Easter in Pennsylvania / The World of DeviantArt

Greetings to everyone, regardless of whether you celebrate Easter or not.  (My apologies to believers, but Easter seems rather a shaky thing to celebrate.)  But it is a wonderfully bright and sunny day out where I live, and everyone is smiling, and calling out greetings--which I hate, because I don't feel comfortable calling out greetings back at them!

I have been working on Concerto, and I took a break, and went out for a walk.

I have joined DeviantArt, a peculiar site for artists: that is, graphic artists.  I'm actually looking for cover art for these books of mine, but they seem to be charging more than I can afford.  Bear in mind that I have earned just about sixty dollars, lifetime, perhaps partly because my covers are not that wonderful!!

But these guys and gals at DeviantArt are just amazing!  They produce beautiful work, but many of them are totally immersed in some specific fantasy sub-culture; sometimes it is a game, sometimes a particular manga series; sometimes it is an anime series, sometimes it is a specific character from a movie.  Many of them are faithful to some character from the Marvel Universe, for instance; others focus on drawing millions of cute teens with pussycat ears!  I mean, that's fine, but . . . it doesn't seem sane to draw so many of them.  Some of them put pussycat ears on every girl they draw.

Thinking about that, I haven't seen this feature on their pictures of guys.  So they live in a world in which the sexes may be equal, but they're certainly different.  (I can hardly complain; almost all the couples in my stories are girl-girl couples.)

Another strange feature is that many of the members of the website do nothing but artwork.  If they haven't posted some artwork for a few weeks, they feel terrible, and apologize to their colleagues, and their Fans.

Some of them have personal problems, such as being transsexuals, and having unique problems related to that situation.  (I don't mind transsexuals, but I strongly disapprove of parents of really young children, who encourage their infants with their obsession of identifying with the other sex, such as little boys who insist on wearing dresses, and being called girls, and vice versa.  Let them wear whatever they want, but I do not think encouraging them to plan to have surgery or hormone treatment makes sense until they're at least sixteen.  That is somewhat arbitrary, I know, but without an arbitrary age of consent, judges will find it difficult to rule, if a legal challenge comes up, such as if the child were to sue its parents.)

Going on to more interesting things, I have noticed that the artists in DeviantArt often draw superheroes, or goddesses, or female fighters; and often these are drawn with heavy chests, and extremely narrow waists.  This is depressing to me, since I prefer waists that are not too narrow, and slim breasts!  If one of these superheroines had nursed twins for several years, I suppose it would make sense to draw them amply endowed.  But for these young fighters, wouldn't it be better if they were slim?  Why do these artists pander to the taste of guys who like big breasts?  Even the female artists seem to have adopted this ideal.

And another thing.  Many of the female heroes depicted wear armor.  But the armor has holes that would help an enemy to pierce them in numerous awkward places.  It is almost as if the artists have not understood the point of metal armor.  (It could be magic armor, which protects even if it does not cover.  That is possible, with good magic!)

There is a particular artist several, of whose pieces I really like.  Unfortunately, her characters seem to always wear the same expression.  If it were a neutral expression, such as a friendly smile, that would be fine.  But often her character wears a bewildered look, that makes her appear to be permanently off-balance.

There are cosplayers, who dress up as interesting characters from movies or videos, and take pictures of themselves, or have friends take their pictures for them.  Some of them are brilliant, and most of them are beautiful women, and good actresses, who can portray emotions really well, emotions appropriate to their chosen character, in her chosen pose.

I would encourage my readers to visit the site, and see the millions of pieces of art you can look at for free.  There is a small risk that you may never make it out again!

Kay H. B.

Maundy Thursday in Pennsylvania

Readers of the Helen stories might remember the enormous effort that Helen and her students put into the Matthäuspassion (just before Helen runs off to audition for Goodbye Mr. Chips!, the shameless hussy).

I'm watching this very passion on YouTube just this minute, and it is a particularly nice performance.  There are many good performances on YouTube, of course, and they are all more interesting to watch, than to simply listen to the music on a CD.

There are three choruses that I always look forward to; the great opening chorus, Come ye daughters,  the great chorus that closes the first half of the passion: O Man, bewail thy grievous sin, and the closing chorus, We lay ourselves, with weeping prostrate  (the English translation doesn't quite convey the meaning of the original German, I very much suspect).  Each of these is a masterpiece in itself, including, in my opinion, the last chorus, which is generally neglected by critics.

The opening chorus sets the scene for the religious drama that is presented in the Passion: exhorting the Daughters of Zion (a symbolic group representing the audience in the manner of Greek Drama) to weep.  The piece does not further the action, but it successfully sets the foreboding mood of the drama, which relates how Jesus is captured--away from his staunch supporters--and brought before the religious authorities, and eventually tried by a sort of kangaroo court, convicted, and executed.  From the outset, it manages to create a mood of confusion and fear, proceeds to work itself up to a feeling of terror, and then stops, saying, behold a lamb; implying that it will be slaughtered.

