And on another nearby island . . .

My other most recent read has similarities in terms of setting and background to

Driftwood Lane

, which I reviewed in my last post.

This novel, also a contemporary Christian romance, also occurs on an island off the Coast of Massachusetts near Boston.  However, in this case the entire island is fictional as is the nearby town of Cape Light.

This book is a collaboration of two authors, who as nearly as I can tell have written two series in this fictional area:  a Cape Light series and an Angel Island series.

This book, The Wedding Promise, is the second of the Angel Island series.  An interesting side note is that this is one of two series Christian romance books I have read in the past year in which I found the second book of the series far more enjoyable to read than the first and that in both such cases these series were a two author collaboration.  [The other being the Davis Bunn/Janette Oke series beginning with The Centurion’s Wife.  In that case I found both book two and three more enjoyable than the first book].

In addition to the off-the-coast of Massachusetts setting, the two books share that the female protagonists initially arrive at the island community as the result of the decease of a relative and resolution of the deceased relative’s affairs.  In this case, there are no children involved but as with

Driftwood Lane

, the primary setting location involves a place of public lodging:  in this case a full-service Inn versus a Bed-and-Breakfast.

The matter of the deceased relative factors in The Wedding Promise as well, but it is more in the background than in Driftwood Lane because of the fact that all that history is more set up in the first novel of the series.

The Wedding Promise uses conflicts that arise around the determination of a young couple other than the male and female protagonists to have their wedding at the Inn, despite the Inn’s deteriorated condition and the female protagonist’s inexperience.

Authors Thomas Kinkade and Katherine Spencer deftly build and resolve the conflicts in very organic ways, culminating in the literary epiphany that the male protagonist is hiding something.

In an unusual but effective move, the authors do not leave the full realization of the male protagonist’s mysterious past unidentified for long.  And they effectively use the “show don’t tell” principle by revealing the nature of the male protagonist’s secret through actions that speak far louder than words.

As with Driftwood Lane, the authors pack a good deal of action and resolution into the last few pages of the book.

In this case, however, as part of a series, although the romance advances towards the end of the book, we are still left without a full realization of the male and female protagonists’s romance as the book reaches its conclusion.  That is left for additional books in the Angel Island series.

Now, that’s a fine how-do-you-do . . .

I had the opportunity this past weekend to read a couple books, and they deserve separate coverage.

Ironically, I had been trying to avoid reading these two back to back since they have comparable settings.  However, although both authors handle the conflicts and literary epiphanies with panache, the details of the storyline differ in most other ways.

I’m going to start with the one I read second.

That is

Driftwood Lane

, by Denise Hunter.

This contemporary Christian romance is set on a fictional Lane at a fictional Bed & Breakfast on the actual island of Nantucket off the coast of Massachusetts.

The author deftly keeps the reader involved in a series of conflicts and dilemmas that arise as the result of the sudden demise of relatives of the male and female protagonists and the issues that arise around the deceased couple’s orphaned children.

The reason I wanted to review this one first of the two involves the literary device the author uses to resolve what become seemingly insurmountable obstacles in the realization of the romance between the protagonists.

I’m not going to be a spoiler as to just what happens.  Let me just say that the author came up with one dandy way for a suitor to convince his lady of the genuineness of his profession of love for her.

An all around enjoyable read.

Identifying purpose for business documents

In earlier blog posts, I posted some tips for those who have to do some business writing as a subset of their work, but are not professional writers.  My first few posts on this topic gave some insights about where to start out and what to consider when beginning such a writing process.

To quickly review:  I mentioned that a good starting point for writing a business document involved first figuring out the nature of the reader for the document and, in tandem with that, figuring out what that reader [known as “audience” to business writers] needed to get out of the document.  The “what the reader needs” also refers to what professional writers call the rhetorical purpose of the document.  This evaluation then feeds into some form of document planning process, such as an outlining process.

In this blog post, I’m going to follow up with some further information on the kinds of purpose you are likely to find in business documents. 

For the most part, ‘layperson’ writers . . .those who don’t write as a major part, or the entirety of their job . . . will deal with a handful of specific rhetorical purposes in the business documents they are called on to write.

