Tag: Writing

The Monster and the Prince

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction Friday2 Comments

Sometimes, the muse is fickle.  Sometimes a story starts out beautifully, and then completely stalls out.  So this is fair warning that today’s Fiction Friday is from a story that never got finished.  It went beautifully for about four chapters, and then I ran into some major issues, and went on to a different project.  I may come back to this one, but for now it’s incomplete.  I know the full plotline so if anyone’s really curious I can tell you about it, but it hasn’t been written yet.

But I thought the first chapter was pretty entertaining, and I hope you might find it that way too, even without the rest of the story to follow.

This is in the same world as The People the Fairies Forget, but a different time and a different country.  Fun bit of trivia: the countries in this world all have names inspired by fairy tale writers (or retellers).  This story is mostly set in Gaicaveene, which is named for Gail Carson Levine, and Rokinlay, named for Robin McKinley.

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            She looked up at the castle and shivered.  It was cold and there was a wind blowing—but it wasn’t that kind of shiver.  And it wasn’t, from appearance, the kind of castle that should make a person shiver.  It was a shiver that should be prompted by looming parapets of crumbling stone, moss grown walls and birds of prey winging beneath a full moon.  It wasn’t a shiver that one would expect from gleaming white towers, rooftops shining golden beneath an afternoon sun, and pennants waving gaily in the wind.

            She pulled her silk scarf more tightly across her face and told herself to stop being excessively imaginative.  It was a bad habit.

Continue reading “The Monster and the Prince” →

Hanging Out with Some Favorite Characters

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction Friday1 Comment

In keeping with this week’s focus on picture books, I thought I’d share a drawing for Fiction Friday.  I never claimed to be a great artist, but every so often–usually when I’m having writer’s block–I’ll turn my hand towards drawing instead of writing for a little while.  I still think in terms of stories, so most of the time my drawings will still end up being of characters or some kind of story in themselves.

One of my favorite and by far most complicated drawings is a scene I did of the main characters from each of my major stories hanging out together.  If you click, you can see it larger.

 

The setting is The Nightingale, an inn which features in The People the Fairies Forget.

Starting from the far left, we have Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, playing the piano.  With him is Meg Giry, who has a small role in Leroux’s Phantom, a larger role in Webber’s, and a lead role in my Phantom story.

Behind the counter are Catherine and Anthony, major characters in the later part of The People the Fairies Forget.  Catherine gets into trouble when Cinderella’s shoe fits her.  When not dealing with problems like that, they run The Nightingale

Floating in midair in front of the counter is my fairy, Tarragon.  Tarry is magically repairing the eggs which were broken by Sam Jones, who tripped and fell across the floor.  Jones could be from any of these stories; he has at least a cameo in all of them, and is apt to trip in all of them too.

Sitting at the back table are Dr. McCoy, Captain Kirk, and Mr. Spock, who beamed down from the Enterprise.

At the other table we have Captain Red Ballantyne with his feet up on an adjoining chair, deep in conversation with Captain Jack Sparrow.  Tamara, who comes from the same story as Red, is sitting by the table chatting with Rodney the squirrel, who Jack met in my Pirates of the Caribbean story.  Red’s Girl isn’t a fantasy, but if I’m going to stretch things to bring all of these people together, I decided Tam could talk to Rodney.

If you’re curious about the little details, the pictures on the back wall are, from left, a nightingale, a cornfield, a sailing ship, the Paris Opera House, and the Starship Enterprise.

I find that when I spend a lot of time writing about characters, they stay in my head in a way that no other characters do.  So in a way, it makes perfect sense to think about them spending time together.  And it’s fun to imagine how they would interact.

If you could bring characters from any fictional source together to hang out for the evening, who would you choose?

Jones and the Pigs

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction FridayLeave a comment

A few weeks ago I wrote about my recurring character, Sam Jones, and shared one of his early adventures aboard the Enterprise.  I thought it would be fun to share a more recent adventure too.  Today I have a story about another Jones-incarnation.  This Jones is less law-abiding than the security guard from the Enterprise, considering he’s a pirate aboard Captain Red Ballantyne’s Ocean Rose.  Some things, however, like Jones’ clumsiness, never change.

This scene is pretty far along in Red’s Girl, but most of the context isn’t necessary.  All you really need to know is that the Rose is in port, and Red, Tam and Jones have come ashore, where they need to, ah, borrow a wagon.  Red specifically brought Jones with the idea that he might need some uproar, commenting earlier in the chapter, “Jones might’ve seemed like a strange choice [to bring], but I had a hunch I’d need to create some chaos.  Jones can create more chaos just walking down the street than most folk could with a week of planning.”

The group splits up to explore the docks and look for any wagons that aren’t being watched.  Red continues to narrate this scene.

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           When we regrouped, Tam hadn’t seen any wagons without people and with horses, and Jones had only seen one, which had a dozen pigs in the back.

            “Pigs could complicate things,” I acknowledged.  “Fortunately, I saw a wagon with only one person watching it.  He looked bored and probably happy to be distracted.”

            No one was watching the pigs.  Time to take advantage of Jones’ chaos-creating talents.  Continue reading “Jones and the Pigs” →

Writing Advice from Gail Carson Levine

On By cherylmahoneyIn Juvenile, Reviews8 Comments

If I had read Writing Magic by Gail Carson Levine when I was twelve, I think it would have changed my life.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t published until I was several years past twelve, and I didn’t read it until I was in college.  But it was still an excellent read then.

Writing Magic, as you may have guessed, is a book about writing, by one of my favorite authors.  I reviewed her best-known book, Ella Enchanted, early on in this blog.  Writing Magic is a wonderful book for kids who want to write.  It’s filled with good advice of all sorts: save what you write; jot down ideas; pay attention to details; make your characters suffer sometimes.  She covers coming up with ideas, writing the actual story, and working through revisions.  The book discusses practical things like the best way to write dialogue, and discusses why you might feel inspired to write to begin with.  And there are writing prompts at the end of every chapter.

This is a great book on writing, and I think it would also be a lot of fun for anyone who has read Levine’s novels–at least, it was for me!  She illustrates writing lessons with examples from her own books–not only by plucking scenes out of the published books, but also sharing pieces of earlier drafts, or talking about what a story started out looking like, and how her ideas changed along the way.  I love knowing the story behind the story.

If you get to the end of the book and want more, there’s good news: Levine has a blog.  It’s a lot like an extension of this book, with discussions on aspects of writing (and writing prompts at the end of each post).  One thing I particularly enjoy about it is the emphasis on young adult/children’s fantasy.  It makes sense–that’s what she writes, after all–and it’s fun to see a genre written about which is not so much a focus in more literary writing books I’ve read, and not at all a focus in most of my writing classes.  And don’t feel that you have to write children’s fantasy to get anything out of her blog (or her book).  The advice is good across genres; it just has a flavoring of children’s fantasy, and is more likely to use fairy tales than Virginia Woolf to draw an example.

The only reason Writing Magic didn’t change my life was that it reached me at a point when I had already read other books on writing, taken a lot of writing classes, and just had already heard a lot of the advice Levine gives.  It was still helpful!  Just less life-altering than it would have been at a younger age.  The gift of this book is that she’s put all this advice I picked up piecemeal together in an engaging way that I think kids will find appealing and relatable.  It might have got me farther along faster in my writing to have all of this advice dropped in my lap at a younger age.  So if you know a kid who likes to write–send them to get advice from Gail Carson Levine.

Author’s blog: http://gailcarsonlevine.blogspot.com/ (and it’s linked over in my list too!)

On the Run from the Royal British Navy

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction FridayLeave a comment

I already shared the beginning of my Golden Age of Piracy story, and this week I want to give you another scene.  The last excerpt introduced you to my pirate captain, Red Ballantyne, but you get to know him better here, especially since he takes over the narration.  Red and Tam go on to alternate narrating the rest of the story.

This is early, so there isn’t a lot of background needed–you can read the preceding scene here.  In sum, Tam has already asked Red for a job on his ship and been turned down, but when officers of the Royal British Navy showed up at the tavern, Red needed Tam’s help to lead him through the crowd to the back door.  That’s about it so far–except that “Tam” is short for “Tamara,” something Red doesn’t know yet.

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            I don’t know why Navy men can’t stay in their own kind of tavern—do you suppose Navy officers even go into taverns for the pleasure in it, or are they too restrained for that?—and just leave me alone.  Me, I’m Red Ballantyne, captain of the Ocean Rose, handsome, debonair and charming, effective with any make of weapon and loved by many women in many ports.  That’s what the stories say.  If they’re not saying that, I’d like to know the reason why not.  The stories should also be telling you that my Rosie is the finest ship that ever sailed any seven of the Seven Seas.  Sure, I’m only intimately familiar with ships in the Caribbean, but I’d still wager money that Rosie’s the best anywhere, barring none.  I’d give you my word on it except that I’m a liar and a rogue, so my word isn’t worth much. 

            Rosie really is something special, though.  I was very much wanting to get back to her, as I pushed through a crowded tavern with the Navy in pursuit.  It was lucky that me and the kid I was following belonged in this sort of place.  We were suitably unkempt; my coat’s the same color blue as the Navy’s, but the effect is different when you wear it open and cut off the cuffs and lapels.  We belonged, the Navy didn’t, and in some crowds that makes a difference.  This crowd let us through without hardly noticing they were doing it.  They tripped the Navy when they thought they could get away with it.

Continue reading “On the Run from the Royal British Navy” →