Women on Writing - WOW and WOW!
Women On Writing is an online magazine and community for women writers. Among major topics are novel writing, indie publishing, author platform, blogging, screenwriting, and more. Lots of contests and general jocularity sans frittering on the part of Earth's most powerful humans.
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Ask me today how I feel about a certain story of mine and I'll answer differently if you ask me next month. I've been working on revising a short story of mine and it's been a challenge. Yesterday was the first time I looked at it in a month, and I thought it needed quite a lot of shaping up. The plotline was solid but there were other factors that made me feel a bit "blech" about it. It made me think of how perspective on writing can be incredibly fickle. You see, I also rant into a flash fiction piece of mine that I had long since written off as being unworthy of publication. When I read it over the weekend, I thought to myself, "Wow, this really isn't that bad." The sa…
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If you’re looking for a writing prompt to spark some new output, here’s an exercise to try. Inspired by doing newspaper blackout poetry, which I wrote about here, it involves isolating words and phrases from a newspaper or magazine article. You can then use them to trigger some writing. Recently, I was doing this with the sports section of our paper (there seem to be good phrases there). I circled “Not really, Kyle” because that’s my husband’s name, so it made me chuckle. The article was referring to Kyle Shanahan, the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, in case you were wondering. Here are some of the sentence fragments I circled from a few issues. Any of these co…
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My grandmother. Recently I got an e-mail from my editor. “Would you be willing to take this on? One thing – all of the writers working on this project have to use pen names.” There are a variety of reasons that writers use pen names. A friend of mine who writes romance told me about the male members of Romance Writers of America who often use pen names. Another friend uses a pen name for her work for hire and her own name on her royalty paying jobs. Yet another writing friend, an engineer, writes science fiction and cozy mysteries under her own name and erotica under a pen name. I’ve heard from some writers that they use one name for their work for young readers an…
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For the past six weeks, I’ve been working as a mentor in a program that helps prepare writers for the educational market. The goal is that by the time the program is over they will have all that they need to apply to any educational market, and there are many. One group of educational markets specializes in testing. The authors who write for these markets prepare passages. Some of them also write the actual test questions. Many write for state assessment tests. Another group writes books for the school and library market. Most of these jobs are work-for-hire with a vast range of topics. To write for this market you have to write fast and you have to be flexible. T…
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Make the idea your own. November is Picture Book Month. No, not Picture Book Idea Month. That’s now known as Storystorm and takes place in January. Picture Book Month is all about celebrating the picture book. You can do this in any number of ways. It isn’t Storystorm, but you can still make a point of generating at least one new picture book idea every day. You can read a picture book every day. Your local library is sure to be full of picture books. You can doodle, illustrating your way through a manuscript idea every day. Buy picture books to give as Christmas gifts. Make earring charms featuring the covers of your favorite picture books. What… Ever. Do wh…
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No matter how old people are or their feelings about reading, they have fond memories of picture books. These memories can range from reading with parents or grandparents at night books like, The Monster at the End of This Book or The True Story of the Three Little Pigs or just about any Golden Book. Memories, of row after row of hardback picture books with white tags on the spine in a school library or even a public one, are also front and center in readers' minds. Maybe some of these picture books were the first ones that you learned to read as a child, and now you are sharing your favorites with your kids--Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? or Don't Let the Pigeo…
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There are a lot of posts and articles, conference talks and YouTube videos and classes, that tell you the dos and don'ts of picture book writing. (Click the link for one by our very own Sue Bradford Edwards!) There are a lot of rules and best practices for picture book writers, and so when I said a couple of weeks ago that I was writing about the dos and don'ts of picture book writing--you probably rolled your eyes. But bear with me. I want to present a different kind of dos and don'ts list--one that reaches into your writer's soul and grabs on. One that allows you to write the best book you can for our youngest readers. The only "rule" I'll mention before I go on to t…
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Not to toot my own horn, but here it is, the next to last day of November, and I’m put-a-fork-in-my-manuscript-done with Nano. Um…I guess that is tooting my own horn. But I’m going to share how I accomplished my specific goal for this annual writing challenge and if you give my method a try, you’ll be tooting your own horn, too. THE GOAL Unlike the Nano standard 50,000 words by the end of the month, I tweak my goal to fit my specific need. This year, I had nearly 28,000 polished words of a cozy mystery. I wanted to add 10,000 words in November and develop a doable habit of producing the same per month (approximately 500 words a day). Keep in mind I’m editing and writing …
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Olivia Braley is a writer and author of the chapbook SOFTENING. She is a co-founder and Editor in Chief of Stone of Madness Press, and a Reader at Longleaf Review. Keep up with her work on Twitter @OliviaBraley or at her website, oliviabraleywrites.com. The first piece of Olivia’s writing I read was her poem “Litany of things to remember” published in issue 16 of Emerge Literary Journal, in which she was the featured writer. The poem left me in goosebumps and a desire to seek more of her work. The more I read, the more I wanted to learn about her style, writing process, and experiences as an editor, teacher, and new chapbook author. She has graciously shared her experien…
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This post made me think about how I work. Monday, I needed to dive into my rewrite. After all, I have a teen nonfiction book due Friday. It is 8 chapters, 15,000 words, and too long already. I need to focus the text, work in some more examples and descriptions, and cut the excess. One chapter is 700 words too long. Others include notes to myself like “Transition!” or “Brilliant conclusion goes here.” I spent the day prodding myself. “Must rewrite . . . must rewrite . . . must . . .” Somehow I suspect you know where I’m going with this. So much to do, so little interest. My brain was full of great ideas -- blog post ideas, ideas for my upcoming comic, and ideas for …
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About two weeks ago, I got two rejections in a single day. One was from a dream agent and it was a FORM rejection. But I was simply too busy to let it bother me. Whatever. Deadline dead ahead. Then a friend spoke about a similar pair of rejection that really shook her. She’s an amazing CNF writer and has had work in places I would never dream of approaching. But the rejections flattened her. Both of our responses made me wonder. Why do writers react to rejection the way we do? I turned to psychology for answers about how we react and what can be done about it. Why It Hurts For answers as to why rejection hurts, we need to look to the past. Early humans, without…
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I have a problem with putting myself first--ever. I'm not trying to be a martyr. I promise. I think it's just my current life stage of being a single mom of a needy dog and elementary-school-aged child and the only child of elderly parents. I have to constantly remind myself of the saying (and what to do on an airplane): "You have to put your oxygen mask on first." And that's so true. If we don't take care of ourselves or put our writing and creativity first sometimes, we will not be able to take care of the people who need us. During the holiday season, it's particularly hard to do this. At least for me. Besides the normal responsibilities and work, there are also presen…
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By Carol Turner Aside from being able to turn your passion into a career, there are numerous perks in the field of freelance writing. For one, the occupational outlook for writers is promising in terms of pay and job growth. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, writers are paid above the median annual wage of $69,510 per year. Job opportunities also continue to grow at a fast pace, part of which can be attributed to companies’ increasing demand for remote freelancers in particular. However, these benefits can only be maximized when you know how to successfully break into this otherwise vast industry. So here’s a guide for everything you need to know about bui…
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By Bobbie Christmas Q: For a two-hundred-page novel, how short is too short for the chapter length? A: The length of a chapter has only to do with the scene or scenes that need to be covered in a novel or the subjects to be covered in a nonfiction book. No rules apply to chapter length. I’ve seen a one-word chapter, albeit a contraction, in Angela’s Ashes. If I remember correctly the word was “T’was.” While I don’t recommend one-word chapters, logic should prevail when it comes to where to break chapters. In novels a new chapter can start after a time shift or a scene shift, for example. In nonfiction a new chapter may be appropriate when the subject matter changes. Al…
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Now announcing a blog tour featuring two clean and sweet books: Read-Aloud Stories with Fred Collection and Only My Horses Know. Both books are perfect for parents who worry about the material their children are reading or they are reading to them. Both are clean and sweet. Published by Editor-911 Kids, an imprint of Editor-911 Books, a small, independent press owned and operated by Margo L. Dill that publishes books that readers love but aren't traditional. Join us as we interview the authors, share more about the books, and give you the chance to win a copy! Also, by actively participating in this tour, you have the chance to win a $25 Amazon Gift Card. Read-Aloud S…
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I'm excited to announce our upcoming blog tour for Rebirth by Kate Brenton. She's one of the instructors for the Sit & Write course we shared with you a couple of months ago, and her book shares real life stories about what happens when you let go and let life lead. This book is perfect for someone who needs a little support in listening to their true voice and remembering what is possible when they have the courage to surrender. Join us as we interview Kate Brenton about her book, share more details about her inspiring book, and give away a copy to one lucky reader. First, here's a bit about her book: When life is calling, often we need only the space and the suppor…
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I'm excited to announce the launch of a blog tour with Carolyn DiPasquale, author of the memoir Reckless Grace. Make sure you continue on to read more about this powerful memoir and an interview with the author. You'll have the chance to win a copy of the book too! First, here's a bit about Reckless Grace: Fourteen-year-old Rachel guards a collection of secrets for ten years, journaling to vent her terror and loneliness. Following Rachel's fatal overdose years later, her mother, Carolyn DiPasquale, stumbles upon her daughter's diaries. Shattered, she searches for answers, retracing her steps to figure out how parents and doctors missed three major mental illnesses. What t…
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Nothing like a worldwide pandemic to make even reading feel impossible. I don't know about you, but somehow over the last couple of years, I lost my love of reading. Like a former relationship, I knew the love had been there once upon a time, but somehow I wasn't feeling that same passion anymore. Luckily, I wasn't alone. I came across countless articles written by my fellow bookworms, bemoaning their loss of reading. (Here's one.) Instead of fighting it, I accepted it. It wasn't like I didn't try to find the right book for me, but I didn't beat myself over it. Jump ahead to 2021. Oh look, the pandemic is still here. Then came a heatwave. Several days of humid 90s, and i…
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It’s been a year since my husband began tracking COVID-19 on the CDC maps and telling me things weren’t looking good. A year since I brushed him off, telling him he was being an alarmist and trying to go about business as usual. After all, we were all too busy to worry about a virus—we’d all lived through things like SARS and H1N1—this would be no different, right? Of course, as we all know now, I was wrong. I don’t think anyone expected how quickly the virus would spread and the toll it would take on the health of our friends and family, as well as the difficulties our children would combat by not being able to see their friends or attend school in person. We all know ho…
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TBR: Book love is highly personal. Rejection letters are not personal. I know you’ve heard that before. We tell each other that because rejection letters sometimes feel personal. After all, we’ve poured time and soul into the manuscript. Telling us you don’t want it, or worse yet that you hated it, feels deeply personal. I’m not going to stick up for editors or agents who say that they hated something. Or that you should stop writing or whatever. I think we just have to assume they didn’t have a West Texas grandma with a broom. They’d have learned not to be hateful. Recently, I learned just how rejection letters are personal. The book club I’m in just read a myste…
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As I considered my goals this year, I thought the most important goal was to get back into a writing groove. I actually surprised myself when I ended up finishing a short story this month. With February now upon us, I considered my goals for this month and even the remainder of the year. What would I focus on next? I love the idea of writing new stories, but the truth is, I have to face my writing weakness which is always looming and lurking in the corner: revising. I am certain this isn't the first time I've talked about this weakness of mine. In fact, I only even thought of it recently when I was cleaning out my closet and stumbled across an old short story. Looking at…
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As part of my health journey, I recently read the following: (thanks Noom) I also read this on my oldest daughter's 23rd birthday...so I'm the old dog referenced in the title. Whether we are old or young, we can change our behaviors and today let's brainstorm about how we can change our writing/journaling behaviors to become more successful. Back in the day, before I started writing for WOW! and managing tours, I read a fabulous article by Sarojni Mehta-Lissak titled 13 Strategies for Freelance Writers . If you don't have time right this minute to visit this article from 2007, let's look at some quick tips: * Read Writing Magazines (you're here, aren't you?)* Have…
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At a "Stranger Things" experience in NYC. Years ago, I attended a children’s writing conference where an agent begged the audience to please not write about the time we grew up in. While I could see what she meant by the advice, I also got a good response later that year when I sent the opening pages of a middle grade novel to an editor I’d met at the same conference. In the words of the editor, my story about a girl who traveled back in time to the 1980s to meet the childhood version of her favorite teacher “had an intriguing premise,” but I hadn’t quite nailed the voice of the protagonist yet. I’ve begun noticing a trend of bringing back pop culture from 10, 20, even …
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Review of Cliffhanger: Jump Before You Get Pushed by Michael R. French This Young Adult story centre’s around a high school student body president election, but it’s about much more than high school, it’s for young adult readers and beyond! Touching on corruption and truths, this page-turner of a novel will have you on the edge of your seat, enthralled to read on and find out who wins the election and who wins at life. Brit is a play-it-safe Brainiac who never gets in trouble. She joins the election team for Matthew, (an old crush and seasoned leader) content to put her own leadership dreams to rest. But when she is blamed for hacking into Matthew’s campaign team serv…
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CPR for Dead or Lifeless Fiction: A Writer's Guide to Deep and Multifaceted Development and Progression of Characters, Plot, and Relationships will soon be a writer's handbook that all of us will want on our shelves. Lucky for me, I received a review copy from Karen S. Wiesner, the talented author of a few writing craft books. So let's talk about why you may want this book on your shelf! If you like writing craft books that make you feel like the author is in the room with you and teaching you how to make your stories and characters better, then this book is perfect. While reading it, I felt as if Karen was in my living room, giving me advice with her helpful and easy to…
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ALGONKIAN SUCCESS STORIES
WTF is Wrong With Stephen King?
