InkyBlots

The Story Behind The Bone Trail

Last fall, while reviewing my lead list for my online equestrian magazine, I came across a highly unusual blog entry by a colleague of mine. In the blog he told a story of a wild horse preservation advocate who made a startling discovery while investigating a secretive wild horse roundup (gather) conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge, located in an extremely isolated area in northern Nevada. During the course of her investigation she stumbled onto something completely unexpected and disturbing. In a pursuant court document she made the following statement:

“…I headed toward the refuge station office …to see if I could find someone with information on this Sheldon gather. There was no one at the office. So I continued down the road to find a place to take my dog …for a walk. <> I began noticing numerous bones, particularly horse bones on the ground. As I looked farther, horse bones became more numerous. I followed this trail of horse bones which led me to even more bones and to a denser distribution of horse skeletal remains. I then found a large pit dug into the ground. It was freshly dug….There were horse bones scattered everywhere.”

Several other disturbing incidents happened to this woman after this discovery; she was harassed and pursued by a helicopter (federal government contractor). She was also told she had to stop taking pictures of the activities surrounding the gather by USFWS Security personnel, even though she was on public land.

Things you would never think would happen in this country. I had so much admiration for this woman, alone, out in such an isolated area, but determined in her efforts to find the truth.

Within a couple of weeks, again, while looking through my lead list, I ran across another news story about a legal battle in Federal Court between the Western Shoshone Indian Tribe and Barrick Gold, the largest gold mining company in the world. The Shoshone had petitioned the court for an injunction to stop Barrick Gold’s plan to begin excavation of a 2000 foot deep open pit mine on Mt. Tenabo, also in Nevada, which is a sacred to the Western Shoshone people. What struck me was that in 2009 while the injunction was granted by the court, and Barrick Gold was back at work, digging up Mt. Tenabo, the next day.

As I pondered these two divergent issues, I began to see a connection.

The wild horses are in the way of ‘progress.’ The Native traditions are in the way of ‘progress.’ Wild horses being wiped out by the U.S. Government – Native Americans losing more and more of their land and heritage.

And, the plot to The Bone Trail was born.

***

Nell Walton is an avid horsewoman and also owns two wild horses, both of which came from a herd near Elko, NV. She is also the founder and managing editor of the online equestrian news magazine, The AllHorses Post (www.allpetspost.org/allhorsespost). She has degrees in journalism and biology from the University of Arkansas, spent many years as a professional journalist and worked as an intern for former President Bill Clinton when he was governor of Arkansas. She lives in East Tennessee on a small horse farm with her husband, four horses, one donkey, two cats and two dogs. The Bone Trail is her first novel.

www.allpetspost.org/AllHorsesPost
www.allpetspost.org/TheBoneTrail
Twitter: nellwal
Facebook: AllHorses Post (user name)
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Bone-Trail/177304412309524

I am a boring writer. I wish I could tell you something fancy about how I write but I am an old-fashioned writing from an outline kind of gal. It keeps me organized. When I start to write a story I have the story mostly finished in my head. I know all the main points and how they will unfold. I then take that information and put it in an outline format and this process helps me keep my thoughts organized and more often than not gives me many other secondary ideas to put in my book. I spend quite a bit of time on the outline but the first pass is all about scenes for me. Not details. So once I have the outline done I begin the writing process starting at the beginning and work my way to the end without stopping and going back. I know I can always fix things later and I want to get as much done as I can without trying too hard.

My goal is to write between 3000-5000 per chapter I have outlined. This forces me sometimes to write what I sometimes feel is a bunch of yuck and I do sometimes delete a lot of it on the next pass but what it does for me is add to the word count and that motivates me. Once I have go to the end and I have 50,000 words I feel like I have accomplished so much it makes it much easier to go back and start the much more difficult process of cleaning the mess I just wrote up.

Like I mentioned the hard work starts on the second pass. That is when I need to make sure that is makes sense. That I didn’t kill someone in chapter 3 who then shows up in chapter 7 (yes that happened). I also start adding details about the setting and characters. AS I add these details I keep a log of the details and what chapter they are located in so I can quickly refer back to them later on. I used to think I would remember I mean I wrote it I should, shouldn’t I? Trust me it doesn’t work that way. At least for me.

