Well, not really a free lunch, more than that. Try a room, a hotel room, a harbor view hotel room looking straight across the water at the magical light show of Hong Kong island’s inimitable skyline. It all cost $329. Normally, to normal people. We paid only the tax on that: $30. Yes, less than backpackers were paying at nearby hostels and, we’re at the five star Intercontinental Grand Stanford, with it’s sweeping foyer, grand piano, hushed luxury and well heeled international clientele.

How are we here? How indeed? Hotels.com is how. With every ten nights booked through this fabulous online booking agency you get one night free. That’s one night with a price limit of $400. This is not a shabby freebie.

But that’s not the main event, although perhaps it should be. The main event was membership of the Grand Stanford’s hallowed Executive Club. This was included in the price of the room and I had no expectations. Sometimes this means nothing more than checking in somewhere private and eating an inanimate free breakfast in a windowless room with wireless and other stuffy executives hopefully not like you.

Not this time. This time we got whisked away from the reception desk and the milling commoners. A uniformed butler type person discretely inserted us into the next elevator going up to the first floor. From this entirely different altitude you could disdainfully gaze down upon the hapless rabble in the common area. I was getting the hang of this.

We were checked in at a private desk where no-one mentioned tasteless things like money or, for that matter, freebies. We were just in time for cocktail hour. Oh yes, you mean the small grubby glass of boxed wine hurriedly downed in some draughty corridor and the lonely plate of cheese cubes? No? That’s no, no and no!

This way please ma’am… Through the entry to the left and voila! The kind of décor you’d see at the French court. Well, almost. And windows, floor to ceiling with the whole of Hong Kong as backdrop.

We waded through the luxury carpet’s knee deep pile and found ourselves a table facing the glitter of water and light. Around us, small puddles of discretely happy people from Germany, France, Britain, Australia, The World.

The Germans looked the most to the manor born. Just disheveled enough to appear casually entitled they sat in groups drinking pearly long glasses of champagne and murmuring sophisticated things to each other in their native language. An occasional, peal of laughter disturbed the urbane surface.

I took out my notebook. I know I looked the opposite of entitled but who cared. This is one of the most compelling reasons to be a writer, to be able to heedlessly indulge my wonder and curiosity, snatch at the unusual and gaze at it unselfconsciously and from all angles. To stare, to watch, to observe.

I was visiting a land I don’t often frequent. Not Hong Kong, I’m fortunate enough to pop in there several times a year but this, the land of the rich. It was enchanting, in a Cinderella, sort of way, to listen to the sounds of the rich swell and recede around me.

Most of the women in the elegant, long room, wore versions of black, narrow skirts, pale nondescript blouses, dark expensive jackets and sharp, slim heels. The men wore polo necks and tassled loafers with no socks. I was in a baggy black smock top with traveled in jeans, boots and a limp, bedraggled scarf.

A party of three very non-executive looking Australian women from Adelaide, where the accent’s more buxom, could not hide their sense of good fortune.

“It’s the dishes. Not having to do them.”  Nods all round.

“Not having to tidy up after the kids.’

“I can’t remember when last I was away from family and the chores.”

This trio was so delightfully out of place, a little rough at the edges, more amazed at it all, than I was.

I watched and listened as the evening wore on, as evenings do where drink flows and no-one gets a check.

My party of three Australians made several trips to the loo only to return to find their drinks refilled again and again. Everyone loosened up visibly and audibly. Confidences were exchanged ever more loudly and with heightened hilarity. It was a joy to watch.

To my left a man in his forties sporting the aforesaid loafers, black polo neck and a well preserved physique was attempting to chat up the Filipino waitress who looked 20 years younger than she is and turns out to have a husband and three grown children. She eventually extricated herself from the awkwardly protracted question and answer session and he returned to fiddling dolefully with his cell phone dreaming of contacts he wished he had and the ones he does.

The snacks were exotic, spicy and warm. A far cry from their impoverished relative, the dried out cheese cube. The night wore on and when it finally ended we were in no condition to mourn it’s demise. It had hardly been sudden and was, on the contrary, painlessly blurred. We decided to cancel our dinner reservations at The Press Room on the island. We’ve had way too much good stuff and were content to repair to our glorious, and almost free, bed. All that for $30. And who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch?

