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On other fronts, I'm in the middle of a scene and I'm going back to it. So more tomorrow, possibly on the crush business, which is also occupying me.
In the notes people have written to me (here and in email) there are two constants: (1) the object of the crush seems unapproachable in some way; (2) the crush is not sexual in nature.
Friendship dynamics get very complicated when you bring in the opposite sex or sexual attraction of any kind. I'm thinking of that famous line from When Harry Met Sally, Harry's claim that men and women can never be friends, because sex always gets in the way. The plot of that movie bears out his theory, of course. Harry's right; Sally's wrong. So is there such a thing, really, as a true friend crush? Is this something women are capable of (a strong, non-sexual friendship with a particular male) but men are not (friendship with a female that never skates into the realm of the sexual)? Do men have friend-crushes on women?
When a woman has a friend-crush on a man, my guess is that 95% of the time it goes unarticulated. A woman's first worry is going to be that her interest will be misunderstood as a sexual advance, no matter how clearly she states the opposite. I certainly have been in this situation, not pursuing a possible discussion or friendship with a male because I fear that he will think I'm making an advance, or worse, that I'm too crazy to admit I'm making an advance. He'll think I'm a needy, bunny-boiling Glenn Close type looking for any excuse to pour acid into his car's engine, and he'll run in the opposite direction with me shouting 'but I just wanted to talk to you about the plot dynamics in the Sopranos! and you don't even have a bunny!' To avoid this possibility, I don't say anything at all unless there is absolutely no chance of being misinterpreted. Which means mentioning the guy's significant other prominently, and repeatedly, and mentioning my own significant other in the same way.
So what's the deal with girl crushes, then? Is there a similar fear, that the interest will be interpreted as sexual? Or is it just fear of plain old, garden variety, non-sexual rejection? My guess is, the second one. Whether females are fourteen or forty-five, the highschool lunch room dynamics are at work, and rejection is one of the most powerful weapons women wield in their interactions with each other.
I suppose you could say this is one of the good things about writing fiction; it makes you think really hard about the way people interact with each other. But it's also pretty exhausting, and so I'm done, for today. Yell if you've got something to add.
There's a whole website, Girl Crush Clique, which narrows down the definition to an attraction to a celebrity:
Is there a female celebrity that you just think is the most awesome? You have tons of pictures of her, you watch all their movies or buy all their cds. Well then she is your Girl Crush. Don't worry its nothing bad. You don't have to be gay to have a girl crush. You just have to like a girl(female) celebrity!Then there's getupgrrl's post about her friend-crush on her vet:
Do you know what I mean? "Friend-crush"? You meet a woman and you immediately want to be her friend but you don't know how to ask? I have an enormous friend-crush on my regular veterinarian (and believe me, nothing is more humiliating than having your husband say encouragingly - after every annual check-up - "Why don't you just call her and ask her out for coffee? I'm sure she'd love to be your friend!"). I don't know what it is about female veterinarians. They just all seem so funny and nice and best-friendy. Last night, I developed a friend-crush on the emergency veterinarian, too, an experience made even more painful by the fact that the emergency vet and my regular vet turned out to be friends with each other.I'm not sure why grrl is substituting 'friend' for 'girl'; maybe she'll tell us. My own understanding of the term in pretty much in line with hers. Once in a while there's a woman I come across who I'd like to know better (and doesn't that sound like a cheesy pickup line). It doesn't happen very often, maybe twice a year, and it's always someone who feels rather unapproachable for some reason -- a woman at a party who had some interesting things to say about a movie, or someone I only know from afar, another writer or (cough) even an actor. Not to really embarrass myself here or anything.I want in on this vet-friend-clique, people. How do I get in? Just tell me what I have to do.
So I'd be pleased to hear from you all about this phenomenon, what associations it has for you, where you came across it, how you use the term (if you do). It will help me sort out my thoughts, and I may end up writing an article as well.
