The Ultimate Spoiler

When talking about books, or writing book reviews, the spoiler is a definite no-no. Revealing plot twists or a book’s ending to those who haven’t read it spoils the experience to the point they may decide not to bother.

Plot-driven fiction is way more susceptible to spoilers than so-called “literary” fiction, which depends less on revelations than on artful use of language. It’s the difference between rushing to a destination and stopping to view the scenery along the way.

As a book’s author, I have a special relationship with the book. In a way, for me, it’s already spoiled, unless I were totally “pantsing” it — writing by feel, without any outline or plan at all. And even that applies only to the first draft. Once I start revising or rewriting, I know how it all works out.

When you think about this, it’s amazing any book at all has a tension-filled plot or a surprise ending. Knowing how the story will end makes it hard to create an atmosphere of peril for the characters. It’s too easy to slip into a relaxed tone and pace, like going to a familiar place down a well-worn path.

How does the writer create tension and suspense for the reader? By calling on the brute force of imagination, dancing around the scenes being plotted, seeing them from all sides at once. Then skewing the view, applying disguises, drawing scrims over crucial details.

Writers have to read their works like readers do, be aware of the expectations they are creating, and either fulfill them or jerk them away and deliver something totally unexpected. Even though they already know the ending.

No wonder writing — the initial act of creation — is so hard!

This is why I personally don’t favour strict outlining or detailed planning. I need to have a specific ending in mind, but I don’t really know how I’m going to get there. When I sit down to write another chapter, I have a list called Things That Must Happen, but quite often, some of them don’t, and unexpected ones do.

Having wiggle room in the plot gives my characters chances to do the opposite of what I thought they might, to try and fail before they arrive at the destinations I have in mind for them, and for me to experience a surprise or two, just like I hope my readers will.

Featured image courtesy of Pixabay.

Optimal Order: Reading the Herbert West Series

When I wrote the four books that make up the Herbert West Series, I intended them to work as stand-alone novels. And they do, sort of, but to fully appreciate the second through fourth books, it’s really helpful to have read the first one.

To complicate things, I also wrote and published four Supplements to the series, short stories that fit within or between the four books.

The first book of the series, The Friendship of Mortals, and all four Supplements, are available as free downloads. More information here.

From July 1st to 31st, Books 2, 3, and 4 of the series will be available at 50% off the regular prices, at the Smashwords store only, as part of the Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale.

For readers new to the series, here is the optimal order in which to read the books and supplements:

Book 1, The Friendship of Mortals
Supplement 1, The Nexus : a portal to the Herbert West Series
Supplement 2, From the Annexe : an untold tale
Book 2, Islands of the Gulf Volume 1, The Journey
Book 3, Islands of the Gulf Volume 2, The Treasure
Supplement 3, A Visit to Luxor
Supplement 4, One of the Fourteen
Book 4, Hunting the Phoenix.

In whatever order a reader may wish to read, it’s best to save Book 4, Hunting the Phoenix, for the end — well, because it’s the end.

Featured image courtesy of Pixabay, enhanced with Canva.

Smashwords Survey 2017

Once again, Smashwords CEO Mark Coker has crunched the numbers and shared them with indie authors.

Find the complete results here.

And get ready to go ebook bargain hunting. The Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale starts July 1st!

Books 2, 3 and 4 of the Herbert West Series will be available at half price.

The Moon Over Luxor

For my current work in progress, the phases of the moon at Luxor, Egypt, in the autumn of 1962 are a moderately significant plot factor. I could have ignored facts and written the moon to suit my plot, but that didn’t feel right. For sure, once the book is published, someone will point out the inconvenient facts. So — research required. Thanks to the Internet, I found this:

Moon Phases for Luxor, Egypt in 1962

Lunation	New Moon		First Quarter		Full Moon		Third Quarter		Duration
483	Jan 6	2:35 pm	Jan 13	7:01 am	Jan 20	8:16 pm	Jan 29	1:36 am	29d 11h 35m
484	Feb 5	2:09 am	Feb 11	5:42 pm	Feb 19	3:17 pm	Feb 27	5:49 pm	29d 10h 21m
485	Mar 6	12:30 pm	Mar 13	6:38 am	Mar 21	9:55 am	Mar 29	6:10 am	29d 9h 14m
486	Apr 4	9:44 pm	Apr 11	9:50 pm	Apr 20	2:33 am	Apr 27	2:58 pm	29d 8h 40m
487	May 4	7:24 am	May 11	3:44 pm	May 19	5:31 pm	May 26	10:05 pm	29d 9h 02m
488	Jun 2	4:26 pm	Jun 10	9:21 am	Jun 18	5:02 am	Jun 25	2:42 am	29d 10h 25m
489	Jul 2	2:52 am	Jul 10	2:39 am	Jul 17	2:40 pm	Jul 24	7:18 am	29d 12h 31m
490	Jul 31	3:23 pm	Aug 8	6:54 pm	Aug 15	11:09 pm	Aug 22	1:26 pm	29d 14h 45m
491	Aug 30	6:08 am	Sep 7	9:44 am	Sep 14	7:11 am	Sep 20	10:35 pm	29d 16h 30m
492	Sep 28	10:39 pm	Oct 6	9:54 pm	Oct 13	2:32 pm	Oct 20	10:47 am	29d 17h 25m
493	Oct 28	3:04 pm	Nov 5	9:14 am	Nov 12	12:03 am	Nov 19	4:09 am	29d 17h 25m
494	Nov 27	8:29 am	Dec 4	6:47 pm	Dec 11	11:27 am	Dec 19	12:42 am	29d 16h 29m
495	Dec 27	12:58 am							29d 14h 43m
* All times are local time for Cairo. Time is adjusted for DST when applicable. Dates are based on the Gregorian calendar.

