Top Ten Reasons Why I Don't Finish a Book

In preparation for the horrific task of going back over my ms another time, I’ve been trying to pinpoint at what point an agent/editor would stop reading the ms. and why. And along with that I’ve been thinking about why I stop reading books. Hence:

Top Ten Reasons Why I Don’t Finish Books

I only finish about 30% of the books I start and it’s mainly because of quirks in my own reading habits. But sometimes I can pinpoint the reason. I’m making this list mostly to help myself as a writer so I’d be pleased if you added your reasons for not finishing a book on to the list. I have a friend or two that finish everything they start but most people probably put books aside. Why?

1. I put books aside because I find the writing itself unappealing. Either it’s poorly written, too dense or lacks grace. I read because I love language so I need to find some nicely put together sentences.

2. I find the subject matter itself unattractive. If there is too much talk about money, or arms deals or child torture, I will probably not finish it. (Maybe these are the very things that make you keep reading though) What don’t you like to read about?

3. There are too many POVs introduced too rapidly. I need to latch onto one person for a while and begin to see the world through his/her eyes. If each two-page chapter switches POV, I feel uncommitted and at sea. Who was that guy two chapter back? Do I need to remember he’s on a bus? Is the old man on page 5 Romaninan or Ukranian. I hate thumbing back.

4. Someone recommends a supposedly better book, says I have to read it and thrusts it in my hands. And similarly:

5. A book I have reserved at the library comes in and I only have two weeks to read it.

6. I am halfway though the book and it seems too familiar, and guess what, I remember I read it already. Or I didn’t read it but I read a book too much like it. Or a lot of books I’ve read are too much like it.

7. The print is too small or too light. This is a new one and is almost surely a function of my age. Is darker print really that much more expensive? (I also avoid blogs where the print is too small and dense).

8. The book begins to feel inauthentic. Characters start to act out of character. I lose a sense of place or period. There is no psychological underpinning for what the characters are doing. Events seems arbitrary--the reason I stopped watching LOST.

9. The story seems too drawn out or too rushed. Like the author was assigned a certain number of pages for the book.

10. The books is due at the library and I just don’t like it enough to pay the fines. I buy around 100 books a year, but I take twice as many out of the library. Of that 300 books, I probably read 75. Twenty years ago, I read 150 books a year. Largest reason: the Internet.

What’s the worst sin for you?

Pick One

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mc3GQmGGms

A Brief Word

It's Pschobilly Monday and time to do what you know you wanna do--go out and buy Yellow Medicine by A.N. Smith. Preferred buying place is Barnes and Noble online or a brick store, or run over to your local independent bookstore as another good choice.

My Town Monday: A Book Review-The Virgin Suicides

My Town Monday Book Project:

The Virgin Suicides

I don’t exactly live in Detroit. My house is about eight blocks from the city limits and in an upper-middle class suburb. I have mixed feelings about this locale. Good schools, good city services, leafy streets, but a right-wing newspaper, Republican voting, certain limitations in what's available.

Since I work in Detroit and am there for cultural activities, ballgames, restaurants, I count myself a Detroiter. But for the purposes of this assignment from Travis Erwin: reviewing a book written about my community, I chose one written about Grosse Pointe: The Virgin Suicides. Most Grosse Pointers prefer Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides second novel, a more conventional novel despite its subject matter: hermaphroditism.

But I greatly prefer Eugenides first book The Virgin Suicides. Stylistically especially, I find it enthralling. Who else has written a first novel in the collective voice of a group of teenage boys?

The Virgin Suicides is the story of five sisters and the effects of their suicides, one after the other, on their community, and especially on the boys, who narrate the novel. The boys are under the sisters’ spell and watch helplessly as their mother, the community, the church, the school drive the sisters relentlessly toward their deaths. In particular, we see the mother, Mrs. Lisbon, the traditional Catholic mother from that era, as she tightens their leash in an attempt to control her daughters, pushing one after the other off the ledge. It's easy to see the seductiveness of suicide in this novel, how it looks like the only way out. The stakes are not so high for people under twenty, the finality is not apparent yet.

Eugenides attended a private school and experienced an even more privileged Grosse Pointe than most people in the community. But I think he captures the ambiance of a slightly lower echelon very well. But the book's greatest strength is its style. It's poetic. It's heartbreaking.

The Virgin Suicides was made into a movie by Sophia Coppola but filmed in Canada. I like the movie quite a bit but I like the book more.

Check out other book reviews about Home Towns at:http://traviserwin.blogspot.com/

Happy Mother's Day, Mom

Three things you need to know about my mother

1) She never says anything bad about anyone except commentators on Fox News.
2) She never once told me I was making mistakes in how I raised my children (even though I sometimes was).
3) She's one of the bravest, least materialistic and least complaining people I know. (Okay so five things).

