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Overlapping Myths and Traditions

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This is the first of our mythological creatures from East Asia and can we just say: we are so excited to share these!

For this week, we’re looking at the traditional Chinese dragon, also known as the East Asian Dragon. This creature is widely known within and beyond Asian history, used as symbols of great strength and honor. But let’s jump right in and see what we could possibly teach you!

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Chinese Dragon | China

“Long, serpentine creature with elemental powers.”

Basic Facts:

  • Don’t be fooled! The serpent-like animal is the more commonly known dragons. They’re also described as turtles and fish.
  • The dragon usually has powers to control water, rainfall, typhoons, and floods (do you see the common trait of strength behind this all?)
  • Scholar Wang Fu of the Han dynasty recorded myths about long dragons having distinct features. It’s an interesting Google search!
  • Depictions of the East Asian dragon sometimes feature a flaming pearl. It’s symbolic of spiritual energy, wisdom, prosperity, power, immortality, thunder, or the moon.
  • Wings? Nope! East Asian dragons fly with the help of their mystical powers, nothing physical helps them soar through the sky.

Creature From The Black Lagoon…?

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We’ve finally made it to the end of European legends and mythological creatures. Next week we’ll be venturing over to East Asia to see what sort of creatures and legends we can inspire you to incorporate into your writing!

Onto this week, though! Could we have found what inspired the Creature from the Black Lagoon?

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Vodník | Czech Republic

Basic Facts:

  • The appearance of the Vodník varies…from a man with webbed hands and gills to a humanoid frog. The description of this creature depends on the location of the myth. His story gets around!
  • On the side of good or evil? The Vodník can be aligned with either. But the bad ones are the recorded ones. They try to drown people who are in their territory!
  • To pass the time, this creature likes to play cards, smoke pipes, or just hang out near the water and overlook their home.
  • Sometimes, fisherman give the spirit tobacco as a trade for fish.
  • They don’t have a mentioned home…but sea water is deadly for them! Just speculating, not confirmed.

Mood Rings

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We’re not going to talk your ear off about how mood rings are real and they need to be taken more seriously…no, instead, we’re going to talk your ear off about colors and symbolism in your writing.

Using colors to accentuate the mood you’re trying to convey in your scenes may help your form of story-telling improve. It could be your main character can now see surrounding characters’ auras and the auras tell your character how a particular person is feeling. Or quite possibly there are colors within a room to set a mood in which your character is about to enter.

Use this color bar image we found on the great, big internet to give you a start on what sort of colors to use in your writing!

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Nope, Nope, Nope.

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Have you ever looked over your old work and thought, What in the world was I thinking?

We know how that may feel sometimes, so we thought it was about time we helped you embrace the cringe with some memes

should not.jpgImagine this: you start reading some piece written three years ago and your first thought is…No. No. Why? No.

Cheers to feeling that way. Just so you know, you should not have done then.

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Sometimes, with re-reading old work, people get inspired to re-write it. Which leads us into our next meme: the lengthy process that goes along with it.

You never know how long it’s going to take, but you know it has to get done sometime or another. Once it is done, though…you realize you’ve lost track of reality.

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One of my personal favorites is when you notice how many times you used one specific word. For me, it’s just. For others, it’s that. You never know what word you actually lean on until you type it into your word finder and it pops up over 500,000 times throughout your entire manuscript.

 

Wrong Alps

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When I first saw the name of our next mythological creature, I immediately thought, “how are the Swiss Alps lore?” I would like to confirm, we are not talking about the Swiss Alps. Just regular alps.

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Alp | Germany

“Shapeshifting goblin that evokes nightmares in sleeping victims.”

Basic Facts:

  • Similar to the picture above, an alp appears small and child-like. Most times, elf-like. But don’t be fooled: they’re still goblins! These little creatures are male a good chunk of the time, too.
  • They can be summoned by witches.
  • What’s so threatening about an alp? Well, they wear a little hat which gives them the powers they do use to terrorize people. They come into a person’s home while they’re sleeping. They’ll sit on the person to cause nightmares. Sometimes, they’ll travel through the person’s nostril to gain control of their whole being for a short period of time.
  • These little guys may be bad most of the time, but there’s a reason! The evil eye is what causes the alps to act out. You can remove it…forcing them to lose their evil intent.
  • If an alp is caught in the act of terror by morning, the alp can be asked to leave. They’ll try to bargain so don’t fall for their tricks! Beware!

A Writer’s Self Care Routine

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  1. If you write with the help of a beverage, we suggest anything caffeinated.
  2. Eat. This is a gift not many writers get to enjoy. We would advise sticking to something quick and fatty, but if you’re watching your health, don’t listen to us.
  3. Remember that killing off characters is necessary in some stories. So, sit back, relax, and plot the next death in your tale.
  4. Stuff your handy-dandy notebooks with every single idea that comes to your head. Your brain will thank you later.
  5. Sleep. You deserve it.

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As Summer Comes To An End…

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…our reading becomes a bit more spookier!

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At the top of our list is A Killer’s Mind by Mike Omer, one of our writers with HRM. Published by Thomas & Mercer, an Amazon imprint, we are so excited to display this on our shelves!

Want a blurb? Here you go:

Three Chicago women have been found strangled, embalmed, and posed as if still alive. Doubting the findings of the local PD’s profiler, The FBI calls on forensic psychologist Zoe Bentley to investigate.

Zoe quickly gets off on the wrong foot with her new partner, Special Agent Tatum Gray. Zoe’s a hunter, intense and focused; Tatum’s a smug maverick with little respect for the rules. Together, they must descend into a serial killer’s psyche and untangle his twisted fantasies, or more women will die. But when the contents of three inconspicuous envelopes reveal a chilling connection to gruesome murders from Zoe’s childhood, suddenly the hunter becomes the hunted.

Why They Aren’t Reading It

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A very interesting post popped up on my timeline, asking friends what makes others stop reading a book. Some of the responses were unique but a decent portion of readers responded in the way we thought they would. Here are three reasons why people put books down and don’t get to the last page.

  1. Being predictable. We all hate when we can guess what’s going to happen in a plot. Once a story is predictable, people don’t feel compelled to continue on with the story. If you’re writing a story and the plot is straight forward, you’d better guess it that book is going right back on the shelf and the reader is huffing in another direction.
  2. No conflict. Believe it or not, some writers just write. And I mean, write without direction. No planning, plotting deaths, or even connections between characters. Some of you are probably cringing in your seats, wondering how someone could do that or how they even got published. Anyway, if your story is lacking a real gut-wrenching conflict, you’re asking for the shelf.
  3. Inserting views into the story. This one is tricky. People don’t like views shoved down their throat in conversation or in upbringing (rule number one if you want sane children), so why would people give books a pass in the views department. They don’t. In reality, no one likes that.put that thing back.gif

Murder In The First Degree

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When someone is convicted for murder in the first degree, that means they planned out this particular death and executed their target. While there are many levels of first degree murder, this is the general idea. How does that relate to writing? Well, let’s talk about how planning out the death of one of your characters may come in handy.

First of all, you should ask yourself a series of questions before you decide to stick a knife in one of your characters. One being: has this character served their purpose in the telling of your story? Or maybe, has it become difficult to write in a character after a revelation in the plot? Or as simple as day, are they the ultimate sacrifice type of character?

If you’ve answered any of these questions with a whispered “yes,” I think it’s time to cut a character out.

As mad as we get when the tables are turned and we’re the reader, a character’s death comes with purpose. There have been so many book deaths that were needed to fuel emotion in the story, or further the plot. (Always kill a character to further the plot.) The characters we hate to lose are usually the ones who get killed off. Sometimes the character needed to serve a quick purpose and needs to be written off…in the most dramatic way possible, aka death.

Don’t feel obligated to keep all of your characters; they won’t all see the finish line.