Novel Writing Program - Modules And Consults

One of the main antagonists in my book is a man with the ultimate goal of saving his race from oblivion. What helped me get into his head was reading and thinking about how various past and present leaders have justified horrifically evil acts with the belief that "the end justifies the means." I also often find myself thinking that "the end justifies the means" in various situations, so getting into his mindset was not too hard. I tried to make it clear that he is at least partially motivated by a genuine ardor for and love of his people and a desire to save them. I imagined myself in his shoes: as a member of a race staring that is staring extinction in the face and with few options to avoid it. I wondered what I would do if I were in them. But what makes my antagonist evil is the fact that he is so stuck in his belief that "the end justifies the means" that he ignores the value of the lives he ends and ruins in pursuit of his goals. He also has only one vision of what he thinks the future should be. He cannot imagine any other and will do whatever it takes to reach it. All in all, I like writing antagonists. Writing antagonists helps me refine my understanding of what separates good from evil and how actions are justified for better and for worse. https://www.instagram.com/rheathbakewrite/

Ellsworth Kelly, Having The Time Of My Life, 1998. Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery. 1 Several years ago, moving into an old but new-to-me apartment with bare white walls, I tacked a poster-size sheet of heavy paper above my desk. Over time, I began to randomly pin found photographs and scraps of stories and poems to this sheet—including a couple of reproductions of Ellsworth Kelly postcards, which I’d torn out of magazines. Every so often, my eyes would stray upward, and these flashes of color would slide into view. I had not thought of them again until very recently, when I heard of an exhibition curated from the four hundred postcards Kelly made and mailed at various points during his seven decades of making art. I did not think much then about why they appealed to me. Some of the other images on my board were actual found photographs, as in ones I found on the street, including a glossy, black-and-white roadside image of a crime scene, probably photographed by highway patrol, then ripped in half. Like the collages I sometimes made on notebooks containing my first drafts, none of these pictures were meant as literal inspiration; they were just references for daydreaming, vague and strange enough that they might compel some unexpected sentence or train of thought. In one of the Kelly postcards I’d pinned up, four irregular squarish panels of slightly diluted shades of blue, yellow, green, and red are pasted like a scrim over a landscape of a mountain and lake. They reminded me of endless things, like Baldessari dots that simultaneously redirect the eye elsewhere and draw it back to the point of obfuscation, piquing curiosity about what it conceals. In their pure arrangement of color, the postcards were pleasingly like the faded multicolored flags that flutter over used car lots, like the surprise patterns and colors of paint that emerge on adjacent boarded-up windows when old city buildings are torn down. They were both curtains and windows, shielding what lay behind them and opening into something else. Ellsworth Kelly, Brooklyn Bridge II, 1985. Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery. 2 The first postcard collage Ellsworth Kelly made and mailed featured a cut-out sphere of red paper pasted against a blank background, upside down; along with a scrap of blue paper torn from a pack of Gauloises cigarettes. It was 1954, in the first week of Kelly’s return to New York City. He stamped it and sent it to his friend Ralph Coburn, an artist he’d known in Boston, who was then living in France. Kelly was thirty-one years old, back in the United States after a transformational six years in Paris, and finding his way into abstraction. In Paris, he’d met John Cage, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and Jean Arp. In his 1990 essay “Fragmentation and Form,” Kelly noted how Kasimir Malevich’s squares blocked religious material so that “color became his content”—the abstraction of Russian icons signaling the artist’s commitment to “picturing transcendental realities.” He was exposed to Surrealist automatic drawing, Schwitters’ collages, and also the work of the Arps, whose collages were “were my first introduction to fragmented forms arranged by laws of chance.” Ellsworth Kelly, Images des Antilles 2/5, 1984. Collection of the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery. 3 During the Second World War, prior to his years in Paris, Kelly had enlisted in the army. He did this “to get away from his family, especially his mother,” Jack Shears, his longtime partner, once said. Kelly served in the Ghost Army, a tactical military unit comprised partly of artists. Kelly and his comrades created inflatable tanks and entire fake military camps—illusions and obfuscations in the landscape, designed to throw the German army off course. On one level Kelly’s postcards can be thought of as a kind of Ghost Army correspondence. The opposite of camouflage, his cutouts insert themselves in unlikely settings, winking at the presence of the surreal. His forms and fields of color create imaginary portals in banal postcard landscapes: a cut-out paper moon floats above a generic Manhattan skyline, or drops of blood dribble over sand dunes. Panels of black, yellow, red, and green descend on grainy, washed-out images of fields, crashing seas, baseball stadiums. For Kelly, postcards were a vacation from the studio. They were both outlet and outline, made quickly and intuitively: Some were places to work out ideas, and a few loose compositions would lead in more obvious ways to larger, more fully realized pieces. Others were just to escape, to play and have fun. All of Kelly’s postcards, though, were equally sketch and message—a brief transmission from wherever he was in the world and in his mind, a glimpse into his creative daydreams, and an invitation for the recipient to see as he saw. Ellsworth Kelly, Manhattan Skyline at Night, 1985. Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery. 4 Kelly’s abstract shapes were often pulled from the natural world. He framed and isolated snatches of reality much in the way a photographer attempts to do. “I want to catch one thing that’s a flash, a mysterious thing, the beginning of something, a primal thing,” Kelly said in 2008. But even as he acknowledged this desire to stop time, to freeze and distill the everyday, he surrendered to and celebrated the impossibility of doing so. Growing up, Kelly was a birdwatcher, perpetually looking out for fleeting, uncanny colors and markings. After his death in 2015, one of his famous quotes kept circulating: “ What I’ve tried to capture is the reality of flux, to keep art an open, incomplete situation, to get at the rapture of seeing.” His postcards contain the surprise of a well-delivered punchline: interruptions in otherwise stale depictions of beauty. Ellsworth Kelly, Orange, 1977. Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery. 5 Can you imagine the person who tosses out an Ellsworth Kelly postcard? But some friends apparently did. He stopped sending them to those people. Kelly also began to suspect postal workers of stealing the postcards. Presumptuous or not, perhaps he knew something from the inside. He worked at the post office himself when he returned from Paris, in Manhattan’s giant Beaux Arts main branch at Eighth Avenue and Thirty-Fourth. Long shifts of sorting mail, interrupted, occasionally, by the sight of something a little out of the ordinary, perhaps handmade, with no obvious value. What would compel a person to steal such a thing, or to get rid of it? Despite his suspicions, he continued to make them. Ellsworth Kelly, Rainbow, 1984. Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery. 6 For artists, postcards are often attractive propositions—semi-intimate and semipublic, their audience largely accidental and mostly postal. They possess inherent formal restrictions, and their own strange vernacular. Kelly’s hewed to the tradition of postcard pieces made by Miro and Duchamp, which often had the same humor, tactile elements, and deliberate, wildly inaccurate scales. He also acknowledged the influence of Ray Johnson’s mail art. And he had antecedents, too: His postcards played with the notions of tourism and place that Zoe Leonard would later explore in her 2008 series You see I am here after all. In Leonard’s series, near-identical view card representations of Niagara Falls proliferate, the visual experience diluted by repetition. Ellsworth Kelly, Oyster Pond (Blue Form), 1977. Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, courtesy of the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin. 7 Stephen Shore’s U.S. 97, South of Klamath Falls, Oregon, July 21, 1973 — a billboard of a painting of Mount Shasta. Its blues, whites, and yellowed greens blend in with the actual land that surrounds it. Its flatness transcends the natural landscape, competing with it. The text of the billboard has been blotted out with two rectangles of paint, blue and black. It feels close to Kelly’s own games with scale: like one of his postcards blown up and planted in the world. Ellsworth Kelly, Sailboat on Lake Pond Oreille, 1977. Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery. 8 Even though they weren’t the real things, the images of the Kelly postcards I collaged on my wall still bore the curlicue border all postcards have, and I regarded them as if they’d arrived in the mail. I could read them as surreal messages about stories I was writing. The embedded blank signs were reminders to interrupt the scene. Sometimes Kelly collaged recognizable representations of people onto his postcards—his partner, Jack, and Marilyn Monroe were both among his recurrent subjects. Another Ellsworth Kelly card tacked to my board: Sailboat at Lake Pend Orielle, in which a grainy newsprint scrap featuring Goldie Hawn’s face obliterates the sailboat in the card’s caption. Kelly’s piece is dated to 1980, the year Hawn’s film Private Benjamin was released, and her wide-eyed expression looks like it was ripped from one of the publicity stills from the movie. In The Colossal Head of Harrison Ford, a black-and-white actor’s head looms blimp-like above a shoreline of beachgoers. While Ford is as obvious as a thought bubble, Kelly’s fragmentation of Hawn’s face makes it possible to see her in more anonymous terms, as I came to do in the months when the picture stayed on my wall. I thought of her more as a spirit in the lake, a presence, a visual of laughter itself. Living with it allowed her to exist for me as another abstraction: Unlike Ford’s visage, trapped in the weird balloon of its being, she was liberated. Ellsworth Kelly, Horizontal Nude or St. Martin Landscape, 1974. Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, courtesy of the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin. 9 Sometimes Kelly flipped the landscape, as in a postcard of a painting of the Brooklyn Bridge, collaged on an image of his own nude body. More often he let facial features float out into forests. A freakish-looking pair of eyes are collaged into a stranger’s face that creeps beneath the Chateau Marmont, a haunting. Or he interspersed human elements piecemeal: Black pumps clopping along the beaches of St. Maarten. Wing tips kicking back on the sand. Torsos in the sky. Mouths cresting volcanoes. Butts over Brewster Flats. Body parts clothed and awkwardly intruding into exotic spaces, hovering over various bodies of water. Kelly’s oversized and disembodied elements are the antithesis of a certain bad Instagram trope: the pedicured bare feet in x beautiful landscape, bonus points if the image includes a hammock, the blazing shade of nail polish that brags, I’m here, without really wishing you were too. Meanwhile, in one of Kelly’s postcards, a giant nose stuck into the hull of a sailboat whispers, But who the hell am I and why am I here? “Ellsworth Kelly: Postcards” is on view at Matthew Marks in New York through June 25 and from August 27 through November 27 at https://blantonmuseum.org/rotation/ellsworth-kelly-postcards/. The exhibition catalogue is published by Delmonico Books/Tang. Originally from North Carolina, Rebecca Bengal writes fiction, essays, and long-form journalism. She is based in New York City. View the full article

