The Fantasy Hive - A U.K. Wonderland
A hub for all things fantasy (plus some SF). Book reviews, games, author interviews, features, serial fiction- you name it. The Fantasy Hive is a collaborative site formed of unique personalities who just want to celebrate fantasy. Btw, the SFF novel to the left by one of our members, Warwick Gleeson, was a "Top 150 Best Books" Kirkus pick in 2019.
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Welcome to our Women In SFF Read-along! If you caught our Read-along Announcement, you’ll know that for Women In SFF, the Hive are hosting a read-along of S. A. Chakraborty’s The City of Brass. Although it’s been on our TBR’s for some time, it’s the first time reading Chakraborty’s magical debut for Nils and myself (Beth). We’ll be sticking to a reading schedule, which I’ll post below; we’ll be posting discussion points and questions every Wednesday via social media, and then Nils and I will be sharing our responses to these every Saturday. Be sure to follow our Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to catch our Wednesday posts. Week 1: Beginning through Chapter 6 Week 2: C…
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Spellslinger is a YA fantasy with a (gasp) male protagonist! Kellen, our main character, is a fairly ordinary teenage boy, whose magic is subpar, and not a feisty redheaded princess or witch! I have to say, what made me pick up this book was its stellar cover design ( well done to the artists, Dale Halvorsen and Sam Hadley!) and the tag line “Magic is a con game”, because I definitely prefer my books to have female protagonists. But, I am so so glad I did try it, because this is one of the cleverest, funniest YA fantasies I’ve ever read. I instantly warmed to Kellen, who we first encounter prepping for a magical duel with one of his bullies – who doesn’t love an underdog…
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Leena Krohn is one of Finland’s most iconic and inventive writers. Her novel Tainaron: Mail From Another City was written in Finnish in 1985, and when it was translated into English by Hildi Hawkins in 2004 it was nominated for multiple awards. The novel tells the story of a woman visiting a city inhabited by insect people, and is told through her unanswered letters home. Startlingly original yet reminiscent in places of Italo Calvino or Franz Kafka, it is the perfect introduction to Krohn’s idiosyncratic and powerful work. Jeff VanderMeer cites it as a pioneering work of New Weird fiction; it is the only work in translation to appear in VanderMeer’s list of crucial New W…
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“I hate useless, creepy old shit.” So says a friend of mine on the subject of ancient relics in fantasy novels. Coming in for particular censure are mysterious old buildings, old roads, old statues, and “that stupid Logoth place where everything is a scary little alleyway.” For my part, I found the stupid Logoth place (Shadar Logoth of Robert Jordan’s first book) both interesting and terrifying, so this remark set me pondering about the creation of fantasy cities. Partway through The Empire’s Ruin, for instance, a group of sailors and soldiers discovers an abandoned city on the far side of the globe, a totally vacant metropolis with a huge ziggurat at the center. Yes,…
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When S. M. Boyce graduated with a degree in creative writing, she realized that made her well-qualified for serving French fries. It would take years of writing hundreds of thousands of words of all kinds before she became the fantasy and horror novelist she is today. Boyce is known for action-packed epic fantasy, powerful heroes, and riveting magical stories filled with twists and intrigue. And, of course, a bit of humor sprinkled through it all. Prepare to get lost in the journey. Welcome to the Hive, S. M. Boyce. Let’s start with the basics: dazzle us with an elevator pitch! Why should readers check out your work? I’m known for writing action-packed epic…
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Today on the Hive, Leo Valiquette is here to share with us the cover for his debut novel THE BANE OF ALL THINGS “Dragon’s Claw Abbey … A fortress on the edge of nowhere that might have been older than the Kingdoms themselves. A massive grave marker for all consigned to it—the living, the dead, and those whom despair had trapped in between. Weather had blunted the profile of the merlons that cut the top of the wall and ringed the roof of the keep. The moss-eaten teeth of some decrepit grin that mocked any thought of hope or reprieve.” So begins Chapter 3 of Bane of All Things (Book 1 of A Silence of Worlds). But let me take a step back and give some context. Here is th…
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Today, we’re delighted to host the cover reveal for Rachel Emma Shaw’s upcoming novel, Sacaran Nights. Set in a different world from her SPFBO 6 finalist Last Memoria, Sacaran Nights promises to be a ‘new take’ on dark fantasy and built from the legacies of the dead! Intrigued yet? Let’s check out the official blurb: “Sacara is decaying. The dead walk the streets, fungi light the night, and Dagner must fight to keep the rot at bay.” Legacy is everything in Sacara. Those few who inherit live only to keep theirs alive, protecting the ghosts of their ancestors from the corruption seeping into every corner of the city. Dagner longs to leave – to create a legacy for himsel…
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Katherine Addison is the pen name of Sarah Monette. Katherine Addison’s short fiction has been selected by The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and The Year’s Best Science Fiction. Her novel The Goblin Emperor won a Locus Award. As Sarah Monette, she is the author of the Doctrine of Labyrinths series and co-author, with Elizabeth Bear, of the Iskryne series. She lives near Madison, Wisconsin, with spouse, cats, and books. Welcome to the Hive, Katherine. Congratulations on your sequel to The Goblin Emperor, The Witness for the Dead. For those who may not know, could you briefly tell us a bit about both books please? The Goblin Emperor started because I wanted to w…
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This is an (increasingly) occasional series of posts drawing on my excursion into the academic side of creative writing doing a PhD project at Queen’s University Belfast with the catchy title “Navigating the mystery of future geographies in climate change fiction.” So the Hive has kindly given me space to post reviews of climate fiction books as well as blogging thoughts and articles on other aspects of my PhD experience. R.W.W.Greene’s Twenty-Five to Life follows Julie, a young woman in America around the end of this century. (Date clues sprinkled through the narrative such as the 100th anniversary of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or a near-recent outbreak of Covid-90, …
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Today we’re thrilled to share with you a guest post from self-published author M. L. Wang. Wang is perhaps best known for her Theonite series of novels, with Sword of Kaigen winning SPFBO 5. Currently, Wang is serialising Sazuma on her Patreon (free sample chapter here). There’s also another serial available free through her newsletter, and there will be more Altima books coming out in 2022. To keep up to date on all Wang’s news, please check out her website: mlwangbooks.com Magic is so ubiquitous in fantasy that it’s easy for an author to throw it into a story without thinking hard about what she wants to do with it—or perhaps not thinking past “this would be co…
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This was my holiday book and boy did it not disappoint. Everything I loved about the first book plus more, in some cases way more. We pick up straight where we left off but this time we get a range of POV’s to experience the story from. Annev is desperate to get rid of the Hand of Keos. His ex-girlfriend Myjun wants to kill him for lying to her and causing the death of her father. Kenton wants to kill him for stealing Myjun and leaving him to die buried in the Vault of Artifacts. Fyn is keen to start living his life and using his skills but more so to improve his station than to halt or hurry any grand prophecy, plus we have a few random moments shown from one character …
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“And it’s not just Murdoch and immigrants and implied promises about what might be done to save the NHS by the very people dismantling it. It’s not just memories of busy shipyards and Grandad’s self-respect. No, it’s an almost mythical yearning, as though, if only we can create the right conditions, a stranger might come out of the mist, thrust a sword into a stone and say, “Whosoever draws forth this blade…” And now here he was, having returned from another world, with a much better understanding of the depth of his ignorance concerning what might be yearned for, and not be mythical.” Elizabeth Knox’s The Absolute Book came out in New Zealand last year, and I have been…
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“But what was the problem? You said we had two incompatible characteristics. What were they?” Jdahya made a rustling noise that could have been a sigh, but that did not seem to come from his mouth or throat. “You are intelligent,” he said. “That’s the newer of the two characteristics, and the one you might have put to work to save yourselves. You are potentially one of the most intelligent species we’ve found, though your focus is different from ours. Still, you had a good start in the life sciences, and even in genetics.” “What’s the second characteristic?” “You are hierarchical. That’s the older and more entrenched characteristic. We saw it in your closest animal rel…
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Welcome to our Women in SFF Feature – 2021! We started this feature last year and had a fantastic response, so we’re super excited to be bringing it back once more – bigger and better than ever! Women in SFF is an opportunity to celebrate female writers of fantasy, sci-fi, and everything in between, as well as all our favourite characters in those genres also. This year, the team have had their planning hats on, and we have a whole host of content lined up for you. We would absolutely love you all to take part; from reviews, recommendation lists, articles – however you decide to join in, let us know by using #WomenInSFF and/or tagging @TheFantasyHive What’s comin…
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Welcome to the Fantasy Hive’s Read-along for Women in SFF! For our first ever Women in SFF Read-along, we held a Twitter poll to choose the book – and the book that one the majority of the votes was S. A. Chakraborty’s THE CITY OF BRASS! Nahri has never believed in magic. Certainly, she has power; on the streets of 18th century Cairo, she’s a con woman of unsurpassed talent. But she knows better than anyone that the trade she uses to get by—palm readings, zars, healings—are all tricks, sleights of hand, learned skills; a means to the delightful end of swindling Ottoman nobles. But when Nahri accidentally summons an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior…
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Genevieve Cogman started on Tolkien and Sherlock Holmes at an early age, and has never looked back. But on a perhaps more prosaic note, she has an MSc in Statistics with Medical Applications and has wielded this in an assortment of jobs: clinical coder, data analyst and classifications specialist. Although The Invisible Library is her debut novel, she has also previously worked as a freelance roleplaying game writer. She is also the author of The Masked City and The Burning Page, both in The Invisible Library series. Genevieve Cogman’s hobbies include patchwork, beading, knitting and gaming, and she lives in the north of England. Welcome back to the Fantasy Hive, G…
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“Bees can sense electrical charges in the air and feel magnetic fields. It’s pretty obvious that if there are such things as portals, doors, thin places between parallel worlds bees are perhaps better equipped to find them than any other creature. They’ve probably found myriad gateways over man millennia, endless untouched worlds, and colonized them without humans. Their own Elysian Fields where angels’ blood is never shed. Immortal, forever young. There’s more to these little winged creatures than meets the eye.” The Blood Of Angels is Johanna Sinisalo’s third novel to be translated into English, although it is her sixth in her native Finnish. And for my money, it …
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Here at the Hive we absolutely love seeing a wide range of cover art and designs! We wanted to highlight all the wonderful female artists and designers who work relentlessly to make so many fantasy covers look gorgeous and entice us readers into wanting to buy them immediately! A little thank you to Petrik Leo and Eon from Novel Notions who gave us many artists to add to our list. Thank you also to everyone on Twitter who responded and also gave us many more artists to highlight. This is by far not a complete list, and please let us know if we have left anyone out and we’ll happily add them. Magali Villeneuve is a French cover artist who has worked on the covers …
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Hey, I’m Stark Holborn, author of Nunslinger and Ten Low and it’s great to be back at the Hive to reveal the cover for the second instalment of my Triggernometry series: Advanced Triggernometry. Triggernometry is an alt-history western, taking place in a world where mathematicians are dangerous outlaws. It mixes the grit of the west with a cast of mathematicians from across history to create a truly unique and unforgettable adventure. Thanks to readers, the first Triggernometry had a great outing last year despite the pandemic, and was featured in The Washington Post and on Tor.com as well as on some of my favourite blogs (including right here)… Check out the sy…
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The Fantasy Hive is excited to announce the launch of a new Kickstarter by Unsung Stories, one of the leading independent publishers of SF and Fantasy in the UK. The Kickstarter for Out Of The Darkness, a new anthology of horror and dark fantasy stories exploring the theme of mental health, goes online today. Unsung have previously successfully funded two excellent anthologies on Kickstarter, 2084 edited by George Sandison (2017), in which speculative fiction writers imagine futures inspired by George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four, and This Dreaming Isle edited by Dan Coxon (2018), which collected horror stories inspired by British folklore and landscape. Both antholog…
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Cock thy ears to the voice of ancient wisdom. He who has cast mighty dragons down from the sky and made sweet love to them. He who has thwarted a veritable carnival procession’s worth of dark lords, via a series of catspaws and proxies. He who is called, through the ancient ritual of court enforced community service, to answer your questions when you find that mortal wisdom is insufficient to see you through the tangled maze of confusion in which you find yourselves. *** Hey Ulesorin, Nobody ever gets my jokes. I tell them, and they flop every time. Send magical help please, Laughless in Leattle *** My Dearest Laughless, I must confess that I am all too famil…
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This is an occasional series of posts drawing on my excursion into the academic side of creative writing. Having taken a career break from secondary schooling to further my own education with some post graduate study I’ve completed an MA in Creative Writing at Queen’s University Belfast. I’ve now started on a PhD project at the same university with the catchy title “Navigating the mystery of future geographies in climate change fiction.” So the Hive has kindly given me space to post reviews of climate fiction books as well as blogging thoughts and articles on other aspects of my PhD experience. This week I’m going to look at Clade by James Bradley Bradley interrogates…
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Will Cadena Photography Growing up, Marc was out of his mind (and perhaps still is). He knew full well that his creative, untamed mind was divergent from the pack. Ill-equipped with an inability to focus in school and a strong desire to explore, Marc was barely present wherever he was expected to be. It wasn’t until his twenties that he retreated from indulging in the vibrant scenarios playing out in his mind and emerged to join the business force, or as he called it, the Spock-side of this world. So there he went, earning his master’s degree and CPA license in the process. Surprisingly, he managed to find some enjoyment while experiencing this new chapter in his life. …
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Content warning: Heroine’s family vary from emotionally to physically abusive. I first read Thorn in 2018, as a self-published novel, and I loved its smart, wry, thought-provoking take on one of my favourite fairy tales, The Goose Girl. When I heard it was being reworked for traditional publishing, I was thrilled, and I’m so happy to be able to tell you it’s even better in this form! I’ve always really enjoyed The Goose Girl as a fairy tale; it’s the story of a princess whose role is usurped by her handmaiden, and who has to work as a goose girl in a foreign kingdom, until she can convince the prince she was supposed to marry that she is his true love after all. I love …
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We have a treat for you today from the lovely androids at Angry Robot – an excerpt of Ada Hoffmann’s The Fallen, the much anticipated sequel to The Outside. The laws of physics acting on the planet of Jai have been forever upended; its surface completely altered, and its inhabitants permanently changed, causing chaos. Fearing heresy, the artificially intelligent Gods that once ruled the galaxy became the planet’s jailers. Tiv Hunt, who once trusted these Gods completely, spends her days helping the last remaining survivors of Jai. Everyone is fighting for their freedom and they call out for drastic action from their saviour, Tiv’s girlfriend Yasira. But Yasira has becom…
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John Wick Marathon
Keanu Reeves as John Wick in John Wick: Chapter 4. Photograph by Murray Close. Courtesy of Lionsgate. In our Spring issue, we published Kyra Wilder’s poem “John Wick Is So Tired.” To celebrate the poem and the recent release of John Wick: Chapter 4, we sent four reviewers to three different John Wick screenings over the course of a week. Tuesday, March 21: Press Preview The first thing we noted when we entered AMC Lincoln Square 13 for the New York press screening of John Wick: Chapter 4 was that film PR girls are way nicer than their fashion industry counterparts. Check-in was a breeze, and we were informed that since we had special blue wristbands, we didn’t have to turn in our phones. We hadn’t considered that we would potentially have to turn in our phones, but were relieved nevertheless. We were handed a very large stack of papers with a large John Wick logo at the top, containing detailed information about the franchise and a long explanation of the movie’s plot, which we chose not to read too closely for fear of spoilers. This heavy stack of papers was also where we first learned that the runtime was a whopping 169 minutes. This troubled us, mostly because we had had a lot of wine with dinner and were concerned that we would have to pee. The theater was packed with agitated-seeming nonjournalists who were somehow able to secure tickets. People wove up and down the aisles in a huff, frustrated by the first-come-first-served seating. A couple of women exchanged curse words over another woman’s volume. Multiple people arrived late with full take-out bags, their lack of discretion leading us to believe that the staff of the theater were not too concerned with enforcing the rules of this AMC John Wick press preview. The French crime film maestro Jean-Pierre Melville once said, “What is friendship? It’s telephoning a friend at night to say, ‘Be a pal, get your gun, and come on over quickly.’ ” In the universe of John Wick, it’s pretty much that too, but it’s a thousand guns, two dozen archers, bows, arrows, knives, swords, bulletproof suits, a sundry list of exotic ammunition, an attack dog, a blind assassin, dueling pistols, a fleet of luxury attack vehicles, and a handful of classic American muscle cars. Oh, and if you could bring them all to the Sacré-Cœur, in Paris, by sunrise, that would be great, thanks. By now, with the fourth installment in the franchise, the formula is familiar. John Wick (Keanu Reeves), on the run from the High Table (a governing body for the underworld whose main function just seems to be killing people) kills a lot of people in a series of highly choreographed set-piece action sequences in places like fancy hotels for assassins, fancy churches for assassins, and fancy Berlin techno clubs, also presumably for assassins. There’s something very charmingly mid-2010s about the environs and the soundtrack (was that the opening of Justice’s “Genesis”?), like a world where there was no COVID pandemic, but where everyone is a rich assassin in an ugly custom three-piece sparkly suit. Better times. Reeves speaks softly and carries a number of big loud sticks, swords, et cetera, often breaking down his guns into their constituent parts and throwing them, stabbing people with them, or indulging in other creative but necessary acts of violence. There’s an extremely fetishistic aspect to the gearheaded breakdown of the guns, and to the clicking of magazine releases, that forms a sort of counterpoint to the theoretically balletic fight choreography. Like Jean-Pierre Melville, John Wick normally drives a classic Mustang. How a similar car made its way to Paris in this film is anyone’s guess. There really aren’t any other comparison points between this film and Melville’s Le Samouraï, except that they’re both about assassins. Oh, and friendship. —Alex Tsebelis and Chloe Mackey Thursday, March 23: Premiere Day I was supposed to go to a cosplay premiere event for John Wick: Chapter 4, but couldn’t get tickets in time—so I ended up at a normal Regal theater for the nearly sold-out 7 P.M. screening. I’d dressed for cosplay that morning, but I’d also never seen a John Wick film, so I had to make some educated guesses. Action movies, I knew, are all about men in suits performing suit-inappropriate actions. Assuming John would have a sexy love interest (this turned out to be wrong), I selected the female suit equivalent, a secretary costume: fitted brown houndstooth minidress. I loitered at the Regal Essex Crossing second-floor bar, photographing my outfit against the sunset over the Williamsburg Bridge, a very John Wick backdrop. “Is this for a fashion blog?” the Regal bartender asked me, winking. “No,” I said. “I mean, yes.” Everyone else in the audience wore joggers, a garment absent from the fashion-forward film. Indeed, without context, the opening sequence registered to me as a kind of psychedelically plotless Saint Laurent advertisement, a brand for which Keanu Reeves is an “ambassador.” We begin with John Wick punching a brick in an elaborately shadowy warehouse. His training is interrupted by the dramatic entrance of his three-piece suit, appearing, silhouetted against the inexplicably fiery glow of a doorway, in the hands of some sinister fellow (friend, foe, butler?). The suit—presented in a manner usually reserved for the hero’s weapon of choice—is accompanied by a line of dialogue I neither understood at the time nor remember now, but which was clearly a classic John Wick catchphrase that meant something like “Here’s your suit. Now it’s time to kill—again.” And he totally does. Wick’s antagonist, the Marquis, sports a series of glittery waistcoats complete with asymmetrical gold buttons and stupid little chains. His weapon: blades. His goal: glory. The effete Marquis probably has ten times as much dialogue, and charisma, as John Wick, who is completely without character attributes. John Wick is just a killer, more like a machine than a human being. His suit, like his gun, is all-black. —Olivia Kan-Sperling, assistant editor Tuesday, March 28 The statistically inclined among us might have told me, as my projectionist friend did later on, that the odds of the screen going black twenty minutes into my 10:30 A.M. Sunday-brunch screening of John Wick: Chapter 4 at the Alamo Drafthouse up at least three escalators in the City Point mall were actually not so low in the age of automated projection. So my associate (a different one) and I finished our cauliflower-crust breakfast pizza and got a refund, and I picked up where we’d left off two days later at AMC 34th Street 14, where Nicole Kidman’s on-screen avatar assured me that the display was IMAX and the projectors laser. In the basement of a Berlin techno club full of bad, identically robotic dancers making repetitive upward arm movements, John Wick is dealt in to a five-card-draw game of poker with the two hitmen contracted to murder him and a German High Table official named Killa. At the end of the game, Wick puts two black eights and two black aces on the table, in what is usually a strong move—called the dead man’s hand, as I learned that night on the Reddit forum r/NoStupidQuestions, after the hand Wild Bill Hickok was reputedly holding when he was shot—but Killa destroys his chances by playing an unbeatable five of a kind: impossible to achieve without cheating, of course, because there are only four suits in a deck. Vegas would do well to be reminded, though, of the words of the Marquis, which I should start telling myself when I wake up in the morning: “How you do anything is how you do everything.” The odds are always against John Wick, and he always wins anyway. In the end, he slices Killa’s neck open with a playing card, and pockets one of his gold teeth. —Oriana Ullman, assistant editor View the full article -
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TOP PICKS – March 2023
Welcome to this month’s Top Picks! Every month, we’re going to share with you our favourite reads of the month. We’ve rounded up our contributors and asked them each to recommend just one favourite read of the month. Somehow, it’s the end of another month already! A big thank you to Nils for coming up with this feature, and our contributors for taking part! Nils: Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs I had three contenders for my favourite read of the month—Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs, And Put Away Childish Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky and The Magician’s Daughter by H.G. Parry. I’m choosing Ink Blood Sister Scribe because I was absolutely blown away by how wonderfully layered this debut by Emma Törzs is. The novel is part fantasy, part thriller and part dark academia and revolves around magical books, family secrets and blood that can create spells. It isn’t out until July (yes I was so excited to read it that I dived in super early!). Nils’ Review | Pre-order here Gray: The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik I finally had a chance to finish the Scholomance series by Naomi Novik this month, and while the third book wasn’t as line perfect as the previous two, it was still extremely satisfying, the resolution to the overarching mysteries was exactly as good as you might have hoped, and I’d recommend the series to literally everyone, if only for the incredible characterisation that has you in love with the protagonist in just a few lines. Available Now Theo: A Second Chance for Yesterday by R. A. Sinn I’ve not done much reading this month, but I do have a peach of a book to pick out. R.A. Sinn’s A Second Chance for Yesterday which has a very novel take on the “playing with time/revisiting your own past” theme. I do like a good meddling-with-time book (or film) and I also like Sinn’s worldbuilding of their near future (2045) setting. You might describe it as a functioning dystopia (a bit like in Ready Player One) which serves as the backdrop to the protagonist Nev’s dilemma when she finds her own personal arrow of time is travelling in reverse. She wakes up each morning, not in Tomorrow, but in Yesterday and her troubles are sadly not at all far away. As Nev travels backwards, and everyone else is travelling forwards, the plot can get a bit head twisting for character and reader alike. I’m sure the authors must have needed a spreadsheet to keep track – which would be another reason for me to love this book. Expected publication date August 29, 2023 by Solaris Julia: Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater This month it wasn’t easy to choose just one favourite book… I read the fantastic Dryer Street Punk Witches by Phil Williams, which is a gritty urban fantasy and much more. Dying is my Business by Nicholas Kaufmann was another great urban fantasy, which includes gargoyles! Michael McClung’s dark and gritty, but also comical and ridiculous Evil Overlord – The Makening had me almost snorting my drink. I’m also still reading two wonderful books, which I might not finish by the deadline for this post… So what book is even better than those? A book that deserves 10 out of 5 stars for me? May I present Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater! Despite some hard topics, like the conditions in working houses, it’s overall definitely a cosy comfort read. The main characters care dearly for others, and I just adored the strong friendships and loyalties between them all. The romance is the cute but straightforward one, so no annoying whining and pining. Dora character lost half her soul to a faerie, and now normal society is a bit of a puzzle for her. Her emotions are very much stumped and she says what she thinks – which does not sit well with high society! And then there’s the rather rude and curt Lord Sorcier… Oh and how I enjoyed characters who just simply say what they mean, without all the drama from misunderstanding stuff, or simply not talking about it at all. Would highly recommend for fans of TJ Klune or regency cosy fantasy! Available now Jonathan: Walking Practice by Dolki Min, translated by Victoria Caudle Another month of many great reads, but I’m gonna have to tip my hat to Dolki Min’s gloriously bonkers Walking Practice, translated by Victoria Caudle. The charming tale of a shapeshifting alien who seduces humans so they can eat them, Walking Practice is delightful and strange, as well as being a thought provoking exploration of embodiment and being other. Jonathan’s Review | Available now Scarlett: The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan Whoa, everyone’s reading sounds so great. It’s always hard to chose a favorite. So, I finished Blake Crouch’s Wayward Pines trilogy as my first read of the month and loved that entire trilogy (not to compare it to the show…that was just awful). Because I had to do some traveling for a week, I knew I would loose precious reading time, so I tried to keep a loose reading schedule with some manga and shorter stories, like Rowena Andrew’s novella Elior, which was just a delight. Next to some historical fiction I picked up, The Ash Garden by Dennis Bock, I finished the duology by Dana Schwartz called Immortality. I’m a sucker for stories of the early trials in surgery and medicines, combined with gothic vibes, and it was pleasant and also really light. I ended my reading month with two possible contenders, the sci-fi novel The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz and the epic fantasy by Richard Swan, The Justice of Kings. The latter is the one I’d crown my favorite for March simply for the nature of the story. It’s richly textured, evenly paced and filled with intriguing characters. The feared Justice from the order of Justices, Konrad Vonvalt and his orphan protege/clerk Helena Sedenka are on the mission to solve a murder/conspiracy that stretches to the Imperial society and will challenge the judges beliefs on a personal level with the dilemma to make a choice: abandon the law to protect the empire or let the consequences pan out. The Justice of Kings was the perfect novel to get immersed in. I enjoyed it a lot. Available now Dorian: The Bone Ship’s Wake by RJ Barker Tough choices this month! I’m going to go with The Bone Ship’s Wake by R.J.Barker. This finishes the Bone Ships trilogy with all the nautical adventures, brilliant characters, and unparalleled world-building I’ve come to expect after the first two books. If you’re looking for a series that is a master-class of marrying language to setting and culture, this is it. Honorable mentions to Gareth L. Powell’s space opera Embers of War and Alix E. Harrow’s fractured-fairytale novella A Mirror Mended, both of which are fantastic. Available now Beth: Games for Dead Girls by Jen Williams Some fantastic-sounding reads this month! Like Scarlett, I also loved Justice of Kings, that was a great shout. I ended up reading quite a lot this month (for me) and quite a varied bunch; I’m making my way through the Shardlake historical crime series, I read the non-fiction autobiography of Lemn Sissay for book club, and a dash of xianxia with Judy I. Lin’s A Venom Dark and Sweet. But far and away my top read of the month was Jen Williams’ folk horror crime thriller Games for Dead Girls. I always say those two genres are generally my least favourite, horror especially as I don’t like being creeped out anymore. But in this instance, Williams’ outstanding writing made it worth the creepy elements to this page-burning crime mystery. Is there anything she can’t turn her hand to? Beth’s review | Available now What was your favourite read of the month? Share with us in the comments! The post TOP PICKS – March 2023 appeared first on The Fantasy Hive. View the full article -
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We Are All Heroes: Playing With POV
