The Reading Life
http://www.amazon.com/Sirens-Secret-Harlequin-Nocturne-Herbert/dp/0373885822/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368806626&sr=1-9&keywords=siren%27s+secret
https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-heartmurmurs-1146731-228.html
Back of mermaid mirror from my friend, Sherrie Morgan
“Are mermaids real? No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found.”
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, July 2102This statement, by a tax-funded government agency no less, was issued in response to a ‘mocumentary’ by The Animal Plant Network. Their show, Mermaids: The Body Found, was the most successful one in its history and has been rebroadcast many times.
Fascination with mermaids has endured from ancient civilizations. Stone Age cave paintings from 30,000 years ago are the oldest known depiction of magical creatures with female torsos and fish-like trunks. Most ancient cultures, especially those by the sea, had stories and drawings of female water goddesses and mermaids. The belief spanned all parts of the globe from Japan, the Mediterranean, India, Africa and Inuit and Polynesian cultures. According to writer Doreen Virtue in her book Mermaids 101, even Christianity’s Mother Mary is known as the “Star of the Sea” and has a connection to water.
Which led me to wonder: why the popularity of mermaids and not mermen?
After researching, the reason that makes the most sense to me is because water symbolically represents the feminine. Water symbolizes deep emotions, intuition and the subconscious.
The ocean can be calm and peaceful or it may unpredictably erupt into crashing tsunamis. As creatures of the sea, mermaids were seen as powerful, alluring sirens that sailors were in danger of becoming enchanted by, just as they were at the mercy of Mother Nature.
Fascination with mermaid mythology has returned and in March, 2012 USA Today reported that the publishing industry will soon be releasing a large number of books about mermaids, particularly in the Young Adult category. The article speculated that ‘Mermaids might be the New Vampires’.
I cannot wait to read each and every one of the new books. My own book with mermaid characters, Siren’s Secret, will be out in November. I’ve always loved the ocean and the possibility of magic—small wonder I dreamed of being a mermaid as a little girl.
Related to mermaids is the mythology of the lost undersea kingdom of Atlantis. Again, the notion of aquatic beings with an advanced civilization fills me with a sense of awed fascination. It’s so much fun to wonder what if and let my imagination roam. Perhaps that will be another book one day.
Does the idea of mermaids intrigue you? Why? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Dreaming of mermaids,
Debbie Herbert
My mermaid mirror, thank you, Sherrie!
|
The Great Gatsby – Life is But a Dream
My favorite line from The Great Gatsby is: “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” It is of course one of the most famous lines. Evoking ephemeral, romantic images is one of Fitzgerald’s great gifts to literature.
As you may know, I am an American Literature teacher and it is Gatsby season. In five days the new movie comes out. My students are so worked up over this novel. But this novel has, this year, come full circle for me. After ten years of teaching it, I feel I have a deeper understanding of the work, the author, and its place in the canon because of its relevancy across generations.
Over the past year, I read The Paris Wife, Tender is the Night, and most recently, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald. And what I come away from it all with is that truth is as diaphanous as dreams. What is truth? Can there be one truth? Or is truth different for different people? Can a truth change?
Scott was my first literary love. And as I have read and taught Fitzgerald’s works, though I often ask my students to examine the novel through a feminist lens for at least one lesson, I have always laughed at his portrayal of women. How absurd they are. Daisy is vapid, Myrtle tragically trashy, Jordan haughty. All of them careless. The men treat them as objects and yet are so utterly wounded by the ultimate betrayals and downfalls of these women, and we somehow end up feeling bad for them. The men. Especially Gatsby.
Like Daisy and Myrtle, I had always believed it was Zelda who had ruined Scott, or at least had been the unstable one. Scott Fitzgerald was to me Jay Gatsby, a sad romantic whose dreams were never quite as real as he strove for them to be, mostly due to alcohol and his wife’s need for a high life style he could barely provide. Interestingly, in Z, Therese Anne Fowler takes the opposite argument. In her notes, she acknowledges that there are two camps. One that claims Zelda ruined Scott (fueled mostly by the tales of Ernest Hemingway who infamously believed Zelda was jealous of Scott and trying to undermine his work). Then there is the camp that believes it was the other way around, and if anything it was Hemingway for all his over the top manliness that was jealous of Zelda’s relationship with her husband.
Could the truth I had been fed for so many years by the male literary establishment, be so misconstrued? Granted the two feminist point of view books are fiction. But so is Tender is the Night. So is The Great Gatsby. So is For Whom the Bell Tolls. Both Scott and Hemingway unapologetically used the very real events and conversations of their lives the people they knew in their writing, sometimes barely fictionalizing it at all. So, where does the line between fiction and truth lie? Is there even such a thing?
I say there is no such thing as truth. Truth is a fabrication. All of life is a story, one we write for ourselves and one others write with us in it. What is real to one person, might not even exist for another. What an individual imagines can be their whole world, made true only by their undying belief. Could Daisy love Tom and Gatsby both? Could both Zelda’s story and Scott be true? Can our dreams be as true as our realities? And if we die still believing in our own truth, who is to say we anything less than what we imagined?
Posted by Ariel Swan at 5:22 PM No comments:
Do Not Open ANY emails from contact@aponteliterary.com!!! Our email has been hijacked!
Our Love Affair with All Things Dystopian
29 Monday Apr 2013
Judging by the number of dystopian and apocalyptic movies hitting theaters, interest in the genre continues to hit new highs. I’ve been a fan of the genre for many years, starting with the incomparable H.G. Wells, Robert A. Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke. Stephen King’s, The Stand, is one of my top ten of all time. It got me to wondering what’s fueling this trend, especially with YA books. A quick search of articles that weighed in on the subject yielded a plethora of opinion and commentary, thanks in part to the movie, Hunger Games, based on Suzanne Collin’s YA story. I thought I’d reference a few that caught my eye, and worth revisiting.
First, let’s make sure we all understand the definition of dystopia. Webster’s Dictionary online defines Dystopia as, “an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives.” Wikipedia describes it as, “an often futuristic society that has degraded into a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian.” Wikipedia cites the first notable dystopian novel as Jack London’s Iron Heel, which chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. I have a few friends who think we’re already there. Most people are more familiar with George Orwell’s, 1984, Aldoux Huxley’s, Brave New World, and H.G. Wells, The Time Machine. Wells had a fear of how quick men were willing to apply new technologies to war, which inspired (or scared) him to include dystopian issues in most of his novels.
Rachel Ives, examines what characteristics dystopian novels have in common and why they sell, in her 2010 article, Exploring Dystopia: The Rise of Dystopian Fiction. She quotes, “Dystopian novels deal with real issues that we face everyday, and turn them into a dire prediction of what could happen to society as we know it, if we don’t change our ways.” She discusses the consequences of the repressive control of a government, the break-down of a government, war and natural disaster, all while using the literary device of the questioning protagonist to explore these ideas. Her top-ten list of great dystopian authors closely resembles mine.
Author Beth Revis posted an article on why the trend caught on with YA. “YA is a genre about character-focused stories with fast, exciting plots. Dystopian literature lends itself perfectly to that mold — when the world ends, we don’t care so much about the how of the end as we do about the who: who survived, and how, and why. Dystopian literature has a natural focus on the characters and their survival, and what makes them continue in a world so bleak. The great thing about dystopian literature, especially in the young adult range is that it’s not about the end of the world. It’s about living past it, overcoming it. It’s about humanity being stronger than inhumanity. It’s about triumph despite the odds.”
Janie Slater offered four reasons Why Teens Love and Need Dystopian Literature, and why the genre delivers a teen’s need for heroes.
It provides a healthy outlet for exploring socially unacceptable topics within our own spheres and communities.
It helps us see new, different perspectives than we’re capable of from our own limited experience.
It helps us sort out and express feelings and emotions, providing cathartic release and relief.
It inspires us with often courageous, defiant (in a healthy way), quirky & unique protagonists (main characters) who overcome barriers and limitations.
