Wind Follower has arrived at my door steps

Hi all:

I just got my novel Wind Follower from the publisher. I'm sooo happy. My very first book. I am sooo happy. Soo happy. I'm a published author of my very own book.

If you know anyone who is into folkloric fantasy, or Christian fantasy, or ethnic fantasy, tell him/her to go on over to Borders and B&N to order it.

Thanks so much.
-C


Then said I, "Here am I. Send me."
Carole McDonnell
www.carolemcdonnell.com
WIND FOLLOWER
www.juno-books.com/windfollower.html

My inner gold-digger

Hi all:

I'm trying to get back into the Daughters Of Men work-in-progress again after a brief hiatus away from it.

I was so into thinking about the male motivation/issues in the story that I wasn't really exploring in a truly deep way the motivation of my female character.

I suspect now I have to get in touch with my inner gold-digger. It seems to me that women growing up in a bereft culture where there are men with power and men without....well, these women would see the overseers as sugar-daddies. This connects in some ways to my love of reality love-match TV shows like Flavor Flav.

Most of those girls were poor and in need and the show was their way of getting money...and fame...even in some small fading hip-hop hipster kind of way.

I have to decide if Ellie, main character in DOM, is needy enough to want one of these guys ...secretly. Or maybe she's a user. And even if she's not a user, she might very well be so oppressed by all the sorrows and responsibilities of life that she finds a part of herself that actually needs a relationship with a paranormal sugar daddy.

The problem is I have to decide if she is like me or not. Satha was pretty much who I would be if I were in that situation. Now I have to decide how noble a character Ellie will have to be. Or rather, how noble a character I would be if I were in Ellie's situation.

The true glory and the true blessing of Josh my main human male character is that he's human. The true horror and the true curse of Josh is that he's human.

An inhuman overseer has power, wealth (presumably), the power to heal, the power to understand everything going on inside a woman's mind. And all they want is love. A real guy can't stand up to that.

Women want real guys who happen to be super-human.

I want to find the real Ellie. Not an Ellie "feminists" or "Christians" or "blacks" or "good girls" or "bad girls" would like. I want to find the real Ellie who will make DOM work. And she probably is not a "pure" user. But an impure one. One with a mix of need and desires and insecurities.

-C

Wind Follower first review

Well, the first review of wind follower is up.

It's up at The long and short of it.
Long and shortreviews a site which specializes in romance.

I'm happy.
It has begun.

And it is interesting that the first reviewer of the book is a Malaysian Christian. The book deals with multiculturality.

She said, "Wind Follower had me hooked from the first page and I found it hard to stop reading. It is very different from the stories I normally read, but nonetheless, interesting."

And she also said, "Wind Follower is a page-turner right from the beginning."

Ooh, I loved that.

Who knew I had it in me to write a page-turner?"


Nice.

experience, observation, imagination

Quote of the Day: A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

--William Faulkner

This is sooo true. And I often see the lack one of these things...but often the other things that are in the author don't seem to supply the lack of the others. This is just my opinion. For instance, I didn't know much about observation. I was terrible about "showing" because I truly had to learn about the various kinds of body language. My characters tended to be talking heads. And they still kinda are...so i'm glad my crit friends remind me of these kind of things.

As for imagination, I've seen a lot of imitative writing. People think they're being imaginative...and they are being imaginative as far as they know...but honestly in a lot of allegories I've read, they're imagining a world that is already created. Or a concept that already exists...and they aren't using it or mining it...anymore. They think they're imaginative because they are stringing together a kind of plot....but it's really a plot based on something they didn't imagine. For instance, why are so many dragons in the stories of beginning writers named "Draco." It's a bit much.

The last thing is experience. This is kind of tough. We all have experience...It's not really about youth, i think...but about the ability to be in touch with your own experience of joy, pain, need, fear, whatever, and get it into the story. So many of the stories I've read feel so unlived in. Someone writes a story about an ugly brute who is being rejected by a beautiful woman. Yet when one reads the story it's as if they don't seem to understand rejection or what it means to be ugly....even if one knows they must have been rejected...or that they must have considered themselves ugly at one time or another.

I wonder why that happens. Lack of courage? Lack of the ability to see ourselves?

-C