Posts Tagged ‘pearl’

Ludwig Pearl

Six Classic Elements of a Best Selling Novel

model for Mason), Gardner was easily the best-selling and most prolific of all mystery writers. From the early thirties until his death in 1970, he produced two or three of his The Case of ... novels a year, enough to keep five secretaries busy transcribing his dictation full-time.

Technique #1: Put Your Story Front and Center Story was literally everything to Gardner. Characterization and background were of secondary, if any, importance. To Gardner, the novel was simply the most effective means of presenting his detective puzzles. Like Agatha Christie, Gardner relied heavily on dialogue, so that his books often read like scripts.

Here's the no-nonsense beginning of The Case of the Screaming Woman, an example of how Gardner hooks us immediately with the first bizarre aspect of his story:

Della Street, Perry Mason's confidential secretary, entered Mason's private office, walked over to the lawyer's desk and said, "You always like something out of the ordinary, Chief. This time I have a lulu!"

"Unusual?" Mason asked, looking up from the papers on his desk.

"Unique," she said.

"Give," Mason told her.

"A Mrs. John Kirby telephoned," Della Street said, "and wanted to retain you to cross-examine her husband."

"A divorce case?" Mason asked.

"No, she and her husband are good friends."

"Yet she wants me to cross-examine him?"

"That's right."

"About what?"

"About where he was last night."

Mason frowned. "Della, I'm not a lie detector. I'm not a psychoanalyst. I don't handle cases involving domestic relations."

"That's what I told Mrs. Kirby," Della Street said. "She told me she only wanted her husband's interests protected. She said she wanted you to listen to his story, puncture his self-assurance, and rip him to pieces."

Though few would be tempted to call Gardner a stylist, there's no arguing that he could arrest us with a wildly unlikely premise at the start of each of his books. It was this ability to build a novel on strength of story, rather than on how he told that story, that made him the favorite of millions.

Sometimes this kind of get-to-the-point storytelling is exactly what readers crave-for example, when what they really want is a challenging puzzle in novel form.

If you share Gardner's gift for ingenious plotting, why embellish your book with unnecessary detail or description? You might be doing yourself, and your book, a disservice. Bare-bones, plot-oriented writing may be the perfect approach for your novel of mystery or suspense.

ERSKINE CALDWELL

"From the day of my birth until I reached the age of twenty years, I rarely lived longer than six years in the same place," wrote this red-haired, Georgia-born son of a Presbyterian minister, who at eighteen was running guns for a revolt in Central America. He also worked as a plowboy, poolroom attendant, cotton picker, lumbermill hand, professional football player, taxi driver, stagehand in a burlesque theater, stonemason, soda jerk, cook and waiter, book reviewer and journalist.

Caldwell is best known, however, as the author of sometimes scandalous novels about the Southern poor, most notably 1933's God's Little Acre, among the most popular novels of all time. Not far behind is Tobacco Road, written the year before.

Technique #2: Paint Characters With Heart Caldwell's novels about "American primitives" have enjoyed their phenomenal success largely because Caldwell (like Mark Twain and Bret Harte, to whom he is frequently compared) truly loved the people he wrote about. This love for these people at their best and worst would not have existed if he had not known them so well, and it was this knowledge that allowed him to show them in all their humor, eccentricity and pathos-qualities that make these people irresistible to readers.

In this excerpt from Tobacco Road, Ellie May Lester shows her feelings for Lov Bensey. Lov is married to Ellie May's younger sister Pearl, who refuses to sleep with Lov. Ellie May, though harelipped, is all too willing to give Lov what he wants.

[Lov] was looking at Ellie May now. She had at last got him to give her some attention.

Ellie May was edging closer and closer to Lov. She was moving across the yard by raising her weight on her hands and sliding herself over the hard white sand. She was smiling at Lov, and trying to make him take more notice of her. She could not wait any longer for him to come to her, so she was going to him. Her harelip was spread open across her upper teeth, making her mouth appear as though she had no upper lip at all. Men usually would have nothing to do with Ellie May; but she was eighteen now, and she was beginning to discover that it should be possible for her to get a man in spite of her appearance.

