A Slightly Expanded Version

I often find myself thinking about various supplementary information I could insert in a book, and it was worse with Yraid than it had been for other books.  So I added a page or two of this stuff into an 'Afterword', and uploaded that as a new version.  So far, only one reader has downloaded (or read) the free portion of the story, so I suppose, only he or she will be surprised with this supplementary stuff.

This has nothing to do with anything, but I now have a far more accurate picture to represent me on any site.  They always encourage us to upload an 'Avatar', as they call it, but now I can put one up, rather than the arbitrary picture I have up presently.  (In case you're wondering, it is an actress of the last century, a very attractive woman, and I am more than satisfied with how well that portrait served my purposes.)

The new picture has already been uploaded on both Smashwords and DeviantArt.  I only mention it here because this would otherwise be a short post indeed.

This is no more only a little closer to my image than any of the others were; but nevertheless, it is a signifantly modified image of me (whereas the others were not images of me at all).  On the left is the face without a smile, and on the right, with a smile.

Well, enjoy.

A New Story From Kay Hemlock Brown—That's Me

Our final Cover (Gina deLuna)

Dear Friends:

A couple of weeks ago, I started a new story, on impulse, and I just finished it last night, and posted it on Smashwords!

I know this is sudden, but I'm so grateful that I still had it in me to complete a story this quickly.  It is a first-person story, which I have never tried before.  It is about a girl who has just graduated college, and started work at a restaurant.  I intentionally wanted it to be "a humble occupation," as she describes it herself.

She looks down on all her classmates, all through college.  But now, she doesn't have any friends, and she reaches out to her former roommate, and gradually learns to relate to people.

It starts off slowly, but becomes a little intense at the end.  I don't remember enough about my own feelings while I was writing the story, to be able to tell you why I wrote it this way.  I still worry about whether some of the things I put in there were a little gratuitous, but none of you folks have ever commented on anything, so I just know you're not going to read it and tell me!

Molly, on the Ramble

I can't urge you to buy it and read it, because it isn't free.  I guess I will make it for free eventually, but right now it's selling for a couple of dollars.

I don't even have a decent cover for it, and I couldn't even think of what I would put on the cover.  There is a dog in the story, a Boxer; maybe that's what I'll put on the cover, though that would be sort of false advertising.

So, go ahead and procure the book, if you're so inclined (how about that word, eh?  Procure...), and convey your response to the story to me somehow.  I leave the method to you.

Kay

P.S.: We have joined the Summer Sale, just for Yraid.  (That's 'Diary' spelled backwards.)

Stories Still In The Works

Actually, these stories are still mostly being written.

• "The Apartment of the Goddess" is about someone who unexpectedly finds herself in another planet.  (I might never finish this one; I've totally lost interest in it.)
• "Heather" is also a story set in a parallel earth, a love story about two cousins.
• "Emily" is about a college teacher who has a nervous breakdown, and takes a semester off and has an adventure.
• “Jana, Warrior Girl”. This one is complete; I lost the last part of the manuscript, so I had to complete it from memory, but it needs to be fixed up.  (It is about an alternate Earth in the Bronze Age, and set in a parallel Middle East and Mediterranean.)
• “Honeymooners”. This is about a pair of lovers who get it together in “Helen’s Concerto”, but who hit the real world with a vengeance, as we’re all doing. I need to wait a few months or a year, since it will depend on how things turn out for all of us; you know what I mean.
• “Julie”. Two friends from childhood learn about a woman who’s being abused, and encourage her to shelter with one of them. But the abusive boyfriend is unstable, and vows to hurt them. When he bombs the house of the girl who took the woman in, they decide it is time to go into hiding. Unfinished.
• “Legs”, a story of two college mates. One of them is a swimmer, who has awesome . . . you guessed it.
• “Yraid”, a story of a rather morose woman, who is very critical of everybody. I realized that the main character seems to be channeling “Daria”, from the animated feature that used to be on MTV. That put a damper on my inspiration, but I’m going to continue with the story anyway.
• “Andromeda”, a lesbian take on Sleeping Beauty. It has been done, but this is going to be different. It is sort of an erotic fantasy, so almost any other project takes precedence over it.
• “Etta and the Composer”, which is about an attempt to create an automaton that is a representation of the composer Johann Sebastian Bach. Don’t steal this idea, you guys; it is awfully easy to implement this idea badly.