I don’t use a journal, just a small piece of clipboard material on which I place quartered (torn) sections of 8.5 x 11″ paper that I have folded in half. I generally keep several such fresh sheets with me, as well as others containing things I am working on—plans, schedules, tasks. Above, you see the board: I put a ridiculous drawing (by Bruegel) on one side. You also see a piece of paper, folded, as it would sit in my pocket. Then you see one such in-use, unfolded sheet: my accounting. This sheet tabulates various habits—you may guess what they are—that I am TO PERFORM or TO AVOID each day. This is a middling eleven days; I could have done better. Jesse Ball is the author of sixteen books and is on the faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a winner of The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for Fiction and his novel A Cure for Suicide was long-listed for the National Book Award. His latest book, Autoportrait, comes out from Catapult this August. View the full article

Welcome to another Throwback Thursday with Wyrd &Wonder! It’s been five years of W&W and one of the ways we’re celebrating is by looking back over the last five years of photo challenges! Each week, we’ll take a look at something different, and our favourite responses (not necessarily just our own). That’s right, we’re back again with a post looking back over our favourite Wyrd & Wonder challenge prompts from the past. This Thursday, we’re covering Map Monday. On a Thursday. But the prompts are always held on a Monday. Because it’s alliterative. This isn’t bugging me at all. ANYWAY Julia I did a couple of pictures for both years, but here’s the one I liked best of each year: Nils I’m cheating a little here as I’ve never posted a map Monday before, but I’ve taken plenty of map pics on my Instagram account, so here’s what I would have posted! Beth Map Monday is always a favourite of mine, as I love poring over maps, particularly fantasy ones! Next Thursday will be our last Throwback Thursday, and we’re having a free for all on our favourite prompts! The post Wyrd & Wonder Throwback Thursday appeared first on The Fantasy Hive. View the full article

Trained by reading hundreds of submissions, editors and agents often make their read/not-read decision on the first page. In a customarily formatted book manuscript with chapters starting about 1/3 of the way down the page (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type), there are 16 or 17 lines on the first page. Here’s the question: Would you pay good money to read the rest of the chapter? With 50 chapters in a book that costs $15, each chapter would be “worth” 30 cents. So, before you read the excerpt, take 30 cents from your pocket or purse. When you’re done, decide what to do with those three dimes or the quarter and a nickel. It’s not much, but think of paying 30 cents for the rest of the chapter every time you sample a book’s first page. In a sense, time is money for a literary agent working her way through a raft of submissions, and she is spending that resource whenever she turns a page. Please judge by storytelling quality, not by genre or content—some reject an opening page immediately because of genre, but that’s not a good-enough reason when the point is to analyze for storytelling strength. Two things make today’s post different. First, it falls on my birthday. It’s good to have another one. Secondly, there’s this . . . It’s a Twofer Today. Today we’re looking at two very different books from the New York Times bestseller lists, one from the trade paperback list and the other from hardcover fiction. And, as it so happens, both feature protagonists from the WU world, one a writer and the other a literary agent. Two openings, two polls. See what you think. How strong is the opening page of this novel—would it, all on its own, hook an agent if it was submitted by an unpublished writer? Opening page, chapter 1 Cindy Thomas was working at the dining table she’d bought at a tag sale down the block. It was cherrywood, round, with a hinged leaf and the letters SN etched near the hinge. She traced the initials with her finger, imagining that the person who’d left that mark was also a journalist suffering from writer’s block—and Cindy was as blocked as a writer could be. Her full-time job was as senior crime reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. She’d been covering the violent murders of a killer unknown. And then, at the end of his crime spree, caught by the police, this unrepentant serial monster had asked her to write the story of his life. And that’s what she was doing—trying to do—now. It would be easy for her agent to sell this idea for a true-crime thriller about Evan Burke. He was a savage and highly successful at getting away with his kills. According to him, he was the most prolific killer of the century, and Cindy didn’t doubt him. She had no shortage of quotable and illustrated research. Because Burke wanted Cindy’s book to secure his place in criminal history, he had provided her with notebooks, as well as photos of his victims, alive and dead. He’d given her his maps to his victims’ graves, which, when opened by homicide cops, had turned up bones, clothing, and other evidence of Burke’s crimes. He’d been convicted of six murders, which in his mind was insufficient, but the prosecution was plenty happy. Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. How strong is the opening page of this novel—would it, all on its own, hook an agent if it was submitted by an unpublished writer? The opening page of the prologue: When books are your life—or in my case, your job— you get pretty good at guessing where a story is going. The tropes, the archetypes, the common plot twists all start to organize themselves into a catalogue inside your brain, divided by category and genre. The husband is the killer. The nerd gets a makeover, and without her glasses, she’s smoking hot. The guy gets the girl—or the other girl does. Someone explains a complicated scientific concept, and someone else says, “Um, in English, please?” The details may change from book to book, but there’s nothing truly new under the sun. Take, for example, the small-town love story. The kind where a cynical hotshot from New York or Los Angeles gets shipped off to Smalltown, USA—to, like, run a family-owned Christmas tree farm out of business to make room for a soulless corporation. But while said City Person is in town, things don’t go to plan. Because, of course, the Christmas tree farm—or bakery, or whatever the hero’s been sent to destroy—is owned and operated by someone ridiculously attractive and suitably available for wooing. Back in the city, the lead has a romantic partner. Someone ruthless who encourages him (snip) Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. I thought it would be fun to contrast the opening strength of a novel that is meant be a thriller to one that is clearly not a thriller. 22 Seconds was the number one hardback fiction bestseller and Book Lovers was the number one trade paperback fiction bestseller for May 22, 2022. Were their opening pages compelling? You can turn the page of 22 Seconds and read more here, and check out more of Book Lovers here. Kindle users can request a sample sent to their devices, and I’ve found this to be a great way to evaluate a narrative that is borderline on the first page and see if it’s worth my coin. My votes: 22 Seconds, NO. Book Lover, YES. 22 Seconds, which received 4.5 stars on Amazon, failed to create any tension in me, and it didn’t raise a story question other than whether or not this person would break her writer’s block, which is not a high-stakes problem, IMO. Leading with the totally irrelevant detail that she was working at a round table signaled more unneeded words ahead. And there was this sentence: She’d been covering the violent murders of a killer unknown. Does that make any sense to you? “Murders” is plural and somehow refers to a single killer. And why would she be covering the murder of a killer? Oh, I understand what the author was trying to say, but where was the copyeditor? Or a content editor? None, apparently, had their hands on this story. On the other hand, Book Lovers, which earned 4.6 stars on Amazon, opens with an enticing voice and a take on cliched fiction tropes that both writers and readers will recognize with a grin. While no story question is raised here, the voice and writing were appealing enough to get me to want to taste more. And a good story question is raised just a paragraph or so later. Had I been the editor, it might have appeared on the first page. You’re invited to a flogging—your own You see here the insights fresh eyes bring to the performance of bestseller first pages, so why not do the same with the opening of your WIP? Submit your prologue/first chapter to my blog, Flogging the Quill, and I’ll give you my thoughts and even a little line editing if I see a need. And the readers of FtQ are good at offering constructive notes, too. Hope to see you there. To submit, email your first chapter or prologue (or both) as an attachment to me, and let me know if it’s okay to use your first page and to post the complete chapter. Wish you could buy this author a cup of joe? Now, thanks to tinyCoffee and PayPal, you can! About Ray RhameyRay Rhamey is the author of four novels and one writing craft book, Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling. He's also an editor of book-length fiction and designs book covers and interiors for Indie authors and small presses. His website, crrreative.com, offers an a la carte menu of creative services for writers and publishers. Learn more about Ray's books at rayrhamey.com. Web | Twitter | Facebook | 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=SUt1_tbJkW8:mFviAO7Ycjo:gIN9vFwOqvQ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WriterUnboxed?i=SUt1_tbJkW8:mFviAO7Ycjo:D7DqB2pKExk [url={url}]View the full article[/url]

