Anastasia’s Medallion or The ABC story project
This writing exercise is called an ABC story and has been around for awhile. Each person gets a letter of the alphabet and must write one (1) sentence of the story. No editing later of typos, grammar, etc. AND it must be cohesive to the team writing. No going off in a direction or tone that won’t fit in with the rest of the story.
Not sure it teaches a lot of skills but good for kicks and giggles. Our chapter wrote this story during our annual retreat. Three days and nights in a rented cabin, lots of food, and tons of creative energy. Total success.
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Anastasia Holland surveyed the rubble of the church, strewn two city blocks by yesterday’s tornado, and wondered how she’d ever find the medallion that would keep her safe.
“Botheration,” she swore aloud.
“Curses on this wretched weather!”
Daunting as the task appeared, she knelt to the ruined floor with her ruined panty hose and started to dig through the rocks looking for the medallion.
Edmund had told her it boasted a center emerald the size of his front tooth, but she was pretty sure he’d exaggerated.
Firstborn children of the Holland Clan were culled by the Patriarchs and the medallion would act as Moses’ lamb blood marks; death would pass her by.
Gulping down water she wiped the dust from her brow and knelt to continued digging, when a pair of shiny brown loafers appeared before her.
“Hurry, some one’s alive in here,” Anastasia called to the others.
Ingrid Dodge watched Anastasia in her feeble attempt to save Edmund, but it was already too last, she’d made sure Edmund Holland would never stand in her way again.
Justice wasn’t Anastasia’s concern right now, it was all about the search, the solution to her nightmare.
Kansas averaged 30 touch downs per year, but this was Idaho and a tornado was the last thing she had expected to have to deal with.
Laughter bubbled–an inappropriate response to her situation, and she fought the urge as she continued her quest.
Moving the last stone aside she saw the medallion clutched in his hand-as the sun hit it it began to glow spreading jade colored light through the ruins.
No one had ever survived who had touched the medallion except for her ancestors, but as she reached for the glowing treasure, she looked into Edmund’s open lifeless eyes, and wondered who would become its next victim.
Only the prophecy of the Medallion and a chosen one would bring the deaths to an end, of the firstborns and the medallion’s curse, but was Ingrid right – was she the one and could she do what was needed to end it all?
Pounding fear slammed through her as she retrieved the medallion, its heat arcing through her body and sending uncontrollable flashes of fire from her eyes that set the nearby bushes aflame.
Quickly closing her eyes, she used her hands to feel out the loop of gold chain and place it around her throat where it laid against her pale skin and pulsed like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
Ribbons of regret twisted through her, afraid to open her eyes she sat in her self-imposed blackness.
Silence intruded and unable to bear the unknown any longer, she opened her eyes to find the flames out and members of the Holland Clan kneeling in a circle around her.
Throne or not, the unadulterated worship in their eyes made her feel like royalty and she didn’t care for it one whit.
Unfortunately she didn’t see Ingrid amongst them and a zing of fear raced up her spine.
Vindictive bitch, Ingrid would stop at nothing to take the medallion but Anastasia swore on her dead cousin’s Edmunds soul, she would never have it.
“Where are you, Ingrid?” Anastasia screamed, and at that moment, saw her nemesis standing beside her with a jagged knife, her eyes alight with a horrible fire.
“Xenophobia has robbed you of your senses and blinded you to your loyalty,” Anastasia didn’t falter as she closed the distance between them.
Yelling the guttural battle cry that had been in her family for generations and evoked the medallions protective powers.
Zigzagging streams of light emerged from the medallion, engulfing Ingrid in red and purple fire, leaving ashes where the woman once stood-the Holland Clan was safe, for the moment.
To Try, Try, and Try Again
Since no one appears to have any grammar questions at the moment, I’m going to talk about one of my pet peeves: the “try and” construction.
Maybe it’s regional to the Northwest, but it’s one of those minor grammar mistakes that makes my teeth grit every time I read it. And I recently reread several books of a favorite author who uses it frequently, so my jaw is just a bit sore at the moment.
Here’s the technical problem with “try and”: “Try” is a verb. In all but the simplest sentences, a verb needs an object. And some verbs need prepositions to connect them to their objects (other verbs don’t need a preposition). “To” is a preposition, but “and” is a conjunction. So the construction “try and” is nonsensical unless followed by something other than the object of the verb “try.”
For example, in “try and fail,” “fail” is another verb, so “and” is properly joining the two verbs with an implied object (in this case, the implied object would be “to succeed,” but the phrase “try to succeed” is patently redundant).
If the whole parts-of-speech thing gives you a headache (and it does that to many people), here’s another way to look at it. “Try” is a synonym for “attempt.” Does the sentence “Attempt and do something” make any sense? Well, neither does the construction “try and do something.”
