IS YOUR NOVEL REAL?

Odd question, isn't it?

Of course your novel's not real.

But it needs to be if you want it accepted by an agent and loved by readers.

You suspend disbelief when certain things in the book you're reading rings true :

Clothes :

Hamlet doesn't wear gold chains and zoot suits. Samuel McCord is a brooding, reflective man who does most of his fighting at night.

He, like Hamlet, wears black. Mark Twain, Sam's life-long companion, wears his all white suit to stand apart from his brooding friend -- as he does everything in his rebellious life.

{Twain's eventual death sends Sam into a spiral of depression from which it takes him years to recover.}

Maija, Meiliori's contemptuous of society twin sister, wears a skin-tight "Dragon-Lady" scarlet outfit -- even in 1853, when the mere showing of a bare ankle was scandalous.

She, like Twain, is rebellious.

But unlike the humorist, Maija is cruel and sadistic -- which is why whenever she arranges to meet Sam after her sister has left him, Maija wears an exact copy of the retro-Victorian dress Meilori wore on the night she stormed off into the darkness.

SPEECH :

Do all your characters sound the same? It might surprise you that they do.

Close your eyes. Have a friend read a rather common sentence from two of your characters from two different parts of your novel. Can you tell who is talking just by their speech patterns? You should.

Reporters and policemen both talk tersely. The reporter tends to go for the dramatic. The policeman keeps objective. In public at least.

Out of public view, the policeman usually is cynical of everyone's motives, having seen too many at their worst. The reporter tends to go for the underdog, having seen big business and big government swallow the little guy much too often.

Not all teens talk the same. The nerds have their own phrases. And jocks their own vocabulary, matching their interests.

The shy mumble. The quarterback smirks. Yet that can be overdone into a cliche. The thinking, reflective quarterback from an abusive home could be the magnet that holds the interest and heartstrings of your readers.

MINDSET :

Take physicians.

One of my favorite novels is CAPTAIN NEWMAN M.D. by Leo Rosten
http://www.amazon.com/Captain-Newman-leo-rosten/dp/2221036816/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278471759&sr=1-1

It is a novel of a caring psychiatrist treating mentally bruised soldiers from WWII, told with wit and compassion.

But there are other mindsets among physicians. And it is understandable why they develop that perspective.

They're trained to prioritize, to emotionally detach themselves from their patients' pain and trauma, and to deal with crises as problems to be solved ... the solutions to be broken down into their component steps. Such a mindset works for them professionally.

In their personal lives, that mindset can be destructive. For many to become emotionally detached takes its toll. To step back from the trauma around them, they must cut loose in another phases of their lives.

On the other hand, become emotionally detached long enough, and you find it spreads like a drop of ink in a beaker throughout your whole life. You awaken one day to find yourself a stranger to your friends, your family ... even to yourself.

A few latent sadists are drawn to the profession. They channel their anti-social compulsions into socially approved actions. But like with scratching a mosquito bite, the more they stroke their sadistic natures, the stronger, the more demanding it becomes.

To make a physician real in your novel, you must incorporate all the above into that character and his/her environment. The same is true with every walk of life you have in your story.

CULTURE/CUSTOMS :

Now, this one is a bugger. There's real. And then, there's realistic.

I wrote a historical fantasy. Historical fiction is not a time machine.

Should you and I go back to the world of 1853, we would find the physical hygiene appalling and the moral consensus even worse. We would be walking around with our mouths open and clothes pins clamped on our noses.

Indigenous races were not considered even human. Women were thought of as a second-class, intellectually deficient breed. Slavery was applauded in most corners. The "science" of medicine was part butchery/part unfounded, faulty supposition.

Still, we would understand only 2 out of every 3 words spoken by the aristocracy : their vocabulary was extensive and littered with Latin and ancient Greek proverbs.

The Divine Right of kings was accepted in a third of the civilized world. And democracy was in its infancy.

Speech was more formal even in casual conversation, more elegant even.

For RITES OF PASSAGE, I had to create the illusion of 1853 in such a way as to root my reader in the reality of that age without tuning him out.

I made Samuel McCord a man educated by his Harvard professor father and inhuman Jesuit priests. His travels across the world has made him a more open-minded man. He has the sensibilities of a 21st century man at odds with the 19th century world.

Therefore, the reader can identify with him as he locks horns with the accepted status quo that offends his compassionate reasoning and the reader's modern sensibilities.
***
There was a TV series which highlights how the mindset and customs we take for granted are just a thing of the moment : LIFE ON MARS :

IS YOUR NOVEL REAL?

Odd question, isn't it?

Of course your novel's not real.

But it needs to be if you want it accepted by an agent and loved by readers.

You suspend disbelief when certain things in the book you're reading rings true :

Clothes :

Hamlet doesn't wear gold chains and zoot suits. Samuel McCord is a brooding, reflective man who does most of his fighting at night.

He, like Hamlet, wears black. Mark Twain, Sam's life-long companion, wears his all white suit to stand apart from his brooding friend -- as he does everything in his rebellious life.

{Twain's eventual death sends Sam into a spiral of depression from which it takes him years to recover.}

Maija, Meiliori's contemptuous of society twin sister, wears a skin-tight "Dragon-Lady" scarlet outfit -- even in 1853, when the mere showing of a bare ankle was scandalous.

She, like Twain, is rebellious.