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Algonkian Pre-event Narrative Enhancement Guide - Opening Hook
OPENING SCENE - Introduces protagonist and antagonist, tone, and foreshadows the primary conflict. Evie was having nightmares. Nightmares so hellish her body sweat and toes curled. Nightmares so hellish she grew afraid of the dark. Muma took to turning off her light long after she'd fallen asleep, so Evie could slumber in ignorant bliss of the shadow standing in wait to overtake her. So why was the light on now? She was sure it was far past the hour when her grandmother usually retired for the night. And yet the shock of pearly luminescence gleamed behind her closed lids as she lay still under her blankets. Flickering. Pulsing. Damn it all to hell. The sandbox was set in an open field, and Evie knelt in it, busy building a castle with three little girls dressed far too fancily for such an endeavor. She had built sandcastles many times before, on weekend trips to the rocky shores of Cornwall. But at 16 she thought she left such juvenile activities behind her. Yet her she was, with bucket and shovel, having (she hated to admit) a fairly pleasant time. Bleeding monkeys! With a painful gasp, Evie pulled back her hand as blood pebbled the tip of her finger. She'd spoken too soon. There was something sharp beneath the surface of the sand and it had punished her for her incessant immaturity. The three young girls sitting across from Evie were cruel little things. They didn't so much as look up when she gasped; showing no concern whatsoever at the damage done to her hand. In fact, they appeared most adamant about finishing the castle, their concentration unparalleled. And yet...could this sculpture be called a sandcastle? It looked like none that Evie had ever seen, but rather resembled a towering spike. Yes, it was a spike-- massive and endless, with a peak that pierced the ethos. Curious. Carefully, Evie rummaged through the sand, one-handed, until she found the foul object that had caused her harm. It was a broken piece of glass with a crackling fissure down its middle. She had only a moment to wonder why there'd be glass in her sandbox before she caught sight of her reflection in it. The rupture split her face into two perfect pieces. Very curious. The fractured reflection did not look altogether connected. Was it just her imagination, or did her left eye blink several seconds after her right? "What are you looking at?" They'd never spoken before, but that wasn't why Evie jumped at the sound of the young girl's voices. No, what frightened her was their timbre. Their intensity. Their union. Their voice -- for she knew now that they were one -- was rough, broad, and entirely unlike those of little girls. "Oh my God!" Their faces were not that of little girls either. Now looking up at Evie, she took in their wrinkled bulbous skin, their endless eyes. They were demons. Demons sats before her. And the demons began to chant... But what they were saying she couldn't hear. Evie heard nothing over the sound of her own screams. Her legs, in their betrayal, ceased function almost instantly, and so Evie instead dragged herself from the sandbox, from the chanting demon girls, from the ever rising spike, and her inexplicable torn reflection. A piercing streak of radiance blazed through the heavens above them, blinding all in sight. It’s a dream. She woke with a start, and seconds later Evie's anxiety kicked in as it'd been wont to do for the last several weeks. With the mannerisms of a bear arising from hibernation, she stretched, recoiled, and let out a slew of groggy curses. The pile of books previously at the end of her bed were now scattered on the floor, disturbed by her movements. Naturally, Muma was already awake; undoubtedly popping garlic pills while screeching through her morning hymns. Evie paused to take it in-- the high pitched, off kilter shrill of praise and jubilee. My God. She hated early mornings more than almost anything else in the world. While Muma would insist that she was just being dramatic, Evie was fairly certain she was correct in her assessment that she suffered from hypersomnia. How else could she explain waking up dead tired after a near ten hour rest? The floor was cool to the touch as Evie wobbled unsteadily from the bedroom to the bathroom, stopping just once to wince as her grandmother (Queen of the Morning People) attempted a most ambitious key. The sun embraced every corner of the bathroom, bouncing off the old white tiles that covered the flooring and walls. Pushing aside the Swedish ivy spilling out of the basket above her cabinet, Evie (as was her custom) scrutinized her reflection in the mirror. "Bleeding monkeys." She whispered, taking in her matted mane. The bulk of kinky curls that spilled over her shoulders were in daily combat amongst themselves. Today, no one had won. And there dozens of casualties that took the form of gnarled knots. The damage was beyond salvaging through the fine art of finger combing, so Evie instead jumped into the bath for a tepid shower. Ten minutes later, naked and unencumbered, she wiped down her mirror to take in her now fully saturated curls. Then she went to work for the second time at detangling them. However, in the midst of her arduous effort, Evie's bathroom door swung open, hitting against the wall, and Muma -- squat and squinty-eyed -- stood forbiddingly at the entrance. "Dear Lord in heaven!" Evie jumped back and crouched into herself in a failed attempt at maintaining propriety. "Muma, what are you doing?! I'm naked!" She grabbed at the nightgown she'd dropped on the floor, pulling it over her head as her grandmother tutted in annoyance. "Well I certainly didn't expect that." She said unapologetically, although she took care to avert her eyes. "You didn't expect me to be naked in my bathroom?" Muma kissed her teeth. "Stop asking silly questions and put on some decent clothing. We have much to do today." Much to do-- of course. Muma always said they had much to do when what she really meant was that she'd pile Evie with busy work throughout the day to keep her occupied. And the chores, if anything, were becoming steeper which Evie was sure was punishment for being disagreeable. She and her grandmother often butted heads (they both had willful personalities) but their rows had recently heightened in their intensity. And when they'd argue over the things that they'd normally argue about -- namely Evie's lack of freedom -- Muma would plow her with chores, and in turn the girl would imagine that she was trapped in a fortress much like Rapunzel. Even more, in this fantasy her grandmother was not her grandmother but a wicked shapeshifting monster. And when they'd argue she'd take her true form of a spindly, albino, black eyed creature near 6ft long. This fantasy both frightened and amused her. Satisfied that she had adequately disrupted Evie's morning, Muma -- a short plump woman -- her black silk cap placed eschew on her head, left the bathroom as she came-- abruptly. Back in her bedroom, Evie absently rubbed her hand against her chest. She'd recently recovered from a massive case of heartburn, which, doubled with her anxiety, was a most unpleasant experience. She then paused to re-stack the books that she'd knocked over earlier that morning. Treasure Island, Frankenstein, The White Witch of Rosehall, her diary (which she never kept up with), and her all time favorite, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Finally, she plopped back down on her bed, her wet curls scattered about her. Why am I so tired all the time? She wondered. It must be the nightmares. Her eyes set on the one long crack in her ceiling. If Evie stared at it for too long it'd start to resemble a meteor, boundless and thin as it pierced through the heavens. Her mind drifted back to the demon girls in dresses. It was them that had told her that she was dreaming. Curious. Thinking back on their singular voice she found that it was indeed coarse, demonic, and endless. And yet still...most familiar. -
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Constant Prometheus - First Chapter (Lost in Fog)
Chapter 1: Lost in Fog The air was filled with a thick and oppressive industrial fog as Constant worked. It hung across the workcamp in a uniform haze almost suffocating in its intensity, forcing Constant to breath slowly throughout the day lest he find himself gasping helplessly for breath. Was this fog the work of the Panathema Box and its opening, or was it merely the work of mankind’s industrial greed? The answer was beyond Constant’s vision. The pun was almost funny. Constant was busy hauling. It was the job that had been given to him by the Assignment Bureau three weeks ago. He had been visited by one of their agents, in a military uniform, flanked by two soldiers, and taken to the workcamp of the assignment where he had been staying ever since, slowly making his way through his job along with the other thousand or so fog-obscured faces who had been doing the exact same thing. They were all strangers to him, and most were wearing the same Arcane Umbra military uniform as those who brought him here: that of their city state’s current military regime. Given the terrible political situation the city was in, a responsible citizen might try to do more than merely cling to their life and survive, but unfortunately surviving seemed like all that Constant could do or be good for when his horizons were just 3 feet in front of him. In that sense, he was the same type of garbage as the rotting plant matter he was so busy moving around. The fog was better now than it had been a few weeks ago, when even the ground and his footing had been obscured. At this point, he could finally see the flat stone ground that he was standing on, and finally see the situation for what it was. During his first few days at the camp, Constant had questioned why they hadn’t been given so much as a wheelbarrow to help them with their work and whether such a tool would help the company complete their assignment faster, but after three weeks he was just thankful for their lack of tools. If there were still things to be hauled around, then the government would still employ haulers, and if they still employed haulers, one of those haulers might still be him, and he’d be able to stay in this job instead of slipping into something worse. In hindsight, it was still better to be here, than in the smoke-filled cul-de-sac of his former home, where the pollution had gotten so thick that living without sickness had become impossible. This smoggy workcamp, in a ruined city district, was where the new government had put him, along with all of the other troublesome cases. At the midpoint between its valued citizens and its criminals, this was where their military government decided to send those various people who they just didn’t want to deal with, through the remains of its legal system or otherwise. Hauling was his occupation. In the truest sense of the word, he was definitely being occupied. Or at least, his body was. His mind wandered off, far afield, to sunny skies and open fields where all of the buildings were intact, such distances from his monotonous work that part of him often forgot he was even at this pointless workcamp: particularly the main part of him. There, he would forget the reality that he had to pull himself, along with the rest of this trash, this broken biomatter and rotting wood, from one end of this yard to the other end for, hopefully, the rest of his life. In his mind, he was flying through the clear and empty skies of his youth when even the urban landscape was covered with trees, flowers and fruits, rather than the rotting carcasses of green plant-life that he was now putting away. In Constant’s mind, those moments in his work where he’d be allowed to zone out and think of the past, were the only salvation he had left. Yet surprisingly, despite how often he daydreamed, it was in a moment of rare lucidity, while he was concentrating on his hauling, making sure he wasn’t stumbling over the spillage from another person’s bag, that he heard the voice of his salvation. “You ought to get out of here.” Constant had never heard any of the other workers talk in the middle of their shift before, so the voice itself was startling. Glancing around, he couldn’t see anybody. If somebody was talking to him, with a voice that unmuffled, their shadow ought to be visible at the very least. The fog which surrounded them had already demonstrated how good it was at blocking out sound. That voice… Had he just imagined it? “I mean, in a certain way you did. Telepathic sounds aren’t technically experienced, so a person’s imagination has to do at least some of the heavy-lifting on that front.” There was a voice in Constant’s head. He had reached the point where he was hearing things. “Yes, to the first one. No to the second one. I mean, as I just explained, you’re not really ‘hearing’ anything. You’re really just imagining that you’re hearing something. The meaning of my words might be coming from me, but everything else is coming right from your head right now.” That wasn’t what Constant meant. “Oh, come on… Let me throw in the occasional comedic misunderstanding to lighten the mood a little here. After all, if I have anything to say about it, we aren’t going to stick with this depressing mood for any longer than we have to.” So, Constant supposed, this being in his head must simply be the incarnation of his futile desires. How depressing it was, that they’d grown so overwhelming while he wasn’t paying attention, that they caused him to start hearing things that didn’t exist. “Claiming that I don’t even exist is pretty ridiculous…” the voice continued, responding to Constant’s inner thoughts. “Even if I was just a voice in your head, I’d still be part of existence since I’d still exist as a voice. And for the record, I’m definitely not a thought or mere figment of your imagination, and I’m definitely going to get you out of here.” Once again, Constant glanced around, but there was nobody there. Only an encroaching screen of misty white, enveloping him from all directions. Suddenly aware of the moments he had wasted, paused in the middle of the hauling route, and the sting of the warden’s punishment for when he arrived late to the drop-off point, Constant picked up the pace. He’d have to escape if he wanted to avoid punishment for his time waste. “Great! To freer pastures we go! The empty sky awaits us! First we’re going to have to sneak around the guards… Then we’re going to have to mask our presence in order to escape through their barrier…” *He’d have to escape from this fog and apologize to the warden if he wanted to avoid punishment for his time waste. “If you really want to avoid that punishment, the only surefire way is to get out of here. You want to escape with all your heart, don't you? Well, I’m saying that we should try with all of our heart to get out…” Yet it was a matter of life or death against guards who held the power to kill him on sight. He longed to escape with all his heart, but since the outcome of such an attempt was obvious, wouldn’t it just be better to live? “If it was only you, maybe the outcome would be obvious, but if it’s the both of us trying to accomplish it…” Both Constantine and his imaginary friend? Wow. What a team. “I told you! I’m not just imaginary!” Then what exactly are you going to contribute to our escape cause, my ‘not-just-imaginary friend’? “Well a plan, for one. The fog on days like this would be perfect for trying to run away.” Literally anybody could tell you that. It wouldn’t matter though. In