Writer Unboxed - The "Connect Kitty" Approves
AAC can't help but deliver the best bloggish content that will inspire writers to new leaps of imagination. This one is mostly new releases, bestsellers, literary fiction historical fiction, mysteries, popular non-fiction, memoirs and biographies.
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With permission from Alan Levine, pxhere.com Recently, I allowed myself to type those two precious words: THE END I’d completed my first rough draft of my historical novel-in-progress. Of course, finishing a draft is not THE END at all. Those two magical words are the call to arms, the rallying cry to get one’s butt back into one’s damned chair, to double down, dig deep, grovel, beg, and maybe ugly cry. It’s time to revise. Hopefully, one is armed with tissues as well as a stash of tried-and-true methods for honing, pruning, enriching and revealing; plus the fresh input of trusted beta readers, freelance editors, a publishing editor, and/or literary agent (if one’s …
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Urban Fantasy Author, Mel Todd Despite Mel Todd’s warning that we shouldn’t use her as a role model for our own self-publishing journeys, I think indie and traditionally published authors can learn a lot from this sci-fi and urban fantasy author who pivoted from writing in a genre she didn’t love, to writing stories on her own terms. Below, the author and creator of Bad Ash Publishing—the publishing company that houses her twenty-plus titles—shares insights into her career, her missteps, and how she went from writing fanfiction to making over $150K in one year. GW: Thanks for agreeing to share your writing and publishing experiences with the Writer Unboxed community. Th…
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Do you see the universe in a grain of sand? If you do, the beach must be a mind-blower. What about snowflakes? No two are alike so wrap your brain around a field of snow, right? Raindrops? For literal-minded folks they only get us wet. Those dullards have umbrellas, but for the rest of us a rainy day is kissing weather or maybe a chance to walk slowly down a noir street, trench coat collar turned up and fedora dripping. It is our human tendency to make associations. We read meaning into things. An old jacket hanging in the hall closet isn’t just cloth sewn together with sleeves, it’s a memory of seasons gone by. Shrug on that jacket and it will tell you tales. …
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The last time I wrote a post for Writer Unboxed was back in December. I was in the querying trenches having, well, not a grand time, but learning to appreciate the journey and everything I’d accomplished these past few years. Then 2022 rolled around and my journey sped up. Like, really really sped up. In a span of two months, I received my first agent offer, which became five offers, which became choosing my agent, doing a very quick revision pass, going on sub to editors, and selling my book at auction two weeks later. Unfortunately there’s no magic advice that I can give to those of you in or ready to jump in either the query or submission trenches. Trust me, I have …
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Some items I doodled at the bus stop. Well, not really Many book covers do well with a pretty face. But sometimes you have to go with someone’s rear end—you’ll see what I mean in a minute. Through all my high school years, I was a lunatic thief, and became more and more brazen: I would dribble basketballs out of stores, march out holding new briefcases as if I were a businessman, stroll out with completely unrolled sleeping bags—my behavior was quite mad. I sold much of the loot at school. I only stopped—temporarily—after spending a few days in jail for stealing a bottle of Scotch. Budgeting as a high school student can be so restrictive—stealing all the things I “need…
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There was something meditative about it. The cleaning of the old rocking chair, knocking off dust, noticing all the nicks and cuts, and the gnawed parts where a pup long grown and long gone from cancer had chewed in his puppy-breathed delighted boredom. I sighed, remembering that dog, and other dogs. I pressed my fingertip to a particularly roughened spot, imagining I could still feel his teeth marks as they were before, sharp not dulled. Chair clean, I gathered my tools: paintbrush, paint, cloth. Taking my time, I brushed paint carefully in slow back and forth motions. Never before had I considered that painting could be relaxing and calm. There was no hurry. I’d do it…
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We’re thrilled to have returning guest Danielle Davis on Writer Unboxed today! Danielle has had dark fantasy and horror published in Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, The Astounding Outpost, and multiple anthologies. You can find her on most social media under the handle “LiteraryEllyMay” and at her website, literaryellymay.com It’s Not Me, It’s the Story Have you ever reached a point where you couldn’t see the path forward while writing your story, and found yourself saying, “What is wrong with me?” It’s an easy trap to fall into, to see our stories as a projection of ourselves and to equate our story’s perceived value with an internal sense of worth. We put so much of our…
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Over the last few years, I’ve come to seriously admire authors who write well-crafted, efficient sentences. I’m thinking of sentences that aren’t necessarily simple or grammatically perfect, but rather ones in which each word seems carefully chosen to pack the biggest punch. Take, for example, the first line from Delia Owens’s Where the Crawdads Sing: The morning burned so August-hot, the marsh’s moist breath hung the oaks and pines with fog. Look at that sentence! Not a single word is wasted. Each one carries weight, fully embodying its own essence, coming together to form a backdrop you can feel on your skin in just sixteen words. I think of sentences like these as I…
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ALGONKIAN SUCCESS STORIES
WTF is Wrong With Stephen King?
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Dukes, Lords, & More
A Wolf Apart RECOMMENDED: A Wolf Apart by Maria Vale is $1.99! This is book two in the Legend of All Wolves series. I love this series to pieces and how Vale builds the wolf, shifter, and human mythology. Definitely slow burns with a focus on character relationships! When the Great North Pack is on the verge of falling apart, Pack wolf Elijah Sorensson wants to give up on his successful life in the human world to return home. But the Alpha says no—Elijah must continue to play his role to protect the Pack from those who want to destroy it. Knowing he needs strength by his side, he seeks out human Thea Villalobos, a woman he’s admired from the moment he met her. He hopes she can help him break through his human shell before the ailing wolf inside him dies, and before the Pack is betrayed again. But can Thea accept who and what Elijah really is? Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Fortune’s Pawn Fortune’s Pawn by Rachel Bach is $2.99 and a Kindle Daily Deal! This is a scifi novel with some strong romantic elements and, in the past, I’ve heard it described as Kate Daniels in space. Many people loved this book and its worldbuilding, though there are a few reviewers who said they never connected with any of the characters. Devi Morris isn’t your average mercenary. She has plans. Big ones. And a ton of ambition. It’s a combination that’s going to get her killed one day – but not just yet. That is, until she just gets a job on a tiny trade ship with a nasty reputation for surprises. The Glorious Fool isn’t misnamed: it likes to get into trouble, so much so that one year of security work under its captain is equal to five years everywhere else. With odds like that, Devi knows she’s found the perfect way to get the jump on the next part of her Plan. But the Fool doesn’t give up its secrets without a fight, and one year on this ship might be more than even Devi can handle. If Sigouney Weaver in Alien met Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica, you’d get Deviana Morris — a hot new mercenary earning her stripes to join an elite fighting force. Until one alien bite throws her whole future into jeopardy. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Duke, Actually Duke, Actually by Jenny Holiday is $1.99! This is a holiday romance that released in November. I remember Elyse reading it and commenting in Slack that she was enjoying it. I, sadly, don’t do holiday romances. What about you? USA Today bestselling author Jenny Holiday follows A Princess for Christmas with another delightful contemporary Christmas romance between a playboy baron and a woman who has said goodbye to love. There’s a royal wedding on, and things are about to get interesting. Meet the man of honor Maximillian von Hansburg, Baron of Laudon and heir to the Duke of Aquilla, is not having a merry Christmas. He’s been dumped by a princess, he’s unemployed, and his domineering father has sent him to New York to meet a prospective bride he has no interest in. In the city, he meets Dani Martinez, a smart (and gorgeous) professor he’s determined to befriend before their best friends marry in the Eldovian wedding of the century. Meet the best woman Newly single, no-nonsense New Yorker Dani is done with love—she even has a list entitled “Things I Will Never Again Do for a Man”—which is why she hits it off with notorious rake Max. He’s the perfect partner for snow angels in Central Park and deep conversations about the futility of love. It’s all fun and games until their friendship deepens into attraction and, oops… Falling in love was never part of the plan. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. An Extraordinary Lord An Extraordinary Lord by Anna Harrington is $2.51 at Amazon and $2.99 elsewhere! This is book three in the Lords of Armory historical romance series. There also seems to be a bit of a mystery element in this one. Have you kept up with the series? A steamy historical romance set in Anna Harrington’s star-studded Regency world. Soldier turned solicitor Lord Merritt Rivers has dedicated his life to upholding the law. He patrols the streets faithfully, hoping to stop crimes before they can happen. While hunting an escaped convict, he encounters a woman also hunting thieves. She’s a delicious distraction, until he discovers that she is the criminal he’s after. She’s smart, challenging, and everything he finds attractive, but he cannot trust her. Veronica Chase has hidden her past as a nobleman’s daughter. She confesses to a crime to keep her adopted brother out of prison. She now lives in London’s underworld, trapped between worlds, belonging nowhere. Forming an uneasy alliance, Veronica and Merritt work together to protect innocent Londoners during the city’s riots. Moving between her world and his, they grow closer to each other and to the mob’s dangerous leaders. But their newfound trust won’t be enough, until each face their demons and ask what’s worth saving―the lives they’ve chosen to lead or the love that leaves them yearning for more. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. View the full article -
