2013 Academy Awards Prediction Contest

Welcome to the annual Oscars prediction contest at The Quivering Pen blog.  Once again, I'm rolling out the red carpet, giving you the opportunity to predict who will take home the little golden statuettes so coveted by anyone who lives in a 25-mile radius of Los Angeles.  This makes the third year in a row where I've given blog readers the chance to win prizes (see below) while dazzling us with their cinematic acumen--or really, really good luck as the case may be.

Before I get to the contest itself, I thought I'd share a couple of my favorite moments from the movies I saw this year:

The hospital stairwell scene in Flight: What's that old saying?  "There are no small parts, only small actors."  That was proved to me in a stunning way when I watched Flight (a terrific character-study of an alcoholic played by Denzel Washington).  Early in the film, as Washington's character, a career airline pilot, is recuperating from the white-knuckled plane crash in which he saves 96 of 102 souls on board, he sneaks out to a hospital stairwell where he comes across Nicole (Kelly Reilly), a junkie who's just come through a near-death experience of her own.  The two have a little bit of repartee and then they hear the door opening a couple of floors below and someone coming up the stairs.  Enter the actor James Badge Dale, a cancer patient toting an IV pole and likewise looking for place to have a secret smoke.  Dale is known in the credits as "Gaunt Young Man" and he gets less than five minutes of screen time, but his performance is seared in my brain.  He is electrifying as a sarcastic, smart, empathetic man at the end of his life.  In one interview, director Robert Zemeckis compared the character to a Greek chorus which comes in, tells the audience about the overarching theme of the story, then leaves the stage, never to be seen again.  For my money, James Badge Dale was perfectly cast as Flight's voice of conscience.

Anna Kendrick and "Cups" in Pitch Perfect:  On the whole, this Glee-ful comedy about collegiate a capella performers fell short of my expectations.  But I thought Anna Kendrick really held the movie together with her performance as a loner who's drawn into one of the singing groups on campus because she thinks it will be a way to please her controlling father (a professor on the same campus).  Pitch Perfect gave us a standard montage of would-be harmonizers trying out for the Barden Bellas--mediocre singers for the most part--but then Kendrick takes the stage and shows everyone how it's done, using only her voice and a plastic cup.  I don't have a clip from the movie, but here she is on David Letterman, schooling us with astounding hand-eye coordination:




So here we go...

Think you can forecast which way the wind will blow in Hollywood this year?  Show us what you've got, Tinseltown Genius!

The Rules:

1.  One entry per person.
2.  You must answer all the questions in the survey (in other words, predict a winner in each of the Oscar categories, and provide your name and e-mail address at the end of the survey).
3.  The contest is open to anyone, though winners who reside outside the United States might have to wait a bit longer to receive the prize.
4.  Each correct guess is worth one point. If more than one person ties for the number of most correct guesses, those names will go into a hat and the winner will be drawn from there.
5.  The contest closes on Feb. 23, the day before the Academy Awards presentation.
6.  The winner will be announced here on the blog no later than March 8.

The Grand Prize

(the only prize, actually...I just wanted to make it sound, er, grand)

One winner will get a copy of each of these books related to the Oscar nominees, generously donated by the following publishers:

Viking/Penguin:

Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History by Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio

 

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

 

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

 

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

 

Click here to take the 2013 Academy Awards Prediction Contest

We are Scripted by War: Fire and Forget

Some of the best fiction is written from the inside out.  That is to say, its authors have "been there, done that."  Nothing against great writers like C. S. Lewis who, to the best of my knowledge, never set foot in a land called Narnia; or Charles Frazier who, I'm certain, never walked across the cold mountains of a Civil War landscape; or even Mary Shelley who, I hope, never assembled a new man from spare body parts--their imaginations have transported us in remarkable ways.  But there is something about the authors who have lived their words that lends authenticity to novels, short stories and poetry.

Such is the case with all the contributors to Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War, the anthology written by veterans and edited by Roy Scranton and Matt Gallagher, which is officially being published today.  Each of the writers has gone to war and gotten the T-shirt (or, in the case of Siobhan Fallon, has seen her husband deploy to the combat zone).  You know when Brian Turner writes in 'The Wave That Takes Them Under" of soldiers how "speak the grammar of sand now" he knows what the fuck he's talking about.  Been there, done that.

As a matter of full disclosure, I should mention that one of my short stories, "Roll Call," is included in Fire and Forget, and I'm trying not to let that taint my opinion of this excellent, necessary book.  And it is an important book which I hope all of you will take the time to read in order to better understand what happens when you send men and women halfway around the globe with orders to kill.

In his introduction to Fire and Forget, Colum McCann writes:

      All stories are war stories somehow. Every one of us has stepped from one war or another. Our grandfathers were there when the stench of Dresden hung over the world, and our fathers were there when Vietnam sent its children running napalmed down the dirt road. Our grandmothers were there when Belfast fell into rubble, and our mothers were there when Cambodia became a crucible of bones. Our sisters in South Africa, our brothers in Gaza. And, God forbid, our sons and daughters will have stories to tell too. We are scripted by war.
      It is the job of literature to confront the terrible truths of what war has done and continues to do to us. It is also the job of literature to make sense of whatever small beauty we can rescue from the maelstrom.

In this collection of short fiction, there are terrible truths and moments of small beauty a-plenty.  Each story is a snapshot--grainy with sand, sticky with blood--of scenes which we must face, uncomfortable as they may be, if we are to start sorting out the two major wars of the past decade. While I enjoyed everything I read and think each story has merit, there were a few which really stood out in their intensity of emotion and skill of wordcraft.

"Redeployment" by Phil Klay, first published in Granta, has a stark, unforgettable opening:

      We shot dogs. Not by accident. We did it on purpose and we called it "Operation Scooby." I’m a dog person, so I thought about that a lot.
      First time was instinct. I hear O’Leary go, "Jesus," and there’s a skinny brown dog lapping up blood the same way he’d lap up water from a bowl. It wasn’t American blood, but still, there’s that dog, lapping it up. And that’s the last straw, I guess, and then it’s open season on dogs.

I know I've probably just lost all the animal-lovers, but believe me when I tell you that Klay's story about the rocky transition of one soldier from the war zone to the living room is as heart-breaking as it is unsettling.  The soldiers' behavior is shocking, but who are we to judge what a person will do when faced with the horrors of an Iraqi torture house ("You see the body parts in the locker and the retarded guy in the cage") and the realities of the everyday ("The broken television and the haji corpse.  Eicholtz covered in blood.  The lieutenant on the radio.")?  Don't judge PTSD until you've walked a mile in its gore-caked boots.  The dogs are just more sad casualties of war.

On the day I read Mariette Kalinowski's "The Train," Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced the Pentagon's proposal to officially allow women to served in combat-arms positions. Unofficially, of course, females have been at the forefront of firefights for years, serving as Apache helicopter pilots, medics, and other support roles which put them face-to-face with bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Bullets don't recognize gender; they don't stop in mid-air to check chromosomes or genitals.  Kalinowski knows this all too well.  A veteran Marine who served two tours of duty in Iraq, she often went out on convoys as a heavy machine gunner. In "The Train," she writes about a female soldier working at an Entry Control Point to a U.S. military base in Iraq whose job is to pat down the Iraqi women standing in line. "She couldn't help but feel edgy," Kalinowski writes. "That worry hovered all around her and in her mind until it became the standard sensation, until a day without fear was a bad day." It's a masterfully-told story which moves seamlessly across three timelines--the present (when the female veteran is riding a subway train in New York City), and two episodes from her past (a horrifying suicide bomber attack at the ECP, and the memory of her mother finding a dead bird in a field near their home in Vermont).  Here's a video of Kalinowski reading portions of the story:



Like Klay's "Redeployment," Andrew Slater's "New Me" is a gripping portrait of a soldier returning to "the world" after being discharged from the brain injury clinic at Walter Reed Army Hospital.  Slater had me glued to the page right from the story's first two paragraphs:

      I joined the Army after my girlfriend Renee drowned because I felt that some people in my hometown would be unable to not blame me. Something would have seemed wrong with the world if they didn’t. The Army was a way for me to leave Elberton for good without seeming like I was making a big spectacle out of it. Renee’s dad called me up about a week after the funeral to ask me why I didn’t go in after her. His voice was calm on the phone when he said it. It sounded like he was reading the question off a piece of paper he was holding with both hands. I think he’d been trying to not say it for a while.
      By the time I realized she must be down river I couldn’t see her at all. I had just got back to the riverbank from my car with a pair of foam water noodles and a CD player. I had been scrounging around in the back seat of my Corolla trying to find a CD, something I wanted her to hear. I stood there staring at the flat top of the river, unblemished blue-brown between the cat tails, a foot or two higher than normal with the past week’s rain, but the water was quiet that morning. There was a clear, quiet sky. I never made sense of it.

Here are some snippets from the other stories in Fire and Forget:

"Smile, There are IEDs Everywhere" by Jacob Siegel:

For us, there had been no fields of battle to frame the enemy. There was no chance to throw yourself against another man and fight for life. Our shocks of battle came on the road, brief, dark, and anonymous. We were always on the road and it could always explode. There was no enemy: we had only each other to hate.

Siegel also has what could be considered the thematic core of the book as a whole when he writes a paragraph later:

War stories are almost never about war unless they’re told by someone who was never there. Every now and then maybe you talk about something or listen to someone who needs to get it off their chest, but those aren’t the stories you come back to, not for telling.

"Tips for a Smooth Transition" by Siobhan Fallon:

      Colin and Evie have spent the week awkwardly trying to get used to each other after a year apart. Awkward because Colin has been working long hours at the base dealing with the accountability of the men, weapons, and vehicles that returned with him.
      Evie tried to adapt to his uneven schedule, mostly by taking time off from Florence’s Home Cooking Catering, sitting around the house waiting for Colin to get back while thinking about the money she should be making, and then smiling too much when he finally came through the door.

"The Wave That Takes Them Under" by Brian Turner:

The platoon moves forward in fits and starts as the wind drives hard against them, soldiers falling back or tumbling down dunes to roll into pits where the sand seems determined to bury them. Henderson can see Sgt. Gould yelling, but his voice barely registers above the wind’s cry and the crack of sand against his goggles. He thinks maybe Gould is cursing the sky itself, as close as any of them might come in their argument with God, or maybe he’s calling out to the men disappearing around him, yelling to be heard over the din of the world in its gritty erasure.

"Raid" by Ted Janis:

I needed to get the hell out of the community.  Bin Laden was fish food, but we were still chasing targets, hunting down lowlevel pipe swingers in the name of GWOT, an acronym and a concept that belonged to last decade. Two deployments ago, I drank the Kool-Aid—drank it like it was the blood of Christ.

"Play the Game" by Colby Buzzell (my heart absolutely stopped when I came to the last sentence of these paragraphs):

      Six months later, I got out of bed and stumbled over to the window. Out on the street corner stood a little blonde-haired girl, dressed like she was on her way to Sunday school. Was today Sunday? I thought about that a minute.
      Wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, a black metal bracelet around my right wrist with some names and dates engraved onto it, and my dog tags, I watched the little girl as she started to cross the street.
      Out of nowhere, a beat-up Ford pickup whipped around the corner and slammed on its breaks, smashing right into the girl and sending her flying onto the pavement.
      The truck idled for a couple seconds, then started to move again. Slowly it turned onto a side street and drove off. I tried to catch the license, one of those old black-and-yellow plates, but it was too late. It was gone before I could make the numbers.
      I looked back at the girl again, and stared at her lying there in the middle of the road. Then I felt kind of tired, so I got back in bed and went to sleep.

