Election Ugliness
There’s about a thousand more months left before November and the end of this presidential election, and as awful as it’s been so far, I expect it will get even worse before it’s over. (Not that the nastiness will stop after the election. No matter the winner, a lot of people are going to be very unhappy.)
I thought it might be interesting to put things in historical perspective by highlighting other notoriously vicious presidential campaigns.
For instance, in the election of 1860, Stephen Douglas got personal, saying Abraham Lincoln was a “horrid-looking wretch, sooty and scoundrelly in aspect, a cross between the nutmeg dealer, the horse-swapper and the nightman.”
Meanwhile, Lincoln said of Douglas: “His argument is as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death.”
Melania Trump took a lot of heat last week but not as much as Rachel Jackson in the election of 1828. John Quincy Adams’s campaign not only accused Andrew Jackson of being a despot and uneducated, they also viciously attacked Mrs. Jackson, a divorced woman who had previously been in an abusive marriage. Adams’s supporters called her a “dirty black wench”, a “convicted adulteress” and accused her of “open and notorious lewdness.”
RACHEL DONELSON JACKSON
(1767-1828). Miniature by Louise C. Strobel.
I don’t know how low the Trump-Clinton election season will go. Pretty low, I expect. But I wonder if it will top the election of 1800—the only occasion when a vice-president ran against the president he was currently serving with—Thomas Jefferson vs John Adams.
An Election Poster for Adams
Thomas Jefferson said that John Adams had a “hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”
Adams’ supporters countered with dire predictions of a Jeffersonian presidency: “Are you prepared to see your dwellings in flames… female chastity violated… children writhing on the pike? GREAT GOD OF COMPASSION AND JUSTICE, SHIELD MY COUNTRY FROM DESTRUCTION.”
Phew. It’s a good thing Jefferson didn’t get elected, huh? Oh … wait …
Mid-Summer in Pennsylvania
I’m happy that the cleome (spider flower) is blooming now! People will stop thinking we are growing marijuana in front of our house.
The leaves of the cleome plant bear a startling resemblance to cannabis.
Still waiting on the tomatoes though.
Hungry, Hungry Hippos have nothing on our goldfish. Sometimes they leap right into the air when you throw them food.
The pool is warm and inviting.
The purple coneflowers are in bloom.
Aaaand, the mint has gone wild and overrun the herb garden.
Meanwhile, Sorcia chases the shadows of butterflies.
That’s right. She doesn’t chase the butterflies. She chases their shadows.
Anybody know what this flower is? It turned up in my bed of wildflowers this year.
What does summer look like where you are?
Backing Up
Earlier this week, I wrote a great scene in my WIP. One of my main characters witnessed someone who lived in her apartment building pass through a solid wall after revealing herself to be not human. I was thrilled with the way it came together. Then I went to write the next chapter … and couldn’t. The story came to a screeching halt as I realized there was only one way for my MC to react.
Terror.
You might be thinking, “Terror is good.” But in this case, it’s not. My terrified character has every reason to flee from this situation and no reason whatsoever to do the things I need her to do in this story. She has no investment to make her investigate this “monster” further. I wouldn’t blame her for curling up in a ball and quietly having a breakdown.
Unable to go forward, I had to back up. Removing the event entirely didn’t seem like a good option. The story would just stall out without this scene.
The solution ended up being simple — although it took me 3 frustrating days to figure it out. If the strange person passes through a solid wall without revealing herself to be non-human, the situation changes drastically. What would you think if you saw someone pass through a seemingly solid wall? You’d think it was a trick, right? That there was some kind of hidden passage there.
A hidden passage gives my MC all the motivation I need to keep her digging into this mystery. Who wouldn’t love to find a secret passageway in their building? The “monstrous” nature of the non-human character can be revealed later, when my MC is too far into the adventure to pull out and curling up in a ball to have a breakdown is not an option.
Two paragraphs deleted in my previous chapter, and my story is back on track.
When’s the last time you had to back up? Did it end up being a simple change? And how long did it take you to figure it out?
Multi-Dimensional Vocabulary
I first encountered the terms ana and kata when reading William Sleator’s book The Boy Who Reversed Himself. (By the way, if you’re a YA science fiction/horror fan and you’ve never read anything by William Sleator, you should remedy that immediately.)