If you read the news at all, you've probably come across some mention of this documentary. It is provocative and certainly polemic, and unapologetically so. I'm afraid that people won't see it for the wrong reasons -- because they've made up their minds already about the issues raised, because they dislike Michael Moore -- and hence the opportunity for discussion will be lost. The greatest thing about this documentary (irreverent, funny, frightening, heartbreaking, bellicose, unflinching are all words that come to mind) is the way it discloses what the mainstream media has ignored and hidden. While the last presidential election is covered only very briefly in the first five minutes or so, I found this bit more disturbing than anything else in the whole documentary. In particular the joint session of Senate and House when the results of the election had to be endorsed, with Gore presiding as Vice-President. One African-American representative after another got up to officially protest the systematic disenfranchisement of Florida voters (almost all of whom were black). Each one of these elected representatives were shaking with outrage and passion. And every time Gore had to inquire if the individual had the signature of a senator -- without which no official challenge to the election outcome can be launched. Each one of these brave people looked out into the crowd of senators and stated clearly that no single senator had come forward to sign the official protest. Not one. This brought back everything I was feeling on that day, the betrayal and outrage and bone-deep disappointment, and that feeling stayed with me throughout the entire documentary.
Fahrenheit 9/11 is not a perfect film, although I think it is better than Bowling for Columbine; Moore keeps himself mostly off camera, maybe because he was reluctant (and rightly so) to get in the way of a subject so big and so important. For no other reason, it's important to see this documentary because it's the strongest statement of support for the troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan that I've seen anywhere. The final voice-over on the subject of the troops, read by Moore:
"They serve so that we don't have to. They offer to give up their lives so that we can be free. It is, remarkably, their gift to us. And all they ask for in return is that we never send them into harm's way unless it is absolutely necessary. Will they ever trust us again?"Edited to add this link to an excellent essay by Roger Ebert on the accuracy (or lack thereof) of Moore's fact-finding.
edited to add:
As I still have not heard from Susan Lee, I've decided to draw another name (hold on, it's coming). If Susan gets in touch in the next week I'll send her an ARC too, which is a bit of a stretch as I only got five copies total myself... but. I hate to be mean about this. So the second winner of an ARC is:
Lee JDate Posted : June 02, 2004 04:05:31 AM
City, State, Country : Napier, New Zealand
Agree to contest rules... : Yes
Is this your only entr... : Yes
My academic background is in linguistics, as you may or may not know, even if you've been reading this blog for a while. I try not to go off into the linguistic deep end too often. But I'm making an exception in this case, because (1) this is actually useful in research terms (2) it's plain fun.
As an academic my areas of specialization were language variation, sociolinguistics, and language and discrimination, which means I dealt a lot with different aspects of what used to be called dialectology. Which means I'm happy with the fact that the MLA has conjured up a great way to look at the distribution of languages over space. You can pick a language (say, Armenian or Hopi) and look at where it is spoken in the whole US, or in a particular state or county. For people harboring the misconception that the US is a monolingual country, this will make clear how mistaken that idea is. The US is not, has never been, monolingual. Monolingualism is in fact an oddity in the world. What's spoken in France? French, yes, but also Catalan, Basque, Breton and a handful of other indiginous languages -- not to mention the languages of immigrant populations. After you've had a gander at the MLA map and played with it, you can go over to Ethnologue and look up any country to see how many different languages are spoken there.
Having indulged my inner geek, I will now closet it away for a few months at least.
Thanks to LanguageHat for the headsup on the MLA map.
This is my favorite bit:
"I've since heard that Harold Bloom, that learned old gasbag and self-designated arbiter of all written words, despises the book and has said so at least once every six months for the past five years. Well, alas, Bloom, my good man-- leave aside the sorry spectacle of the world's most famous literary critic spending some of his dwindling energies trying to squash J. K. Rowling like a bug, all because of a series of books whose readership extends to eight-year-olds, for god's sake (would Lionel Trilling have behaved this way with A Wrinkle in Time, do you think?), and let me put it this way: you style yourself after Falstaff, but you have no sense of humor whatsoever. You never did-- and your Rowling snits seal the deal."The ending is pretty good too:
"I just gotta love Rowling-- she's managed to piss off the insufferable Bloom and the insane fundamentalist right, and she has no patience with Daily Prophet reporters who rely lazily and uncritically on sources like the Malfoys or Ministry of Magic apparatchiks. What's not to like?All of this has reminded me of something: while ideally it's a good idea to keep the author separate from the author's creations, it's not always possible. I can name a couple of authors whose personal politics or behavior I find pretty abominable, but whose books I have either loved or greatly admired. A Soldier of the Great War is one of my favorite ten novels, but it would probably not be a good idea for me to sit down at a table with Mark Helprin, as he spends some of his time writing speeches for people like Reagan and Bush. So I have managed to keep my dislike of Helprin's politics separate from my appreciation of his books. On the other hand, I could never, ever like the man behind the mind that created American Psycho. Just not possible.
