Summer in Wales...

It's August, it's supposed to be summer. The forecasters, back in April, promised us a 'barbecue summer', with temperatures soaring and lots of glorious sun. A lot of folk decided they'd holiday in UK this year instead of going abroad. There were going to be lots of outdoor events. The International Eisteddfod was being held in Bala in August. It would be wonderful...



Now they are backtracking. July has had double the usual rainfall. There have been floods. A local carnival was cancelled because the field was knee-deep in mud. The Brecon Show has been called off, for the first time in 50 years! 'Ah', the forecasters are saying, 'it's very hard to predict the weather.'



I've got news for them. We KNEW that! If they wanted an accurate forecast, they should have said 'Well, it probably won't snow this summer,' and they'd have been right. (Well, right so far, anyway.)



But this is Wales, where we export rain. (Seriously, we do. There are valleys flooded to form reservoirs that feed the industrial centres like Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham with lovely Welsh rainwater.) So should we really believe anything the Metmen tell us? Of course we shouldn't. But we do. Every year we hope that this year will bring us the summers we remember from our misty youth, when every day dawned bright and warm, and even our parents cast off their woolly layers and basked in the heat. Dads in shorts, showing pasty white hairy shins. Mums in cotton summer frocks, but with a cardie kept handy just in case. And we would strip down to our bathing suits and frolic like lambs...



I'm sure it rained back then, as well, but we don't remember it. It was always sunny...



And my three-year-old grandson, born at the end of a blazing July, has yet to experience a real summer. Oh, well, there's always next year.

Master Plots

I have a book that I bought from Writer's Digest Book Club. The book is titled 20 Master Plots and how to build them by Ronald B. Tobias. It takes the classic plots of literature and breaks them down and tells you how to build a story using the same type of plot.
My problem is this:
My characters never want to follow a simple plot line.
Take Moby Dick for instance:
It is considered a pursuit plot. According to Mr. Tobias "The pursuit plot is the lieterary version of hide-and-seek." "One person chases another."
So, you have three phases of the chase - the stakes of the race, the pure chase, and the resolution of the chase.
Simple, huh?
Not for my characters. Oh no. No simple chase for them. There has to be the chase, and a traitor, and a pseudo-traitor (you know - the one you think is the traitor but really isn't), and then we have a monster who chases the chaser and the hero who chases the heroine and cathches her but not before she catches the monster who was chasing her while she was chasing the thing that the chase is all about.

Well, you get the idea.
I was once told that I have a convoluted, devious, and totally insane mind.
If you read Prophecy of Vithan available with Cerridwen Press You will see my mind at work. My current wip Stone of Cruento is even more convoluted, devious and totally insane. However, there is one difference. Stone of Cruento is going to be hot hot hot. So it will probably be offered through Ellora's Cave.
Now, how would you characterize a simple pursuit plot with lots of sex? Hmmmmm,