To my way of thinking the longer the sentence, the greater its
artistic merit. Who but a black-hearted butcher would want to cut short the meandering of
a sentence, bring its life to an unnatural end by slamming a full stop (period)
into an exquisite stream of consciousness, and if that isn’t already enough of
a crime, before it’s murdered, torture the sentence with punctuation such as hyphens,
commas, colons, semi-colons – drivel for the sake of conformity.
I submit my argument in defense of the run-on sentence based
on a precedent set in 2001 – Jonathon Coe vs. the Editor. Thanks to the
survival of Mr. Coe’s 13,995 word sentence in The Rotter’s Club, novelists can all plead publishable as long as no one sentence in their
manuscript exceeds 13,955 words and other requirements are met.
Ah, the grammar police are clamoring for evidence. As much as I’d like to accommodate, space constraints make it impossible to submit
thirty-three pages of evidence in which not one full stop can be found until the
end of the thirty-third page. Plus there’s the matter of the copyright. However, as
every jury of publishers knows, the run-on sentence
exists in several works of note. Therefore, I submit Falkner’s 1,288 word sentence in Absalom (published 1936) and the
French writer Mathias Énard’sone-sentence
novel of 517 pages as evidence the run-on sentence poses no threat to either literature or popular fiction.
I agree with Ed Park of the New York
Times when he says “The very long sentence seems most expressive of life at its
fullest and most expansive.” And I’m all for author’s like Cormac McCarthy (another master of the run-on sentence) who
throws punctuation to the wind in his novel Blood Meridian. In order not to
stagnate, art must always be evolving. But evolution requires experimentation, moving
outside the box, stirring it up to create something unique.
I
was reading the news a few days ago (I must be a masochist) and I saw where the
President invited American manufacturers to
recommend ways the government could cut regulations and make it easier for
companies to get their projects approved. As my eyes moved further down
the news report in Washington Post, I saw this on the list of self-serving recommendations: BP wants to make it easier to drill for oil and gas in the Gulf
of Mexico by reducing how often companies must renew their leases.
I gritted my teeth. I’m still gritting them, particularly since
yesterday, April 20th, was the seventh anniversary of the
devastating BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I remember that date as well as I remember the dates on which people dear to me died. A little melodramatic, you say? This picture may change your mind. That's a sea bird, barely alive when that picture was taken.
Photo: Huffington Post
Now imagine what was under the surface. Years of scientific observation of the Gulf
following the spill have shown what that was. From a 2015 NBC report:
"Nearly five years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill
in the Gulf of Mexico, a new report says that creatures like dolphins, sea
turtles and fish still haven't fully recovered.
Fish including mahi mahi and red snapper,
coral colonies, and white and brown pelicans are still struggling. Around 32
percent of laughing gulls have died as a result of the oil spill, the National
Wildlife Federation said.
Between 27,000 and 65,000 Kemp's ridley sea
turtles died during the oil spill and that the number of nests discovered every
year since has gone down."
And
BP wants to continue drilling, drilling, drilling. Climate warming and the
resulting acidification of the oceans because of increasingly high levels of
carbon in the atmosphere aside, what guarantees do we have that there will
never be more oil spills?
They
say the seed for a book is often planted in a significant moment. The one I’m writing
now was planted on April 20, 2010 with the event that rocked everyone who gives a damn about the health of our oceans. The seed didn’t germinate immediately. It was a
while before it began to sprout and the story grew into two branches - one in 1802 and the other in 2010. Kate, the main character in the 2010 section, isn't anything like me. I'm a creative sort. Kate is a marine and atmospheric scientist, but she speaks for me here as she remembers her reaction to the BP Oil Spill:
"She had not been
able to erase the images of the birds and sea turtles that looked as though
they had been dipped in tar from her mind. The innocent victims of corruption,
greed and the thirst for power. The men on that platform whose lives had been
extinguished in a violent explosion of flame had been innocent victims too. Oh
God, it was horrifying. It had brought her to tears. Soon those tears had been replaced
by a numbing fury that had propelled her into inexhaustible action.