a perimeter outside of the worksite, defogging magic was used to make the fog much thinner, and thus wouldn’t hide him from the perimeter guards. “Not if we used a little fog-magic of our own…” The fog magic that Constant didn’t have the ability to perform, and had never learned? “Just watch.” And suddenly there was a change in the air, and the fog, which had been moderately thick before, became so dense in the area immediately around Constant, that he couldn’t even see the shadow of his hand when he put it an inch in front of his face. How? Constant wondered. How had this voice managed to casually use fog magic if it was only part of his head? “Well it’s largely about spreading your mana around an area with a uniform distribution, and then masking and altering it into the shape of opaque gasses. On the other hand, it’s also largely due to my skill in obfuscation and my ability to hide the inconvenient truth, even when it’s in plain sight” the mystical voice explained, as if that was remotely close to answering Constant’s question. He continued though, only giving the minimum information necessary to avoid argumentation. “Suffice to say, this isn’t my only trick… I’m going to get you out of here safely! Trust me!” The trust that Constant felt was pretty minimal. He didn’t even know what this voice was, and couldn’t wrap his head around what its arrival ultimately meant for him. You only ever really heard one type of story about powerful voices communicating with poor disenfranchised people in this world. Given its lack of introduction, it only made sense to assume that this being was not any sort of god, but given the lack of any other feasible alternatives, maybe it was a divine being. “Sure. Whatever. For the sake of simplicity, let's say that I am.” Of course, to say the least, gods themselves often couldn’t be trusted either. Consider Kriegott, their society’s current God of War and the entity responsible for… “My god, there's no pleasing you, is there… Look: you have somewhere to be, don't you? If we don't escape soon, the warden will start to question where you are and we’ll be searched for. We can clear up this entire question about what I am and whether you want to stick with me long term later, can't we?” It was true. They’d need to hurry, but now was definitely the wrong time to escape. “What is it now? We have a solid initial plan, don't we? You trust me, right? I have answers for what to do once we get out as well. But we really need to go before people start to get suspicious.” But the problem was, if a worker like Constant made their escape before dropping their cargo off, then what exactly were they supposed to do with the huge bag full of rotting garbage they were carrying around? A giant pile of evidence to be abandoned in the middle of the path, way too large to sneak out or to hide anywhere on the flat surface that was Constant’s hauling route. A hauler could only hope to make a break after he dropped his cargo off, while his bag was empty and while it could be made to hide under his shirt or within his pocket. Anyone could tell you that. “Uh… Ok. Yeah. Yeah; fine.” the probable god said, “But right after dropping off our cargo here, we’re going right out, ok? If we delay this for any longer people might start to notice something different about you.” Constant agreed, and with a newfound sense of energy and purpose, he started to sprint forward, towards the shape of the looming free skys which marked out his best life. … Constant was in pain. “Oh; don't worry! We should be almost out…” Constant was in serious pain. “Well you can still walk, right? The punishment spell they just used on you doesn’t cause you any bodily harm, right? I was paying attention. It only creates the sensation of pain within your body, made to stimulate your pavlovian response and discourage you from defying orders. It’s not like anything could be broken or sore, just from that.” Constant didn’t know. Maybe his body wasn’t literally dying after that round of severe punishment he got for being five minutes late to the drop off point, but it certainly felt like he was, and frankly, it was taking all of his focus just to keep his feet from falling out from under him at this point. “*Sigh*. This is why I didn’t want you to go back. If I used my abilities, I’d be able to hide you pretty effectively, even from pursuers, but if you can't even walk any more without noisily wincing, there's not much I can do about it. Which was really dumb. It seemed that this voice of his was severely underestimating their city's current dictatorship and the sort of pursuers that might be called to come after them once they noticed his escape. Many had tried to escape before, but historically, merely having a god in your corner was never going to be enough to defy the might of the great city of Arcane Umbra. An article in the paper from some months ago came to mind. There had been pictures of recently caught deserters, hung up for execution, long before Constant had ever been sent to the camps. The new government had been so gleefully proud to broadcast how many people they had caught trying to run away, how powerful and capable these people had been, and the numerous methods which the Bureaus of Pursuit would use to catch them. This mysterious voice in my head hadn’t seen any of those, right? “Well, I can’t claim to know everything about that, but surely your absence at work would be way more conspicuous than a spare piece of equipment laying around…” On the contrary, he had existed as just another body within that work camp, unnamed and unimportant. If Constant didn’t show up to the drop off point in a timely manner, the wardens would assume that he was having trouble, or slacking off, or had been pulled over at the pickup point and had been harassed. Rather than searching aimlessly through the thick fog, they would’ve just waited for him to reappear again and punished him then, but abandoned equipment was much easier to track and stumble over. That was the sort of thing he’d actually seen reported. If a fully loaded abandoned bag was found without his corpse attached to it, they would be tracking his scent, his trail, and his mana within minutes. “What? So your fellow haulers would’ve ratted on you?” the voice asked, apparently not realizing that they had ratted on others and had gotten awarded for it. “Do you seriously doubt their basic sense of comradery?” the voice continued, apparently not realizing that they had never once spoken to him. “Have you seriously never felt any sort of comradery with them?” It asked, as if it felt ashamed by Constant’s justified caution for the people whom he had never properly interacted with, many of whom wore the same military suits of the new regime, and thus worshiped Kriegott, the new god of war. “I’ve got to ask, was there seriously nobody who you tried to trust?” Whatever the case, now that the incline of the ground was starting to go downhill, Constant couldn’t help but wonder if they had passed the soldier’s perimeter detection range yet, and could thus release the incredibly dense layer of fog that the voice had surrounded him with. “Not yet, and please don’t change the topic. This is incredibly important. Probably more so than escaping in the first place. Putting aside the few haulers you saw in the camp who also had military uniforms, why did you never actually try to befriend or trust anyone!?” ‘What good would it even do!’ Constant thought, red-faced and practically yelling into his mind. What did it matter that he had never relied on anyone to keep his discontent secret and his hatred disguised?! What did it matter that he had no friends to eventually betray him or acquaintances to pick on him and extort him for whatever they thought they could get away with?! To be frank, even if such a trusted soul did exist in the camp, he wouldn’t want to bother them with the burden of that knowledge anyway! “Well for one, one of those people might have been capable of helping you in the same way that I did…” The voice said, though Constant felt that was kind of ridiculous. “I’m serious: fog manipulation is not some sort of rare and exclusive ability. It comes naturally to people. Statistically speaking, several of your fellow haulers in your worksite must have once learned it.” But realistically speaking, if someone had the ability to do some magic as advanced as fog-manipulation, they wouldn’t have been sent to such a low security camp in the first place. “It’s not like it’s easy to check whether someone is capable of such a thing…” *But realistically speaking, someone with an ability like fog magic would’ve found no use in me as a companion anyway and would’ve already left. “Think about it this way. Would you have left without the push I gave you? Even if you had the innate capability?” And wasn’t that a point. Embarrassingly, Constant probably wouldn’t have. What a confusingly inept state of things for the captors who had otherwise seemed so imposing just a short while ago. In the end, if that was true, it seemed like the structure of their workcamp must’ve logically maintained itself mainly through fear and it seemed as if Constant had hardly known anything after all. And that confusion applied to all things. At this point, rather than figuring out the nature of the voice within his head, Constant wondered if he would ever even learn the voice’s name… “You wouldn’t want to know exactly what I am. You wouldn’t like the details.” the voice confessed as Constant sank deeper into the fog rolling down the hill. “But if you want a name, you can call me Prometheus, and for me it’s a matter of pride and gratitude: I'll definitely get you to where you want to go. In fact,” Prometheus intoned, dispelling the fog that covered them in a dramatic flourish, “I think we’re out.” -
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Algonkian Retreats and Workshops 2023 - Assignments
Story Statement: Confined to a pointless labor camp in the fascist apocalyptic city-state of Arcane Umbra, Constant desperately desires to see the sky once again, and one day, upon discovering a mysterious voice in his head, he begins to believe that it might be possible. In pursuit of his goals, it seems as if Constant might have to escape or even overcome his fascist government, but if Constant really wants to come to terms with his desires, and what exactly they mean for his place in the world, the only truly effective method is to change his perspective. Antagonist Forces: The most obvious outward antagonistic force within the novel is the city-state’s government, a power which has almost entirely been overtaken by its military. Constant thinks that it has its priorities backwards, focusing too highly on projecting the image of power, endangering its own citizens with its incompetence. In the government’s eyes, Constant’s first crime was living outside of the easily protected and monitored inner city, and his lack of patriotism towards them is his second crime, for which he’s been sent to an unpaid work camp to keep him occupied and out of trouble. Escaping being his third strike, Constant spends most of the novel fearing the government, and due to his innate misunderstanding of it and its motives, the government ends up feeling all the more terrifying as an antagonistic force to him. In contrast to the government, the results of its actions in the form of the Panathema box monsters, cut a more classically evil figure, inspired by the myth of Pandora. And yet most visible in the novel is the antagonistic force of Constant’s own defeated outlook, which would decry any attempted liberation as useless. Title Ideas: An Attempted Liberation of the Soul Constant Prometheus Falling Empyrean Fire Comparisons: In tone, I’d say that the primary source of inspiration for my novel was the world of 1984 by George Orwell. And indeed, the city of Arcane Umbra deliberately comes off as a sort of Orwellian Fantasy location, what with the authoritarian militaristic government, the destruction of nature, the degradation of infrastructure, the lack of sustainability, and the bleak sense of political hope for the future. My novel’s government may lack in comparative subtlety and all-encompassing sight, but as reality can prove, these aren’t strictly necessary for a regime. Another difference with 1984 is the addition of a tone-morphing audience representative in the form of Prometheus who would encourage the drive for self-determination and adventure from within the main character’s head. In terms of character concept, Prometheus is a bit similar to Bartimaeus from the Bartimaeus trilogy. Looking back, the origin for him probably came from a mangled idea for a similar companion, (hopefully) sharing Bartimaeus’s satirical edge despite being less physically present and more even benevolent. Conflict/Core Wound statement: After hearing a voice in his head urging him to escape, a young man must break away from his labor camp and find it within himself to hope for the future, even when he’s lost faith in the use of trying to actively improve his life. Inner/secondary Conflicts: Throughout most of the first act of the story, Constant holds inner conflict for exactly how much he should trust the voice in his head; an unknown and worryingly naive force which seems as though it’s trying to help him. His main secondary conflict is largely in argument with this voice on what exactly he should be doing in response to the various dangers they face. Constant’s stance on violence, and the power with which to use it, is also a source of inner conflict for him. His mother’s voice and her peaceful ideals often getting tested by the terrifying reality of the world he finds himself in and the goal he finds himself trying to accomplish. There is more than one secondary villain who must be overcome with conflict in a man-vs-nature sort of setting. And of course, there is Constant’s inner struggle against his core wound: the lack of trust he places in his own ability to actively improve things. Setting: Constant’s world is a world of magic and potential and has been from the very beginning right up through the ages to this pseudo-modern day. Through the power of a soul and the force of a trained personality, all types of different people can utilize magic for some form of powerful effect: from spontaneously pulling clean drinking water out of the air, to growing trees out so fast that they seem to attack you, to conjuring a barrier around a city with such thorough application that not even a soul could escape. Around the world, the development of magic is being treated just as any other sort of science, though for more ease of access, the prevalence of religion and the blessings of “Gods” who can perform such miracles for you, are even more common. Unfortunately, Constant’s immediate surrounding region, the city-state of Arcane Umbra, seems as if it’s gradually turning into a hellscape through mismanagement, bad decisions, and a pseudo fascist government hell-bent on maintaining the legitimacy of its own power. The city’s democracy has been almost completely eroded away. Freedom of religion is on the decline with the government sanctioning a new and violent god of war. The peace and high standing it used to have in the world have been brought low by the recent war and many of its suburbs have been bombed to rubble. It’s legacy of ancient evils have been pried open in a disastrous political stunt, releasing both monsters and smog. Revolutionary fervor stirs in the sewers and the enormous magical barrier that should be keeping all of their enemies out is instead keeping all of these problems in. Now, stuck in a fog of distrust and uncertainly, confined to a purposeless workcamp, and walking the ruins of his once great city, our main character Constant can only find a sense of hope and motivation through urging of a mysterious voice in his head named Prometheus, who straddles the line between a god and a monster but manages at least, to be a friend. -
