The Saturday Morning Post (No. 132) EXTRA! EXTRA!

                            

In our second review this week, we have another book suggested by a neighbor. I had put a hold on it as an ebook, but since I had to drive down to the library to pick up yesterday's book, the paper version was on the shelf so I picked it up instead. After a long streak of so-so new books, and yesterday's clunker, it proved to be a winner.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

News of the World by Paulette Jiles  A

The story is set in Texas of 1870, round about the same time and place as Lonesome Dove, just for context. It also tells of a journey, in this case, one from Wichita Falls in the north of Texas to San Antonio in the south. And if you have read any of Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove novels, you will be aware that Texas during this time period was not a safe place. Not safe at all. And this journey is not a safe journey.

Our protagonist, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, is a former soldier. As a young man he fought in the War of 1812, and again, thirty years later, as a captain in the war with Mexico that proceeded the American Civil War by a decade or so. When not a soldier, he was a printer by trade. Now 71 years old, and having lost his printing business after the civil war, he travels from one small town in Texas to another reading stories out of newspapers from far away, for a dime admittance a head. 

At the start of the story he is asked by some old wagon driver friends, to take charge of returning a 10 year old girl, Johanna Leonberger, to her aunt and uncle. She had been kidnapped by the Kiowa Indians six years prior, in a raid on her family's homestead. The rest if her family had been killed, and  since then she has lived as a Kiowa. The Army had forced the Kiowa's to return these kidnapped children, whether they wanted to be returned or not, and she did not want to be returned. The wagoneers had brought her out of Indian Territory to the north of Texas, but did not want to go any further. They offered the money they'd been paid to deliver her family to Captain Kidd if he would take her with him and deliver her to her relatives himself. He reluctantly agrees.

Johanna, growing up a Kiowa and being ripped away from her Kiowa family and life to be taken by strange people was bitter, sullen, and strange. This was common in many children taken by Indians and then later returned to their birth families. The story recounts Captain Kidd and Johnnna's adventures during the 400 mile journey south as they slowly come to form a bond of trust. One that the Captain knows will be broken once he delivers her to her relatives - if they make it that far.

Not wanting to go into spoiler country, I will leave the story here. It is an adventure filled journey across Texas in a wagon Captain Kidd buys for the journey.

Jiles did not use quotation marks in telling this story, a choice that, I think, does it no service. The lack of quotation marks around conversations is something to be endured while reading it, sometime making it hard to decipher just what is actually being said out loud. I have heard rumors that she's not the only author that does this, but she is the first I've encountered. Still, as you can see from its grade, that quibble did not lessen my enjoyment of the story too much. I have referenced Lonesome Dove, as they are set in the same locale and time-frame. Whereas Lonesome Dove I found to be grim, even nihilistic, News of the World is hopeful and sweet, without compromising on depicting the harsh realities of that time and place. It's not a long book, and gets a high recommendation from me.

I believe that some of the other books Jiles wrote feature some of the characters we encounter in this story. However, (spoiler) having gotten out of Texas alive in this one, I'm in no hurry to go back.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 131)

 

This week we have a new book by an award winning (Nebula and others) author who has been writing novels since 1982. I discovered this book on Rich Hortons's blog, Strange at Ecbatan. He was enthusiastic about it, and it sounded interesting to me. Plus, it was available from the library, so off we go... out the window.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below

The Adventures of Mary Darling by Pat Murphy  DNF 42%

I hate books of fiction that attempt to educate me. I don't like being treated like an idiot. I love to learn about the past through works of well researched fiction, for example the Patrick O'Brian novels or the Georgette Heyer romances, but I hate it when the author basically steps out of the story to lecture the reader on some aspect of the historical time their story is set in. There is fiction and there is Wikipedia. Both have their uses, but different uses.

I didn't start reading The Adventures of Mary Darling to learn about some quack doctor's treatment of rich women with nervous conditions in the late Victorian period, one of several  pages long mini-lectures in this book. If the information was woven into a conversation or actions relevant to the plot, fine. Bring it on. But in this case, the author brings the doctor into the story simply as an excuse to launch that mini-lecture on the horrible treatments, and the utter lack of agency women had in the matter. She simply stopped telling the story, and turned to the reader to tell us all about this monstrous evil. Nothing comes of it; it's just an excuse to lecture us. Oh, and where you ever curious about the ABC Tea Houses in London? She has you covered there as well.

This book, as far as I got into it, seemed to be written more as vehicle for education about the various evils of the world a hundred years ago than an "adventure". She highlights such subjects as the treatment of women and non-white races in the late Victorian period, issues that I, and I suspect most, of not all, of the potential readers, are well aware of. Moreover, since they are historical ills, they can not be retroactively cured. So what's the point, then? With "Adventure" on the tin, this tin is, in my opinion, clearly mislabeled.

Murphy has been writing for 40 some years and has won awards, and yet this story has far more "telling" than it has showing. I found it tedious reading, even without the lectures. Moreover, in the modern style, she has taken her story, and, with a hammer, smashed it into little crumbs. She then tells the story using those little crumbs; constantly jumping between POVs, time, and space in scenes often just a few pages long. Everyone seems to have secrets that are revealed in the small crumbs throughout the part of the story I read, more than that I can't say, since I didn't get further. 

Usually, in a mystery story, the mystery is unraveled by the main character(s) in a sequence of discoveries. In this story the reader is told bits and pieces of each of the secrets well ahead of the main characters, with no coherent sequence or timeline, just to keep the tedious story seemingly moving along one tiny step at a time, I guess.

The many points of view characters come and go so fast, and so inconsistently, that I, at least, found it impossible to care about any one of them. 

Not that we are meant to, except for perhaps the title character, since the author seems to have set out to deconstruct the familiar characters, tarnishing or destroying the magic of the stories that this novel is a rift on in the process. Which seems to have been her intent.

"Stop ranting, Chuck! What about the story?" you yell.

Right. Well, the story is about Mary Darling, the mother of Wendy, John, and Michael who went off to Neverland with Peter Pan, and her efforts to recover her children. In this novel, she happens to be the niece of Dr John Watson, so that Sherlock Holmes is brought in to investigate their "kidnapping." What follows, in the first 126 pages, is that we are introduced to Mary, her husband, an iffy old friend of Mary's in the rat-skin glove making business, Mrs Hudson, Watson and Holmes, Peter Pan, and various crumbs of their backstories. My reading ended with Mary, disguised as a man, sets sail to Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean - where have we heard of that island before? - because of a leaf found on the windowsill. And maybe because of a crumb that hasn't been revealed yet. Who knows?

It sounded like a charming idea for a story, which is why I rushed off and ordered it up from the library. However, as you will likely have noticed, I had a few problems with this book, on many levels, not the least a resentment of its attempt to drain any and all magic out of the stories it is based on. I found it a great disappointment, actually annoying, hence my ranting about it. A charming idea, but a book with a very clear agenda, no charm, and no magic.

However, given my negative views on this book, here is the link to the much more positive Rich Horton review. While he notes the same tendency as I did to teach us things, he didn't mind it half as much as me.

While I really disliked this book, and thought it very poorly written, your milage may vary. It is fairly well regarded on Goodreads.

Rambling about Historical Fiction

Several weeks ago, I talked about being a nomad reader roving the range of historical fiction. To me "historical fiction" is such a broad category that it should be not be considered a genre at all. I view all stories set in the past as historical fiction. And for me, the "past" means stories set before I was born, i.e. before 1950.

This is not strictly speaking its proper definition. In a recent post on historical fiction by Audrey Driscoll, HERE, she defined it thus;

"Historical fiction must be set in the past, at least twenty-five years before the writer’s present, but some say it should be fifty or more. Novels from past decades or centuries that were contemporary at the time they were written are not historical fiction."

Her definition is similar to one of the Wikipedia definitions, however, the article does mention that some people read novels written in the past as historical novels. People like me.

"Historical fiction" being such an open description, I see no need to make a further distinctions. All stories set in the past, including those written as contemporary accounts of the life at the time. They have evolved into historical fiction with the passage of time. And indeed, they're likely more authentic than contemporary writers' accounts of those times by nature of their familiarity with world they are writing about. I realize, however, that many contemporary stories are idealized representations of their world, and so they can not be taken at face value. Still, they get the everyday details right as well as the contemporary attitude of the author and/or characters, and thus, more likely the authentic.

As broadly as I define historical fiction, I do make one distinction; fiction written in the 20th century vs stories written in the 21st. I find several characteristics of 21st century fiction that do not appeal to me. Though having said that, my favorite series of the year is a 21st century written historical fiction/fantasy series. It is an exception to my experiences with modern historical fiction.

One of the things that, well, annoy me about modern historical fiction is many historical fiction writers seem to settle for doing their research online, mostly, it  seems by using Wikipedia. They're content just to work in the nuggets of information they found online into the story, just to make it seem historical. Plus they often feel the need to include explanations of the artifacts of the time that are no longer familiar to modern readers. This might be because these authors are considerably younger than me, and so the pre-cell phone, pre-internet world feels far, far more distant to them than it does to me, and so the need to explain this remote world to the reader.

However, because they don't immerse themselves in the period, you get "historical fiction" that has little to no historical flavor to it. The history is just window dressing for a modern story. Indeed, I once came across a mystery story set in the 1930's England, where the author had the characters look at the "screen" of a hotel registry! 

Another trend I have noticed is the desire to teach us about the evils of the past. I recently read a historical fantasy novel where the author essentially paused telling the story to turned to the audience to give mini-lectures on the injustices of the society she wanted to educate the reader about. We, the reader, were told about the importance of ABC Tea Rooms for women of the Victorian age, or how little agency women had, illustrated by the fact that women could be shipped off and confined for treatment for a perceived mental condition and held without their consent. (I see that review is coming up this Saturday. Stay tuned.)