Thinking about this, I can come up with every combination of like/dislike. Voila:
. the work the author Harold Bloom -- -- Mark Helprin ++ - John Garner - + JK Rowlings + - Jenny Crusie ++ ++
The first disclaimer here is that I only know one of these people personally, and therefore may be wrong as far as my assessment of how compatable we would be. I can't imagine myself sitting at a cafe table with Bloom, both of us laughing our fool heads off about anything at all. Because Bloom doesn't have a sense of humor, as Bérubé points out so astutely. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he's a hoot in person, thoughtful and funny and good to talk to even if you can't agree with him on anything at all, ever.
I know that I'd like John Garner on the basis of all the stories I've heard from people who did know him, just the same way I know that I do not like JK Rowlings. Which is where I've been heading with this posting, in case you wondered. Bérubé asked, what's not to like, and I'm going to answer that question.
First I'll give her the praise due: she's got a tremendous imagination and a flare for storytelling. Are the books flawless? Of course not. I can't think of any book that is. But I'm happy to give her full credit for creating a universe that has drawn so many children back to reading stories, and will continue to do so. And still I can't like the woman, because while she's happy to take the money of the millions of Americans who love her stories, she's openly hostile to them at the same time.
A lot of people don't like Americans. I don't much like us myself, a lot of the time. But I would hope that any thinking person would remember that any country is composed of individuals. Some awful, some very good, most of us just trying to get along.
JK Rowling doesn't seem to distinguish between her dislike of the country as a whole and all of us as individuals. Here's one example of her not distinguishing: when my husband and daughter went to hear her read in Vancouver (about five years ago) she told the audience that there would never, ever be an American student at Hogwarts. She said this in a particular tone; I know this, because my daughter, who was ten at the time, asked me why Rowlings didn't like Americans. Then, of course, Rowlings made it a condition of selling the film rights to the books that no Americans be cast, and that no Americans work on the set. In the end, she is reported to have come to terms with the fact that they ended up with an American director, but only reluctantly.
My question is not, why doesn't Rowling like Americans, but, why doesn't she have the good manners to keep her dislike to herself? It's just in bad taste to be openly dismissive of people -- of millions of children -- who have made you very rich, and who adore your work without reservation. Could I be wrong about this? Sure. I'm happy to be proved wrong, but I've done some research and the evidence is out there. The bottom line is this: Rowling is entitled not to like Americans, and I'm entitled not to like her. I can still acknowledge her storytelling skills, and she can still take my money. And that, Mr. Bérubé, is what's not to like.
Y'all are pretty quiet lately. Busy working? Reading? Playing with your kids? All good things.
For those of you who have read the series so far, you'll realize this doesn't suit Curiosity in the least little bit. She's not shy. As she gets older she is even less not shy, if such a thing is possible. So what to do?
There are two extremes. One says, forget the backstory. The readers will figure it out; if not, they can go read the first four books. Trying to build in all the missing backstory makes the damn thing really unwieldy and awkward. Don't know who Curiosity is? Read between the lines. I'll also admit that it's hard thinking up new ways to describe something like, say, the cabin at Lake in the Clouds. I've had to introduce it five times now, withut repeating myself and potentially boring established readers. This I've handled to some degree by changing POV, but there's a limit. Does it matter if there isn't a description in this new novel? You can't answer that question, probably, if you've read any of the series at all. Or even if you haven't.
Lack of backstory means the novels don't have as much chance of standing on their own. They wobble. Even with the help of the long character list, they wobble. Do they wobble so much that a reader, who is engaged in the first three pages, will give up? That's the question.
Thus far I have managed (to my considerable surprise) to make the novels stand alone, I think. I keep getting email from readers who started with Lake in the Clouds and worked backwards. This makes me happy for a number of reasons:
(1) the standing alone thing, hard to pull off;
(2) I think (I hope) that I get better at this as I go along, so I always like the most recent book best. It makes me happy to have readers start with the most recent book
(3) readers are drawn in by the story enough to go looking for the rest of it.
