C. Lee McKenzie

Young Adult and Middle Grade Author

Thanksgiving and Then What?

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What comes after Thanksgiving? A hike, of course. If I’m thankful for anything is the chance to be out in a forest on a trail. And today was a perfect day for it. 

This is early with some overcast. No one on the trail this morning, except me.

I’m always on the lookout for poison oak and I never fail to find it. This little guy looks so sweet, but does it ever cause me suffering and itches galore if I touch it.

My shadowy selfie.

Rattlesnake grass. On a windy day, it gives you plenty of warning.

A bit sunnier as I head toward the coast.

A new pine sunning itself.

Dandelion looking up.

“The unquiet spirit of a flower
That hath too brief an hour.” Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortizzoz

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Along the trail there are always metaphors. Here’s life’s grand circle. Out of the dead stump a beautiful green bush thrives.

This is my last post about Gadget Girl and my November Featured Follower. It has been wonderful to share this author and her work with you. I hope you enjoyed meeting Suzanne and I hope you’ll read and enjoy her books. Check out her AUTHOR’S PAGE

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Congratulate the winner of Gadget Girl! Nicola at Burggraf’s Blog is the lucky Email Connect follower.

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Check back to find out who will be my December Featured Follower! Wow. The last author of the year already. 



Quote of the Week: “Trails are like that: you’re floating along in a Shakespearean Arden paradise and expect to see nymphs and flute boys, then suddenly you’re struggling in a hot broiling sun of hell in dust and nettles and poison oak…just like life.” 

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― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

Failure Cancelled For The Day

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I’m really tired of failing, and I think it’s time to stop doing that. So I’m setting some non-failure-no-that’s-not-happening goals for today. On this day I will not fail. I will succeed. 

  • I will write three amazing sentences. (low expectations also helps)
  • I will finish reading the two books I’m into and loving.
  • I will cook an “Ahh Factor” dinner that even I can say, “Oh, my!” when I take that first bite.
  • I will take a walk in the woods and Bill Bryson will envy me.

For one day I will not fail.  Yay!

I’ve learned that failing and getting up and moving ahead means I’m stronger than I ever imagined. I’m only here for a short time, so while I’m here I want to succeed. I know I’ll have more failure along the way in the future. Just not today. Today Failure’s cancelled.

So much for philosophy 101 and on to Monday-Morphing-into-Goddess-Writer Person.

AMAZON

I made a huge decision yesterday-huge, in like I said, “Okay, fish or cut bait, Lee.” And I actually started to write book three of the Alligators Overhead and The Great Time Lock Disaster series. So I’m into research and. . . are you ready? I’m learning new things. 

Did you know that the name, Plantagenet, came from planta genista, the Latin for yellow broom flower, which the Counts of Anjou wore as an emblem on their helmets? Hillary probably knows this, but until yesterday I didn’t. I just pull it out of my garden every chance I get. Terrible stuff.

And did you know that Richard the Lion Heart was the first king to be a knight?

And did you know that he and his family spoke French and not English, although they were the rulers of England? 

I’m so jazzed about all of this and the possibilities for Pete and Weasel and book three.

Hope you’ll visit Literary Rambles today. The Dragons and I are paying a visit to that wonderful blog.



My Quote of the Week: “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” W.B. Yeats

Random Me on Monday

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It’s hot. It’s dry. I’m stressed to the max about any number of things that seem important right now, but probably won’t next month. All of this is to say I could not think of anything I wanted to blog about today. Until I took a break and read a magazine. And, guess what? I found stuff I wanted to share.

Totally Random and Almost Useless Facts:

  • A group of jellyfish is called a “smack.”
  • A large river hippo can open its mouth wide enough to fit a four-foot child.
  • The life span of a taste bud is about 10 days.
  • Dixon Ticonderoga Company produces approximately .5 billion pencils annually.
  • It took 101 days for the Pilgrims to sail from Southhampton, England to Plymouth, Mass in 1620.
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Psyche: 

I seldom do any reviews of TV anything, but I discovered a show called Psych that actually made me laugh. It’s on Netflix (I gave up on TV years ago), so you’ve probably seen it and forgotten you did. If you missed it, give it a try. Dule Hill and James Roday are a riot together. And Corbin Bernsen is his usual “interesting” self in the role of Dad.