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Links: Knitting Scandals, Parody Songs, & More
It’s our first Wednesday Links of June! Happy Pride everybody! Both my partner and I are queer people, so we’re trying to nail down our Pride plans. We’re very torn between going to a Pride celebration and seeing a coworker’s queer colorguard performance in a parade or honestly, being introverts and celebrating amongst ourselves in front of our AC unit. Warm temps in New England aren’t the kindest when you live on the second and third floors and don’t have central air conditioning. Do any of you have Pride plans? … Sarina Bowen, along with a large collection of other authors, has contributed to a queer anthology for Pride month, with proceeds supporting various LGBTQIA+ causes. … Those who are entrenched in the knitting community may have already heard the news, but a knitting events organizer unexpectedly closed their business and has left many small business owner and hobbyists in a financial bind. … It’s Pride month and my heart goes out to all the queer people in places passing legislation that directly threatens their lives. I loved this essay from Florida author, Kristen Arnett, about loving a place that doesn’t seem to love you back. … 500 Queer Scientists is a great resource for finding or networking with queer people in STEM, whether you want to find a role model for yourself or a young one in your life, or if you’re trying to find a speaker for an engagement. … I shared this on the SBTB Discord (if you’re a member of the Patreon, you get access to this awesome hangout space!), but I love this parody of “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” … 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 -
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The Action of Love: A Conversation between Charif Shanahan and Morgan Parker
Charif Shanahan and Morgan Parker. Photographs by Rachel Eliza Griffiths. I read Charif Shanahan’s Trace Evidence two ways: first as a new work by a friend, written through and about what I know to have been some of his most harrowing years, during which he recovered from a near-fatal bus accident in Morocco, and also as the second collection of a phenomenal early-career poet with a dangerously skilled command of craft. I read it as an intimate reader, and as a distant one, and both times, I experienced a sense of introduction. When we talked on Zoom, Charif told me the book “feels like a birth,” and that feeling of birth, or rebirth, permeates Trace Evidence, as a deepening and an extension of the questions in Shanahan’s first collection, and as an announcement of self and purpose that feels brand new. —Morgan Parker PARKER I love the last line of “Trace Evidence,” the book’s titular poem: “For us here now I will be the first of our line.” It’s such an exhilarating sentence. Can you tell me about that idea of deciding to be a beginning? SHANAHAN It is only we who get to tell others who we are, even when—and perhaps especially when—we are inside a system that empowers those around us to tell us who we are. Put another way, choice and agency are questions I’m thinking about in this book. I think the agency here, inside that pronouncement, is in moving deeply into what had already been waiting for me. One could call it an acceptance, but it required first a clearing of the fog such that I could see this reality and not exactly choose it, but choose to name it and step into it and inhabit it. One of the things you and I have talked about a lot is how layered my family story is as regards race. It wasn’t just white parent, Black parent; it wasn’t just light-skinned, dark-skinned; it wasn’t just American Blackness, non-American Blackness; it was all these things at once. That was part of what was so challenging while growing up. But it’s also the beauty of how my family holds race. For me to be able to say that it is beautiful is, I think, a mark of tremendous evolution and growth. PARKER There’s so much in your first book and in Trace Evidence about passing publicly—passing to white people and passing to Black people. But underlying that is the passing or not-passing that you have done in your family. Can you tell me a little more about those family dynamics? SHANAHAN Well, as you know, I was born to an Irish-American father and a Moroccan mother. In simplistic terms, we’re a mixed, Black-white family. However, for many reasons to do with the layers of empire in the North of Africa, my mother identities as an Arab, and not as African or Black, though she is perceived as both. And so my brothers and I—and I should speak for myself … I wasn’t exactly caught between “whiteness” and “Blackness,” growing up, but between whiteness and a Blackness that didn’t recognize itself as such. Many of the poems emerge from that dissonance, and I think it’s important to be vocal about that racialized experience, despite the privilege I possess. Privilege is where the narrative ends for a lot of people. People might say, “You’re light enough to pass, so what are you talking about?” But I want to put forward a narrative like that in Trace Evidence because racialized experience is so much more complicated than we seem to think. If you have a body, you are racialized. Everybody is having a racialized experience. There are trends within those experiences, of course. Primary narratives. And if Black people are being tried and killed in the street, that obviously needs our urgent examination and action. But I think we can most effectively reckon with race if as many narratives are on the table as possible. Take, for example, the racial violence I’ve experienced in my life. Folks might think, “Who’s going to profile you? What kind of violence are you experiencing?” But it’s a disservice to the complexity of the conversation to assume that violence is only, or even primarily, bodily, or that it comes only when race is optically perceived. PARKER So are we talking about racial individuality? The importance of the individual experience within what is usually regarded as collective, categorical experience? SHANAHAN Yes—and about how an individual’s pathology is shaped around race, not only in terms of implicit bias and the associations one is conditioned into believing, but also in terms of what one recognizes as belonging within a racial category in the first place. I was Zooming with a white mentor of mine whom I help with her poems—she’s a critic by training and is writing poems about her whiteness and very movingly working at decolonizing her mind, at more than seventy. It’s amazing to witness. I’m honored. It’s holy. I raised with her one day the fact that race has no basis in biological or scientific fact, even though it firstly is about the body and the way that the body presents. As I put language to this point, Morgan, I am acutely aware of you. While I think of us as two Black people, it’s also true that each of us is having very different racialized experiences, due not only to phenotype, but to other aspects of embodiment and selfhood, and I’m sensitive to the differences … But what I had wanted to explore with my mentor is the idea that we are taught to see in a way that is particular to our cultural context, such that it’s possible for somebody to look at me and say, “That is a Black man, period” and for somebody else to look at me and see something else. Of course, I am who I am, to myself, in every room I enter, so I have had to learn how to hold both mes at once—who I know myself to be and the self I become in another’s imagination. PARKER Can you tell me about how you use metaphor in this book? How do you think it connects with the content? SHANAHAN The way I think about metaphor, about figuration in general, is less about equation than about seeing how far apart the two things can be while still having a tether, still having some connective tissue. At its most compressed, narrative can function as metaphor. The opening poem, “Colonialism,” for example, comes from memory, and its narrative is unresolved. It ends with the mother’s question—“Elesh, mon fils? Why // Would you do that to me?—”—which might appear to be the exact question a mother would ask in that situation, but because the title demands that you read the scene in relationship to, or within, a colonial or a postcolonial context, the question deepens. The narrative becomes a metaphor, a conceit even. PARKER I would also point to the poem “In the Basement of Sears & Roebuck When for the First Time I Pulled My Hand from Her Hand and Fled,” where the metaphor doesn’t appear on the line level but on the poem level. It’s the narrative. The child running away from his mother and hiding, as that poem’s literal scene, is emblematic of the adult-child’s individuation around core identity questions—which I think has to do with how philosophical your poetic voice is. How does your intellectual self jut up against your experience, when you write a poem? SHANAHAN What I’m trying to do is identify, distill, and reimagine experiences that may represent a particular set of existential or social circumstances so as to foreground the speaker’s interiority in a way that is inseparable from those circumstances. And I’m writing as a way to work against our separateness, by demonstrating the effects of that separateness. I believe the lyric poem can take you to languagelessness—that, ideally, is where it would leave you—and that we can be unified in or even by that “silence.” The paradox of the lyric poem is that the medium is language or breath, but it takes you to a place that we can’t exactly language. I believe that in my bones. PARKER Is that state bodiless? SHANAHAN It’s egoless. In the encounter of the poem and the reader, who brings their own history and imagination to the text, a connection is formed. The reader plugs into an experience that is born out of a subjectivity that is not their own, which might be completely different from what they know. And yet, if the poem does its work and takes you to that place where you are without language but inside feeling, then there’s some kind of merging or bridging that’s happened. That feels important to me, both as a poet and as a reader of poetry. I look for poems that can give me, or take me to, that experience. It’s like that Anne Sexton poem that we’ve talked about … PARKER “The Truth the Dead Know”? SHANAHAN Yes! There’s a phrase— PARKER “Gone, I say!” I can’t believe I don’t have that tattooed yet. SHANAHAN That’s the next one. But there’s another line in that poem, “and when we touch …” PARKER “… we enter touch entirely.” SHANAHAN Exactly. That’s what happens, right? Or can. Entering your feeling, your experience—I am entering yours, and then we are there together as one somehow. And it’s brief, it’s fleeting. Then we walk away from the poem and return to our ego and our self and our life—to the dishes, or the emails. For me, this experience is powerful, but particularly because the subjects that I’m exploring exist to divide. The very function of race was to separate, to classify, to hierarchize in the service of capital—I don’t mean to be reductive, but it all depended on a compartmentalization of the species, right? So how can poems, especially poems that emerge from our separateness, manage to bring us back to that sense of connectivity and oneness? That they can and do seems miraculous to me. PARKER Do you see that as part of a purpose of not just your poems but your life? SHANAHAN I do believe that talking about these nuanced dimensions of race is part of my life purpose. At least that’s what I believe right now. I don’t mean to say that no one else is doing that, but it’s part of what I can do in this life, in this body. I’m working on a nonfiction book to extend the work that I’m doing in the poems, through prose, with hopes of reaching a wider audience. Thinking about purpose, there’s a poem in the book, “Thirty-Fifth Year”—the one that starts, “Dread remains. I keep looking / for a thing I can’t name, though I try / ‘purpose,’ ‘meaning,’ ‘presence.’” Purpose is the first item on that list. What else are you going to do with all this but try to make it meaningful by making it known to people outside of your particular experience? I remember at one of the Cave Canem retreats—during my first year actually, when I was writing some of my first poems about these themes, which went into my first book—I read that poem “Clean Slate.” PARKER I was there. I remember sitting on the bench and feelings were occurring! SHANAHAN Yes! And afterward Toi Derricotte came up to me by the food table. She looked at me plainly and said, “Baby, you were extraordinary.” And I was like, “Thank you, Toi. Oh my God, that means so much!” Then she gets real, Toi. She turns into the Oracle, takes my hand, leans in and says, “And what else are you going to do with all that pain, baby? What else are you going to do with all that pain?” And walked away. And I was so open and porous and unapologetic about my healing and where I was in my life that I fully received her words. Even as the work was never exclusively motivated by pain and isn’t at all anymore. PARKER Thinking about Toi and our Cave Canem brethren and sistren, a lot of what we shared was, “I already have this pain. Let me show it to you so that maybe you can see yours in a different kind of way.” And that, especially in the context of race in the U.S. and what it has done to us interpersonally, is all we can do. You know what I mean? SHANAHAN I do. I will never forget the opening circle that first time I was at the Cave Canem retreat with you. Everybody was going around, introducing themselves, and when you introduced yourself, you said, “I’m just trying to get out from under.” Twice. And that stayed with me because what you were saying—or what I heard—was, This poetry thing, this practice, is part of something larger, part of a healing that is pursued and expressed, holistically, in different avenues of my life. And this is just one piece. PARKER Generally, that is what it is—so let’s find the avenues in which to do that. No one can say more than me about how only therapy is therapy. I haven’t written a poem in a while, but I’m doubling up on the therapy. The idea of writing saving you as you’re going through something I don’t believe in at all. Even though Trace Evidence is such an accomplishment of so much physical and intellectual and spiritual struggle and pain, I don’t think that you would say that the writing of these poems was what got you through, would you? SHANAHAN No. You know what got me through? Love. And love is the thing I believe I’m trying to touch, walk us around, in my poems. Love in various expressions. Maternal love. Love of self. Love of community. Love of culture. Even country, potentially, in the case of the mother figure, who has fidelity to her country of origin. Love got me through that bus accident, the surgeries, the months of convalescence. It was astounding to see: the way that Black poets from the Cave Canem community all over the globe rallied around me; the way that my ex-partner, Nik, and his mom and friends in Zurich took turns visiting me in the hospital; the way that my buddy, Alan, flew his ass from Brooklyn to Zurich to hold my hand at the fucking hospital bed. That. It’s easy to say these are poems of identity. But for me, what’s inside that—and it’s related to the lyric poem being able to bring us to one another—is that love is the cost. The cost of our separateness is the loss of love. PARKER It’s striking that all this was born out of incredible trauma. SHANAHAN Yes, the occasion of that rallying around me in love was my nearly dying. But tomorrow’s Monday, and what’s stopping us all from doing that for one another again? What is in the way? In-it-togetherness is a core value for me. And I think it extends from the ways I experienced a kind of psychological exile in early life, as if I were nowhere and no one. There’s that short poem in the first section of the book, called “Exile,” in which I write, “You think I take from you? I do not take from you, I am you.” I couldn’t believe that more powerfully or more deeply. Let me just say one last thing about purpose as it relates to love. When I was on that bus and it lifted onto its two left wheels, and I thought I was at the end of my life … The first thought I had—and this is in the long poem “On the Overnight from Agadir”—the first thought I had was, “My work. I haven’t done my work.” PARKER No flash before your eyes? SHANAHAN None. I was like, wait, my contribution! And maybe that’s love. In the form of books, friendship, mentorship, partnership, ordinary empathy and compassion—all the forms it can take. There is something specific and particular that I have to do here and I haven’t done it yet. PARKER Maybe purpose, then, is the action of love? SHANAHAN I like that a lot. Charif Shanahan is the author of two collections of poetry, most recently Trace Evidence. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and a Fulbright Senior Scholarship to Morocco, he lives in Chicago, where he is Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Northwestern University. Morgan Parker is the author of the young adult novel Who Put This Song On? and the poetry collections Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, and Magical Negro, which won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award. Parker lives in Los Angeles with her dog, Shirley. View the full article -