The first and second purposes are probably the most common and are related but not identical.  Those purposes are to inform and to summarize.

The difference between these two is subtle but does exist.  You can think of a document with the purpose of “inform” as one that provides new information, or primarily new information, to the reader(s).  Whereas, a document that has the purpose of summarizing will review material that is already known, or some of it is known, to the readership of the document.

For documents assigned to a professional who will only occasionally get assigned to write a business document on the job, these two rhetorical purposes will probably form the rhetorical purpose for most such documents.

The next three purposes also have subtle associations with each other.  Those purposes generally have the objective of generating some form of response.  Those purposes include to engage, to generate action such as through the issuance of an order, and to persuade.

You will structure your document around the “engage” purpose in an instance when you want to introduce interest in something.  An example of a document with the purpose to engage would involve something along the lines of an informational newsletter.  The nature of generating action such as through an order has an obviousness to it:  this would involve things like written announcements of mandatory training or briefings. 

A document that has the purpose of persuasion also seeks to generate an action.  However, a document that seeks to generate action through persuasion has an objective of convincing the readership that the action taken, often a purchase of some kind, provides a benefit to the individual.  While many persuasion documents seek to incite a “buy” response for a product or service, the rhetorical purpose of persuasion can also extend to a “buy in” response.  A business document may seek to convince management, for instance, to implement, extend, or up-staff a particular project or set of projects.

This second group of rhetorical purposes:  engage, generate action by issuing an order, and persuasion actually transition into the category of business document more often handled by a professional writer than by someone who writes business documents only occasionally.  However, these types of documents may well come up for the ‘layperson’ writer of business documents every so often.  For example, a cover letter has a “persuasion” purpose to it.  On the job, a project leader may need to persuade management about extending a deadline, changing a project direction, or modifying project staffing.  Additionally, even when a dedicated business writer . . . or often a team or business writers and editors . . .handles the writing of the persuasive documentation of a proposals to a potential client, technical personnel may have contributing roles to the final proposal.  It should give such personnel an advantage to understand a little about rhetorical purpose in such a case.

Three other rhetorical purposes factor into those kinds of documents that a ‘layperson’ writer may have an involvement in writing either in entirety or as part of a team:  although most often documents having rhetorical purposes in this third category will fall into the province of the professional business writer. 

Those three purposes involve:  to instruct [such as training materials], to provide a procedure on how to do something, and to give an edict . . . such as dress codes, codes of conduct, and statements on an organization’s business ethics code.

Once you define your readership or audience, the next step in preparing for the planning out of your document involves determining which of these purposes will drive the structuring of your final document.

While this is not an exhaustive coverage of all types of rhetorical purposes that could come about, by far these are the most likely rhetorical purposes for business documentation that the layperson writer of a business document is likely to encounter in their need to write business documentation.

Epiphany (religious) as revelation

So, I took the opportunity of the Feast of the Epiphany to transmutate that to literary epiphanies.

Now, it’s time . . . given that spirituality is a sub-genre of where I would like to apply my skills . . . to talk about the actual feast.

This is an interesting year for it.  The actual Feast of the Epiphany fell this past Friday.  For probably a couple decades now, the Roman Catholic church has observed this feast on the closest Sunday, or today.  Unfortunately, due to a combination of health and transportation challenges, I do not have the opportunity to attend.  Though I have many options for private observances at home.  Overall, though, we have a whole weekend of potential observance.

The Catholic view of the spiritual Epiphany involves discovery or revelation, also.

It involves the disclosure of Messiah, Christ, God’s Chosen, the Annointed One to the gentiles of the world of that time.

This is represented in the visit of the Magi, or Wise Men, or Three Kings in the Biblical story.

When I was a child, we set up a manger in a very particular way.  Mary and Joseph and the angels and so on came.  We were not allowed to put the child in the manger into the manger until Midnight on Christmas had passed.

Similarly, we set up the Magi with their camels, and represented their progress toward the stable in a slow, solemn procession.  They were not allowed to “arrive” until January 6^th.

