2nd Place in the 2021 Colonel Darren L. Wright Award

 

Welp, I learned yesterday that "Time Hack" my short story about a (fictional) Afghan vet and her time on a remote outpost as the only woman amid a hundred infantry guys took 2nd place in the category of Prose by a Veteran or Servicemember. 

It's really a thrill and I'm glad that this character, Marcy, resonated as much as she did. I just hope I managed to do her justice.

A Perhaps Weekly Pandemic Periodical, #16

 

The masks are off, the delta variant spreads, there are localized pandemics of the (mostly) unvaccinated across the country, the bees busy themselves around the spread-eagle heads of our sunflower flock. Pandemic news takes a backseat, you have to glance in the rearview to see it, background noise to other more-pressing news, like infrastructure deals and the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

A Perhaps Weekly Pandemic Periodical, #15

The roses bloom. The sunflower seedlings thicken. The tomatoes start to set their first fruit. It's raining today for the first time in, oh, I'd say, three weeks. Everyone says it's an unusual spring. Prognostications of drought find their way into our ears. Rumblings of a rough fire season ahead. Mostly, so far, we just need to make sure to water the lawn. 

A Perhaps Weekly Pandemic Periodical, #6

A lot has happened in the past month any which way you measure it. The same is true, here, at J.G.P. MacAdam Online.

The past week has been especially eventful. I've completed a final structural edit of my science fiction novel, The Way Across, which is based on and taken from The Vallen, an earlier work, but completely reimagined and rewritten. I've also had two more short story publications added to my name, The Pickers, as Passengers Journal, and A Road Not Taken, at Apeiron Review. And what more the baby's toddling all over the house at this point and it's like having a little babbling penguin follow you around room to room.

But even more has happened in the past month—hasn't it?

Letters to the Void, #6

Dear Void,

This one's a doozie. We start with memory and knowledge.

Memory: as in the ones in our head and which we speak and communicate and hold as in suspension among family members and even society as a whole, and Knowledge: as in what is spoken, written, collected, gathered, tabulated and learned through long years of experience and stored, amassed, treasured, disseminated, or otherwise passed on.

Update!

Update for the month of June 2019:

I am busy scribbling, scribbling, scribbling. I have new stories bubbling over the rim. I've got one about an Afghan who gives their American counterpart a laughing disease. I've got another about that roadtrip back home after Thanksgiving and a not-so-nice ghost paying a visit in the car. I've got yet another about a farmer on Mars.

So many stories!

So little time...

Check back in to find out where I place these stories (fingers crossed!), and in the meantime feel free to peruse the archives and take a gander at my nearly a year's worth of blogging on everything from my latest novel, THE VALLEN (currently in querying stage), to my first short story ever published, to my dissections on various novels, writing styles and how-to's for writing here.

J.G.P. MacAdam Online is yours to explore!

Recent r/literature Posts Breakdown

I'm considering whether it is advantageous for me to create quarterly or semiannual summaries of posts I've created (and which have been abundantly upvoted) on r/literature. Most of these posts concern books or articles I've read and literary techniques or theories or thoughts I've developed and/or am developing as a result.

Perhaps this will be a good idea, perhaps not. But let's give it a go.

From biggest to smallest then!

Knowledge + Time = ?

I try to determine what the wall is, where it’s leading Essa, and what walking the wall costs her.

This is the central conflict, dilemma, struggle, call it whatever you want, of my newest novel, THE VALLEN. From conception (during the 2016 Presidential campaign in the United States) to brainstorming to outline to writing the rough draft then many other drafts after, I’ve come to the point where I have now completed a submittable manuscript.

And all the while…

I’ve been asking…

Just what is the wall?

Outlining a blueprint for THE VALLEN

The Wall of Jericho, artist's rendering, more information available here

The power of a blueprint (or outline) for a novel is perhaps best represented in the plot of the novel. (I spoke in a previous post about how Rowling's outlining technique for Harry Potter benefited the page-turning plot of her books...).

