Interlude: Islands, A Guest Blog by Sara Stamey

by Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Today I present to you an excerpt from Islands, by Sara Stamey, for your consideration as you do your holiday gift shopping! Also Sara and I have arranged to give you a sneak peek into the cover art for her NEXT book, The Ariadne Connection!

~~~

“Arrogant jerk.” I was rooted on the dark path among shadowed trees, staring into the night, hands fisted as I recalled the meeting with my “host.” I shook my head and pushed impatiently on, picking my way along the twists of the narrowing trail in the gloom, ducking under boughs. Laura had given me “the spiel” about the Caribbean plantation’s history and the restoration of the eighteenth-century Great-House by her employer’s grandfather, but not much about Leon Caviness himself. He was a dealer in rare art, who often entertained visiting clients. Laura hadn’t been very informative about her own role as social secretary for the bachelor’s estate.

Pat MacIntyre’s Cheshire Cat grin floated on the darkness.

I thrust past it, through a curtain of sweet-flowering branches. The shrouded path ended in an open expanse of black volcanic rock dropping away over a steep cliff. A nearly-full moon sailed above low cloud drifts, spilling white light and black shadows over the cliff, repainting the night in stark otherworldliness. Darkness seemed to ooze from the rock itself to absorb the moonlight. The narrow point dropped in fissured fault blocks, giant stairsteps down to the surf. To the right, a sheltered bay mirrored the shimmering trail of the moon, and to the left, the open stretch of ocean hurled wind and waves to crash in white foam against black rock.

Something held me motionless in the wild spot, breathing the salt wind, soaking in the night. The place gave me neither welcome nor warning. I was only an insect perching there. The sheer mass of rock, imbedded in water and moonlight, reduced the nearby presence of lights and cars to a fitful dream.

Almost. I belonged to that smaller, civilized world.

In another existence, I might have thrown off my clothes and danced homage to the moon, embraced the stones and flung myself into the cool arms of the sea, seeking their magic release from my grief.
Turning brusquely back to the path, I stopped short, then dropped to my knees near the rocky cliff edge and brushed a vine aside from a flat shelf of the stone.

A glass jar tipped and rolled over the rock with a clatter and the scent of rum. I caught it reflexively, staring down at what looked like a freshly-severed chicken head lying on a mound of grainy flour. Beside it, a crude face stared out of the stone.

The moonlight suddenly rippled in dizzying waves, my heartbeat echoing in my ears. No, it was a drum, beating out an urgent rhythm, overriding my pulse. The stone beneath me throbbed like a tautly-stretched hide, and the beat shuddered through me, demanding, my blood pumping to its rhythm, not my own. An indignant protest rose up in me, but there was something, some blind force in the night, in the echoing rhythm, that brushed this logic aside.

*the pounding beat is a live being. It takes my senses, the pores of my skin, opens them wide to greedily drink in the heat and the moonlight and perfumes of rum and flowers. It dances my feet to the driving rhythm*

I jolted back from the carving, skin crawling with irrational fear. I shook my head and took a deep breath, let it out. “Get a grip, Doctor Dunne,” I muttered.

Leaning forward, I studied one of the carved stones I’d come here to research. Moonlight and shadow highlighted grooves scored into the rock, a very basic petroglyph, one of the common designs found from Australia to Africa to Alaska. Nose and eyes, an elemental watcher looking out to sea. My hand felt oddly detached from my will, reaching down to trace the lines of the carving. The ancient face almost looked ready to find its tongue and speak.

“Wha you do here?” The harsh voice came from behind me.

I lunged on a burst of adrenaline to my feet, spinning around, startled into clumsiness as I stumbled backwards. A man clutched my arm and yanked me from the verge, a glimpse of boulders pawed by the sea below.

The face revealed by the bright moon was not reassuring. It was broad, black, and scowling. Long woolly hair hung over his brow and down to his shoulders in unkempt dreadlocks. His clothes were patched together from multi-colored rags of shirts and cutoff trousers, and he had thick legs and arms and big hands. A scar ran across his left cheek and pulled his upper lip into a sneer.

“Wha you wan here?” It was a slurred, single-word burst. “You wan trouble?”

Pulse thrumming in my ears, I remembered Pat MacIntyre’s warnings about the violent “Dreads.” There was no place to go except the path the man was blocking. He stepped closer, the whites of his eyes glimmering.

A crooning noise in his throat. “Liddy missy scare?” He chuckled nastily.

“Mr. Caviness is waiting for me at the Great-House.” I cleared my throat, injected some authority. “Now please move.”

“Huh.” A contemptuous thrust of the hand. “You go. Stay way!”

I needed no urging. The man stepped aside and I hurried through the bushes onto the path, fighting the impulse to run, the back of my neck prickling. I managed to retrace the twists and turns in the dark, tripping over roots in my haste. I stopped at the edge of the pool terrace, heart galloping.
Movement and voices inside the Great House, and a muted progression of piano counterpoint. Bach. Intricate harmonies, impossibly cool and civilized amidst the humid air and riotous foliage. Chords spilled through the night, pebbles dropping into a moonlit pond.