Cool, eh?

Dates of moon phases for almost anywhere in any year may be found here.

Yet another example of obscure info needed by writers. How did we ever manage before the Internet? Libraries, librarians, and reference books — remember them?

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Friends or Enemies? No, Just Plants.

“Peach-Leaf Bellflower, Garden Enemy #2” is one of my most-viewed posts. It was written in a fit of pique after I stabbed a hyacinth bulb while engaged in a heavy session of digging up peach-leaved bellflower (Campanula persicifolia) that had spread by runnng roots. I have since relented in my harsh judgement of that plant.

Partly it’s because I’ve decided there are plants even more apt to spread and harder to control. To wit: Oregon grape, snowberry, periwinkle (both Vinca major and V. minor), achillea, bloody cranesbill (Geranium sanguineum), and certain daylilies. I’ve fought more desperate battles with these than I ever waged against the bellflower (which is rather attractive just now, in its first flush of bloom).

It’s dumb of gardeners to blame plants for being themselves, bestowing upon them unkind epithets such as “thug” or “garden enemy.” (Not that the plants give a damn). I’m the one who decided to plant peach-leaved bellflower, Oregon grape, and snowberry in my garden, thinking them good choices because they are drought-tolerant, or native species, or both. Thing is, they succeed in our local conditions precisely because of their deep-rooting, runner-producing tendencies.

A recent reading of Noel Kingsbury’s excellent book, Garden Flora, gave me a new perspective on this — grouping or classifying plants by ecological habit, as well as by habitat or anatomy.

In looking at the longevity and persistence of plants, some are called “clonal” and others “non-clonal.” The first group includes those that spread by rhizomes, roots or stolons, and others that stay in one place but increase in size. Non-clonal plants are generally short-lived, but produce lots of seeds to ensure persistence. Both types are represented in my garden. The spreaders and seeders are the ones that give me grief, and on the whole, the seeders are easier to deal with. Deadheading is a lot easier than digging up Mahonia roots, let me tell you.

Kingsbury says the non-clonal plants tend to be pioneers, moving into an area and flourishing briefly, only to be supplanted by clonal competitors, whose roots, whether running or expanding in place, allow them to dominate their environment.

Learning about the science of things is a good antidote to the human tendency to personify. Plants don’t run or produce zillions of seeds just to bug gardeners, but as a survival technique. If gardeners were aware of these habits before they introduced plants to their precious patches of earth, much physical exertion and gnashing of teeth could be avoided, or at least minimized.

It would be helpful if writers of advice for gardeners included this aspect of plant performance in their writings. I’m sure if I had read something like “this is a tough, drought-resisting native plant, but gardeners should be aware that it spreads vigorously in conditions that meet its needs,” I would have avoided some plants, and situated others more carefully.

Beguiled by fervid descriptions of a plant’s flower colour, reliability, or the fact that it’s a native adapted to local conditions, I have rushed out, bought one or more, and installed them in my small patch of land. They took hold and flourished. Fast-forward a few years to see me whine and swear at colonizing shoots metres away from the original plant, often in the middle of some pampered darling that’s trying to make up its mind as to whether life is worth living. By this time, of course, the original plant has grown large enough that removing it would be a major project of the back-breaking variety.

The gardener mutters and swears. The clonal plant clones. The planet rotates. The gardener digs, chops, mutters, and swears.

Innocents, take note!

The Hori-hori Knife — essential weapon for battling suckers.

Herbert in Italy

Herbert West is about to manifest in an Italian-made web and TV series, and eventually a feature film. Yet another incarnation of this fascinating character, in addition to H.P. Lovecraft’s original, the “Re-Animator” movies directed by Stuart Gordon and featuring Jeffrey Combs, and, of course, the series of novels by one Audrey Driscoll.

Everyone knows and loves the masterful 1985 horror comedy Re-Animator. Directed by Stuart Gordon and produced by Brian Yuzna and Charles Band, the proudly unrated sex and splatter shocker based on the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, won the hearts of horror fans and mainstream critics and put Gordon on the map. And now, 32 years later, an intrepid band of Italians are reviving the source story for a web and TV series.
Read more at http://www.comingsoon.net/horror/news/858595-re-animator-is-now-an-italian-series#8oLxm0Y15ivjPC9i.99

Death… is just the beginning.

Foxglove Falsehood

I know I read somewhere that the flower colour of a foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) plant can be predicted by the colour of the leaf stems (petioles). Foxgloves are biennials; they flower in their second year of life, and then they die. Their normal flower colour is a reddish purple. It’s fairly attractive, but not nearly as elegant as the white form. Fussy gardeners who prefer the white form would therefore want to know which of a batch of seedlings would be likely to produce white flowers the following year.

If the leaf stem shows purple, I understood, the flowers will be purple. Plants with pale green leaf stems are more likely to produce white flowers. Going by this, I picked out a number of seedlings several years ago and planted them around the place. A few of them did turn out to have white flowers, but not all. Some produced blooms of a pale, washed-out pink with nothing to recommend it, and some were just the ordinary purple shade.

After this experience, I didn’t bother with systematic seedling selection. I simply let a few plants produce seed, and left a few of the resulting seedlings where they came up, in spots where a foxglove would be an asset to the scene.

Right now, I have two foxgloves with white flowers. The biggest and most impressive one has dark purple leaf stems. So does the smaller one.

Clearly, the idea that leaf stem colour predicts flower colour is dead wrong.

Just for fun, I checked the leaf stems of a rather impressive purple foxglove also in bloom now.

Its leaf stems have only a slight tinge of purple. If I had looked at them before the plant bloomed, I would very likely have predicted pale or maybe even white flowers.

So much for that notion. Consulting that fount of info, Wikipedia, I find this in the article on Digitalis purpurea:

The colours of the petals of the Digitalis purpurea are known to be determined by at least three genes that interact with each other.^[6]

The M gene determined the production of a purple pigment, a type of antocianin. The m gene does not produce this pigment. The D gene is an enhances of the M gene, and leads it to produce a big amount of the pigment. The d gene does not enhance the M gene, and only a small amount of pigment is produced. Lastly, the W gene makes the pigment be deposited only in some spots, while the w gene allows the pigment to be spread all over the flower.

This combination leads to four phenotypes:

M/_; W/_; _/_ = a white flower with purple spots;
m/m; _/_; _/_ = an albino flower with yellow spots;
M/_; w/w; d/d = a light purple flower;
M/_; w/w; D/_ = a dark purple flower.

If I could understand the above and make practical use of it, I might be able to predict flower colour in foxglove seedlings. I’d probably get more white flowered plants from my self-sown foxgloves if I pulled up any purple types before they reached full bloom, so as to keep their pollen out of circulation. But I am constitutionally incapable of pulling up (i.e., killing) any plant that is vigorously growing and about to bloom. I even have trouble dispatching certain weeds. So I’m not likely to go around “roguing out” any purple flowered plants if they look good.

In the meantime, I’ll enjoy the blooms I have, and let the white one (which, according to the above, is the white with purple spots phenotype) produce seed. Foxgloves seed like crazy. I’ll harvest a small quantity of seed and sprinkle it around the garden, and in 2019 I’ll see the results.

Update: another, rather small, foxglove plant has since bloomed with white flowers. These are pure white, and without spots of any kind. And the leaf stems are very pale green, without a trace of purple. So now I’m wondering if the leaf stem colour is somehow linked to the colour of the spots within the flower. Observing stuff like this makes gardening — even with common plants — interesting.

Why, Oh Why? #1, Parking Lots

Some things I notice in daily life make me think, say and wonder, “Why, oh why?” Are there good reasons for these irritating phenomena? If so, perhaps someone could point them out.

First up, parking lot design.

Maybe it’s just the city I call home, but I’ve noticed a couple of things about local parking lots that never fail to bug me.

Running the Gauntlet. Why, oh why do the people who design parking lots for shopping malls or plazas insist on running all the vehicle traffic right past the mall and store entrances? Everyone has to cross that road to get from car to shops, which frustrates drivers and endangers pedestrians. Could it possibly be that the pedestrians are seen as traffic-calming devices?

The logical place for car access to parking spots is around the outer perimeter of the lot. Moving vehicles would be directed away from the places where all the customers are headed. Bollards or other devices would separate the vehicle parking area from the pedestrian zone running along the shop fronts or mall entrance. All drivers would approach parking spots from the far edge of the lot. Those who need to park close to the stores would still be able to drive to the nearest vacant spot. Handicapped parking spots would be located where they are now. But no one would have to worry about getting mowed down in their final approach to Canadian Tire, the bank, or the grocery store.

The Landscaped Lot, known by me as the Parking Lot From Hell. Here, the rows of parking stalls are separated by narrow strips containing plants — small trees, shrubs and ornamental grasses. I have two problems with this. First, the space taken up by the landscaping makes it harder than necessary to maneuver one’s vehicle without risking collisions and close calls. Teeth are gritted on arrival and departure, and many trips to one of these mazes are challenging. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more fender-benders in landscaped lots than wide-open ones.

Second, the plants deteriorate. When newly installed, they look attractive, but inevitably, many of them decline and die, going from spiffy to sad, despite routine watering and maintenance (which is not always provided). Narrow beds in expanses of asphalt and concrete can’t be called ideal environments for most trees, shrubs and perennials. Shoppers intent on spending and acquisition tromp heedlessly through them. No one appreciates these plants, especially once they start to look scruffy and battered. What’s the point? It’s a parking lot, not a park.

Old-fashioned parking lots that are just expanses of asphalt with lines painted on it work much better for the intended purpose — parking. Yes, they look butt-ugly and prevent rainwater from soaking into the ground. To mitigate this, parking lot designers could develop durable yet water-permeable surfaces. That would be more effective than the pathetic plantings. Swales and rain gardens around the edges of lots or along pedestrian walkways may also help.

This is the first in what may become a series of posts. Hopefully not a long series. Muttering “Why, oh why?” is not the best way to spend one’s energy.

Here are a couple of pictures that have absolutely nothing to do with parking lots.

Lewisia flowers

Bewick’s wren on ornamental wooden egg.

Counting Words

The novel I’m writing (my sixth) is proving to be a bit of a struggle. In my memory, writing the other five was a silky-smooth process, in which I effortlessly spun out an endless stream of words whenever I sat down at the desk.

Well, it probably wasn’t like that. When I concentrate, I remember plenty of occasions when I sat there, staring at the giant rubber plant (now in a better world), trying to shape another scene.

But this time around, “flow” simply isn’t the word. Scraping, beating, cobbling, hewing — those are the words that come to mind. I’m getting blisters on my imagination.

Part of the problem is that this time, I’m fixated on wordcount. I’ve decided I want to end up with a first draft of 90,000 to 100,000 words, of which I may delete 10,000 to 20,000. Having too many words feels better than too few. It’s as though writing is a weird kind of sculpture — first I hew out a block of stone, and then I reduce it to its final shape. I don’t want to limit myself with a block that’s too small to start with.

I wondered if this warped the process. Instead of letting the plot unfurl organically, I set myself a goal to crank out a minimum of 6,000 words to present at the monthly meetings of my longtime critique group. Before that, I wasn’t writing at all, letting days go by while I played the procrastination game of waiting for the perfect day or moment. Now, with this self-imposed deadline, I’ve been diligently beavering away for five months, and technically am one third of the way through the first draft.

While this approach is getting me to produce, I’m wondering if I’m just churning out crap of which 98 per cent will have to be rewritten. In other words, if I’m just faking it. Okay, the critiquers seem to think the work has potential, but I haven’t reached a point where they can really see the shape of the finished novel. Which is a problem in itself. Or, maybe not — at least the plot isn’t predictable.

This leads to the question of whether it’s better to write too much and cut out a lot in rewrites, or too little and have to flesh out and add stuff. I’ve always taken the more is better approach, and now that the thing is finally coming to life, I intend to press on and test that idea later.

So, back to the quarry…

Images courtesy of Pixabay

Amaryllis

I’ve had a couple of amaryllis bulbs languishing in pots in a south-facing basement window for years. A purchased bulb bloomed and then split into smaller bulbs, which I dutifully potted up. Most of the time they do nothing but grow leaves now and then, but several weeks ago, to my surprise, I noticed one of them was developing a bud. Great excitement! I brought the plant out of exile to a prime spot on the table in an east-facing bay window.

Two big red flowers opened in due course, and lasted for a full two weeks.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t the usual time for these plants to bloom. I associate them with late winter, but maybe that’s because they are sold around Christmas time, and are often given as gifts. I recall occasions when mine (probably different manifestations of this same plant) bloomed in September. I reasoned that they may somehow have known it was spring in the southern hemisphere, since their place of origin is South Africa.

Out of season or not, I enjoyed the company of these gaudy and impressive flowers. Now that they have withered, the plant’s new leaves look rather elegant, so I’ll delay its return to the basement.

The trick now is to manage the plant so it will repeat the performance some day. I won’t even try to guess when that might be.

Audrey Driscoll's Blog

Elements and Transformations