Tag Archives: adventure

The Wattpad Experiment

For years, my friend, Mia Meade, has been encouraging me to try WattPad out. I’ll be honest–I tried it before I met her and had no success. But after talking to Mia and reading “How Authors Can Use Wattpad to Sell Books and Earn Money” by Linda Poitevin, I’ve decided to give it a go and blog about my experience.

 

The challenge was to figure out which story to use as a tester. I currently have three books in the works (The Carrington Pulitzer Revelation Chronicles Online Extended PlayPack–science fiction, young adult; Indoctrination–Book Two of The New Recruit; and Re-vamped (paranormal/supernatural), but they are in various stages of editing and won’t be ready to publish for a while yet.

In the end, I decided to re-issue The Revenant: A YA Paranormal Thriller with Zombies. The plan is to post a chapter a week as Poitevin suggests and to blog as I do. In the meantime, I will be reading other authors in my genre, add to my library, vote, and comment. I will also be posting to social media as I go. In addition, I will be reading a number of resources on how to use Wattpad for fun and profit and share what I learn with you.

The Revenant: A YA Paranormal Thriller with Zombies can be found on Wattpad at https://www.wattpad.com/story/134197850-the-revenant. This is a completed novel that can be purchased on Amazon, B & N, iBooks, and Kobo.

If you Wattpad, please look me up, vote for my book and follow me. I’m interested to connect with you, both here and on Wattpad. After you’ve read a chapter or two, come back and let me know what you think.

Literary Devices from A to Z – Brought to you by the letter I

 

 

 

is for Imagery

 

 

 

Imagery refers either to vivid, sensory description in writing or a recurring image linked to themes or symbols.

One example of the latter occurs in Macbeth when Shakespeare uses clothing imagery to show Macbeth is not up to the kingship he has stolen. When Macbeth learns he has earned the title thane of Cawdor he asks,

Why do you dress me in borrow’d robes? (I.ii)

because he has yet to learn of the former thane’s execution. Later in the play, Angus says of Macbeth,

Now does he feel his title hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief (V.ii)

to say Macbeth is not worthy of his title, alluding to his suspicion that he stole the title rather than come by it honestly.

New writers are often told to show and not tell, don’t tell your reader when a character has smiled–describe her face, the curl of her lips, the gleam of her eye, the wrinkles that form around her mouth and eyes.

In Chicken or Egg: A Love Story, Nigel learns of Paula’s death and rushes to the scene. He finds her zipped into a body bag and loaded into an ambulance. He’s told she’s in rough shape by one of the EMTs, but he’s so overcome with regret that he’d never told her of his feelings for her that he climbs into the ambulance and unzips the body bag.

The ambulance’s interior smelled of disinfectant and alcohol, an odour that began to turn Nigel’s stomach before long,..He brushed away a blood-soaked lock of hair from her forehead. It left behind a copper trail. Her skin was pale, her lips and cheeks inordinately red where her makeup had clung in spite of the blood that had left her.

In this example, the reader can recall the medicinal smell of a doctor’s office or hospital emergency room, imagine Paula lying on the stretcher, pale and bloody, hair taking on a reddish hue as the result of a fatal head wound. Nigel’s feelings for Paula are exposed when he ignores the blood caked in her hair to perform one last tender gesture.

What images do you remember reading that stuck out in your mind as a brilliant, sensory-filled description? Have you written any passages containing imagery of which you are particularly proud? Share your thoughts and comments below!

Literary Devices from A to Z – Brought to you by the letter G

 

 

 

is for Genre

 

 

 

Genre is used to describe types of literature. Some examples are science fiction, young adult, supernatural, thriller, adventure, and police procedural.

In the genre of science fiction, authors take current social mores and technology and project how that might change in the future. One example of this is “Star Trek” and communicators. In “Trek”, Gene Roddenberry imagined how people might communicate in the future and came up with the small, handheld devices. It’s no coincidence that when real life engineers were designing handhelds they used the communicator as a model and came up with the flip phone. Incidentally, modern smart phones appear modelled after another “Trek” device, the PADD (personal access display device).

