VARIATIONS ON A THEME

The Literary Lab has just announced that their new anthology, VARIATIONS ON A THEME, has gone live on Amazon. The collection of short stories is available in beautiful paperback form for only $8.56, a very good price for a nice print book. Isn't the cover awsome? It makes me think of Jack In The Beanstalk meeting Hansel and Gretel.

Writers were asked to create work inspired by one of two stories: “The Tinderbox,” a classic fairy tale, or “The Huntsman,” by Anton Chekhov. I'm excited to see how all the stories fit together in what I've been told is a tight collection of magical storytelling. As always, the proceeds go to a charitable cause.

Gaitskill's Camera

VERONICA, by Mary Gaitskill is horrifying and cruel, and impossible to put down.  It’s a raw, disturbing critique of the modeling industry: the pimps and photographers, the exploitation and narcissism. But it’s also the tender story of an unlikely friendship between two disparate women in 1980s New York. Throughout the novel, Gaitskill moves seamlessly back and forth between past and present, so effortlessly you barely realize she’s doing it.

The story begins when Allison is middle-aged and cleans offices, but with a body so wrecked she can barely wash windows. Gaitskill then takes us back in time to a sixteen-year-old girl who is oblivious to fashion. She runs away from home and meets a fashion model and is drawn to the lure of modeling.

From Allison’s first shoot with an agent:

I didn’t know how to pose but it didn’t matter. Then he said he had to see me naked.

“We aren’t taking any more pictures,”he said. “No one ever shoots you nude. I have to look at you because I’m the agent.”

He turned the music off and looked at me. “You’re five pounds overweight,” he said gently. “And your breasts aren’t that good.” He touched my cheek with the back of his hand. “But right now, that doesn’t matter.”

Veronica is the eccentric middle-aged office temp Allison first meets while working between modeling jobs as a temp doing word processing for an ad agency in Manhattan. Plump, with bleached blonde hair and a loud sensual voice, Veronica is the complete opposite of Allison. She proofreads like a cop with a nightstick, and her voice resonates with "been there, done that". 

"Excuse me hon, but I’m very well acquainted with the use of the semicolon.”

Then Allison gets a chance to go to Paris to work the runway. This is a passage from shortly after she arrives:

He said I needed a haircut. Called a hairdresser, told him what to do, and sent me to the salon in a taxi. The salon was full of wrinkled women staring fixedly at models in magazines. When I walked in, they frowned and glared. But the girl at the desk smiled and led me through rows of gleaming dryers, each with a woman under it, dreaming angrily in the heat. The hairdresser didn’t even need to talk to me. He talked to someone else while I stared at myself in the mirror.

This is one of the more caustic scenes from a shoot with a photographer who was considered an artist:

The girl was fifteen and he spent the whole day telling her she was bloated and fat.

“The lips are too thin, Andre. Can you work with that? And while you’re at it, do something about those bags under the eyes.”

I was drinking orange soda and giggling with a stylist.

“My God!” cried the photographer, throwing another Polaroid on the ground. “Can’t you do better than that? Do you even know what fucking is?”

The girl’s mouth quivered. She was thin-lipped for a model.

I tipped my head back to look at the deep and bright blue sky.

“Okay,” the photographer sighed. “Look. We’re going to be shooting from the waist up only. Just put your hand down your pants and make yourself feel good.”

The girl’s mouth was twisted with embarrassment. Tears shone on her face.

“You haven’t got the lips!” yelled the photographer, “so use your eyes! You’ve got the eyes! Use them!”

Paris doesn't work out. Cheated out of her money and locked out of her apartment, Allison moves back to New York. Her career takes off again. She gets a larger apartment. As soon as she does, the work falls off. 

I was supposed to be in a swimsuit spread, but I stood next to a girl with big boobs and a butt like a mare and the photographer said, "You look like her twelve-year old sister!" During an evening-wear shoot a client suddenly appeared with a tape measure and held it to my hips and said, "Look at this! We can't have this!"

Later, over sushi, a friend asks her, "Were you about to have your period, by any chance?"

And finally, this is from a conversation that Veronica and Allison have much later about pleasing people:

Veronica drew on her cigarette, blew out. “Prettiness is always about pleasing people. When you stop being pretty, you don’t have to do that anymore. I don’t have to do that anymore. It’s my show now.”

It’s her show, and it’s her story as much as Allison’s. While reading this, I kept thinking about all the beauty pageants little girls are entered in: Princess this and Princess that, pitting them against each other to see who’s the cutest when they’re barely out of diapers. I wish that anyone thinking to subject a little girl to that would first read VERONICA.

