Facing Rejection

August 28, 2017August 2, 2017 ~ Elizabeth Drake ~ 4 Comments

I hear myself telling DD1 all the time that it doesn’t matter if she succeeds or fails, I’m proud of her for trying her hardest. For really putting in the effort. She sometimes believes me, and other times I get the annoyed preschooler look.

But, I have to walk the walk now that I’ve written, edited, rewrote, edited, rewrote again, and finally polished Crowned Prince.

I decided I wanted to try getting an agent and go the traditional publishing route if possible. There are pros and cons to both indie publishing and traditional, but I at least wanted to try traditional. Partially for their experience, but mostly for their amazing editors.

I know, I know, but one is not in the budget for us right now. While I take my writing seriously, I also take paying for two kids in daycare seriously. Don’t know if it’s like this everywhere, but where I live, my daycare bill is about twice the cost of an average mortgage payment. So, yeah, not much else is in the budget right now.

If I’m going to find an agent, I need to either meet one at a conference or query one. As a mom with two small children who works full time already, finding time or money for a conference also isn’t in the budget. So that means querying.

And being rejected A LOT.

I have a feeling your chances of getting in to Harvard are probably better. After all, they accept 5.2% of their applicants. But, if I want to get an agent, I have to query them.

This is like a lot of things in life.

Maybe you don’t like your job, but that means putting yourself out there to find a new one.
Maybe you’re single and want to meet someone.
Maybe you want to be an actor, but that means showing up for the auditions.

Everything is life is scarce. And the more you want it, the more of yourself you have to put out there to get it.

That means facing the very real risk of rejection. Of failure. Or not being good enough. Talented enough. Just not enough.

The platitude of at least you tried your hardest feels less genuine then, though, really, that’s when it matters most. Trying. Not giving up.

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Persistence in the face of rejection is especially hard when you put so much of yourself into something. Like a job. Or a relationship. Or writing a book. Because this feels like a personal rejection. And we’re a heard animal. It’s ingrained in us to be part of the pack as those that weren’t usually didn’t have a happy ending.

But, I must face failure. I have to try, as I tell my daughter she must.

So I started the process. Looking up agents, trying to see who they represent and what they sell to see if I’ll be a fit. I even queried a few.

And got my first rejection.

It hurt less than I thought it would. But it still hurt.

How about you? Ever put yourself out there for something? Maybe a new job? A relationship? A book query? How did it go? Did it go better than you thought? If it didn’t, was the rejection or failure as bad as you thought it’d be?

What to Do When Faced with Night Terrors

August 7, 2017July 14, 2017 ~ Elizabeth Drake ~ 3 Comments

Per Kid’s Health, our pediatrician, and a child psychologist, “A night terror is a sleep disruption that seems similar to a nightmare, but with a far more dramatic presentation. Though night terrors can be alarming for parents who witness them, they’re not usually cause for concern or a sign of a deeper medical issue.

Night terrors happen during deep non-REM sleep. Unlike nightmares (which occur during REM sleep), a night terror is not technically a dream, but more like a sudden reaction of fear that happens during the transition from one sleep phase to another.”

Night terrors are caused by the over-arousal of the central nervous system, but science doesn’t know why. The best hypothesis is that this area of the brain is still maturing, especially as the night terrors seem to fade as a child ages.

Doctors think it may be hereditary as most kids that have this condition have a family member who experienced them or who was prone to sleepwalking (which is apparently similar in nature to night terrors).

*Glares at DH*

Guessing it’s hereditary as the other things, like taking a new medication or sleeping away from home, don’t play into it.

Night terrors are rare – happening in only 3-6% of kids. Lucky us.

Our daughter has them regularly. Almost every night. We’ve talked to the doctor and a child psychologist. There is very little we can do.

Our pediatrician has told us the best way to combat them is to make sure she has a solid bedtime routine and is getting enough sleep. Of course, the child suffering from night terrors would love to stay up until 10pm then sleep until 9am. It’s too bad our life doesn’t permit her the schedule she wants as I have to be to work at 8am.

So, we do our best. Every night is a challenge, as she hates going to bed and usually wants me to be next to her when she falls asleep. I know, Ferber Method, etc. etc. But I’m not sure I buy into the Ferber Method (also known as the cry-it-out method).

