NaNoWriMo: Day 15

8,040.

That’s how many words I managed to produce in a single weekend. And what a weekend it was. One of my characters changed her name - twice. The manor house spontaneously sprouted a tower. The steward did something I totally did not expect from him. The mysterious owner is being so mysterious that even I can’t see past the imperious facade. A lazy black setter named Balthazar materialised out of nowhere, even though I’m not really sure what a setter looks like. And there’s something stuffed up the chimney in a long-disused drawing room, and I have no idea what it is.

In other words, I’m having a ball.

Rather a long-winded one, though. My efforts to channel the nineteenth-century style have resulted in an excess of nineteenth-century verbosity. It’s taken nearly 20,000 words just to get the poor girl to the spooky manor house; if I keep going like this I’ll still be writing the first draft come Christmas.

But it’s good for the word count. A few more days, not only will I be caught up, I’ll be ahead. Especially as I can hit 1,900 words an hour when I really get on a roll. How many of those words will survive to the second draft remains to be seen; but they sure do boost morale.

Now, I have an invisible presence in the garden needing my attention....

Fractal Friday: Sweetheart

NaNoWriMo: Day 12

Houston, we have cover art!

It’s a - can you call something photoshopped if you don’t actually use PhotoShop? - section of a painting by William Merritt Chase. I went to the American Impressionism and Realism exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery in September, saw the original, and thought, “That’s my cover!” I love it when dumb luck goes my way.

And I’m beginning to close the yawning word count gap left by my days off sick. Being still in the earliest part of the novel, where I actually know what happens next, it’s not proving too difficult. But by around Saturday evening I’m going to be very worried. I have the beginning (even if Chapter 1 is a bit of a train wreck). I have a fair notion of the ending, and I’ll have a better one once Alice chooses between Fabian and John. But the stretch between the fourth and penultimate chapters currently bears a striking resemblance to the Nullarbor Plain: there’s almost nothing in it.

I’m trying to convince myself that, as gothics depend largely on atmosphere, a slight shortage of incident won’t matter too much, at least not in the first draft. And I’m hoping that my characters will take over - or at the very least, that I can continue keeping one day ahead in my plot-it-as-I-go outline.

If anyone’s interested in closer observation of the impending literary disaster, front row seats are available on my NaNo profile page.

Booking Through Thursday: Too Short?

Suggested by JM:

“Life is too short to read bad books.” I’d always heard that, but I still read books through until the end no matter how bad they were because I had this sense of obligation.

That is, until this week when I tried (really tried) to read a book that is utterly boring and unrealistic. I had to stop reading.

Do you read everything all the way through or do you feel life really is too short to read bad books?

I feel that life is too short to read really bad books. (And I’ve only recently progressed that far.) I used to read everything to the very end; but now if I feel sure I simply can’t finish a book - and if morbid curiosity isn’t enough to keep me going - I will quit.

I’ve only done so a handful of times in the last couple of years, either because old habits die hard or because I’m good at choosing books. I think mostly the former - I’ve written my share of negative reviews. Quitting a book gives me an uncomfortable feeling of unfinished business. I do think that I need to get better at walking away from bad books; but then writing scathing reviews is so much fun!

Chunkster Challenge: Withdrawal

As I just posted, I’ve been unwell for some days and am now seriously behind in my NaNoWriMo wordcount. Hence I’ve been obliged to drop out of the Chunkster Challenge. There’s just no way I can catch up with NaNo, finish another huge book, and produce the necessary reviews for this and the Classics Challenge in 5 days. At least, not if I want to sleep.

I did read three books for the challenge, but only one has yet been reviewed. Links for the pending reviews will be added as they’re posted.

Possession - A. S. Byatt
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
Wives and Daughters - Elizabeth Gaskell (substituted for The Magus because it seemed a shame not to include the biggest book I’ll read all year)

It was fun while it lasted.

NaNoWriMo: Day 10

Wednesday - the day on which I intended to post an update - reminded me of a quote by Neil Gaiman:

When writing a novel that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: 'House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.'

In my case it was: got three and a half hours sleep; tree loppers started chainsawing and woodchipping across the road at seven sharp; mother down with food poisoning from the previous night’s dinner I prepared; was obliged to dispose, all by my arachnophobic self, of the corpse of a spider so enormous that had I seen it when it was alive they’d have heard the shriek in New South Wales....

