Lorna George's Blog, page 3

Book Review: “What Comes From the Earth” by Kris Holt

Title: What Comes From the Earth

Author: Kris Holt

Genre: Political Thriller

Rating: 4/5

 

Kris Holt is not a new writer on my radar, if I’m honest. We’ve been mutuals on Twitter for a little over two years now, and in that time I’ve read a fair handful of his articles and always admired his use of language. Suffice to say, I’m a little ashamed that it’s taken me this long to pick up one of his novels, certainty of enjoyment notwithstanding.

What Comes From the Earth is an engaging read, a story that moves quickly and easily forward, and characters so alive you can practically hear them breathing between the pages. The protagonist, Sithi, is immediately relatable and sympathetic. His plight throughout the story only adds more personal tension for the reader as he sinks deeper and deeper into the dark intrigue and violence surrounding him. His reactions are very human, despite being often wrong or cowardly, and in that I think he makes a very excellent protagonist. He’s far from infallible, and I always appreciate that.

The side characters were all equally as impressive in their range and realism, particularly Ade and Baako, but more than these –excellent as they were- I’d like to specifically make mention of Boipelo. My concern for her came from a place of experience in the land of books, as her brief, early appearances lay a large question mark in my mind as to her role in the story. She is what you might consider at first glance the typical damsel in distress; a beautiful, strong, wilful female character surrounded by pages and pages of men. I groaned inwardly at the potential for her to suffer great violence in order to further Sithi’s own narrative, and expected her fate to be that of a cowed and hog-tied prize for our hero at the end of the book.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that this wasn’t her fate at all, and in fact she was afforded great courtesy, humanity, and dignity as I rarely see male writers offer to the ladies in their work. Well done, Kris. Very well done!

The style of writing is very impressive, with the same sharp wit and momentum I have come to expect from the author, as well as a very lean and tight narrative. There isn’t a single scrap of fat in this story, nor any of the preening, self-indulgence that can often be all too frequent in this genre, and that alone makes it an incredibly enjoyable read.

Kris has successfully taken a very difficult setting and written it with grace and understanding, tackling themes of violence with respect, and pitted it against bright, cunning, and even brutal characters who, as a reader, I became incredibly invested in as the story progressed to its climax.

I enjoyed What Comes From the Earth immensely, and I’ll be certain to pick up more work by Kris Holt very soon!

New Year, 2018

It’s midday, January 1st 2018. Currently I’m sitting at my desk, trying to think of something poignant to write, but all I can think about is how uncomfortable my chair is (I put the legs on backwards when I built it, and now I can’t find the dang allen key), the half-eaten pastrami sandwich downstairs that may or may not make me feel better, the potential for coffee, and how utterly hungover I still am from last night.

Despite how tired, dehydrated, and slightly nauseated I feel right now, last night’s makeup smeared across my forearm from where I passed out face-down at 5am and wearing my Xmas pyjamas coupled with an oversized lumpy cardigan (it’s a look, okay) I feel fairly happy. Oh, there are things happening in my life right now -way over in the background- that are causing me pain, stress, and sadness, but overall? Overall I’m contented.

When I look back on where I was this time last year, there’s a very stark difference. I greeted 2017 with an early night, lots of crying, and followed up by going into work the next day to clean out the stockroom, just so I had something to do. The loneliness of it all was almost unbearable.

This year I was at a house party, surrounded by good, fun people, quite tipsy, ladders all up my tights from where we’d been playing twister, and stumbling along over the words to Auld Lang Syne because none of us were in sync. We all held hands and droned along like a classic herd of drunkards, and in that moment I wanted to cry a little bit for how much I’d always craved that sense of belonging, and to have finally found it.

I didn’t know most of the people in that room, and I was far too socially awkward to make much of an impression, but still I was welcomed with open arms. Even though I was a virtual stranger, I was treated with kindness, ushered forwards whenever I automatically found myself stepping out of the group just a little, and wished a happy new year by each of them as though I’d always known them.

