Helen Rena's Blog: Books and Their Discontents, page 10
August 17, 2014
Why Into the Blind?
It took me a long time to write this story, over ten years. And I absolutely don’t remember how I came up with it. I only remember I went to my husband and asked him if I should write a ghost story or a story about a girl who could channel feelings into other people. My dear husband said, “The ghost thing. Definitely.” So, of course, I went and started the feeling-channeling one.
It was untitled, of course, back then, and it was for middle-schoolers, and it had elements of science fiction to it. Since Harry Potter was a huge thing at the time (it’s still huge, I know, but it was huger then), I shoved my characters into a school, sort of like Hogwarts, only instead of magic, my kids had paranormal abilities. The school was egg-shaped and had neither doors nor windows. The kids left it through a crack in the wall and went on to have many glorious adventures.
It was a sloppy, but cheerful draft.
Then came rewriting.
Many years of rewriting.
And somehow the book morphed into a story for older kids and adults. It became gloomier. I dropped the science fiction bits. I lost the school. My protagonist, a short blind girl with long white hair, became more dangerous, more broken, and her relationship with her boyfriend, a guy who doesn’t like that she’s more powerful than he, became…I hope…more realistic: she both loves and resents him. My husband suggested a title–Into the Blind–and I went with it. I’m sure he’s finally secretly satisfied that I took his advice. At least about something.
My Bad Luck at Being a Frodo Baggins
Until quite recently I viewed writing a blog as a long-term endeavor, sort of like Frodo Baggins going and going and still going to drop that ring into the fires of Mount Doom for the duration of LOTR’s three books.
But that wasn’t my luck. Somehow my blogging enterprise proved to be less of a journey and more of a fight with orcs that quickly left everyone dead. Many reasons. First, it was due to technical difficulties – the website-building company I chose proved to be a Mordor for blogging purposes. Then, there was a huge hosting goof-up – the blogging platform I decided to use mistook my blog for a Gollum and killed it. And always it was thanks to a misalignment in my stars – I can’t quite prove it, but I know it’s there. And so, with a half-hopeful and half-weary heart, I am starting this blog, the fourth one in the last month. I do hope it will at least get out of the Shire, but we’ll see. Wish me luck. 
August 5, 2014
Should You Read "Cinderella"?
Recently, and I'm not even sure why, I began thinking of "Cinderella." It's such a claustrophobic tale: four women milling about in one house, watching each other, hating each other, sizing each other up. With an occasional fifth woman/female fairy popping in now and then. No men on the horizon. Purely theoretically, we know Cinderella has a dad because she's got a stepmother, but where is he? Again, purely theoretically, there must be male servants simply because women back then didn't drive carriages, maintain the grounds, or fix whatever needed to be fixed (except for clothing). But we never see a single guy.
And then a prince drops out of nowhere. Another human being. A promise of getting out of the claustrophobic gas chamber that Cinderella's home apparently is. No wonder all three girls are fighting to death to get him.
Or maybe it is a wonder.
I mean why on earth does Cinderella ask her fairy godmother for shoes and stuff when she could ask her for a kingdom? Or to turn her into a fairy? Or why would Cinderella's sisters need a prince when they are splendidly well off? Or how could Cinderella's stepmother turn Cinderella into a maid without social repercussions? Because surely, if Cinderella's sisters are feasible matches for a prince then Cinderella's slide down the social ladder would diminish their status too.
But you kind of don't think about it.
Because the story makes you so obsessive and paranoid. To all appearances, there's only one marriageable guy and you gotta-gotta-gotta marry him or it's the end of the world. Off goes bodily integrity/the wicked sisters' feet.* True, not in their entirety, but how will they be able to walk with no heels? Off goes common sense. Nobody asks why on earth the prince can't just have another ball so that he could recognize his true love. Didn't he see her face? Was he only looking at her shoes (or whatever else shoes represent, which is usually vaginas)? Off goes dignity. Because there's only ONE guy. Such scarcity. So give up everything. Make sure you're pretty, manicured, pedicured, coifed, polished, poised. Oh, and always cheerful. Oh, and don't form bonds with other women. Oh, and you're never enough without a guy. Anxiety. OCD. Schizophrenia. Depression. After all this, I can only envision the married Cinderella as the guy from The Shining.
