book review: Slow Dancing On Dinosaur Bones, by Lana Witt

 Tom Jett, with his freshly minted college degree in philosophy, wanders from California across the country, looking for the right mountain range for ... he's not sure what. When his Toyota breaks down in the little town of Pick in southeast Kentucky, Tom figures this must be it, whatever it is.

Unfortunately, Tom arrives just as a corporation starts buying up local properties for a mining operation. He's put up in an old hillside cabin by local mechanic/blues artist Gilman Lee, who asks Tom to watch for signs the corporation is auguring coal from under his property. In short order Tom spots Gemma Collet, her skin milky white due to a medical condition, bathing naked in a nearby creek. Not long after, former resident Rosalie Wilson, Gilman's lost love, arrives from Florida, on the run from her rich, charming, homicidal lover.

Yes, it's a long book.

https://www.amazon.com/SLOW-DANCING-DINOSAUR-BONES-Novel/dp/0684815354

It's a little hard to describe the plot of Slow Dancing On Dinosaur Bones--in that way it's something of a literary novel, right up to an ending that's sudden and seems pointless, if inevitable. Gilman Lee is really the main protagonist, and the main fight is against an uncaring coal company that may not own his property, but does own the mineral rights. But things get complicated, quickly, and we're treated to numerous points of view as the characters go about their lives in ways that, often without realizing it, have great effect on others.

You should know that the book came out in 1996, although that doesn't really matter other than the lack of technology that may have made things a bit easier for everyone. Lana Witt has written a sequel of sorts, called The Heart of a Thirsty Woman, which at least in the beginning takes place in Pick. To give you an idea of my thoughts on the first book, I'll be tracking down the second for a read.

My family comes from that area of Kentucky--it was fun to recognize various towns and places mentioned. Lana Witt surely also comes from down there, because she has not only the locations and terrain down, but also the people. Good and bad. She also knows how to pick up the threads of a story and weave them together into a fascinating tale.

My only complaint about Slow Dancing On Dinosaur Bones is my pet peeve: The characters do things that often go against their own best interest, for absolutely no good reason, when a dab of common sense would solve their problems. In other words, the people of Pick are sometimes so much like real people it makes you wince. It's fascinating and a great read, but don't expect escapism.

http://markrhunter.com/
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

NaNoWriMo special: Back Home Again, In ... Kentucky

NaNoWriMo novel ... first draft finished! 58,264 words, a number that's sure to grow between now and the final draft. Hope everyone had a fun month of writing!

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There's an old saying in the writing biz: Write what you know.

If taken literally, it's a dumb saying.

How well did Baum know flying monkeys? When was the last time Clarke set foot inside a giant alien spaceship? How much time did I spend in a girl's summer camp?

Just to be clear, I did not spend any time in a girl's summer camp, except when it was empty during the off season. And yet I still set my novel The No-Campfire Girls inside a girl's summer camp. And by the way, my main character was a teenage girl, and I have no experience being one of those, either.

So "write what you know" has only limited usefulness as a rule, although like many rules there's a germ of truth in it. Certainly an author should research their subject as much as possible. I can take liberties when creating my spaceship, the hapless corvette Beowulf. Similarly, Baum wasn't worried about anyone complaining, "That's not like any Tin Woodman I ever met!" But if you have a character put a silencer on a revolver, you're going to hear about it.

The same goes for setting. If you set your book in New York City, you'd better darned well know which street will get you to the George Washington Bridge. If you create your own fantasy land (and haven't we all done that), you'd better understand why your main city gate faces westward, and which bridges you're likely to find trolls under. Or, you could combine the two and make a trollgate.

I've taken the easy way out up until now. My first two novels and their accompanying short story collection were set in Noble County, Indiana, a place I'm pretty familiar with--having lived there all my life. My fourth book in that series was The No-Campfire Girls and also set in Indiana, although the southern part of the state. While I have little experience with summer camps, I toured my wife's Girl Scout camp, and based the layout of my Camp Inipi on it.

Finally I set a novel outside Indiana--but Radio Red takes place in the area of northwest lower Michigan where I used to vacation frequently, and I was pretty familiar with it. Real places have that advantage, that you can steal locales. There are also disadvantages: In The Notorious Ian Grant, my characters visited a flower shop in Albion, Indiana, in a building where I used to live. That's fine, but the flower shop later moved out.

So there you have the pros and cons of real and fake settings. When I started planning my NaNoWriMo novel I was going to again set it in Indiana, but at the last moment I decided to mix it up a bit: Fire on Mist Creek (On? At? On.) is set in northern Kentucky. It's not far over the Indiana state line, but I'm still dipping a toe into another area.

My town, Mist Creek, is made up, and based to an extent on the towns near where my grandparents lived when I was a kid. But that was southeastern Kentucky, in a mountainous region--well, mountainous to a Hoosier. For the new book, I pictured the other side of the Ohio River from the Madison, Indiana area, which is not nearly as up and down. My wife and I have also kicked around setting it closer to Paducah, also a Kentucky region ... but if you cross the Ohio there you're in Illinois.

I think south from Madison gives me a terrain more accurate to what I'm envisioning: hilly, rugged in places, a rural character where small towns have a certain amount of isolation. You people down there in places like Bedford, LaGrange, and Pendleton, let me know if I'm wrong!

NaNoWriMo special: Naming characters

45,000 words! Way ahead of schedule.
 

Naming characters is one of the great joys of a fiction writer, when it's not one of their great nightmares.

We all want to come up with the next Sherlock Holmes, or Indiana Jones, or Stan Lee. (Isn't he a character?) It can be more complicated according to the genre: With science fiction you might need a Han Solo, with fantasy a Bilbo Baggins. Alliteration is your friend ... sometimes. After all, we have Clark Kent, or anyone invented by the previously mentioned Stan Lee.

Sometimes I go to great effort to give my character names meaning, while other times I just go with what sounds good. In my first published novel, my male protagonist was famous for taking extreme risks, even as he denied being a risk taker. His name? Chance, of course.

With its sequel, The Notorious Ian Grant, I was creating a character who already had a last name--he's the son of a minor character from Storm Chaser. I wanted something to fit his rakish, shall we say notorious personality, and settled on Ian. I also had to take into consideration what his father, an old school type, would have named him.

Often I painstakingly go through the meanings, sorting through my close to a dozen books about names (hey, I'm ready to name your baby!) And that's fine, but it might be more important to pick out a name that just doesn't conflict in other ways.

Do you have two characters whose names begin with an R? Or do all your characters have one syllable last names? Do the first and last names fit together? Say my name fast, without the middle initial ... I wouldn't give a character my name. Look at your cast list, and make sure two of the names aren't too like each other.

You might also consider whether to give your characters names that could apply to either sex, like Robin. I love the female name, Dani. But if Dani's best friend and her family all call her Dan, it could cause some confusion with the reader.

Then there's the question of ethnic names. In the Storm Chaser series is a character named Fran--her full name is Francesca. In my unpublished novel Beowulf: In Harm's Way is a character named Sachiko Endo, whose parents hail from Japan by way of another planet. Now, that story is set 500 years in the future, so there's no reason to think someone named Maria Nejem or Mohan Singh are from any particular place on Earth, or even from Earth at all. But there's also no reason to think my ship's crew will all have names like James and Leonard.

My current novel in progress is a romantic comedy. While the romance genre doesn't have the strict rules it once did, there are certain limitations on names, at least for American audiences. Colin and Wyatt are fine names for male protagonists, depending on the sub-genre; Larry Duckworth would probably not be your male lead.

I named my male protagonist Reed Carter. Why? Because I liked it; I had a backache at the time and didn't feel like looking up meanings. These things happened. Similarly, my female lead is Alice Delaney: I've always liked Alice, and Delaney had an extra syllable that seemed to work well with the first name, and Reed's name.

Now, with secondary names you can have a bit more fun, but be careful if your character might end up with a larger role in a sequel, or series. In Storm Chaser, I gave Chance Hamlin's little sister the name Beth, mostly as an afterthought. She was just a minor character, after all. But in the tradition of Urkels and Fonzies everywhere, she took on a life of her own and has so far shown up in three novels and a short story collection. If, in the new book, Alice's friend Rina Quade takes off, hopefully I'll be able to live with the name.

Finally there's naming characters after friends, family members, and enemies.

Don't.

Well, not without their approval, anyway. Never underestimate the power of people to be offended. Of course, if the character has a different last or first name, and their hair color is different, or even if they're of different gender, hey--just a coincidence, right? Before you do this, know who you're honoring. If you're dishonoring them, change the character around a lot.

My new book (working title Fire on Misty Creek) is set in northern Kentucky. It features a volunteer fire department, and to fill out its membership roles I chose popular last names from Knott County, where my relatives came from--even though its in southeast Kentucky. A little honoring of the roots, there.

The important part, when choosing names, is to have them fit the character, and to avoid confusion. If you end up with a Sherlock Holmes, that's just gravy.

He is Groot.