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THE UNDERTAKING OF HART AND MERCY by Megan Bannen (BOOK REVIEW)
“Mercy gaped at the inexplicable pouring out of a heart that she held in her hand, from a person as real and substantial as the paper on which it had been written, but as fragile and easily torn, too. Who had sent it?” The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen has single-handedly turned this epic fantasy/grimdark reader into a fan of cosy adult fantasy Rom-Coms. I’ve never really been fond of romance in my fantasy books, always preferring it to be in the background, a subplot to cut through the bleakness of whatever dark world I was entering. Yet lately, with the real world setting itself on fire, I was looking for something more fun, light-hearted and charming to escape into and let me tell you now, this was perfect. Set on the island of Bushong lies Tanria, a place of wonder, of strangeness, of old gods and new, a place filled with death. There are those whose task it is to keep the dangers which reside within Tanria from getting out and endangering those who live on the outskirts. Hart is one of them. As a marshal, Hart faces the strange wilds of Tanria on a daily basis, his job is to kill drudge, zombie-like creatures who roam around always on the lookout for new human hosts to infect. In Eternity, Mercy Birdsall runs herself ragged taking care of Birdsall and Son Undertakers after her father’s health demands that he rest. Whenever Hart has a new dead body to dispose of, he takes them to Birdsall and Son, much to the dismay of Mercy who cannot stand Hart and his insufferable ways. The feeling is mutual as Hart finds Mercy just as irritating. Yet out of sheer loneliness Hart begins anonymously writing letters in the hopes that someone, anyone, might reply. Someone does. Unbeknownst to both of them Hart and Mercy begin baring their souls to one another through a series of letters and find they both have more in common than they think. I adored the way Hart and Mercy felt like such real people despite them being in the backdrop of such a highly fantastical world. Through Mercy’s character Bannen reflects on day to day family drama, with particular attention paid to Mercy’s father and his failing health. Having suffered a heart attack and now losing his memory, the pressure to care for her father (he really doesn’t want to give up those sweet treats!), the business and her siblings—though she’s always taken care of them—builds upon Mercy. Bannen offers wonderful slices of family life; those awkward meal time conversations where discussions turn to talks of marriage, children, careers and the big old future. We see a father desperately wanting his daughter to settle down, a brother desperate to shirk his responsibilities and a sister holding back a secret. There are moments of tension and heated words are thrown at one another, but underneath it all their love always surfaces. It’s just that Mercy needs someone to listen to her problems, her fears and her desires. That someone just happens to be Hart Ralston. An overwhelming sense of loneliness follows Hart wherever he goes, he hasn’t moved on from the loss of his mother, his absent father, his work partner and his dog. Hart may be a bit of a dick to begin with but throughout the course of the novel we see that he’s actually the sweetest of souls. As Hart starts to reconnect his friendship with his boss and grows fond of Duckers, his apprentice partner, we see Hart has a whole lot of heart deep within him. If only he could show that to Mercy’s face! I particularly loved the contrast between Hart’s inner thoughts, his unwanted lust for Mercy, the way his eyes linger on her body even when on the outside he ‘loathes’ her. They are just two people who truly got off on the wrong foot. “I wonder, would either of us bother to scratch the surface if we knew each other in person? Or would we pass each other on the street and never bother to look?” I love the way Bannen’s dialogue between the characters were always breezy, quick-witted and full of jibes and sarcasm. I laughed so much at the way Mercy and Hart call each other Merciless and Hart-ache! Duckers quickly became one of my favourite side characters too, his bewilderment when first seeing Tanria and his banter with Hart was absolutely priceless. Not to mention his growing romance with Mercy’s brother Zeddie was so damn adorable. Though romance plays a key role throughout, for me the wonderfully inventive and quirky worldbuilding was exceptionally dazzling. The drudge might be the darker creatures found in Tanria, but the secrets behind their origins built into a fascinating narrative, in fact I loved discovering the history of Tanria itself and the religion surrounding it. Bannen included concepts such as birth keys, ID keys, hand-carved boats to carry the dead out into the Salt Sea which was beautiful, but my absolute favourite, were the nimkilim – a mail delivery service by talking animals. Just wait until you meet Horatio, the owl, and Bassareus, the rabbit! An aspect of the novel which resonated with me was the way Hart and Mercy could express themselves openly through letters, without revealing their identity, far more than they ever could face to face. Words came far easier from the end of a pen for both characters than they ever did from the mouth. Which is the same for me, I can always better express myself through written words than I can verbally. Yet Bannen shows us that it is debatable how much both characters really get to know each other through letters alone. Sure, through these letters Hart and Mercy express their hidden feelings and vulnerabilities, but it also allows them to hold back details too. Therefore can you ever truly know a person you’ve never met? In a time when the need for cosy, uplifting and heartwarming fantasy tales are on the rise, Bannen’s book certainly ticks off all those boxes. The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy is a charming story of two lonely people, who by fate, find each other through the magic of words. “While I am not alone, per se, there are times when I feel like I’m at a party, standing against the wall when I’d rather be dancing. Everyone else is cutting a rug, completely unaware that I’m there.” ARC provided by Nazia at Orbit Book UK in exchange for an honest review. All quotes used are taken from an ARC and are subject to change upon publication. The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy is out 25th August in the UK, but you can preorder a copy HERE The post THE UNDERTAKING OF HART AND MERCY by Megan Bannen (BOOK REVIEW) appeared first on The Fantasy Hive. View the full article -
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Cover Awe: Sweet & Striking
Let’s look at some cool covers, shall we? Cover illustration by Jack Hughes Cover design by Corina Lupp Amanda: Lesbian heisting!! Sarah: I love the nod to Titanic in her hat and parasol! Cover illustration by Anna Kmet Cover design by Guido Caroti Amanda: I actually think this cover is really sweet. I want to hold hands in a big bed! Carrie: The handholding is a sweet touch. Claudia I like it too, and it reminds me of a similar Tessa Dare cover — I think A Week to be Wicked. Elyse: I just requested this one and I want it so bad. I’m in a mood since I started watching The Gilded Age. Cover illustration by Erick Davila Cover design by Diahann Sturge Elyse: Yes please! Amanda: The deep reds are so striking and really make this stand out. Also, I need all the makeup details! Sarah: I received a print ARC of this, and when I opened the envelope I said, out loud, ‘Oh, WOW.’ In person, this cover glows, I swear. Cover designed by Will Staehle Amanda: Loving all the use of negative space in the design!! Sarah: MIDSOLAR MURDERS I see what you did there. And this is extremely interesting design and illustration. I’m so impressed. View the full article -
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A Freebie, Urban Fantasy, & More
The Devil You Know The Devil You Know by Kit Rocha is $2.99! This is book two in the Mercenary Librarians series and is set in a post-apocalyptic Atlanta. This released last August. Are you a fan of the series so far? Maya has had a price on her head from the day she escaped the TechCorps. Genetically engineered for genius and trained for revolution, there’s only one thing she can’t do—forget. Gray has finally broken free of the Protectorate, but he can’t escape the time bomb in his head. His body is rejecting his modifications, and his months are numbered. When Maya’s team uncovers an operation trading in genetically enhanced children, she’ll do anything to stop them. Even risk falling back into the hands of the TechCorps. And Gray has found a purpose for his final days: keeping Maya safe. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Mission: Improper Mission: Improper by Bec McMaster is FREE! This is book one in the The Blue Blood Conspiracy series, which is a spin off of McMaster’s London Steampunk series. While not completely necessary, reviewers say that readers might understand the nuances of the romance and setting more if they’ve read the London Steampunk series. Three years ago, London society changed forever, with a revolution placing the widowed Queen firmly on the throne her blue blood husband tried to take from her. Humans, verwulfen and mechs are no longer considered the lesser classes, but not everybody is happy with the new order… Entire families have gone missing in the East End. When Caleb Byrnes receives an invitation to join the Company of Rogues as an undercover agent pledged to protect the crown, he jumps at the chance to find out who, or what, is behind the disappearances. Hunting criminals is what the darkly driven blue blood does best, and though he prefers to work alone, the opportunity is too good to resist. The problem? He’s partnered with Ingrid Miller, the fiery and passionate verwulfen woman who won a private bet against him a year ago. Byrnes has a score to settle, but one stolen kiss and suddenly the killer is not the only thing Byrnes is interested in hunting. Soon they’re chasing whispered rumours of a secret project gone wrong, and a monster that just might be more dangerous than either of them combined. The only way to find out more is to go undercover among the blue blood elite… But when their hunt uncovers a mysterious conspiracy, Byrnes and Ingrid must set aside their age-old rivalry if they have any chance at surviving a treacherous plot. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Spider’s Bite Spider’s Bite by Jennifer Estep is $1.99! If you like urban fantasy series featuring supreme asskicking on the part of the heroine, you’d like this one: Gin Blanco is an assassin who wields supernatural powers. And while some readers said the first book can be hard to get into, they say the the following books only get better. “My name is Gin, and I kill people.” My name is Gin Blanco. They call me the Spider—the most feared assassin in the South (and a part-time cook at the Pork Pit BBQ joint.) As a Stone elemental, I can hear the whispers of the gravel beneath my feet and feel the vibrations of the soaring mountains above me, though I don’t use my powers on the job unless I absolutely have to. Call it professional pride. After a ruthless Air elemental double-crossed me and killed my handler, I’m out for revenge. And I’ll exterminate anyone who gets in my way. I may look hot in a miniskirt, but I’m still one of the bad guys. Which is why I’m in trouble when irresistibly rugged Detective Donovan Caine agrees to help. The last thing a coldhearted killer needs when she’s battling a magic more powerful than her own is a sexy distraction… especially when he wants her dead just as much as the enemy. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Duchess by Deception Duchess by Deception by Marie Force is $1.99! This is the first book in Force’s Gilded historical romance series. Those familiar with Force’s contemporary romances and romantic suspense series weren’t as taken with this one, given the historical inaccuracies. However, other readers loved the main characters and their chemistry together. In New York Times bestselling author Marie Force’s dazzling historical romance debut, the clock is ticking for a wealthy Duke who must marry by his thirtieth birthday—or lose his title . . . Derek Eagan, the dashing Duke of Westwood, is well aware of his looming deadline. But weary of tiresome debutantes, he seeks a respite at his country home in Essex—and encounters a man digging on his property. Except he’s not a man. He’s a very lovely woman. Who suddenly faints at his feet. Catherine McCabe’s disdain for the aristocracy has already led her to flee an arranged marriage with a boorish Viscount. The last thing she wants is to be waylaid in a Duke’s home. Yet, she is compelled to stay by the handsome, thoughtful man who introduces himself as the Duke’s estate manager. Derek realizes two things immediately: he is captivated by her delicate beauty, and to figure out what she was up to, Catherine must not know he is the Duke. But as they fall passionately in love, Derek’s lie spins out of control. Will their bond survive his deception, not to mention the scorned Viscount’s pursuit? Most important, can Catherine fall in love all over again—this time with the Duke? Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. 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SBTB Bestsellers: June 18 – July 1
Our latest bestsellers list is brought to you by lemonade, hot dog eating contests, and our affiliate sales data. A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall Amazon | B&N | Kobo Someone Perfect by Mary Balogh Amazon | B&N | Kobo One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston Amazon | B&N | Kobo Battle Royal by Lucy Parker Amazon | B&N | Kobo The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix Amazon | B&N | Kobo Meet Me in the Margins by Melissa Ferguson Amazon | B&N | Kobo We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia Amazon | B&N | Kobo | GooglePlay Twice Shy by Sarah Hogle Amazon | B&N | Kobo All Scot and Bothered by Kerrigan Byrne Amazon | B&N | Kobo Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor Amazon | B&N | Kobo I hope your weekend was cozy and restorative. View the full article -
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The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston
C The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston June 28, 2022 · Berkley Romance I am very confused by The Dead Romantics, a contemporary romance between a ghostwriter and an actual ghost. This book has a lot of parts to it, and I’m not sure how I feel about almost all of them. I will therefore write this review as a list of all the pieces and how I felt about them. Expect frequent use of words like “ambivalent” and “confused.” None of these are spoilers – they are all parts of the basic plot set up. As you can imagine, I think the book struggles to balance all this stuff. 1. The main character, Florence, is a ghostwriter for a romance novelist. She can’t finish her latest book because she had a terrible break up a year ago and concluded that romance is dead. I was initially a bit perturbed by the ghostwriting thing but it was actually rather fun seeing other characters attempt, unsuccessfully, to guess for whom Florence writes. It does mean that on top of all the other things that I am about to relate, Florence has to deal with whether she’s a disappointment to her family (NO) and whether she was ever a good writer (ALLEGEDLY, YES), and MINOR SPOILER AHEAD whether she has a right to be angry with her ex-boyfriend who stole all her ideas (ABSO-FUCKING-LUTLY). There’s some nice stuff here about why Florence enjoys writing romance. There’s also a cool twist that I shall not reveal. 2. Her family lives next to and runs a funeral home in a small town. I know exactly how I feel about this – very good indeed. I love a good “raised in or near a funeral home” story, whether nonfiction or fiction, and for the most part I loved the stories in this book about the pride the family takes in their work and the many joyful traditions they’ve incorporated into their lives. 3. Florence’s beloved dad dies suddenly and prematurely and Florence has to go home to help organize the funeral (her dad had a lot of requests so it’s an involved process). Okay, folks, this is where I lost the thread. Almost all of the book takes place during the short period of time (a couple of weeks, I think) that Florence is at home, helping prepare the funeral. She’s sad, of course, very sad. She cries a lot, and so does her family. But also she heals a bunch of relationships and eats waffles and falls in love with a ghost, so it’s a pretty cozy week. When my dad died suddenly and prematurely, and I had to prepare his funeral, I was not having bittersweet bonding experiences or falling in love or anything like that. It was an awful time to a degree that makes me shudder to this day. So is Florence’s experience, which involves a lot of bonding and hugging, falling in love and regaining her motivation to write, along with missing her father, is that just what mourning looks like in a healthy family? My experience did not involve a healthy family dynamic. Is Florence having a typical experience for a healthy family, or is it very strange and unrealistic to combine “sudden loss of parent” with “new love, healing, and regained optimism”? I have no idea, Bitches. I’m hopelessly confused. 4. Shortly after she meets her new editor, Ben, he gets hit by a car and his ghost starts haunting Florence. They fall in love while Florence is helping get the funeral ready. It’s not like ghost romances can’t be compelling and romantic, but this one threw me for a loop. It happens very fast – Ghost Ben and Florence are around each other for only one or two weeks (it’s difficult to keep track of time in this book). Ben is very vulnerable and scared. Florence is emotionally raw. Those are good conditions in which to make sudden and extreme attachments but I’m not sure it’s a good way to make lasting ones. With all the other things happening in this story, I didn’t feel that I really got to know Ben nor did I trust the longevity of their relationship, although I might be too biased because falling in love while planning the dad’s funeral was so hard for me personally to relate to. I am fond of Ben, and fond of Florence, but ambivalent about the romance. However, they did develop an easy way with each other that I liked. More spoilers ahoy 5. When she was 13, Florence solved a murder by talking to a ghost and was so relentlessly bullied afterwards that she left town for New York City and hasn’t been back in ten years. I am confused. Everyone in town is nice to Florence upon her return, even her ex-arch-nemesis Heather (of COURSE it’s a Heather). Why didn’t she pretend no ghosts were involved when she first solved the crime? Why did her parents allow this level of bullying for years and years? Is everyone in town an ex-bully, or just Heather? If the former, why are they all being nice to her now? 6. Florence’s sister Alice is really mad at her so Florence has to sort all that out and make amends and have a sister talk. I adore Alice but this talk seemed too little too late. Also for the record I am Team Alice, always, in all things. By the way, there is an HEA, and it’s quite predictable, although it leaves the reader with a lot of follow up questions, such as: SUPER MAJOR HUGE ENORMOUS REVEALING THE ENDING SPOILER Why hasn’t Florence been ‘haunted’ by coma patients before? Is this a thing she can do regularly? Shouldn’t she visit coma patients and see if they are, for instance, comfortable, aware of their surroundings, able to make requests regarding life support, etc? This is a big deal, right? No one acts like there are any ramifications to this ability! To sum up – there’s a lot happening in this book and my opinion is that the romance is the least interesting and the least convincing part, although I did like that Ben and and Florence don’t fight or have a big misunderstanding or anything like that – there’s plenty of external conflict what with him being dead and all, and conflict between them would have been too much. The romance suffers big time for happening smack in the middle of all this other turmoil involving death, family dynamics, trauma, healing from a bad breakup, a major professional setback, and regaining confidence and inspiration. I felt as though I was reading two different books – a family-centered drama about a sudden death, and a ghost romance rom-com. Now, I am VERY biased by my own life experiences, but I think that even if I remove the death of Florence’s father from the equation, there’s still an awful lot going on in this book, and the romance gets lost within it. Frankly, I’ll be curious about what other people think of this strange, ambitious, cluttered novel. My “too much” might be someone else’s “just right.” If nothing else, I admire it for doing something different, even if it didn’t work very well for me. View the full article -
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Episode 517, Your Transcript Has Arrived!
