WWII

Awesome Adorableness

General Geekiness

My birthday was over the weekend.

One of my roommates, knowing of my interest in the RAF and dedication to Roald Dahl, gave me this book:

Yes! It’s a story book for the planned but never made Disney movie Dahl was involved with. The book tells the story of these Gremlins harrassing a squadron of pilots during the Battle of Britain.

These aren’t your Gizmo-type Gremlins. These little guys are tiny, bald green men with bulbous noses. And they wear suction boots so they won’t fly off of airplanes while they take them apart in midair.

Sorry the post isn’t longer! It seems that homework has caught up with me.

Experiments are fun!

The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

Work on PAaA has slowed for the time being; however, I’ve been thinking about the structure of the novel. I’ve had a renewed interest in writing short stories; also, a few interesting characters revealed themselves.  They all have different perspectives that would be very fun to explore as main characters.

So, I’ve decided to experiment a bit.

The book will be written as a series of interconnected short stories, featuring many of the same characters, like “Claude’s Dog” by Roald Dahl. CD is a novella comprised of four or five short stories with interconnecting subplots. That’s how PAaA will run.

Part of the reason why I’m attempting this is because I want to follow EP, a female character, around her job. And as a snippet writer, this may help me from jumping around too much. 🙂

Bits and Pieces

The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

I am, by nature, a snippet writer. I write things out of order, with half-baked scenes thrust onto paper before I dash to another time and place. This is not without its problems. For one, character development is made a bit more difficult. My characters interact in the future the way they would in the present (if that makes sense).

For another, it makes the whole timeline a bit difficult to figure out. I have a basic idea of what I want to happen when (for example, the first MC death occurs in mid-August), but post and prior to these events are a bit shaky.

I also partially blame this habit for my inability to actually finish a manuscript. I dash here, there, and everywhere while neglecting to complete the blasted thing. Like a butterfly am I, going from story flower to story flower. Sometimes crosspollination occurs (and that works every now and then).

Hopefully, this will change with Per Ardua ad Astra (such a mouthful). I’m really trying to get things moving forward. Dedication to one story. And if I get distracted, I’ll write a short story (not start a different novel).

The Fine Art of Bookbinding

General Geekiness

While my attentions should be turned to writing my WIP, sometimes outside projects have a higher priority. I happily engaged in this one because, well…its just another step in the book process!

I crafted this WWII alphabet book by hand. It was designed using Adobe InDesign CS3.

Image/Book by Beth

Image/Book by Beth

I bound the book using a stich called Japanese Stab Stitch. Beneath the cover, the stitches make a box pattern. I didn’t think to take a picture of the book before adding the finishing ribbon (instead of book tape).

I’m looking forward to one day crafting my own journals. It was a lot of fun (if annoying to my neighbors–I had to use hammer and nails to make sufficient holes in the paper). Painful, too. I hit my fingers a few times!

In the realm of bookbinding, I intend on doing another alphabet book, this time using my own illustrations. The theme? Mythological creatures. I intend on calling in the Alphabeast.

An Afternoon Well Spent

General Geekiness

With a heavy load of papers and projects in the offing, a friend and I did the only thing two self-respecting college students can do on a rainy Saturday. We hopped on the train and wandered into every used book store we could find.

One was Mecca. While it didn’t have any Roald Dahl collections, it was two floors of awesome. The size of a small box book store, everything was neat, clean, and organized. Fiction, music, art, military history, civilian history…ah! Nearly anything one could want to read! Giddy, we strolled through the stacks, picking up anything that caught our eyes. Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle, Dumas…the fiction section alone was enough to send any reader into fits of delight.

We ventured upstairs, picking through books of art, biographies (no luck on the Ogilvy memoir I’ve been keeping an eye out for) and military history.

I nearly hugged the bookcase labelled “aviation” and tore through the WWII shelves. What should I find hidden among the books on the European theatre land battles but a book about Spitfire pilots? Though this book (The Few by Alex Kershaw) is about American pilots in the RAF, research is research. So much of my story is up in the air (no pun intended), and dependent on my discoveries, I figured any little bit can help.

A Certain Time

The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

Well, I’ve decided on a specific time period for my WIP (hurray). The height of the Battle of Britain, 1940.

This provides its own unique challenges.  Most of my other stories have a hazy, indefinite time period. One is set some time between 1793 and 1805, most in the latter half of the 20th century.

This WIP, having its set time frame, means that I just can’t make up too much stuff. Research, lovely research; no sarcasm here, I love it. Weather, and of course the dates/times of actual battles. I’ll have to make sure it feels like its the summer/fall of 1940, probably by referencing newspaper articles, popular songs, and, of course, speeches by Winston Churchill.

I’m thinking about the plotting and having my characters experience personal turmoil while the war is raging on around them. There’s some potential there, especially once the Blitz gets started.