I’m sure that works for some, perhaps for most. What it doesn’t do is work for me.

My Muse is a fickle bitch. She comes along whenever she damn well pleases, whispering words which I type as fast as my fingers can fly over the keyboard. She eggs my characters on, encouraging them to give me the hardest time possible should I even attempt to control their actions. She twists my plots on their head and shoots them off in directions I never imagined they’d go. I follow her like a whipped puppy, obedient to its master.

And then she leaves again. In the middle of a scene. In the middle of a paragraph. In the middle of a bloody sentence.

She might stay away for hours. Days. Weeks. While I while away the time at solitaire or Facebook or Twitter or Backspace, clean the house, clean the cat boxes, twiddle my thumbs, stare at the last sentence I wrote.

Writing for me is not a job. It’s a passion, a need, a drug of sorts. To be in the world I’ve created for my characters is so much more pleasant than being in the world I’ve made for myself. I can’t count the number of books I’ve read over these 60+ years in which I wish I could crawl between the covers and become a character within.

My Muse is a fickle bitch and at the moment she’s left me hanging, right in the middle of a scene. I don’t hate her for that. She is the love of my life and I know she’ll come back. She always does and I always greet her at the door, a smile on my face, my netbook open and ready.

A game of cards, anyone? Perhaps a movie? There’s drinks in the frig and chips on the table. Just keep in mind I might slip away if She shows up. I’m sure you can find your own way out the door and home. I mean, I love ya, ya know, love your company, but writing, writing is what I do.

The book in question here is Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin.

My friend Cindy had taken this book out unbeknownst to me. I stumbled across it one day while in search of something to read and, as I had heard so much about the book and know Melanie from Backspace, I decided to give it a read. I got about a third into the book when I was told it was due back that very day. With great reluctance, I headed off to the Newberry branch and dropped the book off, immediately putting myself on the hold list.

I finally got it back the other day and have spent the last two reading it cover to cover, despite the fact that I have my own manuscript I’m suppose to be working on along with gearing up for the imminent release of Stealing The Marbles.

I will admit I had a bit of a hard time getting into it at first. Alice I Have Been is not my usual genre of reading material. But I persevered and OH MY am I glad I did.

What a charming, beautifully wrought story about the little girl who inspired Alice In Wonderland and, more importantly, the story of her life afterward. This is a blend of fact and fiction so tightly woven together that I found myself ‘curiouser and curiouser’ as to what was which, or which was what. I found myself laughing with the child Alice and feeling the frustrations of the constraints put upon her by her place in Victorian England. And later, as the adult Alice, I followed the twists and turns of her life with a mixture of mirth, joy and sadness.

This is a compelling read, one you shouldn’t miss. Bravo Melanie Benjamin.

Kind of scary, that. As a writer, you do the best you can, operate at the highest level of your craft to tell a story others will want to read but in the end, you never know. Time will tell, I suppose, and a review, a comment, an email, a death threat or two.

Up on Facebook, I’ve been connecting with Rebel e folks. Rebel e is my publisher and what a great publisher they are. I mentioned in a previous post how much I loved the cover for STM. Well, I met the guy who created it, Jacques Stenvert. Here is his blog. Check it out. I’d been talking to him for like a week before I discovered he was the one who had done the cover. Man, did he zero in on the heart of the story with that cover? Thanks, Jacques. That cover says everything I wanted to say.

The Lady from the Porch of the Maidens plays a central, spiritual role in Stealing The Marbles and I always wanted to capture that feeling in the cover. Of course, being graphically challenged precluded my even imagining what something like that would look like but the first time I saw the proposed cover, I knew the folks at Rebel e had pulled it off.

Stealing The Marbles – Coming soon from Rebel e Publishers.

Recently I finished Adrienne Kress‘s Alex and the Ironic Gentleman. I don’t think this is a YA book, more like Middle Grade, or MG if you’re in the know about such things. Frankly, all these genres and sub-genres and sub-sub-genres confuse the hell out of me but I’m pretty sure Alex and the Ironic Gentleman is MG. For one thing, the protagonist is a ten and one half year old girl. I don’t think that quite qualifies as Young Adult. Maybe Old Child or Middle of the Road Child or Almost a Teenager But Not Quite but I haven’t, yet, heard of genres such as these. The other thing that leads me to classify it as MG is the story telling style which I will go on about later.

In a nutshell, so to speak, Alex and the Ironic Gentleman is the story of Alex Morningside and her 6th grade teacher Mr. Underwood. Mr. Underwood is the rightful heir of the Wigpowder fortune, a hidden pirate’s trove which no one knows the location of and which a competing family, the Steeles, are trying to claim as their own. Alex manages to find the map to the location but not before Mr. Underwood is kidnapped. The rest of the story details the adventure’s Alex encounters as she tries to rescue her beloved teacher and secure for him his rightful fortune.

