Going for Greatness
Category: Writing and Poetry

Right before lunch seems to be a very good exercise time -- lunchtime and my post-lunch low phase when I read are good for recovery, and then I have energy for the rest of the day and sleep well at night. Except today I'll exercise at night because I have dance class. The OnDemand workout video I did yesterday may have killed me. I'm not really sore, but I definitely feel like I exercised, and it was proof that I'm really not very fit because I got really winded during the short cardio intervals. So more cardio for me. That might also help me survive the altitude in Denver during WorldCon.

I had one of those days when I felt like I didn't accomplish anything, even though I worked pretty steadily through the whole day. It was just lots of little tasks that didn't add up to anything major or visible that I could say was "done." I cut nearly 200 e-mails out of my in-box, still need to answer a lot, and started work on updating the web site, but that involved lots of little changes before I get to adding new pages.

My agent posted in her blog the other day about reading the book Good to Great and thinking about what that means for her agency. And that got me started thinking about what it means for me as a writer. Supposedly, the enemy of "great" is "good" because it's easy to be satisfied with good, and that keeps you from moving forward (I've put in a hold request on the book at the library). I guess I'm okay there because while I think I'm pretty good, in that I'm good enough to be published, I'm not really satisfied with that and know I'm not where I ultimately want to be -- and I'm not sure I'll ever get there because I'd like to be able to keep growing with each thing I write without ever reaching a stagnant plateau.

So then, being the analytical sort that I am, I started thinking about where my weak spots are, and I came to the conclusion that my biggest weakness is impatience. I get very excited about an idea and want to rush ahead, I write fast, and then I'm done with it and I just want to get it out there. That means some details may get handwaved over, and I'm so impatient that I think of it as "good enough." Some of that may come from my TV news background, where you certainly wanted your story to be as good as you could make it, but the priority was having it done by airtime. The most brilliantly composed story was useless if it wasn't done in time for the newscast. But books work the other way around. Time is certainly still important, but five minutes, five days or in some cases even five weeks (since deadlines are usually padded and publication schedules can change -- or if the book is being written on spec, the time doesn't matter much at all) don't make that much difference in the grand scheme of things. The priority is making it as good as possible. I think some of it also comes from the lingering insecurity from my long dry spell, when I was so desperate to sell something that I just started flinging things out there, and I may be going through some of that now since I don't currently have a contract.

One of my life lessons from The Book That Would Not Die (currently known as The Book In Search Of A Good Home) is that taking my time and doing that one more draft after doing some intense thinking about the story really could make a huge difference. That idea really caught my brain on fire, and I tore through that first draft. But I'm not sure that draft was publishable, even though I thought it was great at the time. The second draft wasn't even good enough, though I thought it was at the time. The third draft was good, but not what it needed to be. The final draft was a world of difference. I'm not sure I can truly cut out all those steps, but if I can learn to do more of the later draft thinking while in the process of writing the first draft, or perhaps even during the resting stage between the first and second drafts, I think that will help. At some point in the process, I need to force myself to slow down and analyze (which I should love doing), looking at the plot and character arcs on a high level, and then drilling into each scene to make it the best it can be in conveying all that information.

Then there are a few other things I want to work on fixing that come as part of that slow-down-and-analyze process. The New Project will be my guinea pig for this. I think it's a brilliant idea that could be a great book, as long as I don't settle for "good." If that takes me a bit longer, then that's fine in the grand scheme of things (besides, there's no point in having even a proposal ready before Labor Day. Giving myself two months to write a proposal should really force me to slow down and think).

9:58 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Robot Love

I had a great weekend, but now am utterly exhausted from all the greatness, and I didn't even have any late nights. I must be getting old. I'm looking forward to a quiet day today and catching up on a lot of work stuff I let slide last week. For a hint of how I spent my Saturday, there's this:



That picture comes dangerously close to being a pin-up for Dalek fetishists, but since I'm already the Locus centerfold, I might as well go with it. I seem to be going through a phase where I strike a pose whenever a camera is aimed in my general direction. I guess we'll have to see what fun photos I can get out of WorldCon. (Hmm, possible marketing strategy: become a geek sex symbol?) I didn't realize how sweaty I was until I saw the picture, but that came right after watching the final four Doctor Who episodes of the season in a room with nearly 30 people. Joe Dalek got a minor repair job and face lift right after we took this photo, so he's no longer looking like he just got through a major battle.

