In this day of social media and viral campaigns, I’ve discovered that I have a new competence.

I am good at team-tag!

I don’t have the mischievous mind to think up viral campaigns.  But I do recognise good viral material and I am quick to endorse them.

Playing team-tag in social media

The beauty of the Hootsuite interface for Twitter and Google Analytics is that I can measure the effectiveness of my “team tagging”.

Getting better at team-tag

I look at the stats not to brag, you understand. But to learn.

The statistics shape my judgement about what people want to hear and see and when they want to hear and see it.

The person running the campaign still has convert the interest and the quick drop-in into a sale or action. To get better at that, they need to speak to people like Paul Imre in High Wycombe.

Helping connect people who want to know with people who want to tell – that I can do.

Gender: Masculine
Origin: German
Meaning: “industrious ruler or universal ruler.”
(EH-meh-RIKH)

This ancient Germanic name is composed of the elements ermen or amal (its debated) and ric which means ruler and is a common component in many ancient Germanic names. If the first element is from ermen then it would mean “whole; universal” + ric. If it is derived from amal then it would mean “labour; work; industry” + ric. In Germany, its designated name-day is September 2nd. The names Amerigo and America are distant relatives and cognates include the Hungarian Imre, the Swedish/Norwegian Emerik and the French Émeric.

We’re back today with author, Lisa Mannetti.

For those of you who are just tuning in, we are continuing our talk with the winner of this year’s Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievment, First Novel, Lisa Mannetti, author of The Gentling Box. If you missed part one of our interview with Lisa, just click here.

Today we’re going to talk about point of view and a few of Lisa’s upcoming projects.

TF: You chose to use Imre as your first person narrator for The Gentling Box. A little while back some of our readers were discussing writing from the point of view of a member of the opposite sex.

Opposite sex is easy, honestly! As a writer you spread your wings and “experiment” and write characters who are demons or vampires or werewolves or whatever and you’re making a stretch, but the whole point of storytelling and writing is stretching.

I don’t think it should be a problem for any writer to get into the head of a character who is the opposite sex – whether the point of view is first or third person. Even if you use third person, you will still have to write from that point of view and one of my bugbears is writers who lose point of view during a book or story.

That’s not to say you can’t suddenly switch point of view when you’re using third person, but there should be a compelling reason. The character has to be important to the story. Reading a book (say) all about a cop who is tracking a killer and having the point of view suddenly switch to (say) some lady who is buying Genoa salami is the sign of a hack.

There should always be a crucial reason to change point of view. Read a book like Stephen King’s Pet Semetary – at the very end of the novel the point of view (and it’s third person all the way through) switches to the wife’s – after she’s come back from the dead. Staying tight with point of view can pull your readers in and be every bit as strong as first person.

You use third person if you need (like King did) certain kickers to enter the tale that can only be told from that character’s point of view or if you have a very large canvas (another example via the deft Mr. King would be The Stand). That story demands third person point of view because critical action and story arise through several characters. And I’d add a caveat: when you’re writing a short story, for the most part you should use one character’s point of view, whether you’re telling it from first, second or third person.

Back to novels: if you don’t need third person, chances are you can safely use first person point of view. Keep in mind there are limitations to first person -your protagonist must always have access to information and it must be his or her story.

In The Gentling Box, essentially, the story is Imre’s and he’s the one we follow during the course of the book. Regarding limitations for point of view, an example would be when Mimi (his wife) cuts off her own arm to obtain the gypsy talisman, the hand of the dead. Imre has to witness the act without being seen by Mimi. As a writer, it’s your job to figure out how your first person protagonist can have access to information the reader needs that involve other characters. It’s fun and I suggest every writer give it a try. You can get pretty creative and you don’t have to limit yourself while using first person to having your character get phone calls or e-mail or reading the newspaper. LOL.

TF: Tell us about your choice for narration for the Gentling Box. Why did you settle on first person and was it uncomfortable for you to write these scenes from the male point of view?

I settled on Imre in first person because I tend to “hear” whatever I’m writing and his voice came through. I could hear him speaking in my head and what I heard was the first line of the book:

“My wife sits mute now in the corner of our caravan, because this morning it is her personality which has come to the fore.”

This auditory entree has happened to me a number of times – I hear the first line, get all jazzed up and things take off from there.

Even though I didn’t skip ahead, how perfect a segue is this considering your next question, Teresa? <LOL>

TF: *grin* You knew it had to come, right? So, when you have an idea for a story, how do you go about finding the right "voice" and setting for that particular story?

Usually, I have an idea of what the story is about (say, women being made into ghosts because they’re physically abused, or a guy who is desperate to sleep with his own wife, or dolls who capture the owners of a person-sized house) and as I’m sitting at the keyboard I “hear” the first line. I don’t know how to explain better than that. (It’s also the way I get psychic information. More on that later, I guess. Anyhow, with psychic stuff, mainly I discount it as being not true, then get freaked out when it happens.) With writing, that first line is a jumping off place, a beginning -with plenty of rewrite and more rewrite and more rewrite to follow.

I’ll also play with setting, character, mood, plot . . . and I ask myself questions . . . Who is this person? Where is this happening? When did it happen?

I also do back stories . . . Who was important to this character? Why? What does this character want now? And the most basic of all . . . What the hell is going on here and what the fuck is this story really about? <LOL>

Sometimes you find you have two stories or, conversely, two ideas that are essentially one story.

You have to play with the idea, the piece. Stay open and keep going till it satisfies you on every level – most important is to ask yourself if as a reader this is a story or book you’d want to read.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with the characters, setting, plot or anything else; and don’t be afraid to write “crapola.” So what if it’s not working – maybe later on it will, maybe it will turn into better story. Let the process be part of the fun -not just whether it’s ‘perfect’ or will be published.

When you enter the house of mirrors at a carnival, you don’t worry too much about whether you actually got “value” for the cost of the ticket – you go with the flow, you have fun. Approach your own writing with the same open spirit. Later on, you can evaluate whether or not a particular piece was worth the price of admission. If it’s not, scrap it and save it for later and move on to the next “ride” or amusement.

TF: The scenes in The Gentling Box were very, very intense at times. Were you uncomfortable as you wrote these scenes?

No, not precisely uncomfortable, because when I write, I’m just swept away by the story. I tend to identify with whichever character is front and center in the action. So, with a humorous story, I’ll be laughing out loud as I type. 51 Fiendish Ways to Leave Your Lover which will be out in February 2010 in time for Valentine’s Day from Bad Moon Books (illustrated by Glenn Chadbourne who has also illustrated for Stephen King) started as a few one-liners that came to me while I was about to go to sleep and made me laugh so hard, I got up and started writing them down.

However, when I was writing The Gentling Box I didn’t always like what Anyeta (in particular) was doing, but since I was telling the story from Imre’s point of view, I could react to what he was feeling. I could get angry for Imre and through him and yet, honestly, at the same time, I also sort of enjoyed seeing what Anyeta could get away with. I kept upping the stakes. How far will she go? Who will she go after next? Will she really make Mimi, her own daughter and Imre’s wife, feel as though she’s turned into a wild dog complete with fur, six nipples and a snout and compelled to get down on all fours and eat out of a dish on the floor?

It was sort of fun in a weird way. At the same time, I definitely was weeping the entire time I was writing the end, which by the way came out pretty much the way it’s written and in a huge spurt of 10,000 words in one day. That’s the beauty of being so tethered to a book that you get swept along and write 10 times what you’d normally produce. I actually thought (even though I was on fire to finish this version) it would take 3 to 4 days – imagine my surprise when in one marathon session the book was done.

At any rate, no matter what material you’re dealing with, as a writer it’s your job to explore it completely. Sex. Drugs. Violence. Raw emotion. Abuse. Heartbreak.

Whatever it is, you have to plumb it. Never worry if anyone thinks you actually did those reprehensible things – your job is to create verisimilitude and make it seem as though your characters have lived this experience. If you’ve never even smoked a cigarette or taken a sip of 2.0 beer but your protagonist is a junkie, you have to create his or her world and you have to do it in a way that is compelling and pulls in the reader. You also have to create enough empathy so that your readers can identify – in The Gentling Box, Anyetta is so awful, the reader automatically feels for Imre and Mimi and their daughter, Lenore.

TF: During the course of the novel, you revisit Imre’s experience with the wild horses three times for maximum impact at the end of the novel. This is a great technique. Every writer functions differently, but it would be nice if you could tell us how you crafted The Gentling Box.

Actually the reason I revisit the scene with the wild horses is because it’s the seminal event in Imre’s life and naturally it has bearing (given the circumstances of the book) on the end.

It’s part of the reason I chose this tagline for the banner: “What if you’re worst nightmare is your only salvation?” Imre has sworn – based on the horrific events he witnessed as a child – never to use the premier tool of his trade, the gentling box.

And while he’s forced at the end to make a decision (no spoilers here) about whether he will use it, I don’t see the device (literally, the gentling device or the plot mechanism) as strictly “device” per se. Very often in real life, what we fear most does become one of our greatest tests as if the gods (or the Universe) want us to grow – or give up. It’s more than self-fulfilling prophecy I think (although that certainly plays a role); it’s more like we fear something because our intuition tells us we’ll have to face it down someday, and that’s a hell of a scary thought – but true nonetheless, I believe.

What do you fear? It might come back to confront you in an alley some night and you’ll feel the cold steel of a razor against your throat . . . or, you could find yourself in a cancer ward or lying abandoned at 28,000 feet on a mountain side . . . or perhaps something even more sinister.

