Edmonton airport

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Communication

When my parents immigrated to Canada with my younger brother and me in the 1950’s their only means of communicating with relatives in Germany was by letter.  The farm where my father worked had a telephone (party line) but none of my relatives had telephones and besides the first transatlantic telephone cables didn’t come into use until the late 1950s.  My relatives didn’t ever see some of their grandchildren or nephews and niece again nor could they share in our daily lives.  I never thought a lot about what they were missing, though I did miss them for a time.  It wasn’t until my own grandson arrived that I realized how extremely difficult it must have been for them to see part of their family leave.  One of my brothers went back with my mother after several years; I didn’t get back until 25 years after we left.  The brother who was born here has never been to Germany to see relatives.

Now we have Skype as well as telephones, and lots of airline flights.
I regularly Skype with my son and his family. My grandson performs songs for me and shows me his toys or tells me what he has been doing.   He asks me what I have at my place so I show him the toys I have here and sometimes I tell him stories about them.  I carry my laptop around so he can see my house again and keep track of the changing seasons in my back yard.  Sometimes I sing to him and we do a puzzle musical puzzle together – he tells me which instrument and I take it out and put it back so he can hear the tune.

Recently one of the members of my book club said that she and her nephew are reading Jack London’s Call of the Wild together using speaker phones.  She encourages him to look up the places mentioned in the book using the atlas, Google and other sources; she also suggests different methods for looking up words.  Her nephew is bonding with her and also learning about how to do research and the value of checking more than one source.
This reminded me again of how creative people are and can be.  I was lucky enough to have my grandson living in the same city for the first two years of his life.  If I hadn’t I’d have had to find ways to sing him lullabies and stories so that we could keep in touch (as we do now) between the times I can fly or take the bus to see him.  It’s much easier now that they are closer to go and visit in person more often, but even so, I am grateful for all of the technological advances that have made us indeed a part of the global village.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month.  It’s an opportunity for people to attempt to write a novel in a month with support from an organization and other writers.  Once the month is over, you upload your novel and they send you a certificate saying you completed the task. It’s fun and I did it a couple of years ago, resulting a new novel called Diamond Cat.  (If you want to try this just google NaNoWriMo.)

NaNoWriMo originates in the United States, while The Three Day Novel Contest is a Canadian tradition that occurs on the Labour Day weekend in September each year.  I did the latter once as well and ended up with 90 some pages. There is a prize for this one – a committee of judges chooses the one they like best and it gets published. I didn’t win, but the process was interesting.  A long weekend of writing and very little sleep.
Recently I posted several chapters of my fantasy novel Queen of Fire on a Harper Collins site called www.authonomy.com.  For anyone interested  in reading what I’ve got up there, just go to the site and type the title of the book into the search space.

After I’d done that I wondered about  my NaNoWriMo novel (I hadn’t looked at it since I finished the draft), and decided it had some merit. I actually liked the first section and decided to spend some time revising it, see what happened.  Then I thought some people might like to read some of Diamond Cat, so I’ve put a bit here.  If you want to read more, let me know and I will add to it in the future.
Diamond Cat Beginning:

A dark-skinned man stands alone at a downtown bus stop.  In the west the sun has just sunk behind the buildings and shadows are growing.  The man is staring at nothing in particular, or perhaps merely contemplating a partially completed spider web in the corner of the bus shelter.  The web is dusty, but glints in the light of the occasional passing care.  The man squats to study the web more carefully, to find the spider, but all he sees are a couple of dead flies.  He stands again and steps out of the shelter to glance right and left.  There is no sign of any bus.

A scream cuts through the peace of the summer evening.

The man looks around, his shoulder-length platinum hair fanning out as he moves his head.  There’s nothing unusual to be seen.  A puff of wind scatters dust and bits of paper.  The man watches the direction of the debris and screws up his eyes against the dust.  He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cell phone or hand-held device, taps at it, and studies the result.  After a moment or two he turns to his left and walks north.

It’s the middle of the week and most people have gone home from work; there’s not much traffic on the streets.  The man soon reaches a set of row houses.  The dirty yellow brick walls and stone basements proclaim their age, but the dark green painted doors, steps and porch columns show that work has recently been done to improve them.  Without hesitation, the man enters the path of the second unit to his right.  When he reaches the door, he doesn’t pull out a key, however, but knocks hard and long instead.  A short time after he stops knocking the door opens, though it’s held by a security chain.

“What do you want?” A woman’s pale face stares at him.  “Are you a police detective?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“I called 911, and I know the Police Station is only a few blocks away, but you responded awfully quickly.”

The man tips his head to one side.  “There was a scream.”

“Yes, someone tried to get in at my back door.”

“It was locked?”

She nods.  “Of course.  I’m not a fool; I keep my doors locked and I don’t let strange men enter.”

“But you stand at the door and talk to them.”  He grins.  It’s an engaging grin, lighting up his face and warming his brown eyes.

Her lips twitch as if she wants to smile back, but stops herself.  “If you’d show me some identification, I’d be much happier, and I could let you in.”

He reaches for a pocket.  The woman pushes against the door so that merely a crack remains open.  The man pulls out a wallet, extracts a plastic covered card.

“A private detective’s license,” he says, holding it out.  “Of course, I might have created it myself.  Could probably do the same with a police badge.”  There’s no response from behind the door.  “Look,” he continues, “I heard the scream, thought I’d come and offer help.  I can take a look at your back door, if you like.  There must be a way to get to the rear of your unit without going through.  Or if you prefer, I’ll just leave.”

