I’ve been lax in posting here. Mostly because we have a new writer cat named Badger who is settling into the house AND I’ve been kind of sour-stomached.

Badger is settling in slowly and making great strides. He was found a few miles away from our house, actually and brought in as a stray. He’d been microchipped and neutered by his previous owner but when the Humane Society reached out to find them, there was no response back so he went into protective custody.

He’d been either in a fight or a dog got him because he has a healing wound on his leg which is a bit purple right now. Not bad considering he was turned in on July 12th so his life’s been kind of a rapid-fire barrage of changes from vet visits to a foster home to the Aquarium at the shelter where he was placed in a room of VERY aggressive young cats.

His hips are a bit tender and his fur is quite patchy and dry. It’ll take some time to get him up to fighting weight and God help us when he does because he’s got HUGE paws and hind legs like a jack rabbit.

Badger’s sketchy about the dog who returns his wariness because well, Gus is afraid of cats and Badger’s already tried to beat him up. So a lot of time is going to be spent reassuring the dog.

Harley Doodle Cat gives no fucks. There was tentative sniffing this morning on Badger’s part but it was too early in the morning for the little girl to deal with him and she gave a small “GTFO” hiss but didn’t do much else.

The dog, however, left the living room immediately.

Dog is NOT stupid.

So there you go. Badger’s in the house. He’s very affectionate but since I’m usually with the dog, he’s giving me a bit of space. He does however come searching me out in the early morning because he’s an attention whore and I’m the only one awake.

Some are by request. Others are well… stuff I wanted to do.

https://www.cafepress.com/RhysFord

Well, it’s going to be stinking hot here in SoCal this week so I’m very thankful for the AC. Seriously. There’s no need to sit in an oven. Set to dehydrate like I’m a bag of Jeff’s Famous Jerky.

Which is fucking awesome, by the way. I highly recommend it.

Secondly, I’d like to say if you haven’t seen it, the Half Moon Bay short stories are up. https://rhysford.wordpress.com/half-moon-bay-shorts/

Also…

The Sinners Interviews are up as are the Last Call Tour Pieces:
https://rhysford.wordpress.com/the-sinners-interviews/
https://rhysford.wordpress.com/last-call-tour/

AND in case you missed them, 415 Ink: Ink and Threads are also available for reading: https://rhysford.wordpress.com/ink-and-threads/

Of course there’s always the old chestnut Tatsu: https://rhysford.wordpress.com/dragons/
This is the story my mother read of mine. Really the only thing she’s read and of course it’s the darkest thing I’ve ever written. *grins* But just in case you were wondering about the Dragons…

The Savior Cover Reveal, Giveaway and Excerpt are now LIVE on The Novel Approach! Go see what Mace and the 415 Ink Boys are up to!

http://www.thenovelapproachreviews.com/exclusive-cover-reveal-excerpt-and-giveaway-savior-by-rhys-ford/

The Novel Approach is hosting the second 415 Ink novel, Savior on July 13th! There will be a cover reveal, an exclusive excerpt AND a giveaway. I’ll be posting the link tomorrow. See what Mace and the other 415 Ink men are doing, and stick around to see Mace lose his heart and mind to the last person in the world he thought he’d fall in love with.

Someone asked me this morning if I think about how a narrator is going to deal with foreign words and phrases when I write. It’s a good question and I kind of want to deconstruct the question a little bit.

Please understand as I write this, I’m going to just go through what is in my head when I start writing so it’s going to be pretty much a stream of consciousness thing, okay?

I don’t go into a story thinking about anything other than the environment I’m writing in. I chose the words and things I need to build the world I want my characters to live in and simply forge forward. I write from my POV, the world I know and the languages and influences I have. So what does that mean for the reader and narrator?

It means they might encounter things outside of their world view. And that’s okay.

Now, this has been a bit of a contentious wrangling at times during editing because I’ve been told… substitute this unfamiliar-to-editor thing with this very-familiar-to-homogenized-America thing. My answer to that will always be no, they’ll learn. That’s how I learned. Because we want to learn as we read.

That might sound weird to say the truth is, it’s how we learn and stretch. There are languages and cultures I would NEVER have encountered growing up in Hawai’i but I learned of them through books. I embraced the unknown because it was unknown. Did  it pull me out of the story? Yes, sometimes. Not gonna lie. It’s a risk…but once I looked something up, I could go back and read over what I’d already read with a new understanding.

See, I believe in the intelligence of the readers in the genre and beyond. I trust in their acumen and flexibility. I have faith they will return to the text with a new awareness of my world, my POV. I respect the reader’s intellect. I never ever want to dumb down my language or cultural references because I know the audience … the readers… will seek out what they don’t know… IF they don’t know.

Just like I had to figure out what the Amish and Jewish cultures were. And let me tell you… that was very confusing for a hapa kid living on O’ahu.

As for writing with narrators in mind… nah, don’t do that either. Mind you, I’ve got some kickass narrators who are fantastic talents and great guys. But I also don’t ever expect stuff to roll into an audiobook. You can’t write with that hanging over you. You can’t hinder yourself with those boundaries. It’s a performance medium of your work, yes…that is true… but the FIRST representation of your writing is that book. And that’s where the focus should be.

Hope that answers the general question of writing for the audience and narration. Bottom line, write your POV… explain as you can and should but embrace the readers’ intelligence. I’m not saying box the reader into a maze of cultural references without a signpost… explain the culture and social constructs but also understand readers are smart and a hell of a lot more worldly. Explore your own world, bring it into your writing and share it with others.

But most of all, write your book.