Our Forgotten Books Thus Far

Because people are beginning to ask if certain books have been done, I thought I'd post the first thirteen weeks on here. It'll take up some room. I've tried to make the font small.

IF ANYONE HAS BEEN FORGOTTEN, PLEASE ADVISE. Cutting and pasting sometimes leaves lines behind.

Because of the oddities of this program, it will not allow me to add omissions in any easy way so please add:


And Todd Mason's choices for Week 10, Signal Through the Flames by Victoria Rader, The Pleasure Tube by Robert Onopa, and The Moon's Wife by A. A. Attanasio.

If I figure how to get them in the right place without completely reformatting I will do that.

Week One, April 25th

Patti Abbott, Desperate Characters by Paula Fox
Patrick Shawn Bagley The Dog of the South by Charles Portis
Bill Crider, City by Clifford D. Simak
Josephine Damian, Don't Let's Go to the Dog Tonight by Alexandria Fuller
Clair Dickson, The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler
Ello, When the Elephants Dance by Tess Uriza
Travis, Erwin, The Rock Orchard by Paula Wall
Eudamonia, The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith
Brian Lindenmuth, The God Files by Frank Turner
Sandra Ruttan, Dust Devils by James Reasoner
Sandra Scoppettone, Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen
Anthony Neil Smith, Scar Lover by Harry Crews

Week Two

Steve Allan, The Temple of Gold, (Goldman)
Jennifer Archer, The Bronze Horseman (Pauline Simmons
William Boyle, Father and Son (Larry Brown)
Declan Burke. Thieves Like Us (Anderson)
Clair Dickson, The Westing Game, (Raskin)
Ello, Silk (Alessandro Barrico)
Christa Faust, Run (Douglas Winter
Angie Johnson-Schmidt, Sally’s in the Alley (Norbert Davis)
Ali Karim. Memoirs of An Invisible Man, (Saint)
Katrina Kimble, The Red Tent (Diamant)
Brian Lindenmuth, Generation Loss ( E. Hand)
Todd Mason, The Enquiries of Doctor Esterhazy (Davidson)
James Reasoner, Seven Faces, (Max Brand)
Sandra Ruttan, The 50/50 Killer (Steve Mosley)
Kay Sexton, Fred and Edie (Jill Dawson)
Gerald So, Spadework (Prozini) and Collected Poems (Justice)

Week Three

Patti Abbott: Roseanna (Sjowal and Wahloo)
Steve Allan: The Giant's House (Elizabeth McCracken
Stephen Blackmoore: On Strange Tides (Tim Power)
Declan Burke: Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (Horace McCoy
Bill Crider: The Assistant (Malamud), Passing Strange (Sale
Sara Crowley: The Trick is to Keep Breathing (Janice Galloway)
Daniel Hatadi: Gun in Cheek (Bill Prozini)
Jen Jordan: One Man's Chorus (Burgess)
Lisa Kenney: A Fine and Private Place (Peter Beagle)
Brian Lindenmuth: Scalped (Jason Aaron
Todd Mason: The Lively Lives of Crispin Mobey (Gary Jennings)
Terrie Farley Moran: The Great Divide (Terkel
J. Kingston Pierce: The Lunatic Fringe (DeAndrea)
Keith Raffel: Kolymsky Heights (Davidson)
Peter Rozovsky: Harper and Iles series (Bill James
R2, The Criminalist, Eugene Izzy
Steven Torres: Moony's Road to Hell (Ramas))
Jim Winter: Blunt Darts (Healy)


Week 4

Steve Allan, Splinters of the Mind's Eye, Alan Dean Foster
Baglady, The Crystal Cave, Mary Stewart
Bookwitch, Sapper, Herman Cyril McNeile
Declan Burke, Wild at Heart, Barry Gifford
Bill Crider, The Night Remembers, Ed Gorman
Travis Erwin, The Me I Used to Be, Jennifer Archer
Ed Gorman, The Kidnappers, Robert Bloch and 361 by Donald Westlake
Kirsty, Other Stories and Other Stories, Ali Smith
Todd Mason, The Aleph and Other Stories 1933-1969, Jorge Luis Borges
Megan Powell, Cuckoo's Egg, C.J. Cherryh
Tom Piccirilli, The Hunter, Richard Stark (Donald Westlake)
James Reasoner, The Siamese Twin Mystery, Ellery Queen

J.D. Rhoades, THE BEASTS OF VALHALLA by George C. Chesbro

Jeff Shelby, The Standoff, Chuck Hogan
Kevin Burton Smith, The January Corpse by Neil Albert
Shauna Sturge, Crossfire, Jeanette Windle
David Terrenoire, Cruddy, Lynda Barry
Sarah Weinman, The Late Man, James Preston Girard

Week 5

Dick Adler, When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, Lawrence Block
Steve Allan, Horse Latitudes, Robert Ferrigno
Bookwitch, Home, Sweet Homicide, Craig Rice
Bill Crider, Revenge, Jack Ehrlich
Lonnie Cruse, We Have Always Lived in a Castle, Shirley Jackson
Jenny Davidson, Colors Insulting to Nature, Cintra Wilson
Martin Edwards, Reputation for a Song, Edward Grierson
J.T. Ellison, Songs of Innocence, Richard Aleas (Charles Ardai)
Victor Gischler, Clans of the Alphane Moon, Philip K. Dick
Ed Gorman, Spree, Max Allan Collins
Lynne Hatwell (Dovegreyreader), The Scapegoat, Daphne Du Maurier
Laura Lippman, A Novel Called Heritage, Margaret Dukore
John McFetridge, Cutter and Bone, Newton Thornburg
Todd Mason, Trouble Valley, Lee Hoffman
A.R. Pickett(Woodstock’s Blog) Alas Babylon, Pat Frank
James Reasoner, Day of the Moon, Bill Prozini and Jeffrey Wallman
Linda Richards, Swann, Carol Shields