If my toddler is scared and alone, crying for me, I need to go to her. I need to hold and console her. Especially as I am there when she cries out at night. I’ve heard her fear.

Seriously. Until you’ve heard your toddler scream in terror in the night, begging some invisible something to “STOP”, it’s hard to understand. The night terrors are awful, and she is hard to wake up from them even if we want to wake her. She’s not in REM, so she doesn’t awaken easily. And when we do wake her, she’s shaking but doesn’t remember what happened.

Maybe I’m spoiling her, or maybe I’m showing her when she needs me, I’ll be there for her. Even if I didn’t hold and comfort her, I wouldn’t be able to sleep hearing her cries anyway. Better to follow heart and gut on this.

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But it does explain why I’m not sleeping. Why I’m a little crabbier. And why I’m burning out.

At this point, I have no idea how to make it better. I’m rolling with the phrase I heard somewhere about raising kids, “This, too, shall pass.”

I hope it does. She deserves a good night’s sleep, and so do I.

How about you? Anyone in your family ever have night terrors? How did you deal with them? Did they ever go away? If so, when did they go away?

Practicing Empathy

March 8, 2017 ~ Elizabeth Drake

I recently wrote about empathy, about giving people the benefit of the doubt, and how we really need more of it.

I thought of this as I read an article recently that talked about Trump’s travel ban, and it’s impact on three people. Sadly, this article was taken down shortly after I read it, but I’m assuming it was done to protect the man in Alabama I will discuss shortly.

You don’t have to look very far to hear the stories of people affected by it in a negative light, up to and including a US-born NASA scientist. As with many of the news stories about the ban, this article began with the heart-breaking tale of a woman who had aided the US in the Iraqi war, was targeted by terrorists because of it, and trying to get to the US for her own safety. It talked of an American man who’d married an Iranian woman and couldn’t get her and his daughter into the US even though they had green cards.

Remember, if it bleeds, it leads.

Empathizing with these people is easy. The news makes it easy. But none of those events are unique to this story.

What was different, however, was the article spoke of an Alabama man who was happy about the ban. After hearing all the stories of terrorism, he was relieved that something was being done to protect him.

This man hadn’t felt safe at baseball games or even the store. He feared any area where large groups of people congregated because that’s where terrorists struck. He didn’t give up going to his favorite sports events because he thought that would be caving into the terrorists, but he felt truly afraid.

Let’s remember that in fiction, no one usually sees themselves as the “bad guy”. The books on craft drill that into our heads.

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I doubt this gentleman from Alabama saw himself as a “bad guy” either. He truly felt afraid. He wanted to be safe, and he cited the events in France and Belgium as reasons for his fear.

What he didn’t know, what the news hadn’t informed him of, was that the total number of American citizens that died due to terrorism from 1995 to 2014 – that’s twenty years – was 3,503. That includes the 2,910 people that died on September 11th.

In 2014, 42,773 people died by committing suicide. The really scary stuff? According to the CDC, in 2013 approximately 610,000 Americans died of heart disease. Yeah. One in four American deaths was due to heart disease.

Had the news given as much weight to things that posed the most threat to this man, terrorism wouldn’t be his top concern. He’d be demanding roasted kale and orange slices (two foods known to help in the battle against heart disease) as he watched his sports games while jogging on a treadmill.

Was this man genuinely afraid? I think he was. It’s possible this man has never met a man or woman from any of the nations impacted by the travel ban. He may not have ever met a Muslim. Only 0.2% of Alabama’s population is Muslim. It may be difficult for him to separate out “bleeding” new bites from reality.

While each person is accountable for their emotions and how they respond to them, I think the news media also needs to accept some accountability. How many images of terrorist attacks have filled our screens? How many times did we watch the planes hit the towers? See the aftermath of bombings?

And it happens every time there’s an attack. We’re bombarded by images. This becomes our reality, what we fear, rather than heart disease.

I’ve seen some accuse the media of being accomplices to the attackers by helping them spread the fear that their attacks were intended to generate.

I doubt this is intentional.

You see, fear sells. If it bleeds, it leads. And what is more terrifying to us than terrorism? Thinking you’re going to punch the clock like any other day, but instead, a plane is flown into your workplace.

