Category: books i’ve read

Jumpin’ Jack Flash

Well, I finished the outline yesterday and am actually feeling pretty good about it. As I finished outlining the last chapters, I began to see with a much greater clarity what the problems with the manuscript were, the changes that needed to be made to it, and what would, in fact, make it a much stronger book than what I originally wrote. It’s going to require a lot of work to fix it, frankly–more than I would have preferred–but hopefully it will turn out to be exactly what I wanted it to be.

And that’s a good thing.

Yesterday was one of those days where I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked; I just felt off center and off-balance for most of the day. I’m not sure why that was; one of those eternal mysteries, I suppose. I did have some trouble sleeping last night as well, which sucked because I have a ten hour day of work today including bar testing tonight. Ah, well, I should sleep well tonight, one would think.

We watched the third episode of The Handmaid’s Tale last night, which continues to chill and disturb me. It is so incredibly well done,  and while the men are repugnant, the absolute most chilling characters to me are the collaborationist women. Atwood’s novel was such genius, really, and I love how the show is taking the time to fill in all of the backstories and develop the characters even more so than she did. The not-knowing in her book was particularly chilling, but I think the show is making it a much richer, complex tale–which is also necessary for something that is visual rather than simply read. I am thinking I need to find my copy and read it again.

We also watched a documentary about H. H. Holmes, billed as America’s first serial killer–although I would posit the Benders in Kansas were the first. I first knew of Holmes because Robert Bloch wrote a fictionalized account of his ‘murder castle’ that I read called American Gothic. (I love Bloch, and went through a period where I read all of his work I could get my hands on; Psycho is still one of my favorite crime novels) The documentary was very well done, but all I could think about while I watched was the Benders and wondering whether there were any books about them. I’ve wanted to write about them ever since I first heard about them, when I was a teenager living in Kansas, but am not sure if I want to do it as a historical crime novel, or as horror….or both. Someday!

I’m almost finished with Cleopatra’s Shadows, which I am sort of enjoying, but wish I was enjoying more. I know that sounds like damning with faint praise, because I am enjoying it, but I only have about sixty pages to go, and I will be curious to see how the author deals with the inevitable (I mean, it’s historical fiction, I know what happens) end.

I’m having lunch with a friend whom I haven’t seen in years today before work, which should be a rather pleasant experience. It’s always lovely to catch up with friends.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines with me. Here’s a Tuesday morning hunk for you, Constant Reader:

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The Unicorn

Monday morning, and not only a new week but a new month. May, of course, is when the Formosan termites swarm; usually they join us sometime around Mother’s Day, but I saw people posting about them last night on Facebook. Maybe it was the extremely mild winter; hopefully, the early start means an early end. It really does seem like one of the plagues of Egypt when the termites are swarming; our first experience with it back in May 1997 was absolutely horrifying. Even typing about it now makes my skin crawl. We’ve been relatively lucky over the past fourteen years or so; living in the back as we do, we only get a few inside the house and once they do, off go the lights and we light candles.

It really surprises me that there really isn’t anything that can be done with these things.

Last night, we watched the documentary Tower, which is about the first mass shooting at  a school, and another episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, which continues to be riveting. I vaguely remember the events of Tower;  I was almost five when Charles Whitman went up to the observation deck of the University of Texas Tower and started shooting people. It really did seem as though the world, and the country, was going crazy. Only a few weeks before the Texas Tower murders, Richard Speck raped and murdered eight nursing students in Chicago, and in retrospect, my mother’s paranoia about our safety–a young woman with two small children and a husband from the rural South living in the big city–really isn’t so surprising. There were also some horrible riots in Chicago in 1996, and of course, the riots in the wake of Dr. King’s murder in 1968 were still to come (in the wake of those riots, some of my father’s relatives who lived in Chicago packed up and moved back to Alabama). The Democratic National Convention was also in Chicago in 1968… and the Chicago Police Department’s brutality against the protestors documented by news cameras for the world to see.

Tower is incredibly powerful, and an interesting way to film a documentary. The filmmakers interviewed and spoke to the survivors, and then used filmed actors the right age to reenact what happened, then animating them, while interspersing actual film footage and photographs from the ninety-six minutes of pure hell the city of Austin, and the University of Texas, endured. What happened that day was horrifying enough, but reliving it through the personal stories of the survivors, and their memories of what happened that day, made it even more heartbreaking and moving. The documentary primarily focuses on the point of view of two of the police officers, one of the students who helped victims, another witness who watched it all happen through the windows of a nearby building (one of the most moving moments is when this woman, a young girl at the time, says, “This sort of thing is a defining moment. I stood there in the window, knowing there were people out there who needed help, but I was too afraid of being shot to do anything. That was when I knew I was a coward.”), the University bookstore manager who climbed the Tower with the three officers to take out Charles Whitman, but the two personal stories that moved me the most was the young paperboy who shouldn’t have even been there, but was filling in on the route for another boy, and had his young cousin riding on his bike with him when he was shot in the leg off his bicycle, and of course, Claire, one of the first victims, eight months pregnant and leaving the student union with her boyfriend, who was killed instantly. Claire’s baby was killed when she was shot in the abdomen, and she lay there, on the cement in front of the Tower, with her boyfriend lying dead near her, unable to move or get helped because anyone who went out there was in the line of fire, roasting on the hot cement in the heat of an August day in Austin. A young woman named Rita ran over to her, talked to her the entire time, lying on the ground near her, keeping her conscious and keeping her alive.

I cannot even imagine how horrible the ordeal must have been for her, or how she has lived with the memories of everything she lost that day for the rest of her life.

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Simply extraordinary.

I’ve almost finished reading Cleopatra’s Shadows–have maybe another hundred pages to go, and also made some serious progress on decluttering the apartment. I’ve decided that I am going to clean out the storage space–both the one over the laundry room as well as the rented one–and try to declutter the Lost Apartment as much as I can. I am only going to  keep research books, my children’s series collections, signed books by friends, and my Stephen King hardcovers. Anything else is going to be donated. If I had more time I might try to sell them on ebay or Amazon, but I just don’t have the time and I don’t want to mess with it, to be perfectly honest. So, every Saturday morning–or every morning when I have to work late–I am going to take boxes out of the storage places, go through them, and start donating. I feel very good about this decision, quite frankly.

I also intend to finish the outline of the WIP this week, as well as a second draft of “Quiet Desperation.”

Onward and upward, y’all.

Light My Fire

Nancy Drew is eighty-seven, can you believe it?

secret of red gate farm

I first discovered Nancy Drew when I was in the fourth grade, at Eli Whitney Elementary School in Chicago. I was already reading every mystery I could get my hands on, either through the school library, the public library, or what my parents would let me order through the Scholastic Book Club, but I didn’t discover Nancy Drew–or the other series for kids–until the fourth grade. My teacher, Mrs. Pirog, had a big wooden table in the back of the room with discarded books from her own kids spread out on it. One day I noticed the above book, and decided to take it home and read it. I loved it! Nancy and her pals Bess and George helped some poor girl and her grandmother, about to lose Red Gate Farm to the mortgage, while also unmasking a ring of counterfeiters. There were two other volumes back on the table–The Mystery at Lilac Inn and The Haunted Showboat–and I was hooked. At the Woolworth’s where I usually spent my allowance, I acquired The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase, and The Bungalow Mystery. (On the book table was also a Dana Girls mystery, The Secret of the Old Well, but we’re going to focus on Nancy Drew for now.)

I became obsessed with reading and collecting the entire series. I still collect them, of course, even if my collection is in storage because I don’t have the room to display them in the Lost Apartment. My obsession (I guess this was probably the first example of my OCD-lite coming to light) was driven even further by my parents’ forbidding me to read them; you see, I was a boy and these were books for girls. I started collecting and reading the boys’ series, and buying Nancy Drew, and the other series for girls, on the sly; I would get, say, five Hardy Boys books and slip two Nancy Drews into the stack, and then would bury the Nancy Drews at the bottom of the book bag beneath the Hardy Boys, and pull out one of the Hardy Boys to read in the car on the way home. (I was undoubtedly not fooling my mother, who had to notice that the yellow-spined Nancy Drew collection was mysteriously growing, albeit at a slower pace than the Hardy Boys.)

nancy drew leaning chimney

This was also an early example of my stubbornness, and the streak of “if you want me to not do something, the worst thing you can do is tell me so.”

Hard to believe something as innocuous as Nancy Drew mysteries could be considered contraband, isn’t it? My sister helped out sometimes, too, when she felt like it, by buying them for me. They couldn’t very well tell her she couldn’t have them.

