Algonkian Writer Conferences - Events, FAQ, Contracts

Every week, the editors of The Paris Review lift the paywall on a selection of interviews, stories, poems, and more from the magazine’s archive. You can have these unlocked pieces delivered straight to your inbox every Sunday by signing up for the Redux newsletter. In a new essay published on The Paris Review Daily, the Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra explores how a lifetime of cluster headaches led him to seek relief in the hallucinogenic mushroom teonanácatl. He learns an important lesson: always wait before redosing. In the spirit of experimentation, this week’s Redux riffs on writing under the influence. Read on for Hunter S. Thompson’s hard-won advice about which drug a writer should avoid, in the Art of Journalism No. 1; a hazy afternoon in J. M. Holmes’s “What’s Wrong with You? What’s Wrong with Me?”; Anne Waldman on the body as “just a bundle of drugs” in “How to Write”; Allen Ginsberg’s 1966 letter to the editor, regarding his experiences with LSD and psilocybin; and a portfolio of Nancy Friedemann’s loopy text-based drawings, as well as a sculpture. If you enjoy these free interviews, stories, poems, and portfolios, why not subscribe to The Paris Review? You’ll get four new issues of the quarterly delivered straight to your door. Interview Hunter S. Thompson, The Art of Journalism No. 1 Issue no. 156 (Fall 2000) INTERVIEWER How do you write when you’re under the influence? THOMPSON My theory for years has been to write fast and get through it. I usually write five pages a night and leave them out for my assistant to type in the morning. INTERVIEWER This, after a night of drinking and so forth? THOMPSON Oh yes, always, yes. I’ve found that there’s only one thing that I can’t work on and that’s marijuana. Even acid I could work with. The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane. Either you function or you don’t. Functionally insane? If you get paid for being crazy, if you can get paid for running amok and writing about it . . . I call that sane. Fiction What’s Wrong with You? What’s Wrong with Me? By J. M. Holmes Issue no. 221 (Fall 2017) The room was streaked with haze like we dropped cream in a coffee, but Rolls never cracked windows. He smoked like a pro even still, burned blunts and let it box out the room. He had the leather furniture from his dad’s old office and we sank into it. These days, he got lit every morning before work, after his bowl of Smacks. His latest was shooting an ad for the ambulance chaser Anthony Izzo. I was about to ask him if he still painted. Poetry How to Write By Anne Waldman Issue no. 45 (Winter 1968) A lot of drugs can change you if you want because you too are made of what drugs are made of In fact you are just a bundle of drugs when you come right down to it Nonfiction Footnote to Allen Ginsberg Interview, Issue #37 By Allen Ginsberg Issue no. 38 (Summer 1966) To readers of Paris Review: Re LSD, Psylocibin [sic], etc., Paris Review #37 p. 46: “So I couldn’t go any further. I may later on occasion, if I feel more reassurance.” Between occasion of interview with Thomas Clark June ’65 and publication May ’66 more reassurance came. I tried small doses of LSD twice in secluded tree and ocean cliff haven at Big Sur. No monster vibration, no snake universe hallucinations. Many tiny jeweled violet flowers along the path of a living brook that looked like Blake’s illustration for a canal in grassy Eden. Art New Work By Nancy Friedemann Issue no. 158 (Spring–Summer 2001) Last year I had the chance to watch Colombian-born artist Nancy Friedemann work in her studio at the artists’ colony Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York. Amidst a scattering of fat permanent markers—the kind graffiti artists use on subway interiors—various books lay sprawled on the floor, but otherwise the room was clean and spare: just eight four-by-six-foot panels of semitransparent vellum-like Mylar on the walls. If you enjoyed the above, don’t forget to subscribe! In addition to four print issues per year, you’ll also receive complete digital access to our sixty-eight years’ worth of archives. View the full article

January is coming to an end already. And then it’s time for the worst month of the year! At least for New England. There’s just something about the winter in February that just…sucks. In continuing with my theme of giving things I can look forward to each month, February will be finishing my tattoo! I’ll be getting the color and shading done and I’m so stoked to see what the artist has planned. Then in March (fingers crossed), I’m going to Germany to visit my brother. I haven’t seen him in three-ish years. If any of the European Bitchery has suggestions, I’ll be there for two weeks and will have plenty of time to bop around to other places. Enough about me, let’s get into it! … I love listening to stuff when I go to sleep. Normally, it’s Twitch streams, but I do love a sleep-focused podcast. (Shoutout to Sleep with Me). I recently discovered this one: Sleepy Bookshelf, which has a lovely narrator read classics to you as you fall asleep. They’re on Anne of Green Gables now. … Look at this adorable interaction between author Kate DiCamillo and a young reader: … Don’t forget to share what cool or interesting things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way! View the full article

The Highland Fling The Highland Fling by Meghan Quinn is $1.99 at Amazon! This is a contemporary romance with a grumpy Scottish hero. I’ve always been curious about Quinn’s contemporary romances. Would you recommend them? In this steamy tale by USA Today bestselling author Meghan Quinn, an American searching for her purpose escapes to a Scottish town but finds more questions than answers when she meets a brooding yet handsome handyman. Freshly fired from her third job in a row, Bonnie St. James has lost her way. So when she and her best friend stumble upon a “help wanted” post to run a coffee shop in the Scottish Highlands, they apply on a whim. Who knows? Maybe traveling to a new place is just what she needs to figure out her next move. When the friends arrive in the tiny idyllic town of Corsekelly, they instantly fall for the gorgeous Highland landscape and friendly townspeople. But Bonnie finds a less-than-warm welcome in Rowan MacGregor, the rugged local handyman. Busy wrestling his own demons, Rowan’s in no mood to deal with the quirky American—even if she is a bonny lass. As Bonnie and Rowan’s paths inevitably cross, insults—and sparks—fly. Can the pair build on their similarities to help each other find purpose and direction…and maybe romance too? Or will their passionate tempers fling them apart? Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Migrations RECOMMENDED: Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy is $2.99! I’ve mentioned this one a couple times in a Hide Your Wallet and Get Rec’d post. This is climate fiction (fiction where a climate crisis is central to the story) and it’s just a bittersweet, character-driven book. For readers of Station Eleven and Flight Behavior, a debut novel set on the brink of catastrophe, as a young woman chases the world’s last birds – and her own final chance for redemption. A dark past. An impossible journey. The will to survive. Franny Stone has always been a wanderer. By following the ocean’s tides and the birds that soar above, she can forget the losses that have haunted her life. But when the wild she so loves begins to disappear, Franny can no longer wander without a destination. She arrives in remote Greenland with one purpose: to find the world’s last flock of Arctic terns and follow them on their final migration. She convinces Ennis Malone, captain of the Saghani, to take her onboard, winning over his salty, eccentric crew with promises that the birds she is tracking will lead them to fish. As the Saghani fights its way south, Franny’s new shipmates begin to realize that the beguiling scientist in their midst is not who she seems. Battered by night terrors, accumulating a pile of letters to her husband, and dead set on following the terns at any cost, Franny is full of dark secrets. When the story of her past begins to unspool, Ennis and his crew must ask themselves what Franny is really running toward—and running from. Propelled by a narrator as fierce and fragile as the terns she is following, Migrations is a shatteringly beautiful ode to the wild places and creatures now threatened. But at its heart, it is about the lengths we will go, to the very edges of the world, for the people we love. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. The Simple Wild The Simple Wild by K.A. Tucker is $1.99! I feel like Tucker is one of those authors that I’ve heard a lot of or has a large fan base, yet I know nothing about it. The covers give me young, white Christian Instagram vibes, if you know what I mean. City girl Calla Fletcher attempts to reconnect with her estranged father, and unwittingly finds herself torn between her desire to return to the bustle of Toronto and a budding relationship with a rugged Alaskan pilot in this masterful new romance from acclaimed author K.A. Tucker. Calla Fletcher was two when her mother took her and fled the Alaskan wild, unable to handle the isolation of the extreme, rural lifestyle, leaving behind Calla’s father, Wren Fletcher, in the process. Calla never looked back, and at twenty-six, a busy life in Toronto is all she knows. But when her father reaches out to inform her that his days are numbered, Calla knows that it’s time to make the long trip back to the remote frontier town where she was born. She braves the roaming wildlife, the odd daylight hours, the exorbitant prices, and even the occasional—dear God—outhouse, all for the chance to connect with her father: a man who, despite his many faults, she can’t help but care for. While she struggles to adjust to this new subarctic environment, Jonah—the quiet, brooding, and proud Alaskan pilot who keeps her father’s charter plane company operational—can’t imagine calling anywhere else home. And he’s clearly waiting with one hand on the throttle to fly this city girl back to where she belongs, convinced that she’s too pampered to handle the wild. Jonah is probably right, but Calla is determined to prove him wrong. As time passes, she unexpectedly finds herself forming a bond with the burly pilot. As his undercurrent of disapproval dwindles, it’s replaced by friendship—or perhaps something deeper? But Calla is not in Alaska to stay and Jonah will never leave. It would be foolish of her to kindle a romance, to take the same path her parents tried—and failed at—years ago. It’s a simple truth that turns out to be not so simple after all. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. The Ladies of the Secret Circus The Ladies of the Secret Circus by Constance Sayers is $2.99! This is a stand alone novel that seems to have two different timelines: 1920s Paris and early 2000s Virginia. There are also some magical elements. Paris, 1925: To enter the Secret Circus is to enter a world of wonder-a world where women tame magnificent beasts, carousels take you back in time, and trapeze artists float across the sky. But each daring feat has a cost. Bound to her family’s strange and magical circus, it’s the only world Cecile Cabot knows-until she meets a charismatic young painter and embarks on a passionate love affair that could cost her everything. Virginia, 2005: Lara Barnes is on top of the world-until her fiancé disappears on their wedding day. Desperate, her search for answers unexpectedly leads to her great-grandmother’s journals and sweeps her into the story of a dark circus and a generational curse that has been claiming payment from the women in her family for generations. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. View the full article

