Author: Erin Penn

Author Spotlight: John Hartness

Erin Penn

Book Cover for Stone Cold Crazy

Cover from Amazon

John G. Hartness is a … personality. His podcast, Literate Liquors where he pairs good books with good booze, is NSFW (not safe for work), and the language on his blog has vocabulary not allowed in G movies. But he is passionate about writing and is willing to help those willing to help themselves. Not satisfied with helping new authors through organizing a few anthologies (The Big Bad and The Big Bad II, for example), he has gone on to start Falstaff Publishing. In addition he regularly contributes at Gail Z Martin’s meetup about how the publishing industry works.

Series he’s written include: The Black Knight Chronicles (published by Bell Bridge Books), Bubba the Monster Hunter (self-published – and yes it is EXACTLY as wild as it sounds), and Quincy Harker (self-published). Plus he had tons of short stories and other material out there.

Highly educated, he man can talk theater, electrical, and wiring. He works as a publisher, marketer, content editor, and with a dozen of other skills beyond his formidable sales ability.

And when the Interweb posts self-published are silly, ineffectual people, gloves come off.

If you want to know what self-writing is about, the schedule you keep, the blood you will bleed – read this blog published April 26, 2016: Ros Barber may not be an elitist assclown, but she sure comes off as one.

Biggest takeaway for me was: 
“…if you want it, it’s out there. But you have to want it. And you have to be willing to work harder than anyone else, because that’s what small business owners do. And if you don’t look at your writing career as being a small business owner, then you’re not ready to have a writing career, no matter how you plan to publish.” (John Hartness, 2016)

Flash: Joelie and Sarah’s Last Day

Erin Penn

Water visible through Ice

Image Courtesy of Jeremy Ricketts at Unsplash.com
Cropped by Erin Penn

Joelie cinched the saddle girdle tighter, letting the town’s mayor attempt to make him change his mind. You would think after raising her from birth, she would know only one person got him to change him mind about anything. Finally he interrupted, “Jillie, hon, your mom ain’t goin’ to last through winter and I can’t stop that. Travel may end it sooner, but she will see something she wants to see.”

“Dad, she is barely conscious. She isn’t going to notice anything, and it’s a full day’s travel even with my horse.” The five foot nothing blond dynamo argued. “Shouldn’t mother die in the comfort of her own bed?”

Satisfied the horse was ready and everything was packed for the journey, the old farmer went into his one-room house. “Your mom has never been one to choose comfort.” He sat in a chair to change his boots and add a second pair of socks.

“At least let me see if the priest from Riding-in-the-Mud can help give travel ease.” The young woman trailed her father into her childhood home.

Joelie stood, pulling on a traveling cloak. “Magic helped the first year, but now the Tester has placed this challenge before us. We can do this on our own.” Touching the pile of skin and bones swathed in blankets, Joelie stroked his wife’s cheek. “Sarah, time to go.”

Her blue eyes focused on his for the first time in days, reassuring him that the love of his life was still with him and he was doing the right thing. Picking up the blankets and padding, he carried the precious bundle out. Despite her having been several inches taller than him and outweighing him most of their joint lives, the last two winters of illness had taken their toll and now she was lighter than a grain sack.

****

Two days of frozen purgatory guiding a horse through his normal, slightly illegal, hunting grounds finally ended. He had never been one to understand how the King could own the entire forest. He was pretty sure the White Stag ruled it.

Jolie had wrapped Sarah tightly during the day and provided her his heat at night. He wanted to carry her during the day as well, or ride the horse and provide her needed warmth, but he needed to break the trail for the horse and he fell too many times.

The horse went to the edge of the water without prompting and Jolie started pulling what was left of his wife down. He heard a whisper and leaned closer in. “Are we there?”

Seeing clear eyes and ruby checks, Jolie gave thanks to the Tester for giving him a final moment with her. “Aye, we have arrived.”

Twenty years ago, she had laid into him during one of their few arguments, saying he did not have a romantic bone in his body. Sarah had just finished a round of afternoon sickness, since morning sickness was not enough for his exceptional wife, and the additional weight at six months on her swelling feet looked painful even to him after spending the day in the field. It took time to get her to this location then, but never did she ever question his romance again. Partially because if she did, he would have dragged her the long hike there and back to revisit this place.