Fear sells.

Not only does it sell, but we’ve become addicted to fear, and for-profit news companies know it. They know how to get us to tune in and keep us coming back.

If you think about Maslow’s Hiererchy of needs, safety ranks as more important than sex. So if sex sells, you better believe fear does. Our ancestors knew this. Go back and look at those original fairy tales if you don’t believe me or the research.

News capitalizes on this, and it’s one of the reasons why I’m avoiding the news.

Was this Alabama man practicing empathy for the people this ban affected that weren’t terrorists? Doubtful. But, I’m betting he was afraid, and if he votes, I’m betting that fear influences his vote.

I know fear can influence me and make me do things I regret or keeping me from doing things that I regret not doing.

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What about you? Do you let fear influence your decisions? Do you watch the news? If so, do you find it be full of fear-mongering?

What Common Household Item is Killing Your Children?

March 6, 2017 ~ Elizabeth Drake ~ 5 Comments

We’ll tell you, tonight at eight.

Except, if it really is killing my children, shouldn’t I get a news flash across my phone telling me what it is and how to get rid of it, much like an Amber Alert?

I have ignored traditional news media for years, getting most of my news from the Economist. Yes, it’s a paid subscription and an expensive one. I’m fortunate that my company is willing to reimburse me for it. Still, it’s some of the best and most in-depth analysis I’ve seen. Positions are well thought out, and their research is impeccable.

For those of you shaking your heads thinking it’s an ultra-conservative news outlet, you may be surprised at how liberal many of their social views are. Why? Because allowing things like gay marriage, religious tolerance, and immigration are actually good for the economy.

Remember who is writing it.

They care about making economies prosper and the generation of wealth. In a recent piece, they actually call for allowing people age 16 and older to vote rather than 18. Why? Because we need to teach this habit like any other. And people must vote or you undermine the very concept of democracy. It’s an interesting article. I recommend it.

As I’ve been entering the social media sphere because authors “must”, I started getting caught in the news cycle. The drama. The “end-of-the-world” mongering.

The fear.

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I decided to stop following people on Twitter or Facebook that post a lot of “news”. I stopped clicking on any and all links to news articles. I stopped looking at anything that remotely resembled click-bait.

Yes, I know a lot of things are going on right now, bad things, but the constant stress was making me crabby and interfering with my sleep.

If you’re rolling your eyes and thinking I’m a snowflake, here are six reasons why research says you should consider changing your news consumption habits.

1. It’s Here to Make Money, Not Inform

With the wave of “fake” news lately, this hardly needs explanation. But we need to remember that news doesn’t usually cover what’s important anyway. They’re looking for the “human” element, the element that sucks you in and gets you to keep watching or clicking.

If it bleeds it leads.

If a building burns to the ground, what do you think the media is going to focus on? The building. The people in the building. Injuries. Fatalities. All of which is relatively inexpensive to produce. They don’t actually have to dig to get to the guts of the story. Do they ever tell you why the building burned? Changes to the fire code that should be enacted to save those lives?

No, because those don’t get clicks.

Because of this emphasis on the dramatic, we focus on the wrong things, and those things are then overblown in our minds. We all fear terrorism, but no one thinks too much about chronic stress. Total US deaths, worldwide, due to terrorism from 2004-2014 was 112. Think about that for a moment. 112 people in ten years. That’s 11.2 people, on average, per year.

How much news did it get?

But how many people die each year of heart attack? Stroke? Cancer? Yet, how much emphasis has any of this gotten?

Stress, on the other hand, affects 143M Americans and 81M are under extreme stress. The causal connection between chronic disease and stress is growing .

So why don’t we hear more about this? Reducing stress is something we might actually have control over, and it can have a direct impact on our lives. Imagine if reducing stress could reduce the number of people with heart disease or cancer by 10% or even 1%.

The news doesn’t cover this because it doesn’t get clicks.

News is a for-profit organization. They are not here to inform. They are here to make money.

2. Doesn’t Really Matter to You

How many news stories have you watched or read in the last year? The last month? What did you do because you read or watched it? What decision did it help you to make, particularly about anything of consequence? Did you become a better parent? A better spouse? Did you make a serious financial decision? Do something to improve your career?

