Thursday, December 23, 2021

Anti-Santas

You've probably heard of Krampus, the horned, hairy, bipedal monster from Austrian legend who prowls in December, mainly on Saint Nicholas Day (December 6), and stuffs misbehaving children into his sack to drag them to Hell:

The Krampus Legend

He even has his own website (which appears not to have been updated recently, since the calendar of festive events refers to 2015):

Krampus.com

The Jungian shadow of Santa Claus has other traditional representatives, however. While we joke about naughty children getting coal from Santa instead of presents, those scary Yuletide figures often take over the punishment task, allowing Santa to remain the good guy. Belsnickel, a fur-clad sidekick of Santa in Germany and among German immigrants in Pennsylvania, does play a dual role. He carries both switches to beat bad children and candy for good children. Similarly, another Christmas companion from Germany, Knecht Ruprecht, gives treats to good children but switches and coal to bad ones. He may also beat the naughty kids with the bag of ashes he carries. In the Netherlands, Zwarte Piet (Black Pete, referring mainly to his sooty appearance) whips bad children with a birch rod or carries them off in his sack. Joulupukki, the Yule Goat of Finland, is sometimes portrayed as an ugly creature who frightens children.

In THE BATTLE FOR CHRISTMAS, an entertaining, in-depth exploration of how the true old-fashioned Christmas (which would look to us like a blend of Thanksgiving, Halloween, and New Year's Eve) was converted in the nineteenth century to the child-centered family holiday we know, author Stephen Nissenbaum analyzes the origins and purpose of Clement Clarke Moore's "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" (aka "The Night Before Christmas"). Nissenbaum draws striking line-by-line parallels between Moore's poem and "The Day of Doom," written by a Massachusetts clergyman in the seventeenth century and still popular in the early nineteenth. The major difference between the two works is that the poem about Saint Nicholas includes no threats of "doom" or "judgment." The "jolly old elf" offers only gifts and good cheer, no coal or switches for naughty children. Christmas was being domesticated.

Traditions of anti-Santas bring to mind THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, the movie in which Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, fascinated by the idea of Christmas but not fully understanding it, tries to appropriate the holiday because he thinks it should be more like Halloween. Likewise, in Terry Pratchett's fantasy novel HOGFATHER, when the existence of the Hogfather (the Discworld equivalent of Santa Claus) is threatened, Death steps up to save Hogswatchnight by temporarily filling the role of his fellow anthropomorphic personification. Not surprisingly, Death handles the job in rather eccentric ways. I especially like the conclusion of the novel, in which the Hogfather reverts to his primal persona as a nature deity in animal form, and only saving his life can ensure that the sun will rise at the winter solstice.

At the end of that climactic scene, Death insists that if the Hogfather had not been saved, the sun would not have risen. Susan, Death's granddaughter, asks what would have happened instead. In his customary all-caps dialogue, Death replies, "A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD."

Happy winter holiday season to all!

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Sunday, December 19, 2021

When is a Bottom Synonymous With Beauty?

Here's a scientific riddle.

Q: "When is a Bottom synonymous with Beauty?"

A: "When it's a quark."

I was thoroughly enjoying Mark Zastrow's piece on astrology.com about a newly discovered giant exoplanet  and why it is called b.Centauri b. when I was diverted in both senses of the word by his mention of a Very Large Telescope.

Rejoicing in the glorious, understated imagination of astronomers when it comes to descriptive language, particularly with regard to the "Large", I nipped off to check on the  Large Hadron Collider, and came across the gem of  that a "bottom quark" is another name for a "beauty quark".

Moreover, a bottom quark (or beauty quark) can be unpredictable. It has been known to behave badly!

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2272400-has-the-large-hadron-collider-finally-challenged-the-laws-of-physics/ 

For those of us with less astral interests, we're still thinking about well-shaped, even large, buttocks, which leads to the copyright-law related topic --naturally-- of product placement.

Legal blogger Jack Greiner --of Graydon Head & Ritchey LLP, on his highly acclaimed, award-winning Jack Out Of The Box blog-- discusses Awkward Product Placement. To wit, putting actor Chris Noth's butt on a Peloton without permission....and then killing him off (fictionally).

