Update on Willow (or Running the race as slow as I can…)

My friend Nicole recently ran the Chicago marathon. You can read her story, "Chasing Garbage Trucks (a marathon story)" at her blog, Five Penny Nicole. It’s really moving. Nicole is a fellow Chicagoan who also moved to Madison, so a lot of what she wrote resonated with me.

I mention this because as you can see, I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this month. Just putting all my energies into my current short story and Willow.  And even those have been going slow. With work and Daniel’s school, I just haven’t had any decent writing time. And I also admit, I’ve been slacking in writing in the evenings. We’ve been watching Babylon 5, and while it’s an awesome show, I haven’t been able to dedicate my usual hours of work in the evening. Sometimes I do write, but it’s hard to concentrate when I’m engrossed in the workings of the Sintari. So it’s getting to be that it takes me two, maybe three weeks to finish a chapter of Willow. And at this snail pace, it would be a miracle if I finish at all next year.

In Nicole’s blog, she talks about running when most of all the sprinters and experienced runners had taken off, leaving the slow runners behind. She talks about running on the sidewalk because the police had open the streets to cars again. She talks about passing empty water stations because the helpers had packed up to go home. And she talks about how despite that, she kept on running. She had made it her goal to finish the course, no matter what place she came in.

It’s not like I have writer’s block that keeps me from working on Willow. While it feels like I’m chipping away at each chapter, paragraph by paragraph, what emerges from all that chipping is some real good storytelling. I’m taking time to think through the logistics: atmosphere, description, believable action. It helps that I’m not in a hurry. Yes, there are times when I get frustrated. I feel that I should be further along.  Here it is getting into November and I only just now finished introducing all the players and starting the dive into the story itself…

But wait…I lie. That last line didn’t feel me with frustration at all. It filled me with glee. It’s got me rubbing my hands in anticipation. I want to see the book to the end, and the thing is, I’m enjoying what I’m writing. It’s not like it’s turned into a thing I have to slog into. This week, I’m putting in the details of a palace that’s based on African architecture. Do you know how much fun it is doing that?

So yes, I’m going slow. But it’s okay. My goal is not to write fast. My goal is to write Willow and finish, so that’s what I’m going to do. And for all you NaNoWriMo writers out there who feel like you’re flagging, like you can’t keep up with the daily word count, ask yourself this: did I sign up for this just to write anything, or did I promise myself to write and finish a novel?

If it’s the latter, then congratulations. You got yourself a goal. Now just keep writing until you reach it. Oh, and thanks Nicole for re-inspiring me. Now if you don’t mind, I got some writing to do!

Book Review: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

This is the first time I’m reviewing a book after I met its author. In this case, I met Rothfuss at this year’s past Oddcon. It’s one thing to read a book, review it, and not meet the author until several years down the line, if ever. It’s another thing to meet someone, learn they have a best-selling novel, then go out and read it.

But read “The Name of the Wind”, I did. And as I did, I realized something. This is a book that shouldn’t have gotten published, much less on the New York Times Best-seller’s List.

According to epic fantasy writing convention, it’s now considered bad form to start an epic fantasy with a prologue. There are no grand quests. It’s not a standalone, which also seems to be current trend among fantasy books nowadays. There is magic, yes, but it’s standard, mundane magic. The main character goes to “university” (shades of Harry Potter, anyone?) There are times when the POV switches from first to third person—right in the same passage. To be honest, not a whole lot happens in this book that can be considered “epic”. And, oh yeah, it starts off, of all places, in an inn.

So how? How did this book do so well when it looks like it broke nearly every rule newbie fantasy writers first learn about the craft?

It’s this line. This first line of the book: “It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.”

Against my will, this line it pulled me into the story of Kvothe. Kvothe has many names: Kvothe the Arcane, Kvothe Kingkiller. But when we first meet him, he is Kote, keeper of the Waystone Inn. How this man goes from a mighty figure of legend to a mere, humble innkeeper is not known—in fact, I’m going to tell you up front: we don’t find out in this book. In a sense, The Name of the Wind is really a prologue of sorts. But it’s a prologue that’s needed.

