A Map of the World

I have been working on the first draft of a novel for the last couple of months. If I really push, I'm pretty sure I can finish by the end of September. There is really only the final conflict to resolve and some subplots to tie up and a last image to leave in the mind's eye of the reader. I figure maybe 20,000 more words or a bit less even than that. This all means that I have written the bulk of the book, and I have the story down on paper and I can refer back to it whenever I want and that the ending should be pretty straightforward to write. Except that I can't, or I won't.

One of my rules for writing a first draft is that I don't read any of what I've written once it's written. That is to say, I just keep plowing forward through the story and don't stop to go back over what's already on the page if it's earlier in the story than the chapter I'm currently writing. Sometimes I allow myself to go back and look up factual data like a date or a place name or how to spell "Corambis" or whatever, but that's all. The primary purpose behind this self-imposed exile from the written parts of the story is to keep me from endlessly fussing and revising and not finishing the first draft at all because I'm spending all my time revising Chapter One.

Something I've always wanted as a tool for writing has been a sort of way to map out the whole novel, a chart or a map showing the entire story arc and all the plotlines that I can refer back to when necessary. Nabokov used notecards to outline and keep track of his story, and I am experimenting with notecards for the final part of my current novel, but you can't really lay 150 or more notecards out end-to-end and see what's going on in a book. I have been building this big structure by hand and I will never be able to see the whole of it all at once, because of course the only true and accurate map of a novel is the novel itself, and I don't have one of those minds that can hold the whole novel all at the same time. I can only "see" bits of my own novel, which is a baffling and frustrating and fascinating thing. Possibly that's tied to complexity, and if I were writing a more straightforward tale, I'd be able to imagine the whole story simultaneously. I don't know.

So here I am, writing the last 20,000 words of a novel when I don't remember the first 20,000 very well. I feel like I'm a man who has walked along a very long mural and I can only see about five feet of it in either direction and the bulk of it is hidden by fog or in shadows and my memory of it is inexact. Certainly I'll have to do some work in revisions to make sure that the story is consistent all the way through, and there is one scene that I think I'll cut entirely because I never developed that particular subplot so what happens there makes no sense at all.

How do you go about "visualizing" the whole of the story? How abstractly do you think about the main story arc? How do you keep track of where you are? Does anyone have a really cool system for charting the entire story (I am looking for a visual/graphic system where it's all displayed together, sort of like a Microsoft Project(tm) graph or a Venn diagram or a flowchart or something)? How do you keep notes, I guess, is what I'm asking.

Room for Subjectivity?

I spent the weekend in San Diego attending the Art of Photography Show, curated by Natasha Egan (Associate Director and Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago). It was great fun, and even more special because my dear friend and occasional Lit Lab commentor, Troy Nethercott, had a piece in the show.

On Sunday morning, Egan gave a talk about how she selected her pieces (111 selections out of over 13,500 entries). What immediately stood out for me was that many of her choices seemed very subjective. She said things like, "As you can see I like photos with fences" or "I like airplanes" or, really, "I think I chose this one because I have a personal connection to A1 steak sauce."

My initial response to this was "Huh?"

I was shocked to hear this curator admit to having picked things simply because she liked them. But, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The Art of Photography Show, like some literary publications I know of, have a new judge each year. If those judges chose their selections based solely on technical merit or some other objective measure* each year's show would risk having a similar feel. Having each judge be subjective made for a new artistic experience each year and, over the long term, probably gives more people a chance to get into the show.

Recently, SmokeLong Quarterly, the journal I work for, transitioned to a rotating editor model as well. Each week, a new person goes through the submissions and picks a story. Whatever they pick gets published. When it was my week, it was a great experience to get to fall in love with a story and decide on it all on my own. It wasn't so much a sense of power I was enjoying, but a sense of freedom. When selections were more democratic, I think often times the safest stories got chosen, those pieces that had a little bit of something for everyone. With only one judge, and a subjective judge at that, an artist who tried something unique has a decent chance of getting rewarded for it.

I used to be weary of people who judged art purely subjectively, but nowadays I think it definitely has its place.

*Okay, perhaps there is never any truly objective measure.

Fill-in For Filler Friday

Well, today's Scott's birthday and he's spending it avoiding the internet. Still, let's wish him happy birthday, and maybe if we scream loud enough he'll hear us up there in Seattle.

Happy Birthday, Scott!!

As for Filler Friday, I've been obsessed by the word "scimitar" all week. I wish I could introduce it into one of my stories, but my characters tend to do things like make soup and do laundry. I don't think either chore requires much scimitarring. Or maybe they do.

I've also been obsessed by those poor Chilean miners stuck in the ground for possibly months! And then there are the Kenyan albinos! Really, there are so many fascinating and horrific things out in the world. I feel like we as storytellers have the power to bring these things to light, if we want to.

What's bouncing around in your head?

Do You Want to Jump the Fence?: Part 1 of Why Self-Publishing Is Better Than You Think

Fences. In writing there may be no fences, but in publishing, there is no mistaking their presence. Fences and gates. Think of it this way: two corrals leading to the same pristine, beautiful pasture. The corrals are exactly the same. And, let me state this again: they lead to the exact same pasture.

Today I’m talking about a very sticky subject, one that I’ve seen people arguing about quite passionately. I’m not here to say that self-publishing is better than traditional publishing or the other way around. I do not feel in any way that one could possibly be any better than the other. Want to know why? Because, once again, they lead to the exact same pasture. The only difference is how you get there. Some might argue that the pasture is different, that self-publishing isn’t publishing at all, but I’ll tell you what - getting your work out there for sale, marketing it, seeing people read it, rate it, love it, hate it, talk about it - that’s publishing. If you deny that, you’re on some sort of crack.Traditional. Self. I'd like to try both, thank you very much. The beautiful thing is that I can.

And let’s get this out of the way up front: both traditional and self-publishing are capable of putting out a piece of crap.

Traditional publishing is often looked at as a filter for the written word. You have to get “approved,” in a way, before your work is put out there. Someone has to UNLOCK that gate leading to the coveted pasture. This is the best way for many writers, and I can understand why.

Self-publishing is often looked at as cheating, and that cheating can produce some really bad stuff because it didn’t go through the filter. Nobody unlocked the gate. The writer just opened it and went through. That might seem unfair to those still waiting for their gate to be unlocked, or they might look at it as completely stupid to open the gate yourself, especially if the writer isn't ready. Either, way, negative feelings often happen because of it.

