The Secret Lives of Dogs and Cats

I was recently reading a book by Bruce Cameron, called A Dog's Way Home.  It was written in the first person; a dog is narrating the story, from her fugitive puppyhood, through a painful, incomprehensible separation, to her joyful reunion with her 'person', or rather people. Cameron does a wonderful job of writing in such a way that the humans talk among themselves with all the complex language, of which the dog picks up only a very few elements, and showing why the dog does understand some parts of the conversation--- principally single words, or short phrases--- and why she is confused by the rest.  Dog lovers should read this book, especially teens and tweens, because dogs understand both more, and less, than we believe.  At least, according to Cameron; I think he's right, just based on the consistency of his text. 

Among the cute and fascinating aspects of the story (Spoiler alert!!!) are the dog's relationship to cats!   When she was a newborn pup, she was nursed by a sweet mother cat, in the crawlspace under a trailer home, along with her numerous kittens, and various humans try to feed them, and others try to get them out of there, and so on.  The kittens were her playfellows, and they would indulge in play wrestling together.  Eventually, the dog is sort of adopted by a human. 

But dogs are not allowed in this human's apartment building, and out of desperation, the dog is left with a couple some 400 miles away.  But the dog pines after her person, and knows roughly where her human is, so she sets out to get back, through towns, and wilderness.  When she is about halfway back, she witnesses the (illegal) shooting of a cougar female.  She fearfully stays hidden and escapes, but soon realizes that she's being followed by another cougar.  But this is a juvenile, and also a female. 

Now, she is already familiar with kittens, having grown up with them.  But when she is finally approached by the cougar kit, she sees that it's a huge baby, so she calls it the Big Kitten.  For me, this is the central piece of excitement in the whole book!  The dog (Bella) and Big Kitten hang out together for weeks, or months.  Bella wants to head for home, but Big Kitten is a good hunter (rabbits and such) and they share their food, so they stick together, though sometimes Big Kitten wants to go in the exact wrong direction, and does not want to go near humans at all. 

Bella is a large dog, often mistaken for a large Pittie, and initially Bella finds herself protecting the kitten, and foraging for her.  But they're temporarily separated, and when they're reunited, Big Kitten has grown huge, and she chases off a pack of coyotes that had trapped Bella.  She's also more in charge.  Soon Bella thinks it's time to part. 

All in all, I think it's a fine book.  I got it from a library, and I wish authors got some royalties from when their books are borrowed.  Two thumbs up. 

Kay Hemlock Brown

My Amusing Future As An Author

When I first started writing, I was crazy about classical music.  I had been crazy about piano music, but now I was getting interested in choral music, and chamber music---trios, string quartets, and so on--- and I had discovered that I was interested in girls, and in art.  And Sci Fi, and fantasy.

I was just heading into college, but living at home.  Somehow, I stumbled into the idea that I would write a story about a girl who was interested in all the things that I was interested in, but was a lot better at all of them.  I was partly wanting to create a girl to act out all that I wanted to do, but also to create a girl with whom I could fall in love.  This was Helen. 

As Helen grew and developed, some of her adventures turned out to be just fantastic achievements, others became sex fantasies, just for me.  As time went on, I became more interested in the musical parts of what Helen was doing.  And then, I became interested in publishing the Helen story anonymously.  By this time I had been teaching, and I was thoroughly embarrassed about my hobby of writing fantasies--- you know what kind they were--- so I started going through the entire thing, cleaning it up, when I got busted!  But, unexpectedly, the one who had discovered a few pages of manuscript simply loved it, and encouraged me to publish it. 

Until this time, Helen was my secret friend, and she could do anything she wanted.  A soon as the idea of making her adventures public came into my head, it became a completely different thing.  Also, I was becoming an adult, and now Helen wanted to fall in love, and not just have sex with various girls.  One wonderful day, I selected a self- contained portion of the story, and published it. 

For the first time, I was eager for people to read it.  Not desperately eager, but still anxious for an audience!  By this time, most of the enormous Helen story was already written, and I was parcelling out the story, trying to create publishable packets.  My statistics (how many people had downloaded the books) became important to me.   I also wrote other stories, and watched how they did.  It was never my main goal to become an author, but of all the things I did--- not very well--- writing seemed to be the best. 

This was a strange state of affairs, and I didn't know what to think about it, and it remains how things are to this day.  I don't depend on the income from writing for living; I have other sources of income.  But I certainly do take an interest in the "sales figures", for no good reason. 

Kay

The Pinocchiocity of Fictional Characters

When I was writing, for years, about my character Helen---I was writing stories of Helen for a decade or more---she became very real to me.  It seems that this happened also to Lucy Montgomery, who wrote the Anne of Green Gables books.  She said, in her diaries, that even later in life, it was as if, if she turned her head suddenly, she would see Anne, just at her shoulder, with her all the time.

Obviously (or, perhaps not so obviously,) Ms. Montgomery's relationship to Anne is somewhat different from that between me and Helen, but similar enough that I understand how Ms. Montgomery feels.  It's even more true in the case of Jane, another OC* of mine.  I loved Jane dearly, and I feel terrible about finishing the book Jane in such a lame manner; but the sisters Gillian and Angela, who figure in the Jane story--- lovely women though they are--- were constraining me too much.  Another is Maia, the central character of Prisoner.  Just thinking about these women makes me feel so sentimental!

I don't remember the exact principle of the Pinocchio story, about how he becomes a real boy; the morality in that fable is, at least on the surface, outmoded and trite.  Possibly, though, we can extract something a little more relevant to modern life and society from Mr. Collodi's story, where good and evil would be defined much more elastically.

Kay

*OC = 'original character.'