Happy Mother's Day, Mom. I love you.

Bad Guys

Here's a writerly question for a Saturday.

Do you sometimes have trouble judging how bad your bad guys can be and still feel real? In a similar vein, if you want your victims to earn their death on some level, do you wonder how annoying/narcissistic/piggish they should be.
In a story I'm working on now, I wanted two kids to kill someone. Try as I might, they just weren't the type to do this. Maybe it's because I don't understand child killers.
So I had to change the story to make them unwilling accomplices to a killer. I'm not sure if it's going to work even with that change.
In another recent story, I didn't want the reader to feel sorry for the vics at the end. It was difficult to get just the right amount of despicability into the tale without it overtaking it completely. What do you wrestle with? Do you feel your story has to psychologically informed or do you let the action carry it?

A Summing Up

One Stop Shopping for Friday, May 9, 2008

(Please Advise if I Forgot Anyone)

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

FRIDAYS: Forgotten Books

FRIDAYS: Forgotten books:

Roseanna by Maj Sjowal and Per Wahloo

I picked this novel because it was the first in the Martin Beck series and the first of their books I read. But most of their novels would do equally well. The novels were intended to portray the decay of modern Scandinavian society from a left-wing vantage point and through the lens of the police procedural. Sjowall and Wahloo were husband and wife and the books step inside both Swedish society and the mind of police inspector, Martin Beck. As a twenty-something reader at the time, I had little knowledge of Sweden outside of Bergman movies—and this was something quite different.

In Roseanna, Martin Beck, a homicide detective with the Stockholm police force is stuck in a loveless marriage. Stockholm bureaucracy is similarly disappointing. This book introduces us to Beck, and follows his painstaking investigation into the rape, beating, and the subsequent drowning of an American tourist named Roseanna. Some critics think the team’s writing got better over time, but I think this is a damned fine first novel. The other nine will not disappoint either. Maybe not forgotten but…

Or try these some of these:

http://billcrider.blogspot.com/2008/05/forgotten-books-passing-strange-by.html

http://billcrider.blogspot.com/2008/05/book-you-have-to-read-assistant-bernard.html

http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/

http://deadman-r2.blogspot.com/

http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

http://danielhatadi.blogspot.com/

http://eviljwinter.wordpress.com/

http://crimetimecafe.blogspot.com/

http://humanunderconstruction.blogspot.com/

http://keithraffel.typepad.com/dot_dead_diary/

http://www.womenofmystery.net/

http://asalted.blogspot.com/2008/05/dont-forget.html

http://crimealwayspays.blogspot.com/

http://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2008/05/friday-forgotten-book-gary-jenningss.html

http://www.mysterybookspot.com/brianlindenmuth/fridays-forgotten-books-pt-3/

http://la-noir.blogspot.com/

http://noirwriter.blogspot.com/

http://eudaemoniaforall.blogspot.com/2008/05/forgotten-book-friday-fine-and-private.html

Please let me know if you’d like to recommend a book next Friday. I have only so many veins to tap. Most of these links won't be up until tomorrow and one or two might not turn up at all. Thanks and Happy Mother's Day.

Hi-jacked in Detroit

I’ve been bitching all week about my blog problems--white space and pictures disappearing and today I woke up to find my blog had been hijacked by some psychobilly dude from Minnesota. If I don’t let him get a few words in here, who knows what will happen. I don’t want to find out….

"Last stop: J.D. Rhoades' What Fresh Hell is This?"

We're all anxious on the way up to Detroit to pick up accomplished literary and crime fiction short story write Patricia Abbott (and now a Derringer Winner, too). I mean, will this unruly crew of "violence artists" be a bit too much for her? Her work tends to outclass some of ours a bit. Will we be acceptable in our torn jeans and rumpled blood-stained T-shirts (don't ask)? Well, we park out front to find Patricia gut-punching a mugger, so all our fears are abated.

Patricia Abbott's work has appeared all over the web now--Storyglossia, Thuglit.com, Spinetingler, Demolition, plenty of others. And she's also finding homes for her stories in the print world, places like Bayou, Fourteen Hills, and Murdaland. Why's that? Because she gives you great characters, people you want to follow around, see what sort of trouble they'll get into. Take this line from "The Trouble with Trolls": "Patrick climbed into the car on Tuesday evening wearing the damp look Denny associated with him since he'd begun tending tropical fish." Can't you feel it too? Or from "Ric with No K": "They say my mother was a dreamy sort of girl. It was hard to talk to her about anything real, but she knew every fact about Demi Moore and Tom Cruise. She grew up on those stars. She didn't even need to see their movies after a while. Jessie just made her own movies up in her head." Yep, kind of like the great cult crime writer Charles Willeford, who Larry Block praised for being able to invent compelling and intricate characters with only a few surprising details. You see it all over Patti's fiction (and forthcoming in a really great piece we're going to publish in Plots with Guns soon). It's about the people, damn it! It's not about the puzzle or the plot or the gimmicks. It's about the people dealing with the consequences of crime--others and their own.