Winter for many is dreary. Seasonally, it’s a time to rest after a harvest. Our bodies crave a nap. We want to read by the fire with our dog, curled beneath a knitted blanket, hot cocoa (possibly doctored to chase off the chill) by our side. Weather on the coast amps that blustery feeling with white-capped waves in a charcoal sea, brisk—as in, steals your breath away—ocean breezes, and a sky of solid gray. I was born in Seattle, so gray and dreary is part of my DNA. It wasn’t until I moved to South Florida twenty years ago that I realized a dip in the ocean didn’t require a wet suit or a visit to the dentist after chipping a tooth from the force of your teeth chattering. Brr. In my Scottish Shire cozy mystery series, heroine Paislee Shaw is a single mum whose main goal in life is to raise ten-year-old Brody to be a good man. She knits, owns a specialty yarn shop named Cashmere Crush, and has a dog named Wallace. In book one, Murder in a Scottish Shire, Paislee struggles to be on time as she juggles the needs of Brody with her growing business. In the first chapter she discovers that the building she leases from has been sold, a new detective inspector in town has dropped off a stranger who claims to be her grandfather, just as the nine o’clock bell on the clock tower chimes. Late again. She owes a coin to the swear jar. She has old-fashioned values in an old-fashioned town, but her innocence is balanced by her glamorous best friend, Lydia. Throughout the series, there is a tug between old and new that most of us can relate to. Change is not always easy, but it happens, whether we like it or not. It’s how we handle things that matters. Well, Paislee keeps a wee bottle of Scotch for medicinal purposes in the back pantry—much needed that day after finding her prior employee dead. Grandpa turns out to be the miracle she’d prayed for, that extra pair of hands she’d never thought to have. They learn about each other over strong tea, and whisky. Notice the spelling here…Scots are famous for their whisky, without the “e”. Canada follows this rule as well, while Ireland, America, and Japan all use the “e” to differentiate their spirits. In the nineteenth century, the spelling was all over the board but by the twentieth, this version was fixed as the proper way to do it. Scotland’s favorite brand is The Famous Grouse though there are many to choose from. Whisky drinkers are as particular in the flavor profiles of the spirits as wine enthusiasts or beer crafters. Single malt, notes of peat…sigh. The important thing is that it keeps a body warm from the inside out! Even Paislee’s Gran approved of the occasional dram. Nairn is known as the sunniest town in Scotland but that said, it still rains. A lot. There are a few golden summer months but otherwise it has cold rain, sleet, drizzle. No sunshine peeking from behind dark clouds. A must-have to be dry as well as warm are Wellingtons, or Wellies. Have you ever noticed that when you’re cold and wet, you’re extra miserable? Dry feet make a big difference while tromping along the seashore on a blustery day. These come in many styles. I think gray is part of the charm in a Scottish shire; the fog and chill evoke a mood that is familiar. When I’m writing a scene, I keep the dreich weather in mind as a constant thread. In book two, Murder in a Scottish Garden, Paislee saves the day in flannel PJs and a pair of Wellies by the front door. Easy to slip on and off, they’re the perfect footwear for a mum on the go. Another thing to keep the body warm on a chilly seaside day is chowder, or Paislee’s favorite, cock-a -leekie soup. The name comes from the mid-1600s when cooks would boil the chicken in leeks to make a delicious broth. Tattie soup is another one for a cool day. Add fresh crusty bread to dip, and it’s a brilliant meal. So, what do people do in a seaside village during winter? Besides the mandatory fireplace and crackling fire, the cozy armchair or sofa, the books, the naps—no judging on the naps—there are a lot of choices for heading outdoors in the Highlands. Bundle up in your boots and coat and hit the coast for a rugged beach walk to collect driftwood and shells. Wrap a thick wool plaid around you for extra warmth. A plaid is a fabric that has horizontal and vertical stripes—a tartan is also made with horizontal and vertical stripes that intersect at ninety-degree angles, but whereas a plaid can be for anyone, tartan is made for a specific clan. Would you wear a kilt in the winter? Supposedly it keeps you warmer than pants—something about airflow trapped in the fabric. Mind the strong winds, or you risk baring more than you’re comfortable with! Top your outfit off with a stylish Tam O’ Shanter, and a wool shawl from Paislee’s shop, and you should be toasty warm, no matter the sea breeze. Nairn has dolphins in the Moray Firth, or you can go on a whale watch. The mountains are only an hour away, and Scotland offers skiing, snowboarding, and snow-shoeing—all you need are special shoes and poles to view spectacular wildlife. Dog sledding. I find the idea of curling intriguing. The curling season is from September to March, and the sport is like shuffleboard, only with stones pushed along the ice toward a goal. Your reward for braving the cold weather in this magical winter wonderland? A tumbler of blood-warming whisky! But hey, can we talk about summer? It is beautiful and should be heaven. Twenty degrees Celsius is supposedly warm. I looked it up, and that is only 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Still. Cold. Murder at a Scottish Social, releasing January 25th, takes place in June…When I was talking warmer weather, I really was thinking 80-degree temperatures! How about we take a vacation, for now, via the Scottish Shire series. Let’s stop by Cashmere Crush and buy warm cardigan sweaters, then go to the Muthu Newton Hotel, made famous by Charlie Chaplin, who brought his family there on holiday. We can order minced beef and tatties, with a whisky. Or two. Slainte! *** View the full article

There was no Bachelor last week due to sportsball, but the weirdness is back tonight and Pudding and I are ready. Well, I am anyway. Pudding is currently having an intense meeting with her stuffed animals, possibly warning them that they better be here for the right reasons. Last week Cassidy revealed she had someone she was hooking up with before she went on the show and that she went on the show to make him jealous, all of which Sierra relayed to Clayton. Clayton asks Jesse if it’s possible to rescind Cassidy’s rose. THERE ARE NO RULES HERE CLAYTON. Then Jesse says, “There are no rules.” I TOLD YOU SO. Clayton asks to talk to Cassidy. She denies seeing someone prior to the show and she says, “Clayton, I have not spoken to any guy that I have any interest in a relationship with for a very long time.” Girl, you were on camera admitting that you were seeing someone. Do these people not realize they’re being recorded? Come on, people Then when he confronts her again, she’s like, well, yeah I had this guy I was friends with but he doesn’t want a relationship and he’s cool with me being on the show, and Clayton stands up and storms out. Cassidy starts to cry and says, “I can’t believe this is happening. I didn’t do anything!” So then they sit down again and Cassidy apologizes if the situation “confuses” him and says they have a genuine connection and then, in the worst most awkward moment, leans over and kisses him while he’s trying to talk and is not receptive to it. Clayton says he has “too many concerns.” Cassidy asks if she’s sending her home, then melts down in tears. “I haven’t even packed my stuff. I didn’t think I was going home tonight,” she complains. Clayton walks her out and says, “This is not at all what I expected to do tonight and it hurts.” In the limo of tears Cassidy sobs, “Why does this keep happening?” How many reality dating shows have you been eliminated from? Then it’s FINALLY time for the Dreaded Rose Ceremony. Ency, Kate and Tessa go home. Then it’s time for the first group date. The women follow Clayton into a dark auditorium where Kaitlin Bristowe is waiting. She says that she’s going to help Clayton get to know the women better. She’s going to read a statement out loud and if it resonates with the women they need to stand up. This sounds like some corporate icebreaker shit, and I’m recoiling already. The phrases are like “Stand up if there are parts of yourself you aren’t proud of.” Then it’s time for sharing and it’s all incredibly cringey. I’m just going to shotgun a Whiteclaw during this part. Click for me really soon Clayton opens up about having issues with his body image growing up and how he would diet and lose weight. All of the women talk about body image issues as well, some of them severe enough that I would classify them as dysmorphia, which makes me think about them coming on this show for some kind of validation, and how all the women have the same body type, and then I just went on a depressive spiral. The date rose goes to Eliza. Then it’s time for a one-on-one date with Sarah. Former Bachelorette Becca Kufrin is there for some reason. They’re doing an extreme scavenger hunt all around downtown LA in their underwear, supposedly to push them out of their comfort zones. Didn’t we just have a long conversation about negative body image being a struggle for everyone? This show is fucked up. Back at the McMansion the ladies are lounging by the pool and Elizabeth cooks up some garlic butter shrimp for everyone. Shanae takes half the shrimp and the other women get annoyed. Okay, but Elizabeth made like 15 shrimp for 15 women so maybe plan better? So then Shanae makes more shrimp which seems like a normal and nice thing to do, and no one will eat it. These people are making me So Tired. During the dinner they aren’t allowed to eat, Sarah talks about being mixed race and adopted by a White family. She says she felt shame about being adopted because she felt unwanted by her birth parents. She gets the date rose and they dance awkwardly in front of a string quartet. The next day it’s a group date on the beach with Baywatch’s Nicole Eggert. The women have to wear the iconic red swimsuit and Eggert puts them through lifeguard training. Clayton has quite the farmer’s tan going on. They have to practice the slow-mo beach run, and then Shanae follows it up by making out with Clayton. Gabby wins the group date and Shanae is mad about it. During the cocktail party Shanae tells Clayton that Elizabeth is bullying her. She says, “It’s hard because sometimes I don’t want to be here because it’s like am I going to be yelled at or victimized?” She cries and they make out. Then she tells the camera that “I’ve got him” and “I was good. Holy shit was I good” and “I didn’t mean to cry, but I cried.” Clayton brings the bullying allegations up to Elizabeth. She tells him if he talks to anyone else, they’ll confirm she’s not a bully. She starts to cry. WHY IS EVERYONE CRYING ALL THE TIME. Then Lindsey W comes back from her conversation with Clayton in tears because Shanae accused her of bullying too. Me again Then Shanae and the other women yell over each other for awhile. why? Clayton gives the date rose to Gabby. Then Clayton says he’ll address the bullying allegations tomorrow during the rose ceremony. And that’s it. Are you watching? View the full article

“We all live in the interstices of each other’s lives, and we would all get a surprise if we could see everything.” Under The Net (1954) is Iris Murdoch’s first novel, and it immediately established her as an important literary figure. It was published as literary fiction, and Murdoch is generally considered a literary writer, her work certainly cannot be contained by mere realism. Under The Net tells the picaresque misadventures of Jake Donaghue, a writer who ekes out a living on translations and sponging off his friends in London. So why am I writing about it for a genre fiction website? Under The Net is the story of how Jack falls under the influence of the mage-like figure of Hugo Bellfounder, and shifts between sequences around the pubs of London and more phantasmagorical sequences in which reality seems to merge with plays, mime displays, or film sets. At times Jake seems to fall into an almost surreal dreamworld. So I could argue that it works as a work of fantastika, a work of fiction that at the very least has a porous sense of reality and draws on much of the feel of fantasy. But additionally, Under The Net is a work of fiction about language and how language constructs reality. All of Jake’s misadventures come about because of how his vision of reality fails to match up to other people’s, how communication is inherently fraught. As much as any Philip K. Dick character, Jake lives in a reality divorced from consensus reality. The net in Murdoch’s title is the net of language itself, which her characters struggle to escape and communicate clearly between each other. As such, I would also argue that Under The Net is a work of speculative fiction that engages with ideas about language as a technology to shape reality. The novel begins with Jake being kicked out of his friend Madge’s flat. Madge is getting married, and so is clearing her deadbeat friend out of her space. Looking for a new place where he can live in style without paying any rent, Jake chances across old flame Anna, who brings Jake back into the orbit of charismatic philosopher Hugo Bellfounder. Jake has been avoiding Hugo after publishing a philosophical tract The Silencer based on Hugo’s ideas, but soon Jake finds himself under Hugo’s incredible influence again. As Jake is drawn back in, he begins to suspect that Hugo, Anna and himself are at the centre of a convoluted and sinister plot. Jake might even have to sober up in order to get him and all his friends out of this particular mess. Central to the novel is Hugo’s distrust of language, the idea that language is an inherently flawed mode of communication because it can only symbolise, and hence removes the speaker and the listener form the thing they are talking about. As Hugo argues through Jake’s The Silencer: “the movement away from theory and generality is the movement towards truth. All theorising is flight. We must be ruled by the situation itself and this is unutterably particular. Indeed it is something to which we can never get close enough, however hard we may try as it were to crawl under the net.” The irony of a writer using the written word to explore this idea runs throughout the book. Jake, like Murdoch herself, makes his living off of writing, he is a master of words. Yet, he is constantly failing to communicate. The plot is driven by Jake’s overhearing of various rumours, snippets of conversation and things people have told him, none of which are untrue but because Jake does not see the full picture he jumps to the disastrously wrong conclusion every time. Thus the words themselves can be true whilst the sense of what being said is quite different. When we are all experiencing our own perspectives on reality, and we are using inaccurate terms to try and convey this reality to others, communication will always be difficult. Modes of communication that rely on other languages run throughout Under The Net. Jake encounters Anna as part of a mime troupe performing in an empty theatre, a performance inspired by Jake’s interpretation of Hugo’s philosophy. When Jake finally meets Hugo again, it is on a television set of ancient Rome, which soon descends into a very real brawl. Whilst crawling London’s pubs, Jake bumps into the leader of the New Independent Socialist Party, and has a spirited discussion about socialism and activism. But in the end, theatre, television and politics prove equally limited tools for which to communicate the truth of the world. There are a number of powerful and memorable sequences throughout the novel which feel very much like fantasy. These are moments of transcendence, in which Murdoch explores how strange the world really is. In one sequence, Jake and his friends go swimming in the moonlit Thames. In another, Jake searches for Anna in Paris, and becomes lost in a ghostly forest of statues. In the scenes set in the theatre and the television set, reality takes on the permeability associated with those forms, as it becomes increasingly difficult to unpick what is prop and performance and what is reality. Murdoch’s sharp sense of humour runs through the book as well, and she delights in pushing Jake’s various misadventures right to the edge of the ridiculous – there’s a particular bit where Jake and his friends try to steal an acting dog from an expensive flat. No particular event in and of itself is quite bizarre or ridiculous enough to completely destabilise Under The Net’s sense of reality, but the combined effect is that this is all happening in a heightened world where the boundary between dream and reality is perhaps not as stable as we are used to. Under The Net is an incredible accomplishment for a first novel. Murdoch’s exquisite prose and deft characterisation mix with philosophical explorations of language and reality to create a read that is as compelling as it is thought-provoking. Whether or not in the end we decide it can or can’t be read as fantasy or speculative fiction, it nevertheless demonstrates how the concerns of speculative fiction and the motifs of the fantastic extend across genre boundaries, and how literature is enlivened and emboldened by them. The post UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch (BOOK REVIEW) appeared first on The Fantasy Hive. View the full article

Crack open any book on the craft of writing published in the last fifty years, and you’re almost guaranteed to find a chapter on how to “silence your inner critic.” The inner critic is that voice that says you’re not good enough, that you need to go back and fix this awkward phrase or that plot hole before you even think of sharing your work with another soul, you hack. And there’s some excellent advice out there from giants of writing: Stephen King in On Writing advises outrunning the inner critic by refusing to turn back and edit until the first draft is complete. In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott suggests envisioning each critical voice in your head as a mouse, which you will then silence by dropping them into a Mason jar and screwing on the lid. All good advice, and still relevant. But the longer I’ve been writing in the internet age, the more I find myself allowing in a new inner critic that these classics don’t address: The inner comments section. Comments sections are often cited as the worst places on the internet (Writer Unboxed is a notable exception, and I promise they did not pay me to say this), but the same principle can be applied to anywhere that an audience is invited to respond directly to published content, including social media. Our inner comments sections, like our inner critics, will all look different, but mine resembles the sort of commenter that takes every sentence in bad faith. Unintentionally, I’ve started couching the words I write in clarifications against arguments that no one has made, almost as if I’m trying to anticipate every bad-faith reading someone could have. I even did it at the start of this post: writing, “All good advice, and always relevant,” after quoting two respected authors, as though to head off someone asking whether I’m saying that King and Lamott gave bad advice. I know I’m not the only one, too; once you notice others doing this, you won’t be able to unsee it. And the thing is, no reasonable person would read the opening to this post and jump straight to, “Are you saying that these two authors aren’t smart? What makes you any better??” But that’s the way my brain has adapted to existing on the internet. Even when I wrote political opinion pieces for my college newspaper, I didn’t get that many bad-faith responses, though that was [REDACTED] years ago, and this particular form of casual internet harassment seems to have gotten more popular since then. Like inner critics, inner comments sections will say that you should probably just not write at all. But unlike inner critics, your inner comments section may tell you that it can be silenced if you simply write in such a way that eliminates every possible bad-faith reading. That is, of course, impossible. Attempting to write a perfectly watertight article or a novel without plot holes is a great way to A) go insane, and B) play the world’s worst game of Whack-A-Mole as you chase every possible misreading of your words off the edge of a cliff. In some cases, advice geared toward silencing our inner critics can also be applied to inner comments sections. But I would argue that we must also look at our inner comments as unique obstacles that require unique responses. Luckily, there are things that we can do to keep these voices from taking up residence in our minds as our inner critic’s loud and cranky neighbor. 1. Understand that your brain is trying to protect you. A few years ago, a scientist claimed that housecats see their owners as nothing but big, unintelligent cats. That’s the reason our pets bring us dead mice and birds: they think we need help feeding ourselves. I like to think of our brains as similar to these cats. Humans didn’t get this far without a healthy sense of self-preservation, and part of the reason behind that is the protective instincts in our amygdalae. If an action carries a risk, the amygdala says, then we shouldn’t do the action. Unfortunately, most actions carry risks—even writing. But the amygdala is just one part of the brain, which does not understand that other parts of the brain are capable of managing threats when they occur. In short, when your inner comments section gets loud, that’s your brain sensing a threat and trying to protect you from it. By understanding this, we can remind those slightly more evolved parts of our brain that our inner comments sections are not real threats. And even if we do experience something unpleasant in a real-life comments section—unless there is an actual threat to our physical safety, which unfortunately is an all-to-real possibility at times—we are adults who can use healthy coping mechanisms to manage our distress. 2. Recognize the difference between your inner critic and your inner comments section. There are some fundamental differences between it and your inner comments section. Your inner critic tells you that your writing is crap, that you aren’t good enough, that your story is unimaginative, that you’ll never sell that book. In a twisted way, the inner critic is (unkindly, and not productively) trying to get you to be a better writer. There’s a reason the inner critic is also sometimes called the inner editor: you’re channeling what your brain things a (not nice) editor might say to critique your work. Unlike editors, though, internet comments sections aren’t there to help your writing improve, nor are they supposed to have your best interests in mind. In their purest state, comments sections are there to allow readers to engage with the text and with one another. In reality, they are often populated by people who are there to tear someone else down. Many modern tips for dealing with the inner critic advocate for self-compassion, or for replacing the urge to bully yourself with gentle encouragement and understanding. But when caught imagining the internet discourse forming around our work, we can remind ourselves that comments sections are not looking out for us at all. They are not our colleagues or our friends: they are background chatter. Why would you listen to someone who’s just being mean to you out of spite? 3. Actually face the bad voices. Allowing the inner critic to take up permanent residence in our minds is not a good idea. But sometimes, ignoring a problem will only make it worse. To silence in inner critic, I’ve found it helpful at times to sit down with a pen and paper and list out, stream of consciousness style, every fear I’m having about my work at that moment. I’ve started doing the same exercise with fears related specifically to reader reactions to my work. Every time I allow the inner comments section to say its piece, I recognize just how ridiculous they sound. As someone who processes information best through writing, I’ve allowed myself to take pen to paper and write down every silly response and bad-faith argument that I can think of someone having to my writing. By doing so, I’ve helped myself understand that if I live my writing life in fear that someone will misunderstand or respond poorly to something I write, I would never write anything. And since that’s not an option for me, I’ve found it easier to look past the risk that there may be a bad response one day, and choose to keep my voice and stay true to myself. Because that’s how I’ve decided I want to live my life: as long as I write things that I myself can be proud of, I’ll consider myself a success. 4. Take external actions for internal comfort. I’ve written primarily here about the inner comments section that exists only in my head. But it’s no secret that some writers, especially those from traditionally excluded backgrounds, have been targeted by real threats to their physical safety. Before you sit down to write, consider whether you feel prepared to accept (and overlook, ignore, or report) negative reader reactions. Is there a way you can write what you want while understanding—and not minding—that you may receive some blowback? If you can’t possibly write this thing without being distracted with fear over a potential response, are there steps you can take to make yourself feel safer? Consider whether you would like to take concrete steps to protect yourself—for example, using a pen name, scrubbing your personal information from the internet, using auto-block lists on social media, and so on. Sometimes knowing that we have taken concrete steps to strengthen our safety and privacy can go a long way toward quieting fears. Do you have an inner comments section that has kept you from writing? Have you found other ways to silence your inner comments section? About Kelsey AllagoodKelsey Allagood (she/her) is a writer, occasional photographer, and trained political analyst specializing in the causes of war and systemic oppression. This background led her to begin writing fantasy fiction steeped in the anthropology of conflict. Her writing can be found in literary magazines such as Barrelhouse, GRIFFEL, Menacing Hedge, and Wanderlust. Her photography is forthcoming in RESURRECTION mag. She has also written on peaceful resistance movements, art as a form of political resistance, and countering violent extremist ideology. Kelsey has a Bachelor’s Degree in international and cultural studies from the University of Tampa and a Master’s Degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University. She lives in Maryland with her husband, mother, and a rescue dog named Henry. Web | Twitter | More Posts http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WriterUnboxed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WriterUnboxed?d=qj6IDK7rITs http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WriterUnboxed?i=iZXrI-KtpJU:Vf8hnsDtgN4:gIN9vFwOqvQ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WriterUnboxed?i=iZXrI-KtpJU:Vf8hnsDtgN4:D7DqB2pKExk [url={url}]View the full article[/url]

Marilee Dahlman Fortune’s Riot, thriller (90k words) Comparables: Wanda M. Morris’s All Her Little Secrets meets Linda Fairstein’s Alexandra Cooper novels. Hook Line: In a world gripped with increasing violence between the top 1% and those who got left behind, a young NY prosecutor battles to discover who killed her boss and protect others from the same financial catastrophe that destroyed her own family. Pitch: Allie Walker moved from Iowa to New York for one reason: to bring down corrupt millionaires. Her family lost everything when a Ponzi scheme orchestrated by a woman named Theodora Blaine unraveled. Now Allie, drowning in debt, plans to wield her prosecutor’s badge like a pitchfork and stick it to the uber-rich. She’s investigating a mysterious trader who will trigger a market crash in three days and wipe out the life savings of innocent people. Allie suspects that Theodora’s son is plotting the crash and will rise from the ashes with millions dripping from the pockets of his designer motorcycle jacket. When Allie’s boss Caroline is murdered before they are supposed to interview him, Allie suspects he’s the killer. Allie is dating the city’s celebrity DA, whose political rise is fueled by the Blaine wealth. The DA dumps Allie and twists the knife by ordering her to leave Theodora’s son alone. Allie digs into Manhattan’s criminal underworld. She is stalked and assaulted and this reinforces her determination to discover who killed Caroline and protect others from the financial catastrophe that had destroyed her family. In the process, Allie might lose her job, reputation and life. Prose Sample: Blaine’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you so interested in getting inside my trading room?” He placed his hands on his waist. He was slight, and maybe a bit less than medium height, but he stood with a straight back, a fencer assessing his opponent before the bout. It made him seem taller. Blaine was also acting like I wanted to see inside his underwear drawer. I suspected why. Rumor was that he’d decorated his trading room with antique swords in order to foster a bloodthirsty attitude among his traders—probably not something he wanted to show a prosecutor. When law enforcement busted into his mother’s Theodora Investments headquarters, they’d found a museum’s worth of medieval weapons. But Gabriel Blaine had been a teenager then, completely innocent. Yeah, right. A few seconds of silence passed. I shifted on my feet. Couldn’t they have taken me to a conference room for a real meeting? Or at least invited me to sit down? “With you here, who’s managing the trading room right now?” “Not managing—running,” Blaine snapped. “It’s called running the room.” “Fine, who’s running the room?” “Rayan Zardari, our newly promoted head of trading. Dexter Nelson’s there, too. Dex is our chief operating officer.” Right. Prada Man and the coffee lover. Kendrick cleared his throat—a habit of his, apparently, and one that was starting to irritate me. “We’re happy to have accommodated the district attorney’s office. We would also be pleased to answer questions at a future date.” My face reddened. I’d learned nothing from these people. “Mr. Blaine, I can assure you, if the algorithmic ghost trader is one of your designs—we’ll find out.” I felt the urge to step closer, raise my index finger at him, but I had stuffed my hand into my pocket at some point. “That trading program is submitting a huge number of orders with no intention of executing trades, undoubtedly for the sole purpose of triggering other market participants to submit orders and manipulate the price of certain stocks. The scale and speed of the ghost algorithm’s activity has the potential to seriously disrupt the markets, gutting the investments of ordinary people everywhere.” Blaine shook his head, smiling. “You don’t understand my designs at all, do you?” “You don’t think so?” He leaned forward slightly. Strands of black and bright blue hair fell forward on his forehead, and silver threads in his dark suit caught the light and gleamed. “My algobots are excellent traders, far superior to humans. They always will be. Why? They follow directions. They have perfect concentration. They are faster than anything you can imagine. And you know what’s most important?” Blaine straightened, looked me in the eye, and smiled. “They never let emotion cloud their judgment.” BIO: This is my debut novel. I’m a published writer, and my short stories have appeared in print or online in The Saturday Evening Post, The Bitter Oleander, The Colored Lens, Cleaver, Molotov Cocktail, Mystery Weekly, Orca Literary, and elsewhere. In September 2021, I won Apparition Lit’s monthly flash fiction contest.

