Mike Duron's Blog
April 4, 2013
March 16, 2013
The Shining -- and Rivals
I'm currently re-reading The Shining in preparation for the release of Doctor Sleep later this year. Okay, I'm doing more than just reading it. I'm analyzing it, I guess you could say. I'm taking notes as I read and have already entered the structure of the novel into my writing journal (Five Parts, fifty eight chapters, some chapters subdivided into sections, though rarely, each part and chapter is named). I have to say, I'm really impressed by Stephen King's work here.
I got Duma Key as a gift when it came out and I was really disappointed with it. There were so many flaws in the telling of the tale I thought I'd never read another book by SK again, but, here I am. For some reason I'm still not sure about (I guess it was the recent reading of James Wood's How Fiction Works) I decided it wouldn't hurt to skim through this old, rarely-visited friend of mine. I've read The Shining several times, at various ages -- the last time being around early 1992.
My own novel, San Anto, isn't broken up into parts or chapters. The narrative flows temporally, and it's told from the first person, present. I'm working on its sequel, "Rivals," right now. It picks up six years after the closing of San Anto, and all I have up to right now is written in exactly the same way San Anto is written, from the first person present.
I tell you though, SK had me so blown away by his writing he had me telling myself, "Why don't I use this old tried and true method of story telling? Part, Chapter, Section...." I even went so far as to start planning out how I would tell Rivals in a manner similar to SK's telling of The Shining, but then I remembered why I had told San Anto from the present, first person in the first place: I wanted the reader to feel the development of the protag as he moves through life. I wanted the reader to notice the changes not just in an intellectual way, I wanted the reader to feel each change the way we feel it when an airplane hits and air pocket and suddenly drops forty or fifty feet. So, this is the way I'm leaving it. The change is significant from when we last left the characters populating San Anto.
Despite the great new-found admiration I have for SK, I'm keeping my book the way it is -- and forging ahead. Still, if you have a chance and are looking for something to read, pick up a copy of The Shining. You won't be disappointed. Oh, and don't be shy about buying a copy of San Anto while you're at it -- it's only 99¢ for crying out loud. ;)
I got Duma Key as a gift when it came out and I was really disappointed with it. There were so many flaws in the telling of the tale I thought I'd never read another book by SK again, but, here I am. For some reason I'm still not sure about (I guess it was the recent reading of James Wood's How Fiction Works) I decided it wouldn't hurt to skim through this old, rarely-visited friend of mine. I've read The Shining several times, at various ages -- the last time being around early 1992.
My own novel, San Anto, isn't broken up into parts or chapters. The narrative flows temporally, and it's told from the first person, present. I'm working on its sequel, "Rivals," right now. It picks up six years after the closing of San Anto, and all I have up to right now is written in exactly the same way San Anto is written, from the first person present.
I tell you though, SK had me so blown away by his writing he had me telling myself, "Why don't I use this old tried and true method of story telling? Part, Chapter, Section...." I even went so far as to start planning out how I would tell Rivals in a manner similar to SK's telling of The Shining, but then I remembered why I had told San Anto from the present, first person in the first place: I wanted the reader to feel the development of the protag as he moves through life. I wanted the reader to notice the changes not just in an intellectual way, I wanted the reader to feel each change the way we feel it when an airplane hits and air pocket and suddenly drops forty or fifty feet. So, this is the way I'm leaving it. The change is significant from when we last left the characters populating San Anto.
Despite the great new-found admiration I have for SK, I'm keeping my book the way it is -- and forging ahead. Still, if you have a chance and are looking for something to read, pick up a copy of The Shining. You won't be disappointed. Oh, and don't be shy about buying a copy of San Anto while you're at it -- it's only 99¢ for crying out loud. ;)
March 12, 2013
Read Today...
Read Virginia Woolf's Modern Fiction today -- stopped off to find and read Anton Chekhov's Gusev as well.