Ana and kata are the two additional directions available in the fourth dimension. See the chart below:
| Dimensional space | Movement that can be made in that space |
| 1-Dimension | Forward, backward |
| 2-Dimensions | Forward, backward, right, left |
| 3-Dimensions | Forward, backward, right, left, up, down |
| 4-Dimensions | Forward, backward, right, left, up, down, ana, kata |
Fans of Madeleine L’Engle will no doubt associate the term tesseract with “a wrinkle in time.” More accurately, a tesseract is the 4-space extension of a 3-space cube (which is itself an extension of the 2-space square). The words tesseract, ana, and kata were all coined by mathematician Charles Howard Hinton in 1888.
A depiction of a tesseract
When researching dimensional vocabulary for my WIP, I also came upon this little chart, giving me trength, tarrow, and trong to work with.
| Dimension | Measure | Small Measure | Great Measure |
| 1st | length | short | long |
| 2nd | width | narrow | wide |
| 3rd | height | short | tall |
| 4th | trength | tarrow | trong |
Now, the trick is to pull all this geometry into an adventure kids will want to read. I’m going for a Doctor Who meets The Boy Who Reversed Himself meets Interstellar Pig meets 14. (I know that a “meets” statement isn’t very effective if the elements aren’t well known books or movies, but let me give you an idea of what I have in mind …)
I’ll leave you with one last picture: This is a diagram I created for my WIP. My story takes place at The Breach.
Multi-Dimensional Adventures
At some point in high school (or possibly middle school) I stumbled across the book Sphereland by Dionys Burger. It’s a mathematical adventure in geometry – and yes, I know that sounds terrible, but it’s really a lot of fun. I re-read the book countless times.
Sphereland is a sequel to an earlier book, Flatland, by Edwin Abbott Abbott, which was both a satire of Victorian society and an exploration of geometry. Since the plot of Flatland was summarized at the beginning of Sphereland, I didn’t need to read the original.
Both books tell the story of a Square living in a 2-dimensional universe, a plane, in fact. This is a diagram of the Square’s home.
The Square is visited by a Sphere from Spaceland, a 3-dimensional realm. At first the Square can only see flat cross-sections of the Sphere as it passes through the plane of his world.
Eventually, the Sphere lifts the Square out of Flatland, and across the span of the two books, they visit Lineland, Pointland, and are in turn visited by an Over-Sphere from the fourth dimension.
These books started my lifetime fascination with multi-dimensional fiction. I eventually did read the original Flatland, as well as The Boy Who Reversed Himself by William Sleator and Spaceland by Rudy Rucker. I’m currently reading Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So by Ian Stewart.
I even wrote a manuscript, BRANEWORLD, which received positive praise on submission, but also some excellent critical feedback which led me to re-think my approach to the topic. Now, I’m 15k into a new WIP and re-visiting the multi-dimensional universe with new characters and a completely new story.
Do any of you have a lifetime fascination with a topic which you’ve written about – perhaps more than once in an attempt to do it justice?
Never Gonna be Big in Iceland
So, I’m on Twitter, and I see this post come up with my name and website:
I put the sentence through Google translator — which identified the language as Icelandic — and got this translation.
The new favorite author of mine is definitely Dianne K. toilet.
I double-checked, putting in just my last name, and yup. It’s true. Salerni is the Icelandic word for toilet.
How unfortunate. 
What the Cat Does
Having shared the useful function of the dog last week, I feel obligated to give the cat credit for her role in the household:
THE EXTERMINATOR!!!!!
Yeah, I know that moth was on the outside of the glass. However, she makes some pretty amazing leaps to catch insects inside the house, too — moths, mosquitoes, flies.
And she is determined. Nothing, nothing gets in her way … lamps, glasses full of water, people …
Once Luna has managed to smash the winged creature against a wall or window and it falls to the floor, she pads at it gently, sniffs it, and then down the hatch it goes. No need to treat the cat. The act is its own reward.
Door to Door Salesman
DING DONG.
BARK, BARK, BARK, BARK!
Sorcia rushes the door like a guided missile, throwing herself up on her hind legs and planting her front paws on the glass window. She bares her huge, sharp teeth and snarls. Saliva drips from her canines.
By the time I get to the door, the bell ringer is standing halfway down the walk. He is obviously poised to run for his life, but he still manages to give me a cheerful wave.
I crack open the door. Sorcia pushes past me and gets her head outside before I manage to pin her body against the door with my leg. She is barking and snarling and snapping. “Yeah, hello?” I say to the man.
“Hello, ma’am. That is a beautiful dog!”
Note: Sorcia is a beautiful dog, but every single one of ’em says this, so I assume it must be part of their door-to-door salesman training.
“What do you want?” Sorcia and I are having a battle in the doorway. She slips out a little more.
The man takes a step back, swallows hard, and says, “I’d like to talk to you about windows/siding/driveway sealant/the kingdom of heaven.”
