Writer and Editor C.B. Calsing/ G.G. Royale

Tonight, I'll go out and eat gumbo with friends. I'll launch bottle rockets in the general direction of Bud Rip's, and I'll drink a cube of mojitos -- that's right. And of course, I'll have to look back over 2010 with fond nostalgia. After all, I'll only ever have one first book. There's the chance that I may -- someday -- have a first "New York" published book, but All Along the Pacific  will still always be my first. That happened this year. It really happened. This may seem a little redundant, but some days I still can't believe it. I'm eternally grateful to the people who have worked to make this happen -- my mom who did the illustrations, my thesis team, the staff at Open Heart, my husband for his patience, and anyone who decides my book is good enough to buy. Thank you everyone for making 2010 one of the best years yet.

I finally pulled the taro up yesterday, after a few frosts had killed off most of the leaves. It certainly didn't get the full time in the soil that it should have, but I did get plenty of tubers to use. Half of the harvest I sliced up and put in the food dehydrator as a first step toward flour. I probably should have done a little research first. Seems it would have been better to make poi first and then dehydrate it, which in hindsight makes a lot of sense. Boiling it first would get a lot of excess starch out of it which might affect the bread consistency afterward. I'll try that next time. I still have a bag full of taro tubers in the fridge as well. For, I'd say $0.99 worth of investment -- and some time -- I've got quite a bit of stuff to work with. I've also got bread starter going right now, and have been baking everyday for three days straight. So far, the sponge method is working best. A cup of starter is mixed with a cup of flour and water and left to...

Today I turn thirty-three years old. Eleven days ago my first book released. Here are some comparisons (first novel year minus birthday year, according to Wikipedia): Stephanie Meyers 28 Anne Rice 35 John Steinbeck 27 China Mieville 26 Gabriel Garcia Marquez 35 Jane Austen 36 Those average to about 31.2, so I guess I was a little later than average, but still on a fine schedule if I can keep my workload up over the next few years. This week, I wrote a speculative fiction story for an anthology. It had to be set in the 1920s, but include paranormal, science fiction, or horror elements. I went the sci fi route. I'm afraid it's lacking something -- a more dynamic meeting with the red herring, perhaps. A gun fight in an alley... I don't know, but as it is, I'm only 500 words from the limit on the anth, so I don't think I have much room to add anything. I know I'm supposed to be starting back on Magpie , but that's going to wait until the New Year. I...

A few weeks ago, students were shown two pictures of the fall of the Berlin Wall. From those pictures, some vibrant writing grew. These students had a ten-minute history lesson before writing... Berlin Wall By Andrew I pushed through the crowd. People stood, screamed, yelled, jumped, and chanted. So may people piled in the massive crowd. We crowded like ants fixing their hill, only we fixed our city. I fought closer to the front. I needed to get a hit in on the wall that separated my city, my people, my family. I finally arrive. There was a man with an ax. He chopped away at the wall. He wore a pink sweatshirt and blue jeans. His friends around him looked unusually calm to me compared to the other people in the crowd. I figured that they'd stood longest considering how close to the wall the were. I then realized I possessed nothing to hit the wall with. Disappointed, I watched the man. Once he became tired, I grabbed the ax and flung myself at the wall. I hit it. The cement chippe...

I put up our Christmas tree yesterday while the Buccaneers played against the Falcons... I bet you know who I was cheering for in that match-up. We are starting on year two with living in half the house, so again we have a small tree, a white tinsel number, that sits on top of the Brunswick .78 player that belonged to my great grandmother. That means no listening to Bessie Smith for the interim. We are putting up only gold and white ornaments, hoping to make up for the sorry $20 Big Lots tree with the sheer decadence of the decorations. My ornament for this year was an air ship. It's silver, but I put it up anyway. My birthday is in a month: thirty-three years old. I like double numbers. I'm one of those people that makes a wish at 11:11, so it seems like a nice year. To celebrate, I got tickets for the Tales of the Cocktail holiday event, Tales of the Toddy. We went to this last year, and it was awesome. This year may even be better because it is in the Monteleone, which I...

All Along the Pacific , my collection of historic fiction, is now for sale at shop.debrincase.com . It went on sale last night. Please help me make it one of the best-selling books from Open Heart ever by placing your order now! This book spans California history from about 1850 to 2005. The stories are loosely based on real events, with nuggets of truth burred in sometimes strange and wacky tales. Thanks for your support and happy holidays!

I finished my first "serious" screenplay, and I'm basically sick to my stomach at the thought of sending it to someone who actually knows something about the business. Now that it is done, I can tell you I will definitely be taking a break before starting back on Magpie , which I talked about a few posts ago. All Along the Pacific is just waiting on an ISBN, by the way, so it should be out soon.

This morning, I stood in the back yard and watched black vultures circle over head. My husband immediately speculated as to where the "corpse" was. Watching vultures may seem odd, but I love them. When I took natural history at Cuesta Community College, I watched the turkey vultures and kept a detailed account of their behaviors. When I moved to Louisiana, the vultures' black heads fascinated me and made them seem all the more ominous. Vultures have two names for the groups they gather in depending on their behavior. Just a group is a venue; if they circle -- I presume over a carcass -- then they become a kettle. I find that exceedingly interesting, that animal behaviorists or zoologists or whomever came up with these terms thought it necessary to give the groups two separate names. Are there any other animal group that have different terms based on what they are doing? I don't know. All of this links back to writing because vultures figure into the first few page...

I'm so lucky to get an entire week off for Thanksgiving. I'm going to need it. I've procrastinated enough with the revisions of the screenplay. In a little over a week's time, I'll sit down and do it. No matter what. I swear I will. I have all the notes done. I know what needs changing, and I will do it. In the meantime, I've had something of a revelation as far as deciding what my next project will be. We had a visiting author at my school, Kimberly Willis Holt. She wrote When Zachary Beaver Came to Town  and My Louisiana Sky . She said that when she first started writing, she decided she wanted to write like an author she had admired in middle school. I started thinking about that. Then I decided maybe, in order to get back into the swing of things, I should try to write a story more like those I admire. The three books that I read over and over again are Frank Herbert's Dune , John Steinbeck's East of Eden , and -- probably most surprising -- Nick ...

Today is a Saints game. For all intents and purposes, it should be an easy game. We should trample the Panthers and come home with a better record from Carolina than we arrived with. We have one issue however. I have neither enough vodka for bloody marys, nor do I have the requisite Lays with ridges and French onion dip which are required to ensure a Saints' win. Mock me will you? This is a tried and true recipe for success. The day we went to the game -- the Browns -- we did not win because we had no chips and dip. We ate nachos at the Dome, but that is not the same thing. Another loss, we'd bought the store-brand chips. See? Believe me now? Of course, this means I'm going to have to go out before the game to two separate stores to get the required elements for a Saints' victory. I don't want to leave the house, but I'm going to do it for the team. Geaux Saints! (I'm glad the Hornets aren't as picky with their rituals. They seem to be winning ...

We've been trying to hatch another clutch of chicks, but the timing has been off. We've been getting one a week, and in the melee of bodies in the hen-house, they're not surviving. So Pat decided to bring the latest one inside. It's living in a cage behind my desk, sprawled out on its belly beneath a red heat lamp like you'd see at a fast-food restaurant. It has a hard time staying awake. I think it even falls asleep standing sometimes. It twitches a lot while it sleeps, and I wonder what a day-old chicken could be dreaming about. I'm worried to death about it, so I keep looking over my shoulder, and my neck is getting stiff. It also breaks my concentration, but we have nowhere else to put it right now. In other news, I got to see a mock-up of the cover of All Along the Pacific this week. Quite thrilled since I have started booking some blog dates and interviews to promote it. This should be available within the next month or so for order, and then after s...

Why is descriptive writing important? If there were no descriptions, any and all writing would be horrendous. Essays, short stories, poems, letters, song lyrics, and plays would have no substance. Audiences and readers would have nothing to look forward to reading. It is so important to first understand that descriptions in writing create pictures in the readers’ minds. Some characteristics of descriptive writing include the use of figurative language, imagery, and rich details. All three of these characteristics combine to construct a mental picture of the person, place, or idea being described. Of these three, the use of imagery, appealing to the five senses, is one of the most important to note. By using all of the senses in describing a certain object or idea, the writer can easily captivate and involve the reader in a strong way.  In addition to using imagery and figurative language, I enjoy nothing more than to pull up an online thesaurus while beginning a new short...

The weather here has been outstanding. As a result, I've been following up on my fitness routine. What is that, you say? Well, it involves hacking away at old stumps in my back yard for twenty or thirty minutes at a time. These are stumps that are left over from Hurricane Katrina. One in particular is a thorn in my side, because it is write where I want to put a table in chairs, smack dab in the middle of the yard. I think I managed to reduce its mass by about a quarter today between levering chunks off with a breaker bar and using the Sawzall to cut away at the roots. It's probably best that I got quite a bit done on that today, since tomorrow I'll go to the Saints game. This is going to be a bittersweet game. Sweet in that we'll probably win, bitter in that it will be Scott Fujita's first game in the Dome as a Brown and not a Saint. I love Fujita when he played on the Saints, and I still love him. He's a great guy and an asset no matter where he is, both to ...

Now that we've moved beyond using weak verbs, passive verbs, and any use of "to be," we can go on to the next thorn in my side: verb repetition. Let's say you got assigned this picture to describe:   My nephew  You  might write something like this: I see a little boy. He wears a white shirt. He wears a sweater vest. He has reddish blond hair. He has his fist raised. He has blue eyes. Here's the problem: I see a little boy. He wears a white shirt. He wears a sweater vest. He has reddish blond hair. He has his fist raised. He has blue eyes. There is no verb variety in this paragraph at all. Sure, I'm not using weak or passive constructions, but the paragraph still reads like a boring list because I have made no attempt to add variety. Variety is the spice of life, they say, and that definitely holds true when it comes to writing. Your latest challenge when it comes to verbs? Try to only use a verb once in each paragraph. Twice if absolutely necessary...

Recently in class, we wrote descriptions of this picture . I thought I'd upload mine for you to have a look at: Her gaze pierced me, and I could see a thousand stories living behind those hazel eyes: bare foot treading through landmine-laced fields, boiling away the last of the lamb fat to make it through the winter, work-cracked hands raised in dubious surrender to Soviet troops. Old before her time, she pauses, the green of her dress visible through the tattered shoulder of her robe. I could brush past her in the marketplace and never take a second look, but here, now, she captivates me, draws me in with her stoicism, her willfulness. She will not bow to any man's boot.Will not pick crops for any man. She would die beneath the lash before lowering herself to that. Strength lives in this woman, inhabits her as if she herself were merely a tattered suit of clothes, still just able to serve its purpose. And here's an example from one of our first period students, Kristen (mi...

I'm writing a steampunk short story right now. It also happens to be a detective story. While I have dabbled in the steampunk genre -- my first novella was a steampunk story -- I have not written mysteries or detective stories. Steampunk seems like a good setting to dabble in with mysteries, since it sort of harkens back to Sherlock Holmes in the style. So anyway, I have about a week to finish this short story. I was hoping to make it a short-short, but the set-up is taking a bit longer than I hoped. Maybe I'll cut it later, but probably not. In other news, I only have seven votes in the Honest Lie Volume Two contest. If you haven't voted please do so here:  http://ahlvol2vote.debrincase.com/ . And if you'd like to buy your advanced copy, check out  http://debrincase.com/ahlvol2/c-b-calsing/  and click on the heart to earn me 500 votes and order your copy today. And next month, we should finally see All Along the Pacific,  so I hope you've saved some mon...

I completed the first draft of my screenplay today. Of course, I have no idea how it will work out in the long run. It's eighty-nine scenes in 121 pages. That means nothing to me. I told the story, yes, but did I tell enough of it? Am I missing vital elements? It's quite a different process from writing short stories or novels, that's for sure. Things I would never do in narration are fine when describing action for a shot, I think. I hope so, because I did a lot of it. Now for edits. I think I'll feel better after one readthrough. I know stuff is missing and inconsistent, but going in knowing that makes it a lot easier to work with later.

Today, I found a blossom on my banana tree. This is only the second time I've ever had blossoms on my banana plants since I started growing them several years ago. Problem is, bananas take something like six months ripen. It can't be rushed. In addition to that, bananas don't hold up to frost at all. And the Farmer's Almanac is predicting a colder than normal winter for the Deep South, with "above normal" snow fall. So while I have this lovely, massive, strangely sexual blossom hanging from all that verdant green now, it will probably end in heartache. Some day in January, frost will cover my tree, and then within a few days, the leaves will be brown, the potentiality of fruit destroyed. I wonder if I can take sick leave if my excuse is that I stayed up all night, keeping a fire burning bright beneath the fronds of my tree in order to keep the cold at bay. I doubt it. Such is the plight of those of us living in the sub-tropical region.

There are three basic types of note-taking during research: summarizing, paraphrasing, and direct quotations. These three tools are essential to creating a research paper that avoids plagiarizing and gives individual flavor to any student's writing. It is important to distinguish between the three. I will describe the purpose of each, and how they differ. Summary A summary is a type of note-taking in which you restate the main idea of a reading selection. The information that you include in a summary is more general than that of paraphrasing. Summaries are shortened versions of the reading selection. Summaries must be written in your own words. Paraphrasing Paraphrasing is a type of note-taking in which you include all the ideas in an article or story. It is not necessarily just the main idea of the selection. It is a shortened version (similar to a summary) of the article; however, it is more detailed than a summary since you are including all the ideas ...

Who is your Favorite Author from An Honest Lie Volume 2? Please check out this link and vote for CB Calsing if you haven't already. And don't forget to buy your copy of An Honest Lie Volume Two!

Sung to the theme from Ghostbusters! If you use a source in your bio project, what you gonna do? Citation! If you paraphrase someone else’s words What you gonna do? Citation! I ain’t gonna get in trouble I ain’t gonna get in trouble. If you summarize some big main ideas What you gonna do? Citation! Direct Quotations need the most attention What you gonna do? Citation! Author, page number, in-text Author, page number, in-text Where’s it gonna be? In text! If you don’t know for sure what to do call Ms. Calsing! Last name, lead in, page number Author and Web site address! I ain’t gonna get in trouble Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah What you gonna do? Citation If you’ve used outside sources and you need to cite them you’d better call Ms. Huckabay Lemme tell you something Citing sources makes me feel so good! I’m gonna give credit! I’m gonna give credit!’ Don’t get caught plagiarizing no no Citation! When you put it in Your own words You still need to do citation What you gonna do? Citation What you go...

Works cited pages are definitely an important part of research writing, but it is only one element of an adequately cited and sourced paper. The second important element is using in-text documentation or citation. This is the method generally used by the Modern Language Association. Every piece of information you include in your paper from another source must be cited both in text and in the works cited page. This is true for paraphrasing -- "putting it in your own words" -- summary, and, of course, direct quotations. All in-text documentation must also appear in a works cited entry, and you will not have anything in a works cited entry that is not also cited in text. Failure to include either a works cited or in-text documentation will result in suspicion of plagiarism. Take the time to do it right so that there will be no question later. So what needs to go into in-text documentation. Well, it can be a little different for each source. Commonly for a book...

More and more students every year are relying on the Internet to do their research. You're probably among them. However, just because it's on the Internet doesn't mean it's free for you to use without citing your sources. In fact, if anything it's probably more important for you to cite sources really carefully so your teacher doesn't get suspicious. The first step to citing sources -- the thing that is most basic and most widely asked for -- is the works cited page. Later in the week, we'll get into in-text documentation too, which is probably more important but harder to grasp. What is a works cited page? Well, it's a list of the resources you used to find your information for your research project. It is comprised of entries, which include specific information. A list of Web site addresses, for instance, isn't enough. For a book entry, you will need to include the author, the title of the book, the city it was published in, the publisher, and the ...

The mad days of going back to work after the summer -- of readjusting to six a.m. mornings and going to bed when the clock tells me to and not when I want to -- are slowly fading. And just in time, I get swamped. Work, work, and more work. Still, I somehow find the time to write. Today, two scenes for the screenplay, day before yesterday, a flash sci fi story. Tomorrow I hope to get another scene written before I head off to work on the restaurant. I'm optimistic enough to think that I may have the first draft of the screenplay done before November, which means I could possibly do NaNoWriMo again this year. I'm not quite sure what to do, though. I have an idea for a western fantasy, but part of it is already written as a short story, so that would be cheating. So really the bottom line is I have no real ideas for this year.

Unfortunately, the title of this blog entry makes it sound a lot more exciting than it actually is, doesn't it? You were all thinking, "Whoopee! It's just like Twilight! " but it's not entirely. In some cases it is, though. Just like Jacob can transform into a wolf, but remain the same lovable Jacob on the inside, so can verbs. They can change, but still have the same kernel of meaning. Verbs change in two major ways. Tense. Tense deals with when the action happens. The most basic tenses we use are past, present, and future, but there are many more tenses that we use every day orally that we may not necessarily know the name of when it comes to grammar class. That's okay. The most common way to make something past tense is to add an -ed to the end. To make it future, tack on "will." Some verbs make it more difficult than that though, so you always have to pay attention! Conjugation. The other way verbs change is to take into account the subject of th...

Hellebore & Rue | Drollerie Press Check out the cover art for the new anthology of which I am a contributor.

Last night I went, with my friends from out of town, on the New Orleans vampire tour from Haunted History. It wasn't...that bad. He told some interesting stories, but I did have to call foul on a few. Like he had the bit about the casket girls wrong at the Ursuline Convent. Today, still playing tourist, I'm off to do the plantations on LA 18. I'm also hoping to pick up a pawpaw at a nursery out there. They had them a few weeks back when I called. The screenplay is going quite well. I think I'll have a first draft done far sooner than expected, and then I'll go in and rewrite, sprinkling in foreshadowing and that type of thing. I like the Celtx program. It's a totally free download for the basic form, and it's really easy to use. Keeps track of all the characters and such. Really nice.

This is a book I love! It makes me laugh every time, and it offers super advise for writings of all ages. Everyone should have it on his or her shelf.

Periodically through this blog, I will be offering nuggets of really important writing advise geared toward middle school students. I have been teaching middle school for seven years, and have taught writing specifically for four years. Not only am I a veteran teacher, but also a published writing. Everything I teach is not only to help kids get better grades and pass state tests, but also to help them become writers in all areas of their lives.

Lately I have had two basset hounds visiting. They come for the day, to dig for rats with my Dane/boxer cross Hamlet and to make my pit/Catahoula Zatoichi feel insecure. Zato is normally the "cute" one, the happy-go-lucky one that gets into all types of shenanigans. He eats light bulbs and climbs chain-link fences as Catahoulas are wont to do. Having these oddly-shaped dogs with comically floppy ears around is putting him off his game. While they are around, he mopes. When they leave, Hamlet whines. It's been just great. Everyone should get to test-drive dogs. I used to think it might be sort of neat to have a basset hound. They're funny, at least. And I bet they're super at sitting on feet to keep them warm in the winter. I had a corgi once that was great at that, and I sort of miss it. However, I have come to the realization that I will never, not in a million years, get a full-time basset hound. Here are six things that I've learned this week about bass...

The week started with several rejections, which -- when added to the whole going-back-to-work-at-the-end-of-summer thing -- sort of made me a smidge moody. But later in the week, I got two notifications that some stories of mine are being held for further consideration. That sort of eases things over. I just wish I wasn't so brain dead from the day job that I could get some more writing done too. Of course, the other reason this time of year is difficult is because of the anniversary or Katrina. Last night, my husband and I walked a few blocks to pick up some barbecue at The Joint on Poland Avenue. It's right next to the Naval Support Activities building. It had rained all the day -- dreary and steady, more suitable to the Northwest than here -- and to the west, the sky was a sliver of brilliant blue, and clouds just above that golden and pink, and then gray covering the rest of the heavens. A breeze blew down Royal Street, and the temperature was just such that I considered ...

Elson heard his Minder ping and refocused. He saw the ball arcing toward him and managed to snatch the pop fly out of the air. He grinned into his leatherette mitt. He heard his coach shout, “Nice work!” from the dugout, and Elson hustled in from the outfield with the rest of his team. After a few pats on the back, he picked up his gear and headed home. His thoughts raced. Here it was okay; he didn’t have to focus unless a car came, so the Minder let his mind run in laps like an excited dog. Elson took in everything, but remembered nothing. His eyes darted from a blade of grass to a butterfly to a parked SUV then down to the toes of his shoes. He thought about microwave popcorn and multiplication and his latest X-Box Infinity game. His thoughts moved like a moth batting against one bulb, then the next, in a string of Christmas lights But when his hand touched the front door of his house, his minder pinged. Elson’s racing thoughts stilled, and he ran through the list that had been co...