Frankly, My Dear...

Keep your fingers crossed for me. The wind is blowing and freezing rain is in the weather advisory for tonight. We had this same weather pattern last January and got three "ice days" out of the deal. Not quite as cool as a snow day because you can't go out and build snowmen, but there was still plenty of hot chocolate to be had.

Hurray for no school!

So let's talk about character details while I do a dance to the snow, er... ice gods. This weekend I watched Gone With the Wind. This movie necessitates a long weekend as it's four hours long, but what a great four hours! I think this is something like the sixth time I've seen it- I've lost count. Why do I keep coming back? The plot is great and it's set during the American Civil War so it's easily one of my favorite movies.

But why is it my all-time favorite?

Scarlet and Rhett. I adore them. I just want to throttle Scarlet through the whole movie, but I love her at the same time. And Rhett?

Swoon.

Not only do I adore Clark Gable's throaty laugh, but the character is just such a deviant he's irresistible. And I have a new favorite character detail that just epitomizes Rhett. (SPOILER ALERT!) In the scene where Scarlet's second husband dies (Frank Kennedy), Rhett shows up to propose while she's in between husbands. Kennedy's casket has just been moved out of the parlor, the casket props are still in the room, and there's a few flowers on the floor. Rhett stops and picks up some of the funeral flowers, sniffs one, and then pins it to his lapel. And then he laughs!

Such a cad. But such a perfect one!

This was a great reminder as I revise to make sure each of my characters come to life. It doesn't matter if they're primary or secondary- each character needs something to make them stand out, make an impression on the reader. It could be a nervous habit or even a distinctive physical trait or like Rhett, something they do that's out of the ordinary.

What do you think of Rhett and Scarlet? Do your characters have traits that make them pop for the reader?

You Can Call Me Michelangelo

So I didn't plan on taking a break from blogging over this splendiferously long weekend, but I have to tell you- I got a lot done this weekend writing-wise. I also cleaned the house, cooked a whole lot, and painted half of my living room. And I met with my beta readers!

Their feedback was awesome- I've already integrated a lot of their suggestions into Major Revision #3. It's nice to have fresh eyes take a look at the manuscript. Also, I found it rather eerie that their suggestions were almost all things that I pondered as I was writing, but blew off, thinking it was only me who would care about them. But no, I was wrong. And there were only a couple big issues, ones I think I've resolved.

So here's the rundown of my major revisions so far. Yesterday, I was thinking that writing a book is kind of like Michelangelo creating David. (Yes, I just compared myself to Michelangelo. I have delusions of grandeur.)

Revision #1: Michelangelo chips away enough marble to tell that he's making some sort of human figure. Oh wait, is that an arm coming out of David's head? Gee whiz, gotta fix that!

I aligned the plot.

Revision #2: David now has two arms, two legs, and one head, all properly attached. Maybe he needs some hair- the blockhead look isn't working for him.

I cleaned up the dialogue and plugged up some plot holes.

Revision #3: Michelangelo takes care of some details- muscles, eyes, nose, lips. Oh yeah, and the slingshot. Almost forgot about the slingshot.

I slashed a lot of unnecessary words and sealed the final gaps in the plot.


Okay, so by the end of Revision #3 it should be pretty shiny, but there's still be some polishing to do. Heck, when I was in Florence a few years ago I couldn't see most of David because he was being restored. Art is an ongoing process. And I'm not going to get into how David's hands are waaaaaaay too big for his body. Even a masterpiece can have flaws, right?

So, what's your revision style? And more importantly, did you have a good weekend?

Hatshepsut's Name & Looking at a Solar Eclipse Without One of Those Boxes With a Pinhole

This has been a rough week complete with migraines shared by many (yes, Wendy and L.T., I'm looking at you), I thought I'd share something a student passed on to me. It's a list of extracts from actual high school essays in which students were asked to use analogies and metaphors.
I'm warning you, if you're drinking something right now, you should swallow and put the cup down. Some of these almost made me shoot water out my nose.

1. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
2. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00PM instead of 7:30.
3. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with white picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
4. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
5. He spoke with a wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.


Hehehe. Yeah, there will be more fun analogies and metaphors to come at a later date. Happy Thanksgiving Eve to all you Americans out there!

Say What?

