Writing a Hot Scene with a Cold

Sometimes I don’t feel so hot. I don’t feel like writing hot. But there’s a book to finish. And the hero and heroine are there, in place, (picture a book as a movie set) and the producer (the author) yells “Roll ’em!”… and the scene starts to unfold.

So here I am, sitting at my desk, a flannel blanket over my shoulders, a steaming hot tea by the keyboard, stuffed with aspirin and sucking a sore throat pill.
I’m writing, “They touch, he slides his hands along her cheeks, grasps her jaw, turns her face to his. She resists, then their eyes meet. He leans over. Their lips touch…”
And I sneeze.

Calculating travel in ancient times

When I wrote my book, The Road to Alexander, I knew I was going to be travelling a lot.  He’d dragged his army (like a gaggle of geese, as Ashley dryly remarks*) from one end of the known world to the other – over mountains, swamps, and deserts. Luckily, I had an incredible ressource to help me plot the journey – Michael Wood’s “In the Footsteps of Alexander”, a book literally written while following Alexander’s army. Invaluable and fascinating! But from book IV to book VII, the couple voyage to Africa, Gaul, Scandinavia, and then down the coast of France and Portugal, through the ‘Pillars of Hercules’ and on to Carthage, Rome, Pompeii and finally home again in Alexandria.  But how to calculate the time it took to travel that route?

Visualizing Characters Through Description and Dialogue

Visualizing Characters Through Description and Dialogue

When we watch a film, the characters are foisted upon us. The actors are the physical manifestations of the characters, and their accents, hair, faces, and clothes are no longer subject to our imagination. When the actor matches the ideal of the character, the audience is by and large content. But when the character does not match the actor, then the audience is disappointed. In order to avoid this, most authors describe their characters as soon as they are introduced, allowing the reader to form an image. Authors, while they are writing their stories, have very clear images of their characters, and their description is an important part of making the character come alive to the reader. If the reader cannot imagine what the character looks or sounds like, they can have difficulty identifying with the character. Identifying with a character is vital – without that connection, a reader can feel detached from the story.

Since everyone has a different way of imagining things, readers’ views of characters can vary greatly. Some will see a character as being physically attractive, others less so, and others will imagine the personage as being quite plain. However, basic things can be imposed – and author can give a clear picture of a character’s sex, height, eye colour, hair and skin, build, and clothing. However, when describing a character, the author has to walk a narrow line between giving too little and too much information.

Different genres of books deal with physical descriptions in vastly different ways. It’s almost a given that a book focusing on romance will describe a character all throughout the book. It’s a manifestation of falling in love. When we fall in love, we think, dream, fantasize about our love interest extensively. Therefore, romance readers will readily identify with endless descriptions of the physique and emotions of the characters. But readers need to project their ideals upon the character. Too much description can leave some readers feeling frustrated, especially as the book progresses. Describing the characters over and over leaves very little to the readers’ imagination. The same with clothes – unless the character is defined by the clothing or the clothing is important to the story, it’s best to be sparse with detail at risk of sounding like a fashion magazine (admittedly, some readers like this).

In science fiction or horror stories, the characters are lavishly described to the reader once at the beginning of the book in order to set the tone of the story.

In murder mysteries, it’s important to visualize the detective and often the victim as well, so that the reader can identify with one or the other.

In children’s books, characters tend to be simply but well-described, along with their traits of character. Pippi Longstocking comes to mind, her description never varies: Pippi is red-haired, freckled, unconventional and superhumanly strong – able to lift her horse one-handed. She is playful and unpredictable. With that, the author has given the reader all he or she needs to know to imagine the character.

Most of all, description should be like a slightly blurred photo that uses the reader’s mind to add the details to bring it into focus.

Accent too plays a part – unless the dialogue is written in the vernacular the reader will hear his or her own voice, with only slight variations. For English readers, for example, Americans will hear American accents, British the British accent, and so on. And even if an American reader is reading a book set in London, the American reader will not superimpose a British accent over the dialogue unless prompted by spelling.

‘Ow, sow lover-ly sittin’ absa-bloomin’-lootly still,’ Eliza Doolittle croons, as she sits in her chair and imagines lots of ‘cowl at noight and lots of ‘eat’. The movie ‘My Fair Lady’ shows us how she looks and sounds – but in the book, only creative spelling can show us ‘ow, er, how, she sounds.

Too much creative spelling can lose a reader. Interest is held just as long as it’s possible to read a story and follow it without having to stop and try to figure out what the author meant. Dialogue written in the vernacular has to be near perfect – it’s better for a beginning writer to try to portray a subject’s accent in small doses. However, a character can be completely identified by speech patterns. If I write; ‘Use the accent sparingly, you must’, a certain Yoda springs to mind!

Punctuation is another thing an author can use to show what a character is feeling. Exclamation marks, dashes, italics, cut off sentences, etc., are all part of the manifestation of a character’s personality. Punctuation in a dialogue can show a reader what a character is feeling better than just telling the reader what the character feels. Use exclamation points as sparingly as possible – too many, and the reader feels yelled at!

Here is an exercise for you; write a short (2 or 3 lines at the most) paragraph introducing and describing the same character for different genres: romance, science fiction, YA (or children’s book), mystery. You can even add a line of dialogue if it helps describe the character as well.

Have fun!

Here is an older post along the same lines, with some comments by readers: https://jennifermacaire.wordpress.com/2006/03/06/babys-got-blue-eyes/

And if you want to post your descriptions in the comment section, go ahead! I will be happy to read them!

What’s in a name

I just got a horrible review for one of my books. It bothers me (of course) but the reviewer didn’t say anything contructive, so I can’t use it, and I can only guess at why she hated the book. In her (or his – it could be a man) comment, she mentions that Plexis – the name – was the reason the book tanked for her. I guess she didn’t get further than the word that struck such a bad note, she had to stop reading.

So why did I choose the name Plexis for one of my character’s nickname?  I had Usse – which was a wink at the Greek’s fondness for names ending in  “us” – and I used some of the French spellings for some of the names (this is fiction – a time travel book – so I took a few liberties…) Anyhow. Plexis. Why? Well, I liked the sound of the name. Hephaestion is stuffy, and the Greeks had nicknames, just like anyone else, so why not Plexis?

The word Plexis comes from the Proto-Indo-European “pleḱ”- (“to fold, weave”).  It’s associated with the Latin plicō, Ancient Greek πλέκω (plékō). I thought the folds and weave of a cloth would suit Plexis’s character – he comforts Ashley, he’s Alexander’s best friend, he is quixotic, but at the same time he has a practical side to him. He’s a complex character, with many layers to his personality.

And there you have it. A name, just a name, and a reviewer crucifies the story. Maybe the name wasn’t at all what the reader hated – but the whole review, just one sentence – only mentioned the word Plexis as if it were the worst thing the reader had ever come across, so I felt I had to explain in case someone else reads the book and wonders where I found the name – now you know, Plexis is a name I made up from an ancient word that means the fold or weave of cloth. It’s nothing too deep, just a sound I happened to like with a meaning that spoke to me.

A bronze head once in the Farnese Collection, then in the Collection of king Philip V of Spain, in San Ildefonso, Palacio Real, now at Madrid, Prado, which has been recognized as the portrait of Hephaestion

7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great! His name still echoes in the corridors of time. Deified and vilified, his legend exists in nearly every language on earth and in the four major religions. We know he was born in Pella in 356 BC and succeeded his father Philip II to the throne at the age of twenty.  Ten years later, he’d created one of the largest empires of the ancient world. He was undefeated in battle and is widely considered one of history’s most successful military commanders, and he died just before his 33rd birthday. But do we really know him?

Alexander the Great

1- Alexander played polo. Legend has it that when Alexander the Great was about to invade Persia in 334 BC, Persian King Darius III sent him a polo mallet and ball. Either he was inviting the Macedonian to a game or suggesting that he stick to games and avoid war. Whatever the intention, Alexander is said to have replied, “I am the stick and the ball is the Earth,” before going on to conquer Persia. But since polo had been around for at least a thousand years and Alexander was no stranger to Persia, he most likely saw polo games, and perhaps he even played the “sport of kings”.

By Arifi (d.1449) – The Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Public Domain.

2-  He may have been in a glass diving bell, his fleet was hit by a tidal wave, and he struck oil. Almost immediately after his death in 323 BC legends began to accumulate about his exploits and life which, over the centuries, became increasingly fantastic as well as allegorical. Collectively this tradition is called the Alexander Romance and some stories feature such episodes as Alexander ascending through the air to Paradise, journeying to the bottom of the sea in a glass bubble, and journeying through the Land of Darkness in search of the Fountain of Youth.

It’s possible that he saw, or was in, a glass diving bell. There are several accounts of him going to the “bottom of the sea” in a glass bell. Aristotle describes sponge divers using a diving bell in his Problematum as early as 360 B.C., so it is concievable that Alexander, who was curious to learn about everything, tried it himself.

As for the tidal wave, according to some accounts, the Macedonian fleet (of Alexander the Great) was anchored for some time in the Indus river delta. The fleet was damaged by a tsunami generated by an earthquake off the Makran Coast in 325 BC.

He could have found an oil well. In another story, supposedly taken from a letter to his mother, he speaks about a fountain of olive oil that sprang from the ground although there were no olive trees nearby! He also mentions trees that sing. Most likely the oil was mineral oil, but the singing tree was from too much wine…

Underwater diving of Alexander the Great, painted by Flemish illuminator Jehan de Grise, 14th century.

3. We know what he looked like: the Azara herm is a Roman copy of a bust of Alexander the Great that was almost certainly made by the Greek sculptor Lysippus. Thanks to its original antique inscription, this figure can be definitely identified as Alexander the Great, son of Philip II of Macedon.  It’s in the Louvre in Paris. Now, since this is a Roman copy, it was made a few centuries after Alexander’s death, and because it was a copy, it’s most likely not as precise as the original. According to Plutarch (more about him later…) Alexander made Lysippus his “official” portrait artist. Now exhibited in the Louvre, this bust was unearthed in 1779 during an excavation at Tivoli organized by Joseph Nicolas Azara, the Spanish ambassador to France. Azara gave the sculpture to Napolean Bonaparte. For a time, this was the only known portrait of Alexander the Great. It is most likely the surviving portrait that looks the most like him.

Portrait of Alexander the Great. Pentelic marble, Attic copy of the 1st-2nd century AD after a Greek original

4- Plutarch’s writings about Alexander are mostly fiction. Plutarch wrote a whole book about Alexander, but he had some major faults. He lived 400 years after Alexander, and by that time, even contemporary writings were scarce. He was Greek – and the Greeks would always see Alexander as an upstart barbarian.  He starts off his book by saying he’s not writing “history”, but rather “a life story”, because, as he goes on to explain, it’s better to get to know a guy from his jokes than from the endless battles he’s fought and won. He pretends to glorify Alexander beyond reason, saying things like, “On his father’s side, he was descended from Hercules.” However, since Alexander had claimed the title of “son of Zeus-Amun”, this was definitely taking him down a peg. He  he has some fascinating tidbits of information, such as the battle of Gaugamela was fought during an eclipse, and that Alexander spent the night before in his tent with his diviner Aristander, performing certain mysterious ceremonies and sacrificing to the god, Fear.

5. Alexander’s favorite weapon was the phalanx. The phalanx was developed by Alexander’s father, Philip, and was a formidable fighting machine. No other army had such thing. It was uniquly Macedonian. According to Arrian’s Anabasis, “Alexander drew up his army in such a way that the depth of the phalanx was 120 men ; and […] he ordered them to preserve silence, in order to receive the word of command quickly.” The spears were 5 meters long (18 feet!) and made of sharpened wood or metal-tipped wood. Interestingly,  Polyaenus (in Stratagemata) says that Alexander spitefully armed his men who had previously fled the battlefield with the so-called hemithorakion – a half armor system that only covered the front part of the body. This punitive experiment made sure that the soldiers wouldn’t turn their backs on the enemy.  But, the soldiers in a phalanx would not require much armor, since coordinated, fast movement was what made the phalanx so effective. So Polyaenus was probably exagerating somewhat. In fact, the soldiers were lightly armored with only helmets (kranos), light shields (pelte), greaves (knemides) and a long pike (sarissa). I think the shields were more like leather plastrons, and I have a feeling most of the men fought naked (despite the drawing below of the men wearing cheerleading skirts).

6 – The funeral pyre for his friend, Hephaestion, was astounding.  When Hephaestion died, Alexander went into a frenzy of mourning. He wrote to the Oracle of Siwa and asked if Hephaestion should be honored as a god or a hero. The Oracle replied that he should be honored as a hero, and so Alexander went all out for a mausoleum/funeral pyre that would knock the socks off everyone. He settled on a simple monument. According to Diodorus, it was: “seven stories high […] The first story had 240 ships painted gold with red flags flowing in between. In the second one the columns resembled flaming torches surround by golden wreaths, serpents and eagles. Above mounted a hunting scene, towered by a battle of centaurs and mythological creatures. The fifth story was a golden jungle of lions, bulls and elephants, shining like planets in the dawning light. The next tier presented the arms of Macedon and Persian, while the seventh level bore sculptures of sirens with a hollow interior where women would chant in lament. On top of it all rose the sarcophagus of Hephaestion.”  It was so huge that Aleander had to break down one of the walls of Babylon to get it into the city. Then he set it on fire, and it must have made life absolutely miserable for everyone as it smoked and smoldered. He plundered the treasories of all his cities to pay for the monstrosity, and it has been estimated to have cost the modern equivalent of two billion dollars! It was most likely the most expensive funeral in history.

7 – He’s associated with a prophecy about the end of the world. The Caspian Gates was the narrow region at the southeast corner of the Caspian Sea, through which Alexander actually marched in the pursuit of Bessus, although he did not stop to fortify it. Somehow, the Caspian Gates, Alexander the Great, the Caucasus Mountains, and the tale of Gog and Magog became mixed up in a fanciful romance of Alexander dating from the 6th century AD.

The tale of Gog and Magog is Biblical in origins with elements in Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions. They will supposedly appear at the end of time to destroy humanity. Revelation 20:7-8: “… And when the thousand years are finished, Satan shall be loosed from his prison, and shall go out to seduce the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, and shall draw them to battle, whose number is as the sand of the sea…”

According to the legend, Alexander the Great, while conquering the world, came to the Caucasus Mountains where Prometheus the Titan had been chained long before. Here, the Macedonians discovered the evil hordes of Gog and Magog laying waste to the peaceable tribes around them. The country of these wicked raiders lay beyond two great mountains named Ubera Aquilonias, the Breasts of the North. Alexander forged gates of iron and brass to seal the narrow way. These Caspian Gates were further strengthened with a magic metal called asiceton, which was proof against fire and steel; steel shattered upon asiceton, and whatever fires which touched it were instantaneously quenched. And further, Alexander built a mighty wall spanning the entire Caucasus range, closing off the civilized south from the forces of darkness. This wall became known as the Alexander wall. But at the end of time, the gates will open and the wall will break down, and Gog and Magog will burst forth to destroy the world.

