Friday, December 21, 2018

The Beauty of Talking Story

Talking story is one of my favorite things in the whole wide world. In case you don't know what it means in the context of writing, it means talking about stories you're writing or thinking of writing, especially if you're stuck.

You usually talk story with other writers, but it can help to talk story to people who aren't writers, but are familiar with something in the story.

For example: Suppose your main character is a waitress, but you've never been a waitress. You need her to be able to share some personal information with a co-worker, but they're both waiting tables. When could they chat?

A waitress could tell you that the boss would frown on their standing around chatting, even if the restaurant isn't busy. BUT, if the restaurant isn't busy, they would be doing side-work, like filling the salt and pepper shakers OR rolling silverware up in napkins. If they're both doing the silverware, they could talk. Or if they bring the low shakers to one location to fill them, they could talk.

If you use that, you not only achieve your requirement, you add some detail to your workplace setting and increase your authenticity.

Or you need a character to do something but don't have a motive. Chew that character over with somebody else, writer or non-writer. describe the character, time, setting, interpersonal relationships. Chances are, the other person or people will see the scene as you've created it, as a place as real as a place in the actual world you've visited. They'll understand the characters as deeply as they would an actual person they don't know but you've met and described. From that construct of reality, they may be able to tell you things you couldn't see past the blinders of Being Able To Make It So.

On this turning of the season, I wish you the ability and opportunity to talk story with other writers and/or other people.

I also recommend the Speculative Fiction Guild's GIFTS OF THE MAGI anthology, a collection of speculative fiction stories set at the turning of the year, with a wide-ranging selection of celebrations. I have a story in it, but none of us get royalties: All profits go to "Indy Reads, a not-for-profit organization that provides tutoring to illiterate and semi-literate adults."

Marian Allen, Author Lady
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Leaving Stuff Out

I went on a week-long writing retreat to rough draft a short story. The absolute upper limit of the submission word count is 9000 words, and my draft finished at nearly 11,000. A weeeeeee tad bit too long, eh?

So now I'm going back through and polishing and cutting.

The point of pounding out a draft during National Novel Writing Month is to just pound the thing out, to just get the story down, to get to the end. It's okay if there are repetitions; later, you decide what the best place for that information is.

So my first pass through the draft has been to trip repetitions and streamline awkward sentences. I've cut a bunch, added some, and I'm still above 9000 words.

Now comes the hard part: Now comes the part where I have to cut stuff that isn't awkward and isn't repetitious.

Luckily for me, I know where to go first.

I'm almost finished with Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem Trilogy. It's insanely satisfying: Hard science fiction plus strong, rich characters. But, although the author realizes any number of worlds and societies, the books contain no animals. No, I tell a lie, there are a couple of ants, some passing birds, and mention of a pet cat. Otherwise, humans are the only animals on earth or in space.

So I put some animals into my story.

And now I'm going to take them out.

If cutting those bits give me enough wiggle room, I might be able to stick a reference in here and there, just a tiny brushstroke suggesting much more.

Wish me luck!

And read that trilogy!

Marian Allen, Author Lady

Sunday, October 21, 2018

A Short Tale of a Long Tail: Are Events Worth It?

People who don't go to events (conventions, conferences, festivals, craft shows) often ask if going to these events is worth it. The answer is a bit complicated.

Naturally, if you don't have the money, it doesn't matter if it's worth it, or in what sense it's worth it. As I often tell salesfolk, you may be offering me a good price for the product, but $400 would be a great price for a flawless diamond--but that doesn't matter, if I don't have $400.

But let's assume you do have the money to pay your entrance fee and/or table fee (if you're selling books) and to get a hotel room and to pay for gas and food.

Now the question, "Is it worth it?" involves defining what you mean by "worth it."

I'm a member of the Southern Indiana Writers Group. We publish a themed anthology of members' stories every year. Fellow member T. Lee Harris and I (and often other members, as well) went to science fiction and other writing-oriented conventions and offered the books for sale.