Those I did know I haven’t known for long, but already I love them fiercely. They listen when I speak, they accept me and worry about me, and genuinely want me to grow and flourish in life. For the first time in a long while I feel at home. I feel accepted and appreciated. I feel more like Lorna than I have in a very, very long time. And what’s more? I feel like being Lorna is a perfectly lovely thing to be.

I don’t have any New Year’s Resolutions. I started writing this with the intention of setting myself a few, if I’m honest. Still, the more I reflect, the more I realise that all I want for 2018 is to finally get myself back out into the world again, and live life.

…And find an allen key so I can fix this dang chair.

Book Review: “An Isolated Storm” by Kaye Spivey

Title: An Isolated Storm

Author: Kaye Spivey

Genre: Contemporary Poetry

Rating: 4/5

 

“An Isolated Storm” is the debut poetry collection by Kaye Spivey. It contains thirty-four pieces of work, all very beautifully written.

The thing with poetry books is that there’s no way to really tell if you’re going to like it until you read it, really. The blurb can only tell you so much, because everyone’s idea of poetry is different, which I think is what makes it so magical.

I went into “An Isolated Storm” with very few preconceptions because of this, and I was very, very happy with what I found between the pages. The style is very similar to other contemporary poets such as Rupi Kaur, Warsan Shire, and Nikita Gill. There is a very large divide amongst the “poetry community” with regards to this type of work, but for my part I find it incredibly refreshing, and reminiscent of the Greek poet Sappho; lyrical and feminine.

Kaye Spivey delivers all of these things in this collection, along with raw, pulsing emotion, beautiful use of language, and vivid imagery, both natural and modern. I particularly enjoyed “Notion of Romance”, “Trees of Autumn”, and “In Meter” for their sheer emotive power, but my favourite was definitely “Standard Visibility”. It was one of the shorter poems in the collection, but it had such a punch to it, and resonated with me to the point I had to stop reading for a half hour just to soak it up.

All in all I would recommend this book very highly to lovers of contemporary poetry, and I look forward to reading Kaye Spivey’s newest collection “Fragments” very soon.

Camp NaNoWriMo: July 2017

Last year I decided that I wasn’t going to do NaNoWriMo again. There were a few reasons I gave at the time (word-counts stress me out, it’s mostly supposed to be for newbie writers, I have a day job that takes priority until someone wants to pay me for my writing) but honestly? This time last year I was in a very bad place and I was struggling to write anything at all.

This month I decided to get back on the proverbial horse and start writing novels again. Don’t get me wrong, my new found love for poetry has been a positive experience, but I do miss writing longer, fictional stories.

Down From The Tower is my main squeeze right now, as I’ve said previously, but I’m struggling to write more than a page a day, and I’m just not satisfied with that. I know I can do more. Time was I could knock out five pages without breaking a sweat, and ideally I’d like to get back to that. I’ve just gotten out of the habit, is all.

It’s a small project. Currently I’m calling it a stand-alone, but if it has a positive response I feel like there’s definitely room to make a series of it. I’m also only aiming for around 50K words, which is actually kind of perfect, because Camp NaNoWriMo starts in nine days.

When a fellow writing friend dropped me a line to ask if I’d be up for joining a cabin, I thought what the hell? Seriously, what do I have to lose at this point? Not much. What I have to gain, however, is that old, regular writing habit, and that’s something I really think it wouldn’t hurt to have help in re-cultivating in my life.

I’m excited, but a little nervous, too. It feels so much like I’ve been failing over and over again lately, so putting myself back out there has been difficult. I don’t want to fail again. There has to be a reason I can’t let this go, you know? There has to be a reason I’m still writing after all this time, after all the roadblocks and vastly disappointing outcomes of each project. I have to hope that I’ll get somewhere in the end if I just keep trying.

[Silence Isn’t In My Nature]

In a world that’s told me all my life to shut up

I spend my spare time stringing words together

Filling pages with what I have to say

And sending them out to strangers

Hoping that someone might listen.

