Today I'm giving away a copy of Codes by Briane Pagel. 

As a special thing for the blog, I'll post the puzzle here first, and then if nobody answers by tonight I'll post directly to facebook and twitter. Please remember our rules 1)you have to live in the contiguous 48 or be willing to pay shipping yourself, 2) this has to be legal where you are, and 3) you have to be a real person.

Bit first I'm going to make you scroll way down.

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Mixed Messages:
Below is a paragraph composed of five sentences. Each of these sentences is taken from an out of copyright work of fiction. Your challange, should you choose to accept it, is to identify each work, and give me back the title, author, and paragraph our sentence was used in. Just to make things interesting a couple of sentences are missing a word or two. Happy googling.

"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. The fields were spread with growth, and the waters clad with sunshine, and light and shadow, step by step, wandered over the furzy cleves. Since we had entered the territory we had not seen a hostile Indian, and we had, therefore, become careless in the extreme, and were wont to ridicule the stories we had heard of the great numbers of these vicious marauders that were supposed to haunt the trails, taking their toll in lives and torture of every white party which fell into their merciless clutches. The Judge was at a meeting of the Raisin Growers' Association, and the boys were busy organizing an athletic club, on the memorable night of Manuel's treachery. Saturday was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life."

So there it is. Five sentences from five works. Best of luck to you!

In the interest of funsies, for this post--because last one was a super downer--we're going to have a fluffy, fun list about the times when the science just really doesn't matter. In honor of the fact I went to see Jurassic World again and I still don't care that you can't make a dinosaur out of tree frogs and cuttlefish. 

#1--The Jurassic Park Franchise.
I honestly cannot accurately express how much I love these movies. All of them. Even the steaming pile of wtf that was #2. I had the bed sheets, I bought the junky candy and listened to the soundtrack over and over. I read the novel so many times it fell apart. I went to see the first movie at least 5 times. Given the fact my local theater was like $2.50 a ticket it might have been significantly more than that.
Even then I understood you couldn't actually make a dinosaur out of reconstituted mosquito guts, tree frogs, and science! I seriously didn't care. I still don't. 
Though it would be nice if in the next movie someone at InJen had two brain cells to rub together.

#2--The Core (2003)
There are so many ridiculous bits in this movie I can't name them all. I'd probably have to rewatch it to try. Which might happen with the Summer Movie List. Ridiculous as this movie is, it's fun. Yes yes, we'll just dive into the center of the planet and restart the spin on the earth's core. No worries. It'll be fine.

#3--The Day After Tomorrow (2004) 
Super special snowflake storm--check. Stoic injured character who doesn't tell anyone they're hurt--check. Pretty post-apocalyptic world we pretend people could survive--check. Bonus points? Timberwolves on the Russian tanker.
But after Jake Gyllenhall survived making a phone call underwater I stopped expecting sense from this movie. It's like the disaster version of Midsummer Nights Dream. Check your brain at the door, here there be faeries. 

#4--Star Trek (2009)
So I don't so much have any issue with the 'science science' part of this movie. And I do love it, quite a lot. I have an issue with the ridiculous amount of trauma Kirk keeps walking away from. Like stranded on Hoth, sure. Beat up by Spock--you're going to pee blood for like a week, but go you. Jumps at least twenty feet and lands on his chest--you're cute Jim, but you're not that cute. 
I will give them this. At least they're consistent in the things that miraculously don't kill our intrepid hero. 

#5--Armageddon (1998)
I have one thing to say. Rain in space.
That being said, I cried like a small broken thing when Bruce Willis and Liv Tyler said goodbye. There's so much wrong with this movie, but it sort of tells you how much you can get away with if you give us a good character to pin our hopes on.

So. That's us for this week. Today at 5pm eastern there'll be a new clue in the never-ending book contest, so keep an eye out for that. And come back next week where we'll talk about new and exciting things. 

So it's really likely today is going to be a sort of epic downer. With that in mind I'm going to get the fun stuff out of the way first. 

I'm still in the midst of doing a contest I haven't actually done yet (shush you, it's a busy time for me and other excuses you don't actually care about). So. If you know people who like free books and other cool free stuff send them my way. 

And the second fun thing. Next Friday, as part of this lovely contest, I'm going to do a puzzle post. But I don't know how yet, so if puzzles are a thing you like maybe throw some ideas my way? Otherwise you're likely to get the most archaic, ridiculous crossword puzzle ever invented. 