Ghostwriting a Nancy Drew mystery as Carolyn Keene is on my bucket-list, I might add.

While I can’t credit Nancy Drew for my lifelong love of mysteries and my desire to become a mystery writer, she was a big assist, and my first introduction to mystery series. I read almost all of the Grosset & Dunlap series (Nancy, the Hardy Boys, Dana Girls, Judy Bolton, Ken Holt, Rick Brant, Biff Brewster, Cherry Ames, Vicki Barr), as well as the Trixie Belden books and The Three Investigators (which was probably my favorite, along with Ken Holt), and have kept all of my copies all these years. In my early twenties I started finishing the sets, haunting used bookstores for used copies, since many of the off-brand series were no longer in print. After Hurricane Katrina I discovered eBay, and started finishing the sets. Once I had all of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series completed, I went back and started recollecting the series–there were  original texts and revised texts, and my completed sets were combinations of the two. Now I want a complete set of revised texts and one of original texts. I also belong to collectors’ groups on Facebook, and there’s a store in Savannah, Books by the Bay, that specializes in the kids’ series that I am DYING to visit (and will undoubtedly drop a ton of cash at if I ever get there).

So, happy birthday, Nancy. Thanks for all the great memories!

Time Has Come Today

I arrived home from a second trip in less than a week about an hour ago. I made fantastic time from Oxford; I made it back to New Orleans in slightly less than fice and a half hours, including two stops for gas. I had the best time there, as well. I have lots of things to talk about regarding both trips, but right now I am decompressing and trying to get organized because I have to work tonight…and am already running out of steam. Whine. Ah, well, I can sleep late tomorrow. I did fall in love with both Montgomery and Oxford, though, and feel strangely reconnected to my Southern roots.

But I  also want to talk about this fantastic book I read on the trip, Luckiest Girl Alive, by Jessica Knoll.

luckiest girl alive

For the record, Constant Reader, anything blurbed by Megan Abbott is generally going to turn out to be fantastic.

I inspected the knife in my hand.

“That’s the Shun. Feel how light it is compared to the Wusthof?”

I pricked a finger on the blade’s witchy chin, testing. The handle was supposed to be moisture resistant, but it was quickly getting humid in my grip.

“I think that design is better suited for someone of your stature.” I looked up at the sales associate, bracing for the word people always use to describe short girls hungry to hear “thin.” “Petite.” He smiled like I should be flattered. Slender, elegant, graceful–now there’s a compliment that might actually defang me.

And so we meet Ani FaNelli, engaged to a successful businessman from old money, and she herself has her dream job at The Women’s Magazine (read: Cosmo). Ani had a horrific experience in her ritzy private high school in Philadelphia, which her social climbing mother forced her to attend, and after this event, focused on reinventing herself and doing whatever she had to in order to get the great life she felt she deserved after that horrific humiliation. But the facade of pretending to be the perfect fiancee is starting to wear thin…and as the book flashes back and forth between her wedding planning in the present day and what happened to her back at the Butler Academy, the edges begin to wear a little thin and she slowly begins to remember who she is beneath her carefully constructed facade, and the unraveling begins.

Ani is probably one of those characters male reviewers like to talk shit about–you know, the “unlikable woman”, which has apparently become so prevalent in suspense thrillers since the enormous success of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, and this one has the obligatory “girl” in the title, even–but the title phrase does come up during the course of the book, and as the story of Ani’s high school experience unspools…it’s so much much worse than you think it could have been.

This was an Edgar Award nominee for Best First Novel (she lost to Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, which also won the Pulitzer Prize), and it’s riveting. Highly recommended.

Bottle of Wine

Oxford, Mississippi is a beautiful little town. I arrived here yesterday afternoon–the drive didn’t leave me nearly as exhausted as the one to Montgomery did, even though it was longer; I suspect it was because I worked late the night before doing bar testing so was already tired. I checked into the Inn at Ole Miss, and then went foraging for dinner as well as exploring.  I had a lovely dinner at City Grocery; shrimp and grits, similar to the dish I make but slightly better–but I also was able to spot the spice differences, as well as the obvious addition of sautéed mushrooms, so the next time I make it I am going to make those alterations and see if it turns out the same way. I washed it down with a lovely glass of a Napa Chardonnay, and then wandered back down to the Inn, taking lots of pictures and getting all kinds of inspirations and ideas for a campus crime novel.I am not sure what the situation here is as far as campus crime, but I am making notes and a file, and perhaps some other time I can come up for a few extra days, talk to some more people, do some research and figure out how to get the story whipped into shape.