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Quote of the Week: “Most of American life is driving somewhere, and then driving back wondering why the hell you went.” John Updike

Are you ready for fall to kick in? Any random facts that you care to share? Know about Psyche?

My Computer Sucks.

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DEAD

This morning my computer decided it was going on strike so I couldn’t blog. By the time I could switch over to my laptop life got in the way with a few emergencies.

Of course, today was the day the wonderful M.J. Joachim hosted me on her blog, Writing Tips, and I really wanted people to stop by and say hello to her.

While I’ve tried to give you the link to the post, my laptop doesn’t like it enough to comply with my orders, so here it is in plain view. http://mjjoachim.blogspot.com/2014/02/writing-kissing-scenes-by-c-lee-mckenzie.html

Hope you’ll pay a visit while I find a sledge hammer to deal with this Apple product.

Monday Moods-Adventurous & . . . still Crafty

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“BREAKTHROUGH: “THE ADVENTURES OF CHASE MANHATTAN” BY Stephen Tremp, will be free for (2) days on Amazon June 18th - June 19th. Be sure to download your copy! You can visit Stephen’s Website Breakthrough Blogs for more synopses and reviews.

This looks adventurous, doesn’t it? Thanks for the visit, Stephen and good luck on your book.

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Last week I returned to the CRAFT of writing, specifically DESCRIPTION. I love description in a story when it’s done right and creates the reality of the place and the people in it. But getting it right isn’t easy.  It takes a lot of practice and, I believe, a lot of reading.
One element in description that I love is figurative language: the simile and metaphor. The biggest mistake I’ve made and that others also make is falling into the lazy cliché trap. “He fought like a madman.” OR “Her eyes were deep blue pools.” 
 
Here’s some description that fell into that trap and, therefore, doesn’t work-at least for me. I’ll let you decide how you react to it. It will be interesting to find out if you agree or disagree with me.
 
He stood dead center in the field and listened to the mixed warbling of birdsong and the rustling sound of a breeze blowing through the tree tops. In the distance he heard the hum of traffic coming from the busy highway.
 
Whoever created the phrase “dead center” did so a long time ago. Any freshness vanished before I started reading books. So is there another way to say someone has arrived in the middle of something? How about, “He’d come half-way across the field.” Not terribly exciting, but all description doesn’t have to be exciting; it only has to put the reader into the place with your character(s), right? 
“Listened to” as it’s used here is one of those overused/abused filter words that I find dotting my first drafts all the time. I hate them, but I can’t seem to avoid them when I’m setting down a story. Thank goodness someone invented REVISION and gave writers a delete key. Take out those filter words and free your prose.
I always like a bit of detail in my description, and I don’t like having to figure out too much of the setting or where the character is located in that setting. In the example above, we have a field, but then are there trees in this field? It seems as if there are, so why not give that bit to us? And why not give us the kind of tree. That’s easy and it changes the feel of the setting. 
 
Why do birds have to “warble” and breezes “rustle” through tree tops? Couldn’t birds sounds come to the page differently? Could they just be birdsongs? Could leaves in a breeze just be that? I think letting the reader fill in what they sound like is a better choice here.
 
So now that I’ve deconstructed this bit of description, it’s only fair that I put it back together. This is one way I’d do it.

He’d come half-way across the field and stopped under the shade of an oak. The muffled drone of traffic coming from the highway was overlaid with birdsong and the fingers of a breeze playing through the tree top.
Okay, your turn. Maybe you’d like to DECONSTRUCT my version. There’s more than one way to build a good descriptive moment.
 
 

Monday Moods-Thankful and Crafty

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My thankful Mood is all about my Mr. Linky experience. It has been great, and I’m now feeling as if I’m on my way to organized. I’ve set my book launch ahead a bit since there was a delay in production, but the delay won’t be long. Thanks to those who signed up to give me a hand and thanks to MPax for all her help with Mr. Linky as well the emails of encouragement. Lee at Tossing It Out, Rachael Harris and Alex Cavanaugh will still be hosting me, but in August.  Julie Muslie will host me in late July.