When I get frustrated or get writers block I make myself trust the process. I know it has worked in the past so I know it will work now. I just need to let it.

***

Laina Turner-Molaski is a businesswoman, mom, author, Professor, and a major supporter of shopping. She has an undying love for shoes and coffee, which is why she created her main character and alter-ego Presley Thurman.

With a lot of letters after her name and a ton of student loan debt, she is always working to pay the bills. While she enjoys her day job, her passion is writing, and she uses a lot of company time writing her fiction or working on her social website for women, Chiczofrenic.com. She is hoping to sell her book before she gets fired from her day job for goofing off.

Laina is currently living in Indiana, with her family, and is always writing something, whether it’s blogs, articles, business journals and books or ideas for her next novel. She is continuously doing what she loves which is writing or drinking coffee.

www.lainaturner.com

Okay, so your last project didn’t make the best seller list.  You had such hopes, those of a parent hoping for your child’s gold medal.  You are absolutely certain that you can produce an Olympic decathlete, so you keep getting pregnant and with each new issue you get a ballet dancer, a poet, a quite brilliant painter and a beautifully built, but completely uncoordinated brick layer.  You love them all, but none of them got you to the Olympic Village.  Still… the next one pops out with the same fervent hope for that gold medal.  And, yes, that’s part of what keeps us in front of our computers, but it’s certainly not all.

There are breakthroughs, and breakthroughs.   How about the one where you learn something from one of your characters?  There have been many times when developing characters, that I have learned something about myself through my characters’ relationships.  Why did I have her divorce him?  Why did he throw that brick down the street?  Each answer lies somewhere within and each exploration of those answers sheds a little more light the enigma that is me.

Even plotting itself can lead to a personal breakthrough.  I’m sure that much of my story telling is like a dream: an attempt to unravel the world and put it back so that it makes sense.

How about a breakthrough that you might have experienced when you were researching some small aspect of a piece and you discovered something that changed the way you thought about politics or religion?  I had been inquiring about Hassidic dress, but asked the rabbi how he reconciled Genesis and evolution since he said he believed in both.  He explained that, in his view, God had created everything in seven days and that in the perfection of His design, he built evolution into what he created.  “He did not create an infant.  He created man in his entirety which included his past.”  I’ll never view Genesis and evolution as irreconcilable again.

***

Before Jeanne C. Davis seriously entertained writing a novel, she wrote for radio and television including staff jobs on DR. QUINN, MEDICINE WOMAN and the modern prequel to the BONANZA series, THE PONDEROSA. Between the numerous drafts of SHEETROCK ANGEL, she wrote, produced and directed the independent feature THE UNIFORM MOTION OF FOLLY. Her early career had little to do with writing – other than in her journal – and everything to do with living. She was a Pan Am purser.

As with most authors, she has stolen a couple of incidents directly from her own life, but SHEETROCK ANGEL is not autobiographical. She did marry actor Ben Murphy, but he is not to be confused with the actor character in the book. Ben and she remain dear friends.

She is currently working on a novel based on her experiences with Pan Am while in preproduction on another independent feature with niece, Morgan Davis, called LIP SERVICE. She is also continuing work on a documentary about her family with editor Charlene Huston. Her great-grandfather brought one of the first carousels to California and merry-go-rounds were a family business until her father retired in the 1980s.

You can visit Jeanne’s website at Bricolage-Arts.com or you can go directly to Sheetrockangel.com

Sheetrock Angel is available at Amazon.com in paperback and through Kindle.

The one question I always get asked, besides how do you come up with your characters, has to be “Why did you choose to do an online serial?” And the way it came about was more of the medium choosing me then the other way around.

Last year the Managing Editor of Abandoned Towers emailed me asking if I had any stories I could possibly turn into a serial. Though I have a list of online comics and mangas I frequent that would impress any 14 year old, I was unfamiliar with using this format for stories. I wandered around the magazine’s serial archives a while and thought, “This is pretty cool.” In more ways than one. Besides getting to post up new things on a predetermined basis, this would force me to write consecutively and linearly. I am a very organic writer; which, as most organics know, can hinder the production process and end result. It was very daunting to think that I would have to stick to a schedule, produce and post. However, I felt I was up to the challenge.

So I went through my many WIPs on my desktop, picked two stories that would best translate to the medium and wrote up their synopsis. After some back and forth the magazine chose Clock Work (though the other story might be going up for the magazine soon too) and then it was up to me. I am very fortunate to have the magazine edit for me and advertise; but posting and episodes are up to me. Because of that I decided to add illustrations to the episodes and try to make the reading experience as visual and enjoyable as possible. It’s really part of the fun.

I very much recommend the medium. Its freeing and restricting at the same time, and very few places give you that tantalizing dichotomy as a writer.

***

Erin Bassett is Senior Editor at CW Productions, is published in several magazines and her online serial Clock Work updates every 5th of the month at:

http://ebclockwork.blogspot.com

When my first novel, the thriller Talion, was published last spring, I began promoting it on my blog and Web site as well as Facebook. I did research, sent queries, and found a few bloggers willing to interview me and/or review my book. Then I waited for the material to come online. Months passed. One review and a couple of interviews appeared. I hated to pester anyone – after all, nobody was obligated to pay attention to my novel – but finally I emailed the remaining blogger to ask if a review of Talion would be posted on his blog. He responded immediately with an apology. He’d assigned the book to someone who had completed and sent the review awhile ago, but swamped with email, he’d overlooked it.

At that rate, it would take years to establish an online presence. Clearly I had to devote a lot more time and become a lot more persistent, I thought, or I might as well as stop. I faced the same quandary as many other writers. Should I put the writing of my next book on hold while promoting this one? Then I found Pump Up Your Book and signed on for a virtual tour. Now, as my six-week tour comes to an end, I’m amazed at how much I’ve enjoyed and learned from the experience.

I had no idea how much work and planning goes into arranging the many blog stops and book reviews. I appreciate the help and attention I’ve had from my tour director, Jaime McDougall. Jaime has worked hard to ensure my tour is a success. She has answered my questions cheerfully and found a way around every glitch.

I had to complete about twenty interviews and guest posts in the two months before the tour began. I worried my creativity would fail. With the interviews especially, I feared being reduced to covering the same stale topics over and over. But I had more to say about my life, my novel, and my writing than I suspected. Discovering this material was a revelation. I gained a deeper understanding of myself as a writer and a new commitment to my writing.

I also began to learn what kind of blog posts spark a response from readers – the ones that intrigue them and make them think. I was especially proud of a couple of posts, but they drew no attention whatsoever. The final post of the tour, which seemed too intellectual, evoked over a dozen comments.

It was hardly a surprise that not every reviewer thought Talion was wonderful. My work has suffered as much rejection and criticism as the next writer’s. What did surprise and impress me was the reviewers’ thoughtfulness and evenhandedness. The most positive reviewer saw a need for improvement here and there, and the least positive reviewer gave the novel some praise. More than ever, I respect the efforts of those people who love to read so much they undertake the task of reviewing books.

Thanks to the tour, I’ve met wonderful people, found fascinating blogs and Web sites, and stumbled upon worthwhile books by other writers. And yes, sales of Talion have gone up. Most of all, though, I’ve become more persistent. Promotion is a long-term project. The tour has given me an online presence, a foundation on which to build, but I have to continue the process.  One piece of advice in particular has stuck with me: Do something every day to promote your book. Thank you for that, Jaime.

Would I do it again? Definitely. When my next novel is published, I’ll be back.

***

Mary Maddox grew up in Utah and California. A graduate of Knox College and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she now teaches composition and literature at Eastern Illinois University.

She lives in Charleston, Illinois with her husband, film scholar Joe Heumann. Her interests include riding her horse, Tucker, and playing club and tournament Scrabble. Mary’s short stories have appeared in a number of magazines including Farmer’s Market, Yellow Silk, and The Scream Online. Her writing has been honored with awards from the Illinois Arts Council.