A more recent and intriguing article comes from Dr. Harold Koplewicz, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist; President, Child Mind Institute, where he digs into the reasons Why Kids Love Disaster, Distress, and Dystopia. “The truth — is that these books strike a nerve with teenagers because of the intense developmental and social changes they’re experiencing. Between 12 and 18, the ages broadly classified as YA, everything is changing all the time — socially, physically, sexually. In reading about worlds and lives that are literally falling apart, kids are reading about emotions that are as intense as their own. Dr. Koplewicz references Scott Westerfield’s novel, The Uglies, in which Westerfield states the success of the novel is partly because high school is dystopia. Dystopian novels may be set in the future, but as far as the teenagers reading them are concerned, they are happening now.
Eric Feig of Lionsgate, the studio behind Hunger Games, says “young-adult literature is a genre that takes place at a specific time in your life when everything seems to be high stakes. If you set stories in different worlds with unique protagonists and an element of wish fulfillment, I don’t think people will ever be tired of it.”
Commentary is long and varied. One commenter said dystopian novels give us a sense of warning. A Baptist minister suggested the reemergence of dystopia is because we often think the past was better than it really was and the future can never be as bright. Blogger Parker Peevyhouse cited that teachers love to use dystopian novels in the classroom because they want to ready kids for society and to prepare them to inherit the power they will soon gain to change it.
In my youth, I never analyzed the reasons why I liked dystopia. I just liked disappearing into a world gone mad and imagined myself in it. The novel I’m working on explores the remnants of a society culled to less than 5% of its original population by a heterogenetic virus that sterilizes survivors and sets the stage for mankind’s extinction. I’m finding it a fun ride, and hope to share it with you in the near future. In the meantime, I’d be curious to hear what you think drives our love affair with dystopia.
http://arielswan.blogspot.com/2013/04/better-than-ever-big-news.html
Goodreads Interview: The Making of Satisfaction
Tiffany Hawk, friend and author, tagged me for this interview. Tiffany’s novel,
Love Me Anyway (Thomas Dunne Books), available at bookstores everywhere on May 7th, is an exciting coming-of-age story about love, family, and life at 35,000 feet.
Love Me Anyway is a compelling depiction of young women negotiating the world around them as they try to seek a balance between their challenging and lonely careers as flight attendants and their complicated personal relationships.
What is your working title of your book (or story)?
Satisfaction
Where did the idea for the book come from?
I got the idea when I was buying tickets for a Rolling Stones concert in Las Vegas. While on the Ticketmaster website, I wondered, what if I clicked the “Purchase” button for every single city and went on the road with the Rolling Stones.
What genre does your book fall under?
Upmarket Women’s Fiction. Satisfaction follows two women as they search for independence on the road and meaning through the metaphors of the Rolling Stones’ music. Ginny and Brenda, like many of the characters in women’s fiction, struggle with issues like discovery and self-acceptance.
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
On her journey, Ginny experiences freedom for the first time, while coping with the insecurities and limiting beliefs that have kept this small town girl’s life far too small. Emily Blunt’s character in Sunshine Cleaning captures the vulnerability and transformation that Ginny also undergoes.
Brenda is a nomad, a spontaneous woman who inspires independence and encourages confidence. She has a great sense of humor and doesn’t take any crap. This picture of Virginia Madsen says it all:
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
A suburban housewife and a quirky, free-spirited drifter find courage, inspiration, and friendship following the Rolling Stones on tour.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
Two years. I wrote the first draft while I was an MFA student under the guidance of many supportive professors and talented writers. Since then it’s gone through several revisions before going out on submission.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Genre classification aside, the two books below have similar themes to Satisfaction:
The characters in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity use their knowledge of music and their literal and metaphorical interpretations of the lyrics as a guide for evaluating and reexamining their lives.
Allison Pearson humorously and poignantly depicts the power of a celebrity crush in I Think I Love You. Whether the attraction is to David Cassidy (in the case of Pearson’s heroine), Mick Jagger or Justin Bieber, the allure of the rock star transcends generations.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve been a devoted Rolling Stones fan, and their music has long served as an inspiration to my writing.
