Malta in the Fall

Where's Malta?  There it is!

Tomorrow I’m off to Malta.

Yes, that Malta.  The one of Maltese Falcon fame, based on a true story, no less.  Well, the falcon part, not the hard-boiled detective part.

Where’s Malta?  Good question.

It is not where you might think it is.  Unless you’re familiar with the area, and then it’s exactly where you think it is.

But the better question is . . . yes, you in the back with the Michael Meyers mask on.  Yes, the better question is: Why Malta?

Send 'em to the Hospitallers, lads!

First, there’s the history.  Malta is famous for not just one, or two, but three major sieges that helped change the course of history.  The first took place in 1565, and pitted the Knights Hospitaller, the Maltese and some random foot soldiers, about 6,000 fighters total, against the armed might and machine-like force of the Ottoman Empire and 48,000 of their warriors.

Guess who won?

The second important siege of Malta is equally interesting.  In 1798, Napoleon, en route to Egypt, seized Malta from the Knights.  Initially, this wasn’t a big deal, but then the French looted the hell out of Malta and really irked the very religious Maltese.  A small committee of about 10,000 irregular Maltese showed up to discuss the issue with the French.  At the same time, the British, under Admiral Lord Nelson (yes that Lord Nelson) blockaded the island, preventing resupply of the French.  There really wasn’t much in the way of fighting.  The British simply starved out the French, and when they ran out of croissants (and any other food), and disease started thinning the ranks, they surrendered.

Rubble, rubble everywhere

The third major siege of Malta occurred during WWII.  This time, the British had control of Malta.  The island had always been a linchpin in the Mediterranean, providing a safe harbor and landing field between Europe and Africa.  Obviously, this wasn’t lost on either the Allies or the Axis powers.  From 1940 to 1942, Malta became a the site of a gigantic tug-of-war between these two, complete with bombings, an invasion (that wasn’t carried out), and some impressive airshows put on between the British RAF and the German Luftwaffe (which historians like to call air combat battles).

Hello, boys.

So wow, that’s a lot of history, and in just a few five-hundred years!

I’m mostly interested in all the castles, bastions and fortified towers that the Knights Hospitaller built during their reign.  I’ll be working on the release of Tears of Heaven, but also focusing heavily on my next book The Second Cut about the samurai warrior-woman Tomoe Gozen.

If you think Joan de Arc kicked buttocks, wait to read this!

The Giraffe Riddle

Did you get the Giraffe Riddle wrong?

Yes Rob, you can be wrong.

This is how stubborn I can be at times, even on a simple riddle that's meant to be nothing more than harmless fun.  I thought I might have been wrong, except certain logical inconsistencies presented themselves.  First of all, me being wrong.

Since this isn't the riddle, I feel justified in telling this story.  If you haven’t heard the riddle, and still want to answer (or face the giraffe avatar penalty), please stop reading now.

Or now.

Last chance.

I’m serious.

Ok, you’ve been warned.

A friend of mine told me the answer was "your eyes".

Don't blink!

According to this article, I had reasoned the answer correctly that it was “the door”.  Initially, though, I was taken with the seeming clever answer that my friend offered.  Your eyes would be the first thing you should open (other than your breathing passage, the alternating aortic heart valves, etc.).

But then, my skeptical side kicked in.  This is one of the hazards of being a high school debate coach.  Besides never wanting to let a teenager be right, you also end up being argumentative, sometimes for its own sake . . . which most of my friends don’t really appreciate.

It’s odd that friends don’t like to be placed in a rhetorical corner, penned in by pedantic definitions and carefully laid verbal traps that leave them frustrated and angry.

You’d think they’d enjoy that.

But I digress.

The solution my friend provided, which initially seemed clever, suddenly started to become silly to me given the information in the riddle.  First, let’s review the text of the riddle:

“It’s 3 a.m., the doorbell rings and you wake up. Unexpected visitors! It’s your parents and they are here for breakfast. You have strawberry jam, honey, wine, bread and cheese. What is the first thing you open?”

First, the riddle says that it’s “3 a.m.”.  This was I started to take issue with the answer “your eyes”.  I’m

Wake me up before you go go!

sure there are some people who have internal clocks more accurate than the NPL-CsF2 Caesium Fountain clock, and would immediately know it’s 3 a.m.  For the rest of us mortals, this requires a garden variety alarm clock, usually next to the bed, preferably battered past the warranty for doing its job so well and consistently.