The transcript for Podcast 517. Rebuilding Your Life Over Dinner for One, with Sutanya Dacres has been posted! This podcast transcript was handcrafted with meticulous skill by Garlic Knitter. Many thanks. ❤ Click here to subscribe to The Podcast → View the full article -
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Emma Cline, Dan Bevacqua, and Robert Glück Recommend
Photograph by makeshiftlove, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY 2.0, This week, we bring you reviews from three of our issue no. 240 contributors. The documentary Rocco, which follows the Italian porn actor and director Rocco Siffredi, feels like a hundred perfect short stories. We learn that Rocco carries around a photo of his mother at all times. We watch Rocco and his teenage sons chat in their cavernous and starkly lit climbing gym/weight room in Croatia. We discover that Rocco’s hapless cameraman of many decades, Gabriel, is actually his cousin, a thwarted porn star. During one virtuosic shoot (Rocco Siffredi Anal Threesome with Abella Danger) Gabriel accidentally leaves the lens cap on, which they discover only after shooting the entire scene. There’s a surprising sweetness in Rocco, a man in the twilight of a certain era. “They used to focus on the women’s faces,” he says, sadly. He’s decided to retire. The final scene finds Rocco carrying a giant wooden cross on his back through the hallways of the Kink.com Armory. This tableau is the brainchild of Gabriel. “Because you die for everyone’s sins,” he tells Rocco. —Emma Cline, author of “Pleasant Glen” Goodbye, Dragon Inn is about a lot of things: the last ever screening at Taipei’s Fu-Ho Grand Movie Palace; a ticket-taker who wants to gift half of a steamed bun to the projectionist; a young man cruising the theater for sex; and that lonely, amorphous feeling of THE END—not so much death as the cinematic mood of loss. When I heard about Goodbye, Dragon Inn, which was directed by Tsai Ming-liang and released in 2003, I could neither see it in a movie theater nor stream it anywhere. At the time, my brother was quarantining in a high-rise apartment building in Santiago, Chile. He found an illegal copy of it on the internet and sent it to me. I liked the criminality of this exchange. No character in Goodbye, Dragon Inn breaks the law, but it feels like there’s a crime going on. Part of this is due to the rain and the shadows and the grimy brokenness of the Fu-Ho Grand, but it’s mostly because Goodbye, Dragon Inn is a stripped down melodrama of longing. The ticket-taker is the film’s star. At one point, she goes behind the movie screen. The light hits her face. We seem to know nothing about her, but that’s not true. We know how, in the light of the screen, despite the forces that would stop her, she hopes and dreams. In this way, we know her exactly. —Dan Bevacqua, author of “Riccardo” I’m currently reading INRI (published in William Rowe’s translation by NYRB/POETS), a book-length poem in which Raúl Zurita remembers the “disappeared” in Chile: those who vanished in the seventies, especially those who were thrown out of planes and helicopters into Chile’s ocean, volcanoes, and deserts. My dear friend Norma Cole gave me the book—her wonderful, learned preface provides an account of the different forms Zurita has used to address Pinochet’s murders. When the trauma of mass death replaces the rich complexity of the lives that have ended, it may take a generation or two for the richness of those lives to reenter the culture, in the past tense, as a memory. But what of a trauma whose existence has been suppressed? Zurita initiates this work of mourning by turning the world upside down, creating a new reality with a place for the knowledge of the dead. As William Rowe writes, “This poem seeks a place where the wound can be included inside the making of a different reality. That place requires a particular type of space, where what has been concealed, expunged from history, can appear.” This is the kind of book I love—a book that is ambitious for literature itself. Zurita goes as far as he can, he goes to the limit. Sensation enters through the ear, because the victims’ eyes were torn out with hooks before they were thrown into the air. “I can hear the rabbit stunned by the headlights.” The dead are bait for the fish, snow for the mountains. The author enters the poem: first the murdered are “they,” then Zurita appears as himself. Then he joins the murdered “we.” The Pacific breaks away from the coastline and falls. First it was the cordilleras and now it is the sea that falls. From the coast to the horizon it falls. In an enemy country it is common for bodies to fall, for the sea to break away from the coast and fall like the daisies that groan as they hear the cordilleras sinking where love, where maybe love, Zurita, moans and weeps because in an enemy country it is common for the Pacific to collapse face down like a broken torso on the Stones. INRI is unsparing and sometimes ugly. When dealing with catastrophe, tact can be repellent. The strange title INRI is a salute to Christianity, but Zurita detaches love from the Christian narrative and recognizes it in the Chilean landscape. He proceeds by accretion and repetition of images that go through variations as a fugue, “from horror to love,” as Norma Cole says. There is no consolation, or if so, it is the conviction that life has value even when squandered in holocausts. —Robert Glück, author of “About Ed” View the full article -
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The New York Review of Books and The Paris Review: Announcing Our Summer Subscription Deal
Love to read but hate to choose? Announcing our summer subscription deal: starting today and through the end of August, you really can have it all when you subscribe to both The Paris Review and The New York Review of Books for a combined price of $99. That’s one year of issues from both publications, as well as their entire archives—sixty-nine years of The Paris Review and fifty-nine years of The New York Review of Books—for $50 off the regular subscription price. Ever since former Paris Review managing editor Robert Silvers cofounded The New York Review of Books with Barbara Epstein, the two magazines have been closely aligned. With your subscription to both, you’ll have access to fiction, poetry, interviews, criticism, and more from some of the most important writers of our time, from T. S. Eliot to Sigrid Nunez, James Baldwin to Toni Morrison, and Joan Didion to Jamaica Kincaid. Subscribe today and you’ll receive: One year of The Paris Review (4 issues) One year of The New York Review of Books (20 issues) Full access to both the New York Review and Paris Review digital archives—that’s fifty-nine years of The New York Review of Books and sixty-nine years of The Paris Review. If you already subscribe to The Paris Review, we’ve got good news: this deal will extend your current subscription, while your new subscription to The New York Review of Books will begin immediately. View the full article -
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Get Some Holiday Weekend Reading: Alisha Rai, Lucy Parker, and Patricia Briggs!