All in all, I've found that historical fiction written prior to the 21st century is usually not only better written, but far more thoroughly researched. Writers prior to the internet needed to work harder to research the period they were writing about, and perhaps because of that, they became more immersed in it, becoming experts in the period. From having read many and a variety of contemporary accounts, those authors picked up more than the facts, they picked up the spirit of the age, the way characters would think, speak, and act. As a result, those books offer a greater sense of the age than most modern historical fiction.

As I said at the top, my view of historical fiction includes all fiction set and/or written in the past. The Cadfael medieval mysteries set in the twelfth century are historical fiction. The Aubrey and Maturin nautical stories set in the early 19th century are also historical fiction. Georgette Heyer's Regency Romances are not only romances, but historical fiction. As are westerns, most war stories, sea stories, Regency Romances, many spy stories, and even historical fantasies that have been written in the last 100 plus years.

Up to now, I've talked about mostly works by 20th & 21st century authors writing about their past. But there is that second aspect of historical fiction, stories originally set in contemporary tines that have become historical by lasting. Most popular fiction goes out of print and is forgotten, but some endure, and remain in print. For example, D E Stevenson's or Miss Read's domestic stories set in Britain. Sherlock Holmes, of course, Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu, Agatha Christie's and her contemporary mystery writers' stories can still be found in print. You can still find Compton's  Monarch of the Glen set in the highlands of the 1930's. and a number of H Rider Haggard adventure stories set in distant lands, as well as Kipling's stories of India under the British Rah, just to name a few more that spring to mind. And as I said, being written as contemporary fiction, they bring that forgotten contemporary life back to life. And while they may include many unfamiliar things, social norms, and attitudes, that only adds to their authenticity.

And, of course, we can not forget all the writers of now classic literature, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Tolstoy, and all the rest who wrote stories set in the world of their times; historical fiction several layers deep.

I have thousands of historical stories remaining to be explored, though the less famous may need a visit to a used book store or the Gutenberg Project to be discovered. With this vast range, to wander, I expect to find many more entertaining books without ever leaving my historical fiction range behind. As I said in the first post, historical fiction is a wide, wide, range to roam over. Some readers find a home on that range, but I have a feeling I'll just keep roaming.

Sorry; I really need to learn how to write clearly and concisely. I've edited this piece down for the last several days and it's still too long and rambling.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 130) EXTRA! EXTRA!

                           

After two old favorites, I am once again stepping out of my usual cow path of reading material. This time to sample a book written by one of those many authors that have YouTube cannels. She was offering this book for free for the month of July, and that's a price that I'm willing to give a book a try by someone who seems quite nice.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

The Sorcerer's Concubine by Lidiya Foxglove  B-

Lidya Foxglove is a full time self-published author of romance fantasy, much of it probably what they call, spicy romance. Starting out as a traditionally published YA author, she shifted to self-publishing adult romance fantasy that were written to market. Which is to say, writing books whose tropes she felt were trending, such as "Fairy Tale Heat" Like Beauty and the Goblin King, plus, reverse harem, A Witch Among Warlocks, magic school story, and Fae Bride stories and darker Vampire Clan stories... Well you get the idea, writing books that sell, writing up to ten book a year, for some years.

Tired of writing to market, and eager just to write the stories she really wants to write, set in a world that she's been imagining since she was a girl, she started a YouTube channel to hopefully supplement her income so that she can write quirkier stories that she knows will be harder to market. This story is set in her world, but was written, apparently in several forms, this being the truest. It is the first book of a trilogy.

As for the story itself; the protagonist, Velsa, is literally a "doll person", an animated-by-magic life-sized living doll made of wood, stuffing, and fabric heavily modified with the use of magic. They are said to be animated by the souls of people who did not make the cut to get into heaven, and are being given a second chance to earn this reward by serving humans in various roles as slaves. In Velsa's case, she was made to be a concubine. These living dolls are not considered persons, have no rights, and are looked down on by the humans of the land, and treated like things with no feelings at all. 

Velsa, does have feelings, and as it turns out special powers - including teletherapy, for which she wears a golden collar to suppress, as it is a power that is feared in that land - though it is common in their enemy's nation. She is purchased by Grau, a young sorcerer who is instantly attracted to her. The story then follows them over the next six months as they fall in love, as Grau takes her to the military camp on the border where he is to do six months of duty to get some money to continue his study of magic.

As usual, I won't go into the details of the plot, though this is mostly a character centric novel focused on Velsa's experiences once she leaves the house she "grew up" in, and all the discrimination, hate, indifference she experiences as an animated "thing" that was built for one purpose; the sexual gratification of the man who buys her. Foxglove is a seasoned writer who brings Velsa, the living doll fully alive. And this story is clearly a work of love. Grau, who buys her, is more or less the ideal man, kind, considerate, very honorable. Someone who not only treats her as a real person, but has honorable ambitions for her, protecting her as much as he can throughout this story. 

As a story, it is a pretty cozy story mixed with some brutal moments. The pacing is pretty leisurely, with some time spent world building, but not over much. It is fairly episodic, the string of incidents leading to a climax of sort, but clearly book one of a trilogy. While I enjoyed it, I'm not it's target audience. Both romances and fantasies are genres that are not high on my list of preferred reading, and a combination of the two is rather far from my well trodden reading cow path, so I doubt I will continue with the series.

