Sometime back around the year 2000 I picked up the banjo. I have since put it down again (save your applause for the end please) to devote my idle hours to writing. Bela Fleck is one of the banjo players (gross understatement he’s a hella banjo player and more) I admire most. He has such a playful way of interacting with his audience I just enjoy the hell out of his music.
So, I have the first two of his “Tales from the Acoustic Planet” CD’s. When I saw that there was a new volume out I didn’t pass GO, didn’t collect two hundred dollars, but drove my cursor right over to the iTunes store and bought me some banjo music.
Well, as sometimes happens when you don’t pay attention, I got something way different than what I set out to purchase. Turns out that Bela had taken a trip to Africa and examined the roots of the banjo (which are varied and largely vegetable based but goat parts do sometimes factor in).
I listened to this music that was rhythmic, lyrical and whose language was completely incomprehensible to me. Exactly what were the songs on that CD about? As usual I didn’t bother to stop and research, but began to consider how traditional songs and the printed word mirror each other.
I know that in bluegrass music, especially old time music where the banjo is frequently featured, it is not uncommon for any random song picked from the playlist to be a tune about a woman who came to a bad end. There’s pretty Polly - bad end, Jezebel - bad end, Rose Connelly - bad end, Lola Lee - bad end. Some poor lovely woman (sometimes barely more than a girl) is always being killed for love in those songs. Frequently they get left in some body of cold water afterward, which I really think is piling on. Sometimes the fella comes to a bad end but it’s usually painted more as a heroic adventure. (See Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, The Night that the Lights Went Out in Georgia).
I wondered if the African songs on Bella’s vol. 3 reflect those same themes? Sorrow and love are the foundation emotions, the slabs upon which the most common structures are built. Our musical roots whether hill music from appalachia, celtic tales from the Emerald Isle or the stormy shores of Scotland, ballads of heroes, tragedies, wild epic adventures, or biblical tributes, each note plays a tentative vibrato on the common threads that run through all our lives. Sometimes our instruments are a little out of tune, sometimes a lot. So is it any wonder that themes of love and violence thrive in popular fiction? They always have in european culture but African? I just don’t know enough to say.
Guinevere - bad end, Juliette - bad end, Joan of Arc…see, not a recent phenomenon. Of course lately the girls have been getting theirs too. Janie got a gun after all…
Sometime around a child’s third birthday most kids learn to count to three and beyond. Before that one and two are it. By the end of grade school they can usually count to whatever number they are inspired to count to. By senior year in High School they’ve pretty much given up counting past two for most things because, really who wants to be the third wheel?
So when I saw a recent notice (thank you Cory Doctorow) that someone was floating a petition around the idea of using the prefix “hella” as a new indicator for this size number: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that would be 10^27 if you’re really wondering) I shook my head - too many comma’s. If you’ve read this blog for very long you probably have an idea where I stand on THOSE.
I understand the math guys who feel compelled to communicate the relative size of something like distance between our sun and oh, say the third star to the left of Jupiter’s fifth moon on December 12, 2012 as seen through Hubble’s squishendy splurch telescope.
I even understand the OCD guys who have to have a name for everything like the uvula, and paraphiltrum {blog author makes squishy doubtfilled twisty face where philtrum is definitely out of square expressing satirical disbelief}
But really, for the rest of us? Not critically important to know.
It’s just another number we’ll never see on the family truckster’s odometer. Because let’s face it - they haven’t made trucksters that would go over 100k since 1963.
On the other hand, it would be easy to make the top Hellion seller’s list and that would be quite good. Easy to get your word count in under the top limit of 65 hellion.
A hellion dollar contract for your novel would result in a commission of about $ 250000000000000000000000000.00 give or take a few pennies assuming a commission rate of 25% which I think would be quite reasonable if the Agent sold a book for that much.
Something like a quarter hella I think. Maybe 2500 yotta? or .25 Octillion maybe (if Octillion exists, the one before it is Septillion so I’m guessing here and no you don’t want to see the condition of my check register…it is sad.) And I don’t even want to think about how much tax you’d have to pay on that. I guess the good news there is you’d only have to pay social security tax on the first $90K or so. But that one sale would wipe out the budget deficit so I guess it’s not such a bad thing really, then the guys in Washington would have to yammer about something else.
The point is that in the context of scale a number that big to most of us is just a jillion, a gazillion, a mmmph, or gobs. Frankly, it’s more than a handful which in the wise words of my now graying former teenage guy compadres is just ” a waste”.
Come to think of it, wouldn’t it be entertaining to watch the look on the teller’s face as she tried to figure out how to key in a number that exceeds the bank computer systems capacity?
Scientific notation to balance my checkbook? Definitely a hella long shot.
When I wrote the last post I had no idea this would become a theme but it’s starting to look that way.
Mack Fire Truck
Over the weekend my fabulous friend Meg and I went on our annual Writers Weekend. We planned to go to Council Grove Lake in Kansas. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t cooperate. Saturday’s forecast called for 28 degrees for a low temperature and snow. I’m pretty game for camping in cold weather but Meg was leery of spending the weekend camping in snow so we decided to alter our plans. We headed to Missouri and Truman Lake whose forecast was ten degrees warmer for the low.
Southwest view from Talley Bend Campground
The camping was wonderful and Meg and I were actually very productive. She worked on a short story idea that had been bumping around. She cranked out about 2100 words, and I managed to get about 12 pages done.
Except for a few minor hitches with the trailer and water supply we were filled to the gills with carbohydrates, managed to stay warm and energized in spite of the cool fall weather. There were very few people there except for the two of us and people fishing. Lots and lots of fishing. Apparently the catfish and - I don’t know what else - was biting last weekend.
By now you’re probably wondering “What on earth does this have to do with firetrucks?”
Well, Sunday afternoon a cloud of black smoke settled down on our campsite from the hill behind us. We were camping at the edge of a lake but all behind us was a forest of sorts. No doubt there was a fire, and though we were away from the trees by the water edge, it was worrisome and well frankly, I was curious.
We didn’t think twice before jumping in Big Bird and heading up the hill.
A quarter mile up the road we found a campsite where a two guys got more of a barbeque than they signed up for.
According to the people I talked to the two men came back from fishing, hung their catch up on the line outside, and went into the trailer. The trailer they were in was about a 16 or 18 foot trailer - I’m guessing, and from all accounts they were extremely pleased having purchased it. Apparently it made a nice little fishing cabin right up until the electrical fire started. I didn’t see it, but these guys were good. They had the sense to get the propane turned off, physically removed the tank(s) from the mounting on the front of the trailer, and then unplugged the trailer from the electrical outlet prior to running out of harms way.
RV fire at Talley Bend
The campground does not have hydrants at each campsite like some places, just electrical, so the water source was not really convenient to the site. Not that pouring water on all that melting plastic and who knows what else is necessarily a good idea, I remember something about not putting water on oil fires don’t know how that might apply to fiberglass, plastic etc.
The fire was good and high when Meg and I showed up. It doesn’t show very well here because it had already been burning for about half an hour by the time I took these photos. Keep in mind the trailer would have been about a foot higher than the fireman’s head shown in these pics.
Shortly after that I took Meg back to the trailer. I had to go back with the cell phone camera and take photos for the blog.
RV Fire view 2 Talley Bend Campground
I did give the guy my card so he could contact me for pictures if he wanted to. I’m sure he thought I was a PITA busybody. I was moderately embarassed with my behavior but I was interested in watching the firemen and looking at the firetrucks (there were two, the white Mack and a new red one from Iconia Fire District) and like any good gawker I rationalized my behavior and continued what I was doing.
So even though I never got the pictures posted from the car fire last week (it was just smoke over the trees), I was able to bring you these and the following short video.
If you’ve got the audio on you may hear a burst of laughter. That’s me. Apparently I surprised the volunteer firefighter with my cell phone and he gave a kind of startled look that was priceless, but not really captured in the video. I was laughing at his expression, not the unfortunate situation that brought him to the park that day. And that they were volunteers is speculation on my part. These two were wearing jeans and the guys that showed up in the later fire truck had the full protective gear.
And just as before I imagine the guys went back to the fire station thinking it had been an interesting day. The fisherman took his catch and went home bummed.
Years ago I was a switchboard operator. We had these books filled with that pressure sensitive paper that bruises the second copy when you write on the first page. You may remember it as the successor to carbon paper duplicate forms. Of course if you do, YOU’RE OLD. Well, maybe not THAT old, but let’s just say the shiny has worn off us both.
So getting back to the point, when ‘whoever’ was ‘out’, you would write down any messages transcribed in these spiral bound books, then tear off the top copy of the message and give it to the intended recipient. If it involved poking the message down on a metal spike - well, that made it even more satisfying.
Yes, this was pre-voicemail, pre-cell phones, pre-internet. Difficult to imagine, hard to remember. Though it was post white-out, it was pre - wait for it - post-it-notes. Impossible you say? Not at all. Once upon a time we had NO sticky notes. The horror!
These days everything changes so quickly it’s difficult to keep up with it all, technology in particular. For example, August 10th, I completely missed a review on a delightful book “Pregnesia” a Harlequin Intrigue by Carla Cassidy at Smart Bitches Trashy Books. (<-link to the review - go there, read that) I happened to be out of town at the lake, after a very busy week where I was actually forced to do - gasp - work at my job. (Yeah, that’s what I said.) In fact, I was reading one of Ms. Cassidy’s other recent titles “Last Gasp” a very very good single title romantic suspense from Signet Eclipse, when someone noticed the author’s name on the cover and told me about the Bitches review.
I finally got to read the review this afternoon when I returned to the land of the internet and quilted two-ply. It was a excellent example of well seasoned snark. I always expect to be entertained by the Bitches - They are after all quite smart (it says so right in their URL). On this day - they out did themselves.
The guest reviewer “Nonnie” gave a long list of reasons why Pregnesia is the best amnesiac pregnant saved by the Navy SEAL book ever (or something to that effect) and OMG the author responded. Not in the pit-bull-snapping-manner of many publicly wounded authors, but in a kind, funny, equally snarky, yet respectful way. Yes, Ms. Cassidy found a way to graciously acknowledge the barbs pricking at her work without embarrassing herself in the process. In fact the very opposite was the case as she showed the audience exactly how grace, charm and wit can turn around something that could have been unpleasant. Ms. Cassidy spun straw into gold. The whole exchange including all 128 comments (at my last count) was fabulous and positive.
When I grow up to be a one of those rich romance author types I hope I have the good sense and grace to be just like Carla Cassidy.
—-
Incidentally, I did finish Last Gasp about 2am Saturday night and she had me with this one. I never did figure out for sure who the killer was until the very end. Highly recommend the book for those who like Romantic Suspense.
I am known as a gadget girl I’ll give you that one. But as much as an early adopter as I like to think myself, I have been sort of a curmudgeon about this whole social networking thing. I did the thing. You know the one, where you say I’ll never go on facebook. I’m just not interested. Well, then someone guilted me into it and now I’ve reconnected with a mass of people I thought I’d left behind. Not intentionally you understand but left behind regardless.
So I finally got curious about this twitter thing. It was different enough that I think if I hadn’t already acquiesced to facebook I might have missed the boat altogether. I’m still not exactly sure how to use it but then I’m not at all sure that very many people do. So I decided to dip my toe in the water. To find out exactly what all the fuss is about.
First of all I have to say it is a very egotistical thing to think that anyone is really that interested in whatever 140 character glop of insight I think I have to share. (Ok, I admit the blog is pretty much the same thing. You got me there.)
But it does seem to make a pretty good promotional medium. Assuming of course you can find the people to follow that say interesting things, or convince people who you think may be interested in what you have to say, to follow you. It’s a bit of a mind bender as well as a tongue twister.
So I signed up for an account. Yes, one more in a string of accounts. Last time I checked I had about 75,000 of them out there. Sorry, that’s a rant for a different day. So I signed up and began looking around for things that interested me. The trick for me was to do a search on terms that I was interested in. Writing and writers, crime etc. So now I follow Harlan Coban and the Boston PD. Sweet.
These important bits of information came across today:
VEHICLE v BUILDING: Andrew Square - A car has crashed into Dunkin Donuts, avoid the area. (from the Boston PD) Ironic no? The cops HAD to go to the donut shop. I’m just saying…looks a little bit like a set up to me.
elmoreleonard Live at Border’s B’ham. Peter Leonard to Elmore: Any advice to budding writers? Elmore: Write.
and one after my own heart:
SmartBitchesHave wireless internet, yet am tempted away from 300+ messages by issue of Corn and Soybean Digest magazine. Edamame popularity = good.
Oh, those are the snarky bits I love to roll around on my tongue.
I have to admit I did secretly preen just a little bit when thirty minutes into my twitter account I was being followed. And not by creepy old guys but by publishers and agents. So what if I “followed” them first and they retaliated in the unlikely event that I would prove to be clever and witty on the tweet. Still I felt a kinship to Sally Field at that moment.
The thing I have enjoyed the most about twitter is the huge amount of interesting blogs I’ve come across because of tweets publicizing their existence. Sites I would likely have missed without it. Here are a few of my favorites:
http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/ He has a pretty large following and an entertaining community. Reading through the comments on his blog the other day made me wonder how much traffic twitter has generated for him.
