Guest Blog: We Can Rewrite It - We Can Make It Better

Better, stronger, faster...never mind.

Today I'm proud to introduce a guest blogger, a good friend of mine, known in fandom, an excellent beta reader (for me, for Sarah Hoyt, and I don't know who-all else!), and talented aspiring author, Courtney Galloway. I'm not going to waste a lot of space here yammering. I'm going to let Courtney speak for herself.

~~~

First, a quick thanks to Stephanie, for asking me to blog here as a guest!

Lots of folks have chimed in over time about writing groups and the good, the bad and the sometimes very ugly aspects of them. The question for me has always been, well ok, how do you recover from the bad or the ugly then? For a long time I wasn’t sure I had an answer to that.

Quite a while ago, maybe a year and a half or two years ago, I came up with a fantastic idea for a story. Of course, me being me and having my kind of luck, I came up with it the night before my writer's group meeting and not a week earlier when I could have had a least a few pages to submit. Anyway, I took my little idea to the meeting with me, figuring if nothing else, when we were done with the critiques - if we had time and the guys didn't object, they could help me brainstorm some of the finer points I hadn't fully figured out yet. In theory, this would have been a perfect scenario. I'd already built good trust with these guys and I respect their input and opinions.

However, the reality was that we had a guest that day. Unknown to me, while our guest wants to write - she never has. She had also never been trained on proper critique etiquette. Yes, boys and girls there is such a thing as critique etiquette, i.e.: critique the technical merit not the idea, be polite, keep it impersonal, and all the other lovely hints and tips you find in things like the Turkey City Lexicon.

I asked if the folks would mind helping me brainstorm on my new idea, and everyone was more than happy to. So I laid out my little brain child of an idea, and the guys gave me some very good ideas both on how to address things I hadn't been able to figure out, but also some aspects that hadn't occurred to me yet that would be vital information for the story. Then our guest spoke up, saying that she hated stories that ended that way (open ended for the reader to decide how they want to envision it ended). That they made horrible stories. That she refused to read them and told everyone she knew not to read them. I was quite simply eviscerated and left the meeting rather despondent.

While I stayed in love with my little fragile idea, and took down notes on what the guys had said, I had not been able to put down on the page more than 58 words of story text. Even that text I knew just wasn't quite right, not quite what I wanted it to be. But trying to work on it was about as effective as bashing my head against a brick wall just for the entertainment value.

To be honest, the experience was almost enough to drive me to leave the group if the woman returned. I agonized about the idea, because I really liked the guys - but I just wasn't sure I could deal with this woman's oblivious sabotage. I made the supreme effort, went back, tried to understand her. Which is how I found out she'd never written before, but wanted so badly to, and that she'd never been trained how to critique. The woman is older than I am - roughly late 60's. So I tried to reach her, to reach out to her. I sent her the Turkey City Lexicon and basically trained her on the proper way to do a critique in a writing group. She improved greatly in time. My little story however stayed a stunted, sickly thing.

Today, I finally had the brainstorm I'd been needing so badly. A new opening scene, new aspects of dealing with a tricky part in a smooth and simple fashion that the reader can accept without getting a headache, and enough material to change the basic story enough to let me try again. And perhaps even reclaim it. The basic premise of the story - the idea - is unchanged, but my new view of it is from a different enough angle, that I think I just got my story healed and functional again. YEAY!!

I made all the notes so I wouldn't forget my brainstorming and am hoping to get to the actual writing tomorrow if my luck holds. We're swamped prepping for the trip to TN this weekend [actually in late May  ~S.O.] for our niece's graduation. So if I don't get to the actual “words on the page” stage - I'll be all set to do so when we get back!

 

-Courtney Galloway

http://courtneygalloway.wordpress.com/

~~~

And I, for one, have no doubt but that she will. And I look forward to reading it.

-Stephanie Osborn

http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

This Is What It Says

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

~~~~~~~
At the bottom of this document are 56 signatures, representing the states of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Massachusetts, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. All 13 colonies. Fifty-six men willing to die to uphold these self-evident truths.

Read it. Really read it...and think.

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

Excerpt: The Case of the Displaced Detective: At Speed

This is the prologue to the second book in my Displaced Detective Series, The Case of the Displaced Detective: At Speed, a science fiction mystery. Books 1 and 2 (The Case of the Displaced Detective: At Speed) are in release, ebook and treebook; book 3, (The Case of the Cosmological Killer: The Rendlesham Incident) will be released later this year. You can purchase both in pretty much any format you like through my website, www.stephanie-osborn.com. Hope you enjoy this excerpt.


