Crime and Punishment

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3/17/2015 – Crime and Punishment

I learn so much from attending meetings of the local chapter of Sisters in Crime, an association of writers and fans of mystery fiction. This month’s meeting was no exception. Guest speaker was playwright Betty May. As a volunteer with I-WISH, a group of women prisoners at the Maryland Correctional Institution for women, she encouraged them to write about their lives, and then compiled their essays, poems, memoirs, and prayers into a chronological format which became a play called Faces.

Too young, too stupid, too ignorant, these women say and so they made bad choices and bad friends. Now they’re serving life sentences in a maximum security prison. They describe unspeakable things that

Come Sit with Me Book Review

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3/13/15  Book Review, Come Sit with Me, by George Spain

 

As the title, along with its subtitle, Come Sit with Me…and listen to the stories I want you to hear… suggests, this is a book for casual reading. Author George Spain’s voice echoes through the words as if a favorite uncle is telling tales of what once was and can never be again, stories you know to be true, some you know to be exaggerations, and some that you know came from the far reaches of his mind.

3/10/2015—THE POWER OF THE CHARACTERS WE HATE

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3/10/2015—THE POWER OF THE CHARACTERS WE HATE

Amy Dunne is one of the most despicable and yet well-known fictionalGone Girl characters today. Gone Girl, the novel that introduced Amy to the world, sold more than 2,000,000 print and digital copies in its first year of publication. Since its release in October 2014, the film version of the novel has grossed around $370,000,000 worldwide. People want to know about Amy—not because they like her but because they can’t stop watching her.

Like most unlikeable characters, Amy can’t help creating conflict, which is the heart of any good story. Unlikeable characters hook their readers because they cause their own consequences. Circumstances aren’t thrust on them. Whether their actions are immoral, illegal, insensitive, or just cruel, they are responsible for the problems they generate, and an active character is always more compelling than an inactive one.

Book Review: All MY PUNY SORROWS BY MIRIAM TOEWS

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3/7/2015 — BOOK REVIEW: MIRIAM TOWES’ ALL MY PUNY SORROWS

ToewsMiriam Toews has managed to do the seemingly impossible: Write a novel about depression and suicide that is funny, loving, witty, heartbreaking, clever, and insightful, all while contributing to the public debate over an individual’s right to die with dignity. Toews has long been a best-selling, award-winning author in her native Canada, but readers south of the border have been slow to discover her. All My Puny Sorrows, her sixth and arguably best novel, should change that.

REIMAGINING THE MOMENT

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3/04/2015 – REIMAGINING THE MOMENT

I’ve just finished reading two novels that re-envision a few days out of history, one about a famous battle, the other an obscure murder. Both novels include meticulously researched historical details, stretched here and there to fit the arc of a story and perhaps highlight a deeper truth, but still leaving readers with a fresh sense of worlds long vanished.  More than that, though, both Frog Musicnovels reminded me of the infinite richness in the smallness, shortest of moments, something all writers should remember.Killer Angels Cover

Guest Blogger Tom Wood

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3 MARCH 2015 Guest Blogger Tom Wood

TIME ON A TIGHTROPE

Imagine you are high above the crowd, walking a tightrope.

Fans are on the edges of their seats as you put one foot before the other, holding their collective breaths and waiting to see what happens next as you slowly cross the span without a net. You know what you have to do to keep them entranced is a breathtaking combination of focus and balance. One misstep, lean a little too far one way or the other—and SPLAAAT. And the big finish has to be more thrilling than the last; you want them to leave the big top panting and coming back for more.

2/28/15 — OUR MARCH 1, 2015, GUEST BLOGGER IS TOM WOOD

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2/28/15 — OUR MARCH 1, 2015, GUEST BLOGGER IS TOM WOOD

 

I’m sure there is a belief out there that the stereotypical writer is a shy introvert, who lives onTom Wood Journalist caffeine, speaks only to his cat, closets himself in a dark room hunched over a keyboard, and puts words to paper 24/7. Well, our guest blogger, Tom Wood, author of the inventive ‘fictional-true crime’ novel Vendetta Stone, will dispel that idea and give you a sense of how difficult it is to write a second book. When he’s not writing novels and Western short stories he is a freelance sports writer, and actor in the ABC series Nashville and films, such as, The Identical.

 

Talent or Genius? Is There a Difference?

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TALENT or GENIUS?