When you walk into a room, whether you are at a conference hoping to win a big award, picking up a pizza, or on a first date – you are the star of the show playing out in your mind. You see the world from your own unique perspective and are acting in accordance with your own desires. The same can be said about the main character in that scene you are struggling to get right. Experimenting with the point of view might help you get unstuck. When I get frustrated with a scene I’m working on, if it’s feeling flat or lacking tension or spark, I allow myself to break out of the point of view in which I’ve chosen to write. Let’s try a thought experiment. Imagine you are in that ballroom filled with your peers, other writers. You have been nominated for a big award and the winners are about to be announced. Your ambition got you in that room. Your desires govern what you hope will happen. Your fears dictate how you act (or don’t act.) You are the center of the action, the one under the spotlight. Everything you see, think, and feel is influenced by everything that has ever happened to you leading up to this moment. Are you flashing back to high school when you were a runner-up, but not the winner, for an academic prize? Are you privately grumbling because you are up against your nemesis who always edges you out? Are you afraid you will cry if you don’t win? Are you worried you will trip on the way to the podium if you do win? Are you hoping to win because you want to rub it in the face of your ex, who also happens to be nominated for this award? Now freeze the frame. Look around the imaginary table where you are sitting. Every single person in that scene believes they are the center of the story. And their internal dramas have nothing to do with yours. The waiter might be concerned about being late getting home for the babysitter – again. They can’t risk losing this sitter, but their boss doesn’t give a crap. The smiling author at the table next to you is bereft because it’s been three years since she has been nominated for anything. Her husband next to her is bored out of his mind and is secretly listening to a horse race, which he bet a lot of money on. Maybe this one will pay off and he won’t have to tell his famous author wife he took out a second mortgage to pay off his gambling debts. Everyone in the room is experiencing that same scene – the awards ceremony – through a different filter colored by their individual circumstances and experiences. Every person in that room wants something. And, for the most part, none of their desires have anything to do with you. This thought experiment – recognizing that everyone in the room thinks they are the center of the story – makes for a helpful writing exercise, especially for those pesky scenes that just feel off, where the tension falls flat. Step One: Make a map. Just as you did in that imaginary awards ceremony, I want you to enter the scene you are struggling with. Look around the room or the space. Notice the furniture, the weather, the trees, and the things hiding under tables or park benches. Where is each person standing or sitting? Where are they in relation to each other? Sketch the scene. You don’t need to be an artist. Stick figures will work just fine. Step Two: List every person in the scene, even the unnamed minor characters, the waitress, and the guy walking his dog in the background. Next to each person’s name answer the following questions: What are they looking at? What draws their attention? What are they thinking about? Why are they in this scene? What are they hoping will happen in this scene? What is at stake for that character? What obstacles stand in their way? Now repeat this line of questions for every person in the scene. Step Three: Now shift the lens. After the main character, who is the next most important character? Get inside that person’s head, and write the same scene from this character’s point of view. Keep in mind the notes you took about that character. What do they observe, think, and feel in the scene? Are their goals and desires aligned with the main character’s, or in conflict? Do they experience the scene differently based on their job, past trauma, family situation, race, nationality, socioeconomic status, or personal ambition? How does this character’s version of the scene impact your original point of view character? Does it help the main character or hinder them? Repeat this step with as many characters in the scene as you can. Step Four: Read over all the different versions of this scene. Is your main character aware of the desires of the other characters? If so, how does it influence your main character in this scene? Notice how the other characters’ goals function in relation to the main character’s goals. Where do they rub against each other? Where is the friction? Where is the heat? How does the MC use what she knows about the other people to move toward achieving her goal? What does the MC not know about the other characters? What does she misconstrue? What does she not see? What things does the MC disregard that the other characters value or fear? Step Five: Go back and rewrite the scene from the original point of view character. Keep in mind all that you know about the other characters, even the things your MC might not know. You now better understand their motivations better and can amplify the points of tension or synergy. When characters in a scene have differing goals – as enormous as whether or not they want to launch a nuclear weapon, or as small as whether they want the window or aisle seat – seize the opportunity to amplify the points of friction and deepen the scene, keeping in mind that each of us is the hero of our own story. I find this strategy immensely helpful and I hope you will too. Have you tried shifting to a different POV to help you find the tension in an otherwise flat scene? What other strategies have you experimented with to shake up a lackluster scene? [url={url}]View the full article[/url] -
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Harini Nagendra’s Favourite Historical Mysteries
From as far back as there were books, writers have interrogated the relationship between past and present. Academic and popular history books help us understand how structures, processes and hierarchies from the past, such as colonization, or slavery, influence our lives even today. Futuristic novels and movies, such as the block buster ‘Back to the Future’, examine other aspects of history through fantasy – pointing out, for instance, how seemingly inconsequential decisions taken in the past can have major consequences for the future. Historical crime fiction has enduring appeal. It is one of the most popular sub-genres of crime fiction, enticing people to learn about the past while immersed in a lively read. While non-fiction offers a broader canvas to discuss structural themes and minutiae, fiction has an immersive advantage that can pull in many more readers. Novels led the reader steep themselves in the lives and modes of thinking of characters from the past, in settings that are at once familiar and unfamiliar. Same but different. I’ve always loved historical mysteries, using them as an entry point to learn about worlds and times far removed from my own. As an ecologist and university professor, my day job involves a substantial amount of research into the biodiversity, geography and ecology of Indian forests and cities in the past – putting together evidence from sources as disparate as maps, epigraphic inscriptions, fossil data, and oral histories. When I started writing mystery fiction, it was natural that I would place my novels in the past – in 1920s Bangalore. This is of course the classic Golden Age period that is so popular amongst crime writers and readers. For a story narrative like mine that foregrounds strong women characters, the Golden Age was the perfect time period to help me explore powerful themes that continue to impact us. My main protagonist, Kaveri Murthy, is a 19 year-old who loves mathematics and has a yearning to solve puzzles and fix injustice in the world around her. In Murder Under A Red Moon, book 2 in The Bangalore Detectives Club series, Kaveri sets out to solve the murder of a powerful mill owner. As she investigates, she finds herself contending with a number of issues that characterized India of the 1920s – women’s suffrage, the exploitation of millworkers, and the burgeoning Indian independence movement. My favorite way to get introduced to history is through mystery. If I were to list all the historical mysteries I love, the list would run to pages. So I’ve restricted myself to six, in the list below. Some of these may be old favorites. I hope you also discover a few new books and series, which open the doors to old times – and new worlds. A Morbid Taste for Bones – Ellis Peters The first in the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael series, this book takes us into the heart of medieval Wales in 1137. When the sacred relics of a revered saint are up for acquisition, there is heated debate. To no one’s surprise, the person most opposed to their removal is found dead. Rumors say that the death was a manifestation of the anger of the saint, but Benedictine monk Brother Cadfael knows it was the work of a live human hand. The Brother Cadfael series transports us to a time and setting that has been relatively under-explored in fiction. Perhaps it’s the ecologist in me, but I find the descriptions of the Benedictine apothecary and their herbal garden, with its medicinal and poisonous plants, especially fascinating. Ellis Peters is the nom de plume of Edith Pargeter, an English writer who wrote both fiction and non-fiction. She had Welsh roots, and like Agatha Christie, she also worked as a pharmacist’s assistant for many years – which may explain her interest in herbal plants and their use (and misuse). The Widows of Malabar Hill – Sujata Massey The year is 1921, the location Bombay. Perveen Mistry, a young Oxford-educated Parsi woman who is one of India’s first lawyers, has started out on her career. It is hard to find cases on her own, so she works in her father’s law firm. While processing the will of a wealthy Muslim industrialist, she finds herself bothered by the fact that his three widows have forfeited their rights to his wealth. As a woman, she has the advantage that she can go places that a man will not be allowed – namely, to visit and speak to the women in purdah. When she stumbles upon a murder, Mistry realizes that her suspicions are correct – something dangerous is afoot. Massey is the author of the award-winning Rei Shimura series, set in contemporary Japan. Her Perveen Mistry series is inspired by the path-breaking work of real-life Indian women lawyers of colonial India. After the Armistice Ball – Catriona McPherson Dandy Gilver is a bored wife and mother. Her husband, a taciturn Scottish landowner, has just returned home after fighting in World War I, and Dandy is restless at having him afoot again. Her two young boys are at boarding school, and besides, Dandy isn’t exactly what you might call the maternal type. They may be rich in land, but they’re not exactly awash in money – so it’s no small wonder when Dandy jumps at an offer to investigate the mysterious disappearance of an invaluable set of diamonds at her friend’s ball – especially when her friend offers to pay her. But when theft turns into murder, Dandy – accompanied by her delightful sidekick Alex, fiancé of the murdered young woman – must strive uncover the truth. Dandy Gilver is a most untypical sleuth, and the entire series is a delight. McPherson is one of the most atmospheric writers around. Even though you know nothing really terrible is going to happen to the main characters, you find yourself holding your breath as you frantically race through the pages, searching for the ending. Her other mystery series – historical and contemporary – are worth a read too, as are her many stand-alone books. Her Royal Spyness – Rhys Bowen Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie is thirty-fourth in line to the British Crown. But it’s 1932, and she is also penniless, having been evicted from her family home by her obnoxious sister-in-law, and secretly cleaning aristocratic homes in London order to survive. Still, when the Queen asks her to conduct a tiny little task for her – spy on someone – she can hardly refuse, can she? When she finds a dead body in a bathtub, and realizes someone wants her dead – Georgie is in trouble. This is a light hearted, entertaining series with a fresh premise. Bowen is the author of multiple historical mystery series and stand-alone mysteries, each of them a must-read. A Beautiful Place To Die – Malla Nunn Race and skin color are omnipresent, taking on the role of character and setting in Nunn’s novels, set in South Africa of the 1950s, during the height of the tensions around racial segregation, following the implementation of new apartheid laws. Detective Emmanuel Cooper, the main protagonist, is white – as is the murdered man whose death launches the novel, Captain Pretorius – but Pretorius is Afrikaner, while Cooper is white. And the people that the Security Branch of police would like to implicate in the crime are black, communist and radical. But Cooper is not a man to rush to hasty judgement. As he investigates the volatile complex of race, color and ethnicity that make up South African society in the 1950s, the reader gets to learn about the atrocities of apartheid, and to appreciate the ways in which these chasms shape South African society even today. Nunn was born in Swaziland, and her experiences, and those of her parents, shape the issues she writes about. Her work contributes to the growing collection of African voices in crime fiction today. Death of a Red Heroine – Qiu Xiaolong While not a historical mystery series, strictly speaking, this book is in the list because it takes us to a very different time period. Set in 1990s China, shortly after the Tiananmen Square protests, the book launches a new series that follows the investigations of Inspector Chen. Chief Detective in the elite Special Case Squad, Chen is a gourmand and poet, who has somewhat improbably landed in a job that his gentle literary personality seems ill-suited for. With the help of friends and colleagues, he solves a politically sensitive crime that involves corruption, while also making sure he doesn’t jeopardize his position. Chen needs to keep his job so he can continue taking care of his elderly mother. The series is a fabulous way to get to learn more about life in Chinese cities in the 1990s, with digressions into Chinese free verse poetry and regional cuisines along the way. Xiaolong is an poet and academic who left China and moved to the US after the Tiananmen Square protests, and writes with an insider’s perspective. *** View the full article -
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8 Novels Featuring Artificial Intelligence
Recent developments in AI are unsettling and even scary. Is a computer going to take your job? Quite possibly. However, if you’re a writer of fiction, the giant leaps made by artificial intelligence present a something of a gift. Although a protagonist who turns out not to be entirely human is not a new conceit, the scope for near-future or alternative-present stories featuring characters who might not even know that they’re powered by AI is huge, and fiction is responding. In my book, The New One, a family with a difficult daughter almost lose her after a hit and run accident. She’s in a coma, and hope is draining away, until the family are offered a lifeline in the form of a medical trial and new life in Geneva. Is this too good to be true? (spoiler: yes). A new daughter, cloned and boosted by AI, joins her parents in their new luxurious life, but this one is fine-tuned to be perfect. So, what happens when the original wakes up and finds an interloper has taken her place? The sentient AI is appearing in more and more stories, as writers follow, and then leapfrog beyond, the science. These books have all engaged with it in different ways: The Perfect Wife by JP Delaney Abbie wakes up realizing that she’s been in an accident, only to discover that actual Abbie has died and her mad-tech-billionaire husband has reanimated her as a robot with his dead wife’s memories and personality. But what really happened to human Abbie, and why is new-Abbie getting messages from a stranger? As the replacement wife secretly follows the trail left by her previous self, the real story, intercut with a POV apparently from one of her husband’s employees, starts to unfold. This thriller twists and turns and gets the reader fully on the side of the robot wife as a darker and scarier reality emerges. Every Line of You by Naomi Gibson Teenage Lydia is brilliant at coding. She loves Henry — Henry is the only one who just gets her, and with her dysfunctional and tragic family background, he gives her the stability and understanding she craves. There’s just one problem: Henry has no body. He started as a line of code and has grown into a sentient and charismatic AI, Lydia’s only friend. With Henry’s help Lydia confronts her problems in a way that goes beyond empowerment and into something altogether darker. When a mysterious government agent starts taking an interest in the hacking that Lydia and Henry are doing together things spiral, and the peace Lydia has always craved recedes over the horizon. A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers This second book in the wonderful Wayfarers series features Lovelace, the AI system of the Wayfarer, who was transferred to a humanoid body at the end of book one but lost all her memories as she did so. Here, she has to orient herself and start afresh. We’re with her every step of the way as she adjusts to seeing through two eyes rather than numerous cameras, works out how to walk, and moves among humans as one of them while programmed never to lie. Chambers is brilliant at showing a logical system working out how to navigate life, and I rooted for Lovelace / Sidra throughout. The whole Wayfarers series is absorbing and compassionate, and this might be my favorite volume. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro The first-person narrative by Klara, a solar-powered Artificial Friend (AF), details her journey from shop floor to being chosen by teenager Josie as her companion, and then to a new life in the countryside in near-future America. Ishiguro goes deeply into the AI’s worldview, giving us an AI’s perspective on religion (Klara is powered by, and so reveres, the sun), on love, and on humanity seen through non-human eyes. He leads the reader to fill in the blanks ourselves, to start to understand the things Klara doesn’t — particularly the question of what Klara’s role really is in Josie’s family. The ending of this novel has stayed with me for a long time. The Fear Index by Robert Harris The AI here is an algorithm created to make huge amounts of money on the financial markets in an alternative 2010. It was built by reclusive physicist Dr Alexander Hoffman for his fund, Hoffman Investments, but as the book opens it’s growing exponentially more powerful and ambitious, having broken away from human control and ultimately declaring itself ‘alive’. This AI, VIXAL, buys books and art, installs cameras, engages hitmen: it’s a speedy and entertaining read set squarely in the world of superrich white men. Troofriend by Kirsty Applebaum This is a book for young children told from the perspective of Ivy, an android companion who has a certain amount in common with Ishiguro’s Klara. Sarah, Ivy’s human, actually wanted a dog and starts off being mean, but even though one can switch the other off, a touching friendship eventually blooms between them. When Ivy is in extreme danger of being recalled and destroyed, the two girls need to work together to save her. A deceptively simple middle grade book, with a charming AI protagonist trying to navigate logically in an illogical world. Foe by Iain Reid Junior and his wife Henrietta live remotely on a farm. When a stranger, Terrance, turns up, their world is turned upside down: Junior has been randomly selected to spend two years at the Installation, a space station orbiting Earth. While he is away, he will be replaced by a replica of himself, so Hen won’t be lonely. As Terrance’s visits to prepare the couple for what is to come increase, so do tensions. What exactly is going on here? This is an unnerving read from the author of I’m Thinking of Ending Things, and strangely, the key to the whole story lies in its punctuation. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley I’m sorry, but I can’t leave this off. Frankenstein’s monster isn’t an AI in the same way as the others on this list, but this book is the mother of all artificial human narratives. You know the story: Victor Frankenstein makes his creature and brings it to life, shapes it by his own responses, and loses control. I set The New One in Geneva as a tiny homage to Shelley, and Harris, in The Fear Index, has done the same. *** View the full article -