Pale fingers reach through the crack and take the card.  There is silence for a few moments.  Then the man outside hears steps walking away.  He waits, wondering whether he should go, too.  But she has his card.  He glances around.  No one is out walking in the streets, though now and then a car passes.  There are lights on in a couple of the other units.  After a while, steps return.

“Inconclusive,” he thinks he hears her mumble.  The door opens to the chain width.  She hands out his card.  “All right, why don’t you take a look at the back, since there’s no sign of the real police.  To your right, then left around the corner until you come to a brick path along the side of the building.”

He follows her directions.  It’s less attractive back there than in front.  Painting hasn’t been kept up.  A dented and slightly rusty blue car is parked near the door he assumes is hers.  By the outdoor light, he can see a large planter of white flowers beside the door to the left.  There’s a sweet scent he can’t identify, probably coming from those flowers.  That unit doesn’t have a car, though there’s a lit window and as he glances at it, the curtain moves.  He thinks a woman’s face draws back into the shadows, but isn’t certain – it could have been a man.  One of the other units to the far right has a parked red truck and a bright window; the rest look dark from here.

He takes out his hand-held device, flicks a switch and shines the resulting narrow beam of light along the ground in front of the door.  He leans forward, bringing his face down.  Being careful not to tread too close, he moves the light over the back door.  There are long scratches around the knob and lock.  He examines these particularly closely.

The lock clicks and the handle turns.  Light spills out and down several stairs.  Above those there looks to be a small kitchen.  This view is partially obscured as a large, dark figure moves forward.  The woman’s voice comes from behind the figure.

“This is James Hunter,” she says, “a friend.  James, this is a police officer.”

James doesn’t show that he’s startled by the lie, or by the fact that she read his card carefully enough and remembered his name.  He merely nods and flicks off his light.  The police officer unclips a very large flashlight from his belt and turns its beam onto James, who lowers his eyelids against the glare.

“Was it you trying to get into this lady’s house?” the officer asks gruffly.

“What?” the woman says.  “Of course it wasn’t him!”

“Please, Miss, um Jakob, let me ask the questions and let him answer for himself.  Well?” the police officer barks, lowering the flashlight slightly so that James can see the glowering face above the beam.

“No,” James confirms, “I didn’t try to get in.  I’d guess something with claws did.  Those scratch marks look fairly fresh.”  He points.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Vampire

Anne Rice wrote Interview with the Vampire after her daughter died of leukemia.  Was there a connection; was she trying to grapple with the tragedy of what happened by writing the book?  I still think that Interview with the Vampire along with Bram Stoker’s Dracula are two of the best books in the genre.  But what is it that draws people to this mythical and fictional creation?

Legends of blood drinking spirits existed in ancient Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome, but our modern day stories appear to have their origins in south-eastern Europe.  Mass hysteria occurred with accusations of vampire attacks in East Prussia in 1721; people had feared the undead before and continued to do so, and they didn’t understand the vectors of disease.  Peter Plogojowitz was a Serbian peasant who died in 1725 and shortly thereafter nine other people died.   It was believed that Peter had turned into a vampire and caused the other deaths.  Austrian authorities and a local priest were asked to exhume the body and supposedly found signs (e.g. hair and beard grown, no decomposition, blood in the mouth) of vampirism.   A wooden stake was put through the heart and the body was burned.  The case was published in a Viennese newspaper.
Lord Byron is credited by some with writing the first vampire story (actually a fragment), which was called Augustus Darvell (A Fragment of a Novel) (http://www.simplysupernatural-vampire.com/vampire-Byron-Augustus-Darvell.html).   Apparently the story was written during a rainy period in Geneva (1816) when Byron, Percy Shelly and Mary Shelly decided to amuse themselves by reading and then writing ghost stories.  Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein was the only one completed and published.  However, in 1819 John Polidori’s novel  The Vampyre was published (it was based on Byron’s tale).

Recently there has been a revival of interest in Vampires.  Anne Rice published Interview with the Vampire in 1976 and went on to write several books in the Vampire Chronicles (ending in 2002).  There have been other books (check any library paperback section) and movies (Nosferatu, The Lost Boys, The Twilight Saga), and television shows (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Moonlight, Trueblood).  I  liked the Moonlight series about a vampire detective (which was actually based on a movie), have never seen Buffy, and like The Vampire Diaries a lot (but don’t try to read the books – they are awful).
So what is it that fascinates some of us about this?  Is it the thought of living forever and having amazing powers?  Is it the sexual turn on (all those burgeoning adolescent hormones)?  The adrenalin rush from being scared?  Most likely a combination of reasons.   The Vampire is the outsider, the focus of hatred and fear.  They have been the antagonist, but more recently have moved into anti-hero and hero status.   Perhaps they represent hidden desires, the dark side of our souls or as Jung would say, the shadow.

Each writer or creator seems to keep certain aspects of vampires and change others.  Invisible in mirrors?  Not in The Vampire Diaries.  Afraid of garlic?  Not in their most recent incarnations.  Able to turn into bats or other animals?  Not always.  Peter Plogojowitz apparently strangled his victims rather than killing them by drinking their blood.  Unable to live in the sun?  Not a problem if you have a witch’s enchanted ring.
Endlessly fascinating.