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Now on to my Crafty Mood. I’ve been so tied up with the business of writing that I feel as though I’ve neglected the craft. I need to return to that and remember that launches are not possible without actual writing.

One thing I’ve been doing a bit more of is reading and paying close attention to how the stories I really enjoy pull me into their characters and the worlds these characters inhabit. I love the fast-paced action and the tight dialog, but I also like those quiet moments when the author DESCRIBES the characters and the setting for me.

Description is an important piece of a story, and to bring that story to life on the page requires such skill on the part of writers. They have to translate the sight, sound, smell and feel of the people and  places so the readers have access to them, have a sense of what the characters look like, how they’re experiencing something or being affected by it. And they have to do it without resorting to clichés-the bubbling brook, the attractive woman, the bustling city, the stinky socks or the meow of the cat.

Appealing to all the senses adds depth and reality and allows the reader more of a chance to really lose himself in the prose. Here’s one passage I love because it tackles two of our senses to deliver up the character.

“Zalatnick led me into the shop not as if I was a fellow looking for a job but as if I was a friend of a friend. I was sure the men in the shop could smell the difference.”

Here’s Stephen King on DESCRIPTION: “Thin description leave the reader feeling bewildered and nearsighted. Overdescription buries him or her in details and images. The trick is to find a happy medium.”

How true, Mr. King. The craft is all about knowing what to include and what to leave out. If the writer includes just the right amount, the left-out portion allows the reader to interact and become one with the story. This is such an incredible skill that I think I’ll be focused on it for a while, so if you visit here for the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about what I’m learning about DESCRIPTION.

What brought this post on were these pictures of spider-webbed trees, an unexpected side-effect of the flooding in parts of Pakistan earlier this year. It seems millions of spiders escaped the rising waters and stayed among the branches, creating these surreal images. When I saw them I wondered how I’d put something like this into words. My first try was to call these trees captured by smoke. How would you describe what you see if you were writing a description of these trees?

Monday Moods-Very Appreciative & Launch Party Nervous

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About Being Appreciative
For some reason my stars lined up this year, and I won lots of things. Lisa Gail Green at Paranormal Point of View was wonderful and gave me a chapter critique during the RAOK Blitz. I so appreciated that.  Julie Musil gave me a wonderful book, Plot and Structure that seems to be chock full of great information. I’m already on Chapter 4, and I just started it. Thanks Julie. Then Stacia Kehoe bestowed Possession, Possess, and The Audition (her own book) on me. I have so much great reading to look forward to this summer. Now pass the hammock, please.
During that super A to Z Blogging Challenge, I had a lot of fun writing min-crazy fiction on Rach Writes Blog and she’s given me a slot on her blog, so on July 9 I’ll be posting an article on the category called New Adult. I must have been on a roll because I also garnered a guest post on Arlee Bird’s Tossing it Out. So on July 16, I’ll be there, too.
About Being Launch Party Nervous

I’m in that waiting room that writers hate. The book cover is almost done. The book is almost formatted and edited. The book trailer is almost ready.

The problem is that the writer isn’t . . . ready, that is. Here’s my list of To Do’s:

1. Organize a launch (Notice how simply put that is.)
2. Buy aspirin.

That should take care of it.

Oh, and here’s where I beg for help. If you have it in those writerly hearts to help me get this book out and about, I’d love to have you sign up on this Linky. I’ll contact those who want to post about my book and give you all the links etc. If all goes according to plan, I’m looking at the last week of July for blast off, but from my past experience with this publishing business, I may have to slide the launch into August. I’ll be sure to check with you as far ahead as I can.

I can offer cookies or cyber love. I’m also great at dog walking and cat sitting. I do windows, but they always streak, so don’t take that option in payment. I will have a few presents to give, of course, and I guess that’s item #3 on my To Do List-find presents.

Monday Moods-Experimental Shorts

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Last year I wrote a short story to be included in an anthology called The First Time. I hadn’t written one of these for the young adult category before, so I had to give it  a little . . . some . . . one heck of  a lot of thought. And my biggest hurdle was getting started.

I only had a maximum of 5, 000 words to tell a whole story. Yikes! How was I going to do that? I much prefer a comfortable 60 to 80K to develop my characters and let them work through their challenges. But I’d signed on to write the story, so I decided I’d better stop worrying about the limited number of words and get on with it.

I went through some of my favorite short story writers and reread James Thurber, Kingsley Amis and William Faulkner. All very different writers, aren’t they? Yet their stories grabbed me when I read them the first time years ago and kept me reading when I returned to them this time. 

So why were these old stories still interesting to read?

The answer popped up the minute I asked that question. The Characters. In Thurber’s  “The Catbird Seat”  it was Mr. Martin, the mild-mannered, cunning man with murder on his mind.  I never could shake the character of Jim Dixon in “Lucky Jim” or fail to shudder every time I thought of  Emily Grierson, shuttered inside that dark house in “A Rose for Emily.” 

Each of the characters in these stories are memorable. First they have a unique voice. Their word choice is theirs. The way they put these words together in dialog or thought is their way of expressing themselves, and the cadence of their language belongs to each of them and can’t be confused with any other characters in the story. 

Then they’re plunged into a situation-AKA a tight spot-and the reader must find out what they will do to get out of it. Will Mr. Martin kill Ulgine Barrows? Will Jim Dixon overcome his first and very bad impression he made at his school? Will Emily keep Homer . . . forever?  As we read how each of these characters act and react, we have a plot to keep us engaged in the action, action that’s all about the character.

With all of this information whirring in my writer’s brain I set out to write Premeditated Cat. So far it has been reviewed well, so while I can’t hold myself up to Thurber, Amis or Faulkner, I can thank them for their wonderfully written stories and their inspiration. And since I had such a great time writing the first short story I submitted a second one. It will be published this year in Two and Twenty Dark Tales, and I’m really excited. 

Monday Moods

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I guess today I’m waxing a bit NOSTALGIC. *She looks into the near distance, hand propped under chin and sighs.

I was reading a blog post several months ago about spinning yarn, not telling stories, either, but really spinning yarn. I know, “Why were you reading about knitting?” you ask. Well, this blogger said something that stuck with me. Here’s what Ashling wrote in The Confessions of a Would-Be Mountain Woman:

“[The people in the shop] told me that their local spinning group (Elmendorph Spinning Guild) had 40 people show up for their monthly meeting. What does it say that so many are returning to this ancient art?”

My comment was: “As to why people are returning to ancient art . . . I think it’s because we’re so isolated in this techi world of internet “love” that we crave a connection of some kind to our past. Just guessing, here.”

After reading Ashling’s post I dug out my grandmother’s quilts and studied the beautiful stitches she’d made my hand and marveled at her art and her skill. Now I do think my comment was right.

I want a connection with things that are tangible and things that give me a feeling of being connected with the people in my life. Even after they’ve gone from this world, they’ve left behind the traces of who they were and where I came from. How about you? Have a need for connections to your past?

Monday Moods-Confused

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I think I’ve been in this mood several times since I started writing and publishing books. Confused must be a necessary part of this business.

THWWWW!

Marketing people are saying you must BRAND yourself if you want to sell books. Authors either embrace this idea or they give it  the old ➥➥➥➥➥➥

So what is a Brand and how do you get yourself one of those, just in case you decide it’s a worthwhile strategy.

It’s been said before, but it needs restating: BE YOURSELF. You’re unique and there’s nobody else who can be YOU. Here are some writers I think have been very successful at creating their brand. I visit them a lot because I want to read what they write and share the time in their special place. I have others, but these have been on my “must visit” list a long time.

Bish Denham
Carrie Butler 
Lisa Gail Green
Old Kitty
Kelly Pollark
Lynn Kelly
Fairday Morrow

CREATE A CATEGORY OF ONE. (For this term I must credit Lethia Owens.)

This category is very different than a category that lumps you under a file that includes a lot of other writers. I love how Ms. Owens shows the difference. If you say you’re a YA or MG author, the person will file you under YA/MG along with all the other writers s/he likes in that category. If you say you’re the writer who captures the pulse of adolescent confusion in your book XXXXX.  You get a special file that’s all your own. I like that.

I’m still looking for more about marketing, so hope you’ll pop back next Monday. I’ll try to have a few more tips. Oh, and please add to whatever I’ve said. I’d love a good collection Marketing Strategies.