I’ve seen all this happening for a long time. I started writing a novella last November and decided that I wanted to self-publish it NOT because I didn’t think I could sell it traditionally, NOT because I didn’t think it wasn’t good enough for traditional publishing, NOT because I had given up on traditional publishing. I decided to self-publish it because I wanted to get it out there, because I knew it was the best damn thing I’d written to date, and because I knew I was finally ready to put my work out there. But possibly the largest driving force behind my decision was because of this very blog. You, our lovely readers, have often asked about self-publishing. I’ve seen negativity. I’ve seen frustration. I’ve seen confusion. I wanted to figure out why. I wanted to do it myself and see what it was all about and if I could do it in a way that expelled some of the terrible stigmas out there.

This series of posts - Why Self-Publishing is Better Than You Think - is going to be about my experience so far with self-publishing. It’s more than about self-publishing, as well. It’s about an experience that has literally changed my life.

I have jumped the fence to a different corral.

I know what it’s like over here, and I want to tell you about it.

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Join me for this series! I'll be talking about getting hurt, making hard decisions, the technicalities of producing a professional self-published work (formatting, cover art, editing, etc,), and numbers and sales. All I ask is that you keep an open mind and that if you have something to say that goes against what I say or what others say in the comments section, say it nicely and be courteous. Differing opinions and open discussion are always welcome here.
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Why Self-Publishing Is Better Than You Think Series

Do You Want to Jump the Fence? - August 26th
The Vase - September 1st
What Going Indie Will Cost You - September 8th
Whither The Author-Artiste? - September 9th 
Influences & Self-Publishing Might Just Stink For You - September 16th 
The Absolute Nightmare (or not!) of Formatting a Print Book - September 22nd
Cheaper Than Kinko's - September 23rd 
Don't Listen to Me - September 30th

Creative Quote Usage

So, I've been studying Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, and I noticed that in several places Woolf was unpredictable in her use of quotation marks. In this passage, for instance, she sets off some parts of dialog with quotes but not others. I'm a bit at a loss for why she made the choices she did. Can anyone figure it out?

The scene first takes place between Mrs. Ramsay and her husband Mr. Ramsay. Their son James comes in next, and near the end they refer to a house guest named Charles Tansley:

(excerpt)

Not for the world would she (Mrs. Ramsay) have spoken to him (Mr. Ramsay), realising, from the familiar signs, his eyes averted, and some curious gathering together of his person, as if he wrapped himself about and needed privacy into which to regain his equilibrium, that he was outraged and anguished. She stroked Jame's head; she transferred to him what she felt for her husband, and, as she watched him chalk yellow the white dress shirt of a gentleman in the Army and Navy Stores catalogue, thought what a delight it would be to her should he turn out a great artist; and why should he not? He had a splendid forehead. Then, looking up, as her husband passed her once more, she was relieved to find that the ruin was veiled; domesticity triumphed; custom crooned its soothing rhythm, so that when stopping deliberately, as his turn came round again, at the window he bent quizzically and whimsically to tickle Jame's bare calf with a sprig of something, she twitted him for having dispatched "that poor young man," Charles Tansley. Tansley had had to go in and write his dissertation, he said.

"James will have to write his dissertation one of these days," he added ironically, flicking his sprig.

Hating his father, James brushed away the tickling spray with which in a manner peculiar to him, compound of severity and humour, he teased his youngest son's bare leg.

She was trying to get these tiresome stockings finished to send to Sorley's little boy tomorrow, said Mrs. Ramsay.

There wasn't the slightest possible chance that they could go to the Lighthouse tomorrow, Mr. Ransay snapped out irascibly.

___

What do you think? Does Woolf's use of quotes in this passage make it stronger?

What I Wish I Had Written

I am sort of continuing a series of writerly explorations with this post, a series I began weeks ago with questions about "moral fiction" and continued with the questions about portrayals of minority-status characters and characters who are not part of our own social groups. Today it's less social and more personal, and I am wondering about our early experiences with writing. Specifically, I'd love it if you could all think for a minute and then in the comments tell me what was the first book you ever read that you wish you had written.

Maybe I'm alone in this experience, but there was a moment in time when I had finished a book and I imagined myself as the author of that specific book because it seemed like it had been written just for me and it seemed like something I myself could have written. Granted, when I was very young, in maybe 5th or 6th grade, my brothers and I would make up little comic books (they call them "chapbooks" these days) that were just folded sheets of paper with a staple in the spine and write our names on the front covers and pretend we were authors.

But those moments didn't have as large an impact on me as did the time I read Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood. "This is a great book," I said to myself. "I understand what she was doing, and how she did it, and I get it and gosh, but I could have written it!" And, sad to say, when I began to write my first novel about six months later, I was writing very much a rip-off of Wise Blood. Still. The moment pushed me past the "it would be cool to be a novelist" stage into the "I could write a novel" stage. Which stage I haven't left.

Anybody have a similar story they wish to share? Because I want to hear it.

My Other D

Okay, so I feel pretty lame about this, but I am announcing the official birth of my pen name. If you've been following along, you might know that I've been working as a post-doctoral researcher. Well, that time is coming to an end in the next few months, and I'm going to have to start a serious job search. Because of this, I've decided it best to separate my science career from my writing career.

Luckily for me, I've always had another name. See, when Thai people are born, we have our formal name (Davin for me) and a familiar name that all of our family and friends use. Other familiar names that you might not be aware of are Tiger for Eldrick Tont Woods and Jhumpa for Nilanjana Sudeshna (I don't know where Lahiri comes from--and she's not Thai). My familiar name is Domey. It's a name that feels very intimate to me, since usually only my loved ones call me that. But, I'm realizing that using Domey in my writing feels right and is giving my life some order.

So, you'll be seeing the name Domey around on the blog from now on--unless I decide this is a stupid mistake, which I may well do. I'm hoping that you all don't find the change too jarring, and maybe some of you will start using it if it feels comfortable.

In other news, check out this amazing artwork. It makes me wish I still had some emotional connection to pencils. There's a link to the German blog where this comes from here.

the DEATH of books as we know them

There has been a lot of hype out there about the new digital age and all the technology surrounding ebooks and the future of books and the imminent death of the printed book.

click here for photo domain

THE DEATH OF THE BOOK!!!!!

Yes, it's so full of drama, drama, drama.

One of our great readers, Mizmak, left a question in our Just Ask section awhile ago, and I'd like to address the question today. Mizmak left a link for us to to peruse, titled Technological Advances Usher in the Future of Reading.