....on the plus side: able to wake from far too little sleep looking fresh as a daisy and put on a convincing show of being fully compos mentis; inherited my father’s cast-iron stomach; nearly finished my cover art; wrote 1,944 fairly easy words before the whole compos mentis thing came to a crashing halt shortly after 6pm. Which made me feel somewhat better about a day that otherwise seemed to be karma’s way of kicking me in the butt in retaliation for cooking a toxic meal and failing to succumb to it myself.

Though as it turned out, it was apparently not food poisoning but something contagious, and it struck me down on Thursday. I spent more than 24 hours sicker than I can ever remember being in my life, and days after that envying the energy levels of snails. The relevant upshot of all this is that I wrote nothing for five days, and as of this morning was 9024 words behind. It’s going to take some serious weekend wordcount heroics to get me back on track.

On a more positive note, it’s starting to come to life. I’ve had objects spontaneously materialise, my heroine (who I feared might be a tad dull) has shown some commendable spirit, and just this afternoon I had a minor plot hole pointed out to me by one of my own characters. By tomorrow evening I hope to have some cover art and an excerpt ready to upload (if the site’s working, which much to my frustration it currently isn’t).

Stay tuned, and wish me luck.

Weekly Geeks: Weird and Creepy

1) Tell us about something weird, unusual, terrifying, or creepy you've read lately.

2) Tell us what you think. Are things getting a little more weird and creepy than usual, or less? If your choice for the answer to question number 1 was written in a different decade, what does it say about that era? Maybe you think that the weird and creepy is status quo. Or maybe we’re all like lobsters in a pot, and we can’t tell if things are getting hot in here.

1. I’ve read quite a bit of weird, unusual, and creepy (but nothing terrifying) lately for R.I.P. IV - an eighteenth-century gothic classic, a nineteenth-century gothic classic, a twentieth-century ghost story, and a twenty-first century piece of gothic surreality. (And I didn’t even notice until now that I had achieved such a spread of centuries!)

2. Given that I’m only 25, and that my reading habits are, shall we say, chronologically diverse, I don’t feel qualified to answer this question. I haven’t been reading adult books long enough, and recent books have formed too small a portion of my literary diet, for me to hold much of an opinion on publishing trends. There do seem to be a lot of weird/spooky/supernatural books out there of late; but then there are a lot of books out there. A certain percentage of those are bound to contain some kind of otherwordly element.

Most of the weird and creepy I’ve read would have been published within, say, the last twenty years; but that could simply be the result of literary life-spans. I’m hardly likely to read something that’s out of print and lost to obscurity. And the weird and the creepy in literature have been around for a long time. The Victorians loved their ghost stories. Gothic novels were first making readers’ hair stand on end more than two hundred years ago. Shakespeare had the Weird Sisters and Caliban.

And since I adore creepy tales of all times periods ... I’m glad that there are centuries of spookiness to choose from.

Book Review: Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Classics Challenge #3

While travelling, Scottish nobleman Macbeth is met by three witches who predict, among other things, that he will become king. Macbeth is sceptical, but when the first part of the prophecy comes true, he sees no reason why the rest shouldn’t also. Nor does his wife; indeed, when the current king stays at their castle she encourages Macbeth to make the prediction a reality. Killing for a throne turns out to be easier than keeping it and the witches haven’t finished with him yet.

For the first time I’ve re-read something that was required reading in high school English. You really do appreciate literature much more without the threat of an essay hanging over your head. And it’s testament to how much I’ve come to appreciate Shakespeare that I chose to read anything carrying memories of Year 9.

I have to feel a little sorry for the historical Macbeth, as Shakespeare’s depiction is ... well, not the most flattering. The theatrical Macbeth is a rather weak man, pushed by the stronger personality of his wife into seizing the throne by murder, necessitating other crimes to retain his ill-gotten crown. Neither one stops to look closely at the witches’ prophecies, taking for granted that they’re as straightforward as they seem and falling headlong into the perils of heedless and excessive ambition. Like any good prophecy, there are hidden snags, and they come true in unexpected but perfectly logical ways; and Macbeth’s inner tyrant in unleashed along the way. I haven’t quite decided whether the witches simply revealed what portents came to them, or knew all along what the result would be and perhaps even intended to cause Macbeth’s rise and fall.

