I Have a Secret...

In my last post, I referred to a writer's group I procrastinated in was involved with from about 1991-96. Anonymous Writers of London were a group of people--mothers, fathers, students, retirees and day-job workers--who gathered on a bi-weekly basis to share and critique their work in progress and learn from one another. There were a few talented 'up-and-comers' in the group. One woman in particular, in my humble opinion, displayed a tremendous work ethic and regularly demonstrated a writing style and voice that proved she was ready to make the leap to the elusive 'next level'. The young lady? Her name was Kelley Armstrong.

For the benefit of those who may not have heard of Ms. Armstrong, she is the New York Times bestselling author of the Nadia Stafford mystery series and the Otherworld series of novels. The 10th book in the series, Frostbitten, is now available. Her second Otherworld anthology for charity, Tales of the Otherworld, will be out in April 2010 and The Reckoning (third book in the Darkest Powers Trilogy, a YA urban fantasy) will be available May 2010. More on Kelley's background and her books can be found at Wikipedia here.

Lori Titus at Flashes in the Dark did a great interview with Kelley Armstrong last Sunday in her regular 'Sunday Special' feature. For those of you who may have missed it I have the link here. I have known of Kelley's success as a writer of horror, fantasy, and crime fiction for years but have never contacted her since our AWOL days...until last week. I emailed her assistant, Alison, who kindly passed along my message to Kelley, who has been in Montreal this past week end as 'Author Guest of Honour' at the Con*Cept convention. She graciously took time out of her busy schedule to get back to me and agreed to a 'Questions and Answers' session here on my blog.

I invite all of my online friends--writers of horror, fantasy, mystery, crime fiction, etc.--to submit questions for Kelley Armstrong to answer. I also ask you to pass on my request to your readers in hopes of getting a great pool of questions. I will collect the questions and pass them on to Kelley. She will return her responses and I will post the questions and answers on my blog in the near future.

Some points that I would like to make about this Q & A session:

• I will send all questions to Kelley but, depending on the number of questions and time constraints, she may not get to them all.


• I will post the questions and answers, but not the names of the people that wrote the question (to protect the 'shy', or in the event that not all are answered or there are duplicates of questions).


• I am confident there will be some creative 'thinking outside the box' sorts of questions. There are some regularly asked Q & A at her website here, so I would advise checking it out to avoid asking her questions she frequently receives. Actually, check out her website anyway as there's a tremendous amount of information to be found there.


• Rather than posting your questions in the comments section, I ask that you please email them to me at awdavidson.nl@gmail.com (I'll give until end of the day Wednesday the 7th).
  
  
  I think that Kelley Armstrong is affording us a unique opportunity to 'pick her brain' about all things horror and fantasy. She is a creator of otherworlds with vampires and werewolves, with witches and demons. Kelley has had experience with online fiction, short stories in anthologies, E-serials and episodic novels with continuing plot lines. She even noted in her email that she has participated in NaNoWriMo and hosts a group on her site to encourage others. I look forward to reading your submitted questions. Thanks!

Thank You Sir, May I Have Another?

Since beginning blogging, and paying a bit more attention to writing related issues, I have been hunting for a box that contained old high school and university papers. I even paid my son to search the crawl space on my behalf. He could not find it but, in Quasimodo fashion, I searched the smelly little space until I found pay dirt. Not only did I find the papers, but also 3 short stories that I wrote in the early '90's while meeting with our creative writing group in London. That was called AWOL--Anonymous Writers of London, not to be confused with the other AWOL in town, Adventurous Womyn of London.

To the right is the first of 4 papers I wrote for my first year English professor. It was regarding the Captain's double in Conrad's short story "The Secret Sharer." The words written by the instructor (whose name I have stricken from the top of the page) are probably not very clear. But his sentiment is. My writing skills were lacking somewhat in September 1980, just shy of my 18th birthday. Being a sporting chap, he gave me a chance to re-write the paper for the next class. I won't bother posting it here, but the amount of red on the page indicated he was again down a pint of blood.