You should at least go scan this article. It's very interesting, stating such things as:

The newest generation of readers — the texting, chatting, YouTubing kids for whom the term "offline" sounds quaint — has run circles around the fusty publishing process, keeping its favorite stories alive online long after they're done reading the books.

Some scholars fear that this is breeding a generation of readers who won't have the attention span to get through "The Catcher in the Rye," let alone "Moby-Dick."

Some argue that reading is quickly becoming a lost art, that our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter with each generation. This could possibly explain the new adult love of middle grade and young adult fiction - it's shorter and usually more simple in nature - fun reading!

Let me share a few things here. I recently self-published my novella, Cinders. I had the choice to offer this novella as just an ebook or as a printed book in addition to an ebook. To me, there was no question. At all. I wanted to be able to hold my book in my hands, flip through the pages, see it on my shelf. Now that the book is out and selling, it's interesting to watch the sales numbers on both printed and ebook versions. Ebook sales are more, yes, but printed sales are significant, as well. I also get responses like this about the printed version when people receive it in the mail:

It. Is. GORGEOUS! This is like a one book argument for never, ever letting the world go entirely to e-reader.The artwork is so stunning. It feels so wonderful to hold it in your hands and turn the pages. It would have been pretty hard, too for you to sign my e-copy and I do love a signed book (I will treasure this one! You're the best. ~February Grace

FYI, before I even crack open the book, it's absolutely beautiful. The cover and print and everything. It looks so professional and gorgeous, and I'm happy to have it on my shelf. You did a really awesome job. ~XiXi from Icy Roses

Just got my package from you in the mail!!! It looks even better than I expected!!! ~Olivia Lowry Cook

I haven't received any responses like that about ebooks arriving on people's Kindles or in their inboxes. Hmmm, there's something special about holding a printed book. It's like a piece of art, and as far as I know, people haven't stopped painting with oils and watercolors or using chalks and pastels just because Photoshop exists.


My Opinions.

(1) I do think that the newer generations are getting shorter attention spans - and yes, that might mean YOU have a short attention span. Do you think you could get through Anna Karenina on your Kindle in less than two weeks? Would you want to? Honestly ask yourself why or why not.

(2) I do think that reading longer, more literary and complex works is a dying art form.

(3) I don't think the printed book will EVER die. Film hasn't died. Paintings haven't died.

(4) I do think we're already in a digital age and it will only get more and more advanced and prominent, but publishing (self and traditional) will grow and change with it even if some of it dwindles first.

(5) I do wish people would stop freaking out about the printed book dying. If you're frightened for the printed book, go to your bookstore and buy some books, and get your friends to buy some, too. And I honestly must admit, there's something much more tangible and rewarding and lasting about holding a printed book in my hands. I'm much more likely to remember it when I see it on my bookshelf and read it again.

Let me ask you this:

Did you skim any of this post?

The Asymptotic Approach To Character Change

A few weeks ago I was working on my novella, Bread, and I mentioned to Michelle and Scott that I only had one more scene to write! (Yay for me!) This scene was close to the end, but it wasn't the climactic scene of the story--I had already written that. Instead, it was a scene describing internal character change, the change that led to the climax.

Although this is a bit of an oversimplification, let's just say that I needed to have my character fall in love. This character had already met the man he was to fall in love with, but the chemistry wasn't quite there yet.

I had them couple go on multiple dates.

The seducer tried his best moves.

Nothing.

Even though more scenes were being added to the story, the scene, the scene of change, wasn't taking place. My character got closer and closer to the change, and then, POOF!, he was on the other side, right at the already-written climax, having made the change already.

I tried to write forwards. I tried to write backwards. But, as close as I got to the change, I never figured out a way to show it.

Wait. What did I just say? Oh yeah, show. I wasn't able to show it. One of the rules I had set for myself with Bread was that I was going to show as much as I possibly could and tell as little as I possibly could. (This was a reaction to my past fiction, and to the work of Virginia Woolf, which has a ton of beautiful telling.)

So, there I am, show-show-showing like a madman, but I couldn't show any character change. Weeks passed. Yes, Michelle, yes, Scott, I still only have one more scene to write, now stop pestering me!

I asked myself, "What does character change look like?"

I can imagine it in a movie. It's that scene where the camera zooms in on a character, let's call her Academy Award nominee Gabourey Sidibe for convenience, and we watch her as absolutely nothing happens. Did you catch it? Did you notice the internal change? No? Oh yeah, it's internal.

So, I'm wondering at you all if it's possible to show character change. Have you ever read or written a scene that actually shows it? Or, could it be that the best we can do is approach the change without actually getting to it? Now, naturally we have alternatives. We can tell. That's a personal favorite of mine. Or, we can have the change manifest in some tangible action that reflects the change. And, maybe that's good enough. But, I found myself ever so frustrated that I couldn't catch the exact moment.

Have you managed to show the time of internal character change? Is the suicidal leap the decision, or is it the action immediately after the decision?

When Are Characters Off Limits?

One of the conversations going on in the literary world concerns the book The Help by Kathryn Stockett. This book chronicles the lives of black domestic servants in the American south during the early 1960s. It's a pretty popular book, a popular "book club" selection and it's been on the best-seller lists for months now.

Stockett is a white woman who wrote in the voices of black women. Stockett was never a black maid; her family employed a black maid. Stockett is from the south, and like the main white character in The Help, moved to New York City to make her fortune. The Help (which I have not read) discusses topics of racism and privilege in America.

There is much discussion going on about the authenticity--or not--of Stockett's portrayals of the black women in this book. There is much discussion about whether or not Stockett even had the right to write this book with these characters, and there have been questions asked about how well this book would have been received by its primarily white readership if it had been written by a black woman.

So this is all pretty thorny. But it gets at some questions that interest me as a writer (and as a human being in the 21st century).

First, and possibly most importantly, should writers be forbidden from writing about people who they are not, and from writing about experiences that are not their own?

This seems like a foolish question, I know, because to write fiction is to write about people who are not us and events that are not ours. But if, as has been said in the discussion surrounding The Help, Stockett had no right to portray her black servant characters because she knows nothing of their real lives, then what are Stockett's choices? Does Stockett then only have the right to write about herself and people exactly like her? How different from the writer can a character be before the writer has gone too far and no longer has the right to portray them? Are we only allowed to write fantasy set in fantasy worlds, or maybe only memoirs? Either write about none but ourselves, or about people who could never have existed in real life? This seems like a reductio ad absurdum, and maybe it is, but really I think it gets to the heart of the matter. Or one of the matters, that is.