But unlike the humorist, Maija is cruel and sadistic -- which is why whenever she arranges to meet Sam after her sister has left him, Maija wears an exact copy of the retro-Victorian dress Meilori wore on the night she stormed off into the darkness.

SPEECH :

Do all your characters sound the same? It might surprise you that they do.

Close your eyes. Have a friend read a rather common sentence from two of your characters from two different parts of your novel. Can you tell who is talking just by their speech patterns? You should.

Reporters and policemen both talk tersely. The reporter tends to go for the dramatic. The policeman keeps objective. In public at least.

Out of public view, the policeman usually is cynical of everyone's motives, having seen too many at their worst. The reporter tends to go for the underdog, having seen big business and big government swallow the little guy much too often.

Not all teens talk the same. The nerds have their own phrases. And jocks their own vocabulary, matching their interests.

The shy mumble. The quarterback smirks. Yet that can be overdone into a cliche. The thinking, reflective quarterback from an abusive home could be the magnet that holds the interest and heartstrings of your readers.

MINDSET :

Take physicians.

One of my favorite novels is CAPTAIN NEWMAN M.D. by Leo Rosten
http://www.amazon.com/Captain-Newman-leo-rosten/dp/2221036816/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278471759&sr=1-1

It is a novel of a caring psychiatrist treating mentally bruised soldiers from WWII, told with wit and compassion.

But there are other mindsets among physicians. ( I am not talking Lydia Kang here, We all know special she is. She is of the Captain Newman, M.D. mold of caring physicians.)

Still it is understandable why they develop cold perspectives.

They're trained to prioritize, to emotionally detach themselves from their patients' pain and trauma, and to deal with crises as problems to be solved ... the solutions to be broken down into their component steps. Such a mindset works for them professionally.

In their personal lives, that mindset can be destructive. For many to become emotionally detached takes its toll. To step back from the trauma around them, they must cut loose in another phases of their lives.

On the other hand, become emotionally detached long enough, and you find it spreads like a drop of ink in a beaker throughout your whole life. You awaken one day to find yourself a stranger to your friends, your family ... even to yourself.

A few latent sadists are drawn to the profession. They channel their anti-social compulsions into socially approved actions. But like with scratching a mosquito bite, the more they stroke their sadistic natures, the stronger, the more demanding it becomes.

To make a physician real in your novel, you must incorporate all the above into that character and his/her environment. The same is true with every walk of life you have in your story.

CULTURE/CUSTOMS :

Now, this one is a bugger. There's real. And then, there's realistic.

I wrote a historical fantasy. Historical fiction is not a time machine.

Should you and I go back to the world of 1853, we would find the physical hygiene appalling and the moral consensus even worse. We would be walking around with our mouths open and clothes pins clamped on our noses.

Indigenous races were not considered even human. Women were thought of as a second-class, intellectually deficient breed. Slavery was applauded in most corners. The "science" of medicine was part butchery/part unfounded, faulty supposition.

Still, we would understand only 2 out of every 3 words spoken by the aristocracy : their vocabulary was extensive and littered with Latin and ancient Greek proverbs.

The Divine Right of kings was accepted in a third of the civilized world. And democracy was in its infancy.

Speech was more formal even in casual conversation, more elegant even.

For RITES OF PASSAGE, I had to create the illusion of 1853 in such a way as to root my reader in the reality of that age without tuning him out.

I made Samuel McCord a man educated by his Harvard professor father and inhuman Jesuit priests. His travels across the world has made him a more open-minded man. He has the sensibilities of a 21st century man at odds with his 19th century world.

Therefore, the reader can identify with him as he locks horns with the accepted status quo that offends his compassionate reasoning and the reader's modern sensibilities.
***
There was a TV series which highlights how the mindset and customs we take for granted are just a thing of the moment : LIFE ON MARS :

IS YOUR NOVEL REAL?

Odd question, isn't it?

Of course your novel's not real.

But it needs to be if you want it accepted by an agent,

bought by a money-tight publisher,

and loved by readers.

You suspend disbelief when certain things in the book you're reading rings true :

Clothes :

Hamlet doesn't wear gold chains and zoot suits. Samuel McCord is a brooding, reflective man who does most of his fighting at night.

He, like Hamlet, wears black. Mark Twain, Sam's life-long companion, wears his all white suit to stand apart from his brooding friend -- as he does everything in his rebellious life.

{Twain's eventual death sends Sam into a spiral of depression from which it takes him years to recover.}

Maija, Meiliori's contemptuous of society twin sister, wears a skin-tight "Dragon-Lady" scarlet outfit -- even in 1853, when the mere showing of a bare ankle was scandalous.

She, like Twain, is rebellious.

But unlike the humorist, Maija is cruel and sadistic -- which is why whenever she arranges to meet Sam after her sister has left him, Maija wears an exact copy of the retro-Victorian dress Meilori wore on the night she stormed off into the darkness.

SPEECH :

Do all your characters sound the same? It might surprise you that they do.

Close your eyes. Have a friend read a rather common sentence from two of your characters from two different parts of your novel. Can you tell who is talking just by their speech patterns? You should.

Reporters and policemen both talk tersely. The reporter tends to go for the dramatic. The policeman keeps objective. In public at least.

Out of public view, the policeman usually is cynical of everyone's motives, having seen too many at their worst. The reporter tends to go for the underdog, having seen big business and big government swallow the little guy much too often.

Not all teens talk the same. The nerds have their own phrases. And jocks their own vocabulary, matching their interests.

The shy mumble. The quarterback smirks. Yet that can be overdone into a cliche. The thinking, reflective quarterback from an abusive home could be the magnet that holds the interest and heartstrings of your readers.

MINDSET :

Take physicians.

One of my favorite novels is CAPTAIN NEWMAN M.D. by Leo Rosten
http://www.amazon.com/Captain-Newman-leo-rosten/dp/2221036816/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278471759&sr=1-1

It is a novel of a caring psychiatrist treating mentally bruised soldiers from WWII, told with wit and compassion.

But there are other mindsets among physicians. And it is understandable why they develop that perspective.

They're trained to prioritize, to emotionally detach themselves from their patients' pain and trauma, and to deal with crises as problems to be solved ... the solutions to be broken down into their component steps. Such a mindset works for them professionally.

In their personal lives, that mindset can be destructive. For many to become emotionally detached takes its toll. To step back from the trauma around them, they must cut loose in another phases of their lives.

On the other hand, become emotionally detached long enough, and you find it spreads like a drop of ink in a beaker throughout your whole life. You awaken one day to find yourself a stranger to your friends, your family ... even to yourself.

A few latent sadists are drawn to the profession. They channel their anti-social compulsions into socially approved actions. But like with scratching a mosquito bite, the more they stroke their sadistic natures, the stronger, the more demanding it becomes.

To make a physician real in your novel, you must incorporate all the above into that character and his/her environment. The same is true with every walk of life you have in your story.

CULTURE/CUSTOMS :

Now, this one is a bugger. There's real. And then, there's realistic.

I wrote a historical fantasy. Historical fiction is not a time machine.

Should you and I go back to the world of 1853, we would find the physical hygiene appalling and the moral consensus even worse. We would be walking around with our mouths open and clothes pins clamped on our noses.

Indigenous races were not considered even human. Women were thought of as a second-class, intellectually deficient breed. Slavery was applauded in most corners. The "science" of medicine was part butchery/part unfounded, faulty supposition.

Still, we would understand only 2 out of every 3 words spoken by the aristocracy : their vocabulary was extensive and littered with Latin and ancient Greek proverbs.

The Divine Right of kings was accepted in a third of the civilized world. And democracy was in its infancy.

Speech was more formal even in casual conversation, more elegant even.

For RITES OF PASSAGE, I had to create the illusion of 1853 in such a way as to root my reader in the reality of that age without tuning him out.

I made Samuel McCord a man educated by his Harvard professor father and inhuman Jesuit priests. His travels across the world has made him a more open-minded man. He has the sensibilities of a 21st century man at odds with the 19th century world.

Therefore, the reader can identify with him as he locks horns with the accepted status quo that offends his compassionate reasoning and the reader's modern sensibilities.
***
There was a TV series which highlights how the mindset and customs we take for granted are just a thing of the moment : LIFE ON MARS :

WHERE NO WIND STIRS BUT HATE_my HAPPY HALLOWEEN TALE

Patricia Timms-McGehee (http://gypsyrozpoetry.blogspot.com/ )

and I were exchanging emails about DreamTime Friday morning. Our talk sparked my memory of this short story, DARK WATERS.

My best friend, Sandra, prompted me to post it, despite its length, saying it touched her heart and birthed one too many nightmares. So here it it :



It is 1848.
The man with death in his veins, Samuel McCord, has followed 12 year old Sammy Clemens into his nightmare, for he senses the boy is the prey of a supernatural killer. We join Samuel inside the boy's nightmare :


It was on the far side of an apple orchard. I drew in the smell of the fruit. It might have been winter in the waking world, but I had a hunch it was always spring about these parts for Sammy.

From the nearest slave cabin a figure appeared in the open doorway.

Tall, muscular, his dark face strong and wise and kind. Only with the farthest stretch of language could you call the sorrowful accumulation of rags and patches which he wore clothes.

I hung my head. How could I call myself a lawman and let this evil go on around me?

The man called out to Sammy, his voice deep and rolling like the endless Mississippi.

“Sammy! Boy, don’t you never go to sleep? I been waiting and waiting for you. You in a heap of trouble.”

Sammy scampered right up to him, his arms outstretched, and hugged the huge man.

“Aw, Uncle Dan’l, I’m always in trouble. You know that.”

Daniel pushed the boy away gently. “This here is haunt trouble, Sammy.”

The man snagged the boy’s right ear and squeezed til Sammy danced in place.

“It’s out dere right now! You’s in terrible bad trouble.”

That got his attention. “It? What kind of it?”

“The Hunger, boy.”

“What in tarnation kind of name is that?”

“The onliest name I knows for it. Dat’s what my grandma called it. And it’s fierce evil, Sammy. It’s what got ahold of your Pa. And I ain’t strong enough to protect you -- not even here.”

A cold, dank breeze suddenly swirled all around the slave quarters, and a voice of winter hate breathed from everywhere and nowhere, “Especially here, slave.”

My stomach coiled tight like a rattler. A stillness fell on the night. Behind me an owl hooted far off in the woods. Death was coming. And she was hungry.

Sammy stiffened. “Uncle Dan’l, who was that?”

“Her. It was her.”

Sammy was about to say something else, but another sound cut him off.

The creaking whirr of a spinning wheel. One not recently oiled from the sound of it. And laughter, long, shrill peals, without a shred of sanity clinging to them.

But it was the rattling clatter of the spinning wheel that seemed to be getting to Sammy more than the souless laughter. Though, truth to tell, both were unnerving to me, like fingernails against a slate board.

DreamTime was a dark place. It held its secrets close. None knew them all. I knew a few. A very few.

But a brave slave and a terrified boy depended upon me.

I drew the shadows in upon myself like a blanket of night and watched, biding my time. Nothing. Only the screech of the spinning wheel. I turned my eyes towards the sound.

Electric blue mists thinned a dozen feet away. But deep within me, I got the sense of despair and hate and undying hunger.

No one sat at the wheel. It seemingly spun of its own accord. And with its own mad purpose.

Long tendrils of glowing icy blue mists were being sucked up one side of the wheel.

There they spun over and over again, slowly spewing out the other end into a billowing, tall column.

As the three of us watched, me in the shadows, Daniel and Sammy outlined by the moon, the column became a form of ---

Not a woman. Not a creature. Both. Neither. She flickered in the mottled moonlight, her shape changing constantly, never the same, never quite sane.

A sad-eyed blonde girl, whose left cheek sprouted bright white bone.

An old Negro woman, her face mostly rotted except for eyes full of hate.

An Indian mother, face all screwed up with terrible grief, holding a small cloth bundle.

The form changed yet again. Something not human, not insect, but mixed in a way that the mind could not forget though it screamed to do just that.

Bristling tendrils above a plated head and luminous eyes that were dark water where no wind stirred but the breath of hate.

A being both terrible and beautiful beyond any singing of it. Those unhuman eyes locked on Sammy, who clutched Daniel’s left arm.

The figure changed one last time. Growing smaller, it sent off black tendrils flowing out from it like the wake of a stone tossed into the sea.

I watched the blossoming dogwood wither in curling crisps under the misty tide. Sammy sucked in a breath at this new incarnation of the hunger.

“Laura,” breathed the boy, his eagle eyes glazing.

It was a lovely little blue-eyed blonde with long plaited hair who stood beckoning to the enraptured boy.

The powder-blue summer frock billowed out from a wind that none of us could feel. The young girl held out her slender arms in welcome.

Daniel held him back from rushing forward. “No, Sammy. No! Dat ain’t Laura Hawkins. Lord, no. Dat’s still --”

“Hold your tongue, slave!”

The voice was of a little girl. The tone was of a monster. But Sammy only heard the one and not the other.

“Let me go, Uncle Dan’l! Can’t you see --”

“I see the haunt what killed your Pa. And I won’t let you die like him.”

“Won’t let? Slave, you have no power here.”

Daniel stood straight and tall. “Here I be free, you haunt. You hear? Free!”

The face of the girl grew long as did her body, stretching into something neither human nor insect nor even animal.

The Hunger’s voice was cornered black with fungus,

“Free? There is no free. Not for you. Never for you. Soon it will be dawn, and your master will drag you back whether you would or not. Free? I would laugh were it not so pathetic.”

I saw Daniel’s face crumble in like the crest of a pie whose weight was too much for the emptiness within. His shoulders sagged down with the burden of that great emptiness. Something snapped inside me. The voice of caution still said wait.

But I just couldn’t. No man knew his hour. And this might be mine. But I wouldn’t let those words be Daniel’s epitaph. I just damn well wouldn’t.

Oddest thing. As I walked out of the shadows I could have sworn I heard the sad wailing of a Spanish guitar out in the night. Everyone froze, and I spoke.

“Don’t make me spank you, ma'am.”

“Capt. Sam!,” cried Sammy, then drew back, his fingers to his mouth.

I sighed. Here in DreamTime, my true nature peeked a bit more out of the shadows. And Sammy had seen it. I suddenly was mad, clear through mad. I wanted done with this. Good and done.

“You!,”spit the re-forming hunger.

I nodded. “You know who I am. You know what I can do. Don’t make me do it.”

I flicked my eyes to Daniel. “Bastards can put chains on your body. But only you can put them on your mind. Don’t let her sucker you.”

A hissing turned my head. Damn. It had come, not from the still changing form in front of me, but from the spinning wheel.

I caught something for a moment. I let my eyes go out of focus a bit. There. Again.

The wheel had moved. Or rather a part of it that should have been stiff wood. Were it unliving. And then it came to me.

The body in front of me was no more the hunger than the web was the spider. And with the thought, the churning wheel blurred in my sight becoming even more indistinct.

But I made out the mottled form of a strange creature. What little I could make of it made my mind want to cringe and scream.

Though the woman spun by the hunger might not be the creature itself, still like the spider’s web, it was connected to it. And that was all my right hand needed. I stepped so that my body blocked my right side from Sammy’s view.

I suddenly pulled up short. Most folks die in the quicksand of their own making. They rush in. They assume. They make a stupid mistake. They die.

I had already rushed in. I tried to back off the mark a bit. The hunger killed. But was it necessarily evil?

Was it past dealing with? Hell, why not make at least a stab at ending this without death?

“No one has to die tonight.”

The woman of mist was now as tall as me. Her long hair a hot sunset. Her dress a caress of black satin, plunged deep down in front. She flung back her living waterfall of hair.

“It is how I live. How you live.”

“But we can pass by death tonight.”

Eyes no longer remotely human stabbed into me. “Why?”

