if you wish to be treated as a professional.