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Friends to Lovers, Celebrities, & More
A Princess in Theory A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole is $1.99! This is the first book in her Reluctant Royals series and this seems to be a series that just keeps getting better with its books. Many readers loved how Alyssa writes consent, agency, and all sorts of other awesome and empowering things. However, some warn that this book takes several chapters to get into the swing of things. From acclaimed author Alyssa Cole comes the tale of a city Cinderella and her Prince Charming in disguise . . . Between grad school and multiple jobs, Naledi Smith doesn’t have time for fairy tales…or patience for the constant e-mails claiming she’s betrothed to an African prince. Sure. Right. Delete! As a former foster kid, she’s learned that the only things she can depend on are herself and the scientific method, and a silly e-mail won’t convince her otherwise. Prince Thabiso is the sole heir to the throne of Thesolo, shouldering the hopes of his parents and his people. At the top of their list? His marriage. Ever dutiful, he tracks down his missing betrothed. When Naledi mistakes the prince for a pauper, Thabiso can’t resist the chance to experience life—and love—without the burden of his crown. The chemistry between them is instant and irresistible, and flirty friendship quickly evolves into passionate nights. But when the truth is revealed, can a princess in theory become a princess ever after? Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Gouda Friends Gouda Friends by Cathy Yardley is $1.99 at Amazon! If you’ve listed to literally any podcast episode I’ve been on with Sarah, you probably know I love cheese and I’m just tickled by the heroine’s dedication to dairy. This seems like a fluffy, small town romance that’s light on angst. Two high school BFFs reunite and endeavor to fix each other’s lives in this geeky romance from the author of Love, Comment, Subscribe. Tam Doan dumped her boyfriend after he threw away her gourmet cheese. Sure, it’s a little more complicated than that, but the point is, he had it coming. Newly single and unemployed, Tam calls up her best friend from high school and utters the emergency code word—goldfish. Next thing she knows, she’s on a plane back home. Josh O’Malley was a troubled, unconfident teenager. Now he’s the successful owner of a multimillion-dollar ghost kitchen. Tam, his high school BFF and fellow member of the Nerd Herd friend group, was instrumental in building his self-esteem. When she calls him out of the blue, he jumps at the chance to return the favor. Josh and Tam immediately get to work fixing her life—but again, it’s complicated. Their close friendship was always a lifeline between them; a blooming romance might confuse things. Still, at least one thing is for certain: their chemistry is un-brie-lievable. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. The View Was Exhausting The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta $2.99! I mentioned this one on a previous Get Rec’d for hardcover romance readers, though I believe it’s coming out in paperback soon. Lots of tropes here – fake dating, celebrities, and friends to lovers. Daisy Jones and the Six meets Crazy Rich Asians in this escapist, swoon-worthy debut novel of a famous actress embroiled in a fake tabloid romance, confronting the challenges of being a woman of color in Hollywood and the notion that she might actually be in love. Faking a love story is a whole lot easier than being in love . . . The world can see that international A-list actress Whitman (“Win”) Tagore and jet-setting playboy Leo Milanowski are made for each other. Their kisses start Twitter trends and their fights break the internet. From red carpet appearances to Met Gala mishaps, their on-again, off-again romance has titillated the public and the press for almost a decade. But it’s all a lie. As a woman of color, Win knows the Hollywood deck is stacked against her, so she’s perfected the art of controlling her public persona. Whenever she nears scandal, she calls in Leo, with his endearingly reckless attitude, for a staged date. Each public display of affection shifts the headlines back in Win’s favor, and Leo uses the good press to draw attention away from his dysfunctional family. But pretending to be in a passionate romance can only lead to one thing . . . trouble. So instead they settle for friendship, with a side of sky-rocketing chemistry. Except this time, on the French Riviera, something is off. A shocking secret in Leo’s past sets Win’s personal and professional lives on a catastrophic collision course. Behind the scenes of their yacht-trips and PDA, the world’s favorite couple is at each other’s throats. Now they must finally confront the many truths and lies of their relationship, and Win is forced to consider what is more important: a rising career, or a risky shot at real love? THE VIEW WAS EXHAUSTING is a funny, whip-smart modern love story set against the backdrop of exotic locales and the realities of being a woman of color in a world run by men. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Digging Up Love Digging Up Love by Chandra Blumberg is $1.99 at Amazon! This looks like a cute romance between a baker and a paleontologist. Have you read this one? It came out last year. From debut author Chandra Blumberg comes a playful, heartfelt romance about chasing your dreams and finding love in the process. Alisha Blake works her magic in the kitchen, creating delectable desserts for her grandfather’s restaurant in rural Illinois. Though Alisha relishes the close relationship she has with her family, she can’t help but dream about opening a cookie shop in Chicago. She may be a small-town baker, but Alisha has big ambitions. Then a dinosaur bone turns up in her grandparents’ backyard. When paleontologist Quentin Harris arrives to see the discovery for himself, he’s hoping that the fossil will distract him from a recent painful breakup. Instead, he finds Alisha—and sparks fly. The big-city academic and the hometown baker seem destined for a happily ever after. But Alisha is scared to fall in love. And Quentin’s trying to make a name for himself in a competitive field, which gets even more complicated when the press shows up at the dig site. For love to prevail, the two may have to put old bones aside—and focus on the future. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. View the full article -
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On the Literary Roots of Die Hard
Die Hard had started with a man named Roderick going to see a movie in 1975. Novelist Roderick Thorp, a burly, bald former private investigator best known for his novel The Detective, bought a ticket for The Towering Inferno, sat through 165 minutes of Paul Newman and Steve McQueen trying to save a large ensemble cast of tanned celebrities, and then went home and had a horrific nightmare. Just as the image of a Terminator rising from flames first came to James Cameron in a bad dream, so Thorpe that night imagined a lone figure trapped in a high-rise, fleeing men with guns. He expanded the image into a 1979 sequel to The Detective, Nothing Lasts Forever, in which a retired NYPD officer named Joe Leland has a very bad Christmas Eve inside the forty-story headquarters of a company called Klaxon Oil. After battling ten invading German terrorists, he drops their leader, Anton Gruber, out of a window, though his daughter dies in the process, too. It got good reviews, with the Miami Herald even anticipating the inevitable big-screen adaptation (“Nothing Lasts Forever is truly a one-man show that would require an actor of Sinatra’s stature to do it justice”) and saluting the cleanness of its high concept (“The building is sealed off; the gang is in an impregnable position, except for Leland, the one-man army, who hides on the top floors above them”). Yet the book would bounce around Hollywood for most of a decade without drawing much interest. Finally a young executive named Lloyd Levin, who worked for Lawrence Gordon, discovered and began championing it. Gordon brought in screen-writer Jeb Stuart. And over two and a half months, Stuart turned Thorpe’s dense first-person prose, which featured its hero monologuing at length on CB radio and offering long sections of exposition about Klaxon Oil’s sideline in arms dealing, into a screenplay. “I worked with what Bruce was,” says McTiernan. “We had to work out: what are the circumstances in which you can like this man?” Much changed, starting with the title. Where Nothing Lasts Forever conjured up images of a James Bond movie or Rock Hudson melodrama, Die Hard left little doubt as to what to expect. At John McTiernan’s behest, the ten terrorists became ten thieves masquerading as terrorists; it would allow them to shake off the novel’s fug of solemnity and make it a caper instead. The earnest dialogue and flat supporting characters became similarly zesty, even more so once Steven de Souza was brought in for a pass. And then there was the hero, no longer Joe Leland but John McClane (it had been “John Ford” in early drafts, after Stuart saw a mural of the Westerns director on the Fox lot). Stuart had already made him younger than his sixty-year old literary equivalent, but originally envisioned him as suave and sophisticated, with a slick sports coat. This would have worked for Richard Gere, but once the un-suave Bruce Willis was official, McClane was retooled all over again. “I worked with what Bruce was,” says McTiernan. “We had to work out: what are the circumstances in which you can like this man?” Overhauling the script, they leaned into Willis’s working-class roots—in his pre-acting days he had been a truck driver and a security guard at a nuclear power plant—and his man-of-the-people charm, honed while working as a bartender in New York, famous for his bone-dry martinis and signature cocktail, Honey I’m Home (the ingredients for which Willis has never divulged). McClane would now begin the movie by declining an invitation to sit in the back of a limousine, getting in the front with the driver instead. He wears a white A-shirt under his flannel shirt, like a stevedore. And beneath the bravado, the grins, the “Yippee-ki-yay, mother-fucker,” is a guy who’s scared shitless. McTiernan, who saw Die Hard as akin to William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (albeit with fewer fairies and more C- 4), envisioned McClane as a wounded soul. “The secret is that he doesn’t like himself,” the director says. “He thinks he’s a loser. His wife thinks he’s a loser. And he’s just doing the best he can. He’s being a smartass to rise above the pain. And Bruce being a smartass in that circumstance becomes an act of heroism. The audience can like him for it.” Adds de Souza: “Vulnerability became a feature, not a bug.” And as the hero changed, so did the villain. A generic heavy was transformed into the polar opposite of a beat cop: designer suit, superior sneer, citations from Plutarch (“Benefits of a classical education”). Hans Gruber—Anton no more—was becoming an action-movie equivalent of the arrogant, expensively dressed bankers to whom Willis once served martinis. Albeit, thanks to the casting of Alan Rickman and the citrus-sharp dialogue, Gruber was a villain so fun that you’d actually want him to walk away with $640 million in bearer bonds, if it weren’t for the guy in the A shirt. “It’s like that cartoon about the mouse looking at the eagle and giving him the finger,” McTiernan says, summing up the two opposing forces. And on November 2, 1987, the mouse and the eagle entered Nakatomi Plaza for the first time. __________________________ Excerpted from THE LAST ACTION HEROES by Nick de Semlyen Copyright © 2023 by Nick de Semlyen. Excerpted by permission of Crown. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. View the full article -
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EYES GUTS THROAT BONES by Moïra Fowley (BOOK REVIEW)