Sitting on the edge of a boulder half-in and half-out of the waterfall pool, he settled his forty-year old woman in his lap and let her look around. A magical spring feed the creek a little further up. The water stayed a constant fifty degrees, creating a pool warm in winter and cool in summer. The steam rising from the waterfall coated the branches nearby with crystal ice. A few flashsprite made the glade their home during the winter, and danced among the branches setting off rainbows of color. The Valley-Home water lily floated pure white from a dozen different locations in the perfect blue of the pool. Green grass grew at the edge of the pool, where the warm water pushed back the hoar frost.

Valley-Home lilies could never be moved from their home water pool. He tried for years to transplant some from the spring to the irrigation pond in the north fields until Sarah had requested he “stop killing the flowers, you fool. I can remember their scent just fine.”

Joelie held Sarah, rotating her head from where it rested on his shoulder throughout the day and sunset so she could see everything. He feed her bits of trail meat after chewing it soft. At night the flashsprites danced faster among the ice, snow, and blue water. The world was a blaze of color and the jasmine-like scent of the Valley-Home released at full strength just before the white flowers closed for the night. Sometime after sunset Sarah slipped away.

(Words 814; first published 6/19/2016)

Editing Rant: Outline

Erin Penn

Model Of Twisted Dna Chain Stock Photo

Image Courtesy of cuteimage at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Why Outline?

On the days when your muse takes a day off, you can still keep going. Words on paper every day is how a book gets completed. You don’t need a detailed outline, just a line or two per chapter to do the trick. I am hoping to use my outline to get through my post-convention slump. 

In addition outlining helps with:

  1. Refining the concept – Sometimes the story is not about what you think it is about. Once you know what the important conflict is, keeping focused on the plot pacing is easier.
  2. Pacing – Essential for genres where you need to provide clues and red herrings, such as mysteries. You don’t want to give them up all at once or hold them back too long. Useful everywhere – quests (journey stages), relationship development (love at first sight still needs tension), and emotional changes (when does the first change occur, when the backslide, and the final new emotional habit develop?).
  3. Timeline pressure – Ticking clock, need to know when everything happens, and picking up the pace as the deadline approaches.
  4. Large casts – Don’t let people just disappear and keep the pivotal characters impact consistent throughout the manuscript.

And from the editing standpoint if you are under contract:

  1. Length – Get a feel for how long the book is. Over time you will know how many words are in a chapter. Do you need to add chapters to reach your word count or do you need to go on a path of destruction? An outline can help indicate which sub-plots you can remove.
  2. Synopsis – Hate synopsis? Providing one to your content editor will help them know what direction you are going.  Use the outline to figure out what is specific to the largest plot and present that.
  3. Time left to write – So that contract. It has a deadline. Just how far are you into writing that book? Your editor needs to know – YESTERDAY – if you are falling behind. … And if you are not under contract because you are a new writer, I recommend setting a personal goal to practice meeting deadlines. Many of the editors for hire have narrow windows for taking on new business; you are going to want to fit into one. (Yep, there is the editing rant as promised. Deadline, folks!!!)
  4. Pantser editing – After finishing your story, go back and outline it to help you refine how you need to edit your story. Which chapters might need moving? Where does the pacing slump? Is any chapter just an info/history dump and needs to be redistributed so it is not disruptive?

An outline is the scaffolding, the building blocks, the DNA of your story. What other things do you think an outline will help you with?

Flash: With the Moon Watching Other Places

Erin Penn

Woman in Forest

Original Image Courtesy of Neill Kumar of Unsplash
Cropped by Erin Penn

Rating: Mature

With the moon watching other places, the lake at the end of the world captured the far lights and milk of the heavens in a pool of midnight black. The pure waters reflected the stars, joining Helio and Gea in perfect union. Henna waited in the fir trees watching the unmoving starlit water.

For the last four moonless nights, he had come and the forest nymph lips lifted in a small smile as the male’s new habit continued. Gods and men preferred to protection on nights Luna did not watch, for without Her light a soul did not have a guide through the dark into the Future Day. The male strode clothed in plant and animals from the path forest animals had beaten to the water.

