Vera Jane Cook's Blog, page 8

Plotting Along

Plots are amazing, especially when you complete one, when you pull the strings toward you and hear the snap. I dream about plots. I try to walk about a mile a day so that I can think about plots. The most difficult thing a writer will ever do is to find a coherent place of burial for the carefully crafted characters who so willingly allow their futures to be synthesized in the hands of their often, clueless creators.
I have been reading literature for a long time and I'm always amazed at well crafted plots, succinct stories that come from writers like Anita Shreve and Sue Monk Kidd. They write masterful plots. They create fine lines that tie together with golden bands, leaving the reader with the sighs of a well told story, a world entered and exited with the utmost attention to detail.
Then, there are a few of my other heroes. For instance, Wally Lamb and Caleb Carr who write plots that are like vast oceans, and once adrift in them, you fear for your life: God, where is this going? But then, miraculously you are placed on the shore like a well fed baby, giggling and cooing for more.
I have learned about writing from reading other people's novels. I have learned more than any professor of creative writing could teach me. And I'm not putting down creative writing professors because I taught creative writing once upon a time, back before I ever got hooked on plotting a novel. Yes, back then, I enjoyed poems and stories I could end quickly. Now I understand why. Creating plot is like starting with a seed and trusting that all the branches will bloom. You plot along with an obsessive willingness to craft a journey worth taking.
I have completed seven novels, two are published and two more are in process. In process means I am adrift in the sea of imagination, logical conclusions and satisfying endings. Not that I was satisfied with the ending of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, or Cold Mountain. I was devastated and sad, and tried to find peace in the ultimate belief that heaven is real and both dogs and star crossed lovers can reunite. I don't know if I want to make my readers sad, but I don't necessarily want to make them happy either. I have to give LuAnne Rice credit, she is a real Irish poet, emotional and romantic and following her tight and repetitive plots your tear ducts will get a work out, but she always returns us to the shores of satisfaction, where all is well.
I wonder if I want a happy ending for my latest character, a woman near seventy, who has certainly lived her life with regrets, heartache, and moments of tender reminisces. I wonder if I will allow her shattered illusions to heal her, or harden her? I think people near seventy years old have a lot to say and I think their lives are a mirror into what we will all face, what we will all feel when we look around the younger world and no longer see our image.
I recently worked a day job with much younger people and the arrogance overfloweth. I felt like an alien on my own planet. But, in actuality, they were the aliens. Their womb was my history and their future is my triumph. They live in a blind present, a decaying bubble that tries not to show its soul, the one that is aging, bargaining and aching. I think that's why I wanted to write my most recent book. My story is a world within a world within a world. And all the inner worlds are what has been lost, reinvented, misinterpreted and rediscovered. I wanted to look through my character's eyes and see how the mindless illusions of youth granted her the wisdom of indifference and a shedding of all superfluity.
But how do I end my story? I alone can tie in the great journey of aging in a young world and I can bring her home, or send her out to sea. But then, I think of a few of my heroes. What would Wally Lamb have done, for instance? Well, I think he would have held me in his long emotional plot, angered me with so many words, confused me with new information, but ultimately, like his characters, I would heal and I would emerge back into the vortex of his vision, where all is treated kindly and felt most deeply. Perhaps, that's where every plot should lead … toward an inevitable and very human victory.

Vera Jane Cook
Award Winning Must Read Women's Fiction. Dancing Backward In Paradise was published in November 2006 and received rave reviews from Armchair Interviews and Midwest Book reviews, as well as an Eric Hoffer and Indie Excellence award in the Literary fiction category for notable new fiction in 2007. Hearts Upon a Fragile Bough, Ms. Cook's second novel, was published this year and will be followed by its sequel, At the End of a Whisper, in 2010. To learn more about her books you can visit her web site at www.verajanecook.com
To contact the author send an email to jane@verajanecook.com

On the Planet Corporate: Survival Through Fiction

I found myself sitting in the HR department of one of the most famous companies in America. My ice queen soon to be boss wanted me and I knew it. After all, I had graduated from a pseudo impressive university and I looked really good in my Ann Klein suit. Problem was, I’d never worked a day in Corporate America and I had just turned fifty. Hard to teach an old dog new tricks but the bills were piling up and the only place my freedom loving artistic spirit had gotten me was down and out in New York City.