And then on Sunday we went to see WALL-E, which is utterly adorable and wonderful. I think this is more of an adult movie than a kids' movie, in spite of it being animated. It either says something about this movie or about the state of Hollywood today that the most touching and moving love story I've seen in ages is about two robots who barely talk beyond saying each other's names. Then again, I'm the freak whose favorite Star Wars character is R2-D2, so it could just be me. Still, you've got to love a science fiction movie about robots that uses the Michael Crawford songs from the movie Hello, Dolly! to underscore the romantic scenes. I need to see this one again on the big screen to pick up all the little details. I'm not sure the movie grill environment was the best for this. It seemed like the waiter waited for the most pivotal moments of the movie to come by distributing checks and stuff. There's one crucial tight point where I don't actually know how they got out of it because that was when the waiter was standing right in front of me and I missed it entirely.

On the agenda for the week: updating my web site to include Don't Hex With Texas info (finally!), dealing with my overflowing e-mail in-box, and revising two synopses. Plus maybe getting back into work on The New Project. I want to have something on that to give my agent in late August. I also want to do more exercise beyond just the dance class. I sang in the "summer choir" at church yesterday (no rehearsal other than just before church), and the choir loft is up really high, so you have to climb stairs to get to it, and I was slightly winded when I got up there, so I'm way out of shape. I'm trying to figure out the best time to exercise. I've been doing it right before dinner, since it tires me out and I don't get much work done afterward, but that cuts into my best working time. Today I'll try before lunch and see if that wipes me out for the afternoon.

9:37 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

A Couch-Potato Holiday

Happy July 4! I decided to take the day as a mostly holiday, since there's little point in starting something, only to have the weekend hit, and I have a busy weekend.

This morning, I watched my city's parade on local access cable. I went in person once, and it was a lot of fun, though I got horribly sunburned. On TV, it reached new heights of hilarity because the local access cable announcers apparently didn't have monitors to see what the TV picture was. Therefore, their commentary was rather out of sync. We'd hear them talking about the amazing stretch limo while the picture showed a golf cart. I think most of the parade units were old cars, convertibles carrying local politicians, or flat-bed trailers carrying scout troops, gymnastics schools or Red Hat ladies.

I've realized that I'm in an awkward stage of life when I'm too old to be a Girl Scout but too young to be a Red Hat lady.

My plans for the rest of the day mostly involve reading, some of it work-related (maybe). I'll make a burger, and I've got a watermelon slice and some Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream with some blueberries and strawberries to go on it (I may make a parfait in one of my fancy sundae glasses).

Then it will be fireworks on TV. It's such a couch-potato way of celebrating the holiday, but I think that is typically American. Besides, the issue with July 4 is that it's in July, and in Texas that's not happy-fun outdoors time. It's huddle in front of your air conditioner and expend as little energy as possible time. We need a cooking-out and fireworks type holiday in October, when it's perfect weather for being outdoors as much as possible.

And now, before I retreat to my sofa with a Terry Pratchett book, my blog readers came through for me yet again, and here's the Japanese cover for Damsel Under Stress:

9:40 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Marketing Books

I went downtown this morning to renew my driver's license, which is always something of an epic adventure. I decided to get it over with instead of waiting until almost my birthday, since I'll be out of town on my birthday, and it would be nice to have the new license before I travel. I tend to treat this like school picture day, agonizing over what to wear and doing my hair and makeup just right. But when you think about it, you show that picture to a lot of people. They've somewhat streamlined the process, so it only took about an hour, and only a little of that was actually waiting in line. You used to have to wait in line that whole time, but now they screen ahead of time to see what you need, then give you a number and send you to a waiting room, then call numbers in small groups to go wait for the clerks. Of course, I didn't think to bring a book because I didn't know about the waiting room. DPS clerks have a pop culture reputation for being surly, but all of these seemed to be very nice and cheerful.

And then since I was already downtown, I hit the big library. Picking specific titles out of the catalog and having them delivered to my branch is nice, but there's nothing like browsing the shelves in the main library every so often. I'd checked out a couple of marketing books based on the online catalog, but they were pretty useless, so I wanted to browse the shelves. I didn't find much that might apply to me, but we'll see if what I got gives me some ideas.

