Mary picked up the soft cover book from her pillow where it had been resting since Lucy left it there. She opened the book so she could see the front and back cover, the red, black, and white colors making her eyes dance. Red was her favorite color. Black used to be the color of her hair. And it had been long and wavy, much as she imagined Helena’s hair to be. An index card floated down from the book and onto Mary’s lap. It was a note from Lucy: “Just call me Penny dammit!” Mary laughed at the inside joke. Both she and Lucy were regular readers of Helena’s blog and knew the story behind “Penny dammit.” (more…)
In a time long ago, I fancied myself an amateur Woolf scholar. I had volumes of her letters and journals; her novels and essays; any biography I could find; and kept all close to my bed, within arm’s reach. My interest in Woolf started while I was in high school and continued, fairly strong, through my grad degree in English. I still fancy Woolf although it’s been a long time since I’ve (re)read anything by her. I no longer claim to be a Woolf scholar, amateur or otherwise, but like a moth to a brilliant light, I fly to her whenever I see her name.
In this blog post, Interesting Literature not only provides an interesting tribute to Mrs. Dalloway (published on May 14, 1925), but also includes a clip of Virginia Woolf talking about writing. I had never heard her voice before. Her accent is much what you would expect from a well-educated, well-to-do British citizen of that time. Her obvious love of language, her philosophy that words should tell us the truth or create beauty, tugs at my heart given that she left this world too soon and too young.
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway was published on this day, 14 May, in 1925. In honour of this, we thought we’d offer a few little facts about this novel, and about Woolf herself.
The action of the book takes place over just one day – a ‘moment of June’ in 1923 – although there are flashbacks to events that occurred in the characters’ lives over the previous five years, in the immediate wake of WWI. The original title of the book was ‘The Hours’, a title that Michael Cunningham would go on to use for the title of his novel about Woolf, which weaves together events from Woolf’s own life and events from Mrs Dalloway. The book was filmed, in 2002, starring Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman (the latter of whom famously wore a prosthetic nose to portray Woolf).
Mrs Dalloway wasn’t the only novel Woolf wrote the action of…
For most, death is a fact of life. If you are a Deschanel, it’s a way of life.
Midnight Dynasty, Book 3 in The House of Crimson & Clover, will be released in three dramatic acts over the 2014 Summer. Click here to read the Press Release.
The Deschanel Curse, dormant for a decade, has returned with a vengeance. As the body count rises, it becomes apparent that strength, love, and ancient power provide no protection from destiny’s cruel hand.
ACT I: MALEDICTION
June Release
The Deschanel Curse is back. They’ve never been able to stop it before, but as it threatens the lives of those closest to them, the desire to put an end to the tragedy has never been stronger.
ACT II: CONVOCATION
July Release
The Curse has claimed its first victim. The Deschanel Magi Collective must bring the whole family together, to fight this as one.
ACT III: OMEGA
August Release
The Deschanels continue to say goodbye to those they love, just as a new and unexpected hope dawns. Will it be enough to save them?
Acts I, II, and III will be released as ebooks only, across all major online retailers. Then, in fall, a paperback (and electronic) version combining all the acts will be available.
The question is: will you be able to wait that long?
Dive into the secretive, ancient, powerful world of the Deschanels and Sullivans…
SERIES PREQUEL:
St. Charles at Dusk
Set amidst the lush and vibrant backdrop of New Orleans, this is the story of Oz and Adrienne. Of forbidden love, and startling heartbreak.
Anne’s entire life has been a lie. She must find the courage to discover who she is, including this terrifying, inexplicable ability she was born with.
Nicolas spent 30 years under his flawed set of principles. Mercy, three millennia under hers. Both are bound by these chosen illusions, until their paths unexpectedly cross.
Sometimes I wait too long to write and then the thoughts, or the threads weaving together an essay, deteriorate from being left out in the rain. Nothing I write comes out of whole cloth, and weaving is long, laborious, sometimes tedious work. I know because for several years I literally wove cloth on a 36-inch 4-harness Harrisville loom. I made a few things, but eventually I sold the loom to a friend and haven’t woven anything since. Sometimes I feel that way about writing: that I want to sell my tools to a friend and move on. Writing is such hard work. Which leads me to a bit of a diatribe. Thus spake my inner bitch:
I envy writers like Jennifer Weiner who can “produce at a deadline pace.”
She has published, what, eleven books in 13 years? And yet she roars with indignation at the publishing industry for being condescending toward female writers. Ya think, Jennifer? Please tell me what industry in this world is not condescending toward women. Just where is it do women no longer struggle to be taken as seriously and treated as equally as men? I came of age during the height of the women’s movement. When I was 12, I was a radical feminist, reading about rape in marriage and desperate to break free from a world that thought I deserved no better than to live in a single-wide with crying children and a husband who drank and beat me.
Maybe that’s why women people like Weiner annoy me so much. According to a New Yorker article (thanks, Kevin, for mentioning the article otherwise I never would have unearthed the issue from the stack of books and magazines next to my bed), her debut novel is in its 57th printing. She has a writing “closet” that “may be bigger than some of the apartments occupied by struggling writers in Brooklyn.” She has a summer home in Cape Cod. She has a personal shopper, someone who reminds her to pack underwear. She has been “outspoken about female writers whom she considers unsisterly.” And that is where she totally loses me. I may forgive her for wanting more when she already has more than many other writers (male as well as female) even dream of having. But the infighting that she appears to relish seems to serve no purpose other than to advance her own agenda: promotion of Jennifer Weiner.
I don’t begrudge Weiner’s writing style, her “commercial novels.” As Rebecca Mead notes, however, “literary criticism, at its best, seeks to elucidate the complex, not to catalogue the familiar.” That’s not to say that all commercial novels are unworthy of literary criticism. The Chief Inspector Gamache series written by Louise Penny, in my humble opinion, is worthy of literary attention.
English: Louise Penny (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Yes, there is a cataloguing of the familiar in her series. They are police procedural novels and as such a particular pace and certain tropes are expected. Plot presumedly drives the stories forward; yet, I keep reading Penny’s novels for the characters and the settings. I read them because the people within her novels are complicated and their lives are complicated and the settings (modern Quebec, a quaint village, the near fatal freeze of winter, the life-draining heat of summer) intertwine with their lives to make things even more complicated. I come away from these novels still feeling thoughtful, still pondering the fine line between love and hate, good and evil, the demons within and the demons without. Because Penny’s novels are categorized as a particular genre (mystery, crime fiction, whatever), she may never get the accolades that Weiner claims is often denied writers who are female.
But I don’t hear Penny complaining. In fact, if you friend her on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/louisepennyauthor), you’ll find that Penny seems to be quite content with her writer’s life. She is about as prolific as Weiner, having produced nine novels in as many years. Her tenth is due out in August 2014. But in contrast to Weiner, one gets the feeling Penny is still pinching herself to see if her success is just a dream. One gets the sense that she feels lucky, the kind of lucky that many artists describe as “being in the right place at the right time.” Yes, I’m admiring Penny for her humility. Perhaps I’ll be criticized for that.
Can I still consider myself a feminist if I choose not to take up arms like Jennifer Weiner and damn the literary critics for looking down their noses at commercial novels because you know they only do that if those novels are written by women? No, wait, Stephen King has had the same complaint for years.
Cover of Stephen King
Maybe I just don’t get it. Maybe I have a stronger class consciousness than a gender consciousness. After all, I feel unequally uneasy at a women-only dinner party as I do at a fancy restaurant where I have to pretend I know which fork to use when. I grew up among a lot of women. Cousins, sisters, aunts, mother. I’ve known from an early age that women aren’t always “sisterly” toward each other. Before I learned to play the part of a middle-class female, I was often condescended to by other women. I was consider stupid, slow because I was, in their presence, a fish out of water.
Eventually I married well, learned to appreciate fine wine, and appropriated the manners and preferences of my middle-class friends. For a while anyway. I’m still married well, but now I openly enjoy good cheap wine and most of those middle-class friends have moved on, no doubt because they found me to be a bore. I feel no great loss there. The complaint of wanting more, More, MORE from those who already have plenty bore me.
I’ll give this much to Jennifer Weiner. At a book signing event, “[s]he took time to talk to everyone.” She appreciates her readers. She knows without them she would be nothing. If she chooses to write for them and if they happen to prefer her stories to those by, say, Doris Lessing, then so be it. More power to her. I hope she continues to be successful and to make her readers happy. I might hope she won’t consider this blog post “unsisterly” of me.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe I’ve misplaced my inner Pollyanna.
A little birdie (well, actually, a big birdie) told me that today is Helena Hann-Basquiat’s birthday! And what better way to celebrate her birthday than by heading over to Amazon and picking up one or all of her recent publications:
Memoirs of a Dilettante Volume One, available in both ebook and paperback. I highly recommend the paperback. The printed format is candy for the eyes. If you are a fan of Helena’s blog (and how can you not be), then you will love having the adventures of Penny dammit, Countess of Arcadia and Helena all in one beautifully designed place.
Three Cigarettes, available as an ebook and only 99 cents. By the way, I’ve read and reviewed Three Cigarettes and found it to be both thrilling and chilling. Although Three Cigarettes was written by Jessica B. Bell, Helena was the editor. More importantly, she is Jessica’s keeper and we do want to keep Jessica around.
Best Medicine, available as an ebook and only 99 cents. Again, this one was written by Jessica but edited by Helena. I don’t need to repeat myself here, do I? I haven’t yet read Best Medicine but I do have a copy so a review will be forthcoming. And I know I won’t be disappointed.