The flip side of this is that people of color and other minority status are under-represented in published fiction. And some folks take umbrage that a white writer's version of these black voices is getting published while plenty of talented black women can't get a book deal, just because they write black fiction. Whatever that is. Likely the situation in real life is more complex than that, and I don't pretend to know how many well-written manuscripts are turned down every year because publishers are afraid to publish "black fiction" or "Portuguese fiction" or "gay fiction" or "Native American fiction" or whatevs. I just don't know. I do know that publishers are afraid, and that they claim (and maybe it's true) that fiction of color sells less well than nice white books for nice white folks. We're all aware of and horrified by, I hope, the "whitewashing" of recent book covers. So there is an understandable amount of frustration and anger about the short shrift folks of color and genders-not-male are getting from the publishing world (though I believe it's also true that the majority of novels published in America these days are written by women--married white women with kids living in middle America, mostly).

I understand that most portrayals--in English-language literature, at least--of people of color, of women, of differently-oriented people have been the products of white Europeans. I understand that a lot of those characters have been portrayed as cliches: patronizingly, shallowly, insensitively and otherwise badly. A lot of stuff in the canon is frankly indefensible. But I also understand that writing fiction is, in some ways, in the best fiction, an attempt to understand. I resist the idea that we are only allowed to write about "people like us." Junot Diaz' Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is peopled mostly by Dominicans. Oscar La Valle's Big Machine is peopled mostly by African Americans. Juhmpa Lahiri's books are peopled mostly by Indian immigrants in America. Yes, I get the authenticity of voice, but need we exclude other voices? Does a Chinese woman get to write about a white guy from Baltimore? Who owns all these voices? Don't we, as writers, own every human voice? I don't know. It gives me a headache.

I've heard often enough in the context of this discussion that I, as a white male, am so inured to the background culture of white European maleness that I can't even imagine what it's like to be outside that or how that background culture marginalizes anyone not a white male. Which may be a fair cop. I wouldn't know, of course. Being a white European male and all. But if that's true, what are my options? Just stay the hell out of publishing because my kind have written enough books and now it's everyone else's turn? I really have to say that I hate that solution. Possibly I like it from an abstract ethical standpoint, but as a guy who wants to be a published novelist, I really hate it. So like everyone else, my ethics are bound by my selfishness, and my selfishness is usually more persuasive than my ethics.

Anyway. I confess that I don't know where the moral high ground is here. I think I can tell the difference between exploitation and exploration. I also think that as writers, we exploit friends and strangers all the time, cannibalizing their lives for our art. Stealing the souls of folks whose portraits we paint, as it were. I'm not going to delete the runaway slaves from my book "Cocke & Bull" nor will I delete the women from "Killing Hamlet" nor will I shy away from the POV of Lord Tilton's daughter in the book about Antarctica I'll be writing, or from the POVs of the Italian soprano or the Czech architect's wife in "The Builder's Wife," which is the book I'll write after the Antarctica book. I'm going to write all of these characters, because a bunch of books populated by only white guys like me would be even more unrealistic (and horrible, honestly) than books with whatever mistakes I'll make writing all these other folks. And I'm not going to quit writing novels, either.

I've rambled long enough. On to the questions: Are characters outside of our social/economic/gender/race groups off-limits to us as writers? Why or why not? Also, have I simply mistaken what the arguments are surrounding race/gender/etc in fiction?

A big thank you and a nod to simplicity

I want to first say that I was extremely touched by everybody's show of support to my Notes From Underground post last week. Our lovely-hearted assistant Becca has informed us that we got about forty entries since that post. That, along with the earlier entries we got, will make for some great competition and some exciting results. It means so much to me that people would jump in and show how much you care upon seeing me distressed. The idea that such a thing could happen on the internet still boggles my mind. I sincerely thank you!

Today, I just wanted to give a shout out to simplicity. For those of you who have been following the progression of my cannibal story, I finished it last Friday. (I believe Scott's words were, "It's about damn time.") It's a novella, weighing in at about 21,000 words, and I've been working on it for about three years. I read through it all yesterday morning, and to my surprise the parts that had me most engaged were also the parts with the simplest POV, the simplest time line, and the simplest prose style.

In a way, this is a relief. Over the last year I've been working to make my prose style more complex because I thought the richness would be more interesting to readers. And, as a reader, I still do very much admire complex prose. But, in this case, in this story, simple was definitely better.

You Can Still Submit!

Looks like some of you aren't sure if you can still submit your entries for Notes from Underground today. Please do! We're relaxed around here. You're welcome to send your entries in all day today until midnight your time.

Why Do They Put Up With Us, Anyway?

With every book and story I write, I reach a point where I’m about ¾ finished and suddenly the end is in sight. That’s a great moment. For a moment. Last night I told Mighty Reader that I was writing my way through the turning point of the current novel, and I thought I’d be finished with this draft in October sometime.

“That’s good,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Now that I can really see the story written down in its broad sweep, I’m having doubts about it. Sometimes I think it’s really dumb.”

Mighty Reader looked at her watch.

“You’re right on schedule,” she said.

It’s that part of the process I loathe the most, where I know I’ll finish the book and fear that when I have finished, I’ll have written a very stupid book. Part of me wants to race ahead and get to the end and part of me wants to drag my feet and delay the inevitable moment when I realize how stupid I’ve been to waste the last six months on this steaming pile of prose. This is the absolute worst part of the process for me, and right now I’m twitchy, irritable and prone to arguments with friends and strangers alike. Mighty Reader, I must point out, is one patient woman to put up with my moods during this phase of the writing. No doubt she’d point out that I am just as moody when I haven’t been writing, and I’m as much of a pain in the ass in all the other stages of the work as I am now; I just don’t happen to notice it. Like I say, she’s patient.

So today I’d like to just thank Mighty Reader for her infinite understanding and remind you all to thank the Mighty Reader in your own lives, whoever that might be.

Whatchaaa! Easing Up Our Expectations

I've been thinking about Nathan Bransford's post on never judging a book by what we think it should be, but by what the writer clearly intended. There seems to be two sides of a coin when it comes to writing and reading: what we want and what we actually get.

When we read a book, we carry certain expectations, and if those expectations aren't met, no matter how small, we usually come away from the book disappointed. If the writer exceeds our expectations, we usually love the book and leave some sort of raving review with our husband or spouse or mom or on our blog. My husband happens to be a reader who carries very low expectations for movies and books, so even though something might be truly bad, he doesn't get upset about it. He takes it for what it is and bases his judgment against the product itself, not some ideal standard he had in his head. Because of this, I think he enjoys more creative things than I do, and he's happier for it...instead of me who walks around criticizing everything left and right.

