Well, there’s writing, and then there’s writing.  What’s more, there’s timely writing, and then there’s timely writing.

No, I didn’t have any publishing deadlines this time around. Yes, I have a bunch of ongoing projects, but they’re in various stages of completion, and I believe I have a good handle on them.

However, that still didn’t free me from time-sensitive writing obligations.

Teachers, instructors, and other educators, you know what I mean.

Writing a good lecture is a very time-intensive, highly focused creative process. Especially the first time you teach a course. Even more so if you really get (or are into) the subject you’re teaching.

So yes, I’ve been writing. Like crazy. But not a word of fiction. On the other hand, I’ve been compensating by getting away from the computer and moving to the crafting table. It’s nice to be making tangible things again.

Meanwhile, the campfires burn gently to reassure the children and the less-stout in spirit. But as the evening progresses, and the meals are done, boredom threatens to set in, and with boredom, feelings of loss and despair are bound to surface and grow to unreasonable proportions.

Of course, you’ve planned even for that. Your little company of refugees have stashed away some items of entertainment and and comfort (and no, now is probably not a good time to break out the trading vodka and whiskey — stay sharp, folks!).

No, I hear a tin whistle somewhere, and maybe a fiddle, and someone actually lugged a guitar on top of his bug-out bag. Or maybe they pulled a bug-out cart so they could afford the extra weight.

Did you bring a pack of playing cards? Maybe something for kids? Go Fish? Or a travel set of magnetic chess or checkers? And don’t forget that the voice is a great instrument too, and so very portable. Oh, listen, there’s a storyteller! And how about some riddles and some guessing games?

Even kindergarten games can be fun when they’re played at the right age-level.

Now the little ones are nodding off and are snuggling into their sleeping bags. Soon, it’s just the older teenagers and single adults whispering around the fires, minding them for warmth and safety. And the sentries stalking the perimeter beyond the reach of the light.

Like Skhye, our blog-hop mistress, I invite all the Bug-In With Romance authors to post a cover blurb the comments for one final hurrah.

That’s right: no heat to cook on, no source of light. Not to mention all the other things that fire (or some fire substitute) does backstage, where we can’t see it: tool making, sanitation, and all the things that need heat for production.

No, you can’t live without fire.

But if you’re faced with having to create, maintain, and otherwise handle a live fire, like a campfire, then suddenly you are confronted by a beast that can die or disappear when you least expect it, or else grow into a monstrous, all-devouring dragon.

Like the dragons of our fantasies, it can be tamed, and if tended properly, it an even be a gentle helper.

Where I live, wildfires are a real danger for a large part of the year, so I’m more aware of when or where to not build a fire, than with the issue of damp fuel – but I’ll talk about that as well. First then, you need to make sure that your fire won’t spread and that you will control it.

Prepare the surface. Clear it of debris, build your fire away from dried grasses and leaves, and if you’re in a super-dry area, you should build your fire in a container: wood burns less hot than charcoal, so anything that will hold a charcoal fire will also hold a wood fire. If, however, the soil is damp enough, just make sure you clear an area of anything that will be ready fuel for your hungry fire.

Gather what you need. You’ve been prepping for a while now, so you should have some fire-starting gear: storm matches (the waterproof/windproof kind you get at outdoor stores), or a fire-starter (the little metal stick that will make sparks when struck against metal or stone – in other words a ferrocerium rod, sometimes called firesteel), maybe a lighter or two, or maybe you’ve even learned how to start a fire with the bow method.

Then you need tinder to catch the spark. Again, you probably have in your survival kit some petroleum-jelly-saturated cotton balls, or some steel wool, or else you can use the alcohol prep pads you’re carrying in your first-aid kid (you may have to shred them a little, though).

Around you, look for fuel of the same caliber for the tinder: tiny size, easy to set on fire, and in sufficient quantities to start a fire (something like dry grasses would work well). Your go-kit will get depleted eventually, always keep an eye out for supplies lying around and save your kit for later.

Next, you need kindling, a pile of pencil-lead sized stuff about 10” long, and another pile of pencil-sized sticks, of about the same length.

When all of this is on fire, you can start adding thicker branches progressively (2” in diameter and bigger) until you have a nice, hot fire.

And that’s the theory.

Boy-scouts are traditionally taught to build teepee fires, or log-cabin fires. At least that’s what I was taught. With a careful selection of tinder, steady build-up of kindling and sticks in progressive sizes, it’s not that hard.

A cabin-log fire is just a teepee fire with larger logs arranged around it like a well.

But the fastest and easiest fire to build is probably the survival-specialist fire, the shapeless, but very efficient and controllable pile of burning stuff.

In all cases, it’s important to avoid humidity (keep the tinder and kindling off the damp ground), keep the fire contained (don’t build it too close to dry timber, resinous trees, and avoid it altogether in areas prone to wildfires), and have fuel on hand. The fuel needs to be nice and dry – sticks off the ground may not be what you want, so look up and get dead branches off trees. Remember: green wood doesn’t burn well, and produces lots of smoke. DEAD branches for fuel, DRY fuel for the fire.

And once your fire has burned down to red-hot coals (remember the fuel you collected? You’ll need it to keep the fire going), you can use it to cook, pasteurize water, and sit around and stare at the dancing flames.

A couple of useful links to start practicing:

How to Build a Fire in 8 Steps

How to Start a Fire Without Matches

 Contest and Prize!

And now that your fire is lit, that you’re all warm and cozy and can see what you’re doing, it’s time for a little relaxation. Since I don’t have anything in print, you wouldn’t be able to read my stories in these primitive conditions. Instead, I’ll send a select winner a small collection of 5 signed romances right off my bookshelf. So leave a comment or send me an email by way of the contact page (unless you say otherwise, I’ll mention yo on this blog; I will respect your privacy preferences; being paranoid is a good end-of-times policy, ya know).

And tomorrow, head on to Brit Blaise’s blog and find out everything about Trade Goods.  http://www.britblaise.com/

Meanwhile, I spend my day as usual with no inkling of the chaos building around me, or of the importance of this catastrophic event.

What? No, this is not fiction. It’s the Twinkie Apocalypse. Hostess, the company, has gone under, and some Americans who remember the little cakes from their childhood fear this may indeed be a sign of the end of times.

Just about.

And meanwhile, I wasn’t even tempted to go looking for a single Hostess product. Not even when I realized I probably never-ever tasted a Twinkie or any other Hostess cake.

Why am I so indifferent to the demise of the formerly ubiquitous treats?

Simple.

For those who already mourn their passing, they were childhood companions, and therefore symbols of childhood. They were reminders of a time when we didn’t, and didn’t need to, worry about sugar or fat content, not in one or two snacks. A time when sweet and creamy and fatty really was happiness.

And me? I didn’t grow up with those snacks, so neither the name nor the look evoke any memories. Now if you told me that croissants didn’t exist any more… Ludicrous, of course, because I could learn to make them, but just imagine… Now THAT would certainly be a sign of the end of times.

I hopped across the Atlantic a long time ago, and I stopped feeling like a foreigner quite a few years back. You wouldn’t know I didn’t go to school right here in the US if you didn’t hear me speak (I’ll keep my accent, I think, it makes for a nice ice-breaker). But at the same time, there are things, like the Twinkies, that will never have the same significance for me as it does for someone who grew up with them.

Being an Alien (being) isn’t just about coming to a strange place (planet) and adjusting to the situation. It’s about internalizing that situation, but also about never internalizing certain things — and being okay with it, if you are okay with living in this new place.