Moïra Fowley is the author of three critically acclaimed YA novels, and a part-time witch. She is half-Irish, half-French, and lives in Dublin. Moïra has a Masters in Popular Literature from Trinity College Dublin and wrote half a PhD on teenage vampires in young adult fiction before leaving academia when her first book sold and her first baby was born in the space of a few months. Since then, she has spent her time writing queer magic realism for young adults, raising two witch babies, and reading tarot. What does the end of the world look like? We all think about this – we all have our own ideas. From the great floods that echo biblical stories to atomic bombs and zombie outbreaks, we all think ‘what would I do?’ and ‘what would it look like?’ In this lingering and uncanny collection, Fowley constructs some beautifully bizarre scenarios, feeding off our darkest impulses and desires, forcing us to confront the end of the world as we know it. ‘Its not too late, Melissa answered. Women have always had children at the end of the world’ I have to say, Fowley knows her audience. Yes, the cover is pretty. Floral and feminine, the perfect piece for that ‘bookstagram’ feel – but when I walked into Waterstones in Liverpool the last thing I expected was to see a giant poster: ‘HER FACE ITCHES, DEEP FRISSON AT HER HAIR-LINE, TINGLE OF BURN ALONG HER JAW. SHE HOOKS HER NAILS RIGHT IN, DIGS UP AND UNDER, SHUDDERING LIKE SHE’S COMING, BREATHS FAST AND HARD. SHE GIVES ONE OF THOSE BELLYGROANS, FINGERS, WORKING FASTER, DEEPER IN UNDER THE SKIN. HER WHOLE FACE PEELS OFF AND IT’S LIKE A BENEDICTON.’ Suffice it to say, I immediately purchased a copy of Eyes, Guts, Throat, Bones with absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into. Fowley’s collection is difficult to define by genre, but I would categorise the stories under: Horror, Body Horror, Queer Fiction, Weird Fiction, Speculative Fiction, dystopia (and probably more). Lena Taylor (Waterstones) points out that Fowley’s collection starts with an ‘evocative banger,’ then begins introducing themes such as ‘not being listened to.’ Whilst the colloquial ‘banger’ might not seem appropriate – I insist that it is. Each story slaps, bangs, kills and fucks you in a slightly different way from a different angle. You become seduced but repulsed, amused but terrified and continuously satisfied, yet hungry for more. ‘There is always music playing and people talking, shouting, dancing, living, at all hours of the day and night. It used to be Adeline’s favourite thing about living there. The monster Doesn’t like it.’ Fowley introduces you to the monster in the mirror, the Demogorgon in your dreams and the witch that whispers in the wind. Sorry to warn you, but that the monster Fowley introduces you to, is you. Each story handles a different perspective on the end of the world, with twists and turns that you might not expect. From the face steeling activities of one drifting girl, to a ‘haunted’ mound of Earth or flowers falling from the sky when two girls fall in love, Fowley does more than ask ‘what if?’ Fowley confronts issues concerning ideological constructs surrounding Gender, love, Morality and identity. She screams ‘fuck off’ at ideological expectations and deconstructs performative heteronormativity. With her wildly delicious stories, Fowley makes you question the world, but you might not like the answers. ‘Night time was the for noises they could never dare to make in the day’ One of my favourite stories, is called ‘The Summoning,’ in which ‘Somebody. Not Katie,’ summons an interdimensional demon from a hell world. By accident. And that demon just happens to be ‘Girl Shaped.’ ‘Kind of. Hot-girl shaped.’ Not Katie (but definitely Katie) accidently summons the demon, at her college. It seems Katie is not the most popular student and has suffered some adversity from her shallow classmates. The Hot Demon offers to help Katie, and it ends in an absolute bloodbath. Whilst you might think – wow that escalated quickly – yes, it does. However, it reminded me of times when one might fantasise about seeking revenge on those who have upset you and what that revenge might look like (not that I have imagined summoning a demon, but the sentiment remains the same). ‘Only corpses stay’ Another great story is the ‘interval’ of the collection, called ‘Sad Straight Sex at the End of The World,’ Which is EXACTLY as vanilla and mundane as the title might suggest – but it is outrageously brilliant. Fowley has created a collection like nothing I have ever read. I half expected something akin to Lucie McKnight Hardy’s ‘Dead Relatives,’ and whilst if you enjoyed Hardy’s collection, I imagine you will enjoy Fowley’s, I do not feel they are cut from the same cloth. Fowley’s collection made me feel human, I haven’t decided it that is a good thing yet. I strongly recommend you read Fowley’s work, let your Eyes glide over the words, let your Guts churn with unease, leave your Throat exposed and let your Bones weaken as she walks you home, hand in hand, ready to introduce you to the monster you keep yourself hidden from. Yourself. Eyes Guts Throat Bones is available now from Orion Publishing, order your copy HERE The post EYES GUTS THROAT BONES by Moïra Fowley (BOOK REVIEW) appeared first on The Fantasy Hive. View the full article -
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Connection Part III: Loss, Home, Hope
When stories reach across time and still speak to us, something important is happening. We are connecting. No matter how different the era, place or events are from our own we nevertheless recognize that the story that we’re reading is our story too. It is the story of our fears, hopes and dreams. It’s the story of us. As we’ve discussed in the first two parts of this series, simply put the universal element that creates story timelessness is human experience. That’s what makes the connection. Whether it is a princess locked in a castle tower, a social climbing bootlegger trying to win a woman above his station, or an airman trapped in a war impossible to escape, we see ourselves. We get it. In one way or another, we’ve been there. Or might be. Or fear to be. Or hope to be. That’s true whether the intent of a story is high adventure or literary realism. Heightened events and ineluctable authenticity are flip sides of the same coin. They are the context for the melting and melding of ourselves and the story that we’re reading. We project ourselves into protagonists; protagonists are our mirror. They are whom we dread, whom we wish to be, and whom we really are. Play it any way that you like, but if we your readers are going to connect then in some way, heightened or humble, we will have to discover ourselves in your story. Genre stories enact our experience of mystery, romance, adventure, fear and journey. Literary fiction captures our living in ways beautiful, breathtaking, sad and splendid. Both purposes can fuse—as I discuss at length in Writing 21st Century Fiction—but neither is by itself what causes connection. The human experience that I’m talking about is independent of the type of story that you’re writing. Certain experiences are common to us all and that is because they are emotional. We’ve all been challenged. We’ve all be disappointed. We’ve all been unfairly judged. We’ve all been overjoyed. There are hundreds—thousands—of specific ways in which universal human experience can be conjured. That is why so many different kinds of story can connect. However, there are a couple of experiences that are utterly fundamental to human existence and yet in manuscripts I run across them only rarely. What I’m talking about are experiences that are intangible and yet real. They are sensations: of a state, of a place, and of a longing. Loss. Home. Hope. We all go through one, have a sense of the other, and cannot live without the third. We may avoid loss, leave home, or be without hope but those conditions are temporary. Loss is inescapable. Home is where we are from and to where we hope to return, perhaps, but more than that it represents safety. Hope is the air that we breathe; without it we are suffocating, if only inside. To create connection for readers, it is worth creating these experiences on the page. But how? Practical Universality I’m not a believer in formulas. Not for writing fiction. However, today I’m going to break my rule and invite you to use three templates. Create three paragraphs. Each is designed to capture one of the intangibles that are our topic today. I’ve presented versions of these templates in recent workshops and the results have been pretty good. So, if you have a few minutes give these a try. First, loss. There are lots of ways to describe grief but one characteristic of that awful feeling is the awareness of what is missing and gone. To get at that, let’s detail not the void but what used to fill it. Start by thinking of a loss—whether of a person or anything else—but focus on the things that were good. Put each into a sentence beginning with the phrase there would be no more… There would be no more days when… There would be no more reminders like… There would be no more anticipation of… There would be no more discoveries such as… There would be no more laughter when… There would be no more comfort from… There would be no more peace because… Then simply name the person or thing: There would be no more X. Finally, add what is left in place of X: There was only Y. Take a little time. String together the details that you’ve come up with which describe what was. End the paragraph with those two simple statements of loss. Have a look. Does the paragraph capture the sensation of loss? Next, home. This time, let’s approach the sensation through the details of what make home what it is—or was. Where is, or once was, home for your protagonist? Fill in the following sentences, using X, Y and Z as things specific to your protagonist’s home: Home is where… (…a happy thing X happens) Home is where… (…a wonderful food Y is prepared) Home is where… (…a caring person X…) (…always does…) (…Y) Home is where… (…protagonist first…) (…did X) (…and Y) (…and Z) Home is where… (…something beautiful X is found) Home is where… (…there is always X) String your sentences together and then conclude your paragraph with one of two capper sentences: Home was still there, but was now so far away. Or, Home was gone for good and would never be there again. Lastly, hope. For this paragraph, too, let’s construct a list using the same device of anaphora. Thinking of your protagonist, what for him, her or they will be the good life and a world that might someday be possible: Someday there would be… (…laughter at X) Someday there would be… (…food tasting like Y) Someday there would be… (…music sounding like Z) Someday we will… (…dress in garments X) Someday we will… (…sing songs of Y) Someday we will… (…believe again in Z) Someday there will be… (…a person X waiting with open arms) Someday there will be… (…a memorial to Y) Someday there will be… (…no more Z) Now, craft your paragraph and finish it with this sentence: That will happen someday, but today is not that day. Okay, take a look. Does that paragraph capture a feeling of hope? Conclusion The paragraphs that I’ve invited you to create may feel intentionally constructed. You may worry that they look mechanical. That’s okay. They don’t have to go into your manuscript. On the other hand, do those paragraphs capture sensations that we all might recognize as part of our human experience? I suspect that they do. If those paragraphs work, it’s probably because of the specifics that you included. Also because of the rhetorical trick that I built into those templates, anaphora. Literary devices have an elevating effect. Language is there to be used and in manuscripts I wish that words were more often used artfully. Loss, home and hope are sensations that come coupled with emotion. They are heart experiences that we all have. They’re not the only ones, of course, but they’re big ones. Universal ones. Used well, they reach across time, places and story types. They say something about all of us. They tell us who we are. They connect. What are primary universal experiences that you value, or that you have discovered in your favorite timeless works of fiction? [url={url}]View the full article[/url] -
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‘Lou Grant’ and The Newspaper Business’s Moment on Primetime TV
The original opening credits of “Lou Grant,” the late-1970s, early 1980s TV series about the newspaper business, are of a particular time but also timeless. The credits montage for the first season shows a bird sitting in a tree, trees being chopped down and turned into newsprint, the reporters and editors of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune gathering news and writing stories, rolled-up newspapers being thrown into puddles and onto roofs and, finally, the newspaper being used to line the floor of a birdcage. The life of a newspaper – and a newsroom, for that matter – is very different now than in 1977. To be sure, print editions are still produced and delivered, sometimes, hopefully, not into gutters and snow drifts. But digital news reigns. One thing that has not changed since 1977 and those early credits is that the demand for news has never been greater, but the method of putting that reporting and editing and images in the hands of readers is still a challenge. That’s a roundabout way of saying that, for a series that debuted when “Star Wars” had been in theaters for only about four months, “Lou Grant” is dated but still relevant. The series was and is something of an oddity. I can’t think of another instance when a situation comedy, even a classic one like “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” spun off a character into a drama. Ed Asner’s Lou Grant, after his stint as the news producer at Minneapolis TV station WJM resulted in unemployment, got a job city editor at the Trib, working for old friend Charlie Hume (Mason Adams). The two of them work for Trib publisher Margaret Pynchon, played by Nancy Marchand in a warm-up for her “Sopranos” role as an intimidating matriarch. Pynchon is a cross between Los Angeles Times publisher Dorothy Chandler – you might have heard of her pavilion – and Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham. Lou oversees a slightly less odd collection of newsroom staffers at the Trib than at WJM: Joe Rossi (Robert Walden) is an arrogant hotshot; Billie Newman (Linda Kelsey) is a rookie with a lot to prove; photographer Dennis “Animal” Price (Daryl Anderson) somehow managed to cover all of SoCal by himself; Art Donovan (Jack Bannon) was the city editor and a dead ringer for one of my editors at the time. You see, I entered the newspaper business right after “Lou Grant” debuted, beginning years of freelancing in high school and college less than a year after the show first aired on CBS. At first, I didn’t like “Lou Grant” much. I eventually realized it was as accurate in its depiction of the newspaper business as any TV series would ever be. Not that TV and movies hadn’t tried to mine the fertile ground of the news business before. Lou Grant and the Case of the Notorious Nazis From “The Front Page” to “The Paper” to “The Post,” the newsroom has appealed to filmmakers. There are many fewer distinguished examples of newspaper TV series. Sure, the journalists of “House of Cards” made an impression but the show was firmly grounded in newsmakers, not news reporters. The season of “The Wire” that focused on Baltimore’s beleaguered newspaper is probably the grittiest treatment of journalism ever “Lou Grant” is assuredly not the grittiest newspaper story ever told. But it told its stories well and kept audiences invested for five seasons. In a recent re-watch, I was startled by how well the series told stories that would prove to be relatively timeless There’s some “story of the week” feel to “Lou Grant.” The episodic nature of television at the time meant that few storylines would be continued week to week. We didn’t find out in the middle of the first season that Art Donovan abused substances, only to see him bottom out in the second season and return to the city desk in the third season, slowly working to regain his bosses’ trust. (This would have been a gritty, and also true-to-life, newspaper storyline.) There were ongoing stories for the main characters, particularly for Billie Newman, who took a chance on marriage and stayed in a profession that isn’t always kind to out-of-office life. Likewise, Lou’s three daughters figure into the series and they share some resentment over how much time he spent away from them over his career. The heart of the show was about two things: the news business and how the men and women in the business do their jobs. The great (and gritty) “Hill Street Blues” didn’t debut until 1981, and “St. Elsewhere” didn’t come along until 1982. The hourlong dramas of the fall of 1977 were more “Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries,” “Little House on the Prairie” and “Charlie’s Angels” and less “The Rockford