All For Not

Forget-me -uh ...

I’ve been told that the English language is loaded with more potential for negative connotation than any other language in the spoken world. This may be true – the info is unconfirmed because I’m too lazy to conduct real research but I trust my nerdy friend to get at least some of it right. I am also familiar with the phrase “we have no word in (insert language here) for that”, which seems to apply during foreign translations to equally foreign English. That could be considered ironic, given that English has been cobbled together from numerous other languages over millennia. Humans being human, however, I imagine backhanded compliments are frequently delivered in a myriad of native tongues all around the world.

The first of Don Miguel Ruiz’s “Four Agreements” is (paraphrasing) “Be impeccable with your word.” My interpretation is to mean what you say, say what you mean, but be mindful of how it sounds, i.e., be positive where possible. And it’s usually possible. I’ve never been more aware of this since a colleague in the Before Time responded to my water cooler rant with a confused, “There were so many double negatives in there that I lost your point.”

“Double negative?” I’m still unsure how to define one (or is it two?) Now I just try to avoid the word “not”. It’s a fun experiment, actually. Try it! You’ll be amazed at how often you use it even when you intend to sound positive.

Granted, the search for positive alternatives can get silly. One of my favourites? Referring to weakness as undeveloped strength. In context, I get it – humans tend to judge themselves – and each other – harshly. So-called “negative” words take on a whole new destructive meaning where self-esteem is involved. An undeveloped strength is a more hopeful trait than a weakness, a word which is likelier to discourage rather than encourage improvement. And we all want to do better … I hope.

And I have yet to figure this one out: the Universe is allegedly unable to hear the word “not” so when it hears us saying what we don’t want, it gets the reverse message. Saying “I don’t want broccoli for dinner” results in the Universe lovingly bestowing broccoli for dinner. It could be so, I suppose, though I tend to believe that the universe responds to the feeling rather than the phrasing. Everything is some form of energy, words included, but the statement of a single word – in English, no less – missing from the all-knowing Almighty’s vocabulary seems highly suspect.

If you’re still with me and wondering where this is going, thank you and I have no idea. I thought I knew when I started the post, but apparently a point can be lost even without the double negatives.

*sigh*

Change Versus Rest

 

It’s said that a change is as good as a rest. So, in theory, I should be able to shift from work routine to home routine without doing a face-plant on the first day of vacation, right?

Wrong.

My first day went fairly smoothly in that I accomplished all I’d set out to do, which wasn’t very much in comparison to getting up and getting out to spend a day with my co-workers at the office. Such an endeavour demands more energy than a day off, so on Day One I went easy on myself ... I thought.

I slept in, took a walk, started my annual read of The Night Circus, ate way too much sugar, did some philosophizing with Ter, and did not need a nap to get me through the day. We planned to finish up the last of our prezzie shopping on Day Two, but when I woke up that morning, I was headachy and seriously conflicted about my ability to deal with crowds of people in a confined space. I tried to talk myself into soldiering on, that I was just tired but it would be okay—and the next thing I knew, I was in tears over nothing and Ter bailed me out by insisting I stay home while she tackled the Christmas crowds. Gratefully, I relented.

Ter was a trooper, making two forays into the retail wild and accomplishing her mission without me whining in her wake. I read my book, skipped taking a walk, ate no gluten, and yes, took that afternoon nap. Day Three was a much better start, though we were both semi-stunned at how quickly the fatigue set in during our quick trip to the mall. But that’s another post.

The point of this one is my realizing that a change is not always as good as a rest. Sometimes a full stop does more good than an altered focus, especially at this time of year. Christmas is a whole other barrel of monkeys when it comes to energy drain and I’m still figuring out the critical balance between capacity and demand in regular life. The curve remains pretty steep as I suss out which symptoms are attributed to age and which are the result of living in a post-COVID world. The plague struck as I reached my sixties so I’m not sure what would have happened anyway; in some ways I’ve never been so confused by ongoing change.

Methinks it’s time for a rest.

Bibliography XVI

 “Shattered Love” – Richard Chamberlain

My best friend in junior high was a huge fan of Richard Chamberlain, otherwise I would have little to no idea who he is. In case you don’t know, he played Dr Kildare on TV in the 1960s, graduated to leading man status on film in the 1970s, and was king of the TV miniseries in the 1980s. Handsome, charismatic, and possessed of a voice like a blend of milk and dark chocolate, in his day he earned the admiration and adulation of fans – particularly female ones – pretty much everywhere.

His autobiography was published in 2003. Media around its release seemed more focused on his coming out than anything else he had to say, and I confess the press combined with the book’s title conspired to have me avoid it like the plague. I mean, “shattered love” in the context of a celebrity coming out could only mean one thing: a “poor pitiful me” tell-all where the intimate (sordid?) details of his hidden life were finally revealed.

I did the man a severe disservice by thinking those things. Turns out the book is more about his spiritual journey than it is about secretly being gay in his line of work (though he tells some dandy stories about his career, too). There is nothing whiny or pitiful about it. In fact, he gives an objective, completely honest account of life as the younger son of a difficult man, of growing up and living for decades with a major inferiority complex, and of his continuing path to inner peace. And he tells it all with a gentle, self-deprecating humour that in no way negates his eventual discovery and acceptance of his true self.

This guy is practically a guru. I related to much of his story, from his description of a complicated Life with Father right down to his faith in a loving, friendly and generous Universe. The title “Shattered Love” reflects his belief that each of us represents a shard of one singular love so immense that it shattered itself in order to experience its own existence. Or something like that. He certainly subscribes to the same theory as me, that we are as divine as we are connected to the Divinity who created us. God exists around us and apart from us and within us all at once.

I learned a lot from reading this book, especially about the nature of forgiveness and when it applies. I actually learned a whole lot more than I ever expected to learn from a movie star’s memoir, and I am eternally grateful for the lessons.

I do wonder, though, what my junior high bestie would think ...

Words, Words, Words

 

My parents always had a stack of books on the hob. One of my earliest birthday presents (my fifth or sixth, I think) was a hard cover book, the first in a series aimed at kids that I collected avidly over the next few years. School libraries kept me entertained with the “Henry and Beezus” novels by Beverly Cleary and horse stories galore by Marguerite Henry and Walter Farley. I was so obsessed with horses, in fact, that my first crack at writing a novel myself (at age twelve) was about a girl and a wild horse. Not surprisingly, it was never finished.

I read a bunch of other things at the same time – “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Exorcist” spring to mind (where were Mum and Dad??) – then I tripped into my teens and discovered historical fiction. As my genre identity developed, bodice rippers shared shelf space with classic tales of kings and queens. A copy of Kathleen Winsor’s “Forever Amber” yet resides in my home library, along with Jean Plaidy’s Charles II trilogy and Dorothy Dunnett’s six-volume “Lymond Chronicle”. Lymond in particular was a coup for sixteen-year-old me, given the thickness of each volume and the tiny print on every page. But, man, it was a compelling ride from my perennial place on the sofa. It’s definitely a repeat read.

Reading it then probably saved my sanity in the daily struggle with my bones.

Sometimes I overreached. As a teenager in the 1970s, I wasn’t sophisticated enough to know that an author named Taylor Caldwell was actually a woman, but because “The Arm and the Darkness” had musketeers on the cover, I bought it in paperback and sat down to read.

I started but didn’t finish it. I’m not sure why; I think the subject was heavier than expected for the space I was in at the time. When I evolved to where I might have been able to sift the story from the excessive wordage, my focus had shifted from swashbucklers to night crawlers thanks to my older sister’s copy of “Interview with the Vampire”. From there, science fiction and fantasy pretty well owned me, though I maintain a deep and abiding love for the seventeenth century.

Yep, I’ve read a lot of books in my life. Lately, though, I’ve made a conscious effort to try new things, and I have discovered jewels in Indigenous and mainstream literature. Conversely, I’m equally inclined to revisit old favourites. Amazon may be an evil entity trying to swallow the world, but it’s also provided a means by which I can explore other worlds without leaving the house. In a COVID environment, it’s a handy tool. Handier still is the Kindle that allows me to read in bed without concussing myself when the book falls forward. Anyway, one night while pondering where to search next, I wondered if Taylor Caldwell was still in print. I remembered the book I couldn’t finish and wondered if I could grasp the story now. I did the search, and darned if “The Arm and the Darkness” isn’t available in a Kindle edition.

So I bought it. Downloaded it. Whatever.

It’s still a wordy read. It’s written in the style of the old masters—Dumas and Cervantes and their contemporaries—so I have to wade through a ton of narrative to find the plot itself, but at least I’m old enough to understand what’s happening and why. A lot of it escaped me the first time. Truth, the style is too cumbersome, though I see now how it might have influenced my own tendency to overwrite—a tendency, might I add, that I’ve tried to change over the years. I also must have read more of it than I thought the first time; a lot of it is familiar though the nuances are definitely easier to espy. I have just reached the point where memory fails and am moving into deeper water. The adventure I had anticipated as a teenager appears to be more of a cerebral treatise on religion and the social hierarchy—but I am finally old enough to get the point.

Took me a while, eh?

This Radiant World

 

I read “Station Eleven” again this past spring. Given current circumstances, it seemed even more relevant than it did when I read it the first two times. Before I began this post, I revisited Bibliography 7 to remind myself of my initial impression of the book and was struck by my closing thought:

Will we create something better the next time? Or will we just want to go home?

Having lived with the threat of COVID-19 for the past six months, I’m afraid I have my answer.

Granted, watching the news is not the best way to feel good about human nature. Too many stories involve vandalized cars bearing out-of-province plates, or claims that mandatory wearing of masks on the bus is a human rights violation, or crowds of young ’uns flagrantly defying the rules meant to keep everyone safe. Fear-and-anger-mongering keeps the media solvent, after all. There is no money in keeping people calm unless you’re in the pharmaceutical industry.

I’m not afraid of the virus, myself. I follow the guidelines and respect the rules, but I’ll tell you, after six months, I’ve had enough. I am done with novelty face masks and working from home. I hate online shopping. I miss bacon cheeseburgers and Vietnamese noodles. I want to expand my bubble and get to know my neighbours. I want to browse in a bookstore. I want to explore my neighbourhood, to become a regular at Guido’s café and share a bench at the park. I want to have a conversation while standing in line. I want to see James Bond at the theatre in November. I want hockey in winter.

Bugger a brave new world. It appears that I want to go home.

But it ain’t over yet. And until it is, there is a line in the novel that resonates each time I read it, a line that encompasses everything about this life and the stage on which it is played. I have carried it with me since the very first reading, and though it hasn’t become a meme (gods forbid it ever does), it surfaces in singular moments.

One morning of late, I stepped onto the balcony after the sprinklers had stopped watering the lawn. It’s a lovely stretch of grass flanked by cedar hedges and dotted with magnolia and apple trees, with flowerbeds and a birdbath where the crows tend to bully the songbirds on a hot day. I’ve seen a raccoon stretching up for a drink, a deer resting in the shade, a squirrel cleaning its fur by wriggling in the dirt. Each of those occasions was a gift, but on this particular morning, the lawn was empty. I stood barefoot in a patch of sun, the floor warm beneath my feet, and I noticed that the tree by the birdbath was glistening. The water from the sprinklers lay thick on the leaves, sparkling like diamonds scattered over the green. It was so beautiful that I fetched the Canon with no hope of capturing the true glory of the shot. I initially called it “jewel tree”, until the line from “Station Eleven” reminded me of the tiny miracles in everyday life if I open my eyes to see them:

This radiant world.

