Topic Free Frippery

I've been stuck for a bloggable topic lately, most likely

because I'm coming up to my Big Middle and stuck deep,

deep, *deep* in the throes of Second Act Insanity. So, in an effort to break the Bloggy Ice, I thought I'd do this meme I stole from Charles and Candy.

Reading Habits

Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?
I read whenever, feeding times included. My favorite reading snack would be beer. My most likely would be coffee.

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
I'm not much for marking.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?
Bookmark, or, in an effort to foster neuronal connection and stave off dementia, one simply remembers one's page.

Fiction, nonfiction, or both?
Both. Most books I read are fiction these days, since I got the hang of using the interwebs to do nonfiction research...

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of a chapter, or can you stop anywhere?
I can put a book down whenever I need to, though I do prefer to at least reach a scene break.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?
Nope. Sadly, I tend to drop the word and the context in which it was used in a sort of mental file, that I may bring it out later, often horribly misused.

What are you currently reading?
The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (an old friend and constant comfort in times of darkness)
a biography of Henry Miller, title and author of which escape me

What is the last book you bought?
The Brightest Star in the Sky by Marian Keyes

Are you the type of person who reads one book at a time, or can you read more than one?
I’ll frequently have several going at a time. But one will usually be my main focus.

Do you have a favorite time/place to read?
I grabs it where I finds it.

Do you prefer series books or stand alones?
I'm easy.

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?
Hmm...
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
The Bottoms by Joe Lansdale
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

How do you organize your books?(by genre, title, author’s last name, etc.)
Organization is a strong word for what I do. A *very* strong word. There are... groupings, but attributing any intelligent design to my shelves is like seeing a sense of purpose in the formation of a sand dune...

Junky - Chasing That High

Addiction is strange. At its heart is the pleasure released when opiate chemicals flood the brain. Addicts' brains have certain chemistries in common, even though their pleasure-triggers can take many, sometimes weird forms. It seems strange to me that moments of pleasure can create lifetimes of damnation.

Most of us cross that dark threshhold in a rush of warmth and light. We spend the rest of our lives comparing every dull moment, every blunted, habituated high, to those early, golden days when the high was still new.

For me, it started with Batman comics. Spiderman and the X-Men figured in there too. And Wonder Woman, who woke other, darker pleasures in my four year old breast.

Once I learned to read, I moved on to harder drugs. The way a heroin addict can tell you about their first really good high, or a hard-core alcoholic remembers the early days when every beer was his friend, I remember a book called Splinter in the Mind's Eye, by Alan Dean Foster. And Octagon House, by Andre Norton.

Those were the first books that really shook me. The ones that made the life outside go away, that cut me to the bone, that gave me that rush.

Today, I'm still chasing that rush. Trouble is, same as the drinker, the junkie, the problem gambler all habituate to their highs, I can't get that same rush in the places I used to. I get pleasure, sure. Quite a lot of pleasure.

But what I'm looking for is that serious, major, insane high. That up-all-night-call-in-sick-the-next-day-because-I-can't-close-this-book high. There are a handful of places where I know I can go for it, but those bastards right so damned slow! And too many of them are dead.

I've just finished Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child, Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson and COld Flat Junction by Martha Grimes. Mighty fine, all of them, but none cut too deep. Today I'm returning to James M. Cain and Joe Lansdale's masterpiece, The Bottoms. The Tiny Dynamo is flying through the Harry Potters once again.

A little more leather and a little less bathing, we could be a literary Sid and Nancy...


Check that apply:

___ I frequently (once or twice a day) find that my
   conversation centers on books or reading experiences.

___ I read to deal with tension or physical stress.

___ Most of my friends or acquaintances are people who read.

___ I have lost days of school/work because of reading.

___ I have had the shakes when going without a good book.

___ I regularly read upon awakening, before eating, or
   while at school/work.

___ I have been arrested for Driving while reading.

___ I have periods of time that can't be remembered while
   reading or buying books.

___ Family members think reading or book purchasing is a
  problem for me.

___ I have tried to quit reading but cannot.  (A good test
  is voluntarily going for six weeks without a good book
  and not experiencing physical or emotional distress.)