London Celebrities Collection RECOMMENDED: London Celebrities Collection by Lucy Parker is $2.99! Thank you to everyone who let us know about this one. This set collections 3 contemporary romances. Sarah loves this series and you can catch her reviews here: Act Like It: A- Pretty Face: B Making Up: B+ The first three full-length novels in Lucy Parker’s delightfully charming London Celebrities series, available together for the first time. ACT LIKE IT This just in: romance takes center stage as West End theatre’s Richard Troy steps out with none other than castmate Elaine Graham Have the tides turned? Has English rose Lainie Graham made London’s bad boy a new man? Sources say the mismatched pair has been spotted at multiple events, arm in arm and hip to hip. From fits of jealousy to longing looks and heated whispers, onlookers are stunned by this blooming romance. Could the rumors be right? Could this unlikely romance be the real thing? Or are these gifted stage actors playing us all? PRETTY FACE It’s not actress Lily Lamprey’s fault that she’s all curves and has the kind of voice that can fog up a camera lens. She wants to prove where her real talents lie—and that’s not on a casting couch, thank you. Luc Savage has respect, integrity and experience. He also has it bad for Lily. He’d be willing to dismiss it as a midlife crisis, but this exasperating, irresistible woman is actually a very talented actress. Unfortunately, their romance is not only raising questions about Lily’s suddenly rising career, it’s threatening Luc’s professional reputation. The course of true love never did run smooth. But if they’re not careful, it could bring down the curtain on both their careers… MAKING UP Once upon a time, circus artist Trix Lane was the best around. Her spark vanished with her confidence, though, and reclaiming either has proved…difficult. So when she’s unexpectedly thrust into the spotlight, the joy over her sudden elevation in status is cut short by a new hire on the makeup team. Leo Magasiva: disgraced wizard of special effects. He of the beautiful voice and impressive beard. Complete dickhead and—in an unexpected twist—an enragingly good kisser. When it comes to commitment, Trix has been there, done that, never wants to do it again. And Leo’s this close to the job of a lifetime, which would take him away from London—and from Trix. Their past is a constant barrier between them. It seems hopeless. Utterly impossible. And yet… Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Stealing Mr. Right Stealing Mr. Right by Tamara Morgan is 99c! This is a romance between a jewel thief and an FBI agent. The book is told through the heroine’s POV and some reader’s wanted more romance between the hero and heroine, but readers say the banter is great. “A sexy, fun, cat-and-mouse chase that hooked me from page one!” –Jennifer Probst, New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author of The Marriage Bargain I’m a wanted jewel thief. He’s FBI. What’s that saying? Keep your friends close…and your husband closer. Being married to a federal agent certainly has its perks. 1. I just love the way that man looks in a suit. 2. This way I always know what the enemy is up to. Spending my days lifting jewels and my nights tracking the Bureau should have been a genius plan. But the closer I get to Grant Emerson, the more dangerous this feels. With two million dollars’ worth of diamonds on the line, I can’t afford to fall for my own husband. It turns out that the only thing worse than having a mortal enemy is being married to one. Because in our game of theft and seduction, only one of us will come out on top. Good thing a cat burglar always lands on her feet. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Tahira in Bloom Tahira in Bloom by Farah Heron is $1.99! This is a contemporary YA novel with some romance and I believe Farah’s first young adult title. This was another Hide Your Wallet mention. Life is full of surprises in a winning novel about a girl dreaming big during one unexpected small-town summer. When seventeen-year-old aspiring designer Tahira Janmohammad’s coveted fashion internship falls through, her parents have a Plan B. Tahira will work in her aunt’s boutique in the small town of Bakewell, the flower capital of Ontario. It’s only for the summer, and she’ll get the experience she needs for her college application. Plus her best friend is coming along. It won’t be that bad. But she just can’t deal with Rowan Johnston, the rude, totally obsessive garden-nerd next door with frayed cutoffs and terrible shoes. Not to mention his sharp jawline, smoldering eyes, and soft lips. So irritating. Rowan is also just the plant-boy Tahira needs to help win the Bakewell flower-arranging contest—an event that carries clout in New York City, of all places. And with designers, of all people. Connections that she needs! No one is more surprised than Tahira to learn that floral design is almost as great as fashion design. And Rowan? Turns out he’s more than ironic shirts and soil under the fingernails. Tahira’s about to find out what she’s really made of—and made for. Because here in the middle of nowhere, Tahira is just beginning to bloom. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Rare Danger Rare Danger by Beverly Jenkins is 99c! This one was featured on a recent-ish Hide Your Wallet and is a romantic suspense story with a librarian main character. Keep in mind that this one is a novella. I’m not sure about the page count, but the audiobook is around 3 and a half hours. A librarian’s quiet life becomes a page-turner of adventure, romance, and murder in a thrilling novella by USA Today bestselling author Beverly Jenkins. For Jasmine Ware, curating books for an exclusive clientele is her passion. Until an old friend, a dealer of rare books, goes missing and his partner is murdered. Linked to an artifact smuggled out of the ancient library at Timbuktu, the mystery draws Jasmine deeper into a plot that could cost her her life. Air force veteran and private security ace Torr Noble is accustomed to adrenaline-pumping stakes. He never expected a private librarian would be so intriguing, but Jasmine is full of surprises. As the connection between them burns hot, a powerful old enemy raises his head. Torr and Jasmine must work together to find the missing dealer. Will the search be the start of a happily ever after or a disastrous THE END? Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. View the full article

This Rec League comes from longtime commenter, Kris Bock on Shana’s Greener Pastures review. Thanks, Kris! “It’s built for bedtime reading; sweet enough to give you happy dreams, and quiet enough to let you fall asleep easily.” I feel like this could be a whole marketable category of books. Sarah: Mmmm sleepytime books. A Psalm for the Wild Built, though it has some emotional moments, is very soothing for bedtime reading. I also often re-read Murderbot (quelle surprise) because while there is action and combat, I know when it’s happening so I don’t react emotionally as much. Grumpy Murderbot is often very soothing to me. I also re-read Act Like It before bed when I’m really stressed out. In terms of romance: Holiday Sparks by Shannon Stacey ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) is one of my all time favorite novellas, and I love re-reading it. The tension is low, based on whether one character will stay in town or go back to their life in a city, but there are, as the title suggestions, sparks. A | BN | K | ABJackie Lau’s books are perfect bedtime reading for me, because the writing leans into very familiar tropes and the emotional and sexual tension builds slowly but steadily. There are no jump scares! Her Big City Neighbor was a lovely before bed read, especially because the characters’ growth comes from a lot of quiet revelations. Ok I have one more: Destiny’s Embrace by Beverly Jenkins ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Scribd ). There’s a lot (A LOT) of competence porn, which I love, and Mariah is one of my favorite of Jenkins’ heroines. I have re-read the section where Mariah is making the train journey from Philadelphia all the way to the west coast a whole bunch of times. Lara: I have no ideas but this is EXACTLY what I’m looking for! Im going through an uncharacteristic bout of insomnia and my brain needs soothing. Thank you, Kris, for writing in! It’s probably time for me to take the financial bull by the horns and read Murderbot… Amanda: I feel like some of the books recommended in our Cozy Fantasy Rec League could work! Shana: Well, I certainly recommend Greener Pastures by Aurora Rey, since it was the book who inspired this rec league. Honestly, any Aurora Rey book is a good bedtime pick. The Last Place You Look is a similarly quiet and chill contemporary. A | BNAnnabeth Albert’s Portland Heat series is super duper cozy. Literally, in the case of Knit Tight’s soft sweaters. Clean Breaks by Ruby Lang ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) could work too. I remember that that book being a series of fun summertime dates. Oh, and Just Like That by Karin Kallmaker would be nice. It take place on a winery, and while there’s a clash between the wine owner’s daughter and the out of town consultant, it doesn’t take long for things to simmer down so they can picnic in Napa together. What books would you recommend for some calming, before bed reading? View the full article

