Letters of Note: C.S. Lewis on Writing

Letters of Note has a wonderful letter from C.S. Lewis with good advice on writing:

What really matters is:–

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn't mean anything else.

2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don't implement promises, but keep them.

3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean "More people died" don't say "Mortality rose."

4. In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, "Please will you do my job for me."

5. Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Letters of Note: I am very real

Wonderful letter by Kurt Vonnegut on censorship, and his own pain at being accused of trying to warp young minds:

Letters of Note: I am very real

Dark Goddess Chapter 4, a twilight fanfic - FanFiction.Net

Dark Goddess chapter 4 has been posted. Enjoy!

Coming Soon .... More "Tailward!"

I'm doing a Written in the Stars out-take for F4NHK. You have Melinda Otterson Gray to thank for giving me the idea.

Please consider donating to this worthy cause.

REBLOG: Issy's musings: Fandom for No Kid Hungry

Issy's musings: Fandom for No Kid Hungry: Ysar and Kitsu Shel have recently asked me to be part of a very worthy cause of aiding the No Kid Hungry initiative. Mobilizing industries and individuals to promote sustainable change, this timely initiative benefits millions of children directly by bolstering food programs in every community across the United States and steps up to aid international efforts in times of crisis.  

Add your voice to the national movement of people committed to ending childhood hunger in America. For a donation of $10, you’ll receive a rich and enthralling compilation of one shots or outtakes from your favorite authors who have come forward to lend a hand. We already have such luminaries as Kitsu Shel, LissaBryan, Edward’s Eternal, and Lady Gwynedd, and it’s only day 1 of the sign up!

Keep checking back to see who else is joining the ranks to make sure there’s food on the table for every child in the US.

Go to the Fandom for No Kid Hungry site Ysar has built to run the operation.

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Thank you for all your help.

For a Worthy Cause....

I've signed up to contribute a story for Fandom 4 No Hungry Kids (F4NKH).

"Dark Goddess" Questions and Comments

- What is she?
Bella is a vampire. She's been in "hibernation" since the pre-Columbian era. When a vampire doesn't feed for a while, he or she goes into a deep sleep state until something or someone wakes them. Upon rising, they need to feed immediately and will be hungrier than usual for a while until their bodies recover from the effects of hibernation.

- Your vamps are different than SM's?
Yes. My vampire world was set up in my story Compulsion. (Which would technically mean there are two Edwards and two Bellas, etc. in my 'verse, but let's just pretend. It's the AU of my AU.)

• They have fangs which extend when they're hungry, and their saliva contains a drug that makes their bite intensely pleasurable. Some people become addicted to vampire bites.
• They burn in sunlight and sleep during the day. The older ones can stay awake later into the daytime than "fledgelings", or young vampires.
• They have a Queen, Victoria Volturi and she has a police force that's called by her last name. Their laws are simple: No killing humans or other vampires, keep the secret, and don't create more vampires without permission (though there's an exception for people changed on the brink of death.). The vampires have to register with the Queen and swear their loyalty.
• The only way to make another vampire is to drink the blood of a vampire. Vampirism is a blood-borne virus. Though many vampires believe that the more a changing human drinks from the vampire, the stronger they'll be, Alice's studies didn't bear that out, either. It only takes a drop of blood to make the change. (Bella in Compulsion was changed when vampire blood seeped into a cut on her finger.)
• They're super-strong and fast. Older vamps are stronger than young ones. They can control human minds and implant false memories. Some people, who had powers before they were changed, such as telekinetics or precognitives sometimes find those powers are magnified after they become vampires. 
• My vamps can't live off of animal blood. It can quell their hunger for a short while, but it won't nourish them. It's like drinking a big glass  of water when you're hungry; it "tricks" the stomach into thinking it's full for a little while.
• Drinking from humans doesn't harm them, as long as the vampire has sufficient control not to take too much. 
• Younger vamps need more blood than the elders. 
• Older vamps are stronger than fledgelings.
• When a vampire is killed, their body decays into ash. The older the vampire, the faster this process, but even a fledgeling will be ashes by dawn.
• Vampires have blood bars where they can buy bottled blood or find a live donor. They're generally located in the back of human bars, accessible only by password or a special token.

- Is this an E/B story, or a B/J story?
There are two versions of this story. The E/B version is on Fanfiction.com. The original version is on The Writer's Coffee shop and it's E/B/J. The difference lies mainly in the romance; the general plot remains the same, though there are some minor alterations here and there and the pacing in some parts differs.

- Pink tears?
All vampire fluids are based on the blood they drink. (And I'm not pulling a Meyer, here. Male vampires don't ejaculate and females cannot get pregnant. They're dead. The dead cannot create life.)

- What is Rosalie?
Rosalie is a dayman, a special type of human that serves vampires. They're specially drawn to any vampire and can sense their emotions and their needs, but with their own, it's like they're the other half of each others' souls. The bond between a vampire and their dayman is intense, but it's never romantic. They have powerful instincts which make it feel incestuous. They smell bad to vampires, which is believed to be nature's way of preventing their vampire from seeing them as a convenient food source.

- Is Bella based on Leeloo from "The Fifth Element" or Anne Rice's Cleopatra in "The Mummy"?
 No, neither, though I loved them both. ("Moool-tee-pass!") I joked with one commenter that I would have Bella sing Celeste Aida  like Cleopatra does as she drives through the desert in The Mummy, but instead, she ended up singing "Teenagers" by My Chemical Romance.

-  Is Bella ever going to learn English? Edward was able to learn a language she understood, so easily, so I'm wondering how come a vampire, with perfect recall, can't retain the language.
 Bella's problem is not memorization. As she proved when she sang at Tuneville, she can replicate the sound of words. It's having a definition for all of those words that's the problem. Some of them she can figure out by their context, but not always. Secondly, Edward is a genius and can learn much faster than ordinary people. Now that she and Edward have a language in common, she'll be able to learn faster.


- Why did it take Edward so long to change into a vampire?
The amount of time the change takes varies from person to person. Some people are "under" for longer than others. Vampires have an urban legend that says the longer a person is "under" the stronger they will be, but Alice found no correlation when she studied it in Compulsion. Some people have been "under" for as long as three days before the change was complete.

- Is Jinx modeled on any elves in other fiction?
All of my stories are entwined in the same "world" (except for Written in the Stars which has its own universe.) The fae-folk include the selkies from The Selkie Wife.

• All of my fae are vegetarians.
•  They're immortal except that they can die of grief, or be killed by beheading/fire. 
•  Some of them have the power of precognition or other psychic gifts. Their powers are fading as nature itself fades, but they can command and heal plants and animals.
• The high elves are the Leaf Lords, the highest caste of fae, the caretakers of nature. That's why many of them hate humans, seeing them as creatures who destroy the natural world.. Every Leaf Bringer has a "heart-tree", a tree with which they're especially bonded. They can survive the death of their tree, but most of them don't want to.
• The high elves are very tall and their eyes have a distinctive "glow."