Right up my alley. I also write literary short stories in addition to crime fiction, and I often blend them in together, genre labels be damned. The reason I like reading and writing "literary" crime fiction (actually, I like putting "literary" right next to "pulp". Something sweet about it) is so that I can see how characters respond when pushed to their limits. What do they do? How do they feel about it? That's the coolest, and I hope I pulled it off in Yellow Medicine. Billy is weighed down with bad choices, and then even worse choices to cover up the bad ones. But he's still alive, still kicking, and trying to find a way to make it all okay...for him. And I just had to see where it all ended up. You should, too. Psychobilly Monday (May 12) is now closer than it way yesterday. Can you wait that long? Is the anticipation killing you?

Patricia climbs aboard the Hummer-sine and starts passing around a photo of her daughter, Megan, holding her newly-won Edgar. Truly proud. And if you think Megan can write some pretty twisted noir, remember that there's a source for that appreciation...and she's on the road trip with us. This net leg, though, will test us all, sometimes in ways we might not be prepared for. Where are we going? Newcastle. England. We'll be picking up...(even his name sounds dangerous)...the shining star himself, Ray Banks.

Driving time: A fortnight!

Tune for the leg: "Bad Luck" by Social Distortion
***

--

Is Rush Subverting this Election

By sending Republican voters to the polls to cross over and vote for Hillary? Do you think this is a permissible technique? Should registered Republicans (or Dems) be able to cross over and vote in a primary with a goal of producing the weaker candidate? Should NYT columnists be able to champion the candidacy of someone they would never support in the general election in an editorial piece (Kristol)? Where did this system go wrong? Why don't we see the flaws before they wreak havoc and subvert the people's choice? Or am I naive to think the people should have a voice?

Neglected Films

For Steve Allan's Neglected Films

Do The Right Thing by Spike Lee (1989)

When Do the Right Thing premiered in 1989 it was considered to be one of the most controversial movies of all time. It certainly was one of the most political movies ever made, remaining so until today. It forced viewers to examine racism in a way never put on a screen before. It forced viewers to examine how violence can emanate from a fundamental misunderstanding between groups of people. People who don’t bother to try to understand each other. It was innovative in its look, in its use of music, in its parallel story lines. None of the characters is blameless; none is completely at fault.

Spike Lee’s place in the pantheon of directors has faded a bit since 1989, I think. He's spread himself a bit thin with a myriad of projects undertaken as one of the few black directors. Perhaps now, during Obama’s drive for the Democratic nomination, it’s a good time to remember Do the Right Thing. And to do it.

My Town Monday

We think of violence at schools as a recent phenomenon, but this incident occurred 75 years ago in a city an hour outside of Detroit.
In 1926 in Bath, Michigan, Andrew Kehoe unsuccessfully fought a long battle against a tax increase to pay for the towns' new school. He won a position as treasurer of the school board to aid his cause, but the city retained the tax despite his efforts. Kehoe claimed that with the added tax burden he would lose his farm and asked that he be hired to work as the school's custodian. The school board agreed.
Kehoe seemed to be a diligent custodian. He was seen doing electrical work in the building along with his janitorial duties. He seemed particularly willing to take on electrical work, saving the school the cost of an electrician.
On 18 May 1927, just after morning bell at the school, 300 pounds of dynamite wired in the basement exploded. The north wing of the school was entirely demolished in one blast. People four miles away reported hearing the noise. Help had to be got on foot since telephones were scarce. Not until noon was a full scale rescue effort mounted. Kehoe pulled up at that time and spotting the superintendent, Emory E. Huyck, aiding with the rescue, and called him over. As Huyck walked over to the car, Kehoe pulled a rifle from his truck and fired into a bundle of dynamite in his truck. The resulting blast killed Kehoe, Huyck, and 7 others.
Forty-four were dead, 30 of those were children. Another 50 to 90 were wounded. Not a family in the area went untouched by the tragedy. The massacre of Bath Michigan made the front page on 20 May, along side news of Charles Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic flight.But the story went on a bit longer. That day they discovered the Kehoe farm had also been destroyed, his wife slain. Horses in the stables had been hobbled with bailing wire so they couldn't escape. There was a sign hung waiting, which read "Criminals are made, not born."
The Bath School Disaster held the title of the worst bombing incident in the US up until 1995's Oklahoma City bombing, and suffered a small historical revival in the time after the Columbine School incident.FOR LINKS TO OTHER MY TOWN MONDAY BLOGS: http://traviserwin.blogspot.com/

.

