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Use this forum to discuss the February 2022 Book of the month Totem: (Strong Heart #3) by Charlie Sheldon
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Charlie Sheldon
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Post by Charlie Sheldon »

Happy to try to answer any questions you might have about Totem or the whole series....
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Post by Janelydia Mwangi »

What motivated you to place characters in the Indian like history. The totem historical information is very interesting in addition to the whale killer marriage to the bear.
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Post by Ella Oyieko »

What made you choose the animals part of the culture and not other things in the indian culture, like the bear being the totem animal?
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Post by Gabriela Contreras »

What was the hardest part to write? Maybe because you needed to do extra research or it was emotionally close to your life?
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Samuel Mamo
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Post by Samuel Mamo »

what gives you the quality to write in such a consistent manner?
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Post by Charlie Sheldon »

Janelydia Mwangi wrote: 14 Feb 2022, 00:06 What motivated you to place characters in the Indian like history. The totem historical information is very interesting in addition to the whale killer marriage to the bear.
You cannot write about places in the Pacific Northwest, or really anywhere in the Americas, without at some point touching on the First Peoples who have always been here. I wanted to write about the Olympic Peninsula, the Gulf of Alaska, coming of age, an ornery young girl, and whether an ancient legend held by many First Peoples that they have always been here might be true. The killer whale-bear story, first seen in Strong Heart and then reprised to begin Totem, is foundational to everything in the series.
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Post by Charlie Sheldon »

Ellen oyieko wrote: 14 Feb 2022, 02:40 What made you choose the animals part of the culture and not other things in the indian culture, like the bear being the totem animal?
Well, the bear is the totem animal for Sarah. Honestly when I started this series I had no idea that these great animals were going to leap into the stories, but they did, demanding attention. The great bear Sarah saw and drew at the start of Strong Heart just jumped before me while I was writing, and suddenly the great animals became key to everything.
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Post by Charlie Sheldon »

Gabriela C 1 wrote: 14 Feb 2022, 08:48 What was the hardest part to write? Maybe because you needed to do extra research or it was emotionally close to your life?
It was all hard, yet it was all easy, too. I would say the hardest part was this - you cannot write a tale about the Pacific Northwest without somehow referencing or including the First Peoples who have always been here, especially if parts of the story become visions to the ancient past with ancient people, maybe even people before there were tribes as such. I am not Native American, and there seems now to be a strong school of thought in literature arguing that if you are not of a tribe or group or identity group you cannot even mention such things, especially if you are an old white guy like me. The risk of "cultural appropriation" is huge, even to the extent that a book wrongly written will be shunned and cancelled. Personally I think this tendency has gone way overboard such that if you are a man you cannot write about a woman, if you are left handed you cannot write about someone right handed....so I had these stories in mind that required First Peoples, both in the present day and the dim past. The entire Olympic Peninsula is "owned" by a number of Salish Tribes (Elwha, Makah, Clallam, Suquamish, etc), all of it, sacred to them, so whatever I did carries a risk of causing offence (my writing teacher told me this would be good because controversy increases sales!). I worked with three Puget Sound tribes for over 20 years as regards fishing activities coordination with shipping traffic (Muckleshoot, Suquamish and Lummi), the most interesting work I have ever done, and hopefully I learned a little bit along the way. What I chose to do in my series was, to the extent possible, write of a time so far in the past tribes as known today did not exist. In the present, astute readers will know that the town of Sol Duc is fictional, as is the Sol Duc Tribe, of which Myra and her family are members, and this at least, I was told by some tribal members, was a respectful way to thread the identity needle. William was born on Haida Gwaii, a member of the Haida people, but in his case I had him taken to the Indian School in Kamloops when a young boy, then running away to the U.S - again, doing my best to step aside from claiming or using any real legends or traditions. The only legend I have used from the real world is that common belief among most First Peoples that they have always been here, always, since they became human, and in a way I wrote three books as an effort to show how that ancient legend might be true. The killer whale and bear story is, I confess, my invention, created to further explain how it is we became "modern" some 70,000 years ago. There is another discussion thread about that specifically.
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Post by Charlie Sheldon »

