Denise DeSio's Blog, page 5

I got a call from a Facebook friend objecting to my descr...

I got a call from a Facebook friend objecting to my description of Rose's Will as upmarket fiction. "Doesn't that sound just a little conceited? Not that your book isn't better than 90% of the others out there," she said, "but it's probably a term better left to your readers to decide."

After the call, I scoured the internet for publishing terms, and indeed, by some standards, the term is controversial. What a surprise! Do I ever do anything that isn't controversial? Despite ruffling a few feathers, however, upmarket fiction has come into it's own right as a standard genre. More and more agents and publishers are requesting it.

What is upmarket fiction? Basically, it's commercial/mainstream fiction with enough literary elements to appeal to the literary reader, making it span both genres and therefore have wider appeal. It is typically a character-driven story, with vibrant language, well-developed characters, and dimension that, by turns, expresses wisdom, irony, insight, and humor.

Rose's Will is no Odyssey, but 've held it to a higher standard. Am I not entitled to use the term to describe it? What do you think?

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My First Live Interview

I did my first telephone author interview for an article in the February issue of ECHO. Fellow insomniac, Cait Brennan, called me at 10:30 at night to begin the interview. If you've never heard of Cait, she's a rock vocalist, novelist, screenwriter, actress, producer and director with her own Wikipedia page. If you want to know the truth, I felt like I should have been interviewing her!

It was a pleasure to discuss ROSE'S WILL with someone who had actually read it and done her homework. Her intelligent questions and thoughtful responses had me yammering on and on. Here's what she made out of an hour's worth of my rambling. Thank you Cait. The pleasure was all mine!

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Taking Risks

Before I sent out my manuscript, I scoured the internet and went to numerous writing seminars and conventions, sucking up information like a Hoover. I learned how to send a query, what an agent wants and doesn't want, what sells, what stinks, and how to pack a punch in the first paragraph. Armed with all that valuable information, I obsessed, second-guessed, and over-analyzed to the point of paralysis, while my manuscript skulked in the dark recesses of my computer.

A very famous author/agent told me never, ever to start a book with My name is so and so and this is what I do. Why? Because it's BOR-ING, and an agent will throw my work directly into the trash bin. Horror of horrors! I ran home and immediately changed the beginning of my novel. I was cranky for a few days until I decided that all the cracks in my 2600 square foot home had to be caulked.

Weeks later, my partner pulled my twisted body out from under the bathroom sink and capped the caulk gun. "Stop it!" she screamed, as she dragged me back into my office. "Change that shit back the way it was and send the damn thing out already!"

She was right. My character, Eli Fineman, would never begin his story without introducing himself. It would show a lack of refinement.

I changed it back, and started sending out sample chapters, envisioning an industry full of agents and/or publishers pressing the delete button and generating a rejection template in unison. Luckily, that didn't happen. Rose's Will was offered a contract from the second publisher I sent it to.

So, get ahead. Get all the education and information you can, but don't compromise your art to comply with generic instructions. If your work is good, your story is well-written, and you have a fine command of the English language, send the damn thing out already!

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My First Live Interview

Last night I did my first telephone author interview for an article in the upcoming February issue of ECHO. Fellow insomniac, Cait Brennan, called me at 10:30 at night to begin the interview. If you've never heard of Cait, she's an American rock vocalist, a novelist, a screenwriter, and an actress, producer and director with her own Wikipedia page. If you want to know the truth, I felt like I should have been interviewing her!

It was a pleasure discuss ROSE'S WILL with someone who had actually read in and done her homework. Her intelligent questions and thoughtful responses had me yammering on and on, and I can't wait to see what she does with an hour's worth of my rambling. Thank you Cait. The pleasure was all mine!

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It Doesn't Seem Right

My novel, Rose's Will is published for Kindle and I don't even own one! Isn't that so wrong? So I'll be scouring the Internet for Kindle contests. Here's one from ReadtoReivew. Good luck!

