Regal Crest

The Power of Symbolism

2012-01-17T10:40:00.001-05:00

The Power of Symbolism

By Nann Dunne

Recently, I watched an episode of CSI: NY that had a scene that impressed me enough to stick in my mind. In the scene setup, the character Jo, a policewoman played by Sela Ward, accompanies a female witness home. Shortly after the woman goes into her bedroom to get some clothes, Jo calls out a question to her. When the woman doesn’t answer, Jo walks to the bedroom door. She sees the woman’s legs on the floor past the end of the bed. Jo draws her gun and slips into the room. She gets punched in the face, and the gun drops from her hand. Fade out.

Fade in. Jo is lying on the living room floor, regaining awareness. A man, the serial rapist her unit has been pursuing, forces her to her feet, beats her with his fists, and slams her against a wall mirror. She falls to the floor, bleeding and barely conscious.

The rapist has her gun. He ejects the magazine into his hand and sets the gun on the coffee table. He sits in a chair and slowly flicks the bullets out of the magazine at Jo, one by one. All the while, he taunts her about how he has outsmarted the police.

He laughs and even encourages Jo as she inches across the floor to the table and wraps her hand around the gun butt. She struggles to a sitting position, points the gun at him, and says in a raspy voice, “You know how most gun accidents happen and people shoot themselves?”

The guy, now sneering at her, stands up and spreads his arms wide. “Bang! You got me. You finally got me.”

Jo gets that look on her face. You know the one. When a person is sure she’s won the battle. She says, “They always forget the one in the chamber.” The camera cuts to the rapist. Realization dawns on him. His face sobers. His body twitches. The camera turns back to Jo, and she pulls the trigger.

Out of thousands of scenes I’ve watched over the years, this is one I know will stay with me. We all like to see the bad guy get his due, and in most crime shows, he or she usually does. I asked myself what makes this scene more memorable than those others? The answer I arrived at? The symbolism of the bullet in the chamber.

The scene is an allegory of life. We can be sailing along with everything going smoothly, then, bam! Something turns our little part of the world topsy-turvy. The upset can affect us physically, mentally, or emotionally; it can be as small as fighting a case of the flu or as large as losing a loved one to the finality of death. Often it seems our small segment of the world shows no sympathy, even laughing at us, as we battle to return to stability.

If we keep our wits about us, as Jo did, and do our best to resolve the situation, we can find deep inside ourselves the power that the bullet symbolizes—the steel force we have ingrained in us that can give us the strength and courage to win against the struggles we face.

Symbolism in writing is a mighty tool. We who are authors should strive to write memorable scenes that mean more than their face value. We can’t use symbolism in every scene, but two or three per book is a reachable goal.

Some common symbols, for example, are flags for patriotism; rings for commitment; the Statue of Liberty for freedom, smiley faces for happiness and friendship. We also have the not-so-nice symbols: finger-flipping for contempt; the “raspberry” for derision; the twirling finger at the temple for craziness.

But try to find uncommon symbols. Have you read or seen scenes that had such a strong effect on you that you still remember them? Ask yourself why—was symbolism involved? Identify that type of writing and use it as a basis to fashion your own original symbols within your story. To strengthen your recognition of symbolism, read some poetry, listen to songs; poets generally are adept at its use, as are songwriters.

Symbolic objects reach into our readers’ minds and hearts and touch them in ways they didn’t foresee. To achieve this is to write with power.

Remember the bullet still in the chamber. Use it in your writing—and in your life.

Moving Parts

2011-12-28T13:50:00.002-05:00

Moving Parts

by Kate McLachlan

I had my first attack of penis envy at the age of nine. Steve was ten and John was eleven. Mom was visiting the doctor (just about the only time she ever left the house) regarding the imminent birth of her ninth child. Granny was in charge, and my older brothers and I had taken advantage of the inadequate supervision to indulge in a lively game of strip poker.

We didn’t really know how to play poker, but stripping was easy. It didn’t take long before we were prancing buck naked across the boys’ room.

I’d seen penises before, of course. I had three younger brothers as well as the two older ones. Escaping the bathtub to run around the house, screaming and soaking wet, was a favorite activity of the little boys. The sight of a penis was nothing new to me.

Then John lay flat on his back on his dingy, bare mattress and said, “Watch what I can do!” Somehow, magically, he made his penis defy gravity and rise straight up into the air. I was struck with a pang of envy so strong it made my bare little loins clench.

Moving parts!