Lupe’s new mixtape I’m talking about! A side order of dopeness to go with that turkey. Have a good Thanksgiving with your families everyone.

DOWNLOAD ENEMY OF THE STATE

Speaking of enemies and land and such, no Thanksgiving is complete without knowing the history y’know? The real history. Here’s the infamous excerpt of this holiday from James W. Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me. I remember reading this in about seventh grade. Certainly an eye-opener. And honestly, it has not made me pessimistic about Thanksgiving’s purpose(s) or anything of that sort. It just always helps to have a bit of truth after that pie. Enjoy folks. No one ever said you CAN’T learn on holidays.

THE TRUE HISTORY OF THANKSGIVING

(Via James L. Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me)

RIP to all devoured turkeys.

-Ish

I’ve never come within a few thousand words of completing a book-length manuscript before, so this is a new one on me. I don’t want to finish!

I know what will happen, I’m excited to take the characters there, I’m getting up at 3:30 every morning and doing my 2,000 words – but I don’t want the fun to end.

Maybe because after “The End” comes the revision – or as Dr Kim Wilkins described it in a recent edition of WQ, “the puppy autopsy” ?

Help me, finishers… is this common – and is there a known cure?

For all its intents and purposes,

The heart is treacherous at best,

If God had breathed a soul into Man’s chest,

Then surely the Devil endowed Man with heart,

A melancholy creation always apart.

Four divisions each with their own agenda,

Lustful, selfish, vengeful, occasionally loving,

Each beating their own defeated drum,

Holding their lies as their ace trump.

If my death was scribed by my own hand,

I’d say prick and slice my heart leaving only a single strand,

So they can look and say,

So that’s what a defeated Devil looks like.

Well, when you put it like that. It doesn’t feel so bad.

Author Etiquette: Acknowledgements I  (Hjersman)

Copyright  ©  Peter Hjersman 2009 

     Writing a book is demanding, which…for most books is a major understatement.  The writer often needs a lot of information in a ridiculously short time, yet only a few are able to hire researchers.  Libraries have been the most used and most reliable source for centuries.  Universities have knowledgeable resources, for student, professors, and sometimes an intriguing letter from a writer.  Now the “information highway”, the internet, adds to these resources. 

     Once I have tackled a search, librarians help in ways that the digital world cannot.  Many libraries have added internet question-and-answer systems to respond remotely and these give yet another perspective.  I still prefer talking to the librarian in person; they often bring up aspects, resources unknown to me. 

     When a book is finished–no more research is required, and the printer is waiting–most authors will thank those who assisted.  Standard manuscript front matter includes a page for acknowledging the helpers.  Many readers will read this section to see the resources used, identify the agent, editor and others who might be of help to the reader in their own pursuits. 

     If someone has done something special for the author, a reward keeps the contact alive.  Usually, the helpers are listed in the acknowledgements, or as the international translator and author Fred Stodt astutely says: “I add the usual housekeeping page with a list of helpers, to acknowledge their help and I give books to the helpers outside the publishing sequence.”   The book given to the helper may be signed in a special, unique, one-off phrase that no one else has.  Of course, if the help was tremendous, they should receive a free copy of the book.  If the helper does a lot of work for the writer but the result is not used, a reward is still appropriate.  Leslie LaMarr, the diverse and imaginative writer/publisher advises: “Quite a few authors include an acknowledgment page in the front of the book.  However, if you feel this detracts from the emotional journey you are taking the reader on, you can insert the page at the back, after the text ends.  It is not mandatory to thank people for their support or to financially compensate them.  Just as their help was a courtesy, so is acknowledging it in conjunction with your work.  On a personal level, it is courteous.  On a professional level, it nurtures the relationship and may allow for collaborative efforts in the future.” 

     Many helped me with my first book.  I learned to run a printing press, do graphic methods, use special darkroom techniques, and enjoy the many suggestions for a company name.  Publisher Ruth Gottstein, who has nurtured many social issues through her Volcano Press  considered my book, plus sent it to other publishers at her own time and expense.  She also suggested an upcoming book fair with the neighboring national librarian’s convention, which was my big break. 