"Television" by Roman Skaskiw:

      When the attack was reported over the radio, a breathless private sprinted from the Tactical Operations Center to the Aid Station where the battalion surgeon, Major Roscoe, watched a DVD with the medics. Scraps of cardboard shaded the windows of their hooch, and the blue light from the television shone on their faces. Two medics watched from their cots, a third sat in a plastic lawn chair. Major Roscoe sat in his camping chair. He lifted the DVD remote from a mesh cup holder, paused the movie, and faced the private. He asked how long ago it happened, how many people were hurt, and what injuries there were. All the medics looked up.
      He couldn’t answer. He sprinted back to the Tactical Operations Center holding his slung M4 carbine against his hip with one arm, and swinging the other as he ran.
      Major Roscoe and the medics turned back to the movie, but it wasn’t there the same way it had been. When the private returned and told them a local boy was coming with a head wound, they turned off the television and walked to the bay to prepare for the boy’s arrival.

"Poughkeepsie" by Perry O'Brien:

It's 0300 and I'm sitting on the sidewalk in front of Port Authority, trying to make a plan. I can’t keep purchase on my thoughts with all this night traffic—taxis and limousines, garbage trucks, buses filled with vacant seats and harsh fluorescent light— this restless march of cars, all of them awake at crow piss and going somewhere. I was going somewhere, too.

"When Engaging Targets, Remember" by Gavin Ford Kovite:

You are a United States infantryman. An Imperial Grunt. The emblem of American militarism. Your rank is: Specialist. It is late 2004, and you are behind a machine gun in al-Anbar, Iraq, swathed in bulky armor and expensive gear and sitting—almost reclining—in a wide nylon sling slung across the roof of a Humvee that’s as cartoonishly bulky as you. Your job as a Humvee gunner is to provide rear security for a convoy of fuel tankers that’s currently wending its way from the Baghdad airport to a Forward Operating Base one hundred miles east.

"Big Two-Hearted Hunting Creek" by Brian Van Reet:

There were a bunch of guys like me at Walter Reed—severe burn cases, the faceless. You would think we would have hung out together, but we avoided it as much as possible. We all looked the same; being around one another was like looking in a mirror. None of us wanted that. We wanted to forget.

"Roll Call" by David Abrams:

      We were standing around after the memorial service. Seven of us, the ones who’d made it this far.
      The afternoon wind kicked up and we bent our heads, tucking up under our Kevlars. Two of us realized the dust covers on our 16s were open and clicked them shut. To someone passing by, it might have looked like we were praying, huddled in a tight circle of faith and brotherhood.
      Bullshit. It was just the motherfucking wind.
      But yeah, God and the hereafter and all that come-unto-me crap was fresh in our minds, since we’d just wrapped up Carter’s memorial service. We could hear the dog tags clicking against the receiver on Carter’s downturned M16.

"And Bugs Don't Bleed" by Matt Gallagher:

      “You just told Grandma that you’re going to going to go to war.”
      “I did.”
      “War is the place where you kill people,” Sunny said. “I know about it.”
      “Yes. Bad people, though. I’m just going to kill the bad people.”
      “I’ve never killed anything. One time, though, I got super mad at Jamie Takemoto because he kicked my sand castle, and I told him I could kill him if I wanted to, and I made him cry. Have you?”
      “Have I ever what? Gotten my sand castle kicked? Of course.”
      “No, Jade. Have you ever gotten so mad you killed something?”
      “Do insects count? Like spiders and stuff?”
      “No,” Sunny said. “It only counts if they bleed. And bugs don’t bleed.”

"Red Steel India" by Roy Scranton:

It went like this: the first day you report for guard mount at 0750, then you’re on duty in the sun till 1400. Then you clear your weapon and walk back to the barracks and sleep until 0100. You get up in the dark, get ready, and make it to guard mount at 0150, pull duty until 0800. The sun’s come up. Then you go eat breakfast, jerk off, and sleep until 1300. Guard mount 1350, on duty till 2000, clear your weapon, walk back to the barracks in the dark, think of some other life you had once, sleep, get up at 0700, back to guard mount at 0750, and the cycle repeats. Light, dark, dark, light, night day whatever.

The term "fire and forget" refers to the type of missile system which doesn't need any more guidance after launching.  Firers can walk away and forget about the pending death on the other end of the trajectory.  Most of the writers in these pages, however, cannot shake what they saw through their rifle scopes or what happened when bullet met flesh.  I doubt readers will be able to forget, either.

You can read more about Fire and Forget at its website.

My First Time: Cinthia Ritchie

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands.  Today’s guest is Cinthia Ritchie, author of the new novel Dolls Behaving Badly.  An Alaska resident, she is a former journalist with the Anchorage Daily News and a Pushcart Prize nominee.  Her work can be found at New York Times Magazine, Sport Literate, Water-Stone Review, Under the Sun, Memoir, damselfly press, Slow Trains, 42opus, Evening Street Review and more than 45 other literary magazines.  Click here to visit her website.  Don't forget to enter this week's Friday Freebie contest for your chance to win a copy of Dolls Behaving Badly (along with A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash).

My First Writing Assignment

I always wanted to be a writer, always knew I was a writer from the moment I opened a book at age four and letters veered and jumped and magically arranged themselves into words.

However, I grew up in a working class farming community where few went to college and even fewer bothered to study, myself included.  There were no literary or intellectual communities at that time, no appreciation of the arts, no book clubs or poetry circles.  There wasn’t time, not when crops had to be harvested, cows milked, factory jobs worked.  It was assumed that I would graduate from high school, work as a secretary and marry.  It was what a girl did back in those days.