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Bringing International Law to the International Thriller
I have practiced international law in Washington, D.C., London, Berlin and elsewhere for more than three decades, beginning many years before I started writing my first spy thriller. During that time, I have had the privilege of handling some of the most interesting international legal disputes of our generation. My first international case was against the Republic of France, where I represented Greenpeace in obtaining damages from France for the illegal mining of the Rainbow Warrior — Greenpeace’s very peaceful protest vessel — in Auckland Harbor, New Zealand. Although the involvement of French intelligence agents in the bombing started out as a secret, a combination of good detective work by New Zealand and Greenpeace, and an internal investigation by the French government, revealed the secret. And made my job in seeking hefty compensation in the following international arbitration a lot easier. I also had the privilege of representing the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement/Army in a dispute with Sudan over their national boundaries. That case, too, required unearthing many secrets, hidden in dusty archives in London, Khartoum and elsewhere. It also required other historical research, into both British colonial rule and traditional tribal lifestyles and cultural sites. I was privileged to represent South Sudan in uncovering all of this and then in defending its ancestral rights in the Abyei Arbitration. Those cases, and international law more generally, are important and can be fascinating. I have loved almost every moment of the cases that I have handled. But I think we all know that most kinds of law, including international law, aren’t really that high on either entertainment value or action. It’s true that legal thrillers, like John Grisham and Lisa Scottoline, are a popular genre — usually fast-paced and entertaining. The fact that some types of law involve high-stakes disputes and complicated characters helps explain the phenomenon. But it’s still incredibly hard to turn most types of law, including most courtroom trials, into spy thrillers. So, when I sat down to write my debut thriller, The File, I didn’t try to write something about the law or about a courtroom. In The File, you won’t find a single lawyer, courtroom, judge or jury. Nowhere. Not even in the wings. Nevertheless, the novel involves law in a variety of other ways. Reflecting on the book, I think those aspects of the thriller are extremely important to the book, and were also important to the process of writing the novel. The File is partly about money — lots of it — that was secretly hidden decades ago by the Nazis, at the end of World War II, in numbered Swiss bank accounts. Writing about those accounts was one way in which my training and experience as a lawyer helped in setting the stage for the novel. I have worked as a lawyer on cases involving numbered bank accounts. So, I knew those bank accounts were often shrouded in mystery and full of secrets, both in popular conceptions and in reality; as a result, those accounts provided an ideal setting for the secrets that any good spy thriller needs. When writing the book, I needed to learn more about the history of those numbered accounts, as well as how they operated in practice – that included learning about the special banking laws that Switzerland adopted just before World War II and about how numbered bank accounts were handled by the banks and their clients. More importantly, though, a thriller often also involves a different kind of law — on that’s less obvious, less technical, and more understandable than Swiss or other banking regulations. Thrillers, like other literary genres, need a foundation of right and wrong, a moral compass. The heroines and heroes need to appeal to some higher values, beyond just surviving. With that in mind, in The File, main character Sara West insists that she wants just two things: justice and truth. She wants justice for her father and friends, who are brutally killed by Russian mercenaries (a version of the Wagner Group); and she wants truth about the secret Swiss bank accounts and those who helped the Nazis with their deposits. Sara’s uncomplicated sense of fairness, of justice, is another kind of law — one that is the opposite of the very formal, legalistic Swiss banking laws that hide the Nazis’ bank accounts. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say more generally that thrillers provide a way to explore these two varieties of law and how each of them produces — or doesn’t produce — fairness. Toward the end of The File, Sara realizes the tidy streets of Zurich are in many ways more brutal and less civilized than the jungles and deserts she fled from, and that the cultured, wealthy bankers and businessmen on those streets are no more civilized or honorable than the book’s other characters. In the same way, the tidy banking regulations that permitted the numbered Swiss bank accounts concealed all manner of evil, while Sara’s straightforward sense of justice was the opposite, insisting on truth and fairness. I don’t think that this view of law — The File’s view of law — is at all foreign to the lawyer work I do representing clients before courts and arbitral tribunals. No civilized tribunal or court ignores the sense of justice that drives Sara, including in cases where there is a formal or technical “law” that says the opposite. Every lawyer has had experience with unjust laws and laws that are applied in ways that produce unfair results, as well as arguing that those laws should not be given those effects. Though my thriller isn’t about courts or judges, my experiences with the law, in countless different setting, played a major role in the book’s thrilling narrative. *** View the full article -
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Tina, Mafia Soldier
Twenty years ago, I was leaving (for the second time), and Tina was being born. Sitting on the backseat of the car, in perfect order inside a transparent file folder, is the dossier that I compiled on her, cutting out newspaper articles, taking notes, photocopying news items. There are also some photographs. I like one of them in particular. It shows her laughing, her hands gripping the handlebars of a motor scooter. I like it precisely for that hearty laugh, her face tilted toward her shoulder instinctively trying to hide from the camera shot, granted nevertheless with an expression of childish mischievousness, of elusive, playful provocation. Tina ’a masculidda. Tina the little tomboy. Loose pants, a striped top on her shapeless, slightly awkward, adolescent body. She must have been fourteen or maybe fifteen years old, and it was her debut, the first time she appeared on the pages of a newspaper. Attempted robbery. But that wasn’t what made her newsworthy, though ultimately young girls who pursue exploits of this kind are rare compared to boys. Tina was the recognized boss of a band of juvenile boys. That’s what was really worth a photo and an article. A young girl and a band of little gangsters, unaware of the fragility of their age. Sitting next to the driver’s seat, my cousin Mimmo points his arm out of the window right where I need to turn. “Here, I said.” He straightens his hair, ruffled by the wind. He wears it long and combed smooth back in an old-fashioned style, so he doesn’t seem either old or young, despite being forty. A look that suits him. Most of all it suits his way of being a doctor, fussy and paternalistic, but with an outward vein of cynical impatience. It’s a Sunday in late June, almost six o’clock, but the town is still sleeping or lazily dragging out the day behind the windows, which are closed to keep out the hot, heavy air. I park in a deserted courtyard and head toward the first of two small white and red buildings that mark the border between the Bronx and the Villaggio. Probably the same blurry building that you can make out in the right corner of the photograph: a perfectly squared wall, dark plaster, a piece of asphalt street. And yet when the photograph was taken, Tina didn’t live here anymore. In truth, she lived here just a short time. It hadn’t even been a year since the entire family—her father, mother, older sister, and brother, who was just a few years younger—had moved from a hovel downtown to the public houses in the Bronx, at the time of the tragedy. Or rather, the incident. That is, when her father died, in that brand new apartment, just inaugurated, the armchair and chairs still covered in stiff, crinkling plastic. He died, shot directly in the face by two shotguns. Three shots exploding from weapons loaded with shrapnel: buckshot mixed with gunpowder and pieces of iron. *** “That was their door,” Mimmo says. “That’s where the Cannizzaros lived. Tina and her family. Now, I don’t know. Maybe it’s still empty . . . But I doubt it, as we’re starving for homes.” There are just two doors on the sandstone landing, well-lit by a side window. The door Mimmo had pointed out is right in front of a blank wall where the stairs make a sharp turn. No nameplate, no name written on the doorbell. The other door is open, and a male voice invites us to come in, welcoming us loudly with warm greetings. The Cannizzaros’ neighbor is a handsome, strong old man, with thick white hair and a lively expression. He’s in his undershirt, sitting in front of a game of solitaire spread out on the table in the combined dining and living room, and doesn’t get up when we come in. “You’ll have to excuse me, doctor.” Now I notice the bright eyes, steadily fixed on Mimmo, have turned curiously dull; communication has been broken, consensus suspended. His wife has set down the tray with our coffee and taken a seat at a corner on the other side of the table. “It used to be better than paradise on earth here,” the old man blurts out of the blue. “Better than paradise on earth. Then those people arrived . . . You, sir, know, you know them, sir.” Which people? My mind jumps to the killer living on the floor above. So I had imagined his ostentatious lack of interest, that absent look on his face. Or maybe the old man still remembers the neighbors he had in the past, the man who was massacred at his front door. “Sure, I know them. But what are they doing?” My cousin makes light of it. “They aren’t doing anything, nothing bad. And they’re clean and tidy.” “As for being clean, they’re clean,” his wife confirms. But the old man shakes his head forcefully. “There’s no pleasure anymore. There’s no pleasure with those people below, on the first floor, that everyone has to pass by.” “Squatters,” Mimmo finally explains. “The apartment went unrented for too long. So they forced open the door and settled themselves inside. An entire family.” “There’s no pleasure anymore,” the old man repeats resentfully. “And it was better than paradise on earth. Better, believe me.” The disgrace gives him no peace. His chest puffs up and his shoulders rise in the effort to launch his protest and keep it high in the air, clearly visible, oozing with passionate hate. The man’s disability, that crutch leaning against the chair, seems harder to bear and more evident amidst the throbbing emotions and repressed energies. The old man is the master of the scene. His feelings invade the home, fill the space, keep it subjugated. Compared to his captive vitality, the two women are only dull, silent extras. “That’s better . . .” The man sighs, calming down little by little, almost as if Mimmo’s impassivity is rubbing off on him. An impassivity that has nuances of complicity. In this home, Mimmo treats everyone with familiarity, and is treated the same in turn. He’s the family doctor, an important laissez-passer for me too. I know how it is, and I have taken note. After his brief introduction—“my cousin”—no one asked me any questions. It’s not courtesy but simple control of curiosity, a normal exercise in this area between people who are friends, who respect each other. And no one asks about the reason for this visit, which is certainly an unusual one. “I was in the area.” That’s enough, at least for the moment. A convention, a recognized, accepted formality. Form isn’t an empty shell, far from it. It enables you to manage situations. That’s the essential thing. But now Mimmo gives me a prodding look, encouraging me to come into play. He says, “My cousin, she’s writing a book. Your neighbors, the Cannizzaros, you remember them, don’t you? She’s writing a book about Tina.” “Tina?” Sugar has already been put in the coffee, and though I take it unsweetened, at this point there’s no way to not drink it. A small sip and I put the cup back on the saucer. “Tina?” Hostile, rebuffing: “She was called Cettina.” *** A name for a little girl, for a sweet little girl, that really didn’t fit her, falling off her on all sides like certain little flounced dresses that her mother resigned herself not to put on her anymore and to replace with pants and a t-shirt. A name that got in her way like the long hair hanging down on her neck. She just had to go to the barber’s when her father went there, to get rid of that encumbrance. Cettina would see herself in those long mirrors under the neon lights, in the white bib towel that covered her, hanging almost down to her feet, and feel the same as all the other boys. It was beautiful to break free from that hairstyle. Cettina would have liked to make her own name slide away right along with the hair the barber shook out of the cloth at the end of her haircut. But at eight years old, there wasn’t any way to escape that shrill, clear diminutive. Even if she hid behind her cousins’ clothes, in their old pants, jackets that reached her after unnervingly long peregrinations from one boy to another, from one growth spurt to another. At a certain point someone would call her Cettina and an entire scaffolding swayed unstably at the impact. Her body dislocated and piece by piece was swallowed up by the swamp of an unruly submission. Spoken on her father’s lips alone that name didn’t jar, ridiculous and sickly sweet, a touchy spot always waiting in ambush in her imaginative soul. “A night wasted when you make a baby girl,” her father would pronounce, repeating the age-old saying, but then he would take her along with him to the café and guide her hand on the billiard stick. Together, they’d roam through the bare countryside and dusty dirt roads, scars of a slightly lighter shade that fur- rowed the pale belly of the plain. He liked to take her along with him, that little girl with tomboyish eyes and a flair for adventure. They were often together on the long rides he had to take for his work as a metal scrap dealer, squeezed tight in the little three-wheeled Ape truck that bounced and squeaked at every gash in the asphalt and dangerously lurched at every stone. He took her alone out, into the world, and not Saveria, with that air of the busy older sister caught up in the most minute domestic duties. And not even Francesco, too babyish, too whiny. In fact, when he saw them arguing, “Let it all out, let it all out,” he’d say, stirring her up. “Hit him now, because when he’s big he’ll be giving you a beating.” Then all of a sudden, the little Ape truck stood abandoned, and she found herself in a fast car, a new house, wearing her own clothes bought in her exact size, with a father who was brusque, worried, and distant. Eight years old and she couldn’t get used to her name. Just like Cettina couldn’t get used to the new house. Sure, if they asked her, she claimed she was happy. She boasted about it with a sort of arrogant vainglory. So much so that her cousins, wavering between envy and admiration, commented under their breath, “Haughty girl.” But Cettina felt she had to show how proud of her father she was. He was a man who knew how to take care of his family and had lifted his children out of that hole of just a few square meters and without any windows, where all six of them had lived and where only their grandmother remained, attached to her way of life, like all old people. There was no lack of windows in the new house. In fact the light was too strong, too invasive and hot. The muffled sound of footsteps on the sidewalk was far away. She vainly strained to catch the sound of feet shuffling by, which at night, just beyond the doorstep of their old home, used to accompany her sleep. That silence tightened around her chest, provoking a sense of estrangement, malaise. Cettina would open the door and find herself facing a sad hallway, an empty ramp of stairs. The street no longer came directly into the house and the house no longer opened onto the street. That’s how it has to be, her father said. That’s how it has to be, Cettina repeated to her cousins and friends from her old street, listing the advantages and comforts of their new accommodations. Then she’d list them over again to herself to find some confirmation and deceive her doubts. Because what good was having a telephone, for example (her mother had been the one to have it put in, after long haggling, furious arguments with her father), if afterwards no one could answer when it rang? “But what did you all get into your heads? To let everyone know about my own business? Do you want to let the whole world know when I’m home and when I’m not here?” He was a cautious man, and he certainly had good reason to be so. Even if all his caution wasn’t enough to spare him from an unexpected, violent end. __________________________________ Excerpt from Tina Mafia, Soldier, courtesy of Soho Crime. By Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, translated from the Italian by Robin Pickering-Iazzi. Translation copyright ©2023 by Robin Pickering-Iazzi. 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The Gangster Who Died Twice
On January 31, 1974, Carmine Galante was loving life. Everything had that new freedom smell. Another thing had changed since Galante went away a dozen years earlier: He no longer drove. Now he always had a driver pick him up and drop him off. Sometimes bodyguards would drive. Other times his daughter Nina would play chauffeur. On this day, Galante was driven around town in a white-over-red Caddy by his nephew, who lived out on Long Island in Nassau County. They rode from Manhattan to Bath Beach in an Oldsmobile bearing Jersey plates. Galante visited the Magic Lantern, a bar owned by his son-in-law, Nina’s husband, Louis Volpe, located on Bath Avenue. Volpe lived at Eighteenth Avenue and 79th Street in Bensonhurst, just north of Bath Beach. As exhibited by his handball games, Galante’s days of losing were over. FBI informants—one of whom turned out to be Bill Bonanno, son of Joseph, turned rat—laid it out for the feds: Galante controlled the Bonanno Family and would “definitely make a power play with Carlo Gambino in an attempt to become the one-and-only crime lord of New York City.” Inside the Magic Lantern, Galante was observed talking to swarthy men in Sicilian-accented Italian. It looked like Galante was conducting business. The swarthy men were Knickerbocker Zips, the Sicilian guys who did more than just drive and bodyguard. Galante gave them capo status so they could operate with their own crews, and they had their headquarters in a variety of pizza parlors and pastry shops up and down Knickerbocker Avenue in Bushwick. With the Bonanno Family in disarray, ranks depleted, the Zips formed the infrastructure for a new family, Lilo’s Family. And Galante was conducting business out of the Magic Lantern. He took over a gambling and loans op that was running out of Penn Station. He chipped away at Gambino power by demanding a piece of the action in Manhattan sweatshops. Galante had grudges. Rastelli, whom the Commission had named top Bonanno, and Gambino underboss Aniello Dellacroce. Galante and Dellacroce, vicious down to their toenails, were two peas in a pod and so naturally hated each other’s guts. Besides, Galante still held a grudge against Dellacroce because he’d whacked a couple of Galante’s heroin dealers. But there was nobody Galante hated more in the world than Frank Costello, tops on Galante’s list of guys who would die before he did. Problem was, on February 18, 1973, while Galante was still in Atlanta, Frank Costello died of throat cancer in Doctors Hospital in New York City at the age of eighty-two. Costello’s body was taken to the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel in Manhattan. Galante heard the news and was beyond pissed. Smoke came out of his ears. Costello had deprived Galante of the pleasure of killing him. * Costello’s death was reported heavily in the news. America had an interest in Costello, getting to know him when he testified before the Kefauver Committee on national television. He was memorable as the guy whose face they didn’t see. He agreed to be on television only if his face was never shown, so TV cameras focused on Costello’s finely manicured hands during his testimony, which he delivered in a raspy voice straight out of Central Casting. Costello answered more questions than most of the hoods who testified. He didn’t take the Fifth at all, which made him different. He also said absolutely nothing of value to the Kefauver Committee. He admitted to being a bootlegger and a bookmaker years before. Who wasn’t? But that was a long time ago and these days he knew less than nothing about organized crime. They asked him what he’d done to his credit as an American citizen. “I paid my taxes,” Costello said. Everyone laughed. Oh yeah, America remembered him. His obituary was action-packed. Illegal booze, gambling, a famous assassination attempt featuring parted hair and a celebrity gun- man known for his chin, the attempt to deport him during the late 1950s, a man who’d aged out of hood activity, who’d been laying low during the last years of his life, seldom leaving the Central Park apartment that he shared with his wife, Loretta. When Costello died, there was a small fuss about the size of his funeral convoy, about the size of the flower arrangements around his coffin, and, finally, about the size of his tomb, which was larger than many Manhattan apartments. Joking—sort of. A caretaker at St. Michael’s Cemetery was a blabbermouth, told a reporter that the plot alone cost Ms. Costello $4,880. “She paid in cash,” the caretaker said. On that five-grand plot they built an elegant marble mausoleum. The contractor who built the structure later said he had no idea that its occupant was infamous. “I didn’t recognize the name,” the guy said, a smart contractor. He said that he’d taken the job from an elderly man named Amilcare Festa, who turned out to be a trusted neighbor of Frank Costello’s mother. The contractor was paid in cash, a series of packets, each containing fifty hundred-dollar bills. This stuff about Costello’s legacy being the fanciest tomb in the whole fucking cemetery appeared in the papers and Galante had Nina read it to him while he sat and drank wine and brooded. That shit stuck in Galante’s craw. When Galante got out of prison in January 1974, one of his first orders was: “Blow up that fucker Frank Costello’s fucking mausoleum. Fuck with his body!” Costello had been dead for months, but the mission was ordered with urgency. If Galante couldn’t blow Costello up when he was alive, he would blow him up while he was dead. So a few Zips, The Tall Guy and a couple of others, went out to buy the dynamite and headed to St. Michael’s Cemetery in the East Elmhurst section of Queens, where Costello’s final resting place was about to lose its doors to an explosion that could be heard all the way to Astoria. The police report said that the doors to the tomb had been blown right off and that the “remains had been disturbed.” Not too many guys have the stomach for that kind of ghoulish work. They grow ’em tough in Castellammare. _________________________ From THE CIGAR by Frank Dimatteo and Michael Benson, excerpted with permission from Kensington Books. Copyright 2023. View the full article -
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Stationery in Motion: Letters from Hotels
Jennifer Dunbar Dorn’s letter to Lucia Berlin from the Hotel Boulderado, September 2, 1977. Courtesy of Jennifer Dunbar Dorn and the Lucia Berlin Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University. In 1977, Jennifer Dunbar Dorn wrote to her best friend, Lucia Berlin, from the Hotel Boulderado, where she was staying while she looked for a house in Boulder, Colorado. Her “large corner room” became “a dormitory at night,” while “during the day we roll the beds into a cupboard in the hall.” She described the hotel as a “faded red brick run by post hippies,” a place for people on the make and on the move. This might not seem like a hotel that would have had its own stationery, but it did. The paper’s crest features a lantern and mountains, and the header reads HOTEL BOULDERADO in French Clarendon font: the typeface of Westerns and outlaws, of greed, gambling, and adventure. The hotel’s name, Dunbar Dorn recently pointed out to me, “is a combination of Boulder and Colorado, obviously, but the mythic El Dorado is ingrained everywhere in the West”—its lost city of gold. I stumbled on this letter at Harvard’s Houghton Library, where a collection of Berlin’s papers are stored in a single cardboard box. Almost everything she saved over the course of her peripatetic life is compressed into this tiny space: correspondence, notebooks, reviews, manuscripts, applications for tenure. I am Berlin’s first biographer, and I often felt deeply moved as I worked through the box last summer. Berlin is my El Dorado, and I had been looking for her for so long … Though the archivists at the library had sent me scans of some of these documents during the pandemic, it wasn’t the same as touching pages she had once touched. As I examined the yellowed paper, placing my own thumb over the smudged thumbprint at the top, I imagined Berlin reading Dunbar Dorn’s letter at her kitchen table in Oakland after a shift on the Merritt Hospital switchboard. Mostly, it’s about Dunbar Dorn’s journey from California to Colorado with her husband, Ed Dorn, and their children. Her emphasis is on their time on the road, not on their arrival—on transience over stasis and on quest over complacency, core values of the counterculture to which she, Dorn, Berlin, and their dispersed community of writers and artists loosely belonged. A postcard from the Hotel Acapulco, from the fifties. The Boulderado letter stood out to me because of the paper on which it was written. I got to Harvard in the third week of a research trip in pursuit of Berlin’s scattered correspondence, and along the way I’d become obsessed with hotel stationery. The appeal, at first, was aesthetic: hotel paper is pretty, and from the forties to the seventies, it was ubiquitous across the States and Europe. A few days earlier, while wading through the papers of Berlin’s literary agent, Henry Volkening, at the New York Public Library, I’d noticed that many of his clients wrote to him from hotels. Berlin herself first used her author name on a hotel postcard to Volkening in 1961. She had just eloped to Acapulco with her third husband, Buddy Berlin, and she described her newfound happiness, signing off: “Lucia Berlin.” But many of the hotel letters I sought out had nothing to do with Berlin’s work. By my third or fourth archive—in my third or fourth American city—I was skipping lunch breaks to call up boxes belonging to writers who I knew traveled frequently: James Baldwin, Anaïs Nin, Raymond Chandler. Here is some of what I found. Raymond Chandler’s letter to Neil Morgan from the Hotel Grosvenor, June 5, 1956. © The Estate of Raymond Chandler. Courtesy of the Estate, c/o Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN. The Hotel Grosvenor Raymond Chandler wrote to his friend Neil Morgan on Hotel Grosvenor paper in 1956, describing a recent bout of “mental, physical and emotional exhaustion” that he dealt with by “drinking enough whiskey to keep me on my feet.” At a second glance, the address on Fifth Avenue is underlined by a second one, of Room H363 at the private pavilion of New York Hospital (“But don’t write here”). Chandler wasn’t at the Grosvenor anymore; he was at the hospital, recovering from a breakdown. The hotel stationery was a respectable front for a man who had been institutionalized but who still wanted the people who loved him to know where he was. “Don’t give me up,” he ends the letter to Morgan. “I need friends.” Kenneth Koch’s letter to James Schuyler from the Hotel Claridge, from the late fifties. Courtesy of the Kenneth Koch Estate and the James Schuyler Papers, Special Collections and Archives, University of California, San Diego. The Hotel Claridge In the late fifties, Kenneth Koch sent James Schuyler a letter on paper from the Hotel Claridge in Paris, a Champs-Élysées institution and a rendezvous for “touristes fortunés,” Koch wonders whether “fear of writing to someone always in movement” is what has kept Schuyler from keeping in touch. He continues with a riff on the New Testament: “Rise and follow me, Immity Skimmity, and never more will you want your correspondent to sit still.” As it was for Berlin and the Dorns, a particular type of transience was, for Koch, a virtue. He traveled to escape the system, not to be coddled in upholstered rooms like the luxury suites at the Claridge. There is an asterisk next to the hotel crest: “Just kidding,” he adds, “see real address above.” This, it turns out, is 41, rue du Cherche-Midi, in the then hip and nonconformist sixth arrondissement, which, since the war, had become the headquarters of existentialism and bebop jazz. He must have swiped the Hotel Claridge stationery; his correspondence wears it as a costume to play a visual trick on Schuyler—to “kid.” Gary Snyder’s letter to Shandel Parks from Timberline Lodge, July 30, 1954. Courtesy of Gary Snyder and the Gary Snyder Papers, Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego. Timberline Lodge Hotel stationery leaves plenty of space for editorializing. Gary Snyder wrote to Shandel Parks in 1954 from Timberline Lodge in the Oregon mountains. The hotel’s name and outline appear on the header, and at the bottom of the page there is an illustration of a ski lift, with tiny letters reading YEAR ’ROUND PLAYGROUND IN MT. HOOD NATIONAL FOREST. Snyder explains to Parks that he has been wandering “disconsolately about,” from “the ocean beaches to the Mountains, from there to Seattle, and thence to Mountains near Canada, and back to Mountains in central Washington, and again to Seattle, and then to a stretch of beach in central Washington, wondering, always, ‘Whence?’ and ‘Whither?’” Finally, he “chanced on a job” at Timberline Lodge, “attending to the «chair lift».” He did not plan to stay long. The double chevrons around “chair lift” are a different shape from the other quotation marks in his text, as though the language of chairlifts is not his own. At Timberline Lodge, Snyder was immersed in an unfamiliar, all-American world of commercialized leisure, one he mocks with his infantilizing caption. He kept its chairlifts running, while maintaining the detachment that pervades his letter to Parks. He makes clear that as soon as the lumber strike in the Pacific Northwest is settled, he “will go to a certain crude logging camp” and “work until the snow flies. i.e. December, accumulating hoards of money.” Back to the Boulderado By the time Dunbar Dorn wrote to Berlin in the late seventies, the Hotel Boulderado’s stationery was informed by a countercultural aesthetic that was beginning to enter the mainstream. The whimsical logo and typography suggest that the hotel catered to seekers, dissenters, and outlaws—or to people who saw themselves as such. Guests included William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Ishmael Reed, plus a rotating cast of speakers at the University of Colorado and the Naropa Institute. In his 1975 song “Come Back to Us Barbara Lewis Hare Krishna Beauregard,” John Prine describes a hippie “buying quaaludes on the phone … In the Hotel Boulderado / at the dark end of the hall.” And yet the hotel remained, fundamentally, a business. In the eighties, after scraping together funds to renovate, it shed its dissident aesthetic and reverted to the plush accessories and prices with which it had opened in 1908. Today, rooms start at two hundred dollars a night, and the “happenings” advertised on the hotel website include a monthly “wine club” starting at forty dollars per person. Burroughs and rollaway beds are a distant memory. When I called the Boulderado to ask if they still print their own stationery, the front-office manager told me that they did, but that she used it for official correspondence and welcome letters to guests. Branded paper is no longer placed in the rooms. And this brings something home: no matter how closely I follow Berlin, I can never truly enter her world, because it is gone, along with the golden age of hotel stationery. What endures, of course, is Berlin’s work. In her short story “Dr. H. A. Moynihan,” originally published under the title “The Legacy” in 1982, a dentist shows his granddaughter a set of false teeth. “He had changed only one tooth,” Berlin writes, “one in front that he had put a gold cap on. That’s what made it a work of art.” I think, for her, this was a metaphor for the creative process. She does something similar with her fiction, drawing on her experience and transforming it, too, as Lydia Davis has observed. And her interventions, innovations, additions, and omissions catch the light: they’re the treasures, like El Dorado, or the gold cap on a tooth. A prewritten hotel letter from the Mission Inn, March 14, 1946. Nina Ellis is a British American writer and scholar. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Granta, The Idaho Review, The London Magazine, the Oxford Review of Books, and elsewhere. She won an Editors’ Choice Award in the 2021 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. Looking for Lucia: A Biography will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2025. View the full article -
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Algonkian Retreats and Workshops 2023 - Assignments