Memory spreading its branches through THE VALLEN

Memory interconnected and disconnecting bits falling away

In the beginning of novel development, I tend to research every teensy-weensy little thing. For THE VALLEN, I went over memory and walls and how to build walls, and where and why walls were built, and how memory is stored, the latest neurological science, how technology enhances or impairs our memory, whether all of this translates to knowledge—and if it does—then what kind of knowledge?

A Word on Too Many Words

Reading over the Goodread comments on Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies, I somewhat ruined this book for myself. Well, even if shortlisted for the Man Booker award, the first 50 or so pages just rung my attention completely dry—so—it wasn’t just the Goodread comments with spoiler alerts, informing me about the unsatisfactory ending and prompting me to lay this book down before wasting anymore of my time reading another word (I admit I especially searched for those comments to substantiate my own suspicions…), it was all the so many words themselves…

Don’t yell at me, I’m an artist – Part I

 

Sarah Jung, pic filched here

There exist many stereotypes about creative types. Just the typifying of people as creative types is itself a corralling of certain individuals who exhibit certain traits into a certain group. A commenting along the lines of: “Oh, you’re a one of those…” or a: “Yes, I’m an it…”

The Perils of Diction

Filched from here

Let's take a step into the world of word choice, or diction. For a brief interlude into the elements of style (tone and diction), look here, and read up on how diction fits into a writing piece as a whole. Otherwise—all our readings up—let's dive in...

Magic in the Making

Filched here

Do we, as writers, need to plan out the Magic in our stories? Does it have to have a pattern or be consistent? Does it have to follow a rigid Dungeons & Dragons-type system, or can it be free-wheeling like Beagle's The Last Unicorn?

In another post, I talked about the difference between fairy tale magic and systematized magic, that every magic "system" — for lack of a better word — encompassed a bit of both.

The Shapes of Refugee Stories

Image taken from here

I just can't read them all. There are too many migrant-refugee books and not enough hours and not enough energies to read every friggin' one of 'em.

So, I take a deep breath....and Google stuff...

If you've never taken a gander at Kurt Vonnegut's The Shapes of Stories thesis-that-never-was, now would be a good time to take one:

Diction & Dick Jokes: A Look at Carl Hiaasen

Writing humor is not something that all writers undertake.

Some dramatic novelists might stick in a silly scenario or sarcasm, but they'll steer clear of riddling their work with gags for fear it won't be taken as a "serious" work. Some non-fictionalists won't sully their work with a single dirty phrase for fear of appearing (cringe) unprofessional.

Magic Systems — Arden's The Bear & The Nightingale

http://avalinahsbooks.space/the-bear-and-the-nightingale/

There're whole heaps of praise out there on the internet for Katherine Arden's debut: The Bear and the Nightingale, a fairy tale-esque coming-of-age story taking place in medieval Russia. I'm not going down that praising path, though I did enjoy the book over Christmas break (absolutely a winter read). Rather, I'm going down the magic-system path. And when it comes to fairy tales, pinning down a magic system is about as difficult as making waterfalls flow backwards.

The Broken Earth Trilogy - Jemisin

Disregard the superb narrative techniques. Disregard the excellent plotting and characterization—particularly between a mother and a daughter—that throttles the both of them to a climactic showdown where, literally, the fallout of their relationship determines the fate of the world. Disregard the fact this is the first time an author has won three Hugos in a row and disregard all of the other milestones of this series.

What most came through Jemisin's masterwork, for me, is this...

Me on r/literature...why do I do this?

So...yeah...long day at work, and what do I do? Post stupid things on the internet...

Here's what I put on Reddit, in response to a post about: Is Literary Glory Worth Chasing? Which is in response to an New York Review of Books article.

Taking (and Giving) Criticism

Joy...Criticism Time...


Love it, hate it, don't-leave-home-without-it, it's Criticism Time for the writer—I mean, **cough, cough**—the writer's work.