Not so Easy Peasy

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

–Confucius

 

Trying to get my writing life back in order is a Sisyphus punishment, that is not going to be written about here.  However, attempting to keep up with a self- assigned blog challenge is as frustrating as my writing life.  Just like many things in this writer’s life it is a juggle to work.  With this knowledge, I will attempt to complete a post, started in March, in the middle of June.

 

Five books Everyone Should Read

The pithy answer would be the holy books of the known religions.  This would include the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, the Vedas etc.  This writer works in speculative fiction, so the five books offered are in that genre.  These books may not be on the top of anyone’s list.  I found them to be fun, entertaining and intriguing.

 

  1. Thirteenth Child by Patricia Wrede

The first book in the Frontier Magic series.  It is the first-person account of a young woman Eff Rothmer, the circumstances of her birth and the big move her family made to the Midwest.   The story is one of the first historical fantasy novels this writer came across, set in the United States.

 

  1. Clean Sweep by Ilona Andrews

The first book in the InnKeeper Chronicles series.  It is another first-person account and interesting writing exercise made by writing team Ilona Andrews, narrated by Rene Raudman.  Dina Demille seems like an average all American girl runs a reasonably sized bed and breakfast that had seen better days in small-town Texas.   The Gertrude Hunt is actually a hostel for interdimensional travelers, who wish to visit Earth.  Dina’s guests are few and far between but when they come something exciting happens.    There are vampires and werewolves from space need I say more.

 

  1. Wild Seed by Octavia Butler

The first book in the Patternist series but not the first book published.  It tells the story of Doro and Anyanwu.  Two immortal individuals with a complicated relationship. It was the gateway book that allowed me to be the speculative writer I strive to be.

 

  1. Saga by Brian Vaughn and Fiona Staples

This is a comic book series or graphic novel.  The story is Brian Vaughn and Fiona Staples did the artwork.  Marko’s homeworld The Moon Wreath and Alanna’s planet Landfall have been at war for generations.  The war has lasted so long; it has expanded to other worlds in their known universe.  It looks like a weird occurrence but somehow Alanna and Marko meet, agree on something and fall in love.  Their bold star-crossed move to together change their lives and many others.  It makes them criminals of both their planets and fugitives for life.  Their daughter Hazel who we meet before she is born b/c she narrates much of the story is born a crime.  She has her father’s horns and her mother’s wings, she is a unique being hunted by both governments wanted dead or alive. 

Even though the story begins with Alanna, Marko, and newborn Hazel, we are introduced to so many others, a diverse galaxy.  Everyone has questionable loyalties and reasons to search and find the small outlaw family.  Nevertheless, Marko and Alanna find a way to travel the universe and maintain a marriage and family life with and without the strain of being fugitives.

One of the weird and wonderful aspects of Saga is that it is extraordinary in its ordinariness.  The universe created by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples is diverse, with humanized animals, as well the impossible to imagine beings with TV for heads.  Creatures that appear to look like plants, Cyclops, elves etc.  However, everyone lives their lives accordingly.  I have five volumes of Saga and will be making a budget to get the next three available volumes.

 

Court of Fives by Kate Elliott

Jessamy is an athlete.

Court of Fives is an alternate world fantasy loosely based on the Ptolemaic Egypt and Louisa May Alcott Little Women, that is according to the author.   The land of Efea has been colonized by the refugee people including the royal family of the Saro Urok.  They fled their country across the sea on pain of death.  For 100 years or more the Saroese have dominated the native peoples, the Efean, destroyed their royalty and forbade their customs. Made them third class citizen in their own country.  They have categorized themselves as Patrons, the Saroese and Commoners, the Efean.  The Efean are described as dark skin people and the Saroese as described as golden skin.

It is told by Jessamy a young mixed raced woman, who once lived a privileged life with her mother, an Efean woman, father, a Saroese man, a Captain in the military, and sisters.   It was all taken away by the machinations of one vicious megalomaniac.   Jessamy uses her knowledge and skill about the Court of Fives, the national game, to save the lives of her relatives and gain popularity.  There are many issues in COF, racism, colonization, misogyny, colorism, identity are the big ones, non-are resolved in this one book.  

There are also hard choices, self-awareness and hero worship.  Jessamy was once living with blinders, when they are taken off she is forced to act and sacrifice.  It was not all decided in one book, it continued with the Poisoned Blade and Buried Heart.    There is also Night Flower, a novella, a prequel that is interesting and bittersweet.

This book gave me faith in the genre of YA again.  In my case oversaturation of the genre made it difficult for me to enjoy certain books.  I’m glad I was introduced to Ms. Elliott’s work.  I also look forward to the second book in the series.

 

Those are the first five books, I can recommend.  Some are more detailed than others.  I have a book review blog called the Joexperiment.com or the joexperiment.wordpress.com.  The Jo-ex is treated as badly as the Universe, which means it too needs a schedule.   However at least two books in the recommendation have been reviewed on the Jo-ex.  At the end of this exercise I am thinking in a few months I should try it again.   Cross your fingers and the post will be up before next year.

 

End

 

21 An idea that seems great, but actually isn’t

No one can change my life, Only I can do that.

Carol Burnett

I’ve had some difficulty writing on this topic.   At first, I chose a type of media, an anime I watch online to use as an example of the title but while analyzing the story realized they didn’t match.  I was then at a loss as to how to write this.  The easy answer is to come up with another example and that was difficult because nothing really interests me at all.  All of these shows have something in common besides my passing interests –  Primeval [2007-2011]; Timeless [2016-]; Quantum Leap [1989-1993]; 12 Monkeys [2015-2018]; Continuum [2012-2015]; Tru Calling [2003-2005]; all these titles have some kind of time travel involved in their shows.  Every fall TV season, networks produce a new show or several shows with the concept of time travel in them.    There are formulas and statistics that go with their decisions, but I don’t have any interest in that at all.   Time Travel- the idea that seems great, but actually isn’t.

 

I sometimes wonder what would happen if I was able to time travel ten or fifteen years back in time with the knowledge I have of the present.   Because I have a kid, I never wonder her out of existence, so my high school years are always out of bounds.  There are few things about my family I would attempt to improve or change outright. But for this short essay, those thought processes will be avoided because of murky tangents.

 

Fifteen years ago, would place this writer in her late twenties, this time in the past, I would definitely set up my website and blog accounts effectively.   Set up a writing schedule and stick to it with the idea that I have prepared a better platform for creating content, writing and the writing business.  I would have a degree in Anthropology and established a writing career that utilized it.   There will also be minor adjustments to the personal life, again remember to avoid the murky tangents.

 

Of course, once I changed my past, my future becomes something completely different.  I couldn’t be the writer of this post.  I would be writing another kind of post.  I have several stories under construction that wouldn’t be the stories they are now and the very new ones in development would never be.  With a changed past, the new person would have missed the failures and the surprising successes of my present.  Inspiration has come to me more easily than it has in the past, once I realized to ignore it all together and write anyway.  It was something I didn’t get until my mid 30’s.   The question is, if you know which future to improve, what would be the problem.  The biggest problem would be the same issue I’m dealing with in the present.  Procrastination.  It was my enemy in the past; it is my enemy now.  At one point this post was a victim of procrastination.  It was left for dead.

What saved it was the desire to write and post the results, to maintain the recent blog JC Henry Universe.

The conclusion I have come up with is that I would be a writer either way.  I am learning to gauge success in a different manner.  This idea of success will be explored in another essay.  Until then consider, what you would do if you could time-travel to your past?  Would you rather return to the life you have now or completely different life?  What would you need to be content?  Many time travel episodes express that what is most desired doesn’t always make us happy or content.

 

A Sideways Introduction

Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.

-Og Mandino 

This is the second attempt to get this blog up and running like a decent blog found in the worldwide web.  There were no ideas coming to this writer, nothing inspired her to write on the blog, she was scrambling in her other writing projects.  Knocked off the productivity wagon after making big promises of change.    It was disappointing.  The point of a public blog is to have interesting work, thrown into the sea of the internet and have it picked to the adoration of millions.   The JC Henry Universe blog is supposed to be about Writing, Life, and Everything that intersects. There are secondary and tertiary reasons however they have to be written at a later.  The writer is well aware that the four blog essays posted are all uncategorized.  2017 and the beginning of 2018 have been that kind of year, progress followed by setbacks.

 

In the month of January, the 31-day blog challenge was posted and then nothing was written.  Other blog writing prompts were collected, the Life of Lovely monthly writing prompts are interesting.  The idea of writing to the writing prompts once thought to help this writer began to hinder the thought processes.  The writer froze on the idea of perfect copy or the lack of perfect copy and what to do if a day was missed.  Was it breaking the rules of the challenge?  Just like that before it was even in an effective result, consistency was lost.

 

It took the whole month of February to get out of that slump.   One of the best ways to get of a slump, rut or setback is to continue working, the writer was not posting things online, but she was eking a paragraph or two to move her stories further.   Eventually, the wheel stopped churning another method was needed to keep the creativity going.    Since this is the first day of March and it has 31 days.  The writer has decided to briefly answer one of the 31-day-challenge this is…

A sideways introduction

JC Henry is a writer, who lives in New York City.  She has one child (who is actually a young adult) and three cats.  She has been writing for many years.  This blog lovingly called the Universe is not her only blog.  There is the Joexperimentblog.com {the Joex}, on this blog, there are reviews on books, movies, etc. and the 100daysprojectvi.blogspot.com which focuses on health and well-being, but that is on hiatus.  For many years, JC Henry split her focus on at least five different blogs and her fictional stories.  They were so easy to start and hard to let go.  She has been consolidating slowly.  She likes reading but has fell into the audiobook trap and prefers to readalongs, when they are affordable.   That is another blog essay for later.  She likes to write all kinds of fiction but concentrates on speculative fiction.  There is also a podcast in development that will focus on the writing and the writing business.  It is a vast undertaking gathering the useful information and translating it to something intriguing, to speak much less listen too.    JC Henry also like quotes, the more motivational the better.  She has not been a fan of first-person POV, however, likes them in audiobooks.  She prefers to write in third-person limited.  POV’s for those who may not know is point of view.

 

As stated an earlier paragraph, the Universe was created to write about writing and creative endeavors.  The next thing JC Henry will be working is second blog post entry.  The goal for March is to be consistent.  It is Woman’s History Month, something should be added.  This is where consistency may help.   The writer has yet to write a satisfactory conclusion to any blog essay.  Feel free to leave a comment, like or dislike.

 

 

End

 

 

3 January 2018

A year from now you may wish you had started Today.  – Karen Lamb. 

I love the quote but  I still have no idea who Karen Lamb is.  A quick google search did nothing, except let me know I am not the only one that likes the quote.  I don’t even remember where I read it.  I copied it.  I used it in several blog post. No matter how many times I have used it, I have yet to adhere to the sage words.    I started this blog with the determination of keeping the JC Henry Universe alive.    The holiday season came around and my universe skidded to a halt.  It was hard trying to think where to pinpoint the restart.  Then my kid showed me this.  It is intriguing enough for me to try it for the next 31 one days.   The normal word count for these blog post is 500 words.  This entry is less because it feels like I am starting from ground one all over again.    The goal is to remember the lesson don’t wallow in the mistake.   There has been more than one setback in my career as a writer.  I can’t change who I am.  I write and I love it.