I also finished reading Jessica Knoll’s sublime Luckiest Girl Alive, which was absolutely amazing, and I intend to discuss that wonderful novel in more depth once I am home and at a computer rather than writing this on an app on the iPad (don’t get me wrong, this is very cool, and this is the first trip I’ve taken where I’ve not brought the laptop–and I will most likely never bring it again, as the iPad basically can replace it completely, and it weighs significantly less. I also started reading Cleopatra’s Shadows by Emily Holleman, which I am enjoying and focuses on two women who have always fascinated me: Cleopatra’s sisters, Berenice and Arsinoe, and whom I myself have always wanted to write about.

My panel is this afternoon at four; they are picking me up at 3:30 in front of the Inn and I am really not certain what the discussion is going to be about. It’s a month-long event called the Radical South, a counter-event to Confederate History Month (in a moment of irony, I am here at a counter-event to Confederate History MOnth while the Confederate monuments in New Orleans are being taken down; which is also a subject for another time as I have very strong feelings about that myself) and after that I am being taken out to dinner. Tomorrow I intend to rise early, avail myself of the complimentary breakfast here at the Inn (it was sublime this morning), and then check-out and head home, as I have to work tomorrow night. But that also gets me a short day on Thursday, which is also lovely.

The weather is also sublime; rather cool for late April, but not humid, which is always a plus.

And now, I am going back to the spice mines.IMG_1725

 

I Say a Little Prayer

Today I venture north to Oxford, Mississippi, home to one of my literary heroes, William Faulkner, and also home to Ole Miss, aka the University of Mississippi. This isn’t going to be a quick ‘in-and-out’ like Montgomery; I am spending two nights there (the event is tomorrow night) and will drive back down to New Orleans on Wednesday. I have to work later that evening, which is daunting and will make for a long, exhausting day, but I feel like I will sleep rather well that Wednesday night, if for no other reason than pure exhaustion. I am feeling rested this morning, but not quite awake; I am going to continue with coffee-swilling before I shave and shower and depart. I am already packed; all I have left to do is put the current book I’m reading (Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll) and my iPad into my bag. I believe the event is tomorrow evening, so I will have all day to explore Oxford. I will be taking the camera with me, and I plan on making a pilgrimage, at the very least, to Faulkner’s home. (In an aside, sometimes when I mention that Faulkner is one of my literary heroes I get mocked, or get called pretentious; but I truly enjoy reading Faulkner. He isn’t easy to read, or follow, but the language! The way he builds the story! I still think The Sound and the Fury is the greatest American novel, no matter what–but I have been thinking lately I should, as an adult and more mature reader, give both Hemingway and Fitzgerald another try.)

I did finish reading Thirteen Reasons Why yesterday afternoon, and no, it didn’t end in the same was as the television series, and yes, it’s ending was just as dissatisfying to me, although it made sense. The book makes no judgments of the characters, including Clay, although the relationship between Clay and Hannah wasn’t as developed or as evolved in the show; I didn’t get a sense of why Clay would care as much as he did from the novel. But it was a fun read, and let’s face it–as I said on the panel Saturday, what could be more noir than high school? All of my young adult fiction, frankly, is based on that principle.

We also finished Feud last night, along with the rest of the country, and Jessica Lange was absolutely heartbreaking. Sarandon really was great as Bette Davis, but for some reason, I just think Lange was better as Crawford. The whole cast was terrific, really, and it was horrible what happened to both women as they aged, how the industry turned their back on them, what it’s like to be a woman in Hollywood–and how that hasn’t, really, changed. Ryan Murphy is an interesting writer/producer. American Horror Story seems to go off the rails every season; I never got past the second episode of Scream Queens; and I never watched Nip/Tuck–but really enjoyed Popular. But with American Crime Story and Feud he’s done an extraordinary job; but then again, in both instances he didn’t have to really come up with a plot or an ending to the story he was telling: both were based in reality. I also am terrified of his Hurricane Katrina season of American Crime Story. It could be terrible, absolutely terrible; all I can do is hope that filming in New Orleans–as he did with American Horror Story–made him fall in love with the city the way Jessica Lange did (she now lives here).

