References and Originality

            One thing you should always remember about authors is that we are playful people and words are our favourite toys. We love to be sneaky and hide little secrets and references in our books, not to mention leaving a few puns lying around. My favourite  though, are the references. Most of these you won’t even notice unless you’re familiar with what they are about, but when you see them, they give you a good chuckle.

            The master of these references, of course, is Terry Pratchett. I firmly believe that no one can measure up to his satirical fantasy. I don’t think you can read a page without stumbling across some sort of obscure reference – the more I read, the more of them I catch and the more I marvel at his brilliance.

            In the three and a half books I've written, I've snuck in everything from Monty Python and Princess Bride quotes to references from Tolkien, Pratchett, Shakespeare and Dr Who (which I've only been watching for about a week) to internet memes. The more I write, the more ways I discover to sneakily hide references.

            I started thinking about these references (obviously, or else I wouldn't be talking about them) after coming across a reference to the lyrics of a Bon Jovi song in the book I'm currently reading (Vortex). I started to wonder why we hide these little tidbits in our books. I mean, obviously it’s fun, and it makes us feel special when someone likes our books enough to go digging through in search of everything we hid inside, but those couldn't be the only reasons.

            Then I realised that it’s our way of giving credit. In this day and age, there is virtually no originality. Not because we artists aren't as imaginative as we used to be, but simply because there is so much that has come before us. When I first read Eragon (a book written by someone close to my own age) I knew right away, without a doubt, that Christpher Paolini was a fan of Anne McCaffrey and Ursula K Le Guin. Whether it is intentional or not, authors will always have traces of whatever inspired them in their work. So, by sneaking our little references in, we are tipping our hats to those who inspired us and making ourselves feel better about using the turn of phrase that, strictly speaking, we didn't come up with.

            Since I mentioned the lack of originality in the world, I think I should elaborate on what I mean by that, as well as making it clear that it’s not a bad thing. We humans love to measure things and, while many would argue that art can’t be measured, we have managed to analyse books and say with certainty that there are only somewhere between 1 and 36 plotlines that exist in the world (the number depends on the system you are using to define the plots). If you look at the thousands of books, movies, video games and anything else requiring a plot that’s out there (like life), it’s obvious that these get used over and over again. How do we not notice?

            Well, the reason we don’t notice is because we (well, most of us) aren't watching for it. The art of telling a story isn't in creating a plot that no one has considered before; it’s in telling the story in a way that entertains people. It’s nice if this is a new way, and even better if you can keep people guessing, but the true purpose is to entertain. So, it doesn't matter that every story has already been told, because it can always be told in a different way!

            What about those people who analyse everything and complain about the lack of originality? That’s their own problem. If they want to decide that every story where the villain is the protagonist’s father is a Star Wars rip off, anything with a portal to another world is Narnia and anything with any type of institution that teaches magic is Harry Potter, then they are welcome to be disappointed about the lack of originality. They should, however, take a moment to read the history books to see how often events of reality repeat. They should also look to see if anyone else has commented on the lack of originality, lest their complaint is not their original thought.

            To finish off, I shall impersonate the Doctor and say, live long and prosper with the force. Alas, poor Yorik, he got caught playing riddles in the dark and was slain by Sephiroth before he could collect all the Deathly Hallows! Now, where did I leave my holy hand grenade...? Like a boss!

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Nostalgia

            What is it about the past that we find so enthralling? It doesn't matter if it was good or bad; something always draws our minds to the past and somehow, the past was always better than the present.

            Nostalgia is such a fascinating thing, not because it exists, but because it exists in so many people. While I’ll freely admit that there is a lot of merit to the saying “They don’t make things like they used to” (don’t get me started on built-in obsolescence), was the past really better than the present?

            When I think back to when I was a child, I wonder at how easily I was entertained and how much fun I had with simple things. Swimming is a perfect example. My parents have numerous pictures of me swimming and having a grand old time. I remember having a blast pretending to be a dolphin or just paddling around. Now, however, I don’t see a point in swimming. There’s no purpose to it and, because of that, I no longer have fun.

