Jeffrey Ricker's Blog, page 54

Two days to win a copy of DETOURS

Hey there! I'm on vacation right now (specifically, I'm on a cruise ship leaving Cozumel even as I type this), but I wanted to remind you that you have until November 6 to enter to win a signed copy of Detours. Just email me at jeffrey@jeffrey-ricker.com and tell me about your favorite place you've ever visited. What are you waiting for?

All I ever wanted

We're leaving on vacation tomorrow morning. I suppose I should finish packing, but my brain is moving a mile a minute and I'm thinking about all the things I still need to do that have nothing to do with getting ready for holiday. Fortunately, we're going on a cruise to the western Caribbean, so wardrobe doesn't matter much—shorts, t-shirts, and swim trunks are just about all I've packed. Unfortunately (sort of), it's a gay tour group, which means they'll all probably be more fashionable than me. This does not take much, mind you.

What I'm really looking forward to? The two days spent at sea. No cell phone, no email, no Internet (yes, the ship has wireless, but at the price of a king's ransom, I'm content to do without). I'm bringing my laptop with me (yes, really) and hoping to do some writing.

And boy, do I have a lot of writing to do. I've been struggling for the past week or so with a ghost story that I've finally finished (pending feedback from my ever-reliable beta reader whose first name starts with an apostrophe). I'm going to completely miss the deadline on another call for submissions. I'm saddened, but I'm also keeping my eye on another deadline on the horizon: the next book, which, now that I've finished with the ghost story, I'm turning back to.

I have a lot of work ahead of me, moreso than I can do in those two days at sea, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to try.

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Want to win a copy of DETOURS?

Then you should head over to my website—did you know I have a website? It's true; check it out—and find out how you can win a copy of Detours before it comes out.

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"42, that sounds promising"

Today, I am the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.

No, I'm not being full of myself. I'm just saying that I'm 42. Apart from the whole ultimate-question business, it's probably going to be a quiet day. I have yoga class in about 45 minutes, I have a Groupon for a massage that I need to use before it expires, and for dinner I want to go to Schlafly Bottleworks (this will be news to Mikey because when he asked me last night, I said, "Ugh, I don't know"), because sticky toffee pudding is probably the best birthday cake.

And I have to finish that damn ghost story. I think I'm going to change the name to that: "That Damn Ghost Story." It has a nice ring, don't you think?

There's no rest for the wicked or the weary after that. There's a closed call for another story that's due at the end of the month, and I have no idea if I'm going to make that. I have two ideas for that one and don't know which one to pick. Then there's a story due at the end of the year that I've already started, and I'm looking forward to writing that one. The anthology is an erotic one, but my story is going to fall more on the other side of steamy. Heck, it's going to involve a Tony Bennett song.

And then there's the little matter of the first draft of the second novel due in December.

I know, I know… Don't Panic.

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"Well, that could have been handled better, NBA" or "Phoning it in"

As you may or may not know, Lauren Myracle's novel Shine was named a finalist for a National Book Award in young adult literature… and then just as quickly un-named. It turned out the foundation had erred, and instead of keeping her novel on the list, asked her to withdraw it. She agreed.

Let the shitstorm commence.

Over here, the wife of Lauren's agent has a "backstage pass to this travesty." For the record, do not convey notification of award finalists by telephone. Clearly, it would have been better for the foundation to take a stance and stick with it, as opposed to this back-and-forth of "we're keeping it" and "we're adding another" and "would you please withdraw your book" and "here's a nice donation to the Matthew Shepard Foundation to make up for the fact that we don't seem to have our act together" (and this is probably the one good thing that has come of this apparent fustercluck). Shine is about a girl who tries to solve an antigay hate crime in her small North Carolina town, so the donation is completely appropriate.

Lauren Myracle's books, it turns out, are frequently on lists of the most-challenged and most-banned books. Admittedly, I haven't read any of them. That's about to change, though. I've ordered Shine from my trusty local bookseller (that's Left Bank Books, by the way; check them out if you're in the STL) I'm looking forward to reading it, because I like things that most people object to.

And being a bestseller is the best revenge.

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Work in Progress

Taking a page from 'Nathan, here's a peek inside the folder on my computer labeled "3. WORKING" (in case you're interested, the others are "1. PUBLISHED" and "2. DONE").

A Murder of Crows
Amazons
Awakening
Celestine
dog
fiveminutefiction
Haven
hearts
Seven Boxes
story (yes, really, that's the filename—I haven't opened the file since 2002; I have no idea what that one's about)
Straightening Up
Tea
The Client
The Curious Case of Buttons (it's about a cat named Buttons—no, really)
The Messenger (this one will never see the light of day, I assure you)
The Teacher

And just for today, I'll tell you about the files in the "2. DONE" folder, because I have a feeling some of them really aren't—done, that is:

Blackout
By the Numbers
Heroine
Normal
Reunion (that one's not done so much as dead and buried)
Something like Heaven
The Long Ride Home
The Sidekick
Waiting Room
Walking (that one I originally wrote in 1988—I cringe at the thought of opening it and reading what I thought was good 23 years ago)

This doesn't even include the stories that have been started and exist in a file called "ideas.doc"—one of those in particular I am really eager to start, but it'll have to wait until next year, once I clear my current projects list.

So, since 'Nathan made the same offer, if you name one of these, I'll tell you what it's about. Mostly. Maybe.

Holy Rollers Detours, Batman!

I swear, people are going to start thinking Rob Byrnes is my other twin. (The first twin being, of course, 'Nathan, since we appear in an inordinate number of anthologies together. No, this is not by design; we just seem lucky that way.)

Anyhow. InsightOutBooks is presenting our books as a featured bundle. Is it wrong that I'm tempted to order this? Rob let me read the first few chapters of Holy Rollers while he was working on it, and it was a hoot. I must admit, the description of my book presented on the aforementioned page makes it sound like more of a laugh riot than it actually is, but there are plenty of humorous moments. And for the record, the only person in the book riding through life on a cloud would be Joel's mother, and that's only because she's dead.

But anyway, what are you waiting for? Go pre-order. Go on, really.

Holly Rollers Detours, Batman!

I swear, people are going to start thinking Rob Byrnes is my other twin. (The first twin being, of course, 'Nathan, since we appear in an inordinate number of anthologies together. No, this is not by design; we just seem lucky that way.)

Anyhow. InsightOutBooks is presenting our books as a featured bundle. Is it wrong that I'm tempted to order this? Rob let me read the first few chapters of Holy Rollers while he was working on it, and it was a hoot. I must admit, the description of my book presented on the aforementioned page makes it sound like more of a laugh riot than it actually is, but there are plenty of humorous moments. And for the record, the only person in the book riding through life on a cloud would be Joel's mother, and that's only because she's dead.

But anyway, what are you waiting for? Go pre-order. Go on, really.

No place like home

My old house is for sale.

Michael and I noticed this while we were walking through Tower Grove South last weekend on our way to the grand opening of The Civil Life microbrewery. The route took us past my old street, and my house, the fourth down from the corner on the right, had a for-sale sign in the front yard. On the way back home, suitably fortified with a few pints of Jake's best brews, I pedaled past to take a closer look and noticed that apart from the porch being painted a different color and new plantings in the flowerbeds, not much looked different.

Michael's a real estate hawk, so naturally he found it right away on Zillow and sent me the link. Inside, the rooms were painted different colors, and of course the furniture was different, and out back the new owner had put in a nice new patio, made the porch into a three-season room and painted the garage a really nice sage green.

There aren't many places I've lived that I miss. I don't miss any of my childhood homes, nor most of my apartments in college or afterwards. There was one above Boone Tavern in Columbia that I had briefly after graduation while I was looking for my first real job. I barely had furniture to fill any of the rooms, but it was a corner unit on a downtown street, where I could look outside and see the crowd gathering in front of the Blue Note before a show. I don't suppose I lived there long enough to miss it, just long enough to wish I'd lived there while I was actually in college, because it was a cool location and closer to campus. In hindsight, I probably would have spent too much time going out instead of doing homework.

I also had what I like to consider the only cheap apartment in Clayton, a nice suburb just outside the St. Louis city limits. It was a corner unit also, with the front windows facing a courtyard and the bedroom windows facing a huge tree where crows liked to perch (not so much fun when you want to sleep past seven thirty on a Saturday morning, but pretty all the same). It had the holy grail of apartment living: free garage parking. It was also within walking distance of the Library, Ltd., a venerable independent bookstore that unfortunately sold out to Borders in the late '90s and eventually got knocked down to make way for Centene's office tower. Ah, progress.

Those were rentals, though. The house in Tower Grove South was all mine. Well, it was mostly the credit union's, but it was just me and the cats—and eventually, the dog. I think it was the first place I lived where I felt like a proper adult, and looking at the pictures in the online real estate listing, I was surprised to feel a fleeting sense of nostalgia for it. It was an old house, and it had its issues, but it had character.

I spend a lot of time writing about home in my stories. At first it wasn't conscious, and maybe it still isn't. I know that it's a recurring theme with me, though, so I know to look out for it. It comes from growing up in a military family and moving around a lot, a habit that I carried into my early adulthood.

It's still a nebulous concept for me, the idea of having someplace to consider yourself rooted. What does home mean to you?

My Trouble with 'Help'

I feel a bit like an interloper wading into this topic, but I saw The Help this weekend (as my friend Pamela would say, catch thy knee), and my reaction to it is, well… complicated.

First off, a disclaimer: I saw the movie, but I haven't read the book by Kathryn Stockett. So I can only comment on the film. I am reluctant to wade into the deeper and hazardous waters of a discussion of its messages of racial inequality and the criticism of it as a work that seems designed to make white Americans feel better about a time of gross injustice in our country's history, or about its depiction of women's lives and the limited roles available to any of them in the early '60s South.

I'm reluctant for three reasons: I'm not a person of color, I'm not a woman, and I'm not from the South.

One thing I am, though, is a writer. By the same token, I'm reluctant to criticize another writer's work because I know how much that hurts. But….

The one thing that jumped out at me about The Help after I finished watching it was it has the wrong title.

To quote Pamela yet again, pause… consider… continue.

For those who haven't seen it [POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD], "the help" refers to the black women working as maids in privileged Southern households. But—there's always a but, isn't there?—the stories of those women are told through Skeeter, a young white woman, just graduated from college, who wants to be a writer and also chafes against the constraints of her family, her upbringing, and the casual racism of her shallow, privileged friends. Skeeter ends up interviewing her friends' maids for a book that rocks the community and creates trouble for some of the maids, but lands Skeeter a job in New York by the end of the film.

See, the movie's about Skeeter and her racist friends, not about the maids whose stories she co-opts. This is my problem: it feels to me like Skeeter, perhaps through good intentions, ends up exploiting the maids in a somewhat subtler but no less real way. And—this is the kicker for me—one of the maids wants to be a writer. That would have been a story that would have felt more genuine to me, I think. It would have made their struggle for justice the centerpiece, as opposed to a subplot.

Have you seen the movie? What did you think?