Night of the Living Adverb

The night has fallen swiftly over the land, and thunder rumbles menacingly in the distance, rattling the windows in their panes. You curl up languidly on the sofa in front of the hearth with a book, where the fire crackles merrily as it slowly warms the room. A new bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon sits silently on the small table beside you, waiting to be poured seductively into a glass by your hunky manservant Tank, who mysteriously has not yet returned from taking out the trash. 


Suddenly a noise--a scream!--outside makes you sit up startledly. The voice belongs to Tank! Your heart pounds racingly in your chest as you rise from the sofa and creep carefully to the window. You peer warily through the rain-streaked panes, when you see them.


Rising eerily from the ground for as far as you can see are adverbs. Moaning creepily and clumsily shaking the dirt from their decaying corpses, they slowly make their way toward the house.


You are rooted to the spot. Tank would save you, but tragically other adverbs have already nabbed him. You can see some of them dining ravenously on his flailing body. His torn, white muscle shirt hangs loosely from his torso. You shut your eyes, not being able to bring yourself to look at the brutally awful treatment the adverbs are inflicting on him. You weep bitterly.


Suddenly another noise meets your ears. This time it is a soft scratching sound, directly behind you. You whirl around hurriedly in fright and nearly faint when you see that even more terribly evil adverbs have somehow made it inside the house and into the very room where you now cower in frighteningly petrifying terror.


The adverbs close in around you. Not an ounce of heavenly mercy shines in their dead eyes.


You realize there is no escape.


Or is there?


Stephen King once said that the road to hell is paved with adverbs. Over time, I have come to agree with him. Adverbs, while not bad in themselves, tend to clutter up sentences that would fare much better without them.

My early writing, just like everyone else's, was loaded with adverbs. It still is to some extent. I've been working to overcome that along with many other flaws in my prose.

I was having a conversation about adverb elimination with a friend the other day. I was talking about how the sentence itself should convey its intended meaning without having to tack on unnecessary adverbs. Here are some examples of how those nasty adverbs can be annihilated.

"We need to talk," she said coldly.

versus

She folded her arms and gave me a hard stare. "We need to talk."

In other words, if you show how a character is acting, you do not need to say what her voice sounded like. Her mood should be made clear by her stance.

Bob crept quietly up the stairs.

versus

Bob crept up the stairs.

It isn't necessary to say that Bob was being quiet, because creeping is quiet in itself. I have never heard anyone creeping loudly, and besides, in that case, they wouldn't be creeping anymore, would they?

And to take an example from the opening vignette:

The night has fallen swiftly over the land, and thunder rumbles menacingly in the distance, rattling the windows in their panes.

versus

Night has fallen over the land. A menacing roll of thunder sounds in the distance, rattling the windows in their panes.


And one final example, which I have stolen from Seize the Night by Dean Koontz, which I am currently reading. The character Chris Snow says,

I was breathing shallowly through my mouth, not solely because this method was comparatively quiet.

Now I love Dean and his books and all, but if I were to rewrite this sentence, this is what I would say:

I took shallow breaths through my mouth, not just because this method was quiet in comparison.

The second sentence looks much better, don't you think? ;)

In conclusion, I hope that these few examples have given you some idea as to how you can save yourself from those vicious, undead adverbs that have invaded your living room and/or prose.

If not, here's a dude with a flamethrower. I've heard they work great in situations like these.

Bailey out.

You Might Be a Writer If...

You might be a writer if...

1. You read obituaries and phone books to look for interesting character names.

2. While sitting in church, you daydream about interesting/creative ways to murder people.

3. You think of various ways to rewrite your favorite novels. ("No, Dean, you shouldn't have worded it like that, you should have worded it like THAT for greater impact!!! Gah!!!")

4. You are afflicted with book-review-related nightmares.

5. Random, out of context ideas and phrases come to you and you have to immediately jot them down in the unlikely event that you will use them in the future. ("The noses that pick together, stick together!" etc.)

6. You unconsciously give your serial killers your own personality. You wonder what it might mean.

7. You forget that your characters are not real people. This makes you sad, because you really want to hang out with them.

8. When no one else is around, you take your favorite book off the shelf, pull it close to you, and whisper, "My precioussssssss..." while stroking its cover with one hand.

9. You write because if you don't, you will turn blue in the face and fall convulsing to the floor. This is why writer's block is so painful.

10. Everyone you meet is a potential character.

11. You reread a gruesome murder scene you wrote a week ago and wonder if there is something seriously wrong with you.

12. You can't bring yourself to read any of your previous novels because you think they are all crap and you wonder how it is possible that your fans love them.

13. You develop calluses in weird places.

14. You're only 23 years old but you're already developing arthritis/carpal tunnel syndrome from spending so much time at the keyboard.

15. Your basic food groups are Wine, Coffee, Chips, and Mexican.

16. You drive by a furniture outlet advertising a sale for "SOFA'S" and you want to take an Uzi to the place.

17. You bawl your eyes out when you finish the rough draft of a manuscript.

18. You learn a new word and can't wait to use it in your novel.

19. You remember the number of books you've sold at individual book signings a year ago but you can't remember what you ate for lunch the day before.

20. You thought the Apocalypse had begun when you learned that Snooki is a bestselling author, and you're not.

Add your own!

The Genesis of a Scene

This past Sunday morning I went for a bike ride on a local bike trail with my father and sister. Though the day was hot, the feeling of the wind whipping around me was soothing. We rode through miles of forest, occasionally passing through small towns full of quaint houses that looked too nice to be real. In all, the scenery was beautiful.

Halfway through our journey, we passed a high-end apartment complex tucked into the woods on our right. It even had a tennis court. "Nice place," I thought. Then, BAM. Out of nowhere, a vivid scene filled my mind:

There is a woman lying in a lounge chair on a wooden deck by a swimming pool. She is in her late fifties, slender, wears her wavy hair short and dyes it a shade of auburn to match the way it was in her youth. She is wearing sunglasses and a black, one-piece bathing suit and reads a paperback romance. Her skin is dark and like leather from so many long days lying in the sun. She is alone.

Around her rise the four-story buildings of the condominium complex she calls home this time of year. The sun beats down from a cloudless sky. The smell of chlorine fills the air. The woman can hear children laughing and playing in the distance, but she cannot see them. She never had any children. She doesn't understand why they are laughing.

Somehow, the sound of their voices fills her with regret. She has never worked in her life, not even for one day, because she has never needed to. Her husband is an executive at a large firm, and in fact he is away at a conference right now. He has provided her with everything she has ever desired--country club memberships, long stays at exotic resorts, dinners at upscale restaurants, jewelry.

She hears the laughter of the unseen children and wonders what it is all for. She thinks about leaving her husband. Something is missing from her life, and as much as she tries she cannot pinpoint what it is. Maybe leaving him will make things better; help her find her purpose. But how can leaving give her the sense of fulfillment she longs for? Her husband is the only person in her life, even if infrequently. If she leaves him--oh, and the idea is so tempting!--she will be left with nothing but the memory of a lifetime filled with empty pleasures. Nothing more.

The lonely woman sighs and turns the page of the novel she is reading. The sun beats down from a cloudless sky, and the sound of children laughing carries on the wind.

So yeah, this all came to me because I drove my aching, sweating self past an apartment complex on a bike I borrowed from my mother. Sometimes being a writer is just weird.

The 500 Fan Challenge

By a show of hands, who likes winning free stuff? You do? And you? Wow, that makes...everybody! Now I'll let you in on a little secret--I like winning things, too. Which is why I'm giving away free stuff to lovely people like you who have taken the time to "like" my Facebook page and support me in this harebrained endeavor called Being An Author.

"What kind of free stuff are you giving away?" you may ask.

THIS stuff.

That's right. One lucky winner will received a printed, hand-bound copy of my Christian speculative fiction story Vapors, a paperback copy of my suspense novel The Land Beyond the Portal, and three bookmarks, though not necessarily the ones shown in the picture.

Now let me tell you about that copy of Vapors. See this?

I hand-stitched that bad boy. I am not a sewing person, so my stitches tend to be a tad crooked. It took me a few nerve-racking hours to attach the blasted thing to the printout of the story and the cover got a little dinged-up in the act, but overall I think it looks okay. It was made with love, and I pray that it will be loved in turn by one of you.

Which brings us to...

The 500 Fan Challenge Contest Rules 

In order to win, you must complete these simple steps:

1. "Like" the page www.facebook.com/jsbaileywrites

2. Share the page with your tribe of fellow bookworms. (You know who I mean.) Encourage them to join, and when they do, make sure they post who sent them in a comment on the page timeline. Otherwise, I will have no clue who got them to add the page.

3. Tell these new fans to share the page with THEIR bookworm tribes so they have the chance to win, too. Repeat steps 2 and 3 as often as you'd like.

When 500 people have "liked" the page, I will determine who sent the most new fans and give that diligent soul the aforementioned Free Stuff.

Any questions?

Contest starts...NOW.

The Continuing Saga of Jenn Versus Deer

So I've had this problem of deer coming into my yard and utilizing my plants as a sort of outdoor buffet line. Everything I plant gets eaten. Strawberries? Entire plants gone without a trace. Pine trees? They add those on the side as a garnish. Lately they've taken an interest in one of my apple trees, which is maybe six feet tall at the most. Last month the tree bore many beautiful white blooms which soon either fell off or ended up in some Bambi's stomach. Many leaves replaced the blooms, and one by one, they vanished. At first I thought that insects had done the leaves in, but closer inspection revealed that the entire ends of the branches had been snipped off by a deer's bicuspids. My eyes immediately turned a menacing shade of red, and in a singsong voice I bellowed, "I WILL HAVE VEN-GEAAAAAAAANCE!" Okay, maybe that last bit didn't happen, but you get the idea.

I thought about various ways in which I might get my revenge. I could have taken a mounted deer head and stabbed it onto a stake next to the tree to demonstrate what would happen if others of its kind sought to have a snack. I could have sat in silence behind the house with a 12-gauge shotgun waiting for the intruders to approach. I could have done many things, yet I did none of them, and that is where I made my mistake.

This morning I arose from bed and went into the kitchen, where I opened the blinds over the sink to gaze out upon the glorious new day. My eyes widened when they laid their gaze upon my precious apple tree. Something had snapped its central branch in half, and it dangled lifelessly like a useless limb, hanging on only by a bit of bark. A smaller branch also met the same fate--dangling. Useless. As I consumed my waffles, I brooded. What could I do? The tree would likely die because almost all of its leaves were gone. And I could not, would not, let that happen.

I went outside after the completion of my breakfast and inspected the tree. Yes, I decided, it could be saved. I returned to the house and found a roll of duct tape, which is my repair agent of choice. I cut off small pieces of the tape and secured the severed limbs back into place with the hope that they could grow back together.

Next I brought a shaker of chili powder outside and sprinkled it all over the remaining leaves and in a circle on the ground surrounding the tree. I also found the remnants of a bottle of deer repellant (it consists of garlic and putrefied egg whites) in the garage and sprayed what was left on and around the tree as well.

Now all I can do is sit and wait. With the way my luck goes, chili powder is probably a deer aphrodisiac and I've just made the worst mistake of my life.

Busy, Busy, Busy...

I know, I haven't posted much on here this month. I've been polishing up the manuscript for Rage's Echo, which is more of an epic undertaking than writing the rough draft. I haven't even been reading as often, either, which stinks because there are LOADS of books I want to read and I just don't always have the time to do it.

Anyway, I self published my Christian speculative fiction short story "Vapors" earlier this month, and it is now available only in the Amazon Kindle store. I designed a nifty cover for it:

You like? What I did was tear apart an empty frozen chimichanga box and dumped potting soil on it on my kitchen floor (because I didn't want to put dirt on the floor itself for obvious reasons), and I put one of my favorite necklaces on top to illustrate a scene from the story. Two photo editing programs later, and voila! I finished the cover.

Soon I will be querying agents regarding my work-in-process Rage's Echo. I will keep you updated, of course. :) Thanks for reading!


(Click the link below to see Vapors in the Kindle Store!)
http://www.amazon.com/Vapors-ebook/dp/B007R4A3OA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334629139&sr=8-1

"Sinner's Lament"

Sinner's Lament

By J. S. Bailey

Copyright 2012

I want to talk but no one's here

There's no one close and no one near

And though I walk and breathe I'm dead

From unseen wounds in heart and head.

My soul is gone, and with it, love

The One who cares dwells up above

Or all around, I cannot see

But God, no one will talk to me.

I'm freaking out, I'm losing touch

It's getting all to be too much

To breathe is torture, life is pain

Life's gonna make me go insane.

I'm sinking, slipping, swallowed up

Why would you make me drink this cup

Of poison! Poison! Cyanide!

Nowhere to run, no place to hide!

They're at my heels, they're coming fast

The monsters make me see the past

Of what was good, of what has been

Of what's now gone due to my sin.

I lay down in the grave I dug

I yearn for touch, for kiss, for hug

Yet none of these will I find here

There's no one close and no one near.

Abandoned! Yes, that ugly word

That's what I said and what you heard

My flesh is dying like my soul

As I expire in this hole.

My vision darkens as I die

The sunlight's fading from the sky

The distant tolling of a bell

Announces my descent to hell.

They say that you once died for me

Reach out your hand and you will see

I beg you, weeping, on my knees

Sweet Jesus, Savior, save me please.