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vocabulary

Vocabulary Building, One Negus at a Time

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A large vocabulary opens doors. Although not always the doors you expected.

I was just muddling through Wuthering Heights again when I tripped over negus. That’s right, despite my fascination with cool vocabulary words, I never took the initiative to look the word up until now. Hard to believe.

I’m reading Wuthering Heights on my Kindle primarily because it is there and I have nothing to read at present. And there I was watching a character suffering from a shock being plied with negus, presumably as a comforting restorative.

What could negus be, I wonder?

Not gruel. Gruel is used for a similar purpose a few chapters later and I know what that is. And I don’t want any, no matter how comforting it might be.

My Kindle is a new device for me and I thought it might have some sort of word bank. So I tapped the word, hoping I might get the definition. Nope. Although the word “never” is now listed in my vocabulary list.

Negus, pronounced NEE-gus, in case you ever have to ask for it at a restaurant, is a combination of port, sugar, lemon and spices, served hot. Personally, I can imagine far more comforting foods than that.

The pronunciation is important since the same word pronounced Neh-GOOS is the Amharic term for King or Ruler. You can’t order one of those at a restaurant. Or, at least if you are lucky enough to receive one, you will have to wait a long time for him. The wait would probably be worth it though.

Maybe, when he arrives, you can share a nice glass of Negus.

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.

Grackles

Grackles – The Juvenile Delinquents of the Bird World

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Two  Great-Tailed Grackles just wandered by the window. I hadn’t ever seen any before, so I looked them up online. Apparently Great-Tailed Grackles usually travel in great flocks of black-blue iridescent blur, wreaking bird level havoc on any area they settle into. They eat whatever they can find, make a lot of noise at inconvenient times and can create a two inch thick ground cover of mess when they are in a crowd.

Much like teenagers.

They love parking lots for supermarkets and fast food restaurants, for obvious reasons. Great place to chat with peers, ogle girls and generally make trouble. The excitement of wondering if a customer will drop her bag must be a big part of the draw. I wonder if they take bets. The winner gets first dibs.

All of which makes me wonder about the two Grackles I see hopping through the grass in a park.

Are they trouble makers? The sorts of Grackles of whom their friends would say, “Pete and Marcie always were a little strange. Kind of stand-offish. But I never thought they would have done that.”

Or maybe they are scouts for a larger flock. They’ll go back to the group and report, “Pretty good grass, trees with lots of branches, one lady, no grocery bags. Meh.”

They could be incompetent dissidents:

She: I believe in the individual. All this society living is bad for the soul.

He: You’re right. Plus, being alone gives us a chance to be ourselves without the restrictions of the flock.

She: Absolutely. If our friends only knew how wonderful it is, they would be green with envy.

He: We should tell them.

She: Great idea! We can invite the flock!

Maybe they’re on a date. Or just lost.

Whatever the case, the news articles online have nothing good to say about Great-Tailed Grackles.

Pretty though.

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.

book

Book Fasts Impact the Entire Globe

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A book fast can make you hungry. Eat a cookie.

I finally know who I am writing for the next romance which in itself is pretty exciting. The hard part initially, at least for me, is figuring out who my main characters are and why it’s imperative I write their stories. And now I’m jittery with anticipation. And I am commencing a book fast.

But the aspect of this writing process which affects you, is the book fast which commences the moment I finish the remaining novel sitting on my library shelf.

“Book fast.” Your brow furrows. “Is there a benefit to reading faster?”

Maybe. Although the pages might catch fire.

No. This is more of a “no book for you until you finish your peas” situation.

So once I finish Sophie Hannah’s The Carrier, part of her Zailer and Waterhouse series which I mysteriously missed in my voracious gobbling of her work, that’s it. No more reading until I am well along into Jock Durrell’s love story.

“So what?” you say. “How does this impact on me?”

