Connie Chastain

Facebook images for Southern Man

2012-01-29T18:39:00.000-08:00

All those cute, funny or inspirational images you see on Facebook inspired me, so I made some to promote Southern Man.

On a roll, I made two others with excerpts they illustrate and posted them. Check them out by following the links below the images:

Go to Facebook Excerpt

I'm looking foreward to doing some more of these!

Tell Us About Your Southern Man!

2011-07-10T05:47:00.000-07:00

Rated R -- for Readers

My novel, Southern Man, is about a sweet Alabama woman, Patty, who loves her Tennessee man, Troy, with all her heart. She loves his "all-American body and movie-star face," but her devotion goes far beyond his physical appearance.

She loves how he faces down his weaknesses, overcomes them and is a stronger and better man for it. She loves his strength, his smarts, his self-confidence, and his sense of responsibility to her and their children, to his company and his community and, ultimately, his God. He is his family's protector and provider, as he and Patty believe God intended him to be -- and he's as devoted to his children, in his own masculine way, as Patty is.

Late Wednesday afternoon there was a rally at Verona State in support of Shearwater-Ingram’s "anonymous sexual harassment victim." Sponsored by the Women's Assistance Group and held on The Commons, it was a small gathering, no more than twenty people, but nevertheless a vocal, loud and angry event.

It had been hastily organized at noon, and the Stevensons didn't find out until someone at church told them. They saw the probable fallout from it as soon as they got home.

Troy had steered the station wagon into the garage and the family had emerged just as several cars rolled down Live Oak Street, slowing dramatically as they reached the red brick rambler. Slurs shouted in both male and female voices echoed through the night—Patty easily made out "Sick bastard!" and "Sex predator!"—and she looked at her husband in alarm."Take them and get in the house," he ordered, walking toward the driveway.

"Where're you going?" she said shrilly.

In the faint orange glow of the street lamp, he turned a face like thunder toward her and barked, "I'm gonna shut the g’rage door, now do what I tell ye, git’n the house!"

Patty herded the children indoors. Two steps into the kitchen, she heard the rumble of the garage door closing followed by several loud, sharp pops that cracked the night and tore into her soul. Terror such as she’d never known ripped through her and she screamed, "TROEEEE!"

She streaked back into the now darkened garage. By the light of the kitchen slanting into the shadows, she saw him walking to her.

"Oh!" She ran to him and slammed herself against him, flinging her arms around him, burying her face against him and crying hysterically in great, gulping sobs. "I thought ... you'd been ... shot!"

His arms went around her and held her as tightly as she held him. He was trembling violently, whether from fright or rage, Patty couldn’t tell. Perhaps both.

"Hey, now, I’m all right. Calm down. Bastards threw firecrackers in the driveway." He shushed her and kissed her forehead. "Let's get inside."

The terrified children were huddled together in the kitchen when their parents stepped through the back door. They ran to their father wailing, "Daddy!" and he knelt down to hold them a moment, murmuring words of comfort. "I’m okay. Don’t worry."

He stood, nodded toward the family room and told Patty grimly, "Take them in there and stay with them."

He went through the house turning off lights except the night lights in the kitchen and hallway, then disappeared into the shadows of the hall and emerged moments later carrying a box. He sat on the coffee table, put the box beside him and looked at his children through the dimness.

"You know what's in here?" He tapped the box.

Their heads bobbed and Randy said, "A gun."

"That's right." He gazed at them with such intensity his eyes seemed to burn. "I can’t lock it back up. I’ve got to get to it quick if I need to, so I’ve got to leave it out. Now listen to me. I've never hit either one of you." He focused on Randy and a flash of pain and regret crossed his face. "Not on purpose. But if I ever see you even touch this gun, I will wear you out. Do you understand me? I will wear ... you ... out."

Round-eyed and open-mouthed, they whispered, "Yes, sir."

"I bought your mama a gun, taught her to shoot for self-defense and I'll teach you when the time comes. But right now this is dangerous for you. It could kill you. And if that happened, your mama and I might as well die, too."

In the silence that followed Troy's admonition, the faint sound of a car engine revving up and yelling voices came to them, though they couldn't make out the words.

"Should we call the police?" Inspired by the calm and courage that had settled over Troy after his initial fright, Patty tried hard to control her alarm, but she was still caught in the trauma of terror and it came through in her trembling voice.

"If it don't stop soon, or if any cars pull up in the driveway or people we don't know come up in the yard, we’ll call."

He left them, walked through the darkness to the foyer and flipped light switches beside the intercom. The front porch light came on, along with rarely used corner floodlights that bathed the driveway and front lawn with light. He opened the front door and stood quietly in the shadows of the darkened foyer, scanning the yard and street.

After ten minutes passed with no further disturbances, he closed the door, set the alarm and secured the house for the night.

Is there a Southern man in your life? Use the COMMENTS to tell us a little about him. Thanks!

The MacLachlainn Saga, Book Two, out now!

2011-06-05T22:10:00.000-07:00

Rated R -- for Readers

I'm excited! The second volume in The MacLachlainn Saga, Deep In the Valley, is available now as a Kindle e-book. Here's a summary:

Niall MacLachlainn drinks to escape the bitterness borne of resentment toward his father. But instead of providing an escape, a bout of drunkenness ushers a nightmare into Niall’s life...a nightmare of torture at the hands of unscrupulous men who lust for the gold on Cherokee land. And the wounded soul of a boy becomes the scarred shell of a man.

When he finds love with Meli, he hopes to leave his past failures behind. But heartbreak finds Niall again through his infant son.

Can he ever receive forgiveness for his failures? And will his father ever give him the approval he craves?

Set against the backdrop of the tumultuous years of the American Revolution, Deep in the Valley continues the saga of the Ailean MacLachlainn family, whose fortune and future is tied to the fate of the new nation.

________________________________________

Find Deep In the Valley HERE and visit Tommie Lyn's website HERE.

A bittersweet romance short story just published

2011-05-06T20:56:00.000-07:00

Rated R -- for Readers

........................ A Family At Last

Raised together in a group home for orphaned and abandoned children,
Vandi and Nicole's love was inevitable. But their marriage was a casualty
of progressivism -- shattered before it began. Nobody could know their
love was strong enough to last through time, deceit and separation.
............
An electronic short-short story for the Amazon Kindle. Also available at Smashwords in a variety of electronic formats. Flash fiction of only 1,600 words, you can read it in minutes.

Here are the Product Details for A Family At Last:

Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 17 KB
Price: $0.99
Publisher: Brasstown Books (May 4, 2011)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
Language: English
ASIN: B004ZGATWE

Lending: Enabled

Confederate History and Heritage Month

2011-04-21T18:15:00.000-07:00

Rated G

The CSA was a bid to form an independent nation out of a region that had a common enemy and some collective regional identity. But the CSA comprised many sub-cultures (a few of them didn't want to be there), and it had a leadership that sometimes confused self-interest with public policy. It had its fair share of charlatans and profiteers and criminal opportunists. It had some brilliant generals and a great many men in uniform who would be the pride of any army in human history. It was committed to 18th century republican values that were incompatible with fighting a modern war, and it had internal social conflicts that the war aggravated.

In nearly all of this it was entirely like the American Revolutionaries. The colonists in 1776: one-third for independence, one-third against, one-third uncommitted. That must be the standard for legitimacy, or else our United States lacks it. The CSA fought a much larger enemy than George III, mostly on its own soil, without a Dutch loan or a French fleet to aid it, and the majority, in spite of internal divisions, put up a herculean effort, won spectacular victories, made shift with what little it had, and held out till the place was literally gutted and blood-drained by its foe.

The four-year history of the CSA is not necessarily the place to seek an example of the values Southerners sought to uphold. Any nation fighting for survival from the cradle, invaded and blockaded all its life, doesn't get a chance to express the finer points of democracy and civil culture. If all we knew of Americans was how they actually behaved from 1776 to 1783, we wouldn't think much of our sense of "democracy" or commitment to "personal freedom."

~ Douglas Harper

Excerpted from his

excellent website

Storm Surge Dedication

2011-04-01T20:10:00.000-07:00

Rated G

To the unsung heroes of emergency management

and disaster preparedness,

the first responders, the volunteers,
those who donate equipment and supplies,

and neighbors who help neighbors,

when disaster strikes.

The world is a better place because of you.

Storm Surge will be released April 15 by Desert Breeze Publishing. Purchase information will be posted soon. Meanwhile, visit the novel's page at Desert Breeze by clicking HERE.

Also, to celebrate the release of Storm Surge, the Kindle edition of Southern Man will go on sale for $.99 from now through the end of May.

The E-book revolution

2011-03-23T15:32:00.000-07:00

Rated R -- For Readers

Readers may or may not be as aware as writers are of the great shifting of the tectonic plates of the publishing industry wrought by the digital revolution. But most of you surely aren't unaware of it.

In 2008, alternatively published books (including e-books) outnumbered conventionally published ones, for the first time in history. They were published for you -- readers. You've purchased Kindles and Nooks and Sony Readers by the millions.

My Kindle for PC loading....

Although sales of traditional dead-tree books still outnumber sales of e-books, the balance is gradually tilting. As has been noted many times and places, paper books will never entirely go away. Probably. But readers of the future will read electronic books, magazines and newspapers.

Southern Man on Kindle for PC

If you're undecided about buying an e-reader (I don't own one, yet --but my sister owns two, a Kindle and a Nook) you can still read e-books on your computer. Many e-publishers offer books for downloading in .pdf format. All that's required is the installation of Adobe's Acrobat Reader. It's free, and Adobe is wonderful about keeping the software updated with the latest capabilities.

Get Adobe Reader

You Amazon addicts will be happy to discover (if you don't know already) that Kindle emulating software is available for download and installation on your computer. You can purchase Kindle books and download them in seconds. And many, particularly classics, are free! It's hard to beat free!

Get Kindle for PC software

There's also Kindle software for your iPhone, Blackberry, iPad and Android.

Check it out, and join the digital reading revolution. Happy E-reading!

Screenshot of portion of Kindle for PC showing
Prologue from Southern Man and reader controls

Stuff that's been happening....

2011-03-18T21:14:00.000-07:00

Rated G -- For General Readership

I've resumed my weekly essays about gender issues at the False Rape Society blog. Many thanks to Pierce and Steve for the opportunity to vent my spleen over the excesses of radical feminism. I guess a 120,000- word novel taking rad-fems to task just didn't get it out of my system.

I have a new link in my wavy menu bar at the top of my pages -- Fun Stuff. Have a look. Jigsaw and crossword puzzles, hangman and word search games, all with tie-ins to my novels. And off-site links to more games and puzzles, for more fun.

I continue to work on my writing in progress -- my somewhat-paranormal romance featuring the Southern Sasquatch, aka skunk apes (Google 'em); and the Georgia series. But as I've noted in several blogs and groups and loops and elsewhere, I belong to the P.J. O'Rourke school of writing. My methodology is to procrastinate as long as possible....

"Writing is agony. I hate it. ....When I'm writing, I spend a lot of time thinking, 'My, doesn't the top of the fridge look dirty'. It takes for ever. I like thinking about writing. I like having written. But actually sitting down and doing it ..."

-- P.J. O'Rourke, journalist, writer and political satirist,
to Christopher Bray of the U.K.'s Telegraph, 2005

All you jigsaw puzzle freaks, click the graphic links below to go to the puzzles made from my book covers. Have fun!

,,,, ......................

Storm Surge Cover Art

2011-02-28T23:23:00.000-08:00

...by the talented and accomplished Jenifer Ranieri. Click HERE to see the cover full size. (Use your browser's back button to return here.)

Justin thanks you, Jenifer! Briana thanks you. And I thank you. The cover is wonderful!

Storm Surge will be released by Desert Breeze Publishing April 15, 2011, in e-book format. It will be available at the Desert Breeze Bookstore, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and various other online outlets. Check back here for links when the book "goes live" in April!

Taglines, Teasers and Blurbs, Oh My!

2011-02-23T23:02:00.000-08:00

I've been reading recently how these devices are used for promoting novels, movies, TV shows, even products like beer and insurance. I've participated in great discussions online about excerpts before, and learned a lot, but the other devices are important, too.

Blurbs, of course, are what you'd find on the back cover of a book. This one is from Sharyn McCrumb's The Songcatcher. "Folksinger Lark McCourry is haunted by the memory of a song. Passed down through generations, it carried her ancestors from a Scottish island, through the pages of American history, to western North Carolina. Over the years, though, the memory of the old song has dimmed and Lark's only hope of preserving the legacy lies in the mountain wisewoman Nora Bonesteel, who talks to both the living and the dead."

Taglines are short, punchy, memorable. They don't tell much about the plot or characters. They're more thematic. Some recognizable samples -- "In space, no one can hear you scream." "Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water." "Space. The final frontier." "The truth is out there." "You're in good hands with Allstate." "Great taste. Less filling."

Then, there are teasers -- very short (one or two sentence) summaries such as you might find in a TV Guide listing. Here are some examples taken from my Cox TV Guide:

From NCIS: "A murder prompts the reopening of one of Tony's old investigations, leading Gibbs and DiNozzo to reverse roles to solve the case."

From The Fugitive: "A U.S. marshal hunts a doctor on the run who was convicted of murdering his wife."

Househunters (on HGTV): "A former Navy flight instructor searches for a home with character in Savannah, Ga."

The Great Gatsby: "Jazz Age bootlegger learns the hard way about the wages of sin."

The Old Man and the Sea: "An old Cuban fisherman's dry spell is broken."

I've had writers tell me that these devices are more difficult to write than novels themselves, but if it doesn't come to you easily, it's just another one of those skills you'll have to develop. It was years before I developed good taglines, teasers and blurbs for Southern Man, but eventually, I got there. In fact, I managed to come up with several each for use in promoting the novel.

Taglines --

A story of love and betrayal in the sultry South
Chronicles the pernicious fallout of the sexual revolution
Reveals the dark underbelly of radical feminism.

Teasers --

"A family man is targeted with a false sexual harassment accusation by an amoral young woman and her uber-feminist mentor."

"A corporate executive is targeted with a false sexual harassment complaint by an amoral young woman and her uber-feminist mentor with harrowing consequences for himself and his family."

Blurbs --

Short (129 words)

In 1983, in moss-hung Verona, Georgia, the tender and tenacious love between a hardworking man and his adoring wife is tested by sudden adversity.

Corporate executive Troy Stevenson must confront his nasent alcohol abuse or he risks losing the wife, daughter and son he deeply loves. When his latent destructivness impacts his family, he moves to their weekend cottage to come to grips with his personal weaknesses.

Southern Man takes readers from the hills of Appalachia to the University of Alabama during the Paul "Bear" Bryant era; from staid New England to drug-drenched and sex-saturated Haight-Ashbury in the Summer of Love; from the glittering skyline of Atlanta to moss-hung south Georgia -- and reveals what can happen when a good man becomes the object of lust and the target of vengeance.

Long (173 words)

In 1972, they fell in love at first sight. He was a college football star -- good-looking and smart. She was sweet sixteen -- pretty, artless, chaste. A year later, Troy Stevenson and Patty Ayers were married.

But in 1983, in moss-hung Verona, Georgia, as they plan to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary, the tender and tenacious love between this hardworking man and his adoring wife is tested by sudden adversity.

Now a corporate executive, Troy must confront an old family secret that underlies his nascent alcohol abuse or he may lose his wife and the son and daughter he deeply loves. When his latent destructiveness is unleashed and impacts his family, he moves to their lakeside cottage to come to grips with his personal weaknesses.

But busybodies at his company assume he left home because his marriage is in trouble. Encouraged by the assumption, co-worker Brooke Emerson, an amoral, 1980s material girl romantically obsessed with Troy, attempts to seduce him, setting in motion a chain of events with harrowing consequences for him and his family.

I freely admit these aren't the best examples of taglines, teasers and blurbs, but considering that it hasn't been all that long ago that I was absolutely clueless about all three, I do believe I've made some progress.

And so can you!

Writers, I'd love for you to leave samples of your taglines, teasers and blurbs in the comments.

My very own quick and tasty pizza snack recipe!

2011-02-11T20:26:00.000-08:00

Snacks for writers ... and others

Visit my HUB PAGE For the low-down on my lo-cal, lo-carb pizza snack recipe!

This snack is great for writers who get the munchies in the middle of the night -- or any time in the middle of a writing session. They take me about 30 seconds to assemble, another thirty seconds in the microwave and -- voila! -- pizza snack in a minute!

The Wasa Crisp 'n Light 7-Grain crackerbread gives a hint of unusual flavor to the old, tried and true tomato sauce + mozzarella combo.

If you try it -- even if you're not a writer -- leave a comment or send me an email and let me know what you think!

In other news....

Word Slinger Boutique is slated to GO LIVE on Valentine's Day! If you're an indie author or publisher, small press or otherwise in need of author/publishing services, stop by. We're giving discounts and freebies through June!

Beautiful Book Covers ~ Simple but Effective Website Design

Eye-catching Video Trailers ~ Interior Book Design and Typesetting

Static and Animated Banners ~ Promotional Items

DROP BY AND LOOK AROUND
WORD SLINGER BOUTIQUE

Head-hoppin' and author intrusion -- my way

2011-01-10T01:24:00.000-08:00

Or...when rules should be broken

Probably to the horror of writers, editors and other POV purists everywhere, I write in what I call modified omniscient POV. That means the POV switches between an invisible, impersonal narrator and one character per scene. That's what keeps it from being head-hopping.

Photo by C. Ward

I think I developed this method from being a boomer, i.e, first generation TV watcher. My impersonal narrator is like a video camera. The reader sees what's going on through the camera's lens. Usually it's in a neutral location and can pan and cut between characters. It can zoom into microscopic level and zoom out all the way across the universe. Now and then during a scene, it moves to the POV character, above or beside his head, so the reader sees what that character sees; and when the "camera" is there, the reader can know what the character is thinking and feeling.

Follow this link for an example of a scene told from this dual viewpoint: The Candidate Excerpt. (Use your browser's back button to return here.)

In this scene, the impersonal narrator is the one describing the three men's physical appearance. The narrator shares POV with Randy. We can see what he's thinking (he wants his friends' help and support with his run for Congress). The camera/narrator never tells us what's in Shelby's or John Mark's head. We have to interpret it through their words and actions, as seen by the camera and/or Randy.

As a reader, I find blatant head-hopping as annoying as anyone else, but subtly switching the POV "camera" between the impersonal narrator and one character per scene isn't head-hopping, in my opinion. And it removes what I consider to be an arbitrary and unnecessarily restrictive "rule" that engenders some workarounds and remedies that can be as annoying as the original headhopping.

Being omniscient, the impersonal narrator also knows things the POV character might not know--or knows but might not be thinking of at the moment. The narrator can pass along information that the reader needs in those circumstances. Here's an example of narrator-supplied information, also known as author intrustion (in bolded and italicized text). Purists no doubt hate it, but I've never had a reader even mention it:

When his plate was cleared, Troy checked the lunch bag to see if a small dessert was tucked in there somewhere, but there was nothing. Patty must be planning a high-calorie dessert for supper if she was depriving him at lunch.

His attention was caught by a piece of paper protected in a plastic sandwich bag and he took it out. It was a small, cream-colored envelope, cool to the touch from having been in a compact refrigerator in his office all morning. Inside was one of his wife’s notecards, a pine bough and her first name printed in gold on the front. The cards were blank, for writing personal messages.

This one had no written message, though. When he opened it, a smaller folded paper about the size of a business check fell out and barely missed his plate. He unfolded it, looked at it a few moments, cut his eyes away and stifled a smile.

“What is it?” Max said, bristling with curiosity.

“It’s a gift certificate.”

“She’s kinda jumping the gun on your birthday a little bit, isn’t she? Anniversary, too.”

The Stevensons’ tenth wedding anniversary was coming up at the end of June, and Troy’s thirty-third birthday in early July.

“She wouldn’t give me a gift certificate for either one of those.” He put the certificate and card back in the envelope and slid it into his inside breast pocket. “It’s a no-occasion gift certificate."

From Southern Man by Connie Chastain

Story-telling isn't mathematics. There isn't a formula that must be followed. It is an art form, and when the rules create a solution worse than the problem, that's when rules can be, and should be, cirumvented. In my ever so humble opinion

Gettin' serious about blogging

2011-01-08T23:38:00.000-08:00

It's about time...

For a while now, I've been studying blogs, particularly the blogs of writers, to see what I needed to do to breathe some life into my blog. I've noticed some interesting things.

First, I note that big-name novelists don't have blogs. Nicholas Sparks doesn't have a blog. Nora Roberts, Vince Flynn, Debbie Macomber, Sherilyn Kenyon -- nary a blog among them. What they do have is websites with frequently updated content. Of course, when you're a big name novelist raking in the royalties, you can pay somebody to keep your website updated.

For lesser known authors, including the unpublished aspiring ones, blogs are more common. What I've noted about these blogs is the frequent ambiguity of who to blog for -- readers or other writers.

When an author blogs about show-don't-tell, POV and headhopping, GMC (goal, motivation, conflict), passive voice... that author is blogging for other writers. These are subjects of great uninterest to readers -- at least, by these designations. What they're interested in is story and characters and sometimes where you get your ideas.

Of course, other writers can also be readers.

That being the case, I've decided to blog for both. For writers on Mondays, for readers on Wednesdays and Miscellaneous on Fridays. Tuesdays and Thursdays may -- may -- find me making short posts such as quotes, interesting comments, tweets, etc.

Due to, um, circumstances (how's that for vagueness?) this new blogging schedule may not fall into place until sometime in February. We'll see.

A new look for the new year

2010-12-31T22:32:00.000-08:00

For a while now, I've been aware that my red/black/gray-themed website was not reflective of a romance writer. Probably not surprising when you take into account that it was inspired by the website of a famous action-adventure author... Well, duh.

So I redesigned the sucker.

Perhaps I went a little too far in the other direction? Retro pink, green and gold, like a 1970s Southern wedding theme? Roses and scrolls? Wavy-bottomed header? Ya think?

Ah, well. I'll leave it a while. And if it turns out the new look doesn't resonate with my readers (all ten of you), maybe I'll go back to the red/black/gray theme -- or start all over again with something new? Coral/aqua/cream -- the colors of 1950s melamine dishes? How about the hot pink/teal/plum of the Miami Vice Eighties?

I think I'd rather get back to writing novels. But if you want to sound off on the new look, just click the comment link.

Romance in an RV Park?

2010-11-17T23:55:00.000-08:00

Early chapters from my work-in-progress. Enjoy!

The Whirlwind
by
Connie Chastain

Chapter One

He stopped for gas at an interchange fifty miles north of the Florida border. It was late afternoon in mid-August. The brilliant blue sky was clear of summer's perpetual haze but the air was still summer-hot.
The gas pump took his cedit card with no problem and he could have left after filling up, but a twinge of hunger sent him inside for a snack. It was cool and dim inside. Behind the counter, a large woman with china-white skin and curly auburn hair took his money and chattered at him while she rang up his purchase.
"Headed to Flarda? Lotta people who stop here are. Usually on the way to Disney World."
"No. Just roaming." He looked over a swivel rack displaying local and regional publications and brochures for tourist attractions. "Any decent campgrounds close around?"
"Hmm." The clerk thought it over. "Closest one's probably Lake Lucy. Take this road east, don't get back on the interstate. Half a mile it intersects with old Highway 41. Turn right, go south about six miles, then west on state Road 87. You'll see Lake Lucy Road in about two more miles. Lake's small, used mostly by folks that live around here, but it's got nice camping facilities -- RV lots, rental cabins and a real good camp store."
"Thanks." He nodded and settled his gray cowboy hat on his head, went back to the black SUV with Pennsylvania plates and slid behind the wheel.
The hefty red-headed chick was right on with her directions. He found the place with no trouble at all. At the camp store, he paid for a weekend rental. He hadn't even realized it was Friday.
The fatigue he'd lived with going on two years now, and the tension it precipitated, had begun to ebb at some point after leaving Pittsburgh last week. He hadn't noticed it until this moment.
He found the cabin and turned into a parking place paved with gravel and oyster shells. For a moment, he gazed at the structure through the windshield, unaware that a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
Cinderblock walls painted shell pink. Jalousie windows. Tar and gravel coating the butterfly roof. Had to date back to the Fifties--back when there was plenty of money and leisure time, not to mention relief and optimism, after a war that had devastated the world.
It reminded him of beach cabins in his grandparents' flickering home movies, which starred his mother and uncle riding bikes, playing in the surf and ... growing up. He shook off the brief dip into nostalgia with a deep breath.
After giving the interior of the cabin a cursory once-over, he took a slow stroll to the water's edge. The lake was long and narrow and the water reflected the breathtaking blue of the sky. On the opposite shore, he saw other vacation cottages shaded with diciduous trees, huge and thick-foliaged, mingled with tall, dark pines. A few people swam near the shore, a couple of small powerboats pulled skiers and, far down the lake, a tiny red and white lateen sail floated just above the surface of the water.
Mellow day, idyllic setting straight out of childhood--
"Hey, mister?" His reverie was interrupted by a childish voice that seemed to fit perfectly with his thoughts. He turned to see a boy perhaps six years old clad in swim trunks and carrying a plastic float mattress. "Did you see a dog come by here?"
"No. But I've only been out here a minute."
"I'm kinda worried he ran off. See, he's afraid of storms and he was acting like he does when a big storm's coming. But I don't even see no clouds."
"Maybe there's weather headed this way. Sometimes animals sense things like that before people can see them."
"Yeah." The boy looked around, concern wrinkling his brow.
"You want me to help you look for him?"
"Would'ja? There ain't nobody else to help me. My uncle went to buy barbecue and it's hard for my mama to walk. She sprained her ankle."
"Is she nearby?"
"Right over there." The boy pointed to a small travel trailer with a colorful striped awning. The camp site was fixed up invitingly with webbed lawn chairs and a checkered table cloth on the picnic table.
"Let's go make sure it's all right with her."
They walked together to the small trailer, the boy chattering easily. "I had to get out of the water when Uncle Kenny left. Mama won't let me swim unless somebody's watchin' me. So I was playin' with Pepper, but then he ran off."
They reached the travel trailer and the boy carelessly tossed the air mattress on the ground, opened the door and stepped inside. "Mama!"
"I'm right here, Julian. It's a little trailer, you don't have to yell."
"Sorry. Mama, is it okay if this man helps me hunt for Pepper? He ran off like a storm's coming."
The boy -- Julian -- backed down the step to the ground as his mother came to stand in the door, favoring her left foot, which had an ace bandage wrapped around the ankle.
"Hi," she said noncommitally to the stranger.
He nodded. "Hi. My name's Daniel. I just got here for the weekend when your son came by my cabin looking for his dog. I'll be glad to help him hunt for Pepper, if it's all right with you."
"Oh, I don't think y'all need to go to that trouble. Pepper'll be back before you know it."
"Mama!" Julian exclaimed softly. "He's prob'ly scared. We hafta find him!"
The woman looked down at her son and back to the stranger and her eyes narrowed. "Could you tell me your name again, please?"
"Daniel."
"Oh, my goodness." She put a hand to her cheek as recognition dawned. "You're Dan Rawson. Steelers quarterback!"
Dan took off his hat, stepped forward and extended a hand. "Former quarterback," he corrected with a polite smile.
The woman scrunched her shoulders with an answering smile and said softly, "Wow." She returned his firm handshake. "A celebrity right here at Lake Lucy Campground! I'm Cassie Shipley. And of course you've met Julian."
At that moment they heard nervous yipping behind them growing stronger, and Dan glanced behind him as Julian yelled jubilantly, "Pepper!"
The brindled mutt trotted toward his young master, tongue and ears flapping.
"Hey, boy! Where'd you get off to?" Julian leaned over to give Pepper's back a scratch. "C'mere, let's put you on the chain." He tethered the dog to a lightweight chain staked to the ground near the picnic table.
His dog's wellbeing out of the way, Julian trained his gaze on Dan. "Are you really a professional quarterback?"
"I used to be; I'm retired now."
"Wow. Hey, would you like to eat with us? Uncle Kenny's bringing barbecue from the best place in town. He always buys more than we can eat."
"Well, thanks, but I don't want to intrude."
Cassie looked at Dan, half embarrassed. "Oh, it's no intrusion. He just doesn't think sometimes, that you might have family or someone with you. Of course, they'd be welcome, too."
"No. I'm traveling alone. And I have to tell you, barbecue sounds real good."
"Well, it settled, then. It's too hot to eat out here, so I've put everything on the dinette table inside--there's cole slaw, potato salad, Texas toast.... We have soft drinks and iced tea and Kenny's got a few longnecks in the fridge. All we're waiting for is the barbecue."
"I think my stomach just growled," Daniel said, a smile lighting his face. "Had a snack before I got here but I guess I'm hungrier than I thought."
"It should be here in a few minutes." Cassie gingerly stepped to the ground and nodded at the lawn chairs. "Might as well sit while we wait."
They settled into comfortable webbed chairs and Julian sat the end of the picnic table bench, swinging his legs. "You reckon Uncle Kenny will bring Lindy back with him?"
"I didn't hear him say, but you'd like that, wouldn't you?" Firming her lips to control a smile, she explained to the visitor, "He's got a crush on his uncle's girlfriend."
"I do not!" Julian protested. "She's just fun, for a girl."
He glanced to the side and saw Pepper straining to get to the trailer door, trembling and whimpering. The chain stopped him about a foot short of his goal. Julian ducked his head to see as much of the sky as possible beyond the awning. Still cloudless. The sun, dropping lower in the sky across the lake, cast long, sharp shadows on the ground.
"Why's he actin' like that?" the boy asked his mother. "There ain't no rain around."
"Let's see," Dan said, pulling his cell phone from his shirt pocket. He pressed a few keys and grunted. "Look," he said, turning the instrument toward Julian. The tiny display showed a map of south Georgia and north Florida in brilliant green. Blobs of red and yellow overlaid it. "Front coming in, to the west of us. Maybe that's what he's sensing."
"Poor puppy," Cassie said, sympathy on her face as she looked at the dog. "Put him in the trailer, Julian." She glanced at Dan. "He likes to ride out storms in his dog bed with his toys all around him."
Julian put Pepper in the trailer and made it back to his seat just as a car crunched into the campsite's parking area.
"Yay!" the boy said, jumping up. "Barbecue!"
The adults stood and turned to see a young man emerge from a late model compact carrying a large white paper bag. As he approached, Cassie said, "Ken, we have a celebrity guest for supper. Dan Rawson, my brother, Ken Shipley."
"Well, well," Ken said, extending a hand for a shake, a smile splitting his face. "Honored to meet you. What brings you to these parts?"
"Just visiting family here and there, doing a little traveling."
"That's nice. You got family around here?"
"Kenny!" Cassie exclaimed, and then shot Dan an apologetic look.
Kenny grinned. "Sorry. Didn't mean to pry, but peggin' a newcomer's kinfolks is a Southern thang. We can't help it."
"Oh, I know," Dan said with a chuckle. "I grew up in North Carolina. Most of my kin are up there. The rest, scattered all over."
Kenny stepped to the trailer door and pushed it open for the others.
"It's pretty small in there so you fellows go on in and sit down," Cassie said. "I'll fix drinks. What does everybody want?"
"Co-cola," said Julian, bouncing inside with the energy only children have.
"Go ahead," Kenny said to Dave. "You, too, sis. You're supposed to stay off that ankle another coupla days. I'll do the drinks."
Dan removed his hat and slid into the booth as Cassie took a seat across from him.
"Julian," she said, "Put Mr. Rawson's hat on the shelf over there."
While Ken busied himself in the small kitchen, Dan handed Julian his hat and glanced around the interior of the trailer. It looked showroom new and personalized with books, magazine, CDs and framed photos on the walls, but not cluttered. He looked at his hostess.
"This is nice. Roomier than it looks from the outside."
"Kenny and I bought it last summer, mainly for Julian. We thought about buying a cabin out here, but they're really expensive and we can take this to the beach, the mountains... wherever. We've really enjoyed it."
"I like it," Julian told his guest. He perched on the end of the bench next to Dan and said, "Can I sit here?"
"Absolutely," Dan said, giving the boy a wink.
It took Kenny only a few minutes to bring drinks and a platter filled with a variety of barbecued meat to the table. He slid into the booth next to his sister, nodded to Julian and said, "Want to say the blessing, hotrod?"
"'kay." Julian laced his fingers in front of his chin and said, "For food and friends and happy times, for families together, for sun and rain, for woods and plain, we thank Thee, O Our Father. Amen."
"Amen," Kenny echoed. "Everybody dig in."
* * *
Cleanup was quick and easy, since there was little food left to put away and plates, cups and flatwere were throwaways. Julian went to the small bedroom to check on Pepper while the adults, sated and mellowed out, headed outdoors.
They stepped into a moderate wind that ruffled their hair and made the awning flap. The air had grown much cooler while they were at supper.
"Goodness!" Cassie exclaimed as a sudden gust blew Julian's air mattress past them. Kenny grabbed it before it got away. Another gust billowed the red checkered tablecloth half off the picnic table, and threatened to toss the lightweight aluminum chairs on their sides. Cassie grabbed the tablecloth while the men folded the chairs and slid them under the trailer.
The front Dan had showed Julian on his phone screen was almost upon them. Kenny looked westward across the lake and uttered a low whistle. "We're in for it."
The others followed his gaze to the roiling bank of greenish gray clouds above the treeline and approaching with frightening speed. As they watched, a finger of gray slowly formed and snaked downward as if to poke the trees below.
Kenny streaked back to the travel trailer door, tossed the air mattress inside and yelled, "Jules! Bring Pepper and get out here, now! Hurry!" The three adults looked at each other, alarm growing on their faces, and Kenny muttered, "We gotta get outta here."
"No time," Dan said. "Don't want to be in a vehicle, anyway. Let's go to my cabin. It's concrete block, just a few yards away."
"Arright," Kenny said as Julian stepped outside clutching a quaking Pepper in his arms. Kenny grabbed them up and said, "Tornado."
They struck out along the lake front. Cassie's limp slowed her and Dan held out his arm to her. "Grab hold and speed up if you can."
Rain and pea-sized hail, sudden and hard, pelted them as they ran past a couple of empty campsites and a row of shrubs that separated the RV section from the cabin area.
Kenny heard the roaring of the tornado behind them grow alarmingly loud and feared the gusting wind would sweep them off their feet before they made it to the cabin. But in moments, he saw Dan standing beside the open door, ushering Cassie inside. Kenny followed, set Julian on the floor and said, "Bathroom's probably the safest place. Y'all get in there, huddle together. I'll bring the mattress to put over us.
Dan and Cassie did as he told them, hunkered in the bathtub with Julian and Pepper between them. Kenny drug the mattress off the bed and wrestled it into the tiny bath. He sat on the floor beside the tub and they pulled the mattress over their heads, held it there, and waited.
The wind grew wilder, louder around the cabin and they heard a roaring pass over the house along with the faint tinkling of breaking glass. Pepper wailed softly and Julian trembled.
"It's okay, sweetheart. It'll be over in a minute. Everything'll be all right," Cassie soothed, although her voice quivered with fright.
Kenny muttered, "Bet the trailer's a goner."
They waited a few moments, listening to the roaring grow distant and the wind gradually die. After a good five minutes of silence, Kenny crawled out from under the mattress and pulled it out of the bathroom. Dan unfolded himself and helped Cassie and Julian out of their shadowed, pink-tiled haven.
They stepped into the main room of the cabin to find the front door open and Kenny disappearing through the doorway.
"Stay here," Dan said, following Kenny outside. Cassie and Julian, still clutching the dog, waited anxiously, in silence. In a few minutes, Dan reappeared. "Trailer made it through. Got knocked off it's jacks, sitting crooked in the campsite but seems okay. Awning is shredded. Picnic table upended. Looks like the twister didn't touch down until it passed us."
"Oh, thank goodness!" Cassie said. "Nothing but woods and swamp for miles to the east."
They walked out into the wet, dusky evening. The chaos of minutes before had settled down to a soft rain. They found Kenny disconnecting the propane tanks at the front of the trailer.
"Don't want to take any chances of a leak in the lines anywhere. We'll have to head back to town for tonight, at least." Around them, other campers were inspecting their trailers and RVs for damage.
"Best I can tell," he continued, "most of the damage is tree limbs down. Still got power," he said, pointing toward the cabins on the opposite shore where lights glimmered through the rain. He looked toward their visitor. "Let me finish here and I'll come down, help clean up your cabin."
"Nothing to do except put the mattress back on the bed. I think I can manage that," Dan said with a grin.
"You got a broken window, too. I'll stop at the camp store and report it on the way out."
"Thanks. So you folks live close by?"
"Yeah, in Verona. About eight miles to the west of us. I'll be out here tomorrow, try to get everything fixed so these two can come back out a few more days. Last fling before school starts."
"I'll be in the first grade," Julian said proudly, still clutching Pepper. The dog's trembling had toned down considerbly.
"That's a milestone in a man's life," Dan said with a wink. He shook hands with Cassie and Kenny. "I enjoyed meeting and visiting with you folks. Thanks again for supper." He glanced around the campsite. "Let me know if you need help with this. I'll be here through the weekend."
Chapter Two
Around eight, a teenager from the camp store stopped by Dan's cabin and taped plastic over the broken window. It was above the sink in the pullman kitchen and the rain had done no damage inside.
"Just one jalousie broken," he reported to Dan. "Should be able to replace that for you tomorrow."
"That's fine," Dan said. When the job was done and the kid departed, he toed his shoes off and shucked his still damp jeans and shirt. Sprawled on the sofa, he found the remote control on an end table and turned on the television, wondering if cable might have been interrupted by the storm.
Apparently not. A hundred and two channels in all their inanity were available. He flipped past the sports channels -- he did not want to even think about that right now -- and finally settled on a mindless war movie with lots of violence, explosions, death and dying. After a few moments of that, he turned off the TV and laid his head against the backrest. He opened himself up to register the unfamiliarity around him.
Thoughts of his hosts earlier in the evening came to him, and he began to wonder about things he hadn't paid much attention to at the time. Kenny and his sister and nephew all had the same last name, Shipley. There had been no mention of a husband and father, and he grew mildly curious.
Julian was a cute kid; brown as a berry, probably from playing outdoors all summer. The sun had streaked and tipped his dark hair a shade or two lighter. Dan had not been around children much in his life, and he found them somewhat intimidating, but Julian was as likeable as he was cute.
And his mother....a pretty woman, slender but shapely in a pastel shorts set. She had pulled her shoulder length dark hair off her neck with one of those big, toothed clamps that looked like an instrument of torture; but it had come loose as she hobbled through the wind and rain to his cabin ... clutching his arm....
She had been so scared ... and so brave, as she cuddled Julian and Pepper and murmured comforting words to them at the height of the storm. Her voice, and laugh, were a touch husky, he'd noticed at supper. And the way the rain had plastered her clothes--
No. Huh-uh. Forget it. Two days, you're outta here. So forget it.
* * *
"You want me to leave the nightlight on, sweetheart?" Cassie sat on the edge of the bed in Julian's room, with its cowboy-Jaguars-Braves-outer space decor.
With Pepper curled at his side and sleeping soundly, her son lay back against the plaid-cased pillow and shook his head. "I ain't scared."
"Okay." She leaned forward to kiss his forehead and accepted his kiss on her cheek. "'Night, my brave little man."
"'Night, Mama."
Cassie stepped softly down the hall to her bedroom and slipped out of her terry bathrobe. By now only slightly damp from her shower, she pulled on cool, cotton knit sleep wear.
Julian might not need a night light but she did. Her nerves were still jangled by their close encounter with the tornado and her mind kept going back to the chaos-- the windwhipped rain, the pelting hailstones, the roaring of the twister as it passed over head while they huddled in the bathtub in Dan Rawson's rental cabin.
Dan Rawson. Professional football player ... rich, famous, good-looking. But so down-to-earth. Weren't pro athletes supposed to have gargantuan egos? Weren't they supposed to be self-centered hedonists with a glitzy, big-busted woman on each arm?
But Dan had been cordial and respectful at supper. Now that she thought back--the first chance she'd had to think about supper since the'd stepped outside into the storm--she realized there had been very little football talk. Kenny had certainly asked enough fan-type questions and Dan had given interesting or funny replies, but several times he had managed to smoothly change the subject, usually with a question of his own.
The three adults had talked more about Kenny's landscaping and decorative concrete company than Dan. He was a great listener. She remembered attentiveness on his face, the the smiles that would come and go, the occasional laugh--and what a marvelous laugh!
Several times, she'd caught herself staring at him, and she'd had to force herself to look away. Once or twice, their knees had bumped under the table. He hadn't seemed to notice but she had -- felt a mingling of mild embarrassment with mild...titillation....
Didn't mean anything. It was just because there was a handsome celebrity unexpectedly gracing their table. He had the cabin for the weekend only. He'd leave after that, and they'd never see him again. He would become nothing more than an anecdote to tell her friends and customers at the beauty shop.

