Cathy Zane's Blog, page 4

The Enduring Appeal of WWII Fiction

Guest blog by Barbara Ridley

I was raised in England in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. The war was so recent it didn’t feel like history. Bombed out buildings still littered the streets and we had rationing for some items through the mid-fifties. People of my parents’ generation talked about the war constantly: the sound of the approaching bombers, the wail of the all-clear siren, the size of the weekly cheese ration, the shortage of soap. I almost felt like I had lived through it myself.

The first fictional representations of the war that I remember came in movies such as The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Battle of the River Plate, or A Bridge Too Far. They featured heroic battle scenes or dramatic prisoner of war escapes, all very male, never very appealing to me. But in the past twenty to thirty years, there has been an explosion of fiction reflecting the enormous range of the WWII experience. Through fiction, we can now read about female spies or the lives of ordinary people on the home front from London to Shanghai. A recent search on Amazon for “World War II Fiction” produced 75 pages with 22 books to a page: 1650 titles. Several are runaway bestsellers, such as All the Light We Cannot See and The Nightingale.

What is the appeal? The war was a watershed moment, for sure, changing the course of the twentieth century, with multi-faceted effects on social relationships and the role of women on all continents. It was also perhaps the last war in which there were clear “good guys” and “bad guys”. Heroism was not confined to the battlefield. In England, it was known as the “People’s War” as everyone had a role to play. In countries under Nazi occupation, ordinary citizens faced extraordinary decisions: whether to be complicit or confront evil. This is all great material for fiction.

It was several decades before we saw the burgeoning of Holocaust-related literature. This reflects the fact that many survivors were not ready to talk about their experiences until the 1980’s. Now, many of that generation are dying, and there is heightened interest in preserving their history. Holocaust stories are riveting, pitting heroes and heroines against quintessential evil, and have inspired blockbuster movies such as Sophie’s Choice or Schindler’s List.

My own novel, When It’s Over, was inspired by the true story of my mother’s escape from the Holocaust. I didn’t decide to write it until after her death, and my main source material was the oral history I had recorded with her in 1982, the first and only time she spoke in detail about her experience and the fate of her family who perished. There were too many gaps in the story for me to write a non-fiction account, so I chose to write a novel, which allowed me the freedom to make up what I didn’t know.

But I was committed to making it historically accurate. In the course of my research, I uncovered two little-known WWII stories: the British internment of Jewish and anti-Nazi refugees as “enemy aliens”, and the progressive political movement during the last two years of the war, which led to the dramatic defeat of Churchill in the 1945 election. These became important elements in my novel. It seems there is no end to the fascinating tales WWII has to offer.

I’ve soaked up many of the novels on that Amazon list. My favorites include Night Watch, The English Patient, The Pianist, The Book Thief and Sarah’s Key. And two of my fellow She Writes Press authors have written prize-winning WWII novels: Barbara Stark-Nemon’s Even in Darkness, about a courageous German Jewish woman’s struggle for survival, and Mary Dingee Fillmore’s portrayal of a Dutch teenager’s role in the resistance in An Address in Amsterdam. I’m always eager for more.

I belong to several book-related groups on Facebook, including one that is specifically focused on historical fiction. People actively participate in discussions and offer book recommendations. I’ve seen some members comment: “I need a break from WWII please”. I get it. There are plenty of other interesting historical topics to explore. But when I heard about Meg Waite Clayton’s new novel, Last Train to London, based on the Kindertransport efforts to rescue Jewish children from the Nazis, I couldn’t resist. It jumped to the top of my “to be read” queue. It did not disappoint. It’s a riveting account of the difference one brave woman can make. And it’s become an instant bestseller.

I don’t see WWII fiction dying out any time soon.

 

Barbara Ridley was born in England but has lived in California for over 35 years. After a successful career as a nurse practitioner, she is now focused on creative writing. Her debut novel, When It’s Over, (She Writes Press, 2017) has been recognized as a Finalist in six awards, including the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award, the Next Generation Indie Award, and the Sarton Women’s Book Award. She is currently working on a second novel, set in contemporary California, and based on her clinical experience as a rehabilitation nurse. Visit her at www.barbararidley.com.

The post The Enduring Appeal of WWII Fiction appeared first on Cathy Zane.

The Story Behind the Story

Guest blog by Eileen Harrison Sanchez

Nearly seven years ago I began to seriously write a novel. It started as a writing critique on an ordinary Monday morning. The multi-genre group had copies of my eight-page attempt at memoir. My essay told the story of the 1969 November day I moved into a trailer classroom on the back lawn of the white elementary school with my second grade class of thirty black students. The segregated black school I taught in had been suddenly closed at the end of the previous day. Why? The Civil Rights Law of 1964 mandated the integration of the public schools in the small rural Louisiana town I worked in. School boards had to comply or lose federal funds.