"Ellie May's acting like your old hound used to do when he got the itch," Dude said to Jeeter. "Look at her scrape her bottom on the sand. That old hound used to make the same kind of sound Ellie May's making, too. It sounds just like a little pig squealing, don't it?"

Chances are these are not like the people you encounter daily, but to Erskine Caldwell they might as well have been, and he painted them exactly as he saw them, with a brush full of color, and broad, lively strokes.

In most novels it is vital that the author give us characters we can know and like as much as we find ourselves knowing and liking those in Caldwell's. To create such supersympathetic characters in your novels, look directly to the people you know and love better than any others. Only by knowing and loving your characters can you make us do the same.

IAN FLEMING

Drawing on his experience with British Naval Intelligence, Fleming created James Bond 007, and indeed Fleming and Bond often became confused in the public mind. Though Fleming called his work "trivial piffle," his espionage adventures had been phenomenally successful around the world, with John F. Kennedy among his most avid fans.

Technique #3: Appeal to Our Wildest Fantasies The success of Fleming's books has been attributed to the way they appeal to our wildest dreams. James Bond, more than any other fictional hero, lived many people's fantasy of a life of total self-sufficiency and self-indulgence.

At the climax of You Only Live Twice, Bond is a prisoner of his old nemesis, Ernst Blofeld, in the cliff-top Castle of Death. Bond manages to escape the deadly volcanic mud of the Question Room, save his neck from Blofeld's massive samurai sword, and ultimately overpower and strangle Blofeld. He even sets the Castle to self-destruct-only to climb out a window and find himself trapped on a narrow balustrade.

. . . He looked over the side. A sheer hundred-foot drop to the gravel. A soft fluted whistle above him caught his ear. He looked up. Only a breath of a wind in the moorings of that bloody balloon! But then a lunatic idea came to him, a flashback to one of the old Douglas Fairbanks films when the hero had swung across the wide hall by taking a flying leap at the chandelier. This helium balloon was strong enough to hold taut fifty feet of framed cotton strip bearing the warning sign! Why shouldn't it be powerful enough to bear the weight of a man?

Bond ran to the corner of the balustrade to which the mooring line was attached. He tested it. It was taut as a wire! From somewhere behind him there came a great clamour in the castle . . . Holding onto the straining rope, he climbed onto the railing, cut a foothold for himself in the cotton banner, and, grasping the mooring rope with his right hand, chopped downwards below him with Blofeld's sword and threw himself into space.

It worked! There was a light night breeze, and he felt himself wafted gently away over the moonlit park, over the glittering, steaming lake, towards the sea. But he was rising, not falling! The helium sphere was not in the least worried by his weight! Then blue-and-yellow fire fluttered from the upper storey of the castle, and an occasional angry wasp zipped past him. . . . Now the whole black silhouette of the castle swayed in the moonlight and seemed to jig upwards and sideways and then slowly dissolve like an ice cream cone in the sunshine. The top storey crumbled first, then the next, and the next, and then, after a moment, a huge jet of orange fire shot up from hell towards the moon. A buffet of hot wind, followed by an echoing crack of thunder, hit Bond and made his balloon sway violently.

. . . Punctured by a bullet, the balloon was fast losing height. Below, the softly swelling sea offered a bed. . . .

It seems clear that Fleming never forgot that most people who read for pleasure read to escape, and that these readers want as much escape as they can get for their time and money.

Are your own characters humdrum and mundane, doing humdrum and mundane things, when they would be so much for interesting being and doing things we've only dreamed of? Fleming knew-and every novelist should remember-that one of the greatest joys of writing is that the impossible can be made possible. Give your readers a run for their money. Let them find true, wonderful escape in the worlds you create for them.

MICKEY SPILLANE

His mystery-detective novels have been called nasty and sadistic, but they've won Spillane millions of fans just the same. The Brooklyn-born son of an Irish bartender began his writing career selling stories to the "slicks" and the "pulps," then writing comic books. His novels, most of them starring rough, tough Mike Hammer (said to resemble his creator), landed Spillane on the all-time best-seller list again and again, from 1947's I, The Jury to the fifties' My Gun is Quick, The Big Kill, One Lonely Night, The Long Wait and Kiss Me, Deadly, to 1961's The Deep.

Technique #4: Torture the Reader to the End Of his method of creating suspense, Spillane said: "You don't read a book to get to the middle. You read a book to get to the end. You deliberately torture yourself all the way through, hoping that after all the garbage the end will be worth all the time you spent in the reading thereof. True? It's got to be totally satisfactory in the last line.

A superb example of how Spillane puts his words into action is the ending of I, The Jury (I've used a few dashes so as not to give anything away):

"No, ----, I'm the jury now, and the judge, and I have a promise to keep. Beautiful as you are, as much as I almost loved you, I sentence you to death." . . .

The roar of the .45 shook the room. ---- staggered back a step. Her eyes were a symphony of incredulity, an unbelieving witness to truth. Slowly, she looked down to the ugly swelling in her naked belly where the bullet went in. A thin trickle of blood welled out.

I stood up in front of her and shoved the gun into my pocket. I turned and looked at the rubber plant behind me. There on the table was the gun, with the safety catch off and the silencer still attached. Those loving arms would have reached it nicely. A face that was waiting to be kissed was really waiting to be splattered with blood when she blew my head off. My blood. When I heard her fall I turned around. Her eyes had pain in them now, the pain preceding death. Pain and unbelief.

"How c-could you?" she gasped.

I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.

"It was easy," I said.

Remember how we all love being surprised, and hold some things back as you write your novel, whatever sort of novel it is. It's a wonderful feeling to read a book and realize that a truly skillful novelist has gotten the best of us. Be careful to play fair with your surprises, however; make them believable and be sure to plant any necessary precedents or clues.

FRANK YERBY

Georgia-born Yerby is best known for his vivid and complex Southern tales, the most successful of which are 1946's The Foxes of Harrow, 1947's The Vixens, and 1949's Pride's Castle. A critic once wrote that "Mr. Yerby could be a pretty good novelist if he ever got his mind off the neckline and the cash register," but the world always welcomed a new Yerby novel unconditionally.

Technique #5: Evoke the Magic of the Moment Yerby is famous for his vivid language, for his multiplicity of characters and for writing, in the words of Arna Bontemps, with "a flair for color, an air of easy abandon, the ability to live in the moment and to create characters that live in the moment, a touch of very elementary magic."

Devilseed is Yerby's story of Mireille Duclos, who, like many women of her time, sails penniless into gold-crazed San Francisco in the 1850s and there climbs to riches and respectability. In this scene we see Mireille riding into town as the new wife of Judge Alain Curtwright.

Mireille's imposing mahogany-and-rosewood-paneled landau swept eastward down Clay Street toward Portsmouth Square, drawn at a spanking trot behind her pair of night-black, imported Australian horses. Perched high on the driver's seat before her, the Swithers brothers, James and John, her coachman and footman, sat, clad in livery every bit as imposing as the landau, their faces, under their tall silk hats, blacker than the hides of her splendid five-gaited pair, set in frowns of stern self-importance.

"Mammy" Pleasant had sent the Blacks to Mireille with a note suggesting that she hire them, which Mireille had been pleased to do, even knowing that Mary Ellen Pleasant had surely placed them in her employ to spy on her. Now, staring at their sturdy backs straining against the frock coats of their livery, she had the wickedly delighted feeling that she had "turned" them both: that they now were, if not wholly on her side, at last double agents. For, by awarding them a treatment involving so much kindness, real consideration, even, at times, an easy, affectionate familiarity that no Black menservants in the 1850s could dream of receiving from a young, stunningly beautiful white woman, she got as much information about Mary Ellen Pleasant's weird, devious, and plain evil doings out of them as they carried back to the house on Washington Street about hers.

As she rolled along, with the rear calash top folded back and the breeze stirring her raven hair under her smart little bonnet, all the men on the sidewalks took off their hats and waved them in her direction. More than one of them grandly bowed. The women-what few there were-glared, and ostentatiously turned their backs. Mireille smiled with quiet satisfaction at that sight. Ever since the fabulous Lola Montez, mistress of the immortal pianist-composer Franz Liszt, mistress of the ex-King Ludwig of Bavaria, mistress of-the list was endless!-whose Spider Dance drove men of the cloth, not to mention mere miners and businessmen, out of their minds, had left San Francisco that preceding fall to settle-permanently, she swore-in the pleasant little California mountain town of Grass Valley, Mireille had inherited, by default, Lola's crown as the most celebrated demimondaine in the city. . . .

Yerby uses details of place and time as tools to evoke character, making Mireille and Mary Ellen functions of where and when they live, and vice versa. The Swithers brothers, coachman and footman, very much a sign of affluence at this time, are the device by which Mary Ellen spies of Mireille, who in turn uses them for the same purpose. We see the people on Clay Street showing their feelings for Mireille through social customs of the place and time-grand bows and waves of the hat from the men, exaggerated turns of the back from the women. Note the use of a real and colorful figure, Lola Montez, to bring Mireille and her role in San Francisco into even sharper focus.

Use these techniques to make the characters in your novel virtually an extension of their place and time. Have them use, abuse and react to objects and customs distinctly of their world, so that we cannot recall these characters without recalling how they were dressed, how they spoke, what they ate and all the other ways they interacted with their world.

Not a person has been born who has not been shaped to some degree by where and when he or she lived. The magic of moment in reading fiction is learning how people live in, adapt to and make use of their where and when as we do with ours.

HAROLD ROBBINS It was a tribute to Robbins's staying power and adaptability that he was as much a titan in 1988 as he was forty years earlier, when he published 1948's Never Love a Stranger.

Robbins's publishers once announced that every minute someone bought a Robbins novel-another tribute to his never having let his public down. Not bad for a poor kid from New York who started his career as a grocery clerk, short-order cook, cashier, errand boy and bookies' runner.

Robbins has been praised most for the authenticity of the world in which he sets his novels. Never Love a Stranger drew heavily from Robbins's experience growing up in New York, and so vividly depicted that world of hustlers and racketeers that one critic called it "a Les Misérables of New York."

Technique #6: Make Background a Character In 79 Park Avenue, in which heroine Marja starts out a poor kid from Second Avenue and winds up a Park Avenue call girl, Robbins describes the seamy beachfront world of prostitution as he no doubt observed it growing up:

She walked into the hotel lobby and chose a seat in a discreet out-of-the-way corner. Opening a copy of Vogue that she had carried with her, she glanced through it idly. . . .

A few minutes passed. Then a bellboy stopped in front of her. "Room three-eleven," he said in a low voice.

"Three-eleven," she repeated, a smile on her lips.

He nodded. "Right. He's waiting there now."

"Thank you." She smiled, holding out her hand.

"You're welcome, miss," the bellboy answered, taking the two bills from her. He walked away quickly.

Slowly she closed the magazine, glancing around the lobby as she stood up. It was normal. The house dick was looking the other way, the desk clerks were busy with check-ins, the other people in the lobby were all guests. Satisfied with her quick check, she sauntered toward the elevators. She had nothing to worry about. Everyone was taken care of. Mac, the landlord of the rooming house, had put her wise to that.

"Pick a place to operate from," he had said knowingly. "Then before you do anything, make sure that everybody who might be interested is paid off. They'll leave you alone then, even help you."

Obviously, Robbins would not have undertaken a novel with a background of prostitution if the hadn't felt he could do so convincingly. But his use of detail and ambiance is what sets this and his other novels apart, makes them as memorable for their depiction of world and place as for their characters.

When deciding on the world in which to place your novel, consider the worlds you know so well that you may be overlooking them entirely. Writers have found these worlds, literally right in front of their noses, to be the richest and to work most authentically. What, after all, does a writer-or anyone-know better than his or her own life and the lives of those he or she has observed firsthand?