Welcome back to Wednesday Links! How have you all been?! The allergies have finally hit. They’ve hit so hard that I was in tears because of the sinus pressure and spent most of Monday night in a dark room with a compress over my eyes, breathing out of my mouth, listening to podcasts. My partner stepped in to cook dinner and be a lovely caretaker that night. They were very supportive of my wallowing. We’re also in a bit of a heatwave. It’s supposed to be in the 90s this weekend! What?! I am not ready for the boob sweat, though shoutout to the MegaBabe Thigh Rescue stick. How do y’all make it through the warmer temps? Any tips and tricks? … If you’re in the New England area and are free June 9th, I’m hosting a romance mad-libs event for the Boston Book Fest Lit Crawl with debut romance author Kataline Gamarra! I’m very nervous, but excited. I’m also assisting Boston Book Fest with genre programming this year, so keep an eye out for some great romance panels this fall. … Love a “truth is stranger than fiction” deep dive? Check out The New Yorker’s profile on a serial killer expert who just bluffed his way into the title. This one may be behind a paywall for some. … Just discovered this new organization through TikTok called Elevated Access, where pilots volunteer their time to fly people needing reproductive healthcare and gender affirming care to accessible states. Please note that they have applied for their 501(c)(3) status and are awaiting approval. Definitely going to keep an eye on them! … Writer and critic Alex Brown has an amazing thread on Our Flag Means Death characters as characters from Jane Austen novels. I’ve just started on Our Flag Means Death and I’m loving it so far! https://twitter.com/QueenOfRats/status/1523690090077167617 … Lastly, this Hulu movie starring Emma Thompson may be of interest to the Bitchery! … 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

Island Affair Island Affair by Priscilla Oliveras is 99c! Oliveras was part of my contemporary romance panel for a previous Bookstore Romance Day, and she was a damn delight. Trigger warning for this one as I believe the heroine is in recovery for disordered eating. Sought-after social media influencer Sara Vance, in recovery for a serious health disorder, is coming into her own, with a potential career expansion on the horizon. Despite the good news, her successful siblings (and their perfect spouses) have a way of making her feel like the odd one out. So, when her unreliable boyfriend is a no-show for a Florida family vacation, Sara recruits Luis Navarro—a gorgeous firefighter paramedic and dive captain willing to play the part of her smitten fiancé . . . Luis’s big Cuban familia has been in Key West for generations, and his quiet strength feeds off the island’s laidback style. Though guarded after a deep betrayal, he’ll always help someone in need—especially a spunky beauty with a surprising knowledge of Spanish curse words. Soon, he and Sara have memorized their “how we met” story and are immersed in family dinners, bike tours, private snorkeling trips . . . sharing secrets, and slow, melting kisses. But when it’s time for Sara to return home, will their island romance last or fade with the stunning sunset? Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. We Sold Our Souls RECOMMENDED: We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix is $2.99 and a KDD! Carrie read this one and gave it an A-: It’s a fantastic celebration of music, it has great characters, it’s funny and sad and awful and terrifying and hurrah and feminist, and it is all about how our passions can save our souls. A new novel of supernatural horror (and pop culture) from the author of Horrorstor, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, and Paperbacks from Hell. In the 1990s, heavy metal band Dürt Würk was poised for breakout success — but then lead singer Terry Hunt embarked on a solo career and rocketed to stardom as Koffin, leaving his fellow bandmates to rot in rural Pennsylvania. Two decades later, former guitarist Kris Pulaski works as the night manager of a Best Western – she’s tired, broke, and unhappy. Everything changes when she discovers a shocking secret from her heavy metal past: Turns out that Terry’s meteoric rise to success may have come at the price of Kris’s very soul. This revelation prompts Kris to hit the road, reunite with the rest of her bandmates, and confront the man who ruined her life. It’s a journey that will take her from the Pennsylvania rust belt to a Satanic rehab center and finally to a Las Vegas music festival that’s darker than any Mordor Tolkien could imagine. A furious power ballad about never giving up, even in the face of overwhelming odds, We Sold Our Souls is an epic journey into the heart of a conspiracy-crazed, paranoid country that seems to have lost its very soul…where only a girl with a guitar can save us all. 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. Spin the Dawn Spin the Dawn by Elizabeth Lim is $2.99 and another KDD! This YA fantasy was featured on Cover Awe and was marketed as Mulan meets Project Runway. Which HELLO! Project Runway meets Mulan in this sweeping YA fantasy about a young girl who poses as a boy to compete for the role of imperial tailor and embarks on an impossible journey to sew three magic dresses, from the sun, the moon, and the stars. Maia Tamarin dreams of becoming the greatest tailor in the land, but as a girl, the best she can hope for is to marry well. When a royal messenger summons her ailing father, once a tailor of renown, to court, Maia poses as a boy and takes his place. She knows her life is forfeit if her secret is discovered, but she’ll take that risk to achieve her dream and save her family from ruin. There’s just one catch: Maia is one of twelve tailors vying for the job. Backstabbing and lies run rampant as the tailors compete in challenges to prove their artistry and skill. Maia’s task is further complicated when she draws the attention of the court magician, Edan, whose piercing eyes seem to see straight through her disguise. And nothing could have prepared her for the final challenge: to sew three magic gowns for the emperor’s reluctant bride-to-be, from the laughter of the sun, the tears of the moon, and the blood of stars. With this impossible task before her, she embarks on a journey to the far reaches of the kingdom, seeking the sun, the moon, and the stars, and finding more than she ever could have imagined. Steeped in Chinese culture, sizzling with forbidden romance, and shimmering with magic, this young adult fantasy is pitch-perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas or Renée Ahdieh. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. View the full article

Assignment 1: Story Statement Sylvia must recreate herself by bridging the gap between fantasy and reality. Assignment 2: Antagonist/Antagonistic Force The antagonistic force (which I now realize I must personify in a character) is Sylvia’s inability to define herself as her own person and claim that status in her life. She does what society tells her to do to have a happy, meaningful life: get married, have children and live happily everafter. But she doesn’t go beyond that to foster any talent or inclination of her own. Who is she beyond being a societal expectation? Even her husband who is living his counterscript is striving toward something. Adonis is the personification (dream) of romantic fulfillment. Sylvia commits to this fantasy. It owns her. Then it threatens her reality such as it is. As she struggles to define herself, she is opposed by both her husband and Adonis. Assignment 3: Breakout Title Sylvia’s Anniversary Ring Vest-Pocket Dreams Ringing Camouflage Assignment 4: Women’s Fiction Comparables Persuasion by Jane Austen The Overdue Life of Amy Byler (The fact that these are in paperback for less than $10 at Amazon is ominous.) Assignment 5: Core Wound And The Primary Conflict Feeling lost and empty, a woman finds refuge in a fantasy lover only to have the affair threaten her sanity and her marriage. Assignment 6: Other Matters of Conflict: Two More Levels Sylvia lives the life society has prescribed but it leaves her feeling empty. Her core wound is her poor self-image. The celebration of her 25th Wedding Anniversary was to have been the culmination of marital bliss but it leaves her unfulfilled. The tipping point occurs when her husband only begrudgingly gives her the much-coveted anniversary ring, A secondary conflict emerges with her fantasy lover who refuses to accept the end of their affair. Assignment 7: Setting A small town near a regional hub city. The family lives in a suburban type environment. The husband works at a local car dealership which will participate in a regional auto show.