We sold some, but never enough to cover expenses.

After a couple of years, we were approached by an independent bookstore owner in our own state, who said he had been observing us at events and wanted to invite us to do a group signing/sale at his bookstore.

That led to a great relationship with him, his wife, her mother, other writers, and readers. When he began an Authors Fair, we were always welcome there. We always sold books, met people, and had fun.

When he started an indie press, any member of the SIW who had a book was invited to publish with him, the first novel publication for some of us.

When he decided to get out of the publication business (which, I would venture to say, most indie presses do), T. Lee and I joined another "orphaned" author to form our own indie press. This happened and that happened, but Per Bastet Publications, LLC is going strong, four years later and counting.

Whether we've made money or broken even or panned out monetarily shy at events, we've never attended one without coming away with something valuable: a contact or two, good will, recommendations for other outlets, marketing ideas, and fire for writing.

Your mileage may vary, but my answer to the question is an unequivocal YES. Assuming, of course, I have what T. Lee calls "the readies" to pay my way.

Do you attend writing/sales events? Do you consider they've been worth it?

Marian Allen, Author Lady
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

Friday, September 21, 2018

Avoiding the Cabot Cove Syndrome #amwriting

Sharon Arthur Moore has a wonderful post on this topic giving 6 methods she's gathered from mystery writers/readers.

The method I'll be using in my Spadena Street series is kindasorta #4. The series is set on Spadena Street and the attached Spadena Villa. The Villa is a gated retirement community on the site of a chandelier-drop factory, and Spadena Street is a two-block cul-de-sac of factory administrators' housing built in the Storybook Style.

Each book will feature a different resident involved somehow with a different murder (or non-fatal but serious crime). I've NaNoed several, and I've enjoyed having the characters pop into one another's stories and seeing what they think of each other.

I'm hoping to get the first of the series out in 2019. If I can pick which one I want to go first!

Marian Allen, Author Lady
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

A Book Review Without a Title

I just finished a book that was very strangely composed.

The first two-thirds consisted of a group of men telling another man what they knew--or had been told by others not present--of the puzzling events of a particular day. Yes, two-thirds of the book take place on one evening, although the events they relate on that evening go back much farther than that.

The next part of the book skips around, with no notice, between the book's present and the past from the points of view of characters who weren't present at the first part's conference.

The last few chapters were only one scene long, while the chapter headings (In which so-and-so does such-and-such and this-and-that happens) have grown so long and detailed that they're longer and more informative than the snapshot or snatch of dialog of which the "chapter" consists.

Interesting, no? Well, no. It won the Booker Prize, and I'll never forget it, but I would never recommend it.

If one of the aims of a writer is to write a book which enters into a relationship with the reader, this book succeeds brilliantly. Unfortunately, it's a dysfunctional relationship, and, ultimately, a broken one.

During the first part of the book, I felt enfolded, drawn into the world described, that of gold-rush New Zealand. I learned things I never knew about the time and the setting, felt I had an insight into the psychologies of the characters, and was deeply invested in finding out the answers to the puzzles.

The second part of the book, in which the puzzles are supposedly answered, broke that spell with its more disjointed time hops and character switches, its competing explanations, its iffy timelines, and a big glob of magic realism that pops in like a gold tooth in a sausage.

That rapid-fire final section pushes you right outside of the story and only gives you glimpses of it, as if you're outside peeping through a keyhole.

Then there's that post-reading section that all powerful books have, in which you mull over what you've read. In the case of this book, there's a lot of, "Wait a minute.... That doesn't make any sense." After two or three episodes of, "But, why would she do THAT? That's just stupid," I stopped thinking about it. I believe the author did this on purpose, as a meta-message about what we can know or fail to know about situations and people. As if the reader hadn't been slapped upside the head with that often enough in real life, right?

