Valentine's Day Surprise: All This Talk of Love

When I started Writing is Tricky I never considered that it would be anything more than my writings (or snippets thereof), rants, writing tips, and nifty little bits of our universe from travel and biology to Dai Vernon and to all things tricky.   But one pleasant surprise of starting this blog is that I find more and more often my posts turn into a celebration of the writers I know and love, whom I consider some of my closest friends

—no scratch that

—closest family members, not of blood but of passion for writing.  I will continue to post the mishmash of other topics, but I find that this year has been a particularly great year for those said writers, and today is no exception.

And what better day than Valentine's Day to have All this Talk of Love about Chris Castellani's newest novel.

All This Talk of Love display at Porter Square Books

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend the book launch and first reading of Chris Castellani’s third novel All this Talk of Love (ATToL) at Porter Square Books in Cambridge.  ATToL is a trilogy, unlike any other that I have read, chronicling the lives of an Italian family, the Grasso family, from its ancestral home in Italy just prior to World-War II, its emigration from Italy to the Untied States, and finally, in present day coming full-circle...an unlikely family vacation back to Italy.

The reading itself was a full house, over 150 in attendance--standing room only folks--and wow, hearing Chris read, it was well worth the cramped quarters.

Fans waited patiently for 2+ hours to have their copy

of ATToL signed

Chris' writing style is sharp, polished, and forms a hypnotic cadence that quickly allowed the audience to fall into the world of the Grasso family-- their ambitions, hopes, and fears.

It was laugh out loud funny yet formed gooseflesh in its poignancy.

And at the heart of all this?

What it means to be family.

The reading was, in a word this writer-and-magician does not often use--spellbinding.  I've seen few readings draw in an audience as wholly as ATToL.

"It's like living with a feral animal" Chris describing what 

it must be like to be the spouse of a writer

You should definitely check Chris out (Check the links below. He may even be coming to a town near you!)

http://www.christophercastellani.com/

http://www.christophercastellani.com/christopher-castellani-events.html

Some of Chris' fan base, including yours truly.

Can you spot him?

Christopher Castellani is the son of Italian immigrants and a native of Wilmington, Delaware. He resides in Boston, where he is the artistic director of Grub Street, one of the country's leading non-profit creative writing centers. He is the author of two previous critically-acclaimed novels, A Kiss from Maddalena (Algonquin Books, 2003)—winner of the Massachusetts Book Award in 2004—and The Saint of Lost Things (Algonquin Books, 2005), a BookSense (IndieBound) Notable Book that was long-listed for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2006.

In addition to his work with Grub Street, Christopher is on the faculty of the Warren Wilson MFA program and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Christopher was educated at Swarthmore College, received his Masters in English Literature from Tufts University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Boston University.

2010 Book List

One of my goals for the last year had been to increase the time I spent reading.  This year I clocked 22 books in all--19 fiction and 3 nonfiction.

I tried to hit a variety of both literary and popular fiction, trying to figure out what made each novel fall into that particular column.  As I analyzed them, a quote from Stephen King--perhaps it's because I returned to several of his works this year, after years away from them (my older brother's ratty copy of Cujo was one of the first novels I read as a teen)--kept coming to mind.

King says, "...there are two types of novelists...those who are bound for the more literary or 'serious' side of the job examine every possible subject in light of this question: What would writing this sort of story mean to me?  Those whose...writing of popular novels are apt to ask a very different one: What would writing this sort of story mean to others?  The 'serious' novelist is looking for answers and keys to the self; the 'popular' novelist is looking for an audience."

With this lens, each novel seemed to fit into its "appropriate" category.  And for me the  books that stuck with after reading and still creep into my head out of the blue, seemed to answer, or at least address, both questions.  Bag of Bones, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, and The Road were a few who successfully pulled this off.

One of the other treats for me this year was seeing how some writers are novelists and some are storytellers.  It's one of those distinctions that makes all the difference to the feel of the story.  With an industry where word counts matter, it was nice to see both types on the shelves.

Lastly, every year I try to take a look at fantasy fiction's past to better appreciate where it is today.  I do this partly because my first manuscript is considered fantasy and partly because I'm amazed with how well fantasy (and science fiction) can be at social commentary.  It's like a snapshot of people's beliefs (or ignorance) is at particular point in time.

Since modern fantasy started in children's literature, this year I chose George Macdonald's The Princess and the Goblin.  According to scholar Michael D. C. Drout, Princess is one of the earliest examples where the protagonists in a children's book face the very real threat of death.  As you read, this becomes obvious.  It definitely is a child's fairy-tale, but unlike Snow White or The Wizard of OZ (which I read last year), where it is pretty clear the characters will be in a better place at the end of their adventure, we don't know if the happy ending is coming in Princess.  In fact as you read, it seems very likely that the the bad-ass with the midnight cloak and bone-colored scythe will be the only one smilingly at the end.

I won't spoil the end, and children's literature is not for everyone, but for a kid's book, I dug it.

So without further adieu, here it is: the 2010 Book list list.  I did rate them 1-5 stars when I read them, but I omitted the ranking from this entry.  If people are interested, I could add them back.

January

• The Star Rover--Jack London
• Your Heart Belongs to Me--Dean Koontz
• Fahrenheit 451--Ray Bradbury
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime--Mark Haddon

February

• Neverwhere--Neil Gaiman

March

• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius--Dave Eggers
• The Art of Happiness--Dalai Lama, Howard C. Cutler

April

• Last Things--David Searcy
• Heartsick--Chelsea Cain
• Princess and the Goblin-George Macdonald

May

• None--apparently it was a slow reading month

June

• Cemetery Dance--Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
• The Road--Cormac McCarthy

July

• Manhood for Amateurs--Michael Chabon

August

• InsideOut--Maria Snyder
• WWZ--Max Brooks
• The Bone Garden--Tess Gerritsen
• The ABC Murders--Agatha Christie

September

• Was a slow reader and didn't finish anything this month

October

• Bag of Bones--Stephen King
• Seize the Night--Dean Koontz

November

• American Gods--Neil Gaiman

December

• The Gunslinger (Dark Tower Book One)--Stephen King
• The Drawing of the Three (Dark Tower Book Two)--Stephen King

Atypical Book Review: The Star Rover, Jack London AND how it teaches writing style

I read "a lot" this year--more than I usually can read in a year.  Last fall, I sold my car and started taking public transportation to work, and I've found that sometimes the thing I look forward to most after a long day in the office is the commute home.

And it's certainly given me some insights as to who I am as a writer and my writing style.  So for the first book, I thought to review here, I've picked The Star Rover written by Jack London and published in 1915, which taught me that writing style is more than word choice.

The Star Rover is perhaps one of the least known, "out-of-character" books by Jack London.  It's not something you'd expect to see from the person who wrote White Fang and Call of the Wild, at least on the surface.  It is a story of a university professor on death row for murder, who finds himself in a state of solitary confinement, bound in something similar to what we'd consider a straitjacket.  To escape the confines, he trains his mind to convince his body that it is dead, and as a result, his mind is able to leave his body and travel into his past lives.  These previous lives are framed together through the prison story.

The writing itself felt dense, and it took me the better part of a month to get through it.  The writing style seemed to be much more complicated than the directness of the other works I read by him ("To Build a Fire" comes to mind).  Despite the denseness, the writing itself was beautiful.  London was able to create well developed worlds in a tight space, and was able to keep me wondering where he was leading me.

Despite the different feel to sentence structure and introducing the element of astral projection, The Star Rover felt like Jack London.  Each tale, including the main story--the prison story--is filled with adventure, suspense, hope, despair, and ultimately death--all elements you find in London's other works...and this intrigued me...

It intrigued me because, until I read The Star Rover, my interpretation of style was more closely defined by the arrangement of words an author chooses.  e.e. cummuings plays around with capitalization, Cormac McCarthy does not use quotation marks for dialogue or an apostrophe for words like "don't."  What The Star Rover taught me as an "early in his career writer" is that style is also determined not only by words but also by the big picture, those global, recurring themes, that an author chooses to explore in writing.

Take Stephen King, for example--most people consider him a horror writer, but the most of his stories--and all of the ones that resonate with me and stay with me long after I finish--explore the concept of love.

In summation, as a writer, we have a style--and getting to learn that style is part of the fun of writing.  When looking for your own style, don't be locked into thinking "my audience expects me to write a certain way."  Tell the story, but remember to be true to it.  Something about it has captured your interest, and it's most likely one of those global themes and your perception of those themes, that makes it your style, that makes it your.