     Each person that helped me received a gratis book.  Every copy had a letterpress ex libris label with their name printed on it.  The owner of a local popular restaurant agreed to cook a special meal for the group, at my expense.  I printed menus for this event with letterpress (which Lester Lloyd taught me), with the chef’s name. 

     To include more people, I had a launch party, where I rented a room over a popular disco and invited everyone I knew.  We offered snacks, but drinks were available downstairs, in agreement with the owner.  Mistake noted: visitors stay longer with alcohol.  Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff, the famous children’s author had this to say: “Sometimes it’s fun to have a launch party.  With The ‘ABCs of Writing for Children’, when I interviewed a lot of authors for the book, I had a LOT of friends in that book!  So I invited them all to a party and fed them.” 

       “I try to fill up my acknowledgements page with all those who have helped me along the way.  And, if someone has done something special for me — maybe hooked me up with insider information or toured me through a facility or allowed me to crash at their place overnight, I’ll try to buy them a meal or a six-pack,” I was told by a rising fiction writer at the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference.    Next week: more acknowledgements 

###

Here I sit another

Night alone

With my words on paper & a dream

In my head

Many moons have risen, fallen, and risen again

While the hearts promised to be here

Have all walked away from the

Mad chaotic sanity that is my

Existence

Have they really learned anything from me

Save that they do not want what I have to offer

Does it really matter when my heart

Has such pain & my soul

Is left to ponder the fact that I will

Forever be a memory

So it is that the time

Has come for me to be

A Dad

I have been a father, stepfather, uncle, etc

Yet now I am faced with the difficulties of being

Dad

Never have I known such fear

Staring down the barrel of a nine-millimeter

Pistol knowing death as imminent

Was easy

Holding a Rattlesnake

Without a hook knowing

Any moment could be

The last was a breeze

Yet now I see those eyes

As if looking into a mirror

Questioning me

For the answers

To love, life, & happiness

I can only cringe away like a

Beaten puppy who

Knows nothing except

That I would do anything to please

It is apparent that

We as humans will cause and

Suffer pain, melancholy, bliss, and joy

There are both receivers and givers

Funny though

No matter how hard we try

We never see the results coming before

It’s too late

Then we all lie awake

In the night guilt ridden or hurting

For what we have experienced

We throw our souls out to

Friends if we have them or family

As if they could help us at all

Then in the end

We realize it is ourselves

That we are left facing in that

Mirror

That’s the part that scares

Us most

Six years. Six novels. Six wins.

And this year, I took four days off completely to attend Donald Maass’s incredible workshop, Fire in Fiction, and another eight days off to attend the Writer Retreat Workshop, at which I focused on revising East of Jesus instead of drafting this new one.

Also this month, I had a colonoscopy, met with the Books Over Breakfast group, switched to a new general practitioner, met with the school psychologist about my daughter’s three-year evaluation for special ed, balanced two checking accounts, paid bills twice, and continued my regular appointments. It wasn’t No-No-November this year at all.

I think I’m ready for the big leagues.

We wear our heartaches on the sleeves

Our laughter goes unheard

Back alley whiskey whores

Are love eternal

What care is worth my

Glance your way

Ain’t nothin’ I need more than

What I got right here beside me

My poems that I wrote

The ones I didn’t but know by heart

The few dollars in pocket

The brothers of Dharma

That confuse and refuse you

For you ignorance of the

Simplicity of love and life

What’s in Mrs. Hale’s Receipts for the Million 1857?

2078. Why will a black teapot make a better tea than a bright metal one, if it is set on the hob to “draw”?  2079 Because the black teapot will absorb heat plentifully from the fire and keep the water hot; whereas a bright metal teapot (set upon the hob) would throw off the heat by reflection.

Last week we had one of the wildest wind and rainstorms that I can recall in years. The temperature outside was in the 50s, but the wind was powerful, shaking the 100 foot plus Douglas fir next to my house into a frenzy. From a distance it looked like the willow in Harry Potter, its many arms whipping around like an octopus. I finally vacated my upstairs.  Not safe for writing or drinking tea.

Organizing your research

The past couple of times I wrote about creating a research plan. I also wrote about primary and secondary sources. Once you get your secondary sources search underway with that first book or article, you’ll need to create a bibliography.  It sounds like writing a high school or college report, but organization will be your friend when you go on that book tour.

There are several ways to do this. Do it like old school research.  Create a card for each book with all pertinent information. Give it a number. All notes taken related to this source will have that number 1a, 1b, 1c.  Also give it  subject title. I wrote my first novel this way. Just like I was trained in college and followed as an intern at the Smithsonian. Lately, I’ve gotten sloppy. I write on notebook paper.

If you go this way, first repeat the process above and create a biblio card for your source ( or if you prefer a data base on your computer, do that. See on-line source below) Remember to give the source a number.  Then when note taking on paper, record the title of the book on the page or first part, and the page number next to each bit of info for any quote.   Write down a subject title.

Frankly, this is sloppy.

For cyberpedias, get title of article, URL, time accessed and of course, look for those org, edu and gov at the end.

Some notetaking sites are at http://mashable.com/2008/08/19/online-note-taking-applications/ Personally, I don’t like storing my info this way. Hardcopy just seems safer for a variety of reasons, one of which is losing everythin if the computer crashes. But each his own.

You can create bibliographies at http://www.librarything.

My word count for the day is 40604 words.
palindrome
Note:  my computer has been messing up today, so all the gain was made last night after midnight.

What would you do if, one day, you got a chance to see into the future, and you saw that you were going to be killed within the next week by a fatal chain of events leading to one big accident?

Would you yell? Scream? Cry in frustration? Or would you do everything you could in an attempt to save yourself?

What if, on this very same day, you managed to find a chance to travel back in time to stop that chain of events from ever starting. Would you take that chance?

And, let’s just say that there’s a slight hitch with the aforementioned time-travelling. When you alter something, a rip occurs in space/time and tears open by about five centimetres, the amount doubling every time something is altered. Would you still keep going? Or would you stop and await your fate to be dished up to you, even with the knowledge that there was a slight chance that you could have saved yourself without tearing the universe down the middle?

This is the tale of just how selfish one man can get when faced with total annihilation, and the devastation that he alone can cause. It’s just a story idea, but I want to have a crack at it when I’m completely finished (or really need a break from) the novel I’m currently writing. I’m thinking it’s going to end up rather entertaining to write…

bi-polar teenage love roller coaster.

it’s a hard time for anyone, with love’s ties and binds.
tougher for us with our pendulum-like minds.
too hard to hold on to emotions like that.
keep them in check, or upside down wreck?

can’t even tell if i’m feeling elated, maybe because I’m so nauseated?

these feelings they push you and pull you and swing you around
`til your head is spinning and you can’t see the ground
and you don’t know how you were before
and what you’ll be after may forever remain a mystery.

the death of this, or the death of me?

i could do it, you know; don’t doubt the poet.
i believed in love, that you loved me.
the death of this thing will be a death, you’ll see.
how much do you think romeo loved juliet?

are you even getting me, yet?

knife under a pillow, car in a ditch.
see death on tv, and wish you could switch.
trade places with them; so long, and goodbye.
most would not notice, no tears in sad eyes.

leaving these thoughts for the one who knows why.

the knife at my throat, held by my hand or yours?
guns at the ready, on count of three.
i’ll do you, if you’ll do me.
or was that just the dream?

suicide pact, or solitudinous act?

i don’t think i care about the how or the where.
wake up, wake up.
find the knife, make the slice.
wonder what i’ve done, as the red from my throat drowns out the sun.

i’ve abandoned all chance to leave a mark on this world.

but i can’t find regret in the struggle for breath.
knowing the warmth on my breast is the signal to leave.
cast off this mortal coil with one final heave.
meet the soft edge of blackness, finally whole.

blissfully reduced to a poet’s soul.