SEVEN SHORT PRE-EVENT ASSIGNMENTS 1. The Act of Story Statement If you could go back, what would you tell your teenage self? 2. The Antagonist Plots the Point Maisie Rudenko is the mean rich girl who has it all. Through jealousy and pure sport, Maisie makes Lenny's days a living hell. Her misdeeds finally push Lenny enough that she starts engaging in revenges of her own, but not taking these new humiliations well, Maisie deals a very public, very personal blow that drives Lenny right to the edge. Dr. and Mrs. Vikram Birk, or Bhapujee and Biji, are the rich and famous grandparents Lenny can't please. She isn't brilliant like her brother, and she reminds them of her father, their deceased son. While Lenny's grandmother does evolve, helping her truly shine for the first time, her grandfather can't separate her from the fractured relationship he had with his only child, and thus his own parenting failures. When Bhapujee's secret of the truth of Hollis' death comes to light, Lenny discovers just how like her unstable father she really is. Cecilia Birk, Lenny's mother, unable to cope with her husband's death, drinks and completely withdraws, leaving Lenny on the hook with adult duties she isn't ready for. Mired in the past and harbouring her own guilt, Cecilia's darkness further isolates the child who needs her most. 3. Conjuring your Breakout Title Title One: My Name is Lenny Birk My first alternate title is a verbatim theme throughout the story. The main character often runs this line through her head to make sense of her surroundings, remind herself of what she feels she needs to do, and maintain her grip on reality. Title Two: The Songs Repeat My second alternate title is from Thomas More's poem Echo. It draws on the heavy musical presence throughout the story, as well as the theme for repetition, or constantly repeating one's actions only to come up with the same result. This rings true for several of the characters in the story, and the paths they have chosen. Title Three: Until I Come to it Again My third alternate title, also inspired by poetry, is this line from Christina Rossetti's Shut Out. This poem speaks of a soul departed from this life, "thirsting" for those they've left behind. It also speaks of how what we have lost attains its own status simply through being lost. We want what we cannot have. Wanting what we cannot have is an integral theme through this story, for the protagonist and most of the pivotal characters, as is the "spiritual" aspect; there is the heavy reminder of Hollis Birk, Lenny's father, now almost one year dead, and the near-constant presence of the mercurial Ruby, who Lenny feels may be a ghost. I also like the literal meaning of this line/title as it speaks to me of work unfinished, which is yet another crucial element to this story. 4. Deciding your Genre and Approaching Comparables My first comparable is You've Reached Sam, by Dustin Thao. Much like the story I've written this is a heartfelt coming of age novel, and a debut one at that, of love and loss, the tangled process of grief, letting go, and the impossible task of moving forward even when it seems all the odds are stacked against you; all with a touch of magic. My second comparable is Milk and Honey, by Rupi Kaur. The fluid writing of this collection, for me, blurs the lines between poetry and prose, and talks of love, of family, pain, mental health, being a minority, what it means to be a girl, how there is sweetness everywhere if you try and see it, and what it is to live. 5. Core Wounds and the Primary Conflict Lenny Birk wants to die. But with the help of the mysterious blue-haired girl who lives in her room, she may figure out how to live. 6. Other Matters of Conflict: Two More Levels Lenny's main theme running throughout the book is that she thinks she wants to die, stemming from the inner conflict that she believes she truly is her father's daughter. Although told her father died of a brain aneurysm just one year prior, deep down Lenny knows he killed himself. Her constant battle is the one she has with herself, where she believes that like her father she will only ever be a failure, and the only good she can contribute to this world is to leave it. Lenny's social environment illustrates her secondary conflicts, be the people badly or well-intentioned. There are the battles she has with her antagonists: Maisie Rudenko, the girl who bullies her, isolates her and makes her feel ugly; Lenny's grandfather, to whom she can never measure up; the school's headmaster, who never believes her, and her basket case mother, all contributing to Lenny's own feelings of worthlessness. But then there are those who want the best for Lenny: her genius brother, Liam Dubray, who eventually becomes her boyfriend, her English teacher, (eventually) her grandmother, and Ruby, the blue-haired girl/entity who lives in Lenny's room. But despite their good intentions Lenny can't believe what they see in her until she tries to see it for herself, nor can she understand the true danger of the path she is on, until Ruby shows her. 7. The Incredible Importance of Setting This book is set in 2018, primarily in the fictional town of Emerson in upstate New York, Finger Lakes region, which I loosely based on two towns: Ithaca, New York, and Hamilton, Ontario. In the center of Emerson is "The Hill," an area separating the upper southern and lower northern portions of the city, or, the ultra wealthy from everyone else. Lenny and her younger brother live at the bottom of The Hill along with the rest of the middle-class but go to school at Knox Academy, the prestigious prep school at the top of The Hill, with the kids of Emerson's elite and where their father was once a teacher. Other areas within Emerson used as setting are Lenny's house, Liam Dubray's house, Maisie Rudenko's house, Skiff Market, Farmer Hutchins' pumpkin patch, the Imperial Arms Hotel and the very real Seneca Lake. New York City is where Lenny's grandparents currently live and where her parents once lived. It's the special place Lenny shared with her dad, and the city of his greatest disappointments. London, Beaconsfield and Eton College in the UK are past settings, mainly in family flashbacks, illustrating the stratospheric rise of the Birk grandparents, and Hollis Birk's misery growing up. India is where Vikram and Parvati Birk grew up, only mentioned as past setting. Berkeley, California, also used in family flashbacks, are where Hollis and Cecilia Birk met, and where they went to school.

Welcome intrepid adventurers to Tough Travelling with the Tough Guide to Fantasyland! That’s right, we’ve dusted it down and brought back this feature (created by Nathan of Fantasy Review Barn, revived by our friends over on Fantasy Faction, then dragged kicking and screaming to the Hive). It is a monthly feature in which we rack our brains for popular (and not so popular) examples of fantasy tropes. Tough Travelling is inspired by the informative and hilarious Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones. Fellow bloggers are absolutely welcome to join in – just make your own list, publish it on your site, and then comment with the link on this article! This month, we’re straying from DWJ’s path to enter the Wyrd and Wonder glade, where for today’s prompt they’re looking at Fantasy Landscapes. So we’ve decided to use that as this month’s Tough Travelling focus. A big thank you to Beth, Nils, Theo, Scarlett, and Asha for their recommendations… Beth: My choice for today’s photo prompt is G D Penman’s Witch of Empire series. They’ve taken what would be familiar landscapes, and turned them into fantasy landscapes; from a Manhattan built by demons, a London cursed into over-expansion until it’s dribbling over the white cliffs of Dover, a hag-haunted Irish marsh, the darkness of a Hong Kong run by vampires… what I love best about all these landscapes was how vivid and easily imagined they were. Another landscape that always comes to mind when I think of a fantastical fantasy landscape is that of the shard plains from Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive. It’s been a looong time since I’ve read The Way of Kings, but I can still picture those giant shards of land with the canyons in between, filled with fallen soldiers and dangers a plenty. The battles with bridgerunners scurrying to put the bridges in place from shard to shard for the army to cross. It’s really stuck in my mind. I’d like to finish in a forest, as per the theme of this year’s Wyrd and Wonder, so I’ll venture into the Wilds of Jen William’s Sarn. Some kind of poison affects the forests of the world in Williams’ The Winnowing Flame series, so that everything is grown huge. They’re haunted by terrifying spirit-like creatures which will follow you and flay you alive… Definitely not the kind of forest to go exploring for alien shipwrecks and treasure #JustSaying Nils: Ok for this one, I’m not choosing Lord of the Rings!! Although shout-out to Lothlorien and Fangorn for being the best forests ever!! Fight me! This time though I’m choosing the desert landscape as beautifully portrayed in three of my favourite reads: Dune by Frank Herbert, The Daevabad trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty and The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdulla. Dune is set on the planet of Arrakis, an unforgiving desert landscape with a sparse population. When Paul Atreides’s father is called to Arrakis to act as a steward we learn why so many are desperate to control it – Spice. This is a drug-like substance which can only be mined in the Arrakis desert, and with its abilities to give longer-life, foresight, mental abilities, and essential for space navigation you can see why it is used as a commodity. Yet that’s not my favourite aspect of the world, this lies within the deadly creatures which dwell within the sand, the worms. Dune is certainly a complex novel, but one I thoroughly enjoyed. Both The Daevabad trilogy and The Stardust Thief are Middle-Eastern/Arabic inspired fantasies, and reflect much of the desert’s beauty as well as the relentless hardship travelling across its terrain. The first book in Chakraborty’s trilogy, The City of Brass is set in both Cairo and the fabled city of Daevabad, and shows us a lot of the landscape as Nahri and Dara go in search of the city. I loved how both characters use a flying carpet as their means of travel! Travelling through the sand also occurs in The Stardust Thief, as Loulie, Qadir and the others are on a quest for a magical lamp! I love how Abdullah has our characters see mirages, be pursued by ghouls and fall beneath the sand into ancient ruins. It’s just a really fun, chaotic adventure. Theo: Peter Newman’s trilogy beginning with The Deathless has a fantastic forested landscape of “The Wild” full of demonic monstrosities that curse or bind humans to them. The Wild is crisscrossed by crystal highways which the monsters cannot touch so humanity ekes out an existence in settlements huddled alongside these roadways, relying on their feudal overlords for protection. Those overlords, grouped in great houses and living in great floating crystal castles don crystal suits that enable them to soar and swoop and fight back the demonic invaders, But overlords have a dark secret, an immortality of the favoured few which involves appropriating the carefully cultured bodies of a blood relative to live out a whole new lifespan while the body’s original soul is crushed out of existence. Conspiracies abound within and beyond the crystal castles that constantly blur the lines between demon and human. Micah Yongo’s Lost Gods has the trained assassins of the Shedaim, caught up in betrayal and intrigue, but they come back often to the Forest of Silences behind their training home. There the blood trees that they planted as children will track their lives and their successes, and – unless they are of a great and enduring power – whither into dry dust on their deaths. At the centre of the forest sits the great Willow planted by the order’s founder Qoh’leth flourishing still. And then, because I couldn’t pass by without mentioning the greatest forest in Middle Earth (eh Nils!) I refer of course to Doriath in Beleriand, where Thingol the Grey first wooed Melian the Maia, where she cast the spell of the girdle of Melian to keep the Sindar safe from the ravages of Morogoth. Beren stumbled into the forest to begin his fateful courtship of Luthien Tinuviel, but the forest endured until Thingol himself was undone by his own pride and the greed of the dwarven smiths he worked with. (For more details – read the Silmarillion!) Scarlett: I enjoyed the settings in The City of Brass and The Stardust Thief Nils mentioned as well. I am a sucker for immersive settings and the Middle-Eastern/Arabic is such an enchanting one to me. So different from my own world and I love reading glimpses of other cultures or wholly comprehensively imagined worlds. Another one that was similar to those that was just fantastic, was Kiersten White’s The Conqueror’s Saga. Holy Moly did I fall for the gardens in the Wallachian world and Ottoman Empire. Filled with colorful bazaars, harams and hamman baths, ironworks on the buildings and the wonderful forests in the surrounding areas. One that intrigued me was the shifting landscapes in The Iron Crown by L.L. MacRae. This concept was new to me when I read the novel and about the forest scapes could shift and move to new landscapes. It let my imagination go everywhere with it and just felt refreshing overall. It wants you to keep turning those pages, as you never know what will be around the corner next. The Ancestor by Daniele Trussoni takes place in the Italian Alps and is filled with magical realism. As the main character travels in search of her family, she emerges into an alternate part of the forest and landscape that is quaint and bizarre. Not only are the humans that live there different, but the forest has magical elements and feels overwhelmingly important as in old fairytales. A connection to it’s inhabitants make it really special and a bit scary too. Asha: The first book that sprang to mind for me is a bit of a blast from the past: Goab, the Desert of Colours in The Neverending Story. I remember being captivated by the idea of every sand dune being a different colour as a child, and I definitely tried to draw it once or twice! Gold and silver streams of sand flowed between each dune, separating the colours, which sounded like something from an expensive paintbox – cobalt, saffron, vermilion, lapis lazuli… The description is so rich, you can’t help but imagine it. One of the most inventive fantasy landscapes I’ve read about recently is in Joshua Phillip Johnson’s The Forever Sea, which takes place mostly on an enormous sea – made of grass. All the islands described were so unique, but the idea of a miles-deep sea of grasses and plants is just so clever and enthralling. I also want to shout out AJ Lancaster’s Stariel books, where the sentient estate of Stariel is almost a character in its own right – a quiet and proper piece of English countryside with a magical twist. I love how the characters’ connection to the land is such an important part of the story. And of course, if we’re talking fantasy forests, then they don’t come much better than in Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh, which perfectly encapsulates the feeling of walking in ancient British woodland (and that animal fear of all the magic that lurks there). It’s another book where the landscape itself is almost a character, and one that will make you think twice when you next see a tree. We would love to hear from follow bloggers! If you would like to join in with our Tough Travelling, please tag us in your posts! The post Tough Travelling: Fantasy Landscapes appeared first on The Fantasy Hive. View the full article