It was so unfair! Boys already got the best toys. Tonka dump trucks, snapping cap guns, Creepy Crawlers, Rockem’ Sockem’ Robots. Now it turned out they came equipped with the same sort of apparatus that made me covet their toys. They had moving parts!

“Me too!” Steve hollered, dropping to his mattress when he saw how impressed I was by John’s parts. “I can do it too!”

I despondently watched their penises rise and fall like miniature sails and wondered what I could show them that would be of any interest. Before anything occurred to me, though, we heard Granny’s voice come up the stairs, followed by her footsteps.

“What are you kids doing up there?”

There were three closets in the big room. Each of us grabbed our clothes and dived into the nearest closet, pulling on clothes as fast as we could. By the time Granny reached the room, the boys were half dressed. They flung open their closet doors.

“Surprise!” They capered out, zipped and snapped and bare from the waist up.

Not wanting to be left out, I buttoned my own pants and threw open the door.

“Surprise!” I leaped out, spreading my arms wide in exaggerated greeting.

“Katie! Where is your shirt?”

Her voice shamed me. I dove back into the closet, pulled my shirt over my head, and emerged, subdued and confused. My brothers and I had just spent the last few minutes together as naked as babies, and we all knew for certain that the only difference between us was between our legs. Why so much shame in my shirtlessness?

The punishment we received back then escapes my memory, though I’m sure there was one. It probably involved spankings for my brothers, something less violent for me. Girls in my family didn’t get spanked. I had no penis. It made a difference.

Not only were we girls stuck with bodies that did nothing interesting, our toys didn’t even have moving parts. Dolls and tea sets and make-up kits were boring. The problem with girl toys is that they didn’t do anything.

Well, that’s not entirely true. The Easy Bake Oven I got one Christmas baked real cakes, a feature that even drew my brothers’ attention from their Hot Wheels. But once the cakes were all eaten, which happened before Christmas day was over, the pink plastic oven was useless.

Another Christmas I got a pretty cool paper doll game. It came with a paper doll, a timer, several sheets of paper doll clothes, and a pair of safety scissors. The idea of the game was to set the timer and see if you could get an entire sheet of doll clothes cut out before the timer went off. That game was pretty fun, for a game you played by yourself, but the paper doll clothes were useless. The problem was, in order to beat the timer you had to cut quickly, which meant sleeves and pant legs hit the cutting room floor along with the little tabs that were supposed to attach the clothes to the doll. By the end of Christmas day, I was left with nothing but an underwear clad paper doll, a timer, a pair of safety scissors, and no paper doll clothes.

The best Christmas presents transcended gender lines. My favorite Christmas present of all, as a kid, was a Toot Sweet, which turned Tootsie Rolls into whistles. Candy and a toy all in one? It was better than the Easy Bake Oven, by far. My sweet tooth was in heaven. But, like most of my Christmas toys, by the end of Christmas day the tootsie rolls were gone and the Toot Sweet sat useless and forgotten while I went to beg my brothers to let me race their hot wheels.

One year I got a bottle cutter. It was actually designed for kids, for some crazy reason. You could take a bottle (in our family it was always a beer bottle), spin it around the glass cutter, and the top popped off. You then took the sandpaper, which came with the kit, to sand the top smooth. Presto! A handy and inexpensive drinking glass. Unfortunately the glass broke every single time, and my brothers and I all ended up with cut fingers that year. That toy disappeared over night.

I lost my interest in boy parts when I got a little older and learned what they were all about. My interest in girl parts evolved as I realized that they really did…move.

My Christmas presents eventually grew more practical – clothing and records and school supplies – and they generally lasted more than a day too, but my memories of them are not distinct. I do remember receiving a calculator one year. Calculators were new and marvelous and expensive. Mine could add, subtract, multiply, divide, and calculate percentages. It was the size of a paper back book. A trade paperback. It was a decent enough present, and it did have moving parts, but really, not much can measure up to a Toot Sweet.

The views expressed in the posts and comments of this blog do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Regal Crest Enterprises, LLC. They should be understood as the personal opinions of the author.

All readers are encouraged to leave comments. While all points of view are welcome on Regal Crest’s blogs, only comments that are courteous and on-topic will be posted. All comments will be reviewed and responded to (as needed) within two business days of submission. Regal Crest reserves the right to post and/or remove comments at its discretion. Spam and comments endorsing commercial products or services will not be posted.

Participants on this blog are fully responsible for everything that they submit in their comments, and all posted comments are in the public domain.

Book Piracy: Is There an Upside?