About the Author

listen to a best seller

Ludwig Pearl

Pearl Floating

Step instructions on how to make a pearl tin cup necklace

There is nothing more lovely than the classic elegance of a tin cup necklace. The floating pearl necklace is not only beautiful, but it can be easy to handcraft if you know how. These are step by step instructions on how to make a pearl tin cup necklace.

The first step is to gather your supplies. You will need a piece of thin sterling silver beading chain, nine pearls, two 2mm silver crimping beads for each pearl (so eighteen total), and a silver lobster claw clasp. This is to make a 16" pearl tin cup necklace. If you prefer a longer length, you may want to add additional pearls. You should always use an odd number of pearls so that one will be in the center of the chain. Other useful tools will be needlenose pliers designed for jewelry making, a tiny drill, a ruler, and a smooth surface or tray upon which to work.

Once you have gathered all of your materials, it is time to begin. To make things easier, it is a good idea to gently enlarge the holes drilled through the pearls with your tiny jewelers' drill. This will allow them to slide freely along the chain while you are spacing them. String all nine pearls onto the silver chain with one of the 2mm crimp beads on each side of every pearl. The crimp beads will be used to fix the pearls in their stations for the tin cup necklace design.

Next, affix the loop end of the lobster clasp to the chain using your pliers. Lay out your chain along the ruler, and attach the claw end of the clasp so that the finished length will be 16" including the clasp. At this point, the pearls will still be sliding freely, but they will not be able to slide off the ends of the chain.

Then it is time to start spacing the pearls. It is extremely important that the spacing is even along the chain. The center three pearls are the most noticeable, so take extra care to get them spaced perfectly. You will secure the center pearl first. Hold the necklace up by the clasp ends so that gravity pulls all of the pearls to the middle of the chain. Squish the first crimp bead beside the center pearl. A handy trick is to then hold the necklace up by one end so that the pearl will fall down flush against the first crimped bead. You can then crimp the bead on the other side of that pearl, knowing that the crimp beads will be as close as possible to the pearl. When the tin cup necklace is complete, the pearls should be nice and still at their stations, with no gaps between them and the crimps.

After the center pearl is in place, set the two on the clasp ends of the chain. Lay the necklace along the ruler, and measure 1.5" from the clasp into the chain. That is where you should secure the next pearl. Following the same procedure as with the center pearl, crimp the beads to affix the two end pearls. Next, go back to the center, and secure the pearls on either side of the middle one, again being careful that they are spaced equidistantly. Then finish it off by crimping the beads to position the remaining pearls, working back and forth to ensure that the spacing comes out evenly.

Ta-da! There you have it, a gorgeous pearl tin cup necklace. Not only will you get years of enjoyment from your floating pearl necklace, but you will have the feeling of pride which comes with making it yourself. And if you love the style of tin cup necklaces, but are not the crafty sort, don't worry; you can always have one made for you by a jewelry designer, and you will enjoy it just as much.

About the Author

Latest collections of Pearl Necklaces and Tahitian Pearls and Akoya Pearls on lagunapearl site.

Pearl Floating

Pearl Vsx Vision

Pearl Vsx Vision

White Pearl

Pearls, Pearl Jewelry and the Celebrities Who Wear Them

Class, style, timeless, sophistication, intelligence……….these are a few of the words to describe pearls and the women who wear them. With so many actresses and other famous women of modern times sporting bigger and more sparkly pearls, pearls have made a big comeback. And it doesn’t look like they’re going to fade away anytime soon. Things have changed as today it’s just not the size of the pearl that makes it a statement, so much as it is a combination of the pearls themselves along with the celebrities who are wearing them. Yes, pearls are certainly enjoying resurgence!

Celebrities and other famous women influence much of the look and style in today’s fashion world while also setting trends. Yesterday’s style masters, Jackie O and Princess Diana, come to mind as both projected a glamorous elegance that so many women have strived to emulate. And who could forget Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s? These women dressed with flair and accessorized with style and everyone wanted to be just like them. As homage to Old Hollywood glamour, here’s a look at pearl jewelry made famous by some of our most beloved ladies.

1. One of the earliest known pearl collections is the Mary Queen of Scots pearls. The most famous piece within this collection was a six-strand necklace strung as a rosary and consisting of more than 600 pearls. Queen Elizabeth I of England was a collector and lover of these pearls.

2. A legend known for her diamonds, not surprisingly, also loves pearls. Actress Elizabeth Taylor owns one of the world’s most famous pearls, the La Peregrina pearl, which was given to her in 1969 by then-husband Richard Burton. This very large, pear-shaped white pearl was found by a slave in the early 1500s in the Gulf of Panama. The magnificent gem was owned by a long line of royalty, starting with Mary Tudor, the daughter of King Henry VIII, before Burton purchased it at auction for Taylor. Interestingly, Taylor once misplaced the famous La Peregrina pearl in her white-carpeted home. After an extensive search, guess where the pearl was found? In one of her beloved dog’s mouths.

You can be a star!

So, here’s a little insight on how you can be a fashion standout. There is an endless supply of imitation pearls and costume Jewelry Pearls on the market. Playing around with them won’t cost you a fortune, can be very fun… and might even inspire you to be a fashion trendsetter. Why not mix various lengths or sizes of pearls together or entwine a silver or gold chain? How about mixing your real pearls with your imitation pearls? Remember when a new season hits, freshen your wardrobe with the latest pearls!

Pearls are available in many hues – you could get several colors, lengths and styles and wear them with your little black dress for many distinct looks. But this season the popular color is lavender. And the lavender family are various from pale iris to plum. Have you seen pearl rings in the magazines? From small, understated rings to oversized ones, pearl rings are hot.

As a result, you can see that pearls will never go out of style - they are always a classy and a traditional wardrobe accessory that will never disappoint. You would not be wrong in saying that pearls are forever.

About the Author

Christine is the owner of http://www.orientalpearls.net a supplier of wholesale pearls Jewelry worldwide. He has been sourcing and wholesaling pearls jewelry.

White Pearl

Review Pearl

What You Ought To Know When Buying Pearl Jam Tickets

Whenever someone hears of a new band, that person is usually very eager to go ahead and buy a few tickets of the band so that he or she can see whether the event will be interesting. Having said that, it is extremely important to ensure that when you are buying the tickets, you need to have a basic understanding a group so that you can determine from yourself whether the band in question is actually worth your while. If you find that the band has got values that you love, then you should go with the band. On the other hand, if at all you feel that the band does not stand for the things that you value, then you should not go with the band. In this article, we are going look at the Pearl Jam band so that you can determine whether it is really worthwhile to buy the Pearl Jam tickets.

Formation of The Band

The first thing that you need to know before buying the Pearl Jam tickets is the process of the formation of the band. The band was formed in the year 1990 by three individuals: Stone Gossard, Jeff Amen, and Chris Cornell. It is important to take not of the fact that these people had performed and even produced together a number of times previously, and that they had broken up as a result of stylistic differences.

The Troubles

Like many other bands, Pearl Jam had run into the common hurdles that any fast-rising bands have ever risen to. First, they became extremely popular, something that is difficult for anyone to handle. There was the constant media attention and the speculation that the band was definitely going to break up. A lot of attention was being paid to Vedder, the front man band member. Again, this was the time when videos were really popular, but the band refused the idea of releasing videos simply because of the fact that they really are not the best way of expressing music. In the year 2000, the band experienced some problems because of the fact that nine fans had been crushed and suffocated in the concert this nearly led to their retiring, a s it proved to be a tragedy indeed.

Overall, the Pearl Jam tickets are your thing f at all you love Rock ad roll music. However, if you do not like this music, then you will definitely not be pleased with the band.

If you would like to get the Pearl Jam tickets I would advise you to visit TicketNetwork for great discounts.

About the Author

Nadav Snir operates a website which includes tickets to any show and sport event in the world. To get the best ticket prices, visit: http://www.great-info-products.com/Tickets/ticketnetwork.html

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