Obviously, I’ve not written a word since I left for Montgomery on Friday (other than here), and hope I’ll have both the time and the energy while in Oxford.

And now, back to the spice mines.6f72d89ae05ea0959513f24176fd12e5

Bend Me Shape Me

 

In a couple of hours, I’ll be on the road to Montgomery, Alabama, for the Alabama Book Festival. The route takes me on I-10 East to Mobile, where I will then get on I-65 north all the way to Montgomery. It’s a lovely drive, if gas stations and places to eat and rest stops are a bit on the sparse side, and I am going to drive leisurely. I’ve decided to make that detour on Chef Menteur Highway over the Rigolets after all, and maybe even stop at a few places that look nice to take pictures. It’s also a lovely looking day outside, so it should be a great day for a lovely drive through the countryside.

When I got home from bar testing last night we watched the eleventh episode of Thirteen Reasons Why–Clay’s tape–and it was so much more heartbreaking than I feared it would be. Bitter cynical Queen Greg cried a couple of times, and the performance of Dylan Minnette as Clay was not only surprising in its subtle nuance, but perfectly done in an understated way that was much harder to watch–and more heartbreaking and effective–had it been over-the-top histrionic, as most directors and actors seem to choose. The entire young cast is quite effective in their roles, and I’ve also become more impressed by the performances of the adult actors. Perhaps the most impressive thing about the show, though, is the seamless editing, the way the show transitions between past and present. The big reveal of Clay’s tape also explained so much more about the behavior of the others kids, which seemed almost inexplicable before. The last two episodes will probably be just as intense….and I am also looking forward into finishing reading the book. In an odd coincidence, the book’s author, Jay Asher, is also appearing tomorrow at the Alabama Book Festival. I am sure his talk will be jam-packed; but I am going to make the effort to go see him.

I love listening to authors talk about writing, frankly, and 90% of the time they don’t annoy the crap out of me. I am excited also because being around book people is always an inspirational high for me.

I doubt that I’ll have time to work on the outline while I am in Montgomery–I’ll probably arrive with just enough time to check into my room, maybe take a shower, and then head over to the author party. I am looking forward to seeing some of the people I met in Wetumpka there, and of course, the always delightful Carolyn Haines and Dean James are also going to be there this weekend–I do always love seeing them.

And now, I am going to have some more coffee, and get ready to head out. Happy Friday, Constant Reader!

Here’s gorgeous Brandon Larracuente, who plays Jeff on Thirteen Reasons Why, one of my favorite characters on the show.

Brandon Larracuente

Never Give You Up

As I get deeper into the outlining of the manuscript I am working on–yes, I am outlining it after writing it, which only makes sense in Bizarro World, but welcome to Greg’s Wonderful World of Writing–I am very pleased with what I managed to accomplish in this first draft. I touched on a lot of issues and themes that are important to me, and it’s not nearly as repetitive as I feared it might be. The trick is going to be the winnowing down; it currently sits at 97,000 words and needs at least three more chapters to get to the resolution and be finished. Even if those are only three thousand words or so, a young adult manuscript of 106,000 is probably way too long. I also think I managed to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish with it, even though it’s technically not finished. There is, apparently, something to be said about writing a manuscript you are really passionate about without the pressure of a deadline. All in all, from the moment I started writing the first chapter to when I realized I’d written it too long and the original end I’d planned would require another three chapters–or I’d really have to rush it all to get it all done in one more–was a total of forty-five days, and I didn’t write every one of those forty-five days. I think the actual writing days were at most thirty, and may have been as few as twenty-five.

I am actually dreading getting to those last few chapters I’ve written, to be honest.

Another thing I am doing is making a list of every character named in the book as I go–I’ve already discovered multiple character name changes–and another thing I am going to do is really get into the characters’ lives and histories by writing biographies of them, putting all the things I know in my head about them down onto paper and filling in the gaps. I’m amazed at how many characters there are–some of them are really only seen or mentioned in passing–and there are some things I really want to hit harder that I just seemed to lightly pass over as I wrote the first draft. But there aren’t a lot of mistakes, no awkward sentences, no bad paragraphs, and most of the dialogue works.

If you couldn’t tell, Constant Reader, one Gregalicious is quite pleased with himself and this manuscript.