March 9, 2013
Afrasiabi :: "Small Girls"
Notes on "Small Girls" by Dena Afrasiabi
This is the first story I've ever read by Dena Afrasiabi, and, though I have some complaints, overall, the story kept me interested to the end, and left some ghosts in my memory. I welcome them warmly and hope they don't leave anytime soon. These are ghosts, or afterimages, if you will, I've remembered, apparently, because I was supposed to have forgotten them. It's a little like that old thing where you're supposed to close your eyes and ~not~ think of a purple Volkswagon beetle with yellow polka dots all over it.
I'm left with the images of the girls, all of them pale and, well, pretty emo. I'm left with the character of the coach, who is never shown to be anything but cruel. I'm left with the technically-accomplished Iranian parents of the un-named narrator. I'm left with the hiding places mentioned (which I won't name here because I don't want to spoil your own reading experience if you haven't read the story yet).
Several things stand out about this story for me as a writer. First of all, I love the way the narrator describes, at the beginning of the story, her voice and the voices of her teammates by saying they "rustled like candy bar wrappers and never caught in your ears." While this certainly changes (though I won't mention exactly how), I think it's especially interesting when you consider the fact the only direct quote in the entire story has to do with one of the girls speaking to an imaginary person. The narrator reports the conversation she overhears from another location, while the girl speaking is alone -- well, at least as far as 'the real world' (of the story) is concerned.
Ms. Afrasiabi is skilled at providing just the right amount of detail to bring the world of the fiction to life. She hits all the notes: sight, sound, smell, touch, and, though she didn't specifically mention taste as far as I can tell, I was certainly left with the impression she did. Maybe it's because of the fact smell is so closely linked to taste and she gets very descriptive of the olfactory throughout, I'm left with the impression she had mentioned taste somewhere in the text (she does mention chocolate at one point, so I haven't lost ~all~ my marbles ... yet).
One of the complaints I have though (and, if this is actually not a work of fiction, but simply an autobiographical anecdote, then some of what follows doesn't apply, of course) is the fact I was never sure as I read the story if I was reading about girls in Junior High School, High School, Prep School, or College/University. The manner in which Ms. Afrasiabi describes the girls seems to paint them as being maybe somewhere in their early teens. Even the use of the word 'girls' seems inappropriate in the context of the story if the girls are in fact young women in college going out into the world for the first time -- although I guess it does make sense if you consider the fact they would likely have described themselves as 'girls' at the beginning of the story, and the narrator, being older and wiser now, would likely (and does indeed) describe them as 'girls' as well.
So, maybe it isn't the fact the word 'girls' is used that confused me. Maybe it was the fact their behaviors and attitudes seemed too childlike for young women attending college. If anything, most young women, I would think, get themselves into trouble during that stage in life not because they think and behave as young girls, but because they (just as young men) sometimes unwisely try to assert themselves as fully-mature adults, which they usually don't have experience enough to do successfully.
I also thought the coach's character was pretty flat. He didn't behave in any way but cruelly. His motivations for picking these little girls when he could have found larger ones seemed very implausible to me. Because of this, the entire journey became implausible. And, while I realize there's irony in the fact we expect a wrestling coach to find the largest women he can for his school's first wrestling team, but, instead, goes out and finds 'smart girls' who all happen to be outsiders, the implausibility was only increased with the actions of the coach -- again, I don't want to introduce any spoilers here -- but it just didn't seem to me that such actions could be carried out with impunity unless the story is set somewhere before 1960 or thereabouts (assuming the setting is America, which it does seem to be, although I guess it could just as easily be England or Canada).
These little nit pickings don't mean I didn't enjoy the story though. I enjoyed it very much. It's a good read, and I'll certainly watch out for more from Ms. Afrasiabi. Well done!
Click here to read "Small Girls" by Dena Afrasiabi at prickofthespindle.com
This is the first story I've ever read by Dena Afrasiabi, and, though I have some complaints, overall, the story kept me interested to the end, and left some ghosts in my memory. I welcome them warmly and hope they don't leave anytime soon. These are ghosts, or afterimages, if you will, I've remembered, apparently, because I was supposed to have forgotten them. It's a little like that old thing where you're supposed to close your eyes and ~not~ think of a purple Volkswagon beetle with yellow polka dots all over it.