Being okay with the forever strangenesses, with the small, almost insignificant details that will always remind you that you’re not really from here is what adapting and assimilating is about. It’s not about losing yourself in the new environment, the new culture, the new language. It’s not about blending in until you are part of a uniform mixture (like cake batter). But since we’re talking about disappearing edibles, it would be more like a salad, and you’d be a chunk that always stands out, but is part of the whole (now I’m hungry, darn it).

So Being an Alien is a lifelong learning journey, and story-people should also experience it as such. You can never know everything about something you didn’t grow up in, and even if you grew up with — but what you grew up with is a different species, there will still be that sense of… alienation.

The hard part for a writer will be to convey what is usually approached as a completely negative emotion or perception, and potentially put it into a positive light. Because if you never feel quite the same, then your curiosity is never quite satisfied, is it? And those who took you in, who love you back with all your alienness, they’re just as curious about your differences and this alienation that never goes away.

Explore writing foreign and alien characters with me and Otter Creations workshops through Savvy Authors, Aug 5, 2013 – Aug 18, 2013.

More information here, at Otter Creations.

He’s no Guard Dog.

Before you abandon me here, this is going to be as much a writing post as a pet-lovers post, so bear with me.

This article from CBS-Atlanta made me wonder not just about pet owners’ expectations, but even more whether they have given any thought to the distinction between the two words: Guard and Watch.

Writers spend (or should spend) an inordinate amount of time looking for the right word. First, there’s the hastily thrown-together s****y first draft (yes, you can attribute the expression to a great many celebrities, but I take my inspiration from Ann Lamott).

But on subsequent rewrites, the pondering begins. It’s easy to say s****y first draft, but how do you qualify the second draft that’s not a draft but not really a version yet? How do you describe a backlit tree in the golden light of the evening, one day as you’re driving home in a good mood and the weather is nice and the air is light? The tree is more beautiful than it was yesterday in the suffocating heat. What’s the word for it? There must be one.

For me, the search for the right word extends into every area of life. In an argument (I mean a discussion, an academic argument, not an I’m gonna beat you up argument), I tend to be distracted by the need to define the parameters of the discussion (ie the meaning of the basic arguments) before it can be determined whether there is an argument at all. Because I’m perfectly willing to spend hours debating the meaning of a word and refining the difference between two apparently identical synonyms. Because if there are NO differences why would there still be TWO words??…

So what about a guard dog? A dog that guards. Is it fair to expect your family friend, the goofy companion whom you allow to give you kisses, whose terrifying fangs don’t bother you the least, to suddenly turn around and bite someone just because you think they should be warned off? But the same dog should never bite a guest or a housesitter or the mailman or…

How would he know the difference? Would even training be enough? Honestly, I wouldn’t know. I’m not a dog trainer, just a dog owner.

However, I do hope that my own little bundle of affection will continue to be a good Watch Dog. He never fails to let us know if someone (even if it’s just a cat) gets too close to the house. And if someone actually walks up to the door, he’ll get into “waiting position” and stare. If it’s a stranger, he’ll growl and bark to warn us about the intruder. In fact, he’ll even warn us about delivery trucks and utility vehicles stopping in front of our house. I’m still working on getting him to stop the noise when I’ve acknowledged his warning, but eh, perfection doesn’t come in one day.

I’m perfectly happy to have an over-friendly dog who doesn’t bite anyone and is never aggressive. I wanted a companion, a cuddle-buddy, someone safe around my elderly and frail mother. Someone I could imagine taking to see children and visit the elderly. Not a Guard Dog.

But I’m also happy to not stifle his innate tendency to bark at anything that gets too close to our home, because he’s better than an alarm.

Not to mention that there will be prizes to be won, excerpts to be read, and pictures to chuckle over. I hear there’s a very handsome and efficient butler presiding over the festivities, too.

I have no idea whether Daniel will make an appearance. He’s the hero of The Brightest Heaven, Ourania’s story. He’s been invited, of course, but his duties keep him quite busy.

What duties, you ask? Well, you’d have to read Ourania’s story to find out, of course.

In the portrait to the left here, Ourania holds the traditional emblems of Muse of Astronomy: a celestial orb and a stylus. Down below she is in a different time, wearing a different fashion. Maybe she stood by Marie Curie and Einstein, too.

Then I elaborate: anyone at any age (barring neurological trauma) can learn to communicate efficiently in any language, assuming they devote the necessary time and effort.

Just as anyone at any age (barring physical limitations) can learn new skills. It just takes practice (demonstration, understanding, and lots of repetition for pattern building).

How well someone learns a language depends on a number of factors: for most people (especially children and college students), the main stumbling factor is the fun/desire factor: how much you enjoy/want to learn the language will determine how well you succeed. Because when you’re having fun, you just don’t care, or don’t realize, how much effort you’re putting into something.

Still, there is one objective criterium that can be used to evaluate how difficult a language can be for any one person, and that’s how far (linguistically) the target language is from the language (or languages) you speak. For instance, if you speak English, then in theory, German will be easier to learn because there are a lot of similarities (they’re from the same family of languages). In fact, French is easier to learn because there are a lot of cognates (words that resemble each other) between the two languages, but also because historically French influenced English a lot more than German.

Consequently Chinese will be a lot harder to learn because there are no similarities — not in the vocabulary, not in the writing system, not even in the way sentences are constructed. And Russian would be easier than Chinese and theoretically harder than French.

But again, “hard” is relative — and “fun” and “want” always trumps “hard”.

This kind of discussion always leads me to wonder about communicating with non-humans. Starting with my dog — I’m always amazed that we manage to get each other to understand what we need. But our communication is simple because our wants and needs from each other are simple. We don’t try to have an existential conversation about the meaning of life.

And what if an alien — a not-from-this-planet alien — appeared in front of us and tried to get us to understand them? Now that is a daunting proposition. Would my theory that anyone can learn any language still stand?

I wonder then if even gestures would translate? Human emotions are expressed universally by involuntary muscle movements. What would we read on an inhuman face? Is there a universal gesture, or posture, or stance, for peace? Greeting? Would that alien point with a hand? Would that alien even be humanoid?

I love the old Disney movie about the alien cat who needed a super-concentrated bar of gold to fix his spaceship. Because the cat couldn’t have humanoid body language. Of course, it was a children’s movie so they got around the communication issue with a “power collar” with a built-in translator. Nevertheless: watch your pet and imagine he’s a wise being from another dimension trying to impart knowledge of a different kind. No words, not rational arguments, but a necessary knowledge all the same. Maybe we can learn any language after all, with enough imagination.

One of the definitions of language is: any system of formalized symbols, signs, sounds, gestures, or the like used or conceived as a means of communicating thought, emotion, etc. [this one and more right here, or look into your old-fashioned paper dictionary for more variations]. Other definitions emphasize the “distinctively human” quality of language. Others that it requires “voice”. But all the definitions agree on one thing: it’s all about communication.

We can dispense with voice, because the deaf community had developed an entirely soundless system of communication. How far can we go and dispense with the aspect of the definition that define language as belonging to people of the same community or nation?

I mean. my dog Percy knows his name, and responds to it, even though Percy is a most definitely un-canine sound. He also knows “treat” (and will run to the location where the treats are stored), and “come”, and the names of toys. He’ll look at his ball if we call for it, as if to make a point that he knows what or where it is, then he’ll go get the toy he really wants to play with.

No, our dog is not trained as a service dog. He won’t retrieve on command. But he does understand what we’re asking for. Elephant? He’ll glance at the toy then decide that the one my daughter is dangling in front of him is more interesting — I don’t blame him! That one moves!

Eat! He’ll check out his bowl for sure and then he’ll make faces, the spoiled brat.

Who’s there? He’ll go jump on his spot by the window and check out the street to see if anyone’s coming. Where’s Dad? He’ll go check out the master bedroom.

