Issue 55

Eric Langberg

They are standing quietly in the Classic Fiction section of Goldman and Brown’s Used Books when she laughs. The sound disturbs the air and she realizes at once that she was heard throughout the store. She puts a hand over her mouth and meets his surprised gaze, her own eyes wide. She is amused by the look on his face, a mixture of lust and scorn, and this sets her to giggling again.
“What’s so funny?” he whispers, a leatherbound copy of of A Tale of Two Cities tucked under his right arm, a worn volume of Kidnapped! sitting spine-to-palm in his left hand. His hair is wild, dipping low enough to block some of the view out his square glasses. She likes that.
“It’s nothing,” she whispers, stepping closer to him without realizing it. She doesn’t have anything in her hand, although she has spent the past twenty minutes reading the embossed spines, lined up like schoolchildren on the shelf. She likes to read the titles, to be close to the books. She likes smelling the dust. But she never buys anything here. The canvas messenger bag slung over her shoulder is empty, and it stays that way.
He looks around and sees that they are alone in this aisle. “You were laughing at something,” he says.
“Yeah, it’s just... well, I was reading the titles, over there. That’s the Dickens shelf. But you knew that.” She gestures at the novel tucked under his arm. He looks down at it, surprised to see it there. She smiles.
“Anyway. I was just reading the titles, and I saw Our Mutual Friend right next to Martin Chuzzlewit, and I read them as one title. Which made me laugh.” She looks at him expectantly, and when he doesn’t say anything, she continues to speak.
“And, well I’m not sure if you’ve read it, but there’s a character named Seth Pecksniff in that book. Martin Chuzzlewit that is. And my ex-boyfriend’s name is Seth. Was Seth. Is Seth. He’s still alive. I think.” She pauses. Frowns.
“And anyway, his name was Seth. Seth Groberstein. And I was just thinking about the last time we were together. We were at this carnival, and he took me on the Tilt-a-Whirl even though I told him I didn’t want to go. And he insisted on spinning us as fast as he possibly could, and we just whirled and spun and tilted and went around and around while that corny carnival music played all around us... And I hated it. Isn’t that ridiculous? I hated it. I was so mad at him, because I had convinced myself I didn’t want to ride, but of course I did. I was just too afraid to say so.
“So I broke up with him. We stumbled off of that ride and I told him right then and there that I didn’t want to see him anymore, and that he should stop calling me. And I left him there, still swaying on his feet, and I walked right out of the carnival. I haven’t seen Seth since.” She didn’t look amused anymore. He stared.
“I’m such an idiot,” she said. She was no longer speaking to him. “We always want to ride the Tilt-a-Whirl.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a cotton candy-pink cell phone. She pushed a few buttons, and then closed the phone with a snap and slid it back into her pocket as tears started to roll down her cheeks.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. He slid Kidnapped! back into the bookshelf and reached out for her. He put his hand on her shoulder. A Tale of Two Cities fell to the floor, sending up a cloud of dust.
“I don’t have his number anymore,” she said, and they held each other in the Classic Fiction aisle of Goldman and Brown’s, held each other while the dust swirled around their feet, swirled and spun and went around and around and around, unnoticed.

By Patrick Van Gorder

It could have been taken verbatim from an Orwell novel, or from a George Romero movie. It could have been 1992 Belfast, or 1969 Prague, under the full weight of the Iron Curtain. But it was Pittsburgh, in 2009, with the Democrats in control of Congress and Obama in the oval office. For two days last month, Pittsburgh, my Pittsburgh, was transformed and fortified into a totalitarian police state.

Despite the shiniest brass and brightest stars of the international political community, mass civil repression was not a good look for the Burgh.

Under the pretense of protecting the world leaders meeting downtown for G-20 summit, 5100 police and National Guard from across the nation were brought in to police the generally peaceful streets of metropolitan Pittsburgh. They were armed with the latest, most effective crowd-suppression weaponry, and clothed in the most advanced, most ominous riot armor money could buy. Because We the People were footing the bill, no expense was spared.

Here’s the thing; they weren’t here to prevent a terrorist attack – that’s the job of the Secret Service and the FBI, and you can bet your ass they were in town too. The police were here to discourage protesters, and when necessary suppress them. And suppress them they did, dear reader, with gusto.

I understand that protests can turn violent, and that no one wanted a repeat of the 1999 Seattle WTO debacle. But let me tell you something about the protesters, the hardened cells of dedicated anarchists who were rumored in the media to be squatting anonymously in abandoned buildings, meticulously stockpiling their own feces and AIDS-tainted blood for deployment against the people of our city: they were kids. For the most part, they were passionate, idealistic, disenfranchised kids. A lot of them were University of Pittsburgh students whose crime was to be in the wrong part of their own campus at the wrong time. One Pitt undergrad was arrested for letting her fellow students out of the clouds of tear gas, into the safety of her dormitory.

I’m not saying that that there shouldn’t have been a police presence, but in this case the crackdown did not fit the crime. Despite all the hubbub, a paltry $50,000 of damage was done, almost half of it by one 21-year-old jagoff from California. This is a ridiculously small amount when compared to the millions spent by the city to stifle the protests. It also doesn’t quite justify the arrests, the manhandlings, or the pepper spray. It doesn’t justify the prolonged exposure of the protesters, journalists, and bystanders alike to the LRAD sonic cannon, a weapon designed for use against Somali pirates and Iraqi insurgents. Thursday was the first time it had ever been used on American citizens.

What I would like to know is why almost 200 people were arrested in essentially non-violent protests of the G-20, while only 68 people were arrested in the “festivities” following the Superbowl victory in February of this year. At the football riots, the crowds were much larger and much more destructive: I saw mobs rush police lines, tear down bus stops, break windows, start fires, even flip over cars.

What’s at stake here is larger than the tainted records of those arrested, or the shattered windows of Pamela’s Diner: what are at stake are constitutional rights central to the liberty that we associate with being American citizens. As those who were arrested for failing to disperse from what the Police labeled as “unlawful assemblies,” will testify, rights are not rights if they can be revoked when convenient.

We live in sophisticated and uncertain times, in a world rife with crime, violence, pestilence, and inequality. We need the police, to protect us from the coldblooded brutalities that people have always committed against one another.

But the strength of a society can be measured in its tolerance of dissent, and we need the protesters too, the radicals; we need the pacifists, the anarchists, the communists, the environmentalists, and all the other –ists that collectively compose the vibrant portrait of American intellectual freedom and expression. We need them to give voice to the voiceless, and as our President is so fond of saying, “speak truth to power.”
We need them out there to remind us that the world is far from perfect, and that there are more important things than Superbowl rings. We need them out there, fists raised rebelliously in the face of tear gas and billy clubs and sonic cannons, a defiant, flesh-and-blood measurement of the force we as a society are willing to use against our own in the name of security.

Email me at Patrick.vangorder@gmail.com

It’s as simple as a broken baguette with goat cheese. Sautéed eggplant smashed with roasted garlic, basil, and sundried tomatoes. Bright yellow curry vivid against a white porcelain bowl. It is a smoothed tablecloth, the snapping of a plum’s skin under your teeth, your mother’s hands. It is sensation, communication, sociology. It is me remembering you every time I bite into a grilled cheese sandwich.

Food has the ability to open lines of communication, comfort, heal, and nourish. As famous French epicure Anthelme Brillat-Savarin said, “Tell me what you eat, I’ll tell you who you are.” What we eat and how we eat it is symbolic of where we came from, our value system, our personality, even how we relate to others. I write about food because it is a comfort and a pleasure, and because writing about food is writing my memory.

I’ve been putting pen to paper for as long as I can remember. I recently found a notebook of some of my earliest stories, and even then, my future writing faults and strengths peek through misspellings and story lines which read like Nancy Drew on vacation with the Boxcar Children. I’m a sucker for commas in a series and alliteration. I may edge on excessive, Dickensian sentences. I’m horrible at plot and worse at dialogue. But description. Exposition. Rhythm. Words and the way they sound together. You’d think I would have settled for poetry, but too much exposure to bad poetry at an early age turned me off. And though short fiction is the genre closest to my heart, at the painful rate of maybe two completed short stories a year, it didn’t seem like a reliable life option.

