The Roaring Twenties

Grapeshot has neglected her blog, sad to say.  After the trip to Spain, and recovering from  the head and chest cold that did not want to go away, there were, shall we say, a myriad of tasks on my plate.  Probably hundreds.  Hunkered down and got many out of the way.

Gritted teeth and reformatted two novels for ebooks.  Every publisher wants different formatting, including scene breaks, chapter headings.  God, is it tedious, mindless, boring and totally necessary.  Got going on my 1928 California novel.  The twenties were soooo interesting.  I was ready to begin the novel a few years ago when the woman who became Maxine began talking to me, telling me her story, and I put 1928 aside and wrote a new novel.  That wouldn't have been so bad except that I am a slow writer and when you aren't writing to a deadline, well, let's just say I am somewhat dilatory.

Portugal:  Al Fresco lunch at the museum.  The chicken empadas were soooo good.

Now I'm back to Such Stuff As Dreams and of course in the intervening years I forgot 75% of all my research.  Still have the books, just have to read them again.   Last night I discovered I only had a vague idea of the houses my characters lived in.  Of   course, they lived in California Bungalows!  How could I not have known that. Found some old old notes about the book that didn't make a lot of sense.  Change.  Change.

I am also in the throes of some work for a writing conference.  Winterized the garden.  We're supposed to get serious snow tonight, so  undoubtedly the nasturtiums and whatever is left (morning glories, cleomes, and a few other annuals) will be frozen.  Got out the fall and winter clothes.  Spain was warm.  It is no longer warm in New England.

Cooked some decent meals:  enchiladas verdes, roast chicken with mustard sauce, etc.  Roasted chicken in mustard and garlic sauce by Jacques Pepin  

The marinade for the chicken would be delicious on the grill or with pork chops, steak, fish or lots of other meats.  

And now we're roaring into the roaring twenties.   Trying to figure out where the conflicts will be.  Hadn't really had a handle on the novel yet.  Which is what you discover when you start to write.  So there is work to be done.   Why am I not surprised? 

Southern cornbread, Puerto Rican Rice and Beans

    Note the cast iron skillets, a cook's best friend.  Cooked the chicken in mustard sauce in it, too.

A Long Slog to the Finish Line

After much procrastinating, I finally completed the final (I hope) edits to my suspense, woman-in-jeopardy novel, tentatively titled In Flight.   An editor friend had kindly gone through the supposedly final copy, and then I cut 3,000 words (sigh), and went through yet another series of edits, and voila!  The final word count in 111,000 and I have decided that I can't really cut anymore without eviscerating the book.   I like to read big meaty books and that's also what I usually write.  No novellas for Grapeshot, no indeed.

It was hard to step out of a series, where I knew most of the characters and start from scratch.  In fact I never would have, but this woman leaned over my shoulder and started telling me her story, and then her antagonist stepped up and began telling me his.  This lasted for quite a while and then in mid-book, they both stopped, as if to say, well, you figure the rest out. 

And I had to do just that.


I had also never done a book in 3rd person or with two points of view.  The novel has some elements of the picaresque tradition, and is both a journey and a quest.  How do you like them apples?

Now I have to write a query letter, my least favorite task, and a synopsis, my even leaster favorite task.  I know.  I know.  Leaster?

I wrote about South Florida and the Reno area, also suburban Boston, places I know well.  Even took a trip to Miami, Boca Raton and Key West to get some more local color.  A trip to Reno solidified the story.  Does anyone still write picaresque?  Do you even know this word?  Here is the wikipedia entry: The Picaresque Novel
Interesting that I come upon this word having just come from Spain and an immersion in Spanish history and culture and even a visit to Don Quixote's famous windmills.

Are my main character's flawed?  Oh my yes, but of course it's hard to them to realize this.  The heroine talks about the "bad angel" on her shoulder who has way too much influence. 

This is my last crime fiction novel, at least for a while.  I am preparing to format The Shadow Warriors for the Nook and other e-readers besides Kindle using Smashwords. Then World of Mirrors will get the Kindle/Smashwords treatment, too.   I have to figure out what to do with my so-far unsold series novels.   We'll see how the World of Mirrors fares. And I've started my 1928 California novel, Such Stuff As Dreams.  Winter will fly by in a flurry of writing and publishing.

