Grits n Gravy
"Nasty Nose
in Print"
February 2012
by Charles Wells
In case you failed to
notice, the world of books is exploding. Some of the largest
book sellers such as Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Nobles, and
Smashwords (Just to name a few) are loaded to the brim with
digital and print books on any imaginable topic, genre,
issue, or "self help" imaginable. Prices range from free
(which people like a lot) up to not free. (Oh my God….they
want thirty bucks for a digital book?) For the reader, it's
a dangerous world of hit and misses when you try to read
some of this stuff that's out there.
Opening a book no longer
means hating it because the author wrote a rotten, boring,
story. In our present world, you can hate a book because the
author likes to pick his/her nose (mentally) and throw it on
a computer word processor. When they get enough words on the
page, they type "The End" then jump online to a book selling
website, find a nice boiler plate cover design, and run that
wonderful book out in front of us for .99 cents up to $29.95
and title it "The Booger picking book of Better Body
Bungles."
If Dick
and Jane Readers (from when I was in first grade) read like
some of the trash I've seen today, Dick would no longer
"run, run, run."
It would be "Dick are running. Jane
be going with him. Spot, the dog, he like to pley wid Jane
when she be flying a kite."
Don't get me wrong. I'm no
hypocrite because I've published stories that were riddle
with mistakes and errors but there is a valid reason for
that. I write "southern flavored" stories. A good, family
level (Rated no higher than PG) southern story is NOT going
to be something like "Midnight in the Garden of Good and
Evil."
That book was southern "based" as in
location, but it was not southern flavored. (as in
character, plot, etc)
Now, those of you who live
in the Deep South know what I'm talking about. We destroy
the rules of "proper" language down here and many of our
books do that with unsuspecting readers. I can't have one of
the characters in my story sounding like he an English lit
major from Harvard while he's changing a tire out at the
truck stop. He/she needs to fit the mold of "southern" and
no, being southern does not mean being illiterate. One of my
most liked characters in the Whispering Pines Series is a
guy named "Catfish." He sounds stupid, talks illiterate, and
does things in a southern way but when the chips go down and
the good guys need something to cover their back?
Catfish is right there, guns
blazing. That character (created from a combination of real
life people I know) is solid, morally kept, and a good
example to follow for anyone who does so.
So I try to make my southern
characters real and show the readers what they are, and they
are southern. In that process I often have to trash the
language of good ole English and toss the good graces of my
English teachers in the septic tank. Outside the quotation
marks, I try to hold the line on the rules but it takes
great effort to do so, having to switch from proper to
southern.
The good news, most book
sellers online give the readers a chance to "sample" a
segment of any book and decide about buying it or not.
It's a good concept and I fully
support it, but it's dangerous for writers like us "good ole
boys" from Georgia.
A potential reader opens up one of
the "20% sample read" of one of my books and fate being the
way it is, the computer feeding it to them pulls out the
lone area of my book where everything looks stupid,
illiterate, and does not let the reader flow up to that
place first. Taking samples like that is a crap shoot for
authors like me. But I still support the concept. You have
to show a reader what you got, what you can do, and how you
do it, before they commit to buy the book. The only thing I
would change is, let the author pick that 20% you are going
to show the readers and not some brainless computer that
might jump right into the middle of a scene where I am
trying to make the bad guy "THINK" that Catfish is a dumb
country boy with about as much brains as a person picking
their nose and publishing the results on a webpage that
sells anything they can get from a writer.
Be careful out there picking
your books but keep in mind there are rare cases where what
you saw is not what you are going to get if you buy that
book. "Follow your nose" is my advice.
See you next time on the
blog..
I would LOVE to hear your
comments about this. Email me at
chasw@charleswells.us
or click here:
Email Charles Wells
Deleted Prayers and
other Fun Things for 2012
by Charles Wells
January 2012
Welcome to the first edition of the
New Year. The day after Christmas I got down on my hands and
knees and said the following prayer that I want to share
with you. So take off your hat, bow your head and close your
eyes, and then sit there like an idiot because with your
eyes closed and head bowed, how are you going to keep
reading the computer screen?
I'll have our tech engineer check it
out and get back with you…
anyhow… here's my prayer from the day after
Christmas.
"Dear God… remember yesterday when I
prayed just before we ate at noon?
Remember how I thanked you for the food that we were
about to receive? That included the part about "by your hands, we are fed?
Well, that ham you provided us (via Kroger at the cost of
most of that week's paycheck) ripped me a new one; that
baked hog tore my stomach all to pieces. I was up most of
the night sick and calling your name a lot, along with Ralph
and a few other choice words I mentioned in the same breath
with the hog.
Well, the whole point is, please
disregard that prayer. Erase it if you don't mind and in the
future, all my prayers before meals will be in thanks for
the previous meals and not the one "we are about to
receive." I
guess I'll get funny looks from anyone around the table when
I pray, "God is great.. God is good.. let us thank him for
that fried chicken and French fries we received last night
from KFC. And lord
forgive me for what I was thinking about that cute
little gal that waited on us at the counter. And one more
thing, I'll get back with you tomorrow about this stuff on
the TV tray that we are looking at right now but it appears
to be left over from the Christmas dinner so don't hold your
breath. I got to run for now because Fox News is about to
start so, uh, Amen…"
(Editor's note)
I'm probably going to get struck by lightning in the
next few days for writing all this and I'm sure my pastor at
the Church will submit my name for excommunication.
Now here's a shocker for some of you "non" Catholics
out there, not that I'm Catholic mind you, because I'm hard
nosed Southern Baptist.. but that's off the topic.. let's
get back to getting the boot from the preacher...
Have
you ever looked up the definition of the word
excommunication?
Here, I'll help. It means, "…to exclude a baptized
Christian from taking part in Communion because of doctrine
or moral behavior that is adjudged to offend against God or
the Christian community."
You got to admit that is a pretty
wide coverage of things any of us could do to cause our
church (or faith) to toss us out on our heads but (as they
say on the TV infomercial)
"There's more!"
Is it wrong for me to ask God for
understanding?
For his patience as I make human mistakes and misfires?
I'm not talking about sin (per se) I am talking about
the human need to explain ourselves when we totally foul up
something in our life that doesn't reach the "sin" level but
gets high enough up there that we have to explain it to God.
Follow me?
(Boy I sure hope so.. whew)
So let's all be careful this year of
what we say or do that runs just under God's definition of
Sin because, contrary to popular opinion, sin has no clear
boundary line. None of us truly can say when we cross that
fence from grace into sin. (Good lord.. I am sounding like a
preacher.. no?)
Next
time I'll pick an easy topic.. perhaps one that explains why
it took the University of Georgia Bulldogs three over time
quarters to lose the game. I mean, come on, Georgia Tech
could have done that in one or less!"
See you next time here on the blog..
…
Charles Wells
|
