Site Updates 2022

Ah! The Year of the Tiger! I feel I should be promoting a different manuscript but there it is, A Greek Matinée whistling in the wings.

Dear Visitors, this page gives you links to latest posts and alterations on my site. I’d be delighted if you would leave a Comment and/or Like on pages you visit 🙂 Easy-peasy! The menu above leads to all sorts of things. I’m interested too, what you think of my encounter with Lela. Thank you.

Here’s an easy link to become a valued >Follower

2022 April 30 April 30 Tattling Update (New) with Tweeter

2022 April 09 Early April Tattlings (New)

2022 April 01 It’s settled! A Greek Matinée is Literary Fiction.

2022 March 29 Tattling A Greek Matinee (New) Manuscript Tattlings (Update)

2022 February 20 papilio aegeus (New) My butterfly is now identified.

2022 February 15 Wind, Dreams & Butterflies (New) and another recipe for you to try: Chili, Grape, Hazelnut Porridge (New)

2022 February 06 The Journey Begins (Update)

2022 February 05 Parsnip, Blueberries & Salmon (New) A recipe for you.

2022 February 04 Heavy Reading & Marshmallow (New)

2022 February 02 Simon’s Books & Boots article on Mary Beard’s A History of Ancient Rome (New)

2022 February 01 Manuscript Reader Comments (Update)

2022 January 27 Manuscript Reader Comments (Update)

2022 January Genre (Update)

Cick here To visit updates 2021 2020

Below are a few links from the end of last year’s page.

• Ioana Pârvulescu (New)
• Fyodor Dostoevsky Demons (New)
• Xenophon (New)
• More Romanian Writers, history bits, Isobel Fonseca’s bury me standing – The Gypsies and Their Journey, and Blackwell (New)
• Tony Park (New)
• Stella Rimington (New)
• Asemic Writing in Wet Sands (New)
• In Wet Sands – Ebbs and Flows  (New)
• A Greek Matinée is born

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My Genre

 

Literary Agents, Publishers, Retailers and Libraries (seem to) prefer one elected Genre although I note in earlier years often a book was catalogued with several Categories

I love the smell of books, the feel of them in my hands. And I can turn pages back to a great turn of phrase or idea I marked with a satin ribbon.

Is multiple-cataloguing unique to non-fiction like Byron Akyanoglu’s The Taste of Honey, Peter Thompson’s Pacific Fury, Sandra Lee’s The Promise?

But Rafik Schami’s fiction, The Calligrapher’s Secret, lists four Categories.

I suppose that came with reading mountains of non-fiction. And then, coming to grips with Tags for Posts!

For A Greek Matinée, I had chosen Contemporary Fiction as the Genre (noted in my post Contemporary Fiction, Genre – A Perspective, and considering A Greek Matinée ) while I was immersed in early stages of creating my manuscript. Then I changed it to include sub-categories! Now I’m back to Contemporary Fiction. Keep it simple! However, A Greek Matinée is Literary Fiction.

The story is set in contemporary times with characters who are thrown together on a journey, swivelling through personal and social problems. Boundaries were extended as the main character became enthralled by mythology and legends. To her the figures and creatures are very real so as she sees them, those ancient characters face their own difficulties and complications.

Computerisation? Tags? Meta-tags? Reading a book on a luminous screen? Every day life becomes more complicated. Eyes glue to screens. Bums get bigger. Sadly hours spent browsing in sizeable establishments with books shelved floor to ceiling are fast becoming a thing of the past. But,

I love the smell of books. The feel of them in my hands.

I can turn pages back to a great turn of phrase or idea I’d marked with a satin ribbon; keep my finger where a map clearly shows where the story has moved to like in Harry Sidebottom’s Warrior of Rome (“a rollicking page-turner”), Christian Cameron’s Tyrant series (great action story) and Giles Milton’s White Gold– all great reads and the non-fiction Along the Enchanted Way by William Blacker.

But soon, I’ll enter a magical bookshop in Romania, Cărturești Carusel (http://carturesticarusel.ro) located in the Old Town (Strada Lipscani 55, București 030033) — “The prettiest bookshop in Romania”   — a restored 19th Century building confiscated during the Communist Period but in 1990 returned to the Chrissoveloni family who were in  possession of it in 1903. The bookshop spreads over six levels totaling 1000sqm. It is open 1000-2200. What a great idea the late closing hour for booklovers! That’ll be when the world recovers from the present crisis. I was booked to go early 2020. Then all flights and stuff of course were postponed.

Keep safe everybody. Love and respect is key.

And now it’s 2021. Still the world trembles and we’re not permitted overseas travel. We’re, rightly for our protection, locked in our state. Oh yes, we can travel to NSW or Victoria where their cases of the dread disease are skyrocketing, but we will not be able to get back into Queensland our home – without rare special permits, lengthy delays, seemingly never… and if we are lucky to cross borders, we’re whipped, rightly, into quarantine. Those southerners are not allowed in. How lovely for us to go to a restaurant, meet with friends. Sip coffee together. Walk on the beach.

December 17 2021. Border with NSW opens. I don’t think this a good idea. We’ve been so lucky to be relatively free of the problems down south.

2022 January. Now we too are stressed, overstretched, masked and trying to keep safe. How long can we hold our breath? And extraordinary weather events beset us – as is happening in the northern hemisphere. Has Earth finally reached the end of it’s tether? Retaliating for our not looking after it better?

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Site Updates 2021 2020

 

Dear Visitors, your Likes and Comments lighten my world and can trigger conversation. Leap to a piece to leave a Comment or Like of its own 🙂 Easy-peasy!

And now it’s Christmas! Season’s Greetings to you all and let’s hope for a fabulous 2022. Site Updates turn a page.

This old page will be accessible from Site Updates 2022

2021 November 28:

• Ioana Pârvulescu (New)
• Xenophon (New)
• More Romanian Writers, history bits, Isobel Fonseca’s bury me standing – The Gypsies and Their Journey, and Blackwell (New)
• Tony Park (New)
• Stella Rimington (New)

2021 November 21:

• Beta-Reader Cues & Prompts (Big Update).
• “The Manuscript” Tattlings (Update)
• Manuscript Reader Comments (Updates: yesterday!)
• And New is Fyodor Dostoevsky Demons

2021 November 17: Quickie Snacks (New) includes Walnuts, Medjool Dates, Cumin infused cheese and Feta and my take on Tzatziki. On my Chess Day, we all bring a contribution for Morning Tea. Recipes Updated with listing the new four with Buttons. And, tomorrow’s tomorrow, Me & Books tweaked.

2021 November 02: Rain (New) A poem as rain fell and a baby huddled on a frond inches from the sodden ground. “The Manuscript” Tattlings (Updated)

2021 October late: Me & Books (Updated), Asemic Writing in Wet Sands (New), Eclectic Readings from My Stash (which is under construction but does have some Button-Jumps to several authors including Peter Esterhazy (New), Anstey Harris, Di Morrissey, Kayte Nunn, Jodi Picoult. And, perhaps sussed, how Smart-Phone users and non-WordPress visitors can become a Follower with ease: Go to page In Wet Sands – Ebbs and Flows and scroll down to the pink form and you should be able to “sign in” through your familiar platform 🙂 Welcome! Give it a whirl!

2021 October 15 Tech Prob: Follow from Phone not triggering (New) despite 2 hours of effort! It does seem to work if you are a WordPress Site holder.

2021 October 14 Eclectic Readings from My Stash  (New) Four titles so far commented upon – Anstey Harris, Bertrand Russell, Geraldine Brooks, Di Morrissey

2021 October 12 In Wet Sands – Ebbs and Flows   (New) and herewith update on Follow button problem: now it may be working properly 🙂

2021 October 11 Asemic Writing   Asemic writing written by trees, the wind, seaweed on the sand, termites and me. (New) Thanks bluebrightly for the word! I’d not known my “writing” and squiggles in my art had a name 🙂  And Thanks to The Metropolitan Museum of Art – https://www.metmuseum.org – for the five pics of cuneiform writing 🙂

2021 October 10 Tech Prob: Follow Button not triggering (New because several people have not had their efforts to Follow trigger. I’m trying to suss out what I’ve done wrong to the site. Maybe you can help?);  My Genre (Updated); And coming soon, Asemic Writing. My manuscript editing is up to Deeds of Men.

2021 September 27  My Genre (Update with pics and jump for the fabulous bookstore in Romania – at their site, scroll down for heaps of pics of the restored building). Now I’m off for more editing of my manuscript – I’m honing in on Chapter 23 Guilt and Honour.

2021 September 26  Today, tidying, compacting, fixing, updating. Some menu items now leap to sub-menus to give you better paths like [Poetics] and [Book Hop]. [Brain Expanding] zaps to the new ♦ Expanding Our Brains Menu which gives links thus (but listed tidily): ♦  Expanding Our Brains  – bright fruit, leafy greens, walk and Aristophanes  ♦ Expanding Our Brains ii – Meta-Tags and the Ocean  ♦ Expanding Our Brains iii Frogs  – Aristophanes Frogs Βάτραχοι. Don’t you just love him? – Brain Food  ♦ Expanding Our Brains iv Ken  – a puzzle   ♦ Jumping with Hoops – oh those Meta-Tags and Keywords – learning computer stuff. Now I’m off for a much-needed cuppa and shelter from the wind that’s shaking the door.

2021 September 24  Books 21+ (new) **  Book Encounters tickled.

2021 September 18  Poetics …. now I’m off to tend garden, body and that ms!

2021 September 17  Book Encounters  **  Fennel   A quick easy recipe. Great either hot or cold.

2021 September 14  I’m back! **  “The Manuscript” Tattlings  **  Beta-Readers  **  AGM QUESTIONS – Can you help?

2020 May 01 Page (child of Art Endeavours): Seas to Red Centre 19plusOne : Painting Explorations From the Sea to the Red Centre amongst Trees and Creatures. Turtles, Fish, Crabs, Forests, Plains, Mountains, skeletons and saints, tigers and snake.

2020 April 07 Post: My Genre

2020 March 31 Post for My Garden: Golden Orb-Weaver & Jumping Spider and,  Some Books I’ve Read This Year 2020 up to March 31  which includes books currently I’m reading.

2020 March 08 New Page: Some Books I’ve Read This Year 2020

2020 February 25 Updated: Words and Phrases regarding BC/AD vs BCE/CE, retaining historically used characters BC / AD which now can be interpreted:  Backwards Counting / Advancing Date means databases remain unscathed.

2020 February 23 New Page Eclectic Collection: Books, Authors, Words & Phrases which is parent of:

• New Page Some Books and Stuff I have Pored over for A Greek Matinée
• Updated Eclectic Collection of Authors – To this list, soon I’ll start adding Book Titles
• (and unaltered Words and Phrases)

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Ebbs and Flows

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A Few Manuscript Reader Comments

An enormous thank you to all my readers.

2022 January 30  Two sessions with yet another beta-reader of the first 50 pages of A Greek Matinée. Since I gave the pages to Carole a month-or-so ago we’ve talked about it but yesterday got to the nitty-gritty of two words. We meet regularly and talk about books, analysing, dissecting, criticising, recommending over an extended lunch. Yes, I think four hours could be seen as extended!

And she wants to read the rest. Particularly after perusing the Synopsis that is neither sales-pitch nor blurb that may appear on the back of a book but a piece of writing in which the publisher or agent is introduced to the main character, the where and when of the story, core conflict and how the main character deals with the conflict (or fails to), how the conflict is resolved remembering of course, emotions and feelings.

2022 January 27  Yesterday I met with another beta-reader who generously read the first 50 pages of my manuscript. Good session. Important. Now I have the perspective of a vibrant 27-year old. Vanessa gave me several solid suggestions. Initially she thought Anna was “ageless” insomuch that she could be any age but then saw a speech pattern a mod-bod may not use in 2016, the period of the story. Ahah, a generational thing! She thought the character’s age should slot in earlier because of that. So now with Anna’s age on page 1 of Chap 1 instead of p7, everything falls into place

I’m pleased to say that Vanessa is enormously enthusiastic about A Greek Matinée. She says it’s like reading poetry.

Weeee! I want to say. On 2022 January 23 I was feeling flat. But this week I’ve been enjoying tickling my latest editing round. Good coffee with friends does it! How are you other emerging-writers doing?

Earlier:

The Journey Well In Hand.

In this Log for your interest, I’ve placed some comments from my Alpha-Reader and some Beta-Readers. Currently I’m super-fine-toothcombing my manuscript. Do I move on to Gamma-Scrutineers? Or are they too, Beta-Readers, third wave of pre-submission readers?

* After reading just the first page of A Greek Matinée (that was before the manuscript gained a preceding “Preamble”), Nicole said she liked it as it gives good idea of what the story will embrace. “Particles immediately got me interested and having read the first 16 pages I want to read more”. Nicole is a down-to-earth, strong-minded young woman.

* Carmel, retired university lecturer of sociology, throughout her complete reading kept saying: “I can’t put it down … The archaeological sites enable the past and present to entwine. Females are empowered ” and suggested I include a map. Her husband said she’d disappear with the manuscript for hours! We still tango with “sub” clauses!

* Robin, a retired General Practitioner who read a late manuscript of A Greek Matinée a year after an early draft (on his request! 🙂 ) also enjoyed the story and said Chapter Of Teeterings and Toasts is a “good sharp hit”. He also said that first page Particles is a good addition… and we had heaps of discussions and going over notes together – he even caught me out on several spelling mistakes and grammar! Mighty efforts! Thanks a million Robin. His wife interestingly said their grandson would want to read it also!

* Others too including my daughter (who suggested I change the earlier working title Anna Amongst the Gods – she “really” likes the new one A Greek Matinée) have been so supportive and encouraging giving positive feedback and suggestions.

* And Julia! my Alpha-Reader! with our long discussions over home-brewed coffee! In her notes she’d written: “I want to read on – I am now at home with Anna and enjoy her thoughts and plans.” After her full manuscript reading Julia wrote: “It is a good read and believable“.

* And Beatrice whose first language is not English, read aloud early chapters to me bringing up a few issues to address. A very interesting exercise to hear someone read their “baby” to them – particularly with a robust accent.

* And Deane, retired teacher/Headteacher at coffee and cake, “really” likes the title and says it gets her interested. Deane also suggested certain commas!

* And Em.Prof. Bob says not to forget to invite him to the launch! Bob had helped me with some of the Greek. Any mistakes are entirely my own.

♥  How lucky I am to have such support from all these people. Dearly I treasure each of you. Thank you.

♦  Beta-Readers   ♦

Have you clicked a Like for this Page? or left a Comment?

If you have Thank You

If you haven’t, scroll farther down to do so 🙂

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Contemporary Fiction, Genre – A Perspective, and considering A Greek Matinée

My writing is not formulaic.

A generous “Pre-Approach-Agent Reader” (a beta-reader), before looking at an early draft of my manuscript (for critique and feedback) asked me in which genre I had written the tale. This is one of the Big Questions every writer of a novel has to answer. I elected Contemporary Fiction. Actually, Comercial Fiction is the more correct term to use. Contemporary Fiction, at least my work, slots in there.

Goal posts in the industry of course change with time as if with the winds and reader delights (which or course drive the markets). Many embrace innovations never envisioned in classical times nor even a few decades ago.

My writing is not formulaic so with my thinking cap fitted well and my feet planted firmly I believe, A Greek Matinée crosses categories: Contemporary, General, Journey (not restricted to the physical (Road Fiction) nor the mental (psychotic, meditational or otherwise!), Mythology and of course Greece! as the title gives.

On the www, a plethora of sites jostle with their take on Contemporary Fiction from: “Realistic fiction creates imaginary characters and situations that depict our world and society. It focuses on themes of growing up and confronting personal and social problems. This genre portrays characters coming to understand themselves and others”, “… set in contemporary times (modern times)” to “Contemporary Fiction is a genre that extends, reworks and plays with its boundaries”. (I blushed the text herewith as that hits my character nails.)

[Genre (zhahn-ruh): a kind; stylistic category or sort.]

“A Greek Matinée” is Contemporary Fiction. Contemporary because the story is set in modern times (oh yes, the Now) and characters involve with some contemporary and topical issues as they travel on a commonly toured route. They move in the real world but some characters like Anna and Heather lapse elsewhere from time-to-time in psychological shifts; and Anna drifts as if composing a tale in a mythological time. The story is Fiction because characters are not real. Some are 100% imaginary while some inevitably are original composites drawn from various people, past and present, that is, characters woven from an expression of theirs, a glance, a look, an action, some belief, experience, hate or love.

Hesiod’s “Theogony” and “Works and Days” were contemporary with the writing-down of Homer’s epics which originally were in oral tradition and maintained from his Bronze Age, through Greece’s Dark Age and into the Archaic Period when writing re-emerged, contemporary with the rise of Greek city-States.

Ah, such adventures, intrigues, sufferings and revenge! Wonderful stories of mythology which shaped the lives of the Greek people and oft those they came in contact with. In those days, if we lump in the Classical Period, genre was easy to slip your work into: tragedy, comedy, history, philosophy, oratory.

And consider Subjectivity / Objectivity.

Objectivity (note the reversal!) could be seen as telling a tale with detachment, impersonality – no sentimentality. Objectivity is External.

Subjectivity on the other hand internalises, considers and manipulates in emotional terms the how and wherefores stirring the emotions, scurrying with reflectives and working with the human condition as it separates “heart” from “head”. It swims with complexities of reasoning. It’s got feelings, contradicts, questions, pushes beyond the “inevitable”. It is sympathetic and reflective. The world, its people and truth grope in contradictory complexities giving language to the many-sided matrixes of subjectivity and points-of-view. Subjectivity is born of the ego, the mind, the conscious self.

What’s your take on this? I’d be very pleased to read your comments, perhaps strike up conversations.

7

A Greek Matinée is born

As I explored my experiences and went to Greece researching for a tale, I realised that hey! I’m no teenager off on the Grand Tour, not even middle-aged but perhaps already in the matinée of my life. Early Autumn. Early afternoon. And so A Greek Matinée was born. Matinée? An afternoon’s entertainment.

To read some Manuscript-Reader comments thus far, click item on the menu.

I’m on a great learning curve to set this site up. I do hope you like it, perhaps even find something helpful as you negotiate your own paths.
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