His linen shirt and leather pants were quickly stripped. Henna tried to restrain her gasp as the man stood skyclad. He half-turned to her stifled sound. His body rippled with lean muscles. He was the most beautiful mobile being she had ever seen. She could feel his eyes search the shadows of trees, but she stood her ground motionless. The night was deep and the forest by the lake was hers.

One or two human hunters made it this far in their ranging. Gods had sometimes crossed the lake in their boats. But no village was within two days walk of the lake. Rarely did Henna see humans or other creatures not of her forest and she could not say if the male was either god or hunter.

He was clever. She had not been able to find his encampment the night she was bold enough to follow him. His eyes may be human weak, but his hearing was as sharp as tree’s ears. She knew not why the forest was hiding his home from her; how he commanded the loam and pines not to whisper his secrets to her. Henna had been tempted to send a songbird to a sister nymph to see if others knew of such magicks, but such action might mean sharing her male with someone and she could not bring herself to risk losing him just yet.

The man dove into the star water; widening circles, rippled, doubling, tripling the light. Assured of his diversion, Henna made her way closer to the area he had released his clothes. This night she meant to see his face and know him god, human or nymph. She yearned nymph as only such a being could she lay with; all else was forbidden.

Sinking down into the moss struggling to tie the forest to the lake, Henna blended in two body lengths from where his garments were discarded. Her red hair darkened from tree bark to garnet stone. She willed her skin to change from dappled light to sand sparkle. Then she drank in the sight of the male and waited.

He stepped from the water dripping black diamonds. Her hazel eyes followed the glittering rivulets flowing from his darkened tresses over shoulders bear-broad, a chest boulder smooth, abs rippling like rapids to a manhood as stout and thick as oaken root. His face, she must see his face, but he turned his back to her while he wrapped his waist-length hair around his fists and squeezed out drops of light.

Please, she begged Gea silently, may his eyes be stone or sapphire, earth or air nymph. Water and wood were female. But his beauty was so great she knew they would hold the fire of gods; no human or sprite could be so perfect. His face fell into shadow as he picked up his clothes and made his way to the stones where she hid. How had she forgotten he laid on stones to dry before redressing?

He collapsed among the stones beside her, stretching out among the moss. Frozen to immobility, her position let her see only his feet. She feared discovery.

Nymphs were playthings of the gods and thralls to humans who found them. Even male nymphs were either hard emotionless creatures or fickle capricious beings, depending on their element. Why had she been so intrigued? For hundreds of years the pines and deer had been her companions. To seek out a male, however beautiful was madness.

A hand caressed her butt. Henna knew her bare back cheeks looked like smooth stone and she had seen the male stroke the stones around him as he waited for the moss to absorb the water from his monthly swims. The hand dragged the other way, leaving a trail of lighting and fire behind. Another stroke and she felt her legs move slightly apart asking for attention deeper in her being. The hand stilled and she could feel his eyes bore into her camouflaged back, making out a female shape where none should be. The hand spread over the smooth pretend stones and pushed. Warmth and flesh rebounded into the calloused hand.

The male’s hand left her butt-cheeks for a moment and Henna tried not to moan from the loss. She could not keep the sharp yelp of surprise from escaping when the hand returned with a sharp smack. The sensation rippled up her spine and release her breasts from their illusion. Her glamour entire fell as her whole body tensed then released like water from the second slap.

The feet she had been staring at disappeared as the man moved. Henna tried to move as well, but two hands then grabbed her ass lifting it and slapping it both sides soundly. Dew emerged from her crevasse and her legs willingly rooted into place. The moan she had been holding back all night emerged as the male rubbed both sides of her ass and slowly sunk his trunk into her opening.

When she tried to twist to look over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of his face through her mass of hair, the male grabbed a hank and pulled her face forward. As he started to work his way in and out, trembling took Henna like a tree in the wind. First one then another eruption burst from her like pine cones in a fire. The male did not stop, but caught her closer to him as he wrapped one arm around to tease a nipple and the other arm braced him on the moss-covered boulders.

A whisper in her ear announced, “Ah, now little one. Some heaven”

Gea, please let his eyes be stone or sapphire was her last thought before the stars captured in the lake exploded back to the skies for an endless forever and night’s blackness claimed her.

(words 1,100 – first published 1/27/2013 ; republished new blog format 6/12/2016. Originally inspired by a photo on the Breathless Press site; picture is no longer available so recreated it using an unsplash.)