Storyboarding
Today I am storyboarding for a children’s book for my mother-in-law… we’ll hand the pictures off to a real artist when I’m done.
“It was a dark, rainy day.”
A Classic Book for Every Myers-Briggs Personality Type
Jane Austen for the INTJ win. I have a Persuasion quote tattooed on my arm.
A Review on Nerve & A Few Thoughts on Christian Fiction
I have mixed feelings about Nerve by Bethany Macmanus.
As a reader I felt the Christian themes were awkward. Having attended a Baptist University where, though I am a fellow Christian, people were constantly using breathy voices and calling on the Lord and praying over me and my sins in a manner that often made me uncomfortable. Some were sincere friends and followers of Christ, many were frauds participating in group think and social customs of the Bible Belt. Therefore, I have to say that personal experience greatly affects my ability to enjoy Christian fiction. Ironically, since my own cozy fiction – The Bookshop Hotel – has a churchy reference or two (maybe, if you look for it really hard). A testament to the fact that although it’s a completely fabricated story with no roots in any people I know personally, world views have a tendency to seep through an author’s writing.
As someone who has grown up with Bethany Macmanus in my sphere of family friends, I know that these dialogues, prayers, and sentiments were sincerely written. Something that rings false to me in the dialogue, I am quite certain was meant whole heartedly and rang true for the author when she wrote it. She is one of the kindest, loving, and God-fearing women I have had the pleasure to know in my life. I’ve never seen her without a smile and a sweet disposition.
Many with life experiences concerning physical ailments and reliance on God to get them through those ailments will find this romantic suspense novel something they can identify with and find comfort in. I, on the other hand, had a hard time relating to Wren in any way as she struggled with romantic desires for two love interests, discomfort with whether things and people she encountered were destructive to her spirit, and dealing with creepy stalkers and dead ferrets.
Characters telling each other that they needed each other, and deeming that a verbalization of love, also didn’t sit well with me. Again, I can chalk this up to personal experience tainting my ability to digest certain plot points – which is not an issue with the writing at all. Need and love are such drastically different things in my world, with need often times being the exact opposite of a loving sentiment. In my own writing, I’ve used need as a red flag to characters not being in the right place at the right time for each other, as opposed to the DTR that gets them together.
I think if you’re an avid romantic suspense or Christian fiction reader, this book will be right up your alley. I definitely read a lot of books with romantic elements and enjoy a mystery every few titles I read, but romantic suspense has never been my favorite – and Christian fiction is a genre I tend to avoid, aside from Jan Karon, whose books (crossed with, hopefully, some Kate Morton) are closer to what I strive for in my own existing series. I also have a tendency to prefer exploring religious themes in fiction within in the sci-fi genre – like Philip K. Dick, C.S. Lewis, and Mary Doria Russell titles.
These, of course, are all personal preferences and have no bearing on the merit of Macmanus’s work. I can think of many people I would recommend her books to, and I will continue to purchase her titles and support her as a friend and fellow indie author. But, as an honest book reviewer, I have to say that I wasn’t smitten with Nerve or its characters.
The editing was done well. Not that I’m known for being a grammarian by any stretch of the imagination, but I noticed no flaws in grammar or any hiccups that would distract me from the story – something I highly appreciate after a poor editing job done on my own book from the first indie publisher who picked me up (fabulously re-done and re-released by Grey Gecko Press just this month), as well as other indie titles I’ve reviewed as a blogger. It’s nice to see things so well done the first time out the gate, so there is definitely a kudos to professionalism regarding this title.
I think it is important to mention that though I consider Bethany a family friend, this title was *not* given to me in exchange for an honest review. I purchased the title, read it, and am choosing to share my honest review with my public. Some might wonder why I would share such an on the fence review regarding a friends’ work – I do it with purpose! I think people scanning reviews might come across less than stellar star ratings for this novel (very few! I only see one on Amazon as of the writing of this post) and I’d like to offer some insight to the author and the public. I strongly feel like this is *not* because there is any problem with the story or the characters, but with the perception of the readers who leave those reviews and how they might feel about people in the real world who speak this way. It’s amazing how life experience can manipulate your views on a story, even in the most light hearted of genre fiction.
Books to Read in One Sitting This Summer
This week I read three books, of different genres, each in their own sitting. And if you’re looking for something to fill a nice, summer day, I recommend you give them a go too.
1. The House of Paper – Carlos Maria Dominguez
This is a beautiful and mysterious 103 page book about bookishness, and I love it. Prettily illustrated with so many quotes I was itching to underline, I cannot wait to purchase my own copy. (I checked it out from the library.) Bibliophiles will adore the title and author references, as well as the social commentary regarding people who build private libraries our of their book collections. Goes down best early in the morning with your coffee, or perhaps late at night with your tea.
