Creative Image Creation Roundup, Part 1: The Workhorses

This is how I feel when I try to make art.

3/2/14 update: scroll down to the bottom of the post to see four sites added to the list!

I suck at art projects. I don't understand typography. I don't understand placement. I'm okay with color, but really, everything I know comes from a MAC counter. But in today's oh-so-visual world, we indie writers have to produce a staggering quantity of visual products for social media, our blogs, our websites, and what have you. This can be extremely stressful if, like me, you have the aforementioned defect of sucking at art.

Well, I've been trying to fix that and I figured some of you might be, too. I've been compiling a mile-long list of the image creation and manipulation programs I've found in Evernote. Suddenly, I realized...I shouldn't bogart the helpful information. So this is me...not bogarting the helpful information.  

Note the first: I didn't even look at any apps that are only for phones. I don't have a smartphone and never will, so anything I do has to be done on a desktop.

Note the second: These aren't sources for images...these are where you go after you already have those images. I've got an image source post in the works, but for now, just have fun with these. 

Part 1: The Workhorses

This post is about the programs that do it all: basic editing, adding text, adding effects, adding filters, and adding frames. Basically, they make it easy to look like you don't suck at art.


1. PicMonkey
My favorite. I honestly don't know what I'd do without this program. It's easy, fun, and I love the fact that no login is required. More companies should make it this easy to use their service. You can make collages, including Facebook covers. You can tweak profile photos. You can add lip gloss to your selfies. You can zombie-fy yourself. You can make nifty title cards for videos. There's not much you can't do with a little exploration here. 

PicMonkey is my favorite image editing site of all time.
Not that I'm biased or anything.

Good: Browser-based; no download required
Good: Free (some effects are behind a paywall; however, I've done fine without them so far. I want them, but I've done fine w/out them)
Good: No signup, login, or email registration required
Good: Easy to use
Good: Can download straight to desktop; social sharing not mandatory
Good: No watermarking or branding on your finished product
Good: Best mix between ease of use + features offered
Good: They name their three image quality levels after actors who have played James Bond

Bad: There is no way (that I know of) to group or ungroup overlays without merging them all down to the background image. You have to know what you're doing so you can merge each overlay as you get it right. If you only want to merge your last overlay, you're hosed.
Bad: There is no way to curve words a la Word Art or Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator. I tried to do this manually, almost went blind, and still had crooked letters.


2. Pixlr 
Pixlr.com's "Editor" is close to a full-on Photoshop replacement. However, before I knew this existed, I taught myself to use GIMP, which is why I'm only talking about Pixlr Express and Pixlr-o-Matic here. They're the most comparable to the idiot-proof art solutions I'm listing here. 

The Express features are your basics: filter, crop, recolor, etc. O-Matic offers a fast way to slap a filter and a frame on an image. O-Matic gives you sample images to get started with, which I like. Express does not. I can't really figure out the difference between Express and O-Matic.

My one gripe here is that you can't always tell what their icons do, and THEY DO NOT HAVE HOVER TAGS. For the love of all that is holy, when I hover over a function, something should pop up to tell me what it is.

O-Matic is a little confusing to first-timers. After you choose a photo, you select a filter. You're shown 25 default filters, but you can also access 13 Creative filters, 11 Soft filters, 9 Subtle filters, 7 Too Old filters, 20 Unicolor filters, and 15 Vintage filters. Who has time to go through all these? Not me, but if you've got time on your hands, go for it. Second, select an overlay (bokeh, burn, etc.). Third, select a frame. Download to your desktop, and you're done.

Pixlr features beautiful design, but it may take you
a time or two to get the hang of it.

Good: Available as a download, on FB, as a Chrome web app, or for your smartphone
Good: Free, no paywall!
Good: No signup, login, or email registration required
Good: Can download straight to desktop; social sharing not mandatory
Good: No watermarking or branding on your finished product
Good: Easy way to make images look old or vintage

Bad: Not quite as intuitive as, say, PicMonkey.
Bad: Time consuming to go through all filters. Almost too many options here.
Bad: Can't tell difference between two of their products


3. BeFunky
It's a lot like PicMonkey. You can edit a single photo or create a collage. You don't have to register, but if you do, you can subscribe to streams for inspiration. Streams include big-picture concepts like "love," "travel," "LOL," etc.

It's organized a lot like PicMonkey, too, with a left-hand vertical nav bar. They make it easy to make a Facebook cover, which is nice. While you're in the "Essentials" menu, the bottom choice there is "Facebook cover," where the selector appears over your photo so you can size it just right.

I'll admit: the effects are bananas. There's a lot to pick from, which is both good (choices!) and bad (it's overwhelming and insanity-causing among perfectionist art-disabled neurotics like me). There are a crapload of filter categories, and often a crap-ton of choices within each subcategory. When you pick a filter, you can tweak things like highlights, shadows, and effect amount with an easy-to-use slider bar. Tintype is freaking awesome. Line Artopia is fun to play around with. 

You can add frames (Grunge Frames and Filmstrip kick ass), along with text, overlays, and textures. I could take a couple days off work just to play with all the good stuff they have here.

I haven't used this one much, mostly because the choices are overwhelming. But I get the feeling that you could really fine-tune some images here and get way closer to the look you want than in PicMonkey. You can save or print your image when you're done.

The highlights of BeFunky include "grunge" and "fiilmstrip" frames.

Good: Browser-based; no download required
Good: Free, no paywall
Good: No need to register, but you can if you want
Good: Overwhelming choice of filters, textures
Good: Can download straight to desktop; social sharing not mandatory
Good: No watermarking or branding on your finished product

Bad: Annoying ads on top
Bad: Almost-overwhelming choice of filters and textures

4. Canva
Design the ever-loving hell out of a flyer, Facebook fan page cover, sheet of paper, or social media post. You have to get on the waiting list (I got my creds in a day or two) to get an invitation to Beta. It's a little (okay, a lot) overwhelming just because of the sheer variety of what you can do. It seems very handy for creating a logo or crest. 