TF: Okay, let’s talk about this fear of lying abandoned at 28,000 feet on a mountain side. Tell us about your next novel, The Everest Hauntings.

The Everest Hauntings is about a woman who’s always dreamed of equaling the success achieved by her older brother and sister who are twins. Maxie (the protagonist) feels like the “economic black sheep” of the family, despite her advanced degrees. She decides to climb Mt. Everest (and trust me, a ton of research has gone into this) and be the first person to conquer the summit using self-hypnosis. Her plan (stateside) is to return safely and to go on the ever-popular lecture circuit armed, not only with talk like “you can overcome your hurdles,” but hands-on training using her tried and proven method to achieve goals a college student or corporate mogul would never dream possible.

That’s her plan before she leaves for Nepal. But she’s a neophyte and she’s only vaguely aware that the 200 plus bodies still on the mountain are hungry ghosts – and that despite utilizing one of the best Himalayan climbers in the business as her mentor and guide on the mountain, these ghosts will key into the “trance” state or self-hypnosis she needs to climb the mountain. That’s when the fun really begins. <wicked grin>

TF: Ouch! I can’t wait to see how that experience turns out. You’ve had so many great things happening all of a sudden. Tell us about the short film, “Bye-Bye Sally,” which is being shown at the Malibu International Film Festival and the Montreal World Film Festival. How did your short-story, "Everybody Wins" come to be made into a short film?

OMFG, talk about a bolt out of the blue!

I used to joke that it made absolutely no difference what I wore every day because it wasn’t like Hollywood was calling. Imagine my surprise when I was scanning my spam file and saw “Everybody Wins” in the subject. Naturally, I opened the e-mail, but truthfully I was expecting a variation on the Nigerian letters that promise your bank account is about to be enriched.

I probably would have just deleted it along with the 300 other pieces of junk mail that arrive in that file every 24 hours, but I had more time than usual that day. Turned out it was from Paul Leyden (an actor and director) and he’d read my story and wanted to make it into a short film. After we corresponded that afternoon and evening, the very next day, he phoned -  so much for my theory about Hollywood calling! Anyhow, he was looking for material (he’s directed a half-dozen or more short films in Australia whence he hails) and had picked up the anthology These Guns for Hire which was edited by the amazing J.A. Konrath and, lo and behold, settled on my story.

Paul was also generous enough to bring me out to L.A. for the filming and I have a tiny sliver of a spot in the short film; and needless to say I seriously hope it gets picked up and will be a feature length film. But in any case, he is a director to keep your eye on. He’s unique and his talent shines through every second of the short.

TF: You recently tweeted that your novella, Deathwatch, will be published by Cargo Cult Press in 2010. Tell us about Deathwatch.

Deathwatch is another piece that came to me via the first line I heard in my head.

In this case, even though The Gentling Box had a major agent when I began the novella (call it jitters or psychic pre-cognition arising from the fact that said agent was not able to sell The Gentling Box back then) I wasn’t sure what to work on next. My mentor at the time, Emily Hanlon, advised that I just sit (as she put it, even if it took 4 days of just sitting there and waiting but being ready to write) and “listen in” on what was happening.

What I heard, again, was a first person account, a voice in my head that turned out to be a character named Stuart Granville who had this to say:

“I was 20 when I first came to Hyde Park, New York and fell in love with the child who was both woman and ghost. And God help me, it was my infatuation–or obsession–if you prefer, that spawned both her strange shadow life as my bride and–later, much later–her death.

It was December and the Hudson River was frozen. I hailed from the Carolinas, and after a bleak train ride north, my first–my strongest–memory of the region was that solid white mass like a road, of wind blowing, and the sight of tight-lipped red faced men hauling blocks of ice on sledges, their horses straining for purchase on the slippery surface.”

I had in mind the isolation that occurs in Ethan Frome, the way that winter actually shut people down in the previous century—way more serious than the isolation or sense of being cut off we experience now when we can’t access the Internet or the lights go out or we have a day or two when we feel “lonely.”

It’s 1893 and Stuart has been expelled from the University of Virginia medical school for drinking and accepts a position as a tutor in a doctor’s home in upstate New York—in what would have been a completely rural area at the time.

Stuart is dealing with his own guilt. His tunnel vision (or, if you prefer, his self-centeredness in focusing on his own transgressions and failures) limits his imagination and his ability to understand the evil around him; the weather and the situation he encounters compound his sense of uncertainty.

What he is unaware of is that the girls he’s been hired to ‘educate’ are Siamese twins and their father, a doctor, means to separate them – and to take advantage of Stuart’s outcast status as a failed medical student to help him with this surgery.

That’s the basic premise, but of course, there’s much more that transpires – and I think (hope) most readers will agree that the haunting that underpins Deathwatch is terrifying.

TF: Okay, one last question: If you had one wish for your next book, what would that be?

I hope that I’m able to deeply explore and carry out the vision I have of the book (well, no one is ever able to get everything down, but you get the gist) and to write it to the best of my ability.

I hope that my readers will walk away after finishing it feeling stimulated, intrigued and ‘satisfied.’ And I hope it does well in terms of sales and becomes the literary jumping off point for the third, fourth, fifth . . . fifteenth . . .

I don’t necessarily want to be (although it wouldn’t hoit) a New York Times bestselling author, but I do have this weird macabre wish which involves achieving enough (and, of course, primarily I want to feel good about what I write and feel I’ve given my best) stature that when I die I get an obituary in the Times.

I haven’t made up my mind whether I’d be okay with just a notice – or whether I want to go for the brass ring and be one of the lucky dead folks who also gets a picture that accompanies the obit.

A picture, to accompany the obit with a nice tidy and chubby list of books I’ve written, I have to admit, is something to aim for. <wicked grin>

TF: And with her wicked grin, she leaves us for now (said your host with a <wicked grin> of she own).

Look for Lisa’s up-coming works, including the short story, “It’s Magic,” in Sephera Giron’s Beach Boys anthology.

I hope you enjoyed our interview with Lisa Mannetti. You can say hello in the comments or if you have a question, leave it in the comments and I’ll forward your question to Ms. Mannetti. She has graciously agreed to hang around this week to answer your questions.

If you have a minute, you can visit Lisa at:

Her web site (www.lisamannetti.com) where you can read excerpts from The Everest Hauntings,  Deathwatch, and The Lamia.

Her blog is at: www.lisamannetti.blogspot.com.

Or visit The Chancery House where Lisa creates ghostly e-cards you can send to your friends!

This week I am thrilled to have as my guest, Lisa Mannetti. For those who haven’t been keeping up with news from the horror front, Ms. Mannetti won this year’s Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement for her debut novel, The Gentling Box.

When I originally asked Lisa for the interview, she most graciously offered to tell us about her writing techniques in addition to talking about her current projects. Due to the length of the interview, I’ve broken our discussion into two parts.

Today I’d like to introduce you to Lisa and we will be talking about The Gentling Box, researching your novel, Gothic and literary horror. Tomorrow we will be discussing point of view and Lisa’s upcoming projects.

Lisa goes all out for us, and I hope you enjoy her discussions as much as I enjoyed working with Lisa.

I present Ms. Lisa Mannetti:

TF: We’re going to start with your debut novel. Tell us about The Gentling Box.

LISA: The Gentling Box is set in 19^th century Hungary and Romania and focuses on one year in the life of the protagonist, Imre, a half-gypsy horse trader.

When the book opens, he is not only on the verge of death having been afflicted with a hideously disfiguring and fatal disease by his mother-in-law, Anyeta – a choovahanee or sorceress. Then we follow the descent Imre has taken to this horrendous low point: He is dying, his wife has been possessed by her mother, his closest friends have been tortured and maimed by Anyeta and, his daughter, Lenore is her next target. In the present (that forms the final chapters of the book) we watch Imre attempting to resolve matters and save what’s left of the wreck of his life at great personal cost.

TF: What inspired you to write The Gentling Box?

LISA: What inspired me primarily was a lifelong love of Tennessee Williams (whose sister, Rose, was lobotomized) and a very strong interest in theater and specifically in this case, Peter Shaffer’s play, Equus. Somehow, my love of animals and my horror over the blinding scene in Equus and my fear of insanity and lobotomies combined inside my unconscious and my imagination; so, gentling (in the book) is a kind of lobotomy using long iron needles which is performed on horses, and the “box” is the tool of gypsy horse traders.

Additionally, my mother made me a gypsy costume when I was a kid (I wore it several years running since I hardly ever outgrew anything) and I was crazy over Maria Ouspenkskaya who plays the old gypsy woman in the Lon Chaney werewolf movies. “Is only one woman in whole country who can help you,” she used to intone along with the bit about the sign of the pentagram on poor Larry Talbot’s chest, and I guess somehow this transmogrified into love/fear of gypsies.

I was also terrified by demonic possession – thanks to the grammar school nuns who told us it was entirely possible. When you’re 8 years old and a nun tells you that St. John Bosco was levitated 3 feet over his bed, trust me, you believe it. When a well-regarded professor at Fordham (who happens to be a Jesuit) tells you essentially the same thing approximately 25 years later, you believe it even more.

Finally, I had (have?) a really morbid and keen interest in disease – my mother was a nurse (later, a public health director) and I spent a lot of time reading my mother’s nursing books as a child. In fact, my older brother and I used to play a game with her med/surg text book: You open a page (random selection here) and look at the picture. The other person must then turn the page to look at the next photo and so on. You lose if you can’t look at your picture and, remarkably, it never mattered who went first or where we started in the book – my brother invariably lost because he could not look at the patient with tertiary syphilis (who had no nose).

In fact, even chicken pox (or varicella as it was then also called) was too much for him. I lucked out because even though I was petrified (dare I say phobic) about leprosy the picture of that wasn’t too bad. Small pox (also known as variola) . . . shudder . . .

All I can say is read Zola’s Nana for the literary equivalent of what my mother’s nursing book said: “There is no disease so foul, so difficult . . .” Imre’s disease, glanders – which is a real disease – was inspired by these descriptions and memories.

TF: The amount of research you did was phenomenal and really paid off for readers like me who knew something of the Romany history. The book felt very authentic in both detail and setting, but you never allowed the information to detract from the story.

LISA: The Internet at the time was completely untrustworthy as far as doing research – in fact I used to complain to my students at Mount Saint Mary College that they ought to avail themselves of the library: a building with a card catalogue that led (sort of like a scavenger hunt) to actual books.

It was so obvious they were all using the same “research.” Given a topic (say, “The Yellow Room,” which is about madness and was one of the short stories I assigned) I’d find 21 out of 23 papers with the same perspective, language, etc. In fact, it was sinfully easy back then to pinpoint the exact article they all copied. So, for my work I basically utilized the library and a little-used human resource called Intra-library loan.

You can get books from any library in your county and despite Google’s intent to copy every single book ever published it hasn’t happened yet and there really is a lot more out there in libraries than on the Internet. It’s true you might be able to get professional/insider information online (medical, for example), but libraries are free – while pro sites will end up costing you your arms, legs, three car payments and whatever money you need so you can go into bars and eavesdrop to learn how to write dialogue.

The librarians of Wappingers Falls were sterling about getting me hundreds of books regarding history, language, culture – you name it. I was lucky enough that Dutchess County included Vassar College. Talk about gold mines!

TF: How do you determine when you’ve supplied your reader with enough information without detracting from the story?

LISA: As I was taught in a self-editing class, here’s the rule of thumb about information (or really almost all aspects of storytelling as far as background, setting, plot devices, etc.). Be like the CIA, in other words, as an author you only reveal any element strictly on a “need to know” basis. If the reader does not need to know that particular bit of information at that time, you don’t include it. Never telegraph (or signal) what is coming next and keep in mind that pretending to be a spy who’s totally in control helps you stay tight with focus and “kill all your darlings,” as Stephen King would say.

TF: You told me that The Gentling Box was originally 1,000 pages. Tell me how did you whittle that number of words down, and how did you determine what, if any, scenes to keep?

LISA: Here’s the god’s honest truth: when my agent at the time told me I had to rewrite The Gentling Box I got rid of everything but the title of the book, a few character names, the concept of gentling and the concept of the hand of the dead. In other words, I started out on page 1 with a blank slate. In fact, in the original thousand page version, Zahara was a ‘good’ character; so was Vaclav, the leader of the gypsy troupe. I really did chuck it all and this time through, I chose Imre to narrate the story in first person and listened to his voice.

TF: Your background is in 18th and 19th century literature when the Gothic novel was popular in England. Did you intentionally set out to write a 20th century gothic novel when you wrote The Gentling Box?

LISA: Whoa, Teresa, loaded question! LOL. First of all, novels were pretty much considered by the elite (translate that into those who were literate and therefore well-to-do) as being strictly a province of “women” during the 18^th and 19^th century. The best analogy I can come up with is to say that novels were dismissed like daytime TV soap-operas which were believed to appeal strictly to stay-at-home women in the 1950s and early 60s. In other words: fodder, tomfoolery, junk for low minds and small intellects.

Clearly everyone did not believe this or we would not have the legacy of writers like Jane Austen, the Brontes, Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne, Mary Shelley etc. Dickens, of course, is in a different class: people would storm the docks when another installment of his novels was arriving in New York from England. But, before we start channeling the ghost of literature 101 we have to keep in mind that there were tremendous changes between the 18^th and 19^th century and the beginning and end of the 19^th century itself.

Here’s a little scoop for you, the age of Enlightenment referenced by the publisher on the back cover of The Gentling Box is wrong…I didn’t dispute it, but romanticism (well in place when The Gentling Box is supposed to take place) was a direct reversal of the rationalism that preceded it.

Have I lost sight of your question about gothic novels? Hell no . . . I’m almost there.

Most scholars disparage gothic novels – and for good reason. Books like The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole are mainly interesting in the way specimens of squashed spiders can intrigue entomologists (What kind of arachnid was it before someone dropped an anvil on it? Was it male or female? Is this species primarily found in Brooklyn or Borneo?) Books like Walpole’s have their place – and are worthy to a degree – but like the very earliest films created, they’re more experiment than art.