Talion, her debut novel, is available at Barnesandnoble.com as a trade paperback and at Amazon.com as both a paperback and a Kindle book. You can visit her at her Web site www.marymaddox.com and follow her blog at http://blog.marymaddox.com.

When I was at University, a good way to make an extra ten quid was to volunteer to be part of a police identity parade. One of my housemates was forever returning from the student union with news of a line-up scheduled for later in the week.  He and I would regularly get picked for the same one, despite having different heights, different length hair, different eye colours, etc. The best you could say was that we were both about twenty-years old and male. This clearly didn’t deter the local constabulary in anyway, and helped to supplement our beer money into the bargain.

News arrived of a line-up, for which the stipulated requirement was facial hair. My flatmate had a bit of a goatee beard, I decided not to shave for two days, and so we arrived at the police station, confident of each picking up a tenner. The Sergeant looked unusually disappointed at the group of young men that had gathered before him. Clearly our features were vastly different to the suspect in police custody, even by their standards.

He took the two of us, plus one other guy, to a room towards the back of the police station. The sergeant explained that the suspect had been filmed on their security camera at the desk. There weren’t enough of us for a line-up, so instead the three of us would also be filmed approaching the desk in the same way, to see if the witness could pick out the right man. My flatmate went first. When it came to my turn the sergeant took a selection of false moustaches from a tray inside the draw of his desk, and began to carefully glue one of them to my chin, to help represent a goatee beard. My sniggering mate agreed afterwards that I didn’t so much look like a criminal with a goatee, as I did a student with a tash glued to his chin. Meanwhile, the frustrated sergeant found our sniggering rather trying if I recall.

According to Her Majesty’s constabulary, I learned that looking the part is everything, even if you don’t. This is certainly the case with the character of Mr. Choli in the ‘Tinfish’ series of children’s books that I have written. His solution to earning his reputation as head detective is to waft around a toy pipe and magnifying glass each time anything happens that requires investigation. It doesn’t make him any more knowledgeable or useful in the process. However, convincing the others that he looks the part is all that is needed to make sure that he’s given the detective job.

***

Chris Wardle holds a bachelor’s degree in physical geography as well as a Master’s degree for water supply in developing countries.

Over the last ten years Chris has travelled extensively in developing countries working on charity projects in poor communities. He has been able to draw on his numerous experiences to inspire his creative works, particularly living for long periods in communities with different cultures in Africa and Asia.

An orphaned kitten in Northern Uganda was the inspiration for Mr. Choli’s character in the Tinfish series. He now lives in the UK with Chris’s family (via a few months with a foster family in France to organise his European passport).

Website:                                www.mrtinfish.moonfruit.com

Store:                                     http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=28817892

Facebook fan page:             http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-lighthouse-of-Mr-Tinfish/253883077406

Contact:                                 mrtinfish@gmail.com

The one thing I’d like to see more of in the writing world is co-creation.  And here’s what I mean by that; how incredibly awesome would it be, if Dean Koontz and Stephen King put their twisted minds together and wrote a novel? Can you imagine?

That is one of the reasons I enjoy text based roleplay so much. For me, there’s a lot of magic in words and creating something new.  It’s terribly exciting watching your imagination unfold and suddenly start writing itself. And when another author, or fellow creative writer joins you and helps build upon your idea…wow.  I’ve seen storylines get taken to levels I never dreamed of when a group of writers got together and each added their own talent and flavour to the story.  Both of my current published books contain a sneak peek of the fantastic storytelling prowess of other writers, close friends of mine who enjoy the written word as much as I do. I think it has breathed new life into sections of my book, and provided depth and rawness that I could have never have achieved alone.

I know this whole idea can be an alien concept.  After all, this is our baby. It’s ours! We don’t always want someone else drawing on our canvass.  But, if you can find another creative genius like yourself, why not take it for a test drive? Sometimes we can form amazing partnerships where we inspire each other, it flows like a symphony, and oh man you’ve never had so much fun. You never know what might come out of it.

***

DCS is the author of Synarchy Book 1: The Awakening and Synarchy Book 2: The Ascension.  When not writing you can listen to her radio show, In The Mind of DCS every Saturday evening at 7pm CST on the Paranormal Soup Network.  Currently sucking up the creative energy of New Orleans, she is attending the American Institute of Holistic Theology to earn a PhD in Metaphysical Spirituality while being hard at work at the next book in the Synarchy Series, and an upcoming webisode series called The Fallen.  Visit her website at www.themindofdcs.com to learn more.

Are there any part-time authors, who feel satisfied that they can spend as much time writing as they would like to? I don’t hear the ones I know say that very often. Well, actually, they never say anything like it at all.

One of the reasons we love to write is because it’s very satisfying to read the work we have slaved over and think with a broad smile “Terrific, I couldn’t have put it better myself!” And of course it’s a great pleasure when other people enjoy it too.

For a long time I spent much of my day writing “boring work stuff”, full of regrets that I didn’t seem to have enough time to spend on “the real thing”. My book ideas seemed too big for the little time available. But I gradually eased into the realization that every writing job is an opportunity. Even an inquiry into the workings of an infuriatingly non-intuitive computer program, or a report on the failing foundation of some unfortunate householder’s pride and joy.

I still spend plenty of time writing that kind of thing. But now it’s pure pleasure. I treat every assignment as if it were a story. How can I say what must be said in a sharp, clear, interesting way? Can I streamline the grammar and sentence construction? Is there a place for humour? Irony? Colourful vocabulary?

I send a copy of most of my e-mails to the boss. Being a good manager he wants to know what is going on; whether I’m keeping up with the latest ideas in storm-water management … or assessing some ambitions project which might have enjoyed rave revues in the architectural journals if it had been erected in Cape Town or Johannesburg – but which, sadly, was beyond the capabilities of the  contractor who attempted to build it in a sorry little village somewhere near the end of a dirt road.

Whatever it is, it’s a challenge.

When the boss waltzes in and says “I thoroughly enjoyed your e-mail to Professor Jenkins (or whoever) it is just about as satisfying as hearing someone say “I liked Another World so much I read it twice in one week.” Though, I must admit, not quite on a par with one lady’s “I loved it! I want a copy for each of my three children.”

And there’s a bonus. After making a report on, say, clay which swells when it gets wet, exciting enough for the boss to come beaming into my office with “I really enjoyed that!”, it’s child’s play to write a scene where the hero rescues the beautiful girl from a pack of giant Australian feral cats, while kookaburras are dropping the world’s most venomous snakes on their heads … or … well, you get the picture.

***

Philip Stott was born in England in 1943. He studied at Manchester University, where he obtained B.S. (with honours) and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering. He lectured at universities in Nigeria and South Africa and carried out research in the analysis of geometrically nonlinear structures. He shared the Henry Adams Award for outstanding research in 1969. While lecturing at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, he studied biology. After leaving Wits he joined an engineering consulting firm. His ongoing interest in all aspects of science led to studies in mathematics and astronomy with the University of South Africa and, later, to four years of part-time research with the Applied Mathematics Department of the University of the Orange Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa.

After many years as a firm atheist, he was converted to Christianity in 1976. Following several years of studying the conflicting claims of secular science and Scripture, he actively entered the Creation/Evolution debate in 1989.

In 1992, he was invited to address a conference in Russia and since then has lectured, addressed conferences, and taken part in debates in eastern and western Europe, America, Canada, and southern Africa. Venues have included the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN), a UNESCO International Conference on the Teaching of Physics, and the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Philip Stott is married to Margaret (born Lloyd). They have two children, Robert and Angela; and two grandchildren, Sean and Julie. They live in Bloemfontein, South Africa.

You can read more about Philip and his novel, Another World at http://nordskogpublishing.com/book-another-world.shtml

Back when typewriters ruled the earth, I outlined my first novel on 3×5 cards, giving each scene a card, with extra cards for bits of dialogue or narrative I wanted to use. It worked great, and allowed me to rearrange scenes and dialogue as I liked.