As The Man Said: “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”

You know what? No.

I’ve been stewing about this for two days now, and it’s exhausting. I wanted to step away from the situation because I was so utterly infuriated that I was afraid I’d seem unprofessional if I didn’t. That said, there are some things I just can’t sit back and ignore, and this is one of them. If this is professional suicide, then sign me up, because I’m going down swinging.

I’m not going to link anyone or anything, or tack this response to the bottom of the original post, because the “rebuttal” was ill-informed and rude, and I’d much prefer not to give it any further traction. That said, if my responding is unprofessional, then I, at least, have the decency to hold up my hands and admit that what I’m doing right now is more than likely a huge error of judgement at best, and at worst fairly ill-mannered.

In my humble opinion, it’s in very poor taste to attach a call-out post to the bottom of a link, because everyone knows the denizens of tumblr will rarely bother to read the original post, instead forming their opinions based solely on the reply and coming to their own conclusions. It’s worse that the responder in question took one minuscule part of what my original post was about (Minotaur) and completely overlooked my main issue, which was that I was receiving copious amounts of hate mail because, apparently, white people should only write white characters. There was no focus given to that at all, and instead, it was made to seem like I was indeed playing dress up with Greek culture in my writing, which, had the original post been read, people would see that isn’t the case.

I work very, very hard to be inclusive in my work, to give the very best representation I can, whilst still maintaining a healthy understanding of my own privilege and that I am by no means infallible. That said, things like this make me not want to try. Do you have any idea how much time I would save if I only wrote about my own experiences? If all of my characters were white, female bisexuals? The answer is a lot.

That said, despite it all, I won’t ever do that, because it’s not what I believe in. I write fantasy books, and as someone who is fairly well represented in the genre, I’m bored of reading it, and more importantly, I’m bored of writing it. I am a better writer and a better person for taking the time to thoroughly learn about the cultures that have inspired my world-building.

It’s very important for me to now reiterate (because I mentioned it in my original post and it was blatantly ignored) I am not the only author who does this. In fact, would you care to know a secret?

All. Writers. Do. This.

We all take inspiration from the world around us, because most storytellers are looking for that common ground. The things that connect people to one another. Shared experiences that can bring people from different walks of life together whilst saying, “Hey look, our differences are neat and cool, and they don’t need to divide us!”

That’s what storytelling is, my chums. At least, that’s what it is to me, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to stop striving for that message just because there’s this growing little subset of people who believe all media should be perfect in all ways, or else it should be burnt on a sacrificial pyre, along with the creator in question. You’d best get your pack of witch-burning matches now, children, because I’ll pour gasoline over my own cussing head so long as I go up in smoke with people listening to what I have to say.

Art is not supposed to be perfect and comfortable and fit into neat little boxes for your convenience. It’s supposed to speak out! It’s supposed to grab you by your gut and squeeze your heart. It’s supposed to teach you things about yourself and those around you. It’s supposed to warm the cockles of your soul, light a fire under your arse, make you laugh until your dang ribs hurt so much you can’t breathe. It’s supposed to reach out and tell you things will be okay in the end, no matter how bleak it all seems right now.

I am truly sorry if people are offended by my work, but that isn’t going to make me stop. I won’t stop trying just because there are people who want me to shut up and stay in my lane. I’m going to keep writing, keep researching, keep growing and developing until I get it right, and hang anyone who wants to drag me through the mud for that.

In the end, my point is this: you are perfectly entitled to your opinion, and even encouraged to tell me if there is an issue of insensitivity in my writing as a by-product of my own privilege. You are not, however, entitled to come for me, very publicly, with half of the information and a head full of your own self-importance.

I am done being chewed out by strangers gunning for me, completely half-cocked. It’s obscene, and I’ve had enough of it.