Today I was talking to one of my beta readers, getting some pre-discussion feedback before the whole group meets on Saturday. She admitted that historical fiction on ancient Egypt isn't something she'd normally pick up, but then made my day telling me she loved it and that I needed to come up with a plan to market the book to non-history people because they'll love it.

Yay!

I told her that I love the warm glowy comments, but I need to know all the bad stuff- everything in the novel that doesn't work. Her first comment was that the names were hard in the beginning.

Don't I know it? Egyptians had a penchant for names that feel like a sack of marbles in your mouth. I've yet to find a way to make them less painful, shortening some and even looking up all their throne names. Would you rather have Thutmosis or Aakhpenenre?

Yeah.

Then she made a great comment- one I'm going to be on the lookout for. She said that some of the dialogue seemed too modern. That was something that Gary mentioned when I posted my first couple pages (which have now been edited within an inch of their life). She said she could tell when reading Hatshepsut's interaction with kids that I took some of that inspiration from real life interactions with my daughter.

Guilty as charged.

There's a fine line to walk here. Obviously Egyptians wouldn't have talked like us, but I've read some depictions of Hatshepsut that are so stiff and formal (sorry, Pauline Gedge!) that they're hard to read and make it difficult to connect with the characters. My beta reader commented that the modern-speak wasn't heavy throughout the novel, but it definitely poked through.

So I'm adding that to my list for this weekend's revisions. Do any of you have particular issues with dialogue?

Who the Heck is Hatshepsut?

I've been putting off writing a blog bio of Hatshepsut for a long time. Since I started blogging actually.

Why? Because I wanted to wait until people would actually read the post! Imagine your hero, the one person in the world you've on a pedestal, one so high you can hardly see the top. Now imagine that no one has ever heard about your hero. That's Hatshepsut.

And I want everyone to know what a superstar she was!

So, without further ado, here is Hatshepsut!

Hatshepsut was the daughter of Pharaoh Tutmose I and Queen Ahmose. (BTW- There are multiple spellings of some of these names and I'm going to use the ones I used in my book.) Her father had several other children, but all of them predeceased him except for Hatshepsut and her half-brother, Thutmosis. That's one of the hazards of living back then- life expectancies hovered somewhere around the 30 year mark.

Thutmosis was the son of the Pharaoh and a lesser wife named Mutnofret. When Tutmose died, Thutmosis became Pharaoh. His reign was short- dated anywhere from two to twelve years, but with most historians leaning toward the former. Regardless, the guy's only major accomplishment while on the throne was fathering a son with a dancing girl named Aset and Hatshepsut's daughter, Neferure.

Then he dies.

Aw, what a shame. But not really! Thutmosis kicking the bucket allows Hatshepsut to become regent to her toddler stepson. (And yes, little Tutmose would also be her nephew since he's her brother's kid.)

Anyway...

Hatshepsut sits by dutifully for seven years, ruling for Tutmose like a good little regent. But then, for whatever reason (and we don't really know what this reason is) she declares herself Pharaoh.

Yay!

Only two other women before Hatshepsut were Pharaoh and both were the end of their family lines, the last link in a family to toss on the throne. And both women brought about the end of their family dynasties. Oops.

But Hatshepsut's reign was a total success. She went on to built the architectural marvel of Deir-el-Bahri (there I am in front of it!), organize an expedition to reopen trade to the mythical land of Punt, and keep the peace in her country for a couple decades.

Hatshepsut disappears from the historical record around 1482BCE and then Tutmose gets to take his place on the throne. Late in his reign all references to Hatshepsut as Pharaoh and all her monuments and statues are destroyed. Historians used to think this was an act of revenge against his usurper stepmother, but now it's believed it was merely to secure later successions and erase the aberration of a female ruler from Egypt's history.

Hatshepsut may not be as famous as Cleopatra VII (who lost the entire country to Rome, by the way), but of all the women Pharaohs, Hatshepsut was by far the most successful. In fact, even compared to the entire list of Egypt's rulers, Hatshepsut would still rank up there in the top five. I'm biased, but I'd say she only comes behind Ramesses II and he lived so long (ninety-some-odd-years-old) that his death sunk the country into a slump from which it would never recover.

So yeah. Hatshepsut is a rock star!

Weekend Mishmash

First, I have a thank you that's long overdue. Julie Dao passed along this pretty little bouquet to me- I love Picasso and I love awards! So guess, what? If you love Picasso you too can swipe the award!

