Ruth Harris's Blog, page 2
November 26, 2021
The Big Six-Oh!
THE BIG SIX-OH!
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“Loved it! One ex-cop who doesn’t want help solving a murder. One current wife whose help he needs to catch the killer. One couple meant for each other who fall in love all over again after decades of marriage. Funny, exciting and very romantic.”
Blake Weston, is a smart, savvy, no BS former fashion editor. Her handsome, sexy husband, Ralph Marino, is a très James Bond ex-cop and head of security for an international media company.
When Blake buys a faux Chanel bag from a sidewalk vendor, the danger starts—but doesn’t end—with an attempted mugging in broad daylight. From there, it escalates to face-to-face encounters with a gun-toting jailbird, a lovelorn Afghan war lord, and a glamorous celeb chef in a red balconette bra.
Meanwhile, Ralph is about to hit the Big Six Oh! and he’s not happy about it. Not that Blake is exactly thrilled either. Especially now that she suspects Ralph might be cheating on her. Again.
Right now when Blake and Ralph are forced to work together by his über-neurotic boss to bring down a deadly global counterfeiting ring—and save Ralph’s job.
“Funny and charming and a delight to read! Really yummy. It is a rare author who can bring to the page such vivid and believable characters with so much sly wit and style.”
“Perfect for those of us not looking for bubble gum chick lit. The relationship between savvy Blake Weston and her ex-cop husband Ralph Marino is realistic and down to earth. And yet the extraordinary circumstances they find themselves in kept me flipping the pages well past my allotted reading time. If you're looking for a wonderfully fast-paced read that will take your mind off whatever you're stressing about, Harris's The Big Six-Oh! will fit the bill.”
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November 10, 2021
DOWNHILL (OR, NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE)From carbon paper t...
DOWNHILL (OR, NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE)
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From carbon paper to carbon emissions.
From Edward R. Murrow to Tucker Carlson.
From Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly to the Kardashians.
From Julia Child to the Golden Corral.
From Ernest Hemingway to Go The F*ck To Sleep.
From Dr. Freud to Dr. Phil.
From I Like Ike to The Donald and Sleepy Joe.
No wonder I’m so p*ssed off. Not just because I’m about to turn sixty and not just today, but just about all the time and just about everything.
On line at the supermarket where I have to remember to bring my own bag and pack my own groceries.
At the gas station where I have to pump my own gas.
On hold listening to the robot telling me my call is important.
At cellphones and their rude, clueless users.
At Metro cards that don’t work on first swipe.
At double length buses that make Manhattan’s terrible traffic worse.
At a decade that began with Enron and ended with Bernie Madoff & Too Big To Fail.
You name it, it bugs me.
And, right now, you could add Ralph to the list.
Just because we’d been married since just about forever does it really mean he had to go on a diet, start exercising, and buy a fancy new wardrobe?
How come he had more—and more expensive—grooming products than I did?
Was it really fair that, turning sixty, he looked like George Clooney while I was beginning to look like Phyllis Diller?
Why did women who weren’t even born the year we got married look at Ralph with goo-goo eyes—and why did Ralph have to look back?
I wondered what happened to Ralph and me. The sizzle was gone, domesticity had set in, time and gravity had had their way with both of us.
Or was it just me?
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October 13, 2021
The Big Six-Oh!
Facing The Big Six-Oh — with a reality-check from the Glam Gourmet.“I made him into a success and what thanks do I get? A divorce plus that witch Lorraine is the thanks I get," Charlotte said bitterly. "I’m telling you this because I don’t want one other woman to go through what I’ve been through. I can’t help but notice the way Ms. Hooters looks at Ralph. He looks back, too.”“It’s that obvious?” I said, my stomach coming unmoored.“Are you blind or just stupid?” Charlotte said briskly, sounding almost like my no-nonsense mother. “I get the picture because I’ve been there. I could help you get Ralph to pay attention to you, too.”“Red balconette bras aren’t my style.”“Maybe they should be.”Maybe she was right.
Charlotte’s words reverberated ominously in the echo chambers of my psyche. I knew perfectly well that the same things (ditched, dumped & divorced) that had happened to her could (and did) happen to other women. Maybe even including me. Especially now that Ralph was showing definite signs of restlessness.I began to face reality, as any sane woman would, with an inventory.My height was average and my weight was (more or less) what it always had been. Small, straight nose, bright blue eyes, fair skin sun-damaged from Bermuda vacations and Maine summers back in the prehistoric era before anyone ever heard of SPF 15. Crow’s feet when I laughed, which was often, and deepening lines that bracketed the area from nose to mouth. My hair was blonde — OK, greyish-blonde. The part was getting wider every year and the page boy I’d worn since high school hadn’t had a good day since Reagan was President. My makeup consisted of a quick floof of powder and a dab of Revlon’s Primrose Pink, a variation of the shade I’d worn since my parents — finally! — had allowed me to wear lipstick. My body had gone from lithe and limber to Viewer Discretion Advised. I had clothes that were older than half the population and wore underwear that looked like it came from a nunnery. I tried not to shrink from what time had wrought but, after almost a quarter of a century of marriage, I wondered what Ralph saw when he looked at me. A reminder of years and even decades gone by? A reflection of the almost-sixty-year-old self he wanted to escape/deny, a reality that was about to cost him his job? Even so, did he really think diet and exercise, a renovated physique plus a snazzy wardrobe and/or a hot romance would equal a new self and a fresh start? I knew perfectly well he did, so when Charlotte offered me a session with her hairstylist, Miguel, and her makeup artist, Sondra, I got off my high horse. I thanked her and accepted.The fact was, I loved Ralph and wanted him to stay interested in me (even though he could drive me crazy).
"A totally fabulous, LMAO adventure with some of the best one-liners I've ever read!!!"
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Charlotte’s words reverberated ominously in the echo chambers of my psyche. I knew perfectly well that the same things (ditched, dumped & divorced) that had happened to her could (and did) happen to other women. Maybe even including me. Especially now that Ralph was showing definite signs of restlessness.I began to face reality, as any sane woman would, with an inventory.My height was average and my weight was (more or less) what it always had been. Small, straight nose, bright blue eyes, fair skin sun-damaged from Bermuda vacations and Maine summers back in the prehistoric era before anyone ever heard of SPF 15. Crow’s feet when I laughed, which was often, and deepening lines that bracketed the area from nose to mouth. My hair was blonde — OK, greyish-blonde. The part was getting wider every year and the page boy I’d worn since high school hadn’t had a good day since Reagan was President. My makeup consisted of a quick floof of powder and a dab of Revlon’s Primrose Pink, a variation of the shade I’d worn since my parents — finally! — had allowed me to wear lipstick. My body had gone from lithe and limber to Viewer Discretion Advised. I had clothes that were older than half the population and wore underwear that looked like it came from a nunnery. I tried not to shrink from what time had wrought but, after almost a quarter of a century of marriage, I wondered what Ralph saw when he looked at me. A reminder of years and even decades gone by? A reflection of the almost-sixty-year-old self he wanted to escape/deny, a reality that was about to cost him his job? Even so, did he really think diet and exercise, a renovated physique plus a snazzy wardrobe and/or a hot romance would equal a new self and a fresh start? I knew perfectly well he did, so when Charlotte offered me a session with her hairstylist, Miguel, and her makeup artist, Sondra, I got off my high horse. I thanked her and accepted.The fact was, I loved Ralph and wanted him to stay interested in me (even though he could drive me crazy).
"A totally fabulous, LMAO adventure with some of the best one-liners I've ever read!!!"
KindleiBooksNookKoboGooglePlay
October 11, 2021
Ruth Harris's bio
Who is Ruth Harris?
No, Ruth does not write her own reviews.
Ruth is a multi-million-copy New York Times bestselling author and Romantic Times award winner for “Best Contemporary.” Her books have been translated into 19 languages, published in 25 countries around the world, and were major selections of the Literary Guild and the Book-Of-The-Month Club who agreed with raves from prominent reviewers.
They said that about Ruth? Yes, really!“ONE OF THE FRANKEST, MOST STYLISH, AND MOST COMPELLING VOICES IN CONTEMPORARY FICTION, HARRIS WRITES WITH INTELLECT, INSIGHT AND HUMOR." (Chicago Sun-Times) “SPECTACULAR, RICHLY PLOTTED. Racing to a shocking climax, this glittering novel is first-class entertainment.” (NY Times) “SUPERB! Ruth Harris is a talented writer who has come up with a novel so entertaining and interesting you won’t have to hide if someone asks you what you’re reading.” (West Coast Review of Books) “SUPERIOR FICTION WITH A ZINGING SENSE OF STYLE. A skillfully written page-turner.” (Ft Lauderdale News Sun-Sentinel) “COMPELLING! RUTH HARRIS IS IN A CLASS BY HERSELF!” (Literary Guild) “Well-written. fast-paced and diverting.” (Library Journal) “ADDICTIVE. Sad and funny, raunchy and realistic. I couldn't put it down." (Rona Jaffe) “DOWN-TO EARTH AND PERCEPTIVE." (Anniston Star) “Ruth Harris writes about feminist issues with wit and without anger or angst.” (The London Times) “IMPRESSIVE!” (Houston Post) “BRILLIANT! Tough, trenchant, chic and ultra-sophisticated, Ruth Harris has the insight of Joan Didion.” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram) “TERRIFIC!” (Cosmopolitan) “Ruth Harris has both style and substance.” (Book-of-the-Month Club) “ABSOLUTELY PERFECT — the songs we sang, the clothes we wore, the way we made love.” (Publisher’s Weekly) “FICTION AT ITS BEST. A dead-on accurate social critic, Harris has captured the feel of being young and hungry and ambitious in New York.” (New Woman magazine) “SLICK, SEXY, SHARP AND RACY" (Kirkus) “A bit of glamour, a bit of history and lots of romance. Enjoyable reading!” (Richmond Times-Dispatch) “RUTH HARRIS' BREEZY PROSE STYLE, PEPPERY DIALOGUE AND IRREVERENT OBSERVATIONS MAKE MODERN WOMEN FUN TO READ." (Dallas News) "AUTHOR RUTH HARRIS' RAPIER WIT SPICES UP A COMING-OF-AGE-IN-THE-SEXIST-'60s STORY. FUNNY, SAD, VIVID, AND MORE THAN RAUNCHY ENOUGH TO SATISFY THE MOST RIBALD APPETITES, HARRIS SEEKS TO ENLIVEN AND ENTERTAIN, AND SHE DOES IT IN SPADES.” (Cleveland Plain-Dealer) “GLORY BE! EXCELLENT. A THOROUGHLY DELIGHTFUL tale of what it was like to be young, ambitious and in love during an exciting period of history." (Los Angeles Times)
No, Ruth does not write her own reviews.
She was a reader before she was a writer, an editor before she was a publisher.
She grew up on Long Island’s North Shore back when it was still rural farm country.
She was studious and athletic, the valedictorian of her class, and had teen-age dreams of becoming either a lawyer or a professional figure skater.
She is the daughter of a creative, independent-minded father who dropped out of med school to chart his own course. Her mother was an RN whose grit and determination rescued her and her sister from drab futures in a fading New England manufacturing town.
She is the older sister of a damaged younger brother whose unsteady life ended in murder, and the younger sister of an older half-brother whose lively spirit and expansive nature were lifelong sources of affection and inspiration.
She lives in NYC and has been married for over fifty years (to the same man.)
She has too much red lipstick, a raucous sense of humor, and an addiction to the written word inherited from her mother who devoured the latest bestsellers and from her father who is remembered by those who knew him as “always reading.”
Ever curious, she’s looking forward to the future, although, considering the way things are going, she sometimes wonders why.
Find Ruth at Twitter and at Pinterest. She opines about the art and craft of creating fiction on the last Sunday of every month at her award-winning blog with Anne R. Allen.
Ruth loves to hear from her readers, especially when they have something nice to say. She can be reached at harris.ruth.c@gmail.com.
And, yes, she’s working on a new book! :-)Ruth Harris bio
Who is Ruth Harris?
No, Ruth does not write her own reviews.
Ruth is a multi-million-copy New York Times bestselling author and Romantic Times award winner for “Best Contemporary.” Her books have been translated into 19 languages, published in 25 countries around the world, and were major selections of the Literary Guild and the Book-Of-The-Month Club who agreed with raves from prominent reviewers.
They said that about Ruth? Yes, really!“ONE OF THE FRANKEST, MOST STYLISH, AND MOST COMPELLING VOICES IN CONTEMPORARY FICTION, HARRIS WRITES WITH INTELLECT, INSIGHT AND HUMOR." (Chicago Sun-Times) “SPECTACULAR, RICHLY PLOTTED. Racing to a shocking climax, this glittering novel is first-class entertainment.” (NY Times) “SUPERB! Ruth Harris is a talented writer who has come up with a novel so entertaining and interesting you won’t have to hide if someone asks you what you’re reading.” (West Coast Review of Books) “SUPERIOR FICTION WITH A ZINGING SENSE OF STYLE. A skillfully written page-turner.” (Ft Lauderdale News Sun-Sentinel) “COMPELLING! RUTH HARRIS IS IN A CLASS BY HERSELF!” (Literary Guild) “Well-written. fast-paced and diverting.” (Library Journal) “ADDICTIVE. Sad and funny, raunchy and realistic. I couldn't put it down." (Rona Jaffe) “DOWN-TO EARTH AND PERCEPTIVE." (Anniston Star) “Ruth Harris writes about feminist issues with wit and without anger or angst.” (The London Times) “IMPRESSIVE!” (Houston Post) “BRILLIANT! Tough, trenchant, chic and ultra-sophisticated, Ruth Harris has the insight of Joan Didion.” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram) “TERRIFIC!” (Cosmopolitan) “Ruth Harris has both style and substance.” (Book-of-the-Month Club) “ABSOLUTELY PERFECT — the songs we sang, the clothes we wore, the way we made love.” (Publisher’s Weekly) “FICTION AT ITS BEST. A dead-on accurate social critic, Harris has captured the feel of being young and hungry and ambitious in New York.” (New Woman magazine) “SLICK, SEXY, SHARP AND RACY" (Kirkus) “A bit of glamour, a bit of history and lots of romance. Enjoyable reading!” (Richmond Times-Dispatch) “RUTH HARRIS' BREEZY PROSE STYLE, PEPPERY DIALOGUE AND IRREVERENT OBSERVATIONS MAKE MODERN WOMEN FUN TO READ." (Dallas News) "AUTHOR RUTH HARRIS' RAPIER WIT SPICES UP A COMING-OF-AGE-IN-THE-SEXIST-'60s STORY. FUNNY, SAD, VIVID, AND MORE THAN RAUNCHY ENOUGH TO SATISFY THE MOST RIBALD APPETITES, HARRIS SEEKS TO ENLIVEN AND ENTERTAIN, AND SHE DOES IT IN SPADES.” (Cleveland Plain-Dealer) “GLORY BE! EXCELLENT. A THOROUGHLY DELIGHTFUL tale of what it was like to be young, ambitious and in love during an exciting period of history." (Los Angeles Times)
No, Ruth does not write her own reviews.
She was a reader before she was a writer, an editor before she was a publisher.
She grew up on Long Island’s North Shore back when it was still rural farm country.
She was studious and athletic, the valedictorian of her class, and had teen-age dreams of becoming either a lawyer or a professional figure skater.
She is the daughter of a creative, independent-minded father who dropped out of med school to chart his own course. Her mother was an RN whose grit and determination rescued her and her sister from drab futures in a fading New England manufacturing town.
She is the older sister of a damaged younger brother whose unsteady life ended in murder, and the younger sister of an older half-brother whose lively spirit and expansive nature were lifelong sources of affection and inspiration.
She lives in NYC and has been married for over fifty years (to the same man.)
She has too much red lipstick, a raucous sense of humor, and an addiction to the written word inherited from her mother who devoured the latest bestsellers and from her father who is remembered by those who knew him as “always reading.”
Ever curious, she’s looking forward to the future, although, considering the way things are going, she sometimes wonders why.
Find Ruth at Twitter and at Pinterest. She opines about the art and craft of creating fiction on the last Sunday of every month at her award-winning blog with Anne R. Allen.
Ruth loves to hear from her readers, especially when they have something nice to say. She can be reached at harris.ruth.c@gmail.com.
And, yes, she’s working on a new book! :-)February 13, 2019
Stephen King���s 10% Rule And The Secret Power Of The Delete Key
Because: what you leave out is as important as what you put in.I���m not saying the delete key is magic, but sometimes it can feel that way.Skillful use of the delete button will help you show instead of tell.Will add to the page-turning quality of your book.Will help create books readers stay up late to finish.The delete button is the quickest, easiest way to transform your draft.Less Is More and Feeling The Joy.Mies van der Rohe���s famous dictum, Less Is More, applied to design and architecture.Marie Kondo created a worldwide bestseller with advice on decluttering.According to some of the world���s best writers, these two simple but powerful principles���less is more and decluttering���also apply to writing. Used judiciously, the modest, unassuming, reliable delete button is the fastest, easiest way to significantly improve your book���and maybe even change your life the way it changed Stephen King���s.Other writers���like Elmore Leonard, Janet Evanovich, and John Grisham���agree and explain what you leave out is as important as what you put in.Stephen King���s 10% Rule.From Stephen King���s On Writing:���In the spring of my senior year at Lisbon High���1966, this would have been���I got a scribbled comment that changed the way I rewrote my fiction once and forever. Jotted below the machine-generated signature of the editor was this mot: ���Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft ��� 10%. Good luck.������I wish I could remember who wrote that note���Algis Budrys, perhaps. Whoever it was did me a hell of a favor. I copied the formula out on a piece of shirt-cardboard and taped it to the wall beside my typewriter. Good things started to happen for me shortly thereafter.���Elmore Leonard Leaves Out The Parts Readers Skip.���Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.������Don���t go into great detail describing places and things.������Leave out the parts readers tend to skip.���To quote Elmore Leonard: ���Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he���s writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character���s head, and the reader either knows what the guy���s thinking or doesn���t care. I���ll bet you don���t skip dialogue.���James Patterson is a Master of the Minimal.Patterson���s books, known for their short chapters and unputdownable quality, are driven by dialogue and action. Characters, setting, and emotion are conveyed in brief bursts.Patterson advises: ���If you want to keep up the pace, make sure you only give readers the barest details that add a bit of color, texture, and emotion.���Janet Evanovich Compares Writing to Making Gravy.In her book on craft, ���How I Write,��� Janet Evanovich says: ���I work very hard at the mechanics of writing so the reader doesn���t have to work hard at all���I keep my books relatively short and I strongly believe in reduction writing. It���s like reduction in cooking When you make gravy, you take a big pot of ingredients���meat, spices���and you boil it down to a little pot of stuff, which is the essence.���If you use that principle in writing you���re getting two terrific sentences rather than four long, tedious paragraphs. While my writing may give the impression of being simple and effortless, it actually takes me hours to get it to appear that way.���John Grisham���s Do���s And Don���ts For Popular Fiction.John Grisham is another popular writer who takes the less is more approach.���Read each sentence at least three times in search of words to cut.������Most writers use too many words, and why not? We have unlimited space and few constraints.���George Orwell Concurs.���If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.���The Elements of Style by Strunk & White does, too.���Omit needless words.���Screenwriter William Goldman Takes a Scene-by-Scene Approach.Obviously, novels are different than screenplays, but William Goldman���s observation that many scenes start too early and end too late is also relevant to novels.���You always attack a movie scene as late as you possibly can. You always come into the scene at the last possible moment. Get on. The camera is relentless. Makes you keep running.���English Author Esther Freud says ���Editing is Everything.���Named as one of the 20 ���Best of Young British Novelists��� by Grantamagazine, Esther Freud advises writers to ���cut until you can cut no more. What is left often springs into life.���Award-Winning, Bestselling Welsh novelist, Sarah Waters also Wields the Delete Key.���Cut like crazy. Less is more. I���ve often read manuscripts ��� including my own ��� where I���ve got to the beginning of, say, chapter two and thought: ���This is where the novel should actually start.������A huge amount of information about character and back story can be conveyed through small detail. The emotional attachment you feel to a scene or a chapter will fade as you move on to other stories. Be business-like about it.���How (And Where) to Start.As in any criminal investigation, begin by rounding up the usual suspects.Hunt down the cooties of language���adverbs, wandering sentences, meandering paragraphs, long descriptions, banal language, flat sentences���irritating, unneeded and unwanted.But!Before you start, duplicate the document you���re working on in case you get too carried away or change your mind later. If you���re on Scrivener, take a snapshot [Command-5] before you start pruning.A no-brainer but crucially important. (Ask me how I know.)F-words, Crutch Words and Other Perps.Kathy Steinemann takes on filter words, lists offenders, kicks butt and offers rescues.Diana Urban nails 43 words to cut. Period.Jen Doll in The Atlantic goes mano a mano with an epidemic of crutch words.Editor Hannah Baumann lists 40 words to avoid.Why say ���very beautiful���? ���Beautiful��� is enough, said James Joyce, hardly a miser when it came to words.Here are 45 alternatives to ���very.���Editor Dave King offers a striking example of how deletions immediately strengthen a scene.Blah, blah, blah���and more blah, blah, blah.Are you entertaining your reader?Informing your reader?Or are you dishing up a limp and lame word salad before you get down to the business of plot and chartacter?Are you boring your reader?Yourself?Have you asked yourself: Is this paragraph/scene/chapter really necessary?Are you drowning your story (and your reader) in lengthy descriptions or irrelevant digressions when s/he just wants to know who���s doing what to whom and what happens next?Is your book suffering from a dreaded case of info dump?If you���re not sure, look for dense thickets of prose and dumb dialogue.Can four sentences be condensed into two strong, vivid sentences? Are you making a mess? Or are you making gravy the way Janet Evanovich does?Should one long paragraph be two shorter paragraphs?And what about a one or two word paragraph to change the rhythm and get your reader���s attention?Like this.Navel gazing.The character���s deep, philosophical thoughts about Life or The Search For Meaning and/or Identity? Only if you���re Plato or Nietzsche.Often deleting the ���why��� a character does or says something will immediately strengthen your scene. The reader will fill in what you���ve purposely left out. Dialogue, setting, and body language will provide the necessary clues.As Elmore Leonard said, ���the reader either knows what the guy���s thinking or doesn���t care.���Warm ups.Just as athletes leave the warm up on the practice field and shift into another gear when the game start, writers should consider William Goldman���s advice about when to enter and exit a scene.Is your scene starting too late?Have you been ���setting the scene?���Describing the weather?Dithering on about the character���s identity crisis or inner psychological state?Explaining the crisis instead of showing it?Have you spent a few paragraphs ���warming up��� before the real action begins?If so, you���ve found more to cut or even delete.Reuse and recycle.A good cook saves leftovers and knows how to repurpose them into appetizing meals. The left-over spinach that���s delicious added to a lentil soup? The odds and ends of meat and vegetables that appear again in a hearty shepherd���s pie?Like a good cook, think of your deletions as leftovers that can be used another day.Might a scene that ended up on the cutting room floor make a short story?Can your odds and ends be used in a blog or newsletter to give your readers a peek behind the scenes?Could a character that didn���t quite work be perfect in another book?When the going gets tough, the tough delete.Or at least they think about it, and so should you.[This post first appeared on Anne R. Allen's blog. I'm repeating it here in case you missed it. I hope you find it helpful.]
Stephen King’s 10% Rule And The Secret Power Of The Delete Key
Because: what you leave out is as important as what you put in.I’m not saying the delete key is magic, but sometimes it can feel that way.Skillful use of the delete button will help you show instead of tell.Will add to the page-turning quality of your book.Will help create books readers stay up late to finish.The delete button is the quickest, easiest way to transform your draft.Less Is More and Feeling The Joy.Mies van der Rohe’s famous dictum, Less Is More, applied to design and architecture.Marie Kondo created a worldwide bestseller with advice on decluttering.According to some of the world’s best writers, these two simple but powerful principles—less is more and decluttering—also apply to writing. Used judiciously, the modest, unassuming, reliable delete button is the fastest, easiest way to significantly improve your book—and maybe even change your life the way it changed Stephen King’s.Other writers—like Elmore Leonard, Janet Evanovich, and John Grisham—agree and explain what you leave out is as important as what you put in.Stephen King’s 10% Rule.From Stephen King’s On Writing:“In the spring of my senior year at Lisbon High—1966, this would have been—I got a scribbled comment that changed the way I rewrote my fiction once and forever. Jotted below the machine-generated signature of the editor was this mot: “Not bad, but PUFFY. You need to revise for length. Formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%. Good luck.”“I wish I could remember who wrote that note—Algis Budrys, perhaps. Whoever it was did me a hell of a favor. I copied the formula out on a piece of shirt-cardboard and taped it to the wall beside my typewriter. Good things started to happen for me shortly thereafter.”Elmore Leonard Leaves Out The Parts Readers Skip.“Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.”“Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.”“Leave out the parts readers tend to skip.”To quote Elmore Leonard: “Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he’s writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character’s head, and the reader either knows what the guy’s thinking or doesn’t care. I’ll bet you don’t skip dialogue.”James Patterson is a Master of the Minimal.Patterson’s books, known for their short chapters and unputdownable quality, are driven by dialogue and action. Characters, setting, and emotion are conveyed in brief bursts.Patterson advises: “If you want to keep up the pace, make sure you only give readers the barest details that add a bit of color, texture, and emotion.”Janet Evanovich Compares Writing to Making Gravy.In her book on craft, “How I Write,” Janet Evanovich says: “I work very hard at the mechanics of writing so the reader doesn’t have to work hard at all…I keep my books relatively short and I strongly believe in reduction writing. It’s like reduction in cooking When you make gravy, you take a big pot of ingredients—meat, spices—and you boil it down to a little pot of stuff, which is the essence.“If you use that principle in writing you’re getting two terrific sentences rather than four long, tedious paragraphs. While my writing may give the impression of being simple and effortless, it actually takes me hours to get it to appear that way.”John Grisham’s Do’s And Don’ts For Popular Fiction.John Grisham is another popular writer who takes the less is more approach.“Read each sentence at least three times in search of words to cut.”“Most writers use too many words, and why not? We have unlimited space and few constraints.”George Orwell Concurs.“If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.”The Elements of Style by Strunk & White does, too.“Omit needless words.”Screenwriter William Goldman Takes a Scene-by-Scene Approach.Obviously, novels are different than screenplays, but William Goldman’s observation that many scenes start too early and end too late is also relevant to novels.“You always attack a movie scene as late as you possibly can. You always come into the scene at the last possible moment. Get on. The camera is relentless. Makes you keep running.”English Author Esther Freud says “Editing is Everything.”Named as one of the 20 ‘Best of Young British Novelists’ by Grantamagazine, Esther Freud advises writers to “cut until you can cut no more. What is left often springs into life.”Award-Winning, Bestselling Welsh novelist, Sarah Waters also Wields the Delete Key.“Cut like crazy. Less is more. I’ve often read manuscripts – including my own – where I’ve got to the beginning of, say, chapter two and thought: ‘This is where the novel should actually start.’“A huge amount of information about character and back story can be conveyed through small detail. The emotional attachment you feel to a scene or a chapter will fade as you move on to other stories. Be business-like about it.”How (And Where) to Start.As in any criminal investigation, begin by rounding up the usual suspects.Hunt down the cooties of language—adverbs, wandering sentences, meandering paragraphs, long descriptions, banal language, flat sentences—irritating, unneeded and unwanted.But!Before you start, duplicate the document you’re working on in case you get too carried away or change your mind later. If you’re on Scrivener, take a snapshot [Command-5] before you start pruning.A no-brainer but crucially important. (Ask me how I know.)F-words, Crutch Words and Other Perps.Kathy Steinemann takes on filter words, lists offenders, kicks butt and offers rescues.Diana Urban nails 43 words to cut. Period.Jen Doll in The Atlantic goes mano a mano with an epidemic of crutch words.Editor Hannah Baumann lists 40 words to avoid.Why say “very beautiful”? “Beautiful” is enough, said James Joyce, hardly a miser when it came to words.Here are 45 alternatives to “very.”Editor Dave King offers a striking example of how deletions immediately strengthen a scene.Blah, blah, blah—and more blah, blah, blah.Are you entertaining your reader?Informing your reader?Or are you dishing up a limp and lame word salad before you get down to the business of plot and chartacter?Are you boring your reader?Yourself?Have you asked yourself: Is this paragraph/scene/chapter really necessary?Are you drowning your story (and your reader) in lengthy descriptions or irrelevant digressions when s/he just wants to know who’s doing what to whom and what happens next?Is your book suffering from a dreaded case of info dump?If you’re not sure, look for dense thickets of prose and dumb dialogue.Can four sentences be condensed into two strong, vivid sentences? Are you making a mess? Or are you making gravy the way Janet Evanovich does?Should one long paragraph be two shorter paragraphs?And what about a one or two word paragraph to change the rhythm and get your reader’s attention?Like this.Navel gazing.The character’s deep, philosophical thoughts about Life or The Search For Meaning and/or Identity? Only if you’re Plato or Nietzsche.Often deleting the “why” a character does or says something will immediately strengthen your scene. The reader will fill in what you’ve purposely left out. Dialogue, setting, and body language will provide the necessary clues.As Elmore Leonard said, “the reader either knows what the guy’s thinking or doesn’t care.”Warm ups.Just as athletes leave the warm up on the practice field and shift into another gear when the game start, writers should consider William Goldman’s advice about when to enter and exit a scene.Is your scene starting too late?Have you been “setting the scene?”Describing the weather?Dithering on about the character’s identity crisis or inner psychological state?Explaining the crisis instead of showing it?Have you spent a few paragraphs “warming up” before the real action begins?If so, you’ve found more to cut or even delete.Reuse and recycle.A good cook saves leftovers and knows how to repurpose them into appetizing meals. The left-over spinach that’s delicious added to a lentil soup? The odds and ends of meat and vegetables that appear again in a hearty shepherd’s pie?Like a good cook, think of your deletions as leftovers that can be used another day.Might a scene that ended up on the cutting room floor make a short story?Can your odds and ends be used in a blog or newsletter to give your readers a peek behind the scenes?Could a character that didn’t quite work be perfect in another book?When the going gets tough, the tough delete.Or at least they think about it, and so should you.[This post first appeared on Anne R. Allen's blog. I'm repeating it here in case you missed it. I hope you find it helpful.]
November 22, 2018
November 22, 1963���The assassination of JFK
HISTORICAL WOMEN���S FICTION [image error]
"Fiction at its best!"Kindle | iBooks | Kobo | Nook | GooglePlayNovember 22, 1963
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy���he was young, rich, handsome, vigorous���was a defining event of the 20th Century. People remember where they were, who they were with and what they were doing when they heard the shocking news.
Modern Women, a million-copy NYT bestseller, begins in Dallas, New York, and Washington on November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination, as the three heroines���outrageous Jane, studious, conflicted Lincky, and idealistic Elly���learn of the President���s death. Young women with the future ahead of them, they confront turning points in their own lives and must face the opportunities���and challenges���of the coming decades.
Here is the first chapter���
JANEDALLAS11:31 A.M. CST
AT first she wasn���t sure what happened. If anything.Wearing a phony press badge with a fake name borrowed from Ian Fleming, Jane Gresch was seated on the window side in the first row of the first press bus accompanying John F. Kennedy���s presidential trip to Texas. Because of a mix-up in scheduling, the bus was farther back in the motorcade than planned. As Jane gazed out the window at the sparse crowds that had turned out to see a president much too liberal for local John Birch tastes, she thought she heard a car backfire.From behind the tinted bus window, Jane saw, as if in a silent film, a stir of uncertainty ripple through the crowd. She noticed several people turn and begin to run away from the motorcade. A young mother pushed her two children to the ground and, using her own body as a shield, flung herself on top of them.Then the bright daylight receded and Jane���s view was blocked as the bus went into the shadows of the Dealey Plaza underpass.���What happened?��� Jane asked. She turned to Owen Casals, her date for the weekend, who was sitting next to her in the aisle seat. Tall Owen. Dark Owen. Lean, handsome, work-all-day, fuck-all-night Owen.He stood up to get a better view of the scene in front of them.���The president���s car sped off. Really barreled away,��� he said, turning to Jane. He looked alarmed. Owen, too, had heard the sound. Rifle fire, he thought, although he immediately rejected the idea. It was impossible. Along the banks of the Yalu River, yes, but not here in America.Originally a police reporter like his father, Owen had risen through the journalistic ranks swiftly. At thirty-two he was a star in his world, a general assignment reporter for Newsflash magazine. Owen traveled constantly covering the hot stories���and President Kennedy���s Texas trip promised heat.The local Democratic party���s bitter infighting had prompted what was hoped to be a fence-mending presidential trip. Adlai Stevenson, citing the ugly mood in the Lone Star state, had advised the president not to go. The warning added an edge of danger to the story. Mrs. Kennedy, known to dislike politicking and politicians, had accompanied the president, contributing a bracing jolt of glamour and sex appeal. Dallas promised to be the kind of story on which Owen had built his career.When the bus came out of the underpass, Jane saw a policeman jump his motorcycle up over the curb, dismount, and scramble up the grassy bank. As he disappeared from her view, Jane thought she saw him reach for his holster. The bus stopped for a moment and a lone reporter got off and ran after the policeman. Then it started again and continued at a leisurely motorcade pace toward the Trade Mart where the president was scheduled to speak.���Something really serious, we���d hear sirens. Cops and Secret Service would be all over the place. This bus wouldn���t be crawling along,��� Owen said. He had decided that the noise he had heard was probably a motorcycle backfiring. The driver of President Kennedy���s limousine had certainly heard the same sound and, trained to act first, think later, had undoubtedly jammed his foot on the accelerator and peeled out.���Just act like you belong,��� Owen advised Jane, leaping out of his seat as the bus pulled up to the Trade Mart. Even if nothing had happened, Owen wanted to be the first to report it.Scores of tables had been set up in the huge function room of the Trade Mart. The speaker���s podium, where President Kennedy was about to address the crowd, was draped in red, white, and blue bunting. American flags stood by the speaker���s podium and bouquets of hundreds of yellow roses stood at the head tables. The organist was warming up with a few bars of ���Hail to the Chief.���Everything was ready, but suddenly everything ceased. Hundreds of Texans in the middle of a rubber-chicken circuit lunch stopped eating. Jaws stopped in midbite. Forks hung suspended in midair. Water glasses poised midway between table and mouth. Jane could see eyes open wide in surprise, heads shake in doubt, mouths open in O���s of disbelief as the rumor spread through the room.���Is it true?��� a man in a business suit and ten-gallon hat asked Jane. He glanced at her press badge and, thinking she might know something, grabbed her urgently by the arm. ���Did someone shoot the president?������Shoot?��� Jane replied. A feeling of chill she had pushed away earlier returned. Jane remembered the stir in the motorcade route crowd���an uneasy and frightened ripple similar to the wave of movement that was sweeping the banquet room.Before Jane could say another word, Owen grabbed her by the arm and propelled her into the surging mob of journalists that pushed through the banquet hall and up the stairs into the second-floor press room. Just as Jane and Owen entered the room, an official-looking man put down a telephone.���The president���s been shot,��� he said, his face turning white. ���He���s at Parkland Hospital.���
LINCKYNEW YORK CITY12:39 P.M. EST
ON November 22, Lincky Desmond did what she almost always did for lunch. She left the office at twelve thirty and went out for a brief walk and a breath of fresh air. Then she stopped at the deli for a tuna sandwich that she would eat at her desk while working on a manuscript.The fact that she had been sleeping with her boss didn���t mean that Lincky worked less. In fact, it meant that she worked more. There were two reasons. The first was that Lincky didn���t want Hank Greene to think that she would use their personal relationship to take advantage. The second was that Lincky didn���t want anyone in the office to suspect the affair by noticing that she was goofing off and not getting chewed out about it. Hank Greene, after all, was known as one of the most demanding bosses in publishing.The first thing that struck Lincky was that the deli, usually frantic at lunchtime, was eerily quiet. The customary frenzy was notable by its absence. The waiters were not shouting orders at countermen. Dishes did not clatter noisily and silverware did not bang against stainless steel counters. The customers, too, were silent. They had stopped eating, stopped talking. Lincky would have thought that she had suddenly gone deaf except for the sound of a portable radio turned up high.���The president is dead. That���s a confirmed report.��� The announcer kept repeating the words over again and again. ���The president is dead. That���s a confirmed report.���Lincky was confused.���President?��� Lincky asked, turning to the Brooks Brothers-suited young executive who stood in the line behind her. ���President of what?������Kennedy,��� he said. Lincky noticed that his skin was ashen. ���They got Kennedy.���Irrelevantly, it struck Lincky that with his charcoal gray suit, rep tie, and horn-rimmed glasses, he didn���t look much like a Democrat. Even before the impact of the news fully sank in, Lincky ran out of the deli toward the office.As she hurried down Third Avenue to 45th Street in the clear, gloriously sunny late autumn weather, Lincky still didn���t quite know whether or not to believe what the man in the deli had told her. President Kennedy dead? He was so young and so vital. Dead? It was incomprehensible. Yet that was what the man had said.Lincky saw people standing on the sidewalks, huddled around portable radios. Traffic had come to a halt. A bus, its doors open, stood empty, abandoned in the middle of Third Avenue. Knots of people were gathered around automobiles listening to car radios through open doors and windows. A large crowd had gathered in front of a discount store window where banks of television sets showed grim-faced reporters and anchormen.Half walking, half running, Lincky realized that something momentous really had happened. Part of her wanted to stop and join the people clustered in groups. The other part, the dominant part, wanted to get back to the office. She wanted to see Hank. She wanted to be with him. She wanted to share this moment with him.The Henry Greene Literary Agency���s fourth floor offices were deserted. Everyone was out at lunchtime, particularly on a beautiful late November day, sure to be one of the last nice days before winter and darkness took over the city. Looking for Hank, Lincky went down the corridor to his modest corner office. Like everyone else, Hank was still out. Unable to be with Hank physically, Lincky did the next best thing. She sat down in his chair, smelled the familiar odor of his cigarettes and soap, and took comfort from these signs of Hank���s presence.More prepared now to confront the terrible news, Lincky turned on the portable radio in Hank���s office. Every station had broken into its regular programming for the same bulletin from Texas:���President Kennedy is dead. He was shot today in Dallas by an unknown assassin.���It was only then, when she first began to truly comprehend the dimensions of the tragedy, that Lincky realized that not once since she had heard the dreadful news had she thought of her husband.
ELLYWASHINGTON12:40 P.M. EST
AS dumb jobs went, selling shoes in the Pappagallo boutique in Georgetown was one of the dumbest. As impossible customers went, this one, Elly had long since decided, redefined the species. Her name, although not nationally prominent, was fairly well known in Washington. Her husband was an upper-echelon lawyer in the attorney general���s office. It was said on the Georgetown dinner party circuit that she and her husband had the perfect marriage: he had the brains and she had the dough, piles and piles of it.She also had a blond lion���s mane bouffant hairdo that she flew to New York every week to have set and teased at Kenneth���s, a wardrobe of Jackie Kennedy look-alike A-line dresses, and an overly emaciated figure to offset her overly developed bank account. Her existence proved that it was possible to be too rich and too thin. She reeked of Shalimar and insatiability.She was exactly the kind of spoiled, materialistic, self-centered woman Elly McGrath had been brought up to despise.Seven pairs of suede and patent leather shoes were scattered around the pearl gray carpet of the boutique. Three pairs were pumps, four were T-straps. Three were black, the rest were various shades of cream, tan, rust, and brown. Elly was on her knees on the floor, helping her customer slip her long, bony feet into and out of them. The woman had been parked there for an hour and a half unable to decide which color and which style she wanted.Floundering in a morass of indecision, she inspected each style carefully, lingering over each one in turn. Under her breath, she debated the merits and debits of each style and each color, arguing with herself over its present and future usefulness, flattery, and fashion quotient. The microscopic examination did not seem to help her make up her mind. Nor did the fact that she had repeated the exercise on the two previous afternoons.���I don���t know. I���ll have to think about it,��� the woman said.She motioned to Elly to put her own shoes back on and then got up, ready to leave. As Elly collected the shoes strewn over the carpet and began putting them back into their tissue-lined boxes, the stock boy suddenly burst out of the stock room.���President Kennedy���s been shot!��� he said. ���He���s dead!���For as long as she lived, Elly never forgot that at a moment of national crisis she had been on her knees, trying to sell shoes to a selfish and self-obsessed woman who greeted the announcement of the president���s assassination with an angry sigh.���I suppose that means my dinner party���s off for tomorrow night. And Ethel promised that she and Bobby would be there,��� she said, her thin, predatory hand with its blood-red nails on the open door of the boutique. ���Jesus Christ! Why does everything have to happen to me?���Elly was jolted by the assassination and her customer���s self-centered reaction. She was wasting her life, her time, her energy. Where were her brains? Where were her values? Where were the ideals with which she had been brought up? Elly was appalled at the way she had been spending her time and energy.���I���m quitting,��� Elly told her boss an hour later. She was in tears.���You���re just upset. Why don���t you go home for the rest of the day? Come back tomorrow,��� replied Janice Kellen, the boutique���s owner.Elly was an excellent saleswoman, the best Janice had ever had. She didn���t want to let her go.���No. You���ve been nice to me and I���ve enjoyed working here, but I realize that it���s the wrong place for me,��� Elly replied.It was an impulsive, emotional decision that Elly couldn���t really afford. She had very little money and no idea about what she was going to do next other than that it was damn well going to be more constructive than selling shoes. Making her way home through a stricken city, Elly comforted herself by remembering that she still had the only things that really mattered to her: her friends and her family���and, maybe, if she really got lucky, the man she had her heart set on, Owen Casals.
"Fiction at its best!"Kindle | iBooks | Kobo | Nook | GooglePlayNovember 22, 1963
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy���he was young, rich, handsome, vigorous���was a defining event of the 20th Century. People remember where they were, who they were with and what they were doing when they heard the shocking news.
Modern Women, a million-copy NYT bestseller, begins in Dallas, New York, and Washington on November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination, as the three heroines���outrageous Jane, studious, conflicted Lincky, and idealistic Elly���learn of the President���s death. Young women with the future ahead of them, they confront turning points in their own lives and must face the opportunities���and challenges���of the coming decades.