Alright. Now for the giant downer. 

Today for Well-Written Wednesday we're going to pretend I'm just talking about including people who don't look like you in your writing. It's a lie, obviously. This isn't a conversation we can divorce from the rest of what's going on in the United States. The debate over whether the Confederate Flag is a symbol of white supremacy or a symbol of historical connection. The debate over the way race is still a very real issue and I'm not going to end that sentence with 'in our country' because I don't think we're that special. Race is an issue everywhere. I want to say it's 2015 and it shouldn't be, but I'm having a little trouble being that nieve lately.

So we're going to "ignore" all that and pretend we're having a craft discussion about getting over our fear of telling other people's stories wrong. 

But first I want you to push play on that video down there. I'll wait for you to be done.

Strange Fruit took an incredibly dehumanizing, uncomfortable topic and made it immortal. Through the words (it was originally a poem by Abel Meeropole) and Holiday's voice we get a front row seat to a universe where laughing, happy  people can watch a man swing from a tree and imagine that everyone walks home to share a late meal when it's done. Strange fruit, hanging from a poplar tree. 

It's painful and visceral. You look at the picture that inspired the poem and every part of it is wrong. How can there be so little concern for the taking of a human life? These people were taken from jail, beaten, and then hanged. Aren't we supposed to have an issue with vigilante justice? 

You look at that picture and listen to Billie Holiday sing about living in a country that doesn't count you as a person and...well. I'd like to think it wasn't possible to do those things and not be forced to accept what our connection to race is. But then I remember reading an article where the sheriff in a small town in Missouri was confused as to why his town was upset. "I've always had a good relationship with the blacks," he's quoted as saying. Presumably with no understanding of what's just left his mouth. 

So what's that mean for a fiction writer? How do you look down the barrel of that story, from the outside, and get it right? I've never lived in a country where the color of my skin was all someone needed to hate me. To murder me. How do I tell that story? 

The tricky part of this is that I don't have an answer. I shy away from those stories, on some level because I think working from the head-space that all that matters to a character's back-story is the color of their skin is wrong. Is just as bad as assuming the only discernable trait about a trans or gay character is their transition or their gayness. Personally, even if we aim for social justice, defining people solely by their otherness is right back to strange fruit swinging in the breeze. I've robbed them of their humanity and made them a statistic, or a skin color, or an exotic animal to be gawked at. 

Hand on heart, all of us, right now. I will pledge to do my absolute freaking best not to rob people of their humanity. In fiction and in life.

I do have one small thought I'll share. I'm not a black woman in 1939. I'm not an immortal non-human either. Or a doctor living on some far distant planet a thousand or so years in the future. I firmly believe the point of fiction is to help us understand ourselves better. And to help us understand other people better. When we read--and when we write--we should reach for that other. All of it. No matter how uncomfortable it makes us. 

And a thing about life I keep struggling to put into words. Understanding all sides of a situation isn't accepting them or even allowing them. I want to know everything you can tell me about a man who walks into a church, or a school, or a movie theater and pulls out a gun. Not because he deserves to be understood. Because in understanding him we might figure out how to notice/catch/help the next one before people die. 

Understanding people who can look at victims--victims of a single act of violence, or police brutality, or an entire history of abuse--and still make a case for it not being a real thing/about that flag/unjust is harder for me. But much as I hate it, I suspect it's just as vital. We have to share a planet with them, and I really don't think it can stay the way it is.

So. That's my epic downer for the week. Friday we're going to talk about something fluffy and fun. Because we can. We deserve for life to be enjoyable any time it can be.

Also, as a tiny note, up there where I'm talking about men walking in places with guns, I almost put 'people' because...well, defining people by their sex is occasionally just as unhelpful as defining them by anything else. But I honestly cannot think of a single instance in my entire life where someone who identified as female walked into some place and started shooting it up. I'm not sure what to do with that bit of information.

So...the last couple of weeks happened. 

We're going to get back on the wagon here, with blogging. And in the reality of that, we're starting with a Miscellaneous Monday post.

Which goes right under this reminder that I'm still doing this contest! So, if you'd like a free book, keep your eyes peeled!

Go to this website. I could happily spend forever and ever on this website, just pretending this was a real thing. 

And then come back Wednesday, where I'll either cross post my Art of Procrastination post, or I'll come up with some kind of new content.