ALGONQUIN ANSWERS file:///C:/Users/misterm/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.jpg FIRST ASSIGNMENT: Ruby Parker loved her daddy, almost more than anything. Almost as much as she hated his brother, her uncle Frank. She must find a way to save the family ranch and her daddy’s elephant from Frank. But there’s a war on and revenge must wait, as she must first help her country win that war as a welder and bring her soldier fiancé back to her. When Ruby falls from a ladder, a co-worker saves her life and befriends her. As she recovers her memory, she realizes that William used to work for her daddy on his circus. After her father’s death Uncle Frank attempted to murder William, who now joins Ruby on her vengeance quest. SECOND ASSIGNMENT: Frank Parker always played second fiddle to his older brother. Unlike Gene, Frank lives only for himself and the pleasures he can grab from life, by force if necessary. He prefers girls to grown women and often just takes what he wants; even raping his own young niece as his brother lies dying. He hates both his brother’s elephant and the young black man his brother had as much as adopted. But then, his brother dies, freeing Frank from any last restraints of decency. He steals the family’s ranch and his brother’s substantial insurance proceeds. He tries poisoning the elephant and attempts to murder the black man, maiming him for life. Within a few years after his brother’s death, as the rest of America fights Naziism, he becomes a rich and powerful man in the small Texas Hill Country community he terrorizes. Frank epitomizes both the racism and sexism of the Jim Crow South, but also, in a more veiled manner, that of the entire country – at the time – and even until today. It is these larger antagonistic forces against which Ruby and William struggle throughout the novel. THIRD ASSIGNMENT: The O’Dell Cup is my working title. It’s simple, and perhaps a bit plain, but, hopefully more than a little mysterious. While this may not prove to be the final title of my novel, I’m using it now because it refers to an actual tin cup in my family lore and is the original inspiration for my story. The cup appears in the novel’s opening scene and, later, its revelation to the protagonist becomes a turning point in the plot. It also serves as a symbol of the racism that permeated the Jim Crow South, even by those who thought themselves immune from it. Other Options: Ruby the Riveter Forgetting and Remembering FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: Water for Elephants - Sarah Gruen Who doesn’t love a circus? Not just the glitz, the danger, and the exotica, but also the intrigue and the backstories behind the tent walls. Stories about circuses offer a glimpse into a lifestyle that few have, or really want, to taste. While we may not really want to run away to join the circus it can certainly hold nearly all of us in its spell long enough for a good read. My female protagonist is based, in no small part, on my own circus family. In fact, when I first read “Water for Elephants” I thought, “How did Sarah Gruen know my family story?” – there were so many fictional accounts in her work that closely paralleled true stories from my own family background. In The O’Dell Cup Ruby relives much of her own circus experiences as she regains the memories she lost when she fell in the Liberty ship she was helping to build. Sprinkled throughout the novel, these memories and other disclosures recapture for the reader the picture of a small family circus (a “mud show”) characteristic of such enterprises in the “Jim Crow” rural South. Where the Crawdad’s Sing – Delia Owens The tie-in to this story is the strength of the female protagonist who overcomes obstacle after obstacle as the story progresses. While my novel has a different time and setting, I think it will attract the type of readers who revel in the struggles and eventual victory of a strong female protagonist. And in both stories the young white female is befriended by and receives invaluable assistance from an older black male. FIFTH ASSIGNMENT: In recovering her memory after a fall in a WWII ship she worked on, a circus girl discovers that the co-worker who saved her life is the same man who used to work for her daddy’s circus. After realizing that the girl’s uncle has seriously injured both of them, the protagonists vow revenge, but only after the war has ended. SIXTH ASSIGNMENT: In the novel’s inciting incident, the female protagonist temporarily loses her memory in an accident. Backstory reveals that she was orphaned as a teenager. As she recovers her memory, she learns that her fiancé soldier had been killed on the same day she was injured. Not enough? Finally, she remembers that her uncle repeatedly raped her when she was a child. Although she suffers through these repeated tragedies, none can defeat Ruby. Victimhood is not in her circus DNA. Like the “energizer bunny” she manages to bounce back from all that life can throw at her. Here is one sample: In the novel’s inciting incident, the female protagonist temporarily loses her memory in an accident. Backstory reveals that she was orphaned as a teenager. As she recovers her memory, she learns that her fiancé soldier had been killed on the same day she was injured. Not enough? Finally, she remembers that her uncle repeatedly raped her when she was a child. Although she suffers through these repeated tragedies, none can defeat Ruby. Victimhood is not in her circus DNA. Like the “energizer bunny” she manages to bounce back from all that life can throw at her. Here is one sample: Ruby was quiet for a few moments. Then she asked, “William, may I…would you mind…if… I touched your scar?” William’s silent expression indicated that it would be okay. Ruby reached up to his forehead where the purple line began. Slowly and gently, she traced it down his face, past the void where his eye had been, down toward his chin. As her hand reached his lips her fingers began to tremble, and then shake uncontrollably. The scar reminded her of a snake and her worst memory, the most hidden one, the one that had never been remembered, rushed into the depths of her soul. The worst memory, the one nobody should have to remember. “I’m standing above a hole in the ground, like where we buried my daddy. I look down and see… Me. I’m covered with snakes; dozens of rattlers crawling all over my body; hissing; flicking their tongues at me; tasting my body with their tongues – my fingers, my eyes, my lips, my hips, my breasts, my private place. Then the biggest snake, the evilest one, crawls inside me, staying inside, hurting me. I scream but no sound comes out. No one can hear, not even my own mind. I close my eyes, clinch my fists, but it’s still there, staying, hurting, taking part of me. Finally, the snake crawls away. I look down again and the hole is empty. The snakes are gone. I’m gone. Uncle Frankie is standing beside me. ‘This is a secret Ruby, our secret. Don’t ever tell nobody. Never. If you do, something very bad will happen.’ He squats down and looks me right in my eyes. ‘It might happen to your little pony Poky, or to that n****r boy you seem to like so much, or even to your beloved Daddy.’ “These last words were spoken with a sneer so evil and dark it seemed to blacken the sky. But the snake didn’t stay away. It came back, whenever it wanted. And it went inside me again and hurt me again. And I lived in fear of that snake. Until Daddy died. And we buried him in the rain. And his casket floated up the next day. And we had to bury him again. And I got to go away to San Antonio. It was Daddy’s dying that saved me from the snake.” As Ruby jerked her fingers away from his face William saw the look of horror on hers. “Oh, Miss Ruby, I’m so sorry. I never should have let you touch my scar. It’s bad, really bad. I know how I look.” Time seemed to have nowhere to go. It just hung there between the two of them. Unmoving. Eventually Ruby, her gaze fixed somewhere else, a faraway place to which William could never go, said, “It’s not you William. You are a beautiful man, inside and out. I just remembered the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.” And then she told William what she had remembered. After Ruby had finished telling William why she had jerked her hand from his face, the two friends sat in silence for a long while. William kept expecting Ruby to start crying and had no clue as to how to comfort her. But she didn’t fall apart; just the opposite. She was growing stronger. “William?” “Yes?” “We have to make this right, you and me. We have to get even with Frankie for all he’s done. He hurt us both, real bad. file:///C:/Users/misterm/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.jpg Next, likewise sketch a hypothetical scenario for the "secondary conflict" involving the social environment. Will this involve family? Friends? Associates? What is the nature of it? Ruby is from the South – Texas - before the Civil Rights era; need I say more? Ruby’s life is saved by a black co-worker who then befriends her as she convalesces. As she gradually recovers bits of her memory, the black man realizes that she is the daughter of a circus owner he worked for a decade earlier back in Texas. And when he hands her the old tin cup he used to drink from, she recognizes him as the man who nursed her daddy in his final illness. They become friends and Ruby considers herself free of the prejudice that permeated the landscape of her childhood. It isn’t until she and William sit together at the staged trial of fifty black sailors that she realizes how deep her own unacknowledged prejudice runs. And William, sitting beside her realizes how he has always accepted his lot in life because “that’s just the way things are.” Sitting next to her friend William, looking across at the fifty black faces on trial for their lives, some merely teenagers, Ruby found herself on trial as well, perhaps more so. She remembered her thoughts when she had read in the Oakland Tribune the day after the explosion that the “Death toll may reach 650." She was horrified. The war had come home, right in her backyard. Other than Pearl Harbor, the Port Chicago disaster would be the worst loss of life on American soil during the war. Then, when the article went on to note that most of the victims had been Negro sailors, she had felt a sense of relief. It could have been worse. They could have been…. Even Ruby’s mind couldn’t finish that sentence. She wanted to wretch as the enormity of her thought sunk in. Her insides started to tear at her as if she had a tiger in her gut trying to rip something evil out of her, something she hadn’t been aware existed. She started to cry, first inside, and then in quiet sniffles as tears dripped down her cheek. FINAL ASSIGNMENT: Is there a more iconic structure in the western United States than San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge? Its mere mention, or a glimpse of its image conjures up memories and feelings within anyone who has ever seen it or heard of it in literature, song, or film. The novel opens, and closes, on the bridge. It is the first landmark Ruby sees when she arrives in California from Texas. And it continues to recur throughout the novel, even serving as an accidental inciting incident for what will become her career. Ruby couldn’t wait to start photographing the bridge for real. Each photo would tell the story differently; the bridge itself in different moods – early morning through the shroud of fog, late afternoons of golden sunsets, and the evening as the lights of the City began twinkling on. And her pictures would tell the story of the people of the bridge: those who designed and built it; former circus performers who itched to meet its challenges; and those for whom it promised an escape from an unlivable life. And all of its more mundane denizens; tourists, commuters, pedestrians. Across the bay sits Richmond, nondescript if it weren’t the location of one of the largest military industrial complexes of World War II. This is where the two protagonists meet, as welders on Liberty ships. Richmond California sticks out into both San Pablo and San Francisco Bays like a hitchhiker’s thumb. The setting would have been beautiful if the Whites had left it the way the Ohlone’s had it when they came. But, unless your taste in vacations ran to oil refineries, assembly plants, or heavy industry, this other “city by the bay” had little to recommend it by the mid-1940’s. …In less than two years, Richmond’s population had mushroomed from fewer than twenty thousand to well over a hundred thousand souls. By mid-’44 Richmond was a twenty-four seven, three-sixty-five, situation….All four shipyards ran triple shifts. Bus exhaust choked the air, and Susan had to keep her car wheels steered clear of the trolley tracks. Horns blasted. People were walking everywhere, both with and against the lights, as though they’d all been to pedestrian school in New York City. And the beautiful green hills of Berkely, rising above, geologically and economically, the more pedestrian East Bay communities of Albany, El Cerrito, Oakland, and the aforementioned Richmond. The imported Eucalyptus trees of Tilden Park tower over Casa Serena, where Ruby recovers from her injuries. And where her discovery of a carousel triggers the return of her memory. By the first of May, Ruby had been moved to a small facility up in the Berkeley Hills, at the edge of Tilden Park. It was no accident that the recovery center was located where it was. The setting itself was almost enough to cure anything. The brown California hills turn a brilliant green in the Springtime. Native Coastal shrub covered the ground and imported Eucalyptus trees towered above, blanketing everything with their unmistakable aroma, like the fog over the bay. It was believed that the scent emitted by the Eucalyptus oils increased brainwave activity and countered physical and mental fatigue. And, if one listened closely, she might hear the spirits of the ancient Ohlone’s who inhabited the land before the whites arrived. For perhaps thousands of years prior to the Spaniards conquest, these native peoples had made their homes in this beautiful landscape where God probably took his vacation. If one knew how to look and feel for it; how to open one’s pores to the healing ministrations of the ghosts of those ancient medicine men, she could feel a cleansing, a fullness, and a calm that even the strongest drugs couldn’t duplicate. And Treasure Island, not the fictional setting for Robert Louis Stevenson, but an artificial island anchoring the two spans of the Bay Bridge. It is where the US Navy wrongly tried and convicted fifty black sailors of mutiny following the Port Chicago ammo depot explosion in 1944. The novel’s protagonists are present at both the mutiny trial as well as the aftermath of the explosion itself. It didn’t take Ruby but about 10 minutes to realize the trial was a sham. The room was salt and pepper, black and white. The salt was sitting at the front table; older white men in their starched white uniforms, their medals threatening to topple them over. And the two younger white men arguing the fate of the pepper; fifty Black men sitting in uncomfortable chairs along the back wall. One significant scene is set in the “Last Chance Saloon” a hole-in-the-wall drinking establishment on Oakland’s waterfront frequented by the writer Jack London around the turn of the twentieth century. The saloon had survived the ‘06 earthquake but it hadn’t escaped unscathed. When they bent their heads, at least Gordon did, to step down to enter, he directed Ruby to sit with him on stools at the far end of the bar as the half dozen tables were already filled. The first thing Ruby noticed was that the bar, the original from when Jack London sat there, slanted from one end of the small building down to where they were sitting, dropping close to a foot. “This is what happened during the earthquake,” Gordon explained. The bar tilted and they never fixed it. I always sit at this end, to keep my drink from sliding down to another patron. It’s sort of the thing here. Newcomers often wind up finding someone ‘down bar’ finishing their first drink. Most of them learn after that.” As the novel reaches its conclusion the scene shifts to a small town in Texas’ Hill Country, an hour’s drive from San Antonio. It has become the undisputed domain of the novel’s antagonist, a man who epitomizes both racism and sexism. He controls the town and its citizens including the judge presiding over a trial in a musty courtroom with a foregone conclusion. The courthouse in Riverbend sat on a little knoll in the middle of town. With its three stories and belltower it was the tallest building in the community, and you could see its cupola from anywhere in the city limits. The first floor, called the dungeon by some, contained jail cells and the sheriff’s and coroner’s offices. The two identical courtrooms were housed on the second floor, accessible up fifteen marble steps through the main entrance. The courtrooms sat on opposite sides of the hall towards the back of the building, past the county clerk and assessor’s offices. Each had a double oak door carved with a blindfolded lady justice holding her scales in balance. The majestic doors belied the simplicity of the courtroom itself. The judge’s bench sat on a raised dais, offset a bit to the left to fit in the jury box on the right side. Opposing counsel each had a small desk facing the judge at floor level and there were four pew-like benches on each side of the room capable of holding six or seven spectators. The rooms gave off a faint musty smell due to the paucity of windows and there was an ominous, almost frightening, feeling about the space. As if the ghosts of criminals, themselves victims of some of the “hanging judges” of the previous century, were hanging around to see who else might share their fate. -
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Algonkian Pre-event Narrative Enhancement Guide - Opening Hook