Then I walked inside Mr. Blakeslee’s sophomore English class, and my life changed.

Clair Blakeslee was a tall bearded man who wore rumpled shirts and walked through the hallways reading books, so that he was forever bumping into walls and drinking fountains.  Students teased him, but he didn’t seem to mind.  He didn’t seem to hear.  He walked around so immersed in books that nothing else existed.

Once I leaned down and tried to read the title of his book as he passed, but the type was immense and heavy and printed with old, dull type.  The book was old, too, the binding ripped, the pages yellow and thin.  I had no idea why anyone would choose to read such a shabby-looking text when there were new books, shiny and smelling of sharp, dark ink, in the upstairs library.

I didn’t expect much from this class.  I didn’t expect much from life, really.  I was moody and sixteen years old.  I didn’t fit in.  I wrote poetry in cheap notebooks and stole a copy of The Bell Jar from the library and dreamed of lying dead in a rowboat covered with flowers, like a poem I had read the year before in my older sister’s college textbook.

So there I was, slumped at my desk, depressed and wearing too much blue eye shadow, because I thought blue was the color of rebels (I hadn’t yet heard of the beat poets and their black turtlenecks and black auras and black humor or, if I had heard, I hadn’t cared).

Suddenly, Mr. Blakeslee’s voice rang out: “You will write!”

My head snapped and I stared at him, at this man who seemed so old, though I realize now that he was only in his early thirties.  I stared as if at a revelation, an apparition, like those people who see the Virgin Mary in Pop Tarts.

“You will read, and you will write,” he boomed.  Someone snickered but I was transfixed; I was sure he was talking to me, and only me.  I copied his words in my notebook: You will read. You will write, and that page became my talisman.  I carried it around, folded, in my back jeans pocket (bright orange hip-huggers that hung low on my skinny, insignificant hips), and often when I skipped class and sat in the bathroom and tried unsuccessfully to smoke, I reached in and smoothed the edge of that paper, and always, always I felt better.

I don’t remember much of what I wrote for Mr. Blakeslee’s class--probably it was depressing and had to do with birds dying and flower petals moist (moist!) with dew--but I do remember the moment that changed my life, the moment when I knew, without a doubt, that I would grow up to become a writer.

It was spring and the air smelled of freshly-cut grass and everyone was restless.  Mr. Blakeslee talked on and on about a science fiction story we had supposedly read.  He talked excitedly, waving his arms and jumping up and down.  Behind me, someone yawned, and I doodled poems in the margin of my notebook.

And then Mr. Blakeslee spit, so caught up in his story discussion that he forgot to swallow.

A wad of saliva flew across the room and landed on the top of my head.

There was a stunned silence, but Mr. Blakeslee didn’t miss a beat.

“Now you will write,” he yelled, as if an order.  Then he turned back to his book and continued.

I sat there, his spit slowly dripping down my hair, and I didn’t feel disgusted or gross or even slighted.  I felt blessed, as if this odd man, the only person I knew who dared become excited over books, had singled me out, given me a gift, not of saliva or spit but of courage, the tenacity to be yourself, to follow your dreams.

Later that week I submitted my first poem.  It was about what horses talked of when locked in the barn at night, and it was appallingly bad, though I didn’t realize this at the time.  I carefully printed it, in ink (which smeared over my wrist), signed my name and mailed it off to Reader’s Digest.

A rejection letter immediately came back, so I sent it off to Ladies Home Journal  and McCalls.

I wish I still had those rejection letters.  They were kind, in their way; it was no doubt evident that I was a child.  And sometimes, when I submit poems and essays to magazines, I still think of Mr. Blakeslee waving his arms and spitting, and maybe it sounds crazy but I feel a connection to him, a kinship, the way we often feel connected to those rare individuals we meet who seemingly love books more than they may love themselves.

Judging a Book: I Want to Show You More by Jamie Quatro

Aluminum foil was invented in 1910, but it wasn't until this year that it found its true calling: a spot-on perfect design element on the cover of I Want To Show You More, the debut short story collection by Jamie Quatro coming from Grove/Atlantic in March.

I've just started reading Quatro's stories and they are eyebrow-raisingly good. The first, "Caught Up," is a short-short about a married woman standing on the precipice of commiting carnal adultery (she's already been having phone sex with "the other man" for ten months). This despite the fact that:

I grew up and married a good man who cries at baptisms and makes our children carry spiders outside instead of smashing them, as they’d like to; who never goes to sleep without kissing some part of my body. He says he wants to know, on his deathbed, that his lips have touched every square inch.

In the second story, "Decomposition: A Primer for Promiscuous Housewives," adultery becomes a literal rotting corpse on the marital bed.

Quatro's style has the terse, stabbing power of Raymond Carver in his finest hour, but at the same time there's the fuller lyricism of something by Alice Munro humming below the surface of the words.  If the rest of the book is as good as these two opening stories, then I'm in for a real treat.

The cover design for I Want to Show You More is also a feast for the eyes, using the mono-chrome of grey and silver to its advantage.  The fabulous art is by Rachel Perry Welty; you can see more of her work here.  With everything encased in foil--including all but the head and arms of the blonde-haired, droop-winged angel--it's like the book is ready to be broiled in the oven.  I also think it was a smart design decision to use a cursive "font" for the words, making it seem like the ribbon of Reynolds Wrap is endless (in some of Welty's other work, she does indeed use one sheet of foil).

I haven't held a hardcover copy in my hands yet, but I'm certain this is one cover that's going to shimmer on the New Books table at your bookstore.

Friday Freebie: A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash and Dolls Behaving Badly by Cinthia Ritchie

Congratulations to Carl Scott, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: The Book of Jonas by Stephen Dau, Black Flower by Young-ha Kim, and The Death of Bees by Lisa O'Donnell.