The Saturday Morning Post (No.129)

I've grown rather weary of my recent run of what sadly has turned out to be books that did not greatly appeal to me. So, what's the use of having a wall of books, if not to read an old favorite? Or two? And that's the course I'm steering this time around. We start this journey in old favorites with the fourth and fifth book of a favorite series, since I believe I've read the third one since I starting this series of posts. No matter, since I've read these books at least three times already.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

The Mauritius Command by Patrick O'Brian  A

As I stated in the lede, this is the fourth book of the series. I happened to have picked up this book at a library sale - a first American printing edition - around the time that the Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin series caught fire, sometime in the late 1980's. I don't remember how I discovered that the series was being reissued, but starting in 1988 I have vol 11 and the nine volumes that followed in hardcover, again in first American printings, all the previous one save for this one in trade paperbacks. Needles to say, I was a big fan, as what my father, who collected them as well.

I also have C S Forester's Horatio Hornblower series as well, but for my money, Patrick O'Brian's tales stand head and shoulders over Forester's because O'Brian's stories are so much better written, in my opinion, and written with a broader view of the world than Forester's. Not that Forester's are badly written, it is just that O'Brian has his own way with words that I greatly appreciate. He creates the time period in the way he tells the story, without making it a chore to read, as well as offering many thoughts and observations on human nature.

Well, if I haven't said anything specific about this story, it is only because it being the fourth book in the series, this is not the book to start with, as I did. The Aubrey-Maturin series is one of my favorite top six series of all time, and high on that short list as well. It is a series I strongly recommend, as it is far more than a series about the British Navy in the Napoleonic wars. It takes the reader from the Mediterranean Sea to the France and the Channel, to Calcutta, to the Baltic, to the far side of the world, the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and Boston during the War of 1812, centered around the small world of a ship, but far from confined to ships and combat.

In this story Captain Aubrey, just scraping by on half pay without a ship, is sent to Cape Town and appointed a Commadore, a sort of temporary admiral, to lead a squadron of frigates to put a stopper on the activities of a squadron of French frigates operating out of the Indian Ocean Mauritius Islands, off the east coast of Africa. O'Brian introduces his fictional characters into a carefully researched real life episode where nothing important in the book describing the campaign is invented. You basically get the historical campaign with only the names changed.

My only negative comment is on me; as I have written elsewhere in this series, I have a hard time following action, in this case the maneuvering of ships and such. I have to believe, that I once was able to follow things more closely than I do these days. I've gotten too old and too inpatient, I guess. As always, on me.

Desolation Island by Patrick O'Brian  A

This story takes place a year or so after the previous book. Captain Audrey's fortunes have been restored from his share of the ships captured in the Mauritius campaign. Plus, he had been give a shore job as a reward. At the start of this story, he is given an old ship in the line, the "horrible old Leopard" and ordered to sail to Australia to deal with problems regarding Captain Bligh, or rather the problems Bligh is having as governor of New South Wales. 

Meanwhile Dr Maturin is having a tough time; he finds himself addicted to laudanum (a tincture of opium) after being dumped, once again, by the woman he desperately loves and is making mistakes in this both roles as a doctor and intelligence agent. To give him time to recover his spirits and perhaps usefulness, he sails with Audrey aboard the Leopard along with a female spy being transported to Australia rather than hanged, with the idea that perhaps Maturin can extract some useful information about her connections with the French, and Americans. 

This story is a return to the usual form of stories O'Brian writes for Jack Aubrey; he is on a solo mission in some distant part of the world, allowing O'Brian to write a tale that focuses more on people and places, as well as the life of the sailors and ships of that period, rather than the headline events of the naval aspects of the Napoleonic wars. This a story of a long journey, with the usual trouble, strife, and desperate adventures common in these stories. 

O'Brian is a much more literary writer, compared to the many other writers of this type of story in this era, Including Forester. He explores a variety of characters in all of his books, and writes with humor, an ear for period dialog, and a eye for details and settings. I think these stories can be enjoyed for many reasons unconnected with naval warfare.

Clearly I don't know what I'm doing.

Literally.

I know that, since, for a while now I have, out of curiosity, been reading posts and watching YouTube videos instructing aspiring writers on how to write novels. And I must admit, I don't recognize the process. What the hell am I doing? 

Their approach to the writing of a novel involves so many considerations, so many moving parts, and processes, that it makes my head hurt. It seems you need to construct a story out of hundreds of components and considerations, all aimed at snaring the "reader" and keeping them reading. You must hook'em right from the beginning to get them into the book, and keep the action flowing to keep'em reading, chapter after chapter. To do so, you build your story on proven structures using standard patterns, large and small, including, the expected tropes and story beats in order to serve reader expectations. Your characters must have their own distinct voices, vices, and each, their own character arc showing that they are different at the end of the story from who they were at the beginning. Dialog must be snappy, but authentic, but neither too much, nor too little. Show, don't tell. Everything must then fit together seamlessly into a carefully crafted consumer product designed for a specific audience. 