This is a work in progress and may differ when completed and editedCopyright © 2010 by Connie Chastain

Cover mockups for my WIPs

2010-10-25T02:29:00.000-07:00

(Click image for larger view. Use back button to return here.)

Southern Man, of course, is completed and available on Amazon.com. The others are all in progress. Sweet Southern Boys is about 75% complete. Little Sister is about 1/3 complete, and The Candidate (working title; it will be changed) is just getting started.

I am writing them as one undertaking for the sake of continuity. Fourtunately, nothing in Southern Man is impacting the sequels (thus far), perhaps because the first two were begun as prequels to the third.

Yes, my original project was Little Sister. In the writing of Ainsley Kincaid's story, big brother Shelby and his two best buddies, Randy Stevenson and John Mark Jordan, wanted their story told. So, I temporarily shelved LS to work on SSB. And, as it was reaching completion, I couldn't ignore the story of Randy's father taking shape in my mind. So, I stopped SSB to write Southern Man.

The Candidate didn't exist even as an idea during that process. It's a very late addition, but I'm enthusiastic about it -- see the excerpt at the end of this post. So now I'm writing all these stories in tandem.

Isn't it funny how this prequel/sequel thing works?

The Candidate

Chapter One

"My friend," said Shelby Kincaid as he poured a mug of steaming coffee. "I don't know whether your testicles just got real big or your brain got real small."

He carried his cup across the break room, set it down on a table and took a chair. Beneath unruly blond hair, his blue-gray eyes fastened on the man seated across from him.

Randy Stevenson's dark eyes returned Shelby's gaze. His sensitive, enigmatic face, surrounded with shaggy black hair, betrayed not a hint of mirth. "Dickson's more than a tax-and-spend liberal. He's a leftist, a socialist. Somebody's got to challenge him."

"Not you." Shelby took a careful slurp of coffee. "His political machine will tear you to pieces. And the public at large will help 'em."

Randy shrugged. "I got real thick skin."

"No, what you've got is crap for brains. Now, listen. You're one of the Verona Three. They'll dig up everything they can about that--about your daddy, too, just to smear you by association. You've seen how politics works--the whole story doesn't come out until after the damage is done. You're also a Southern Baptist. That makes you a sexist, a racist and a homophobe."

Shelby went completely still as realization flitted into his eyes, followed by alarm. "And it's horrifying, what they'd do to Susan and the kids. Have you thought about that?"

The back door opened, briefly letting in the sound of morning traffic. John Mark Jordan stepped inside and traded greetings with the other two as he got coffee for himself and brought it to the table, his netbook under his arm. With his remarkably handsome face and stylish apparel, he was often mistaken for a client of a nearby modeling agency.

"What's going on?" The question was rhetorical because he didn't wait for an answer before opening the netbook to skim the business section of the Jacksonville Post Herald.

Shelby aimed a thumb across the table. "Brilliant here says he's thinking of running for Congress."

John Mark's head snapped up. His brown eyes, wide with astonishment, fastened on Randy. "Have you gone crazy?"

Randy lifted his chin. "How many times have we sat at this table handwringin' about the future our children will have to live in? How many times have we said something has to be done? Well, I'm gonna do something. I don't know if it'll help, whether it'll be too little too late--but I have to try."

John Mark remained incredulous, his netbook forgotten. "You'll get slaughtered. There's a bazillion things they'll attack you for. Without mercy."

"Don't try to tell him anything," Shelby muttered. "I've already tried. He says his skin's thick."

Randy raked a thumbnail across his lips and considered the other two. Their opinions and advice were crucial to him. They were not only his business partners; they were also his best friends, going back to grade school. For over two decades, the three of them had been closer than brothers.

"I know what's in my life better than they do. Whatever they attack me with, I'll have a carefully crafted defense or a counter-attack prepared well in advance. I've already started that. The message will go out on a dynamite website, press releases and online videos so powerful they'll go viral. The three of us could pull it off. Turn it all to my advantage. I know we could."

Silence filled the room as his friends stared at him, the import of his words sinking in.

John Mark murmured, "How does Susan feel about this?"

"Totally supportive. We've talked about it a lot, imagined worst-case scenarios, up to and including violence against us, although we aren't paranoid enough to assume it would come to that. She has realistic expectations and she's looking forward to the challenge. But her main concern is the kids and the kind of world they'll have to live in if the country doesn't change where it's headed."

The men's expressions grew pensive. They'd discussed numerous times the grim world that awaited their children--all children--in the foreseeable future. Now they were looking at an opportunity to do something about it on a national scale--or, at least, to try--and it was both sobering and exhilarating.

Randy gave his companions an appraising look. Their demeanor had gradually changed as he spoke, and he could see their resistance weakening.

"You realize that both of you will be drug through the mud, too, especially if you help with the campaign. And you have your own families to think of."

John Mark grunted. "Are you kidding? You do this, Ainsley'll be your biggest cheerleader."

Randy's eyes crinkled in an almost smile, but only for a moment. He wanted all considerations out in the open. "One other thing. A political campaign will take us away from the company for months."

"That's not an insurmountable problem." Shelby pushed his mug aside and leaned back. "We can take care of it."

Another silence fell. This time, an undercurrent of excitement vibrated through the air.

"I'm driving down to Saint Augustine after work to talk to Missy and Tommy," Randy said. "Saturday, I'll take the family to Verona to discuss it with Mama and Daddy. If nobody can give me a powerfully good reason for not doing it, I'll register my candidacy within the month."

He looked at each of his friends for a couple of seconds. "I want you two with me in this."

John Mark gave his earlobe a tug. "Well, you know we can't let you do this by yourself, so you've got us."

Shelby nodded. "Unless we can talk you out of it."

Mirth finally sparked in Randy's eyes. "You got three weeks."

Exponential Nostalgia

2010-10-20T04:40:00.000-07:00

Thanks to my sis for that great phrase. She and I are hip-deep in a vintage music craze at YouTube. It started with TV theme songs from the Sixties (Route 66, Mr. Lucky, Peter Gunn, etc.) and grew from there. I now have five playlists at YouTube where I can go and listen to my faves in various categories -- Mid Century Swank Instrumentals; Mid Century Country; Rock From Back In the Day; Mid Century Vocals and Eighties Goodies.

One of the songs I found was a popular tune from the late 1950s, The Wayward Wind by Gogi Grant. I really liked that song, though I was a grade schooler when it was popular. We had a 45 RPM version (and it's probably still around my house somewhere). I can't play my old vinyl singles and albums, as we have no working phonograph anymore. How wonderful to find it on YouTube!

If you want to hear it, click this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFhwxZeq6g4 What a voice! What a classy song! But here's the topper. Grant performed this song in 2004 when she was approaching eighty years old -- and was still performing in 2010 in Palm Springs, California. Enjoy the 2004 performance:

Fantastic!

Quotable qotes from my characters

2010-09-01T21:23:00.000-07:00

“She was trying to be helpful. That’s what women do, because that’s how God made them—to be helpers and companions to men. Mainly wives to husbands but you find it in the workplace, too.... They want to help us and they want to please us, and so they go overboard sometimes. But you don’t have to get bowed up about it.”

~Troy Stevenson, discussing his secretary, Dinah Langley,

with his friend and colleague, Max Ingram

“I know it hurts you to think there are people out there who believe you did what you’re accused of. But they’re the people who hate you, anyway, because you have a family you love and take care of. They’re the people who want me to support myself, they want the government to raise the children, and they want you to disappear. Don’t give their opinions any weight, not any, for one second longer.”

~Patty Stevenson, to her husband, Troy

"We were both saps....S-A-P. Southern American Princess. In our case, small-town, small-time version....Ornaments. Frivolous. Not to be taken seriously. I don't think my parents realized what kind of self-image they were helping us develop, because they told us from time to time how important it was to get an education and think about the kind of work we wanted to do, but that was stacked up against years of silly ballet lessons and parties and school clubs and cheerleading and prom queening..."

~Briana Farrior to her employer and love interest, Justin Adair

"I'm a little put out with you right now, but I'll get over it. Anger's a feeling; feelings come and go. But love is constant and steadfast, and the capacity to forgive is limitless."

~Justin Adair, to his secetary and love interest, Briana Farrior

Writers, have you got quotable quotes from you characters? We'd love to read them. Share with us. Just leave them in the comments.

Exciting happenings!

2010-08-21T20:58:00.000-07:00

I'm excited and delighted. Storm Surge has been sold to Desert Breeze Publishing with a planned release date in April, 2011.

Desert Breeze is a relatively new publisher but already has a track record for producing wonderful e-books. I'm both honored and humbled that they've accepted my story.

It's also been fun to meet other Desert Breeze authors online and chat about the biz. Many thanks for the opportunity to Editor in Chief Gail Delaney and the great folks at Desert Breeze.

Visit the Desert Breeze Publishing website and take a look at their wonderful variety of novels.

I'm also pleased about an interview with David Wisehart that appeared on his Kindle Author blog recently. It's a great blog and it's fun to read interviews with other authors -- to see what motivates them to write, why they published Kindle books, and other interesting topics.

Read it here: Kindle Author Interview -- Connie Chastain

David is an author and playwright, director and producer who also finds the time to help Kindle authors get the word out about their stories.

Thanks for the interview, David

New Cover for Southern Man

2010-08-04T23:03:00.000-07:00

Has wimmins on it, more color and a textured background. A little less corporate, a little more organic. Click the "comments" link and lemme know what you think!

For a really up-close comparison of old and new, plus a look at the new back cover blurb, click HERE.

Rabies Scare!

2010-07-28T18:38:00.000-07:00

Spot, July 26, 2010

Is this the face of a rabid cat? Until the infection reaches a certain stage and symptoms begin to show, you can't tell just by looking.

This is Spot, a semi-stray my husband and I are feeding and trying to socialize so he can be checked, innoculated, etc.

Spot bit me recently and sent me into a rabies scare. There are other stressors and anxiety-producers at work in my life right now, or I probably would have been more rational about the bite and its aftermath.

Whole story here, if you're interested: A Scary Cat Tale

I've calmed down now; Spot grows more laid back and "at home" here. Looks like it was a lot of worry for nothing.

But isn't most worry for nothing?

Spot, May 2010

Check out my interview...

2010-07-12T15:48:00.000-07:00

...at Tabby's Nocturnal Nights Blog. http://www.tabithablakesnocturnalnights.com/interviews_3.html

Thanks to Tabitha Blake for the opportunity!

A plotter tries pantsing

2010-06-30T01:55:00.000-07:00

So I was browsing I-Stockphoto one day, looking for pics for a book trailer video, and I came across this photo of a spooky road. I found it interesting. Intriguing and inspirational, really. The kind of picture you can create a story from. It would make a great book cover.

I downloaded a comp and the germ of a story idea took form in my mind. I write romances, or mainstream with romantic elements, so the germ was romantic.

I had the impression of a woman being driven down this scary road by a man she didn't know -- and, of course, being afraid. But since it would be a romance, they'd get past her initial fear, develop a relationship and end up with their own HEA. The title "Wrong Turn" came to me, so I made a cover (these are inspirational motivators for me) and put it on the back burner.

Every time I ran across my story-less cover, it would tempt me to write a story to match. I finally gave in and decided to attempt a 20,000-word novella, as several romance e-publishers are asking for them.

I'm a plotter -- have to outline, have to make notes, have to do research, have to illustrate... Gotta know my characters, gotta know what happens, and when, and why.

But I decided to write the novella by the seat of my pants. Pantsers, as they are known, just sit down and start typing, and go wherever the story leads. They don't know when they start where it might end up.

I've read that most writers are a little of both -- that pantsers do a little plotting; and that plotters sometimes let the story, or a character, lead them where they will.

I don't know if I can do this pantser stuff. Where this story's taking me is absolutely bizarre. It started taking on a "paranormal" cast. I don't do paranormal. Vampires, shifters, aliens -- forget it. Gimme a real flesh-and-blood son of Adam, a human male, a MAN for my hero. So my hero remained human, and the paranormal elements came from something else.

Bigfoot.

Yes, Bigfoot in Dixie, since my stories are set in the South. Don't laugh. The Pacific Northwest doesn't have a corner on crypto-primates.

So the story started taking shape... and unfortunately did a little plot shape-shifting, if you'll pardon the pun. What started out as a heroine lost in a storm and then trapped with a mysterious hero by flood waters, now has mad scientists and crypto-monkeys with psychotronic brain implants. Bizarre!

I'm tempted to give up on this story. Just toss it and start plotting a real romance, like normal. But I said I was going to pants it, so I'll keep plugging away at it, until I'm absolutely certain it is a lost cause.

Meanwhile, you natural pantsers out there... Does this ever happen to you?

First harvest...

2010-06-28T14:50:00.000-07:00

These are the first items from my upside-down garden -- a couple of cucumbers. Frankly, folks, I'm amazed that this even happened. The big one is a bit small--about five inches long. But I've got 'em in the fridge cooling down. Looking forward to a cuke-and-ranch salad!

Yum!

Book trailers revisited

2010-06-19T00:08:00.000-07:00

In my latest essay for The False Rape Society blog, my subject was false sexual harassment statistics. (You can read the essay here: Rape Culture 101: The Little Brother of War.)

I gave a little background about my online search for the statistics, which I needed for a promotional video for my novel, Southern Man.

Now, because I enjoy editing videos (and Movie Maker is fun to play with) I ended up making four book trailer videos for Southern Man. But the one with the EEO stats has the greatest impact, I think.

Writing about my search made me nostalgic, so I've decided to post the video here. Enjoy!

Southern Man by Connie Chastain -- Book Trailer II from Connie Chastain on Vimeo.

Sweet Southern Boys -- Excerpt

2010-05-22T11:17:00.000-07:00

Sweet Southern Boys is the sequel to Southern Man. The manuscript is about fifty percent complete. Here's the blurb and an excerpt, the opener. Enjoy! And e-mail me your comments!

Shelby and the Other-Brothers ....

Shelby Kincaid, Randy Stevenson and John Mark Jordan have been best friends since grade school. Growing up in a small town in south Georgia, they have watched out for Shelby's little sister, Ainsley, and butted heads with Shelby's rival, Wesley Bratcher, a Northern-transplant. They've hunted and fished, played football, studied and learned, worked and worshipped -- together. The sons of close-knit families, they have been raised to be responsible, to revere God, and to love.

But when they are seniors in high school, they are charged with unspeakable crimes. Branded as criminals in headlines from coast to coast, persecuted by the justice system, abandoned by their community, their lives shattered and their futures jeopardized, they have nowhere to turn but themselves, their families and their faith.

Sweet Southern Boys is a tale of what happens when societal watchdogs run amok and political correctness carries more weight than truth.

___________________________

Sweet Southern Boys

Connie Chastain

Excerpt

Prologue

Verona, Georgia

January 15, 1993

The vehicle streaked westward on a dirt road through sparse woodlands, kicking up dust in its wake. Behind the wheel, Randy Stevenson, soon to turn eighteen, monitored the road ahead. Tall and broad shouldered, he was a gracefully muscled athlete. Shaggy black hair framed his face -- a sensitive, enigmatic face that captivated girls at Verona High School.

Only people who knew him well--and the two boys with him knew him as well as anyone in the world-- would know how agitated he was behind his stony expression. His nostrils flared, his respiration was rapid and shallow. His hands were not trembling only because they held the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip.

A last quarter moon hung in the sky ahead, glowing through a hazy cloud cover. It was eight o'clock. The temperature hovered around forty degrees and the three boys wore lightweight jackets over their jeans and shirts.

Randy's eyes darted to the rear view mirror. In the distance, a dusk-to-dawn light cast a circular glow in the misty darkness and shone down on the riverside cabin the boys had hastily departed moments before. The cabin and the half dozen vehicles parked around it disappeared as trees closed in behind the speeding car.

Click here to read entire excerpt.

How does my garden grow?

2010-05-21T16:20:00.000-07:00

Frankly, I'm amazed. I didn't know whether this was gonna work or not. And it's still open to question. I won't call it a success until I have a tasty tomato sandwich, some cheesy squash and a cuke-and-ranch salad on my table....

They're really growing!

First cucumber blooms -- there were two this day.

Many more now.

Tomato bloom -- there are actually four cozily sharing a stem.

Squash blooms. There are tons of them!

But the plants are growing and blooming. The squash is particularly active, with literally dozens of buds -- and blooms opening every day. I read that the early blooms on squash plants are usually male, and that's why they fall off; the female blooms have little bulges at the base.

I keep watering and feeding and checking. So far no worms or bugs, although some of the tomato leaves have turned dark at the edges. The plant seems okay though.

I'm kinda proud. I'm no farm girl and this is miraculous stuff for me.

Authonomizing!

2010-05-16T07:36:00.000-07:00

After reading about authonomy for several months, I decided to check it out for myself. Basically, authonomy is HarperCollins' experimental e-alternative to the traditional paper slushpile. It's a website where writers, readers, agents, editors and publishers gather to read and evaluate unpublished or self-published works.

The uploaded material, most often several chapters of novels, but there's nonfiction, too, is read and rated, and the ratings calculated into rankings. The top five ranking books each month make it to the "editor's desk" where a board made of HarperCollins editors read at least 10,000 words and offer feedback to the author.

The hope is that the editors will find among the electronic slushpile offerings a submission they'd like to publish. Thus far (authonomy has been operating for several months), three novels have been found on authonomy and published by HarperCollins. Ironically, they weren't among those making it to the top five and the editors' desk.

The odds of your novel being found and snatched up at authonomy look, well, pretty dismal. However, there's more going on there than meets the eye. Editors and agents not affiliated with HarperCollins are said to lurk there. How many publishable jewels they might have found, nobody is saying.

I published Southern Man myself because I thought the underlying theme of anti-feminism would make it unpalatable to traditional publishers. Nevertheless, I decided to upload my novel at authonomy and just see what would happen.

My page at authonomy

Southern Man's page at authonomy

HarperCollins is a British company with branches around the world. A great many participants at authonomy are European. My impression, just from reading the offerings at authonomy, is that writers across the pond, and in Australia and New Zealand, are talented wordsmiths and story tellers, and I've been gratified by the reception they've given Southern Man.

If I understand the rankings, Southern Man has gone from 5261 when uploaded on April 30 to 971 today, May 16. The green up arrow indicates that it has gained 97 points in rankings over the last time is was calculated (which I assume is daily). I don't know that it will sustain this climb in the rankings enough to make it to the Editor's Desk. Time will tell.

But meanwhile, I've enjoyed some of the comments left by readers -- what a boon to an author's ego!
I don't know whether HarperCollins' experiment with an electronic slushpile will ultimately prevail, but something will have to replace paper submissions eventually, to all publishers, just for the sake of saving trees. What shape the future of submissions takes will likely be greatly influenced by the authonomy experience.

authonomy home page

authonomy's about page

Any Web-TV old timers out there?

2010-05-10T23:10:00.000-07:00

In about 1998, I learned about the World Wide Web on my computer at work, and when I changed jobs, I was anxious to get online at home. I checked into Web-TV and decided it would be a cost-effective temporary substitute for a computer.

I was a happy webber, and kept my Web-TV subscription for a good while after I got a computer in the summer of 1999. My mom was also bit by the Web-TV bug and we bought her several of the units -- usually they'd meet their demise when lightning struck close by.

She loved her Web-TV and she loved her kitty-cat, Boonie.

One of the things we both loved were some of the background tunes. There were lots of them, in various genres -- we liked jazz, funk and rock the most. Yeah, yeah, they were midi files, very rudimentary electronic music, but there were some that really grabbed us: Cool Shades, Flute Boy, Funky, Future Sound, Groovy, Herbie, Jive Coffee, PCH, Xess, Renegado.

Periodically since I've been online with my computers, I've looked for midi archives with Web-TV's music. Happily, I recently found one here: http://www.gnu-bee.com/webbie_zone.shtml

I've downloaded all my favorites, even though some are rmf (rich music format) files that I can't play with out a Beatnik player, which is no longer supported by Beatnik. I'll keep looking for a player, or a program that will convert .rmf files to .mid files.

If anyone knows how to do this, lemme know!

Raising gardens, raising books...

2010-05-02T21:41:00.000-07:00

My little upside down garden seems to be doing well. There's a bloom on the tomato plant!

I'm also very excited to have received a request from a publisher for a partial (first three chapters) of Storm Surge! It will be several weeks before I hear from them about whether to submit the entire manuscript. Meanwhile, I'm working on Sweet Southern Boys and some other writing projects.

Looking forward to the day a few weeks from now when I'm sitting at the computer, preparing my next query/submission, with a plate next to my keyboard -- tempting me with a sandwich made with tomatoes from my own little upside down garden!

Blogging at The False Rape Society

2010-04-23T14:32:00.000-07:00

I'm gratified by the opportunity to become a contributor to this fantastic blog begun by Attorney Pierce Harlan. You can't read my blog or website -- or my novels -- without concluding that I'm no feminist and that I support the men's rights movement. And false rape accusations overwhelmingly impact men.

Over time, I'll educate myself on what feminists say about the "rape culture" and how it appears to impact the growing number of false rape accusations. Actually, do anyone but feminists talk about a "rape culture"? I think the claim is as dubious as the article positing that overwhelming "hatred of women" exists in the United States (it was on truthout years ago, or Daily Kos or one of those ultra-lib websites -- I'll find it and post a link when I have time). Really? The USA, where women have excessive influence over government, run public education, and enjoy the cushiest female existence on the planet? Gimme a break!

In any case, I'll post what I discover in short essays at The False Rape Society. Many thanks to Pierce for the opportunity!

Taking a break from writing...

2010-04-22T22:14:00.000-07:00

...to mess around in the great outdoors....

My Upside Down Garden

I'm not much of a TV watcher, but I've been doing a little more of that lately and one thing that's caught my eye is something called the Topsy Turvy tomato planter. Last time I tried to grow tomatoes, squirrels and some kind of little worm shredded the plants, so I wondered if this off-the-ground garden might work for me.

But with my track record, I didn't want to spend twenty bucks per planter. Soooo, I got online and found all sorts of do-it-yourself upside down planter instructions (I do love the Internet!) and decided to try my hand at upside down gardening on the cheap.

My planters are gallon ice cream buckets (I've been sticking them in the back of the cabinet for-ever -- always knew they'd come in handy for something!). They're smaller than the Topsy Turvy and some other homemade solutions (five-gallon hard plastic buckets, for example), which means I'll have to water and feed the plants more often.

But here's my first attempt, cobbled together Tuesday and Wednesday, April 20 and 21, 2010.

Below: My happy little ice cream bucket upside-down planters -- one missing a top. Various sites recommend keeping a top on the planter, to keep in moisture. Apparently these things can dry out pretty fast. Recommendations are to water once or twice a day, and feed the plants every couple of weeks.

Below. Big Boy tomato -- 78 days from transplant to harvest. Late June or early July, tomatoes on my table! Yum!

Below: Yellow crookneck squash. (Love cheesy squash!) Sixty-five days to harvest.

Below: Cucumber. Fifty-five days to harvest after transplanting. Ah, I can taste the cuke and tomato salad now!

Below. Another view of my upside down veggie garden. I knotted the plant hangers from clothesline -- it's made to take what the outdoors dishes out -- purchased at a big box store.

Below: The, um, gallows? I made it myself from two old fence posts and a somewhat curved two by four.