Bibliography 15

 “Diary of a Bookseller” – Shaun Bythell

It seems I’ve read a ton of autobiographies this summer: Elton John’s Me, Tina Turner’s My Love Story, Stewart Copeland’s Strange Things Happen. I also read a bio of Freddie Mercury and Chris Heath’s fly-on-the-wall account of life with Robbie Williams. If you see a theme here, you’re right on the mark—the rock stars who have provided the soundtrack to my life are telling their stories and I’m devouring them. Each of the aforementioned is a worthy read. As laugh out loud funny as Copeland’s brash American POV is, Dame Elton’s voice is particularly enjoyable for its honesty and humour; the British tendency toward self-deprecation is as hilarious as it is harrowing ... which leads me to the subject of this post.

Shaun Bythell is a fellow from Scotland who returned to his hometown in 2001 and somehow ended up buying a used bookshop. At one point, given the daily dramas encountered with quirky staff and regular customers, not to mention the antics of rogue patrons as observed from behind the counter, he decided to keep a diary, the end result of which was first published in 2017 as Diary of a Bookseller.

It may be a keeper. The copy I read was loaned to me by a friend and I’m unsure if I will purchase my own, though after reading Shaun’s experience with online selling and the insatiable monster that is Amazon, I feel somewhat compelled to support the bookselling industry by amassing as many hard copies as possible, even if I don’t have room for more than a hundred volumes in my reduced living space. That’s one reason why I have a Kindle—I’ve been seduced into the space-saving advantage of e-books even though the original hype of “books at lower cost” is no longer true. These days a new release download costs the same as the paperback edition; the primary bonus to the buyer is the convenience of an entire library contained on a device the size of a drugstore pocket book. Only thinner.

I digress.

This is a great book for those moments “in between”: when waiting for tea to steep, my hair to dry, or Ter to get her shoes on. If I had a half-hour to spare, I’d pick it up and read a few entries. Some are longer than others, as is the way of diaries. Some days are busier than others. If nothing else, the overall glimpse into the world of used bookselling, particularly in a small town, gave me a greater appreciation for the stalwart souls determined to endure in a world of on demand print, cutthroat competition and online conglomerates. Or impossible customers, come to that. I try to be pleasant with store clerks, recognizing that dealing with random members of the public is hard work. Not everyone shares my perspective. The beauty of this book is that the author, who could easily swing from objective to objectionable, simply notes the customer’s tone and general mien during any exchange. Rarely does he descend to disparaging criticism of any individual, no matter how appalling the individual’s attitude. The echo of his inside voice is tempered by diplomacy for the PG-13 audience while being, in my opinion, completely justified. Oh, some incidents are hysterical.

The funniest observations, however, are of his staff, particularly his regular (opposed to seasonal) employee, who gives as good as she gets both to her boss and to the customers. It’s a slice-of-life-in-a-small-town story as much as a view from behind the counter. My overall impression is that bookselling is not to be undertaken lightly. It takes a special breed to take up the profession ... but if you’re not worried about making ends meet and have the people skills to manage characters too colourful to be invented, then selling used books might be the job for you.

Bibliography XIV

“The Starless Sea” – Erin Morgenstern

Beautiful imagery, enchanting vignettes, compelling story, too many twists and turns. I got lost three-quarters in and felt vaguely cheated at the end. Maybe I missed something. Maybe I expected too much—and yet the writing itself did not disappoint.

I confess, I was in a scattered state of mind when I read the book. In that respect, I disappointed myself. Still, the main storyline intercut with seemingly unrelated stories would have confused me anyway. Just as I fell into the rhythm of the protagonist’s tale, the momentum was interrupted with a story from another realm. Sensing that these unrelated fairy tales were relevant to the main theme, I trusted all would be revealed as I read deeper into the book. But in the end, I missed the point.

Don’t get me wrong. The writing is beautiful, as magical as in “The Night Circus”, but depending on the passage, there is either too much unnecessary information or not enough where necessary. I admire the author’s ability to put me in a scene where I can hear the merest whisper and smell the faintest trace of cinnamon, so I appreciated the experience of being there. I just don’t know why I was there in the first place.

Yes, I do. This is Erin Morgenstern’s second novel, and I loved her first so much that I’ve read it every Christmas since 2012. Eight years later, I still look forward to the annual delight. Expectations were high on this one; perhaps she felt the pressure and overcompensated. There is a lot of writing in this book. I think it could have been shorter and thus made more sense ... but perhaps, as I say, my expectations were too high. I just don’t know.

I will read a good book more than once. Sometimes it’s simply because I enjoyed it so much the first time. More often, it’s to get a better grip on the story itself. As with a movie, the first round is spent getting familiar with the characters, following the action and trying to predict the outcome rather than noticing nuances. Knowing how “The Starless Sea” ends (sort of), it may make more sense to me the second time.

Am I trying to avoid disliking a book I was so eager to read?

Maybe. I was so confused at the end that I couldn’t tell whether or not I liked it at all.

At least I’m willing to give it another try.