Phew.

They suggest that every element in the story should be based on a standard, proven blueprint. The process treats writing as product design, not art. Which, I suppose, makes sense for most writers, since most authors write their books to sell them. Books are, after all a product. So it makes sense to construct their "story" to meet the current, sales-proven standards of the day. It makes writing books a customer-driven rather than author-driven process, creativity harnessed as a carthorse, pulling a heavy load. With no guarantee of any bag of oats at the end of the day.

No wonder I often hear that writing novels is hard, grueling, and thankless work. No wonder there seems to be so much angst involved in writing novels. Writing is a demanding job, with little real hope of it paying off for the vast majority of aspiring writers. No wonder writers drink.

What is not mentioned is talent. It would seem that talent is unnecessary, if one just follows the blueprint they set out.

I, however, believe in talent. I believe talent is a necessary ingredient in storytelling and in writing. Without it, or with very little of it, writing would be dreary, uninspired work.

Maybe my belief is old fashioned. I've held it all my life, after all. Back, after the dinosaurs had died out, people had moved out of the caves to the 'burbs, and I had just finished my freshman year in college, I decided that journalism wasn't for me. I had originally chosen journalism for my major because I wanted to learn to write, not how to read, as one does when majoring in English. But I felt I could give up journalism and still learn to write, because I believed in talent. I felt that if you have it, you have it. It only needs to be developed. And you could do that all on your own by observation, practice, and self-evaluation. So I changed my major to international relations, and trusted that if I had the talent to be a writer, I could learn to be a writer all on my own.  

Along with this belief in talent, I approach writing as art; an unique creation of an individual. Art is Art. Commerce is Commerce. And sure, art can be turned into a product, and art can be a ensemble creation of many people; published books being an example of that. But the heart of writing, of storytelling, I believe is art, art for the sake of creation, for bringing something a little new to life. And for this, talent is the key ingredient. 

This view of writing as art, art as an expression of talent, informs my approach to writing. For me storytelling feels organic. I dream up a world, and a premise that I can use to explore facets of that world, alongside characters who are gently propelled through the world by that premise to a natural end of one story. What happens along the way comes about organically - realistically - from their actions driven by the premise, but without a design or structure imposed on the actions. What happens, happens because of what happened before it. One step at a a time. And what can happen is what I find interesting to think and write about. My focus is on my characters, my world, and my amusement. Readers play no part of my vision. I know that if I enjoy my story, there will be others who will as well. My novels are, at best, only tangentially, a product. And only after the story is completed.

Given my organic approach to writing, allowing my story grow as it goes along, you can see why I find the art of writing reduced to an artificial construction, built according to a blueprint by apparently anyone who can follow directions, actually rather creepy. It is the opposite of my approach. But in view of this approach, I can easily understand why so many authors, aspiring and otherwise, find writing a novel so hard. Between having to fit every element of their creation, their story, into some sort of standard mold to meet some sort of standard expectation with an impatience to reach a desired destination, and perhaps a destination beyond their talent, or reached only by a long journey, the process of writing can be an exhausting exercise in frustration. 

Writing for me is organic, so natural that the process is instinctive. I truly don't know exactly how I do it, but I credit it to having a talent to write. A talent that I have developed over a lifetime. I have no interest in trying to disassemble it. It is what it is and I'm content to leave it a mystery.

In short, I don't know what I'm doing. But I'm doing it. And having fun doing it.

.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 128) EXTRA! EXTRA!

 

Lots of books this weekend! Once again we have two classics to talk about. One a mere attempt at reading it, the second, a bit more successful attempt. 

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy  DNF 1%

Okay, I did not give it a fair chance. But while the writing seemed inviting, the story's opening, a husband affair with his children's governess has been discovered by his wife, devastating her. His hopes of reconciling with her seem futile since she is too devtered to even consider it. All this even before the title character has come on stage. I decided that the prospect of eight hundred plus pages of domestic affairs and intrigues of this sort would be just too daunting, or tedious, for me to push further. It's scope, too limiting, its subject, something that I find  uninteresting. What was I thinking? 

Besides, I've read his War and Peace. I've nothing to prove. 

Onward!

Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy  C

As with most of my reviews, this book's grade is more a reflection on me than on the book itself. 

Thomas Hardy is, I believe, a popular author among the fans of classic English literature. Like the first book here, this was also suggested by Tristan, the BookTuber I go to for suggestions of classics, or at least, old books to read. He suggested this book in his video on short classic stories, as this is one of Hardy's shorter works. Also going for it is the fact that it is one of his apparently rare works that is quite upbeat. I gather Thomas Hardy's novels are generally quite grim. This was the longest story of the the suggested books, coming in at 66K words, but one that you could read in a two days. It took me several more than that, but I soldiered on and did finish it.

The story is set in rural Victorian England. It is a romance written as an ode to the old ways that were disappearing in the 1870's when this story was written. The romance plot centers around a new, and pretty, school teacher, who quickly gathers three suiters, a well-to-do farmer, the young new Vicar, and the son of a local hauler of goods, a waggoneer of sorts. The main subplot, relating to the decline of the old ways, is that the new Vicar intends to introduce an organ into his church services, replacing the string instruments and boys' choir that for ages had been used to provide the music for the church service since time immortal.