There’s no shortage of writing exercises to choose from. Just google it. Eight Exercises to Strengthen Your Writing. Thirteen Creative Writing Exercises. Twenty-four Exercises to Become a Better Writer. Fifty Fantastic Creative Writing Exercises. There are lists of eleven, fifteen—even one hundred writing exercises! No one can, or should, use all of them. On the contrary, heaping your plate with an abundance of a la carte exercises can be counterproductive, leaving you with conflicting “advice” and competing priorities. So how can you decide which are worth your time? One strategy I’ve found helpful is to consider each exercise in the context of when to employ it. Some exercises may be more useful at one stage of novel-writing than another, depending on their purpose. Here are three that I’ve found especially useful at three different points in the process. They address three crucial aspects of a story: what, who, and how. WHAT: “Aboutness” exercise—at the beginning stage, as the overall story is taking shape. Before I decide how to tell my story—structure, pacing, turning points, and so on—I need to know what it’s about. That’s the purpose of this exercise (with a nod of acknowledgement to Sandra Scofield for introducing me to the key role of “aboutness”). “Aboutness” has to do with the story’s theme, in its most universal and abstract form. It can often be summed up in one word. For example: This is a story about revenge, or redemption, or forgiveness, or homecoming, or liberation. It might need more than one word, but it’s still one idea. Second chances. Letting go of shame. Healing from betrayal. Sometimes there are two themes that feel equally salient, but that’s usually because they represent the before and after of the protagonist’s journey. For example: This is a story about grief and renewal; this is a story about guilt and forgiveness. Since there are only a limited number of themes, at this level of abstraction, a story becomes more interesting if it’s told in an unusual or highly specific way. For example: This is a story about forgiveness … … set in the XX (an interesting era and/or location) … told against the backdrop of XX (an intense political or social context, like a war, revolution, or cultural upheaval) … seen through the perspective of XX (someone with an unusual background, occupation, or approach to life) … framed by the XX (a story-within-a-story, or a famous person who is present in the narrative but is not the protagonist) If you put the two parts of the sentence together, you get—aha! Your elevator pitch! This the story of a woman’s journey from constriction to liberation, set against the backdrop of Brooklyn’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community (Unorthodox, by Deborah Feldman) This is a story of love and redemption, set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai during World War II (The Last Rose of Shanghai by Weina Dai Randel) This is the story of a family’s struggle to reconnect after a devastating loss, seen through the alternating perspectives of its oldest and youngest members. This is the story of a woman’s search for wholeness, framed around the art and life of iconic American painter Georgia O’Keeffe. This “Aboutness sentence” can help to keep you focused as you work on that first draft. I like to print out my Aboutness statement and tape it to my desk. WHO: “Getting told off by your protagonist”—at the late-middle stage, as you’re trying to go deeper into your character and discover what you’ve missed. A nod of gratitude to Don Maass for this exercise, which I learned in one of his workshops and have been doing, in various iterations, ever since. At this stage, you’ve got the story down, and it works—that is, it holds together as a narrative that gets your protagonist from Point A to Point B. Yet you’re wondering if there might be other, deeper layers that you’ve yet to uncover. You sense that something remains invisible to you, but you don’t know where to look for it. Thus, the purpose of this exercise is to pull back the veil between you and your main character. Who is this character, and what don’t you know about her—because you’re too close, too intellectually distant, or too quick to settle on who you assume she is? A good way to get to know someone better is to sit down and talk with her, meeting her eyes, listening to what she has to tell you—even if there are things you’d rather not hear. Visualize yourself sitting across the table from your protagonist—literally. (In my mind, we’re at my kitchen table.) Ask your protagonist these questions, and write down everything she says, exactly as she says it—again, literally. It only works if you actually write down what you “hear” her saying. Don’t just think it. How do you feel about the way I’ve portrayed you? What am I getting wrong about you? What do you want to do that I’m not letting you do? What do you dread seeing yourself do on the page? What about the other characters? You know them better than I do. Whom am I not getting? What am I missing? What do you want to say to one of the characters in the story that I’m not letting you say? What’s this story really about? What do you think of me, as a writer? I did this with the protagonist in my soon-to-be-launched novel, and it was one of the most incredible exercises I’ve ever done. My protagonist pulled no punches and told me exactly what she thought of me—how I was projecting my own hang-ups onto her, making her too defensive, and suppressing her kinder impulses. She told me that I needed to love her more. She shook me up—but luckily, I listened to her. HOW: Mapping interiority and exteriority—at one of the later stages, as you’re refining the way you’ve told the story. The story is done—but you aren’t sure if you’ve told it in the cleanest, most powerful way. You can’t see it with fresh eyes anymore, and you’re pretty sure that micro-tweaking (as in: deleting adverbs and overused words) isn’t the answer. Here’s something that can help you to assess how you’ve told your story. Print out the manuscript. (Yep, on real paper; trust me on this.) If that feels like too much, start with a couple of scenes that you know are problematic. Get out some colored pens or highlighters. Take it scene by scene. On every page, use a different color to underline or circle these elements, one at a time: Green for sentences or passages of interiority: when the POV character is in her head reacting, reflecting, thinking, wondering, or remembering. It’s the internal material that no one has access to, except her. Blue for observable action: when a character does something external, or there’s an action you could observe (like a car crash). It’s whatever you could see if you were watching a film. Yellow for exposition—when something is narrated, rather than depicted. For example, there might be a description of the setting or a paragraph to indicate the passage of time. This differs from interiority because it isn’t inside someone’s head. It’s more like the voice of the narrator. Pink for dialogue. In my own experience, actually “seeing” the way I write was pretty dramatic. I sort-of-knew that I had a habit of making my protagonist reflect on every single thing that happened, but seeing it on the page, in blue and green, really brought it home. It made me stop to consider whether each bit of interiority was needed—or needed right then—since interiority interrupts the forward movement of the story. In some cases, I consolidated the protagonist’s inner reflections and put them together at the end of the scene, rather than interspersed throughout. In other cases, I pondered whether the passage of interiority was truly necessary—and decided that it wasn’t. Certainly, there are other wonderful exercises—these are just three that I’ve found helpful. Can we compile a notebook, as a community? Is there an exercise you’ve found especially useful? If so, at what point in the process do you use it? Why and when is it useful? About Barbara Linn ProbstBarbara’s (she/her) debut novel QUEEN OF THE OWLS (April 2020) was a medalist in popular fiction from the Independent Publishers Association, first runner-up for the Eric Hoffer Award, and short-listed for the $2500 Grand Prize. Her second novel THE SOUND BETWEEN THE NOTES (April 2021) was the recipient of a Kirkus starred review, where it was lauded as "a tour de force" and selected as one of the Best Indie Books of 2021. It was also awarded the Sarton Gold Medal in Contemporary Fiction, as well as the Silver Medal in Fiction from the Nautilus Book Awards. Barbara has a PhD in Clinical Social Work and has been a therapist, teacher, researcher, and advocate for out-of-the-box kids and their families. When not writing, she’s a serious amateur pianist. Learn more on her website. Web | Facebook | 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=7sVS_mYYoK8:wCbLvetXpns:gIN9vFwOqvQ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WriterUnboxed?i=7sVS_mYYoK8:wCbLvetXpns:D7DqB2pKExk [url={url}]View the full article[/url]

