Two Sentence Tuesday

These two sentences are from a book I am currently reading, Drop Shot by Harlan Coben. If you haven’t read any of his work you should take a look. Coben combines humor and mystery in a very unique style, and with sports thrown in, how can the reader lose?

“What’s-her-name was Jessica, which Esperanza knew very well. Esperanza did not care much for the love of Myron’s life.”

This week I wrote these two sentences in a short story:

“But time has its way of adjusting your take on things. After a couple of years inside, I picked up a routine.”

We have a brand new blogger participating in Two Sentence Tuesday, stop on over and say hi to Huddlekay.

Anyone out there got some great lines to share? We wanna see 'em!

Terrie

MTM: City Island, The Bronx, New York

I often boast that I was born and raised in The Bronx, the only one of New York City’s five boroughs to actually be part of the mainland of the United States of America. To a kid in the 1950s that was very important because when The Bomb was dropped on New York City, we wouldn’t have to cross any bridges to reach the safety of Middle America. I was sure that my cousins in Brooklyn would be goners, while we Bronxites would just walk until we reached a cornfield somewhere. We kids knew all about The Bomb because in those days families watched the evening news together and world events were common dinner table conversation.

My beloved Bronx is home to the New York Yankees, home to the oldest Municipal Golf Course in the United States, located in Van Cortlandt Park , and home to tiny City Island, only a mile and a half long, and barely a half mile wide. The Island is surrounded by the waters of the Long Island Sound and Eastchester Bay and is connected to the rest of the Bronx by the one road out, one road in, City Island Bridge.

Originally inhabited by the Siwanoy Indians, City Island was first established as an English settlement in 1685. Since it was in a perfect location on the route schooners traveled between Manhattan and New England, the Island became an important ship building and yachting center.

World Wars One and Two brought about a necessary switch to the construction of submarine chasers, P. T. Boats, landing crafts, tugs, and mine sweepers.

Following World War Two, the Island shipyards began constructing pleasure craft once again, including 12-meter sloops that became increasingly popular, especially in yacht racing. Several America’s Cup entrants were built on City Island, including the 1977 contenders the Independence, the Enterprise, and the 1977 winner, the Courageous skippered by Ted Turner.

Today, the presence of yacht clubs, sailing schools, sail makers, marinas, fishing boats, and marine supply and repair shops reflect City Island's historic role as a nautical community. City Island Avenue is lined with antique shops and sea food restaurants. There are no hotels or motels but Le Refuge Inn is a very elegant French Inn and Restaurant located in a nineteenth century sea captain’s house.

I am always surprised at how many New Yorkers have never been to City Island. When I can, I drag them on the grand tour and usually wind up at the Lobster House . To see some of the wonderful views that bring diners back time and again, click here.

My personal favorite place to eat is an old coffee house turned restaurant called the Black Whale where I brunch with my old friends from high school a few times a year. We talk about the past, as in “Why did we get detention for that?” the future, as in “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you retire?” Someone always remarks how terrific it is that the City Islanders continue to fight against development, struggling to keep the village atmosphere for generations to come.

Sometime this Spring, my oldest grand daughter will be going to City Island with her first digital camera and will probably take pictures in the same niches where I took them when I got my first Brownie camera fifty-three years ago. Hopefully, she won’t cut off nearly as many heads as I did.

For a quick trip around the world via My Town Monday links, please visit Travis Erwin’s blog, where it all began.

Terrie

What's Not To Love?

Clare's post yesterday on the various kerfluffles around the writing world got me thinking about two strains of chatter I have seen in the past week.

First, there are numerous blogs participating in a project started by Patti Abbott wherein blog authors use Fridays to recommend books. Says Patti, "I'm worried great books of the recent past are sliding out of print and out of our consciousness. Not the first-tier classics we all can name, but the books that come next."

On the other hand, there seems to be quite a bit of chatter about what turns readers off. On one reader forum I belong to, the moderator posted a poll asking about bad editing in published books [membership in Delphi forums required]. Here are the options:
• It makes me mad, but what can you do?
• It makes me mad, and I'm going to write to the publishers.
• It makes me so mad, it's putting me off buying books from the worst offenders.
• Other (specify).

At the moment, there's a 60-40 split between "what can you do" and "not buying books from the worst offenders." (If you feel like answering this yourself in the comments, I'll be happy to pass along your comments.)

At the same time, a conversation began in a romance readers forum at LibraryThing about "wallbangers", i.e., books so bad you throw them against the wall. These appalling books range from books with horrendous plots or dialogue, to those with factual errors, to...well, you name it.

In both of these discussions, a good number of people have been turned off entire bodies of work--either they won't read anything written by an author or anything published by a certain publisher. As a writer, I find this both encouraging and frightening.

On the scary side, what if I accidentally publish with one of those publishers people refuse to read? What if I make a mistake and am shunned forever for it? But I can control those things. I research publishers, and the list of those who publish my kind of work who I'd work with is comparatively short. (Compared to what, you ask? Compared to the list of publishers of genre fiction overall.)

As it happens, the ever-helpful Victoria Strauss has a post today on researching small presses. One thing she mentions only in passing, but I would emphasize, is actually reading books published by the press in question. That's usually the first thing I do. And I evaluate every aspect of a small press book if I am considering them as a viable publishing option-- not just the contents, but the price, the design, the paper quality. I am a consumer of books in both the literal and figurative sense and I don't want to put my own work out in a way that doesn't please other readers.

As for the factual stuff turning off readers, well, luckily, research is something I enjoy (witness all the years I spent in school getting useless advanced degrees). Some things I will, inevitably, get wrong, especially in the law enforcement arena, but I hope I won't make the glaring kind of errors people are talking about in these threads.

But I find all these discussions--not just "don't forget about these great books," but also "these books are so awful they left dents in my wall on the way to the trash"--encouraging. They mean that readers are still passionate. Some people, at least, are involved enough in what they read to be both enthusiastic about books they love and angry about books that aren't what they should be.

All that, I think, bodes well for the future of genre fiction, in whatever form it may come to be distributed.

While the Kittens are at Malice...

Sproing! If all's gone according to plan, two of our WoM, Nan and Elaine, will soon be arriving in the D.C. metro area. There, they'll be feted with malice aforethought for three days, and we expect succulent morsels of still-steaming dish served promptly upon their return. We also wish them a wonderful time, and to Nan, fingers crossed for the Agatha award! Since our ranks have been thinner as of late, I've been taking the mouse's chance to post, boing, post. It can't last.

All the recent conference activity (mystery, comic-sff, romantic) in turn spins off lots of spirited blogtalk about the states of the industry from various angles. Combine that with recent kerfuffles, first spawned online, re: plagiarism and reviews, and lots of questions have been raised recently about civility and collegiality across genres and cyberspace itself. I don't claim to have the answers, but there are more raw and funny opinions you may enjoy reading while coming to your own conclusions.

Nancy Martin of The Lipstick Chronicles enjoyed the recently-held Romantic Times in Pittsburgh, but behavior from attendees and exhibitors got beyond some folks's comfort range. As a prime example, some of the gentlemen models promoting an erotica line seem to have become 'handsy' in old parlance, creating consternation and issues of accountability. Where's the line between appreciating playful, edgy marketing and needing to get yourself steam-cleaned? Aside from her notes about hand sanitizer, Nancy makes fascinating observations about the different ways she saw readers connecting with books (the news ain't all bad!) and the way romance is growing its new generation of fans. Interesting stuff with wider application, I think.

Richard K. Morgan wrote a commissioned piece about the vitriol in the speculative fiction community that was so negative, he says, the man paying didn't want to run it. So he posted "Sound and Fury, Signifying...?" on his blog. If you don't know or care about the difference between mundane scifi and space opera, for example, feel free to insert any other warring sub-genres of your choice as you read. Now, I think Morgan would disagree with this last suggestion, as he claims that the world of mystery is eminently more civil than sff. Well maybe, and maybe it is the average age of the writers and readership at work. However, I think he grants the crime fiction crowd too many laurels when he writes:

...you don't get this gnawing, mutilative thread of self-hatred, this bulemic purging of whole sub-genres or readership sub-sections as somehow unworthy. A quick trawl through a couple of dozen crime writer websites and messageboards reveals no agendas or dogme-style utterances, no towering rages or griping about how the genre's going to shit these days, how there's all this generic pap being published, how this strain of crime writing is so much more valid than this other strain...

I quickly found this interview with legendary publisher/agent/bookseller Otto Penzler on Evil E, where he does take shots, as is his wont, at the so-called cat mysteries. He's known for it, but he's not alone. The books involving animals centrally, especially as crimefighters their furry selves, are extremely beloved and also widely mocked and reviled. Noir versus Meow- you can easily locate that snarking once your own antenna's hoisted. Perhaps this dispute is milder than ones in sff, but there are plenty of writers of "gritty, dark" fiction (and I've written some myself) who hold what's "cozy" in contempt. Lots of the cozy readers and writers feel disaffected and unwanted, and resent being pushed into ever darker stories as if it weren't okay to like what they like.

I'm a jukebox that plays all the songs from time to time, and believe more graphic violence and less-redeeming characters do not necessarily equate to elevated quality in the writing or storytelling. Careless writers toss in expletives and savagery without humanity, assuming their blue-streaked dialogue sings like Leonard's can and that readers intrinsically care for any thug or thugette they meet. Well, no. Even other thugs cross the street from certain crazies and death-bound baddies. Fans of the grimmest stuff are mostly quite nice, but getting readers over instinctive urges to cut bait with these losers is part of what makes the great writers of bleakness so satisfying to read. When they're not as good, repulsion and fatigue win for me. But, aside from that aside, I think this kind of internecine fragmentation happens any time someone likes mild versus hot salsa, for example, and doesn't much feel like they need improving simply because of their preferences.

