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Ah yes, I’ve heard of that sort of thing! Its sounds pretty cool. If I’m only sleeping very lightly I can do that, but not when I’m deeply asleep.
I have had 50+ emails once, but I’d been away for the weekend. However the percentage is still the same. I wake up with ten emails, nine of which are from kp.
But on the days when we talk alot, I probably do get fifty emails!
INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
@seekjustice No, I can’t do it when I’m deeply asleep either. 🙂
Oh, I see. I haven’t been away yet since joining KP except for one night spent in a hotel with my mom when we traveled north for my Christmas present concert. And even then I brought my computer and I think was able to post two or three posts. I guess I’ll have the real experience of being away next month when conference season starts. Then we’ll be travelling to several different conferences and I probably won’t have much computer time.
Yes…we talk an overly large amount, don’t we? 😛
I’ve been thinking about that list of American history I’m supposed to be giving you, and realized I hadn’t read a really good book, so I’m ordering it for myself now! 😀
I don’t have a nice complete list like you gave me, since most of what I read are out of print historical fiction books…but I have read some biographies and classics. You want a small list now?
"Sylvester - Sylvester!"
Then you’ll be getting 50+ emails from KP 😛
I don’t mind out of print his-fic because I use both Librivox and Gutenberg so I might be able to find some on there.
I also went to the library and got out a book on the Civil War and one on the American Revolution. Sure, I’d love a small list.
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INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
@seekjustice Oh, if I can give you my favorite public domain books the list will be miles long! 😀 Don’t worry, I’ll keep down to a very few right now. By the way, you didn’t really give me any his-fics yourself? Do you read many? Do you have any recommendations? I do read true history books but enjoy his-fic better. 😉
Oh, you did? Cool!
The Courtship of Miles Standish by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is amazing! It’s historicity is questioned, but it is about the Pilgrims and Plymouth Colony. Some people say the story depicted is true, and some say it isn’t. I prefer to believe it is, since it’s a really nice story. 😀 Longfellow apparently wrote another really good poem/book called Evangeline, but that’s the one I am ordering, so I can’t recommend it since I haven’t read it yet! 😉
If I’m going to do this in chronological order, I would say watch 1776 which I’ve recommended to you before. By the way, have you listened to any more of the songs?
Then, I’ll say read Huckleberry Finn, which is a historical fiction/satirical book by our beloved Mark Twain, or Samuel L. Clemens. (Twain was his pen name.) That’s set in the 1850s, I believe, just before the Civil War. So I’ll give you the most controversial book from the Civil War period as well: it’s titled Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and is by Harriet Beecher Stowe. I haven’t read the whole thing, since I attempted to read it when I was much younger and some of the scenes were a little heavy for me, so I skimmed it. That book stirred up the anti-slavery movement and caused great controversies between the abolitionists and slave owners. One more Civil War book which will give you the Confederate point of view would be G. A. Henty’s With Lee in Virginia. Henty was British, and since the British supported the Confederates during the Civil War, he wrote from the Southern view. You can actually probably find all of those on Gutenberg, but I’m not sure.
Now for the cowboys! 😀 A really well done movie is Two Flags West from 1950. It’s about how both Northerners and Southerners had to work together when they went out west. As for books, anything by Zane Grey, William MacLeod Raine, or B.M.Bower is usually very good, and they’ve each got lots of books on Gutenberg.
Down South a very sweet series is the Little Colonel series by Annie Fellows Johnston. She has a very unique style of weaving fairy tales and fake legends into her tales to teach her characters something.
Going back East my favorite books about social life in the early 1900s are the Patty series by Carolyn Wells!!! (That’s the window scene series, remember? 😀 ) Those are very light reads, and I know you like heavier stuff usually, but I consider that if I can ever learn to write dialogue as well as Wells did I will be an amazing author! Her dialogue is perfection itself. I have no idea how she managed to capture the feeling of true banter as well as she did. You’ll have to look up a list to find out what order the series is in, though.
Fast-forward to the ’40s and there are two books on Gutenberg from as late as that time period, both by Ruby Lorraine Radford. I think they give a good picture of both homefront and battle life during WWII. My favorite American WWII movie is Since You Went Away from 1944.
Ohhh, I’m going to stop. Oh, my goodness! I said it would be a short list, but it doesn’t look short at all! Sorry. 🙁 😀 If you ever get through it and want more recommendations I’ll give them to you, but I’m afraid I may have bogged you down for life!
"Sylvester - Sylvester!"
I am working on my Camp NaNo project and will hopefully get a bit further into the actual story soon.
Either of you still writing? @rochellaine @seekjustice
Writer | Freelance Editor
Inspiration<@jess-penrose I am attempting to convince myself that I should be working on my Camp NaNo project rather than writing fanfiction for @seekjustice ‘s book. 😀
What’s you Camp NaNo project about?