Basically, it's a way to add flat graphics (all the rage in the web design world) to a background you upload or one of their templates. It's super-easy to make a hipster-style logo or Facebook cover, in other words. All those gourmet hot dog bun companies, founded in Brooklyn in the 1980s? They probably made their logos here.

Your hipster logo is just minutes away.
(The Sarcasm Factory: Est. 1977)

Good: Browser-based; no download required
Good: They offer 5 tutorials that help you get started
Good: Overwhelming choice of layouts and text
Good: Nothing's behind a paywall
Good: Can download straight to desktop; social sharing not mandatory
Good: No watermarking or branding on your finished product

Bad: Must log in/register
Bad: Almost overwhelming to choose a layout or text
Bad: Some layouts don't let you add your own background image. If it starts with flat color, it stays with flat color.

5. Ribbet
Very similar to PicMonkey and BeFunky. Upload a photo and then crop, recolor, add filters, shapes, and text to it. It's also available as a browser add-on, so you can have these tools available to you anywhere you go in Chrome. Another interesting feature here is that they're teamed with Zazzle to create customizable designs on salable products. It's probably not the road to early retirement, but if you have a knack for this kind of stuff, it could be fun.

The basics are on your left (crop, rotate, recolor, sharpen). The goodies are along the top of your workspace: effects and filters, stickers, frames, and more. Stickers are just what they sound like: digital stickers, cartoon-like or icon-like add-ons you can superimpose on your photo. What's cool here is they give you an idea of what each filter will do; you see the same frog image revamped with the filter. Cairo's is funny (the frog is wearing a pharaoh's headpiece). Night Vision is kind of cool. So is Neon.

They also have a "Sandbox" with effects designed by people who don't work for them. Most of them are way out there and I'd never use them, but hey, they're there. You can also make a collage instead of working
on just one photo, if you like.

The big ads are kind of a drag, but I understand. It's hard out here for a pimp.

Good: Browser-based; no download required
Good: Free (some effects are behind a paywall)
Good: No signup, login, or email registration required
Good: Wide range of filters to choose from
Good: Can download straight to desktop; social sharing not mandatory
Good: No watermarking or branding on your finished product

Bad: Overall cheesy feel
Bad: Ads are distracting

6. Photovisi
This is a photo collage tool. It's not really meant for sprucing up a single image the way the other sites are. That being said, you can make kick-ass imagery for a blog post that compares multiple items, or advertises all of your books, for example.

The samples are gorgeous...great for stitching together
your book covers for a FB background.

Good: Browser-based; no download required
Good: Free, no paywall
Good: Gallery of samples so you can get ideas
Good: Can download straight to desktop; social sharing not mandatory
Good: No watermarking or branding on your finished product

Bad: Login required

7. iPiccy
Overall, this is a lot like most of the other tools. You can add effects, text, textures, do touch-ups, and more. You have several options for choosing a photo: upload, take a shot from your webcam, grab it from Flickr, or from a URL. You can paint, make a collage, or blend photos together.

There are fancy-pants tools like clone, curves, levels, and liquify. This is a bit too advanced for your average art dumb-ass like me, so I stick with the basics. In my life, when things get liquified, something really bad has just happened that probably requires Lysol.

As for filters, the usual suspects are here: lomo, polaroid, focal black & white, etc.  Depending on your project, they have a few filters are are super cool: Snow, Scanlines, and a kick-ass old west Wanted poster. That alone is worth visiting the site for. You enter the name of who's wanted, the reward amount, and bingo...your ex is now wanted dead or alive. You're welcome.

If you click "textures," you can overlay a grunge texture on your image. I love grunge textures. Yes, it's hipster of me, but I can't help it. Sometimes you just need a little grunge.

More grunge goodness here at iPiccy in the texture selections. 

Good: Browser-based; no download required
Good: Free, no paywall
Good: No signup, login, or email registration required
Good: Can download straight to desktop; social sharing not mandatory
Good: No watermarking or branding on your finished product
Good: Create your own Wanted poster
Good: Good font selection

Bad: Not quite as intuitive (Click on the stacked paper icon to add text? Wha?)
Bad: You might have to say "iPiccy" out loud when someone asks you how you made that image.

Okay! That's it for my roundup of workhorses. I hope you have fun playing around with these.

Next week, I'll continue this theme with some "one-trick ponies": sites that are less versatile, but can still be the right tool for the job. Stay tuned.

UPDATE

I found a couple more workhorse sites while researching and writing the second post in this series, Creative Image Creation Roundup, Part 2: The One-Trick Ponies. Here they are, with a brief summary:

8. Dr. Pic 
This one reminds me a lot of Ribbet, visually speaking. Here, you can resize, crop, rotate, add text, sharpen, etc. Choose your format (JPG, PNG, etc.), and save to disk or web. 

Easy-to-interpret icons on the left tell you what features are available.

9. LunaPic

This one is yet another entry in the "free photo editing" site field, but it's a hell of a lot more robust than many other entries (plus, they have tutorials!). Unfortunately, the options look a little overwhelming, so if you're in a hurry, this probably isn't the site for you. Given a few minutes to play, there are a lot of interesting options here. Hover over "Draw" and you'll see options like "Motivational Poster," "Stained Glass," "Twitter Mosaic," and "Glass Tile," among others. The "Effects" menu has just as many cool-looking choices. Choose "Dollar Bill" to put your picture in the center of a dollar bill, use the "Lego" effect to make your photo look like it's composed of Lego blocks, or make your photo look like it's underwater with the "Water" effect. There is a lot to explore here, and given the time, you could create some pretty cool homemade marketing materials. 

A generous supply of effects, if you've got the time and patience to sort through them.

10. Fotor

This one lets you edit a photo, make a collage, or make cards. Once you upload a photo, you can crop, rotate, adjust tone/color, etc, play with curves, resize, add text, effects, a frame, clip art, or save/print/share. You can also run your photo through "HDR" to make it look super HD. They give you a "compare" feature, which puts your "before" and "after" side by side. I didn't notice a difference in the rose photo I tested. 

Is that gold glitter in their background? Hmm, I wonder who their target audience is...

11. Pixenate 

This one offers the standard array of photo-editing tools: crop, resize, flip, rotate, improve color balance, smooth, brighten, straighten horizon, remove red eye, white teeth, adjust color/hue, and drawing over the photo. Your options for your finished product include saving to disk or uploading to Flickr.

Easy fixes for red eye and bad teeth, plus straightening photos with a crooked horizon.

The Romanov Legacy: Free on Kindle

This is a public service announcement.

All this week, my four-star thriller, The Romanov Legacy, is free for Kindle. Yes, you read that right. Absolutely free.

Included features:

• Espionage
• Betrayal
• Murder
• Treasure
• History
• Romance
• Car chases
• Shootouts
• Secret codes
• Hidden letters
• Death squads
• Breaking & entering
• Hoaxes
• Conspiracy theories

But wait, there's more! Buy now, and you'll also get: 

• A schizophrenic heroine
• A dog
• A spy
• A traitor 
• A mom
• A son
• A boy
• A spymaster
• A prime minister
• Two grand duchesses

To take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime offer, click here. 

We now rejoin the previously scheduled program, already in progress.

Demons, Funnels, and an Empty Checking Account: Why I Decided to Sell Short Fiction

In 2010, I had an idea for a short story about the lost colony of Roanoke. My first love is historical fiction and I've always been tormented by the idea of unsolved mysteries, so it seemed like a natural fit for me. Still, my writer's brain wanted more. It wanted to put a supernatural twist on the story. What better way to explain the strange disappearance of the colonists than by introducing something creepy and otherworldly? Namely, a demon named Croatoa. I know, I know...there are actual scientific theories about what happened to the colonists. But that's not nearly as much fun as a long-fingered black-haired demon.  

But I digress. It was a cold December and I was about to finish my first semester of grad school. It was time to write the final story for my first graduate-level creative writing class. I'd already turned in one historical fiction story, and one story about a talking dog who was really the devil. To reveal my amazing depth and breadth as a writer, logic dictated that I avoid (a) history and (b) the supernatural.

But since when have I done anything the way I'm supposed to?

I wrote the Roanoke story anyway.  Whether it risked my grade or not, it was the story I wanted to write. That's how I roll. 

I wrote it from the point of view of Eleanor Dare, the mother of the first English baby born in the New World. I wrote about the last days of the colony, when hunger and cold and starvation and drought and attacks by Native Americans had taken their toll. I wrote about a demon named Croatoa, who offered Eleanor Dare a terrifying bargain. I wrote about Manteo, the Croatoan man who had already been to England twice by the time the last, doomed Roanoke colonization party arrived. And I turned it in for my final: 20 pages of brutal, bloody, tragic prose.  I don't know what my grade on that particular story ended up being, since the professor said he would read our finals over a fire and burn them before assigning our final grades. But my grade in the class was an A, so I'm guessing it didn't suck too hard.

This is pretty much how I write
 most of my non-literary short stories.

Being in grad school led to a burst of creativity for the next 16 months that resulted in me having quite a few short stories, mostly written for creative writing classes. I submitted almost all of them to journals and anthologies. Quite a few of them actually made it in and have been published. As is the case with most journals and anthologies, they requested only first North American rights, which meant that once the story had been published, all rights reverted to me.

Until recently, I thought of my short stories as a means to an end: a way to get better at writing. A way to rack up a few publishing credits for this here "Awards & Publications" page. A way to earn backlinks for this blog. But I never thought of them as anything else.

Then I read a blog post on Anne R. Allen's blog.  Writers, if you're not reading her blog, you're missing out. I only discovered it recently, but every post is chock-full of helpful and interesting information. The post I read was called, "Why You Should be Writing Short Fiction." In it, Anne writes, "What--short stories? Aren't they just for writing classes?" She had my attention right away, since that's what I'd always thought. She said she knew of a bestselling writer who put a bunch of her older short stories up for sale on Amazon (under non-famous name, of course) and ended up making $500 a month. People found them, bought them, and liked them. 

Hmm, I thought. I have folders of short stories, all just sitting there.

But I still didn't do anything about it. I was working on marketing my books and getting my website up and running, and I didn't want to think about it yet.

Then, Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant released Write, Publish, Repeat. Their advice is to create a marketing funnel, with short stories, novellas, and books in tiered pricing layers that draw browsers in and convert casual readers into repeat buyers and (hopefully) fans.

Hmm, I thought. I don't have shit for a funnel.

That's when I started thinking of ways to use my short stories as part of my marketing funnel. The book I want to write next is historical fiction (both of them, actually). I have several historical fiction short stories, including Croatoa. Why not put out some of the short stories and try to use them to generate interest in my historical fiction? 

So here's what I did:

1. Dug out my old manuscript.
2. Polished it up. Added some stuff. Took a few awkward lines away.
3. Made a cover. (Deepest apologies to my fantastic cover artist, but with a dead laptop and an empty propane tank, money is allergic to me right now.)
4. Popped the completed manuscript into my eBook template.
5. Added two bonus features to the end of the story: a historical note on Manteo, and a detailed timeline of the Roanoke Colony. I wanted to make sure the reader had a bit more than just the story, so I used the idea of a DVD's special features and came up with the timeline/historical note idea.
6. Added a brief excerpt from my vampire book at the very end, with the cover art and a buy link. The idea here is that someone interested in a historical fiction story with a hint of the supernatural might also really like my vampire book, which also hits both of these genre's high notes. 
7. Priced it at .99c. My books are all $2.99, and since this story is much shorter, the price needs to reflect that. Maybe when I have more items up for sale, I can make one of my funnel items permafree, but for now, I chose the entry-level price point of .99c.
8. Published through Amazon KDP and Smashwords. Since I don't plan on doing a ton of promotion for the story, I didn't make it exclusive to KDP. I want the max amount of exposure for the minimum amount of effort, which means more venues = more eyeballs. 

So this is now the beginning of a grand experiment in which I see if I can replicate other authors' success selling short fiction. I haven't publicized the release much, since I had an interview that went live at the same time and I can only stand so much of myself. In general, my books make very little money and this story likely will, too. As of now, it's sold one copy through Smashwords and made me .73c. But that's .73c I didn't have yesterday, so that's cool with me.

I don't think I'll be one of the lucky few making $500 a month off of it, but I also know I have a dozen more than can follow. It's the production time that's going to slow me down. I am writing two books right now, and don't have much time left over to market the older books plus edit, format, produce, and publish a buttload of short stories. But I'm going to try because, well, Protestant work ethic bequeathed to me by my Swedish and Scottish ancestors just will not quit. Why watch TV at night when you could work on 800 projects all at once?

That's one thing about being a one-woman indie author show. You have to love it in order to live it. So here I am, loving it and living it, and wanting to help you do the same. I'll post updates here as needed to let you know how my short story experiment goes.

If you want to check out Croatoa, you can get it from Amazon or Smashwords.

To learn more about how I researched and wrote the story itself, check out this post on my website:

Croatoa: How I Turned the Lost Colony of Roanoke into a Short Story

8 Things I Never Knew about the Donner Party

I spent this weekend doing nothing but reading Ordeal by Hunger, by George R. Stewart. It sat on my shelf for 10 years after a chance purchase in a Truckee bookstore. Now, I live about 70 miles from Donner Lake and can see that forbidding ridge of the Sierras from my living room. Then, a couple weeks ago, we had snow. This is not supposed to happen--we're only at 1,500 feet. But it did happen, and our pipes froze and our driveway iced, which is why I think I finally plucked this one off the shelf.

Going in, I knew what most people know: they were pioneers en route to California, got snowed in at Donner Lake, and died. I think at some point I must have known there was cannibalism involved. I was under no illusion that this was going to have a happy ending, but holy mother of God, I had no idea it was this bad. There's a lot I didn't know or didn't remember.

There's a lot no one tells you.

This is by no means an exhaustive summary. It's more a jumbled recollection of the moments that pierced the cold, cold veil of my shriveled heart.

1. They were pretty much beaten before they ever reached the Sierra. Just getting to California had exhausted them in every way. To get their wagons over the Wasatch mountains, they had to stand in front of the wagons with axes in their hands, making the damn road yard by yard. They had to cross the desert beneath the Great Salt Lake, a more fucked up route than other travelers because the Donner party took an ill-advised southern cutoff that wasted a shit-ton of time. Suffice to say, when someone tells you the next water is three days away but really it's seven, you're going to have a bad time. Blame that douche-bag Hastings, who told them, "No sweat. My cut-off is a piece of cake," and then ditched them, leaving behind notes that lied to them about how far away the next water was.

2.  They didn't like each other very much. It would have been a shit trip under any circumstances. But in addition to the navigation issues, they also lost a bunch of cattle to the Paiutes, both through thievery and general marauding. No blame, just a statement of fact. All told, by the time they got to the eastern slope of the Sierra, they were tired, hungry, in need of supplies, and lacking tolerance for each other. If you and your sibling got on each other's nerves in the car as kids, imagine going on a six-month car ride where you had to build the road for the car by working in harmony with said sibling.  I'm pretty sure Mother Teresa would have needed at least one time out.

3.  They weren't all stuck in one cabin, tent, or even general area. There were three distinct cabins, with the two Donner families a whopping five miles behind them. When they got to Truckee Lake (now Donner Lake), it was about Halloween...and it started snowing like a mother-you-know-what. It didn't stop. They tried twice to get those big-ass wagons up and over the pass, but it just didn't happen. So they dropped back down on November 4 and realized they had to make camp on the eastern side of the pass until spring.

They set up some primitive cabins along the lake, with the Jacob and George Donner family groups about five miles back.  The party had always been segregated by family groups (the Breens, the Donners, the Reeds, the Murphys, the Kesebergs, etc.), but now those segregations etched themselves in stone. Contact between family groups was generally limited to requests for help, which were usually ignored or fulfilled only grudgingly. There were 60 people: 19 men, 12 women, and 29 children, including toddlers. The men bore the brunt of the work--gathering firewood, attempting to hunt, etc. Suffice to say, it fucking sucked.

At first, they had some food: a bear, a few remaining cattle, mice, and hides they boiled and used for soup. But when that runs out, what happens? Can you sit around a dank, dismal cabin full of sick and malnourished people, including your own children, and tell them they're going to die because there's nothing to eat? The first person to die was Baylis Williams. It was December 15, a month after making camp.

4. One group escaped on foot. On December 16, a group of 15 snow-shoed out, trying to cross the pass on foot. They were headed for Sutter's Fort in what would become Sacramento to beg for help and organize relief. But there was hardly any food left for those staying behind, let alone extra to send along with the people fleeing.

On the first day, they went four miles...all still on the eastern side of the pass, and still able to see the smoke from their families' cabins.  The snow was so damn high and so damn soft that it took a long time to cross, even with the snowshoes.

They had each taken six days' rations. Every person had a strip of jerky as long as two fingers, three times a day. That's it. Now go walk miles in a ferocious snowstorm and climb the parts of the mountain that snow won't stick to and don't forget to gather firewood and take turns maintaining it at night and generally try to give a shit so much that your mind wills your body not to die. I'm not sure I could have done it. When Eddy, one of the men, found a half pound of bear meat in his pack that his wife had hoarded and packed in secret with a love note, I almost cried.

Four days out, they were exhausted, malnourished, snow-blind, and subject to hallucinations. One man lasted six days. On the sixth, he sat down, smoked his pipe, told the others he was coming soon, and waited to die.

The seventh day, they shared the bear meat.

The eighth day, they had nothing.

The ninth day, they had nothing. And it started to snow again. They were all skeletal, malnourished, weak, and frozen. What were the options? Finally, they broached the subject: draw lots to see who dies and who lives? Fight to the death, so at least whoever went down went down swinging? They decided it was too horrible, and they had to wait. It wasn't a long wait. That night, a man named Antonio died. A few hours later, Billy Graves died.  A third man, Patrick Dolan, died a day later while they paused for Christmas Day. They waited another day. On the eleventh day, they did what they had to do. Two Indian guides and Eddy at first refused to eat. They trudged down the mountain, up and down canyons, through storms and conditions that make a Hieronymus Bosch painting look like Club Med. More dead than alive, they stumbled into a ranch on January 17. They'd started with 15 people, five women and ten men. Only two men made it out. All five women survived. (Yay, ladies.)


5. There was gallows humor. Back in the lake camp, things went from bad to worse. Terrible weather, vermin, sickness, malnutrition, starvation...you name it, it happened. George Donner had sliced his hand with a chisel. The wound festered and he didn't have the strength to fight the infection off. He also didn't have the strength to die. Old Mrs. Murphy went blind. A bunch of kids died. To keep the remaining ones alive, some of the corpses were dug up. Jacob Donner's wife, Elizabeth, said to her sister, "Guess what I cooked this morning? Shoemaker's arm."

6. Rescue came in waves, organized and orchestrated poorly and often by people with little or no snow/mountaineering experience. The snowshoers managed to send back several waves of rescuers, some more willing and able than others. The first wave of rescuers crossed the pass and realized what a terrible state everyone was in. They brought out everyone who was able to walk and not needed to care for the ones left behind--23 people, with 17 staying behind. The walkers included three children three years old. Tommy Reed was one of them. He made it two miles before it became painfully obvious that he couldn't keep stepping through the enormous drifts.  His sister, Patty, was also doing poorly. They were holding up the rest of the group. The rescue coordinator Glover, told the childrens' mother the two little ones had to go back to camp. No one had enough strength to carry the two children (the rescuers had run into storm and supply troubles of their own). Their mother sent them back to the camp and continued on with the rescue party. "Well, mother," Patty said, "if you never see me again, do the best you can." Oh holy Jesus, tear my heart out, why don't you...

A second rescue party included two men who had already escaped with the snowshoe party, Reed and McCutchen. They both had kids still starving at the camp and had to go back. Their party rescued the Breen family, the Graves family, a couple of the Donner kids, and Reed's two kids who had been sent back. As they struggled down the mountain on the other side of the pass, the Breens and the Graves could go no further. The rest pressed on. I've seen the word "abandoned" used to describe the Breens and Graves after the others marched on. I don't think you can use this word in that context. It seems too cruel. It was what it was. No one can pass judgment who didn't go through it.

A third rescue party, including Eddy and Foster (both escapees via snowshoe), went back into hell to try and save their children, both too young to have made it out with the other parties. But by the time they got there on March 13, Eddy's wife and child were already dead. A man named Keseberg seems to have eaten them. Elizabeth Donner was dead. Her husband, Jacob Donner, was dead...and partially eaten. George Donner was ill but clinging to life. His wife, Tamsen, refused to leave him. Rescuers told her they weren't sure if and when a third rescue party would make it. She stayed.

7. One of the survivors was accused of murdering Tamsen Donner. This is weird, you guys. So Keseberg was one of the last left in the camp. When the third rescue party arrived, they found him alone with a pot of what might have been human entrails and/or blood. They asked where everyone was, but Keseberg said they were all dead. They checked the Donner tents five miles away and found George Donner dead and wrapped in a sheet--obviously Tamsen had outlived him. They found no sign of her body, though. They went back and asked Keseberg where she was. He said Tamsen appeared at his cabin one night, drenched to the bone from a fall in the creek. She said George had died and she now wanted to cross the pass on foot to get to her children. He bundled her up for the night, but she was dead by morning. This didn't jive with the rescuers, who had seen Tamsen on rescue waves one and two. The healthiest of all the settlers, she didn't seem likely to die after one cold night. But they couldn't find a body anywhere. Keseberg said he'd eaten her--that she was the best-tasting of them all because she still had a little fat. However, if this was true, where were the remains? The head, for example? Jacob Donner's split skull had been recovered, even after the brains were eaten. Where was Tamsen? Was Keseberg lying? If so, why?

It struck some of the rescuers that Keseberg might have killed her. The Donners were wealthy, and maybe he thought he could scrounge their belongings to find cash or valuables. They got him out of that horrible death camp and tried him when they'd made it to safety. He was acquitted, but made to pay all the costs of the trial. Keseberg seems to have changed his story later in life, saying he did not participate in cannibalism. No one will ever know.

8. Some of the survivors ended up near where I grew up. It's not all doom and gloom, which is why I saved this point for last. The entire Breen family survived, 7 kids and 2 parents. They settled in San Juan Bautista, in an adobe near the mission I've seen a dozen times. I never knew. The entire Reed family survived, 3 kids and 2 parents. They settled in San Jose. I never knew. There are still Donner descendants in the state. Even Keseberg has at least one descendant in the state.

This is one of those stories that hits you in the nuts and the guts. I read this book faster than any fiction I've read in the past two years. I couldn't do anything else afterward but keep looking for more information on this event and these people. I just sat back, breathless, in awe of what these people went through. I could not have done it. Their will to live was so much stronger than anything I've felt in my entire life. That is both my shame and their honor.