Lady Macbeth fascinated me when I first met her and continues to do so. She’s one of the most compelling women in literature - encouraging, aiding, and abetting murder to secure her husband’s advancement and through his, her own. When she discovers that she is not in fact able to cope with the path she’s embarked on the results are dramatic. Even though she’s one of the bad guys I do pity her just a little for her fate.

As well as one of the great villainesses, Macbeth contains a number of highly memorable images: the procession of phantom kings, "Out, damned spot!", Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane, and the appearance of Banquo’s ghost. (Phantom kings ... a ghost ... almost R.I.P. IV material!) And for anyone wary of Shakespeare, it has the advantage of being short.

Rating: A-

NaNo Is GO!

I resisted the temptation last year, but this year I caved: I’ve sat up to begin my NaNoWriMo novel at the stroke of midnight! I had intended to supply myself with a proper outline and written notes this year, but we all know where good intentions go. I have too little plot, undoubtedly too little research, but an abundance of enthusiasm which I hope will compensate for the shortcomings. (I also have a last sentence to aim for, which puts me one up on last year.)

The blog will roll on while I have my head in the nineteenth-century clouds; my backlog of pending reviews will make nice warm-up exercises to begin my writing day. There’s the Chunkster Challenge to finish ... somehow. And there will be updates, rants, and self-congratulation as applicable.

Now I’m off to start writing! Having watched Psycho this evening I’m hoping some NaNoing will get the image of Mrs Bates out of my head before I try to sleep....

(If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is ... it’s a form of mass insanity in which thousands of people around the globe attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. Crazy? Of course. Fun? Hell yes!)

Classics Challenge 2009 Wrap-Up

Since the challenge blog only specified reading the classics, not reviewing them, I have technically completed the challenge even though I have five half-finished reviews. (Blame NaNoWriMo. I do.) My selections were:

Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (A-)
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë (A)
Possession - A. S. Byatt (bonus) (A+)
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane (B)
Bleak House - Charles Dickens (A-)
The Metamorphoses - Ovid (B+)
Macbeth - William Shakespeare (A-)

Aside from my tardiness, an unqualified success! Seven books and nothing lower than a B. I read about the American Civil War for the first time; added another century - the 1^st - to my list of centuries I’ve read works from (nine and counting); I finished a novel by Dickens; and I ventured back into the realm of Books I Was Forced to Read in High School. I also had a perfect excuse to re-read some old favourites.

Review links will be added over the next couple of days as the reviews are finished and posted.

Many thanks to Trish for providing one of my favourite pre-NaNo distractions!

R.I.P. IV Challenge Wrap-Up

Reader imbibing peril indeed! In the last two months I have (vicariously) been trapped in haunted castles in mediaeval Europe, learned of a friend’s horrifying transformations, gone on a body-snatching expedition, discovered dark family secrets in the mountains of Spain, been pursued across England by a malevolent supernatural force, and made a deal with ... well, I’m not quite sure with what. Something not entirely human, certainly. I’m a little envious of my northern hemisphere co-participants - such tales demand dark autumn evenings and chill winds whistling round the corners of the house. But reading them surrounded by warmth and sunshine is still a lot of fun. (And now some of my northern hemisphere readers are doubtless a little envious of me!)

To complete Peril the First, I read four books:

The Mist in the Mirror - Susan Hill (C+)
The Mysteries of Udolpho - Ann Radcliffe (B-)
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and other tales of terror - Robert Louis Stevenson (B-)
The Angel's Game - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (A-)

After a trip to the library at the start of the month I decided to substitute The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl for one of the above, but it was a DNF for me - it was printed in a too-thin typeface that I just couldn’t read. The other books I started were much better choices, even if The Mist in the Mirror frustrated with too few chills and too many loose ends, and Udolpho with more excess verbiage than Henry James (and isn’t that saying a lot?).

At long last I got to meet Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and make my acquaintance with the story behind the saying. Its fame has proved its undoing, taking away the shock of discovery. No such worry with The Angel's Game; for once I actually managed to lay hands on the latest bestseller in reasonably quick time and only had to avoid a handful of reviews on other blogs to keep all the surprises intact.

Looking back over this year’s selection, it’s struck me that all are set in western Europe and all are historical, mostly nineteenth and early twentieth century. Next year I’ll aim for a greater variety of time and setting, but as my justification for adding another challenge to the pile this year was NaNo inspiration the choices were appropriate. Now that I’ve finished reading about historical supernatural horrors, I get to go and inflict some on my heroine!