Bibliography XIII

“Strange Things Happen – A Life with The Police, Polo and Pygmies” – Stewart Copeland

An excerpt from my rock n’ roll journal, dated May 31, 2007:

“Strangely, perhaps because Sting has remained a pop icon and produced commercial hits since 1984, and perhaps because I’ve seen him 3 or 4 times already, I found myself more enthralled with Stewart Copeland’s masterful touch on drums and percussion. He was mesmerizing on all counts. Impossible to ignore, really. A phenomenal drummer, maybe the best I’ve seen. It was a privilege to hear him play live; if I’m glad of anything on this trip, that is it—getting to see him work his magic in sublime testament to Sting’s hilarious descriptions of him in Broken Music. The man is, as Terri said, a mad genius. Completely manic and wild, he ran laps around the stage a couple of times, like a lanky kid hyped on sugar. He actually out-did Sting himself ...”

* * *

Looking back, what I wrote about him that night pretty well describes Stewart Copeland, period, as indicated in his most excellent autobiography. Alas, though it was a Christmas present in 2009, I took almost a dozen years to read it. I say “alas” because it is easily one of the most entertaining books, and maybe the best of the autobiographies, I have ever read. 

It’s not so much the story of his life as it is a bunch of stories from his life, everything from scaling crumbled castle walls as a kid in Lebanon to playing polo against the Prince of Wales to touring with a posse of musicians during Notta della Taranta festivals in Italy to composing operas and writing film scores to judging singers on a BBC reality show to facing off against a pride of lions in Africa ... and I’m not finished reading the book! I have yet to embark on the final section, chronicling Copeland’s 2007 experience touring with Sting and Andy Summers, aka The Police.

These tales are written with such articulate hilarity that he has propelled me into areas (like opera and Africa) that hold no interest for me at all. If I felt lukewarm at the start of any such segment, I quickly learned to pay attention because the story is so brilliantly told I would regret missing it. His acuity is so outrageous that I must put the book down for spontaneous bouts of laughter—Terri asked me yesterday if I was okay because I was quaking on the couch with my hand over my eyes, and given the current health climate, she feared something was amiss. I responded by releasing the laughter I was hopelessly trying to suppress.

Aside from the Calvin and Hobbes treasuries, books that capable of assaulting my funny bone are so few as to be counted on one hand. Comedy is really hard to convey in writing, though the humour here is not in the least contrived. Copeland is genuinely funny.

I have also been disappointed by autobiographies over the years. One actress managed to make a potentially fascinating life into an appalling snoozefest, and some of my rock icons have relied on ghost writers to get their stories told—for which I’m grateful, else I’d not know the stories at all, but still. You want a sense of the artist’s self in any book about him/her. Well, Stewart Copeland’s voice is all his own: a brash, shoot from the hip, sharply witty voice that prevails alongside nuts and bolts detail about subjects too varied to name, including music itself, that few ghost writers could or would affect, and many artists, though outstanding in their fields, will not achieve no matter how expert their command of English.

In short, it’s a cracking good read that even eclipsed Sting’s!

Random Italics

I believe a good story can be made better if it’s well-written. On the flip side, a good story that’s badly written may still be good, but it certainly isn’t helped. And the tools in an author’s box of same can either add to a good story’s elevation or contribute to its mediocrity.

Case in point: my current bedtime read. It features an interesting premise, likeable (if not memorable) characters, and a standard storyline with a curious twist folded into the well-worn theme of religious nuts purifying the earth by killing off the monsters who are, in fact, less monstrous than the men who are killing them. The book is the first in a series I might consider in its entirety except for one truly annoying thing: overuse of italics.

As a rule, I have no problem with italics. I use them myself, to emphasize a point or single out the title of someone else’s work, but if italics are meant to stress certain words while preserving the rhythm of a sentence, then English can’t be this author’s first language. She has sprinkled italicized words with gay abandon and apparently no thought to where they may land, and this practice consistently messes with the read. Worse, when I read a line a second time and ignore the italics, the sentence runs more smoothly. So why bother with the italics in the first place?

I know I’m not without sin. I have a debilitating fondness for the semi-colon*, but I have never encountered such flagrant use of “CTL+I” in my entire reading life. Which would be okay if it made sense or added to the mood of the scene.

But it doesn’t. It just creates a hiccup in the action; (*see?) a mental “huh?” that disrupts the cadence of the prose. Disappointing. Truly. And yet I must also wonder where the copy editor’s head was when reviewing the manuscript.

After all, genius doesn’t always extend to formatting and grammar.

The Heavy Entertainer

I’ve just read Chris Heath’s Reveal, a fly-on-the-wall biography of singer Robbie Williams during the years between 2011 and 2016. The author is clearly a friend of the artist, entrusted with access to friends, family and colleagues, yet expected to be truthful in the recounting and honest with his own opinions regarding whatever is happening at the time.

It’s a fascinating read, really well-written, though it helps that I’ve been a huge RW fan for years. The man is a complicated set of individuals for sure, but he is also uncannily self-aware. This makes him alternately brilliant, frustrating, scattered, single-minded, hilarious, enraged, thoughtful, reckless, remorseful, insecure, and astonishingly adept at channelling his inner neuroses into charismatic swagger on stage. He’s quick with a story (sometimes unwisely), but he is unfailingly honest. And people don’t know how to react when a public figure is so relentlessly, well, public. So you either love him or you hate him; it seems there’s no middle ground, and the man himself seems prone to one or the other extreme on any given day.

I don’t remember where I first heard of him; I think it was when his single Millenium was released in the 1990s. Back when MuchMusic actually played music videos, his clip for Feel appeared in the Daily Top 10 for weeks. What a wonderful, powerful song. When something so magical hits me, I tend to get obsessive about the artist. I loved it then and I love it now, though he has released countless tunes in its wake that are equally compelling in a variety of ways.

The guy can sing anything. His two swing albums are maybe my favourites, but there are no throwaways on The Heavy Entertainment Show—I guess you can call it a pop album, but there’s rock and soul on it as well. It’s loaded with irony, sarcasm, sincerity, love, hope, humour, catchy riffs, rhythmic hooks, and asks the question: why should he go away? A lot of people really dislike him, and yes, he’s courted animosity in the past, but really, is it fair to decry a talent so epic in scope? Only if one envies it, methinks.

It’s remarkable to me, reading this book and listening to these albums, that the man at the forefront is so different from the man behind the music. I recognize humility in so much of what he does, yet there are moments during his show when he struts as cockily as they come. And that’s the other remarkable thing: he hasn’t cracked America. He lives in LA, but I don’t think he’s toured the States. Truly, I haven’t investigated that far, but Chris Heath also wrote a book in 2004 called Feel which allegedly chronicles RW’s pursuit of fame in the promised land and it is most definitely next on my reading list.

One final note. The UK press seem to loathe him for being consistently successful (we can’t count Rudebox, and he doesn’t, either), as if pop stars are by law restricted to a limited shelf life. I am less inclined to consider Robbie Williams a pop star than he is an entertainer of the old school variety. He gives it everything he’s got and takes nothing for granted.

Good on you, Rob. And thank you.

Make It Count

Finally! Def Leppard is nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame! At last! How many anniversary editions of Hysteria did they have to release to make the list?

“We have to get online and vote,” Ter said, and I agree. But wait. We can vote as often as we like—daily, if we choose. What the ...?

The same thing is happening on PBS with The Great American Read. People are encouraged to go online and vote for their favourite novel—or novels (yes, more than one can be a favourite)—from a shortlist of 100, as many times as they want before the deadline. The most votes wins, so vote now and vote often.

Huh?? Imagine if the same rule applied to political elections. And why doesn’t it? If I can tip the scales in the Leppard King’s favour by clicking OK a dozen times a day, why do I only get one crack at the House of Parliament?

Give me a mittful of ballots. The most votes would still win, right? And I can say I participated in the democratic process. Never mind if I vote for three separate candidates eight times apiece. Okay, maybe one will get nine votes and the other two will get, say, three and six, respectively. Do the math and my first choice will clearly be the one who got nine votes. Meanwhile, my crazy neighbour votes twenty times for one candidate and guess what? Nutbar’s guy gets in by two votes. How is that fair?

I doubt fairness to the candidate/nominee (or at all) is the point. It seems these online polls are geared toward empowering the voter, specifically the chronically indecisive voter with a nervous tic in his index finger. I understand the challenge of naming a favourite anything—my favourite Leppard song depends on the day—but come on. If you want the Leps in the RnR Hall of Fame, by all means, say so; however ...

Once is enough!

The Horror of Romance (or the Romance of Horror)

I want to write a romance.

There. I said it.

Not one of those formula romances, of course. That’s not my style. Besides, I tried it once, and I couldn’t keep the characters in line. You’d think two-dimensional people would be easy to manage, but my people were, ironically, too-dimensional. She was too independent and he was too conflicted, so I decided to write a vampire story instead.

That story turned out to be a romance. Well, romantic. She was independent and he was conflicted, but somehow the love affair worked. Too bad it ended tragically. When one party is immortal and the other one isn’t, it’s kinda doomed from the start. Mine worked without a happy ending because, quite frankly, paranormal romance is a genre unto itself and I can’t stick to that formula, either. I have utmost respect for authors who can follow those rules. Trust me, it’s harder than it looks.

You know who wrote great “outside the box” paranormal romance? Anne Rice. She set a new standard for Gothic horror with a romantic slant—or was it Gothic romance with a horrific slant? In any case, her work with vampires and witches was phenomenally fabulous, crazy romantic, deeply, sensuously, gorgeously written, and it gave me permission to blow off the doors when developing my own style. She was my example, my mentor, my yardstick, and my escape. I learned from her while reading everything she wrote.

So why was she not included in the top 100 of PBS’s Great American Read? Anyone? Anyone?

Naturally, I couldn’t resist tuning in to find out how many authors I recognized and which books I’d read (more than I thought and not as many as I’d hoped). After the show, I came away with a lengthy reading list ... and some big-time bitterness on discovering the literary Queen of the Damned’s legendary Vampire Chronicles did not make the top 100 while Stephenie Meyer’s horrific-for-all-the-wrong-reasons Twilight series did.

Weeks later, I’m still not over it. In truth, I may never be over it. Twilight led to the Fifty Shades of Grey debacle (which also made the list, gods help us) so I guess it gets points for inspiring a new voice, but I believe it’s also responsible for destroying an eternal genre and lowering the bar for writing in general.

I know I sound hysterical. I could be overreacting, I suppose, since vampires are rarely out of fashion for long, but comparing Interview with the Vampire to Twilight is like comparing cream to dishwater. I also understand that lists are completely ego-based and of no value in the grand scheme, yet it truly pains me that the writer whose work first obsessed me then compelled me to become the writer I am (undiscovered and pretty darned good) was sacrificed in favour of a writer far less deserving of the placement.

So, in dark and stormy tribute to the incomparable Anne Rice, I am setting out to write that romance.

Grrrrr.

Bookish

After he helped Ter and me move by hauling countless boxes of books up the stairs to our suite, my then thirteen-year-old nephew declared, somewhat belligerently, “I’m getting you guys an e-reader for Christmas.”

I have one, but it’s safe to say it won’t replace hard copy books in my life. There’s nothing quite so relaxing as a rainy day, a pot of tea, and a fat, luxuriously-written novel. I must confess to being more discriminating in my book selection these days; space is at a premium at home, not to mention the scarcity of reading time after a day at the office relegates my mental capacity to something akin to a squashed apricot. Still, I love to read. I love books, real books; magical, wonderful, lavishly written books about characters who compel me to think, feel and live their lives with them. Books inspire me. They take me to faraway places. They introduce me to new friends and villainous enemies. They teach me things. They stretch my imagination. It’s true what’s been said about reading: “One who reads lives a thousand lives. One who doesn’t read lives only one.”

I’ve read bodice rippers and murder mysteries, high fantasy and pulp fiction, biographies of mediocre people brilliantly written and autobiographies by brilliant people who couldn’t write worth a darn. I’ve even dipped a toe into poetry and, under duress, tackled the occasional non-fiction tome. But the point of this post stems from a curious dawning about the last few books I’ve bought:

They’re about books.

Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451 is a one-off with a specific message (I’ve only just started it, so I can’t pontificate on that message - yet). Genevieve Cogman’s The Invisible Library is a steampunky/alternate fantasy series that revolves around a place where important fiction from multiple worlds is collected and stored in order to keep those worlds connected and balanced (easier said than done, of course). It’s rollicking good fun in four volumes so far; as usual, I discovered the fourth first and had to rewind to get the background.

What gives? Why am I suddenly discovering books about the importance of books? Farenheit 451 is older than I am, but The Invisible Library was published in 2015. Have books always been in danger? Maybe so. Every time technology advances, the fear of books losing their worth seems to rear its head. Radio, TV, the internet, smartphones, you name it – each one of them has been perceived as a threat to literacy and books in general.

Literacy is definitely under fire, but books? Paperback or hardcover, the printed word doesn’t seem to be going the way of the dinosaurs anytime soon. While touted as the solution to packing Thomas Hardy around in your backpack, e-readers have hardly replaced those weighty beauties of old. Yes, they’re convenient in transit, and mine sure came in handy at the hair salon yesterday, but overall, I still see tattered pocketbooks in play at Starbucks. What a relief. As a writer, I needn’t fear imminent extinction. Technology has provided a vehicle as portable as those beat-up paperbacks, but some things can’t be replaced. Books are important. Books are a comfort; a tangible, sensual means of taking a trip without leaving your comfy chair. And browsing through amazon’s Kindle store is not nearly as pleasurable as browsing the shelves at your local (emphasis on “local”) bookstore.

Find the perfect escape, make that purchase and carry it home. Brew that tea and curl up on that couch, lift the cover, smell the paper, run your fingers over that title, turn the page … and disappear into another life.

Reading Material

I’m one-third of the way through my annual visit to The Night Circus and it’s as magical as ever despite its familiarity. There are no throwaway scenes, no skip-over passages; in fact, there are scenes where I wriggle with delight at what I know is to come. Everything is so beautifully executed. It’s a joy to read.

The best book this year was ML Rio’s debut novel If We Were Villains, and unexpected feast that I was compelled to pick up and subsequently read twice in a row. I finished the last page, then flipped immediately to the first and started over again—in the same sitting! A book that good is always a treasure, probably because they’re so rare. Villains was favourably likened to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, so I proceeded to read that as well.

It wasn’t the same at all. None of the characters was remotely likable, and the tragic secret that bound them was something I’d have done just because the guy was so insufferably irritating. Nor did I find the professor who supposedly seduced his idiot students into committing the original, accidental, crime particularly charismatic. The whole story left me utterly cold.

But the most disappointing read of 2017 had to be Juliet’s Nurse. The premise was certainly intriguing, especially to a Shakespeare fan who has three different versions of Romeo and Juliet on DVD (and Tybalt steals the show in every one), but the execution fell far short of the expectation. It’s hardly the author’s fault that I’d hoped for a new twist on the tragedy and she gave me more of the nurse’s background than I anticipated. The kids weren’t even born at the beginning of this story. Once I realized that we weren’t starting with the Montague/Capulet conflict in full swing, it was quite engaging, and it was a bonus to meet Tybalt as a child, even if it was never entirely clear why he grew up with such a hate-on for the Montagues. The so-called blood feud was barely explained let alone investigated, but what really bugged me was the portrayal of Juliet as a sweet young thing and Romeo as an awkward stripling suddenly turned conniving traitor to the precious girl’s tender (ha!) heart.

I’m sorry but, hello? Has the author even read the play? Seen the movie? Romeo as a double-crossing womanizer? Seriously? I have never seen him as anything other than a poet with heroic intentions too easily foiled by fate and his own romantic nature. Juliet, on the other hand, is a pampered, impetuous firebrand whose willful passion drives the whole story.

So, toward the end of the novel, I was reading to get it over with, caring nothing for any of the players and bitter that the news of Tybalt’s death was given tabloid drama status and the reason for it never fully defined—except, of course, for that amoral scoundrel being solely responsible. Honestly, when I wasn’t impatient with the nurse’s histrionics, I was snickering at the play by play. I was saved by my library card on this one—I borrowed rather than bought the book, which had been haunting me for some while. In the end, the story I told myself about the story was far better than the story I was told!

It’s good to be reading again, though. Of late, I haven’t been as immersed in words as much as behooves my creativity; I can’t write if I don’t read, as it seems I need the work of other writers to inspire me. I have learned how to write (and how not to write!) through their efforts, for all of which I am grateful whether or not I actually enjoyed the experience. I think now, with few weeks of vacation ahead and my mind turning from mere survival to more pleasurable pursuits, it might be time to renew my passion for my craft and see where it takes me.