***

P.S – As a passive-aggressive and pedantic aside: “Taur” is from the Latin “Taurus” meaning a creature of the Bovine persuasion, and Latin is the root of languages. So! Unless the suggestion is that I shouldn’t write any words in any language except for one I’ve painstakingly crafted from scratch myself (which is, frankly, ridiculous) I would suggest perhaps some fact-checking might be in order. …Shockingly.

The Problem With Minotaur

At the beginning of this week, I was unfortunately caught up in a bit of hoo-ha on tumblr. It came about because I very casually mentioned a character in Down From The Tower who happened to be a female Minotaur, and a few people took exception to that.

Before I knew what had happened, I was being accused of cultural appropriation for using a Greek myth and altering it by changing the “established” gender from male to female. It spiralled then to some very bizarre finger pointing and eventually “white people shouldn’t write non-white characters” at which point I tapped out.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been accused of cultural appropriation, and I daresay it won’t be the last, but since the posts are still being shared with commentary and opinions from lots of other people, and I’m being bombarded by messages about it, I’ve decided it would be a good idea for me to lay out exactly how I feel about the accusations being levied at me.

It’s taken me this long because I’ve been trying to think of a polite way to say I don’t care. Nothing has presented itself, so instead, I’m just going to say, quite bluntly: I don’t care.

I could sit here and write a huge post about how much work and research I put into writing respectfully and knowledgeably about other cultures. I could tell you that the last thing I ever want to do is offend anyone. I could bust a gut trying to find different and careful ways to say that cultural appropriation doesn’t mean white people can only write about white culture; it actually means when you take a culture, strip it back to the bits you find aesthetically pleasing, play dress up with it, and lay claim to it as your own.

But I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to, because I’m tired and I’m fed up, and as I’ve said numerous times the past few days, I’m going to get dragged for whatever I write, so I may as well just do my best and please myself. I almost packed up writing altogether because I tried to please everyone when I wrote The Redwood War series. All I got out of that was the realisation that people are never happy, as well as a series I used to love making me cringe whenever I look at it now. It was a hard lesson to learn, but the price of bending over backwards to please readers was way too steep for what it yielded in the end. I won’t make that mistake again.

If someone can come to me with a rational argument that I shouldn’t be using Greek myths, then, by all means, let me know and I’ll change it. But you’d best be gunning for Rick Riordan, JK Rowling, and all the other, less accessible authors out there who have used mythology from other cultures in their work, too.

I’m just a nobody author out here trying to write stories I like, have fun doing it, and use what little platform I have to give the best representation I can manage. That’s all. These kinds of incidents occasionally make me wonder why I even bother, but I’m going to bother anyway, come hell or high water. Because I want to, because it’s right to, and because I’m a stubborn, hard-headed baggage who doesn’t know when to quit.

The bottom line is this: love it or hate it, it’s up to you, but know that unless there’s a legitimate issue with my creative choices, I really don’t give a flying hoolie.

That Writing Life

I’m on holiday from The Day Job this week, and since I’m feeling a rare sense of pride in my writing (The Royal Sentinel is currently #340 in Fantasy on Wattpad, so yay!) I’ve decided to use the time to take a good crack at Down From The Tower.

I’d made some good headway a few months back, but due to my main character, Mandisa, accidentally morphing way too much into Naomi, I decided to start over again. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Naomi, but I wanted to write a very different sort of leading lady this time. Mandisa is practically Naomi’s opposite in almost every way. Best way to describe it is that Mandisa is the Elle Woods to Naomi’s Katniss Everdeen. It’s a fairly hefty change of pace for me, especially when you consider that I’ve been writing Naomi almost exclusively for the last six years, but it’s been the sort of super fun challenge that makes being a writer worthwhile, I feel.

One of the things I was pulled up for doing badly on when writing The Redwood War series was the bland world-building, so I put a lot more thought and effort into that with Down From The Tower. I doubt I’ll ever be at the Brandon Sanderson level of epic world-building, but I’m proud of what I have so far. It pains me a little to compliment myself (but I’m going to power through it anyway) but I feel like my strongest area will always be writing compelling characters, and honestly that’s just fine with me. Still, I always want to improve at what I do, and I’d like to hope that I’ll be showcasing at least a little of that with this project.

Also I always felt fairly bad for having more male than female characters in The Redwood Rebel (something I was able to fix really quite easily in The Royal Sentinel) so I’m not going to fall into that same trap again this time. It’s far too easy to trip over these tropes, even as someone who is fairly thoughtful about the media I consume and put out into the world, so I’m determined to be a lot more mindful in future. Once again, I hope it’s something that shows in my work.

Down From The Tower is currently only planned to be a short novel of around 50k words, and depending on its reception, may or may not become a series in the future. It’s been a really long time since I last sank my teeth into writing a big project, the last year or so having been entirely about editing The Redwood War series, and writing poems and poetic prose. I’m nervous about it, but I’ve been doing this long enough now that I know the only way to get past that fear is to just barrel straight through it. The feedback I initially had for The Redwood Rebel really knocked me back hard, and it’s honestly taken me this long just to build myself back up to the point where I feel ready to have a pop at traditional publishing again. That’s my plan for this project, at least, so I guess we’ll just have to see where it takes me.

In the end, it may work out or it may not, but I tried giving up and I found it was much harder than trying to succeed ever was.

For now I’m just throwing down words and powering through this first draft. Once that’s done, my plan is to knuckle down with book three of The Redwood War series (working title: TDC) until I have something resembling a draft I can feel at least semi-confident to send out for beta-reading. I’ll swap and switch between the two projects until they’re done, and who knows? Maybe in a year from now I’ll just be that much closer to being the writer I want to be.

Wish me luck!

“The Royal Sentinel” and Some Lorna Stuff:

So it’s finally done! All of The Royal Sentinel is up on Wattpad to be read and/or ignored as people see fit!

I had planned to keep posting a chapter a week until it was all published, but that didn’t really work out the way I’d hoped. Frankly, I’m not a terribly patient person at the best of times, and just between us (and anyone else who should happen to stumble across my wee corner of the internet) I have very little impulse control. The long and short of that is when I get struck by the urge to do something, I do it. And today I was struck by the urge to hang it all and post the dang story, already. So there it is. Enjoy!

So what’s next? Well, your guess is as good as mine, really. Book three isn’t even nearly finished, so it’s going to be a while before that’s ready. I have another poetry collection coming out in September (or possibly August, depending on this and that) and I’m still slowly chugging along through the first draft of Down From The Tower. I also really had the strongest urge to work on Going Under recently, but that story has never had a lot of love, so we’ll see.

I have some other things in the pipes, too. Non-writing things, I mean. I’m currently working on an etsy shop to sell my homemade candles, bath salts, and soaps, as well as starting up a local floristry business. I’m also considering the possibility of setting up a proper beta-reading service, but I’m still in the pondering stage of that particular brain-baby. As well as all of this, I have to keep enough energy and concentration for The Day Job; the only work I do that actually pays my bills, after all.

I’ve been feeling my own mortality a lot lately. I got hit by a car a few weeks back, which was terrifying, and yesterday I ended up in hospital with a ruptured ovarian cyst, which was… also really quite upsetting.

Oh, it’s not all as bad as it sounds, of course! I’m fine, really, I just have been thinking a lot about the sort of life I want to be living. My creative output has been shockingly low as of late, and well, I’m not really happy about that. I just want to do stuff, you know? I want to enjoy what I do, and enjoy my life, and making things makes me happy so it seems like the logical thing to focus on.

I don’t know what’s next, precisely, but I figure I’ll just throw a bunch of projects at life and see what sticks!

[I’m So Sorry, I Just Can’t Help Myself]

I have fallen in love

With the softness of your eyes

The warmth of your laughter

And your gentle smile.

With the comfort of your voice

The curling of your hair

And how careful your hands are.

With the strength of your heart

The passion in your soul

And the light of your humour.

I have fallen in love

With all that you are

The entire beautiful mess of you

And it’s terminal.