In historical reality, the probability is that Mary and Joseph had found a home and the child Jesus was nearly two before the Magi/Kings/Wise Men actually appeared at that home.

That is why you read accounts of Herod ordering the massacre of all male children “under the age of two.”

I saw a documentary about five or six years ago that indicated that the reason there are no historical records of such a massacre is that it was not historically significant.  Bethlehem was a very small town:  even with the influx of visitors, rather than the hundreds of children we envision, the massacre probably at most involved 20 male children under the age of two, and possibly closer to 10 victims.

As to converting into later tradition:  there are still some cultures that celebrate Epiphany, rather than Christmas, as the day of revelation.  The day that involves the arrival of gift givers.   Sometimes the gift givers are the Magi.  But other cultures invoke gift givers for children on this day, other than the Magi such as LaBefana.

All around, however, this feast . . . which the Catholic Church observes today on the closest Sunday . . .deals with knowing one’s own heart and soul and understanding the Great Plan as well as human intellect and soul is able to do so.

Happy Feast of the Epiphany.

I messed up my schedule [with help]

I got distracted, and messed up my schedule.  The bottom line for the blog is that most likely the blog will get more posts than planned for this spiritual feast weekend.  Things in the oven, don’t you know . . .

Various of my necessary interaction experienced technical difficulties, so I had to fill the time.  I filled it by writing blog posts.

One author, two books . . .

So, this post entry on my most enjoyable reads for the past year or so will deal with two related books by the same author.

While my own focus is on Christian romance, which minimizes the intimate interactions of the characters in comparison to secular romance, I do look at some secular romance from time to time . . . especially the mixed genres.

And as with the other books I chose to mention here as my “best reads,” what I most enjoy seems to revolve around the deft handling by the author of the character’s [and reader’s] epiphany or personal revelation in the book.

An author who has demonstrated that she is becoming a master at this is Jana DeLeon, and after the first two books I mentioned as my “most enjoyable” reads for about the past year, her related books “The Secret of Cypriere Bayou” and “Bayou Bodyguard” bring character epiphany to a fine art.

Ms. DeLeon’s work is classified as romantic mystery, with a touch of paranormal, and she deftly manages these disparate elements in a unique and subtle way.

Romance has a short shelf life, and these may already be off the shelf as new books, but if you can find them I think you will enjoy the read.

On an older book

Last weekend, or one day early in the week, I was looking for a book to read that I knew I could finish on the same day I started.

So, I fished through bookshelves for things that have been around for awhile.

I came up with The Horsemasters, by Don Stanford, which has a copyright date of 1957.

I’d actually seen parts of the Disney television episode made from that book, but never read the book itself.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. 

How it fits in with the series of review/commentaries I’m doing over this weekend is literary epiphany.

The author does an excellent job structuring the book around the focal events of, or related to, a 15 week summer course not only in horsemanship but meant to equip the students to serve as assistant riding masters or mistresses in other schools and colleges by the end of the course.

Stanford does a great job connecting up little . . . and sometimes not so little  . . . personal epiphanies for the students, particularly the viewpoint character Dinah Wilcox, with the events of the horsemanship course.

I’ve read other writers who try to structure things similarly in more contemporary novels, and not always with as much success.

The book is surprisingly contemporary for a 1957 copyright, I didn’t find anything directly out of date as I have in other works of that era.

For someone who is looking at literary technique, The Horsemasters makes a good study while also serving as an entertaining read especially for those who enjoy reading about horses and horsemanship.  But, without ‘talking down’ to the audience, Stanford includes enough detail that I think even those who have no knowledge of horses will enjoy this book if they can find it given its “vintage” status.

 I plan to be back later today with another "best read."  And, then I should be due for some practical tips again in the blog.

I may toss in one more review than I planned, having just finished a book yesterday I greatly enjoyed again for the "character epiphany" reasons.  Interestingly, this is the second of a series and I didn't enjoy the first as much as the second.

But, I will probably add a post on practical tips before I cover that additional book; and perhaps try to capture some thoughts on the spiritual season of Epiphany, as well, before I add that review.