The online world of free opinion sometimes seems less like a great party and more like an arena. There are times you want to change conversations or even grab your coat, preferably of rhinoceros hide. How you respond isn't really anyone else's purview, and depends on how you yourself are wired. You may decide finally to walk away, concentrate on your writing as best you can, and stay out of the scrum. Fair enough. You might also decide to join in with gusto and glee, irony as your Kevlar. For myself, I still find it all more exciting and amusing than awful, and as long as I do, I'm glad to have a front-row seat for whatever's Next.
Boing!

Something New for Writers and Readers

Do you like audio books? Do you like short stories? Hello, have I got something for you!

Head on over to Sniplits. Subtitled Audio Shorts 2 Go, Sniplits offers audio short stories in a variety of genres and lengths. As described on the website’s About page:

Unlike audiobooks that can take hours to finish, these stories take just a snip of time. They are the perfect pack-and-go entertainment for just about any pause in your day. A 10-minute story might be just what you need for a coffee break, while a two-minute story might make that wait in line at the bank’s drive through a little easier to take. How about a 20-minute story for your lunch break, or a 40-minute story to get you through your dental appointment.

After joining Sniplits (which is easy, quick, and free), you can search for stories by author, length, or genre. The stories are inexpensive, costing 48 cents for pieces less than five minutes long and 88 cents for anything over five minutes, including stories over an hour long. Once you purchase a story, you can save it in your library or download it to any device capable of playing digital music. Compatibility shouldn’t be an issue because the stories are all published DRM-free. Even better, each story can be downloaded to 10 different devices—and they don’t all have to be yours. So if you really love a certain story (for example, something you wrote yourself), you can share it with friends.

The website is new—in fact, it’s still in a beta version―but a fair number of stories are already available. They’re divided into the following genres:

• Literary, mainstream
• Adventure, travel, sports
• Humor
• Horror, spinetinglers
• Period pieces, historical fiction
• Mystery, crime, PI
• Romance
• Speculative, sci fi, fantasy, myth
• Suspense, thriller
• Western
• Tweens2teens

If you’re a writer, Sniplits is an interesting new market well worth considering. If you hate your voice, don’t fear—stories are submitted in written form and Sniplits hires professionals to read them.

Sniplits is currently looking for “beach reads” of between 100 and 8,000 words. For the details and submission guidelines, see the website’s Authors Room page.

KHAN!!!!!! A 2-sentence Postscript.

I forgot to include this great picture which shows (again) how widely graphics are being used, but I couldn't stand thinking about hashing around the original long and mangled post. So, here's a rack of philosophical, historical works in graphic form from the For Beginners book series.

P.P.S. Faked you out with that 2-sentence stuff, didn't I?

P.P.P.S. We shall see...


UPDATE: What the heck? Here they are. I read:
She was her Staten Island cottage, the shining bay, the sailing ships, a sanctuary from the sense-numbing city. Imagine unlacing her every night. - The Midnight Band of Mercy by Michael Blaine.

I wrote: There wasn’t a flexible-enough cover identity, except possibly as an especially naive journalist or NGO staffer, which each had limitations. No one but a minister would drag his wife to these places, which left Franklyn the role of someone’s girlfriend, a status too often translated in locals’ minds to being the Westerners' whore.

Please share any two you read and wrote in the comments, or let us know where they're posted so we can provide the link.

Travis Erwin's inspirational and whitewashed twos.

Britta Coleman likes to post her 2x2s on Thursdays. A sweet one.

KHAN!!!!!! Wait, I mean Con

Star Trek Inspirational Posters found here.

Sure I don't live in Manhattan anymore, even if I'm darned close, and sure it's really Tuesday at this moment, but I've always been broad-minded about My Town Mondays.

This weekend was the 3rd Annual NY Comic-Con (vention). I've been to all three and it's ballooned in size and scope every year. While things keep improving, other problems of scale arise and need tweaking. After such a short run, that this is already the second largest event after Comic Con Int'l in San Diego shows that the East Coast was hungry for its own local venue. Sensible, too, since so much of the publishing is in NYC.

Sorry for the delay in posting, but Blogger's been more evil and obstreperous handling pictures than usual, which is really saying something. The order and shape will have to stay what it is (click to enlarge) and I'll notate around the edges. Yuck.

Above- The Javitz Center indeed has a soaring atrium and many kinds of other merchandise, like this case of figurines, are on display besides comics books and graphic novels. There's statuary; toys in both vinyl and plush; clothing and thematic accessories; non-picture books; lots of original artwork; games on boards, cards, and video; and exhibits from not only from 2-D producers but studios like Disney and Nickelodeon and SciFi who screened piles of related previews and trailers. Don't forget the funnel cakes.


The 2 top pics in the group above show the main problem in this year's show. The mob scene between cement walls is not the exhibition hall, which was, for the first time, a room large enough to walk in wide aisles without getting poked by horns and light sabers all the time. (Yay!) However, the downstairs hall where the panels were presented, including popular media previews, had no flow and inadequate capacity. A set of escalators leads to and from it from above, and the pic with the shiny tile floor is THE LINE FOR THE ESCALATOR simply to get into the mob! I didn't see a single panel, because of the schooling crowds that blockaded every inch of floor space. The media shows should be in a large, open access amphitheater set-up. On the biggest day, Saturday, it was disappointing not to get to attend any of the discussions or presentations. However, last year the capacity was lean enough they sold out of tickets, and lots of traveling attendeed couldn't even get in. So this is improvement. Also above is the quintessential comic dealer set-up, boxes with issues in plastic sleeves for browsing. There are fewer of these type of booths than you'd imagine, fewer than the first years. I think. It's more about the splashy spectacle now.

The last of this chunk above is a truly sad sight to educate any writer. WARNING: RANT FOLLOWS. See that tiny table on the blue carpet in the image's center? The one with a few books that's slapped against the back of another, much grander booth? Whoever the publisher, they set up a space with signing slots in this lousy spot, and the dispirited author was spending his hour just sitting there, slouched so far back you can't see him in my picture. I almost went back at least to examine his book out of pity, but frankly, there was plenty of traffic (as you can see) walking that row if he'd come out from behind the table! Stopped waiting for people to approach him! The place incites sensory overload, but... Meet the other exhibitors in your row. Most people working in the field are also fans. They may buy a book, send people your way, or at least help you pass the time in bonhomie. Meet attendees! Ask them how the day's going, what they've seen so far that's cool, whether it's their first con, etc. Regular people like having interest shown in them, just like authors do : ) And they may even buy your book or tell a friend who will. It takes energy to be outgoing, but at an event like this (especially if your slot's only a hour or so), enthusiasm teems in the candy-colored oxygen supply. Don't just mope and liquify, feeling bad about your admittedly horrible placement and pathetic display. Time's a wastin' while potential readers flit by. If you wrote the book, you're part of the product and more potentially compelling than any long table, pleated draping, banner, or vertical shelving unit!

The scene has echoes of Mardi Gras and elaborate tailgating parties. You'll notice lots and lots of costumed people and become inured to them. This year (also a yay), security was way less draconian about the 'weapons' people had with them. How you gonna make Gandalf give up his staff? Some of the outfits are very professional, some are more home-grown, but cosplayers and civvies are all cavorting together. Even the non-costumed tend to wear gear that proclaims their superheroic or thematic allegiances. It's a colorful, good-natured scene, polite and pleasant despite the apparently horrible and martial characters that populate it. Most of the costumed are not only happy, but positively eager, to have their pictures taken. Above left, the X-Men Women had just finished taking pictures with the excited girl CatWoman, if that's how to phrase it. Bad news for all the scantily costumed: Next year's con is in early Feb. again, and the coat check issues were myriad during the last winter event.

Of course, no convention's complete without Stormtroopers. Trust me on this. Half of this pair, once the helmet was off, was revealed to be a 30-ish woman with a chestnut bob and granny glasses who would've looked right at home behind any circulation desk. Cons Rock!

Update: Signet Fires Cassie Edwards Over Plagiarism Scandal

We didn't spend a lot of time on the Cassie Edwards scandal here, although Elaine did have a very timely post on the subject of plagiarism in novels. But this is just a quick update for those of you who might be interested. Signet let Cassie Edwards go, reverting all the rights they owned back to her. (You can find the whole, pathetic story in the right sidebar of the Smart Bitches blog.)

And tune in later today for a wonderfully bizarre My Town Monday from Clare, who spent the weekend at the Comic convention.

The Politics of Reviews

I never think twice about reviewing a product. Want to know what I think of my Honda Hybrid? I love it. Want to know what how the pistol-grip Dremel works? It doesn't. But books are something else entirely. Reviewing a book is hard for me because I really hate to hurt people's feelings and I know that even people who write really, really bad books work hard at them and send them off into the world believing they are wonderful.

On the other hand, if a book is chock full of ghastly grammar, plodding plotlines or atrocious alliteration, shouldn't other readers be warned before plunking down their money?

You may (or may not, depending on what loops you are on) have heard the bruhaha about a certain author who went so far as to track down the personal information (name, address, family names, etc) of a woman who gave her book a mere three star review on Amazon. That's after chastising the reviewer in the comments section of the review and recruiting people to vote that the review (three stars, remember, not one) be removed as abusive. And there are other authors, rather famous ones, in fact, who are also known to "game the system" by having friends go in and post 5-star reviews whenever negative reviews pop up.

I rarely read Amazon reviews because for the most part I find them utterly useless. Unless I am trying to get a plot summary, of course, in which case, there's always back matter masquerading as a review by "Harriet Klausner." I do read Janice Harayda's One Minute Book Reviews, though she mostly doesn't review genre fiction, so I rarely read the books she examines. She does, however, do wonderful children's book reviews on Saturdays, where I collect present ideas for my various nieces and nephews.

John Connolly said something about reviews that's stuck with me now for over two years:

I can’t remember the good things that were said about my books because, in some deep, dark place inside of me, I didn’t quite believe them and so they didn’t stick in my memory. I can, by contrast, probably recite sections of the bad reviews verbatim. They stung because in another deep, dark place inside of me, I believed that they might be true.
(March, 2006--as with most things he writes, the whole post is worth reading, especially the chunk on bland reviews and internet reviewing)

So today, as I was about to add a book to my LibraryThing library and give it a mere three stars, which--for this author--would be a decidedly low mark from me, I started to wonder about whether that author had a LT account, and whether she'd be upset. I still think the book deserves three stars because it's part of a series, and there's far too much focus on stuff that happened earlier in the series, but now I feel a bit awkward. After all, I read Tess Gerritsen's posts about how upsetting she finds bad reviews.

What about you guys? Do you read reviews? Write them? Would getting a negative review upset you more if it were "this book sucks" or if it went into detail about the problems? Is "what a fab book" sufficient praise, or would you prefer more specific compliments?

UPDATE: People asked about the original story for of the Amazon fight, and Dear Author has conveniently posted a timeline.

Speaking of Poetry

Remainder image from here.

As we've recently been discussing poetry, haikus specifically, I was inspired to post this to which I was recently introduced via John Scalzi's blog. The poet is the prolific and witty Clive James, and more of his poetry's here. If you're not familiar with the concept of remaindered books, a definition of these publisher's sad clowns is here. If you are familiar, just sit back in the ample schadenfreude he casts and enjoy.

The Book of my Enemy Has Been Remaindered

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy's much-prized effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
One passes down reflecting on life's vanities,
Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
Lavished to no avail upon one's enemy's book --
For behold, here is that book
Among these ranks and banks of duds,
These ponderous and seeminly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I rejoice.
It has gone with bowed head like a defeated legion
Beneath the yoke.
What avail him now his awards and prizes,
The praise expended upon his meticulous technique,
His individual new voice?
Knocked into the middle of next week
His brainchild now consorts with the bad buys
The sinker, clinkers, dogs and dregs,
The Edsels of the world of moveable type,
The bummers that no amount of hype could shift,
The unbudgeable turkeys.

Yea, his slim volume with its understated wrapper
Bathes in the blare of the brightly jacketed Hitler's War Machine,
His unmistakably individual new voice
Shares the same scrapyart with a forlorn skyscraper
Of The Kung-Fu Cookbook,
His honesty, proclaimed by himself and believed by others,
His renowned abhorrence of all posturing and pretense,
Is there with Pertwee's Promenades and Pierrots--
One Hundred Years of Seaside Entertainment,
And (oh, this above all) his sensibility,
His sensibility and its hair-like filaments,
His delicate, quivering sensibility is now as one
With Barbara Windsor's Book of Boobs,
A volume graced by the descriptive rubric
"My boobs will give everyone hours of fun".

Soon now a book of mine could be remaindered also,
Though not to the monumental extent
In which the chastisement of remaindering has been meted out
To the book of my enemy,
Since in the case of my own book it will be due
To a miscalculated print run, a marketing error--
Nothing to do with merit.
But just supposing that such an event should hold
Some slight element of sadness, it will be offset
By the memory of this sweet moment.
Chill the champagne and polish the crystal goblets!
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am glad.

Clive James

The Haiku of Discipline

*Thanks for the title, Claire2e.

I’ve been having fun with my writing lately. I’ve been testing out different genres plus playing around with different forms. No question, the umbrella category of mystery/thriller/suspense will always be my favorite, and I seem to derive the most satisfaction from novels, both in reading and writing, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like anything else. In addition to preventing burnout, taking occasional breaks from spending all my writing time on my mystery novel reinforces my decisions to write a novel and to write a mystery. It also allows me to learn new things or practice skills that benefit my regular writing.

One of the formats I’ve been playing with is micro fiction. A type of short story, micro fiction has 100 words or less. It sounds easy. After all, who can’t write a story of just 100 words? Well, it’s not easy; it’s dang hard. Plus, I’ve been entering my creations in a weekly contest that requires exactly 99 words―no more, no less. That’s even harder.