I look forward to reading the upcoming Goodreads Interviews of some of my colleagues at Aponte Literary:
M.V. Freeman is a native of Minnesota, but calls North Alabama her home. She is a member of RWA, and the chapters: Georgia Romance Writers, Southern Magic, and Heart of Dixie. By day her mind is filled with medical jargon at the local health clinic, but at night she finds herself exploring alternate worlds within our own. Heavily influenced by Slavic languages and culture, you will find she weaves these elements into her stories. Her award winning current story INCANDESCENT is the first in a series. She is currently working on the second book in the series while plotting another set of stories. When she is not writing, she’s reading, cooking, throwing around kettle bells, or making coffee.
Debbie Herbert writes paranormal romance novels with a touch of Southern whimsy. Her novels reflect the belief that love, like magic, casts its own spell of enchantment. She is a 2012 Maggie finalist in both YA and paranormal romantic suspense and a member of the Georgia Romance Writers of America. She’s always been fascinated by magic, romance and Gothic stories of any kind. Debbie holds a degree in English as well as a masters’ degree in library studies. Debbie is happily married and resides in Alabama. Her oldest son, like many of her characters, has autism and her youngest son is with the U.S. Army, currently deployed in Afghanistan. Unlike her mermaid characters, Debbie adores cats and has two feline companions.
D.T. Krippene is a native of Wisconsin and Connecticut, former Peace Corp Volunteer. DT deserted aspirations of being a biologist to live the corporate dream and raise a family. After six homes, a ten-year stint in Singapore and Taiwan, and an imagination that never slept, his muse refused to be hobbled as a mere dream. Now a full time writer, DT writes mostly young adult science fiction and fantasy. His latest story is a dystopian tale of humanity at the edge of extinction from a virus plague and a reluctant teen destined to stem the tide.
Claudio Gedda – DepositPhoto.com
A fellow author with Aponte Literary Agency, Debby Herbert, recently invited me to participate in a Goodreads Interview process with other writers. Not yet on the bookshelves, I was asked to offer a sneak peak at my latest project, a unique dystopian tale where humankind stands on the cliff of extinction.
What is your working title of your book?
Lasty
Where did the idea for the book come from?
The idea germinated from a discussion with blog partners about unique dystopian futures, prompting me to research endogenetic retroviruses and tie it to the human genome.
What genre does your book fall under?
Young Adult, Dystopian Science Fiction
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
I rarely think of live actors in my stories. Part of the joy in reading is taking an author’s narrative and invoking my own imagination in people, places, and things. I tend to apply the same principle to my characterization, choosing to allow my readers formulate their own concept of who the character is.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
After a human endogenous retrovirus wipes out 95% of the human population and renders survivors unable to procreate, a teenage boy struggles with the notoriety of his mysterious birth.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I am represented by Victoria Lea, Aponte Literary Agency
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
About six months. First drafts are easy, it’s the subsequent editing and rewrites that take more time.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Children of Men, The Handmaiden’s Tale, The Postman
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
I was discussing dystopian scenarios with my shared blog group, and I fronted an idea of a unique virus that could wipe out the human race within two years. The concept haunted me for days, prompting a desire to sit down and pen the tale.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
It is a cautionary tale of humanity’s excess that triggers a hidden genetic code and sets the stage for human extinction.
Lasty is the story of seventeen-year-old Ryan Townsend, one of the last children born on Leap Day, February 29, 2052. Raised within the strict confines of his religious mother, Ryan is fed up with the notoriety of his mysterious birth. No one will tell him why the watchful eye of an autocratic government monitors his every move. As a Lasty, Ryan is an outcast in his home town, his only desire, to escape to the solitude of recovering woodlands, away from the world’s eyes.
