Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

janet reid wrote:

Now I just have to find the words and put them on paper - the last week has been less than stellar.

So it's 6pm and I just finished a chapter. Except, it's not finished because it ends in the middle of boooorrrrriiiinnnnnnggggggg. Nothing will make the reader turn to the next page.

grrrrrr, I have to be clever again. I don't do clever well. LOL

Ames, at least I have Anthony's wounds down to a tee. Oh yes, that wasn't me, that would be you. LOL

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402 Reply by njc

Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

You can't let the narrator step back and say something like "She couldn't have been more wrong," ?

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Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

For now, it ends where Isaac's sister approaches Catherine. Catherine is all worried, of course, not knowing if there is a problem. Readers might expect more to it too. It's pretty much nothing, that will be cleared up next chapter - mostly development of Matthew and Black J's characters before the real bomb is dropped a bit later in the next chapter. But it feels like a cheap shot ending it where Catherine asks Alice if something is the matter and knowing nothing is the matter.

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404 Reply by njc

Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

Open a question that gets resolved in the next chapter--but leads to the REAL issue.

Yeah, cheap trick, but if the question seems to follow from what happened before and camouflages the real issue well, it's a good trick bought cheap.

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405 Reply by janet reid (edited by janet reid 2015-11-16 04:04:01)

Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

I'll go cheap then! smile At least the romance is on the back burner with mystery the main focus again.

Oh, forgot to say thank you, so thank you! It's pretty late on your side of the States!

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406 Reply by njc

Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

Happy to help.

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407 Reply by amy s

Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

It's 1130 PM here. I'm just about to have lunch. What is this 'late' that you speak of?

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Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

amy s wrote:

It's 1130 PM here. I'm just about to have lunch. What is this 'late' that you speak of?

Enjoy lunch! I just posted the chapter I didn't think I would post today, take that K's cattle prod! tongue
1130PM is late. It's all relative? smile

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Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

janet reid wrote:
amy s wrote:

It's 1130 PM here. I'm just about to have lunch. What is this 'late' that you speak of?

Enjoy lunch! I just posted the chapter I didn't think I would post today, take that K's cattle prod! tongue
1130PM is late. It's all relative? smile

It's 9:30PM for me, but if it wasn't my day off, I'd be leaving work in half an hour. smile

Darnit, Janet. I need to catch up on reviews!

-Elisheva

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410 Reply by njc (edited by njc 2015-11-16 07:01:54)

Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

Elisheva Free wrote:

It's 9:30PM for me, but if it wasn't my day off, I'd be leaving work in half an hour. smile
Darnit, Janet. I need to catch up on reviews!
-Elisheva

Me too!  I've got four I really need to do, and another seven or eight if I want to catch up. sad

Sounds like you're working table service hours.

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Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

njc wrote:
Elisheva Free wrote:

It's 9:30PM for me, but if it wasn't my day off, I'd be leaving work in half an hour. smile
Darnit, Janet. I need to catch up on reviews!
-Elisheva

Me too!  I've got four I really need to do, and another seven or eight if I want to catch up. sad

Sounds like you're working table service hours.

24/7 tech support, actually. smile

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412 Reply by njc

Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

Oh, wow.  I love you.  smile  (Kidding, but I love people who do that work.)  Take a look at rinkworks.com/stupid .  It hasn't been updated in a long time, but I think you'll identify with it.

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Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

njc wrote:

Oh, wow.  I love you.  smile  (Kidding, but I love people who do that work.)  Take a look at rinkworks.com/stupid .  It hasn't been updated in a long time, but I think you'll identify with it.

I think I could spend my whole day on that site. lol

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414 Reply by njc (edited by njc 2015-11-23 09:28:01)

Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

ComputerWorld magazine, now online as computerworld.com, has a daily column called The Shark Tank (link at the bottom of their homepage).  I suggest you take it in small doses.

Oh, at one time the rinkworks Computer Stupidities page included this:

"You will read stories in this file that will convince you that among the human race are human-shaped artichokes futilely attempting to break the highly regarded social convention that vegetables should not operate electronic equipment. And yet, amidst the vast, surging quantities of stupidity are perfectly excusable technological mishaps - but that are amusing nonetheless. After all, even the best of us engages in a little brainless folly every once in a while."

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415 Reply by janet reid (edited by janet reid 2015-11-26 20:48:29)

Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

njc wrote:
Elisheva Free wrote:

It's 9:30PM for me, but if it wasn't my day off, I'd be leaving work in half an hour. smile
Darnit, Janet. I need to catch up on reviews!
-Elisheva

Me too!  I've got four I really need to do, and another seven or eight if I want to catch up. sad

Sounds like you're working table service hours.

I'm slowly catching up on reviews. Amy, done. njc, done. K absolved me from Victorious reviews until he had reviewed NS. (although I still would like to keep up with Victorious, I just don't have the time for everything I'd need to do and like to do). sad Elisheva, next. smile

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Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

Okay, good people. I have a challenge! (or maybe not at the rate you lot can come up with brilliant suggestions and ideas).

In any case, from what I could gather, clocks existed in the 16th century, but at best indicated hours, half hours and quarter hours, so no minutes and seconds. But I find myself mostly needing to refer to minutes and seconds. grrrrr

The best I have is, heartbeats for seconds, but I can only use it so many times and then it doesn't work anymore.

So, what other alternatives can you suggest to indicate seconds and minutes? You will have my eternal heartfelt gratitude if you can help a co-writer out with this one!

Thanks!
Janet

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417 Reply by amy s

Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

Personally, I replaced my time measurement with 'moments' instead of seconds. There isn't really a minute measurement in my world, so I paced time by how many footsteps that people took until they reached a place.

Since there is a Christian presence in your world, have the local church tower call the hour for mass. That way, the faithful count time by when the service starts and end working in the fields when the bells chime at sunset for evening prayer. The bells would act as a reliable clock for people to time their lives and meals.

Another thing is the placement of the sun. High noon, afternoon, sunrise, sunset, dusk, evening. Time used to be easy to keep track of back then. Ex: The cooks would fire the ovens and bake the day's bread. People wake at sunrise or when they smell the cooking. Stomachs rank the passing of time, indicating when the character needs to be fed.

"I'll meet you at the stables after the evening bells ring"

"Be ready to mount up and ride at dusk"

"I'll be ready to meet after the morning bread is done."

Does this help?

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Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

amy s wrote:

Personally, I replaced my time measurement with 'moments' instead of seconds. There isn't really a minute measurement in my world, so I paced time by how many footsteps that people took until they reached a place.

Since there is a Christian presence in your world, have the local church tower call the hour for mass. That way, the faithful count time by when the service starts and end working in the fields when the bells chime at sunset for evening prayer. The bells would act as a reliable clock for people to time their lives and meals.

Another thing is the placement of the sun. High noon, afternoon, sunrise, sunset, dusk, evening. Time used to be easy to keep track of back then. Ex: The cooks would fire the ovens and bake the day's bread. People wake at sunrise or when they smell the cooking. Stomachs rank the passing of time, indicating when the character needs to be fed.

"I'll meet you at the stables after the evening bells ring"

"Be ready to mount up and ride at dusk"

"I'll be ready to meet after the morning bread is done."

Does this help?

Moments, steps. That could work.

They did live by the bell, so to speak, but for most, 2.30pm and 9.00am and so on existed, so I don't have the same problem with hours, or even half hours or quarter hours.

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Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

KHippolite wrote:

Licks of the candle flame
Strums of the harp

This is pretty good - the Borderers were/are poetic, more so than anything else.
Thanks K!

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Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

KHippolite wrote:

PS: You don't need to keep pace with Victorious... I plan on posting something quite different this summer. With luck we'll be all equalized in reviews by then. Victorious is complete, however, So at least the chapter-count can't grow on you

Let me know if there is any romancy parts - I'll check those out for you. Okay, and now I'm curious as hell to see what you have planned next. I'll get writing then, to equalize the reviews as much as possible. wink

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421 Reply by amy s

Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

Janet, the other thing I use in my book is candle marks. There are candles in my world that people burn marked with even points throughout the day The candle burns past that point and I consider it to be an hour. So three candle marks would be three hours.

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Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

amy s wrote:

Janet, the other thing I use in my book is candle marks. There are candles in my world that people burn marked with even points throughout the day The candle burns past that point and I consider it to be an hour. So three candle marks would be three hours.

Candles have also been used for sure. I should use all this cool lingo! Thanks Amy! smile

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423 Reply by amy s

Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

The official term is, 'busting a nut'. 

Interesting fact of the day: Ruptured testicles often need to be removed surgically. If they are left in place, the guy becomes sterile. The sperm is recognized as a foreign substance by the body because it isn't complete DNA, so the body forms antibodies to the sperm and woooosh. No more babies.

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Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

E.D. due to a combination of age and booze. *sigh* Don't fear, Janet TP gave me a great idea to make it even more obvious. Matthew will be questioning/pondering it a little bit later for the ones that need less subtlety. wink Sorry Matthew.

K, not a bad idea. It's wrong, but a useful one for a bad guy one day.

So is the ruptured testicle, Amy. (You guys are GOOD to come up with ways to inflict pain on our characters!!!). Would've been a great one to use, but if I have trouble making ED obvious, there is no way on earth I'd be able to explain that. How would the old wives from the village pick that up .... mmmm, taps finger thinking about that one for a while ... "Oh dear heavens, my poor sir, your right testicle is three times the size it was just yesterday. You busted that one bad! Scissors!" *snip-snip* And then he's not only sterile, but probably dead too, if not from blood loss, infection. Yeah, those were tough times!

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Re: Northern Skies - Janet!

I could decrease the number of times they had (almost) intercourse i.e. only have him visit her for a few months/a few times and then stop because he can't get things going. My understanding is with ED it's a combination of not being able to do it to being able to do it, but not maintain anything, so he could still have 'almost' raped her (best I have is consensual rape given theirs was an arranged marriage). Amy is probably best to confirm this. I can also make it less painful or less borderline 'forced intercourse', i.e. instead of focusing on the physical aspects, shift it to the emotional aspect.

Will see what I can do next revision around. The important part is pretty much that everyone thinks Catherine can't conceive while she actually can. Otherwise, poor Humphrey (as if he hasn't suffered enough already) can always bust a nut. Or two.

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