Call Down The Hawk is book one of The Dream Trilogy by fantasy author Maggie Stiefvater. Stiefvater has created a unique fantasy world in which there are dreamers who can create things in the real world––some times those dreams are under their control; sometimes not. Sometimes they dream duplicates of themselves, which can get complicated. Then there are those who are hunting the dreamers to kill them.

Stiefvater is a master at creating fantastic worlds. The problem to this reader is that the world overwhelms the story. The lack of a defined plot in the early chapters made my following the story a challenge. That’s an issue which only improves slightly as the story progresses.

That’s not to say she doesn’t create interesting characters as well as well as interesting possibilities.

Think of a movie or book you love where not a single character, not even the hero, is truly virtuous. For old-timers like me, “The Sting” (you know, starring Robert Redford) immediately comes to mind. For literary types, “The Talented Mr. Ripley” by Patricia Highsmith. Both are about con artists, though the crooks in “The Sting” are fun and are just ripping off illegal gamblers, where Mr. Ripley is, well, pretty much everything that personifies awfulness. The fact is that there are compelling anti-heroes for all literary tastes, the common ingredient being that we somehow end up rooting for them despite their criminality. What is the point of works like this–what are we supposed to do with them? Now that I’m working on a novel about a professional rumrunner during Prohibition (based very loosely on my grandfather), these questions are beginning to haunt me.

Some of the finest thriller and crime writers of all time have come from the British isles starting with Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. Ireland’s Tana French is on the path to joining the coterie of highly regarded contemporary mystery/thriller authors who include P.D. James, Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Sayers, and Lee Child.

French has a unique story-telling style that may not suit all readers­­––particularly if your preference is for short, action-filled scenes. French constructs her stories as if building a castle, stone by stone.

Both novels I read had female protagonists struggling to following their intuition and not the rules set for them by their male counterparts. This is done without preaching which I appreciate.

In The Likeness French sets the story around a unique set of circumstances––the victim of a murder bares an uncanny resemblance to a former member of the Murder Squad, a specialist in going underground in disguise.

Do a narrator’s accent and voice necessarily enhance the audiobook experience, even if they differ from the author’s? Clearly some audiobook producers think so. But would the author agree? The reader/listener?

I pondered audiobooks and accents in last month’s blog (The Narrator’s Accent). It turned out that I wasn’t the only one with strong opinions on the subject.

Most people who responded turned out to be fans of accented audiobooks. In this month’s blog, I share some of their responses.

The Audiobook Experience

Is a regional accent helpful in creating atmosphere? Or does it restrict a listener’s imagination? Does it pull you out of the story because you are struggling to understand the words?

Alan Cheuse’s 1982 lyrical biography of John Reed is mistitled. While the title refers to Reed’s fellow travelers of the cultural and political upheaval that took place during the first decades of the 20^th century, it is Reed’s life story that Cheuse has told no doubt because Reed in many respects was one of the main players in that era’s story.

Reed is best known for his Ten Days That Shook the World, the story of the Communist takeover of the Russian Revolution. Before travelling to Russia where he passed away in October 1920 from typhus, however, he had chronicled for alternative magazines like The Masses, the labor movement wars in the U.S. and the rise of the socialist movement in the U.S.

Are writing and sex connected?

Is there a connection between writing and sex? Between selling one’s skills as a writer and being a prostitute?

I opened the door to my husband’s psychoanalytic office, a neutral ground where I could meet with my own clients, writers (or potential writers) that needed help. I was about to enter into the complexities of narrative with a young man who would graduate from college soon as a computer major. Yes, the poor guy had been bitten—not by the Zika mosquito carrier but by the writing bug.

He’d emailed me for help after taking his first writing workshop with a fellow writer whom I know from an on-line critique group. She’d recommended me as a writing coach.

Are You Destined for Literary Success?

Just fill in our quiz, all you talented wordsmiths, and find out!

1. How talented are you? Be brutally honest, babes! a. Off the charts – right up there with Dan Brown and Lee Childs b. No genius, but I know my craft, and work my ass off c. Martin Amis or Salman Rushdie would like my work if they knew it d. I don’t know crap about grammar or spelling, but hey, that’s what editors are for, right?
2. How much training do you have in Creative Writing? a. Bachelor’s degree b. MFA c. PhD d. I went to a summer workshop and slept with one of the tutors
3. Your social media presence a. rivals Kim Kardashian’s b.

I recently finished reading Fielding’s chef d’oeuvre, Tom Jones, first published in 1749, and running to over 750 pages in the Norton Critical Edition—without the critical essays at the end. So by contemporary standards it’s a whopper, and that in itself may be why sufficient reason why so few people, apart from English Lit. students, have read it. (And have they? I suspect half of them merely skim it.) And yet, with some reservations, I very much enjoyed reading it, and benefited from the experience quite a bit. In this thumbnail review, I shall consider some of the reasons why people may shy away from it, and try to show what they’re missing.

First, it was written nearly three hundred years ago, so some will be wary of the ‘old English.’