This week's book giveaway is another plural prize offering.  One lucky reader will win copies of A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash and Dolls Behaving Badly by Cinthia Ritchie.

I've been touting the excellence of A Land More Kind Than Home quite a bit here at the blog.  There's a reason for that: it's excellent.  In his debut novel (set in North Carolina), Wiley Cash has a way of immediately sinking his readers into the lives of characters who range from sympathetic to terrifying.  Here's what the book is about:

For a curious boy like Jess Hall, growing up in Marshall means trouble when you get caught spying on grown-ups. Adventurous and precocious, Jess is protective of his older brother, Christopher, a mute whom everyone calls Stump. Though their mother has warned them not to snoop, Stump can't help sneaking a look at something he's not supposed to—an act that will have repercussions. It's a wrenching event that thrusts Jess into an adulthood for which he's not prepared. He now knows that a new understanding can bring not only danger and evil—but also the possibility of freedom and deliverance.  Told by resonant and evocative characters, A Land More Kind Than Home is a haunting tale of courage in the face of cruelty and the power of love to overcome the darkness that lives in us all.

“A Land More Kind Than Home is a powerfully moving debut that reads as if Cormac McCarthy decided to rewrite Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.” (Richmond Times-Dispatch )

Another author, Cinthia Ritchie, is making her debut this month with her novel Dolls Behaving Badly.  Ritchie's world is about as far away from that in A Land More Kind Than Home as you can get; it's set in Alaska, where the author also lives.  (Cinthia and I may or may not have taken a creative writing class together at the University of Alaska Anchorage--both of our memories are a little fuzzy; but I do remember reading her excellent reportage for the Anchorage Daily News during the time I lived in Alaska).  Here's what's in store for you inside Dolls Behaving Badly:

Carla Richards is a lot of things. She's a waitress at Anchorage's premier dining establishment, Mexico in an Igloo; an artist who secretly makes erotic dolls for extra income; a divorcée who can't quite detach from her ex-husband; and a single mom trying to support her gifted eight-year-old son, her pregnant sister, and her babysitter-turned-resident-teenager.  She's one overdue bill away from completely losing control-when inspiration strikes in the form of a TV personality. Now she's scribbling away in a diary, flirting with an anthropologist, and making appointments with a credit counselor.  Still, getting her life and dreams back on track is difficult. Is perfection really within reach? Or will she wind up with something even better?

"Reader, you hold in your hands a novel so true and heartfelt you'll want to buy it for everyone you know."  (Jo-Ann Mapson, author of Solomon's Oak and Finding Casey)

If you'd like a chance at winning a copy of A Land More Kind Than Home and Dolls Behaving Badly, all you have to do is email your name and mailing address to thequiveringpen@gmail.com

Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line.  One entry per person, please.  Despite its name, the Friday Freebie runs all week long and remains open to entries until midnight on Feb. 14—at which time I'll draw the winning name.  I'll announce the lucky reader on Feb. 15.  If you'd like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week Quivering Pen newsletter, simply add the words "Sign me up for the newsletter" in the body of your email.  Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning?  Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter.  Once you've done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying "I've shared" and I'll put your name in the hat twice.

No More Rainbowfarts or Sparklepoop: Why Unicorn Drinks by C. W. Moss

Thanks to C. W. Moss, unicorns are no longer the snow-white beasts of our youth who prance through forests and fart rainbows.

If, like me, you're still scarred from watching the horrid, horrid animated version of Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn, in which the titular beast was voiced by Mia Farrow, then the outrageously insulting Why Unicorn Drinks is the book for you.  Among other things, Moss' pathetically-funny Unicorn is an alcoholic, a porn addict, and a murderer.

As he did in his earlier book of comics, Unicorn Being a Jerk, Moss takes the horned beast out of myth and plops him down in contemporary, dysfunctional America. In the debut, we see Unijerk doing things like smashing kids' sandcastles at the beach, parking in handicapped spaces at the mall (then rollerblading away from the car), and feeding bacon to pigs.

In Why Unicorn Drinks, Moss answers his opening page ("Because:") with 65 four-color illustrations like this:


His first kiss was with his cousin.

Or this:

Putting in overtime didn't pay off.

You can see more unicorn comics at Moss' website.  Trust me, I haven't even shown you the most untamed illustrations.

There are plenty of sight gags in these pages (my favorite is the one where Unicorn is standing on the side of a hill with a bass drum strapped to his chest looking out over the rubble of uprooted trees, overturned cars and houses buried in mud; caption: "He accidentally started the landslide that killed seven families, including one that had adopted two orphans, another that had a special needs child, one with a war veteran of three tours, and the last had some kids who play on their cell phones all day.  He didn't care about those last kids though.").

But for all the easy laughs, there are deep pangs of sorrow and depression (Unicorn waving goodbye to a drunk girl at a party; caption: "He thought it was cupid.  She thought it was vodka."). 

You'll laugh, you'll  groan, you may even sell this book for 25 cents at your next yard sale, but I guarantee you'll never forget Unicorn.  His trials and tribulations are ours--Moss makes him an Everycorn--and, through the bitter chuckles, we recognize ourselves in the reasons for his drinking.

Moss' anthropomorphism turns Unicorn into a Raymond Carver character with hooves.  Despite his rainbow-colored horn, he becomes a whiskey-soaked representative of our deepest fears and disappointments.  Frankly, I feel much better about myself after meeting Unicorn.

Trailer Park Tuesday: Big Sur

Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.  Unless their last name is Grisham or King, authors will probably never see their trailers on the big screen at the local cineplex.  And that's a shame because a lot of hard work goes into producing these short marriages between book and video.  So, if you like what you see, please spread the word and help these videos go viral.