But the results have been worth the hair I’ve pulled out. I’ve always been able to write newspaper, magazine, and newsletter articles to fill a certain amount of space. I majored in journalism in college and spent my first several post-graduation years as a newspaper reporter. But fiction has been different. Compared to my nonfiction writing, my fiction writing has been extremely undisciplined. I always just . . . wrote.

Practicing writing toward a specific low word goal can help tame undisciplined writing. Try it. Think of a story, write the first draft, and then trim it down and fill it out to your desired low word count, correcting any typos and grammatical problems. At the same time, keep a good balance of dialogue, action, and description, plus—and even more important―convey a complete story. For some good examples of micro fiction, see here.

Poetry is also good for learning or practicing discipline. Some forms have very specific requirements. For instance, haiku generally consists of three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Traditionally, the first line should establish the situation, the second should convey the action, and the third should describe the result, but most people just aim to hit the syllable count. For some classic funny examples, see here.

Micro fiction and haiku are just two types of writing that can help develop discipline. Many others also exist. See what strikes your fancy. You can learn new types of writing, hone your skills, and have fun all at the same time.

Two Sentence Tuesday

Tuesday is here again and once again I have very little written. But here are two sentences I wrote this week:

"F.I.T.--the Fashion Institute--is just a few blocks down from here, and there are manufacturers and designers as well as students, professors, shopkeepers…all people who don’t keep nine-to-five schedules. And they all smoke, so they have to stand out on the street for at least ten minutes every couple hours."

I rarely--really rarely--review books, but LibraryThing has an "early reviewers" program, so I signed up to see whether I could get a copy of A Dog Among Diplomats by J.F. Englert a while back. The book intrigued me, but it's so far from the kind of thing I would normally read that I wasn't sure I'd buy it. I got my copy yesterday, and here are the first two lines:

It's not every day that a young man clad only in boxer shorts embossed with red hearts dies beneath an opened parachute in a small third-floor room in one of New York's last boardinghouses. It's even rarer that a visual artist, the owner of a Labrador retriever equipped with a generous belly, a fine mind and and admirable temperament, is called to the scene by the local police department before the body is even cold.

Looks like fun, eh?

If you want to post two sentences on your own blog, just put a comment here and we'll update the post with links!

This week, check out:

Travis Erwin's two sentences
Britta Coleman's two sentences

My Town Monday: Peternity

A few miles from my house is Hartsdale, NY. It's not technically my town, but within my normal orbit of operations, so I'm counting it, and Hartsdale boasts the nation's oldest and largest pet cemetery. All the images posted here are ones I took myself yesterday. (Click to enlarge.) Pardon any formatting weirdness. With this many photos, Blogger burps.









In 1896, a prominent NYC vet, Dr. Samuel Johnson, offered his apple orchard in then-rural Hartsdale to serve as a burial plot for a bereaved friend's dog. From this single act of sympathy, the site grew and now is the resting place for almost 70,000 pets.



The park is run by the descendants of the family that founded it, which included relatives of famous designers and sculptors such as Robert Caterson, who was chosen to do its WWI War Dog Memorial. I don't know how I managed to miss a picture of that, but above I snapped the memorial of Tanne, a seeing eye companion, and Skippy, a fire hero.










The monuments come in all sizes and expressions of grandeur. The arch above for Pekoe and Lady Lu provides one of the landmarks of the park, as well as the practically human-sized monument to Toodles Walsh . The monuments span the eras and even the small ones are full of personality. Sometimes, the pet names are the best part, and many have mounted photos or elaborate etchings. There are so many more examples of creative commemorations then I'm even showing, and the place is full of flowers. Whether placed by the families or planted by the park's staff, this place is blooming and green. And they're not species snobs here. Look for two examples of other honorees, occupying the "peaceable kingdom" among the dogs and cats.

I've collected the facts from the cemetery's well-developed website, which has tons more links/images of notoriety and interest (seriously!) as well as a slide-show tour. I've always been a fan of graveyards, finding them fascinating and lovely, and this one struck me as a faintly goofy but extremely sweet place.


However, concerning this last one, may I add my hopes that the family are breeders, or that these names all belong to goldfish?

On Prologues

I seem to be reading a spate of books of late that have completely pointless prologues. I realize the custom in the suspense genre these days is to open with some poor innocent being captured or killed by a serial killer so that we can see just how deviant the "baddie" is (or so the author can then relax a little, having already shown you the basic plot and stressed you out) and I've gotten used to that. I've even written a prologue for my romantic suspense, though it's not nearly so involved as some. (I posted a draft of it a while back, here, and while it's undergone some revisions since then, it hasn't become much more elaborate.)

I didn't have a prologue at first, but as I wrote, I realized that I wanted the reader to know that Nicole was dead long before the characters became certain of it. I wanted them looking for clues before the characters did, and that was the sole purpose of the prologue.

But the past few books I've read, I wonder why the authors bothered with the prologues and why no editor told them the book would be stronger without one.

• In one case, the prologue--which occurs more than a hundred years before the rest of the book--shows the discovery of an archaeological find. One of the artifacts is stolen later in the book, which forms the basis of the mystery/suspense, but nothing dramatic happens during the find, nothing vital that is not explained more than once later on in the story.
  
• The prologue of another book, taking place nearly ten years before the rest of the story, depicts the main character witnessing a murder as a child. The event is definitely life-altering, and you do need to know about it to understand the protagonist, but it's recalled so many times in the book, in dreams, in discussions, etc, that I got bored with all the repetition.
• The third actually takes place after the book begins. That is, Chapter 1 is dated earlier than the prologue. You get the prologue again later on in the book.

None of these is unique to the book in question. I've seen all these techniques used more than once (and the list is far from complete--certain styles of prologue get used regularly). However, reading these three books one right after another really brought question of a prologue into focus for me. All these books are by "name" authors (I'm too lazy to see whether they all qualify as "best sellers"), who've been writing and publishing for years, and now I want to go back and see whether they've always incorporated these introductory bits with information readers get again later on, or whether there's some sort of trend that's making them feel they need to have them.

I am a careful reader, so if I get information in a prologue, I don't want it again in the body of the book. If characters are going to discuss in detail a crime that's taken place, I don't need to see it being committed--you don't have to show the blood spilling first if you're going to give me two pages of spatter analysis later on down the road. (On the other hand, if you do show the spillage, that's fine...just give me a single sentence about what the spatter analyst had to say when the time comes.)

On television, there's a minute or two of story before the titles roll. Often, in shows like Cold Case, Without a Trace, Criminal Minds, the crime takes place in that first spot, and the rest of the show is an investigation into it. Sometimes, further crimes take place during the show, but there's a teaser up front, and that's how I often feel about the prologues in suspense novels. Maybe that's actually why I don't even notice the "serial killer grabs a victim" prologue any more; I'm so used to it from television.

So I wonder...how do the rest of you feel about prologues? Do you have particular types you like or particular ones that make you crazy? And what about epilogues, while we're at it?

Spring Finally Sprang, and I'm Sprung

I am happy. I understand now the central theme of the book I'm writing, that idea wrapped around the mere plot that represents its identity and reason. As I've griped here before, I was struggling over tone, but still the real theme hadn't asserted itself.

In On Writing, Stephen King wrote (and I paraphrase from memory) that it's in the later revisions he can identify the themes he's woven throughout and can sort and amplify them. I've finally been thinking about this project long enough to have learned what fascinates me most
about it.












Sure, this means redirecting the plot from what I thought it was (again), and showing events from a different camera angle, but it all feels easy this time. And that's how I always know when I've got it right. The choreography starts flowing like I've been spending my nights sleepwalking at Arthur Murray. I can't ever predict the timing, but things just organize themselves effortlessly and it's joyful to glide along.


The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say. ~Mark Twain



As of yesterday, my visiting houseful of family has gone. Lots of energy expended and not much sleep, but I'll remember it as more wonderful than tiring. And today, I'm finding all this springy goodness inspiring and supportive of my efforts, not distracting like it felt just a couple of weeks ago. Funny how that works. Though many of my neighbors have flowers and trees that I wish my covetous eyes could transplant, I've stuck to inflicting upon you specimens from our own territories. I know many of you also have works-in-progress right now. Any new breakthroughs of glorious blooms or plumage?


1)Blossoms of some weepy-cherry thing.
2) Pansy survivors of last week's torrents. More pals coming.
3) Flowering basil in the kitchen. Eggling on the sill.
4) Eggling ceramic planter with new-sprouting mint.
5) Forsythia from the sideyard.
6) The first, bravest daffodils. Mob in transit.
7) Hydrangea. Will eventually go into our front garden with the other bushes. I love these kind of blues.

The Muse and The Music

“Imagine one note struck on a piano. Immediately that one note is enough to change the atmosphere of a room.” -- Aaron Copeland, What to Listen for in Music.

On Absolute Write I found an energetic thread about writers who write to the strains of Beethoven or Talking Heads. It struck my fancy because I’ve been moving CDs to a new Media Center computer connected to our living room speakers. Along with music and audio books, this new toy plays and records television, runs my Netflix stuff – both DVDs and instant movies – runs games, and stores our entire collection of photographs. I’m waiting for the upgrade that will wash my windows.

My old albums sound so good through a quality audio system, and are so easy to access, that I’ve found they propel my writing. It seems not to matter which genre, as long as the tracks are old favorites. Music stirs me. Both physically and emotionally. If I’m upright (and alone!) I get down and boogie. With the laptop in my recliner I dance on the page. That screen of sound keeps work deadlines and laundry outside my orbit. It keeps my head in that place where the writing surprises me. (Turn up the volume, however, and I sing along with the vocals.)