Below. My post hole diggers -- an old kitchen knife and a throw-away plastic container (purchased at Winn-Dixie full of macaroni salad or cole slaw). I recycle these containers but I've never used one as a substitute spade! (We used to have some for-real post-hole diggers, but I have no idea where they got off to.)

Below: Another tip found online. Make a "soaker" waterer out of an old gallon milk jug with pinholes punched in the bottom. Since my planters are "half-size" I'm using a half-gallon jug.

So there it is; my upside down veggie garden. Maybe this is just the beginning --peppers next? Beans and peas? Herbs growing out the top? We'll see how it goes.

Just released -- High On a Mountain by Tommie Lyn

2010-04-19T22:09:00.000-07:00

A MacLachlainn Saga, Book One: Ailean.

The stirring tale of one man's remarkable journey through life; a story of adventure and love...of faith, loss and redemption.

Dedicated to our Scottish ancestors,
who suffered so much, yet
endured it all without complaint
and without succumbing to self-pity.

As a boy, Ailean MacLachlainn dreamed of living an adventurous life and longed to be a celebrated warrior of his clan. Until a shy smile and a glance from Mùirne's blue eyes turned his head and escalated his rivalry with Latharn into enmity and open conflict.

When Ailean became a man, his boyhood dreams faded. Until Bonnie Prince Charlie came to reclaim his father's throne. The Jacobite loyalties of Ailean's clan chief involved the MacLachlainns in the uprising and set Ailean on a course toward a destiny of which he could never have dreamed.

A hearty congratualtions to my sister, Tommie Lyn, on the publication of the book that started it all for her. Fantastic job, sis!

Pensacola Tax Day Tea Party!

2010-04-15T19:48:00.000-07:00

Click here to see pics from the rally in Pensacola, Florida

Confederate History Month

2010-04-14T21:18:00.000-07:00

"The SOUTH is a land that has known sorrows; it is a land that has broken the ashen crust and moistened it with tears; a land scarred and riven by the plowshare of war and billowed with the graves of her dead; but a land of legend, a land of song, a land of hallowed and heroic memories.

"To that land every drop of my blood, every fiber of my being, every pulsation of my heart, is consecrated forever. I was born of her womb; I was nurtured at her breast; and when my last hour shall come, I pray GOD that I may be pillowed upon her bosom and rocked to sleep within her tender and encircling arms."

Edward Ward Carmack (1858-1908),
United States Representative, Tennessee

It's unfortunate if anyone is offended by my tribute to Confederate History Month, but I don't apologize for esteeming my Southern ancestors, or blame them for fighting an invading army that brought waste, fire and death to their homes and region.

My position is that the people of the Confederacy were no worse than anyone else -- particularly the ones who came South and made war on them.

I'm not one of those who claim, "The war had nothing to do with slavery." Nor do I accept the simplistic reasoning that slavery was the only reason for the war. A review of history plainly shows that there had been bad blood between north and South since colonial days; slavery was just an excuse to bring the animosity to blows.

I can't say it any better than Douglas Harper has written it:

Dealing with American history on this level requires patience and the ability to get past attitudes unwilling to go further than, "They had slaves, slaves were wrong, the South deserves everything it got." The American Civil War was "about" slavery like the Boston Tea Party was "about" tea. Slavery became the symbol and character of all sectional differences. It was the emotional gasoline on the sectional fires. Its moral and social implications colored every issue in terms of right and rights. William Seward, the Republican leader whose party made so much of this, recognized the fact: "Every question, political, civil, or ecclesiastical, however foreign to the subject of slavery, brings up slavery as an incident, and the incident supplants the principal question."

No matter what squabbles the regions had, and there were many, somebody always brought slavery into the argument, so that what has come down to us is an erroneous emphasis on slavery as the only issue.

All that's necessary to see there was far more to the war than slavery is to read the declarations of secession issued by the states. On anti-Southern blogs, you sometimes find the declarations with everything deleted but the passages referring to slavery.

This is possibly a photo of my ancestor, Private Balus Brackett, Company I, 39th Regiment, Georgia Volunteer Infantry, Army of Tennessee, C.S.A. Gilmer County, Georgia, "Gilmer Tigers #2" Joined the Confederate Army March 4, 1862. Fought in the Battle of Corinth, Miss, October 3-4, 1862

In any case, whatever others may choose, I will honor my Confederate ancestors and their causes, plural, their gallantry, their nobility, their sacrifice. Had the Confederate States of America prevailed, had slavery ended peacefully, the victim of economics and industrialization, as it had ended everywhere else up till then, I can't imagine the CSA would be any more screwed up today than the United States of America is....

Heroines of the Confederate States of America

2010-03-09T01:34:00.000-08:00

A politically incorrect tribute on the occasion of Women's History Month 2010
Varina Howell Davis
First Lady of the Confederacy
http://www.civilwar.si.edu/leaders_varinadavis.html#________________________________________
Mary Boykin Chesnut
The Confederacy's Renown Diaristhttp://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/chesnut/bio.html
Diary here: http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/chesnut/menu.html ________________________________________
Rose O'Neal Greenhow
Famous Confederate Spy and Courier to Europehttp://www.mycivilwar.com/leaders/greenhow_rose.htm________________________________________
Belle Boyd
Confederate Spy and "Cleopatra of Secession"
http://civilwar.org/education/history/biographies/maria-belle-boyd.html________________________________________
Emma Sansom, Gallant Frarm Girl of Alabamahttp://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1360________________________________________
LaGrange, Georgia's female militia, The Nancy Harts
Named for a Georgia heroine of the American Revolution
http://www.forttyler.com/nancyharts.htm
http://www.exploresouthernhistory.com/nancyharts.html________________________________________
The Women of Roswell Mills, Georgia
Civilian captives of the Yankee invader
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-1086

Photos: Varina Davis, Wikipedia; Rose O'Neal Greenhow, Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina; Belle Boyd, Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina; Mary Boykin Chesnut, City of Alexandria website: Emma Sansom, Alabama Archives and History via FindAGrave.

A great cause to support

2010-02-16T22:02:00.000-08:00

Men's Studies. But really? Is that necessary?

For decades, education in the United States has been oriented to the way girls learn while showing hostility to how boys learn. As a result, boys are falling behind in school. Almost two-thirds of college students are females, which is used as justification for denying male students participation in sports. Boys are three to four times as likely as girls to commit suicide.

Men die sooner. They account for over 90% of workplace deaths. They have been hit particularly hard by the service economy and the current recession. Men are disproportionately victimized by America's family court system, having their children and livelihood stolen from them. Male victims of domestic violence are routinely ignored by legislators, law enforcement and the public. Men are disproportionately demonized in the media and the popular culture.

Feminism claims to be about equality of the sexes. Why, then, have there been Women's Studies courses in our universities for decades, but no Men's Studies?

Hopefully, that is about to change, thanks to the On Step Institute which is sponsoring a symposium on Male Studies on April 7, 2010.

As a supporter of Men's Rights, I give the On Step Institute a hearty cheer.

We have a winner!

2010-02-16T21:57:00.000-08:00

Folks, I apologize for my Itsy Bitsy Story Contest being sabotaged by technology (or the failure thereof) among other things. We had one vote, cast by starfleetbrat, which went to Shannon. And here's Shannon's winning entry:

The vice president had told him to create a "game plan" to sell the stockholders on the new direction the company was taking. Mark knew what he was - a shill for the suits. It was time to learn how to talk out of both sides of his mouth, he figured. No one really believed those motivational posters right? Supposedly inspirational pictures with pithy sayings to keep the grunts from complaining too loudly. His promotion put him on the inside and so he had to wear the mask. His boss, of course, called it being a team player.

Congratulation, Shannon. And thanks to all who participated!

Connie

Let the voting begin

2010-02-07T19:46:00.000-08:00

Congrats and thanks to the seven entrants in the Itsy Bitsy Story Contest. I'm glad I'm the moderator and don't get a vote, because they're all great and I'd lose sleep trying to choose!

Read the stories here: Entries

Then, beginning at midnight (February 8) choose your favorite by number or author name -- and vote in the comments HERE.

Voting ends Sunday, February 14, 2010 at midnight.

1. Alison McEvoy Murray
"She loves me...she loves me not....

2. Rowan Elizabeth
"She watches him from across the library...."

3. starfleetbrat
"He sees her by the water cooler..."

4. lastingdreams
"With all the technology surrounding us..."

5. Shannon
"The vice president had told to create a 'game plan'..."

6. serafine-fic
"Surrounded by the files they had worked so hard on...."

7. Ai
"Dear Mom, Boarding school sucks..."

It's been great fun and I hope to do it again, with more promotion and, hopefully, more great entries!

Thanks again to all who entered stories. You're all great writers!

Connie

Woohoo, Saints Superbowl Champs!

2010-02-07T19:33:00.000-08:00

Congrats to Coach Sean Peyton, Quarterback Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints on their Superbowl victory over the Indianapolis Colts. Husband ecstatic; crying tears of joy. He's a Louisiana Boy who's been waiting for this for decades!

Contest Deadline Extended

2010-02-01T19:40:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the slimy black-hat hackers who created "Internet Security 2010" fake anti-virus malware -- which has attacked my computer several times, caused loss of time and data, necessitated two restores of my system, and thus kept me from promoting the Itsy Bitsy Story Contest as I'd planned -- I'm extending the deadline another week, to February 7th. Voting for the winner will start February 8th and run until February 14 -- Valentine's Day! Post both your contest entry and your votes in the comments section.

There are some great entries already. Go read them, you'll enjoy them. Many thanks to the entrants!

So join in! Tell fellow writers in your forums and groups. It's great fun and because of the word restriction, it really is a challenge!

Little Bitsy Story Contest

2010-01-10T11:17:00.000-08:00

In a blatant ripoff of agent Rachelle Gardner's "A Teensy Weensy Story Challenge" from June 2008, I'm announcing the (first?) Little Bitsy Story Contest. Like Gardner's challenge, the idea is to write a 100-word story based on a visual writing prompt -- a photo. This photo:

The rules, such as they are, are similar, though not identical, to Gardner's. You enter by posting your 100-words-or-less story in the comments. Does it have to be about romance? No, any genre is fine -- just keep it clean. No profanity, obscenity, no explicit sex, kinky or otherwise. One entry per person. Rules may be revised on the whim of the contest sponsor (that's me).

No prizes, except for the satisfaction of knowing your story was selected as the best by your peers. And the winning entry will be showcased as a blog post.

Deadline for posting stories to the blog comments is midnight, January 31, 2010. Deadline for voting is Saturday, February 6, 2010. The winning entry will be posted to the blog the week of February 7th.

To see the inspiration for this contest, visit Rachelle Gardner's blog:
http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2008/06/announcing.html

And read the winning entry here:
http://cba-ramblings.blogspot.com/2008/06/congratulations-to-winner.html

So look over the photo, let it get your creative juices flowing and post your entry! Questions? Post them in the comments and I'll answer them here.

Good luck -- and have fun!

Storm Surge submitted

2009-12-25T12:42:00.000-08:00

I've been scarce lately, finishing up my romantic suspense novel, Storm Surge, and I recently submitted it to Carina Press. This is a new e-publisher owned by Harlequin. Judging by their website and blog, they're still in the start-up phase. Guidelines say the soonest I'll hear anything is four weeks.

I started this novel as a quickie "formula" romance that I hoped to find a publisher for, either print or electronic, to enhance the marketability of Southern Man. But I got so involved with the characters and the story, I had to give it my all ... sweet Briana who so badly wanted to do something "important" to overcome her frivolous, Southern-American-Princess self-image -- and who ended up biting off way more than she could chew ... and handsome, conscientious Justin, who put his business, employees, his church before himself, and buried his heart under responsibility and obligation ... and Kathy, a Category Five Hurricane who pays a visit to the Gulf Coast.

So, I've packed these two off to Toronto, or New York, or wherever Carina is; it's possible, being e-pubishers, that their readers and editors could be anywhere. Godspeed, Justin and Briana.

Now it's time to see who is waiting in the wings. Catlin? Jeremy? Randy, Shelby and John Mark?

Celebrating Heroes -- International Men's Day

2009-11-18T19:51:00.000-08:00

November 19 is International Men's Day. This celebration of men is in its tenth year and exists for multiple reasons.

Visit here to learn more:
From the 2009 website:

Objectives of International Men's Day include a focus on men's and boys' health, improving gender relations, promoting gender equality, and highlighting positive male role models. It is an occasion for men to highlight discrimination against them and to celebrate their achievements and contributions, in particular for their contributions to community, family, marriage, and child care....

The ability to sacrifice your needs on behalf of others is fundamental to manhood, as is honour. Manhood rites of passage the world over recognise the importance of sacrifice in the development of manhood. Men make sacrifices everyday in their place of work, in their role as husbands and fathers, for their families, for their friends, for their communities and for their nation. International Men’s Day is an opportunity for people of goodwill everywhere to appreciate and celebrate the men in their lives and the contribution they make to society for the greater good of all.