Publishers, agents and editors are running scared.  And authors know what self-publishing is no longer a shameful option.  It's a whole new world out there.  How Do you like them apples?  Are we in a new garden of Eden and if so, who is the snake?

Grapeshot

The Language Barrier

Parador at Carmona, a former Moorish ruin 

For our recent trip to Spain, I tried to relearn a bit of my old Spanish from high school. So long ago.   I also read all the signs on a city bus trip through Spanish Harlem and realized it wasn't the reading that was the problem, it was the spoken word.

I went to high school in a community full of migrant workers who spoke Spanish (Mexican Spanish) at home but of course didn't know how to read and write.  The first day that the teacher (a Phi Beta Kappa) opened her mouth and lisped away in her Castillian accent, the Hispanics rolled on the floor holding their sides they were laughing so hard  Truth to tell, she did sound ungodly effete.  Everyone else laughed, too, although we weren't in on the joke.

The Anglos excelled in reading and writing and the Mexican kids were masters of conversation. But speaking is what you want to be able to do.  Speak and understand.   After I married, we made several trips to Mexico and could communcate a little bit, especially Significant Other who studied 5 years of Spanish and has a bit of a knack for languages.

In the meantime, I had three years of French at university, and learned German at Berlitz.  Spoke lots of German and some French during trips.  Picked up a little Italian after a few jaunts to Italy.
So naturally, whenever I opened my mouth to speak Spanish, German, French or even Italian words presented themselves to my tongue.    After two weeks, I had remastered my vieho espanol a bit, and was making valiant efforts at menu Spanish.  We sure as hell didn't want to order an omelet of pig brains.  With a cheat sheet and the good will of waiters, we muddled through.  Jamon Iberico (forgive the lack of accents) three times a day.

Saw the windmills Don Quixote jousted.  High on a windy hill.  Zowie.

At night in my dreams I am still in Spain, not a bad place to be.  A cat that looked very much like my tortoise Thisbe ran through the Alhambra gardens.  

In Carmona, just before the bus took its last hairpin curve into town, there was a cat house.  No, not that kind.  Grapeshot runs a clean blog.  This was a house surrounded by a wall with a nice courtyard that was full of cats of all sizes and descriptions.  They slept in the garden and on top of the wall.  A quick glance into the window of the house showed a man  with a cat on his shoulder and two on his lap.  Was this the home of a crazy cat man?  You always hear about crazy cat ladies, but I did know a crazy cat man once.  Anyway, the dogs barked like crazy down the hill, but the cats were  silent.  Sometimes a rooster crowed.  That's what happens when you sleep in an old Moorish palace, now a posada. 

All for now.  Hasta la vista, buenos tardes, arividerci, ciao, auf wiedershen, schuss, adieu, and so long.

Grapeshot

National Book Award Nominees Announced

Here they are.  Congratulations to all the authors.

National Book Award Nominees

Fiction

Andrew Krivak, THE SOJOURN (Bellevue Literary Press)
Tea Obreht, THE TIGER'S WIFE (Random House)
Julie Otsuka, THE BUDDHA IN THE ATTIC (Knopf)
Edith Pearlman, BINOCULAR VISION (Lookout Books)
Jesmyn Ward, SALVAGE THE BONES (Bloomsbury)

Non-Fiction

Deborah Baker, THE CONVERT: A Tale of Exile and Extremism (Graywolf)
Mary Gabriel, LOVE AND CAPITAL: Karl & Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution (Little, Brown)
Stephen Greenblatt, THE SWERVE: How the World Became Modern (Norton)
Manning Marable, MALCOLM X: A Life of Reinvention (Viking)
Lauren Redniss, RADIOACTIVE: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout (It Books)

Poetry

Nikki Finney, HEAD OFF & SPLIT (Triquarterly)
Yusef Komunyakaa, THE CHAMELEON COUCH (FSG)  
Carl Phillips, DOUBLE SHADOWS (FSG)
Adrienne Rich, TONIGHT NO POETRY WILL SERVE: POEMS 2007-2010 (Norton)
Bruce Smith, DEVOTIONS (University Of Chicago Press)

Young People's Literature

Debby Dahl Edwardson, MY NAME IS NOT EASY (Marshall Cavendish)
Thanhha Lai, INSIDE OUT AND BACK AGAIN (Harper)
Alfred Marrin, FLESH AND BLOOD SO CHEAP: THE TRIANGLE FIRE AND ITS LEGACY (Knopf)
Lauren Myracle, SHINE (Amulet/Abrams)
Gary D. Schmidt, OKAY FOR NOW (Clarion)

The Boston Book Festival

 Books, books, books!  Bostonian bibliophiles, writers, agents, and bookaholics are attending the Boston Book Festival, Saturday, October 15th. The Boston Book Fest on Saturday, October 15th 

There will be loads of events for fiction, non-fiction and kid lit. It's always wonderful.  And it's free!  Yowza!  Get thee to Copley Square in the heart of the city for a great literary fandango.

The New England Crime Bake

Haven't posted much about writing lately, but I'm down deep in the trenches with my 6th novel and half-way through a difficult short story.  Writing groups and conferences make the lonely life of a writer less so and can give one heart and inspiration after being rejected.  One such conference for crime writers is the The England Crime Bake.  Yours truly was on the first (and many subsequent) committees ten years ago when the event was born.  Check out Lindsay Down's  blog to  read first-hand how one of these events gets off the ground.  How The New England CrimeBake got started

We've been sold out for many moons, but check it out.  Great panels, guests, agents, editors and an entire weekend that's all about crime writing.  Yowza.  Official website of the New England Crimebake 

It's a fun weekend for old writing pros and beginners alike.  Very friendly and accessible.  

Grapeshot

Viva España!

Incredible Parador in Carmona

So where, you may have been asking (or not) has Grapeshot been for lo, these many weeks?  Truth be told, she was swanning around Portugal and Southern Spain, sampling the wines, the cheeses and especially the Spanish hams.  Viva Jamon Iberico!  She saw Moorish castles, Roman ruins, Spanish cathedrals and palaces and 40 million of the 80 million (or is it 800 million?) olive trees.  Cork trees, too.  Bulls outstanding in the field.  Sheep.  Goats.  Jacaranda trees in Lisbon.  Umbrella pines.  Listened to Fado.

I never knew what a Spanish breakfast was.  Take a slice of good white bread or slice a roll.  Spread with fresh tomato pulp.  Add a few slices of good Spanish ham.  Drizzle with olive oil.  Eat.  Yum!

Iberico hams displayed

 The scenery, the history, the accommodations and the company couldn't be beat.  We ended the trip in Madrid in an orgy of museum visits.  Then, we got head/chest colds to die for, yes, and we thought we were going to.  Came home with two weeks laundry to find the washing machine crapped out.  30 pounds of junk mail and lots of bills awaited.  A bare larder.  Cats who needed lots of attention. Waking at 3:30 a.m. two days running.  News of the Red Sox debacle.  Maybe we are dead and this is hell.  No, just the yin and yang of life. 

Two books I should mention.  Before the event, we read James Michener's Iberia, a non-fiction record of his travels in Spain many years ago.  I also began reading Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra, which turned out to be sort of an early Michener-style book with many good stories and digressions.  The book, Food of Spain, came out during prep for the trip and we read Traveler's Tales of Spain, also good.

I can't remember the last time I immersed myself into a culture or activity so deeply.  Well, when I wrote my last novel.   Significant Other kept the trip diary and took the photos, and I took notes on some curiosities that caught my eye.  

Settle in for a few weeks of more traveler's tales from Spain.  Right now, I have to put another load of laundry into the new washer.  We didn't even have to visit the laundromat because Sears delivered it so speedily.  There is food in the house and we are pleased to discover that our little hummingbirds have finally migrated.  Wish them godspeed on their long journey.  The slough has turned red and the early fall light is fantastic.  But everything looks so different.  Where are the olive trees?  I did find the ham in Garden City, New York, but it will have to wait until I'm in the neighborhood.  Of course we packed on a few pounds in spite of all the walking and climbing of stairs.  And my last word today is that there must be 100 recipes for Gazpacho, but the best we had was in Cordoba.  And it had little bits of ham!   Viva España!  Where flan is on the breakfast buffet along with hundred's of other delicacies.  I did other activities besides eating, really I did. 

Grapeshot