Was the year I started this blog - about six months ago, in fact (hmmm, sounds like I should celebrate or something... but how? I must rack my brain!).
Was the year in which the venerable Kirkus Reviews announced that it was closing (and then maybe not). When was the last time you made your decision on whether or not you were going to read a book based on a Kirkus Review? I cannot remember because for a long time now, I've been depending largely on Amazon reader reviews. I don't even know the last time I read my newspaper's book review section (which might lead to unfortunate consequences). In the last six months (the length of time that I've been blogging) about 90% of the books I've read or wanted to read, I first heard about through other book blogs.
I'm hesitant to make any predictions because I have no idea what 2010 will bring. In December of 2008, a blog or webzine was not something I thought I'd ever start, so who knows what will happen in the future?
However -
2010
Is the year that I might actually pay for an e-book. E-books are controversial all on their own, but free has its own controversies. So much great content is free on the web, free books, free apps (I've yet to pay for an app as well), free short stories, free articles - what will we pay for? Are we in a publishing e-pocalypse or new age? Are terrorists indirectly saving the printed book?
Is the year Misfit Salon will have more interviews, giveaways, a guest blogger or two, maybe more paintings of farting dragons, more musings, and of course, more books, books, books!
The voting was very close on this one as all the entries were amazing. I am gratified to have received such a range of well-crafted stories to publish in my very first issue of Misfit Magazine!
Citing the voters, Housetrap had a "unique" and "unsual" "voice" - which is precisely what I was seeking to publish in Misfit Magazine.
"Misfit Magazine is a webzine that celebrates fresh and talented voices in short fiction. Eclectic, provocative, surprising, and always entertaining –the stories that do not fit anywhere else belong here."
Chad - how did you come up with this idea? I would love to know!
I very much appreciate all those who voted and left comments for the writers. If it were left up to me, I would still be undecided - so you made my job much easier!
Because they were finalists, The Red Bicycle and The Stairs will automatically be entered to win Misfit Salon Micro Fiction of the Year ($25 Amazon gift card prize) to be chosen in late 2010.
Thank you to all those who entered. I was so pleasantly surprised by the offerings I received. I love reading stories and you entertained me immensely.
There will be another contest starting in January, this time with a very loose theme of Love. Look out for an announcement!
In the meanwhile, please check out Misfit Magazine, where Housetrap, The Stairs, and The Red Bicycle are now gracing its "pages." In addition, I have a flash fiction piece from A. Vargas, Fragile. The magazine is a little lean right now, but I will be adding more contest winning entries and flash fiction submissions in the months to come.
*Eligible votes are those that are from verifiable followers. If your avatar/name doesn't appear on my list of followers (left sidebar) then you are not a follower and your vote, sadly, does not count.
Robert Oliver, a renowned painter, has attacked a canvas in the National Gallery of Art. What would compel an artist to try to destroy something he values beyond all else? Oliver’s only words on the subject: “I did it for her.”
Psychiatrist Andrew Marlow prides himself on being able to make even a stone talk, but he gets nowhere with Oliver. Desperate to understand the secret that torments this genius, he embarks on a journey that leads him into the lives of the women closest to Oliver and a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism.
I loved The Historian, so when I found out that Elizabeth Kostova's next book was soon to be released, I went into complete covet mode. The Swan Thieves is easily my most anticipated book of 2010.
- There are still letters interpersed within the narrative, but not long or detailed. They are brief, with hints of secrets that won't be uncovered until the end.
- Historical detail regarding the 19th Century French Impressionist movement
- Like The Historian, although I told myself to read slowly and savor every delicious word, I still read it in one morning - I'm a greedy, greedy girl!
- And like The Historian, The Swan Thieves is a meaty, layered book that has multiple narratives telling multiple story lines. One of the main stories is that of Robert Oliver, the mentally ill artist. Why did he try to attack the painting of Leda and the Swan at the National Gallery of Art? Dr. Andrew Marlow, the psychologist who starts delving into Oliver's life in order to cure him, finds himself obsessed with how Oliver descended into madness.
The figure of Oliver towers god-like in the book, enigmatic and mysterious, known only to the reader through the narratives of the women who have loved him and Marlowe's observations. His talent makes him seem like the Zeus of the story, and his muse, a mysterious, beautiful dark-haired woman he keeps drawing and painting - but whom he has never met.
The other main story is that of this dark-haired woman with whom Oliver is obsessed; she is Beatrice de Cherval, who lived in France during the time of the Impressionists. An artist of prodigious talent herself, she abruptly stopped painting without explanation. This mystery, as well as that of her doomed love affair, is unraveled slowly and tantalizingly over the course of the book.
Because this book is about artists and their obsessions, it is appropriate then that Kostova writes with a painterly eye. We are lavished with rich, visual detail as she paints us scenes by the sea, portraits of the characters, even the act of painting or drawing itself. We feast on descriptions of real paintings and imagined ones, but Kostova's vivid and exact writing makes us see them in our mind's eye. I know a book has touched me when immediately after reading it, I start googling. For all of you who read The Swan Thieves, the Edward Sisley painting which she alludes to in the beginning and in the end (and which plays a pivotal part in the mystery of Beatrice)is one of the fictional ones. I looked through a gallery of Sisley's complete works and couldn't find it.
