Trailer Park Tuesday: Trust Your Eyes by Linwood Barclay

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.

Swift, suspenseful, and jolting, the trailer for Linwood Barclay's new novel, Trust Your Eyes, comes at us like a relentless neon sign blinking "Watch Me.  Buy Me.  Read Me."  Even before I knew what the book was about, I was thinking to myself, Hot damn, I really gotta check this one out.  In fact, the trailer is so good, I all but overlooked the endorsement from Stephen King ("Barclay vaults to the top of the suspense pantheon").  Trust Your Eyes appears to be something like an updated version of Rear Window for the modern wired world.  Here's the plot summary from the publisher:

Thomas Kilbride is a map-obsessed schizophrenic so affected that he rarely leaves the self-imposed bastion of his bedroom. But with a computer program called Whirl360.com, he travels the world while never so much as stepping out the door. He pores over and memorizes the streets of the world. He examines every address, as well as the people who are frozen in time on his computer screen. Then he sees something that anyone else might have stumbled upon—but has not—in a street view of downtown New York City: an image in a window. An image that looks like a woman being murdered. Thomas’s brother, Ray, takes care of him, cooking for him, dealing with the outside world on his behalf, and listening to his intricate and increasingly paranoid theories. When Thomas tells Ray what he has seen, Ray humors him with a half-hearted investigation. But Ray soon realizes he and his brother have stumbled onto a deadly conspiracy.

For a trailer that's only 84 seconds long, Trust Your Eyes ratchets up the tension quickly and slickly.  I can only hope the book does the same.

My First Time: Jennifer Spiegel

 

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 Jennifer Spiegel, author of the just-released debut novel Love Slave from Unbridled Books.  Her collection of short stories, The Freak Chronicles, was released earlier this year by Dzanc Books.  Regular readers of The Quivering Pen may be experiencing a bit of deja vu right now.  Yes, it's true: Jennifer Spiegel did contribute to this feature back in July, so this makes her second "first time."  But when the writing is as sharp and delightful as what Jennifer brings to the screen, I'm happy to give QP readers a double-dose of Spiegel.  If you want the full shot of 100-proof JS, you can visit her website here.

My First Literary Crush

Everyone always says Holden Caulfield, and I suppose I could, too.  I’m pretty sure Holden has something to do with everything.

There was, however, Raskolnikov a little bit later—and, perhaps, he was my first real literary crush.  Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment may have offered me my first perfect bad boy: dark, brooding, smart, and a family man who WHO SUBSCRIBES TO HIS OWN TWISTED MORAL CODE BORN OUT OF A WARPED SENSE OF ALTRUISM!  And then, then, redemption!  We’re talking James Dean before there was a James Dean!  I remember well his shadowy, dusty, creepy landscape, and its assembly of disparate parts:  prostitutes and police, academics and pawnbrokers, St. Petersburg and Siberia.  The guilt-ridden human heart churning, scalding.

Do yourself a favor and say his entire name aloud: Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov.

Um, yum.

Raskolnikov was also a foreigner—and every American girl knows foreign guys are hot!

(Side note: sometimes, when my husband and I are joking around, I like to say things like, “How in the world did I end up married to the whitest guy in the world?”  This because, prior to me, he had never before eaten hummus.  And there’s his propensity for mayo, which I find ultra-WASPy.  I’m being unfair; he does have a lovely Roman nose, which suggests otherness, right?)

I think, though, my teenage years hit shortly after my early brush with Russian literature and I turned to British rock stars (also with Roman noses).  When I emerged from that era of utterly-non-altruistic-bad-boys, I had a fairly minor affection for Salman Rushdie, because he was in hiding and all.  That seemed pretty cool.

But then there was Douglas Coupland.  By the time I got to Doug, it had morphed into something not terribly romantic.  I guess I had grown up.  Either that, or I was experimenting with bitterness and anti-male sentiment.  Soon, I’d marry the whitest man in the world who had never before eaten hummus.

In my twenties and early thirties, though, I was convinced that Douglas Coupland and I were supposed to be best friends—like best friends.  After years of an unrequited literary crush, I had the opportunity to interview Coupland for Hayden’s Ferry Review when he came to town to do a reading for his latest book, All Families are Psychotic.  This was in 2001.  I was working on my MFA at Arizona State, I was thirty-one, and HFR granted me tons of creative license.  The interview is unorthodox; it’s more of a creative nonfiction piece.  It’s not online, but you can find “Douglas Coupland: Who Is This Guy? (Or, Generation X Lamentations)” in Fall/Winter 2001 Issue 29.  The interview is pretty great, if you ask me.  But now, I’m going to share some of the behind-the-scenes stuff.

I just wanted to be his best friend.  That’s not so far-fetched, is it?

I was supposed to meet him at his hotel, which was right next to the Borgata of Scottsdale, this fancy shopping place (“mall” sounds a little low class here), which looks like a medieval castle.  It’s still there, though I don’t know who frequents it.  Tourists?  Old people?  Ultra-WASPy old tourists?  Do you need to put a gag in my mouth to stop me now?  Am I crossing the line?  Can someone sue me for saying this stuff?  I’ll tell you this: this shopping center does not have a pet store or a Sbarro pizza.  (And since having kids with the whitest guy in the world, I don’t do shopping centers without pet stores.)

We met at Coupland’s hotel, which was next door.  I was trembling and sweating, preparing for my role as “Fascinating Young Woman.”  I needed to lure him in somehow.  I needed to be witty, smarmy, deep, atypical, observant, philosophical but not annoying.  So I arrived with two cups of coffee from Starbucks, because those kind of people often drink coffee.

