20 Thursday Dec 2018
Posted in Glynda's Writings, Poetry
Tags
The earth lays aslumber as
Mother Nature pulls her white coverlet
Across the browning fields.
Though nearer now, to Sun’s burning
Than in those blooming days
The globe averts her visage now,
Shying for the Dreamtime,
A time of garnering warmth and
Exhilarating in the chill.
A standing still time.
A time for recollecting
And of foretelling.
The time of offering friendship and
Of Wishing well.
-Glynda Shaw
01 Saturday Oct 2016
Posted in History, Writing Opinion
Originally posted on on November 5, 2014 at 11:50 PM
I’m currently reading the second volume of a biography Robert A. Heinlein in Dialogue with his Century by William Patterson.
It’s interesting how hard he had to fight to keep any semblance of works he originally conceived and most of his juvenile novels were evidently changed a good deal due to editorial intervention. Though always patriotic and essentially pro-military, Heinlein actually saw himself as a traditional liberal until the mid 1950s or so when he began to feel the U.S. government was drifting away from liberal values and going increasingly to the left and even enabling communism. At that point he resigned from the Democratic Party and voted for candidates whom he considered less odeous than others which is essentially what I do.
Also though he participated in some meetings and correspondence around the formation of the John Birch Society, he requested his name be struck from the membership roll quite early on because he considered the organization to be misguided and it’s leadership to be unacceptably controlling. One of many valuable takeaways for me from the book was the notion that traditional American Liberalism is really quite a bit different for what passes as liberalism today.
Most of us I think, believe more or less in womens’ rights, that people shouldn’t be enslaved, that there should be help for persons less fortunate and a lot of other essentially altruistic notionsbut there are so many radical agendas today masquerading as liberal that I’ve always been suspicious of the L-word.
Right now I’m to about 1959 in the biography and he’s written most of his juveniles by this time. One of his last, Have Space Suit Will Travel, was the first RAH book I ever red and in some ways, one of my favorites, mostly because of the discussion of space suit operation which I’ve used with other sources to design life support gear for my own stories and practical designs.
28 Wednesday Sep 2016
Posted in Holidays
Tags
Originally posted on January 3, 2013 at 12:20 PM
For those with chickens you probably know that egg production goes way down in the winter months at least for those of us who have more or less aux naturalle coops. I’d known that light played a role in the disposition of hens to be active and possibly produce but I didn’t know quite how significant that role might be.
I’d rigged a power line from the house to the coop, a distance of about 75 feet, with intentions of providing a heater if temperatures dropped too low but the weather has been reasonably mild most of this season. Our six hens were behaving very sluggish and egg production was down to about .666667 per day with one valliant hen following through with the goods. Last Saturday I bought a high intensity reading lamp with one of those newfangled bulbs which draw only 20 watts of power. I hung the lamp from a coop rafter with a piece of wire and we plugged the power line into one of those nifty light switch sockets that let’s you turn things on and off without bending and unplugging. We’ve been turning on the chicken light in the morning sometime before 8:00 and letting it burn till about 8:00 PM. Immediate results; Chickens are active, seem happier. Egg production is up to more like 1.75 a day (Those fractional eggs are a bit messy but we’re hoping for an even number any day now!) I’ll keep you posted on the recovery rate of egg production and mental health of hens.
Glynda
12 Monday Sep 2016
Posted in Writing Opinion
Originally posted on November 15, 2012 at 12:45 AM
Just like our taste in food our taste in reading material is apt to change over the decades and I at least, find myself reading stuff which I’d not have approached as a teenager or in my twenties. I grew up an avid science fiction reader but now spend a great deal of my recreational reading time with medical and detective fiction and if they’re combined so much the better. Currently my favorite authors appear to be Patricia Cornwell, Greg Iles, Tess Gerritsen, John Sandford, Jodi Piccoult, James Lee Burke, Karin Slaughter, Archer Mayor and pretty much anyone else male or female who write in a similar fashion to some of all of the above. I never started out to be interested in detective fiction nor did I ever particularly want to be a Dr. Why then has my reading focus shifted from spaceships and exo-sociology to crime labs and autopsy rooms?
A couple of reasons I suppose. For one thing pretty much all of the authors I’ve mentioned tend to set their novels in specific areas of the country and in most cases they are areas I like or in which I’m interested. Jodi the News Hampshire area, John Minnesota, James Lee Louisiana, Archer Vermont etc. etc. But the big draw I think is the adrenaline rush of reading about folks in extreme danger and how they overcome it, are rescued from it or how their own unfortunate demise contributes eventually to someone else’s rescue.
Much (very much) of the suspense literature I read is disproportionately devoted to the misfortune of women; women being killed, stabbed, strangled, bludgeoned and so on, women being raped or subjected to sexual slavery, women being imprisoned for long periods of time, sometimes perpetually in cellars, attics, boxes, holes in the ground, women being tortured and mutilated in the most unspeakable ways. I must confess I don’t like this much in myself, my propensity to read this stuff. Of course I’m always cheering for the investigators, forensic scientists, cops on the beat and of course the victim herself but do I really need to spend so much time among entrails and torture chambers?
I think a problem we face as writers and readers is we appear to be losing our ability to build suspense without murder or sexual mayhem. Another way to say that is inflicted misfortune is an easy base on which to build a scary book. I don’t believe that I’d be able to write the sort of sadistic murder stuff I frequently read even if I want to. I think the reason I tend to write a lot about gender issues and various trans varieties in particular is because I can build tension through risking my protagonist’s discovery or dealing with the consequences of flouting perceived social norms.
Obviously not everyone wants to read books on gender issues but aren’t there some other ways to build suspense without cutting up people? Ghosts are a faithful standby and needn’t always be deadly but haven’t most of the changes on ghostly appearances been wrong? The feeling of being pursued can certainly excite the nape Follicles and chill the spine. Journeys of extreme difficulty or explorations through strange or weird environments can likewise excite. In what other ways may we employ our Drs Isles and Linton and Scarpetta? How use our Lucas Davenports, Greg Flowers’s or Dave Robicheaus?
What other things can scare, excite, grip us to the point that the book sticks to the hand till the back cover is reached? What do you think? Am I alone out here and is there a problem? Are there alternatives you’d choose if only they were available? Let me know.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Glynda
09 Friday Sep 2016
Posted in Glynda's Writings, Novels
Originally posted on October 14, 2012 at 11:55 PM
Secret Summers is now available through the FastPencil marketplace, Barnes and Noble, and a whole slew of other marketplaces.
It’s available in eBook format as well as hard copy.
Book description:
“Ninian thinks of himself as an average 11 year old boy with normal interests. According to his Grandfather, he was named for the patron saint of Scotland. Summer vacation is here and he looks forward to the easy days of backyard, books and just hanging out. But he is invited to visit his estranged aunt Claire who lives in an old, cliff-side house on the Oregon coast! Almost as soon as he arrives, he begins encountering events both mystical and mysterious; me meets a new friend, discovers a magical lighthouse that changes things that it touches, and explores the world of Faerie, as well as his identity as his own twin sister!”
eBook on FastPencil
Paperback on Lulu.com
Updated cover for the Lulu Edition