It was a large canvas, frankly Impressionist…dominated by two figures. The central figure was a mainly nude female form, lying on beautifully real grass. She was prone, on her back, in a classical attitude of despair and abandonment—or abandon?—her head with its burden of golden hair thrown back on the earth, a wisp of drapery caught over her middle and slipping off one leg, her shallow breasts bare, arms outspread…
The other figure in the painting was not human-although it was certainly a dominant character—a huge swan, hovering over her as if to land on water, its wings beating backwards as if to slow the speed of its assault, its long wing feathers curled inward like talons, gray-webbed feet almost touching the delicate skin of her belly, black-circled eye as fierce as the gaze of a stallion. The sheer force of its flight toward her, caught on canvas, was astonishing, and it explained visually and psychologically the panic of the woman in the grass…
The above fictional painting describes the myth of Leda, Queen of Sparta, who was ravished by the god, Zeus, in the form of a swan. She later gave birth to two sets of twins, half of which were human, and the other half immortal.
Kostova plays around with the metaphor of Leda and the Swan, that of the god coming in disguise to ravish a maiden and impregnate her with divine children. Though it may be borne of violent obsession, art, in the end is what makes an artist immortal. Art itself is divinity.
The year that Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette. Annette worked in Paris for the Duke and Duchess de Guiche, and it did not escape the Duke's notice that someone extraordinary was polishing the pewter. The Duke's notice did not escape the notice of the Duchess eithel, who was not very beautiful, not very rich, but plenty smart. The Duchess set about studying Annette and shortly found her adversary's tragic flaw.
Chocolate.
Armed now, the Duchess set to work. The Palace de Guiche turned into a candy castle. Everywhere you looked, bonbons. There were piles of chocolate-covered mints in the drawing rooms, baskets of chocolate-covered nougats in the parlors.
Annette never had a chance. Inside of a season she went from delicate to whopping, and the Duke never glanced in her direction without sad bewilderment clouding his eyes... The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Simply put - I love food. And this time of year, visions of decadent chocolate croissant bread pudding, tender Dungeness crab dipped in garlic butter, my mother's moist honey-glazed ham dance in my head.
While I wish I could share my family's feast with you all (somewhat like this, only scaled down and less fancy)
We can still celebrate together with some of my favorite food descriptions in books. "...Relax, let us pull up a chair, as the dining room proudly presents --- your dinner!"
How delightful are these candy fantasies from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling?:
There were shelves upon shelves of the most succulent-looking sweets imaginable. Creamy chunks of nougat, shimmering pink squares of coconut ice, fat, honey-colored toffees; hundreds of different kinds of chocolate in neat rows; there was a large barrel of Every Flavor Beans, and another of Fizzing Whizbeees, the levitating sherbet balls...; along yet another wall were "Special Effects" sweets: Droobles Best Blowing Gum (which filled the room with bluebell-colored bubbles that refused to pop for days), the strange, splintery Toothflossing Stringmints, tiny black Pepper Imps ("breathe fire for your friends!"), Ice Mice ("hear your teeth chatter and squeak!"), peppermint creams shaped like toads ("hop realistically in the stomach!"), fragile sugar-spun quills, and exploding bonbons.
Who has not wanted a mug of warm, frothy butterbeer while following Harry, Ron, and Hermione's forays into Hogsmeade?
No one does festive and yuletide cheer better, however, than Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol, despite Scrooge's mean and stingy spirits, is full of feasts and merriment. From Fezziwig's parties, to the Ghost of Christmas Present's bountiful table, even the poor Cratchits' seemingly meager dinner is mouthwatering and enviable in their generosity of love and good will.
What a feast for the senses is this scene:
The poulterers' shops were still half open, and the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, potbellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed...
...
The Grocers'! oh the grocers'! nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses!...the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint...
What are your favorite winter holiday foods?
Any scrumptious literary feasts you'd like to bring to the table?
Fairy tales, despite their problems, have such classic themes and universal appeal that they can be mined for countless unique interpretations. Andrew Lang's fairy tale books are good for classic versions. But if you want your fairy tales turned upside down and inside out for fresh perspectives, grab one of Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's fairy tale anthologies: Snow White, Blood Red; Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears; Black Swan, White Raven; Silver Birch, Blood Moon; and Black Heart, White Bones. The best known and lesser famous tales are remade so that they seem like new. The retellings range from the twisted and strange, to violent ones, to bittersweet and lovely. There's a fairy tale here for everyone.
Gregory Maguire is the master of re-making classic stories told from an unlikely point of view. For a different take on Cinderella - read Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. For Snow White - Mirror, Mirror.
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly, explores the fascination with fairy tales and uses many of the Brothers Grimm themes. In it, a young boy, angry at his stepmother, escapes to a dark fairy tale world where he endures a series of dangerous trials before he can go home.
For everything fairy tales, perhaps a shirt that says "Fairest of them all," go to SurLaLune Fairy Tales.
I acquired a fairy godmother of my own some weeks ago when Maria of A Passion for Books sent me a boxful of books, among them, CrazyBeautiful by Lauren Baratz-Logsted, a young adult retelling of Beauty and the Beast.
In an explosion of his own making, Lucius blew his arms off. Now he has hooks. He chose hooks because they were cheaper. He chose hooks because he wouldn’t outgrow them so quickly. He chose hooks so that everyone would know he was different, so he would scare even himself.
Then he meets Aurora. The hooks don’t scare her. They don’t keep her away. In fact, they don’t make any difference at all to her.
But to Lucius, they mean everything. They remind him of the beast he is inside. Perhaps Aurora is his Beauty, destined to set his soul free from its suffering.
Or maybe she’s just a girl who needs love just like he does.
What I love about this book:
- The hooks are inventive - a dangerous image of Lucius's beastly past.
- The dual point of view narrative of Lucius and Aurora. I've only read one other retelling which has the beast's point of view. I especially love Lucius's voice - dark and sardonic, with underlying sadness. Aurora's is much more innocent by comparison, sometimes funny in her naivete.