People who know me, especially other writers and crit partners, know that I write to honor men. Heroes are the stars of my stories, their experience drives the plot. People also know, probably, that while I support women's rights, I am not a feminist, and think that much of the modern feminist agenda and influence is destructive for our culture, including women. My novels reflect that belief, also.

I love and honor men because the men I knew when I was growing up a preacher's kid in the Deep South were good, decent, intelligent and honorable men who loved and supported their families and were forces of good in their communities. Yes, I know not all men are like that, but the vast majority of men are not the oppressors feminism would have us believe.

Therefore, to celebrate International Men's Day, I honor here the two wonderful men who have been most important in my life....

November Madness Redux

2009-10-31T20:12:00.000-07:00

It's been almost a year to the day since my first post on this blog about, you guessed it, NaNoWriMo. I had come home from a writer's meeting on November 1, all ready to jump into my first day of National Novel Writing Month -- and I remembered I hadn't signed up to participate.

Didn't make that mistake this year. I'm all signed up to write my 50,000 word novel in a month, tentatively titled Haven of Ruin (or, alternately, Shelter of Perfidy or Refuge of Havoc). It's about the destructive effects of America's cultural decline on a particular family. It's mainstream fiction and, like nearly everything I write, it's politically incorrect (i.e., the leading man is virtuous, strong and loving).

So they tell me I gotta turn off my "inner editor" and just write. Write 1,666 words a day. I think I can churn out the words, but that inner editor business -- we'll hafta see. I'm a plotter, not a pantser. From where I sit, no-editing-as-you-go looks ... daunting.

For the Sweetest Romance Authors Scavenger Hunt

2009-10-22T09:55:00.000-07:00

Welcome, scavenger hunters! Those of you who are owned by a cat may be able to relate to this.

This is my cat, Slick Man Buddy-ro. Yes, he really is this crotchety, except when he's being a sweet boy. But regardless of his mood, I have never seen an animal with such determination to get between me and my keyboard. He likes to lounge on my desk and use my arm for a pillow.

I love the little guy, but he does this at the most inopportune times. So I'm working on a scene from my next romance, Storm Surge. It's a tough one that's been evading me for some time. And just as it starts to come together, to gel enough for words, Buddy-ro jumps up on my desk for the sixteenth time today.

"Move! Go on, get down!"

He ignores me and stretches out in front of my keyboard and begins to purr. I resolutely pick him up and deposit him on the floor, return my fingers to the home keys and ... the scene is gone. Completely gone.

Grrrr!

But at least the scavenger hunt's not gone! To continue, follow this link: http://cindykgreen.blogspot.com/

Written Outtakes Festival

2009-10-08T16:29:00.000-07:00

out⋅take /ˈaʊtˌteɪk/ –noun 1. a segment of film or videotape edited out of the final version.... ~dictionary.com

I think most writers have scenes they've cut from stories, novels or screenplays -- the equivalent of piles of film lying in coils on the editing room floor. Scenes get cut for various reasons. Some were never intended to be in the final version, anyway, but were exercises used by a writer to get to know characters better. Others get the ax because a story is too long, or it just doesn't read right.

In Southern Man, the protagonist, Troy Stevenson and his wife, Patty, have a "storybook" marriage. The reader finds that Patty's adoration of her husband is "near idolatrous" and that Troy is "crazy about his wife."

But even in near-perfect marriages, couples experience those less-than-perfect moments that let them know they're still in the real world, as the following scene illustrates. (BTW, I never intended for this scene to be in the novel, as it doesn't advance the story; but it did help me get to know my characters better.)

Do you have outtakes from your stories or novels you'd like to share? If they're short, please share them in the comments. A bit longer? Email them to me at conniechastain@gmail.com and we'll see about making them a future blog post. Or, post them to your own blog or site and send us the link!

Let's have an Written Outtake Festival!
________

Outtake from Southern Man
Patty steered the LeSabre down Benton Street to the intersection with busy Forsythe Avenue. She braked the vehicle to a halt and looked left and right. It was rush hour and traffic appeared to be nonstop in both directions.

Troy sat in the passenger's seat. They had just dropped off his vehicle at Abbott's for servicing tomorrow. Now he also looked left and right at the traffic and discerned breaks in both lanes that would reach the intersection at the same time.

"Go after that red Toyota," he said.

Patty studied the red vehicle's speed, looked in the other direction. She appeared to be getting ready to pull out when Troy suggested but the vehicle passed and the LeSaber didn't move.

"Go!" Troy said, but the window of opportunity was gone. "Why didn't you go?"

"Cars were moving too fast. The break in traffic wasn't big enough."

Troy groaned softly and began monitoring the traffic for another break. More seconds passed. "Okay...go! Now!"

Still, the LeSabre sat at the intersection, its turn signal ticking monotonously.

"What was wrong that time?"

Patty sighed. "I didn't know if that car in the outside lane might change lanes and hit us if I pulled out."

Troy nodded slightly, clamped his lips together and resumed looking for breaks in traffic.

Well aware of his exasperation, Patty said, "Do you want to drive?"

"I may have to if we want to get home toni--Go! Punch it!"

Patty punched it. The station wagon scooted across the intersection and turned left with a slight squealing of tires.

The New Covey Awards rocks!

2009-09-20T15:28:00.000-07:00

And Southern Man is in the running! My book cover is #9 and the voting buttons are down the left side. Kudos to David Boultbee for making the site available; it's a boon to writers. Follow the link below to visit the site, learn more about it, and find out how to submit your cover. And if you're so inclined to cast your vote for my cover, I'll just be tickled to death!
THE NEW COVEY AWARDS

Thank you for the interview

2009-09-19T22:51:00.001-07:00

My online friend and critique partner, Cara Martens, recently interviewed me for her blog, Moonstruck Gems. I'd love to have folks visit her blog read my interview, but the real treat is seeing her photos of gemstones and the lovely jewelry she makes from them. Don't miss it. And Cara, thanks so much for the interview. It was fun!

In the LASR Spotlight

2009-09-13T16:39:00.000-07:00

I recently had a great time in the "Author Spotlight" at Long and Short Romance Reviews. Judy and Marianne at LASR had drawings back in the summer for several spotlight features -- and I won one of 'em! The spotlighted author writes five essays that are posted at the LASR review site from Monday through Friday. Site visitors answer questions from each essay and the winner receives a gift from the featured author. My gift to the winner was an autographed copy of my novel.

My essay topics were as follows (click to go to LASR to read the essays).

Monday -- On Writing
Tuesday -- On Agenda and Theme
Wednesday -- My Hero
Thursday -- Dialog and Dialect
Friday -- Excerpt from Southern Man

I had a great time in the LASR spotlight, and I enjoyed the comments left by readers. LASR is a terrific site run by folks who do so much for romance authors. My thanks to you ladies, and best wishes for the continued success of your site!

Classic Romance Revival? And how!

2009-08-28T18:39:00.000-07:00

I'm excited to be a new affiliate author at Classical Romance Revival -- an online group of authors from around the world who support the revival of classical romance -- that is, sweet, sensual and sophisticated romance with the classic values of commitment, integrity... and happily ever after! A marvelous new website has been launched by author Judah Raine of Westville, South Africa, the group's dedicated and resourceful leader, and a cyber-celebration is underway.

Follow the link below to have a look around. There are reviews of classical romances, a wonderful group blog and news (check under "Hot Happenings"). You'll also find author interviews, bookstore -- even recipes!

So come check us out -- and check back often!

How Sweet It Is!

2009-08-27T18:59:00.000-07:00

With apologies to Jackie Gleason...(All you kids who don't know who that is, click HERE) I have to tell you what a great time I had chatting at The Sweetest Romance blog! Our guest was Crystal Wilkinson, who acquainted us with the wheel concept of story structure (all "spokes" must lead to the hub, or core, of the story). There was also a scavenger hunt won by -- Yours Truly! My prize -- this lovely banner.
Click HERE to vist The Sweetest Romance Blog! Thanks for an fun evening, ladies of the blog. I look forward to chatting with you again.

Playing with covers ... again

2009-08-15T21:04:00.000-07:00

The novel I originally called Honor's Conquest has been renamed Storm Surge. The reference is to coastal flooding that accompanies hurricanes when they make landfall -- one of the major events in the story.

I have about 33,000 words. I need another 20,000 more and it'll be finished. I'm not going to publish this one under the Brasstown Books imprint. I'll go the submissions route. This is a romance -- no politico-cultural agendas, here -- so we'll see how it does.

Even though I'll submit to conventional publishers, I couldn't resist playing with a cover idea. Whoever suggested to me to make covers for my WIPs -- thanks so much! I enjoy doing it, and the covers make the book more real while it's being created.

So here it is. What do you think?

Here's a bit about the story:

All her life, Briana Farrior has been a SAP -- a Southern American Princess, small-town, small-time version. But since she was a college freshman, she has wanted to shed her frivolous self concept and do something with her life that matters.

Her first chance comes when she is hired by Guardian Consumer Protection Group, a watchdog organization in Mobile, Alabama, to help get the goods on ruthless corporations that victimize the little guy.

But her big chance comes when her boss and mentor, Sylvia Watson, helps her go undercover at Gulf States Insurance Services, an independent adjusting firm in nearby Pensacola, Florida.

The young company is headed up by its founder, Justin Adair, who Sylvia suspects of big-time insurance fraud.

Briana's mission -- become Adair's trusted administrative assistant and find the evidence.

But Sylvia didn't tell her young friend that Adair was so handsome and charming. And she didn't tell her how a crook could be a man of such high principles and virtue.

And now that Justin is falling in love with his new administrative assistant, how can Briana stop herself from loving him in return?

More to the point, why should she?

But as Justin and Briana work through the barriers -- her deception and his doubt --that threaten their love before it really starts, a vengeful adversary threatens their lives.

Reviews and Reader Comments

2009-08-11T22:33:00.000-07:00

I'm so pleased that Southern Man is getting reviews, and very glad they're all positive this far.

Says Cherokee, at Coffee Time Romance:

...a smooth flowing storyline that kept this reader interested. The characters are real. ... Troy and Patty were good players as husband and wife, as they sought to maintain order in their life. Connie Chastain tells the story of a loving couple who... find a way to face any temptation in their path. She chronicles a good tale, instilling, warmth and emotions in her players, to create a delightful story worth the read.

Says Edelweiss at LASR Reviews:

....an absorbing story of marriage vows under stress and of politically targeted individuals facing social and career extinction....refreshingly written from the viewpoint of the traditional family values that made our culture the world’s envy....a novel with political bite....grippingly exposes the underside of corporate harassment policies that have inadvertently brought misery to many innocent employees....a well written story, with prose that’s concise and silky to read..... sparks with rising excitement as it gathers momentum...the harrowing rush to the book’s conclusion is a riveting reading experience....a love story of refined elegance.
__________
Wow! Thanks to both of you. Great reviews!

Says it all...

2009-08-04T21:24:00.000-07:00

Getting the word out....

2009-08-04T20:48:00.000-07:00

I'm so excited that Southern Man is featured in the August 2009 edition of the "Marketing for Romance Writers" newsletter. Many thanks to the MFRW staff -- all volunteers -- for all their hard work! The newsletter is viewable to members of of Marketing for Romance Writers Newsletter Group at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MFRW-Author-Newsletter/?yguid=332645947

It's a wonderful edition of the newsletter. Great job! Thanks again, Rochelle and staff!

So leftists have discovered love and romance

2009-07-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

Or have they? Or is it just another vast, uncharted landscape of our culture they haven't marched in and trampled on yet?

Back in May, Hillary Rettig gets on Huffington Post to report on the April Conference on Romance Fiction at Princeton -- but she's really just using it as an excuse to pat herself and liberalism on the back and evilize conservatives. What a surprise, huh.

Take this, for example, from her piece, The Eroticization of Equality and Social Justice. She notes that the "arch-conservative" website Human Events lists Dr. Alfred Kinsey's book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, a.k.a. The Kinsey Report, as the fourth most harmful book of the 19th and 20th centuries. Then she dramatically asks, "What do conservatives -- and repressive regimes and ideologies the world over -- have against romance, love and sex? Why do they need to control them so much?"

First of all, how is saying that something -- anything -- should be used right, as it was intended -- how is that a need to control? Is telling an obese person they should eat less and healthier food a need to control?

If Rettig cared enough to look, Human Events explained why they consider the book dangerous, with a quote from the Washington Times: “The report included reports of sexual activity by boys—even babies—and said that 37% of adult males had had at least one homosexual experience.... The 1953 book also included reports of sexual activity involving girls younger than age four, and suggested that sex between adults and children could be beneficial,” the Washington Times reported.

Presumably Rettig thinks child-sex is just another manifestation of equality and social justice?

So much of the type of romance Rettig is praising as "progressive" is not about equality and social justice. It's not even about love and romance. It's just more leftist mutation and mutilation of goodness and decency.

