Phyllis Anne Duncan (P. A. Duncan)'s Blog, page 51

Ladders to Friday Flash Fiction

By some sort of odd coincidence, both Friday flash fiction exercises I participate in (Friday Fictioneers and Flash! Friday) have ladders in their photo prompts today. One is commonplace; the other unusual, and both different enough that one story won’t fit both. Not that I’d do that anyway. Both brought lots of interesting thoughts to mind.

Friday Fictioneers’ photo prompt brought back to mind a favorite episode of mine from the classic Twilight Zone series. I’ve mentioned before that watching that series and seeing the stories penned by not only Rod Serling but people who became some of my favorite writers (Bradbury, Matheson, and many more) made me want to write.

Serling was an amazingly erudite man who had such a grasp of human frailty, and he reflected that in his tales of the other worldly and macabre. Almost single-handedly he made the term “speculative fiction” credible in a literary environment that dismissed such writing as pulp. (That, unfortunately, still happens to a certain extent.) He wrote or adapted to a screenplay ninety-nine of the original 156 episodes, including the one I’m paying homage to in today’s Friday Fictioneers offering, “Reincarnation.”

If you’ve never watched the original offerings of Twilight Zone, give them a try. Ignore the black-and-white presentation and the sometimes cheesy special effects and pay attention to the stories, the words, which are masterful.

As usual, if you don’t see the link on the title above, scroll to the top of the page, click on the Friday Fictioneers tab, then select the story from the drop-down menu. If you want to read the story for Flash! Friday, which features a ladder as well, click here or click on the Flash! Friday tab above and select the last story (Escalera del Jacobo) on the list.

Heading in a New Direction

Off and on for the past fifteen years I’ve been working on my magnum opus–a multiple book series on an actual event of domestic terrorism. Fifteen years may seem like a long time, but for twelve of those years I had a full-time and demanding job plus an actual social life. That, and the research was not only extensive but sometimes mentally taxing.

I composited real people into fictional characters but stuck to the history as it’s known in public records. I changed the names to protect the innocent–and to disguise the guilty. I filled holes in the historical record with fiction, but fiction extrapolated from the research. In all that time, the only thing I didn’t change was the location of the event of domestic terrorism.

Until now.

I’ll digress a bit to again recommend that writers participate in critique groups. Not only do you get an honest appraisal of your craft, but you get the reactions of readers–both needed before you think about publication. Locate a critique group and join one. You’ll find it useful beyond measure.

Book one of this series is going through my critique group, and the comments and suggestions have been just what this series needed. And a key comment was about keeping the location historically accurate. When the critique group members started making suggestions about plot, I kept having to respond, “But the reality is this or that.” My critique group quite rightly pointed out that by sticking to the actual location, I was boxing myself in.

At first, the thought of changing all the references to the actual location was daunting. Book one isn’t an issue; it doesn’t even come up in that. It’s book two and three where the first veiled hints get dropped, and in book four that particular setting is critical. So, I debated long and hard with myself about whether or not to change it and came to the only logical conclusion.

I changed the location, moving it one state north then one state east. Sounds simple, right? Not. There are hundreds if not thousands of allusions to this location, including physical descriptions of buildings, locations of streets and landmarks, and dialogue. Doing  a global search-and-replace won’t cut it. It means yet another methodical and thorough edit.

And maybe that was the point all along.

All fine and good, but when you’re planning to publish the series so that book four appears in the month of the twentieth anniversary of said event, it’s not so convenient. Convenience, however, isn’t a consideration. The art and the craft of writing are the major considerations, so I’ll do it. I’ll grumble a bit–well, a lot–but I’ll get it done, in the knowledge it was the right decision for the story I want to tell.

Friday Fictioneers with a Sting

The influx of some spring-like (and summerish) weather doesn’t combine well with putting your butt in the chair and writing. The lure of outside is too strong. Yes, yes, I know I can take the laptop outside and enjoy the weather while writing, but what can I say. I’m easily distracted.

And this has been a week where we needed distraction from an all too intense reality. Boston has always been a city after my own heart. I loved the time I’ve spent there for work and for pleasure. I was just there in March for AWP, lamenting the fact the snowfall didn’t allow me to play tourist in Boston’s fine museums and art galleries.

So, take an intriguing photo, twenty-four hour news reporting about terrorists, and you get something pretty dark, even for me. So dark, in fact, I’ve impulsively decided not to post it. If this hadn’t been a week where the face of the inhumanity of terrorism was a smiling, eight-year-old boy, maybe the story would have been appropriate, but today it’s not. And I never censor myself or my writing; however, it’s a matter of sensitivity.

Instead of the first thing that came to mind, you have “Empty Nest Optimism” instead. If you don’t see the link to the story in the title, scroll to the top of this page, click on the Friday Fictioneers tab, then select the story from the drop-down list.

Life Gets in the Way

Last week was a slow writing week. I didn’t even get a chance to sit down and compose until Friday morning. Some spring clean-up, some things I’d been putting off around the house, babysitting, and other obligations intervened. That’s life, but by the time Friday rolled around I not only missed writing, I kicked myself for not making the time to write.

And the weekend of April 5-6 was certainly inspiring. I attended the Tom Wolfe Seminar at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA. Wolfe, a 1951 W&L graduate, is so admired by his classmates that they endowed an annual seminar in his name, which pairs Wolfe and another author for a weekend of panel discussions of the author’s work. W&L faculty also present a scholarly address on a particular work of the featured author.

This year the featured author was Jennifer Egan, a Pulitzer winner for A Visit from the Goon Squad. I’d read “Goon Squad” right before the Pulitzer announcement because I’d heard it was a novel in stories, something I was interested in exploring. Some of the stories intrigued me, though the PowerPoint story gave me a flashback to working days and countless, bad PowerPoint presentations. I wasn’t entirely sure what I thought of the book as a whole, though the writing was excellent.

Turns out Egan never intended that book to be a novel, in stories or otherwise. She knew she had this cast of interrelated characters, and she had decided to write a story for each character; but she wasn’t calling it a “novel” in her own head. Nor did she call it a collection of short stories, though that’s what she intended it to be. It wasn’t until the paperback edition came out that the words “A Novel” appeared on the cover, but that, Egan stated, was likely at the publisher’s instigation–as if “Pulitzer Prize Winner” wouldn’t boost sales.

In truth, I read the book over a period of several weeks, and I think it’s a work you need to finish in a single sitting or not over a protracted amount of time. Otherwise, you tend to forget the connections and the fact that a minor or barely mentioned character in one story is featured in another. So, this seminar, then, along with the two scholarly explorations by W&L professors Christopher Gavaler (“Goon Squad as Pulp Fiction”) and Jasmin Darznik (“The Art of Discontinuity: Time and Memory in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad“), brought the characters back to mind. And the connections clicked. “Goon Squad” is a book I recommend.

Egan’s speech–”Journalist as Novelist; Novelist as Journalist”–was thought-provoking as well. She admits she’s an “accidental journalist” and took advantage of a job offer from The New York Times Magazine to conduct research for her novel Look at Me. The emphasis on research as a journalist improved her lot as a novelist, Egan stated, and she lauded the recent trend in writing non-fiction along the lines of fiction and vice-versa. In all, a very inspiring talk, and Egan was self-deprecating; no swelled-head Pulitzer diva in the house.

This past weekend I attended a two-day workshop on Speculative Fiction by Edward M. Lerner and hosted by WriterHouse in Charlottesville, VA. It wasn’t so much a craft workshop as an in-depth explanation of what speculative fiction is, the elements of speculative fiction, its place in the current publishing market, and its related fandom. Lerner, who has co-authored with Larry Niven in addition to publishing several “hard” sci-fi novels on his own, is very knowledgeable of the topic and gave an excellent presentation with plenty of opportunity to ask questions. In truth, it was more of a refresher for me because I’ve read spec fic since I was a teen, but it did inspire me to give writing sci-fi a second (or third or twentieth) chance.

Why? Well, Lerner himself is a physicist, but he has written sci-fi books on nanotechnology, medical thrillers, and other non-physics topics through research and contacting subject matter experts. That approach doesn’t put it out of my wheelhouse, even though I’ve always thought I didn’t have the science chops to pull off writing sci-fi. However, the first story I had published in eFiction Magazine was sci-fi–”Without Form or Substance.” It was about time travel, but, unbeknownst to me until Lerner’s workshop, I used time travel as a trope. It was there and central to the plot, but the details of how it worked were unnecessary.