It all changes when on a winter hike, he stumbles on a wolf pack about to tear a girl to shreds. Life-hardened and on the run from Australia, trouble follows Penny McGuire wherever she goes and Ryan’s feelings for Penny drag him along for the ride. Ryan struggles to overcome years of repressed angst at the hands of his Directorate handlers, fanatic Apostolate intolerance, and his own confidence issues to rescue Penny from a militant gang of rovers. This time, he must turn to the very organization that tormented his youth to save her, not knowing she bears a secret that may pull humans from the precipice of extinction.
Be sure to visit these great authors for the next big thing.
Raine English
Raine is a Daphne du Maurier Award Winner and Golden Heart® Finalist. She writes contemporary and historical romance novels infused with magic and the paranormal. Her book, Tin Angel, is available now. Coming soon, Date with a Vampire.
Raine began her career as a journalist, but writing romance novels was her passion. She enjoys writing both adult and young adult contemporary romance infused with elements of magic and the paranormal, along with eerie Gothic historical novels. When not behind her computer, you can find her reading, usually something involving the supernatural. She lives in New England with her family, two dogs, and a mischievous cat. You can visit her at www.RaineEnglish.com.
Keena Kincaid
Reader’s Crown Finalist for Ties that Bind (2010) and Enthralled (2011), Keena honed her writing skills as a newspaper reporter and editor. Career honors include writing awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Gannett newspapers and the Associated Press. When she switched to public relations, she began writing fiction. When not working or writing romance, Keena regales her niece and nephews with stories of quick-thinking ladies, mathematically challenged knights, and ill-mannered dragons that chew with their mouths open.
Her books are available at Amazon and Wild Rose Press. Visit her at http://www.keenakincaid.com.
http://blameitonthemuse.com/lets-have-a-heart-to-heart/
Lets Have a Heart to Heart
by R. R. Smythe
It’s release day! I’m very excited to relate my new Young Adult Novel, Heart Murmurs is out today.
I’m often asked how I come up with plots. Well, it’s no secret I am a tad…odd. I have always been fascinated by the unusual. So now that I am in medicine, often my craving for the unusual takes a side trip into unexplained medicine.
I first heard about cellular memory on NPR. It is the premise that memories may be stored in our DNA, so when a person receives an organ transplant–some of the person’s characteristics come…with it.
POPPYCOCK, was my first thought. But then the obsessive research engine chugged on the rails and was soon screeching out of control.
In one case, a 47 year old man awoke after surgery to a sudden longing for classical music. His donor, a 17 year old, died with his violin case in his hands.
The most striking example was that of a child, whose heart was transplanted into another child. The donor began experiencing frightening nightmares. It was later revealed that the donor had been murdered. The recipient was eventually able to identify the killer, and he was incarcerated.
ENTER my insane author brain and you get…Heart Murmurs
Mia Templeton is dying. Or was dying. After receiving a heart transplant, her world is forever altered. Before her eyes open, she overhears her donor was a murdered girl of the same age. Whispers invade Mia’s head before she’s even left the recovery room. She develops tastes for foods she once hated, and dreams so vivid, she feels they’re someone else’s memories. Her personality is altered—once a quiet doormat, she’s now inexplicably flippant, and confident. And her unexplained longing for the new boy at school is borderline obsessive.
Morgan Kelley is new. Adopted by his aunt, a descendent of Louisa May Alcott (Little Women), he’s thrown into life at a new high school, and as a historical guide for his aunt’s store—a homage to all things Alcott. Conspiracy theories abound about his mangled lower leg—but no-one has been brave enough to ask. Till Mia.
Something is awry with the Underground Railroad tunnels beneath his aunt’s home.
Mia and Morgan enter the world of a secret Literary Society–and are drafted to help bring a rogue Literary giant to justice, solve the mystery of her heart donor, the the real fate of Beth from Little Women.
Heart Murmurs is based on the concept of cellular memory; that the bodies RNA may carry a part of our consciousness into an organ donor. I researched memoirs of people who experienced this phenomenon. The historical portion is based on the life of Louisa May Alcott, ardent feminist, visionary, civil war nurse and abolitionist.
For some, the key to happiness is letting go of the past, for others, it’s embracing it.
In celebration, of life as well as the book. I will give an ebook away to one random commenter.
Share this: