Oregonian

[Oregonian]

I love the fox wagging its tail, Noelle @la_topolina.  Thank you so much for that image.  I wrote Tiramisu for Bex's @beyond the rain Bookshelf Challenge and promised her that I would post it on the archives when it was done, so that is what I will do.  There would have to be a few alterations in the text if I were to try to publish it. 

Really, don't you think that they should hold NaNoWriMo in January, after the holidays are over?  Plus, January has one more day.

[Oregonian]

I have posted the first chapter of Tiramisu  to the queue.

[Oregonian]

I went to my daughter's house (2 1/3 hours by car) for Thanksgiving Day, and I brought with me my manuscript of Tiramisu. There is something so tactile-ly gratifying about holding this big stack of 8 X 11 papers in two hands -- "This is my book"-- and something so visually fulfilling as seeing her sitting at the end of the bare dining table on the day after Thanksgiving with the big stack of papers in front of her, slowly reading the hand-written pages one by one, slowly turning the pages as she makes her way through the story.  Writing is gratifying in so many dimensions, and through so many senses.

[Oregonian]

WritingTiramisu is behind me now, and posting Tiramisu is behind me now, and Christmas is behind me now, and there's such a slump.  Day after day I get nothing done but surf the net for depressing political news and look at the gray clouds outside, and the hovers-around-freezing temperature on my front porch.  I should get back to work on The Crofter and the Snake, but it's hard to come out from the clutches of Tiramisu and back into the real world again.

Positive news: I received some great Christmas gifts.  An antique map of Ireland, a large 28" X 33" map of contemporary Scotland, and a 50" X 60" map of Medieval England.  They will be so useful.  I love just looking at them.

[Oregonian]

I did something that's a bit out-of-character for me today.  I've been pondering the fact that Tiramisu is not really a good fit for this particular site because it's set in the Middle Ages and does not include issues of romance/relationships or any familiar canon characters (or OC siblings/children of canon characters).  So it won't get many reads at this site unless I actively work for them.  

My youngest brother is in the same situation -- he has written a wonderful book which he would like to sell, but one of the things he must do is to get the manuscript into the hands of as many (hopefully well-known) people as he can and specifically ask them to read it and write their glowing, positive comments on it, which can then be used to persuade agents to represent the book and publishers to buy it.  This can feel pushy to those of us who are not accustomed to self-promotion, as if we are imposing upon people's time and interest.

So I sent Tiramisu to my daughter and my son (they'll read Mom's stories) and to my brother (we support each other in this) and to my priest, who said he'd like to read it when I offered it because of its setting in the medieval ecclesiastical world.  Then my oldest brother and one of my nieces said they wanted to read it, so I sent it to them, but except for my daughter I don't think any of them have gotten around to it yet.

So I've been mulling over sending it to my bishop and to a retired priest who is a friend and a force in our diocese, but holding back on doing so for fear of what they might think or of my looking foolish.  Then this morning I thought to myself that I am too old to worry about looking foolish or caring what people think about me, so I sent it off.  Not long after I got a reply from the retired priest who said he was at Barnes and Noble looking for a book when he got my email offering him Tiramisu, so he was pleased and would read it soon.

[inmyownlittlecorner]

You've just finished a major project, Vicki. I think it's perfectly normal to feel a little low for a bit afterwards. I hope the slump doesn't last too long, and that you take the time to recharge. You'll feel like creating again soon, I'm sure of it.

I also commend you for sharing your work! I hope you get some wonderful feedback

 

[Oregonian]

Oh, thank you for the support and encouragement, Noelle.  You are always there for me.  As a random act I scrolled through all the postings on this thread the other day and was happy to see some posts by people who said how much they had enjoyed Greenhouse Seven, which is a moment out of the storyline which is The Crofter and the Snake, and it stirred up some enthusiasm for finishing that story, although it is no Tiramisu in terms of gravitas.

I very much hope that you and your family had a wonderful Christmas and will have a good new year.  Winter has been atypically warm here, not much snow, and temperatures above freezing.  That means I can get outside, between raindrops, and do some yard work that I neglected during the frantic writing/typing of October 15-December 22, and that's good because I get much creative work done in my head while working on mindless garden cleanup chores.  Plus no snow-shoveling, which I hate!

[Oregonian]

Had a nice phone chat with my son Will today.  He is reading Tiramisu (about 2/3 through it), and he mentioned that when he read the chapters set in 1348 Edinburgh, he could envision and follow the scenes because it was as he remembered, having been in Edinburgh a few times for his business.  The landscape and topography were as he remembered it, and the bones of the medieval city (walls, gates, churches, castle, streets) are still all there today.  That's neat!  (Thank you, Internet, for successful research.)

[Oregonian]

At the end of December I sent the manuscript of Tiramisu to the bishop of my diocese and to a retired priest who is a friend and well-loved in our diocese, thinking they might enjoy it.  Last night I received an email comment from the priest.  He said:

Hi Vicki:  At last I have completed Tiramisu, and am even more grateful that you let me read your novel.  Congratulations!  Well done!.  I started from your daughter's comment that the story was sad and hard, but life all around Europe in the fourteenth century was sad and hard. I like the pace of the story - the narrative held my interest, so much so that I would read several chapters at a sitting.  Moreover, the visuals are excellent - reading your prose I can almost see the land, the faces, the buildings in Gerard's journey and of course, his vulpine friend. I was worried, though, that in the wilds of Aberdeen Tiramisu might get carried off by a raptor. And as a novice calligrapher, I am immediately captured by the illumination, the calligraphy, the pots and quills and lining, and the story of the great manuscripts like Lindsifarne and Kells which weave through your narrative.

Your dealing with death and isolation in young Martin is poignant, and you avoid some of the exploitative and abusive behaviors visited on oblates and novices in many of the monasteries in ancient times.  Your work is pure narrative, not sensationalism. And who among us has not known Martin's agony when he cries out, "Where are you, God?" and "Are you even listening, God?"  In Chapter 6, your line, "My tiny self was the only spectre of life" is elegant, poetic, and the commendation "Depart, O Christian soul...  May your rest be this day in peace and your dwelling place in the paradise of God" I have used for years with my patients in hospice and since. 

I did not see coming the turn toward Hogwarts School, but enjoyed the surprise when it did.  And I noticed that for Martin, and later Gerard, keeping the offices of the day was an order and stability through his journeys.  I am not sure he did, but throughout his sojourn from light to darkness to light again, keeping the daily office was his rock, his anchor, his warrant to say "I have kept the faith".

Again thank you. Many blessings, Fr Roy

[Oregonian]

Another positive review for Tiramisu from a member of my church. 

She says:  

"OMG! 

Vicki!!!

I’ve just finished chapter 24!!!!!!  This is sooooooooooo good.  Intriguing.  And what a turn.  A letter of invitation when one is eleven.  A brave new world is opening for Gerald.  A Harry Potter touch.  YOU are amazing."

 

Her career was as a nurse (like me) and her husband taught at Virginia Theological Seminary.  After retiring, they moved to my town in Oregon and my church.

[Oregonian]

@victoria_titania Thank you so much for your congratulations.  It's always so gratifying to get good reviews on a story that one has worked very hard on, but there isn't a way to post reviews like these onto a story in the archives, so I put them here instead.

I have started reading The Might of the Architect by @tinyporcelainehorses, which is also a story set in the Middle Ages, but that story is set in the beginning of the High Middle Ages (1000-1200), whereas Tiramisu is set in the latter part of the Late Middle Ages (1200-1400), so it is fascinating to see the differences in what was happening in England, and what the social, theological, and technological conditions were between the two stories.  There are some surprising parallels in the earlier chapters of that story, but I see that the plot is now veering off in a different direction.

[Oregonian]

Drew/Ameripuff, in his review for Chapter 4 of Tiramisu, cited Martin's statement "there were no good choices, only different degrees of bad" as Martin pondered his choice to stay at the monastery or leave when he reached his sixteenth birthday.  It occurred to me that Martin's father, who might come across as an unfeeling or callous guy, might be in the same situation.  If he didn't make his bargain with God, he believed that his wife and his unborn child would die.  If he did make the bargain with God, nobody would die but he would have to send his young son to the monastery.  As Martin, who came to resent his father's actions, ultimately realized, sometimes there are no good choices.