Hey y’all! This is usually Amanda’s territory but we’re having a nasty access attack on the site, so first: whoever has decided this was a great idea, I wish diarrhea upon you. Amanda’s locked out but I’m running around here by myself. I bet if it were real the echo would be terrifying. Today’s books on sale are some bestsellers, fan favorites, and excellent holiday reading. Let’s do this! Battle Royal Battle Royal by Lucy Parker is $1.99! Oh, yeah! This is a perfect weekend treat of a book. I read it on vacation last year and loved it, and Catherine Heloise (we miss you, Catherine) wrote in her A- review that ” Lucy Parker could probably hear my squeeing from across the Tasman Sea (look, it’s not that far from Melbourne to New Zealand, and I am a trained singer…). I was not disappointed.” This is a perfect reading confection if you like contemporary romance and food, and the price is *chef’s kiss.* Beloved author Lucy Parker pens a delicious new romantic comedy that is a battle of whisks and wits. Ready… Four years ago, Sylvie Fairchild charmed the world as a contestant on the hit baking show, Operation Cake. Her ingenious, colorful creations captivated viewers and intrigued all but one of the judges, Dominic De Vere, the hottest pastry chef in London. When her glittery unicorn cake went spectacularly sideways, Dominic was quick to vote her off the show. Since then, Sylvie has managed to use her fame to help fulfill her dream of opening a bakery, Sugar Fair. The toast of Instagram, Sugar Fair has captured the attention of the Operation Cake producers…and a princess. Set… Dominic is His Majesty the King’s favorite baker, the go-to for sweet-toothed A-List celebrities, and a veritable British institution. He’s brilliant, talented, hard-working. And an icy, starchy grouch. Learning that the irksome Sylvie will be joining him on the Operation Cake judging panel is enough to make the famously dour baker even more grim. Her fantastical baking is only slightly more troublesome than the fact that he can’t stop thinking about her pink-streaked hair and irrepressible dimple. Match… When Dominic and Sylvie learn they will be fighting for the once in a lifetime opportunity to bake a cake for the upcoming wedding of Princess Rose, the flour begins to fly as they’re both determined to come out on top. The bride adores Sylvie’s quirky style. The palace wants Dominic’s classic perfection. In this royal battle, can there be room for two? Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Girl Gone Viral Girl Gone Viral by Alisha Rai is $2.99! HOT DIGGITY. Alisha and I cohost Love Struck Daily together, so I’m a fan. This is book 2 in the Modern Love series, and has a 3.7 average on Goodreads. Maya reviewed it and gave it a B-, saying that it’s full of All the Tropes, and is “both funny and insightful.” Have you read this one? In Alisha Rai’s second novel in her Modern Love series, a live-tweet event goes viral for a camera-shy ex-model, shoving her into the spotlight—and into the arms of the bodyguard she’d been pining for. OMG! Wouldn’t it be adorable if he’s her soulmate??? I don’t see any wedding rings Breaking: #CafeBae and #CuteCafeGirl went to the bathroom AT THE SAME TIME!!! One minute, Katrina King’s enjoying an innocent conversation with a hot guy at a coffee shop; the next, a stranger has live-tweeted the entire episode with a romantic meet-cute spin and #CafeBae is the new hashtag-du-jour. The problem? Katrina craves a low-profile life, and going viral threatens the peaceful world she’s painstakingly built. Besides, #CafeBae isn’t the man she’s hungry for… He’s got a to die for. With the internet on the hunt for the identity of #CuteCafeGirl, Jas Singh, bodyguard, friend, and possessor of the most beautiful eyebrows Katrina’s ever seen, comes to the rescue and whisks her away to his family’s home. Alone in a remote setting with the object of her affections? It’s a recipe for romance. But after a long dating dry spell, Katrina isn’t sure she can trust her instincts when it comes to love—even if Jas’ every look says he wants to be more than just her bodyguard… Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Cry Wolf Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs is $2.99. I seriously love this book and have read it several times. TW for assault and trauma in the heroine’s past a and it’s rather violent because werewolves and bad people, but the story of Charles and Anna is one of my favorites. I reviewed this book and the next one in the series back in 2009 (wow!) and gave both an A: “The relationship between the Alpha and the Omega gives known wolf mythology a quarter-turn so it looks entirely different, and demands reexamination of traditional gender roles as well….” Now Briggs begins an extraordinary new series set in Mercy Thompson’s world—but with rules of its own. INTRODUCING THE ALPHA AND OMEGA NOVELS… Anna never knew werewolves existed until the night she survived a violent attack…and became one herself. After three years at the bottom of the pack, she’d learned to keep her head down and never, ever trust dominant males. But Anna is that rarest kind of werewolf: an Omega. And one of the most powerful werewolves in the country will recognize her value as a pack member—and as his mate. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. View the full article -
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The inevitable failure of writing for validation: GUEST POST by Rachel Emma Shaw
The Inevitable Failure of Writing for Validation Rachel Emma Shaw When the amazing team at Fantasy Hive asked last year if I would write an article for their women in SFF month, I gathered together the thoughts and experiences of authors I admire, exploring the difficulties faced by women during their writing careers (read the post here). The same themes resonated throughout their accounts. Themes of self-doubt, of insecurity about being an author – emotions I’ve known only too well, but never realised dogged so many others. To my eyes, the women I reached out to were successful. Why then should they have any doubt about their abilities as authors? Sadly, many authors, myself included, publish under the delusion that it will bring some form of validation. That it will eradicate our near crippling sense of self-doubt. That readers will recognize our worth as individuals and affirm us as authors. Spoiler alert: Irrespective of how successful your books are, that’s not how it turns out. For every positive rating your stories receive, there will always be a negative one your mind fixates one. For every standout review, you’ll only notice the less positive line. For every competition judge who loved your book, you’ll only remember the ones who didn’t. You’ll decide that friends and family who say they love your book are just lying to be kind, and you’ll convince yourself that the fans stalking your house are just insane. Although, you might have a point with that last one… You get the picture. Self-doubt corrupts everything. If you’re hoping for validation from your writing, then you likely won’t find it. Like matches on a dating app, each small sense of validation keeps authors going a little bit longer. Long enough to keep them clinging to the hope that the next book will finally bring the affirmation they’ve been seeking, but it never can. Instead, they receive diminishingly small dopamine hits. Why can’t books give its creator that sense of validation? Authors have slaved hard to bring it into being, surely there should be some good to come from it? There are two reasons why not. Firstly, books are like children. The author can be proud of them, but just like regular children, their existence doesn’t validate its creator. Secondly, because for a book to bring validation for the author, the reader must understand the context behind its creation, which they mostly don’t. Even those who read the bio will only comprehend a fraction of what it took the author to create that story. They won’t have lived the dyslexia and the stigma the author might have struggled through. Nor will they have woken up with the author before dawn each day just to carve some time out starting their ‘real’ bill-paying job. They won’t have heard the kids screeching in the background behind every word the author wrote, or understand the self-doubt the author overcame enough to share their manuscript with readers in the first place. Readers can only ever judge books by the final product they see before them, rather than the hard work behind its creation. They can commend an author for being talented, but talent isn’t a recognition of hard work. Why does this happen? Because the publication process makes all books equal. Stories exist to be read without consideration of the one who wrote them. How many have you read without knowing much about an author beyond their name? The problem is that not all authors have equal opportunities to create those books. Whether for reasons of inequality or just plain dumb luck, all authors lead different lives, and the challenges they must overcome are not the same. Inevitably, we must consider the validation of the author and of their works as two separate things. No matter how successful and validated one becomes, it’s validation does very little to validate the other, or counter the very insecurities that made the author start writing in the first place. Ironically, that same self-doubt is likely a part of what makes these authors so good. It drives them to keep going. To tweak and improve until they have something that sets the dopaminergic neurons alight. Writing for validation is a mistake new authors make all too often. One they can avoid if they learn from the lessons of authors who have come before them. If I were to conduct a survey amongst authors no longer publishing, then I imagine ‘disappointing publishing outcomes made continuing not worth it’ is a box that would get checked a lot. It’s why it’s important for authors to have another reason behind why they publish. Something more achievable than the reduction of their self-doubt (a task that by all rights is best left to trained professionals!). So instead of seeking validation through your stories, write to improve your skill, or even just for your own satisfaction. When it later comes to the choice of whether to publish or not, publish to spread your message to the world, whether through offering readers catharsis, escapism, or whatever else your stories provide. And, perhaps publish to increase your bank balance. We can but hope. So if you’re a writer struggling from self-doubt over your career as an author, then here are five tips to help. Tip one: Seek validation elsewhere, and publish for other reasons. It’s highly likely that the source of your self-doubt goes far beyond your writing. Be open with others. Share what you’ve been through with a therapist or someone who’s really good at listening and being supportive. Self-doubt is a craving of recognition, so seek out that recognition. N.B. There is nothing to stop you trying to do this online through blog/social posts, but you’ll be taking a risk if you do since you don’t know who will respond. Tip two: Try not to view critique about your book as criticism of you. Instead, see critique as opportunities to grow as an author. The best authors are the ones who keep challenging themselves to improve. Critique is the roadmap to how you can do it. Tip three: Write what you love. If you don’t, then it will be harder to finish, which will just provide more opportunities for your self-worth to take a knock. Tip four: Don’t be pressured into publishing. You can always make the choice just to write for yourself. Maybe you’ll decide to publish further down the line. If you do, then you’ll have a whole back catalogue to launch on the world all at once. Tip five: Recognise that readers won’t have been on the journey with you, so don’t expect them to give any allowances in their reviews for everything you went through. You’re the one who must recognise how incredible it is that you overcame all you did to write that book. Writing is hard. I’ve only met one author who said it’s easy. Because if it wasn’t, he said, then he wouldn’t be writing. I reckon that was a lie, but his glibness has still made me never touch his books since. But as hard as writing is, if you take out the self-doubt, it can be a lot easier. So take the necessary steps to help make it a little easier for you, and keep writing. The only person you have to convince about your writing being good enough is you. A neuroscientist by training, Rachel Emma Shaw was a finalist in SPFBO6. She delights in creating stories that blend psychology and fantasy to explore the nature of life. Alongside her writing, she works as a science communicator for a charity and has more plants than is normal. Check out her website and find her on Instagram @rachel_emma_shaw. The post The inevitable failure of writing for validation: GUEST POST by Rachel Emma Shaw appeared first on The Fantasy Hive. View the full article -