NOAA’s response had
been quick. She’d dropped everything and volunteered to help. The Gulf now took
precedence over everything else. What they found was bad. The dispersants
hadn’t helped. They’d only added to the unholy mess that was a death warrant
for thousands of marine species. The first that came to her mind was the
dolphins, those gentle, friendly creatures with the same level of intelligence
as humans."
There are red hearts all over the place. They appeared in
the stores the second all the evidence of the holiday season disappeared in a poof.
Love, love, love, love – the centuries-old inspiration for songs, books, poems,
letters, journals, plays, movies and even graffiti is about to make its annual rounds again. Sent in text messages, written on cards, whispered between sheets, or shouted from the highest hill, love
will be confessed, reaffirmed, renewed, and maybe even discovered, as it is
every year on February 14th.
Why a day devoted to celebrating this most celebrated
of emotions? Cynics may claim it’s "a Hallmark opportunity,” but card
manufacturers can’t seize an opportunity that doesn’t exist. With few
exceptions, people need to love and be loved in one way or another. Understanding
that there is more than one kind of love, the ancient Greeks had four words for
love: éros, love of an intimate nature, sexual passion, philía, affection, friendship, storgē, the kind of love and affection shown between parents and children, and agápe, a more universal type of love such as love for our fellow humans.
Since last Valentine’s Day, there’s been a lot of
hatred displayed around the world – in terrorists attacks, war and other kinds
of violence, in verbal attacks against some groups by U.S. politicians.
There have also been attacks against the environment and attacks against wildlife.
It seems there is no end to it. Yet amidst it all, there has been an incredible
outpouring of love as people from all over the world have come together to
stand by what they believe is right for their countries and the world. This is love
in the agápe sense and it's powerful. However, to quote Elie Wiesel, “The opposite of love is not
hate, it’s indifference” – that cold eye that observes wrong doing without
being motivated to take action against it. Too many of us have become
indifferent because of fear or hopelessness, or both. Apathy on a mass scale is
snuffing out the light of love almost as fast as the candles are lit.
Let’s not allow love to become a second-hand emotion. Let’s
celebrate all the beautiful aspects of it this Valentine’s Day by loving in
every way we can. I think Burt Bacharach was on the money with this line from his famous song from the 60s: "What the world needs now is love, sweet love." Listen to it and if you like, take a peek at some of my favorite love quotes while you're listening.
"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."— Elizabeth Barrett Browning "I won't stay in a world without love."— Lennon/McCartney "Love is passion, obsession, someone you can't live without."—from the movie Meet Joe Black Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while." —from the movie Princess Bride. "He ain't heavy, he's my brother." —Bobby Scott/Bob Russell "Love doesn't make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile."— Franklin P. Jones "He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all."— Samuel Taylor Coleridge "And now these three remain: faith hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." 1 Conrinthians:13
There’s been a lot of
controversy over when the Twelve Days of Christmas begin and end, but the Church of England stands firm that
the first day of Christmas begins at sunset on Christmas Eve and ends on the
night of January 5th (Twelfth Night). I’m in the other camp who
believe the First Day of Christmas is Christmas Day and the Twelfth Day of
Christmas is January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany, also known as
Three Kings Day. Since Epiphany is the celebration of the visit of the Wise
Men, it makes no sense to me that Christmas would end the day before.
Which brings me to something
else that doesn’t make sense - Christmas decorations going up in November. Hello!
Christmas isn’t in November. And it isn’t over on December 26th, the
day so many Christmas trees are now being stripped of their ornaments and discarded.
I’m a traditionalist when it comes to Christmas, so forgive me if I find all of
this straying from tradition a bit bah, humbuggy.
Call me sentimental,
but I can’t help longing for a good old fashioned Christmas like the ones I enjoyed as a child. Nativity plays in elementary school, singing
Christmas carols, the Christmas tree being brought home by my father just before Christmas, helping him decorate it, placing the star I’d made at
school on the top. Christmas morning was always exciting, but it was never an orgy of opening presents and it
was full of surprises because my brothers and I didn’t have a clue what we’d be
getting. There were no TV commercials to solicit a desire for the latest toy or gadget.