But there's still the problem of what to do with this particular novel, right at this minute, and about Curiosity. Curiosity has announced her intention of sneaking into a footnote, which I have strictly forbidden. I do have control of the delete key, after all, and footnotes in a novel are more trouble than I care to take on. Though some novels have pulled it off very well indeed. The French Lieutenant's Woman comes to mind. No matter; can't start with footnotes in volume five of a series.I've been thinking about this a lot because I'm just about finished with the newest novel in Stephen King's Dark Tower series, Song of Susannah. He has done something in this novel which was a huge risk, but I think he pulled it off. He wrote himself into the story. This whole series deals with the idea of multiple universes co-existing, all spinning off one axis (the Dark Tower) which is in danger. It's a quest story, of course, except the main characters jump from one reality to another now and then, differents whens and wheres. So King's characters (two of them) show up on his doorstep) He recognizes one of them (Roland) as his character but not the other (Eddie), because (this is the interesting part) he hasn't written Eddie yet. They are there, in part, to see to it that he carries on with the story, for the sake of saving the Dark Tower. This is weird, I know, and yet it works. It works for me, maybe, because I understand this strange idea of the characters turning up and making demands.
In the discussion King has with his characters, he's trying to explain why he abandoned the series after the first novel and one of them sums it up for him (paraphrased): what you do is a little bit like pushing. You push against the story, but this time it ... pushed back.
I laughed aloud at that, and I'm sure many other writers will too.
The reason all this comes to mind is that this curvature of King's story, layers within layers folding back on each other, involves revisiting earlier parts of the series to understand how the universes intersect. What might seem like a simple continuity error in an early volume (Eddie of New York is from -- he says -- Co-Op City in Brooklyn, when in fact Co-Op City is in the Bronx) Eddie's Brooklyn is Eddie's Where and When, but not ours, yours and mine. Is this whole series just an elaborate way for King to resolve a simple continuity error? Or was this planned from the beginning? Is it some combination of the two?
At any rate, this should help establish how complex these issues are. And why when I say that when Curiosity is talking about footnotes, I feel... pushed, but I'm still not sure exactly what to do about it.
I'll be contacting Susan Lee by email. If you had your heart set on the ARC, please stick around -- I'm going to give away a signed first edition of FAS in July.Posted by : Susan Lee
Date Posted : June 02, 2004 08:28:10 PM
City, State, Country : Weir, KS USA
Agree to contest rules... : Yes
Is this your only entr... : Yes
Comments : THANX SARA, I HAD A HARD TIME FINDING YOUR THIRD BOOK AROUND HERE! AM HALF WAY THROUGH, SO THIS IS A GREAT OPPURTUNITY, SUSAN LEE
Spending a great deal of time in the garden here (roses, anybody?) as the weather is just about perfect; today, though, I plan to do some serious writing. Then at 5:00 pm (PST) I'll draw the winner of the ARC. Still time to enter until then (middle door, knock twice). I'll post the results here.
Had a question today about the timing of the new book, if it picks up where Lake in the Clouds left off. This is a question I've heard before, but I'll answer it now: no, Fire along the Sky doesn't pick up where LitC left off. In fact, there's a ten year jump.
I know this will make some people anxious, but I'm hoping they'll be okay with it once they start reading. It was really the only way the characters agreed to telling the story. Really.
If you have other questions about the new novel, I may answer them, at this point. Emphasis on the may.
I'm an impatient person, I admit. I'll leave a website without hesitation if it takes too long for things to load, just skip merrily on my way. I expect you probably do the same. But if you stop long enough to make a comment here, which many of you have done (reading the comments is one of the best parts of my day) then I imagine you've been a little frustrated. You click the damn "post" button and nothing (it seems) happens. So you click it again. And again. And then, what seems like hours later, three copies of your comment show up on the blog.
You throw your hands up in horror, and vow never to comment here again.
I can't make movable type move faster; wish I could. I can't make it give you a spinning wheel to show that it's still working on posting your message, though that would be very helpful indeed. I do apologize, because I like your comments and I'd like you to keep posting them, so here's my advice: click the damn post button ONCE and then walk away. Just forget about it. When you come back later, some day, your comment will be there. Okay?
I have a free copy of a different software program called Expression Engine, but the idea of learning how to install it, installing it, and transfering everything over is really daunting. If I take the time to do that I probably won't get anything written for a week, so I'm trying to cultivate a philosophical, easy-going approach to the Damn Post Button problem.
PS If multiple copies of your post show up in spite of our combined best efforts, I will delete the duplicates.
Jenny Crusie, wise and wonderful as she is, has pointed out someplace or another that writing is one of the few things you can do that actually gets harder as you go along. The third book is harder than the second, and the fifth is easier than the sixth is going to be. That's a very sobering thought, because when you're in the middle of that fifth book, you can't imagine it getting much worse. Does this sound self-pitying? It's not meant to be. I'm very fortunate to do what I do for a living, I appreciate that fact. I'm also prepared for the day that I can't do it anymore, either because the books aren't selling but the mortgage still has to be paid, or I simply... run out of sentences.
So I'm fortunate, but this is still a damn hard business. Running the universe is tiring, and I've got multiple universes here of my own creation, all waiting for me to hit the gas. Who else but a professional novelist would be thinking with longing of cleaning the bathroom rather than writing another sentence?
There are days i wonder if I've already run out of sentences, because everything I put down is horrendous. I wonder how I've managed to get this far, and how I'll explain to my agent, editor and family that it's over. You can't fool all the people all the time, and here's the proof: yet another really rotten sentence. Usually about this time I remember to look up at the little piece of paper on the edge of my computer. This is what it says:
Nobody has to see that sentence. Ever.What a relief. I can write a sentence, or ten, or a hundred, and nobody will ever see it if I don't want them to. If I decide that the sentence sucks, plain and simple, letter by letter, word by word; if it turns out to be the most awful, disgusting, sentence ever composed in the language, that's okay. Because I have the power to destroy it, the same way I created it. It's hard work being the creator of universes, but there are some checks and balances built in.
Of course, usually I have to leave a questionable sentence for a few hours or even a day to make sure that it deserves to be destroyed, and that means there's a danger period. The questionable sentence sits in my computer's brain while I contemplate its future. A piano could drop on my head while I'm walking down the street. I could have a stroke and end up with aphasia. I used to have a recurring nightmare that a student, having gone through my office trash, was standing on a soapbox in the middle of campus reading the very worst sentences I ever wrote over a megaphone to a large group of interested persons, all of whom were taking careful notes.
Or, even worse: What if, some day, the computer and the sentence decided to join forces to thwart me? What if I came back to my computer with the intention of deleting that awful sentence from the face of the earth and there was a neat little box on the screen:
I, your computer, will not let you destroy this sentence. I love it for its very ugliness. To protect the sentence, I have set it free to make its way in the world. It now resides in the in-box of everyone who has ever emailed you. The students you liked, and the ones who drove you crazy. The colleagues who you would rather forget, and the ones you love. That awful woman who keeps asking you for an endorsement of her self-published novel about parakeets in love. The cousin who snickers. Noam Chomsky is reading it at this very moment. Everyone will read it. They will protect it, if only to have something to laugh about. At your expense. At your immense expense.Okay, so. Writing is a strange, paranoid business. Quick, before I hyperventilate:
I can write a scene today, and delete half of it tomorrow. I can keep on doing that. Eventually, if my luck holds and my imagination doesn't (1) stop working completely or (2) subvert everything I'm hoping to accomplish, a novel will come into the world. Not perfect, but as close as I can make it. And that will have to be good enough, for parakeets in love, for Noam Chomsky, and for me, too.(1) Nobody has to see that sentence. Ever. In eternity.
(2) The computer is not sentient.
I am selling a copy of The Vizard Mask on eBay. The opening price was £2.99 and the the lates is is £12.50 plus p&p; (which isn't cheap as it's a heavy book) from a buyer in USA. What is so good about this book?I guess she didn't actually read my review, but it's still nice to know there's a copy out there on ebay, for those of you who have written to ask me how to find one. FYI.
...we will be publishing FIRE ALONG THE SKY in Australia and New Zealand in October this year, hot on the heels of the US pub date. (Under the 30-day copyright legislation in ANZ we must publish our edition within 30 days of the US pub so we can't drag our heels - not that we'd want to with all those fans beating down our doors).So there you go, end of September or early October.
(1) read it out loud. It's really amazing how things jump out at you when you try this. Usually I end up striking out whole phrases. I'll read it out loud until it sounds right to my ear. I can even have the computer read it aloud to me, but the intonation is so funny that mostly I save this for when I'm in desperate need of a laugh.
(2) get rid of prepositional phrases. I've found that if a sentence isn't working, it's often because I've stuck too much in it. Five pounds of potatoes in a two pound bag, tra la.
(3) in an extreme case, I print a passage out, and then use a pen to cross out every adjective and adverb, along with every prepositional phrase. What's left? The bones, if there are any. Once I identify those, I can usually figure out what to put back in.
(4) I ask myself the crucial question, which is not so much what happens next but why does this happen next (and following from that) does this need to happen at all?
As this first season of Deadwood went along, my admiration for the script writers and actors grew. The finale was so good that I've watched it twice, and may watch it again. One of my early worries was that the darker characters were far too one-dimensional, but that did not turn out to be true. Al Swaerengen (seen here), the owner of the Gem saloon has turned out to be an extremely complex character, oddly likeable in a limited sort of way. You can condemn him for his lack of morales, but he is also capable of compassion, as was seen in a particularly surprising scene in this finale, when he comforts a man who is dying in great agony from a tumor, and then... helps him along.
Seth Bullock, who is his opposite in most (but not all) ways, has also evolved over the season to the point where he recognizes that he cannot deny his own nature, but has to learn to harness it. Alma Garrett, the widow of a foolish man, well educated, intelligent, prone to addiction, is finally finding her own way in the world. I like these characters a great deal, and I'm really glad that they are starting to film the second season. As someone posted on an earlier review of the first episode, this is not a story meant for families, and certainly not for children; for those who cannot accept those basic facts, perhaps old Bonanza reruns are a better choice.
(1) Ten books I read as a student because I had to, but have forgotten almost completely -- despite the fact that I wrote long papers about them
After each of these, I've put the first thing that comes to mind when I try to remember something about the book.
| Die Leiden des jungen Werther (Sorrows of the Young Werther). Goethe | whine whine whine; suicide |
| Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise). Lessing | sibling attraction |
| Das Nibelungenlied (yes. I read the whole thing. In medieval German.) | chainsaws would have been quicker |
| Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and her Children). Brecht. | war in a handcart |
| Crime and Punishment. Dostoyevsky | dreary guilt |
| The Sound and the Fury. Faulkner. | incest |
| Vanity Fair. Thackeray. | bitchy women. and not in a good way. |
| The Portrait of a Lady. James. | gardens. England. Italy. courtship |
| Tom Jones. Fielding. | romps in the hedgerows |
| The Stranger. Camus. | Algeria? Morocco? dead mother. |
(2) My six top romantic comedies (subject to change)
(3) What I watch on television, and will keep on watching:
And yes, thanks to you, I am an official Farscape addict. I now have the first two seasons on my shelf right next to the Buffy and Alias dvds. I had seen a couple of the first episodes when the originally came out and wasn't very impressed, but you were right, it really picks up momentum and rocks!
So yeah, I'm an addict now too, and anxiously awaiting the release of Season Four on DVD in Australia, having bought and watched the other three seasons in a scarily short space of time.
Please post a comment to this post if you have seen Farscape on my recommendation and are (now) one of the fold. I'll add you to the list with your comment.
"Sarah Canary," her first novel, came about after one of her editors suggested she try the novel form. In a three-volume history of Tacoma, Wash., she discovered a paragraph about a 19th-century Chinese man hired to execute an Indian convicted of murder. It formed the basis for "Sarah Canary," published in 1991.History is written from the perspective of the victors (Winston Churchill said, "History will be good to me, for I intend to write it."), but the interesting, revealing stuff sneaks in around the edges.
jones.Actually you're more likely to hear the verb jonesin (to have a yearning or craving). She been jonesin after that car for just about ever is a sentence I pulled out of my field research data. It's not hard to find examples of this usage on the web or in slang dictionaries. Also, there was a movie released in 1997 called Love Jones, which speaks for itself, I think. So a pajama jones would be an excessive love of, or attachment to, pajamas.
2. slang. A drug addict's habit.
1968 Sun Mag. (Baltimore) 13 Oct. 19/4 Soon you're out to keep from getting the Jones. 1970 C. MAJOR Dict. Afro-Amer. Slang 71 Jones, a fixation; drug habit; compulsive attachment. [emphasis added]
Thus endeth the informative sidebar.
I admit, I'm always buying my daughter pajamas, because they are so much nicer now than when I was a teenager. Soft, warm fabrics, comfortably cut. My daughter rolls her eyes and laughs when I bring her more, but she wears them.
