Helen Rena's Blog: Books and Their Discontents, page 11

Girls Are Good For Drowning

***Flash Fiction***
Ophelia swam to shore. It was a muddy bank with an occasional sharp stone embedded in it. Ophelia grabbed a branch and helped herself onto the dry ground. It was cold. Probably autumn. Ophelia wasn’t sure—she’d been swimming with her eyes closed ever since Shakespeare had shoved her into the river. But maybe it was time to get out.

She walked along a street, her long dress leaving a wet trail. A hot drink would be nice, she thought just as her eyes fell on a shop front with a picture of a steaming mug. She hurried in. Besides hot drinks, the place was selling books, and Ophelia, forgetting her cold, drifted over to the shelves. Books…bright-colored, shiny, glossy, gilded, perfect. Lovingly, Ophelia ran her pallid finger over the spines.
“Oof,” a tall girl in a leather coat said when Ophelia rammed into her. “Look where you’re going, ‘kay?”

“Sorry,” Ophelia said. “What are you doing?”

The girl was holding a book with a photo of a young drowning woman on its cover in one hand and a sticker of a wet kitten in another. “Watch,” she told Ophelia and put the kitten over the woman. “See, it’s not okay to drown kittens,” she said. “PETA will throw a fit when they find it. Then maybe they’ll have this book yanked off the shelves.”

Ophelia looked around. There were three more books with drowning girls on their covers, and then there was a book with a live girl on it and a title, “Drown Me.” Quietly, Ophelia turned and left the store and walked back to the river. She was a good swimmer. She had to be.

I Was Interviewed by Gina Henning

Gina : Both Into the Blind and "About the Dark," center around the theme of the loss of sight, if you had to choose which of your five senses that you would lose first what would it be?

Me: Smell. You can live without it. In fact, owls do live without it, which allows them to eat skunks. Yes, I realize you probably didn't need to know that. :)

Gina: "Girls Are Good for Drowning" is a great piece of Flash Fiction, please give us some insight as to how this story came about?

Me: Killing off young women in fiction for esthetic pleasure has unfortunately been a long-standing tradition in Western culture. In 1846, Edgar Allan Poe infamously opined that "the death of a beautiful woman [was], unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world." So, quite predictably, there were very few female survivors in his fiction. And he was far from alone in his views on the Great Poetical. The literary canon is brimming with dead and dying women. Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, Vladimir Nabokov—they all thought it was esthetically pleasing to kill off their female characters. So, I wrote a short story about Ophelia who did not actually die in Hamlet. Instead of drowning, she went on swimming for ages before finally getting out of water in the early 21st century where she found…well, you'd have to read the story to discover what she found. 
Gina: The cover for Into the Blind is fantastic, I like the details of the map, have you ever been lost without a map or any other form of GPS device?

Me: Plenty of times. More than that, I've been known to get lost WITH a map. I remember one time in particular. I was trying to find a book fair, and I had a map of how to get there, and after some driving, I arrived at the right street and found the house with the right number, only it wasn't the book fair! Completely flabbergasted, I drove up and down that street for half an hour before discovering that the street changed its name in the middle. Yes, from North King Street to South King Street, and each half had its own house number 476. Thank you, North Virginia.

Gina: On your author bio, you mention a collection of green bottles, which one is your favorite?

Me: Probably the one with a stomach. Yes, I have a bottle that has a bubble in its middle that's meant for ice to cool whatever liquid you put in the bottle. My daughter called that bubble the bottle's stomach, and so it stuck.

Gina: In "About the Dark," Ever and her friends play a very dangerous game, are there any moments from your youth that as a mother you now look back on and gasp?

Me: Yes, when I was a kid, the town where I lived decided to build a school not far from my house. It obviously began with a massive construction site full of nails, pits, and cinder blocks. My friends and I played there all the time, and I'm still surprised none of us died there.

Dog Number F

***Flash Fiction***
Vera was two days late. After she parked her car in the driveway, she threw the door open and scrambled out to face a small dingy house half-sunk into a balding lawn. A gnarly tree in front of the porch was thickly hung with tiny birdhouses, all of them empty and mossy and time-weathered. A vacant dog kennel leaned against the tree.

Praying to all the gods that nothing bad had happened here, Vera ran onto the porch, briefly noticing a large planter with a desiccated geranium in it. Several large bones were piled next to the planter.

Vera knocked on the door. No answer. She knocked again. “Aunt Lisa! It’s me, Vera.”

The door creaked open, revealing a small brown dog standing just inside the hallway. No Aunt Lisa anywhere.

Vera made another attempt: “Aunt Lisa-a-a-a!” Silence. Just the dog in the hallway. Vera looked at it more closely. It was as tall as a milk carton and sort of longish…sort of like a dachshund, but not a dachshund because this was the only breed Lisa could tell apart, and this dog was not it.
The dog looked at Vera too. It was neither friendly nor hostile. It seemed profoundly content with standing in the hallway and facing Vera.