One book I'd checked out and flipped through before returning today was specifically about marketing books, but it seemed to be aimed more at publishers or self-published authors, and everything in it that authors can actually do I already knew. One of their "tips" for making your book a bestseller was to get on a national television talk show, since Oprah can be very influential for book sales. Um, okay, I'll get right on that. Their case study for how to make a book a bestseller involved a $750,000 marketing budget (ten years ago). It definitely reinforced the fact that while an author can nudge the needle a little bit, you're not going to be a bestseller unless your publisher decides to make you one.

Now I need to come up with more ideas for nudging the needle. Book trailers seem to be pretty hot right now, but I'm still now sure how effective they really are outside the publishing community. The ones that seem to get buzz involve famous people the author happens to know who volunteer to appear in her trailer, or else the author knows a filmmaker who makes a really cool book trailer as a favor.

I suppose I could start a feud with some bigger-name author, and that gets some attention, but again, I think that's something only people in publishing care about. There does seem to be a lot of tunnel vision in the publishing world, where they seem to think that things that are really important, interesting and exciting to them are automatically as important, interesting and exciting to the rest of the country. That seems to be where the biggest bombs come from, where the book is really something that only would matter to people in the publishing industry, but because it really, really matters to them, they think it's going to be huge, and then they're surprised when it isn't a major hit, even though all the people in the country who might care about it are able to get free copies through their jobs.

In other news, I got the copies of the Japanese edition of Damsel Under Stress today, and they're so cute. They have little drawings of various scenes in the book on the cover, and the artist has definitely read the book. I've tried finding an image online, but all I've found so far was the Japanese listing for the American edition, with the American cover art. I'm not even sure what to Google to find the Japanese cover. The title and "Japan" didn't seem to work, and even checking the "also bought" list at Amazon Japan didn't bring it up. I may have to resort to the scanner.

And now I need to hit the bank and the grocery store before the holiday weekend. I'm not sure what I'm going to do on the Fourth itself. I may get wild and crazy and declare it a holiday instead of trying to work. I love fireworks shows, but getting to and from them can be a real pain because there's serious traffic, and they aren't held in places I can get to via public transportation -- and if they are, they cut the schedule back on holidays so that the public transportation isn't running at the time of the show. So I may be watching the fireworks from Boston on TV (now, there was a fireworks show you could get to without a car). Then I'm busy the rest of the weekend with fun stuff.

12:06 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Archetypes (Revisited)

I felt like I didn't accomplish anything yesterday because I was so groggy, but I hit everything on my admittedly light to-do list. I didn't do much in the way of writing, but I did take care of a few nagging businessy things. I have a few other things that must be done today, and then maybe I'll get some writing work done. Meanwhile, I've discovered that there may not be a way to avoid a preschool story time at the library. I adjusted my time today and still got there when the place was full of rugrats. On the up side, the coffee shop lady was in the lobby passing out samples of frozen raspberry lemonade, and I may have a new minor addiction. Looks like I'll be getting back into the habit of doing my brainstorming and plotting in the library coffee shop.

It was around this time last year that I started doing those posts about archetypes, and I think it may be time to revisit the subject for my "official" writing posts.

It seems that everyone who talks about archetypes means something slightly different or has a different system for classifying them. Ultimately, it boils down to something similar, which is that these are recognized character types that can serve as a shortcut of sorts in the communication between author and reader. As an audience, we're consumers of stories, so we generally know how things work, and we recognize the roles that pop up in story after story. That creates something of a shared language between author and audience, and if there's something universal and recognizable in a character through the use of an archetype, then that allows us to take that much of the character as an understood given, so the author can then dedicate more energy and time to the aspects that are unique to the character.

This is not the same thing as a stereotype. I like to think of the difference as internal vs. external. An archetype functions as the core of a character, as the universal pattern of energy that character brings to the story. Then other aspects of the character can be layered on top of that. A stereotype is a hollow shell, with only the recognizable external attributes of a character type and nothing beneath that. For instance, the Mentor is a common archetype, and we often see this type represented in stories as an older man with a white beard -- think Gandalf, Merlin, Dumbledore and Obi-Wan Kenobi (in the original Star Wars movies -- structurally, he's the hero in the prequels). If all you do to create a mentor character is throw in an older man with a white beard who points the hero in the right direction, you've used a stereotype. But if you're really thinking of the role of the mentor archetype, you'll be aware of the mentor as a representation of the hero's higher self, and your mentor may or may not be an older man with a white beard. If he is, he'll be a more interesting older man with a white beard.

For the purposes of this discussion, I'm going to go with the archetypes that come out of Joseph Campbell's work on mythology, as translated for modern storytellers by Christopher Vogler in The Writer's Journey. These archetypes are about story functions as well as a psychological energy. That then ties back to Jungian psychology. It's a very basic way of looking at characters, and then there are other, more specific archetype classifications that other writers have come up with.

Over the rest of the summer, I'll take these functional archetypes one by one and see if I can make sense out of them.

10:18 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

In Need of Tinfoil Hats

Staying the extra day doesn't seem to have made me less tired. It just means I had more fun at the convention. I suspect I'm going to be groggy and slow all day today. It may be more of a reading day than a writing day, once I catch upon e-mail and stuff.

I did catch up on Doctor Who, and after seeing Friday night's Sci Fi Channel episode, I may have to send Stephen Moffat a tinfoil hat and tell him to wear it because there was an element in that episode that I found myself mentally playing with back in February or March, presumably after the episode had already been written, and it was freaky to see it come to life. I don't want to pick up on his brainwaves anymore because that's scary. I still want to play with the concept, but it's still in the concept stage as I don't have a plot or even specific characters to go with it. I imagine it will have to collide with something else in my head in order to produce a story, and my take on it will be more magical than scientific.

Meanwhile, a conversation I had at ApolloCon may actually spur me to write fanfic, as a truly bizarro idea struck me. We were chatting about my Enchanted, Inc. magical universe and how it might be funny to see what a temp would do in that office -- and how you might not be able to tell if the temp didn't notice all the magic or if the temp was just in the "I don't care, please sign my time sheet" zone. I immediately said, "Donna!" and now I think I must write a story in which a pre-Doctor Donna (since the Enchanted, Inc. books take place in late 2005/early 2006) has a temp assignment in the London office of MSI and doesn't notice anything odd. It would only be a partial trademark/copyright issue, as I actually own the rights to most of the characters and situations, and I suppose I could even skirt it by not making it absolutely specific that the "Donna" in the story is actually the Donna Noble of Doctor Who. Not that I'd try to publish it. It might just be something fun and wacky to do on the web site. And I have some other stuff that needs to be done first.

Now I need to see if I can find an alternate viewing method for this weekend's Robin Hood, as it hasn't been posted at OnDemand yet, and sometimes they are lax about skipping weeks. I have a massive bit of silliness related to that to discuss, but it will have to wait until I'm coherent enough to be properly clever.

11:42 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Apollocon Report

I'm mildly more coherent now, having had a chance to catch my breath and recover. Staying the extra night was definitely worth it, as I got a good night's sleep in an incredibly comfortable bed and now have the energy to drive home. Since I didn't have so many panels at Apollocon this year, I had a chance to go to more panels, which was highly educational. It's nice to listen to other people talk, for a change.

One panel I thought was interesting involved artists and an editor talking about what works on book covers. I may joke about the "shunning" covers where the characters have their backs to us, but I actually do like not getting a good, full view of the characters. I like the more impressionistic covers that convey the mood or tone of the book rather than something that's supposed to represent the characters. I like getting my own mental image of what the people are supposed to look like.

I also went to a spinning demonstration (as in wool, not exercise bicycles), which is something I've always been kind of fascinated with but haven't ever seen up close.

People came to my Kaffeeklatsch (and there was tea!), which was reassuring, though I suspect most of them were just in search of a chair and some coffee rather than a talk with me, but I guess they got more than they bargained for. (Mwa ha ha! All part of my grand scheme for world domination.)

The panels I did involved archetypes in speculative fiction and urban fantasy, two things on the "don't get me started unless you've got hours" list. You know how I can go on about archetypes. I even had one of those fun little mindblowing moments from something someone in the audience said, and now I shall have to do a little more research for a whole fun new theory. Look for a post to come.

The urban fantasy panel got pretty lively and turned out to be the occasion for my giggle fit for this con (but I was told I was provoked and not at fault for that one. And the thing that sparked it falls into the "don't go there" category, so it will have to remain a mystery if you weren't there). I've already posted my own rant about that and how most of what's published as "urban fantasy" today isn't what I look for to read as urban fantasy. That's pretty much what I said on the panel (more fantasy stuff in a modern setting, less vampires, werewolves and other "horror" elements, please). I guess it boils down to the fact that I want someone else who's better than I am to write more books that are kind of like what I write so I can have something to read without having to write it and so I won't know how it ends when I read it. I don't know if the fact that there isn't a lot out there that falls into my particular niche is a good sign or a bad sign. On the up side, it means I own that niche. On the down side, it could mean that there's not really that much of a market for it.

