Time Off

I'm going to be taking just a brief hiatus from blogging this coming week. 'Tis not so much a shortage of material as a physical frailty which prompts me. I've always been subject to eye strain—an inconvenient ailment for a writer, but an altogether too common one, I'm afraid!—so periods of too much staring at a page or a screen, whether reading or working, eventually build up to chronic headaches. This time I also managed to pinch some kind of nerve in my neck, leaving me with awkward stabbing pains in the back of my head too, so I'm getting it from all sides, so to speak. So I'm going to try and cut down my computer time as much as I can for a little while; about a week, perhaps. When I come back, look for my take on the 1942 film adaptation of The Magnificent Ambersons, which I finally got to see last night, and the next entry in my A-Z series...which I haven't forgotten about, really.

Shakespearean Shawl

A few months ago, I wrote about my plans to make a quotation at the opening of the story a feature of the Mrs. Meade Mysteries. I had one picked out for The Silver Shawl, but originally I planned to update it at the same time that I published the next title or two in the series, since I would have to update the files then anyway. That's one of the nice things about being an indie author and formatting your own books—you can instantly update the "More books by this author" section in the back of the books every time you publish a new title. However, since the release of those next few titles has been pushed back a bit, I decided to go ahead and add The Silver Shawl's quotation now. You'll now find this at the beginning of the story in any of the ebook editions available for sale:

GLOUCESTER. In my opinion yet thou seest not well.

SIMPCOX. Yes, master, clear as day, I thank God and St. Alban.

GLOUCESTER. Say'st thou me so? What colour is this cloak of?

~ William Shakespeare, Henry VI. 

Those of you who have read the book will probably "get" the reference. Those who haven't...well, you'll just have to read it and find out!

What I've Been Up To

Looking back over my last few posts, I realize I haven't posted any updates on what I've actually been up to in a while. On the writing front, I recently finished editing the first draft of my Western novella Left-Hand Kelly, and now it's currently being read (or waiting to be read) by some family members and test-readers. This is the first time I've shared a manuscript with anybody outside my family, and the first time I've given my family a full-length book manuscript to read (i.e. not a short story), and quite frankly, I'm scared to death! But I guess that's all part of the process. This was one of those stories that gnawed at me and drove me to write it for a long time, and I'm really hoping I can make something good out of it.

Since finishing that, I've been brainstorming and scribbling down scene ideas for another future novella, finishing up an old short story, and writing a new one. The latter was an absolute blast to write! The idea popped into my head out of nowhere one morning, and I finished the 6,000-word story in just a few days—possibly a record for me, since I'm ordinarily a slow writer. Although writing anything involves work, there are times when the work is simply fun, and this was one of those times.

When not writing, I've mainly been helping with spring cleaning, both indoors and out. Mowing, weed-whacking (which is more like haying the first time of the year), setting up the lawn furniture. Right about the time I was beginning that tremendously fun short story I also got mixed up in a day of no-holds-barred housecleaning, designed as a pre-emptive strike against seasonal allergies. April and May are tough months. I am what a character in an old book would probably call a "fresh-air fiend," and I'd love nothing better than to have every window in the house open and the beautiful spring breeze flowing through—but there are others in my family who literally can't go outside without their allergies flaring up, so during this season we live in an essentially airtight house. I have to slip outside for a walk to get my daily allowance of fresh air...just so long as I change my shoes, so as not to bring any pollen back inside! It'll be so nice when June comes and those windows can go up.

