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I'm back from Africa and will get to my mail as soon as I catch up on a few other things. Great riding, as usual, and saw some big cats this time, which is always fun.
It's cooler at this time of year than I remembered. There are gift shops in the Johannesburg OR Tambo International Airport departure terminal named, "Out of Africa". The name makes me smile and I always say to myself, 'I'm going to watch that movie. It's been a long time.' But then, I remember it's been a long time since I've watched any movie and I don't. I'm back to work on "Lean on Me."
When a story gets as long as the Jack Pierce Chronicles, the number of people naturally grows. As I write the next chapter, I can keep the growing number of characters or let some of them slide into the background to keep from overwhelming my readers. There are some obviously central characters but there are some on the periphery as well. If there are some that you think, "Please don't let this person fade out of the story," let me know, please. It's not a matter of whether certain characters are more or less important. It's simply a matter of keeping it a bit more streamlined so that it's readable. I strive to make it easy to follow. If you have input, fire it my way.
Thanks
I'm currently working on the senior year of the Jack Pierce Chronicles. My goal is to have it published before.............Christmas. It takes a while.
For those who are curious, here's my process. Each author has their own.
Write. It takes between 3-8 days for me to write a 20 page chapter. I will continue to write until I get to either Christmas break or the end of the school year, depending on how it's going.
Rough edit. I work back through the entire book, looking for continuity issues, major editing errors, adding necessary clarifications. I'll break that down into chapters ranging from 15-30 pages in length.
Second edit. I work through each chapter, making minor edits. At the end of each chapter, I send it off to:
Steven - he receives each chapter only after I've beat it to death. He edits it and sends it back.
Last chance - I'll work through it one more time before publishing each chapter.
In spite of all that, I've made some misses, using complement rather than compliment, peddle rather than pedal, and canon rather than cannon, and the like. I'll still get an email from grammar nazis telling me I should have had an extra comma or didn't need one. I don't mind.
This is a hobby. Kids, foster kids, attorneys, horses, and my own vacations tend to slow me down, here and there. Because of the lengthy time between episodes, I do my best to remind readers of who familiar characters are, without getting bogged down. Characters like Veronica or Cheryl are left out for chapters at a time so that I only have to re-introduce them once.
I do hope you enjoyed the tie in between Beach House and JP Chronicles.
Once I have
I get quite a few notes from readers. I read them all. Some, point out inaccuracies in my story, some are thanks for writing, some are, "It would sure be nice if..." Here's one from Suspenders that I enjoyed reading. I hope you do, too.
Thanks again for giving me the inspiration to find a place to contribute. I was out of town for two weeks, but last Saturday I finally participated in training for horse leaders and side walkers.
Since I've never been around horses before, it'll be quite a while before I'm ready to lead a horse, but side walkers are responsible for keeping the riders safe and encouraging them, which I can mostly do.
The most memorable part of Saturday was feeding a couple of the horses carrots; one of them later practically swallowed my fist hoping I might have something else for him. He's a hoot.
Yesterday (Wednesday) I volunteered for the first time. Pretty simple stuff: the first participant was a non-verbal, gentle giant of a boy. I helped him mount, talked to him a bit, and held his thigh against the horse.
The second was a young girl who didn't need help staying on, but did need encouragement to project her voice so the horse could hear her. She was absolutely charming, very much a talker.
I'll be working with both over the next several weeks, and I'm very much looking forward to it.
Thanks again.
Charleston is a tourist town and because of that, it's pretty laid back and casual. Locals can spot most tourists pretty easily and if we can't tell they're tourists by sight, we can definitely do it by sound. Here are a few words you'll want to learn how to pronounce properly before you visit.
Awendaw: AW-en-daw
Beaufain: BYOO – fain (“BYOO” rhymes with “you”)
Beaufort: BYOO – fort, BYOO – fert
Beidler: BYE – dler
Bonneau: BOHN – oh
Clemson: CLEM – zun (Sometimes, CLEMP - zun)
Gaillard: gil – YARD
Hasell: HAY – zul
Horry: o – ree
Huger: u – GEE
Legare: le – GREE
Moultrie: MOOL – tree, MOW – tree
Sumter: SUMP • tur
And when you pronounce them properly, do so slowly and enjoy the sound as it rolls off your tongue.
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