Crappy Character Calling Cards

Since I didn’t join the April Blog A to Z Challenge until yesterday, I missed the A & B, but fret none as I will make them up on one of these here weekends. So give me a “C”.

Naming your character is just as important as the title in my opinion. A great title will make you pick up the book and flip it over to see if you want to buy it. But the wrong character name will have me snapping it shut before I get through Chapter 1.

The name speaks to the character’s attributes. For example, Igor…what do you see?

A bug eating freak, humpbacked, lice infested, and stained white lab coat, right? Or some such, but no Igor is actually a 15 year-old, 6’2’’, and solid wall of muscle linebacker. Sure. With a name like Igor he’s gonna need those rock hard abs. While the author may be seeing it as a cutesy statement, the reader is already lost in bug eating conjurings and completely turned off by the character.

Likewise is the overuse of popular names. Brandy for instance… Brunette, curvy, hazel eyes, ex-cheerleader type and go ahead, think it...slut.

While a secondary character may be fine named after the alcohol she was conceived on, do you really want that for your main character? If that’s her personality be bold, but not many readers are going to find it plausible for Brandy to save the world, unless it’s erotica.

Sexually ambiguous names can be just as annoying for your reader.
Okay, maybe not, but they annoy the “C”rap out of me.

Tangled in My Own Web

I made this amazing schedule to get my writing career going in a forward direction instead floundering in the quagmire. Well that sucked! Even without the laptop keyboard glitch, I haven’t succeeded at following it one single day. These are the reasons why:

1. Querying a mere three agents, not the ten I so loftily amused myself with, per day takes me upwards of four hours. I troll QueryTracker.net selected picks for me and then research the agent. Hoping my letter will not look completely random, I Google said agent and read at least one of their interviews and quote some little ditty they’ve espoused.

2. I hadn’t scheduled time for bathing or Chardonnay, but I’m proud to report those items have not missed a day. I cocooned my laptop in Saran Wrap and have been practicing with washing and guzzling while typing. Not vastly successful yet, but I have high hopes. Sadly for the monumental span of my derriere, exercise has been moved down on a notch on my ‘to do’ list.

3. I swore that I would write on one of the two WIP’s and rotate them regularly, but that has been revised to writing like mad on one and ignoring the shouting voice of my MC in the other.

4. I committed to editing my badly needed rewrite on my NaNoWriMo. Wisely, I moved it to the end of my document’s list so I need not feel any guilt by accidentally scrolling past that sad file.

5. No more time suckage allowed by FaceBook or Twitter? No comment.

6. And as for that blogging, reading blogs, and commenting on such… I’m working on it.

So for those of you who have this whole shebang under control, how do you do it? And how do you deal with the guilt when you flop miserably?


On a completely sane level, would anyone like to post their query letter and let random strangers poke fun, er, I mean critique it?
Leave me a comment if you want to be my guinnea pig.

Schedule Wisely or Get a Job

The above are the sage and heartless words of my dearest..

Several of the NYT Best Selling Authors churn out multiple novels in a year, which in itself with the required hours of editing and rewriting is monumental. Add in Twitter, FaceBook, a myriad of other social networking sites and a blog and the task seems unattainable. How do they do it? Where do they find the time?

I’ve spent 3 years beating my head against the wall, not literally (I hate pain), and I feel no closer to being published than the day I scaled down my real estate brokerage in order to do this. I’ve come to an impasse. (My husband is losing patience with my lowered income, but I’m fine with not working 80 hours a week.) It’s time to get serious, to get organized, or admit defeat and go back to work fulltime.

I have three finished novels and two under way. I write, I edit, I rewrite, I edit, but I really suck at querying. I have queries for each of the aforementioned novels but sending them out? Ewww! I’m breaking out in hives just thinking about it. I do the research, I find my dream agents, but… just...ewww.

Enough! I will, starting today.

Since I have three completed novels, I will work on one book at a time rotating them weekly. The new and improved (first ever) schedule I came up with went like this: 10 query letters per day-three hours, two hours of editing, two hours of blog reading/writing, two hours of FB/Twitter (time suckage no longer allowed), and four hours on the WIPs. A full thirteen hours of devotion.

Extremely proud of my spurt of industriousness, I boasted of my eminent success to my other. He rolled his eyes and sagely noted that I hadn’t scheduled time for him, bathing, eating, exercise, or (OMG how could I have forgotten?) chardonnay.

Okay so something has to go, and it won’t be my wine. Do I really need to query?

First Day a New Way

Thanks to my innate laziness I'm the world's worst blogger. Besides the fact that I find writing about writing incredibly sad, especially as to date I'm unpublished. Sure, I could go the indie way lots of today's millionaire writers have done that very thing. I've even read a few of those books, but I haven't found one yet that made me stay up all night reading it. They read like early drafts, the potential of something great is there, the yeasty scent is enticing but the bread is only parbaked.

So, I shan't give up my quest, I shall lumber on.

This new blog will be my rant at the futility of my search to obtain that goal. It will be filled with angst and guest bloggers and contests. Why? Because I've been assured by the “oh so wise”, Office Girl, see her blog under blogs I follow, that this is the key to wild success. And she knows all. She is wise beyond her tender years.

What I won't do is curse the heads of those sage and venerable creatures, otherwise known as agents, even when they turn down the unbelievable opportunity to represent my work. I will sadly keep a public count of my humiliation here for your pleasure.

Why? Dare you say I should wail at the beasts that could so obtusely refuse such a gold plated sweet deal? I should spit in their eye? After all they must be blind; they couldn't see the spit coming.

Well I won't and I'll tell you why. Because one day, one of those higher beings is going to pick up my query letter, laugh their asses off, and request a full. And it goes without saying that the wise one will love it! Find me a publisher with a flick of his/her cellphone and rocket us both to instant success. So there!

Egypt - Did You Get Your Wish?

Today Egypt is free. Today Egyptians cleaned their streets. Today’s body count stands well over 300 Egyptian citizens and that doesn’t include the injured. But this ancient race, they are resilient. Peacefully, they removed bombed-out cars, broken glass, and (18) days worth of litter and debris.
So why is America rejoicing? Why are we happy that Hosni Mubarak stepped down? Wasn’t he our best bud only (19) days ago? No? He wasn’t? Really, then why did we kiss his wrinkled 82 year old bum for 30 years?
I haven’t posted during these eighteen days. I haven’t commented on this uprising, this overthrow of everything the Egyptians know. I’ve remained silent to this scream for power in a vastly Muslim country. And why not?
Perhaps, I wanted to be able to babble in favor of the winning team? I wanted to remain as neutral as a Swiss bank? But oh, how the mighty have fallen, even the untouchables now have dirty hands.
Why I? She, who fights daily with the one man who holds her heart in his Islamic fist, why have I remained as silent as the graves of those who have died? How melodramatic, it was a democratic movement. Have I been sleeping? Have you? For I can assure you I have not.
I have listened with a deadening ear to the holocaust that has been brewing across the pond. I have watched each news reel with a hardening heart. I have predicted each step of this bloody fiasco with uncanny accuracy, even our own.
And for once, my wonderful Muslim husband and I agree. And not a little, one hundred percent, we are completely aligned against this snake in the grass successful move of the Muslim Brotherhood. How can I say such a thing? Because it’s true. Egypt has been mollified for thirty years with their regime. Was it right? Was it fair? Was it exploitive? Search the “world” news over the past thirty years for your answer. Counting the lives sacrificed to make it what it was; can we call it a democracy? In my world, no, but it was still theirs.
But for a historically volatile population that form of democracy worked. We want to look at Egypt with our Benjamin Franklin tinted glasses, we want to see every corner of the world through our constitutional lenses. But who are we to judge? When did God/Allah/Buda/Joe’s cat throw down his gauntlet and ask the luckiest citizens of the world to pick it up?
I wish I could say I am happy for this supposed win for democracy. I wish I could say that the Muslim Brotherhood had nothing to do with the sudden rise of the masses of the Egyptian populace to have their voices heard. I wish I could say that I believe the Egyptian military will do what is in the best wishes of the people they serve, that they will obey a higher command, not the foreign governments lining their pockets, especially our own. I wish I could say I believe the Muslim Brotherhood is a mostly secular organization.
I wish I could say I am not terrified for the people Israel and Jordan. But most of all, I wish I could say I rejoice with you, Egypt. When all I can say is…be careful what you wish for.

Is Attending the Sick Anti-Islamic?

