storytelling

Now the artist who's doing the cover has been in touch and needs a different kind of commentary from me, and that's also a part of the process I like, though it's much more fraught with anxiety than the creation of the map. I like the concept for the cover, and I think it will turn out well. But I'll admit that I'm a bit obsessive about book design and cover art. I've been known to buy books that didn't interest me at all because I was so struck by the physical fact of the thing. With different mentoring as a teenager I could have well ended up as a graphic artist somehow involved in book design. Does this mean I want to design my own cover? Probably that would be a bad idea; I'd spend a year doing it and get nothing else done.

Posted by at 12:43 PM | Permalink

I'll admit that I thought Elmore Leonard's list was a bit vague ("10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. ") except where it was too specific ("3. Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue.")

So I'm going to list my suggestions (three at a time until I'm bored) and give other people a chance to bash at me. It's only fair.

1. When in doubt, read the passage out loud (1) to yourself (2) to somebody else you like (3) to somebody else you don't like. Take the average of all three reactions. If you still have absolutely no idea if the damn thing is any good, at least you will have succeeded in wasting another hour.

2. Hit a wall? Take a page-long scene with dialogue you like from a novel you admire. Write it out longhand, but switch all the genders of the characters. This will either paralyze you for a week or give you good ideas.

3. Take a random page from your manuscript and highlight every occurence of 'very' in yellow. Now go through and highlight every adjective in blue and every remaining adverb or adjective (in case you're not sure of the difference) in pink. If you've got rainbow-esque page in front of you when you are finished, delete all of the highlighted terms . Now put back only one out of ten. Choose carefully. (If you've got no pink, yellow or blue on the page, you're in a minimalist sink-hole and you'll need professional help to get out.)

Posted by at 6:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Posted by at 6:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by at 11:03 AM | Permalink

Here's what I don't like: first, the leaning toward more non-fiction (they had too much to start with, in my humble opinion). Mostly I don't like the way this discussion feeds into the frenzy over that old four letter word PLOT and the idea of serious fiction.

Roget’s II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition has this entry for serious:

1. Not easy to do, achieve, or master: arduous, difficult, hard, laborious, tall,tough, uphill. See EASY. 2. Full of or marked by dignity and seriousness: earnest, grave, sedate, sober, solemn, somber, staid. See ATTITUDE, HEAVY. 3. Having great consequence or weight: earnest, grave, heavy, momentous,severe, weighty. See IMPORTANT. 4. Causing or marked by danger or pain, for example: dangerous, grave, grievous, severe. See HELP. 5. Marked by sober sincerity: businesslike, earnest, no-nonsense, sobersided. Idioms: in earnest. See HEAVY, WORK.

So the distinction here seems to be between people who write fiction that is serious and those of us who opt for the easy. The question can also be put this way: why does Stephen King sell, and John Updike languish on the shelves? The answer is (and they don't want to hear this): you can't. People want a story; it's a part of the way the human psyche works. Give them a great story and they'll come, even if the novel is otherwise deficient (and I'm not going to get specific here, not just now).

There are a few litbloggers who do see some of the bigger issues here, ala The Literary Saloon. [correction follows; wrong attribution in original post] And there's this lovely little bit (also from The Elegant Variation):

But the other, more serious issue for me is the insularity of the contemporary fiction landscape. I find too many novels that feel like MFA projects that are little more than auditions for teaching posts to grind out more MFA students. Now, this is my own personal bugbear, but if I read one more novel about an academic or a writer I’m going to blow my brains out. Are you all so bereft of invention that this is the best you can cobble up? These arch, self-indulgent self-portraits? My question to all of you is why do you think that any reader would care? What do you offer them to connect to? How are you speaking to them? And that, in my opinion, is why it’s easy for the NYTBR to cut you - and the rest of us, by association - off. You have no constituency, no one who will not only defend the need for your work but who will back it up with their pocketbooks.

I've been in both camps -- the elite MFA and the PLOT crowd (this may be an overly simple way to draw the distinction, I admit); I gave up the first for the second. My proof is that my first novel (written under my real name) won the PEN/Hemingway award, which is pretty much a "you've arrived, welcome" pass from the MFA crowd. But then I went off and concentrated on this series of big, plot driven historicals, and by doing that, distanced myself. I'm a good girl gone bad. Or at least, gone easy.

Bottom line: If the NYTBR wants to give up literary gatekeeping and widen the scope of fiction it reviews, I'm pleased. But I'll believe it when I see it.

Posted by at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

A lot of the second novel in the Wilderness series takes place in lowland Scotland in 1802. The language spoken by the characters would have been Scots -- not English. I'll spare you the discourse on the difference at the moment, but while I was writing the novel I struggled with representing Scots in writing, and I did end up using spelling, to some degree. Here's an example:

Geordie nodded and cleared his throat. "On the road fra Corbelly, it was, at dusk. A whole pack o' redcoats wi' baig'nets at the ready, marchin' the crew o' the Jackdaw oop the road tae Dumfries. One o' the redcoats was carryin' Granny Stoker on his back, tied han' and fit like a calf. A mair crankit auld chuckie ye'll nivver see, swearin' and skirlin' and screechin'. It was a wonder tae behold."

Geordie nodded and cleared his throat. "On the road from Corbelly, it was, at dusk. A whole pack of redcoats with bayonets at the ready, marching the crew of the Jackdaw up the road to Dumfries. One of the redcoats was carrying Granny Stoker on his back, tied hand and foot like a calf. A more cranky old chuckie you'll never see, swearing and skirling and screeching. It was a wonder to behold."

The last example is from Curiosity, the character who so many of my readers claim as their favorite. She is an elderly black woman, a freed slave.

"No need to get particular with names, now. Don matter anyway, cause the man who lay claim to Selah wouldn't sell her, and there ain't a law that say a slave owner got to sell a slave at any price if he he got a mind to keep her. So maybe you'll understand that we ain't got much choice, not with a child on the way."

Flowers from the Storm, Laura Kinsale
"Bless me, what a row that was, Miss Timms! Shev was right bosky, do you see—he was used up. Corned, pickled and salted—"
"Comatose, Miss Timms," Durham explained gravely. "In strong drink."
"Oh, yes, good Oxford word. Comatose!" The colonel seemed to find that description an uplifting one. "Perfectly senseless. And we was having to carry him home, y'see, between the two of us, and he weighs—'S blood, he must weigh fourteen stone! And who might drive by at the very moment but the one they call the resurrection jarvey—"
"Night coachman. Sells bodies to the surgeons," Durham interpreted. "For anatomy lectures."
"Right! So what should I think—and it was my idea entirely, I promise you, Miss—and the fellow took him, and—" Colonel Fane made an expressive revolution with his forefinger. "And, y'know—his clothes, we got those, and the fellow took him in a sheet to old Brooks! In Blenheim Street! Took him there, to the lecturer's door!" He leaned back his head and thumped the table. "And offered—and offered . . . him for . . . f' . . . sale!"

They went into the dull gloom of the shop.
"Ah," said Yark. "I 'as a one or two to finish up, y'know," pointing to wooden skeletons and half-planked sides. "Says I might 'elp Nige Fearn wid 'is long-liner this winter. But if I gets out in the woods, you know, and finds the timber, it'll go along. Something by spring, see, by the time the ice goes. If I goes in the woods and finds the right sticks you know, spruce, var. See, you must find good uns, your stem, you wants to bring it down with a bit of a 'ollow to it, sternpost and your knee, and deadwoods a course, and breast'ook. You has to get the right ones. Your timbers, you know. There's some around 'ere steams 'em. I wouldn't set down in a steam timber boat. Weak."

The next example is from one of my all time favorite short stories, "My Man Bovanne," by Tone Cade Bambara . It's written in first person, and the narrator is Hazel, a black woman at philosophical odds with her grown children: she's too old-fashioned for their sensibilities. Bambara was a prominent African American writer who was intensely involved in urban culture in the '60s -- and she writes Hazel's POV in Hazel's language, Bambara's own language, full of imagery and living sound. She could write this vernacular because it was her own.

"Generation gap," spits Elo, like I suggested castor oil and fricassee possum in the milk shakes or somethin. "That's a white concept for a white phenomenon. There's no generation gap among Black people. We are a col—"
"Yeh, well never mind," says Joe Lee. "The point is Mama well, it's pride. You embarrass yourself and us too dancin like that."
"I wasn't shame." Then nobody say nuthin. Them standin there in they pretty clothes with drinks in they hands and gangin up on me, and me in the third-degree chair and nary a olive to my name. Felt just like the police got hold to me.
"First of all," Task say, holdin up his hand and tickin off the offenses, "the dress. Now that dress is too short, Mama, and too low-cut for a woman your age. And Tamu's going to make a speech tonight to kick off the campaign and will be introducin you and expecting you to organize the council of elders—"
"Me? Didn nobody ask me nuthin. You mean Nisi? She change her name?"
"Well, Norton was supposed to tell you about it. Nisi wants to introduce you and then encourage the older folks to form a Council of the Elders to act as an advisory—"
"And you going to be standing there with your boobs out and that wig on your head and that hem up to your ass. And people'll say, 'Ain't that the homy bitch that was grindin with the blind dude?"
"Elo, be cool a minute," say Task, gettin to the next finger. "And then there's the drinkin. Mama, you know you can't drink cause next thing you know you be laughin loud and carryin on," and he grab another finger for the loudness.
"And then there's the dancin. You been tattooed on the man for four records straight and slow draggin even on the fast numbers. How you think that look for a woman your age?"
"What's my age?"
"What?"
"I'm axin you all a simple question. You keep talkin bout what's proper for a woman my age. How old am I anyhow?"
And Joe Lee slams his eyes shut and squinches up his face to figure. And Task run a hand over his ear and stare into his glass like the ice cubes goin calculate for him. And Elo just starin at the top of my head like she goin rip the wig off any minute now.
"Is your hair braided up under that thing? If so, why don't you take it off? You always did do a neat cornroll."
"Uh huh," cause I'm thinkin how she couldn't undo her hair fast enough talking bout cornroll so countrified. None of which was the subject. "How old, I say?"
"Sixtee-one or—"
"You a damn lie Joe Lee Peoples."
"And that's another thing," say Task on the fingers.
"You know what you all can kiss," I say, gettin up and brushin the wrinkles out my lap.
"Oh, Mama," Elo say, puttin a hand on my shoulder like she hasn't done since she left home and the hand landin light and not sure it supposed to be there. Which hurt me to my heart. Cause this was the child in our happiness fore Mr. Peoples die. And I carried that child strapped to my chest till she was nearly two. We was close is what I'm tryin to tell you.

Posted by at 9:45 AM | Permalink

I have a great affinity for descriptions that involve color. So much so that I have to stop myself from overdoing it in my own writing. I'm only allowed to use the word cerulean once in any book, for example. Verdigris is another word/color that rings for me as are: vermilion, topaz, malachite, ochre, umber, sienna.

Posted by at 7:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

1. Appropriate disclaimers. From the BBC fanfic article: "Fan fiction websites invariably contain a host of disclaimers, acknowledging the borderline legality of the pursuit. While not done for commercial purposes, fan fiction inevitably involves the use of copyrighted characters and settings, and fanfic authors basically operate at the mercy of [the copyright holder/author]. The good archives all recognise this - hence their clear legal disclaimers - and are usually only too willing to take down any material if [the copyright holder/author] ask them to. ...Any responsible site which archives fanfictions will have a blanket disclaimer on the main page and any index pages, stating that the stories were written for fun and are reproduced on the web for the enjoyment of other fans, and that there is no commercial intent. This is preceded or followed by a copyright disclaimer, stating - for general fanfic sites - that all characters and settings are the copyright property of their creators, or on specific sites stating to whom the rights belong."

2. Anybody writing fan fiction about my characters must understand that I cannot and will not -- primarily for legal reasons -- read it. This is to protect myself from claims that I have stolen ideas that might show up in any such fan fiction. I just have to stay away from it, no matter how wonderful it may be.

I quite like reading the disclaimers on fanfic sites -- they are often quite funny. Somebody should compile a sampling and post it somewhere (not me; nope). But. This is what I mean: From Jess's Buffy fanfic:

DISCLAIMER:  What's the Numfar of this fic?  In other words, Joss [Wheldon] is the malevolent god that owns all, although sometimes I sneak Spike out the side door and do wicked things with him.

Farscape is owned by The Jim Henson company, Hallmark Entertainment, Nine Network Australia and the Sci-Fi Channel. They own all rights to characters mentioned within this story. I have merely borrowed these characters to play with, and promise to return them in good working order.

Posted by at 8:40 AM | Permalink

Just behind Lieutenant Hodges stood Hannah Bonner, dressed in men's breeches and a leather jerkin over a rough shirt, her person hung about with weapons: a rifle on her back, pistols, a knife in a beaded sheath on a broad belt. She could heal or kill; he had seen her conjure miracles and blasphemies with equal ease. No mortal woman, he had called her to her face and she had not corrected him with words.

The moonlight was kind to her, as the sun was kind. In the year since they had made their uneasy alliance he had seen her every day, and still the sight of her was startling. By the standards of Wyndham's own kind, Luke Bonner's Mohawk half-sister could not be called beautiful. Her skin was too dark, her hair too black, her mouth too generous for pale English blood. Below dark eyes, the bosses of her cheeks cast shadows. Most damning of all, the expression in those eyes was far and away too intelligent. If her skin were as pale as snow, her mind would have isolated her; Englishmen did not know what to do with a woman like her.

Posted by at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

[...] My heart is breaking here -- you must make this poor soul happy by continuing to post excerpts from the book because I can't wait until August!!!

Sorry, my passion for your books got the best of me....guess I'll have to reread the first three. Also, rented "The Last of the Mohicans" because I saw it referenced a few times along w/ your books and did not know Nathaniel and Chinahook (spell?) were characters in that movie...does your book continue their adventures or did your books come first or what?

Waiting impatiently in Georgia, Cindy Hendley

Now, regarding the movie The Last of the Mohicans -- I'm glad you asked, because there's a lot of confusion about this.

James Fenimore Cooper wrote a series of books called the Leatherstocking Tales. His main character was Natty [Nathaniel] Bumppo (also called Hawkeye, and several other names), and seemed to be based on the legends that grew up around the real life character Daniel Boone. One of his novels was The Last of the Mohicans; another, set in Hawkeye's later life, was The Pioneers.

The Last of the Mohicans has been filmed a number of times, the last and most memorable by the director and producer Michael Mann. That is the movie staring Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeline Stowe. In Mann's version of the story, Hawkeye's real name was Nathaniel Po.

I wasn't so much interested in retelling the story of The Last of the Mohicans -- that has been done often enough -- but I was interested in Hawkeye's later life. So I set out to do a few things: first, write a very loose retelling of The Pioneers (keeping some of the plot, some of the characters, and some of the themes, especially the environmental ones); second, to tell the story from the female perspective (Cooper was a fine storyteller, but he didn't write women very well -- they come across as idealized and two-dimensional); third, to put my own spin on the legend of the frontiersmen who populated the New-York frontier; fourth, to try my best not to contribute to the stereotypes rampant in literature about the Mohawk. I hoped to portray them as a people who survived in spite of great hardship.

Because I wanted to put my own version on paper, I changed Hawkeye's name yet again. Not Bumppo or Po or Boone, but Bonner. So I have a Dan'l Bonner and his son, Nathaniel Bonner.

So the bottom line: this series is not a sequel to anything, not to Cooper's books or Mann's movie, but a departure from the fictional world that Cooper created.

Posted by at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Mostly the corrections have to do with hyphenation, commas and similar matters, but the copyeditor does have a query here -- she's asking me to make sure I'm using the right names, as the text on page 1060 conflicts with the text here on page 1077. Which is very possible; I mess up like this all the time. So you can see this is where the copyeditor is invaluable.

The ms. goes back to Bantam on Monday. The next stage is galley proofs, in six or eight weeks, I'd reckon. Then the ARCs (advance reader's copies, sometimes called uncorrected galleys), come out and go off to reviewers and other such people.

Posted by at 7:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I like Terry's blog; he's interesting and funny, and mostly I just change the channel when I start to get irritated. Which I had to do this time. The only reason I'm bringing it up here is that there is one interesting observation to point out, and I'm quoting:

But it’s just as worthy of note that theWashington Post is now behaving as though litblogs have become a recognized part of the world of literary journalism.

It seems a matter of common sense. I think anyone who reads King's comment that the new Peter Straub book lost boy lost girl deserves the National Book Award knows it is ridiculous. Unfortunately for King, the National Book Awards are not run like the Oscars where big and dumb rules, giving The Titanic the award over L.A. Confidential. (Yes, I'm still fuming.) And not that Straub is big and dumb, but it is a matter of storytelling vs. writing.

Posted by at 6:15 PM | Permalink

Rather than get into a long essay on erroneous use of terms for language (the temptation is great, but I will resist), I will simply state an observation: it's never a good idea to try to convey variation in spoken language in terms of spelling. The best (and maybe the only) way to make this clear is by example. Take a look at this exchange from Gone with the Wind. In this scene, there is an elderly black man named Peter, a slave, and he's upset with Scarlett.

"Dey talked in front of me lak Ah wuz a mule an' couldn' unnerstan' dem—lak Ah wuz a Affikun an' din' know whut dey wuz talkin' 'bout," said Peter, giving a tremendous sniff. "An' dey call me a nigger an' Ah ain' never been call a nigger by no w'ite folks, an' dey call me a ole pet an' say dat niggers ain' ter be trus'ed! Me not ter be trus'ed! Why, w'en de ole Cunnel wuz dyin he say ter me, 'You, Peter! You look affer mah chillun. Te'k keer of young Miss Pittypat,' he say, ' 'cause she ain' got no mo' sense dan a hoppergrass.' An' Ah done tek keer of her good all dese yars."


"Nobody but the Angel Gabriel could have done better," said Scarlett soothingly. "We just couldn't have lived without you."

"They talked in front of me like I was a mule and couldn't understand them -- like I was an African and didn't know what they was talking about," said Peter, giving a tremendous sniff. "And they call me a nigger and I ain't never been call a nigger by no white folks, and they call me a old pet and say that niggers ain't to be trusted! Me not to be trusted! Why, when the old Colonel was dying he say to me, 'You Peter! You look after my children. Take care of young Miss Pittypat,' he say, 'cause she ain't got no more sense than a hoppergrass.' And I done take care of her good all these years."

"Nobody but the Angel Gabriel cudda done bettah" said Scarlett soothingly. "We jus' couldn't have lived without you."

I've done to Scarlett's dialogue what the author did to Peter's -- I changed the spelling to approximate how she would have pronounced the words. The result? It's amusing and condescending -- the misspellings seem to indicate something about her intelligence, or her illiteracy.

The lesson here is simple: don't play with spelling unless you have a really good reason. Playing with spelling will almost always work as a trivialization of the character, and that's never good. If it's important to portray dialect, do that in other ways.

Posted by at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Deborah wrote in a comment:

May we see the first chapter of 'Fire'? And many thanks for 'spoiler' geneological chart.

Posted by at 3:26 PM | Permalink

I get between twenty and fifty emails a week asking about the publication date of the new novel, which I can finally state with certainty: 08/31/2004. ISBN: 0-553-80146-5.

This is the North American publication date; when I know about Australia/NZ, you'll know too -- but it's most probably at the same time. Yes, this date is later than I expected. Please don't kill the messenger.

When I have the new cover art I'll put it up here. In the meantime: below (ta-da) is the cover copy, which will answer some of the many questions readers have been asking.

The year is 1812 and Hannah Bonner -- known as Walking Woman among her husband's people, the Seneca -- has returned to her family’s mountain cabin in Paradise in upstate New York from the wars in the west. She has come home without Strikes-the-Sky or their son…and with a story she can’t bear to tell. As Hannah resumes her duties as a gifted healer among the sick and needy, she also slowly gathers the strength she will need to heal herself. Little does she realize that she is about to be called away to face her greatest challenge ever.

News of the latest conflict with Britain finds the young men of Paradise -including eighteen year old Daniel Bonner --eager to take up arms. Against their better judgment, Nathaniel and Elizabeth must let him go, just as they must let his twin sister Lily pursue her independence in Montreal under the protection of their eldest son, Luke, who will face his own challenge: on the eve of the War of 1812, an expected guest arrives in Canada from Scotland. It is the Bonner's distant cousin, the newly widowed Jennet Scott of Carryckcastle. Far from their respective homes, Lily and Jennet will each deal with regret and the possibility of new love.

While Paradise copes with a harsh winter and the far-reaching repercussions of an old enemy's schemes, it is Hannah who must risk everything once more—this time to save Daniel, who’s been wounded in battle and taken prisoner by the British. As the distant thunder of the War of 1812 threatens Paradise, Hannah may learn to live—and maybe love—again in one final act of courage, duty, and sacrifice.

thanks to Tracey for catching that typo.

