There are really four people who make this podcast happen- you already know our hosts, authors Steve Diamond and Larry Correia and you might know Jack, but who is the mysterious fourth person who makes it happen? And what writing advice did he give that Steve was so impressed with that he wanted to dedicate an entire episode to exploring? Find out on this week’s exciting and thought provoking episode of the WriterDojo!
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This week’s episode is brought to you by Craig Nybo’s Dead Girl.
https://amzn.to/3qAEKDc
Also, big shout out to Nancy Frye for the awesome job on the ad- if you’re ever in need of a professional VO actress, I highly suggest you give her a shout! http://nancyfrye.mystrikingly.com/
About Dead Girl:
I love true ghost stories and hauntings. Every small town in America has a haunted spot, a place where the teenagers go to freak themselves out, whether it be a bridge, a graveyard, a stretch of forest, or a weather-beaten, abandoned house.
My home town of Kaysville, Utah has such a spot; it’s called Kay’s Cross. The story goes, Bishop Kay, the founder of Kaysville, buried his 3 wives back-to-belly inside the cross. The three scarlet dead sisters hung there, suspended in eternal crucifixion, confined in the stone. Teenagers in Kaysville used to say if one stood too close, one of the book of dead sisters would claw through the stone and grab at you with a skeletal claw. Others said if you climbed up on top of the cross and looked down at the ground, you would see a surface swirling with maggots. Being a bit of a macabre-minded sole as a lad, I participated in both rituals and, to my dissatisfaction, there were no morbid consequences.
I dedicate Dead Girl to every teen haunt in every small town across America. This ghost boundary book tells the almost real story of a haunted bridge that could exist anywhere in America, perhaps right in your own town. Here’s to scary books. I love them. I write them. I am excited to contribute Dead Girl to the ever-growing collection of them.Happy reading and I wish you the most profound of lucent nightmares. Yours truly, Craig Nybo
On the subject of the songs/poems in Lord of the Rings, those are there for a specific reason, as is everything else: because Tolkien wrote the whole work to be a new mythology for England (we lost a lot of it during various invasions over the centuries, and most of it was oral, not written).
As such, they’re integral to the overall work in the same way they would be in any other mythology. LotR is far more than merely a story 🙂
If I recall correctly, the poems also were understood to be “translated from Elven” and so the implication was the were better in the original language. It’s a convenient work around to them being…okay. Sort of like the remark of “if you don’t know much about X, have the POV character be the least knowledgeable about X.”
I believe that’s correct, yes. Just going by some of the titles, like ‘The Lay of Luthien’. Luthien being an Elven name and all, it makes sense they’d be Elvish originally.
In fact, doesn’t the first movie actually have Aragorn quietly singing that lay in Elvish? I seem to recall that being the case. Need to rewatch the extended cut trilogy again one day soon… while we still have electric -_-
The description of how to write a scene using music blew my mind away. Just that made every moment listening to the podcast worth its weight in gold.
I really must email you guys about the cost of a book promo on the podcast.
Are there any stories that have good magic systems based on or involving music?
I remember the Odyssey had the sirens, but I’m pretty sure that just consisted of “If you hear them you’ll go mad and rush after them” and “Odysseus was nuts enough to want to hear them, so we tied him to a post for that part.”
“So what did they sound like?”
“I dunno. I had my ears plugged like a sane person.”
L E Modesitt had one in his Spellsong series. It was really good for the first few books.