My Antonia - Willa Cather
Winesburg, Oh - Sherwood Anderson
Gabriel García Márquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo (Everyman's Library Edition -- which appears to be the basis for the Modern Library Classics edition)
Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse

The Lyrical Novel -- Ralph Freedman

SO, The universe from which Snape switched places with our Snape . . . I have an idea of what goes on a bit afterward, but I don't plan to have my usual Harry eyes there to tell the story, but I kinda want to tell it anyway. But I have no good reason to tell it inside Resolution. It's a dead-end thread. Honestly, though I cheated with this once already when I backed up and explained what happened to the Snape whom Harry rescued from the Ministry Dungeon and took to Finland (we'll call him Ice-castle Snape). Although I lead into that with Harry going to "look" at what was happening.

Blah, this is too long winded. Shorter question: If I simply started out a chapter picking up the other Snape's thread in the, um, switcheroo universe (let's call it), and I just dedicated a chapter to that, sorta like an interlude of sorts, would that be just too freaking weird and disruptive? Or should I make my idea a short story on its own? Trouble with that is it tends to get lost. Since it has no bearing on anything but everyone's curiosity, perhaps it should get lost if need be.

Anyway. Anyone have any thoughts? Maybe I can work out a way of segueing into it, somehow. Hasn't happened yet, though. I could make up a lame excuse, maybe... :-D

Added: I think I figured out how to do this. I have plan A and plan B in my head now. Either way, I'll provide closure on that universe, which would be good. Thanks for all the suggestions!

Owl Awards are open. You have to be registered on the site to nominate.

Have to borrow a pic for this post. Just makes me giggle, this does.


Severus Snape, Sex God by ~chicxulub on deviantART

Jessica Watson is one of two 16 year old girls currently making an attempt at a solo circumnavigation of the globe. She's about half way around (from Australia) and her blog makes for an enjoyable read. There is such a unique psychology to a long-term, intense monitoring, solitary task like this. I'd start here, reading posts from the bottom to the top of each page.

The other girl (odd using the term girl for someone with so much going on, I keep wanting to type "woman") is an American whose brother has also gone around solo and briefly held the record for youngest to complete this feat. Abby Sunderland just left yesterday but she is also keeping a blog.

There is a third girl, all of 14, Laura Dekker, from Netherlands, whose story is already full of twists and turns and she hasn't gotten close to departing yet. You can type her name into Google for the headlines. Laura's voyage site

It must be crowded out there in solo circumnaviationland, there is an Indian man also circumnavigating solo . He and Jessica had a radio chat as they approached the Horn of South America (fixed). I can't help but be amused at the thought that, here you are 42 year-old navy guy and you are hoping to catch up to a sixteen year old girl. Heh. As an aside, looks like he won't, he's had to put in for repairs.

And we must leave our tropical paradise (leaving for the airport in just a moment). Very rainy tropical paradise, actually. And some property owner is trying to close the beach path for the neighborhood (a perennial issue around these parts). Claims he wants to graze cows. Um, right. On the vast acreage of the ranch in question that I can see from the upstairs window during our visit . . . not a single cow. More likely subdivide it for a housing development with a "private" beach (no beaches are allowed to be private on Hawai'i, but access doesn't have to be easy, hence the perennial battle over beach paths). Sad to think there may not be a reason to return. We picked this house to be near Larsen's beach, specifically. Getting to that age where it's nice to go somewhere comfortable.

Got to see two different endangered species. A monk seal pup was sleeping on the beach one day. And several Shearwaters, huge penguin-colored sea gull shaped birds which dash in and out of the pounding surf like it's nothing. Amazing to watch.

Where was I (speaking of age...) Yes, 51 is up. I'm probably having pacing problems again. But no really telling that until the story is finished. I think I have introduced that last new plot line of the story with the bit about Arcadius. So, were making real progress here. Oh wait, there is one (oh, maybe two?) more, but it is after the climatic scenes, and is just icing. Doesn't count, really. ;-)

And you are all thinking . . . climactic scenes, are we really going to get those? We'll believe it when we see it.

We'll get to the big moment(s) but Harry has to first figure out who he is to make them believable. That's where things are now, in case you are keeping score at home.

Gosh, how much easier it goes when my brain is clicking on the right gears for it. Most of the week, I've been forcing the words out, half a page at a time, hoping it isn't too horrible to keep later.

I finished 51 but I have to go over it and smooth over the rough, oh, first three quarters of it.

I have been a total slug this week. I have not only been doing token amounts of writing, but also token amounts of work. (For which I will pay dearly later when these deadlines loom closer.) Although I've had a lot of weird client requests by email that have been sucking up my energy, mostly by forcing me to be patient with incredible ignorance about all things technical. I mean, dealing with that is my job, but usually I'm faced with smaller doses at a time. There has been a rash of it lately. That and the sunshine and warm breezes and being able to walk outside and pick fruit to eat, kinda puts one off thinking about exerting oneself. Just something about that.

Reading is pretty much all I've been doing. Kindles are baaaad, baaad. You can't run out of books to read! Gah, whose idea was that?

So..... 51 is not done. It is shaping up, slowly. I finished the scene with Harry's visit to the French prison, which was a bit of a relief, as I had not figured out exactly what I was going to have him do there. I had vague notions that I figured would become clearer, and they eventually did, after putting up some resistance. It turned out better than I thought, actually, possibly because it's had more revision than normal. (I always start a writing session by revising what I've got so far.)

I'll check back in in a few days when I have more to report.

I'll confess up front that I don't read much fanfic, because if I'm reading fanfic, I'm not writing fanfic. Sometimes the reading mood strikes, and if it does, my writing productivity goes way down. If I read something like Jane Austen et al, my writing productivity (and hopefully quality, heh) goes up, so mostly I've been reading things along the classical line when I find time to read at all.

That said, people frequently ask for recommendations. So, here are a few. If you have others, please throw them in the comments.

Aspen in the Sunlight
Jocelyn
Still looking for more?
Rec lists:
Fox Estacado's list of Harry/Snape Mentorship/Partnership stories (you'll probably recognize the lovely graphics I was allowed to use on Resolution . . .)
Shadowarwen's Let there be Angst
Knowitall's Snapecentric category

Surprisingly few people (based on the stats) have read Brighter Morning, so I'll throw that in the mix too. I know, it sounds like it's going to be awful (featuring Harry's son and all) but that's exactly why I wrote it. I wanted to prove to myself that it isn't the story idea that matters, just the implementation. And I wanted a challenge.

In the usual places...

http://www.harrypotterfanfiction.com/viewstory.php?psid=213117
http://owl.tauri.org/stories.php?psid=5321
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3470741/50/

And it has a disclaimer on it. As we say in New York . . . whaddyagonnado?

Hope everyone has a great extended Solstice-related holiday, sol invictus, Alban Arthan, Festivus . . . oh yeah, and Christmas ;-) and Gregorian calender New Year too. As an adult, probably my favorite of the bunch. Although, they all involve drinking, funny enough.

In desperation for a better way to cook chicken I combined several recipes and twice now this has worked out beautifully, so I thought I'd share it. (I love food all the time, but winter makes food even more of a religious experience.)

For starters, I brine my chicken and turkey before I do anything else (hot smoke, pan fry, bake, roast, whathaveyou). Once you taste it that way, you can't ever go back. So, a quick overview of brining is below the other recipe.

( read the recipe(s) )

This wonderfully entertaining review of Phantom Menace, through its dissection of the problems with the movie, starts to carve out what I think of as the "anti-story". As a storyteller, its helpful to recognize the negative space around what works, at least within a particular genre.

I have to admit, part way through this review I was starting to wonder if Lucas was actually trying to go surrealist on movie making the way, say Gertrude Stein did with poetry. You know the way Stein believed that language/words and grammar were limitations on her art. For a few minutes, while watching this, I started to think maybe Lucas thought, hey, characterizations and plot, those are limitations on the art. And I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt that he was actually doing something very different from what everyone thought. But then the scene comes up where they are screening the movie to the big wigs involved in making it. And Lucas has his head in his hands. Guess not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI

Better yet, as further props to the review as a set-piece. The reviewer manages to do exactly what Lucas fails at: he creates dramatic tension, and even manages some plot arc. In a review. It's nicely done, especially given (or perhaps because of) the weird casualness of it.

Oh, by the way. DO NOT start watching this unless you have 70 minutes of time blocked out. I'm serious.

And now I must get some work done today. Yikes.

Others have mentioned they liked this book, so I'm hoping to get a little discussion going. I'm going to cut the book up into 10 chapter chunks for analysis. I'm trying to limit myself to reading a chapter a day (otherwise I simply don't stop reading, ever), but in reality I'm going a little faster than that, so 10 chapters will be roughly a week.

I think some spoilers are inevitable here, sorry for that. This book withstands full spoilerage though, I've discovered upon re-reading an unabridged copy after getting 2/3 of the way through.

1st off, and most importantly, if you are going to read this book, do not bother with an abridged version. Your recommended edition options are: the Modern Library Classics, the Everyman's Library (which you may find at a used book store or a close version of it here for free ), or the Penguin Classics. Don't bother with any others.

( read more about The Count of Monte Cristo )

This week for my class I'm writing Fables in prose poem form. This form is conducive to fable because it's compact and dense and in fable you are not supposed to stop and explain why something fantastical is happening, just plow ahead with confidence. Details and character motivation will charm the reader into believing even the most absurd events. This is not surrealism, however, the world described and the characters in it should be recognizable, even as tweaked as it is.

Dang but this has been a liberating exercise. All that chastisement you get growing up to suppress the grandest, most fabulous parts of the imagination now get to be coaxed out to play.

The Poets we are using for examples are Charles Simic, Russell Edson, Chistopher Kennedy, and Morton Marcus. Simic has this great poem that starts out: "My guardian angel is afraid of the dark. He pretends he's not, sends me ahead, tells me he'll be along in a moment." Ah, that just hits the sweet spot of my dark humor.

Here's my first attempt. Angels and the dead (along with disturbingly quirky parents) feature in a lot of these, so I started in on a similar theme because I had that on the brain.

------------------
Recall Notice

As I crossed by the broad stone steps of the cathedral downtown today, I passed a stout old man wearing three clashing colors of plaid. He said, "I got a recall on my soul yesterday," and tugged from his pocket a brown parchment letter with rusty red ink. It flopped in his hand from the weight of the wax disk affixed to the bottom of it and trailing a shiny red ribbon. "But they tell me I can't return it here." He sniffled doubtfully and folded the letter, which protested like dried leather. "I hate to disappoint them. They spent so much on the postage."

"I'd hate to go through life with a defective soul," said I.

"Better than none at all," said he.
------------------

Harry Potter's Infamous Nude Scene Will Please An Unexpected Group Of Shippers
And remember that rumor about Daniel Radcliffe baring all for one of the final Harry Potter films? Despite earlier denials from Radcliffe's reps, it sounds like director David Yates has confirmed that we will see naked Potter:

In one scene, "a horcrux [carrying a piece of Voldemort's soul] defends itself by producing nightmarish visions, and one shows Hermione and Harry embracing and kissing," explained Yates. "It's something intriguing and sensual for Rupert to react to, and Dan will be bare for that." --from io0.com

Aye. A much better scene for a bare Harry would be when he jumps into the pond. I mean, that's a powerfully symbolic scene laden with old British lore. Hm, makes me worry this movie may be no more than a teen flick. Sad sad.

Oh, and Chapter 49 is up in the usual places. I had an easier time with word selection this time. Poetry class is definitely paying out. Oh, speaking of which, I have an assignment for tomorrow I haven't started: Object Poem. Trouble is I have Gertrude Stein on the brain from the samples. Not conducive for some reason. And I've been reading To the Lighthouse. Boy does that require one's full and complete attention. I'm getting into it though. Didn't think that would happen first dip into it.

Yum yum. This story is like that toaster you never get rid of, even though it burns the toast if you go off and make the rest of breakfast. Because if you keep an eye on it, it makes yummy darkened bread that you can really sink your teeth into.

Bad analogy? Eh, time to go to bed anyway...

(Gammas, just a note, I'm doing two rounds, so you won't have to see the obvious grammar problems. well, except the ones I introduce fixing the first round of issues...)

Attempting an embed . . . otherwise the cartoon is here

Resonance in HP Book format

Revolution in HP Book format

So authentic looking it's almost creepy.

Robin sent these a long time ago and I'm finally getting around to posting them. (They were linked from the comments before in case these seem familiar.) Robin was a total dear for doing these, as well as giving me the files to keep Resolution updated. I'm going to hack at that a bit tonight, mostly because I have a massive work deadline at the end of next week (argh) and really, playing with latex sounds like MUCH more fun.

Prose poetry class again tonight. Me, in a poetry class. Still makes me laugh. One of the seven signs of a personal apocalypse?

My first attempt: (Must be five sentences and in the style of Gary Young. I can count the sentences, but the style thing is a toss-up.)

In the morning the furnace roars up the center of the house, and the clicking igniter wakes the cats, who dutifully demand breakfast even before the sky brightens. The wind and the rain have stripped the color, stripped everything, from the trees, but by afternoon the sluggish sun pushes wind-tossed curls of leaf through balmy air. Spring green, Irish green, invades the garden beds in carpets of self-seeded arugula, kale, and chicory. The deer ignore this bounty in favor of the sweetly fattening apples and pears congregating under the shelter of the trees. The unforgiving snow will come, but we are given repeated, tenuous, second chances.

I picked up a book on Harvard Square this summer entitled Reading Frames in Modern Fiction by Mary Ann Caws. I'm really excited about this book. It's exactly the sort of thing I want to learn more about. Trouble is I have read very few of the works discussed, so I loaded up at the used book store in Syracuse, and more recently in Vancouver at MacLeods.

The reading list consists of:

Tess and Jude by Hardy
Mansfield Park and Persuasion by Austen (which I've read, most of, but I should probably re-read)
Pierre by Melville (no copy of this book exists, apparently. I've tried not only my two big Syracuse stores, but also the big red phoenix barn outside Ithaca, and now MacLeods. I'll have to order online, which kills the romance, I tell ya.)
Later Henry James
--A Small Boy and Others
--The Wings of the Dove
--The Golden Bowl
--The Real Thing ...
(hey, wait, I just read this one on a spree of short story reading through an old college textbook Short Story and Its Writer, whoo hoo... Hm, it was a lowkey and kinda weird story that if I got the point it was a little weak for the number of words.)
--The Author of Beltraffio
--The Friends of the Friends
--Jolly Corner
(Juice! by the time I get through this, I can write a thesis on James...)
--Turn of the Screw
--Sacred Fount
--The Ambassadors
(Dang, I really really really better like James...)
--The Awkward Age
--The Portrait of a Lady (hm, maybe I've read this one too...)
(Perhaps High Modernist Framing is not SO important. Shew...)
Marble Faun by Hawthorne
Lighthouse and Waves by Woolf (this is very sad, but I have never read any Virginia Woolf. Long overdue...)

First across the line is Tess of the D'Ubervilles.

I have just a bit to say about this one. The use of nature vs. agriculture vs. human society wove throughout it making a nice framing. Near the end the the metaphors across these echo each other a little too strongly. The ending was waay too much like Adam Bede, (spoiler alert) girl makes small mistake (really, is led into it) and in the end commits murder and is executed. Yay. Nice sense of wry humor though. Needed more of it. Also two major spots where the characters seemed to go out of character to serve the story. When Angel walks out, his internal workings didn't seem believable in light of the setup. His actions were believable, but not what was going on in his head. Maybe the other spot is less an OOC problem than that the author pulls back unexpectedly. When Tess's family is stuck in an exceptionally bad run of luck after her father dies and the house they thought they rented had already been taken, it was jarring to go from pages and pages of internal dissection to suddenly skipping over to, oh, she's given into D'Uberville, and it's a done deal. Huh?

I'm looking forward to reading more detailed interpretation of the framing, since it's pretty accessible.

I don't have a card reader on me that will let me read this trip's pictures, so here's an old pic from Vancouver. It better represents where the story is about now, anyway. ;-) Especially those big boulders just visible through the mist at the approaching bend in the river...



I've been applying a few things I learned in writing classes, the main one is probably: replace generic words with something more specific. That way when you do haul out the ordinary word, it actually means something by virtue of being ordinary. Immediacy, immediacy, immediacy. Did I mention immediacy?