When we write a story, most of us have expectations of what the story should be by the time we finish. I read several posts yesterday that held a running theme: I HATE MY BOOK. I think we all get this feeling at some point if we're working on a novel. But why do we hate our work? Because it's not cooperating? Because it's not measuring up to that ideal we set up in the first place? I know Scott is currently rewriting one of his books because the first drafts didn't measure up to what he had planned to do.

I've rewritten books before. From scratch. Because of this. It sucks.

However, on my last huge project, I promised myself not to rewrite anything. I promised myself not to let more than a few select people beta read the book. I promised myself to let the book be what it would be instead of trying to force it into a corner and make it behave. When I did this, truly amazing things happened and I ended up with a final product that pleases me more than almost everything else I've written.

Also, lately, I've been reading different genres. I've picked up YA books I never would have picked up before. I've read science fiction and fantasy instead of just literary classics I never got to read in college. I've let myself enjoy more things. I've let go of what I think I want and allowed myself to celebrate things as they are. I've stopped being so damn uptight about things, and I'm happier with my creativity. Much happier.

Do you suffer from this type of thing?
______________________________

If you haven't already, you should go check out Livia Blackburn's post about The Vulcan Mind Meld. Well, her post isn't actually titled that, but it's about how storytellers force their brain activity on their audience. Yes, very cool. I was going to do a post all about this, but Livia pretty much said it all.

My final plea

I'm going to try and be as sincere as I can today. With less than a week left to enter our Notes From Underground contest, there are far less writers interested than I would have imagined. So, I wanted to take one more opportunity to try and convey my excitement for this project.

When I first proposed the idea of giving writers pages in an anthology to write whatever they wanted, I think all three of us--Scott, Michelle, and I--were very hopeful. We saw this as an opportunity for writers to feel secure in knowing that they could say anything, an opportunity for writers to free themselves from the "rules" and attempts to please others that may have been holding them back. I figured this would intimidate some writers, and probably bore others, but I really thought a significant portion of people would find this to be a unique and fun opportunity to try something new.

With the writers who aren't interested, there's not much I can say to that. But, with the writers who may be too scared, I hope you'll take that leap and answer the ever-important question: What would I come up with if I could write anything at all?

Maybe the contest seems too complicated. After all, there are two steps. Well, with the low number of entries we've gotten so far, the nice thing is that the first step may be completely irrelevant. If you want the pages, chances are you're going to get those pages. Just let us know you want them! After that, all you have to do is let yourself go. And, if you want our help with the final stories, we'll be here as your personal 3-in-1 advisory board.

Because we don't have winners for the contest beyond the 25 writers who will be selected, we didn't offer prizes like we did last year. But, what we are offering is a publishing opportunity in an anthology that we put a lot of work into producing. This year, I plan to spend more energy promoting the book. After publishing Cinders, Michelle is now an expert at formatting and publication. This book will be special, and I want readers to see how special it is.

interjection by Michelle: This new anthology will also be available on Amazon.com. That means your work will be for sale and distributed on Amazon.com in the US and the UK (the Kindle version). It will also be for sale on Smashwords as an ebook, and also as a beautiful paperback. The price will possibly be lower than last year, but that will depend on the page count. How can you pass that up!? Really published, and not just on an online journal, but in print. :)

You'll also be doing something charitable. Like last year, we're going to be donating the proceeds of the anthology to a writer's non-profit organization. From our first anthology, we were able to donate hundreds of dollars to WriteGirl, and this year we're planning to give to the Writers Emergency Assistance Fund, a group that got a lot of support in our earlier poll.

So, I hope you will all give the contest one more consideration. There is still plenty of time to enter, though there's not a lot of time to waste. I also hope you see this as the unique opportunity that it was intended to be! Have fun, and be brave!

Flash Editing: An Experiment, Sort Of

Yesterday I spent time and effort on two writing projects that were totally unrelated, but one of them made a considerable impact on the other. First, I had Chapter 16 of the novel-in-progress to finish. Next, I decided to write a short story that was exactly 600 words long, including title. It's for an NPR thing.

I have never written flash fiction before, but surprisingly the 600-word limit really appealed to me. Possibly it was the puzzle aspect of writing it: if I was in paragraph 10, for example, and I wanted to add a word, I had to find and delete a word from paragraphs 1-9. This forced me to write with a great deal of conciseness, cutting things down so that I was able to say what I wanted in the fewest number of words while being able to say as many things as possible. It was some tricky. I'm still not finished with the story, but forcing myself to do that sort of very tight editing/revising made me impatient with any sort of writing that wasn't as terse and to-the-point as possible. Which was cool, in its own way.

However. I also have that novel-in-progress. The language of the novel is a sort of Elizabethan English which is expansive, additive, cumulative. Wordy, that is. A bit on the fancy side, especially in dialogue. When I sat down to finish the scene I'm working through I was still in my "600 words is all I get" frame of mind, and so I would cut almost everything I tried to put into the scene. "Too much," I said. "Not necessary," I barked. "Reduce! Compress! Cut cut cut!"

After about an hour I had written about 500 words, but I had crossed almost all of them out and the voice of what I had left didn't match the expansive, ruminative voice of the rest of the book. Fail, as the kids say.

So what I think I've learned is this:

1. Flash fiction is cool. The challenges are numerous and rewarding, and you really begin to look at stories in a different way. You can sort of reimagine them and restructure them easily, because there aren't that many moving parts, unlike a novel. Writing them also gives you an awareness of how much you can really say with very few words.

2. Flash fiction may not be a good introduction to writing longer things. Maybe all of the good points will help you write longer pieces that have no fluff or filler, but if you are going for something relaxed and a bit diffuse, your flashified brain will eat all of that expansive feeling up and spit it out and contract your prose so much that it's not at all what you want. At least that was my experience yesterday.

So a question or two: Who here writes both flash fiction and longer forms like novels? Do you/did you have a similar experience to mine? How do you balance it? Do you try to write longer fiction using the same brevity that flash fiction demands? Am I just an idiot and nobody but me has these problems? 'Cause that's possible.

What if you forgot everything you ever wrote?

Meet Murray Dunlap. He's a writer. He wrote stories years ago, and he's still writing now. But, in between the then and the now, something happened. He got amnesia.