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Women in SFF 2022 – INTRO
Welcome to our Women in SFF Feature – 2022! That’s right, we’re bringing back Women in SFF for the third year! Last year was another huge success – we love the response we get from the community so we’re excited to bring you another month of fantastic content! Women in SFF is an opportunity to celebrate female writers of fantasy, sci-fi, and everything in between, as well as all our favourite characters in those genres also. This year, the team have had their planning hats on, and we have a whole host of content lined up for you. We would absolutely love you all to take part; from reviews, recommendation lists, articles – however you decide to join in, let us know by using #WomenInSFF and/or tagging @TheFantasyHive What’s coming up this month? Blogger Tags This year, we’d love to get other blogs involved in Women in SFF, so we’ve devised some posts you can join in with! Each Monday, we’ll be kicking off a different, here a little info about each one: #TagTeam: Started by Bkfrgr and Ariana of The Book Nook for Wyrd and Wonder, this is a theme/trope association game. Check back on Monday for our starter book, we’re looking forward to seeing how far this chain will get! #TheBookWouldBeBetter: There have been some fantastic adaptations over the years, but which from a female author would you love to see, and who would you cast? #TheBand: Yes! We’re getting the band back together! The mercenary one, to deal with that Dark Lady causing havoc… We need your character recommendations! #Readle: Anyone else got hooked on the Wordle craze? We’re still on it, and Framed, and Heardle… so we’ve come up with Readle! We’ll be giving you some clues to some favourite reads for you to solve – and we can’t wait to see puzzles you come up with of your own! The Photo Challenge We’ve brought back the photo challenge, but on a smaller scale than last year! You can join in on either Twitter or Instagram using #WomenInSFF, and we can’t wait to see all your responses. Guest Posts and Interviews Once more the SFF community have stepped up and we’re blown away by everyone who’s agreed to take part. Here are just some of the incredible women we’ll be featuring this month: Stacey McEwan Chelsea Abdullah Jamie Lee-Nardone Stephanie Burgis Freya Marske Rachel Emma-Shaw Sunyi Dean Rebecca Zahabi Naomi Booth Caroline Hardaker Karen Heuler Olivia Blake GIVEAWAYS Keep your eyes peeled on Twitter and Instagram today where we’ll be announcing our g i v e a w a y s! Reviews and Recommendations And of course we’ll still be bringing you plenty of reviews to bump up your TBR! As you can see, it’s going to be a busy month on the Hive, and we can’t wait to share all this with you! The post Women in SFF 2022 – INTRO appeared first on The Fantasy Hive. View the full article -
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The Practice
Or…the magic secret to writing your best work It is an exquisite summer morning in my world. Not yet hot, but promising to be later, dry and bursting with sunshine. I watered the pots in my front yard and longed to be able to spend the day doing summer things—swimming, perhaps, moving plants around in my garden. I’ve been immersed in the latest season of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show and every inch of my gardening heart wants to get out in the dirt and experiment. Which I will do. In a few days. Last week, the news was overwhelming, after a solid month (years) of overwhelmingness, all manner of bad news and disappointing leadership and what sometimes seems like the collapse of everything I’ve believed in my entire life. I feel impotent and furious. And yet, I took a walk with my dogs and my husband. I watered the flowers in their pots, gave myself permission to plant one of the dozens of bedding plants that are awaiting my attention. I wrote my morning pages, which I don’t keep all the time, but usually do at the end of a book, which is where I am at the moment. The very end of the rough draft, when I’m living the lives of at least six other people, running back and forth through their history and memories, their losses and loves and goals. It’s really hard work, mentally, emotionally, and physically. The wide-openness required to get authentic emotion on the page means I feel all that bad news even more than normal. More than anything, I want to take the day off and go shopping for art supplies or go out to lunch with a friend or hit the plant store for more bedding plants, actions that would soothe my aching heart, distract me from the awfulness of the impending collapse of the empire, give me some love and beauty. While I consider myself a warrior on these fronts, I also think there are times we must give ourselves space to let go. I will do that in a few days. Today, I have to write. The book is due in two days and I’ve had plenty of trouble and obstacles trying to get it ready to send to my editorial team. I was stranded in England for two extra weeks with Covid, for one thing. Two weeks is a big loss during deadline times. But you know, something always gets in the way of writing. Always. A child is sick or the world is on fire or your mom takes a fall or needs a ride to the market. Those things are part of our lives, too. It’s okay. It’s also okay to move everything aside for the work. Today, that’s what I’m doing. I’m writing here about my writing to get me in the right state to stay right here all day, until I’m finished. I will sit here in my comfortable desk chair, and I will write my 3000 words, one sentence at a time. I’ll write a scene that feels like an entry point so I can get myself going, and then move on to another one, until all those words are written. In a couple of days, or next week, I’ll garden. I’ll go see my granddaughters and spend time with friends. This, my friends, is the great secret. Writing is a practice, like meditation or walking or practicing piano. We get the book on the page by writing. So obvious, right? It sounds so easy. Sit down and get yourself writing. Write a word and then another, write a sentence and then another. And yet. It’s hard, isn’t it? Another writer and I have deadlines fairly close together and we’ve been sharing progress via Messenger, checking in at certain hours. It has not been easy going, not for either of us. I had a migraine brought on by the wind one day. Children and family needs push in at the most inconvenient times. I’m sometimes torn over my loyalties—do I write or listen to my sister who just had surgery? It might shock you when I say that at this point, I wrote pages instead of taking the phone call in the middle of the day. Anyone who knows me and loves me understands this is how I get it done. It’s the only way to get it done. Meditation is the deceptively simple practice of sitting with your self and learning to observe what’s going on. People sometimes say, “I can’t mediate because I have too many thoughts.” Well, yes. That’s the point. The practice is to learn to notice that you’re thinking and become less attached to those flying, intruding, incessant thoughts. It is remarkably peaceful to capture a moment or five of simple quiet observation, not thinking, detachment. The world is much calmer and easier to manage from that place. A minute later, the thoughts swirl again, and the practice begins anew. Breathing, observing, sitting. Writing is like this. Of course it’s hard to sit still when Rome is burning and the cat needs to go to the vet and you have parent-teacher conferences and you’re worried about your mother and, really, it’s frivolous and self-indulgent to do this, anyway. It isn’t. You know that, but I know it’s hard to sit down and ignore that voice of derision in your head, the one that tells you if you were a truly worthy human being, you’d be actually engaging in [fill in whatever thing your voice says], but that’s the practice. You write one word, and then another, and then another. You get lost and have to stop and figure out how to extract yourself from this mess of a plot tangle. You discover that the character you thought was so great is clearly going to need more work, and you engage the process of doing that, whatever you’ve figured out to help you. This is the practice. You write. That’s what you do. You sit down and tune out the world, and enter the world of your creation. You do it because you were called to it and because somebody out there needs what you’re writing. I don’t know who. You probably have no idea, either, but you might someday if you keep showing up. This is the practice. Sit (or stand if you prefer). Shut out the world. Open your work. Begin. Write one word and another and another. Polish it. Repeat. I’m off to do the same. What things keep you from writing? What is the one thing that will derail you every time? Maybe we can all brainstorm ways to help each other out (kindly, kindly). About Barbara O'NealBarbara O'Neal has written a number of highly acclaimed novels, including 2012 RITA winner, How To Bake A Perfect Life, which landed her in the RWA Hall of Fame and was a Target Club Pick. She is a highly respected teacher who also publishes material for writers at Patreon.com/barbaraoneal. She is at work on her next novel to be published by Lake Union in July. A complete backlist is available here. 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=_SfJUXTbf-s:sFOPFQzmkw0:gIN9vFwOqvQ http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/WriterUnboxed?i=_SfJUXTbf-s:sFOPFQzmkw0:D7DqB2pKExk [url={url}]View the full article[/url] -
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Patrick Radden Keefe on Secrets, Lies, and the Murky Line Between Licit and Illicit