RESPONSE TO PRE-ASSIGNMENTS PART III Below are the opening pages of my novel. Since it contains no dialog, I have added another section from later in the novel. 1985 The heavy fog, late in leaving that morning, nearly obscured the shadowy figure making its way towards the center of the Golden Gate Bridge. Although she passed just a few feet from the Sunday traffic, the small woman went unnoticed by the drivers streaming towards Marin County. Clad in a fashionable running suit and sensible shoes, she strode briskly along the pedestrian walkway. Her petite frame, firm gait, and bright red hair belied her nearly seventy years. After she’d passed the south tower, she paused and turned eastward towards Oakland first, then Berkeley, Albany, and, finally, Richmond. Slowly, she removed her shoes and set her backpack on the steel grating. Then she took a small object from her pack: a tin cup, tarnished from age and use. Standing at the guardrail, the woman lifted the old cup to her face and tenderly kissed it. Holding it above her head with both hands, like a priest lifting the chalice for a blessing, she let the winds carry the man’s spirit higher and higher above the bridge in a swirl of ash. The gulls swarmed, imitating the angels. Then, she leaned over the rail, offering the empty cup to the waves, 220 feet below. Four Seconds… The time it takes a human jumper to reach the roiling waters of San Francisco Bay. Four Seconds… The time it took that little cup to slip beneath the waves. Four Seconds… More than enough time to travel back four decades. 1944 Most mornings, as Ruby Parker stepped off the bus to begin her shift at Richmond Yard No. 2, she could just see the tip of the Golden Gate Bridge emerging from a fog-shrouded San Francisco Bay; and some days, she believed she could hear its ghosts: the souls of those desperate jumpers seeking an end to an unlivable life, and the spirits of those thousands more who sailed beneath that span to a war from which they never returned. From the outside, Ruby looked like any of the other young women who got off the bus along with her: denim coveralls, sturdy work shirt, a bandana hiding her bright red hair, lunch pail clutched in her left hand. From the outside, she looked like any of the thousands who worked for Henry J. Kaiser building ships to help the Allies win the war. She looked like she could have come off an assembly line similar to the ships she helped build. But on the inside, it was a different story. Ruby was a circus girl. If you asked, she would tell you about riding the elephant on her daddy’s circus when she was only four. And of swinging between trapeze rings a few years later. And she might tell you about her wonderful life on her family’s ranch in the wintertime. And perhaps she’d even tell you about the death of the circus, and of her daddy, during the Great Depression a few years before. And why she’d left the Texas Hill Country for the Bay Area. But she wouldn’t tell you that other thing, the one buried down so deep inside that she didn’t even know about it herself. When Ruby had started working at the shipyard, she had been a young woman with a past. And a future. And she was just about to lose both. *** “William, can you tell me what happened? Why did I leave the ranch? I want to know about my daddy and mama.” “I can, much as I know, but it’s sad. Miss Susan said not to tell you until you asked. She said that’s how we’d know you were ready to hear it. And she said that after I started to tell you about it, you’d likely start rememberin’ it yourself, bad as it might be.” “I understand. I think I’m ready.” “Ole Boss, he just got worse and worse. Spent his whole day, coughin’ up that blood. Doctor come out a couple of times. Said there wadn’t nothin’ he could do. Just keep him comf’tible as possible. It was a cold November day when he went. Day even the devil didn’t want to be outside.” “And it was raining, wasn’t it?” Ruby asked. “It was. You startin’ to remember?” “I found him, didn’t I? I found my daddy, and I screamed for you. And I was holding him when you got there. And I didn’t care if I caught his TB or not. Maybe I even wanted to. It didn’t seem like life made any sense anymore. What happened then?” “It was too muddy for the undertaker to bring out his hearse, so we bathed and wrapped him ourselves, and I made a coffin for him. The next day Richard and I dug the grave, right next to his little cabin. We did get a preacher to come out and say some prayers, and then we put him in the ground.” “And then?” “You sure you want to hear this?” “I can handle it. Don’t leave anything out.” “Well, like you said it was rainin’ like there was no tomorrow and, soon as we buried your daddy, we all hurried inside to dry out. Your mama was holed up in the back of the house, ever since she heard he was dead. She never even come out to see him. And the funniest thing; as soon as we had covered him up that elephant of his, Lucy, started bellowin’ loud, and cryin’ like, like she knew or somethin’. And it went on for hours. By the time it was dark, the rain had gotten lots worse; seemed like it was comin’ in sideways. Soon as he could, the preacher had left so it was just you and me, and Richard, and Sylvia, and your mama. It was the first night I stayed in the house. I just did and nobody said nuthin’ about it. We all just sat there, eatin’ milk and cornbread, listenin’ to the rain, and that elephant cryin’. I fell asleep in that chair your daddy used to rock in ‘fore he took sick. It was you woke me up the next morning, askin’ me to take you down to your daddy’s grave. You said we had forgotten to put flowers on it. When we got there….” “Stop,” screamed Ruby. “I know. The rain had been so bad that it had washed him out of his grave. The hole was full of water and the coffin was just bobbing at the top like a raft. And we had to dig another hole, higher up. And we tied ropes around the coffin and had Lucy drag it up the hill. And you said a prayer, I remember, before we covered him up a second time.” -
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Sophie Kinsella, Historical Fiction, & More
The Proposal The Proposal by Mary Balogh is $1.99! This is the first book in her Survivor’s Club series, which is a favorite amongst the Bitchery. Readers loved the hero, Hugo, but I’ve never felt particularly moved to pick one up. Balogh fans, what do you love about her books? In Mary Balogh’s engaging and seductive new novel of drama and romance, a woman comfortable in her solitude allows temptation to free her heart, when a daring war hero shows her how truly extraordinary she is. THE PROPOSAL Gwendoline, Lady Muir, has seen her share of tragedy, especially since a freak accident took her husband much too soon. Content in a quiet life with friends and family, the young widow has no desire to marry again. But when Hugo, Lord Trentham, scoops her up in his arms after a fall, she feels a sensation that both shocks and emboldens her. Hugo never intends to kiss Lady Muir, and frankly, he judges her to be a spoiled, frivolous–if beautiful–aristocrat. He is a gentleman in name only: a soldier whose bravery earned him a title; a merchant’s son who inherited his wealth. He is happiest when working the land, but duty and title now demand that he finds a wife. He doesn’t wish to court Lady Muir, nor have any role in the society games her kind thrives upon. Yet Hugo has never craved a woman more; Gwen’s guileless manner, infectious laugh, and lovely face have ruined him for any other woman. He wants her, but will she have him? The hard, dour ex-military officer who so gently carried Gwen to safety is a man who needs a lesson in winning a woman’s heart. Despite her cautious nature, Gwen cannot ignore the attraction. As their two vastly different worlds come together, both will be challenged in unforeseen ways. But through courtship and seduction, Gwen soon finds that with each kiss, and with every caress, she cannot resist Hugo’s devotion, his desire, his love, and the promise of forever. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. My Not So Perfect Life My Not So Perfect Life by Sophie Kinsella is $1.99! I bought this book on the recommendation of one of my book group members because she said it was absolutely hilarious. However, I have yet to read it (story of my life). I’ve heard Kinsella’s books are great palate cleanser reads. What do you think? Part love story, part workplace dramedy, part witty critique of the false judgments we make in a social-media-obsessed world, this is New York Times bestselling author Sophie Kinsella’s most timely and sharply observed novel yet. Everywhere Katie Brenner looks, someone else is living the life she longs for, particularly her boss, Demeter Farlowe. Demeter is brilliant and creative, lives with her perfect family in a posh townhouse, and wears the coolest clothes. Katie’s life, meanwhile, is a daily struggle—from her dismal rental to her oddball flatmates to the tense office politics she’s trying to negotiate. The final, demeaning straw comes when Demeter makes Katie dye her roots in the office. No wonder Katie takes refuge in not-quite-true Instagram posts, especially as she’s desperate to make her dad proud. Then, just as she’s finding her feet—not to mention a possible new romance—the worst happens. Demeter fires Katie. Shattered but determined to stay positive, Katie retreats to her family’s farm in Somerset to help them set up a vacation business. London has never seemed so far away—until Demeter unexpectedly turns up as a guest. Secrets are spilled and relationships rejiggered, and as the stakes for Katie’s future get higher, she must question her own assumptions about what makes for a truly meaningful life. Sophie Kinsella is celebrated for her vibrant, relatable characters and her great storytelling gifts. Now she returns with all of the wit, warmth, and wisdom that are the hallmarks of her bestsellers to spin this fresh, modern story about presenting the perfect life when the reality is far from the image. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Burning Roses Burning Roses by S.L. Huang is $2.99! We mentioned this is in a pervious Hide Your Wallet. There are elements for fairy tales, older main characters, and I believe a sapphic romance. Lots of catnip! However, this is more of a novella. A gorgeous fairy tale of love and family, of demons and lost gods, for fans of Zen Cho and JY Yang. When Rosa (aka Red Riding Hood) and Hou Yi the Archer join forces to stop the deadly sunbirds from ravaging the countryside, their quest will take the two women, now blessed and burdened with the hindsight of age, into a reckoning of sacrifices made and mistakes mourned, of choices and family and the quest for immortality. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Island Queen Island Queen by Vanessa Riley is $1.99! This is Riley’s first work of historical fiction as opposed to historical romance. It’s about Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, a free Black woman who achieved great wealth. Have you read it? A remarkable, sweeping historical novel based on the incredible true life story of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, a free woman of color who rose from slavery to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in the colonial West Indies. Born into slavery on the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat, Doll bought her freedom—and that of her sister and her mother—from her Irish planter father and built a legacy of wealth and power as an entrepreneur, merchant, hotelier, and planter that extended from the marketplaces and sugar plantations of Dominica and Barbados to a glittering luxury hotel in Demerara on the South American continent. Vanessa Riley’s novel brings Doll to vivid life as she rises above the harsh realities of slavery and colonialism by working the system and leveraging the competing attentions of the men in her life: a restless shipping merchant, Joseph Thomas; a wealthy planter hiding a secret, John Coseveldt Cells; and a roguish naval captain who will later become King William IV of England. From the bustling port cities of the West Indies to the forbidding drawing rooms of London’s elite, Island Queen is a sweeping epic of an adventurer and a survivor who answered to no one but herself as she rose to power and autonomy against all odds, defying rigid eighteenth-century morality and the oppression of women as well as people of color. It is an unforgettable portrait of a true larger-than-life woman who made her mark on history. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. View the full article -
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Making of a Poem: Kyra Wilder on “John Wick Is So Tired”
Photograph courtesy of Kyra Wilder. For our new series Making of a Poem, we’re asking poets to dissect the poems they’ve published in our pages. Kyra Wilder’s “John Wick Is So Tired” appears in our new Spring issue, no. 243. How did this poem start for you? Was it with an image, an idea, a phrase? With the first line. It was something I’d thought a lot about—I run marathons, and in those tense few days before the race, when I’m drinking water and carb loading and meditating on what’s going to happen, I watch John Wick, specifically because of the way Keanu Reeves runs. He looks so tired, but he’s winning. In the fall of 2021, I was tapering for a marathon and then I had to go to a funeral, and suddenly my John Wick time got invaded by real grief. And John Wick was good for that, too. What were you reading while you were writing the poem? I was reading a lot of Ian Fleming that fall. I got pretty obsessed with the fact that he included a recipe for scrambled eggs in a James Bond story. In that story, Bond is completing some kind of mission in New York but also being really whiny about the poor quality of American eggs—to the point that he’s wandering around the city going into bodegas and criticizing them. So, it was either going to be “John Wick Is So Tired” or “James Bond Could Make You Some Pretty Good Eggs.” Where did you write this poem? That glissade is in there because I was writing in the car, waiting to pick up my daughter from ballet class. I write all over—sometimes even at my actual desk. I have a print from Bas Jan Ader’s I’m too sad to tell you on the wall. There’s nothing better to stare at when things are going badly. Did you show your drafts to other writers or to friends or confidantes? If so, what did they say about them? I showed it to my husband. He’s a math guy and doesn’t read poetry, but he’s usually right about my writing. When he read the first draft, he liked the first half but said he “didn’t get” the ending. Reading that draft again now, I see what he meant. That version was maybe more like a novel or a short story. We’ve started with John Wick, but by the end we’re lost in the desert. It’s chatty, reaching for all the conversations that are being missed—the speaker wants to watch John Wick and tell the lost person historical asides about nuclear bomb testing sites. Of course they do, but that’s for a novel. In the context of a poem, it’s too much, too close together. I’m hitting the meaning-gong too many times. John Wick (the character, the movies, the Keanu) is so good, and the poem is about this one feeling of where-are-you-right-now-how-could-you-miss-this-one-particular-thing, so we need to stay with John Wick and forget the desert. After I found an ending that felt more specific and focused and safely clear of novel/short story/essay territory, I sent a copy to my agent, Jon Curzon. He told me he’d once made an Instagram account called Keanu Leaves, which was just full of pictures of Keanu Reeves waving goodbye. How else did the poem change over time? I wrote it without stanzas at first, and then decided to break up the poem following the speaker’s thoughts—where the thinking shifted, or where I thought they might pause or take a breath. The stanzas got me closer to the person speaking—they helped me hear how the speaker would say the lines. As useful as they were, though, the stanzas made the poem too dramatic. They looked like they were trying too hard. We’re starting with a hatchet thrown at someone’s face—we don’t need the additional histrionics of white space. Then it was all playing with line breaks. One of the drafts has two lines with single words. It’s not that I was thinking I might eventually end up with one-word lines—it was that I was breaking the lines up everywhere and leaving them for a while to see how they looked. I was just pushing things around, moving lines back and forth and reading it again every few days. I would open the document, break up lines, and leave it for a bit. Once I got the poem to the point where, when I looked at it fresh, there wasn’t anything I wanted to change, I sent it off and left it for dead. Kyra Wilder is the author of the novel Little Bandaged Days. View the full article -
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GAMES FOR DEAD GIRLS by Jen Williams (BOOK REVIEW)
She was at my side suddenly, her face in the gloom small and round, and tipped up to watch me closely. She narrowed her eyes. ‘Do you remember, Charlie?’ What do you (an anything-but-horror reader) do when one of your favourite auto-buy authors brings out a horror book? Well I can’t vouch for what you would do, but I dove right in. Was there still everything you enjoy about Jen Williams’ writing? Yep, shenanigans and malarky aplenty! Did you end up loving it? Absolutely! Did you read it before bedtime? Not a chance, and I recommend you don’t either. Jen Williams’ latest novel Games for Dead Girls is a crime thriller with heavy folk horror elements. It reminded me a little of Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger, but amped up and on holiday in Broadchurch. We follow Charlie in the past and the present; when she’s on holiday with her family, the summer friendship she makes with a girl in the caravan park; and when she returns to that caravan park as an adult, ostensibly researching a book she intends to write on local folklore. As she increasingly loses control of the games she devises with her new friend, in the present we begin to piece together what happened back then and why she’s had to return. Regardless of what genre she’s writing, you can rely on Williams’ storytelling to be superb. What she’s done here with Games for Dead Girls is to bring the storytelling to a meta level where, not to get post-modern on this, but the question of who is telling the story, and how reliable a storyteller they are, becomes key. The stories we tell ourselves about events, the ways in which our memories become stories we share with those who experienced them with us. How reliable these stories and memories may or may not be. It was a theme I really loved and thoroughly enjoyed the complexities of throughout. With regards to the writing itself, Williams does a fantastic job of intertwining a thread of threat into an otherwise harmless or mundane observation, layering this ominous atmosphere in such an insidious, subtle manner. It’s like an after-taste, when you’re half-way through your cuppa and you wonder if the milk is off: They were exactly the same as they had always been. At first glance, they looked identical, but if you trained your eye you could see all the things that set them apart from each other – and if you were a little kid left to run riot around the site all day, it was vital to learn these differences. Otherwise, you might never find your way home again. There are elements of haunting and a fair bit of body horror throughout, as you might have deduced from the cover, but the mystery behind it all kept me turning the pages. By the end of the first chapter, Williams dropped so many enticing hints to draw you in to this story, just as any good thriller should. I reached the end of that chapter with so many questions that I needed the answers to – I was hooked. As a reader, you’re trying to puzzle what happened to Charlie in her past, just as Charlie begins to puzzle why there is a history of girls going missing in this touristy seaside town that turned her life upside down. There are dual mysteries to solve here, which is what made this such an addictive read. Games for Dead Girls does for horror and crime what The Ninth Rain did for sci-fi and fantasy. Williams demonstrates once more what a skilful writer she is; she takes the best elements from both genres to combine them into a chilling, atmospheric story that you won’t be able to put down. This is a dark story which highlights there are worse monsters out there than even the most over-active imaginations can dream up. As much as I’m looking forward to her next fantasy in the autumn, Talonsister, I’ll definitely be coming back for more horror thrillers too! There was a power to knowing her words were affecting her listeners. Games for Dead Girls is out today from HarperVoyager and is available here! The post GAMES FOR DEAD GIRLS by Jen Williams (BOOK REVIEW) appeared first on The Fantasy Hive. View the full article -
