Musings – Page 6 – Cindy Young-Turner

Happy 2013 and a new writer’s wish list

Hope you all had happy holidays and wishing you joy and peace and success for 2013. I’m emerging from the whirlwind of December and trying to get things back on track and do some planning for the upcoming year. The nice thing about January is the blank slate. Anything is possible. I hope there will be big things to come this year.

I did a writer’s wish list post last year and I thought I’d do another for this year. I’m feeling a bit more introspective this time around. Stuff doesn’t seem as important as the ability to spend time with loved ones.

The 2013 Writer’s Wish List

1. Time

This was on the list last year. I think it’s a given. We all need more time. I hope to prioritize more in 2013 and make time for the things that are really important to me. Life is too short to waste it.

2. Confidence

I’m working on this one. Sometimes it’s hard to have confidence in myself as a writer. I’m probably my own worst critic. My wonderful critique groups aren’t shy about telling me when something needs work and giving praise when something is good, but I need to remind myself also that yes, I can write and sometimes I even write well.

3. Better networking skills

I’m working on this one also. I did Balticon this year and was a panelist and survived. I even talked to a few people. I’m hoping to participate again in 2013. I’m planning to do some book festivals and other events, so this will also help build on #2.

4. An ending to my current work in progress

I admit, I’m envious of the Crescent Moon Press authors who already have sequels out. I’m working hard on Thief of Destiny and I’m determined to finish it this year. Thief of Hope has had a pretty positive reception, and Journey to Hope, a short prequel, just came out in December. I hope book 2 will help bring more fans to the series.

5. Good health and happiness to friends and family

This isn’t writing related, but I’ve found that my mental health really does impact my writing. 2012 was a tough year for a lot of people. When bad things happen, it puts into perspective what is really important. I wish I could be closer to my family and my dearest friends, but at least technology makes it easier to stay in touch. I want to send out healing thoughts to a good friend who was recently diagnosed with lymphoma and is undergoing chemo. He expects to be in remission this year, but it’s going to be a challenge getting there. His wife and I have been friends for ages and I was lucky to be able to attend their New Year’s Eve wedding a number of years ago. Please check out his blog (http://myrepochbattle.wordpress.com) where he’s sharing his experiences and could use some support.

More than anything, 2012 was a reminder that we all need to be there for each other. If nothing else, I hope this is one wish that will be fulfilled this year.

This must stop

Like many people, I was horrified to hear about the shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School yesterday. This is a town not unlike the small town where I grew up in Massachusetts. My heart is breaking for the parents, teachers, and community who have lost loved ones. My daughter is four and a half and will be starting kindergarten next fall, and I can’t help picturing her and her preschool classmates. I can’t even imagine what those parents must be going through. They should be celebrating the holidays, not mourning the loss of their child.

And like many people, I want to know why and how this continues to happen. There have been too many mass shootings. No one wants to talk about gun control, but really, is it too much to ask that we make automatic weapons impossible to obtain? That we enforce the laws and make it more difficult for people who shouldn’t have guns to get them? I’m not saying take them away from responsible gun owners. But if you’re responsible, don’t you want to help prevent these senseless acts of violence? If you had to wait longer to obtain a gun and this prevented the loss of life, wouldn’t it be worthwhile?

Sure, criminals will find ways to get guns no matter what and no law will prevent that. But also an issue is the lack of mental health services for people who desperately need help. And the violent culture that pervades our society. There is a lack of compassion and common decency and sense of community. We don’t care about each other. We don’t help each other. Yes, I think our government has a responsibility to help its citizens, especially the most vulnerable (liberal here, if you haven’t figured that one out yet), but we also need to help ourselves and our fellow human beings. Somehow we have lost our community.

I truly believe it takes a village to raise a child. We need to start from the ground up: parents, schools, community. What is the fallback if those things fail? Who helps the kids who have nowhere else to turn? You can say it’s not your problem, but it’s our problem. None of us lives in a vacuum. We have to stop the cycle of violence and hopelessness. Please note that I’m speaking generally here because the motive behind Friday’s shooting hasn’t come out yet.

