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Author: Deb

Take an Author to Book Group

Take an Author to Book Group

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Bringing Home an Author I’ve mentioned Laurie’s book group before. We are a mixed group of mature (interpret this word as you wish!) and urbane women who meet monthly to chaw over books as diverse as The Invisible Man (Ellison’s, not Wells’) and Persuasion (Austen’s not Lakhani’s). Plus women’s fiction and exposés and mysteries and story collections. For our last meeting we read Breaking Out of Bedlam by Leslie Larson. As a special treat, the author Herself graced our gathering….

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Deb’s Very Own Prologue

Deb’s Very Own Prologue

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Hi Everyone, As promised, I am posting the prologue to my novel Moonlight Dancer. You can decide if I violate any of agent Kristin Nelson’s prologue injunctions that I discussed in my previous post. I would love to hear what you think. Well, sort of. I’m also scared to hear what you think! Therein lies the writer’s dilemma. But–GULP–here goes. (I included page one of chapter one to give you some reference.) *                     *                     *                      *                      * Jindo, Korea PROLOGUE…

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In Defense of Prologues

In Defense of Prologues

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image courtesy of Daniel Villeneuve via Dreamstime In Defense of Prologues A funny thing happened to me. I’d been reading and rereading literary agent Kristin Nelson’s blog about prologues in which she denigrates the vast majority of them. Read it here. I’ll let you in on a secret: I LOVE prologues. Not only that, my novel Moonlight Dancer begins with one. And this is why, like a dog worrying its wound, I keep returning to Ms. Nelson’s blog. Let’s go…

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Ghost novel review: Her Fearful Symmetry

Ghost novel review: Her Fearful Symmetry

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Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger Review Part Two Endings are so hard, aren’t they? At Laurie’s monthly book group, concerns about conclusions run high. When I listen to people describe a book, satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the ending always figures into the discussion, which generally falls into three categories. The first category involves quilting metaphors. I hear, “the threads were tied up too neatly” or “not tied up neatly enough” or “story threads were left hanging.” In the second…

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Book Review: Her Fearful Symmetry

Book Review: Her Fearful Symmetry

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Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger Scribner, 406 pages. A set of twenty-year-old twins, children of a twin, receives a mysterious inheritance—a London flat adjacent to Highgate Cemetery in which the twin girls must live together for one year before assuming ownership. Soon after arrival, Julia and Valentina mix with their quirky, lovable neighbors—Martin, housebound neurotic and puzzle mastermind; Robert, cemetery scholar and leal lover of the deceased. Not to be outdone, the cemetery itself dons a quasi-character role. Into…

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When Disaster Strikes: Part Two

When Disaster Strikes: Part Two

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When Disaster Strikes—How Writers Can Safeguard their Work Part Two Hi, Everyone. Today we sit down for a chat with author and gallant work-saver, Dan O’Connor. Our discussion will focus on what writers can do to preserve their work before that devastating earthquake (or hurricane or tornado or toddler) hits. Welcome, Dan! We’ll start right in with questions. Q: Can you give an overview of your writing backup systems? A: My manuscript first goes to an external hard drive that…

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Ghost Novel Review: Saving Fish from Drowning

Ghost Novel Review: Saving Fish from Drowning

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Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan I so wanted to love this book. I loved the idea—a novice ghost follows her museum friends on an ill-fated tour through Myanmar. I loved Tan’s trademark fusing of myth to narrative, particularly the satiric vignette detailing how one goes about saving a fish from drowning. I loved the comforting heft of the book as I settled beneath my Tree of Life quilt and snapped on the bedside lamp. What I didn’t love…

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When disaster strikes

When disaster strikes

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When Disaster Strikes—How Writers Can Safeguard their Work Part One Earthquake. Japan, 2011. New Zealand, 2011. Haiti, 2010. Floods in Australia. Red mud in Hungary. Hurricane Karl in Veracruz. After disasters such as these, we mourn the lost lives, the terrible injuries, the environmental harm. But art was lost as well. In the Pacific Northwest we face earthquakes, fires, and landslides. Other parts of the world endure floods, sand storms, tsunamis, hurricanes, and tornadoes. Assuming we survive whatever disaster befalls,…

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Ghost Novel Review: Beloved

Ghost Novel Review: Beloved

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Beloved by Toni Morrison Publisher: Plume, 275 pages Format: Paperback Source: Purchased What it’s about: Set in the south in the years before and after the Civil War, Beloved tracks the ravages of oppression across one matriarchal line—that of Baby Suggs, Sethe, Denver, and their sons and lovers. The novel depicts in unflinching narrative the horrors that slavery wreaks on individuals and families. There are chain gangs, routinized torture, and callous indifference. We know, for instance, that Sethe’s baby daughter,…

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The Right to Write

The Right to Write

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Barrack Obama isn’t black enough. You’ve heard that, right? Amy Tan isn’t Chinese enough. Maxine Hong Kingston ditto. Chang-rae Lee isn’t Korean enough. Picture me, a writer exploring Korean characters and culture, biting my nails. I can trace four ancestral lines. No doubt my lineage contains the requisite number of horse thieves, courtesans, peasants, warriors and whiners. One line snakes back as far as 1000 CE (thanks for your research, Carolyn and Randy). I am that nondescript blend of Scottish,…

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Ghost Novel Review: The Little Stranger

Ghost Novel Review: The Little Stranger

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  The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters In many ways this book reminded me of Jane Eyre—the retrospective narrator, the gloomy atmosphere, the decaying mansion. Minus, of course, lapses into Dear reader confidences. Just as Bronte did before her, Waters renders the crumbling mansion’s inhabitants with subtle shifts—Mrs. Ayres, increasingly desperate to maintain the veneer of the landed gentry; Roderick Ayres, desperate to preserve himself inviolate; Catherine Ayres, desperate to keep it together despite a malevolent supernatural presence. And then…

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What’s in a name?

What’s in a name?

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Pen in Her Hand? What’s with the name? This blog’s title is inspired by my favorite quote from the novel Persuasion. Jane Austen’s heroine rejects the claim that history and literature prove women are weak. She insists that historically men wrote those same books as “…the pen has been in their hands.” Go, Jane! Not that I claim any more than a gender connection to Austen, but I take up my pen (literally in that I’m one of the few…

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