Renee H. Gannon
11/25/2009

Written for my friend, Adam, who is on a downswing.

besides trying to spell it i mean.

the idea behind this blog is to write and let people discover it. have linked one person to one thing i wrote and also gave mention of the fact that it exists on my FB status… but the idea is not to advertise and draw everyone towards it.

but it’s hard cos i want people to read what i write. as if it matters or something. i think a lot of what i write matters and i think if and when people stumble across this it will matter to some of them and maybe one day to a lot of people. but the purpose of this was to get my thorts aligned and down on virtual paper.

i need to stick with that. this is predominantly for me.

anonynimity. hm i think that’s more it. actually not too sure but way too lazy to risk looking it up. not convinced, but more convinced than anonyminity for sure. definitely anonymousity if i was in charge though. yeessssss.

Douglas Adams famously said, “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sounds they make as they go by.”

Well, Douglas Adams managed to get away with that. For those of us in school, there’s not quite as much leeway.

However, I have come to embrace deadlines. They are immensely useful to me. Because I’m afraid that without them, I would never actually get anything done.

Let me give you an example. I have a research paper due tomorrow. It’s on a topic that I’ve wanted to write about for awhile, so I’ve been really excited to work on it. I would have wanted to write something on the topic at some point even without the impetus of school.

But it’s a huge project, this paper. There’s just so much I wanted to discuss. And with the deadline being tomorrow, I knew a few weeks ago that I should start thinking about it. So, I started doing the research, started reading pages upon pages and paper upon paper, and everything I read just gave me more things I wanted to write about.

This past Monday, I realized just how much work I was looking at. And the deadline was looming.

Now, had I not had that deadline, I would have continued to read at a leisurely pace, collect things to write about, etc. With the deadline, I didn’t have that option. On Monday, I spent a number of hours doing research, with very little break. I then started having trouble visualizing how exactly I would put all this information together, what kind of structure the paper would take. So I spent a few more hours trying to figure that out.

On Tuesday, between work and school and a desperate need for sleep that comes from having to get up at 4am to work, I only had a few hours to spare to start actually writing the paper. Which I took.

And now today. I started at 10am. It is currently 10pm. Let me be very clear: I am not done yet. I have not done anything else today.

In three days alone, I have spent 25 hours working on this paper. It will be done for class tomorrow. On time. Complete.

But if that deadline hadn’t been there, I can only imagine that it would be years before I actually finished the project. That is, if I finished it at all.

In my next life, I hope to be a dancer, a singer or an actor.  I harbor a secret desire to perform on stage – to inhabit someone else’s life and pour out my soul for crowds of strangers.  This desire is entirely irrational because I have absolutely ZERO musical ability.  I’m tone-deaf and my rhythm is nonexistent.  Plus I can’t even lie well, much less act.

Tonight my mom, my mother-in-law and I took Em to see Riverdance.  She loves all forms of dancing and, unlike her mother, may actually have some budding talent.  I’ve never seen feet move so fast in my life!  I longed, just once, for weightlessness.  To leap in the air and land without sound one minute and use my feet and my whole body as an instrument the next.  To hear the crackle of applause turn to a roar.  Take a bow.

On the drive home, I started wondering if there is some connection between my tiny, unspoken (until now) desire to perform and my much larger desire to write (specifically, to be published).  On the one hand, writing is a very private, solo pursuit.  One of the main reasons I started this blog, for example, is to get myself used to other people reading my writing.  Most of the time I write only for myself and self-consciousness and self-doubt prevents me from flinging my written words onto the unsuspecting soul wandering by.

On the other hand, if writers were not exhibitionists in some way, then getting published wouldn’t be so important, right?  Sure, there’s a legitimate need to earn a living and pay the bills, but we could do that by ghost writing or writing within a corporation or nonprofit (which I did for many years).  There is some other aspiration at play here.  What is it?

Sitting in the audience tonight I could feel the resonance of the music and dancing travel up my spinal column and leave behind jubilation.  Had I been watching a wrenching opera, more likely melancholy would be the resonant emotion.  Writing is the same way.  I can just as easily feel the vibration of a sentence as I can a piece of music.  Resonance occurs when the words touch a personal truth.  In my current book, Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott, she describes her fear of flying and turbulence this way:  “My heart thumped around my chest like a tennis shoe in the dryer.”  When I read that sentence, I practically shouted, “YES!  YES, that is EXACTLY what it feels like!!”  I felt vindicated, somehow, that there is another person intimately acquainted with that fear and who gave it expression.

