Open Book - P.J. MacLayne

How Soon is Too Soon? #OpenBook Blog Hop

By P.J. MacLayne May 10, 2020 May 10, 2020 Open Book

May 11, 2020

How soon is too soon to include a real-life event in a fictional story?

Let’s start with the most current event. You know the one I mean. I subscribe to a lot of book newsletters, and I cringed the first time I saw an ad for a self-help book with a quarantine related title. I think it was two or three weeks after most people in the US were asked to shelter at home. My first thought was – how does anyone pull together a meaningful book in that amount of time? And my second thought was – nothing like taking advantage of people in a time of crisis. Yes, I thought that was far too soon.

In the past week, I’ve started to see fiction books with titles like “Quarantine” and “Pandemic.” First, I despise the titles as being unoriginal. They certainly wouldn’t attract me to buy the book. Second, I wonder how well the book has been edited. Yes, I am aware that there are people out there that can write a book in less than thirty days, but I’m not among them.

What do I consider a reasonable time lapse to include a real-life event in a fiction book? It’s going to depend upon the event. For the tragedy of 9-11, it would have been at least a year if not more. For the space shuttle explosion, six months would have been a long enough of a wait. For the current virus? I can’t imagine turning it into fiction for entertainment while up to 2500 people a day are dying from Covid in the US, let alone the figures world-wide.

Now the first moon landing? Shoot, go ahead and use that before the dust had even settled. A presidential election? Have at it. The capture of a criminal? I’ll give you a soft maybe, depending upon the crime. The murder hornet? Better get that book written before they become a real problem.

It comes down to how many people have been hurt by the event and how deeply. I can’t imagine trying to profit from an event when people are still suffering. (Unless every cent of that money goes to organizations working to help the affected.)

My caveat to this discussion is that the author has to be mindful of their use of the event. Either disguise it appropriately, or make your use historically accurate. I don’t want to read about the first landing on the moon with fictional names.

So, that’s how I feel about it. Me, I avoid real world events with a passion. I don’t want to get them wrong.

I’d love to hear about how you feel. Share your thoughts in the comments. In the meantime, I’m going to head over and see what the other authors in this hop have to say.

May 11, 2020

How soon is too soon to include a real-life event in a fictional story?

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

Holidays We Need

By P.J. MacLayne May 3, 2020 May 3, 2020 Open Book

May 4, 2020

May 4th is the unofficial Star Wars Day. (May the Fourth be with you.) What other days should be recognized as holidays but aren’t?

Sadly, there are a number of holidays in the U.S.A. that have been basically forgotten or turned into nothing but a big commercial. President’s Day is a good example. Does anybody beyond banks and government agencies celebrate it? Without looking, I couldn’t even tell you the date it was originally celebrated.

People have lost track of the difference between Labor Day in May and Memorial Day in September. All they know is one marks the unofficial beginning of summer and the other the end.

Growing up, the first day of deer hunting season was practically a holiday. Unofficial, but lots of people took the day off and even the schools let kids out for the day. I don’t think as many people hunt anymore, so I suspect that has changed.

Another area I lived in had an excellent high school basketball team. Somehow, Spring Break normally was scheduled for when the state level basketball tournaments were held. Then one year the schedule was changed and people got really upset. When the team had a bad year, the furor died down.

(Political Rant ON) If I was going to create a holiday, it would be Election Day in November. Too many people find it difficult to go vote because of their work schedules. Either that, or make voting by mail the standard. It’s ridiculous that people have to stand in line for three or four hours to vote in some places. (Political Rant OFF)

I’d like to see Earth Day turned into an official holiday. I participated in the first Earth Day back in 1970 and it helped to make me aware of the challenges the environment faces. Combine it with May Day and let’s have some fun while doing good things.

And I really want a play day holiday. Did your school do that, just have a day to play games and have fun? Wouldn’t it be great if we could do that worldwide? We’d all get to ride bikes with bells and toss inflatable balls or whatever else makes us happy. Heck, we could call it Fun Day!

Is there a holiday you think we should add to our calendars? Tell us about it in the comments. And don’t forget to check what the other authors on this hop think we should add.

In the meantime, stay safe and hope to see you next week.

May 4, 2020

May 4th is the unofficial Star Wars Day. (May the Fourth be with you.) What other days should be recognized as holidays but aren’t?

Pet Peeves #OpenBook Blog Hop

By P.J. MacLayne April 26, 2020 April 26, 2020 Open Book

April 27, 2020

What are your pet peeves when it comes to grammar and spelling?

I’m sure the list will be ones you’ve all heard over and over before, but I’ll give this a shot.

Too! Many! Exclamation! Points! Now, I’m not against the use of
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
exclamation points in general, but I think they need to be used sparingly. It’s like sending an email in all caps—it’s yelling. Look at me! I’m important! If you, as an author, have to use an exclamation point to show how important the sentence you wrote is, you need to rewrite the sentence. There are exceptions, of course, because they help to show what a character is feeling. But, please, please, don’t overuse the exclamation point!
Apostrophes. Apostrophes can be hard. Is it it’s or its? And how about the possessive of a noun that ends in s? If you have more than one dog, and they each have a bone, is it the dogs’ bones or the dogs’s bones? Now throw in someone whose name end in ‘s’. Let’s say someone’s last names is Cookes. Is the car belonging to Mr. Cookes, Cookes’ car or Cookes’s car?
Here’s a fun one. One or two spaces after a sentence? Old style sheets will tell you two, newer versions will say one. The truth is, back in the days when documents were typewritten, two spaces made for a cleaner look. Nowadays, that’s not true. Microsoft, in all its wisdom, has decided to flag two spaces as errors. (But it’s an option that can be turned off.)
There, they’re, and their. It strikes me as silly that the English language has three words that sound the same but have different meanings. Especially when all the words are used frequently. Homonyms are bad enough with two words that sound alike, but three word homonyms are totally unnecessary. It’s a wonder that auto-correct ever gets them right.
How about the word I am most likely to misspell. Awkward, isn’t it? No, that’s the word. Awkward. I always want to put a c in the first syllable. I know it doesn’t belong there, but darn, if my fingers don’t reach for that key every time I type the word awkward.

There’s my five. What did I miss? Tell me your pet peeves in the comments.

And stay safe, y’all.

April 27, 2020

What are your pet peeves when it comes to grammar and spelling?

Making Fiction Out of Real Life #OpenBook Blog Hop

By P.J. MacLayne April 19, 2020 April 19, 2020 Open Book

April 20, 2020

Talk about the setting of your book. Is it entirely imaginary or is it based on a real-life place?

As I say in my bio, I grew up among the rolling hills of Western Pennsylvania. I know that people refer to them as mountains, but after spending years in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, what you find on the East Coast are just big hills to me.

But I love the landscape. Growing up, I spent many hours exploring the woods and meadows, and dreaming up stories. I knew where the huckleberries grew and when they were ripe for picking. I knew where large patches of endangered ground pine hid in the shadow of the nearby hardwood forest. I stared down a whitetail buck from across the patch of grass where an old farmhouse used to stand. I watched pheasants flash by when I flushed them from their nests in the meadows and listed to wild turkeys call their mates. I tracked a field mouse searching for seed among the dry winter grass. From my third-floor room on hot summer nights, I fell asleep to the song of the whippoorwill.

Naturally, when I started writing, I drew upon what I knew best for my settings. Both my Free Wolves series and my Harmony Duprie stories lean heavily on that area. But I fictionalize the details.

For my wolves, I work on the theory that they don’t want people to know exactly where they are. Between the two main packs in the stories, their territories cover parts of two states and may occasionally bleed over into a third. (New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio) I try to not be accurate when creating their pack lands to honor their need for secrecy.

When I write my mystery stories, I deliberately don’t reveal which state Harmony lives in. It gives me the ability to play with laws and police duties, which can vary from state to state. What the sheriff’s department in a Pennsylvania county does differs from their counterparts in Ohio. And laws dealing with things like gun ownership and speed limits may not be the same. By not saying exactly where Oak Grove is, I can use whichever legal system makes the most sense for the plot.

That doesn’t mean I make everything up. I spent several hours studying road maps for one chase scene that took place north of Pittsburgh. I wanted the road numbers, intersections, and exists to reflect reality. I often search out average drive times between cities to create an accurate timeline.

It’s been a lot of fun ‘building’ Oak Grove, naming its streets and populating it with a variety of people. Some of those eccentric characters may or may not be based on people I’ve known in real life. And some may be tributes to people I’ve loved. It’s been a challenge to give the town the happiness it deserves, and still include the challenges that small towns all over America face.

