Just joined MetaxuCaf?.  Never done anything like this before, but here goes...I’m a British novelist and would love to communicate with other writers.

Welcome Clare and thanks for getting things started around here.

(And just so everyone knows: Clare’s books are FANTASTIC.)

Thank you very much Ms Bond - your w?nderbar blog is how I got on here...shaken and stirred all the way…
Since this thread is about what we’re writing and reading I’ll start off with that.  I am attempting to write a novel based in Patagonia, and have been doing so for the last eighteen months (it is not going well) and I am reading THE AMERICAN BOY (or AN UNPARDONABLE CRIME) by Andrew Taylor which is fascinating.  It is a ficitionalised adventure concerning Edgar Allen Poe as a boy.  The writing is skilled and absorbing - makes the outside world disappear for a while.

The American Boy sounds excellent. I did a ton of research on Poe a few years ago and found him a fascinating character. The most surprising thing to me was that he had a pretty wide streak of jerk in him; he seems like he would have been a frustrating person to know. I suppose in my romanticized, holdover-teenage view of him, he was just this tragic, drunken, melancholy genius, which had I known then what I know now might have tipped me off on the jerkiness.

Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia is one of my favorite books of all time. I can sympathize with the not going well, though my book finally seems to be in the home stretch—I’ve now cut 30,000 words and have been working on it more or less steadily for two and a half years (or a smidge more) and, most depressing of all, it’s a young adult novel so it’s only slightly more than 50,000 words now. Anyway… very soon I have to dive back into research on the Roanoke book (also YA) and get back into that groove.

I’m a reader of all things, writer of fiction and playing around with flashmedia after taking some classes on it and finding it intriguing.  Just finished Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude and DeLillo’s The Body Artist and am halfway through Atwood’s Alias Grace along with catching up on the lit journals that are piling up on my floor.

Let’s see - I’m reading Michael Winter’s The Big Why a novel about Rockwell Kent in Newfoundland that is due out in Jan and very very compelling. I’m also going to start on a new YA novel tonight as I just finished reading my latest assignment from Booklist and can do that review and move on to the always fun “To Be Read Pile”.

I’m writing two things - a YA novel that is more urban fantasy then anything else and involves some research into the history of dragons. (Curious?!) I also just got back my book on Alaska commerical flying. This time it came from an interested editor who asked (as several agents have asked) that I consider making it nonfiction. As I explained to everyone else, that would involve my husband and all of my friends never speaking to me again as the threat that someone might think it was one of them who busted the aviation regulations in a scenario I wrote about is too great. She did have a few suggestions as to how to beef it up and make it a better novel if I choose to stay that route, so I’m trying to do that. I’m looking for a zen-like space to reach in my brain over this book. It is good, it is how it was for us up there and it is relevant. I just have to make someone else in the world believe that as well.

Such fun!

And thanks to Gwenda for pointing me in the direction of this site as well!

Colleen - 01 December 2005 02:46 PM

Let’s see - I’m reading Michael Winter’s The Big Why a novel about Rockwell Kent in Newfoundland that is due out in Jan and very very compelling.

Ooh!  Thanks for the info--it sounds fascinating!

Colleen - 01 December 2005 02:46 PM

I’m writing two things - a YA novel that is more urban fantasy then anything else and involves some research into the history of dragons. (Curious?!) I also just got back my book on Alaska commerical flying. This time it came from an interested editor who asked (as several agents have asked) that I consider making it nonfiction. As I explained to everyone else, that would involve my husband and all of my friends never speaking to me again as the threat that someone might think it was one of them who busted the aviation regulations in a scenario I wrote about is too great. She did have a few suggestions as to how to beef it up and make it a better novel if I choose to stay that route, so I’m trying to do that. I’m looking for a zen-like space to reach in my brain over this book. It is good, it is how it was for us up there and it is relevant. I just have to make someone else in the world believe that as well.

Both of these sound totally fascinating to me, Colleen, and I’m sure you’ll find the right home for the Alaska book eventually. Have you read anything amazing in your dragon research? (Neither here nor there but: Did you read Jo Walton’s novel of manners about dragons that came out last year? I haven’t yet, but have heard really wonderful things.)

You know what is really blowing my mind about dragons? The fact that they were everywhere, and I mean everywhere. I have books on dragon stories in the Far East, in Europe in Native America, all over. And while everyone keeps saying that they could not have existed it is odd (and all the authors I’ve read agree) that they kept showing up in the oral traditions and artwork of very old and distant human cultures.

Makes you wonder doesn’t it?

I’ll get down some titles of the more interesting books for you but I haven’t read Jo’s book. Honestly, my butt is being kicked by this book on Fallingwater right now that I am determined to finish this year. The “To be read pile” will be conquered! ha!

Thanks for the kind words on both my book projects though Gwenda. My little Alaskan heart loves hearing positive words about the flying book. How can you not publish a book that has a story about the Dead Body Contract? Completely true and completely insane. My Company was the low bidder on the contract to fly dead bodies into Fairbanks for transfer for autopsies.

You just know the whole time I was working there I was planning to write about it later. Who could resist?!

Colleen,

I just discovered Michael Winter’s blog.  Thought you might find it interesting (if you haven’t already discovered it yourself).

Colleen - 02 December 2005 02:49 AM

How can you not publish a book that has a story about the Dead Body Contract? Completely true and completely insane. My Company was the low bidder on the contract to fly dead bodies into Fairbanks for transfer for autopsies.

Sounds like an updated Gogol’s Dead Souls!

Thanks amcorrea - I didn’t know about the blog. I have mentioned a bit about Michael’s book in my blog and he emailed me the other day, which was cool. I’m glad he was able to discover how much I’m enjoying his work. It’s hard not to jump on the internet and see what happened to Kent in real life though - kind of like jumping to the end of the book but without the same amount of guilt! ha! I’m resisting so far.

Bud - it was insane having the dead body contract. I never realized how much someone dead relative is treated like freight until I had that job. It was twisted beyond words doing that contract (and arguing with the pilots and the cargo guys about who had to do what). There are so many aspects of that job that seem surreal now. I mean really - I must have missed the day in college when they said I would be arguing over who had to hose the spilled guts out of an airplane.

I just finished reading a young adult western, The Misadventures of Maude March - it’s great and I highly recommend it!

Sounds interesting! We should have a place to post here for members to mention when their books are published.

Gwenda:  Thanks for your post - that makes me feel better - to know I’m not alone.  The only writers I know seem to produce books really quickly - one a year, regular as clockwork.  People keep asking me what I’m working on now and I can see their faces fall when I tell them it is still the Patagonia book.  Glad you’re in the home stretch - that is a good place to be, I think. 

Colleen:? Rockwell Kent sounds like quite a man...I?d never heard of him until I happened to innocently pick out an article he’d written in the New York Times to finish my first adult novel - and my American editor was excited that Rockwell Kent knew my character.  He is little known in the UK.  Good luck with the novel - sounds really unusual - the sort of thing I’d love to read.