The story was a study of characters and rural life, neither of the two plot lines being overly dramatic. Yes, there were ups and downs in the romance, but everything grounded in the ordinary customs of the time. Nothing to write home about. I'm a fan of romances, but I, at least, never got close enough to the characters in this story to care all that much about them.

Perhaps the biggest impediment to my enjoying this story is the 19th century writing style, the denseness of it - one sentence had to be a page long, and the authenticity of the dialog, that 150 years later, whose meanings requiring both familiarly with the period writing and patience, neither of which I can claim to possess. I certainly have read, and enjoyed, books (Miss Read, D E Stevenson) that did not have any more plot or drama than this story offers, perhaps because they were much more accessible. There were some witty observations by the characters and writer, but I fear I missed much of the little details, meanings, and implications of what was said, and this greatly diminished my enjoyment of the story. Nevertheless, I plowed through to the end, without any great enjoyment. I had nothing better to read at hand.

Still, I can now say that I read a Thomas Hardy novel. It will be the only one, but still... I (now) have nothing to prove, when it comes to Hardy as well.

The Saturday Morning Post (127)

 

A double header today with two American classic novels on reread. I was looking forward to these books as summer reads.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain   C

The Adventures of Huck Finn by Mark Twain C+

Sadly, these two books failed to live up to my recollections of them. Having read them so long ago, I only recalled a few episodes of Tom Sawyer, and even fewer of Huck Finn. Still, I expected to be swept away to life along the Mississippi in 1850's and taste an old fashioned summer. And, while both of these novels offered a picturesque impression of that place and time, they didn't quite succeed in carrying me back in time, as I expected them to. 

As usual, that is on me. I haven't the patience I might once have had. But the truth is I found large sections of both of these books very tedious and ended up skim reading sections of both of them. Neither was the page turner I expected. And while Twain paints the locales, people, and time in great detail, no doubt from personal experiences, much of it very colorfully and keenly observed... I didn't find it lyrical. It often came off, as a catalog of items found in rooms, in little towns, and of the often outlandish habits of the people. 

Perhaps what surprised - and bored me - the most, was the extensive passages of Tom Sawyer's make-believe story-playing, present in both books. I found it tedious, and, hard to swallow. Not just because Tom would've had to have been as well read as Twain himself to know all the people and events of history he uses in his make-believe, but because I don't see any child of his rather murky age going to the extent he goes to in his make-believe. Of course that wouldn't matter, if I found the telling of these imaginary adventures amusing. But I didn't. Not at my present age, anyway. 

While Huck Finn's adventures addressed some very serious issues of that day, ones that are still relevant today, I was surprised when he resolved them with an unconvincing coincidence and Deus Ex Machina at the conclusion of Huck Finn's story. I thought it was a far too easy way out. The ending almost seemed to be a part of another book. A children's book.

All in all, disappointing.

Yikes! Another Cover Reveal (Or Rather Two)

Note; A new and slightly revised cover from the original posting. I zoomed in on the scene in this revised version.

But never fear, The Founders' Tribunal is only a 25K word potboiler of a novella that I plan to release as an ebook/audiobook only in the first week of November 2025. Let's call it my 2028(a) Project.

And kids, do as I say, not as I do. I say; writing sequels for anything but runaway bestsellers is for clumps. This is a sequel to The Darval-Mers Dossier, which is not a runaway bestseller. So, yes, I'm a chump, but I had reasons...

In this case it was simply an any port in a storm issue. I needed something to get out of bed in the morning to write. I had started writing my next full Lorria novel when I ran into something of a wall at about the 24K word count. This was because, one, I hadn't thought the story through to the end in any detail, and two, I felt that I needed to revise what I had written in light of my epiphany of the yin and yang of writing. And so, I needed to walk away from that project for a time to get the complete story in my head before I could put words on a screen again. Hence my need for something else to write every morning. 

This story, in particular, came about because I was actually toying around with the vague idea for another Red Hu/Wine story, which, I have to admit, I shouldn't have been, if I listen to what I say. (But then why should I? No one else does.) In any event, I wanted that story to be set in the summer following the events of The Darval-Mers Dossier. However, I felt that the gap between stories was too long. Plus, there was a character who appeared in that first story only as voice on the caller who I wanted to properly introduce. And so bridge that gap and properly introduce that character, I felt that I needed to write a story to fill it. I would have been happy with a short story, but it ended up as The Founders' Tribunal, a novella. I have now started writing and hope to complete the summer story, but it is still very much a bird in the bush. The Founders' Tribunal is, however, written and handed off to wife for proofreading, after which is will be offered to my beta readers for their input. In short, it's a bird in the hand.

I'll talk more about The Founders' Tribunal closer to its release date, suffice to say, as you can see from the cover art, the story is set in winter Celora, during and after the week-long Solstice Holiday - the extra week in Lorria's six-day-five week-12 month-year. In it Red agrees to act as something of a body guard for an important personage summoned before the title "court." These stories are set in the pre-Second Founding period of Lorrian history, when the Great Houses, old and new, confront the prospect of a new economic reality, and strove to make certain they not only survive, but continue  to prosper, and rule. A bare knuckle, knives out period within that exalted circle.

As for the cover(s) of this book I had two pieces of art I had on hand that I felt I could use. I painted both years ago, but I figured they would do for setting the mood of the story's setting. The top one is my current favorite. its more moody and I like understatement for just about everything. Still, I could make the case for the bottom one. It's more graphic... Your opinions are always welcome. We have months to decide. 

In any event, stay tuned in the coming months for more about Redinal Hu and Ellington's next case.

The Saturday Morning Post EXTRA! EXTRA! (No. 126)

 

This installment we have a book suggested by Tristan, the classic's booktuber who I follow, as a summer read. It took me from Cape Cod in the 1920's back to the 1880's and around to the far side of the world; to Australia via a free Gutenberg Project ebook.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin (Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin)  C+

This novel 1901 is the first person narration of Sybylla, a volatile, strong-willed, free-spirited, ambitious, and talented girl growing up on farms in eastern Australia between Melbourne and Sydney in the later 1880's. It recounts her life from the age of five to nineteen, with the greater part of it concerning her life from the age of sixteen to eighteen. 

Sybylla's great regret, a theme running through the book, is that, at least in her eyes, she is unattractive, and as such, she finds herself at a great disadvantage in life. In a world where men value how women look, and expect them to be little more than showpieces doing insipid things and obedient wives, she feels that she is both unlikely to attract a husband, and/or be allowed to play an active role in the marriage and life is she should. This is something she very much wants to do, for she is both smart, ambitious, and aspires to culture and the arts which are closed to her, at least in her rural situation. She may also be too volatile and independent minded that seems to make her ill-fitted for a life on the remote farms and ranches of countryside. Indeed, she's a great trial for her mother. So, with her ambitions and dreams, Sybylla refuses to compromise and vows not to get married - despite a seemingly golden opportunity to do so. With very iffy results. The book seems to end before the story ends... Or does it?

In any event, the story offers an authentic look at life in the Australian countryside of the 1880's, both its lushness as well as the spirit-breaking bleakness of it. She writes of the wealthy farmers and of tramps who walk the roads looking for their next meal at the ranches the roads past by. And of the hard life of the small farmers trying to scrape a living from an often very inhospitable land.

Miss Franklin wrote this "romance" as a teenager to amuse her friends. And though is presents the view of a very young person, I gather it proved to be somewhat of a manifesto for Miss Franklin, who lived an adventurous and committed life that her hero dreamed of. She submitted the manuscript of a famous Australian author, who seeing its worth, submitted to his publisher in England. It proved popular. Perhaps too popular, as she never wrote another novel that achieved the success of her first book. Still, she left her mark on the world, not only with this book and her half dozen other books, stories, and writing, but in her various "real jobs" and in her life-long promotion of Australian arts.

I found it to be a very interesting book, for the colorful life and interesting characters, Miss Franklin painted. But there is nothing romantic about it. It doesn't shy away from the grim realities of the time. Between those grim realities and its rather abrupt, pessimistic, and unsatisfactory ending, I found it a little too grim for my tastes. Not what I would consider a bright summer read. 

Note; When searching for the cover for this book, I used Google "Lens" to identify the cover art of this issue, and it is an authentic Australian artist and scene from the period.

The Saturday Morning Post (125)

 

Each summer I make a point to revisit Cape Code, the Cape Cod of a hundred or more years ago. This year is no exception.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Doctor Nye by Joseph C Lincoln  C+

All of Joe Lincoln's stories are set on a slightly fictionalized Cape Cod, from about 1870's to the 1920's, and in doing so, chronicling the changes in Cape Cod, from a backwater fishing and cranberry growing region, to a summer resort of wealthy people. From horse drawn carriages and rutted roads to motor cars and rutted roads. His stories are filled with colorful characters, with plenty of local dialect tossed in. This story dates from 1923, somewhat late in his writing career, and perhaps as a result, is a more serious/melodramatic book than some of his earlier work. Well, sort of. Many of them have serious themes, though I seem to remember them to be a little more lighthearted than this story.

This is the story of the title character, Doctor Nye who returns as a black sheep to his Cape Cod hometown. Ten years previously he was just out of his medical internship and married a local girl, a girl who had some issues, including spending a lot of money. He was the treasurer of a congregation that was building a new church on a budget of $10,000, when it was discovered that he seemingly wrote and cashed a check for $7,000 on that account. He could not - or would not - account for the money. At this same time his wife was dying. He was charged,  tried, found guilty, and sent to jail for five years. After his release he spent World War One in France as a doctor, before deciding to return to his home town and set up a practice, perhaps to eventually clear his name. He is shunned by most of the population except the "Portygees" i.e. Portuguese-Americans who where poor and looked down on by the rest of the community. (Someone always has to be looked down upon.) The story of Doc Nye's trials as a jailbird winds its way over the course of the long story, 423 pages to its inevitable happy ending.

Grading books on a reread is somewhat iffy, in that they are at least vaguely familiar. I knew the premise, and the resolution, going into this one, but little else. As I said above, this one rather lacked the humor and charm of some of his earlier stories, and laid the melodrama on rather heavily for my taste, hence the somewhat low score for this Joe Lincoln installment. Still, I have 21 Joe Lincoln books in my library  because I always enjoy his stories, as light and entertaining yarns. He was a popular writer in his day, and as long as you judge his work by the tastes of the day, they are great entertainment. I just wouldn't start here.

Fields and Fence Lines (Part Three)

This is the third of a currently unknown number of posts in which I consider my limits as a writer.

"Consider" being the operative word. I'm neither bemoaning my limits, nor glorify them. I'm just noting them, since for the most part, they are what they are.

In my first post, I explained that I learned to write organically, by reading and writing, rather than formally, and that may have limited my writing. And in the second one, I talked about how I'm not much of an intellectual with no interest in questions without answers, in philosophy, phycology, politics, in short, in "themes" readers often find in great literature.  

These personal limits can be seen as fences that enclose my abilities as a writer.

Another of the fences that limits my ability as a writer, a box unchecked when it comes to writing popular and/or great literature, is that I'm not a passionate fellow. Drama isn't my thing. Not in real life, nor in my writing.

Most people love drama.

It seems that one of the chief characteristics of the great classics, and in all sorts of popular fiction as well, is that it stirs the emotions of the reader. It creates within the reader deep, heartfelt emotions via the experiences of the characters in the story, or at least, a usually safe facsimile of those emotions. They can be made to experience them, while at the same time, knowing that the emotions are not caused by real life events. They're emotions that have been created artificially, by their imagination, and empathy for imaginary characters, that in the end, are just that; imaginary. They are safe emotions.

People want to experience safe emotions. They want to feel. It's the reason sports exist. Sports are an artificially constructed struggles that participants and fans can take a part in to experience the range of emotions that real life struggles evoke, within a struggle that doesn't really matter.

In the same way, readers can experience emotions they otherwise would not - or hope not - experience in their real life, along with the characters in a book, if the story is well written. Again, these emotions are created by something that doesn't matter.

In short, books can supply real emotions without real causes and real consequences. Ones that can be laid aside at will, though often, they may linger like real experiences.

Unlike most people, I don't like drama. I like a simple, uneventful life. I'm an "Ordinary Man. " 

I'm an ordinary man
Who desires nothing more
Than just an ordinary chance to live exactly as he likes
And do precisely what he wants
An average man am I, of no eccentric whim
Who likes to live his life, free of strife
Doing whatever he thinks is best for him
Well, just an ordinary man

I'm a quiet living man
Who prefers to spend the evenings
In the silence of his room
Who likes an atmosphere as restful
As an undiscovered tomb
A pensive man am I, of philosophic joys
Who likes to meditate, contemplate
Free from humanity's mad inhuman noise
Quiet living man

-- An extract of the lyrics of I'm An Ordinary Man, from My Fair Lady.

I suspect that great writes are very passionate about a lot of things. Great writers use their passions to write stories. But they can do more than just write about themselves and what they have experienced. Their limits are the limits of their imaginations. However, while I certainly write stories beyond my personal limits - all my characters are far braver and bolder than me, for example, But passions and powerful emotions are beyond the fence line for me, as a person, and as a writer, the result of a combination of nature and personal preference. 

And this goes for my reading as well. I write the book I want to read, and in reading I'm not looking for powerful emotions, be it passionate love or terror, grief, grimness, tragedy, and despair. I'm looking for interesting places and spending time with cheerful, entertaining characters, presented with clever, witty writing. And that's also my goal in writing. 

As a side note, I'm currently reading an old book with a number of emotional romantic scenes and musings that seem to go on and on. I'm just skipping over most of them.

And something along those lines are what my loyal readers expect from my stories, so meeting those expectations are another reason I stay on my side of the fence.

But there is a more personal and practical reason I avoid heavy stories, and that is the fact that I usually spend six or more months dreaming them up and writing them down. Unlike readers who may only spend six or seven hours in the book, the story lives within my head for months at a time. And to some extent or another, I live my stories, or at least, they live in my imagination throughout the day. Thus, writing a grim, dark, depressing story would certainly seep into and darken my everyday life, and that's a price I'm unwilling to pay. I don't know how authors of dark stories do it, unless they are simply a reflection of past experiences, everyday live, or they have the ability to compartmentalize their stories, keep it separate from their everyday life.

Could I venture beyond this fence line? Sure. It's only words, and I know words. But will I? No. Even though I recognize that in settling for light, escapist, stories, I am taking greatness off the table, but oh, well. Greatness demands a steep price, a price I am unwilling to pay.

There is, however, one plus to my muted emotional range; auto-narration audiobooks work well with my style, since the artificial reading voice is not required to reproduce extreme human emotions. Steady as she goes works well for auto-generated audiobooks.