___ I often double up, reading two books at a time or
   regularly read more books than others.

___ I often read to "get ready" for a social occasion.

___ I regularly hide books and reading material from those
   close to me so that they will not know how much I am reading.

___ I often read by myself.

___ My reading or book buying has led to conflict with my friends
  or family members.

Three or four 'yeses', you may have a problem. Five, get thee to a counselor!

In fact, go anyway. They have *great* promotional literature....

Special Treats

Yes, I have a great big To Be Read stack. It's full of books I 'should' read, books I look forward to reading and books I know I'll enjoy. It shrinks, it grows, it will never quite go away.

Then there's my treat shelf. There are a very, *very* few books that I set off to one side, precious gems of heart-stopping loveliness. There are a few old favorites and a few unread volumes by my absolute favorite authors.

Sometimes I look at that shelf, knowing I could dive in and lose myself in one great read after another. Sometimes, I look at it and fear that the authors will let me down this time. (Despite my love of Henry Miller's work, Black Spring is one of the worst books I've ever read) These aren't the drop-everything-else-the-day-it-comes-in books; these are books I save and savor. Same as I might save that bottle of Chateau Margaux for a special occasion, I wait until the time is right for each of these little gems.

The pressure is building for Lay Down My Sword and Shield by James Lee Burke, Henry Miller's Rooftops of Clichy and revisiting Double Indemnity by James M. Cain. But last night I dusted off another old friend: I'm sitting down with the complete Travis McGee series.

Pure. Bloody. Heaven.

How about you? What are your literary treats?

Write More Betterer

Lisa awarded me the Pico del'Arte, for which I am *most* stoked! As I understand it, this award is all about inspiration. In that inspiring spirit (and to spend more time with 'The Remarkable Shrinking TBR Pile') , I've decided to emulate the finger pointing at the moon, and direct you to resources that you shall write 'more betterer'.

First, our very own Liz Fenwick has been posting her notes from a recent writing conference. Kate Harrison's Botox for Writers is recounted here, and tips from agent Caroline Sheldon are here.
Both are chock full of great info.

Speaking of great info, the inimitable J.A. Konrath has done it again: The Newbie's Guide to Publishing Book is 750 pages of priceless advice. It's like an MFA in Creative Writing, except that the information comes from someone whose writing actually SELLS, and its contents are stuff you can actually USE!

And for a little extra fun, here's his advice on 'How Not to Start a Story'...

And while I'm thinking about the sort of information MFA programs *should* give out but don't, one bit of advice I see given all to seldom is this: rent lots of DVDs.

That's right, rent lots and lots of DVDs, then sit down and listen to the creator commentaries. You don't even have to watch the movie, just listen to the writer and/or director talk about their storytelling. You can learn from good movies and from bad ones. You can learn from storytellers puzzled at the success/failure of their creations and from those too deluded to see what works. As long as they talk about how and why they told the story the way they did.

Sure, you'll get burned sometimes. Some creators, even writer/directors who had control over the whole project, seem unable to do more than describe the movie as it happens. Yea, Vince, I'm talking about you. Your commentary on The Breakup was like movies for the blind: 'Um, yeah, he's going into the kitchen here. Probably wants a snack. I'm pretty sure they're mad at each other. Looks like they might break up.' Gack.

And on that note, I'm off. Joe Lansdale, Jefferson Parker and Charles DeLint are calling me. In my quest to write more betterer, it's a grand thing indeed to spend time reading the Most Bestest!

Aaaahhhhhh...

A lone figure wanders the vast and cavernous halls here at Secret Headquarters. A bitter southerly has blown for days now, howling Antarctic winds with needle-sharp teeth. Christchurch shudders under snow, sleet, frost and hail, sometimes in the same day.

In these dark and echoing chambers, a faint smile plays at the lone figure's lips. A faint tuneless sound teases the ear. Could it possibly be... whistling?

Yup, whistling. You see, winter it may be, but in my heart, summer reigns.

The lovely and talented Agent Anne has the latest manuscript. There are no revision notes yet, and no new project has been started. It's even too cold for oil painting. The Full-Throttle Lifestyle is as close as it gets to idle.

My to-be-read stack is dwindling. This...

is gradually becoming this:

With my time undivided, I'm reading whatever I want to, whenever I want to. It's bloody lovely.


Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to put my feet up by the fire with a small stack of favorites.

I'm hoping a few well-placed matches, a comfy chair and a big mug of hot cocoa should transform this...





into this:

Literary Love

This New York Times article got me thinking. How important is taste in reading?

A love of story is central to my life. Books, comics, even those paintings I'm drawn to have a strong narrative element. I can't imagine a relationship without a shared affection for stories.

But how closely shared?

In my checkered past, I kept company with women across the social spectrum, from doctoral candidates to former teen runaways. Levels of formal education varied widely, but two things were constant: I've always gravitated to smart women, and to women who read.

And it goes both ways.

First eye contact with the Tiny Dynamo, my world slid a little bit sideways. Second time we met was our first chance to talk. She was smart, scary smart. Our third meeting, I compelled her into a reluctant (very reluctant) first date.

Did I mention reluctant? I'm unlike anyone the Dynamo ever dated: Foreign. Fashion-challenged. Funny-looking. But I do have certain Secret Powers, and before she knew what she was doing, she found herself sitting across a table from me.

I can thank the contents of my backpack for our second date. And the last several years. In my pack was a novel she'd read, an ashcan of Serina and my sketchbook diary.

We started talking about books, and the Tiny Dynamo realized that 'unlike anyone she ever dated' might just be a good thing.

So I reckon I can understand a bit of a literary acid-test. But to reject someone for reading Proust? Or not reading Proust?

That I don't get. The Dynamo and my tastes overlap, but they also widely differ. She likes the classics. She likes Victorian sensation novels. She likes those girly Shopaholic-type stories. That's cool.

She doesn't get my love of comics. She doesn't respond to the 'over-macho' voices of John D. MacDonald or James Lee Burke. Covers with half-naked women holding guns have kept her from discovering the fine writing coming out of Hard Case Crime. And that's cool.

We still have plenty of tastes in common. And (to me, the point of dating a fellow reader) plenty to talk about. And our reading sometimes comes closer. I turned her on to Dickens and Du Maurier, Sarah Gran and Donna Tartt. She gave me Wilkie Collins, Marian Keyes, Bryce Courtenay and (oddly enough) Dennis Lehane. If either of us had been too fussy about the other's taste in books, we would have missed out on all of these new favorites.

And one hell of a lot of fun!

What about y'all? How important is taste in books to your relationships?

The Three Readers

Further in the questions of style: There are three distinct ways of relating to the written word. As writers, our style will be affected by our own reading style and the way our readers take in our work.

A quick overview:

1. The Motor Reader: These readers are still quite closely bound to our roots in oral storytelling. They read by physically modulating the sounds they see on the page. That is, their lips move.

Slowest reading style, but also the most thorough. Not so common today, but a hundred-odd years ago this style was the norm, enough so that those few who read *without* moving their lips were noteworthy.

Motor readers experience books as a form of spoken word. They respond to dialogue that echoes the rhythms of real speech and don't mind long descriptive paragraphs. The fiction of Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Sir Walter Scott, Daniel Defoe, Robert Louis Stevenson and L. Frank Baum were all created for an audience of motor readers.

2. The Aural Reader: The majority of modern readers 'hear' the sounds of the printed word in their heads. They read at the speed of the spoken word and experience their fiction as a sort of disembodied 'sound'.

These readers still echo the experience of the spoken word, but it's like the voice in their heads is going really, really fast. Verbal tricks, beautiful words and poetic techniques of meter and rhyme go over a treat. For examples, look at your favorite fiction of the 20th century!

3. The Visual Reader: A minority of readers see the printed page for what it 'is': squidgy black shapes on a pale ground. A quick scan of the shapes of the words assembles itself in their heads. For them, there is no similarity between 'knows' and 'nose'-- the shapes are too different.

This small but growing minority are the fastest group of readers. With a bit of training, a visual reader can learn to take in 'blocks of text', 2-4 lines of text at a time, left side, then right. The pieces assimilate in rough order.

So far, advertising and comics seem to be the only folks catering to this crowd. Advertising, because they know that you're going to look at a print ad for a second or two at most. They *have* to use clever shapes to draw your eye across the words. Comics for a similar reason: graceless clumps of words are a turnoff.

Two 'visual' writers come to mind: Elmore Leonard and James Patterson. Both came out of advertising. Both are aware that readers initially 'look' at a page, and that big blocks of dense black print make the reader's eyes glaze over. The average reader: the working stiff spending a few minutes with a book before bed, on their lunch break, or on an airline flight.

It's no coincidence these two writers love dialogue. Or that they break description up into smaller paragraphs. Or that, when nothing but a big old paragraph will do, they pepper their sentences with exciting, powerful words. You may not want to spend three of your fifteen minute reading-time days forging your way through a boring info-dump, but you'll bravely forge ahead to find out why you saw the words 'hammer' and 'blood'.

So what's a writer to do?

We can't change the ways people read, but we can be conscious of them. Looking at your work from a different reader's perspective can help point out areas need strengthening.

Me, I write visually. My first drafts are a relentless chase from image to image, using words to show the pictures playing in my head.

In a later draft, I scan through looking at the shapes of dialogue and paragraph, making sure nothing is too dense, or too 'wordy'.

Another draft, I actually read the book out loud to myself. Quietly and under my breath, but out loud. *Really* helps prune the dead wood.

Just one more way of trying to tell a better story.

Utterly Spoiled

For a while there, I'd had a bad run of books. Godawful things I didn't get through fifty pages of, and godawful things I followed right to the end, turning pages in mute shock.

But lately, my run of luck has changed. It all started in Australia, with Gil Brewer's The Vengeful Virgin. Then, the rest of John Ramsey Miller's Winter Massey series. There was some Lee Child in there, and Andrew Vachss's newest, Mask Market.

Oh, and Theresa Schweigel's Officer Down. And of course, I've just finished re-reading the Harry Potter books so as to be fresh for July 21.

And the good times didn't stop there. In the last couple weeks I've also enjoyed Joe Hill's fantastic debut, Heart-Shaped Box and Barry Eisler's Choke Point and taken some time to visit with old friends: Walt Whitman's poetry and F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories.

I'm also reading the final installment in Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver trilogy. Daunting sizes on those bad boys, but man, can Stephenson ever deliver the goods!

It's a run of luck so fine I'm afraid it can't last.

But no. Here on the table (up on deck, as it were), I've got a James M. Cain omnibus, John Connolly's The Unquiet, Sarah Gran's Come Closer and Swords of Talera, a pretty cool fantasy tale by some guy named Gramlich.

Charles, I hope your mum's okay!

This year, I also want to re-read Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca and maybe pick up one fo the biographies about her that're due out.

Utterly spoiled...

PS Just started Charles's book. It's like being a kid again, discovering Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E Howard and Fritz leiber for the first time. Loving it!

I am so truly and utterly spoiled!

After the Loving

(word count now irrelevant)

So what's next?

One problem with running full-throttle is stopping.

I finished last night and sat on my hands for a couple of hours before bed. Fortunately, the Tiny Dynamo thought she saw a mouse, so there was screaming and standing on chairs, etc. to keep me entertained.

It's fall. We live next to acres of fields. It's warm inside. But try telling a fearful Dynamo that. Like getting an amphetamine-fueled leprechaun to do algebra.

I also finished my latest read: The Blue Girl, by Charles DeLint. Good stuff, and I'll be reading more. Next up: Hunting Down Amanda, by Andrew Klavan and Clockers, by Richard Price.

Sometime in the next couple of days I've got a drawing to do for a client, a painting or two I've been thinking about and, apparently, a driving need to mouse-proof my home. Somehow I just know that will involve lots and lots and lots of (shudders, same voice Jerry used to say Newman) cleaning.

I'm trying to give it a day or two before I start back in. Not sure I'll be able to handle the break, but I'll try. Fortunately, I've got a couple of ideas in mind for my next two books, so I won't have to live with that 'will I ever write again' feeling. Just the 'will it be any good' and 'is this one I just did any good' ones. Oh, and 'what if the power has left me'. That's always a fun one, if you listen to it...

Mostly, I'll be a reader and movie watcher (when not -- ugh -- cleaning) for the next short while. I do loves me a good story. And I learn a lot from a bad one, so it's a win either way.

Old Man River

34,000 words

Mark Twain used to tell a story about how when he was a kid he loved the Mississippi. It was a place of mystery and wonder to him, and he couldn't imagine anything better than to pilot a steamboat down its wide wet length.

He grew up and got a job sitting in the bow of the boat taking soundings. I can't remember if her eventually made pilot or not, but he did get to the point where he knew the Mississipi like the back of his hand. From St Paul to New Orleans, every sandbar and shoal, every rip and sunken root was as intimate to him as his teeth to his tongue.

And, he said, the river's magic had been lost to him forever.

Like a lot of us, books were tiny worlds of mystery and wonder sandwiched between two covers. Every new story held the potential to carry me away, every bit as much as the Mighty Miss might carry a little boy far from Hannibal, MO. I've never been able to imagine anything better than storytelling.

When I got serious about writing, I realized I was going to have to learn my river just as closely as Twain learned his. I stopped picking up books for entertainment alone and began reading them with a different eye.

"How did the author do that?" I'd ask. "Ooh, I bet she's setting this up for later," I'd say. "What do I like about this dialogue, and what don't I like about that?" I no longer fell so easily into the worlds between covers. Or maybe I fell so deeply that I saw the machinery behind the curtain.

At a point of high suspense, part of me might still be reading with the shivers, but another part was examining the author's use of adjective, adverb, metaphor and sentence length to build that suspense. And comparing it to other examples.

Research also meant branching out. Like a lot of the book-buying public, I sought security in authors with multiple titles on the shelf. "If he's written this many, he must be good," I'd say. Research meant buying every first novel I could find, making a special point to read every award-winning or nominated first novel every year.

Some writers can write just like they always have and still sell books. They're on they're ninth, or nineteenth, or ninetieth, book and it reads more or less like the first one they sold back in nineteen ought-whatever. Newcomers can't do that. The bar is always set higher for us and always will be. We have to be in step with the current voice and style. And we have to beat it by enough to make people notice.

I didn't care if I thought I'd like it. I got reading those books that had done just that. And y'know what? Not a bad read among them. So many fantastic, beautiful, haunting stories I read, I had to take several long walks around my typewriter (it was a typewriter back then) before I got my nerve back.

Sure, I don't read like I used to. I read now the way a magician watches a magic show, or a boxer watches a bout. It's the way a tracker looks at a wooded glade, or a painter at a painting.

And I've decided Mr. Twain was being more entertaining than honest.

The river would've changed for him no matter what. If he hadn't piloted down it, he might have ended up a drummer (salesman) using it to get from A to B, blind and deaf to its beauty. Or he might have ended up as so many of his boyhood friends did, holding a plow and walking behind a mule, the river little more than a source of vague resentment over dusty dreams.

As it worked out, decades later and half a continent or half a world away, Twain could close his eyes and conjure that boyhood love, that spirit of magic and mystery, in ways that a man who knew the river half so well never could.

And he could raise that love in our hearts, too.

Shock and Awe

Status: 30,000 words

Some writers don't read while they're in the middle of a book. Some writers read, but not in their genre. I can understand why. A couple years ago, all it took was one good book to shift my narrative voice. Suddenly, I was piling on the adjectives like Michael Connelly, or waxing poetic like John Connolly. Or trying to reel out the laconic, time-stretched action sequences of Sarah Gran, UPSIDE DOWN by John Katzenbach. Truly fine books, one and all. DOPE was the most intimidating for me, though. It's closest to my own writing style, and she's intimate with the same world I write in. If we weren't on the same bus ride through Hell, we definitely booked with the same tour company.

I'm glad I read it now, while I'm full of enthusiasm for my new work, and not in another month or two, when I'm lost and lonely and not at all certain this thing I'm doing will come together at all.

It will, of course, but a sleepless night or two is a part of that process.

Anybody out there have books/authors they avoid while writing? Or ones they seek out for inspiration?