            So, is swimming less fun now than it was when I was a kid? I find that doubtful. Swimming is an activity, it cannot change – but I can.

            What is it, then, that changes us as we grow older that makes us enjoy life less, or at least think we do? Is it growing up? Gaining more responsibility? Having greater knowledge?

            If I had to choose one, I would have to go with knowledge, because growing up is optional and in order to have responsibility you have to accept it. Knowledge is the one thing that is irreversible – once we have it, there’s no going back (well, at least not while you still have a healthy mind).

            Knowledge is important to our way of life and it’s supposed to be a good thing. So why does it seem like the more knowledge we have, the less we can enjoy life? I think it’s because we over-think things. We spend our time worrying about what other people think of us, what we could have done in the past to make the present better, when the next terrorist attack will come and what we can do to get a raise. Then we look back at our childhood selves and think, “Gee... I had it made back then.”

            The funny thing is that life isn't all that different now than it was back then. We just know more, which means we have to sift through a lot more before we can arrive at what we enjoy – or we don’t enjoy things because we don’t understand why we enjoy them.

            Instead of looking back at how great the past was, I think we should take all this knowledge we've accumulated and, rather than allowing it to make us think life is worse, use it to find ways of enjoying life more. We’ll never enjoy life the way we did when we were children – we have too much knowledge for that – but we can enjoy life differently. Not more, not less, but differently.

            Either that or we should accept that ignorance is bliss and go live in the trees like every kid wants to. After all, kids have it made.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Understanding Phobias

            I have often felt that most people don’t understand the term “phobia”. The general meaning is understood – a phobia is a fear. But, if it’s a fear, why not just say “fear” instead of “phobia”?

            The reason is that a phobia is much more than a fear – it is a type of anxiety disorder. Depending on the severity of the phobias, they can be very debilitating. As someone who suffers from a number of them, I would know. That being said, the information I can give you is based off of my own experiences and may or may not reflect those of other people, but in the very least it can give you an idea of what having a phobia is like.

            The very worst part of having a phobia is knowing that it exists, because they are generally irrational fears. With a normal irrational fear, someone can use logic and explain to you how it is irrational and that helps you overcome the fear, but with a phobia, all it can do is make you aware that your response is entirely involuntary. There’s nothing worse than knowing that you can’t control your reaction to something you know you shouldn't be afraid of.

            Perhaps the best way to demonstrate this is with an example. One of my phobias that I discovered when I was a teenager was a fear of heights. But not all heights, no, just a certain type. I could easily jump down from a ten foot balcony or have LARP sword fights with my friends on the angled (and usually slippery) pavilion roofs at the park, but to get up to that roof I had to walk across the narrow sides of two-by-fours which I discovered I could only do if I was holding on to something.

            Now, I know, that seems perfectly logical and is an intelligent safety precaution, which is true, but what struck me was that I actually couldn't move if I wasn't holding on to something. I have an excellent sense of balance and I had every confidence that I could even run across those two-by-fours without falling, but my body refused to move.

            Logic told me I would be safe; I had the confidence and the skill, but I still couldn't do it. This is the difference between a phobia and a fear. Here is a picture of the closest I ever got to defeating that phobia:

            It was taken as part of a series of pictures where I was having LARP dagger fights with my best friend everywhere. Of all the pictures, this was the only one that was posed (including one where we were fighting while standing on either end of a teeter-totter) because I couldn't stay standing up long enough to fight.

            I shouldn't say that logic is entirely useless in regards to phobias. It is wonderful for making them worse. There is one very common mistake that people make when trying to help someone with a phobia, and that is to give them logic. “Why are you afraid of X? Don’t you know that Y, which you have no problem with, has far more bacteria?” To which my response is, “Gee, thanks, now my phobia won’t let me touch X or Y!”

            In fact, being a logical person and having a phobia is probably the worst combination there is. One of my worst phobias is raw meat. Somewhere along the lines, I picked up that raw meat carried all kinds of bad... something. I don’t even know what it is that I'm afraid of, but I know I can’t touch raw meat. Or anything that raw meat touches. Or that that touches. It’s like there’s a force-field.