What is genius? How is it different from talent? Is it a matter of degree, or is it something altogether distinct?
In the past week on Facebook—admittedly not the most elevated forum, though I like to think that most of my friends are fairly bright—I have read that the following people are geniuses: JK Rowling, Prince and Stevie Wonder. I also read that Taylor Swift is extremely talented: she must be, said my friend, an intelligent person, because she is so widely popular. (I had perhaps foolishly, and certainly thoughtlessly, given the opinion that she was ‘completely talentless.’)

For a number of reasons, these comments disturbed me, and forced me to consider—yet again—whether it is possible to make any objective evaluation of the talent of an artist—Aesthetics 101—and also, if it’s possible to discuss the subject without simply getting into a curmudgeonly rant about declining standards, whether there is such a thing as genius, and if so, whether we might be able to define it

DANGEROUS CHARACTERS

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23 FEBRUARY 2015 DANGEROUS CHARACTERS

2/23/15 DANGEROUS CHARACTERS BY SONIA LINEBAUGHElmerGantryCOVER

In 1927 Elmer Gantry was banned in Boston and denounced from pulpits across the USA.
Gantry was a hard-drinking, womanizing, college football player, who grew into a sometimes sober, womanizing, evangelist minister. The denunciations weren’t because ministers were suddenly being held to a higher standard—it was because the fictional Elmer Gantry was a character in a novel by American author Sinclair Lewis.

In 2008, the Swedish novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, knocked American readers out of Thegirlwiththedragontattootheir collective comfort zone. The story seemed to be about a journalist named Mikael, publisher of a Swedish political magazine, but several chapters in, readers’ imaginations got hijacked by “pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander.”

Interview with Joesph D Haske, author of North Dixie Highway

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2/20/15 INTERVIEW WITH JOSEPH D. HASKE, AUTHOR OF NORTH DIXIE HIGWAY HASKEjosephd

Professor of English at South Texas College in McAllen, Haske was awarded the 2011 Boulevard Emerging Writers award for short fiction. His work is featured in journals such as Boulevard, Pleiades, The Texas Review, AleCart, and Fiction International. Last month on Late Last Night Books I reviewed his riveting debut novel, North Dixie Highway, and today I’m honored by the chance to interview him.

Q: Why did you choose rural poverty as the environment for your first novel?

Truth in her Dress

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2/17/2015 – Truth in her Dress
“Truth in her dress finds facts too tight; in fiction she moves with ease.” This quote has stayed with me since college freshman days. I’ve pondered it over the years, both as a reader and a writer.

I think of the quote when I read savage satire where the facts are too tight. And I think of the quote when I read historical fiction that helps me with dates, incidents, and characters difficult to remember. In fiction, they move with ease. The quote works on many levels.

But who said it? A quick google search turned up the author: Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali polymath poet and the first non-European to win the Nobel prize.

Interview with John Neely Davis, Author Bear Shadow

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2/13/15—Interview with John Neely Davis, author, Bear Shadow 

Last month I reviewed Bear Shadow, winner of the Janice Keck Literary Award for Fiction. Today we get to interview the author, John Neely Davis.

MJT: John, Bear Shadow is introduced as a prequel to your debut novel, The Sixth William. Other than geography, what is the connection between the two stories?John Neely Davis - Photo

 

2/10/2015—BOOK REVIEW: WHAT THE ZHANG BOYS KNOW BY CLIFFORD GARSTANG

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2/10/2015—BOOK REVIEW: WHAT THE ZHANG BOYS KNOW BY CLIFFORD GARSTANG

In social psychology, the proximity principle says that people tend toWhat the Zhang Boys Know cover form interpersonal relations with those who are close by. What the Zhang Boys Know by Clifford Garstang confirms that principle and also tests it severely by gathering a multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-generational group of people as residents in a Washington, D.C., condominium building called Nanking Mansion. A Chinese father and his two sons, an African-American lawyer, a painter, a sculptor, a gay aspiring poet, and an unemployed woman who’s selling her jewelry so she can eat are among the people trying to make their way in this minimally refurbished building in a neighborhood that’s just beginning to turn around. 

Book Review: ‘Claire of the Sea Light’ by Edwidge Danticat

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danticat2/7/15 — REVIEW: EDWIDGE DANTICAT’S CLAIRE OF THE SEA LIGHT

I spent a few days in Haiti last week without leaving home. My tour guide was Edwidge Danticat, and the mode of transportation was her magnificent novel, Claire of the Sea Light, which brought Haiti’s sights, sounds, smells to my senses, while introducing me to the people and their incredible courage, perseverance and hope. It was a remarkable journey, one I won’t forget for quite a while.