Samuel Mamo wrote: 14 Feb 2022, 10:45 what gives you the quality to write in such a consistent manner?
Thanks for suggesting I am consistent. I would say time and persistence is the quality needed for a consistent style, whatever that style is. I don't know how other authors do their work, actually, everyone is different. Some do outlines, some write whole backstories of their characters, some others do not. Many do research and I am among them. For me, personally, a book takes three years to become "right." It only takes me four to five months to write a first draft of an 80,000 word novel, an intense period of writing every day, steeped in the tale, watching it appear. Then it takes another 2.5 years to edit it myself, let it simmer and steep, give it to someone else, sometimes more than once, to edit as well. The whole effort is to only have in the story what is needed, cutting the rest away, and because we writers cannot see our own flaws we desperately need someone else's eyes to spot things, repetitions, repeats, sloppy prose....A final step I take (this is only possible due to the wonder of cumputer systems) is to find certain words, like "that" and "said" and "then" and "smile", "laugh," etc which tend to be used a lot and go through and whenever possible strip them away, leaving a hopefully spare and clean style for the reader.
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F N Chamomile
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Post by F N Chamomile »

Can you tell us more about your creative process, like how you come up with the idea and the way you turn it into a full story? Did you start with a plot plan or did you let your ideas flow as you write? Thank you!
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Post by Suzer6440 xyz »

How did you stay so focused and creative in this book? I was amazed to find so much description and mystery and found it inspiring that an author can offer so much excitement in just one novel
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Post by Charlie Sheldon »

Suzer6440 xyz wrote: 14 Feb 2022, 21:54 How did you stay so focused and creative in this book? I was amazed to find so much description and mystery and found it inspiring that an author can offer so much excitement in just one novel
In one word, persistence. Glad you enjoyed it. I have been noodling this tale since 1990, when I first came to the Pacific Northwest, and then through my work spent 20 years working with several tribes on fishing conflict issues and learned a lot of the history. When I got serious about writing a tale (at first it was one tale but then became three) I embarked on nearly three years of research about the Olympic Peninsula, tribal history, human history, geology, ice ages, ice age animals, ancient human genetics, migrations, DNA patterns, plus mythology, Carl Jung, and others. Filled notebook after notebook. All this information swirled around in my feeble brain while at the same time I was hiking in the Olympics whenever I could. Then, after finishing my research, which I did at my last desk job while working away from home during the week, in the evenings, I went back to sea as a merchant sailor and spent four years on ships all over the place. Took my notebooks with me and started writing in between gigs on ships. Even wrote the first half of Totem on a ship in Baltimore, before breakfast, coffee breaks, weekends (it was a military reserve ship ready to go but docked with a skeleton crew). The stories just...appeared, I would say, but it took me 11 years to start and finish the series. Great fun. If you have half the fun reading these tales as I did watching these things appear, then hopefully you're in for a treat....
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Post by Charlie Sheldon »

F N Chamomile wrote: 14 Feb 2022, 17:57 Can you tell us more about your creative process, like how you come up with the idea and the way you turn it into a full story? Did you start with a plot plan or did you let your ideas flow as you write? Thank you!
I have answered a lot of your question in a couple other comments and answers I already gave. I have written novels forever, writt5en eight or nine, some published, and this latest series took 11 years start to end, really, and during and before that there was a lot of research. I wanted to write about the Olympic Peninsula, add some great sea stories, do something dealing with coming of age and the nature of truth, and mostly wanted to explore the possible truth of this ancient legend among First Peoples here that they have always been here, forever, they did not come over on the land bridge. Years of research and sticking to what I felt I knew from hiking and sailing and working with tribes and ports all merged somehow into a stew of stuff and when I began writing it was easy to finish the first drafts, and then each book took a couple more years to season and settle and edit and get right. I don't do outlines, that is like writing the book twice for me, but I have a good idea of where I want to end up. Once the draft is done then there are pages and a story to work with, move things around, add things, take things away. It is an exercise in faith, totally frustrating yet totally wonderful, too. Of course with any long tale lots happens that is unexpected, things leap into the story or characters try to take over. I just write what I see happening, I would say, but I try to write just enough to give the general picture because I know the reader will fill in the blanks the way they want. I think in this way the story is better for them. This is something I have been doing in one form or another for over 60 years, and I'd like to think by this time I know what I am doing. Of course, that decision isn't mine, but the reader's.....
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Post by Chinecherem A »

What was more difficult for you to write, the beginning of the book or the ending? How were you able to write it eventually?
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Post by Rita Nuncia »

What motivated you to start the first book in this series and also what made you to continue?
Secondly, did you ever had the fear of what if I lose creativity and it stops being interesting and how did you overcome it?

PS. This questions are actually personal
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