~~~

Chapter 1—Ruminations and Rehabilitations

Skye woke up in a hospital bed on Peterson Air Force Base near Colorado Springs the afternoon following the shooting, which was Saturday. Her chest and belly ached miserably, and there was a taste in her mouth as if all the armies that had ever marched had tramped across her tongue.

"Uhg," she groaned softly, smacking her mouth in disgust.

As sensation and full consciousness slowly returned, a previously unnoticed grip on her fingers tightened, and a familiar, English voice murmured, "Skye?"

"H-holmes? Is that you?" Skye wondered, confused.

"Yes, Skye. I am here."

Through the slits of her barely open eyelids, she saw a dark form loom over her, coming to sit gingerly on the edge of the bed. As her eyes finally responded to her mental command to focus, the form resolved into Holmes, who was now dressed in the RAF uniform he kept in their office. He reached for something beyond her range of sight, then brought his left hand back with a small plastic cup, a straw tucked inside it.

"Here. Sip this." His right hand never let go her own. Skye allowed him to place the straw in her mouth before sipping the cool water.

"Oh, that's better. My mouth tasted nasty."

"That would be the narcotics," he replied, the hint of a smile on his tired face as he returned the cup to the bedside table.

* * *

"Oh." Skye gave him a bleary-eyed scrutiny, and Holmes read it accurately.

"No, my dear. Watson broke me of that habit some years ago, at my own request, I might add. And I must confess, I find this world of yours stimulating enough that I have no interest in such substances, anyway." He allowed the hint of expression to become a full-fledged smile, and he said, "Dear old Watson, it seems, was equally as determined as dear new Skye. But it does mean I have some experience with nasty tastes in one's mouth."

"How bad?" Skye gestured to her bandaged, aching torso.