ON ADDING TO THE WORLD’S BABBLE

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2/04/2014 – ON ADDING TO THE WORLD’S BABBLE

It is easy to throw words down on the page. But how much more difficult it is to choose which of these words are worth keeping, worth sculpting, worth sharing.

2/1/2015 GUEST BLOGGER CLIFFORD GARSTANG

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MORE THAN MERE SETTING

When we first study creative writing, we’re told that the principal elements of fiction are plot, character, and setting. My sense is that teachers of writing spend a good deal more time on plot and character than they do on setting. Perhaps that’s justified. After all, the plot of a novel or short story is essential, whether it’s an action-packed thriller or a psychological drama. Without the plot there is no story. And it is widely recognized that plot and character are inextricable. Plot—a convincing plot, anyway—arises from character, and the reader learns about the characters in a work of fiction from observing how those characters react to the complications that develop in the plot.

But what about setting?

AUTHOR CLIFFORD GARSTANG IS GUEST BLOGGER ON FEBRUARY 1

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01/29/2015   AUTHOR CLIFFORD GARSTANG IS GUEST BLOGGER ON FEBRUARY 1

For author Clifford Garstang, the setting in a story is crucial. As heClifford Garstang said in an interview here last month, “[Setting] is part of the reason I read fiction. I want to be transported, not only to whatever the story is but also to the place.” As you would expect, setting plays an important role in Garstang’s award-winning writing, including In an Uncharted Country, a collection of short stories, and What the Zhang Boys Know, a novel-in-stories. In Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet, a collection that Garstang curated and edited, each story takes place in a different country. As our guest blogger on February 1, Garstang will explain why the best fiction uses setting as more than just a backdrop.

Agnar Mykle’s Lasso Round the Moon–and a Rant against American Parochialism

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Agnar Mykle’s Lasso Round the Moon—& a Rant about American Literary Parochialism

“So much of American fiction has become playful, cynical and evasive,” says novelist Joy Williams, and she goes on to deplore its “inconsequentialities”. I agree. And because I am ever more bored by the contemporary American novel, which strikes me, to add some adjectives to hers, as increasingly myopic, solipsistic and parochial, not to mention uninspired—especially the hip sacred cows like Jonathan Franzen, George Saunders, and Miranda July—I find myself ‘playing truant’ whenever I can, running for refuge to Latin America or Europe, where writers have not yet learned to turn out the MFA novel, which generally comes in one of two flavours: either flawless technically but deadly dull, dealing with domestic melodramas (Richard Russo, Jane Smiley) or else ‘quirky’, linguistically imaginative (July, Saunders, Shteyngart, Safran-Foer) and yet shallow and pretentious.

HYPE: ARE YOU BEING SERVED?

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23 JANUARY 2015 HYPE: ARE YOU BEING SERVED?

1/23/15 HYPE: ARE YOU BEING SERVED? BY SONIA LINEBAUGH

“The Intellectual Situation (The Hype Phase)” is a 2008 essay by the editors of n + 1 magazine. According to the writers, the hypeHouellebecq 1-23-15 cycle starts when “the ginned up enthusiasm of publicists combines with word of mouth (and blog) to create so-called buzz.” After the release date, “backlash surges alongside the ongoing hype.” Then follows “backlash-to-the-backlash.”

WhenI search Amazon for novels I get 750,111 results, 6992 of them hyped as best-sellers. French author Michel Houellebecq’s (pronounced WELL-beck) “Suomission” is one of them, an instant out-of-stock bestseller at $44.96 for the paperback edition in French. The ginned up enthusiasm comes from the media in general, not a few well-connected publicists.

REVIEW OF JOSEPH D. HASKE’S NORTH DIXIE HIGHWAY

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NORTHDIXIEHIGHWAY1/20/15  Review of Joseph D. Haske’s North Dixie Highway  A prologue explains that no single “Dixie Highway” exists, but instead the term applies to roads south that reach as far north as Canada. Haske’s story lives in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Publisher Texas Review Press offers, in part: “Weaving multiple storylines with vivid description of characters and landscape, Haske’s debut novel brings new life and a unique voice to the fiction of rural America. North Dixie Highway is a story of family bonds, devolution, and elusive revenge.”
Author reviewer Larry Fondation adds (in an Amazon editorial review) “It may be fueled by alcohol and anger, but it’s based on love and loyalty: avenging the dead, defending the living.”