- That Lucius undergoes and emotional, not physical, transformation. All the anger that made him beastly is replaced by an earnest desire to be a better person. Lucius goes from wallowing in loathing for himself and the world to someone who wants to help others.
Aurora:
I just want to kiss him.
Is that so wrong?
I've never kissed any boy before, unless you count kissing Jessup during play rehearsals, which I don't.
When your mom is dying for five years, there's not really a whole lot of time left over for kissing boys.
But now I want erase those false first kisses with Jessup. A first kiss, I think, should be important, special. It should be with the person you want to kiss more than anybody in the world.
Lucius:
The strong wind whips a stray hair across the front of her face. I long to reach out with a hand, brush that hair out of the way for her, feel that hair, feel that cheek.
More than ever before right now, I wish that I had hands again.
What a glorious thing it would be to hold a girl's hand, this girl's hand, to feel her skin beneath my fingers.
Thanks again, Maria, for giving me this book!
What is your favorite fairy tale retelling?
Or in the alternative, ponder this: Are fairy tales dangerous? For women? Orphans? Gingerbread men?
I always hated Cinderella - so obedient, so passive, just waiting for the prince to place the slipper on her foot and rescue her from drudgery. But one non-book fairy tale adaptation that not only turns this fairy tale upside down, but knocks it out of the park in my opinion, is Ever After. In Drew Barrymore's Danielle de Barbarac, we have an admirable heroine; she is feisty, strong, and intelligent. She reads Thomas More's Utopia, rescues imprisoned servants, is passionate about class equality, and throws a fastball so hard, she can knock a grown man from his horse with it.
My favorite scene is towards the end when the Prince is charging up the castle with his sword drawn, so ready to rescue the imprisoned Danielle --- only to find that she has rescued herself, by her own wit and courage. This Cinderella doesn't need rescuing; she is superior to the Prince prostate at her feet. I love it!
In the wake of her father’s death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, re-reading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away, as they are said to do. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be granted.
The day that Ash meets Kaisa, the King’s Huntress, her heart begins to change. Instead of chasing fairies, Ash learns to hunt with Kaisa. Though their friendship is as delicate as a new bloom, it reawakens Ash’s capacity for love—and her desire to live. But Sidhean has already claimed Ash for his own, and she must make a choice between fairy tale dreams and true love.
Entrancing, empowering, and romantic, Ash is about the connection between life and love, and solitude and death, where transformation can come from even the deepest grief.
Ash by Malinda Lo is Cinderella with a twist. According to Malinda's website:
"In the first draft of Ash, the Cinderella character falls for the prince. It wasn’t until my good friend Lesly read it and said, 'You know, the prince guy is kinda boring,' that I realized that Cinderella was gay."
I would have to agree with her friend - the scenes with the fairy Sidhean lack vitality when compared with the ones between Ash and the Huntress. I loved that this book has a compelling and beautifully represented lesbian relationship, but the writing is what kept me reading late into the night: lush, lyrical, and enchanting - perfect for a fairy tale.
"Ash woke in the middle of the night from a dream of horses—tall, thundering white horses with foaming mouths and slender, wraithlike riders. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and went to the window that looked out over the Wood. She searched for the light of the candle by the grave but saw only darkness. Then there was movement at the edge of the trees, and she shivered. Where was her father?
"She ran down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out the back door. The wind was rising. She ran down the hillside in her bare feet, feeling the earth alive beneath her toes, her nightgown flying behind her in white linen wings. She ran past the garden’s rows of carrots and cabbages and toward the dark, hulking line of the Wood. Beneath the hawthorn tree, the glass cover was tipped over on its side, the candle was snuffed out, and her father was gone. She knelt on the ground and reached for the candle, but she hadn’t brought matches and could not light it.
The wind gusted over her, whipping her hair around her face. The dark pressed against her, and she wondered if her father had given up his vigil because of the weight of the night on his back. She heard the hoofbeats then, coming closer and closer. She thought she saw a faint glimmer of white in the dark Wood, a glow of otherworldly light, like stardust caught behind glass. She was frightened, but she would not leave her mother. She lay down on the grave, pressing her body into the warm earth and her cheek against the gravestone. The hooves came closer, and she heard the high, thin sound of a bugle. The wind rushed toward her, and the cries of the riders were clear upon the air: They called for her mother, for Elinor. The ground beneath Ash’s body heaved, and she let out a scream of fright as she felt the world buckle beneath her, earth and stone and moss and root twisting up as if it were clawed by a mighty hand. There was a roaring sound in her ears as the horses surrounded her, and she squeezed her eyes shut, afraid of what she might see. She dug her fingers into the ground, clinging to the earth where her mother lay buried.
"And then there was a sudden silence, and in that silence she could hear the breathing of horses, the heaving of their lungs, the musical jingle of bit and bridle, and the whisper of voices like silvery bells. She thought she heard someone say, 'She is only a child. Let her go.'”
Beauty and the Beast, the t.v. series, ran for three seasons, 1987-1990. Beautiful Catherine Chandler (Linda Hamilton of Terminator) is a corporate attorney at her father's Manhattan firm. Although she is rich and successful, Catherine feels empty. One night assailants mug her and slash her face. She is left for dead in an alley when Vincent finds her.
Vincent (Ron Perlman of Hell-Boy) is a beast with a heart of poet. Abandoned as a baby at the steps of St. Vincent, he was found and adopted by Father, a physician and leader of a small community of outcasts living in a secret underground city below New York streets.
Vincent takes the near-dead Catherine underground and nurses her back to health. Because her face is bandaged, she does not know what the man by her bedside looks like, who reads her Great Expectations to comfort her as she recovers. They form a tender friendship that is almost ruined when Catherine's bandages come off and she finally sees what Vincent looks like.