Here’s how. A significant shortage of shelf space will ensue in my local library since I will not be storing the usual number of books at my house. A librarian attempting to jam too many books on a shelf will shove too hard and a patron in the next aisle will suffer a sore foot from the books which tumble onto it. He will stomp around the corner and complain to the head librarian.

The head librarian will head out to a café for lunch with her husband but will snap at him when he doesn’t deserve it. Her husband, on his way back to work, will honk angrily at a slow procession of cars in front of him. At the head of the procession, a visiting dignitary who hails from a small pugnacious country, will take offense. He will threaten to bring suit against anyone who writes a novel using his country as a setting.

You see how it goes. Never mind a butterfly sneezing. It’s my not reading which has impact.

More to the point, it means the Wednesday Book of the Week feature will go on hiatus for a while. Instead, every Wednesday I’ll either review old favorites of mine, which might be new favorites for you, or just blather on in my usual inconsiderate way about topics of my choosing.

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.

 

finishing

Finishing a Novel and Letting It Go

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Finishing and Letting Go are Not the Same Things.

So much of writing a novel is about beginning it – plotting, character exploration. Beginnings are optimism incarnate. But finishing has a distinct flavor too, a bittersweet tang.

Today I finished novel number three. Really finished. Drafting, spelling and grammar checking, fixing sequence errors, sending it to the editor, fixing all the sequence, grammar and spelling errors I missed the first time, the second time, the third time.

I knew I needed an editor but until I worked with one, I had no idea how sharp eyed and persistent editors have to be. Or maybe they aren’t all sharp eyed, but mine is.

Waiting For You is the best writing I have done so far. And now that the story is complete, I feel like I should be celebrating but somehow I’m not there yet.

Because part of finishing a manuscript is saying goodbye to your characters – letting them go.

It’s true Aidy and Max may return as side characters in a subsequent novel, but the part of their journey which I was the first to witness is concluded. Which leaves a kind of emptiness in a place they filled. As though one heard a voice, turned around, and found no one there.

I feel this same sense of wistfulness, sometimes, when I finish reading someone else’s writing. And if I do, I know those characters will stay with me, will speak their minds when I least expect it, not so much a haunting as a comfortable inner presence. I think that defines good writing.

So as I set my own characters free to roam about the world of fiction, I wish the same for them – that they should live on in the hearts and minds of their readers, distinct voices and distinct personas. I’m not sure an author can ask for more or better than that.

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.

scary

Scary. And It’s Not Even Halloween Anymore.

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Scary times in the Writer’s Corral.

I sent a manuscript off to an editor for the first time ever and waited with baited breath to see what she said. It’s one thing to write a contemporary romance. It’s a totally different thing to let a person who reads books for a living assess what you wrote. Aaack! Maybe not terrifying but definitely scary.

What if she hates it? Perhaps it will bore her to tears. The plot might be weak, the characters insipid. God! Why did I ever think I could write, anyway?

Writing is such an “in your head” craft, it is hard to be sure you have conveyed the voices in your head accurately. Not to mention any concerns one might have about the relative worth of those voices. So sending your work off to an editor, a beta reader or even an agent takes a leap of faith. But once you have done the sending, the anxiety really sets in.

Scary visions of irritable unsatisfied readers skitter through your head. Sort of like Piglet imagining a Heffalump.

When I studied singing, I learned to think of my work as a point in time. It was as good as I could make it at that very moment and that would have to suffice until I got better. Thinking of one’s product this way is a discipline. Sometimes it’s the only way you can make yourself try again.

That’s an important way to think about writing too. Each book is better than the last. The book that’s with the editor is my third. It’s better than my first two, probably. Hopefully not as good as my fourth will be.

Can’t wait to find out!

Rose Grey has written three romance novels and is hard at work on a fourth. If you liked this post, come visit the rest of the blog at www.rosegreybooks.com. Hot Pursuit and Not As Advertised are available as ebooks and as paperbacks online.