The CrimeReads editors make their picks for the month’s best debut fiction. * Harini Nagendra, The Bangalore Detectives Club (Pegasus) A truly auspicious beginning to a new series featuring an amateur sleuth, Kaveri, operating in 1920s Bangalore, aided by her sharp mind, her husband’s medical practice, and the preconceived notions about who she should be and where she should go. Her first case stems from a murder at a distinguished club, pointing to a nearby brothel and a wealthy Englishman, an investigation that allows Nagendra to show off her skills as a social critic and a first rate mystery novelist. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda (Berkley) Isabel Cañas takes the gothic novel to the haciendas, just as Sylvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic took on the history of silver mining and imperialism. In The Hacienda, set just after the Mexican War for Independence, heroine Beatriz has been dispossessed of her family fortune after her father’s fall from political grace and subsequent execution. She finds a husband she feels will elevate her status and protect her mother from persecution, but strange happenings at her new estate and rumors of hauntings threaten to derail her new life, and a sexy local priest who moonlights as a witch is her only hope of survival. Lush, beautiful, and completely deserving of the comparisons to Rebecca, The Hacienda is essential reading in the gothic revival. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor Emma Bamford, Deep Water (Gallery/Scout Press) Bamford’s debut unspools a disturbing, mysterious tale of an island in the Indian Ocean, the British couple still seemingly under its ominous spell, and a ship’s captain who has to try to parse some truth from the unnerving accounts he receives after rescuing the couple on the open sea. The novel is dark, atmospheric, and bolstered by a lingering sense of dread that will keep readers breathlessly turning the pages. –DM Robin Peguero, With Prejudice (Grand Central) A bold debut in the neglected realm of the legal thriller. Peguero, a former Miami prosecutor, brings readers into the courtroom at a high stakes murder trial, filling in the tableau the stories not only of the prosecutor, the public defender, and the judge, but also those of four key jurors. The result is a rich narrative and a compelling courtroom drama. –DM Wendy Church, Murder on the Spanish Seas (Polis) Church’s charming debut introduces readers to Jesse O’Hara, a woman as intelligent as she is abrasive, currently adrift on a luxury cruise around the Iberian peninsula, bored out of her mind, drinking to excess, when she begins to piece together what appears to be an onboard terrorist plot. The writing is quick and smart and the story a nice balance of fun and thrills. –DM View the full article

I just realized I’m overdue in paying the very expensive storage fee for my frozen eggs—a fee I have committed to paying into perpetuity, I guess. Five years ago, at age 33, I sat in front of my friend and former boss at a coffee shop and explained that I needed more money. “Why?” she asked, surprised. “Weren’t you just promoted?” I replied that yes, I was just promoted (to a just-over-mid five figure salary), but that being a single person in New York City was difficult, and “What if I want to be a single mother someday?!” “Well,” she said, after a pause. “Let’s get you more money, then.” I am not sure why I became so preoccupied at that time in my life with the hypothetical scenario of being a single mother. I think I was less interested in the reality of it and more interested in having the ability to choose. I eventually achieved my goal of relative financial stability, and selling my new book, Just Like Mother, gave me the freedom to pursue fertility preservation. However, it’s very unlikely I could comfortably afford to be a single mother in New York City even now, and in fact my circumstances have changed dramatically in the last five years—I’m no longer single and I no longer live in the city, having relocated to the more affordable Hudson Valley region. But I think back on that conversation often because the truth of it is, nothing drove my commitment to improving my finances more than the idea that my fertility was swiftly expiring. I have never felt any sort of strong maternal instinct. For a while I assumed many years of nannying had temporarily extinguished it, and that it would eventually reappear at some random time. (I loved the children I cared for but nannying in both Paris and New York painted a daunting picture of what was needed to juggle a career and a family in an expensive city.) But the fact was, my instinct wasn’t temporarily quelched—it had never existed at all. I’ve never felt opposed to children, but I’ve never particularly looked forward to them, either. They merely existed as a fact of my distant future, and as time went on the gap between present and future never really narrowed. They were always there, hovering roughly 5-7 years out of sight, even as I turned 33, 34, 35, 36…. …and just before my 37th birthday, my theoretical family went on ice. Typing that sentence invites shame, because the knowledge that my eggs are safely ensconced a cooler, sporting miniature sweaters (erm, that’s how I picture it) over at a lab over on the Upper West Side is an absurd privilege. Beyond the problematic aspects of paying to forestall the inevitable, by opting into “fertility preservation” (a palatable term!), I am complicit in something bigger and more sinister: the cult of motherhood. Motherhood is a cult. I don’t expect this to be a popular opinion, but think about it: what drove me, a woman who has only ever felt ambivalence toward child-rearing, to fork over an ungodly sum and submit to weeks of self-injected hormones—all leading up to the grand finale of general anesthesia and an aching uterus—for something as intangible as “options”? Only to know I’ll have to spend more money down the line to potentially (with luck) achieve the pie-in-the-sky status of “mother”? And don’t get me started on the implications of the financials and how unfair it is that a lot of people don’t have this option at all. So why do we—the “lucky” ones, at least—do it? I have a theory, but first I want to take a look at the dictionary definition of “cult.” One of the Merriam-Webster entries reads, “great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work.” By this definition, almost anything can be a cult, and to be honest I think a lot of things about society are mind-blowingly cultlike. This may sound obvious, but there’s a reason the word “culture” shares an origin with “cult.” As a writer/editor I like words, and as a former (middling) Latin nerd I am interested in derivations, so bear with me for a second. At the root of both terms are the Latin “cultus” (noun: care, adoration) and “colere” (transitive verb: to cultivate). I don’t know this because I remember any Latin, by the way. I googled it. Anyway, I’m interested in the terms, “to cultivate” and “adoration.” From religious reverence of Mary, the mother of Jesus (she has no other notable identity) to the unconscionable cost of designer onesies, ours is a culture that cultivates an adoration of motherhood. Okay, but how? Circling back to my theory, sustaining this culture relies on two factors: shame and a lack of questions. Emotional manipulation is by far the most insidious and frightening aspect of this cult, the leaders of whom are all of us who buy into it and perpetuate it. The emphasis society places on cultivating a family unit as an inevitable next rung in the ladder of life is overwhelming. We’re conditioned basically from birth to opt in. It’s not a coincidence that baby dolls are arguably the most popular toy for anyone born with a uterus. We’re taught to mimic motherhood when our brains are still squishy and spongelike, and by the time our prefrontal cortexes and amygdalas sync up in our mid-twenties we might already be pregnant; if we aren’t, the inevitability of parenthood is by then deeply ingrained. The result is a lot of fear, anxiety, and—yes—shame, if one’s life moves of its own accord, pursuing a different direction from the lives of the majority of one’s community. Many aspects of my fertility preservation were uncomfortable, not least extreme water retention to the point where I was forced to walk stooped over under the weight of my bloat, like a lady Gollum. That was unpleasant, but the worst part was the unexpected emotional liability. When I was just barely out of anesthesia and dozing in a recovery room, the doctor whisked the privacy curtain aside to reveal my “number.” “That’s good, right?” I asked. “Yes! Great work!” she said, adding to a list of congratulatory feedback I’d received over the course of my two weeks—accolades I didn’t feel I deserved, given that all I was doing on my end to move things along was eat salty meat and drink water, as I’d been instructed. I love salty meat, so that hardly required effort. Then the doctor moved to the person down the row from me, her form concealed by a few flimsy cotton panels. “You got thirty!” she declared. That woman promptly burst into tears, overwhelmed by relief. For my part, I was dismayed that we could hear one another’s “numbers.” What if my row-mate, with whom I felt an instant kinship, had been unhappy with her results? I would have felt awful about my own achievement! And in fact, egg-envy is common, as it turns out. Fertility can become a competitive sport, with women warring jealously over harvests. When I looked down at my phone while sitting there in recovery, I had at least one message from a prying friend wondering how many eggs I got. I know of women who have gone back and paid for additional, unnecessary, and costly rounds of retrieval to trump friends’ results. That’s where the element of shame comes in. When motherhood becomes a value judgment, it changes us. When we are congratulated over elements of our biology over which we have zero control, it feels maddening. And we are all guilty of competing to some degree because reproduction feels like a lottery we’re judged by and must scramble to “win” despite our helplessness. I am not suggesting there aren’t loads of people who genuinely want children and for whom it’s authentically fulfilling. The more benefits of having children are apparent. You’re guaranteed love and companionship, a legacy, and someone who will (with luck) visit you in old age and see you off to the other side. You’re given a cute small person to care for, hopefully better than you have historically cared for plants and goldfish, and shortly after they learn to talk, they’ll say hilarious things that bond you to them and make you wish you could keep them small forever despite tantrums and diapers. Plus, parenthood has the potential to change you for the better (so I hear). Who has time for petty gossip when one’s brain space is fully occupied by strategies for keeping a kid alive? In seriousness, there are few things in life that surprise us after a certain point, and I’d guess parenthood is one. That fact in itself is incredible, and the prospect of ushering a human into the world and shaping their personhood is breathtaking. I could make an equally compelling argument for not having kids, and you can probably guess what that looks like. Money, time, tabled dreams, etc. How many of us sit down and truly ask ourselves what matters more? If we don’t, it’s because we’re taught it’s shameful to question the system. It’s selfish to want careers and vacations or to pursue dreams that consume too much of our time. It’s inherently bad, we’re told, to prioritize short-term goals over potential long-term emotional gain. For that matter it’s bad to even think of it in terms of loss and gain, because how cold-hearted can you be? You’re bringing life into this world and that’s a noble pursuit that requires selflessness! Even the most well-meaning people reinforce this schema. “Don’t worry,” a kind relative told me at a time when I was not worried. “There’s time yet!” My contentedness wasn’t enough while there was something missing, something I had yet to achieve. Enter a slight sense of unease. Should I be worried? I asked myself. On the flip side, when I hang out with mom friends, I have a tendency to lean into my nannying years to feel a sense of belonging, despite my clear lack of knowledge and authority. “Oh, I love Magna-Tiles!” I heard myself exclaim at a recent gathering, relieved some aspect of my distant past was still relevant. I received tolerant smiles as my reward. All of this is to say that I am the problem. We are the problem. I wasn’t aware that’s where this essay was going until now. But as long as childless women like me are fawning over Magna-Tiles and expressing a long-held dream of bringing a child—any child—to the American Girl flagship store (cue memory from wine-induced conversation just last night…dear god), the cult will loom large. See you in two to four years after I greenlight the big thaw, Mothers. Congratulations to us all on our hard work. *** View the full article