In between times, I've been packing up boxes of books and old china dishes and trying to find places to sell them, and catching an NBA playoff game here and there (cheering for the Grizzlies!). It's not always the most convenient thing, following a team in a different time zone, because late-night games and clear-headed thinking and writing the next day do not mix. Here's hoping the rest of their games will come at a civilized hour.

photo credit: Norway maple in bloom, from wikimedia

Book Review: Miss Buncle's Book

Miss Buncle's Book, by D.E. (Dorothy Emily) Stevenson, is an utterly charming and delightfully funny story—almost a story within a story, since it is a book about a book. The book in question is written by Miss Barbara Buncle, a rather mild and insignificant spinster lady living in a quiet English village, to supplement her depleted income. Miss Buncle draws her inspiration from her fellow villagers, and proves to be so adept at character portrayals—especially at pinpointing and dramatizing their faults and foibles—that anyone who reads the book can recognize the subjects instantly. This results in an uproar among the villagers, especially because Miss Buncle has indulged her imagination a bit and caused her characters to do some sensational things. They begin frantic efforts to discover who is behind the much-vilified "John Smith" pen name...and meanwhile the publication of Miss Buncle's book begins to have some curious effects upon their real lives.

The characters and their various plotlines are all tremendously entertaining: the earnest young vicar who is being pursued by a gold-digging widow, but also trying a sort of experiment in poverty; the lively young granddaughter of Miss Buncle's neighbor; the charming wife of the local doctor, who is suspected of having written the book herself; and Miss Buncle's own blossoming enjoyment of life and growing friendship with her publisher, the warm and sympathetic Mr. Abbott. It's rather like a blend of Gaskell and Wodehouse, with the classic Cranford-esque village setting but a more uproarious style of comedy. I couldn't put it down once I started reading, and the way in which the fates of the real Miss Buncle and her fictional alter ego are eventually woven together makes for a clever and happy ending.

Miss Buncle's Book was originally published in 1934. The cover pictured above is a snappy new one from last year's Sourcebooks Landmark edition. This was yet another book I first spotted within the pages of the Bas Bleu catalogue, which has brought my attention to some intriguing reads before. There's also a sequel, which I now want to read—indeed if all of Stevenson's books are this good I should be happy to read more of them!

Shelf Life

I've been planning to do a post like this for some time, inspired by Abigail Hartman's fun posts sharing pictures of her bookshelves. Up until late March I didn't have a bookshelf at all; my books were all stored in a plastic bin under my sisters' bed. But that has all changed—behold the perfect birthday gift:

It sits at the end of the hallway right outside my bedroom door, and by a miracle, just perfectly fits my personal library at its present size. It's a pretty neat bookshelf—when empty, the shelves fold up and the sides fold in so it stores practically flat. I've spent so many years without a bookshelf of any kind that now it's neatly filled, I love just looking at it!

 

Click any picture to enlarge

The top shelf holds my favorite fiction. Old favorites like A Christmas Carol, Captains Courageous, and Swift Rivers share the shelf with new favorites like The Sunny Side, Mrs. Miniver and Nine Coaches Waiting; on the left you can just barely see Beechenbrook slipped in next to Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories. And what do you know, there's my own little book shelved next to Du Maurier—not bad, eh? To the right is my small collection of old B.M. Bower books (minus one that arrived in such fragile condition it has to be kept in a plastic bag), and a few other vintage acquisitions, including a couple I haven't read yet, Thorofare by Christopher Morley and The Bellamy Trial by Frances Noyes Hart (the only one that didn't quite fit, as you can see!).

The middle shelf holds a lot of my research and history books—Calico Chronicle, Dorothy Wickenden's Nothing Daunted, David McCullough's Mornings on Horseback, some Civil War books. Mixed in there are some collections of letters and memoirs—several wonderful Western ones from University of Nebraska Press near the middle, and to their left a mix, from The Day I Became an Autodidact to The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. In the middle of the shelf you'll see my books on writing craft: Eats, Shoots and Leaves, Simple and Direct, my trusty Chambers thesaurus, and The Elements of Style, which I've yet to read. Then comes the Agatha Christie department, with a book on Jane Austen at the end. The odd one out on this shelf is plainly the copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea stuck at the far left, which landed on my shelf because no one else had room for it!

A number of classics repose down here: my wonderful volume of O. Henry's complete works, the family collection of Dickens (thank heavens the stack was exactly the right width to fit!), my copies of Jane Eyre and The Cranford Chronicles, a couple books of poetry, Peter Pan and collected editions of Winnie-the-Pooh and Beatrix Potter, and a few miscellaneous odds and ends.