In the beginning, the story basically follows Kvothe as he putts around in his inn. He appears to be a shadow of some former glory, but it’s hard to tell. You know that something horrible has happened to him. You don’t know what, though. The only person who knows his past is his servant/companion/best friend Bast, and he keeps his mouth shut—mainly because he’s got his own secrets, one of which is that he’s not all that human as he looks.

One night, someone gets attacked by a big, black spider-like monster, rare in those parts. Almost reluctantly, Kvothe goes out to see if they are any more and runs into a man with the auspicious name of Chronicler. Turns out that Chronicler had been searching for Kvothe for years, hoping to get his story out of him. Kvothe resists at first, but then he agrees, and from there, we get into the story proper—told in Kvothe’s own words.

And it is engrossing. Kvothe is a master storyteller, and you can’t helped getting sucked in as you see the events of his life through the distance of his memory. We see Kvothe growing up with his family of traveling performers, being a too smart-for-his-own-good brat, whose own cleverness sometimes lands him in deep trouble. We see him through the trauma of losing his family and spending several years as a street urchin. We see him pull himself up and attend the University, where he gets whipped for insubordination, makes enemies with a noble, makes friends with a money lender, falls in love but doesn’t know what to do with that, and tries to gain money playing his lute while maintaining his studies. And, through interludes, we learn a little more about Bast, and we see more that the darkness that had (probably) pursued Kvothe is stirring again.

Like I said, this isn’t a book that takes you on a grand-sweeping country-traveling quest. Instead Kvothe is presented with little goals. His main one is to avenge his family’s deaths. But in order for him to do that, he needs to get into University, which is a trial within itself. Then he needs to find a way to get into the archives that houses the info on the dark beings that slew his family….and most of the time, the obstacles to his goals is Kvothe himself. If only if he wasn’t such a thick-skulled, arrogant bonehead…

But that’s what I like about The Name of the Wind. Rothfuss does an awesome job of taking this brash, arrogant character and turning him into someone likeable, even fun. You just can’t help rooting for Kvothe, even when he makes boneheaded decisions. Part of that, I feel, is that most of the story is in Kvothe’s own words. It’s like you’re sitting there in the inn, with Bast and Chronicler, listening to him spin his tale. Also, because most of the story is told in first person, you don’t wade through long descriptions of scenery and naval gazing.

That doesn’t mean Rothfuss slacks in the writing. There are these wonderful literary bits that reminds me a little of L’engle writing. For instance, advice from Kvothe’s father: “Call a jack a jack. Call a spade a spade. But always call a whore a lady. Their lives are hard enough, and it never hurts to be polite.” And then there’s that POV change I mentioned. There’s a scene where Kvothe plays the lute for the first time after living on the streets of Tarbean. It’s a very emotional moment for him, and you can feel it as Kvothe narrates. As he nears the end, Kvothe switches from speaking in first person to third, as if the memory of that night is too much for him, and he must distance himself by withdrawing from the story in third person. It’s a brilliant, beautiful use of POV change, and it totally blew my mind.

Of course, not everything is perfect in this book. There is a dragon chase that comes out of nowhere, and there’s a point where we have to suffer through a character with an accent barely readable on the page. But still, I really enjoyed reading The Name of the Wind. Rothfuss knows the rules. He breaks the rules. And he does it well. This book gets four iron drabs out of five. And I can’t wait for the next book, when we learn how Kvothe gets expelled from the University. What? You ask? You’ll have to wait for the next book to find out.

And speaking of which, Rothfuss is running a contest for his next book, The Wise Man’s Fear. You can be one of the lucky ones to get your name, or any name you want, into the book. All contributions go to Heifer International, a very good charity indeed. Check out the link for more information.

Dissing the Wisconsin Book Festival (or bad LaShawn, bad LaShawn for not supporting books like you should!)

The Wisconsin Book Festival was here a couple of weeks ago, and I didn’t go. I just wasn’t interested. Even last year, back when we first moved up here and I first learned about it, it just didn’t grab me.  Not like the Midwest Literary Festival in Aurora, which sadly closed due to low attendance.

