Updates and Other Things

Ah, God is good.
All the time.

Even when the world is upside down and backwards, especially when the world is upside down and backwards.

My family member who was in the hospital for mental instability is home, and the medication is working better than any of us could have dreamed. Tears are flowing, but this time of thanks, of gratitude, of being undone by His work. This is a chance at a real life for them, this is a chance for life and life more abundantly, for He came, and comes to bring life and not just life which is precious enough when you consider that we were all dead in our sins, but life abundant here on earth, and life everlasting with Him. Gloria a Dios. Somehow that seems more fitting than saying it English, maybe because I remember with great affection the passionate way the Christians in Argentina said it, with all their life and breath and heart behind the words. I am so very grateful, for so many things but for that work in particular.

I am also very weary.

More doctors, more tests, more needles and more lab work for me, not for them. This body of mine, this earth suit that the immortal me wears is hurting. It's not the Designer's fault, see we (that would be all of us) decided that we didn't need Him, and because of that a fatal flaw worked itself into the warp and weave of the suit. It's not immortal, it's decaying around the immortal soul that lives and dwells within it and right now, it's actually attacking itself and undoing the warp and weave at a faster pace than it should. And, because the immortal and the mortal are bound together, I'm hurting.

I'm tired of the dead ends, of the judgments, of the humiliation, and because I am so very tired of it all, I want to hide.

You know, hide?

Oh to be four again and certain that a fort of sheets made me invisible or for a crabapple tree with gnarled branches that could scoop me up and hold me and hide me at the same time.

I don't have bed sheets, or a crabapple tree, but I did find this. And so I'm hiding, I'm hiding in Christ, and hiding in this old hymn.

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.

George Matheson

When Boulders Fall Like Rain Drops

I've never been one much for secrets or for facades, usually what you see is what you get with me. But my family, like all the others in the world I suppose, has some things it doesn't want to broadcast.

I'm well aware of how fast news can travel through churches, how prayer chains often work more like gossip networks, and I also know the sting and ache of judgment which more often than not comes with others knowing that your family (surprise surprise) isn't perfect. So this post is going to be in some places deliberately vague, to protect the privacy and sanity of those directly involved in the current crisis. I do want to share some things because I know that my real friends, the ones that genuinely care, deserve better than to have silence gnaw on their hearts and let the Enemy stretch their minds with all kinds of dark and dire fantasies.

Last Sunday, or July 6th, my family got a call that one of our own had a psychotic episode where he quietly threatened to kill himself if he didn't receive what he demanded. This person's immediate family rallied around them, and took them to the hospital where the attending physician wisely made the decision to admit the person having the episode into the psychiatric wing of the hospital for stabilization and evaluation.

Remember the scene in the movie The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe when Peter signals to the gryphons to start out and they fly in formation, carrying the great chunks of stone in their paws and then they let them go effectively doing to the White Witch's army what Germany was doing to London at the beginning of the movie? Down on the evil hoard came great chunks of stone that couldn't be deflected or reasoned with or persuaded to fall elsewhere. It is still one of my favorite scenes, and I cheer every time I watch it.

This week has felt like we've been on the receiving end of that bombardment. Every day there have been phone calls, sometimes it's nothing but the other half of the family out there, really going through the meat grinder wanting just to be encouraged by the rest of us, and more often than not it's one of them calling in to report on what's going on with the family member in the ward.

Everyone feels responsible, everyone is second guessing themselves from the person's siblings to their parents. On top of this stress comes the stress about paying for their stay, and for the MRI that needs to be done to determine some things. Thankfully the one doctor who is in charge of the others assigned to the individual is working to get the cost lowered, because the insurance won't pay for it.

It's been a long week, and it's really not over yet.

Interestingly enough, the past couple of weeks, close on a month have been pointing in this direction so while the incident came as a shock, the fact that things have changed with this individual that we all love so much, wasn't.

Tomorrow, I'll try and share some of the ways that Christ has been showing up in the midst of the boulders.

I apologize again for the vagueness, but I don't want to hurt my family, just like I don't want to leave my friends in ignorance.

For now,

Scribe.

If only it were true

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Blaise Pascal

For those that have been so kind as to make certain that I haven't fallen off the face of the world (kinda hard considering its' round and not flat) I offer my thanks. I'm working on a post that will hopefully be a musing and coherently telling of what has been going on with me though for privacy's sake I can't go into everything. If I were the main character, the primary mover, well then I would let the gates flash open and the whole of the story gush out, tears and blood and puss all mixing. Fortunately and unfortunately I am a bit player in the drama that has taken my family by the scruff of our collective necks and shaken them. Can you have collective necks? Hmm.

I can say that my writing is going well, I'm really enjoying outlining/storyboarding and those closest to me that know as much of the plot as I do have been wonderful in goading me on and making sure I work on it and don't allow myself to be lulled into Summer complacency.

This past week has been especially hard as several vague problems in my family have hardened into darker reality and I find myself in the unenviable position of throwing the boulder sized problem back to Christ. Otherwise, they would crush me. I keep reminding myself that while this world and its' problems are much larger than myself, I serve a Powerful, Tender, Mighty Warrior who is much larger than this world.

My thanks to everyone who has prayed for strength for me and for my family. Even just tucking me in to the tail of your own prayers and asking Christ to bless me with the blessings you ask for your own family, as some have shared they do, means the world to me.

Really more later. Really really. I promise. Scribe's honor ;)

Scribe Reccommends

1 Peter 3:14-15 The Message.

"Through thick and thin, keep your hearts at attention, in adoration before Christ, your Master. Be ready to speak up and tell anyone who asks why you're living the way you are, and always with the utmost courtesy."

The italics and the blue coloring are mine, for emphasis.

Wayne Batson started me thinking with his post about Atheism and then of course after digging around forever I managed to remember that scripture. At work, we have a display set up to help people better understand their faith so that they can share it with others.

