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Dialogue from the past can be a real pain in the…paragraph.
If you want to make Medieval, Renaissance or even characters from the age of Mozart believable, you have to be like a tightrope walker. Characters who say “thee” and “thou” can’t say also say “you” in the next sentence. Here is part of a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer, born in 1340, who wrote in Middle English. Book Of The Duchesse I have gret wonder, be this lighte, How that I live, for day ne nighte I may nat slepe wel nigh noght, I have so many an ydel thoght Purely for defaute of slepe That, by my trouthe, I take no kepe Of no-thing, how hit cometh or goth, Ne me nis no-thing leef nor loth. Al is y-liche good to me — Ioye or sorowe, wherso hyt be — For I have feling in no-thinge, But, as it were, a mased thing, Alway in point to falle a-...
The Writing Process
I had dabbled in writing since maintaining a food blog for over six years. Tackling a novel is a whole new ballgame. Wait, let me backtrack a little. I’ve always been a dreamer. I remembered my early childhood when my father always scolded me for being absent-minded. Even then I would think up scenarios in my head and appear to be lost in my own world. In high school, I even started on a science fiction novel which I, unfortunately, abandoned. I grew up learning and speaking three languages. You can just imagine how confusing that can be when it came to writing. Fortunately, I only had to do composition in two of them. I did well in my English courses in high school, but when I headed off to college and took up an Engineering degree, I got rusty in composition. When I started writing a foo...
Just who are these Redheads, Anyway?
With Cailín, the first book of my debut series Anam Céile Chronicles, releasing in little over a week, I thought I would dedicate this next month’s blog posts to subject matter I created the series around. Aislinn, the heroine of this series, is a stubborn Irish lass, and naturally, she has red hair— something which I myself can also relate to. Redheads have had a shaky history fitting in socially, going from being persecuted, ridiculed, and even put to death for the color of their hair to being admired and worshiped for it. I know from personal experience how bewildering being a redhead can be. As a child I was teased and singled out for the color of my hair, which needless to say, took its toll upon my self esteem and resulted in my becoming rather shy and solitary. Add that to my...
Reflections
Reflections The last few days have been, to say the least, quite eventful and exciting. As I sit here in my office, (built by the world’s most wonderful husband), I am thinking about how much my life has changed in the past eighteen months, five years, ten years, and I am just in awe of it all. Ten years ago, I was adding two cans of water to a can of chicken soup to make it stretch. If we had crackers to put in it, we were feasting like kings. People think I joke about this, but the sad fact is, it is true. Life was a struggle back then. Every morning was like playing Russian Roulette. Will they shut the power off today? How will I pay the water bill? How am I going to buy groceries this week? Where am I going to get the money for shoes for the kids? I worked any job I could get ...
A Special Goodbye: Charles Moss
A Special Goodbye: Charles Moss I’ll never forget the Sunday afternoon three-wheeler rides with our little gang of misfits. I was the youngest, I think, in my teens. Every Sunday we would meet up at my grandfather’s store, each other’s houses, or at some point in between. We all rode Honda three-wheelers. Our destination might be a sandpit, logging trails, river beds, or just a nearby mud hole. Most afternoons, at some point along the way, we would gather in a lazy circle, eat Nabs (that’s peanut butter crackers made by Nabisco, for you non-southerners) and drink a Pepsi. It was during those times Uncle Charles told his stories. His deadpan delivery never failed to make us all laugh. Even when he told horrific tales of being trapped in foxholes in Vietnam, we laughe...