Speaking of presents, I've often
wondered how all those presents came to be in the Twelve Days of Christmas song seeing
that the twelve days were originally feast days of the church. I’ve tried to
find out, but the only thing I learned is that thought to be French in origin, the
lyrics were first published in England in 1780 as part of a children’s book
entitled Mirth without Mischief.
On that note I'll leave you with warm wishes for a merry Twelve Days of Christmas and a new year filled with blessings. P.S. My romantic thriller The Tangled Web is on sale for 99 cents until the Twelfth Day of Christmas. If you haven't already read it, now's the time to grab it. On sale in all Kindle stores. US http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Z5Y3ZQUK http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007Z5Y3ZQ?*Version*=1&*entries*=0
My beautiful mother was forced to breed many times in her life, so she
could produce as many litters of cubs like me as possible. I was taken
away from her when I was only a few days old....I cannot imagine her grief
losing me, as I can only remember mine.
I got sick, I was stressed because of losing my
mother, I was not fed properly, I lost some of my hair, and no one cared, Not
even the tourists who came to see me, because if they knew the
"truth" they would not have paid to hold me, to never let me have
peace. All they wanted to do was hold me. I needed my mother, not them.
My life will consist of being patted, mauled,
forced to be held, while camera flashes go off in my face over and over again,
and when the next day comes, it starts all over like the day before and the day
before that, and the day before that.
When I start to grow, and get too big to be
cuddled, I will then be put on a leash and walked by tourists who come to
places like where I am, who are told that I am a part of a breeding
conservation facility. I wish I could yell out the Truth!!!!
The truth is this. I was born for one reason
and one reason only. I was born to be killed. I was "Bred for the
Bullet." I was born suffering and I will die suffering when I am full
grown and killed by a "Canned Hunter."
I will not know he is a hunter. I will not know
that what he holds in his hands will cause me to bleed and suffer until my life
ends. I will not know he is to be feared because I have been hand reared all my
life, so humans do not scare me.
I will more than likely see that bullet coming
at me....Until it strikes....Me.
That is my life. Please tell the world about
me.
Tell the world about us who are bred to die.
Bred for the Bullet.
Please tell the world about the industry that I
was born into, "The Canned Hunting Industry."
There is nothing cute about petting me. You are
simply helping me be killed. Please always
remember this, no matter how cute I look, I suffer inside and I need you to
tell the world about me and what they are doing to all of us.
Thank you for being
our Voice.
Dawn Warren Flann is a wildlife advocate supporting Blood Lions Tweet Storms for TV premiers and screenings worldwide.
Be another voice for the Blood Lions. Join the Tweet Storm to save them at
I love animals, I always have and it saddens me that three of my four favorite animals in the wild are under threat of extinction because of human activity. One of them, the polar bear, isn't getting much attention this week. It will have have to wait in the wings while elephants, lions and rhinos, which are under a more immediate threat, take center stage as people in 137 locations around the world march to bring attention to the dire situation that is taking place in Africa. It's unbelievable to think that African elephants are being slaughtered for their ivory at the rate of one every 15 minutes. Add that up. I can hardly wrap my head around such numbers. Rhinos are being slaughtered for their horns at the rate of about one every 7 to 11 hours. The poor lion, once king of the jungle, has been reduced to a caged animal bred for hunting. Accustomed to having humans feeding him, the caged lion doesn't stand a chance when he's let out of confinement to walk a few yards only to be shot to death by a sports hunter. You're thinking this is awful, aren't you? It's more than awful because the only reason the elephants and rhinos are being illegally poached is because a lot of people like ivory and others erroneously believe rhino horn has medicinal properties. The lions are under threat because there are people who actually enjoy killing lions for fun and they have the means to go to Africa and hunt them.