With Ben Stien's Expelled coming out in theaters we have had people asking for books on Apologetics and Intelligent Design as well as requests for other formats covering the same things (ie DVD and CD) so I thought I would post my own recommendations here for anyone who is interested in this topic.

Books
------
Creation/Intelligent Design

In Six Days by: John Ashton

The New Answers Book :Edited by Ken Ham

The Lie:Evolution by: Ken Ham

Fatal Flaws: What Evolutionists Don't Want You To Know by :Hank Hanegraaff

The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates The Scientific Evidence that Points Towards God. By Lee Strobel.

Apologetics

Mere Christianity by: C.S. Lewis

Slandering Jesus: Six Lies People Tell about the Man Who Said He Was God: By Erwin Lutzer

Soul Cravings by: Erwin McManus

More Than a Carpenter by: Josh McDowell

Escape from Reason by: Francis Shaeffer

The Case for the Real Jesus by: Lee Strobel

The Case for Christ by: Lee Strobel

Beyond Opinion: Living the Faith We Defend by: Ravi Zacharias

The End of Reason: Ravi Zacharias

DVDS
------
Creation/ Intelligent Design

See Answers in Genesis Website

Apologetics
DVD-The Case for Christ
DVD-The Star of Bethlehem


Websites:
Answers in Genesis
Star of Bethlehem


Hope that helps anyone who is interested in pressing in further to this topic!

The Play's The Thing

So I'm still in Ohio :-D for those wondering, though that's not Ohio, that's Megan. I took that yesterday during rehearsal which went powerfully well. That's Prince Hamlet reading the cliff notes version of Hamlet to the Cadburry Easter Bunny. The play is "The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged." And this is the latter half of that play seeing as the front part of it was done last year and had to be delayed due to one of their number, one Eric by name, falling off the stage and breaking his leg.

Remember, it's bad luck to wish anyone in the theater ''good luck'' on the night of the performance and so you tell them to "Break a leg'' instead. Eric took that rather literally and while it was a stunning exit to make, it meant the rest of the play had to be postponed. Here's a visual of Eric

As you can see he's a man of many talents, including but not limited to, ghost busting. Healed up and ready to tackle the second half of the production, Eric stole the spotlight several times from Megan and Amie in turn stole it from him. Basically it was forty five minutes of delight as four hams (Megan, Eric, Aime and Tiffany) took us through a celebration of Shakespeare's best known play and moved from parody to original play, weaving in and out of character. William Shakespeare is beloved for many reasons, but at the heart of his work is the feel that the stories were written for the common man, and because of this people love him to this day. I'll close with some highlights. And I'm still not coming home.


Because Rhu (who is Hamlet and all in black with the Red Light Saber) loves Star Wars so much, it had to make it into part of the parody. That's Aime (Laertes) there impaled on her bright red saber.


There's Tiffany, Amie and Megan taking on the part of Hamlet where all . . .no no pretty much any moment in Hamlet all hades is breaking lose. So that is the final confrontation between Hamlet and his uncle/father/mother(King Claudius and Queen Gertrude) played by Tiffany and Aime's character (Laertes). Ah, but where you ask is the lovely Ophelia? Right here, Eric played her too!

Did I mention that I'm on Vacation?! :-D

So I've been in Ohio now for three days and I'm pretty sure I'm not coming back home. I mean why would I want to leave a place where they have awesome coffee, incredible ice cream, 65 cent hamburgers, fabulous old houses, friendly people and most importantly a place where I can dispose of the bodies of my enemies!



While they discourage the dumping of bodies and the picking of flora and fauna, they do let you walk through and become saturated with the scents and smells and the feeling of being in a fen (while the sign says bog, it really is a fen). Take a gander at some of the beauty I found within:

DO NOT MISS "EXPELLED"

I saw Ben Stein's Expelled No Intelligence Allowed today and it exceeded all of my expectations! While it isn't perfect, it's awful close. It asks the question, "What is at the heart of the quashing of any theory that dares to challenge Darwin's Theory of Evolution?" Then, it starts looking for answers, and in the process takes you around the world to learn some interesting things such as:

Scientists in Poland have more freedom to look at Intelligent Design and Darwin's Theories than they do here in America.

Hitler had a link to Evolution and it affected the Holocaust

A black brutal secret of the United States and how 50,000 people were sterilized against their will

The fact that Evolutionists can't tell how life began on earth, they can only offer theories to explain how it has changed.

This movie is only ninety minutes long, but it packs a wallop and in that hour and a half it manages to be funny and poignant as well as eyeopening.

Well done, Ben Stein and Company.

Well done.

Ouch.

Ever had one of those moments that throw you backwards in your Christian Walk?

Not a few paces, not a half-hearted stumble, and not two steps foreword and one step back. I'm talking nailed you in a place you didn't even know was still raw, sent you head over boots down the hill end over end till you hit the bottom with a thud and couldn't breathe because of the impact for several minutes, kinda moments.

That happened to me yesterday and, like most things that make me stumble, it came out of no where.

I was having a good morning, customers were asking easy questions, I was ticking off the things on my to-do list at a good clip, and the phone wasn't ringing off the hook and making me threaten to pull it off the wall with my bare hands and throttle it to death. It was a good morning. Then, this sweet lady comes in and asks a question and then stops and stares at me and goes "Oh, you are 'insert mother's name here''s daughter." The smile froze on my face and I felt my heart give a tight angry squeeze before it resumed its' normal rhythm. She was one of the women who knew my mother from when Mom was the head of the Interdenominational Intercessors Network, IIN for short. I've been wrestling with resentment and anger since the woman said that. Poor lady, it wasn't her fault and it has nothing to do with her, or really even with Mom. It has everything to do with me, and half a lifetime of some not very pleasant memories.

Ten years, Mom steered that organization through meetings and events and even a short term missions trip. Ten years, I was 'so and so's daughter' at every church I went to, at every event I attended, and even at the book store where I work now, I was known as 'so and so's daughter'. I was watched like a hawk, I was judged, I was put down, I was told how I was to behave, and I was shunned because of who my Mother was.

But my problem with that label goes back further than ten years. Before Mom ran the Interdenominational Intercessors Network, she was head of one of the largest homeschooling networks in the state. She ran that for seven years, and at every event I was 'so and so's daughter' and everyone in the home schooling community knew me as 'so and so's daughter'.

They might not have known my first name, but they knew my Mom.

She did a fantastic job, taking the organization from fifty family to over five hundred families. But it was like living in a fishbowl. Everyone had an opinion about everything that I did, and no one had any problem sharing it with her, or with me. Don't get me wrong, there was a tremendous amount of good that came out of her position too. One thing was the fact that my brother and I learned to set up, break down, pack and unpack because of her leadership position. These are skills that have served me well on a variety of projects, including book signings.

Ten years plus seven years equal seventeen years. Seventeen years of being greeted by "Oh, you're so and so's daughter." Seventeen years of judgment, seventeen years of being measured against the standard my Mother set in their eyes, seventeen years of falling very short.

*sigh*

Weird how one little phrase, even kindly meant, can put you in a whole world of hurt.

Here's what I have been meditating on as kind of a poultice or balm for that ache reopened.

“Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you.
I have called you by name; you are mine.
2 When you go through deep waters,
I will be with you.
When you go through rivers of difficulty,
you will not drown.
When you walk through the fire of oppression,
you will not be burned up;
the flames will not consume you.
3 For I am the Lord, your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

Isaiah 43:1b-3 NLT.

The italics and blue color are my emphasis in the passage. Christ knows my name. Kinda mind blowing if I stop and think about it, and more mind blowing, He wears a label too, and wears it for me. You see, Christ is my savior. He is the King of Glory, the Great I AM, and He is Scribe's Savior. In His sight, I am judged pure and lovely and righteous all together. Oh, if I could get that into my heart and really really believe it, instead of letting the words run around in my head.

I did not want this ouch, but apparently I needed it because He let it happen, He allowed it to trigger all this muck now kicking around in me.

:-P

On a better note, the outlining is working well, and tightening up very nicely indeed. I've shared some of the stuff now with three of my co workers and all of them are excited and NO ONE IS confused. Go-outlining!

Night all,

A very uncomfortable Scribe

Once Upon a Time. . .PART ONE

There was a best selling fantasy author who was part tale teller, part swashbuckler, and part teacher. A week ago he came to the store where I work, and brought a long sharp metal pointy thing along just for fun.

This was a good thing, because I had invited him to come and have a book signing at the store and he made time in his busy family/work/adventures/writing schedule to do just that! It was a bit of a rainy night, but the turn out was incredible! I set out roughly 15 chairs and after thirty minutes they were filled and fans were waiting for a sneak peak into the Isle of Swords!

Here are a father and son that are some of my favorite The Door Within fans! For starters, they read the books together and for another they face some unique challenges when it comes to reading anything. It's one that I share with them to some degree.



You know should Thomas Nelson ever do audio versions of his books, I really hope they offer him the opportunity to read them himself! All Door Within fans *MUST* hear him do a dramatic reading at least once in their life time! I've heard him do readings I don't know how many times, and every time I get dragged into his worlds through his words. It's definitely worth coming a great distance to experience the Seanachai employ his craft.




Did I mention that he makes the events all about you guys?! Here's Wayne doing what he does best at a book event, encouraging his fans and sharing some of the behind the scenes stuff you'll never hear unless you hunt him down in person! (He's going to be on the move again soon! Keep watching his blog for updates!)

Oh, and if you ask very very nicely, he might let you hold his sword.

"And here we see best selling fantasy author Wayne Thomas Batson being taken hostage by a lovely young fan."

"And here, a young blood is learning the proper way to hold a cutlass, with tips from a salty dog of unknown origin.''

Pictures!

Real quick for anyone interested here are links to the pictures of the Maryland Swashbuckling signing that Wayne Thomas Batson had in April.

Store One

Store Two

Store Three

That should do it, check out the Capt'n in all his glory!

Best Definition of Friendship I've Ever Found

"What is a friend? Friends are people with whom you dare to be yourself. Your soul can be naked with them. They ask you to put on nothing, only to be what you are. They do not want you to be better or worse. When you are with them, you feel as a prisoner feels who has been declared innocent. You do not have to be on your guard. You can say what you think, as long as it is genuinely you. Friends understand those contradictions in your nature that lead others to misjudge you. With them you breathe freely. You can avow your little vanities and envies and hates and vicious sparks, your meannesses and absurdities, and in opening them up to friends, they are lost, dissolved on the white ocean of their loyalty. They understand. You do not have to be careful. You can abuse them, neglect them, tolerate them. Best of all, you can keep still with them. It makes no matter. They like you. They are like fire that purges to the bone. They understand. You can weep with them, sing with them, laugh with them, pray with them. Through it all--and underneath--they see, know, and love you. A friend? What is a friend? Just one, I repeat, with whom you dare to be yourself."

C. Raymond Beran, in Bits & Pieces, September 19, 1991, p. 3-4.

Please Pray!

Isn't it handsome? I certainly think so, this is the table display for the signing event in the smallest of the three stores. In less than a week, Wayne Thomas Batson will be there from 5-8pm will be there and we will be having an awesome time, despite Bryan Polivka not being able to make it. I have had a dozen problems with this particular event everything from having to revamp the signs to props not showing up at the right time to people not sure that they could make it. There is always cost involved when the store does something like this and I take quite a bit of risk myself telling the owner that it will be fun and profitable. This first signing I'm not too worried about, it's kinda in Wayne's back yard and even the fans with books are going to be coming out to say hi to him, play with the props and revel in the pirate decor. He's going to do a reading from Isle of Fire if we get enough of a turn out and I have some door prizes for those that show up too. Not to mention pirate trivia that we'll have posted and did I mention the props? Yeah, it's going to be a fun time. I sure would love some prayer from you all though, it's been probably the roughest event I've put together to date. Here are some of the others snaps from around the store advertising the event.









That's the front window there, the photo taken from the inside looking out and beside the most awesome Isle of Swords is an early birthday present for me. The rings actually rotate within one another as well as collapse nearly flat. This is the first rotational globe that I've seen which is able to swing and change its' presentation as well as being reasonably priced. Mom bought it while I was drooling over it and then said she thought it would be cool to have as a prop for the signing so would I like it early? I said yes, yes please!










This is from the outside (ignore the dirty window please) looking in at the display. The glare is rather horrible but I am extremely proud of that iron cross there which usually hangs in my room. I thought it did very well to represent the monks in the book which might have had something that plain hanging on the walls in their cells. The gold coins have been a real big hit and everyone wants one. They are cool. Theyappear to be metal until you pick one up and see the minor imperfections and feel the weight of it, then you know it's plastic. The pouch my brother brought back for me from Jamacia when he was there on his missions trip years and years and years ago.

See? Being a pack-rat pays off.






This is the wall behind the front counter, and that ships wheel is mine, it hangs on my wall when not in use as a prop for the signing and the lamp over there is also from my personal collection, purchased to be used as a bookend from Tuseday Morning (TM) for $9.00 on clearance. I liked the nautical look of it, and it feels substancial when you pick it up. Look at all those lovely jewel toned books. They are so reasonably priced in paperback too, just $9.99 retail. And, see those glorious seals? Yup, lost chapter editions.


















This is the last photo for tonight, but I had to include it because it's The Rise of the Wyrm Lord that for whatever reason didn't get the cool colored print in the paperback edition and yet the cover is my favorite. Why? Because of all the action taking place there, and I can remember when Wayne did a talk at the local library and had the cover art for we fans to look at and I was so disappointed. On the orginal cover there were these horrid red cat eyes in the cave that made it look so weird and out of proportion and really really B-movie like and then, through the careful words of the Capt'n the art got changed and I was sooooo happy! So, I had to put the little letter opener on it and take a picture.




In conclusion, I would ask that you pray, and pray hard for this week for me and for my store. I am not asking the Lord for number, though that would be cool, and I'm not asking for sales, though that would make my job easier. I'm asking specifically that the Lord open the eyes of the owner and the various managers to the fact that there is a hunger for these type of events, and also that every last person that shows up be blessed by the event in one way or another. Book sales and $$$ are great, but I can't take them into eternity with me. They're props, staging, like the items I used to set up for the event and one day they will be gone. The people who come to the event, they are the real treasure, and they are the eternal beings that will spend all of forever with Christ, or without Him.

Ooooh cool!

Taken from M-W (Merriam-Webster Online)

descry • \dih-SKRYE\

*1 : to catch sight of

2 : find out, discover

Example Sentence:

Liang descried a bluebird flitting near the edge of the glade.

Did you know?

With "descry" and the more common "decry" ("to express strong disapproval of"), we have a case of linguistic double-dipping. That is, English borrowed from the same French root twice. Both words ultimately come from the Old French verb "decrier," meaning "to proclaim" or "to decry." English speakers borrowed the term as "descry" in the 14th century and used it to mean "to proclaim" or "to spy out from a distance" (as a watchman might) and eventually simply "to catch sight of" or "discover." Meanwhile, in French, "descrier" itself developed into the modern French "décrier" ("to disparage, to decry"). English speakers borrowed this word as "decry" in the 17th century. Be careful not to confuse "descry" and "decry." They may be close relatives, but in modern English they have distinct meanings.

Fingerlings

Oh! Rhu's remembering sparked my remembering too! (Again)

When we lived in New Jersey, every summer we would travel the three and a half hour from our house to visit our grandparents in Maryland. At that point, our main transport was a Dodge Malibu called "Fat Albert" after the cartoon character Dave and I both loved, voiced by Bill Cosby (Who was and is to this day bar-none the comedian everyone in my family adores. Dad discovered him when he was in I SPY and has been a life-long fan, Mom discovered him in the Cosby Show and entered into the adoring of him, and Dave and I discovered him in Fat Albert and the Gang in reruns and promptly followed suit) and it had seats covered in a pale brown vinyl. Wretched material, created for the sole purpose of torturing children. In the winter when I would wear skirts to school and church it was so cold and slick it was impossible to keep balanced on the seat so that the belt didn't cut into my hips and stomach. In the summer it was worse, skirts or shorts were murder because the backs of my thighs would stick to the vinyl and peeling myself off the seat when we were wherever it was we were going was sheer hell. The worst possible thing however was the summer 3 1/2 hour trip to my Grandparents, because of the vinyl, because Dave and I would be forced into close proximity to one another in a hot, close space, and also because Skipper who was our beloved dog at all times save that car trip would be wedged between us. Unlike neutral Switzerland, Skipper didn't sit peacefully and allow Dave and I to exchange threats. He was a hyperactive Germany intent on escaping the car by any means, including windows, and sadly Dave and I each possessed a window in our territory of the backseat. He continually invaded our area, scratching bare legs, slobbering on whatever books we were trying to read or tapes we were trying to get into our personal cassette players to listen to, and also working to sit on our laps with his his hot, smelly, furry body so he could ram his nose out the window and then his skull, and then the upper part of his body, and then jump out and escape.

It was during one of the three and a half our trips that Dave came up with "Fingerlings" which was to be an amusement that like FirstOnes went everywhere with us and we taught to others. Here is how to make a fingerling, if I had a camera I'd give you a visual but here's some simple instructions, and most of you have probably done something similar anyway. So without further ado take one of your hands (it doesn't matter which) and curl up your ring and pinky fingers tight against your palm as if you were going to make a fist, but leave the thumb, the index finger and the middle finger loose. Good! Now, the thumb and the middle finger are the Fingerling's legs, and the index is the head/neck of the creature which if you half close your eyes could perhaps look a little like a brachiosaurus. I said, a little like. *Ahem* Anyway, that is a Fingerling. Our were incredibly curious and mischievous creatures. Right Fingerling would fight left Fingerling and kill it, and then begin to eat the dead Fingerling. Hey, Dave and I got so good with them that they were better than hand puppets. We could show shame, anger, happiness, fear, and a variety of other emotions with our Fingerlings. This game was played a lot in the car, and most especially in boring stores (meaning any that weren't toy stores) where the Fingerlings could explore the racks of clothing, dusty glass shelves and pretty much anything else in the store that wasn't breakable.

