murder.booklocker.com

Last night I was the guest of radio show host Dr. Niama Willams. At first it sounded easy enough - call the station, they conference me in and we talk. Unfortunately, there was a typo in the number they gave me to call, the station manager was late (which meant I had to call back later) and …

Well, once we got it together it was okay. The show was scheduled from 8-9 p.m. Eastern BUT because of the delay we ran over - all the way to 9:30! That’s how I spent the evening - talking about myself, about PARK RIDGE (my novel). Oh! And I read. Two pieces. One called “Bearing Witness” which strings together real life incidents that I witnessed interpersed with personal memories. The second was a short fictional story called “Flight” about a wintery morning “L” ride. 

Dr. Ni has a doctorate in literature so it was a bit of kick to have my work analyzed on air. Folks from Chicago should get a chuckle when I say that she wondered what secret message I was trying to convey by saying that the train tracks were “squeezed between the in-bound and out-going lanes of the expressway” or my use of “Eden.” I don’t think she believed me a bit when I insisted the Edens Expressway was the real name and that I had no hidden intent!

She was lavish in her praise - both on the air and in email:

“Bearing Witness” is an excellent piece of writing, and I think what I love best about it is your listing of the choices when one has been victimized as a young person:  1) become an abuser, 2) continue as a victim, 3) I haven’t figured that one out yet ….

3 is such a brilliant move as an essayist because it represents a journey that many survivors must and often do go through.  One cannot avoid, if one is at all a conscious, aware human being and survivor, confrontation of that question. 

Too many of us stand aside when witnessing the kind of behavior that you describe in the essay, and I for one have stood aside, helpless and angry:  helpless because I don’t want someone to pull out a gun and hurt me and angry because my fear forces me into powerlessness. 

I’ll let you know when the podcast is available.

Today’s Spotlight is on Chicago Writers Association member, Lisa Maroski, author of The One That Is Both.

Exploring the Frontiers of Language    Many years ago I read a small book called The Limits of Language. It had been written much earlier, in 1962–a collection of essays by philosophers, scientists, and writers who all pointed to a boundary of sorts. If there were a sign at the border it would have said something like “Caution: No Adequate Language Beyond This Point.” However, none of the authors did any more than point at a dark void; none offered a solution, none ventured into that void. I resolved to be the person to do that. I have taken some first tentative steps, which I will share in the hope of sparking someone’s imagination, to join me in this adventure into a frontier as exciting as deep space, deep interior space this time.

My own quest began while studying physics and Eastern philosophy. From both those perspectives, the world seemed to be a paradoxical unity, not the nice linear, rational world that I had been conditioned to expect. The interpenetration of opposites–such as body and mind, energy and matter, subject and object–was more compelling to me than analyzing them in their separateness. And aside from clumsy compounds, such as bodymind, there was no way to express succinctly the dynamism, cocreativeness, and inherent unity of such oppositions. In graduate school, I experimented with equally clumsy constructions, but it wasn’t until I hit upon the idea of getting away from the alphabet that I struck paydirt. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Let’s look a bit more closely at the boundary. If you come from the perspective that each thing we have a word for is a separate entity distinct from other entities, then the language we’ve got will do you just fine, and you can stop reading this. If, however, you come from the perspective that everything is profoundly interconnected, then the limitations of language become more evident. The very act of predicating, of saying X is Y keeps X from ever being one with Y. My friend, Steve Rosen, describes this limit very concisely, “Of course, any act of predication, any assertion that ‘X is’ or that ‘X is not,’ is an act of circumscribing X, rendering it finite, implicitly (if not explicitly) turning it into an object that is cast before the subjectivity of the predicator. Quite irrespective, then, of the explicit content of my thoughts or words, when the form of my discourse is that of predication, implicitly I finitize, objectify, create an other. Therefore, in predicating self, I actually produce what is other, what appears over against this existential self that predicates.” In other words, our language implicitly keeps the subject and object separate, keeps the unity of interpenetration of such opposites forever a poetic metaphor.

This is not the case in some languages. A Navajo woman once explained that when they say something like “I see the mountain,” it is implied that I am also that mountain, that it is not separate from me. English implies that is absolutely must be separate.

So how do we expand this language, English, to be able to express that inherent non-separation of subject and object? How do we increase the bandwidth of our language?