Catherine goes back to her old life and has plastic surgery so that she will look like she did before; however, her life is now irrevocably changed. She quits her father's firm and decides to work at the gritty D.A.'s office to fight crime. She has a purpose now, with Vincent's love and friendship to support her.
Father: I sometimes feel that I'm standing on the bank of a raging river watching you try to swim across. How can I not worry? I'd be a fool. And yet, Vincent, sometimes I have to marvel at your courage.
Vincent: Catherine swims across that river as well. She faces the same dangers, shows the same courage. And in many ways the toll on her is even greater.
Father: You really think that's so?
Vincent: On the other side of the river there is no one standing on the bank watching. On her side of the river there is no one praying for a safe passage. On her side of the river, Father, there is no one but Catherine.
Father: Then I shall stand watch, and pray, for both of you.
The show is mostly about Vincent and Catherine's impossible relationship: how Catherine maneuvers from her life above to her friends below, how they rise above their suffering. He cannot leave the underground because of his beastliness. And although Catherine loves him enough to turn her back on her world and come live with him, he won't let her make such a sacrifice.
There are episodes about some of the outcasts and how they turned their backs on the harsh world above, episodes where Catherine risks her life going after criminals and gets rescued by Vincent, episodes where Vincent and the outcasts are in danger and Catherine saves them.
Every aspect of the show was well thought out. Characters are skillfully drawn. The underground world is rich and imaginative, and New York City, despite the crime, has never looked lovelier, especially in scenes where Vincent perches on the edge of tall skyscrapers, contemplating the night-time cityscape below him. The writing has a literary quality. Many of the themes the show explored, through Catherine's job as assistant DA, showed social consciousness. Beauty and the Beast was exceptional - of course it only lasted a few seasons!
I have two problems (other than the liberal use of shoulder pads) with the show:
The first: the third season. If you had watched it, you know what I mean. If you haven't, don't watch it; it will break your heart. Just be content with the first two seasons.
The second: Vincent set an impossibly high standard which all other men, real or imaginary, invariably fail to match. That's what happens when a 13-year-old impressionable girl takes a fairy tale to heart. I had Vincent's poster up on my wall directly across from my bed and before going to sleep I would listen to a tape of Ron Perlman as Vincent reading poetry (Of Love and Hope, which includes works by Shelley, Byron, Frost, Rilke, ee cummings, and Shakespeare, as well as music compositions from the show - amazing!)
Noble, cultured, well-read, kind, and heroic, a refined man-beast who uses his great strength to help others -How could Vincent not be my first love?
Here is a video montage of Vincent and Catherine, with Ron Perlman as Vincent reading Shakespeare's Sonnet 29. Just listen to the rich timber and depth of his voice- who wouldn't fall for this man by his voice alone?
And because I couldn't resist - just an audio of Vincent reading Rilke.
Jean Cocteau's La Belle et La Bete, the 1946 French film, is a wonderful adaptation. The special effects in the enchanted castle, while not advanced by modern standards, are still enthralling. This is one truly beautiful film.
I just have a few things to say about Disney's Beauty and the Beast. They obviously borrowed from Robin McKinley's Beauty and the French film, but I won't hold that against it. If you're gonna steal, steal from the best.
It is my favorite Disney movie of all time and there are reasons it was nominated for Best Picture of 1991 (not just best animated movie but best picture - the only animated film to have ever had the honor.) Fabulous soundtrack, great characters, and that scene of the Beast and Belle dancing in the ballroom takes my breath away, still. And don't tell anyone, but no matter how many times I watch it, I still cry at the point where the Beast lies dying in Belle's arms.
Which of these adaptations (or perhaps you have other ones I haven't mentioned) did you like the best?
Wow, was this great fun, but agonizing! Choices, choices, choices...
I want to thank everyone who entered; I know how hard it must be to put your work out there. I salute every one of you! If you didn't make it this time around, I encourage you to keep an eye out for the next contest. Finding new writers is a now a passion of mine and I will continue to hold writing contests in the new year (tip: January)
The finalists for this month's Micro Fiction Contest are (in no particular order):
Please vote for who should win the $15 Amazon gift card in THIS POST only. However, please leave comments for the writers on their individual posts; I assure you, they would LOVE the feedback.
One vote per person.
You must be a Google follower of this blog for your vote to be eligible. Not a Google follower? It's easy to become one!
For an effective housetrap, set a soft lawn. Preferably in a field that has been over-farmed and abandoned, then plant Kentucky bluegrass. Trim it neatly to stand no taller than an inch and a half from the soil. To lure a house to the lawn lay freshly paved roads with deep black pavement and solid bright lines painted on them, freshly paved roads with billboards promoting soft green lawns to settle upon.
A lawn on its own is not enough. Next, lay upon the lawn at the end of a freshly paved road a pile of the following: a wife, then a husband, three children of various ages, a microwave, maybe an SUV, televisions, stuffed animals captured from a arcade crane machine, phonebooks, flatware sets, stacks of newspapers, Halloween decorations, another microwave, a hamster, a slightly deflated basketball, and toothpaste.
That is the minimum amount of bait required to trap a two bedroom, one and a half bath, with single car garage house. To capture something larger, perhaps a five bedroom, four bath, with basement and three car garage house multiply the amount of bait by five, plus add the following: a hot-tub, treadmill, bumper pool table, a time machine, bird bath, guillotine, 1:45 scale model train set, possessed Ouija board, and citronella candles.