The benefits of the Fingerlings were that:
1) We couldn't lose them or leave them behind (they were after all attached to our bodies)
2) Didn't run on batteries
3) Amused us for hours and hours of time and allowed our parents to shop relatively unmolested by "Mom/Dad can I have this/get this

The only down side really was that people who saw our fingerlings often stared as if we were insane. Obviously the benefits outweighed the drawbacks and Dad and Mom encouraged this game for years and years.



Good Memory Jog Rhuness!

More More!

Tagged! If You Read This Consider Yourself Tagged Too!

Rhu tagged me on my other blog and I had such fun remembering I thought I'd put what I wrote here too. Btw, I don't always post exactly the same thing on each blog, sometimes I'll put an idea or an entry just on the one and not on the other. Xanga gets read more but I love the layout of this one and so, I keep them both. Anyway-enjoy!


Your Longest Running Game Played as a Child


That would have to be one simply entitled First Ones though not First Ones the Movie, sadly. First Ones prime players were my brother David and myself though it often included Lloyd, his best friend when we lived in New Jersey, and Kelly who was Lloyd's sister and my best friend too. First Ones was a game only to be played outside, and was best played in the Summer when the daylight hours were long and there was nothing to keep us from staying out from after breakfast to twilight with only a brief intermission for a scarfed lunch of cheese sandwiches. The gist of the game was this; Dave and I (and Kelly and Lloyd half the time) were the advanced scouts of a people coming to Earth. We were to make notes and take samples and send back the reports and things to the oncoming ships so the others would know what to find when they arrived. We were equipped with hover-bikes (our bikes) which ''flew'' so high over the buildings that they looked , from our point of view, like the pebbles variation in the pavement of our street, and 'pocket recorders' conveniently were invisible to everyone but ourselves. Had you happened upon us during around of First Ones you might have seen our hov-bikes abandoned haphazardly by the curb (we weren't good at landing them all the time) and the two of us or the four of us on our knees, waving our pocket recorders over thick clusters of clover in someone's front lawn. One would be carefully extracting one clover, stem, roots, leaves, everything and even the dirt cluster around it and placing it into a Tupperware (TM) container for further analysis, another would pull out a small and deadly weapon that had been disguised as a squirt gun, and the other two would be making notes in little Mead (TM) spiral bound note books, the kind that our teachers required us to keep in school to keep assignments straight. We collected all kinds of flora and fauna (as you no doubt can guess) as well as insects, interesting rocks, and occasionally small toads or snails. What I remember most about the game is the way we would talk with one another. Here's a rough out of a conversation:

Me: Commander, look what do you think that odd building is sir?" *points to our own house*

Dave: I'm not sure, Captain but I believe it might be an old type of prison or trash dump. Let's go and see, but be careful.

Me: Commander, what is this marvel? *Points to a tree*

Dave: Oh, that is according to our research called a Poodle. The people who live here keep them as pets and sometimes eat them.

Me. Commander, we are being watched, I can feel it. To our bikes!

All cars were enemy craft that were trying to beat us to earth and to stop our ships from coming and we had to race like mad down the sidewalks and to our driveway which was the only place we could transmit to the oncoming ships from, and any people we met were to be smiled at and then immediately mind-wiped with our deadly weapons which had that one other setting. There was 'kill' and there was 'mindwipe' but no stun.

This game could be played anywhere and usually was. We'd play it on our street, we'd play it on Kelly and Lloyd's street which was a cul-de-sac and we'd play it when we came to visit our Grandparents in another state. We played it too with our new friends when we moved. It was hours and hour of fun and we could play it off of our bikes too, we would play it in the wood behind our house and also in the park that backed up to the wood. It was played in the fall and the spring as well, and sometimes if we felt especially bored with snow ball fights and snow men, in the winter, but my richest memories are the ones that took place in the height of the summer when all the world was ripe for imagination it seemed and there were adventures to be had everywhere.

Signing Update (Go away m'lord)

Okay, so I blogged about what I've been up to for the signing in April, but I'm not posting it here. Anyone interested can hop on over to my Xanga account and read about it there. Certain persons are WARNED that if they LOOK they will RUIN THE SURPRISE. *Ahem*

Anyway, the rest of you go on over if you are interested. I hope to have the MAJOR surprise finished in two weeks and then you'll really want to check back and ooh and ahh over my mad skills. So, here's the mirror for this blog:

My Xanga


Enjoy!

Mr. Rochester & Maximilian

Ah, blame Rhu for this. She was talking about Mrs. Peach and Mrs. Apple and the fun that she and her friend had (and before her friend, her sister Kari played that game with her) writing letter back and forth as if they were keeping one another abreast of what was taking place during the war. My friend Susanna and I had a similar game involving a Mr. Rochester and Maximilian, his good friend. You can guess what movies we saw before we read the books (why we picked guy characters I don't know, other than it always seemed like the girls never got to have any adventures or fun) but she was Mr. Rochester and I, was the dashing rather younger and more reckless Maximilian. The game started one afternoon when we went to her grandmother's house, I think it was for her or maybe one of her cousins birthday parties, and it was a sleep over. We were bored as they were a kind and elderly pair of grandparents that didn't care much for young girlish squeals or giggling and there were several of us at that age where we wanted to do nothing BUT giggle. So, we were told the best thing to do would be to explore the upper reaches of the house that weren't currently in use. Susanna led the way and I was right behind her, feeling very out of things as her cousins rumbled up behind me.