“Because there is more to life than death.”

“Not for me. I am the last of my kind. And those maggots behind you are an insult to the memory of beings they, and you, are not fit to touch with your shadows.”

I nodded. It came down to that then.

She smiled with needled teeth.

“You understand then? Good. But your death should have at least the same semblance of pleasure that the whelp’s father enjoyed. Come, let me embrace you.”

“No!,” cried Sammy. “Pa was a good man. He wouldn’t hug no shameless hussy like you.”

The hunger sneered, “Wrong, maggot. He rushed willing into my embrace, his despair finally forgotten. And his first words were those of lust fulfilled.”

She smiled smugly. “His last were not so pleased, of course.”

“You monster!,” swore the boy, who would have rushed the woman if Daniel hadn’t held him back.

“You cage and eat your own. You are the monsters.”

“I ain’t no monster!”

The hunger fixed him with her glittering eyes. “I choose my prey quite carefully, boy."

I sighed, “Be that as it may, neither Sammy nor Daniel die tonight.”

“And you?”

“Well, I’m a mite partial to my own hide too. So let’s just walk off this dance floor all of us in one piece, shall we?”

“I think -- not!”

She was fast. Mighty fast. But she had preyed in one stretch of land for so long against weaker victims that she felt stronger than she was.

Me? I had left chunks of my hide across near the whole world. And none of my enemies had ever been accused of being puny. But I had survived.

More or less.

Before she had moved, I had sensed her intent and ripped off my right glove. I shifted my shoulders, slipped past her thrust -- both of them.

One from the woman in front of me and the stinger from the spinning wheel creature.

That last had whizzed only a thin layer of skin from my left ear, so I’d no room to brag. In spite of everything, she had nearly killed me.

The woman of mist might not have been the hunger proper. But it was connected to her. And that was all that my right hand needed.

I wrapped what passed for my fingers around the woman’s icy throat. I bent down with her as she screamed writhing to the grass.

“What -- are -- you?”

“Pissed mostly. But sad too. You just couldn’t let it be, could you?”

She tore at me then. Both creature and woman.

But the more she slashed, the more I drained from her spirit. No lasting harm was done me, though the same couldn’t be said for the hunger.

“Now when I became bloodbrothers with Elu, I knew he was half Apache. It plain never occurred to me to ask what his mother was.”

The woman and creature were both flailing at me even more wildly. “What -- was -- she?”

“Still don’t rightly know for sure. Some say she is the World her own self. I have me some guesses of course. And while my guesses might be dead on or they might be full of worms, Mrs. McCord didn’t raise any son idiot enough to speak them to an enemy.”

Now while her slashings weren’t doing me any permanent damage, they sure hurt something fierce, so I commenced to drain her the faster.

“Let’s just say her blood played hell with mine, and mine with poor Elu. Truth to tell, I’d be hard put to say who got the worst end of that deal. But for me .... well, let’s just say, while you think you’re bad -- me, I - am - bad.”

I’ll give her this, she was dying and hurting and weakening, but she flat refused to ask for mercy. Pride.

You have to admire it sometimes, even when it is certain death, maybe especially those times.

“Kill her, Capt. Sam!,” screamed Sammy. “Kill her!”

That pulled me up short again. Did I want to do that? Did I? Did it always have to end in death? And in front of a young boy?

The woman of mists blurred, letting me see only a glimpse of the terrible beauty of the creature behind her.

“Do it. Kill me. It is fitting. You are the first of a breed as am I the last of one. Kill me and rid me of this farce I have been living for much too long.”

I shook my head, easing up on my draining but not on my hold of her. “There’s always mercy.”

“Mercy would be ending me.”

“I don’t see it that way. You may not be the last.”

“I would feel were it otherwise.”

“You might be wrong.”

“I am not. Kill me.”

Sammy cried, “Are you crazy? That’s a monster there.”

I called out loud. “We all do monstrous things, son. We can be better.”

The hunger sneered, “You delude yourself.”

“There’s a lot of that going around.”

“Let me live, and I will kill again.”

“There are a lot of human vermin out there.”

“I let them live so as to weaken the herd.”

It hit me then. “You cull out the best of us, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You hate us that much?”

“Yes.”

I called out loud,

“You hear that, Sammy? She thinks you’re one of the best of us. You want her to win? Just let hate take control, and the murderer of your father wins. Is that what you want? Is that what you really want?”

“N-No.”

“Then fight her -- and your own hate, else she will win. You hear me?”

“Y-Yes, Capt. Sam.”

She glared up at me, and I flinched at the clearer glimpse of her true self I saw, and her voice was as plates of slate rubbing together.

“In your place I would show no mercy.”

“I know.”

I snapped open my fingers. She lay still for a moment, then blurred totally away.

The spinning wheel creature groaned, shivered, then gathered its last strength. I watched it scuttle painfully away into the blackness.

Almost lost in the shadows, the hunger paused and turned its bulk my way slightly. “Then why?”

“There has to be a difference between me and those I fight, or what’s the point?”

“What is the point?”

“Damned if I know.”

I glanced back at Sammy and wished I hadn’t.

For a lightning's flicker, it seemed something burned hollow and bright in his eagle eyes. A something I had seen earlier in the night. A cruel radiance.

I looked again. It was gone. Or was it? I peered close into his eyes.

A thick shadow suddenly swallowed Sammy's face. Its color was the odd black of blood billowing underneath the water. The dark waters of a wounded soul.

Only time would tell if it had been there at all or had only been the illuson cast by my own guilt.

And if it had been there, could I kill the boy whose soul I had tried to save? Could I? Or did a monster like me even have that right?

I lived with my curse. Maybe I could teach the boy to live with his. Maybe.

If.

If the mother would let me. If Sammy would let me. If I could.

Daniel's sad bear eyes went from Sammy to me then back again to the boy. He looked like he wanted to cry or to cuss or both. Me, too.

{END?}

***

IS YOUR NOVEL REAL?

Odd question, isn't it?

Of course your novel's not real.

But it needs to be if you want it accepted by an agent and loved by readers.

You suspend disbelief when certain things in the book you're reading rings true :

Clothes :

Hamlet doesn't wear gold chains and zoot suits. Samuel McCord is a brooding, reflective man who does most of his fighting at night.

He, like Hamlet, wears black. Mark Twain, Sam's life-long companion, wears his all white suit to stand apart from his brooding friend -- as he does everything in his rebellious life.

{Twain's eventual death sends Sam into a spiral of depression from which it takes him years to recover.}

Maija, Meiliori's contemptuous of society twin sister, wears a skin-tight "Dragon-Lady" scarlet outfit -- even in 1853, when the mere showing of a bare ankle was scandalous.

She, like Twain, is rebellious.

But unlike the humorist, Maija is cruel and sadistic -- which is why whenever she arranges to meet Sam after her sister has left him, Maija wears an exact copy of the retro-Victorian dress Meilori wore on the night she stormed off into the darkness.

SPEECH :

Do all your characters sound the same? It might surprise you that they do.

Close your eyes. Have a friend read a rather common sentence from two of your characters from two different parts of your novel. Can you tell who is talking just by their speech patterns? You should.

Reporters and policemen both talk tersely. The reporter tends to go for the dramatic. The policeman keeps objective. In public at least.

Out of public view, the policeman usually is cynical of everyone's motives, having seen too many at their worst. The reporter tends to go for the underdog, having seen big business and big government swallow the little guy much too often.

Not all teens talk the same. The nerds have their own phrases. And jocks their own vocabulary, matching their interests.

The shy mumble. The quarterback smirks. Yet that can be overdone into a cliche. The thinking, reflective quarterback from an abusive home could be the magnet that holds the interest and heartstrings of your readers.

MINDSET :

Take physicians.

One of my favorite novels is CAPTAIN NEWMAN M.D. by Leo Rosten
http://www.amazon.com/Captain-Newman-leo-rosten/dp/2221036816/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278471759&sr=1-1

It is a novel of a caring psychiatrist treating mentally bruised soldiers from WWII, told with wit and compassion.

But there are other mindsets among physicians. And it is understandable why they develop that perspective.

They're trained to prioritize, to emotionally detach themselves from their patients' pain and trauma, and to deal with crises as problems to be solved ... the solutions to be broken down into their component steps. Such a mindset works for them professionally.

In their personal lives, that mindset can be destructive. For many to become emotionally detached takes its toll. To step back from the trauma around them, they must cut loose in another phases of their lives.

On the other hand, become emotionally detached long enough, and you find it spreads like a drop of ink in a beaker throughout your whole life. You awaken one day to find yourself a stranger to your friends, your family ... even to yourself.

A few latent sadists are drawn to the profession. They channel their anti-social compulsions into socially approved actions. But like with scratching a mosquito bite, the more they stroke their sadistic natures, the stronger, the more demanding it becomes.

To make a physician real in your novel, you must incorporate all the above into that character and his/her environment. The same is true with every walk of life you have in your story.

CULTURE/CUSTOMS :

Now, this one is a bugger. There's real. And then, there's realistic.

I wrote a historical fantasy. Historical fiction is not a time machine.

Should you and I go back to the world of 1853, we would find the physical hygiene appalling and the moral consensus even worse. We would be walking around with our mouths open and clothes pins clamped on our noses.

Indigenous races were not considered even human. Women were thought of as a second-class, intellectually deficient breed. Slavery was applauded in most corners. The "science" of medicine was part butchery/part unfounded, faulty supposition.

Still, we would understand only 2 out of every 3 words spoken by the aristocracy : their vocabulary was extensive and littered with Latin and ancient Greek proverbs.

The Divine Right of kings was accepted in a third of the civilized world. And democracy was in its infancy.

Speech was more formal even in casual conversation, more elegant even.

For RITES OF PASSAGE, I had to create the illusion of 1853 in such a way as to root my reader in the reality of that age without tuning him out.

I made Samuel McCord a man educated by his Harvard professor father and inhuman Jesuit priests. His travels across the world has made him a more open-minded man. He has the sensibilities of a 21st century man at odds with the 19th century world.

Therefore, the reader can identify with him as he locks horns with the accepted status quo that offends his compassionate reasoning and the reader's modern sensibilities.
***

There was a TV series which highlights how the mindset and customs we take for granted are just a thing of the moment : LIFE ON MARS :

CAN YOU HEAR THE CITY'S LAMENT?

Several readers have emailed me asking how to make the locale a character in their novels. I am hardly an authority, having published no novels. But what I do know I am more than willing to share. And what I know might just be so.

Just take what seems reasonable to you and leave the rest to the winds.