There are some relationships you're just well out of. I could reread the book to see if things fell more neatly in place the second time through, but once bitten twice shy. No way am I going to give a toxic relationship a second go at me. Not the same damn one, anyway.

You'll notice I haven't named the book. The odds of the author of that book reading this post are so slim, I can probably safely say that if you're reading this, the book IS NOT YOURS. If you know me personally, the book is DEFINITELY not yours. You don't play unpleasant games with your readers.

I'm not going to name the book or the author, because I don't want to recommend the book even by warning against it. I know how that goes with human relationships. No, if you met Frankenstein's Monster, he would NOT be your bestie, unless you're an old blind violinist.

This curmudgeonly book review has been brought to you by

Marian Allen, Author Lady
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

Saturday, July 21, 2018


I read an article recently that said that a motive in a murder mystery must be strong enough to justify a murder, that nobody would kill somebody for stealing their socks.

As it happens, I had just heard an excerpt from Shostakovitch's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, in which the precipitating motive for a murder is a woman's appropriation of another woman's stockings. Granted, this is in Siberia and the stockings are warm.

So I would have to add three words to the article's advice: The motive must be strong enough to justify a murder to the murderer.

This means that the setting must be specific enough to affect the motive. The characterizations must be strong enough and deep enough to rationalize extreme reaction. Relationships must be clear enough to urge a violent resolution.

Think of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart." Is there a strong motive for murder? No, there's no motive for the murder -- except in the mind of the murderer.

If you're just starting out writing murder mysteries, you might do well to follow the simpler advice and choose an obviously powerful motive like money, fear of professional damage, love, or immediate self-defense.

But subtler motives are a lot more intriguing, if more difficult to put across.

She took your socks? Yeah, baby, she had it comin'!

Marian Allen, Author Lady
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

Thursday, June 21, 2018


Grandma was Lily Genarose Green, from Leitchfield, Kentucky. My grandfather divorced her when I was about two. I clearly remember when he came in, all het up about something, and announced his intention to her. I don't think he even saw me in the room, because I was behind my mother. "They" said she paid too much attention to her good works and not enough to her family. The people I know who knew her have nothing bad to say about her, so I don't know what he was so mad about. She trained and got a job as a Licensed Practical Nurse. Mom took Grandpa's side in the divorce, so she and Grandma saw nothing of each other all the time I was growing up. I would visit with Grandma once or twice a year. She seemed cold, but kind. I think the coldness I perceived was just reserve. She got hepatitis from one of her patients and was given little time to live. We had her stay with us for a few weeks while one of her brothers converted part of his house for her. She and I did some cooking together and talked. I liked her very much, and was sorry when she moved out. Mom and I weren't with her when she died.

Mom was Ruth Genarose Turner. Her mother always hated having the middle name Genarose, and would never tell anybody what her middle name was, but then named her daughter the same name and called her by it. Grandpa had twin aunts, Ruth and Rose, and Mom was named after them, too. Mom was divorced before Grandma was, when I was just a baby. I have no contact with my father, and never did, much. Mom worked at the Health Department when it was located in Louisville. When it moved to Frankfort, she moved there for a couple of weeks to see if she wanted to move with it permanently. I stayed with a friend of hers in Louisville. She decided not to move to Frankfort, and I think that was when she started working for Corhart Refractories, which then became a division of Corning Glass (where the Corningware comes from). She worked nights selling Tupperware. Got some Tupperware party stories, you bet. When Corning moved its offices to Corning, New York, Mom did move, and took Grandpa and Grandma (his second wife, who I loved dearly) with her. I was all grown up, so I stayed in Louisville. Mom retired as Accounting Manager of the Ceramic Products Division. I took care of her as she aged and as dementia progressed. She passed in January.

Me. 'Nuff said.

The Amazing Sara Marian is a writer, an editor, and an archaeologist. Amazing.

Stories. So many stories. So many characterization wrinkles. So much conflict.

Everything is about writing.

Marian Allen, Author Lady
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

It's May, It's May, A Story Once A Day!

