Maria Haskins's Blog, page 62

Got my Facebook Page up and running

Finally caved in and made myself a Facebook Page: just so I can blather on about myself in yet another venue (and yes, self-promoting does make me feel very self-conscious!). I’ve just put it up, so not a lot of content there yet, but it’s got the basics.

My Facebook Page.

A beauty from 1899

This is one of the oldest things in my house. It was published in 1899, and I found it in a used bookstore in Sweden many, many years ago. The gold-leaf is worn off on the cover, the language is slightly antiquated, and it still has a somewhat musty, dusty, old-bookish smell; but oh, oh, how I love this book! It’s a copy of Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, in Swedish (AKA Grefven af MonteCristo) and best of all: it is illustrated. The years, and the many times I’ve moved during those years, have not necessarily been kind to it, but I wouldn’t want to part with it now.

The book itself is one of my all-time favourites: it is the ultimate revenge story (I haven’t seen a movie or read another book that tops this one when it comes to delivering a vengeful payoff). It is also a beautifully written, and gloriously sprawling novel.

Looking at my copy of the book, I do of course wonder where it spent its years before I found it. Who read it before I did? Who enjoyed getting lost in this story of passion and crime and dastardly deeds and sweet, subtle, and well-deserved, though ultimately corrosive, revenge?

These days most of the books I buy are ebooks. It’s a great way to read: convenient, portable, paper-free. But I still come back again and again to this old beauty. She has body, she has looks, she has a scent and a feel all her own.

My copy of Dumas’ masterpiece turns 116 years old this year, and it is still able to tell a great story.

ODIN’S EYE: introducing the stories

Here’s something I’ve learned about myself recently: one of the few things that makes me more uncomfortable than writing my own bio, is writing a synopsis of my own stories. Not so good when you have to do both those things for various websites and book-blurbs!

I really find it extremely difficult to describe my own writing (it makes me “tongue-tied” as a writer, if that makes sense) and part of me wants to groan “just read it!” as soon as I try it, but that’s not very productive I guess.

With that disclaimer out of the way, here is a basic, and very stripped-down synopsis of each story in my new ebook Odin’s Eye.

Mimir’s Well – A technician is dispatched to take on a powerful entity.

Live And Virtually Returning! – A top-secret cloning project finally comes to fruition.

The Child – A mother faces a harrowing choice.

The Gates of Balawat – A corporate mission to a ruined city unsettles a young crew.

On Our Way – A woman tries to find a way out in a world haunted by destruction and loss.

The Man In The Grey Coveralls – A strange individual stalks a mother and her teenage son.

Lost And Found – A shipwrecked explorer clings to sanity on an alien planet.

Bethel – A convict confronts both her inner demons and brutal violence in a prison-facility on Mars.

Life Line – Two maintenance workers encounter unexpected issues on a research station in deep space.

Empty – A space-freighter becomes mysteriously stranded in the outer solar system.

The Settlers – A group of colonists tries to adjust to life in a brand new world.

Johnny B. Goode – An old man is hiding an ancient, and suddenly very sought-after treasure.

The twelve stories are not really connected, but they all fit into the same loosely constructed future universe, though I imagine that they might all take place far apart in both space and time. If you want to check out the whole book, you can sample and buy Odin’s Eye at various online retailers including: Smashwords, Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Apple iBooks.

My 10 favourite Ray Bradbury short stories

I might be biased since I’ve just published an ebook made up of twelve short stories, but I really do love me a good short story. And to me, one of the masters of this genre is Ray Bradbury.

Ray Bradbury is a standout because he’s able to put so much into such a small literary space. He knew exactly how to build that chilling sense of dread that makes the best horror tales stick in your mind, and your nightmares, for years to come. He knew how to set a story in a seemingly familiar environment, and then subtly peel back “the normal” until you realized nothing was as it seemed. And he knew how to add the poetry of language to both the science and the fiction in science fiction.

Here are 10 of my favourite Ray Bradbury short stories. Many of them have massively influenced and inspired my own writing over the years.

1. The One Who Waits

This story was included in the short-story collection The Machineries of Joy, and to me, it’s not just a quintessential Ray Bradbury story, it is THE quintessential science fiction short story. It’s ominous and unsettling right from the start:

I live in a well. I live like smoke in the well. Like vapor in a stone throat. I don’t move. I don’t do anything but wait. Overhead I see the cold stars of night and morning, and I see the sun. And sometimes I sing old songs of this world when it was young. How can I tell you what I am when I don’t know?

Beautifully written and absolutely haunting: a true masterpiece.

2. The Veldt

Bradbury is very skilled at turning something we’ve been brought up to think of as innocent – like mushrooms and babies, for example – into something sinister. In The Veldt child’s play becomes deadly, and the relationship between two children and their parents takes a rather horrifying turn. This story also includes a playroom reminiscent of Star Trek TNG’s “holodeck”. It’s a true Bradbury classic that has been adapted for TV several times (by NPR, and Canadian television for example) and has also been turned into a movie. It was included in The Illustrated Man.