As for FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, I lived on the streets of New Orleans for a time so the images, smells, and despair were fresh in my mind. Which was a help and a hindrance. What one written detail brought into focus for me would not be in the memories of most of my readers. I had to enter the blank slate of the reader's mind. Evoke in him/her an archetypal detail of touch, taste, and sight that would paint a landscape of the mind. Every reading experience is a collaboration between reader and author in that way. No two readers will take away the same mental images from the same author's words because each reader has his own distinct treasure-trove of memories and beliefs.

Still every author must bring his readers into the "now" of the novel's locale. Not just by sight but by smell and by touch -- and even more important by the emotions evoked by each of those details. Go from the universal to the specific with words. Meld detail with the characters' emotions.

In FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE, I used actual quotes of politicians at the time of Katrina to ground the reader in the reality of the hurricane's aftermath, slowly melding the fantasy aspects so that the fantastic became more acceptable. And at the same time, I used specific sensory details, blending them in with the main character's emotions to give the locale a personality of its own. As in the beginning of chapter five :


CHAPTER FIVE

THEY MOVE IN THE SHADOWS

“We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans.
We couldn’t do it, but God did.”
- Rep. Richard Baker to lobbyists.
{as quoted in The Wall Street Journal
September 9, 2005.}

An odd feeling came over me as I looked at the crowd in front of the Convention Center. For a fleeting moment, I saw the overgrown square of trees and brush it once had been. I remembered when I had been young, when every moment had been crisp and fresh, where happiness and heartache had quickly changed positions, and life was full of hope and promise. Now, things were crowded, ugly, and the only hope was for a good death.

What had Elu once told me? "When you were born, you cried and those around you rejoiced. Live your life, Dyami, so that when you die, those around you will cry, and you will rejoice."

I put my Ranger face on. The one that told onlookers that their deaths would make my life easier. And judging from some of the sullen, angry faces in front of me, sadly, that was probably true. It was a harsh look, but if it saved me from killing then it was a pretense I was willing to fake.

Most of those sitting, standing, and laying in front of the center were just scared and filled with uncertainty and dread. But those things quickly turned crowds into mobs. The water was only ankle-deep by the time I got to the front walk. But the shit I was about to walk into was much deeper.

I looked into their hollow eyes. Like most folks in this day and age, they had gone about their lives, quietly trying to swallow the fear that their lives had somehow gotten out of control and things were falling apart. Now, their worst nightmare had come to life before their eyes. Their predictable world had crumbled before their eyes. Their next meal was no longer certain, much less their safety. What did Al Einstein tell me during that last chess game?

"The true tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he still lives." Then, I heard the squalling.

I made a face. As I have stated before, I am not a nice man. For one thing, I hate screaming babies. The more of them I hear, the more I want to lash out and hit something. Maybe it was because I never had one of my own. Maybe it was my sensitive hearing. Or maybe it came from me being a man. Men just naturally want to fix whatever they see that is broken. And I couldn’t do that with a squalling baby. Most folks get downright cranky when you snatch their howling baby to see what is broken with the damn thing.

And there were a lot of babies crying as I stepped onto the water-covered sidewalk. I frowned, and those closest to me cringed. I have that effect on a lot of folks. Go figure.

My better self urged compassion. I found it odd that there was a me that I couldn't see, that walked beside me and commented on my thoughts, urging kindness when I would be cruel. I snorted. I was too old to go crazy. Hell, at my age I should already be there.
***
Another route to making the locale a character in itself is to bring into sharp focus the essence of the particular times when you are bringing the reader to walk among your characters in their struggles.

Hurricane Rita scattered my friends and I all over the southern United States. A good friend, Debbie {her last name I will leave a mystery to protect any potential fallout from this story,} was in a church-run Katrina/Rita shelter. As a teacher, it fell to her to teach an English class of displaced urban high schoolers. The one book that the church shelter had multiple copies of was THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKEBERRY FINN. Many of her students were outraged at the portrayal and seeming acceptance of racism in the novel.

In an emailed plea, Debbie asked that while I was driving rare blood over Southern Louisiana, if I could write a short story that would help her paint the times of the novel in such a way that her students would better grasp the mindset of that period -- and that for such a time, Samuel Clemens was actually a liberal humanitarian. And if I could make it a horror story that would be great. And if I could make it a horror story that wouldn't outrage the church leaders that would be even better.

"Was that all?," I emailed back. "You're sure that you don't want me to establish world peace while I'm at it?" She assured me that she had faith in me. That made one of us.

But I gave it my best shot.

I tried for a rural horror story that would present the actual timbre of the 1840's in a way that was acceptable to urban highschoolers. Irony is a great way to hook a reader. So I tapped my epic undead Texas Ranger, Samuel McCord, for the Mission Impossible. His scholar's mind, philosopher's spirit, and poet's soul made him an uneasy fit for the Texas Rangers. A man whose belief in the worth of any human, no matter the skin color, made him perfect to espouse values readily accepted in today's culture but made him a pariah in his own. And for good measure, I threw in a 12 year old Samuel Clemens and a monster whose natural habitat was the dreamscape of humans. And to top off the irony, I focused on the painful problem of how did a lawman who despised slavery keep true to his vow to uphold the law when slavery was legal.

Debbie emailed me that my story held her students captive and led to a week-long discussion of what the times must have like, what Manifest Destiny was, and how difficult it must have been to live honorably in times when compassion to minorities was a crime. Debbie assured me it was my story that made her teaching HUCKLEBERRY FINN possible.

