This is a test... This is only a test...

Just wanted to see if you could slap those things down anywhere, and you can. So much easier than sending a reviewer a lengthy excerpt to run alongside their review!

A few words about the Golden Heart...

I like to participate in the various organizations of which I'm a member. One of those is RWA, and one way I can help out is by helping to judge the first round of the Golden Hearts. The often-cited requirements for judges is that I have to be (1) a member of RWA, and (2) breathing. I fulfill both counts.

Before I'd joined RWA I'd never heard of the Golden Heart. A friend had won it and/or been a finalist several times and I'd smile and congratulate her without realizing the importance of the event. The Golden Heart is THE highest award given to a writer of romance who is still unpublished.

It costs $50 to enter. ($100 if you're not an RWA member. What, they let non-members enter?) One has to print out six copies of 55 pages of material (that includes a synopsis of no more than 15 pages) or supply a CD of same. It other words: the process ain't cheap.

In the old days when dinosaurs roamed Houston, judges could comment on the entries and give the authors helpful hints for improvement. Not any more; lawsuits were instituted by disgruntled entrants, and so RWA merely assigns numbers to the final entries: 1 is pretty darned awful, and 9 is sublime. Also, the entry form has the entrant sign a waiver, which includes among other wording: "I shall accept and abide by the decisions of any judges and/or Contest officials regarding finalists or winners for the Contest."

I'm no lawyer, but someone who signs that has just signed away their right to raise a ruckus if they didn't final, right? So no probs there. We should be able to make comments with no backlash, right?

But we judges are still stuck with the one number to assign to each manuscript. Early in the game it occurred to me that unless an entry got an 8 or 9, it wasn't going to final, so I could take it easy on those writers who passed in work that was... well... Let's say I arrived at this conclusion when I was quite literally banging my head on the table, moaning, "Lord, make it stop. Make it stop!" as I plodded my way through one entry. I finally realized it wasn't going to be a candidate for finalist, so I could put a low number on it and move along. (I did read the entire thing, though. Let me make that clear.) I didn't want to completely discourage the author (her enthusiasm was telling) but I wanted her to know that she really needed to learn more about her craft before assuming what she was writing was publishable. In other words: I don't give out 1s, 2s or 3s, but I do assign 4s.

Each year in my stack of about 6 entries I usually find one real dud (sorry), one or two terrific, engaging entries, one that's almost there, and the rest are meh. This year only the last manuscript was good, and so far (not finished yet! Let me savor it) it's terrific.

The others are duds. Awful. Oh-my-gods.

And yet the authors' enthusiasm still shines in them. It's such a shame to me that I can't make the occasional comment that might allow them to step back and think again about how they present their material. After all, the Golden Heart is to showcase material that an author thinks is publish-ready.

So since I cannot mark up the entries and return them for perusal, here are my suggestions to future Golden Heart entrants:

• Spell check is your friend. Don't guess at your spelling; double-check it.

• If you aren't confident in your use of proper English, get someone who is, to check your entry before sending it in. Be professional.

• Make sure your plot makes sense. Even if (I am not making this up!) you send in a 12-page, single-spaced synopsis to explain everything, double check to see that it does and doesn't just make things more confused. If the 50 pages you sent in only covers the first two paragraphs of that synopsis, something is wrong. If your synopsis handles the fates of fifteen male heroes who are all in lust with your comely heroine, your plot might need some simplifying. If it is not clear what your primary hero and heroine's goals are (internal, external, whatever) from the start, much less how they change over the course of the book and why, perhaps you need to re-examine your plot and how well it is focused.

• Your book should start on page 1, not page 33. No lie, I just read one that had all narrative backstory until page 33. Zzz!

• Usually, your backstory/flashbacks should be kept until chapter 3 or so, at which time you can start to dribble stuff in--IF IT IS NECESSARY FOR THE READER TO UNDERSTAND. Now, YOU have to understand your characters' backstories, but your plot will often not require it of the reader. If so, leave that part out.

• Compare your approach to that of published writers in your genre. Are you writing a futuristic? Do you keep referring to oddball futuristic accoutrements in every other sentence, drawing the reader's attention away from what's going on to "what the heck is she talking about"? Do authors in your sub-genre truly do that? Tone down the frou-frou and concentrate on the ATMOSPHERE.

• Writing, especially romance writing in all its sub-genres, involves a generous dose of EMOTION. Does every page (okay, every other one) of your manuscript have someone reacting emotionally to something? We're linking the reader in to your story, and one of the best ways to do that--especially in a romance--is by giving them some kind of emotion to latch onto.

One of the most eye-opening workshops I've ever taken was Margie Lawson's "Empowering Characters Emotions." It is given online and I believe she also has info packs that give the same info but without the feedback opportunities that one of her classes has. Say, she's about to give another class over at http://pasic.net/class_lawson_032010.html . You will come away with a HUGE stack of course lectures (I still haven't gotten all the way through mine). In it she teaches her EDITS system, which is worth the price of admission alone. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

The packets are available at her website: http://www.margielawson.com/index.php/lecture-packets . I don't want to sound like I'm her pitch-woman, but these things are great. Deep, hard-to-read sometimes, takes a lot of effort to wade through, but you can do like I did and pick and choose what you want to concentrate on, vowing that you'll be back to read the rest... later. (That reminds me: I'm not through her "procrastination" course yet.)

Let's get some real, stomach-churning, laugh-out-loud-ing, happy-ever-after emotion into your writing!

So my wish, future Golden Heart entrants, is that next year your entry will be lightyears better because your skill at your craft has been honed through whatever means you choose to advance yourself. Let's hope your entry really will be publisher ready, that you will be recognized by the GH, or at least (most?) a publisher or agent who will see in you the next New York Times bestseller!

Time for Art of the Carolinas!

So it was the second weekend (and the two days before) in November, and time for ART OF THE CAROLINAS!

Jerry’s Artarama likes to bill this as the biggest event of its kind in the world. What it is, is 4 days of workshops, lots given by famous artists and/or artists who really know their stuff (and some not so much), and 3 days of a trade floor that is pure Christmas for artists. We get to see all the latest products--and they’re coming out with SO MUCH these days--and we get to see people on the floor demonstrating them, or barring that, get to talk with experts about technical stuff.

Last year after being completely ignored several times by Winsor & Newton’s website as to a technical question, I was able to ask a guy at the W&N booth about how to make sure that when I reworked an old oil painting the new paint wouldn’t cause any problems. (You know, flake off or something.) A relatively high-ranking member of the company, he had a definite opinion about that but also leaned around the corner to his right and caught the attention of two other folks who knew even more about the chemical makeup of oil paints. I was able to walk away with a confident game plan! That plus he took my story of not getting feedback off the website extremely seriously and said that he would take it up with the people who needed to improve things when he got back.

This year, Thursday began with me getting a late start from the house for my 9:00 class. I don't speed. I kept recalling how a psychic lecturer had once told us how she liked to “time” herself--slip around regular time--when she drove. She said she had driven to our class (this was back when I was in psychic school) from the deeps of Quebec to Durham, NC in 8 hours. A couple of times in my life it had seemed that I’d been able to “time” drives, so I tried to do it now.

And I pulled up at the hotel with 15 minutes to spare. You tell me.

Amazingly, AotC wasn’t quite ready for business yet. Usually they’ve got schedules up on the wall: which classes are meeting where, etc. This time: zippo was ready. This year the hotel opened up two small ballrooms (which are usually part of the trade floor) for classrooms, and we arrived to find a few tables in place and plastic on the floor, but nothing else. Staff, teachers and attendees had to work quickly to get things organized and separation walls put up between us and the next classroom.

Anyway, the all-day class (until 4) was “Abstract Impressionism” with local artist Joe DiGiulio. FABulous!!! It took me deeper into the techniques than I’d gotten so far and gave me a lot of confidence to experiment. We students luxuriated in having entire tables to ourselves (usually Jerry’s crams us 3 to a table, and the tables are only about 24 inches deep). Guess it pays to have an instructor who’s married to the lady who puts the show together?

Anyway, great fun and I got 3 solid paintings out of it. The last one was the largest and on canvas. While I painted the first layer background I kept getting a certain impression of what it reminded me of. “Uh oh,” I said, but went for broke anyway.

Halfway through the spangles Joe came around to look. “Channeling Jasper Johns?” he asked.

“Wonder Woman,” I replied.

Needless to say, this is the painting at the top of the blog. It's 20" square, painted on wrap-around canvas. Here are the two others I did during the morning session, both about 12x9 or 9x12, depending on which way you look at ‘em:



The drive home was horrendous. We’d been under Tropical Depression Ida for a few days, and she wasn’t letting up. It was driving rain, wind, darkness, exhaustion, and rush hour all the way across three counties. Ugh! Let me repeat: ugh, ugh, ugh!

Friday I attended my job, which was knee-deep in (sale!) catalog as well as our regular packages. I’d come in the previous Sunday to work, and with that managed to finish everything that had a deadline that day. Whew!

Saturday I ran a bit early leaving from home, despite having to pack for an overnight stay. (It’s my once-a-year luxury.) I stopped for gas and debated the time. I was going to drop by Lowe’s to return a bit that my gas man hadn’t needed in installing the new gas logs, but decided that I shouldn’t push my luck. I arrived at the hotel a very comfortable 25 minutes ahead of class time and snagged a staff person to tell me where my class was.

This time was also an all-day class, but now was something like “bold acrylics as watercolor using interactive acrylics.” I was interested in both acrylics used as watercolors (I’m terrible at watercolors and desperately need more practice!) and in interactives, of which I’d purchased a sample pack last year and never opened.

On Thursday I’d run into an expert in acrylics who told me that (1) he hated interactives, (2) he hated the interactives manufacturer, and (3) he hated the interactives salespeople. Uh oh! I tried taking it with a few grains of salt.

There were only two of us students in this weekend class. Weekend classes sell out first. Always. That little alarm at the back of my head began to buzz even louder.

Our instructor had laid out several sample paintings. They looked like third graders had done them, blops of color placed across the page in a line. At one point during the class our instructor told us that in his whole life he’d sold maybe two paintings. I asked myself, “Why am I shelling out big bucks for this guy to teach me?”

I’m sorry, but even if it were true and I was teaching a class, if they asked me how my art business was going, I’d tell ‘em that I’d recently had a one-woman show at Windsor Palace. I mean, let ‘em fact-check me afterward. I have a professional impression to make as I teach!

Needless to say, my acrylic watercolors looked like crap, though I got praise for technique and color. The final painting was pretty much copying off of what the instructor had done as he tried out a completely new kind of board to him (and made us do the same!) (ca-ching down the drain! I mean, having your class try out materials you’re unfamiliar with when you’re trying to teach them? Ooh, such a rotten idea!). That painting I might be able to salvage and sell, I dunno. I haven’t finished it yet:


The instructor seemed to be a really nice guy. He told amusing stories and was the kind of person you like spending time with just talking. He was very enthusiastic as well. An excellent sketcher. But he needs to come up with another way to present his class. The only thing I really learned was (1) never ever to use that kind of board again, and (2) that interactives, used in a watercolor manner, stay wet a little longer than regular acrylics and that’s IT. You can’t really “open” them (the whole point of interactives, right?) on watercolor paper the way you can on canvas when you’re painting in an oil paint manner.

Whatever. I raced out of class to pick up my goodie bag (which I hadn’t gotten on Thursday), an event tee shirt, and to do a quick recon of the trade floor before it closed for the night on Saturday. Sundays are always the best day to shop. You get bargains, though you also run the risk of things selling out.

Tried Bahama Breeze next to the Hilton for dinner. Got in right away and had a nice meal if a tad pricey. Was able to demonstrate my Kindle to a curious waitress who had one on her Christmas list. Went back to my hotel room, which meant I also avoided the last of the night rain on I-40, hurrah!

AotC is the one consistent time of the year when I spend a night in a real hotel and order room service for breakfast. I get a clean room, clean bathroom, a mattress that doesn’t come in the shape of a “U,” lots of pillows, and a TV I can watch from either a comfy chair or the bed. The North Raleigh Hilton was certainly classier than the Homestead Inn I’d been staying at up to last year during AotC, and it was handy being just above the show.

I hadn’t noticed anything wrong with the room when I checked in. When I returned from dinner there was a definite chill in the air. On rare occasions I get these chill episodes, so perhaps it was that, but I never heard the heat turn on that evening but the constant fan from the heating unit meant that something was still functioning and maybe the heat itself was completely silent. I turned the heat up. Nothing. Since there was nothing on TV (why didn’t they carry Comedy Central, which I’d counted on for Saturday entertainment?) I curled up in a cold bed and read a very good Dave Barry book on my Kindle. Thank goodness there was a spare blanket in the closet. At one point I considered using the extra towels as blankets as well.

COLD! I kept hitting the thermostat and zippo happened. Finally about 2 AM there was a click at the thermostat, an answering click from the heater, and suddenly the room went equatorial. I had to throw off all covers, as well as the sheet.

By 5:30 AM the heat was finally acting normal. Whew!

One of the perks of an annual hotel trek is ordering room service for a nice fattening breakfast. The hell with price; bring my breakfast to my door! And make sure there's a cute metal dome over the main plate. Mine arrived right on time. They got part of the order wrong, but not the main part. They did eventually bring me tea (I’d used up all the tea that came with the room the previous evening) but forgot any sweetener. Good thing I’d packed some. But the eggs were flat and tasteless. It should be a crime to cook bacon so it tastes awful. The cranberry juice was definitely watered down. I was surprised it was still red. Good tea. I hate to think how much I paid for a little over a cup of hot water, which was all they furnished with the tray. (Heated up some more in my room’s coffee maker.)

Took a nap to make up for the night before and just because I could. Ah, decadence!

Well, that claim to luxury eventually ran its course. Checked out, packed the car tightly so as to make sure I had as much room as possible for what I was going to buy, and waited a few minutes for the trade floor to open. Went through and grabbed the stuff I’d zeroed in on the night before.

Figured out that the way to tell if that Steven Quiller DVD was the same one that I had on VHS, was not to ask the staff at his table--they had no idea--or try to track down the artist himself (though I did pass him in the hall when leaving), but rather to look at the copyright date. Bingo: 2003. I passed on that one and bought the other. After all, Steven Quiller is a god. When I grow up, I want to paint a lot like him. Not exactly, but with the same kind of color ‘tude, simplicity and ease.

Went over to the Matisse brand table and found Joe DG there working (it was in Jerry’s section). Bought some Matisse colored gessos that he’d recommended and he pointed out the cheap but nice Titanium White from Lukas that he likes to use especially for large projects.

In his workshop we’d done his “Black Bag” exercise, in which he gives students a small bag with a few implements and brushes, and then dishes out two colors and a bit of white and tells them to paint. We got a goldish-orange color that was named after an Australian tree (or maybe that was another color), and a bluish green that was called “Southern Ocean.” You see, Matisse is located in Australia so everything is named after Australian stuff. Joe pointed out that “Southern Ocean” had the same color formulation as Thalo Blue (Turquoise), so it’s all marketing, right? The Australian tree sure looked and acted a lot like Quin Gold to me, though I didn’t get a chance to compare formulation codes (which are listed on labels by law).

Hint: Joe told us he liked to use opposite colors on the color wheel but tweaked the idea to use the ones that are just off being primaries. This adds subtlety to paintings. So instead of blue and orange, he kicked the color to a greenish blue and a reddish orange (that turned goldy when diluted). Worked terrifically!

Then I aimed myself at (1) mats. Joe had told us to think of the entire process of framing from a cohesive economics standpoint. Buy the pre-cut available mats to determine (2) what size paper you’ll work on, and then buy (3) frames to fits the mats. So I got a few packs of cheap ones and larger ones as well, hoping they’d fit what I’ve already done at home. Got a block of W/C paper (from Steven Quiller, who was having a very nice sale) and some cheap but okay frames.

Over at the Burning Tree Studios desk they were doing BOGO DVDs. It was difficult to find a second one. I’ve already got a handful at home of good ones, plus a handful of just awful ones, I mean, ptui! Told them that they needed to make sure there were “next” buttons in the gallery sections of their DVDs (the girl was astounded that there weren’t, but there aren’t, not always) (she dutifully took notes to pass along to TPTB) (I love AotC! It’s the direct line to God), and found a second DVD that looked interesting.

Grabbed a few other things and began to think about lunch. The hotel dining room was finishing up brunch and didn’t serve lunch. The hotel’s sports restaurant wouldn’t open until 12 (it was almost that), at which time the entire convention crush would descend along with overdressed Sunday outsiders. Went out to walk and stretch the legs that hadn’t seen much exercise in a few days. Walked past Bahama Breeze, but didn’t want to do that two days in a row. The next place was Denny’s.

Ordered a breakfast from Denny's despite having had a similar one at the hotel early that morning. Did I say “similar”? This one was lovely! Delicious! Cheap! Ahh. I’m so glad there’s no Denny's near my house. I’d go broke and gain about 100 pounds in no time.

Got back to the hotel in time to read Dave Barry a few more minutes and then staked my claim for my place in the afternoon class in Art Marketing, given by wild n crazy Bob Burridge and his wife.


(Sorry, Bob. Next time I'll bring my non-blurry camera and wait for a good pose.)

MAAAN! OMG! They stuffed us full of marketing know-how and hints of how to step out into the Real World of Art as a true Professional. I bought the updated version of their marketing book that I’d bought years ago. When they come through Raleigh again (they usually hit us a couple times a year) I hope Bob will be giving his two-day version of the workshop because it seems there’s an AWFUL lot more I need to know!

So the Burridge and DiGiulio classes were abfab, completely worth the price and more. I should be able to sell significantly more than I have after taking these classes. And (hee hee) Bob told us that we should never, EVER sell off eBay. When I arrived home (kitties were fine!) my computer informed me that I’d just sold a painting there. Think I’ll try selling the early, not-quite-up-to-snuff stuff there until the end of the year, at which point I’ll become a Professional Arteest and turn up my nose at the site in relation to fine art.

How long is it until next November? I loves me that Art of the Carolinas!

Moravian sugar cake recipe

This is a kind of coffee cake. If you can't go to Old Salem to buy a freshly-made cake, and if you can't wait for your order to arrive off of www.oldsalem.com , here's a recipe that's quicker than the other one I have that requires you to bake the potatoes first.

1/2 c. granulated sugar
1/4 c. instant mashed potato flakes
1/4 c. instant nonfat dry milk powder
1 tsp. salt
3/4 c. hot water
12 Tbsp. melted butter or margarine, divided
2 eggs
1 envelope active dry yeast
1/4 c. warm water
4 c. flour
1/2 c. light brown sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon

In a large bowl, combine granulated sugar, potato flakes, milk powder and salt. Mix well. Stir in hot water and 6 Tbsp. melted butter; beat in eggs.

In small bowl, sprinkle yeast over warm water. Allow to stand for a few minutes to soften. Stir until dissolved; add to mixture to that of large bowl.

Add flour, one cup at a time, stirring well after each addition until smooth. Cover bowl. Let rise in warm, draft-free place until dough has doubled in bulk (approx. 1 1/2 hour). Stir down; place in a greased jelly roll pan. With lightly greased hands, pat out dough, evenly covering bottom of pan. Cover and allow to rise again until dough doubles in bulk (45 min).

Meanwhile, mix brown sugar and cinnamon. When dough is ready, create mini-pockets by pressing lightly floured fingers into it at 1 1/2-inch intervals. Sprinkle brown sugar and cinnamon mixture over surface evenly. (Note: I usually make a bit more topping because I'm a pig.) Drizzle with remaining melted butter.

Bake at 350° for 20 min. or until cake appears golden and center is firm to the touch. Cool for five minutes. Cut into squares and serve.

Recipe makes 12 portions. Moravian sugar cake tastes its best when served fresh from the oven, but also freezes well. Wrap leftovers in foil and freeze. Just make sure you serve it warm.

DEEEE-LISH!!

Stepping Back in Time...and Out on a Ledge!

I was so proud of myself! For once I hadn't made my hotel reservation six weeks (if not six months) in advance. Of course, that was because I was waiting to see how the weather played out during my week's vacation...