So, I have some words of wisdom to pass along from my daughter (who is three, by the way). A couple days ago she looked at me, and full of seriousness said, "Mommy, I grow every day."

It was just so adorable, coming from no where. I love watching her grow every day too- learning to read new words, discovering the seasons, and even outgrowing her pants. I like to think that I grow every day too. I've been dabbling in painting lately and I'm making an attempt to try new things whenever possible, be it food or even just reading a book outside of my normal genre.

And of course, I try to grow as a writer each day. Or at least each week. Reading blogs helps as does writing every day.

So, what do you to to grow, either personally or as a writer?

And this weekend's fun word to use in a sentence?

Snafu- (noun) There was a slight snafu in the ice cream conveyor belt, resulting in the most peculiar combination of peppermint cookie dough peanut butter gelato.

Live Long & Prosper

My brain is a mush of short-circuiting synapses right now so I'm not going to blog about writing tonight. Or ancient Egypt. Those of you visiting in the hopes of finding either of those topics are going to be sorely disappointed. I'd apologize, but I'm not going to because today we're going to talk about...

Star Trek!

Two nights ago I did the unthinkable. I stayed up late to watch the new Star Trek movie that just came out on DVD. (Translation: Stayed up until 11PM which really is late considering I deal with 125 hormonal teenagers starting at 7AM.)

I loved it. Loved, loved, loved it!

Gene Roddenberry had quite the imagination, sparking this whole franchise- I once read that he created the characters of The Next Generation giving each person one part of the human psyche. Picard (or was it Data?) was the brains, Riker the sex drive, Troi the emotion, and Worf was instinct. I've always thought that was kind of nifty.

As you might have guessed, The Next Generation is my favorite series and while I love all the characters (except for Geordi and Wesley Crusher) I always really liked Troi. Data and Picard would be tied for second place.

So for those of you Trekkies out there, enlighten me today. (And yes, I'm a definite Trekkie. I might even have a couple of convention notches in my belt- my dad and I bonded over Star Trek when I was a teen- it was the only thing we agreed on.)

Who is your favorite character in the Trek universe? Favorite series? Episode?

My Ode to Delos

I thought I would go out on a limb here and post one of the rare poems I've written. While visiting Delos, Greece this summer I was struck by the windswept, barren beauty of the deserted island. The winds at the top of the island's mountain must have been 75-80 miles per hour, but I kept pulling out my notepad to jot down little phrases of inspiration. When we got back to our boat I pulled them all into this little poem. For all of you rhymers out here- I can't rhyme to save my life. I think I must have missed out on that gene.


Delos

Ancient staircase to the gods, rambling up the mountain,
lilting, cobbled, strewn with orange lichen.
Bridal veil of a wedding long since past,
steps loose, cracked, weather beaten.

Cracked terracotta trampled into earth,
pale cactus luxuriating in a corner.
Pot shards crunch under feet,
cicadas' arguments pierce the wind.

Delicate periwinkle blossoms triumph,
o'er parched and gritty thorns.
Spiked purple stalks clamber up long-dry wells,
faces burned by the sun.

Forlorn columns stand eternal sentry,
merciless winds defacing statues.
Silent lions brace themselves,
witnesses to time's mosaic.



So, do you write poetry?

Writing is Like Running

I don't love running. In fact, abhor is not strong enough a word to describe my feelings toward an activity only Satan could have spawned.

But I do it because I'm turning 30 next year and my metabolism is dying a slow and painful death. Here's my internal monologue as I run, on the treadmill because there's six inches of snow and it's five below outside.

0:01-0:05= "This really sucks. At least I get to read while I warm up."

0:05-0:10= "I hate this. Why on God's green earth am I torturing myself?"

0:10-0:15= "This is just sadistic."

0:15-0:20= "I LOVE endorphins! Yeah! I'm a freaking rock star!"

0:20-0:25= "Holy cow! Who knew I could run faster than six miles per hour? YAHOO!"

0:25-0:26= "I want to die. Who knew I could sweat this much?"

0:26-0:30= "Wow. I am totally amazing. Look what I can do!"


Okay, so here's my internal monologue when I sit down to write.

0:01-0:05= "This really sucks. At least I get to read my blogs while I pretend to write."

0:05-0:10= "I hate this. Why on God's green earth am I torturing myself thinking I can write?"

0:10-0:15= "This is just sadistic."

0:15-0:20= "I LOVE writing! Yeah! I'm a freaking rockstar!"

0:20-0:25= "Holy cow! Who knew I could write something this good? YAHOO!"

0:25-0:26= "I want to die. Who knew I could write something this bad?"

0:26-0:30= "Wow. I am totally amazing. Look what I can do!"

Yeah. Writing is like running. Now I need to go take a shower.

My Hatshepsut

For some reason I really enjoyed writing that title. She's mine, all mine!

Mwahahaha!

Now for your regularly scheduled programming.

Yesterday we talked about obesity in ancient Egypt and I let you all in on a little secret: Hatshepsut was obese at the end of her life. Amalia, Gary, and L.T. then asked if I would be incorporating that little historical tidbit into my book and if that knowledge colored my perception of Hat.

The short answers? No and no.

Now for the long answers. Being obese in ancient Egypt would not have been the norm- this is a pre-industrial civilization and while the Egyptians were much better off than their friends in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, (compliments of the Nile's clockwork flooding), we're still not talking about a land of good n' plenty. So only those who were extremely well off would have had the privilege of love handles, double chins, and spare tires. Like Hatshepsut.

But it doesn't matter what Hatshepsut looked like- she's a rockstar! I plan on doing a full-length post featuring all of my hero's accomplishments in the future, but the short list includes her magnificent temple at Deir el-Bahri, successful forays into Egypt's neighboring countries to quell some miscreant rebels, reopening trade with the mythical land of Punt, beginning tomb building in the Valley of the Kings, and keeping peace in Egypt for her twenty-some-odd year reign. And she was a woman- the first woman Pharaoh in Egypt to seize the throne in a time of peace. And she was the first woman to successfully rule the country. The two other female Pharaohs before her each managed to end their family dynasties and plunge Egypt into chaos.

Oops.

In my world, Hatshepsut led a life of luxury and enjoyed her honeyed rolls and spiced wine. Who wouldn't get a little soft after twenty years of ruling a peaceful country with a smorgasbord of new trade goodies coming to your table?

Now onto the harder question. Did I incorporate Hatshepsut's weight into my novel? I actually did in the first draft, but it got cut. I got all psychological into why Hatshepsut gained weight, but it just didn't work for the story. My betas didn't like it. I didn't like it. It became one of those unnecessary descriptions. You know the kind: blue eyes, blond hair, pink shirt, heart-shaped lips, 100 pounds overweight.

So in the end I've alluded to her health problems at the end of her life. Most Egyptians only made it to an average of 30 years during the New Kingdom so Hatshepsut would have been darn near ancient hovering somewhere around 50 years old. She had arthritis, diabetes, a tumor in her left iliac bone, and an abscessed tooth with an infection that spread to her bloodstream and killed her.

So, when you all read my published book, you'll know that Hatshepsut was also a tad on the round side toward the end. But everyone else will just hear her complain about her creaking bones and a tooth that really needs pulled.

Obesity & Airbrushing in Ancient Egypt

All the inscriptions and pictures of people in ancient Egypt are like this one- svelte Pharaohs, nobles, and gods, each individual equipped with rock hard abs and buns of steel. But was this the reality?

Heavens no!

I get a kick out of the Egyptians when it comes to body image- they were masters at airbrushing. In Hatshepsut's mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri there is a scene where her mother is being led to the birthing chamber, minutes away from Hatshepsut's glorious entrance into this world. The picture?



Yes, that little bump on Queen Ahmose's belly is the evidence that she was nine months pregnant. So cute, right?

However, meandering a little further down the temple, one sees a depiction of the queen of Punt, a land Hatshepsut reopened trade with and now believed to be somewhere near Somalia. The Egyptians were impressed with the myrrh trees and the Puntians (Puntites?) houses built on stilts. But they were even more impressed by corpulent Queen Ati, evidence of which was also preserved for eternity on Hatshepsut's temple. They recorded that it took six men to carry her around too.



She wasn't Egyptian so I guess they didn't feel the need to airbrush her. Poor Ati- one of the only images of obesity in all of ancient Egypt.

So what about Hatshepsut? Her mummy has been found (thank you Zahi Hawass!) and even Hawass was hesitant to identify that particular body with Egypt's greatest female Pharaoh Egypt until hard forensic evidence linked the two with irrefutable proof. Why? Because Hatshepsut's mummy was obese to the extent that she was likely diabetic and had to be eviscerated through a U-shaped incision in her abdomen instead of through the side as was customary. Zahi Hawass, Egypt's Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities described the mummy as a "very large, fat body with huge pendulous breasts."



