Dana Swier Huff's Blog, page 64

Quicksand, Chapter One

I have been editing my second novel Quicksand. Here is a mockup of the cover, which may or may not be the final cover. I am interested in feedback.

The image used on the cover is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license by anyjazz65 on Flickr.

The first chapter of the novel can be found after the break.

Jasper's hands shook as he took the jar of moonshine out of Cooper's hand. He handed Cooper the lead. He turned and walked away without looking back, though he could hear the cow lowing. He knew it wasn't close to a fair trade, and likely Delia would carry on like Jack's mother in the story about the magic beanstalk, but there would be no happy ending with a goose that laid golden eggs. Jasper would just get tight again and have to figure out how to get more whiskey. And the cow would just be gone. She might leave this time, and Jasper had to admit she'd be right to do it.

The drink, the drink! I am poisoned, he thought. It might be killing him more slowly than whatever Claudius put in that goblet, but it was killing him nonetheless.

When he opened the door and walked inside, Delia was not inside, but little Imogen was sitting on the floor poking a stick between the floorboards, trying to unearth something or other that had slipped down between them.

"Divine Imogen, where is your momma?" Jasper felt in his coat to catch the jar before it slipped.

"Hanging the clothes," Imogen replied, turning back to her work.

He could tell Delia now, or he could turn around and walk out the door, down the street and out of her life a few minutes sooner. She would find out anyway. He supposed she had the right to throw him out on his ear personally.

He found her out back, a clothespin in her mouth as she fixed his other shirt to the line. He could smell the clean linen snapping on the line. He ran a hand shakily through his hair.

"Cooper's wife was just up this way. The way I see it, Jasper, you ain't never going to change your ways," Delia said, fixing the clothespin to his shirt.

"Delia, I'm sorry." Jasper looked down and traced a circle in the dirt with the toe of his boot.

"Yes, you are. This ain't dry, but once it is, you can pack it and get on out. I reckon we can't afford to keep you if your idea of helping out is trading the family cow for a jar of whiskey."

"I reckon you might be right, Delia."

"Is that all you got to say?" Delia put her hand on her hip in that way she had when she was mad.

"What else can I say, Delia? Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia, the gods themselves throw incense."

"Horseshit," she replied.

"Delia, I understand how things are. Keep the shirt. Maybe you can get something for it. It's in pretty good shape."

"Jasper Medley, get the hell out and don't never come back." Delia turned her back on her husband and hung a pair of her underdrawers on the line.

Jasper couldn't even muster up the sadness he knew he should feel. It had always only been a matter of time.

He walked back inside and scooped Imogen up, then sat down in the rocking chair he'd built. For a moment he just rocked with her, watching the dust motes swirl in the patch of light that shone through the only window in the room, then he cleared his throat.

"I got to go, Im," he said.

"When are you coming back, Daddy?"

"Oh," he said, hesitating, "who can say when things will happen? In the meantime, you got to mind your momma and listen to your grandpa. You'll start to school soon, and you need to listen to your teacher, too."

"Yes, sir."

"Go get my guitar, and I'll play you a song before I go. Don't wake Junior."

Imogen scuttled off his lap and went into the other room, quickly returning with the guitar in her hand.

"I was so quiet, Daddy. I never made even a tiny noise."

"I know. I heard. Which one you want to hear?"

"You pick, Daddy."

He picked "Wildwood Flower," watching Imogen as she looked, rapt, up into his face. He wanted to remember her just like that, deep brown eyes—his eyes—looking so intently at him, he might have sworn they were the only two people in the world, at least for a moment.

"You pick that as good as Maybelle Carter," she said once he'd finished.

"Well, not exactly, but I hope you remember it that way."

He picked her up and held her for a minute. Or maybe it was a lifetime. He couldn't tell which.

"I love you, baby girl," he whispered, taking in the earthy child smell of her hair.

"I love you, too, Daddy."

Delia stepped into the room and crossed her arms. He let go and took Imogen's hand, slipping a nickel into her palm. He glanced over her shoulder at her mother glaring at him from the doorway, then looked back into Imogen's eyes and winked. He closed her fingers over the nickel and patted her hand. Standing up, he leaned down to kiss the top of her head, slung his guitar over his back, and walked out the front door.