The rooms were everything that young girls with a vivid imagination could hope for. Hopelessly crammed with brickabrac and dimly lit with white covers over the beds but not over the shelves bursting with curios they wreaked of stories not told. We got the idea then and there of Mr. Rochester and his ill fated love (which is why he was so moody) and Maximilian who was his rich spoiled and devil may-care friend who had girlfriends all over but never really fell in love. She and I whispered back and forth between giggles which annoyed her cousins and the game, that day, had to be shared. We spent most of the rest of the time hiding notes and letter among the unused rooms, some of them printed, others of them written in a 'lavish cursive hand' and some in a cramped brittle script. There was a mystery in those letters to be solved. Mr. Rochester was looking to meet with Maximilian over some enterprise they had taken concerning diamonds. The letters we scattered throughout the upstairs were suppose to be like a treasure hunt, the one linking to the next. The cousins who were older than Susanna and I insisted that Maximilian and Mr. Rochester be described and I hotly protested that men did not 'describe' themselves in letters to one another, but they pressured me and I remember looking in one of the uncovered mirrors set over one of the dressing tables in the room and thinking 'this is so stupid but Max, what do you look like? ' All I could see was myself in the mirror but I remember looking long enough into it to freak the girls out as I said slowly "He's tall, and has dark hair, and grey eyes, and he's always tanned." At the time I didn't know what olive skin was or I'd have said that instead. Oh, and Rhu, he doesn't sound familiar does he?

Anyway I don't remember what I wrote in the letters all that day (between things like the party and meals and stuff) all I do remember is that Susanna and I had to keep writing letters for the others to keep finding and we had to keep spinning the tail out until late in the night when we were allowed to take flashlights upstairs to our rooms, and finally went to sleep. The next morning, I know Susanna and I hid for a while up in the attic because we didn't want to write any more for the others about Mr. Rochester and Maximilian. They were ours and the other girls wanted them to have girl friends and all that and Susanna and I wanted them to have adventures and Maximilian I was certain would have more daring do and less catching swooning maidens.

I do know that Maximilian was always somewhat of a disappointment to me because Rochester was an easier name to write and sounded cooler. And they would call each other "Dear sir, or mockingly "My dear sir" when they started the letters. If they were in peril (Maximilian had a way of getting into scrapes like dungeons flooding with water) the letters would begin "If I am alive after this I will tell you all" and if he were injured he'd "Have gotten this nice nurse to write the letter for me" and often times he'd put in "The ink is rather hard to come by here so I'm using my own blood". Whereas Mr. Rochester would start his letters by saying things like "My dear chap, you can not go on spending money like this" or "Dear sir, I can not condone your actions any longer" or "Hang it all Maxim, now I have to come and rescue you." Ahhhh, good memories. We had so much fun with them.

Thanks for the memory jog, Rhuness.

My HoverCraft is Full of Eels

Moio sudno na vozdušnoy poduške polno ugrey!

Oh come on, you all know that at some point in your life you've wanted to yell that out in Russian. I mean really, how many times has your hovercraft been full of eels and you've been in frigid Russian waters and desperate to get help from someone but there has been a language barrier? Or maybe like me you've just watched far too much Monty Python's Flying Circus. Well now, this fantastic site can help you with all your foreign language tongue twisting dilemmas.

It is a fascinating site and one that I have spent hours on while working on the Chatter Sheets for work today. I know I know, focus, focus. *Whine* I like and admire Wayne Batson and Bryan Polivka but I'm tired of writing about their writing. Besides, it's for work and I'm doing it off the clock and not getting paid so a little distraction is allowed I think.

Anyway, if you seek distraction or want to dive deeper in the glory of different languages check out www.omiglot.com

But plan to stay there for a while when you do go.

~Scribe

Touching History 128 years old

Mom found this today going through a box of old photos, and Dad and I were in awe as well as rather moved. It's my great-great grandfather's petition for citizenship here in the United States. And it's dated 1880.

Chatter Sheets

I am tired, today was not kind in any way other than it has agreed to end.

I am currently writing chatter sheets for the upcoming event and doing my level best not to sound like the AP updates that scroll across the bottom of the news feed on the cable channels. Bryan and Wayne were very nice and got back to me ASAP about when they are available which makes my job easier, but I fear I'm still sounding dull as ditch water about the two of them and that is not my intent. Ah well, my coworkers can make them sound better as they talk to the customers. I wish I felt more creative.

All right topic skip!

I've tried this last week to post my final thought on villains Blue, no less than five times. Twice Windows has crashed (making me hyperventilate until I remembered I backed my writing up on my flash drive) once there was a power outage and twice Blogger has refused to put the post up here. I think, Blueness I'm going to have to e-mail it to you at this rate or better yet, pop by and we'll have coffee and an informal writer's meeting. Anyway, on to other topics because I have received chastisement for not posting as regularly as I have before. Imagine that, tarbs want to know what is going on in my life.

First, writing news/update as demanded. My antagonist has been named (which is a triumph) because I really am weak at naming people. I also know that he's going to be a cross between Iago from Othello and Elijah Price from Unbreakable. I don't mean an exactly 50/50 split of course, I can only snitch so much, but now I have a general frame of reference for how he thinks *AND* what his motivation is and why it is important to the main plot of the story!
Now, in my outlining I can move foreword with things and create the incidents needed to move from point a to b to c to d to e and so on. I can't begin to tell you how much having him roughed in has helped. And for those wondering about my snitching this and snitching that, remember it has all been done before and you can't copyright ideas or plots or archetypes, and writers have been stealing from one another since the time of storytellers. To further your understanding of the legal stealing, I heartily recommend the following books:

The Complete Writers Guide to Heroes and Heroines Sixteen Master Archetypes by Tami D. Cowden, Caro LaFever, and Sue Viders.

In here not only will you find the 'type' of your character(s) but also how they best interact with other 'types' as well as examples pulled from well known books and movies that help you further understand the ideas.

Theme and Strategy: How to build a strong narrative structure to help your fiction stand tall, run fast, hit hard and soar to success by Ronald Tobias. ISBN # 9780898793925

This book is worth its' weight in gold and is one of the oldest ones in my library. I reference it a lot and it's worth the price for the list of plot summaries in the back. Here, you'll find the 36 master plots that have been around since the time of the Greek playwrights, and possibly before. These are the ones that everyone uses and Tobias helps you to ferret out plot(s) from well known books. If you don't have the resources to buy a copy now, get it from your library and buy it later. (Currently shown as out of print but available through B&N's used section, Amazon's used section, and Alibris)

The Creative Call: An Artists Response to the Way of the Spirit by Janice Elsheimer


This one will challenge, rebuke, and echo Wayne Batson's cry of "Get off your chairs, and create" that he posted this week.


Okay, that's about it for the writing, lettsee what else do I have to report?

Oh, I'm in charge of another author signing, this time with Wayne Thomas Batson and George Bryan Polivka as our featured authors. I've got about six weeks to find props, make props, figure out staging, figure out advertising, and get the staff in three stores primed and ready for the event. And this time, I've sworn I'm not going to let it take over my life as it has before. So far, so good. I'm still working on my story as well as setting up for them.

Mom and I went to the Delaware Museum of Art last Friday and had a blast looking at the Pre-Rafaelite exhibit and the Tiffany Windows which were breathtaking.

This past Friday in an attempt to get more fun in our lives and continuing last Friday's venture into the realm of fun she and I went and saw Fools Gold in the theater and it was rather good, except for a moment of full frontal nudity that had no reason to be in the film at all. I hate that kind of crap. But really, the movie was well written and had some strong themes woven throughout, I was pleasantly surprised. In fact, I'm going through and point-outlining it as an exercise to see just how the writers put it together.

And now, I'm going to go and be fascinated by Cyrillic alphabets.

~Scribe

If you want to study someone who knows villans. . .

Pick up George Bryan Polvika's Legend of the Fire Fish and watch for a character named Talon. Also worth mentioning is the sequel to it, The Hand That Bears the Sword, and the book that tells how it all ends The Battle for Vast Domain. You can interact with the author too at

www.nearingvast.com

as well as meet other fans and get immersed in the world Bryan's created.

Right, well back to what I do with villains. And yes tarbs, today is not ''tomorrow'' as promised but you all know what happened, life hijacked me at knife point.

Right now I am still held hostage. I'll try and finish the thought on villains on Wednesday as its' my day off. For now, go read Bryan's books and see how a Master storyteller give a villain a heart.

Villians, Neer Do Wells, Bad Guys, Misguided Individuals Part 2

Crawl inside a villain, try one on for fit, wear one out in public, it won't hurt a bit!
Listen to one's heartbeat, hear one sigh at night, poor misguided guy, he never wins the fight!


Okay tarbs* I'm back as promised with part 2 on the black hats!

I'm sure you've heard it in some movie---a whiny actor asks the director "What's my motivation?"---and most people roll their eyes or worse because it's such a cliche'. It's not as irritating a question as it might seem, motivation is important.

As Christians we are to examine the motives of our heart (what moves it to act) and to see if they line up with the Bible. As writers we have to examine the motives of our characters(what moves them to act) and see if they line up with their roles. The best motives for villains are pulled from the darker side of human nature. Here's a short list.

Wrath
Greed
Sloth
Pride
Envy

Consider a character who is rounding whole families up and putting them in ghettos, dividing them from the rest of the population of their country.

That's the action, now what's the motive behind it?
Easiest way to figure that out, because the reader is going to be doing the same thing, is to ask why are they doing that action?

-it could be that they have a personal grudge against this people group. Motive-Wrath

-it could be that they wanted the land these people were occupying. Motive-Greed or Envy

-it could be that by putting the people in the area they hope to have one of them discover the area's secret. Motive-Sloth

-it could be that they think these people are ruining the city with their low class ways and so move them to one quarter where they will not be seen. Motive-Pride.


Right so you get the idea, nail down the motive behind the actions and it will help you flush out the character of the antagonist. By the way, this works with the protagonist too. But this, this is the flaw or the broken part of the villain that is buried way down deep inside, tomorrow I'll go into what you wrap around that to make the core of your bad guy.

* take the 's' away and read it back to front. ;) You know who you are.

Villians, Neer Do Wells, Bad Guys, Misguided Individuals Part 1

Hullo all you tarbs* in aspiring authordom, this post is just for you. I've had three of you ask in less than a week "How do you write your villains?"

I haven't been published recently, but if you really are that curious, I'll go ahead and show how I do it. Mind you, there are other published authors that can give better advice but here's how I go about it.

Let's start with the words that define the black-hats, because it's fun to know the vocabulary regarding the doers of evil deeds. The technical term for anyone dead set against the hero of your tale is antagonist. Merriam Webster defines that title as 1." one that contends with or opposes another''. You can see that the word antagonize has the same root that antagonist does. Villains are also called adversaries, or enemies when referenced in the same breath as the hero. Oh and if you want to sound like you know what you're talking about when discussing what you do with people who don't write, you can always reference the hero as the protagonist.

Now, back to the bad guys.

In most people's minds bad guy=evil and dark with nothing at all redeemable about them. I don't think about them this way. In my mind, the line between antagonist and protagonist is rather thin. After all, from the perspective of the villain, the hero is the ''bad guy''. No self respecting antagonist sees the hero as the hero.

When I start writing the antagonist, I ask myself some questions:

1) What do they hold most dear?

They've got to have something they can lose to get them to act to keep it, whether it's plans of world domination, a girl/guy they love, a peanut brittle factory, it has to be something of value to them.

2) How is the hero threatening this?

It's a given that they are, because there is has to be something they both want and only one can have, that's what generates the conflict. If it helps, keep in mind the tip off in a basketball game. Both teams want the ball, only one is going to get it.

Maybe they both want to rule the world, or are both in love with the same person, or have a chance at the perfect peanut brittle recipe.

3) Could it be said that the hero in this story is really the antagonist of the villain?

Now I just said that from the villain's perspective that is true, but this question makes me check and make sure they are loggerheads with one another. Mediation isn't going to work and neither is compromise.

All right, that's all for right now. Tomorrow, getting inside the skin of your villain!

A Small Mound of Stones

For anyone who was wondering, this qualifies as 'later in the week'. Ugh. I could list new grievances and irritations, but I have decided that I'm not going to do that. Instead I am going to catalog all of my blessings as an act of worship and to remind myself that while the waters are raging, they haven't come over my head. Here are some in no particular order.

I won the Suspense Technique ''Trail of Breadcrumbs'' on Wayne Batson's site
with my entry featuring everyone's favorite Archivist of mine, Mynasthoa.

I really loved every last one of the challenges/assignments whether I could pull something together for each one or not. Some of them exposed a weakness that ran so deep through my skills that I nearly hated m'lord for putting his finger on it (hey, I'm being honest and I did say nearly) and others were fun from beginning to end. Out of all the ones that I did, the one with Mynas meant the most to me and I kept thinking "If I just win one, let it be that one. Let that be my 'at bat' where I slam the ball out of the park. Please." When he and his lovely lady wife agreed that it was the front runner of the pack I was more than delighted, I was encouraged. Right then, I needed to be.

Someone who had been praying for me called me up and said "I don't know if this makes any sense to you or not, but the Lord has impressed on my heart that you are really living "The Silver Chair" by Lewis. I know that this is a little odd sounding but. . .He's really put it on my heart that is where you are this year. And that He loves you, be faithful, endure, press on."

I sobbed, because I have. I have been living that book this year, and I have been telling Him how much I feel stuck in it, just like Jill and Eustace.

I keep forgetting what He's told me, I keep doubting, I keep getting caught up in the pleasures of the world, in all the good things it can offer, I keep missing signs, and I keep failing.

Only He knew that, I hadn't told anyone else, yet here was this dear friend praying for me, and He showed that to her, and she called and told me.

My friend Rhu came out to visit in December on a Thursday(half day) Friday (all day) , Saturday(went home early in the morning) type thing. I was so jazzed about her visit, I was giddy for a week before--Christmas was coming early! The most awesome part was she was just as jazzed. We talked and IMed and schemed the week before she came out like we were eight year olds! That lovely shivery stomach feeling you had as a kid before Christmas or vacation or your birthday? I had it all week! When she finally got here I think we talked and wrote non stop, occasionally eating and perhaps drinking. Our sentences spilled over one another and it wasn't as if we were completing each others thoughts as much we were playing a friendly game of 'top this' and ideas rolled like avalanches down from our brains to our pen nibs. M'lord came in to where I work to sign copies of Isle of Fire the day that she'd arrived safely at my house. I'd just called home and talked to her when he started signing. I was practically hoping up and down I was so excited, and I'm sure he and his lovely-lady wife who came in as well, thought me quite mad. I was. Mad with happiness.

So, there is the beginning of my blessings, recognition of talent, conformation that the Lord is with me though I stumble about in the darkness unable to see Him or hear Him clearly (the fault of which lies with me) and the fellowship of a friend who has been true and solid and unchanging in her friendship now for seven years.

There are my stones, mounded up, lest I forget what the Lord has done for me.

Scribe Lives Scribe Loves Scribe Outlines

Thanks to everyone who emailed or rang to see what in the name of all that made sense happened to me. I can't remember who I've told what, so think of this as a massive information drop that will hopefully will enlighten those who know nothing and bring up to date those that talked to me the third week of December.

Around the first week of December something happened at work that necessitated involving the local police. The repercussions of that are still being felt, but the long and the short of it was that my work schedule was shot to pieces because of what happened, and I nearly got the chance to take a polygraph test. Anyway, after that lovely excitement I came into work two weeks ago and was told by one of the managers that a co-worker of mine, one that I am extremely close to though she is from a more mature generation, lost her husband the day before.

I was dumbfounded. I couldn't think, couldn't talk, could only feel this really suffocating constricting of my throat and heard my pulse thrashing through my ears. He'd been doing badly earlier in the year but he'd turned the corner, he'd been making great progress, everyone was rejoicing and then--he was dead. If I hadn't been at work, I'd have screamed. As it was, I cried through my entire shift and wanted nothing more than to go home. Thankfully as busy as it was (Christmas time, and seeing as I worked with her we all were desperately scrambling to cover her shift hours), I was able to attend one of the viewings the next evening and there I saw why it is so desperately important to have fellow Christians around.

My friend was literally being carried through the event. People clustered around, family encircling one another, everyone talking about knowing where her husband was, for he too was a Christian. You could just sense the Holy Spirit there, in the hands, in the words, in the tears of the saints that rallied around her.

Hang on, I'm not done yet. One police involved incident and one sudden death at Christmas time was more than enough for me, but the month wasn't over yet. The very next week we had a problem of a technical nature where I work and sorting it out fell to my friend/manager, which put alot of extra work on me because he was busy unsnarling that, so I was coming in early, not getting days off, and just about ready to drop when another coworker unexpectedly had a family member die. This time, it was a daughter-in-law (different coworker) who died the day after Christmas. This too was violently unexpected and again I scrambled to help and covered shifts so she could go down and be with he son, and her granddaughter who is just turning eleven and now has buried and mourned two mothers.

These are some of the reasons that I haven't been around much, and when I have been around I've not felt like posting or sharing anything. I encourage you to go over and check out m'lord's blog and Brian Davis, Christopher Hopper's, and Sharon Hinck's too. They've got some marvelous things going on.

Oh, and for those interested, I've not broken from the outlining, still plodding away and planning and not just writing because I feel like it. It's been just over a month now, and things are still clicking. I'll try and share more later this week.