Hurricane Preparedness

Every year we go on a family vacation. This year we all went to North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Needless to say we’ve been watching the weather channel and checking the airlines to keep on top of the hurricane situation. We leave this afternoon to travel back to New Jersey and will get home ahead of the storm.

My daughter received an email from her former boss, an environmental specialist. It included a link to a blog. It has great emergency information and I've reprinted the blog here. 

Everyone, stay safe!

Hurricane Irene Aug 24, 2011

Hurricane Preparedness 2011: Smartphone Up!

The smartest thing you can get for hurricane preparedness is an off-grid charger for your cell phone.  A cell phone — particularly a smartphone — can serve as “find me” whistle, flashlight, information channel, family finder, and so much more.  Remember that smartphones especially have a short battery life.  This cannot be over-emphasized.  Nokero’s solar charger is good, see details here.  Or go to your nearest Sprint store or Whatever store or go to Best Buy and see what they have.

A serious hurricane in New England?  My father sat through a hurricane in 1938 that took down almost all the trees around Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire — where the family had a summer house.

EMERGENCY KIT From experience, then, the Sensible Yankee hurricane emergency kit includes basics.  You can get through just about anything with: 

-  two gallons of water (supermarket) 

- your eyeglasses/contact lenses/sunglasses/reading glasses 

- your meds 

- a sleeping bag or blanket or warm winter coat, pillows are nice 

- non-perishable food (eg, canned food with can opener, Twinkies, Powerbars) 

- extra flashlights and batteries 

- Swiss Army Knife

Online, it appears the government preparedness instructions haven’t changed much since 1938.

FEMA has you storing up “moist towelettes” (?), a dust mask (?), a NOAA Weather Radio (no one under 40 knows what that is) and traveler’s checks (what?).

Suggestion: start with phone and off-grid charger and our Sensible Yankee list, above.  Then add stuff from their list if you have an encyclopedia, historical reference guide, and a lot of time to identify dated items and shop at 12 different stores and wait in line at a bank for traveler’s checks (again, what?).

OVERNIGHT BAG: Pack, because you may need to evacuate or you may not be able to find your stuff under stress.  Pretend you’re going camping for 3 days and pack accordingly.  Include toothpaste, toothbrush, medications, vitamins, clothes; all the things you normally need.

If you’ve never been camping, pack as if you’re going to the wrong side of Detroit for three days and staying in a half-star motel with no fridge or running water.  Bring your own blankets, sheets & pillow.  Leave your strappy high-heeled sandals behind.

CHILDREN: If you have small children, and it’s not possible to travel to a safe place, then collect your gear and put it all in one place:  a safe, windowless room, as if you’re about the load the car for a 3 day camping trip.  Now you’re ready to evacuate if you need to, and you know where all your stuff is either way: your clothes, water, food, cookstove, candles or lanterns, etc. are all in one place.

Treat it like a fun camping-trip sort of adventure — kids often react to these things the same way you do.  For details and (you guessed it) a more extensive list of obscure stuff, see www.ready.org.

FLYING GLASS: Most injuries in a serious storm come from flying glass and debris, usually puncture wounds.  This is one of those incredibly obvious things we don’t think of.  So:  during the actual storm, keep away from windows and exterior doors.  This is for real.  The basement or closet or bathroom is likely safest, e.g., rooms with fewest portals to the outside.

PETS: Put pet food, leash, an extra gallon of water, their favorite blanket, and their favorite chew toy in a plastic garbage bag — put it in the trunk of the car — with their crate — now or as close to now as you can.  We emphasize now because pet care is the easiest to ignore in an urgent situation and as a result causes the most heartache.  Don’t even flirt with it.  Here’s more from FEMA on pets — but we didn’t have time to read all that.

UTILITIES: If a serious hurricane is coming your way and you own your home or are responsible for your home, shut off your utilities.  Here’s how.

If you’re like most people under 40 who only read 40 words of any given web page and never read the manual:  get a neighbor to come over and show you how to shut off utilities.  People like to show off what they know and you get a custom lesson — you also get to find out what a monkey wrench actually is, and how to use one, which is kind of fun.

Junk in the trunk: On a preparedness note, if you’re not a New England native, you may not know this:  in northern winter months from September –> May it’s imperative to always have in your car anyway:

•         a blanket or sleeping bag
•          old but still functional hat, mittens, gloves
•          old wool sweater, just in case
•          an old (super-warm) coat you wouldn’t wear unless you had to
•          at least one flashlight, loaded with good batteries, preferably two flashlights
•          Swiss Army Knife (canopener, screwdriver, knife)
•          water bottle (you may need to fill it)
•          off-grid smartphone charger

Believe me, you’ll feel better having these things.

Here’s FEMA’s take: http://www.fema.gov/help/widgets/prepared_hurricane.html

The truth is that if you have a cell phone and an off-grid charger, you can just call for help, company, or pizza delivery.

Summer Vacation

The end of summer is quickly approaching. I had so many books, none of them were about craft, I was looking forward to reading but one thing lead to another and, well my to be read pile is towering next to my desk. I have one last chance. We go on vacation to the beach next week. Perhaps I can laze by the pool or on the beach and read, read, read. What do you do on vacation?

Several people guessed the authors and titles of the opening lines I posted last week. I hope you enjoyed the challenge. Did you guess which one was mine? 

1.    “As their elegant traveling chaise rocked and swayed along the rutted country road, Lady Anne Gilbert leaned her cheek against her husband’s shoulder and heaved a long, impatient sigh.”

     Whitney, My Love by Judith McNaught

2.    “How does a person reenter a life she left behind years earlier?”
     Summer of Roses by Luanne Rice

3.    “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
     Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

4.    “It wasn’t a very likely place for disappearances, at least not at first glance.”
     Outlander by Diane Gabaldon

5.    “The noon whistle blew and the saws stopped whining.”
     Morning Glory by LaVyrle Spencer

6.    “I should not have stayed away from the Manor so long. Something stirs.”
     Knight of Runes by Ruth A. Casie

7.    “Who am I? And how, I wonder, will this story end?”
     The Notebook by Nicolas Sparks

8.    “Douglas Montgomery sat in the back seat of the rental car, Robert and his pudgy thirteen-year-old daughter, Gloria, in the front.”
     Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Deveraux

9.    “Cam called in markers, pulled strings, begged favors and threw money around in a dozen directions.”
     Sea Swept by Nora Roberts

10. “They said he killed his first wife.”
     The Bride by Julie Garwood

11. “Come to me.”
      A Dance Through Time by Lynn Kurland

12. “There were pictures in the fire. Dragons.”
     Valley of Silence by Nora Roberts

13. “Fae archers stood at the Sidhe wall and trained their arrows toward the tree line as a slow, unseasonable frost overtook the branches.”
     Left for Dead: A Crimson Moon Novel by L.A. Banks

14. “When the rumbling Cessna heaved into the sky, Kate Jansen completely lost her nerve.”
     The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship by Lisa Verge Higgins

15. “As darkness slowly fled from his eyes, the boy woke, his head aching and his body sore, as if he had been beaten.”
    The Lost by Caridad Pineiro

16. “It is always a mistake to underestimate the possibilities of a train compartment.”
    Tears of Pearl by Tasha Alexander

The Hook

I wrote a wonderful forest scene. The description was spot on.

The full branches of the maple trees created a cool green canopy over the neglected trail. A gentle breeze played through the leaves and made them dance ever so gracefully. The sun light, falling in broad shafts, pierced through the trees and bathed the ground in great golden pools. The fragrance of wild flowers and herbs filled the early spring air with a delicate perfume.

My critique partner, and several other readers, said it put them there but, it didn’t put them in the story. They didn’t like it, well, not for the opening paragraph. I thought it set the stage for the following action which was in contrast to the calm idyllic setting. Wrong. It didn’t grab them.

They pointed me to Noah Lukeman’s book, The First Five Pages. The sub-title was compelling, a writer’s guide to staying out of the rejection pile. Dutifully, I did my assigned reading. The essence of one point he made – the hook is more than a marketing tool to draw the reader in. It sets the tone of the story, the characters, the setting, the mood, and more. The care you take to the opening line should be the same care you give to the first paragraph, page, and chapter all the way through to the last sentence. But let’s get back to the opening sentence.

According to author, Barbara Dawson Smith, the common thread in most opening lines/paragraphs is change. Your hero or heroine’s current situation is about to change. Something has happened, or will happen that will result in dramatic consequences.  The author’s goal is to pique the reader’s curiosity, give them the promise of what they will find when they read your story.

Here are some opening sentences from some romance novels. One of them is from my debut novel scheduled for released on November 14. Does it hold up with the others?

1. “As their elegant traveling chaise rocked and swayed along the rutted country road, Lady Anne Gilbert leaned her cheek against her husband’s shoulder and heaved a long, impatient sigh.”
2. “How does a person reenter a life she left behind years earlier?”
3. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
4. “It wasn’t a very likely place for disappearances, at least not at first glance.”
5. “The noon whistle blew and the saws stopped whining.”
6. “I should not have stayed away from the Manor so long. Something stirs.”
7. “Who am I? And how, I wonder, will this story end?”
8. “Dougles Montgomery sat in the back seat of the rental car, Robert and his pudgy thirteen-year-old daughter, Gloria, in the front.”
9. “Cam called in markers, pulled strings, begged favors and threw money around in a dozen directions.”
10. “They said he killed his first wife.”
11. “Come to me.”
12. “There were pictures in the fire. Dragons.”
13. “Fae archers stood at the Sidhe wall and trained their arrows toward the tree line as a slow, unseasonable frost overtook the branches.”
14. “When the rumbling Cessna heaved into the sky, Kate Jansen completely lost her nerve.”
15. “As darkness slowly fled from his eyes, the boy woke, his head aching and his body sore, as if he had been beaten.”
16. “It is always a mistake to underestimate the possibilities of a train compartment.”

Contest: I love trivia. Guess the book title and author for each of these opening lines. See if you can guess the book title and author. I’ll post the answers next week. Have fun!

5 Essentials For Creating a Great Story

I read an article in Writer’s Digest written by Steven James, The 5 Essential Story Ingredients. Mr. James wrote that writers think that stories are just a beginning, middle, and end but it’s much more than that. A story must emotional engage the reader so they invest in the heroine’s outcome.

Aristotle claimed stories must have an origin, an escalation of conflict, and a resolution. The resolution must transform either a situation or a character. The very heart of the story is how the character deals with the tension created by the conflict. Without tension, conflict, and crisis there is no action.

The tension in the story must build as the story unfolds. There are 5 essentials that make a good story. Using them will draw readers in and keep them turning pages. How these essentials are developed make the story unique.

1.     Orientation

Grab your reader’s attention from the very start through the setting, mood, and tone and with a heroine they care about. If they don’t care about the heroine, they won’t care about the story. The reader already knows that something will change (after all it’s a story). The orientation is the baseline, starting point, from which the change will take place. It’s the standard by which they will judge the success or failure of the story.

2.     Crisis

Introducing a crisis, usually internal and external, that tips the heroine’s world out of kilter must be one she cannot immediately resolve. This is the challenge that sets the story in motion. Her life will change and will never be the same. There are basically two ways to introduce the crisis, begin with the heroine having what she wants and take it away or desiring what she wants and have her pursue it.

3.     Escalation

According to Mr. James, there are two types of characters – pebble people and putty people. One is rigid while the other is malleable. The main character needs to be a putty person. She is the one that has to change. She will struggle to get back to ‘normal’ but she is forever changed. The more intimate, personal and devastating the struggle the more the reader will keep reading.

4.     Discovery

At the climax of the story, the heroine realizes that her life has changed and will try by wit (cleverly putting the pieces together) or grit (showing perseverance or tenacity) to get back to ‘normal.’

The irony of storytelling is that the reader wants to predict the outcome but he wants to be wrong. The resolution of the story is more satisfying when it ends in a way that is inevitable and unexpected.

5.     Change

Here the heroine either transforms or dies. Whatever happens, she will never be the same. The change marks the resolution of the crisis and culmination of the story, moving the heroine to a new normal.

“If you render a portrait of the protagonist’s life in such a way that we can picture his world and also care about what happens to him, we’ll be drawn into the story. If you present us with an emotionally stirring crisis or calling, we’ll get hooked. If you show the stakes rising as the character struggles to solve this crisis, you’ll draw us in more deeply. And if you end the story in a surprising yet logical way that reveals a transformation of the main character’s life, we’ll be satisfied and anxious to read your next story.” … Steven James.