“Uh, no,” I say bluntly, grabbing Sorcia by the collar and heaving backward with all my strength.
“Okay!” He doesn’t argue. He bolts.
I close the door and turn around.
Sorcia has stopped barking. She sits and watches me with big brown eyes. Her wagging tail makes a swishing sound against the floor.
I give her a biscuit.
They’re Busy at Arlington: Guest Post by Larry O’Donnell
Another Memorial Day approaches. It seems this annual event comes every few months, a sure sign I’m getting older. A few years ago, I had the honor, and I mean a real honor, to attend a good friend’s father’s funeral. Rick was my best man at my wedding. His dad was a retired Army Colonel. Col. Mock retired in the early 70’s and, oddly enough, started a music store in Northern Virginia.
Col. Mock and I were both Old Crows. We shared memories of similar duty stations and the odd nature of SIGINT. We couldn’t talk much about our work or we would have had to kill each other. Suffice it to say, Col. Mock was a highly decorated hero. Like other real heroes, he was afforded a place to rest at Arlington Memorial Cemetery.
Not every vet can be buried there. I’m sorry that the facility is overcrowded and the Armed Forces have been forced to adopt some pretty steep entry requirements. (Which, at my last look, I couldn’t meet) These requirements can be part of your homework to look up.
The ceremony is very moving at Arlington. The Army ensured that Col. Mock was carried to his resting place by respectful and caring soldiers. An honor guard consisting of some 30 Soldiers, a real military band, and a horse drawn caisson took him to the gravesite. 3 volleys of shots, Taps, and a folded flag to the widow wrapped it up.
I fell in with the detail commander after the ceremony and told him how, as a retired Marine, I was impressed and proud of the detail and their execution of the ceremony. The soldiers were somber and respectful. Their appearance and field drill was impeccable. These troops were the Army Old Guard and they weren’t just showboats. The Major I spoke with was a Ranger, who wore the Silver Star, the Purple Heart (with repeat award star), the Bronze Star (with Valor clasp- a combat award), plus the other ribbons of a successful career officer.
I discovered that he had as many as eight interments a day, six days a week, and there were other details for the other Armed Services. There was about a 3 month backlog. WW II heroes in their 90’s and 18 year old men from Afghanistan all coming to rest at the same place. WWII hero John F. Kennedy lies there with his sons and brother, Robert. Many of the most revered names in US military history are there. The Tomb of the Unknowns is guarded around the clock by some very serious guards.
For your final homework and exam, make the pilgrimage. You can use DC and all its monuments, the Smithsonian, Holocaust Museum, Capitol, and White house as an excuse to go, but do cross the Potomac and spend some time there. It’s a 15 minute walk from the Lincoln Memorial across the Memorial Bridge. The visitors’ entry fee has been paid for by the residents.
Road Signs to the Past
I’ve always been a little puzzled by this road sign at the end of an exit ramp off Route 1 near my home.
There is no Russellville. There is no Forestville.
There are no towns 1 mile in either direction.
But there used to be. I finally got curious enough to look them up.
There was a tavern at the intersection of Newport Road (PA 896) and Limestone Road (PA 10) as early as 1737. A town grew up around the crossroads, which eventually came to be named Russellville. In 1823 Russellville had a population of one hundred with a sawmill, a hotel, two general stores, a grocery and a post office. There was also a private school known as the Russellville Academy.
None of those places exist anymore.
Forestville (and the forest it was named for) are also gone. Apparently there used to be a blacksmith shop, a store, and a post office.
Poof. Gone. But PennDoT still puts up signs telling you how to get there.
(I’m kind of jealous Forestville had a post office. The town I live in doesn’t have its own post office. We were assigned the post office at Lincoln University, so my mailing address uses Lincoln University as the town name, even though it’s not a town, and I don’t live on the university grounds. Weird, huh?)
Do you have any historical leftovers where you live?
Let Me ‘Splain. No. There Is Too Much.
Let me sum up.
Here’s all the stuff that happened while I was on blogging hiatus.
- My husband went to Japan on business, and at the end of his trip, my daughters flew out to join him in Tokyo. There are several reasons why I didn’t go too, but there’s no point getting into them. Suffice it to say that they had the time of their life anime-ing themselves up, while I manned the fort and was the sole object of affection for one large dog and one small cat.
- Don’t feel too sorry for me missing out on Tokyo because two weeks later my husband and I took a long overdue anniversary trip to Key West. There we enjoyed great food, jet skis, a sunset Rum & Reggae snorkel trip, Snuba (diving with your air supply attached to a raft), and tooling around the island on a scooter. I was a little nervous about riding on the back of this thing in traffic, but I pretended he was Riley and I was Evangeline and we were off to save Jax in The Inquisitor’s Mark. (At 30 mph, lol.)