I Wish I Wrote That!

books that deserve to be read

The Night Circus

Station Eleven

If We Were Villains

Each of these novels had me rending my garment on first read, they were so astoundingly, beautifully written. I’ve read the first four times in four years (with the fifth scheduled for this Christmas). I’ve read the second twice, with the third time pending. I’ve just finished racing through the third, and fully intend to read it again, slowly, to savour the details missed in my zeal to see what happens next. Magical tales in their own right, the language and style of the authors (all women—coincidence?) is pure art. Villains was partly written by Shakespeare, as it features hefty chunks culled from his plays, but he also inspired the “pidgin Bard” bandied so easily between the characters. Geez, it was an astonishingly gorgeous read; I fell so deeply into the story that it became real at the expense of my reality—and it urged me to improve my own craft.

I love English. I treasure grammar as much as I do the imagery conjured by the words. Prose can be poetry, after all, and after relishing novels like these three (among others), I long to be a poet myself.

I have had no problem with purple hyperbole in the past, but the glory in these novels lies in the simple beauty of language. A few well-chosen words can ignite brighter joy and sharper horror than a rampant stream of syllables. This trio of young women has created a wonderland in words, and though I may be similarly gifted, I am always in awe when a story excites my imagination and no scene is filler.

I love to write. I love to read. I can’t do one without doing the other (I must read more!), and why would I want to, when inspiration and aspiration are stimulated as one?

While I’m raving, I must include Z in the list of books I wish I’d written. It’s a completely different story in a completely different style, yet executed with the same respect for the written word and the talent to portray raw emotion as airbrushed fancy. Strong characters will always drive a story, of course, but set design and stage direction are important, too. Keeping it simple is the hard part. I struggle with it every time I put pen to paper. Books like those at the top of this post do more than entertain me. They teach me, absorb me, frustrate me, excite me, and inspire me.

They also exhaust me—and that’s the most fun of all!

A Fine Romance

Passion is a double-edged sword. As deeply and wholly as someone can love another, equally deeply and wholly can that someone come to hate the other. Either way, when two souls are inextricably linked, what is it that holds them together? Love? Hate? Or passion?

I’ve just finished reading Therese Anne Fowler’s most excellent novel Z: a Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald. Aside from being a deliciously descriptive dip into the literary world of the Jazz Age, it’s the story of Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald as told by Zelda herself. And, boy, fictionalized or no, their relationship from first encounter to last vestiges was a wild, crazy, roller coaster ride through a rainbow of emotion that should have blown them apart—and almost did, except for one thing: as written by Fowler, they were utterly and completely devoted to each other. Despite the booze and excess, the flings and flops, despite her struggle to maintain a balance and his fight to remain famous at any cost, they stayed together for more than twenty years.

They never really stopped loving each other.

Nowadays, I suppose a divorce would be inevitable since it’s so easy. Back then, not so much. Zelda’s attempt to live her own life was thwarted by the laws of the time—if she left the marriage, she forfeited everything, including her daughter. So she stayed and lost herself instead, ending up in a series of sanitaria where most of the doctors declared the cure lay in devoting herself entirely to her domestic duties of wife and mother—“the centre of a woman’s happiness”. Forget that she was a creative soul in her own right, since everything she accomplished was perceived as an extension of or due to her husband’s influence.

Of course she resented it. She even resented him (with good reason, might I add), but she understood him, too. And she loved him, knowing that he loved her as well. It was a beautiful train wreck. The insanity of excess and the bittersweet ending, however, hardly detract from the romance. Something between them endured the chaotic run through two decades. It made the book’s ending so poignant that I needed time to process it.

Romance (and I may have said this before, so bear with me) might begin with chemistry and that giddy, unbridled riot in the heart. It’s brave and bold and daring—and it can, but often doesn’t, have a happy ending. True romance stays the course through rough waters and prevails against the darkest odds. It survives birth, death, and drama. It lasts beyond the final exhausted surrender. It’s the last man standing. Not a happy ending, perhaps, but a triumphant one if the pair involved can regard each other through jaded eyes and recognize the magic that drew them together in the first place.

Scott and Zelda had a great one.

Blustery Days

My earliest memory of hella high winds formed when I was about five years old. I was in kindergarten in Sorel, at a school that was, I believe, walking distance from home.

I don’t remember much about kindergarten except that I didn’t like it. It was new and strange, and full of kids who spoke French when I was the only one who didn’t. I don’t know if I lasted the full term, or if my folks pulled me out after I pitched a four alarm tan-tan in the driveway one day; so much of that time in my life is long gone but for the dramas that tend to stay with a person well into adulthood. Allowing for said dramas to become exaggerated over time, I have a clear sense of losing my mind one day, and my mother telling the kind folks who had come to pick me up to go on their way. I don’t remember anything more than that, but if Mum does, I bet the story’s as embarrassing as the one she likes to tell about the day I first saw snow.

I digress.

While I was still in kindergarten, I remember stepping from the school into bright sun and big wind. The leaves were doing their swirly dance on the sidewalk and skittering into the street. I was wearing my plush green winter coat, which was heavy enough to keep my feet on the ground when the wind tried to lift me off them. It was so strong when it hit me that it felt like a big hand curling around my legs. It tugged so insistently that I was sure I’d achieve liftoff like Piglet in the stories by AA Milne—to this day, on a big windy one, I’ll generally ask of no one in particular, “Can I fly Piglet next?”

Fast forward to November 2015. Ter and I had ventured out to do some Christmas shopping and the wind was so strong when we got home that folks were parking on Dallas Road to watch the ocean pound against the shore. I love a stormy ocean, and while I normally watch it from the shelter of my living room, this time, I couldn’t resist. “I have to go look,” I told Ter, and promptly left her to struggle with the shopping bags while I headed up to street level.