To show you how I used detail plus a character's emotions and thoughts to make a locale a character in its own right, here is a small excerpt from the short story, DARK WATERS :

Mrs. Clemens gave me a hard look, then nodded and called out, “Jennie!”

A black woman, her lined face a sad map of the harsh life she’d led, came hesitantly into the room. “Yes, Miss Jane.”

“Please show Capt. McCord to the guest bedroom.”

She flicked uneasy eyes to me, seeming to prefer being alone with a rattler than with me. “Will do, Missy.”

As we walked down the spacious hallway, she edged closer to me. Her whole body quivered as if she wanted nothing so much as to run as far away from me as possible. I didn’t blame her. Fact was I felt much the same way, but I was stuck with me. She stopped suddenly.

She swallowed hard once, then managed to get out her words, “Mister, there’s monstrous mean haunts in this world. And then there be some who are damn fool enough to try and do good, only they ends up making things terrible bad for everyone around them.”

She forced herself to look me in the eyes. “Which one is you?”

“The damn fool kind.”

She almost smiled. “Leastways you be a truth-telling haunt.”

“It’s a failing.”

“That kind of thinking is what makes you a haunt.”

She was wrong. But there was a lot of that going around. Why tilt her cart if I didn’t have to?

I noticed as we walked that the walls showed clean squares where ornate frames had once hung, depressions in the wood floor where heavy furniture had once long stood. I said nothing. But my straying eyes had betrayed me to the slave, whose life I wagered had often counted on her being able to read the expression of the whites around her.

“Miss Jane has gone through terrible, sad times. Mr. Marshal he done tried, but he ain’t got a lick of business sense. Me, I’m the last thing they own of any value. And if’n I hadn’t helped birth little Sammy and saved him from drowning that time in Bear Creek, I’d be gone like everythin’ else.”

I felt sick. Thing. She had called herself a thing. What kind of world was it when one race made another think of themselves that way?

I shook my head. “They don’t own you anymore.”

Her dusky face went as sick pale as it could get. “M-Mr. Marshall done sold me to dat devil Beebe!”

I reached inside my buckskin jacket and pulled out the hastily written bill of sale. “He was going to. But ... things didn't turn out like he planned. So he was forced to sell you to a stranger ... to me.”

I gave her the paper. She took it with trembling fingers. She stared at it hollow-eyed as if it were the parchment selling her soul to the devil.

“I - I can’t read, mister.”

“Get Sammy to teach you.”

She glared at me. “You is evil!”

“Turn it over, Jennie.”

“I done told you I can’t read!”

“But Sammy can. Show it to him. He’ll tell you that I’ve given ownership of you to --”

Jennie’s face became all eyes. “T-To little Sammy? Oh, bless --”

I shook my head. “No, Jennie.”

She took a step backwards, her voice becoming a soft wail. “Not back to Mr. Marshall? He’ll just be selling me again.”

I reached out with my gloved right hand that must never touch bare, innocent flesh and softly squeezed her upper right arm. “No, I gave ownership of you to --- you.”

“I’m -- I’m free?”

“Well, the judge said you were priceless.”

“Oh, you is one of the good haunts!”

She rushed and hugged me, stiffening as she felt how cold my whole body was. She edged back a step. I met her suddenly hollow eyes.

I smiled sad. “But still a haunt.”

We were silent all the way to the guest bedroom. She opened the door then her mouth. No words came out. But she did give me back my sad smile. I watched her walk away staring at the bill of sales as if it were holy writ. It was something. More than a haunt like me had the right to expect. Maybe my pillow would be the softer for it.
******
Later on in the story, McCord is inside the nightmare of 12 year old Samuel Clemens :

I slipped up far behind the boy. I stayed in the shadows to get the lay of the land. With his slight, shuffling gait, Sammy was making his way to a row of tiny log cabins. I smelled sweat and weariness. But I heard muffled, happy singing inspite of it. My guts went cold. Slave quarters.

Sometimes I was glad I wasn’t human.

It was on the far side of an apple orchard. I drew in the smell of the fruit. It might have been winter in the waking world, but I had a hunch it was always spring about these parts for Sammy. I realized then that I was standing at the edge of a thicket of hickory and walnut trees. Their scent caught me up with my own memories of a lost childhood. I forced them back. Memory Lane was a dead end street. Leastways for such as me.

From the nearest cabin a figure appeared in the black, open doorway. Tall, muscular, his dark face strong and wise and kind. Only with the farthest stretch of language could you call the sorrowful accumulation of rags and patches which he wore clothes. I hung my head. How could I call myself a lawman and let this evil go on around me?

Elu kept on telling me that what the white man called legal wasn’t necessarily right just because of the name he slapped on it. I could see his dried apricot face in my mind as I heard him sighing. "There is a difference in the white man’s world between justice and his rules. And that difference is as wide as the Mississippi you head to, as sharp as day is from night, and as simple as greed."

Because I believed Elu was right and lived accordingly, I was an outcast among civilized folks, hell, even among the Rangers, for I made no allowance for the standing, class, or race of any man I dealt with. I felt my face go tighter. All I cared to know was that a man was a human being -- that was enough for me. He couldn’t get any worse than that. Except for me. I had become much, much worse.

******
And to make the locale of FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE more real, here is a music video :