‘Nuff said, as Stan Lee would say. Hey, you didn’t think I was going to give it all away, did you? Suffice it to say there are some wonderfully drawn out characters in this story and the adventures will tickle you silly.

I will say that I had a bit of a hard time getting into this book. Not because of the writing, to be sure. And certainly not because of the story. All that was quite impressive. It was the story telling style that threw me for a bit, one which I haven’t encountered in a very long time. That and, I suppose, the age of the protag. Hard to identify with a ten and a half year old when there’s a half century difference between she and thee. But once I opened myself to, and actually remembered, the wonder and joy of a life at its beginning, I really fell into this and found myself embracing fully the style Kress uses to tell Alex’s tale. Trust me, you’ll love it.

And, just so the FTC doesn’t get into my case here, no one has paid me for this review. Hell, Adrienne, who I know from my time on the writer’s forum Backspace, has no idea I’m even writing this and, considering how little traffic I get on this blog, I doubt it will help her much anyway. Still, if you are the one or two sorry souls who do follow my blog, please buy Alex and the Ironic Gentleman. If not for yourself than for someone you love. Trust me, they’ll get a hell of a kick out of it.

I’ve just started reading Kress’ Timothy and the Dragon’s Gate. Maybe I’ll let you know what I think of it later.

Yeah, I know, sacrilege, defamation of the sacred page, the kind of thing the library police are there for. Still, I do it and I’m glad other readers do it as well. I love it when I’m ferreting out clues in a good mystery, following the adventures of a pirate cursed by the dust of a hundred dogs, viewing the Mississippi from Pap’s point of view or slicing up a Fokker fuselage with my Sopwith’s 7.7s and I suddenly run across a dog eared page. I always stop and think: Someone has been here before me, in this very place I now am.

I always wonder about the person who dog eared the page; were they young or old, male or female? Did they run out of time, patience, were they distracted by something, called to the phone or by a loved one or just get sleepy at the end of a long day? Were they casual readers, avid readers or total book junkies as I am? What did they think of this story we share? Have they read other books by the same author or was this their first? When I see that crease up there I actually feel the presence of that unknown reader, I can almost see them standing there, smiling, knowing what’s ahead, squirming to keep from giving the end away.

The publishing industry is going through changes, eBooks are taking over. I’ll admit that despite my love for the feel of a book in my hands, I support this eBook revolution. I think it will give a lot of good writers a chance to entertain a lot of good readers, something the publishing industry with its bottom-line mentality doesn’t seem to get. The sad thing about that, though, is you can’t dog ear 1s and 0s.

My first ‘novel’ was written in the late 70s – early 80s, nearly indecipherable scrawls on pad after pad of yellow paper. It was called Mrs. Lawrence of Essex – A Twisted Love Story and was really a series of short stories strung together along a time line. I lost those sheets of paper somewhere along the way but remembered the gist of the story vividly, transferring it to zeros and ones when I got my first computer. Over the years, that file has moved from computer to computer, been converted from Wordstar to Wordperfect and updated through all the WP versions to the current one. It’s still pretty much in it’s first draft stage and may well stay there forever.

I completed three more novels since those first scrawls. The first of those went through so many revisions and name changes that it’s a disjointed mess and no longer has a title. I think of it as my learning novel. It was a good story with good characters that I think of too often but it’s so mixed up now I doubt it will ever see the light of day.

The second of those three, Stealing The Marbles, I wrote in a frenzy shortly after a return from Greece in 2004. I even managed to get an agent for it but he turned out to be a royal dickhead and I ended up dumping him. I haven’t made a serious effort to get another one since. Call it a quirk in my personality, but I have a difficult time playing the query game and, considering the bizarre way the publishing industry works today, there are long moments when I’m not sure I want to play the game. Hell, I’m not sure I could play it. I don’t do people well and once you get published you find yourself in the midst of a whole lot of em. I have a feeling I’d make a complete ass of myself.

The last of the three, Meter Maids Eat Their Young – A Love Story’s End, damn near killed me. Meter Maids was sort of a sequel to Mrs. Lawrence and a little too autobiographical for comfort, sort of a closure thing to something I’d been hanging onto much too long. Another one of those quirks, ya know, a tendency to hang on to things long past the point at which I should let them go.

Since finishing Meter Maids, I haven’t really attempted another novel. I’m not sure if I ever will. Oh, I have ideas, I’m just not sure if I want to devote the time to something I probably won’t pursue beyond the writing. What I have been doing is writing short stories and finding that I really enjoy the whole process. Three or four have been published in the last few months and I have one, The Karaoke Singer, currently playing at the SoMa Literary Review.

I like the intensity of writing a short, the brief letting go of the real world and into the whirlpool in my head. Once an idea takes hold, I can be off and running, pounding out two or three or ten thousand words in the time it takes the sun to make it’s daily journey across the sky and having a finished product by bed time. And when it’s done, there are no query letters to write, no dismal hunt for an agent, no marketing departments to judge your worth, just a quick scan of Duotrope’s Digest to find the right market and off the story goes. Ok, so there’s rarely any pay but you don’t have to do any interviews, become a guest blogger, meet and greet any editors or publishers or marketing drones or play any of the other games a published novelist needs to play in today’s publishing world. And, being the basic recluse that I am, I like that just fine.

Did I mention that The Karaoke Singer has been published by the SoMa Literary Review? Please show your support for short stories in general and me in particular by checking the ezine out. To check out some of the other stories I’ve published recently, follow this LINK.

With so much same-old-same-old bullshit being published, it seems a wonder that I ran into two books recently, nearly back to back, that put a serious crimp in my reading speed because I didn’t want them to end. My previous post noted one of those, The Dust of 100 Dogs by A. S. King, which, I will say again, you MUST read.

The other was Neil Gaiman‘s The Graveyard Book.

What can I say about this book that hasn’t already been said? I mean, it won the Newberry Award so that pretty much says it all. But what can I say? That it was enchanting, wonderful, totally absorbing, different? Ah yes, different. That’s what I want. I mean, depending on who you ask, there are anywhere between 7 and 30-odd plots to plunder and the only thing that differentiates them is how the author presents the plot within the story. The publishing industry seems to think we want the same thing over and over and over. Well, sorry to disappoint them but I don’t. I want different. I want new. I want creative. And The Graveyard Book is all that and more.

Don’t be scared off by the YA classification. This is a book for everyone. Trust me, you’ll love it. And, if you like this one, try Gaiman’s Coraline. A most excellent read as well.

That’s been the case with The Dust of 100 Dogs, the debut novel by A. S. King. Reluctantly, I finished it today. I feel lost, set adrift amidst a becalmed sea, devoid of pirate ships and Spanish Galleons and tropical islands hiding buried treasure. I miss Emer with her Irish temper and Saffron with a hundred dogs in her past and her future hanging in the balance.

And I miss the Dog Facts.

Though I don’t miss Fred.

And ya know, to be honest, I think she’d of been better off with David. But that, of course, would have changed the story.

They say this is a YA novel (Young Adult for those of you not in the publishing slang loop) and if so, I wish they’d had this sort of thing available when I was YA.

If you want the same-old-same-old reading crap, Cussler has a new one (the cover of which is ripped off from a really good novel, Freezing Point by Karen Dionne) and I’m sure Patterson has yet another cut-n-paste novel making the rounds.

But, if you want something beautifully different, a story unlike the everyday boring fare, a tale that will carry you to faraway places, The Dust of 100 Dogs should be at the very top of your book shopping list.

Back in 29 a dime might have gotten you an overcooked cuppa Joe and a stale donut. Today, it wouldn’t buy you the paper cup. In this twenty-first century example of financial crash-and-burn, entertainment is going to be hard to come by. Most any form of entertainment, things we took for granted just a year ago, is going to slap hard against the tight fist you’re trying to wrap around what money you have left.

Eating out has become a luxury one can hardly afford, despite the many restaurants that are cutting their prices to the bone. I’ve been watching restaurants closing their doors left and right around here. Movies, theaters, concerts? Have you seen the cost of those tickets?

Vacation? Surly you jest. Who the hell can afford a vacation right now?

So, what do you do? Hunker down at home, break out the cheap chips and dip and huddle around the boob tube? That sounds like fun.

There’s an alternative. It’s called books. Books are cheap and, unlike a meal at a restaurant or a movie ticket, books are reusable. You can trade books with your friends, your family. And books offer not only hours of entertainment but, during those hours you get a break from all the gloom and doom on the TV news, some relief from the financial fear. Good for the soul, good for the attitude.

And, being that all this financial meltdown is coming right at the start of the Holidaze season, books make an excellent, inexpensive present.

And here’s an added bonus: Buy a book, several books if you can afford it, and get involved in a growing movement to list a million books purchased. Karen Dionne, author of Freezing Point and co-creator of BackSpace, the finest writers forum on the planet, has started the blog When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Buy Books where you can list the books you’ve purchased either for yourself or as gifts. The goal is to list one million books purchased and the list is growing every moment. Why not add yours to the list.