Category Archives: Writing

Jul 16
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Where did the Title Star Rider on the Razor’s Edge come from?

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Having adventures provides important material for authors to write about. For example, Hemmingway was known for big game hunting and fishing, and for his fascination of watching bullfights. My character’s adventures come out of some of my own experiences such as backpacking in the Rockies, canoeing in the Boundary Waters, exploring caves, and skydiving.

When writing the Star Rider series I drew on these skills. Originally the title of the first book in the series didn’t include the words Star Rider. Its title was On the Razor’s Edge.

Before it was published, I was walking along the street when I saw a movie Marquee displaying a new movie On the Razor’s Edge. I stood there amazed that there was a movie with my book’s title. With a little research, I discovered the movie was based on a novel by Somerset Maugham Titles aren’t copyrighted, but I didn’t want my book to have the same title as an already-published, well-known novel.

Grateful for my discovery, I changed the name of my book to Star Rider on the Razor’s Edge.In my story, the heroine, code name Star Rider, walks the razor’s edge in pursuit of high ideals such as integrity, honesty, courage, and truthfulness.

Maugham’s book is about the search for meaning in life and the clash between materialism and spirituality.

Maugham was the most popular author of his era. He was known mainly for his short stories. The most famous one is Rain. Itis the story of a missionary trying to save the soul of a prostitute in Pago Pago. The name Rain is partly based on the fact the Pago Pago harbor has the highest annual rainfall in the world.

In the story, the missionary is a tyrant, unwilling to learn about the native people and their culture. He feels justified in forcing Christianity on them. What makes Rain interesting is that the ending can be interpreted in two different ways. It leaves the reader pondering the ending.  

Here is a link to an audio version of the story

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Jul 31
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the News. 

By | Art, Writing | No Comments

Why is AI so controversial?

AI has been in the news a lot these days. At first, people were excited by all AI could do like write a poem or make up a joke in a matter of seconds or create an award-winning piece of artwork or photography. Some writers were excited because AI could come up with a fully developed character and make illustrations of them.

Then the concerns began coming in. Would Al take jobs away from writers, artists, musicians, and other types of workers? What is the impact of AI not being able to discriminate what is real from what is a conspiracy theory or an extreme point of view? What are the privacy concerns and ethical dilemmas?

Now there are lawsuits and petitions against the creators of AI for violating copyright laws.

All these things aside, what is the difference between an AI-produced creation and a human-produced creation? Is there a difference?

I think there is. Creative people paint, write and produce music from something inside them. A need to express themselves, to communicate, to share the beauty (or horrors) they see in the world, to understand the meaning of life, and to share what they’ve discovered or learned.

A creative idea can come from a dream, meditation, inspiration, or a childhood fantasy. J K Rowling said the idea for Harry Potter “fell into her head” while riding a train. Some of Stephen King’s ideas were inspired by nightmares. My own first book came from a series of dreams. A creative person may have worked on their books for years like J. R. R. Tolkien when writing Lord of the Rings.

People draw on their experiences to write a book or do other forms of artwork. AI doesn’t have original thoughts or emotions. It can’t transcend this world and rise above human consciousness. It doesn’t have a higher consciousness or soul.

In the science fiction world, writers have been exploring the idea of advanced computers for years. I, robot was a group of stories about robots by Isaac Asimov published in 1950. 2001: A Space Odyssey was a 1968 movie about a ship’s computer malfunctioning and working against the astronauts. In 1977 Star Wars came out with two beloved droids, R2-D2 and C-3PO. Many more movies and books have come out with robots, droids, and AI since then.

What do you think of AI? Are the benefits to society greater than the risks? Have you used one of the AI programs? If so what did you think of it? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Apr 20
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J K Rowling, What’s next after Harry Potter

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In my last blog, I talked about what makes really good fiction writing. In this one, I’d like to talk about a famous fantasy author, J. K. Rowling. She did an interview with Oprah after she finished writing the last book in the Harry Potter series.

In the interview, Rowling talked about the success of the Harry Potter series being like the phenomenon of the Beatles. On her second tour of the US in New York people stood in long lines to see her at a book signing. When she walked in the door, they screamed and camera light bulbs flashed.

The series and movies made her so profitable that she became the first billionaire author.

For her next book, Rowling said she doesn’t feel like she has to do it all over again. No one expected a children’s book to leap to this kind of success. The first book in the series was rejected a dozen times before it was accepted for publication.

Rowling wanted to be a writer since she was five. The idea of the story of Harry Potter came to her when she was twenty-five riding on a bus. She had no pen to write down her ideas as they flooded in.

Every other page of the books were related to Rowling’s mother’s death. Rowling loved her mother and after she died, Rowling went into a deep depression. The dementors in the story came from her depression. The dementors had the ability to suck a person’s soul out through their mouth and drain their feelings of happiness.

Yet overall, the power of love is the thread that runs through all seven of the Harry Potter books. Love allowed Harry to live and have the help he needed to fight the dark forces.

In a Harvard speech, Rowling said it’s impossible to not have failure in your life and to use failure to gain success. Be willing to try. Rowling had nothing to lose writing Harry Potter. She was a single mother on welfare. We are all richer for Rowling’s success. She cultivated a love of reading in a whole generation of children. One fan said, “You were my childhood.”

When Oprah asked Rowling if she was going to keep writing, she said “I can’t stop writing. I need to do it.” I think that is the reason many people write or do any other creative activity. We write because that’s what we’re passionate about and love to do.


A friend of mine is a fine artist and she expressed the same sentiments. She said, “I paint because that is what I do.”

In conclusion, do what you’re passionate about to add more meaning to your life.

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Feb 06
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Have you ever wondered where authors come up with their idea?

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Dear Friends,

Have you ever wondered where authors come up with their ideas for stories? Ideas come from everywhere such as reading an interesting article in the newspaper that sparks the imagination, a person’s own experiences, and hearing stories. Last week, my husband and I were up at Tofte, MN on Lake Superior. My mother owns a house on the lake and it’s a good place to write while listening to the waves crashing into the rocky shoreline and enjoying the peaceful setting. A blanket of freshly fallen snow covered the ground.

One day we walked to a nearby art gallery. The artist, Ron, who owns it is a friendly man and shared a bear story. He lives north of Tofte and one day he was putting food in the bird feeder near his house when he turned around and there was a black bear right in back of him. I make note of stories like this as you never know when they might come in handy. I’ve used He had a pan in his hand so he smacked the bear with it and yelled. The bear ran off. But then it stopped and turned to look at him. They stared at each other for a moment, then the man started yelling and banging his pan against the house and the bear ran off. Since then, the man has frequently seen the bear around. I’m thinking. “Dude, get rid of the bird feeder!” You don’t want anything around that attracts bears. I learned that when we were camping this fall in Glacier National Park.

I use my own experiences and encounters with bears and other wild animals as the basis of scenes in my books. Even though I write science fiction, I use real animals on Earth for ideas in creating an alien animal. There are some pretty amazing animals on our planet.

In my most recent novel, Call of the Eagle, in one scene the main characters, Fawn and Baymond, are alone in  the wilderness and have an encounter with an animal. Here is a short excerpt from the book showing how I took some of my own experiences with bears combined with stories I’ve heard to create a scene.

The aroma of the fish cooking filled Baymond’s nostrils and his stomach rumbled. It would be the first good meal they’d had since leaving the space station. The thought of eating the fish was pleasantly rolling through his head when he heard a deep growl followed by Fawn’s scream.

Baymond’s eyes flashed open as a large snarling beast ran toward him. Before he had a chance to move, it sunk its teeth into his thigh. He cried out in pain and blindly struck out at the animal with his fists. He started to rise, but the creature swatted him, ripping his jacket and shirt to shreds, and knocking him to the ground.

Fawn grabbed a branch from the fire and began hitting the beast with the burning end. The creature rose onto its hind legs, towering above her, and snarled. Fawn grabbed a branch from the fire and hit the beast with the burning end. The creature rose onto its hind legs, towering above her, and snarled.”

The next time you read a book, you might want to ponder what experience led the reader to write that scene. Or if you’re a writer pay attention to a unusual experiences you can use in your novel.

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Nov 17
0

Wisdom from Hawaiian Artist and how it applies to Writing

By | Art, Uncategorized, Writing | No Comments

Angela Treat Lyon is a prolific and versatile artist who does drawings, paintings and sculpture. When I went to Angela’s site, I was struck by her art work especially the sculptures. I was also struck by her words and how they apply to all types of artists, including writers.

On her home page, Angela says when people asked her what her painting meant, she thought the person should allow the piece to speak for itself, not realizing that not everyone knows how to do that. A writer has to take that into consideration as well. An author wants a book to speak for itself, but a story means different things to different people depending on their past experiences and background.

For example, one person may relate to the characters camping in the wilderness like my characters, Fawn and Baymond, in Call of the Eagle. Other people may have never camped and be curious as it what the experience is like.

Angela said that a seasoned collector told her that people want an experience, to be drawn in as she was drawn in. “To be in your shoes as you create and bring this painting and sculpture into manifestation.” This is true for writers as well, the reader wants to be drawn into the story world, so they feel almost as if they are the character. In Call of the Wind as the reader you can experience what it’s like to ride on a sand tiger and feel the wind against your skin as you race across the desert.

This newsletter is another way I bring you into my author world, revealing how I create my stories, my characters and their adventures.

Angela, went on to say, “They (the viewers) want a shift of thinking that leads them from ordinary, everyday consciousness – a journey into the world created by the image or the sculpture – and out the other side with a new, wonderful perception.” This again applies to novels. The reader wants to be transported from their everyday world and journey into the story world where they are transported into a new exciting perception.

Angela goes on to say: “Art is about creating and transmitting new perceptions to you, the viewer. So that’s what I strive for: pieces that take you, the viewer, to another experience, another world, another realm, where you can enjoy rich, gem-like blasts of fantasy color, or rounded, voluptuous sculptural forms, and whimsical or powerful, poignant emotion.” Again this applies to authors as well. The writer takes the reader to another experience, another world or realm.

In my book, Call of the Wind, you can enjoy what it’s like to travel by spaceship to another planet where the people have green skin and gills, so they can swim without coming up for air. You can experience a world where the people are less technologically advanced, yet have skills we don’t have like communicating inwardly.

Here is a link to Angela Treat Lyon’s website.

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Jun 16
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How Dune brought Sci-Fi into Recognition

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Recently, a friend read my novel Call of the Wind and said she didn’t know why it was called a space opera. I explained what the term meant and told her Star Wars, Star Trek, and Dune were space operas. I thought some of you might also be wondering what the term means.

Here is what I found online. A Space Opera takes place in spacefaring civilization set in another time and often in another galaxy. It has epic characters, a big universe, empires, and political conflict. It has space battles, a love story, princesses, strong handsome heroes and beautiful, feisty heroines, and powerful villains. Technology is secondary to the story compared to hard science fiction. Adventure is secondary to war compared to military science fiction.

The term space opera started out with negative connotations like soap opera, but as the genre became more popular the term lost its derogatory meaning. One of the books that helped space operas become accepted was Dune. A new version of the movie Dune was released recently, and I happily watched it on my plane flight to St. John in January.

The movie inspired me to reread Frank Herbert’s novel Dune. The book brought science fiction into recognition as an important genre in the same way as J. R. R. Tolkien’s Hobbit brought fantasy into recognition. Dune came out in 1965 and by 1970 it had sold 10 million copies. It has been made into two movies and a TV series.

At the end of the novel, Frank’s son Brian Herbert wrote an Afterword. In it, he says that as a child the characters in Dune competed with him for his father’s affections. Frank Herbert spent more time with Paul Atreides (the fifteen-year-old main character) than he did with his son Brian.  It took 9 years for Frank to research and write the book, including four years of research.

Frank Herber didn’t have an easy time getting it published. His agent submitted it to twenty different publishers. It was finally picked up by Chilton Books, known for their auto repair books. It was rejected partly because it is 215,000 words—most books at the time were a quarter to a third that length. It’s also a complex novel with many new words. Initial sales were slow but it won the Nebula and Hugo awards for best novel of the year and sales started rising.

Frank Herbert continued the series with five more books. Brian Herbert finished the sixth book in the series after his father died.

So science fiction writers have a lot to thank Frank Herbert for in bringing sci-fi out of the ghetto of literature. 

Click here for a link to the trailer of the movie Dune

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Jul 12
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What is a Visionary Fiction genre book?

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I am a member of the Visionary Fiction Alliance on Facebook because my novels are in the Visionary Fiction genre as well as the historical or sci-fi genres.  Visionary Fiction is a relatively new genre and has a crossover with Spiritual Fiction.  On the Visionary Fiction Alliance site, some authors shared ideas of what Visionary Fiction means to them. 

 

Theresa Crater, author of  said:Beneath the Hollowed Hill

“I was recently invited to a book club and one of the women told a story about her experience walking into the Holocaust Museum in Israel. She said she was drawn to a particular corner and as she walked toward it, she knew what she’d find. She knew the names of those who’d been killed. Knew what the place looked like before she saw the pictures. She felt that she’d been in that place in a past life or somehow was spiritually connected to those people. Then she told me she’d always dismissed that experience because she didn’t think humans could have that kind of knowledge – until she read my book.

“Visionary Fiction affirms people’s spiritual experiences and offers a vision of possibilities. It does this without a lot of dogma. It teaches spirituality without preaching or requiring people to join a group. It portrays old traditions that have been lost or repressed, widening people’s ideas of religion and human potential. Plus, it’s fun to read and write.”

What Crater says is true. A story can validate a person’s own spiritual experience. It should be done in a way that doesn’t preach yet lets the reader draw their own conclusions about the character’s experiences. 

 

My historical fiction novels are based on my own remembrances of past lives, but are written in such a way that it’s good entertainment, whether or not you believe in reincarnation. 

 

In my sci-fi books, some characters have past-life remembrances, out-of-body experiences, or a near-death experience.  These episodes lead to the characters growing and changing from their experiences.

 

Another quality mentioned in the Visionary Fiction Group was at the end of the book the reader should be uplifted in some way. I feel this is important.  Even though the characters go through many challenges, they should show courage, perseverance and triumph in some way. I also like to include an element of love, both divine and human, and a character who serves as a spiritual teacher or mentor for the main character.

What books have you read that are Visionary Fiction?  Are you attracted to uplifting stories?

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Jul 25
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Five qualities of a good novel as shown in the book Shane

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Shane

I just finished reading the classic western Shane by Jack Schaefer, which was published in 1949 and made into a movie in 1953.  The novel set me to reflecting on what made it a best-seller that is still read in schools and has stayed popular for so many years.  As the St. George Daily Spectum wrote: “Shane is a work of literature first and a Western second.”  What qualities does it have that make it a work of literature?

Interestingly, the novel opens at a slow pace.  Today’s writers are taught to open with action or grab the reader’s attention in some way.  However, in this book the author takes his time introducing the characters and setting. The result is very effective.

Here is the opening paragraph: “He rode into our valley in the summer of ’89.  I was a kid then, barely topping the backboard of father’s old chuckwagon.  I was on the upper rail of our small corral, soaking in the late afternoon sun, when I saw him far down the road where it swung into the valley from the open plain beyond.” (p. 1)

For the next eight paragraphs, the boy continues to describe the horseman as he rides closer and closer, then finally into the farmstead where the boy observes him.

This slow pace allows the reader to see the stranger and enter into the world the boy, Bob, lives in.  It is told from the intimate first-person point of view.  We see the horseman, the small town, the river and the fork in the road as the rider draws closer and finally into view.  Bob tells us the stranger’s clothes are different from the local people.  He wears tall boots and a belt, both made of a soft black leather tooled in intricate design and a “finespun” linen shirt.

A child’s viewpoint is an interesting way to tell the story because Bob is a keen observer of life, yet he is young and doesn’t understand everything that’s going on.  We, as the reader, left to our own interpretation of people and events, have deeper insights into what is going on.

The plot is fairly straight-forward.  Bob and his parents live on a farm and a mysterious stranger rides onto their land and asks for a drink of water.  The father, Joe, soon recognizes that Shane is the kind of man whom nobody will push around and asks him to stay as a farmhand.

Shane hires on and is loyal to the family, so when a powerful rancher tries to drive out the local farmers, Shane is pulled into the deadly conflict.

The story focuses more on character development than action and the topics of courage, honor, love and heroes are explored.

The book is relatively short, yet it will draw you in from the beginning and keep you reading to the end, leaving you to ponder its depth and layers of meaning.

The reader never does find out about Shane’s background and what it is he’s trying to escape.  He finds serenity and inner peace on the farm, but this is broken by the tension in town between the farmers and the large rancher.

So what makes this a good novel?

  1. It has well-developed characters with heroic qualities that we care about.
  2. It has an interesting plot with high stakes, both in terms of how the outcome will affect the character’s lives and how it will force them to grow and change.
  3. It has great descriptions and metaphors. Here is the boy’s description of a stump. “It was big enough, I used to think, so that if it was smooth on top you could have served supper to a good-sized family.” (p. 18)
  4. The author, Jack Schaefer, shows the reader what’s going on instead of telling him, leaving the reader to interpret the situation.
  5. The story has good pacing that gradually builds to the climatic ending.

In conclusion, Shane is a great read for anyone who enjoys a good western.  For writers, it’s an interesting study in what makes a good novel.  As you read the book, look for the five qualities listed above and ask yourself the following questions:

  1. What draws the reader into a story and keeps them there?
  2. What universal values and ideas make the story worth telling?

I invite you to share your thoughts in the comments section.  What do you think makes a good novel?  What qualities do you look for in a book?

If you’ve read Shane, I’d also like to hear your thoughts on the characters and story.

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