The thread on Absolute Write is great. A couple of responders seem to have a fair bit of time on their hands – they create entire play lists to evoke a manuscript’s tone. Or an era they’re writing about. Or they make different play lists for each character.

Initially, although I was charmed, I was skeptical about what seemed a unique way to avoid actually writing. Until the other day when I queued up albums for a friend coming over, a colleague who’d recently lost a beloved relative. The CDs were favorites of mine that I was sure Lauren would like. But when I started listening, I realized every track was in a minor key…dirge-like…hardly the thing to lift the spirits of someone grieving. I dumped that lot and recorded some Concrete Blonde, The Band, and Rusted Root (am I dating myself or what?). Again, tracks I thought she’d like but a tad more upbeat. I called the first set Lauren Sad, the second Lauren Glad.

Those AbsoluteWriters are on the right track. I'm thinking of making sets for each stage of my heroine's journey: Paige in Denial. Paige Terrified. Paige Triumphant.

I’m curious who needs silence. Who among you listens. And where do you go for the music?

Image found at http://www.tuba.is.nl/pic1-10.html

- Lois

Join the Frenzy

Publishing is changing, have you heard? Every month, it seems, Publishers Lunch or Publishers Weekly or even just the New York Post has a story about some new twist that some publisher somewhere is implementing or some old method that’s being modernized or killed. We writers seem to just roll with the punches.

One thing more and more writers seem to be doing as part of their rolling is testing out new writing forms, genres, and markets. Short story writers are trying their hands at novels, mystery novelists are dipping their pens into fantasy, screenwriters are pounding out e-zine flash fiction. Because of this, I’ve been getting a bit of positive feedback on the contest information I’ve been passing along lately. Since I like positive feedback (I’m the mother of two sons, so it’s not something I’m used to), I'll continue posting about contests I hear about, as well as opportunities such as anthologies and new book, magazine, and e-zine publishers I come across that are looking for submissions.

So, without further delay, as they say . . .

Have you ever played with the idea of writing a script? Whether it’s for a stage play, movie, or TV show doesn’t matter. If you have, hike on over to Script Frenzy. Brought to you by the NaNoWriMo gang, Script Frenzy is being held through the month of April. Yes, it’s already the 9th today, but there’s still a whole three weeks left. And the rules don’t say anything about not being allowed to finish your script after April 30; you just won’t “win” the “competition.”

What are the rules? Well, they’re very simple. According to the Script Frenzy website, there are just five:

1. To be crowned an official Script Frenzy winner, you must write a script (or multiple scripts) of at least 100 total pages and verify this tally on ScriptFrenzy.org.
2. You may write individually or in teams of two. Writer teams will have a 100-page total goal for their co-written script or scripts.
3. Script writing may begin no earlier than 12:00:01 AM on April 1 and must cease no later than 11:59:59 PM on April 30, local time.
   
4. You may write screenplays, stage plays, TV shows, short films, comic book and graphic novel scripts, adaptations of novels, or any other type of script your heart desires.
5. You must, at some point, have ridiculous amounts of fun.

To join in the fun and get started on your way to a Tony, Oscar, or Emmy, just register at the Script Frenzy website.

Two Sentence Tuesday

I have no brain this week at all. This past weekend I had one of my three-day trade shows, and I am completely shot. (Most of my shows are two days, I have two three-days and two one-day shows every year, both of which are a drain, though for different reasons.)

So my two sentences reflect my lack of brain, being trivial in the extreme. But I find myself focusing more on trivialities these days!

“If I get the ones I usually wear,” she explained, “I don’t need to try them on. We can just buy them and go.”

And two -- well, three -- sentences I read this week that I printed out and pasted in the front of my notebook, from Jessica Faust's blog:

Think of always moving your career forward. Don’t get stuck working for years on the same book or the same series. If you truly want a publishing career, and not just to write books, you need to be in search of the next thing.

Jessica is talking about books and series, but I need to remind myself of this on a scene-by-scene basis. If I let myself, I can become mired in the physical aspects of a scene, just trying to move the characters around, rather than getting through it with the knowledge that I can go back and perfect it later.

Queens County Farm Museum

In keeping with the newest blog craze, started by our pal, Travis Erwin, this post is part of the My Town Monday series.

New York City. A place full of glitz and glamour. We got Times Square. We got the Empire State Building. We got Yankee Stadium. We got the Queens County Farm Museum. That’s not a typo. In the city of skyscrapers and yellow taxis, we have a forty-seven acre working farm museum.

New York is a big city, covering 321.8 square miles in a very lopsided way. The borough of Manhattan, which has been called The Island at the Center of the World, is not at the center of the City. It is a narrow island bound on the west by the Hudson River and across that river is our neighboring state of New Jersey. The other boroughs, The Bronx, Queens</