Author: Rose Sparrowking

Recent Reads

~ Rose Sparrowking

Shutter by Ramona Emerson

This is my new fav! I’m on the list to get her second book from the library. So many good storytellers coming out of the southwest. Rita can see and hear ghosts and acknowledging this is a big taboo in Navajo culture. And potentially dangerous for Rita. But the dead want her help and as a forensic photographer, she’s in a position to do just that.

At times I did stop reading as the descriptions of the crimes were so gruesome and disturbing. I also was pretty sure who the murderer was.

But that was balanced out by the loving relationship between Rita and her grandmother and Rita’s growth as a photographer.

Ramona also ties in the terrible history of the Navajo peoples perpetrated by white people and their continuing hardships. I was aware of some of this and it is heartbreaking to read about it in such a personal manner.

Murder-mystery, ghosts, Navajo culture, photography and more–I’m looking forward to the next book!

The Golden Tresses of the Dead by Alan Bradley

Another murder mystery! I’ve loved Flavia de Luce since The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie came out. This is the tenth novel in the series. I love her spunk. I love her relationship with her sisters. I love Dogger. But I think I love Gladys best! That Flavia treat her bicycle as a person just tickles a girlish part of me.

Oh no! There’s someone’s finger in Feely’s wedding cake! Who will figure this out? Flavia’s new investigative business with Dogger is on their first case.

These are such a fun read. I admit to skimming a lot of the chemistry. That might be Flavia’s love, but I study chemistry in high school and college and that was enough for me!

I’ve got the next book in the series on the top of the TBR pile just waiting to go!

Book Review: The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

~ Rose Sparrowking

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Beautifully written. Emotionally evocative. I empathized with Grace Winters closely and enjoyed watching her become the person she was by the end of the story. How she learned to live.

Life. Death. Grief. Guilt. Love. Flaws. History. Dancing. Ibiza. Miracles. Alien life. The ocean. Murder mystery. Friendship. Corporate greed. Environmental protection and destruction. Protests. Hippies. Mathematics. Astrophysics. Scuba diving. Marine biology. Family. Psychic powers. Orange juice. And so much more in this novel.

I wasn’t all that invested in the beginning of the novel. It took time to grow on me, but the voice engaged me. I noted some passages that captured my attention in the first quarter of the novel, but I stopped doing that as I became more involved in the story.

Favorite quotes:
“‘I feel like I have a life inside me that needs to be lived and I am not living it.” P12

“There are two kinds of ghosts that torment you when a young person dies. The ghost of who they were, and the ghost of who they could have been.” P19

“When you had a childhood surrounded by saints it was easy to feel like a sinner. A teacher once told me if prayers aren’t reaching God, it was because they had been blocked by your own sin.” p71

There were many more quotable moments, but I was too busy reading by then.

La Prescencia threw me for a long time. It felt so weird, but by the end, I understood the necessity of something so extraordinary. We are so familiar with our day-to-day lives that we need something outside ourselves to show us truth. To show us the miracles all around us that we take for granted.

Live your life. Truly live. What does that mean? I think that’s different for everyone. I know I go around in a haze of doing one thing after another, one day after another, and it’s when I slow down and look around that I remember how wonderful and crazy it is to be alive.

“Where there is life, there is possibility.” P39




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Links List

~ Rose Sparrowking

Venting Doesn’t Reduce Anger, But Something Else Does, Study Finds. Smashing shit in a rage room isn’t going to help you to let it go.

ProWritingAid is offering a free Fantasy Writers’ Week Summit, April 22-26. I’m attending! “Discover the secrets for writing, editing, and publishing a spell-binding fantasy novel at this free online summit.” Yep, they’re going to try to sell you stuff but I always come away with some gold nuggets.

The 3 Best Writing Tips I’ve Gotten From Masters, and the 4 Best Writing Tips I’ve Given.

Links List: Romance Writers’ Week and Why Do We Even Read?

~ Rose Sparrowking

Prowritingaid is hosting Romance Writers’ Week starting February 12, 2024. I rarely watch the sessions live, but go through them quickly afterward. You’ve got like a week or so to review the sessions before access is cut off (unless, of course, you fork over more money!). There are usually some good tidbits along with the usual sales pitches. It’s free.

Why Do We Even Read?: “The purpose of literature is, of course, to open up new worlds and introduce information and experiences. This is what libraries do and why libraries are a monumental resource and a cornerstone of democracy. They offer a whole world to their communities that does not change based on an algorithm. It’s based on providing tools, skills, and resources that benefit as many people as possible outside capitalism, which drives data collection and the resulting feeds curated for a user rather than curated by a user.”

The Lens of Life

~ Rose Sparrowking

Like most Americans, I took the SAT exam in high school. Twice. This was the mid 1980s and I had done respectably well on the first round, not record-setting but fine, and the second round I did about the same. My scores were decent, and I got into all the colleges I applied for.

I appreciate the irony of being a writer now and avoiding any college application that involved an essay. Sorry, BU. (Boston University)

Also amusing to me, my daughter got her Master’s from BU.

And strange to me, this is the first time I’ve ever typed that I’m a writer. Not a wannabe writer. Aspiring writer. Novice writer. Just a writer.

Back to the SATs.

I don’t know how much they change the exam from year to year, but I’m sure it’s similar between one year and the next. I didn’t specifically study for the exams. Which is weird, thinking about it now since I normally crammed the night before for exams. I didn’t take any SAT classes. Did they have those in the 80s? I don’t remember my teachers discussing strategies for the exam. The exams, my preparation and my scores were the same.

Yet both experiences were vastly different.

It must have been Spring of Junior year, 1984. My friend and I were getting a ride together, and we wanted to go out to breakfast before going to school. We both had part time jobs and wanted to treat ourselves. My father was the designated driver that morning. He didn’t really ever drive any of the kids around or do anything with the kids if he could avoid it and he wasn’t pleased about picking us up. He didn’t want to have stop somewhere and get us. If he had to be up and driving, he just want us to all get in the car together and go. We were only going to Burger King. It was an easy walk from my house and he’d be driving that way to take us to school. He wasn’t going out of his way, but he was still irritated.

My friend lived a short walk away, so we met up and walked down Main Street, ten or fifteen minutes, looking forward to a special breakfast. Most breakfasts at home were cereal and milk and it was a treat to go out to eat at anytime, even fast food. We arrived only to find Burger King was closed at 6:00a.m. on a Saturday morning. Disappointed, we knew there was no time to walk back to the house to get food. And suddenly there was my father, honking for us to get in the wagon and he was not about to go to a drive-thru somewhere else to get us a bite to eat.

So I took those SATs miserable. My father was irritated with me. I was up earlier than I needed to be, with no reward for my sacrifice, which any teen will tell you that getting up early on a Saturday morning is a huge sacrifice. I was hungry and thirsty and out of luck.

Definitely a learning experience.

Senior year, I took the SAT’s again. I don’t know why because I had acceptances and had committed to a school. But I was told to take them again, probably by the guidance counselor, and being a good rule follower, I did.

This SAT experience was so very different. First, I had a school lined up, so the pressure was off to begin with. (Why, oh why, did I have to sit that second exam?) I didn’t get up any earlier than necessary. I ate breakfast at home. I didn’t meet up with my friend. (We weren’t friends anymore.) My mother drove me to school and I’m sure we chatted the entire ride. She was probably thrilled about getting out of the house without the baby and looking forward to some time alone on the drive back home. (My third brother was a little over a year old at that point and my first sister would arrive in a few months.)

I remember it being a sunny day and I choose a place in the cafeteria near the windows and far away from the main doors. I had a table to myself, because no one walked to the other end of the cafeteria.

I plopped my hobo bag on the seat next to me, got out my number 2 pencils and then the best part, I brought out a big bag of M&M’s and covered it with my purse. And this little thing, this minor act of defiance, made me happy for the entire exam.

Did I really get away with munching on M&M’s during SAT’s? I don’t know. No one said anything to me. I’m sure the teachers monitoring the exam didn’t bother with me. I never caused trouble. Never. I’m sure they ignored me the entire time. But I thought I got away with something.

I nibbled my booty of forbidden candy, enjoyed the sun on my back and completely colored in my little circles with number 2 pencil. And I was happy.

One year, miserable SAT. Next year, happy SAT.

I’m not sure why this memory popped into my consciousness today. I’ve been reading Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and changes in perception is a theme in the story. My SATs is one of the most obvious examples in my life of how my thinking changed my perception of an event.

So I guess there’s a lesson or moral in this story. If you’re going to do it, you may as well enjoy it? Take a minor risk, it’s fun? Is the way you think about something more important that the thing itself? The way you think about your life is how you experience it?

Perhaps it’s something that we need to figure out for ourselves. How we want to perceive our life. That the lens is just as important as the events. That life is going to happen, so you may as well make the best of it.

I hope you all are making the best of your life.

Happy November 1st

~ Rose Sparrowking

Happy First Day of NaNoWriMo! Woo hoo!

First, if you’re going to do timed sprints, you should actually start the timer. Hahaha! I was writing and writing and waiting for the timer to go off so I could get up and stretch and use the bathroom but it never happened. I finally tabbed over to see how much time was left, and, yup, never started it.

I got a good start on my word count!

I’m using this word count tracker: NaNoWriMo Wordcount Worksheet (https://justinmclachlan.gumroad.com/l/nanowrimotracker)

Since my husband works from home (and is teaching a seminar today), I’ve got my noise-cancelling headphones on with the Piano Guys playing. I find lyrics distracting when I’m writing. Also, I just like the Piano Guys!

I’ve got two goals for November:

  1. Write daily
  2. Walk daily

I’ve got a lot going on this month, NaNo, Thanksgiving, a charity event, cleaning to prep for Thanksgiving but I’m most concerned about my health. I was sick in September and then had COVID in October. I haven’t exercised at all in two months, except for walking in Florence on our recent trip. So I’m getting myself back in the habit of moving, starting slowly with a daily walk. By the new year, I’ll be ready to ramp it up, provided I stay healthy. Fingers-crossed.

Daily walk:  20 minutes at a local park

Writing: Word count today: 1717

Science Fiction Writers’ Week with ProWritingAid

~ Rose Sparrowking

Sci-Fi Writers’ week was September 11-14 and while I watched many of the sessions, these were the only two that inspired me to take notes. There was another session that I wanted to watch, but there was a problem with the wrong video being posted and I never went back to see if they fixed it. And now I’ve lost the link, so that’s poor planning on my part.

I have signed up for another webinar, How to Structure Your Plot and Finally Start Your Novel with Katja Kaine, on September 26th and I’ve bookmarked the link this time. Live and learn! I’m looking forward to this because plotting is a struggle for me. I can develop characters and setting and dream up a few scenes but getting a well structured plot has eluded me so far. I usually end up pantsing it, which doesn’t lead to a cohesive plot and requires a lot of editing.

Onto the webinar session reviews:

The first session I watched was by Joe Nicoletti of AI for Authors, talking about how to use ChatGPT as a writer. I knew very little going in, so this one was very informative, even though he only scratched the surface of what’s out there. His main point was learning to develop the best prompt for AI to get the results you want. Think of what expert you need the AI to be, who the audience is, what tone of voice, what writing style and what the context is for your prompt. Get specific. Then ask follow up questions and drill down. Don’t know what to ask? Ask the AI what you should be asking. He got ChatGPT to generate some awesome ideas and characters, even an alien language with pronunciation, with his prompt and follow ups. He was so enthused by what he was demonstrating, that the ProWritingAid monitor had to cut in and tell him he only had 2 minutes left in his time slot. Haha! Definitely going to be playing with this and looking to learn more.

Next session I watched in replay was a talk by the author Lauren Buekes. Loved this one, as she’s very encouraging but also down to earth. She acknowledged that creating is hard, but it’s so worthwhile. “Art is the fire we light against the darkness.” And to just finish: “Finish the damn book. Nothing else matters. Stop second-guessing yourself and write through to the end. You don’t know what you have until you’ve finished it. You don’t know how to fix it until it’s all down on the page.” Also, something on AI: “There is a subconscious magic in process and I think this is what AI is never going to be able to do. There is the subconscious thing that happens as you’re typing and the words change and the characters run away with you and do something different and it’s not magic and you’re not possessed. It is your brain. It’s the wonder of your brain and it’s the wonder of thinking about things and actually writing it and the process is the writing and that’s why it’s so important to finish.” If you can hear her speak, I’d would encourage you to take advantage!

I’m looking forward to more webinars with ProWritingAid and let me know if there are other webinars (preferably free!) happening out there that you’d recommend.

It Only Takes One

~ Rose Sparrowking

Someone posted this image to Facebook today:

Ugh! How do you let something go? This one asshole is ruining my day… because I’m letting them.

It’s the first time I’ve had to block someone on the NaNo forums. I imagine that it’s some 13 year boy pranking people online. It was that infantile and obvious. I get a chat message and I’m suspicious because I don’t know this person and there’s nothing in their profile. I ask what they’re doing for NaNo and they reply they didn’t know and were really there to connect to people. A red flag, but nothing in the conversation is crossing a line. They keep complaining about being tired and I keep sidestepping the issue until finally I ask, because I know that’s what they want. And, yes, their genitals are the reason they are so tired.

Double ugh! Boys! Whatever the age! This is why I’m writing about a female only society for NaNo and the disruption of men when they arrive.

And FFS, I know it’s not all men!

So, the situation has been on my mind all day and I wish I could go into my head and erase the entire thing.

I need to learn some techniques in how to let things go!

Links to Articles on Using AI for Writers

~ Rose Sparrowking

I am technologically curious and really enjoyed what little I’ve learned about using AI for creative writing. Enough that I’d like to learn more. I am concerned about how AI has been trained and what that means as far as copywrite for authors. But I think for generating ideas, characters, and other items that aren’t actual writing, AI could be very useful.

Here’s a few links about using ChatGPT for writing:

How to use ChatGPT for writing by TechRadar. Summarizing, creating characters, worldbuilding, creating outlines and some good tips for better prompts.

5 Ways ChatGPT Can Improve, Not Replace, Your Writing at Wired. Use ChatGPT as a writing assistant. Find the right word. Generate ideas. Do research, but check out the sources! Generate character and place names. Have it review your writing.

9 ChatGPT Tips for Writers (Plus Prompts) from EvatoTuts+. 9 tips for writers using ChatGpt.

How to Write a Novel With ChatGPT (Ultimate Guide in 2023) from WritingBeginner. “Write a novel with ChatGPT by generating outlines, descriptions, dialogue, and scenes. Using prompts like, “Describe the setting of the scene” or, “Create a dramatic confrontation,” ChatGPT generates unique and compelling output, scene by scene. Refine and edit the output to fit your story’s needs.”

Online courses:

Write an entire novel with AI? Sudowrite. I’ve listened to The Creative Penn’s podcast with Amit Gupta from Sudowrite and it’s worth a listen to hear their side of the AI and creative writing debate. I am technologically curious enough to at least give it a try.

NaNoWriMo 2023

~ Rose Sparrowking

Yesterday I began work on my prep for my novel for NaNoWriMo 2023. (What’s that? Short answer: join people around the world to write 50,000 words in November.)

I signed up online and started freewriting ideas on my protagonist, the antagonist, the setting and the conflict. Plot points emerged organically as I worked.

I’m planning this work as the background for my protag for the novel I’ve been kicking around for years. I find I write so much background so I can understand my character(s) that I figure why not write a novella of it. This may backfire on me as I’ll be thinking of background for the background story but experimentation is all good. And by background, I want to understand what my character wants, needs and what false belief is keeping them from getting what they need.

Theme is starting to tickle the back of my mind. And names. And setting. This is the fun part!

I’ve got a basic title: Rowan’s Story. It may change.

But if it doesn’t, that’s okay too. The point for me is to write the story and to finish writing the story.

I used an AI generator to create an image (Stable Diffusion) for my cover. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’m not talented or experienced enough to create something like the image myself. I don’t want to spend money for someone to create a cover for me because it’s not a book I’m looking to publish. But I do want to support creative people. I’ll have to keep wrestling with this. I will note somewhere that I generated the cover with the help of an AI generator.

Here’s the book cover I made up:

I’m looking forward to more freewriting today. I think I’ll be focusing on the antagonist. A specific person? Society at large? Plus I’ve already run into a conundrum in the plot to puzzle out. Fun times!

Are you participating in NaNoWriMo? Let me know!