And of course he knows all the basic commands: sit, down, roll over, wait. Even if my gestures are inconsistent, he’ll obey the sound of the word.

I don’t know if he’s more or less or as intelligent as the average dog. He definitely suits us. What I do see is that he recognizes and reacts to sounds that we make in a logical and predictable manner. What’s more, he’ll find ways to let us know what he needs or wants — like go out, get a treat, eat, or just cuddle. By sound, body language, or by leading us to where the thing he wants is.

So maybe Percy doesn’t know English, but we definitely have a language we use to communicate, he and I (and the family). And it’s only getting more complex as he learns of new things he can get, do, refuse, or want.

First, check out this one, available from Amazon and Barnes:

Dragon’s Desire by Delilah Devlin

I always open (or click on the cover of) a Delilah Devlin story with much anticipation. And I’m never disappointed. Dragon’s Desire ranks up there with some of my favorite reads, but I have to confess to a weakness for old-time myths. And Delilah has a particularly deft touch with the handling of traditional elements and the reworking of tales and legends into modern stories.

Dragon’s Desire is a classic tale of a curse that transcends time and stretches into centuries. But as any reader can expect from a skilled storyteller, Delilah Devlin twists the plot and foils expectations with unexpected turns and developments. Yes, there’s a dragon, and a knight, and an abducted, seduced damsel… and then the author begins the tale, traveling from a medieval castle to a modern-day Renaissance Faire.

Delilah is a master at creating endearing characters who capture the reader’s imagination, and at placing them in fantastic worlds that have personalities of their own. Her descriptions involve all of her audience’s senses, so that her worlds can be felt, heard, and sensed in every way. Hers are definitely stories to become lost in, and Dragon’s Desire doesn’t disappoint.

Dragon’s Desire plays not only on the themes of dragon legends, but also on the wording of legends and offers some intriguing what-ifs from the world of fantasy… and of course a steamy, emotional, sometimes funny, and always delightful read.

And then Delilah gifted me with an ARC (Advance Review Copy) of her upcoming paranormal thriller Shattered Souls.  It’s coming out January 8 (so no link yet), and I hear rumors of a series about the main characters. Sign me up! Delilah’s stories always put me in a good mood, and ready to tackle any wayward manuscript.

Shattered Souls by Delilah Devlin

Sometimes a book by Delilah Devlin is not a romp in the hay. Don’t let that stop you from grabbing Shattered Souls, even if your introduction to her delightful stories has been through her hotter and riskier reads.

Even when the focus of the story are paranormal events, demonic killings, possession, and other dark happenings, Delilah’s tales are full of sensual promise and seductive heroes. And how could her characters be anything less, when the resolution of her plots depends as much on the resolution of relationship conflicts, and of inner struggles, as on the discovery and solution of clues, and the occasional well-choreographed pitched battle, satisfyingly intense, from which the heroes do not come out unscathed.

The characters of Shattered Souls are as flawed as real people could be, but like true heroes they rise above their own weaknesses and needs when the situation demands it. Cait O’Connell works as a private detective, because the voices haunting her destroyed her Memphis PD career. She drowns them in liquor, and only then can she sleep. Her former partner Sam Pierce doesn’t know about the voices, or else he might try to commit her to a mental facility. Sometimes Cait even doubts herself – if it weren’t for the memory of her mother’s spell-casting, and the lessons of a powerful and seductive wizard. She’s tried to set all thought of supernatural power aside, but when her mentor disappears in an impossible manner, she calls on her innate abilities and goes to battle. Her lingering attraction to Detective Pierce makes the situation more difficult – or maybe this one case hold a faint hope to mend her shattered soul.

Plan on setting chores aside once you open Shattered Souls. Its world (set in modern-day Memphis) and its characters will come alive and take you away. Don’t resist the pull of a Delilah Devlin book – it’s hopeless. Her storytelling skill will hold you spellbound and leave you waiting for more of Cait O’Connell and Sam Pierce and their “full-moon” cases.