Files.” There’s not as much character development for the Los Angeles Tribune staff as we’d see today. But there were great stories, and “Lou Grant” excelled at telling the stories behind the stories. The Hardy Boys never took on neo-Nazis (correct me if I’m wrong), ceding that task to “Wonder Woman” and the reporters of the Los Angeles Tribune. In a very early episode of “Lou Grant,” a small group of brownshirt-wearing white guys disrupt a group of Jews holding a service in a Los Angeles park. There’s a scuffle and the Nazi leader gets a bloody scalp wound, making for good photos by Animal. But back at the Trib newsroom, the editors debate whether they should cover the Nazis at all. In an editorial meeting that has been re-enacted in many newsrooms since 2015, one editor suggests it’s a bad idea to give the neo-Nazis attention. “What do you think this is, World War II?” one asks Lou. “Maybe about 10 years before World War II,” Lou replies. Arguing that “the news is the news,” Lou wins the debate and assigns Billie to track down and write about the leader of the local Nazis, played by the future “Robocop” himself, Peter Weller. (Another Nazi is played by Brian Dennehy.) In a development that seems hard to believe until you remember almost any news story from the past decade about false-faced, self-serving politicians, Billie finds that the Nazi is Jewish. The revelation shifts the focus of the story and of the episode, as Weller’s character threatens the journalist, then pleads that his past not be exposed. The twist has the unfortunate effect of making the Nazi sympathetic, but I’m grateful that CBS, the Tiffany network, chose to expose neo-Nazis in any way short of giving them their own weekly series. Newsrooms and dark humor One of the best things about “Lou Grant” is how it portrayed the news business more realistically than before or since. And one of the biggest newspaper truisms was the dark, often inappropriate, humor in the newsroom. When I was a reporter and editor, talk in the newsroom about many topics would eventually work itself around to ideas expressed through dark humor. There’s no darker humor than humor about the news business itself. At some point, someone in “Lou Grant” notes, “Mrs. Pynchon is very interested in endangered species,” prompting Lou to reply, “Sure, that’s why she owns a newspaper.” In the second season, Charlie Hume goes to talk to a high school class and isn’t prepared for the students to be informed and ask relevant questions. “They wanted to talk issues and I gave them pencils,” he moaned. Not all the humor in “Lou Grant” would be accepted as appropriate today, as in the episode where a reporter dies in a cheap hotel during an affair and Lou clumsily tries to cover for the man with the reporter’s wife. That’s not the only time some of the stories display outdated attitudes. In one episode in particular, Billie is writing a sympathetic story about a sex worker played by “Cujo” and “The Howling” actress Dee Wallace. Lou and Charlie scoff at Billie’s idea that the woman is more than just her job at a massage parlor. When Lou runs into Billie having lunch with her story subject but doesn’t know who she is, he concludes that she’s “a nice girl” who reminds him of his daughter. The nature of the show and a lot of television and a lot of fiction, for that matter, is that most of the stories show a lot of personal involvement on the part of the reporters and editors. Luckily, it’s not the personal involvement and huge ethical lapses of the reporters in “House of Cards,” for example, but it makes for good drama when Billie is so personally invested in the sex worker she’s writing about that she helps her study for a real estate exam. No good stories or bad stories – just stories The little notes of realism in “Lou Grant” really spoke to those of us in the business, even if the general public didn’t understand. The way the police scanner squawks from a shelf near Lou’s desk strikes a nerve with all of us who ever worked through the scanner’s constant chatter. It was very realistic how Lou and the other editors would quickly reject cliché or substandard stories. The first season Christmas episode in particular has a scene of them quickly dismissing awful seasonal story ideas. “Lou Grant” did a nice job in portraying the gradual changes in the industry. By the final season, in 1982, the newsroom typewriters are being replaced with word processors, just as they were when I started in the business. And just like when I started in the business – and still today – the staffers lived in fear of the system crashing and dumping a just-finished story. For critics of the news business and those who work in the business alike, we could do a lot worse than remember Lou Grant’s response when someone in the newsroom says they just don’t have anything to write about at the moment. “There is no such thing as a slow news day,” Lou says. I’d add to that something I overheard my friend David Penticuff say once when someone on the phone had asked if he was going to write a “good story or a bad story.” “I don’t write good stories and I don’t write bad stories,” we heard Dave reply. “I just write stories.” It sounded like something that Lou Grant would say. View the full article -
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High Tech in Low Places: The Makings of the Tech Bro Villain
There are several reasons why corporations and/or billionaire CEOs make such good villains in works of fiction. First, all mysteries and thrillers need a power imbalance favoring the bad guy. Second, because in real life, we keep seeing tech titans do reprehensible, insane and/or criminal things. And third, as Arthur C. Clarke told us, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Let me take on that last one first: High tech corporations do stuff that, to a guy like me with a bachelor of arts degree in political science, is simply arcane. I read articles about, or ads for, Silicon Forest juggernauts and realize: I don’t know what any of those nouns and verbs mean. And if you dabble in magic, well, you’re fair game to be the bad guy in a book or movie. In the late 1970s, I was flying to see my family at Christmas in one of those awesome, 12-seat turboprop airplanes of the era. (This was the now long-forgotten Trans Magic Airlines. It wasn’t the world’s greatest airliner; we generally referred to it as Man’s Tragic Airlines.) The pilot, who sat two seats ahead of me, told us we had to make an unscheduled landing in Walla Walla. “Some engine problem.” I asked him, “What’s wrong with the engine?” He drawled, “Damned if I know.” But a half hour later, he whistled for us to get back onboard and I did, along with the other passengers. Because with this mid-twentieth century technology, I felt safe to believe that this guy probably popped the hood, figured out what wasn’t working, and fixed it. I flew off without another thought. If a pilot of a 747 today tells me there is engine trouble, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that that pilot cannot fix the problem. It will require computers, diagnostic readouts, and a team of trained mechanics. The captain on the flight deck of a 21st century jetliner sure as hell isn’t popping the hood and digging around in the engine. Because the workings of a jet engine today are sufficiently advanced—even to the captain—as to be is indistinguishable from magic. It’s that unknown quality of the high-tech world that leads writers like me to create high-tech bad guys. I don’t know what “the cloud” is but I store all my most valuable information there. Could it be used for crime in a novel? Sure, why not? I don’t know how it is that two dudes’ will create a tech start-up in a rented office over an ampm minimart in Modesto and—without ever seeing the slightest profit—will suddenly get gobbled up for a couple of billion bucks. But it happens. Is that kind of inexplicable transfer of wealth a gold mine for mystery writers? Without a doubt. Even the terminology is opaque to most of us. Ever read an articles about trolls doxing the netiquette of some cyberchondriac in the meatspace? Increasingly, articles about the high-tech world are devoid of English. And even if you understand the words, their original meaning gets distorted. I saw an ad the other day for a tech firm that advertised they were “Calm Cool and Compliant.” Generally speaking, those are traits I look for in a hostage. Writer Amelia Tait at Wired penned a terrific article recently titled, “The Rise of the Tech Bro Supervillain,” which featured a great line: “These days, evil wears a hoodie.” If you’re about to start a new mystery or thriller novel and you need a bad guy, how could you not be influenced by Elon Musk? Beyond being a candidate for World’s Worst Boss, he recently crashed sentient cars, ginormous rockets and a social network. And that was on a Tuesday! Or Elizabeth Holmes, the former Theranos CEO whose golden parachute from that gig included 11 years in the slammer for defrauding investors. (There’s no rule that tech bros must be bros, per se.) Edward Norton’s character, Miles Bron, in Rian Johnson’s delightful “Glass Onion” is the perfect example of the go-to bad guy. Breathtakingly full of himself, the dialogue of this chauvinistic, narcissistic rich boy was peppered with delightful malapropisms. Of course we all want to make fun of gigabyte gazillionaires! Or to be frightened by them. The high-tech corporate cad isn’t a 21st century invention, by the way Hey, I learned to write action sequences by reading comics. From Superman’s Lex Luthor to Spider-Man’s Norman Osborn, ain’t nothing new in the CEO villain. Sure, very few writers today fall back on using the tried-and-true giant robot to dominate Metropolis, but our bad apples haven’t fallen that far from the tree of villainy. Another reason for the Snidely Whiplashes of the C-Suite (wow, did I date myself with that one) is the much needed power imbalance that all good mysteries and thrillers must have. Simply put, the villain of the piece has to be sufficiently stronger than our heroine, right up until the end, that the threat is believable. Protagonists have to be underdogs. The fight has to be uphill, or it’s not such much a “thriller” as it is a “duller.” Imagine a dust jacket that asks, “Will our hero, the assault-rifle-wielding gym-rat Special Forces icon, be able to defeat the cranky jerk threatening to write a snotty Yelp review in time?” The answer’s yes. That’s not a spoiler: you’ll have tossed out the book long before you get to the denouement. Simply put: the ultra-rich make for good villains. The high-tech world is, for most of us, so opaque that Silicon Valley techno-mages are shovel-ready antagonists. And in real life, babbling billionaire buffoons keep showing us absolute power ain’t nothing compared to absolute wealth when it comes to corrupting absolutely. Need a template for a bad guy in your next novel? Have you been on Twitter lately? *** View the full article -
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10 Thrilling Novels featuring Horses
Horses are highly sensitive herd animals and as such, they reflect the emotions of those around them—including their human partners. To quote my latest novel, Girls and their Horses, “Horses are like mirrors. They reflect all the best parts and all worst parts of ourselves back at us.” Horses in fiction are often used to echo the qualities of their human counterparts. They also inspire fast-paced, passionate stories of determination. Horses are often used to represent deeper emotional struggles or iron will. While perhaps not strictly thrillers, the following stories are fast-paced, thrilling and filled with twists. Dark Horses by Susan Mihalic \Dark Horses tells the story of a teenage equestrian prodigy struggling to escape the grip of her abusive father and coach. Evocative of Ella Berman’s The Comeback, the character’s dreams seem to hold her hostage. Mihalic focuses in on the Roan’s determination to be a champion rider to create a compelling conflict. The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans The Horse Whisperer tells the story of a teenage girl who narrowly survives a terrible riding accident that kills her friend, and her strong-willed mother who seeks out a ‘horse whisperer’ in a last-ditch attempt to save her daughter and their horse. The book opens with one of the most harrowing horse-riding accidents ever committed to print and continues apace from there. The Horse Whisperer was inspired by horse trainer Monty Roberts, and focuses on the emotional and spiritual connection between humans and horses. The Black Stallion by Walter Farley A classic novel about a boy and a wild horse who land on an abandoned island following a shipwreck and form a spiritual bond that sees them through struggles in the real world once they’re rescued. This book kicked off a series of thrilling horse racing novels. The Black Stallion dramatizes the connection between horse and rider, making the protagonist Alec the only person who can ride the titular black stallion. The Horsewoman by James Patterson and Mike Lupica This extremely fast-paced novel details the competition between mother and daughter equestrians leading up to the Olympics. With high-staked competitions, manipulative owners and riding accidents, The Horsewoman zeroes in on the many twists and turns of competitive showjumping. Horse by Geraldine Brooks Inspired by a true story, Horse features a multiple timeline narrative based around a record-breaking racehorse. Brooks imbues the narrative with suspense and twists. This beautifully-written story examines themes of racism, art and obsession. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy The tale of a teenage Texas rancher who sets out on an adventure to cross the Mexican border and find work as a cowboy, All the Pretty Horses juxtaposes beautiful prose with the tragedy and brutality of the New/Old West. Here the horses seem to represent a romanticized vision of the west and the plotting is quick and filled with adventure. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty In a similar vein, but a heck of a lot longer, Lonesome Dove tells the epic story of aging ranchers who decide to go on one last cattle drive. The story is filled with danger and death. Here the horses are partners with their riders and share a relationship and history. Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan In this literary thriller, a police detective discovers sixteen horse heads on a farm and follows this mystery down a dark and twisted path. While a very different take from the above, here again we see horses as symbols. The Syndicate Manager by Richard Laws This book tells the story of a syndicate manager fighting to keep control over his star horse. It’s a deep dive into the dangerous, corrupt world of horseracing. In this highly competitive world, the horse represents money, success and power. The author is in fact a syndicate manager in England, and used his experience to create a more authentic story. Dark Horses by Cecily Von Ziegesar Did you know that the author of the Gossip Girl series also wrote a book from the perspective of a horse? That book is Dark Horses, which tells the story of a troubled girl who is sent to a residential equine therapy program where she bonds with a failed racehorse. Here the story gets pretty wild, because the horse falls so deeply in love with his rider that he will do anything to keep her to himself—including murder. Yes, you read that right. *** View the full article -
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Why Are We So Obsessed with Missing Persons Stories?
It’s the not knowing, really, Isn’t it?. When we read mysteries and thrillers centered around solving a murder, we know the person is dead… but a missing persons case opens up a slew of psychological aspects to explore. There is no closure in cases of people disappearing. There is never an ability to mourn and move on because there is still a lingering flicker of hope. A character holding onto hope and simultaneously torturing themselves with endless possible worst-case scenarios is what really draws us into missing persons stories and what makes us resonate with them–empathize with the pain and grief of the family. Not only can we deeply sympathize with the character searching for answers, we feel like we are a part of the search in perhaps a more urgent personal way than a character’s search for justice for a murder, say… or finding out who-done-it. It seems as though in real life, once a high profile missing case goes viral, the general public feels like they are a part of it too, in a sense. Everyone has a theory or an opinion. Everyone is an online, armchair detective, and It instills fear–if it could happen to this everyday person, it could happen to my family. This is probably most deeply felt by marginalized groups of people because we have a collective history of throwing disproportionate amounts of resources to stories about young white women missing while countless other cases are dismissed in many ways. It begs the question: What criteria do national newsrooms use to decide which cases make the cut and become a headline?… but that’s a topic for another article, or maybe even for a thriller book, because it’s actually quite scary how many missing lives are swept under the rug. Thriller authors write about what we fear the most, and so a well-crafted story of a beloved family member or friend vanishing is something we seem to perpetually have a big appetite for in fiction. In novel form all of this is concentrated and dramatized, so the reader has enough separation from real life to safely go along for the ride, but the fear of the unknown still hits a nerve for most people. The reality is that thousands of people go missing every year, and a few thousand unidentified bodies are found every year which is sort of staggering in this technological era, but is also likely why “into thin air” and “without a trace” stories have found themselves a comfortable home in crime fiction. Here are several novels about missing persons, each with its own unique lens. Then She Was Gone, by Lisa Jewell When fifteen year-old Ellie Mack disappears, The police’s investigation never turns up any clues about what happened to her, but they believe she ran away. Her mother, Laurel, believes otherwise. After ten years, and after losing her marriage and disconnecting from her family, Laurel begins to try to piece together a life for herself without her beloved daughter. It’s only then that some shocking clues reveal themselves and draw her closer to the appalling truth about what really happened to her daughter. This one is a real stunner. Jewell is one of my very favorite authors. somehow she has this unique ability to create a very unsettling and chilling story and yet make it touching and poignant…and still page-tuning and unputdownable. I find, even though it’s been a few years since I read this one, I still think about Ellie Mack, and I can’t really say that for many fictional characters, so that’s why it’s on the top of my list and has always stayed with me. The Woman in Cabin 10, by Ruth Ware Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, was given an assignment on a small cruise ship with only a handful of cabins. What started as an exciting opportunity, turns horribly wrong as she witnesses a woman being thrown overboard. The problem is, all passengers remain accounted for and so, the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo’s desperate attempts to convey that someone is dead and something on this ship is terribly wrong. This gives away how relatively new to thrillers I am, but this is one of the first thriller novels I ever read, and Ware’s work is part of what inspired me to try writing thrillers myself, so she holds a special place in my heart and on my bookshelf. It’s twisty and atmospheric, and just when you think you’ve figured out what’s going on, something happens to make you second guess everything. It’s anything but predictable. As a side note, do yourself a favor and listen to this one because Imogen Church’s narration is perfection. The Couple Next Door, by Shari Lapena Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all—a loving relationship, a wonderful home, and their beautiful baby, Cora. But one night, when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion immediately lands on the parents. But the truth is a much more complicated story. I especially love the way the title ties in. Is it the couple next door to you? Or are YOU the couple next door? This story explores deception and unraveling family ties, but what I loved most about it is that I never had a clue what the twist would be. I didn’t see it coming and It’s not all that often I read the big reveal–the big “who-done-it’ in the end and feel both genuinely surprised and very satisfied. This one had it all and was well crafted from beginning to end. And Now She’s Gone, by Rachel Howzell Hall PI Grayson Sykes is tasked to find a vanished woman, Isabel Lincoln, who is thought to have disappeared on purpose, so surely the boyfriend (who reported her missing) is hiding something. Grayson suspects abuse and knows firsthand what an abusive relationship is like, so she’s convinced that all is not what it appears. But the further she goes down the rabbit hole, the more unexpected and complex the story becomes, and as she digs into the secrets of Isabel’s life, Grayson’s own secrets unravel. This author creates sharp and vivid images with smart, complex characters in the lead. This book takes you on a rollercoaster ride–wild, scary, and filled with twists you don’t see coming. When it finally comes to a halt at the very satisfying and unexpecting ending, the reader will not be disappointed. A writer to watch, in my opinion. Spare Room, by Dreda Say Mitchell Lisa is a young woman who has been told the physical scars she carries and the nightmares she suffers are from a tragic accident when she was young. She does not believe that’s true. The mystery keeps her anxious, depressed and struggling throughout her life. When she decides to rent a room in an old house, she quickly learns that it’s not just any house. It has a dark history and equally sinister live-in owners. Then…she finds a suicide note seemingly written by the previous tenant, and that’s when this story catches fire as Lisa begins to understand this creepy place, this note, somehow relate to what happened to her all those years ago. Perhaps not a true missing persons book, but the main character’s obsession to find out what happened to the man who stayed there before her is compelling and electrically charged from beginning to end. I love when reviewers say a book was ‘so hyped they expected to be disappointed when they read it themselves’..and then they’re still blown away. This book received many such accolades, and I concur that it’s a twisty, heart pounding gem of a book you won’t be able to put down. *** View the full article -
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We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian
A We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian June 6, 2023 · Avon Historical: American CW: Homophobia on the page and mentioned in the past Cat Sebastian is an auto-read for me. She never lets me down. And she certainly hasn’t with this book. Nick Russo is on the city desk at the Chronicle, a progressive newspaper in New York. (Progressive because they don’t toe the party line and they dare to criticise the police.) He’s worked hard to get there and he’s good at his job. He’s brusque, respected and not particularly close to anyone. Enter Andy Fleming, the publisher’s son. So far, so standard, right? Wrong. Andy is scattered in an ADHD-coded way (with the baggage that goes along with that) and with two dynamic parents (although he lost his mom), he’s expected to take over the reins one day and he’s absolutely sure that he’ll muck it up. He’s put on the city desk and Nick takes him under his wing when he finds Andy with his tie stuck inside a tricky filing cabinet. Andy reminds him of his nephew Sal who has a similarly scattered approach to things. Nick’s obviously soft heart shines through the cracks in his armour. There are some who suspect Nick’s sexuality, but he keeps them at arm’s length and focuses on being an island. Andy puts paid to that though and soon the two are best friends. Binary stars rotating around each other. Usually, I detest a friends-to-lovers vibe, but this was such a beautiful, organic growth that it was effortless and believable for me as a reader. There’s more plot to it, but not much. This story is driven (powerfully) by the growth of Andy and Nick as individuals and as a team. The revelation of Andy’s sexuality and the joy they find with each other are just sweet stops along the way to their HEA. Why an A for something that amounts to a character study? Oh, my, but it’s perfect! Let me enumerate the reasons. First, these characters are so finely drawn that they felt real. All of their quirks and expressions and thoughts integrate so beautifully into their whole self, that as a reader, I could completely surrender to where the story wanted to take me. The humour (wry and gentle) kept my heart tripping along as their love story evolved. There were so many beautiful moments of bravery in this book! None of that nonsense where a point of tension could be resolved with a simple conversation that the characters refuse to have. Oh no! Here we are big and bold with our words and feelings! Okay, maybe initially, we whisper and imply our feelings, but we build up to the point of forthright openness and acceptance. TL;DR: Read this book if you’d like to be swept along safely in a rising tide of emotion, predominantly love. View the full article -
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Creative Progress is Subjective--Keep Going!
Slow growth is growth. This line from Nicole's post yesterday resonated with me when I read it. I've spent many years working on various creative projects without any way to measure the results. I get discouraged and give up on things (like novels or short stories) too easily. I expected the same thing when I began my podcast a little more than three years ago. I didn’t even know how to write a podcast script, but I learned. I didn’t know how to research cases and pull them together into cohesive narratives, but I learned. I didn’t know how to record a podcast, what kind of equipment I needed, how to get my show in podcast “feeds,” etc., but you guessed it, I learned! I taught myself the craft of storytelling through this new medium and tried not overwhelm myself, because I knew that would lead to me quitting the project altogether. So, slowly, I progressed. I produced short weekly episodes until I realized that was too hard to juggle with my day job. Then I settled into an every other week schedule. I looked at my stats on SoundCloud and noticed true crime episodes (and not just ones featuring missing people) got more downloads, so I integrated those topics into the content. I set up social media pages for the podcast. I learned how to make simple graphics in Canva. I cold called local true crime authors to ask if they wanted to be interviewed and promote their books. And each month, I would go back, analyze my podcast downloads, and tell myself to keep going, but the numbers kept going up. Coming up with a brand-new website for the podcast included a few hiccups. When a person I hired to help me with it didn’t share the same vision as I did, I figured out how to do it myself. I’ve been happy with the results and it’s high in the search rankings. My most recent episode, where I shared five true crime documentaries from Netflix, has already received 1,000 downloads in five days. The podcast overall is approaching 125,000 downloads overall and draws listeners both nationally and internationally. This past spring, I took all the knowledge I’d gained from working on this podcast and taught a webinar on “How to Start a Podcast.” It brought in more attendees than I ever imagined and another one is planned for August. I hope to develop more content around podcasting in the future. There is still room for more growth I’ve had comments on a few of my YouTube videos that visitors want to see more. I don’t know a lot about producing video content and am wavering on whether I should invest more time and energy into it. I have ideas for monetization, cross promotion with other products I have, such as books, and would love to find a few sponsors and hire someone to help me produce more content. I think that will all take time, so I’m staying the course. Renee Roberson is an award-winning writer and host/creator of the podcast, Missing in the Carolinas.(C) Copyright wow-womenonwriting.com Visit WOW! Women On Writing for lively interviews and how-tos. Check out WOW!'s Classroom and learn something new. Enter the Quarterly Writing Contests. Open Now![url={url}]View the full article[/url]
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