Category: Character Development

Squirrel Book!

Furry squirrels lighting the way : new book!

July 17, 2017

Furry Squirrels Lighting the Way

One day we were driving home and a squirrel jumped out in front of the van.  Amid squeals and screams from “Don’t hit it!” and “Mommy! A squirrel!” to “Yummy! Squirrel stew!” I managed to avoid it.

We were on our way to church.  Our church family calls themselves the squirrels.  Instantly, the girls were coming up with nutty squirrel names and reasons for why this “teenage boy squirrel” was out in the road. (I have no idea how it became a teenage boy squirrel, we certainly didn’t catch it and examine it!)

They suggested I write a bunch of stories with these cute little squirrels.  We jotted down names, ages, and built squirrel families in the “Landmark Tribe” in the “wooded lands.”  This was complete with the Beaver Clan and the masked robber family (raccoons).  Several of our chicken names were drafted for Landmark Tribe’s squirrels.  They even sketched out character traits!  Granny Pecan was the first character made.  Her heavenly hazelnut pie was perfected.  They drew pictures and giggled about the squirrels’ stories.

The first story to be published is just out!  Busting Berry Bath is a humorous tale told by Chip, one of the Crunchies of the Landmark Tribe.  (Adults are “elders,” babies are “squawlers,” and teenagers are “crunchies.”)  Each story is a squirrel-style fable; special messages of good character are hidden within. (Can you find the message?)  In their own quirky, squirrely way, these squirrels are lighting the way for all good creatures.

We hope you enjoy this story and the many more to follow!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Meet Joseph

July 13, 2017

Meet Joseph

Jaquline’s favorite series of stories right now is The Devonians.  She loves the short, easy to read, stories with “bright colors” (Christina illustrates the covers in bold crayon) and “big words” (the lettering is large print).

Each of the Devonians stories follows a different child within the village colony of Covenant.

Daydreamer follows Joseph Taylor.

Joseph is a colonist on a planet called Devonia.

This planet has a much longer year than Earth does, so when Joseph says “6 years old” he’s really the same age as someone over 8 years old on Earth!  Joseph’s year is equal to about one year, four months, and two weeks of Earth time.

Joseph’s family lives on a farm – like everyone on Devonia.  They have running water because they pipe water using a waterwheel from the Crystal River to their farms using bamboo pipe!  They also collect rainwater from their rooftops!

Joseph likes to daydream.  He sometimes lets his daydreaming get in the way of his chores!  This is what happens in Daydreamer.  Joseph has a best friend who lives on the next farm.  Her name is Alena.  Joseph has four brothers and one new baby sister named Rose.  Two of his brothers are twins.

Jaquline says she likes Joseph because he’s a lot like her.  He tries to do big kid stuff, but sometimes his wandering thoughts get in the way.

Jaquline says, “Maybe, children on Devonia are the same as children everywhere!”

*Of course, Devonia is fiction.  It’s a world I made up and all the characters are also fiction!*

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Yard Work Day

June 30, 2017

Yard Work Day

Today was a yard work day.

I love yard work day because I love to mow grass.  With our push mower, it’s a walking workout where you can sing your lungs out and no one can hear you.  Today I was interviewing Ethan while I mowed instead of singing.

The girls love yard work day because after we spend hours yanking stumps and sticks and dead wood out of the ground (this yard was Florida brushland 8 months ago, so it was loaded with hidden spikes where bush stumps stick out of the ground), we can burn them in our fire pit (8 concrete blocks set in the dirt off the backyard in the middle of the dirt pit – I like to pretend that’s the summer kitchen; it might be, someday).

The dogs love yard work day.  Primrose likes it because she gets to be outside with us.  Sheba gets the whole house to herself – and we’ll come in to find her stretched out on top of the couch with a nest made out of her blanket.