With this every-inch-occupied setup, I don't know what I'm ever going to do if I want to buy another book! I shall have to either part with an existing one, coax somebody else to take Dickens off my hands, or revive the bin-under-the-bed method (which I really don't want to do). We'll have to wait and see.

A Bit of Something

Earlier this month, I entered a little writing contest being held over at Whisperings of the Pen. The rules were to write a short piece, between 500 and 1500 words, on one of three themes: happiness, a comical/awkward incident, or a make-believe/fantasy scenario. I knew if I entered, I'd want to try the first category, but my idea didn't come to me until just a few days before the deadline. I wrote it basically on the spur of the moment, typing straight to the computer, which is something I hardly ever do. It was one of those things where you write it in a fifteen-minute spurt of inspiration, and then don't want to look at it again. I had mixed feelings about it; I didn't show it to anybody. I figured I'd submit it to the contest and that would be that; I'd be quite content to let it sit in a folder with other spur-of-the-moment productions not likely to see the light of day.

Well, imagine my surprise when I got the notice that I'd won first place in the category! I really hadn't expected it at all. At any rate, it's now been posted over at Whisperings of the Pen with the other winning entries—you can read them all here.

I've got to say also that I don't really like my title—to me, it just seems a bit too trite and has something of a comic effect that was not intended. But I was racking my brains for some kind of a title on the very eve of the deadline (which, go figure, was extended just a couple of days after I submitted), so it was the only thing I could come up with!

Little Grey Cells at Work

Last January, I mentioned that Mom and I were re-reading all of Agatha Christie's mystery novels in publication order. At one point we took a rather long break, but over the past couple of months we've been going at it steadily. So far we've read forty-four out of the sixty-six...the total number of books covered may actually end up being sixty-two, though. On this go-round we skipped the strange item known as The Big Four; I've told Mom that it's not really worth bothering with By the Pricking of My Thumbs and Postern of Fate, which I found pretty much incomprehensible, and I haven't decided yet whether to have a go at Passenger to Frankfurt, which I've often heard described as Christie's worst book. Not that I ever put too much stock in what critics say, but if it's anything like those last two I mentioned it wouldn't be worth the time.

This time around, I've been focusing more on the structure and style of the books, because I already know how the mysteries turn out. Mom is amazed (and a little exasperated, I think) that I remember the identities of all the criminals, but I can't help it—it's just the way my mind works! But though I remember who, I don't always recall all the details of how, and it's interesting studying exactly how all the clues are layered in and revealed at certain times, and the little touches that direct trails of suspicion toward every character.  If there's one defining element that I've noticed about Christie's mysteries, by the way, it's this: no character is safe from suspicion. With other authors, you can wash out the young lovers early on in the story; you know you don't have to seriously consider the sweet old lady or the charming young man or the kindly uncle. But with Christie, neither age, sex, personality, family relationship, social station, or anything else you can think of makes the idea of their guilt impossible.

Speaking of characters, I must mention how much I love Mrs. Oliver. Generally regarded as Christie's tongue-in-cheek parody of herself, Mrs. Oliver's bewilderingly fertile imagination, eccentric habits and hilariously blunt but oh-so-true observations about the trials of a writer are an absolute hoot in every book she appears in. ("Unless I get a rough sketch of my idea jotted down, it will go!") She's got to be right up there with Hercule Poirot himself on the list of memorable recurring characters.

I've been noticing some interesting side-affects of this reading course: more and more often now I find myself thinking like a detective—considering all the possible solutions of a problem, deducing which is the most likely, pinpointing the crucial stray facts that don't seem to fit. In spite of this, I'm still no match for the Queen of Crime herself. I thought I had a pretty good shot at solving Death Comes as the End (one of the few I'd never read before), with all this added experience on my side, but she got me again.

Musical Interlude: The Farmer and the Cowman

Since I'm both a Western enthusiast and a longtime Rodgers & Hammerstein fan, you might naturally conclude that Oklahoma! would be a perfect fit for me. But things don't always add up that way. I saw the movie once years ago, and really didn't care for it (in spite of the brilliance of the music). One reason was in fact that its Westernness just didn't seem genuine—everybody seemed to talk in fake accents and exaggerated cliches, and the women's party dresses were the multi-colored square-dance-costume variety that seem designed to try historian's souls. All in all, I was ready to accept it as a pair of urban New Yorker authors' stab at a Western that didn't quite make it.

Last week, however, I looked up the "Farmer and the Cowman" number on YouTube, for whatever reason—possibly to see if it was really the way I remembered it. It was. But alongside the movie version was this clip of the same number from the filmed London stage production of 1999. I was amazed by the difference! The staging, the singing, the acting, the costumes, were downright terrific—on a completely different level than the movie. This cast was believable enough as Westerners to make the idea of a Western musical seem not wholly far-fetched. Ironic, isn't it, that it took the Brits to show us up with their version of a quintessentially American musical!

The Further Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (well, mostly Mrs. Gamp)

You may remember that a while ago I did a post sharing a slew of quotes and allusions to Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit, which seemed to be popping up in every other book I read. Since then they've continued to pop at a steady rate. I'm ready to believe that Mrs. Sairey Gamp and her fabled friend Mrs. Harris are a pair of the most fondly-regarded and oft-quoted characters in English literature. Running a search of the word "Gampish" on Google Books reveals that in olden times it was practically an informal adjective, usually applied to an umbrella! Here's a further sampling of Gampish appearances in a variety of books:

"Toodle-oodle-oo!" said Mr. Coleman. "Here's Sairey Gamp." ~ Agatha Christie, Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)


On his rare visits to the farm it seemed to him there was always some drab dejected female in the kitchen or living room or on the porch—a woman with broken teeth and comic shoes and tragic eyes—drinking great draughts of coffee and telling her woes to Selina—Sairey Gampish ladies smelling unpleasantly of peppermint and perspiration and poverty. ~ Edna Ferber, So Big (1924)


"She didn't know I was there, of course. I just stood a bit and looked at her. Then, when I heard Mrs. Gamp stumping up the stairs again, I slipped away." ~ Agatha Christie, Sad Cypress (1940)


Victoria longed to say, "He's brother to Mrs. Harris," but refrained. ~ Agatha Christie, They Came to Bagdad (1951)


I uncorked the bottle of King Minos, sec, and, with a silent blessing on Frances, who had insisted on my taking it, took a swig that would have done credit to Mrs. Gamp and her teapot. ~ Mary Stewart, The Moonspinners (1962)  

"I now propose a toast, as my 'friend and pardner, Sairy Gamp' says. Fun forever, and no grubbing!" cried Jo, rising, glass in hand, as the lemonade went round. ~ Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868) 

That last, of course, was one of those Dickensian references in Alcott that mystified me throughout my childhood reading, only to become clear when I finally made the acquaintance of Mrs. Gamp herself—whom, once met, never forgotten. Indeed, I often find myself quoting one of Mrs. Gamp's lines as rendered in the splendid 1994 miniseries adaptation "when I am so dispoged" (though I can never come close to Elizabeth Spriggs' rendering of Mrs. Gamp's inimitable accent).

Spring

Spring took quite a while deciding whether to stick around or to duck behind winter's curtain yet again, but I think it's finally here to stay. Typical harbingers don't always hold true—our robins are often a bit premature, showing up to scout out the territory while the snow is still lingering on the tree branches. For me, the real sign of the season comes when the little perennial clumps of coltsfoot appear in the otherwise bare and muddy bit of ground behind our woodpile. I saw them for the first time last week, on a beautiful crisp, sunny morning, and I knew that spring was really on its way at last. Sure enough, the other day after a night of rain I came out to find that the grass seemed to have turned green overnight, almost magically.

Though I still love winter, I think I'm more eager for spring this year than I usually am. Perhaps it's because this winter wasn't the most satisfying kind—it was cold enough, but we had frozen gray ground and brown grass for most of the months, and then just as we were figuring on seeing that turn into spring, down came all the snow we'd wished for back at Christmastime. I also find myself thinking, more than ever, that spring is the most exciting season. Of course I love all four. Autumn might be the most pleasant kind of weather to spend time outside. Spring is messier, but there's a kind of thrill and force to the wind on those windy spring days that you don't feel at any other time of year. Maybe it's because of all the things that are visibly changing around you every day—the buds suddenly appearing on trees and bushes, the bits of new green plants poking out from under last year's brown leaves, the gradually changing colors creeping over the woods and ground. Even though it happens every year, it always has the feeling of a wonderful surprise for me. The transformation is brand-new all over again, and I don't want to miss a minute of it. Maybe that's what spring fever really means, after all.

By the Book

I ran across this gem of a cartoon on Pinterest a couple of weeks ago:

Pens and Pencils

There are several items that disappear quickly in our house: pens, pencils, paper and pickles. The only ones we actually eat are the pickles, but I do wonder about the pencils sometimes.

There was a time when I couldn't hang onto even a single pencil for anything. They would regularly disappear from the mug where I keep my writing implements, but I could never make anybody admit to taking them. I could stand in the middle of the house and howl, Charlie Brown-fashion, "Isn't there anyone who knows where my pencils have gone?" but nobody ever seemed to know. Since then matters have improved somewhat. The pencils return to the mug, albeit almost unrecognizable—half the length they were, with the erasers completely used up. If anyone could invent a pencil that had as much eraser in it as it did lead, they'd probably make a fortune, because it seems an incontrovertible fact that the eraser end of a pencil gets as much use, if not more, than the tip.

Fortunately, I do the large majority of my writing with a pen. My instrument of choice for fiction-writing is my trusty Zebra F-402. I own several of these—one of them is usually clipped on the rings of the notebook containing my current project, another on the notebook containing a project-in-waiting for which I scribble notes whenever an idea strikes me, and a couple more reside in the mug, to be snatched whenever I happen to pick up a notebook that doesn't have a pen clipped on the rings. For other pursuits, such as journaling, writing out cards, keeping records, etc., I use a Pilot G2. The split between fiction-writing and all other kinds of writing even extends to my handwriting—I keep a journal in cursive, but print when I write stories. It's faster, and for whatever reason I just like it better. My cursive handwriting is not my strong point, anyway. I think all my old journals contain at least one entry where I declared that part of my purpose in keeping a journal was to improve my handwriting, but it doesn't seem to have worked—it's still the same childish-looking, grade-school-copybook scrawl I wrote at age twelve, as I am painfully reminded every time I have to sign a book for someone. My mother, on the other hand, has the most beautiful handwriting I've ever seen, and my brother and middle sister are following in her footsteps. These days, whenever there's a joint gift to inscribe or a joint thank-you card to make out, I'm eager to nominate one of them for the job, for the simple reason that they do it so much better.

We've always been a family that wields writing and drawing materials constantly—when we were little it was crayons, and now pens, pencils and markers, depending on the situation. Besides writing (which everybody seems to be doing these days), there's always a lot of drawing going on. This is not one of my skills, though. I can sketch some passably pretty flowers and trees and such, but I've never been able to draw people—even when I painstakingly copy from another picture the proportions don't turn out quite right. I just don't have the natural eye for color and composition that others in my family do. All three of my younger siblings, though, are extremely artistic and can draw terrific portraits. Their idea of a good time is to spread out art supplies over half a room and spend a couple of hours simply drawing and coloring, in their favorite mediums of charcoal and colored pencils. The enclosed pencil-sharpener hasn't been invented that can hold the pencil shavings we turn out, so an inevitable adjunct to these art sessions is a brown paper bag full of said shavings...which every now and then takes a spill on the rug, or occasionally on somebody's closet shelf.

Just another day in a scribbling family.

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