Carl, you’re a legend for devising this challenge!

Book Review: The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

R.I.P. IV Challenge #4

David Martín’s great ambition is to be a writer. When he gets the chance to write a noir serial titled The Mysteries of Barcelona he grabs the attention not just of the reading public, but also the mysterious Andreas Corelli, a Parisian publisher who uses an angel emblem and seemingly has the ability to make the impossible become real. Years later, David has taken over a sinister, decaying mansion where he churns out pseudonymous thrillers and dreams of the lovely but married Cristina. When he needs help, Andreas Corelli obliges, but in return David must produce a very specific type of book. Not such a simple task, when the police are watching him, people are dying, and the question of what became of the mansion’s previous owner keeps distracting him. David Martín and the late Diego Marlasca share more than just initials - they both made a deal with Corelli, whose motives and plans are highly questionable and from whom it might not be possible to walk away.

I began this - the first companion piece to The Shadow of the Wind - with high and barely restrained expectations. And although it took me a while to warm up to David I wasn’t disappointed. The Cemetery of Forgotten Books made a welcome reappearance (I would love to spend time in that place!) as did Sempere & Sons bookshop, one generation earlier. It also shared the theme of a young man unravelling a mystery while overcoming his greatest weakness; but while Daniel Sempere’s besetting flaw was cowardice, David’s was cold-heartedness. This initially made him a little hard to like, but did provide some great snarkiness, especially when Isabella showed up. He didn’t want a protégée, and he really didn’t want one who would entrench herself in his house and clean it to within an inch of its life, but that’s exactly what he got and I loved every word of their verbal sparring.

And they share Barcelona. The city is a spectacular backdrop, and obliterates any notion of Spain as perpetually sun-drenched. Eerie mansions, a labyrinth of books, a witch’s hovel, dingy apartments, and of course a cemetery ... they’re all the types of location that would fit easily into The Mysteries of Barcelona. Even when nothing particularly spooky is happening, you know that in a setting like that the characters can’t remain safe for long; something will have to happen. And something always does.

It takes some time for the mystery to really get going, as it centres around Corelli and his game and there’s a fair bit of set-up required to establish his presence in David’s life. But when it does ... it was baffling, at times unnerving, and came with plenty of action. And that smell.... Even after finishing it I was still baffled, but in a “Wow!” way. Closing the book was like stepping out of a mirror maze, suddenly back amidst the everyday and wondering what had been real and what not. I know that one day I’ll have to read it again in the hope of figuring out just what was going on when it all went strange(r).

Rating: A-

Fractal Friday: Nebula

Book Review: The Mist in the Mirror by Susan Hill

R.I.P. IV Challenge #3

After having spent nearly all his life abroad, James Monmouth returns to England, the country where he spent the first five years of his life and of which he has no memory. He plans to research a book about the explorer Conrad Vane, who has long fascinated him and whose travels he has retraced. From the moment he arrives at London’s Cross Keys Inn, odd things begin to happen. Seemingly trivial matters terrify him. A strange boy stands in the street gazing at him. And person after person advises him stay well clear of anything concerning Conrad Vane.

I did feel a chill while reading this ... but that was because the aircon on the train was overdone again. I didn’t find it particularly creepy. Initially it was all too subjective: Monmouth was, by his own admission, getting freaked out for no reason by things unlikely to alarm anyone else. Later, when clearly abnormal phenomena began to appear, it was hard to believe that he was truly scared by them, as regardless of what he felt at the time, he kept going with his enquiries afterward. Being a first-person story, if the character relating the events keeps shrugging them off it’s an open invitation to the reader to do the same. And I didn’t altogether like Monmouth; surely, after receiving that many warnings, a person of sense would have returned to London and boarded the next ship out of there.

On the upside, it’s fabulously atmospheric. Monmouth begins his account with a passage that echoes the opening of Bleak House with rain instead of fog, and you know at once what sort of tale you’ll be reading. From dank inns to ancient college buildings to a dilapidated manor house, the settings fit the genre perfectly. The malevolence quotient increased at the end (perhaps it wasn’t the aircon after all....) but there were too many loose ends that never came close to being explained.

Rating: C+

Fractal Friday: Galactic

Fractal Friday: Flamingo

Book Review: Behold, Here's Poison by Georgette Heyer

When a servant finds Gregory Matthews dead in his bed, it’s believed to be natural causes. And natural causes it would have remained, if his dragonish sister Gertrude Lupton hadn’t declared it impossible that there could have been a weak heart in her family, and demanded a post-mortem. When it transpires that Gregory was poisoned, there’s no shortage of suspects for Inspector Hannasyde and Sergeant Hemingway to investigate. His siblings, siblings-in-law, niece, nephews, and neighbour all stood to benefit by his death, either materially or just by getting rid of an unpleasant nuisance. So to, perhaps, did the mysterious "Mr Hyde"....

For some inexplicable reason I was surprised when the victim’s first appearance was as a corpse. It’s happened in numerous books that I’ve read, but still, in a classic-style whodunit I was rather expecting to be able to play spot-the-victim and study everyone’s opportunity before being presented with a body. Still. It certainly got things off to a dramatic start, even if it did prevent Gregory from being as well-defined as the other characters. Although there’s well over a century between them, it was impossible not to think of Heyer’s Regency characters - this group was just as eccentric as any in her romances, and while not all of them were likeable they were a lot of fun to read about. Especially Randall Matthews, who took great delight in always doing or saying precisely the most objectionable thing in any situation. It could be highly entertaining to have a Randall in one’s family - so long as his barbs weren’t directed against oneself.

I felt very pleased with myself for identifying the means by which the poison was delivered pages before the detectives did, which compensated for my utter inability to identify the person who used it. The motive was almost too much of a surprise, but it did fit in with what had been uncovered about Gregory Matthews’s character. Not sure, though, about the eventual romantic pairing....

Rating: B

Booking Through Thursday: Weeding

We’re moving in a couple weeks (the first time since I was 9 years old), and I’ve been going through my library of 3000+ books, choosing the books that I could bear to part with and NOT have to pack to move. Which made me wonder…

When’s the last time you weeded out your library? Do you regularly keep it pared down to your reading essentials? Or does it blossom into something out of control the minute you turn your back, like a garden after a Spring rain?

Or do you simply not get rid of books? At all? (This would have described me for most of my life, by the way.)

And–when you DO weed out books from your collection (assuming that you do) …what do you do with them? Throw them away (gasp)? Donate them to a charity or used bookstore? SELL them to a used bookstore? Trade them on Paperback Book Swap or some other exchange program?

The last time I culled by book collection was also in preparation for a move ... i.e. seven years ago. Since then it’s been steadily expanding to fill all the available shelf space. Given that shelf space is finite - and in my case rapidly running out - a second cull will have to take place in the near(ish) future. Probably I’ll put it off until I have so many books stacked on the front of the shelves that I can hardly get to the books behind.

When the inevitable day comes, what I do with the weeded-out books will depend on their condition. Since a lot of my collection was acquired second-hand some will undoubtedly be fit only for a return to the charity from whence they came. Any that are in good shape I’ll take to a second-hand bookstore I know which accepts trade-ins. Which won’t really help in the matter of shelf space, but since the new acquisitions will go straight into the TBR box their effect won’t be felt for a while. And as it’s essentially a way of getting new books for free, I can justify it on the grounds of its being the economical option :-)

Fractal Friday: Mocha Rose

Weekly Geeks

Take a look at your blog as if you were someone who has never seen a blog before. Imagine they are looking for something specific. Could they find it? Could they find YOU again? Be able to contact you? Would they understand your jargon?

With these questions in mind, start making your blog more reader friendly.

I’ve had vague thoughts of blog improvement percolating in my brain for a while now. I’ve even started acting on them: I’m currently going through my archive unifying the formatting and adding ALT tags to everything. Beyond that ... I have a large list of little things to think about.

META tags, as suggested, are top of the list, probably followed by a lot of reading of Blogger Help to get me started on the rest. (Despite appearances, I’m not great at coding.) I want to overhaul some of the things done in haste as part of the Blog Improvement Project at Sophisticated Dorkiness (the reviews index, the additional personal information, the "Best Of" list); the vision I’m toying with is a row of links beneath the header. Assuming, of course, it’s possible to turn a header into an image map....

I’m also considering switching to either my given initials or a "proper" pseudonym, now that NaNoWriMo has me taking my writing more seriously. Trouble is, that could necessitate changing the URL.

One thing at a time....