Ow! There goes the teeth-gritting again.
Until next time, We remain your humble servant,
The Grammar Queen
CBC Author Ask and Tell #1
Welcome to our Author Ask and Tell in which the published authors of Coeur de Bois Romance Writers of America Chapter respond to the questions of inquiring minds! Our first author to “tell all” is Robin Lee Hatcher.
On Shelves Now: Home to Hart’s Crossing and The Perfect Life
Wagered Heart, an historical romance set in 1880’s Montana, just arrived in bookstores. The link on Amazon.com is: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0310259266/novelistrobinlee
Upcoming: Bundle of Joy
1. Describe your latest project.
I am currently writing the first of three books about women with unusual jobs for their time (1915 for the first book). In A VOTE OF CONFIDENCE, Gwen Arlington (a determinedly single young woman) is running for mayor of Bethlehem Springs against the relative newcomer to the area Morgan McKinley, a wealthy businessman who is building a health spa (fed by the hot springs) near the town. Problems and romance ensue.
2. What ONE other author do you think readers should read?
Oh, this is an impossible question. There are too many wonderful novelists who should not be missed.
However, I’ll choose James Scott Bell, not just because he writes wonderful legal suspense novels (Try Dying is my current favorite of Jim’s; it has a film noir feeling which I adore – “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”), but because he also writes some of the best writing books offered by Writers Digest today in their Write Great Fiction line. Plot and Structure has been around since 2004. Jim’s new book, Revision & Self-Editing, came out this year.
3. Please share a passage from a favorite author of yours, and what do you like about it?
Since I already mentioned James Scott Bell’s Try Dying, I’ll share the opening of that novel. It’s an unusual opening, a terrible series of events being described in such a matter of fact way — and then boom, it becomes personal. Each following scene sucked me in deeper and deeper to the mystery behind what actually happened on that freeway.
“On a wet Tuesday morning in December, Ernesto Bonilla, twenty-eight, shot his twenty-three-year-old wife, Alejandra, in the backyard of their West Forty-fifth Street home in South Los Angeles. As Alejandra lay bleeding to death, Ernesto proceeded to drive their Ford Explorer to the westbound Century Freeway connector, where it crossed over the Harbor Freeway, and pulled to a stop on the shoulder.
Bonilla stepped around the back of the SUV, ignoring the rain and the afternoon drivers on their way to LAX and the west side, placed the barrel of his .38 caliber pistol into his mouth, and fired.
His body fell over the shoulder and plunged one hundred feet, hitting the roof of a Toyota Camry heading northbound on the Harbor Freeway. The impact crushed the roof of the Camry. The driver, Jacqueline Dwyer, twenty-seven, an elementary schoolteacher from Reseda, died at the scene.
This would have been simply another dark and strange coincidence, the sort of thing that shows up for a two-minute report on the local news — with live remote from the scene — and maybe gets a follow-up the next day. Eventually the story would go away, fading from the city’s collective memory.
But this story did not go away. Not for me. Because Jacqueline Dwyer was the woman I was going to marry.”
4. Who would you love to invite to dinner (living or not) and why?
Abraham Lincoln, the most written about President of all presidents. I am currently reading (on my fabulous Kindle ebook reader!!) Abraham Lincoln, a Man of Faith and Courage: Stories of our Most Admired President. It is impossible to read about this man without wishing you could know him and ask him about his life and the people he knew and the decisions he made. I admire him on numerous levels.
5. What’s on your playlist right now (music)?
In my office while working, I’m currently listening to violin music by Joshua Bell and Andre Rieu plus Vienna waltzes by the New 101 Strings Orchestra.
In my iPod, I’m currently listening to the audiobook of Philippa Gregory’s The Virgin’s Lover (after having already completed the same author’s books about the wives and lovers of Henry VIII: The Constant Princess; The Other Boleyn Girl; and The Boleyn Inheritance).
In my car stereo, I’m listening to Found by Travis Cottrell (a voice very similar to Josh Groban).
6. Have you had any interesting experiences with one of your readers– via blog, book signing, conference, correspondence?
I have lots of stories that I could tell, but one that was special was hearing from a childhood friend of my oldest daughter about 27 years after she moved away from our neighborhood. She inquired if I was the Robin Hatcher who was mom to Micki, and then told me who she was. She retold a story about a time she stayed overnight with us and the girls got scared (a lightning and thunderstorm, I think) and what I said that had calmed their fears. Of course, that moment hadn’t made as big of an impression on me as it did on a ten-year-old. It was great fun connecting with her, and it never would have happened if she hadn’t seen one of my books (I knew her before I wrote my first book).
7. Is there anything about being a published author that you wish you’d known before you were published?
I wish I’d known that writing actually gets harder, the more books you write. Yes, you learn more all the time, but the expectations get higher and higher. I probably wouldn’t have believed it if someone told me, but I still wish someone had told me. However, when I started writing, there wasn’t email. Writing groups for novelists didn’t exist either, at least not in Boise. Although I joined RWA as soon as I heard about it, that was after my first two books had been sold. So whatever I learned, I learned from how-to books that I checked out of the library or bought at the bookstore.
Robin Lee Hatcher discovered her vocation as a novelist after many years of reading everything she could put her hands on, including the backs of cereal boxes and ketchup bottles. The winner of the Christy Award for Excellence in Christian Fiction (Whispers from Yesterday), the RITA Award for Best Inspirational Romance (Patterns of Love and The Shepherd’s Voice), two RT Career Achievement Awards (Americana Romance and Inspirational Fiction), and the RWA Lifetime Achievement Award, Robin is the author of over 50 novels, including Catching Katie, named one of the Best Books of 2004 by the Library Journal.
Robin enjoys being with her family, spending time in the beautiful Idaho outdoors, reading books that make her cry, and watching romantic movies. She is passionate about the theater, and several nights every summer, she can be found at the outdoor amphitheater of the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, enjoying Shakespeare under the stars. She makes her home outside of Boise, sharing it with Poppet the high-maintenance Papillon.
To learn more about Robin and her work, please visit her web site at www.robinleehatcher.com
Quantization, Less, Fewer, and the Number Six
This one is for free, because this is an error I’ve been seeing far too frequently of late.
In my real life, I’m not just a grammar geek—biting the heads off dangling participles!—I’m also a techno-geek. Relevance, you ask? Actually there is some.
Quantization is the quality of existing as individual packets of something, or existing as a continuous mass. This relates both to quantum mechanics, where light is made of particles called quanta, and to grammar. Yes, grammar. Stop rolling your eyes.
Specifically, it relates to the use of less and fewer. “Less” is used for non-quantized nouns and adjectives, while “fewer” is used for quantized nouns and adjectives. Confusingly, “more” is used for both quantized and non-quantized nouns and adjectives. You’re safe with “more.”
As an example, consider peanut butter. Peanut butter is non-quantized. If you have peanut butter and give some away, you have less peanut butter than you started with. However, if your peanut butter is in jars, it’s different; jar is a quantized noun. You can have “six jars,” but you cannot have “six peanut butter.” “Six peanut butter” is such blatantly bad grammar that even Microsoft Word can pick it out as such.
Some nouns, such as “mess,” are non-quantized until they are made plural. It would be correct to write “less mess” or to write “fewer messes,” but “fewer mess” makes no more sense than “fewer messy.” Messy, of course, being a non-quantized adjective.
How can one tell the difference between a quantized noun and a non-quantized noun? Assign a number to it, as in “six peanut butter,” which we have established doesn’t work. “Six blue” likewise shows that the noun is non-quantized. However, “six mistakes” clearly shows that the construction “less mistakes” is grammatically incorrect.
I’ll stop now, before brains begin to throb. Thank you for your kind attention.
—Valerie
Grammar Queen?
What’s that? You’ve noticed that it’s been two weeks and no Grammar Queen? That means you’ve visited the site and haven’t left a comment or question for our Grammar Queen to answer. It’s your fault. At least that sound good to me. Way better than that life got in the way and I haven’t had a chance to post anything. Anyone have some brie for my whine?
So the first and best tip the infamous Grammar Queen gave me on grammar was this: Valerie said get a copy of Strunk and White. The Elements of Style is the powerful, little book on grammar.
Whole cow and Holy Cow, a great book.
So, send in a comment with a challenging grammar question.
Grammar Queen – Further or Farther
Dear Grammar Queen:
How about further and farther???
Thanks for the help,
Annalise Russell ~*~Romance Through The Centuries~*~
Blog: www.annaliserussell.wordpress.com
THE PLEASURE OF HIS BED, September ‘08 Kensington
Annalise,
Farther is used for literal distance, as in, “farther down the road,” while further is used for figurative distance, as in, “further back in time.”
Here’s a quick way to remember which is which: if it has an “a” in it, it’s for Actual distance. Hokey, but it helps me. 
–Valerie aka GQ
How American Idol Inspires me
A couple of years ago, the morning after Taylor Hicks won American Idol, someone in an email posed the question: “…wondering if … it is possible for me to care any less about who the new (or used, or future) American Idol is, or where it can be explained why this announcement was on every TV news show…”
There followed a lively discussion.
For many novelists (including me), the answer is easy. Human drama. Having a dream and pursuing it for all your worth. Taking it on the chin and getting up again; even more, taking it on the chin and smiling into the camera. Watching American Idol is a wonderful character study.
And as a writer, how can I not appreciate the guts and the bravery, what it takes to offer up the talent one is given and wait for others to take potshots at it? Publishing isn’t for wimps. When my books are released, they are fair game. Yes, I’ve won awards and received heartwarming letters and emails from readers who have loved the stories I’ve told. But I’ve also been trampled on by professional reviewers and readers and writers. I’ve held up my “baby” and had people call it “ugly.”
I’ve got to tell you, knowing what it feels like to have my baby called ugly was in the forefront of my mind when I commented on the AI performances in my blog (http://robinlee.typepad.com). I’ve tried to always avoid dissing someone, especially if I knew it was a matter of taste. I’m a believer in “truth and grace.” I think we can speak honestly without being cruel. (Simon, take note.)
Anyway I’ve watched these kids (from where I stand, they are kids!) on American Idol for the past four years and admired them for their courage and hurt with them when they blew it and rooted for them when they did well. I’ve loved watching them grow more polished over the course of the competition, and I’ve also admired those who have remained true to who they are.
And for a moment, let’s forget those singers who make it to the final 12. There is nothing more painful, funny, and occasionally inspiring than those first weeks of tryouts. One friend said, “How many times over the years of following this show have I heard a really bad singer say, ‘But Simon’s wrong!! People have always told me I could sing!!’ Well, honey, people lied. And they didn’t love you enough to tell you the truth…”
So true!!! Talk about grist for a writer’s mind.
Robin Lee Hatcher
http://www.robinleehatcher.com
The Impotence of Proofreading by Taylor Mali
A very funny video about proofreading.
Grammar Queen – Lie versus Lay
This week’s question is from multi-published author and chapter mate Charlene Teglia:
Valerie rules! Now can you explain lay/lying/lie/laid because I once saw a beautiful, brief, clear explanation and now cannot find the bloody thing. And I am forever getting this one wrong.
Charli
www.charleneteglia.com
Well, lie and lying are actions you perform with your own body. Lay and laid are actions you perform on other objects. For example, hens lay eggs, but you lie down for a nap.
Is that the sort of thing you had in mind?
Valerie aka Grammar Queen
Yes! Exactly! Thank you.
So if a cat is lying across my keyboard, that’s correct? Because it’s performed with its own body. I mean, I didn’t lay the cat there.
Charlie
Grammar Queen – compound adjectives
As promised are resident Grammar Queen will answer and post grammar tips once a week. To get us started I asked her:
Dear Valerie Robertson, i.e. Grammar Queen,
Okay, I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the use of hypthens.
The truck’s driver sat, knuckle white and red faced in the blue truck like a patriotic statue.
Is red faced really redfaced or red-faced? How about knuckle-white? Or am I over thinking this?
Amberly,
I think what you’re having difficulty with is compound adjectives. When two or more words modify a noun as a group (but not individually), then they need to be hyphenated. For example, “white-knuckled and red-faced furious,” where white-knuckled and red-faced both modify furious. Or you could go whole hog and write it as, “white-knuckled-and-red-faced furious.”
Of course, this _is_ English, so there are exceptions: If one of the modifiers is an adverb (the -ly endings are a dead giveaway), the compound adjective doesn’t need to be hyphenated.
There’s also a really obscure case that mostly applies to software manuals, but if one component of the compound adjective is itself a made up of more than one word, the multiword phrase isn’t hyphenated internally (these are usually command strings or program proper names). It just doesn’t come up much in fiction, but it’s in the Chicago Manual of Style.
The first example I could think of was “DDR SDRAM” which is a particular type of computer memory chip. So if you’re discussing a DDR SDRAM chip or a DDR SDRAM module (the actual thing you put in a computer to upgrade the memory), DDR SDRAM isn’t hyphenated, although it modifies the noun chip or module as a phrase.
The other time you would want to hyphenate a word is when you need to make a pronunciation differentiation: co-op vs. coop, or un-ionized vs unionized.
In your example, the word ‘white’ modifies ‘knuckled,’ so you don’t need a hyphen, and the word ‘red’ modifies ‘faced,’ also not needing a hyphen. To require hyphens, you need another word in there that both phrases modify/describe without the individual words in the phrases describing it.
Clear as mud?
Val,
Who could talk about this stuff all day long, because she’s just that sick and twisted…
Good thing Valerie is twisted. Post your grammar questions in the comments or send them to infocbc@yahoo.com attn: Grammar Queen and we’ll post the answers here.