~~~

And now for the surprise. Sara and I proudly present to you the cover art for her next book, The Ariadne Connection!

AND -- Don't forget to pick up a copy of Islands by Sara Stamey for your friends and relatives today!

-Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Elements of Modern Storytelling: Character Development, A Guest Blog by Sara Stamey

By Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Sara Stamey’s extended travels in out-of-the-way corners of the globe include treasure hunting and teaching scuba in the Caribbean and Honduras, operating a nuclear reactor, and owning a farm in Southern Chile. Now resettled in her native Northwest Washington, she teaches creative writing at Western Washington University and offers editing services as a “book doctor.” She shares her Squalicum Creek backyard with wild critters and her cats, dog, and very tall husband Thor.

Her romantic suspense novel Islands is described by reviewers as “an intellectual thriller” and "a superior suspense novel….a stomping vivid ride.” A new eBook edition is available from Book View Café. BVC will also release her new metaphysical thriller set in Greece, The Ariadne Connection, in October 2014.

~~~

Sara:

“How do you come up with the characters in your novels? Are they based on real people? Do you make lists of their work, family, education, hobbies? Is it better to describe them in detail, or let readers flesh them out in their minds?”

These are questions novelists hear from readers eager to understand the mysterious workings of a writer’s mind. I’ve heard all kinds of advice about how fiction-writers “should” create fully dimensional characters, but I think every writer finds her own ways.

I confess that I have based several characters on people I know (or knew), and have found “seeds” in characters in films or even music videos. It’s a boost to start with appearance, speech, or personality tics you’ve already observed, then go on to morph that seed into your own character. Most of the time, my models never recognize themselves in the transformed character, which is the way it should go.

Take Heinck, the creepy ringleader of a criminal gang in my second science fiction novel, Win, Lose, Draw. (I hate that title my publisher chose instead of my original Resistance Coil, but that’s another story!) He’s whippy, with slicked-back dark hair and a lot of “pain-dure” tattoos that advertise how tough he is, a sadomasochist who has absolutely no morals. The man I took as my initial model probably never reads, so I don’t have to worry that he’ll recognize himself – besides, Heinck is probably smarter.

Years ago, when I was working as a scuba guide and instructor in the Bay Islands of Honduras at an isolated inn reachable only by boat or rough trails, I was pretty much held hostage by the lowlife temporary manager who was driving away the few tourists and making life miserable for everyone else. He waved around an arsenal of guns, bragged about his previous scams, and kept me and the other employees from taking a boat to the only distant town to radio the absent owner back in the States about the state of crisis at his inn. When the owner finally arrived to fire the manager, he skulked away to the relief of everyone. (spoiler alert) And later, I took secret pleasure in killing him off as my fictional villain. One perk of acting Deity in our own invented worlds!

Flipping the coin, I created a modest tribute to my original writing mentor by making him a minor, helpful character in my Caribbean suspense novel Islands. My mentor was R.D. Brown, a source of inspiration to his many students at Western Washington University. He was a very tall man, with a slouch perhaps as the result of ducking through doorways, a bald head, a jowly face, and an incisive wit animating his eyes. When I created Captain Wilkes, a native police chief who aids my archeologist/sleuth Susan Dunne, I called on images of R.D.: 

A big native man was unfolding his height from a dusty compact. He slouched over to me in rumpled slacks and a linen dress shirt, dark scalp gleaming above a graying frizz, face drooping in folds like an intelligent basset hound.

You’ll see that I’m in favor of providing appearance details of my characters. I feel that leaving them a blank slate makes it hard for readers to invest or even keep track of who’s who.  BTW, Captain Wilkes is my only character-based-on-real where I’ve been caught out: When his partner read the novel, she immediately recognized R.D. as the model, and we all got a chuckle out of it.

Of course, there’s a lot of work to do once the original image and basic personality forms. Voice is perhaps the biggest challenge for me: What kind of diction would this person use, and does it fit his background and upbringing? Or deliberately contrast with it, for plausible reasons of education or choice? Is each character meant to be sympathetic or not? Even if she’s “the bad gal,” does she embody at least a little ambiguity as a complex person? When I teach fiction-writing at the university, I point my students toward good advice from writing guru Janet Burroway: “Give your character a consistent inconsistency.” In other words, some habit or preference that seems at odds with the initial presentation or “type,” so he has a realistic individuality.

I do depart from some writerly advice (including Burroway’s) to create a detailed summary about every character, including history, family, hobbies, etc. I feel that it constrains the characters if everything about them is pinned down at the start, and prevents them from “acting out” to inform me that they would do this or wouldn’t do that. But I do have to work during revision to make sure they “add up” to realistic personalities.

#

Because my novels are often set in foreign countries where I’ve lived or travelled, I face a special challenge in creating characters from different cultures, working to present them as authentic, with believable voices that might mirror their different diction or accents from English/American speech. I usually present these characters through the observations of an American point-of-view character, hoping to avoid “cultural appropriation” or just plain blunders in accuracy.  The more you experience and observe people in actual life, the closer you’ll come to capturing the essence of characters, whether from familiar cultures or foreign. In my travels, I’ve found that there are definitely cultural variations in beliefs and social interactions, but also that most humans at heart have much in common and are willing to make a connection.

One more example from my latest novel set in Greece, The Ariadne Connection, to be released in October 2014 from Book View Café. My heroine’s uncle Demetrios has retired to a mountain village on the southern coast of Crete. In real life, I was backpacking in this region with my former partner, when we found ourselves stranded in a remote, rocky village without a place to stay during the Easter holidays when all the busses stopped running.  We were trying to find a level, unrocky spot (not likely!) to pitch our tent, when we were befriended by a local dignitary, Stelios Mamalakis, who offered us the famous Greek hospitality of a place to stay and a tour of the local landscape. Here is a bit I borrowed from him for my character Demetrios:

Wild asparagus. Ariadne touched the slender soft buds Uncle Demetrios had always favored. She could still see him, all those years ago, climbing ahead of her up a narrow ravine beside a rain-swollen stream, pushing through thorn thickets to find the new asparagus shoots, tearing his trousers to get the last one. 

“But I can’t resist it! This one is the best, Kri-Kri, just look at it. Tender youthful perfection, the most sublime Platonic ideal of a sprout. Now this is beauty. We will eat it tonight and be strong and beautiful, too.” His white teeth flashed beneath the long pirate mustache.

I will leave you with this thought: We writers have to love our characters, even the villains. With love, and patience, they will live and breathe.

~~~

All I can say, Sara, is that you're a woman after my own heart.

-Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

New Book by Sara Stamey!

by Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

One of my Modern Storytelling authors has a new book out! Islands is a romantic suspense adventure by Sara Stamey! 

“Welcome to Paradise!” is what archeologist Susan Dunne hears on arrival on a Caribbean island to research petroglyphs and solve the mystery of her brother’s drowning. This sunny tourist paradise conceals shadowy secrets—violent native unrest, sunken treasure, and a bloodthirsty cult masquerading as Voodoo.

Despite threats, Susan literally dives into her investigation of the sunken treasure ship where John drowned. To find the truth, she must work with her number one suspect—Vic Manden, the troubled salvage expert who worked the site with John. Attracted to the unpredictable Manden, Susan is soon in over her head. 

~~~

Inspiration for Writing Islands

 by Sara Stamey

Since the new ebook edition of my romantic suspense novel Islands was released by Book View Café publishing this month, everyone has been asking if the free-diver on the cover is a photo of me, and I wish I could say yes. If I had pics of my underwater explorations from my time teaching scuba in the Virgin Islands and other Caribbean locations, this could have been me. In those hot, tropic days, I practically lived in the sea, and like my character John in the novel, I wished to be reborn as a dolphin.

The question raises the issue of inspiration for my stories, and place has always been a big one. I’ve traveled and lived in a number of exotic locales, and my fascination with the geography and culture of foreign places stirs my writing muse. The Islands storyline started with my journals while living in the Virgin Islands – the diving and sunken treasure angle pretty obvious, since I did some diving on wrecks and found a lovely antique perfume bottle exactly like the one my archeologist Susan Dunne inherits from her brother John.

I’ve been accused of having a “Hemingway Complex” in needing to actively explore the world in order to write about it, and my literal immersion in the tropic seas permeates the story of Islands – crucial to both the plot and the rebirth that Susan undergoes. I will probably never succeed in capturing with words the magic and mystery of gliding weightless in the shimmering clear depths among fish and coral, but I hope I give readers at least a taste of it.

After moving to St. Thomas, I started research in the island archives, and pieced together bits of actual ship logs for the “Parker Manuscript” that starts Islands. And yes, crew of ships caught in storms or pirate attacks actually did seal notes or pieces of their logs in bottles or tubes and toss them into the sea, hoping they’d be found! The story blossomed with the colonial history of the slavers and African religion as the roots of Caribbean Vaudun (Voodoo). In one of the St. Thomas “jungle towns,” as the native quarters were called by many locals, I stumbled upon a funky little hole-in-the-wall café, Le Lambi’s, pretty much like the one where James takes Susan for lunch. And there I noticed some interesting décor suggesting the owners might have connections to the Vaudun, which officially didn’t exist in the formerly Danish Caribbees.

I started hearing references to “Jumbies” (mischievous spirits) and “power spots,” and some of these seemed connected with the petroglyphs Susan is researching in the novel, so of course I checked out any sites I could find. I also delved into the local herbal lore, and while on my petroglyph hikes tried to find some of the plants used for healing and protective charms. When I learned about two very similar, shiny red seeds – “crab eyes,” a nasty poison, and “Jumbie seeds,” a protection against tricksy spirits – they ended up playing a role in the plot.

In addition to working as a scuba guide and instructor, I also did some cruising through the U.S. and British Virgin Islands as deck hand on a yacht, absorbing the larger expanse of sea and islands, and I try to impart that glorious, sensual paradise that exists beyond the frantic pace of tourism taking over some of the more developed islands. There are so many contrasts of people and place, and that tension helps drive the plot and character issues for me. Susan is a fish out of water when she first arrives in the tropics, and part of the story concerns the unraveling of her preconceptions about the native society, as well as her ideas about “reality.” A scientist and self-described “logical person” from the cool, laid-back Pacific Northwest, she’s jolted by the unexpected fast pace of the tourist town and in-your-face locals, some of whom scoff at her quest for “the truth” about her brother’s drowning as well as possible pre-Columbian contact from Africa evidenced by the petroglyphs.

As a side note on creating characters: I must admit I enjoyed basing a flamboyant  anthropologist character, rejected by academia for his radical theories, on a real-life professor I had interviewed years ago about the theories of pre-Columbian contact in the Americas. He was insufferably arrogant and scoffed at the theories that, these days, are pretty much universally accepted by scholars. Just one of those little pleasures for authors!

People have asked for a sequel, and Susan and other characters clearly have issues and further adventures to explore. I’ve started the next novel, set in southeast Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala, drawing on my travels in those areas. Happy trails and pages to you!

~~~ 

Novelist Sara Stamey’s journeys include treasure hunting and teaching scuba in the Caribbean and Honduras; backpacking Greece and New Zealand; operating a nuclear reactor; owning a farm in Southern Chile; and now teaching creative writing at Western Washington University. Resettled in her native Pacific Northwest, she shares a backyard wildlife refuge with a menagerie including her very tall husband Thor. Follow her blog at http://www.sarastamey.com

You can purchase her new ebook edition of Islands on Amazon.com or www.BookViewCafe.com (formats available for both Kindle and epub readers)

-Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com