I'm left with the images of the girls, all of them pale and, well, pretty emo. I'm left with the character of the coach, who is never shown to be anything but cruel. I'm left with the technically-accomplished Iranian parents of the un-named narrator. I'm left with the hiding places mentioned (which I won't name here because I don't want to spoil your own reading experience if you haven't read the story yet).
Several things stand out about this story for me as a writer. First of all, I love the way the narrator describes, at the beginning of the story, her voice and the voices of her teammates by saying they "rustled like candy bar wrappers and never caught in your ears." While this certainly changes (though I won't mention exactly how), I think it's especially interesting when you consider the fact the only direct quote in the entire story has to do with one of the girls speaking to an imaginary person. The narrator reports the conversation she overhears from another location, while the girl speaking is alone -- well, at least as far as 'the real world' (of the story) is concerned.
Ms. Afrasiabi is skilled at providing just the right amount of detail to bring the world of the fiction to life. She hits all the notes: sight, sound, smell, touch, and, though she didn't specifically mention taste as far as I can tell, I was certainly left with the impression she did. Maybe it's because of the fact smell is so closely linked to taste and she gets very descriptive of the olfactory throughout, I'm left with the impression she had mentioned taste somewhere in the text (she does mention chocolate at one point, so I haven't lost ~all~ my marbles ... yet).
One of the complaints I have though (and, if this is actually not a work of fiction, but simply an autobiographical anecdote, then some of what follows doesn't apply, of course) is the fact I was never sure as I read the story if I was reading about girls in Junior High School, High School, Prep School, or College/University. The manner in which Ms. Afrasiabi describes the girls seems to paint them as being maybe somewhere in their early teens. Even the use of the word 'girls' seems inappropriate in the context of the story if the girls are in fact young women in college going out into the world for the first time -- although I guess it does make sense if you consider the fact they would likely have described themselves as 'girls' at the beginning of the story, and the narrator, being older and wiser now, would likely (and does indeed) describe them as 'girls' as well.
So, maybe it isn't the fact the word 'girls' is used that confused me. Maybe it was the fact their behaviors and attitudes seemed too childlike for young women attending college. If anything, most young women, I would think, get themselves into trouble during that stage in life not because they think and behave as young girls, but because they (just as young men) sometimes unwisely try to assert themselves as fully-mature adults, which they usually don't have experience enough to do successfully.
I also thought the coach's character was pretty flat. He didn't behave in any way but cruelly. His motivations for picking these little girls when he could have found larger ones seemed very implausible to me. Because of this, the entire journey became implausible. And, while I realize there's irony in the fact we expect a wrestling coach to find the largest women he can for his school's first wrestling team, but, instead, goes out and finds 'smart girls' who all happen to be outsiders, the implausibility was only increased with the actions of the coach -- again, I don't want to introduce any spoilers here -- but it just didn't seem to me that such actions could be carried out with impunity unless the story is set somewhere before 1960 or thereabouts (assuming the setting is America, which it does seem to be, although I guess it could just as easily be England or Canada).
These little nit pickings don't mean I didn't enjoy the story though. I enjoyed it very much. It's a good read, and I'll certainly watch out for more from Ms. Afrasiabi. Well done!
Click here to read "Small Girls" by Dena Afrasiabi at prickofthespindle.com
Some Notes on Saramago's :: The Tale of the Unknown Island
Wonderful technique here where the characters' speech isn't corralled within quotation marks. It remains perfectly clear -- and has several advantages over the conventional method (to use James Wood's favorite term toward the end of "How Fiction Works").
What are the advantages of getting rid of the quotes? What are the disadvantages? Why do it at all? Why the impossibly-long sentence used to convey this conversation?
I think the important thing to focus on is the fairy-tale setting Saramago is using to tell this tale. The strangeness starts on page one, where the king worries that the rapping on the door requesting favors from the king, gone unanswered for too long, will disturb the neighbors. What sort of king has neighbors and doesn't live in a castle? Of course! A king of a small number of people who live on an island. The use of the fairy-tale language immediately made me think of an old-fashioned European king who would, of course, reside in a castle, but the title of the story makes it obvious these are people on an "Unknown Island." Or are they?
At the very beginning of the story, we can't know for sure. Although the title gives us a clue, we don't know yet if maybe this actually is a European kingdom and perhaps the suppliant will discover an island after he gets his boat from his king. Either way, the king having neighbors whose opinion he has to worry about is minor compared to the conversation quoted above. That's actually pretty brilliant, and I think it's very clever because it reflects an almost stream of consciousness technique that hijacks the reader's phonological loop (as described in Baddeley's model of working memory) in a very subtle way.
The reason the quotation marks are missing and the speech isn't broken up into paragraphs is because the words on the paper very smoothly penetrate and take over the articulatory loop so they become the thoughts of the reader. This is why the speakers in the conversation aren't confused by the average reader. That reader, though many other characters have already been mentioned, knows exactly who is taking part in the conversation and to whom each line should belong.
This writing is -- even in translation -- white hot with a mastery of written language. Lots to learn here....
"...When the cleaning woman asked him through the crack in the door, What do you want, the man, unlike all the others, did not ask for a title, a medal, or simply money, he said, I want to talk to the king, You know perfectly well that the king can't come, he's busy at the door for favors, replied the woman, Well, go and tell him that I'm not leaving here until he comes, in person, to find out what I want, said the man, and he lay down across the threshold, covering himself with a blanket against the cold. Anyone going in or out would have to step over him first...."
What are the advantages of getting rid of the quotes? What are the disadvantages? Why do it at all? Why the impossibly-long sentence used to convey this conversation?
I think the important thing to focus on is the fairy-tale setting Saramago is using to tell this tale. The strangeness starts on page one, where the king worries that the rapping on the door requesting favors from the king, gone unanswered for too long, will disturb the neighbors. What sort of king has neighbors and doesn't live in a castle? Of course! A king of a small number of people who live on an island. The use of the fairy-tale language immediately made me think of an old-fashioned European king who would, of course, reside in a castle, but the title of the story makes it obvious these are people on an "Unknown Island." Or are they?
At the very beginning of the story, we can't know for sure. Although the title gives us a clue, we don't know yet if maybe this actually is a European kingdom and perhaps the suppliant will discover an island after he gets his boat from his king. Either way, the king having neighbors whose opinion he has to worry about is minor compared to the conversation quoted above. That's actually pretty brilliant, and I think it's very clever because it reflects an almost stream of consciousness technique that hijacks the reader's phonological loop (as described in Baddeley's model of working memory) in a very subtle way.
The reason the quotation marks are missing and the speech isn't broken up into paragraphs is because the words on the paper very smoothly penetrate and take over the articulatory loop so they become the thoughts of the reader. This is why the speakers in the conversation aren't confused by the average reader. That reader, though many other characters have already been mentioned, knows exactly who is taking part in the conversation and to whom each line should belong.
This writing is -- even in translation -- white hot with a mastery of written language. Lots to learn here....
February 16, 2013
February 6, 2013
Mike Duron #1 -- Now Available on Smashwords
Mike Duron #1 (a collection of three new short stories for February, 2013) now available at Smashwords. It's under review for the premium catalogue, so, out for distribution soon:
Mike Duron #1 at Smashwords
Mike Duron #1 at Smashwords
San Anto -- Smashwords Edition
San Anto now available at Smashwords with a new cover. It's under review for the premium catalogue, so, out for distribution soon:
San Anto -- Smashwords Edition
San Anto -- Smashwords Edition
January 25, 2013
Coming February 2013
The first issue in a new series of short stories by Mike Duron....
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September 22, 2012
San Anto on Amazon Prime
If you're an Amazon Prime member, you can borrow San Anto for free!
http://www.amazon.com/San-Anto-Rivals...
http://www.amazon.com/San-Anto-Rivals...