Week 6

Joe Boland, Lightening of the Sun, Robert Bingham
Gerard Brennan, Sacrifice of the Fools, Ian McDonald
Ken Bruen, Michigan Roll, Tom Kakonis
Bill Crider, The Hot-Shot, Fletcher Flora
Deborah (Knit Lady) Brat Farrar, Josephine Tey
Stephen Elliott, (an extensive list: see link from yesterday)
Alison Gaylin, The Dice Man, Luke Reinhart
Charles Gramlich, Desert Dog, Jim Kjelgaard
Lisa Kenney, The Dogs of March, Ernest Hebert
Kristy Kiernan, Into the Road, Adrienne Richard
Steve Lewis, Too Much Poison, Anne Rowe
Brian Lindenmuth, (an extensive list of forgotten Sci-Fi: see link)
Dick Lochte, The Honest Dealer, Frank Gruber
Stuart MacBride, Shooting Dr. Jack, Norman Green, Diamond Dove, Adrian Hyland
Todd Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to be Read with the Door Locked, edited by Harold Q. Masur
Jason Pinter, The Long Walk, Stephen King
Sandra Seaman, The Quiet Game, Greg Iles
Andi Shechter, Cut to the Quick, Kate Ross
Clea Simon, A Place of Greater Safety, Hilary Mantel
Wallace Stroby, The Rare Coin Score, Richard Stark
Dave Zeltserman, The Captain, Seymour Shubin

Week 7

Robin Agnew, The Last Witness, K.J. Erickson
Patrick Shawn Bagley, When the River Flows North, Howard Frank Mosher
John Baker, Murphy, Samuel Beckett
Joe Boland, The Art of Losing, Keith Dixon
Julia Buckley, I Don't Kow How She Does It, Allison Pearson
Sean Chercover, Derek Rayond's Factory Series
Bill Crider, Down and Dirty, W.B. Murphy
Travis Erwin, You Never Believe Me: And Other Stories, Davis Grubb
Anne Fraiser, Uther and Igraine and Sorrell and Son, Warwick Deeping
Steve Hockensmith, I Am the Cheese, Robert Cormier
Caroline Leavitt, After Life, Rhian Ellis
Steve Lewis, 57, Chicago, Steve Monroe
Lee Lofland, Postmortem, Patricia Cornwell
Jeff Marks, Home, Sweet Homicide, Craig Rice
Russel McLean, The Shark-Infested Custard, Charles Willeford
Medora, Guard of Honor, James Gould Cozzens
James Reasoner, The Sharpshooters, John Benteen
Clea Simon, Crooked Man, Tony Dunbar
Jay Tomio, Brittle Innings, Michael Bishop

Week 8

Patti Abbott, October Light, John Gardner
Joe Boland, Freak's Amour, Tom DeHaven
Gerard Brennan, Father Music, Dermot Bolger
Steve Brewer, The Tango Briefing, Adam Hall
Mark Coggins, Samurai Boogie, Peter Tasker
Bill Crider, One for Hell, Jada Davis
Deborah, Mother Love, Domini Taylor
Chris Holm, The Elementals, Michael McDowell
Ruth Jordan, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, George V. Higgins
Vince Keenan, Violence, Nudity and Adult Content, Vince Passaro
Larry, The Famished Road, Ben Okri
Steve Lewis, Pangolin, Peter Driscoll
Brian Lindenmuth, Four Kinds of Rain/Red Baker, Robert Ward
Tim Maleeny, Chinaman's Chance, Ross Thomas
Terrie Farley Moran, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
James Reasoner, The Dark Brand, H. A. De Rosso
Rochelle Jewel Shapiro, Jamaica Inn, Daphne DuMaurier
Gerald So, The Spy Who Loved Me, Ian Fleming
Jay Tomio, Sarah Canary, Karen Joy Fowler

Week 9

Gerard Brennan, Joseph O'Connor, The Salesman
Lyman Feero, Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
James Reasoner, Lewis B. Patten, Rope Law
Joe Boland, Thomas Perry, Island
Lesa Holstine, Stephen Cannell, King Con
David Corbett, Pete Dexter, God's Pocket
Bill Crider, Henry Kane, Too French and Too Deadly
Ed Gorman, John D. MacDonald, Border Town Girl
Steve Lewis, Donald Hamilton, The Ambushers
Robin Gorman Newman, Patrick McDonnell, The Gift of Nothing
Susan, Todd Borg, Tahoe Deathfall
Todd Mason, William Kotzwinke, The Exile
Lee Gold, Henrik Van Loon, Van Loon's Lives
Jim Ingraham, Kate Chopin, The Awakening

Week 10

Lori Armstrong, Naked in Death, J.D. Robb
Patrick Bagley, The Great Brain, John D. Fitzgerald
Joe Boland, Up in the Air, Walter Kirn
Gerard Brennan, The Salesman, Joesph O'Connor
Tony Broadbent, Funeral in Berlin, Len Deighton
Shannon Clute, New York Trilogy, Paul Auster
Bill Crider, Wolf House, Jack Lynch
Ed Gorman, Dog Soldiers, Robert Stone
Libby Hellman, Briarpatch, Ross Thomas
Lesa Holstine, Charms for the Easy Life, Kay Gibbons
Randy Johnson, The Mushroom Planet series, Eleanor Cameron
J.A. Konrath, Blackburn, Bradley Denton
Steve Lewis, Don Sturdy on the Desert of Mystery, Victor Appletion
Todd Mason, The Loner, Ester Wier
James Reasoner, The Ghosts of Elkhorn, Kerry Newcomb and Frank Schaefer
Peter Rozovsky, Bertie and the Seven Bodies, Peter Lovesey
Barry Summy, The Chrysalids, John Wyndham
Susan, Corpse de Ballet, Lucy Cores
David Thompson, The David Handler Series
Mary Ellen Walsh, Salvation, Lucia Nevai
Sarah Weinman, The Golden Road, L.M. Montgomery

Week 11-Kid’s Books

Patti Abbott-The Return of the Twelves, Pauline Clarke
Steve Allan-Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury
Patrick Shawn Bagley, The Great Brain, John Fitzgerald
David Cranmer, Dig Alley Space Edxplorers' Series by Joseph Green
Bill Crider, The 21 Balloons, William Pene DuBois
Travis Erwin, Where the Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls
Lesa Holstine, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, Betty MacDonald; Snow Treasure, Marie McSwigan, The Happy Hollisters, Jerry West
Randy Johnson, The Mushroom Series, Eleanor Cameron
Steve Lewis, Don Sturdy on the Desert of Mystery, Victor Appleton
Brian Lindenmuth, The Mouse and His Child, Russell Hoban
Todd Mason, The Loner, Ester Wier
Terrie Farley Moran, The Paperbag Princess, Robert Munsch
James Reasoner, The Rocket's Shadow, John Blaine
Sandra Ruttan, Twenty and Ten, Claire Huchet Bishop and Janet Joly
Susan Smith, The Ghost Next Door, Wylly Folk St. Jo

Week 12

Robert Gregory Browne, Control, William Goldman
Bill Crider, Death Tour, David J. Michael
Al Guthrie, Portrait in Smoke, Bill Ballinger
Woody Haut, Hard Rain Falling, Don Carpenter
Lesa Hostine, Bachelor Brother's Bed and Breakfast, Bill Richardson
Randy Johnson, Gone South, Robert McCammon
Claire Lamb, Kate Vaiden, Reynolds Price
Todd Mason, On Wings of Song, Thomas M. Disch
Craig McDonald, Four Corners of Night, Craig Holden
Karen E. Olson, Lockout, Lillian O'Donnell
Barrie Summy, The Sweet Second Season of Kitty Malone, Matt Cohen
Louise Ure, No Human Involved, Barabara Seranella

Week 13

Barbara D'Amato-HMS Ulysses, Alastair MacLean
David Cranmer, A Treasury of Great Mysteries, Haycraft and Belcroft
Bill Crider, Rafferty: Wrong Place, Wrong Time, W. Glenn Duncan
Jack Getze, Sleeping Dogs, Thomas Perry
Ed Gorman, Don't Cry for Me, William Campbell Gault
Lesa Holstine, A Dangerous Road, Kris Nelscott
Charlie Huston, Complicity, Iain Banks
Randy Johnson, Booked to Die, John Dunning
Colman Keene, Paco's Story, Larry Heinemann
Ken, The Anvil of the World, Kage Baker
Larry, Camp Concentration, Thomas Disch
Medora, Kristen Lavranstatter, Sigrid Undset
David Montgomery, Chinaman's Choice, Ross Thomas
Sandy Parshall, We Have Always Lived in a Castle, Shirley Jackson
James Reasoner, The Hangman of Sleepy Valley, David Dresser
Barrie Summy, Crackpot, Adele Wiseman
Jay Tomio Dossier, Stepan Chapman, Black Brillion, Matthew Hughes, Pandora, Holly Hollander, Coelestis, Paul Park, Sarah Canary, Karen Fowler, Brittle Innings, Michael Bishop
Dave White, Honor Among Thieves, Jeffrey Archer

Some Things I Thought About on the Drive to Stratford

How often do you call your cell phone to locate it?

Do you believe your community actually recycles all the stuff they collect from your recycling bin?

What's the most number of times you tried to type in a verification code before getting on a blog?

Are you as tired as I am of reading Tina Fey and Ellen Degenere's bios on the American Express ads? I mean is it that expensive to run more of them? I bet lots of people would give them that info for free.

Do you have one household problem that has followed you from house to house? (With us it's gutters).

My Town Monday: Side Trip to Stratford, Ontario to Shakespeare Festival

The Stratford Shakespeare Theater Festival began in 1952 in Stratford, Ontario. Tom Patterson, a local journalist, was looking for a way to revitalize his town after train service to the town was discontinued. The town’s name provided his inspiration. The first year’s half-dozen productions were performed in a tent but today the town has four venues that perform plays from May till November. Two of those theaters hold over 1000 people, the other two are more intimate.

2008 Season

• Hamlet - by William Shakespeare
• The Taming of the Shrew - by William Shakespeare
• Romeo and Juliet - by William Shakespeare
• All's Well That Ends Well - by William Shakespeare
• Love's Labour's Lost - by William Shakespeare
• The Music Man - by Meredith Willson
• Cabaret - book by Joe Masteroff, lyrics by Fred Ebb, music by John Kander
• Caesar and Cleopatra - by George Bernard Shaw
• Fuente Ovejuna - by Lope de Vega
• The Trojan Women - by Euripides
• Emilia Galotti - by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
• Palmer Park - by Joanna McClelland Glass
• Moby-Dick - by Morris Panych
• Krapp's Last Tape / Hughie - by Samuel Beckett / Eugene O'Neill
• Her Infinite Variety - by Peter Hinton
• There Reigns Love - by Simon Callow

The quality of the productions is first-rate and actors from both the U.S. and Canada regularly perform here.

Stratford has turned the town over to the success of this festival and has lectures, musical events, gardens, a lovely river, multi-media productions, museums and other events to compliment this festival. It is a 3 hour drive from Detroit. We usually see 1-2 productions a year. This year we saw The Music Man, which was absolutely outstanding.

The town of Stratford is charming as well. It has numerous top-notch accomodations to fit all budgets as well as fine restaurants and shops.

If you are within driving distance of Stratford, I highly recommend a trip. Check out more My Town Monday posts at Travis Erwin's blog:

http://traviserwin.blogspot.com/

The Summing Up for Friday, July 18, 2008

Thanks to today's contributors. I am going to try and post a list of all the selections people have written about so far some day this week. So we don't forget these books again.

Barbara D'Amato-HMS Ulysses, Alastair MacLean
David Cranmer, A Treasury of Great Mysteries, Haycraft and Belcroft
Bill Crider, Rafferty: Wrong Place, Wrong Time, W. Glenn Duncan
Jack Getze, Sleeping Dogs, Thomas Perry
Ed Gorman, Don't Cry for Me, William Campbell Gault
Lesa Holstine, A Dangerous Road, Kris Nelscott
Charlie Huston, Complicity, Iain Banks
Randy Johnson, Booked to Die, John Dunning
Colman Keene, Paco's Story, Larry Heinemann
Ken, The Anvil of the World, Kage Baker
Larry, Camp Concentration, Thomas Disch
Medora, Kristen Lavranstatter, Sigrid Undset
David Montgomery, Chinaman's Choice, Ross Thomas
Sandy Parshall, We Have Always Lived in a Castle, Shirley Jackson
James Reasoner, The Hangman of Sleepy Valley, David Dresser
Barrie Summy, Crackpot, Adele Wiseman
Jay Tomio Dossier, Stepan Chapman, Black Brillion, Matthew Hughes, Pandora, Holly Hollander, Coelestis, Paul Park, Sarah Canary, Karen Fowler, Brittle Innings, Michael Bishop
Dave White, Honor Among Thieves, Jeffrey Archer

FRIDAY'S FORGOTTEN BOOKS, JULY 18, 2008

Barbara D'Amato is the author of Death of a Thousand Cuts and White Male Infant.

HMS ULYSSES by Alistair MacLean

HMS Ulysses [1955] was the first novel Alistair MacLean wrote, and it’s a remarkable achievement. He had many other successes—The Guns of Navarone, The Satan Bug, Ice Station Zebra, Where Eagles Dare, Breakheart Pass, and many more, many made into movies, but HMS Ulysses remains his very best.

