Category: Uncategorized

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
I’d been wanting to read something a little different, so I glanced through my TBR (to be read) list.  Keith Richards’ Life was on there, and I figured I couldn’t possibly go any different than that.   I’d become interested in him because I’d read an article in the Times UK a couple of years ago that Richards had always had a longing to be a librarian. 

The book was an interesting read—definitely eye-opening in sections. :) And entertaining, since I have such a quiet life and am a pretty reserved person and Keith Richards…we’ll just say that Keith and I don’t have much in common. Well, except for the fact that we’re both parents.  And one other similarity—the way we both observe the world through a lens:

The radar is on whether you know it or not. You cannot switch it off. You hear this piece of conversation from across the room, “I just can’t stand you anymore”… That’s a song. It just flows in. And also the other thing about being a songwriter, when you realize you are one, is that to provide ammo, you start to become an observer, you start to distance yourself. You’re constantly on the alert. That faculty gets trained in you over the years, observing people, how they react to one another. Which, in a way, makes you weirdly distant. You shouldn’t really be doing it. It’s a little of Peeping Tom to be a songwriter. You start looking round, and everything’s a subject for a song.

Richards, Keith (2010-10-26). Life (p. 183). Hachette Book Group. Kindle Edition.

Some days it all comes naturally to me and everything is a story.  Some days I have to remind myself that I’m looking for material, words, character descriptions and quirks, etc.

If you ever find yourself blocked, a change of scenery can frequently do an amazing amount of good.  Not only are you escaping your house and whatever might be distracting you/keeping you from working, but you also have the opportunity to be inspired by other people and places.

I’ll sit in the carpool line at the high school and work to finish my page goal that I start each morning.  I have the car off and the windows down and I’m completely surrounded by characters…usually the same characters each day, too, so the characters’ stories unfold as a serial.  The woman who comes in backwards on the one-way school driveway each day (even though a cop stopped her a week ago and gave her a warning.)  The grandfather who listens to World War II era songs in his car while eating a pack of crackers. The middle aged guy who drums his fingers on the side of his car while staring off into space.

I’m a character too, writing every day as I wait.  I push my seat all the way back to accommodate my laptop.  Sometimes I’ll accidentally blow my car horn from enthusiastic typing.  :)

Do you write on the go much?  Do you feel like you look at the world through a lens?

Image: MorgueFile—Procrastinator

By Anne Trager, the founder of Le French Book, @LeFrenchBook
I recently translated a fun, classic whodunit from French into English for Le French Book. It’s called Treachery in Bordeaux and was written by two Epicurean French men, Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noël Balen. It is set in, well, Bordeaux. When you hear the name Bordeaux, you think wine. In my case at least. And wine is a large part of the story, and a key element in the whole Winemaker Detective series (there are 20 books to date in French).

Yet, as much as the story is about wine, it is also about place, about Bordeaux, city and region, past and present. Here are five of the ways the authors got across that sense of place.

1) Opening with setting. The authors chose to give an immediate sense of place in the opening paragraph. Note the hint of timelessness:

The morning was cool and radiant. A west wind had swept the clouds far inland to the gentle hills beyond the city of Bordeaux. Benjamin Cooker gave two whistles, one short, the other drawn out, and Bacchus appeared from the high grass on the riverbank… The Médoc was still wild, despite its well-ordered garden veneer, and it would always be that way. In the distance, a few low wisps of fog were finishing their lazy dance along the Gironde Estuary.

2) Focusing on details. Notice the use of something everyone can relate to, which immediately puts the readers right there in Bordeaux itself:

As they approached the limits of Médoc, traffic slowed little by little until it stopped entirely on the boulevards. Construction bogged the city down, disfiguring it everywhere with orange-yellow signs that looked like they belonged in a cheap carnival. Cranes stood with empty hooks, and aggressive bulldozers lumbered like large lazy insects. The tramway—silent, shiny and bright—would soon rise from this tangled mess that had mired the city for several months. Some irritated Bordeaux residents honked without any illusions of being able to move along, while others just put up with it silently.

3) Using the senses. The five of them have this way of grabbing the imagination:

The Rue des Faures smelled of lamb. A heavy aroma of spices and grilled meat rose up in thick swirls from the hodgepodge of Arab shops, suitcase salesmen and faded bistros.

4) Juxtaposing disparate elements. After a scene that advances the story, we return to the same street. Notice the modern and historic all mixed together, and the refined Cooker with his greasy sandwich:

When he stepped out of the workshop, he crossed the Place Saint-Michel and bought a lamb kebab from a tiny take-out. Then he went to sit at the base of the bell tower facing the church. Around him, a group of acne-faced teenagers were playing with a soft-drink can. Young Kabyles from northern Algeria formed another group under a basketball hoop near the Gothic bell tower. On the steps in front of the church, a couple of lovers whispered to each other. Nobody paid any attention to Benjamin Cooker. The sun was warm, and no heads turned to see him savor his too-fatty, too-spicy overcooked sandwich that should have ended up in the first garbage can he found.

5) Using dialogue. Not to be neglected to introduce elements of place:

“This is the first time I’ve been here. I had no idea that the development was so spread out,” Cooker noted, thinking it best to change the subject.

“It’s a ghost town, a concrete cemetery, that’s what it has become! And the middle classes get off on moving into a historical area. It’s all being bought up by architects, doctors, lawyers—people who think they know something. They invest in cultural heritage. Some heritage. Just junk!”