            Colleen and I went to the local Farmer’s Market a few weeks ago and we bought a couple pounds of bacon. It was nearly a traumatising experience for me and worse for Colleen once I pointed out to her what had happened (she makes every possible effort to not agitate my phobias. Isn't she wonderful?). The lady at the shop handled the bacon with her bare hands, which she then used to wrap the bacon before putting it on the counter. To clarify this in my phobia’s terminology, the bacon contaminated the lady’s hands, which contaminated the paper that was now, by my expectation, supposed to be preventing the bacon from contaminating anything else.

Good job there.

            Moving on, Colleen paid the woman, who took the money and gave change with the same contaminated hands. Taking the contaminated change, Colleen’s hands became contaminated, as did her wallet and everything in it when she put the money inside. Then, on the way home, Colleen brushed her hair out of her eyes with her contaminated hands...

            And that is how phobia logic works! It took every ounce of my self control and mental re-routing to stop my phobia from preventing me from handling money ever again (because I don’t know how much of it has been passed through hands that have handled raw meat). To be fair, that’s a pretty powerful phobia, but it should at least give you an idea what having one is like (if you don’t already have one).

            So, what can you do to help someone with a phobia if logic doesn't work? The best suggestion I have is to leave them to take care of themselves and to respect that their fears are rooted so deeply that it is more than a fear – it is an involuntary, often paralysing, reaction. People who know they have phobias know what precautions to take to prevent them from being too problematic (such as marrying a wonderful person who’s willing to eliminate all those spiders that want to kill them). In my experience, all you can do by trying to make the phobias go away is to make them worse.

            I hope this has helped you to understand phobias a bit better and that, if you have phobias, it hasn't made them worse.

            To that one despicable person out there who just opened their wallet and started rubbing all their money on a raw steak, I hope that whatever it is that my phobia insists I’m afraid of gets you instead of me.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Colleen on Food

Today's blog is brought to you by my wife and co-author Colleen regarding one of her favourite subjects: Food.

I've always enjoyed cooking. But even longer than that I've enjoyed eating. At some point I discovered that food wasn't just a phenomenon that occurred when mom was around; I had control! Once that transition happened there was no looking back. I started with Mr. Noodles and then the rest is a blur until the present day. I take on any cooking challenge and I defeat most foods that I come across. The majority of the time when I fail in the kitchen it's because I went free-form, sans recipe or the recipe I did use was faulty. As egotistical as that sounds I swear it's the honest truth.

Cooking always seemed to come naturally to me. At age ten I broached the subject of home made bread with my mother. Time and again she had attempted this feat and her efforts had always turned out “smelling of beer” she told me and as a result she was fearful of teaching her young daughter. We tried anyway and my mother was astonished at the result. Not only was the braided loaf pretty as a picture but there was not a whiff of beer to be smelled. I try to tackle every culinary challenge with the same fearlessness I had at ten.

Cooking will never be a chore for me. Each aspect of it is a delight. I wish I could wave a magic wand and infuse other people with this love I have because I know too many of us dread entering a kitchen. Of course when you've been obligated to perform this traditionally “womanly” task since age fourteen, it's a little hard to find the fun in it after sixty odd years.

I also adore giving back to the people I love. I regularly baked brownies for my amateur theatre group, cookies for my live action role play group, innumerable meals for my family, casseroles for ailing relatives. My knee-jerk reaction to any situation is food. A few years ago I heard that my husband's grandmother had fallen and broken a hip. Instantly I asked “Should I cook something for grandpa?” And nothing makes friends faster than hearing “These cookies are great! Who made them?” One Christmas I decided to give an uncle the twelve days of cookies. I ended up wrapping a box weighing over thirteen pounds, of just cookies. The joy of eating is very seriously rivalled by the joy of giving and sharing a meal.