Let’s not forget a lot of the gothic material at the time was written purely to line the author’s pockets and to cash in on a popular trend. Kind of like most movies nowadays. <grin> But lots of mainstream novels were supposedly true (they weren’t, of course or were very loosely based on fact to give them cachet) including Robinson Crusoe, Journal of the Plague Year (Defoe was a newshound) and the completely fictitious, Moll Flanders. Swift, for example, was afraid of his imagination and like Samuel Johnson, he was of terrified madness. The pendulum swung the other way in the early 19^th century and that luckily spawned great books like Frankenstein.

So, did I set out to write a gothic novel? No. Because ‘gothic’ was a pejorative in my mind when I wrote the book. But, now that gothic novels have been run through the rinse cycle culturally speaking, I don’t mind at all being called gothic. Up till recently, the only gothic considered actual literature was what was produced under the term “southern gothic.” And there have been some incredible writers in that lifeboat: Carson McCullers, Joyce Carol Oates, Truman Capote to name just a very few. But as long as it’s considered real literature and not “tripe” as it used to be, I’m very happy to be deemed a gothic novelist.

TF: I’ve seen the phrase “literary horror” listed on several agents’ websites. Some people have defined literary horror as “not splatterpunk” which isn’t really a definition at all. Do you have a definition of “literary horror”?

LISA: Literary horror is horror that strives to be beyond “rote” literature – it breaks ground, it avoids clichés, it’s well-written. To me, the term “literary” means the book (whether it’s horror-oriented or not) shows finesse and ideation – not just with story-telling, but with the choice of words, with meanings that underpin the book, with depth of character.

Literary is another term for classic. We all know instinctively as readers what makes a great book. Great storytelling, drama, characters that live and breathe, flights of imagination. Classic books capture us, grip us by heart, mind, and other assorted body parts and they don’t let go. Of course they can be read purely for story – that’s why children can read Jane Eyre (say) or the groundlings loved Shakespeare during the Elizabethan Age.

It’s why Charles Dickens was so popular in the 19^th century, too. Jaws and Love Story sold more copies than the population of some Midwestern states. But the best literature reaches across the boards to people from every walk of life. Regular folk can relate solely through story, character, and situation – and scholars and students and critics can analyze to their hearts’ content.

To go a step beyond this level of literary horror (or any genre) you’re looking at works that map out new territory, that penetrate the prevailing collective psyche and set trends. Does that mean literary horror is arcane or difficult to understand? Not necessarily, though books of this caliber certainly can use language in a way that demands more effort and less passivity on the part of the reader.

This is not a new concept.

We’re used to it in art (think, e.g. Jackson Pollack and, going way back to the bad old 19^th century, Paul Gauguin or Vincent Van Gogh ); film ( Eisenstein, Fritz Lang, Hitchcock) music (Beethoven, the Beatles) and other venues. Calling any work of art literary does not detract from the notion of popular. To my way of thinking, the best “literary” works incorporate popular appeal and intellectual and emotional grace notes.

Stephen King has been compared to Charles Dickens for very good reasons. (You might not like everything King has written, but as a 19^th century student, I can honestly say I don’t like everything Dickens wrote either. No one is going to produce that many works and have everything reach the highest level he or she is capable of producing but, so what?)

Looking for what I consider truly today’s groundbreaking literary horror? Try (among others) Robert Dunbar or Jeremy C. Shipp or Tom Piccirilli or, my personal favorite, Peter Straub.

I’m honored that The Gentling Box is considered literary . . . in my own mind I have a long way to go.

TF: Thank you so much, Lisa!

We’re going to stop for today, but be sure you read Lisa Mannetti Interview – Pt. II where we talk about point of view and Lisa’s upcoming projects.

If you have a minute, you can visit Ms. Mannetti at:

Her web site (www.lisamannetti.com) where you can read excerpts from The Everest Hauntings,  Deathwatch, and The Lamia.

Her blog is at: www.lisamannetti.blogspot.com.

Or visit The Chancery House where Lisa creates ghostly e-cards you can send to your friends!

Did I just say that?  Did I just post that?

I’m so excited I can’t wait to tell you that Lisa Mannetti, award winning author of The Gentling Box, has agreed to do an interview here at helluo librorum.  Since she and I are going to be incredibly busy for the next two weeks, the date of the interview and other details will be coming soon.

For those of you who don’t know: Lisa Mannetti won the 2008 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Horror Writing in the category for First Novel with her debut, The Gentling Box.

I wanted to give you all advance notice, because if you haven’t read The Gentling Box, there is plenty of time for you to acquire a copy and read it before the interview.  It’s the best horror novel I’ve read in years, and I don’t say things like that lightly!

If you want to order a copy, go to your favorite bookseller and give them this information: The Gentling Box by Lisa Mannetti, DarkHart Press, ISBN 978-0978731892.

You can find your copy online at:

Amazon.com

Barnes & Nobel

Horror Mall

Just be forewarned: once you begin, you won’t be able to put it down.  When you’re done, don’t go to sleep, you’ll have nightmares . . . and if you’re not careful, Imre will stay in your heart forever.

If you would like a small sampling of Ms. Mannetti’s writing style, visit her web site (www.lisamannetti.com) and read some excerpts from her upcoming novels: The Everest Hauntings or The Lamia.  She has also graciously posted some excerpts from her novella, “Deathwatch”.

Stay tuned!

Did I say I was excited?   

Copyright 2009 Teresa Frohock

Oh my Wild Things, come close, come close; the Dragon has a treasure for you.  I remember now what it is to be afraid . . .

It is the mid-nineteenth century, but the Age of Enlightenment has bypassed Hungary and Romania’s itinerant gypsy population.  Imre is a half-gypsy horse trader who lives with his wife and daughter in Hungary, but their happy existence is shattered when they receive word that his wife’s mother, the sorceress Anyeta, is dying.  Mimi insists they go to Romania to ease her mother’s final days and against his better judgment, Imre agrees to make the journey with his wife and young daughter, Lenore.

By the time they arrive, Anyeta’s body is dead, but the old sorceress’ spirit has taken possession of another woman’s body.  Anyeta contrives to seduce Imre from his family so she can destroy him.  Anyeta has plans for Imre and Mimi’s beloved daughter, Lenore.  Imre can stop the sorceress, but first he must overcome his own terror of using the gentling box.

Imre’s haunting tale grabs the reader by the eyeballs from page one and does not let go. In spite of his best efforts, Imre watches everything he loves slip away, and his struggle with his conscience is heartbreaking. Mannetti weaves Imre’s story with skill and her dark prose evokes the wild loneliness of the Romanian wilderness where Imre’s small family struggles against Anyeta’s evil.

I was delighted by the accuracy of Mannetti’s research both into Romany culture and the time period.  Mannetti recently won the Bram Stoker Award for first novel with The Gentling Box, and it is an honor that is richly deserved.

I warn you now: let no one disturb you when you read this novel, because you will not want to stop until you have devoured the last word.  I could not put The Gentling Box down and neither shall you.

“Tshailo sim.”

I am replete . . . (hehe)

My rating:

A fotót Kinszki Imre 1929-ben készítette Budapest legnagyobb zsidó környékeinek egyik főútvonalán…idén pedig, július 2-ig, New York-ban a “How They Lived: The Daily Life of Hungarian Jews in Photographs, 1867-1940” című különleges kiállítás része. A képek kivételes betekintést engednek a magyar zsidók második világháború előtti mindennapjaiba.

Kinszki a Holocaust alatt eltűnt.

(A kiállítás az Extremely Hungary magyar művészeti és kulturális fesztivál része.)

forrás

Written by Jonas Klit Nielsen

Last week I wrote the post “Target activates Facebook Fan Pages by giving”. Highly praising how Target has chosen to activate their Facebook Page.
Letting their fans determine which charities, one of their weekly donations should go to.

The result is now in for the campaign, delivered to me in an email from the nice people at IMRE, what I believe must be Target’s PR agency.

The donation spread of the 3 million dollars:

- St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital – 77,427 votes (26.6% of votes) = $797,123
- American Red Cross – 77,118 votes (26.5%) = $793,942
- The Salvation Army – 38,004 votes (13%) = $391,258
- Operation Gratitude – 22,627 votes (7.8%) = $232,948
- Breast Cancer Research Foundation – 19,264 votes (6.6%) = $198,326
- Feeding America – 15,574 votes (5.3%) = $160,336
- Hands On Network/Points of Light Institute – 11,378 votes (4.0%) = $120,845
- Parent Teacher Association – 10,904 votes (3.7%) = $112,259
- National Park Foundation – 9553 votes (3.3%) = $98,350
- Kids In Need Foundation – 9,190 votes (3.2%) = $94,613

Statistics for the Campaign on Facebook:

- 291,399 votes tallied
- Target Facebook Page added 97,091 new fans
- During the campaign, the Target Facebook Page increased daily views by 4,800% (as of 5/22)
- Target Facebook Page experienced a 3,000% surge in wall posts, with more than 3,000 personal stories shared throughout the campaign (As of 5/22)
- More than 167,000 fans on Facebook voted for the charity of their choice
- St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and American Red Cross received over 53% of total votes
- Over 2,200 fans on Facebook clicked through to the Volunteer Match service page to find causes and volunteer programs in their local communities

I think it sounds good! But of course I don’t know what the goals for the campaign were

I am looking forward to seeing how Target is going to maintain and sustain their campaign on Facebook, and when they are going to do a similar donation campaign again.