In the opening lines of Chapter 1, Martin says that during his early childhood his father would often say, "This little son we are giving to the church," and it occurs to me that his father didn't want to give him to the church, but he felt that he must, and by saying the words repeatedly he was steeling himself for ultimately doing what he had to do.  Still, he could not bring himself to tell Martin what was about to happen--perhaps he felt guilty for doing this to his child--and so the job of telling Martin fell in the end to his older brother Richard, who didn't feel guilty because it wasn't his decision, and who spoke the truth bluntly in the way that children often do.

It is interesting that you can write a story, just presenting plainly the events that happened, and then when you go back to the story later, you see that the truths of the human condition are all there also, just underneath the recital of the events that took place.

[inmyownlittlecorner]

On 3/10/2021 at 11:10 PM, Oregonian said:

"there were no good choices, only different degrees of bad"

I loved this part of Tiramisu so much. 

[Oregonian]

I bit the bullet and signed up for a high-powered, pricey year-long virtual class (one weekend a month for 12 months) in fiction writing, presented by a guy from whom I have taken seminars at the annual Willamette Writers Conference in Portland, so I know that he is good, and I should learn a lot.  It will probably be a lot of work.  I expect much homework between classes.  It begins in May.   It is being presented under the auspices of Wordcrafters in Eugene and is advertised as being of MFA quality.  That's believable.  I investigated a couple of distance-learning MFA programs a few years ago and was not impressed (but they still send me emails  ), so this course could easily equal or surpass them.

Good news: because of special one-time changes in the tax laws, my income taxes for 2020 will be substantially less than usual, so I will have the extra $ to pay for the course! (Not spending much on vacation trips at present. ) 

In between times I take advantage of a lot of one-hour online seminars on various writing topics through the Willamette Writers or Wordcrafters in Eugene; most of them are useful and informative (and free, once you pay for membership in those 2 organizations).

I continue going through the chapters of Tiramisu over and over, finding new typos with every new pass-through. *sigh*  Surely I've located them all by now...  Soon I will quit trying and will replace the presently-posted chapters with the cleaned up versions.

I visited a ZOOM open-mic session earlier this evening presented by Willamette Writers, just to see what it was like, not having seen one of these sessions before.  I didn't sign up to read anything, I just wanted to know what they were like.  It turned out to not look intimidating--just a bunch of people reading 5-minutes snippets of their writing, not necessarily better than my own, so maybe next time (I think they do this once a quarter) I will put my name on the list to read something.

Wow, the Writers' Journals have really been on fire with these Gift Tags.   Need to get with this program!

[prideofprewett]

Vicki, this is so exciting!  This course sounds intense, but that is amazing you're committing yourself to something as grand as this! Sounds like a great opportunity to really focus on your writing, which is just like A DREAM, to me. 

And that open mic ZOOM session sounds really cool! Is it open to general internet public to view? If so, and if you do decide to read something, please let us know? If you want to of course. But I would love to hear some more of your writing! 

 Courtney

[Oregonian]

Hi, Courtney @prideofprewett.  Thanks for writing in my journal.  It's sort of scary to commit to something like this--it's better just to do it and not overthink it, or you'll talk yourself out of it!  (I just hope it won't conflict with my niece's wedding .)  Just take it one day at a time.

Yes, the open mic sessions can be viewed by the general public.  It's a feature of the Willamette Writers.  Google them to see their website.  They have a free-form discussion Coffee Klatch on Tuesdays at 8 a.m. and Saturdays at 10 a.m. which my schedule allows me to participate in, and at this morning's Coffee Klatch we talked about last night's open mic.  It was deemed to have been a big success, such that they might do another one sooner than three months from now, so I'll keep my eyes open on the calendar of their website.  WW has many activities available by ZOOM; you can check them out on the calendar.  If you want to participate but you're not a member, they ask you to be so kind as to donate $5.00, and there is a link in the Chat sidebar to do that, though I doubt that there are any repercussions if a spectator does not.

I was weeding in my far back yard/garden and got to thinking (weeding is a fertile field for me to think in) that a person could develop their own capabilities and powers by writing a story about a character who did/dared/accomplished the very thing that the author themself is hesitant to do.  The character in the story becomes the model for the author to imitate, in the same way that we might be emboldened by imitating a friend who dares to do something we would like to do also.  Of course it's easy to make your character do the right or brave thing, and less easy to make yourself do it, but I think that that character could lead the way for us to follow.

Maybe I should write a story about a character who gets all her weeds pulled before they go to seed.  And gets her veggie garden in before June.

[Oregonian]

I saw the darnedest thing -- 3 photos of an Arctic fox shedding its thick white coat of winter fur in the far north of Norway last June.  (In National Wildlife magazine, the latest issue.)  The fur is super thick, and the white hairs are much longer than the brown-colored summer hairs that are being exposed.  The thick white coat comes off in big hunks and sheets, and in one of the photos a gust of wind has caught up the shedding sheets of hair and it looks as if the fox is exploding!  It's the darnedest thing you ever saw.  I've seen pictures of mountain goats shedding, but it's nothing like this.  No wonder these little guys can keep warm in the Arctic.  Wikipedia says "The fur of the Arctic fox provides the best insulation of any mammal."  I should revisit my text of Tiramisu and put in a line or two about how prodigiously Tiramisu sheds in the springtime.  

[Oregonian]

Hi, guys!  I just now got off a ZOOM Coffee Klatch of Willamette Writers, the Saturday morning Klatch that runs from 10 to 11 a.m. (though we ran over a bit today because people didn't want to stop talking).  We got to talking about how to make characters have more depth, rather than being just stereotypes or archetypes, and one woman said, 'You have to ask yourself, what does this character really want?"  

Of course we all have heard that advice often, but I thought once more, What does Howard want? at an even deeper level than I had considered it before, and I went beyond 'he wants to get out of Hogwarts and back to his croft on Skye' and articulated that he wants to be outdoors, in nature, communing and communicating with his animals.  

Then, applying that concept to his activities at Hogwarts, I saw him trying to connect with the six odd, seemingly inert creatures (kind of like rough, knobby soccer balls; they just sit there and don't do anything) that he has to study for his N.E.W.T. Magical Creatures class (kind of like in Greenhouse Seven, original research).  I quickly grabbed a piece of paper and started writing down all the things he does with these inert creatures.

Then, voila! This ties perfectly into the midway chapter as a segue into the scene where he rappels down the side of Gryffindor Tower in the middle of the night because he thinks that something might be going on with them.  That scene is already written, and I love it, but I wasn't sure how it was going to fit in as a subplot.  Glad I joined in on today's ZOOM Coffee Klatch.

[Oregonian]

I'll see if I can get a lot of work done on The Crofter and the Snake, although we are in the springtime now, the season when I do a lot of yard/garden work.  April is a good month for me to do NaNoWriMo because I begin my year-long writing course (lots of homework) in May.  And I get lots of creative ideas as I ruminate about my WIP while pulling weeds (the most mindless of chores).  My goals? To write at least 50,000 words (which I managed to do last November).  Finish this story?  Well, it depends on how long the story ends up 

[grumpy cat]

vicki! i'm here with some questions

1. i remember reading a little bit about the crofter and the snake in your writer's journal and how it started out as a missing moment from deathly hallows because all the homeschooled students had to attend hogwarts so...how is life different for howard when he has to attend? i assume he has to adjust a lot, but how does that play into what's happening with the war and especially the whole atmosphere at hogwarts?

2. what are some of his biggest difficulties during his time at hogwarts, and on the opposite spectrum, are there things at hogwarts that make him happy or that are better than when he was homeschooled?

3. are there any important plot points or background on howard's life before hogwarts that you'd like to share?

4. what have been some of the biggest challenges when writing this story? and what is most fun for you while working on it?

(i haven't yet read greenhouse seven which i think is the story howard appears in, so i'm sorry if some of these questions are answered there - i'll definitely read it in expectation of the crofter and the snake because i'm sure it'll be an amazing and exciting story when you finish and post it!)

[Oregonian]

Hi, kris!  Thank you so much for writing a note in my novel nest.  Such a nice treat to see it here!  I am happy to answer your questions.

1. Howard is seventeen years old, the youngest of three children (and the only child left at home), living on a large croft on the Isle of Skye with his parents.  They raise sheep.  Howard (and his older brother and sister) attended Muggle schools as well as learning their magic curriculum at home, so Howard has a foot firmly set in each world.  He likes working out of doors, and he bonds with his animals.  He expects to continue the agricultural life and eventually to take over the croft when his father retires.  So being forced to leave the croft and come to Hogwarts for one year is a big upheaval for him.  Kids who grow up on farms assume adult roles and a lot of independent responsibility at an early age, so being stuck indoors at Hogwarts and having to follow a lot of rules is a big change for him, not to mention having to learn the very different culture of Hogwarts at a rapid rate, and not to mention the dysfunctional, even dangerous milieu that exists there during 1997-1998.  While living on Skye, he was not very aware of the war (far away, involving other people), but when he arrives at Hogwarts, he immediately stands out as culturally different, and he is gradually drawn into the war effort.

2. Entering into a new society is always challenging, and especially if that society is traumatized by the situation they are in.  Howard has a huge learning curve, learning the thousand unwritten rules about how how life functions at Hogwarts (even in the best of times), making friends  when stressed people tend to cling to the friends they already know, trying to utilize his own skills and competence without endangering himself, learning to comprehend the seriousness of the crisis he finds himself in.   Things that make him happy?  The friendships that he does make, the ways he is able to use his own strengths (including his experiences on Skye) to contribute to the well-being of the school and the students.  He was definitely somewhat isolated from the wider world when he was living on Skye, and by the end of the story he has seen and done things he would never have expected.  I was describing the final scenes to my son over the telephone recently, and he was laughing and incredulous that his mother would write stuff like that.  (It wasn't humorous, but uniquely violent.)

3.  Important plot points or background on Howard's life before Hogwarts?  Bits of his life as a raiser of sheep come into the story of his life at Hogwarts, but I don't want to give them away.  (Ask my son.)  And his relationship with his sheepdog Mackie plays an important role.

4.  The biggest challenge in writing this story is filling some plot holes, which are slowly getting filled in.  I have learned by experience that plot holes are not an unsurmountable challenge because in the past great hole-fillers have come to me at the last minute.  In Dark Enough To See The Stars, I didn't know what the big climax in Chapter 6 would be until I was halfway through Chapter 5; I just knew it would blow the reader away.  So I dragged out Chapter 5, which turned out to be a superbly effective thing to do for the situation in that chapter, greatly increasing the tension, and I have used that technique again for Chapter Somewhere-in-the-Middle in this present story.  Acquiring authoritative material on sheep husbandry has been necessary, but it's easy to find.  It's fun to locate all the information I need, just by Googling it.  What did people do in the old days when they needed to know how long it takes to drive between Portree and Aberdeen?  (Four and a half hours.)  It sure speeds up the writing when all the information is at your fingertips.

 

Thanks so much for asking these questions.  I really am going to finish this story this year.  Right before I start the year-long online class that will teach me how I should have written it. 

[RonsGirlFriday]

Hi Vicki!

Besides Howard, who are the other important characters in The Crofter and the Snake? If any are OC's can you tell us a little about them?

Have you encountered any surprises so far while writing this story? Did you start out with plans for any bits that turned out to be completely different?

[shadowycorner]

Hi Vicki, I love this idea  good luck on reaching your 50K! That's a big goal and I don't think I could do it more than once a year

I love that Howard comes from Isle of Skye. Did you do a lot of research on that area or do you have some of your own experience? If and when you do reasearch, what methids do you mostly use? 

[Oregonian]

On 3/29/2021 at 8:57 PM, FrogFactFriday said:

Hi Vicki!

Besides Howard, who are the other important characters in The Crofter and the Snake? If any are OC's can you tell us a little about them?

Have you encountered any surprises so far while writing this story? Did you start out with plans for any bits that turned out to be completely different?

Hi, Melanie! @FrogFactFriday  Thanks for writing on my novel nest.   The other important characters in the story are Tracey Davis (Slytherin), Wayne Hopkins (Hufflepuff) and Neville and Seamus in Gryffindor.  Many other familiar Hogwarts names have minor roles.  The other OCs that appear are members of Howard's family, but since most of the scenes take place at Hogwarts in the terrible year of 1997-1998, we don't see much of his family in person.  Howard's father and older brother are both sheep raisers (his brother has his own croft), and they are tough-minded, pragmatic men who, like other wizard crofters, don't have a lot of interaction with the Ministry of Magic, and live their lives to suit themselves.

Nothing that I have planned so far has been altered much, though there are holes in the narrative that I slowly fill in as inspiration strikes, and as I learn more and more about sheep farming, I have to go back here and there to change some little point that's not as factual as I would like, or to add some new little fact that I just discovered.  The greatest surprises will be the stuff that I will think of, to fill in the narrative holes.  This story will link with other stories I have written (see Greenhouse Seven, written in 2013, for the earliest appearance of my Neville/Howard/Tracey/Wayne quartet, Carried in My Heart  in 2016 for a glimpse of Wayne, and This Year Will Be Different for a very brief mention).  I'll also link it to Maggots. 

On 3/31/2021 at 9:32 AM, shadowycorner said:

Hi Vicki, I love this idea  good luck on reaching your 50K! That's a big goal and I don't think I could do it more than once a year

I love that Howard comes from Isle of Skye. Did you do a lot of research on that area or do you have some of your own experience? If and when you do reasearch, what methids do you mostly use? 

Hi, Eli! @shadowycorner  I have done research about Skye and have learned many interesting tidbits which I can drop in here and there, and my daughter Elaine has been there.  While on Skye, she had an encounter with members of the Climbing Club from the University of York, who had come to have fun climbing up and down the cliffs, so Elaine and her friend joined them in climbing, to the surprise of the Yorkists, who were not accustomed to seeing girls do rock-climbing.  I incorporated that episode into The Crofter and the Snake in a dramatic scene which is one of my favorites.  I do a lot of my research via the internet, of course.  There is tons of information available; just the other day I was watching videos of Scottish sheep farmers assisting ewes who were having a difficult birth by reaching up, grabbing the front legs of the lamb, and pulling him/her out with great strength.  (Not sure I'd be strong enough to do that myself.)  And I was listening to an audio of adults on Skye discussing how much exposure they had to the Gaelic language during their childhood; mainly I was listening to see what words they use, such as 'when I was a wee lad' in place of 'when I was a little boy', and how much of an accent they had.  Websites of local government agencies (the laws about who can or cannot buy land on Skye, for example), local churches, local newspapers ( I used the newspapers of Coventry, England, for some other stories regarding unexploded ordnance from World War II that is regularly dug up there) -- there's tons of information out there.  I have learned that it is necessary to get the details correctly because some readers follow my story with one eye on Wikipedia to check all my facts!

Thank you so much, Melanie and Eli, for these questions.  Seeing the questions and thinking about the answers gives me a real boost of enthusiasm for continuing to write, especially after several days of doing my federal and state income taxes (very complicated and time-consuming) which left my brain fried and ready for a real change of pace.  You are both sweethearts.

Vicki 

On 3/31/2021 at 9:32 AM, shadowycorner said:

 

 

[Oregonian]

Wow, it's been nine days since I posted anything on this thread!  Not getting off to a roaring start, I'm sad to say.  I spent the first two days of April finishing up my taxes, which are always complicated, lengthy, and time-consuming, but this year even worse than usual because of a bunch of changes in the tax laws.  I would think I had everything right, and then I would see some thing that was different, or new, and and it was back to the eraser, until finally I had located all the Schedules and Forms and Attachments that I had to fill out.  Then my daughter and granddaughter came for a visit over the Easter weekend, and it is always such a treat to see them.  I hauled them down to my church on Saturday morning (the day before Easter) for the annual clean-up-the-church-yard work day, and now my granddaughter is old enough (12) to work steadily weeding for 3 hours without complaining, and all the fellow workers remarked how tall she is getting (broke the 5-foot barrier since Christmas).

The Crofter and the Snake will be different from other stories I have written in that it has two main characters, not just one, so there will be some switching back and forth from POV, and I am having to learn how to do this properly. Slogging away.  Complication: I have one main character much more fully formed in my mind than the other, so there is a lot of character development to do on the less-conceived character.  I have gone back to one of my writing textbooks, Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell, to get more info on how to handle this structure without necessarily going full-on Tolkien-esque.

Plus, yard-work calls, as it always does in spring.  Spent much hours yesterday in weeding, especially the never-ending goal of eradicating the grape hyacinths from my property.  Some people actually plant those little buggers purposely (though I think that should be illegal because they are so invasive).  Making progress, and the weather report is for at least ten days of warm, sunny weather, so I will keep my fingers crossed that the freezing nights are over now and will go ahead and plant my veggie garden.  That would be a first, getting the veggies in on time!