Without a Nose There'd Be No Sex. Who Knew?

      Rogue-Phoenix press will release my new novel, Love in a Small Town, in October. Learning how to make a perfume is an important part of the plot. Since Professional Perfumer was one of my job descriptions in one of my former lives, I decided to write a few blogs on perfume making and the important role scent plays in our lives. We all know about how smell protects us from fire and spoiled meat, but few know the important role it plays in human procreation.

The following quote is from my book, Accidental Alien, wherein aliens, who are plants living on the planet Agra, which contains only plants, are trying to understand animal (Earth) behavior. The whole matter of human sexual activity amazes them. As one alien, a moss, explains:

"The human male has little choice in the matter. His nose controls him, though he is not aware of it, because, although his body can detect female sex hormones, he is not aware of the odor. His hormonal makeup forces him to act at any opportunity. The female has scent glands behind her ear. When a fetal egg has ripened, she emits a scented hormone called 'Copulin.' Sex glands in nearby males are stimulated by this odor to produce another hormone, testosterone, in their saliva. He coaxes the female to allow him to put his mouth on hers, Earthlings refer to this action as kissing, and the saliva arouses the female, encouraging further male mating activity. Fertilization takes place."

We’ve never been able to incorporate hormones into commercial fragrance, but our desire to smell good to others supports a billion dollar industry. Creating a fragrance isn’t difficult. It requires scented oils and grain alcohol, available at the local liquor store. The fragrance Sarah makes in my new book is one I made and sold in my store as “Shakespeare’s Flowers.”

This week I’ll explain the different materials used as scent. Next we’ll discuss the various scents you might want to start your own collection; then we’ll go on to possible mixtures. There are three materials generally available on the retail market. The first, essential oils, are distilled from living plant material: wood, leaves, stems, and flowers. They’re generally found in health food stores or online, and are the oldest, historically. They were made by simple distillation, a process discovered in the Middle East, as early as 3,000B.C., by men attempting to discover “the essence of life.” They roamed the desert, distilling everything in primitive pots, down to the tiniest part, hoping they’d discover the key to everlasting life. The oils use for fragrance and healing became important later on. Today a similar process, called extraction, but less expensive is used. The Romans were crazy about roses and scented everything with rose oil.

Many flowers cannot be distilled, so most fragrance today uses perfume oils, which and are not nearly expensive as essential oils, and are manufactured in a laboratory. They are generally available online and are recommended.

The other fragrance source comes from chemicals that have no counterpart in nature. They are simply compounds found to have odor useful in perfume manufacture.  I’ll only mention aldehydes, which are compounds with one carbon atom and attached oxygen atoms. Aldehydes go by names such as C 12, which means one carbon atom and twelve oxygen atoms, and smells like fresh air, or C 16, which is like peach. One chemist, on the other hand, described aldehyde C 10, as “ten nights on a troop train.”

Don’t worry about these; just know that most fruit scent is an aldehyde. Coco Chanel was the first person to use one in Chanel #5. I think it was Aldehyde C 12MNA. The French, who only, at that time, used “real” oils, were scandalized.

For a complete biography and a list of my books go to: http://joycezellercom.weebly.com

Where does a writer find a new idea?

I’m between books with nary an idea to jumpstart my writing, but an idea can come from anywhere. You have to pay attention to the moment in which you’re living.

    The idea for Christmas For Annabel, a holiday romance, came in a Hobby Lobby store in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It was October, so, of course, the Christmas decorations were out. I saw three-foot trees made of feathers, and had to wonder. What if one was made of black turkey feathers and it was eight feet tall? ? Who would have such a thing? A hunky millionaire, of course, with an ambitious girlfriend who decorates. Big Bird gone Goth and having a meltdown.

     Maddie’s Choice, a romance, came from a news article about cattle rustling in local cattle ranches. Reports of a fight between two motorcycle gangs about who controlled the local drug trade added a twist. Add a bull with a craving for chocolate, a New York romance novelist, a hunky cowboy with PTSD, and a gun battle, and there you go. Gideon’s picture is on my website.