My essay was ready for critique from the group. After I finished reading, I looked up to see shocked faces and to hear surprised reactions from this group of white writers in a suburban NJ town. I was hoping to learn how to write a memoir. I was not prepared for the instructor, herself a published author, to say, “I think you have a novel.” This novel took five years of research; critique writing workshops, numerous edits, rewrites and revisions. During this time I gained confidence in my voice and my story. I became my own agent and found a publisher for a self-imposed deadline of 2019, which is the 50th anniversary year of the events that I have fictionalized in Freedom Lessons (She Writes Press).

Always an avid reader, becoming a writer made me more interested in the writing and the “seed” of the stories I read. Here are some of my favorites.

In 1999, author Heidi Daniele attended an event for a family friend in Ballinasloe, Ireland. Others at the event were discussing industrial schools, not knowing what they were, Heidi asked and discovered that they were similar to orphanages. The children that lived in these schools were placed, sometimes “sentenced” by judges. The schools were run by religious orders in separate facilities for boys and girls. Many of the children were illegitimate and all lived a harsh life of unpaid labor. The first line of this emotional story is “My birth was a sin and a crime.” Heidi’s years of research led to locating women who lived in the industrial schools as children. She fictionalized the women’s stories into one story of Mary Margaret Joyce. Read The House Children, “An unassuming but riveting tale of the hardships and ultimate rewards of family.” (Kirkus Reviews)

Janet Benton’s Lilli de Jong “began in the long days and nights of nursing and nurturing my baby. As I held her in my arms…a voice came now and then…the voice of an unwed mother from long ago.” After setting her own child down to sleep, Benton jotted the beginnings of her novel as she imagined this woman under the challenging circumstances of being pregnant and abandoned in late nineteenth-century Philadelphia. The character of Lilli emerged as an unwed mother, supporting herself and her child as a wet nurse. As a Quaker she would have been well educated and outspoken in the era of the legendary reformers of Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony. Ms. Benton’s extensive research brings the reader to recognizable Philadelphia landmarks as well as the importance of wet nurses and a story of women’s strength.

The genesis of The Invention of Wings, by Sue Kidd Monk, was from a visit to the Brooklyn Museum.  She went to see Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party; a monumental piece of art celebrating women’s achievements. Thirty-nine place settings at a banquet table honor thirty-nine female guests and another 999 women’s names are inscribed upon a porcelain tiled floor. As Sue Kidd Monk read the names of the women, Sarah and Angelina Grimke stood out. They were sisters from Charleston, South Carolina. It was the same city in which she lived at the time. Her next novel, not started, was a vague notion of a story of two sisters. As she researched the Grimke sisters she “became passionately certain” that she had found the sisters she was to write about. She was most discouraged about her ignorance of these first female abolition leaders and major American feminist thinkers. The Invention of Wings follows thirty-five years of a complex relationship between Sarah and her ownership of Handful, as both women strive for lives of their own.

 

Eileen Harrison Sanchez is now retired after a forty-year career in education. She started as a teacher and ended as a district administrator. A reader, a writer, and a perennial―a person with a no-age mindset―Sanchez considers family and friends to be the most important parts of her life, followed by traveling and bird watching from her gazebo. Freedom Lessons is her first published novel, available November 12, 2019. She blogs as Gram’s Book Club with recommendations for young readers and as A Perennial Writer’s Thoughts. Connect with her at www.eileensanchez.com, and eileenwrites@comcast.net

The post The Story Behind the Story appeared first on Cathy Zane.

Women Who Go Their Own Way

Guest blog by Rifka Kreiter 

I closed the book with a contented sigh just as the sun peeked through my bedroom window one summer morning in 1961. I’d been reading all night. Published in 1959, Mary Astor: My Story was one of the first confessional autobiographies to come out of Hollywood, by the actress best remembered for her role in The Maltese Falcon. Although I was only fifteen, Astor’s honest account of her struggles with emotional dependency and alcoholism, and her valiant efforts to overcome them was the first memoir to move me deeply. Since then, I have been inspired again and again by stories of women who go their own way.  It is in large part thanks to them that I was inspired to share my own stories in the memoir Home Free:  Adventures of a Child of the Sixties. 

To echo Cathy’s last blog, I loved books that made me feel that I wasn’t “alone, that there is hope, that there is a path to a better and more fulfilling life.” As I wrote and re-rewrote Home Free, I always said if just one reader found solace and hope in the book, my goal would be attained.

Stephen King has said that the most important quality in a book is that the reader keep thinking, “…and then what happened?”  As a lover of great literature, I balked when I first read this. What about character and style, setting and tone? What about structure?

But I’ve come around to seeing King’s point. In the many memoirs I’ve read, it’s generally the life story itself that has the most power.  Having struggled mightily with my own fraught childhood, I’m particularly drawn to stories of women who’ve overcome traumatic histories.

Here are some of the memoirs that have pleasured my hours and illumined my path over the years.

Mary Karr’s memoirs have it all:  strong stories beautifully written and delightfully spiced by her sassy voice. (I confess that, when peeved, I’ve paraphrased the retort Mary used as a little girl in Texas:  “You can kiss my rosy red derrière.”)   The Liar’s Club (1995), Cherry (2000) and Lit (2009) offer the particular satisfactions of sharing a life as if in real time, from childhood through adolescence, to her adult engagement with alcoholism.

But setting lends power to story. I often visualize certain scenes long after I’ve forgotten details, and this reminds me of my global impression of that book including insights it may have catalyzed.  In The Road From Coorain (1989), Jill Ker Conway provides the texture of the utterly-unknown-to-me Australian outback of her childhood. When images of a place are well painted, the setting can feel like a character itself. I can still see the young Jill riding horseback on those wild Aussie plains. She was seven before she ever saw another girl child, much less a school. Following her unlikely path from there to becoming president of Smith College is a journey that has stayed with me for decades.

Educated by Tara Westover (2018) similarly recounts a life transformed by education. Here too, the setting of her Idaho mountain home, lyrically evoked first in the prologue, is a vivid backdrop to the unforgettable events of Westover’s hardscrabble childhood. I have friends who say they were put off by her personality. This made me wonder:  do you have to like the subject of a memoir to enjoy the book?  I too perceived Tara’s personality as (in her own words) hollowed out and brittle, the result of a lifetime of privileging her family’s view of reality over her own experience.  But it is just this travesty that seemed so horrifying to me.  I couldn’t wait for her to FINALLY wake up, all the while marveling at her success in overcoming such enormous obstacles.

Of course, it’s a normal task of maturation to separate psychologically from one’s family of origin and become one’s own person, to find one’s own voice. When childhood is traumatic, becoming a healthy adult can be charged with difficulties—which makes for good reading!

I love the exceptionally apt title of Sally Fields’s engrossing In Pieces (2018).  Here, the writing is just good enough to tell the tale of her fragmented personality and how she’s been managing to put the pieces together—a process I could relate to big time.

Contemporary memoirs often use creative structures, such as braiding different time lines and themes through consecutive chapters. I’ve loved such elegant books as Andrea Jarrell’s I’m the One Who Got Away (2017) and Dani Shapiro’s memoirs.  But, when structuring my own memoir, I knew that— if the climax was to convey the impact it had on me—the tale needed to unfold chronologically. My eureka moment came when I found a way to frame the story as a flashback, giving the book the lift it needed to read smoothly. How I love it when a reader tells me she’s stayed up all night to find out “and then what happened?”

 

An astrologer once told Rifka Kreiter that a certain planetary conjunction in her chart signifies “an unusual life, full of unexpected happenings” and this has certainly proved true.  Her memoir Home Free: Adventures of a Child of the Sixties recounts her passionate quest for liberation, personal, political and spiritual,  leading  through all the movements of those times, from Civil Rights marches in Mississippi, to est seminars in Manhattan, to meditation intensives in the Catskill mountains.  Rifka lives in suburban New Jersey and teaches meditation in the tri-state area.  Visit her at rifkakreiter.com.

 

The post Women Who Go Their Own Way appeared first on Cathy Zane.

Getting Real

A reader recently wrote a review of my novel, Better Than This, and described that it was painful to read, but not in a bad way. Rather, it was a book that explored a difficult topic, but ultimately left the reader feeling hopeful and empowered. As a psychotherapist, I think writing (and reading) about facing difficult things in life can be inspirational and motivating. I want to speak to those readers who may need to hear that they aren’t alone, that there is hope, that there is a path to a better and more fulfilling life. To know that change and healing are possible.

I’ve read several other books similar to mine recently – books that explore the darker side of human nature, but that also offer hope or redemption—some of which I’ve discussed in earlier blog posts. Kerry Fisher’s The Silent Wife (Blog #19 – Girls, Girls and more Girls) was an honest and insightful portrayal of how confusing and pervasive self-doubt and self-blame can be in an abusive relationship. It sheds compassionate light on the difficulty that abused women have reaching out for help.

Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us, also takes you inside the very gray world of domestic abuse. Hoover masterfully portrays the confusing pull of being in love with someone hurtful. We gain more understanding as to why women stay, as well as how personal histories of both the abuser and victim influence the dynamic. I felt empathy for all the characters and while the outcome was satisfying, the heartbreak was also there.

This was my first Colleen Hoover book and by her admission in the author’s note, it is very different than her other books. It portrays how the world of domestic abuse is not black and white – something I also attempted to do in my novel. I thought Hoover did a great job of taking the reader inside the struggle of whether to stay and forgive – or leave. And why that decision is fraught with strong and conflicted emotions. It was painful, heartbreaking, empathic, hopeful and ultimately empowering.

Another book that shared similar themes to my novel was Her Greatest Mistake by Sarah Simpson who is a psychologist. I love any book that explores the realms of psychology, from the normal and expected responses to everyday stressors or past traumas, to the extremes of psychological disfunction and sociopathy. Well, Simpson’s book definitely falls into that latter category. An intense inside look at the impossible no-win situation of extreme abuse and how terror can impact even the sanest of minds, it is hard to put down. Simpson’s experience as a psychologist definitely shines through in this riveting debut that easily falls into the psychological thriller genre.

Finally, Tiger Drive by Teri Case explores a family in crisis. I loved this book and Case’s compassionate treatment of her characters, all of whom feel abandoned by hope and each other but who ultimately find redemption and connection, each in their own unique way. Family dysfunction is painful to see, but there’s always more to the relationships than meets the eye. Case does a masterful job of slowly revealing secrets and hidden strengths. I moved through many emotions while reading this book – anger, sadness, hopelessness and hopefulness – never imagining in the early parts of the book that I would ultimately finish the last page feeling uplifted.

I realize that for many reading is an escape, something they do for fun. I can definitely relate. At times I just want a fun beach read. But when I’m in the right frame of mind, I always appreciate the satisfaction that comes with reading a book that “gets real”. What about you? Are there any books that explored real life struggles in a way that was inspiring to you?

The post Getting Real appeared first on Cathy Zane.

Girls Just Want To Learn

Guest blog by Juliet Cutler

When Grace was a child, she would cast shy sideways smiles at me covering her mouth, slouching her shoulders, and looking away. When she spoke at all, I would have to lean in to hear her.

Now, in her adolescence, there’s a steadiness about Grace—a look in her eye that’s thoughtful and confident. She has something to say, and she’s no longer afraid to say it. She stands upright and walks as if she knows where she’s going, because she does. In 2021, Grace will become the first member of her family to graduate from high school. From there, she will no doubt transform the conditions of poverty for herself and for her family, as most educated women do.

I’ve known Grace since her birth in 2000 when I was living and teaching at the first school for Maasai girls in East Africa. Grace grew up in a traditional Maasai family in northern Tanzania, and I knew her father well. From the time Grace could talk, she began to quietly, but urgently tell her mom and dad that she wanted to go to school—an unlikely prospect for most Maasai girls who frequently face early forced marriages, genital cutting, and other forms of gender-based violence that keeps them out of school. However, I believe this drive to learn is woven into the very fabric of Grace’s being, as it is in children all over the world.

Unfortunately, 263 million children and youth worldwide, or the equivalent of about 80 percent of the United States’ entire population, are not in school. Many of these children are like Grace. They are poor. They are female. They live in cultures where discrimination and violence against women are prevalent. And yet, they know education can improve their lives.

Research in the field of international development proves that the single most transformative intervention for poverty alleviation is the education of women and girls. Education has the power to improve the health and wellbeing of families, communities, and even the natural world. National economies are strengthened by the simple act of sending girls to school.

I’ve had the great privilege of witnessing the life-changing impact of education for Grace and for many of my Maasai students. Some of them are now doctors, teachers, pilots, nurses, attorneys, founders of nonprofits, and above all else confident leaders in their own communities. These women are now transforming the conditions for other Maasai girls who are following in their footsteps.

In my memoir, Among the Maasai, I tell the stories of girls like Grace, but as important, I reveal the ways my ongoing work among the Maasai has transformed my life in deep and significant ways. Over the course of 20 years, I’ve learned the power of walking bega kwa bega, a Swahili phrase that translates as “shoulder to shoulder.” Even across vastly different cultures, we are more similar than we sometimes realize. I’ve come to recognize that Maasai women and girls share many of my own aspirations. They want opportunities to thrive. They want happiness and love, and they want to chart their own courses. Education is the pathway to this.

*     *     *

Here are a few other books that may inspire you to empower and uplift women and girls around the world:

1.      Malala Yousafzai is known worldwide as an advocate for girls’ education. In her most recent book, We Are Displaced: My Journey and Stories from Refugee Girls Around the World, Yousafzai not only explores her own story of displacement, but she also shares the stories of girls she’s met while visiting refugee camps around the world. In the midst of these stark, barren places, Yousafzai observes that hope still stubbornly emerges in the face of heartbreaking trauma.

2.      In We Should All be Feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie encourages men and women to start defining gender roles more broadly by inviting us all to image how much happier we would be—and how much fairer the world would be—if we didn’t carry the weight of gender expectations. Adichie makes the point that we should claim our identities based on abilities and interests rather than on socially conditioned gender roles.

3.      Melinda Gates offers a heartfelt and personal call to action in The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World. Using stories and data from her travels and research with The Gates Foundation, Gates shares her vision for an equal society where women are valued and recognized in all spheres of life.

4.      In 100 Under $100: One Hundred Tools for Empowering Global Women, Betsy Teutsch shares 100 proven solutions that help women emerge out of poverty in eleven different sectors including public health, technology, agriculture, transportation, law, and finance. Teutsch reveals the power we all have to make an impact with a relatively small investment.

 

Juliet Cutler is an American writer, educator, and activist. In her book, Among the Maasai, she tells the story of her experiences working alongside local leaders to empower Maasai girls in Tanzania. All proceeds from the sale of the book support education for Maasai girls. To learn more visit: www.julietcutler.com

The post Girls Just Want To Learn appeared first on Cathy Zane.

Social Change Through Memoir

Guest blog by Elizabeth Anne Wood

The very act of sharing our experiences with one another has the power to transform lives. Sharing stories gives listeners/readers the comfort that they are not alone and offers them new information or perspectives with which to approach their own challenges. Sharing stories spreads empathy. Memoir is only one way of sharing stories, but it is one that I love. Getting lost in a book that provides a window into a writer’s life feels like a gift: a new way of seeing something familiar, or a way of seeing something new to me through the eyes of someone who’s lived it.