Anyway, I hope the love I have for that part of the country comes through in my books. But before I take off to see what the other authors are sharing, I’m going to say it again.

Be safe, everyone.

April 20, 2020

Talk about the setting of your book. Is it entirely imaginary or is it based on a real-life place?

Best Blogging Tools #OpenBook Blog Hop

By P.J. MacLayne April 12, 2020 April 13, 2020 Open Book

April 13, 2020

What are the best tools you use on your blog? (widgets, templates, etc.)

I’m no expert when it comes to the subject of blogs. I’ve been running this version of my blog for a little over a year now, and I’m still figuring out how to do things. But I’ll share what little I know.

First, the basics. I left the Blogger platform when they dropped the google component that had gained me most of my followers. I debated what to use as my base platform and decided to go with WordPress. I looked at several others, but my choice was made by the sheer amount of free support out there from other WordPress users. I’m not doing anything fancy, and every time I’ve run into a problem, I’ve found a YouTube video to help me out.

Image by William Iven from Pixabay

Next up was choosing a theme. I’m using Parabola, but that certainly isn’t the first one I played with. I don’t remember how many I tried before another author suggested this one. It gives me the flexibility level that’s just right for my basic skill set.

Let’s dig deeper into widgets and plugins. I use the built-in Gallery widget in many places. It has its limitations, but my graphic artist and I have been able to work around them.

I use MailChimp for my newsletter, so the MailChimp widget was a no-brainer. Except for setting it up. I had help with that.

I also use the basic Add to Any for sharing. That’s the widget that gives you the pretty buttons to tweet my posts or share on other websites. I hope you’ll make liberal use of them.

My best non-standard widget is Code Embed. It’s the one that allows me to turn Java Code into clickable fields. That’s what I use to take the code for our blog hop and make it user friendly. (That’s why you can click on the pictures from everyone else’s blog and get taken directly to their post.) It took me a few weeks to learn to use it correctly, but there are helpful videos on YouTube on how to make it work.

I want to find a plugin that allows for basic slideshows. (I had one bookmarked to check out, but it’s no longer being supported.) Does anyone use one and is willing to share the information? Share in the comments, please!

Before I go check out what tools the other authors are using, I’m going to say it. Be safe. I want you to be able to come back next week. Thanks for taking the time to drop by!

April 13, 2020

What are the best tools you use on your blog? (widgets, templates, etc.)

Growing Up #OpenBook Blog Hop

By P.J. MacLayne April 5, 2020 April 5, 2020 Open Book

April 6, 2020

What did you want to be when you grew up vs. what you are today?

Once upon a time, I posed that question to Harmony, the main character in my mystery series. Well, Jake, the anti-hero, asked.

“You know, when I was a little kid, I wanted to be a cop when I grew up.” He glared at me. “Don’t laugh.”

I swallowed my chuckle with a sip of coffee. “What happened?”

He grimaced. “Life, I guess. I still think I would have been a good one.”

It was surreal, having a conversation with a renowned jewel thief about being a police officer. “Sometimes dreams just don’t work out,” I said, thinking about Janine and the library job.

“What dream hasn’t worked out for you?”

I picked up a section of the newspaper so he couldn’t see my eyes. “It’s not important. I’ve got a good life and good friends and that’s what matters.”

“Let me guess, you wanted to be an astronaut but your eyesight’s not good enough.”

“Worse. I wanted to be a cowboy. Not a cowgirl, mind you, but a cowboy.”

Jake snorted into his cup, spraying coffee everywhere. He snatched a handful of napkins from the holder and blotted the liquid from the newspaper. “Yeah, I can see where that might be a little hard to accomplish.” He eyed me. “You don’t have the right parts. But I must say, I like the parts you have.”

I crumpled up an insert from the paper and hurled it at him. I needed to find a way to keep him busy and out of my hair, and soon.

Now, I never wanted to be a cowboy. Daniel Boone, maybe. Or a hermit. There was a time I wanted to be a singer-songwriter, but only knew the basics about music. Or maybe a writer. Then I decided to be a librarian.

Those of you who have followed this blog for awhile may remember I actually got to be one. Part-time, in a small library in a small town. But it was everything I wanted. I got to be surrounded by books, I got to do story hour for kids, I got to help pick out new books to the collection. Best of all, I got to read when there was nothing else to do!

Life happened, and I had to leave that small town and small library. Eventually, I was introduced to computers and fell in love. (I won’t talk about the many jobs in between.) Yes, I’m old. No one had a personal computer when I was a kid.. And now I’m a Windows server administrator. A job that didn’t exist when I was growing up. (And one that certainly wouldn’t have been suggested to a teenage girl.)

The best part is, I’m a writer too! Which may seem like an odd combination. One is mathematical and the other creative. In the whole right side of the vs the left side of the brain theory, I’m using both equally, but not at the same time. And loving it.

I tell people I didn’t decide what I wanted to be when I grew up until I was over 40, and it’s the truth. Better late than never!

To find out what the other folks on this hop wanted to be when they grew up, follow the links below.

Be safe, everyone!

April 6, 2020

What did you want to be when you grew up vs. what you are today?

Killing Off A Character #OpenBook Blog Hop

By P.J. MacLayne March 29, 2020 March 29, 2020 Open Book

March 30, 2020

How do you feel about killing off one of your major characters?

If you’ve read my Free Wolves stories, you know I’ve killed off quite a few characters. Minor ones, mostly, but I’ve thrown in a major one here or there. Villains are easy to kill off in those books because it’s true to a wolf-shifter heritage. Staying ‘civilized’ is more of a challenge. And I’ve seriously injured my main characters, but they’ve pulled through.

In my Harmony Duprie Mysteries, I’ve set about writing stories that don’t necessarily include anyone dying. Yes, I’ve had a murder or two, but they were off-camera. The stories are relatively light-hearted, and don’t contain a lot of gore. We’ll get back to them later.

In the first book I wrote (the one that went through about four revisions before I decided the plot was flawed and it would never be published) I actually killed my main character in one version. It made sense for the story, but I knew that readers would hate me for it. So, I switched up the story and gave it a happy ending.

But I cried hard as I wrote my heroine’s death. And cried harder when I wrote her funeral. And cried more when the hero (her lover) scattered her ashes to mingle with those of her late husband. In the revised version, they got to stay together as they aged, a no-tears, happily ever after ending. It was a good ending, but I thought the original was better. (Can’t say I liked it, but it was better.)

Now, let’s go back to Harmony. I’m currently editing the fifth book in the Harmony Duprie Mysteries, (The Samurai’s Inro) and I’m worried about her stories getting ‘stale.’ I love the character but she needed a shake-up. And the only thing I could come up with was killing of a major character- Eli, her lover. And I wasn’t happy about it.

Harmony and I have been known to have arguments about the plot of her stories, but oddly, she wasn’t talking to me about this idea. I didn’t know if she agreed with it or if she was mad at me for even suggesting it!

Well, as Harmony is wont to do, she let me know how this was going to go down in a dream. (Hey, I won’t reveal her decision now…that’s another book.) I’ve had several dreams about this book, leading me to places in the story I didn’t know it needed to go. I’m somewhere near 15000 words in a book that I haven’t officially started writing yet!

Let’s just say I’m okay with killing off a main character if it’s true to the character and to the story. It can be a fine line between that and not alienating the readers. If it’s well-written, true to the plot, and not done for the shock value, a good writer can make it work.

That’s how I see it. And if you follow the links below, you can find out what the other authors think.

Off topic: I hope everyone out there is doing okay. Things will get better. It’ll take some time, so hang in there.

March 30, 2020

How do you feel about killing off one of your major characters?

Favorite Reads #OpenBook Blog Hop

By P.J. MacLayne March 22, 2020 March 22, 2020 Open Book

March 23, 2020

Ask your readers to share their favorite books.

This post is for you! Share your favorite books and tell us a bit about them.

Here’s one to get the ball rolling from Chelle de Notte on Twitter:

Tell the Wolves I’m Home is my favorite book. And a greater story…it paints a very clear picture of being set in a certain place and time, yet the emotions are timeless.

And one from me:

First off, it’s ridiculous to ask for one favorite book. So, I’ll bend the rules and go with the Harper Hall Trilogy from Anne McCaffrey. The story of Menolly, her struggles and her ultimate triumph, found a place in my heart the first time I read the books.