So what can we do? To begin with, we can help build awareness of the dire situation these animals are in. As Ekhart Tolle said, "Awareness is the greatest agent for change." If people don't know there is a problem, they can't do anything to solve it. Most people who buy ivory aren't thinking that an elephant has to be killed in order to get the tusks from which the trinket they're buying was made. Those who buy rhino horn for its so-called medicinal properties are most likely unaware that the horns are cut out of the rhino's heads leaving them to bleed to death. Most Americans don't know that the United States is the second largest importer of illegal ivory in the world. I didn't know that about the U.S. Did you? I'm joining thousands of other wildlife advocates this weekend for the Global March for Elephants, Lions and Rhinos. I'll be marching in Gainesville, Florida, a university town with a population of 124,000 that's about 25 miles from my house. I'm proud that little Gainesville has joined the march. It may not turn out to be as large as some of the huge ones that are being planned, but that's not the point. The point is Gainesville folks will be showing up to add their voices to the outcry against an atrocity nobody who cares about animals can tolerate. Even if you're unable to join the march this weekend, you can join those speaking out against wildlife crime by sharing this post, joining the Global March For Elephants and Rhinos community on Facebook and retweeting from their hashtag stream #GMFER. I'll be tweeting too, so you can also retweet me from @jpLANEauthor. Let's pool our social media resources and put a stop to the killing. We have the voice. We have the power. Now we just need to unleash it and help save the elephants, lions and rhinos of Africa before it's too late.
Thanks very much for your much appreciated comments. For some reason I'm not able to reply to them at the moment. I will as soon as I've sorted out this glitch.
I was thinking about social media this morning. I admit that when I first stepped tentatively into that universe it was with the intention of bringing my writing to the attention of as many people as possible. Being a private person, I was a bit confused by Facebook, which has always had me in a bind. On the one hand, I don't like sharing every little detail of my life, except with very close friends. On the other hand, I'm not comfortable promoting my work on Facebook as often as I should. Twitter was a different story. With only 140 characters with which to say what needed to be said, it allowed a certain amount of anonymity. I could promote my book to my heart's content on Twitter without feeling as though I was being a nuisance. Best of all, it didn't seem anybody cared one way or another about my personal life. That was fine by me. Yet it's through Twitter that I've met the most people and made the most friends. It's on Twitter that I find myself engaging in conversation. I enjoy chatting, if briefly, with people from every continent. When I'm on Twitter, I'm connected with the entire world and I love that. That world gets bigger every day and my views on why I'm in it have changed a lot since I opened my Twitter account and set out to sell my debut novel. Audrey Hepburn said something that resonates with me now that I'm getting older. She said, "As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others." Having a social media platform was originally for the purpose of marketing. Now it's also for helping to create awareness of things that need to be changed, things we can all help to change. As Eckhart Tolle said, "Awareness is the greatest agent for change." Yesterday was a joyous day for me. I read the Pope's encyclical. It's what inspired this post. I also read numerous news items and editorials about it. I can't remember when last I felt so excited. Which environmental and wildlife activist wouldn't be excited to see the stir it created and the action it's inspired? Not to mention the awareness it's created of the danger Mother Earth is in.
ENCYCLICAL LETTER
LAUDATO SI’
OF THE HOLY FATHER
FRANCIS
ON CARE FOR OUR COMMON HOME
1. “LAUDATO SI’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”. In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us. “Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs.” 2. This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.Click here for complete text
"However, health is symptomatic of a larger problem, which undermines and fragments our broader worldview. In addition to highlighting the effects of climate change, we must address the root of the problem. In so doing, we will discover how the benefits of assuming moral responsibility and taking immediate action — not just on matters related to health, but also world economy and global policy — far outweigh the cost of remaining indifferent and passive."
Three years, and what a ride, though it seems like
yesterday when my author friend, Linda Nance, hosted a Facebook event for the
launch of The Tangled Web. As far as I remember, my only involvement was making
the book free for the event – which was a disaster – for 37 terrifying hours.
Every author’s
nightmare
The event was planned for a Friday and Saturday. Early
Friday morning, (3:00 a.m. on the dot) I dashed to my computer to see if the
price change was in effect. It wasn’t. I was concerned, but who was I going to
message at 3:00 a.m.? I went back to bed and woke at around 6:00. Still no
price change. I began to have a bad feeling.
Linda surfaced at around 9:00. She didn’t think there
was any reason to panic – yet. When afternoon rolled around and the book still wasn't free, she conceded there might be some cause for concern. By this time,
guests were pouring onto the event page on Facebook. I was cringing while making futile calls to Amazon. Linda kept
posting, “Check back in an hour.” I can't count how many times she did that.
Being green as grass back then, I didn’t know anything about the workings of Facebook, but those comments, which would have showed up on news feeds, must have made a few people curious. By mid-afternoon the event page was crowded with comments as more and more guests arrived. By nightfall I was drained. The book still
wasn't free. Saturday dawned
and the situation remained the same, but still guests kept coming back.
And then it
happened
It was shortly after 4:00 on Saturday afternoon when the good news
came all the way from Scotland in the form of a post on the event page by
author Jon Magee. “It’s free in the UK!” OMG, it was free – finally! I rushed
to Amazon. To my dismay, it still wasn’t free in the U.S.
I’m not sure when the U.S. finally made it to the free
line, but it wasn’t long after the U.K. Linda had virtually taken over the event by
this. My mind had turned to mush. I’m not sure when she started posting the
rankings either. I just remember messaging her to ask what all that stuff she
was posting meant. I never knew there was such a thing as an Amazon ranking.
“It’s a free bestseller in its genre!” she explained in a very excited voice. “It’s #14 in
Romantic Suspense in the U.S. and #17 in the UK." Armed with this knew knowledge, I checked all the Amazon stores myself. Surprise of surprises, it
was #15 in Germany. To cut this long story short, the two-day event turned into
a three-day event which took me about as many days to recover from.
43 Kindle
Reviews Later
Oprah never did invite me to be a guest on her show, and
The Tangled Web never made it to the New York Times bestseller list, but I have a lot to be thankful for. The Kindle edition of The Tangled Web has 43
reviews (Amazon U.S. and U.K. combined) with a 4.5-star average ranking in U.S. and 4.6-stars in the U.K. It also has 75 ratings/32 reviews on Goodreads. My heartfelt
thanks to everyone who has read the Tangled Web and to those who took the time to review it. And many thanks to Linda Nance for being such a great friend, and for my first interview back in 2012. Read it here.
Please don't rush off to download The Tangled Web just yet. There's one more thing. I'd like to dedicate this Beatles song to all the wonderful authors who have supported me. Thank you, dear friends. I couldn't have got by without your help.
If anyone should be celebrating International Poetry Month it's me. My writing career was launched because of a poem. Were it not for that poem, I probably wouldn't have become a writer. But that's a long story, so I'll save it for another time. I haven't written much poetry since that poem that changed my life. Here's one of the few...it's about Alaska...a place that would inspire anyone to wax poetic.
Alaska…raw,
rare, primeval, other-worldly…a vast white wonderland of jagged mountains
carved from the heated rage of Earth during a time we can no longer remember.
Alaska…where through a misted sky the eagle soars in search of some morsel from
the bounty offered up by a sea made chill by ice cast off from gemstone-blue
glaciers that have had their fill of earth and rock and sand.
Alaska… where time hangs suspended in endless day that becomes endless night
until it becomes endless day once more to cast its spell upon your body and
mind.
Was that a mountain peak, snow-capped, cast adrift on a sea of clouds and ice, or was
it the ghost of something that bewitched the eyes to become a memory so vivid
that memory and reality become one in a limitless, breathtaking landscape?
Alaska…bodies bundled from the wind and drizzle, a red parka stark against the
flint-grey cold of a pebbled beach where the sea makes certain that fishers,
casting their lines shoulder to shoulder, do not wait long for their catch.
Alaska…you are too awesome to paint, even in words. Your landscape escapes
capture, making mockery of the camera’s lens just as the Orca diving to arctic
depths scorns the curiosity seeker, offering him, at very best, a mere glimpse
of its grandeur.