LL: First off, tell us about your situation and what happened to you. Feel free to be as brief or as detailed as you want.

MD: OK. on June 7th, 2008 (6-7-08 as creepy as that is), I was just driving down our street, taking some recycling in, when a stranger ran a red light and smashed into me. It was crazy. Pushed me right into some friends who were minding their own business driving in the next lane. The thing is, I can’t remember a thing. Weird as it seems, a very near death experience with zero memory. None. Literally, it may be the closest I’ve come to death, and try as I might, I've got nothing. Nothing.

And the following year was so horrible, there are no words. Just anger. And fear. My God, the fear. I was in a wheelchair when I came out of the coma, which I was in (coma) for three months, and never had any doctor convince me that it was 100% clear that I would walk again. They assured me I would walk. But I was nervous. They mumbled all sorts of things about my brain and legs not talking, but I always felt like there was a very real chance I would never walk again.

So day-by-day, I went to therapy and gave it my all. What else could I do? You would be surprised by the determination that comes over a person when walking is on the line. Therapy 5 days a week and I made up my own therapy on weekends. Sprinkle in doctors here and there, and then you’ve got yourself a recovery process. Damn, that gets old! I think it may be the closest I’ve come to insanity yet.

I’ve come awfully close to dying about a dozen times, but this, nothing compares to it. Most near death experiences are just like you would imagine: extremely dangerous, but for an instant. Compare just about anything to a coma for 3 months and that followed by a full year in a wheelchair, and that followed by 6 months using a walker, like an old man. It simply makes no comparison. Like the time I was run over by a motor boat, while intense, was over almost immediately. So then a trip to the ER and some stitches and, like most accidents, then it’s over.

Or when I jogging at college, and some professor’s daughter was coming around the corner too fast, and not looking. So I was put on the hood with both hands pressed flat against the windshield. And was close enough to see her face, and despite my hopes, knew she would slam on brakes from the look in her eyes. So I went flying off the hood and went flying into the street until gravity tore me down and I landed, on my left knee, in the same very hard street. Campus security swarmed me, either out of concern for my safety or concern for my lawsuit-capable parents. I’d day the latter is more likely.

So I guess you could say I’ve been lucky. Or it’s just as easy to say I’ve been awfully unlucky depending on your point of view. I'm not dead yet...

LL: I should mention to everyone that the reason I met you was because the literary journal I work for, SmokeLong Quarterly, accepted a story that you had written before the accident. What is it like to look at your own work without having any memory of writing it?

MD: Very weird. Very. It is as if I have pulled a rabbit out of a hat and not known where the rabbit came from. Truly. That weird. And it is as if I am reading it for the first time. I have a fuzzy feeling I know what is about to happen, but then I'll get confused. I'm on lots of medicine!

LL: How has your writing changed because of what happened?

MD: I don't think about anything the same way. Nothing. I have much less sympathy for problems that have no real danger at all. When I have a character I hate, I simply have to have them complain about anything stupid. Anything. It makes my skin crawl to hear people say how "rough" they have it when it makes an instant comparison to being in a wheelchair. Even if they don't realize they have done it. But for my writing, I think little things, like love and care, are more important to me than ever. Ever. I could have shoved a billion dollars at anyone after the wreck and they could not have made me walk... So. Money is meaningless to me now. But I think in writing, it makes me more attuned to characters showing love for one another. Love is MUCH more important to me than ever before.

(You can read two of Murray's stories, here. The Dogs Go Too was written before his accident. Times I Nearly Died was written after.)

LL: To come back to writing after the amnesia implies that you've dedicated yourself to this art form twice. Is that true? Was there any possibility of you NOT being a writer after the accident?

MD: Yes. I was so dissoriented and medicated that, literally, I am just now feeling like I can try again! Weird to focus on something for so long and then be forced to take just under 3 years off...

But it's getting better. And my memory is improving enough that I can remember at the end of a sentence what the beginning was about... It was that bad.

LL: Do you you think there is a universal consensus (or should there be) about what is dramatic or important to write about versus what isn't? I think a lot of writers would argue that the subject of the story isn't as important as the way that subject is written about. Do you disagree?

MD: I think every writer has to share the way he or she sees things. Whatever way that may be. I think I agree that the subject is less important than the way the story is told. If it wasn't, there would be nothing but horror movies. But what we've all learned is that yes, it can be interesting to see or read about a person in danger of losing their life, but in the end, it is the life itself and the connections made that truly reveal something.

LL: Do we as writers have a job to do, a common goal, as you see it?

MD: Yes. What writers do is complete our understanding of life itself. That and give people an emotional ride that they might not get otherwise. And to see themselves expressed through words that help life make sense. I'm starting to sound very pretentious I think, but really, I would like to think "our" job here is that important. Sort of a psychologist for the species.

LL: Do you have any additional insight from your experience that other writers might find useful?

MD: I guess anytime a writer thinks a character is "in it", they should take a glance at the handicapped or insane and realize just how bad things really can get. Maybe spend a day without walking, if they can?

LL: And, what projects are you working on now?

MD: I've been working very hard with Kevin Watson of Press 53 on an anthology that we've named "What Doesn't Kill You...". Should be wonderful! Our book launch will be at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, TN on October 9. It has been a lifesaver to have a job to do when I have been unable to drive to a job (or anywhere) and have become bored to tears. But I will say that what didn't kill me made me a better writer.

__

Murray, thanks so much for telling us about your amazing story!

Cliffhangers & Page-Turners

As a writer of literary fiction, I am alleged to be unconcerned with such things as hooking my reader and making my novels into "page turners." Fie upon such allegations, I say. To paraphrase literary great Salman Rushdie, you can do whatever you want in the way of digressions and word play and formal innovation as long as you hang it all on a good story. And a good story, in my opinion, keeps the reader turning the pages to see what happens next.

Now, some of that "page turning" quality has to do with the premise and the characters. Heck, most of it. But some of it has to do with pacing and structure, which are purely mechanics. That is to say, there are some tricks you can play on your reader to keep them turning the pages, reading "just one more chapter" when they should be getting to bed.

In my current book (and in the MS I finished before my current project) I have been experimenting with different ways to add suspense to the structure of the storytelling. Suspense refers to the reader wanting to know what happens, or how the questions they are forced (by you, the author) to ask about the story will be answered.