The authors use other techniques as well, such as character descriptions that compare and contrast with preconceived ideas readers may have about a place and the use of a painting compared to an actual place. They are particularly skilled at getting across a sense of actually being there, in the city of Bordeaux in transition, but also in the vineyards. I’d feel I were cheating you if I didn’t give you one more quote from among the actual grapevines:

The winemaker took advantage of the moment to get a closer look at the new cabernet franc stock that had just been planted on a small parcel. Tender sprouts were starting to bud; they would not give clusters for another two or three years. He glanced over the meticulous rows of vines, quickly judging the state of the soil composed of thick Gunz gravel, sand and clay and noted with pleasure that the vineyards had just been plowed. His eyes stopped for a moment on the Haut-Brion estate hilltop that dominated the neighborhood.

I’ll leave you to read it for the descriptions of the wines!

Le French Book is having a special promotion ofTreachery in Bordeaux starting on October 9. They are giving away a trip to France, French wine (of course) and lots of other gifts, and dropped the usual list price for a limited time. Check it out: http://www.treacheryinbordeaux.com

About the authors

Jean-Pierre Alaux is a magazine, radio and television journalist when he is not writing novels in southwestern France. He is a genuine wine and food lover, the grandson of a winemaker and exhibits a real passion for wine and winemaking. For him, there is no greater common denominator than wine. He gets a sparkle in his eye when he talks about the Winemaker Detective series, which he coauthors with Noël Balen. Noël lives in Paris, where he shares his time between writing, making records, and lecturing on music. He plays bass, is a music critic and has authored a number of books about musicians in addition to his novel and short-story writing.

About the translator

The translator, Anne Trager has lived in France for over 26 years, working in translation, publishing and communications. In 2011, she woke up one morning and said, “I just can’t stand it anymore. There are way too many good books being written in France not reaching a broader audience.” That’s when she founded Le French Book to translate some of those books into English. The company’s motto is “If we love it, we translate it,” and Anne loves crime fiction about as much as she loves wine.

Buy links for Treachery in Bordeaux:
Amazon
B&N
iBooks
Kobo

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig


MorgueFile: xenia

I received an email a week ago from one of my blog readers. 

She said that she repeatedly heard the advice that writers needed to read.  But, she asked, what should writers read?  What’s most helpful to a writer when they’re trying to start out?  She said she’d been overwhelmed by the sheer number of books and felt she needed some direction—that sometimes she felt like the books she was picking didn’t really help her learn more of the craft.

It is overwhelming to find a book these days.  The number of books in any genre is skyrocketing as writers write faster and publish books themselves.

And there are only so many hours in the day.  It’s a good idea for most of us to have a targeted approach if we’re reading to learn more about our genre.

The first thing I’d do is narrow down what you’re most interested in writing.  Most genres have subgenres.  So, if you’re a fantasy or science fiction writer, are you interested in writing dystopian novels?  Steampunk? Space Operas? Urban fantasy?

You could spend a lot of time reading the classics in your genre—but I wouldn’t spend all my time reading my genre’s classics.  If you’re writing for a modern market, you’re going to want to see what’s selling now.  It’s important to also see how the genre got from its past to its present, but I wouldn’t spend all my time doing that.

So….subgenres, modern books.  The next thing I’d do is find the top writers of that genre…writers who have received critical acclaim.  The quickest way to do that is to find the awards given for that genre and see who the most recent recipients are.   For science fiction, you’re going to be looking at the Arthur C. Clarke award, the Hugo Award, among others.

For romance, you’ll focus primarily on the RITA awards.   There’s also the RT Book Reviews awards and reader awards on sites like All About Romance. 

For mystery, Agatha,  Anthony, Edgar, and Left Coast are probably the biggest.

I could go on and on—but this post would too, so I’m stopping here.  :)  But there are tons of these awards….Google your genre+awards and see what comes up first (and, obviously, who’s sponsoring it and how prestigious it seems to be.)

Book bloggers are another great way of finding great books (especially the most recently published books that wouldn’t have gotten any awards yet.)  This directory of book bloggers (Book Blogger Directory) is a good way to get started.

I request books I’m interested in from my library’s website, reserving them with my library card number.  When I really like a book, I’ll frequently buy it and re-read it for years.
Now…that’s a great way to find books that work.  You can read those books and note things like: Pace—How quickly is the story moving?  What does the writer do to pick up or slow down the pace?

Nuts and Bolts/Structure—How does the book hook you at the start?  Where is the inciting incident? Length of the chapters?  POV? How are the transitions handled? How was the mood developed?  Is there a theme to the book?  (In mysteries—when is the body discovered? How many suspects are there?  Each genre will have its own specific patterns to look for.)

Characters—How are they described? Developed? What motivates them?  How are they used to create conflict? What makes the protagonist compelling? What’s the character arc?

Language—What literary elements are used and how effective are they?

You can learn a lot from a good book, but you can also learn a lot from a bad one—by noticing where it fails.  You can see how it didn’t hit the mark with the elements I listed above.  It also makes you feel a little more confident as a writer to read a really, really awful book.

How do you find good books in your genre?  How do you make time to read them? What kinds of things are you looking at when you read a book critically?

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

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Have a great week!