I've mentioned before how I first met Jack Kerouac (in book form) at City Lights bookstore when I was in San Francisco for a publishers' trade show.  The book I plucked off the shelf on the bookstore's second floor--the late autumn light streaming hot and heavy as syrup through the windows--was Big Sur, the Beat writer's 1962 semi-autobiographical novel.  At the time I thought to myself, "This is good stuff, but they'll never make a movie out it--the writing is just too loopy and stream-of-consciousness."  Famous last words.  Now comes news from the Sundance Film Festival that Big Sur the Movie will indeed hit screens later this year, following on the heels of last year's On the Road (which suffered from mediocre box office receipts, despite the tease of a topless Twilight actress).  The trailer for Big Sur predictably features lots of crashing waves, excessive drinking, clouds of bar smoke, and big trees.  It's all very navel-gazey--pretty to look at, but meandering as a serpentine coastal highway.  My suspicions that this might be a difficult movie were confirmed when I learned the director is Michael Polish who, along with his twin brother Mark, has made some ponderous films like Northfork and Twin Falls Idaho.  While intriguing, those movies crawled along at a stubborn snail's pace.  Mefears the same will happen with Big Sur.  The cast includes Jean-Marc Barr as Kerouac, Josh Lucas as Neal Cassady, Kate Bosworth as Willamine “Billie” Dabney, Radha Mitchell as Carolyn Cassady, and an unrecognizable Anthony Edwards as Lawrence Ferlinghetti.  Big Sur fans will recognize one thing right off the bat: while Kerouac thinly disguised his cronies with fictionalized names, the movie tears off that veil and calls a Cassady a Cassady and a Kerouac a Kerouac.  Does this make the movie more honest?  I don't know, maybe the verisimilitude will help, maybe it won't.  I'm reserving judgement until I sit down with my popcorn and watch it.  Make that popcorn and whiskey.  Strictly for verisimilitude's sake, of course.

My First Time: Jan Richman

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands.  Today’s guest is novelist and poet Jan Richman whose book, Thrill-Bent was recently published by Tupelo Press.  Her poetry collection Because the Brain Can Be Talked into Anything (LSU Press, 1995) was chosen by Robert Pinsky for the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets.  Richman received an NEA grant in Literature, a Nation/Discovery award, and the Celia B. Wagner prize from the Poetry Society of America.  She lives in Oakland, California.  Click here to visit her website.

My First Literary Scandal

and Subsequent Disgrace

Like Truman Capote, I met with literary fame at a ripe young age—complete with the requisite pomp and circumstance.  For me, it was not Bennett Cerf who crowned my talents with a laurel wreath and a Random House contract, but Mrs. Aisles, a nice old lady who smelled of Aqua Net and tuna fish (not necessarily in that order).

In second grade, we had been learning to scan poetry for rhyme and meter—mostly haiku and Jabberwocky—when Mrs. Aisles suddenly threw down a gauntlet: prizes would be given for the first, second, and third place winners in a limerick-writing contest!  This declaration elicited exaggerated eye rolls from many in the class, and the cross-talk quickly drifted off-topic to tetherball face-offs and Knox Blox, but I vowed to reign supreme at Friday’s awards ceremony.

Truman Capote taught himself to read and write before he was five, at which point he could often be seen carrying around a dictionary and a notepad.  My mother had given me a copy of his award-winning roman à clef “Old Mrs. Busybody,” which he wrote when he was eight, along with a fancy flowered journal and an astronaut pen.  I think she was trying to encourage me to aim high, but so far I had mostly just traced my hand while lying on the floor of the living room.

Frankly, I don’t remember trying to write a limerick that night.  I have no memory of struggling with anapaestic meter or alternate punchlines.  I remember only balancing atop the headboard of my parents’ bed so I could snatch the Big Book of Limericks off the top shelf.

Lest you think I was lazy, let me assure you that choosing a limerick that was neither too ribald nor too sophisticated for a child credibly to have written, not to mention trying to discern which ones might be known to Mrs. Aisles, was its own kind of hard labor.  Eventually, I found one by Anonymous that featured a French town I doubted Mrs. Aisles had been to:

In a house in the town of Champagne
Lived a very thin lady named Jane
In her bathtub one night
She received quite a fright
For she found she had slid down the drain.

I adored the off-hand hyperbole of the last line.  I copied it out carefully with my space pen, intentionally misspelling “Champane.”

By Friday morning, I was sure I was about to be kicked out of school. I sensed that my parents’ forced smiles hid a painful knowledge of my plagiaristic ways.  And Mrs. Aisles had been adorning my homework with uncharacteristic smiley faces all week.  But when she announced my name and pinned the blue ribbon on my dress, she was gushing with pride and awe.  She told the class that she’d never read such a wonderful limerick by a student, and that I was clearly destined to be a great writer.  Then she bade me to perform my masterpiece aloud, and I gladly obeyed, making sure to alter my cadence and interject a playful pause before the final phrase.  Some kids laughed, and a few even seemed puzzled and/or impressed.

The “Scandal/Disgrace” part of this story refers only to my private reaction when I remembered the scenario many years later.  Disgrace, outrage, followed almost immediately by a shiver of recognition (I can’t believe I… yeah, that sounds like me), and the vague feeling that Mrs. Aisles might not have been the sharpest tool in the shed.

Truman Capote slowly killed himself with alcohol and tranquilizers after the massive success (and some have said deception) of In Cold Blood, trading the writing life for the talk-show circuit.  My own trajectory from the heights of my first literary success has been less pharmacological and more ink-stained.  Today, I try to employ my (ahem) ingenuity toward more authentic fictional ends, but I still struggle with punchlines.

Look What I Found: Heaven Can Wait by Leonore Fleischer

Look What I Found is an occasional series on books I've hunted-and-gathered at garage sales, used bookstores, estate sales, and the occasional pilfering from a friend's bookshelf when his back is turned.  I have a particular fondness for U.S. novels written between 1896 and 1931.  If I sniff a book and it makes me sneeze, I'm bound to fall in love.