“All art is but imitation of nature,” or so Seneca observes in, Moral Letters to Lucilius. But Oscar Wilde flips Seneca’s view in his essay, “The Decay of Lying,” holding that, “life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” It’s a chicken and egg thing, really. And if you mix in the matter of art imitating art and take the discussion into ideas, inspiration, influence and homage in crime fiction, things get interesting. Many authors have drawn on previous works, which in some cases, have been inspired by other previous works, or by life. It’s a subject I love exploring or kicking around with others as some recent examples – and there are many – come to mind. There’s Confessions on the 7:45, by Lisa Unger, which opens with commuter Selena Murphy, her world imploding, heading home on the train when she meets and talks with Martha, a beautiful stranger, with troubles of her own. The two women reveal their innermost problems, thus setting the stage for a brilliantly crafted thriller. Unger was intrigued with the notion of strangers “meeting in a liminal space.” She suggested that in that moment in time you are not the person you were before, and you are not the same person afterwards. “There’s like an energy to it, a friction and that was one of the things I wanted to explore,” she said in an interview with The Book Report Network. “The book is sort of loosely based on the idea of Strangers on a Train, the Patricia Highsmith novel.” Of course, there is much more at work in Unger’s story, as there is in Highsmith’s classic. Her biographers, Richard Bradford, (Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires, The Life of Patricia Highsmith), and Joan Schenkar, (The Talented Miss Highsmith, The Secret Art and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith), and others, suggest she was in part influenced by Dostoevsky and Poe. Highsmith’s idea for her novel may have arisen after a walk with her parents in Hastings-on-the-Hudson, New York. “The germ of the plot for Strangers on a Train was: “Two people agree to murder each other’s enemy, thus permitting the perfect alibi to be established,” Highsmith wrote in Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction. In her wonderfully written, The Turn of the Key, Ruth Ware makes no secret of her homage to the Henry James tale, The Turn of the Screw. “While The Turn of the Key isn’t a rewrite of The Turn of the Screw, it definitely shares a few common themes,” Ware said in an interview with Waterstones. In both books there is a central character, a nanny-governess, a too-good-to-be-true position looking after two children in a beautiful, somewhat isolated, house with many secrets at work. Ware does a superb job offering a compelling story while updating aspects of The Turn of the Screw. Much has been written on the seed of inspiration Henry James used for his classic work, even by James himself. As most aficionados know, James has said that he got the idea from a tale told to him, concerning, “A couple of small children in an out-of-the-way place to whom the spirits of certain bad servants dead in the employ of the house were believed to have appeared with the design of getting hold of them.” James has written that he got the “fragment” about the children from Edward White Benson, the Archbishop of Canterbury. But Benson’s descendants have no recollection of the telling, according to Francis X. Roellinger Jr, in his essay, “Psychical Research and ‘The Turn of the Screw,’” leaving us with something of a haunting mystery about its origin. Turning to Linwood Barclay’s gripping thriller, Trust Your Eyes, we meet a schizophrenic obsessed with maps. His bedroom has become something of a fortress of solitude. He only leaves it virtually. Employing a computer program he travels the streets of the cities of the world, while never stepping from his room. He also studies the people frozen in time on his screen. “I wrote a kind of updated Rear Window about someone who thought he’d seen a murder in a tenement window on a site similar to Google Street View,” Barclay said in a post about the book and the film he regards as one of his favorites. Rear Window, as many know, is the acclaimed 1954 film, starring James Stewart and Grace Kelly, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The central character is a photographer, bound to a wheelchair after breaking his leg. From his apartment in New York City, he spends much of his time observing his neighbors in the building across the courtyard and begins suspecting one of the tenants has committed murder. The film is adapted from the 1942 short story, “It Had to Be Murder,” by Cornell Woolrich who was inspired by another short story: “Through a Window,” by H.G. Wells. The Wells story concerns a man with broken legs who passes time watching the goings on along the river when he witnesses a violent crime. A caution, written in 1890s, the Wells story contains offensive material. But on the subject of art imitating art, and life imitating art, we find something of a tragedy in Woolrich, an unsung author of the pulp era. He had an unhappy, tortured life and lived “in a series of seedy hotels, rooms, and apartments,” according to Eddie Duggan’s essay, “Writing in the darkness: the world of Cornell Woolrich.” Near the end of Woolrich’s life, a foot infection led to the amputation of a leg. With his health in decline, Woolrich became a recluse at a New York hotel. “Some of the staff there would take Woolrich down to the lobby so he could look out on the passing traffic, thus making the wizened and wheelchair-bound Woolrich into a kind of darker self-loathing version of the character played by James Stewart in Hitchcock’s Rear Window,” Duggan wrote. In launching his acclaimed John Rebus series, Ian Rankin nodded to another Scottish writer, Robert Louis Stevenson. “My own first crime novel, Knots and Crosses, was (in part) an attempt to update the themes of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Rankin, said in his wonderful essay for Britannica, “Edinburgh as literary metaphor.” Rankin observes how, “the mazy, dark, and nefarious Old Town—gave rise to literary metaphors for the human condition and provided Stevenson with his major inspiration for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” In Knots and Crosses, Rebus pursues a killer the papers call, “The Edinburgh Strangler.” The novel explores the duality of man, the double, and the masks people wear in public and private. Similar themes are found in Stevenson’s classic, as they are in other works by other writers. But Stevenson also drew upon the strange and true case of William Brodie, also known by his title as Deacon Brodie. He was a well-respected cabinet maker by day, who, by night, used his skills with locks, to break into homes. Stevenson’s biographers, Philip Callow, (Louis, A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson), and Frank McLynn, (Robert Louis Stevenson, A Biography), and others, suggest the Stevenson family-owned furniture made by Brodie and Stevenson was familiar with his infamy, even co-writing a play about the case before he wrote Jekyll and Hyde. Another example of art imitating art, which imitated life, can be found in The Stranger by Albert Camus, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. The Stranger, published in 1942, concerns the trial of a clerk in Algiers for murder, but he is judged because he appears lacking in the emotion and reactions society expects. It has been noted that in creating The Stranger, Camus was influenced by James M. Cain’s, The Postman Always Rings Twice, a noir classic published in 1934. In Cain’s story, a drifter falls for a seductive wife of a diner owner, and they plot to murder her husband. Apparently, Camus liked Cain’s book for its structure, how the story, “is told both in the moment, like a diary, and from a mysterious future beyond the grave,” Alice Kaplan writes in her outstanding book, Looking For The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic. Some have observed that Cain may have looked to Emile Zola’s 1868 novel, Thérèse Raquin, which concerns a pair of lovers who need to get a husband out of the way. “I know – you’re thinking: James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice? Or one of its many imitators?” Barry Forshaw wrote in The Independent and Crime Time. There are also suggestions Cain’s Postman was inspired by two true-crime cases; the infamous New York case from the late 1920s dealing with the trial and executions of Ruth Snyder and her lover Judd Gray for the murder of her husband, Albert. And a second true-life case in California, about a young couple running a gas station Cain knew. “One day I read in the paper where a woman who runs a filling station knocks off her husband.” Roy Hoopes, quotes Cain as saying, in his epic, Cain: The Biography of James M. Cain. A wonderful study of art imitating life is found in Kevin Birmingham’s superb analysis of how Fyodor Dostoevsky crafted Crime and Punishment by taking a cue from the true case of Pierre François Lacenaire, a murderer who became infamous for his charm and was guillotined for his crimes in Paris in the 1830s. “Dostoevsky routinely borrowed ideas from real life, though he never simply transposed them into fiction,” Birmingham writes in, The Sinner and the Saint: Dostoevsky and the Gentleman Murderer Who Inspired a Masterpiece. Dostoevsky drew from Lacenaire’s case to explore several themes and techniques, one of them being the novel’s point of view. It came to Dostoevsky while he wandered the streets of Wiesbaden, Germany, sick, destitute and desperate. “He would write a murderer’s story from the murderer’s perspective.” Birmingham’s book is highly recommended for it reads like a thriller as he examines all the forces Dostoevsky contended with and considered as he forged Crime and Punishment. So many more examples can be found to debate the theme of art imitating life, or life imitating art, or art imitating art, from James Joyce’s Ulysses to Theodor Dreiser’s, An American Tragedy, to John Steinbeck’s, East of Eden. And so it goes. Featured image: Toulouse-Lautrec, photographed by Maurice Guibert *** View the full article

My love for stories featuring the theme of human vs. the elements started at a very young age, when I would squirrel away in my toy box (a story for another day) with a blanket, a pillow, a flashlight, and my books. Over the years, I escaped into the wintry worlds created by the likes of Ezra Jack Keats in The Snowy Day, Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Florence and Richard Atwater, and The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Eventually, I found my way to The Shining by Stephen King (though I was long out of the toy box by that time). My love for books set in snowbound settings hasn’t waned. Here is a list of thrillers and mysteries where an untimely winter storm takes center stage. Ice Cold, by Tess Gerritsen Since the beginning, I’ve been an avid fan of Tess Gerritsen’s Rizzoli and Isles thriller series, and her eighth installment, Ice Cold, is one of my favorites. Chief Medical Examiner Maura Isles travels to Wyoming for a medical conference when she bumps into a former classmate. In a rare moment of whimsy, Maura decides to go skiing with her long-lost friend, his daughter, and another couple. As they travel up the mountain, a winter storm hits, leaving them stranded in the elements. The ill-prepared group finds shelter in the abandoned village of Kingdom Come, but someone is lurking in the snow, and they are far from safe. Back in Boston, homicide detective Jane Rizzoli becomes worried when she gets word that a burned body matching Maura’s description has turned up in the mountains. With more questions than answers, Jane travels to Wyoming in hopes of finding the truth and discovers that something much more dangerous than a blizzard may have claimed her best friend. Runner, by Tracy Clark When I started reading Runner by Tracy Clark, it was a mild December day in the Midwest. Still, I had to pull on my warmest sweater, coziest socks and pause to brew a hot cup of tea before reading on. In her fourth Chicago-based novel featuring PI Cassandra Raines, Clark captures winter in the Windy City perfectly. And just as chilling is Raines’s current case—the search for Ramona, a fifteen-year-old runaway. Raines can’t stand the thought of a young girl out on the streets, fending for herself in subzero temperatures, and as she draws closer, she discovers something much more nefarious at play in Ramona’s disappearance. While Runner is the first novel I’ve read by the talented Clark, I will quickly dig into the rest of the series. No Exit, by Taylor Adams The very first line of No Exit by Taylor Adams had me hooked. I mean, who hates the iconic holiday song, “White Christmas” so much they tell classic crooner Bing Crosby to do something anatomically impossible two days before Christmas? Thus begins, No Exit. Darby Thorne is driving solo through the mountains of Colorado, desperately trying to get home to Utah and to her mother, who is suffering from late-stage pancreatic cancer before Christmas. Equipped with only a quarter tank of gas Darby finds herself without cell coverage and in the belly of a raging blizzard that was only getting worse. In search of cell access and a hot cup of coffee, Darby’s only option is to pull over at a rest stop. There Darby meets four strangers, all waiting out the storm. Desperate to get a cell signal to call her mother, Darby goes back into the storm and makes a chilling discovery—a van with a young girl in a cage locked inside. In a race against time and the elements, Darby has only her wits to use as a weapon against an unknown evil. A Deadly Inside Scoop, by Abby Collette A Deadly Inside Scoop by Abby Collette is a deliciously binge-able read, perfect for a cold winter night. College grad Bronwyn Crewse has returned to her Ohio hometown to take over the family ice cream shop—Crewse Creamery. Bronwyn learns early on that running a business comes with unexpected headaches, including a delayed grand opening, a looming winter storm, and a dead body. Bronwyn is shocked to learn that her father had a decade-long feud with the victim and is now the main suspect in the murder. Determined to solve the mystery, Bronwyn slings ice cream cones while trying to clear her father’s name. The result—a cozy, wintry escape with a cast of memorable characters. And if one Crewse Creamery ice cream cone isn’t enough for you, no worries! Two more books in the series await you. Moon of the Crusted Snow, by Waubgeshig Rice A remote northern Canadian Anishinaabe community becomes even more isolated when, without warning or explanation, they lose electricity, cell service, and all communication with the outside world. As the days and weeks pass and the winter weather worsens, food, medicine, and fuel become scarce, causing tension among the tight-knit community. To make matters worse, a heavily armed stranger straggles in desperate for shelter and relief from the chaos unfolding in the south and bringing chaos and discord in return. Faced with devastation and certain death, members of the Anishinaabe community, led by Evan Whitesky, come together and try to prevent the collapse of their society. United, they must return to long revered traditions to survive. To say I became entirely immersed in Moon of the Crusted Snow as I read understates just how captivating, intriguing, and how beautifully written this book was. It’s both a lyrical and brutal exploration of how, in the midst of collapse, humanity seeks order. *** View the full article