Merry Christmas

When I was little, my mom made me write thank-you notes for any birthday, Christmas, or graduation gifts I received. I hated it at the time, but now I understand that it's one of those niceties that makes the world go around.

This post is a thank-you to everyone who has read the blog this year. To everyone who has commented, thank you. To everyone who lurks, thank you.

I hope you have a chance to reconnect with friends and family over the next few days. (Writers: even if they drive you bonkers, this is valuable material. Keep a notebook handy.)  I've got some cool things planned for 2014 that will help all of us become better writers, better readers, and hopefully, better people. I'd love to have you along for the journey.

If, like my husband, you're about to be dragged through a family circus that isn't what you really want to be doing, remember: your attendance and your smile is a gift to the person who brought you. As Bill and Ted said, "Be excellent to each other."

May your eggnog be spiked...with love or whiskey, whichever you prefer.  

Book Review: Inferno by Dan Brown

Inferno by Dan Brown.
It's ablaze, all right, but with what?
That's up for debate.

Note: This post is being sponsored by Grammarly. I used Grammarly's plagiarism detector because I wanted to watch it have a conniption fit over Inferno's purple prose.
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I'm not normally at a loss for words when it comes to talking about books. But Dan Brown's Inferno might have gotten the best of me.

I just can't think of anything to say.

It's a book.

It's not good.

Can we just call it a night?

No?

Damn it. I should have known you'd expect more of me, dear readers. Inferno is not a good book. It's also not hate-worthy in the manner of some of the other books I've blogged about here. It doesn't inspire vitriol. It doesn't inspire anything at all. Perhaps that's the whole problem.

Confession Bear says, "Don't be a book snob."

Great Expectations
Let me start by saying I loved The DaVinci Code. Yes, the insults hurled at the book by book snobs are probably mostly true. But applying literary fiction's criteria to Dan Brown is like cursing at an apple because it isn't round and orange and you can't remove the peel in one of those nifty spirals. If you didn't know that going in, you're either blind or humorless or both.

Being a page-turner is an accomplishment. Books that make you stay up late at night to find out what happens next are, by definition, good books. You have another option--going to sleep at a normal hour, like a sane person--but you choose the book. If you have another option but you choose the book, the book is doing something right. For me, The DaVinci Code was crack...or whichever potato chips have the slogan, "Bet you can't eat just one."  I couldn't read just one page. I couldn't turn out the light.

TL;DR: It's a good fucking book.

Dante's Pique
Inferno is not a good fucking book. It's even worse than a bad book. It's a boring book.

It's like when you're in college and your professor is talking, and you try to listen, but he's off on a tangent about some facet of his grad school research that matters only to him. It's 2:15 in the afternoon and his voice drones on like that guy who says, "Bueller?" You listen for an hour, but your watch says it's only 2:18. You start fidgeting to try and not fall asleep. But that gets boring, too. And then you get a little angry. You're paying for this class, after all. By the time 3:00 actually rolls around, you're not glad to be alive. You're pissed at the professor (for wasting everyone's time) and the university (for throwing away the student evaluations that say how boring he is). You would rather have been in the library doing research for your Victorian Lit paper. At least you'd have checked something off your to-do list that way.

That's Inferno in a nutshell. This Twitter account would have been a better use of your time:

10 Things I Hate about You +1, for a Grand Total of 11...Because I'm Feeling Bitchy that Way
When I started reading, I took notes on things I thought I'd blog about...but I stopped caring about 150 pages in. Then I started counting the number of times I fell asleep while reading it and got close to double digits. In order not to waste the time I spent making the list, here's a few of the things that ticked me off before page 150:

• Adverbs
• "Langdon battled the sedatives and awkwardly hoisted himself upright in his bed."
• Because when I've been shot in the head and wake up groggy with amnesia, it really needs to be specified that my first movement is an awkward one. 
• Exclamation point
• "A ray of hope cut through Langdon's grogginess.  'That's good news! Maybe this person knows what happened to me!'" 
• Because when I've been shot in the head and wake up groggy with amnesia, the first thing I do is make nothing but excited declarative statements. 
• Statements of things that make no sense
• "Who are you!? he called out in silence." 
• If only someone had invented a word that meant having words go through your head without speaking them. Someone get the call-out-in-silence tank on the phone and ask them about it. 
• Repetition for no point whatsoever
• "...every operative on board sensed there was some kind of high-stakes operation going on. The stakes are inconceivably high, and Vayentha had better get it right this time." 
• I don't know about you, but I never believe the stakes are high unless I'm told twice in rapid succession using a variety of typefaces. 
• Way too many uses of "?!"     
• "I beg your pardon!?" 
• Using this redundant form of punctuation makes it look like Brown doesn't know the difference between a statement and a question. I'm at a loss here, folks. I have never seen so many uses of "?!" in my life. I'm convinced Dan Brown has a "thou shalt not edit me" clause in his contract. This had me tearing out my hair, and with a 500 page book, that's a lot of hair. I'm bald now, actually. Thanks, Dan Brown. Thanks a lot.
• Moments where the characters say really dumb things
• "Langdon teetered on the brink of consciousness. Someone is trying to kill me?"
• No shit, Sherlock. That's probably a reasonable conclusion when someone comes into your hospital wing, shoots your doctor right in front of you, and then takes aim. This is a character with a PhD who has been through this drill in three prior books. Is it really such a big surprise when it happens again? 
• Moments where the characters do really dumb things
• In the book, while on the run from people trying to kill him, Langdon checks his Harvard email. I literally screamed at the book: "You stupid fuck! You've been on three adventures where people are hunting you the way fat kids hunt cake, where your survival hinges on hiding your location. You STILL haven't learned what an IP address is?"

• A disturbing lack of useful history and symbology
• They play so much less of a role in this book than in The DaVinci Code. There's one moderately intriguing art world mystery raised (cerca trova), but it's not solved or referred to again after it points the characters toward the villain's plot. Never mind the rest of us who find the historical mystery more intriguing.   
• Dante seems integral to the story, but he's not
• He's a set piece. At its heart, nothing about the main conflict has a damn thing to do with Dante. The main conflict could have happened in any country, with any author who ever wrote a poem about death. It could have easily been T.S. Eliot, with The Waste Land standing in for the Inferno. Dante's just a red herring, a fancy set piece. Malthus is doing the heavy lifting here, but no one gives a crap about Malthus, so they needed Dante to bring sexy back.  
• The main conflict isn't even resolved, despite nearly 500 pages
• The book ends with a huge problem looming. We, the reader, knew what the problem was from the very beginning. We just had to wait for the characters to catch up. And then they do. And then nothing else happens. Seeing that the crisis looming is a big one, this seems either like a sequel setup (please, no) or a writer who's too bored with his own story to wrap it up. SPOILER ALERT: the looming problem is that humanity will be destroyed within a couple generations by a secret virus. What are the good people of the world doing about it? We don't know. The book's over. Have a nice day.
• Everything is boring
• The chase scenes are so long-winded you forget who and what the characters are running from. There's no historical mystery that you'd bite your own fingers off to solve. It's all about some stupid modern-day plague. The suspense is supposed to be in whether Langdon can stop it. But didn't they already do this in Mission Impossible 2? With better actors? I'll take Tom Cruise over Tom Hanks any day.

If I tried, I could probably come up with a few more things to say. But what's the point?

Go read a good book instead.

Happy Thanksgiving, Y'all: Here's the Story of My Ancestor Who Was Hung as a Witch

My 10th great-grandmother was hung as a witch in Connecticut. You've probably heard of the Salem Witch Trials, which took place in the early 1690s. Well, my homegirl beat them to it by getting herself hung in 1663.

As we're eating turkey and giving thanks for how awesome things are in our country and our lives, don't forget that the path to all-American awesomeness is strewn with bodies: Native Americans, mostly, but also some white people other white people didn't like very much.

We're not really sure what her maiden name was, but her first name was Rebecca. (My middle name, in case you were wondering.) She married a man named Abraham Elson, and had a daughter named Sarah who is my 9th great-grandmother. Abraham died, and Rebecca married a man named Jarvis Mudge. He died, too, and she married a third time to a man named Nathaniel Greensmith. Rebecca Greensmith is the name she died with.

She and Nathaniel lived in Hartford, Connecticut. They were not liked. Nathaniel had been in trouble with the law at least three times, once for stealing wheat, once for stealing a hoe, and once for battery. A local reverend, John Whiting, called Rebecca "a lewd, ignorant and considerably aged woman." Because everyone knows being an "aged woman" is some intolerable shit for Puritans.  

People had been on the lookout for witches for awhile--the very first suspected witch in the colonies was hung in Hartford in 1647. But now, in 1662, shit really hit the fan. It started, as it did in Salem, with the accusations of a girl. Before she died, John Kelley's 8-year-old daughter Elizabeth cried out in her delirium that her neighbor, Goodwife Ayres, was "tormenting her."

Not long afterward, John Cole's daughter, Anne, freaked the fuck out. She started having "fits" and said Satan's minions were messing with her. She named Elizabeth Seager as a witch, and someone (it might have been Anne) said Rebecca was a witch, too. Nathaniel and Rebecca were already disliked within the community, so it's not hard to see how they fell under suspicion. Rebecca was arrested in late 1662.

Hard-ass Puritan ministers took control of the situation, interrogating the accused. Reverend Samuel Stone, Reverend Joseph Haynes, and Reverend Samuel Hooker played bad cop/worse cop/abysmal cop, and Rebecca admitted that under Haynes's questioning, she could have "torn him in pieces." Satanic strength notwithstanding, Haynes survived unscathed.

Under interrogation, Rebecca confessed to witchcraft. She said she and some other folks used to meet out in the fields at night to booze it up. One of the women present said she would do bad things to the town marshal if she could. That's all the evidence they needed back in the day. Empty field + night time + booze + (heaven forbid) dancing = a genuine goddamn coven. Increase Mather took Rebecca's confession as definitive proof that witches were real.

Anxious for all the dirty details, her interrogators asked her whether she made a covenant with the devil. She said no, but that she had promised to go with him when he called. He was supposed to be back on Christmas, and that's when the covenant would be signed. She said the devil first appeared to her as a deer, and other times as a crow. Lord knows you can't trust animals. Not even once.

On December 30, 1662, both Rebecca and Nathaniel were indicted on charges of witchcraft.

On January 8, 1663, Rebecca said that although he hadn't confessed, she had doubts about Nathaniel's innocence. She said he was pretty old and weak, but that he somehow did lots of chores and outdoor work. Plus, it was pretty damn suspicious that he was friendly with some foxes and other woodland creatures.

The jury found them both guilty.

On January 25, 1662, Nathaniel and Rebecca were hung on "Gallows Hill," the present site of Trinity College.

"Witches" were also hung in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Virginia. Their names have all since been legally cleared, not helpful at all to the victims but somewhat helpful for the families and descendants. Not so in Connecticut. All of these folks are still officially on record as being guilty.

Even if the genealogical research that seems to link me to this woman proves to be faulty (as so much of it is), I'll always remember her story...and the dark side of what we celebrate every Thanksgiving.

Why I Won't Watch The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

I hated the first Hunger Games movie. Like, hated it. It was one of the worst movies I've ever seen. My husband walked out (well, walked out of our living room, where I'd paid $1 to Redbox it). I used the fast-forward button to get through the last 20-30 minutes of the movie because I couldn't take it anymore.  Hate me, flame me, put vitriolic in the comments, but I just don't see what the big deal is with this franchise.

Bear with me, because I'm trying to remember exactly why I disliked this movie so much based on a single viewing of almost a year ago. Here's the list, as best I can reconstruct it, in no particular order:

1. I expected more in the romance department. The Hunger Games is often touted as a superior alternative to Twilight, which is nothing but romance (creepy romance, supernatural romance, high school romance, call it what you will, but it's a romance). I failed to find a smidgen of comparable romance in this movie.  Was there any shadow of real human emotion between any of the three characters supposedly involved in this love triangle?  Can it even be called a triangle when one of the participants (played by Liam Hemsworth) was in the movie for all of five minutes?  That's not a triangle. It's a straight line with a wart on it.

That leaves us with Peeta and Katniss, a couple with the worst on-screen chemistry since Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant in that horrible witness protection program movie, or Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman in Australia.  He passes out in a cave, and she loves him?  Or pretends to love him for the cameras?  I'm not sure and I don't care.  The concept of someone faking a relationship for publicity's sake was beaten to death during Kim Kardashian's first marriage. Better actors don't improve the storyline for me. 

2. The names. I'm not even going to talk about how ridiculous I feel typing the word "Peeta."  It's like "Pee," but it just keeps going.  Names are important.  I do not care for these. Give me Benjen Stark or Darth Maul or Gandalf the Grey. Peeta does not merit further discussion. Katniss sounds like tarted-up catnip. Everdeen is a line of non-stick cookware sold by Paula Deen.

3. I don't care about the main character.  Like, at all.  Katniss is more than flat--she's borderline dislikable for me.  Sure, she's meant to be introspective and self-reliant and brave, all admirable qualities, but also boring to watch. Most of the time, we're staring at J Law's blank face.  I hoped she'd get angry. Get upset. Reveal something. Do something interesting. I got bored by how capable she was at keeping her emotions under wraps. No one wants to watch Michelangelo paint an apartment wall white.  

For comparison's sake, I thought about a prickly-loner character that I did care about:  Rambo. Similar setup--a person alone, manipulated by governments and superiors into situations that risk life and limb. He doesn't talk much, doesn't like people, and yet I root for the guy. I want to watch him triumph.  I want him to get the pat on the back that no one else has ever given him.  He wants something good, and everything bad that he does is in service of his goal. I get that Katniss volunteered to save her sister. It was noble, and it should have had the same effect on me as Rambo's sacrifices, but it just didn't. I also hate kids.  

Another Stallone comparison springs to mind: his lone-wolf rock climber in Cliffhanger. Stallone is either much better than J-Law at using his face to reveal enough emotion to make you care, or his director gives him more leeway to do so. His features can fall, perk up, or reveal anger with no words written into the script.  Does he look cheesy doing so? Sure. But it's entertaining. If J-Law can do these things, the director needs to start asking her to.  She has an Oscar now. Forced heavy breathing and a blank-faced stare are no longer sufficient. 

If you say, "Sure, but Stallone is ridiculous and Jennifer Lawrence is an actress with a capital A," I say, "Stallone is ridiculous to the tune of $1,861,069,518 box office dollars and counting. Plus, he's Rocky." And don't tell me this movie is afraid of ridiculous. It has Woody Harrelson as a role model. 

4. The suspense was flat. Obviously, Katniss isn't going to die.  There are more books, which means there are more movies. Seeing her in a life-and-death situation is only going to end one way.  So what else am I supposed to give a crap about? I want to see her tested or changed or humbled.  None of those things happened.  She climbed some trees and shot some things.  Great.  Thanks for the memories.

5. Those stupid dog-like things chasing them at the end. The interwebs tell me they are called "muttations," which is another name that makes me want to listen to nails on a chalkboard. The interwebs also tell me that the creatures were used differently in the movie than in the book. The movie is my only reference here, and as far as the creepy-creature-chasing-the-hero concept goes, I've been there, done that...they're called hell-hounds, and they're in Supernatural. Want to see that stuff done right? Check out season 5, episode 10 ("Abandon All Hope...") where Jo and Ellen buy the farm to give Sam and Dean a snowball's chance of stopping Lucifer from launching the apocalypse.  I cry every time. More suspense, better tragedy, better character development, better everything.

6. I felt nothing while watching it. Except a profound longing for it to end. Yeah, it was sad when Rue died. But one tender moment didn't redeem the movie as a whole. I get the feeling I was supposed to be frightened, sad, horrified, excited, worried, and a whole bunch of other things that never crossed my mind. But everything was strangely antiseptic. I can't be worried for a character who is part of a trilogy. Everyone in the city is a dick. Half of the other kids in the games were dicks. I don't care about the downtrodden losers Katniss left behind. Want to see real suffering? Read about Russians during the first half of World War II. 

7. I did not like the world-building. I just didn't buy that part of the U.S. looks like an Andrew Wyeth painting circa 1940, while the other part looked like humans impersonating Muppets among the sets from Death Race. I couldn't believe that this is what happened to our country, that the world we live in now became the world I saw on that screen. And if I couldn't believe that, I couldn't believe anything else that happened, either.  Maybe more of this is explained in the book, which I have NOT read, but it was NOT explained in the film.  Let me attempt to summarize what I saw:  part of the U.S. rebelled against some future government, things went horribly awry, the place is now called Panem, and parts of it got sent back to the stone age.  What happened to electronics?  Where are things like power poles? And cars? And paved roads? Did every piece of technology invented after WWII just vanish from particular areas? Did fashion revert to the 1940s, too? I'm confused. 

8.  A dress that's on fire? You have to be kidding me.  The Golden Gate Bridge couldn't suspend my disbelief that far. Also, where are the jet packs and the holodeck? Why do they have flaming dresses but no jet packs? I'm confused.

I have never read the books.  I'm not planning on reading the books. The first movie made me want to run screaming in the other direction from the entire franchise. This is not meant to be a critique of the book(s), since it's entirely possible all my objections are addressed there. This is a critique of the film itself, for someone who came to it without the background (or the suspension of disbelief) provided by the books. It failed. These people think so, too:

#hungergames #catchingfire