     Rogue-Phoenix Press will publish The Haunting of Aaron House this October. It is a paranormal about ghostly possession. It has a lot about spells, folk healing, and witchcraft that exist today in the town where I grew up. My paternal grandmother was a witch and I use a lot of what I learned as a child in this book. I can’t wait for you to meet Phineas and Amalie, the two really nasty ghosts from the 1800s, bent on murder.

      The same publisher will release Love in a Small Town after Aaron House. The small town is my home, Eureka Springs, Arkansas, which looks a lot like it did in 1879, when it was founded. Single parenthood, teenagers, and the human need for loving companionship are themes here.  David Martin who, until two years ago, was a confirmed bachelor, is suddenly widowed and a step-dad to teenaged Sarah who doesn’t fit in to small-town living. They both need to find love.

        I wrote Accidental Alien, for the fun of creating a whole host of weird but funny characters, both here and in outer space.  Daniel is a plant who looks human, as is Aine, his gorgeous would-be assassin, and a personal weapon of mass destruction. Daniel is a shape shifter; Aine is a Shirley, the hooker, has her own app, and Benz and Arnanno, two very confused detectives—their own comedy act. Little Leon is a homeless eight-year-old gangster in training, devoted to his stray cat, Scooter, who escapes death when rescued by a werewolf, aka Daniel. See Daniel, Scooter, and a plant werewolf on my website: http://joycezellercom.weebly.com

Point of View -- The Last Word

Point of view is something all beginning writers struggle with. It is simply a matter of letting the reader know who they are in the story. Imagine you are playing a role in a film. This is who you are, this is what you see, and this is how you feel about it, and what you understand is going on in the scene. How you choose to convey all this to your reader, to make him part of the story, is the point of view. You have to decide how you’re going to do this. There are a lot of choices and it can get pretty confusing. In the last two blogs I’ve only told you how I’ve dealt with this, with some success, with two of them, Interior Monologue and Omniscient. I’m also a beginning author, not an expert and only sharing my experience.

Most of us write in third person POV. You pick out your main character and see the action through their eyes. You let the reader know in the first line or two of the chapter who that person is and can establish how they feel about themselves and the world around them. This is where “show, don’t tell” comes in. You don’t say: “she saw him and was frightened.” You say: “The menace reflected in his eyes and the way his fists clenched made her heart pound.”

The good news is that there is an expert who has written a series of books that not only explain POV, but the entire craft of writing. Her name is Dr. Angela Hunt. There are seven short, easy to read books in the series titled, Writing Lessons From The Front. The first book is about plot, the second about creating characters, the third about point of view, the fourth is titled Tracking Down the Weasel Words.

Weasel words? All beginning writers do it. We use too many words to describe a scene or make a point. A very wise mentor of mine, Dusty Richards, who is a member of my writing group and has published at least a hundred and forty western novels, puts it this way, “You have to have something happening on every page.” Dr. Hunt tells you how to find all those extra words and get rid of them to keep the action flowing.

The fifth book is Evoking Emotion, or how to keep your readers hooked on reading. She tells you how. The sixth book is Planning and Process, or all that stuff you must do before you get around to writing, and the seventh book is Tension on the Line. You have six seconds to hook your reader on the first page and you have to keep that tension going throughout the book. This might be the most important book in the series, but you need them all if you’re going to be a writer.

The entire series is very affordable as e-books, but if you can choose only one, make it Point of View. Dr. Hunt’s easy, conversational style not only takes the mystery out of the subject, but gives you the freedom to experiment using more than one point of view in a scene or a chapter.

In my western romance, Maddie’s Choice, I used two POVs. Maddie is from New York, a writer, and she has a smart mouth and a sense of humor. Gideon, the male protagonist, is a bitter, disillusioned war veteran, suffering from PTSD. His voice and approach to Maddie’s shenanigans keeps the pace and the humor flowing.

Learn the rules, understand the reasons for them, then go your own way. Rules were made to be broken, as Dr. Hunt says.