I Envy Me Some Etouffee

My WIP, Bayou Blue, takes place in south Louisiana...the Bayou. So I need to portray the common style of speech there. I am beginning to understand what people's "Good Luck With That" looks mean when I say I'm going to learn some Cajun.
Uh...its English, but not. Like my Australian friend when I first met her. She was saying words I knew...but still had no idea what she was saying.

I think this will be both fun and challenging. I've been on some sites about Cajun cooking, even found one that gave sayings and their meanings. Its called Louisiana Cajun Slang and was very helpful. So was the very organized Terry Eymard's Guide to Bayou Cajun Words & Expressions.

I've learned some interesting ways to express myself. I thought I knew me some French...this is really, really different.

I wanted to say that I needed to mop, I'd say: I'm about to pass a  mop.

Or maybe I got scared and got goose bumps: I got the freesons!

Some of the words are just French blended right in with the English...Mais (well). "Maise I don't want to go, but..."
Or..."Don't be so coullion (coo-yon) which means foolish.

Over all though, it is reminescent of my own family's "Spanglish" a mixture of Spanish, English, and made up words like carro (car) in which the actual Spanish word for car is coche...so I think I may be able to get some phrasing down enought to write my book.

I hope some real life Cajuns out there are willing to help a writer portray the culture accurately. If you do speak Cajun, or spot any mistakes, please feel free to let me know. That is all for now. I shall see you all on June 4th for the Dream Sequence Blogfest over at Amalia T.'s blog.

Until next time, my friends...Go Write!

Photograph by Natalie Maynor, Uploaded on October 25, 2005. Photograph by HarshLight, Uploaded on January 3, 2010.

Alligator, Crawfish, and a Black Butterfly.

Last weekend I flew to Seattle to kill two birds with one stone. I visited my brother and his lovely wife and I attended a writer's conference. I arrived fairly early in the morning and wandered Pioneer Square all day...I took the train, several busses, and walked everywhere.  It was great.  Visiting the required touristy places was fun with no schedule or itinerary. The Sound, Pike Place Market, the Space Needle...all still there and all still great!

After the conference in the evenings, my brother took me to eat at his favorite places in Freemont.  I had Vietnamese Pho for the first time and was instantly in love.  We also went to La Petit, a cajun restaurant, and I had fried alligator tail, crawfish etouffee, and oysters rockefeller.  It was totally justified research for my next novel, people.  Yum!

For some reason, whether its the clean air or the artsy-fartsy surroundings, I always manage to get a tattoo when I'm out there. Coyote over at Apocalypse was gone...he's moved on to better skin canvas pastures.  But I did find a great place called Hidden Hand just across the Freemont Bridge.  I'd been planning for a while to get the drippy butterfly tattoo.  Its more my speed, no offense to the colorful butterfly enthusiasts.

The conference itself was wonderful. The key-note speaker, Brandilyn Collins, a popular suspense novelist, had three workshops filled with awesome insights.  She wrote a non-fiction book recently called, Getting Into Character: 7 Secrets a Novelist Can Learn From Actors and it is such a great book, I had to mention it.  Brandilyn takes the principles behind Stanislavsky's writings on Method acting and applies them to the writer.

Many fine actors use this method to build a character from the inside out. Rather than dressing up the outside with looks and gestures, Stanislavsky explains that understanding a character's core truth will result in the outward manifestation of their drives.  For instance, you might have a shy character...but why is she shy?  Is she deformed, abused, overly tall, a genius?  The reason they are shy will color how they express that inner feeling...an abused woman might not make eye contact or roll the shoulders forward while an overly tall woman might slouch.  Someone with a scar might subconsciously cover it when nervous...etc.

The workshops were so helpful and the book, which I purchased at the conference, is thoroughly highlighted in preparation for revisions on Ruby Dawn...and blocking out of Bayou Blue. 

I had the opportunity to meet with a few acquisition editors and got the green light to send in proposals so I felt that despite my gorging on gourmet oddities and tourist silliness, my trip to Seattle was a success.

Looking forward to reading all of your entries on the 16th during the Flirt Fest Blogfest over at Critique This WIP.

Until next time...Go Write!