Stephen Greco's Blog: Over a Cocktail or Two - Posts Tagged "balzac"
Easter-ish Eggs
Can I claim that The Last American Heiresses contains literary “Easter eggs” if the hidden references I am referring to are contained in books of mine that are yet unpublished or self-published long ago?
If a reader of Heiresses cared to know more about Ollie’s friend Mrs. Welland—Elizabeth “Liddy” Prescott Welland— they'd find more about three generations of Prescotts in the yet unpublished Church Lake Road, a kind of dark comedy about the failed rehab of Mrs. Welland’s nephew, Cort. And if a reader wanted to know more about Nancy Creamer Russo, who sells Doris Duke some lovely suits and a very important accessory that completes Doris’ desired Charity Lady Executive look, they would find it in the yet unpublished Mid-Century Modern, a story about three Prescottville women (actually, one of them’s a very teenage girl who foils a school shooting) whose lives span seventy or so years of village life.
And if anyone’s interest in knowing more about Selwyn Stanfield, whom Doris and Ollie meet as a young businessman in London in 1969, at the Mangrove restaurant, then again as a billionaire in New York in 1979, at the Museum of Modern Art, then there’s lots more about Selwyn and his calculating wife MaryAnn in The Culling (2008) and Other’s People’s Prayers (2009), both available on Amazon.
(Then there's a sweet and, for me, quite short sci-fi tale set in Prescottville in 1947, about a young vet, home from World War II, who meets an intriguing girl who's definitely "not from around here" and asks his help with a mission that may or may not threaten the entire world.... Yet to be titled, yet unpublished.)
In my feverish little writer’s brain, there’s a certain excitement about telling very different kinds of stories that are framed within a nonetheless cohesive world, as Balzac does in his Comédie humaine series of novels—which I have adored for half a century. Nobody can be Balzac anymore, of course, but he represents a fine benchmark to aim for, no?
If a reader of Heiresses cared to know more about Ollie’s friend Mrs. Welland—Elizabeth “Liddy” Prescott Welland— they'd find more about three generations of Prescotts in the yet unpublished Church Lake Road, a kind of dark comedy about the failed rehab of Mrs. Welland’s nephew, Cort. And if a reader wanted to know more about Nancy Creamer Russo, who sells Doris Duke some lovely suits and a very important accessory that completes Doris’ desired Charity Lady Executive look, they would find it in the yet unpublished Mid-Century Modern, a story about three Prescottville women (actually, one of them’s a very teenage girl who foils a school shooting) whose lives span seventy or so years of village life.
And if anyone’s interest in knowing more about Selwyn Stanfield, whom Doris and Ollie meet as a young businessman in London in 1969, at the Mangrove restaurant, then again as a billionaire in New York in 1979, at the Museum of Modern Art, then there’s lots more about Selwyn and his calculating wife MaryAnn in The Culling (2008) and Other’s People’s Prayers (2009), both available on Amazon.
(Then there's a sweet and, for me, quite short sci-fi tale set in Prescottville in 1947, about a young vet, home from World War II, who meets an intriguing girl who's definitely "not from around here" and asks his help with a mission that may or may not threaten the entire world.... Yet to be titled, yet unpublished.)
In my feverish little writer’s brain, there’s a certain excitement about telling very different kinds of stories that are framed within a nonetheless cohesive world, as Balzac does in his Comédie humaine series of novels—which I have adored for half a century. Nobody can be Balzac anymore, of course, but he represents a fine benchmark to aim for, no?
Over a Cocktail or Two
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