Tales from the Raven

A discussion about violence in fiction (specifically YA and Middle-grade) in the comments section of a post by agent Nathan Bransford has left me with the need toss my two cents out there.  Perhaps more than two cents.  I don’t often pull out a soap box, but this might be one of the times I do.  Consider yourself forewarned.

The thing is, while people’s comments came down in just about every possible position on censorship and what is or isn’t appropriate levels of violence in kids’ novels, one common assumption was that it’s the parents job to pick out appropriate books and watch over their kids’ reading.  And I heartily agree, so no problems there.

The difficulty is that some commenters strongly implied that if a parent isn’t reading all their kids’ fiction books before they can fall into the child’s grubby little paws, they’re a bad parent.  Or, at least, not terribly involved and perhaps a tad irresponsible.

Nonsense.

As a parent, I know my kids’ interests, discuss books with them, and chat over life, the universe and everything.  It would be easy to argue that my greatest challenges as a mother is stepping back and allow my kids space, to let them grow in independence.  But I haven’t the chance of an ice cube in the Sahara at noon of pre-reading every one of the books my kids read.  I’m sure with kids that read a book every other week, that could be done.  Maybe if they read a book or two a week.  But it’s not unusual for a child of mine on a reading kick to consume four or five books in a week.  Often big fat books, mind.

Uhm, folks, they’ve got more free time than me–I can’t keep up with that!

And what about families with a wondrous, reading child plunked down in the midst of non-readers, or casual readers?  Who is going to guide that child’s fiction consumption?  To assume that every reading child is followed around by a parent with the time and energy to pre-read or read in tandem every book consumed by that child is just naive.

Now, as I writer, I don’t want anyone censoring me.  I believe in being true to the story, and those story truths might/will offend some parents’ sensibilities and could expose the reading child to everything from bad grammar to weird world views to, yes, violence that is not helpful or healthy for that child.  Kids develop at different rates, and also go through stages of their life–while dealing with grief, for example–when some otherwise appropriate and true to story content isn’t going to be right for them.

But, there’s an easy fix!  If people would be honest in reviews, and discuss the nitty-gritty of fiction, that would help.  Even better would be the publishing world adopting a simple content guidance system, so parents and children would have more to guide reading selection.  Kids could still read books that push their boundaries, but parents would know which books really needed that pre-read and plenty of in-depth discussion.  Teachers could better inform parents of the content in books kids were reading in school.  This would also help parents know how to guide children through a series which gets progressively more mature in content.

There wouldn’t be any need for spoilers, either.  Just a general guide that would supplement reading categories–like Young Adult–which don’t necessarily give any clue to the appropriate audience.  After all, my understanding is that “YA” includes everyone from age 13 to 26, and let’s face it, that’s a pretty broad category.  I’m not sure why books don’t come with a content guide, but it seems to me that putting information into the hands of the prospective readers is a win-win.  And that doesn’t seem so bad.

My body and brain are protesting the new school hours so this is going to be short…but I couldn’t pass up the chance to link to my first publication as Suzanne Warr–gotta love that Z!

You can read the The Immortal Horse here, on Every Day Fiction, and be sure to leave a comment!

The stuffed suitcases are still waiting to be emptied, but I’m finding that after a summer of packing and unpacking, they can be ignored rather nicely.  Give me another week or two, and they’ll just be another piece of furniture I walk around.

Maybe if I put up a few pics from the summer trips, I can kid myself into thinking that suitcase-shaped furniture is all the rage.  Don’t you see?  Suitcases are just one of those touristy things you drag home, like over-sized seashells and mugs you can’t fit in your cupboard!

I give you, in no particular order:

An Anole, from Hilton Head Island.  A very friendly fellow, he jumped onto our daughter’s shoulder while we were taking a family pic.  Perhaps he saw a family resemblance the rest of us missed?

Then again, maybe he could see the rugged outlines of Colorado National Monument seared onto the back of my eyeballs, and just wanted a closer look.  Baked rocks under a blue sky–sounds like a lizard’s dream vacation.

And a perfect place to bask in the sun, right?  The fellow below was immortalized in rock roughly one thousand years ago.  I’d say he got a lot of mileage out of his vacation!

And, best yet, I’ll bet he didn’t have any nagging suitcases waiting when he got home.

Today the kids were stung by a jellyfish.  First the R girl started jumping about in the water and yelping, then two seconds later her brother hollered and tried to jump out of the waves.  Somehow I managed to miss it, which I personally have no problem with, though the kids thought it sad I couldn’t brag of being stung by a jellyfish.

Of course, that was later, after the lifeguard had squirted their welts with a vinegar and salt water mix.  Turns out our jellyfish was a sea nettle, like the one below.

We didn’t get to see the one that stung the kids, but the pics online look pretty cool.  Mostly we’re just glad it wasn’t a man ‘o war.  The lifeguard said they had a tiny man ‘o war wash up on the beach last week.  Our brush with the nettle will still impress the kids’ friends and their welts are fading fast.

Before the jellyfish incident we walked down to a tidal pool near the mouth of an inlet and met a clan of fiddler crabs.  I can’t tell if this guy is ready to run or warning me off.

Perhaps he’s just grumpy at all the beach goers who are disturbing his peace and quiet.