"Punctured left lung, lacerated spleen." Holmes drew a deep, pained breath. "Considerable blood loss. The spleen was not so damaged as to require complete removal, fortunately. There is speculation it caught a ricochet; the bits of metal pulled out from that organ definitely did not add up to a complete bullet, as opposed to the one in the lung, which emerged intact. But lung and spleen are repaired now, and you are getting blood." He gestured at the IV bags hanging nearby, where a deep-red fluid dribbled through a tube into her arm. "In fact, one of those is mine. They were low on your blood type." Then he quipped, "And relative to some of the people in this age of yours, it seems I am quite the healthy specimen." He paused, becoming very serious. "Skye, I must apologise…I had to break my oath to you."

~~~

For more, or to purchase this and more books in the series, go to my website, www.stephanie-osborn.com.

A Plea for Help: Colorado Springs and the Waldo Canyon Fire

For the last twenty-four hours my eyes have been glued to reports - television, multiple websites, and friends - about the Waldo Canyon wildfire. This fire has exploded in that time, and is now twice the size it was this time yesterday. It is jumping reservoir lakes and is threatening to jump I-25 in and around Colorado Springs, or as I know it, CoSpr.

I have friends who live there. I have been there many times. I recognize the scenes, the neighborhoods and mountainsides that are burning. They are places I have talked about in my Displaced Detective series, which is based in the CoSpr area. I am terrified for my friends, I am horrified at the destruction, and I am dreading the potential loss of the historic district. When I read the evacuation orders and the boundaries of the evac zones, I recognize the landmarks they are using. This whole thing is a living nightmare. I cannot even imagine the mental state of those who are living it.

There are many homes being burned in this fire. There are numerous reasons for this. One is that, between the USAF Academy, Peterson AFB, Schriever AFB, and Cheyenne Mountain, with their associated civilian contractors, there is a continual flux of people moving into and out of the area. People who have never lived in what is a kind of high desert before do not know how to protect themselves against wildfires. They pick a home site based upon its view, its aesthetics, then build a home like what they are used to, or what they envision is appropriate (e.g. a log cabin style), and landscape as they would in a well-watered area in the East. This is a recipe for disaster.

Aesthetic views notwithstanding, the homes should be as fireproof on the outside as possible. Nearby trees should be removed, so that they cannot catch fire and fall atop the house. Landscaping should be kept well AWAY from the house, and be of plantings that are relatively inflammable (although at temperatures hot enough to melt iron and steel, that can be a moot point). Plants should be surrounded by stones and pebbles, not organic mulch.

But in general this doesn't happen and outside the city limits proper there are no rules about such things. (I'm not sure what rules there are within the city limits either, but you get the idea.) And there are always things that happen: I was informed that only about a week or so ago a tremendous hailstorm came through that did severe damage to the flame-resistant shake roofs, breaking tiles galore, and many have not yet had a chance to repair the damage. Gaping hole in the fire defense.

So this is happening. And people are in harm's way. People are losing their homes and businesses. What can we do?

Go here : https://american.redcross.org/site/Donation2?idb=160451275&df_id=3791&3791.donation=form1

This is the donation site for the Colorado Red Cross. You are welcome to donate whatever you like to whatever you like, but the Red Cross chapter for CoSpr is known as the Pikes Peak chapter, in the pull-down menu. I know that the son of a friend in the area has volunteered for Red Cross service - I think as a medic/EMT, though I could be wrong - despite the possibility that his home may be under evacuation notice at any time. I know people who are likely on the front line of that fire somewhere. Maybe we aren't there, but we can "get their backs." Donate, please, I urge you.

Space Weather - The Carrington Event

In August of 1859, during historic Solar Cycle 10, something very strange began to happen. The Sun, as it neared solar max, grew unusually active. It produced prolific numbers of sunspots and flares, some of which were visible to the naked eye. This continued through the end of the month, until, just before noon on September 1, British astronomer Richard Carrington, just 33 and already acknowledged as one of England's premier solar astronomers, observed an incredibly brilliant solar flare – a flare that was easily visible to the naked eye. In later times, this single flare became known as The Carrington Super-Flare. In his own words from his scientific records:

“...Within the area of the great north group [of sunspots]...two patches of intensely bright and white light broke out...My first impression was that by some chance a ray of light had penetrated a hole in the [projection] screen...for the brilliancy was fully equal to that of direct sun-light; but by at once interrupting the current observation, and causing the image to move by turning the R.A. [right ascension, an astronomical coordinate akin to longitude] handle, I saw I was an unprepared witness to a very different affair...The instant of the first outburst was not 15 seconds different from 11h 18m Greenwich mean time, and 11h 23m was taken for the time of disappearance [from the telescope's view]. In this lapse of 5 minutes, the two patches of light traversed a space of about 35,000 miles...”

British amateur astronomer Richard Hodgeson also observed it; Balfour Steward at the Kew Observatory noted a “crochet” effect on the observatory's magnetometer. (A “crochet” is also sometimes called a Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance, or SID. It is when a solar event produces an abnormally high plasma density – remember, plasma is like the stuff in your fluorescent lights – in one layer of the ionosphere. This in turn creates literal electric currents running through the ionosphere, which magnetometers pick up. It creates something of an invisible lacy pattern in the atmosphere, hence, I suppose, the term “crochet.”)

And all of the previous flares and coronal mass ejections had fairly effectively cleared the interplanetary medium between the Sun and Earth.

The enormous coronal mass ejection produced by the super-flare slammed into Earth in only 17 hours.

The resulting effects lasted several days.

What kind of effects?

Worldwide aurorae for starters. These aurorae were most noted in the Caribbean, where they had never been seen before. Colorado gold miners, awakened by the brightening skies, got up and began cooking their breakfasts, because they thought it was dawn. In Europe and the northeastern United States, newspapers could be read by the light of the aurorae.

Speaking of newspapers, the Baltimore American and Commercial Advisor spoke of the ongoing event in poetic terms. “Those who happened to be out late on Thursday night had an opportunity of witnessing another magnificent display of the auroral lights. The phenomenon was very similar to the display on Sunday night, though at times the light was, if possible, more brilliant, and the prismatic hues more varied and gorgeous. The light appeared to cover the whole firmament, apparently like a luminous cloud, through which the stars of the larger magnitude indistinctly shone. The light was greater than that of the moon at its full, but had an indescribable softness and delicacy that seemed to envelop everything upon which it rested. Between 12 and 1 o'clock, when the display was at its full brilliancy, the quiet streets of the city resting under this strange light, presented a beautiful as well as singular appearance.”

Those dealing in the business of telegraphy did not think so highly of the display. The incredibly intense event, a maximal G5 and S5 by any definition, created induced currents in telegraph wires that were simply impossible to control. Lines and pylons threw sparks, telegraph batteries were blown, telegraphers received severe shocks, and telegraph “flimsy” paper burst into flames.

And yet some telegraph systems continued to function, despite having no batteries to power them. The induced current was simply that strong.

This was the Carrington Event, the most powerful solar/geomagnetic storm ever to occur in recorded history. It was before the advent of electricity, or electronics, or integrated grids and networks, save for telegraph systems, with which it wreaked havoc. Imagine what effect it would have today.

Dibs on the story.    ;-)

-Stephanie Osborn

http://www.stephanie-osborn.com