All memoir is deeply personal, revealing innermost feelings, examining relationships, and reflecting on the lived experience of the writer, but some memoirists also bring a critical and analytical eye to the world through which their stories move. These are the memoirs I love most: the ones that achieve this balance of personal storytelling and social analysis.

I wrote my memoir, Bound: A Daughter, a Domme, and an End-of-Life Story, for a couple of reasons. One reason was intensely personal: I needed to write as part of my own healing, and I felt an obligation to my mother, who wanted so badly to write her story herself. A second reason, of course, was to share a personal story that I thought would make many other readers feel less alone as they navigate complicated caregiving situations or live through the aftermath of same. But a third reason I wrote this memoir was because I knew that the story spotlighted some of the serious problems with the U.S. health care system, and I believed I had something important to say about that.

I’m a sociologist by training, and so I often look at social situations with a critical eye. I often ask why things work the way they do, even when these are things that are generally taken for granted. In the case of health care, I think that lots of us find the system confusing, nonsensical, and even organized counter to its goals. I wanted Bound to help people feel reassured that their confusion was not because of any lack of intelligence on their part. I wanted to plainly expose some of the flaws in the system so that people would be less likely to blame themselves when they struggled with it, and so that those who are in the process of becoming leaders in the world of health care would have more light shining on the parts of the system they need to fix.

The first draft of the book was quite different from the one that made it to publication. It was organized in seven thematic chapters, each focused on a particular problem or situation, and early readers let me know that it seemed too unapproachable. The story was halting. There was too much analysis and exposition; not enough scene and dialogue. It was confusing, too, because sometimes the same events would occur in different chapters, but with a different part being highlighted. I was told I should consider rewriting it as a more conventional memoir with a clear narrative arc, and while I saw the wisdom of that advice, I worried that the sociological insights would not come through.

I needn’t have worried. I’ve learned a lot about craft in the process of writing, revising, and publishing this book, and one important lessons is that the best way to make complicated issues easier to grasp is to tell a truly engaging story about them. Doing that would strengthen the analytical message, not detract from it. People didn’t need to be told what the story meant. They needed to read the story and let it lead them to understanding or give them new ways to think about what they already knew. If I was able to do that, it is in no small part a result of reading memoirs like these:

The Space Between, by Virginia A. Simpson, and To Love What Is, by Alix Kates Shulman, can both be described as caregiver memoirs. Simpson writes about caring for her mother as her mother experiences illness and then dementia in her last years of life while Shulman writes about caring for her husband after a traumatic brain injury. Both examine what it means to be women balancing professional work and care work, facing frustration and finding new ways to love, and both highlight flaws (and occasional bright spots) in the provision of health care in the United States. Both also examine deep questions about quality of life, longevity, and happiness.

The Liars Club by Mary Karr, and All Over But the Shoutin’ by Rick Bragg each use memoir to tell stories about their childhoods and, especially in Bragg’s case his rise to success as an adult, in ways that depict the deep structures of class, and the cultural challenges of moving between classes. They also unveil cultural differences between north and south in ways that challenge stereotypical assumptions.

And just as there are memoirs that incorporate social analysis, there are some great social science and other nonfiction books that incorporate a lot of memoir-like storytelling.

Atul Gawande and Haider Warraich, in Being Mortal and Modern Death respectively, use liberal doses of anecdote to help readers understand the complexities of dying in the United States, and paint stark pictures of what we as a society need to do differently in order to help people die as well as they live. Advice for Future Corpses and Those Who Love Them, by Sallie Tisdale, does much the same thing, and even more personally, by focusing on the very micro-level questions about how we can best take care of those we love as they are dying, and how we, as we are dying, can be as clear as possible about what kind of care we want.

 

Elizabeth Anne Wood is a SUNY Chancellors Award–winning professor of sociology and Chair of the department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work at Nassau Community College in Garden City, NY. She is also Senior Strategist for Woodhull Freedom Foundation, the nation’s only human rights organization working full time to protect sexual freedom as a fundamental human right. She earned her PhD at Brandeis University in 1999 and has written critically about sexuality and society ever since. Born on an Army base in Kentucky, Wood grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and now divides her time between Queens, New York and Jamaica Plain, Boston. She is a devoted fan of Amtrak and an avowed cat person. Her first book, Bound: A Daughter, a Domme, and an End-of-Life Story, was just published by She Writes Press. Visit her at elizabethannewood.com

 

 

 

 

The post Social Change Through Memoir appeared first on Cathy Zane.

Fantasy or SciFi?

Guest Blog by Cheryl Campbell

When people learn I am a writer, their first question is usually: “What do you write?”

My answer: “Science fiction and fantasy novels.”

The next question is: “What’s the difference?”

The answer lies in genre conventions. A romance novel will have a love story. If it doesn’t have a love story, it’s not a romance novel. Can’t have a crime novel without a crime. Period. Those are basic but rather obvious genre conventions.

Common conventions for fantasy are things like magic (think Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings). They can also have fantastical creatures such as dragons, wizards, elves, dwarves, fairies, etc (Eragon, The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Peter Pan).

Some of the conventions for science fiction include space ships, aliens, advanced technology (examples Aliens, Ender’s Game, Star Trek).

You can also get genre blends where there is a mix of both conventions. A great example of this is Star Wars where you have Jedi’s using The Force (magic) plus advanced technology and space elements (Death Star, anyone?)

Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game) is oft-quoted with describing the difference between fantasy and scifi book cover art as fantasy having trees and scifi having rivets. Both are applicable as conventions for the genres and are spot on. Lord of the Rings had talking trees in it. Doesn’t get more fantasy than that! Rivets … Ender’s Game was set in space on space ships.

When I first started writing, I initially lumped my Burnt Mountain series into scifi. A friend and fan of Orson Scott Card who was familiar with the trees versus rivets quote pointed out to me that I was indeed writing trees instead of rivets. He was right, too. I had been writing fantasy (complete with magic and fantastical creatures) and had the genre’s name wrong in my head the entire time. Thankfully I still managed to hit the fantasy conventions even if I, as the author, was calling it by the wrong genre name. I had to laugh at my own mistake with this, but I still learned from it. My first five novels are fantasy, and my trilogy in progress falls squarely into science fiction, complete with aliens and advanced technology.

If you ever want to do a deeper dive into different genres, I recommend Shawn Coyne’s Story Grid website or book. Both have the same information. For genre conventions, read your favorite novels or watch your favorite movies and note the consistencies between them for particular elements. You’ll start to see certain things develop. For people I talk to about fantasy and science fiction, once they get the idea of magic (or trees) and advanced technology (or rivets) down, they start naming off movies or books and can identify them on their own for which genre they belong. It’s easy to distinguish between the two genres once you know what to look for in the story.

 

Cheryl Campbell was born in Louisiana and lived there and in Mississippi prior to moving to Maine. Her varied background includes art, herpetology, emergency department and critical care nursing, and computer systems. In the Spring of 2018 she returned to her interest in a wandering lifestyle which she first did during her graduate studies of garter snakes on Maine islands. She is now rarely in one spot for more than a week before relocating. She lives in Maine, when not nomadic, and has won five awards through the New England Book Festival for her fantasy series, Burnt Mountain. Cheryl is currently working on a science fiction trilogy. The first book of the trilogy, Echoes of War, releases on 10 Sept 2019 via SparkPress.  cherylscreativesoup.com Facebook and Instagram – cherylscreativesoup

The post Fantasy or SciFi? appeared first on Cathy Zane.

Her Word Against His

Examining Sexual Assault in YA Novels

Guest blog by Heather Cumiskey

Remember the cringeworthy scene in the movie Sixteen Candles when Caroline, the ever-popular high school senior, wakes up after a night of drinking to discover that while passed out, she’s had sex with Ted, the freshman geek and former virgin? It’s understood that until then, these two had never crossed paths. She looks ashamed and regretful at first. He then asks her if she thought he was any good—and astonishingly, they KISS!

Wait, WHAT? To be honest, my 16-year-old self didn’t bat an eye at this either.

Though this 1984 date rape storyline is a product of the era, disturbingly it perpetuates the notion that it’s okay for drinking and nonconsensual sex to go hand in hand. These things happen, right? Blame it on the alcohol and one crazy, wild night. For the majority of teens today, (I hope) this wouldn’t fly today, largely due to the growing awareness of sexual assault in the media, movies, and especially YA novels.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Fourteen-year-old Melinda, a high school freshman, dials 911 during a party to report a rape that has just taken place. Her own. Melinda’s distraught state blocks her words from coming out. Her 911 call, however, manages to bust up the party, resulting in arrests and severed friendships. She swiftly becomes the school pariah and spirals into a deep depression. It’s a haunting example of the devastating effect sexual assault has on a young woman’s life. Her stress of burying what’s happened slowly sabotages every aspect of her life, until she’s forced to come forward to save her former best friend from the same fate.

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

Annabel finds herself trapped in a dark upstairs bedroom during a high school party and is forcefully raped by her best friend’s boyfriend. When the lights go on, her best friend makes it clear to the rest of the party that Annabel’s a slut. Like Melinda, Annabel, too, keeps silent. Later, her flashbacks of the attack take a physical toll, plaguing her with panic attacks. There’s a dramatic shift in the girl she was before the rape to the girl she is now.

Both novels explore the complicated reasons why victims of sexual assault aren’t always able to come forward. The confusion and fear that manifests often paralyzes them to act. Swallowing their shameful secret seems easier than facing public scrutiny and becoming “that girl.”

Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake

What if the alleged rapist wasn’t some random guy at a party? In Blake’s novel, Mara’s twin brother, Owen, is accused of raping his girlfriend, who is also Mara’s best friend. As Mara grapples with who she can believe, the incident triggers her own trauma to surface, an incident that happened years before with one of her teachers. The novel confronts the difficult questions surrounding consent and victim blaming, as well as the damage that’s caused when we treat rape survivors with suspicion.

According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), the US Department of Justice reports that young women ages 16-19 are 4 times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.

With this sobering stat and many others on RAINN’s site, I find comfort in the undaunted storylines of rape and sexual assault in today’s YA novels. They especially excel in the exploration of what happens to a victim AFTER an assault; how suicidal and depressive thoughts tend to increase and forever change someone, and how friendships and families can unravel.

Once these characters are able to speak their truth, they are able to take back their power and slowly start their path to healing, leaving readers hopeful.

Young women like Caroline in the era of Sixteen Candles weren’t given that consideration. When it came to teen partying, they were written as powerless, careless creatures.

Maybe now our daughters and sons can escape that same fate.

 

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673, available every day 24/7. For more resources on sexual assault, visit RAINN or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

***

Heather Cumiskey is an award-winning author of I Like You Like This, a poignant YA duology about addiction, peer pressure, sexuality, and first love. The second book in the series, I Love You Like That comes out this month. Connect with her at HeatherCumiskey.com.

 

 

 

 

The post Her Word Against His appeared first on Cathy Zane.

Divorce Drama

Guest blog by Maren Cooper

When this post is published, I’ll be just two months out from my pub date for A Better Next, my debut novel. Writing is the fourth or fifth chapter in my own life’s book, and is an adventure I didn’t anticipate.

One of the themes of my book is divorce. I didn’t set out to write a novel about divorce, but rather, about a dual career couple dealing with the conflicts inherent in keeping confidential business matters out of their everyday conversation, and how that strains their relationship.

Jess Lawson, the protagonist, is going through a doozy of a marital crisis in the middle of a busy career challenge while trying to deal with her impending empty nest. Sound familiar? It should. As I developed the characters, the end of the marriage seemed inevitable. That caused me to do some quick research. Fifty percent of American marriages end in divorce. And, about the same percentage of married couples are dual career couples. We all know someone who has been through, is going through, or expects to go through a divorce. Without giving a dissertation on the cultural changes over the past few decades, it seems predictable that re-negotiated relationships go along with the upheaval.

Divorce looms large in women’s fiction. It is one of the dominant crises that may face a woman during her lifetime. Indeed, as the incidence is so high, it’s no wonder that we want to read about it. While divorce is a universal concept, it is also an extremely personal experience. No two are exactly alike. And, even in the most peaceful, drama lurks; if only imagined by outsiders looking in.

As I consider the books I’ve read over the past few years that address divorce, the stories vary. Cathy Zane writes of emotional and physical abuse in Better Than This. Memoirs like Kathryn Taylor’s Two Minus One with its surprise element are almost a cautionary tale for readers.

Liane Moriarity’s book Big Little Lies, picked up by Reese Witherspoon’s Book Club and then for the screen, clearly displays the challenges of second marriages after a divorce with children involved.  In I’m the One Who Got Away Andrea Jarrell masterfully depicts the consequences of marital dysfunction and divorce on children.

I enjoyed Marilyn Simon Rothstein’s book Husbands and Other Sharp Objects and Camile Pagan’s book Woman Last seen in Her Thirties for their humor. At some point, the divorced have to find the humor in their situation, right? When is it too soon, and when is it therapeutic?

I’m a fan of Mary Kay Andrews and enjoyed The Weekenders— again a woman doing her best to get through a painful time. Jen Lancaster’s book By the Numbers is also a good read about moving through a tough time with dignity.

How about Tayari Jones An American Marriage?  Wrongful incarceration certainly is a stressor to this couple who were, by all accounts, madly in love. How should we judge the wife who makes the decision not to wait for her man? A good book club discussion here.

And, my favorite for last. The Wife—Meg Wolitzer’s classic, made even more popular now by the sublime Ms. Glenn Close whose masterful portrayal of a woman wronged makes this reader grit her teeth hoping that she would have divorced the bastard had he not died!

Recently, Brooke Warner featured Tayari Jones on her podcast Write-Minded and I remember a comment Jones made about how authors early on write the “obvious story.” I wonder if this concept fits as an explanation for why so many women write and read about divorce. They see it, or they experience it so it becomes something they write and read about. Sometimes for therapy, sometimes to better understand it, sometimes because they see it in relationships around them.

It’s all about family drama. Divorce has it all. Every social class and every family member is affected. Whether the break-down of the marriage was in the works for years and relief abounds once it is finally acknowledged legally, or it’s a shock that requires time to adjust to the fact of it; all parties will respond in their own way. Stages or grief come to mind. Some will go through re-invention or renewal, some will be stuck trying to sort out what went wrong. After all, people still refer to “divorce survivors” or “victims of divorce.” Years later each member affected remembers it differently. Who was wronged, who came out of it better off? All involved carry baggage from it.

Yep, books about divorce will be written and read because they reflect life around us. Drama.

 

Maren Cooper grew up in the Midwest and now resides in Minnesota. During her long career as a health services executive, she led a number of organizations in their efforts to respond to the challenges of new, competitive business models, improve their operating systems, and optimize their governance structures. A lifelong reader, Cooper recently discovered the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, began taking classes, and slowly unearthed the aspiring writer inside her. She writes best on the shore of Lake Superior, where she retreats frequently to hike, watch the deer devour her hostas, and needlepoint. Visit her at https://marencooper.com/

The post Divorce Drama appeared first on Cathy Zane.

The Truth of Perfection

Guest blog by Deborah Burns

My other-worldly beautiful mother seemed perfect.

A chiseled work of art, she evoked the eternal female ideal, standing tall as a distant goddess on a pedestal that only-child me devotedly danced around. Paying homage and idealizing her in all ways was my default. How could I not, when such a queen was before me?

Despite the appeal of my own soulful brown eyes versus her baby blues; of my bittersweet chocolate hair versus her seductive red mane; deep down I felt that I could not live up to what she must have expected from me. Maybe, just maybe, if I looked more like her she would love me more? With such secret thoughts floating in my child’s mind, it’s no wonder that I was a late bloomer, someone who very slowly emerged from the shadow of such physical magnificence and into her own.

I realize now just how futile the pursuit of perfection actually is, but I certainly didn’t realize it then. To add to my list of realities, my mother was a tad narcissistic (either by nature, or because everyone in her orbit automatically put her first), so it’s easy to see how things could get mighty tangled.

Now, in my own midlife and twenty-five years after my mother’s death, I wonder how chasing my perfect role model then—one who was unattainable from the start—impacted my quotient for motivation and happiness. What turns on and off in a young mind when all she hears is how much she resembles her father instead of her flawless mother; when no matter how hard the trying, she knows from birth that she will never live up to that?

Actually, despite the obvious downsides, I realize now that the situation was full of early learning that served to make my grown-up years more successful than they might have otherwise been.

It all actually made me more motivated, not less. Somehow, I unconsciously focused on what really matters, and I became a person driven to succeed in other ways. I gave into my natural curiosity and intuition; I quietly developed other aspects of myself; I read and learned and focused on my strengths.

It made me understand that in addition to the laughability of pursuing perfection, the pursuit (of anything, really) takes us out of whatever happiness is possible within any present moment. I grew to become attuned to the truth of mindfulness before I ever learned its name.

And, finally, it also made me really see that attractiveness—imperfect by definition—is so much better than being too beautiful, as my mother was. When you are, your features are your calling card, a fact that immediately minimized all the other fabulous qualities that made her her (and that make me me and you you). Beauty as anyone’s foundation only builds a house of cards that is doomed to topple.

The ultimate paradox of perfection that philosophers have been writing about and debating for eons is simply this: if something were indeed perfect, it could not improve. Since all progress requires continuous improvement, nothing, in fact, can ever be perfect or complete.

Even art—when something is visually or emotionally stunning, the viewer is drawn into the scene, actively participating and complementing what is seen or felt. So, for a fluid life that is always in motion and evolving for the better, I realize that the only path is to fully embrace the notion that all is flawed.

In that vein, it was my process of writing a memoir—as an imperfect observer of the relationship between my mother and myself—that allowed me to see my mother as a woman of secrets who, despite my tendency to idealize her, was well aware of her own flawed perfection. Finally, I was able to humanize her.

I still honor and love her, but I now understand the totality of who she once was, chips, cracks, and all. And through that creative writing process, I actually proved that those philosophers were indeed correct.

Somehow, writing the truth of us together managed to make everything better, and in so doing, ironically made her more perfect than she was in life.

Now she is whole.

 *  *  *

Mine was a creative journey that ultimately transformed my life. By unraveling the truth of my mother, I was able to reclaim my own, aided by insights from some non-fiction books I read along the way.

All fall into the self-help category and were required bedside reading for me while I was writing. If you struggle with living up to an image or a story you’ve told yourself—or if you find yourself trapped in a perfectionist bubble—these books could be worthwhile:

Never Good Enough: Freeing Yourself from the Chains of Perfectionism by Monica Ramirez Basco

Present Ove Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living by Shauna Niequist

Making Peace with Imperfection: Discover Your Perfectionism Type, End the Cycle of Criticism, and Embrace Self-Acceptance by Elliot D. Cohen, PhD and William J. Knaus, EdD

How to Be an Imperfectionist: The New Way to Self-Acceptance, Fearless Living and Freedom from Perfectionism by Stephen Guise

 

Deborah Burns is a media executive-turned-author of Saturday’s Child, a memoir about growing up with her unconventional mother that Kirkus Reviews hails as “Devilishly sharp.” A must-read for every daughter who’s ever wondered where her mother ends and she begins, Saturday’s Child earned 300 million media impressions since its April 2019 release—featured by brands like Entertainment Weekly, Parade, Refinery29, Forbes, PopSugar, and more, The Hollywood Reporter recommended that Saturday’s Child be movie or series. Visit her at https://deborahburnsauthor.com/

The post The Truth of Perfection appeared first on Cathy Zane.