As a young writer, finding your niche can be as easy as knowing that you need to breathe, or as complicated as knowing that you love to write and need to write but don’t know what it is you like writing best. I used to joke that my three favorite things in life were eating, writing, and traveling, and I wanted a job that would pay for all three. I made this joke for so long that when the time came to start thinking about what I wanted to do after college graduation, I didn’t seriously consider food writing as a legitimate pursuit. It was the job I’d do if I didn’t have to worry about money (though for a long time, there was a toss up between food writing and starring in Cats). I didn’t think about the fact that in High School I had a subscription to Saveur rather than Cosmo, that my favorite thing to do in other countries was go to the grocery store, that at the age of thirteen I lectured a friend on the demerits of hot dogs. And especially that most of the memories I had were centered around food, in some form or another.

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered why I couldn’t actually pursue my dream job. Food writing is a niche, certainly, but a growing one both high- and low-brow, as demonstrated by the infiltration of celebrity chefs into our daily lives. The growing niche is nice, because it means that someone out there wants to read what I want to write. So I started a blog, an experiment for a class on food writing I created with a friend of mine for a senior year independent study. My first entries were rough. Very factual. Very essayistic. And the professor leading our independent study noticed. I may not get her admonishment exactly right, but abridged it reads, “There’s no soul.”

Earlier that day I had made an absolutely perfect lunch, toasted baguette with butter and chili-infused sardines. It was so good and so perfect for the moment that I thought—maybe I could write about this—but dismissed the idea, because I wouldn’t have enough to “say” for a blog entry. On the short walk back to my dorm room after our meeting, I realized that writing about food is capturing the memory of sense, not detailing facts. So I wrote how I felt about that sardine toast: “It was exactly what I wanted without knowing that I'd wanted it. The softness of the sardines, their saltiness, that quick, subtle hit of chili and the richness of melted butter on crisped bread—sigh. It was delicious.”

Clearly nothing profound. But it was a breakthrough for me in my relationship to food writing. As I began to explore writing my visceral response to food, I saw that food connected people, and food writing interpreted the memory of that relationship. Food writing, however, is incomplete without the food reader. When I write about food, I want to share a part of myself with that anonymous reader, who I hope will be able to see what I see, feel what I feel, and taste what I taste. In a more abstract sense, then, food writing, like food, brings people together.

I love people who love food, because people who love food love living inclusively. They are open to new tastes and experiences, linger over dinner like conversations, and value the present as a flavor never to be recreated quite the same way. I choose to write about food because I want to remember each experience and share it with those I love most. The word companion, after all, means those who break bread together.

Check out Lyz’s food blog: http://eatmeanddrinkme.wordpress.com/

By Amanda M. Griswold

The editorial staff at WritersNewsWeekly is excited to announce a brand-new feature—“Blog of the Week”—presented each week to a blog that our staff deems unique, informative, well-designed and worthy of promotion in the writing world.

Our first ever “Blog of the Week” award goes to Backstory, a site we feel strikes an admirable balance of showcasing excellent writing and providing online marketing opportunities for authors. On Backstory, authors are invited to share the specific people, places, and incidents that inspired their latest fiction, from lost loved ones to prophetic fortune cookies. Each backstory features a new author’s “story behind the story,” detailing the inspiration behind one specific work of fiction.

Created and maintained by international bestseller M.J. Rose, Backstory provides a platform for writers to reach out to fellow writers and readers alike. Praised by critics for her unflinching subject matter, sincerity of style and cross-genre appeal, it seems Backstory has inherited all the best of M.J.’s traits. This week, I had the good fortune to interview M.J. to learn more about the vision that inspired Backstory and the balance she maintains between an author’s craft and calling.

WritersNewsWeekly September 21, 2009 interview with author M.J. Rose

WritersNewsWeekly: On its website, Backstory is described as a site “where authors share secrets, truths, logical and illogical moments that sparked their fiction or memoirs.” What would you say sets Backstory apart from the millions of blogs that feature talented authors?

M.J. Rose: We only do one thing – we offer authors a chance to tell us what inspired their current novel. We don’t add anything else. We have really interesting authors all focused on this one moment of revelation.
WNW: When was Backstory created? What made you decide to explore the narratives behind authors’ stories?

MJR: In September 2004, I had an idea that a glog – group blog – would be something fun to try. There were very few of them then. The more I thought about it, the more I knew I didn’t want the blog to be from writers for writers only but rather really be from writers to readers. I am always looking for more ways to get more books in front of more potential readers.

As an author myself (I’ve written 11 novels), there is no question I get asked more frequently than some variation of “how did you come up with your book – what inspired you?” I thought since it’s the one thing everyone wants to know – there should be a place where writers can tell readers that.

WNW: What makes a good backstory?

MJR: The intimacy of the author really sharing the truth behind the inspiration of their current book.

WNW: What is your vision for the future of Backstory?

MJR: That it gets more readership and more backstories. We’re already picked up and on a lot of sites/blogs but I’d love to be more visible still.

WNW: When did you first decide you wanted to become a writer? Or is it a continual process?

MJR: When I read The Secret Garden when I was about eight years old. It was then I first realized that making up stories was a tangible act.

WNW: Romanticized notions of writing (inspiration, muses, writer’s block and a life of intrigue) seem at odds with certain realities of the writing world (deadlines, marketing, and rejection slips). How do you personally reconcile the two?
MJR: With a lot of hard work. I make a real effort to separate my time into segments that are either one or the other – either the business or the art. My favorite expression is – “writing is an art but publishing is a business” – and an oft broken business at that.

I have two computers – one for email and business and banking and marketing and everything but writing – the other computer is only for writing my novels. Nothing else. I also shut off the phone in my writing hours and I take walks and swim and visit museums and do things that inspire me without having a cell phone on.

WNW: What are your current projects?

MJR: I’m working on book four of my Reincarnationist series – the series that has inspired a new TV dramatic series PAST LIFE which will premier on FOXTV in March.

In March The Reincarnationist will be re-released, in April The Memorist will be released for the first time in paperback (it was a 2008 hardcover) and in May The Hypnotist will be released for the first time in hardcover.
WNW: What are you reading now?

MJR: About 40 nonfiction research books that would bore everyone but me. But my most recent fiction reads that I’d love to handyell are The Promised World by Lisa Tucker and ISIS by Douglas Clegg.

Kate Jacobs is the New York Times-bestselling author of Comfort Food, Knit Two, and The Friday Night Knitting Club, which has over 1 million copies in print. A former journalist, she was also a freelance editor at Lifetime Television’s website.

Q: You’ve worked in lots of mediums – magazines, Lifetime Television’s website, and novels. What would you say is the common denominator that peaks an editor’s curiosity and prompts them to accept a manuscript? Which takes precedence: character or plot? Why?

A: It's about voice, I think, and writing style. You can teach someone how to find out the facts for an article but it's more of a challenge to help them relax and write naturally in a way that shows their personality. Not so much that it overtakes the story, but just enough to add some flavor. When I write my fiction, I tend to use a very conversational tone, not just in dialogue but throughout the narrative. I invent people and places but I retain my sensibilities and the way I view the world. So, in the new paperback Comfort Food, I wrote a story about a woman dealing with a milestone 50th birthday and growing to understand that age is just a number. About daughters who want their mother to realize they are no longer little girls – as daughters we all strive for that respect – and about a mother asserting her need to be understood as an individual outside of her role as parent. Essentially a lighthearted story about women and our complicated personal and professional relationships. All set against the backdrop of a reality cooking show so I could write often about food!

Q: How did you happen to hit upon the particular niche of a knitting theme in your novels? Would you say it’s easier to hook into an established niche or create one’s own? Why or why not?

A: It's simply about what makes sense for the story being told. Knitting is in the zeitgeist; it's contemporary. You see, I begin all of my novels, including Comfort Food, in the same manner: I brainstorm. I chat out loud with friends, tossing out ideas and being open to feedback and suggestions. This is my gathering phase. Then I sit down and prepare for the long hours/days/weeks/months of solitary writing. The stretches of time where I learn who the characters really are by meeting them on the page, and figuring out by myself --sentence after sentence -- what is truly the story I'm trying to tell. Some things are pure fictions and other moments I draw upon my experiences. I knit, and I can draw upon my memories of my knitting grandmother, just as in Comfort Food I drew upon being a daughter as well as my love of cooking and baking and watching food television.

