Book Review: A Dictionary of Maqiao

Several times a year, I seek out translated literary fiction. It's like taking a vacation from genre fiction. Other cultures have different rules about writing than we do. This time, my girlfriend shared a book I'd never heard of and would never have looked for. A Dictionary of Maqiao is an artifact novel. By that, I mean the author, Han Shaogong, pretends to write a linguistic dictionary of a small village in rural China and in so doing tells the history of the village and its people.

A Dictionary tells us a story of this village. It doesn't show us the story. Right there, it violates what we writers have pounded into our heads. The Western reader wants dialogue and action to forward the plot. Han Shaogong has little dialogue, perhaps as little plot, and very little action, yet the work is compelling.

There is no hook, no conflict. Nothing to compel the reader to continue, except what is told, how it is told. I was "hooked" because I didn't think anyone could pull of writing a novel and pretending it was a dictionary. Like, get totally real.

Each "chapter" sets up as a word in English, followed by the Chinese characters, and a passage that relates the word to the village or to its people. Along the way, the author muses on all sorts of philosophical subjects. On writing he says, "Anything left out of traditional fiction is normally something of 'no significance.' But when religious authority is all-important, science has no significance. When politics is all-important, love has no significance...I suspect the myriad things in this world are in fact all of equal importance; the only reason why sometimes one set of things seems to have 'no significance' is because they've been filtered out by the writer's view of what has significance."

Think about your own work. If you had a deeply philosophical character, could you get away with such a monologue? My guess is, an editor would want it removed. Maybe not, but more than likely.

Throughout the novel, Han Shaogong introduces to character after character, from the People's cadre leader to an Enlightened Youth to the peasant who has no dragon (you'll have to read the book to get the reference) to Three Ears to Yanzao's wife. Word play translates well into English, for one term in the Maqiao dialect can have multiple, contradictory meanings in English and in Chinese.

Winner of the China Times Prize for best novel, the Shanghai Literary Prize and one of the top 100 works of Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction from Asia Weekly, A Dictionary of Maqiao is a tour de force. If you want a different reading experience, check this out.

Interview with Michael Murphy, Author of Goodbye Emily

I had the pleasure recently of interviewing Michael Murphy, author of Scorpion Bay and the upcoming Goodbye Emily. If you don't know Michael's work, this should entice you to read him. If you already know his material, this lets you know about his next novel, which will be published in January.

Some of the readers of this blog may not know your works. Would you like to introduce yourself?

I’m a full time writer and part time urban chicken rancher in Arizona. I write mostly mystery/suspense novels and have had seven published to date. I’m really excited because Goodbye Emily, my return to Woodstock novel, will be released by Koehler Books January 20, 2012. I’d love for readers to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Goodreads.

Before we learn about your book, can you tell us the last exciting place you visited? Why did you pick these destination?

My wife and I spent several days in Puerto Vallarta after I won two free tickets. I’m sure we enjoyed the sun and the beach. I remember a short pleasure cruise to an island nearby for a sunset cookout and a trip into the mountains that took us back a century, but our main memories focus on there being a major airport mix-up regarding the free tickets, which almost kept us from returning to the US. 

Can you tell us a little about how you became a writer?

I’ve always been a writer, since elementary and high school when I wrote for the school newspapers and I majored in journalism at Arizona State University, but I didn’t get serious about writing until 1999 when I attended a seminar on establishing long term goals. At the end of the seminar each attendee was required to pick a goal that would take a year or more to complete. I picked writing a novel.

Goodbye Emily is your latest book. Why did you select the theme?

Goodbye Emily is more than a return to Woodstock novel. It’s about a man whose not only suffering through the loss of his wife, but he’s been laid off from the career he loves. Four days after my sixtieth birthday, I was laid off from a job I loved, so I took that experience and novelized it.  The novel is a lot more fun and upbeat than my personal recovery from losing my job.

Readers who might want a bit of Woodstock history and trivia can follow my Goodbye Emily blog.