I ask this is all seriousness. If it is meant to inform you, it should be doing so in a meaningful way. We’ve already established that it’s not really informing you. Rather, it’s telling you things to get you to tune in, and we should be challenging the value of tuning in.

I can honestly say consuming news did little to engender action from me. News stories didn’t even help me make a decision on the candidates I voted for. I got that from their stated positions on their websites.

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3. Teaches You Not to Think Too Hard

This article really says it all. News programming is designed to make you think you’re seeing both sides of a story and getting the low-down, but you’re not. Most of what we get are news bites, little pieces of information meant to fit into an allotted amount of time. Deep, complex subjects require time to digest. Truly difficult concepts can’t be understood in the five minutes of time they get.

We’ve all heard “climate change”, but how many of us have actually taken the time to understand what it is and why it’s happening? What are the macro effects? What does it truly mean to the planet and to us? (Give you a hint, the planet doesn’t care. It’s already survived numerous mass extinctions.) What are we really sacrificing by not dealing with it, and what would it really take to reverse it?

You see this superficiality with a lot of “news” reports. They are interested in giving you bite-sized pieces, but nothing too meaty. They don’t make money informing, remember? They make money on you tuning in or clicking.

Yet, without this deeper level of understanding, you lose sight of the bigger picture. Events become singular and contained instead of part of the broader view. Hard to make truly informed decisions when you see a very small piece of the whole issue.

4. Seek Conforming Opinions

With the sheer volume of news out there, we no longer have to expose ourselves to ideas that don’t conform to ours. If we don’t want to believe in climate change, we can find plenty of articles denying it to fill our screen.

As Warren Buffet said, “What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.”

If this is true, then we’re really not seeking information or enlightenment. We simply want to be told that everyone already agrees with us. That we’re right. That’s called confirmation bias, and it’s very detrimental.

It means you never hear the other side, you never have the chance to understand their way of thinking. You can’t find a compromise because why would you compromise when “everyone agrees with you?”

But what if you’re wrong? Even Albert Einstein was wrong on occasion.

5. Induces Stress

News, particularly what’s splashed across our networks, triggers our fight or flight response. The same stories that tend to get clicks, tend to activate this center.

When you hear about a family dying in a fire, you have a very different reaction than if you’re hearing about alternate routes to avoid a fire. That’s why so many of us felt panicked and twitchy after all of the 9/11 stories, particularly as we watched people, human beings, plummet from those upper stories.

That’s one image I will never, ever forget.

The “human” side of these stories release glucocorticoid which has a whole slew of effects on your body. It’s the fight or flight response. And what does this constant fight or flight response bring? Remember that stress we were talking about and how we know it contributes to heart disease, stroke and cancer? Yeah, that.

It’s like being constantly told there’s a monster under your bed, and knowing there is nothing you can do about it.

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6. Crushes Creativity

I’m not sure if news in general does this, or just bad news. I won’t say this is an unbiased or researched article, because I couldn’t find any with hard facts, but it states what I’ve seen myself.

The more news I consume, the less creative I am. Or, perhaps, the less time I have for creativity.

Not sure, but I do know that switching off the news, even for a week, made it much easier to work on my novel. I completed as much in a week with it off as I had in three with it on. I felt more relaxed, more able to focus, and able to bring more of myself to my writing.

Why?

Not sure, but I figure the reduced fight-or-flight response is part of it. As is not allowing the news to snatch at my already divided attention. Of course, tuning out the world burning may not be ideal, but there is very little I, personally, can do for the suffering people in Syria other than donate to the White Hats.

Yet, despite the stress, lost creativity, and lack of information, we keep coming back to the news. Makes me think they’re in the same camp as social media. They’ve figured out how our brains work and how to keep us coming back for more. How to suck our precious time from us for profit.

I, for one, am done.

I will continue to read the Economist, and I will never know what household item is slowly killing my children until they send me an Amber Alert to my phone.

How about you? Do you watch the news? Do you get anything out of it? Does it inform your decisions? Has it ever affected your sleep or given you nightmares?

What If It Were Me?