Great minds from Baker Hostetler LLP also found the story apparently irresistible. Amy Ralph Mudge's views on publicity, and when it is better to build on a sensational story rather than to sue, are great.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=3bec237f-04bc-44aa-8078-68a5ac88c4e6

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=3bec237f-04bc-44aa-8078-68a5ac88c4e6&utm_source=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed&utm_medium=HTML+email+-+Body+-+General+section&utm_campaign=Lexology+subscriber+daily+feed&utm_content=Lexology+Daily+Newsfeed+2021-12-16&utm_term=

Disclaimer, lest something thinks I am pumping it: I bought Peloton (PTON) stock on Friday...pretty much close to the bottom of the day.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry


 

 


Friday, December 17, 2021

Karen S. Wiesner: HOW TO SPOT DEAD OR LIFELESS CHARACTERS, PLOTS, AND RELATIONSHIPS (CPR), Part 2 (Writer's Craft Article)



Writer's Craft Article by Karen S. Wiesner

HOW TO SPOT DEAD OR LIFELESS CHARACTERS, PLOTS, AND RELATIONSHIPS (CPR), Part 2

Based on CPR FOR DEAD OR LIFELESS FICTION {A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships} by Karen S. Wiesner

This is the second of three posts focusing on how to spot dead or lifeless characters, plots, and relationships in your fiction

 It should be simple to spot dead or lifeless CPR conditions in our characters, plots, and relationships, I know, but it's unfortunately anything but. I feel your pain in identifying dead or lifeless CPR elements because it's a question that been with me from the very first book I wrote. With the need to identify dead or lifeless CPR development in mind, let's go over some general ways that should pinpoint whether any aspect is dead or merely lifeless. In the chapters that follow, identification will allow us to give the lacking areas either the kiss of life or a jolt of electricity. 

Poking and prodding your characters, plots, and relationships in all the compass points with sketches should exhibit some reaction one way or the other. When you start asking questions about all of these things, getting absolutely no response--beyond a blank, cadaverous stare--is clear enough. Yup, dead. Time of death? The moment of execution. (Forgive the really bad pun.)

Merely lifeless core elements, however, may show a few signs of life and that's what makes lethargy in development so hard to spot. As we said earlier, conceivably, some evidence of development can allow those areas that are at least functional to carry around the dead elements. In these cases where the book is already published and the functional elements are hoisting the dead ones in a sack over the shoulder, readers may even overlook your failure because the solid development of those one or two core elements gives the reader part of what he's seeking.

The identification of partial necrosis is almost always deeply startling to readers. There are times when I'm reading a story I'm enjoying but not in an in overwhelmed, obsessive way that I'll suddenly visualize the author's hand holding the character as if she's a puppet or a dead body, forcing a certain situation on the poor thing. That hand will move the character around in response to action, even thrusting another story puppet/dead body up against her in a contrived effort to make something happen between the two that's equally artificial, awkward, and not a little disturbing.

One aspect or another in a story like this is undeveloped or underdeveloped and, in the course of reading, I'll usually, eventually, figure out what's lacking. Maybe the main or secondary characters have no obvious signs of life, nothing that makes them unique, no legitimate personality, personal goals or motivations. A main character's conflicts as they're portrayed may not convince me she truly cares about them, has an intensely personal investment in them, or that they're cohesive with what's been set up as who this person is and what's she's all about in other aspects.

Whether the conflicts are internal or external, the story may not feel like it's actually hers. Events are randomly happening to her, and there's no personal connection to them. She's not authentically motivated to act in the face of what's happening to her. It may be easier for her to run away--and that goal at least may feel legit. When she's compelled to react, jerky clunkiness may be the result, more robotic than flesh and blood.

Also, her relationships might not seem quite realistic and deeply planted, growing enough to feel warm and realistic. Maybe she's going through the motions with these people who are part of her life, but even those most intimate ones don't go in-depth enough to spark emotion in me, as the reader. In the worst case scenario, I've read romance stories where relationships are integral to the genre yet those attachments had little or no depth, dimension, desire, or connection between two people who were supposed to be falling in love and making romantic, reading hearts swoon. If a romance story doesn't include strong, profoundly emotional relationships, it's failed on the most elementary level.

I've also read books and even series--some of them that were actually published--where the author has deigned to give a main character a first name, neglected the last, and sometimes doesn't bother with physical descriptions or details about the past nor "drive" for the future that would fully flesh out the character. Plots and conflicts (and the corresponding, crucial goals and motivations) are almost always spur of the moment, created scene by scene, no setup, no buildup, no curiosity, and certainly no tension. The relationships feel cold, stilted, off-focus, frequently with secondary characters that serve no other purpose in the story beyond being soundboards for the main character or, worse, merely bulking up the word count. Even if a minor effort has been made to plant foundational seeds of character, plot, and relationship, so often those seeds aren't developed and advanced properly or at all throughout the subsequent scenes in the book. They're buried so deep, it's not possible for them to come out to see the light of day and flourish.

In Part 3, we'll talk more about how to spot dead or lifeless CPR development.

