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Author Spotlight: M.C.V Egan & “The problem with stereotyping individuals”

The Problem with Stereotyping Individuals © M.C.V. Egan

I think we are all guilty and all victims of stereotyping. Whether by appearance or other traits, such as race, religion to the mode of speech, residence, or country of origin. I know I am guilty of it.

I have the kind of complexion that people identify as Greek, Middle Eastern, Italian, and Latin American. I am originally from Mexico. Because of my height or sometimes because of my personality, people say, “Wow, you are so tall, I thought all Mexicans were short.” or “Wow, you are so outgoing; I thought Latin women were submissive.” Yes, I have heard that more than you can imagine.

I do not mind, especially at airports notorious for profiling, in the U.K., for example, after the Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988. The explosion, caused by a terrorist bombing.  It resulted in the deaths of all 259 passengers on board the Boeing 747 and 11 people on the ground. 

When I get profiled, I thank the person trying to do their job for protecting us; I do not take it personally. I do not think I look like an evil person, but what is the appearance of  “an evil person”?

In 1939, at the Brink of WWII, my grandfather Cesar Agustin Castillo, a biochemical engineer for Standard Oil of New Jersey, died with four other men on board a British Airways, LTD plane in Denmark. Hitler invaded Poland just two weeks later and set off what we now know as WWII.

Amongst the Dead was a German corporate lawyer, he had a glass eye, and amongst his belongings were his medals from WWI. Because of the brutal warfare and use of Bayonets, it was not unusual for WWI veterans to be missing an eye. During WWII, hollowed-out glass eyes were often used to transport microfilm, espionage. So understandably, Herr Beuß (Beuss) profiled as a potential, “evil guy” as Europe in August 1939 described in a letter written by Grandfather the previous night, and received by his father after his death, stated. “Europe smells of dynamite and is surely at the brink of war.” (I paraphrase as he wrote in Spanish.)

So, Herr Beuß was investigated thoroughly. But my grandfather, with a New York City address and a Mexican passport with no record as the veteran for any army, went unnoticed. To the point that he was referred to as Señor Castello or Casteilo as some of the few replacements for his actual name Castillo.

My grandfather was born in Mexico. At the age of 10, he was taken to Germany to receive a proper education in 1908. He remained there until the summer of 1914 when WWI broke out in Europe. His father, Victor Manuel Castillo, was in international diplomatic circles, a lawyer, and amongst his clients had Baron Von Krupp. You know the Krupp that in 1933 received the first order for 135 Panzer I tanks. During World War II, the Krupp made tanks, artillery, naval guns, armor plate, munitions, and other armaments for the German military.

My grandfather also attended as an undergrad Texas A&M University which until the early 1960s was a Military school and post-grad at Columbia University in NYC.  

In 1939, he was stereotyped and deemed not a person of interest. In the 1990s and early 2000s, as I researched and received help from numerous brilliant people; who were well versed in the 1930s, I heard more than once the question. “Did your grandfather speak as many languages as you?” to which I honestly answered, “More, he was fluent in five languages, especially German.” After a pause, the same response; “You realize that you are most likely researching a spy?”

~
Death of a Sculptor in Hue, Shape and Color
by M.C.V. Egan
Genre: Suburban Women’s Fiction
Color-coded love stories and revealing female anatomies lead to the murder of world-renowned sculptor, Bruce Jones.
In life, the artist loved women, almost as much as women loved him. Adored for his art and colorful personality, Bruce is mourned by the world at large. The tale is launched with the multifaceted perspectives of four ex-wives, the current wife, and his new love interest and their children.
Mary, Bruce’s wealthy first love, is always in perfect pink; the color of love. Mother of Clair the famous actress and Aaron the corporate lawyer.
Leslie The Second’s color is yellow for her sunny nature as much as for her fears and insecurities. Her only son Bobby is vulnerable and lost. Mourning his father’s death, he finds himself.
Petra The Third, is outstanding in orange, representing not only her native Holland but also her love of the fruit. Cherished her freedom and had no children of her own.
Toni The Fourth is a vibrant passionate Italian red and part of the eventual glue that creates and solidifies this dysfunctional Jones family. Her teenage daughters Tina and Isa are as different as night and day.
Brooke The Fifth a gold-digger. Green, her color, reflects the color of money and envy. Her young son’s Kyle and Caleb are too young to understand why their world has been turned upside-down.
Mara, as blue as the ocean was the last woman to steal Bruce’s heart. Mother to newborn Baby Peter is the unexpected gift and surprise.
Bruce Jones’ eight children speak out, too. They are as distinctive as the women he loved, their mothers.
Loose ends are tied up by the insights of Sylvia, Aaron’s wife and a trusted keeper of secrets; Scott, the private investigator and family friend; Nona, the quintessential grandmother everyone loves but to whom few are truly related; and Detective Jim Miller who will not rest until he discovers Bruce Jones’ murderer.
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Defined By Others
Defining Ways Series Book 1
by M.C.V. Egan
Genre: Suburban Women’s Fiction
A word, a single word defines a moment for Anne. She needs to find a new one when her spouse, Frank, leaves her at the age of forty-seven, coming out of the closet literally in a closet.
She finds herself back in her hometown of Skvallerby, Connecticut among her high school friends which she had left in her past.
An inheritance from a frenemy leaves her with the means to meddle and spy on the lives of mutual acquaintances.
In an attempt to run from her reality Anne becomes engrossed in a game of fun and flirtation with her friend and fellow sufferer Connie.
Their fun games turn into a deadly reality. It is no longer a game. Life, death and not even a defining word can stop the reality of manipulation.
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Book Trailer
https://youtu.be/0YCothOvgP4

The Bridge of Deaths

A Love Story and Mystery
by M.C.V. Egan
Genre: Historical Mystery
On August 15th, 1939, an English passenger plane from British Airways Ltd. crashed in Danish waters between the towns of Nykøbing Falster and Vordingborg. There were five casualties reported and one survivor. Just two weeks before, Hitler invaded Poland. With the world at the brink of war, the manner in which this incident was investigated left much open to doubt. The jurisdiction battle between the two towns and the newly formed Danish secret police created an atmosphere of intrigue and distrust. The Bridge of Deaths is a love story and a mystery. Fictional characters travel through the world of past life regressions and information acquired from psychics as well as archives and historical sources to solve “one of those mysteries that never get solved.” Based on true events and real people, The Bridge of Deaths is the culmination of 18 years of sifting through conventional and unconventional sources in Denmark, England, Mexico and the United States. The story finds a way to help the reader feel that s/he is also sifting through data and forming their own conclusions. Cross The Bridge of Deaths into 1939, and dive into cold Danish waters to uncover the secrets of the G-AESY.
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Book Trailer
https://youtu.be/YNe9psSjGio

The Bridge of Deaths (Revised Edition)

A Love Story and Mystery
by M.C.V. Egan
Genre: Historical Mystery
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Book Trailer
https://youtu.be/tUdQ_AV0StA
M.C.V. Egan is the pen name chosen by Maria Catalina Vergara Egan. Catalina is originally from Mexico City, Mexico. Catalina has lived in various countries and is fluent in four languages; Spanish, English, French and Swedish.
Her first book The Bridge of Deaths revolves around her maternal grandfather’s death in 1939. A true-life pre-WWII event. It has over 200 footnotes with the resources of her extensive search through Archival materials as well as the use of psychometry and past life regressions. It is more fact than fiction.
The revised edition of The Bridge of Deaths; A love Story and a Mystery focuses on the story-line as opposed to fact, but all footnotes and facts are available through the website for any curious minds. http://www.thebridgeofdeaths.com
Defined by Others taps into the dark quirky side found even in the best of people. With the 2012 American elections as a backdrop and the fearless reassurance that the world might end on December 12, 2012, as predicted by the Mayan Calendar.
Death of a Sculptor; in Hue, Shape, and Color is a novella written in sixteen different voices. It is a murder mystery. She is currently working on a sequel; Bruce (title subject to change).
M.C.V. Egan lives and works in South Florida. She loves cooking and crafting. She is married and has a son. Aside from writing Astrology is one of her passions and careers she pursues.
You can find M.C.V. Egan everywhere online
Website * Blog1 * Blog2 * Blog3 * Blog4 * Facebook * Twitter * Tumblr * Amazon * Goodreads

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#B2BCyCon2017 – Fantasy Genre Tour

Fantasy “Behind The Scenes” Tour – Stop #1

“World Building: It’s Not Just About Drawing A Map” by Stephen Pearl

In writing any kind of narrative the world it takes place in is of paramount importance. Even writing in what is meant to be the real world requires that the author do world building in as much as there are many worlds within our real world. I’ll address that later. What follows is a brief overview of the elements I feel are important for world building and how they are illustrated by my available works.

Logical

First, my world / universe must be a place that the action I want to play out can logically occur. This seems obvious but it is all too easy to try to place a story in a world that really doesn’t support it.

Taking my tinker books, Tinker’s Plague and Tinker’s Sea, as examples, these stories cannot be told in anything but a post-apoplectic world. I require a world where high technology exists but is only available to the few. There must be a smattering of failed technology, and limited resources for dealing with the problems presented. In Tinker’s Plague this made the quarantine hard to enforce and set up the situation that led to my central conflict. In Tinker’s Sea I needed the antagonists to have a nuclear submarine, but had to supply a rational for why they hadn’t been hunted down and neutralized already.

The world must fit with the story told within it. If I tried to tell the story of Tinker’s Plague in let’s say the present day, logic flaws would occur such as why wouldn’t the CDC descend on mass. Where are the news crews making everything public? Why don’t they mobilize the military to keep order? The shortages of a post-apocalyptic world are vital to my telling of the story and in fact set up the backdrop the story hinges upon. One obvious thing that being in a post-apocalyptic world allowed for was the isolation of my protagonists which really ups the dramatic tension.

In Tinker’s Sea I had to add a political element that springs from the cold war going on between the two technologically advanced nation states to enhance the reason for their failure to use their advanced military systems to neutralize the pirates. This came in the form of a treaty that limited the scale of military equipment that the nations could deploy on the great lakes. A treaty like this again rises logically from the world I created.

Thus the first rule is; “Follow the logic of your world.”

Internal Consistency

The world must be internally consistent.

In Slaves of Love, I have a high-tech, urban society set about a hundred years from now. This has several implications, for one the cities have largely been converted into “Towers”. These structures reach kilometers into the air. The suburbs, or low towns, form what can be called the wrong side of the tracks. To make the towers I had to advance materials technology, thus poly-carbonates, super-strong, log chains of carbon molecules, are used for many things we use steel for today. This also means that space launch technology has advanced with super-light, super-strong, space shuttles. It is a hundred years in the future so gasoline is a bad memory; instead, people drive electric cars. Using electric cars meant that I had to have recharge stations reminiscent of parking meters at each parking space because of the poor mass to power storage ratio of batteries when compared to chemical fuels. The pressure differential between the bottom and the top of these kilometers high towers will result in hurricane force winds. It makes sense to harness these to supply power. This is but one consequence of people living in these towers that has to be examined to keep the book’s internal logic. The answers to these problems echo out into the world in general.

In Horn of the Kraken the Norse apocalypse, Ragnarok, has come about. From the writings passed down to us we know that Ragnarok has several ages the first of which is marked by Fimbulwinter, a time where the sun and moon have been eaten by the cosmic wolves and all is arctic cold and dark. Now the logical consequences of this cannot be ignored. Torches, candle lanterns, fires all sources of light and warmth are vitally important. It also means that any light makes you visible from a long way off and a lack of light makes you invisible and practically blind. Food production has all but stopped. Another matter of vital importance is that waste removal systems that rely of flowing water no longer function. Thus if I wanted to use flowing water in the book I had to supply a rational or violate consistency. I couldn’t have light when I wanted it without explaining why. I had to stay consistent to a dark and icy world. It was often a pain to do so, but those limitations forced me, well my charters, to be innovative. Another factor that added to the book in this way was the technology was from 936 CE, and I had to stay consistent to that.

The idea is to look at the elements you put into the world and think of how they would affect that world, not just in the ways that are convenient to your story. This will make your world seem real and may even present you with some interesting elements to use in the book that you hadn’t thought of before.

Character Impact

The people in the world must reflect their world. No one lives in a vacuum. We are all affected by the society we live in, the things we grew up with, and the things we deal with every day.

In Nukekubi, my paranormal detective story, I have a structured, urban society, ours, where rationalism has largely eroded a belief in magic. This results in Ray, my wizard, having to have a day job. Most people not believing in magic forces the practitioners of magic to be circumspect. Imagine going to your boss and saying, “I need a few days off so I can hunt a Japanese goblin that is scaring people to death.” Getting canned might be the least of your troubles. The logic of a world, where magic is only slightly more demonstrative than ours, is that mystics are as closeted as they are in our own world. Keeping this kind of secret will influence a character.

Another aspect of this is that there are simply things your characters can’t talk to people at large about. This will create friction in interpersonal relationships. The sense of being an outsider looking in is likely to make the character a little judgmental when looking at the rest of society.

An additional consequence of this sociological denial is that your character has a way they can strike out at people, and not risk retaliation. What does it say about your character’s moral nature that they don’t?

In Worlds Apart I have a wizard from a parallel earth with different physical laws who has brought a limited store of magic from his world with him to ours. How he interacts with the world around him dominos out even though he tries to be circumspect. Any time a character adds an element to the world you need to ask yourself how far the ripples from these actions will reach. If a wizard flaps his gums in Derbyshire England will it cause a hurricane in Miami?