The big chorus halfway through the passion, O Mensch, bewein dein' Sundre gross,  'O Man, repent your enormous sin,' expresses great remorse, grief, shame and mourning.  The children's choir, usually placed in the center, sings the hymn, while the two other choirs, usually placed on either side, comment on the hymn, emphasizing it and elaborating on it.  It's hard to describe; the old German tune that it is sung to is just perfect for it, as if it were an epic poem, describing the shameful death of a hero.

The final chorus is simply a farewell.  In this case, it is the sad farewell of a choir that is wiped out, emotionally, left without hope, keeping exhausted watch over the grave of Jesus.  Some of this is explicit in the words, much of it is conveyed in the homophonic wail that we hear in the music.

Kay.

Well, Its Coming Along!

Greetings again, to all six of you readers!

It's rather amusing, when writing this Blog, to realize that only six people read it!  Obviously I can't encourage any more readers to come check it out by writing anything here!

Luckily, I get a lot of satisfaction in just writing the books; so it doesn't matter a huge amount how many people read them!   (I guess I just conflated the readership of the books with that of the blog, for which there is no good reason, really.)

I'm doing two sorts of things when editing the books, apart from checking the grammar and the syntax, and the spelling, that is:  Firstly, I try to unwind a lot of the flashback there was.  There still is some, which would be difficult to rip out without making a mess.  For instance, there is this episode where Helen goes camping with a couple.  It is mentioned in about three, or even four places, and I decided to just leave it there; it is too hard to make things perfect.

Secondly, I actually introduced an episode or two that had not been in the manuscript at all.  This would make the story a tad longer, but at the moment, we have it down to 136,000 words, give or take a few, and about 300 pages in Word.  (I set up a page size that would be nice to read on a tablet, if I converted the book to Pdf, which of course I'm not planning to do for Smashwords.)

I have to take breaks from the editing, because the last thing I want to do is to get Helen Fatigue, which is a weird phrase that comes up in the story, incidentally.

Well, that's all for now; I might be done with this work much sooner than I expected, but you don't get to see it before June 21, 2019.

Thank you all for your support; I really appreciate it!

Isolde Wells

Whoa, I just learned that the Welsh form of Isolde is Esyllt!

That is lovely; I wish I had known it before I started writing the episodes of the Helen story in which Isolde appears (none of which have been published, unless I'm mistaken).

I do believe that a young musician named Esyllt, in modern Britain, would probably have changed it to Isolde just for the sake of ease of pronunciation, and to minimize the exotic nature of the name.  Isolde does not come across to me as--or at least, I did not conceive the character to be--someone who considered that how different and unique she was, as her main characteristic.  She knew she was extremely good at what she did: play several instruments; and the other things that made her different: her clothes, her hair, her voice, etc, were just incidental.

Kay

My Books on Smashwords!

I had just announced a couple of days ago that Concerto was finished!  Just this morning (or was it last night?) I uploaded the thing to Smashwords, and pre-published it, to be published on Midsummer's Day, June 21.  There's nothing special about this day, except that it is the longest day of the year, in terms of the number of daylight hours, and is--not quite incidentally--the anniversary of D-Day of World War II.  Helen's Concerto has less than nothing to do with that fact; I just picked the date out of a figurative hat!

Of course, this gives me a couple of months to tinker with and edit Concerto, and I'm taking the opportunity to clean it up, but also to add in some background, without which would be a bit obscure.  At the moment, the story keeps backing up, because there's a big difference between a love story and just a history: the things people say, and the reasons they say them, are important.  Part of this love story is buried inside Helen & Sharon, and I really hate to have to duplicate any of that.

The way I'm rewriting it, I may not have to back up at all, or maybe back up just once, after having outlined most of the story until we get to the point at which Helen & Sharon ends.

I just looked at the author area in Smashwords, and thought it might be as amusing to you as it was for me, to see which books are selling, and which are not!  (Most of them are selling at present, because most of them are being given away free!  Hey, don't download them unless you read them, people!  I want to know how many are actually reading them!)

This represents a (somewhat misleading) stacked chart of the sales of the books every six days or so.  Actually, each day; only every sixth day is labeled.  One day a total of 31 books sold!  It was March 28th.  Around 5 copies of Helen at the Beach were downloaded (judging from the thickness of the dark blue band at the bottom),  about four copies of Jane and Jane the Early Years, three copies of Prisoner!, one copy of Helen at Ballet Camp (which was slightly embarrassing, because it was written in a sort of a teen style; but I love that little story, especially the characters of Hunter, Cara and Dena).  Then come four copies of Alexandra, a copy of Helen & Sharon--hey, come on, guys; that's an important book in the Helen sequence.  And it's free (I think?).  One copy of Helen & the Flower Girl, three copies of Galactic Voyager, one of Helen on the Run,--a pity; I think that's a book that's a cut above; anyway, three copies of Backstory: Lisa, Cindy, Pat & the Violin, a copy of Little John Finds a Friend, and two of Helen vs. Handel's Messiah.