And let me just add this detail to your mental image: the coffees, which were relatively expensive for me, were genuine tokens of my affection.

We walked to the Borgata, holding our cups.  Though I looked like a shabby grad student (blue jeans, Jansport backpack) and Coupland is Canadian, he looked pretty spiffy.  I can’t totally remember, but maybe he was wearing yellow?  Can I be sued over that—like if he were actually wearing navy or gray?

This is the kicker.  We needed a place to sit to do the interview.  I had my mini-cassette recorder in my purse.  Coupland said he needed to eat something.  There was an Italian restaurant ahead of us.  We walked towards it.  As he strolled, Doug dropped his cup of coffee into the trash.

I was crushed.

Douglas Coupland, Coffee-Tosser

In college, I once saw the guy I thought I loved coming down our dormitory hall holding his underwear in his hands.  He was walking next to some girl I despised for no reason, and it was a Saturday morning; the yawning, stretching, and sweet talk said enough.  Not to mention the underwear.  I was working at the front desk, and they had to pass me.  I had a job to do, answering phones, buzzing people when their guests arrived.  Our eyes met, and I had to hide it away, bury any anguish—just like he had to ball up his boxers in the palm of his hand, clenching his fist.  We were both concealing something.

Much later, a man—not a college boy at all—told me I was pretty in an unusual way—a “different way,” he said—but he wanted to be with someone else.  In my mind, she was pretty in a normal, ordinary, common way.  The man was calmly deciding between me and another woman, like he was choosing between brands, between Coke and Pepsi, Shamrock and whatever.  The relationship hadn’t gone too far, though I had kissed him in front of an Einstein’s Bagels—and, now, the thought filled me with something like self-loathing.  How had I let myself be put up for auction?  How had I done this, and why had I kissed him?  He thought he looked like Kenny Chesney, that’s what he said.  He didn’t, nor did I care about Kenny Chesney.  But that kiss!  I don’t know if I hid my pain then or if I unleashed this inexplicable fury that masked my bruised self, my injury.  Did I let him have it?  Did I deliver a violent tirade or sink into myself, pretending it was okay?

Douglas Coupland once threw out the cup of coffee I bought him as part of my performance as “Fascinating Young Woman.”  The toss was casual, incidental—he meant nothing by it at all—but I knew we would not become best friends, privileged members in one another’s lives.  I went on with the interview, and it was a very good interview indeed.

Before you get the wrong idea, please know that Coupland offered to buy me dinner at the Italian restaurant.  When I declined, he insisted.  I still declined.  But he would’ve bought me dinner at a super crazy-expensive restaurant.  Know, also, that he personally signed my books that night at the reading—and he said very nice, totally flattering things inside my copies which I still have today.

After the reading, we never saw each other again.  I never heard from him either.  I wrote this kick-ass interview.  I tried to get him to write a blurb on the back of one of my books.  It didn’t happen.  He never responded to my e-mails.

I’m over it.

Look What I Found: The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper

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.

True confession: as an undergrad at the University of Oregon, I had a mad crush on James Fenimore Cooper.  For at least two semesters, I ate, breathed, and bathed Leatherstocking.  Somewhere in a trunk full of mildewing college papers, I have one or two starry-eyed treatises on Cooper's tales of old New England--man vs. wilderness, the savage breast, overripe romance, all that kind of stuff undergrads think is So Important.

I haven't been back to Cooperland in well over a decade and I have no idea if he'll hold up as well as he did when I would curl up with Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook on drizzly Oregon afternoons in our cramped married-student housing apartment.  Maybe I'd find him dull or maybe I'd find him still delightful.  Whatever the case, I can tell you I just found a near-pristine copy of The Deerslayer in an antique store here in Montana.  But not just any Deerslayer.  Nosireebob.  This was a special Boy Scouts of America edition of the book.  The endpapers are what first alerted me to the book's unique character as I stood in that antique shop: full, two-page photospreads of Boy Scouts sitting around a campfire.  There's no date inside, but the book is illustrated with stills from a 1920 German silent film version of Cooper's novel (starring Bela Lugosi as Chingachgook).  Thanks to the heavenly glories of Google, I was able to find that movie on-line, which you can watch here.  The silent film opens with the Scouts sitting around the campfire.  Their leader brings in a book, gives them a Cliffs Notes version of the plot, then says, "The story of The Deerslayer is too long to read in an hour, so I am going to tell parts of it in my own words."  And then we're off on a truncated version of the 1841 novel.

Come to think of it, maybe that's the best way to appreciate James Fenimore Cooper: speed-reading and picking out all "the best parts."

By the way, yesterday marked the 223rd occasion of Mr. Cooper's birth, so happy belated birthday to you, sir!  Here are some Boy Scouts to help you blow out all those candles....

More Vanity Links: Fobbit, New Tour Stops, "Numb," The Rumpus, NPR, Other People, and the Most Excellentest Giveaway in the History of The Quivering Pen

Here's the latest herd of ME-centered links, lassoed and corralled from all around the web.  Plus, scroll down for one of the biggest and best giveaways I've ever offered here at the blog.

1.  Curtis Edmonds at Bookreporter very kindly reviewed Fobbit.  The fact that he mentions one of my favorite movies, Groundhog Day, is just like gravy on the cake:

      For a civilian reader--and FOBBIT deserves a wide non-military audience--the world of FOB Triumph may be a bit like going through the looking glass. However, the central metaphor for the book isn't inspired by Lewis Carroll. Instead, it is inspired, at least in part, by a certain light 1993 romantic comedy starring Bill Murray and Andie McDowell. This might be somewhat of a surprise. The novel is set in the midst of the occupation of Iraq by American forces, and features bloodshed, mayhem, at least one war crime, and omnipresent sand, heat and privation. On the surface, the relationship between the movie and the novel sounds like it might not be the best pairing.
      The film, of course, is Groundhog Day, and its central premise is that Phil Connors, Murray's character, is trapped into reliving the same day over and over again. The characters in David Abrams' debut novel identify with the concept, if not the specific reality, of the movie. The daily round for the Fobbits involves press releases and PowerPoint presentations, punctuated by news of explosions, mortar rounds, and sudden violent death. The Fobbits are in the war but not of the war, and the sameness, repetition and constant grinding of the gears of war seem endless and hopeless.

