Might Be Too Political, But . . .

This might be a mote too political, but whenever one of my favorite literary characters is mentioned in a blog I like to point it out. Although any reader of this blog might find it hard to believe, due to the dirth of reviews of these books in my book reviews section my favorite series of books is George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman books.

Today, the political writer for National Review, Mark Steyn, quotes from Flashman, the first novel, that is set in Afghanistan.

This I will say for the Afghan – he is a treacherous, evil brute when he wants to be, but while he is your friend he is a first-rate fellow. The point is, you must judge to a second when he is going to cease to be friendly. There is seldom any warning.

Steyn goes on to quote himself from an article he wrote a year and a half ago:

A dozen pages of a Flashman yarn has a sounder grasp of the Afghan psyche than nine years of multilateral “nation-building”. Which is why we’re going round and round in circles in an almighty Groundhogistan where a man gets sentenced to death for converting to Christianity under a court system created, funded and protected by us.

To read the whole post go here, but I recommend instead that you go buy the novel and read it immediately. Flashman has so many more things to say on the subject and really there are few books as fun to read as these.

Simply (Less Than) the Best!

Not a great first line or passage if you ask me. Actually, having read the other two books, and written about their first lines, I don't think that Stieg Larsson puts much credence in having stunning first lines.


Dr. Jonasson was woken by a nurse five minutes before the helicopter was expected to land. It was just before 1: 30 in the morning. 

“What?” he said, confused. 

“Rescue Service helicopter coming in. Two patients. An injured man and a younger woman. The woman has gunshot wounds.” 

“All right,” Jonasson said wearily. 

Although he had slept for only half an hour, he felt groggy. He was on the night shift in the ER at Sahlgrenska hospital in Göteborg. It had been a strenuous evening.

Larsson, Stieg - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

However, my knowledge of the first two books can also lead me to believe that this is less a first line of a new book as just an arbitrary break in the action between book two and three. It's as if he wrote this and The Girl Who Played with Fire at the same time and was asked by his agent to split it into two.

Just Couldn't Do It

Someone recommended a book to me the other day and I went out and bought it . . . Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander. Just prior to pushing purchase in Amazon I did take a peek at the reviews, not any specific reviews, but just the number. 

The book had over 1500 reviews, most of them positive. I tried reading it and actually got 15% of the way through, then I gave up. Just way too much nonsense and detail. I felt I was living out every minute of someone else’s life. It was a good primer on not letting a story drag. It wasn’t till I was about 5% in that I looked at one of the one star reviews and saw a review by Honest Abby titled “What the Fuss?”

This book gets so much adoration and love...and I just don't get it! I completely agree with several of the other one-star reviews. This book is disturbingly violent, has a plot that meanders aimlessly, and two lead characters who are poorly characterized.

I agree. Life is too short to read huge "commitment novels" that take too long to go anywhere. Next!

Author Interviews

As I have said in previous posts, I'm thinking of using a service to organize reviews, blog tours, and author interviews. I've just received yet another review, this time from Laura Beasley out of Hong Kong.

This is the second interview I've had to do, the first being here, and I think I need to brush up on some of my answers prior to getting a company to help me. Still, I'll take another good review.

Research for Novel Three

I began Night Fall by Nelson DeMille not realizing that it played perfectly into the plot that I was using for my third novel. I’ve read one other Nelson DeMille book, The Lion’s Game. I like The Lion’s Game. I love the opening chapters where the plane lands in New York and everyone is dead. I thought that was an awesome way to start the book. As I posted in my first lines category Night Fall too started well. Sadly for both books I found the endings less than spectacular.

John Corey, the main character, who I love for his abrasive attitude, at one point said while watching a memorial service:

Empathy and sensitivity are not my strong points, but this scene of shared grief and comforting passed through my own death-hardened shell like the warm ocean breeze through a screen door.

This was a good analogy. It stopped me. But then, as I read more, I realized it wasn’t worthy of the character’s inner thoughts. This guy wouldn’t be thinking of a screen door and ocean breezes. I really liked these next few. It shows the character’s personality so well. If there was an aspect of DeMille’s writing that I would want to emulate it would be the way he allows the character to interact in a playful and false way with the reader. All of these express the “joking” attitude that Corey holds, and they all make the character much more real for the reader.

It was not yet noon, and the place was fairly empty, except for a few locals drinking what smelled like So Long tea out of bowls and chattering away in Cantonese, though the couple at the next booth was speaking Mandarin. 

I’m making this up. 

There was an exquisitely beautiful young Chinese woman waiting tables, and I watched her moving around as if she were floating on air. She floated toward me, we smiled, and she floated away to be replaced by an old crone wearing bedroom slippers. 

God, I think, plays cruel jokes on married men. I ordered coffee.

Corey is in them middle of a fight with his wife, Kate. He comes home and reports:

I got back to my apartment a little after 7 P.M., and Kate was in the kitchen wearing a tiny teddy while cooking my favorite meal of steak, real French fries, and garlic bread. My clothes, which I’d left on the living room floor, were put away, and there was a Budweiser waiting for me in an ice bucket. None of that is true, of course, except my arrival time and Kate being home. She was sitting in an armchair reading the Times.

Then there is this, Corey’s philosophy on life. It gives the reader a quick but sure peek into what makes him tick.

Life was a continuing series of compromises, disappointments, betrayals, and what-ifs. Now and then, you get it right the first time, and more rarely, you get a chance to do it over and get it right the second time. 

Was it as good as The Lion’s Game? I don’t think so. The Lion’s Game is far more original and sweeping. Even though I didn’t like the ending of The Lion’s Game, it was far better than the predictable and trite ending of Night Fall. Am I glad I read it,  . . . yep, . . . and I look forward to reading another by DeMille soon.

Baby Thundercloud Strikes Again

Whenever my youngest son gets upset he lowers his head and slits his eyes and provides anyone looking a grumpy face. We call him "Baby Thundercloud" when he does this.

He's the second in the two part team that makes up the Word Smith/Word Wiz duo that is a part of this blog. Lately we've noticed alot of bunnies outside our house. One day Price and I saw a hawk snatch a bunny just a few meters from us (later, he provided a terrifically gruesome sight for Price by eating that bunny in our front yard then leaving the carcass in our tree).

There are so many bunnies that problems like the hawks, the cars, dogs all provide quick ends to them. So, when Charlie started to take notice in them it was funny to hear his two year old voice call them. "Dabbits." Now, with all the bunnies not surviving very long it seems more apropos that he calls them "Dummy Dabbits."

Don't Believe Me? Just Pay a Bit More Attention

It's true what Roger said, you can only call the day a ochre dying schmear so many times, but authors love to talk about mornings. Case and point. Not even 10% into the book and I hit the first. Not bad, though in terms of morning descriptions that I've cataloged.


Dawn was coming up in streaks and slashes over the foggy moor. Our destination loomed ahead, a huge bulk of dark stone outlined by the grey light.

Gabaldon, Diana - Outlander

Still it continues to amaze me that this is such obvious and almost over-used fodder in novels. It sure makes me want to describe afternoons since everyone else is so focused on mornings.

Outside the Box and Not Sure I Like It

I'm reading outside the box. This was recommended to me by a reviewer and I'm not sure if I'm going to like it. I bought it though, so I have to finish it.


It wasn’t a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance. Mrs. Baird’s was like a thousand other Highland bed-and-breakfast establishments in 1945; clean and quiet, with fading floral wallpaper, gleaming floors, and a coin-operated hot-water geyser in the lavatory. Mrs. Baird herself was squat and easygoing, and made no objection to Frank lining her tiny rose-sprigged parlor with the dozens of books and papers with which he always traveled.

Gabaldon, Diana - Outlander

Great Title, Greater Article

I read Karen Thompson Walker's article Sentences Sentenced to Hard Labor in the WSJ with great verve and excitement. Usually I eschew articles on sentence crafting and word smithing. I have a series of posts on word smithing inspired by my two children, but that's about as far as I'll deign to go. Miss Walker's article changed that, at least on Saturday.

I liked Miss Walker's article for one very prescient reason, she used relevant and meaningful examples to express her point. I started my series on First Lines because every writing class always emphasizes the importance of first lines but beyond that you just don't hear much. Miss Walker goes beyond the importance of first lines and tackles how sentences can provide several degrees of depth to the story.

Most importantly, like a waiter who doesn't drop a single plate but also engages in charming conversation, the best sentences do more than one job at the same time. And I've found that the frequent use of these multitasking sentences is often what separates great books from all the others. These sentences give literature its layers, mystery and depth.

The example follow on the heels of this statement. The one I liked the most was this one.


One of my favorite hardworking sentences is the first line of "The Virgin Suicides" by Jeffrey Eugenides: "On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese—the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it is was possible to tie a rope."

This sentence 1) delivers crucial information via back story—all the girls in this family have committed suicide; 2) creates mystery and suspense by withholding the reasons for the suicides, the events that preceded this final day and the identity of the person telling this story; 3) shows us carefully chosen details, as vivid as they are meaningful, and 4) sounds good to our ears—the element that drew me in right away. To say that Mary "took her turn at suicide" instead of the more familiar "committed" is just one example of the line's fresh and subtle poetry.

Miss Walker's article did it's job. I'm travelling this week, invariably this is when I get the bulk of my writing in. Guess who will stop taking sentences for granted?

Argh! What a Let Down the End Was

I don't think I've felt more let down by the ending of a book than I was by Nelson Demille's Night Fall. I finished it last night and have felt down in the dumps since. The last line:


It wasn’t until Friday that I returned to the Plaza Hotel to pick up our things in the suite, and to have the safe opened to claim Mrs. Winslow’s package. The assistant manager was accommodating, but informed me that there was nothing of Mrs. Winslow’s in the safe.

DeMille, Nelson - Night Fall

Such a let down compared to the first line that seemed to make the novel so intriguing. I'll have more in the upcoming review.