Is there a trend?  The Jane books are selling better than the Helen books; stories with more sex are selling better than those without!  And free books are selling better than book that are not free!  I think I set the price of Concerto at $1.99, which might be too rich for your blood, but if you wait long enough, the paying customers will buy all they want, but there's sure to be a shop-soiled copy or two for free for you later in the year!  No, I'm not upset with those who wait to get a story at no cost, because I would do the same.  The difference is that I would actually read the book, while you folks might not!

I would dearly love it if those who actually read the stories would write to me care of Smashwords, if you're too bashful to write to me here, in the comments, and say how you liked the story.  You can say that it sucked, or it was OK, or you liked it, or anything you like.  Authors love those who read their books, not necessarily those who say nice things.  (Of course, we love those who say nice things, but speaking for myself, I know that the way I write, some people will not enjoy the writing.)

A little political commentary.

I am a liberal, and I vote Democrat.  I'm not registered as one, but that's how I vote.  Because I don't make a huge amount of money, I don't pay taxes, but I'm comfortable knowing that the government tries to provide services to the poor and destitute that I would like to provide, if I had the money and the time.

People are horrified at the things Donald Trump does and says.  (What he says is sort of an act; to please those who hate the Democrats.  A lot of Trump supporters do not support any policies except to frustrate and anger Democrats, and support Trump, the man.)*  As I see it, I think reacting to these taunts will only encourage him and his followers.  If we could rein in all our indignant liberal friends into completely ignoring Trump for two weeks, it would be the worst two weeks of his life.

On a related note, I wish the legitimate news programs would just report the news, and not try to explain it.  When they do, it sounds like spin.  (Hopefully you know what 'spin' is.)

Love (whether you read the books or not),

Kay

* Added very much later:  In hindsight, I guess I was wrong about Trump.  I said that his hate of Democrats was a pose.  At this point, it's clear that he really does hate Democrats.  He's identified all the attorneys general, who're bringing cases against him, as democrats, at least to his own satisfaction—and at this point, most lawyers who have observed him for the last seven years are certain that he's as crooked as—you fill in the blank.  At the very least, the sneaky tricks of Trump's lawyers make getting judicial rulings against Trump very difficult iindeed, which makes him a sort of Public Enemy No. 1.

Finally! "Helen's Concerto" is finished!

Just a few minutes ago, I finished writing the final episode of the Helen Saga: Helen's Concerto!

I'm going to take all the time I need to edit this carefully, but be assured, there will be errors, and things that need to be changed, that will be fixed for the next few years, or never fixed at all.  I am a terrible  editor of my own work, but a passable editor of stuff I did not write.

I have placed an image of the cover in my last post--unless I'm much mistaken--and you can take a peek at that.

I'm very tempted to tell you a summary of the story right here, so that those who read these stories for the stories themselves will be frustrated!  Well, no, I won't; but you will be able to guess the final outcome about a quarter of the way in.

I have a very Soap Opera mentality in the way I write.  I just wallow in the dialogue (or dialog), I develop the personalities, I obsess over their motivations . . . all the things that the writers of Soaps are preoccupied with.  Of course, they're also preoccupied with such mundane things as cliffhangers, etc, etc, which I don't give two hoots about!  You probably think I should give at least half a hoot about those things, which would make the stories more interesting.  I, in contrast, simply like to present everyday life, and the interactions of the characters!  I'm incorrigibly pathetic.

In spite of all that, I think many readers--not most, I'm afraid; just many--will find the story satisfying, especially those who have found some understanding of the personality of Helen Nordstrom.  I think this last story makes the character more plausible, and her final state more acceptable.

The story has something like 126,000 words, more or less, for those of you who like statistics.  I can even give you the character count: oops, no I can't . . . I looked everywhere.  It's 300 pages, but I'm seriously considering lengthening it slightly, especially the early part, where I summarize a lot of the pertinent adventures of Helen that will probably never appear elsewhere.

Note: One of the things I have done is to show to what extent, and how, Helen's musical skills return after the amnesia.  A lot of that those who are not crazy about classical music will find boring.  Sucks to be you.    Similarly for Helen's other skills.

I also try to introduce many of Helen's friends.  I did not bring in Leila, nor Juliana, nor Gretchen; Melanie, Little John and Taylor only appear in passing.\

(Those are placeholders, in case I want to add a small paragraph or two later.  That's how I do this fancy paragraph spacing; it's a nuisance to do from scratch.

Thanks to my readers who have supported me so far!  Love,

Kay H. B.