Kiss Me I'm Irish

Every time I peel potatoes, I think of the Irish. I don't know why. Maybe it's the old stories about the Irish potato famine that I heard from my mother and my grandmother and have never forgotten. I like potatoes as much as the next person, and it's one of the most versatile root vegetables, but I can't imagine having a diet solely based on potatoes. I can't imagine if that were the case and the crop failed.

Everyone is Irish today, so I wanted to post a little tribute to a resilient people by sharing a list of common English words that come from the Irish. Credit goes to the Scottish for words like whiskey, loch, and clan, but according to Emma Taylor's article at Accredited Online Colleges, Scottish Gaelic grew out of Middle Irish. Thanks Emma. I didn't know that! 

Check it out and amaze your friends with your knowledge of word origins whilst tipping back a pint (I can't do green either). And doesn't hooligan sound nicer than criminal?  A hooligan can be almost charming. Haven't you ever wished that you'd said "yes" just once to that hooligan in your past?

Here's to the "water of life" and a day of fun with the hooligans in your present.

Friday Flash 55 - Tick Tock

The man was a clock.
Tick Tock.
He threatened the teenager who quit without notice.
He punched the migrant worker for no reason at all.
He threatened to kill the irrigation man
who forgot the couplings
Tick Tock needed for his strawberries.
They thought he was all talk
but now they're all sorry.
Tick Tock.


The storm surrounds us and knocked out the power a place away. The woods across the road are backlit by strobes of  lightning, and I try not to put too much stock in what might be seen outside the window on a night such as this. Beware the Ides of March. The man on the loose.

If you write a flash 55 for the Ides of March, make sure you let the G-Man know.

Did you buy your man a silver tie for Christmas?

What has 16,000 reader reviews on Goodreads, 100,000 e-book sales, and is No. 1 on the New York Times e-book fiction best-seller list for sales in the week ending March 3? This is all everyone is talking about.

And I've been advised by some critters to tone down the sex a bit. Now I want to put every erotic detail back in. Sex sells. Big and simple.

Their bottom line in the review: "Our consensus: the book is pretty ridiculous — for every lashing there's an "OMG!" — but if it's making more women feel comfortable discussing their sexuality, we're all for it."

At a time when women's sexualty and reproductive health are under attack,  I can't disagree with that.

The Funeral

His eyes were on me
like an owl in the barn on movement below
and I'm struck by an old emotion.
You see, I met a man who knows
that the highest point in the Great Lakes Basin
lies not far from a bluff where water drops 900 feet
to a river bottom untrespassed.
Who knows that?

Others eat shrimp and drink wine
and don't know they don't know
while he takes me into the forest
and we listen for the loons.

A man who would
rather hunker down at a campfire
than eat shrimp and drink wine
knows things I don't know.

You see I met this guy who pays attention to words
like a tiler to the blade slicing through water.
When I talk I feel his eyes
listening, listening.
And I want to go on and on about something
so he'll keep looking
and looking.

Was it the sound of water falling
or the whirr of a whippoorwill I heard
in the inflection of his voice—in his story of kayaking
on Lake Superior in a storm.
The cry of the loon is interrupted

by the clap of the skeets outside the yacht club.
They punctuate our conversation like a grammarian.
Shooters send their clay targets flying across the water
on the simulated angle of birds in flight
with no mind to the wake inside. Life goes on.
You have to hit your target.

The first time you hear a loon, you know what it is.
Like the first time you meet someone
you already know.
Draw me a map on a napkin
and I'll follow.
Take me kayaking on open water,
I'll follow.

When the silence amplifies what we won’t say or ever do
clay pigeons fly across the water and we look and look.
Only the loon in a lonely decibel
says what we won’t say.

Friday Flash 55 - Catalog Of Last Resort

He’s looking at a catalog for canes
because he can’t afford the shots.

The house is cold—
propane at fifteen percent.

He claims love is not a consideration
in his life anymore

but he waits for her to get home
to turn on the heat.

He looks for the cheapest
and circles it in red.




If you've written a piece of flash fiction in 55 words, go tell the G-Man and enjoy a flurry of attention from his bevy of FF followers.  The temperature is dropping and now I'm seriously freezing. Wonder if I can turn up the heat....

TGIF!

RUTH

The Central Plaza bustles with vendors.
A small woman trails necklaces for sale from both arms
and implores me to buy from her.
Remember Ruth, she says with a smile.

I remember her.
People brown and sturdy as earth,
travelers of space and time,
owners of the maize—
red, black, and gold.

I wish I had something of Ruth’s . . .
jade at my throat or a runner for my table.
A blanket for this winter night.
Eyes like that to lift a glass to.

Breakthrough Novel Award Contest

I made the first cut in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest in the General Fiction category. It was a shot of adreneline to find my name on the list. There were ten thousand entries so I guess that's pretty cool. If nothing else, I know my query is effective. I have the folks at Agent Query and She Writes to thank, as well as the amazing Mindy McGinnis at Writer Writer Pants On Fire, who also just so happens to have a short story in SPRING FEVERS. Her debut novel NOT A DROP TO DRINK is coming out in 2013 but you can add it to your Goodreads shelf if you have one. While you're there, you might as well add SPRING FEVERS too.

I've decided that Twitter might be a cool way to connect with people. If the creator of Spring Fevers can find time to Twitter, than I can too. One can only buck the current for so long. So if you see me out there floundering in a headwind, please offer me shelter on a branch.

I hear sleet against the window. Dare I wish for an "ice day". A free day to sit at my computer and make up stories? Delve deep into my imagination and bank of memory? This brings up an interesting discussion I started with Tricia over at Talespinning.

Do you think memory can be imagined? The mind is a fascinating thing. Dark and beautiful and mysterious. How do you know you don't know something and how do you know that that embellished memory is authentic? We all embellish memory, tweek it and edit it. Then there's memory loss. How much of your self do you retain if you lose your memory?

Keep a diary. It's the only sure way to remember the past with accuracy. That or sit down with an older family member or an old friend who can set you straight. But you might not like what they tell you.

Off to imagine some stories. Come on sleet. Come on.


P.S. I posted this accidently before all my links were in place. Sorry Mindy. Corrections have been made. And, no, I didn't get that free day.

SPRING FEVERS - It's Contagious!

Just in time for spring,

is hot off the press!

Hot in more ways than one, the anthology is a collection of tales that explore relationships in all their forms. Created by Cat Woods and Matt Sinclair, SPRING FEVERS is the debut publication of Elephant's Bookshelf Press. The ten writers featured are: MarcyKate Connolly, S.Q. Eries, Robb Grindstaff, J. Lea Lopez, Mindy McGinnis, R.S. Mellette, Matt Sinclair, A.M. Supinger, Cat Woods and myself. Yes, I am very proud to have two of my short stories included with such a fine group of writers.

The cover design was done by Calista Taylor. Isn't it pretty?

She just launched a new site for her ebook covers. If you need a cover, check out her gallery here.

SPRING FEVERS is available at Amazon or at Smashwords.

Catch a fever!

Flash Fiction Friday

DRINKING A DEAD MAN’S BEER

Someone poured a stein for the deceased
and set it on the mantle.
It had warmed but wasn’t flat.
The sun danced off the lake
which should have been ice-covered
but was bare as the hands wrapped in a rosary.
Let them wonder that you walked
amongst their grieving
and finished your final beer unfettered.


I thank the G-Man for providing an outlet for 55 of my wayward words come Friday. And let's remember that this is supposed to be fiction. I wouldn't want you to think I'd actually do such a thing.

TGIF. Keep warm and in good company.

Winners Announced at The Literary Lab

The Literary Lab just announced the winners of their latest contest "Variations on a Theme", and I'm thrilled that my short story Varcy And The Girl Who Said No is one of them.

You can go here to see the other winners and the stories that will be included, as well as the two who took the top money prizes. The collection is slated to be published on March 15th, the Ides of March. That's just how cool the folks at the Literary Lab are.

Special thanks to Michelle Davidson Argle, Davin Malasarn, and Scott Bailey for all their support and the hard work that made this possible. To echo one of my fellow contestants...."YeeHaw! I'm in!"

College Classics That Shouldn't Be

If you've ever felt guilty because you really couldn't understand all the hype about Wuthering Heights, this is the article for you.

Twenty Classroom Classics That Shouldn't Be is a humorous take on some of those novels that made you feel like...what? Am I just dense? Compiled by Onlinecollegecourses.com, this list, from Bronte to Absalom, Absalom by William Faulker (did anyone ever understand Faulkner?) to Ann Rand, which they stop just short of burning, will make you sigh with relief. Yes, you should've raised your hand and told the teacher you didn't understand a single word. Your classmates would've thanked you.

There are a couple I would remove from this list, but out of twenty, that's still a consensus. I wonder which two you would remove. Anyway, for now I thought we could all just enjoy a lighthearted round of sacred cow tipping with our first cup of coffee.

Maypie Tales - "White Like Me"

WHITE LIKE ME

They forgive me my alabaster chill.
They love me in spite of myself.
With smooth walnut bodies,
muscled and uniform as recruits in an army,
they embrace me.

I’ve never walked into a room where I was the only one.
Never in a store, classroom or street
have I been the only one.
White like an angel of the lord
who was white too
(it’s in a book)
am I smug in my majority.
All the angels on high—
the Seraphims and Heroines
in the missals of my upbringing were white like me.

So when they embraced me and held me tight
with arms that were brown,
I was fearful and senseless and tried to escape
until they closed my eyes to my minority.
Only then could I feel the weight of an arm across my breasts
and the breath in my hair and on my legs
and know it was good.

The hands that held me were warm as a counterpane
that encases a dream, and I became color blind and free.


This week's prompt for Maypie Tales

from Tess Kincaid at Willow Manor stumped me for a while.

Like the woodpecker frozen on the feeder with his beak aiming for the suet, I didn't know how to proceed. Then I went off on a thread and walked the wire inside my head. Maypie sometimes does that to me. I think that's a good thing.

Here's to a productive week to all you writers, editors, and creative souls out there. Here's to aiming for the suet that seems out of reach.

Friday Flash 55

THE SILK AND THE TASSEL

They called her into the corn field
and said they just wanted to look at it.
She studied the silk and tassel above her head,
not knowing they were the male and female parts
that together formed the cob.
They whispered against her thighs
and clucked their tongues
and a flock of blackbirds darkened the sky.

If you can write a flash story in exactly 55 words that you want to share, post it and then visit the G-Man who moderates Flash Fiction Friday every Friday.

TGIF

Model On A Pillow (Magpie Tales)

He strapped her to a bale of cotton,
and turned her in circles for the camera,
like an automobile under the lights.
He airbrushed the tendons out of her hands
the clench out of her teeth
and the stretch marks out of her thighs,
like an artist smoothing the parchment
hung on the wall for affect.


When Tess Kincaid of Magpie Tales offered this image for inspiration this week, for some reason, I thought of the Detroit Auto Show and all the models coiffed and collared.

Silenced (Magpie Tales)

They bound my hair
and burned my shoes,
then stripped me of clothes
and entombed me at sea
with the others before me
who refused to sit silent
swaddled from view.

I choked on the bracken
and cried out for those
who knew of a land
that was pagan and free
to open the eyes of the ones
who surround me,
silent.


Thanks goes to Magpie Tales for the picture prompt, and today they turned 100! My link has been fixed. Sorry for the earlier broken one.

GOD LOVES TEXAS

They want to write Thomas Jefferson out of history.
Delete him like a dark chapter
from the annals of American History.
He who coined separation of church and state
is a sword in the side of self-proclaimed historians
who bleed, but not of wine.

The Dark Ages weren’t as dark
as the house the Texas Board of Education wants to build.
With the buying power to control content,
America’s children will read what
they want them to read.

They soften the image of McCarthy—
His motives were pure.
Jefferson for McCarthy.
There’s only so much room.
Motives justify methods
because God loves Texas.

To defame a person,
first misspell his last name.
Sow seeds of doubt.
Rearrange his words and cast credit elsewhere
Remove Monticello from travel guides
and besmirch the gardens—
the vegetables he grew,
amazed at the temperate zone of a new world.

While at it,
rearrange the heads of the founding fathers,
Was that really John Hancock’s John Hancock?
Like the 12 apostles at the dinner table,
Mary Magdalene in the shadows.
Misquote Paine to fortify your position.
Who will bother to verify?

Purge American History of he who dared to separate
the church from the state.
As if one could take guns from the righteous
guards from the gate
inmates from their prison.
God out of Texas

They Say She's Crazy (Friday Flash 55)

but she isn’t.
She has more than one name
and talks to those who aren’t there,
but she isn’t crazy.
She used to be a librarian-
checked out books with a date stamp
to those on death row.
She quit that job
so she could look in the mirror
without seeing those who aren’t there.


The Friday Flash 55 of mysterious origin (which can be researched here) is an ingenious writing exercise. Mr. Knowitall knows this and so encourages the writing of a story in 55 words, no more, no less. If I see you there, I'll follow you home.

TGIF!

Why You Should Preorder Books

If there is a book coming out from one of your writerly friends via traditional publishing that you plan to purchase anyway, the best way to support them is to preorder. Publishers look at preorder numbers to determine their print run. Early sales are also important. The first two weeks of a book's shelf life are the most important. This article by Sophie Perinot at From The Write Angle explains why.

I did not know this. I'm inherently guilty of procrastination, but I did not know that my preorder could make a difference. For all the times I said to myself...I like the sounds of this and I'm going to buy it....later. I'M SORRY!!! PREORDER is the word of the day.

Thank you Sophie for opening my eyes.