This was to be the beginning of getting reference photos and sketches for a "scenic NC" painting series. Old Salem (located in Winston-Salem) was closed on Mondays. The weather report indicated that the sunny day of the week would be Thursday, followed by a partly-cloudy Friday. Armed with a new car player for my new iPod Nano, plus a few Pepto pills because I was a tad queasy, I set off.

Found my hotel after taking the exit after the one I was supposed to. It was definitely okay. My room was supposed to have been $130, but I got an AAA/AARP discount for $78. They never asked to see my card. Never checked my picture ID when I presented my CC either.

Hotel customers had to park in the back, which had a stairway to connect it to the hotel. Where was the handicap-accessible entry, I wondered. The rooms wing was connected to the conference wing by another flight of stairs, this time with a strange handrailing that looked like some kind of automation was in place, maybe perhaps. Weird.

When I left, ambulance personnel were trying to get their empty gurney up that flight of stairs. They needed help to do so. When I stood in line at check-out, one of the hotel people had to WAIT (I motioned for him to go ahead) to get the key to unlock the mechanism that would allow them to affix a pallet to the railing so they could load the gurney onto that for their return journey.

How awful is that?

The hotel folks had assured me that Old Salem was 2 1/2 blocks from them, easy walking distance. It turned out that the Old Salem historic district was about five blocks from them at its nearest, but that the business end of OS with all the exhibits and stuff was a few miles away. Glad I took the car.

Old Salem, a restored village clustered around Salem Academy, is a town the Moravians founded when an offshoot of that sect came to NC from PA. Guides dress in historic costumes and many buildings are open to show what life was like way back when. Centuries alternate: 18th Century one day and 19th Century the next. Some buildings are open during the 18th Century and others only open during the 19th.

If you want to tour the buildings and get all the lectures, the cost is about $20. You can walk around for free (which of course is what I chose to do).

The oddest part of it all is that, way back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, I attended Salem Academy for 6 weeks one summer as part of NC Governor's School. I had absolutely no recollection of Old Salem except the sugar cake and the nauseating smell of the tobacco factories downtown. Walking around the Academy just a bit, I had little memory of it. The dorms all looked alike; I couldn't recognize the one I stayed in, much less which building I had French in. Maybe it was all too traumatic? I hit myself on the head. I'd stayed practically all summer in my room, when there was all this interesting STUFF out there to walk around to see! Duhh!


But Old Salem was delightful. There were only three school buses in the visitor center, school was in session, and so there were few families with children about. I strolled for four hours to my heart's content, and there were public restrooms available for when the Pepto didn't quite work as well as it should have.

I really should have looked at the gardens more carefully. They had all ranges of gardens to show what the town as a whole would have raised, to what individual houses would have, to what the Single Brothers would be growing, etc. (The Moravians housed their unmarried people in dormitories.)

The Salem Tavern only required a 15-minute wait for lunch, during which I was regaled by stories from one party who talked about their worldly trah-vels and Mercedes Benzes and such. My table opened up and I was led into a room with another couple eating, and then a party of eight women from some local club. They talked loudly about how they were going to split the check (the menu clearly stated one table, one check, but they managed to talk the waitress into two checks). It was money, money before they were served, then one woman complained at great volume that her German potato salad was just roasted potatoes, money, potatoes, money, potatoes, then they got the check and it was money money money and then a little more about the potatoes. What a lovely lunch they must have had! (One of the ladies came up to me as they were leaving and said she hoped they hadn't been too loud.)

As for me, I was presented with a bread bowl containing a light-as-air wheat roll and a tiny pumpkin muffin that obliterated everything with a heavenly waft of cinnamon, ginger and pumpkin. The tavern knew how to make real iced tea, just perfectly right, ahhh. I ordered the blackened chicken salad, thinking that was the safest thing stomach-wise and most healthy item. It was covered with sinus-clearing spices. Okay, sue me. I'd never had blackened anything before. I didn't know. But it was lovely!

(I heard two non-money/potato comments from the other ladies: that the chicken pot pie was presented beautifully and the pot roast was delicious.)

After lunch I went upstairs to the Facilities (again, where was handicapped access?) (the public restrooms located in two places in the village were the only wheelchair access places I could see), and found the world's tiniest semi-modern bathroom. One of the stalls had a door that opened inward, so it hit the front of the toilet. Because of the placement of the toilet paper holder, one had about six inches--maybe less--to wedge oneself inside. Luckily for me, the other stall's door opened outward. It was still tricky to move inside, but whatever needed to be done was possible if one was determined enough.

The day was gorgeous and the houses were picturesque. Because there were so few people there, I got to chat with some of the costumed folks who hung around their doors waiting for patrons. So friendly! Oddly, everyone was concerned that Hillsborough's (where I work) Colonial Inn is still closed after being the longest-functioning inn in the US. I assured them all that it is finally undergoing extremely extensive renovations. (Asbestos and lead were merely the first of the problems the latest owners have to overcome.) (And in my experience, the food was lousy and quite over-priced there anyway.)

Over at the Book & Gift Shop I got in a bit of trouble when their computer broke down after half-charging me for my purchase. I gave them name & address so they could contact me later once they'd straightened things out to see if I'd been double-charged, and then went upstairs to see the little art gallery they have. I wanted to see what my competition was. They had a few really nice paintings, but most were (sorry!) very amateurish but with high prices. The gallery takes a 25% commission. When I came downstairs, the people were delighted to see me as the system was online and I had indeed been double-charged, and if I could fish out my CC again we could straighten everything out. Which we did.


The largest crowd of course was at the C. Winkler Bakery, where there was a line to purchase the goodies. Most of the cookies and coffees could be bought elsewhere in town (and at www.oldsalem.com ), but here you could also get fresh-baked breads, scones... and the famous Moravian sugar cake. I'm afraid I was responsible for getting two families to buy some. Now they'll be hooked for life. (You can buy the stuff online as well. Wrap the cake well and put it in your freezer, then bring it out and heat it up for serving.)

Walked a bit more, took something like 80 pictures, and realized I hadn't applied sun screen. Still, with all the overhanging trees it was fairly shady (which was why I was aiming for a sunny day and not a partly-sunny one), so things weren't that bad.

Eventually I took my shaky stomach back to the car and headed back to the hotel. I was going to go out to "Restaurant Row" on 4th street to see what I could find, but ye stomach advised staying in. The hotel made an excellent hamburger. Not so great slaw. Okay salad. Good tea. (But they always forgot to bring sweetener.)

Stomach didn't let me sleep much that night. Got a late start as I catered to it, and finally figured I could stand a quick trip to Pilot Mountain, though I didn't think I could take in Mt. Airy, located about 10 miles further down the road. (Darn, I wanted to get a shot of the "Snappy Lunch" diner, which came BEFORE the TV show, not after.) The day was not the "partly sunny" day the weatherman had promised. It was overcast, but every now and then the clouds would clear. It might make for good pictures at that if I timed things right.

As I drove down Hwy 52, I suddenly got a very good glimpse of Pilot Mtn through a break in the trees, like, boom, there it was from nowhere. There didn't seem to be other mountains in the area, though there was a high horizon far beyond. Ignoring every safety rule, I dug into my tour bag for my camera, got it out, turned it on, and managed a couple shots through the windshield in the next few miles.


Then the state actually gave us a "Photo Op Viewpoint": an exit, a parking lot, and a ramp back onto the highway. I got out and took a shot, then got back on the highway.

The next time I saw the mountain it had gone all blue. Darn! Some cloud must be sitting on it. It'd probably be all foggy by the time I got there.

Then the sky fell in. I drove through a mammoth downpour. Some partly cloudy! But the turnoff was right ahead. I took it. The information station turned out to just be a ranger station with a map posted outside (and public bathrooms).The rain was just a drizzle now. Oh, what the heck. I was here. I figured there'd be an outlook at that bump just to the left of the knob where I could take a few pictures looking up at it. The map didn't seem like the road would be that long.

So I took the left fork and started going up. And up. And seriously UP. It was a tiny paved road. There was zero shoulder on the side I was on (a part of me said thank goodness, I'll be against the mountain coming down). Occasionally there'd be a barrier made of short pieces of 2x4's that looked like I'd been in charge of the hammering and sawing. I didn't trust it at all. I drove down, or rather up, the center of the two-lane road at 15 mph (speed limit was 25 except on the curves, which were many), and thanked the universe that I seemed to be the only car up here.

Well after I thought the road should have come to an end, just about the time I was beginning to get dizzy from panic at being so incredibly high (don't look down! I ordered myself whenever a bit on my right opened up), I finally arrived at a parking lot (and public bathroom) with wood-fenced overlooks. We were at the very top of the mountain, looking down. There was no mountain to photograph, just the view. While I'd been sweating and making bargains with God, the rain had completely disappeared and the sky was blue.

(Okay, we weren't at the VERY top, but were close enough. Near enough to sneeze at it. There were trails around us, including one called the "Pinnacle View" trail, but I was too dizzy and sick to consider taking it. Studying the map afterward, it still seems to me like we must have been within just a few lateral feet of the very top of the place.) ('Scuze me; I'm starting to feel ill just remembering it.)


I didn't really feel like taking in the view. My heart was pounding, I was dizzy, and worst of all, if I actually had a heart attack or full-out panic attack, if I could actually get out a 911 call (was there reception up here?) for help, at some point I'd have to return for my car and drive back down.

I had a serious talk with myself in the rest room, and finally, not looking at all the sky surrounding us at eye-level, I quaked back to the car. Praying furiously, I put it in second gear and started down. At one point I may actually have made it to 23 mph, but I tried to keep it at 15. My brakes had been done recently; I hoped the mechanic had done a good job.

At last! The ranger station! I put the car in drive and didn't recall from before how steep it was getting up to that point. But I made it to the stop sign below the station, and from there it was a hop back to the LEVEL highway and home.

Uhh. Must remember... DO NOT ATTEMPT HEIGHTS!!! This will certainly eliminate the Blue Ridge Parkway from my list of places to be photographed, unless I do it while it's still relatively low, like it is around Asheville. Think I'll keep to a lot of sea level ocean views instead.

Writing pt 4: Don't make your reader work

The very first workshop I ever attended at my local RWA chapter (go, Heart of Carolina RWs!) was one that taught about writing to the proper grade level.

Well, duh. Almost all romance readers would be high school graduates, and a large percentage would have had some college. Why then did this speaker tell us we should be writing on a 4th-6th grade level?

I turned to the woman beside me. "She's not serious, is she?" I whispered.

"You bet she is," she replied. "We all check this stuff."

Well actually only a few do. But it is true enough: readability matters. This one particular speaker went through various favorite authors and gave the reading levels that they wrote to. It was all at an elementary level, or just a hair above. Through the years I've read more articles about this, including ones in which folks took all the NYT best-sellers for a particular week and analyzed their writing.

4th to 6th grade, with just a couple straying into 3rd and 7th grade territory.

Hunh. Lessee... Stephen King writes 4th grade level... He makes a bajillion dollars on his books... He has gazillions of fans... Maybe I should be writing 4th grade level too?

But how the heck do I discover what my levels are? How does this stuff work?

If you're trying to write professionally, you're using some version of Word. I'm on a Mac, so what I tell you may not be the exact order of how to get to this particular screen on a PC, but if you look on your menu you'll see a "help" button. Use it and key in: "Flesch." That's "flesh" with a "c." It will bring up "readability scores." Check out that section.

On a Mac you want to go under Preferences > Spelling & Grammar > click on "Check Grammar with Spelling" and make sure "Show readability statistics" is checked. You can't get this final box to check unless you've got the grammar turned on. Then you highlight whatever copy you want to check and run it through spell-check. Just keep hitting "ignore" until the piece is through, and your scores will come up. Yes, it's idiotic that you can't just say, "check readability" and it does it. You've got to jump through hoops.

So what do your scores mean? The Flesch Reading Ease score counts the length of your sentences and your average syllable usage. For fiction you want to stay in the 60-70 range. The higher you go, the simpler your language is. The grade level score also counts syllables and sentence length but uses a different formula. Word says you want to be about Grade 7 or 8.

Yet think of all those best-selling authors. James V. Smith Jr. wrote Fiction Writer's Brainstormer, which is a truly anal-retentive book that you need for those too-many times when you've got to get down n' dirty anal-retentive. On this subject he uses charts for NYT best-selling authors' work.

The Flesch Reading Ease scale? Steven King's an 84. John Grisham is 72. Danielle Steel is 83. His "pro-average" writer is 83. His "amateur" writer is 71. And I do love this: the US government writes at a 36 level.

Let's switch over to the grade levels. King is Grade 4. Grisham, 6. Steel, 5. Pro-average, 4. Amateur, 6. US government: 12.

This past week over on the Wonder Woman board at Comic Book Resources, some people complained that a column sounded "a little stuffy." This particular column was a literary examination of a comic book, so it was not fiction. It was written at a Grade 10 level for an audience of comic book readers. It was this that reminded me of the two scales available in Word, and hurriedly I checked my own column (AFTER I'd sent it off, duh!) for its level. Mine was 7th grade.

But like I said, these two columns are NON-FICTION. For such, check your expectations of audience. Are you writing for collegiates or a more general population?

As for fiction, your scores should vary from scene to scene. Action scenes should grade very, very low. Why? Because grade scores are based on sentence length and syllables. For action scenes your sentences should run shorter than usual, to increase the pace of things. Your word choice should skew to brisk, low-syllable words. Passages where you're plugging in back story (subtly, of course), delving into character, describing the landscape, and such will have longer, more leisurely sentences so your grade level will go up. Just make sure the two types of writing aren't radically different. Your readers shouldn't feel they're reading two different books pasted together.

Another trick: One of the first things I learned with my romance writer friends concerned paragraphs. I'd always been proud of my high school papers. I'd write my topic sentence, then three sentences to clarify things, then a summary sentence. Ta dah! A perfect paragraph!

That's not how real life works, especially real life fiction. If you don't have an ebook reader (horrors!), thumb through some best-selling or genre book you have lying around and look at the paragraphs.

They're short. I mean, really short.

Two back-to-back paragraphs can seem as if they should have been combined into one, but they haven't. Why is that?

White space. Readers like white space. They don't want to be confronted with a solid page of type. That's hard to read! So break up your paragraphs into breezy bits. (I once read a book 50% of whose paragraphs were single, short sentences. Obviously the author thought she was doing High Style and increasing the drama. Instead, she was irritating the heck out of this reader at least, who determined never to read another of her books.) Single sentence paragraphs (see above for one or two) do have drama and snap when saved for the proper moment.

And of course one of the final things you do to every book is this: read it out loud. That's right, each and every word. Sure, it seems redundant and time-consuming, but you'll be surprised at how things sound and how many small changes you'll make because of it. Your prose will flow much better.

Which will increase the readability of your book.

END NOTE: This column had a Flesch reading ease score of 76.6 and a Flesch-Kincade grade level of 5. Also, 3% of my sentences were passive, which is a subject we might cover in a future column.

Art School #4: Know your colors

Awright! You're ready to begin painting. You've got that photo of dear young Edwin that you've been dying to paint a portrait from.

First thing: Put Edwin down. Wait until perhaps your third painting to try your first portrait. You should be comfortable with your materials and the way they work before you try a portrait.

So you've probably got a landscape you want to paint. Isn't this a perfect time of year to go out and paint en plein air! (Then why am I painting inside this weekend?) Terrific! But first... Or since we've already dealt with the first thing up there, secondly...

Know your colors.

The two things you can do before you paint the first stroke that will improve what you're about to do 100%, are:

• Do a preliminary thumbnail, or small sketch, of what you're going to paint. Make it the same ratio as your canvas. Divide things up into four values so you can see the simple pattern of eye movement and composition involved. You may want to make another thumbnail, try your values a different way. Or even (gasp) a third.

EACH TAKES ONE MINUTE TO DO. Most students miss doing this entirely and then wonder what went so terribly wrong?

• Look at the paints you've got squirted out onto your palette. Okay, this step is probably best done BEFORE you start to paint a subject, so look at the paint you've bought, the paints you're usually going to use.

Play with them.

No, I don't mean to smudge them all over yourself! Cheez! Okay, okay, let me explain.

When I was in high school and my high school wouldn't let me take art because college-bound students Didn't Take Art (and girls couldn't take auto repair or tennis), my parents let me take art lessons for a few Saturdays from a local lady. We worked in her garage.

(A few months after lessons ended, she walked into a 7-11 down the road from my house and was killed by a punk robber. I hope they caught him and that he fried painfully somewhere.)

Anyway, when we first started, she handed out index cards blank except for a pattern of circles on them. We were supposed to take them home and fill them in with color, seeing how the colors mixed. She had cards for just about every "opposites" combination she could think of.

And yeah, I think I did about six. Bad, bad me. Yet those six cards increased my knowledge of color enormously.

So this is what you do, and if you want to use blank index cards, that's just peachy. You've only got a few colors, so it won't be that bad. Each card will take you TWO MINUTES to do. You will keep these cards. You will take them to the grave with you, they'll be so handy.

What you do is pick out two opposite colors. What are opposite colors? These are colors that are placed opposite each other on a color wheel. Now, WHY is this?

Because when they combine they can cancel each other out. They will make a gray or neutral. A lot of times this "gray" will be brownish. The trick is that you won't be able to see either color in the mix when you get it right.

It's magic. And even better, you'll find it INCREDIBLY useful as you paint.

So go ahead. You may have to mix up a secondary color from your primaries to do this. You'll want to look at combinations for red and green; blue and orange; yellow and violet.

We did these things by sticking our thumbs in the color and mooshing them onto the card. You can use a brush. Start with pure color. Put a dab of red on one end of your card, centering it vertically, and a dab of green on the other end. Now on your palette begin to play with your color, combining them until you can't see either a red or green in your mixture. Put that in the middle.

Now if you really want to do this right, you'll add in a couple stations between these so you'll get a reddish-gray mixture on the red side of your gray and a green-gray one on the green side.

Now add white to the whole lot and place that result above your little spectrum. These are TINTS. You can make even lighter ones if you want.

Add some black if you've got it to the mixtures you did from the pure colors (the stuff that doesn't have white in it) and arrange those on the bottom half of the card. You can add even darker mixtures. These are SHADES.

And voila! You know what two of your colors can do. Isn't it amazing the amount of lovely color you can get out of a mere two starting colors!

NOTE: I know you only have so much money as you begin in art. You've only bought a few colors. As I said in an earlier lesson, the target is to have a cool version of yellow, red and blue and a warm version of the same. Cool means they lean to the blue side; warm means they lean to the yellow side. There is no way to produce a "pure" primary color in paint, so all the primaries you find will be "tainted" in some way.

So as not to end up with mud, you'll want to mix warm with warm and cool with cool. (And sometimes you WANT mud.)

Stephen Quiller (www.quillergallery.com) is a GOD of color. I was just watching one of his videos this morning and noticed that he not only gives exact names for what he wants in each position of his palette (he lays down primaries, secondaries and tertiary color straight out of the tube), but he's got a Violet named after himself. He had a company formulate it so it precisely neutralized Cadmium Yellow Light, which he uses as his yellow.

So FYI, his ACRYLIC primaries and secondaries are: cadmium yellow light, pyrrole orange, quinacridone red, Quiller violet (available from Jack Richeson), thalo blue (green shade) (as opposed to thalo blue [red shade]; this is one of those warm and cool things we talked about), and thalo green. Before you start jumping up and down in dismay, let me remind you that these are just his personal choices for colors. I know a couple of very famous artists who swear that a ruby red is the one, the only, true red in the entire manufactured-pigment universe. Others say cadmium red is the only way to go.

If you bought your paints as a set, that's likely JUST FINE.

Use the colors that work for you. Use colors that will neutralize each other so you can get a great range of color on your painting.

ARTEEST NOTE: It is very okay, even chic, to refer to the cadmiums as "cad" this and "cad" that. Quinacridone? "Quin" this and "quin" that. You'll impress everyone with your artistic savoir-faire!

Th-th-that's all for now. Feel free to ask questions! What subjects would you like me to cover? If I don't know the answer I'll track down someone who does.