My husband has told me several times that what I cook is the best of its kind he's ever had or that he doesn't normally like whatever it is but when I make it he can't stop eating it. He once told me that my deep-fried “potato thingies” (a mashed potato French fry based on a Julia Child recipe) were the single most delicious thing he'd ever eaten. He's also accused me of trying to fatten him up with all my cooking. Feeding him is the greatest pleasure I have in an activity I already deeply adore.

I manage to infuse almost every aspect of my life with food. One of my duties as Jonathan's co-author is to assist in the descriptions of his writing. When he draws a blank he will leave [DESCRIPTION HERE] in the manuscript and I will add my imagination in the form of clothing, hair colour, fireworks displays, meadows of flowers and even a chocolate chip cookie. One chapter in his first book found the main character trying chocolate for the first time courtesy of a cook, who I was given free reign to do with as I pleased. Of course, there is no better way to introduce anyone to chocolate than with this time-honoured treat. I went to town describing how a freshly baked, warm, chewy, sweet chocolate chip cookie feels, tastes and smells. After that, the minor cook character earned a larger role in the book.

I hope to someday publish a cookbook and share my first love with the world at large, but for now I have the joy of keeping a relatively small corner of the globe happy and well fed.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

 

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

The Miracle of Social Networking

            Today I have no choice but to talk about the miracle of social networking. Those of you who know me well will find it astonishing that I have anything positive to say about anything containing the word ‘social’ – it’s true that I’d be perfectly happy living in a cave somewhere were it not for the bugs, lack of food and the absence of internet – but sometimes even I have to point out the merits.

            A couple weeks ago, I discovered the Dragons Fan Page on Facebook through a couple of author friends I met on Authonomy. After clicking the Like button on the page, I discovered that the person running the page sometimes posted links to the artists’ whose work was being displayed and, sometimes, models or figurines were posted as well as pictures. They also had 18000 people following their page and the wheels in by brain started to turn...

            You see, for the past month I've been sitting on a pile of pictures of my chainmaille dragons, waiting for the time to edit them and put them on my website. Well, now that I'm moved I found that I had time, so I prepared the pictures and had the adorable little dragons for sale on my website on Monday morning and announced their arrival on Ringcrafts’ Facebook page in the afternoon. That evening, shortly before going to bed, I sent a message to the Dragons Fan Page, asking if they might share a picture of my chainmaille dragons with a link to my work.

            I woke up Tuesday morning to quite the shock! The number of Likes on my page had gone from 76 to well over 400! Not only that, but I had tons of comments and questions to reply to, as well as several orders. Throughout the day, more questions and orders came in and the Likes on my page steadily rose until there were more than 550. All thanks to the kind person running the Dragon’s Fan Page who was nice enough to help me out and, of course, Lindsey and Sophie who inadvertently led me to the page.

            So, in the span of 24 hours, Ringcrafts went from being known by a few people here and there to being known by a good deal more people, scattered around the world. I'm amazed and delighted to say that the numbers are still climbing.

            This ties into something that I've learned from the authors on Authonomy. If you want to make a living as an artist, you need to turn yourself into a brand. As I am most certainly an artist – the only careers I considered after my childhood whims of being a veterinarian, a spy or a detective were author, musician/singer, music teacher, and chainmailler – I took this advice to heart. That’s why this blog is linked to both Authonomy (where you will find my book) and to my website. Not only that, but Authonomy links to here and my website, my website links to here and my Facebook page and my Facebook page links to my website. Everything is interconnected and it is easy for someone who likes some of my art to find the rest of it. In fact, some of you reading this may have found this blog through the events I've just been talking about!

            I can’t even begin to describe how much it means to an artist to have someone buy and enjoy their products. You see, the thing is that artists don’t create their works to make money, they make money so they can create their works that they hope other people will enjoy. Nothing is more important to an artist than the knowledge that their art has brought joy to someone else and, as such, there is no greater gift you can give an artist than a compliment on what they created or – better yet – buying it so they can continue creating.

            I hope for a world where, someday, all artists can make a living doing what they love. Until that happens, you should buy loads of chainmaille from me and pester publishers to publish my books.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Time

            Time is a funny thing. It’s something we rely on so much, yet it never seems to be consistent. Sometimes it flies by, while other times it drags on and on. A year will fly by or feel like forever. Is it so surprising that time grabs the interest of so many people?

            My opinion is that time doesn't really exist. It is merely a term humans have invented to satisfy our need to measure and quantify everything. But not everything can be measured, at least not with any means we currently have. I’ll admit that something resembling time must exist, but it is far too abstract and strange for us to understand with our current knowledge and abilities.

            I recently saw a video on YouTube that explained that, while we claim to live in the present, we actually experience things in the past – a moment after they occur. This is caused by the time it takes our senses to transmit their information to our brains. It isn't very much time, but it isn't instantaneous either, which is enough to make a difference. That’s how we sometimes know what’s going to happen a moment before it does. It also explains déjà vu; sometimes the order in which we perceive things gets mixed up, so part of our brain thinks something already happened – which, technically, it did. Or, of course, it could always be a change in the program of the Matrix.

            A common way of describing time is as the fourth dimension. This does make a lot of sense, especially if you watch a video I found years ago called Imagining the Tenth Dimension. It explains how all of existence (and possible existence), at least to our current level of understanding, can be said to exist within ten dimensions. The video describes this extremely well, using dots, lines, branches and folds, then repeating. I’d explain it to you myself, but the video does it better. It also touches very lightly on hypothetical time travel.

            Ahh, time travel. It has been dreamed about for centuries! What if we could go back and change something, or go forwards to see the future? The dreamers have popped up with dozens of theories about the possibilities of how timelines work. Is there just one timeline, where if someone changed the past, they already did it in the present so it can’t really change anything? Or are there multiple dimensions, born from the decisions people make, where every time something is changed millions of new dimensions are created? Perhaps everything that is, has or will ever happen is happening all at once, or time is like a vast sea we are weaving our way through, constantly doubling back but never crossing over. Then there’s the theory that with every moment that passes, the universe is destroyed and remade.

            Maybe time just doesn't exist, or is an entity too complex for us to comprehend.

            Time is a funny thing. It’s something we rely on so much, yet it never seems to be consistent. A year ago (minus two days) I got married and the year almost felt like a year. Almost, but it was still on the short side. Where does the time go when it’s not around here?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Moving Day!

            Ahhh, moving day! Yesterday was moving day for me, which is why this blog is coming out a little later than usual – sorry to anyone it confused. One thing I've decided, though, is if I want to really get into shape, I’ll become a mover.

            Nope, not happening. Never. My muscles say once was more than enough. They have also threatened to mutiny if I ever move into (or out of, in this case) an apartment building again. Particularly the top floor.

            I'm told that moving can be very stressful – it certainly was for Colleen – but I don’t see it myself. Perhaps that’s because everything I do, moving included, is rather abnormal. For one thing, I've technically been in the process for months, and I don’t mean just packing. You see, since it was my parents’ house we were moving into, Colleen and I have been bringing boxes over since our roommate confirmed he was buying a house with his fiancée. This, in my opinion, is a far more sensible way to move than the usual do-it-all-at-once method because you don’t need as many people and you spread all the work out over more time. Then there is only one trip with all the big furniture and you’re done! Time to unpack!

            Granted, not many people have this option available. I've only ever moved twice in my life (excluding when I was too young to remember) and it was either out of or into my parents’ house. The result being that I have always had the freedom to move at any pace that works.

            My parents are awesome, by the way. And I'm not just saying that because they read this blog – they really are! I mean, not only did they let us move back in, but they gave us two rooms instead of the one we were expecting! Plus they entirely fixed up the bedroom for us (okay, so we helped with that, but they didn't even ask us to). This is only one instance of their awesomeness (my friends were always jealous that I had the best parents ever), but this isn't a blog about them, so I’ll stop boring you.

            I think that’s about it for today. Moving has occurred. All is well. Time to finish unpacking then get back to work as usual. Moral of the story: always move in or out of your parents’ house (or don’t move at all).

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so. Really, please do!