3. The Small Assassin

This short story is another excellent example of how Bradbury can create a sense of ominous dread and get those shivers running up and down your spine. A pregnant woman begins to suspect that the child she is carrying is evil. A ridiculous notion, of course. Right. Except that it turns out she’s right… It was included in the anthology Dark Carnival, and can also be found in several other Bradbury collections.

4. “Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!”

This is one of the first Bradbury stories that I remember reading as a child (maybe I was a young teen? not sure). It’s been stuck in my mind ever since. An alien invasion that takes place in people’s basements? Of course. This story can be found in the Best-of-Bradbury collection The Stories of Ray Bradbury.

5. The Third Expedition

Without a doubt one of the Bradbury stories that has made the biggest impression on me. The story is taken from Bradbury’s amazing The Martian Chronicles, a collection of short stories strung together to tell the story of what happens when human beings try to colonize Mars. In this particular tale, an expedition from Earth to Mars encounters a town that seems eerily, yet comfortingly, familiar to them. It’s even populated by long-lost relatives and family. Of course, it doesn’t have a happy ending.

6. The Martian

Yet another short story from The Martian Chronicles, and yet another masterful Bradbury-tale. This time, an elderly couple from Earth have settled on Mars and one night they encounter a person they think is their long-dead son. The sense of sadness and foreboding that permeates this short story is what really gets to me:

The cold wind blew and the thin rain fell upon the soil and the figure stood looking at them with distant eyes.

And no, this one doesn’t exactly have a happy ending either.

7. The Million-Year Picnic

This one is also from The Martian Chronicles, and it’s actually the final story in that particular book. This is Bradbury at his poetic, poignant best. I can remember getting goosebumps when I read the ending the first time.

“I’ve always wanted to see a Martian,” said Michael. “Where are they, Dad? You promised.”

“There they are,” said Dad, and he shifted Michael on his shoulder and pointed straight down.

The Martians were there. Timothy began to shiver.

8. The Crowd

How swiftly a crowd comes… like the iris of an eye closing in out of nowhere.

Again, Bradbury picks something that seems fairly innocuous and familiar: the way crowds tend to gather at the site of an accident. But they way he tells the story, we just know that there is something dark and terrifying happening beneath the surface.

“Is he dead?” “No, he’s not dead.” “He won’t die. He’s not going to die.”

This short story is included in Dark Carnival, and also The Stories of Ray Bradbury.

9. Skeleton

A rather macabre story that was included in The October Country. I’ll just quote the Wikipedia entry about it without spoiling it any further:

A man becomes convinced his skeleton is out to ruin him, and consults an unorthodox specialist.

10. Tomorrow’s Child

I can vividly remember reading this story as a child: after all, a story that features a human baby that has accidentally been turned into a blue pyramid is bound to make an impression. It’s a whimsical story, more than an ominous one, and probably the most light-hearted of the tales I’ve included in this list. It’s included in the anthology I Sing The Body Electric, and in a way, this one actually does have a happy ending.

I cobbled together a promo-video for ODIN’S EYE

Movie Maker must be one heck of a program, because even I can apparently make some kind of videos using it! (And no, this is not paid advertising… I kind of wish it was!)

My latest project: a promo-video for my ebook Odin’s Eye.

Take a look at the results, and check out the book as well. It’s available now, from a variety of online retailers!

It’s release day!

Today is the day: my ebook Odin’s Eye is out and available from several online outlets!

Odin’s Eye is a collection of twelve science fiction short-stories. Each story follows one of twelve individuals in a distant (or maybe not so distant) future, and each individual is faced with a choice, a challenge, or a profound life-changing experience. In the stories, there are glimpses of a future where humanity is affected by technological change, ecological disasters, and a society that is not always easy for everyone to fit into.

The stories take place both on Earth, Mars (I’m a Bradbury-fan, after all!), various other places in the solar system, as well as outer space, and they all fit into my loosely constructed future universe: I am currently working on a novel that will be set in the same “future-verse”.

You can buy Odin’s Eye from various online retailers:

Smashwords  (download available in various ebook formats, including epub, mobi for Kindle, txt, and pdf)
Amazon (available at Amazon.com and other Amazon outlets)
Kobo
Barnes & Noble
Apple iBooks

Individual links to all Amazon outlets:

CA / Canada
.com / US
UK / United Kingdom
AU / Australia
DE / Germany
FR / France
ES / Spain
IT / Italy
NL / Netherlands 
JP / Japan
BR / Brazil
MX / Mexico
IN / India

ODIN’S EYE is now available for purchase online!

My ebook Odin’s Eye, a collection of science fiction short-stories, is now available for purchase online!

My heart’s a-flutter, I’m in a cold sweat, and my hands are shaking, so I know it’s for real.

Get your copy from one of these online retailers:

Odin’s Eye is available for purchase in various ebook formats (including epub, mobi for Kindle, txt, and pdf) from Smashwords.
You can also purchase Odin’s Eye at Amazon! (Available at Amazon.com and other Amazon outlets.)
Odin’s Eye is also available at Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and Apple iBooks.

These twelve evocative science-fiction short stories follow twelve individuals in a distant, or maybe not so distant, future. Each character is facing a challenge or choice that will change the course of their life, and might also affect the fate of humanity itself.