Since those dim, lost times we’ve been blessed with the personal computer and word processing software.  But I still like the file card idea, and I’ve worked out my own system for adapting it to today’s technology.

If you’ve come up with the same thing on your own, don’t tell me about it. I like to think it’s mine.

I’m not a sophisticated, Moleskine kind of guy. When I sprout an idea, my habit is to scribble it down on any scrap of paper I can find, fold it into my pocket planner, and take it home. Then, during writing time, I transcribe it (assuming, of course, I can read it) into an MS Word document, titled something like Novel, or Short Story, or Desperate Plea for Attention.

As I accumulate notes, they go into the document in the order I expect them to occupy in the final manuscript (if I change my mind, Cut and Paste is my friend).

Eventually, this accumulation starts to look pretty much like an outline, assuming you’re not too fastidious. Not a formal outline, with Roman numerals and subheads, but the kind of outline you have when you’re working with a pile of file cards.

Then, when I feel I have enough outline to start working from, I begin my story, at the top of the same document. As I use each point of the outline, I delete it from the tail end.

In the course of time I will have a completed story, with a forlorn litter of unused ideas at the end, like the greasy detritus at the bottom of a potato chip bag. I delete these. (I could also save them to a new document for use some other day, but I know from experience I’d just forget about them.)

That’s how I get a first draft.  The fact that it will certainly stink on ice is not the system’s fault, or even my own. First drafts are supposed to stink. That’s their function.

But that’s for another writer’s tip.

***

Lars (pronounced Larce) Walker is a native of Kenyon, Minnesota, and lives in Minneapolis. He has worked as a crabmeat packer in Alaska, a radio announcer, a church secretary and an administrative assistant, and is presently librarian and bookstore manager for the schools of the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations in Plymouth, Minnesota.

Visit Lars online at www.larswalker.com/ and his blog at www.brandywinebooks.net/ .

Lingering Spirits was written a long while ago. It’s based on a sad happening in my family and I think I wrote it as part of the grieving process. It was first published as an e-book. I have no idea if anyone bought a copy because I never received a single royalty from it. I broke my ties with that particular publisher and it just sat on my computer.

Years later, I had signed with another publisher for my Rocky Bluff P.D. series. When Amazon came out with the Kindle, my publisher asked if I had any old books I’d like to have on Kindle. I thought of Lingering Spirit and she read it and fell in love with it.

Recently she asked if I’d mind if she published Lingering Spirit as a trade paperback. Of course I didn’t mind. To be honest, I was thrilled.

Of course it meant changing gears, the same people who loved my mysteries might not like a romance with supernatural elements in it. I really wasn’t sure how to promote something I wrote so long ago and I’m most grateful to Inkyblots and other blogs who have been so kind to host me while I’m on this tour for Lingering Spirits.

Though the book is a romance, it is not an explicit romance—that’s not something I can do. When you read it, you’ll know I wrote this book from my heart.

Marilyn

***

Marilyn Meredith is the author of nearly thirty published novels, including the award winning Deputy Tempe Crabtree mystery series, the latest Dispel the Mist from Mundania Press. Under the name of F. M. Meredith she writes the Rocky Bluff P.D. crime series, An Axe to Grind is the latest from Oak Tree Press.

She is a member of EPIC, Four chapters of Sisters in Crime, including the Internet chapter, Mystery Writers of America, and on the board of the Public Safety Writers of America. Visit her at http://fictionforyou.com and her blog at http://marilymeredith.blogspot.com

___..—***—..___

Have you ever dreamed of being immortalized in print? Well, here’s your chance! Award-winning author Marilyn Meredith is running a contest during her Lingering Spirit Virtual Book Tour, which runs from July 6^th through July 30^th. Marilyn will name a character in her next Rocky Bluff P.D. book after readers who comment at any of the blog stops during her virtual book tour. This book is currently scheduled to be released in 2012. Leave a comment and get your name in Marilyn’s next Rocky Bluff P.D. book!