Vampire heroes and radical feminism

2009-07-11T21:44:00.000-07:00

So my novel is completed and available on Amazon.com -- and I'm starting the marketing and promotions bit. I'm also getting back to my neglected blog.

I had a wee bit of trouble trying to classify Southern Man. It's not really a romance, which, as I understand it, involves two people falling in love and dealing with internal and external conflict along the way. Southern Man contains a romance; the story of Troy and Patty's meeting, courtship and early married life is told in backstory and flashbacks. But that doesn't make the novel a romance.

Nevertheless, romance readers are part of my target readership. I was a member of Romance Writers of America and several online romance groups, and one thing I've learned -- romance novels have changed since the 1980s, when I occasionally enjoyed offerings from Lavyrle Spencer and Dixie Browning.

It seems that hunky heroes of times past are finding themselves squeezed out of the picture by host of quasi-human heroes -- vampires, shape-shifters (which, I think, includes werewolves and were-other-things), aliens and even demons. Lord help us, when did the servants of Satan, the enemy of humankind, become the objects of romantic love?

When it comes to reading fantasy or speculative fiction, I can suspend disbelief as well as the next gal... Well, no, maybe I can't. I used to be better at it than I am now. I'm still a fan of space-opera sci-fi (still a Trekker after all these years), but that's only a part of the weirdness I've been finding in romance sub-genres today.

And as a human woman, a daughter of Eve, child of the Earth, I love romance heroes who are real men. Flesh and blood humans, the sons of Adam with all their flaws, creatures made by God in His image, with their spark of the divine. What cyanotic walking dead guy can touch that? What fellow who's apt to sprout fur and fangs can come close to a real man with a human heart full of love?

I admit the intriguing nature of this phenomena, and I've developed a theory based in part upon my antagonism for radical feminism and not-so-radical feminism. Don't get me wrong; I applaud equal pay for equal work and all that, and I admire strong women (my family has been full of 'em for generations). But I believe that helping and uplifting women is but a small slice of the political and cultural agenda of feminism. Far more of its attention and resources are focused on something else.

Basically, the core of feminism is the female hatred of men. That hatred extends to anything that involves men--particularly marriage (hence the current societal drive to define marriage as between other than male and female); and family (hence the stripping from men their rights as fathers by the courts of the land; and hence the feminist-influenced societal war against life in the [female] womb, life that results only when a male contribution is part of the process).

For several decades, western culture has been fed the line that men are the sole cause of all humanity's evil and sorrows; that for millenia, men were oppressors, women the oppressed. That women lived lives of drudgery, men lives of ease. All men are brutes, we were told, all sex is rape.

A post-modern woman, strong, decisive, making her own decisions, in charge of her own life, dare not succumb to the attraction of a strong male because he can, and likely will, revert at any moment, from the slightest provocation, into the brutish oppressor of females men have been from time-immemorial. In the feminist mindset, not even in our fantasies are we allowed to love a strong man.

So, what can we do?

Well, we can disguise them -- as quasi-humans, something still of the earth and still male, but not totally flesh and blood, not the sons of Adam, and possessing no membership in the patriarchy. Or, we can make them not of the earth at all. And we can make quasi-human women to love them, or strive with, or against, them.

We can wrack our brains, world-build till the cows come home, and create vampire after vampire and eternal wars for them to fight, and furry men who howl at the moon ... or we can admit we are women with human hearts who love men, real men -- men who are not the evil oppressors we've been told, but who also have human hearts capable of courage and love.

Humanity, with its flawed nature and spark of the divine, is the unending source of fascinating stories -- including romances. Face it -- even the wildest paranormal, sci-fi fantasies are concocted by human minds.

So to heck with what the feminists say. Men are wonderful. I love them!

Are you a writer or reader of paranormal, futuristic and fantasy romance? Do you agree or disagree with my premise? Are you a feminist who thinks I just don't get it? Let's hear from you. Comments invited!

Southern Man out at last!

2009-06-28T22:39:00.000-07:00

I have to say, publishing the thing was a whole lot more pleasurable than writing it! I really enjoy typesetting (I used QuarkXpress) despite it's being so labor intenstive.

Anyway, I'm so proud of my baby! It's available on
Amazon.com

Next step -- learning promotion. One of my early efforts resulted two trailers at Youtube. Here's the short one:

Enjoy!

Southern Man to be out soon!

2009-04-27T17:46:00.000-07:00

By arrangement with the author (me) Brasstown Books (also me), an imprint of Great Southern Publishing (yep, you guessed it; me, again) is going to publish Southern Man with a release date of sometime this summer. Early June, I hope.

I've been busy doing book designing. It's really enjoyable, and I like the idea that I have control over things like font style and size, and cover design. I also rather like the idea of doing my own marketing and promotion. It's not like being marketed by one of the New York giants (no, not those Giants) but I don't think even they do a lot of marketing except for big name authors.

Since most of this book's marketing will be done online, I have started with banner designs. I did these first few banners, static and animated, as well as the cover for Southern Man, in two programs, Adobe PhotoDeluxe (the "home version" of Photoshop) and Ultimate Paint.

I'll have a little longer to work on these before my ISBNs come in. I'm also waiting to hear back on permission to quote lyrics from a popular song in this novel. That's going to be about three weeks... Also give me plenty of time for one more proofreading of my manuscript.

This is exciting!

Contests In Perspective

2009-02-13T19:59:00.000-08:00

This is a scan of a certificate I won in a synopsis contest sponsored by the Maine Romance Writers, RWA. My entry was Southern Man. It was entered in the Romantic Elements category. It was a second place finalist in that category, tied with another entry.

I'm absurdly delighted with the award. See, I'm wordy. It's hard for me to write short. That's why I'm not a good blogger. So for me to win a synopsis contest was truly remarkable.

This particular contest allowed a synopsis of no more than ten pages. Ten pages! That was startling to me. Most editors and agents specify that a synopsis that accompanies a query and/or sample chapters be no more than a page or two long. I'm still trying to figure out how you encapsulate over 100,000 words in a two-page synopsis.

Oh, well. I guess if you can capture a behemoth story like Southern Man in ten pages, you can figure out how to capture it in two. Or one.

Many thanks to the judges who scored my entry--and who offered such wonderful words of encouragement! I look forward to the next synopsis contest.

Book Covers

2009-01-31T11:23:00.000-08:00

I read somewhere, a tip for writers with a new WIP, particularly a novel, that you can make it more real by designing a cover for your book. So I tried it. Did the front, spine, back blurb and all.

This is kinda fun. Here are some covers made with affordable stock photos and PhotoDelux -- the really, really old (Windows 98) home version of PhotoShop (I still love it and use it a lot, even though it spits at XP now and then, and vice versa).

Plumbers, Authors and Elitists

2008-12-08T17:22:00.000-08:00

So Maureen Dowd's "Guest Columnist" Timothy Egan, posts this column bellyaching about Joe the Plumber writing a book....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/opinion/07egan.html?_r=2&th&emc=th

Why does Egan care? Ostensibly, it's insulting to struggling writers who don't have a snowball's chance of getting published while the economy is plummeting and publishing houses are in turmoil, laying off, not acquiring.... And ostensibly it's insulting because Joe is clueless about writing and ... and ... whatever.

But that's not Egan's real problem. Egan's real problem is that Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber, challenged his candidate, Barack Obama. If Joe had challenged John McCain, do you know what you'd be hearing from Egan and the New York Times about this book deal?

Right.

Dead, ringing silence.

It's not about writing or publishing. Egan doesn't like Joe having opinions, expressing them, and God forbid, expressing them by a method that others can hear -- or read. In other words, it's all politics. The amount of filth that gets published is staggering -- and was before anyone ever heard of Joe the Plumber -- and the NYT doesn't blink an eye about that.

I admit I followed the campaign and election only superficially. I didn't even vote because, while most people saw a huge difference between the two candidates, I didn't. Besides, I got my fill of national politics when I was a Congressional staffer back in the 1990s. But I paid enough attention to the recent election cycle to understand what's happening now, in the aftermath, with such incidents as Egan's whining non-issue.

Egan and the NYT are elitists, and I can't stand elitism. (I can't help it; according to Myers-Briggs, that's just a natural facet of my personality.) Elitists do not want people with opposing, or differing, opinions to be heard, plain and simple.

But even if it was about publishing -- who is Joe putting out of work? His publisher is Pearlgate Publishing, LLC, for cryin' out loud, which appears to have all of two books under its belt.

We're not talking Random House, here, folks.

We see through you, Egan, because you're as transparent as a poly-carbonate champagne glass, and just as fake. Bellyaching about Wurzelbacher's book, which threatens no one's publishability, isn't just sickeningly elitist. It reeks of censorship and that makes it downright unAmerican.

Settings and Star Trek

2008-11-09T18:54:00.000-08:00

Several times, I've encountered in writing articles the advice that all, or most, setting description should be omitted from your stories. I think that can be a mistake.

Of course you don't want to overdo it, but setting is, or can be, very important to a tale. It may set a mood, which is no small thing to do for a reader. It may be part of characterization. Describing a man's office or a woman's kitchen can tell the reader a lot about those characters. But even if it serves as nothing but a backdrop against which action or emotion is portrayed, it is still important.

Why?

Because the lack of setting description turns visually oriented readers (such as myself) into Melkots.

Melkots?

Anyone old enough to remember the original Star Trek series may remember an episode titled "Spectre of the Gun" (aka "The Last Gunfight"). The Enterprise trespassed on Melkotian space and the Melkots punished the earthmen by forcing them to reenact the gunfight at the OK Corral ... with the men of the Enterprize being the Clantons--the losers. The Melkotian plan was to execute the trespassers with elements of their own culture.

But the Melkotians either didn't learn enough about the setting from the starship's memory/history banks, or else they didn't care enough to completely recreate it. Their rendition of Tombstone, Arizona had big gaps and voids. The buildings of the town had only a front wall. In the saloon, for example, and you could see the landscape of the alien planet behind the bar. Above it, a clock hung in thin air. It was bizarre, and help set the tone for one of Star Trek's creepiest (and most riveting) episodes.

In that case, visual gaps in the setting were extremely effective. But if you're not going for creepy sci-fi in your story, turning your readers into Melkots may not set so well with them. It can be disconcerting and decrease their enjoyment of the story.

That's the way I am when I read something that doesn't give me sufficient information to create the setting in my head. The characters will act in front of a bizarre, and perhaps inadvertently creepy, half-built set with black voids here and there.

The best setting descriptions don't include every little detail, of course, because you don't want to bog the reader down in unnecessary minutia. But a good writer knows, or has to learn, the minimum to provide so the reader's imagination can recreate a whole, reasonably accurate setting/backdrop for the story's action.
SPECTRE OF THE GUN

Southern literature vs. Southern fiction

2008-11-02T15:18:00.000-08:00

Wikipedia's definition of Southern Literature references an article by Patricia Evans that appears on a server at James Madison University. It sez:

Southern literature (sometimes called the literature of the American South) is defined as American literature about the Southern United States or by writers from this region.

Characteristics of Southern literature include a focus on

--a common Southern history
--the significance of family
--a sense of community and one’s role within it
--the region's dominant religion (Christianity — see Protestantism)
--the burdens/rewards religion often brings
--issues of racial tension
--land and the promise it brings
--a sense of social class and place
--the use of the Southern dialect
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_literature).

Jerry Leath Mills is reportedly the origin of the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. (What makes Southern literature Southern? It has a dead mule in it.)

Mills' tongue-in-cheek scholarship on the subject appeared in "Equine Gothic: The Dead Mule as Generic Signifier in Southern Literature in the 20th Century," which appeared in the 1990s in The Southern Literary Journal.

Mills' work apparently inspired other researchers to seek "generic signifiers" in every other kind of literature, from New England to the Midwest, from Jewish to French, from feminist to romance, according to Peter Applebome at the New York Times.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C06E4D71F3AF930A25755C0A96E958260

Oh, well. Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery. And sometimes ends up being fun! Or at least interesting.

Or not.

November Madness

2008-11-01T18:37:00.001-07:00

November First. The first day of NaNoWriMo -- National Novel Writing Month. You know, where you turn off your inner editor and write a 50,000 word novel in a month.

I was gonna do that. Had every intention of doing it. I went to my local RWA group's meeting today, intending to come home and get started. And then I remembered.

I hadn't signed up.

You hafta sign up aheada time.

Oh, well.

One less thing to do in November.

I do have my 102,000 word behemoth mainstream/romantic elements novel to finish. (Info/excerpt/trailer HERE.)

And I do have my 60,000 word romantic suspense novel to finish. (Synopsis/excerpt HERE.)

So it's not like I'm gonna be sitting around, twiddling my thumbs throughout November.

And as far as NaNo goes -- there's always next year....

Welcome!

2008-10-26T22:32:00.001-07:00

This blog is a companion to my website, Connie Chastain.com. Both website and blog currently exist for pitching my writings to agents and publishers, and for general chit chat on writing (and occasional other subjects) with authors (published and un-), agents, editors, critiquers and various and sundry other interested folks. Look around. Leave a comment. Or email me!