After the housetrap has sprung and the foundation set, snap the house’s scrawny legs from its frame. The house should stay in place for up to thirty years, provided it does not spontaneously combust out of some desperate attempt to free itself. Once secured, bait can be left inside the captured house for up to three years before digestion takes place.
Chad Redden currently lives in Indianapolis where he majors in English at IUPUI. His work has appeared in Sixsentences, Fiore, Biannicle, and [sic]. My blog is called Box of Rocks and can be found at http://chadredden.blogspot.com. I'm also on twitter http://twitter.com/chadredden.
She pulls the door back a fraction of an inch; just enough to peer outside. An unearthly chill, more than just the bone-chilling cold of November, seeps through the crack. The landing outside is dark; the peculiar concentration of shadows by the railing defies even the strongest moonlight. She shivers, her breath forming frozen clouds in the still air.
There’s no one there there’s no one there there’s no one there
The words run together as one as they tumble through her head. She swallows hard, and bites her lip to ground herself through pain. Mustering a handful of tattered shreds of courage from some forgotten part of her psyche, she throws open the door. The landing is still empty, but she darts across to the opposite wall. She slams her fist against the switch, and impassive electric light floods the space. She can see nothing out of the huge window above the stairs, but she senses a flicker of movement in the mirror to her left. She begins to descend before the timer kicks in and the light snaps off.
She isn’t quick enough. The light goes out and the stairs are plunged into darkness. She hears the creaking of an old rope swinging from the railing above her, and once again the sad blonde woman fills her thoughts. She freezes, her hand gripping the banister. Half of her wants to run back upstairs and throw herself into the warmth of her room. The other half longs to go downstairs, to reach the next light switch.
One word races through her mind.
Suicide…
Icy has previously had work published online, in Noctober, SilverBlade and Everyday Weirdness, among others. Her background is mostly speculative fiction and horror, although she has been known to dabble in fantasy and comedy. Her blog can be found at http://icy-sedgwick.blogspot.com.
He was running, always running. He couldn’t slow down, couldn’t stop. He distantly heard explosions, loud snapping sounds, but his breathing was roaring in his ears. How much longer could he run? Suddenly he heard one more loud snap and white pain shot through his head. He fell to the ground and was suddenly nine again following a string he’d found in a box. Around the Christmas tree, out the door into the drive and there it was! It was brand new, glistening in the sun and red as a fire truck. He slid his hands over it, feeling smooth cold metal against his skin. He could feel the grin spreading across his face and ran back to his family, waiting on the steps. He hugged them all, tears running down his cheeks; he hadn’t thought it would be possible to get anything other than home made gifts this year. “Go on, take it for a spin!” said his father as he hugged him.
He tried but felt something pulling him away. He was being shaken, he could see himself as a boy but he was getting further from his dearest memory. His eyes finally snapped open and he saw the white camouflage with red crosses that meant medics had arrived to save him. He smiled, but all he could think about was that red bicycle he had gotten the Christmas of 1930. It was Christmas in Germany, the year, 1944 and as he look back at where he’d fallen after the bullet grazed his head, the scarlet stain on the snow he thought of his family and the red bicycle then blackness took him.
My name is Mikah, I'm a teenage girl who loves to write and a favorite pastime of mine is reading. I didn't have that many people to talk to when I was growing up so I started writing and learning to play the guitar. I live in St. Louis, MO, and I'm really into this website, thanks to my uncle. My facebook page is http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/profile.php?ref=profile&id=610433437
Fairy tales have always been problematic for me mainly because the heroines were so passive and act like nincompoops. You have Snow White who, despite being warned repeatedly to be on the look out for her evil stepmother, keeps getting tricked. Why in the world would you take an apple from a stranger, idiot? Some are so passive they're literally asleep - like Sleeping Beauty. She just sleeps. And sleeps. And sleeps.
Disobedience is equated with being willful (Snow White for talking to strangers & Sleeping Beauty for seeking a spinning wheel) and so both are punished with almost-fatal curses. Both are rescued with a one-sided kiss.
What's up with these princes who are attracted to catatonic/dead women? Necrophilia, anyone?
But Beauty is different. She does the rescuing. First she rescues her father by taking his place as the Beast's prisoner. Then she rescues the Beast by releasing him from the spell. There is no love at first sight everpresent in other fairy tales. At first, the Beast asks Beauty to marry him every night in his desperation to break the spell. However, they fall in love the way real people should - through meaningful interaction, getting to know one another. Ultimately the Beast proves that his love is real when he lets Beauty go. She proves hers when she returns to him.
Robin McKinley's Beauty is the finest retelling of this tale, which I first read when I was about 13. I love that the heroine is no beauty, just a brave and bookish girl whose given name is Honour. Beauty is a childhood nickname the now awkward teenager is too proud to cast off. There are no villains or evil stepsisters and little action. But there are delightful enchantments: invisible servants, roses which do not wither, a library of all the books that ever were and ever will be. Minor characters are fleshed out; the two beautiful but kind sisters, Grace and Hope, the merchant father now come down from the world, even the bossy invisible servants are painted vividly.
"Beauty, will you marry me?" said the Beast.
The world was as still as autumn after winter's first snowfall, and as cold as three o'clock in the morning beside a deathbed. I pressed myself back in my chair and closed my eyes, my fingers clenching on the carved arms till the smooth scrolled edges pinched my skin. "No , Beast," I said, without opening my eyes. "Please---I am---very fond of you. I wish you wouldn't ask me this for I cannot, cannot marry you, and I don't like telling you no, and no, and no, again and again." I looked at him.
"I cannot help asking," he said, and there was an undertone to his voice that frightened and saddened me. He made a brusque gesture, and the wine-bottle toppled under his arm. He turned and caught it in mid-air with a grace that seemed inhuman to my troubled senses. He paused, looking at the bottle as if it were the future, his head and back bent.