*In the Grimms' version of "Cinderella," the sisters cut off their heels so that Cinderella's tiny shoe would fit them.
August 2, 2014
The Lonelies
Photo by Audrey from Central Pennsylvania***Flash Fiction***The space between the couch and the wall is tight and dark, and it smells musty even though we cleaned here just this morning. We carefully squeeze into the gap because the lonelies are coming. It’s time to hide. Methodically, we press our knees to our chests; we pull our heads deep into our shoulders. They wouldn’t find us here.
But we can see the dark surrounding the couch isn’t black tonight. Somehow it’s gray, a dusky, cloudy gray. The glass top of our coffee table reflects this grayness with a bit of shimmer. But where is this gleam coming from? Didn’t we turn off all the lights?
We stick one head out. Damn it. The nightlight in the kitchen, the one by the sink, is still on. Shaped like a pink ball, it projects a picture of a princess onto the ceiling, and while the princess is defective—she has only one head—we still kind of like this nightlight. We hesitate. Damn, damn, damn. All the lights must be off, or the lonelies will grow stronger. They will stain the floor and the walls and the furniture, and then we’ll have to move out, and this is the last unstained house in the neighborhood. Damn.
The right head cusses, which is okay because the lonelies can’t hear—they’re only attracted to light and movement. The left set of eyes pointedly looks at the nightlight: we have to go and turn it off. We nod.
Holding hands, we run to the kitchen just as the lonelies slither in through the crack under the door. Their flat, shapeless bodies look like puddles of oil on our clean wooden floors. We flick the nightlight off before they sense the light, but they catch our movement. They dash toward us, yet cannot find us because we stand very still now. And so they search and search, and this one time, when they get too close to us, they cut our foot to the bone. We scream, but we don’t move, and the lonelies, having circled the kitchen several times, pool not far from our bleeding foot. They know we’re in pain—they wait for us to move, to flinch, to shudder—but we stand like we were petrified, only lightly moving our lips to whisper words of encouragement to ourselves. We stay strong together. Finally, the lonelies wriggle in disappointment and swim away, into the night, to check the other houses on the block.
We bind our foot with a dishtowel, then limp over to the couch and lie down. We think about the princess in the nightlight. A lot of one-headed people died when the l-bomb went off, the “l” standing for “loneliness” and for “lonelies” and perhaps for “last,” because so few of us managed to fuse together and survive that explosion of the sharpest, most agonizing forlornness that we just don’t merit another bomb of any kind. Yes, people’s hearts just burst. They weren’t close enough to each other that day, which is only natural, for to be alone is to be human. We lean our heads together. We smile because we are not human anymore. We are not lonely.
August 1, 2014
Thank you!
The Blogger tells me that I have readers. Yes, real people are stopping by and reading my posts. I'm so thrilled. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
July 31, 2014
Why Into the Blind?
It took me a long time to write this story, over ten years. And I absolutely don't remember how I came up with it. I only remember I went to my husband and asked him if I should write a ghost story or a story about a girl who could channel feelings into other people. My dear husband said, "The ghost thing. Definitely." So, of course, I went and started the feeling-channeling one. It was untitled, of course, back then, and it was for middle-schoolers, and it had elements of science fiction to it. Since Harry Potter was a huge thing at the time (it's still huge, I know, but it was huger then), I shoved my characters into a school, sort of like Hogwarts, only instead of magic, my kids had paranormal abilities. The school was egg-shaped and had neither doors nor windows. The kids left it through a crack in the wall and went on to have many glorious adventures.
It was a sloppy, but cheerful draft.
Then came rewriting.
Many years of rewriting.
And somehow the book morphed into a story for older kids and adults. It became gloomier. I dropped the science fiction bits. I lost the school. My protagonist, a short blind girl with long white hair, became more dangerous, more broken, and her relationship with her boyfriend, a guy who doesn't like that she's more powerful than he, became...I hope...more realistic: she both loves and resents him. My husband suggested a title - Into the Blind - and I went with it. I'm sure he's finally secretly satisfied that I took his advice. At least about something. :)
Into the Blind: A Prologue
The black market was closing. The last sellers and buyers clustered behind an out-of-business toy store in Brooklyn, where the road smelled of trash and the subway trains that ran high above the street rattled the loudest. There were no children for sale at this hour. The last and least important bits of the day’s tidings were hastily sold.
“There’s been a dance kid born in Queens this morning.”
“Hell, who needs a child gifted in dancing?”
“But it’s right around the corner. And the parents haven’t hired any security.”
Monies changed hands.
Everyone was stealthily watching two bulky men who were not selling or buying anything. The slightly shorter man of the duo held a large four-wheel suitcase, and the slightly taller one, wearing a trench coat and a black fedora hat, gripped a gun. They did not talk. They had the letters DH tattooed on their right cheekbones.
Cars honked in the street, and somewhere far off a police siren howled.
A woman entered the alley. Neither tall nor short, she wore a pixie-cut blond wig like a ski hat: pulled down over her ears and forehead. Her shoulders were wrapped in an oversized faux fur coat that made it impossible to guess her real proportions. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses.
The men with the DH tattoos looked up at her simultaneously. They didn’t say anything, but the woman answered them nonetheless, “Yes, it’s here, the child.” She nodded at a rather small purse in her hand. “And the money?”
The black market sellers and buyers stopped even pretending they were still trading. They held their breaths and listened. All of them had wondered if the suitcase held money, but it was such a big suitcase. No child was worth that much.
The man with the suitcase lightly swung his burden. “Yeah. Ten mil. Wanna count?”
The fedora hat man puffed. “Wait, bro. I don’t think…you know what.”
The bro clearly knew. “Lay off it, man. We talked enough about it.”
“Oh, yeah?” The hat man jabbed his gun in the direction of the woman’s purse, a fake brown leather affair with an ugly brass zipper. “This kid…how do you know it’s gifted in what this gal says it’s gifted? Yeah, sure, two dream guys told us it’s legit, but what if they are in on it? Ten mil is good money even split three ways.”
The bro shook his head. “I said. Lay. Off. It.”
The hat man didn’t. “And where did she even get that kid? Sure, Bones…I mean, not Bones…I mean, I never said your name, okay? Anyways, we bought death kids, time kids—pricey kids, yes, but those gifts can be priced in. But this…a kid with this gift…who would sell it? It’s like selling the Almighty!”
The people in the alley inhaled sharply. A heart child had been born on earth? That was some tidings to sell.
The woman in the fur coat stepped away from the two men. “Fine. The deal is off.”
Bones shoved the suitcase after her. “No, no, take it. Give us the kid.”
The woman grabbed the handle of the suitcase, then handed him the purse.
“Are you at least going to check if it’s actually a kid and not a pile of rags?” the hat man asked his partner.
Bones unzipped the purse, and there, swaddled in several disposable diapers, lay a newborn, its face tiny and pink and its delicate white hairs tangled. It slept.
The woman suddenly, as if in a paroxysm of a strong feeling, clasped the hat man’s arm. “It’s a girl,” she said. “A girl.”
The hat man, unsure what to do with this information, scratched his temple. “And? You want to give us a discount for that or what?”
The woman spun around and walked away, wheeling the suitcase along the cracked, rot-smelling road.
The hat man followed her with his gaze. “If this kid is really a heart, I’ll eat my damn hat.”
The hat remained uneaten for the next fifteen years.
July 30, 2014
Facebook Party
Please join me on Facebook on August 4 at 8:30 pm EST. There will be contests, prizes, trivia, and tidbits, as well as a chance to ask questions and chat with me and other authors. :)
