Beth Alvarez - Author of Epic Fantasy

  • Blog juggling

    Bloggling. That’s what I’ll call it.
    I don’t know why, but I inexplicably always convince myself that I can maintain more than one blog. I have no idea why I do this, you’d think that after about ten years I’d learn that I can only manage about one. And sometimes not even one.

    Sometimes I convince myself that it’s best to keep some things separated. That my life as a writer and my life as a business owner and my life as a housewife and my life as an artist are all separate things and should be separate as far as where I write about them, but why? I’m not a bunch of separate people, I’m one person who happens to do a whole lot of things.
    It might take a while, but someday I’ll convince myself that it’s easier and more interesting to just have all the stuff I do in one place. Easier for friends and followers to see what I’m up to. And easier for me to find everything, if I end up needing it again.

    So in any case, I’ve been closing old blogs and livejournal accounts and deleting wordpress installations here and there. A bit of fall digital housecleaning, if you will. The past couple weeks have been pretty uneventful here, so I got nothin’ – I try to update this thing every week, because I think writing something that isn’t fiction at least once a week is good for me. But I’ve got nothing to talk about right now.

    Instead, I’ll be moving some of the how-tos and little tutorial bits I had on my other blogs to here. That way they’ll still be around and my friends can still see them and hopefully make use of the information.

    In the meantime, if you think of something I’ve posted somewhere that you found interesting or useful, let me know and I’ll make sure it survives here! That’s helpful, right?

  • Friday Photo Break, vol. 32

    I really love statues. This one in particular belongs to my mother, sitting on the corner of her front porch. My father has grown to dislike this statue, wanting to throw her away as she ages and begins to crumble, showing cracks and heavy wear.  I’ve always thought that the aging process makes statues more beautiful. Mom intends to move this angel statue to the woods beside their home, leaving her alongside a trail to let her be covered in moss and vines. I can’t wait to see how she looks then.

  • Friday Photo Break, vol. 31

    A butterfly enjoying one of Mom’s flowers. Truly, her garden is a wonderful place.

  • Why the internet should abandon five-star ratings

    I’ve brushed on this here before, but it was on my mind recently, so I thought I’d speak about it.
    There’s an old XKCD comic floating around that summarizes starred ratings on the internet. This is it:

    Credit: XKCD

    Sadly, it’s quite accurate. As consumers, we want perfection. We want to love everything we spend our money on. If something doesn’t have a top-tier rating, it must not be worth our time and effort. I understand that and agree, but the more time I spend online, the more I realize that the five star rating system is horribly broken.

    Five-star systems add unnecessary levels in an attempt to describe a consumer’s satisfaction rating more accurately, but it falls short of its goal when a percentage satisfaction rating is just as (if not more!) effective. Not only that, but the problem is exacerbated in the fact that every website that uses starred reviews uses a different rating scale for them. This can confuse users, and can skew results based on what the userbase is accustomed to using.

    For example, let’s compare Amazon’s five-star rating scale to that of Goodreads, since those are two major book review outlets.

    Amazon’s rating breaks down like this:
    One star = Hate it
    Two stars = Don’t like it
    Three stars = It’s okay
    Four stars = Like it
    Five stars = Love it

    While the system on Goodreads breaks down like this:
    One star = Don’t like it
    Two stars = It’s okay
    Three stars = Like it
    Four stars = Really like it
    Five stars = It’s amazing!

    See the problem? A three-star rating on Goodreads is a positive thing, meaning the book was enjoyable. This is a very common rating on Goodreads and isn’t considered a negative rating. But to a consumer who is used to Amazon, it means something entirely different.

    There’s a reason I don’t use starred ratings whenever I post reviews of media here. Simply put, it’s the same reason the five-star system is broken, really. Especially when media like books or movies are involved.

    When you read, watch, or listen to something, your experience is not broken down into five categories. Either you like it, you don’t like it, or you’re indifferent. If you look at places with very successful and accurate rating systems, like eBay, it’s broken down into those three categories only. Positive, negative, and neutral. And really, that’s the way all ratings systems should be. Not only is it plenty broad enough to explain your feelings about the media you’re consuming, it encourages people to write text reviews to go with the rating.

    Of course,  places like YouTube further simplify the rating system by removing the middle ground and simply allowing “like” and “dislike” votes, and that gets the job done just as well.

    How do you feel about starred rating systems?

  • September Giveaway

    I thought about making this the October giveaway, but since it’s Halloween themed, wouldn’t it make more sense for you to have it to wear for the month of October?

    Tree of Life pendants are one of my favorite things to make. Classes on how to make them were offered at work when I was still working a day job, and I spent a lot of time peeking at the work being done since I wasn’t free to take the class for myself. I puzzled it out from there.

    I like my pendants to be smaller than the ones you make in the class, though. They’re roughly the size of a half-dollar.

    This one is made with hematite colored wire and a dyed shell bead. While the wire and chain are plated with the hematite finish and should hold up indefinitely, I can’t promise it will stay gunmetal gray forever. Scrapes and dings can take the color off, and some people have a natural skin pH level that can cause the coating to wear off with time. That said, under the gunmetal plating, the wire and chain have a layer of silver plating, with the core being brass underneath that, so even if the plating wears, it only gets more interesting coloration!

    Like it? Want it?
    Leave a comment here or on my Facebook page to enter. Or, comment both places to double your chances to win.
    If you have to use an OpenID to comment here, please make sure you sign your comment with a name and initial, a username, or an email address so I know how to tell you that you’ve won!

    The drawing will happen on the 30th.
    Good luck!!

  • Friday Photo Break, vol. 30

    I’m scared of bees. Like, really, really scared of bees. I originally planned to take a picture of these pretty orange flowers in Mom’s garden, but when I got to them, I discovered they were covered in dozens of fat bumblebees. I was terrified, but determined to get a picture of the flowers. Naturally, every shot I got was photobombed by a bee… oh well.

  • Death of the Sun going paperback

    No matter how many times I do it, submitting a piece of writing somewhere makes me unreasonably nervous. It’s not like I’m afraid of people reading my work, or not reading my work, or not liking it, or anything like that. I guess what it all comes down to is that every time I submit my work for something, I’m afraid something will go horribly wrong.

    Somewhere out there, I picture machines breaking down and steam shooting from pipes as rivets pop and fly across the room. I picture fiery explosions and panic in the streets. I don’t know what could possibly go wrong, but I’m sure that

    Death of the Sun paperback proof

    something, somewhere, just might.

    Naturally, because of this, prepping for the paperback version of Death of the Sun has been an adventure and a half. With all digital versions getting a facelift and another thorough editing job to go with the launch, I spent a lot of time deciding what I should do to make the paperback special.

    Well, my first proof copy arrived today. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s something else to see it actually in my hands. A quick page-through shows that the formatting is beautiful, but I will probably have to re-think the inclusion of graphics I drew for the purpose of prettying it up, since they didn’t translate quite as well as I hoped.

    But that’s what a proof is for. Making sure everything is in order. And since it got here without any fiery explosions and no bursting pipes or billowing steam that I know of, I’m just going to be content to breathe easy for a few days while I read through and make sure there aren’t any typos I’ve missed.

    And don’t worry – As soon as it’s ready to be set free in the world, I’ll definitely let everyone know.

  • Old Cemeteries

    I never outgrew the teenage goth phase.
    I still have the boots and the clothes and I’m not entirely sure where my black lipstick went, but Halloween is in two months and I’m sure I can get another tube pretty easily.

    Naturally, in a really stereotypically teenage goth fashion, I love old cemeteries. I’ve been out to Elmwood cemetery in Memphis several times and it’s one of my favorite places in the city, oddly enough. Well, maybe not that oddly, if you know me.

    In any case, the area my parents live in hosts a neat old old cemetery. I didn’t really know how close it was, or I might have spent a lot of time there when I still lived with my family and loved to drive the narrow country roads. I went to see my family early in the month, and on an unseasonably pleasant morning, I got a stroller for the baby and took a trip with my mother to visit the place.

    If you aren’t a fan of cemeteries, I suggest you stop reading now, because I took lots of pictures and I’m about to share them. I know not everyone finds them as interesting as I do, so I’ll forgive you if you bow out now. You can always come back closer to Halloween when you’re looking for something to spook you. If not, then keep going, and share the experience with me!

    Despite being small and extremely secluded, down a narrow country road traveled only by the people who live there, the cemetery is very well kept. Sadly enough, what this picture doesn’t show is the big “No Trespassing” sign nailed to the beautiful old tree shading the entrance. Since the cemetery is so secluded, it’s a popular spot for local teenagers to sneak out to so they can do things they probably don’t want their parents to know about. The problem comes in that they aren’t particularly respectful, and a large number of headstones have been knocked down or shattered by people climbing and sitting on them.

    I actually would have been out to visit the cemetery a lot sooner, but my Dad scared me out of going by informing me that the groundskeeper made a practice of running said teenagers off with his shotgun if he caught them. I figured it would be best to wait til I could visit with my family, who said groundskeeper would recognize.

    To get to the place, you have to cross this very questionable little bridge that goes over the creek. Then, once you get to the other side, there’s the wrought iron fence.

    I’m not sure if it used to surround the whole cemetery or if it ran to the treeline or what, but there’s a bit of fencing left, some of it wired to stakes that have to hold it up.

     It’s rusted and tarnished, covered in moss and lichen, and absolutely beautiful. There’s a wide double-gate at the top of the hill, with  just a little of the original posts remaining. You can tell they were fastened to tall wooden posts, but I’m not sure how high they went. The smaller gate is framed by big iron posts.

     

    There’s not a whole lot of grave markers. I saw one as recent as the 1950s, but most of them are from the late 1800s, and most belong to young women and babies.

    A baby’s shoe, carved into a headstone

     Some of them are simple, but some are very interesting, and many had engraved poems that were so worn it was almost impossible to read. I saw more than one headstone that had been so battered by weather that, while still standing, there were no remaining signs of anything that had been carved into it.

    Quite a few headstones were so damaged that they had been laid down and anchored in concrete. It prevents them from falling and breaking any further, but it exposes their faces and any carvings, like the angel above, to erosion from rainfall. Some remained crisp and readable despite their age.

    While most of the grave markers were small, some no taller than halfway to my knee, some were enormous – With the decorated base and topper displaying a broken branch of the family tree, this grave marker was around seven feet tall and carved on every side with words from the family.

     One was accompanied by a planter, which someone had added silk flowers to. It’s hard to tell who might have put them there – The groundskeeper, or descendants of family?

    Most of the epitaphs were too worn to read without assistance. I tried to photograph as many as I could, figuring they could later be adjusted in Photoshop to determine what they used to say. So far, the only one I was able to read belonged to a young woman named Emma.

    Remember friends, as you pass by
    As you are now, so once was I
    As we are now, so you must be
    Prepare for death and follow me.

    As creepy as it is, I have to say I like it.

  • Friday Photo Break, vol. 29

    Lilies in my mother’s front garden.

  • August giveaway #1 results

    I honestly thought I would have time to do two this month, but I ended up taking an unexpected trip to visit my family and was gone when I planned to do the drawing and organize the next giveaway. Oh well – There’s always next month! This time I think I’ll plan to do just one for September.

    Anyway, if you missed it, August’s freebie was these:

    Entries ended up being spread across here and Facebook because a few people had trouble leaving comments on the blog, so I’ll be looking into that problem for next month. Especially since I’ll be giving away some bigger and fancier pieces.

    I put all the names into a cup and with the help of my 8-month-old assistant, drew one and crinkled the paper real good…

    And there you have it. Hoorah! Congratulations!