I add suspense on two levels: the story level, and the chapter level. At the story level, I throw out the big Story Question ("Will X manage to do Y before Z happens?") and then as I tell the story, I throw out questions to the reader in the form of mysterious statements. "Pity about your dog," A says to B, but nobody explains what that means. Add more references to the dog as the chapters go by and, if you do it right, the reader starts to really want to know WTF is up with the dog. (Bear in mind that this is entering into a contract with the reader: if the payoff--the relationship of the dog to the story--isn't very interesting when you get to it or if it makes no sense or isn't really part of the Story Question, you have cheated your reader. Don't.) Basically you tantalize the reader with little mysteries as you go along, the answers to those mysteries revealing the nature of the Story Question.

At the chapter level, I have been experimenting with cliffhanger endings. These are pretty easy to do, at least the way I've been working it. Suppose you have a scene or a sequence of scenes leading to a Very Exciting Climax. Let's visualize the movement of the scene/chapter/whatevs toward the climax like this:

----------------CLIMAX!->

There is likely a temptation to make this into a single chapter, with the end of the chapter coming after the climax. You might be tempted do all your chapters like this, ending them at the conclusion of some exciting action or reveal. Let's use an asterisk to represent the chapter breaks:

*-------CLIMAX!-> * -------CLIMAX!-> * --- et cet.

This sets up a regular rhythm where the action always falls off at the end of a chapter, and gives the reader a place to put the book down and go to sleep. In one book I wrote, half the chapters ended with the protagonist going to bed at the end of the day. This structure did not exactly catapult the reader into the following chapter. Catapulting the reading along is, however, just what we want to do.

What I'm doing now is ending the chapters IMMEDIATELY BEFORE the exciting climax, so that the reader hits the chapter break and wants to know what happened and maybe will keep reading. So the structure looks like this:

* -CLIMAX!->--- * -CLIMAX!->--- * -CLIMAX!->--- * et cet.

Three things happen here. First, each chapter begins with something exciting. Which is good in and of itself. Next, you move on from the climax of one dramatic arc to building the next dramatic arc, giving the reader another little mystery and another question of "what happens next?" You hook them into the next scene/sequence and pull them forward into the story by raising the tension and then WHAM you end the chapter again without resolving any of the tension you've just built up.

This might be cruel to your reader and you might want to put in some slow chapters and vary the pacing so it's not exhausting and all being pitched forward through action. If you want. But you should never end a chapter at a point of rest in the story. Ask a question, or throw a grenade, or kidnap a princess, and then run like hell to the next chapter. If you do it right, your reader will stay hot on your heels, trying to catch up with you.

You Need to Read This Book!

A review and interview with Andrew Blackman about his award-winning novel, On the Holloway Road

I don't do book reviews here often. In fact, I'm not sure I've done any book reviews here. Which is a complete shame because there are so many out there, and I've read a few of them, and I'd like to share those with you. Today, however, we'll focus on one.

"Andrew Blackman's debut novel On the Holloway Road (Legend Press, February 2009) won the Luke Bitmead Writers' Bursary and was shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize. It tells the story of two young Londoners who, inspired by Jack Kerouac's Beat classic On the Road, embark on a similar search for meaning and freedom in modern-day Britain."

Soon after I met Andrew Blackman in the blogosphere, I planned to read his novel. It took me well over a year to finally buy it and read it. I'm lame, yeah. But I'm glad I got to it! This book is a gorgeously written, literary narrative that brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion. Especially the end. At first I thought I would hate one of the main characters, Neil:

Compared to my own sad, shambling existence in the shadows of life, his was a kaleidoscope. I peeped from behind my mother’s curtains at the world outside and wrote about people like Neil. I never believed that he really existed until I met him.

Blackman brought to life a world I've never known: that of two young men, one completely reckless and full of life, the other so stiff you could snap him half, rambling about the English countryside getting into trouble, sleeping with girls, and pretty much breaking any rule they can find. As soon as I thought I'd figured out the novel, thinking it was all about Neil and his crazy existence, Blackman pulled back the fine layers of his story to reveal something much deeper and poignant. All of a sudden his main protagonist, Jack, came to the forefront. Everything about him I could relate to: his feelings of failure, his struggle to feel alive in an increasingly stiffling world, his constant comparing himself to others. This connection I felt to Jack took me back to my high school years, my college years, and then reminded me that I still deal with these feelings now. By the end of the novel Jack helped me view things from a different angle.

Blackman's prose is rich and flawless. His descriptions brought the story to life, each one like a rolling wave, constant and sure. On the Holloway Road combines this lovely prose with strong characters and a gripping plot, creating a novel you shouldn't miss.


INTERVIEW

MDA: First, I'd like to let you know how much I enjoyed your novel, On The Holloway Road. Can you tell us a little bit about the book and when you started writing in general?

Andrew: I'd always wanted to be a writer, but never really believed I could do it. So although I wrote bits and pieces in my spare time, I didn't really take it seriously. Instead I got a 'sensible', well-paid job as a corporate banker, first in London and then New York, and then for three years I worked as a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal. I was writing and getting paid for it, yes, but I was still being 'sensible' and only taking a half-step towards doing what I wanted. I found myself getting up at 5:30am to write my own stuff before going to work, where I wrote other people's stories.

So in 2006 I moved back to London and for the first time really focused on writing fiction. I found temp jobs at nights and weekends to pay the bills, and during the days I wrote. I finished a novel, sent it off to agents and publishers, and accumulated a large manila folder full of polite but firm rejection letters. I revised it, sent it out, and got more polite but firm letters to add to my manila folder. In November 2007, for a break, I entered the National Novel Writing Month challenge to finish a novel in a month. I started on a completely new idea, something about a couple of young guys in London who set out to emulate Jack Kerouac's famous road trip in England, but discover that it's not as easy to be free and spontaneous in 2008 Britain as it was in 1950s America.

The result was On the Holloway Road. Of course I edited it later, but not very much - the basic manuscript was done in a month, and it was a lot better than the other novel that I'd spent years working on. For the first time I was writing for myself, not an imagined audience, and it worked really well for me. After a few months I entered On the Holloway Road for the 2008 Luke Bitmead Writers Bursary, a prize for unpublished authors. The prize was £2,500 and a publishing contract with Legend Press, and to my amazement I won. The book came out in February 2009 and has done well - it was shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize, and picked up a few decent reviews.


MDA: Wow! You've had such great success so far! Can you tell us if you'll be publishing any more books with Legend Press? Do you have an agent?