2. The Colossus – Sylvia Plath
After reading The Bell Jar, I was in desperate need of getting to know Plath a little better. The Colossus and Other Poems is only 83 pages long, but rich is hauntingly gorgeous descriptions. I read somewhere that someone once described this collection as the coldest summer poetry available – and I tend to agree. If you’re from Texas, this is a good one to sweat out the morning in your garden just before brunch (or second breakfast) while your kiddo frolics with the dog and collects dead flies.
3. High Moon – E.J. Boley
Werewolves, gypsies, cowboys, and vampires – I just devoured this paranormal western while hiding indoors during the hottest part of the day. If Cormac McCarthy decided to pick up a punctuation habit and tell supernatural tales, it might come out a little bit like this. Except Boley manages something I’ve never experienced in a McCarthy novel – FUN. Using familiar phrases and titles as chapter headings was a nice touch. Being set in Texas is always a nicer one. Can’t wait to read Boley’s future endeavors.
My Issue With Sylvia Plath
Disclaimer: If I was a coward or a sensible human, I’d post this as some sort of fictional work. I am neither. But if you know me and would rather pretend this post isn’t real, for the sake of our friendship, that’s cool.
I’ve been trying for days to figure out how to write this post without sounding like a bitter, unfeeling hag. Then, I realized, more than that, I have to find a way to say what I mean to say without sounding like a pitiable, whiny, woe-is-me turd. Finally, I came to the conclusion that I just need to say what I’m going to say, post this “review” and let it sound however it will sound; because ultimately, though I am a writer and can be precise or flowery with my words, I cannot control how you hear/ read them. I am not that powerful. Maybe that just means I’m a terrible writer, but we’ll let those insecurities ride for another day…
I finally read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. It was my dead friend’s birthday and I thought he deserved a proper wallow, what better way to have a healthy wallow than to read a classic novel written by a woman who put her head in an oven?
So I took a bath, all appropriately scalding hot, and settled down into this:
There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them. Whenever I’m sad I’m going to die, or so nervous I can’t sleep, or in love with somebody I won’t be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: “I’ll go take a hot bath.”
This, of course, made me giggle at the wisdom of my selection.
Mostly, though, I felt a familiarity about the book, the characters, and all the feelings, that just outright angered me. She talks about things that make her sad and tired, and then how thinking about being sad and tired makes her more sad and tired. I found one of my own personal college friends in Doreen, the party girl from the deep south. I found myself in the narrator’s alter ego, inspired by an outing with Doreen, the party girl.
As I read, I got deeper and deeper into the narrator’s not-so-dark and twisty brain and followed her around as she thought about killing herself and received shock therapy while being hospitalized with the other crazies. I thought of Girl, Interrupted and Susannah Keyson and realized why, exactly, this book was familiar, and enjoyable, but ultimately a deep itch under my skin.
Everyone feels that way – the way Sylvia Plath’s autobiographical character feels. Everyone struggles to live, and if they don’t then I’m shocked. Reading The Bell Jar I just wanted to scream at a very dead Sylvia Plath, and every other depressed person I’ve known, and even the depressed person I’ve been and sometimes still am:
WHAT MAKES YOU SO SPECIAL? What makes you so special that you get to bask in your insanity? Nothing. That’s what. You’re just taking advantage of living in a world that works harder than you to exist.
That’s probably unfair, and shows an utter lack of compassion, but it’s how I feel.
Because it is hard work. Getting out of bed every morning is a mental exercise. Keeping yourself from crawling back in – or worse being a drunk slob for the hours you’re awake – is a physical exercise. Every day you have to create and maintain specific habits to keep yourself from sliding into the glorious abyss of a terrible wallow… a wallow of anxieties, simultaneously deep and restless sleep, an attitude called The Mean Reds (thanks, Holly Golightly), and a conflicting desire to both eat yourself into obesity or starve yourself to death – it could go either way.
Every day is a challenge to make the counting in your head stop. And with all this counting, it’s a struggle to actually sit down and count the things you’re supposed to. My drawer was ten cents off at work the other day, which naturally (and I would have said the same thing to anyone else), they teased me about not being able to count – because it wasn’t actually off, I had just documented it as off. Want to know what that sounds like? If your brain is anything like mine, which for the sake of this entire post I’m going to assume that for many people it is, my brain processed the comments a bit like this…
A Rising Panic Attack
Recognition that this was a joke
Panic Attack Subsides, only to start up again wondering if they think you’re stupid, or, worse…
Did they catch on to the fact that you were counting dimes over top of the counting already happening in your head – the one that finds itself ticking in time with any and every clock on the wall, the one that falls in tune to your steps as you walk across tile floors, still looking at your feet when you walk even though you are now in your thirties. The rhythm that helps you get your work done fast when you’re methodically shelving and alphabetizing, but might trip you on the street if you encounter a crack in the sidewalk – because you’re never sure if that day is a no crack day or a step ON the crack day… not until you do one or the other and the part of you begins to panic. Did they notice this?
While all this is happening in your head, you realize your rhythm is gone. Your heart was racing, but now it suddenly stopped altogether and you find yourself both mentally and physically trying to catch your breath, but you play it cool when you remind yourself that even though you *feel* like your head has bubble wrap duct taped around it and that you’ve been thrown into a swimming pool – that’s not what you look like. No one sees your bubble wrap face. They also don’t realize, hopefully, that you can’t hear them right now.
Your left pinky finger starts to tingle and you crack the knuckle to make it stop, to regain feeling. Only this time it hurts and you look down and see it is more bent than usual. Long ago it was broken, right now it simultaneously feels numb and broken. You wonder if you re-broke it sometime this week and didn’t notice.
The Heart Flutters.
Post-it notes are raining on your head, but they are in teals and oranges and easily arranged and filed into your handy-dandy mental filing cabinets – alphabetized and roughly dated. (Yes, I have those. If I’m too terribly distracted, the notes turn yellow and green, they’re only their orange and teal shades when I’m looking directly at them. The filing cabinets are the old metal kind, the ones you find on the side of the road or in ancient school building, rickety and decidedly thrown away by someone more sane than me.)
During all of this, life goals and contingency plans are running in the background. What if my husband dies? I could come back to work full time here. We’ve accomplished x,y,z so it’s probable. But I can’t count dimes, that might be a problem. If he died by car crash, I go _____. If he dies by _____, I go ______. If I die, he does not die…. If this than that. It takes me 30 seconds to map out a life plan from a newly presented scenario. It takes another 30 seconds for me to make a list of resources I think I need to implement this life plan effectively. Life Plan 3,069 logged away in filing cabinet 192, June 2015.
Your ears pop – as though you’ve ACTUALLY been under water, which briefly makes you wonder. Wonder about what? The Matrix, of course, are you in The Matrix? Or God’s brain? My husband thinks we are all synapses in a giant God-head’s brain. I ponder the biology of that while I – or you – think about The Matrix and how Neo didn’t realize he was stuck, naked, in a bubble of goo while his brain was plugged in to what he thought was real.
Suddenly, you’re cold all over and briefly wonder if you might be in goo too. Then you realize that for some inexplicable reason (the smell of old books? the comfort of the books? the smell of the person who just passed you by?) you’re not in goo, you’re just horny and why haven’t you ever had sex in a library or a bookstore? Oh, because the NSA is watching, yes, that’s why.
Less than a minute has passed since you were teased about the dimes and your inability to count. People have been talking around you, and you’ve even piped in – whether sensibly or not, you can’t be sure – and finally a customer asks you a question. This part is easier. The question is a book title, or an author. (I honestly don’t remember now.) But when someone asks something like this, it’s easier to get around all the warehouse like noise in the mind. The color coded post-it notes of fragmented thoughts are discarded, the flow-charts of contingency plans for life are swept momentarily aside and you consult your filing cabinets and bookshelves for the answer to their question. Maybe they asked you about dystopian fiction and you’re walking them through a list of your favorites. Maybe they just want a book that reminds them of red fields of grass, which they have to read for sophomore English – naturally you pluck up Catcher in the Rye by Salinger and they marvel at how you knew, or (depending on the customer) take it for granted that of course you knew exactly what they were talking about because they described the book so well.
The point is, this is constant and every day. Everyone has a thousand things happening in their heads that no one knows about. And frankly, not everyone needs to know about. When I’m having a hard time quieting the characters for my fiction, who like to gather around my filing cabinets and gab at me, or making the what if flow charts stop, when I can’t seem to stay out of the damn bubble wrap pool party – I chatter. I get clammy and chatter to whoever will listen. Because if my mouth is running, then I don’t have to listen to the chatter in my brain as much… I can ever so briefly shut them the hell up. The point is, I’m not sticking my head in any ovens. I make do.
It’s not fun. It’s not easy. It’s down right exhausting. It’s noisy, and it’s lonely. It is an effort to remember to feed myself and to feed others, and when I eat – not to eat too much. I am held together by the fact that I must sweep and mop this floor every day, that the things happening in my husband’s head are far worse than mine so someone has to keep it together. That some people out there have worse problems – like being raped and or being torn from limb to limb as they refuse to renounce Christ.