Have you ever read a book with dead or lifeless plots? Leave a comment to tell me about it!

Happy writing!

Find out more about CPR FOR DEAD OR LIFELESS FICTION here: http://www.writers-exchange.com/cpr/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08JDYXMFQ

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 140 titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

https://www.goodreads.com/karenwiesner

http://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

http://www.writers-exchange.com/blog/ 


https://www.amazon.com/author/karenwiesner

Thursday, December 16, 2021

Classics and Monsters

Following the success of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES (2009), numerous mash-ups of public domain classic novels with horror creatures and tropes were published in the few years immediately following. I've recently reread LITTLE VAMPIRE WOMEN and A VAMPIRE CHRISTMAS CAROL. Are such adaptations worth reading except as bizarre novelties? Their main appeal, judging from the types of books that have been adapted, seems to be incongruity, with fiction as unlike the horror genre as possible being transmuted by the insertion of supernatural threats into the original stories. Some others, for example, are JANE SLAYRE, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS, LITTLE WOMEN AND WEREWOLVES, and WUTHERING BITES.

In my opinion, those kinds of books turn out better if they involve a certain amount of actual rewriting. From what I remember of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES, it's fun to read once but not transformative enough to comprise much more than Jane Austen's original work with zombies thrown in at suitable intervals. Granted, though, the image of Elizabeth as a trained zombie-slayer has a certain zany charm. LITTLE VAMPIRE WOMEN and A VAMPIRE CHRISTMAS CAROL, on the other hand, rewrite their prototypes more extensively, although some undigested lumps of Alcott's and Dickens's prose do stand out.

A VAMPIRE CHRISTMAS CAROL raises the question of whether the entertainment value of such crossovers fades a bit when the source text already contains elements of supernatural horror. It strikes me as not too much of a stretch to have Mr. Scrooge stalked by vampires as well as haunted by ghosts. WUTHERING BITES falls into a similar category. Vampiric motifs pervade WUTHERING HEIGHTS, with Heathcliff explicitly compared to a vampire in one line. Turning him into a literal vampire-human crossbreed, cursed by the heritage of his monstrous half, fits fairly well into the original plot. In that case, the "co-author" can't depend solely on the appeal of incongruity; she has to create a believable story with an anti-hero who inspires genuine sympathy as well as horror.

A step removed from those books, which might be considered a peculiar sort of fanfic, we find "secret histories" such as ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, which I discovered to be better than I'd expected. The criterion for such novels is that the action must remain faithful to the historical person's biography as publicly known, while inserting supernatural elements into the hidden corners of his or her life, so to speak. Queen Elizabeth, H. P. Lovecraft, Lizzie Borden, and many others have received similar fictional treatment. A January 2022 release, THE SILVER BULLETS OF ANNIE OAKLEY, by Mercedes Lackey, will introduce magic into the career of the famed sharpshooter. I don't object to this type of fiction as long as the author does conscientious research into the historical background and treats the protagonist with respect.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, December 14, 2021

Reviews 68 

Purgatory's Shore 

by

Taylor Anderson 

Reviews by Jacqueline Lichtenberg haven't been indexed yet. 

Taylor Anderson's famous Destroyermen series


 builds an alternate Earth with open dimensional gateways, usually embedded in a storm at sea.  Ships from our Earth at various periods of our Earth's history seem to fall through these gates and land on this alternate Earth with no way back.

The groups that survive the gate rebuild some semblance of what they knew on our Earth, but adjust to the vicious environment on this new Earth where giant (voracious) animals command the seas and murderous non-human people swarm the land.

Anderson pits the values of our Earth's civilizations against the Nature of this untamed Earth, and reveals many flaws and strengths within our Earth's peoples.

Having created and won an entirely different World War II than they came from, the Destroyermen sail into a relative peace with rosy prospects.  

So Anderson takes us back in time to when a few ships from the newly founded USA bound for our Yucatan fall into this new Earth's much altered Gulf Coast area, somewhat off their version of Yucatan.

This novel, Purgatory's Shore, https://amazon.com/Purgatorys-Shore-Artillerymen-Book-1-ebook/dp/B08R55VC7S/ begins a new series of the adventures of strangers cascading through the vortex into this new Earth. It is called Artillerymen, as the armed force being sent to our Yucatan sported state of the art artillery units who really knew what they were doing with a canon.


Purgatory's Shore is a war novel -- and little much else. It does show us how the rag-tag survivors of the American force manage to pull together an alliance of various city-states (some not human populated) to combat a religion driven, empire building, movement which, in Destroyermen, proves to be a formidable enemy.