Q: You’ve said that you like exploring the richness of women’s’ relationships. Why? What does the reader have to learn? What are your thoughts about the label, “chick lit?”

A: I'm not so big into labels, but we all seem to love shorthand. Think of how we're combining celeb couples into the ubiquitous one-word moniker. It's easy, it's fun, and it rolls off the tongue. Some folks avoid the term "chick lit" because it can seem dismissive; others find it captures what they seek in fun fiction that deals realistically with issues of interest to women. I prefer to think of my books as stories. Pure and simple. No label. My focus is always to present a multigenerational, multiracial cast of characters that treats women's friendships as worthy of exploration. Having strong female support networks adds a richness and depth to our lives that cannot be underestimated. And it's not such much about learning as it is about celebrating. Readers come to my stories because they make sense to them. They know these women, they are these women, and they have the same struggles with career, with family, with love, with striving to achieve their own goals and ambitions.

Q: On your website you tell readers to invite you to do a telephone interview with their book club. What has that been like? Do you get many clubs taking you up on this suggestion? How has this impacted/broadened your fan base?

A: I call about 40 clubs a month on average, so often more than one a day, and it's great fun! Many times, I'll do one novel with a club and then they'll get back in touch to schedule when I have a new book; that's happening often with the new paperback of Comfort Food and I'm excited to catch up with these clubs in the coming months! Inviting me is easy -- just send an email via my website at katejacobs.com -- and it's simply a Q&A-style chat about the plot and characters and pretty much anything. I once had a reader ask if I charge -- I certainly do not! It's free -- and all a book club needs is a speaker phone so everyone can take part. Calling book clubs began for me when a group emailed and asked if I would telephone their club and, since then, I've spoken to hundreds of book clubs. It's a wonderful way to connect with readers, and thank them personally for being so supportive of my novels. Because such a focus of my stories is about creating community, and it's a privilege to be invited to spend time with all of these different communities of readers. Making time to talk directly with readers is important to me and that’s why I tuck call-ins around trips to the grocery store and writing chapters.

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

By Sarah Benjamin

A friend of mine read “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert and raved about it for weeks. When she insisted that I read the book, I simply responded: “I don’t do memoirs.” In truth, I didn’t do non-fiction at all. The nauseating prospect that this book was probably about some woman going through a mid-life crisis was enough to make me gag a little.

Then, while visiting this same friend in New Hampshire, as we laid on our beach blankets soaking up the sun, she handed me the book. I had nothing else to read so grudgingly, I opened it. I was immediately hooked.

I didn’t get the feeling that I was intruding on some stranger’s life, but rather reading a really good story about survival and recovery. This was the honest confession of a woman who had everything—a great marriage, a big house, and a fulfilling writing career – but suffered from an unexplainable depression. This depression was so severe that it led her to cry alone, night after night, on the bathroom floor struggling with the decision of having children or not. She knew that this struggle was the cause of her decaying marriage. It may sound depressing, but instead of closing the book, I found myself on the floor with Gilbert, vicariously and voraciously sharing in her struggles and emotions.

Gilbert’s marriage ultimately ends in divorce, and for a moment it looks as though she’s going to spiral out of control. Especially when she hooks up with a guy that seems to be more bad than good. But then, at this crucial turning point, she does the unexpected: She leaves behind her relationships, her doctors, her family and friends and heads for a whirl-wind tour of three countries: Italy, India and Bali. Her reasons: To learn to enjoy life, connect with herself and to find her own balance of the two.

My inherent sense of duty was initially skeptical of Gilbert’s “run away from it all” tactic, which I have stereotypically assumed was reserved for men. But, nonetheless, I went on the journey with her. I precariously found joy in Italy, solace in India, and discernment in Bali. It was Gilbert’s witticisms, humor and wise insights that made her story so utterly fascinating. She has an amazing sense of balance in her writing – in a simple sentence – that I found to be refreshing and inspiring. While I hope that I will never suffer from depression, get divorced or make the decision to never have kids; if I ever lose my joy, myself, or my reason, I’ll have one woman’s map of how to reclaim them. Thanks Elizabeth for sharing. I’ve bought this book to pass on to a friend: She doesn’t like memoirs, either.

Contact me at sbenjamin496@yahoo.com