Julie of Story A Day suggests we write something in the form of a news story. She specifically mentioned fairy tales. I'm also doing the Deal Me In 2018 short story reading challenge, and since I drew the card that means I read a fairy tale, I read "The Dog and the Swallow," from Germany. So here I go!

Fear and Loathing in LaGrange

by Marian Allen

When I left LA, I had been up all night dropping lids with somebody's cousins. When I landed in Louisville, Kentucky, which runs on New York time, it was starting to get dark.

I sat next to a man on the plane who, after we'd toasted each other with a couple of those short-shot bottles they sell you on the flight, whispered that his brother had scored a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle, and would I like to join them. I said I'd bring the grass, if my connection was still at liberty. He was, so none of us slept that night, either, insofar as I can remember.

Then it was Friday, and I drove to LaGrange for my interview with the widow/prisoner. She had refused to talk to reporters after one of them had dubbed her The Bird-Brain Killer, but one of her fellow prisoners knew somebody at the Courier-Journal, who said I would give her a fair hearing without putting my own spin on her story, so she agreed. If I'm proud of anything, I'm proud of that.


She sat across from me at a metal table, bolted to the smooth cement floor. The benches, also metal, were also bolted down.

"They said you wouldn't make fun of me or laugh at me," she said.

"I never laugh at murder," I said, which was true.

"Most of it," she said, "it's my husband's story. I didn't have no reason to kill him. Well, maybe I did, but I didn't kill him for that. It was partly his fault and partly a accident."

I didn't say anything. She peered at me, maybe trying to read my expression. At that point, I would have been surprised if I had had one, but whatever she saw seemed to satisfy her, so she told her story.

* * *

My husband said he was driving the wagon with the three horses, bringing three barrels of wine. He traded the last of my mama's earrings for them. Said he was going to sell the wine a cup at a time and make a big profit and buy me some new earrings. But they wouldn't have been my mama's, would they? Besides, if I know him, he would have drink it all hisself.

Anyway, he said there was a dog asleep in the middle of the road. He never swerved to miss an animal in his life. Give him credit: He never swerved to hit one, either, so.... Anyways, he said a sparrow told him not to run over the dog, that it was the sparrow's brother, but he said he just laughed and drove on. Killed that dog.

He said the sparrow pecked the bungs out of the wine barrels and lost all the wine. If I know him, he drank it hisself before he could even get it home.

He said then the sparrow pecked the eyes out of one of the horses. Said he tried to kill the sparrow with an ax, but the sparrow flew away and he killed the blind horse. He said that happened twice more, so all the horses were blind and dead. They say they found the horses dead in the road with their eyes pecked out, so nobody can say that didn't happen. They said I made it up about the sparrow, but they can't say the horses wasn't dead with their eyes pecked out, and they can't say them barrels wasn't empty.

But the first I knew about all of this was when a sparrow flew in at the window and said, "Your husband done killed my dog brother, and me and my bird brothers is gonna eat you out of house and home." Then all these birds flew into the barn and started eating up all our grain.

When my husband got home, I told him, and he told me what happened on the road. All he would say about it was how "unlucky" he was! Like I hadn't lost three barrels of wine, three horses, all our grain that I helped plant and harvest, and my mama's jewelry she left me besides.

Well, that sparrow come in to gloat, and my husband took that damn ax and chased it around the house, trying to kill it, but just bustin up all the furniture that Daddy made. He finally dropped the ax and caught the sparrow with his hands, which he should have done in the first place. If he'd done that back on the road, I'd still be a free woman. Well, I'd still be married to him, but I wouldn't be in the fix I'm in now.

So he says, he says, "I'm gonna eat this swallow alive!" That's the kind of man he was, if you want him in a nutshell. So he popped that bird in his mouth and swallowed it. Swallowed the swallow!

[She laughed and I laughed. She reached over and patted my hand, the chain on her handcuffs clinking against the metal table between us.]

