Shawn L. Bird

Original poetry, commentary, and fiction. All copyrights reserved.

love light June 6, 2011

Filed under: book reviews,Commentary,Literature — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:19 am
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She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day.

She taught me to revel. She taught me to wonder. She taught me to laugh. My sense of humor had always measured up to everyone else’s; but timid, introverted me, I showed it sparingly: I was a smiler. In her presence I threw back my head and laughed out loud for the first time in my life.

She saw things. I had not known there was so much to see.

She was forever tugging my arm and saying, “Look!”

(Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl p. 107)

This is the best part of love, isn’t it?  Spinelli is able to articulate so beautifully a special part of the best relationships.  When the world opens up because of the love you share.  When we are able to embrace things that are new to us, particularly if they challenge us, we become better.  We are never able to see things quite the same way when we’ve looked through someone else’s eyes.

The older we grow, if we keep exposing ourselves to experiences that introduce us to new views, we can become large enough to see ourselves as a tiny pinprick on a planet.  We realise our perspective is not the only one, and that there is joy in other places than where we usually find it.  There is pain in new places as well.  Be open to both, and the world expands.

 

ebooking history June 5, 2011

Filed under: Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 7:17 pm
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One of the benefits of the e-book is that authors and publishers can easily re-release out of print books. The summer I turned thirteen, I read a book by a teen ager. I was so impressed that a young person had been published, and enjoyed the book so much, that I never forgot it. It was  The Green Bronze Mirror by Lynne Ellison.  It was a time travelling book of a girl who leaves modern England and finds herself in Roman times.

Over the years I kept my eyes open for it, but it wasn’t until this year that it showed up. It was available as a very inexpensive ebook download. Yeah! So now it’s in my e-reader and I have read it through a couple times, searching for all the components that captured my imagination as a kid.  Now I can see that there are some rough patches that a good edit could have improved, but I also see what I loved in it, as well.

How easy it is to re-release old books now that there are ebooks!

I just keep thinking e-books are the future, and perhaps it’s worth cutting through all the middle men to offer one’s book directly to the readers.  The more I hear, the more I am convinced that this is the right move.  I am working out the details, but it’s coming together for Grace Awakening to be released as an ebook later this summer.  It was always in the plan that Gumboot would release an electronic version.  It’s quite possible I maybe ready to release it even earlier than the scheduled Gumboot release.  Wouldn’t that be ironic?

Old books are easily re-released. New books are easily released. A good offering should find a readership.   With the right promotion, it should generate the movement it needs to find the readers who will love it.

And so it begins.

Before any great journey, the provisions must be prepared. The day of embarkation is within sight. When the tide is right, we will sail!

 

Flavia rocks! June 4, 2011

Filed under: book reviews,Commentary,Grace Awakening,Literature,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:42 am
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I have just finished reading A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley.  This is his third book featuring 12 year old chemist Flavia de Luce.   The other two are Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag.

What’s great about Flavia, is that although she is an uncommon genius in the chemistry lab, she has all the same issues that any youngest of three kids could expect- torturing by older siblings, being ignored by a distracted parent, etc.

Her bike, Gladys, is as much a character as Fatima the VW Beetle is in Grace Awakening.  I  like that someone else feels transportation can be a valid character. lol

Although Flavia is 12, these are not books for kids.  The murders Flavia  solves are rather gruesome.  Nonetheless, the humour of her prepubescent attitude adds a lot of amusement to the stories. They are set in Georgian England.  Flavia has a good relationship with their gardener who was a shellshocked WW I soldier and with their housekeeper Mrs. Mullet.  Her mother Harriet was lost and presumed dead while mountain climbing.  Her sisters  are Daphne and Ophelia.  They have their own unique talents.  Their father has never gotten over the death of his wife, and has retreated into a world of philately.

Here is a little taste of Flavia’s voice:

My experience of cod-liver oil was vast.  Much of my life had been spent fleeing the oncoming Mrs. Mullet, who, with uncorked bottle and a spoon the size of a garden spade, pursued me up and down the corridors and staircases of Buckshaw–even in my dreams.

Who in their right mind would want to swallow something that looked like discarded engine oil and was squeezed out of fish livers that had been left to rot in the sun?  The stuff was used in the tannig of leather, and I couldn’t help wondering what it would do to one’s insides.

“Open up, dearie,” I could hear Mrs. Mullet calling as she trundled after me.  “It’s good for you.”

“No! No!”   I would shriek.  “No acid!  Please don’t make me drink acid!”

And it was true–I wasn’t just making this up.  I had analyzed the stuff in my laboratory and found it to contain a catague of acids, among them oleic, margaric, acetic, butyric, fellic, cholic, and phosphoric, to say nothing of the oxides, calcium and sodium.”

Alan Bradley.  A Red Herring without Mustard.  Toronto: Doubleday. 2011 (pp.127-8)

How can you resist a character with so strong a voice?  Even when the story goes just where you expect, Flavia is always a delightful surprise and there is always something interesting to learn!

 

Rotten apple! June 3, 2011

Filed under: Commentary — Shawn L. Bird @ 7:45 pm
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There are people out there who love Apple products.  They glow about how ‘intuitive’ the programs are and how little problem they have using them.

I am  not one of them.

I think I can say quite categorically that I actually despise Apple.

I was given an iPhone.  I didn’t want one. I liked my cute little flip phone with an easy to remember number.  I liked to flip it open and imagine I was in a Star Trek episode, ready to ask Scotty to beam me up.  It did one thing, and it did it well.

I have had a stack of CDs that I want to load onto the iPod app on the phone.  I dutifully load them into iTunes library (a  hellish and confusing place that does not bear any resemblance to the wonderful, soothing, physical libraries in my world). 

Time to sync the iPhone to the iTune library and load up all the updates.  Click.

Up pops a warning “You have purchased items on your iPhone that are not in your iTunes library.  You should transfer them to iTunes library before proceeding.”

Okay.

Um.

How?

So I type the keywords into the “Help” menu.  In Word that always brings me the file I want, and it one or two clicks I’ve figured out everything I need to know.  Not in iTunes apparently.  30 ‘helpful’ boxes appeared.  I clicked and scrolled, but NOT ONE of them told me how to transfer my purchased iPhone apps into my iTunes library.  NO HELP just Hell.  After an hour of raising my blood pressure, I have given up, tossing electronics across the desk and standing with enough force to propel the office chair on a Homeric Odyssey.

I have left my iPhone plugged into iTunes in the basement.  I will hurt it if I see it until my rational brain function is restored.  I have recalled that the last time I tried to sync my iPhone, and the time before when I had the iPod Touch before it was stolen, I had the same problem.  It wouldn’t let me save the files that were on the other devise.  Those times, I gave up and just synced and lost them.  I presume the apps in question are my French subway maps, verb books and dictionary. I did pay actual money for them, and it’d be nice to keep them.

It would be nice if Apple would tell me HOW to do it, instead of just telling me to do it.

It makes me very sure that I will never own an Apple computer.  If a tiny devise like this is so hard to work with, what are larger ones like?  I will stick to my nice little notebook computer (smaller than a text book). 

I’d like my Walkman back, too.

 

pieces of sky June 2, 2011

Filed under: Poetry — Shawn L. Bird @ 11:56 am
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Pieces of sky
fall upon flowers
and flatten summer.

Sky in pieces
weeping and whispering
bemoans gone sun.

Pieces of sky
crack away and fall
flaming to forest.

Sky in pieces
watching and waiting
passes in sighs
by peace.

 

story urge May 31, 2011

Filed under: Commentary,Literature,Writing — Shawn L. Bird @ 9:49 am
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I’ve been reading a book called The ABC’s of Creative Nonfiction edited by Lee Gutkind. The theme is there is a compulsion to tell our stories that goes beyond cultural and is actually biological, he says,

The act of autobiography forms in our frontal cortices, while the will to write likely lies in the limbic system, one of the oldest parts of the brain, governing not only basic desires for food and sex but social bonding, learning, and memories. We are the most vocal of the primates, and sharing the intimate details of our lives has many functions: the act makes us feel connected to others, alleviates stress, and makes us healthier. Writing about emotionally laden events increases our T-cell growth and antibody response, lowers our heart rate, helps us lose weight, improves sleep, elevates our mood and can even reduce pain.
(Keep It Real. ed. Lee Gutkind. New York: Norton. 2008)

So. It’s not obsessive to be writing all the time.  Keeping a blog is a healthy thing!  Some people jog. I write. I know I feel good after I’ve been writing, but it’s interesting to know that it’s not just anecdotally true.   They talk about the ‘runner’s high,’  but they don’t talk about the ‘writer’s high.’  We know about it though.  It fuels our writing.  What’s more, we feel it again when we re-read something we wrote that is particularly good. 

 What we feel is actually legitimate psychological response.  Good.

I feel so much better about not jogging now.

 

show dog to sheep May 30, 2011

Filed under: Commentary — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:01 am
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The spring appears to have come!  Beautiful sunny day today, and OJ was moving slowly.  I decided it was time for the summer transformation.  As I cut into the his thick Continental jacket, I could almost feel steam rising off his back!  So here is the transformation at the half way point, when he looks like Tina Turner:
 

Tina Turner poodle

 and now he’s ready for the summer, but he looks a lot like a sheep.  I left the ‘fleece’ in the picture just because it’s fun to see how much wool comes off!  No sweeping required, it all sticks together; I just pick it all up and and stuff it into a bag.  OJ looks less like a poodle, but he’s a lot cooler.

sheep poodle and fleece
 

CHEESE! May 29, 2011

Filed under: Commentary — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:27 am
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Cheesy Write gift basket from Sedo's Old Fashioned Butcher and Deli

Each year at the Shuswap Writers’ Festival they offer a story start for a Cheesy Write that must be deposited in the basket about 28 hours after the opening of registration. The winner is announced at the Storytelling event on Saturday evening. The writing is supposed to be ‘cheezy’ and the prize reflects this.

Tonight Kay Johnson announced, “I’m glad this year the winner of the Cheesy write is actually in attendance to receive the prize. Shawn, come on up!” Yeah!! I won last year, but I was late arriving and so the prize was given to someone else.

This year was a murder mystery start, and the selection had to provide clues and solve the murder. I had a notion of what I wanted to do with it, so I took lots of notes at the Friday night coffee house, and incorporated things we learned about the writers and their stories in my piece.

You know, I got compliments for this doggerel from a Governor General Literary Award winner.  Gotta love Writers’ Festivals!   😉  One wins $25,000; another wins a basket of cheese, but a win is a win.  lol  It’s nice that people got the jokes and had a giggle.

Here it is, for your confusion and/or amusement:

2011 Cheezy Mystery Write:

We hear there’s been a murder and we’re not sure yet whodunit
So let’s consider options and hope that there’ll be some fun yet!
John Pass might take the Higher Ground, so it’s a bit far fetched
To imagine a GG nominee could murder is quite a stretch!
And that eliminates Annabel because she made the GG short list
And also clears GG prize winner, amazing Wendy Phillips.

There’s some suspicious folks among the nudes at Burning Man
So Deanna’s worth some pondering, but first let’s get another scan
Wait! What is that object lying on the boardwalk over there?
Oh my! A tattered playing card of a lady who’s quite bare,
Across her chest’s an invitation to a “Come Naked” pot luck dinner
Taking place on Galiano*, among the family friendly sinners

The sleuths picked up the card and noticed tiny print-
The dead man is a lawyer. “Ah ha!” they shrieked, “A hint!”
Now who would kill a lawyer? They pondered by the lake
Nancy said, “Apparently almost everyone would like to plunge a stake
Into their heartless chests!” There is nothing there to beat
The rhythm like what throbs from Ken Firth’s drumming seat
“That’s it,” they called, “we’ve solved it! The lawyer’s heart was taken
To provide Ken’s powerful rhythm, unless we’re much mistaken!”

* this is actually an error-

The ‘family friendly nudes’ were in Desolation Sound with Grant Lawrence, not on Galiano Island…  Luckily I wasn’t penalized for errata!

 

Maybe May 28, 2011

Filed under: Commentary — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:13 am
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I’m just thumbing through my journal (a random collection of drafts, ideas, poems, lecture notes, etc) and discovered this poem:

Maybe
is a dangerous room
in which tolive.
A place to run
when here is too hard,
when now is a naked agony.
Then there is maybe…
maybe him
maybe someday
maybe
(though
probably not).

(2009-1-21)

 

necessity, the mom May 27, 2011

Filed under: Commentary — Shawn L. Bird @ 12:51 am
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Topic #137: What invention, as in something not yet invented (jetpack, teleportation ring, time machine) do you most need right now?

The fall that I started Grace Awakening, I also started a high interest low vocab novel I called #8. When Grace took over my life for six months as she told me her 150,000 word story, #8 languished as an outline and one chapter. When Grace was finished, I set to work on #8. I’m aiming for it to be completed at 15,000 words, so it’s a tenth of Grace’s size. You’d think it would have taken a tenth of the time- say eighteen days instead of 180, but no. For all its brevity, #8 has sat with ‘something’ not quite right for almost two years. Every once and awhile I pull it out and add a paragraph here, a chapter there, fine tune a paragraph, crop out a sentence, but the intangible thing has been elusive.
This last week I’ve been reading and thinking about #8. I’ve added half a chapter and decided that I need to crop out the first chapter I wrote for this book (presently it is chapter 2). I realised that I have a beach scene immediately followed by a snow shovelling scene (this is feasible in Calgary, but not in the Shuswap!). Oops. I figured out the biggest area that needs fixing.

As I was drifting off to sleep, one of the minor characters stepped up. She had been in one brief scene in the seventh chapter, but suddenly she had a back story to share that was relevant to the rest of the story. She had been there all along, with the answer to the question, if only I’d been paying attention. I had to be up in a few hours, and I couldn’t afford to get up and write out the scene. I was sure that it would not be lost over night, but I could not shut off the narrative.
It would be so handy for authors to have a brain writing machine. While you sat in a boring meeting, went jogging through the neighborhood, or were drifting off to sleep, your brain writer could dictate the narrative rolling in your thoughts and put it into a file. What a brilliant devise that would be.