Alexander building the Caspian Wall (from a Persian manuscript)

Some further reading:

A Passion for Polo. The American museum of Natural History. https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/horse/how-we-shaped-horses-how-horses-shaped-us/wealth-and-status/a-passion-for-polo/

Alexander the Great – Imact of the 325 BC Tsunami in the North Arabian Sea upon his fleet, George Pararas-Carayannis.  Copyright © 2006. All Rights Reserved.

http://drgeorgepc.com/Tsunami325BCIndiaAlexander.html

The Anabasis of Alexander or, The History of the Wars and Conquests of Alexander the Great, Arrian of Nicomedia, Translator: E. J. Chinnock. Project Gutenberg [EBook #46976]

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46976

Library of History, Book XVII, (Funeral for Hephaestion: Sections 114 – 115) Diodorus Siculus,  Vol. VIII
of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1963

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/17F*.html

Some Passages in Polyaenus Stratagems concerning Alexander, N. G. L. Hammond. (N.b.: Polyaenus or Polyenus was a 2nd-century Macedonian author, known best for his Stratagems in War, which has been preserved.)

http://grbs.library.duke.edu/article/viewFile/2911/5831

A Discourse Composed by Mar Jacob upon Alexander, the Believing King, and upon the Gate which he made against Gog and Magog,” E. A. W. Budge (translator), ed. (1889). “, in The History of Alexander the Great Being, the Syriac Version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes (in Syriac).

Time Travel

If I had a superpower, it would be the ability to travel through time. It’s no coincidence my favorite show is Dr. Who… I’d love to be able to have a TARDIS! 

My passion for time travel started with a Kodak Brownie camera and a roll of 127 film.  I got my first camera when I was 7 years old, and my father would buy me a roll of film every month. The first batch of pictures came back with everyone’s heads cut off. My Brownie camera had a primitive viewfinder that exaggerated the lens’s reach – but after the “attack of the headless monsters”, as my dad jokingly called my first photo attempts, I was more careful. I continued to take pictures, buying my first reflex camera with my first paycheck (if I couldn’t afford a horse, at least I could get a camera). I continued to freeze time on shiny paper, fixing everything in place in chunky albums. I love to take photographs. It’s a way to stop time.

When I started writing the Time for Alexander series, it was obvious I was going to have to do a lot of research in order to make the history believable. I wished for a time machine to send me back to the past so I could meet the enigmatic conqueror, and I wished for a tradi-scope that would enable me to understand and speak in any language, (my Christmas list is getting longer…) but instead I had the library and the Internet. I haunted the Louvre – I’m lucky, I live near Paris, and there is an amazing section in the Louvre devoted to ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Mesopotamian art and daily life. Little things like combs, mirrors, chairs, beds, mattresses, lamps helped make my book come alive. In one part, Ashley looks at herself in a mirror, and thanks to the Louvre, I knew just what the mirror looked like, what it was made from, and even what the perfume bottle and makeup was like back then. Museums are like time machines.

While researching ancient Greece, I was also reading fiction and biographies about Alexander the Great. I’d read Mary Renault’s books as a teen and had loved them. Alexander’s biographies were fascinating too, but frustrating. Hardly anything contemporary to him remained. On the other hand, it made writing fiction easier. Books are like time machines; they take us anywhere we can imagine. My journey took me back to ancient Greece, and I hope you’ll join me!

Love at first sight and romance novels

What is more romantic than a romance novel? What is more predictable? Woman meets man, it’s love at first sight, they overcome obstacles to be together, and there is a Happy Ever After. That’s the “Love at First Sight” romance novel. It happens in real life too* – all the time.  A glance, a touch, and somehow, someway, the chemistry is there. It’s love at first sight.

Then there is the “No, No, No, Yes”, romance book, where hero and heroine hate each other on sight (but they manage to overcome that – usually by getting alone and naked together…)

There is the man falls for woman and stalks pursues her relentlessly in Fifty Shades style. There is the woman wants a man and goes overboard to get him… The Phallus from Dallas springs to mind, with Ciarra Sim’s unforgettable character, Hannah, who tracks down her cocky cowboy and won’t give up until she’s his filly.

There is the novel where the hero and heroine are kept apart by circumstances beyond their control – but they always get together in the end.

Love is complex. It’s lightning fast, it grows slowly, it’s incandescent, it’s smoldering coals, it’s fragile, it’s incredibly strong. But it’s not a formula. You can write a formula romance, but love is anything but predictable. So – when you read about a heroine falling instantly in love with a hero, or when you read about the couple who can’t stop bickering until they realize they are actually in love… you just have to sigh and smile, and hopefully give a nice review on Amazon**.

*I met my husband at the polo club, and I knew right away he was “the one”. I told my sister I’d marry him, when we’d barely spoken to each other. We met in 1979. We married, and are still together! Love at first sight!

**This whole article came about because someone accused my heroine of not being “reticent” enough towards my hero and shot my book down in flames.  In other words, the heroine was infatuated at first sight with the hero and didn’t resist. So, if you want a book where the couple hates each other on sight, won’t speak to each other, or think the other character is an ass, jerk, etc., there is a wonderful book called “Pride and Prejudice” that I hold up as a shining example of how a romance book should be written when the two main characters are not smitten with each other. If, on the other hand, you enjoy a sizzling love story, but the two characters have to learn to trust each other, and have to overcome obstacles beyond their control to be together, you may like my Alexander series. It’s up to you. But now, you’ve been warned. 

 

Publisher’s Weekly

Publisher’s weekly review of “The Road to Alexander”

Macaire’s imaginative opening entry in the Time for Alexander series transports time-traveling journalist Ashley Riveraine back 3,000 years to 333 BCE via a frozen magnetic beam to interview the legendary king and military general Alexander the Great. Ashley loses her ability to return home when Alexander pulls her out of the beam believing she is the goddess Persephone. Alexander is unaware that Ashley is from the future, and she must not do or say anything to change history or she will be erased. She soon becomes Alexander’s lover (steamy scenes ensue) and a resourceful operator in a society in which people rely on omens, oracles, and gods in everyday life. Alexander’s relationships—with his treacherous mother, Olympias, his three wives, and his troops—are reasonably well-developed. The book’s most engrossing sequence sees Alexander matching wits with the Persian king, Bessus, while pursuing him in a grueling ride that sees many men and horses die. A loose ending will entice readers to find out what lies ahead in the series. (Booklife)

 

 

Flash Fiction “Greed”

Greed 

The day he destroyed his violin, Jacob wandered through the museum, staring. So far from his home planet, everything looked strange.

In the courtyard, he came across delicate, frosted glass bones of the behemoths. Its wings had been transformed into sun-catchers. There was a musical instrument made from its sinews. Jacob plucked at a string. It sounded like bells. He plucked again, and this time heard singing. The sound was never the same, and it was always achingly beautiful.

On the plaque, it said, “Behemoths were exterminated for their sinews, which are used in musical instruments all over the galaxy.”

Photo prompt  © Roger Bultot

A funny thing happened on the way to 333 BC.

A funny thing happened on the way to 333 BC. I was supposed to go back in time, interview Alexander the Great, grab my story, and leave. But Fate, that joker, intervened, and here I am, stranded in the past with Alexander the Great. Well, not really. My character got stuck. I was going to write a short story about a time-traveling journalist going into the past, and I ended up with a series of seven books.

I was never interested in history when I was in school, but having a mother who was a history teacher meant hearing about it all the time. Maybe, like osmosis, it seeped in, because when I started writing, I first gravitated towards history. I had been publishing short stories in magazines and had a good number under my belt, as well as a couple literary prizes and a nomination for the Pushcart prize. So, it was in all confidence that I started a short story about a journalist who goes back to interview Alexander the Great, slaps a mosquito, and changes time.

To read more, click the link and whoosh over to the Historical Novel Society where this feature is published! Read about Ashley’s hangover, how & why I fired the first journalist – and much, much more!