This is my first blogpost since returning from a month in Kosovo and some short sojourns in civilized Europe. As usual hanging out with my Haxhi (pilgrim to Mecca) father-in-law was barely tolerable. But after all that time in his presence, I’m proud enough of myself to say that he is still breathing and without broken bones. It’s not that I hate the man, honestly I don’t-I make a very conscious effort not to. It’s his very ungodly, but apparently Muslim, disregard for his bedridden wife of fifty-plus years that I find intolerable.
Nënë, my mother-in-law, is blind and in the latter stages of Alzheimer’s. She no longer recognizes my husband, myself, or anyone other than Haxhi. When I hear the word mother-in-law, I picture Marie from Everyone Loves Raymond, a meddlesome tyrant that doesn’t know when to back off. But not so with me and Nënë, to me she is a saint. She is the mother that religion stole from me, my mother’s cult ruled (and still does, even with the cult leader dead) her life and thus mine. My dear mother-in-law is now in diapers and her own daughter (yes, the devout Muslim one with an affinity for breaking and entering) will not clean her. So we hired a caretaker for her, but apparently Haxhi seems to think she belongs to him, as in his own personal slave since Nënë has become too weak to grovel at his every wish.
In Islam, per the Quran, it says you are supposed to take care of the sick, poor and elderly as quoted, “Allah enjoins adl, ihsaan, and giving help to kith and kin (i.e. to give them financial assistance, visiting them and caring for them), and He forbids you from fahshaa and from munkar, and from baghya (oppression of all kinds).
In fact this along with much of the Quran mirrors the Old Testament. The major differences being, wait for it….yep, holy war, jihad, not making friends of Christians or Jews, yada, yada, yada. But I digress.
I take issue with anyone dumping their parents off at a home if they are capable, financially, physically, and emotionally, of taking care of them themselves, regardless of religion. But someone to place themselves above all others, a haxhi, someone who demands respect for his religious devotion, to ignore such a fundamental part of that very religion then I find them to be a hypocrite.
He ridicules her, mocking her as she moans. He pulls her when she shuffles when required to walk a few steps. He leaves her in a filthy diaper for the entire night, if she goes to the bathroom after the caretaker has left. He has her fed milk and bread only. I can’t write anymore of the conditions in which he treats her, but I will say this… I don’t believe in organized religion, but I do believe in my version of Karma, what goes around, comes around. And what do you know, he ain’t getting any younger…

Brave Nuns in the Center of a Muslim World

It has been two years since I last visited Kosovo. It's a Muslim country, part of the former Yugoslavia, situated north of Greece and east of Italy, along with a couple of other countries that you might not recognize the names of. The first time I spent any time here was in 1990, it was still part of Serbia and steeped deep in tradition. Not so anymore.

Today Kosovo is a contradition in ideas, as mini-skirts and free love walk down the same sidewalks with rapidly radicalizing Moslems. The only thing everybody seems to agree on is their united hatred for Serbs. I can't blame them; I have personally seen the horror that many Albanians suffered at Serbian hands. But I've also seen the unjustices that many Kosovo remaining Catholic Orthodox Serbs have suffered by Muslim Albanian hands.

But rather than focus on the open wounds afflicted by both sides, I'd like to praise the most amazing women I've come into contact with in years, quite possibly in my life; the nuns of Gracanica Monastery.

A mere 5 kilometers from Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, sits a 13th century Orthodox Catholic Monastery. The existing monastery was built over the remains of a 6th century monastery and is a tear evoking example of Byzantine architecture. The nuns residing there, lead a simple life, devoid of politics. There ancient doors are open and welcome to peoples of all faiths and their innocent trust shines through their aged eyes. As I walked through the stone nave with its frescoes blackening and crumbling away, my soul was cleansed and my heart was filled with wonder at the sacrifice these women make to uphold their belief in God and ultimately humanity.

I wish I could say that they have remained unscathed by the hatred flowing through this small country, but not so. Gracanica has seen several attacks over the centuries, but apparently you can't keep a good monk down. The monastery housed monks until WWII when the monks fled or were killed and the sisters moved in. In the last Battle of Kosovo 1999 they were once again attacked, but bravely stood their ground, only losing some of their sacred documents.

I am not a person of faith, I'm afraid my childhood in a religious cult, scarred me forever against organized faiths. But these sweet women with their self-denying peaceful existence, gives me a new faith. A faith in the power of forgiveness and hope for the future.