I was up really late both nights of the con going to various room parties, where there were lots of good conversations and a game of what got dubbed "volleyboob" (don't ask, please).

Now I'm actually looking forward to getting home and getting back to work. But first I guess I'd better get packed and on the road so I can hit Dallas before rush hour. And then I have Doctor Who and Robin Hood to catch up on. I think other than this post, today counts as a vacation day (though I suppose the drive time counts as work because it's transit time from a business-related event, and I was doing more than full-time "work" all weekend).

8:14 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Note from ApolloCon

Well, looks like all my ambitions about posting from ApolloCon and having photos thanks to my nifty new digital camera were overly optimistic, as I was too busy doing the con to talk about the con, and the camera never came out. Ah, well, doing the con is the priority, right?

And right now I'm very, very glad I decided to stay that extra night, as I'm suddenly getting tired. I've been up rather late two nights in a row, then got up earlier than I needed to because the brain woke up (earlier even than normal), and I believe it's catching up with me now that I'm done with panels. I'll be at the Dead Dog party in a little while, and wouldn't miss that as the con suite food has been amazing, and then I suspect I will curl up in bed with a book and the TV on and chill until I need to leave in the morning.

I've had a lot of fun and will post a more complete update later.

In other news, I'm the centerfold girl in the Nebula Awards issue of Locus. Well, actually it's just a couple of little photos in the Nebula spread, but both of them are near the fold, and in one of them I'm wearing that slinky evening dress and doing a silly "model" type voguish pose. I didn't realize the person taking pictures was taking them for Locus and goofed off a little. So the result is very much "centerfold in Locus." I guess there are worse things than having a nice, sexy photo with my name (even spelled correctly) in a major industry magazine. At WorldCon, I'll be happy to sign copies of my photo spread. :-)

1:33 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Reading Habits
Category: Writing and Poetry

I'm about to head off to ApolloCon, and as usual am running behind my estimated time of departure. If you're going, at my reading there may be a world premiere sneak preview of The Book In Search of a Good Home, and you'll be the first person other than my mom and my agent to hear anything about it. You'll even be ahead of the editors.

Now, before I head out, I've seen this going around, as apparently it's Celebrate Reading Month, so I leave you with a glimpse into a snapshot of my reading habits.

The Big Read, an initiative by the National Endowment for the Arts, has estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. How do you do?

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.

Though I wonder how they came up with this list, I'm reasonably impressed by it because it's not all snooty high literature and has a decent mix of classics and recent books (though it's pretty weak on genre fiction). I seem to have done okay with a good variety of books I've read, and I'm kind of proud that very few of the classic/literary type works were things I read for class, or if I did, I had already read them on my own or ended up re-reading them on my own later. There were a few cases where they had several books by an author listed, and although I'd read a lot by that author, I hadn't read the ones listed. Making the "loved" determination was hard. I went with the definition of wanting to re-read it for the enjoyment of it (thus, the Bible didn't make the "loved" list because while I do re-read it, it's for purposes other than pleasure reading).

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (I loved it when I was 11, but was less enthralled when I re-read it in my early 20s)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (maybe partial credit here because I read an abridged kids' version)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I've made decent progress, but there are a lot of sonnets)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (it's on the TBR mountain)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (I have tried repeatedly, but have never made it past chapter one due to extreme dislike of the main character. I know she grows, but I still want to slap that bitch.)
22The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (I liked it far more than I expected to, but not sure yet if it would make the "love" list)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (another one where I read an abridged kids' edition)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (I just bought this at the library sale. It's on my fall reading list)
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (I know he's depressing, but I strangely find Hardy compulsively readable)
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (I honestly don't remember if I've read this one. I went through a Dumas phase in high school, and the plots of his novels do kind of blur)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (another condensed children's version)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (I've started it a few times, skimmed parts of it, but some day I aim to finish it. Really. It's a mission.)