Ragging on the Wisconsin Book Festival isn’t fair. How can I criticize something I barely attended? I don’t know. Maybe it’s because the Festival was a week-long event, crammed with so many book readings, it lost me. Or the panels didn’t grab me as particularly interesting for a writer like me. I seem to recall complaining about this last year as well.

As for authors, well, they did bring on Gregory Maguire, who wrote Wicked. I’m not a fan of his novels, but I do like his short stories. The only other author I recognize was Kevin Henkes, and I am bummed about missing him. We’re currently discovering him in our household, and Daniel is becoming a huge fan of his books, all on his own. It would have been neat to take Daniel to meet the creator of his favorite book, "Julius, the Baby of the World", so I could introduce him to the world of writers. Unfortunately, I didn’t even know Henkes was attending the festival, not until I heard from someone else the following week who did attend. So I was bummed.

Perhaps the reason why I didn’t go to the festival is because I’ve grown more selective in what festivals I network at. After all, I’ve been to two cons this year, OdysseyCon and Wiscon. Both are geared towards science fiction and fantasy, genres that I’m developing my writing in. Both deal with the fandom of the genre, which I have more knowledge of, as opposed to say, bass fishing in Wisconsin. Both give me the opportunity to mingle with writers and editors in my field—I’m still blissed out over my chance to meet with the editor from Tor—the Wisconsin book festival seemed more general.

I don’t want to come down hard on the Festival. It does look like a great, well-organized festival, and there were some authors I genuinely wanted to see had I actually made an effort to go see them. But maybe what I need right now is to get more involved in the fandom of the genre I’m writing in.

But I do promise to pay more attention to the Wisconsin Book Festival next year. I really am bummed I missed an opportunity to introduce Daniel to his favorite author. It looks like, however, like some of Kevin Henkes’ artwork, as well as other illustrators, are on display at the Wisconsin Academy until December 6. Looks like I need to arrange for a field trip.

In the meantime, I’m making plans to not only go to Oddcon and Wiscon next year, but I may even squeeze in one more con. I’m thinking World Fantasy 2010. Road trip to Columbus, OH, anyone?

New Short Story: "Lavender and Chamomile" up at Big Pulp

Took a little while, but I finally got this short story sold. It’s up and running at Big Pulp Magazine.

The foundation to this story came back when Daniel was still a baby. One of the many toys he got was the quintessential teddy bear, complete with glassy eyes and button nose. One day, I was picking up toys in his room, and the teddy bear was lying face-down on the floor. I picked it up to put it back on a shelf and –boom– instant storyline.

I think this was the second story I ever wrote, so I’m not surprised that it took me this long to find a market for it. I submitted it to several fantasy markets, and most of them came back with “interesting story, but not sure it fits us”.  I really didn’t want to shelve it or rewrite it, so when I found Big Pulp, I figured “Lavender and Chamomile” would be a good fit, and started to send it to them under their “Fantasy” genre.

Then I thought, wait a second. I’m not having much looking submitting it as a fantasy story. What if I submitted it as ‘horror’?

What constitutes a horror story? For a long time, I thought it was monsters. Demons. Things that go bump in the night. When I was a kid, I read a lot Stephen King and Dean Koontz. When I grew older and started writing seriously, I shied away from horror, mainly because I felt it too dark. But really, what constitutes a horror story? It’s the strong emotion of fear, yes, but where does that fear come from? Can it come from monsters, or can it come other things? Fear of aliens? Fear of life?

Or the fear of a mother trying to protect her child?

So there you have it. I submitted it under horror and it got accepted—in their fantasy section. So aha! It is a fantasy story! Just as I thought! I shall thumb my nose at all those other markets who thought otherwise. Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!

Actually, in all honesty, I’m just glad it’s published now. Maybe one day, I’ll write a horror story for real. But if I’m going to do that, I’ll have to start reading more horror stories. Looks like I’ll have to take a trip to Pseudopod…

So have fun reading “Lavender and Chamomile“. It’s rated PG—though if little kids love their teddy bears, you might not want to let them read this.

By the way, for his preschool graduation present this year, Daniel got a Build-A-Bear from the Build-A-Bear workshop. Its fur is soft, its eyes are glassy. I know it’s just a stuffed bear.

But I still make the boy pick it up off the floor just the same.

Rambling Thoughts on a Rainy Cold Night…

I’m sitting here in my chair, a mug of decaf hot Lipton tea next to me (my third one), and an episode of Babylon 5 playing on the TV.

Rainy nights always make me moody.

Our cable went out a couple of months ago. I haven’t missed it at all. Been too busy working on Willow and other short stories. I’m starting to watch movies again. Last night, I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Brilliant movie. Absolutely brilliant. The storyline and editing was wonderful. I want to watch it again, pick it apart bit by bit.

What makes a good story? Is it plot? Is it in the writing itself? Language? Is it the ability to empathize with the characters? Is it turning a twist on a cliché?

I’ve thought about it for a long time, and I realized that one of the ways to learn is to become a slushreader. A couple of weeks ago, Fantasy Magazine put out a call for new slushreaders, and I was lucky to be chosen as one. So far, it’s been good. I’ve read stories where the ideas were so-so. And I read stories where it pulled me in, but something about the story was off…not quite right.

I’m trying to figure out how that applies in my own writing. I’ve been making good on my goal of releasing a story a week out to markets, though this week might be a little hard because of this cold. But for the most part, it’s been fun fore me, mainly because I’m not agonizing over every little word. And these stories have sat on my hard drive long enough. They deserve to get a chance, though it’s more likely they’ll get rejections. But still, better than just sitting there, unread by anyone.

Well, my mug’s empty, and my nose is drippy. I think I’m going to turn in early tonight, read a book. The rain patters against the windows, and I want it to be background noise for Barrick as he travels in the Fae Realm.

Book Review: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

A Beer & Marmalade Book of the Month

This past month, I’ve been watching the entire series of the revisioned Battlestar Galactica. It’s an awesome show, and I highly encourage people to watch it, even though there’s not an ounce of optimistic sunshine in it.

Believe it or not, Battlestar Galactica has a lot in common with Never Let Me Go, which I read in about three days. Not that it’s engrossing (though it is), but it’s a quick book to read. Both deal with the nature of clones, though where BSG’s clones are theiving, conniving, killing machines, the clones in NLMG are produced to give their body parts to others.

Hmm…actually, now that I think about it, they don’t have that much in common.

Whereas BSG is a wild, gritty roller coaster ride of angst and despair, NLMG is more on the quieter side. The story’s narrated by a Kathy H., who is reminiscing about her youth at Hailsham, a school which houses "special" children. Kathy is aware that she is "special", along with her best friends Ruth and Tommy. But just how special she doesn’t really know.

The book is told through Kathy’s memories, which meander and double back on themselves as she tells them to her unseen audience—other clones, no doubt. There is a certain structure to the narration, but it’s in no hurry to get to the point. If Kathy suddenly remembered something that happened before, she’ll tell it before coming back to her main story. Despite all this meandering, the narration works. We get a feel for Kathy herself as she tells her own story, an unsure woman who is not quite certain of her own memory as fact as she looks through the filter of maturity at her past.

Most of the book centers on Kathy’s relationship with Ruth, a bossy, domineering young woman who likes to manipulate people, and Tommy, an emotional young man who gets picked on by most of the school. Through the relationships, we get a wider picture of life at Hailsham itself, where facts aren’t mentioned outright and information can get downright political. The children are encouraged, not by their teachers but by themselves, to not stand out or make a scene. A young girl gets bullied by her classmates for asking a teacher why a woman called Madame comes to take their best artwork away. Though the children know they will eventually do ‘donations’, they don’t know outright what it means, nor are they encouraged to learn. Whether this passivity is bred in them when they were created, or if it’s just something the children came up with on their own, is not known.

The fact that they are clones isn’t ballyhooed right away. In fact, the word clone doesn’t appear until about 3/4 of the way into the book. What we get, then, is not so much a clone story, but a story about a bewildered young woman, always searching for the meaning behind her and others’ actions, spying upon and being spied upon, and never voicing her questions about her life, not until it’s too late. 