In Phase Shift, museums on Gaia meld high and low tech in their dioramas. A description follows:

…the display was lifeless, a series of plaster casts of various skeletal remains sitting dully on a number of podiums, arranged in chronological order according to the era of each animal’s evolution.  Now, one by one, each piece of bone is animated in turn.  I watch as the first skull grows holographic muscle and skin and then rotates a full three hundred and sixty degrees on its podium.  Following that, the hologram grows a body, a three-dimensional representation of what Gaians believe the animal to have looked like when alive.  The three-D body comes away from the skull on the podium and it, too, rotates full circle.  Lastly, for its magnum opus, the hominid looks me square in the eye and takes a series of steps toward me, leaving the diorama behind.  Once more it rotates a full three hundred and sixty degrees before vanishing into thin air.  It takes almost a full five minutes for each specimen on the Gaian human evolutionary line to cycle through its trip down the runway.

When the last specimen has finished, the gallery is once more still.

Here, holographic technology is melded with a low-tech plaster diorama to create an interactive museum display. Given the state of holographic technology today, it’s not such a long stretch to assume one day the two might be joined to make history come to life for museum patrons.

The key to writing science fiction is to make it plausible. Readers should be able to imagine a future in which the technology and social structures might exist.

How many genres of literature can you think of? Write them below and I’ll compile a master list and share it in a future blog post.

 

Literary Devices from A to Z – Brought to you by the letter F

 

 

 

is for Foil

 

 

 

Foils are characters that have opposing character traits and motivations.

An example of foils from classical literature are Macbeth and Macduff from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In this example, Macbeth is driven by ambition to suit his own, selfish needs, while Macduff’s only ambition is altruistic in nature, to put the kingdom back to rights. Macduff and his wife’s relationship is a loving one, while Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s is adversarial. Macduff has a child while Macbeth has none. Macduff is allied with Malcolm while Macbeth is his enemy. These and other traits set Macbeth and Macduff up as near polar opposites in character and desire, establishing them as foils.

In The Revenant, Morgan and his brother Malchus are constructed as opposites. Morgan is the naughty child, Malchus the good one. Morgan tends his family’s farm fields while Malchus is apprenticed to the local doctor. Morgan has the gift of foresight, something he wishes would go away while Malchus actively seeks out and embraces his power in the Dark Arts. Malchus raises Zulu from the grave for nefarious means; Morgan saves him. Morgan finds a life of purpose embracing the good while Malchus loses himself in evil. For these and other reasons, the brothers are set up as having opposing personalities, desires and motivations, rendering them foils.

Can you think of any other foils in literature or television? Post your ideas in the comments below.

 

PHASE SHIFT – Prelude

Here is the Prelude, the first chapter of my  novel PHASE SHIFT.

Enjoy.

I am laying in the dark listening to my husband’s raspy almost-snore, unable to sleep.  To keep myself occupied, I try to remember when I first knew I wanted to be an archaeologist. 

After seeing the first Indiana Jones movie as a teenager, perhaps? No, Indy merely served to bolster my interest in the field.  The real turning point came while watching a documentary called “In Search of Noah’s Ark” when I was no more than twelve, back in the time before the super cinemas.  It was then, I knew.  Wood decomposed to nothing but dark shadows in the soil, aerial photographs of well-fed vegetation, and measurements approximating those in The Bible—I still shudder in awe at the thought of it. 

My first real taste of archaeology was in the middle of a conservation area  almost an hour’s drive north of the city: dark soil dampening trouser knees and buttocks, dirt rammed under fingernails, blowing out a peppering of dust mixed with snot on the Kleenex—man!  I was hooked. 