Man, that was tiring enough to write down; I have no energy left to reflect on the situation.  Stay safe.

Kay

Laura Adams: Sleight of Hand

I had read this book some years ago; it is written by Karin Kallmaker, under the pen name Laura Adams.  The story was a very ambitious project; it is about three stories concerning the same characters; the first story is set in the 5th Century, about St. Ursula, who was ostensibly a convert to Christianity from the She-Bear Cult, and several young women who were either members of her circle of meditation, or admirers whom she encouraged to travel with her.

The two other stories are both set in the present time, in different places.  One is of a girl called Ursula, living in England, who meets an American tourist, falls in love, and once the visitor has returned home, follows her to the US, and meets a group of mystics in the US, with whom she uses spells of defence to protect herself and her friends from an evil influence that seems to want to destroy her.  Each of these young women are associated with a specific girl in Ursula's circle, in the fifth century.  The final story centers around a girl, Autumn, who makes her living as a conjuror and card sharp in Las Vegas, who cannot remember her past.  Echoes of the adventures of St. Ursula reach back to her too, gradually enabling her to work true magic.

The story proceeds in layers, switching back and forth between the action on the ship which is contracted to carry the unwilling St. Ursula to her husband, but whose captain Ursula and her friends persuade into taking her to Rome.  Events on board that ship run parallel to crises taking place in Pennsylvania, and in Nevada.  As the story proceeds, we find Ursula realizing that her love for her companions--in particular one stalwart girl--pales in comparison to her desire for the captain's daughter, who corresponds to the young amnesiac Autumn in Las Vegas.  As the modern-day protagonists see the action on board the ship in dreams and visions, they learn all about each other, though naturally Ursula's circle of friends are jealous and suspicious of the captain's daughter / conjurist Autumn, whom they never meet in the present day, but whom they have seen in mystical scenes.

Karin Kallmaker has the gift of writing very intensely emotional prose.  In addition, she uses the chants of Hildegard of Bingen (a 10th century mystic and composer, who composed several poems and chants to St. Ursula), whose poetry motivated the feelings of Karin Kallmaker's protagonists perfectly.  While the poems express the longing of the devotees for the presence of the object of their devotion, they also beautifully express how their devotions frequently crossed the line into romantic yearning.  Ursula, as an innocent but flawed wielder of powerful magic, is the perfect pivot for the stormy passions of the girls who want to protect her, and who also yearn to join with her, but cannot relax their vigilance without succumbing to the evil force that wants to possess and destroy Ursula.

This story is the first of three books:

Sleight of Hand,
Seeds of Fire,
Forge of Virgins,

but the third book apparently never got written.  Based on the obvious difficulties of writing a piece of fiction on two layers, I could easily imagine how easy it would be for Karin K. to shrink from the task of completing the trilogy.  It would be a snap to complete it badly, but to complete it with a third book in the quality of the first two could be too demanding of anyone.  (It is also quite possible that there may have been conceptual inspiration from some human source for the first two books that has, for reasons known only to Ms. Kallmaker, slipped from her fingers.)  Still, I am wishing, and wanting, as hard as I can, that Karin Kallnaker will complete this trilogy, which could be a modern-day classic.  The confluence of music, history, witchcraft, mysticism, romance and adventure is irresistible

K. H. B

A Much-Admired Cover, which is now No Longer in Service!

When I first began uploading stories to Smashwords, they had to be accompanied by a “cover”, which was basically an illustration from the story, plus normal title page material.

I was only too happy to oblige, since one of my hobbies was fooling around with (the equivalent of) Photoshop.  For the people in the images, I went to a website that had royalty-free images; that is, photographs of almost everything under the sun, which customers could buy, but not have to pay something to the people in the photos on a per-commercial-use basis.  It was using this resource that I made up practically all my covers.

Eventually, though, I thought the stories deserved truly original covers, and for that purpose I joined a website called DeviantArt, whose purpose was to showcase the artwork of artists, and also, connect artists with those who needed artwork.

Members of  DeviantArt were considered primarily artists, though a large proportion of them are, like me, more art afficionados than artists.  To my excitement, I found that there was actually a genre of artwork based on modification of photographs!  So now I could upload the best covers that I had created by photo-modification, while I looked for an artist to create original covers for me!