Click here to read the rest of the review.


2.  Since I last told you about the Fobbit book tour, we've added two more stops: University Bookstore in Seattle on October 4 at 7 pm (I'll be appearing with Karl Marlantes, author of Matterhorn) and Brazos Bookstore in Houston on October 26 at 7 pm.



3.  Kyle Minor interviewed me for The Rumpus.  We talked about what I imagined combat would be like, the evolution of wars, media on the battlefield, writing an unsanitary novel, and working on Saddam Hussein's former hunting preserve which was once stocked with wild game he and his guests would "hunt" on the weekends.


4.  All this week, 5 Chapters has been giving me the Charles Dickens treatment by serialising one of my short stories, "Numb."  It's all about a sensitive young husband dealing with a family crisis on the eve of his departure for basic training.  Here are links to the installments:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

5.  NPR's Morning Edition interviewed me for a recent segment called "Stories From a New Generation of Soldiers."  I was honored to be on there with Kevin Powers (The Yellow Birds) and Brian Castner (The Long Walk).

6.  NPR was great, but what really turned my crank and got me fired up was my recent interview with Brad Listi for his Other People podcast.  I'm an unabashed fanboy of the show and have listened to all 100-plus episodes, so when I learned I'd be one of Listi's "other people," hot butterflies of happiness took flight in my chest.  Okay, maybe that's over the top; maybe I should be more bashed.  Is that a word, "bashed"?  Perhaps "bashful" would be more fitting.  But honestly, when you lurve something as much as I lurve Other People, then it's hard to clamp down the enthusiasm.  Brad is less of an interviewer than he is a conversationalist.  Each episode, he engages his subjects in casual, yet probing, talk about their craft, their home life or, in the case with recent guest Pauls Toutonghi, their favorite classical music.  Topics range far and wide during the hour-long show as Brad follows the trail of talk wherever it leads.  I think I've only fast-forwarded through two out of the 104 episodes--and even then it wasn't Brad's fault, he just had a relatively dull subject on the other end of the microphone.  You might find my interview dull and you certainly have my permission to fast-forward, but here I am in all my glory:

David Abrams on Other People With Brad Listi

7.  In conjunction with the Other People podcast, I'm offering Quivering Pen readers the chance to win a year's membership in The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.  TNB (where I've also made recent appearances) is Brad Listi's other literary website and it, along with The Millions and The Rumpus, is one of my go-to sites for All Things Bookish on the Internetz.  Each month, the Nervous Breakdown Book Club sends its members one book, hand-picked by TNB staff.  Past titles have included Room by Emma Donoghue, Pictures of You by Caroline Leavitt, and Emily, Alone by Stewart O'Nan.  So here's the deal: I am giving away one TNB Book Club membership to a Quivering Pen reader (about a $120 value).  For one year, you'll have a book delivered to your front door (or back door, depending on where you get your mail) and you can participate in all the author chats hosted by the book club.  Here's how to enter:

1.  Email me at thequiveringpen@gmail.com with "I'm having a Nervous Breakdown" in the subject line (it has to be those exact words so I can keep track of the entries in the flood of emails I've been getting lately).
2.  Include your name and mailing address in the body of the email.
3.  The contest closes at midnight on Sept. 20 and I'll announce the winner in the regular Friday Freebie post the next morning.
4.  Only one entry per person.
5.  The contest is only open to those who live in the U.S. (sorry, but I can't afford the international book club rate).

Friday Freebie: Vandal Love and Cures for Hunger by Deni Y. Bechard

Congratulations to Beverly Sizemore, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: Cascade by Maryanne O'Hara.

This week's book giveaway is a double-header from author Deni Y. Bechard.  Milkweed Editions published two of his books earlier this year and it's my pleasure to be able to offer a copy of both Vandal Love and Cures for Hunger to one lucky reader.

Here's the publisher's blurb for Vandal Love which has been compared to the work of a wide range of writers including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, William Faulkner, E. L. Doctorow and Annie Proulx:

An astonishing novel of epic ambition, Vandal Love—winner of the prestigious Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best first book in 2007—follows generations of a unique French-Canadian family across North America and through the twentieth century. A family curse—a genetic trick resulting from centuries of hardship—causes the Hervé children to be born either giants or runts. Book One follows the giants’ line, exploring Jude Hervé’s career as a boxer in Georgia and Louisiana in the 1960s, his escape from that brutal life alone with his baby daughter Isa, and her eventual decision to enter into a strange, chaste marriage with a much older man. Book Two traces a different kind of life entirely, as the runts of the family discover that their power lies in a kind of unifying love. François seeks the identity of his missing father for years, while his own son, Harvey, flees from modern society into spiritual quests. But none of the Hervés can abandon their longing for a place where they might find others like themselves.

Calgary Herald had this to say about the book: “Although Vandal Love is a first novel, it reads as smoothly as if Béchard had a library to his name--mature, lyrical, tactile and at times simple, cruel and sweet.  No doubt, the giant steps this young writer has taken will set him far ahead on his literary path.”