I’ve also decided to NOT take the detour on Chef Menteur Highway on my way to Montgomery, and think I might do that on my way to Oxford on Monday instead. The drive to Montgomery is more time sensitive–there’s an author party I should go to on Friday night, and the event in Oxford is on Tuesday, so it doesn’t really matter what time I get there, so why not do it when I am not going to be pressed for time? It only makes sense. And I am also really pleased with how “Quiet Desperation” is coming along in its rewrite.

Wow. Who am I, and what have I done with myself? I think the affirmations are helping, seriously.

We got through two more episodes of Thirteen Reasons Why last night, and I have to say, I am becoming rather a fan of Ross Butler. He was simply stellar in the episode about Zach’s tape, and I was already aware of him from playing Reggie Mantle on Riverdale, and that casting was pretty bad-ass: a role traditionally Caucasian being played by an Asian-American actor (yet another reason to love Riverdale is its diverse casting choices). Ross is also easy on the eyes:

ross butler tank

See what I mean? And now, back to the spice mines.

Magic Carpet Ride

I got up early this morning to take a friend to a doctor’s appointment, and so, having finished Finders Keepers, dug out my copy of Jay Asher’s 13 Reasons Why to take along to read while I waited for her.  We watched another three episodes last night–it really is compulsively watchable, if more than slightly annoying (Paul and I have a tendency to yell at the television periodically “JUST LISTEN TO THE REST OF THE TAPES DUMBASS!” but other than that, we are really enjoying it, despite some plot holes). I managed to read almost 100 pages during the hour or so I waited–it’s a quick read, the book isn’t as long as it looks–double spaced, big font, lots of short, one sentence paragraphs–and again, despite some plot holes, it’s compulsively readable; I want to know all the reasons. The book is also different than the show, in that Clay apparently does what Paul and I want him to do in the show–he listens to the tapes all in one night. I can see why that isn’t possible in the show; you probably couldn’t get thirteen one hour episodes out of the story if it all took place in one night, but on the other hand…does it really need to be thirteen hours? But the young actors are all incredibly appealing and are quite good in their roles, as I said before, and it’s compulsively watchable.

The show also pushes buttons from time to time for me; “wow, are they really showing the kids getting high? Drinking beer? Getting drunk? How incredibly irresponsible!” and then I have to snap out of it. Teenagers deal with these things, they did when I was in high school, and one of the things that annoyed me about entertainment aimed at teens when I was one is that it was so unrealistic.

Then again, Judy Blume was just getting published and writing frankly about teens, and scandalizing the country and getting banned everywhere, when I was a teen–and I always see Judy Blume as the person who changed the world of young adult fiction, and for the better.

Ironically, I just checked the schedule for the Alabama Book Festival this weekend and see that Jay Asher is speaking there. Synchronicity, or serendipity, or both?

I think one of the reasons I’m enjoying Riverdale as much as I am (the young actor who plays Reggie on that show is also on 13 Reasons Why; the first time he turned up on screen I said out loud, “Reggie!” He and the character are being under-utilized on Riverdale, which I hope changes) is seeing the squeaky clean, highly sanitized comic books I read when I was very young made more realistic. Riverdale is a dark teen soap, owing debts not only to Twin Peaks and Beverly Hills 90210, but also a big one to Pretty Little Liars–which in turn owes a debt to The Edge of Night, the long running daytime soap whose story-lines were based not only in romance but in crime and suspense. 13 Reasons Why is another teen soap built around a mystery; while Riverdale‘s main driving story is”who killed Jason Blossom, and why” this one’s is “why did Hannah kill herself, and why the tapes?”

I’ve also been thinking about my own young adult fiction a lot lately, probably because of what I am currently working on. I’ve put the Scotty book aside for the time being, because I just wasn’t feeling it, to be honest, and writing it felt like I was forcing it and the story itself didn’t work for me. So, I am going to take a break from it for a bit, work on some short stories, and forge forward with this manuscript I am intent on revising. I’m actually enjoying myself doing all this editing and revising because there is no pressure of a deadline. I can take my time, think things through, rather than trusting my instincts and hoping for the best while the clock inexorably continues to tick as time slips through my fingers. (There really is something to be said for no deadlines.)