Imogen had been the only good thing he'd ever made. He half-hoped she would remember him, but it might be easier all the way around if she didn't, at least for her. He walked for a while, then took out the jar and took a gulp of the whiskey. He wiped his mouth with the back of his shaking hand and kept walking.

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Post © Dana Huff

Quicksand, Chapter One

The Winter Sea, Susanna Kearsley

Susanna Kearsley's novel The Winter Sea is the story of writer Carolyn McClelland, who relocates to Cruden Bay in Scotland in order to get the feel of the location for the novel she is currently writing about the 1708 Jacobite uprising—one of the lesser known skirmishes of the Jacobite Rebellion. Carrie takes a cottage in the village near Slains Castle and becomes friendly with a local family, Jimmy Keith and his two sons Stuart and Graham.  After her agent suggests she try telling her story from the point of view of a female character, since Carrie can't seem to find a male character's voice, Carrie decides on a whim to write one of her ancestors, Sophia Paterson McClelland, into the story. Suddenly she is writing faster than she's ever written before, and when she discovers that many of the things she's writing actually happened, even though she hadn't consulted history books before she wrote, she begins to wonder if she is remembering her ancestor's life. Meanwhile, both Keith brothers begin to show an interest in more than Carrie's writing, but Carrie finds herself drawn to the one with eyes like the winter sea and begins modeling her hero, John Moray, after Graham, a history lecturer at the university in Aberdeen.

One of the reasons I liked this book was the genealogy thread that ran through it. Genealogy happens to be one of my own interests, and I can always sympathize with characters who find it interesting, too. Carrie's discoveries about the lives of her ancestors fascinate her father, who is able to trace the family tree back one more generation due to Carrie's insights as she writes. I expected to find myself more interested in Carrie's novel, the part of the book that takes place in the past, because I have an absolute fascination for Scottish history. However, I found myself more drawn to the characters in the present—Jimmy, Graham, Stuart, Carrie's agent Jane, and even Carrie herself. This book covers a topic that I myself have wondered about: is it even possible that memories can be passed down genetically? It seems far-fetched, but it works well in this novel. It's a fun idea, anyway, and a nice alternative to some of the other paranormal tropes that have gained traction in recent years.

Kearsley is able to capture the past vividly in the sections of Carrie's novel intertwined with the present-day story. She has included a historical note, and explained her painstaking attention to historical events as much as possible. I was surprised to discover that few of her characters were invented. It can sometimes be hard to make real historical people do what you want them to do when you're writing about them, which is why, I think, that some writers of historical fiction prefer to use fictional characters.

The ending of the novel satisfies both the requirements of history and the requirements of historical romance. It's a solid novel, and I would recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in Scotland or genealogy.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Two other reviews I found:

All the Books I Can Read
Dear Author

Although I've finished the Historical Fiction Challenge, this book (or the half of it that Carrie writes) counts. For the Take a Chance Challenge, it counts for the Challenge 6: Book Seer Pick, because Book Seer directed me to it after I read Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen. Scottish castles on the coast during winter? So Gothic.

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Post © Dana Huff

The Winter Sea, Susanna Kearsley

Writing Updates

I have several writing updates to share. First, you can buy my novel A Question of Honor in the iBookstore, now. This is great news. I had hesitated trying to submit it because I had heard, apparently erroneously, that you had to have an ISBN in order to submit your book to the iBookstore. I don't have an ISBN because you have to buy them in blocks of 10, and a block of 10 costs over $200, which I just couldn't afford when I threw the book together (and still can't, really).

Second, I have downloaded a trial of Scrivener, and I have absolutely fallen in love with the software. It was created with writers in mind. It's not really a program for producing quick documents, like MS Word. I wouldn't use it to make flyers or handouts or to write letters. But I won't ever use another program to write novels ever again. It's very easy to use, for one thing. And for another, it makes the arduous job of creating a final publishable document, whether it's a paper book or e-book, extremely easy. It also creates both ePub and Kindle Mobi documents. The e-books have a working HTML table of contents and chapter markers, which I love. If you write, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, I can't recommend it highly enough. If you are thinking of doing NaNoWriMo or writing a book, do yourself a favor and at least try this program first.

Scrivener enabled me to figure out how to format A Question of Honor properly for the Kindle. Amazon says that PDF files are OK for creating Kindle books, but it didn't work as well for me. The formatting was haywire. I feel really bad if you bought my book on Kindle and got that crazy layout, which I just learned how to fix and can only now correct. Does anyone know if Amazon lets you download books you've already purchased again for no additional fee? Once Amazon finishes processing the new file, I'll update here and on Twitter. Don't buy it right now, or you'll be getting the old PDF file (I think—if you can even buy it at all).

Finally, I have been editing a second novel, Quicksand. I wrote it during NaNoWriMo in 2009. I have put aside a third project (currently untitled) based on the Irish legend of Deirdre of the Sorrows. I will be sharing an excerpt of Quicksand tomorrow. It takes place in the Kentucky coal fields of Breathitt County, where my ancestors lived, during the 1930′s. It's heroine, Imogen, is the daughter of an alcoholic coal miner with a penchant for Shakespeare (hence her name) and a the shrewish woman who is the descendant of one of the worst feuders in Breathitt County history. Imogen discovers the body of her stepfather Frank, and she sets out to discover what happened. It's a little bit of a retelling of Hamlet. Anyway, look for an excerpt tomorrow.

[image error] photo credit: Markus Rödder

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Post © Dana Huff

Writing Updates

Friday Finds—July 29, 2011

I found a few interesting books this week. First, in searching out more information about The Ballad of Tom Dooley by Sharyn McCrumb, I discovered she has written a whole series of novels based on Appalachian murder ballads (I know, slow me). Anyway, I added her novels The Songcatcher and The Ballad of Frankie Silver to my TBR list.

I read about Witches of East End by Melissa de la Cruz in a Washington Post review by Brunonia Barry. It's the first in a series, and it looks interesting. Plus I love witches.

Stephanie at Reviews by Lola recently reviewed The Reservoir. It crossed my radar before, and I can't recall where, but it looks good, and Stephanie's review prompted me to add it to my list.

This morning my Any New Books email mentioned Richard Miles's history Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization. I immediately remembered my college Latin exercise in Wheelock in which I translated Cato's famous "Carthago delenda est." I had mistranslated it as "Carthage must go." Latin scholars: is that a more literal translation? Or just flat out wrong?

I remember my professor helping us with that one because, no joke, it was clear that many classmates had the most trouble with what on earth "Carthago" meant because it wasn't in our glossary or word bank. I had at least figured that part out. I wasn't shocked by my classmates' lack of knowledge or anything because I didn't and still don't know much about Carthage either beyond two things: 1) Dido was a queen in love with Aeneas, or so the stories say (I plead ignorance on the history), and 2) their great general Hannibal rode over the Alps on elephants, which is totally badass. Now, I can't tell you why I remember it because I even misremembered "Carthago delenda est" as a quote by Cicero. Thank goodness for Google so I don't look like too much of an idiot. After recalling this whole event from college, my interest was piqued. So naturally, this book looks like a great opportunity to learn, and it's available on Kindle, which is a requirement for all history books I read now so that I can highlight and take notes without feeling like I'm defiling a book.

Has anyone read it? I am so scared it will be dry, which is why I tentatively put it on my pile until I can gather more evidence that I will enjoy it while I'm learning something from it. Plus, it is really expensive on Kindle, so I want to be sure it's good.

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Post © Dana Huff

Friday Finds—July 29, 2011

Booking Through Thursday: Night Owl

This week's Booking Through Thursday asks a question that will amuse just about anyone who knows me: "What's the latest you've ever stayed up reading a book? Is staying up late reading a usual thing for you?"

My answer? How late have you got? I have stayed up ALL NIGHT, BABY! On many occasions, as a matter of fact. I am actually scheduling this post to publish at about 8:00 A.M. to disguise how late I stayed up reading last night, as a matter of fact. I don't make a practice of staying up so late during the school year, but my husband made a crack on Google+ the other day to the effect that summer is the time of year when he discovers he's married to a vampire. I have always been more of a night owl than a morning person, and when I have any sort of lengthy holiday from work—even one week will do it—my body clock naturally rotates around to the same time that creatures of the night keep. I always thought when I read Anne Rice's vampire books that I would have made an outstanding vampire. Even during the school year when I must report to work by around 7:30 A.M., I feel off—sluggish, sleepy, and generally not with it—until afternoon. I love the evenings and early night the best. I do start getting tired on the other side of about 2:00 A.M., even during the summer, and I am no longer at any sort of creative peak. During the school year, I usually have to conk by 10:00 or 11:00 P.M. or I will never make it through the next day.

I am so going to laugh if some participants post that they have stayed up all the way until 10:00 once! All kidding aside, this is a morning person's world in many ways, and sometimes it really stinks to have a body clock that is out of sync with what almost everyone else has decided is wakey time.

Image by Simeon

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Post © Dana Huff

Booking Through Thursday: Night Owl

WWW Wednesdays—July 27, 2011

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you'll read next?

I am currently reading Susanna Kearsley's The Winter Sea. I am close to half way finished with it. Incidentally, there is a really good deal on the Kindle version of this book right now. I was glad I happened upon that sale price because I had wanted to read this book for a while, but I wasn't sure when I'd be able to get it at its full price (either on Kindle or paperback).

I recently finished reading More Than You Know by Beth Gutcheon, which was OK, but did not light my fire (review).

I am not sure what I am going to read next. Last week, I said it would be Tracy Chevalier's Burning Bright, but that was before the Kindle book deal I snagged on The Winter Sea. I may still go ahead and read it next, or I may read Moloka'i by Alan Brennert, A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly,  The Widow's War by Sally Gunning, or Memoirs of a Geisha by Arther Golden, all of which I received in the mail this week via PaperBackSwap. Lots of good books to choose from! But do you know what book I'm dying to read? The Ballad of Tom Dooley by Sharyn McCrumb. Alas, it doesn't come out until around the end of August. She had such a smart idea, creating novels out of those old Appalachian murder ballads. (I love murder ballads, by the way. I made a murder ballad playlist on Spotify, which you can listen to if you have Spotify.)

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Post © Dana Huff

WWW Wednesdays—July 27, 2011

Editing

I have been editing my second novel, Quicksand. I originally drafted it during NaNoWriMo 2009, and I set it aside for quite a long time before looking at it. On the one hand, this was helpful because it gave me quite a lot of distance, so I was able to review it with fresh eyes and perhaps more impartiality. Some observations I have about my writing:

I really need to work on pacing. I fly through scenes at breakneck speed with no leisurely look around.
I'm equally ambiguous as to how much time has passed, and that might be confusing for the reader.
I can write dialogue fairly well, but it tends to drive my stories, and perhaps I need to flesh out scenes around dialogue better, cf. first bullet point.

I downloaded a Mac writing program called Scrivener on a trial basis to see if it helps me with some of the weaknesses I need to shore up. I haven't tried the program yet, but what I really like is that the 30-day trial is a true 30-day trial: if I use it tomorrow and then don't open it again for a week, those two days count as two days, not seven. That's pretty awesome of them. Most software trials have a clock running whether you use it each day of the trial or not. I also like the education discount they offer.

On a completely related note, editing is so so so much harder than writing a first draft. I want to tear out my hair and cry when I think about how much work I need to do on this draft. Another related observation: reading as much as I have over the past couple of years is really helping me figure out what I need to do better as a writer. Models are the best teachers.

[image error] photo credit: Unhindered by Talent

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Post © Dana Huff

Editing

Friday Finds—July 22, 2011

I wasn't scouting for books much this week, but I also have to say I didn't see too many that caught my interest.

No cover available for it yet, but I just found out that Jude Morgan is writing a book about William Shakespeare called The Secret Life of William Shakespeare. I just loved his books about the Romantic poets and the Brontës. I'll be keeping my eyes open for the release of that one.

I was looking around for more books set in France, and I found On Rue Tatin: Living and Cooking in a French Town by Susan Herrmann Loomis. Loomis bought a 14th century convent in Normandy and set up shop. The book has 50 recipes!

I also discovered My French Life by Vicki Archer. Like Loomis, Archer bought an ancient home—a seventeenth century farmhouse in Provence. I'm not jealous. I'm not jealous. I'm NOT jealous.

Can you imagine being able to pick everything up and move to the French countryside? Ah well, at least we can read about others who can.

I'm still on the lookout for more books like this, preferably fiction. Know of any?

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Post © Dana Huff

Friday Finds—July 22, 2011

More Than You Know, Beth Gutcheon

Beth Gutcheon's novel More Than You Know is the parallel story of Hannah Gray, reflecting on her first love in Dundee, Maine, and Claris Osgood Haskell. Hannah fell in love with wild boy Conary Crocker, but it's clear something didn't work out as she begins her narrative sadly reflecting on how she married Ralph, whom describes as "a good man and I loved him, but he wasn't the great love of my life, and he knew it, thought we never spoke of it" (8). Hannah is reading over a diary she kept as a teenager during the time when she met and fell in love with Conary. As a teenager, Hannah developed an interest in the Haskell family on Beal Island. One day, Danial Haskell was murdered with an ax, and though his daughter Sallie was tried twice for the crime—one ended in mistrial and the other in acquittal—she was never found guilty, and no one was imprisoned for the crime, though some suspicion also fell on the Haskells' boarder Mercy Chatto.

The Haskells' story is told in third person, while Hannah herself narrates her own story. The two stories intertwine as both Conary and Hannah see a ghost associated with the Haskells both on the island and in the schoolhouse the Gray family is living in. The schoolhouse originally stood on Beal Island, but was moved over to the town of Dundee. The island is uninhabited when Hannah begins her story.

The Maine setting is beautifully evoked, and the Haskell ax murder was clearly influenced by the Lizzie Borden story—many of the elements of the two stories are similar. I found the characters hard to sympathize with, and I felt more like I was hearing gossip about a local family I barely knew than being let into the lives of people I cared about. I expected the two storylines to mesh more tightly by the end of the novel, but I never felt they did, and Hannah never resolved her curiosity about the murder (though the reader does learn what happened). The one connection I did make was to wonder if Gutcheon showed us the end of the "what-if" story. If Conary and Hannah had been able to marry, would they have been happy together? Or would they have ended up more or less like Claris and Danial Haskell? In the end, it felt incomplete, as though some connection I was supposed to make had been withheld from me as it had been from Hannah. It's a pity because it started out strong, and I thought I would like it in the end, but I found it left me feeling kind of hollow. But other people clearly liked it, and if you're thinking about reading it, please read their reviews.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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Post © Dana Huff

More Than You Know, Beth Gutcheon

WWW Wednesdays—July 20, 2011

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?

• What did you recently finish reading?

• What do you think you'll read next?

I'm currently reading a book my mother passed on to me called More Than You Know by Beth Gutcheon. It was published over a decade ago, and I think she found it at a library or paperback book sale. I'm over 1/3 the way in, and it's really good so far: New England setting (love those), ghosts, and an ax murder that has a familiar Lizzie Borden taint. I hadn't actually heard of this book or seen it mentioned on book blogs. Let's bring it back! I'll save more for my review.

This week, I finished reading Garden Spells (review) and The Sugar Queen (review) by Sarah Addison Allen since my last WWW Wednesdays update. Both of them were very enjoyable, but I liked Garden Spells better. I will probably read the rest of Allen's books. It's fun to find a new author you like.

The next book I read will probably be Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier. She's another author I enjoy, and this is one of only two books of hers that I haven't read, the other being Falling Angels. Also, how did I not know that Tracy Chevalier was on Twitter? Followed. If I don't read Burning Bright next, I'm not sure what I'll read, but I have a huge TBR pile, and I daresay if you are at all interested, you'll find out what book I pick next soon enough.

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Post © Dana Huff

WWW Wednesdays—July 20, 2011