I like the way you balance sorrow with humor. Do you find it difficult to write both?

Drama and comedy are based on conflict, so I find it easy to incorporate humor into my novels. I usually have at least one character who looks at life through a humorous lens, often complimenting the main character. Goodbye Emily includes some serious and tragic situations, but there’s also plenty of scenes that will make readers laugh. 

 I see the book is will be available through Amazon in print and paper. Can you tell us more about the publication schedule?

Goodbye Emily is now available for pre-order through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell Books, Books A Million and through independent bookstores. The official release date is January 20, 2013.

You can help your fellow writers with this question. What are you doing yourself to promote Goodbye Emily?

I’ve been more aggressive promoting Emily than my other novels. It’s been my honor to have two Woodstock icons, Country Joe McDonald and Wavy Gravy provide back cover blurbs, but the novel is more than a return to Woodstock. The three main characters are baby boomers who, like those of us in this category, face the challenges of aging. They do so with optimism toward the future and humor, so my primary focus is to reach out to this age group and present a novel that will appeal to not just nostalgia, but to a sense that Goodbye Emily is about everyone who is about to or has reached the age of sixty.

You wrote Scorpion Bay a couple of years ago. Can you tell us about it?

Scorpion Bay is an action/suspense novel and a mystery with a twist at the end. It takes place in Arizona, where I live. Writing about real locations rather than a fictitious setting can create challenges, but it’s a fun read. There’s a series about these characters in me, but I haven’t started book two yet.

What do you have planned next? Any other books in the works?

I’m really excited about my first post Goodbye Emily novel.  It’s called The Yankee Club and I’m returning to my mystery/suspense roots. Inspired by The Thin Man film series, it takes place in 1933 New York City and follows a writer, Jake Donovan, and actress, Laura Wilson, who can’t seem to avoid getting involved in a mystery. There’s romance and humor and I get to use the word dame a lot. Famous people from that era drop by from time to time, Cole Porter, Babe Ruth and Dashiell Hammett are just a few.

Like The Thin Man movies, this will be a series. I’m busy writing the second in the series, All That Glitters, with Jake and Laura in Hollywood.

Thank you, Michael, for sharing your life and new novel with us. I was pleased to find we have several things in common. Both post-60. Both got laid off and used that event to begin the transformation into careers as writers. And we are both Pacific Athletic Conference grads. You from Arizona State, so you're a Pac-10er. Me from UCLA and USC, when it was PAC 8.

More on My Writing Life

On my last post, I left with a teaser. Why would a book inspire me to devote a dozen years to learning a new craft? Because Abigail Trafford told me that I could do anything I wanted in the decades after turning 50. (Actually this works for those who are under 50 but who want to change their lives and follow their dreams.)

 Trafford's thesis is that you can do whatever you want as long as you define that desire. And as long as you have the health and means to accomplish that goal. If you're 55 and want to be an astronaut, probably not going to happen. But if you're 55 and want to start a career, she encourages you to research what it would take to enter that career. She sites an example of an oil woman who went back to school after 55 and became a nurse. My cousin, who has been a psychotherapist for 20 years, decided to finish her doctorate. So, Dr. Vail is now practicing in Vermont. Her significant other went back to school at the same time, and he is now a nurse.

I believed Trafford's message. I knew I wanted to write. I ground out literally thousands of pages, most of them dreadful. Several friends offered books on the craft of writing. Imagine my surprise there was a craft of writing! I devoured the books and began putting much of the information in practice. I ground out more pages, many of them actually better, but not good enough.

I played around with a couple of writing groups in northern Virginia but didn't find one that fit. I tried a writing partner who didn't know much more than I did. That didn't work. Then, I moved to my permanent home at Smith Mountain Lake, found Lake Writers, found Valley Writers in Roanoke, and found writing partners who were not afraid to tell me what I had was all right but needed a lot of work. And so my transformation began.