Like many writers, Gabriel Valjan does not like to talk about himself. On social media, he seems more comfortable boosting other writers or showing off his charismatic cat, Munchkin. So you may not know that he has written three book series: the Roma Series, about organized crime in Italy; the Company Files, espionage adventures set after WWII; and the Shane Cleary Mysteries, following a private eye in 1970s Boston. He has also been nominated for the Agatha, Anthony, Silver Falchion Awards, and won a Macavity Award in 2021 for his his short story “Elysian Fields.” I got to talk to Valjan about his newest book—his twelfth published novel—Hush Hush, just published this January. RN: My pet theory is that crime fiction writers were drawn to the genre because crime featured somewhere in their pasts. My father was a numbers bookie, for example. How about you? GV: Wow, you came up to the plate swinging the bat. Yes, there are personal connections to criminal elements in my background, but I’ll plead the fifth and keep it simple. In the environment I grew up in—New Jersey, in the ’70s and ’80s—violence was a backdrop, an unavoidable and ugly reality because of the ecosystem and people in it. Personally, violence is anathema. This is one of the many reasons I don’t write graphic violence. The places I knew and where I worked in New Jersey, criminals were unavoidable. You knew who owned or controlled what, and it was so integral to the fabric of life that you accepted it as normal. In my exposure to “characters,” I’d picked up the cadence of their speech, their syntax, which conveyed both comedy and paranoia. I want to emphasize that I didn’t find any of this romantic. The criminal life is a brutal life, a destroyer of relationships, especially in families, and almost all the individuals I encountered back then have either died violently or in prison. If I became fascinated with crime, I would say it had more to do with the psychological aspects, such as motivation and rationalization. RN: You’re lucky enough to be able to write full time. At the same time, you’re currently published with a small press, which can come with its own joys and frustrations. Do you ever turn to Munchkin and say, “To hell with this, I’m better off painting houses”? GV: [Laughs] In light of your previous question, there’s a certain irony in your choice of words. “Painting houses” is mob lingo for a hitman. As for motivation, I don’t think I can do anything else but write. I enjoy it that much. I write because it gives me pleasure to create realities, shape them, and I write to learn about myself. I can say or do things in my writing that I can’t in real life. I know that writers of crime fiction understand this last point. Where else can you kill someone and get away with it? The page is home to your darkest secrets and fantasies. If you’re a writer, you’re going to write, regardless of success or not. It’s not a hobby. RN: You’re well known as a booster of other writers on social media—posting book birthdays and author events—as well as a great resource for awards and calls for stories. Did you start doing it as kind of a marketing plan, to get people’s attention—“Hey, I exist!”? How did it start? GV: It evolved. In the beginning, I was told, like most writers, to have a “platform.” I didn’t even know what that meant. Then it hit me that none of us knows what we’re doing. I think back to the gorillas in the ’70s commercials for luggage. We bang away at it with our weapon of choice and hope for the best. My approach to social media is to convey information, provide a service. I don’t call it networking because that implies an ulterior motive, something transactional, meaning, I boost your book, you boost mine. The result for me was that I went from “Oh, he’s the Twitter guy” to “This guy is also a writer. Check him out.” Social media helped facilitate introductions at conferences. Once the ice melted, I found it easier to ask for blurbs. The wonderful upside to helping others—besides, endorphins—is that I’ve been invited to participate on panels and contribute to anthologies. For a group of people who write about murder, the crime fiction community is incredibly supportive. RN: With Hush Hush, you’ve written three Shane Cleary books. He’s a complex private eye, ex-cop, smart, principled, but idealistic rather than worn out. What was your inspiration for the character? GV: Shane and Walker, from my Company Files series, both contain aspects of my personality. The inspiration is more of a mirror than an external source. Walker is the accidental writer. He fell into it while on the job. I’m not one of those writers who dreamed of becoming a novelist and wrote his first novel with crayons. I’d been reading all of my life, and I think that helped me write well. If I have a specific talent, it’s the ability to reach back into history for events that mirror those of the present day. For example, The Devil’s Music, while about the McCarthy era, shows how fake news can destroy lives. With Hush Hush, I drew inspiration from an infamous murder in Boston’s Combat Zone. Shane and I can accept ambiguity in our lives. Shane’s ally is a mafioso, and yet Mr. B is the most honest person in Shane’s universe. I can relate to that. Shane and I understand shades of gray. RN: Writing historical fiction can be a minefield in these sensitive times. How do you navigate building the verisimilitude that you need for a story while avoiding offense? GV: It’s challenging enough that a writer has to do a ton of research, but the greater concern is choosing what to show and not show. We can’t have blinkers on about the historical past. I won’t apologize for what I write, and I don’t pull any punches in the Company Files or the Shane series. Neither the ’50s or the ’70s were PC, but rather than focus on that, I like to remind readers how far we’ve come and that those decades were awful for people of color, for LGBT folks, and women. There’s a scene in Hush Hush that did worry me. I used the n-word, but there’s a context. The word comes out of the mouth of a black character and he’s citing a notorious nursery rhyme that gave Agatha Christie the title to one of her mysteries. If you’re a fan of the Dame and didn’t know this tidbit of trivia, then google the original title to And Then There Were None. Readers need to understand that people talked that way. I wrote an afterword for Hush Hush to remind readers of forgotten history. RN: Your father was born in Cuba, so if you wanted you could label yourself a Latinx writer. Or Latine, I think, is what we’re using this year. But you don’t, you don’t wield your ethnicity like a billy club that way I, frankly, feel I have to, in order to carve out a niche in a crowded market. Why not? Do you think it might help if you did? Or, rather, what kind of writer do you want to be, what do you want to be known for? GV: This is a poignant question for me. First, I dislike labels. Intensely. I’m not saying not to be proud of where you came from, but be wary of labels and the people and institutions who might use them against you. For those who don’t know me, I’m a Heinz 57, a mix of several nationalities. I’m predominantly European Spanish and a calico pattern of eastern European, with a streak of German. Spanish was my first language, and I picked up a smattering of German from my mother’s side of the family. When my parents divorced, I “lost” Spanish. I returned to the language in recent years, and I can read it, but I’m not confident speaking it because I’m also hard of hearing. The time away from my father made me feel disconnected from identifying with a sense of cubanidad, so I would feel fraudulent calling myself “Latinx.” Labels, this need to identify oneself, bothers me. I’m a writer. Simple. I understand the need to stand out in a crowded field. I am aware that people may label me a writer of crime fiction, but I’ve written historical fiction, horror, and poetry. I’ve also done translations. I have a strong interest in history. My strengths as a writer are my intellectual curiosity and discipline. I want readers to see growth and a writer who took risks. I want to be known for having written great stories and as someone who wasn’t afraid to challenge readers to think about what they see on the page. View the full article

I do love a good secret, don’t you? And when I hear that something is a best kept secret—like a new hometown restaurant off the beaten track or a mysterious walking trail—I can’t wait to give the secret a try. But here’s the thing about best kept secrets: they don’t stay secret very long. You just can’t keep people from extolling the virtues of something wonderful. And before long, it’s not secret anymore; everyone’s in on it. That’s what’s happened over at Nonfiction Fest, a writing challenge that on February 1st will be starting their third year. I expect Nonfiction Fest to draw even bigger numbers this year so yes, it may not have that cozy, isn’t-this-great-just-the-200-of-us feel anymore but (and this is a big but!) it will still be a wonderful, inspiring, and supportive community where any writer can learn a whole lot. And before you say, “But I don’t write non-fiction so pooh-pooh to this challenge!”, hear me out. Because whether you write fiction or nonfiction, for children or adults, picture books, novels or articles, you will learn something of value over at Nonfiction Fest. Like… Research! Have you ever wondered how a writer was able to get all that terrific (and vetted!) material, perhaps even a few quotes from professionals for an article on say, dinosaurs? There are a lot of tips and tricks of the trade when it comes to getting information, and authors of nonfiction are pros at this skill. And they’re willing to share a how-to or two. For free. And now you’re thinking that you don’t need that skill for something simple like a poem. You’re just writing a happy little verse about a platypus, right? And I say, the more you know about a platypus, the better your concept will be. And maybe it will take an unexpected turn because you found out something surprising about platypuses (like the correct plural of the little critter). That’s the thing about research. It’s like shooting a film where tons of reel stays on the cutting room floor. But you don’t know what stays and what goes until you get into the thick of it all. The Art of Editing That’s a skill, too, editing all that research. Maybe your novel’s setting is the Province of Massachusetts Bay during the years of the Salem Witch Trials. Perhaps you have reams of information about the time period and the place. And it’s awful tempting to get all that hard-earned info into your novel. Nonfiction authors can give you tips on balancing story and all that research and ultimately helping you write a rich, textured novel instead of a mystery that reads like a textbook. So here’s the best kept secret every writer should know: the skills to writing good nonfiction aren’t just for nonfiction authors. But don’t take my word for it. Do a little research for yourself over at Nonfiction Fest! (And P.S. I didn’t even mention that you can win prizes if you participate in this challenge and that’s pretty wonderful, too. And you know what else is wonderful? Supporting the NF authors who give so generously of their time and talent. So check out their books, leave a review, encourage your schools to invite these authors for a school visit. It’s a win-win for everyone!) ~Cathy C. Hall(C) Copyright wow-womenonwriting.com Visit WOW! Women On Writing for lively interviews and how-tos. Check out WOW!'s Classroom and learn something new. Enter the Quarterly Writing Contests. Open Now![url={url}]View the full article[/url]

B- The Donut Trap by Julie Tieu November 2, 2021 · Avon Contemporary RomanceNew AdultRomance Content warningThis is very much a story about the ways your family can hurt you while having the very best intentions in the world. If this is also your story, you might find it hard going. I certainly did. The Donut Trap is a New Adult romance with strong coming of age themes. Jasmine’s parents sacrificed and suffered so that their children would have better lives, but at times, Jasmine feels like she and her brother are the sacrifices. They feel bowed down under a weight of expectation and obligation, and the result is that they both resort to hiding important parts of their lives from their parents. A year or so after finishing college, Jasmine is back living at home with her parents, working from 6am to 10pm in her parents’ donut shop, while hunting for a ‘real’ job, and maybe even a boyfriend – though both more in theory than in practice. Working such long hours, there really is hardly room in her life for anything else… but her hours also form a handy excuse to avoid thinking about difficult things, or socialising with her friends from school and college, who are moving on with their lives and careers in a way that Jasmine feels she is not. And then Alex, the boy she had a crush on in college, turns up at the donut shop. And he is just as handsome as ever, as well as being charming and clearly very interested in getting to know her better… The Donut Trap does a first-rate job of depicting difficult family dynamics, particularly in the context of the immigrant experience. Indeed, it did this so well that I was almost unable to keep reading it. The weight of pressure and obligation and shame, the feeling of being trapped in a cycle with no way out, and also just the grueling amount of work Jasmine does in the shop were so intense that I found myself getting really stressed and anxious just reading about it (it didn’t help that the story was first person and from Jasmine’s viewpoint – the reader is really immersed in her troubles). How can you possibly complain about your own little stresses and anxieties when your parents literally fled the country they were born to escape the Khmer Rouge? Jasmine is caught in a trap where she can neither live up to her family’s expectations, nor escape them, nor even express her feelings about them honestly. One thing that really bothered me was that her best friend, Linh, kept on telling her that she should just talk to her parents, they only wanted what was best for her, and while this was maybe technically true, there is no ‘just’ about it. What Jasmine’s parents thought was best for her seemed to have been decided without any consultation with Jasmine as to what she actually wanted. Much of the book was a masterclass in what happens if you love someone but fail to listen to them. Or when one generation thinks of love as being about pushing their children to be as good as they can be, as a matter of survival, while the other experiences this as never being good enough to deserve love. It is very emotionally destructive. Basically, this was a brilliant piece of emotionally truthful writing and I found it an absolute horror to read. I will add that the family situation does have a happy and satisfactory resolution, but it takes a long time to get there. I realise that I have dived straight into the family dynamics of this book without mentioning the romance, but this is because it seemed to me that they were the emotional core of the story. The romance with Alex, while sweet, felt distinctly secondary. But let’s talk about it anyway because this is a romance novel blog, and also, it was definitely the more enjoyable half of the book! With the story being told from Jasmine’s point of view, we never get to see quite what Alex is thinking – for the first part of the story, he could almost be a fantasy come to life: the boy she had a secret crush on in college also had a secret crush on her! And now he has reappeared in her life and he still thinks she is cute, even when she is eating Korean Barbecue and wearing grubby work clothes and not flirting because actually she is kind of grumpy at being surprised by her best friend and dragged out for lunch with a cute guy when she isn’t in the mood! And he even speaks Mandarin and knows how to impress her parents! I enjoyed their awkward flirting via text and social media, and the way Alex really thought about what Jasmine might like when planning their first date. I also really liked the fact that the suave and charming Alex is not without his own family dramas, which render him just as awkward and off balance as Jasmine’s do her. And I appreciated that they were both pretty good at using their words when it counted. This is a closed door romance, so the on-page sexual content was limited to kisses, hand-holding, and a lot of appreciation for Alex’s abs, but the story did a good job of making these very sensual. One thing I enjoyed a bit less was the low-key love triangle that developed at one point in the book. I could see why it worked thematically, with the things both Alex and Jasmine told and hid from their families in their romantic relationships, but I really could have done without it. Also, I am contractually obliged to comment on the food porn levels in this book, which were strangely lacking in the early chapters, but picked up nicely when Jasmine started experimenting with new icing flavours about a third of the way into the book. And now I want donuts. (UNRELATED BUT IMPORTANT FACT: My husband just brought donuts home from the bakery! How did he know?) The Donut Trap is hard for me to grade fairly, because it pressed a few too many of my buttons. If you like somewhat angsty coming of age stories that speak to the immigrant experience, I think you will enjoy this. But if you’ve just come out of one of those holiday seasons that makes you feel grateful that Christmas comes but once a year, you might want to wait a few months before you read this story, or maybe skip it entirely. It’s a little too good at what it does. I think the writing is brilliant, but I had a miserable time reading it, and I don’t think I can grade it higher than a B minus when it made me so unhappy. I suspect it is going to be an amazing, affirming book for another reader out there, and I hope they find it! View the full article

Not the Kind of Earl You Marry Not the Kind of Earl You Marry by Kate Pembrooke is $1.99! I mentioned this on a Hide Your Wallet over the summer and it’s the first in a series. Did any of you pick this one up? Fans of Netflix’s Bridgerton series will adore this stunning historical romance debut, where a wary wallflower enters a fake engagement with one of London’s most eligible bachelors. The one woman in London who doesn’t want to marry him is now his fiancée. William Atherton, Earl of Norwood, is as shocked as the rest of London to discover his betrothal via an announcement in the morning paper. Furious at what appears to be a shrewd marriage trap, William tracks down his alleged fiancée before her plans can affect his campaign for a coveted political post. But then William realizes an engagement, however fake, may benefit them both… Miss Charlotte Hurst may be a wallflower, but she’s no shrinking violet. She would never attempt such an underhanded scheme, especially not with a man as haughty or sought-after as Norwood. Yet his suggestion to play along with the betrothal has its merits… and the longer they pretend, the more undeniably real their feelings become. But when the true culprit behind their engagement is revealed, can their newfound happiness survive the scandal? Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Tiny Little Thing Tiny Little Thing by Beatriz Williams is $1.99! This is book two in the Schuler Sisters series, but I think it’s find to read on its own. Williams writes mainly historical fiction and her books have popped up on the site a few times. In the summer of 1966, Christina Hardcastle—“Tiny” to her illustrious family—stands on the brink of a breathtaking future. Of the three Schuyler sisters, she’s the one raised to marry a man destined for leadership, and with her elegance and impeccable style, she presents a perfect camera-ready image in the dawning age of television politics. Together she and her husband, Frank, make the ultimate power couple: intelligent, rich, and impossibly attractive. It seems nothing can stop Frank from rising to national office, and he’s got his sights set on a senate seat in November. But as the season gets underway at the family estate on Cape Cod, three unwelcome visitors appear in Tiny’s perfect life: her volatile sister Pepper, an envelope containing incriminating photograph, and the intimidating figure of Frank’s cousin Vietnam-war hero Caspian, who knows more about Tiny’s rich inner life than anyone else. As she struggles to maintain the glossy façade on which the Hardcastle family’s ambitions are built, Tiny begins to suspect that Frank is hiding a reckless entanglement of his own…one that may unravel both her own ordered life and her husband’s promising career. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. How to Date a Douchebag: The Studying Hours The Studying Hours by Sara Ney is FREE! Series name aside, I really enjoyed this one back when the Audible Escape package was around. I also recommended it in our Seduction as a Bet Rec League and for Ready Set Go: Double Features. This book reminded me a lot of Kristen Callihan’s The Hookup in terms of vibe. CRUDE. ARROGANT. A**HOLE. No doubt about it, Sebastian ‘Oz’ Osborne is the university’s most celebrated student athlete—and possibly the biggest douchebag. A walking, talking cliché, he has a filthy mouth, a fantastic body, and doesn’t give a sh*t about what you or anyone else thinks. SMART. CLASSY. CONSERVATIVE. Make no mistake, Jameson Clarke may be the university’s most diligent student—but she is no prude. Spending most of her time in the hallowed halls of the library, James is wary of pervs, jocks, and douchebags—and Oz Osborne is all three. She’s smart, sarcastic—and not what he expected. …EVERY DOUCHBAG HAS HIS WEAKNESS. He wants to be friends. He wants to spend time with her. He wants to drive her crazy. He wants… Her. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. The Start of Something Good The Start of Something Good by Jennifer Probst is $1.99! An enemies to lovers contemporary, this one is the first in a new series. Readers loved the tension and chemistry between the main characters. However, others wanted more obstacles for the couple to overcome. An enriching story of family ties, broken hearts, and second chances from New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Probst. When Ethan Bishop returns to the Hudson Valley, his body and spirit are a little worse for wear. As a former Special Forces paratrooper, he saw his fair share of conflict, and he came home with wounds, inside and out. At his sisters’ B & B and farm, he can keep all his pain at a safe distance. But quiet time isn’t easy when a fiery woman explodes into his life… It’s business—not pleasure—that brings Manhattan PR agent Mia Thrush reluctantly to the farm. Tightly wound and quick tempered, Mia clashes immediately with the brooding Ethan. Everything about him is irritating—from his lean muscles and piercing blue eyes to his scent of sweat and musk. But as the summer unfolds and temperatures rise, Ethan and Mia discover how much they have in common: their guarded histories, an uncontrollable desire, and a passion for the future that could heal two broken hearts. But will their pasts threaten their fragile chance at a brand-new future? Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. View the full article

Maybe it’s just because I reread all of the Wheel of Time books last year in preparation for the series, but I’ve had an itch for fantasy ever since. Not just any fantasy, mind you—dark fantasy is where a crime fan goes looking when crossing over into the realm of magic. Some of the books below are nihilistic, some are hopeful, and some are profound statements about contemporary existence. What unites the items on this list, other than their 2022 release dates, is a shared emphasis on the abuses and misuses of magic, the consequences of power, not any awe-inspiring achievements. In dark fantasy, the use of magic often comes with a terrible cost to the spell-caster, which is why I like to think of this as the “Blood Sugar Sex Magic” category of genre fiction. In other words, authors of dark fantasy embrace a noir vision of the world. W. M. Akers, Westside Lights (Harper Voyager, March 8) This is the third in W. M. Akers’ incredibly imaginative Westside series, in which the Western half of Manhattan suddenly experiences the failure of all modern technology. With the lights gone dark, gang warfare, dark magic, and petty politics hold sway, but in Westside Lights, someone’s figured out a way to turn the streetlamps back on, and not everyone’s happy. Oh, and it has something to do with a whole bunch of poisoned seagulls… Peng Shepherd, The Cartographers (William Morrow, March 15) If you enjoyed John Green’s Paper Towns, but always wanted to read a book about ghost maps written for adults and that actually made sense, then The Cartographers is the book for you! Nell Young, once a rising star in the world of cartography, is working a dead-end job making fake old maps when the sudden death of her famed archivist father sends her on the adventure of a lifetime. Secret societies, vanishing buildings, and a rekindled romance soon follow, for what is sure to be one of the cleverest mysteries of the year. Sara A. Mueller, The Bone Orchard (Tor, March 22) 2020 was my big gothic year, 2021 was all about the horror, and now 2022 is going to be the year I Notice Dark Fantasy. There’s, like, so much good dark fantasy out there. I hesitate to claim any knowledge of or expertise within this lovely, morbid subgenre. But I can tell you that the visual creativity of The Bone Orchard is stunning. Charm, a powerful witch and mistress to the kingdom’s aged emperor, spends her days imprisoned in luxury, creating bone ghost simulacra of herself at different ages in life. Together, the bone ghosts serve the refined clients of Charm’s tasteful bordello, and when Charm’s emperor is murdered, she follows his last instructions: to find who has killed him, and to send his dangerous sons far from the throne. Rebecca Roanhorse, Fevered Star (Gallery/Saga Press, April 19) I adored Rebecca Roanhorse’s first in the Meridian series, Black Sun, grounded in pre-Columbian Meso-American mythology and geography, and I can’t wait to read this sure-to-be-exciting followup. Black Sun ended with the great city of Tova engulfed in civil war, which I’m really hoping means some kind of revolution is coming, and the publisher’s blurb promises lots of shifting alliances and new antagonists. Holly Black, The Book of Night (Tor, May 3) The Book of Night is so cool! And I’m not just saying that because the author showed off her brand new naked sphynx cat on the internet and it’s adorable. Holly Black’s written a lot of great YA, but this is her first aimed-at-adults novel, and I couldn’t have been more absorbed while reading it. In a world infused with shadow magic, a bartender who used to be the greatest heist artist in the city gets pulled back in for one last job. And of course, this has to be the job that gets messy. Olivie Blake, The Atlas Six (Tor, March 1) Once you start reading this cool-headed tale of magical competition, you’ll immediately understand why’s it’s become a Tik Tok sensation (so much so that Tor is reissuing the book, which came out early in 2020, in a new hardcover edition). Six students have been selected to compete for five coveted positions within the magically-saved Library of Alexandria. Some of them hate each other, and some of them really, really each other. And everyone is backstabbing everyone else. The Atlas Six is dark academia with a magical twist that evokes the way graduate students are pitted against each other for limited positions (because even in the magical world there are still more people qualified to work in a library than there are library jobs). Nghi Vo, Siren Queen (Tordotcom, May 10) In Siren Queen’s alternate history version of 1920s Hollywood, studios use dark magic to ensure the success of their pictures, and stars, when they first rise, are as bright as a mercury bulb flash, and just as painful to look at in the flesh. Nghi Vo’s Chinese-American heroine will do anything to become a star (except play a maid or a doomed love interest), and instead carves out a powerful space for herself playing monsters. Meanwhile, she immerses herself in the Jazz Age’s thriving gay subculture. Her friends and lovers try as hard as they can to retain a sliver of themselves inside their outsized new personas, and find ways soaked in time and blood to fight back against the studio system. Hollywood + folk magic = amazing!! J.M. Miro, Ordinary Monsters (Flatiron, June 7) Setting: England, 1882 X-Men meets A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in J.M. Miro’s imaginative, Victorian-set novel. A strange institute, led by the powerful and mysterious Dr. Berghast, is busy collecting orphans from across the globe, each with their own special powers. But someone else wants the talented children too, and he’s got some Gaiman-level henchmen to help him. Come for the world-building, stay for the badass train fight! Sunyi Dean, The Book Eaters (Tor, August 9) In this dark vision of knowledge and its collection, the ancient Families known as the Book Eaters are dwindling in number and desperate for a solution to their population problems. Fewer girls each year are born to the Book Eaters, who have the power to accumulate knowledge and gain sustenance from eating words, and those girls lead sheltered lives until they are married off in hopes of bringing new Book Eaters into the world. Sunyi Dean has crafted a well-realized in-world fantasy with a powerful heroine and a complex magical system. Oh, and there are murders, I promise! View the full article

Our fifth instalment in the Walking Middle-Earth series takes us out of the Shire to visit the Lone-Lands beyond Bree. Kai Greenwood (@LostDunedan) Visit the Forsaken Inn, and climb up to the Arnorian watchtower of Amon Sûl. Distance: 3 miles Difficulty: Rough terrain, some steep ascents Dangers: Wolves, Crebain Several years ago I received a pipe holder from Seredoc Sackville-Baggins that was modelled on the watchtower at Weathertop. Seredoc claimed to have bought this at the Forsaken Inn in the Lone-Lands, many miles from the Shire. A Sackville-Baggins beyond Bree? A tall story! Mind you, Seredoc has a history of outlandish boasts. Amongst these are: 1. That he held Galadriel’s cloak out of the mud on a rainy night in the Chetwood. 2. That he chased a black rider out of Bywater armed only with a lamb shank. 3. That he smoked an entire pouch of Old Toby in a single sitting. Preposterous stuff! Nobody could smoke an entire pouch of Old Toby. Anyway, these days the road to Weathertop is much safer, and I have made the journey via Bree to explore these hills. Starting at the Forsaken Inn, (which, on my visit at least, was noticeably lacking in watchtower-shaped pipe holders), head east along the Great East Road. At the broken Arnorian bridge (step 2) scramble down the bank into the dried-up creek. Pause here to admire the bold carving on the fallen bridge-stones. Some of these designs are said to be Numenorian in origin, and resemble great waves. This seems in bad taste to me, but each to their own. If dry, follow the stream bed northwest until you meet a deep gully on your right (3). Clamber up this to emerge at the foot of Weathertop, aka Amon Sûl. Now the work begins. A spiral track will take you to the top, but it is more suited to goats than hobbits, so take your time and enjoy fine views of the Weather Hills as they hove into view. Ah, the Weather Hills! The old stone heart of Eriador! A thousand feet high, rocky and barren. Despite the rain on my visit they are dry hills, with scarcely a dribble of a stream to cool one’s hairy feet. Isobel would have loved them. Take second breakfast in the ruins (4). A low ring of stone is all that remains of the once proud watchtower of Arnor, home to a seeing stone, the sister of which Peregrin Took looked into on his adventures. Here too, Frodo fought off the Nazgûl (with help from the Ranger…) On a sunny morning it all seems too fanciful to be true, but a Took bore witness, and a Took can be trusted. Even if it is Pippin. Descend by the steep western path to a shallow bowl in the slope where if you are lucky you may find the remains of a campfire. This is a ranger-camp (5), and those honourable folk, though freed from the shadows, still slip off into the wild on occasion. Maybe they have Took blood in them? At the foot of the hill, you should meet the same dried up water course that led you towards Weathertop. Follow it south-east to retrace your steps to the Inn. P.S. Note that the Forsaken Inn management are somewhat inflexible, and will not refund any unwanted souvenirs, no matter how good their condition. Yours, Everard Took Read more at www.kaigreenwood.com Twitter: @LostDunedan Text and Maps © Kai Greenwood 2021 The post Walking Middle-Earth: Forsaken Inn to Weathertop appeared first on The Fantasy Hive. View the full article