I suddenly realised that I had overlooked what was right under my nose. It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that the auspicious IU team is made up of (apart from me, of course) an amazing group of talented, brilliant, funny, witty, and charming authors. With regret, I haven’t had time – yet – to sample all of these authors’ work. Clever and gifted as our Evil Mastermind is, he has yet to invent the 40-hour day. Come on, Stephen Hise, pull your finger out and get on with it – I need more reading hours.
So far, I have had the pleasure of reading books by three of our wonderful resident authors: Stephen Hise, Valerie Douglas, and Rosanne Dingli. Three outstanding authors, three very enjoyable books. Continue reading “Spotlight on…The Home Team”
Dan Mader’s recent post is pertinent here. In it, he goes all Wu Tang on our collective be-hinds, extolling the benefits of “the crew”, of having a cadre of peers with which to bounce ideas off of, collaborate with, borrow from, represent to, and party alongside till you’re hoarse and vacant. He has a point. Writers are horribly misanthropic for the most part, and that solitary nature can be toxic when left to its own unhealthy and addictive devices. I call it the writer’s paradox: we spend most of our time alone figuring out how to communicate with people. I mean, really. How utterly ludicrous is that?
So, I was trying to come up with this week’s post while in the type of mood Mussolini was probably in around the time those Italian partisans captured him and hung him on a meathook, only a much lower grade version, obviously, and was about to burn more bridges than all the desperate, self-hating trolls in and around Madison County by posting something pointlessly scattershot-angry to be read by pretty much anyone on the internet, which you don’t need me to say would have been astoundingly, mindbogglingly dumb, when I found myself in a conversation with our very own Mader and Brooks (which sounds like a Savile Row tailor shop, or maybe part of a law firm: Mader, Mader and Brooks) and they allowed me to rant for a while as they snuck occasional glances at each other, no doubt wondering how they were going to inform my loved ones, until I eventually ran out of steam and left an awkward, very pregnant silence. Not to mention the mother of all run-on sentences.
After which they suggested with exquisite, admirable patience that I tone down the outrage and frustration slightly, and instead of skewering my formless targets with sharpened words, I sweeten the whole deal with an extended metaphor. For which you, kind reader, will henceforth be the beneficiary. Continue reading “The Method, Man”
Today, I’ll be pushing the bounds of the “Casual” part of the column title, as this is more of a story than a post. However, it’s the sort of thing that often makes my fellow writers smile ruefully, while “regular people” look at me like I’m psychotic. So here we go.
Back in the mid ‘90’s, when flannel-clad Grunge bands roamed wild and free, I was an apple-cheeked (just go with it) student at a Midwestern university. I was studying Literature, with a Creative Writing emphasis, which of course means I was writing a lot of short stories. And reading a lot of short stories. And talking about a lot of short stories. But because nobody actually wants to grow up to be a short story writer (“I have a burning need to express myself through the written word…briefly.”), of course I was working on a novel. Continue reading “Ed’s Casual Friday: When good research goes bad”
The emergence of e-books and the resultant boom in self-publishing has changed the writing world. Some think this is a change for the better. Some worse. I am not really interested in getting into that right now. What I am curious about, and what no one seems to talk about, is the change it has had on the reading world.
When I was young, books were my salvation. I needed escape and books were there for me. I read them…don’t think I ever stopped mid-book…even if they were not that great. It didn’t matter. Once I had started a book, I felt compelled to finish it. I folded down the corners of my favorite pages. I wrote things in the margins. I drew pictures of birds (I was a bird freak). I made the books mine. To this day, the first thing I do with any book I get is write my name in it. It is mine. And I make it mine by the song lyrics I write on the blank pages, the passages I underline, etc.