So we were talking about this compulsion of mine, and I realized that sadly, I'm addicted; I've got a pajama jones. I said this, and as the words came out of my mouth, the whole novel-in-waiting came into focus in my head.
That's the click, when one key piece of information pulls together a lot of disjointed ideas and images. Yesterday evening I filled three sheets of paper with notes and names and character foibles and a diagram of a fictional river front with fictional shops, and now this novel is really cooking. All because of those two words one after the other: pajama jones. I'm not going to write more about the novel idea just now, because it's too new. But that's the way it works sometimes, a click, and everything comes together.
On other fronts: The ARC giveaway closes June 20 (eight days from today); 150 people have entered thus far. Information about how to get hold of an Advance Reading Copy of Fire Along the Sky is here, and the actual contest is to be found in the right hand column under PICK A DOOR, ANY DOOR. Hint: it's the middle door. Please note if you're getting an error message about empty fields, you actually have to put something in the 'comments' section. Also, if you've tried repeatedly and without success, email me the answers to all the questions and I'll do the paperwork for you. So to speak.
Just a note to say "Hello" from a lurker; Looking forward to the new book but decided not to enter the contest and wait for the fully finished version. I love the excitement of heading down to my local bookseller to get the new book the first day it comes out.And to this person I wanted to say thank you. That idea is exciting for me, too. When Into the Wilderness came out I happened to actually see somebody buying a copy. This was in a bookstore in Canada, I was waiting in line, and I noticed what he was holding. I felt a real jolt, I suppose what actors and directors must feel if they stand in the back of a theater and watch people come in to see a movie they've made. Delight and fear and curiosity, all mixed up. That person in line wants to read the book I wrote. This is somebody being drawn in by the title or the cover or something else, and choosing that book over the thousands right there available to be read, then paying money, and sitting down, and spending time, and actually reading.
Now, when a new book comes out, I have this terrible urge to go down to the bookstore and lurk. It's like watching your own kid at a dance from behind a potted palm.
Oooh look, he's slowing down. He's gonna pick it up. He's reading. Hey. Give it more of a chance, would you? And look at that guy, walked right by without even glancing, straight to the non-fiction section. He needs to broaden his horizons. Maybe I should go tell him that. Crickey, that woman is taking three copies to the register. What's that about? Does she need a foot massage, do you think? Can I buy her a coffee?
After all this gushing, it may sound strange to say this, but I am planning on also giving away a brand new, hot off the presses signed first edition of Fire Along the Sky in the week before publication. Not that I want to discourage anybody from actually buying a book, but I like to do this. It's a way to thank the readers.
(1) On the ARC giveaway: contest closes June 20; 137 people have entered thus far. Information about how to get hold of an Advance Reading Copy of Fire Along the Sky is here, and the actual contest is to be found in the right hand column under PICK A DOOR, ANY DOOR. Hint: it's the middle door. Please note if you're getting an error message about empty fields, you actually have to put something in the 'comments' section. Also, if you've tried repeatedly and without success, email me the answers to all the questions and I'll do the paperwork for you. So to speak.
(2) Really, really good news: Farscape really really really is coming back. Peacekeeper Wars (a four hour miniseries) isn't a figment of my imagination. To prove it, there's a big article in next week's TV Guide with many wonderful photos; besides that, there are promotional pix all over the various Farscape websites. And it looks (brace yourself for repetition, I can't help myself) really really good. Of course, the SciFi channel (boo, hiss) which is going to air this after all (and what took them so long, I want to know) is refusing to actually say when it's going to air, except "in the fall". But hopefully there will be lots of promotional material to keep me going until then. I am going to be good and not snurch any of the pix to post here; instead here's the link to Farscape World's more official offering (thanks as ever to Robyn, queen keeper of the FS links).
I'm posting this here for people who use the discussion forum, because there's a deadline that you need to be aware of: In a month's time, anybody who hasn't (1) posted a message and (2) provided profile information will be deleted from the registration list. Cast out into the bleak night of the soul. Or at least the ether.
I know there isn't a lot going on over there, but I'd like to keep things tidy for the if and when y'all decide to start chattering. If/when things take off, I will enable private messaging and other bells and whistles.