MacLean had served in the Royal Navy from 1941 through the end of the war, as Ordinary Seaman, Able Seaman, and Torpedo Operator, and saw action in the north Atlantic, escorting carrier groups in operations against targets in the arctic and off the coast of Norway.

HMS Ulysses throbs with authenticity. I read it at least twenty-five years ago and it still produces a thrill when I think of it. Not an easy book, often grim, always real, it is the tale of a light cruiser, put to sea to guard an important convoy heading for Murmansk. The convoy runs into crisis after crisis--German warships, an arctic storm, attacks from U-boats beneath, and from the Luftwaffe overhead. Slowly thirty-two ships are reduced to five. Then the Ulysses is called on to do the impossible--

As a depiction of the human cost of war, HMS Ulysses has never been surpassed.

Charlie Huston is the author of Every Last Drop and Half the Blood in Brooklyn

Complicity by Iain Banks

I don't know if it counts as a forgotten book, more like a
book that no one has ever heard of, but Iain Banks'
"Complicity" deserves to be known.
Broke in New York, I stumbled across the 1996 Bantam mass market edition.
I'd heard about Banks' cult novel "The Wasp Factory," but had never been
able to find a copy.  On a flier I purchased this conveniently inexpensive
substitute.  To this day I know of only one other person in the United
States who has read this former #1 British best seller, and I loaned that
reader my copy, the only copy I have ever seen in person.  "Listen," I told
him, "I generally don't loan books.  I give them away.  If I have something
on my shelves that I want someone to read, I give them the book.  I don't
want to ever worry about getting a book back.  But this book, I can't lose
the book.  I really want you to read it, but you have to get it back to me.
The covers can be torn and the pages dogeared, but I have to have this book
back."  He read it, bowed down to it, and returned it to me via registered
express mail.  What's it about?  Told from two points of view (first person
reporter and second person killer), it's a cat and mouse about a serial
killer going about Britain and Scotland killing people in brutally
appropriate styles to suit their real or perceived crimes.  Been there and
done that you have, but not with a writer up to Banks' snuff.  The
complicity of the title is not just related to protagonist journalist
Cameron Colley's possible involvement in the crimes he's investigating, but
the reader's own involvement and enjoyment of the crimes.  Putting the
reader in the front row of every murder with his second person narration,
Banks lets us stick the knife in, or close the book if we can't take it.
And trust me, there are bits that will be hard to stomach.  That complicity
exists at another level as well.  How much enjoyment can you draw from the
grotesque when you are cast as the executioner?  You can read the book with
an eye toward answering that question, or you can skip over the morality
play and just rip through the pages as quickly as possible.  A mad fucking
read, there are dozens of new and used copies available online, most of them
seem to be a 2002 Simon and Schuster TPB that I knew nothing about.

David Montgomery writes about authors and books for several of the country's largest newspapers, including the Chicago Sun-Times, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer and Boston Globe.

Ross Thomas, Chinaman's Chance, 1978

When Ross Thomas died in 1995, twenty-four of his twenty-five books were out-of-print – the only one that was still available in a current edition was perhaps his best. (A few years back, St. Martin's Press undertook a program to return Thomas' novels to print. Sadly, it was discontinued after only a handful of titles were published.)

Chinaman's Chance (1978) introduced readers to Artie Woo and Quincy Durant, two of the best, most memorable characters ever to appear in fiction. Lifelong pals since they hooked up in a San Francisco orphanage, Woo and Durant were lovable grifters, con men with hearts of gold ever searching for their next big score.

The bent duo usually plied their trade somewhere on the Pacific Rim, and Chinaman's Chance finds them in Pelican Bay, a small, down-at-the-heels (fictional) town south of Los Angeles. You wouldn't know it at first glance, but Pelican Bay is the most corrupt American city outside of Washington, D.C. Crooked politicians, bent cops, shadowy Company rejects and the Mob are all up for a piece of the action. In other words, the perfect setting for Woo and Durant to work their magic.

With his commitment to sharp and precise prose, Thomas raised the stakes for thriller writers, showing a generation of readers and writers that suspenseful writing could be lean, but still meaty. His keen eye for political chicanery and insight into the devious side of human nature helped him create stories that are as delightful to enjoy on the fifth reading as they are on the first. (That quality makes him among the rarest of genre writers.)

Thomas had a remarkable ability of making cynical characters likable and complex plots believable. His novels are "page-turners," but they're also insightful and poignant sketches of the human condition. He was truly an uncommon talent, and Chinaman's Chance ranks among his best. If you haven't read it...Well, now you know what you're missing.

Colman Keene is a prolific reader, sometimes notching a book a day, and the father of three in the UK.

Paco’s Story by Larry Heinemann

Originally published in 1986, this moving tale was in my opinion a worthy winner of the National Book Award for Fiction.

I first discovered this book in 1989, a period when I was obsessed with both reading and watching a lot of books and films about the Vietnam War.

The conflict was the first war that was delivered to people daily in their living rooms. Growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, my interest must have been piqued by the coverage……..Saigon, Ho Chi Minh, Cu Chi tunnels, My Lai, MIAs, gooks, grunts, napalm……thousands of tragedies – from small to vast, personal to national……….I rubber-necked at a car crash of monumental proportions.

I had previously read and enjoyed Heinemann’s first book – Close Quarters.
Bagging a copy of his next work was a no-brainer.

Paco’s Story relates the moving tale of a survivor back in the US.
His post-war experiences are related through the voices of his dead comrades from the war.

Paco is the sole survivor of a base camp massacre, with a body held together by screws and steel, and a mind by whisky and painkillers.

Eerie, unsettling, disturbing, moving, powerful – all inadequate in describing the full effect this novel had on me.

Read it and weep – I did.

Sandy Parshall is the author of Disturbing the Dead and The Heat of the Moon (Poison Pen Press)

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) by Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson has been one of my favorite writers since I was a teenager, and it saddens me that so few people read her work now. If younger people have read anything of hers, it’s likely to be “The Lottery” – a 1948 New Yorker short story credited with a deep metaphorical meaning and sociological insight that Ms. Jackson herself found amusing and baffling. It was “just a story,” she insisted. But what a story: a leisurely description of an annual ritual in an ordinary New England village, rendered in Jackson’s clear, evocative prose, and building to the death by stoning of a village woman.