My father, a formidable wrestler and boxer, told me more than once, “Guys size each other up the moment that they meet.” This may not happen consciously; but on some level, they predict the outcome of a fight between them. Men size up other qualities, too: intelligence, talent, competence. Always, a power-heirarchy emerges. Best hitter, fastest runner, best student, most popular—the ranking starts young, and—police chief, pop star, billionaire, President—it never stops. When I worked as a professional musician, power-struggles went on constantly. When I worked as a psychotherapist, most of my male clients were contending with issues of power, or its lack. When I began to write fiction, power-struggles between men, and especially between friends, became a favorite theme. At age 15, I started playing music professionally in Houston, Texas. I moved to Seattle for graduate school, and from 22 to 29, made my living by singing and playing lead guitar in rock-and-roll bands. Usually, I was the leader or co-leader of these bands. As such, it was my job to choose cover songs, write originals, run rehearsals, hire and fire sometimes-fractious or too-wasted-to-play musicians, and generally keep everyone in line. I also had to deal with club owners, fans, and every so often, a heckler. I’m not a large man, but I knew how to fight, and had a fiery temperament which I controlled but didn’t entirely hide. Jungian psychologists might say that I had integrated my shadow side into my personality. I held in check the “beast within,” but kept it well-fed and healthy. I came across as a nice guy, but not someone to trifle with. (The verb may not have been “trifle.”) As a leader, the nice part of the characterization was, for me, the most important. I downplayed my power, minimizing overt challenges to others. I rarely got in someone’s face, and defused tensions by being fair, reasonable and, when possible, using humor. If necessary, though, I could come down hard. Power-dynamics within bands work much the same as power-dynamics between friends. There are, I’ve found, three kinds of male friendships: leader / hanger-on, leader / sidekick, and co-leaders. Just as among lions or chimpanzees, there are sure to be attempted coups. The hanger-on may try to lift his status to sidekick, co-leader, or even sole leader. The sidekick may try to raise himself to leader. Either of the co-leaders may try to become sole leader. Conflict is inevitable, and runs the risk of rupturing the friendship. Or the band. The leader / hanger-on relationship requires a leader willing to tolerate a “friend” of much lower status, and a hanger-on willing to accept that low status. This relationship was common with rock bands. Stories of female hangers-on are the stuff of legend and song. But a lot of guys hung around bands too, hoping to soak up spare glory and other perqs. For the privilege of hanging out, they might offer a good practice space, deals on equipment, assorted substances, or most often, their labor, which might involve acting as security, moving equipment, designing logos, or in one case, building electronic devices to enhance my band’s sound and show. The more talented and dependable hangers-on might be promoted to sidekicks, with the band-members as leaders. The leader / sidekick relationship requires that a smaller but still significant power-imbalance be accepted by both parties as right and fair. Many bands, including mine, made a show of being egalitarian; but there is always a leader. Leader / sidekick is the de facto relationship of a band-leader vis a vis the other members. The sidekicks need to follow the leader’s orders, or risk expulsion. Co-leaders of a band can work very well musically, but the balance can be precarious. The John Lennon / Paul McCartney falling out was in large part responsible for the breakup of The Beatles. As a band’s co-leader, I found myself on the losing end of a coup two different times. The first involved artistic differences. I wanted to play heavy rock; my co-leader wanted to play pop. The popsters outnumbering my side four to two, I got the boot. In the other case, my co-leader, feeling that the balance of power between us on stage had shifted too far in my favor, formed an alliance with our manager, and got me axed. On other occasions, I put down rebellions, or staged coups of my own. On one occasion, the leader of an already-popular band hired me for my musicianship, then felt that I was taking the band over musically. Regretting his choice, he tried to kick me out. I staged a preemptive strike. The band axed him. In bands or not in bands, most interactions between men involve overt or covert issues of power. In my novel, Ursula Lake, former best friends Scott and Errol, years after a serious falling out, find themselves fishing together on their favorite lake, deep in the wilds of British Columbia. During the years of their friendship, they maintained a co-leaders relationship. This took some doing, since Errol, an accomplished high school wrestler, was Jack Reacher-sized: well over six feet and 200 pounds. Scott and Errol had a lot in common, however, including intelligence, irreverence, strong interests in the arts, and a near-fanatical love of fishing. This, plus Errol’s conscious decision never to play the “size card,” created a mutual respect that let the friendship thrive. A petty conflict, allowed to escalate, changed everything. Their friendship’s equilibrium destroyed, Scott and Errol didn’t speak for five years. The whole time, though, they mourned their lost friendship. When the chance to fish together again presents itself at the start of my novel, they try to re-establish the co-leaders friendship they have both missed. Events do not cooperate. When Scott begins catching more and bigger fish than Errol, the power balance shifts. Errol’s wife, Claire, witnesses this shift, which makes things worse, since men’s fixation on hierarchies and power evolved, almost certainly, from the necessity to compete for women. The problems that arise from Scott’s and Errol’s struggle for power propel my book. Outside the realm of friendship, too, interactions between men generally involve assessing and sometimes testing each others’ power. Some ultra-competitive men refuse to acknowledge anyone’s superiority. This can lead to big problems. Most men, though, will bow to superior ability. Few young quarterbacks would balk at taking directions from Tom Brady. Being bossed by someone “sized up” as inferior is harder to accept. Being bossed by an incompetent—see the Dilbert comic-strip—can be intolerable. Conversely, a boss who feels inferior may overcompensate by being arbitrary, overbearing, and punitive, trying to cut his subordinates down to size. In Ursula Lake, Errol chafes at working for and being bossed by his wife’s overbearing father. Scott, a professional rock musician, finds the agents, managers, and A &R men who control the music industry to be fools and philistines. Men controlled by people they see as their inferiors may become depressed and/or angry and vengeful. When that happens in Ursula Lake, it’s time to duck and cover; something heavy’s coming down. *** View the full article