The Writing Life -- Mine

Have you always wanted to be a writer? Do you have a novel in you screaming to get out? I'd like to say I always wanted to be a writer, but I didn't. Oh, I played with writing from grade school onward, but not seriously.

My first adventure into writing fiction was part of a third-grade assignment to write my autobiography. For crying out loud, I was eight. I hadn't had a life to write about, so I made one up. It was pretty good, as I remember. I also remember two other things about that assignment: my first and only F, and my mother saying that if I was going to lie, I should consider being a novelist.

In college, I wrote my first novel. On my trusty Underwood upright, no less. I wrote a science fantasy novel. Yes, on a manual typewriter. I couldn't afford the latest IBM Selectric, so it was manual or handwritten. I was enthralled by Ray Bradbury and a guy I was dating. It seemed so easy to write science fantasy. All you had to do was let your imagination go. I did. I spent a summer after sophomore year pounding away on the keyboard, piling up a huge stack of pages. I reached "The End" and pronounced I had written a novel.

My mother asked to read it. She actually finished it. She never said it was dreadful, but she suggested I continue with my education. Mind you, I wasn't in a creative writing program. I read the story. I cannot describe how dreadful it was. I mean, redefined dumb. Redefined purple prose. Redefined "don't quit your day job." I fed every page into the fireplace.

In grad school, I decided I had more to say so I started writing poetry. Pure, unadulterated doggerel. I really hated reading poetry. What made me think I could write something I didn't like reading? At least with the science fantasy, I read and loved Bradbury.

I piddled around with writing off and on for years. I wrote several novels, all of which are gathering cyber dust. I ground out pages, pages and more pages. I was hooked. I didn't know what I didn't know about writing. I knew I was possessed to write.

And then I bought a book called My Time: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life by Abigail Trafford. Her book changed my outlook on life. Seriously.

To know what she wrote that was so profound and why it hit me will have to wait until the next post.

From Voices in Our Heads to Voice on Paper

Writers joke about listening to the voices in our heads. When we don't hear anything, we have writer's block. Translating the voice in the head to the voice on a printed or "e" page can be difficult.

When I was at the Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop this year, Dan Mueller gave me some great advice that added richness to what I was workshopping. I write almost exclusively in first person singular. I have a strong, mouthy main character, Mad Max, who takes us through her story. Dan suggested I combine Max's voice was a narrator's voice. Let me show you what he suggested.

I have a scene where Max knocks at a door, which is opened by a child. The child hesitates, then let's Max in. Here's what I wrote:

Marianna's frightened eyes flared as she peered at me.

"Don't worry. I came alone."

She started to close the door, then changed her mind. She opened it enough to let me slip in.

Dan made several suggestions. One was to show Marianna's fear better. Yup, old show versus tell. He also said I could describe the room once Max was inside, because the things in a place create a vivid fictional world. While I don't want to pad the narrative with extraneous words, this made sense. My next draft reads:

Marianna stood in the open doorway, her hands twisting the hem of her tee-shirt. She looked past me to see if Emilie was with me.

"Don't worry. I came alone."

She hesitated before stepping aside to let me enter. As soon as I was inside, she closed and locked the door.

Three days earlier, the room was clean and neat. Today, dust dimmed the polished table tops. Light came through a four-inch gap in the drapes and left cross-hatched shadows on the wrinkled rug. A book lay on the floor, its pages ripped out.

Marianna closed the drapes. Not before I saw the dark bruise on the side of her face, though.

Now, I could have said squishy things like, "Max looked around the room." But once Max is in the room, the  narrator's voice can fill in some "stuff" details.

Don't know if I'll use something like the second example, but it does open different ways of presenting scene and action. Gave me lots of room for creative thought.

Hey writers, ideas???

Interview with Kathleen Delaney, author of "And Murder for Dessert"

I love doing interviews with writers of books I liked. My last book review was of Kathleen Delaney's And Murder for Dessert. She recently sat down for an interview about her writing life. Please meet Kathleen.


Will you introduce yourself to my blog readers? Not all of them may know you.  
My name is Kathleen Delaney.  That is my original name. I use it to write under because my mother asked me to. She wasn’t too fond of my ex-husband. However, we had five children together, and I now have 8 grandchildren, one great grandson and another due any minute. I grew up in Glendale, Ca., and lived all over southern California for many years, finally moved to Paso Robles, on California’s central coast, where I worked as a real estate broker for over twenty years, and bred and showed Arabian horses. After I retired from real estate, my two dogs and I moved to South Carolina where I currently live in a one hundred year old house with a wonderful wrap around porch. I love to cook, write, and of course read.

You like to write about exciting places. Where have you traveled?I love to travel and do so as often as possible. Two of the most exciting places were Egypt and a barge trip down the canals in France, ending in Provence. I went to Egypt because my youngest daughter was at school at the American University of Cairo and because after reading all of the Amelia Peabody mysteries I was fascinated with the idea of visiting there. The trip was wonderful. I don’t like cruises as a rule but the idea of floating through France on a barge, sipping wine as we watched the landscape slip by, stopping in medieval towns along the way, appealed. Especially as I went with family and friends. We took up 2 barges. It was even more fun than I thought. So was Paris and the few days we spent on the Mediterranean.

How did you become a writer?  

I think anyone who reads a lot has a secret, or not so secret, desire to be a writer. I used to scribble stories and hide them in the cedar chest so no one could read them. I really didn’t think I had what it took to be a writer. One day one of my daughters found a bunch of them and pronounced them good. They weren’t, but a couple of other things happened and I decided to try. I wrote an article about my children’s adventures in 4H. I sent it to Family Fun. They bought it, for money, and published it. I was a writer.

Is And Murder for Dessert the 3^rd book in the series? 

Yes

I know you lived in Paso Robles. Before you wrote, did you have any experience making wine? 
The setting is in the Paso Robles wine country, but I have no personal experience with making wine. However, one of my daughters does and I know several of the wine makers in the area. They were all most helpful.

Since this is the third book in your series, can you tell us a little about the others?
The first book is Dying for a Change. It introduces Ellen, a woman in her early forties, who has returned to her hometown after a nasty divorce. She has gotten a real estate license and is determined to have a new life as well. Unfortunately, she finds a dead body, a bashed and bloody body, in the first house she tries to show. She finds Dan Dunham, whom she hasn’t seen since she was in high school. He has returned to their small town, as Chief of Police. Romance looms.  Except Ellen isn’t one bit sure she wants romance. Her first try at it didn’t work out so well. 


Ellen and Dan’s relationship gets a little closer in Give First Place to Murder. The book centers around Arabian horses, horse shows and drug running. While trying to figure out who murdered the highly objectionable trainer, Bryce Ellis, Ellen and her daughter, Susannah, get locked in a horse van and almost end up dead. I threw in a pirate to keep the story interesting. 


And Murder for Dessert is all about temperamental chefs, beds and breakfasts, unwelcome suitors, and, of course, murder. 


The fourth book, Murder Half-Baked, centers on Grace House, a halfway house for women in transition and a bakery. Ellen and Dan are getting married, the wedding is to be on New Year's Eve but nothing is going right.  Ellen has been handed a new client, Grace House. Only it burns down and the residents move in with Dan and Ellen while Dan tries to figure out who set the fire and who killed Dr.Sadler by bashing him on the head with the arm of a cemetery angel. Unfortunately all clues point to someone from Grace House. Only, who? Ellen had better find out before her own house goes up in smoke 

Do you model characters after living people? 
No. Characters just come as the story unravels. In the book I am writing now, Dead in a Manger, two gay guys have appeared. I didn’t plan them. Only, I was writing this scene in a pet shop and they walked in. They’ve stayed in, too.

Your books are available in print and e-book formats. Are you satisfied with your print and e-book sales?

Not my print sales.  The e-books are selling unbelievably well and I’m thrilled, but the print books are moving at a much more leisurely pace.