2011-12-02T10:19:00.003-05:00

Ouch

People are selling my books and collecting money for them, and I’m not getting my piece of the pie. The books are not theirs to sell. Selling something that doesn’t belong to you is unlawful. Case closed, right? Well … maybe.

There’s a little wrinkle to this. A few online entities now provide free copies of lots of books and ask for a voluntary donation to enable them to carry on. So they aren’t actually selling my books, they’re providing free copies. It’s kind of the reverse of the popular bug killer, the Roach Hotel (“roaches check in, but they never check out!”): books are checked out, but they’re never checked in. It’s a strange twist on the public library system. And it makes you stop and think.

Libraries

My local library buys a copy of a book and makes it available to as many people as want to read it. For new bestsellers, one copy is often read more than a dozen times in its first year alone.

A couple of months ago, I borrowed a copy of a classic Agatha Christie novel. I was surprised to find that the library has owned this particular (very well worn) copy for over fifty years. It still had the envelope inside the front cover that was once used to hold information about the book and its whereabouts. (Now it also has a little chip in the back, and all the information is computerized.) I was sort of awestruck. How many others had held and read that very copy over the last fifty years? Maybe hundreds. One at a time.

Nowadays my library also loans ebooks. Their system lets you download a book that’s “checked in” and then erases it from your computer (supposedly) when it’s due to be “returned.” There are safeguards (supposedly) to ensure that only one reader at a time has a copy of the ebook.

One of the librarians told me that their funding is based partly on the number of books borrowed, so they’re really happy to have voracious readers like me as patrons. In turn, I’m really happy that they exist. The library has made it possible for me to read hundreds of books without having to buy them. I never could have bought all those books; the expense would be horrendous.

The library does have a fairly good selection of modern lesbian classics and currently popular gay male novels from the larger publishing houses, and I’ve read most of those. But for the latest lesfic, I have to look elsewhere.

Bookstores

These days, most of my bookstore shopping is of the online variety. I buy several lesfic books per year online because they aren’t available at the library or at mainstream bookstores, and there isn’t a brick-and-mortar LGBT bookstore nearby.

Even now, my purchases are mostly print books. After reading them, I pass most of them along to friends, but keep a few of the ones I think are exceptionally good. Every year or so, my partner points out (gently, but firmly) that the “exceptionally good” lesfic books are causing an overflow situation. So I cull them and make a contribution to our local LGBT center.

Bottom line: for most of the lesfic books I buy, after I’ve read them they go “somewhere else.” I have no idea where they end up or how many people eventually read them, but I hope it’s a lot.

Fifty years ago I bought Ann Bannon’s books at my local Rexall Drug Store. On my meager allowance, fifty cents was a financial sacrifice. But they were my one and only lifeline. I had to have them. Nowadays, people I call heroines work hard for no pay to make quality lesfic available for free. I’ve contributed stories to “Khimairal” and “Read These Lips” because I know how important it is to have access to stories that cast us in a positive light.

The Money

Money? What money? Every three months, I get a royalty check that just about covers printer cartridges, paper, coffee, and my labor at the rate of ten cents per hour (yes, that’s ten whole pennies). That makes writing lesfic a break even proposition if you plant your tongue firmly in your cheek. So why do I do it? Because I enjoy the challenge, and I want to share my thoughts and stories with as many people as possible. And this is where the “piracy” situation gets dicey for me.

I realize that my books might be read in ebook format by people who didn’t pay for them. Honestly, this doesn’t bother me. Is there a difference between a print book read serially by ten people over the course of ten weeks and an ebook read simultaneously by ten people in one week? That’s debatable.

I’ve read lots of books that I didn’t pay for (mostly library books). I chose them because I thought I might like them, but I never would have paid money up front for most of them. That’s why I don’t believe it’s true that every pirated ebook represents a lost legitimate sale.

What to do?

As an author, I am conflicted. If I were to lose a few bucks due to piracy and giveaways, it wouldn’t make much difference in my life (assuming I even found out about it). It might also result in more people reading my stuff, which I hope would make a positive impact on the lives of the lesbians who read it.

On the other hand, it’s possible that piracy and giveaways could significantly reduce publisher revenues. There is no way to estimate the amount involved. But if the publishers who depend on lesfic for their livelihood are driven under by this, we would be left with only our dedicated volunteers to continue their publishing ventures. That would not be good.

But are we trying to get blood out of a turnip here? Let’s face it: we are very tiny frogs in a very big pond. Are we getting ahead of ourselves, with so many small publishing houses and such a limited customer base? Realistically, just how many people can make a living off of lesfic? We have a just cause, and we know there is a long uphill battle still ahead of us before we’re able to take our rightful place with the bigger players at the publishing table. Most authors realize that lesfic has to be a labor of love. Our mission is to spread our message as far and wide as we can, and in the current situation lesfic publishers could get hurt financially along the way.