Oh, that laugh did me good. They told me you was all right, and you are.

Anyway, that bird fought its way back up and poked its head out of his mouth and kept on threatening us! Now, I ask you: What could a dog be to a sparrow, that it would do what it done to us for the sake of a dog that was so stupid it went to sleep in the middle of the road? And why didn't the sparrow just wake the dog up?

[I was seeing sparrows everywhere by that time, so I just sat very still and nodded slightly.]

So he says, "Take the ax and kill this sparrow in my mouth."

Well, of course, when he said that, he opened his mouth, and the sparrow flew out, but the ax was swinging by that time.

And that's how I killed my husband. Now, that's the God's honest truth. The prosecutor said I was just mad because he drank up my mama's earrings and killed the horses and broke up all the furniture. They did give me life instead of the death penalty, because they said I was provoked, which I was. My lawyer says he's going to appeal and see can he get me manslaughter instead of murder. It sounds worse to me, but he says it's better.


I don't know if all the swallows left with me or if some of them stayed at LaGrange, but I put the hood up on my rental convertible for the drive back to Louisville, hoping my new friend, whose number was still penned on my palm, had some bourbon left in his cabinet.


Marian Allen, Author Lady
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes


Saturday, April 21, 2018

New Publication! LONNIE, ME, AND....

It isn't science fiction. It isn't fantasy. They don't solve crimes or have romantic adventures or think deep thoughts. Well, Lonnie hardly thinks at all, really.

I'm talking about my newly published book of short stories, LONNIE, ME, AND....

Lonnie is a natural-born fool. Tiny is the poor fool's best friend. Lonnie's wife, Leona, a hardshell Baptist, trusts Tiny to keep Lon out of trouble, but that ain't easy.

Each story is titled "Lonnie, Me, and [fill in the blank]" and is narrated by Tiny, except for the final story, when Tiny's wife has her say.

In "Lonnie, Me, and the Battle of St. Crispin's Day", the boys go back to the old neighborhood for the parish festival.

Gotta Dance!

excerpt from "Lonnie, Me, and the Battle of St. Crispin's Day"
by Marian Allen
We almost made it. We were right there at the rectory gate when somebody opened the door to the parish hall and a burst of music came out.

“Dancing!” Lonnie shouted. He faked a little tap routine. “Gotta dance! Gotta dance!” He tossed the panda into my arms and loped away from us.

Drinking and gambling and dancing. Leona was purely gonna kill me!

I’m big, but I’m not that fast, and Father Dan couldn’t but waddle. By the time we got into the hall,
Lonnie had worked his way into the crowd and cut in on a guy who didn’t look all too happy about it. The woman he was dancing with was laughing.

I recognized her. Then I recognized the guy.

“Are you kidding me? He’s in here two seconds, after twenty years away, and he zeroes in on Jackie the Kipper?”

Jacob deKueper, his real name was, but he was “Jackie the Kipper” to us boys, and his big brother, Pete, was “Dutch”.

Danny was sweating, and not just from the heat of the parish hall.

“I didn’t realize the deKuepers would be here. I haven’t seen any of them around for over five years.
Jackie must have gotten time off for good behavior.”

And the woman.

“Isn’t that Yvonne Hargrove Lonnie cut in on?”

“Yvonne deKueper.”

“She married the Kipper?”

“She married Dutch.”

“This just gets better and better.” I craned around, lookingfor somebody my size but uglier and meaner.

“Surely Dutch won’t be here.” Danny ran a finger around the inside of his dog collar, then made a twitchy gesture that looked an awful lot like the sign of the cross. “Dutch is still wanted for his part in the hold-up that got Jackie put away.”

“I’m gonna go peel Lonnie off that handful of trouble he’s dancing with and get going. Thanks for the good time, old pal. If I ever invite you over to my place, take my advice and don’t come.”

“Sorry, Tiny.” His voice faded behind me as I plowed through the dancers.



from Amazon in print and for Kindle and Kindle apps
from an independent bookseller, like through Indiebound.