For more see Target’s press release.

{or…by Lakatos Imre, if you’re Hungarian.}

Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery

When you finish this short book, it will put a reckoning wrench in the way you think.  It is about mathematics, but you’ll easily fall into the critical thinking platform that it is.  And then you’ll get past that and just enjoy it.  No, for real.  That’s what makes it art.  It doesn’t start by proclaiming itself art, but simply plies its trade and ends up at the art that lies at the end of any true effort to dive into a given discipline.

I should also note that it’s an easy read, if not easy reading (there will be some formulas – very light, though), since it’s written as screenplay.  You can follow a particular line of reasoning just by following the comments of specific characters.  He gives each a Greek alphabet name: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc. are students in a classroom debating whether or not Euler’s theorem [v-e+f=2, vertices minus edges plus faces equals two] holds true for all polyhedra.

You can tell by all this nonsense that I am a dangerous and probably frustrating kind to the true scientist or mathematician: the layman who grabs math and science for analogs, pleasure, or some other non-math reason.  Imagine an 8-year old using a jackhammer.  …mad fun.

But I do take heart at the unexpected affirmation from John Seely Brown who, when I mentioned this book during a Socrates Society Seminar at the Aspen Institute said that it changed his way of thinking.  Whew!  Gimme my jackhammer back.

My only possible redemption is that I acknowledge that weakness and try not to use those analogs gratuitiously when I write about them. And I won’t talk to you about them when we’re playing ball, fishing, running, surfing, or just sitting on the rooftop for coffee.  That’s right, not even coffee.

What I am not hestitant about, though, is what I have experienced as application of this stuff to the way I think.  Proofs and Refutations gave me access to a new system for analysis through, yes, Proofs, Refutations, but also local and global counterexamples along any specific line of thinking that I have.  A whole lot more is in this book.

Check how he uses footnotes – The best example I’ve seen of stuff that would clutter the text but is necessary at the point you would insert them.  He gives historical anecdotes and clarifications in the footnotes that are pretty dang powerful.

I’ll stop here.  I hear the scientists and mathematicians gathering forces against lay, and possibly misinformed enthusiasm.  And I really don’t want to go toe to toe with those dudes on whether or not Polya acutally gave a better perspective or whether or not, per Paul Feyerabend , ”Lakatos’ methodology {is} not a methodology at all, but merely “words that sound like the elements of a methodology and no different from epistemological anarchism, Feyerabend’s own position.”

Just read it and lemme know how it moves ya…..

Har rätt nyligt lärt mig göra korsstygn. Och ännu mer nyligt fattat hur man gör för att brodera på kläder. Man har inte väldigt bra ögonmått som jag trodde, utan man lägger helt enkelt stramalj över plagget och broderar igenom båda lagren. Sen blöter man stramaljen och drar bort den, tråd för tråd och kvar på plagget sitter brodyren!

Nu har jag lärt mig att man innan man broderar på trikå också bör ha lite vlieselin bakom. Annars blir det små hål i tyget… Fint med lärdom. Men. Eftersom han som heter Imre bara vill vara klädd i syntetiska landslagsdräkter och bara nickar på frågan om han gillar tröjan men säger “nä, inte just nu!” när man frågar om han vill prova, så tänker jag att det inte gör så mycket att den är full med små hål. Och förmodligen skaver den mot bröstkorgen ändå. Får väl bli dörrskylt eller något istället!

Däremot när man broderar på frotté så går det så bra så, utan vliselin. Kan dock rekommendera att inte använda den allra finaste stramalj som finns i handeln… Gick bara att brodera i fullt solsken! Kanske dags att äta lite morötter för att bättra på mörkerseendet förresten?

Ska klart brodera mera. Korsstygn är ju hur tufft som helst!

Con base en los resultados que arrojó el estudio IMRE en 2006 -realizado por Transparencia Mexicana y Consulta Mitofsky-, ubicar la existencia o inexistencia del departamento responsable de la comunicación organizacional en los respectivos sitios web de las empresas mejor rankeadas: ITESM, Grupo Bimbo, Nestlé de México, Grupo Modelo, Bayer de México, Procter & Gamble México, Universidad Iberoamericana, ITAM, Universidad de Las Américas (Puebla), Pfizer.

Enviar un correo electrónico al área de recursos humanos y preguntar si en esa área laboran psicólogos organizacionales.

Fuentes de consulta:

Estudio IMRE 2004 resumen_ejecutivo-imre-2004.pdf
Estudio IMRE 2006 imre-2006-mexico.pdf
Estudio sobre confianza en las instituciones. Consulta Mitofsky, 2008 -obligado marco de referencia- confianza_2008.pdf