Umberto Eco, on translation

There’s a lot of truth in this quote by one of my favourite authors: Umberto Eco.

Try as you might, a translated text will never equal the original. You can come close to conveying the meaning and feeling, but you can never capture it completely. And yet, it’s wonderful to try.

My favourite books to read again and again and again

I love it when I read a new book that pulls me in and doesn’t let go. It happened to me when I first read Bernard Cornwell’s books about King Arthur: The Winter King, Enemy of God, and Excalibur. (They’re a truly original take on Merlin, magic, Lancelot and all that jazz. A book that starts with the sentence: “ONCE UPON A TIME, in a land that was called Britain, these things happened” definitely has potential.)

But I also re-read my favourite books quite a lot. Partly I do it because it’s relaxing to read something familiar. Partly I do it because even if I’ve read those books more than once (or twice or ten times…) I always discover something new in them. One thing all the books I like to re-read have in common, is that I enjoy the language in them (IE the way they are written) just as much as the story itself.

These are some of the books I can, and have, re-read more times than I know and I still enjoy whenever I pick them up.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy - If you know me, you probably knew this would be top of the heap. I read the books for the first time when I was in my early teens and it quite literally blew my mind. My world has never been the same since. I remember lying in bed after a marathon session of reading “The Return of the King”, crying my eyes out because the story was over and there was no more to read. I usually re-read the trilogy once a year just to go back to Middle Earth.
The Martian Chronicles – This is a classic collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury, and it made a huge impression on me when I was a teen. I don’t think I’d realized before reading it, that it was possible to write a collection of short stories that actually fit together. Kind of like a theme album (as in music, on vinyl). The Martian Chronicles is old-school sci-fi, and yes, the technology in the stories is dated, but that doesn’t really matter since Bradbury’s stories are never really about the technology anyway.
The Waste Land - This long poem by TS Eliot was another piece of literature that blew my mind when I first read it as a teen. That poetry could be like this: strange, sprawling, yet oddly compelling even when I couldn’t always understand immediately what it meant, was a revelation. It was like a world in itself, with all these various layers of meaning, shifting rhythms, dialogue blending with descriptive passages and literary quotes. I still find it completely mesmerizing.
Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco is a genius, and I think this is his best book. It is the perfect rebuttal to the ridiculously overblown and over-hyped conspiracy theories of Dan Brown’s books and the atrocious Holy Blood, Holy Grail. And best of all: it was written years before those books became popular! In the book, Eco guts and skewers that whole genre of writing and the flawed way of thinking that goes with it. And he does it with a fantastical, mesmerizing tale of three Italian book editors. (Told you he’s a genius.) To paraphrase his point: Just because you can fit pieces of actual history into some fictional scenario you’ve dreamed up, doesn’t mean that the story you invented is true. But as long as you act as if there is some super-ultra-secret knowledge that only you have figured out, then some people will probably believe you.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy & Smiley’s People- John LeCarré is brilliant. I think he writes some of the best characters and dialogue of any writer, ever, in any genre. And I also think these two books are his masterpieces. I’ve read them so many times my copies are falling apart.
The Count of Monte Cristo – This is the ultimate, ultimate revenge tale. Seriously. The Bride from Kill Bill has nothing on The Count when it comes to single-minded, devious ways to exact revenge. My copy of this book is in Swedish, and it’s from 1899 or something: I found it in a used book store and it is divine. I just wish that one day, someone would make the actual story from the book into a movie, not some watered down version.
The Chronicles of Earthsea – Ursula LeGuin is one of the best sci-fi/fantasy writers ever. The Tombs of Atuan from the Earthsea books freaked me out no end when I first read it, and still gives me goosebumps when I read it. She’s a fantastic writer and Earthsea is a great place to go. Come to think of it, I might be overdue for a visit…
Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome books – The first three books in this series are crazy-good reading: the kind where you can barely put the book down to eat or sleep. The rest of the series is also excellent, but I think her heart was really, really in the very first books about Gaius Marius and Sulla. She obviously loves Caesar as well (and when reading her books, it’s hard for the reader not to). The books are a great take on the Roman world. They are set in Republican Rome, just as it is on the cusp of becoming Imperial Rome, and blend romance, vendettas, politics, well-researched historical detail, accounts of military campaigns and war and a huge list of characters (fictional and not) into an amazing story. It is the best way ever to learn about ancient Rome.
The Odyssey & The Iliad - It’s Homer. It’s ancient. And it is so. damn. good. No, really. Ultra violent, gory, over the top in every way, strange and familiar… It’s like a sprawling, epic Hollywood blockbuster with better language (except Hollywood is apparently unable to do it justice). How anyone could have written this 3000 years ago (or so) is amazing to me.
Anything by George Orwell - If I could write like another writer, which I know is really not possible or something I should want, I’d want to write like Orwell. I love everything he has ever written: novels, articles, essays… doesn’t matter.

This post was originally posted at my personal blog: Kids. Food. Life.

The truth about books, from Anna Quindlen

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”

-Anna Quindlen

That is some deep inspiration for me this Friday afternoon.