I have taken a stab at it by inventing new types of words, words that don’t have letters but have graphic images, since images show relationships. Here is an example of what one of them means: “fu-an-gu: its meaning translates roughly as ‘the deeper you get, the less it looks like itself, and when you reach the core, it looks like the opposite of what you started with.’” (Check out my book to see the actual graphic.) This concept embodies the paradox of wholeness, wherein you express the simultaneity of opposites. That is one way to increase the bandwith of language. I’d love to hear your ideas for other ways.

Lisa Maroski, author of The One That Is Both
website: http://murder.booklocker.com/www.theonethatisboth.com
blog: http://paradoxplayground.blogspot.com

I’m a little annoyed. Yesterday in the morning’s email I found a request to proof something for a friend. I did and within hours received the jubilant message that it had been accepted for publication and it would be appearing in the next issue of some magazine.

Okay, so maybe not annoyed. More like jealous. I’m happy for my friend. Really. But golly gee whiz, why don’t things like that happen to me

On the other hand, I’m signed up to do an internet radio show next week. I’ll be reading one pretty long piece entitled “Witness” and a short story called “Flight.” Getting the opportunity was not as easy as my friend popping her piece into email.

When I inquired about appearing as a guest, I was sent a document with some really stringent requirements regarding content for work to be submitted. I was amazed at what I found there. The show purports to be interviews with book authors plus short reads by the authors. THIS was NOT THAT.

Undeterred, I located “Witness” which did fit the criteria. I waited almost a month to hear that the show’s host rejected it. Seven minutes after receiving that email I received another saying that she changed her mind. But did I have another piece to fill out the hour?

I submitted short story that had been published in DePaul’s literary magazine, Threshold. It was rejected (don’t ask). Then I submitted two more pieces. One of these was found “acceptable.”

And so next week I’ll be doing the show. I can only hope that I get to mention the name of my book.

The latest issue of the Chicago Writers Association newsletter, The Clarion, has just been released. Oh, and it has an interview with me

It also has an interview with Helen Gallagher, “Writerly News” (On Publishing, Self-Marketing). Dorien Grey was also interviewed.

Making her first appearance in The Clarion and one of the newest members of CWA is Diana Xin. a student at Northwestern University/Medill School of Journalism. Her feature article is an interview she conducted with award-winning romance writer Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Naperville.

Also in this issue: Freelance and Paying Jobs for Writers; Personal Writing Essays & Success Stories; and Chicagoland Author Friendlies.

This morning on the CWA forum Jeanetter Clinkunbroomer linked to an article about Copyright and “fair use.” I’ve always thought of myself as being responsible with other people’s words, keeping my quotes to the bare bones so as not to infringe on their rights.

Lately, though, I’ve discovered that it’s getting harder to do. Not with respect to writing but blogging. I know that you write when you blog, but I’m pretty sure you know what I mean when I make the distinction.

At Blooking Central I’ve been researching software and publishers as well as blooks and blauthors. It’s been really hard when I’ve had words in front of me — words that I could highlight and plug into my posts as quotes — to keep myself honest.

Generally I pick up whole paragraphs, sometimes whole pages of material. I pop it into Homesite and save it until I need it.

Then I begin trimming. Then I trim some more. I confess that some of the quotes look pretty mangled when I’m done but I don’t know how else to do it. I’m very careful about attribution and always provide links to where I got the material. But still … . I was glad for Jeanette’s reminder.

Today’s Spotlight is on Chicago Writers Association member, FRank Creed.

Tackling the Big-Hairy-Business-of-Writing-Monster:
How to Shave and Exfoliate This Bad-Boy Without Bruising or Laceration.

by Frank Creed

At the beginning of 2006, I learned my first novel would be published. I jumped on the bed until the biz realities of being a published novelist went upside my head. That mother of a problem spanked me hard. I was an artist who’d spent a lifetime learning craft. My only online writing connection then was Elfwood.com the web’s largest amateur sci-fi/ fantasy site. Big help. Mother’d brought me up right, so I stopped jumping on the bed, and began jumping on the Web.

Intimidated by technology? All you need to know is how to use a web-browser and an e-mail program. Add a tasteful website and a real domain name to that ask-Santa list. As you log BOCHOK (butt on chair, hands on keyboard) time, steeling the courage to tackle the big-hairy-biz-reality-monster, focus on this one purpose: networking. Your job is to help your publisher sell your book—trust me, it’s in your contract. Bad news? Gone are the days when an author can retire to a cabin and just write. Worse news is that the biz-monster eats time. His diet seems to be a minimum three hours biz-time for every word-count hour, and if you don’t feed him, he can kill your career.

Why network? We use viral-marketing to build web presence infrastructure. Before the web, viral-marketing was called word-of-mouth buzz. Demographics show that the overwhelming number-one reason someone reads a book is because it’s been recommended by friend or family. Infecting print, radio, and television mediums through the real-time-modern-encyclopedia called the internet, and thereby infecting readers, is known as viral-marketing. Web-presence simply refers to an author’s visibility on the internet. This is achieved by laying an infrastructure of sites, blogs, and memberships. Web-presence is measured with tools like hit-counters, Technorati-ratings, and Googlability.

If you’re not genuine and kind throughout your infrastructure, you’ll get tagged as a spammer or board troll—friends of the biz monster willing to help kill a career, so use some propriety in your networking. Be passionate without being desperate. Live the Golden-Rule and be courteous. Help others and just tack-on your signature links. If you don’t use sig-links, get-over-it and write some. Make it easy for readers to learn more about you.

I spent eight months furiously Googling, bookmarking, joining groups, kissing palms and shaking babies. Even though I write in the nonexistent speculative fiction sub-sub-sub-genre of Biblical end-times sci-fi, I was stunned at the quantity of tools and people like me I found scattered across the web. (Let me pause and say I’m not cramming religion down any throats here—the following context will work for any writer’s niche.) Authors whose genre begins with the word “Biblical” all consider our work to be some kind of ministry. As such, my motivation for founding the Lost Genre Guild was to gather the tools and people I’d found scattered across the web, for the Boss’s glory. That, and Christians who are spec-fic genre fans pack the grudge that G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Frank Peretti and Stephen Lawhead were the only known Biblical-Speculative-Fiction authors published in the twentieth century. As readers we were starved. Quick tip: don’t starve a guy stubborn enough to spend a dozen years on one novel.

Point is, Google your niche very specifically. Use a variety of subtly different parameters. Christian spec-fic has three main sub-genres: I chased sci-fi, fantasy and horror *cough spiritual thriller cough*. Then I replaced “Christian” with “Biblical”, and did it again. Then I did it for every sub-sub-genre I could think of. Take the time to chase and scan the first two hundred results—you won’t believe the useful things that don’t Google well. Central gathering points for your niche may already exist on the web, and some charge membership fees (the Lost Genre Guild does not). To have genre-specific resources at your fingertips is worth thirty bucks a year. If you can’t find a guild or writers’ club for your niche, start one. A specific fiction-ministry is LGG members’ motivation, but authors of any niche share a bond. Find others out there doing what you do. Band together and share what you know. Network.

For those still reading, here’s a couple cookies. The Lost Genre Guild began as a private invite-only Yahoo newsgroup. I spent another eight months networking and promoting the guild. What began as a handful of artists now consists of publishers, editors, web-show hosts, production studios, promoters, blog tourists, and one unofficial cat. According to a spring of ‘06 Writer’s Digest issue (that the cat messed-on and I pitched), religious, not just Christian, fiction is expected to explode over the next five years. I’ve heard echoes of this anticipation over the last year, and the fact that the local Barnes & Noble’s has three times the Christian fiction shelf-space as the biggest Christian bookstore *cough gift-shop cough* is a biz reality. If you write religious fiction, you’re in the right place and time. And here’s a fun fact: an LGG member wrote the Wikipedia definition of Biblical Speculative Fiction. Network.

If any CWA member would like an export of my mostly categorized favorites-file containing thousands of writing bookmarks, send a blank e-mail to frankcreed@insightbb.com with “bookmarks” as a subject line. Obviously Christian or Biblical Speculative Fiction authors would benefit most, but all my months of research is bound to help anyone. I oughta be burnin’ disks and sellin’ this stuff.

If the pen is mightier than the sword, the web is a writer’s whetstone.

To God be the glory,
Frank Creed

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Home: www.frankcreed.com
Author Blog: frankcreed.blogspot.com
Book Review Blog: afrankreview.blogspot.com
Lost Genre Guild Site: www.lostgenreguild.com
Lost Genre Guild Blog: blog.lostgenre.com
The Underground Series: End Times Sci-Fi

The Blog Writers & Artists Network has just announced that I’ve won the Red Envelope competition for frequent blogging. I missed a day here and there during the month but had good responses to my posts. You needed to have four comments (excluding your own) for an entry to count. 

Luanne is currently reading The Riverview Murders by Michael Raleigh, a Chicago writer. Raised just across the Indiana border to Michigan, she didn’t think that she’d ever been to Riverview. Silver-something was much closer. (Yes, I do pay attention, but can’t recall what the something was.) Riverview was already past its prime and dying when I went with friends in the mid-60s. The amusement park died in 1967, yet somehow lives on in memory. And in Michael Raleigh’s book.

I wandered over to Amazon since the book jacket said that there were four books that had preceded The Riverview Murders in the Paul Whelan mystery series. The page I landed on was NOT the right one but hey! I found something else: “So you’d like to… Explore Chicago’s Mysteries”  - A guide by Randy Richardson “Mystery Writer” (Evanston, IL). Who knew? 

In this short piece Randy claims that “Chicago has an air of mystery about it, and I mean that in a good way. It’s a feeling that spills out of its architecture, its majestic lakefront and its incredibly diverse and varied neighborhoods. There’s a sense that it’s holding so many secrets – secrets that you want to discover in you own way. ”

Then there’s a list of 27 mystery books by Chicago writers.

The second, Who knew?, is found at the very bottom of the list. It’s a book entitled Mystery Reader’s Walking Guide, Chicago, by Alzina Stone Dale (Author), Ben Stone (Illustrator).

Description:
Around the world the name “Chicago” still conjures up images of the Roaring Twenties, cops and robbers, and Al Capone. Using this guide you can follow in the footsteps of more than 75 authors and sleuths from over 100 mysteries. Each walking tour covers a specific Chicago neighborhood, providing a map, must-see places and restaurants, all from Chicago mysteries, together with a special index of people, places and mysteries covered. Mystery Readers’ Walking Guide: Chicago won Malice Domestic’s Agatha Award (and teapot) for Best Non-Fiction.

About the Author:
Alzina Stone Dale is a freelance author/lecturer who teaches mystery seminars at the Newberry Library, and chairs panels at Bouchercon, Magna cum Murder, and Malice Domestic. Dale is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, British Crime Writers Association, Society of Midland Authors and Dorothy L. Sayers Society.

Who knew?

B.Y.O.P. Bring Your Own People
Start: Saturday, June 30, 2007 - 7:00pm

Time: Reading begins at 7:00PM
Cost: Free admission.
Location: Peter Jones Gallery, 1806 W. Cuyler, 2nd Floor, Chicago

B.Y.O.P.: Bring Your Own People

Chicago is a storytelling town. Whether through poetry or prose,
Chicagoans have plenty to say about life, the world, home teams, and
cicadas…but too often we only talk to those in our own
neighborhoods. The Guild has always stood for crossing the street into
the next neighborhood to learn where our stories intersect and differ.
Through B.Y.O.P., the Guild invites two members of Chicago’s literary
neighborhoods — reading series, individual writers, lit mags — to
partner together to offer an evening of literature, conversation and
hanging out. We’ll supply the cups, openers and ice. You bring your P
(people) and your B (beverages) and your G (gift of gab). Bring some
munchies to share too. Consider it a literary pot luck.

http://www.guildcomplex.org/?q=guild_events

[I'm happy to post this press release from fellow Chicago Writers Association member, Diana Zwinak.]

Yorkville, Illinois, June — Teen Writers and Artists Project is looking for Chicago Area teens (ages 14-18) to participate in the creation of an online literary journal for northern Illinois teenagers. The group is looking for authors of poetry, prose, fiction, and non-fiction, as well as original artwork to electronically publish on its site.

“We are hoping to give our participants the ability to express themselves in ways that they may not be able to in a regular daily setting, and those participants who are looking to find a way to take their work to higher levels will have the opportunity to work with professional authors who have published in their particular genre. This is an opportunity that I could only dreamed about as a young author and I’m glad that I can play a part in bringing it to others,” said Diana Zwinak, the group’s founder.

Zwinak, a high school teacher in Shabbona, Illinois, currently hopes to match young Chicago area authors and artists with a place to publish their work, and with on line mentors, many of whom will come from Teen Writers’ and Artists’ Projects’ partner organization the Chicago Writers Association. When enough participants have joined, she plans to create writers’ groups and classes in participants’ towns, cities and neighborhoods.

For now, starting the on line journal is enough. “We are very proud of our new Web presence and want to expand our project to include teens from throughout the Chicago area,” Zwinak said.

Contact the group’s blog and Journal at: www.teenwritersandartistsproject.blogspot.com