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Win a Free eBook

Help me improve my Amazon ranking by taking 10 seconds to sign on to Amazon and check my TAG boxes here and WIN A FREE COPY OF ROSE'S WILL! (read the prologue for FREE and answer this question for an extra entry:

After she called me an idiot, and much worse, quite a few times

A.  She hung up the phone.

B.  I took her to lunch.

C.  She took my car keys.

LEAVE A REPLY below. (Winner will be picked when I get 20 entries)

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eBook Giveaway!

Win a free eBook!

Help me improve my Amazon ranking and WIN A FREE COPY OF ROSE'S WILL!

Just check off my TAG boxes here and say how much you love love me in a reply below.

(For an extra entry, read the prologue for FREE to answer this question:

After she called me an idiot, and much worse, quite a few times

A.  She hung up the phone.

B.  I took her to lunch.

C.  She took my car keys.

LEAVE A REPLY below.

I'll choose 3 winners from every new set of 20 entries! (No repeat entries please)

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Rose's Will Reviewed by Celebrated Lesbian Author, JE Knowles!

J.E. Knowles

Rose's Will is a very good debut novel. I read most of it in one sitting, despite having to do so on my laptop (it's e-book only, and I don't have an e-book reader). Denise DeSio manages to tell a compelling story through the viewpoints of three very different characters.

Set mostly in New York, the story begins and ends with Eli, the man who loved Rose in the last years of her life. We also have chapters from the point of view of Glory, Rose's daughter, whose lesbianism is just the latest thing for her mother to despise her for; and Ricky, Glory's brother. Unlike Glory, Ricky never moved away and so never escaped the iron will his mother attempted to impose on her children. "Rose's Will" is not just the mystery that drives the plot, but the dominating power in these characters' lives.

It is significant that the story starts with Eli, a character both cerebral and endearing. Because we first meet Rose through his eyes, our first version of her is as someone lovable. So everything we subsequently learn about how she was not lovable somehow doesn't quite shake with what we know about her from Eli.

And we learn some pretty awful things. Glory's relationship with her mother is beyond broken: her childhood memories are of violent abuse. Of course, Rose claims never to have laid a hand on her daughter. It is hard to understand child abuse and the lies surrounding it, harder still to imagine loving or forgiving an abuser. Readers who avoid scenes of cruelty to children, or for that matter, want the only sexual relationships in a book to be lesbian, should probably not download this.

Which would be their loss, because the author convincingly brings to life not only Rose, but all three viewpoint characters—two of them men. It would have been easy to portray Ricky as the doormat who puts up with all his mother's bullshit, including homophobia, but there is more to him than that. In fact, it is easy to sympathize with Ricky. Glory is only too eager to continue trashing their mother even when it's futile, and it is true that he was surviving in his own way all those years.

Glory's lover, Claire, is not a major character in the book, but it is Claire who states its theme most clearly when she tells Glory on p. 31: "Honey, I know it upsets you that your mom doesn't acknowledge our relationship, and I love you for being so loyal to me, but I don't want you to regret the time you wasted waiting for her to change. Maybe she can't change." Those words will resonate, however ruefully, with many readers who have despaired of their parents with far less cause than Glory has.

Rose is the most important character in the book, yet we never see Rose from the inside, and so we never get to see how she really thought she treated her children, or whether she was truly depressed, had a psychological breakdown, etc. Maybe that's the point. Knowing a person through our own, or someone else's version of her is not really knowing her at all.

The one thing Eli and Glory agree on about Rose is that she was never wrong—or at least never acknowledged being wrong. The difference between them is that Eli can accept this about Rose. We learn at some length about his childhood in Bulgaria, which was unique among European countries in that Bulgaria did not allow Hitler to deport its Jews. While this is an important part of history that should be better known, it took me a while to realize its significance here: Eli's experiences of horror on a historic scale have made him compassionate and far-seeing.