8:16 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Girlfriends Cyber Circuit Goes to the Island
Category: Writing and Poetry

There really is something magical about rain when it comes to my creativity. I've spent the last three days struggling to plot a sequel to The Book In Search of a Good Home and have trashed every effort. Then last night around nine, I thought I heard a rumble in the distance and went out onto the porch to find out what it was. It was thunder, and as I was standing on the porch, it started raining and suddenly got cooler. I went inside, opened the windows so I could hear the rain, and scribbled out an entire outline for the book, with all kinds of ideas coming fast and furious. Unfortunately, the down side to a late-night burst of creativity is that I can't turn off my brain to go to sleep, and my brain also likes to use that energy to solve various problems in my life. So at one in the morning I was wide awake and mentally composing a politely worded note to someone I have business dealings with, explaining the problems I'm having with the way they do business. I hadn't even realized how upset I was about the situation, and I've been just saying that it's okay and I understand because I like to be easy to work with, but now I've realized I'm nearing a breaking point and it's better for me to be up front with the fact that I can't and won't do business that way and give the other person a chance to change than for me to just get fed up and sever the relationship because I can't take it anymore. Getting a good mad on about something I hadn't realized I was that angry about is not conducive to getting to sleep. I may be a zombie today.

So it's probably good that it's a Girlfriends Cyber Circuit day and I don't have to think of a coherent post on my own. Jenny O'Connell is back with two new books that make me want to go on vacation. Both are set on Martha's Vineyard during the summer and involve the differences between the locals who live on the island year-round and the tourists who come for the summer.

In LOCAL GIRLS, friendships are in danger of ending with the summer. Kendra and Mona are best friends, local girls who spend their summers catering to rich tourists and the rest of the year chafing against small-town life. Then Mona's mom marries one of the island's rich summer visitors, and Mona joins the world of the Boston elite, leaving Kendra and Martha's Vineyard behind. When Mona returns the following summer, everything is different.

Unlike his sister, Mona's twin brother Henry hasn't changed. He's spending his summer the way he always has: with long, quiet hours fishing. Early mornings before work become special for Kendra as she starts sharing them with Henry, hoping he can help her figure Mona out. Then Kendra hatches a plan to prove she's Mona's one true friend: uncover the identity of the twins' birth father, a question that has always obsessed Mona. And so she begins to unravel the seventeen-year-old mystery of the summer boy who charmed Mona's mother. But it may prove to be a puzzle better left unsolved--as what she is about to discover will change their lives forever...

In RICH BOYS, Winnie jumps at the chance to babysit for a wealthy summer family and earn some extra money—but soon learns that life in the Barclay's beautiful vacation home isn't as perfect as it appears. And what was supposed to be a carefree summer quickly becomes more complicated than she ever thought possible.


Now, the interview:
What was the inspiration behind these books?
The books take place on Martha's Vineyard, so first and foremost summer was the greatest inspiration. I've always felt like summer is a time when anything can happen, it's all about possibility. LOCAL GIRLS and RICH BOYS have very different plots, but they're both about the opportunities and changes summer brings.

You've said Martha's Vineyard is one of your favorite places. Do you see yourself as more one of the "local girls" or a "rich visitor"?
Well, I'm definitely not a local girl, because I only go to the island in the summer, but I'd like to think I have a local girl's mentality - I hate crowds, would rather sit on a deserted beach than one filled with kids and activity, and after ten years of going there I'm over buying souvenirs every time I step onto Main Street. I actually spent some time on the island in October, after the summer crush, and it was so nice - like a normal place that just happened to be stunning.

If someone wanted to plan a trip to Martha's Vineyard, what would you suggest they do and see to get the best experience?
There are six towns on the Vineyard and each one has its own personality. From preppy and sort of cosmopolitan (Edgartown) to laid back and more earthy (Chilmark). LOCAL GIRLS and RICH BOYS take place in Edgartown, but the next book takes place in Chilmark. They're totally different back drops for stories. I'd tell someone to make sure they explored the whole island to find the place that fits them.

If you were going to have a summer job (other than as a writer) at Martha's Vineyard, what would you want to do?
Oh, good question because the characters' choices of summer jobs actually tell a lot about them (Kendra works at the Willow Inn and Winnie works at a camp and babysits). I've never waitressed. I don't like cold water, so lifeguard is out. I love ice cream, but if I scooped that all summer I'd end up the shape of a beach ball. Is unemployed a summer job? Because just hanging out on the beach sounds good to me.

What are you reading now?
I just started Twilight by Stephenie Meyer.

What are you working on now?
The third book in the Island Summer series.

For more info, visit Jenny's web site. Or visit her blog for a chance to win an Island Summer t-shirt. You can get Local Girls and Rich Boys at Amazon.

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