That Slippery Green Slope...

I'm blogging over at A Good Blog is Hard to Find today. Come on over.

Several years ago, I started faithfully participating in my city's curbside recycling program. To my surprise that small step led to other earth-friendly choices, and now, although I don't own a Prius (yet), let's just say I haven't been this green since I tossed my cookies on a deep-sea fishing trip as a kid.

* I tore up my lawn.
* I grow vegetables in my front yard.
* I have a bat house in the back.
* The bumper sticker on my car says, "Compost Happens."
* I don't eat anything (much) with a face.
* I take my own reusable grocery bags to the store (plastic bags...never again!)

You, too, can be green, kids. Maybe even "person of interest" green. Here are four easy steps...
Read the full blog.

Nail Biter

At first I rejoiced! Ragged, chipped nails are IN!
(Mine are usually bitten, sporting tell-tale rinds of garden soil.)

From today's NY Times Style section:

Now there is another stylistic tic that would have been unthinkable on a proper lady in your Aunt Beatrice’s day. Over the last few years — since the era of the skull print scarf, let’s say, or the (metaphorical) rise of the Olsen twins — having streaked, chipped or just plain grotty nail polish no longer suggests drug addiction, manual labor or pure laziness. Like untied high-tops, thread-worn jeans and bedhead, it’s now part of a deliberate look.

But then I read further--it takes a lot of work to get the right "I'm so busy and important I don't have time to dart out to the mani for a touch-up today." AND-- you have to have that $5k handbag.

Oh well.

So Brave, Young, and Handsome

From the Charlotte Observer, my review of Leif Enger's novel:

A vigorous way to break writer's block

In ‘So Brave,' a forlorn writer finds adventure and inspiration out West

By Mindy Friddle

Special to the Observer

Robin Enger photo

Leif Enger, author of "So Brave, Young, and Handsome."

SO BRAVE, YOUNG, AND HANDSOME

By Leif Enger. Atlantic Monthly Press. 272 pages. $24.

“Authorship is not a trade,” Mark Twain once wrote. “It is an inspiration; its habitation is all out under the sky, and everywhere the winds are blowing and the sun is shining and the creatures of God are free.”

The American satirist might well have been describing the dilemma faced by Monte Becket, the narrator and failed writer in “So Brave, Young, and Handsome,” the second novel by Leif Enger. Becket is desperately casting about for an adventure to write about, and it isn't long until he finds one. Like his 2001 debut novel, “Peace Like a River,” Enger's follow-up begins in a small town in Minnesota before his characters soon hit the road.

When we first encounter Becket in 1915, he is determined to make a living pounding out tales of adventure. Alas, he tells us, his daily word count is anemic. (“Jack London sets down a thousand a day before breakfast,” he says, “How hard can it be?”)

By the time we meet him in “flat old Minnesota,” Becket is blocked and bereft, “sitting on the porch of my comfortable farmhouse, composing the flaccid middle of my seventh novel in five years.” Unfinished novels, that is.

Enter Glendon Hale, a mysterious boat maker in the twilight of his years, who lives down the river from Becket. Hale befriends Becket's son, charms his wife and persuades Becket to accompany him down Mexico way to find the wife Hale abandoned 20 years previously. The two men set off, but the sojourn turns rocky when Hale's train-robbing past comes to light, and he and Becket find themselves pursued by Charles Siringo, an odious bounty hunter whose eerie talent for finding fugitives is matched only by Hale's uncanny ability to slip through the fingers of the law.

Becket's languid days of porch-writing may be behind him; fortunately for us, he proves to be an appealing narrator in this picaresque tale of the American West.

Still, there's nothing like a villain to quicken a reader's pulse, and it is Siringo, his face “pale as smoke,” who breathes life into the pages of this story like a rattled-breath Darth Vader cowboy.

“I did glimpse the dark creature squatting behind the flatness of his eyes,” Becket says, while finding himself held captive by the ancient lawman who, upon awakening, “spat the wicked day to life.” Over a campfire, Siringo, a memoirist of some note, impresses Becket by effortlessly reciting the first chapter of his traumatic life story, advising Becket that in adventure writing, it is best to “just lay down events without floral arrangement.”

In the end, Becket will have his own harrowing experiences to mine, but thankfully, won't leave off his tender “floral arrangements” in the telling. And while there are dark events in this novel – broken necks, murdered trackers, flood and fire – the comic moments are never far behind.

“So Brave, Young, and Handsome” is an enthralling romp, appealing to fans of “Peace Like a River” – to anyone, that is, who loves a good story.

---

Mindy Friddle is author of the novels “The Garden Angel” (St. Martin's Press/Picador) and “Secret Keepers,” forthcoming from St. Martin's Press.

Is it writer's block or procrastination?

An article on Slate teases out the difference, touching on the no-show follow-ups of Ralph Ellison and Truman Capote:

Of course, given that procrastination carries the stigma of sloth and disorganization, it may seem uncharitable to ascribe the dithering disease to the blocked but feverishly ambitious writer—surely, if he weren't truly stuck, he wouldn't be finding new Facebook groups to join instead of composing his chef-d'oeuvre? On the other hand, creative-writing instructors often start class with a five-minute automatic-writing exercise for a good reason: There is always something to be written.

As I've mentioned before, I love what Richard Bausch once said in an interview about being blocked: "Lower your standards and keep on going."

Starting Out in the Evening

I read the novel, Starting Out in the Evening (by Brian Morton) last week, and saw the movie--on DVD-- the other night. I liked both, but, as happens when one sees the movie after reading the book, I was struck by just how different a screenplay is from a novel. Characterization runs deeply, quickly, in this novel, and of course the film has to convey all those nuanced details--flashback, intricate relationships--through the visual, and in dialogue, without a narrator, or access to the characters' inner thoughts. But I digress. Read it, see it. Here's an excerpt. Here's a clip from the movie.

I'm Batty

I guess my love for the only flying mammal started by reading Stellaluna by Janell Cannon to my daughter years ago. We even had the little stuffed animal Stellaluna that you could velcro around the bedpost. It's hard not to love this critter:

Lately, bats are having a hard time...they are endangered, and, according to this NY Times article, perishing from a mysterious cause biologists haven't identified. (You know, like the honey bees.)

Bat houses help. I put mine up a couple of months ago, and I'm waiting for the migrating bats to move in.

The National Organization for Bat Conservation has lots of info...like, did you know a bat house is either a "nursery" with females and young, or a "bachelor" house with males ( that would be a frat bat house?)

Also, according to the site: "Bats are not blind, and are very clean animals. They do not get caught in peoples’ hair or chew through the attic of your house. Bats will not interfere with feeding backyard birds, and they will not be disrupted by pets or children."

What Bats will do is pollinate (they are night pollinators) and eat a S*!@ load of mosquitoes. After all, bats are the primary predators of night-flying insects.

Okay, so I'll get off my bat box in a minutue, but first, even if you don't find these much maligned critters particulary appealing, know that bats play a vital role in maintaining the balance of nature:
"As consumers of vast numbers of pests, they rank among humanity’s most valuable allies. A single little brown bat can catch hundreds of mosquito-sized insects an hour, and a typical colony of big brown bats can protect local farmers from the costly attacks of 18 million root-worms each summer." So maybe my backyard neighbors are freaked out, but my bathouse is mounted on a 16-foot pole...here...away from trees (Bats don't like the houses on trees) and is facing southeast to take advantage of the morning sun.

I'm hoping I'll look up one day and see them snug like this:

Cover Story part 1

I need your help. I'm casting about for images and art and objects that capture the feel of Secret Keepers, my forthcoming novel. I'm no graphic artist...and I'm so happy to foist off--I mean delegate-- jacket design to the professionals. But my editor agrees that bringing along some ideas that evoke the novel is a splendid idea. For The Garden Angel, I helped track down the featured porch--and actually took the photo myself. I wanted something definitely UNpristine and forlorn and beautiful--sort of ruined finery. And so I emailed my humble jpg, and the true artists then worked their magic and designed around it.

This time, I'm attracted to vintage seed catalogs and botanicals. Secret Keepers is about the emergence of a swallowed-up lost garden--the legacy of a tragic planthunter.

I love this:



And also this--because of the landscape of the town:


And this:


Here is the album for more examples and larger views.

Vintage Botanical Illustrations, Prints, and Seed Catalogs
What do you think? Do tell.

The Jane Austen Book Club

After reading Karen Joy Fowler's novel The Jane Austen Book Club, I can see why this proved to be a breakout book for the author and popular with book clubs. It's witty--Fowler has a unique voice--and of course, it is (duh) about a book club.

Told in third person POV, we spend time in the mind of each character, who are all connected through the monthly meetings and discussions of Jane Austen. Very clever structure, too: the meetings often begin, briefly, in first person plural ("We really could not approve of someone who showed up with an obviously new book, of someone who had the complete novels on his lap when only Emma was under discussion. Whenever he first spoke, whatever he said, one of us would have to put him in his place"), before narrowing down to one character's point of view and backstory, told in "close" third person POV. Occasionally, a character addresses the group in an extended scene/flashback told in first-person POV ("I took up tap and ballet at Miss Olive's. I was the best dancer there, which didn't mean squat, but gave Mother ideas"...)
All of which provides a seamless, multifaceted look at this constellation of characters.

In this issue of Poets & Writers magazine: An informative, funny, and inspiring interview with Nat Sobel on agenting, editing, publishing, writing and Sobel Weber, "one of the top boutique literary agencies in New York City" :

"When you spend any amount of time with Sobel, talking about books and publishing, which now have been his lifeblood for almost fifty years, you are confronted with an obvious contradiction: He is also one of the most forward-thinking agents in the industry..."

Read the full interview here.

Recommended: The Great Man & A Blow Up Doll

Plucked from my towering TBR list: The Great Man, a novel (by Kate Christensen) I just finished and thoroughly enjoyed. Little in the way of exposition, and lots of dialogue--- strong dialogue. Here's an excerpt. Btw, The Great Man won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction.

Also, my Netflix queu is one shorter. Lars and the Real Girl arrived and we watched it tonight. The "real girl" is one of those blow-up sex dolls you can order over the internet. But it's not that kind of movie--it's PG-13 (but definitely for adults). Quirky--that overused adjective is useful here. Oddly fulfilling. A sort of modern-day Harvey. Well written, well acted, well done.Written by Nancy Oliver, of Six Feet Under fame (God, I miss that show. )

Doctorow Info

New York magazine, as part of its 40th anniversary issue, interviews E.L. Doctorow, author of Ragtime, one of my all-time favorite novels.

A short but intriguing Q&A. Regarding research, for example: "When you’re working well, you don’t do research. Whatever you need comes to you." Literally...
Read the full interview here.

Author to Author: Beanball

From my "Author to Author" column appearing this week in the Greenville Journal:

The Author: Gene Fehler
The Book: Beanball (Clarion Books)
The Events: Gene Fehler will sign copies of his new young adult book, Beanball, on April 12, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at Fiction Addiction, 3795 E. North St, Ste 9 and on April 19, at noon, at the Open Book, 110 S. Pleasantburg.


Gene Fehler has been in the writing game for years. The South Carolina poet has been published in more than 300 magazines, including The Nebraska Review and Saturday Evening Post. His work has appeared in children's publications such as Highlights, Guideposts for Kids, and Sports Illustrated for Kids. His poems have been read aloud on National Public Radio and HBO.

Now he’s hit one out of the park. The Seneca resident’s first young adult novel, Beanball, is drawing fans. “I don't know if it's because it's for a young adult audience or because it's been released by a major publisher (Clarion Books, a division of Houghton Mifflin), but I've already gotten much more response since its February release date than any of my other seven published books,” he said.

Although it is marketed to middle-school audiences and older, many reviewers have noted that a reader doesn't have to be a fan of either baseball or poetry—or a young adult—to enjoy Beanball. The novel’s unusual structure—free-verse monologues by 28 different voices—helps make it a thought-provoking and suspenseful read. The idea for the pivotal event in the novel, Fehler said, came from his own high school days. “One of my best high school friends had a promising baseball career as a pitcher that ended in college with an arm injury. I thought that would be a good conflict to base a novel on: how can a boy cope with the loss of his major league dreams? I decided to make the loss even more dramatic and sudden by having a high school center fielder (Luke ‘Wizard’ Wallace) struck in the face with a pitched ball and blinded in one eye.”

The wild pitch, or “beanball,” that shatters Luke’s skull changes his life. The injury also affects the lives of the 28 narrators—including Luke’s best friend, his girlfriend, family, teachers, teammates, and doctors. “I chose multiple narrators because I've always been fascinated by how in fiction the story changes depending on what character is telling it,” Fehler said. “I found the process really interesting, because I had become each of the narrators, to put myself into their mindset. I tried not to speak for them, but to let them talk and record what they were thinking and saying.”

Take, for example, the umpire:

It’s the worst sound I’ve ever heard
in all my years of umping.
Oh, I’ve heard plenty of pitches hit a helmet.
But this . . . this fastball, up and in
This one hit bone, right in the face.
Not even a scream or grunt from the kid.
He went down like he was shot.

The free verse format with multiple narrators, “let me introduce a number of sub-plots-- a teammate's feeling of guilt, an umpire's shock, a father's anger, a mother's questioning of her faith, a girlfriend's shallowness, a coach's bitterness, an opposing player's jealousy, a friend's loyalty,” Fehler said. A more conventional approach wouldn’t have made that possible, he said.

Critics have been kind. Kirkus, in just one of many glowing reviews praising Beanball, says of the novel: "Each voice maintains its individuality with all the voices combining seamlessly to tell a powerful story. In Fehler's debut novel, he succeeds at every level." On June 7, Fehler will be heading to the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, courtesy of his publisher, where the American Art Museum will be is hosting an event in which the Washington National major league baseball team will be reading to children and young adults. Fehler will be on hand to sign copies of Beanball.

But the business of promotion hasn’t distracted Fehler from working on more books for children and young adults, “some in verse, some in free verse and some in traditional prose fiction.” While his previous six books were published by four different publishing houses without the help of an agent, after Simon & Schuster published Goblin Giggles (2005), Fehler said he found an agent. She sold Beanball within a few months. The same publisher also bought Change-Up, an illustrated book of baseball poems for kids, illustrated by Donald Wu, forthcoming in 2008 or early 2009. “As a writer, one can't spend time waiting for publishers to respond,” he said. “The only thing to do is keep writing and try to make each book better than the one before.”

And enjoy a well-earned winning season.