Our street sits a bit lower than the main road. How much lower became evident when I reached the top of the slope and was struck full in the face by a blast of salt spray—and this before I got across the road. I waited for a break in the traffic and crossed over to join the other nut cases hanging out by the railing.

Wind roaring. Surf crashing. Gulls hanging overhead. Kids in their twenties spreading their wings and leaning into the teeth of it, letting the wind hold them upright. Small dogs being carried because otherwise they’d be airborne. My vision immediately obscured by the spray on my glasses. The sheer force of the wind felt like that long-ago hand trying to push me back into traffic, shoving so hard that it seemed almost enraged. I fought back, kept my feet, staggered a few steps along the sidewalk. You can’t breathe in wind that strong; it jams itself down your throat and stays there. And all the while, you are reminded of how fragile, how mortal, you are against this heaving, howling, living entity.

Jesu Maria. Get me out of this.

With the wind helping me along, I trip-and-a-trip-trip-tripped back toward home, where Ter had managed to secure the Tiguan by the curb and wrestle our loot into the house. “Well?” she asked from the top of the stairs. “How was it?”

“One of the stupidest things I’ve ever done,” I replied, gasping.

“Yah,” she said, “while I was trying to drop the hatch on Tiggy, the wind swooped in and snatched one of the empty grocery bags. The last I saw, it was zipping toward Moss Rock Park.”

I could very easily have gone the same route.

Last week, the west coast was treated to a hat trick of storms over three days, ending with the remains of Typhoon Songda predicted to be the most intense of the trio. Once again, folks pulled over to watch the ocean do its thing. Ter parked Tiggy behind the house for the third act, as did most of the neighbours. The street out front was empty that night. The wind ramped up for a bit of a show before dinner, then died back by eight and never really took off.

I didn’t even try to go outside.

Return to Castasia

“Enjoy your book,” Ter says, leaving the room to let me read a bit before I go to sleep.

What’s so strange about this, you ask?

I am reading my own book.

Re-reading, actually. I was inspired to revisit The Healing after a work colleague asked if I would take a look at the first few chapters of a fantasy novel she’s writing. I have great respect for this person, not only because she rocks at her finance desk job, but because she has published a bunch of books through real contracts with established publishers. She already identifies me as a capable employee. To have her recognize me as a fellow wordsmith—or at least someone who knows something about writing—was pretty darned cool.

You don’t entrust your fledgling child to just anyone.

After I sent her my review, she dropped by my office for our first real writer-to-writer conversation. We’ve scratched the subject on occasion, but because I respect her practice of keeping her writer’s life separate from her work life, we had never gotten into the meat of it. My effort with her manuscript proved more than she had hoped for—not knowing what I was doing, I did a complete line edit rather than a general overview—and our relationship seems to have shifted in a more comfortable direction as a result.

At the same time, I decided to take another look at The Healing, if for nothing else but to remind myself of how my own fantasy story started. Of course I’d write it differently now … but not by much. My style has evolved in the decade-plus since I finished the first draft. The story itself is good. The characters are complex and colourful. The magic is present but not overpowering—I recall GRRM saying that magic is like anchovies on a pizza: too much and the whole pie is ruined. Best of all, elements are present in The Healing that remained consistent and actually propelled the series forward in subsequent novels. I should be proud of that sucker; it’s a pretty good read, if not a little fatty in places. It’s actually fun to see that I could have cut a line or a paragraph, or even a scene, to make the flow move faster—then again, I always write what I want to read. In 2003, it seems I wanted to read something thick and sticky with detail. Nowadays, not so much.

And that’s okay. Like Treason before it, The Healing deserves better than two of five, so I’ll give it …

King of Kings

It’s been years since I read a novel by Stephen King. His On Writing is a staple on my bookshelf, but despite his name perennially displayed in the New Releases section at the local bookstore, the last novel I read was Gerald’s Game in 1993, and even then, I did not finish it. Too scary.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I still believe The Stand is his best work. Cal Leandros even gives it an honourable mention in Roadkill!

The man doesn’t need a book release to get my attention, however. I have long admired him for his honesty and, in particular, his sense of humour. The guy’s a hoot.

Little did I know that he and George R.R. Martin have been friends for decades, since before GRRM struck gold with A Game of Thrones (the book, not the TV series). So imagine my delight on finding a video of the two old pals having an onstage conversation when Steve’s recent book tour brought him to New Mexico. The bulk of the talk was stuff I already knew, but I always appreciate hearing how the professionals operate. One of King’s genre policies is this: “Aim for terror. If you can’t reach terror, aim for horror. If horror eludes you, settle for the gross-out.”

The other thing he said that had me rolling on the floor was during an elaboration of a storyline. He mentioned a villain’s recent diagnosis of pancreatic cancer as motivation for a diabolical act and the audience gasped as one. He looked at them and scolded, “It’s written on page nine, for Chrissakes! Spoilers? Spoilers? There’s no such thing as a spoiler. You can’t ‘spoil’ a book; people read books to have an experience, so who cares?”

Or words to that effect.

He’s right. If he was wrong, I’d only read a book once. How else can I explain my passion for revisiting The Night Circus or GRRM’s series, or Station Eleven or the Cal Leandros novels; or for multiple viewings of Orphan Black or The Newsroom, for that matter? Knowing what happens ahead of time is clearly no deterrent. It’s the joy of reconnecting with beloved characters that brings me back time and again.

I recognize that some folks prefer the slow reveal. I admit, I prefer it myself, but knowing before I saw The Empire Strikes Back that Luke Skywalker’s dad was Darth Vader did not prevent me from paying to see the movie. If you really care, you won’t care. Stephen King certainly doesn’t.

Long live the King.