Sorceress began as a short story of slightly less than ten thousand words, and I originally wrote it in 1989, long hand, on notebook paper. I remember paying someone to type it for me, and as a lengthy short story it didn’t work–it was too rushed, too much happened in too short a period of time on the page. When I reread the story, it occurred to me that it was really just a lengthy synopsis, and might make a book. It was the third novel I completed a first draft of (in 1993!), and it eventually made it to publication in 2010. I know I wrote it originally as an homage to Jane Eyre, Victoria Holt, and other gothic writers I had long admired; I gave it more of a supernatural edge, though, but it was really the same premise that even Dark Shadows began with: a young orphaned girl comes to live in a big, spooky house where mysterious things happen. (I wonder why so many books/stories of this type start this way? Is it because it’s a voyage to the unknown, or a fresh start in a new place? 13 Reasons Why kind of fits into this as well, since part of Hannah’s problems begin with her being the new girl in town.)

Hmmmm.

All right, it’s back to the spice mines with me.

 

Hold Me Tight

Monday morning of a short work week, as I am traveling to Alabama on Friday, returning to New Orleans on Sunday, and then it’s off to Ole Miss and Oxford, MS for another event.

It was a rather lovely three day weekend, quite frankly; I wish there was some way to make every weekend three days, to be honest. Having the extra day makes all the difference, really. I spent one day running errands and cleaning, another day cleaning and reading, and the last day reading and writing. I now feel completely relaxed and rested and thoroughly prepared for this week, as opposed to whining about how the weekend never lasts long enough. Alas, there won’t be another such three day weekend until Memorial Day at the end of next month. Heavy heaving sigh.

I finished reading Finders Keepers yesterday, and I did really enjoy it. It was an excellent follow-up to Mr. Mercedes, and it was fun catching up with the remaining cast of that novel: Bill Hodges, Holly, and Jerome, who team up to help out a teenaged boy who has discovered a treasure trove–a buried trunk full of money and manuscripts, the haul from the robbery/murder of noted American author Joel Rothstein. Like all of King’s novels, it was compulsively readable, highly entertaining, with strongly built characters and relationships, brilliants touches of pop culture, and a good story. And, like so many of King’s novels/stories, at the center of the story was an author and his work–not to mention how that work affected his readers. Like Misery, one of his readers takes the work too seriously and becomes overly attached to the main character, doesn’t like what the author does to the character, and that fanaticism is what leads to the robbery/murder, and triggers the rest of the story.

I often chastise myself for writing about writers; I’ve always considered it more than a little self-indulgent, and as I get older and further along in my writing career, writers as characters continue to pop up in my work. “Quiet Desperation” is about writers and writing; and an author character popped up in The Orion Mask– Jerry Channing, a character I became so attached I brought him back for Garden District Gothic, and even considered giving him his own stand-alone adventure. It also occurs to me that the unnamed protagonist of several short stories I’ve written–an author–are really early incarnations of Jerry (the only short story about him that’s been published so far was “An Arrow for Sebastian”). Yesterday I started a second draft of “Quiet Desperation”–an actual rewrite, rather than an edit (which is, I think, long been a part of my problem with writing; I don’t rewrite, I simply edit what I’ve already written, which is lazy) and it will eventually require me to drive out to New Orleans East, because where the new opening of the story takes place is a part of New Orleans I haven’t seen in over ten years, and I am pulling from my memories–and Katrina occurred since then, so the topography of that part of the city/parish has undoubtedly been changed by the hurricane and aftermath. Of course, now that I have a new car, that’s not an issue; nor is driving out there. It’s just a matter of finding the time. Next weekend is definitely out, since I’ll be in Alabama, and when I’m  not in Alabama I’ll be too busy preparing for the trip to Mississippi–although I could drive out that way on the way out of town to Alabama on Friday; it’s on the way.

Hmmmm. ’tis a thought.

We also watched last night’s Feud, and I have to say, both Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon are absolutely killing it. I’m not sure who’s going to win the Emmy, but my guess is on one of them–with Nicole Kidman’s performance in Big Little Lies giving them both a run for their money.

We also started watching Thirteen Reasons Why, and got through the first three episodes. Had I not needed to get up this morning for work, we would have watched more. There are some questionable aspects of the story/plot for me, but the young actors are incredibly appealing, and Dylan Minnette, who plays main character Clay Jensen, is quite compelling as the quiet loner. I have some thoughts about him, his character, and where this is all going, but I will keep those to myself and continue to watch.

dylan minnette

I also have a copy of the book in my TBR pile, where it’s been forever, and might just go ahead and read it now–reading Big Little Lies while watching the show didn’t hurt either, frankly.

And now, back to the spice mines.