Wandering Mole Syndrome, A Teenage Book Editor, And Other Revelations

     "There is no frigate like a book to take us miles away," wrote Emily Dickinson.
      Though I've always understood the truth of the poet's words in describing a book one is reading, I've more recently learned that this dictum is equally true regarding a book that one has written.
       Since my novel was launched by Black Rose Writing last June, 

...I've been navigating a sea of new and unanticipated activities, meeting new people, literary neophytes like myself as well as veteran authors full of advice and wisdom that I wish I'd been apprised of before I set sail for the strange new intertwined worlds of book-publishing and book-marketing.
   Still, I am continuing to rack up book-related experiences that are miles away from the sorts of things that normally fill my day-to-day world.

     The latest of those experiences occurred last Saturday when I spent  a good part of the day in the recording studio of yourbookmybook.com,

​...with YBMB media coordinator Miguel Lopez,

...interviewing authors for the YBMB podcast, and doing a book talk segment on my own book.

    

     Our first podcast interview was with a mother-daughter team, Melisa L. Ruscsak and her  daughter Cheyenne.

     Melisa, under the pen name of M.L. Ruscsak, writes a fantasy novel series which she calls "Of Lite and Darke,"

...the most recent volume of which is entitled "The New Reign."

     Cheyenne is Melisa's line editor, checking her mother's grammar and spelling, sometimes standing over her mother's shoulder as she writes.
       Cheyenne is 14 years old.
      Cheyenne is a self-described "grammar nut," a voracious reader, and autistic.  For all her reading, however, Cheyenne has never read a reference book on grammar.
     "With her being autistic, it's one of her strengths," said Melisa of  her daughter's uncanny spelling and grammatical ability.

     Here's the link to my interview with Melisa L. Ruscsak and Cheyenne (It is Cheyenne who towards the end of the interview corrects my pronunciation): 
https://www.facebook.com/yourbookmybook/videos/2028435417414014/?hc_location=ufi  

     After Melisa and Cheyenne's interview I did my book talk  segment during which I spent about 11 minutes talking about  my book and myself,

...finishing off with an ad for the Authors at the Loft event that will take place on July 8 at The Book Loft of German Village in Columbus and during which I will be doing an open mic.

     Here's the link to my book talk podcast:
https://www.facebook.com/yourbookmybook/videos/2028462137411342/?fref=mentions

      Then it was time for the last podcast, an interview with Spenser Stoner, author of the  novel, "Ophelia, Demons, and Money." Here's the link to Spenser's interview: https://www.facebook.com/yourbookmybook/videos/2028476837409872/

    Spenser, a fantasy writer from Reno Nevada, shared with us, among other things, how he learned to draw so as to avoid in his writing what he called Wandering Mole Syndrome.  I asked Spenser to explain what he meant by Wandering Mole Syndrome, though after he explained I knew exactly what he meant, all writers do, though I don't believe this phenomenon has ever been given a name before.
     As Spenser described it, Wandering Mole Syndrome occurs when a writer gives a character a particular physical characteristic, such as hair color, eye color, or a mole - though it could happen with a character's name, too -  and then decides to change this characteristic during the course of the novel but, through lack of careful editing, neglects to make the change throughout the book. Spenser explained how as a teenager he once read a fantasy tale in which a character's mole (kind of an important mole, one gathers) was on her back  in the beginning of the novel. But once at a later point in the book the mole showed up on her shoulder.  Still later the mole made an appearance on the character's face.
      Hence when Spencer began writing he got into the habit of also drawing his characters so as to be at all times mindful of what the characters look like and  the color and location of all physical features.
       I'm thinking that before I get much deeper into my next novel I should mayhaps learn to draw.

"Equal and Opposite Reactions"
          By Patti Liszkay
          Buy it on Amazon
     http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa