After The Horror Show, with Brian Keene

I was on The Horror Show with Brian Keene this week. It was a great time, and (I hope) a good talk with Brian and Dave (and Phoebe!).

We talked the origins of Apokrupha and Lamplight, about new releases–LampLight Volume 3 and The Honey Mummy by E. Catherine Tobler— and about Samhain closing down, shark movies and more.

Here are some links and follow on discussions from the interview. (and maybe a link so you could subscribe to LampLight)

Dream Authors

Keene asked me about what my dream authors for LampLight would be… and I promptly stumbled over my words. Here is a short, and by no means complete, list of dream authors.

Elizabeth Hand
N. K. Jemisin
Livia Llewellyn
Laird Barron
Joyce Carol Oates

Presses

We spoke of other presses I admired and thought were doing a good job. Just wanted to list them again, and add one I forgot on air, Raw Dog Screaming Press.

And here is the blog post Keene talked about.

Poetry

I talked on three different poetry challenges I’ve been doing this year. Here is more info and links for all three!

1 in 12

I want you to write one poem in 2016, but write it 12 times, seeing what time brings to the process.

Monday Poems

I want you to take a moment every Monday morning and write a poem.

April Poems

Write one poem a day for all of April

My Books

Volume 3 of LampLight is out, which I edited. Check it out, there are some amazing stories in this one.

My poetry collections, Extrospections and April Poems 2011.

April Poems, 2015 will be out in April, AND come join us on Facebook if you want to do your own April Poems.

If you use Smile.Amazon.Com, they donate a portion of your purchase to charity, and I suggests Scares That Care!

Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoyed it.

On Sentence Clarity and Oxford Comma Memes

If you are a writer for any appreciable amount of time you will come across one of the great debates of our trade: the oxford comma.

This is not to be about that. Rather, I would like to talk about the example sentence being passed around on a meme. Yes, this is a discussion about a meme, but as it is being passed around to educate, I want to comment on it.

There are a few, but they have similar structure to this one.

We invited the rhinoceri, Washington(,) and Lincoln.

(Oxford comma in parenthesis)

The meme goes like this: with the Oxford comma, you have a list of three things (a group of rhinos, two people, one named Washington, the other Lincoln) but without it, just two things (two rhinos, one named Lincoln and the other Washington, which are odd but acceptable names for rhinoceri).

The sentence, while correct, is poorly constructed. While one can argue the function of the comma, it is the ambiguity of the sentence, not the Oxford comma that is the issue, and why the sentence fails.

Perhaps context would have fixed the ambiguity, but we should not rely on the surroundings when clarity can be presented in the sentence.

The striking part of this sentence is the specificity of “the” for the rhinoceri. THE rhinoceri were invited, not “some” or “a few” or any other designation. Clearly this was done to make the sentence ambiguous.

“The rhinoceri” are not the same rhinoceri as “some rhinoceri” or even “a few friendly rhinoceri”, etc. I suspect the context of this sentence would remove the ambiguity, as it would explain the use of ‘the’ over any more appropriate word.

But, back to our list. There are two situations: Washington, Lincoln and a whole bunch of animals are coming; two animals are coming, one named Washington, one named Lincoln.

There are three things in my sentence

The first point of this situation is ordering in your list. In general, it is best to go specific to unspecific, as well was singular to plural.

We invited Washington, Lincoln and the rhinoceri.

Of course you could argue that “Lincoln and the Rhinoceri” could be a punk band, but that’s just you being difficult.

Since there is a change of the noun from both proper to general and from singular to plural between our subjects, care needs to be taken in the phrasing.

We invited our friends, Washington, and Lincoln, and several rhinoceri.

or perhaps:

We invited Washington, Lincoln, as well as the rhinoceri.

They are just two Rhinos with odd names

The first solution to this one is a simple change of punctuation.

We invited the rhinoceri: Washington and Lincoln.

However, it would be better to make the sentence read clearly.

We invited two rhinoceri named Washington and Lincoln.

Clarity is key

The take away is not that a single punctuation mark can fix all of your problems.