Shifting gears, we turn to Bechard's memoir, Cures for Hunger (and how about that cover, eh?).  Here's the jacket copy:

As a child, Deni Béchard has no idea his family is unusual. His mother is from Pittsburgh and there is a vague sense that his father is from Quebec, but when Deni is assigned to complete a family tree in school, he begins to wonder why he doesn’t know more about his father’s side of the family. Who is André Béchard, and why do the police seem so interested in him?  Soon after Deni’s mother leaves his father and decamps with her three children to Virginia, Deni learns that André was once a bank robber, a revelation that sets his imagination on fire. Boyish rebelliousness soon gives way to fantasies of a life of crime. At once attracted and repelled, Deni can’t escape the sense that his father’s life holds the key to understanding himself, and to making sense of his own passions and longings. Only when he goes off to college does Deni begin to unravel the story of his father’s life, eventually returning with it to the Quebecois family that André had fled long ago.

Claire Bidwell Smith, author of The Rules of Inheritance, praised the book by saying, “This powerful and haunting memoir is a must-read for anyone who has ever struggled to uncover their identity within the shadow of a parent.  Written in exquisitely sharp prose, Béchard combs through his attempt to understand his father's mysterious existence with inspiring precision.  This book is huge and achingly true.”

If you'd like a chance at winning a copy of both Vandal Love and Cures for Hunger, 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 Sept. 20—at which time I'll draw the winning name.  I'll announce the lucky reader on Sept. 21.  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.

Fobbit Patches, Wild Dog & Suicide Bomber Fail

I'm too short on time today to post any meaningful literary content, so I've gone back to the pages of the journal I kept during my year in Iraq to give you three days' worth of entries.  Readers of Fobbit will perhaps find the September 14 incident vaguely familiar....

September 12, 2005:  I hear about some hardcore battalion commander with too much time and money on his hands who had a bunch of patches made at his own expense.  They looked just like Ranger tabs, but said “Fobbit.”  He also had some that had “REMF” and “POG” (“People Other Than Grunts,” another derogatory for us Fobbits).  They looked just like the real thing and he went around handing them out—with no small measure of amused derision, I imagine—to admin guys he came across in his travels.

Fobbit, Self-Portrait (2005): See how neatly-pressed his uniform, how tall his Starbucks, how carefully-manicured his hands, how tightly-shut against the glare of the Baghdad sunlight his eyes!  We were lucky to get this shot of a Fobbit in the wild outside of his natural air-conditioned habitat.

September 13, 2005:  I saw a wild dog while I was out running around the lake this morning.  I rounded the bend and there he was, this mangy coyote-like dog trotting alongside me for about 20 feet, his sharp, knife-like muzzle pointed in my direction.  He and I looked at each other for a few seconds before he veered off into the tall reeds alongside the road.


September 14, 2005:  We started feeling the first explosions around 8 a.m., just after the morning briefing.  As always, when the percussion rippled through the air, nudging us slightly in our chests and making our hearts skip half a beat, we collectively said, “Whoa,” but then kept on with our work.   When the second one came about 15 minutes later, we paused a little longer, looked at each other and said, “Well, here we go again.”  But along about the third one and then the fourth one on its heels, we knew this wasn’t just another ordinary day. It was like the feeling we had on Sept. 11th when we watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center and we knew this was no “accident.”

From a neighboring cubicle, I heard one officer say: “Man, it’s a VBIED day in Baghdad today!”

Another cubicle shot back: “Yeah, we’ve got a whole fuckload of ’em.”

By the end of the day, our Significant Activities chart was riddled with more than a dozen Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive Devices—14 in all, matching the previous record (in case you’re keeping a scorecard) set back on April 29.  It was a deadly day for civilians (more than 140 killed), but our U.S. Soldiers only took it on the chin with three or four wounded.  It was a carefully crafted, coordinated attack on the part of the terrorists.  They’d been squeezed out of Tal Afar, so they returned to Baghdad to show us the stuff they were made of.

Not all of the attacks were successful, however.  At least one suicide driver failed miserably.  Here’s how I described it in a press release (which we ended up never sending out):

      In Eastern Baghdad, at about 10 a.m. today, a homicide bomber crashed his explosives-laden vehicle into a coalition tank and survived.  The driver’s right leg was pinned under the dash of the damaged vehicle.  Coalition forces, working in concert with Iraqi Police, cordoned off the area around the vehicle to ensure the safety of civilian bystanders.  The vehicle was inspected by a camera-equipped Explosive Ordnance Disposal robot and it was determined that the vehicle contained explosives. The driver was observed drinking water and told an Iraqi Police officer that he was from Syria and that his (terrorist) group had launched numerous vehicle bomb attacks today and that other attacks would follow. The driver said he was here to kill Americans.
      It was considered unsafe for soldiers to approach the vehicle while the terrorist was still capable of detonating his explosives. To reduce the threat, the EOD robot placed an explosive charge (water charge) beneath the vehicle to blow the munitions out of the rear seat and render the vehicle safe. The water charge was detonated. The driver survived the blast. The EOD robot investigated the vehicle again and found the water charge did not successfully render the vehicle safe; explosives were still present.
      An EOD specialist approached the vehicle in his explosive protective suit and found a grenade within reach of the driver and a landmine was at his foot.  When the EOD specialist went to remove the grenade, the driver began to move. The EOD specialist moved away from the vehicle as the intent of the driver was unknown.
      The EOD robot was again called into action and approached the driver. The bomber became agitated when the EOD robot attempted to pull him to safety, preventing his removal from the vehicle. It was determined the driver still wanted to blow up his vehicle to cause casualties.
      As the driver was still considered a threat, it would have been an unacceptable risk to have soldiers approach the vehicle. The driver was engaged with small-arms fire and was killed.
      EOD investigated the car and discovered the driver’s foot was indeed still placed on top of a mine and he could have detonated it if soldiers or civilians had approached.
      At 2:30 p.m., EOD technicians completed removing all ordnance from the vehicle, which included three propane tanks, two 152-millimeter artillery shells, several anti-tank mines and a grenade.  Iraqi Police then assumed control of the scene.

Front Porch Books: September 2012 edition

Front Porch Books is a monthly tally of books--mainly advance review copies (aka "uncorrected proofs" and "galleys")--I've received from publishers, but also sprinkled with packages from Book Mooch, Amazon and other sources.  Because my dear friends, Mr. FedEx and Mrs. UPS, leave them with a doorbell-and-dash method of delivery, I call them my Front Porch Books.  In this digital age, ARCs are also beamed to the doorstep of my Kindle via NetGalley and Edelweiss.  Note: most of these books won't be released for another 2-6 months; I'm just here to pique your interest and stock your wish lists.  Cover art and opening lines may change before the book is finally released.

Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell (Knopf):  Opening a new book by Karen Russell is a little like coming home after a dinner with your spouse (who was oddly insistent that the two of you go out to a particular restaurant at a particular time), turning the doorknob, pushing your way into the living room, and having two dozen of your closest friends sporting silly cone hats on their heads leap out from behind the furniture and yell: "Surprise!  Happy Birthday!"  That's the kind of happy, unexpected pleasures readers have found with Russell's previous books: the short story collection St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves and the widely-acclaimed novel Swamplandia!  And now comes a new collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove.  I'm already strapping on my party hat and warming up my noisemaker.  Jacket Copy:

In the collection's marvelous title story, two aging vampires in a sun-drenched Italian lemon grove find their hundred-year marriage tested when one of them develops a fear of flying. In "The Seagul Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979," a dejected teenager discovers that the universe is communicating with him through talismanic objects left in a seagull's nest. "Proving Up" and "The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis"--stories of children left to fend for themselves in dire predicaments--find Russell veering into more sinister territory, and ultimately crossing the line into full-scale horror. In "The New Veterans," a massage therapist working with a tattooed war veteran discovers she has the power to heal by manipulating the images on his body. In all, these wondrous new pieces display a young writer of superlative originality and invention coming into the full range and scale of her powers.

Opening Lines (of the title story):

In October, the men and women of Sorrento harvest the primofiore, or "first flowering fruit," the most succulent lemons; in March, the yellow bianchetti ripen, followed in June by the green verdelli. In every season you can find me sitting at my bench, watching them fall. Only one or two lemons tumble from the branches each hour, but I've been sitting here so long their falling seems contiguous, close as raindrops. My wife has no patience for this sort of meditation. "Jesus Christ, Clyde," she says. "You need a hobby."

I find that paragraph terrifically funny--the poetic, pastoral description of the lemon grove, punctuated by the snappy, sitcom-ish exclamation by the vampire's wife.  I can't wait to sink my teeth into the rest of the collection (sorry--my pun resistance is weak today).

Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See by Juliann Garey (Soho Press):  Along with having one of my favorite titles of the year so far, this novel has some unforgettable Opening Lines (I didn't plan it this way, but both of these first Opening Lines selections crescendo with wives yelling at their husbands, invoking the Lord's name in vain):

      Los Angeles 1984. California is a no-fault state. Nothing is ever anyone’s fault. It just is. Day after day. Until it kills you.
      Automatic sprinkler clicks on at dusk. SssstChchchSssstChchch.  Flattens oak leaves—yellowy, brown-veined—against stiff green lawn.
      It is a warm September night when I leave my wife and eight-year-old daughter. I tell my wife I’m going out to the backyard to clean up the dog shit. It’s the one chore I’ve never really minded. A couple of times a week, I use a long-handled yellow plastic pooper-scooper that came with an accessory—a narrow rake designed to help roll the turds into the scooper. I make my way systematically across the lawn in a zigzag pattern. The dogs, a couple of beautiful over-bred Irish setters who suffer from occasional bouts of mange, enthusiastically follow, sniffing as if hot on the trail of something other than their own crap. When the scooper gets full, I dump it into one of the black Rubbermaid garbage cans I keep in the garage. And when I’m done, I spray down my equipment with a fierce stream from the gun-like attachment I screw on to the green hose I use to top off the swimming pool. By the time I’m finished, the scooper is clean enough to eat off of.
      “Jesus Christ, Greyson,” my wife, Ellen, yells out the kitchen window, “it would be a whole lot easier if you’d do that during the day when you could actually see the shit.” This is something she yells out the kitchen window almost ritually. But I always do it at night. I like the challenge.

This comes to us from the unstable mind of Hollywood studio exec Greyson Todd who, according to the Jacket Copy, "leaves his wife and young daughter and for a decade travels the world giving free reign to the bipolar disorder he's been forced to keep hidden for almost 20 years. The novel intricately weaves together three timelines: the story of Greyson's travels (Rome, Israel, Santiago, Thailand, Uganda); the progressive unraveling of his own father seen through Greyson's eyes as a child; and the intimacies and estrangements of his marriage."  But wait!  There's more!  "The entire narrative unfolds in the time it takes him to undergo twelve 30-second electroshock treatments in a New York psychiatric ward."  Okay, now I'm completely sold on this debut novel.  Strap me down and give this novel to me in strong doses.