But something has to be done to end this. If twenty young children and the six people dedicated to educating them gunned down in a school–a safe haven–is not enough to wake us up as a country and ask what the hell is wrong here, then I don’t know what will.

If nothing else, please hug your children, cherish your friends and family, and stay active in your community. We really are all in this together.

When good characters make bad choices

This post has been rattling around in my head for a while. A few people who have read Thief of Hope have commented that they didn’t like Sydney, the heroine, at first. It’s an interesting comment. Sydney may not be the most likable of characters at the beginning of the book. She’s a pickpocket, she’s been a prostitute, and she also dealt with drug addiction. And you find all of this out in the first chapter. My hope is that despite her faults, she’s compelling enough to draw the reader into the story and want to find out more. She does make some bad choices over the course of the book because it’s a struggle for her to become the person she wants to be. Under pressure, she sometimes falls back on bad habits. I think that’s part of life, though. People don’t change overnight. Sometimes it really is a struggle and, to be cliche, sometimes you take two steps forward and one step back.

I’ll admit, I like to read about characters who have a bit of a dark side. Rogues and scoundrels who are trying to make a change or do the right thing appeal to me. Life is not black and white. Shades of gray are much more interesting. It may not come as a surprise that my favorite character when I first saw Star Wars was Darth Vader. Man, he was cool. Maybe I knew subconsciously that there was still good in him. A character’s inner journey also appeals to me. I enjoy reading about characters who grow and change over the course of a book. Some of my pet peeves about books these days are when I’m reading about a character who doesn’t change, at least not enough for my liking (yes, I’m talking about you, Hunger Games trilogy).

Sydney certainly isn’t meant to be seen as a role model. But I think her character is realistic for someone who’s been in her situation. This novel is fiction and meant to take you into a fantasy world where you’ll be entertained for a short while, but one of the best compliments for me as an author would be for people to look at Sydney and be inspired by her desire to change to follow what she believes to be right.

Being thankful

Wishing all of you who celebrate it a very happy Thanksgiving! I do have a lot to be thankful for. Employment (with health insurance), family, friends, a place to live. A lot of people on the East Coast were hit hard by Hurricane Sandy, and my publisher, Crescent Moon Press, was among them. It’s going to be a long recovery, and my heart goes out to those who have lost so much. When you live in comfort, it’s easy to forget the things that are really important because these days we are overloaded with stuff. Strip all of that away, and suddenly the stuff isn’t so important after all. So instead of celebrating the holidays by stuffing ourselves with turkey and pie, followed by the gift buying extravaganza known as Christmas, which begins with Black Friday (you couldn’t pay me to go near a mall this time of year), maybe we could focus on the things that really matter. Family, friends, and community are the things that keep us going in hard times. Hold them close and cherish the time you have with them. The stuff can wait.

Something spooky this way comes

I’m from Massachusetts and fall is by far my favorite time of year. There’s something about the beautiful red and yellow foliage and the changing of the light that turns everything gold. I love going apple picking and getting some many apples that you’re “forced” to make all kinds of apple treats–pies, bread, applesauce, baked apples, apple crisp, you get the idea. It’s the time of year to start hunkering down and getting ready for the long winter to come. There’s hot apple cider and pumpkins and hayrides and, of course, Halloween.

There’s a kind of magic in the air during fall, and particularly in October. You can almost feel like the walls between the worlds are growing thin and anything is possible. It’s a good time of year to get out the spooky stories. I recently read Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes as part of a group read on Goodreads. He’s a brilliant writer and he does creepy and psychological horror very well. I highly recommend it. Of course, almost as soon as I started the book our local carnival arrived. Yikes. I’m sure it was perfectly harmless, but I did not attend. Bradbuy’s October Country, the first book of his that I read, is a collection of deliciously eerie stories that are also perfect for this time of year.

I much prefer psychological horror to the gory kind. My imagination can scare me quite well. Authors like M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft, and Algernon Blackwood have written some terrifying short stories. And “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs made me want to turn on all the lights after reading it (although there was a brilliant spoof on The Simpsons that takes away from some of the original’s power when I picture Homer holding the monkey’s paw to make a wish).

What are some of your favorite fall activities? And what do you read when you’re looking for a good scare?