So, a great workshop for inspiration or, rather, renewing inspiration. If you live near Charlottesville, VA, give WriterHouse a look. In addition to providing space for actual writing, its workshops are always top-notch.

After all that, here’s hoping this week is more productive. I’d cross my fingers, but I need them to type.

Friday Fictioneers – How the Week Flies By

To call this a slow writing week for me would be an understatement. As a recent Facebook meme states, this was my week: “Writer’s Block–when your imaginary friends stop talking to you.” That’s exactly the way it felt, and I’m not really sure what I did to piss them off so they’d spend the week sulking in silence. I guess it’s like marriage–you’re expected to read minds and know what’s bothering the other person.

In reality, spring cleaning–indoors and out–was the culprit. Unlike many writer friends, gardening is not a chore I like. It doesn’t free my mind to be creative. It just makes me mutter about how much I hate it, but I figure the neighbors would get upset if I allow the flowerbeds to go au naturale. I did get a certain amount of satisfaction from reorganizing my household filing system so that, next year, when I take everything to my accountant he won’t quirk an eyebrow at the pile of paper I hand over.

Bottom line: Not much writing or revising done, and two blog posts missed (including one on the Tom Wolfe Seminar I attended and will write about). It’s been a while since that happened (probably the same time last year). Though all was not lost. I did manage to come up with some decent ad copy for a radio spot to promote the SWAG Writers Book Fair later this month. (See the first item in the column to the right). Somehow, thirty seconds worth of words is little compensation for a week’s worth of missing creativity.

On Wednesday I look a brief look at the photo prompt for this week’s Friday Fictioneers and literally said, “WTF?” (Well, I didn’t use an abbreviation.) As this week’s pattern played out, I sat down yesterday to write something, and, even though I had a concept, I couldn’t force the words onto the screen. I even switched to pen and paper because sometimes that gets the creative juices flowing, but zilch, nada, nothing.

I must have fallen asleep last night with the concept in mind because, boom, I woke early this morning with the story in my head. I got up immediately and got it into a Word file, and, whoa, 121 words. On first glance, I figured there was no way to cut twenty-one words, but I did; and the concept is intact. This is what I love about Friday Fictioneers–I’ve reached the point where not doing a Friday Fictioneers story would mean letting myself down, and that’s great inspiration.

Today’s story is “Siblings,” and you’ll see a dedication at the beginning of the story. I didn’t lose my only brother in Vietnam, like the story’s protagonist, but I did lose him in another war–one called Type One Diabetes. As usual, if you don’t see the link on the title, scroll to the Friday Fictioneers tab above and select it from the drop-down list.

April’s First Friday Fictioneers

A short post today because I’m off to Lexington, VA for the annual Tom Wolfe Lecture series. Legendary author Tom Wolfe introduces another author of note, and faculty from Washington and Lee University provide scholarly lectures on the author’s work. This is all interwoven with great food and interesting company, and this year the featured author is Pulitzer prize winner Jennifer Egan. Her featured work is A Visit from the Good Squad.

I’m looking forward to some in-depth study of another writer’s work–and to having my copy of Goon Squad signed by the author herself.

Today’s Friday Fictioneer’s story is a prose poem–yeah, I’m a glutton for punishment–in honor of National Poetry Month. Last night we had a great, SWAG Writers poetry reading, so I must have been inspired. Poets, be kind to “Life, a Cliché.” If you don’t see the link on the title, then scroll to the top of the page, click on Friday Fictioneers. You can select this week’s offering from the drop down list.

No Foolin’

Today, I could have played a major April Fools joke on the rest of you by “announcing” that I’d just been offered a six-figure advance and a multiple-book contract from one of the “Big Six.” I could have, but I won’t because it’s likely the joke would be on me. So, no advance, no book contract; just constant editing and revising and hoping.

I get frustrated at times with the lack of new material I’m producing. I retired to have more time to write, and I have written more and more constantly than before I retired; but it seems at times that I do more re-writing than writing.

No difference, you say. Writing is writing. True, but I miss the mad rush of researching and drafting that comes with a whole new project. Granted, I participate in National Novel Writing Month every November, which means I have created five, original manuscripts in five years.

The first one was a semi-autobiographical piece, which, after re-reading it, I realized was 200+ pages of self-indulgent whining. It has, however, been a good source of short stories.

The second one I have edited, revised, and re-written to the point where it’s as ready as it will ever be for pitching to possible agents.

For the third one, I took a risk and killed off one of my characters, a bold move that turned out fairly well. It also helped me face the loss of my long-term relationship and address the emotions that involved; however, the character wasn’t ready to die and told me so. The good news is, I’m meshing this manuscript with another one I developed shortly after the events of September 11, 2001. So, all is not lost.

The fourth one is one that I really enjoyed writing. It’s the closest thing to a sci-fi novel I’ve ever written–a story about a dire future after the Tea Party takes over the government. Dark and political, it was a rough draft I was very proud of, and, in fact, the first 5,000 words I submitted for critique in last year’s Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop. The reception it received was awesome. (It helps that the workshop instructor, Pinckney Benedict, is a fan of dystopian fiction.) Then, I re-read Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale, for a book club and went, “Oops.” It had been two decades almost since I first read The Handmaid’s Tale, but apparently I channeled Atwood when I wrote my manuscript. (Channeling Atwood could be a good thing.) However, since it got such good feedback, it’s definitely something to work on.

The fifth one, last year, was a completely different work for me, a straight-up literary fiction novel that intersects an event in a small town during World War II with an event in the same town in present day. The protagonist is a successful romance writer married to a not-so-successful novelist, and all is just lovely until they find the bones of a baby in the wall of a room they’re renovating. I always put a NaNoWriMo draft aside for six months before I start revising, so next month is when I’ll pull it out and start polishing it.

So, what am I whining about? Well, after an amazing amount of creativity in the late 1990s and early 2000s wherein I dashed out six novel-length manuscripts featuring my two favorite spies, Mai Fisher and Alexei Bukharin, as they work for the fictional United Nations Intelligence Directorate, I haven’t produced a new novel featuring them since 2002. Yes, I’ve been revising and re-writing all those original manuscripts, but I’ve missed creating a new adventure for them. I have been writing short stories featuring them (Spy Flash, published in December 2012), but aside from that, Mai and Alexei walked away from a mission in 2001; and we’ve heard nothing from them since.

You’ve written all you can about them, you might say. No, I feel they have a lot of adventures in them, and I’ve made notes about those adventures. Merely, focusing on improving my craft and establishing a bit of a name for myself as a flash fiction writer has become my immediate focus.

That’s why I need that multiple-book contract, publishers. I’ve always been well-motivated by deadlines, so take a chance. Tell me you want three books, four, or five, and I’ll get right on them.

Don’t forget, this is National Poetry Month. Take a break from fantasy or cozy mysteries and read a poet you’ve never read before.

Friday Fictioneers Marches On

We’re approaching the end of March already. My, how the year speeds by, and here I am with a weekend more or less free of literary conference/workshop pursuits. Don’t worry, that changes next weekend with the annual Tom Wolfe Lecture Seminar at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA.

And March is defying all mythology of coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb. It came in like a lion, behaved like a lamb for a few days, then dumped a spring snow storm on us at the beginning of this week. All gone now, though it was pretty. Annoying but pretty.

I have a stack of recently purchased books to read and taxes to do, but what’s that compared to Friday Fictioneers? And apparently snow-pocalyses in March put me in a dystopian frame of mind for this week’s story, “Doom and Gloom.” If you don’t see the link on the title, scroll to the top of the page, click on the Friday Fictioneers tab, then select the title from the drop-down list. I cleaned up the web site a bit this morning, so you don’t have to scroll through so many stories.

Let’s cross our fingers for Spring’s quick arrival so we can enjoy some perfect weather before we start complaining about how hot it is.

And if you missed Wednesday’s short post about a recorded interview with me at The Bookcast about my book, Spy Flash, click here to have a listen. Yes, you’ll get to hear what I sound like and note that I used “um” and said “exactly” too many times! If you’re an indie author needing some publicity for your work, check out The Bookcast.

An Interview for SPY FLASH

Many thanks to Bill Thompson at The Bookcast for the opportunity to talk about Spy Flash and its two main characters, Mai Fisher and Alexei Bukharin.

You can click here to listen.

 

#VaBook – Gone but Not Forgotten

Virginia Festival of the Book is aptly named, but after this, my third year of attendance, I think it more apt to title it “Virginia Festival of the Book–and Writers and Readers.” Though considerably less populated than the 12,000-person AWP Conference just two weeks before, the enthusiasm about books and their authors was just as intense. In truth, you don’t get many “readers” at AWP, but #VaBook (its Twitter hashtag) is the rare opportunity for writers and readers to mingle. In some cases, you’re a writer for one panel’s presentation then a reader for another. It’s a great showcase for writers across the country who have or whose books have Virginia roots.

My festival started on Wednesday evening with “The Ties That Bind: Family in Fiction.” Authors Wendy Shang, Lydia Netzer, Camisha Jones, Mollie Cox Bryant, and Cliff Garstang combined a discussion of this year’s The Big Read book, Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, with their own works. I read that book before it was a best-seller on the recommendation of a co-worker, who is Asian and said it was as if Tan had written the friend’s biography. I found it a fascinating glimpse into a culture I knew little about, but the sometimes bizarre behavior of mothers was something I completely understood. The authors on the panel compared and contrasted how Tan used family to their use of family in their own works.

Thursday’s only session for me was “Fiction: The Art and Craft of Short Stories,” which I wanted to attend because I keep trying to convince myself there’s a future for short stories (why I’ve published three volumes of them). The panel members–Robert Day, Cliff Garstang, E. J. Levy, and Kurt Rheinheimer–are convinced the short story is undergoing a revival. Their various definitions of a short story were compelling:

“A short story is a piece of geography that spawns a character.” (Rheinheimer)

“A short story is a bomb going off.” (Levy)

“A short story focuses on a moment in time with a zoom lens.” (Garstang)

“A short story is a piece of prose fiction that has something wrong with it.” (Day)

The latter was intended to show that even short stories are never finished in the sense of revision and rewriting. The panel went on to discuss the writers who influenced them, the how and why of linked short stories, first person versus third person, and if an MFA helps your progression as a writer.

Friday was a full day for me, beginning with “Fiction: Forbidden Attraction.” Authors Maryanne O’Hara, Erika Robuck, Margaret Wrinkle, and Bill Roorbach discussed how they used captivation in each of their novels or were captivated themselves by the subjects they wrote about. In Robuck’s case, a photo of a young, Cuban girl on a dock where Hemingway hauled in his fishing catch prompted her to write Hemingway’s Girl. For Wrinkle, it was literal captivation–a novel about the taboo topic of slave breeding in the ante-bellum south. A wonderful discussion and great insights.

Next was “Fiction: Parallel Stories,” featuring authors whose novels involved two different but related timelines. I particularly wanted to attend this panel because a novel I have in rough draft involves stories in the present and in the World War II era. Dana Sachs, Tara Conklin, and Sarah McCoy discussed what compelled them to construct their works this way and the joy–and pitfalls–of research.

“Fiction: Journeys” was a panel on novels featuring road trips or metaphorical journeys by Sharon Short, Sheri Reynolds, Kathleen McCleary, and Kimberly Brock. They discussed the apparently insignificant germs of thought that inspired them, and the chemistry among these authors during discussion was fascinating and hilarious.

Unfortunately, I had to miss two other panels on Friday (“Science Fiction and Fantasy,” featuring the phenom Hugh Howey of Wool fame, and “Crime Wave: Friday Night Thrillers”) because I needed to go home and pack for an unexpected trip to Northern Virginia for a funeral. That also meant Saturday’s panels and the Book Fair I missed as well, but friendship supersedes all.

I was back Sunday in time for the only panel on which I was actually a participant–”The Magic of Words,” which was the launch event for the Blue Ridge Writers 2013 Anthology. My story, “Mourning,” appears in the anthology. Rita Mae Brown was the keynote speaker, and she gave an amazing off-the-cuff, quarter-hour dissertation on language. Fascinating. Then came the time for readings. I was fourth on the schedule, so enough time to work up a good set of nerves. Fortunately, Brown had been amusing as well instructive, so when I got a laugh out of her at the first comedic point in my reading, I relaxed. After the event, Brown came up to me and said, “Please tell me you’ll continue to write.” Yeah, floated a few inches above the ground all the way home.

I came away with a lot of good information and way too many books. Add them to the stack I brought home from AWP, and I’ll still be reading them by the end of the year. But that’s a good thing.

I can’t wait for #VaBook14! And who knows, maybe there’s a panel out there with my name on it!