Comments on "Knight's Blood"

If the title didn't make this clear, this is a story by Gwendolyn Blackthorne, about vampires.  Normally I stay as far as possible from vampires; both vampires, and the the authors that are inspired by them, are usually ultra romantic, and of questionable stability.  But this one was within the price range of the acquaintance who lets me read their ebooks, and I was bored ...

I was surprised by the aspects of the story that were good.

1. The main protagonist is a young woman, who has qualified to be a knight in spite of her reactionary father.  There are a number of run- ins between father and daughter, but the language and tone---given that girls were not permitted to be knights, though that is a conceit that has been heavily explored in modern popular literature---are convincing.

2. The vampire is also a woman, who is disguised as a visiting knight, at the outset.  The plot element of a 'dark knight' at a tourney ìs also quite common, so the only innovative device, here, is that it is a female, and a vampire. 

3. The other grown-ups here are well-spoken, though the language is modern.  The politics is moderate, though the young female knight is not only an ardent feminist, but also a 'socialist' according to conservatives of our day, because she urges her father to spend money to make the lives of the villagers easier.  But that's not a knight theme; the girl is anxious to make the village safer, from vampires, incidentally. 

There is one feature that I think detract from the story. 

The vampire is, as vampires often are, several centuries old.  But the woman is just a little more spry and affectionate and--- honestly--- youthful, that it strains the imagination.  A being more than a century old, would normally be just a little more measured in their speech.  The style of speech is the main tool an author has to paint a picture of a character, more than descriptive words, descriptions of clothing, and things like that (though they're important, no doubt).

Then, apart from a couple of mechanical errors--- which seem inevitable--- it is a nice first installment of a multi- volume work. 

K.H.B

Maria Sharapova

Maria Sharapova

At one time I thought I was in love with this woman!  I still think she's beautiful, and I like her sense of humor, but I'm not as infatuated as I used to be. 

New Sales

I usually expect that there'll be new people buying my books when they're offered for free, but this time there is only a sales bump of about 5 books!  I'm not severely disappointed (thanks for being concerned, if you were concerned!); I'm wondering whether I would buy and read my own books, if I were an ordinary reader, not particularly interested in classical music.  The answer is: probably not.  By the way, Jane, and Jane, the Early Years are books without any reference to music.  (Well, a little bit of reference in passing.)  Also: Prisoner, and Yraid.

Changing the subject, now with ebooks, it's impossible to borrow a book from a friend, or even check out something that your friend might be reading!  With paper books, you could always do that... I would so like to pop into the future, just about 5 years, and take a peek at the reading habits of people!  Actually, Music on the Galactic Voyager  is set at about that time, but socially it's like life in around 2000, because that's when I wrote it.  I thought I was being super futuristic, but I totally wasn't. 

Well, I hope any Americans reading this had a nice July Fourth; I was unhappy from an environmental point of view, because of the fireworks, and from a noise point of view because of people's pets, who always hate fireworks.  But most Americans like noise, and most Americans like explosions, so tough, I guess. 

That's all I've got!

Kay.

Beaten Up?

I'm noticing that in some images, girls are made up as if they had been beaten up, or 'roughed up,' as the saying goes.  Looking closely, though, the additions to conventional makeup are just a little too symmetrical to be caused by violence.  I'm just very uneasy about this whole situation.  It is becoming fashionable for girls to make themselves up as though they have been abused?  Like wearing an ornamental black eye?

How an App Displays Text

I'm not a professional computer scientist, but I've taken a number of courses on computer science, and I can, as they say, read between the lines.

Most computers today have the basic capability to display text characters built into the hardware.  So there is a "word" in memory that remembers where, on the screen, the active location is.   Unless you touch the mouse, or press the arrow keys, the next whatever: character, or word, or symbol will be right here.  Whatever font is desired is also put into another "word" of memory; it's easier to number all the fonts available on the computer (or phone,  or whatever) 1, 2, 3 ... and just note down which number font is wanted.  If it isn't one of the fonts that was shipped with the device, then the computer has to look up how to draw each character as it comes up.  (This is nothing; every minute, the device has to look up a vast number of things, so it does it without complaint.)

Suppose it's displaying a line of text.  If it's starting a new word, it has to see whether there's space for the whole word on the present line.  (You can imagine that it's keeping track of how far along the line it is.  Each character could be a different width, so it's been adding these widths to the width-counter as it prints them.)  If there's space for the whole word, it proceeds to start the word, otherwise it pops down to the next line (unless it's the end of the page, which is a small problem!)  All this sounds painstaking and slow, but we know computers are fast. 

A slightly different procedure takes place if the variable called "hyphenation on" has the value "true" placed in it.  "True" is represented by 1, "False" by a zero.  Hyphenation can be done in two ways: automatic hyphenation, and manual hyphenation.  (Manual hyphenation can be done two ways, too, but we'll just do it one way for the moment.)

The app keeps its finger at the space just before the word, and starts looking through the word for a hyphenation suggestion.  This is a little invisible "character", what it is exactly does not matter.  There are literally hundreds of invisible characters the app could use.  If there is one, then here's what it does. 

It considers the portion of the word just up to that invisible character, and decides whether there's space for that portion, plus a hyphen.  If there is, it puts that portion on the screen, and a hyphen,  and pops down to the next line, puts in another hyphen, and the remainder of the word, and continues with the next word!  As always, every character's appearance has to be looked up, but that's really not done by the app, but by the Android system. 

So the life of a device consists of a lot of lookups, and lighting up a lot of pixels, and calculation to decide whether a word will fit. 

The other manual method of Hyphenation is, instead of the author putting in these invisible hyphenation suggestions, the editor (not a person, but the word-processor) beeping when it comes to a long word, and waiting for the author to approve a place to break the word.

Not everyone will find this post interesting, but it's good to have an idea how devices really work, than to think of it as magic!