A Summing Up

One stop shopping for May 1, 2008
Friday's Forgotten Books...

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

Congratulations

To the Edgar winners (and nominees). Didn't Sarah Weinman do a fabulous job?

Fridays Forgotten Books, Week Two: Here's a new group of books to consider. I thank everyone who agreed to do this.

http://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com/2008/05/book-you-have-to-read-seven-faces-max.html

http://faustfatale.livejournal.com/

http://randomactsofunkindness.blogspot.com/

http://noirwriter.blogspot.com/

http://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2008/05/friday-forgotten-book-avram-davidson.html

http://crimealwayspays.blogspot.com/2008/04/thieves-journal.html

http://geraldso.blogspot.com/

http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

http://thenarrowmargin.blogspot.com/2008/04/today-is-friday-larry-brown.html

http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/

http://writingneuroses.blogspot.com/

http://inforquestioning.blogspot.com/

http://bofexler.blogspot.com/

http://crimespace.ning.com/profile/BrianL

http://sandrablabber.blogspot.com/

http://katrinadkimble.blogspot.com/

http://jenniferarcher.blogspot.com/

PLEASE REMIND ME

what it was I liked about Gerard Depardieu? I saw him in the film Nathalie the other night and he seemed to walk through the part. (A very strange movie if you've never seen it). I always thought Depardieu might lose something in translation but what film should I go to to be reminded of his greatness? He's made about a hundred films so maybe someone can come up with one.

If anyone other than the people I have been in touch with plans to post a book recommendation tomorrow, please advise.
Many names have been used to describe the project so I am going to go with Friday's Forgotten Books. And if anyone wants to do one next week, let me know. Or any week. I'll be happy to put a link to your blog.

What Scares You the Most?

If you think yesterday's pictures of Detroit were scary, wait until you see this. Boxing kangaroos scare me to death. I remember an episode of Family Ties where the entrance of a kangaroo sent me fleeing, much to my kids amusement.

What seemingly innocuous object or element in a story/movie can frighten you?

With my husband, it's houses where mass murders have taken place.

My Town Monday: Detroit's Real Face

I bet you're thinking, my city has houses like this, but try four thousand of them. Imagine a city where until recently, there was not a working pharmacy, a movie theater, a decent grocery store.

In many ways, I’ve been hiding the real Detroit from you these past two months: showing you a Detroit via the city’s visitor’s bureau. I haven’t included recent headlines about: schools failing, casinos failing, the mayor failing, the infrastructure failing, the city government failing—a city in decline from top to bottom. This is a brief look at that Detroit, which hurts me to post although it's the only Detroit I've known since coming here in 1970 as a twenty-two year old.

Detroit began its downward spiral fifty years ago. Before the riots, before the attempts to bus kids to school, before it was clear Asia would rival Detroit in the car market, before all of those demonstrable, chartable things, Detroit began to fall apart.

After the war, Detroit was one of the first U.S. cities to experience suburban flight, fueled by racial tension that began with several riots during the 1940s. Between 1940 and 1960, the proportion of blacks in the population grew to one-third and the white middle-classes began their inexorable flight. By 1998, 78 percent of those living in the suburbs were white, while 79 percent of those in the inner city were black with vast disparities of income. Polarization in Detroit was the most exaggerated in the country. Today, one third of the entire city area lies derelict. Countless buildings have been demolished. Four thousand of those still standing are vacant and abandoned: locked, boarded and walled-up, waiting for their turn at implosion. Street signs are rusting away. Grass grows over the pavements. In certain places, the city looks almost rural, even attracting rural game and birds.

In spite of this, attempts at re-urbanization are being undertaken. Detroit is finally putting up affordable housing and rebuilding its downtown. New stadiums dominate the downtown. Strip malls, a curse in most areas, bring needed stores and jobs to the city. There is talk of a light rail system. A river walk now connects the riverfront downtown. But continuing improvement depends on an improved economy. Will that take place?

FOR LINKS TO OTHER MY TOWN MONDAY BLOGS: http://traviserwin.blogspot.com/

HELP! I can't see.

Are those word verifications blocks getting harder and harder or is it just my eyes? (I am having surgery this week). Sometimes I like to screw with it and see how easy it will make it after 5-6 tries. Maybe it's getting even.