"You--you are very strong aren't you," I whispered.
"Strong?" he said in a queer, detached voice that did not sound like his own. "Yes, I am strong." He lingered on the last word as if he detested it. He straightened up in his chair and held the bottle at arm's length. His hand tightened on the bottle, and it snapped and shattered, the shards cascading to the table and splintering against silver and gold, and falling to the floor.
The heart of the story is the relationship between the cursed yet gentle Beast and the honorable Beauty. We witness Beauty's terror and suspicion blossom into respect, friendship, then love for the Beast. As she matures and overcomes her fear of him, Beauty fully embodies her name. True beauty, as does true love, has depth.
McKinley's writing is superb, her rendering of this world magical. This is the book I re-read when I feel like being a child again, burrowing into my bed, having a cup of warm tea and buttered toast at hand, while I visit with old friends for a few lovely hours.
20 years after Beauty, McKinley came out with another retelling, Rose Daughter, a more mature version of the tale. Although it is well-written, I was dissatisfied with it. The happily ever after ending seemed...off. I'll let you be the judge.
I am an informal collector of Beauty and the Beast retellings, some of which work:
Other novels & picture books, as well as an annotated version of the tale, and lots of goodies are at SurLaLune Fairy Tales (otherwise known as fairy tale central).
Have you read any of these versions? Which do you like the best?
Some friends and I recently discussed Roman Polanski's situation - how outraged we were that although he had a U.S. warrant for his arrest for over 20 years for rape of a 13-year-old, he had been living the high life, even making films that drew critical and popular acclaim here in the U.S. What really got us going was the roster of A-list Hollywood directors and actors who were championing Polanski - basically excusing him not only because the crime was so long ago, but because he is such a great artist.
What this means to me is, people who, I'm sure, would condemn an ordinary rapist of a 13-year-old does not condemn Polanski because his art redeems him, outweighs his crime. They compartmentalized the art and not only separated it from the artist (and thus his flaws) but set it above.
Should art be wholly separate from the artist?
The last time I had to grapple with this question was in the case of Kanye West and his completely inexcusable behavior towards Taylor Swift at the MTV Music Awards. A couple of days later, my son asks me if he could buy a Kanye West song from iTunes and I had to say no; I will not support that man. It pained me somewhat because I love his music. I have refrained from listening to his songs, but have not deleted them from my iPod (I'm angry, but not that angry).
Now authors aren't Hollywood; they lead quiet lives for the most part so we don't really know that much about them. All we care about are the books, right?
I can think of one author whose life is the stuff of scandalous fiction; horror, to be exact. Anne Perry, the author of popular crime novels is a convicted murderess. If you haven't seen Heavenly Creatures, the movie with Kate Winslet that portrays Anne Perry's chidhood friendship that led to Perry and her friend to bludgeon her mother to death - see it; it's a bit strange, but very well done. Perry served 5 years and then went on to become a bestselling novelist. Being guilty of matricide didn't hurt her career any; in fact, it might have given her crime novels credence.
Imagine your favorite book -
What if you found out it was written by a convicted murder? By someone who had beaten his wife?
What if your favorite book it turns out was written by an ultra-conservative Republican and you're a liberal?
Does an author's political or religious beliefs matter? Sexual orientation?
Or do you believe that an author's work stands apart from the author's personal life? Do you separate the art from the artist?
Asma begins with the origin of the word monster: "Monster derives from the Latin word monstrum, which in turn derives from the root monere (to warn). To be a monser is to be an omen." From there, Asma explores symbolic and literal monsters, the perception of monsters throughout history to the present day as well as their role in the future.
Asma's overall definition of what has been perceived as monsters is broad, encompassing mythological ones such as griffins and manticores to serial killers like John Wayne Gacy. Asma even delves into horror movies or "torture porn," such as Hostel.
The Loch Ness Monster is mentioned briefly a couple of times. Bigfoot doesn't make an appearance at all. This isn't that kind of book.
Instead, Asma explores all the facets and connotations of the monstrous:
-As detailed in the ancient histories of Pliny and Herodotus -Greek mythology -as archetypes -Modern-day criminal monsters -Future monsters -literary monsters such as Grendel and Frankenstein's creature -Biblical monsters -psychological -biological: mutants -historical -cultural -medical -scientific
In chronicling the role of monsters throughout history, Asma lists some idiotic, once widely-held beliefs. One of the more outrageous ones (at least from a modern-day, enlightened point of view) is that in the middle ages, it was thought that the following caused a mother to give birth to a monster [meaning a mutant or freak]:
Too great a quantity of seed Too little quantity The imagination the narrowness or smallness of the womb the indecent posture of the mother, as when, being pregnant, she has sat too long with her legs crossed, or pressed against her womb
Surprisingly, rather than assembling a menagerie of fearsome and fantastic creatures, Asma gathers human monstrosities, such as psychopaths. Furthermore, the demonization of "the other" in society (such as other races, religions, cultures), he argues, is a form of monster-making.
Given the many and varied examples of monsters throughout history, Asma concludes that there isn't "one compelling definition of monster"; however, most monsters share the same characteristics:
Monsters cannot be reasoned with. Monsters are generally ugly and inspire horror. Monsters are unnatural. Monsters are overwhelmingly powerful. Monsters are evil. Monsters are misunderstood. Monsters cannot be understood...They reflect the fears of specific eras. But they also reflect more universal human anxieties and cognitive tendencies, the stuff that gives us human solidarity....
Thank you very much to Justyna at Oxford University Press for providing me with a review copy of On Monsters!