The book was written during the Covid-19 restrictions, and turned out somewhat different from the Destroyermen. Purgatory's Shore has much less character driven relationship and much more combat maneuvering, battle after battle.

When not in combat, the forces are repairing, regrouping and training.  

I expect the Artillerymen series to open up into much more relationship, even love story, but not Romance, as one of the main characters is a young woman who has been a member of the fighting force disguised as a boy.  It is something of a cliche, true, but Anderson has a knack with cliche that I admire.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com 


Sunday, December 12, 2021

All, Right Now

If my title suggests an uplifting song about seduction and reassurance by the British rock group FREE, check out the deliberate comma.

Today's theme is urgency or immediacy.

SUBMIT ASAP
 
Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House is accepting submissions of complete, unagented works.
For more information on which genres are of interest, and on what to do, and how, follow this link: https://authorspublish.com/berkley-an-imprint-of-peguin-random-house-accepting-submissions-through-january-9th/

For those who completed a novel during NaNoWriMo, this is great timing.

COMING TO A HEAD IN MARYLAND … COMPULSORY LICENSES FOR EBOOKS

 Maryland would force authors to license their ebooks to libraries at a price that Maryland politicians --and those who fund them-- like. Compulsory licenses have previously only applied to songwriters, but times change with technology.

Read the warning from a well written musicians' blog:

The MTP blog contains a quote from an anonymous librarian excoriating the Internet Archive. The quote is music to a copyright enthusiast's ears.

"You claim [the Archive is a] charitable organization. Charitable organizations provide money from their own funds to those in need or they collect donations of money or property, voluntarily offered by the original owners, to distribute to those in need. Taking from others despite their objections and offering the stolen material to those in need does not fall into the description of a charitable organization. It is, as has been pointed out, looting.

Your activity undermines the copyright system for your own benefit and in the financial interests of some of the wealthiest corporations in history. As has been said, the Internet Archive is not a public service but a pirate website. You are not here to help others- you are helping yourself to others’ property. It’s unfortunate that your supporters can’t admit this, or don’t realize it."

The quote is older, but entertainment value sometimes trumps other considerations.

Here is a link to a publishers' lawsuit against Maryland: 
 
It is alleged that a similar copyright grab is on the governor’s desk in New York.
 
The Authors Guild has issued a strong statement as of December 9th.
 
 
MUSIC FAIRNESS ACT... still time to act.

The free-thinking bipartisan team of a Democrat from Florida and a Republican from California introduced the American Music Fairness Act (AMFA), H.R. 4130 to help ensure that songwriters are fairly compensated when terrestrial AM/FM radio stations play their music. 

Other industrialized countries around the world make sure that their songwriters are paid, but owing to the current American laws, American songwriters cannot even be compensated by foreign countries when their work is exploited by foreign radio stations. 

The CopyrightAlliance.org calls on all creators to contact their Representative in Congress to urge their support for the American Music Fairness Act. They've made it easy. Just click on this link, fill out the brief form, and the CopyrightAlliance's campaign will automatically contact your Congressional representatives with an email—which is pre-written for your convenience—requesting their support.

https://p2a.co/fUuhVCp

KILL TWO BIRDS (to coin a phrase)

This is my adaptation of the Copyright Alliance's template, in which I also mentioned my dismay at the Maryland and alleged New York copyright grabs.

“I write to encourage you to support the American Music Fairness Act (AMFA), H.R. 4130, and give recognition to a terrestrial public performance right for sound recordings in the United States. Unlike the United States, most countries in the world require their AM/FM radio stations to compensate copyright owners of sound recordings when those works are played over the air. The USA does not do that, so, due to a system of reciprocity, this means that American copyright owners are prevented from being paid when their sound recordings are played over the air in other countries as well. The AMFA would fix this by establishing a terrestrial public performance right for sound recordings, and bringing U.S. copyright law in line with other industrialized nations around the world.

As an author, I know firsthand that the livelihoods of creative professionals depend on our right to be adequately and fairly compensated for our work. So, I am asking you today to show your support for creators like me by supporting and co-sponsoring the AMFA.

Moreover, the precedents and principles are important. It looks like the State of Maryland, and also perhaps the State of New York are proposing to create compulsory ebook licensing laws that would force unwilling authors to allow “libraries” to publish and distribute ebook copies of in-copyright works without the author having any input into terms or compensation.

Thank you for your assistance and support.”

Sometimes, one has to spit into the wind. 

If you are having trouble seeing Older Posts on the home page, look for a pink text link for More or Older Posts to the lower right of the Comments box.

All the best,

Rowena Cherry 

SPACE SNARK™