Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 200

This Is A Good Book Thursday: The ReReaders’ Edition

Have you ever re-read a book you loved and found it less?  Not the ones you loved when you were a kid and find wanting now that you’re an adult, a book you read for the first time lately and then went back for a reread.  I’m having that experience, and it’s weird.  It’s not as though I liked those books for the plots (although the plots were good), I liked the characters, too, but now I find my mind wandering and not finishing.  Yet I’ve returned to books I read twenty years ago and still found them compelling.

What makes one book re-readable and another one not?

Oh, and what did you read this week?

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Big Book

This thing is huge.  I’ve got so many plots running here with so many people, it’s Game of Thrones with demons.  Actually, I’ve never seen Game of Thrones, I just know what I’ve read about it, so maybe Dickens is a better comparison.  The odd thing is, this time I know the major plot, it’s the details that are kicking my butt, which is the opposite of the usual progress.  Also I keep losing pieces that I’ve written and put somewhere.  

Writing books is hard, she whined.  

Anyway, it may be quieter than usual in here this week because I am writing and then on Tuesday getting a houseguest (YAY) so you’ll have to talk amongst yourselves.  Or whatever.  Good Book Thursday and Cherry Saturday will go up as usual, however.  Now I must go finish painting the floor in the guestroom.  One damn thing after another.  

So how’s by you?

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Cherry Saturday, Oct. 7, 2017

Today is Random Acts of Poetry Day.

I think you’re supposed to write poetry on post-its and photos and leave it stickied or scattered around, but that seems to me to be self-serving littering.  Let’s face it, most people are not good poets.  I, for example, suck at poetry.  Love it, can’t write it.  But oh, do I love it.

Robert Frost was evidently a bastard to live with, but he wrote beautiful poetry.  Every place I’ve ever lived, I’ve painted or posted my favorite lines of his on a wall (it’s from “Two Tramps at Mudtime”):

Only where love and need are one,

And the work is play for mortal stakes,

Is the deed ever really done

For Heaven and the future’s sakes.

The whole poem is incredibly beautiful, but it’s those last lines that gave me my life philosophy on work: if I can’t be passionate about what I need to do, I need to do something I’m passionate about instead.   Yes, I know that’s impossible for most people, I’m just happy it’s worked out for me twice.  

So how are you going to commit random acts of poetry?  Posting some here is a non-littering method.  I’m going to try to figure out where in my practically wall-less off I can put those four lines (there are walls, there are just windows and doors in 90% of them).  Maybe on a Post-It . . .

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This is a Good Book for Thursday in the Fall

The seasons are changing.  Cuddle up with a good book (and some pumpkin custard).

[Advance notice: Trust Me On This will be $1.99 on Bookbub (and every place else) on Nov. 14.  Why anybody would want a decades old book, I have no idea, but hey, it’ll be two bucks.]

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I Hate This Song but I Sing Along to It Anyway Rant

 

You know those songs you sing along to and hate yourself for because the lyrics are about awful people but the music is catchy?  

That’s how I feel about the Pina Colada song.

“I was tired of my lady, we´d been together too long

Like a worn-out recording, of a favorite song”
Okay, that happens.  Now tell me how you rediscovered the magic in your relationship.
 

“So while she lay there sleeping, I read the paper in bed

And in the personals column, there was this letter I read“
You dickhead.  You’re bored, so you’re looking for a way to cheat?  While she’s sleeping beside you?  Really, dickhead.
 
“If you like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain

If you´re not into yoga, if you have half a brain

If you like making love at midnight, in the dunes of the cape

I´m the love that you´ve looked for, write to me, and escape“
I don’t know who this person is, but I hate him or her already.  “Half a brain”?  Let me insult you before we meet.  Also making love in the dunes?  Have you ever tried that?  You get sand everywhere.  There’s not enough KY in the world.  
 
“I didn´t think about my lady, I know that sounds kind of mean“
Kina of?  KIND OF?  She’s right there beside you, you asshat.
 

“But me and my old lady, had fallen into the same old dull routine“
And obviously it’s better to cheat than to work at making the relationship new.   
 

“So I wrote to the paper, took out a personal ad

And though I´m nobody´s poet, I thought it wasn´t half bad“
You were wrong.
 


“Yes, I like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain

I´m not much into health food, I am into champagne“
“Hi, I’m not healthy and I drink a lot.  Want to have my baby?”
 

“I´ve got to meet you by tomorrow noon, and cut through all this red tape

At a bar called O’Malley’s, where we´ll plan our escape“
A bar.  Sounds like a good place for both of you.
 
 
“So I waited with high hopes, then she walked in the place

I knew her smile in an instant, I knew the curve of her face

It was my own lovely lady, and she said, “Oh, it´s you“
Ha.  A happy ending.  They’re both cheaters.  Bleah.
 

“And we laughed for a moment, and I said, “I never knew”
“That you liked Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain

And the feel of the ocean, and the taste of champagne

If you like making love at midnight, in the dunes of the cape

You´re the love that I´ve looked for, come with me, and escape“
You know why you never knew?  Because you idiots don’t talk to each other.  Relationships need work.  Also, you deserve each other.

 


Songwriter: Rupert Holmes
Escape lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

 

I’m still waiting for the follow-up song, “We Caught Each Other Cheating While Drunk From Too Many Sex On The Beach Cocktails and Killed Each Other”.
 
There’s another one with an insanely catchy tune that’s some jerk singing about how he cheats on his girlfriend and lies to her about and then laughs.   I can’t remember the title, but it arouses the same fury in me.
 
I hate myself when I sing along, but “The Pina Colada Song” is on the Guardians soundtrack which is the only disc in my car, so I do it all the time.  Also, the drink is quite good.  Grrrr.  
 
Any of you have songs like that?  

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Cherry Saturday, Sept. 30, 2017

September is Happy Cat Month:

Or not.

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Names. Argh.

So after three people said they had a hard time keeping the names Dag and Rab straight, I knew I had to change them.  Rab was too much a character for me already to change, but Dag was too non-Korean a name to work, so that was the one to change.  Then I found out that most of the Korean demons were damp women, so I co-opted a Korean supernatural entity named Jeoseung, which made him Jeo.  Jeo and Rab.  Not the same.  

And then I started rereading the first act and remembered that my murder victim was Joey.   Jeo and Joey?  No.  So Joey had to change (he’s now Jimmy, close enough) but all of this is, of course, shifting characterization for me.  Jeo seems smarter than Dag for some reason, and I always thought Dag was smart, so that’s odd.  And Jimmy doesn’t seem as big as Joey was, although of course he is.  Names, do not mess with them.

In other news, here’s your beta draft of Act One..  If you want to comment, tell me the stuff I need to fix and the stuff I need to keep, no rewriting.  If you don’t want to comment, that’s good, too.  Have a nice day.

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This Is A Good Book Thursday: Autumn is Coming

Although you wouldn’t know it by the weather, it was in the 80s here yesterday.  (Yes, I know it’s spring in other parts of Argh Land.  I should stop doing weather reports.)  This week I read Al Franken: Giant of the Senate.  Good stuff.  Finishing up Helen Mirren’s biography as research for Anemone in the Liz books: not as good so moving on to looking for other sources.  Mostly reading my own book and wishing it were done.  Argh.

So what did you read this week?

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The Unknowable Patience of Readers

 

 I’m looking at Nita’s book in big picture mode now, and frankly, the fun stuff starts in the second act.  Well, it always does because first acts are slow because you have to do some set-up, and you have to tell the story while you’re doing the set-up, and the set-up becomes a weight penalty for the story.  And right now my first act is over 35,000 words.  Since I have a sneaking suspicion this is going to come out over 100,000 words, that’s not the end of the world, but I do worry that’s too long before the Good Stuff starts.  