My favorite Jackson novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, has the same stunning juxtaposition of the normal and the unthinkable that both captivates and repels readers in “The Lottery,” and it has the bonus of fully developed characters who pull you into their strange world instead of making you watch from the outside. I was delighted to read that the Penguin Classics Reading Group on Amazon made the book their July selection, bringing it to the attention of readers not familiar with Jackson’s work. But I was annoyed by the way the book was described in the reading groups announcement: “a nice creepy, angst-ridden horror story.” Creepy it certainly is, but you won’t find any of the ghouls, ghosts, and vampires usually associated with horror stories in We Have Always Lived in the Castle. This is a book about human nature and the lengths people will go to in preserving what they believe is a normal existence, and in the telling Jackson used many ingredients of classic gothic tales.

In 18-year-old Merricat, Castle has a supremely unreliable narrator, and much of the book’s power comes from her skewed perspective on events. Merricat, her older sister Constance, and their uncle are the only survivors of a poisoned meal that killed the rest of the Blackwood family. The truth of what happened has never been told, and local people view the survivors with revulsion and hostility, forcing them to live in seclusion on their estate. The three have developed rituals and delusions that allow them to survive. Their insular world is turned upside down with the arrival, as in most gothic tales, of a stranger. Cousin Charles, with an eye on the family’s money, installs himself in the household and sets about wreaking havoc with his relatives’ minds as well as their routines. This isn’t an easy or comfortable read, but it is a powerful story that exhibits all of Jackson’s strengths as a writer.

Here are some more suggestions for this week.

http://austincarrscrimediary.blogspot.com/

http://jacksondonne.blogspot.com/

http://randall120.wordpress.com//

http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/

http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com/

http://davidcranmer.blogspot.com/

http://billcrider.blogspot.com/

http://www.jamesreasoner.blogspot.com/

http://www.crimefictionblog.com/2008/07/fridays-forgott.html

http://barriesummy.blogspot.com/

http://ofblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/forgotten-friday-spotlight-thomas-disch.html - Larry

http://nethspace.blogspot.com/2008/07/forgotten-fridays-kage-baker-writes.html - Ken

The following is several weeks’ worth of books from Jay Tomio and Medora from Fantasy Bookspot that I inadvertently missed. Thanks, Jay and Medora, and sorry.

http://www.fantasybookspot.com/jaytomio/2008/07/forgotten-fridays-saturday-edition-dossier-by-stepan-chapman/

http://www.fantasybookspot.com/medora/?p=43

Now That's Funny!

Washington Post cartoon.


Also a brilliant one from jibjab.
(Thanks to Jeff and Lesa)
http://sendables.jibjab.com/

Die a Little-UK

Excuse me for a little BDP here, but Megan's Edgar nominated first novel, Die a Little, debuts in paperback in the UK on August 4th. Hope some of you people over the pond will give it a read.

I can still remember reading it four years ago and thinking--could this possibly be my kid? Damn!

What Should The New Yorker Do to Address Its Error in Judgment?

Check this out too. (Hat tip to Chuck) http://www.sitemason.com/newspub/fQKJvW?id=57932

When a publication like The New Yorker makes an error in good sense like its current cover, its impact on this presidential campaign can be devastating. If you haven't seen it, you can find it almost everywhere and that is precisely the problem. With 24 hour a day news coverage, with the Internet, with all of the media we now have fixating on issues like this, this offensive cover will be available and talked about until something else comes along--and the worry is that something else will come along, also harming Obama's campaign.

When supposedly like-thinking, friendly sources like The New Yorker make such a catastrophic error in judgment, what chance is there? It's hard to believe that someone on the staff didn't see it and say "Hey, wait a minute!" Can the powers that be at the magazine live in such a bubble that they don't know how the rest of the country looks at things? Can they believe that everyone understands satire and gets the joke. I often don't get The New Yorker jokes.

I have subscribed to The New Yorker since I was a teenager, but feel I need to cancel it now unless they find someway to address this. How should The New Yorker make amends to the Obama campaign, which has said...

"The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said.

"But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree," he said in a statement.

And not just tasteless and offensive. It could also be seen as frightening, racist, or humorous without being satirical at all. It also reflects the feelings some Americans have about Obama.

McCain has said he would find it offensive too. So we all agree on this. Except The New Yorker.

My Town Monday-DETROIT NOIR

My book group read DETROIT NOIR for July. Not my idea since I knew they'd find it troubling--both the genre aspect and the way Detroit comes off in it.
Almost all of the women in this group were raised in Detroit when it was a city to be reckoned with. DETROIT NOIR reminded us once again that things have changed since 1965.

I said I wanted to look at Detroit in a kinder light, but this book was not the place to begin. I can thumb through it and find disturbing passages about Detroit in every story. Or even those set forty years in the past. That's as long as I've lived here. They remember another Detroit. I don't.

My group is not normally "noir" readers. Our typical selections are books like The Kite Runner, Reading Lolita in Tehran and Nickel and Dimed.

What was most remarkable about DETROIT NOIR, and I've read a lot of books in this series, is how dominant Detroit is. The city seems to overwhelm every story. No character or plot can outplay Detroit. I didn't find this to be the case in other volumes.

I think Eric Olsen and John Hocking did an excellent job in choosing the stories. And I say this as someone whose story was rejected. Not all of the stories are noir but every story in this book says something about Detroit. And that's a pretty fine achievement. It may not have been my group's favorite book, but it was good for us all to read it. Sometimes dark stories need to be told.

My Town Monday is the brain child of Travis Erwin, but this week check out Barrie Summy's blogsite at http://barriesummy.blogspot.com for other stories this week.

The Evil Back Story

Oh, it's awful. The struggle to write another novel. I'm reading a book recommended to me called Hooked by Les Edgerton. In it, he says to begin with the inciting incident, the scene where the story worthy problem occurs. (Why am I tempted to say sponge-worthy here?) Sort of applies, I guess.
And I did that. I have a nice opening which introduces the problem with a bang.
But that immediately takes me into back story. How did she get to this place is the next question that comes to my mind. I know back story in huge sections is a no-no but it often feels right.
I think it's because I am interested in the psychology of a character rather than his/her actions that "back story" is my go to place when I try to write a novel. And that psychology must be put in place for me to move on.
The only way out of this is to give my protagonist a story worthy problem at birth, I guess. Advice anyone?

The Summing Up, for Friday July 11, 2008

These books were chosen. Thanks to all the contributors.

Robert Gregory Browne, Control, William Goldman
Bill Crider, Death Tour, David J. Michael
Al Guthrie, Portrait in Smoke, Bill Ballinger
Woody Haut, Hard Rain Falling, Don Carpenter
Lesa Hostine, Bachelor Brother's Bed and Breakfast, Bill Richardson
Randy Johnson, Gone South, Robert McCammon
Claire Lamb, Kate Vaiden, Reynolds Price
Todd Mason, On Wings of Song, Thomas M. Disch
Craig McDonald, Four Corners of Night, Craig Holden
Karen E. Olson, Lockout, Lillian O'Donnell
Barrie Summy, The Sweet Second Season of Kitty Malone, Matt Cohen
Louise Ure, No Human Involved, Barabara Seranella

P.S. It is growing more difficult to come up with new people to participate in this as I enter the fourth month. I would most appreciate repeat performances, referrals or volunteers. I am quickly running through the blogging community and non-bloggers, by definition, are more private or remote. Thanks for your help. Of course, all things must come to an end at some point....

Back Alley Webzine

Hey, join me and a few other disreputable types in the Back Alley.

http://www.backalleywebzine.com/

FRIDAY's FORGOTTEN BOOKS, July 11, 2008

Robert Gregory Browne is the author of Kiss Her Goodbye
CONTROL by William Goldman
For those of you who have never heard of William Goldman, you might know him from his movies, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Princess Bride, and well as more recent work like his adaptations of Misery and The General's Daughter.

Before Goldman got into screenwriting, however, he was a novelist -- and a damn fine one at that. Marathon Man is probably one of the best thrillers ever written and I'll always consider it one of the novels that taught me how to write. Magic is another great one that was made into a thoroughly mediocre movie that flat out ruined the novel's excellent jump-out-of-your-chair twist.

But one of Goldman's very best books is all but forgotten, and that's CONTROL, which melds the thriller with other genres in ways that I can't describe because it would spoil the story for you. Let's just say that Goldman is the master of what he calls the "reversal" and this book has one of the biggest reversals you're bound to find.

Released in 1982, CONTROL is the story of an artist named Edith, a psychopath called Billy Boy, a couple of mismatched cops and so much more. And that's all I'm willing to tell you. I challenge anyone to read the first paragraph and put the book down. Unless your house is on fire, it will be pretty much impossible and you'll find yourself devoting very large chunks of your day to finishing CONTROL.

Al Guthrie is the author of Savage Night and Hard Man.

Portrait in Smoke by Bill Ballinger (1951)

A minor classic. A gem that shouldn't be. Reason I say that, character

motivation is weak throughout and that's usually a killer for me. But

Ballinger somehow manages to pull it off with a driven narrative and some

unusual characters. What's interesting is the character points-of-view used

throughout. It alternates between first person, in the shape of Dan April,

collection agent, and third person in the shape of Krassy Almaniski, psycho

femme fatale. A device used with increasing frequency these days, but I

don't know of too many examples from over 50 years ago. In the psycho

league, Krassy's right up there alongside Jim Thompson's Lou Ford and Horace

McCoy's protagonist in "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye". The story: well, Dan is

obsessed with tracing Krassy -- although the logic behind his obsession (he

saw her once as a kid and thought she was beautiful) is best simply accepted

and not analysed too closely. Dan tracks Krassy down, chapter by chapter,

from her youth to the present day. Every other chapter, we see (from

Krassy's viewpoint), what Dan doesn't know. When he finds her, eventually,

he's quickly and utterly smitten. Krassy behaves consistently, and the path

to ruin is complete. Or is it? If Goodis had written this the conclusion

would be inevitably bleak, but Ballinger serves up a clever ending.

Cheers, Al

Woody Haut is the author of Pulp Culture: Hardboiled Fiction and the Cold War and Heartbreak and Vine: The Fate of Hardboiled Writers in Hollywood.
Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter

First published by Harcourt in 1966, Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter would make a brief appearance on the fringes of the best-seller list. Unfortunately, after a handful of reprintings- the last a Ballantine paperback edition in 1987- the book pretty much vanished from sight. I remember briefly meeting Carpenter- it was Richard Brautigan who introduced us- at a San Francisco coffee house in the late 1960s. At the time I actually had no idea Carpenter was a novelist, much less one with a truly great novel under his belt. But then it was unlikely that such a hardboiled, street-wise rendering like Hard Rain Falling was going to qualify as a livre du jour in that particular time and place. After that initial success, in which he heralded as a major literary talent, Carpenter would continue to publish, only to succumb, like so many before him, to the lure of Hollywood, caught between embracing its promise of fame and fortune and rejecting its advances and accompanying compromises. So It’s hardly surprising that many remember Carpenter simply as the screenwriter of the 1973 cult movie Payday, in which Rip Torn plays a third-rate Hank Williams. It’s a film Carpenter co-produced with the late jazz writer and San Francisco Chronicle critic Ralph J. Gleason. Carpenter followed Payday with a screenplay based on Charles Bukowski’s novel Post Office, which, however enticing that might sound, would become yet another aborted Hollywood project.

It might have been published over forty years ago, but Hard Rain Falling reads like it could have been written yesterday. Built around the life of Jack Levitt, an orphan who grows up to be a drifter and constantly in trouble with the law, the book’s honesty, insight and lack of sentimentality make both the narrative and its protagonist heart-renderingly real: “He was buried inside his skin, bones, and nerves, and he would have to get out of there if he was to understand his pain. If it was pain. He knew people suffered agony, and he wondered if what he felt was agony. It did not seem like the descriptions of agony. He wondered if it wasn’t just self-pity again.” Moving from Portland pool halls to San Quentin, where Levitt falls in love with his cell-mate, to the mean streets of San Francisco, the novel, which takes place between 1929 and 1963, carries an intensity that perhaps only a young writer willing to pour out his soul can instill in their work.

In effect, Hard Rain Falling revises both the juvenile delinquent novel, so popular during the late 1940s, and the prison novel. In doing so Carpenter creates something unique, a coming of age street novel that unflinchingly examines race, class, male sexuality and the injustices perpetrated by the criminal justice system. In this way it can be classed alongside books by authors like Robert Tasker, Jack London, Clarence Cooper Jr, Chester Himes and Edward Bunker. Coming out of the Dreiser school of social realism, Hard Rain Falling is not only brutally honest, but also beautifully rendered. What’s more, no one, Walter Tevis and Richard Jessup included, writes more convincingly about the complex world of poker and pool-hustling. Though he would go on to publish some ten books, including at least three Hollywood novels, Carpenter was never able to recapture the magic of Hard Rain Falling. Sadly, in 1995, plagued by medical problems, and haunted by Brautigan’s suicide, Carpenter, at age 64, ended up shooting himself at his home in Mill Valley, California. As a reminder of how cruel and beautiful this world can sometimes be, Hard Rain Falling deserves greater recognition and a publisher willing to reprint what must surely constitute one of the best American novels to appear, however briefly, over the last fifty years.

Craig McDonald is the author of Head Games and Toros and Torsos.

Four Corners of Night by Craig Holden

I first heard of Craig Holden at a James Ellroy signing in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Holden was in the audience that rather cold night and Ellroy took the trouble to tout CH’s most recent novel — it was a rare and ringing endorsement on the part of the Demon Dog.

I secured a copy of The Four Corners of Night (1999) and was pole-armed. Night is always in my crime fiction Top 10; depending on mood, it often cracks my top five.

Set in a mythical city in northwestern Ohio — a kind of re-imagined and combined Toledo/Detroit — the novel turns on the uneasy axis of two cops and the woman who stands uneasily between them. It’s a classic triangular dynamic that informs everything from Bruce Springsteen’s noirish “Highway Patrolman,” to James Ellroy’s own watershed novel, The Black Dahlia.

When I read Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, I finished the novel so convinced Lehane’s River was informed and inspired by Holden’s Four Corners, I went looking for proof of concept. I found it in an interview Lehane gave during his promotional cycle for his then-latest-series entry Prayers for Rain; he had, he said, finished Holden’s novel “just last week.” Mystic River was unveiled in 2001.

That’s the kind of subtle classic Holden’s Four Corners of Night is — a novel that not only inspires other novels, but inspires novels that go on to inspire still other books.

The language sparkles from it’s richly evocative opening in an all too-real Denny’s along the Ohio-Michigan border (“‘Buck ninety-nine,’ Bank says. ‘Who can afford not to eat this shit at that price?’ He’s said this over the years maybe fifty times in this restaurant with me.”), to wonderfully evocative lines that touch poetry (“We have no business at this scene…standing in the river of some mother’s grief and feeling my own worthlessness.”).

Four Corner’s exploration of the ramifications of a child’s abduction pushed the boundaries of crime fiction to the far four corners; Holden’s book expanded the reach and breadth of crime fiction and shows that in the right hands, a crime novel can be both a page-turner, and an atmosphere-rich and wrenching character study.

Whenever the words won’t come — or if they come too easily — Four Corners of Night is one of the two or three books I consistently dip into for inspiration or humbling.

http://barriesummy.blogspot.com/

http://billcrider.blogspot.com/

http://randall120.wordpress.com/

http://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/

http://firstoffenders.typepad.com/offenders/

http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/

http://www.answergirlnet.blogspot.com/

http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com/

Too cynical for words

Have you become cynical and jaded from reading too much crime fiction?

I think I have. I started America, America by Ethan Canin--what I am sure is a brilliant novel about...well, America and politics. I have read other work by Canin in the past and admired and liked them.

But the characters in this novel were all just too damned nice, noble, polite to feel real. Even the stinking rich people were admirable. It didn't conform to my notion of a believable story, my notion of the world.

So it didn't work for me and I put it aside. Has reading too many books about the wretched of the earth ruined mainstream novels for you? Am I going to live in an Ellroy world from now on? What was the last book about nice people you liked?

Hear the fabulous Vicki Hendricks read "Must Bite"

Thanks to Aldo and Seth for making this happen. Right here: http://crimewav.com/

The 20th Century's Greatest Hits

Picked this up at a used book sale once and am finally getting to it and an odd little book it is. Paul Williams makes a list of what he considers the top forty artistic achievements of the last century. Some of them are what you'd expect ULYSSES by James Joyce, GRAVITY"S RAINBOW by Pynchon, ON THE ROAD by Kerouac, but most of them are quirky choices such as Krazy Kat Sunday page, "Horses" by Patti Smith, the directing and musical score for Leone's "For a Few Dollars More," WINNIE the POOH by A. A. Milne, "Sister Ray" by the Velvet Underground, "The Human Declaration of Rights" by Eleanor Roosevelt. Several paintings make his cut: Dance by Henri Matisse and Girl Before a Mirror by Picasso. Music's represented by Dylan (Renaldo and Clara) The Beach Boys (Pet Sounds) the Beatles (Things We Said Today) the Rolling Stones (Now!), Coltrane (Impressions Side 1)Hank Williams' Lost Highway are on there. Movies include "Gandhi," "Two-Lane Blacktop," and "Kundun" Well, there's more, but you get the idea. Each choice gets an essay to explain it.

What are some of the works of art you'd include on your 20th Century's Top Forty?

There's no television on his list, but I might include "Homicide: Life on the Streets" on mine. Too early for "The Wire."

Book Recommendation: Robbie's Wife by Russell Hill

I resisted this book for some time, fearing it would be a retread of The Postman Always Rings Twice. It was not.
In fact, it was barely about a crime at all. What it was, was an extremely well-written meditation on loneliness and love late in life. A mediation on the vulnerability this love demands. A look at how loneliness can make you act in certain ways.
It took its time developing the characters, in bringing you to the central conflict. Russell is apparently a poet and this is very evident.

Hill is very good at describing the sheep-farming business and the English coutryside but he does not get bogged down by it. His plot moves forward and when I got to the end, he surprised me twice. Highly recommended.

Does Age Matter?

Internet relationships seem fairly independent of age.
Common interests play a larger part. Many, not all, of the people I regularly correspond with here are much younger than I am. In real life, we would probably not be friends. We would always be aware that a huge age gap separated us. The younger person would not feel free to speak as bluntly. The older person feels they can never be as hip. Know what I mean?

We only have an avatar to go by here or the writer's actual words so age begins to fade. Or am I kidding myself. Does age matter in Internet chatter? In real life, do you talk this much to people a generation removed from you other than family members?

My Town Monday: Windsor, Canada, Detroit's Neighbor to the South

Probably most Canadians consider Windsor to be one of their lesser, if not the least, city and it's mostly because of its proximity to Detroit. We used to go to Windsor quite often since it's a 20 minute drive. Now with the agony of going across the border (especially the US side) we go very rarely. Adding a half hour onto the trip on each side is not attractive.

But on the fourth, we went to Windsor's charming but empty art gallery (museum) and then on to Amherstberg for lunch. Windsor has done a nice job of developing its waterfront (Detroit River), putting sculpture gardens, walking trails and playgrounds along it. But all of it is situated toward Detroit.

It you ask google images for pictures of Windsor, you get the Detroit skyline, taken from Windsor, sure, but not Windsor. All of the photos here are of Detroit. Detroit is not the kind of place you think of as dominant. But the car industry drives both cities and headquarters sit right on the Detroit River in the Renaissance Tower, looking across at Windsor.

Windsor has some good restaurants, some good music, a nice shopping district but a higher than normal crime rate for a city of its size in Canada. Detroit's influence again ,perhaps.

Sometimes when we get very angry at US politics, we contemplate moving to Windsor. But really, it's just a smaller Detroit. And we'd have to look at Detroit all the time anyway.














For all things wonderful on My Town Monday, see Travis Erwin at:http://traviserwin.blogspot.com/

Advice from the Masters: Elizabeth George

In her book, Write Away, one of the many things George advises is that you make a checklist of your main characters' traits before you begin to write. She calls it a character prompt sheet and keeps in by her WP before and as she's writing.

Her list includes such items as gestures when talking, gait, what does he/she laugh at. I wonder if this is common. I've been going on the premise that I will discover most of these things about my characters as I write. That I will start off with just a few things in my head and let the rest take shape. Which do you do? Do you know the these things before you begin a story or novel?

A Summing Up, Friday, July 4th.

Kids' Forgotten Books for Friday, July 4, 2008

Patti Abbott-The Return of the Twelves, Pauline Clarke
Steve Allan-Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury
Patrick Shawn Bagley, The Great Brain, John Fitzgerald
David Cranmer, Dig Alley Space Edxplorers' Series by Joseph Green
Bill Crider, The 21 Balloons, William Pene DuBois
Travis Erwin, Where the Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls
Lesa Holstine, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, Betty MacDonald; Snow Treasure, Marie McSwigan, The Happy Hollisters, Jerry West
Randy Johnson, The Mushroom Series, Eleanor Cameron
Steve Lewis, Don Sturdy on the Desert of Mystery, Victor Appleton
Brian Lindenmuth, The Mouse and His Child, Russell Hoban
Todd Mason, The Loner, Ester Wier
Terrie Farley Moran, The Paperbag Princess, Robert Munsch
James Reasoner, The Rocket's Shadow, John Blaine
Sandra Ruttan, Twenty and Ten, Claire Huchet Bishop and Janet Joly
Susan Smith, The Ghost Next Door, Wylly Folk St. John
Sarah Weinman, The Golden Road, L.M. Montgomery

Adult Forgotten Books for Friday, July 4, 2008

Todd Mason, Signal Through the Flames, Mitch Snyder and America' Homeless, Victoria Rader; The Pleasure Tube, Robert Onopa; The Moon's Wife, A.A. Attanasio
Chuck Nichols, The Real Revolution: The Global Story of American Independence, Marc Armstrong
Mike Ripley, Watcher in the Shadows, Geoffrey Householder
Kirk Russell, Cutter and Bone, Newton Thornberg
Gerald So, The Fifth Profession, David Morrell
Jay Tomio, Black Brillon, Matthew Hughes
Medora, Kristin Lavransdatter, Sigrid Undset

FRIDAYS FORGOTTEN BOOKS: KIDS' VERSION

The Return of the Twelves by Pauline Clark

Written in 1962, this was a book I read to my children. I usually chose books with a fantastical element since they didn’t choose such books on their own.

Together we read Tom’s Midnight Garden, Tuck Everlasting, The Indian in the Cupboard and so on.

The Return of the Twelves is a favorite.

Max finds a box of twelve toy soldiers in the attic. The soldiers come to life at night and Max eventually learns the soldiers were the playthings of the Bronte children who endowed them with a magical ability to come alive. (Branwell Bronte actually wrote a story about his soldiers called “The History of the Boys”).

Tying the story to a real and literary family was especially delightful to me and leads young (or old) readers to an interest in the Brontes. Highly recommended.

Here are a few more to go up on the Fourth.

http://davidcranmer.blogspot.com/

http://geraldso.blogspot.com/2008/07/friday-4th-forgotten-book.html

http://www.womenofmystery.net/

http://readspace.wordpress.com/2008/07/03/forgotten-author-for-children-and-teens-wylly-folk-st-john/

http://barriesummy.blogspot.com/

http://billcrider.blogspot.com/

http://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com/

http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com/

http://patrickshawnbagley.blogspot.com/2008/06/fridays-forgotten-childrens-books.html

http://www.sarahweinman.com/confessions/2008/06/friday-forgotte.html

http://noirwriter.blogspot.com/

http://sandrablabber.blogspot.com/

http://traviserwin.blogspot.com/

http://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=665

http://www.mysterybookspot.com/brianlindenmuth/

http://randall120.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/fridays-forgotten-books-for-kids/

http://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2008/06/friday-forgotten-books-junior-edition.html

There may be an adult forgotten books on Rap Sheet: http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/
and here http://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/
http://www.fantasybookspot.com/medora/?p=43
http://www.fantasybookspot.com/jaytomio/2008/07/forgotten-fridays-black-brillion-by-matthew-hughes/#comment-1199

Woman of Mystery Challenge: Two Sentence Tuesday

Two lines you wrote; two lines you read:

It was a serious office, not the kind of place where suburban women were coddled. Nor a place where kindly public relation gestures were made. (Me),

I took a deep breath. "I watch the way your neck rises from your shoulders and the way you move barefoot across the floor and I try to memorize the way you move so I can come up here and write it down."
Robbie Wife by Russell Hill

I Said I'd Never Do It Again

but ....after a long talk with my child, I decided to try another novel. I'll probably still send the last one out more, but not yet. Am I sabotaging the second novel by letting too many people read the first one? I've kept it to just six agents/editors so far. Maybe more is a mistake.

Find a true story with a good arc and make it yours, Megan advised. Write your way into what's already there so the strength and story in the original material can guide you. So I went home, looked at some archives and found a story that perfectly suits an interest of mine: mothers and daughters in trouble. I have 12 pages that I didn't have Saturday. Of course, I had to put my first try at writing a ghost story aside.

Of course, the mother's a real bitch already, but maybe if the daughter isn't such an unlikable character it'll fly. Am I destined to write about bitchy women? Probably.

Writing a practice novel isn't such a bad thing, I guess. Do you have one on your hard drive? If I count the novel in stories from 2006, I have two practice novels. Oh, well. Maybe practice will make perfect. Someday.