Discuss: It never fails to amaze me that ALL the books ever written are made up of just twenty six letters.

When I saw this prompt, my first thought was how amazing the word usage is in some books and how some authors are so extraordinarily talented at weaving the 26 letters available to all of us into the most vivid and memorable descriptions, concepts, and thoughts.

We all have the same tools for writing, 26 letters, its how we string those letters together that makes all the difference. We add other writing tools to these basic building blocks and focus on showing and not telling, dialogue, avoiding filter words, and other learned techniques, but at the end of the day, the quality of our stories boils down to the words on the page.

Some examples of great writing that have remained with me long after I finished reading a particular book are as follows:

A short extract from The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

“But this morning was different. Disturbingly because mysteriously different. No wheels rumbled, no buses roared, no sound of a car of any kind, in fact was to be heard. No brakes, no horns, not even the clopping of the few rare horses that still occasionally passed. Nor, as there should be at such an hour, the composite tramp of work-bound feet.

The more I listened, the queerer it seemed – and the less I cared for it. In what I reckoned to be ten minutes of careful listening I heard five sets of shuffling, hesitating footsteps, three voices bawling unintelligibly in the distance, and the hysterical sobs of a woman. There was not the cooing of a pigeon, not the chirp of a sparrow. Nothing but the humming of wires in the wind …”

Opening paragraph of War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.”

Passage from The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough

“She was very dead, must have died within minutes of retiring, a good fifteen hours earlier. The windows were closed fast, and the room humid from the great flat pans of water she insisted be put in every inconspicuous corner to keep her skin youthful. There was a peculiar noise in the air; after a stupid moment of wondering he realized what he heard were flies, hordes of flies buzzing, insanely clamouring as they feasted on her, mated on her, laid there eggs on her.”

Extract from A Ghost and His Gold

I have tried hard to mimic some of the great writing I have read during the course of my life to date.

The following is an extract from one of the battle scenes in my book, A Ghost and His Gold, that I was pleased with:

“I ran, legs pumping and bayonet held at the ready, to the discordant notes of the supporting artillery guns and the Maxim which intensified the din and swirled around me like an insane orchestra. I was conscious of the men of my squadron around me, as well as those of C Squadron about three hundred yards ahead of me.

A great surge of comradery surged through me as these men, my brotherhood, charged forward through the smoke, directly into a hail of bullets from the Boer musketry. Death seemed certain, but, at this precise moment, this did not matter to me; a cloud of red anger and lust for blood having descended over my mind.

The anger prevented fear and grew in its intensity as the occasional figure, including that of Captain Fitzclarence, dropped around me in small explosions of red.

C Squadron reached the fort, which was hidden by bushes, and the guns roared; the sound of the discordant orchestra growing and swelling. My men and I slowed our forward momentum as we watched more ghostly forms falling, to lie in ghastly bleeding piles on the ground.

The few men still standing started to fall back, shouting at my squadron to follow suit.

“The walls are too high … Impossible to mount without scaling ladders.”

Their shouts filled the air, mingling with the gunfire and moans, groans and cries of the wounded.

One of my men, William, and I picked up Captain Fitzclarence as we slowly and deliberately retraced our steps. The blood lust had faded from the men’s eyes and their moods had turned sullen. Expressions of dejection had settled on some faces.”

You can see what other writers think about this topic here:

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

https://fresh.inlinkz.com/party/d2fe7b5a64dd45ee99c2b6e275b9de74

Author, Charles French, asks “which 2 or 3 fictional characters I would like to sit down with over coffee, tea, or beer and with whom I would like to have a conversation.”

You can read Charles choices here: https://charlesfrenchonwordsreadingandwriting.com/2021/05/05/conversations-with-characters/

Upon reflection, I would not choose a mythical character from a fantasy novel to invite around for tea and a chat. My choices would be characters who have gone through personal trauma and experience growth and personal development as a result. I think my choices would reflect the elements of fictional novels that interest me the most: What makes the character tick? Why did the character make the choices or decisions he/she made? Were their choices and attitudes influenced by their background?

The first character I would like to chat to would be Van Helsing from Dracula. I would want to know more about his background and his Catholic faith and how his respect for the ancient customs and belief in superstitions and folk remedies fitted with his enthusiasm for modern medicine and understanding of the importance of science for the future of mankind. I would also want to know what he knew about vampires and how he came by this information.

My second choice of character would be Oom Schalk Lourens from Herman Charles Bosman’s The Complete Voorkamer Stories. Given the difficulties I experienced with researching certain aspects of the lives of the Boers before, during, and after the Second Anglo Boer War in South Africa, I would love to chat to Oom Schalk and learn more about his life, especially during this war.