A few years later I was near graduation and looking toward grad school.  Dr. Richardson, the head of the Archaeology department, offered to be my faculty advisor and I accepted without hesitation. He assigned me a site, the remains of a carriage house behind a restored clapboard house, built nearly two centuries ago.  The planning, supervision, excavation and analysis of the site over two years’ time would earn me my Master’s degree. 

My assistants and I arrived at the house, to find Dr. Richardson sitting on the stoop reading Scientific American, anissue featuring an article about a cache of Peruvian mummies. Dr. Richardson is a forensic anthropologist. That means he gets off on dead people and figuring out how they died.  He works extensively with the police, to give them clues as to what decomposed bodies and skeletons might have looked like while they were still living and breathing. 

We approached the stoop and he stood to greet us.  I had to crane my neck and shield my eyes from the sun in order to meet his gaze.  He smiled at me, said hello and squeezed my shoulder.  My stomach lurched.  Dr. Richardson is what we used to call “a hunk”.  The first time my mother met him she called him “a dreamboat” and said she wouldn’t throw him out of her bed for eating crackers.  The way things turned out, that comment was so many different levels of wrong. 

The house was converted to a living museum sometime in the late eighties.  The side entrance, added on around the same time, smelled of new carpet and fresh paint.  Pictures of the house in various stages of disrepair and renovation hung on the walls like windows into the past.  Dr. Richardson gave us the grand tour:  men’s parlor, women’s sitting room, dining room, upstairs ballroom, and nurseries.  A narrow staircase took us up to the third floor servants’ quarters. 

Back downstairs, Dr. Richardson showed us the kitchen.  The walls were of unfinished wood made dark by soot.  At the centre of one wall was the original hearth, complete with bake ovens.  A single wooden table stood in the middle of the room, deeply scarred through use and over time, and in the far corner, the kitchen pantry, converted to a small storage-cum-utility closet after the restorations.  Near the ceiling Dr. Richardson pointed to a series of wallpaper layers.  He recited each occupation and era by rote and I was in awe of him. 

He finished his lecture and ushered us out of our cramped quarters.  I chanced a glance up at him and he smiled at me.  A perfect three-toed crow’s foot appeared to frame the outer edge of each of his eyes.  The solitary, unshaded light bulb that dimly lit the room shone in his dark eyes—a girl could get lost in those eyes.  I blushed, embarrassed at the lust I felt for him at that moment, chastising myself for falling for my faculty advisor.  But then I reminded myself that Dr. Richardson was a good sixteen years’ my senior, and everyone knew he was seeing Suzanne Pascoe, the Egyptologist.  Dr. Richardson was safe, like a movie star.  Like a movie star, he was unattainable, and consequently, not entirely real. I told myself the crush would pass, and it eventually did.

 

Palmer’s snoring again. I nudge him, tell him to roll over, then roll over myself, wedging one hand between his rib cage and the mattress and one foot arch-deep between his thighs. He doesn’t protest. 

Sleep has eluded me this evening.  Pretty soon my bedside alarm will begin to shriek at me, signifying the start of yet another day.  I need a drink.  Tea would go down good right about now.  Hot tea with honey and lemon. 

In the kitchen I fill the kettle and plug it in. While I wait for the water to boil, I stroll into the living room and take a peek out the front window.  Two black sedans are parked on the road, each facing opposite directions, waiting for me in case I decide to take it on the lam.  Inside each car sits a pair of officers—which officers are out there tonight is anybody’s guess. The possibilities read like a who’s who for law enforcement:  CIA, CSIS, OPP… It’s funny how quickly things spiral out of your control:  yesterday I was an archaeology professor considering earning my doctoral degree. Today I am the prime suspect in a murder investigation.

The kettle begins to boil.  I unplug it.  Sometime between eying the sedans and thinking about the death I may have expedited, I’ve lost my appetite for tea.

I return to bed, drawing my body close to Palmer’s, more for security than warmth.  I find solace in the fact I was right about one thing when I was struggling with that crush on my faculty advisor all those years ago:  Palmer Richardson is safe.