But the critters who make the absolute best of yard work day are the chickens.  They follow the mower like rats following the Pied Piper, each hoping to snatch more dislodged bugs and fresh, juicy greens than every other chicken.  They race to whoever is raking and scratch the hay all over finding bugs. (10 adult chickens can smooth a leaf pile flat in less than a minute!)  They spy a child toting the full hay bucket toward their henhouse – Crow Cackle Cackle! – they call all other foraging chickens as they race back to the henhouse to inspect and rearrange their new hay immediately.  Soft grass cuttings make hay.  Thicker, brush-type cuttings make the hen yard mulch.  We fill this “hen yard mulch” about 6 to 10 inches deep and the chickens continually scratch and add nitrogen to it for a few weeks.  We use this finished, fertilizer-infiltrated, shredded indigestible plant material to mulch our bulb beds and for our future garden.

The bonus of yard work day is that everyone feels like we’ve accomplished much, we all clean up, eat dinner, and sleep.  The children all go to sleep as soon as they are out of the bath.  Even Mom is tired, but after the last outside chore (herding the reluctant chicken flock back into the hen yard for the night), I breathe in the sweet smell of cut grass, fresh earth, and wood smoke.  And we finish our yard work day with sticky, gooey roasted marshmallows over the dying fire’s embers.

Working outside always relaxes me.  I totally love how when God made us and put us in the perfect environment; perfection was a garden!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Mythical Horses

June 27, 2017

Mythical Horses

They say that in fiction, we don’t really create anything new, we draw on our memory of things we have seen to create something new: Like the Sevokloi in Web of Deception – they are like squids with reptile bodies (leather) adapted for a desert terrain and having two steadying legs like an overgrown insect.  I love creating creatures that don’t really exist.  I also like to pretend (in my stories) that other mythical creatures are real: like unicorns and pegasi. (The people of my world call them “skyhorses”.)

In our house, each of us have different theories on how the stories of mythical creatures like flying horses (pegasi) and horned horses (unicorns) came about.

My personal theory is that someone in ancient times came across a skeleton of a horse with a bone spear stuck through its skull.  Since it was bone, they thought it was part of the skeleton (maybe they’d never seen a horse!) and voila, stories spread of a horned horse!

For pegasi, maybe there were some pre-Ionian shepherds out when Elijah rose up to heaven (it says “there appeared a chariot of fire and horses of fire… and Elijah went up by whirlwind to heaven”) and those shepherds said “Look Joe!  Flying horses of fire driving a chariot of fire!”  (tada, pegasi!) Then Joe says “maybe that’s how the sun goes across the sky.”  Boom!  Now there’s the Greek story of Helios driving flying horses in his flaming chariot.

Rebeccah thinks that flying horses and horned horses were mutants of the horse kind.  An isolated, now extinct, species of horse in ancient times used an overgrown tooth to dig the ground like cracker cows and wild hogs looking for food.  These were unicorns.  A few, eohippus sized members of the horse kind, flew-hopped about like archaeopteryx with tiny wings.  These ended up being called pegasi!

However you explain the origin of mythical creatures in fantasy stories, they do make the stories far more interesting.  (They also let us know that the story world we are entering is not real – so we can expect many strange things.)

I love mythical creatures.  I like pretending to create something new.  And it’s fun to theorize about how people created them.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

Capturing Places

June 24, 2017

Captured Places

Have you ever walked through a place you loved so much you drew scale drawings of it and built models?  I love architecture.  I plan each building and area – in most of my stories, even down to the plants and what color flowers are in season!

Once, I walked through a house with my parents.  This house was three levels with huge seat windows in every upstairs bedroom – the architecture of its large, open, bright rooms inspired the castle rooms in The Princess and the Swans.

The drab gray stone buildings in the K’vell training complex in Web of Deception came straight from a series of compact, functional, barracks-style buildings on an old property we explored once.

The Ann, Mary, and Susan Mysteries take place in my second-favorite childhood home.  The inside of that house is exactly as it is in real life – including the wrap-around second-floor deck and the loft-lookout bedroom on the third floor.  I added the aviaries, fields, and barn the way I wanted them (the only real-life outdoor structures in the stories are the dilapidated pool and the little next-door house) but even most of the bushes the girls hide in are on the real-life property.

In the Adventures of Long Tail, the chicken yard is exactly as we had it in the house Kimberly and Lucas were born in. (But the time stamped in those books is just before Jaquline was born.) Even the hen house is set up exactly as we had ours with the 4-level biddie brooder and incubator on top.

For me, it helps to visually see places in my worlds.  Lego bricks are great for scale buildings!  I even make maps and blueprints for most worlds and buildings so I never mess up my directions as I bounce from one storyland to another.  Continuity is very important to me (my perfectionist nature, I guess, but seriously… if Long Tail’s hen house was different each time, or if Ethan went down a different corridor each time to get to the Observation Deck, wouldn’t that be odd?)

Writing also helps me capture the best of places I remember (or dream up).  If I love a house, shed, barn, park, or yard layout, it will be in a book someday!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Question For Inspiration

Why do you say “curiosity killed the cat?”

June 17, 2017

Question for Inspiration

We were all snuggled up, sprawled across the big fluffy bed in our pajamas, about to start reading the third bedtime story on the cool winter night.

“What will it be?” Begs Jaquline for the umpteenth time.

“Patience!” Sighs Kimberly.

“Curiosity killed the cat, you know,” Christina laughed, repeating something her grandmothers and some aunts had occasionally said.

“Why?” Jaquline asked.

Everything stopped.

“Why do you say curiosity killed the cat?” Jaquline clarified.

“Mom, why do you and grandma say that?” Rebeccah asked.

I was stopped on the bed.  I had a storybook in my hand.  This time, I didn’t know why.  I’d never heard of any fable, story, or family tale which had that saying, even as a line somewhere.   So, I invented one.  I told them why the birds say, “Curiosity Killed the Cat.”  They liked it!  The girls insisted I write it into a real story. (Type it, actually) Christina drew the illustration and colored it.

This fable-style story owes its existence to a question asked by a little girl.  For me, inspiration often comes from the simplest of things!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time,

~Nancy Tart

Eggs of Giants

June 13, 2017

Eggs of Giants

One cool thing about keeping a flock of chickens (aside from the 5am alarms) is that they pop eggs out!

Before we had chickens, I thought all eggs were white and exactly the same size and shape.  With the first time our Buff Orpington hen announced to the world that she plopped a smooth, clean, egg in the nest box, my preconceived notions about eggs were shattered.

It was BROWN!

It was TINY!

This giant, beautiful 6 pound hen had laid an egg that may have weighed 3 grams (okay, maybe a little bigger than that).  It didn’t have a yolk!  Maybe our chickens were broken.  Of course, they weren’t broken.  Most heavy breeds lay brown eggs.  Buff Orpingtons are heavy breeds.  Most first eggs are small and even the most proficient layers occasionally have an egg without a yolk.  They never did lay what I previously thought of as “normal” eggs, instead they were huge eggs (extra-large) with the occasional super-giant egg containing two yolks.

Currently, we have a rainbow of large chickens in our flock.  Buff Orpingtons, Rhode Island Reds, and Plymouth Barred Rocks lay various shades of brown eggs (actually, pale apricot to medium walnut brown) and some have speckles!  Our Easter Eggers lay green, pale pink, and occasionally spotted eggs.  We also ended up with some White Leghorns, who are smaller than the others, but lay extra-large white eggs.  Our Golden Phoenix (who is a mottled English walnut color with a ring of golden feathers around her neck and scattered about her dark head) lays a torpedo-shaped almost pink egg 6 of the 7 days in a week.  Just like each of us are unique, each hen lays an egg with her own distinct size, shape, and color!

Young pullets (a female chicken is a pullet until she starts steadily laying eggs) will sometimes start out producing small eggs for the first week or so.  In the picture, we had a new layer’s tiny, a “regular” sized, and a double-yolker from our White Leghorn.

Another fun thing about having chickens is observing the variety of egg colors and shades when packing our eggs in their cartons.  We have at least one white and one green in each dozen but most of our hens lay an assortment of pink-brown shades called “brown” eggs.  They say you can tell what color a chicken will lay by the bottoms of their feet! (In our experience, not exactly, but pretty close)  In our last batch of biddies, we had three with blackish green “soles” of their feet. The girls are hoping to find a dark olive egg or maybe even a purple egg!

Yes, the girls name our chickens.  These names (usually for attributes or specific colors) usually find themselves playing hens or pullets in the Adventures of Long Tail.  Sometimes their creative names end up inspiring an actual story character (like Jasmine Rose in The Devonians).

The girls’ favorite part of chickens is the raising challenge.  They enjoy plotting color mixes as they separate them for breeding, watching the incubator for 21 days and squealing “babies are coming soon,” tending new hatchlings, encouraging them to explore, helping them grow, and seeing their breeding experiment results as they become pullets and cockerels.  Then they usually say goodbye to newly laying pullets about 18 – 26 weeks or promising-looking cockerels about 10 – 14 weeks as they prefer to sell them when they are “past the danger stage.” (aka too big for most hawks and no longer needing brooder care)

I love their learning adventure (as Rebeccah says, breeding in chickens is more colorful than Mendel’s peas) and we all enjoy the rainbow of eggs in various sizes the happy hens provide.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time,

~Nancy Tart

Research for Caleb

June 8, 2017

Caleb

I love to write historical fiction.  Historical fiction is fiction (a made-up story) set in a historical setting.  It can be following an actual historical figure, about a historical figure, place, or event, or a made-up story in a real time in history.

Writing historical fiction requires research.  The deeper and more accurate your research, the more in-depth and believable your story will be.

For example, “The Living God” is a historical fiction story.

Historical setting: Babylon, 6th/7th century BC

Historical figures: Daniel, counselors, princes, King Darius (Persian)

Culture(s): Recently occupied Babylon, rule was Mede/Persian, servants/slaves of various conquered tribes/nations/villages including Judean (Israelite)

For this story, I researched the culture of Babylon pre-occupation, the culture of the Mede/Persian empire, and the Judean culture for the time period of the story.  The Babylonians had a rather effective “conquer and subjugation” method of stealing conquered people’s high-ranking children and using them in court service to prevent uprisings.  They generally treated these individuals as princes and only took the best of the best.  Daniel was one such captive.

I also researched what was available on King Darius (and Mede/Persian rulers of this time in general), and Daniel; as these were my primary historical characters.

This research gave me insight into Daniel’s mental state.  Reading historical information about him revealed that he was grateful for his position, served his masters (at least three different kings) faithfully even if he disagreed with them, fulfilled his duties honestly, yet considered himself a prisoner and yearned for release and the ability to return to his homeland.

I created a main character to follow (Caleb) as a palace slave (captured youngster from another dominated tribe) using the cultural information I could gather.  Caleb is feisty, independent, used to being above the law (a noble in his former land), yet knowledgeable of the laws of his captive land and attempting to follow them.  As my research showed that often pairs of children were stolen, I also created Miriam, Caleb’s younger sister who is more accepting of her lower status as women were culturally lower than men even in nobility.

Since “The Living God” is a retold Bible story, the central storyline (regarding Daniel) is taken from the Biblical account.

So, that’s just a little bit about the research behind one short, historical fiction story!  I love researching things, so historical fiction is a favorite genre of mine.  Try that out with your next story – research and write!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time,

~Nancy Tart

 

 

The Real Egg Thief

June 6, 2017

The Real Egg Thief

We had forty little chicks in the high brooder.  It was back when our little 4-level brooder held three batches of monthly chicks in stages and by the time they were in the bottom level, they roamed the yard. (At 12 to 13 weeks, our breed was too big for almost all predators.) Hardware cloth (wire) protected them from everything and a warm heat lamp kept them toasty (until their feathers come in at about 4 weeks, chicks need 100 degrees Fahrenheit).

But one morning when we went out to feed them, a corn snake had feasted!  He had popped the staples and lifted up one corner of the hardware cloth to slide his seven foot body inside their tiny brooder and eat at his leisure.  He was so camouflaged in their warm hay floor that we didn’t see him at first!  We just saw that almost all the baby chicks were gone.

Corn snakes are very important around farms because they eat rodents and other pests.  We had to relocate him to another area and use big u-nails instead of staples to make our brooder big-snake-proof.

Naturally, any adventure with our chickens turns into a Long Tail adventure!  In Long Tail and the Egg Thief, the snake only eats eggs and tries to scare off the chickens.  And, Long Tail’s humans shoot the snake with an arrow (this was because Christina and Rebeccah had been doing archery lately, so they thought that was cool).  Usually, farmers don’t kill snakes unless they are poison snakes that pose a threat to livestock and people.  We have a black racer snake living under our house and he routinely gets fat with mice that would try to get in the henhouse (or in our house).

Since then, we haven’t lost any chicks to snakes.

Raising chickens, like many things, is a learn-as-you-go activity.  You can read and research forever, and try to do your best.  Sometimes, everything will go along fine, but other times, the unexpected (three hungry fence-destroying neighbor dogs, a seven-foot corn snake, or a family of five dive-bombing 4 foot tall eagles) will show up and you learn from those mistakes on what to do next time.

For me, most of the upsets in our continuing chicken flock become adventure stories for Long Tail the Rooster.  That’s seeing the bright side.  Because just like everything in life, we can’t go back, only forward!  Let’s march on, chicken adventures!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later,

~Nancy Tar

World Builder

June 3, 2017

World Builder

I love creating alternate fantasy worlds.  I like to make them believable but fascinating.  Here’s a little step into how I build them:

In Web of Deception, the world of the Four Kingdoms is vibrant with culture and history.  I research elements I want, design histories that incorporate geography, climatic or geographic racial differences, climactic events, and culture clashes including the resulting epidemics, interracial blending, or wars that would have been.  To me, when I read Swavarian, I see the history of the people that made them who they are.

Sometimes I love the world so much that I create alternate stories within it.  For instance: the sharply contrasting cultures within the post-apocalyptic Earth world in the Realm of Earth series began with Grenadan stories focusing on the clashes between the militaristic tribe of Grenada with its central hub cities and primitive outskirt cities and the neighboring pacifist tribe of Camela in Source of Strength, Bold Worlds, and The Truth.  This precariously perched world with one central militaristic tribe whose Guards enforce law and order in most of the ten tribes shows up again in the Brantley Station Saga with the wealthier, more technological Qualizidians dealing with the political requirement of allowing Guards in their underwater mining colony.

All Greek?  No.  All part of the Realm of Earth!

That’s the way I explore other cultures in our real world.  I like to step into the shoes of different classes of people during whatever time and wiggle my toes around in them.  I like to picture their daily lives, struggles, imagine what their dreams would have been, and understand their culture without today’s lenses clouding my judgment.  It works for various cultures today too.  How does one understand another culture easily?

Imagine you are a mother in it.  What are your worries?  You love your children (love is universal); your hope is for them to have the best.  That I’ve found to be the easiest shoe for me to step into.  But you have to be able to drop your preconceived notions about what “best” is.  Here, in America, we have almost unlimited hopes and dreams.  An early Greek family living in a smaller polis would be hoping the rains didn’t wash away their crops and dreaming for a winter free of sickness.  They spent most of their day gathering food for the same day; as with most agrarian systems, they lived life connected to the seasons and their crops and animals.  Even if we are fortunate enough to have a garden today, we can find readily available food almost anywhere for a price; we live connected to our jobs which provide us money that translates into food, shelter, and clean water.  “Best” for them was survival.  Their “Best” is what we take for granted.

When I build my worlds, I’m pulling bits from a myriad of cultures I’ve studied and attempt to morph them together in a believable way.  Then I walk around in the shoes of the people I’ve created and pull their hopes, dreams, and feelings from what I would feel should their history be mine.  Hopefully, this process creates some realistic characters and believable worlds for your enjoyment!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time,

~Nancy Tart

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