Things That Trigger My Endorphins.

First the book, Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteredge because I wonder if this happens to anyone else. Do you read passages of prose that are so sharp and true that it sends you immediately to your computer, thinking you have found the secret to writing? Does it immediately inspire your "voice" to start speaking. This happened to me with the second story of this novel in stories. It practically brought me to my knees in adulation. I liked her other two books very much but I think this one may be in a class by itself.
Two good movies, too. The Year My Parents Went on Vacation deals with the crackdown on Communists in Brazil in 1970, setting it against Brazil's bid for the World Cup. The Visitor deals with the U.S. crackdown on illegal immigrants after 9-11. Neither government comes off looking very good, sad to say. Both lovely movies though. Isn't it great when literature can move you?

The Finale of the first FRIDAYS--Yesterdays' Picks

I wanted to round up yesterday's picks for one-stop shopping for those who have a limited amount of time to visit blogs, but more time to read books. What a wonderfully diverse selection they were too. Thanks for participating and I hope everyone in all genres will jump onboard in the coming weeks. If you don't have a blog but would like to recommend a book, email me and I'll post your recommendation on my blogs on FRIDAYS. Also if you're going to post one on your blog and would like me to give the link, that's fine too.

Thanks. I'm off to find a few of these.

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

FRIDAYS: The Book You Have to Read

This is the first of what I optimistically hope will become Friday recommendations of books we love but might have forgotten over the years. I have asked several people to help me by also remembering a favorite book. Their blog sites are listed below. I also asked each of them to tag someone to recommend a book for next Friday. I'm worried great books of the recent past are sliding out of print and out of our consciousness. Not the first-tier classics we all can name, but the books that come next. Here's my choice.

Desperate Characters by Paula Fox

It's difficult to remember, thirty years on, New York in the seventies, The City was facing bankruptcy, the streets were dangerous, frequent strikes left unattended garbage for the rodents, buildings crumbled. Paula Fox's novel Desperate Characters perfectly captures that time along with the similarly disintegrating marriage of Sophie and Otto Bentwood. The story begins with an unexpected cat bite. "Because it's savage," Otto answers Sophie's puzzled, "why?" It was a cat she was trying to feed that bit her. This well-intentioned act, this McGuffin, sends the couple off on a weekend odyssey, where ominous events continue to haunt the childless couple. They find little solace in each other and there is no easy resolution at the end. The quiet desperation that suffuses their story is heart-breaking. The writing is haunting, lucid, and succinct.
Fox has also written two books about her life (Borrowed Finery and The Coldest Winter), a few other novels (The Widow's Children) and many children's books. But nothing is finer than this one for me.

Check out other recommendations here:

http://billcrider.blogspot.com/
http://bofexler.blogspot.com/
http://anthonyneilsmith.typepad.com/crimedog_one_the_internet/
http://sandrascoppettone.blogspot.com/
http://patrickshawnbagley.blogspot.com/
http://sandrablabber.blogspot.com/
http://josephinedamian.blogspot.com/
http://traviserwin.blogspot.com/
http://randomactsofunkindness.blogspot.com/

http://eudaemoniaforall.blogspot.com/

http://crimespace.ning.com/profile/BrianL

Gerald So, take it away.

Generating Story Ideas

Well, I said I preferred writing short stories but sometimes the ideas dry up. Then I ask my husband and he invariably suggests something that just won't work for me. His ideas are always conceptual--for instance, last night he suggested that I write a story where suddenly homosexual men and women are able to give birth and what's the impact of that on society. You can see he's a theorist, can't you.
For me though, story ideas never come from such a big concept. They usually come when the first line of a story mysteriously pops into my head. Or when I see something going on in front me that's interesting.
What about you? How do ideas come to you?
Is it ever the big idea of my husbands? Is it usually based on a real life event or something smaller.
This line popped into my head last night and I'll begin this story today. ---Georgie comes for me at 8:30 every morning.--- I don't know who Georgie is or why he comes but I'll find out soon.
It's a start.

Sleeping Dogs by Ed Gorman

Yesterday I mentioned this book in a meme. Last night, I decided I wanted to say more about it than the five lines that challenge allowed.

Most books about politics tend to be thrillers. A quiet, incisive meditation on the seductiveness of political power, the people it attracts, and the way it all plays out is unusual. But Sleeping Dogs by Ed Gorman is exactly that. No plots to blow up the White House unfold; no bio-terrorists loom. Instead, this novel looks at an Illinois Senate race from the perspective of political consultant, Dev Conrad, an operative who’s realistic about what politicians are like. Dev stays in the game though it often sickens him. He’s good at it, and on some level, he likes the political arena, always hoping to find a politician he can promote for more than a paycheck.