SD: What inspired you to write The Man Who Loves Books Too Much?
AB: When I came across an article in an Australian newspaper in which an Interpol agent was quoted saying that rare book theft is more widespread than fine art theft, I was taken aback. I had never heard of this problem, and I certainly would not have expected it to be widespread. Then, when I learned that some of these thieves steal out of a love for the books, I was hooked. What is that kind of love about? I had to find out.
SD: How did your experience as a journalist affect your approach to writing a book?
AB: I wanted to present balanced depictions of those I wrote about, to reveal their good sides and their bad. Put simply, I wanted to be true to the story and everyone who played a part in it. This included not just the thief and the "bibliodick," but also the thief's victims.
SD: How did the fact that the subjects in your book are still very much alive affect your portrayal of them?
AB: If they told me something off the record, I did not include it in the book.
SD: Please tell us a little of your journey to publication.
AB: I followed a fairly typical path to publication. Shortly after I began doing research, I got an assignment to write about John Gilkey for San Francisco Magazine. Once that was published, I began writing my book proposal and signed on with Jim Levine of Levine Greenberg Literary Agency. This was one of my best decisions. The agency helped me shape the proposal, and after months of my writing and editing, and then more writing and editing, my agent sold the book to Riverhead Books. They've been incredibly supportive ever since. I hear a lot of horror stories from author friends, so I know that this part of my experience is unique. This is a short version of the story, by the way. From start to finish, the book was four years in the making.
SD: What surprised you the most about the publishing process?
AB: How long it takes! I tend to work quickly, so when I first came across the story, I imagined that it would take a few months to research and write the magazine piece, a few more to write the proposal, then a year to write the book. It was incredibly naive of me.
SD: What's the most important piece of advice you have for unpublished writers?
AB: A writing teacher gave me two valuable pieces of advice: writing is an act of faith, and good things happen to those who keep writing. I repeat these to myself whenever the going gets rough. Also, if you're a non-fiction writer thinking about writing a book, plan on spending many months on the proposal. It will help you write a better book, and it will help editors understand its potential.
SD: What's next for you?
AB: More writing, although what, exactly, I haven't decided. I have a few ideas brewing, but they need more time.
SD: How does it feel being the interviewee rather than the interviewer?
AB: I've been doing dozens of interviews for radio, television, and print, and the process has been illuminating. I have always been aware that the interviewer/interviewee relationship is fraught with all kinds of interpretive challenges, potential deceptions, etc., and now I have a better appreciation for what those I interview go through. But, to be honest, it's much easier than writing a book!
Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to visit us, Allison!
Allison Hoover Bartlett has written on a variety of topics, including travel, art, science and education, for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Salon.com, San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, San Francisco Magazine, and other publications. Her original article on John Gilkey was included in the Best American Crime Reporting 2007.
Bartlett is a founding member of the writing group North 24th and works at the San Francisco Writers' Grotto, a collective studio. Bartlett has a B.A. in English literature from UC Santa Barbara and lives in San Francisco with her husband and two children.
Peter S. over at Kyusi Reader asked me sometime back what it was like to work in a book store. I started to reply and then decided I had to devote a full post to it. Readers, prepare yourselves for a tale of horror and despair, with glimmers of happiness.
You're probably envisioning something very close to heaven, right? To be surrounded by books all day long, talk about books, sell books - what could be better for a book lover?
I'll start with THE BAD:
5. Unfortunately, my employer expected me to work so I couldn't read any books during my shift.
4. Being on your feet all day. Working in retail is physically taxing.
3. The pay sucked.
2. Holiday season. Anyone who has ever worked in retail knows that it is anything but a Merry Christmas. For one thing that means working longer hours - coming home at 1:00 in the morning most times. The store was always trashed by the end of the night. Customers have short tempers and there's more of them this time of year.
To illustrate, during one Christmas season, our store hired a 4th grade teacher for extra help. She was helping a customer try to find a particular Hardy Boys book and when we didn't have that title, the customer threw one of the books at her, narrowly missing her foot by an inch. She quit that day. Teaching 4th graders was easier than dealing with customers.
1. Customers. Yes, the very reason for one's livelihood is also the bane of it. There are the customers who treat books they haven't bought as if they already own it, spilling their coffee drinks, tearing pages, leaving piles of them strewn around. There was one weird regular who persisted in giving me dire predictions about my future. The smelly creep who repeatedly tried to hug me. The patrons who were so very patronizing and dismissive because I was "serving" them. There's probably other nasty instances but I think I'm blocking a lot of them out.
Now THE GOOD:
1. 30% discount as a part-time employee (this could be construed as bad - for my wallet. One can easily go crazy with this discount.)
2. Toned arms. Shelving books all day keeps the arm jiggles away.
3. Sometimes getting the pick of Advanced Reader Copies
4. Getting to borrow any book in the store to read at home.
5. Customers. I worked in the children's section and there was just something wondrous about helping a child discover new books; I was introducing them to a friend for life.
6. My coworkers. Booklovers who end up working in bookstores are some of the finest people I have met. In addition to forming a natural camaraderie of people who suffer the same inanities and indignities and laugh about it, they genuinely love books, which makes working with them a true pleasure. I quit the book store years ago but I'm still friends with three of my former coworkers.
Okay, so I guess looking over my list, there was more good than bad. Barely.
Did I just shatter your illusions?
What did you think being a book seller would be like?
Or if you are a current or former book seller, do share your horror/heartwarming stories with us!
Last month, The Literary Review compiled their annual list of bad sex scenes in fiction. Roth earned his place with his novel, The Humbling, about an actor who "converts" a lesbian to heterosexuality. There's a whole a lot of wrong going on there before we even get to the bad sex scenes, which refer to a shaman, an acrobat, and the god, Pan. Read the offending passages here.
The most memorable bad sex scene I've ever read was in a horror novel my book club was reading. It stuck out I suppose because I wasn't expecting it. During our meeting, everyone had something to say about it. One of us read it out loud to hysterics. Here it is (the worst parts bolded for your reading pleasure):
For a while they lay on the bed, talking, laughing, touching, kissing, then talking less and kissing more.
Gradually Travis undressed her. He'd never before seen her unclothed, and he found her even more lovely and more exquisitely proportioned than he had imagined. Her slender throat, the delicacy of her shoulders, the fullness of her breasts, the concavt of her belly, the flair of her hips, the round sauciness of her buttocks, the long smooth supple sleekness of her legs--every line and angle and curve excited him but also filled him with great tenderness.
After he undressed himself, he patiently and gently introduced her to the art of love. With a profound desire to please and with full awareness that everything was new to her, he showed Nora--sometimes not without delicious teasing--all the sensations that his tongue, fingers, and manhood could engender in her.
He was prepared to find her hesitant, embarrassed, even fearful, because her first thirty years of her life had not prepared her for this degree of intimacy. But she harbored no trace of frigidity and was eager to engage in any act that might pleasure either or both of them. Her soft cries and breathless murmurs delighted him. Each time that she sighed climactically and surrendered to a shudder of ecstasy, Travis became more aroused, until he was of a size and firmness that he had never attained before, until his need was almost painful.
When at last he let his warm seed flower within her, he buried his face in her throat and called her name and told her that he loved her, told her again and again...
This was the consensus, summed up by one of our members: If you don't know how to write a sex scene, if you're uncomfortable writing a sex scene - Don't write it. Just say, "And they went into the bedroom and closed the door." Nothing wrong with that.
When I do come upon good sex - in a book, people - I am enthralled. Not soon after reading the delightfully awful one above, I found a good scene in another book club selection, The Painter of Battles by Arturo Perez Reverte. This is the way it should be done:
... they got their coats and walked through the white, frozen streets to a small trattoria on the Zattere pier. There, he in a dinner jacket, she in a pearl necklace and a black dress so filmy it seemed to float around her body, they dined on spaghetti, pizza, and white wine before walking on to the point of the Aduana to kiss at exactly twelve o'clock, shivering with cold, as a colorful display of fireworks exploded over La Giudecca and they slowly walked back to the hotel, hand in hand through the deserted streets.
From that night on, for Faulques, Venice would always be images of that unrepeatable night: the glow of lights through the fog and pale flakes, falling on the canals, tongues of water lapping over white stone steps and washing in gentle waves across the marble paving, the gondola they watched pass beneath the bridge carrying two motionless passengers covered with snow, and the gondolier singing in a low voice. Also the drops of water on Olvido's face and her left hand sliding along the banister of the stairway up to their room, the creaking of the wood floor, the carpet that snagged the heel of her shoe, the enormous mirror on the right wall of the stairs, where he saw her glance sideways at herself as she went by, the engravings on the walls of the corridor, the pale yellow light falling through the window when, near the large bed, after peeling their wet coats, he very slowly lifted her dress up to her hips as in dark shadows she looked into his eyes with a fixed and impassive intensity, only half of her face lighted, as beautiful as a dream.
In that moment Faulques rejoiced in his heart-a savage and at the same time tranquil elation-that he had not been killed any of the times it might have happened, because were that the case, he wouldn't be there that night, slipping off Olvido's panties, and he would never have seen her back up a little and fall onto the bed, onto the unturned spread, the loose, snow wet hair falling across her face, her eyes never breaking from his, her skirt now up to her waist, her legs opening with a deliberate mixture of submission and wanton challenge, while he, still impeccably dressed, knelt before her and placed his lips, numb from the cold, to the dark convergence of those long, perfect legs between which throbbed, warm, soft, deliciously moist at the contact of his lips and tongue, the splendid flesh of the woman he loved.
Happy (consumer frenzy and gluttony) Holidays are upon us. Since we're trying to prove our love through materialism - why don't we do some good while we're at it? Other than volunteering at the dining hall or food bank, what else can we do to help others?
I say, let's support the authors!
Give a book as a gift. Make it a new book - not used because used means the author doesn't get royalties.
Buy a book from an independent book store, if you can, because the independents are even more in trouble than the big chains.
Put a book on your wish list.
Talk up a book by a little known, new, or midlist author. Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling can take care of themselves.
I want to support authors so that they continue writing good books that I love to read. Ergo, by helping the authors, we help ourselves. So, really, it's a win-win situation.
Some books I haven't reviewed but discovered this year:
The Scent Trail by Celia Lyttelton - for someone who loves perfumes or just loves to travel, this nonfiction book combines both passions in an entertaining and informative way. Lyttelton has a French perfumer create her bespoke scent - that is a unique scent made only for her to wear. She takes readers along to seven countries to trace the origin of each of the seven ingredients for her bespoke perfume.
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton - for those who loved to curl up with historical fiction, fairy tales, and mysteries, this book is all of that wrapped in one delicious tome. I just discovered Kate Morton this year with The House at Riverton. Once I finished that, I pre-ordered The Forgotten Garden before its release (something I rarely do) and this book did not disappoint. A little girl is left abandoned on a dock at the turn of the century. Who was she? Who left her there? Where did she come from? The mystery takes many years to unravel, involving an enigmatic Authoress, a hidden, labyrinthine garden in Cornwall, and original fairy tales woven into the narrative.
What are some books you think I should consider giving this season? Any by less exposed authors I should know about?