Near the end of his enthralling 2019 book Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, Patrick Radden Keefe recalls the frustration he felt while trying to solve a cold case that had stymied detectives for almost fifty years. His main concern? That those who knew “the whole truth of this dark saga”—the 1972 kidnapping and murder of Jean McConville, a Belfast mother of ten—“would take it with them to their graves. Then, just as I was completing the manuscript, I made a startling discovery.” His digging essentially solved the case. If Say Nothing confirmed that he’s among the finest true-crime storytellers working today, Keefe’s new book suggests he won’t soon relinquish that status. Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks collects a dozen pieces he’s penned as a staff writer for The New Yorker. Whether his subject is a drug cartel kingpin, a Wall Street swindler or an amoral weapons dealer, his stories don’t lack for memorable facts and elegant aphorisms. By 2010, he writes, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had an astonishing 80-plus offices in more than 60 countries. But the international dragnet isn’t always a match for crime bosses who mount populist charm offensives. Until 2019, when he was convicted of multiple crimes and locked up for life in an American prison, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán tightened his grip on the Sinaloa cartel by paying for baptisms and bankrolling ostensibly legal businesses. “Nothing deepens sympathy like charity and bribes,” Keefe writes. Like Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, his prizewinning 2021 book about Big Pharma profiteers and the opioid epidemic, Keefe’s magazine crime reporting is informed by his self-avowed fascination with “the power of denial” and “the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds.” In a recent video interview, he answered a few of my questions about these and other subjects. Kevin Canfield: You grew up reading crime stories, among other stuff, in The New Yorker. Were there particular books, like New Yorker staffer Calvin Trillin’s Killings, or specific articles that made you want to do this kind of writing? Patrick Radden Keefe: Trillin’s Killings I discovered later, when I was already doing this kind of work. It’s funny you should mention it, because that’s a book I thought a lot about when I was putting together Rogues. The stories that were real touchstones for me are ones that you wouldn’t necessarily expect. In ’95 I was in my first year in college, and Henry Louis Gates Jr. published a big story about the O.J. Simpson verdict called “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man.” That was the first time I had ever thought about how a magazine article is constructed: Look at all these people he talked to—he must’ve chased all these folks down and had these deep conversations with them, and then woven together their different perspectives on the verdict and what it means. KC: When did you realize that, as you write in Rogues, lies and secrets were among your “abiding preoccupations”? PRK: I grew up reading a lot of crime fiction—Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers—and that was probably my route into these stories about deviant behavior of one sort or another. I think another influence may be my mother, who is a retired professor of philosophy. She was always doing a lot of work on the intersection of philosophy and psychiatry, looking at different kinds of aberrant conditions. KC: I’ve read that you decided to write Say Nothing after reading an obituary of one of the people involved in the crime. PRK: That’s right. KC: This made me wonder about the inspiration for some of the stories in Rogues. PRK: That’s always the riddle. I’m always trying to move through the world with my ears open for a good story. Often, things will come up in conversation or I’ll get tips from people. One of the luxuries of writing a ten thousand-word piece for The New Yorker, when you can take months and months to do it and you have a lot of room to roam, is that you can read a newspaper article that’s eight hundred words long but seems to contain a much bigger world. In that case (Say Nothing), I read an obituary—just stumbled on it—and was completely transfixed by the story of this woman’s life. When I started to dig in, I realized there was something much bigger there. KC: After the El Chapo story was published in 2014, his lawyer called you. You were leery about calling him back. I can understand why. As you say in the piece, cartel leaders have been known to leave “‘corpse messages’—piles of dismembered bodies,” in public places as a warning to journalists and anyone else who’d get in their way. PRK: I was scared. The thing that’s funny in retrospect is that I didn’t tell my wife because I knew it would freak her out. She didn’t know for about a week. But I talked to (New Yorker Editor) David Remnick about it right away. I did a little due diligence on this lawyer—a government source of mine ran the name, and he came back and said, “Yeah, the lawyer is legit.” So all of that worried me a little. KC: As it happened, El Chapo wanted you to help write his memoirs, an offer that you immediately declined. But do you worry about your safety when reporting pieces like this? PRK: In a way that might be surprising given some of the people I write about, I have a pretty well-calibrated risk threshold. I’m a middle-aged guy, I’ve got two kids. I’m careful about things, so if there is a situation that seems particularly hazardous, I wouldn’t necessarily go in. I’m not somebody who is known for his derring-do on the ground. But I think in the particular context of the cartels, it’s also important to point out that I have this privilege—I’m American and I live on this side of the border. The cartels have killed lots and lots and lots of journalists, and those journalists are Mexican. That is an awful reality, and it is absolutely true that those organizations pose a huge threat to journalists. But they don’t pose a threat to journalists like me. KC: Given the tech tools are your disposal, is this a kind of heyday for cold-case investigations? PRK: In some respects, yes, it’s incredible what you can do. My book Empire of Pain was based on tens of thousands of pages of court documents, and if I couldn’t optically scan those documents and then do keyword searches, there’s no way I would’ve been able to get through the sheer volume of that. When you read about Robert Caro working his way through the (President Lyndon B.) Johnson archives, it’s interesting to wonder how that process, both in terms of the reporting and the way it shapes the writing, was different in the pre-digital age versus now, when you can move through these vast repositories of information with an eye toward what you’re looking for. KC: The stories in Rogues inform one another in edifying ways. In a piece about tax evasion and Swiss banks, you note that a U.S. Senate investigation found at least one bank was important in the money-laundering done by Mexican drug cartels. The cartels, of course, are the focus on another of the stories in Rogues. This made me wonder: Is there a way of looking at financial crimes as all part of the same big scam? PRK: What a great question—I think about this all the time. This is in some ways one of the biggest preoccupations for me—the difference between licit and illicit bad activity: What gets blessed? Who gets out of jail free? And who doesn’t? Because I’m interested in that murky netherworld between the two, convergences come up all the time. I’ve written a fair amount about intelligence and the CIA, and I also wrote about the arms dealer Monzer al-Kassar. It turns out that over the years he had a relationship with the CIA. I’m working on a story right now that will close tomorrow and come out next week, and it turns out that the person I’m writing about, for a time, was kept at the federal holding facility in Lower Manhattan, in Chapo Guzmán’s cell. Not at the same time. But it’s like the Lincoln Bedroom—once Chapo Guzmán stays there, it will always be his cell. KC: Al-Kassar, you write, likes to be coy about his dealings, to almost tease the authorities. He built a home in Spain and named it Palace of My Virtue. In another of your pieces, there’s a guy who might have done business with terrorists, including those who bombed Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. He claims he wasn’t involved, and yet his email address begins with “Mr.Lockerbie.” What do these guys get out of flaunting their notoriety? PRK: There’s something a little pathological in both cases. I think they’re peacocking—they’re kind of winking, saying maybe I did it, maybe I didn’t. There’s almost a freedom and exhilaration for some of these folks that comes with getting away with it. As a writer, that’s something I’m drawn to—these big, forceful personalities who’ve taken the measure of a system, and then they think they’ve figured out how to game it to their advantage. Sometimes they get away with it. And sometimes they don’t. KC: You mention how a culture of corruption in some countries causes a kind of “reflexive cynicism”—nobody believes anything government officials say. Beyond the bribes and crooked cops, how does this shape a citizen’s basic relationship to government, to their civic responsibilities, to their neighbors? PRK: And our relationship with the very concept of truth. One of the things about reporting in Mexico that was so bewildering to me is that nothing is verifiable and nothing is falsifiable. You have people come out and say that the former president of Mexico took a huge bribe, and nobody can really prove it, but nobody can falsify it either. And the average person is left confused. When you talk about the number of people who are dead from the drug wars in Mexico, nobody can even give you the aggregate number. People will say eighty thousand or one hundred thousand. Nobody knows. It’s not a situation in which people are able to even tally the death certificates. I think that that creates, over time, a sense of helplessness, a kind of jaundiced view of the very possibility of accountability. Russia is another place where this has happened. I did this podcast, Wind of Change (about a pro-democracy song by the Scorpions, a German band, that was purportedly written by the CIA). One of the questions that came up was whether the United States to some extent isn’t now experiencing some of that same kind of phenomenon. There’s an amazing quote in the podcast, where this young woman who was our fixer in Moscow, says, “All these years I thought that Russia was going to become more like the United States, and instead, you became more like us.” KC: Is there a white whale for you, a story that you’re pursuing that you’ve not been able to nail down? PRK: There are a few. But I can’t tell you what they are. View the full article -
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Jason Starr on Satire, Alternate Realities, and Failing Marriages
Always versatile, a writer of contemporary noir, domestic thrillers, horror, graphic novels, and both Marvel and DC tie-in novels, Jason Starr has now turned to the sort of alternate-reality nightmare story Philip K. Dick might have dreamed up. A criminal attorney named Steven Blitz, who lives in the New York City suburbs, is in the middle of a murder trial for his serial killer client. At the same time, he is undergoing a difficult period in his marriage. When his wife, one evening, declares that she wants a divorce, Steven leaves the house and drives away to spend the night someplace else. A stop at a local gas station leads to an altercation with a man, and a sudden spasm of violence puts Stephen in a different reality than the one he knows. In this world, to his utter confusion, Steven’s life is almost nothing like the one he’s been living. It’s as if history, both his own and the planet’s, somehow took a weird turn while he lay unconscious after being injured at the gas station… Starr melds noir and a multiverse narrative to create a sinuous, high-wire act of a novel. It’s an unabashed page-turner that has the author’s usual dark and often satiric humor. I interviewed Starr by email about the book, and we discussed its inspirations and how Starr took a more seat of the pants approach to the writing than he usually does when working on a novel. Scott Adlerberg: In The Next Time I Die, you write something that starts out like a Jason Starr novel of the sort we know – first person narrator, contemporary, someone who fancies himself quite rational and balanced and decent but who despite all that is having marital problems – but which then goes in a direction completely new for you. The central conceit is of a type you’ve never used before, where, after a chapter, time and space subtly change. Is that where the book started for you, with you coming up with this conceit? Jason Starr: Yeah, I definitely wanted to do something very different with this book. I’m a big Philip K. Dick fan and for a long time I’ve been mulling how I’d approach writing a reality bending novel, that could also be a crime thriller, and I decided to just go for it. I knew where the plot was heading when I started out, that there would be that big shift in chapter two, though then the plot had some twists and turns that even I couldn’t anticipate. This is unusual for me because I usually plot in advance pretty meticulously. Scott: What are some of the Philip K. Dick books that you like the most? Or that inspired you for The Next Time I Die? He’s certainly a writer who tackles the question of identity and its fluidity, not to mention alternative reality narratives, as well as anyone. Jason: Of course I love the best known ones like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep?, A Scanner Darkly, and The Man in the High Castle, but my favorite has always been Time Out of Joint. It was actually one of the first Dick novels I read. I found an old battered mass market paperback of it at a used bookstore and was blown away. It has everything that’s great about Dick’s fiction—extraordinary stories that come out of ordinary situations. Dick has had a big impact on my writing in general. Aside from the sci-fi tropes, I think his stories at their core are psychological thrillers. Scott: That’s interesting. We’ve known each other since we were kids, and I didn’t know you were a Philip K. Dick fan. You’ve been holding out on me. But yes, I think you’re right. Among writers you’d brand as sci-fi authors, he’s extremely psychological in his focus. Much more interested in the internal, what goes on inside people, their minds, than in gadgets or the possible technologies of the future, though he has that sometimes, too. In your book, you have a very plausible laying out of how someone in your narrator’s predicament might react to something unprecedented to them, something truly mind-boggling in their experience. You say that this novel you didn’t plot out as meticulously as you generally plot out your books, but the world that Steven Blitz, your main character, inhabits is a layered, detailed and internally consistent one. I assume a good bit of that, the world-building (I hate that phrase, but I suppose it fits) must have been thought out in advance. The technology people have, the world political situation, who the US president is, and so on. Jason: Actually, I didn’t have all of those details worked out in advance. I had an idea where the plot was going, but I wanted to experience this “world” as Steven, the narrator, does, in real time. Without giving anything away—the time when this book takes place is very specific, I knew it had to be for the plot to work. I was writing the book in late 2019, early 2020 and for whatever reason I decided the book would begin on a specific date in late February 2020. I had that date in the book the whole time. Then late February arrived, and this timing took on much greater significance as it turned out that the pandemic was starting. I had to make some adjustments but somehow it all came together. Scott: You once told me that satire, at least some satire, infuses virtually everything you write. That’s certainly true in The Next Time I Die in a number of ways, especially in the ways the world is politically different than the actual world we live in. Is this, under the surface, your way of writing an “if only” book. Things may be tough for Steven Blitz and there are problems in the world, but overall, it’s sort of like alternate history as improvement. “If only, at a certain point, history had not gone this way…” I couldn’t help thinking that as I read. Jason: Well, I think satire is part of my personality that sort of slips through while I’m writing. I think satire is a general attitude about the world, an undercurrent. It’s seeing the lighter side of even very dark situations. I’m not sure everyone gets the satire at times, because that’s the thing about satire, it’s a very delicate line for a writer to toy with—like humor, but without a punchline. Charles Willeford, Elmore Leonard, Jim Thompson and Patricia Highsmith jump to mind as crime writers who excel with satire—especially Willeford. I always picture him writing his books with a sly, ironic smile. There’s a lot of satire in Philip K. Dick’s work as well. In The Next Time I Die there were some juicy opportunities for satire that I couldn’t resist, but I didn’t intend to do it with any defined point of view. Some things about the alternate history are much better, but some are much worse. There’s also an alternate history to Steven himself that has its positives and negatives. Scott: And the positives and negatives extend to Steven’s marital situation. One day maybe someone will do a study of the work of Jason Starr from the marital perspective, a writer who created as full a gallery of unhappily married people as just about any writer of any kind of fiction. Read the Starr collected works and no sane person would ever want to commit to marriage with anyone. I suppose it’s in line with what Tolstoy said about families: All happy marriages are probably more or less the same. Unhappy marriages are more interesting and give the writer more to work with dramatically. But can I ask: How do you keep finding new wrinkles to present marital dysfunction? Jason: Yeah, for me it’s definitely the Tolstoy idea. As you know, I started out writing plays, so I’m always looking for the conflict when I’m writing because that’s where the drama is. In real life happy relationships are the ideal and I hope I’m not turning you off to marriage, Scott. It’s just that in fiction, I think Tolstoy was right, happy marriages are usually pretty boring. You need some drama and tension because that’s where the stories come from. I mean if the characters in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? agreed on everything it wouldn’t be much of a play. I don’t consciously look for new wrinkles, though. For me, it’s more about creating a plot, or plot twists, out of the conflict. The thing I’m mainly concerned about is making relationship conflicts feel as real and as relatable as possible. Scott: Without giving too much context to this question, since it would reveal a bit too much, do you have any particular favorite stories or movies that link murder and art? You link the two here in a particular and quite creepy way, and I was wondering where that derived from. I may be wrong, but I don’t remember that idea – the artist as murderer – figuring so much in your books before. Jason: Art has been a theme in some of my other books, in particular Panic Attack, and the artist character in The Next Time I Die is probably my favorite character in the book. I really loved writing those scenes. My mom paints and there are other artists in my family, and I go to museums frequently, but I think there is just something about “the complicated painter” that fascinates me—of course if the artist were happy and conflict-free they wouldn’t be nearly as interesting. In fiction, some of Highsmith’s Ripley books come to mind, and a big shout out for Willeford’s The Burnt Orange Heresy, a great noir novel about the art world. And I love Max von Sydow as the cheated-on abstract artist in Hannah and Her Sisters. Scott: Yeah, von Sydow is great in that, as he is playing a tortured artist or two in Bergman’s films. But I’ve been wondering…Since Cold Caller, your first novel, you’ve worked in a number of different areas. Two hundred percent proof noir, crime where the emphasis is more on the blackly comic, one or two domestic thrillers, two werewolf novels, and both Marvel and DC tie-in novels as well as graphic novels. You keep trying new things, but as I mentioned, you also have a lot of consistency in your preoccupations from book to book. The Next Time I Die brings something of a sci-fi speculative fiction slant to your fiction, but not without noir, naturally. Any particular type of story you’re thinking about writing that you haven’t yet? A cozy with a dark edge? Hard sci-fi? An ecological disaster novel where nearly every marriage crumbles facing the pressure of imminent global devastation? Where do you think you’ll go next? Jason: Ha, the eco disaster book is a great idea, Scott, you should write that! Maybe in the end I’m more of a relationship optimist than you are, though, because I think this is one story where the surviving couple should be happy—you need to contrast all of that bleakness with some hope. As for what’s next, right now I’m working on a new psychological thriller that’s also much different from any of my previous books, at least in style. I do like to mix things up, you’re right, but in the end it’s hard for me to get away from writing noir with an ironic slant, so I think the overall tone is similar. I’d like to write a series of at least several books. That’s one thing I haven’t done yet, and when I come up with the right idea, I’ll give it a shot. View the full article -
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Your Guide to the Best New Crime Shows Coming Out in July
There’s a lot of good crime tv happening right now. In the interest of helping you sort out viewing schedules, we bring you a monthly guide to what’s coming next. We Hunt Together Showtime – Premieres July 3rd (season 2) The British detective series returns, after a bit of a hiatus, for its second season to air in the States. Serial killers, emotional traps, sexual attraction – all still at the center of the series, which has a bit of style and wit to it, setting it apart from the usual fare with an interesting perspective and a charismatic detective pairing. Black Bird Apple TV – Premieres July 8th One of the year’s most anticipated crime shows, this one comes to us from none other than Dennis Lehane. It’s based on a memoir from James Keene, who was serving a ten year sentence at a minimum security prison when, in the hopes of getting his time reduced, he agreed to be moved into a maximum security outfit, bunking with a believed serial killer in the hopes of getting a confession from him. The cast is pretty impressive, featuring Taron Egerton, Paul Walter Hauser, Sepideh Moafi, Greg Kinnear and Ray Liotta. Plenty of pedigree and excitement for this one. Better Call Saul AMC – Premieres July 11th (season 6, part 2) You already know what you need to about Better Call Saul. This is just a reminder that part two of the final season begins airing on AMC this month. The Resort Peacock – Premieres July 28th There’s not too much out on The Resort just yet, but what there is sounds pretty enticing. It comes from Sam Esmail and company and stars William Jackson Harper, Cristin Milioti, Nick Offerman, Skyler Gisondo; described as “a multi-generational, coming-of-age love story disguised as a fast-paced mystery about the disappointment of time.” It would seem to be set at a resort, also. I’m in. Surface Apple TV – Premieres July 30th An amnesia psychological thriller! Honestly I don’t know what amount of money I would have to be paid to watch this series, but it’s not insignificant. That said, the cast seems quite solid – Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Marianne Jean-Baptiste, among others – and the San Francisco setting is always worth something extra. City on a Hill Showtime – Premieres July 31st (season 3) This series, which regularly seems to be engaging in a competition to see how many times it can remind you “hey, this is Boston,” is back for another season. Which is set in Boston. Boston, Massachusetts. The city on a hill, sort of. View the full article
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