In other news my flash fiction story The Immortal Horse has been accepted by Every Day Fiction and will be published on August 25th.  It’s a kinda silly piece, but one I especially enjoyed writing because I got to blend magic with molten glass, and how can that not be fun?

We’re delighted to announce the arrival of the first egg from our spring chicks!

We recently looked up the age that we could expect eggs, and figured theses pullets wouldn’t lay ’til the middle of August, so this was a fun surprise.  Of course, they couldn’t be accommodating and lay it in their nesting box…that would be sensible and chickens aren’t big on the whole sensible thing.  They chose a much better spot for their egg.

Behind a bunch of tools stacked in a corner of the workshop!  I’m thinking we should give them something similar in their coop, and see if a couple of golf balls can coax them into trying the new nest.

We’re home, but still deciding how we feel about that.  For the most part I’m thrilled.  It was a fantastic adventure and wonderful visit to see family, but if it had gone on much longer I would have melted into a puddle of sludge.

Bloody sludge.

I swear we signed up for the non-violent vacation, but before we’d come home I had blood stains on a favorite t-shirt (thanks to a thirsty rose bush and a late night tp job), our daughter had smeared blood on one of her new shirts, and bled on several other family members as well, and I just discovered that one of my toenails was ripped backwards and has been bleeding in my shoe while I wasn’t looking.

Small wounds, I know, but we can’t all feed the vampires.  Some of us are more mosquito-sized donaters.

Of course there was plenty of sweat while we tramped around on the wonderful and weird cliffs of Colorado National Monument, ran all over Utah keeping up with the family and setting off fireworks, and hiked up to see the petroglyphs at Dinosaur National Monument.  But the sweat I’m referring to here is of a special kind.  The kind that beads a writer’s lip and drips from the written page as the writer wrings yet another edit out of their manuscript.

In other words, I’m yet again editing 13 Demon Days.  The first pages (and I only refer to them by that banal name because no swear words would do them justice) are getting extra attention and may soon be ditched for even newerest new first pages.  Yay for them.

I may get up some other pics from the trip, at least on FB, but I can’t resist a couple shots of the gargoyles we visited on the way home.  Thank goodness we had this church to look forward to–the thought of gargoyles waiting for me on the return trip sustained me through the long drive across Kansas and then back again.  Unfortunately I didn’t quite dare scale the building adjacent to the church, so these are ground-level pics and you may have to squint to make out the gargoyles.

Don’t worry if you have trouble making out his features.  The gargoyles are made of metal, not stone, and not the kind to come flying through the night to haunt your sleep or overturn the world.  But, if they do, be sure to let me know so I can come quick and see.  I suspect these fellows just may wing their way into a future book, and I’d love to get some pics should they take flight.

We love to hate our dentists, but I for one am really glad they’re there and can make tooth problems go away.  Of course, asking that the problem go away may be a tad too open-ended…today at the pioneer heritage village (circa 1860’s) on the wall in the blacksmith shop was a sign offering tooth extractions for a very reasonable rate of seven cents.  And a few streets down at the drug store I took a picture of this advertisement:

Yes, that’s offering drops of cocaine at a price of 15 cents for a sure cure for toothache.  Makes you wonder what else it would ‘cure’ while it was at it?

We made it safely to our first stop on the road west–the lovely St. Louis.  Yesterday we defied the summer heat and chilled with our black and white feathered friends at the St. Louis zoo,

Penguin Chorus

then finished up an evening out with family at the one and only spot for truly divine frozen custard–Ted Drews.

A relatively busy night, from the look of the lines, but we were grateful for the few minutes in line.  It takes more than a minute to decide between heath bar with oreo, the aptly-named Cardinal Sin, or some other combo of deliciousness.

And in and around all the fun and driving, I continue to work on 13 Demon Days.  Somewhere in Tennessee I had a breakthrough, and figured out how to transition the new pacing I’m implementing so it flows naturally into the rest of the novel.  It looks like I’m not the only one reconstructing a story and wondering which scenes need to be moved and which will have to go.  There’s a fun post by Bryan Russell on agent Nathan Branford’s blog that sums it up well.

Tomorrow, bright and early, we roll out the door and begin the first marathon day of our cross-country trip.  I’ve said no to the over-ripe bannanas which thought they should be made into muffins before we leave.  I told the turkeys and chickens no when they begged to have free range of the pasture while we’re gone.  I told myself no when I thought to stay up ’til my usual witching hour when I know the alarm will ring loudly in the morning.  I gave my dh an emphatic no when he wondered if I could cut back on bathroom breaks tomorrow.  And when the kids ask if we’re there yet?  I’ve got my answer ready…

NO!

“Mom, there’s a copperhead in the garden.”

That got my attention, and got me off the phone.  A smart tactic if the kids just wanted to give me a scare, but it turns out they were right.  A copperhead must have been prowling in the pasture last night, and got himself tangled in the deer netting.  He was so wound up when I went to check the kids’ find that he was constricting his movement and had no hope of getting free.

We came inside and googled what to do when you find a copperhead in your garden, and placed a couple calls to the wildlife people in the area.  By the time we went outside to check on it less than an hour later, it was dead.  I can’t say that I’m not relieved.  Apparently the most common way to get bitten by a copperhead is when one tries to kill it or get it to leave.

So, no more copperhead.  Now I just have one question–was it alone?