Should we sit on the sidelines as our cause advances at the expense of publishers? Or should we follow the money and advocate for the rightful financial interest of the publishers who are trying to make a livelihood from this and sacrifice a bit of our mission? Beats me. That’s the conundrum.

~Vicki Stevenson, author of the Family of Choice Series.

The views expressed in the posts and comments of this blog do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Regal Crest Enterprises, LLC. They should be understood as the personal opinions of the author.

Regal Crest reserves the right to post and/or remove comments at its discretion. Spam and comments endorsing commercial products or services will not be posted.
Participants on this blog are fully responsible for everything that they submit in their comments, and all posted comments are in the public domain.

Connections

2011-10-19T21:11:00.000-04:00

My grandmother died today. Mom remarried when I was four, so my step-dad is a second father to me, and Grandma G was his mother—my family. She and my mom never connected. They had a difficult relationship, at best and that animosity affected the entire family in more ways than we’ll ever know. Since grandma’s fall last week, my siblings and I have talked about how sad it was that they never resolved their issues. Grandma G tried. We decided that our mother largely held onto her gruff exterior out of fear. She’d rather be thought of as cold than risk her feelings. That was the lesson she showed us. Here’s what mom missed: Emotional connection, as difficult as it may be, is necessary for humans.

Growing up, I never observed my parents being affectionate with one another, and that certainly extended to us kids. I don't say that in a "woe is me" whiny way, just a statement of fact. I don't think they knew how. I was always the more emotionally leaning, affectionate kid. Tenderhearted my mother used to call me, but somehow I understood that she really meant “weak". I began writing at a young age, needing somewhere to channel my emotional side, which I'd learned to hide. I needed a safe place to give voice to my emotions and dreams. My journals gave me that. I graduated from high school with no clear direction of what I wanted to do in life, and after floundering for a couple of years, joined the military. Now you might think that was the dumbest idea in the world for a kid like me, and it seems that way on paper. <g> But, you know, looking back that was the single most important decision and defining moment in my young life. Jumping headlong into a situation that required me to sacrifice my individualism actually made me more sharply aware of exactly who I was. Sounds crazy, I know, but it’s true.

I have found my upbringing, my identity as a lesbian, and my career choices have naturally created social barriers. Yes, all of those categories have their own groups for belonging, but they also defined me in ways that can sometimes prevent wider connections. Even within my subgroups of belonging, there were distinct barriers. The military’s prohibition of lesbian and gay soldiers remanded my fellow soldiers and I to silence. Police culture often separates officers from the general community, and gay officers segregated within the ranks. We all know the ways that being lesbian separated us from the larger community in the past. Hopefully, not as much now.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that I knew loads of people, but didn't have very many real connections. Took a little soul searching to admit in part that I was the one holding back out of fear. Funny, the day I decided to end my closeted existence at the police department was the day my career moved forward and I met Sandy soon after. The interesting thing about the change professionally is that I realized that cops have to depend on each other—sometimes for their very lives. It dawned on me that my peers would see that I was holding something of myself back. That would cause mistrust—bad for the survival mix, right? So, that's what changed my career. Sharing my authentic self with my peers made them trust me more, not less. What an amazing epiphany.

Writing has been a similar experience. I’ve always needed to write, but in those early years my scribbling was confined to my spiral notebooks, kept hidden away in the space between my bed and the wall of the room I shared with my sister. Back then I never dreamed of the courage to share my written words with anyone. What if they said it was awful? What if they laughed? I didn’t think I’d survive it.

My fellow authors know this as well as I. It's intimidating as hell to put yourself out there and be vulnerable. But for me, the rewards personally have been profound. Putting my heart on the page honestly is what defines me. I if I hold back it doesn’t work. I know it and my readers will know it. An author must put themselves out there heart and soul, with no holds barred, gut wrenching vulnerability. One of my author friends said recently during an interview, “If I don’t shiver, my readers won’t shiver.” You’re right, Isabella. I’d add, if I don’t cry, my readers won’t cry. Emotional connection is what makes every one of our lives worthwhile. The same is true for our writing. Exposing our emotional selves is scary, but I think it just might be the greatest act of bravery possible. Write with abandon. Dare to be vulnerable. Make that connection.

God speed, Grandma G.