Writers, like the dancers, want to connect.  We want to put our work on a stage in the hope that someone’s life, however momentarily, might be improved by the experience.  There is no doubt also a wee bit of, “Hey, look at me!  Over here!”  Mostly though, I think it’s part of the human need to reach out.  We stomp out our sentences and pirouette through paragraphs to choreograph a story in the hope of reaching someone, anyone – perhaps even ourselves.  Then a small piece of the ravages of our minds can be left as a legacy before we take our final bows.

]]> http://kevinnorberg.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/nanowrimo-is-a-recipe-for-success-50000-words-in-25-days/ Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:46:27 +0000 kevinnorberg http://kevinnorberg.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/nanowrimo-is-a-recipe-for-success-50000-words-in-25-days/

NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month (November) and the goal is one novel of 50,000 words in 30 days.

Thanks to NaNoWriMo — I just passed 50,000 words in 25 days! 50,672, so far.

Tevye and The Streets of Gold (the sequel to Fiddler On the Roof) is well on its way to a becoming a finished First Draft.  I’ll be assembling my submission kit package this weekend to set about finding an agent and a publisher.

A novel — and the sequel to Fiddler On the Roof

My novel’s been keeping warm on the back burner for some time now — 10 years, to be exact.  Combine three years of research, slowly stir in one year of story development mixed with the Dramatica Pro software treatment, knead together and let simmer with procrastination for six years and you have the recipe for — um, well… a 10-year outline!

But… mix in one month of NaNoWriMo and you have a Recipe for Success!!

It’s Day 25 and I just surpassed the 50,000 word milestone!

Judging by where I am in the story, I’m somewhere between 40% and 60% finished… my completed novel should weigh in at 75,000 to 125,000 words.   Which means I’ll still be writing three to four weeks from now (late December 2009).  But the good news is this: my First draft is pretty solid, so there should only be minimal editing/re-writing to get to a completed manuscript.

Some of you who have been following this process know I’ve been planning a three-pronged approach:

1. write the novel — Tevye and The Streets of Gold.

2. write and perform a solo stage presentation — Tevye! The One-Man Show.

3. write and produce the fully-staged musical — Fiddler in America.

I’m going to be in pre-production for the one-man show while I’m in the process of finding an agent and a publisher for the book.  I plan to begin performing this show this winter in smaller venues here in the Twin Cities and beyond.

Kevin Norberg as Tevye — the world's most famous Milkman!

But once I locate a publisher and begin negotiating a contract, the goal is to release a national tour of the one-man show to coincide with the publication of the novel.  We’ll map out thirty cities or so for the solo performance in larger venue theaters.  And I’ll be developing and producing a multi-media presentation to complement and accompany the one-man performance.  We’ll use multiple screens with stills, graphics and images including panoramas of streets scenes, city skylines and set backdrops to visually enhance the one-man performance and make it into an event!

Ideally,  the smaller venue performances will take place in the winter, spring and summer of 2010, while the larger venue production of Tevye The One-Man Show will roll out with the publishing of the novel in the Fall of 2010.

The third phase will then be to complete the script and compose/arrange the music for the fully-staged musical FIddler in America for Fall 2011 in a regional theater somewhere.

So there’s my battle plan for The Tevye Project.  You can read more about the entire project here:  http://www.TheTevyeProject.com

and on the novel and NaNoWriMo here: http://www.nanowrimo.org///eng/user/553371

Tevye! The One-Man Show poster

By the way, some interesting things happened along the way on my writers journey… my characters surprised me by some of their actions!

I had a pretty complete outline for the main plot points and sub-plots, the characters involved,  etc..  But once I turned the characters loose and they began to interact with one another on their own, they did some unexpected things.

One sequence involved Tevye’s youngest daughter, Bielke, who meets a rich, Uptown bachelor.  I had already sketched out where their meeting would take place.  But she and another character did something so unexpected that it completely changed the way her romantic interest meets her and reacts to her.  It was totally appropriate to her character and to the story.  But it wasn’t something I even remotely considered when plotting the story.  Now my novel is many times the richer because of what she did and how he reacts to it.

Three benefits resulted from this unexpected occurrence:

1. The reader is surprised by what happens, because the characters themselves are surprised by their own actions;

2. The characters become richer and deeper, more three-dimensional, as  a result; and

3. Because the characters acted unpredictably, the reader moves on with the story not knowing what to expect next!

Very cool!

I’ve gotten to the point in writing that I can’t wait for the next scene to unfold, because I, myself, can’t be sure what the characters in my novel are going to say, nor do I know everything they’re going to do until I put them together, turn them loose, and begin writing what happens!

This being my first novel, I didn’t know that would happen.  It’s made the process of writing so worthwhile and the journey thrilling!  I guess if the novel becomes a “page-turner” for the author, then maybe it has a better chance of being “unputdownable” for the reader, as well!

So, enough celebrating the 50k hurdle.  On with the next 50k!!…

—Kevin Norberg

author, Tevye and the Streets of Gold / Fiddler in America

The film adaptation of The Road opens this weekend, Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic silliness wherein women are self-proclaimed whores to the night, and the men are brave and true. The book has been the source of many a genre war: proof that literary fiction is at a loss for ideas, ripping off previous but lesser known genre novels, and lapping up critical acclaim, while relying on sonorous prose and kiddy pool depth to hold lowly Sci-Fi’s face in drink.

When it comes to The Road and it’s misogynist idiocy, I couldn’t agree more. There’s the “Woman,” i.e. the bad mother, who kills herself – a sensible decision in this case – but before doing so spends two pages calling herself a whore: “You can think of me as a faithless slut if you like. I’ve taken a new lover. He can give me what you cannot. . Because I am done with my whorish heart and I have been for a long time.

The book is also an absurdly easy read. I’m no defender of difficulty for difficulty’s sake, but once you realize there aren’t any actual ideas behind the chest beating, smoked limbs, and miraculous morels, you should rush out to read Canticle for Leibowitz or Parable of the Sower.

The Road, however, is more than a sign that taste is often a matter of conformity and that the genre wars are still in full swing. Forget about climate change, meteor fears or that passé Nuke annihilation. The book is less about the archetypal father figure than an archetypal helicopter parent. Just look at the guy, sensitively and slavishly hovering over his child, lovingly scrounging for that Pepsi, hacking up his lungs in bad weather rather than spending a few extra days in that food-stocked bomb shelter, and more importantly shielding his son from brutality after brutality, despite the fact that the world is pretty much frakked from here on out. If the “Man” really wants his child to survive, then wouldn’t it be better to own up to it all?

And then there’s the pesky reality that millions of children in less cushy areas of the world do not enjoy such assiduous parenting in the form of covered eyes and stories about “carrying the fire.” They, much like kids in those generations muckraked by Dickens, pretty much live day to day in a living hell, working their butts off with out the luxury of protecting their precious psyches.
Only someone as naïve and jittery as a helicopter parent, who lives in a gated fortress, free from the terrors of the working class and poor — albeit most likely terrorized by debtors — would believe this tripe.
“What you put in your head is there forever,” says McCarthy. No, it isn’t.
But someone who believes that test scores and college resumes count for everything, and that rote learning and a prestigious degree mean one is “educated” certainly believe that the verity of this pop psyche truism. The ultimate faux suburbanite Donald Draper describes the reality much better, and yes once again, TV trumps literary fiction: “It will amaze you how much it didn’t happen.”
It’s really not surprising that The Road has claimed success. It’s a fake reality check for those who are touched by the false nobility of protecting children from the increasingly obvious fact that our society, economy, education system, not to mention that pesky climate, are in dire need of a reality check. And despite grand proclamations to the contrary, McCarthy’s book isn’t one.
It’s a fantasy, hard to stomach and emotionally wrought for some, but a fantasy nonetheless that we will somehow retain our humanity when confronted with the worst of all worlds, and damning evidence that many have given up already.

When you hear the term helicopter parent, it might be best to avoid envisioning some over protective parent. Helicopters after all, are a means of escape.

Watch any pre-Road apocalypse film. You’ll see.

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