11/25/2008

The Staff of WritersNewsWeekly.com would like to wish all our readers a Happy Thanksgiving!

By Carole Shmurak

A Shilling For Candles is the second of Josephine Tey's mysteries about Alan Grant. Tey was not yet the great writer that she would become in the years after World War II, when she published Daughter of Time, Brat Farrar, and The Franchise Affair, among others, but there are some wonderful scenes and an intriguing mystery nonetheless.

The body of a famous actress, Christine Clay, is found on the beach near the cottage she has borrowed for a time from a friend. Her nobleman-husband is out of the country at the time, but she has been sharing the cottage with Robert Tisdall, a young man who has recently squandered a fortune. When Clay's will names Tisdall as the beneficiary of her ranch in California, he becomes Grant's number one suspect and then a fugitive from the law. The middle part of the book, which follows the sixteen year old Erica Burgoyne as she tries to prove Tisdall's innocence, has the quirky charm that Tey's admirers have come to expect; Erica is indeed an engaging heroine. It's worth noting that when Alfred Hitchcock adapted A Shilling for Candles for the screen (as the film Young and Innocent in 1937), he chose to dramatize the Erica/Tisdall story and pretty much left out the rest of the book (including Alan Grant.)

Grant’s solving of the mystery of Clay’s death is a bit more routine, with an ending that seems to come too abruptly. The actress Marta Hallard, who figures in so many of the Grant mysteries, appears for the first time in this book, and is, as usual, Grant's entree to the world of the theatre; it's interesting to see her introduced with little fanfare, as if Tey did not yet realize that Marta would become Grant's longtime (but platonic) friend.

Readers who love Tey's later books will find this early installment in the Grant series an interesting step on the author's path to greatness.

By Amanda Linsmeier

My absolute favorite Jane Green book, at least so far, is the sassy and surprising Jemima J (Broadway, 2001) Jemima Jones, a British reporter, is one hundred pounds overweight. She also happens to be very smart and very funny and knows that she could also be very pretty, if she just lost the weight. She can’t help but feel totally out of her league when it comes to Ben, her good-looking and charming colleague. Jemima resigns herself to just being his supportive friend because how could she possibly have more? When she takes an internet class through work, Jemima takes a shot at the world wide web for the first time. With her friend Geraldine and Brad at her side, she wanders into a chat room where she eventually meets Brad, from Santa Monica. Brad owns a gym, he’s sexy and in incredible shape. At the urging of Geraldine, Jemima tells Brad her name is JJ and that she’s very athletic. To prove her point, Geraldine helps Jemima Photoshop a picture of herself so that she looks thin and beautiful. When Brad responds enthusiastically and demands that they meet, Jemima has to conquer her fears and take giant leaps forward to finally lose the weight.

Jemima J is a fast-paced and incredible novel about love, addiction and attraction. When Jemima and Brad finally meet, he really is everything she thought he would be: Perfect. There’s just one problem: Jemima senses that something isn’t quite right and when she discovers the truth, it will turn the tables on everything she thought her life could be. I adored this book and know I’ll read it over and over again. It is refreshing reading about a heroine who struggles so much with loving herself. Overcoming her food addiction is just one of the problems Jemima has to overcome. And perhaps it isn’t the most realistic novel I’ve ever read, but I still loved it. It is the quintessential happy ending where you know our heroine will get everything she ever wanted and that she really does deserve it.

Robert Morgan was raised on his family's farm in the North Carolina mountains. He is the author of eleven books of poetry and eight books of fiction, including the bestselling novel Gap Creek. Winner of the 2007 Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, he teaches English at Cornell University. He is the recipient of the 2008 Thomas Wolfe Prize. His newest work is titled Boone.

Q: You are primarily a poet and novelist. What led you to write a biography of Daniel Boone?

A: Since I was a kid I’ve always been interested in the frontier and the Indians and after five novels, I wanted to try something new. I wanted to see if I could do a story that would address the folklore and fake lore and bring a breath of fresh air to Boone. I wanted to make him more alive and so I researched the archives and found documents from his career as a surveyor. Unlike many biographers who tire of their subject after a while, I grew more and more interested. Also, other biographers had not studied his wife Rebecca, whom I found interesting. I was surprised to learn that Boon was also a free mason.

Q: Growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountains must have been a unique experience. How well do you think your regionalism of this site transferred onto the pages of your books? What does regionalism in literature mean to you?

A: Regional writing takes on different guises. Most people are familiar with the southern or western writers but there are also African-American stories and Asian stories and many others who exemplify regional writing. The story of American fiction is one wave of discovery after another. In the 1940’s, for example, there were the Jewish writers like Philip Roth. Then there are writers like John Updike whose regional writing includes the suburbs.

Q: In your opinion, can there be poetry in fiction novels? Can you elaborate with examples?

A: The best poetry of our time is prose in fiction. There is powerful poetry in the writings of Hemingway, who thought of himself as a poet, and also in Faulkner, Melville and Wharton. Poetry uses language to create powerful experiences. We can see this in the fiction of these writers.

Q: As a college instructor of English, what writing trends have you observed in undergraduate curriculums and does this trend correlate to what the marketplace is supporting?

A: Over the past four decades I’ve seen quite a change in terms of the ambitions of students in writing fiction. In the early years they tried to write like the hip writers and were experimental in their works. Many aspire to write shorter pieces for The New Yorker or Atlantic Monthly. Over the years the students got better - at least at Cornell -where they seem to work harder and focus on mainstream. They don’t yet have the experience in writing or law or medicine, for example, to handle specific genres like crime writing.

Q: What advice do you have for writers?

The advice I give at conferences is to have persistence. Everybody becomes a writer in their own way. You learn by doing it. Those who succeed have a fire in their belly. Those who succeed are the ones who get rejected or don’t get the agent they want and go right back to the computer and work on their book again.

Revision is important. Younger writers starting out enjoy that first rush and heady feeling finishing the first draft. They are reluctant to go back and revise. As we get older we like the second and third chance to go back and fine tune our writing. It’s a pleasure to make it more alive. Some say the first draft is the engagement, the final draft is the marriage.

Carlotta Holton is the author of Salem Pact and Touching The Dead, and is a member of the National Federation of Press Women and an affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association.

Carlotta Holton has just received her second award for Touching the Dead from the National Federation of Press Women Communications Contest. Click here to purchase the book.

I must admit that I listen to the Howard Stern Show every day. I feel that all of the characters are true friends and each day I thrill my wife with stories of their antics, but today, I was upset by something about the show, and it has to do with my writing career.

Sure, Howard Stern wrote a couple of best-selling books, but now, his sidekick, Artie Lange, has also hit number one on the New York Times Bestsellers list. He laughed when he told the news and commented that there were most likely a lot of writers out there who were aggravated by the news.

I know of one! It occurs to me that the surest way to garner the number one spot at Amazon.com or the New York Times is to already be a celebrity. Whatever happened to the art of writing? What ever became of carefully creating a plot, establishing some viable characters, and entertaining millions with a structured story of mystery and suspense?

I’ve published five novels. I’ve tried my hand at non-fiction and wrote a couple of memoirs that have deeply affected doctors, nurses and patients. I have stayed awake at night deciding when and where to place my characters, and Artie Lange (who I love as a comedian, by the way) hires a ghost writer, slaps a funny title on the book – Too Fat to Fish, and cops the number one spot on the list.

And it’s not just Artie. Madonna wrote a book about sex that did very well. OJ was featured in a story about how he would have committed murder if he were so inclined – and that debuted at number one even after they yanked it from the shelves.

Dr. Phil sells a hundred thousand books for every book I ever sold, and then there’s Dr. Laura, Al Franken and Bill O’Reilly.

I have a new rule – if you’re already a millionaire from doing something else – you can’t call yourself an author.

If you are selling books based solely on your name, you can’t be part of a list. If you haven’t put in the time to do a classic rewrite, and have never sat lonely at a book signing, you can’t even begin to think about cashing a royalty check.

Let the struggling writers have their own career. Artie Lange’s debut at number one on the bestsellers list is certainly an accomplishment, but he spent a little time jokingly referring to himself as Hemmingway.

The worst part about it is that he probably sold more books than Hemmingway!

It’s beginning to dawn on me – perhaps I’m just not well known enough to ever write a bestseller. Maybe the best thing to do would be to run down to the bookstore and grab a copy of Artie Lange’s book. Perhaps he can show me how it’s done.

I’m just too normal to succeed.

Cliff Fazzolari is a professional writer and prolific author. He is on the Women and Children's Hospital of Buffalo PICU Parent Advisory Council. He currently resides in Blasdell, New York.