What you need to do is think about how things have influenced you and extrapolate how the elements of your world will influence your character. Will they rebel, conform, not care? The world your characters live in is as much a part of them as their hands and feet, so be careful how you sculpt it.

Sub-worlds

My final point is to remember there are many worlds in your world.

In The Hollow Curse, my two leads experience a series of past lives. To make the story work my characters need to believe in reincarnation. They also should be people pre-inclined to recalling past lives so I made than practicing Druids.

Some of you are probably scratching your heads and saying, ‘what’s a Druid?’ others are thinking, “weren’t they killed off?” The answers are that they are the Priests of the Celtic Religion, and there are still several Druidic churches and societies in operation today. This is the point, they are a world within our world that many people have no contact with. Have the modern Druids been affected by the modern world? Definitely, who’s going to pass up indoor plumbing? Do they form a world within the world with its own unique influences that will affect the characters? Definitely. You have to look at the sub-worlds that your character moves through and how they influence them.

A character may move between several sub-worlds in a book. In The Hollow Curse, Alysia is part of the worlds of a university graduate student, a Druid or Dryad, a term some use for a Druidic Priestess, a jogger, and a budding police consultant. All of these sub-worlds will influence her although she may be their only crossover point, and she may keep them all very distinct.

Another great source of conflict is to have a person slip and apply the norms of one sub-world they live in to another sub-world that they live in. If you want to see the result of this just look at a high school kid who is into science and sports. If he slips up and describes the flight of a baseball referencing the laws of physics how well is he received by the other jocks? It can range from good-natured teasing to downright hatred and ostracism.

So at another level of world building, you must be aware of the sub-worlds that inhabit your story and allow the pertinent ones to leak in and influence your character. No one completely turns themselves on and off when they move between these sub-worlds and conflicts between the various worlds your character inhabits can add spice to the book or even be the central theme of the book.

The idea of all this is that world building should be as important as character and plot to your story. In a sense, your world should be a major character present in every scene affecting every action, influencing, but never overshadowing, the other aspects of the story.

Thank you very much for reading.

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Author Tips and Tricks by Andrew Hess

In the nine years I have been writing, there have been many hiccups and bumps in the road. One of the things I have been thankful for have been the great authors I’ve had the pleasure of learning from along the way. I am happy to pass that on to others.

  • The first thing I recommend to all authors and aspiring authors is to read. Read everything you can get your hands on whether it’s a free book or costs you money. There are a few books I recommend if you are starting out. The first is called “Plot and Structure” by James Scott and “Inside the Story” by Dara Marks. Both books will help give you the basic foundation for your stories and put you on the right path. After those, start searching for books that help you write in your genre of choice or other authors that have been writing in that genre so that you see what works and what doesn’t.
  • The second thing I will recommend is to start using the social networking sites. No I don’t mean going on Facebook and talking to your friends and family. I mean using twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Google Plus to seek out authors, bloggers, promoters, and book reviewers and establish relationships with these people. They are the ones you can learn from and build a network of like-minded people that have goals very similar to yours and know what you are going through.
  • Thirdly, ask the people closest to you for help in Beta testing your book. Have them read it over, ask for their opinions, suggestions, what they liked best about it, what they disliked about it, and what they would like to see more of. Typically I would choose a friend who will be completely honest with you or another author that you have become very close with.
  • Lastly, learn marketing strategies. Whether you decide to pay someone to do the work for you or you decide to do the work yourself, there are many options out there to help promote your book and will need to research. Promotions I suggest are; Virtual Book Tours, Virtual Launch Parties, Cover Reveals, Book Signings, and Table Events.
  • There is only one more thing I would strongly advise for all authors and/or readers. Remember to rate and review the books on Amazon.com and Goodreads. Everyone has a voice; let it be heard.

CAM00384Andrew Hess is a resident of Long Island New York who likes to spend much of his time traveling between Long Island, New York City and the Dutchess County areas. In 2011 he debuted with his first book Chamber of Souls, a small book of free verse poetry which depicted the struggles of a man who thought he had everything in the world only to feel like he lost everything after a rough break-up. In 2013, Andrew debuted his novel The Phoenix Blade: Project Justice; the first in The Phoenix Blade series.

Andrew is also a blogger at TheWritersRevolution13.blogspot.com where he interviews and promotes other authors in order to assist indie authors get more exposure. Andrew is also a frequent guest on the Anthony Charles Podcast, a show dedicated to creative professionals as they give insight into their works and the lives they lead; guests have included authors, comedians, musicians, stuntmen, actors and producers.

Purchase link: Amazon.com

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Amazon Author Page|Twitter|Facebook:TheRealPhoenix13|Facebook:ThePhoenixBlade

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords