Two Australian Authors and One AMAZING book

Over the past week, I've read three books, two of them by Australian authors and one by an author I've never heard of who actually lives up to her cover blurb.

I picked up "Sweeping Up Glass" by Carolyn Wall after reading about it in the email newsletter for booksellers and librarians, Shelf Awareness.
The blurb on the back cover said "This is a perfect little book, like a head-on collision between Flannery O'Connor and Harper Lee with a bit of Faulkner..." Joe R Landsdale
I actually laughed when I read that, and figured Mr Landsdale must somehow be related to Ms Wall.

Much to my astonishment, once I cracked open "Sweeping up Glass" I couldn't put it down...it does, indeed, read like a cross between "To Kill a Mockingbird" and a Flannery O'Connor short story with a dash of Faulkners insane Southern characters. It's a perfect blend of innocence, ignorance, pride, prejudice, mystery and transformation. I was riveted right to the last word, which I read at 12:30 am this morning.

This is the story of Olivia Harker Cross, a woman who lives in poverty in a little Kentucky town at the base of Big Foley Mountain. She's taking care of her evil mother, Ida, and raising her beloved grandson Willem, while trying to eke out a living by tending the tiny grocery at the front of her home. Having lost her father, who was the town veterinarian and moonshiner, Olivia has been at odds with her insane, vituperative mother and the town thugs for years, mainly because her best friends are the local colored community, who treat her like family and helped raise her when her mother was in the state mental hospital. Oliva's father brought silver-faced wolves to the area, and now they are being hunted and killed off in her back yard, and Olivia must solve the mystery of who is behind the killings, why her father was buried near the outhouse, and why the love of her life married someone else.

Once Olivia starts to unravel the mystery, the power of love to transform a life, even one that is halfway over, is revealed. The prose in this novel is deceptively simple on the surface, yet it has the power to create people who seem as real and possible as the neighbors. The plot is swift and full of twists you won't see coming, and the characters voices are spot-on for the South of the 1950s. I highly recommend this novel and I hope that my book group at the library will consider reading it this year.

I also read Australians Jennifer Fallon and Denise Rossetti's latest works.
Jennifer Fallon wrote the Hythrun Chronicles series, about the Harshini, which I loved, and the Wolfblade trilogy, which I was somewhat less enthusiastic about, mainly because there were a lot more political machinations in that series, and politics bore me, whether real or imagined.

"The Immortal Prince" is the first book in a new series by Fallon, and it is terrific, full of strong, self realized female characters and both good and evil male characters.
The story takes place on a world where magic and Tide Gods are the stuff of legend, even a deck of tarot cards, but Arkady Desean has become an expert on those legends and on the history of the Crasii, a race of slave creatures created by the Tide Lords from animal and human DNA. Akrady learns that the Crasii believe that the Tide Lords exist and are just waiting for the tide to come in to regain their powers and take over the world.

Meanwhile, Arkady, who grew up in the slums, marries a gay Duke, enabling her to continue her studies and help keep him in the Kings good graces. Once a man is tried for murder and hanged, unsuccessfully, the kings spymaster, Declan, asks Arkady to interrogate the man, who claims to be the Tide Lord Cayal, an immortal.In the cell next to Cayal is a dog/man hybrid named Warlock, who engenders Arkady's sympathy as well as her trust when he claims that Cayal is telling the truth. Over time Arkady gets the real story of the immortals and learns of the despair Cayal feels over not being able to die, after centuries of guilt over heinous crimes committed by himself and his fellow immortals, and eventually, she realizes he actually is a Tide Lord.
The trouble is, some of the other immortals, particularly her husbands lover, are manuvering into position for the tides return, so they can take over Amyrantha and enslave not just the Crasii, but the mortals as well.

Fallon's prose is rich with imagery and her plots never plod. She did, however, leave me with a cliffhanger at the end of the book, so I've now got to wait, impatiently, for the second book, the Gods of Amyrantha, to arrive at the library so I can find out what happened! I'd recommend this book to those who enjoy Mercedes Lackey's fantasy novels, or the works of Barbara Hambly.

I will admit that I picked up a copy of Denise Rossetti's "The Flame and the Shadow" because her name is similar to my own, and because I am a fire sign, and any fantasy/SF novel about fire witches is bound to appeal to me.

I was a bit taken aback, initially, when the book started out with the anguish of a mother over losing her baby daughter, and then moved rapidly into a sexual scene with a musician that the main character, Cenda, barely knows.
But I was willing to give this Australian author the benefit of the doubt, mainly because Shana Abe, author of the wonderful Drakon series of paranormal romances, blurbed the book as inventive.

Unfortunately, the story, which had great promise and was interesting, was consistently stalled by detailed sexual scenarios in nearly every chapter of the book.
So much so that I realized the author was writing erotica/soft pornography with a story lightly wrapping around it, like a transluscent robe over a naked body.
The story runs thus: Grayson, the Duke of Ombria, has a living shadow that he wishes to rid himself of, mainly because he doesn't want to face his own homosexual feelings toward the shadow, named "Shad."

He is told that there is a rare fire witch that the technomages want to experiment on, to use as a weapon. There are others who also want the fire witch and her powers, and Grayson makes a double deal to ensure that someone will give him the way to remove Shad in exchange for the fire witch, Cenda.

Meanwhile, Cenda is working with the Enclave, a group of magicians who do things organically, not using technology, to hone her powers when she meets Gray and the two are so immediately enamored of one another that they spend many pages in sexual encounters, each more explosive than the last (and yes, Shad gets involved, too, as he is able to keep Cenda from burning Gray during sex).

What follows are thugs chasing the two, who end up adopting a street child, and escaping from the evil technomages. Cenda learns of Gray's treachery, and Gray realizes that he is in love with Cenda, as is Shad, so all is forgiven and they have more sex. The end.

Other than feeling like this book shouldn't be shelved in the Science Fiction/Fantasy area of the bookstore (it should be under erotica or adult literature/pornography), I was alarmed at the frequent use of the F word along with that despicable host of euphemisms for body parts that were rife in this book. Why can't erotica writers use the word penis? Why use slang words that make everything sound ugly?

A writer with this much talent, whose prose was otherwise fairly decent, killed her credibility by using swear words, ugly oaths and slang wherever possible.
So, while I liked the story, the world-building and some of the characters, I can't recommend this book to anyone, knowing that the pornographic scenes would offend most of my friends who read genre fiction such as SF and Fantasy. I felt angry that I didn't get what I paid for. I wanted an SF/Fantasy novel, not a book of erotica or porn.
Perhaps Ms Rossetti, the Australian version, will clean up her prose and create a book more worthy of her talent as a writer.

Lit Crit at Christmas

Merry Christmas bibliophiles!

I finished two books yesterday, "The Birth of Venus" by Sarah Dunant and "The French Gardener" by Santa Montefiore.

I picked up a copy of Dunant's "Birth of Venus" and "In the Company of the Courtesan" before Thanksgiving, and was going to just add them to my TBR stack and get to them later, when I happened upon the Queen of the Seattle book scene, Nancy Pearl, interviewing Dunant at University (of Washington) Bookstore, and I was glued to my seat for the next 30 minutes. Dunant is a fascinating British woman who does extensive research and has a unique POV in all her novels, particularly the four book set that she began with "Birth of Venus." Apparently she wanted to have her novels speak not only from a woman's point of view, but also from the inside of convents in Italy and France that were stuffed full of women and girls who were required to be there because they were unmarriagable, poor, widowed or disgraced.
Once I began reading Birth of Venus I realized I'd read it before, and I don't recall if I liked it or not, but this time, I really enjoyed the story, the setting of Medici Florence (in the 15th century)and the protagonist, willful artistic genius Alessandra Cecchi. Alessandra is a child of the Renaissance, and loves to draw and paint, but though she is educated and the daughter of a wealthy cloth merchant, she is still proscribed in what is allowed of her, and painting/artistry as a career is only allowed for men and boys. She is expected to marry and produce children and run a household. Unfortunately, Alessandra has two brothers, one a cruel and vituperative gay man, and the other a dolt who loves to fight and kill. When a former monk turned painter is hired by her father to paint the family chapel, Alessandra is fascinated by him,and tries to get him to help her learn to be an artist.
Her brother, noticing that his sister strains at her bonds of staying virginal and in the household at all times, sets her up with his lover, and after the two marry Alessandra realizes that she is being used to keep her brothers lover from being arrested by the religious fanatics and tortured into confession of his 'sin' of being a homosexual. Christoforo, her husband, only has sex with her to procure an heir, and Alessandra soon finds herself in need of something more in her relationship. After rescuing her family's painter from a deep depression, she has sex with him and becomes pregnant, but isn't sure if her child is the painters or her husbands.
Soon after her evil brother is arrested, her husband pays to rescue him, fakes his own death and runs away with her brother (who now has a kind of plague)and Alessandra is forced to move into a convent with her slave Erila and her daughter. The painter finds her, makes love to her many more times and tattoos her body with a large serpent which winds down from her shoulder to her pubic area. She has her servant Erila brew her a concoction to allow her death, and she fakes using a pigs bladder full of offal as a breast cancer tumor to help others believe that this is why she died.
I found the book riveting reading, staying up until 1 am to finish it. Dunant's prose is complex and rich with images that make you feel like you are right there in Florence, watching them burn paintings and gowns and other items believed to be too showy and not pious enough for the current political/social climate. Like most British authors, she can go overboard on the details, but Dunant only strays into the minutia a few times, thankfully.
I would recommend this book to anyone who finds stories of women in art, women in history and women in religious communities interesting. It certainly beats the skirts off of most "chick lit" novels.
This brings us to The French Gardener, which was an impulse buy from the library book cart. The author is also British, but is not of the same calibre as Dunant.
Miranda and David Claybourne are successful Londoners, with two children, Gus and Storm, who purchase a country estate that is in near ruins. Miranda is a freelance writer who yearns to be a novelist (she constantly complains that writing articles is soulless and unworthy of her talent as a writer, because we all know that writing for magazines and newspapers doesn't make you a real writer, only a fictional novel can do that, right?) and doesn't see much of her lawyer/banker husband, because he's got a mistress (her best friend, but she doesn't know that) that he's keeping on the side while both parents ignore their children, who are in turn sullen bullies due to lack of parental guidance or attention.
The first 80 pages of this novel goes into detail of the lives of these awful people, who are all shallow, cruel and stupid. I was ready to throw the book against the wall and call it a day, when the author introduced the character of the French gardener, a man named Jean Paul, who came to work for the Claybournes because of his history with the estate, and his illicit relationship with the previous owner's wife, Ava. We learn, though Miranda's reading of Ava's journal and scrapbook, that Jean Paul had come to their estate at the behest of his father, who wanted him to gain wisdom and maturity, as well as gardening skills, so that one day he might take over his family's vineyard in France. Ava, who is happily married to a man much older than she is, (and who has three children) teaches Jean Paul about the magic of gardening and helping things to grow, and in so doing, Jean Paul falls in love with her and eventually wears down her resistance to a physical relationship. Ava realizes she can never give JP what he really wants, which is a full marriage, because she still loves her husband and children, and when her husband has a stroke, she moves away with her family and leaves JP unsuspecting that she is pregnant with his child (whom she names Peach, which borders on the precious and silly). Miranda learns of all this, eventually weaning herself away from her expensive and glamorous London lifestyle, and after befriending some of the locals, embarks on her novel, telling the story of Ava and JP. She also comes to realize how neglected her children are, once she sees how carefully and lovingly JP takes them in hand, building them a tree house, teaching them to plant and grow a garden and generally giving them the time and attention they seem to crave. Once the children begin to turn around in their attitudes, so does Miranda, and once she realizes her husband is having an affair, she bans him and her vulgar best friend from the estate. David Claybourne is mortified when he realizes he's lost his family for a cheap and sleazy affair that meant nothing to him, and he begs to be given a second chance.
Here is where the novel veers off into extreme fantasy, in my opinion. I find it hard to believe that a wealthy snob like David who thoroughly enjoyed having his cake and eating it too would give a rats rump about his wife and children, when he's been virtually ignoring them for years. Just because he has been exposed as a jerk and a cheating heel of a guy doesn't mean he will change his nature overnight, and suddenly become a loving husband and father. Nor does it mean his wife and children will just accept him as that, when they've all been shown what an asshat the man is over the years. I felt that Miranda and her children were much better off without David, who I really though deserved to wither and die alone somewhere after making such a mess of his life. However, with that kind of shallow person, it seems doubtful that is what he'd do...more likely he'd mess around with dozens of women and enjoy the life of a sleazy divorced businessman. He didn't seem to see women as anything but possessions anyway, something he felt he 'deserved' as part of his success. So the ending when they're all back together as a family and happy seemed far fetched to me. Poor old JP learns that the love of his life, whom he's waited for, died without telling him about his daughter, but he meets her and is enchanted by her in the end, and takes her back to his estate in France. Still, it seemed like JP got the short end of the stick there. There is a nice secondary storyline with a pudgy townswoman named Henrietta who learns to love herself just as she is, and gets the local farmer falling for her in the bargain, which is charming, but all too brief.
I'd give this novel a solid B grade, though I am tempted to add a minus for those first onerous 80 pages.
Fortunately, for Christmas I got a copy of Jennie Shortridge's "When She Flew" which I plan on delving into immediately, along with Dunant's second novel, "In the Company of the Courtesan."

Seattle is the Most Literate City in America, Again!

This is from Shelf Awareness and USA Today newspaper:
Seattle has once again topped the list of America's most literate
cities, but this year Washington, D.C., edged traditional literate city
powerhouse Minneapolis as a surprise runner-up. The annual study by Jack
Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University, "focuses on
six indicators: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library
resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment and
Internet resources,"

Seattle tops list of literate cities

By Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY
Cities where lots of people read also tend to feature a vibrant singles' scene, a study suggests. It finds that Boston, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta boast high rankings both as "literate cities" and as places for single people to live.

The study is by Jack Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Conn., who for seven years has compiled the literate-cities list. It focuses on six indicators: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment and Internet resources.

Seattle and Minneapolis have typically traded the top two spots, and this year Seattle comes in first. But Washington, D.C., edged Minneapolis out for of the No. 2 spot.

This year, Miller correlated results with rankings based on other surveys by Forbes, Bert Sperling's BestPlaces, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and American City Business Journals.

Among findings, top literate cities also:

•Tend to offer the most active singles' scenes: Boston, Seattle, Washington, and Atlanta

•Are safer: Minneapolis, Boston, Seattle, Portland, Denver and Cincinnati

•Are more walkable: Seattle, Washington, D.C., Portland, Boston and Denver

•Are healthier: Washington, D.C., and Denver

But Miller also found that these cities are not immune to hard times. Only Washington had relatively low unemployment.

For more on the findings, go to www.ccsu.edu/amlc09


America's most literate cities for 2009:

1) Seattle
2) Washington
3) Minneapolis
4) Pittsburgh
5) Atlanta
6) Portland, Ore.
7) St. Paul
8) Boston
9) Cincinnati
10) Denver

I loved the movie "Rain Man" with Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman, as I found it to be tender and wise, something that doesn't often happen in movies today.
Sadly, the original "Rain Man" has died, but the movie and the actor who played him had a profound effect on his life. Hurrah for the effect of art to change lives!
This is from MediaBistros FishBowl LA Blog:

The Real Rain Man Has Died
By Pandora Young on Dec 22, 2009 03:38 AM

Kim Peek, the mentally disabled savant who inspired the Oscar-winning film "Rain Man," died Saturday of a heart attack. He was 58.
Peek was a mega-savant with the ability to recall 98 percent of everything he read, saw or heard. Peek's remarkable mental abilities left such an impression on screenwriter Barry Morrow that he was inspired to write the movie "Rain Man." The film, while fiction, significantly raised public awareness of Autism, Savant syndrome, and mental disabilities.
The film was beneficial for the deeply introverted Peek as well, helping him learn new social skills. From the Times Online:
It was not until he met Dustin Hoffman, when the Hollywood star was researching his role in "Rain Man", that he could look into another person's face. He was 37 at the time.

Dustin Hoffman advised Fran Peek not to hide his son away. Mr Peek said of that meeting: "Dustin Hoffman said to me, you have to promise me one thing about this guy, share him with the world. And pretty soon it got so that nobody was a stranger to him, they were people, and so was he".
He took Hoffman's advice, putting his son on stage in front of thousands of people for whom he answered, almost always correctly, the most obscure questions they could test him with.
He thrived on his new found fame. Mr Morrow said of him: "I love the way he's flowered, it belies the myth that people don't change, especially people with developmental disabilities."
Four years before his death, Mr Peek said: "I wasn't supposed to make it past about 14, and yet here I am at 54, a celebrity!"

And finally, the Couth Buzzard Used Bookstore, a haunt of mine for 10 years when we first moved to Seattle and lived in Phinney Ridge and Ballard, closed down last year to much sorrow and protest by locals who had loved the 30 year old store.
Fortunately, a young man named Theo bought the store and its contents and is reopening on Greenwood and 83rd, just down the road from the original location in January, 2010.
This is heartening news for booklovers in the Seattle area, because the best book bargains were always to be found at the Buzzard, along with some great conversation, and now you can get a cuppa joe there as well!

This is from an email I got from the owners:
Greetings Friends of Couth Buzzard Espresso Buono Cafe.
Well, the New Couth Buzzard Books Espresso Buono Cafe had a week exceeding our expectations! A special thanks to all our old and new friends who came by.

And, our Grand Opening Party is Saturday, January 9th all day. Food, Fun Entertainment. Come on by and check out our new digs. Let me know if you can help, or if you want to do a little performing.
Theo, Penny and Gerry

Afternoons With Emily by Rose MacMurray

First, a brief appeared today in Shelf Awareness about Elliott Bay Bookstore in Seattle:

Elliott Bay Book Co., Seattle, Wash., has found space in the Capitol
Hill neighborhood and will move from Pioneer Square next spring,
according to a letter from owner Peter Aaron on the store's website

The new space has slightly more selling space than the store's current
location, will have a cafe and offers ample parking below street level
and in a nearby parking lot. The building, which dates from 1918, "has
the fir floor--complete with creaks--we're used to treading, and
gorgeous high wood ceiling--including massive wood beams--and
skylights," Aaron wrote. "While no space could exactly duplicate the
charm of the original store, I can promise that the new building will
offer a warm, comfortable and cozy environment that will be true to the
beautiful place Walter Carr founded on Main Street."

He added: "When I first became involved in the ownership of Elliott Bay
eleven years ago, it was because I believed fervently that this gem,
which had been 'my' bookstore since I first moved here twenty-seven
years ago, was worth saving--that it was a precious asset that must and,
in fact, could flourish in this city--if anywhere on earth. Since that
time I have done my best to be a faithful steward in preserving both the
spirit and the body of this unique place which has been built and
nourished cooperatively by the generations of booksellers who have
worked here over the years and the book-lovers who have supported
us--here in Seattle, across the country and indeed around the world. I'm
inexpressibly grateful for that ongoing support--and most especially for
the outpouring of concern and commitment we've received in recent
months. We're committed to doing everything in our power to continue to
earn your patronage and support."

I must note that now I will have no reason to visit Pioneer Square, as that store was a landmark and the only reason the 25 mile trip was worthwhile, really. Now that area is going to become just another corridor of cheap and scuzzy bars surrounded by the bums and panhandlers that sleep at the mission and then try to get enough together to buy booze and get drunk or buy drugs and get high.
Capitol Hill already HAS bookstores, and it is notorious for being bereft of parking, day or night. Cap Hill also has a well deserved reputation as a gay and lesbian enclave, (and that is fine, really, I have no problem with the GLBT community) and a haven for 'wierd' people and strange restaurants. It's not considered a family-oriented place, so, as a woman with a family, I don't bother to go there often, though when Jim and I first moved here, we did visit Capitol Hill for their Japanese noodle houses. Yet I think that Elliott Bay has shot themselves in the foot, and I don't believe their business will thrive when transplanted to the funky soil of Cap Hill. But I wish them good luck with the move, regardless.

I bought Afternoons With Emily on a whim, mainly because of the lovely Victorian art cover and the back flap blurb that mentioned that the author, Rose MacMurray died unexpectedly after finishing the manuscript of this book, and her family had it published for her posthumously. I am a sucker for a publishing sob story, so I had to buy this book.
Fortunately, the book lives up to its cover and its author with a fine, if somewhat melodramatic story, fascinating characters and rich prose sprinkled with the luscious poetry of Emily Dickenson.
It should be noted that Ms MacMurray was a well-educated woman who studied Emily Dickenson's life and poetry for many years before writing this work of fiction.
That kind of dedicated research informs every page of the novel, making all the characters seem real and well-fleshed-out.
The story's main protagonist is Miranda Chase, a young girl whose mother dies of TB and leaves her with an absent-minded professor father who hasn't a clue how to parent a little girl, and is selfish and arrogant enough not to care. Following the death of her mother, Miranda and her father move to a sugar plantation on Barbados for a year, where Miranda learns a great deal from the natives and finds out that her mothers insistence that she, too, had "consumptive lungs" is a lie, and that she is actually hale and healthy. Miranda's father wins a position in classics at Amherst College, and the two move to Amherst, Massachusetts, where they will live with Miranda's Aunt Helen and next door to the town's founding family, the Dickensons.
Miranda learns that Emily Dickenson, the genius poet of the family, is a recluse and rarely allows anyone to see her, as all her relationships are maintained via letter writing.
However, once Emily hears that a teenaged Miranda has told the local reverend that she prefers Zeus to Jesus, she insists that Miranda come to call upon her, and therein starts a riveting relationship. Miranda initially comes to visit Emily every Monday, but as she grows and her lifes work takes shape, Emily's attitude toward Miranda becomes less that of a friend and mentor/teacher, and more of a Svengali who is cruelly possessive and wishes to shape Miranda's life to be exactly like her own.
For example, when Miranda's cousin Kate dies right after Miranda has lost her fiance to the Civil War, Emily writes her comforting poetry and is sympathetic to a point. Yet once Miranda brings home her cousins daughter to raise as her own, and falls in love with her fiance's trust lawyer, Emily seems consumed by jealousy and rage, and works to undermine Miranda's life and love.
Though we see many bits of Emily Dickensons poetry, readers are allowed to see that Dickenson's immaturity and bizarre mental state often lead her to produce works that were not great, and her pride kept her from allowing any famed publishers of the time to edit her work. Here we see that high intelligence and insanity really are flip sides of the same coin.
I enjoyed this book, though it became something of a treatise on the rights of women in the 19th century, and the serious lack of quality early childhood education, which Miranda tries to rectify by creating a montessori-style kindergarten in New York and Amherst. I would have appreciated more of Emily's daily life and less of Miranda's, because Emily was a real person and Miranda was not.I would have liked to have known, for example, which of Emily's mentors finally persuaded her to publish, and if they were able to edit her work, and what happened to all the poems Emily sent to her relatives and friends--were they published posthumously? Also, the fate of Emily's sister Lavinia and her mother are never brought to light.
Still, the love story of Miranda and Roger was nicely done, and the HEA ending wasn't amiss.
I recommend this book to all who are fans of Emily Dickenson's poetry, those who are interested in how people lived during the Civil War era and those who appreciate a good historically-accurate romance.

Love and Biology at the Center of the Universe by Jennie Shortridge

Love and Biology at the Center of the Universe is a charming novel, set in Fremont, Washington, the so-called "Center of the Universe" as claimed by the eclectic residents of this funky, offbeat village about 10 miles from downtown Seattle.
Having lived nearby in Phinney Ridge, which is cheek and jowl with Fremont,as I read the book I could see the statues that the residents dress up at the bus stop (It is officially called "Waiting for the InterUrban", and people dress the figures in everything from Husky gear to ballerina outfits for birthdays...it is always a comedic sight) and the famed Fremont Troll, as well as the statue of Lenin that competes with the rocket sticking out of a building as one of the largest oddities in the area. I found myself recalling the evening that Blue C Sushi opened in Fremont, and my family were allowed front row seats for the event, because I had interviewed the owner, a Mercer Island resident, for the Mercer Island Reporter. Somehow the kaiten sushi going by on its little conveyor belt seemed to fit in perfectly with the odd nature of the Fremont neighborhood. I also interviewed the drawbridge operators, and always enjoyed their neon-light Rapunzel in the window of one of the towers, so I was gratified to read that the protagonist of the book found it charming as well.
There is something so satisfying about reading a fictional character's fresh view of a familiar place.
Love and Biology...is about middle aged Mira Serafino, an "obedient daughter, supermom, loyal wife" and all-around 'good girl' who discovers that her husband of many years has been having feelings for another woman, though, other than a kiss, he's not really acted on them yet.
This sends Mira into a tailspin, in which she flees from her hometown of Pacifica, Oregon to Fremont, Washington, only stopping when her car breaks down in Seattle.
Mira is one of those annoying women who believe they can control everything and everyone around them to be 'perfect' or at least her ideal of perfection. She is also used to having her relatives tell her what to do instead of handling situations herself. Mira's not too good at dealing with crisis situations, or dealing with her own emotions, desires and her own failures. Her daughter can barely stand talking to her, because she feels her mothers lack of dealing with the 'real world' full of imperfection and ugliness. Her husband, though we really hear little from him throughout the book, seems to also feel that there is a wall separating the real Mira, the human being with emotions and desires, from him as well.
Though her nonna (grandmother) and father all counsel her to forgive her husband and return to her family, Mira decides to 'find herself' by staying in Fremont, cutting her hair, wearing more youthful clothing, smoking pot, and having sex with a younger guy that she barely knows. Mira also takes over a coffee shop called "The Center of the Universe" where she works to 'fix' the shop and fires those who are slacking off or irresponsible, such as the owners thieving girlfriend.
For an Italian woman, I found Mira to be somewhat wimpy at the outset of the novel...she didn't seem able to handle anything that she couldn't control into being 'perfect.' I knew that things would blow up on her because it is inevitable--life is messy and perfectionists are always fighting a losing battle.
Yet I enjoyed watching Mira make realizations about herself, her desire to be seen as a sexual being, her letting things go instead of fretting over them with such vigor, and her growing understanding of the truism that the only person you need to worry about making happy is yourself, and everything else will fall into place. I thought she fell into bed with another man all too quickly, especially considering she was still married and still felt she loved her husband, but somehow Mira needed that sexual reawakening to learn about herself and her needs, which had been subjugated to her family's needs for years. Shortridge makes a good point here, by showing how invisible women in their 40s become, how taken for granted they are by their families and friends. By moving away from her obnoxious daughter, for example, Thea now has to make some realizations of her own, and deal with the consequences of her choice of career. Everyone learns, and grows, just by having one stable person throw a monkey wrench into their lives by leaving town.
Shortridge's prose is like Italian wedding soup--rich and delicious, with lots of meatballs to keep it interesting. Her plot starts at a languid pace but develops a nice brisk rhythm by the 50th page, and never lets up after that. Her characters are so well drawn they seem real, and you find yourself wanting to give Mira a hug about every other page.
I thoroughly enjoyed the quirky atmosphere of the book, and the insights into female midlife crisis. Fair warning, you won't get away from this novel without some thoughts being provoked. You'll also be charmed and aggravated and fall in love with the wonderful characters. I know that I did, and I heartily recommend this book to women who enjoy chick lit and book groups looking for something with a few meatballs of wit and wisdom to chew on.

The Biggest Problem Non Fiction Writers Face Today

I don't normally post discussions about my 24 year career as a writer/reporter, but I am making an exception because there is a heinous problem for non fiction writers that has reached epidemic proportions during the past two years of economic crisis.

The problem is that there are web sites, email newsletters, and other print and digital venues that are scamming writers by offering them jobs or projects that pay a dollar an hour or less. Some are paying $10 per article, or $15, but those people are asking for research and rewriting for free, even as they want to pay this paltry amount for the high quality content they say they require.

As newspapers and magazines close or strip down their staff to the bone, journalists like myself are finding it nearly impossible to make a living doing what we love and were trained to do. Add to that the rise of these lowball publishers and outright scammers, like Examiner.com, (which pays per click, so most writers make a few dollars per article, at most) and what you are left with is writers having to change careers or work menial jobs just to get by, because they can't bring in enough money to pay bills or mortgage or car payments by working for pennies or a couple of dollars for hours of research and writing. At least most menial jobs pay minimum wage, which is over 8 dollars an hour here in Washington state.

Unfortunately, too many young "newbie" writers or gullible writers are willing to work for next to nothing so they can say they have online 'clips' for publishers to view. Really, though, most publishers who pay decently are not going to be trolling these scam web sites for writing talent, because they already have piles of resumes from qualified writers that they can delve into and know that they are getting quality writing for their money. "Exposure" on these sites doesn't really pay the bills or help the writer at all.

I recently read an article in the email newsletter Writer's Weekly from a woman who was determined to stand up to these "mill" sites that use up writers crazy enough to fall for their scam, and leave them burned out and impoverished. I responded to the author of the article that I am with her in boycotting these sites and demanding decent pay for writers hard work. My letter was published in this weeks Writer's Weekly in the "Letters to the Editor" section, at www.writersweekly.com

Today I got an email from the Women in Digital Journalism site that pointed me to an article by Carol Tice, about the reasons why she refuses to write for chump change, too. I couldn't agree more with her reasoning.

Here's the URL to the article, and an excerpt:

http://caroltice.com/blog/27

7 Reasons Why I Won't Write A $15 Blog

1. I'd rather quit writing. If that's all I'm going to make, I'd rather go out on the lawn and play Frisbee with my kids. They'll only be young once. If I can't really pay the bills writing, I should pack it in and enjoy life.

2. I won't be part of the problem. I won't contribute to the current downward spiral in pay rates by accepting insulting pay. If I accept this kind of work, it reinforces the idea that high-quality content on specialized topics can be obtained from professional writers at one-tenth or less of what was, until recently, market rates. I refuse to be part of the problem.

3. Low paying work begets more low-paying work. Say I worked for this legal content sweatshop, and managed to convince one of their clients to work for me directly. Even if the connection helped me land other clients and I cut out the middleman, I'm doubtful the wages would be appropriate. Any client I got through my association with this low-payer would likely also want to pay me joke wages. Once customers have the impression you're cheap, it's hard to convince them that you're not.

4. I'd rather get a day job. At those rates, I could make more money as an assistant manager at a fast-food place, and work on that novel in my off hours. So if it comes to it, I'll do something else to pay the bills. My creativity will be fairly compensated, or I'll earn money another way. I type fast – I have made a living as a secretary in the past, and could again.

5. I want to take a stand. I believe we're at a turning point in the world of online content that requires taking a moral stand. Thousands of scam operators have flooded into the marketplace, hoping to get writers to write for peanuts and then either resell the work for much more, or sell ads against them and make much more, or sell their whole Web site to someone else and make a killing – all off our backs. What they're doing is morally wrong. So my basic sense of decency and justice demands that I resist exploitation. Accepting low-pay assignments may pay a few bills in the short term – emphasis on a few – but in the long term it will foster more exploitation. That's why, for the sake of our vocation's future, it's important to refuse.

Agents and Allie Beckstrom

For those who are looking for an agent for their book manuscript, there's an article in the most recent issue of Writers Digest that gives out the names and addresses of agents who are looking for authors.
Here's the link: http://www.writersdigest.com/article/24-agents-who-want-your-work-2009

This morning I finished the latest Allie Beckstrom novel, Magic in the Shadows by Devon Monk, and found it to be even more of a fast ride through enchanted Portland, Oregon, than the last book.
Monk has created a protagonist who is the female version of Harry Dresden of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. Allie Beckstrom is a tall, strong, brave, stubborn and fiesty gal who has strong values and talents and seems to always get herself into trouble because of it, just like Harry Dresden, Chicago wizard extraordinaire. Also like Dresden, Beckstrom is a rebel, leaving her family and going her own way despite the strictures of the local magicians union, called The Authority (In Dresden's world it is called The White Council). Harry Dresden is a very powerful wizard who tends to get beat the hell out of on a regular basis in defense of others, as does Allie Beckstrom, who has the rare ability to hold magic within herself and use it to do everything from 'hound' out who created a given spell to opening a gate between the world of the living and the world of the dead.
Harry Dresden had to put up with the ghost of a Roman magician/fallen angel in his head who nearly drove him crazy, and in this third installment of the "Magic in the" series, Allie Beckstrom has to deal with her father's ghost in her head,(Daniel Beckstrom was a powerful magician and ruthless businessman who was estranged from his daughter) and try to keep him from taking over her body and using her to make himself immortal, find his killer and retrieve some magical discs that have been stolen and are being used with death magic for revenge.
Unlike Harry Dresden, Allie has a lover/soul mate named Zayvion Jones, a powerful magician who is a guardian/closer and a high ranking member of the Authority. In this book Zayvion is required to pit himself against Allie to test her for membership in the Authority. Unfortunately, the price of not passing the test is to have your memories and your magic 'closed' and removed forever. Meanwhile, Allie's best friend Nora develops a relationship with Stotts, the policeman in charge of MERC, a magical arm of the law, and Allie gets a stone dog/gargoyle as a companion after she sets it free of magical influence at a restaurant. The gargoyle, named Stone, is as fiercely protective of Allie as Mouse, Dresden's Foo dog is of him.
Throughout Magic in the Shadows, horrible magic-sucking, murderous creatures and the Veiled are on the loose, and Allie has to try and help contain or rid the city of them, as well as deal with the alliance of Hounds that she's been charged with heading up after the death of their original leader in the previous book. This was reminiscent of Harry Dresden teaching his best friends (and guardian angel) wizard daughter as an apprentice because she will be a harm to others if she isn't trained. Allie also has problems with cell phones and computers, like Dresden she tends to fry them, and she prefers living in the working-class part of town, eschewing the finery she could easily afford as her father's heir.
I was glad to read that Allie is going to learn martial arts so she can better defend herself against the bad guys/ghosts/ghouls out there, but I believe this will make her even more like Harry Dresden, who is trained in martial arts and the use of his staff as a bo-staff.
Still, I enjoy Allie Beckstrom's world, her refusal to be molded to what others want her to be, and her beautiful meshing of heart/soul/magic with Zayvion, who provides a perfectly calm counterpart to Allies chaoes. I can't wait for the next installment of this series, due out in the spring of next year.
I recommend this series for those who love Harry Dresden type of fantasy novels, with clear heroes and heroines, and lots of magic and mayhem.