What do you do to promote your books and yourself?  

Lots of different things. Since I am now “handicapped” I am doing lots more on line than I used to.  Besides, there is more you can do on line. Facebook, blogging, Goodreads, lots of things and while I don’t do them all all the time, I do use that avenue a lot. However, I go wherever anyone will listen to me. Libraries, book clubs, any other kind of club. The book I’m writing has a lot in it about dogs and dog breeding. When it comes out (here is where we cross our fingers that it does come out) I will add dog clubs to my list. 

I belong to the Carolina Conspiracy and we do a lot of different things as a group. Getting on a panel at writers conferences is always good, and just doing book signings at bookstores is great. I’ve done a Christmas bazaar, sharing a booth with 2 other writers, and done book fairs several times. The hardest one is the LA Book fair held every year at UCLA. There are thousands of books there and even more thousands of people wandering around. It’s hard to get noticed, but it can be done. Bookstores are important even if you just drop in and leave information. The booksellers tend to notice and if they like you and/or your book, will hand sell it. I keep lists of people, book stores where I have appeared, libraries, where I’ve made a speech, fans who have emailed me or signed the email list at events, and send them a notice when a new book comes out and follow through. Have a master list of all the libraries that carry the books and they get a notice of a new release as well. And on and on…

What are you writing now?
I am writing a new series, features a woman in her seventies who manages all of the volunteer activities in town. Amazing how bloody volunteer work can get.  I am hoping it will turn into a series as well. The 5^th book in the Ellen McKenzie series needs a serious rewrite before it goes back to Camel Press, who has asked for it. If they like it, Ellen and her Aunt Mary are going to go to Williamsburg, VA. A few ghosts, a little history, and, of course, murder, one that Ellen and Aunt Mary had better solve if they want to get through alive.

Is this book under contract?

No. Camel wants to see it, but I’m not quite ready to send it.

Lastly, what are the last three books you read? 

Hmm. Some one gave me the Runaway Jury by John Grisham, and I read that one. Catherine Coulter's The Cove, that one was my mothers, it was on my shelf. I picked it up and didn’t put it back down until I was done. I am currently reading Kate Atkinson’s Started Early, Took My Dog. She has four different main characters, doing very different things, and they are about to collide. Great book.

Thank you, Kathleen. You've given my readers a very important insight into your writing life and the next books coming out. 

To my readers, if you didn't know Kathleen's books before, you do now. All of her books are available through Amazon.

Book Review: And Murder for Dessert by Kathleen Delaney

I've taken a vacation from reading cozy mysteries for quite a while. I met Kathleen Delaney earlier this month, picked up her And Murder for Dessert, and decided I needed a break from the serious non-fiction reading I've been doing for several weeks. And what a break it was.

Set in the wine country in California, we meet Ellen McKenzie working in real estate and engaged to the local chief of police. When Ellen's sister calls to inform her that her niece, Sabrina, and her husband Mark are coming to live with her, Ellen once again bridles at her sister's presumption, but since the young couple is on its way, she can do nothing but make them welcome. Soon, Sabrina ropes her into helping plan an upscale dinner at the winery where Mark is the wine master.

The guest chef is a nightmare right out of hell's kitchen. He's histrionic, unstable and downright mean. Many readers will cheer when he ends up dead in a vat of wine. The weaving of several secondary story arcs into a  whole keeps the reader wondering who killed the chef. More importantly, readers will want to solve the crime and unravel the secrets themselves.

Kathleen Delaney understands both the wine business and real estate, although real estate doesn't figure in as strongly as it did with her Dying for a Change, available in Kindle version only. Right now, that is. Dying for a Change is scheduled for a new release in print later this year.

I confess. I guessed who the killer was about half-way through. I enjoyed the way the author tied up all the arcs and brought to story to a successful conclusion. Even if you figure it out, too, this is a fun read.

Available in print and on Kindle, it's a read well worth it.