One of the most moving concepts for me in this book related to Oom Schalk’s comments about his wife going into a concentration camp with their two children and coming out alone. I would like to learn more about both of their experiences, living conditions, and emotions. I would be interested in the small details relating to their lives that are so difficult to discover through research.

You can learn more about Herman Charles Bosman and his books here: https://www.amazon.com/Herman-Charles-Bosman/e/B001JS25GO

My thoughts about chatting to characters are that if the author has done a good job of showing the emotions of the characters and explaining the circumstances of the story and how the entire story lines comes together, there isn’t that much I would need to chat to the characters about.

Having tea with an author now, well that is something entirely different. There are dozens of authors I would love to talk to about their ideas and delve into the greater meanings of their storylines and underlying messages and meanings.

Do you have any characters you would like to chat to? Why? Let me know in the comments.

Welcome to Thursday Doors, a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing your link in the comments below, anytime between 12:01 am Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time).

During our visit to Ghost Mountain we went on a tour of the local community. The guide was a conservationist and explained the issues the community is facing due to the dry conditions resulting in water shortages, lack of maintenance of chemical toilets in the schools, and issues with alien plants that are spreading like wildfire and which poison the cattle if consumed.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

You can join in Thursday Doors here: https://nofacilities.com/2021/05/06/march-april-leftover-doors/

This weeks topic was easy for me to respond to.

Do pets (or other animals) play an important part in your books? Tell us about them.

Of course they do, pets and animals are a part of our world and they come into my books quite naturally.

How animals and pets are included in my books differs, depending on the book.

Pets and animals can be used to demonstrate certain qualities and personality traits in characters. For example, in my book for older children, While the Bombs Fell, the reader knows that little Elsie loves animals from the way she behaves, as illustrated by this short paragraph:

“The morning after the birth, Elsie would rush to go and see the newborn calf and any other calves in the calf shed. She thought the tiny calves were pretty with their dark brown eyes and soft noses. She used to visit the calves and, if she put her hand out towards one, that calf would suck on her fingers. The strong sucking sometimes gave her a bit of a fright as she struggled to pull her hand free, but it didn’t stop her from repeating this fun over and over again.”

Animals can also be a way of showing the occupation of the characters. The father in While the Bombs Fell is a farmer and the importance of the well being of his livestock is illustrated by this paragraph from the same chapter:

“Quickly, the weaning of the calf off its mother’s milk and onto a mixture of special calves feed, mixed with water, began. Calves ate this diet until they were old enough to be sold. Father cared for the calves well because they were valuable and, when sold, helped feed the family.“

Animals can also be used for scene setting. Certain animals, like black cats, have a reputation for being associated with witches and evil. In my young adult book, Through the Nethergate, I have used a cat to increase the tension of certain settings and scenes.

“Margaret didn’t see the cat lying on the sixth riser from the top. She tripped, grabbing hold of the banister to save herself.

On reaching the top of the stairs, Margaret stood for a moment, breathing heavily. The strange vision in the cellar, combined with the cat on the stairs, had scared her. Adrenalin pumped through her body. It made everything seem sharply focused and almost over bright.

The cat stood up and stretched. It sauntered past Margaret, brushing against her ankles. The feel of the cat made Margaret break out in gooseflesh.“

Animals can also be used to illustrate the harshness of life in a historical time period. This scene from A Ghost and His Gold does that:

“He reminds me of Hansie, he has the same trusting eyes. I miss that dog,” Pieter sighs deeply. “Shooting that dog was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, but what other option did I have? He’d gone
blind from the snake venom and a blind dog cannot survive in the veld.”

Estelle visibly shudders. Since Hansie was hit in the eyes by the venom of a Mozambique spitting cobra, she has developed a horror of snakes and won’t go anywhere near them.

Pieter had desperately tried to save the dog’s eyesight by washing his eyes out using water and milk, but he had gone blind anyway. Marta has mentioned several times that she missed knowing Hansie was there to
protect them while Pieter was away. His loud and frantic barking acted as an excellent warning system if any humans or wild animals approached the farm.“

Do you incorporate pets and animals into your writing and stories?

You can see what other writers do here:

Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

https://fresh.inlinkz.com/party/e1e6679373014d03ae3ad227b7eecb71

Welcome to Thursday Doors, a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing your link in the comments below, anytime between 12:01 am Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time).

The Pongolapoort Dam, also called Lake Jozini is located on the Pongola River in northern Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa.

Prior to the construction of the dam, the land was Africa’s first formally recognised conservation area. The Pongola Game Reserve was created in 1894 by the president of the Transvaal Republic at the time, Paul Kruger.

This move ultimately lead to the proclamation of the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi, Mkuze and Ndumo Game Reserves as well as one of Africa’s greatest wildlife conservation parks, the Kruger National Park.

Here are a few pictures from our tour of this dam which contains a lot of hippos. Hippos are hard to capture in photographs as they only pop up for air every five minutes and their time above the surface of the water is very short. They spend up to 16 hours a day submerged under water to keep their bodies cool.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I am busy finishing off a new collection of poetry called Behind Closed Doors. This amazing cover was designed by Teagan Riordain Geneviene.

You can find Teagan’s designed and ready to use covers here: https://teagansbooks.com/riordain-cover-designs-portfolio/

You can find out more about Teagan’s amazing books here: https://teagansbooks.com/home/

You can join in Thursday Doors here: https://nofacilities.com/2021/04/29/glastonbury-doors/

This month, my Dark Origins post focuses on the famous American tale, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which features the well known character, Ichabod Crane. The background to this story is rather interesting. Thank you to Kaye Lynne Booth for hosting this post on Writing to be Read.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a gothic story by American author, Washington Irving, and is included in a collection of 34 essays and short stories entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.

The plot

The story is set in 1790 in the countryside around the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, New York. Sleepy Hollow is a secluded glen which is famous for its ghosts and haunting atmosphere.

Ichabod Crane moves to Sleepy Hollow to be the schoolmaster of the village. As was customary at the time, Ichabod earns practically no money, but is provided with lodgings and food on a rotational basis by the local farmers who are also the fathers of the boys he teachers. This arrangement, and the singing lessons he gives on the side, keeps him employed and also gives him numerous opportunities to listen to the many tales about ghosts, haunted spots and twilight superstitions shared by the farmers wives.

Continue reading here: https://writingtoberead.com/2021/04/28/dark-origins-the-legend-of-sleepy-hollow/

This weeks topic is ‘Prologues and Epilogues. Yes or no?’

I have not included either a prologue or an epilogue in any of the books to date. As I only have two full length novels, that doesn’t necessarily mean I never will, but merely that this concept wasn’t useful to me for either of Through the Nethergate or A Ghost and His Gold.

Literary terms describes a prologue as “Some works of literature start with a prologue (pronounced PRO-log), a short introductory section that gives background information or sets the stage for the story to come. The prologue is usually pretty short, maybe a few pages . But it may be the most important section of the story, and if readers skip it they may be lost for the entire story.”

I had a look at a list of the top 12 novels with prologues that worked and I haven’t read any of them. The only prologue I can distinctly remember was the one in the musical production of War of the Worlds which goes like this:

“No one would have believed in the early years of the 21st century that our world was being watched by intelligences greater than our own. That as men busied themselves about their various concerns, they observed and studied, the way a man with a microscope might observe the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency, men went to and fro about the globe, confident of our empire over this world. Yet across the gulf of space, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our planet with envious eyes, and slowly, and surely, drew their plans against us.”

I think this prologue definitely worked! Of course, I do admit to loving this book [not the film], so maybe that is why I love this prologue.

Literary terms describes and epilogue as “an optional final chapter of a story, such as in a play or book, and which may serve a variety of purposes—concluding or bringing closure to events, wrapping up loose ends, reporting the eventual fates of characters after the main story, commenting on the events that have unfolded, and or setting up a sequel. It can appear as a speech (especially in a play), a series of scenes, or an essay by the narrator.”

I had more luck thinking of a series which ended with an epilogue – Harry Potter. I remember it because I didn’t feel the epilogue added value to the series and I would have preferred to have drawn my own conclusions about the futures of the characters. In fact, I found the epilogue quite annoying.

In conclusion, maybe my thoughts are quite simple” “maybe a prologue, but never an epilogue.”

Have you written any prologues or epilogues, or do you prefer leaving them out? Add your blog hop post to this one by clicking the blue button below, or just leave a comment.

Rules:

1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants’ blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person’s blog post. Use #OpenBook when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!Click here to enter

Poetry Treasures is a new WordCrafter poetry anthology with contributions from guests to the 2020 Treasuring Poetry series on Writing to be Read, hosted by Kaye Lynne Booth and myself.

You can read the latest Treasuring Poetry post here: https://writingtoberead.com/2021/04/17/treasuring-poetry-meet-poet-and-author-elizabeth-merry-and-a-review/

Blurb

A collection of poetry from the poet/author guests of Robbie Cheadle on the “Treasuring Poetry” blog series on Writing to be Read in 2020. Open the book and discover the poetry treasures of Sue Vincent, Geoff Le Pard, Frank Prem, Victoria (Tori) Zigler, Colleen M. Chesebro, K. Morris, Annette Rochelle Aben, Jude Kitya Itakali, and Roberta Eaton Cheadle.

This wonderful cover was designed by Teagan Riordain Geneviene. You can find Teagan’s lovely books here: https://teagansbooks.com/ and you can find her ready designed covers here: https://teagansbooks.com/riordain-cover-designs-portfolio/

A reading of What is Happiness?

What is Happiness? is one of my five poems in Poetry Treasures.

Links to samples of other poems and readings

K. Morris

Geoff Le Pard

Colleen Chesebro

Purchase link

If you would like a free copy for review, please email me at sirchoc[at]outlook[dot]com.

Welcome to Thursday Doors, a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Feel free to join in on the fun by creating your own Thursday Doors post each week and then sharing your link in the comments below, anytime between 12:01 am Thursday morning and Saturday noon (North American eastern time).

About Ghost Mountain

“It is a great and strange mountain. It is haunted also and named the Ghost Mountain, and on top of it is a grey peak rudely shaped like the head of an old woman.” So wrote Rider Haggard in his book “Nada the Lily”.

The Legend of Ghost Mountain

I took this information directly from the Ghost Mountain Inn website which you can find here: https://www.ghostmountaininn.co.za/

A section of the Ndwandwe tribe, headed by the Gaza family, had their home beneath this mountain until they were conquered by Shaka in 1819 and the head of the family, Soshongane, fled with his followers into Mozambique, where he founded the Shangaan tribe.

From early times it had become customary to bury the bodies of Chiefs on Ghost Mountain. High on its slopes there is a taboo cave, used as a tomb by generations of the Gaza family. Soshongane and his descendants, although they lived many miles away in Mozambique, were carried back to the Ghost Mountain when they died.

Their bodies, mummified and wrapped in the black bull skins, had to be transported by bearers who travelled by night and hid during the day to avoid detection by the Zulus. After the Anglo Zulu War in 1879, when the British tried to rule Zululand by dividing it into 13 separately ruled states, there was a period of chaotic rivalry, feuding and fighting. The two principal rivals were Prince Dinuzulu, the son of the deposed Zulu King Cetshwayo, and his Usuthu warriors, and Zibhebhu, head of the powerful Mandlakazi section of the Zulu nation.

In a series of bloody fights, Zibhebhu gained the upper hand. Dinuzulu, in desperation, enlisted 600 Boers and Germans, led by Louis Botha (later General Louis Botha, who was also to become the first Prime Minister of The Union of South Africa), who were promised rewards of farms for their help. In June 1884 Dinuzulu’s army of Zulus and Europeans invaded Zibhebhu’s territory.

Zibhebhu was a resolute leader and his Mandlakazi section was considered to be made up of the finest warriors, and although he also had a handful of white supporters, including the famous frontiersman, Johan Colenbrander, he had little chance against the opposition.

Zibhebhu made a fighting retreat to the Mkuze River Pass through the Lebombo, and on the 5th of June, in this rugged gorge beneath Ghost Mountain, there was a vicious struggle known as the Battle of Tshaneni. The Mandlakazi fought stubbornly, but heavy rifle fire from Dinuzulu’s army mowed them down and they broke and fled into the dense forest country of Tongaland. The battlefield was littered with thousands of bodies, and of this the late Col. Reitz makes mention in his book “Trekking On”, where he claims that in the early 1920’s he journeyed through skeletons that were still strewn about on the slopes of the Ghost Mountain.

Denys Reitz was made Minister of Lands in 1922 and journeyed up through Zululand to establish the position of a new harbour. His opinion was that Richards Bay would not be suitable but Kosi Bay would be ideal. On this trip he went on a Hippo hunt with, as his book ‘Commando’ states, “The mad Rutherfoord brothers”. This trip is documented in a series of photographs hanging in the Inn. Peter Rutherfoord, the grandson of Richard Hubert, who escorted Denys Reitz on the Hippo hunt, is the present owner of the Ghost Mountain Inn.

Some doors

We had a lovely time at Ghost Mountain Inn and were entertained with various tours during our stay, and some lovely meals, including a braai and a buffet.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

You can join in Thursday Doors here: https://nofacilities.com/2021/04/22/barn-doors-thursday-doors/