For even more fun, see that widget on my sidebar, the one that says “Honorary Dilettante Contest”? Click on that, dear Readers, and prepare to participate in a truly fun contest. I’m participating and you can see what I mean here.
John W. Howell’s new novel, My GRL, is a pleasantly different kind of thriller. The hero, John D. Cannon, lacks a few of the standard hero qualities that you might expect in a thriller novel. He doesn’t seek out danger. In fact, at one point, danger has to literally run him off the road and onto the beach to get his attention. Cannon is somewhat naive as well, especially when it comes to women. He takes them at face value, trusting them in spite of all the red flags they wave in his face. [Ahem, Mr. Cannon, when a woman tells you she had great fun infiltrating another company while pretending to be someone else, in effect, SPYING, you might want to put your trust in her on hold for a bit.] Cannon is also one of the most polite, respectful, and well-adjusted heroes I’ve ever met, and he’s a lawyer to boot! He also has a wry sense of humor which carried through the novel quite well. (Some of my favorite lines: “I get dressed and wait for the wheelchair which is the requisite mode of transport out of a hospital. (If you are still alive that is, if not, then it is a gurney.”; “I think he believes I have a good memory and no brains.”) (more…)
“The threads of fate weave slowly, until at last, an unbreakable knot.”
Beyond Eventide: Bound
The House of Crimson & Clover Book 2.5- Coming in April
Aidrik knew Anasofiya’s tears were from a pain far deeper than anything physical she was experiencing. She was strong; very strong. Never complained once about the physical toll their son was taking on her, instead choosing to embrace the beauty, and promise, in the life she carried. All the while, this other thing, this malady Aidrik could not fix, consumed her.
Take advantage of this sale if you haven’t already purchased Yesterday Road! It’s a wonderful novel about memory (or the lack of it), the desire to forget, and the urge to connect. The main characters–Jack, Joe, and Ida–will live with you long after you’ve finished the book, and you’ll be glad for that. So go on and pick up a copy!
I thought I’d tip off readers of the blog to a promotion that I’m running through April 7. Officially it starts on 4/1, with a listing on Ereader News Today and a few other daily lists, but I wanted all y’all to have a crack at it sooner than later — if you haven’t already bought the book, that is.
Legends of Windemere: Family of the Tri-Rune is set to debut on Sunday, March 16th!!!
The magical adventure continues after Luke Callindor and his friends recover from their battles in Haven.
Nyx still has nightmares about casting the genocide spell in Hero’s Gate. Every night her heart is gripped by the sensation of hundreds of goblins dying by her magic. By the request of Lord Highrider and Duke Solomon, she is returning to fix the damage she caused. With Luke Callindor and Sari by her side, Nyx is ready to face the vengeful goblins and opportunistic thieves that plague Hero’s Gate. Yet, there is a darker threat that was born from her violated magic: The Krypters.
It is another action-packed, character driven story that will reveal one of our heroes has been lied to for their entire life.
About the Author:
Charles Yallowitz was born and raised on Long Island, NY, but he has spent most of his life wandering his own imagination in a blissful haze. Occasionally, he would return from this world for the necessities such as food, showers, and Saturday morning cartoons. One day he returned from his imagination and decided he would share his stories with the world. After his wife decided that she was tired of hearing the same stories repeatedly, she convinced him that it would make more sense to follow his dream of being a fantasy author. So, locked within the house under orders to shut up and get to work, Charles brings you Legends of Windemere. He looks forward to sharing all of his stories with you and his wife is happy he finally has someone else to play with.
Looking for a place for your poetry, stories, essays, photography to be published both online and on paper? Jayde-Ashe of The Paperbook Collective has loosened up her guidelines a bit (much like me loosening up the waistline on my clothes … so much more comfortable :)). One highlight is she will now take submissions of work that has already been published, say on your blog or another website. This is great news for those of us who have published poems or stories on our blog and then been told that those works of art are not acceptable for submissions to other venues. So go to The Paperbook Collective, check out the revised guidelines and SUBMIT :)
It’s Friday afternoon, and I am elbow deep in Issue Eight of The Paperbook Collective. I should probably be nose deep in a glass of wine, but there is none in the house. That I can find anyway…
So I’m feeling a bit crazy, a little bit wild, slightly Mad Hatter-esque. And a thought just struck me.
Let’s throw out the rule book for good.
I had grand intentions when I first begun The Paperbook Collective. I thought it would be released promptly on the 1st of each month, it would include specific types of content, submissions would end on a specific date and it would all be very professional and proper.
But let’s be honest. Professional and proper? That’s not really my style.
So here are the ‘guidelines’ I created at the start of this journey:
Guidelines:
All work must be original and unpublished. This means it cannot…
Marie at 1 Write Way 