Writs R Wrought

Resolution Update

2012-03-01T00:50:00.000-07:00

My resolutions for this year are to:

·Graduate from college.
·Write a new manuscript, something I haven't had time to do since I started college.
·Take a vacation someplace out of Arizona.
·Hug my daughter every day.
·Learn how to make book trailers and post them to YouTube.

How am I doing?

I'm still getting assignment grades that will lead to A's at the moment, but one of my classes is very close to sliding into B territory...every time I start to panic about that, I remind myself I need to pass these classes, not ace them. C is still a passing grade...panic averted. One class is an 8-week online class, which ends in about a week. My final paper, a 5-6 page essay, is due on Wednesday and I haven't begun the research for it yet.... This is going to be interesting, as it is one of the must-pass classes.

Writing the manuscript will have to wait until after graduation. I plan to fulfill this resolution in November as part of NaNoWriMo.

I have a sister getting married in California in June, and plan to celebrate graduation at Disneyland while I am there.

I am hugging my daughter every day...even on the day we had an argument that we both hated having. The hugs are helping.

The book trailers, like the manuscript, will have to wait until after graduation. Some days it feels like my whole life is waiting until after graduation, which I have started referring to as "A.G.".

All in all, I'm doing well; working on things in their proper order. Just as a side note, I am still working on knitting the sweater. It's a top-down raglan sweater that will have no seams when I'm finished. The rows are starting to get really long, and I am hoping that the row comes soon when I will split the arms off and just work on the body. (If you didn't understand that, it's because you've never knit one, and that's all right, I share the sweater details for my friends who do knit.) I have finished thirteen books with a collective page count of 4011 for pleasure reading this month. I have four pleasure books in progress. (One on my nightstand, one on my Nook, one on the Nook app on my phone, and one in that room of my home which my family refers to as "the reading room".)

~Marie

Don't Overdo the Overdue Fines

2012-02-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the difference between “due” and “do”. If you’ll recall, “due” has to do with time and deadlines, while “do” is an action word where someone is doing something.

Just as people confuse “due” and “do”, they also confuse “overdue” with “overdo”. To keep the meanings straight, simply take the words apart. “Overdue” = “over” + “due”. It means that the bill, library book, or pregnancy is past the date on which it was due. “Overdo” means you did too much and you are likely to be in pain. Most of the time, this word is properly used in the past tense: “I spent the weekend working in the garden and I think I overdid it.”

If you can remember that “due” and “time” both end with the letter “e”, and “do” is part of “doing”, you won’t have any problems keeping these two words separate and clear.

~Marie

Shovel Leaners and Toaster Leavin's

2012-02-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

Here’s a pair of interesting phrases which are apparently fairly new to “formal” vocabulary.

“Shovel leaners” doesn’t appear in any dictionary that I could find. However, I did find references to it in several blogs. Gathering the meaning from the context, the term refers to workers who collect a paycheck for apparently doing nothing. The origin appears to be from road construction projects where several lanes are closed off and several individuals are leaning on their shovels watching one individual do the actual work.

“Toaster Leavin’s”, is defined at urbandictionary.com as the crumbs left behind in the bottom of the toaster.

Maybe I should go outside and offer some toaster leavin’s to those shovel leaners….

~Marie

Do You Know When Dew is Due?

2012-02-14T07:00:00.000-07:00

Today we get to examine a trio of homonyms. “Do” is a verb. Use it when there is action, when someone is doing something.

“Dew” is condensation found on the ground in the morning, usually after a chilly, damp night when the sky is clear. In the winter, dew freezes and is called “frost”. Interestingly, “dew” is not often confused with “do” and “due”, but I included it here in order to be complete.

“Due” relates to time. Bills are due. Pregnant women are due. Library books are due. It refers to a specific date, and sometimes even a specific time on that date when something is expected to happen. You are expected to pay the bills or return the library books when they due. The pregnant woman expects to have her baby on or near the date she is due.

Remember them this way: “Do” is part of “doing”. “Due” and “time” both end with an “e”. “Dew” contains the word “ew”, which is what you say when you walk outside barefoot and get cold, wet feet.

~Marie

Using Commas in a List

2012-02-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

When I was learning grammar, the rule concerning commas and lists was easy. In any list, and a list was defined as having three or more items, you put a comma between each item, including before the “and”. In other words, your list liked like this: “I need to go to the store to buy milk, eggs, butter, and cheese.”

When my daughter went to school, they taught her to omit the comma before the “and”, making the list look like this: “I need to go to the store to buy milk, eggs, butter and cheese.” This works well, unless the last two items on the list could be mistaken for a single item. For example, what if my list was slightly different? “I need to go to the store to buy milk, eggs, butter, macaroni and cheese.” Do I need to buy both cheese from the dairy case and macaroni from the pasta aisle, or am I looking for a box of macaroni and cheese from the prepared foods aisle? My daughter’s teacher told me that the comma belonged before the “and” only if there was some ambiguity in the list.

Out of habit, I continued to always put the comma before the “and”. None of my college teachers have objected to its presence. When I sat down to write this post, I decided to do a little research and find out the current rule of correct comma usage. I searched at least a dozen sources, and found a great deal of confusion. No one seems to agree whether to put the comma in before the “and”, or not. Some sources said the comma should absolutely be there, while others said it should only be included in cases of ambiguity. There didn’t seem to be a clear difference between US and UK rules. Finally, I found a resource from the University of North Carolina which seems to be the final authority. They say, “Put commas between items in a list. When giving a short and simple list of things in a sentence, the last comma (right before the conjunction–usually “and” or “or”) is optional, but it is never wrong. If the items in the list are longer and more complicated, you should always place a final comma before the conjunction.”

I’ll keep adding that final comma out of habit, but it’s good to know that while it is optional, it is never wrong.

~Marie

Resolution Update

2012-02-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

My resolutions for this year are to:

· Graduate from college.
· Write a new manuscript, something I haven't had time to do since I started college.
· Take a vacation someplace out of Arizona.
· Hug my daughter every day.
· Learn how to make book trailers and post them to YouTube.

How am I doing?

I'm enrolled in the last classes I need to take in order to graduate. I'm getting grades on my assignments that will net me A's if I can keep it up. The school will take applications for graduation beginning February 1. I intend to fill out the form and submit it by the end of the week.

Writing the manuscript will have to wait until after graduation. I plan to fulfill this resolution in November as part of NaNoWriMo.

I have a sister getting married in California in June, and plan to celebrate graduation at Disneyland while I am there.

I am hugging my daughter every day...even though we are now passing a really bad cold back and forth. I may have to temporarily suspend this until we're no longer contagious.

The book trailers, like the manuscript, will have to wait until after graduation.

All in all, I'm doing well; working on things in their proper order. Just as a side note, I am also working on knitting a sweater, and I have finished a dozen books with a collective page count of 3819 for pleasure reading this month. I have four pleasure books in progress. (One on my nightstand, one on my Nook, one on the Nook app on my phone, and one in that room of my home which my family refers to as "the reading room".)

~Marie

This, Then That, Rather Than the Other Thing

2012-01-31T07:00:00.000-07:00

Here’s a pair of homonyms I often see badly battered by abuse on the internet. “Then” is a measurement of time, used to put two events into their proper chronological order: “I went to the store, and then I went to the bank.”

“Than” is used to compare two things: “I would rather go swimming than do errands.”

Remember them this way: “then” and “when” are spelled almost the same, while “than” and “compare” both have an “a” in them.

~Marie

Misplaced Modifiers

2012-01-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

I’ve been aware of this phenomenon since I was in junior high, or possibly even longer, but it was only in the last five years that I learned the name of it. A modifier is a word that modifies, or changes the meaning of another word. Adverbs modify verbs. Adjectives modify nouns. For example, you could use the sentence, “I ran.” That isn’t a very specific sentence, though, so you can add modifiers to make the meaning more clear. “I ran away quickly,” adds the information of where I ran (away) and how fast I was moving (quickly).

Misplaced modifiers are exactly what they sound like, a modifier in the wrong place. Most of the time, a modifier is placed directly before the word it modifies. In the sentence “I ate meat,” the word “only” can be added in three places, and give the sentence three entirely different meanings.

“Only I ate meat” would indicate that of all the persons present, I was the only one eating meat.

“I only ate meat” says that I did not prepare it, I just ate it.

“I ate only meat” says that I indulged in a meal without vegetables, fruits, or grains.

The modifier getting misplaced can sometimes be funny as well as confusing. Consider these:

“Hiking up the mountain, the thunderstorm was an unwelcome surprise to James.” Why was the thunderstorm hiking up the mountain? I can imagine it would be an unwelcome surprise to see a thunderstorm hiking up the mountain.

“Tumbling down the mountain, Susan feared the rocks would flatten her tent.” Was Susan tumbling down the mountain, or were the rocks? If Susan is falling down the side of the mountain, why is she worried about rocks smashing into her tent? I’d be more worried about me hitting the rocks on my way down the hill.

In both sentences, the problem can be solved by moving the modifying phrase closer to the word it is supposed to be modifying.

“Hiking up the mountain, James was surprised by an unwelcome thunderstorm.”

“Susan feared the rocks tumbling down the mountain would flatten her tent.”

When proofreading something you’ve written, if a sentence is awkward or doesn’t seem to make sense, try moving the modifiers around a bit, and see if the problem is a misplaced modifier.

~Marie

Break the Brake

2012-01-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

Can you tell I have a pet peeve against commonly confused words?

“Brake” is a noun. It’s part of a vehicle or piece of machinery that stops or slows motion.

“Break” is a verb. It’s when you take something that should be in one piece and make it so there’s more than one piece.

The two words even have all the same letters as each other; the only difference is where you put the vowels. Remember it this way: if you break a glass, you almost always say “eek!” as it falls and shatters. “Eek” and “break” have the vowels together. Brake separates the vowels, the same way a brake separates you from travelling at speed.

~Marie

Bodaciously Copacetic

2012-01-10T07:00:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Okie Dog, who suggested both of today’s words, and dictionary.com for providing the definitions.

bo·da·cious [boh-dey-shuhs]

adjective

1. South Midland and Southern U.S. thorough; blatant; unmistakable: a bodacious gossip.
2. Slang.
a. remarkable; outstanding: a bodacious story.
b. audacious; bold or brazen.
c. sexy; voluptuous.

Origin: 1835–45; probably to be identified with dial. (Devon, Cornwall) bo ( w ) ldacious brazen, impudent, blend of bold and audacious

co·pa·cet·ic [koh-puh-set-ik, -see-tik]

adjective; Slang.
fine; completely satisfactory; OK.

Also, copasetic, copesetic.
Origin: 1915–20, Americanism; of obscure origin; popular attributions of the word to Louisiana French, Italian, Hebrew, etc., lack supporting evidence.

Despite Suzanne’s bodacious behavior at the party, Mike assures me that everything was copacetic.

~Marie

Coulda-Woulda-Shoulda

2012-01-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

I thought I’d start the New Year off with another pair of easily confused words. In this case, the confusion comes because of similar pronunciation rather than similar spelling.

“Of” is a preposition. Prepositions show location or direction, and always have a few words tagging along behind them that contains a noun, such as “within five miles of the freeway”, or “south of Main Street”. “Of” is also commonly used to show where something came from or its composition, as in “a man of good family”, “piece of cake”, or the “books of A M Jenner”.

“Have” is a verb. When it’s alone, it means possession; I have a piece of cake. However, “have” is also used as a helper verb in past tense, and this is where the confusion starts. I could have gone to the party. I should have gone to the party. If I would have gone to the party, my boyfriend would not have broken up with me. When could have, should have, and would have, the three most common combinations, are contracted, they become could’ve, should’ve, and would’ve. In each case, the contracted part is pronounced “of”. Dictinary.com notes “inexperienced writers commonly confuse the words, [while] professional writers exploit the misspelling deliberately, especially in fiction, to represent the speech of the uneducated.” Don’t appear uneducated in your internet posting by using “could of” rather than the proper “could have”.

~Marie

I Resolve...

2011-12-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

I don't usually make New Year's Resolutions. It's too easy to break them when everyone else around you is breaking theirs. Generally, I take time near my birthday to review goals and set new ones for the coming year. Having a wild party with pointy hats and lots of cake and ice cream and friends coming over to play silly games is a lot more fun than goal-making, but the goal-making is a lot more grown up.

Sometimes New Year's Resolutions do get hung on to and worked on. In 2001 Anne's resolution was to submit something, anything, to a contest. She did, and won. The audio book of A Heart Full of Diamonds was the result of her resolution.

My Success for College teacher said that goals should be made on the "DAPPS" plan. That is, they should be Dated, Achievable, Personal, Positive, and Specific.

If you don't put a date on a goal, then you don't know how much time you have left.

Your goal has to be achievable, and measurable. "I will lose weight" isn't a good goal, because if you lose only one ounce, you have lost weight, although not enough to notice. "I will lose ten pounds" is something you can measure, and know when you have completed the task.

Your goal has to be personal, something you can do without the outcome depending on others. "I will get a promotion" is not achievable, because you can't control that. "I will ask my boss for a promotion" can be done, no matter what your boss decides to do.

Your goal should be stated in a positive manner. "I won't smoke" is a negative statement, while "I will quit smoking" is a positive one that will accomplish the same thing.

Finally, your goal should be specific. "I will write more" doesn't cut it. More than what? More than I have been? More than a house? "I will write a new manuscript" is specific, although it could get more specific if I added a word count to the goal.

This year, I resolve to:

·         Graduate from college.
·         Write a new manuscript, something I haven't had time to do since I started college.
·         Take a vacation someplace out of Arizona.
·         Hug my daughter every day.
·         Learn how to make book trailers and post them to YouTube.

Let's see how far I get.

~Marie

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

I know there are many out there who don't celebrate Christmas for one reason or another. For some, it is for religious reasons; they are not Christian and Christmas is, after all, the celebration of the birth of Christ. For some, it is a disgust at the commercial aspects the holiday has taken on. Some even refuse to celebrate because it has been calculated that Christ was born in the spring, not in December, and that the origins of the celebratory date in December come from a pagan holiday.

Some people even get angry and lash out if you dare to offer them a "Merry Christmas", and greeting cards have taken to using the phrase "Season's Greetings" instead.

The fact is that nearly every religion in the world has a holiday in the midst of winter celebrating the coming of light into the world. At this time of year, let us put aside our differences and our contentions, and celebrate the coming of light into the world.

As a Christian, I celebrate by honoring the birth of Christ. My scriptures refer to him as "The Light of the World", among other titles. I celebrate his birth on the designated day, even though I know it wasn't actually his birthday. I try to keep the idea of Christmas in my heart all through the year; trying to do as Christ would have me do. I try to treat others how he would treat them; with love and kindness. I am not always successful, but I do try.

Today, I wish you a Merry Christmas. I hope you take it as given; that I wish you love, happiness, and pleasant memories of time spent with family. I wish you feelings of fulfillment in your religious observations, if you observe them. At the very least, may all of you enjoy peace.

~Marie

Hear Here

2011-12-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

This pair of homonyms is a fun one to write about and easy enough to keep straight if you just stop and think about it for a moment.

"Here" is a location. Like other location words such as "there" and "where", it contains the letters "ere".

"Hear" is what you do with your ear, and just to help you remember, it actually contains the word "ear", right after the "h".

A very short post today, but hopefully you'll now find it hard to confuse the two words.

~Marie

Ebooks vs. Print Books

2011-12-10T14:55:00.001-07:00

In most respects, print books are equivalent to ebooks. Both copies usually have the same content. With ereader devices such as Kindle and Nook, both are equally easy to carry around. You can carry more ebooks with you in a smaller space than you can print books. Most ebooks are less expensive.

The one area where print books had complete superiority over ebooks was that they could be autographed. I mean, where are you going to sign an ebook? On the back of the Kindle? On the screen?

Yesterday I came across a service which I totally dismissed, because I was sure there was a catch. The idea wouldn’t let go of me. It kept me up all night. Early this morning, I checked it out. If there’s a catch, it’s so well buried this cynical author can’t find it. I signed up.

It’s called Kindlegraph. It’s a way to collect autographs for ebooks. It’s totally amazing, and now all of my books are able to be signed. My print books have hand-made bookplates which anyone can have for the asking. My ebooks can be signed through the Kindlegraph site.

Here are the facts. A Kindlegraph is a PDF file containing the book’s cover image, a personalized note from the author, and their signature. It can be stored on your computer, printed out, or kept in a folder on your ereader. Because it’s a PDF file, most ereaders will display it. You don’t have to own a Kindle. You could even get Kindlegraphs for your print books, print them out, and glue them in the front, if you’d like. You don’t have to own or buy the book to get a Kindlegraph, because no one checks up on you. The Kindlegraph is a separate document; it is not inserted into the book. The author can choose whether to actually sign their name with their mouse, or use a font script. I sign with the mouse, even though it’s a little sloppier than with a pen, because then it is a real autograph. If you tell me you need it signed to a certain person, or you want the inscription to read a certain way, I will personalize the inscription to be the way you want it, just as I would at a book signing. Finally, Kindlegraph and I don’t charge you anything for the service. It is totally free, unless you use Amazon’s Personal Document Service to email it to your Kindle…but that fee goes to Amazon.

Requesting a Kindlegraph is easy. Go to www.kindlegraph.com/authors/AM_Jenner, sign in with your twitter account, give them an email address where you want your document sent, locate the book you want signed, and click the request button under the book. I get a daily email informing me when I have requests. I write the personalization and sign it and send it back to you. That’s it! Easy as pie, and finally, a way to autograph an ebook!

Typographical Errors

2011-12-06T07:00:00.000-07:00

A friend on Facebook commented that one reason she likes to follow authors was that she loves it when they share their typos with their fans.

My first thought was, “Ack! Share those little things I’m supposed to keep hidden? No Way!”

My second thought was, “Hey, how cool would that be to read typos committed by my favorite authors?”

I commented that I would keep that in mind, and then turned to editing my upcoming book, Assignment to Earth.

This is the final edit before publication, and the manuscript has been in process off and on for 22 years, so you would think I would be down to tiny things. I won’t bore you with the missing punctuation, the period that should be a question mark, and the double punctuation hanging around, but there are a few that made me laugh at the absurdity of what it actually said, and also give myself the “V-8 salute” that these had not been found earlier.

Trusting that you have a keen eye, I won’t tell you what the mistake is, but let you discover it on your own.

· One character turns to her superior officer and says, “What do you us to do, Sir?”

·         “This must be the great-grandpappy,” he said with a grimly.
·         He bent to the task, determined to obtain answers to each and every one of his many and questions...as soon as she woke up.
·         He shook his head slightly, if trying to realign his thinking.
·         Chapter Thirty-two…Chapter Thirty-three…Chapter Thirty-three…Chapter Thirty Four…

I can understand how extra keys could get pushed, or not pushed fully down, but how entire words could be missing for years and never be noticed, is totally beyond my comprehension.

For those who really enjoy typo hunts, after I fixed the accidental typos listed above, I put a (different!) typo into Assignment to Earth just for you. Email me if you can find it!

~Marie

How Long Does it Take to Write a Book?

2011-11-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

I have been asked this many times, so I decided to figure it out.

These are minimum times for me. Other authors may be slower or faster; it varies with the individual.
The rough draft takes me between 30 and 45 10-hour days, depending on the length of the book, which is approximately 300 to 460 hours.
The second draft takes me about thirty 8-hour days, times two authors, for approximately 480 hours.
The manuscript is sent out to beta readers. They are given two weeks to read, comment, and return it.
Combining the versions the readers send back takes approximately 4 hours.
The third draft takes about 14 8-hour days, times two authors, for approximately 224 hours.
Formatting the manuscript for ebook for the final edit takes about 5 hours.
The final edit takes about seven 8-hour days, for approximately 56 hours.
Making the final corrections in the manuscript takes between 2 and 3 8-hour days, for approximately 16 to 24 hours.
Creating the cover and adapting it for both print and ebook takes about 8 hours.
Formatting the finished manuscript for print takes 8 hours.
Formatting the finished manuscript for ebook takes 8 hours.
Writing a new web page and updating existing webpages to accommodate the new book takes about 3 hours.
Uploading the new webpages to my site and the book files to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and Createspace takes about 4 hours.
Writing the blog post to announce the new book takes about an hour.
Posting the blog post and linking it to social media sites takes about an hour.

Total time: Somewhere between 1110 and 1278 hours.

If I was working a "desk job", the 9-5 = 8 hours, minus 30 min lunch and two 15 min "coffee" breaks, would be 7 hours work time per day.

1110 hours = 158.5 days, or 31 weeks, or 7 3/4 months.

1278 hours = 182.5 days, or 36 1/2 weeks, or nine months.

It takes most people one to three days to read my book.

No wonder authors compare the publishing process with sending a child out into the world. Keep in mind this process would take as much as two extra years if I had a publisher and an agent involved in the process.

Going back to the hypothetical desk job: if I made $10/hour, I would earn $1600 per month, or $14,400 in nine months. At a royalty rate that pays me approximately $2 per book, I have to sell 7,200 books to make an average of $10/hour over the nine months it took me (without salary) to create the book.

Giving Thanks

2011-11-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

Thursday is Thanksgiving. Time to stick the turkey in the sink where it will take two days to thaw, and to get ready for some football! Don't forget about the incredible shopping deals on Friday!

Ick!

Although I do eat the "traditional" Turkey dinner, for me Thanksgiving is a time to spend extra time with my family, and to pause and reflect the things I am thankful for. I thought I'd list some of them here.

Marie's thankful for:

· My parents. I would not be the same person I am today without the influence and love of my parents. I would also be homeless without them.

· My daughter, whose huge, body-engulfing hugs keep me on an even keel.

· Federal grants for education, without which I would not be attending school.

· The talents the Lord gave me for imagining and writing stories.

· My friends who encourage my efforts at school and writing.

· My fans who enjoy and purchase my books, and support my writing habit.

Anne says, I could simply add a ditto to Marie’s list, but that may appear to be cheating just a bit; therefore, in addition to what she’s written, let me add:

· Living in a country as free as ours is, with the education provided as a youth so I learned to read and write.

· Having a choice about which religion I want to follow, and the freedom to do so.

· The right and ability to vote, to choose people and policies to keep my country free.

· Having the opportunity to work, so I can have a place to live, food to eat, clothing to wear and books to read.

· Having the opportunity to serve others.

· The chance to smile and say thanks to the people who serve me, including the harried cashiers at the stores I frequent. It costs nothing out of my pocket to give them a smile, read their badge so I can call them by name and say thanks to them for all they do for me.

~A M Jenner

You're Your Own Worst Enemy

2011-11-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

One more pair of often abused homonyms: you're and your. Again, this is a contractual confusion.

The word "you're" is a contraction of "you" and "are". Smash them together until you get the apostrophe. "you are"; "youare"; "you're".

The word "your" is a possessive pronoun, meaning that the object in question belongs to you. Read the post on "it's" and "its" for a more detailed explanation. This is exactly the same mistake, except for the identity of the owner of the property in question.

Remember the difference by trading out the "you're / your" for the words "you are". If you're the owner of your book, you would not say, "You are the owner of you are book." The first "you are" makes sense, the second one doesn't; therefore you use the contraction in the first spot, and the possessive in the second spot. "You're the owner of your book."

~Marie

The Nincompoop's Minion

2011-11-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you can guess at a word's meaning by deconstructing it and seeing what roots it has in common with words you already know well. Beloved, for example means be + loved. (duh!). How often are you deconstructing words to compare roots? Use some of these in your life, and come back to tell us how much better (or not!) your love life is, compliments of dictionary.com.

Cherish [cher-ish]

–verb (used with object)
1. To hold or treat as dear; feel love for: to cherish one's native land.
2. To care for tenderly; nurture: to cherish a child.
3. To cling fondly or inveterately to: to cherish a memory.

Beloved [bih-luhv-id, -luhvd]

–adjective

Greatly loved; dear to the heart.

Nincompoop [nin-kuhm-poop]

–noun
A fool or simpleton.

Minion [min-yuhn]

–noun

1. A servile follower or subordinate of a person in power.

2. A favored or highly regarded person.
3. A minor official.
4. Printing. A 7-point type.

You are cherished and beloved, my nincompoop of a minion.

~Marie

It's its.

2011-11-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

This pair of often abused and confused homonyms is one of my pet peeves.

The word "it's" is a contraction of "it" and "is". Remember what I said about contractions? Smush the word together until one or more of the letters collapses under its own weight and becomes the apostrophe. In this case, "it is" becomes "itis", then "it's".

The word "its" is a possessive pronoun. The object belongs to "it". In English, the pronoun "it" is used for objects without gender. This problem does not arise in Spanish, where everything has gender, but this blog is about the English language. If an object owns another object, then you use the possessive pronoun "its" to show that possession. For example, the tires belong to the car, so you could write, "The car spun the car's tires". However, the word car is used redundantly, so you’d want to write, "The car spun its tires." The word "its" is complete without an apostrophe. Never put one at the end to show possession; the word itself shows the possession.

How to remember which to use: Say the sentence out loud, replacing the "it's" or "its" with "it is". If it makes sense when you make the replacement, then you want the contraction with the apostrophe. If the replacement doesn't make sense, then you want the possessive pronoun without the apostrophe.

Going back to the car and tires, with the replacement phrase, you would say, "The car spun it is tires", which makes no sense, so you know you want to leave the apostrophe out and make it possessive. The tires belong to the car. However, you can safely use the contraction in the sentence "It's making a lot of smoke," because the replacement phrase makes sense there. "It is making a lot of smoke."

Either way you look at it, when the car spins its tires, it's making a lot of smoke.

~Marie

The Earl's Couch

2011-10-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

While I knew a Chesterfield was a couch, and an Axminster was a carpet, I still don't know if the word Chesterfield refers to the earl, his couch, or his suit. Possibly all three; dictionary.com didn't specify. Share the words, and report your colleagues bemused expressions when you come back.

Chesterfield [ches-ter-feeld]

–noun

1. (Sometimes initial capital letter) a single- or double-breasted topcoat or overcoat with a fly front and a narrow velvet collar.

2. A large, overstuffed sofa or divan with a back and upholstered arms.
3. Chiefly Canadian . Any large sofa or couch.

Origin:

1885–90; named after an Earl of Chesterfield in the 19th century.

Ingénue [an-zhuh-noo, -nyoo]

–noun, plural -nues [-nooz, -nyooz; Fr. -ny] Show IPA.

1. the part of an artless, innocent, unworldly girl or young woman, especially as represented on the stage.

2. an actress who plays such a part or specializes in playing such parts.

Bemused [bih-myoozd]

–adjective

1. bewildered or confused.

2. lost in thought; preoccupied.

The bemused ingénue sat on the antique Chesterfield, clutching her script in one hand, but not really seeing the words printed on the page.

~Marie

Roll the Role

2011-10-18T07:00:00.001-07:00

Time for another well-abused homonym pair. I have no idea how often I see the phrase "roll model" posted online.

A roll, as a noun, is a small piece of bread.

As an adjective, it means some object which has been rolled up, or coiled, such as a roll of garden hose, or a roll of TP. As a verb, it means to turn over. Remember it this way: It has only one vowel, and it takes only one person to accomplish. You can roll a roll in butter, or roll up a roll of TP without any help.

A role is a part in a play, or a part you play in someone's life. We all need positive role models, people who are models that teach us how to play our role, our part in society. Ideally those role models will come from our family or church group, rather than from among the ranks of dysfunctional celebrities, but that's a post for another time. Remember it this way: this "role" has two vowels, just like you need two people; one to play the "role" and the other to be the audience.

~Marie

The Whole Gamut

2011-10-11T07:00:00.001-07:00

Here's one of those words I've been misunderstanding for years. I always thought "salubrious" had something to do with being drunk. I was way off. Thank you, dictionary.com for educating me. It just goes to show that you can teach an old author new words!

I also think it's interesting that we nearly always say "the whole gamut" when "gamut" means "whole", which makes "whole gamut" redundant; but it wouldn't sound right to just say "gamut". English is a funny language. Go out into the world and share the words, then return and share your funny stories.

Salubrious [suh-loo-bree-uhs]

–adjective

Favorable to or promoting health; healthful: salubrious air.

Suint [soo-int, swint]

–noun

The natural grease of the wool of sheep, consisting of a mixture of fatty matter and potassium salts, used as a source of potash and in the preparation of ointments.

Gamut [gam-uht]

–noun

1. The entire scale or range: the gamut of dramatic emotion from grief to joy.

2. Music .
a. the whole series of recognized musical notes.
b. the major scale.

The whole gamut of ointments made from suint are salubrious.

~Marie

They're There

2011-10-04T07:00:00.003-07:00

Here's another set of easily confused words. I can't even enumerate the number of times I've seen this group abused.

The word "they're" is a contraction of "they" and "are". It seems people have forgotten what contractions are, and what the apostrophe means. In all contractions, the apostrophe is standing in for missing letters. My first grade teacher taught us about contractions this way, and it has helped me keep them straight ever since. (I'm not telling you how long ago that was, however!)

Take the word "they" and the word "are". Smash them together. They spell theyare. Keep smushing. The letter "a" gets wadded up and becomes the apostrophe. "They're".

The word "their" is a possessive pronoun. If something is "theirs" it belongs to them. Remember it this way: It is "theirs", it belongs to "the heirs". "Theirs" contains the word "heirs". (This one isn't actually a contraction, though; it's just an easy way to remember it.)

The word "there" is a location. The object is over there. It coincidentally contains the word "here". If you need a location, the thing you're looking for is either "here" or "there".

~Marie

Here's Mud in Your Eye!

2011-09-27T07:00:00.002-07:00

I love learning new words. Sometimes when I look words up, I find out that they don't mean what I thought they did or that I've been saying them wrong for years. Again, I challenge you to use these in daily conversation, then come back and post comments on how your colleagues reacted. As usual, my source is dictionary.com. No, I'm not confessing which words I didn't have right. I don't want to blush again.

Akimbo [uh-kim-boh]

–adjective, adverb

with hand on hip and elbow bent outward: to stand with arms akimbo.

Quagmire [kwag-mahyuhr]

–noun

1. an area of miry or boggy ground whose surface yields under the tread; a bog.

2. a situation from which extrication is very difficult: a quagmire of financial indebtedness.
3. anything soft or flabby.

Curmudgeon [ker-muhj-uhn]

–noun

a bad-tempered, difficult, cantankerous person.

The curmudgeon stood in the quagmire with his arms akimbo.

Discreetly Discrete

2011-09-20T07:00:00.001-07:00

Today's homonym pair is often abused in written communication, probably because both "discrete" and "discreet" are real words, so they don't trip the spell check. They are very different words, with very different meanings.

"Discrete" means separate and apart. A leper colony, for example, is a discrete group, because they live apart from others in order to quarantine the disease.

"Discreet" means sneaky and secret. If you're trying to do something discreetly, you are hoping nobody notices what you are doing.

The easy way to remember how to spell the one you are looking for: Look at the letter "e" in the word. If you mean separate, then separate the e's. Discrete. If you mean sneeeeeeky, then put the e's together. Discreet. Easy, right?

~Marie

Gobsmacked!

2011-09-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

"Gob" being a British term for mouth, apparently, my friends and I are more British than I realized. Or at least, they are. I moved back and forth between British and American English for years before I found out there was a difference, and that many of the words, spellings, syntax, and punctuation I habitually use are British rather than American. Maybe it's just that I watch too much British television. Wait, I'm not sure it's possible to watch too much British television. At any rate, here are three words you can add to your vocabulary this week. I challenge you to work them into your normal daily conversation. As an added challenge, come back and tell us how people reacted to the words. As usual, I'm getting my definitions from dictionary.com.

Gobsmacked (ˈɡɒbˌsmækt)

--- adj

flabbergasted, astounded, shocked; also written gob-smacked

from gob 'mouth' + smacked 'clapping hand over in surprise'

Defenestrate [dee-fen-uh-streyt]

–verb (used with object), de·fen·es·trat·ed, de·fen·es·trat·ing.

to throw (a person or thing) out of a window.

Discombobulate [dis-kuhm-bob-yuh-leyt]

–verb (used with object), -lat·ed, -lat·ing.

to confuse or disconcert; upset; frustrate: The speaker was completely discombobulated by the hecklers.

Origin:

1825–35, Americanism; fanciful alteration of discompose or discomfort

—Related forms

dis·com·bob·u·la·tion, noun

I was gobsmacked when they defenestrated the discombobulated old man.

~Marie

Too Hard for Two to do

2011-09-06T07:00:00.001-07:00

Is it too difficult to keep these two (or three) words straight?

Apparently, it is extremely difficult. I can't count how often I see people going "too" the store "too" get "two" bottles of whatever. I also see people who like something, and their friend likes it "to".

The word "to" is a preposition. It shows direction. If you are moving in any direction, then you are moving to something, and away from something else. Remember it this way: "to" and "from" each have only one letter "o".

The word "too" is an additive. You have something, then you add something else; as in, "having you cake and eating it too." Remember it this way: if you are adding one thing to another thing, then you need to add one "o" to the other "o".

The word "two" doesn't seem to get mixed up as much. Everyone seems to remember that the number is the one with the "w" in it.

Good Reviews, Bad Reviews and the Occasional Chocolate Chip Cookie

2011-08-30T07:00:00.000-07:00

I have a special treat for you today. I’ve invited L. Carroll over to do a little writing at my place. I already had the chance to post my scribblings in her living room. Keep reading when she’s finished, and I’ll tell you a little about who she is, and what her books are about.

~Marie

I used to manage a retail home décor store in a shopping mall. While this fascinating bit of information is likely to captivate and enthrall audiences for years to come, it's a particular incident that took place while I was engaged in this profession that I'm compelled to share now.

One lovely afternoon, a customer stormed through the doors and demanded to speak to the manager. While the rest of my crew showed support for their leader from behind an armoire, I -- armed with a sympathetic expression -- approached the lady to ascertain the nature of her obvious agitation.

Fast forward eleven years to the present day. I don't remember what this customer was upset over; I don't remember how the issue was resolved. I only recall what happened afterward.

There was a larger piece of furniture involved that I was to take out the back door of the store and load into the lady's car, but she asked me to give her a few minutes before meeting her there, as she had one last quick stop to make in the mall. When she arrived to pick up her piece, she had with her a bag containing a warm, gooey, jumbo chocolate chip cookie that she had just purchased from the bakery in the mall. Smiling, she handed me the cookie and thanked me profusely for helping her that day. Her gesture overwhelmed me, and (apparently) made an indelible impression on my memory.

So, what does this story have to do with books and writing, you may ask. Well, allow me to explain. Coming from a non-literary background, I was quickly humbled by what it takes to write a book. I was further humbled by the emotionally fatiguing, and oft times downright depressing process of querying agents and publishers. And, as if that wasn't enough, my pride sustained further injury when I realized that eighty percent of my time as an author would not be spent writing, but would be spent marketing, networking, begging and pleading.

The point is that independent authors work hard! They work long! They dump all of their selves -- heart and soul -- into their books. They don't have teams of editors, marketers and PR people escorting them around. They do it all themselves.

This singular shouldering of responsibility makes feedback so much more impactful on the indie author. Negative reviews are devastating, positive ones, invigorating. Lack of reviews? Well, let's just say that it takes a while to recover from that accompanying spiral of self-doubt.

Am I saying that you should jump on to Amazon and write gushingly, glowing critiques of every self-published book you read? Absolutely not! I know from experience that there are a lot of sub-par books out there -- both indie and traditionally published. What I am saying is that if you read an indie book you really enjoy, make sure that you let the author and others know. Gush on Amazon; shout it out to your networking buds; buy copies of the book to give as gifts; OR, if you're so inclined, send the author a warm, gooey, jumbo chocolate chip cookie.

About the Author:

L. Carroll is a wife and a mom of five who writes because she's found that if she pretends to travel to magical worlds, makes up wild tales, and carries on conversations with the voices in her head, it's considered mental illness; but if she pretends to travel to magical worlds, makes up wild tales, carries on conversations with the voices in her head and writes it all down; it's a perfectly normal "author" thing to do.

About the Books:

Destruction from Twins

When an enchantress steals mystical powers from her twin sister, she sentences the world of Lor Mandela to an untimely death. Only one can save it; a Child of Balance named Audril Borloc. All hope seems lost when four-year-old Audril disappears.

Desperate to save their world, spies travel to Earth looking for the girl with black hair and bright blue eyes. Instead, they find sixteen-year-old Maggie Baker.

Maggie's existence is launched into a roller coaster ride of twists and turns as she bounces back and forth between her home in Glenhill, Iowa and the mysterious land of Lor Mandela. She must learn who to trust and who to fear. More importantly, she must find a way to convince the Lor Mandelans she is not their missing "Child of Balance", and her family and friends in Iowa that she's not going insane.

Could Maggie’s reality be the real fantasy, and does the fate of an entire world actually depend on her?

Destruction from Twins is available in print at CreateSpace, in ebook at Smashwords, or your choice of format at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It’s free at Smashwords until the end of the month, so you only have two days to run over there and get it.

Four Hundred Days

When the heiress to the Lor Mandelan throne sneaks away to Earth to save one of her dearest friends, she finds that a power hungry tyrant from her own world has begun systematically obliterating towns and cities to get her to turn herself over to him.

On Earth, she meets a wildly eccentric old lady named Teedee Venilworth, whose imaginary butler/fiance supposedly holds the key to her success. But how can someone help if he doesn't exist? Could it be that creatures who dwell in shadow are not exclusive to Lor Mandela?

The second book in the Lor Mandela Series, "Four Hundred Days", is an action-packed whirlwind of intrigue and fantasy. Join the extraordinary characters from "Destruction from Twins" as they traverse the haunted corridors of Alcatraz Penitentiary; travel via portal to an ancient castle on the cliff shores of Ireland; and meet a race of mystic warriors known as the Solom.

Soar on the back of a large, horse-like creature to the Northern High Forests and discover that, on the picturesque world of Lor Mandela, your friends can become foes, your enemies your allies, and just because someone dies it doesn't always mean that they're dead.

Four Hundred Days is available in print at CreateSpace, in ebook at Smashwords, and in your choice of format from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Brace Me Up

2011-08-23T07:00:00.002-07:00

I'm going to be learning a lot as I provide these for you. I had no idea how many definitions there were for "brace". Apparently I'm a bit behind the times, I like it in the archaic usage of two, a pair, as in "He walked into the kitchen and set a brace of wildfowl on the table." Dictionary.com had a lot more definitions than I ever thought of.

Brace

–noun

1. something that holds parts together or in place, as a clasp or clamp.

2. anything that imparts rigidity or steadiness.
3. Also called bitbrace, bitstock. Machinery . a device for holding and turning a bit for boring or drilling.
4. Building Trades . a piece of timber, metal, etc., for supporting or positioning another piece or portion of a framework.
5. Nautical . (on a square-rigged ship) a rope by which a yard is swung about and secured horizontally.
6. Music . leather loops sliding upon the tightening cords of a drum to change their tension and the drum's pitch.
7. Often, braces. Dentistry . a round or flat metal wire placed against the surfaces of the teeth for straightening irregularly arranged teeth.
8. Medicine/Medical . an appliance for supporting a weak joint or joints.
9. braces, Chiefly British . suspender def. 1 .
10. a pair; couple: a brace of grouse.
11. Printing .
a. one of two characters { or } used to enclose words or lines to be considered together.
b. bracket def. 7 .
12. Music . connected staves.
13. a protective band covering the wrist or lower part of the arm, especially a bracer.
14. Military . a position of attention with exaggeratedly stiff posture.

–verb (used with object)

15. to furnish, fasten, or strengthen with or as if with a brace.

16. to fix firmly; make steady; secure against pressure or impact: He braces himself when the ship rolls. Brace yourself for some bad news.
17. to make tight; increase the tension of.
18. to act as a stimulant to.
19. Nautical . to swing or turn around (the yards of a ship) by means of the braces.
20. Military . to order (a subordinate) to assume and maintain a brace.

–verb (used without object)

21. Military . to assume a brace.

—Verb phrase

22. brace in, Nautical . to brace (the yards of a square-rigged vessel) more nearly athwartships, as for running free.

—Idiom

23. brace up, Informal . to summon up one's courage; become resolute: She choked back her tears and braced up.

Origin:
1300–50; (noun) Middle English < Anglo-French, Old French: pair of arms < Latin brā ( c ) chia plural (taken as feminine singular) of brā ( c ) chium arm (< Greek; see brachium); (v.) in part Middle English bracen (< Anglo-French bracier, derivative of brace; compare embrace), in participle derivative of the noun

What is a Sampler?

2011-08-21T15:48:00.000-07:00

In embroidery, a sampler is a wall hanging that shows off many different styles of stitching and usually contains an alphabet, some small pictures, and a saying. Young girls would stitch the sampler while still at home so they would have the patterns of the stitches after they married and had their own establishment.

In confections, a sampler is a single container with several different sorts of candy that showcase the manufacturer's abilities and hopefully lead to sales of other containers dedicated to your favorite flavors.

My newest book, Reading Sampler, is made in the same tradition. There are excerpts from six novels in three categories: Assignment to Earth (Science Fiction); Tanella's Flight and Fabric of the World (Fantasy); Deadly Gamble, A Heart Full of Diamonds, and Inherit my Heart (Suspense). The intent is to allow readers to try my books and see if they'd like to read more.

Reading Sampler is available on paper for $12.99 – a full 320 pages of enjoyment, complete with a free autographed bookplate. I expect more people will grab the free ebook.

Yes, you read that right. I'm so confident I can "hook" you on my writing that I'm willing to give away a free ebook as "bait". Go ahead. I dare you. Download it. Share it with your friends. I'm betting that when you get to the end of the sampler, you'll do whatever it takes to find out what happens next.

~Marie

Blog Tour Guest Post

2011-08-19T09:52:00.001-07:00

L. Carroll is celebrating the release of her new book, Lor Mandela - Four Hundred Days, and as part of that celebration, she organized a blog tour. I was fortunate enough to be chosen as one of the "stops" on her tour. My guest post is over here on her blog today, and she will be contributing a post on my blog on August 30.

I have no idea what she will be writing about, but then, she had no idea what I was going to write, either. If you comment on my post on her blog, you will be entered into a drawing to win any one of my ebooks. You choose the book, and I will email it to you.

Happy blog-hopping!

~Marie

Wholly Cow

2011-08-16T07:00:00.001-07:00

Homonym is a fancy word that means two or more other words have the same sound, but different meanings and, most often, different spellings. An a-moo-sing exchange on the message boards at my favorite online hang-out got me thinking about this week's homonym pair "hole" and "whole" and the related trio, "holey", "holy", and "wholly".

A hole is an empty space in what should otherwise be a solid surface. A hole in a wall, a hole in the ground, a hole in the head; oh wait, that's another matter altogether.

If something is whole, it is complete and not broken; you are referring to the entirety of the object in question.

A whole hole would be the complete empty space.

Holey means that the object in question has a lot of separate empty spaces. Think Swiss cheese.

Holy (without the "e") is something which is held to be sacred to a group of people. It is usually used in terms of religion, although different religious groups hold different things to be sacred.

Wholly means completely.

Therefore, "Holy Cow" would refer to a sacred bovine; "Wholly Cow" means 100% beef; and "Holey Cow" means you ought to call the veterinarian.

~Marie

The Need for a Good Vocabulary

2011-08-09T07:00:00.008-07:00

Here's an experience a friend of mine had:

"I was sitting on some concrete steps involved in an art project. A couple of 'gentlemen' who were under the influence of some mind-altering substance came over to me and started chatting. They were basically friendly and harmless, if somewhat inappropriate, so I kept working and tried to ignore them. One of them sat down right next to me, and as he moved closer, I said, "You don't want to do that. I'm very contentious." I doubt he knew what contentious meant, but I bet he thought it was the same as contagious, because they immediately stopped trying to schmooze me, and picked up and left!"

While it was probably fortunate for her that the "gentlemen" in question didn't have a better understanding of the English language, think of the other things they might be missing.

We communicate through the use of language, and those who don't have a good, working vocabulary miss out on things they need to understand. In the future, I will be posting some lesser-used words along with their definitions and examples, so you can avoid missing out on the fun and interesting parts of life. Feel free to suggest some of your favorite obscure words. If it's not already on my list, I'll even give you credit for the suggestion.

I'm taking my definitions from Dictionary.com, though if they give other sources, I will show those. The usage sentences are my own creations.

Kerfluffle

- row, disturbance, c.1930, first in Canadian English, ult. from Scot. curfuffle.

She left the restaurant, oblivious to the kerfluffle happening on the balcony above her until the potted plant, nudged by one of the combatants, crashed to the sidewalk at her feet.

Ribald

–adjective

vulgar or indecent in speech, language, etc.; coarsely mocking, abusive, or irreverent; scurrilous.

–noun

a ribald person.

Origin:
1200–50; Middle English ribald, ribaud (noun) < Old French ribau ( l ) d, equivalent to rib ( er ) to be licentious (< Old High German rīben to copulate, be in heat, literally, rub) + -au ( l ) d, -alt < Frankish *-wald a suffix in personal names, derivative of *walden to rule; compare parallel development of -ard

She blushed as the minstrel strummed the opening bars of a popular and slightly ribald song. He ought to know better than to sing such a scurrilous thing in the presence of ladies.

Wow! What a week!

2011-08-07T10:44:00.001-07:00

First off, and most exciting, my book A Heart Full of Diamonds has finally been published in print and ebook! Some of my fans have been waiting ten years for this event, so I'm understandably excited. I love the new cover, too. It's been a lot of fun learning to make my own covers, and with this one, I'm feeling confident that I finally know what I'm doing.

What's this one about? Here's what's on the back cover.

Once she saw the diamonds, she was out of options.

A wig, a change of clothes, and nerves of steel freed Marilee from her diamond-stealing husband, but Tony has too many friends in too many places for her to trust anyone.

A thousand miles away, she's fashioned a new life in a safe haven. Her brawny neighbor Richard and his engaging son Derreck would do anything to help her, but she keeps her past a secret until two of Tony's goons kidnap her in broad daylight.

The race is on, and Marilee's life hangs in the balance!

A Heart Full of Diamonds is available in print here, and in ebook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

In other news, the renovations have been finished on the older books. Clues to Food and Fabric of the World have new covers and lower prices.

Due to requests from blog readers, I'm working on preparing Assignment to Earth and Inherit my Heart for publication in print and ebook. I'm also putting together a short story collection and a sampler book, which should be out shortly. I expect that The Siege of Kwennjurat will be coming out sometime this winter. It needed more work than I had time to complete during summer break.

School starts again in two weeks and I've got a very full schedule this fall, so if you think I've dropped off the face of the planet, you'll know where I am. In the mean time, I can promise there will be a new blog post every Tuesday on something related to writing.

~Marie

Cultural References

2011-08-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

Last week I watched an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The Enterprise crew meets a people whose entire language is based on cultural references. In the episode, Captain Picard must learn their language or be killed by a wild animal. In explaining how their language worked, the example of Romeo and Juliet was cited.

Mention Juliet on her balcony, and those familiar with the play understand the mutual attraction, romantic love, and insurmountable obstacles - least of which is the distance to the balcony. If you don't know Juliet's story, understanding escapes you.

People dismiss ancient Greek and Roman civilization as out-dated, outmoded, and "dead"; not true. More of the culture in the modern world stems from these ancient cultures than we know.

Many scientific words have Latin or Greek roots; but so do many other words we call "English". I don't speak either language, but can often tear apart unfamiliar words to get a vague understanding, because of similarity to a word I already know.

Much of our architecture comes from Greek and Roman sources. I don't mean only buildings with fancy columns and sculpted frieze work on the facade. I was talking to someone recently about a "Spanish style" house, featuring a courtyard full of plants, breezeways, graceful arches, and thick, white outer walls. The Conquistadores brought this architecture with them as they built in the Central and North American deserts. They knew it was the best design for guarding against the heat. It's the type of home built in southern Spain and along the Mediterranean coast. The design is older than we think; it was used in Greece and Rome on the same coast.

Reading includes many references to history, culture, and literature; some more veiled than others. In my youth, "Greek" mythology was popular. I learned the Roman names first, probably because they're easier for English-speakers to pronounce. I loved the old stories, and tried to interest my daughter in them. She couldn't be bothered until she started reading the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson books. Suddenly mythology was fun and exciting; not just the gods, but the creatures, heroes, history, language, and culture. She learned in a fun way, and I'm grateful to J K Rowling and Rick Riordan for making her learning fun. She now reads "docudrama" books based on medieval and renaissance royalty. I smile as I think of the history she is soaking up in her pleasure reading. Now if I could just get her to put the book down long enough to clean her room….

~Marie

Verbiage Vigilante

2011-07-26T07:31:00.003-07:00

Several years ago, I was in a writing group where we helped each other learn enough about writing to reach our individual goals. Some wanted to write their journals in an interesting manner. Some wanted to write family histories for private publication. Most wanted to be commercially published. Success has been met in varying degrees.

Every meeting encompassed both a lesson and a critique session. Each author had different strengths and weaknesses in their writing. The group leaders had us take turns teaching those things we knew and learning what the others had to teach. The group was a mix of published and unpublished authors.

Janette Rallison was our resident expert on Point of View. She could find minute errors and point them out to us, even when we had looked for mistakes and couldn't spot them. She painstakingly taught us how to avoid POV problems when writing. I was often guilty of "head-hopping" and other such literary sins until Janette taught me a better way to write. We used to call her the "Point of View Police".

Anne and I were referred to as the "Continuity Police". We were the ones who would catch the little details like the character sitting down on a chair, then suddenly being across the room leaning against the fireplace without having gotten up and walked over there. One character in a book we were proof-reading for a friend came downstairs to greet her date - in a one-story house. The professional editor did not catch this, but we did.

One of my readers is extremely good at pointing out sentences which are longer than they should be, and use too many adjectives. I think that in all sincerity and gratefulness for her service, I ought to give her the title of the "Verbiage Vigilante". What do you think?

~Marie

Tanella's New Look

2011-07-22T10:47:00.000-07:00

The book has been in print only two years, and just over a year for the ebook; why does it need a new cover? It's more than just a face lift.

My first covers were made using CreateSpace's wonderful cover creator tool, which made some really great covers for our books. They looked very nice, and I liked them a lot.

When I was ready to release the novels as ebooks, I discovered that because I had used their template and just plugged in my own information and photos, CreateSpace held the copyright on the cover, while I held the copyright on the interior only. In other words, I couldn't use the cover from my print book as the cover of the ebook. I quickly made some rather bad covers for my ebooks and released them, but I was never really happy with them.

A year later, I decided to do something about it. I bought a photo editing program that would do what I needed it to do, and spent time learning how to use it. I know I'll get better with more practice, but I already like my new covers better than the old ones. The best part is that because I am now making my covers from scratch, I own all the rights to them. My ebooks and print books can now have the same cover - which will help people who have seen one version find the other one at the store.

This also means everyone who bought Tanella's Flight in print now has a collector's item, an autographed first edition with the original cover, which is now out of print. The book is still in print, with the new cover, but the original black cover is no longer available, ever.

Within the next month, I will be replacing the cover on Fabric of the World, so if you want to get the original cover before it's gone forever, I recommend you purchase it before August 1, when I plan to take it off the market to work on the new files.

~Marie

Are You a Reader?

2011-07-19T07:41:00.002-07:00

Part of being a writer involves having a large vocabulary available without having to keep looking up other ways to say something. I think it's part of being a reader, too.

There are different levels of reading. I am not making fun of anyone's ability or choices, just observing facts as I see them; in other words, stating my personal opinion without judgment of any individual. I've noticed these groups:

1. People who cannot read because of limited mental capacity or physical impairment. For example, a man I know has MS. Reading is painful for him because of the difficulty of moving signals along his nerves.

2. People who cannot read because they have never been taught how. People who cannot read in the dominant language of the country they live in because they do not speak the language well enough.

3. People who can read, but do better when reading aloud, tracing with their finger, or sounding out words aloud or silently. This includes people new to reading or a language. It also includes those with a mental or physical reason for not reading well; such as dyslexia or the host of problems lumped together as "learning disabilities".

4. People who read well, but only for learning. They read assigned materials for school and work, and no more.

5. People who read fiction and non-fiction for fun. They usually have a larger vocabulary than any other group. They are also generally well-versed in historical and cultural references, so they understand inferences faster than others.

Notice that the difference between groups 4 and 5 is based on choices; not education, practice, or physical or mental conditions. I call the group who reads because they enjoy it "readers". I know ten year old children who are readers, and adults who are not. I've found I prefer the company and conversation of readers. Not all of the readers I know are people who would be considered of "normal" physical or mental capacity.

The man with MS I mentioned before was never a reader, even before his illness made reading painful and nearly impossible. Because of his physical impairment, he now spends most of his day watching television. The lack of historical and cultural references he could have picked up by reading limits his full enjoyment of the programs he watches. He sometimes has to have the plots explained to him.

By contrast, I know a young woman of limited understanding who loves to read. Just from surface association, I wouldn't expect her to be capable of understanding the nuances of plot. Because I see her several times weekly, I got multiple updates of her progress as she read Tanella's Flight. She enjoyed the book immensely, and from her commentary, I could tell she had no problem grasping all the layers of the plot. She's now joined the crowd demanding the sequel. I think she really just wants to find out what happened to Liammial and whether he gets away with murder.

Are you a reader?

Wow! I feel Famous!

2011-07-15T09:52:00.003-07:00

I was recently interviewed by David Wisehart about my book Deadly Gamble. David produces the Kindle Authors Newsletter on a daily basis to showcase new authors and their books. You can read my interview at the following link.

Kindle Author Newsletter Interview: A M Jenner

~Marie

I'd Like to Make an Announcement

2011-07-14T09:30:00.000-07:00

One murder, followed by three attempted and two actual murders committed by way of "cleaning up the mess", too much gambling, cheap women, an Old Italian Family, police officers and detectives, a private security company, Indians, a little bit of light romance, one cool diner, and a hot frying pan to the head later, A M Jenner is proud to announce Deadly Gamble; a novel of suspense.

How do you get it?

For those with Kindles, you want to go here.

If you have a Nook, you want this link.

All e-reader formats are at Smashwords, and will be shipped (shortly, I hope) to Apple, Kobo, Sony, and other e-stores.

If you just can't live without the smell of a newly bound and printed on paper book, you're looking for this link. For those who purchase paper books, email me with your order number and address, and tell me who you want it inscribed to, and I will send you an autographed book plate to stick in the front of your book. If ebook owners want the bookplate, I'll send one to you too, but I'm not sure what you're going to stick it on.

The ebooks are $2.99; the print book is $14.99 because paper costs more than electrons.

There's some interesting photos and info about the writing of the book on its page at my website, and a hilarious but absolutely true story about creating the cover art in this blog post.

~Marie

Going Green

2011-07-05T09:43:00.001-07:00

For centuries, books were paper of some sort. There was no other sort of book. The paper was made with pulp from some sort of plant. Before easily made movable type was available, books were copied out by hand, or each page was carved from wood and they were printed. In fact, the word manuscript literally means hand-written.

Even after printing became easier, books were still written by hand. Every revision and draft was re-written by hand. Can you imagine waiting for, say, the next book in the Harry Potter series if J K Rowling had to write every draft of every 500+ page book by hand? Those 500 printed pages are single-spaced. Most manuscripts are double-spaced, to give room between the lines for making corrections. One page of typed, double-spaced text is roughly equal to two pages of hand written, single-spaced text. Most of my manuscripts go through two major revisions and four to six minor ones.

Mark Twain was the first author to write a manuscript on a typewriter, for which his editor was probably very grateful. My grandmother was a writer, and typed her things with three sheets of paper and two of carbon paper in the machine. If she made a mistake even on the last line of the page, she had to re-type the entire page.

Writing always has taken a lot of paper to produce a book, but that is changing. I write with my computer. If I make a mistake, I back up and it automagically disappears. My computer keeps track of all the changes I make. It can put it back the way I had it in the first place if I decide I don't like it. I can carry a hundred manuscripts on a flash drive in the palm of my hand.

Working on Tanella's Flight, we printed out the manuscript at each stage, using about a ream of paper. We sent printed copies to no less than fifteen readers. We probably went through at least two cases of paper preparing one book for publication.

Fabric of the World was only printed once before publication. Your eyes and brain process information differently when you read on a backlit screen and when you read on paper. We had to print the manuscript once to read it on paper, and find the last million mistakes you never notice on a computer screen.

With Deadly Gamble, the book was written, revised, read, and checked without being printed out even once. We did the final "paper test" with an ebook reader. When you're reading on an e-ink device such as a Nook or Kindle, your brain processes it like paper. People who buy an ebook copy of Deadly Gamble will get a book that has never been printed on paper. We think that's pretty awesome.

We still offer print copies for people who don't have, don't want, or can't afford an ebook reader, and those who prefer paper books. It's certainly easier (at the moment) to get a paper book autographed. We are not against paper books; we have a huge library full of them. We still think it's absolutely cool to be able to produce an entire book without using a single piece of paper!

~Marie

Progress Report

2011-07-04T05:09:00.000-07:00

Publishing a book is a game of hurry up and wait. With Deadly Gamble, the first draft was written in 27 days in November of 2006, then put on the back burner in favor of other projects. In 2009 we pulled it out for evaluation. A timeline was created, and a frenzy of work ensued to make the book fit the timeline. It was sent out to test readers in January 2011. A second rewrite was completed based on the recommendations of the readers. By mid-June, it's formatting time.

First, I format the page size and interior layout for the print book. When I know how many pages the book contains, I create the cover for the print book. I upload the print files to our distributor and have to wait while they check the files.

Now that I have the cover, I can use the front for the ebook. I have to make separate size images for each of the three ebook distributors I work with. I format the interior files one way and leave it as a word document for one distributor, and turn the entire thing into an HTML file for the other two.

I get an email from the print place that the files are ready for printing, and I order a proof copy; the first time the manuscript will see paper.

I upload the files to two of the distributors. Smashwords has it up for sale in minutes. Amazon has to review the files first. Barnes & Noble has put a hold on my account. (I mentioned this in the last post; they still haven't called me back.) I check my mailbox, and my proof copy from CreateSpace isn't here yet. I don't expect it until the 8th, but I keep hoping.

I go into the Independence Day weekend with dismal thoughts about it being Tuesday before I can really do anything more on my book.

July 4, 3:30 AM. I wake up, and know I won't be getting any more sleep tonight. Out of habit more than anything else, I check my author dashboards at all my sites. Even though it's a holiday weekend, the computers never sleep. The Kindle copies have gone live. (They're available here.) I update my website to provide a link to my book's page at Amazon. Smashwords still doesn't have any ISBN's, but expect to have them available on Thursday. The hold is inexplicably gone from the Barnes & Noble account, and I upload Deadly Gamble. Now I get to wait again while the files are inspected, before they go live. Links will continue to be provided on my website, and announcements made as each format becomes available, but most of my attention will turn to Tanella's Flight on Tuesday as I add a map of the Ten Kingdoms and redesign the cover.

You Just Made My Day!

2011-06-30T19:22:00.000-07:00

Today is June 30. It is my self-imposed deadline for publishing Deadly Gamble. I get up at 4:00 in the morning and commence work. I have a lot of ebook formatting to complete to make my publishing deadline.

I uploaded the print files at CreateSpace on Monday, and watch the mailbox for my proof copy. After it gets here and I check it over, it's very likely there will be no changes necessary, and it can be published with the click of a mouse. There's only one detail I'm not certain is perfect.

My fingers dance over the keyboard and caress the mouse. The Kindle formatting is now complete and the files uploaded to Amazon. They have to be reviewed and approved before they will go live in the Kindle store. It may take 24 - 48 hours. I move on to the next stage.

More fast finger work readies my files for Barnes & Noble. A few clicks take me to the Barnes & Noble pubit site. There is a big colored banner across the top of my dashboard page asking why I haven't called them in reply to the email I didn't get from them. For unknown reasons, there's a hold on my account and I have to call them to get it straightened out before I can upload books. I called and left a voice mail.

I turn my attention to the formatting for Smashwords. I finish, and upload the files. They tell me the book is now available for sale at their site. I can't send it out to vendors like Apple and Sony until the files are approved and the book has an ISBN. Smashwords is out of ISBN's, but should have more soon.

It's noon, and there's only twelve hours left on my deadline. The book is going to be late. I'm falling asleep at the keyboard on two hours sleep. I'm feeling down, because I'm not going to meet the goal, due to those pesky "circumstances beyond my control". I still need to do the ebook formatting for the books I plan to give away for various reasons, but I will do that after a nap. I've now done everything I can, and make the two-foot commute from my office to my bed.

It's 4:00 in the afternoon. I am awakened by the third phone call in as many hours and decide I'd better get up and check on my books. Amazon is still waiting for review. Barnes & Noble still hasn't called.
I check my email before going to Smashwords to see if they have any ISBN's yet. Today's prize is sitting in my inbox. There's an email from Smashwords. Someone has already bought a copy of Deadly Gamble. My spirits soar. I'm not even finished publishing the book and some kind soul has bought a copy. I don't know who you are, but you just made my day. Thank you very much.

~Marie

P.S. Deadly Gamble is available at Smashwords here. Other announcements will be made as formats become available. There will always be links on the book's page on my website along with cool facts about the book.

Anatomy Lesson

2011-06-28T12:14:00.000-07:00

Part of understanding the language of fantasy comes from familiarity with the technology of the time period. Marsha Ward, a writer of westerns who read Tanella's Flight for us, taught us a lot about horses. This includes horses that are ridden and those who pull vehicles. We also learned much about the parts of those vehicles.

At the same time, she was amazed at our well-written description of clothing. We knew the names for the various items of clothing, how they fastened, and how to put them on. My familiarity with Elizabethan dress developed while I danced in a renaissance group. When you sew it and wear it, describing it becomes easy.

For those not familiar with coaches, I found a labeled photo for your education and amusement. This is an American Old West Stagecoach, but the technology didn't change significantly between the 1400's and 1800's.

~Marie

Deadly Gamble Cover

2011-06-22T09:06:00.000-07:00

It's getting so an author can't go out and play in the street without drawing a crowd! Well, not quite, but while getting the cover art for Deadly Gamble, it sure felt that way.

After the concept for the cover art had changed several times, we finally hit on the idea we wanted; a chalk outline on pavement, absolute proof in the entertainment world that a corpse was involved. The idea came late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, the pavement in the street outside was cool enough to lie on, and I took my adult daughter out into the street to be my model. She laid down, and I began tracing around her with a stick of white sidewalk chalk. When we were nearly finished, a car drove past. I ignored it.

A minute later, it came back, pointed the other direction. A woman got out, wanting to know how she could help. It seems her young daughter had seen my daughter lying in the street and was worried about her. We explained we were making a book cover, and everything was fine. They asked again to make sure all was well, then went on their way, satisfied they'd done their good deed for the day. We finished the photo shoot while giggling. We'd have a fun story to tell later. I put the pictures into the computer, and didn't bother with them, since it would be months before I was ready to make the cover.

June came, and I was deep in the production of Deadly Gamble. It was time to make the cover, but the artistic shadows from the bare branches of our tree made the pictures unusable. What I needed was photos without shadows, but it being June, I couldn't have my daughter lying on the hot asphalt at noon. We decided to re-shoot just after dawn, when there would be even lighting and cool asphalt.

On a Saturday morning, we put my daughter down in the street again and began drawing. Anne was down on her knees, tracing our willing corpse, and I was standing in the middle of the street making sure they didn't get run over. Two women came by, with that garage sale look in their eyes. They stopped and asked if my daughter was all right. We assured them she was, that it was a photo shoot for a book cover. They drove away, but didn't really believe us; about three minutes later, a police car came slowly cruising down the street. Fortunately my daughter was now vertical. The police car slowed, nearly stopped, and Anne waved him on his way. A minute later, the women came past again, obviously disappointed that we weren't being arrested.

These pictures worked out well. During the second shoot, I had taken a shot over Anne's shoulder as she wrote our name on the street. I intended to use it for the author photo on the back, and it was good, but our name wasn't complete enough to see what she was writing, so she asked to reshoot just the one picture.

Saturday arrived, and we draped our cooperative part-time corpse on the street again, and Anne started the outline. Just as I was about to snap the photo, a neighbor drove by and wanted to know if there was anything he could do to help us. It's hard to explain that it's a book cover photo shoot when you have a giggling corpse behind you.

Here's the finished cover, what do you think?

The Language of Fantasy

2011-06-14T15:34:00.000-07:00

I've been blessed to have friends who are willing to be readers for my books. I don't ask them to tell me what's right and wrong with the technical parts of the book, such as grammar, spelling, and punctuation, because I am capable of doing that for myself (most of the time). What I ask them to tell me is what works for them as a reader, and what doesn't. What's beyond belief, what's out of character, or if there's any places where they can't follow the story because I made a leap based on my knowledge of the characters that they don't have, and need more explanation on. All in all, they let me know what needs fixing in order to make my novels better. What I learn as I read their comments helps me not just on the book they've read, but when I write future ones.

Through one reader's comments, I just recently realized that there's a "language" of fantasy novels. This reader is an accomplished editor with many published books to her credit; mostly non-fiction. She apparently doesn't read much fantasy, because she doesn't understand the language of it. I thought I would share a few things to educate those of you who don't read fantasy, or have tried to read it and don't "get" it.

What makes a book a fantasy is usually one of three things: 1) it's set in a place that doesn't exist; 2) it involves animals or peoples that don't exist; 3) it involves use of magic or other supernatural powers. Other than that, it is simply a novel.

Many, probably most, fantasies, are set in either a medieval or renaissance time period. This gives the writer a set of customs, language, dress, and technology that is well documented that they can describe easily because there are paintings and resource materials available. Technologically emergent civilizations are based on the Victorian time period. Other tales are based on either Chinese, East Indian, and Islamic societies of the same time periods. All of these settings are somewhat familiar, because they are based on human history. It's very easy to make up a geography and political map, decide what time period and culture your group of people live in, and then go forward with your story. Any ordinary novel that is set in an entirely fictional place, especially if it includes a map inside the front cover, or has an established dating system not used on earth, is a fantasy.

There are certain well-established fictional people and animals you can include in your story, and with a little research, you can understand the mutually agreed-upon "rules" governing them: elves, dwarves, goblins of many sorts, leprechauns, fairies of several sorts, unicorns, gryphons, phoenixes, and so forth. Any ordinary book that includes one or more of these groups is a fantasy.

Any book involving the use of magic, witchcraft, mind-reading, telekinesis, or any other mental or physical power, including power learned through study is a fantasy.

Enchanted Garden Chapter Twenty-two

2011-06-07T10:29:00.000-07:00

The Doctor and Romana carefully calculated how long they had until Old Mrs. M’s spell would wear off, and had the children go and get into their Halloween costumes about an hour before it was due to be midnight in Belly Button, Arizona.

Newt put her costume back on slowly, wishing desperately that her time in the TARDIS wasn’t fast coming to an end. She would give everything she had if she could be allowed to stay on and go on other adventures with the Doctor, but she understood and respected his reasons. If she was doing something she knew could become dangerous, she wouldn’t want to be responsible for someone else’s underage child, either.

Perhaps when she was older, she might be lucky enough to meet the Doctor again, and he would allow her to ship out with him in the TARDIS. Costume in place, including Karen’s sock filled bra, she joined Dusty and Harold in the control room to await the stroke of midnight. Dusty had either retrieved his cloak and hood from the meadow before they had left Purvis Major, or he had filched replacements from the Doctor’s wardrobe room, for his costume looked like it did when he’d first entered her living room this morning. Newt shivered. This morning seemed an entire lifetime ago.

A clock the Doctor had awkwardly perched on the center console ticked off the minutes. Five minutes, then four, then there was a flurry of hugs and goodbye’s and Newt was unsurprised to find herself crying as she joined hands with Dusty and Harold to watch the hands of the clock come together at the stroke of midnight. Suddenly, there was a bright flash, though not as bright as the one that had taken them to Purvis Major, and the ground beneath their feet lurched.

Newt staggered, but managed to keep from falling. She looked around to see where they were. The three children stood, in their Halloween costumes, in the large, dark and totally deserted parking lot of the Belly Button, Arizona Regional Shopping Mall. Their backs were toward Old Mrs. M’s property.

Harold looked at his watch. “Three minutes past midnight,” he said, “Let’s go home.”

Dusty dropped hold of Newt’s hand. “We’ll walk around the end of the block this time.”

“And every time,” Harold added. “No more short cuts for me.”

“No candy this year,” Newt noted dully. “How are we going to explain that?”

“We don’t explain,” Harold said grimly. “Not now, and not ever. If people ask why they didn’t see us at the party, we just smile and tell them they must have missed us in the crowd. If they ask us what we were wearing, we give a very mysterious smile and say that if they aren’t bright enough to pick their own friends out of a crowd, it’s their problem. We don’t say what we were wearing, or where we’ve been, or what we’ve been doing, or who we were with.

“As long as we’re home on time, our parents won’t notice we’ve been missing. And if we stop at the Wal-Mart over there at the end of the mall and pick up some of the candy that will be on clearance now, nobody will ever even suspect we were missing for sixteen hours.”

He gallantly offered his arm to Newt, and she happily tucked her arm in his, and they all traipsed across the parking lot toward the Wal-Mart to get their candy.

Hooray for my Netbook!

2011-06-02T06:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I woke up and turned on the computer, thinking to check my email before I headed off to do errands for the day. The computer that sits on my desk and never goes anywhere is a laptop, because that was the only intel-chip computer in my price range in February when my four-year-old computer gave up the ghost. The computer made the usual chunking and whirring noises it makes when it is booting up - but the screen was white with slowly moving brighter-white lines, like a mobile white-on-white plaid. Then it turned grey. I could still hear the Windows welcome noises, I just couldn't hear anything. I rebooted. during shutdown, I heard all the usual sounds and noises, and this time during start up, again it sounded normal, but on the screen there was no white, just grey. It's at the repair shop now. I suspect the video card.

Some of my writing files are saved on the desktop (including my website files, my accounting files, and my ideas folder), and I really hope I don't lose any of them. It's interesting how many files you don't need until they're inaccessible. I miss all my internet shortcuts. I miss the auto-login cookies, and hope I can remember how to get into my new twitter account. I needed to find a book in my library yesterday evening, and couldn’t remember what it was filed under, and then realized my library catalog was on the computer’s desktop with my writing files. (My library is close to 5,000 books, about half catalogued, and takes up a goodly chunk of two rooms in the back of my home.)

The good news is that I still do have internet access on the netbook I got for carrying back and forth to college. It’s small, but it does work, and hopefully I’ll have my “real” computer back, with all the files on it, within the week.

The other good news is that all my manuscripts are still safe on their flash drive, and work on Deadly Gamble won’t be slowed by this…obstacle.

Ironically, one of the errands I was doing yesterday was buying a new flash drive to put the rest of the writing files on, to get them off the hard drive and available to me wherever. Would it have been too much to ask for one more day of working screen?

Enchanted Garden Chapter Twenty One

2011-05-31T12:16:00.000-07:00

Newt sat in the darkness until light returned and the floor straightened, then she went to the control room where, much to her surprise, the Doctor was talking to a woman she had never seen before. She cleared her throat and both the Doctor and the woman looked at her.

"Who are you?" she asked the pale blonde woman.

"Me?" the woman smiled at Newt. "My name is Romanadvoratrelundar."

"Wow," said Newt," That’s a really long name."

"Just call her Romana," The Doctor said. "She won’t mind."

"Oh yes she will mind," said Romanadvoratrelundar.

"But," said the Doctor, "If a large and horrible monster had sneaked up behind you, by the time I say your full name, you would be the monster's lunch. Which is why I call you Romana."

"But I don’t like 'Romana'," said Romanadvoratrelundar.

"It’s that or 'Fred'," the Doctor said.

Romana smiled, her eyes dancing. "Fine then, call me Fred."

"Great," said the Doctor, with an extra warm smile. "It’s good to see you again, Romana."

"It’s good to see you again, Doctor," said Romanadvoratrelundar.

“So,” said the Doctor, “if the TARDIS is working properly, then why couldn’t we land in Belly Button, Arizona? And how did we end up in Antarctica? The time didn’t change, only the location. And how did you end up here at the same time?”

Romana was busy checking the dials and controls on the console, and the far side of the circular control panel from where the Doctor was standing.

“I would guess,” she said, pointing to one of the smaller screens, “that this would be the reason you couldn’t land in Belly Button, Arizona, though I don’t see why you would want to, really.”

The Doctor moved around the console and looked over her shoulder. “A space-time interdiction? Centered on what? And anyway, all I was trying to do was to take these children home before they were missed.”

Romana looked up to where Harold and Dusty had joined Newt in the doorway of the control room, and gave the three of them a brilliantly white smile.

“Where did you pick them up? Children this young aren’t your usual style.”

“No, they’re not,” the Doctor agreed, moving back around to his side of the console, “but they trespassed in the yard of the local witch, and according to their testimony she cast a spell that sent the children to Purvis Major.”

“Purvis Major?” echoed Romana, “That’s a fair distance. Have you looked into who could send them there without a capsule?”

“Not yet,” the Doctor answered irritably, pressing several controls and frowning at the results, “I was going to check into that right after I took them home.”

“Do you know what sort of spell the witch used?” Romana asked. “That might help us negate the inter-dimensional interdict. I’ll bet it’s centered on the children, anyway. Was there a time period stated in the original parameters?”

The Doctor smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Ahhh, of course! Yes, they can’t go home until midnight. So when I tried to take them home at noon instead, so they wouldn’t be missed…”

“The interdict becomes active and slaps the TARDIS away, and you end up in Antarctica. So the solution is?”

“Wait until midnight in Belly Button, and let the interdict expire, and then take the kids home, of course,” the Doctor said, beaming. “Unfortunately, we can’t take them home at noon, but I expect midnight will have to do just as well.”

“So you didn’t say how you got here,” he added, looking pointedly around the center column at Romana.

She smiled back at him, and her dimples flashed with her delight.

“You remember Biroc?”

“Yes, what about him?”

“You remember what he was doing when we first met him?”

“Yes, he was—ahh, he’s taught you how to walk on the time winds without getting burnt.”

“Exactly. It’s extremely difficult, and much less comfortable than a TARDIS, but there you’ve it. I was walking my way out of e-space, and then I noticed the disturbance when the interdict slapped the TARDIS, and decided I should check out the cause of the disturbance. So here we are, together again.”

“I rather like that thought,” the Doctor said.

“So do I,” Romana agreed.

Enchanted Garden Chapter Twenty

2011-05-29T01:34:00.001-07:00

The Doctor heaved himself up from the floor of the control room and poked at the unresponsive screen. “Where are we?” he muttered, more to himself than to the TARDIS, but of course there was no reply. Grabbing one of the safety rails, he hauled himself up the steep slope of the floor to the exterior doors of the TARDIS and opened the door. Snow fell into the ship, and the Doctor could see that the warm air escaping from the TARDIS was turning to steam instantly, even as it was being replaced by cold air that oozed over the slanted threshold and filled the control room with the extreme temperature. The falling snow dusted the Doctor’s dark hair and he shivered.

He was about to shut the door again, when he saw something moving out in the snow. A red and black blur, coming closer, and struggling through the drifts of snow, as though it was a very small person, someone with very short legs who was having a very difficult time making their way through the drifts as they came toward the TARDIS.

The Doctor stood near the door, waiting patiently as the figure came closer. He hesitated to abandon someone in this cold and inhospitable environment, especially someone who was not dressed for it, and especially someone who could tell him where he had landed. They had been almost to Belly Button, Arizona, when something had struck the TARDIS, hard, and thrown the ship terribly off course. And now he would have to right the ship and fix whatever was wrong with it now, and also discover exactly where and when he was, before he could make another attempt at taking the children home to Belly Button, Arizona.

The figure in the snow came ever closer, and eventually resolved itself into a woman wearing nothing more than a pair of black slacks and a long sleeved red tunic, and nothing at all to protect her from the snow storm that was growing ever more furious by the minute.

The woman reached the doors of the TARDIS, and the Doctor reached out a hand to assist her. “You will need to be very careful, my ship is tipped partway over at the moment, and the floor isn’t straight just now,” he warned her as she took his hand.

The woman clambered into the TARDIS and held on to the railing while the Doctor secured the door against more snow entering the TARDIS, and making certain that no more of their heat could escape. He had had quite enough of icicles and snow storms in the control room, thank you very much.

The Doctor let go of the railing and slid back to the control console, where he fiddled with his sonic screwdriver for a few minutes, before managing to get the power restored. He made a few more small adjustments, and then he was easily able to right the TARDIS, bringing the floors back into alignment with the internal gravity propulsion units.

“Who made this landing?” the young looking woman asked, tucking her long blond hair behind her ears and pushing the ends behind her shoulders, then hopping up to sit on the hand rail and lean against the wall next to the door.

“The TARDIS was hit by something, midflight,” the Doctor replied irritably, “and went spinning off to who knows where.”

“Well, I know where,” she said in an irritatingly smug tone that sounded just a little bit familiar.

“Where are we then?” the Doctor asked distractedly.

“Antarctica,” she answered calmly, her eyes twinkling with her amusement. The Doctor wasn’t at all pleased that she seemed to be enjoying herself while he was trying to determine what had happened to his precious ship now. If it was something those pirate wenches had done, he would go back and skin them all alive. Well, not really, he amended hastily, but they would definitely feel the sharp edge of his tongue if he ever saw them again.

The woman hopped off the railing and came toward the control console, looking all around the interior of the ship with great interest, her eyes wide.

The Doctor followed her gaze, waiting half in anticipation, half in exasperation, for that revelatory moment that all people seemed to have when they first realized the apparent impossibility of the interior dimensions of the machine.

She flipped her hair behind her shoulder again, and patted the console, then frowned.

“Did you just redecorate in here,” she asked, “or is this an entirely new TARDIS all together?”

The Doctor frowned and stared at the woman. Something about her teased at an old memory, and he distractedly tried to place it, failing extravagantly. It was almost like she was wearing a perception filter, or something else that damped down his ability to truly look at her and recall when he might have seen her before. She was certainly acting as though she had been in his TARDIS before, though, and even as though she knew exactly who he was.

That last bit made him uncomfortable, having someone know him when he had no idea who they were. It had been happening to him a lot lately, as though he had been doing too much hopping back and forth in time, and was meeting people out of their proper order in his life.

"Well?" she demanded. "This place looks like a Dalek junkyard. What did you do to it?"

"I...well...I…um," the doctor stammered, then abruptly changed the subject.

"Did you say we were in Antarctica?" he asked, nudging the screen and surreptitiously moving a few controls on the console in front of him.

"I did, and you’re changing the subject, as usual," the woman said in complete and utter exasperation. "Come on, Doctor, I can see you’ve regenerated at least once since I last saw you, but it’s still you, I can plainly see that too. Have you gotten so old that you’re losing half of your memories? You should recognize me rather easily, since I haven’t regenerated."

The Doctor blinked and rubbed his eyes, then walked toward the woman again, and circled around her, peering closely at her, and trying very hard to place her in his memory. Maybe he was getting too old, if he couldn’t remember ever having met this young lady. He turned away from her and focused his attention on the TARDIS controls again.

"If you’re just going to stand there baiting me, fine," he said, "then just stand there and rot. I haven’t got time for playing silly games of who said what and what our names are and when we met last. I’ve got work to do, figuring out what happened to keep the TARDIS from landing in Belly Button, Arizona and why we ended up in Antarctica. You wouldn’t happen to know the date, would you?"

The woman smiled cryptically.

"Yes, I do happen to know the date, it’s Saturday, October Thirty First, Two Thousand and Eight, in local reckoning."

The doctor punched the date and their location into the TARDIS's computer, and did a little more fiddling, then kicked the base of the console.

“Did that help?” she asked.

“Yes,” the Doctor answered.

“Did it hurt?” she asked, with amusement in her eyes and voice.

“Yes,” the Doctor answered, leaning against his seat and pulling his foot up to where he could rub the pain from the toe.

"Whatever is the matter, Doctor?" the woman asked in a sweetly cloying tone of voice.

"According to this thing," the Doctor grumped, "there is absolutely nothing wrong with the TARDIS at all."

The woman insinuated herself between the Doctor and the console, and hesitantly at first, and then with growing confidence, began manipulating the controls and peering at both the screen and other various dials.

At length, she looked up at the Doctor, who was rather grumpily leaning against one of the safety rails. "Well, you’re right," she said. "There is absolutely nothing wrong with the TARDIS.

It's complicated. Very Complicated.

2011-05-24T17:50:00.000-07:00

All I really want to do is publish my books in print and ebook, and sell them online. You wouldn't think this would be such a difficult thing to accomplish, but it gets complicated. Very complicated.

To write a novel, I use Word. It's an excellent program for passing a document around to my partner and my readers and back again. I usually use Excel for my outline, and keeping track of where I am in the manuscript while I write. In the final editing stage, I have to convert the manuscript to an html file, which involves using Notepad. Then I use Calibre to format it as an EPUB file and load it onto my nook. The brain processes the words differently on "paper" than it does on a back lit screen. Using the nook means saving a whole ream of paper on this step, and catching a lot of typos. (That's four programs and two devices, are you keeping track?)

For print publishing, I use CreateSpace. I like the quality of their product and their customer service. Once my book is "finished" and "ready to publish", I us Word to do considerable formatting of page size, margins, fonts, making sure everything is on the correct side (left or right page) and that it all looks good. Then I save all that formatting as a PDF. I download a cover template that's based on the size of the book and the number of pages, and use Photoshop to create the cover. When I'm finished making the cover, Createspace wants me to smush it all down to one layer and save it as a PDF file. (Now I'm up to five programs).

For ebook publishing, I like Smashwords because they will market to a large variety of stores for me. I am not fond of the way their "meat grinder" (seriously, that's what they call their ebook converter) does to a book for Kindle formatting. Also, although their royalties aren't bad, I can get better at Amazon and Barnes & Noble if I upload directly to their sites, and let Smashwords handle the other ebook stores and formats. All three places have different submission requirements, which means I have to format the book one way for Smashwords, a second way for Amazon, and a third way for Barnes & Noble. I also have to make three different-sized cover photos (of the same cover), one for each vendor. And at Amazon, I have to use an extra program, Mobipocket Creator, to get it formatted right. (I'm up to six programs, two devices, and five separate formattings.)

Finally, I want to give ebooks to those readers who consistently do a good job of helping me make significant and helpful changes, which means I'm re-formatting the manuscript as an html file, and putting it into Calibre again, to end up with formats readable on Nook, Kindle, and computers.

I've just spent the last two weeks learning how to move around in Photoshop without blowing anything up, and figuring out the easiest ways to make manuscripts into html files for Calibre. I don't think the time was wasted. I was shocked though, when I went to upload all the very nice ebooks and discovered I still needed to do a lot of formatting. I now have an Excel file that outlines each step for me, so I don't forget anything.

I still wouldn't trade away the freedom of being a self-published independent author!

~Marie

Enchanted Garden Chapter Nineteen

2011-05-20T11:53:00.002-07:00

We dare you to make your characters talk in rhyme for at least two pages.

We dare you to get your characters from wherever they’re right now to Antarctica by the end of the chapter.

The Doctor patted Newt’s hand and let go of it, then whispered to her, “Stay right here, never fear, I will light the lights, my dear.”

Newt giggled at the rhyme, and said, “No fear, my dear, I’ll linger here, though the dark I do not fear.”

The Doctor made a grunting noise that sounded like “humph!” and then walked away into the darkness. Newt suddenly recalled the gaping hole they had left in the middle of the floor, and hoped the Doctor wouldn’t stumble into it and hurt himself.

“Beware the hole left like a mole had made a door in the midst of the floor,” she called out in warning, and then stopped. Why had she spoken in rhyme? Could she speak without making a rhyme?

“I’m a poet,” she whispered, and then firmly clamped her lips shut, clapping her hands over her mouth to prevent herself from finishing the rhyme.

“And I do know it,” the Doctor finished the rhyme for her from across the room, as the lights snapped on.

The Doctor grinned at her from where he stood near one of the doors. “The language circuit now is fixed, the little beast of light was nixed; the rhyming should end sometime soon as the language circuit finds its tune.”

“In the meantime we should eat,” Newt said, “I’ve already cooked us up a treat, and left it in the kitchen to heat.”

“In that case, let us seek our dinner, or I might starve and then get thinner,” the Doctor said, then he smiled merrily, and offered his arm to her. Newt laughed, and then took his arm as they left the control room together and walked sedately down the hallway to the kitchen, where presumably, the others had had the sense to stay when the lights all went out.

They were in the kitchen all right, all six of them, and were sitting in their places at the table. The emotions on their faces ranged from fright to amusement. They had all been babbling to each other in rhyme when the Doctor and Newt entered. As they became aware of the Doctor’s presence, they all dropped into silence for one long moment, and then their fear poured forth from them in the form of angry voices which sounded ridiculous in rhyming words. The six voices babbled over each other, intertwining into a long rhyme, as some of them finished each other’s couplets, and the more they rhymed, the more farcical an ludicrous they sounded, until Newt couldn’t stand it any more and started to giggle.

Her laughter initially sparked more anger to begin with, but then as the people in the room realized how they sounded, they began laughing also. During the laughter, Newt walked over to the cooking machine and deftly removed and served the ice water. To her utter amazement, the ice hadn’t even melted in the chilled glasses of water. She set the water on the table, and began to pull out the food from the warm section of the machine. The meatloaf looked just like she had imagined it, with the red sauce baked on the top. The rich, dark brown gravy smelled wonderful, and the potatoes looked so smooth and creamy, with the perfect pat of butter nestled in a small, shallow depression in the exact center of the mound of potatoes, which themselves nestled in a beautiful cut crystal bowl that was exactly like Newt’s mother’s bowl, down to the tiny nick on the edge that had appeared after Newt accidentally washed the bowl in the dish washer and it had jostled against the other dishes during the wash cycle.

With sudden jolt, Newt realized that the TARDIS had reached into her mind and somehow recreated her mother’s bowl, exactly, even the tiny nick. She indignantly wondered what else the TARDIS had been doing in her mind. She served the rest of the dinner to the assembled party as she listened to the rhyming talk. The Doctor still hadn’t explained exactly what had happened and why they were talking in rhyme, other than his initial comment of, “I’ll explain later, please pass the tater.”

The assembled group settled down to eat, and several nicely rhymed compliments were sent in Newt’s general direction, each one making her blush worse than the last one. She knew in her heart that she was absolutely not a great cook, and that anyone with a good imagination for exactly how the food should look and taste could make this machine work and have a reputation as a great cook. She devoutly wished there was some way she could take this machine home with her when her time in the TARDIS was finished, because she really liked cooking by imagination.

They finished eating the dinner, and Harold and Dusty volunteered to help clean up the dishes and put everything away. The pirates rose to leave, but the Doctor motioned silently to them to remain in their places, and the five of them remained at the table while Newt and Harold and Dusty bustled around, cleaning up the kitchen and putting away the dishes, and restoring everything to perfect cleanliness and put in order so that everything was prepared for the next time that the TARDIS rose in flight.

When their chores were completed, Newt and Harold and Dusty returned to the table and sat back down in their places again. Then, to Newt’s amazement, the Doctor just laid one finger over his lips, asking the assembled party for utter silence. They gave him what he asked for, and he smiled, then closed his eyes in concentration, looking inward. What seemed like a very long time to Newt passed in complete silence, as every person seated at the table simply sat silent and still, staring at the Doctor, and no doubt, doing what Newt was doing, which was wondering what they were all doing sitting around the table staring silently at the Doctor while he sat apparently lost in thought.

Finally, at long last, the Doctor opened his eyes again, and gazed at the assembled group.

“I think,” he said slowly, “that things are fixed now, and that we’ll not be speaking in rhyme any more.”

He let the silence go on for a minute or two, making certain that no one else had the compulsion to make what he had said rhyme. No one spoke.

“Good,” the Doctor said, then went on, his voice very quiet, and deadly serious. “Now, I’ve repaired the environmental controls, and I’ve also repaired the damage done to the chameleon circuit when you lot,” he glared at the pirates and pointed accusingly at them as a group, “tried to force the TARDIS to look more like your idea of a space ship.

“I’ve also fixed the damage that a small sprout did when it burrowed into my ship in order to escape the intense cold that the ship was radiating. The sprout, the precious child of the forest, has been ousted, and I hope it wasn’t traumatized permanently for its attempt to keep from freezing to death. I’m telling you all, and I’ll be telling you this only once.” His voice rose to a raging shout. “Keep your bloody hands off my ship.” Then his voice dropped to a very threatening whisper, and his face became very hard edges and solemn, and suddenly he was scarier than he had ever looked. “Don’t touch anything. Don’t touch a single knob, button, or switch. I’m going to lock you four,” he pointed at the pirates again, “in your bedrooms, and take you home. In the meantime, you aren’t to touch anything at all. You broke in here uninvited, you abused my hospitality, you broke my ship, and you very nearly killed a sprout of the Forest of Cheem, and if you had succeeded in that, there is no telling what interplanetary incidents you would have set off, all for the sake of finding a bit of carved rubber. It’s not worth it. Now go,” he practically hissed at them. “Get to your rooms, and stay there until I tell you that you can come out.” He raised his arm and pointed to the door, and as one, the lady pirates rose from the table and fled from before his wrath.

Newt, Dusty, and Harold sat frozen in place at the table, stunned by the venom and vituperation they had just heard in the Doctor’s voice.

“As for you lot,” he continued in a much more gentle and benevolent tone, “you had no choice about coming here. You boys have done your best to stay out of the way, and Newt has done much to try and help, and to make the situation better. I want you all to come with me to the control room while we take those women home and get rid of them. Then we’ll see what can be done about getting the three of you returned to your own homes, and getting your mess straightened out.”

The Doctor rose from the table and left the room, the three children bobbing and scrambling in his wake.

By the time they all reached the control room, the Doctor was leaping around the main console making all sorts of settings and muttering to himself, as though to make certain that nothing was set wrong or forgotten. Very shortly, the clear, blue lit rods in the central column were moving up and down, accompanied by a wheezing, groaning sound, and Newt felt a thrill of anticipation as she wondered what would happen next. Presently the wheezing stopped and the rods in the blue column stopped, and silence reigned with the TARDIS.

The Doctor disappeared, and came back again in just a few minutes with the four lady pirates.

He stood for a long moment, thinking, while they stood in a small clump and looked at him with trepidation written not only on their faces, but in every line of their entire beings. After a time, the Doctor apparently came to a decision.

Without a word, he took hold of Hollerin’ Holly’s arm, and brought her near the control console, then pressed a button, and a helmet descended from the ceiling. He set it gently on her head, and strapped the strap under her chin, then flicked a switch on the console. Blue and white lightening crawled all over the helmet. Hollerin’ Holly screamed, and then dropped to the floor, unconscious. The Doctor removed the helmet, scooped her up, and moved her over near the door that led to the outside of his TARDIS.

Then he took hold of Darth Wolf’s arm and began to lead her to the helmet. She tried to pull her arm from his grasp, but Newt could see that the Doctor was far stronger, and Mama Wolf didn’t stand any chance of escaping from his will.

“What are you doing to me?” Mama Wolf screamed at him.

“I’m erasing your memory of the time you spent with me,” the Doctor replied. “It will hurt, but there will be no lasting damage. The four of you will wake up in the woods, and you will be fine.” The whole time they had been talking, his fingers were busy fastening straps and things, and then he flicked the switch again.

The lightning crawled over the helmet and with a scream, Mama Wolf also dropped to the floor.

The Doctor removed her also to the area by the door, and turned back to the room to find that Knit Wit was already fastening the helmet on her head.

The Doctor walked back to the control panel. “I’m sorry for this,” he murmured as he reached for the switch, “I’m so very, very sorry.”

“I understand completely,” Knit Wit replied, “and I forgive you.”

The Doctor nodded as he flicked the switch for the third time, and caught Knit Wit as she collapsed.

After he had laid Knit Wit by the TARDIS door, the Doctor turned to RavenWolf, and gestured to the helmet. “It’s your turn now.”

She shook her head, then pleaded, “Please, Doctor, don’t take my memories of this. I give you my solemn word that I’ll not tell a single soul what happened, not even these three, no matter how much they plague me. I’ll not even tell them that I retained my memories. I know you’ve no reason to trust any of us, but…” she spread out her hands, fingers spread wide, palms up, in her mute appeal for mercy.

“Give me one reason I should leave you your memories,” the Doctor said. “Just one.” His voice was whispery and hoarse, choked with emotion, though Newt couldn’t say, exactly, which emotions were affecting him so profoundly.

RavenWolf looked at him for a long, long moment that stretched out for at least five minutes, though it may have been ten or twenty times that long. Then, calmly meeting his eyes, she made her statement in a serene and matter of fact tone that brooked no argument. “Because I’m nothing more or less than the sum of my memories, and I beg of you not to diminish me. I ask you for mercy and forgiveness. We entered your ship, not meaning any harm. Not finding anyone on board because you chose to hide from us, we incorrectly assumed that it was an abandoned craft, and did our best to learn to fly it. We intended only to have a little fun. You told us yesterday, when you finally chose to reveal your presence that you took off and removed us from our rightful place, because you were only having a little fun with us. Neither side meant any harm. No intentional damage was done. That makes both sides even, in my book. But I ask you, I beg of you, not to intentionally do harm to me. Please don’t diminish me. Please don’t take from me the one thing that you could never give back, my memories. I give you in return my solemn oath that not one word of this adventure will ever pass my lips, or ever be set down on paper. No one shall ever learn of it from me, a burden I would carry alone for the entirety of my short human life.”

RavenWolf then dropped her hands to her sides and dropped her head, staring at the floor, awaiting the Doctor’s judgment with resignation.

Silently, the Doctor turned away from her and picked Knit Wit back up, then carried her outside the TARDIS, returning a few moments later for Mama Wolf and Hollerin’ Holly the Troll Master of the Talley Valley Farm Clan and South Carolina Sith Lord.

RavenWolf maintained absolute silence while she watched him.

The Doctor came back in the TARDIS doors, and nodded stiffly to RavenWolf. “I’ll take your word on it. Go out there and lie down and pretend to be unconscious until after they start waking up. Make sure you’re the last person to wake up.”

He turned his back on her and began adjusting things on the TARDIS’s control panel.

RavenWolf fled out the doors into the dark of night.

Newt crossed slowly to the door and closed it softly. Then she joined her two friends where they stood near the TARDIS control console.

The Doctor finished his adjustments, and then stood back and looked at three children.

“Next stop, Belly Button, Arizona,” he said, “so I would suggest that the three of you go back to your rooms and clean up and get back into your Halloween costumes again.”

Harold and Dusty nodded and headed off down the hall, but Newt lingered in the control room with the Doctor.

“Do we really have to go back so soon?” she asked.

“I’m afraid you do,” the Doctor answered. “My life isn’t a safe one, and I can’t take responsibility for someone else’s children. Sorry. But you really do have to go back before your parents miss you. They will be looking for you shortly after midnight, is that right?”

Newt nodded. “Yes, the Halloween party at the school was supposed to be getting out at midnight, but our friends will miss us if we’re not at that party. In fact, we had people that were expecting us to be with them from about noon on.”

The Doctor nodded, scratching his chin, and then he pulled Newt around the console to the computer like screen that sat on one side of the round plinth.

He tapped at the screen several times, then motioned to Newt. “Here is a map of Arizona. Work it like a touch screen, and zoom in on a good place to land the TARDIS, someplace that won’t be noticed by half the population of Belly Button.

Newt fiddled with the screen for a few minutes, and finally directed the Doctor to the small tangle of woods in the city park.

“And where is the Old Mrs. M’s house,” he asked, “the woman who sent you out of your own time and place, where do I find her?”

Newt peered at the very good rendering of the aerial pictures of Belly Button, and found the information the Doctor had asked her for. Then, weary beyond belief, she headed down the hall to her bedroom to change back into her Marie Antoinette Halloween costume.

She reached her room and was reaching out for the latch to open the wardrobe when there was an enormous slapping sound that reverberated through the TARDIS. At the same time, the floor tipped sideways, and Newt found herself sliding down the steep slope that was actually the floor. The TARDIS began to spin, and the floor rocked wildly from one side to another, and then with a sickening sound of splintering wood, the motion suddenly stopped, and both silence and darkness descended.

Looking for Readers Again!

2011-05-19T10:31:00.000-07:00

School is out, I got straight A's, and am halfway to graduation. It's time to work feverishly on writing until I fall back into academia in mid-August.

What have I done so far? I've learned how to format a manuscript for a successful conversion to e-book; learned enough about photoshop to make decent book covers; cleaned up all the files on my external hard drive, including a badly needed reorganization of my writing files; engaged in a seriously painful battle with a sinus infection; and began coding an update on my website.

My goals are to publish Deadly Gamble by the end of June in print and e-book, re-do the covers and e-book formatting for Tanella's Flight and Fabric of the World, and do as much as possible to get the next two novels ready to publish in October and April.

The October novel has been read, and is entirely in my hands now. I am looking for readers for the April novel. This one is called The Mom's Place. It is a romance, but it is a clean romance. It has a contemporary setting.

I'm looking for people who have MS Word to read and edit the manuscript. I would like to send it out to 5-6 people on Monday, and you will have three weeks to read, edit, and return it. As always, I'm looking for people who are willing to help out, and not people who just want a sneak peek at the manuscript. Instructions on how to edit will come with the manuscript. If you're interested in reading, please email me at marie@am-jenner.com.

Thanks,

~Marie

Enchanted Garden Chapter Eighteen

2011-05-16T20:07:00.001-07:00

We dare you to take away all your characters’ ability to speak for one whole chapter.

They walked back to the TARDIS in silence, their hearts light. Newt felt happier than she had felt during their entire adventure, since the moment they had first realized they were on an enchanted path in Old Mrs. M’s garden.

We dare you to incorporate three of the things nearest to you that start with the letter “n” into the next paragraph.

When they reached the TARDIS, Newt went off to her room. She had sweat pretty badly when they had been running through the forest away from that very frightening fortune teller, Madame Du Pompadour, and Newt wanted very desperately to take a shower and get cleaned up. When she opened the door to her room, Newt realized that someone had been in her room while she was gone, because a New rubber stamp, a Novelty pen that had a combination magnifying glass and microscope on the top of it, and a Never opened package of Smarties were all sitting in the middle of her bed.

She grumbled to herself that the pirates had been in her room, and made a mental note to ask the Doctor how she could lock her bedroom door while she was gone. For that matter, she wondered how to lock the door while she was here. What if they had come in while she was in the middle of changing clothing, or showering? That was certainly not a pleasant thought, especially since she had been warned not to trust them. At least one of them had been proven to be a liar, and at least one of them had entered her private space without her express permission.

Newt went over to the door and looked for some way to lock it or otherwise secure it closed. She saw no obvious latch, but there was a small metal plate set into the wall at about chest height, right next to where the lock should have been, if there was a lock on the door. Newt pressed her thumb against the metal plate, and heard a distinct click. Startled, she pulled her thumb back, but nothing else happened. She reached out to the latch on the door, and tugged, but the door refused to open. Experimentally, she pressed her thumb to the small metal panel again. Although there was no feeling of “give” to it, she heard the small snick of a lock again, and this time when she tried the door handle, it opened easily.

Newt stepped out into the hallway and investigated the wall next to the door frame, and discovered a similar panel on this side of the wall. A little further experimentation, and she knew she had found her door lock.

She went back inside her room and locked the door, then proceeded to the small bathroom, where she made use of the facilities, and then cleaned both her laundry and herself.

Shortly, she had located something else nice to wear, a long green skirt, paired with a pale pink tunic that had long trailing sleeves. As the tunic had rather open sleeves and the neckline was quite a bit lower than Newt was accustomed to wearing, she supplemented the outfit with a tight fitting, long sleeved black body suit that really fit like a turtleneck sweater that had been melded into a single piece with a pair of long, ankle length leggings. Once Newt had zipped up the zipper that was cleverly hidden in one of the sleeve seams, you couldn’t tell how it was possible to get in and out of the body suit. With the green skirt, and the loose pink tunic, Newt felt very posh and sophisticated. She braided her hair up, and swirled the braids into a coronet. The green ribbons she had braided into her hair matched the skirt. When Newt stood before the mirror and swished her skirt, she was suddenly glad that the body suit went all the way to her ankles, because the green skirt proved to have slits up the sides all the way to her waist.

She unlocked her bedroom door, went out into the corridor, and carefully relocked the door, before moving off down the hallway in the general direction of the kitchen.

She thought it would be nice if she made dinner for everyone tonight, and she had a few good ideas on what, exactly, she was going to serve them for dinner.

We dare you to put lime Jell-O into your next scene. Food fight? Jell-O eating contest? It’s up to you!

Newt entered the kitchen in the TARDIS and discovered to her great pleasure that she had the facility all to herself. She went over to the food machine that she had used earlier to make a sandwich for her lunch, and opened the door where she had placed her hand before.

She clearly imagined a lavish dinner of meatloaf, mashed potatoes that were made from fresh, whole potatoes, and so were still slightly lumpy from the mashing process, nice dark brown gravy, and a big bowl of sweet green peas, the smaller, perfectly round ones that were more expensive because they were the first, almost ripe pick of the season. Spring peas, she thought they were called. She imagined her mother’s freshly baked bread, still hot from the oven, and slathered with butter that melted directly into the bread and became an integral part of the flavor and olfactory experience. She imagined big water goblets with tiny ice cubes in them, and filled with the fresh, delicious, moss filtered water that she had been privileged to drink at the little cottage today, and then for dessert, she imagined elaborate dessert dishes filled with colored cubes of Jell-O in all varieties of flavor—lime, cherry, orange, lemon, blue raspberry, peach, banana peach, black cherry, grape, blackberry—everything except strawberry and watermelon, because she hated the artificial strawberry and watermelon flavoring. The dessert was a rainbow of Jell-O cubes topped with freshly whipped sweet cream.

While the machine worked on making the dinner, Newt busied herself finding a nice table cloth and china, and silver utensils, and bustled about setting the table. In one cupboard, she found a vase, and Newt filled it with water and set it in the center of the table, then, when everything was almost ready, she went outside and gathered some of the purple grasses that had been blooming, and brought them in to put in the vase.

A bell that reminded Newt of the timer in her mother’s kitchen went off, and she set her hand in the cubbyhole slot of the food machine and instructed it to keep the hot foods hot and the cold foods cold while she rounded everyone up for dinner.

She was about to leave the kitchen when the door slammed open, and the boys entered, distress on their faces.

Newt opened her mouth to ask what the problem was, and realized that there were no words. She was still thinking in words, of course, but she found that it was impossible for her to say anything. Her eyes widened with her own distress, but realized almost immediately that this must be the source of the boys’ affliction.

Newt pointed at their seats at the table and motioned to them to stay put, and then she flitted off down the hall to the craft room to gather up the lady pirates, as well as some pads of paper and pens to use for communication purposes until this new contretemps could be sorted out.

The scene in the craft room couldn’t have been funnier. Three of the pirate ladies, Knit Wit, Hollerin’ Holly, and Mama Wolf, were all sitting at a table, staring at each other with tears in their wide, roundly opened eyes, grasping their throats, and flapping their mouths open and shut, looking for all the world like fish out of water gasping for their last breath. The fourth lady pirate, RavenWolf, was sitting at her computer, furiously pushing buttons on the keyboard. When Newt got closer, she realized that the screen was blank, and concluded that even her written words had been taken. This didn’t bode well for using paper and pencil for communication, but she gathered up pads and pens anyway, and motioned to the pirates to follow her. Newt led them to the kitchen, and realized that the Doctor was now the only person not in evidence.

She handed the pads of paper and the pens to Knit Wit, and made shooing motions with her hands. The lady pirates went into the kitchen, and Newt set off to the control room in search of the Doctor. Something else had now gone wrong with the TARDIS; something that had effectively stripped them of all language.

Newt found the Doctor in the control room of the TARDIS. He had pulled up one of the floor panels and climbed down into the pit that contained a maze of wires and lights and other components, not all of which seemed to be entirely electronic. The Doctor was furiously shaking wires and applying the glowing blue end of his little stick to the various parts of the TARDIS. Every time he manipulated a different part, he would open his mouth as though he was trying to speak, and then he would move on to another part. As Newt watched, he threw the tool with the glowing blue end on it across the room in frustration, and slammed his fist against one of the more solid parts of the TARDIS. There was a loud crack, and the Doctor cradled his hand against his chest and let out a howl that bespoke his frustration and pain without the need for words. Newt guessed that he had probably broken his hand in hitting the machine, and felt a great wave of sympathy for the pain the Doctor must be experiencing.

She crossed the room to him, and plucked at the shoulder of his suit, gaining his attention. Newt sat on the floor of the TARDIS, and dangled her legs down the open hole, then patted the floor next to her. One handed, the Doctor heaved himself up out of the hole until he was also sitting on the floor with his legs dangling down the hole.

Newt knew that there were no words available to her, but still, she had watched her mother often enough to know that some emotions could be conveyed entirely without the need for words. She put her arms around the Doctor and leaned her head on his shoulder, striving within the confines of her heart and mind, to radiate her concern, and her sympathy, and to offer him comfort. She wanted to be soothing, hoping that she could take away his anger and frustration so that he would be able to think calmly, and figure out how to fix what was wrong, for she somehow knew that restoring the Doctor to rational thought was the only chance they had to regain their language skills.

The Doctor put his good arm around her shoulders while still carefully cradling his injured hand against his chest.

After a time, Newt felt a warm, wet drop on her cheek, then a second one against her neck, and she realized that the Doctor must be crying. She knew that men don’t like to be caught crying, as most of them consider it most unmanly, so she didn’t move or react to the tears in any way, but just sat still with her arms around the Doctor’s skinny chest, and did her best to radiate comfort as he relieved himself of the frustration he had been experiencing with his ship for…she paused to calculate how long the TARDIS had been broken, and realized with a shock that they had only met the Doctor at dinner time yesterday, and that the great environmental controls blow up in the control room had only occurred this morning. However, there had been an awful lot of living that had been packed into one single day.

Slowly, the Doctor’s sobs and tears subsided, and Newt felt, almost as a palpable thing, the stern resolve that came into his entire being and was reflected in his body posture. He gently unwound his left arm from Newt, and she let go of him and sat up straight. Without a word, because of course, he couldn’t have uttered one anyway; he heaved himself to his feet, stalked across the room and retrieved his useful tool with the glowing blue tip. The Doctor tucked the tool into the inner pocket of his suit and returned to Newt, offering his uninjured hand to help her get up. She accepted his aid and rose from the floor, feeling acutely for the first time all the little pin pricks from the expanded steel floor as they left their imprint on her flesh right through the clothing she was wearing.

The Doctor offered his arm, a gentlemanly old world gesture fraught with meaning, and Newt’s thoughts took an amused turn, as she realized how many ways the human race had developed to communicate with each other entirely without the use of words.

The Doctor went first down an unfamiliar corridor, and through a door, and as Newt looked around her at the very unfamiliar machinery, she wondered what they were going to do in this room.

The Doctor opened up one of the panels on a machine, a little awkwardly, since he was forced to use his left hand, and it was patently obvious that he was very right handed.

Once the panel was open, he pressed a button, and the machine unfolded by itself, becoming a large table or bed, with several pieces of equipment hanging over and around it.

The doctor pulled one of the bits of machinery over the bed near the head of it, and carefully positioned it with great attention to exact details. When it was where the Doctor wanted it to be, he carefully laid his injured hand beneath it, slowly and with great grimaces of pain on his face, using his left hand to straighten out his fingers and lay the hand flat on the surface of the bed.

Suddenly Newt realized that they must be in the TARDIS’s equivalent of a sick bay, or urgent care treatment center, and that the Doctor was trying to work the machinery with his left hand only because he couldn’t explain to her what needed to be done.

When his hand was flat against the table, he stood still for a long moment, panting and gasping from the pain the small effort had cost him, then motioned Newt over to the control panel of the machine, which was out of reach from where the Doctor stood near the head of the bed.

It took a long time for her to find the right switches and buttons, because they each had to be pressed in the correct order. She had to go over each button on the panel, while the Doctor nodded or shook his head on each one, then start the process all over again for the next control. One of the dials had to be set to a number, which the Doctor was forced to count out to her in groups of five, since he could only signal with one hand to do so.

Eventually Newt got everything set the way the Doctor needed it done, and was allowed to push the great big threatening red button that apparently powered everything.

There was a great deal of whizzing and whirring, and bluish green and orange lights emanated from the part of the machine that was suspended above the Doctor’s hand. Newt found herself desperately hoping that this part of the TARDIS wasn’t also broken, and that it would properly heal the Doctor’s hand.

Within a few minutes, she could see the tension the pain had caused leaving the Doctor’s shoulders, and a few minutes later, the lights emanating from the machine went out, and the Doctor pulled his hand from beneath the machine, flexing and stretching the fingers and thumb experimentally. Apparently everything worked as it should, and he gleefully wiggled the fingers at Newt to show her it was now healed. He folded the machine back up again and put it away, a process that went much more quickly with both hands working, and then walked over to the door and held out his hand to Newt, and she joined him at the door and took his hand. They walked out into the corridor, and the Doctor closed the door and secured it carefully behind him.

Hand in hand they started off through the corridors and Newt gently pulled the Doctor in the direction of the kitchen where she knew dinner awaited them.

The Doctor shook his head and pulled her instead to the control room where he grabbed a large rubber mallet and started banging on the walls, with his ear close to the wall, as though he was listening to the sound it made, and looking for something in particular.

Finally at one section of the wall, he did an awful lot of tapping in a small area, as though narrowing down exactly where the problem lay.

It reminded Newt of the time her father had been trying to locate a wall stud in order to hang up a very expensive and heavy mirror on the wall. He had used the electronic stud finder, and the magnetic stud finder, and then tapped the wall for a very long time, with his ear pressed carefully to the wall to hear some slight and subtle difference in the tapping sound.

Finally he had decided he had the right place and had installed the hanging hardware triumphantly on the wall, and then he and her mother had carefully lifted the large mirror up and, with many a grunt of effort, had strung the wire hanger over the hook on the wall, then stepped back to admire their handiwork just in time to see the mirror pull the hangar through the unsupported drywall and tear a large hole in the wall as it crashed to the floor and shattered, exploding flying shards of silvered glass throughout the entire room.

Some of the bits of glass had penetrated the wall on the far side of the room, and Newt and her parents were very lucky indeed to have escaped with only a few very minor cuts each. Newt had had to have three stitches right in the center of her eyebrow, and to this day, the hair wouldn’t grow in that scar tissue, leaving her with a small, straight, bald patch right down the middle of her right eyebrow. Her mother told her later that she had been very grateful the glass had pierced Newt’s eyebrow instead of being a couple of inches lower and destroying her eyeball itself.

Newt brought her attention back to the present and concentrated on what the Doctor was doing. He had located a certain spot in the wall of the TARDIS, and was tapping out strange rhythms on the wall. Incredibly, the wall was tapping back, and the entire control room thrummed and beat with the sound of the Doctor and the TARDIS tapping at each other as though they were using some sort of Morse code.

The Doctor pulled out his favorite tool with the glowing blue end and held it to that particular place on the wall, while the blue light glowed and the tool whirred. The tool began to shake in the Doctor’s hand, as though the TARDIS was fighting against whatever it was that he was doing, but he relentlessly held his hand firm, and the tool steady. That section of the TARDIS wall started to turn the same color blue as the end of the tool, and Newt wondered what, exactly, the Doctor was trying to accomplish.

Suddenly, all of the lights went out, the darkness nearly a palpable thing, but the tiny blue glow of the tool and the part of the wall that it had caused to glow blue instead of its normal ruddy orange remained alight, the only light source in the room.

Distant screams from the direction of the kitchen informed Newt that the thick darkness wasn’t just in the control room, but a general power failure for the entire ship.

Slowly, the patch on the wall grew larger and brighter, and the Doctor still fought, harder than ever, to keep his tool on the exact spot that he had worked so hard to find.

With a suddenness that was almost as breathtaking as the lights going out, there was a tremendously bright flash from the area where the Doctor had been working. Newt rubbed at her eyes, trying to reduce their dazzlement, and discovered that the Doctor was still trying to hold the tool to the wall, but now the tip of the tool had been pushed an inch or two from the wall by a dazzling ball of white light that had apparently been drawn out of the wall by the glowing tool.

The Doctor’s arm was shaking with his efforts to push against the light, so Newt moved to his side and put her hands on his, helping him push. Soon, they were both pushing with all their strength, and the dazzlingly bright white light disappeared with a soft popping sound, like a soap bubble vanishing. With this disappearance, the room was plunged into absolute blackness, for the whirring blue tool exploded in the Doctor’s hand at the same moment that the white light had vanished.

As the thing they had been exerting all their strength against vanished, Newt and the Doctor both staggered against the wall and each other, but quickly managed to regain their balance, clinging to each other in the darkness.

“Thanks,” the Doctor said quietly.

“You’re very welcome,” replied Newt, rejoicing in the fact that she could speak once again.

Enchanted Garden Chapter Seventeen

2011-05-09T11:35:00.001-07:00

‘”The familiar spirit that has chosen to live within my crystal ball, which is that being who delivers to me proclamations regarding the future, instructs me to say to you that you must do nothing. All will be revealed unto you when the time is right. Midnight is the witching hour, and the hour when the greatest power comes to those who have power. The spell that has been cast around you as a net will lift at midnight, and you will find that all in your life will be as it should, but beware, for time does not run at the same speed when in different dimensions, and therefore you must be careful, for any injury that you take while in this continuum will travel with you into the next, even unto death. Beware of pirates who make false promises, and always trust your physician, after all, an apple a day gets the doctor away!”

“You’re right, Doctor,” Dusty said. “It all sounds like it’s a bunch of random gunk. None of it makes sense to me.”

“Start again at the beginning Newt,” the Doctor suggested, “and let’s start taking it apart.”

Newt nodded, and began again.

‘”The familiar spirit that has chosen to live within my crystal ball, which is that being who delivers to me proclamations regarding the future, instructs me to say to you-“

“Stop there,” said the Doctor. “Comments anyone?”

“It sounds like she’s telling us that she believes this creature, or spirit, or something, actually lives in her crystal ball, and that it somehow gives her the information. Telepathy maybe? Is there really such a thing as telepathy?”

The Doctor nodded. “There is such a thing as telepathy, and it would be entirely within the realm of possibility that there is some sort of a creature that lives in her crystal ball, It’s also possible that this creature is telepathic, so this part of her speech might be genuine, or it might just be her standard opening when she’s telling fortunes, but at any rate, all it does is establish her credentials as a fortune teller.”

Harold nodded sharply, showing his agreement with what the Doctor had said, and Newt decided she agreed also, so she went on with the next part of the fortune.

“You must do nothing. All will be revealed unto you when the time is right.”

“Well,” Harold said, “that could mean anything. I mean, all it says is that if we don’t do anything to try to get back home, someone will come along and tell us what to do.”

“That sounds reasonable,” agreed the Doctor.

“The first part of it’s pretty plain to understand, anyway, said Dusty, that she thinks we shouldn’t do anything, which to me says to just go with the flow and take events as they come.”

Newt nodded. “Agreed. And the part about things being revealed to us in the future, well, we’ll just have to wait until the future gets here and see if anything new is revealed to us.”

She looked down at the note pad and turned to the next page in order to continue reading.

“Midnight is the witching hour, and the hour when the greatest power comes to those who have power,” Newt read from the note pad, then continued, “That just sounds like establishing her authority again, or explaining. Like she was telling us that something will happen at midnight, because there is more power at that time of day.”

“Well,” the Doctor said, “lots of cultures believe that midnight is a magic time. It’s the hour when one day changes into the next, and you get a clean start on the next day. Cultures that practice magic, or have what we would call magic as a part of their daily existence, all tend to attach a great deal of importance to the hour of midnight. Who am I to say they’re wrong. So, your Madame Du Pompadour explains that midnight is a time that’s significant to many practitioners of what could be termed magic, and why she thinks it’s that way. What’s next? Something else about midnight, was it not?”

Newt nodded. “It says, ‘The spell that has been cast around you as a net will lift at midnight, and you will find that all in your life will be as it should,’ so maybe the first bit about midnight was to tell us why Old Mrs. M’s spell would be lifted at midnight.”

“Hang on!” Dusty said, and then screwed up his eyes in intense thought until they were completely closed. He threaded the fingers of his right hand into his hair and gripped the hair tightly, as though he could pull the errant thought from his brain directly through the hair follicles. Everyone at the table sat patiently while he thought, politely and considerately giving him time and space to retrieve whatever memory he was after.

Finally, he let go of his hair and opened his eyes, and looked at them with a great deal of excitement sparkling in his bright blue eyes. His hair continued to stick straight up, still twisted by his fingers, and Newt wondered how much hair gel he had used to keep his fine hair from static electrically sticking to the inside of the hood of his Vashta Nerada costume.

“Old Mrs. M said something about midnight, just before that flash of lightning knocked us out.

“That’s right,” Harold said, “I remember now… it was something about… um…”

“Midnight,” Newt broke in. “She said we had until midnight.”

“That’s right,” Harold agreed.

“But,” said Newt, “we’ve been here overnight already, and it’s now in the afternoon of our second day here. So that kind of kills the ‘things will revert back to normal at midnight’ theory, doesn’t it?” She sat back in her chair and exasperatedly blew her breath out in a way that would have blown her bangs upward out of her eyes, if it hadn’t been several years since she had had her hair cut so that she had bangs.

“That’s one theory,” the Doctor said, “but you’ve to keep in mind the nature of time. Most people assume that time is an orderly progression of events, from cause to effect, but in reality, it’s more like a big ball of tangled string, and if you pull on one of the ends hanging out of the ball, you’re never quite sure what other threads inside the ball are going to be moved, knotted, and disrupted along the way. Which is why it’s never wise to meddle in time, and try to change past events.”

“The fortune teller’s words continue,” Newt continued, “but beware, for time doesn’t run at the same speed when in different dimensions.”

“Well, there is that to consider also,” agreed the Doctor, “which probably means that the spell will lift at midnight, in your own time zone, at home, regardless of how much time you spend in other dimensions and time streams.”

“That makes sense to me,” Harold said, and for the first time since they had arrived on Purvis Major, Newt saw that his face actually looked cheerful. Dusty’s face was showing that he was cheered by the news also, and Newt suddenly realized that Dusty might have been blaming himself for the entire incident, since it had been his suggestion to cut through Old Mrs. M’s yard. Even when they had protested that they shouldn’t be doing it, he had practically forced them to go on without him, or follow him. With a horribly sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Newt wondered what would have happened to Dusty if she and Harold hadn’t followed him into Old Mrs. M’s enchanted yard. He would probably still be there taking tea with the Victorian woman, and would have therefore been trapped in the past, with no way home. Newt shivered at the possibility that Dusty would have vanished completely from the face of the Earth, had their friendship not been strong enough to follow him into the well enchanted garden.

“What else did the fortune teller say to you?” the Doctor prompted, and Newt realized she had been silent for a time, wrapped in her own thoughts.

She hurriedly looked at the note pad, turned to the next page, and continued reading.

“Therefore you must be careful, for any injury that you take while in this continuum will travel with you into the next, even unto death.”

The Doctor nodded. “Standard good advice for time travelers. Even if you’re in a time that’s in your own people’s history, you can still change things you shouldn’t change, or get horribly hurt or even killed. It’s very possible for you to have been born in the twentieth century, and die in the eighteenth.”

Newt nodded. “So she gives us some good advice. Advice to be careful is never out of line.” She took a drink from her cup, and was amazed at the wonderful clean taste of the water. It was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted in her life, and she wanted more of it. She drank again, deeply, until her cup was drained. Suddenly she felt cold all over. Eating food in the TARDIS seemed different, somehow, than the water that came from the planet they were on, probably because that food had been brought to Purvis Major by the Doctor. Harold had been so certain that they shouldn’t eat or drink anything that was offered them, because according to the rules of the fantasy realms he had read, eating or drinking native food items would trap you there within the sorcery forever. She even recalled a Greek myth to that effect, a girl who had been trapped in Heck for half of each year because she had been tricked into eating a few pomegranate seeds, or something to that effect. What in the world had she done? Would she now be allowed to go home?

“Drink up!” the Doctor said in his cheerful voice. “I love the taste of fresh well water from a nice mossy well. The moss filters out the dirt and germs, and it just tastes better than any other water, don’t you think?”

He refilled his cup as well as hers, and drank deeply of his own, with a wink.

“But…won’t we be trapped here for drinking it?” Harold asked.

“Well,” the Doctor said, that’s the rule for some enchanted worlds, I suppose, but this isn’t an enchanted world, no matter how you got here, so the food and drink wouldn’t have any effect on you. Except to taste good. And anyway, you’ve been eating food from the TARDIS, how is that different?”

Harold grinned. “Well, you brought that with you, it wasn’t a part of the enchantment of this world, unless you yourself was part of the enchantment.”

The doctor considered his words for a moment, then nodded. “Your logic is good, I’ll grant you that. Be assured that I don’t usually frequent worlds where you can’t eat the local foods.”

Dusty shot a glare at Harold, but it was only short lived as the two boys drained their mugs of water, and agreed that the clear, cold, moss filtered water was the best they had ever tasted.

“So,” said the Doctor, “was there any more to your Madame Du Pompadour’s pronouncement?”

Newt flipped to the last page, and looked. “Just a little more,” she said, and then read, “Beware of pirates who make false promises, and always trust your physician, after all, an apple a day gets the doctor away!”

Newt turned to the next page, and saw that it was empty. “I think that’s where I asked her what it meant, and she got mad and chased us off.”

“Well, beware of pirates who give us false promises makes sense,” said Harold, with a grin. “How many times did that Hollerin’ Holly lie to us about how much further we had to go to get to the top of the mountain?”

“Too many times,” Harold answered with a mock groan, but we did find that box, and it was sort of fun, having a reward waiting at the end of our hike. I wonder if there are any of those letterboxes in or near Belly Button, Arizona?”

Newt kicked him under the table. “We’ll find out about letterboxes later, after we’re safely home. I’m sure that if we search online, we’ll be able to find out more about them with out having to ask that lying pirate Hollerin’ Holly.

“Read that last bit again, Newt,” Dusty said, “not the bit about the pirates, but the other part. It sounded a little strange, but I can’t quite put my finger on why.

“Always trust your physician, after all, an apple a day gets the doctor away!” Newt read, obediently.

“Trust your physician,” Harold laughed. “I think she means the Doctor.”

“Well, I trust the Doctor,” Newt retorted, “and I didn’t need her to tell me that.”

“An apple a day…what exactly does that say Newt?” said Dusty.

She checked the paper again. “An apple a day gets the doctor away.” She recited, then looked up at Harold. “Are you sure you got that bit right? I thought it was ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away.’”

“Not the doctor,” Dusty said, suddenly, “the Doctor!” and he pointed excitedly at the tall man seated at the table with them. “An apple a day GETS the Doctor away. She was telling us how to fix the TARDIS,” Then he sat down again, a frown on his face. “Never mind, that suggestion was a real piece of rubbish. How could an apple fix a machine?”

The Doctor sat bolt upright, his eyes going very wide. “Dusty, I think you’ve the right of it. I’ve been looking at the hardware, but there is a set of programming instructions filed in the apple file, for restarting the TARDIS if everything should go strange at once. If I follow the codes and directives in the apple file, I would bet it would put the old TARDIS to rights again, and then we could leave.”

The Doctor’s eyes were gleaming as they got up from the table and hurried outside to return to their meadow.

“Thank you!” the Doctor shouted, his face tipped upward, as though he were talking to the trees.

Newt thought she may have imagined it, but it seemed to her that a sudden breeze rippled through the distant canopy of leaves, almost as though the forest laughed and giggled an acknowledgement to the Doctor’s voluble thanks.

Leash Laws

2011-05-06T10:59:00.000-07:00

There's been an ongoing conversation at my favorite website for the last several days about leash laws, and when it is all right to let dogs off their leashes. I started to reply, but realized I wanted my thoughts to be shared with a wider audience. When I say "you", I mean people in general rather than any specific person I know--unless it applies to you.

The arguments essentially boiled down to these:

On the keep the dogs leashed side:

Many children are afraid of dogs, even friendly ones, because the dog is bigger than the child.
Many people are allergic to dog dander/hair.
"Other People's Dogs" might harm "MY Dog".
If my dog runs after a squirrel I may never see it again.
Many people have been bitten by off-leash dogs in leash-only areas.
People feel it's their right to pet my dog without asking, and if it is leashed, I have better control of the situation.

On the unleash the dog side:

But MY dog is friendly/doesn't bite/only wants to say hello.
My poor doggy has been in the car all day and needs to run.
My dog is well trained and obeys every command, so it's safe, and the sign doesn't apply to me.

I am not a dog lover, or a dog hater.

Although not an elderly person, I am a little unsteady on my feet. I have arthritis from head to toe. Sometimes just walking is all I can manage. No one can see my disability just by looking at me. Someday in the future I will be in a wheelchair, but my doctor has told me walking is the best exercise to push that day as far into the future as possible. I get out and walk as much as possible, but often have to take my walker with me. Two years ago I had a bad fall. I tripped on a curb and dislocated my elbow. I have not fully recovered from the fall, and am terrified that another fall will result in a more debilitating injury. The point here is that a big, friendly dog who won't bite can still be a danger to me simply by knocking me down.

Here's the point:

If there's a sign designating it's an off-leash area, then I know what I'm risking (being knocked over by a friendly dog and getting badly injured in the fall) by venturing past that sign.

If there is no sign, use your discretion. Again, I have chosen to go into that area, knowing I may meet off-leash dogs.

If there is a sign stating dogs must be on leashes, the dog better be on a leash; not because it is polite, not because it's a bad dog, but because it is the LAW that the dog must be leashed in that area. When I choose to walk only in areas where it is posted that dogs must be on a leash, I choose to walk there to protect my own safety. Dog owners have the choice to walk that path with their dog on a leash, or to break the law and let their dog off the leash. It's that simple, no judgment call is required.

Laws are not there to limit our freedom. I choose to walk only on leash-required paths instead of all trails, because I am concerned about being knocked over by a large and overly friendly dog. Dog owners who choose to walk on leash-required paths should obey the law and use a leash. They also have the choice to walk on undesignates and unleashed paths. There are many places not posted either way, and many places posted for off-leash dogs. If you want to walk your dog off-leash, take them to where it is legal to do so, but please don't risk my future by breaking the law.

I guarantee you that if your unleashed dog knocks me down in a posted leash area, and I am hurt because of it, you will be meeting me in court, you will be paying my medical bills, and you will be losing your dog. The laws are not just there to protect other people from your dog, they are there to protect your dog from other dogs, to protect your dog from other people, and to protect you from lawsuits. However the laws only work when we all obey them.

~Marie

Enchanted Garden Chapter Sixteen

2011-05-03T19:07:00.001-07:00

The Doctor listened to the strange tale Newt told of the mysterious fortune teller in the woods with an amused frame of mind, though he kept his face serious, because he knew that she took this fortune telling thing very seriously. Well, she would, being only thirteen, and a very young thirteen, at that; besides, she still regarded the teleportation of herself and her friends halfway across the universe as magic.

The Doctor knew very well that what seemed to be magic to one society and civilization would be termed science by another, and that there was almost always a reasonable explanation for anything that at first appeared to be magic, but he also had been around the galaxies enough times to recognize that it was much easier to deal with any given person within the bounds of their tribal superstitions and beliefs, because very few individuals were able to shake those off and live in a wider world.

Therefore, he hadn’t contradicted the children the night before as they had spoken of the magic spell that had sent them to Purvis Major, nor would he contradict Newt now as she spoke of the fortune teller. True soothsayers were very rare, and never human, but many of them might be able to appear to be human, if the need arose. He also didn’t know if the fortune teller was one of the natives of Purvis Major, or whether this so called Madame Du Pompadour was, like himself, a visitor to this place.

He also had no sure indication of what species the Old Mrs. M was, or what motivation she actually had possessed for sending the children off to the far end of the universe all on their own, but that was another matter entirely and he would look into that later, after he took them home.

Children this young shouldn’t be racketing about the universe all on their own, and he felt the responsibility to return them to their homes in safety, and to stand as their guardian until that task was accomplished.

In the meantime, Newt was offering him the contents of her notepad, and he took it carefully, keeping in mind the trust she was offering him along with the notepad and its contents.

He quickly read through the so-called prophecy, expecting it to be made up of so many generalities that it could be interpreted in any way that the events actually fell.

The papers on the note pad read, “The familiar spirit that has chosen to live within my crystal ball, which is that being who delivers to me proclamations regarding the future, instructs me to say to you that you must do nothing. All will be revealed unto you when the time is right. Midnight is the witching hour, and the hour when the greatest power comes to those who have power. The spell that has been cast around you as a net will lift at midnight, and you will find that all in your life will be as it should, but beware, for time does not run at the same speed when in different dimensions, and therefore you must be careful, for any injury that you take while in this continuum will travel with you into the next, even unto death. Beware of pirates who make false promises, and always trust your physician, after all, an apple a day gets the doctor away!”

“Hmmm…” the Doctor said, “this will take some time to talk about. Why don’t we find a nice place to sit down and discuss it?”

He led the way into the forest, and the three children followed in his wake.

As he walked, he formed a picture in his mind of a snug cottage, complete with a nice little garden and ivy twined well, where there would be a table full of refreshments where they could sit and talk in privacy. Well, he amended, as much privacy as you could have on a planet that was populated by telepathic trees who could create any environment you wished to have created for you.

The Doctor knew that the cottage was prepared when he saw the inviting little path just ahead of them, and he veered onto it, leading the children to the cottage, which was exactly how it had been imagined in the Doctor’s mind. He sent his thoughts out again, thanking the tree beings for their hospitality, and felt a comforting assurance that he would always be welcome in their realm because of his kindness to one of their own number many, many years ago, when he had befriended Jade, the lovely tree woman from the Forest of Cheem.

With a pang, the Doctor recalled how she had willingly given her life to save all of the people who had been gathered on Platform One. He shook the memory free, and continued down the path to the cottage, certain that the pirate ladies wouldn’t be able to find them here, even if they thought to look.

The tree people of Purvis Major assured him that no one would ever be able to find the Doctor against his will, on any planet where their people lived.

When they reached the clearing with the cottage, the children stopped short, wary of entering yet another enchanted clearing. The Doctor opened the small white picket gate, and gestured them forward.

“It’s all right,” he promised them with a smile, “we’re all safe here. We’re not trespassing here. The house belongs to some friends of mine, and they have given me permission to use it. I thought it would be a good place to speak in private, and to discuss your prophecy, Newt.”

Newt nodded, and proceeded into the small yard, the boys following nervously in her wake.

The Doctor drew a bucket of water from the well, and then carried the bucket into the house with him as he opened the front door and walked in, acting for all the world as though he owned the house. He knew his confident attitude would spread to the children, and they would be comforted by it.

Quickly glancing around the single room of the cottage, the Doctor carefully set the mossy bucket on the table, and then stepped over to the shelf near the beautifully and intricately carved mantle piece and retrieved four beautiful, leather bound wooden mugs. He peeked inside of them, and as he expected, found no dust or other contaminants. The Doctor set the mugs on the table and retrieved a dipper from its peg on the wall, and dipped out some of the cool, sweet, well water into the mugs.

By this time, the children had all seated themselves around the table, and the Doctor set the dipper in the mossy bucket from the well, and set the entire bucket within reach on the sparkling clean hearth stones.

“Now,” he said, pulling the list from his coat pocket where he had carefully tucked it, “shall we see if we can get to the bottom of this fortune you’ve been given?”

He laid the note book on the table in front of them, and said, “These things are usually better understood if you take them apart and look at each section individually. Newt, how about if you read the entire thing to us, and then we can go over it a section at a time, to see what knowledge we’ve that will shed any light on what this fortune teller - Madame Du Pompadour, I think you said her name was?” he paused while Newt nodded at him, “has told you. Do recall, please, that a fortune teller usually tries to state things in a hazy and hard to understand manner, because they really don’t have any idea what’s going to happen in the future. Most events are constantly in flux, meaning that they’re easily changed, and only a true telepath would have the ability to make an accurate prediction. And true telepaths are very rare, and not often human in shape,” he added offhandedly, “so we might also want to consider the notion that she, or it, or whoever it was that you met, is a fraud, and none of this might be a true telling.”

The children nodded, and Newt took the note pad from the table in front of the Doctor, and began to read in her clear and youthful voice.

Enchanted Garden Chapter Fifteen

2011-04-27T07:29:00.001-07:00

The three friends ran down the path through the purple forest. Their sides ached with the effort, but still they ran, not slackening their pace in the least. Their breath came in great heaving gasps in and out of their tortured lungs, but still they ran on, seeking greater speed. Their legs cramped, and then grew wobbly with weariness, but they continued to run, even when their running became staggering, they neither stopped nor let loose of one another’s hands, until they had returned to the large circular meadow where the TARDIS was parked. They spilled out of the forest and fell, gasping and panting, face down in a little heap as the blue sunlight bathed both them and the purple grasses with its feeble warmth.

Only when at last they were able to sit up under their own muscle power, and breathe at a normal rate, and the breeze had dried most of the sweat from their faces that they had gained by the exertion of their headlong flight, only then did Dusty break their terrified silence. “What all did she say?”

“I don’t remember it all,” Newt answered.

“Shh!” Harold commanded, and then motioned that he needed something to write with.

Newt jumped up and ran into the TARDIS. She flew down the now familiar corridor, and burst into the craft room. Ignoring the questions of the lady pirates, and in fact, ignoring the lady pirates altogether, Newt quickly grabbed up a notepad and a pen, then whirled and left the room at top speed.

She flew back through the corridors of the TARDIS, and smacked right into the Doctor as she came flying into the control room. Only his quick reactions saved them both from a nasty tumble onto the expanded steel floor, which could have hurt badly, and possibly could have caused injury to one or both of them.

She had momentarily forgotten that Harold had a perfect recall of words he had heard, providing he wrote them down quickly, before more words came into his ears to crowd out the ones he wanted to preserve.

She dashed across the meadow, aware that the Doctor was following closely on her heels, and practically flung the writing materials into Harold’s hands.

As soon as he had hold of them, Harold started writing frantically fast, covering many of the pages of the small note pad with large and sloppy lettering, hastening to record her exact words before they faded from his very short term photographic hearing.

The Doctor started to speak, probably to ask what in the world was going on, but Newt whirled around and clapped her fingers gently across his mouth. Fortunately, he was a man of great intelligence, and stood quietly, holding his questions until Harold had finished his scribbling on the pad.

Harold wrote it all down fast and sloppy, and then Newt watched as he tore all of those pages from the pad and went through them carefully, transcribing them into his more usual, very neat handwriting. He scratched his head a couple of times, and Newt was afraid that the terror of their flight back to this meadow had driven the words from his mind, but eventually, he looked up at his assembled audience. By this time, the pirates had also followed Newt from the TARDIS. The Doctor had shushed them as they arrived, and the entire group waited for Harold to speak.

Harold, for his part, simply handed the note pad of neat writing and the torn off sheets of sloppy writing and the pen back to Newt, compressing his lips into a tight line as an indication to Newt that he wasn’t going to share her secrets without her leave.

Newt looked down at the pad and read the words that Harold had used his unusual gift to preserve for her.

“The familiar spirit that has chosen to live within my crystal ball, which is that being who delivers to me proclamations regarding the future, instructs me to say to you that you must do nothing. All will be revealed unto you when the time is right. Midnight is the witching hour, and the hour when the greatest power comes to those who have power. The spell that has been cast around you as a net will lift at midnight, and you will find that all in your life will be as it should, but beware, for time does not run at the same speed when in different dimensions, and therefore you must be careful, for any injury that you take while in this continuum will travel with you into the next, even unto death. Beware of pirates who make false promises, and always trust your physician, after all, an apple a day gets the doctor away!”

Newt looked at the very inquisitive group before her, and tucked the pad and loose papers into the back pocket of her jeans.

“I…I didn’t mean to startle anyone, sorry about that, I…it…it was just that Harold suddenly got a good idea for a story he has to write for our Lit class, and needed to get the idea on paper before he forgot it. So I ran to get him some paper and a pen,” Newt lied.

“I see,” the Doctor said, with a very grave expression on his face. “Well,” he added over his shoulder to the pirates, “nothing more to be seen here, go on back to whatever it was that you were doing.” Without so much as a single word of argument, the pirates turned as a single entity and returned to the TARDIS.

The Doctor stood, unmoving and silent, until the TARDIS door had closed behind them.

“The thing is,” he said to Newt, “if you had been telling the truth, then the papers with the idea on them would have ended up in Harold’s pocket, not in yours. Therefore whatever it was that he was writing down with such fervent concentration actually belongs to you. Therefore, it’s not some idea for a composition project for a class at school. Am I right?”

Newt sat in silence for a long time, desperately hoping that the Doctor would go away and leave them to examine Madame Du Pompadour’s words in privacy. She had a niggling idea that the fortune teller had warned her who to trust, and who not to trust, and at the moment, she couldn’t recall which was which.

The Doctor just stood there, towering over the three young teenagers in a majestic and commanding silence, as he waited for his question to be answered. Both of the boys sealed their lips shut, and Newt knew that her two best friends would never betray her to the Doctor, or to anyone else. She knew that if she didn’t speak of this, they never would.

Still maintaining her stubborn silence, she pulled out the pad of paper from her pocket, intending to read it silently to see if it was at all clear on which people she was supposed to trust. Several of the loose papers came fluttering out of her pocket at the same time. The Doctor stooped quickly and picked them up, and then deliberately folded them writing side in so that there was no way he could see what was written there and handed the folded papers to her without looking at them.

Suddenly, her heart loosened within her chest, and she felt a flood of trust come forth. Somehow, she knew that she could trust the Doctor with her life, with all of their lives, and that he wouldn’t interfere in any way with their return home. Newt decided at that moment to place her full faith and trust in the Doctor, come what may.

Haltingly at first, and then in an ever escalating flood of words, Newt explained how the three friends had met in the forest and talked, and then described in every detail their journey to the fortune teller, Madame Du Pompadour. A veiled look entered the Doctor’s eyes when she spoke the name, and Newt wondered why that would be. She finished by explaining the transitory nature of Harold’s photographic hearing, and why that had necessitated such a rush of speed as she had gone into the TARDIS to fetch the paper and pen for him.

Finally, she finished up by telling him that the three of them had thought to have privacy as they tried to decipher the aged fortune teller’s words to her, but that she, Newt, would be more than very glad if the Doctor would lend them the services of his well developed intellect and superior experience.

Newt then extended her hand, and offered the small writing pad to the Doctor. He took it gently from her hand, and his demeanor seemed to show that he fully understood how important this giving was.

Winding Down...or Ramping Up?

2011-04-22T10:17:00.000-07:00

Two weeks. Four more "Instructional Sessions" in each of my classes. And Finals. then I'm out for the "summer". I'm worn out and looking forward to the break.

As soon as I'm free of schoolwork, I'll return to my very neglected writing. Anne has been working over Deadly Gamble, and should pass it to me soon.

I will be diving into learning photoshop, with the idea of making our own cover this time instead of using a CreateSpace template. It's not that we don't love their templates, but if we use their template, they own the copyright on the cover, and I can't use the same cover for the ebook. If I make the cover, I can use the same one for the ebook, and I like that.

I'll also be learning better ways to format the ebooks so they look better internally.

I'll go over Deadly Gamble, and then it can be formatted for print and ebooks, and the cool cover put on it, and sent out into the wide world.

There will be website updates as well, something I've been neglecting. Does anyone know how hard it is to make a shopping cart for your website? I was going to take a class on that this fall, but they've decided not to teach it (now that I've completed the prerequisites!)

As soon as I've finished that, I'll be making new covers for Tanella's Flight, Fabric of the World, and Clues to Food, and uploading those for print; then I'll be reformatting the ebook versions and republishing with the new covers and better internal formatting.

If it's still not time for school to start, I'll get working on final edits for The Siege of Kwennjurat, which is the sequal to Tanella's Flight.

The fall semester will be challenging mentally, but not as challenging physically, because most of my classes are online, and those that are on campus are lined up in neat, compact blocks on Tuesday and Thursday, so I'll have a lot less travelling and wasted time than I have with the swiss-cheese schedule I have now.

~Marie

Enchanted Garden Chapter Fourteen

2011-04-22T10:01:00.001-07:00

We dare you to have your main character talk to a psychic with a crystal ball. What do they find out about the future?

Nothing in the clearing stirred as the children walked toward the caravan, other than the animal that was like a horse but not really a horse. That beast continued cropping the purple grasses, and utterly ignored them. With a jolt in the pit of her stomach, Newt realized that this was the first animal she had seen, heard, or even seen any sign of, since she had first awoken lying on her back in the lavender, heliotrope, and solferino colored grasses of the broad meadow in which the TARDIS was currently parked.

There was no sign of life in the caravan at all, as Harold, Dusty, and Newt approached it. They cautiously made their way up the four decayed and withered steps that led to the tiny porch at the back end of the caravan. Timidly, Newt let go of Harold’s left hand, and raised her right hand to knock on the weather beaten door.

Harold placed one hand on Newt’s shoulder, maintaining contact with her while he quietly stepped behind both her and Dusty, and took up Dusty’s other hand, keeping the three of them linked. Newt approved of his move. He firmly believed that maintaining physical contact was the best way to ensure that whatever other magic befell them, it would befall them all equally, and that they wouldn’t become separated in the course of their adventures. Newt had a feeling, deep down in the darkness of her soul, that the only true chance she had to return home lay in remaining in the company of those with whom she had begun her travels.

The corner of the ragged cloth covering the filthy glass pane set in the door of the caravan stirred slightly in response to Newt’s rap upon the panels of the door. One blue eye, once bright, but clouded now by age, peered out from the very corner of the glass made murky by virtue of the grime and filth encrusted upon its surface.

A thin reedy voice issued through a crack between two of the door’s panels.

“Who be ye, and what do ye be seeking?” the voice asked, and despite the weakness of the voice, Newt heard the authority of command at the core of it, with a strength like steel.

“I seek Madame Du Pompadour,” Newt answered, and noted with pleasure that the fear currently causing her knees to quake and rattle one against the other had no hold upon her voice, which came out clear and firm. “As to who I am, do you tell me that a woman who claims the power of foretelling the future cannot know that without asking? Or perhaps age has tempered her powers, and we should seek in other places for some one who can lay the future open to us.”

The eye disappeared from the corner of the window, and they heard the hurried sound of the door’s bolt rattling against its fittings as it was being drawn back. The door swung slowly open to reveal the supposed fortune teller, Madame Du Pompadour.

She wore a dress very similar in many ways to the one Newt had rented for a Halloween costume. The hoops spread out to either side, rather than in round circles as Newt’s hoops were. The ancient woman wore no blouse beneath the gown, and the low neck threatened to reveal her bosom. Judging from the look on Dusty’s face, he was rather hoping that the dress would slip rather more than a few inches.

The sleeves were short little puffs at her shoulders, and the front of the gown was split to reveal a faded under skirt that had at one time been dyed a rather bright yellow. The gown itself had originally been a deep blue, but its color was as faded as everything else about this caravan had shown itself to be. There were many places where bare threads stuck out from the gown, showing where beads or jewels had been sewn, once upon a time, but now the once beautiful embellishments had either fallen off or had been removed, leaving only the bits of thread as mute testimony to the former grandeur and glory of this gown.

The wig the woman wore had once been piled high atop her head, but now the strands lay limp and straggly along her shoulders, although the jeweled pins still firmly attached the wig to what was left of the ancient woman’s thinning hair.

Newt heard the Doctor’s voice in the back of her mind, recalling his words concerning her need of different clothing to wear. He had said there was no need for her to traipse through the woods looking like a refugee from the French Royal Court. Suddenly, she knew that this woman truly was such a refugee, and she wondered how she had come to be here, and whether or not the Doctor had known of her existence and residence on this planet when he had chosen those words to describe her costume. Or had he, as a traveler in time, actually been present at that court, and what sort of memories did her costume dredge up from the depths of his mind?

The elderly woman retreated from the door, doddering her way to a chair at a small table in the center of the caravan’s small single room.

This room was draped with the ragged and decaying remnants of rich fabrics, which now hung as frail as cobwebs, their fragile fibers barely clinging to each other out of long habit.

If the sum total of this room was her office, Newt wondered abstractedly where the elderly crone slept, and where she prepared her meals. She didn’t have the appearance of being undernourished or ill, merely old beyond imagining. Even her wrinkles had wrinkles.

Newt advanced into the room in the wake of the superannuated woman, her friends following behind her, and keeping themselves in firm contact with her. She felt security and comfort flowing from Dusty’s hand, and hoped he felt the same in clinging to herself and Harold.

The fortune teller calling herself Madame Du Pompadour had by this time reached an upholstered chair at the far end of the caravan which was at least as aged as her body. It was losing its stuffing in several places where the fabric had simply given out, the elegantly and intricately carved wood was scuffed and scratched, dried out and appeared to be quite brittle, and at least one spring was visible as it protruded from the fabric covering the seat.

Madame Du Pompadour seated herself with all the grace and elegance of a queen. Without a word, she gestured to Newt to sit in the hard wood chair on the side of the table opposite her. This chair, though it had never been more than a well carved hard wooden chair, looked a bit more comfortable than sitting on bare springs poking out of the seat cushion. However, the wood itself appeared to be of an equal age with the other furnishings of the caravan, and Newt wondered for a moment whether or not the chair would actually hold her weight.

She sat gingerly on the edge of the chair, and looked at the table in front of her. The table was covered with an ancient, yet elegantly draped cloth that had lace work along the edges. The cloth had long since yellowed, and there were places where the threads had worn so thin that the table could be glimpsed through the actual fabric of the cloth. The lace had aged better, and though yellow, it was holding together well. It didn’t look like it was either knitting, crocheting, or tatting, all of which she had seen some beautiful examples of that had been made by her grandmother, but this lace still had the appearance of having been hand made, with each individual thread woven or knotted securely into place. Set squarely in the center of the small round table was an ornate base covered with carved vines that cradled a ball made of solid crystal, some seven or eight inches across, and as far as Newt could see, entirely without any sort of bubbles or blemish throughout the entire piece.

Suddenly she felt very silly, having come here to consult a fortune teller, when she didn’t even believe in any sort of magic at all. Then she laughed within the privacy of her own mind. How could she say that she didn’t believe in any sort of magic at all? If she didn’t believe in any sort of magic at all, then she was in the midst of a very elaborate hallucination, and she had entirely lost her mind. She preferred to believe that she had come to believe in magic, than that she had entirely lost her sanity.

“So,” said Madame Du Pompadour as soon as they had both seated themselves, “what sort of fortune would you have me tell, then? You’re interested in Palmistry? Or tasseomancy, perhaps?” She reached for Newt’s hand, and Newt hastily pulled her hand back to her side, out of the old woman’s reach. A sudden chill shook Newt’s frame, and she shivered with the fear that wormed its way into her heart. Newt had no idea what prompted her fear, but suddenly she didn’t want the woman to touch her.

“N…no,” Newt stammered. “I…” her voice failed her for a moment. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I would like my fortune told,” she said, “by having you look into your crystal ball and tell me what I need to do in order to get home again.”

“Where is your home?” Madame Du Pompadour asked, with a crafty gleam in her eye.

“Wrong answer,” Harold said, speaking in Madame Du Pompadour’s presence for the first time. She gave a start, as though she hadn’t noticed him or Dusty until just this moment. Then again, with the way the cataracts had clouded her vision, perhaps she hadn’t noticed them.

“You’re supposed to be the fortune teller here.” Harold continued. “That means we ask the questions, and you supply the answers. Or are you just one of the millions of frauds who pump their client for information and then spout off generalities that are calculated to be what the client wants to hear.”

“What do you want of me?” the old woman whinged.

“We want what you advertised,” Harold said. “Look into your crystal ball and scry her future. ‘Fortunes told, be they fair or foul’” he quoted from her sign. “So do your job. Tell the lady what she wants to hear. How does she find her way back home again? And you get no hints from us.”

He closed his mouth, pinching his lips together, and a look of utter resolve came across his face. Newt watched as Dusty straightened his spine and did his best to emulate Harold’s cold and calm demeanor, and she did likewise, sealing her lips shut, and glaring at the ancient and decrepit crone, daring her to actually tell what the future might hold.

Madame Du Pompadour looked at the three resolute teenagers in her small caravan for a long moment before she apparently came to a decision.

She nodded her head, once, with a rather jerky motion, and then bent studiously over the large crystal ball on the table.

“The girl wants to know how to go home,” Madame Du Pompadour announced, then sat motionless in silence as she gazed steadily into the large crystal ball upon the table in front of her.

Newt sat tensely on the edge of her hard carved wooden chair and looked intently into the crystal ball also, just to see if she could see anything in its depths. To her gaze, the ball remained as clear as it had in the beginning, which was a little bit strange, as the crystal ball was apparently the only object in the little caravan that the woman ever dusted. Either that, or the familiar spirit that resided within the ball had rendered it incapable of collecting the dust in the first place.

Newt felt the palm of Dusty’s hand grow clammy against her own, and felt the tension mount within the tiny and ancient caravan, as minute after minute passed in silence. Madame Du Pompadour stared into the crystal ball without pause, silently, and after a while Newt began to wonder if the venerable octogenarian had fallen asleep over her crystal ball, or perhaps she might have suffered a heart attack and died; such was the depth of the stillness both in sound and motion that the old woman exhibited.

Finally, at long last, the aged diviner made a pair of small, soft moans, and then a long exhalation of her pent up breath.

“I see,” Madame Du Pompadour said to no one in particular, though Newt got the impression that she was using the crystal ball to communicate with some being that resided at a far distant location from the planet Purvis Major. There was a long pause while she listened for a reply that as far as Newt was concerned, hadn’t been given.

“But what can then be done about that?” she asked next, and listened again to the reply that was either nonexistent or inaudible to the children.

There was an even longer pause while Madame Du Pompadour stared, eyes apparently unfocused, into the ball.

“Can it be reversed? Or is there no solution at all?”

On hearing these words, Newt’s heart suddenly shrank within her chest, as though it had suddenly been seized by icy cold talons. Dusty’s hand tightened on hers convulsively, as though he didn’t want to even think the thought that there might be no way home.

Finally, the old woman sighed, and, passing her hand over the ball as if she was erasing the messages that had appeared there, or perhaps as though she was turning it off for a while, she sighed deeply and turned her attention back to Newt again.

“There is only one way for you to return to your homes again,” she said wearily, her voice even thinner and weaker than it had been when she had answered the door to them.

“What is it?” Newt asked, suddenly fearful of what the woman might say, but not at all sure what exactly it was that she feared the woman would tell her to do.

“The familiar spirit that has chosen to live within my crystal ball, which is that being who delivers to me proclamations regarding the future, instructs me to say to you that you must do nothing. All will be revealed unto you when the time is right. Midnight is the witching hour, and the hour when the greatest power comes to those who have power. The spell that has been cast around you as a net will lift at midnight, and you will find that all in your life will be as it should, but beware, for time does not run at the same speed when in different dimensions, and therefore you must be careful, for any injury that you take while in this continuum will travel with you into the next, even unto death. Beware of pirates who make false promises, and always trust your physician, after all, an apple a day gets the doctor away!”

Newt was totally confused. “But…but what does that all mean?” she asked.

The old woman, Madame Du Pompadour, cackled with delight. “I deliver to you the pronouncements of the familiar spirit who lives within my crystal. He, whom I mustn’t name under any circumstances lest he leave me, has made his pronouncement. It’s neither his fault nor mine that you aren’t able to understand it. The interpretation of the fortune is yours, and yours alone. Now get out! Get thee out of my caravan, and out of my meadow, and away from me, and never come near me again, unless you desire to provoke me to a much greater wrath than she whose wrath you’ve already provoked, she who has sent you to this time and this place, with the intent to harass both thee and me. Now Begone!” Her voice rose steadily throughout her diatribe, until the last words were so shrilly shrieked that they were nearly inaudible.

Newt jumped up from the hard, elaborately carved wood chair she had been sitting in with enough force that the chair sailed backwards and slammed into the wall behind her. The chair hit the wall hard, and collapsed into what seemed like a hundred million splintered fragments.

Harold threw open the ancient door, and pulled his friends behind him in his wake as the three of them fled back the way they had come across the small clearing and down the path into the forest.

Enchanted Garden Chapter Thirteen

2011-04-20T06:15:00.000-07:00

Newt finished her sandwich and wandered down the hall to her bedroom. There was nothing to do there, however, and she quickly became bored.

She decided to go out to the control room to see if there was any way she could help the Doctor finish his repairs, but halfway there, he came rushing down the hallway and passed her going the opposite direction.

She peeked into the craft rooms, and saw the lady pirates working on various different projects that they apparently found satisfying. They invited Newt to come in and join them, but she didn’t see any thing in there that she was currently interested in getting involved in.

Newt then wandered into the control room. It seemed that things were at least a little better now, the room was a more normal room-temperature temperature, and all of the moisture seemed to have entirely evaporated.

Unsure of exactly what to do next, Newt went outside and crunched through the dead iced over frozen purple grasses, and then proceeded through the meadow until she reached the edge of the forest.

Harold and Dusty had been sitting there lounging against trees, and they stood up as Newt walked up to them.

They greeted her and the three of them walked a little way into the forest, but not so far that they couldn’t see which direction the meadow was in. The three children, Harold, Dusty, and Newt found three trees close together and sat down facing one another.

“What do you think of everything?” Harold asked. “I mean, this whole thing, everything that’s going on, is all pretty weird. Think about it. How likely is it that we would get magically transported to some alien planet, and such an unnatural one at that, and then run in to other people from Earth, and also this Doctor guy straight from Dusty’s favorite television show?”

“I know, it’s more than just a little bit strange,” Newt said. “I keep wondering if old Mrs. M has just given us a joint hallucination or dream or something, so that we all think we’re seeing the same thing, and we’re really all still just in her garden hack in Belly Button, Arizona, in the good old U S of A.”

“I don’t know,” said Dusty, “the rubber stamps and the books feel pretty real, and my muscles are aching after that hike this morning. Would muscles ache after imaginary five mile hikes?”

“Sure they would,” Harold said, laughing, “because you believe you were on the hike, and so your mind makes your body believe that you were actually on the hike by making your legs hurt when there is really no reason to feel it unless your legs hurt. So your mind makes you think that your legs hurt, just so that you will believe that you were actually on the hike that you hallucinated that you were on.”

Dusty turned to Newt. “Did that long convoluted run-on sentence of his make any sense to you, or did he get lost somewhere in the middle of it?”

“I think he may have got lost just a little bit in the middle of that long run-on sentence,” said Newt with a grin, “but although his grammar was absolutely faulty, I agree in essence with what he appeared to be trying to say, which was that since our minds believed we were actually on the hike, they’re fully capable of making us believe our legs hurt from the hike, even if we didn’t go on the hike, and even if our legs don’t really hurt at all. Or at least something to that effect,” finished Newt in a rush of words.

Dusty just laughed, and Newt gave him a very offended look, as though he had just hurt her feelings immensely.

“I wonder about that path up the mountain,” she said, “and why it’s here, and who put it here, but I don’t want to go trying to find out about it, either, because we just might not be able to find our way back to the TARDIS, and as far as we know, that’s the only way we’re going to get out of this mess.”

Dusty smiled. “Yeah, I vote we stick with the Doctor, because whether the Doctor and the TARDIS are actually a part of our shared hallucination, or whether the Doctor and the TARDIS are real and actually here, even a hallucinated Doctor is better than no Doctor at all, and he will help us to get out of this mess.”

“If anyone can help us at all,” Harold said darkly.

Newt smiled. “Why don’t we ask the fortune teller?” she asked.

“What fortune teller”, Dusty asked, his confusion written plainly on the features of his face.

“The fortune teller that that sign tells us about,” Newt said, pointing at a nearby sign that she was suddenly certain hadn’t been in the forest on either of the other two occasions when she had been in among the trees.

The two boys looked at her as though she was totally insane, but as they followed her pointing finger with their gazes, both of their faces were totally overcome with incredulity.

Dusty heaved himself to his feet, and offered first Newt and then Harold his assistance in rising. Once all three of them were on their feet, they three friends, Harold Porter, Dusty Brown, and Alexandria “Newt” Newton took careful hold of one another’s hands and set off down the trail toward the fortune teller that the sign assured them lay ahead.

Only a short way down the path they came into a small clearing. Newt’s memories of the sight of the forest she had seen from the top of the mountain belied the very existence of this clearing, but although one part of her mind shrieked out that something was very, very wrong here, another part of her mind shrugged things off, rationalizing that so many strange things had happened to her since her footsteps had left the sidewalk in front of Old Mrs. M’s home, that one more impossible thing was very simply no longer out of the ordinary at all.

The sight that met their eyes made them stop suddenly and they dropped each other’s hands. The clearing opened abruptly from where they stood at the edge of the purple forest. It was floored in the ubiquitous purple grasses which seemed to grow everywhere on the planet that wasn’t covered over by the trees. Nothing at all of any sort grew underneath the canopy of the trees. In the center of the clearing stood a dilapidated gypsy caravan. The bright paint was faded and peeling and the purple grasses twined through the spokes of the wheels, plainly showing that this caravan hadn’t moved from its place in many, many years. One of the wheels was broken, and the caravan rested a bit crookedly on the remaining prongs of the wheel’s rim, and what was left of the spokes.

A light green sway backed horse with six legs grazed dispiritedly nearby. There was no trail out of the clearing that was wide enough that the horse, if it was a horse, could possibly have dragged the caravan down, even if the caravan had been able to move, and even if the horse, if it was a horse, was capable of pulling it. There was a dilapidated sign near the four sagging steps that read, “Madame Du Pompadour, Palmistry, Tasseomancy, Scrying by Crystal, Fortunes Told, be they Fair or Foul.”

“What’s Tasseomancy?” Dusty asked.

“It’s when they read signs and omens in your tea leaves,” Harold replied.

“I don’t know about you two,” Newt said, “but I don’t think I would drink any thing offered me by some one who lives in a place that filthy on the outside. Who knows how bad it’s on the inside, and what sort of pests and rodents live within that dwelling?”

“Maybe it’s just her office,” Dusty surmised, “and not actually her home.”

“If that’s the case,” said Newt, with a practical note in her voice, “then tell me where does she live, assuming she’s a she. I don’t see any place any where in the near vicinity that would be conducive to living in.”

“She’s most likely a she,” offered Harold, “since the sign says that the caravan belongs to Madame Du Pompadour.”

“Do you think we should go have our fortunes told?” Dusty asked, an unusual note of caution in his voice.

“Well, we came to ask,” said Newt.

“Does any one of us have any money to pay the fortune teller?” Harold asked.

“Actually, I do,” Newt said, and reached into her pocket to jungle the change that resided there. “I brought it with me so that I could buy ride tickets and a caramel apple at the carnival at the mall.”

“Too bad the carnival is back home in Belly Button, Arizona, and we’re here,” Dusty said.

“Yeah, a caramel apple sounds really good right about now,” Harold agreed.

“I’ll make you caramel apples when we get back to the TARDIS,” Newt said, “but for right now, let’s go get our fortunes told, be they fair or foul.”

“You can make caramel apples in the TARDIS?” Harold asked.

“Yeah, I figured out how the kitchen works,” Newt said.

“How did you figure that out?” Dusty wanted to know.

“The TARDIS told me,” Newt said with a grin. “I think it likes me.”

“The TARDIS is talking to you?” Dusty said, shaking his head, “and you didn’t tell us?”

“She just now told us,” Harold said. “We can talk about the TARDIS later, For now, are we going to go talk to Madame Du Pompadour the Fortune Teller, or not?”

The three children joined hands again and walked cautiously across the clearing to the very small caravan.

Enchanted Garden Chapter Twelve

2011-04-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

The room was quite warm, and almost unpleasantly steamy, as though they had walked in from winter’s chill to find themselves in a sauna. Harold pulled his fogged up glasses from his face and used the tail of his shirt to wipe them clear before he returned them to their usual position in front of his eyes.

The pirate ladies immediately started sweating heavily in their thick sweaters, and quickly left the hot room in search of something cooler to wear.

Newt looked around the room. The orange light was brighter now than it had been at any other time she had been in the control room, and it nearly drowned out the thin thread of blue light that ran up the vertical central shaft.

Thawing icicles hung from the ceiling, dripping softly through the expanded metal of the floor and dropped with sparks and hisses on to what Newt hoped were not delicate electrical parts that would short out from the moisture that was present in every nook and cranny of the large cathedral-like control room.

The Doctor wasn’t in evidence. Newt took her notebook and stamp to her bedroom, and while she was there, she showered and laundered the violet velvet outfit she had worn hiking. She browsed through the other clothing that had appeared in her wardrobe, and found an outfit consisting of a pair of jeans that still looked nice, but was just worn enough to be in that soft and comfortable state, and a blue short sleeved blouse with a cute rounded collar of eyelet lace. She pulled them on, and then on a whim, she transferred her money and MP3 player from the blue pearl encrusted embroidered purse that was a part of her Marie Antoinette Halloween costume in to the pockets of her newly acquired borrowed blue jeans.

Clean, dressed, and presentable, Newt decided it was high time that she went to the kitchen in search of a nice long drink of icy cold water.

As Newt walked through the corridors of the TARDIS, she realized that it was getting easier and easier to find her way around. In fact, the distances between places that she wanted to go seemed somehow shorter. She briefly wondered whether the TARDIS was creating short cuts for her, or at least, telling her where she needed to go. Newt thought about what the lady pirates had said when they had first met, about “their” ship being able to read your mind and translate languages, and though she didn’t doubt that the TARDIS could do this, she did wonder for a few moments if that was the only thing it was doing while it was inside her mind. With a jolt, she realized that if it could access the language centers of her brain, it could certainly implant the knowledge within her mind of how to get around the inside of the ship easily.

When she reached the kitchen, she noticed that the icicles in the corner were completely gone. At first glance, the room seemed empty. Newt rummaged in the cupboards and quickly found a glass, then, looked around for anything that resembled an ice box. As she looked at each piece of machinery, the function and workings of it seemed to float to the top of her awareness, as though she was remembering what it was and how to use it. “Aha! Caught you!” she said aloud as she confirmed to herself that the TARDIS was indeed inside her mind, and apparently trying to be helpful, now that it recognized her as a guest of the Doctor’s.

Newt walked directly across the room to the correct piece of machinery, slid open the cover plate, and pressed her empty glass against the lever in the cubbyhole, while thinking very hard in her mind that she would like half a glass of crushed ice, and then cold water filled to the brim. She hoped that the TARDIS would read her mind and give her what she wanted. Her theory proved to be an accurate one, and the glass filled halfway with tiny ice cubes of a uniform size, and then topped itself off with sparkling crystal clear water. She pulled the glass from the machine, drank about half of it, and refilled it, then closed the door on the dispenser. Suddenly realizing she was hungry after her hike, Newt set her glass of water on the table, and slid open another dispenser door. She placed her hand against a plate, and imagined the peanut butter and honey sandwich that she wanted to eat. In far less time than it would have taken Newt to assemble the sandwich from ingredients spread across the counter, and with no mess or fuss at all, a small door in the face of the machine opened and her sandwich, fully assembled, sat upon a small crystal plate.

Newt laughed aloud with her delight, and removed her hand from the touch pad and her plate from the dispenser. She turned again toward the table, and suddenly noticed the Doctor sitting at a small table in an alcove that she was certain hadn’t been a part of the room last night when they were all in here sharing the Thanksgiving feast.

“I see you’re figuring out how things work,” the Doctor observed.

Newt nodded, and at the Doctor’s gesture, picked up her glass from the large table and joined him at the small table in the alcove. “I was hungry after that hike,” she said, “and I didn’t think you would mind if I got myself a sandwich.”

“Not at all,” the Doctor said. “Make yourself at home. What sort of sandwich do you have there?” he added, peering at her plate.

“Peanut butter and honey,” she answered, then asked, “What sort are you eating?”

The Doctor grinned at her. “Peanut butter and anchovies.”

We dare you to make your villain eat an anchovy and peanut butter sandwich in the next scene…and like it! (I don’t really have a villain, so I’ll make the Doctor eat it)

Newt’s automatic response was to scrunch up her nose and pull the corners of her mouth down in an expression of distaste, even though she knew it was rude of her to make even a silent comment on her host’s dubious taste in sandwiches.

The Doctor laughed. “That’s what I thought too, before I tried it,” he said, “and believe you me, I would never have tried it voluntarily out of my own choice. But after I had been forced to eat one, much to my surprise, I found that I like them. Occasionally. The oils in the anchovies and the peanuts seem to combine in such a way that it helps me think better.”

“So how are the repairs coming?” Newt asked.

The Doctor sniffed deeply and exhaled loudly.

“They’re going all right,” the Doctor said, “Well, I say all right, but actually, they aren’t going so well at all. I’ve managed to warm things up a bit in here, though, and resynch the interior of the TARDIS with the proper season on Gallifrey.”

“I noticed it’s warmer in here, Doctor,” Newt said, “but are you aware that the winter is now leaking out of the TARDIS, and killing the grasses in a big circle all the way around the TARDIS? Also, was the TARDIS supposed to change from looking like a flying saucer to looking like a blue wooden box?”

“It’s simply amazing that those women persuaded the TARDIS to look like a flying saucer at all,” said the Doctor. “They shouldn’t have even been able to change the appearance at all. I think maybe that’s what broke things in the first place. So did you find this letterbox that you all went after?” the Doctor asked, changing the subject.

“Yes, we hiked just about forever, though Knit Wit said it was only about five miles total. We did find the box, but I have to wonder how it got here, and how they knew about it in the first place. This planet doesn’t seem quite natural, either, it’s all forest, with only one clearing, this one, and only one mountain, and the mountain is a perfect cone. The top of the cone is sheared off flat, and the box is in a pile of rocks in the exact center of the flat spot on the top of the mountain. There is no sign of any animals or birds or anything living in that forest, except for the plants. It just seems like there is something all wrong about it.”

“Did you say that the plants outside the TARDIS are dying of cold?” the Doctor asked.

“Yes, I said that ages ago, Doctor, were you not listening to me?” said Newt.

“But there should be no way that the internal weather should be able to leak out into the outside world!” the Doctor shouted as he suddenly leaped to his feet and dashed out the door.

Enchanted Garden Chapter Eleven

2011-04-13T11:57:00.000-07:00

Newt had expected to come out of the TARDIS doors, then down the ramp and see the others in the letterboxing party lounging in the shade under the TARDIS when she exited the ship.

Very much to her surprise, when she opened the doors, there was no ramp, but she stepped directly out into the purple grasses of the meadow. She closed the door behind her, and walked over to the edge of the forest and joined the others of the group. When she turned around and looked at the TARDIS, she gasped.

It really shouldn’t have astonished her as much as it did. She knew that the TARDIS was alien technology, just her experience in the shower and laundry facilities should have convinced her of that, not to mention the thunder storm and blizzard in the control room. She knew also, just from the relative sizes of them, that the inside and the outside had to be only loosely connected to each other, but for some odd reason, it had never occurred to her that the outside of the ship could take on a different appearance than that of the pirate ship that she had originally seen when this incredible ship had first landed in the meadow.

She should have guessed, she supposed, but on the other hand, there was really no way that she could have guessed, or any hint that she should have to do any guessing. What she saw sitting before her in the pristine purple grasses of the meadow, however, wasn’t a sleek black flying saucer shaped pirate ship, but a rather dilapidated looking blue painted wooden box with a sign on each side near the top that read “Police Public Call Box”.

Staring at it, Newt shook her head and rubbed her eyes, but the blue box didn’t change.

Dusty stepped quietly up to her side. “That’s the way it looks in the television show,” he said.

“I think I’m going to have to start watching this show with you, now that I’ve actually met the Doctor,” Newt said quietly.

“Good.” Dusty said. “The Doctor said that probably about ninety percent of the elements of the television show are fictional, but that some of the stories are actually based on things that have happened to him, and some of the alien creatures are real, though the portrayals of their appearance or behavior are sometimes not accurate.”

“I can understand that,” Newt said with anxiety, “because it would be hard to duplicate some things with a man in a suit, and also it would be a little harder to hire real aliens to play themselves.”

Dusty started to laugh. “And in which currency would you like to be paid, Mr. Schwazzleneck Blain der Slitheen of Raxacoricofallapatorius?”

Newt laughed. “Mr. who from where?”

“In the show,” Dusty explained, “Raxacoricofallapatorius is the name of a planet where some green creatures are from. They’re interplanetary thugs, a family business, kind of like the mafia. The family name is Slitheen, and the planet is called Raxacoricofallapatorius. Interestingly enough, the sister planet has green people on it who can absorb other beings into themselves, and that planet is named Klom.”

“Klom?” Newt said. “That short? And the sister planet has a hugely long name? Raxaco…”

“Raxacoricofallapatorius,” Dusty supplied helpfully, “Rax-a-cor-i-co-fall-a-pa-tor-i-us,” he said again, pronouncing it slowly so Newt could hear each syllable.

“Raxacoricofallapatorius,” Newt said slowly after him. “Raxacoricofallapatorius. I think I’ve it now!” she said, laughing.

“Congratulations,” Dusty said, clapping her on the back. “Though that one, I think is probably fictional.

“It’s all right,” Newt said, “it’s a fun word to say. Raxacoricofallapatorius. Raxacoricofallapatorius. Raxacoricofallapatorius.”

Dusty laughed.

“All right, everyone!” Hollerin’ Holly said, calling to them from the shelter of the forest. “Are we all here and ready to go?”

Everyone gathered around Hollerin’ Holly, and Newt let her eyes flicker around the group, so that she would know who she was going into the forest with.

Hollerin Holly was no longer wearing the pirate’s hat, in fact, none of the pirates were wearing their pirate hats. Newt then made the assumption that the pirate hats had been their Halloween costumes, and that they were also from the same planet Earth that she herself came from, since they were celebrating a similar holiday on the same day, and also based on the similarity of the side dishes of last night’s feast being so similar to a traditional United States Thanksgiving celebratory feast.

Hollerin Holly stood in her leggings and sweater, wearing sensible sneakers for the hike. She wore the same, many pouched belt, however, with its bulging pouches. Knit Solo and Darth Wolf flanked Hollerin Holly, the changes in their apparel very similar.

Newt noted with a slight bit of satisfaction that their sweaters seemed a bit crumpled and rumpled, and Darth Wolf’s had a small red stain on one cuff where she had spilled cranberry sauce on it last night at dinner. Evidently, the Doctor hadn’t seen fit to take the time to show, or even to tell, the pirate ladies how to use the laundry facilities. She felt a bit smug about that. The Doctor liked her better than he liked them. Of course, she hadn’t tried to steal his TARDIS, either, and he’d told her several times that he liked the way she used her mind.

Harold and Dusty stood on either side of Newt, each of them carrying their new books. Newt assumed that their stamps were in on of their pockets, which was where she had stashed hers.

RavenWolf wasn’t in evidence.

“Where is RavenWolf?” Newt asked.

“Remember that it’s now officially November,” said Knit Solo, “and she has been writing frantically on her novel since midnight. I don’t think she’s had any sleep. I doubt if a tornado could pry her away from her computer.”

“I’ll go get her,” Darth Wolf said, and then she walked off through the trees and grasses back to the TARDIS.

Within just a very few minutes, she had returned, with RavenWolf trailing in her wake.

Hollerin’ Holly pulled out her battered piece of paper from one of her many pockets, and she consulted it closely.

“We’ll need to take a heading of two hundred and seventy degrees, Mama Wolf,” she said, and then added to Knit Solo, “and Knit Wit, we need to go about a quarter mile to the trail head, according to wassa’s directions.”

Darth Wolf, who was apparently also called Mama Wolf, nodded and pulled out a compass and began fiddling with its settings.

Knit Solo, who apparently was also called Knit Wit, reached into one of her pouches and pulled out a key ring with a leather thong on it that was strung with several beads and had knots in it also.

Mama Wolf indicated the direction that they would need to go, and they all set off together.

Curious about how Knit Wit would use the beads to keep track of their distance, Newt walked near Knit Wit. Newt saw Knit Wit’s lips silently moving as she walked, and realized the she was counting their steps.

Knit Wit held the beads in both hands, with one finger tucked through the loop of the key ring.

Every few steps, her fingers would move, and by careful observation, Newt realized that Knit Wit was moving a bead from the top of their area on the cord to the bottom, as she took every tenth step.

About the time that Newt figured out what Knit Wit was doing, she realized that she was soon going to run out of beads. However, after the last bead was moved, they walked another ten steps, and the large section of nine beads went back to the top knot of their section, and one of the beads from the next section of the leather lacing was moved.

On further observation, Newt realized there were three sections, containing nine, nine, and five beads, and could be assigned as ones, tens, or hundreds, depending on the distance that you needed to mark off as you covered it. All you had to know was how long your stride was, and you could accurately know how far you had gone, and not have to worry about losing count of your steps.

She resolved to make herself one of these step counters when she got home. If she ever got home.

They walked for a while, then Knit Wit announced they had come to the end of the quarter mile. Hollerin’ Holly consulted her paper, and muttered directions to Mama Wolf, who fiddled with her compass, and they turned left, almost back the way they had come, and there on the forest floor was a well trod path, and furthermore, one that looked more like it had been made for human body widths, rather than the slender track it would be if it were a game trail used only by animals.

Hollerin’ Holly continued to consult her paper, as she and Mama Wolf conferred one with the other, and led them down the garden path.

Knit Wit continued to count her steps, although Newt didn’t see why, since Hollerin’ Holly hadn’t told them how far away the next landmark was supposed to be.

After a while, Dusty called out, “Hey, Holly!”

“What do you need?” Holly called out over her shoulder, without stopping or even slowing down.”

“How much further are we hiking?” Dusty wanted to know.

“Well, I’m not exactly sure, since I haven’t been to this letterbox before,” Holly said, “but according to the clue sheet, it’s not a very long hike.”

“Thanks!” Dusty called back to her.

Knit Wit snickered under her breath as she continued to count steps.

“What’s so funny?” Newt asked Knit Wit, but Knit Wit just shook her head and continued to giggle as she counted her steps and recorded them on the beaded strip of leather thong.

Shortly, the path began to rise, at first gradually, and then a little more steeply. Newt was quite accustomed to walking pretty much every where she went, yet she wasn’t at all accustomed to hiking up the side of a mountain with any amount of speed, and was very shortly finding herself very short of breath. After a little bit more hiking, she was breathing hard enough that she pretty much couldn’t hear anything other than the frantic pounding of her heart, and the rasping sounds as she gasped deeply in a vain attempt to draw in a lungful of air that actually contained oxygen.

Newt looked over at Knit Wit, completely ready to hit her if she was still laughing, but Knit Wit was very obviously doing nothing but breathing and moving beads. She had even ceased to move her lips as she counted her steps to herself.

Harold, ever the gallant knight protector, lagged back a little and offered his hand to Newt. She took it gratefully as she traversed the steeper patches of trail, which all seemed to also be the parts of the trail with the slipperiest rocks and the most treacherous rolling pebbles.

“How… much… further?” Dusty asked again, having to insert his words in between the great gasps of air his heaving lungs were demanding.

“Not much further!” Holly cheerfully replied, without the slightest bit of decrease in the incredible pace she was keeping. It was clearly apparent to Newt that Hollerin’ Holly might be part mountain goat, because she scaled the ever steepening trail as quickly and easily as a child climbs up upon a stone table.

The path wound steadily upward, and Newt wondered how she could have stood in the meadow and totally missed the presence of a mountain of this height towering over the forest.

Finally, they came to a place where the trail was slightly wider. A small bench had been placed in the wider area, and a very small shelter built over the bench, so that it might sit within a small pool of cooling shade while a hiker rested and recovered from the upward climb.

Without a word, Dusty flung himself onto the bench, gasping, and then fixed Hollerin’ Holly’s retreating back with a glare that very plainly said that it would be several minutes before he was going to move again. Newt sat down next to Dusty, and leaned forward, bracing herself with her hands against her knees, as she, too, fought to regain full control of her breathing.

Since it was now evident that the bench had only been designed to accommodate two rather narrow teenagers, Harold dropped to the ground at Newt’s feet and lay on his back, also breathing heavily.

Knit Wit, having counted her way to the bench, took two steps more to the farther end of the bench, and set her last bead.

“Holly,” Knit Wit said, Hollerin’ Holly, already continuing up the trail, called back to them, “Only a little further, come on!” and kept climbing.

“Holly!” said Knit Wit, more sharply, and Holly turned around. Newt could imagine the picture they presented, red faces, gasping for air, worn out, and slumped and huddled together on and around the bench, as though seeking for protection from some terrible fate.

And the terrible fate was coming back down the trail toward them, Newt thought. The idea of Hollerin’ Holly being a ‘terrible fate’ made Newt want to giggle, but as she had neither breath nor energy for it, she merely allowed herself to be content with being highly amused within the private confines of her own skull.

Her reluctance to stop showing plainly in every fiber or her being, Holly slowly walked back toward the gasping teenagers on the bench.

“They aren’t used to hiking with you, Holly,” Knit Wit said, and they’re desperately in need of a break.”

Newt smiled her gratitude up at Knit Wit, happy that she had a champion who would speak for her, now that her exertion had temporarily robbed her of the ability to speak.

Hollerin’ Holly waited with visibly growing impatience while the three children, Newt, Dusty, and Harold, regained control over their breathing. Newt’s knees were wobbly, and she wondered how she was going to have enough energy to finish climbing the mountain and still walk back down the hill and through the forest to get back to the TARDIS.

As she slowly regained her breath, she realized what a wonderful view was spread out before her eyes from this idyllic resting place. She was appalled to see exactly how high they had climbed. Other than the top of the mountain at their backs, she could see nothing higher than they were. She could see the round meadow below them, the only open place in a sea of foliage. The TARDIS sat in the meadow, a tiny blue box in the sea of purple grasses. With a pang of concern, she saw that the grasses nearest the TARDIS, and for a small way out from it in a circle centered on the blue box, appeared to be winter bitten, and dying from frost and cold, while those plants right next door were flourishing in what appeared to be summer health. The cold feeling in the pit of her stomach spread and clenched at her heart. The cold in the TARDIS was spreading into the outside world, killing the plants in its vicinity. What if the Doctor wasn’t able to find out what the problem was, or was unable to repair it? Did he carry spare parts? It didn’t seem right that the cold should spread beyond the outside of the TARDIS, especially in view of the already tenuous connection between the inside and the outside of the ship.

The leaves on the trees in the forest below them appeared as a patchwork quilt worked in every possible shade of purple that the eye could perceive or the mind could imagine. They were lovely, and Newt suddenly wished she had brought her camera with her when she had left home. This one photo would more than make up for all of the trepidation and fear she had experienced since Old Mrs. M had put the spell on them in her enchanted garden. Come to think of it, she had had a few moments of unease and anxiety in the enchanted garden before Old Mrs. M had popped out and scared them nearly half to death and then put that horrible spell on them, which flung them halfway across the universe.

‘But,’ the little voice in the back of her mind reminded her, ‘if you hadn’t trespassed yesterday morning, you would never have met the Doctor.’ A pleasantly warm feeling suffused her midsection, and she ineffectually tried to bat it down with a great deal of annoyance. ‘Boy, have I ever got it bad for him,’ she thought, ‘and nothing is ever going to erase the age difference between us.’

Newt noticed that Knit Wit had hung her beads on a small clip on her belt, and counted them. They had been moved so that it looked as though, if she was reading it correctly, they had taken five thousand three hundred and ten steps. She quickly started figuring. At approximately two feet in a stride, and five thousand two hundred and eighty feet in a mile, they had walked approximately two miles from the TARDIS, most of it, apparently, nearly straight up.

RavenWolf fished a small digital camera out of one of her pouches, and Newt tugged at the hem of her sweater.

RavenWolf continued taking pictures, but answered her any way. “Yes? What do you need?”

“Could you email me a copy of those?” Newt asked.

“No problem,” RavenWolf replied. “Hang on a sec.” She finished taking pictures of the view, then turned a knob at the top of the camera and pointed it at Newt. “I’ve got it on video. Tell me your email address,” she commanded.

Newt smiled for the camera, and said “My name is Newt, and my email address is Newt@gmail.com.

“Spell that for me, please,” said RavenWolf.

So Newt obligingly followed her directions. “That’s en, ee, double you, tee, the ‘at’ sign, gee, em, ay, eye, ell, a period and then cee, oh, em,” she carefully spelled in a loud enough voice that the camera could catch the sound and RavenWolf would be able to send her the photos later. If they were from the same planet, and connected to the same internet. The horrible feeling that they might not be both connected to the same internet suddenly seized her, and she grew worried that she might never see the photographs RavenWolf had just taken.”

Knit Wit grinned. “Harold and Dusty and I had a long conversation about home planets, and we’ve realized that not only are we from the same ‘Earth’, but the same country on the same Earth. I’m from North Carolina. I understand that you all are from Arizona, right?”

Newt nodded, and her heart filled with joy that she would eventually have copies of the photos that RavenWolf had taken of the beautiful purple forest below them.

When the three of them had sufficiently rested enough that they could continue, Harold rose to his feet and asked Holly, “So, how much further is it, any way?”

Holly grinned at him and said, “It’s not very much further, I promise.”

“You’ve been saying the same thing all the way up the mountain,” Dusty said. “I don’t believe you.”

Mama Wolf caught Knit Wit’s eye and they burst out laughing, then Mama Wolf said, “But Holly ALWAYS lies about how far it’s on a hike. It’s traditional for her to lie to us on hikes. However, we always get the box we’re after, if it’s still there, and we always have a lot of fun doing it. So, to us, it doesn’t matter that Holly always lies. It’s become a point of pride to survive a hike with Holly.”

The four letterboxers all drank from water bottles they produced from their pockets, and then shared with the children when it turned out that they hadn’t brought water with them.

“Nobody warned us that this was going to be an all day excursion,” Harold pointed out, “you all make it sound like a simple little walk in the woods.”

RavenWolf giggled and when Harold demanded to know what was so funny, she answered him that there was a book with the title, “A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail”. It had been written by Bill Bryson and was his memoir of his hike up the Appalachian Trail.

At the mention of the Appalachian Trail, Newt ceased to worry about whether or not they were from the same planet Earth. There were now just too many similarities between their home worlds to be two different places. She had actually read “A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail”, two summers ago.

They finished their drinks, and set off again up the path, always upward, ever upward. With a suddenness that was startling, the path ended in a very small circular area that was covered with purple grasses and rocky soil. The grasses were neither as lush nor as tall as the variety that grew in the meadow so far below, but they were obviously a related plant.

The wind here whipped at them, and Newt was put in mind of the arctic blast that had whipped through the TARDIS, save that this wind, though chilly, was not nearly as cold, or quite as strong.

Exactly in the center of the perfectly round mountain top, was a large pile of dazzlingly white boulders, and Hollerin’ Holly the Troll Master of the Talley Valley Farm Clan was comparing the boulder pile with something on her piece of paper, assisted by Darth Wolf, who was alternating between enthusiastically looking over Hollerin’ Holly’s shoulder at the piece of paper, and dashing around the side of the boulder pile looking at various crevices in it.

“Where did you find these clues, anyway?” Knit Wit asked Hollerin’ Holly.

“They were in the bottom of that bag of kettle corn you bought me at the Wal-Mart,” Hollerin’ Holly answered, her eyes still on the crevices in the pile of boulders she was eyeing as though she were suspicious of the poor innocent pile of rocks.

We dare you to have your main character discover a treasure map at the bottom of his or her bag of kettle corn.

Suddenly, the unnaturalness of the entire planet struck Newt. This colors being different thing was strange enough, but this went beyond that. There were no streams, only one mountain, and endless forest. There was only one meadow in sight from this mountain, and it was perfectly circular, as though it had been deliberately cut that way. The mountain, viewed from their vantage point atop it, was conical, as though it was an old volcano, but there were no ridges, no anything other than a perfectly conical mountain sticking up abruptly from the forest that surrounded it. There was only one trail up the mountain, and it was a good trail, not entirely natural, but a made trail, intended for use by human beings, or at least human shaped beings, and someone had even put the bench half way up the trail as a resting place. Again, the top of the mountain was perfectly flat, as though it had been chopped off by a giant sword. There was no sign of a crater, as there should be if it had indeed been an old volcano. Furthermore, the pile of rocks was precisely in the center of the upper meadow, and was also circular. Suddenly Newt felt trapped, as though there was no way this was a coincidence, and she felt that the entire place had been built. It would be awfully expensive to build an entire planet, or even to change one… what was the word for that? Oh, yeah, terraform a planet to have such a peculiar configuration. She knew that whoever had done it had had access to technology far beyond anything the Earth had ever possessed, and she couldn’t even conceive of why any one person would want to so change a planet and do this to it. If she had been terraforming a planet, she would have given it lush fields that could be used for farming, in addition to the forests for harvesting wood from. Where were the fields? Where was the freestanding water? Grasses and trees wouldn’t grow without water, and yet these were all flourishing without any sign of any sort of surface water. Despite the warmth of the bright blue sunlight, Newt shivered in the briskly chill wind, and desired nothing more than to gain the relative safety of the TARDIS.

Harold spoke from just behind her shoulder, and Newt jumped from her alarm, until she recognized his voice.

“This place is just too perfect,” Harold said softly. “It’s spooky.”

Newt nodded. “I feel it too. I don’t like it. I want to go back to the TARDIS. I felt safer there.”

Harold grimaced. “I want to go back too, but we can’t do that without that piece of paper that Hollerin’ Holly is carrying, and also a compass. I can retrace the path as far as the base of the mountain; that part is easy, but I don’t know what compass heading will take us from there back to the meadow where the TARDIS is. Furthermore, I hope that that piece of paper will tell us, when we get there, because as far as I can tell, the paper only tells us how to get here, not how to return.”

“Well,” said Newt, “when we left the meadow, I heard Holly tell Mama Wolf that we needed a heading of two hundred and seventy degrees. Then when we had gone the quarter mile that Knit Wit measured for us, the second compass heading put us directly onto this path, which led to the mountain.”

“This path just started where we were standing,” Harold said, “we didn’t join it some place in the middle of it. So if we were to go to the end of the trail, and then go…” he screwed up his eyes to do the mental calculations for the reciprocal course, “three hundred and sixty minus two hundred and seventy is… um…”

“Strike off the zeros,” Dusty said. “Thirty six minus twenty seven is nine, so put the zero back on and our heading back would be ninety degrees. But we would still need a compass, because we don’t know whether the magnetic field here is lined up with the poles, and whether the planet rotates in the correct direction to make a solar compass work. Besides, there isn’t enough light on the forest floor to really do a good job of making a solar compass, anyway.”

“How do you make a solar compass?” Newt asked, interested in spite of her worries.

“Well, it’s a very crude compass, even on earth, but you can use it for general direction finding, and it can be helpful if you’re lost.” Dusty said. “You stick a stick into the ground, and then use a rock or another stick, or something for a marker, and somehow mark the exact place where the end of the stick’s shadow falls. It doesn’t even have to be a straight stick, and you can use anything that will hold still and make a nice pointy shadow.

“Because, on Earth, anyway, the sun moves from generally east to generally west, shadows move from generally west to generally east. So you wait about fifteen minutes or so, and then mark where the shadow has moved to. You draw a line between them, and extend it out to both sides. This line will be as close to east and west as you can get, but it’s true east and west, not magnetic. Then you draw another line in the dirt, perpendicular to the first, and that’s north and south. If you’re good at geometry, you can even figure out most of the other angles from there, and get the heading you’re looking for. But you still have to know what the magnetic variation is for your area, and compensate for that as well, because a compass points to magnetic north rather than true.

“Anyway, the point is, that at home, I could make a solar compass if I could find a patch of sunshine, but here I don’t dare to do that, because there are just simply too many unknown factors, any one of which would leave us wandering around in the forest and unable to find the TARDIS before we died of exposure, thirst, or hunger.”

“So unless we steal their compass and abandon them to hopeless wandering in the forest, we’ve to stick with them,” Newt said.

“Got it in one,” Dusty replied.

With a sudden cry of exultation, Knit Wit reached into one of the crevices of the large pile of rocks and pulled something out of it.

Assuming that this was the object of their search that had brought them up to the top of this mountain in the first place, the children gathered near so they could see it.

“It” was a small plastic box that had been entirely covered in brown and green camouflage duck tape. Newt watched as Knit Wit almost reverentially popped open the flaps that kept the lid on the box and provided the watertight seal. Things clicked in Newt’s mind, and she suddenly recognized the camouflaged container as a lock and lock, the sort of container that her mother used to store leftovers in the refrigerator. She lifted the lid, and to Newt’s disappointment, the only thing visible was a wadded up plastic zip lock baggie.

Knit Wit pulled out the baggie, and suddenly Newt could see that there was a small book in the bottom corner, a book that had been made to exactly fit within the small rectangular lock and lock container.

Knit Wit handed the zip lock encased book to Hollerin Holly, who promptly flopped down on the purple grasses and started pulling things out of her various pockets. A trio of markers, and a stamp, and a small notebook were very quickly in evidence. Every last one of the letterboxers sat down and began digging their books and stamps out, so Newt and Harold and Dusty did likewise, copying their hosts. The sooner they could complete this strange ritual, the sooner they could reach the safety of the TARDIS and try to help the Doctor discover the cause of the problems with the environmental controls, and effect the necessary repairs, so that they could get off of this unnatural planet as soon as they could manage it. Newt shrugged off her feeling of impending doom and disaster, and tried to concentrate on the stamping in ritual that the letterboxers were participating in with great relish.

Hollerin’ Holly had freed the small book from its zip-locked confinement, and was busy coloring on her stamp with her marker. Knit Wit was pulling a lump of felt from a second zip lock that had been lodged in the bottom of the lock and lock under the small book. The lump of felt proved to contain a rubber stamp. Newt rolled her eyes. They had hiked all this way for a rubber stamp that they could have just as easily carved back at home?

Each person took their turn stamping the stamp from the box into their own books. Knit Wit told them the name of the box, “The Extreme Mountain”, and they all dutifully wrote the name of the box next to the stamp in her new book, and also, they entered the date. They used November first, two thousand and eight, because they were all still operating on Earth’s calendar, and didn’t know the local equivalent on the local calendar.

As a matter of fact, they didn’t even know if there was a local calendar, since the planet was supposedly uninhabited.

Newt suddenly realized one of the things that had bothered her about the forest. There were no animal sounds. No bird calls, no insects droning about their business, no game trails or foot prints, or scat, or any other signs that anything lived here on this falsely formed planet other than the plants.

The sheer sinisterness of the forest pressed harder against Newt’s consciousness and she shivered again.

They had also written the name of the person who had left this box here, or his letterboxing nickname, Newt guessed, because she couldn’t conceive that any loving mother would have chosen to name their child the rather unlikely name of wassamatta_u.

As the book that had been in the box was passed around, each of them stamped their personal stamp into that book, and then wrote the date and their home town next to their stamp. Newt flipped through to book when it came to her, and was surprised to see that there were already three finders who had beaten them to this remote place…someone named Arizona Roadie had been there first, followed on separate days by a couple named Pete and Wanda, and someone named BR1.

She put her mark into the book, and passed it on.

Just as she was about to put the book away, Mama Wolf said, “Exchanges!” Noting the blank look on Dusty’s face, Knit Wit explained.

“When letterboxers meet each other, they stamp into each other’s boxes as well. This is called an exchange, because we exchange stamp images of our personal signature stamps.

So they all had to pass their personal books around the circle, and Newt was obliged to stamp her stamp into every person’s book and note the date and place they had met. Every one stamped in to her book also, but she noticed that the four letterboxers didn’t stamp in to each other’s books. Apparently they had “exchanged” before, and didn’t need to trade stamps again.

Finally all of the stamping was finished, and the stamps had been cleaned and put away. In fact every thing had been put away, and the box repackaged exactly in the same manner that they had found it. Knit Wit, having been the person who had found the box, put it back into the crevice and then they all joined in artfully arranging the rocks over the box so that it wasn’t visible from any direction.

Everyone shared the last bits of water from the water bottles, and the bottles were again stowed in whatever places the letterboxing pirate ladies had hidden them before they all had left the TARDIS.

Newt was a little uneasy at the knowledge that they still faced quite a long walk, and that it must be made entirely without water. She decided to ask advice of Knit Wit, who had seemed to be the most helpful among the pirates so far. Besides, when they had been using star wars-ish names yesterday, her name of Knit Solo had seemed to indicate she was on the side of light and goodness, while Darth Wolf definitely sounded as though she sided with the Sith, and a couple of times, she had referred to Holly as a Sith Lord also.

Newt walked over to where Knit Wit was checking her belt pouches, and, Newt saw as she read Knit Wit’s notations in her logbook upside down, she was recording the approximate length of the hike they had just taken.

“How far did we come?” Newt asked, hoping that her question would sound just mildly curious.

“About two and a half miles, give or take,” Knit Wit answered, putting her book away and resetting her beads to zero.

“Are you going to count steps on the way back?” Newt asked.

“Yes,” Knit Wit answered, then explained, “because then I’ll take the average of the steps and determine the actual mileage. We humans tend to take shorter steps going uphill, and longer ones going downhill, so if you count and measure both directions, you will have a more accurate estimate of the actual distance travelled. I’ve us now at about two and a half miles, but it’s probably not quite that far, because it was a pretty steep hill we were climbing, so our shortened steps didn’t cover quite as much ground.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” Newt acknowledged, then asked, “Do you think it will be very hard on us to walk all the way back to the TARDIS without being able to get a drink of water?”

“Well,” said Knit Wit, “I think we’ll probably arrive at the TARDIS thirsty, but I don’t think we’re in any danger of over heating or getting the equivalent of sunstroke. Today isn’t a very hot day, and most of our return is downhill, and much of the rest of it is in the shade, so I think we’ll be just fine. It was smart of you to be concerned about the water situation, though, it shows you’re using your head. That’s a wonderful thing to see kids doing; you don’t see enough kids using the brains the Good Lord gave them.”

Newt smiled, a little unsure how she was expected to respond to this statement, but fortunately she didn’t have to respond, because Holly called out, “Is everyone ready to go?”

There were nods and murmurs of assent from every member of their group, and Holly counted her responses, and then blithely led the way over the edge of the mountain’s lip and back down the path they had arrived on, which was, in fact, apparently, the only path on the entire planet.

Knit Wit had been right, Newt mused as they rapidly descended the mountain. They took longer steps, and moved faster, and with much less effort going down the side of the precipitous slope. In fact, they were hard pressed not to run, though in the name of safety, Holly had forbidden that activity.

In what seemed like no time at all, they had reached the base of the mountain, and were retracing their steps to the beginning of the trail.

Once they had arrived at the place where the trail ended, they paused while Holly consulted the sheet with the directions, and Mama Wolf fiddled with her compass. Then they set off again through the forest, not following any path other than the imaginary one that Mama Wolf’s compass showed them.

Very shortly, they had returned to the meadow, and guessing from their reactions, the others were very surprised at the oasis of frost that surrounded the TARDIS. There was actually now a small snow storm centered directly over the TARDIS, and a great pile of the fluffy white stuff was heaped on and around it, as though a large truck load of snow had been dropped directly on top of the small blue box, and had fallen to the ground around its base.

The frozen grasses crackled under their feet as they made their way through the gentle snow storm, and Newt wondered what they would see and how cold it would be when they entered into the TARDIS itself. She had visions of the control room being entirely encased in ice, and the Doctor, still buried past his knees in the control console frozen at his post, an eternal Popsicle.

However, when they pushed open the TARDIS door and entered into the control room, Newt saw that she couldn’t possibly have been more wrong.

Enchanted Garden Chapter Ten

2011-04-08T08:33:00.000-07:00

Newt hurried down the hall way to her bedroom, and then quickly put her arm load of clothing down. First, she put on the chemise shirt and pantaloons from her Halloween costume, and stepped into the shower stall in the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

Water sprayed from all directions, and she scrubbed at her hair and face until they felt clean. Shortly, she was standing in a warm blast of air, which cut off only when she was totally dry.

She returned to her bedroom and was carefully folding her costume parts when she noticed a latch on the wall that she hadn’t seen before. She pulled it, and a closet rack slid out of an otherwise hidden compartment in the wall. She quickly hung up her costume parts, and then slipped back in to the soaking wet velvet top and flower petal skirt that she had taken from the TARDIS’s huge wardrobe room. Because her shoes had just been cleaned, she set them carefully into the wardrobe, and slid it back in to the wall, then stepped into the shower stall bare footed, and waited.

The shower cycled again, this time cleaning and drying the beautiful velvet clothing that Newt had feared had been ruined by the rain storm. Returning to her bedroom, she reopened the wardrobe, and very much to her amazement, it was full of many different outfits, all apparently in her size.

She changed into the pants of the velvet outfit, which still needed cleaning, and returned to the shower once again.

When that shower was finished, she put the pants away, and finally, took one more shower, wearing nothing but the skin she had been born in. She could see how her hair could be clean, but didn’t think that she could possibly have been cleaned underneath her clothing.

At first, she wasn’t sure this was a good way to do laundry, but on second reflection, she saw that if you came in each evening and washed your clothing and then put it away, you would never have a lot of laundry to do.

Newt changed back into the velvet top and the flower petal skirt. She recalled that when the Doctor had seen her through the smoke, he had called her Nyssa. She wondered who Nyssa might have been, and why she had left her clothing in the TARDIS when she left.

From her bedroom, it was only a short path through to the kitchen, and when Newt arrived, she discovered everyone else there already, snacking on leftovers from last night’s turkey dinner with all the Thanksgiving trimmings.

“Where have you been?” Captain Hollerin’ Holly demanded as Newt entered the room. “We’ve been waiting for you for at least half an hour, if not longer!”

At the same time, Harold asked, “Where did you get those clothes?”

Dusty looked up and blinked several times in succession, but said nothing.

Newt ignored Hollerin’ Holly, though she could see how she might have got her name, but she smiled at Harold as she helped herself to some of the leftovers, piling turkey, potatoes, gravy, and stuffing on to her plate. She sat down at the table, and began to eat.

“The Doctor showed me where to find some different clothes,” she said, “because he said he figured that I wouldn’t want to be traipsing around in the forest looking like a refugee from the French royal court.”

“I see his point,” Harold said, “and agree with it, and I only wish he had shown me where to get some regular clothing too, since I can’t move particularly comfortably in this outfit either.”

“I can show you,” said Newt, “I think. I’ll do my best, any way, to remember the way to the wardrobe room.”

Dusty leaned over and said, “Why did you pick out that particular outfit?”

Newt shrugged. “It was the first thing that I found that would fit me, that wasn’t some totally historical piece. Why do you ask?”

Dusty smiled. “I asked because it looks exactly like a dress that was used as a costume in the television series. It was worn by a character named Nyssa.”

“The Doctor called me that,” Newt said, “when he was trying to see me through all the smoke.”

“All what smoke?” Harold and Dusty asked in unison.

“Well, when I went in to the control room, after I had found the clothing, the Doctor was in there working on something under the control panel. Then there was a big puff of smoke, and he crawled out from under there, and then something in the console kind of, well, exploded, and–”

“Exploded!” Dusty exclaimed, his face a classic mask of shock, concern, and fear.

“Yeah, like I said, it exploded,” Newt said, “and there was a lot of smoke, and even some flames, and I tried to help the Doctor use my blanket to put the fire out, but then it started raining-“

“Sprinkler System” Harold said knowingly.

That’s what I thought too,” said Newt, “but the Doctor said that the TARDIS doesn’t have a sprinkler system, plus there was lightning and thunder going at the same time, right there in the control room, and then finally the storm quit, but the fire was out by then, so that was good, but then the temperature dropped and it started snowing-“

“It was snowing?” asked Dusty.

“It was snowing indoors?” asked Harold

“She’s obviously lying,” said Hollerin’ Holly, “just to get some attention.”

“Yeah, you would know all about lying, wouldn’t you, Holly?” asked Knit Solo, with a sly grin.

Holly sniffed loudly and grumped out of the room.

“Yes, it was snowing, indoors, in the control room,” said Newt, “and then one of the corridor doors flew open, and this terrible wind started blowing, and it blew me over, and it was all the Doctor could do to get the wind to quit, and when I left him it was still cold in there, and icicles were starting to grow on that tall column in the middle and on all the hand rails, but the Doctor was buried up to his waist in control console, and he’s trying to fix it.”

“Does he know what’s wrong with the TARDIS?” Knit Solo asked with a concerned look on her face.

“He said he thought it might be that the environmental controls were fried, but that he hoped that that wasn’t the cause of the problem,” answered Newt.

“Environmental controls, huh?” said Dusty. “Well, that makes sense, because it’s the interior environment that seems to have gone crazy.”

“The Doctor said he would try to get an emergency temporary patch in place and then come in for breakfast,” said Newt.

“And here he is,” said the Doctor from the doorway. “I see that you’ve been catching everyone up on the events of the morning Newt?” the Doctor asked her by way of greeting, and she smiled shyly and nodded.

“I hope it’s all right that I told them what happened,” she said.

“Not a problem,” said the Doctor, “they’re passengers here also, so they might as well know the situation that we’re in. Unfortunately, it will take me several days to effect permanent repairs to the TARDIS, and I don’t dare move her until they have all been made, or I risk fusing several other, much more important circuits. So, we’ll be staying here on Purvis Major for a few more days, which will give you more time to find that letterbox of yours.”

The Doctor then turned his attention to his breakfast, and made short work of the food he had piled on his plate before he hurried off in the direction of the control room again.

Newt showed Dusty and Harold where the main wardrobe room was, and they both picked out several outfits. Then she explained how the showers worked, and they hurried off to their rooms to clean the Halloween costumes they had worn yesterday, as well as their own bodies.

Newt stopped in her room to get her new book and newly carved rubber stamp and went back to the kitchen in search of the lady pirates. There was only a note on the table.

It said, “Gone outside to wait for you. It’s too cold in here, and it keeps snowing on us.”

Newt looked around, and noticed the icicles starting in one corner of the kitchen.

She hurried down the hall toward the control room, and reached that door at the same time as Harold and Dusty.

“Every one has gone outside to wait for us,” she said.

“Hey,” Harold said, “I have a magic closet in my room, it filled up with other stuff my size after I closed it.”

“Mine did that too,” said Newt. “I wonder if it had to wait for me to close it to know what size clothing to move.”

“That’s a good question,” said Dusty, “I’ll have to ask the Doctor about that when I get a chance and he’s not so busy repairing the TARDIS.”

The three of them, Harold, Newt, and Dusty, all moved into the control room together, and the boys headed straight for the outside doors.

Newt stopped off near the control console.

“Doctor?” she asked.

“Yes? What’s it?” The reply came, even more muffled now. Newt noticed that only his legs from the knees down stuck out, and she thought it reminded her of that song where you’re being slowly eaten by a boa constrictor, one body part at a time.

“What’s it?” the Doctor asked again.

Newt kneeled down so she could direct her voice into the hole where the Doctor was laying, and answered. “I just thought you might like to know that it’s snowing off and on, and there are icicles in the corner of the kitchen now.

“Thank you,” said the Doctor, a worried tone creeping in to his voice. “It’s spreading, and I’m not quite sure what to do, with it being winter in the TARDIS. It’s not supposed to be winter, in any event, as it’s summer now on Gallifrey.”

“See you later,” Newt said, “we’re all going out to look for that letterbox thing.”

“Have fun!” the Doctor replied, and then Newt got up from the freezing cold metal of the floor and walked slowly toward the exterior doors of the TARDIS.

Suddenly she turned and hurried back. “Look,” she called into the hole that was eating the Doctor. “Is there any thing that I can do to help you? Even if it’s just to hand you tools or hold a light for you or any thing?”

“No, Newt, there isn’t a single thing that you can do that would help me, but I do thank you again for asking again. You’re really a very thoughtful young lady, and I really do appreciate that very much.”

“Well, I guess I’ll see you later, then,” she said, and then she once again, got up from her freezing knees and headed to the door way, to join the others.

Enchanted Garden Chapter Nine

2011-04-05T12:51:00.002-07:00

Newt woke in the morning to a tapping sound on her bedroom door. She opened her eyes and suddenly sat bolt upright in the bed. She wasn’t in her bedroom at home! Memory came flooding back to her, and with a rush of warmth to her face, she recalled the handsome Doctor, whose space ship they were now staying in for a little bit.

The knock came again to the door, and she leaped to her feet. She had slept last night in just the white shirt and knickers of her Marie Antoinette costume, and had left the other parts of her costume draped neatly across a chair in her borrowed bedroom, because she couldn’t find a place to hang them.

She hastily grabbed the dress, and was about to pull it over her head, when the knock sounded a third time, and the Doctor’s voice came through the door, just a bit muffled.

“Newt? Are you awake yet?”

“I’m awake, Doctor,” she called out, “but hang on a second, because I’m not dressed yet!”

The door opened just a crack. Not far enough for the Doctor to see through, but just wide enough to be heard through.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said, “I didn’t think you would want to go hiking in the woods with our pirate women dressed as a fugitive from the French royal court.”

Newt laughed, threw the dress back on the chair, and pulled the blanket from her bed and wrapped it around her. “Come on in, Doctor,” she called, and the door opened just a bit wider, and his head popped through the opening, reminding her of the jack in the box toy that belonged to the children she often baby sat.

“Ah!” the Doctor said, as he came the rest of the way into the room. “There you are! I’ve got a well stocked wardrobe, and there should be something in there that will fit you, and will be easier to hike in than what you were wearing yesterday. Come on!”

He set off down the hall, with Newt trailing in his wake.

“So where are you from?” the Doctor asked as they set off down the corridor.

“Um” Newt started, as she thought of Knit Solo’s comments yesterday about every culture calling their planet ‘Earth’. “Well, we call it Earth, but I suppose that’s no help, is it?”

The Doctor laughed. “Not much, but I also can see that you’re human, and speaking what sounds like American English, and the TARDIS isn’t having to translate for me, so I’ve a pretty good idea of which Earth you’re from.” He grinned over his shoulder at her, and then slackened his pace a little to allow her to catch up with him. “So, what part of Earth are you from, and more importantly, when do you need to get back?” He grinned again, and his deep dimples made Newt’s knees melt. Really, she couldn’t keep doing this to her self every time the Doctor showed her any sign of friendship.

“So where in the States are you from?” The Doctor prodded.

Newt laughed. “I live in the tiny little town of Belly Button, Arizona, which is a wide spot in the road between Snowflake and Taylor. In fact, Belly Button isn’t even a town any more; it’s been swallowed up by its bigger neighbors. Mind you, when I say ‘bigger’, the neighboring towns are only bigger by comparison; they both still qualify as very small towns when compared to places like Phoenix or Tucson.

“As far as when, it was Halloween, October thirty first, two thousand and eight, and it was about nine in the morning, when the witch, I mean, when Old Mrs. M, sent us off to this place. Is it actually named Purvis Major?”

The Doctor nodded. “It is,” he said, “and you give very good directions for a young lady of your age.”

Newt felt the sudden heat in her face, and knew she was blushing.

The Doctor laughed. “And you blush very prettily, too,”

Newt’s face grew warmer, and she hoped they were not too far from the promised wardrobe. They had already come down so many corridors and made so many turns that she knew she would never be able to find her way back by herself.

“And here we are!” The Doctor exclaimed, throwing open a door on their right. “Go on in and find something your size, feel free to use anything you find in there.”

Newt entered the room, and was promptly amazed. She was still getting used to the sheer size of the interior of the TARDIS, but this was totally off the scale for comparisons. It consisted of one room, containing at least two floors, and racks and racks of clothing. As far as she could tell, they were not sorted or organized in any particular manner. Adult clothing hung next to children’s sizes, and a very starched Elizabethan neck ruff was draped over a long Medieval gown, which hung right next to ripped black denim pants held together by safety pins, and a long trench coat that would be nearly floor length on the Doctor, and would be wearable in nearly any age since World War One. She sighed. The room was nearly as large as a Macy’s or Sears store. She walked up and down the aisles, looking for something in her size, something that would work well to go for a hike in. The forest parts of the planet Purvis Major didn’t appear that they were very steep, but then, Newt didn’t know what the terrain would do once they left the immediate area of the meadow in which the flying saucer no, the TARDIS, had parked. Newt chastised herself, and told herself to remember the correct name for the ship.

She rounded a corner and saw a beautiful deep purple sleeve sticking out from between a white dress with a purposely tattered hem and a red Elizabethan ball gown. The purple sleeve turned out to belong to a royal purple velvet fitted tunic with long sleeves that were slightly puffy at the top. It also looked like it was about her size. Newt looked around the room, and, fully confident that she was the only person in evidence, pulled off her blanket and her white blouse, and slipped the purple tunic on. It fit perfectly. There were two extensions with clips hanging from the same hanger, one holding a pair of matching pants, and the other a skirt in several layers of poofy, petal shaped panels in various shades of purples and lavenders, which appeared to each be made from nearly translucent fabric, but when sewn double, then layered over one another they managed to hide her limbs with a proper amount of modesty and decorum.

Newt chose the skirt, but brought the pants with her also, in case she might like to wear them later. She hastily gathered up the blanket and the pantaloons and the blouse, or chemise, belonging to her Marie Antoinette costume, and made her way back toward the door where the Doctor had left her.

When she regained the hallway, there was no Doctor in evidence, and she trudged back the way she thought they had come. After a couple of minutes, she had to admit that she was thoroughly lost. Why had the Doctor brought her so deep inside the TARDIS and then just left her there to fend for herself? Didn’t he realize she wouldn’t remember the way back to her room? She chuckled. Obviously he hadn’t realized it, or he would have waited for her.

On the other hand, he did have important business to tend to, such as keeping the universe running, if he hadn’t been making a joke when he had said that was his job. However, somehow, in the private space in the very back of her mind, Newt had a niggling feeling that the Doctor hadn’t been entirely kidding about that very serious matter.

She went through yet another door, expecting to find herself in yet another corridor, but instead, to her very great surprise, found herself back in the main control room. The Doctor was busy staring into a television or computer monitor, and then frantically leaping around the control panel, moving switches and buttons. As she watched, he crawled under the console and pulled a small stick out of his pocket.

This was evidently some kind of tool, because it suddenly lit up with a blue light on one end, and made a whirring sound, and then there was a great deal of sparks flying out from under the console, and the Doctor backed out coughing, followed by a great billow of smoke.

He was waving the cloud of smoke away from his face when he saw Newt standing in the doorway watching him.

“Be right with you, Nyssa,” the Doctor said, and then he froze. “Nyssa?” He shook his head. “It can’t be Nyssa.”

“It’s Newt, Doctor,” she said.

Just then there was a fairly good sized explosion from under the control console, complete with a lot of smoke and several spare parts flying across the room.

Flames erupted from the control panel, and Newt hurried forward with her blanket to try and put out the blaze. A deep bell sound came from no where, and suddenly there was a flash of light and a crack of thunder, and it began raining in the control room of the TARDIS.

We dare you to create weather inside a character’s house for one chapter. Perhaps a tornado in their living room?

Between the blanket and the rain, it didn’t take very long to get the fire out, but in the meantime, Newt and the Doctor were both soaked clear through to the skin. When the fire was out, the rain eased off, but not without another rumble of thunder dying off into the distance.

Newt and the Doctor looked at each other.

The Doctor’s hair was plastered to his skull, and water streamed down into his face. His suit was dripping water down into the electronics in the under parts of the TARDIS’ control room, and there was soot smeared across his face.

Newt supposed she looked about as good, which is to say, terrible.

The Doctor reached out with one corner of the dripping blanket, and wiped Newt’s face. She supposed the soot on her face was now either gone or smeared badly.

“Was that the sprinkler system?” she asked. “You would think it could put out the fire without the lightning and thunder”

The Doctor laughed delightedly. “Sprinkler system? No, but that’s very good. You really use your mind, Newt, I like that! No, the TARDIS doesn’t have a sprinkler system, but I think, and I really hope that I’m wrong, but I think I just fried the environmental control systems.

Newt shivered. She suddenly realized that the temperature in the TARDIS control room had been steadily dropping. Without warning, snowflakes began falling, twirling and swirling around the central column as they fell. One of the doors flew open, and a freezing wind shrieked through the room, knocking Newt to the floor. The Doctor grabbed her hand and helped her get up and over to a safety rail. She held on for dear life while he slowly made his way against the wind to the inner door and firmly closed it. The wind ceased, and Newt sighed with relief.

“Go on in to the kitchen, Newt, and get some breakfast,” the Doctor ordered her. “I’ll see what I can do about getting a temporary patch on this problem, and join you there.”

Newt nodded and headed out of the control room and toward the kitchen. She poked her head back into the room. The snow was still falling, and so was the temperature, though the wind had abated. The Doctor’s legs were sticking out from under the control console, and they were the only part of him that was visible.

“Doctor?” Newt asked.

“What?” his voice was muffled as it came from the depths of the TARDIS, but he didn’t sound annoyed.”

“How do I get me and my clothes dry again? Have you got a laundry? And if you did, where would I find it?”

The Doctor chuckled. “In your room, go into the bathroom. I’m sure you noticed it last night?”

“Yes,” Newt said, a little uncertainly. She had seen the bathroom, which seemed to consist of a toilet and shower stall, and nothing else.

“Well,” the Doctor said, “Get into the shower stall, and it’s all automatic.”

“But what should I do about my clothes?” Newt asked, thinking that she would have to put on the Marie Antoinette dress again, because it was the only dry thing she had left.

“The Doctor chuckled again. The laughter, distorted by the circuitous path it had to take to get to her ears, sounded vaguely sinister. “The shower does the laundry, too. You get in to it fully clothed, and come out cleaned, pressed, and ready to go.”

“Oh,” Newt said, trying to get her mind around the concept of this sort of technology. “Cool. Thank you. Do you need anything?”

“No,” the Doctor answered cheerily, “but thank you for thinking to ask me.”

Enchanted Garden Chapter Eight

2011-04-01T12:33:00.000-07:00

Hollerin’ Holly stared at the man with a bit of fright on her face.

We dare you to introduce a famous celebrity into your next scene and have your characters not react as expected.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice a thin reedy whisper. “Have you been here all along? Where were you hiding while you were spying on us?” The word ‘spying’ came out with a great deal of vituperation.

“I told you,” the Doctor said, “I’m the Doctor. And this,” he gestured around him, “is my ship. And apparently this young man, Dusty is it?” he gestured toward Dusty, who nodded, still in shock, “knows more about my ship than you do. The TARDIS does travel in space, and time, but you’ve already figured that bit out. On the other hand, did you really think that you had actually learned to fly such a complicated machine all on your own?”

He moved into the room, with a sniff, looking over the laden table. “Ah, cheese stuffed celery, I love that!” He picked up a stalk and bit into it, chewing and swallowing every bit as fast as he had been talking.

“Let me see,” the Doctor said just as he cleared the last of the celery from his mouth, “I think your next question was where I had been hiding?”

Hollerin’ Holly nodded mutely.

“Well, you see, I had just been in the auxiliary control room, and it was really a mess in there, so I was doing a little bit of maintenance, because the old girl runs a lot better when you take care of her, and who else is she going to turn to for maintenance, after all? I’m all she has left, really, poor thing, so anyway, I was in there working on the systems, and all of a sudden you lot came bursting in and just made yourselves at home, and nicked my motor. So I thought I would have a bit of fun with you before I took got rid of you.”

“Got rid of us!” Hollerin’ Holly spluttered. “Just you wait, Mister-“

“Obviously you mean to kill us,” Darth Wolf said at the same time, “so just get on with it.”

And all the while Knit Solo was leaning against the counter with her arms folded across her chest, shaking her head in dismay and telling Hollerin’ Holly, “I told you not to push any of those buttons. I warned you, but you didn’t listen to me, and then it was too late and we’ve been trying to get home all this time.”

Newt and Harold just stood in the center of the chaos, trying to absorb everything that was happening.

Dusty began muttering to himself, very rapidly, and quietly. “It’s true. It’s real. Time Lords and TARDISes and who knows what else, and how did they get it so right, from the very beginning?”

“Verity Lambert was a Time Lord,” the Doctor said to Dusty. “Well, I say was, but actually he still is a Time Lord, he just isn’t Verity Lambert any more.” He turned his attention back to Holly. “And I wasn’t spying on you, but I was having just a bit of fun with you, and you’ve got to admit that I took you to places you wanted to go, did I not?” and then to Darth Wolf he said, “And I’m not going to kill you or abandon you on some planet a million light years from home, I’ll take you back to where and when I got you.” And then finally he turned to Newt and asked, “Now the three of you kids don’t seem to belong with the rest of these people. What’s your story, how did you end up involved in all of this.”

Newt started explaining all over again about their original plans for Halloween, and Dusty’s suggestion that took them into Old Mrs. M’s garden, and the rest of the events of their rather eventful day to this point.

While she talked, the Doctor reached out and grabbed another stalk of cheese stuffed celery and chewed it thoughtfully as he listened. Somehow, she knew he was paying attention to her alone, and somehow managing to totally ignore the loud talking that was going on in the rest of the room.

To her surprise, the Doctor was kind and sympathetic toward their situation, and promised that he would take them home after he had safely delivered the pseudo pirates home.

“I think maybe it would be kind to them if we let them go find this letterbox thing first,” Newt said.

“I think you’re absolutely right,” the Doctor said.

Newt and the Doctor shared a smile, and her stomach did another flip flop. He was just too good looking, and even though it was obvious he was way too old to be interested in her in that way. It was rather like having a crush on a teacher at school, she thought, even knowing that he would never see her that way, she could still have a mighty crush on him and feel all the delightful feelings every time he smiled at her. Which was apparently what her stomach had decided to do anyway.

The Doctor took a step away from her then, and offered his arm. “Might I escort you to dinner, Miss Newt?” he asked in a rather formal tone of voice, even as his eyes twinkled with amusement.

“Oh, yes, I would be delighted to go to dinner with you, sir,” she answered, and slipped her hand through the crook of his elbow. He escorted her the three or four steps across the room to the table that still waited patiently under its load of food, and then pulled her chair back and helped her sit down.

Newt hoped rather fervently that she wouldn’t dribble any food down her expensive costume and ruin it.

Harold, taking the Doctor’s cue, offered his arm to Captain Hollerin’ Holly, and Dusty, still somewhat in a daze, and still muttering under his breath, offered his to Knit Solo. The Doctor, having seated Newt, walked around the table and offered his arm to Darth Wolf, and was just taking her to a place at the table when RavenWolf came through the door.

Newt watched as her eyes fastened on the Doctor, as he bent over Darth Wolf’s chair, and Newt realized that she was probably the only person in the room who didn’t miss the appreciative gleam in RavenWolf’s eyes as she took in the view the Doctor presented to her.

As soon as Darth Wolf was seated, the Doctor returned to the doorway to also seat RavenWolf, and although Newt heard her soft voice asking the Doctor when he had finally decided to come out of hiding, she didn’t hear his quiet reply to her. With a jolt, though, she realized that RavenWolf had been aware of the Doctor’s presence in the ship for some amount of time, and had either accidentally or by design, neglected to inform her ship mates that they were not alone in the interior of the TARDIS.

They all finished eating dinner, and spent an enjoyable and companionable evening chatting, while the lady pirates knitted. Yes, Newt knew that they were not really pirates, but she still tended to think of them that way, because that was how they had first been introduced to her.

Mostly, she sat near the Doctor in the old fashioned—actually to be perfectly honest—it was an antique sitting room that looked as though it had not been redecorated since it was furnished during the reign of Queen Victoria.

Newt sat quietly and listened to Dusty as he pumped the Doctor for all manner of information, including words she had never heard before, such as ‘Dalek’ and ‘Cyberman’. They discussed the Vashta Nerada, and Newt was glad to find out that they were fictional and had just been made up for the television show, but apparently something called the Weeping Angels were not fiction, but, the Doctor said with a rather sorrowful look on his face, they had been neutralized, and he didn’t expect that there would be any more problems with them at any foreseeable time in the future.

“However,” added the Doctor with a gleam in his eye, “that’s the thing about the future, you never really know what it might hold.”

Harold spent most of his time sitting next to Newt, holding her hand and just listening to the conversations around them.

Finally, as it was getting late, The Doctor stood up and stretched. “Time for bed!” he announced. “Tomorrow morning we’ll go get this letterbox that you’re interested in, and then I’m going to be taking you all home and get on with my own business.”

“What business is that?” asked Hollerin’ Holly, who suddenly wore a stricken look, as though it was all her fault that something very important had been left undone.

“Oh, nothing much,” the Doctor said cheerfully, “My job isn’t too important. I just keep the universe running, that’s all.”