Leeeeeeeee! Welcome back! Got any new writing you're working on?

Thanks Ann & Susan

I don't have any of my art online. I bought what I thought would be a simple
digital camera (Kodak M340 about a year ago) but I'm still having issues with
it when I try to transfer or upload from it to my PC.
  Lee

New chapter for Secret of the Druids just posted. This one introduces two new characters.
A large pink man who can increase his size at will and his tiny friend, who looks a lot like
a ferret, but has a secret ability.

Any reviews appreciated...Lee

I didn't know you started reposting this one. I just printed the first chapter to read tonight. Yay! You're really back! About damn time!

Ha! Well, it looks like you republished, which is excellent because i remember the story, but not the minor details, ya know?

Last edited by Susan Stec (11-27-2012 19:44:55)

I entered "Hoeing Tomatoes" in the humor contest. Any comments welcome...

Thanks for all the reviews on Secret of the Druids, Ann
What can I review of yours? I've already done Roarks Raiders.
Lee

Ann Walters wrote:

I'm intrigued enough by what you've written that I want to keep reading, Lee! I'll wait for the details.

I'm working on Under the Almond Trees. I know it's not your thing, but give it a few chapters?

Okay Ann (digs toe in the dirt and smiles a boyish grin) If I gotta, I gotta.....

Erndog wrote:

Lee,

I read your reply about Chapter 1. I'll read chapter 1 again to get my ball bearings back in line. I think what you described helps, because it defines a realtionship, and would work to add more suspense (I think) to the story. It proposes a lot of 'what ifs' and "I wonder what will happen when...?"

Cool Ernie...Some of the folks here worked reviews on my first novel, Cable Hornman: The Bard Begins and I sometimes assume the reader knows certain things. I shouldn't do that, it's a bad habit to
get into. Each book has to stand on its own. When a reviewer asks for a clarification, it actually helps me
take a second look at a passage, or chapter, and see where I made an assumption that confuses the
reader.
See if the new chap 1 helps get you into Cable's motives.
Lee

Thanks Ernie

Lee, as promised here is a couple of sites on the use of em dashes vs commas or hyphens. As writers I think we need to use all tools available to us and the em dash has been around for many years. I am reading a book Audrey Rose, great book by Frank DeFelitta on reincarnation that was published in 1976, made into a move staring Anthony Hopkins not long after and both book and movie are still on the best seller list. He used em dashes quite a bit to create the same effect I am trying to create.

As promised, here is some information on using them and eclipses.  Read it with an open mind--we all have personal preferences.

Hey Lee. Comments on your comments. LOL
You said:
consciousness[,](—)annoying tugs of distraction from her soothing macabre thoughts. ...cosciousness-annoying...strange hyphenation...

***This is not a hyphen. A hyphen is ONE dash. This is called an em dash:

Using Em Dashes and En Dashes Properly
By Suzanne Gilad from Copyediting and Proofreading For Dummies

Although they are each a simple horizontal line, hyphens and the various dashes have their own appearances and specific uses. The shortest and most common is the hyphen, which is used for clarifying open compounds (such as "four-armed villains," as opposed to "four armed villains"), for separating number groups in phone and Social Security numbers, and for connecting written-out fractions like three-quarters.

Although many people call the hyphen a "dash," dash refers to another group of horizontal lines in text. The two most common dashes are the em dash and the en dash.
Em dash

Em dashes — so called because they are (at least historically) the width of the character m — are used for emphasis or interruption. They can be used on their own or in pairs to offset a word or phrase:

Many people seek help from naturopathic medical professionals — those who emphasize using diet, exercise, meditation, and other tools for improving health.
A vast amount of serotonin — about 95 percent of the body's total — is produced in the digestive system.

The double hyphen (--) is sometimes used in place of the em dash. You may notice that word-processing programs automatically convert double hyphens into em dashes for you. However, since the programs aren't infallible, some stray double hyphens may remain, so if you're copyediting on hard copy, you'll want to mark each em dash no matter how it appears in the text. The production editor will then make the global change to convert everything to proper em dashes. If you're proofreading, you need to make sure the change has been made and note any stray double hyphens that need to be corrected. (If you're copyediting electronically, just do a global search-and-replace to convert all double hyphens to em dashes — or vice versa, if that's what the production editor wants.)

You can create an em dash in Microsoft Office software (among others) by pressing Ctrl+Alt+– on the Number Pad. To do a find and/or replace, plug the code ^+ into either the Find What or Replace With text boxes to search for or replace with an em dash.

Em dashes also precede quotation attributions:

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.
— Kahlil Gibran

You may encounter a supersized first cousin of the em dash if you work on texts that include bibliography sections. The 3-em dash (which is the width of three m's in the corresponding font) most frequently appears in a bibliography when an author's name is cited more than once. Repeat listings by that same author feature a 3-em dash rather than the author's name again.
En dash

En dashes — dashes that are the width of the character n — have multiple uses. They're used to connect two items (usually numbers) that designate a range:

We submitted chapters 10–12 well after midnight.
I left at halftime with the score stuck at 3–1.
The January–February issue is due on newsstands tomorrow.

They take the place of hyphens when one part of an open compound is made up of two words:

The author is a Nobel Prize–winning physicist.

In the above example, Prize and winning are joined, but Nobel is just floating out there. The en dash works a little harder than a hyphen to show that the word Nobel is included in the open compound.

En dashes may also be used to indicate that tension or opposition exists in a relationship, or to show a direction of movement:

The article supports the tax–spend hypothesis: Tax revenues determine government spending.
The New York–Washington, D.C. run takes about three hours by train.



This is an eclipse ...:

n formal writing, the most common way to use an ellipsis is to show that you’ve omitted words. For example, if you're quoting someone and you want to shorten the quote, you use ellipses to indicate where you've dropped words or sentences.
Here's a quote from the book Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens: “I cannot help it; reason has nothing to do with it; I love her against reason.�

Now far be it from me to edit Dickens, but if I were a journalist under a tight word limit looking at that quotation, I'd be tempted to shorten it to this: “I cannot help it . . . I love her against reason.�  That middle part—“reason has nothing to do with it� —seems redundant, and taking it out doesn't change the meaning. Dot-dot-dot and it's gone, which saves seven words. Clearly, literature and journalism are not the same thing. ***note that the writer uses em (--) dashes in her explanation.

Here are the two websites:

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/ellipsis.aspx
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/u … perly.html

Last edited by Susan Stec (04-05-2013 09:04:33)

C Lee Brown wrote:

I sent you an email already on the subject of en, em dash use. Thought it would be
more appropriate than getting into a discussion on an open forum. I see you feel
very strongly about this.

I do, and put this up before I saw the email. I did answer it just now. You may remove it if you wish.