Another one I found by following Allison Brennan is Murderati where she and some other authors blog. http://www.murderati.com/
I can’t remember who I followed for this one but I’ve seen some interesting posts on Jane Friedman’s blog at Writers Digest http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules/ I subscribe to Writers Digest and never saw it.
And some people are just twits with wit. DanKennedy_NYC for example. He tweets funny things.
Lee Loflan and Daniel S. Baum are a few others that I latched onto early and have followed with interest. So follow me on twitter? You can if you want. Gretchenjones is my code name. But you’ll get more out of finding out who I follow than by following me alone.
I recently read a historical romance where the hero takes the heroine off to collect swamp gas. How romantic. Not very believable either. Though you gotta give the author a triple bonus score for creativity. Sure it was plausible but still very silly.
So how realistic does a concept have to be for the reader to buy it?
Vampires, Werewolves, time travel, ok. Not very realistic. That whole suspension of disbelief thing. So why is it that the swamp farts thing bothered me? Well, I think first of all that the author was trying to get the reader to buy into the hero as a scientist (a titled english nobleman, as if student of methane weren’t enough to keep him busy). I think perhaps it was the context that pulled me out of the story. That or maybe it was the fact that the Duke of Earl or Earl of Duke I forget - anyway…He took the heroine (a bookish girl) out in a canoe or dinghy or some other small water craft into the swamp in the early morning hours to collect the swamp gas. Now maybe it’s just me but I have always thought swamp gas was inherently funny. And this book was decidedly not a comedy. There was pedophilia, satanic rituals, child abuse, pre-marital sex scandals - egads! It was a historical after all. But the swamp gas. pfffft. That clinched it for me.
If you’d like to bore yourself with a diatribe on that subject you can find a fascinating (eh) page with scads of details here.
I know I’ve blogged about this before but lately the spammers have been driving me crazy on the blog. It’s not like this is the most popular blog out there on the interweb, and I certainly don’t publicize it but they do find me regardless.
There are some writers I know who use the names of spammers in their novels for the less than desireable characters we love to hate. I’ve thought about doing that but for some reason I can’t figure out a way to work Carogloppyfag into my novel. At any rate if any of the spammers bother to read this. I moderate my comments so you’re wasting your time trying to post. For those of you who actually do read my blog and know me or are simply interested for some strange reason, patience will get your comment posted viewably.
A few weeks ago I received an error message at work from one of the servers I administer that had me baffled. I understand in principle what it was trying to say (which frankly has me a little worried about my sanity) but practically I had no idea what it meant. So for today’s oxymoron - that had my mind bent for the better part of that morning - I give you the message from the Rational Server.
Today I received spam at work. At least I think it’s spam. I can’t really tell for sure because it was written in kanji of some sort. Yep, those cute little asian symbols that they use for their alphabet. I’ve scrunched it down so it wouldn’t take up so much room
So here’s the thing that has me scratching my head. Normally I get spam and I just ignore it, delete it. Like all those posts from people who visit my website hoping to post ads for whatever product they’re hawking that has nothing whatsoever to do with me or my blog. Sometimes they even say something nice about my writing but I have to be suspicious because they’re posting from some marketing site (BTW - Thanks very much Chris for the compliment).
But in this case I really couldn’t figure out what they were hawking. Well, one of them had two english words on it. DVD and SEX . So that one was obvious. It had a whole list of numbered bullet points too but I have no idea what their carefully considered and presented arguments were.
The other e-mail had only characters no english words. So it could be that my man parts are too small or otherwise unsuitable (I of course do not have any dangly bits of my own but that never seems to matter). The good news is that (gross generalization here) it’s probably very polite about the fact that my parts are deficient.
It could be that there is some remarkable new stock product that I will never be able to get in on the ground floor of. The possibilities are staggering in their breadth.
The fact that I received them two minutes apart doesn’t do anything for my e-mail confidence today but hopefully it’s a fluke.
So here’s hoping your spam is comprehensible and amusing. Thank goodness it’s Friday!
This is an interesting blog article AngelaHoycom3-27-2008
that arrived in my inbox today that talks about Amazon trying to gain a monopoly in POD publishing.
Essentially, publishers who produce books using POD (Print On Demand) will have to use Amazon to print their books (instead of doing it themselves) or they won’t allow them to sell through their site. (Which they have allowed ever since Print On Demand publishing became popular).
Amazon bought their own POD publisher a couple of years ago and are trying to strong arm authors, POD Publishers etc. to use them. If they can do it with books why not music. Artists can only sell their goods on Amazon if Amazon presses the CD’s. Sounds lucrative. Let’s see if the authors move away from Amazon in droves.
Here’s another link that explains it better than I have:
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