Research for new novel

Went to the main branch of the Atlanta library this afternoon to do some research for my new novel - code named "Life Portraits" or LP for short. Two of the characters lived in Atlanta beginning in 1955, and I needed a good way for them to meet. An incident at Tech in December of 1955 that I had read about in one of my history books sounded interesting, so I looked at the microfilm archives of the Atlanta newspapers to get the real scoop.

Atlanta Journal headline for Saturday Dec 3rd 1955 - "Tech Students Jeer at Capitol, Mansion". It seems that Tech got selected for the Sugar bowl that year, and word got out that the opposing team, the University of Pittsburgh, had a black player. Governor Griffin of Georgia pitched a hissy fit, sending a telegram to the Georgia Board of Regents that, by our standards today, would be grossly racist. Actually, by the standards of the time it was probably racist. Here is the some of the telegram - you decide:

"It is my request that athlete teams of units of the University System of Georgia not be permitted to engage in contests with other teams where the races are mixed on such teams or where segregation is not required among spectators at such events. The South stands at Armageddon. The battle is joined. We cannot make the slightest concessions to the enemy in this dark and lamental hour of struggle."

And so on and so forth. Remarkable what was uttered in public by politicians back then. And this was a telegram that he released to the papers.

Anyway, the Tech students reacted by throwing a little mini-riot. Two thousand of them marched on the capital and broke in, hung the Governor and burned him in effigy, and then tried to march on the Governor's mansion. They almost made it, but got turned back by police. Finally about 3:30 am they broke up, but not before three of them got arrested. Oh those wacky kids. In a couple of days the Regents basically laughed down the Governor, and Tech went to the game.

But it's a cool story. One of my characters is a female, trying to be a press photographer, the other can be a Tech student (they were exclusively male back then). An interesting way for them to meet.

Atonement by Ian McEwan

A touching novel, masterfully constructed. A thirteen-year-old girl witnesses events that she incompletely understands, and gives testimony that ruins lives. The novel is her atonement for her sins.

How long has it been since I got choked up reading a novel? It's a powerful story, and expertly written. A novel within a novel, since the principal character is writing an account of what happened in the form of a novel in order to ease her own conscience. It concludes with an epilogue that brings things into the present and wraps up the story, one of the few epilogues I have ever read that was effective. In a sense it reminds me of another excellent novel with a similar form, Margaret Atwood's  The Blind Assassin.

It does have a slow start - we are halfway through the novel before we get to the defining incident. Because of that I think I did not have a good sense of what kind of novel I was reading. Was it a comedy of errors? A romance? A coming of age? But that's my fault, my critical examination of the novel  as I read it, my desire to categorize other writer's fiction so that I can understand them. It's possible I missed the dark tone early which would have given me the clue. It's a tragedy.

Extraordinary novel, well worth a read.

Lulu copy of The Church of Hooks and Lures

Got the copy today of Rev 4, the one with the cover I designed. Didn't come out very well! There is a strange color cast to the photo. Probably my fault. The only good thing is that I can always fix it up and print another.

Where writer's write

I just wasted a half a day when I should have been working looking at the rooms where other writers write.  Mostly Anglo-centric as well - I had to resort to wikipedia to look up some of the authors I didn't know.

Mr. Spaceman by Robert Olen Butler

An alien abducts a busload of casino-bound tourists prior to revealing himself to humans at the Y2K celebration. A short novel of about 200 pages, written in Butler's unmistakable first person style. I'm a big fan of his short stories. He did, after all, win a Pulitzer for "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain," but my favorite stories are those in "Had A Good Time."

This novel falls short, though, of being engaging or satisfying.  It doesn't really work as science fiction or speculative fiction - it is not nearly original or creative enough for that. The alien is the extra-terresstial of popular imagination - cat eyes, skinny body, green blood. And he is doing what does in the sensational tabloids - abducting humans.

It doesn't work as popular fiction either, for much the same reasons, and there is no "plot." I would expect it to be judged as literary fiction, but even there, in my opinion, it falls short. The only interesting character is the spaceman, and once we learn about his reluctance to do his "work," what else is there? The other characters all make cameo appearances in very short scenes.

The "theme," of comparing the alien to Jesus, the twelve passengers on the bus to his disciples, and his wife to Mary Magdalene, is obvious and not carried through. Even the old movie, "The Day the Earth Stood Still," which has a similar theme, did a better job of carrying through with the ending. Butler simply fizzles out and resorts to a non-ending ending.

I read this because I wanted to read one of his novels, to see how he handles the longer form. It's a very short novel. Perhaps he wrote it as a long short story? So I wasn't very impressed.

Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley

An exceptional book. An epic novel of horses and the people who love them, hate them, make their living from them. Yes, it is long, and sprawling, and there are lots of characters, but it is well worth the effort required to read it.

I especially enjoyed those sections from the viewpoints of the horses and the dog. Smiley did a great job imagining how they see the world and humans.

The Church of Hooks and Lures - update

I'm calling revision four done. Converted it to 6x9 format and sent it off to Lulu.com to get an actual paper copy in my hand. I don't sell it on Lulu, of course, since I am holding out for a actual agent and publisher. I use Lulu to get an economical hard copy in my hands. It costs $40 to print out at Office Depot, and $20 to get a copy shipped to me from Lulu. Of course, it is an actual book, single spaced, with my cover art, and not the double spaced, single sided manuscript format that has been the standard for years for submissions, but this is for my own use. And I love to hold it in my hands. Satisfies my book lust. Looks like an actual book, instead of a foot high stack of paper.

The cover is an actual picture of one of my grandfathers fishing. I think it's pretty cool. Of course, the novel is fiction, and not based on any actual persons. The usual disclaimer. Neither of my grandfathers would have done the things that the grandfather in the novel did. But if would be lying if I said I did not picture my grandfathers when describing some of the physical characteristics of the fictional grandfather in the novel.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Classic melodrama. I read it in high school, forgot it (mostly), and read it again forty years later.

Dickens ties everything up neatly doesn't he? And his need for moral justice is not to be denied: The servant of Lucy, in the final showdown with Madame Defarge, ends up killing (accidentally) the evil knitter. But the servant has to suffer for her part in the death of the Madame, so she ends up deaf. Now that is carrying moral retribution a little too far. And notice that Jerry cannot be the hero of that little scene, since he is a fallen man - a grave robber. How times (and novels) have changed.

New Stories from the South - 2006

Another great collection. There are some real gems here. My favorite - "Blue Knights BOunced from CVD Tourney" by Chris Bachelder - in which a sportswriter gets carried away and slides into the darker side of reporting. Very creative.

Robert Olen Butler at the Decatur Book Festival

If Ferrol Sams was a pleasant surprise, Butler was a disappointment. I'm one of his biggest fans, actually. I love his short stories, and I am one of the few people who has watched all of the video where he writes a short story and we look over his shoulder - for hours and hours.

But in person? Not so impressive. He started by reading his theory of short short fiction versus poetry. Informative, well thought out, well written, but just a little condescending and arrogant. Then he read for the rest of the hour, his short shorts, published and unpublished. He didn't take a single question, alluded to his recent marital difficulties many times, and I had to question his choice of material several times. How arrogant must you be to write in the first person voice of Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde?

In retrospect though, I probably knew he was like this. What kind of an ego must you have to film yourself for hours writing a short story, with the expectation that people like me will actually watch it? And I did watch it, and learned from it. But that doesn't alter my assesment of his personality.

Actually this is the first author talk I have ever been to where I was disappointed in the personality of the author. But he can still write, regardless of what kind of person he is.

Ferrol Sams at Decatur Book Festival

I wasn't prepared for how good a speaker he turned out to be. He had no prepared notes, no speech, didn't read anything, and talked completely by taking questions from the audience. His comic timing is perfect. In person he is a much better storyteller and comic than on paper. Wow.

Charles Frazier at the Decatur Book Festival

I went to the keynote address by Charles Frazier at the second annual Decatur Book Festival last night. Held in the impressive Presser Hall at Agnes Scott College, a timber-framed chapel complete with pipe organ.

Frazier is definitely low key. They chose a format where he was on stage with a book critic, and they sat in stuffed armchairs.  Definitely not as good an impression as, for instance, the talk given by Joyce Carol Oates at the Atlanta History Center, where she was on stage alone and standing at a podium.

This interview was targeted at readers, not writers, but I still gleaned a few interesting tidbits. The questions were about equally distributed between his first novel Cold Mountain and his new novel Thirteen Moons. I have not yet read his new novel, and it was a surprise to me that it was set around the Cherokee removal. If I had known that I would have read it earlier, since that is one of the events in local history that really interests me. Poor marketing?

• Frazier works slowly - a couple of pages is a good day for him


• He revises extensively. He said some passages had been revised twenty times.


• The pressure after the success of Cold Mountain was considerable. I can only imagine. He mentioned having to deal with the expectations of publishers.


• He didn't directly criticize the Cold Mountain movie, but did say he would have done some things differently if he had been able to. He was surprised, after seeing how movies are made, that any good movies are ever produced.


• Film rights have already been bought for Thirteen Moons.


• He writes every day. If he doesn't then he gets rusty.


• But he did not say that he is writing another novel. When asked that question he sort of danced around the answer.

Also present was a Cherokee translator who had translated part of the novel into Cherokee. They did tandem readings. Interesting, but a little bit of Cherokee goes a long way.