I guess ruling a kingdom during its golden age takes its toll, eh?

Big Weekend Plans

I'm counting down- only two more weeks until I meet with my beta readers for HATSHEPSUT: FEMALE PHARAOH and then I get to go to town revising. I'm kind of a nerd (you knew that already), but I'm pretty excited to get back to work!

My goals for this weekend? Polish my bloody synopsis and get a solid 2,500 words written in RELUCTANT QUEEN.

And here's your word for the weekend!

FUSTY: (adjective) musty, moldy

The cork on my bottle of old vine zinfandel was fusty, but I drank it anyway.

Inspired by the quote on the cork of my recent bottle: What contemptible scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch? -W.C. Fields

Wait, Is That Cruella Deville?

I'm thinking out loud here so I'm warning you ahead of time- things could get scary. Very scary.

As many of you know, HATSHEPSUT: FEMALE PHARAOH is in the hands of my first round of beta readers. I'll get the full run-down in a couple weeks when we all meet together. However, my husband is also reading the finished book for the second time, now that it's all cleaned up. I've put him to the task of looking for repetitious words, phrases, etc. Last night he came to me laughing because Hatshepsut's brother/husband had been insulted six times in one page. Really, it was only five, but whatever. I guess that might be overboard.

But the brother/husband, Thutmosis, is the antagonist. He's the one wearing the crown while Hatshepsut is doing all the work. The novel is in third person, but that scene is from Hatshepsut's point of view and she's really tired of him being a punk.

And vicariously, I'm living through Hatshepsut. And I'm tired of him being a spoiled rotten brat.

But upon thinking about my husband's comments, he does have a point, much as I might hate to admit it. There's a fine line between making a villain a Disney caricature (I hate reading villains that remind me of Maleficent or Cruella Deville) or adding depth. I think I've done that in other scenes with Thutmosis, but maybe not enough. On the flip side, no protagonist should be a saint. I've focused most of my energies on Hatshepsut's development- she's by no means perfect. And I modeled her after Oedipus so she's kind of tragic. Kind of a lot. And she has a nasty temper.

As for Thutmosis? His redeeming quality is his love for his son and another wife, but that's at Hatshepsut's expense.

I'm rambling so I'll stop now. I guess what I'm getting at here is that every character needs flaws and redeeming qualities; it's just the ratio of each that determines whether they are protagonist or antagonist. Susan blogged on a similar topic the other day- well worth the read!

Do your characters possess traits to flesh them out or are you still working on them?

Writing Is Like Painting... Only Not

Ahem.

Yes, I am standing on a soapbox. It's not a big soapbox, but still.

Let's talk about art. Writers are artists, right? *insert nod here*

Writers are some of the biggest risk-taking, kick-butt artists around. Now, I'm not an artist in the traditional sense, so keep in mind that I'm terribly biased here, but I dabble in painting and wanted to be an animator in high school, so I have some idea of what other artists go through. And I'm having a really hard time coming up with another genre of artist who labors for so long to create their product, undergoes such a massive amount of critiquing, reworks their baby, and then willingly opens themselves up for waves of rejections.

A painter paints a canvas. It may take forever before the last splash of paint is applied, but once that paint is dried it's a done deal. You can hang it on the wall in your living room, your grandma's kitchen, or a gallery wall, but it's done.

A writer types the last word in their first draft and they've merely cleared the first hurdle. There's months, if not years, more work to be done.

Writing should come with a warning label, WARNING: Hazardous to your sanity. Writers are amazing for even attempting this craziness. And I'm going to get all touchy-feely on you here. You are amazing for attempting this craziness. So do something nice for yourself today. I'm going to enjoy some dark chocolate sea salt cashews (sweet and salty and terribly yummy!) and a glass of old vine zinfandel.

What will you do to treat yourself?

Rules Are Like Pie Crust, Easily Made, Easily Broken

First of all, a big thanks to Steph Damore for the Honest Scrap award! You should all check out Steph's blog if you haven't already- it's awesome!

So here's a present for all my followers! If your purty little mugshot is on the right of my blog, you've earned the Honest Scrap award too! Congrats!