Perhaps this is where BSG and NLMG differ the most. I found the ending of BSG to be utterly bleak, even though they do reach their goal (of sorts). With NLMG, at the end, Kathy is resigned to her fate, and the last few chapters is tinged with sadness and regret. And she’s still passive: she doesn’t refuse to do her job, or try to run away. But, in telling her story to others like her, I think there is a spark of rebellion, her hope that the others would use her experience as a springboard. There’s no way of knowing, of course, but I like to think of it as a hopeful ending.

I don’t think NLMG was intended as a science fiction clone story. It deals more with silence and self-discovery, loss and regret, living one day at a time, and cherishing the memories one has, even the painful ones. It is a thoughtful, quiet story, well-suited for its slow pace. This ranks 4 out of 5 pieces of clone-done art. And if a gray haired woman named Madame wants to take it away, I’ll make sure she pays for it first. Not in lousy tokens, but in cold, hard cash.

Short Story & Willow Update (or why the best bar stories never get published…)

Last week our home routine changed again. Daniel has started kindergarten. His transformation into a bona-fide student went so smoothly, I’m surprised he wasn’t standing at the school’s doors at 6am with his new bookbag and lunchbox, calling out impatiently, "What time is it? Will school start soon? How about now? Now? Now?"

Thank God it went so smoothly. Much better than his summer school program back in June, when he got being mistaken for a Mexican boy and put on the wrong schoolbus. I would go into more details about this, but I’ve realized something: there are just some stories that are only meant to be told once, in the heat of the moment. Told any more times after that, and then the power of it wanes. When Daniel did not get off his bus and I spent the next two hours trying to piece together what happened, my emotions became so churned, that when we finally found Daniel (safe and sound, and in fact taking great delight at his impromptu ride) I headed down to the bar where my book club was meeting, where I spat out the most vitriolic, obscenity-laden, ear-blistering diatribe railing against the ignorance and ineptitude of the whole Madison bus system.

Then, afterwards, when the room still ringing from my profanity-laced hollering and the group, in all their wisdom, got me a well-deserved Mike’s Hard Lemonade, I found myself thinking, wow. That was good!

I have since told the story since to other people, but it’s not the same. For one thing, I’m calmer and had a chance to think about it. And I’m also owing up to part of the whole mess, so the story loses its emotional impact. ("If we hadn’t lost the wristband he was supposed to wear…") And even if I did get upset about it ("Never mind that even if he did wore the wristband, they would’ve ignored it; much like how they ignored the wristband of the Mexican boy they claimed was my son…) it pales against the initial blizzard of frustration and rage I felt.

The profanity was the best part. I never swear all that much in public, and even among friends, I occasionally use a tame ‘hell’ or ‘damn’. But that night, whoa, I swear, the bar we met at got few more cracks in their ceiling from the words I was using (and I don’t regret it one bit—in fact, according to Time Magazine, it’s actually good for women to swear now and then. Acts as a pain reducer. Who knew?).

On the plus side, I did sell two stories in August. (Don’t worry, what I wrote above is related. You’ll see.) One will be published in October, the other sometime in Spring next year. So I crossed them off my list and took a look to see what other stories I had floating around the magazine markets.

Only two.

There’s one story that’s currently at Writers of the Future, so I should be hearing from that sometime this month. There’s another story that’s a rewrite request that I’m waiting to hear back on hopefully by this month as well. But as far as new stuff goes, I got nothing. Nada. Zip. Which means I better get some new stories out there to circulate, stat.

It’s not like I don’t have any stories to send out. I did a ton of writing back when Daniel was in summer school, so I actually have several finished stories sitting on my hard drive. Thing is though, these are all first drafts of stories. I wrote them as fun freewriting exercises and just never had time to go through them again. Or I figured I’d do some research first before I return to revisions. Then there’s one story I wrote a long time ago. But when I started the second revision of it, it started to get too wordy, too long-winded. The second draft was killing the story, so I set it aside to think on it some more, then promptly forgot about it.

Ever since I started writing, I’ve been of the opinion that good stories need to be revised twice, three times, four, maybe even five or six times before it’s ready to send out to markets. And I still stand on that. I’m working on a short story now that I know I’ll need a heavy duty revision for—it requires some research for it to be just right. It is a jewel that will need some good polishing to make right.

But I’m also wondering if my story-writing has improved as such that I can take some stories I wrote, do a general pass for spelling, grammar and punctuation, and just send them out. No toying with plot or point of view. No countless freewrites to figure out what the story’s theme or playing around with words to make it more lyrical. Just make sure it flows well, then send it out.

It’s a risky thing to do. I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to revising stories (and that’s the last time you’ll see me use the word ‘perfectionist’ when describing myself). I don’t want my stories to be merely good. I want them to be great. But who am I to determine if a story is ‘great’ or even ‘good’? The only way to find that out is to let someone else read them. But I can’t do that if they’re only sitting on my hard-drive. And there’s a possibility that the more revision I’d do, the less effective the story gets. There are some stories that do require carefully planning and revising, and there are some stories that are best when they were written in the heat of the moment, so to speak. Those stories work so well the first time, to rewrite them again would be an injustice, just like the school bus mix-up story. When I told it to my book club, it was perfect. I can’t recapture that again. (See, told you it was related.)

So here’s what I’m going to do. Starting this week, I’m going to start submitting a story a week. That means it need to be pulled off the hard drive, given a once-over to make sure it looks good, then find a market and send it off by Friday. If I do this for five weeks, it gets me five stories out in the market field. (I wanted to start this last week when September started, but with all the first day of school fun, I was pretty busy). So my goal is to have five stories submitted to markets by October 9. I’ll put a progress meter on the blog to show how I’m doing.

This isn’t something I’m doing for money or for show. It’s just a simple way for me to get some stories off my hard drive and out circulating until they find a place where they belong. Oh, yes, Willow is going along quite well. I just finished editing chapter seven, which ended on, I think, a wonderfully sinister note. I’ve been trying a new style of revision using Word 2007 comment feature—as I revise, if there’s something I’m really stuck on, instead of spending precious time trying to figure it out, I comment it with a couple of questions and continue on with the rewrite. The next time I open Word, I go to the comments first. Not only have I figured out the problem by then, but it also pulls me back into the story. I’m kicking myself for not doing this sooner—it would’ve saved me a whole lot of backtracking.

But I will get Willow done. Darn it.

Book Review: Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link

I am growing to become a huge fan of Kelly Link. When I first read her story “Lull” in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #16, it prompted me to send her an email, begging her how exactly she came up with her weird, surrealistic ideas to have a palindromic story that consisted of a poker game, a cheerleader playing spin the bottle with the Devil in a backwards-time world, and a man who lived with different clones of his wife.

Link never responded. Which is a good thing, I guess. I imagine if she had responded, it probably would’ve been something along the lines of: “I prick my finger at two in the morning, squeeze red droplets into a glass of sand, then go down to Menards where I dance in the parking lot, vocalizing whale songs until the ideas come to me and I write them down on a flat sheet of styrofoam with a toothbrush made out of ferret fur.”

Actually, it’s probably as as mundane as: “Well, I read a lot and I write a lot.” But where’s the fun in that?

Link’s website is a fascinating smorgasbord of all she’s involved with: Small Beer Press, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. But best of all, all three of her short story collections can be found there for free under the Creative Commons license. At the time I went there, only “Stranger Things Happen” were available, but now I see that all three collections: Magic for Beginnings (which includes the awesome Lull story) and Pretty Monsters are also available.

“Stranger Things Happen” is a good introduction to Link’s style, starting with “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose” a story about a man who wakes up alone in the afterlife disguised as a hotel, writing letters to a wife whose name he cant recall. Link’s use of language is poetic and serene, with just enough surrealness thrown in to make things interesting.

Most of the stories in the book have a dash of fairy tale. “Travels With the Snow Queen” retells Hans Christian Andersen’s story from a world-weary, love point of view. “Shoe and Marriage” starts off with the Prince of the Cinderella story still looking for a lost mate. The Girl Detective stalks the 12 Dancing Princesses to find where they go at night (an existential Asian club, it appears).

But there are original stories too. Strange, surreal, and dreamlike. “Survival’s Ball, or, the Donner Party” mingles a toothache with a strange love affair that ends at a questionable party. “Water Off a Black Dog’s Back” has a young man dealing with his girlfriend and her odd parents. “Flying Lessons” has a girl falling in love with a demigod. And “Louise’s Ghost” tells the story of two women named Louise who are best friends…I think…

Sometimes, Link’s stories tend to switch plots in the middle. What starts off as one story ends in another. “Shoe and Marriage” was like that, the Cinderella story suddenly turning into a a couple watching a bizarre pageant show on TV.  There are also some stories that get downright confusing. Louise Ghost”, never gives the last name of the two Louises, so it’s hard to differentiate who’s who. Oddly enough, it is my favorite story in the book.

And there are stories which are poignant. In “Most of my Friends are Two-Thirds Water”, the narrator, a woman dealing with unrequited love and lived in her father’s garage, resonated with me. Or maybe it was her feeling that she was competing with a bunch of blonds for the guy she loved. Or maybe it was that all the blonds look like Sandy Duncan and smelled like Lemon Fresh Joy. Probably the least surreal of the whole bunch is “The Vanishing Act”, (not that there isn’t surrealness there), the story of a girl and her cousin who comes to stay with her temporarily, and “The Specialist’s Hat”, the story of two twin girls who live with their absent-minded father in a strange house.

This isn’t a book I suggest reading beginning to end in one sitting. Reading it in bits and pieces works wonderfully though, and I can’t wait to dive into her other two books. This ranks Four Louises out of five.  One of them is in love with the cellist. You just have to read carefully to figure out which one.

Book Review: "The Handmaid’s Tale" by Margaret Atwood

When I was a kid, I watched The Handmaid’s Tale on cable television. You know, the one with Natasha Richardson. I thought it was a cool movie. A bit on the strange side, but cool nonetheless.

Flash forward to a couple of Monday’s ago. I’m at our book club and we just finished reading the book. As we go around giving our likes and dislikes of it, I mention that I saw the movie as a kid. The responses were along the lines of GASP! SHOCK! YOUR MOTHER LET YOU WATCH THAT?! This startled me because I really don’t remember the movie being all that bad. There wasn’t any nudity, and the only real lasting image I kept from the movie was when a woman in red went medieval on a guy who supposedly killed a mother and her unborn child. I say ’supposedly’, because this is in a movie where truth spoken by loudspeaker can never be trusted.

The Handmaid’s Tale is a story about a woman named Offred. It isn’t her real name—that had been taken away from her along with her property, her identity, even her sex. Dressed in all red, she is now a ‘handmaid’ who can only go out in the presence of other handmaidens. She’s not allowed to read or write. She’s not allowed to have any thought of fun or pleasure. Her sole purpose is to produce a child for her Commander and his wife.

What’s scary is that before all this, Offred had a normal life. Granted, she was sleeping with a married man, but she had her own life and the freedom to live the way she wanted. Now, all that exists in painful flashback. It doesn’t matter how her world had gone from normal to this cultish state of existence. All Offred can do is keep her sanity intact as she deals with the mundane of doing nothing except wait for the Commander’s wife to call her to do her duty.

I’ve always been a huge Atwood fan. This book first introduced me to her work and it’s just as good as I remember. Atwood has a wonderful knack for detail, and it helps carry the book along where the main protagonist spends most of her time sitting and waiting. Conversely, I liked how we never get any infodumping on what happened to Offred. We are as baffled as she is as to why all this is happening and how she should deal with it. The flashbacks to the past are bittersweet as well as informative–we can feel Offred’s despair and longing to know what happened to her lover, her best friend, and her only daughter, who was taken from her.

When I was younger, I never saw the feminist angle on this. I’m catching it now: how they other women to keep the handmaidens in line. How she starts doing forbidding things with the Commander, like play Scrabble, but not because he pities her—he’s only using her to satisfy his own needs. This is evident when he sneaks her to Jezebels, sort of a black market nightclub where women are free to dress whatever they like and talk to men. Of course, it becomes apparent that it’s just another form of prison.

The only thing I didn’t like about the book was that Atwood doesn’t really make it clear that Offred’s a handmaiden because she’s been sleeping with another man’s wife. It’s not until we reach the end of the story, when there’s a "transcript" of an academic talk that discusses the finding of Offred’s story, and it’s there we learn that only those women who were deemed "unmorally fit" were the first wave of handmaidens. Apparently there were other women who were pretty much left alone. Other than those useful bits of information, I felt this transcript was tacked on and provided way too much back history into the story.

I found it interesting that our club read this right after reading "Little Brother" by Cory Doctorow. Both deal with dystopian near futures that can easily come to pass if we allow it. While I wasn’t as scared as such a thing happening in the Handmaid’s Tale as I was with Little Brother, it does make you think about other places where this is as commonplace as sin. This gets 3-1/2 red dresses out of 5. And try to learn Latin—you’ll never know when you need to translate an obscure message you’re not supposed to read.

Dealing with Fantasy of a Different Sort (or I would reject your reality to substitute my own, except my fantasy is nicer than my reality…)

So last week our dryer broke down. Just stopped working on us. You would think that would sadden me, but it didn’t. For me, No dryer meant that I could actually dry our clothes outside.

Now let me tell you something–I’ve always had this weird desire to do line-drying outside. Call it a idyllic vision from my past: running past flapping bedsheets, hiding in their billowy folds, smelling the sweet fresh scent. Hearing Mrs. Sykes yell at us to get out of her laundry before we yank it down. Yeah, that’s right. It was my babysitter’s line-dry laundry I remember most. I honestly can’t remember if my family did it. Which is odd because I’m sure we did. At least, we had one of those drying racks…didn’t we?

Anyway, line-drying laundry in the sun. I always wanted to do it. When we got a house in Chicago, it was frowned on because it being the suburbs, anything that marred the ‘perfect’ landscape was a no-no. So when we moved to Madison and saw all these houses with laundry flapping in the wind, I knew one day, I’d be doing the same. Except it’s a little difficult to put up a clothesline at a rental apartment?

When our dryer broke down, I wound up putting our much-needed-to-dry washing on our fence, which worked pretty well, provided that I brushed off all the splinters when I collected it. And I had to turn the clothes around so that they would dry evenly. And I had to make sure none of the neighborhoods made off with my underwear (“Hey! Put that down! It’s already stretched enough as it is!”) And just yesterday, I learned the pitfalls of drying laundry when there’s a 40% chance of rain.

I’m learning that my little idyllic fantasy doesn’t come close to matching reality.

I bring this up because there’s a website out there called Where I Write: Fantasy & Science Fiction Authors in their Creative Spaces. Basically, it’s a bunch of F&SF authors in the places where they work.

When I started clicking on pictures, I noticed most of them among nice rooms with lots of books surrounding them, some with art, some with their hobby. And there would be desks and computers. Some even posed with their cats. It all look so nice and idyllic, it actually depressed me a bit. I don’t have a nice looking house. Most of my books are packed away in the garage. My writing desk is currently in my clothes closet, because that’s the best place to put it in our bedroom. And instead of a cat, I have a wild, rambunctious five-year-old who constantly bursts in to demand when dinner will be ready.

It’s not the sort of thing one think of as a writer. Even when I picture myself writing, I see myself at a coffeeshop, settled in an overstuffed chair, my laptop balanced on my lap.

But the appearance of being a writer is vastly different from the actual being a writer. When I write, I don’t see the laundry piled up on my bed or the papers that need to be cleaned off my desk. I see what’s going on in my head. That’s more important than having an office of my own surrounded by books. Having a fancy office doesn’t mean squat if I’m not writing.

And the beauty of being a writer is really, one could write anywhere. Taking a look again at the pictures on the Where I write site, I like the sparseness of Harry Harrison’s writing space. Even better, I love Frederik Pohl’s space—sitting on a couch, writing on a roll up typewriter stand. Now that’s something I can relate to. (What would be even more wonderful was if there were some pictures of writers at the kitchen table with their kids in the background. Or maybe some writers of color. They’re out there…)

And hey, there are times when writing for me does get idyllic. Especially those times I get to take the laptop out to the patio with a tall glass of iced tea. Mmmm…typing in the warm sun…while the birds chirp overhead….

Birds. Birds chirping. Birds flying.

Excuse me. I need to get my laundry in. Then I’m going to place a call to my landlord so we can get this @&*% dryer fixed.