Here is the first chapter���
JANEDALLAS11:31 A.M. CST
AT first she wasn���t sure what happened. If anything.Wearing a phony press badge with a fake name borrowed from Ian Fleming, Jane Gresch was seated on the window side in the first row of the first press bus accompanying John F. Kennedy���s presidential trip to Texas. Because of a mix-up in scheduling, the bus was farther back in the motorcade than planned. As Jane gazed out the window at the sparse crowds that had turned out to see a president much too liberal for local John Birch tastes, she thought she heard a car backfire.From behind the tinted bus window, Jane saw, as if in a silent film, a stir of uncertainty ripple through the crowd. She noticed several people turn and begin to run away from the motorcade. A young mother pushed her two children to the ground and, using her own body as a shield, flung herself on top of them.Then the bright daylight receded and Jane���s view was blocked as the bus went into the shadows of the Dealey Plaza underpass.���What happened?��� Jane asked. She turned to Owen Casals, her date for the weekend, who was sitting next to her in the aisle seat. Tall Owen. Dark Owen. Lean, handsome, work-all-day, fuck-all-night Owen.He stood up to get a better view of the scene in front of them.���The president���s car sped off. Really barreled away,��� he said, turning to Jane. He looked alarmed. Owen, too, had heard the sound. Rifle fire, he thought, although he immediately rejected the idea. It was impossible. Along the banks of the Yalu River, yes, but not here in America.Originally a police reporter like his father, Owen had risen through the journalistic ranks swiftly. At thirty-two he was a star in his world, a general assignment reporter for Newsflash magazine. Owen traveled constantly covering the hot stories���and President Kennedy���s Texas trip promised heat.The local Democratic party���s bitter infighting had prompted what was hoped to be a fence-mending presidential trip. Adlai Stevenson, citing the ugly mood in the Lone Star state, had advised the president not to go. The warning added an edge of danger to the story. Mrs. Kennedy, known to dislike politicking and politicians, had accompanied the president, contributing a bracing jolt of glamour and sex appeal. Dallas promised to be the kind of story on which Owen had built his career.When the bus came out of the underpass, Jane saw a policeman jump his motorcycle up over the curb, dismount, and scramble up the grassy bank. As he disappeared from her view, Jane thought she saw him reach for his holster. The bus stopped for a moment and a lone reporter got off and ran after the policeman. Then it started again and continued at a leisurely motorcade pace toward the Trade Mart where the president was scheduled to speak.���Something really serious, we���d hear sirens. Cops and Secret Service would be all over the place. This bus wouldn���t be crawling along,��� Owen said. He had decided that the noise he had heard was probably a motorcycle backfiring. The driver of President Kennedy���s limousine had certainly heard the same sound and, trained to act first, think later, had undoubtedly jammed his foot on the accelerator and peeled out.���Just act like you belong,��� Owen advised Jane, leaping out of his seat as the bus pulled up to the Trade Mart. Even if nothing had happened, Owen wanted to be the first to report it.Scores of tables had been set up in the huge function room of the Trade Mart. The speaker���s podium, where President Kennedy was about to address the crowd, was draped in red, white, and blue bunting. American flags stood by the speaker���s podium and bouquets of hundreds of yellow roses stood at the head tables. The organist was warming up with a few bars of ���Hail to the Chief.���Everything was ready, but suddenly everything ceased. Hundreds of Texans in the middle of a rubber-chicken circuit lunch stopped eating. Jaws stopped in midbite. Forks hung suspended in midair. Water glasses poised midway between table and mouth. Jane could see eyes open wide in surprise, heads shake in doubt, mouths open in O���s of disbelief as the rumor spread through the room.���Is it true?��� a man in a business suit and ten-gallon hat asked Jane. He glanced at her press badge and, thinking she might know something, grabbed her urgently by the arm. ���Did someone shoot the president?������Shoot?��� Jane replied. A feeling of chill she had pushed away earlier returned. Jane remembered the stir in the motorcade route crowd���an uneasy and frightened ripple similar to the wave of movement that was sweeping the banquet room.Before Jane could say another word, Owen grabbed her by the arm and propelled her into the surging mob of journalists that pushed through the banquet hall and up the stairs into the second-floor press room. Just as Jane and Owen entered the room, an official-looking man put down a telephone.���The president���s been shot,��� he said, his face turning white. ���He���s at Parkland Hospital.���
LINCKYNEW YORK CITY12:39 P.M. EST
ON November 22, Lincky Desmond did what she almost always did for lunch. She left the office at twelve thirty and went out for a brief walk and a breath of fresh air. Then she stopped at the deli for a tuna sandwich that she would eat at her desk while working on a manuscript.The fact that she had been sleeping with her boss didn���t mean that Lincky worked less. In fact, it meant that she worked more. There were two reasons. The first was that Lincky didn���t want Hank Greene to think that she would use their personal relationship to take advantage. The second was that Lincky didn���t want anyone in the office to suspect the affair by noticing that she was goofing off and not getting chewed out about it. Hank Greene, after all, was known as one of the most demanding bosses in publishing.The first thing that struck Lincky was that the deli, usually frantic at lunchtime, was eerily quiet. The customary frenzy was notable by its absence. The waiters were not shouting orders at countermen. Dishes did not clatter noisily and silverware did not bang against stainless steel counters. The customers, too, were silent. They had stopped eating, stopped talking. Lincky would have thought that she had suddenly gone deaf except for the sound of a portable radio turned up high.���The president is dead. That���s a confirmed report.��� The announcer kept repeating the words over again and again. ���The president is dead. That���s a confirmed report.���Lincky was confused.���President?��� Lincky asked, turning to the Brooks Brothers-suited young executive who stood in the line behind her. ���President of what?������Kennedy,��� he said. Lincky noticed that his skin was ashen. ���They got Kennedy.���Irrelevantly, it struck Lincky that with his charcoal gray suit, rep tie, and horn-rimmed glasses, he didn���t look much like a Democrat. Even before the impact of the news fully sank in, Lincky ran out of the deli toward the office.As she hurried down Third Avenue to 45th Street in the clear, gloriously sunny late autumn weather, Lincky still didn���t quite know whether or not to believe what the man in the deli had told her. President Kennedy dead? He was so young and so vital. Dead? It was incomprehensible. Yet that was what the man had said.Lincky saw people standing on the sidewalks, huddled around portable radios. Traffic had come to a halt. A bus, its doors open, stood empty, abandoned in the middle of Third Avenue. Knots of people were gathered around automobiles listening to car radios through open doors and windows. A large crowd had gathered in front of a discount store window where banks of television sets showed grim-faced reporters and anchormen.Half walking, half running, Lincky realized that something momentous really had happened. Part of her wanted to stop and join the people clustered in groups. The other part, the dominant part, wanted to get back to the office. She wanted to see Hank. She wanted to be with him. She wanted to share this moment with him.The Henry Greene Literary Agency���s fourth floor offices were deserted. Everyone was out at lunchtime, particularly on a beautiful late November day, sure to be one of the last nice days before winter and darkness took over the city. Looking for Hank, Lincky went down the corridor to his modest corner office. Like everyone else, Hank was still out. Unable to be with Hank physically, Lincky did the next best thing. She sat down in his chair, smelled the familiar odor of his cigarettes and soap, and took comfort from these signs of Hank���s presence.More prepared now to confront the terrible news, Lincky turned on the portable radio in Hank���s office. Every station had broken into its regular programming for the same bulletin from Texas:���President Kennedy is dead. He was shot today in Dallas by an unknown assassin.���It was only then, when she first began to truly comprehend the dimensions of the tragedy, that Lincky realized that not once since she had heard the dreadful news had she thought of her husband.
ELLYWASHINGTON12:40 P.M. EST
AS dumb jobs went, selling shoes in the Pappagallo boutique in Georgetown was one of the dumbest. As impossible customers went, this one, Elly had long since decided, redefined the species. Her name, although not nationally prominent, was fairly well known in Washington. Her husband was an upper-echelon lawyer in the attorney general���s office. It was said on the Georgetown dinner party circuit that she and her husband had the perfect marriage: he had the brains and she had the dough, piles and piles of it.She also had a blond lion���s mane bouffant hairdo that she flew to New York every week to have set and teased at Kenneth���s, a wardrobe of Jackie Kennedy look-alike A-line dresses, and an overly emaciated figure to offset her overly developed bank account. Her existence proved that it was possible to be too rich and too thin. She reeked of Shalimar and insatiability.She was exactly the kind of spoiled, materialistic, self-centered woman Elly McGrath had been brought up to despise.Seven pairs of suede and patent leather shoes were scattered around the pearl gray carpet of the boutique. Three pairs were pumps, four were T-straps. Three were black, the rest were various shades of cream, tan, rust, and brown. Elly was on her knees on the floor, helping her customer slip her long, bony feet into and out of them. The woman had been parked there for an hour and a half unable to decide which color and which style she wanted.Floundering in a morass of indecision, she inspected each style carefully, lingering over each one in turn. Under her breath, she debated the merits and debits of each style and each color, arguing with herself over its present and future usefulness, flattery, and fashion quotient. The microscopic examination did not seem to help her make up her mind. Nor did the fact that she had repeated the exercise on the two previous afternoons.���I don���t know. I���ll have to think about it,��� the woman said.She motioned to Elly to put her own shoes back on and then got up, ready to leave. As Elly collected the shoes strewn over the carpet and began putting them back into their tissue-lined boxes, the stock boy suddenly burst out of the stock room.���President Kennedy���s been shot!��� he said. ���He���s dead!���For as long as she lived, Elly never forgot that at a moment of national crisis she had been on her knees, trying to sell shoes to a selfish and self-obsessed woman who greeted the announcement of the president���s assassination with an angry sigh.���I suppose that means my dinner party���s off for tomorrow night. And Ethel promised that she and Bobby would be there,��� she said, her thin, predatory hand with its blood-red nails on the open door of the boutique. ���Jesus Christ! Why does everything have to happen to me?���Elly was jolted by the assassination and her customer���s self-centered reaction. She was wasting her life, her time, her energy. Where were her brains? Where were her values? Where were the ideals with which she had been brought up? Elly was appalled at the way she had been spending her time and energy.���I���m quitting,��� Elly told her boss an hour later. She was in tears.���You���re just upset. Why don���t you go home for the rest of the day? Come back tomorrow,��� replied Janice Kellen, the boutique���s owner.Elly was an excellent saleswoman, the best Janice had ever had. She didn���t want to let her go.���No. You���ve been nice to me and I���ve enjoyed working here, but I realize that it���s the wrong place for me,��� Elly replied.It was an impulsive, emotional decision that Elly couldn���t really afford. She had very little money and no idea about what she was going to do next other than that it was damn well going to be more constructive than selling shoes. Making her way home through a stricken city, Elly comforted herself by remembering that she still had the only things that really mattered to her: her friends and her family���and, maybe, if she really got lucky, the man she had her heart set on, Owen Casals.
November 22, 1963—The assassination of JFK
HISTORICAL WOMEN’S FICTION [image error]
"Fiction at its best!"Kindle | iBooks | Kobo | Nook | GooglePlayNovember 22, 1963
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy—he was young, rich, handsome, vigorous—was a defining event of the 20th Century. People remember where they were, who they were with and what they were doing when they heard the shocking news.
Modern Women, a million-copy NYT bestseller, begins in Dallas, New York, and Washington on November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination, as the three heroines—outrageous Jane, studious, conflicted Lincky, and idealistic Elly—learn of the President’s death. Young women with the future ahead of them, they confront turning points in their own lives and must face the opportunities—and challenges—of the coming decades.
Here is the first chapter—
JANEDALLAS11:31 A.M. CST
AT first she wasn’t sure what happened. If anything.Wearing a phony press badge with a fake name borrowed from Ian Fleming, Jane Gresch was seated on the window side in the first row of the first press bus accompanying John F. Kennedy’s presidential trip to Texas. Because of a mix-up in scheduling, the bus was farther back in the motorcade than planned. As Jane gazed out the window at the sparse crowds that had turned out to see a president much too liberal for local John Birch tastes, she thought she heard a car backfire.From behind the tinted bus window, Jane saw, as if in a silent film, a stir of uncertainty ripple through the crowd. She noticed several people turn and begin to run away from the motorcade. A young mother pushed her two children to the ground and, using her own body as a shield, flung herself on top of them.Then the bright daylight receded and Jane’s view was blocked as the bus went into the shadows of the Dealey Plaza underpass.“What happened?” Jane asked. She turned to Owen Casals, her date for the weekend, who was sitting next to her in the aisle seat. Tall Owen. Dark Owen. Lean, handsome, work-all-day, fuck-all-night Owen.He stood up to get a better view of the scene in front of them.“The president’s car sped off. Really barreled away,” he said, turning to Jane. He looked alarmed. Owen, too, had heard the sound. Rifle fire, he thought, although he immediately rejected the idea. It was impossible. Along the banks of the Yalu River, yes, but not here in America.Originally a police reporter like his father, Owen had risen through the journalistic ranks swiftly. At thirty-two he was a star in his world, a general assignment reporter for Newsflash magazine. Owen traveled constantly covering the hot stories—and President Kennedy’s Texas trip promised heat.The local Democratic party’s bitter infighting had prompted what was hoped to be a fence-mending presidential trip. Adlai Stevenson, citing the ugly mood in the Lone Star state, had advised the president not to go. The warning added an edge of danger to the story. Mrs. Kennedy, known to dislike politicking and politicians, had accompanied the president, contributing a bracing jolt of glamour and sex appeal. Dallas promised to be the kind of story on which Owen had built his career.When the bus came out of the underpass, Jane saw a policeman jump his motorcycle up over the curb, dismount, and scramble up the grassy bank. As he disappeared from her view, Jane thought she saw him reach for his holster. The bus stopped for a moment and a lone reporter got off and ran after the policeman. Then it started again and continued at a leisurely motorcade pace toward the Trade Mart where the president was scheduled to speak.“Something really serious, we’d hear sirens. Cops and Secret Service would be all over the place. This bus wouldn’t be crawling along,” Owen said. He had decided that the noise he had heard was probably a motorcycle backfiring. The driver of President Kennedy’s limousine had certainly heard the same sound and, trained to act first, think later, had undoubtedly jammed his foot on the accelerator and peeled out.“Just act like you belong,” Owen advised Jane, leaping out of his seat as the bus pulled up to the Trade Mart. Even if nothing had happened, Owen wanted to be the first to report it.Scores of tables had been set up in the huge function room of the Trade Mart. The speaker’s podium, where President Kennedy was about to address the crowd, was draped in red, white, and blue bunting. American flags stood by the speaker’s podium and bouquets of hundreds of yellow roses stood at the head tables. The organist was warming up with a few bars of “Hail to the Chief.”Everything was ready, but suddenly everything ceased. Hundreds of Texans in the middle of a rubber-chicken circuit lunch stopped eating. Jaws stopped in midbite. Forks hung suspended in midair. Water glasses poised midway between table and mouth. Jane could see eyes open wide in surprise, heads shake in doubt, mouths open in O’s of disbelief as the rumor spread through the room.“Is it true?” a man in a business suit and ten-gallon hat asked Jane. He glanced at her press badge and, thinking she might know something, grabbed her urgently by the arm. “Did someone shoot the president?”“Shoot?” Jane replied. A feeling of chill she had pushed away earlier returned. Jane remembered the stir in the motorcade route crowd—an uneasy and frightened ripple similar to the wave of movement that was sweeping the banquet room.Before Jane could say another word, Owen grabbed her by the arm and propelled her into the surging mob of journalists that pushed through the banquet hall and up the stairs into the second-floor press room. Just as Jane and Owen entered the room, an official-looking man put down a telephone.“The president’s been shot,” he said, his face turning white. “He’s at Parkland Hospital.”
LINCKYNEW YORK CITY12:39 P.M. EST
ON November 22, Lincky Desmond did what she almost always did for lunch. She left the office at twelve thirty and went out for a brief walk and a breath of fresh air. Then she stopped at the deli for a tuna sandwich that she would eat at her desk while working on a manuscript.The fact that she had been sleeping with her boss didn’t mean that Lincky worked less. In fact, it meant that she worked more. There were two reasons. The first was that Lincky didn’t want Hank Greene to think that she would use their personal relationship to take advantage. The second was that Lincky didn’t want anyone in the office to suspect the affair by noticing that she was goofing off and not getting chewed out about it. Hank Greene, after all, was known as one of the most demanding bosses in publishing.The first thing that struck Lincky was that the deli, usually frantic at lunchtime, was eerily quiet. The customary frenzy was notable by its absence. The waiters were not shouting orders at countermen. Dishes did not clatter noisily and silverware did not bang against stainless steel counters. The customers, too, were silent. They had stopped eating, stopped talking. Lincky would have thought that she had suddenly gone deaf except for the sound of a portable radio turned up high.“The president is dead. That’s a confirmed report.” The announcer kept repeating the words over again and again. “The president is dead. That’s a confirmed report.”Lincky was confused.“President?” Lincky asked, turning to the Brooks Brothers-suited young executive who stood in the line behind her. “President of what?”“Kennedy,” he said. Lincky noticed that his skin was ashen. “They got Kennedy.”Irrelevantly, it struck Lincky that with his charcoal gray suit, rep tie, and horn-rimmed glasses, he didn’t look much like a Democrat. Even before the impact of the news fully sank in, Lincky ran out of the deli toward the office.As she hurried down Third Avenue to 45th Street in the clear, gloriously sunny late autumn weather, Lincky still didn’t quite know whether or not to believe what the man in the deli had told her. President Kennedy dead? He was so young and so vital. Dead? It was incomprehensible. Yet that was what the man had said.Lincky saw people standing on the sidewalks, huddled around portable radios. Traffic had come to a halt. A bus, its doors open, stood empty, abandoned in the middle of Third Avenue. Knots of people were gathered around automobiles listening to car radios through open doors and windows. A large crowd had gathered in front of a discount store window where banks of television sets showed grim-faced reporters and anchormen.Half walking, half running, Lincky realized that something momentous really had happened. Part of her wanted to stop and join the people clustered in groups. The other part, the dominant part, wanted to get back to the office. She wanted to see Hank. She wanted to be with him. She wanted to share this moment with him.The Henry Greene Literary Agency’s fourth floor offices were deserted. Everyone was out at lunchtime, particularly on a beautiful late November day, sure to be one of the last nice days before winter and darkness took over the city. Looking for Hank, Lincky went down the corridor to his modest corner office. Like everyone else, Hank was still out. Unable to be with Hank physically, Lincky did the next best thing. She sat down in his chair, smelled the familiar odor of his cigarettes and soap, and took comfort from these signs of Hank’s presence.More prepared now to confront the terrible news, Lincky turned on the portable radio in Hank’s office. Every station had broken into its regular programming for the same bulletin from Texas:“President Kennedy is dead. He was shot today in Dallas by an unknown assassin.”It was only then, when she first began to truly comprehend the dimensions of the tragedy, that Lincky realized that not once since she had heard the dreadful news had she thought of her husband.
ELLYWASHINGTON12:40 P.M. EST
AS dumb jobs went, selling shoes in the Pappagallo boutique in Georgetown was one of the dumbest. As impossible customers went, this one, Elly had long since decided, redefined the species. Her name, although not nationally prominent, was fairly well known in Washington. Her husband was an upper-echelon lawyer in the attorney general’s office. It was said on the Georgetown dinner party circuit that she and her husband had the perfect marriage: he had the brains and she had the dough, piles and piles of it.She also had a blond lion’s mane bouffant hairdo that she flew to New York every week to have set and teased at Kenneth’s, a wardrobe of Jackie Kennedy look-alike A-line dresses, and an overly emaciated figure to offset her overly developed bank account. Her existence proved that it was possible to be too rich and too thin. She reeked of Shalimar and insatiability.She was exactly the kind of spoiled, materialistic, self-centered woman Elly McGrath had been brought up to despise.Seven pairs of suede and patent leather shoes were scattered around the pearl gray carpet of the boutique. Three pairs were pumps, four were T-straps. Three were black, the rest were various shades of cream, tan, rust, and brown. Elly was on her knees on the floor, helping her customer slip her long, bony feet into and out of them. The woman had been parked there for an hour and a half unable to decide which color and which style she wanted.Floundering in a morass of indecision, she inspected each style carefully, lingering over each one in turn. Under her breath, she debated the merits and debits of each style and each color, arguing with herself over its present and future usefulness, flattery, and fashion quotient. The microscopic examination did not seem to help her make up her mind. Nor did the fact that she had repeated the exercise on the two previous afternoons.“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it,” the woman said.She motioned to Elly to put her own shoes back on and then got up, ready to leave. As Elly collected the shoes strewn over the carpet and began putting them back into their tissue-lined boxes, the stock boy suddenly burst out of the stock room.“President Kennedy’s been shot!” he said. “He’s dead!”For as long as she lived, Elly never forgot that at a moment of national crisis she had been on her knees, trying to sell shoes to a selfish and self-obsessed woman who greeted the announcement of the president’s assassination with an angry sigh.“I suppose that means my dinner party’s off for tomorrow night. And Ethel promised that she and Bobby would be there,” she said, her thin, predatory hand with its blood-red nails on the open door of the boutique. “Jesus Christ! Why does everything have to happen to me?”Elly was jolted by the assassination and her customer’s self-centered reaction. She was wasting her life, her time, her energy. Where were her brains? Where were her values? Where were the ideals with which she had been brought up? Elly was appalled at the way she had been spending her time and energy.“I’m quitting,” Elly told her boss an hour later. She was in tears.“You’re just upset. Why don’t you go home for the rest of the day? Come back tomorrow,” replied Janice Kellen, the boutique’s owner.Elly was an excellent saleswoman, the best Janice had ever had. She didn’t want to let her go.“No. You’ve been nice to me and I’ve enjoyed working here, but I realize that it’s the wrong place for me,” Elly replied.It was an impulsive, emotional decision that Elly couldn’t really afford. She had very little money and no idea about what she was going to do next other than that it was damn well going to be more constructive than selling shoes. Making her way home through a stricken city, Elly comforted herself by remembering that she still had the only things that really mattered to her: her friends and her family—and, maybe, if she really got lucky, the man she had her heart set on, Owen Casals.
"Fiction at its best!"Kindle | iBooks | Kobo | Nook | GooglePlayNovember 22, 1963
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy—he was young, rich, handsome, vigorous—was a defining event of the 20th Century. People remember where they were, who they were with and what they were doing when they heard the shocking news.
Modern Women, a million-copy NYT bestseller, begins in Dallas, New York, and Washington on November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination, as the three heroines—outrageous Jane, studious, conflicted Lincky, and idealistic Elly—learn of the President’s death. Young women with the future ahead of them, they confront turning points in their own lives and must face the opportunities—and challenges—of the coming decades.
Here is the first chapter—
JANEDALLAS11:31 A.M. CST
AT first she wasn’t sure what happened. If anything.Wearing a phony press badge with a fake name borrowed from Ian Fleming, Jane Gresch was seated on the window side in the first row of the first press bus accompanying John F. Kennedy’s presidential trip to Texas. Because of a mix-up in scheduling, the bus was farther back in the motorcade than planned. As Jane gazed out the window at the sparse crowds that had turned out to see a president much too liberal for local John Birch tastes, she thought she heard a car backfire.From behind the tinted bus window, Jane saw, as if in a silent film, a stir of uncertainty ripple through the crowd. She noticed several people turn and begin to run away from the motorcade. A young mother pushed her two children to the ground and, using her own body as a shield, flung herself on top of them.Then the bright daylight receded and Jane’s view was blocked as the bus went into the shadows of the Dealey Plaza underpass.“What happened?” Jane asked. She turned to Owen Casals, her date for the weekend, who was sitting next to her in the aisle seat. Tall Owen. Dark Owen. Lean, handsome, work-all-day, fuck-all-night Owen.He stood up to get a better view of the scene in front of them.“The president’s car sped off. Really barreled away,” he said, turning to Jane. He looked alarmed. Owen, too, had heard the sound. Rifle fire, he thought, although he immediately rejected the idea. It was impossible. Along the banks of the Yalu River, yes, but not here in America.Originally a police reporter like his father, Owen had risen through the journalistic ranks swiftly. At thirty-two he was a star in his world, a general assignment reporter for Newsflash magazine. Owen traveled constantly covering the hot stories—and President Kennedy’s Texas trip promised heat.The local Democratic party’s bitter infighting had prompted what was hoped to be a fence-mending presidential trip. Adlai Stevenson, citing the ugly mood in the Lone Star state, had advised the president not to go. The warning added an edge of danger to the story. Mrs. Kennedy, known to dislike politicking and politicians, had accompanied the president, contributing a bracing jolt of glamour and sex appeal. Dallas promised to be the kind of story on which Owen had built his career.When the bus came out of the underpass, Jane saw a policeman jump his motorcycle up over the curb, dismount, and scramble up the grassy bank. As he disappeared from her view, Jane thought she saw him reach for his holster. The bus stopped for a moment and a lone reporter got off and ran after the policeman. Then it started again and continued at a leisurely motorcade pace toward the Trade Mart where the president was scheduled to speak.“Something really serious, we’d hear sirens. Cops and Secret Service would be all over the place. This bus wouldn’t be crawling along,” Owen said. He had decided that the noise he had heard was probably a motorcycle backfiring. The driver of President Kennedy’s limousine had certainly heard the same sound and, trained to act first, think later, had undoubtedly jammed his foot on the accelerator and peeled out.“Just act like you belong,” Owen advised Jane, leaping out of his seat as the bus pulled up to the Trade Mart. Even if nothing had happened, Owen wanted to be the first to report it.Scores of tables had been set up in the huge function room of the Trade Mart. The speaker’s podium, where President Kennedy was about to address the crowd, was draped in red, white, and blue bunting. American flags stood by the speaker’s podium and bouquets of hundreds of yellow roses stood at the head tables. The organist was warming up with a few bars of “Hail to the Chief.”Everything was ready, but suddenly everything ceased. Hundreds of Texans in the middle of a rubber-chicken circuit lunch stopped eating. Jaws stopped in midbite. Forks hung suspended in midair. Water glasses poised midway between table and mouth. Jane could see eyes open wide in surprise, heads shake in doubt, mouths open in O’s of disbelief as the rumor spread through the room.“Is it true?” a man in a business suit and ten-gallon hat asked Jane. He glanced at her press badge and, thinking she might know something, grabbed her urgently by the arm. “Did someone shoot the president?”“Shoot?” Jane replied. A feeling of chill she had pushed away earlier returned. Jane remembered the stir in the motorcade route crowd—an uneasy and frightened ripple similar to the wave of movement that was sweeping the banquet room.Before Jane could say another word, Owen grabbed her by the arm and propelled her into the surging mob of journalists that pushed through the banquet hall and up the stairs into the second-floor press room. Just as Jane and Owen entered the room, an official-looking man put down a telephone.“The president’s been shot,” he said, his face turning white. “He’s at Parkland Hospital.”
LINCKYNEW YORK CITY12:39 P.M. EST
ON November 22, Lincky Desmond did what she almost always did for lunch. She left the office at twelve thirty and went out for a brief walk and a breath of fresh air. Then she stopped at the deli for a tuna sandwich that she would eat at her desk while working on a manuscript.The fact that she had been sleeping with her boss didn’t mean that Lincky worked less. In fact, it meant that she worked more. There were two reasons. The first was that Lincky didn’t want Hank Greene to think that she would use their personal relationship to take advantage. The second was that Lincky didn’t want anyone in the office to suspect the affair by noticing that she was goofing off and not getting chewed out about it. Hank Greene, after all, was known as one of the most demanding bosses in publishing.The first thing that struck Lincky was that the deli, usually frantic at lunchtime, was eerily quiet. The customary frenzy was notable by its absence. The waiters were not shouting orders at countermen. Dishes did not clatter noisily and silverware did not bang against stainless steel counters. The customers, too, were silent. They had stopped eating, stopped talking. Lincky would have thought that she had suddenly gone deaf except for the sound of a portable radio turned up high.“The president is dead. That’s a confirmed report.” The announcer kept repeating the words over again and again. “The president is dead. That’s a confirmed report.”Lincky was confused.“President?” Lincky asked, turning to the Brooks Brothers-suited young executive who stood in the line behind her. “President of what?”“Kennedy,” he said. Lincky noticed that his skin was ashen. “They got Kennedy.”Irrelevantly, it struck Lincky that with his charcoal gray suit, rep tie, and horn-rimmed glasses, he didn’t look much like a Democrat. Even before the impact of the news fully sank in, Lincky ran out of the deli toward the office.As she hurried down Third Avenue to 45th Street in the clear, gloriously sunny late autumn weather, Lincky still didn’t quite know whether or not to believe what the man in the deli had told her. President Kennedy dead? He was so young and so vital. Dead? It was incomprehensible. Yet that was what the man had said.Lincky saw people standing on the sidewalks, huddled around portable radios. Traffic had come to a halt. A bus, its doors open, stood empty, abandoned in the middle of Third Avenue. Knots of people were gathered around automobiles listening to car radios through open doors and windows. A large crowd had gathered in front of a discount store window where banks of television sets showed grim-faced reporters and anchormen.Half walking, half running, Lincky realized that something momentous really had happened. Part of her wanted to stop and join the people clustered in groups. The other part, the dominant part, wanted to get back to the office. She wanted to see Hank. She wanted to be with him. She wanted to share this moment with him.The Henry Greene Literary Agency’s fourth floor offices were deserted. Everyone was out at lunchtime, particularly on a beautiful late November day, sure to be one of the last nice days before winter and darkness took over the city. Looking for Hank, Lincky went down the corridor to his modest corner office. Like everyone else, Hank was still out. Unable to be with Hank physically, Lincky did the next best thing. She sat down in his chair, smelled the familiar odor of his cigarettes and soap, and took comfort from these signs of Hank’s presence.More prepared now to confront the terrible news, Lincky turned on the portable radio in Hank’s office. Every station had broken into its regular programming for the same bulletin from Texas:“President Kennedy is dead. He was shot today in Dallas by an unknown assassin.”It was only then, when she first began to truly comprehend the dimensions of the tragedy, that Lincky realized that not once since she had heard the dreadful news had she thought of her husband.
ELLYWASHINGTON12:40 P.M. EST
AS dumb jobs went, selling shoes in the Pappagallo boutique in Georgetown was one of the dumbest. As impossible customers went, this one, Elly had long since decided, redefined the species. Her name, although not nationally prominent, was fairly well known in Washington. Her husband was an upper-echelon lawyer in the attorney general’s office. It was said on the Georgetown dinner party circuit that she and her husband had the perfect marriage: he had the brains and she had the dough, piles and piles of it.She also had a blond lion’s mane bouffant hairdo that she flew to New York every week to have set and teased at Kenneth’s, a wardrobe of Jackie Kennedy look-alike A-line dresses, and an overly emaciated figure to offset her overly developed bank account. Her existence proved that it was possible to be too rich and too thin. She reeked of Shalimar and insatiability.She was exactly the kind of spoiled, materialistic, self-centered woman Elly McGrath had been brought up to despise.Seven pairs of suede and patent leather shoes were scattered around the pearl gray carpet of the boutique. Three pairs were pumps, four were T-straps. Three were black, the rest were various shades of cream, tan, rust, and brown. Elly was on her knees on the floor, helping her customer slip her long, bony feet into and out of them. The woman had been parked there for an hour and a half unable to decide which color and which style she wanted.Floundering in a morass of indecision, she inspected each style carefully, lingering over each one in turn. Under her breath, she debated the merits and debits of each style and each color, arguing with herself over its present and future usefulness, flattery, and fashion quotient. The microscopic examination did not seem to help her make up her mind. Nor did the fact that she had repeated the exercise on the two previous afternoons.“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it,” the woman said.She motioned to Elly to put her own shoes back on and then got up, ready to leave. As Elly collected the shoes strewn over the carpet and began putting them back into their tissue-lined boxes, the stock boy suddenly burst out of the stock room.“President Kennedy’s been shot!” he said. “He’s dead!”For as long as she lived, Elly never forgot that at a moment of national crisis she had been on her knees, trying to sell shoes to a selfish and self-obsessed woman who greeted the announcement of the president’s assassination with an angry sigh.“I suppose that means my dinner party’s off for tomorrow night. And Ethel promised that she and Bobby would be there,” she said, her thin, predatory hand with its blood-red nails on the open door of the boutique. “Jesus Christ! Why does everything have to happen to me?”Elly was jolted by the assassination and her customer’s self-centered reaction. She was wasting her life, her time, her energy. Where were her brains? Where were her values? Where were the ideals with which she had been brought up? Elly was appalled at the way she had been spending her time and energy.“I’m quitting,” Elly told her boss an hour later. She was in tears.“You’re just upset. Why don’t you go home for the rest of the day? Come back tomorrow,” replied Janice Kellen, the boutique’s owner.Elly was an excellent saleswoman, the best Janice had ever had. She didn’t want to let her go.“No. You’ve been nice to me and I’ve enjoyed working here, but I realize that it’s the wrong place for me,” Elly replied.It was an impulsive, emotional decision that Elly couldn’t really afford. She had very little money and no idea about what she was going to do next other than that it was damn well going to be more constructive than selling shoes. Making her way home through a stricken city, Elly comforted herself by remembering that she still had the only things that really mattered to her: her friends and her family—and, maybe, if she really got lucky, the man she had her heart set on, Owen Casals.
September 4, 2018
What Ian Fleming Did to Make James Bond a Success (Beside...
What Ian Fleming Did to Make James Bond a Success (Besides Write Terrific Books)
It’s not just today’s authors who work hard to make their books a success. Consider Ian Fleming.The Man With The Golden Typewriter: Ian Fleming’s James Bond Letters is a collection by Fleming’s nephew of the author’s letters to his publisher, editors, colleagues, other writers, fans, readers, and friends.They were written in the 1950s when the British mail service operated at high efficiency. A letter mailed in the morning would be delivered the same day. The letters are organized chronologically and were written contemporaneous to the publication of the James Bond thrillers, beginning with Casino Royale.Lively, witty, and extremely informative about the inner working of book publishing at the time, the letters reveal Fleming to be a man of charm, lively intellect and wide interests.He was also a hard-working author concerned with the technical, editorial, and financial details of publishing.Ian Fleming’s Publisher Wasn’t Impressed.James Bond, as we think of the suave spy today, was hardly an instant, overnight success.
In fact, his publisher was—shall we say—barely lukewarm about Casino Royale. He had little interest in thrillers, “believing them to be short-run phenomena that rarely covered their costs. Nor did he think much of their authors, and suspected that Fleming was a dilettante. Remarkably, Casino Royale was the only Bond book Fleming’s publisher ever read.”He Faced the “Dreadful Prospect” of Getting MarriedFleming’s hard work and interest in every aspect of publishing may well have saved James Bond from obscurity.Fleming was a disciplined writer. Every morning, for three hours, he sat at his desk and typed 2,000 words of a new Bond adventure during January and February. Those were the months he spent in his house, Goldeneye, located on the Caribbean island of Jamaica.He shored up his discipline by “obstinately closing my mind to self-mockery” and wondering “what will my friends say?” He joked that as “a confirmed bachelor on the eve of marriage, I decided to take my mind off the dreadful prospect by writing a thriller.”A Steely Eye on the Finances.Fleming’s nephew comments that “he liked to joke that he was Cape’s hardest working author, and to an extent this was true. He had made a career in journalism, ran a network of foreign correspondents and was, indeed, a publisher himself and a collector of first editions.There was little Cape [his publisher] could tell him that he didn’t know already. ‘I enjoyed his enthusiastic interest in the technicalities of production,’ wrote Michael Howard with surprise. That soon turned to alarm when “it became clear that Fleming had more in mind than simply delivering a manuscript. He designed the covers, organised reviews, invented sales tactics and cast a steely eye over the finances.”Blurbs, Covers, and Print Orders.Fleming also wrote blurbs, concerned himself with the details of covers and size of print orders, and suggested ads and promotions, Also, he drummed up reviews, contacted magazine editors about feature stories, and concerned himself with the size of print orders, advertising budgets as well as the ads themselves.Nor did he overlook the details of his contracts—royalties, foreign editions, option, serial, movies, and tv. He worked closely with cover designers, making suggestions about images, and commenting on title fonts.Guns, Perfume, and Typos.Determined to make his books as good as possible, Fleming was an avid reseacher intent on tracking down the “perfect” kind of gun or the exact perfume a heroine might wear. He explored Harlem’s nightlife on a trip to America in December 1952, tracked down information on gold doubloons and Spanish treasure by consulting Spink, London’s premier coin dealers. And scenes taking place in Florida were based on his visit to that state at the beginning of 1953.He welcomed input from his editors, readers, and friends and was constantly working to make the books as good as possible. He even alerted his publisher to typos to correct in future editions.Advice from Readers and Other Writers.Fleming paid attention to advice from other writers like Raymond Chandler, Noel Coward and Somerset Maugham.The novelist Michael Arlen advised him to “write your second book before you see the reviews of the first. Casino Royale is good but the reviewers may damn it and take the heart out of you.” Heeding Arlen’s words, Fleming completed Live and Let Die before its predecessor had even been published.He also carried on a lively correspondence with readers. One reader who was an expert in guns (and holsters) made specific recommendations for Bond’s weaponry.Another who worked in the Yale University library corrected what Fleming referred to as his “Americanese.”In fact, it seemed that about the only thing he didn’t do was actually drive the trucks that delivered copies to bookstores.Always polite and often witty—even when pushing back on the royalty rates offered by his publisher or when replying to a dissatisfied reader’s negative comments—he concluded his note to her “with many thanks for the kindly thought behind your letter.”The Sheer, Ridiculous Delight!And, about that golden typewriter: yes indeed, Ian Fleming did have a real—as well as a metaphorical—golden typewriter. According to his nephew, “Fleming had always longed for success, but failing that would settle for the trappings.So, in anticipation, he ordered a gold-plated typewriter from New York to congratulate himself on finishing his first novel.
It was a Royal Quiet de Luxe, cost $ 174. It wasn’t a custom-made machine—Royal had produced several of them—and Fleming’s literary acquaintances considered it the height of vulgarity. Fleming did not care. “It was the sheer, ridiculous delight of the thing. He owned a Golden Typewriter!”Beyond his Wildest Dreams.Not just literal gold. But, as it would turn out, golden beyond Fleming’s wildest dreams.Originally published at Anne R. Allen's blog.
It’s not just today’s authors who work hard to make their books a success. Consider Ian Fleming.The Man With The Golden Typewriter: Ian Fleming’s James Bond Letters is a collection by Fleming’s nephew of the author’s letters to his publisher, editors, colleagues, other writers, fans, readers, and friends.They were written in the 1950s when the British mail service operated at high efficiency. A letter mailed in the morning would be delivered the same day. The letters are organized chronologically and were written contemporaneous to the publication of the James Bond thrillers, beginning with Casino Royale.Lively, witty, and extremely informative about the inner working of book publishing at the time, the letters reveal Fleming to be a man of charm, lively intellect and wide interests.He was also a hard-working author concerned with the technical, editorial, and financial details of publishing.Ian Fleming’s Publisher Wasn’t Impressed.James Bond, as we think of the suave spy today, was hardly an instant, overnight success.
In fact, his publisher was—shall we say—barely lukewarm about Casino Royale. He had little interest in thrillers, “believing them to be short-run phenomena that rarely covered their costs. Nor did he think much of their authors, and suspected that Fleming was a dilettante. Remarkably, Casino Royale was the only Bond book Fleming’s publisher ever read.”He Faced the “Dreadful Prospect” of Getting MarriedFleming’s hard work and interest in every aspect of publishing may well have saved James Bond from obscurity.Fleming was a disciplined writer. Every morning, for three hours, he sat at his desk and typed 2,000 words of a new Bond adventure during January and February. Those were the months he spent in his house, Goldeneye, located on the Caribbean island of Jamaica.He shored up his discipline by “obstinately closing my mind to self-mockery” and wondering “what will my friends say?” He joked that as “a confirmed bachelor on the eve of marriage, I decided to take my mind off the dreadful prospect by writing a thriller.”A Steely Eye on the Finances.Fleming’s nephew comments that “he liked to joke that he was Cape’s hardest working author, and to an extent this was true. He had made a career in journalism, ran a network of foreign correspondents and was, indeed, a publisher himself and a collector of first editions.There was little Cape [his publisher] could tell him that he didn’t know already. ‘I enjoyed his enthusiastic interest in the technicalities of production,’ wrote Michael Howard with surprise. That soon turned to alarm when “it became clear that Fleming had more in mind than simply delivering a manuscript. He designed the covers, organised reviews, invented sales tactics and cast a steely eye over the finances.”Blurbs, Covers, and Print Orders.Fleming also wrote blurbs, concerned himself with the details of covers and size of print orders, and suggested ads and promotions, Also, he drummed up reviews, contacted magazine editors about feature stories, and concerned himself with the size of print orders, advertising budgets as well as the ads themselves.Nor did he overlook the details of his contracts—royalties, foreign editions, option, serial, movies, and tv. He worked closely with cover designers, making suggestions about images, and commenting on title fonts.Guns, Perfume, and Typos.Determined to make his books as good as possible, Fleming was an avid reseacher intent on tracking down the “perfect” kind of gun or the exact perfume a heroine might wear. He explored Harlem’s nightlife on a trip to America in December 1952, tracked down information on gold doubloons and Spanish treasure by consulting Spink, London’s premier coin dealers. And scenes taking place in Florida were based on his visit to that state at the beginning of 1953.He welcomed input from his editors, readers, and friends and was constantly working to make the books as good as possible. He even alerted his publisher to typos to correct in future editions.Advice from Readers and Other Writers.Fleming paid attention to advice from other writers like Raymond Chandler, Noel Coward and Somerset Maugham.The novelist Michael Arlen advised him to “write your second book before you see the reviews of the first. Casino Royale is good but the reviewers may damn it and take the heart out of you.” Heeding Arlen’s words, Fleming completed Live and Let Die before its predecessor had even been published.He also carried on a lively correspondence with readers. One reader who was an expert in guns (and holsters) made specific recommendations for Bond’s weaponry.Another who worked in the Yale University library corrected what Fleming referred to as his “Americanese.”In fact, it seemed that about the only thing he didn’t do was actually drive the trucks that delivered copies to bookstores.Always polite and often witty—even when pushing back on the royalty rates offered by his publisher or when replying to a dissatisfied reader’s negative comments—he concluded his note to her “with many thanks for the kindly thought behind your letter.”The Sheer, Ridiculous Delight!And, about that golden typewriter: yes indeed, Ian Fleming did have a real—as well as a metaphorical—golden typewriter. According to his nephew, “Fleming had always longed for success, but failing that would settle for the trappings.So, in anticipation, he ordered a gold-plated typewriter from New York to congratulate himself on finishing his first novel.It was a Royal Quiet de Luxe, cost $ 174. It wasn’t a custom-made machine—Royal had produced several of them—and Fleming’s literary acquaintances considered it the height of vulgarity. Fleming did not care. “It was the sheer, ridiculous delight of the thing. He owned a Golden Typewriter!”Beyond his Wildest Dreams.Not just literal gold. But, as it would turn out, golden beyond Fleming’s wildest dreams.Originally published at Anne R. Allen's blog.