Vera cautiously carried her foot over the threshold. The dog did nothing—neither moved nor growled. Just watched.

Once Vera was inside, the dog pushed the door closed with its nose. Then it walked over to a credenza by the wall. Vera followed. There was a note there, atop of some keys, crumpled receipts, and a piece of opened, but unchewed gum: “Sweet pea, I’m so glad you made it. Dog Number F will take care of you. Love, Aunt L.” There was a thin layer of dust on the note.

Vera swallowed. This was not good. Vera and her three sisters had been taking turns watching their kooky aunt, and the last turn had been Mabel’s, and Mabel had said everything went just fine. She and Lisa played games; for fun, instead of talking to each other, they exchanged the most droll notes; and every day, Lisa spoke to Vera’s mother on the phone in that quavering, breathy voice of hers, you know. Well, that was then, and now it was all screwed up. Because it was Vera’s turn, and Vera had been screwing up everything.

Just to be sure, Vera checked all the rooms, and yes, they were completely devoid of her aunt. Vera returned to the hallway and looked at the dog again. The bones outside seemed too big to have been Dog Number F’s meal. Did they belong to Dog Number E?

The phone, an ivory-colored, vintage-looking affair with an actual rotary dial, rang like it was paid to make as much noise as possible. Vera picked the receiver. “Hello.”

“Lisa?” said the receiver in Vera’s mother’s voice. “Lisa?”

Vera had to place her hand on the credenza not to fall down. If Mother learned about Lisa’s disappearance, she might not survive the shock. The doctors had said so. Vera closed her eyes. Well…maybe…maybe…Lisa would show up. Yes, that was it—an eighty-year-old woman couldn’t be gone for long—and in the mean time Vera would just pretend to be Lisa…for just a bit. It wouldn’t really harm anyone, would it?

“Lisa?” the receiver pleaded.

Vera put her sleeve over the speaker and said in a quavering, breathy voice of her aunt, “Speaking.”

Dog Number F smiled.

Crime and Punishment: A Question

So, a man kills and robs a rich woman. Then he can’t stand the guilt, so he turns himself in and goes to prison. But...where’s the money?

P.S. This cover is phenomenal, isn't it? Judging by it, Raskolnikov killed the woman not for her money, but for the glory of god.

The description of Crime and Punishment on this Amazon page is great too: "Supreme masterpiece recounts in feverish, compelling tones the story of Raskolnikov, an impoverished student tormented by his own nihilism, and the struggle between good and evil. Believing that he is above the law, and convinced that humanitarian ends justify vile means, he brutally murders an old woman — a pawnbroker whom he regards as worthless."

The last time I checked, Raskolnikov wasn't tormented by his nihilism, but by his crushing poverty. Also, "humanitarian ends"? That's like a new definition of "humanitarian"? :)

Ketchup Clouds: A Review

Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher has an awesome premise: a teenage girl murders one boy and betrays another. And then writes about it to a death-row inmate. My interest was through the roof at once.

But...well...okay, the book was good in places. It was fast-paced. The protagonist's voice was entertaining...perky. There were some very passionate and nicely described kisses.

Now, for the problems with this book. There be spoilers...

You were warned...

Okay, so the book opens with the protagonist Zoe writing a letter to a death-row inmate. In it, she claims that she killed a boy and that now she is super upset about it. At once, judging by her perky, a-joke-here-a-joke-there voice, I knew the murder would turn out to be an accident. And yes, that's exactly how it turned out. So much for suspense...


The next problem was that the entire plot is built on a misunderstanding. Zoe thinks that the boy she likes has a girlfriend while that "girlfriend" in reality is just a friend. So Zoe hooks up with the boy's brother. Now, why can't Zoe ask her hook-up if the girl in question is amorously involved with the boy Zoe likes? I don't know. She just doesn't. More so. Once, when she is with the boy she likes, he gets a phone call from his "girlfriend." He says, "[It] can wait." Why can't Zoe ask if this is his girlfriend? Who knows...

However, these problems with the book's plot are minor compared to the problems with its content. First off, in one of her early letters, Zoe writes to her pen pal, who is sentenced to death for killing his wife, that she doesn't blame him. It's his wife's fault that she got killed - she'd been unfaithful. When I read this, I didn't panic. I stayed very cool. I assumed that Zoe would learn not to blame victims as the book unfolded. And I was wrong! In her last letters, Zoe waxed poetic about the guy expecting his execution and what a poor soul he was that he'd been sentenced to death. Now, I don't approve of death penalty, but hey, what about the guy's wife? Wasn't she a poor soul? But no. Apparently, she was not. The entire book contains zero kind words about the poor murdered woman.

But there's more...

The guy actually killed another woman besides his wife. Their neighbor who just stopped by to check on the wife. And Zoe blames that woman too. Apparently, since she was nosy, she deserved her death. Yes, that's how it is. Women, don't be nosy. Don't get married either, I guess.

Now, dear author of Ketchup Clouds, if let's say you had a sister and she got killed because she had an affair, would you say it was her fault?

But moving on...

Toward the end of the novel, we find out some stuff about Zoe's mom. Since she is the only adult woman in the novel who is alive and who has an actual role in the plot, I will call her the Woman. So, the Woman, it turns out, was pressured into not having an abortion by her husband and her father-in-law. That's why she has the third daughter Dot. The Woman tells this to Zoe. The reader/me is holding her breath: what would be Zoe's reaction? And it's nothing. Not a single word. Not even a horrified gasp. Because apparently stripping people of their bodily autonomy for wishes and desires of others is fine.

But pushing on...

We also learn that the Woman wanted that abortion because she really wanted to continue working and having her career. After she was coerced into staying pregnant, she gave birth to Dot, got a nanny for her, and returned to work. One day Dot was having a fever, but the Woman had a big meeting at work, so she went to work, leaving the child with a caregiver, and turned off her phone. And of course, Dot's fever proved to be meningitis, but since the nanny could not reach the Woman, Dot was rushed to the hospital too late, and so the child lost her hearing. The Woman blames herself. The Woman's husband blames the Woman. The father-in-law blames the Woman. I'm amazed passing cats and dogs don't stop by to blame the Woman. Because everyone knows that if something happens to a child, it's the mother's fault. Because obviously the caregiver could have never ever ever called Dot's father. Because Dot's father, when he's at work, is not responsible for his children!!!

And it gets worse...

Surely, it shouldn't!

But it does...

You see, in the early stages of the novel, Zoe's dad loses his job. So he pressures the stay-at-home Woman to go and find a job. And she says no. And the reader/me is invited to hate her for that all throughout the book because what a selfish person she is! Well, when at the end we learn that she does not work because Dot got meningitis on that one day the Woman turned off her phone because she had a big meeting, we understand why she hasn't been wanting to work all through the novel. We forgive her. Only the book ends by then. Which means we've hated the Woman for nothing all through the book!

Which is sad.

GIVEAWAY

I'm doing a giveaway for Into the Blind.
If reading about an all-powerful girl and her boyfriend who resents her power is your cup of tea, please enter for a chance to win an Amazon gift card and a print copy of Into the Blind.
Here are some of the bloggers who are taking part in the giveaway: 
Kelly P's Blog 
Mythical Books
My Love for Reading Keeps Growing
NaYa Books and More
Sunshine Book Promotions
Thank you!

Mailing List

If you like books as much as I do, please consider signing up for my infrequent newsletters where I overread books (a strictly scientific, Ph.D.-in-Comp-Lit term, meaning I read them the way I want to) and announce my new releases. Here's the link. Thank you!

It's real...my book is out there in the world!

This is my friend, author, and blogger Gina Henning with a copy of Into the Blind. Thank you, Gina! You're the best!!!!!!!!!!!

My Interview with Ever-Jezebel

Who is Ever-Jezebel?
She is the protagonist of Into the Blind. She's 15. She's blind, but can see through other people's eyes. She's rather short - only five feet in height - and she's been kidnapped and imprisoned for the gift she was born with: all-powerfulness.
Helen: Hi, Ever.

Ever: Hi, Helen.

Helen: Thank you for talking to me today. Here's my first question. How—

Ever: No way. I ask first. Why did you make me all-powerful?

Helen: Well, I thought it was a nice gift to have. And besides, I really wanted to read a story about an all-powerful female, but I couldn't find one, so I wrote about you.

Ever: Really? Not a single story?

Helen: Well, okay, okay, I'm not absolutely sure about this. I only have one Ph.D., so—

Ever: Never mind. Next question. So you made me all-powerful, fine, but why give me a boyfriend who objects to powerful women?


Helen: Well, it seemed like a cool predicament.

Ever: Cool? Are you out of your mind?

Helen: Me? No, I don't believe so. However, one must remember that writing fiction in principle is a form of socially acceptable schizophrenia, therefore—

Ever: Forget about it. Better tell me this. At the beginning of your book, I don't have any power. I can't do anything. I'm just locked up in a bookstore at the mercy of a human-trafficking gang. Why?

Helen: Well—

Ever: Don't tell me it seemed like a cool predicament.

Helen: Mmm...

Ever: You're hopeless. But fine, whatever. Here's what I want you to remember, though. If you write a sequel about me—and I know you're scribbling something—I want a nice life. All smooth sailing. Understood?

Helen: No. Wait. True, there is no consensus on what constitutes a plot in a work of fiction, but at its most basic, a story must have a protagonist who gets in trouble.

Ever: Well, then you have a cool predicament on your hands, don't you? Well, I better get going. It's a busy life being Almighty.

Helen: Well, thank you. For not answering my questions.

Ever: Anytime, Helen. Anytime.

Into the Blind Release

And so it begins...my book's journey into the world. I wish it all possible success. I hope it will entertain and enlighten and sell well, among other things. :) I hope it will make me proud. :)