And yes, I just used five exclamation marks in two paragraphs. Take that writing conventions! Hey! That brings us to the topic of today's post...

What writing convention do you get a little thrill out of breaking?

There are so many rules we writers are expected to follow: stick to said and asked as dialogue tags, don't use adverbs, nix the prologue, stay in one head at a time, use proper grammatical conventions, blah, blah, blah...

We all know the rules and we all know rules are occasionally meant to be broken. I'll let you in on a little secret. I love sentence fragments. LOVE them! And they're one of the things I bust my students for in all of their writing assignments. They're absolutely never, ever allowed to use them. That's one of those cases where you really have to know and understand the rule to know when to break it. And I do.

With relish. ;)

So, what rules do you get a kick out of breaking?

All in the Name of History

Okay, so I whined about this on a couple other blogs today (sorry!) and then thought, no- this particular topic deserves its very own blog post!

*drum roll*

I hate it, absolutely hate it when historical fiction writers get sloppy. I also hate it in Hollywood, but I take that with a grain of salt because it's, well, Hollywood. For example, the use of coins in Troy- the one with Brad Pitt. (Don't get me started about how Homer's version wasn't good enough so Hollywood had to muck with it.) They didn't have coins in that time period of ancient Greece/Troy. If I recall correctly, coins in the Western world weren't invented until the 6th century BCE- way before the Iliad.

Anyway...

Last night I was looking forward to writing a big chunk of RELUCTANT QUEEN. The scene I'm currently working on is a funeral, one that should be rich and fairly dramatic. But it's set in an obscure pyramid complex, one of them in Saqqara that I've never been to. (Drat that I didn't know I needed to go there last time I was in Egypt!)

So I spent about an hour researching. And then another hour writing. A page.

A page!

ACK! And the whole page is description. Description that will get cut to a couple sentences. But I needed the details right- the layout of the four pyramids (five if you count the cult pyramid within the main pyramid's temple), the inscriptions on the walls, the names of the queens of the smaller pyramids.

Why, you ask, would I need all this? Who really cares?

History nerds like me care! It would be plain lazy of me to make the stuff up. I'm okay with making things up that further the story- characters, scenic details that would affect the plot, and so on. But it would be sloppy of me to make up the queen's names if the historical record had preserved them this long. Although one of them is named Udjebten. And there was another reference to an Ineneh-Inti. And I thought Hatshepsut was a mouthful.

So it dawned on me that if I spend this much time on details (in the name of history) and then cut them (in the name of writing for an audience who doesn't care that there was a guard house to the right of the first causeway ramp), other writers probably do the same thing.

Do you? Just tell me you do so I don't feel so bad. Puh-lease?

Awards and the Word of the Weekend (Yes, a little late. So sue me!)

Yahoo! Natalie Murphy AND Stephanie McGee both gave me the One Lovely Blog Award!

Rules are as follows:

1.Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you’ve newly discovered.

2. Contact the bloggers to let them know they've been chosen.

Numbers have never been my strong point, but here are my nominees!

L.T. Host at Quest: Published
Matt at Free the Princess
Bane of Anubis at Bane's Blogging Blues
Anissa at Anissa Off the Record
Valerie Geary at Something to Write About
Susan Mills at A Walk in My Shoes
Natalie Bahm at Natalie Bahm
Tamika at The Write Worship
Amalia at Good to Begin Well, Better to End Well
Megan Rebekah at Megan Rebekah Blogs... And Writes

Woohoo! Nothing like spreading the love on a Monday. (Okay, it's still Sunday here, but I'm betting most of you are ahead of Alaska Time.)

Also... In my excitement about Egyptian toys, I forgot this weekend's word game. But I think it works for Monday too- I know I need all the help I can get making Monday's bearable.

Today's word is...

EXTIRPATE: (verb) to pull out by the roots, to destroy completely

My sentence: I will extirpate every gray hair on my head, including the one eyebrow hair that keeps growing back.

Egyptomania!

Oh yeah! I totally bought Playmobil's Egyptian pyramid for my daughter for Christmas. I'm indoctrinating her early into Egyptomania. I gave her life and one day she's going to have to sit through Liz Taylor's Cleopatra with me, all 192 minutes of it. (And the HBO series inspired by my book.) I have to have someone to rave to about Hatshepsut, pyramids, and the Valley of the Kings, right?

And you know I'm going to play with this. I might actually have to break into the box before Christmas. I need to, uh... make sure all the parts are there. And that the trapdoor works. Yeah, that's it.

I'm so excited!

Shhhhhhh!

What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers. ~Logan Pearsall Smith, "All Trivia," Afterthoughts, 1931


Whisper to your readers, dear friends.

That is all. My brain is soaked in a sugar induced fog from too much ice cream birthday cake. My little monkey turned three today!

See you Monday!

Confucius Says...

So I'm kind of a big fan of fortune cookies. Who doesn't like a happy prediction for the future wrapped in sugary goodness?

Yesterday some of my students brought in fortune cookies and mine gave me a big smile.

A cheerful letter or message is on its way to you.

Like an agent offering representation? (Yes, I know they would call. But this is my fortune and my fantasy so just nod and smile.) And yes, I know I haven't started querying, but I'm not taking this in the literal sense- the letter doesn't have to be in the mail or my inbox right now. I'm using these fortune cookies to keep me motivated- I've got until July 16th, 2010 to make the last one come true.

Hurray for fortune cookies!

Ancient Egyptian Weddings

So far I've written three Egyptian weddings in two books. And there's more to come. After all, I'm writing about royal women, those who were used as pawns to solidify claims to the throne and sometimes political alliances. So it's kind of inevitable.

Modern Western society makes a big to-do about weddings with the happy couple often going into debt to put on the perfect ceremony and reception, but I think the ancient Egyptians may have had the right idea. In ancient Egypt, a woman was considered married as soon as she moved into her husband's house. There are no records of any sort of ceremony, any documents that had to be signed. You shack up together and viola! You're married!

There's also a fair amount of love poetry that exists from ancient Egypt, some rather suggestive. Those Egyptians were no Puritans (even though Matt informed us via Bane's blog that those Puritans were far from saintly). An example, one that's PG-13ish:

My lover is a lotus blossom
with pomegranate breasts;
her face is a polished wooden snare.

And I am the poor bird
seduced
into the teeth of her trap.

There are also many poems using the words brother and sister as terms of endearment. These don't mean sibling in the literal sense as it was really only the royal family that intermarried. It's important to keep the crown in the family, you know.

This is one of those examples where I've had to stretch history a little. It's hard to write a wedding scene, especially one between two royal siblings, without elaborating a little. I think modern audiences expect a gala event. So I've added some symbolic actions in the wedding, but tried to focus mostly on the parties that would have followed. Normally I'm a stickler when it comes to history, but embellishing on fact in this instance only makes a better story. And if the scenes are mostly about the parties, I figure the ancient Egyptians won't mind. After all, their lives were short and they certainly knew how to party!

Kind of Like Musical Greeting Cards, But Better

A while back I was talking to a friend about how it would be kind of nifty to have a soundtrack to go along with my novel. Those so inclined could tune into what I had been listening to as I wrote a scene, maybe add another dimension to the story. I'm a big music person and there are certain scenes in HATSHEPSUT that morphed as a direct result of what I was listening to at the time.

And really, how cool is it to be able to listen to Yo-Yo Ma while running through the Valley of the Kings?

Now there's certain songs I listen to that instantly remind me of what Hatshepsut was doing as I wrote. Kind of weird, but it works for me. And really I'm helping HBO out so that when they turn the novel into a miniseries they won't have to search far to find the soundtrack. (Just humor me here...)

I don't own a Kindle and don't read books on my iPhone so I'm wondering if this is something that's maybe already out there. I swear I've been bugged in the past and some of my greatest ideas have been stolen. (Oops All Crunchberries? I pegged that years before it came out.) Do any of you e-reader people out there know?

Tortoise or the Hare?

In honor of all the amazing people participating in the NaNoWriMo marathon, I thought I'd pose a question.

Do you write fast or slow? Somewhere in between?

I write faster when I'm not working. (I neglected to mention my degree in rocket science on my profile.) I pumped out almost half of my novel in the two-and-a-half months break this summer AND managed my first edit too. But when I'm working I'm lucky to get in 15 pages a week. I'm really looking forward to winter break- that's when I'm planning on cranking out a full revision for HATSHEPSUT and a big written chunk of RELUCTANT QUEEN.

Yes, I just unveiled the temporary title of the new WIP. Yippee!

So, which are you- the tortoise or the hare?