The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets by Diana Wagman (Ig Publishing):  I'll start with the Blurbworthiness: “What begins as a single mom’s ordinary chaotic morning launches into a pinball-game of twisted fun when Winnie Parker is kidnapped after dropping her station wagon at the Peugeot mechanic’s.  Add one sulky teen daughter, one wonderfully self-impressed celebrity ex-husband, one flashingly weird reptile-obsessed kidnapper and a seven foot iguana, and you have Diana Wagman’s The Care & Feeding of Exotic Pets, a high-speed comic thrill ride that launches the reader against the restraint bar with every turn, while at the same time offering up a surprising array of insights into marriage and midlife.  Buckle up and get ready.” (Janet Fitch, White Oleander) and “Diana Wagman’s new novel is a beautifully rendered, perverse love story.  Man loves woman, lizard loves woman, Wagman deftly infuses the ordinary with shots of horror.  You’ll never look at pet ownership the same way again.” (Seth Greenland, author of The Bones).  As they say in the business, those are money blurbs!  I like stories that come at readers from sharp angles and Wagman's novel certainly looks like it fits the bill.  This is high in my To-Be-Read stack and it should be in yours, too.  Here's the Jacket Copy:

Winnie Parker, mother to an angst-ridden teenage daughter and ex-wife to a successful game show host who left her for a twenty-something contestant, begins a normal day in her hum-drum existence by dropping her car off at the repair shop. After accepting what she believes is a ride to pick up her rental car, Winnie realizes too late that she's been kidnapped. What follows is a riveting psychological game of cat and mouse set in the kidnapper's tropically heated house—kept that way for Cookie, a menacing seven-foot long Iguana headquartered in the kitchen. While desperately seeking to escape—which leads to several violent clashes with her increasingly unstable kidnapper—Winnie also tries to understand why she was taken captive. Is her kidnapper merely seeking a ransom or does he have something more sinister in mind? Does he know that Winnie's mother is an Oscar-winning actress? Or did he connect her with Jonathan, her famous ex-husband? When the truth reveals itself, Winnie is not only forced to fight for her life, but must also protect the lives of those she loves from the kidnapper's deranged master plan.

The Chocolate Money by Ashley Prentice Norton (Mariner):  Norton's debut novel about the daughter of a chocolate heiress navigating a hazardous path through childhood in Chicago and prep school on the East Coast is sure to lose the kindly ladies of the Grandmother's Book Club and Knitting Circle right from the first page with its Opening Lines:

      The day I cut my hair and completely fuck up the Christmas Card, I am merely bored, not a defiant brat like Babs tells all her friends.
      It is late August. I am ten. Babs is in the kitchen talking to Andie, who comes Saturday afternoons for Bloody Marys and eggs Benedict. Babs doesn’t drink alcohol. She always nurses a Baccarat champagne flute of freshly squeezed juice (grapefruit, plum, raspberry) cut with a heavy pour of Perrier. Fruit has way too many calories. I’m not even sure she likes the taste, but it looks pretty.
      “So, Andie,” Babs says, “we are doing the Card tomorrow. I can’t decide if I should go summer or for more of a holiday feel. No matchy-matchy reindeer sweaters, of course, but maybe a tad less controversial than last year’s. I know the nudity was tastefully done, but I don’t want that bitch Nona Cardill writing nasty things about me in her column. That biddy probably never takes off her underwear. And all the calls from school. No sense of humor at all; no points for creativity.”
      All the kids in my grade at Chicago Day were really mean when our Christmas Card arrived last year. Yes, we were naked, but I was sitting on Babs’s lap and covered her privates. That didn’t make things any better. They said I was totally weird to have my picture taken without my clothes on. The best I could come up with was that it wasn’t my idea.

So Norton's characters shock the white wigs off a few readers.  What of it?  By all appearances, this is not a safe book...and I love that about it.  In his workshop at NYU, E. L. Doctorow said Babs was "the worst mother [he] had ever come across in American literature."  That alone makes me want to sit around gorging on Chocolate Money.

Spectacle by Susan Steinberg (Graywolf Press):  From the looks of it, Steinberg's stories in this slim collection are the equivalent of the carnival ride depicted on the cover design: they're bright, they're fast, and they leave you feeling shaken, your core of balance thrown out of whack.  Most of the stories come to us in one-sentence paragraphs--short lines that look like poetry on the page.  Other stories do the opposite--they're one long sentence glued together with semi-colons (which also begin and end the story).  The subject matter, according to the Jacket Copy, takes no prisoners:

In these innovative linked stories, women confront loss and grief as they sift through the wreckage of their lives. In the title story, a woman struggles with the death of her friend in a plane crash. A daughter decides whether to take her father off life support in the Pushcart Prize-winning “Cowboys.” And in “Underthings,” when a man hits his girlfriend, she calls it an accident. Spectacle bears witness to alarming and strange incidents: carnival rides and plane crashes, affairs spied through keyholes and amateur porn, vandalism and petty theft. These wounded women stand at the edge of disaster and risk it all to speak their sharpest secrets.

Here are the Opening Lines from "Superstar," the first story in the collection:

      I once hung out with this shit group of kids and they were just such shit.
      This to say I made some mistakes.
      Like breaking into this one guy's car.
      Like stealing the stereo out of that car.
      I was young and I didn't steal the stereo because I wanted the stereo.
      I stole it, rather, because I wanted the guy.

Love Bomb by Lisa Zeidner (Farrar, Straus and Giroux):  In all the history of Great First Lines in American Literature, surely the Opening Lines of Zeidner's new novel are already in my Top 10:

The bride did not wear white. But the terrorist did.