The author is remarkably skilled with language, using fresh images and comparisons where too many other authors might fall back on clichés. So when I realized that the time of the story had it heading towards September 2001, I was dreading it. How would the inevitable events play out in the lives of these characters, and could I bear to read it? Eli quotes Cicero: "If we are forced, at every hour, to watch or listen to horrible events, the constant stream of ghastly impressions will deprive even the most delicate among us of all respect for humanity." (p. 234)

But ultimately, it is hard to imagine a story set in New York City not dealing with September 11, at that time or afterwards. The neighborhoods, past and present, are vividly imagined, making the place almost a character in the book.

The ending is powerful and unexpected. Who is to say that any one's experience is entirely wrong? As we learn, Eli makes Rose a better person than she otherwise is. But that's what loving someone means.

I did keep forgetting that Glory herself was a mother, and wondered why she didn't make more comparisons with the way she treats her own children. Ricky certainly thinks this way about his family. And it would have been nice to see more of Glory and Claire at home in Arizona, instead of just hearing about their relationship as backstory.

But this is a well-told story and any of the three main characters could be its hero. That is a major accomplishment for a first-time novelist. Add to that the humor and the gift for language, and DeSio is a writer to watch in years to come.

– J. E. Knowles is the author of Arusha (Spinsters Ink), a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her second novel, The Trees in the Field, will be published in 2012. http://jeknowles.com

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Something To THINK About

According to The National Science Foundation the average person thinks roughly 1000 thoughts per hour. When we're writing, that jumps to 1666 thoughts an hour. Deeper than average thinkers think up to 4X more than that.

Given these statistics it a wonder why writers get writer's block at all.

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A Favorite Excerpt From Rose's Will

…On one particular afternoon, I took Rose to lunch at the Jewish deli. By that time we were extremely familiar – Rose's kind of familiar, which made it acceptable for her to buy clothes for me with my money and without my presence. Rose and I stood in front of the deli case at Adelman's, and after I decided in favor of the herring with cream sauce instead of a pastrami sandwich, I pointed to some of my favorite foods and asked Rose, "Do you like kreplach? Do you like latkes?"

After I had made many suggestions, she said in a loud voice, "Boy oh boy! You like all that Jew food, huh?"

"Rose," I said. "Please. Have some respect." It was the first time I ever said anything like this to her.

In a louder voice, she asked, "What? I can't say Jew food?" The customers twisted their heads to look at us. "Rose," I whispered, "I want you to be quiet or I am going to leave you here by yourself."

She put one hand on her ample hip. "You think I don't know how to get home? You're an idiot. Go ahead, you wanna leave? Leave."

Lenny, behind the counter, shook his head. I gave up our spot to the next person in line. "Rose," I put a trembling hand on her forearm. "Please stop it. I am asking you for the last time." My voice was below a whisper.

"Hey Mister," she shook my hand off her arm. "Don't you dare tell me what to do." Now she was screaming. "So what if I said Jew food? Big deal! You're a Jew. It's not a bad word."

I didn't want to leave her there, but I did. There are some things a man should not have to put up with, even for love. Yes, I loved her. I admit it. I loved her even as I turned my back and left her standing at the counter in Adelman's. I loved her when I returned to my apartment hungry, with nothing in my refrigerator but moldy leftover shish kabob.

I was miserable, but I did not call her – and I knew that Rome would fall again before she called me. Rose never apologized for anything. She was always right! So what's to apologize? I didn't go to the Senior Center for two days. My friends called to see if I was sick. My heart was sick but I didn't say so. I said I was taking a break, that I had things to do. To tell you the truth, I had no idea what to do. I forgot that I was an educated man.

On the third day, I woke up and asked myself what Cicero would do. Would he lock himself in his apartment for three days? Would he forget to brush his teeth? Of course not! He would examine the problem from every perspective. He would acknowledge that there was more than one truth.

Rose, she did not know what she was saying. She never looked death in the face through barbed wire. She never heard the word Jew spat from the mouth of a Nazi. She was an ignorant woman who never left Brooklyn. The word Jew, in her mouth, had no connection to those atrocities. She meant no harm and I had no right to be angry with her.

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