Sleeping Dogs has a cast of characters that turns out to be multifaceted and complicated. No one is exactly what he/she first appears to be. In Sleeping Dogs, the actions are in proportion to the actors, each scene inexorably follows the one before it.

I hope we run into Dev Conrad again, working for a politician he can like. One of the most interesting questions posed in the novel was this: what do you do if you like the voting record and the political stance of a candidate, but not the person him/herself? That’s a question we need to think about. This was a terrific book.

The Quaker State

Where it's all turned to guns and roses. And where being "soft" is the worst insult you can hurl at someone. It's as if some Republican operative has controlled this nominating process for the Dems. Like some evil puppet master seized the strings about two months ago. It couldn't be worse. I am sick with worry that the Democratic Party has insured a Republican victory in November
by making both candidates look desperate, nasty and out of step.

What do you think? Does any of it matter as we possibly head into a Depression? Should we be looking for a Roosevelt instead of any of these candidates?

Meme me up, Scottie

I have been tagged by Peter Rozovsky at Detectives Beyond Borders with the following meme:
1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

My answers:1) The book is Sleeping Dogs by Ed Gorman

2) I have just opened it to page 123.
3) I have counted off the first five sentences, which got me to:
4) "Gabe, in his graying ponytail and granny glasses sat at his desk with his feet up reading the Rolling Stone Reader. At least, he wasn't doing any online gambling at the moment, The great Marist who fell for the worse sucker game of all, gambling.
(I think this is a nice little hint on what the book is about).
5 I tag, with apologies, Christa Miller, Graham Powell, Clair Dickson, Steve Allen and Aldo Calgagno.

My Town Monday: Pewabic Pottery

Pewabic Pottery was founded in 1903 by Mary Chase Perry Stratton at the height of the Arts and Crafts movement in the U.S. In 1991, the building and its contents were moved to E. Jefferson, where they still sit today. Works produced at the pottery can be found across the country including the National Shrine in D.C. and at Herald Square in New York.

Pieces produced at Pewabic Pottery are especially valued for their distinctive glaze. Today, the Pottery continues to grow as a museum, an educational institution, as a shop and as an important part of the Detroit art community. Pewabic Pottery still reflects the vision of its founder and many of the most popular work produced here are in Arts and Crafts style-emphasizing nature, classic children’s stories, animals. Their lovely tiles graces many homes, schools and buildings in the Detroit area.

Pewabic is Chippewa Indian term for "clay with a copper color" according to an article on the National Park Service website.
http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/detroit/d5.htm (Thanks, Tim).

FOR LINKS TO OTHER MY TOWN MONDAY BLOGS: http://traviserwin.blogspot.com/

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

This was a really cute movie. Funny and nice and smarter than it had to be.
It gave its characters more complexity than this type of picture usually does.

My new pet peeve though: people talking on their cells in the theater and then recounting their conversation to the person sitting next to them. Argh!

RAISING THE DEAD

In some ways the last few weeks have been very rewarding. Four stories have been accepted for publication, two of them in places I really hoped to crack. But in other ways, it's been a bust. Four agents and one editor have passed on the book manuscript. Three agents wouldn't say why, one, as I recounted already here, hated the protagonist, and the editor told me I had a well-written mainstream novel, not a crime novel. I know five people's opinions are not enough, but I have a very clear sense I have written a novel that straddles genres in a time when that's a no-no.
Do I go back and make it more mainstream? This would probably be the easiest solution. Do I try to ramp up the crime elements--I can't really think how to do this without adding a second story-line. Do I put it aside, figuring in six months it might become clearer. Do I continue sending it out? Do I ditch the whole think and regard it as a practice novel?
Maybe I am strictly a short story writer and the whole enterprise was a misstep. Alice Munro only wrote one novel and it wasn't very good. Not that I'm comparing myself to her but you see the point.
What would you do?

The Relentless Hitman

Joe Don Baker plays a relentless and "happy in his job" killer in this film from 1973. (Yes, we are on an early seventies roll right now). Of course, it reminded me of the character in No Country for Old Men, or The Terminator, if we can fault an android for his nature. And, going back, Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark) in Kiss of Death.
There are lots of hitmen in recent movies. EW did a story on it not too long ago. But the hitman who really loves his work, like Joe Don Baker did in Charley Varrick is somewhat unusual. Or isn't it? What other ones am I forgetting?

Groundhog Day for Hillary and Obama

This is not a putdown of PA. For goodness sake, it's my home state. It is a discussion of how a month anywhere can distort your agenda, which I think has happened here. Love PA, hate the current method of choosing candidates that dumped these two here for all this time.

You remember the movie Groundhog Day, of course. How every day was the same in Punxsutawney, PA for Bill Murray's newsman. So it is now, after three weeks in the foothills of Central Pennsylvania, for Hillary and Obama. The same blueplate special (meatloaf most days) at the Somerset Dinner. The same three former steelworkers or coal miners showing up at the VFW luncheon chat. The same motels with moldy carpetting and a leaky window. I lived here for part of my life. I travelled back and forth across this terrain for the next forty years. Nobody wants to richocet along the turnpike and through those mountain tunnels too often unless you're born to the life. Newcomers lose too much oxygen. The relief in hitting Philly or Pittsburgh is palpable.

After a while in Central, PA, any outsider would say stupid things. You might claim you went hunting with your father and the right to bear arms is pretty damned important. You'd talk about bitterness and clinging to your gun and church. After all, churches and hunting are the primary recreational options here. They become part of your speech pattern. You forget a world beyond this one exists.

And the other candidate, the one who cares not an iota about these people, speaks of elitism. But nobody takes him up on it. Nobody says how out of touch he is. The Battle for Pennsylvania makes him look reasonable--which he is not.

Come out of the foothills, Hillary and Obama. Remember that Central Pennsylvania is just a state of mind. Just leave that gun behind.

My Town Monday: Made in Detroit by Paul Clemens

In 2005, Doubleday published Made in Detroit by Paul Clemens. It received excellent reviews and went on to be chosen a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times.

The book details Clemens’ childhood growing up on the eastside of Detroit in the nineteen eighties in a city that was almost entirely black. His father worked in auto industry-related jobs, his mother mostly raised her children, taking the occasional housecleaning job in affluent suburbs. Clemens love for his parents shines through on every page. Listening to his account of his father's ability to shift gears without use of a clutch is a favorite section of the book for me.

The work also deals with the Coleman Young mayoral years, which Clemens faults with breeding an “us against them” mentality in the larger Detroit area. The book was brutally honest and beautifully written. Some readers found his picture of Detroit troubling, but he never claimed to speak to every experience, just his own.

Clemens went on to contribute several op-ed pieces to the New York Times and local Detroit papers. But with two children to support, Clemens continued working at his job as Assistant to the Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wayne State University. He wanted to be involved in the lives of his wife and children when he had a spare moment so the writing got put aside.

Last week, Paul was awarded a Guggenheim to our great joy. Hopefully, he will now have the opportunity to follow Made in Detroit up with another piece of writing. How often does a kid from a blue-collar, Catholic family without a Ph.D. get a Guggenheim? If you haven't read Made in Detroit, it's worth looking for. It's sad, funny, frustrating and authentic, just like Detroit.

FOR LINKS TO OTHER MY TOWN MONDAY BLOGS: http://traviserwin.blogspot.com/

Dreams

I had a dream last night where one man was holding me down while another carved "Jesus
Loves" on my toes. Was this


1. Proof that I have been reading and writing too many crime stories?
2. A new story idea?
3. Punishment for putting a comment on someone's blog that people read the Bible too much?
4. An invitation, albeit a nasty one, to come back to the fold?
5. A bit of undigested potato?

Does This Happen to You?

Don't you hate it when a very improbable first line for a story pops into your head? It happens quite regularly to me. This one was generated by a comment from Todd Mason a few days ago and now it's stuck in my head like a old Motown song:

No one knew when the day began that it would end with us eating Martin.

Now where do you go with that? What lines have you eventually discarded or, better yet, worked out?

Would anyone care to add a second line to this tale? Maybe you can point me in the right direction.

The Seventies

Little did I know when I was staying home with two small children in the seventies that Hollywood was making some the best movies in cinematic history. This sort of movie is only made by independent film makers now. Steven Spielberg taught Hollywood at the end of this decade that they should only be concerned with blockbusters and they learned that lesson well.
I spent the last two nights watching two of them: Payday and Electric Glide in Blue. Both recount a few days in the lives of their protagonist and things don't turn out too well in either movie. They're beautifully filmed, scored, edited.
What you notice most is the pace of these dark movies,
Because we all had so much more time in the 70s, the director/and or writer was in no hurry . We got to see the characters develop over 120 minutes. I especially liked Payday-- recommended by my daughter--I'd never heard of it although I like Rip Torn a lot. Robert Blake was also very fine in Electric Glide although I'm not so fond of him nowadays. If you haven't seen these, both made around 1972, give them a try.

What are your favorite 70s films? I may have missed them too.

Am I Nothing More Than a Killing Machine?