As far as hooks go, those are some of the hookiest sentences I've encountered all year.  The rest of the novel appears to hold up to the promise of those first sentences.  Here's the Jacket Copy:

In quaint Haddonfield, New Jersey, Tess is about to marry Gabe in her childhood home. Her mother, Helen, is in a panic about the guests, who include warring exes, crying babies, jealous girlfriends, and too many psychiatrists. But the most difficult guest was never on the list at all: a woman in a wedding dress and a gas mask, armed with a rifle, a bomb trigger strapped to her arm.  Lisa Zeidner’s audacious novel Love Bomb begins as a hostage drama and blossoms into a far-reaching tale about the infinite varieties of passion and heartbreak.  Who has offended this nutcase, and how? Does she seek revenge against the twice-divorced philanderer? Or is her agenda political—against the army general? Or the polygamous Muslim from Mali? While the warm, wise Helen attempts to bond with the masked woman and control the hysteria, the hostages begin to untangle what connects them to one another, and to their captor. But not until the SWAT team arrives does “the terrorist of love” unveil her real motives....

Blurbworthiness:  “If Jane Austen had lived to witness 9-11, Lisa Zeidner’s witty and terrifying comedy of romantic manners is what she would have written.  It’s brilliant, funny and scary.”  (Rafael Yglesias, author of A Happy Marriage)

Trailer Park Tuesday: Four New Messages by Joshua Cohen

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.

Gritty, haunting, unrelenting--just a few words to describe the trailer for Joshua Cohen's quartet of stories, Four New Messages, published by Graywolf Press last month.  At first, I was a little put off by the video, thinking it was a little slow and showed the strains of trying to be a Serious Art Film ("Sundance, here I come!").  But you know what?  Since then, I've come back to this video multiple times, drawn deeper and deeper into its spell with each viewing.  The short film, directed by Brian Spinks, stars Alex Karpovsky (from the HBO series Girls) as a drug dealer named Richard Monomian.  How can I remember the character's name so easily?  It's repeated to us several times by the voice-over narrator who is typing at her keyboard as she tells us the story of Richard Monomian's disastrous appearance at a party where he brought "snax," drugs that are "OK price but also of crackhead quality."  The trailer is based on one of the "messages" in Cohen's book, "Emissions."  In that story, according to the publisher's plot synopsis, "a hapless drug dealer in Princeton is humiliated when a cruel co-ed exposes him exposing himself on a blog gone viral."  The trailer hints at that over-exposure incident, but cuts away before we see the act in question.  It's not always an easy video to watch, but I guarantee that, love it or hate it, you won't be able to shake it from your mind.  It stays with you, like that ghostly aftertaste of last night's cigarettes in your mouth.

My First Time: Maryanne O'Hara

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 Maryanne O'Hara, author of the new novel Cascade (which is the current Friday Freebie--enter today for your chance at winning a copy).  Kim Edwards (author of  The Memory Keeper’s Daughter) has this to say about the book: “Compelling and fascinating, the story unfolds in such unexpected ways, and with such gathering tension, that I couldn’t stop until I’d read the final, beautifully written, line.”  O’Hara was the longtime associate fiction editor at the award-winning literary journal Ploughshares.  She received her MFA from Emerson College and her short fiction has been published in publications as varied as Five Points, The North American Review, and Redbook, as well as in many anthologies.  She lives on a river near Boston.  Visit her website, and find her on Twitter and Facebook.

My First Book Launch

Launch Week 2012, and fittingly my first book event is a group signing at the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore on Martha’s Vineyard.  It is a gorgeous August Sunday afternoon.  Seven of us are on-hand to sign: Amor Towles, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Margot Stedman, Ann Napolitano, Steven Raichlen, James Sullivan and me.  The event is called “Celebrate the Literary Arts,” and the spirit in that shop is indeed celebratory!  Dawn Braasch, the owner, is the kind of hard-working indie bookseller that writers and readers depend on.  The other authors are warm, supportive, and lively.  Three of us are first-time novelists—Amor with The Rules of Civility, Margot with The Light Between Oceans, and me with Cascade.  We buy each other’s books.  Islander Geraldine Brooks shows up to say hello, while her talented son plays the harp, outside on the patio.

When life is so good, it can be hard to remember the bad.  But during the years that I toiled on Cascade, with no certainty it would ever find a publisher, I often stood in front of the Bunch of Grapes like a Dickensian waif.  Of all the bookstores in the world, I wanted to see my work in their paned windows.  Martha’s Vineyard is a place I love, with farms and tranquil pastures that have nourished complicated souls like Lillian Hellman, William Styron, and Mike Wallace.  It is a creative person’s island, and I wanted to be part of it.

I had started out, late, in my thirties, as a short story writer, with no desire to ever write a novel.  But at one point, a few story ideas refused to be contained—they wanted to come together as a novel: Cascade.

Cascade is about an artist in the 1930s.  It plays out within the context of the Depression, New York during Roosevelt’s “New Deal for the Arts” era, and the approaching World War.  The main setting is a New England town threatened with flooding so a reservoir can be constructed.  A renowned Shakespeare theater, which the artist’s father built, faces destruction if the town is destroyed.  There was a lot to research, and it was easy, in the early years, to devote most of my “novel-writing time” to watching hours of newsreels, reading histories and old newspapers, studying Shakespeare, 20th-century art, reservoir construction materials, and interviewing elderly artists and housewives.

But when I published the last short story I had written, in 2006, I began to panic.  It was then that I really committed to Cascade.  There followed some lonely, uncertain years, when I despaired that the novel’s many layers and themes could ever cohere, make sense, and read well.  But I didn’t have it in me to have a “drawer novel.”  If I was going to devote years of my life to a book, I needed to see it published.  So I kept on.