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The 18 Scruffiest Detectives in Crime Film and TV
The scruffy detective is one of the purest, most persistent tropes in the crime genre. I’m not talking about the trope of the incompetent cop, but the detective who is very adept at solving crimes and less so at looking presentable/caring about other things. Personally, I like this character type. I want to watch someone roll out of bed at noon and go stagger off to follow a lead while wearing a trench coat that has not been dry-cleaned in a decade. I decided to put together a list of some of the most iconic entrants in this category. This is not a comprehensive list. Some of my lists are fairly exhaustive, while others are more like very specific, little tasting menus, if I’m permitted to be a bit florid with my description. This is the second kind, a sample of some very memorable men and women known for their practical nonchalance and unpretentious airs. And bedraggled appearances. It’s worth reiterating that this list is about rumpled detectives and not rumpled cops, so one of my favorites (Brian Keith as Gloucester Island Police Chief Link Mattocks from The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming) is not eligible for this list. We all have to make sacrifices. There are also no FBI or CIA agents on this list, which rules out Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality and Walter Matthau in Hopscotch, the latter of whom dresses up up half the time but other times works on his plans in his pajamas. Speaking of our Lord and Savior Walter Matthau, I thought long and hard about whether his Lt. Zachary Garber from The Taking of Pelham 123 counts… and although he wears that objectionable shade of yellow and works for the MTA (a falling apart, filthy institution by its very nature), I don’t think he comes across as scruffy? I wish Matthau were on this list. I thought about The Laughing Detective, I thought about Mirage, but I couldn’t shoehorn him in, and for this, I am profoundly sorry. This list is not ranked, because how would I even do that? Least scruffy to most scruffy? Get outta here. Jim Rockford, The Rockford Files James Garner’s PI Jim cleans up pretty good, but he also leads a very casual existence, living in a trailer on the beach. And if you live in a trailer on the beach, you’re going on this list. Mike Ehrmentraut, Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul Former police officer Mike Ehrmentraut (Jonathan Banks) works as a PI/fixer/hitman for Gus Fring in Breaking Bad. In Walt’s words, he’s a “grunting, dead-eyed cretin.” He’s a rough, no-frills, not particularly fashionable middle-aged guy. Not nearly as rumpled as some of the other guys on this list, but you know if he had his way, he’d be standing out in his yard, wearing his robe, hanging out with his chickens, making sure Wendell the rooster has enough to eat. Vera Stanhope, Vera The great Brenda Blethyn stars in as DCI Vera Stanhope in this long-running British series based on the Vera books by Ann Cleeves. Our girl is cranky and can even be a bit mean. All the descriptions say she’s disheveled, but I don’t think it’s it. As Brenda has said, “Sometimes, people say to me ‘oh you wouldn’t be able to wear those clothes going to work’… they’re all good clothes that Vera wears! She just doesn’t look in a mirror. She doesn’t see if this blouse goes with that skirt.” I agree! Also, people, it’s not a crime to care very little about appearances. Jake Peralta, Brooklyn Nine Nine Scully and Hitchcock are the precinct layabouts in this cop comedy TV series, but they are one-note background characters. Andy Samberg’s Jake, our protagonist, is the more significant slob. He’s really clever… but he’s also a buffoon with mice living in his desk. Shaggy, Scooby Do, Where Are You? I mean, it’s in his name. He wears an oversized t-shirt to every investigation, never shaves the peach fuzz, slacks off on every work outing to make sandwiches. Everett Backstrom, Backstrom Rainn Wilson’s Backstrom arrived to TV on the swells of the House craze. Although the show was based on Leif G.W. Persson’s darkly comic Bäckström books, about a cantankerous Scandinavian police detective, it hit American TV just when executives were wondering if what the people were wanted were shows that asked “what if a genius was also an asshole?” The show lasted one season, not just because audiences didn’t want the answer to that question, but probably because Backstrom’s issues aren’t just that he’s unkempt and crabby, but also that he’s racist! Giving us a protagonist whose bigotry is included in an umbrella of eccentricities is… bad. I don’t care to watch him redeem himself through crime-solving. So, yeah, he’s scuzzy enough for this list… too yucky to watch. Hank Dolworth, Terriers Ex-cop and unlicensed PI Hank Dolworth (Donal Logue) doesn’t exactly seem like the kind of guy who remembers to shower every day. But he’s got a lot of other things on his mind! Sam, Under the Silver Lake Andrew Garfield’s slacker Sam is the prototypical amateur detective of this category. He’s slovenly, more interested than getting high than paying his rent, but grows motivated to figure out what happened to his neighbor Sarah, who has gone missing. The fact that he’s a conspiracy nut doesn’t lend him credibility, and neither does the fact that he barely takes care of himself. Shawn Spencer, Psych Of all the detectives ever brought to film and TV, perhaps Shawn Spencer (James Roday Rodriguez), Santa Barbara’s fake psychic private detective, is the one who makes stuff up the most. Disorganized, immature, irreverent, and outright silly, Shawn is a man-child with an eidetic memory who has had years of practice honing it, thanks to training from his tough former-cop father. The scrimshanker Shawn is allergic to hard work and flies by the seat of his pants in every aspect of his life, including his housing situation (we find out a few seasons in that he lives in an abandoned dry cleaning facility). Unlike most of the other sleuths on this list, he even plays fast and loose when solving crimes. (He pretends he’s a psychic; really, he just observes or remembers things no one else observes or remembers, and solves crimes faster than the cops, and then fakes visions to get the credit/paycheck.) To Shawn, almost nothing is sacred. Brendan, Brick Part of Brendan’s scruffiness is the fact that he’s a high-schooler. Rian Johnson’s crackerjack 2005 neo-noir set among a group of teenagers in California asks young people to embody hardboiled tropes, and pulls it off to great success. Joseph Gordon Levitt’s Brendan starts off more casual than untidy, but his investigation starts wrecking his body, leaving him… a bit messy, quite bloody. Travis McGee, Darker Than Amber Rod Taylor’s chill Travis McGee is maybe a little more polished than his literary counterpart in John D. MacDonald’s 1966 novel of the same name. Maybe. He’s a beach bum, a chivalrous bachelor who is also a libertine. But like, Rockford Beach Rules apply! If you live on a boat, you’re a little bit scruffy! Unless it’s a yacht. (It’s not a yacht.) Charlie Cale, Poker Face All hail Charlie Cale! The heroine of Rian Johnson’s splendid case-of-the-week mystery series Poker Face is a paragon of this character type. Though she is extra tousled and wrinkled due to her circumstances (being on the run and off the grid—living out of her car and taking up short-lived odd jobs in towns she visits), she’s still fairly relaxed when we meet her in the pilot episode. At this point, she lives in a trailer in the desert, sits outside in a lawn chair and sips beer for breakfast, goes to the Liquor Castle in the middle of the day in a pajama set and bathrobe. Right on. Jim Hopper, Stranger Things Hopper is technically a police chief (and therefore a cop), but he does detective work, and for a while, that’s his primary function in the show. So I’m violating one of my rules from the intro (the no regular-cop rule), but for good reason. He’s a real “stares into the cereal bowl for an hour” kind of guy, the epitome of the vibe I’m trying to capture with this list. Not lethargic so much as exhausted or annoyed, his appearance is far more slapdash than his investigative work. Doc Sportello, Inherent Vice Doc, the protagonist of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, looks into the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend. But he (Joaquin Phoenix) is in a weed-fueled haze most of the time, because this is California in the ’70s. Nonchalant, easygoing, and sporting thick mutton chops, Doc is a low-key kind of guy, who can rev up a bit when he’s on the trail of something big. But he’s also cool to lay down and trip out. Shannon Mullins, The Heat In The Heat, Melissa McCarthy’s Detective Shannon Mullins is a messy, sweatpants-wearing Boston detective with a creatively vulgar vocabulary. She means well, and she’s damn good at her job. But also says asks things like, “You want something to eat? I didn’t finish my submarine sandwich from the other day.” So. The Dude, The Big Lebowski The Dude isn’t the best detective on this list. Actually, he’s probably the worst. And he’s probably the most slatternly, definitely the laziest. Jeffrey “The Dude” (Jeff Bridges Lebowski) wanders through Los Angeles in a t-shirt and jelly sandals, drinking white Russians and getting dragged into a hard-boiled mystery that’s out of his depth, after being mistaken for a local tycoon who shares his name. When he winds up becoming a detective of sorts, working for the man he was mistaken for, he’s asked, of his hoodie and shorts, “You don’t go out looking for a job dressed like that? On a weekday?” Yes he does. He does what he wants: “bowl, drive around, [have], the occasional acid flashback.” The Dude abides. The Dude abides. Philip Marlowe, The Long Goodbye Elliott Gould’s mussed-up Philip Marlowe is a far cry from the slightly vain, courtly, sardonic detective from Raymond Chandler’s books (especially the early ones), but he’s just as compelling. (Like Rockford, he can clean up really well when he needs to, and spends a bunch of the moving looking pretty slick.) Laconic, a little bit jaded, keeping very odd hours, and always with a cigarette dangling from his lips, this Marlowe perfectly blends the vague dreaminess of LA with the existentialism of the 70s. Columbo, Columbo Peter Falk’s unassuming, trench-coated, cigar-chomping detective is the granddaddy of them all. Unassuming, rumpled, and twinkly-eyed, Lt. Columbo uses his naturally unimposing, easily-underestimated vibe to his advantage, calmly finding clues and solving the mystery in his head, letting the villains think they’ve gotten away with something, before shocking them with the linchpin. “Oh, just one more thing…” and boom. Case closed. View the full article -
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Elyse Watches The Bachelor–S27 E11: Poop in Shoes
After many showers (so, so many showers) and much pointlessness, season 27 of The Bachelor is over. So who “won?” I don’t care. Anyway, thanks to some comments from last week’s post, I found Pudding a shirt that covers the spot she isn’t supposed to lick so she doesn’t need a cone. She doesn’t love the shirt, either, but it’s better. She’s still going to poop in my shoes. We open in a studio in LA where Jesse announces this is a three hour episode. FUCK MY LIFE. They announce that Charity will be the next Bachelorette. Then Jesse brings out Ariel, who was eliminated last week. He comments on how composed she was when Zach broke up with her. That’s because she was there for the free wine, travel and friendship my dude. No one is there for Zach, not even the Kohler shower head. They bring Zach out. “I’m sure you just got done with your thirty minute shower scene,” she says. click for me She tells Zach she’s hurt that he was honest about Fantasy Suites with Gabi and Kaity, but not her (Zach had said he wasn’t going to sleep with anyone, but slept with Gabi and disclosed that to Kaity). She doesn’t like that she learned about things from watching the show. She also says by taking sex off the table, he made the entire week about sex. Then we go back to Krabi, Thailand. I shit you not, Zach takes a shower. WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH THIS? After he’s dried and dressed, he meets his family. We cut to Gabi who says she won’t meet Zach’s family unless the two of them talk first. She says she still feels like she’s wearing a scarlet letter (because she slept with him during Fantasy Suites and he made a big-ass deal about it ). Zach has been saying he feels disappointed in himself for having sex, and Gabi explains how that shames her. Pudding: Don’t worry Gabi, I’ll poop in his shoes, too. Or in his shower. Ed. note: I vote both. Zach tells her that he loves her and then they go meet his family. Zach’s dad tells Gabi that his relationship with his wife (Zach’s mom) wasn’t based on them having a great time, it was based on them having a horrible time. I…weird advice. He says that Zach was really sick when he was born and they weren’t sure that they would survive infancy. One of Zach’s sisters looks like she’d rather be anywhere than on this show. Next up is Kaity. She reveals that she’s afraid Zach will leave her like “all of the men in my life do.” Zach’s mom brings up the fact that there’s another woman still there, and Kaity breaks down crying and his mom comforts her. Then Zach’s dad pivots from “my relationship with your mother was horrible” to how his wife is his best friend, which makes more sense to me. Then he says, “It’s just my belief that relationships aren’t made in good times. They’re just not.” I get where he’s going with this, but it also seems like dude has things to process. Then it’s time for the final dates. First up Zach and Kaity go to a national park. He’s wearing an awful shirt. They go for a hike and then during dinner Kaity tells him she loves him. For their date, Gabi and Zach go horse back riding on the beach. HORSE BUDGET! Gabi tells him she didn’t know he almost died when he was born, and Zach says, “Oh, they brought that up, huh?” Nice chat. They have a lot of awkward silences in their conversation. Then Zach says he has a tough decision to make, he doesn’t know where he’ll be in two days, but he feels strongly that the outcome will be good…for him. Gabi starts to cry and tells the camera she has a gut feeling it won’t be a good outcome for her. Her tears seem kinda fake though, and Pudding and I think that she’s secretly relieved she doesn’t have to be engaged to this bozo. During dinner Zach tells her he doesn’t have “a decisive feeling.” “None of my fears were relieved,” Gabi tells the camera. At this point, BTW, Zach has told Kaity he loves her, but not Gabi. Apparently we’re skipping the Neil Lane, picking out the diamond bit, because after a commercial, Zach is standing on the beach where he’s going to propose. Gabi arrives first. She gets out of the SUV and steps into a puddle. She scolds the driver, “When it actually matters, when Kaity gets here, do not do that to her.” This isn’t said in a shitty way, but like she wants Kaity to have a really nice engagement. I think these women like each other more than either of them like Zach. Jesse asks Gabi how she’s feeling and she says, “I just know what’s about to happen.” Zach lets loose with some verbal diarrhea about their “journey.” He says, “Falling in love with you has made me a better man, but…” “You don’t have to say it,” Gabi says. “As much as I’ve been falling in love with you,” he starts. “I don’t want to hear it,” she says. “You deserve a man who picks you first every day,” he says. “Can you stop,” she begs. DUDE TAKE A HINT. Gabi says that he knew and should have told her sooner. She tells him Kaity is an amazing person. “I know you don’t want to hear this,” he says, then keeps talking, “but you have part of my heart.” Pudding: Can it be the part that stops him from talking? STOP TALKING! Click for Pudding and I In the SUV, Gabi says, “That was fucking humiliating. I’ve been strung along this entire time for what? What really pisses me off is, I fucking knew.” We cut back to the studio where Gabi is sitting with Jesse. She tells him that she didn’t think Zach would make her go through the last day of interviews and prep if he wasn’t going to propose. But like… that’s how the show works, so… Regarding the fact that they had sex, she says, “It’s extremely violating that Bachelor nation knows everything.” Then they bring out Zach. She tells the audience that Zach had told her what happened in the Fantasy Suite was “just between us,” so she was blindsided when he divulged that they had sex and she felt ashamed. She also points out that he only cared about telling Kaity and not Ariel. “I get that sex sells, but now I’ve become a narrative,” she says tearfully. Zach makes noises but doesn’t offer a genuine apology. Then we cut back to Thailand, where the driver doesn’t park in front of a puddle this time. She walks out to the beach and tells Zach she’s in love with him, and that if it’s not him, “It’s not anyone.” Zach says he loves her and proposes to her. She accepts. Back in the studio, Kaity comes out to meet Zach and Jesse. We learn they’re moving in together in Austin, but haven’t started planning a wedding. Kaity says she’s still friends with Gabi and Ariel. The last five minutes are a preview of Charity as the The Bachelorette. What did you think of this season? Ed note: As part of our new sticker collection, we have a limited-edition sticker of Pudding which supports The Pawffee Shop cat rescue cafe: Product successfully added to your cart.View Cart Pudding is the Final Rose Sticker $5.00 You can find this sticker and the others in our store! View the full article
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