LM

Lynette Mae is the author of Faithful Service, Silent Hearts, now available from RCE, as well as Tactical Pursuit, coming in 2012.
Connect with LM at www.lynettemae.com and on Facebook

The views expressed in the posts and comments of this blog do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Regal Crest Enterprises, LLC. They should be understood as the personal opinions of the author.

All readers are encouraged to leave comments. While all points of view are welcome on Regal Crest’s blogs, only comments that are courteous and on-topic will be posted. All comments will be reviewed and responded to (as needed) within two business days of submission. Regal Crest reserves the right to post and/or remove comments at its discretion. Spam and comments endorsing commercial products or services will not be posted.

Participants on this blog are fully responsible for everything that they submit in their comments, and all posted comments are in the public domain.

The Undelivered Speech

2011-09-30T18:26:00.002-04:00

     This past September 6 marked the beginning of my eighth year of retirement from the School District of Philadelphia. During these last seven years I’ve missed the camaraderie of some of my former colleagues and the seconds of magic I used to see when my students experienced their “aha” moments, but I do not regret having left the classroom.
     I like to think I’ve used these seven years well. I’ve become a volunteer at a local hospital, continued attending water aerobics classes twice a week, visited all sorts of places of historical and cultural interest, served on the Board of Directors of the Golden Crown Literary Society, and written four novels. There are tons of activities I want to explore, more books I want to write, an Atlas full of places to which I want to travel, an untold number of people I want to meet and talk with, and so many facts, information, and skills I hope to learn.
     Some folks label longings such as these a “bucket list.” I don’t like that phrase because it reminds me of the expression “kicking the bucket”. “Bucket list” is draped with the depressing shroud of finality. I prefer to tie my plans with multi-colored streamers labeled “the future” because those two words suggest optimism.
     We can all attribute some parts of our world view and some aspects of our personalities to our parents. Hopefully, over time we learned to let go of any growth stunting lessons we absorbed from them in favor of developing the more positive characteristics they modeled. For example, I’m convinced my mother, who frequently tells me she’s “as nervous as a cat” showed me in utero how to react to stress. Every time she utters her feline simile, I visualize my two kitties, Zami and Randi, who regularly display trigger quick reactions with little or no provocation. My younger one, Randi, executes flawless back flips for which the most demanding International Olympics judge would award a perfect 10.
     When my mom tells me she’s as nervous as Randi, I take deep breaths. For the sake of my blood pressure and emotional health, I try to react to life’s stressors differently than my mother, Zami, and Randi do. I try to be mindful of other behaviors they model; like their insatiable curiosity about nature, their relaxed attitude about taking midday naps in the sunniest spot available in the family room, and the happiness of baking cranberry muffins for friends. You can guess who does what. All of you cat lovers probably figure my two pets can do it all.
      What did my father show me? I believe his very presence modeled being positive and always making one’s best effort in the face of societal obstacles. He lived his life exuding the kind of gritty determination it took for an African American male to become a successful military officer, executive, husband and father during the mid-twentieth century.
     All of this brings me to my blog’s title, The Undelivered Speech. My fourth novel, THE BUTTERFLY MOMENTS, was short-listed for a 2011 Goldie. in the romance with intrigue category. On the evening of June 11th, two minutes after the third winner of that category was named, I realized the disappointment I felt tugging at my non-winning heart was due in large part to my not being able to thank my parents publically for all they had done to help me become a writer. I hadn’t had the opportunity to praise my mother for giving me either a book or a gift voucher from a bookstore every single Christmas of my life. I was bereft of the chance to talk about my father, and how faithfully he had read bedtime stories to me and my younger sister. I couldn’t describe the joy we felt whenever he put aside the little Golden Books and spontaneously composed his own tales for us. I think it is my Dad’s creative energy that jumps from my imagination onto my computer’s screen when my writing is really flowing. His muse is my legacy, I’m certain. And that certainty fills me with pride.
     I remain grateful that my book was a finalist. I am thankful for this opportunity to deliver my speech.

Renée Bess is the author of LEAVE OF ABSENCE, BREAKING JAIE, RE:BUILDING SASHA, and THE BUTTERFLY MOMENTS. Her website is www.reneebess.com. To contact her via email: ecrivaine1@yahoo.com


The views expressed in the posts and comments of this blog do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Regal Crest Enterprises, LLC. They should be understood as the personal opinions of the author.

Regal Crest reserves the right to post and/or remove comments at its discretion. Spam and comments endorsing commercial products or services will not be posted.
Participants on this blog are fully responsible for everything that they submit in their comments, and all posted comments are in the public domain.