But ok, one logical inconsistency does not immediately render the answer wrong.

How about two?

The very next phrase in the riddle is “. . . the doorbell rings”.  I don’t know about you, but if it’s 3 a.m. and the doorbell rings, my eyes are open.  First, I want to know who died.  Second I want to know who I’m about to kill for ringing the doorbell so early, likely about to start pounding at the door and waking up the baby!

Well, sure, anyone can find two things wrong with a riddle that make another answer more plausible.

Shall we go for three?

You got the riddle wrong?

The third phrase in same first line says, “. . . you wake up.”  Now, you can be awake with your eyes closed.  I do this all the time when the baby cries and I think I can fake sleeping so my wife has to get up.  It doesn’t work very often, because she knows I’m doing this.  But still, most people open their eyes when they wake up.  They especially do this at 3 a.m. when the “doorbell rings” at “3 a.m.”.

Three does seem to be more than a coincidence.  But as previously mentioned, I like to put counter-arguments in a corner with that pedantic reading.  So let’s get one more nail in this coffin, shall we?

I'd like to ask you a riddle . . .

Given all the above, it’s still possible that your eyes are not yet open, except . . . how would you know it was your parents?  You weren’t expecting anyone at 3 a.m. to ring the doorbell and wake you up, otherwise, well, you wouldn’t be asleep.  You’d have battered the alarm clock’s snooze button fifteen times by this point.  So you must have already opened your eyes to look out the window, or through the peep hole, making certain that a mass-murderer polite enough to ring the doorbell before killing you isn’t standing there.  Unless you often stumble out of bed and open the door to people at 3 a.m. before you open your eyes to find out who they are.

So, there you have it.  That’s what keeps me up at night.  These viral riddles that I may or may not have gotten wrong, depending on how much time you want to spend over-analyzing the information.

Maybe my time would be better spent figuring out why I have so few friends?

One Month

I’m a joykill.

A friend of mine made up a story about a humorous picture.  The picture doesn’t matter.  I pointed out that one of his key elements was incorrect.  That doesn’t matter either.  He told me, “It would be better if it had been correct.”  That’s what matters.  That’s why we write. 

 

We try to make reality is better.

A month.

A little over a month.

After questing for decades to publish one of my books, in a little over a month it will happen.

Tears of Heaven will go from being a manuscript that I passed around to curious friends and family, to being an honest-to-goodness book with my name on the cover.

The indie publishing route was never for me.  A good, solid editor was something that I definitely needed.  In just a few short months, I learned a great deal about writing and story-telling.  Every revision, I felt my book getting stronger.  I was telling the story clearer, connecting with the potential audience.

Now, it’s all about to pay off.  Royalty checks do not need to rain down from the sky (though I won’t put up a fuss if they do).  I’ll get to see my name listed on the major seller sites.

We write to make reality better.  But sometimes reality gets it right.

Cover Reveal -- Life Flight by Shaunna Wolf

Cover Reveal -- Life Flight by Shaunna Wolf

Cover Reveal

Life Flight

Erotic Romance/Mystery 

From SRHowen writing as Shaunna Wolf

Malachi Blackfeather has spent twenty years in the Army. Two of those years as a Vietnam POW. Now that he's out, all he wants is some peace and quiet to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. Between the flashbacks, and an over interest in sex that is now being called sex addiction, finding his path isn't easy.

Kat is trying to escape an abusive marriage. Her soon to be ex is a master at manipulating the system, and her family thinks she should stay with him, "because no other man will want her". She's looking for escape in any form she can get it.

When they meet, sparks fly. Trapped by a blizzard, can two damaged people, who think there is no chance of love in the world for them, find each other, and survive an unforeseen circumstance that puts both of them in danger?

Mystery, romance, and danger, fill this novel, with a story that will draw you in and not let go.

**Warning: This is a mature adult novel. Recommended for readers 18+ due to sexual content and adult language.

From Freya's Bower

December 2013

Goodreads

Cover Reveal - Please Sign Up

Ladies and gentlemen, blog and Facebook followers of all ages, welcome to the COVER REVEAL announcement!

I tried to make it glittery with rainbows and unicorns, but the excitement processor on my computer fried.

This is not the cover you're looking for

It’s a very special time in a young (relatively speaking) author’s life when his first cover is completed and ready to be revealed to the world at large.  It’s a coming of age, one might say.  The culmination of years of effort, sweat, tears and no little blood.

Those virgins aren’t going to sacrifice themselves!

So it is with great, great pleasure that I announce the COVER REVEAL for my own book Tears of Heaven.

Tears of Heaven is being published through Wild Child Publishing December 1, 2013.

The cover will be revealed November 15, 2013.

I’m asking any and all of you to help me get the word out.  If you have a blog, no matter what it is dedicated to, I would appreciate if you would agree to host my COVER REVEAL.  Please, please, please FILL OUT THIS FORM.

I’ll take care of all the rest.

I’ll provide you with the HTML and art work ready to go.  I’m also happy to send out an advanced reader copy (ARC) to anyone who will host the COVER REVEAL.

Thank you all for your support in the past, and also for your continued efforts.

If You See an Angel, Run

People think they want to meet an angel, but they really don’t.  The awful truth is that meeting an angel is the scariest, most life-altering moment of any mortal’s short existence.  Angels have always had their voices raised in songs of praise and their wings dipped in rivers of blood.  When the Throne needs a mortal slain, or an army felled, an angel is sent.  When a city or nation needs to be leveled, and the ground sown with salt for a thousand years, an angel is the destroyer.

Flood, fire, famine, disease, pestilence and death are conjured through an angel.

Angels should be a human’s worst nightmare embodied.

Rogues were an order of magnitude worse.  An angel was a messenger of destruction, operating under orders from the Throne.  Rogues had no direction, no channel for their power.  They sought only dominion through the most direct means possible.

“Go, little girl,” the rogue gestured with his right arm, the one where she’d managed to drive a spike through his wrist.

It would have been stupid to engage the rogue, or really any opponent, in conversation.  Witty banter was for the movies.  Errol Flynn and John Wayne could while away the hours as they faced a bad guy and spouted catchy one-liners.

In the really real world, Del knew better than to take time out of her busy schedule.

She still held a second cold-forged iron spike in her left hand.  She wanted to drop it and reach for her last SIG Sauer .45 behind her back.  Most melee weapons against a rogue were nearly useless. Unless it was the right weapon.  She shifted her grip, stepped into the rogue with speed no mortal could, and stabbed with enough power to lift the rogue off its feet.  Rogues might be strong, but the laws of physics were stronger.  The foot-long spike punched into the rogue’s left shoulder and only her fist on the weapon stopped it.

The Host takes care of their own.

Even if they have to hire it done.

Tears of Heaven available Winter 2013

Research

I love research.  I love history and tactics and logistics.  I love finding out just how stranger than fiction truth can be.

I love hand-manufacturing techniques, learning what it took to make a simple horseshoe, let alone something as complex as a full suit of armor.  I like finding out interesting little details and then working them into my own writing.

Drachmas?  I thought this was an action story!

I can spend hours on end searching down the tiniest of details.  Sometimes, this has a detrimental effect on my writing.  Putting all that time and effort into figuring out exactly what the coin denominations were for the major ports of Greece and the Mediterranean.  The conversation between characters that resulted from this effort ended up being scrapped because, well, it was a lecture on ancient coin denominations that made no sense in the context of the story.

Why would three characters start instructing each other on the different kinds of coins they all should already know about?

Such is the life of a writer.

We often must kill our hard-researched and hard-written darlings.

Quick, take the blue pill!

The other problem with research, especially in the internet age, is that while it’s easy to stumble upon something that sounds cool, it’s even easier to find information that isn’t true.  We writers have to put on the appearance of being an expert in all fields, when in fact we may only have a decent handle on one or two and we’re faking the rest.

You see, when you create a world, and the characters that inhabit it, you strive for realism in every aspect.  History, society, culture, events all need to appear to be organic occurrence.  The characters reactions should be organic and personal.  At the end of the day, though, they’re happening because the author wants them to happen.

How much for the brick in the window?

We have to do everything in our power to keep readers from pulling back the curtain.  It’s not enough to just put up a sign in front that says, “Pay No Attention.”  We have to tack, nail, screw, chain, bolt, and (if we’re really successful) wall over the curtain with brick and mortar.  The world needs to be so real that a reader can step out of this one and into that one seamlessly.

How does that happen?  Three tips: research, research and more research.  It helps if an expert has already condensed research for you, so that you only have research those important bits.  Experts like  like I Clausewitz and limyaael who can take a lot of the pressure off a writer.  But the research still needs to take place, and it should be done.