February 24, 2017 ~ Elizabeth Drake ~ 7 Comments

I saw this picture, and it really struck a chord. A deep chord. She’s about the same age as my daughter. My daughter also loves giraffes. She had a pair of giraffe pants once, and would run up to me and point at her pants. “Momma, raf. Look Momma, raf.”

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I suffer from really bad nightmares. The kind that leave me sweating and shaking when I wake up. The kind that make me not want to go back to sleep because I know exactly where the dream is going to pick-up again.

I have no idea where these nightmares have come from, but I’ve suffered from them all of my life. I have cut things like scary movies out of my life completely, and I hate the month of October as I have to avoid television and the non-kids side of Netflix.

Perhaps that will shed some light on the nightmarish stories that leapt into my head seeing this.

Nightmare 1

My father was Catholic, my mother was raised UCC. For various reasons, we worshiped with the Methodist church for the majority of my childhood.

But not all religions believe this is okay. When you lose the separation of church and state, this starts to matter. Really matter. Some countries even criminalize apostasy. Some groups have taken religious affiliation even father. For example, under the Nazis, you would be considered Jewish with as few as one Jewish grandparent. Two Jewish grandparents and you were deported to the death camps.

So where is the story in all of this?

I saw the picture and began imagining a dystopian alternate reality where religious intolerance between the Christian sects has resurfaced. Where my Catholic grandparents are enough to get me and my two girls ripped away from my husband and herded like cattle into refugee camps.

I lose my job. My livelihood. My ability to provide for my family.

My girls lose their home. Their medical care. And their safe and comfortable lives. Instead of my toddler learning her alphabet and my pre-schooler developing her reading skills, we’re struggling just to eat.

As a mother to these two amazing little girls, you know I would give them anything I had, skip my own meals for them. As so many mothers in these horrible situations do. (And yes, I know this maternal sacrifice sounds cliche. I can’t tell you how hard I rolled my eyes about this before I had kids. But it’s real, oh so real.)

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How long can you face the hunger, the fear on your little ones’ faces, and the bleak future offering you nothing? How long can you hear the horror stories of children taken in the night for nefarious reasons, and there being nothing you can do to get them back or protect them?

Then you hear of this magical place called Quebec where it’s okay if you’re Catholic. Where you can live in peace. Where you can work again so your daughters can eat.

What would you do to get there?

Damned near anything.

After doing whatever must be done to get the fare, you can finally afford passage across Lake Superior and into the land of Canada.

You board the ship, only to have those magical Canadians sink it because you can’t come there. See, there have been others who came there who commit acts of terror. So now you’re banned. Even though all you wanted was to feed your children.

The nightmare gets worse.

In the sinking of the ship, you’ve lost both your daughters. The two things you had left to live for, the two little faces you went hungry for so their tummies would be a little more full.

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You’ve literally lost everything. Your spouse. Your home. Your children. You’re staring down the black maw of existential despair when a man whispers to you that you can have revenge. You can get even with those that killed your children and took away your hope. Those that have everything while you have nothing. And if you do this thing, he guarantees you that you’ll be reunited with your children in heaven.

Your sacrifice will make sure you and your girls are reunited with God.

I want to say that I am cynical enough to see through such nonsense. That I wouldn’t listen to the lies.

But that’s easy to say with a full stomach, wearing clean clothes, and sitting in my warm home with a computer on my lap.

I honestly don’t know what I’d do. I don’t think anyone does until they’re standing there facing it.

But I do know this. There is almost nothing I wouldn’t do to protect my little girls. I can’t imagine there are many mothers, many parents, that don’t feel that way.

life — *I know there are really bad people who want to use my empathy against me, but I cried real tears when I saw this.*

Nightmare 2

My thoughts then took another turn.

Perhaps my daughters survive the sinking of the boat, but now there is no hope. There is no magical Quebec for us. There is nowhere you can go, nothing you can do. You stare at your children’s tired, hopeless faces. Faces that used to be filled with love and happiness reflect only despair.

Your stomachs are always empty. You’re always cold. Always tired. And when your little ones cry, you can do nothing but hold them. You can’t even promise them things are going to get better because they can see through your lies.

Again the evil man comes to you.

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But now he offers you a deal.

You do this thing for him, this horrible thing, and it purges the “evil” from you and your daughters. They get to go home to their father. They get back the life that was taken from them. They will be fed. They will be warm. They will be safe.

Would I give my life for my little girls? Just the image of them cold, hungry and scared makes me cry genuine tears. You know I would.

Would I take the lives of others for my little girls? I want to say no. I want to believe I wouldn’t. But I don’t know. My daughters have never gone to bed hungry because I couldn’t feed them. They’ve never gone to bed cold because there was no roof over their head. They’ve never gone to bed scared because I couldn’t protect them.

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Whatever choices the powers-that-be make, I hope they understand the overwhelming love between a parent and a child. I hope they understand what we’d do, the lengths we’d go, for them. I hope they understand this and can find a way to keep out the bad but offer a sanctuary for those who just want to see their kids fed, clothed, and happy.

What about you? Ever think of dystopian alternate realities? Ever lay awake worried about your kids? Grandkids? If you don’t have kids, maybe you worry about nieces or nephews? Or maybe you just sleep very peacefully and now understand why my over-active imagination makes it impossible for me to read horror?

Who is Vera Rubin?

February 20, 2017 ~ Elizabeth Drake ~ 5 Comments

I was saddened by a recent article in the Economist over the death of Vera Rubin. I was even more sad that it seemed like almost no other news outlets covered it.

Who is Vera Rubin? She is the physicist who proved the existence of Dark Matter.

She reshaped cosmology with her stunning discovery, yet she never won a Nobel Prize for Physics.

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If you read the article, you’ll learn of a brilliant woman that faced stupid obstacles like not having a bathroom available to her. A woman who was told a colleague would present her work for her, and of course, he’d take the credit for it.

She said no.

A woman who had to put her work aside to raise her children, because that’s what women did.

Makes me wonder what more she could’ve accomplished if instead of fighting for a bathroom, she’d been given the same resources as her male colleagues. After all, look what she did with the hurdles she faced.

Reading this article made me glad for the how far we’ve come, but it also reminded me that we’re still not all the way there.

As a bright-eyed freshman, I walked into my Calculus II class and realized I was one of two women in the class. The professor looked at me, snorted, and said I wouldn’t be in his class by the end of the semester. I was shocked. Enraged. And hurt.

I worked my tail off that semester, and I pulled an A in the class. Beauty of math at this level is there’s one correct answer. Hate me or not, I could do the work.

But that professor still won.

I changed my major at the end of the semester.

See, he wasn’t the only patronizing, demeaning professor or student I endured. Frankly, there were certain other students that made the classroom feel slightly hostile. I’d get a sick feeling in my stomach if they sat by me, and I was sure they were saying mean things about me.

Mean girls in high school was one thing, but they never questioned my right to simply be.

It was things like that which drove me from the engineering program and to the business school even though the only class I didn’t make an “A” in that semester was German.

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I liked the business school a whole lot better. I felt like it was “okay” for me to be there. No one made harassing or threatening overtures. The accounting class was 50% female, so most group projects saw at least one other woman working on it with me. Almost half of my accounting professors were female, too. The math was way easier, but there were other things that made it challenging enough to keep my interest. Good job prospects didn’t hurt, either.

I wasn’t as sure of myself at eighteen as I am now. I couldn’t handle being singled out. Even though I work in a male dominated field now, it doesn’t bother me. I have no issue being the only female at a staff meeting. Or any other meeting, for that matter.

But it bothered me a lot then. Enough to chase me away.

Maybe that made me weak, but it also means the world lost all the contributions I could’ve made to the field.

Makes me wonder how many Vera Rubins there could’ve been.
How about you? Ever walk away from something you wanted because you felt like an outsider? Do you regret it? Maybe you stuck with something really hard? Where did you find the gumption to do it? How did it turn out?

Our Deepest Fears

February 13, 2017 ~ Elizabeth Drake ~ 11 Comments

I read an article in GQ of all places (I know, the depths of the internet I troll), that made a very interesting point on insults and fear.

When someone insults someone else, the insult is enlightening of the person giving it. For example, if Woman A calls Woman B fat, that tells us that Woman A does not find worth in herself unless she meets a certain body ideal.

Intelligence is another example.

