A person in tattered clothing; a ragged or beggarly fellow; a ragamuffin.
OED
Holiday gift giving is upon us!
Don’t know about you, but I tend to ignore most of the marketing in my inbox, most of the time.
So here’s a blog post for intrepid souls who have ventured this far into my lair.
This week is marketing week, to get the word out before the supply chain for printing books is overwhelmed. Here’s your reminder (for anyone new to my site or my newsletter) that I have 3 kid-appropriate books available that would make great gifts.
The Crow Magic series follows the adventures of a young girl who discovers that not only does she have magical powers she must learn to control, she inherited the ability to shape shift as well. During her second adventure, she is joined by a young girl who has abilities Suli has never heard of, but which are key to restoring the magic to their world.
The third book, The Wharf Rat Guild,is appropriate for slightly older teens and adults, with a fifteen-year-old protagonist who also has unusual abilities. It’s based on the true history of the Restoration period in England, a time when “surplus labor” and radical ideas of liberty, freedom, and democracy were the cargo exported to the new world.
Awards Eligibility – The Wharf Rat Guild
I’ve never done this before, but what the heck?
I published The Wharf Rat Guild just last month, so not many people will have read it. Still, it made its way into the world in spite of COVID, so I am proud of it. It’s historically accurate, mostly, so I think of it as historical fantasy.
I enjoyed writing it, I like the characters, it kept me sane and on the balance beam of writing, and I hope it brings pleasure to someone else.
If y’all want to give me an award for not giving up, I will gratefully accept, and name all the writers who have helped get me through the past year and to this point, living and dead.
There, that’s my awards post.
The grey heron has returned
The grey heron is back, on the crest of the hill, just after the rain. This makes me so happy, as though the world was forgiving our gas-guzzling stupidity, just a tiny bit.
I know a wildlife biologist would explain it’s because the rain brings out what they like to eat.
And I know rain is the important factor. I haven’t seen one since the last time it rained. Welcome back, pointy-beaked friend, who eats unfortunate gophers. On the other hand, the rain finally returning feels like forgiveness too, so possibly both are correct.
Is it too early for the frogs to return after the apocalyptic drought? I don’t hear them in the creek yet.
“Is that your turkey?”
Friends, a turkey story for you.
I had to drive quite a ways from where I live to find a vaccination site (perfectly legit, offered by my health provider) and since the appointment time was near lunchtime, I brought my lunch and sat in the parking lot, happily eating it.
Picture 2 acres of asphalt in a corporate office park, near major freeways, a parking lot so big that Amazon stages its delivery vans there and you can watch the drivers park and change into their uniforms (I didn’t even know they had uniforms).
So I am happily munching, with plenty of time before my appointment, when I notice movement in my side mirror, and I glance that way.
Then I glance back, thinking I am imagining things. A very striking black woman, in a candy cane striped red and white wig, white stockings, red shoes, purple dress, red walker, is chasing a turkey around a bright red SUV.
Two things occur to me.
One: the turkey is one of those who attack their reflection in the hub cabs of SUVs (it has to be a large vehicle apparently) assuming it is another male intruding into their territory. But that’s the Toms, and I thought this turkey was female.
Or
Two: This woman and this turkey are very good friends.
I cannot help myself. I open my door and yell, “Is that your turkey?”
“Yes, but he’s running away from me!” She’s laughing. She’s having fun chasing the turkey, not afraid of it at all.
I cannot tell if the turkey is laughing.
I deeply regret that they disappeared before I was able to snap a photo. I turned away to prevent my lunch from sliding into the footwell, but I am firmly convinced the turkey was coaxed into the shiny red SUV.
I packed up my lunch with the feeling that I was not living the life I could be living. I could be wearing a wig that looks edible, a purple dress, and be laughing as I drive my turkey around town in my ruby SUV.
I got in line 5 minutes early, got the jab, sat in the “are you going to die?” waiting room for the required time, and then started the drive home.
Feeling much cheered by the encounter.
A Local Mystery
Who has been adding these wonderful birdhouses and sculptures to our local stop signs?
The main reason I live in this tiny community is because I love seeing wild animals, especially right now, as the spring migrations begin and the red tailed hawks come through.
On my daily walks I see turkey vultures, a blue heron, turkeys, rabbits, quail, falcons, crows, and the odd coyote, but lately a strange new wildlife has been appearing on our stop signs.
So far, I’ve seen elaborate birdhouses, and sculptures of a quail mother and her fledglings, as well a flock of geese (hmm).
Just recently, Dr. Who’s Tardis appeared. Apparently we are now signaling that our community is welcoming the Doctor with open arms.
Whoever the mystery person is, they’re making my neighborhood a much happier, more whimsical place.
Thank you, mystery person!
Russian readers?
I am thrilled to announce that The Third Kind of Magic is now available from the largest Russian publisher of children’s books, EKSMO. The second Crow Magic book, The Cursed Amulet will be published in Russian soon! It was a long process, and I learned a lot about publishing (and auto-translation of emails) along the way.
If you read Russian, or know someone who does, visit the link below.
“Oh, just one more thing…”
Lately my life has been a Columbo episode. Just one d### thing after the other.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back the water, just when you thought that pesky morphing alien was dead, just when you were sure that the vampire had a stake through its heart, just when you thought Gojira had sunk to the bottom of the ocean…something gruesome lifts its slimy head and…the to-do list gets longer. Again.
I am talking about getting a book out the door, and the pesky tasks that happen in its wake. I think I’ve swept all the broken glass from the floor, but be careful where you step.
I need to say a big sparkly heroic THANK YOU to all the folks who’ve helped me on the way. Here’s the list:
- For services above and beyond the call of duty, my beta reader extraordinaire, Bryan-Kirk Reinhardt. Not only did he read more than one draft, he cheerfully said he’d do it again.
- Laura Blackwell, the copy-editor on The Third Kind of Magic, who didn’t work on this last book but whose suggestions I absolutely took to heart for the second. (All extra commas and British spellings are my own.)
- Julie Dillon, the cover illustrator, who brought older Suli and her gang of friends to life and accepted my passion for purple without a murmur.
- Mary Auxier, the copy-editor who turned around the copy edit on The Cursed Amulet well before the promised date, and pointed out where logic was missing or stuff just didn’t work. Painful, but much appreciated.
- Robin J. Samuels, who did the final proofread and made my revisions so much better.
- David Blatner, who doesn’t know me from Adam, but whose lynda.com tutorial on book covers in InDesign has saved my life a couple of times. Thank you for making life-saving videos free, David!
- I have to thank my Russian publisher, EKSMO, because if they hadn’t insisted I provide them with a sequel,”and when can we have it?”, I probably wouldn’t have prioritized the half-finished ms.
- The crows in the local park who have advised me on questions of Crow protocol and laws.
- And last but never least, all the fans and reviewers of the first book who posted reviews and emailed me to tell me they liked the first book and why. Words can’t express how much it meant to me to receive that encouragement.
Thank you all. Deep bow.
The proof is in the pudding
I am in the middle of trying to pull together all the editions needed to publish the next Suli book, The Cursed Amulet.
The ARC version is ready to go, but naturally that means PGE will shut off my power for a couple of days (again), so if I want to actually send out newsletters and emails, I have to figure out some other place to be.
This is a better option than death by wildfire, but so far it seems wildfires start just as easily in the areas where the power is off as it does anywhere else. The last outage here (two weeks ago) we had a grass fire on the hills not that far from where I live (see photo above), but because the power was out, no one got a phone notification from the FD or PD or from Calfire.
Including me and I signed up my landline for precisely this reason — so if the cell towers were down I thought I’d still get a phone call. Nuh uh.
Luckily someone in that neighborhood noticed, and folks started knocking on doors in the dark, and blowing car horns.
But there’s not much point in my grumbling when most of the state is in the same fix, and people are losing their homes in Sonoma and SoCal. It’s eerie here because so many folks have left. The smoke is getting pretty oppressive, too, and that may be what forces me to leave if the power isn’t back on within 24 hours. No power = no HVAC filters (and no hot water for coffee. Must acquire camping equipment.)
The final final version of the book attends the proofreader’s leisure, but if you’d like a fairly well edited advanced reader copy in exchange for a review, let me know.
I’ll be excited about it again when I’ve survived natural disasters and software I use so rarely I’ve forgotten how.
Dragons with attitude
More Middle-grade adventures
I’ve been spending time reading through the best-selling Wings of Fire series by Tui T. Sutherland. Very entertaining, and great examples of story-telling craft.
Narrative voice and well-defined characters are why these books are so successful. Sutherland clearly lays out “here’s this character’s temperament, attitude, goals” and you know by the end of the story the crises will directly challenge all of those things.
I have enjoyed all of the books so far but I didn’t *like* all the main characters. Some I like a lot more than others, and I suspect the author did too. That, to me, is actually the most interesting aspect of the series, because it tells me what I as a reader wanted from the story. And what makes a successful hero.
I should explain that each book is told from a different character’s point of view. So you may really love one character, but boom, in the next book you have to identify with a new one.
I want courage and heroism and character growth if I am going to identify with the point of view character. If they’re cowardly, betray their friends, refuse to help others in need, then I don’t want to identify with them. And yet some of these characters do just that. I was shaking my head, wondering why we had to go there. Sure, it leaves a lot of room for character development, but it also leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Who gets to be a hero?
And yet my favorite character in the series so far is a mass murderer. There’s a lot of violence in the series, and I am ambivalent about it. But it doesn’t seem to have the same impact as it would if these were human characters. Dragons are naturally violent; or so the dragons invested in the ongoing war claim. Our heroes don’t agree with this familiar human argument.
Peril burns everything she touches; she can’t help it, it was the way she was born. An evil queen uses her as a weapon of punishment. Peril obeys her because she doesn’t know any better, until someone points out she doesn’t have to do this, that she could choose something else. How do you stop being a weapon of mass destruction? Now that’s a moral journey.
This happens in the first book of the series. When we get to Peril’s own book, we see her attempts to change who she is, as she tries to figure out how to be a good, likable dragon, even though most dragons shun her, hating her for what’s she’s done in the past.
Peril says what other people think but would never say out loud. She’s rude, blunt, and funny. She’s also smart. We don’t mind identifying with her — she’s trying, she helps others, she would do anything for the dragon she’s besotted with, and in the end she proves she really has changed, because of the choices she makes.
Peril’s character is transgressive – she doesn’t bother to be socially appropriate and polite, because that’s not going to work for her anyway. She will never be ‘acceptable.’ And we can vicariously enjoy being rude and dangerous and courageous at the same time.
She’s a great hero. I just wish she’d come back in another book.
Middle-grade point of view
It’s my second summer of reading middle-grade books and I’ve been having a great time.
A couple of marvelous books stand out.
The first is The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle. I am usually not a big fan of realistic novels for this age group because they tend to be reductionist (“here’s the bully, here’s the inattentive parent, here’s our hero battling odds, here’s the specific trendy problem that appeals to NY publishers…”) and at first glance this seems like it fits all those categories.
But someone told me this was a great book, so I tried the first few pages and was hooked.
So how is this different? Mason’s narrative voice.
Leslie Connor pulled off something extremely hard to do: she gave us a first-person POV with an unreliable narrator who is extremely appealing. Mason doesn’t understand everything that he records as part of his story–but we do. Mason is fun to hang out with, and we end up liking him a lot, just as most of the people around him do. Yes, there are quite a few adults who should be paying more attention, but the reasons they don’t see what’s happening are believable, and mean no one except the actual bad guy looks anything other than human.
Mason has some pretty serious problems: extreme dyslexia, abnormal sweating, he’s too big for his age, and his parents are dead. Kids call him stupid, and it seems he doesn’t read other people’s emotions as well as we can, just from his descriptions. He lives with his grandmother and his uncle. Their lives were turned upside down by the death of Mason’s parents and by the death of Mason’s best friend — in mysterious circumstances. It is this mystery that’s the spine of the plot.
I won’t give too much away because it’s such a fun book to read you should discover it for yourself. My only quibble is that the villain was so completely villainous, and I wasn’t comfortable with the implication that his bad behavior was caused by an absent father. But we don’t really know much about the villain’s motivations, and it doesn’t really matter, because Mason is the star.
It was great to spend time with him, with Ms. Blinny (I loved Ms. Blinny) and the people in Mason’s world.