The old covers were duly uploaded, and I set out to look for suitable artists to commission new covers.  I found two of them: Sreya Halder, whose professional name is HALCHROMA, and Lisa M. Schwartz.  Schwartz's style was what is called ‘comic style’; the pictures are the type of illustration with a black outline, colored in with minimal or no shading.  In contrast, Halchroma supplies actual paintings, in the style of oils on canvas.  (It isn’t really oil on canvas; she uses electronic painting equipment.)

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that HALCHROMA has painted several artworks for me, starting with one just of Helen, then one of Helen and Sharon, then one of Helen and Lalitha, and most recently Helen at Westfield.

Helen and Lalitha was partly super successful, and partly a minor disappointment.  Why super-successful?  Because her depiction of Lalitha was completely on the money!  Why a minor disappointment?  Because her depiction of the 30-year-old Helen, while it looked plausible, had minor features that weren’t quite right, but I am quite unable to pinpoint what those features are.  (If I did tell HALCHROMA what they are, she would fix them in a flash!)

But, to my amazement, the old cover for that book, which is now of mostly historical value, is collecting lots of admiration on DeviantArt!  Not a day goes by but I get a notification that so-and-so has given a star to Helen and Lalitha, meaning the old cover.

If you look at the cover (shown above) closely, you will see that the photograph has been textured in two ways.  Firstly, I have overlaid a pattern of curves on their faces that follow the contours of their faces.  This was a favorite technique of mine, which, unfortunately, I cannot do any longer, because my software does not run on modern computers.  (The company was bought out by a competitor.)  Secondly, I overlaid an allover floral pattern on the sarees.  The two processes, together, gave the images an enormous amount of texture, which is at least partially the reason for all the love this cover is getting.

There’s not a lot more to say.  I recently re-read Helen and Lalitha, and I was once again struck with how well I had written a large part of it; in fact almost all of it, except for the chapters that dealt with what happened between when Helen left California, and arrived in Philadelphia.  This is all despite tons and tons of editing, in which I ripped out vast quantities of text which I had considered too self-indulgent, and bordering on pornographic.  Now, seventeen years after I wrote the original story, I can’t even write that sort of prose; I have grown too old for it.

I hope everyone is distancing successfully!  So far, so good.  Friends and relatives of mine, unfortunately, are in circumstances not conducive to avoiding infection.  So, those of you who live in relatively low-infection parts of the world: be grateful.  And help your circumstances along by wearing a mask when you go out in public.  It does three things: it filters out bacteria—and viruses—from your breath when you breathe out; it filters viruses coming into your lungs, if someone in your vicinity happens to be infected; and finally, it encourages other people around you who are wearing masks, or are thinking of wearing masks.

Kay

Bumped Off Facebook :(

I was thrown off Facebook for not being a Real Person.

At least they're throwing off people who might be Russian troll agents; that's good.

I had hardly any prescence on Facebook, and they were not making any money off me, so, all things considered, it makes sense that my account bites the dust!

Kay H. B.

A New Cover for Westfield, and J. K. Rowling's Essay about Gender

Firstly, there is a new cover illustration for Helen at Westfield on Smashwords; if you've gotten the book, feel free to get a new version, with the new cover.  If you haven't got the book, please do get it; it isn't terribly dramatic (or maybe it is; I had forgetten everything there was in it), but it is closer to my heart than some of the other books, because it contains Helen's adventures in music, as well as her adventures in the classroom.

I only recently learned that J. K. Rowling had expressed unhappiness about the rights of transgender persons.

Before I had read the essay she had written and posted on her website, I too had begun to think that it is not appropriate to grant to transgender persons every right that they demand.  But read Rowling's essay for yourself; it is available on her personal website.  It isn't easy reading, because it is nuanced.

Same-sex couples had fought for their rights for many years, and finally won them about a couple of decades ago.  Subsequently, transgender people fought for an entire set of rights, some of which were not parallel to the rights of gays and lesbians at all, and they have persuaded authorities to give them all sorts of legal rights. 

Firstly, the term 'transgender' can mean many things.  Apparently in the north of Britain, a person can merely assert their interest in being considered to be a gender different from that of their birth, and be certified as transgender.  Now, I don't know whether that is universally true, but according to J. K. Rowling, it is.  And her objection to the matter is that she does not wish to relinquish the right that, let's call them conventional women have had for centuries, to have a protected feminine space, namely the Ladies' Room, into which no one with a penis can obtain entrance.

So much I can completely sympathize with.  And now I have to read carefully, and see what rights and privileges various flavors of transgender people are demanding.

Kay