Glenda Larke

One thing that has been evolving over the past couple of hundred years is the pacing of novels. Go back to nineteenth century books, and the story tends to unfold at a delightfully leisurely pace. You can’t read those tomes in a hurry.

We still have big fat books – especially in the fantasy genre – but mostly the pacing is much faster. To match the way we live, perhaps. And there are so many websites or blogs by agents/writers/editors telling us we’ve got to grab the attention of the reader/agent/editor in the first few lines – or fail to sell. Which is a shame in some ways. I actually prefer a leisurely start when I am reading. I like to get to know the characters before someone tries to kill them in the first paragraph.

Which doesn’t mean I don’t bow to modern taste in my own writing. Mostly. Sort of. Here are the beginnings of my published novels. Which one would you pick up to buy first??

The Tainted:

It wasn’t easy being a girl sometimes. Especially not when you were just sixteen, and hauling in wet fishing nets over a deck slippery with scales and slime.

The Aware:

So you want to know what the Isles of Glory were like back then, eh? In the days before the Change, in the years before your people found us – and we found out that we weren’t the only islands in the ocean.

Gilfeather:

I first met Blaze and Flame the day before I murdered my wife. The evening before, to be exact.

o

Havenstar:

Piers Kaylen drew rein at the top of the rise and looked down on the halt. He sat unmoving in the saddle of his mount, and his emerald eyes missed nothing as he shifted his gaze away from the distant mountains and bordering roughs to the tree-spattered plain, and finally on to the stolid buildings of the halt below.

Heart of the Mirage:

When an emperor laughs about you behind your back, you know you are in trouble.

The Shadow of Tyr:

Temellin stood on the sea wall and watched the Platterfish manoeuvre through the moored fisher boats. In the windless waters of the harbour, four oars stroked in unison from the lower deck, while the sail hung like a rumpled blanket from the top spar. On the upper deck, a woman leaned at the railing, looking back at him.

Song of the Shiver Barrens:

When Kelven was twelve years old, he saw the harbinger of his death. He was fishing for his family’s dinner in the lake at the time, sitting on the bank with his feet dangling over the water, dreaming of nothing more than a good meal of spout-nosed trout.

One phrase my first beta reader caught in passing is “He dropped his eyes.” She hates anyone using the noun eye/eyes when they mean gaze or look. “Did they bounce?” she asked.

Now, I will admit that I used to have no problem with the phrase. I reckoned using “eyes” in this way had passed into legitimate usage. We do say, for example, “Catch his eye“ or “Keep an eye on” or ” Run your eyes over this” or “Cast his eye in this direction” without the reader immediately having visions of playing ball with eyeballs or using them as worry beads.

So, tell me, can a writer say “He dropped his eyes” or “His eyes followed her” without the reader cracking up?

(Of course, having pointed this out to all of you who have never thought about it before, I have ensured that none of you are going to be able to read the phrase in the future without going “Eeeewww”.)

So, will my hero be dropping his eyes in my latest book?
Nope. He will drop his gaze, and keep his eyeballs firmly in their sockets.

The other day I had a post on books “restricted” in Malaysia. Today there is an article in the New Straits Times newspaper on film censorship. Here are some of the things that get snipped:

Copulating animals. (Oops. Should I take down that post on alien sex?)

Women sitting cross-legged. (Just as well arthritis has stopped my sitting cross-legged days. I had no idea I was being obscene.)

“Swinging an arm upwards and pointing a middle finger towards heaven”. (Hmm. That’s odd, I had no idea the gesture had anything at all to do with heaven.)

Scenes and dialogue with direct reference to sex. (Immaculate conception anyone?)

Native women with exposed breasts. (When I first came to Malaysia, it was easy enough to see such women – but alas, they have now been carefully taught that their “national costume” is obscene.)

Medical documentaries that expose private parts. (Are there really people that would find a medical documentary either obscene or titillating? Hmm. So you can’t watch a TV documentary on how to feel for breast cancer.)

Close-up of a woman breastfeeding. (Now that’s sick.)

Anything to do with homosexuality. (Brokeback Mountain was banned outright. “Homosexuality is not something we allow in films here” says the chairman of the board.)

Munich was also banned. Says the chairman: “(It) portrayed violence, terrorism and the Israelis.” (Excuse me? Israelis?)

Words that mean masturbating, illegitimate child, bastard, son of a bitch, prostitute, private parts etc etc. (Not sure whether it’s these actual words, or a more coarse substitute.)

The censorship boards consists of retired government servants (possibly all men?). I have told my husband he should apply for a job there when he finally does retire. I mean, what better way to spend one’s day that watching movies and then debating all the naughty bits? And perhaps replaying them over and over, just to make sure you’ve got your decision right?

My webmaster runs a company that provides free websites for UK charities – even websites that are suitable for people with various kinds of disabilities. See here for a bit about their enterprise, Usable Websites. As you can imagine, getting the funding to keep afloat is half the battle, and they are always running low on funds. The more assistance they get, the more websites they can build and the more charities they can help.

They have applied for funding from a group that doles out money according to the number of votes received from you, the public…so if you have nothing better to do, go here and vote for Usable Websites. They won’t even record your email address so you aren’t going to be hassled by spam as a result of voting.

I know my webmaster well, and he’s a great guy trying to help others.

I’m serious. Almost.

What a day. I drove my man to work this morning. Well, that’s what he calls it – actually he was going to stay in a many-starred hotel-cum-marina-cum-golfcourse-on-the-beach somewhere up north. Some seminar or something, so he says….hmph. I couldn’t go because I had already committed to give a talk on birds and migration at the Kota Kinabalu Wetlands Centre (Bird Park) for the Malaysian Nature Society tonight. AsI say, hmph.

Anyway, we buy a newspaper on the way, and the first thing I read is how Tenaga (the local mostly govt owned power company) has “made money hand over fist”, record profits this year, etc. Good on them. Praise all round.

I come home, sit down and do an hour’s work on the power point presentation – and then, wham, no electricity. And I didn’t have the batteries in the laptop cos my Toshiba has such pathetic batteries that if you leave them in, they are useless in 3 months. AARGH. I go to put the battery in, but shove it in around the wrong way and it jams. (OK, yes, this is the woman who just wrote a whole blog about her husband and his washing machine illiteracy….)

Ten minutes later I manage to get the battery out and put in right way up. Only to find it was dead. AARGH again.

Ok, I do have some of the Song of the Shiver Barrens printed out for line edit. I work on that. And work on that and work on that… Sweat drips (no fan). I cook lunch and manage to burn it (no lights in a rather dark kitchen). 3 p.m., still no electricity. What happened to the plans implemented by Tan Sri Tajuddin Ali when he headed Tenaga? About always having the power back on in 2 hours by using portable generators if necessary? Ah, but then they kicked him out when he reached retirement age (56 in Malaysia- with maybe a grace year or two for special cases). Can’t have senile old men running the country. Oh, unless they are politicians, of course. All right, all right, I digress. I’m hot and mad by then, and my powerpoint presentation is still not done.

Husband rings to tell me how wonderful the hotel is. And the beach. And the pool. And the food.
My cell phone dies and I can’t recharge it (no electricity). I look around the house hunting for torches. I find six. Not one works.

Have a cold shower and wash hair. Forget that my hairdryer works on electricity…

In the end, I drive to the Bird Park (hair damply lank) and use the outlet in their resource room to power up the computer and finish preparing the presentation. On the way back there’s a traffic jam…..no traffic lights working, you see. AARGH again. I buy new torch batteries (in a very dark unventilated shop), just in case.

Walk up the stairs (no electricity for the lift), feeling my way in the pitch dark because although I now have batteries, I hadn’t brought the torch with me.

And the jellyfish? Well, it’s like this. Two nights ago, I woke up with an excruciating pain across the skin of my back, almost into my armpit. About 3″ in a line, as if a jellyfish had trailed its tentacle along… and the pain is still there if my skin is touched lightly. There’s not the slightest sign of a rash. My skin is as smooth and unmarked as the baby’s bottom in between bouts of nappy rash. So what is making it hurt?

The only thing I can think of is that it is the forerunner of a dose of shingles, which as you might know is a truly horrible, horrible, horrible thing to get. I haven’t been to the doctor yet as I have nothing to show… but frankly, I am hoping that I have a jellyfish somewhere in the bedclothes, and I just haven’t found it yet.