It is that naming rhinoceri “Washington” and “Lincoln” is probably a great idea.

But you didn’t tell me whether to use an Oxford comma!

If you are a lawyer, always use an Oxford comma. This is their fault, after all, stemming from nit-picking text in contracts. IANAL YMMV AAFYB.

As for the rest of you, do what you will, just be consistent about it, and in your sentence structure, be clear.

Rhinoceroses

And for those wondering, “rhinoceri” is not the proper plural of “rhinoceros.”

Ten Influential Books

Having been tagged by a few on Facebook, I am posting my ten influential books. I know you weren’t suppose to think about this much, but, as it will happen, as the meme went about Facebook, I of course thought a lot about this.

That being said, I could probably do this five more times with different books. When there are books like “The Hero and the Crown” and “The Last Temptation of Christ”, or “This Perfect Day” and “The Pillars of the Earth” all of which influenced me somehow.

Superman… something, Saves the Day, maybe? This was a kids picture book… more importantly, it was MY picture book. I remember the bad guys had back pack helicopters. It was the first thing I read, first by memorizing all the words, then by actually reading them. Everything else started here.
Raise the Titanic, Clive Cussler – Another milestone. I read this in fourth grade, it was my first full sized, adult novel. I had to ask my mother what damn (dam-en) was. Nerd fact: I read this book before Ballard found the Titanic, spawning years of interest in the subject. (Yes I saw the movie opening night, no I am not ashamed)
The Chronicles of Narnia, C S Lewis – These were the first books I ever read twice. Such a thing seemed foreign to a kid… I mean, I already read them! Voyage of the Dawn Treader is still my favorite of the bunch, and I am still pissed about what happens to Susan.
The Nine Billion Names of God, Arthur C Clark – There were some Sci Fi before this, but this was really my introduction to short stories as well. This collection, sort of a “Greatest Hits” for Clark is just filled with so much great stuff. For anyone wanted to write short stories, of any genre, this book is a valuable resource.
Cosmos, Carl Sagan – What can you say about this book? It had planets in it! We had NatGeos showing us Jupiter and Saturn as I grew up. This book opened my eyes to the solar system, and to the universe beyond.
The Keep, F Paul Wilson – My first horror novel. One of my mother’s favorite books, it has been read quite a few times before I tried it. Around sixth grade at this point, and for the first time became afraid of the dark.
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook, 2nd Edition – I had gotten into fantasy, reading Terry Brooks, Eddings, even getting into Dragonlance books. This book, the rule set for the AD&D game did something else for me. It set me free. Now I wasn’t just reading stories, I was actively participating and creating them. This book brought me friends, adventures and countless hours where my parents had no concern at all about me, because I was playing D&D.
Dune, Frank Herbert – This is my favorite novel. Half fantasy, half sci fi. Throw in some philosophy and big ass worms. I think the thing that got me about this is how rich and alive the whole book feels. Nothing is shallow, each character or clan or house has a history. One of the few books I have read several times. Herbert’s prose is near poetic at times, and has been a bar I’ve strove to rise to.
Carmina Catulli (The Poems of Catullus) – This was my text book for Latin V. I translated poem after poem and fell in love with not only Catullus, but poetry itself. While there had been poetry before, some I still love, no book has had more of an impact on me as a writer than this.
The Afterimage, Phillis Levin – By now I am in college, and there were certainly a pile of books that had gotten into my head up to this point. I was given this book by a teacher in my first poetry composition class. Found out Phillis taught at the college, and wanted to be good enough to be in her class. These poems are beautiful and thick and Phillis’s command of the English language is still something that I admire. If Catullus’s book bore a poet from me, the Afterimage was it’s bearing, it’s guidebook.

bonus:

Alice in Wonderland – I have never read this book. I own at least 5 copies in various bindings, and yet, I have never traveled front to back between any of their bindings. And yet still, Alice remains one of the most influential stories in my life. I love it. I’ve seen any movie, any cartoon, love video games and artwork, I’ve read re-tellings. Somehow, despite the unmarked spines of the editions I own, this book fascinates me.