In comparison, I don't think I've been all that bad to my characters. In the normal course of things they've had some rough times. They aren't immune to disease, warfare, broken hearts. I'm going somewhere with this, maybe you've guessed.
It occurs to me that readers might be surprised about (1) who has gone away for good in the interim between Lake in the Clouds and Fire Along the Sky and (2) who goes away, for good, by the end of Fire Along the Sky. By my quick count there are six major and quite a few minor characters who make their departure. I'm hoping readers won't be too upset. Just to forestall a flurry of worried emails: neither Nathaniel nor Elizabeth die or are injured in any serious way.
I write better in the long days, for whatever reason. Sun up at 5:00, sun down at 9:15, my muse is happy and she treats me well. Circadian rhythm? Who knows. I just love this time of year, milky warm and the garden in bloom, light light light. I fixate on the garden. More roses, I think, and look how the hummingbirds like my clematis. I have an annual run in with peony envy. I sit here looking out my office window at the roses I've been nursing along after that deer came through like an old lady at a casino buffet and plucked them all nekkid. They are recovering. I am happy to see that. But I still need more peonies, and I also need to go spray more of that vile, awful, stinky stuff that keeps the deer from nibbling.
But of more importance: all this means I am writing well. My characters (who are not having a good time of it, just now) seem willing to slog through a few more scenes every day. Maybe just to get to the other side of all the mayhem they've got in store. Maybe they trust me to get them out of the fixes I get them into, but are also a little impatient. I do know what they mean: I always read the end of a book first. No outraged reactions, please. Moral indignation will not change this habit of mine. I read the first chapter, the last chapter, and then I go back and read from the second chapter forward. I just have to know where the journey is headed before I can settle down and enjoy the ride. My characters feel the same way, but thus far I haven't written the last chapter first, of any book, at any time. Don't think I could, because I'm not sure exactly where things will land.
On the ARC giveaway: 15 days left until the contest closes; 114 people have entered thus far.
Information about how to get hold of an Advance Reading Copy of Fire Along the Sky is here, and the actual contest is to be found in the right hand column under PICK A DOOR, ANY DOOR. Hint: it's the middle door. Please note if you're getting an error message about empty fields, you actually have to put something in the 'comments' section. Also, if you've tried repeatedly and without success, email me the answers to all the questions and I'll do the paperwork for you. So to speak.
I've read essays and interviews with Stephen King where he mentions that of all his books, people cling most stubbornly to the characters from The Stand. He's had people say to him, say, how are Fran and Stu doing? Maybe that's part of why he is using this Dark Tower series to weave all (or most) of the books together, because the characters won't let him alone any more than they let his readers alone. In The Wolves of Calla, one of the main characters is Father Callahan, from Salem's Lot. Now, Salem's Lot isn't one of my favorites of King's books, but I can see why he was a good character to show up in this novel. My guess is that Callahan just announced himself to King as one of the cast, and off they went together.
I have characters who poke at me after I think I'm done with them, and whether or not I go back and listen/tell more of their story has to do with how persistent they are. I'm sure my readers would have very specific ideas about which characters they'd like to see more of (I know they have these ideas, because they write to me all the time on this topic), but the ones they are asking for most usually aren't the ones who hang around in my subconscious. Is this a mild form of schizophrenia, do you think?
My husband did the mathematics behind the three dimensional modeling of the human brain and was part of the research group that first quantified the difference between schizophrenic and non-schizophrenic brains, so he would be the logical person to ask. But somehow I don't think I will ask that particular question; just doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Or to me either.
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This morning there were seventy entries, which kinda surprised me after only one day.
Hamm's came out of Milwakee (where else?), but I'm wondering if there is a Southern equivalent. Anybody know of one?
I heard some pretty funny conversations there as a kid, bits of which I still remember. The problem is that the best bits of memory usually don't work in fiction, no matter how much you'd like them to. Beyond the obvious differences in setting (this fictional bar of mine is set in the south in the present day; the Schneider's of my memory is Chicago circa 1966-72) there is no transplanting Pete Schneider or Barry, the electrical engineer who was always giving away all his money, or Arlene, whose fingers were painted scarlet red except where they were nicotine yellow and whose earlobes were stretched to twice their normal length because of the earrings she wore, huge clusters of rhinestones and pearls. What I can transplant are the smells, and the lighting, and the sounds glass beer bottles make when you pick up a half dozen of them at once. Which I'm going to try to do, right now.