"Sylvester - Sylvester!"
Fun fun.
Well, my blurb thing is this…
In a world where science reigns, and the society relies on the advancement of human abilities in order to keep moving forwards, genetic modification turns into a political war. People are taken in as ‘Experiments’ and are used to test new ways to advance society. Failed Experiments are treated as creatures less than humans and are cast out from society.
It has been five years since Michael Rentson used the new discovery of teleportation to lead an army across the entire world and conquering it under his reign. The increased security and seemingly magical technology tames the world who are all ready to listen to their new leader who legalises the use of Experiments.
One Experiment is slightly unusual. Connor Daleson is the son of one of the world’s leading scientists, Regina Daleson who had accidentally turned her other son into a failed Experiment and left him mindless. The grief-ridden woman spends all of her waking hours trying to find a way to fix her eldest son…or replace him.
Connor spends his days in military training, and making sure that no one finds out his secret of being an Experiment. Upon returning home one day, his mother injects him with a fluid that altered his atoms so that he could travel through the dimensions.
Being chased by Rentson’s men who want his blood and therefore the ability to conquer all of the dimensions—Connor and his sister Laura join with a young Experiment girl called Ashley to protect the dimensions, and to find the truth of the price of human freedom.
Writer | Freelance Editor
Inspiration<I have to disappear now, but I’ll try to compile a list of my favourite Aussie his-fics for you 🙂
@jess-penrose do you read historical? Do you have any Aussie recommendations for Rochellaine?INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
@jess-penrose Sorry! I didn’t see your post since you didn’t tag me, and you might have left by now. But that sounds extremely interesting! 🙂 I love sci-fi, though I prefer more realistic sci-fi than the near-fantasy you have there. But your story does sound pretty cool.
@seekjustice Okay, I’ll go to bed. 😀 😛 See you tomorrow, I hope!"Sylvester - Sylvester!"
@rochellaine That’s okay, and byyye!
@seekjustice Ooooh, I haven’t recently, but I love anything by Jackie French. I mostly read for Australian things, anything by Henry Lawson and A.B.Patterson.Writer | Freelance Editor
Inspiration<@rochellaine And I’m so sorry! I didn’t realise that I hadn’t tagged you. *headdesk*
Writer | Freelance Editor
Inspiration<@seekjustice I’m not here because I am writing but because I have a question for you specifically and didn’t think it worth creating a new thread. (I hope that’s okay 😉 )
Anyways I know that you like to write stories that are retellings and would love to hear your general thoughts and advice about writing them. 🙂
and I was so confused
No worries, that’s fine! I love answering questions 😀
I actually just wrote a blog post on this, which you can check out if you like. https://anordinarypen.wordpress.com/2018/03/24/finding-inspiration-for-a-retelling/
I really love writing retellings, I think for the same reason I like reusing and recycling material objects, because it’s one thing to create something out of thin air, but it’s a completely different thing to take something old and make it into something completely new, and that’s what I love doing. To some extent, all stories are recycled, but retellings have something special about them since you’re doing it more purposefully.
basically, I think the most important thing about writing a retelling is that you need to offer some sort of twist that isn’t in the original. If you’re planning making a retelling out of a story, you need to ask “What if”. Marissa Meyer writes some really good fairy tale retellings and in her first one, Cinder, she asks “What if Cinderella was a cyborg?” and that set the groundwork for the character of Cinder and adds some really interesting plot devices.
I think it’s also important not to go for the super popular fairy tales or stories, because Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty etc have been done to death, and people just aren’t really interested in it anymore. Which is why I like doing classic novels 😀
And lastly, because otherwise I’ll scare you off with a super long post, I think we retell stories so that they’ll reach a different audience, or make the same audience see things differently. With my Les Mis retelling, I did it because I think people often see classics as irrelevant now, just because they were written 200 years ago. But they aren’t really, because the injustice Victor Hugo wrote about still exists. Not under our noses, like it did back then, but in more subtle ways, like the factories where most of clothes are made. So by “revamping” it, setting it in a dystopian society and aiming it at teens instead of adults, I hope it succeeding in showing a new audience something.
If you have anymore questions, let me know! I am exceedingly passionate about retellings and will tell you all I know! Are you planning on writing one?
INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
@seekjustice Hi! I’m here. It’s a little earlier than usual, but are you ready to write yet?
"Sylvester - Sylvester!"
@seekjustice @jess-penrose Well, I’m back! Are either of you Australians around? Because I’m afraid most of the other Americans have gone to bed by now… 😛
SeekJustice, I finished A Little Bush Maid this morning, and got so into it that I had read half of the second book, Mates at Billabong, all at once before I realized how far I had gotten! 😀 I now love the series and can’t wait to read the rest. 😉
"Sylvester - Sylvester!"
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