Yet, this twat, who was an amazing writer and artist, who had two kids that needed her… stuck her head in a freaking oven. Would that be easier? Yes. Was she crazy? Yes. But no more or less than anyone else, in my self-admittedly judgmental opinion.
Despite all that, I checked out her Bed-Book and read it to my daughter – it’s a lovely children’s picture book, and am currently reading both her diaries and her letters to her mother. Because I like her, I do. I feel like I know her and have been her. I feel like if I am not careful, I could be her again – but at least I’ll have the sense to keep my head out of ovens. (Although, when I was a kid, I used to bend over in the laundry room, holding a button down, to dry my hair in the clothes dryer – very effective…)
The Clover House
Title: The Clover House
Author: Henriette Lazaridis Power
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Length: 397 pages
It took me much longer than it should have to read this book. It has the vibe of a Kate Morton novel, but didn’t quite enrapture me in the same way – mostly because I am preoccupied. It’s possibly ironic because this preoccupation was along the same vein of that of the main character – but I was left unmoved.
It’s the slipperiness of memory that caught my attention though. How some people remember things so drastically different than other people who were right there in the same room. How perceptions are changed by knowledge. How ignorance is not always bliss, but can be if you let it.
I think more than anything, the book was good, but perhaps I wasn’t ready for it. And if I was, perhaps I’m just not ready to discuss it. Don’t be surprised if I bring it up six months from now, once I’ve digested it all.
Book Signing on Saturday
I’ve gotten away from posting these, but I shouldn’t have. If you’re in the area, be sure to swing by Half Price Books Humble on Saturdays to check out local authors.
My Continuing Adventures with PKD
Solar Lottery.
It wasn’t my favorite, but I suppose they can’t all be. It was PKD’s first published novel, and it feels like it. Not because it isn’t good, but because it’s so very typical genre. There was a lack of bravery in it. It’s plot pointed. It’s correct.
I fell in love with PKD’s writing because it wasn’t confined to a formula, because he didn’t seem to care whether or not the plot points occurred when they were supposed to. It is why Clans of the Alphane Moon is my favorite of his work so far.
The same week I read Solar Lottery, I also got a DVD I requested from the library:
The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick.
It was an interlibrary loan from a college – what I call my “super fancy request” because it has a $3 a day late fee.
It looks like something they’d show in a high school class. I say high school because I always thought showing videos in college courses was a lazy prof’s way out. (You should require students to watch something, then discuss in class.) Also, because by the time I got to college cheesy 90’s videos were being replaced by updated videos.
As I watch the video, I keep thinking how much I’d rather be reading the content in a book than be viewing a documentary. I suffer from a plight the majority of my contemporaries will never understand… watching things on a screen is far more tedious to me than reading them.
Also, as I’m watching, Solar Lottery slips away from my mind as my most recent PKD experience (of slight disappointment) and all the reasons I adore PKD flood back.
There’s a cheesy cartoon of PKD moving his mouth to Phil’s actual audio responses, recorded when he was still living. This would be cool if I didn’t feel like I was watching Southpark. It’s hard to focus on the documentary without closing my eyes because a headache is starting to form behind my eyes, another reason why I don’t watch a lot of tv but can read for days straight.
I’m glad I’m listening, though. There are so many things about him that fascinate me. The break in to his safe, for instance. People relate this tale in direct correlation to his drug use and having an unhealthy level of skepticism for the world around him… then the police thought he orchestrated the explosion himself… to which his supposedly drug addled mind thinks, “Maybe I did…? What would my motivation have been?”
They attribute all of this to a novelist’s mind on drugs.
How is this not just a normal human response to an accusation? I have these spin off thoughts nearly every moment of every day. I’ve written entire novels in my head based on an accusation. My first published novella was born slightly out of a similar strain of thought.
I may not be drug addled. I may not be as prolific or clever. But I do think, had I ever met PKD in person, we may have been friends, at least I think I would have liked him a lot.
Ptolemy – Dwight Howard – Same Thing…
I’ve never felt like a bigger idiot than when trying to read Ptolemy’s The Almagest. First of all, I inevitably always pronounce the P when speaking about it. And constantly get corrected, but can’t stop doing it. Secondly, I switch the m and the g of “almagest” in my head so often that in my deepest heart I’m not reading The Almagest, I’m reading The Algamest. Third, it’s a lot of information that I’ll never remember. I hate knowing that what I’m reading is not going to sink in… it’s all just a passing whimsy and I’ll be able to tell you nothing of value about it when I’m done with it.
Nevertheless, I’m enjoying reading it. Mostly because I’m a glutton for punishment, I think. Also, it’s included in The Great Books, it’s fat (roughly 600 pages), and it’s part of our ancient history – which I’m a huge sucker for.
Reading stuff like this is kind of like watching certain sports for me. I can follow the games, I know what’s going on, and I thoroughly enjoy them – but I don’t have sports lingo dripping from my lips and I rarely will discuss them with people because I know I’ll just sound like a moron. I like the ambiance of the game and the thrill of hard work and athleticism paying off. Just like I love the exertion it takes to read things slightly outside my knowledge base. They are similar experiences for me. Dropping me into a martial arts ring is more like breezing through fiction – I know it so well I can function there with my eyes closed.
It sounds completely absurd, even as I type it – but Ptolemy is like watching The Rockets play. I’m there. I get it. I’m enjoying. I love it. I will devour it – with chips, salsa, and beer. I will not, however, scream and shout with the other fans or talk about it tomorrow; and if you try to talk to me about it, I’ll clam up. Mention apogees in anything other than reciting a chant from Bedknobs and Broomsticks and you’ll see the same blank expression on my face when people shout “Wet!” I read that, I heard that… I internally absorbed it somewhere in my brain. But please, please, don’t quiz me. That’s recipe for an anxiety attack right there.
There are some things in life we should be allowed to simply enjoy without analyzation. Therefore, just like I will never be any good at fantasy leagues, I will also never be able to give an intelligent lecture on Ptolemy and his great work. But I’ll have fun being a half hearted amateur/ closet fan of both.
I Saw Him Live
I got to see B.B. King live in concert once. I realize that millions of people have, that he toured relentlessly until now when he will never tour again. But, despite not being unique in this trait, I consider myself special for having experienced it.
It was 2004, and my friend (who had recently broken up with me) had already purchased tickets. “It’s ok if you take Tim,” I told him. His room mate at the time is just a big of a music geek as any of us, and quite a guitar player. Tim would have loved it. “No,” my ex said, a No I will forever appreciate, “No, I bought them for us to go, we’ll go together. It’ll be fun.”
To be fair, we’re not the awkward exes of dramatic literature and over played movie cliches. We’re friends, always were, and hopefully always will be. I respect him as a human, he is part of what grew me into an adult. Also, to be fair, even if he had been the ex from hell – I wasn’t going to argue too adamantly about whether or not I got to go to the Eric Clapton Crossroads Concert. It was Eric Clapton. It was B.B. King. It was… everyone who made guitar history ever…
It was beautiful.
I drove up from Houston to Dallas to attend. In June, in a car with no AC. I stayed the weekend in dorm rooms that were closed for the summer. It was worth it just to hear that man play.
It was a hot, sunny day – until the end when it wasn’t and ZZ Top got rained out – sweltering even, but it was good. It was several generations of men in the most relaxing and amazing jam session on stage that I’d ever heard. It was Texas in a stadium of fans born and bred in Texas – I’m not great with crowds, but good old country boys listening to the blues is a crowd I can manage. I was laying in the grass while an old hippie with boobs down to her waistline swayed, clapped, and danced, depending on what was most appropriate for whatever song was playing.
I wish I could record my journal entry from that weekend here for you, but that journal is in storage, and I doubt I was very articulate anyway… I imagine it was a lot of: Oh My God, that was AMAZING. I do know that I lamented the fact that my now husband hadn’t been able to get tickets and go himself. It was something I knew he would have enjoyed. My ex is my friend, but my husband has always been my very best friend – especially then. Now, I lament that he missed it completely. Seeing B.B. King together was something I thought we’d get around to eventually. I should have known better, the man was old. But he seemed so epically immortal. Even though he sat through the whole concert, I didn’t see it then as a sign of an older man – I saw it as a sign of a King on his throne.
I remember John Mayer coming out. I remember being so proud of how respectful he was to all the men who had come before him – especially B.B. King. I didn’t like John Mayer until that moment, until I saw him bow with such grace to a man that I adored and would come to adore more and more as I aged, as I married, as I had a baby who would live the first year of her life listening to jazz and R&B in our living room while my husband smoked a cigar on the porch after work with the door open so the music and the smoke could play a wafting dance on the threshold. B.B. King, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald… my child knows these voices well.
B.B. King, you have shaped so many lives with your talent, you beautiful, beautiful man. Thank you for gracing the world with your presence. Thank you for all the concerts, all the performances, and all the love for music that has always seemed to radiate from your entire being and existence. Bless you. Thank you, and bless you.
Anakalian Whims 