At some point in the movie, Stranger Than Fiction, the character played by Emma Thompson worries about the number of characters she’s killed off in her novels over the years. Of course, in her case, she’s come to believe that her character, played in the film by Will Farrell, is now a living breathing person. But do you ever give this any thought? Do you wonder if your writing is too blood-thirsty? Or that you watch movies or read books and feel little remorse at the body count? Do you watch Dexter and don't feel a bit guilty for loving it?

I have killed off about a dozen characters in my stories. They have died by a variety of methods, none pleasant. Do you ever pull back from this either in reading or writing? How far is too far? Do the novels of 50 years ago show more restraint?

My Hero

For those kind enough to ask, here's a link to "My Hero" in Muzzlelflash: http://www.muzzleflashfiction.net/2007/08/my-hero-patricia-abbott.html#comments

Obama V. McCain

You can't live with a political scientist very long without considering elections. Maureen Dowd today had a op-ed piece where she contended that the contest between Obama and Clinton was most useful in preparing Obama for his ultimate fight with McCain. Defeat Hillary and McCain is a piece of cake (pardon the cliche).
But I wonder if the general election will be about the same set of issues at all. In the primary season, it's been mostly about personality. Whom do you trust? Who has more experience?
I wonder if those old unsettling issues the Dems faced in 2000 and 2004 will rear their ugly heads.
In particular, when did the Republicans begin to own the issue of patriotism? My husband says, "Always," Is this true? Will Americans look at the candidates and say, "Well, I hate the war and the economy stinks, but damn it I'm a patriotic American and I'm voting Republican." Will their priests/ministers remind them about issues such as pro-life and gay marriage, those old bugga boo concerns? What do you think? Can a national candidate triumph over these issues? Can we elect a candidate who triumphs liberal concerns? If Obama is rated as the most liberal Senator in office, can he win?

Derringer

A flash fiction piece of mine that appeared in Muzzle Flash has been nominated for a Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society. If you read the story, "My Hero," and liked it, you can vote for here: Or you can vote for one of the other outstanding stories in the flash fiction field. I think that's the one up there now. I hate to BSP, but.... https://login.yahoo.com/config/login_verify2?.intl=us&.src=ygrp&.done=http%3a//groups.yahoo.com%2Fgroup%2FShortmystery%2Fsurveys%3Fid%3D2683108&rl=1

I'm a Sucker for Caine

although my affection for him has taken me to some bad pictures over the years.

The one in question, and what brought this discussion up, was Flawless. Maybe Demi Moore drives me away from a movie as much as he brings me to it. So the two of them together create problems. Flawless was full of flaws starting with an unbelievable heist scene. I'll say no more because what I'm interested in is which actors will you pay money to see even if the movie is probably not your cup of tea. And which ones turn you off despite their role in a movie you might have interest in.
For me: Michael Caine, Ben Kingsley, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ryan Gosling, Tom Wilkinson, Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Laura Linney, Kate Blanchett, Kate Winslett attract my attention.
On the negative side: Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Lily Tomlin, Goldie Hawn, Kate Hudson, Owen or Luke Wilson, Robin Williams.

How about you?

My Town, Monday, Tyree Guyton and the Heidelberg Project

Any discussion of Detroit will eventually lead to a discussion of the Heidelberg Project and Tyree Guyton. For an in depth look at it, simple google his name. For the purposes of My Town Monday, here's a tease. Twenty years ago, Guyton was looking for a way to express both himself and his frustration with the deterioration of his city. Guyton, with little money sought to make a statement about this via his own neighborhood.
He began to paint colorful pictures on the neighboring abandoned house. He began collecting discarded objects and creating fields of vacuum cleaners, car hoods, dolls and shoes --all painted in bright colors. Easy to do in Detroit, where streets had begun to look rural due to demolished or falling-down housing. He nailed objects ro the houses themselves, hung bikes, did whatever he could to transform Heibelberg Street into a living work of art.

Not everyone approved of this. Some of the neighbors thought his work was mocking their poverty. Or that is wasn't art at all. It became controversial, a subject that divided the city. Was it art or an eyesore? The courts entered the debate and although they ruled his work was constitutionally protected as a genuine artistic expression, he City of Detroit in 1998 served Guyton with an order to dismantle the project or they would demolish it. Odd for a city that couldn't demolish the abandoned house he had painted his work on.
In 1999, the City demolished the site.
It's not over yet, however. Parts of it reappear. Guyton's art turns up in museums and private collection. Its still a part of Detroit.
Is it art or an eyesore? Look at the streets around Heidelberg and make your choice.

For more My Town Monday, go visit Travis Erwin at:http://traviserwin.blogspot.com/