So the first act is one day (35,000 words is one day, ye gods) and at the end of it, Nita believes in the supernatural.  Then the second act is Nita coping with that and finally starting to uncover the weird on the island with the help of Nick, Button, Rab, Dag, and Max, so there’s team building and Button shoots Max, and Nick and Nita hit the sheets and Nita gets a hell hound and finds out she has powers, stuff happens that moves the plot so it’s a brand new story, and then something huge happens at the midpoint and it’s really a brand new story, and then there’s another big shift at the last turning point, and Nita harrows Hell and gets a triumphant ending.  

What I’m saying is, once I get the reader through the first act, the book moves as fast as Nita does.  And what I have to figure out is if that first act is too slow to keep people reading.  It’s no good saying, “But wait, it gets really good later,” because if it’s too slow, there won’t be a later, people will leave.  

Frankly at this point I’ve read that first act too many times to know.  Frankly, at this point, you all have read that first act too many times to know, too.  Krissie’s book is finished, maybe I’ll make her read it.  That’s what friends are for.  Argh.

 

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Cthulhu and the Girls

So the Girls in the Basement sent up that Cthulhu line, and since so many readers hadn’t heard of it, I seriously considered cutting it.  Except I didn’t want to.  I didn’t know WHY I didn’t want to, but I knew it had to stay.   

And then later when Rab brought Nita’s clothes back from her house to Nick’s apartment, he also brought her crocheted Cthulhu neck roll, which was a surprise.  So at that point I had to start paying attention..   I know why I’m drawn to Cthulhu, the monster dreaming beneath the sea who fuels the subconscious anxiety of humanity, but I wasn’t sure why Nita was.

And then when I thought about it, it was obvious: Most of Nita lies dreaming, too, all her power trapped asleep in her subconscious.   (The Girls are geniuses.)  And because her mother suppressed that power, made her repress it, she’d see it subconsciously as a monster within her.   So I went back to the neck roll and wondered where she’d gotten it, although the story’s set on Demon Island, so probably anywhere.  But I wanted it to be special, so I thought maybe her great-grandmother had made it for her.  Her mother is nuts (for good reason, it turns out) and her grandmother’s nuts (for no good reason, sometimes you’re just born a selfish nutjob), but her great-grandmother is pretty solid, considering she’s half-demon.  So Great-Grandma Keres made her the Cthulhu neck roll, which little Nita probably carried around like a doll.  And of course I’m going to have to make one now.  I think I’ll start with this pattern, and evil it up some with hooded eyes. (Wait, wait, hooded eyes?  No wonder she falls for Nick.  My God, the Girls are GENIUSES).  So it should be cuddly but not cute.  Much like Nita.

And I’m quite sure she’d have a My Little Cthulhu.  He comes with two screaming people who fit into his hands.  And you could buy the six piece My Little Victims set if you wanted more.  Which of course you would.  (Don’t get excited, the only place you can find these now is on eBay for a whole lot of money (if new) or just a lot of money (if used).  The Little Victims set alone is over twenty bucks.  I want it but I spent enough buying a used My Little Cthulhu.  Hey, it’s RESEARCH.  (This is how I ended up with a kitchen full of art deco china, too.)

There’s so much more Cthulhu out there, most of which won’t have anything to do with Nita, although I bet she has a T-shirt made from this material.  At least I’m going to have a T-shirt made from that material, even though I already have a great Cthulhu T-shirt.

Of course, now I’ll have to make all of this pay off in the story down the line, but I’m loving it.  Well, I would: I’ve got a “Vote Cthulhu/Why Settle For the Lesser Evil” sticker on my car from the 2016 election, so consider the source.  (I’ve also got a “Choose Love/Dogs Against Romney” sticker on there.  I can hold a grudge.)

So it turns out that Cthulhu is Nita’s spirit animal.  It’s all so clear now.

And the Girls are GENIUSES.

Oh, and if reading the original Lovecraft story isn’t to your taste (Lovecraft was, no surprise, weird as hell plus the white-man’s burden racism of his  time), have a Cthulhu not-a-kid’s book (It starts in the lower right hand corner of the linked page):

:

 

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