Speaking of Riley, I stumbled across some fan art for Riley Pendare on Deviant Art. You can check it out HERE.- I made several school visits – real and virtual – and signed books at the Hudson Children’s Book Festival where I (briefly) met Jane Yolen and Kwame Alexander! I wish I had a picture of with them, but I don’t. You’ll just have to imagine it.
- The Eighth Day was the 3rd place winner of the 2015-2016 Sunshine State Young Readers Award. Thank you, students and teachers in Florida!
- As for writing, I revised a manuscript based on notes from my editor, almost finished the first draft of my WIP, plotted out some ideas for my next project, and jotted brief notes on a premise that came to me (but which does not have any characters or plot yet).
So what have you been up to these past few weeks?
First Impressions: EVERGREEN
Our second submission for First Impressions is a YA Contemporary manuscript titled EVERGREEN by Christy Hintz. Here is the first page:
***
Everything looks perfect. Strings of red lights drape across the ceiling and dangle from the center of the gymnasium, cloaking all the dancers in crimson.
Everything sounds perfect. The music is upbeat, the bass a perfect volume, not that crass loud overbearing beat that makes everyone’s ears bleed and heart hurt. Not like last week’s prom at East High–which naturally I crashed to be sure I didn’t overlook any details. Nope, my prom is nothing like that. Everyone is laughing and having a good time. I circulate, smiling at my classmates, nodding at their dress and accessory choices. The food table is topped off. The chaperons are keeping their distance.
I approach a girl standing at the foot of the bleachers. I tap her bare, brown shoulder. “Where have you been?”
She’s wearing a strapless, short black dress, one electric blue heel and one emerald green heel. Her nails are each painted a different color of the rainbow, and today her eyes are a natural brown. A thick strand of her black hair matches the electric blue shoe.
“Bathroom.” She turns toward me. “I sat on the seat and everything.”
“Ew.” I fumble through my purse.
“What are you looking for?”
“Sanitizer.” I hand her a bottle.
She doesn’t take it, but asks, “And what, pray tell, shall I do with it?”
I steer her toward the hall. “Spread it on the back of your thighs.”
She ducks out from under my hands and moves back toward the dance floor, laughing. “You really are crazy. Remind me again why I love you.”
“Why wouldn’t you?” I put the sanitizer under her nose for one last try.
She shakes her head and I return it to my purse with a huff.
“I promise to wear sweats to sleep in later. My germ-covered legs won’t touch anything in your house.”
“What about our toilet seats?” I watch as a girl in a mermaid dress takes the last water bottle from the refreshment table.
“Man. I’ll shower when I get there. Okay?”
“Fine.” I gesture to the transformed gymnasium. “It’s all fantastic, right?”
“Beyond.”
Ms. Fulton, the only teacher not charmed by my straight A+ average and over-abundance of extra-curriculars is glaring at me from ten feet away like something’s gone amok. All the other teachers patted my back and congratulated me on successfully orchestrating the prom-week festivities, parade, and dance. Not her.
***
Since I kept scrolling uselessly down to the blank end of the page when I first read this submission, I guess it’s obvious that I would turn the page if there was more to read! I want to know what Ms. Fulton’s problem with the narrator is, although I can guess it might be her sexual orientation.
Our narrator gives us a strong sense of character. She’s competent, organized, energetic, and finicky about details and germs. I like her! It doesn’t bother me that we don’t know her name yet because her character is so strong.
It did bother me that she didn’t identify her date by name. The teacher got a name, and so did the neighboring school. Why not the girlfriend — if for no other reason than to avoid having two unnamed girls in this scene.
The line “I sat on the seat and everything” dragged me out of the story. It seemed like such a strange thing to say at that moment, even if the girl is transgender (which is the only reason I can think of for her to make that statement). And then there was the thought of putting sanitizer on her legs. (Oh, the burn!) By the time we got to sweatpants and germ-covered thighs, I was completely pulled away from the prom thinking about other people’s bathroom habits. It’s just my opinion, and maybe it didn’t bother anyone else, but I wonder if there’s a way to steer the conversation so that we see evidence of their humor and fondness for one another while keeping our attention on the event of the evening, the prom.
Christy, thanks for sharing your page with us! Readers, do you have any other comments for her? Don’t forget to check out feedback from Krystalyn and Marcy, and you can find Christy at her writing blog, Erica and Christy.
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