1777 - DANBURY ON FIRE!



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Defeated  By the Grammar Police or How I learned to Hate Reading

8/6/2017

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Everything in my reading-and-audio-book-listening life was fine until I learned that adverbs had become tools of the devil. While I religiously avoid using adverbs now, I listen to many audiobooks during the week. Many are supposed to be fine literature. But, like the finned autos of the 1950s, these stellar works com garishly outfitted with adverbs.
I do not know why I allowed myself to listen to Donna Tartt's The Secret History, other than it was flowing words while I pulled weeds. But every adverb hit like a concrete block. My not-so-favorite turned out to be "ruminatively."
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Editing For 1777 - Where We Are Now

6/17/2017

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So it's decided: I'm on my very last editor. But some things do go a little against the grain.

The thought exists out there that too much description of emotion prevents the reader from identifying with the character. The reader's personality might react differently to the circumstances presented by the plot occurrences. If something scary happens, one person might be terrified and another only fascinated to see what happens next.
Is it good or bad to emphasize the fear reaction during dangerous situations? Once someone told me that his wife was very good in an emergency room setting because she just acted and never considered consequences. I wanted a hero like that.

I have also had people tell me that children do not empathize too much when adults are caught in bad situations, unless there is visible pain or damage (i.e. moral or political dilemmas). I don't remember doing so. Yet I received much advice to the contrary.

Some persons may be too involved in their own problems and emotions to want to intertwine psyches  with their children. I have received advice from several editors to make my book's parents more understandable and lovable. But my intent was not to have parents like that because of their own internal emotional wars.
My main character tries get out from under their dark cloud, which accidentally results in new opportunities for the parents to regain self-respect and family ties.

So what should an author feel when editors advise contrary to main premises in plot and character?
​We'll see where it all ends up....



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Latest, greatest Editor for 1777!

6/7/2017

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Wow, was I ever lucky....
Val Muller agreed to be the very, very last editor I would ever need.
A Pennwriters member and author of multiple books of her own, Val's knowledge of the industry and of young people's reading is invaluable. Visit her at http://www.valmuller.com/www.valmuller.com/

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Referring to References or "How to Get Rid of Books"

6/4/2017

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  • In the beginning, I collected anything referring to the Revolution, my family, the French and Indian War ... and now I just don't need them any more. 
  • Why donate these to a library in Virginia? I've sent a couple of boxes (and more on the way) to the Danbury Museum, where they can be offered to anyone coming in to research or visit.
  • I am glad that they sell used books.  Amazon selling used books gives wonderful opportunities to buy collector's items. (Not so hot for modern authors' incomes, though! It saddens me to see my friends' books offered both new and for a penny.)
  • Being me, some things are hard to let go, so I have to read them again, sometimes finding nuggets, sometimes wondering "What in the...?" How can I find James Fenimore Cooper too wordy to read, despite his involved plots and vivid use of words? But I do. And I feel guilty.
  • Why "Cooper Guilt" in particular? Because his early book "The Spy" was based on Enoch Crosby, an invisible character in "1777", whose career is used  by young Joe to manipulate his grandfather, the only person in town who knows for which side Crosby spies. (And one of my characters sold  that book in his bookstore in later life!) Oh, well, into the box with Cooper!
  • Some things you will never get away from me, number one being "Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution" and its succeeding volume "Reflections of Rebellion," in which Benson Lossing interviewed survivors and often drew portraits of them and their houses. Imagine how I felt to actually see a home used as a setting in "1777." 
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May 31st, 2017

5/31/2017

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May 30th, 2017

5/30/2017

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Goodness, here I am again after coming to a dead stop in 2015. 

Imagine my joy to take up a conversation with Diane Hassen of the Danbury Museum, just as if we had spoken last week. But we did.

Imagine my shock when Diane said that a new book had appeared on the Hamilton family and that it disagreed with my interpretation of the Hamilton genealogy in the book!
Yikes!
How wonderful that she contacted the book's author for me, so we shall see what we shall see.... He responded that he would respond....
(But I'm pretty sure I'm right....)

So 1777 has been through many more hands since we spoke last.
o my utter shock, March 2016 found that my dear friend and editor Linda Wirkner had died. Then what to do.... 
Different people have helped me with the book, Ann Westrick, Edie Hemingway, but one must never use the same pair of eyes twice, they say.

A filmscript editor I engaged asked if we could send young Joe Hamilton on a journey.
Not so much, since the book is about Danbury.
Then he wanted to know if we could blow something up.
Alas, the book is about burning! (And there was a little powder shortage issue....)
I gave up. Guess they'll make the movie when they make it.

Then 1777 journeyed to Thalia Newland and had a good romp with her. Thalia is great, but in Australia. I needed an American editor.
So best choice was everybody's favorite, Ramona deFelice Long, who had met my book before in a Pennwriter's Area 7 seminar. Definitely got good value from her!!
But still, something was missing! Or someone. Stay tuned!
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