BLOG UPDATES

To close out 2012 and maybe tweak your thoughts for 2013, I'm posting an updated index to my blog posts on Writing and adding a new author to my list of "What Grace Reads." But first . . .

The "grandgirls" - Hailey, Cassidy, Riley, Christmas 2012

Look, Mom, it's snowing!

Road Trip - Gatlinburg, Tennessee, December 26, 2012 - a LONG drive to see snow!

UPDATED INDEX

 to Grace's Writing & Editing Blogs

2011:

The Writing 101 series

1.  Formatting a Manuscript - May 9, 2011

2.  Nuts & Bolts, Part 1(grammar, punctuation) - May 16, 2011

3.  Tab conversion (from manual to auto) - June 5, 2011

4.  Nuts & Bolts, Part 2 - June 16, 2011

5.  I Ran Spell Check, I'm Done, Right? (self-editing) - July 5, 2011

6.  The Final Steps (self-editing) - July 14, 2011


2012:

EDIT THE BLASTED BOOK series

1.  Intro to Self-editing - April 1, 2012

2.  Should you hire help? - April 28, 2012

3.  Manuscript Format for the 21st Century - May 6, 2012

4.  Writing No-No's - May 28, 2012

5.  Point of View - June 18, 2012

6.  Anatomy of an Edit, Part 1 - August 5, 2012

7.  Anatomy of an Edit, Part 2 - August 19, 2012


HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR CHARACTERS series

Part 1 - What you need to discover about your characters - October 15, 2012

Part 2 - More questions about your characters - October 29, 2012

Part 3 - The Rest of the story - November 5, 2012 


Miscellaneous:

1.  Guideposts for Critiquing - January 28, 2011

2.  Writing Mistakes, Near Misses & Just Plain Strange - March 4, 2011

3.  Shortcuts for Writers (ASCII codes) - March 18, 2011

4.  Rules for Romance - September 18, 2011

5.  More Rules for Romance - October 16, 2011

6.  How Not to Write a Book - December 20, 2012 

UPDATE TO "WHAT GRACE READS" 

Original post - September 9, 2012

Aaron Pogue.  Evidently, Mr. Pogue thought he was writing Young Adult - hence the third book in his Dragonprince trilogy, The Dragonprince's Heir, with a fourteen-year-old hero of the next generation. However, from the notes at the end of the e-version of this book, I believe he's finally realized he reached a much wider audience and plans to fill in the "gap" years between Books 2 & 3. The triology is highly sensitive, imaginative, and heart-wrenching, delving into nearly everything from warcraft and magic to insanity and politics.  
 

Grace's Archives.

 The Archive menu to the right of the screen should allow you to find the articles you want. I'd very much appreciate hearing which topics you found most helpful. Questions and suggestions for future posts are also welcome.



Thanks for stopping by.

Grace (who writes as Blair Bancroft)

For Blair's website, click here.

HOLIDAY GREETINGS

For a Holiday Greeting this year I'm presenting a photo essay on a "Europe by Train" journey I did a few years ago. Glimpses of London, Paris, Zermatt, San Moritiz, and Venice. The photos are all scanned from non-digital photos taken with my now deceased Nikon.

Where else to begin but the London Eye?

Parliament & Big Ben from the London Eye

London classic - the Changing of the Guard

Traitor's Gate at the Tower of London - taken from a boat

Outside Covent Garden Market on a quiet Sunday morning

My personal London favorite - the Regency canal

Regency Mansion above the Regency Canal 

Just picture living in the heart of London and having your very own narrowboat anchored just across the street. The Regency Canal has access to most of Britain's vast network of canals. The mansion above is one of many along the Regency Park portion of the canal (not far from the London zoo).

Next stop: through the Chunnel to Paris. Sorry, nothing from the Chunnel trip - it doesn't exactly photograph well. 

Paris from the second level of the Eiffel Tower

Notre Dame from a boat on the Seine

Notre Dame at sunset

And back on the train for our next stop:  Zermatt, Switzerland, a town where the only cars allowed are taxis that transport tourists up the mountain from the train station. If you ever go to Switzerland, make Zermatt a "must."

The Matterhorn as seen from my hotel balcony

Cable car from Zermatt up the mountain

Village above Zermatt - taken from cable car

Skiing in May

Believe me, it was really cold on top of that mountain! None of us had jackets for that kind of weather.

And then it was off to San Moritz via the Glacier Express - great trip except for the wait staff who ignored single females, taking orders only from MEN! 

View, mile after mile, from the Glacier Express. In MAY

The chariots that took us up another picturesque mountain outside San Moritz

Interestingly, most of the shops in San Moritz were closed, due to "Off Season." Even the restaurant on top of the mountain the horses climbed. (Our tour guide ordered a special picnic basket for us.) I'm told we were lucky - the carriage ride is frequently cancelled due to bad weather.

I had hoped to take the train all the way to fabled Venice, but we were off-loaded onto a bus for the last 50-100 miles.

Bridge of Sighs

Although this was taken from a pedestrian bridge, we later traveled by gondola directly under it and through some of the narrow "back door" canals.

St. Marks Cathedral

 We went to a blown-glass shop in St. Mark's Square, admired the Doge's palace, and I indulged in what I believe was a c. $40 hot fudge sundae! (If I figured the translation to dollars correctly.) But who could visit and not sit at one of those outdoor tables and not eat something?

Workboat removing garbage from our hotel early in the morning

 I really like to know how things work and was pleased to have the opportunity to take photos of the supply & trash boats servicing our hotel. 

Now back to Zermatt and a couple of professional photos to end our mini tour of Europe.

A meadow near Zermatt

We all had our pictures taken with Bella, the Zermatt photographer's dog

~ * ~

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, 

and Best Wishes to people

of every religion and country

 for a happy, healthy, hopeful 2013.

Thanks for stopping by. Mosaic Moments is going to take a Christmas break. "See you" in 2013.

Grace
www.blairbancroft.com

HOW NOT TO WRITE A BOOK

No, this is not about setting a daily writing schedule, writing X-many words each day, or doing your research. Nor will I tell you to:
    play background music, don’t play background music;
    do your edits onscreen, do your edits on hardcopy;
    write the whole book before you edit, edit after every chapter;
    write linear, write random scenes then tie it all together;
    spelling & punctuation count, don’t worry the small stuff - that’s what
    copy editors are for.
   
This post is the tale of how a highly experienced author and editor got caught in the meat-grinder of inserting a vague long-time idea, called “Jack’s Book” into an already finished novel with an entirely different hero. With nearly catastrophic results. I’m reeling, and I’m only on the revision of Chapter 7.  My advice: don’t try it!

Background: My first book destined for publication was The Sometime Bride, which sparked the idea for Tarleton’s Wife, which won RWA’s Golden Heart contest. Tarleton's Wife ended up being published first (1999), at the request of a newly founded e-book company, Starlight Writer Publications. Even my elderly mother, the author of c. 50 children’s books, had recognized the potential of e-pub and handed me an article about it when it was in its infancy. So I was receptive to the offer from Starlight and became an early advocate of e-books. I went on to write a mass market paperback love story for Kensington, followed by a number of Regency paperbacks for Signet. But when Kensington closed Precious Gems and Signet closed their Regency line (and refused to look at Historical Romances by their “trad” authors), I found myself pounding my head against the wall, although I still kept writing. And then came indie publishing.  Yay, hurray! Fortunately, I scrambled around and got my rights back before NY publishers decided to be difficult about it!

So, finally, earlier this year, I uploaded O’Rourke’s Heiress, the third book in my Regency Historical series, containing characters from both The Sometime Bride and Tarleton’s Wife. But for fifteen or twenty years I’d had a folder marked “Jack’s book.” Poor Jack who never got the girl. Nor the book he so richly deserved. I toyed with a number of ideas for him, but none seemed quite right. Until - hallelujah! - I recalled a book I’d written shortly after moving to Orlando, which remained in the cyber drawer because no one should ever write a book while moving or within six months after moving. Particularly after leaving a house in which you’ve spent twenty-five years and which contains not only all the possessions of someone who writes, sews, knits, crochets, and reads excessively, but also all the accumulations of an equally pack-rat elder son and a deceased spouse, plus all the “extras” of three grown children (including a huge carton of all my daughter’s stuffed animals, which she had absolutely refused to give up).

But somehow I suddenly realized that not-so-great tale, written under extreme stress, contained a heroine worthy of Jack. Why hadn’t I realized it at the time? (See above paragraph.) So when I finished Lady of the Lock, I turned to Shadows Rising. (Yes, I agree, the title wasn’t so hot either.) Before cracking a page, I put some thought into the necessary major changes: I had to delete the heroine’s brother, a half-Abenaki who was so dynamic he refused to stay in Quebec and crossed the Atlantic to become a much too important character. And I had to switch the classic hero, a cavalry colonel and younger son of an earl, to a man who worked for a living. (Oh horrors!) To Jack, a man who was nearly hanged in Tarleton’s Wife and became a confidant of the young heroine in O’Rourke’s Heiress.  To Jack who has loved two women and lost them both to best friends.  (He did have one similarity to the original hero—Jack is the son of an earl, but on the wrong side of the blanket)

I also had to eliminate a number of the “shadows” from Shadows Rising. (And I’d spent a lot of time developing physical descriptions and individual personalities for each one of them. Sigh.) But good romance demands an emphasis on the Hero and Heroine. Too many charming young cavalrymen can be almost as distracting as a striking Big Brother. Out! All but two had to go.

To make matters even worse, I decided the beginning of the new book should overlap the ending of O'Rourke's Heiress, making it necessary to write new scenes with coordinated timelines.

And then . . . near the end of Chapter 7, I ran into a sub-plot that was a bit doubtful the first time around and blatantly wrong for Jack. Oops! So I had to sit down and make a list of crimes heinous enough to force the villain, a high-ranking nobleman, to go into exile. Hm-m, I just may choose four out of five things on the list. Nothing like overkill to get rid of the Bad Guy. Only all these new threads have to be woven into fabric which already exists. Double, maybe triple, Oops.

Oh joy, I still have c. twenty chapters to go . . .


Advice: Do not attempt this method of writing a book!

Alas, I liked Alain, the brother. He was a great character. Too great. He overshadowed my original hero. He might even have overshadowed Jack, although that’s debatable. But what do you have left after you’ve eliminated all that clever dialogue between the heroine and her now deleted brother? Pages and pages of narrative, that’s what. Ugh! And then there’s the matter of eliminating every reference to “Alain,” “her brother,” even “they” and “them,” which now had to be “she” and “her.”

As for Jack the bastard. . . he, as leader of a private army known as Harding’s Hellions, has to take over the hero position from a man who was a legitimate “gentleman,” a heroic cavalry colonel who fought against Napoleon. Again, poor Jack. But since he no longer lacks for money, the switch ought to work, I thought. Except I had to eliminate every “colonel,” switch every reference to his “officers” to men who served with Jack's brother Avery (a character in both Tarleton’s Wife and O’Rourke’s Heiress). And I had to make sure every word of "salvaged" dialogue was something that would come out of Jack's mouth, not the colonel's.

Chapter 7 was such a mix of usable bits and pieces, interspersed with long passages that had to be deleted, that I went through the hardcopy armed with yellow and pink highlighters and a red pen, as well as scribbling side notes in pencil. Will it make sense when I’m finished with it? I can only hope so. Astonishingly, when I read through Chapters 1-5 a few days ago, the story actually seemed flow with some normalcy. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Repeat:  I strongly advise against ever trying this method of writing a book!

Then again, it really sharpens the wits.

Tentative title for the finished result:  Rogue's Destiny  - if poor Jack doesn't implode somewhere during the transition from gentleman colonel to bastard rogue.

~ * ~

Thanks for stopping by. Next blog will likely be "Holiday Greetings."

Grace






 

BEST FOOT FORWARD

I have made some major changes to the services offered by Best Foot Forward. In addition to "General Edits," which should be enough for most authors, I am offering "Author Development"—comprehensive analysis, revision suggestions, plus copy edits*—aimed at new authors.  I have also added an Intro Page to the BFF brochure, which, hopefully, will be self-explanatory (see below). 

*For an explanation of the difference between edits and copy edits, please see my blog Archives: EDIT THE BLASTED BOOK, April 1, 2012. 


                                        INTRODUCTION to BEST FOOT FORWARD

In the world of New York publishing, editing and copy edits are done by two entirely different people of very different skill levels and at different times in the manuscript’s life. But in the world of independent publishing or authors who want to polish manuscripts before submitting them to agents or publishers, a different kind of editing is necessary - primarily for financial reasons. Authors need someone who can edit, copy edit, and suggest major revisions all in one reading.

Is it easy to find someone who can combine the creativity of an editor with the meticulous grammar, spelling, and fact-checking (librarian skills) of a copy editor? No, it isn’t, but there’s no doubt this combination of skills is very much needed in today’s publishing world.

I founded Best Foot Forward for exactly that reason. I am a multi-published author, and I also have those “nitty gritty” skills demanded of a copy editor. Am I perfect? Absolutely not - I don’t know anyone who is, but I am an outstanding editor and I make a genuine effort to be consistent with all those stray capitals, commas, dashes, and ellipses. And I absolutely will not let you use a full sentence as a dialogue tag!

In the months I’ve been editing as Best Foot Forward, I have discovered I cannot offer copy edits separate from editing. The editor in me simply won’t allow it. I end up making all sorts of editing notes anyway and working for less than minimum wage. After all, what’s the point in returning to you a manuscript with all the punctuation in the right place if your story just isn’t working? I simply will not return a story to you unless I’ve covered all the bases needed to make it better.

Therefore, Best Foot Forward now offers only two kinds of service:

Author Development - for unpublished authors who want to make a serious effort to improve their skills. These services include extensive Track Changes comments, copy edits, and a separate comprehensive critique. The editing suggestions are more detailed than in “General Editing.” The critique covers: Opening Paragraphs; Characterization - Hero, Heroine & Secondary; Conflict; Narration; Dialogue; Setting; Plot; Style - including Show vs. Tell, Less is More, Personalize/Identify, Point of View; Presentation - format, grammar, spelling & punctuation; Overall Impression


General Editing (with copy edits) - suitable for more experienced authors who know their books need “another pair of eyes.” This service includes Track Changes comments and a separate Mini Critique.

                                                                    ~ * ~                                                       
                                 

   To request a BFF brochure (pdf), click here.       

                    

                                                          
Thanks for stopping by. Next blog - finally - "How Not to Write a Book"

Grace
Click here for the Blair Bancroft website 

                                                    

IN HONOR OF THANKSGIVING

In my 2011 "Reflections on Thanksgiving," I ranted about Black Friday. Alas, things have only gotten worse, with the media now proclaiming, "Gray Thursday"! Gray Thursday? Can they possibly mean Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving, the most American of all our holidays? The holiday that extends across ethnic backgrounds, religion, education, age, etc. The holiday which inspires more travel than any other time of the year - 43,000,000 according to this week's television news. 

Why is Thanksgiving such a universal American holiday? Because if you are an American—if you appreciate what being an American means—you celebrate Thanksgiving. And, if it's at all possible, you find a way to celebrate this very special holiday with family. And possibly extend the holiday feast to friends with no family of their own.