I finished Cascade right before Christmas 2010.  I gave it to a trusted friend for one last reading.  Susan Conley, God love her, was launching her own book, but read it and gave me the “Go” in February.  The agent I most wanted took it in March.  When she sold it to venerable Viking, I sensed that a lot of good was about to begin.

I reflect on that good as I sign books at the Bunch of Grapes.  I catch sight of the store windows, two copies of Cascade snug inside two panes, and I feel joyous and thankful.  When the event ends, Margot mentions that she wants to see the West Chop lighthouse—she plans to walk there and back.  It is a mile away and getting late in the day, so I offer to drive her up.  That way she can enjoy the walk back in daylight.  It is wonderful to spend time with this interesting woman I never would have otherwise met—one of countless new connections, thanks to the book.  We talk of publishing and privacy and the brilliance of writer Jane Gardem.  I leave her, fittingly, puttering around the lighthouse, as I head off into Launch Week.

Fobbit Tour, Stop 1: Fact and Fiction in Missoula, Montana

I could think of no finer bookstore to host the first public reading of Fobbit than Fact and Fiction in downtown Missoula, Montana.  Bookstore owner Barbara Theroux is an enthusiastic champion of all books, but especially those by Big Sky Country authors.  She rolled out a carpet as red as the cover of Fobbit for me last night—which coincided with Missoula’s festive First Friday event, along with the weekend-long Brewfest. 

At 5:30, I read a short selection from Fobbit, introducing the audience to Lieutenant Colonel Eustace Harkleroad, and then answered questions for about a half hour.  Our conversation ranged from integrating comedy into a narrative set in a bloody combat zone to how to land a literary agent.  I’d joked on Twitter I was worried about talking to a room of empty seats, Clint Eastwood-style.  But Missoula readers totally allayed those fears.  They made my day. 

After the reading, I moved to the front of the store to sign a couple dozen books (maybe more, maybe less—my mind was a blur at that point).  Some things I need to work on in the future: abbreviating my chats with readers so I can keep the line moving….and trying to improve my penmanship—which may be a lost cause at this point.  And to Justin whose book I accidentally dated “5.7.12,” I apologize.  Consider the book a collector’s item, the product of an addled author’s “Launch-Week Brain.” 

Two memorable moments:

1.  Midway through the Q &A  session, my mother came in, walked up to the front of the room and said she needed my cell phone (my wife was at another location in Missoula, setting up Backyard Bungalow’s booth at the Prairie Sisters Party, and my cell phone was the one we use for credit card transactions).  My mother apologized to the crowd and snuck back out.  I told the group, “Y’know, Mom was always barging in and interrupting me right when I was in the middle of something important.” 

2.  Due to a printing error on a Fact and Fiction flyer, we decided to hold a second reading at 7 p.m.  Three people showed up, but they were the three coolest people in the world: Kris, a poet studying at the University of Montana; Chris La Tray, a literary advocate and blogger; and Chris Connor, a childhood friend of mine from Jackson, Wyoming (Chris now lives in Missoula where he runs the Ronald McDonald House).  We called it “The Chris Reading” and it was a perfect way to end the evening. 
 

At every stop during the book tour for Fobbit, I intend to support independent bookstores by buying a book recommended by booksellers.  For the first event, I chose a new memoir about living in Saskatchewan, A Geography of Blood: Unearthing Memory from a Prairie Landscape by Candace Savage.  Barbara Theroux said the book told a familiar story, but it was so well-written that it makes it stand apart from the rest of contemporary Western literature. Here’s the first paragraph:

Let's just say that it all began when Keith and I took a trip.  Keith is Keith Bell, my companion of going on twenty years, and it's largely thanks to his love of travel that I've seen a bit of the world: the wild-and-woolly moors of Yorkshire, the plains of Tanzania; the barren reaches of Peninsula Valdes in Argentina.  Yet the journey I want to tell you about was not a grand excursion to some exotic, faraway destination but a trip that brought us closer to home.  A nothing little ramble to nowheresville.

Friday Freebie: Cascade by Maryanne O'Hara

Congratulations to Mari Kathryn Gavin, winner of last week's Friday Freebie contest, the four books which shared Fobbit's release date (September 4): Love Slave by Jennifer Spiegel, Hemingway's Girl by Erika Robuck, The Three-Day Affair by Michael Kardos, and On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson by William Souder.  Mari certainly has some quality reading time ahead of her.

This week's giveaway is Cascade, the new novel by Maryanne O'Hara from Viking which Caroline Leavitt said "unfolds like a Shakespearean tragedy, with an ending you won't see coming."  While this Fall season is crowded with promising books (see above), none holds more promise for me than Cascade.  I can't wait to pluck it from the TBR pile and sink into its pages.  Here's the plot summary:

1935: Massachusetts will soon decide whether to flood the valley town Cascade, to build a great reservoir. If Cascade is chosen, the town will be literally wiped from the maps, drowned. Desdemona Hart Spaulding is already drowning in Cascade. Before the Depression, Dez had enjoyed a privileged life—art schools, study in Paris—and was an up-and-coming Boston artist when she discovered that her dying father had lost nearly all of his wealth. She returned to Cascade and made a marriage of convenience to put a roof over his head, only to have him die within months. Now she’s married to a man who is eager for children she doesn’t want, and bound to the promise she made her father: to someday reopen his acclaimed Shakespearean theater. Her discontent is complicated by her growing attraction to Jacob Solomon, a fellow artist and kindred spirit. When she joins the fight to save Cascade from drowning, tragic events unfold, and she is forced to make difficult choices. Must she keep her promises? Is it morally possible to set herself free?

If you'd like a chance at winning a signed copy of Cascade, 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 Sept. 13—at which time I'll draw the winning name.  I'll announce the lucky reader on Sept. 14.  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.