To this day, if you say the words "liver-and-whey shake," I'm bound to get a little choked up.  Or if I hear plaintive notes coming from a soprano sax, my eyes get a misty drizzle.  And if someone were to tell me that a Concorde supersonic jet transports us to heaven when we die, I'd believe 'em.

Such is the impact Heaven Can Wait made on me when I was a sophomore in high school.  I was a skinny, stuttering, shy teenager--especially when I was around girls who, it seemed, exuded some sort of chemical that clouded my confidence and made me fumble words like they were slicked with butter.  When Warren Beatty and Julie Christie finally got together up on the screen at the Jackson Hole Cinema, it was like Love Potion No. 9 had just been unbottled and spilled in the aisles of the dark theater.  I swooned, I clutched my chest, I palpitated.  I looked around to make sure no one had seen me.

For those who have never had the pleasure of seeing the 1978 movie (I pity you!), here's a brief recap: Beatty plays a quarterback for the L.A. Rams named Joe Pendleton who's killed when he enters a dark highway tunnel on his bike and meets head-on with a van coming in the opposite direction.  Unfortunately, it wasn't his time to die--he was snatched from this life 50 years too soon by an over-zealous angel.  Oops!  When Joe arrives in heaven and sees all the passengers boarding the Concorde for their "final flight," he protests to head angel Mr. Jordan (James Mason) and, heaven being the forgiving place it is (along with being quite embarrassed about the angelic error), he decides to give Joe a new body back on earth.  And so, he's reincarnated into the just-about-to-be-murdered millionaire Leo Farnsworth.  While dodging his "personal private executive" (played by Charles Grodin) and his wife (Dyan Cannon), scheming lovers who can't figure out why Leo didn't stay dead after they killed him, Beatty falls in love with an environmental activist named Betty (Julie Christie) who's upset that Farnsworth's corporation is polluting the world's oceans--especially the waters near her small English town of Paglesham.

Heaven Can Wait had everything my love-yearning heart was waiting for: eyes sparkling in the moonlight, last-second touchdowns, a butler named Sisk, and liver-and-whey shakes.  On that day in 1978, I put the film in my then-fledgling Lifelong Top 10 Movies List.  Since then, it may have slipped down to Number 14 or 15, but it still ranks among the sweetest, funniest movies I've ever seen.

And so, imagine my surprise and delight when I was browsing the shelves of books in a thrift store here in Butte, Montana yesterday and I came across this paperback, the official movie-novelization by Leonore Fleischer:

Faster than you could say "James Mason," I'd plunked my 49 cents down on the thrift store counter and went home with my own little slice of movie nostalgia heaven.

I've written before about "movie novels" and how I agree with Joe Queenan who once said "Authors of film novelisations, not unlike pornographers, rarely get the respect they deserve."  I haven't read enough of Fleischer's treatment of the screenplay by Beatty, Elaine May and Buck Henry to pass full judgement, but at first glance it does seem like some fairly ordinary movie tie-in porn.  For instance, take a look at the opening lines:

This was the time of the day that Joe loved best, the hours before the morning had been burnished to a gleam.  When he rolled out of bed at first light, there was still a chill in the canyon air, and the moon was only just disappearing reluctantly from the pink sky.  The day smelled fresh and newborn and ready for anything; Joe could sense it.

Or consider these pages in which Leonore Fleischer allows herself some flights of literary fancy as she describes the accident that kills Joe just when he's getting ready for a big game against the Dallas Cowboys:


The Pulitzer Prize committee probably won't be ringing Ms. Fleischer's doorbell any time soon.  But maybe she doesn't care.  Maybe she just wants to collect her paycheck.  Maybe she just wants to recreate the movie experience on the page, something for film fans like me to take down off the shelf and relive at any time of day or night (this was even more significant back in 1978 before instant Netflix streaming* and the omnipresence of VCRs).  A quick Google search of "Leonore Fleischer" tells me that, for a brief period in the 1970s and 1980s, she was the queen of movie novelizations, transmogrifying scripts into books for movies like Fame, Rain Man, Ice Castles, The Rose, Flatliners, The Fisher King, and several others.  I suppose it was good work if you could get it, and I'm actually glad she took these writing gigs because 34 years later here I am, replaying one of my favorite movies in my head courtesy of some words on an age-yellowed page--no matter how flowery the prose (as purple as a Maxfield Parrish sky!).

I'm still not quite ready to drink a liver-and-whey shake, though.


*I just checked Netflix and Heaven Can Wait is not available--streaming or on DVD.  How can this be?  We must correct this crime!

Friday Freebie: The Book of Jonas by Stephen Dau, Black Flower by Young-ha Kim, The Death of Bees by Lisa O'Donnell

Congratulations to Laura Hatfield, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: Thrill-Bent by Jan Richman.

This week's book give-away is another Friday "Threebie."  One lucky reader will have the chance to win a trio of terrific novels: The Book of Jonas by Stephen Dau (out in paperback at the end of this month), Black Flower by Young-ha Kim, and The Death of Bees by Lisa O'Donnell.

Stephen Dau's debut novel The Book of Jonas has been called "a literary tour de force" by Kirkus Reviews; it also comes highly recommended by Library Journal: "A sobering and accomplished read meant to prick the conscience."  Here's the synopsis:

Jonas is fifteen when his family is killed during an errant U.S. military operation in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. An international relief organization sends Jonas to America, where he struggles to assimilate—adapting to his foster family, high school, a first love. Jonas meets Rose Henderson, the mother of the U.S. soldier responsible for saving his life. Christopher Henderson disappeared after the raid that destroyed Jonas’s village, and Rose yearns to know the truth. Gradually, a shocking and painful secret emerges. In spare, evocative prose, debut novelist Stephen Dau crafts a virtuosic novel about memory, the terrible choices made during war, and what happens when foreign disaster arrives at our own doorstep.

Earlier at the blog, I raved about the novel's opening paragraphs.

Black Flower by Young-ha Kim is also about the consequences of war, though it takes place a century earlier than the conflict in The Book of Jonas.  Here's the plot summary:

In 1904, as the Russo-Japanese War deepened, Asia was parceled out to rising powers and the Korean empire was annexed by Japan. Facing war and the loss of their nation, more than a thousand Koreans left their homes to seek possibility elsewhere—in unknown Mexico. After a long sea voyage, these emigrants—thieves and royals, priests and soldiers, orphans and entire families—disembark with the promise of land. Soon they discover the truth: they have been sold into indentured servitude. Aboard ship, an orphan, Ijeong, fell in love with the daughter of a noble; separated when the various haciendados claim their laborers, he vows to find her. After years of working in the punishing heat of the henequen fields, the Koreans are caught in the midst of a Mexican revolution. Some flee with Ijeong to Guatemala, where they found a New Korea amid Mayan ruins. A tale of star-crossed love, political turmoil, and the dangers of seeking freedom in a new world, Black Flower is an epic story based on a little-known moment in history.

Young-ha Kim's debut, I Have the Right to Destroy Myself, earned him critical acclaim.  Since then, he has published five novels and four collections of short stories.

Screenwriter Lisa O'Donnell's debut novel, The Death of Bees, is also gathering a lot of good buzz (hey, you knew the pun was coming, right?).  The Spencer Daily Reporter had this to say: "The Death of Bees reminds me of Emma Donoghue’s Room. Maybe it’s because both authors originated from the United Kingdom. Maybe it’s because both stories carry a darkness brightened only by the innocence of the main characters."  Booklist gave it a starred review: "O’Donnell’s finely drawn characters display the full palette of human flaws and potential. Told in the alternating voices of Marnie, Nelly, and Lennie, this beautifully written page-turner will have readers fretting about what will become of the girls."  Library Journal wrote: "Quirky characters with distinct voices enliven this sometimes grim and often funny coming-of-age story in the vein of Karen Russell’s best seller Swamplandia!"  Here's the plot summary:

Marnie and her little sister, Nelly, are on their own now. Only they know what happened to their parents, Izzy and Gene, and they aren't telling. While life in Glasgow's Maryhill housing estate isn't grand, the girls do have each other. Besides, it's only a year until Marnie will be considered an adult and can legally take care of them both. Lennie, the old man next door, realizes that his young neighbors are alone and need his help. Or does he need theirs? Lennie takes them in—feeds them, clothes them, protects them—and something like a family forms. But soon enough, the sisters' friends, their teachers, and the authorities start asking tougher questions. As one lie leads to another, dark secrets about the girls' family surface, creating complications that threaten to tear them apart.

Here at the blog's "My First Time" series, Lisa recently wrote about her early encounter with war poetry.

If you'd like a chance at winning a copy of The Book of Jonas, Black Flower and The Death of Bees, all you have to do is email your name and mailing address to thequiveringpen@gmail.com

Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line.  One entry per person, please.  Despite its name, the Friday Freebie runs all week long and remains open to entries until midnight on Feb. 7—at which time I'll draw the winning name.  I'll announce the lucky reader on Feb. 8.  If you'd like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week Quivering Pen newsletter, simply add the words "Sign me up for the newsletter" in the body of your email.  Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning?  Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter.  Once you've done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying "I've shared" and I'll put your name in the hat twice.

On the Road Again

After taking a breather from the flurry of bookstore readings and literary festival appearances last Fall, I'll be heading back out on the road for another round of events in support of Fobbit and Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War, the anthology of short stories about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan coming from Da Capo Press.  I haven't said too much about Fire and Forget here at the blog (I'll have a longer post about it in the future), but I urge you to pre-order it or request it at your local bookstore.  The official publication date is Feb. 12 and it features stories by Siobhan Fallon, Colby Buzzell, Brian Turner, Matt Gallagher and other military veterans (including yours truly).

Here are some of my confirmed appearances between now and the beginning of summer.  If you're near any of these locations, I hope to see you out there in the audience.  (Note to my friends in the Northeast: sadly, no, I'm still not coming to the Washington, DC or NYC areas.  Bummer.)

Bozeman, MT
March 3 at 7 pm
Reading from Fire and Forget at The Country Bookshelf


Deer Lodge, MT
March 8 at 7 pm
Reading from Fobbit at the Kohrs Memorial Library


Missoula, MT
March 9 at 2 pm
Reading from Fire and Forget at Fact and Fiction


Portland, OR
March 20 at 7:30 pm
Reading from Fire and Forget at Powell's with Roy Scranton and Gavin Kovite


Seattle, WA
March 21 at 7 pm
Reading from Fire and Forget at Elliott Bay Books with Roy Scranton and Gavin Kovite


Clemson, SC
April 5 at 5 pm
Clemson Literary Festival
Reading from Fobbit at Tiger Town Tavern (368 College Ave), along with authors Eduardo C. Corral, Charles McLeod, Bonnie Nadzam, and Ariana Reines.


Bozeman, MT
April 10 at 6 pm
Reading from Fobbit at MSU's SOB Barn


Little Rock, AR
April 18-21 (Day/time TBD)
Arkansas Literary Festival


Coos Bay, OR
May 13-14
The Coos Bay Library has generously selected Fobbit as a community-wide read.  I'll be making appearances at several locations around town, reading from the novel and talking about my war experience.


Ketchum, ID
May 16 (Time TBD)
Reading from Fobbit at The Community Library


One final note: if you are part of a book club, university class, or other literary-type organization, I'm always happy to Skype with your group.  Just drop me a line and we'll work something out.