Posted by at 6:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

There are a few things that are notoriously hard to write well. Sex is probably at the top of the list, but grief isn't far down from the top. This short story is about a woman who came, after long struggle and with great initial reluctance, to love a man who was first her closest ally and friend. She loses him suddenly; this story is about the time immediately following that loss. It is tightly written, clean in its scope and highly evocative.

Posted by at 1:14 PM | Permalink

There's a battle that people don't talk about much, one that goes on (has always, will always) between authors and editors, most particularly copy editors.

I have been very fortunate in the editors who I've worked with on my novels. For the most part, I've been able to get along the with copy editors, too. But especially with copy editors, there's always a bit of tension. I imagine it's the same kind of push-pull that exists between architects and engineers.

The thing any author wants and hopes for from an editor are pretty simple, the first and most important being: please catch me when I fall. That means, if a paragraph is impossible to follow, I need to know. If I used the wrong character name, please, shout. If I've got the wrong word (sure, this happens once in a while) then by all means, don't keep it to yourself. Most of all I want a copy editor to catch me when I repeat myself. I hate doing that, and while I re-read a hundred times, I will always miss a few instances where I let the same word creep into a sentence or paragraph after it's come to the end of its usefulness.

From a really good editor, one whose instincts I trust, I hope for more. I hope that editor will raise deeper and more complicated issues, for example: do you feel this is enough of a transition for readers who are new to the series? Or: this feels a beat too long to me, or: Have you read this dialogue out loud? [one way of saying, this sounds awkward]. And a big one: Do you realize that you've used this imagery [facial expression, turn of phrase] before on pages xx, xx, xx and xx ?

These are things that make the editorial process important to me personally. Less important to me (and I think, to most authors) are issues of spelling and punctuation. I'm pretty good at that stuff, probably because I have done my share of editing, but I'm not perfect. And there's a reason: it bores me, and worse, it distracts me from the important stuff.

I am writing this partially in response to Pat Holt's essay Ten Mistakes Writers Don't See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do) , in which she (as editor) shakes her finger at authors for comma sins:

Compound sentences, most modifying clauses and many phrases *require* commas. You may find it necessary to break the rules from time to time, but you can't delete commas just because you don't like the pause they bring to a sentence or just because you want to add tension.

I would guess that about 90 percent of the editorial marks in the manuscript I've got in front of me have to do with commas. The copy editor wants serial commas. I don't use them. Do I care? Not really. If s/he wants to go through 1,170 manuscript pages aligning commas, I'm fine with that as long as the outcome is consistent and it doesn't interfere with some greater purpose of mine. Should I have done this while I was writing? The answer is simple: hell no. I'm juggling a hundred characters, a half dozen plot lines, three different battles, two love stories, and a million words of backstory. When I'm re-writing I'm looking hard at characters, the way they talk to each other, what they do. The commas are of secondary (or even tertiary) importance, as are other matters of punctuation-rules-of-the-moment (because much of punctuation is, in case you never noticed, a matter of style, and changes over time).

The bottom line is this: my job is making sure the story works, the characters move, the conflicts engage. Sometimes, rarely, I use punctuation as a tool to achieve a desired effect. In those cases, I simply tell the copy editor (by means of that wonderful abbreviation sic) to Leave It As I Wrote It. Thus far, nobody has gone to war with me about such an incident. I hope that never happens.

Posted by at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

But there were problems. I wasn't worried about the length of the movie; it never struck me as boring, or slow -- I probably could have sat through another twenty minutes without noticing the time -- but the screenplay I found seriously flawed.

I try never to compare movies to books, but in this case the major flaw of the book was amplified in the movie, and here it is: Charles Frazier wrote a fictionalized account of his own family's history in the Civil War, but he stuck pretty much (as I understand it) to the facts. A soldier walks away from the war because he's had enough, and the journey home is fraught with symbolic encounters. The young woman who has been waiting for him through all the years of the war has had her own tragedies to deal with. Both of them are confronted by the extremes of good and evil that humankind has to offer; Ada and Inman survive, in part, because they hold on to the idealized memories they have of each other. Will he make it home? That issue is never really in doubt. Will they find in each other the person they hope to find? That's not the question either. The story suffers because the second question is never entertained, and the first one is manipulated. The result is an ending that is so strikingly, exceedingly painful and even overwrought that it almost negates the whole story that comes before. The ending may be true to the historical record, but in this case (as is so often true) history is not the stuff of satisfying fiction. Or filmmaking.

Posted by at 5:42 PM | Permalink

It seems like such a simple thing, given the internet. How long does it take (and what does a ticket cost) to travel roundtrip from London to Zurich in August, by train? Spent three hours trying to find answers and got nowhere. I tried all the main rail sites (eurail, raileurope, etc etc). Every single of one of them put me through the same slow, excruciating hoops and then said (oh so perkily): sorry! Can't get there from here! Or, they advised that I plan each leg of the journey and add it all up and then ticket them all separately... at which point the fare comes out to something like $800, one way. I started wondering if maybe a Eurail pass would solve the whole problem and then saw, oh no, England doesn't participate in the Eurail Pass program. Of course not. Why make things easy, when difficult is possible?

I like trains, and we thought this would be a good way for the Girl-Child to see some of central Europe... but I may give up and go back to British Airways in desperation.

back to copy-editing.

Posted by at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The thing is, I can't pick up any of the Niccolo books without wanting to read the whole series again. And given the complexity and demanding nature of these novels, that's like saying you're just rarin' to swim the Atlantic one more time.

So here I am, in the middle of re-reading the series agian. I'm on the third volume, A Race of Scorpions, and almost finished with it. This must be my seventh or eighth reading, and things don't get any easier, I have to say. Is this a streak of masochism in me? Or is there some other reason I go back and read these books again and again?

Clearly, the story has me hooked. More clear still is the fact that I just don't understand some of what goes on in this novel, and every time I read it I am determined to figure it out. This third novel is set primarily on the island of Cyprus, in a time when Christian and Muslem powers were locked in one bloody war after another: for souls, for trade monopolies, for land.

Niccolo is one of those extremely intelligent, extremely devious, utterly charming characters. He has reason to be devious and he certainly has reason to hold a grudge, and in fact he is a formidable foe. But Dunnett is so dedicated to keeping the reader guessing that she rarely lets us inside Niccolo's head, and so we readers are likely to end up as confused as some of the characters who find themselves in the middle of Niccolo's macchinations. The first two novels in the series are demanding, but this one takes it up a couple notches. Who is scheming against which King or Queen, Greeks and Mamlukes, Portugese and Knights of the Order, the Pope, the Sultan, the Genoese and the Venetians -- the next time somebody complains I've got too many characters, I'm going to hand them Dorothy Dunnett. Who is, according to the New York Times, the best writer of historical fiction, ever. Which reminds me: my publisher says that sales of historical novels are down across the board. Can that be true, given the following Dunnett has for these anything-but-fluff deeply written, very detailed novels?

Should you read this book? Do you like a really good historical novel wrapped in many layers of complexity? Are you willing to read the first two novels first, and to read slowly? If so, you will be rewarded. Otherwise, you'd be better off with less demanding fare.

Posted by at 5:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Holly Lisle, the sci-fi writer who was such a huge presence on the web for so long (her website is on the list to the right) decided back in November to give up her blog and her website to concentrate on her work. She came to a place where she realized that her participation in the writers' workshops and other parts of her website were draining her own creative energy. And so she handed it all over to other people, and she went off, and now she's writing (I assume) away from the babble of the internet.

Her mantra, while she was deciding to do this, was Protect the Work.

It's a good mantra, but for every writer I expect it means something different. For Holly it meant withdrawing from the very large, very active community of aspiring writers that had grown up around her website. Probably if I were in that situation I would be dealing with the same issues, but my challenges look very different. Writing this weblog hasn't distracted me from the novels I'm working on, nor has it caused some kind of magical surge in my productivity. It has made me think a little more about some craft issues, which is good. It has put me in touch with more readers, which is also good. (There's a forum, but it's a quiet, rather calm place where lots of people have registered but most are content to listen rather than participate in the occasional exchange, so I don't feel overwhelmed by that, either.)

But Holly set out to create a community that was welcoming and encouraging to aspiring writers, and I haven't done that. I'm happy if people want to discuss craft on the forum (something that hasn't happened so far, and might never), but that's up to them. The idea behind this blog, this website, the forum was simply to share information with the people who read my books and who come looking for answers to one question or another. I post bits and pieces about writing, about my own process, about things I read and watch; I answer questions about the next book and the last one. So far it's been useful for the readers (or at least somebody is stopping by, an average of 250 visits a day) and I get something out of it, too. So goodbye to Holly and good luck, and I'll continue to putter along here at my own speed.

For me, Protect the Work has other connotations. Right now I'm struggling with where the story wants to go and what the readers may be expecting. Most writing teachers will tell you to let character lead, and never to think of the readers. Editors and publishers have a different take on things. The writing guru asks: what does this character want? The publisher asks (or would ask; nobody has said this to me in so many words): what will make the reader pick up the book and put down the money? That's what I'm struggling with right now, because the contrast between these two things drains my creative energy. I've been writing less the last two weeks thinking about it, and working through it, and trying to figure out how to resolve this external conflict and keep telling the story. I'm at a crossroads, I suppose, and a little puzzled about where to turn. But this blog isn't part of that. So again I say: wish me luck.

Posted by at 8:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A box sitting in front of my door yesterday. Inside it was the copy-edited manuscript for Fire Along the Sky. This stack of paper is 10.5 inches high and weighs just under 13 pounds. It is due back to the publisher by January 28, or before, if I can manage it.

Wish me luck.

update: 19 January and I'm not quite half way through.

Posted by at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Posted by at 6:59 AM | Permalink

But there's a lot more to fan fiction than the obvious. It has to do with storytelling in the first line, yes, but far more important: fan fiction has to do with communities of storytellers. People who get together (symbolically, of course, and mostly on the internet) and starting with a character they all love, they spin tales. Then they write back and forth about those stories, exchanging ideas. Five hundred years ago people sat together around fires and told stories about the gods, about heroes they all knew and feared or loved, about Coyote, about ancestors. That was a kind of fan fiction, too.

It's a simple thing, really: the writer of fanfic (RobynBender, for example; see below) follows a character (John or Aeryn) off the screen and out of the script that was written so beautifully (by David Kemper or Rockne O'Bannon or Ben Browder or one of the other talented screenwriters). She then goes wherever the characters lead. She observes things they think about and do. She spends time contemplating John's background and motiviations and what he's feeling when he sees Aeryn grieving or injured, what it's like to love that particular woman. And then she tells that story. Robyn and others who take the time and effort to tell these stories do so because there's only so much Farscape on film, and the story is much bigger than can be contained in any hour-long episode. And also, you'll see if you delve into these stories, writers of fan fiction can go places where television screenwriters cannot.

This is probably the right place to point out that a goodly portion of fanfic tends to the explicity sexual. Such things are usually prominently flagged, though; there's a whole vocabulary, and dictionaries too. The Writers University explains everything you might want to know about slash fic or het fic or smut. Just don't read fic marked with those abbreviations, if it's not your thing. If you'd like more of an introduction to the fanfic phenomenon before jumping in, the BBC has a good introductory site here.

It's true, of course, that not all fan fiction is good. Not even most of it. Often times people bring more raw enthusiasm than finesse to their fan fiction. Fan fiction can collapse into parody or cliche or mindless repetition -- just as there are some pretty awful novels out there on the bookstore shelf, there is poor fan fiction on the web. You've got to look for the good stuff. So here is some fan fiction that I recommend highly. I'll start (how did you guess?) with Farscape, because for those of us who love it and who are still operating in the complete faith that it will in fact come back from this unwelcome and undeserved hiatus, fan fiction is a way to get through the waiting. If you haven't seen Farscape (yet), these stories might well convince you to do just that, but be warned: they will also give away a lot of the plot. They will certainly make you curious.

The Work of Her Hands (R; stands alone)

The Talyn Suite (in three parts):
Where You Should Be (R)
The Space Between (NC-17)
Sauce (NC-17)

The Well-Known Act (NC-17; stands alone)

Silver has one story to his/her name that I can find, but I wish there were more. It's called "In One of These Dreams" and it's striking, sharp, and a little rough around the edges. If you happen to be Silver and you're reading this, would you please get in touch?

My favorite of Ann's fanfic is "24 Hour Pass", but she's got other great pieces to look at, too. Tightly written, suspenseful, great stuff.

And to prove that I do live in a universe that is wider than Farscape:

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

Buffy fanfic is a galaxy where anybody who loves a good story can get lost. Try Roz's vignette of the First Slayer: "Bed of Bones"

Laura's fic about Buffy's relationship with Willow and Tara (rated PG) is "Closed Circuit".

Robyn pointed me to this "Many Loves" fanfic -- which she refers to as the Definitive Spike site (warning: NC-17 in a b.i.g. way). The summary gives a pretty good sense of what you're in for:

A not-so-brief history of William the Bloody, including a hundred and twenty years, two girlfriends, three doomed obsessions, four continents, nine haircolors, four parties, three torture scenes, two blowjobs, twelve consecutive shots of whiskey, forty-three thousand eight hundred packs of cigarettes, and a car theft. RATING: NC-17 for violence, het and slash sex, and industrial-strength angst.

The Obscure Fandom Secret Santa Project has to be looked at to be believed. There are hundreds of pieces of fanfic over there, written as a part of this project. Have a look at this foot-noted wonder, "The Galactic Miscellany", from Hitchhiker's Guide fandom, by Rhianna.

Such goodliness out there, waiting to be read. Go to it.

Posted by at 6:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here's a definition:

Stereotype is an oversimplified or simplistic standardized image or characterization; the use of a well-known image or description to evoke commonly held misconceptions, prejudices or biases about a group of people.

Marge handed over her fare, and fell back asleep.

Flo not only had the biggest hair on the eastern seaboard, she tended to tight little skirts that showed more cleavage than her low cut blouse. But the real problem was the way gum chewing interfered with her ability to walk from the kitchen to the counter without tripping. For once she managed to put coffee in front of Mikey the cop without spilling it, and then she gave him one of her goddamn-I'm-good-better-get-some-quick smiles, showing off two lipstick smeared teeth.

Ask yourself some questions:
1. Do we need to see and/or hear this character at all?
2. If so, what will this character contribute?
3. How do I make this character real?

The answer to the last question is the crux of the matter. Really, it all comes down to focusing on detail while avoiding cliche. Here are some examples from writers who really know how to bring a secondary character to (temporary) life:

“And Mrs Miff, the wheezy little pew opener -- a mighty dry old lady, sparely dressed, with not an inch of fullness anywhere about her -- is also here.” (Dickens, Dombey and Son)

"[Sunny] was in her forties with skin tanned the color and texture of a good cigar, hair that had been bleached to canary yellow frizz, and a two-pack-a-day voice. She was wearing rhinestone earrings, skintight jeans, and she had little palm trees painted on her nails." (Evanovich, One for the Money)

"Crawford was already talking to the chief deputy, a small, taut man in steel-rimmed glasses and the kind of elastic-sided boots the catalogs called 'Romeos'." (Harris, The Silence of the Lambs)

"Then, at a meeting, Petal Bear. Thin, moist, hot. Winked at him." (Proulx, The Shipping News)

"Near the window a man listened to a radio. His buttery hair swept behind ears. Eyes pinched close, a mustache. A packet of imported dates on his desk. He stood up to shake Quoyle's hand. Gangled. Plaid bow tie and ratty pullover. The British accent strained through his splayed nose." (Proulx, The Shipping News)

"Sir George was small and wet and bristling. He had laced leather boots with polished rounded calves, like greaves. He had a many-pocketed shooting jacket, brown, with a flat brown tweed cap. He barked." (Byatt, Possession)

The man in the expensive suit gestured with a manicured hand and the chauffeur jumped to open the door for him.

Posted by at 6:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

.. is my birthday. As I get older birthdays are mostly a matter of confusion. Surely that number can't be my age.

Albert Schweizer was born on January 14, as were Benedict Arnold and (yes, it's true) L.L. Cool J. And today is Ratification Day - the U.S. ratified the Treaty of Paris on this day in 1784, thus officially ending the Revolutionary War. Also, on the day I was born Little Richard released Tutti Frutti. This was the man who uttered the immortal line: “It ain’t what you eat, it’s the way how you chew it . . .” (I’ve Got It, recorded 1956, New Orleans). A month later the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers premiered.

In honor of this birthday, I'll share one of my growing collection of old lady jokes.

Three sisters live together. Anabel age 96, Marie age 94, Loretta age 92.
Marie goes upstairs to take a bath. As she stands there with her toe hovering over the water, she can't remember what she's doing. She yells down the stairs: "Am I getting into or out of the bathtub?"

Loretta yells back, "Wait a minute, I'll come help." On her way up the stairs, Loretta falters. She yells down "Was I going up or coming down the stairs?"

In the kitchen, Anabel is disgusted. "Thank the Lord my mind is still in good working order." She raps her knuckles on the table. "Knock on wood."

"Help!" yells Marie.

"I'll be right there," says Anabel. "Just as soon as I see who's at the door."

Posted by at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Robyn pointed me to a LiveJournal entry by Jane St. Clair which contemplates Farscape (most particularly the relationship between Aeryn and John), and heterosexual relationships across genres. The issues have to do in the first line (but not exclusively) with the wide wide world of fan fiction (if you go have a look, don't be startled at the word "slash" -- it's not about knives).***

She writes:

[...] I demand more stories in which people have bad first sex.

(For some strange reason, my urge to write an long series of tales in which people have extremely bad sex. So awful that they never want to see each other again. But it doesn't really satisfy anyone but me. No one expects their porn to include, "Can we stop? You're on my hair.")

This made me laugh, but it also made me think. Do I always leave out the not-so-nice parts about two people getting together? I think the closest I come to writing about a relationship that begins with a really rocky ride is in Fire Along the Sky, but I can't say more here without giving a major plot line away. So this is something I will continue to think about. Maybe when FAS comes out this summer people will have an opinion on this.

My beloved Shakespeare prof spent a long time reconciling us to the notions of love the plays offered, which often didn't sync well with our own. What she led us to was the recognition that the strongest sign of love or affection is play. Sometimes teasing (Much Ado About Nothing) or wordplay (The Taming of the Shrew -- she had us quite convinced that Katherina didn't mean a word of her final speech on the place of women, that it was all humorously ironic and meant for Petruchio's amusement), or gameplay (The Tempest). But in most modern portrayals of love, we go for either deep drama (angst) or domestic tranquility (curtainfic), leaving no space for a healthy relationship interesting enough to hold its audience.

Jane St. Clair has put her finger on something here. My sense is that sex takes second seat to playful banter for many of my readers. It certainly does for me. But how it all these elements work together -- playfulness, drama, tranquility -- that's something to contemplate for a good while.

***I've got a longer entry on fan fiction I've been working on for a while. Hope to post it soon.

Posted by at 9:15 AM | Permalink

just a note to say that I've started moving book, movie and other reviews from this blog to the recs blog... and so things might go a little wobbly for a while.

Posted by at 6:51 PM | Permalink

The amazing thing is that, some thirteen books into the series (Naked Prey is the most recent) there's nothing stale about the writing or the characters. When this novel opens, Lucas has finally settled down after many years of wider appreciation of women pretty much everywhere. That means there's no woman for him to be irritating or for him to irritate. I was worried that Sandford wouldn't know what to do with a Lucas who couldn't flirt with any serious intentions, but he found a good foil in a twelve-year muskrat rapper called Letty West. I'd bet almost anything Letty is going to be around for a good while. Certainly Weather will be the kind of influence she needs. This novel works not just because of Letty, but because of the way it explores morality issues where they are least clear.

Of all the novels, I have to say my favorite is Winter Prey -- this is where Lucas first runs across Weather Karkinnen, who is a wonderful character, smart and tough enough to meet him on his own terms.

Posted by at 6:46 PM | Permalink

McCarry is best known for his political novels and for a series of espionage novels focusing on the Christopher family (there's a good article about him here). One day he decided to sit down and write a historical novel about the founding of that family, set in the early eighteenth century in London, Canada, and the wilderness that would one day be Connecticut. The title is very romance-like, and in fact there is an incredible love story ('incredible' just doesn't do it, and I would insert a lot more adjectives here but I'm holding back) at the heart of this novel, but its scope is broad. It is, simply put, one of my all time favorite historicals.

It's not too hard to find a used copy of this book, and it is at most libraries that I've checked.

Posted by at 6:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

...and that's saying a lot. I'm not going to take the time or energy right now to talk about the anti-romance prejudice out there, except to say this: the happy ending may be out of fashion, but that won't last forever. This culture of the ugly and morose that permeates literary fiction circles will fade away eventually, and in the meantime you can always read Jane Austen -- she'll give you a love story and a happy ending you don't have to apologize about.

Anything I could say on this topic has been said before and said very well indeed, particularly by Jenny Crusie, the goddess of modern romantic comedy. Please have a look at her Let Us Now Praise Scribbling Women (an essay on the romance novel as feminist revision of toxic fairy tales and canonical literature), and Defeating the Critics: What We Can Do About the Anti-Romance Bias.

Of course you could just skip the essays and go straight to one of her novels -- I'd recommend you start with Welcome to Temptation (St. Martin's Press March 2000 ISBN 0312252943) . Reading her fiction will get across all the same points.

So, a list of three romance novels that I consider just plain good: well written, engaging fiction with a strong narrative and excellent characterizations. And happy endings, which (remember this) aren't fattening.

Beyond Welcome to Temptation I recommend: Flowers from the Storm (Avon Books 1992; re-issue May 27 2003, ISBN 0380-76132-7 ) by Laura Kinsale. It was out of print for a long time, but it's back again, and what a good thing.

Especially fine is Judy Cueva's (aka Judith Ivory's) Dance (Jove Books, 1996, ISBN 0-515-11763-3). In fact, thinking about it, if I had to pick one novel classified as romance to take to a desert island, it would probably be Dance, for the lyrical language and the characters I adore so much that I shiver -- literally -- when I pick this book up to read it again. Which I do regularly. Now if they'd only reissue it (it's sadly out of print, but worth the search) and give it a worthy cover.

Posted by at 5:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Genres are genres specifically because there are conventions associated with them. Romance novels (whether or not they are marketed that way) are love stories with a hopeful ending -- how shocking. Hope? Happiness? How very naive, how feminine. Tsk tsk. Traditional mysteries will, in the end, let you know who did it: there's supposed to be an Answer. In hardboiled fiction, the main character(s), no matter how tough, have to have limits to what they will do. Lucas Davenport in Sandford's Prey series goes right up to that line, so do Patrick and Angie in Dennis Lehane's series. But Patrick and Lucas are engaging where as Joe Kurtz is mostly just scary.

Most of these hardboiled series follow the pattern set up by Robert Parker in his Spenser novels: There's Spenser, the detective who stays just side of the line, and his good friend, Hawk, much more dangerous and unpredictable, who is happy on the other side of that same line and does the stuff that Spenser won't. In Robert Crais's novels, there's Evis Cole and Joe Pike, in Dennis Lehane there's Patrick and Angie on the bright side of things and Bubba Rugowski on the dark. Joe Kurtz is Bubba and Patrick rolled into one, and Bubba is winning the wrestling match.

Posted by at 5:49 PM | Permalink

So I picked up a book at the local small bookseller (Village Books in Fairhaven) because the cover and the cover copy appealed.

This is by no means a sure thing -- I've been fooled before. But what a find. A Catch of Consequence by Diana Norman (Berkley, pub date July 1, 2003, ISBN: 0425190153)

It reeled me in right away and kept me going. Really first rate historical fiction about a young woman in Revolutionary Boston who rescues a Tory and ends up fleeing for her life as a result. The love story is complex and the characters engaging. If I have any doubts about this novel, it's that the troubles that come along are broadcast a little too clearly right from the beginning.

Now here's the odd part. I was so taken by the writer's prose and storytelling that I went to look for more novels by her. There are some historicals but they are not available here (Norman is a Brit and is pretty well known over there, it seems), so I ordered a used copy of Vizard Mask from an on-line bookseller. (Penguin Books, pub date 26/10/1995 ISBN: 0140243267).

Two things: I liked this one as much, if not more than, A Catch of Consequence and here's the kicker: when the main character runs into the man who will be her lover on and off over the years, he gives her the nickname Boots.

Obviously I am in tune with this author. I hope her American publisher brings out her earlier titles here. I think she'd find a thankful audience.

Posted by at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The reason to go to New Orleans was, of course, the novel I'm writing, the fifth in the Wilderness series. I'm calling it Queen of Swords. Let's hope I can hold onto that title in the long run.

I did a lot of research for the trip and made plans, and got pretty much everything in that I needed to do. The re-enactment of the Battle of New Orleans at Chalmette was high on the list, and that was indeed a good thing to see. People who spend so much time and energy doing reenactments are a wonderful resource. Who else knows what it's like to wear woolen underwear all day long? And it's one thing to see a uniform in a color plate, and another to see it on a man walking along the levee. Also, I always forget how loud the artillery fire is. I'm surprised anybody who fought in those battles had any hearing left.

The most instructive and interesting place was the Pitot House, (French Colonial/West Indies in style) built in 1799 on Bayou St. John. It's been carefully restored and is maintained by the Louisiana Historical Society. We were fortunate to be the only people touring that morning, which meant I could ask all the questions I usually hold back for fear of slowing things down too much or boring less inquisitive types. Kathy Collins (our guide) was one of the best informed and most helpful people I have ever run across at a historic house. We got into such an interesting conversation that I took up a good hunk of her morning.

The house itself is the kind of place historical novelists are always looking for, with an atmosphere that is so strong that you can -- for a few moments -- get the sense that you are no longer in your own time. The furnishings, the way the light falls, the air itself -- everything comes together in a very powerful way that allows the imagination to take over. I'm going to use the Pitot House as one of my settings in this novel. I will make some changes, of course, but then I will set my characters loose in its rooms. Kathy was kind enough to share the names of some of her ancestors with me, and I may well end up using them, as well: Jean Baptiste Baudreau dit Graveline is especially nice, but from Kathy I also found out more about the Pelican Girls (also called Cassette Girls).

In the early 1700s, the first families and young women came from France to the new French colony at what is now Mobile, Alabama. Many of the girls came from Parisian religious communities, and they were all approved first by the bishop (who made sure they were virtuous, but also hard workers). These young women -- some no more than fifteen-- married the French Marines who were already stationed at the colony. Prime material for a historical novel, if anybody's looking.

Posted by at 2:50 PM | Permalink

I like to keep track of dialogue I overhear that strikes me as unusual. Not that I *listen* to other people's conversations, understand. It's just a professional hazard, having bits of conversations jump out at you while you're sitting, minding your own business. I suspect pretty much any writer of fiction experiences this. I have a whole file full of little gems, and here's one I picked up in New Orleans.

After a week of gumbo, jambalaya, and crawfish in every possible configuration, we decided to try something outlandish, like Italian. Found a restaurant that was highly recommended, got ourselves out there by rental car. Northern Italian cuisine, heavy linen tableclothes and napkins, the wait staff very formal -- you get the picture. So we're waiting for soup and talking in this almost empty restaurant (it was quite early) and the only other occupied table is right behind us, two elderly couples. They were exchanging news about friends and family and so forth, got into politics for a while, and then fell into silence while they got ready to order. Then a querulous, confused voice said, "But I don't see spaghetti and meatballs anywhere on this menu."

It took me by surprise, and I nearly laughed out loud.

One of my all time favorite overheard comments was while I was in line at the grocery store in Ann Arbor. Two undergraduates, young women, seeing each other for the first time in the new fall semester:

For years I've been thinking about this, and playing with it. So she got her wallet stolen. Sure, it's an unsettling experience. But what's the significance of the two prepositional phrases? Why qualify the statement that way? There's definitely a story waiting to be told. Don't know if I'll ever get around to it.

Posted by at 7:12 AM | Permalink

Spent a day walking, and walking, and then walking some more. This is my fourth trip to New Orleans, but my first research trip. I still amazed at the number of historical artifacts that have survived. Lots of good information, small observations, and listening to people talk, all of which are a help when I'm writing. Which of course I'm not doing just now, because I'm busy walking.

On the plane I found a novel in my seat-back pocket, which I then began to read. It was such a trainwreck of a novel, I couldn't quite put it down and neither could I keep myself from wincing. No, I'm not going to name it. It makes me uncomfortable reviewing something if I can't find even one good thing to say.

In this case, I quickly began skimming. Jumping over long dialogue passages full of info-dumping, over even worse internal monologue. A thirty year old, never married, career oriented lawyer (a male, by the way) who is reminded of Blue's Clues. What else is this but the author's own POV coming through? So I'm skimming for plot (because sometimes novels that are awful on every other level have a decent plot)... but no such luck. What I mean to say is, there is a plot, but it was poorly constructed, thin at best, predictable and unbelievable at the same time. It's too bad, because there are some promising almost-characters here. And I also must admit that the last novel I read was Dorothy Dunnett. She's a hard act to follow. There was a paragraph of description (if I had the book handy I'd quote it) that was short but so clear and intense that I re-read it ten times. And she pulls that off again and again. Of course, she sometimes also strays into the purposefully obscure and overly subtle, but for Niccolo, I'd put up with a lot more than that.

Unfortunately, I won't learn from this experience. The next time I find a book on a plane, I'll probably try to read it. Hope springs eternal.

You may have noticed that I'm posting this at 3:30 in the morning. That's because insomnia has followed me across the country, piggy-back style.

Posted by at 3:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This email came today:

Fire Along The Sky - it's a book title written by Robert Moss. Are you staying with that title? and I"m curious to know about Queen of Swords - is that part of the Wilderness Series? and Is It? or Is It not at this point? love your series, of course....... M

As I suspect these questions will come up again, I thought I'd answer here.

First, the title of the new book (number four in the series) was changed from Thunder at Twilight to Fire Along the Sky. This decision was not totally my own; Bantam has final say on titles. And yes, the title FAtS has been used before, by Robert Moss.

By law a title can't be copyrighted, and so they are often reused. According to the U.S. Copyright Office:

Names, titles, and short phrases or expressions are not subject to copyright protection. Even if a name, title, or short phrase is novel or distinctive or if it lends itself to a play on words, it cannot be protected by copyright. The Copyright Office cannot register claims to exclusive rights in brief combinations of words such as:
= Names of products or services
= Names of businesses, organizations, or groups (including the name of a group of performers)
= Names of pseudonyms of individuals (including pen name or stage name) = Titles of works
= Catchwords, catchphrases, mottoes, slogans, or short advertising expressions

Confused? Well, copyright law is confusing, especially when you toss in trademark issues. Of course, my titles aren't copyrighted, either. In March of 2003 a new novel by Rosanne Bittner -- Into the Wilderness -- was released by Tor Books. In contrast, Moss's novel called Fire Along the Sky has been out of print for quite a long time. As you know if you read this blog, it wasn't my first choice for a title, but I do like it, and I'm very comfortable with it at this point.

And yes, the next novel in the series, the fifth one, is called Queen of Swords. It's the one I'm working on now, and coincidentally, I leave tomorrow morning for New Orleans to do some research and attend the re-enactment of the Battle of New Orleans, which is the centerpiece of the novel.

Posted by at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Karen wrote in a comment (to the Lost Books entry) about a novel she finally tracked down after many years. She mentions that the novel (The Constant Nymph) didn't stand up to her memory, and that struck a chord with me. I haven't had an experience like Karen's with a book (yet), but I did have it happen once with a movie.

A long time ago I saw this film at the Clark Street Theater in Chicago (I was living in the Sandburg apartments at the time, young and single, Mr. Goodbar days Division Street). It stayed with me for years, about a girl who had three male friends, each of them in love with her. She was the kind of quirky free spirit that boys in movies always fall in love with. The story (and I'll bet you've guessed it) is about how the friendships evolve as she makes her choices and changes her mind and in general plays with people's minds. It's set (in part) in Gary, Indiana and her name was Georgia. The boys sang 'Georgia on my mind' to her when they wanted her to come out on her porch.

Doesn't sound promising, does it? But it stayed with me, and I always kept an eye out for it. Then one day I saw it for five bucks on a flea market table, VHS. Four Friends, Jodi Thelen as Georgia. So I rush home to watch it. Disappointment isn't the right word. Embarassment, maybe. I can't figure out why I liked this movie. It's awkward, and strained and silly in parts, and Georgia (the character) is the kind of person I wouldn't tolerate these days, not for a moment. It was one of the first movies to deal in a more direct (but still veiled) way with incest, which is probably why it caught my attention.

Have I learned a lesson? Probably not. I'm still looking for various books and movies I only partially remember, and when I find them I will be very pleased. Whether that lasts or not is the question. In the meantime I should go re-read Baine Kerr's Wrongful Death (here's my review of it) which is what brought Karen to the blog in the first place. I have been meaning to move all the reviews over to the recs pages; something else to do this year. At some point.

Posted by at 7:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If you read this weblog with any regularity you know that I actively support the movement to bring Farscape back to television. And in fact, against all odds, it looks as if that campaign has begun to reap rewards -- right now the cast is reassembled in Australia to begin filming a miniseries, which (if the viewers have their way) will be only the start of a beautiful thing.

And then today I find out that another television show, probably one of the most original and truly funniest ever aired (far funnier than Saturday Night Live, even at the top of its game), has been cancelled. Whose Line is it Anyway?, that improvisational gem, is no longer on the ABC schedule. Not only that, but there are apparently some twenty unaired episodes they have no plans to run, and the past seasons are not available on DVD. Yes, I should have been recording them all along. But silly me, I didn't anticipate yet another bone-headed cancellation.

Unfortunately, WLiiA doesn't have the organized fan base that Farscape does, although there are some folks out there working hard to save the show. Pay them a visit, drop ABC a line, wander around the official Whose Line website at WarnerBrothers (there are some video clips of a few of the skits). Most of all, watch whatever episodes they may still air. You'll have to hunt for them, but it's worth it. If you can catch the one where Colin plays an alien trying to work out the differences between male and female humans at a party, you'll see why this show should be saved.

PS: yes, I know there was a British version of this show first; yes, it was (is) funny. Right now, though, I'm concerned about Wayne, Colin, Ryan, Drew and the rest of the gang.

Posted by at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

1996 -- Robert Dorton barricaded himself in his residential motel room in Billings, Mont., in August and held police off for more than 30 hours, firing dozens of shots at them, because he feared authorities were about to take away his 15 pet rats, some of which were reported to be the size of cats. Before the siege, according to animal-control officer Mary Locke, Dorton kissed one of the rats and referred to them as "my brothers." Right then, she said, "I knew what I was up against."

Personally, I think Mary Locke would make an interesting main character. I like characters who do something for a living that is out of the ordinary.

I've always wondered about the invisible people who design and put up road signs. I think that profession harbors more than a few independent thinkers and odd ducks. Especially in England and Scotland.

So the question is, what do an animal control officer in Montana and a sign maker from, say, Edinburgh, have to say to each other? Anything?

Posted by at 3:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)