3 Posts for March 2012

TORITOS DE PUCARA

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Author R. Ann Siracusa welcomes you to her blog

IT'S THE JOURNEY THAT COUNTS

Pack your bags, pour a goblet of 1998 Far Niente Cabernet Sauvignon, settle in a comfortable first class seat with one of my novels, and get ready to travel to exotic foreign lands for romance and intrigue—and a good laugh. Enjoy the adventure. It’s not the destination that matters; it’s the journey that counts.

TORITOS DE PUCARA

Traveling in Peru is like experiencing other places in the world where thousands of years of civilizations steamroll over one another. Century after century, culture after culture, all leave their mark, but not as layers. Instead, the various cultures, beliefs, and traditions are stirred into the mix and entwined until only archeologists can determine their origins.

Peru is certainly no exception, but exists as a melting pot of modern / colonial Spanish and Inca / pre-Inca cultures.

Where is Pucara, Peru?

The town of Pucara (or Pukara)—population 5,000 to 10,000, but no absolute figure—is a quiet pueblo located in the southern highlands in the northern basin of Lake Titicaca.  It's about 66 miles north of the city of Puno (Lake Titicaca) between Cuzco and Puno. The altiplano (high plane in the Andes Mountains), is very dry, bleak, and not particularly hospitable terrain.

   

The people there (to me) lacked the joy of living I observed in other parts of Peru, and the inhabitants work hard and put to use every possible resource.

Within the town, facing the Plaza de Armas, is the Church of Santa Isabel De Pukara built by Jesuit missionaries in 1767.  Its ornate interior a large mural of the Jatun Ñak'aq, El Gran Degollador (or Decapitator).



There is also the Museo Lítico de Pukara just off the plaza, on the road to the pre-Columbian archeological site by the same name (300 B.C. thru 300 A.D.) is known for its unusual horseshoe-shaped temple of stone masonry. Actually, the museum has some very wonderful ceramic pieces.

   

Pucara is famous for its ceramic production, a tradition dating back at least 2,500 years.  And it is the home of the Toritos De Pucara.

What are the Toritos De Pucara?

It is tradition and very common in the highlands of the Andes to place to ceramic bulls on the red clay tile roofs of the houses.  The two bulls are placed side by side at the peak of the roof, sometimes with a ladder and a cross.

According to Escaped to Peru – Latin American Blog “Two bulls side by sale (male and female) are said to signify various things.”  Help me out, here.  I was under the impression (possibly an incorrect one) that all bulls were of the male persuasion.  Am I missing something?

Regardless, the bulls keep the house safe with a blessing to the “Apus” (the Inca mountain gods) and ensure health, wealth, and unity for the occupants of the house.

     
 
        



The bulls are combined with a ladder and a cross to allow easy passage to heaven when the final call comes.
     

You can buy these at the market outside the church.  Buy them there, because I’ve haven't found them in the states, and on-line they run from $60 to $100 each.
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References
http://www.rediscovering-america.com/html
http://www.delange.org/Pucara/Pucara.htm
go2peru.biz/peru_guide/puno/photo_pucara_museum_church.htm
http://escapedtolatinamerica.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html
http://www.historiacultural.com/2009/04/la-cultura-pukara-pucara-puno.html


LET'S GO TO BARSOOM

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LET’S GO TO BARSOOM

No! Not the Bar Room. Barsoom. You know: Mars. John Carter. Sci-Fi. Oh, you didn’t know?


Frank Franzett’s cover art for the Barsoom Series


The Barsoom Series
The Barsoom series, created by author Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1912, is a fictional romantic representation of the planet Mars. It depicts a savage world of honor, noble sacrifice, and constant struggle, where martial prowess is paramount, and where many races fight over dwindling resources. The world is peopled with strange creatures, beautiful women, advanced technology, lost cities, heroic adventures and forgotten ancient secrets. Action/Adventure at its best.

I believe this is one of the first significant sci-fi series to be written, and one of the most dramatic worlds ever created. Obviously, I love this series, and I’ve been waiting nearly fifty years for Hollywood to catch up and make these remarkable books into movies. I’m sure the books have inspired other science fiction writers and adaptations of the stories have been made into comic and movies.

John Carter, a gentleman from Virginia, is the main character. In the first novel, A Princess of Mars, he falls into a cave only to wake up on the planet Mars. Being an adventurous man, John Carter adapts to his new environment, an exotic world slowing sinking toward its eternal slumber.

    
Original cover art by Gino D’Achille                                Another later cover

The world is populated by many intelligent species, human and non-human, all vying for diminishing resources. Carter encounters a plethora of bizarre beings, from the vicious four-armed white apes to the ever-mutating vats of synthetic men, and is constantly fighting strange alien beasts and rescuing women from villains, and eventually (eleven books later) rescues the planet by showing the various colored Martians (black, green, red, and yellow) that they need each other to survive. Ta-Dah.

John Hollow, writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, praised the first three novels of the series as
 "...a particularly fine instance of science fiction's attempt to cope with what Burroughs himself called 'the stern and unalterable cosmic laws,' the certainty that both individuals and whole races grow old and die."

The complete series includes eleven books:
● A Princess of Mars (1912)● The Gods of Mars (1914)
● The Warlord of Mars (1918)
● Thuvia, Maid of Mars (1920)
● The Chessmen of Mars (1922)
● The Master Mind of Mars (1928)
● A Fighting Man of Mars (1931)
● Swords of Mars (1936)
● Synthetic Men of Mars (1940)
● Llana of Gathol (1948)
● John Carter of Mars (1964) actually written by Burroughs's son, John Coleman Burroughs from the original John Carter and the Giant of Mars (1940)
The Art Work
The Barsoom series is one of the most “illustrated” of all works of fiction. In addition to the cover art for many editions of the books, the characters and stories have inspired numerous artists to depict many scenes from the stories. The women of Mars have received particular attention of artists.
    
Dejah Thoris by Chad Spilker                     Another version of Dejah


John Carter and Dejah Thoris by Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell

   
A Princess of Mars by Boris Vallejo                     A Princess of Mars by Frank Shoonover

 
Original cover art by Gino D'Achille    Later Cover of Chessmen of Mars

    
Original cover art by Gino D'Achille     Later cover art for Warlord of Mars

The Movie
Now the first John Carter movie is out.  I hope it will live up to the written word.

 

Edgar Rice Burroughs
Aspiring authors, take heart. Your time will come.

Burroughs was born September 1, 1875 in Chicago, the fourth son of businessman and Civil War veteran Major George Tyler Burroughs. After attending a number of schools, he graduated from the Michigan Military Academy in 1895. When he failed the entrance exam for West Point, he enlisted in the 7th US Cavalry. But that career was not to be. There he was diagnosed with a heart problem, making him unfit for a commission, and was discharged in 1897.

It took a while for Burroughs to find his calling. He drifted for quite a few years, wandering through a series of short-term, low-wage jobs, including ranch hand in Idaho, until he found work at his father's firm in 1899. He married childhood sweetheart Emma Hulbert in January 1900. In 1904 he left his job and found less regular work, initially in Idaho but soon back in Chicago.


By 1911, he was working as a pencil sharpener wholesaler. One of his duties was to verify the placement of advertisements for his sharpeners in various magazines. These were all-fiction "pulp" magazines, a prime source of escapist reading material for the rapidly expanding middle class. Verifying the pencil sharpener ads left Burroughs with a lot of down time, and he utilized it by reading those pulp magazines.

In 1929, in an article entitled “How I Wrote the Tarzan Stories” (published in TheWashington Post and The World Magazine), he recalled thinking that
“...if people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines, that I could write stories just as rotten. As a matter of fact, although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably a whole lot more so than any I chanced to read in those magazines.”
And a writing career was born. Aiming his work at the pulp fiction magazines, his first story, “Under The Moon of Mars” was serialized in All-Story Magazine in 1912. His story "Tarzan of the Apes" (for which Burroughs received seven hundred dollars) appeared in the October 1912 issue of All-Story magazine.

During the time of his first series, he began to write full time and by the end of the series, he had written two novels, including “Tarzan of the Apes”(1913), which became another successful series. The first Tarzan movie was made in 1918 with Elmo Lincoln in the title role .and in 1932 MGM made the movie “Tarzan the Ape Man” staring Johnny Weissmuller.

                 

The Tarzan stories have been translated into more than 56 languages, and reportedly more than 25,000,000 copies of the Tarzan books have been sold worldwide. But Burroughs was a prolific writer and authored many more works, including The Land That Time Forgot, Science and speculative fiction, historical, mysteries, and more. According to the Gale Encyclopedia, “His novels sold more than 100 million copies in 56 languages, making him one of the most widely read authors of the twentieth century.”

In either 1915 or 1919, Burroughs purchased a large ranch north of Los Angeles, CA (which he named "Tarzana") that eventually became the city of Tarzana. In 1940, Burroughs moved to Hawaii. He was 66 when Pearl Harbor was attacked, too old for active service, but became a war correspondent. At the end of the war, he returned to Tarzana and died March 19, 1950. □

Resources
http://www.edgarriceburroughs.ca/worlds/barsoom.html (E R Burroughs official website)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Rice_Burroughs
http://theartofbarsoom.blogspot.com/p/test-rss.html
http://mikethebold.blogspot.com/2010/12/book-review-barsoom-series.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barsoom
http://www.edgarriceburroughs.ca/worlds/barsoom.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/edgar-rice-burroughs#ixzz1od35nbK4
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=John+Carter+Of+Mars&qpvt=barsoom+art&FORM=RESTAB#x0y0
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Edgar+Rice+Burroughs+Martian+Series&qpvt=barsoom+art&FORM=RESTAB#x0y4024



Romance and The Secrets of the Male POV

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Ah, the male view point in Romance fiction. Female Readers and Writers always wonder if the heroes in romance novels are realistic or just what we (the females) want them to be. Well, hold onto your hats. Here’s the real thing.

Please welcome my guest blogger, Bob Richard

Thanks so much Ann for having me on your terrific blog today.

Hi everybody. I’m Bob Richard. I write romances and am a member of RWA – San Diego. I hope you’ll check out my blog on the secrets of the male POV.

In so many romances I have read, the hero has his time on the stage. He thinks (usually in summary thought) in a logical straightforward fashion and we move on to the heroine.

I’m an ex-physicist/engineer/1st in my math classes/trained in logic, but I don’t think that way. Not exactly. I understand summary thoughts are cleaner, clearer, and tend to be straightforward.

When I ponder a complicated problem, I may be investigating various branches of the problem at the same time. I may make a tentative decision subject to future events, more in depth analysis, and/or interaction with the heroine or the villain. I may stop to admire the hummingbird that just landed on me because I have a red and white shirt on. Or pet my dog and realize how important unconditional love is. I might go over what I could say to win the heroine’s heart. In short, I may be heading in all directions at once.

At my blog, http://romancetheguyspov.blogspot.com I look for the exceptions and/or otherwise ignored ways guys think that might enrich your presentation of the male POV.  I started the blog in January 2012 and have written about how some men:
●React to tears.
●Think of the natural look.
●Have lust is in our hearts.
●Read romances and watch romantic comedies.
●React to testosterone changes over time and what it means for your character.
●Think of breast implants.
●Talk less and think more.
Guys are introspective - posted 1/22/12

Studies say women speak 20,000 words a day, and men, 7,000. But men are more introspective to make up for the lack of words. Yet many writers want the male POV to be straight forward, logical, and short. Consider all that was left unsaid, which a male would mull over during or after an encounter.

An example from a romantic comedy:

A girl who is attracted to a guy friend walks up to him in their place of business and says, “It’s warm in here.” She just wants to talk to him and breaks the ice. (Joke, unintended)
The guy really likes her and wants to protect her (yep, men do that) so he says what might be thought of as the dumbest thing by the gal. “Well, look at what you’re wearing.” Said with the warmest smile. She’s wearing a sweater.

“It was colder over there.” She becomes defensive.

He starts staring at the ceiling, inspecting air ducts (to figure out if there’s something wrong with the air-conditioning). She walks off feeling unloved and wondering why the guy thinks she doesn’t know enough to take her sweater off.

The guy might mull over all sorts of things in an effort to repair the relationship. He’d think about how she might interpret his words, if she felt sad, rejected, etc. About how he could have said it better (maybe, “I know I just took my sweater off, and then the air-conditioner, you know, will kick in again. He’d likely reject asking her to take all her clothes off, as too bold. He’d worry about how to make it better for her. He’d worry if she’d think he was showing off as smarter than her because he took his sweater off first. He’d wonder if he could ever explain himself, since his thoughts are so complicated. He’d think: well maybe she didn’t want him anyway, and fine if she thinks so little of him. He’s liable to have all these thoughts occur at the same time and then sort them out.

Will our too-hot heroine and hero get together? Well, you’re the writer. I have a feeling, they’ll lock themselves in the boardroom and damn, their productivity will suffer… or will it?

Okay, some men can get carried away with their thinking. Remember he’s your hero. Guys are introspective. Whatever choice you make with your hero regarding the amount of interior monologue, if you bust a stereotype, make sure your male POV is deep enough to not only show his way of living, loving, and thinking, but you’ll write the POV so well, people will think of you as the next Judith McNaught…”
I hope you visit me when you have time. Leave a comment or follow my blog and I’ll follow yours. For my romance writers try: http://romancetheguyspov.blogspot.com

BIO

Bob Richard grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He is married, has two daughters and two grandsons. A man of many talents, he has an MBA, was a physicist and an engineer, and is a chess master.

       
         Author Bob Richard indie-published his first novel, Neanderthals and the Garden of Eden

The author of four novels, a novella, and several short stories, he writes romantic comedies and contemporary romantic suspense. His first novel, Neanderthals and the Garden of Eden, is the only non-romance although all the love stories are happily ever-afters. It bends genres as a pre-historical multi-protagonist epic, using the palette of magical realism and romantic fantasy to depict the everyday challenge to survive.

His novella, The Wolves of Sherwood Forest, is coming soon.
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