Andrew: Yes, I do have an agent, James Wills of Watson Little. He has been great in reading the drafts of my next novel and making suggestions for improvements. Right now I'm concentrating on getting it finished, and will let James advise me on the best thing to do next. I've been really happy with Legend Press and how they handled On the Holloway Road. They are not a very big publisher, but managed to get my book stocked in all the main bookshops in the UK, and have arranged lots of events for me to help get the word out. So I'd be happy to work with them on future books, but nothing's fixed right now.


MDA: That's fantastic you have such a great agent and press! I'm truly jealous because I love the idea of going small and still being recognized as you have. Amazon recently reported that ebooks are selling more than paper books. How do you feel about that? I already know you're a fan of the small press, but how do you feel about self-publishing and the ebook rise?

Andrew: To be honest I'm a little old-fashioned - I love paper books, and it's always been my dream to have a house large enough to have a room of my own with bookshelves from floor to ceiling around all four walls (right now they're in big piles all around the flat!). When I had On the Holloway Road published, Legend Press emailed me lots of pdfs to proof during the editing process, but the excitement when I received the first physical copy was completely different. As I held it in my hands, ran my fingers over it, saw my name on the cover and flicked through the pages, I felt for the first time that I had realised my dream. Personally I'd hate for paper books to disappear.

I also worry that the way we read will change, as the nature of electronic media is very different from paper. As more features are added to ebooks, they could become more like the internet - full of links to other books or websites, less linear and more associative. Of course there's a lot to be said for that, but I do like the way that right now you can read a book from beginning to end without distractions, and I worry that even the way we think could change quite radically in a very short time. Perhaps the changes are for the better, but I don't think we've really thought through all the implications.

I'm a lot more positive about self-publishing. To me it's great that so many people can now publish so easily and cheaply - it's very democratic, and is one of the things that technology is so good for. I never considered self-publishing for myself, because I am very bad at marketing and publicity, and have no interest in doing it - I prefer to write. With the traditional publishing model, the publisher takes a large percentage of the profits, but the advantage is that they get your book into the shops, they promote it, they use their media contacts to get reviews and profile articles published, etc. With self-publishing you're entirely on your own and have to do a lot of work to generate every sale. It's not for me, but it works for a lot of people and I think it's a very positive development.


MDA: For our last question I'd like to ask you what the one thing is that you want from being a writer. Is it fame? Sharing your work? Creating something beyond yourself and growing? I could go on and on.

Andrew: I've always been quite a shy person, and I often feel that in conversation I don't express myself very well. When I first discovered writing, back in my childhood, I loved the fact that I could take my time and get it right. There was no need to just blurt out whatever came into my head and then regret it later; I could think about what I really wanted to say and put that down on the page. I think today it's still more or less the same impulse. It's having ideas buzzing around in my head but finding that when I open my mouth they come out all garbled. Writing gives me the space and time to work through those ideas and express them in the clearest possible way.


MDA: It's scary how much I relate to your last answer! Thank you for taking the time for this interview! Where can we get your book, and do you know when your next will be out?

Andrew: No problem, thanks for reading the book and coming up with some good questions! The best way to buy On the Holloway Road if you're outside the UK is to go to the Book Depository, where they now offer free worldwide shipping. Alternatively you could go to Amazon UK, or Amazon US to get the Kindle edition or buy from a 3rd-party seller. The eBook is sold through UK bookshop Waterstones, and finally if you want a signed copy just email me and send me enough to cover the cost of the book and shipping to wherever you are. Or if you're in the UK, you could always go to a real, physical bookshop and pick it up from the shelf!

The next one will probably not be out until next spring or summer at the earliest, and that's assuming that I finish soon and that my agent loves it and says it doesn't need any more rewriting. Both quite optimistic assumptions, but I think writers have to be optimists :-)

GIVEAWAY Winners!

Thanks to everyone who entered our book giveaway! Davin pulled the winners this morning using Random.org, and the winners are:

CINDERS goes to Mmm!

GENRE WARS goes to AlphaChick!

and OPIUM Magazine goes to Paul Greci!

Winners, please send your address to Michelle at ladyglamis (at) gmail (dot) com. We'll need to hear from you soon so we know you've accepted your prize. We'll get your book out to you as soon as possible. Thanks!

Book Giveaway!

Today we're celebrating some of the talent in our very own blogging community by giving away three publications by our authors and regular commenters!

First, Michelle Davidson Argyle's Cinders, an emotional and adventurous tale of Cinderella after the happily ever after.

Second, our Genre Wars Anthology Volume I, containing a mix of great short stories from several different genres. Writers include Frances O'Brien, Anne Gallagher, Loren Eaton, Simon Larter, C. N. Nevets, and others.

Third, Opium Magazine's Opium 9, The Mania Issue, which contains our ambitious collaborative story written by 18 different writers including yours truly, Scott G. F. Bailey, Michelle Davidson Argyle, Natalie Whipple, Kathy Fish, Mary Miller, and Kuzhali Manickavel, among others.

If you'd like to be entered into a random drawing for each of the books, just leave a comment below to let us know. I'm taking this opportunity to tell all of you how wonderful it is for me to be surrounded by so many talented writers with such a passion for writing.

Thank you all for reading our posts and for having this daily conversation with us here at The Literary Lab.

Otherwise, please know how grateful I am to have been able to interact with all of you over the last year and several months. And, of course you can buy any of these books on your own. E-book versions of Cinders and Genre Wars Volume I are also available.

Also, remember about our Notes From Underground contest! Less than two weeks left to take a shot at having your work included in our next anthology.

Cinders by Michelle Davidson Argyle

I'm proud to announce that one of our Literary Lab authors has published her first book! Cinders, by our very own Michelle Davidson Argyle, tells the story of Cinderella after the happily ever after.

For those of you who may not be familiar with Michelle's fiction writing, it's always rich in vivid detail and emotion. Cinders is no exception. I had the honor of reading a pre-published version of this novella and finished it over the weekend.

Michelle uses enough of the details of the classic story to bring it back to life while also making use of her own imagination to provide us with something new. And, on a personal level, I know the genuine excitement with which Michelle approached this project. Never have I seen her so happy and passionate, and that energy comes through in the story...and in the beautiful production of the book. Not only did Michelle write it, but she's responsible for the cover photo, even arranging for the dress to be custom made.

I hope you'll help spread the word to readers who might enjoy Cinders. And, if you'd like to read it yourself, there's a link over to the left.

So, please join me in congratulating Michelle! I deeply admire what she's accomplished. AND, come back tomorrow for our own little celebration. We'll be giving away a free autographed copy of Cinders, along with some other publications by fellow bloggers.