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This is only insulting if you value intelligence. Clearly, the person who wrote this meme does. But this may not hold true for everyone. I know when I was in middle and high school, being intelligent, especially as a girl, was not highly valued (sad, but true).

The idea that an insult tells you more about the person delivering it makes a lot of sense to me, and it could be a great way to explore a character’s fears. Whether protagonist or villain, any insults they throw out would show what’s important to them.

Honor. Faith. Love. Monogamy. Whatever it is that your character views as important.

For example, in my work-in-progress, Knight of Valor, when a vampire insults the heroine and calls her weak, that’s really of reflection of the vampire’s own fear of not be able to do as her master commanded.When a necromancer calls the heroine a whore, it’s a result of his fear of her choosing another over him.

As I think through this, though, I also realize that the importance of the insult varies greatly on who is delivering it.

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Does the heroine care about being called weak by the vampire sent to retrieve her or a whore by the necromancer that wants her? Not at all. They simply don’t matter to her. This doesn’t generate action on her part because it doesn’t resonate with her values.

In Crowned Prince, the insult dynamic took a different turn when a very respected High Knight uses some subtle and some less-than-subtle insults on a power-hungry prince. But these tell us that honor, loyalty, and dedication are very important to the High Knight. The insults are also more meaningful because they’re coming from him, and the hero and heroine respond accordingly.

Not sure this will change my writing, but it does give me another way of looking at my characters. Another way of understanding them, developing them, and digging a bit deeper.

How about you? Any of your characters ever use insults? Do they tell you more about them? Show you what the character fears? Or does it give you insights into whoever is being insulted?

Horror

March 7, 2016 ~ Elizabeth Drake ~ 1 Comment

I read one Stephen King book and kept my drapes closed for a month. I never read another. I have never liked being scared. I don’t do corn mazes, haunted houses, or scary movies.

Not sure if it’s something intrinsic to me or if it’s because it fuels twisted dreams I’ve had most of my life. Lately, I have been haunted by dreams of a Dexter (watched one episode, wish I hadn’t), Law &Order SVU and occult mash up. The dreams follow a team of detectives as they investigate some gruesome murders.

In one dream, the killer ripped people in half at the spine above the hips and somehow preserved the horror on their faces even as they decomposed. He then buried their top halves to preserve their expression forever. My team of investigators found them and were looking for their bottom halves in hopes of finding clues that would lead to the killer.

A second investigation involved the junior member of the team coming upon the gruesome murder site first with the local police and photographing it for evidence, not realizing the murderer wasn’t done as they had yet to move and properly position the bodies. The murderer then stalks this junior member to get the camera. Not because of incriminating evidence, but because it showed their “work in progress.”

Strangest thing about my dreams, while they are in vivid color and sound, there is never any smell. Small kindness, I suppose.

DH is intrigued, especially as he knows I avoid anything scary and have for my whole life. He thinks I should write it all down and turn the dreams into stories. He wants to see what happens to these investigators. Learn more about the murderers and why they are doing what they’re doing (feeds into the occult). I don’t want to add any more fuel to the imaginative fire and would rather find a way to dream of unicorns and rainbows!

Risk

February 5, 2016 ~ Elizabeth Drake

After a couple of weeks (maybe months) of soul searching, I am still trying to decide whether or not to query my finished manuscript.

I poured man weeks of time into this work and a great deal of love. That word sounds funny (especially coming from me), but it’s true. You don’t put that much of yourself into something unless you love it. And I would like to share that with other people, maybe convince them to love these characters as much as I do.

Even if I am extremely lucky and am able to get the manuscript published, I am putting a lot of myself on the line. Any rejection feels like a personal rejection because you have put so much of yourself into it.

What is others don’t like it?

What will the publisher make me change?

What if I don’t like the changes required to get it published?

What if no one buys it?

I’m sure I can come up with a dozen more things, but I’m not going to try. I’m already worried enough.

I think this is the doubt writers and other creative types are plagued with. Why put yourself on the line like this?

That’s the real question, isn’t it? Is it worth putting yourself out there? Opening yourself to the nameless, faceless criticism that comes with creating something?

I don’t have an answer. Not yet.

Elizabeth Drakes's Site

Be There Dragons