Mayflower replica, Plymouth, Massachusetts

What makes Thanksgiving so special? After all, we have a lot of holidays, from the birthday of our country to the birthdays of great men, to honoring our veterans, so what makes this one stand out?  Because 156 years before we became the United States of America, we were a tiny colony on the shore of Massachusetts. A colony of Pilgrims, religious dissenters who suffered two months on board the sailing ship Mayflower, hoping to settle in Virginia—where Jamestown had become the first English colony in the New World— only to end up at the end of a promontory considerably farther north. The place now known as Provincetown on Cape Cod. There, they found a spring. What joy to have fresh water after two months at sea. But the land was narrow, scarcely a mile wide, and sandy. No good for farming, for keeping themselves alive. So they got back on board the Mayflower and continued on. Farther along the cape's "arm," they stopped again. This time they were greeted by natives, the people Christopher Columbus had erroneously named "Indians." [The place, now commemorated as "First Encounter Beach," is on the Bay shore in Eastham, Massachusetts. We stopped there on our trip to Cape Cod last summer.]

But the soil was still sand, so once again they set sail. The next landing was more productive and the Pilgrims joined the New World's first wave of  "immigrants." Conditions were harsh, many died, but when spring came they cleared land and planted seeds.  And that Fall, they stopped to give thanks - for their survival, for food, for help from the Indians, for the new land they were settling. [Today's Plymouth offers a replica of the Mayflower, which you can explore, and an excellent reproduction of the buildings and crafts of the early colony at what is called "Plymouth Plantation."]

Over the years this First Thanksgiving has become an inspiration for a holiday which emphasizes giving thanks for all we have, particularly for the love of family and friends, for a roof over our heads and food on the table. It is also a time when, thanks mostly to volunteers, we do our best to provide "Thanksgiving" for those who have little or nothing. Nor does our government forget our men and women in uniform. Thanksgiving is truly the "universal" holiday. 


And yet . . . retail America, particularly the "big box" stores, are turning Black Friday, the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season, into "Gray Thursday," encroaching more and more on America's most precious holiday. If the owners of these corporations were going to be out there, staffing the stores on the Thanksgiving, maybe this crass play for money and more money wouldn't be so bad, as I'd like to think only those hard-shelled enough not to give a @#$% about Thanksgiving would be shopping on the holiday. BUT these corporate giants are infringing on the most sacred American family holiday by requiring their workers to be front and center for this madhouse of consumerism. Employees must cut short their holiday to run back to work at eight, nine, midnight, four a.m., five a.m.  You name the time, and some store has compromised the holiday tradition in order to offer people an opportunity to trample all over each other so they can buy a 40" TV.

NOT AT OUR HOUSE! This Thanksgiving at 6:30 p.m. we sat down thirteen to dinner - twelve family plus one "friend." [The rest of the nineteen (the brand new American citizens) who joined us last year were creating their own holiday tradition for friends visiting from Miami.] This year my son-in-law (born in Argentina) started a new tradition. He asked each person at the table, in turn, to tell what he or she was thankful for. After the adults spoke, he asked his daughters (ages 6-9) to read a list of ten things they had written down for which they were thankful. (They had to compose these lists on their own.) It was a moving experience and, as sometimes happens, it all came together in a perfect moment. 

After we stuffed ourselves with an incredible array of food, we sat around the table and talked. Just talked - in English and Spanish. None of the thirteen of us was rushing off to the mall. We enjoyed Thanksgiving for the family day it was meant to be. For the giving of thanks, not the gimme-gimme of "What can I buy & how cheap can I get it?"


Has our family had some of those Thanksgiving disasters or blow-ups that people sometimes moan about? Yes, we have, so, believe me, I particularly treasure this year's ideal Thanksgiving. And I want other people to have their very special Thanksgiving moments and not be forced to give it all up in order to go to work so crass consumerism can push our most American holiday all the way back to August. 

If you agree with me, I hope you will pass this blog post on to others. 

~ * ~

Next week: "Best Foot Forward" will likely come before "How Not to Write a Book"

Thanks for stopping by, 
Grace
Grace's books as Blair Bancroft