Now, it’s your turn. Share the books that have touched you, entertained, you, or taught you in the comments below. And if someone else has already mentioned your book, I don’t care, add it to the list again! I’ve already broken the rules, so you can too!

March 23, 2020

Ask your readers to share their favorite books.

Organizing My Stories #OpenBook Blog Hop

By P.J. MacLayne March 1, 2020 March 1, 2020 Open Book

March 2, 2020

Share how you keep your characters, storylines, etc., organized. Do you use an outline? Notecards? Post-its all over your walls?

As many of you know, I’m what is called a pantser. I don’t plot out my entire story ahead of time. I usually know the beginning and the end, but the middle is a mystery until I get there.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have to keep track of my timeline. My current work-in-progress, The Samurai’s Inro, runs over four weeks. There were times, as I wrote, that I lost track of what day of the week it was. Harmony is a creature of habit and follows a schedule, so I had to know if it was her day for the self-defense class or to clean her refrigerator. I ended up having to go back and “walk” thru the days, to make sure I didn’t send her to work at the library on a Sunday. I ended up with three different pieces of scrap paper scattered on my desk to track her calendar. Then, because I lost track of one of the papers, I had to go back and start all over.

By the way, I love to throw Harmony off her schedule.It’s loads of fun figuring out how she would react.

And you’re right, it’s not an efficient system, if you want to call it a system at all. But it works. Well, most of the time.

What’s more difficult is tracking a series over the course of several books. I’ve started a “book bible” for the Harmony series, but haven’t kept up with it as good as I should have. What color is Freddie’s hair? How about Sarah’s? I frequently have to go back to earlier books to get the details, and when I do, I add them the the file. (In fact, let’s play a little game. The first person to tell me what Janine’s last name is (she’s the chief librarian, remember?) will win a free ebook copy of the Samurai’s Inro when it is released. That’s a couple of months off. Leave your answer in the comments)

The Free Wolves series was a whole different creature when it came to tracking the stories. Because each book is a stand-alone story, with only the slightest of overlaps in the characters, I didn’t have to work as hard to keep things straight. They also weren’t quite so linear- I didn’t cover every single day- so I had more latitude in how each story flowed.

I’m currently working on the next-next Harmony book, and I’m 3 or 4 chapters in and still on day 1. (I’ve written everything by hand so far, and have’t the foggiest idea what the word count is.) I need to start keeping track now so I don’t end up in the same situation I was in with Inro. Will I? Somehow, I doubt it!

And that’s how I do it- track my stories, that is. I’m pretty sure we have some plotters on this hop, and I’m going to go check them out and see if they can inspire me to join their ranks.

Happy reading!

Share how you keep your characters, storylines, etc., organized. Do you use an outline? Notecards? Post-its all over your walls?

Unethical Practices #OpenBook Blog Hop

By P.J. MacLayne February 23, 2020 February 23, 2020 Open Book

February 24, 2020

What is the most unethical practice in the publishing industry?

The sad truth that this is even a topic for discussion tells you much of what you need to know about my decision to go indie at the start of my fiction writing career. It was not the only reason, but it played a part.

The biggest problem I see is the poor payment most authors receive. I’ve never signed a publishing contract, but I’ve heard about the minimal amounts signed authors get after paying off their advances. A quick search revealed that most authors get in the area of $1.25 per book that sells for over $20. And that’s after they’ve paid off their advance.

But the authors who work with the big companies know what they signed up for. So it’s not exactly unethical. What is shady is companies will use “interesting” accounting practices to count the number of books an author sells. And authors have no way to verify the figures provided by their publishers are correct.

All of that is bad, but not what I consider the worst. What I consider the

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

most unethical is how hard it is to authors with traditional publishers to get the rights back to their books. Publishers will only promote a new book for a short period of time (if at all) , but contracts give them rights to the book for several years. Even then, if the author is self-promoting their books and sells copies through the publisher, it extends the life of the contract. (And the number I was quoting by an author in this situation was low. Really low.) Meaning an author who works hard and makes their own success may never get the rights back to their stories.

I’m sure there are (unfortunately) other examples and that’s why I’m heading over to see what the other authors (with more experience in the topic) on this loop have to say. I’m sure it will reinforce my decision to be an indie author!

February 24, 2020

What is the most unethical practice in the publishing industry?

Category: Open Book