I was offered the job; mostly because the actress in me conjured up Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl, a dash of Faye Dunaway in Network and I performed a nifty little improve using the shrewd and sassy elegance of Judy Holiday and Melanie Griffith, as rather impressive role models. My stunning performance worked and there I was, embraced by my new corporate family and occasionally loaned back out to the rest of society, my pet Pomeranian and my old disco buddies.

After filling the pages of my gratitude journal for six months, and thanking the universe for this rather prestigious position, the honeymoon wore off and I became increasingly shell shocked. My co-workers were very strange indeed. I didn’t feel that they were family, but that’s what having a job is called on the Planet Corporate: family. Oh, they like putting us in teams, too. Teams connote competition and a great rah, rah spirit. In my old world they called it “opening night.” Here they call it “making goal.” As you can imagine, I was confused.

I had a hard time understanding these people. They talked about nothing that would interest me, they thought they were too sexy for their underwear, and most of them didn't even remember the moon walk! When they weren’t obsessing on how low the sales numbers were, they were holding meetings in which nothing was said. They also spent a lot of time debating whether or not the Bachelor would chose the blonde or the tenacious little redhead. I was beginning to feel quite invisible. I mean, who cares?

The first time I heard I had a direct report I thought I was going to be interviewing the bimbo under thirty year old receptionist who excelled in condescending. The first time I was called a subordinate, I almost wept aloud. Jeez, if I wanted to be subordinate to anyone I would have married my ex.

Then I was told I was getting a performance review. Well, finally something to look forward to. I was happy at last. Surely, my calculated persona as a prisoner in pin stripes was impressive. Why, I learned to click down the hallowed halls of this very famous corporation in three inch heels. I found the perfect skirt length and kept my nails conservatively French tipped. I even talked numbers all day, like they were as important as season tickets to the Round About Theater, and I pretended to be in a constant state of urgency so my boss would think I was absolutely taking years off my life to make my impossible sales goal.

Well, you could have knocked me over in a breath when I discovered that a performance review was actually based on whether or not I was selling anything. Disappointingly, my review was moderate to cold. I felt that I wanted to crawl under a rock and not emerge until I figured out how to increase the money my company made off the ninety percent of my life it was taking.

So be it. I licked my wounds and went on like a good soldier. These people were expanding my sales goal wider than a middle age waist line, but still, I persisted. I plodded along, cursing my fate and trying to figure out if I’d enjoy driving a cab for a living and conversing with people who'd heard of Fellini and didn't think Horn & Hardart was a circus act.

Finally, some good news from the Planet of the Corporate: We were all going on a retreat. I joyously ran out to buy a yoga mat, karma sutra oil to share with colleagues, hot pink sweatpants and new Addidas. I couldn’t want to chant with my corporate family. I was ecstatic.

But then, the bomb fell. I was both surprised and appalled. My corporate family was thrusting me into a hotel room with another adult, asking me to share the spit and spittle of sleep, the intimacy of bodily woes and the loss of privacy on my frequent calls home to the dog walker. That did it. I rebelled. I wore the new Addidas and the hot pink sweats to their all day meetings on how to sell more stuff. I chanted enthusiastically during the power lunch and used some little book on cheese they gave me as a place mat for the very gooey award night dinner.

Wouldn’t you know it, I was written up. At first I thought I’d earned some good review on the little monologue I gave to the company president on corporate greed. Not so, I was put on probation and sent home to watch Oprah, listen to the Secret and meditate on changing my life as I sat by the Hudson with my Pomeranian re-reading What Color Is Your Parachute?

After two weeks, I was back on the planet Corporate wondering how I’d get through it. I couldn’t quit, it was already going to take me two years to get out of the debt I’d accumulated relying on an income doing extra film work and occasional voice overs for pharmaceutical drug companies. I needed the damn job. But something had shifted for me during my little reprisal from the bull pen of consumption. Maybe it was Oprah, maybe the law of attraction really works. I sure was intending to alter my present state. And it happened before I could say "you're really not too sexy for your underwear."

Once I began writing my novel, the words just flowed. I wrote and I wrote till my little fingers twitched. My life was altered forever by that simple action. I now started to wake at five A.M. with a passion I hadn’t felt in years. I threw myself at the keyboard for an hour or more. I filled my weekends weaving a story, creating characters that I couldn’t get enough of. My joy was abundant.

Wouldn’t you know it? The bull pen became tolerable. Even the ice queen melted a bit and the complicated hidden agendas of coworkers became insignificant. My head was filled with plot and character. Who cares who wants my head on a corporate silver
platter? What cared I for corporate agendas when my chapters flowed off the page? I thought about nothing else. My sales numbers even increased, as did my tolerance for the ice queens and the age discriminatory wooly bully boys on the Planet Corporate who, tipping way past the age of forty, were not at all too sexy for their underwear. How strange it all was.

So, I stole back my time. I found a place that I wanted to be. You might say I took back my soul to write. I would advise anyone out there who has found themselves on an alien planet, to follow their passion, as well, even if it doesn’t get you back on the planet Earth right away. I can assure you that eventually, it will, one way or the other. You see, your freedom will come out of the creation and your joy is in action, not the inaction of just feeling miserable. Writing is a place no one can enter or soil with demands you may never reach and definitions that limit you. So, find your book and write it. If you don’t, your Corporate family will become the title of your life, and the spirit who longs to fly free will lose touch with the words that might have been, and the key to the door not taken.

Vera Jane Cook
Award Winning Must Read Women's Fiction. Dancing Backward In Paradise was published in November 2006 and received rave reviews from Armchair Interviews and Midwest Book reviews, as well as an Eric Hoffer and Indie Excellence award in the Literary fiction category for notable new fiction in 2007. Hearts Upon a Fragile Bough, Ms. Cook's second novel, was published this year and will be followed by its sequel, At the End of a Whisper, in 2010. To learn more about her books you can visit her web site at www.verajanecook.com
To contact the author send an email to jane@verajanecook.com
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Time in Film/Fiction

Time In Film/Fiction

Time in film is often an artful edit, a story told in film language. When I was in college I had a brilliant professor who taught me to 'read' film, not just see it, or feel it. Film is the great language of symbolism, verisimilitude deconstructed, syntagmatic readings of the psyche in juxtaposition. Propaganda in filmic doses . Montage in the hands of editors and directors who cut into our linear perception and twist the lens of our subconscious, where privacy is vulnerable to the violation.

But what of time in fiction? Is being linear playing it safe? If my characters think in present time their thoughts are random, and like dreams, scuffle and shuffle to their own music. Sometimes, as I sit here in the present I get a flash of myself in 1970. A moment later, I recall the face of someone I knew in 1990. Words flow that might never have existed, emotions surface I might never have felt, but for several seconds, I am transported outside of myself, and the comfort of the present tense, which pales next to the time travel of mental ellipses and the rewriting of history.

In retrospection, time is tempered, retold, suppressed, reanalyzed and reevaluated. But, alas, my life is not a novel. Form is not owed to the randomness of my memories. However, what I have in common with my characters is that we think of what we will do, and have done, more often than what we're doing right now. The present only holds me by action. When action is broken by inaction, the past surfaces like celluloid negatives. Memories, without warning, appear like burps and cause reactions that settle in the unconscious mind like mine fields. What we recall is sometimes like a bullet, aimed at the heart and meant to shatter the safety of distance.

I keep going back to this one novel of mine that is already written, but probably won't be published for a couple of years. I keep returning to it because of the issue of time, which has begun to fascinate me. The five characters in my novel are tied together through the past. A reunion is called and they attend, for reasons of their own, but certainly to move toward a linear conclusion. Within the linear telling of the story, their recollections surface and old wounds are opened. So, the novel, in a sense, is a telling of five different interpretations of the past within the same linear story. I can only hope my readers are not made dizzy by these journeys back to my character's youthful regrets. After all, memories are out of sequence, and oftentimes, without sense, they stare back at you, even when you turn away.

I recently saw the film, Seven Pounds. It's a good example of how time tells its own story, how memory is the root cause of action, reaction and regret. The film is also a perfect example of brilliant editing. In my heart, I am still a film student, still thinking of that syntagmatic current that manipulates our concept of realism and flirts with our perception of the linear line. I recently found myself using the present tense in a novel I'm writing, instead of the obvious past. I discovered that my character has a mind of her own. I let her have her way and decided to keep her recollections in the present tense. I overstepped a boundary. Maybe I want to jostle my reader, to claim the intimacy I lose when I say: I ran to the rhythm of my own breath; the beat of my heart provided the music of being alive. I could say: I am running to the rhythm of my own breath; the beat of my heart provides the music of being alive. I am no longer writing to tell you. I am writing to claim you, to make you join me, to offend the safety of the past tense with my character's audacity.

My two published novels are tales and they are told as a linear story, but someday I will take another look at the films, Last Year at Marienbad and Hiroshima Mon Amour. I will read them, comprehend them, and then, do something different. I will write a book that starts at the end and ends at the beginning. I will upset my own sense of balance and never solve the riddle. Are you here today, but it was yesterday we met? Don't you remember? Then again, perhaps, not until tomorrow, will you turn and find my eyes. I'll be waiting.

Vera Jane Cook
Award Winning Must Read Women's Fiction. Dancing Backward In Paradise was published in November 2006 and received rave reviews from Armchair Interviews and Midwest Book reviews, as well as an Eric Hoffer and Indie Excellence award in the Literary fiction category for notable new fiction in 2007. Hearts Upon a Fragile Bough, Ms. Cook's second novel, was published this year and will be followed by its sequel, At the End of a Whisper, in 2010. To learn more about her books you can visit her web site at www.verajanecook.com
To contact the author send an email to jane@verajanecook.com

Canine Characters

Maybe it’s not so odd that dogs appear in all my books. I grew up with them. They fold into the fabric of my youth like my Aunt Kitty and my Uncle Jack. Memory images squared off in black and white. Color came later, with my Shih Tzu, Charlie.

I heard that my grandfather loved German shepherds. Two of them have materialized from the vapors of my creativity. Since my first novel was really centered around stories from my youth, a regal shepherd suddenly appeared on the page, as if any subliminal thoughts of my grandfather were terribly incomplete without his beloved dog. Being a bit eclectic I tend to write in different genres. I have also written a fantasy novel that I’m soon about to sequel. In that book, a white shepherd was sent to lead my character, who just happened to be a witch, to the infamous Church of Loudon, where my heroine's fate lay buried in the stones. Needless to say, the white Shepherd was a saint, never showed his teeth, just his heart.

It’s not easy to write dogs into the dialogue. They don’t speak. Well, not usually. But they do provide a wonderful opportunity for description and humor. In my books, they attach themselves to me as they do in life: endearing, annoying and absolutely wonderful little dominances, sprightly companions, balls of fur that gather and wind up on my black blazers, not to mention my walls.

I never had a Chihuahua but one just happened to materialize in my third book, coy and clever; she controls the characters around her with the iron hand of a five star chef. It’s difficult to think of a dog as being coy and clever but I have a Pomeranian who fits the bill. She lured me into adopting her by pretending to be docile and sweet. She always gets fed when she’s hungry and has literally learned the English Language. It’s a terribly egocentric interpretation of our language because it always has something to do with her little desires and it is always connected with food. She has even learned to recognize the music from The Today Show and begins barking at seven A.M., the moment she hears it. Today Show theme song translates into “Now she’s going to walk me and then she’s going to feed me. Big Bow Wow; let’s move it.”

I also wrote a science fiction novel. I did mention I'm eclectic, didn't I? Well, like a flying saucer sent to unhinge my world, into the story line came a wonderful old country mutt, the kind that little boys love. My plot, as you can imagine went back and forth between my main character’s befuddled adulthood (he believes he was abducted) to his all American boyhood, when the adduction took place. It isn’t his first grade school teacher who appears to him so many years later, nor even his Mom and Dad; it’s Crocket, the dog that had his heart to such a degree, that like the shepherds before him, this friendly old mutt comes back to lead the way home, to provide the answers sought.

Interestingly enough, when I was single I had a dog named Starlight, a beautiful black and white Sheltie mix. A friend once said that in human form she would live in Paris and own a millinery shop on the Champs-Elysees. She’d be a flirt, a pretty little seductress. I could definitely see that. In my singleness she was my family, friend and companion; she filled the gaps left by disappointment; she always made me happy and took my attention off wallowing in everything that wasn’t working in my life. It is no wonder then that when one of my female characters in another one of my books, more contemporary and earthbound, gets separated from her spouse, she gets a dog, the kind you cuddle and name Elvis, someone whose ears perk up when you arrive home, whose heart beats just a little faster when he hears your key in the lock, a puppy dog who picks up your cologne and awaits your arrival with baited breath.

In the novel I’m writing now, a pug demanded his way into my creation, cute and ornery and as annoying as a fly at lunch. I never had a pug either but it hardly matters. I never had a King Charles spaniel but in another one of my books, she showed up, too. This little puppy fit the character who loved her, gracious and full of spunk. I guess I can always count on the writing process to reveal my take on the world. I’ve never met a person I’ve ever liked that didn’t warm to dogs. Why should I create characters that don’t relate to the wonderfulness of these magnificent beings? You can easily find your soul mates, your likeminded friends, the people you’d chose to make up your world if you could. They are the ones who can’t pass by a dog without a smile. I guess that in my writing, my world is of my making and within my world, dogs rule.


Vera Jane Cook
Dancing Backward In Paradise was published in November 2006. The book has received rave reviews from Armchair Interviews and Midwest Book reviews, as well as an Eric Hoffer and Indie Excellence award in the Literary fiction category for notable new fiction in 2007. Hearts Upon a Fragile Bough, Ms. Cook's second novel, was published this year and will be followed by its sequel, At the End of a Whisper. To learn more about her books you can visit her web site at www.verajanecook.com
To contact the author send an email to jane@verajanecook.com
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So, Loved My Book, Right? Or Where to Really Put the Energy

Truth be told, as a writer we accomplish the near impossible: we actually finish our novel, tie in our plot and pour out our souls. Once we publish our little masterpieces, we are unabashedly naked, exposed, vulnerable and hanging by our thumbnails for feedback. Well, let me warn you; feedback is subjective, and though it is often heartfelt, it can also be manipulative, false, arrogant, biased and sometimes, though not very often, useful.

Once your novel is out there, be prepared to be praised, ignored, insulted, ridiculed or admired. All meaningless reactions when it comes to sales. I appreciate it beyond words when friends not only take the time to read my books but also take the time to respond with a note or a call. This kind of support is priceless and it comes from the people who care enough about me not to distance themselves from a pat on the back, a comment or a call. But unless your caring and valued friends are spreading the good word on dozens of social networking reading sites, the good words will do nothing more than warm your heart.

Let's talk about selling your book. The most important thing you can create as a writer is a fan base. This fan base will always buy your books because they like the way you write. They may not buy all your books but they'll spread your good name around social networking sites and your sales will increase, and your fans will increase. In terms of the math here, this fan base is more important than your mother, father, best friend, worst enemy and even the professional critic that gave you all those accolades. Good reviews will not even sell your books, but what will sell your books are the reviews that get passed around the internet by your fans. Your fan base will be found among your target audience. You must recognize who that audience is, seek them out, give them free copies and send them bookmarks. Nurture your relationship with them, be available for book club discussions when they ask for you, and if possible, even offer pre publication copies of your new books.

Anyone who writes knows that some reactions you get to your work will disappoint you in one way or another, and for one reason or another. As a writer, you will discover friends who aren't, friends who are, people with hidden agendas who will withhold commenting on your books, which simply translates into "I hated it." Hating your book is their issue, not yours. People who withhold admiring you and praising you for a job well done are not the people you want in your sphere anyway. Arrogant people bore me, withholders bore me even more.

As a writer, you have to be an observer, a storyteller and a beast. Really, you have to be a beast. When all the snarly people who judge you harshly stalk you in the forest of creativity, simply eat them alive and spit them back out. They really don't taste very good anyway. Expect nothing less from your friends and family than honest praise and expect nothing more from your enemies than silence. Give all your professional critics room to critique you. And hug your fan base, feel flattered when they love you, listen when they don't, and continue to open up your heart to all the right people.

As a writer, don't be sensitive outside of your solitude. The Beasts in the forest of creativity will attempt to destroy your confidence in a myriad of ways. For one, they can't do what you do and if they could, could they do it as well? Listen, they aren't in your fan base … so take aim … and move on.

Back Story: Hearts Upon a Fragile Bough

I did not grow up with Goldilocks and the Three Bears, though I read the book. Little Red Riding Hood was introduced to me at a sleepover, and if I remember correctly, I thought it was “okay fun.” The stories in my childhood were stark, but always told with tenderness and humor. My mother was the quintessential story teller, very much like the main character in my novel, Hearts Upon a Fragile Bough. Mom was a showgirl and worked for Billy Rose in the 1940s. She had a bevy of fascinating characters in her past, with lives far more interesting than Grandma’s house, or an empty bowl of porridge to fill my young ears with. Surprisingly, my mother’s chronicles of eccentricity, art scams and Mafia buffoons, remained and festered in my memory until I decided to write my first novel. It was then that those tales that had defined my youth as poignantly as acne, first crushes, menstruation and the heartbreak of my father’s early death, dared me to find more fascination, pathos and hysterics in any other imaginary, fictionalized creation, than in my own family.

Once I started writing novels, I knew it would only be a matter of time before I had to write the history of my mother’s outrageous reminiscences, but not as nonfiction. My novel is not a memoir. But I like to refer to it as making sense out of all the blarney. My mother’s most poignant tales were mostly about my grandmother. She immigrated to America from Ireland in 1912. In my novel, I refer to her as Hannah. My Irish grandmother’s story was a sad one and my mother often cried when she told it. I wove together whatever I could garner from my mother’s memories, especially how much my grandmother loved her piano. My grandfather came home one day and sold it. Nice guy! No one really knows what he did with the money but at least, in the rewrite, I gave him a purpose for his cruelty. Fictional granddaddy Wade became a bootlegger and invested the money in a distillery. Wade does eventually pay for his sins; he dies of asthma; he goes to sleep and dreams of his beautiful Hannah, breathes a bit too deeply, and like a blanket from God, Hannah’s hair lies across his lungs. Revenge is sweet!

I grew up with bits and pieces of my grandmother’s painful life, and my mother’s flamboyant one. Each woman was defined by a history they couldn’t escape any more than I could escape being a teenager in the 1960s. My grandmother never knew the freedom of slacks or a world in which marriage is not altogether necessary. I grew up with a complexity of choices; my mother grew up believing that beauty was the only ace in the hole a woman had.

Hearts Upon a Fragile Bough is a family saga that pretty much spans the twentieth century. I like to think of it as a study of history and how the choices women make are often limited by the times in which they live. Hearts Upon a Fragile Bough tells the tale of three very unconventional generations of women. I needed to understand my grandmother’s youth in order to write the book, and I needed to revisit my relationship with my mother in order to end it. My main character, Vita, was created in my mother’s likeness. Vita lives a glamorous life, one that puts her at the periphery of danger, exposes her to the eccentricity of cross dressers, the allure of easy money, the peril of art scams and the revenge of the Mafia. My mother gave me the material for the book, there’s no doubt about it, but my mother had a vivid imagination, so there is no way of substantiating the tales she told, and that’s a good thing, because for me, fiction is more fun than fact.

But there is always a bit of truth in fiction. While writing Hearts Upon a Fragile Bough it was important to both discover and appreciate my roots and honor the women who crafted me with their choices and their sacrifices. When I finally sat down to write my novel I wanted to tell the stories that were passed down to me by my mother. The Irish are great storytellers, always finding humor in the most macabre of subjects. I am, after all, a byproduct of this tendency. I’m also a survivor of imperfect heroes. I hope that both my mother and my grandmother will forgive the liberty I took in sharing the narrative, and embracing the “blarney” with all the heart I could give it.


Vera Jane Cook
Hearts Upon a Fragile Bough is Vera Jane Cook’s second published novel. Her first book, Dancing Backward In Paradise, was published in November 2006. The book received rave reviews from Armchair Book Reviews and Midwest Book Reviews, as well as an Eric Hoffer and Indie Excellence award in the Literary fiction category in 2007. Vera's next book is a sequel to Hearts Upon a Fragile Bough, and will be published in 2010. The sequel, At the End of a Whisper, will be the contemporary culmination of three generations of women. Vera Jane Cook has completed five novels and is also working on a non-fiction book about getting creative in corporate America. Vera plans to give seminars on the subject. To learn more about her books you can visit her web site at www.verajanecook.com. To contact the author send an email to jane@verajanecook.com

Writing: On Friendship

Now that my second published novel is due out this month I've gone back to a manuscript I started a few years ago. It's titled "Faith Among Friends."  I've been polishing and rereading chapter after chapter and coming to the satisfying conclusion that I like the book. It isn't always that way, of course. Sometimes there is the discarded prose on a bottom shelf that must have been conjured up and written during a phase of momentary insanity. Faith Among Friends is different, it was written during