The semester played out pretty much the same for each of the papers and their re-writes I completed for Dr. xxxxx. They had to do with scenes in such classic novels as "In The Penal Colony" (Kafka), "The Turn of the Screw" (James) and "The Sun Also Rises" (Hemmingway). I was trashed and drowned in a sea of red with each paper and re-write I completed attempting to improve my writing (and grade). Keep in mind that I attended school to study sciences, not English. and had classes in chemistry, biology, physics, geology, calculus and of course English. I also had to attend 3 hour lab sessions weekly in chemistry and biology.

I'm surprised that I maintained my sanity during the first year. A 5th paper and subsequent re-write may have prompted me to the clock tower, sniping at bearded, tweed-coated academics that bore a resemblance to Dr. xxxxx. After the final exam, I was presented with my 48.5% grade; good for a chance to enjoy his class another semester. I did, however, discover that I could take the other first year English class. I wrote my papers for Dr. yyyyy and was given a C+ grade. Perhaps this English shtick wasn't so bad after all? I'm hoping that the first semester professor wasn't biased against me because his ex-wife was my English teacher in high school.

The bottom line? I deserved a poor grade for that ill-fated English class because my written skills probably did suck back in 1980. They still leave a lot to be desired as I'm the first to admit that I have difficulty telling the difference between a preposition and a proposition...and I'm constantly reminding myself: use the active voice dumb ass! I just tend to go with what sounds good and flows. Grammar be damned.

I wish he could have used a bit more compassion at conveying his criticisms. Offered more encouragement. Or at least less discouragement. I think my love of horror began that year as I imagined evil ways of dispatching Dr. xxxxx with his own red marker. But I suppose that I really shouldn't judge him until I've walked a mile in his shoes (yep, I do know what a cliche is).

The Great Pretender

I figured that I will do my small part in getting the word out about somebody plagiarizing stories in our on-line community. Most of you will know this already but perhaps some have not.

Mercedes Yardley last night posted on her blog about a person by the name of 'Richard Ridyard' who attempted to pass off a story as his own, but was actually written by the horror master Stephen King. Fortunately, the people at Shock Totem recognized it for what it was and called him up on it. You can read her full story here. She also mentions that horror writer Angel Zapata has had one of his stories plagiarized. I read this morning that our own Aaron Polson has also had his story "Communion" plagiarized by this person. You can read his comments about this at his blog here.

Angel does an amazing job of building a case against this fraud on his most recent post. Do yourself a favour and read his well-researched story exposing this person here. There are numerous comments from folks at his blog, updating information on the story.

There's not more I can add to what others have said about this person. When on-line publishers accept stories there is a certain amount of trust assumed. I somehow doubt this was done for money because, as we all know, there isn't a lot to be had by publishing short stories on e-zines. I think that it's more of a sick joke by someone who has carefully placed stories for some time, knowing that eventually they would be discovered. I also think that this person is getting off on the amount of attention they are receiving. Sort of their '15 minutes of fame.'

There will always be people who try to scam the system, but it is comforting that when a person like that is exposed for what they are the rest this community can rally together. In a matter of hours people all over the world have gathered and shared information on this fraud in an attempt to expose him/her more quickly the next time. I have no doubt that Richard Ridyard will surface again in another persona, but at least everyone will be watching.

The Mob Rules

I saw something odd today. Or perhaps I'm out of step with the times and 'odd' is the wrong word to use.

I was getting lunch together in the kitchen when I noticed a group of teens in the park behind us. It's not unusual to see a few there eating their lunch away from the Jr. High school. More kids used to hang out there, but the large wooden play structure they sat on was set on fire at 4am one morning about a year ago and the city never replace it. Good idea.

Anyway, there was a large group of kids milling about and more showing up every minute. There seemed to me something menacing about the group, so I kept watch. I estimated about 50 to 60 in number and they all moved en mass into the parking lot of the plaza just out of my view. I switched windows to the front of the house and saw them moving towards the creek. Cars started showing up and parking, and many more older teens got out of the vehicles and joined the crowd. All of a sudden many of the group started to run back in the direction of the park where they had started. Some cut through the opening int he fence and came in groups down our street. A police car drove up our street and many headed back through the fence into the plaza. Two more police cars showed up in the plaza and the kids began to scatter in all directions.

My son returned to school and reported later that the group had heard that two boys were going to meet in the park for a fight. Perhaps I'm a bit stunned to think that 50 to 60 kids, boys and girls, want to see two guys beat the crap out of each other in a public park. The mob mentality really is a powerful thing. Also, if the junior hockey team had had that sort of support from its spectators, it wouldn't have folded a couple of years ago leaving us with no team playing in our 7000 seat arena. It was a new sort of thing to witness, but I suppose it happens all over the place...it does, doesn't it?

Bring on the Bloodsport

Yes, fair readers, it's that time of year again. When all Canadian work places (and some American) begin to pour over lists of hockey player names in hopes of putting together that winning squad...the team that will win you a crap-load of money give you lots of fun and possible glory among your hockey-worshiping co-workers. And remember, friends, that gambling is illegal in most countries and we should not partake ;)

Instead of putting together characters and scenes for my NaNo story, I will be pouring over pages of statistics trying to decide who is worthy of my selection. Shall it be Ovechkin over Crosby (note that I had opportunity to watch Sid the Kid play in the Memorial Cup tournament in London in 2005, and he is well worth the price of admission should he be appearing in a metropolis near you) or shall I select Zetterberg over Thornton. The choices are endless.

As noted on other blogs, it's Natalie Sin's birthday today. In her honour I hold up a cup and toast her greatness. The attached photo below, which was indeed from Slap Shot (as were the Hanson's above), will have to suffice as I scoured the Internet for the video footage of his strip tease to no avail.

Count Me In

Catherine Gardner at The Poisoned Apple has started a trend today that all the cool kids want to be part of this Halloween season.

The Aaron Polson fan club is now open to members and I, for one, have never been disappointed by anything he has written and am jumping on the bandwagon.

To join, all you have to do is add the certificate (below) to your sidebar/web page/blog/or have it tattooed on your butt chest.

I am a fan of his smooth, clear writing style and enjoy the evil and horrific journeys he has led us on. I would not hesitate to wave his flag or pimp him out...oops, I don't think that came out right. Anyway, in case you have been living in a well-lit, carefree world--take a moment to step into the shadows and check him out at The Other Aaron . Sign up now while there's still time...Muwhahahah....

Cryptozoology...

...it's more than just a big word. According to the Wikipedia people, it 'refers to the search for animals which are considered to be legendary or otherwise nonexistent by mainstream biology.'

An article in Canoe.ca news caught my eye this morning and I figured I would share it with you, just in case you haven't had enough weirdness in your day. The full story can be found here, but to paraphrase: there was a photo released taken on Cameron Lake near Parksville, BC on Vancouver Island. The woman who took the photo had seen something on the surface and snapped a quick shot of the serpent-like creature. Researchers spent Saturday on the Lake and did, indeed, pick up a large sonar signal from an object 60 feet below.

British Columbia has had a storied history with strange beasties from the Sasquatch to Ogopogo, and, years ago, the fabled Cadborosaurus. It's interesting that all it takes is one misinterpreted sighting of an object on a body of water, over a span of dozens of years, gets folks speculating as to what lies beneath. I'm as guilty as the next person...when we visited Loch Ness years ago I had my eyes peeled on the water at all times, just hoping for the elusive sighting. I guess some things are human nature. To the right is a photo of the serpent play-thingy, made of concrete, located at Gyro Park at Cadboro beach in Victoria. I used to play on that as a kid.

And all of this reminds me of the hilarious video to be seen at Carrie Harris' blog regarding the trend of merging the classics with supernatural elements. You've got to check it out.

The Week in Pictures

Have made a bit of progress fleshing out characters and certain scenes for the Nano story, but am having problems outlining the sequence of events. I am hoping for divine inspiration or an Epiphany or something like that. I present the last several days in pictures for your viewing enjoyment.


The berry best the island has to offer...

(yes, I do look a little stunned after all that picking)

Life has gone to the dogs...
(sub-titled, of course, Who Let the Dogs Out...)

All I can say is better him in the silly hat than me...

Umm, I wanted an excuse to to back to the harbour cam again...the Celebrity Constellation visited (965ft long, 122ft wide) just passed through the narrows...

The turn to port...

Approaching the dock...

Let's just put her into 'park'...

(I know what you're thinking. Alan has waaaaay to much time on his hands...)