Marian Allen, Author Lady
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Holmes, You Pre-date Me OR Kaye George Does Neanderthals #BookReview

DEATH IN THE TIME OF ICE by Kaye George is the first in her People of the Wind series. She places various hominid peoples in North America, including this tribe of Neanderthals. Using the most current research findings (at the time of writing) and what I can only call a stunning imagination, she creates a culture specific to one particular group of people.

I read and loved Steven Mithen's AFTER THE ICE, and there was nothing in George's book that made me go, "Naw. Uh-uh. Got that WRONG." I could absolutely believe that these people behaved and thought in these ways. I say "these ways", plural, because George writes about individuals.

Okay, the death. Somebody kills the Hama, or Most High Female. The tribe wants to blame it on an outsider -- any outsider. One woman, though, believes the culprit is one of the tribe. Not a popular opinion.

There are sub-plots galore, none of which get in the way of the main storyline. There is a wealth of detail about building techniques, burial practices, climate change, and so on, none of which bogs down the flow with info-dump.

The only drawback I can find is a tendency to repeat questions and musings a little too exactly and a little too close together.

"You call that a drawback?"

Hey, if I said it was perfect, I would draw the attention of the gods to the book. You don't wanna draw the attention of the gods, amIright?

I've bought and read the sequel, DEATH ON THE TREK, and the sequel holds up. If there's another in the series, Imma buy that, too.

Marian Allen, Author Lady
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Write This Way Indie Author Fest #Dallas

Shondra Quarles emailed me with news of this free event in Dallas, Texas. Alas, that I live nowhere near Dallas, Texas, 'cause this sounds like fun:
Write This Way: Indie Author Fest is hosting our 2018 Authors of the Future Contest. This is an opportunity for new and amateur writers of poetry, novelettes, children’s books or short stories of any genre . No entry fee is required. Contest is open to writers 12 and older. Entrants retain all publication rights. Finalists MUST be present at our 2018 Write This Way: Indie Author Fest in order to win prizes. The 2nd Annual Write This Way: Indie Author Fest is a FREE EVENT & will be held March 24th 12 noon -4pm at Ponchaveli Studios. All awards are adjudicated by professional writers only. Top Prize: Ponchaveli Studios will design a book cover, $600.00 - $1600.00 value. 2nd & 3rd Winners will receive gift cards to help with publication expenses.


Ponchaveli Studios 914 West Commerce Street Dallas, TX 75208 The organizers are Shondra M. Quarles and Latrenda Chirell Bailey-Rush To register, go to their Write This Way Eventbrite page.

Marian Allen, Author Lady
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

Sunday, January 21, 2018

Life Outside the Storyline

I'm currently reading BEATRIX POTTER'S GARDENING LIFE: THE PLANTS AND PLACES THAT INSPIRED THE CLASSIC CHILDREN'S TALES. In it, author Marta McDowell first outlines the life of "Miss Potter" and then goes through a year of plants and flowers. She illustrates both sections with photographs of the actual gardens and "Miss Potter"'s art, and with quotations from her letters.

I say "Miss Potter" in quotation marks, because Beatrix preferred her married name, Mrs. Heelis. The book leaves the impression that Beatrix Potter, author, was much more Beatrix Heelis, gardener. 

When my grandfather went into the hospital and then into a nursing home, I found that his treatment shifted slightly but discernibly when I brought in a picture of him as a young man. Life outside the storyline of "an elderly man needing care" changed him into "THIS man who is now elderly."

And that made me think about genre v literary writing. Everybody says, "Know your characters inside and out -- and then leave most of it out of the book." I think that's more true of genre writing than literary. I think genre books focus nearly exclusively on the storyline, with peripherals coming in as subplots. I think literary books focus on life outside the storyline, with the storyline simply being the thread through the beads.

What do you think?

Marian Allen, Author Lady
Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes