Wot no Posts...Again...

I'm truly amazed at how quickly an entire month can zip by!

I can tell you how we've been locked away, furiously writing for days upon days, too intent on our various WIPs (or is it WsIP?) to put up a post or two. But that would be a lie. 

Art at the Prado

The truth is, we've been basking in the warm sunshine of central Spain, enjoying Madrid's titillating art scene, and gorging ourselves on Iberian ham, sweet-but-not-too-sweet marzipan, and stuffed olives so good that I nearly blush while eating.

And it was an amazing and much-needed break.

With a couple of transatlantic flights, airport downtime, and post-travel jet lag, though, I did have tons of time to catch up on my reading. And we visited some fabulous bookstores on our travels (most of which we neglected to photograph) that we'll talk about here on the blog.

So we're ramping back up slowly on both writing and blogging, but should be back into the swing of things soon. In the meantime, here are some not-so-great photos of the European food trip. Which one's your fav?

Prey Dancing

Amazon: Prey Dancing by Jonathan Gash

Following hot on the heels of Different Women Dancing, I went through the sequel, Prey Dancing, like a dose of salts. It helped that it was the Easter break, but I do find this series to be real page-turners.

The second novel builds on the first. There are ongoing plot strands running through, but this one has a more clearly self-contained story within it, about gangland violence between rival drug dealers.

What’s good about it? The immersion in the criminal underworld again, with all its associated slang. I like how the violence and reprisals are carefully planned out, so the underworld doesn’t have to be intruded upon by the world of law and order. The violence is generally graphic, but not brutally so.

I don't know whether I'm showing my age, but I wonder whether the characters, pretty much all in their early 20s, sometimes seem a bit too old and well, wise. Maybe that's a reflection of growing up fast on the streets.

All-in-all, I really enjoyed re-reading this. I’ll be straight on to the next book once I’m reunited with my library!

I do have to reiterate a niggle from the first book, though, about the editing. Near the start, Clare Burtonall (the novels are called the “Dr Clare Burtonall" series, and of all the characters I wonder why she gets the lead billing!) has a pillow-talk conversation with Bonn, the goer, and asks about “pollen”: a slang term for drugs. Bonn knows the word but doesn’t let on, and then a short time later we have him asking someone what it means. Come on, Mr Editor! We’re busy authors, help us out here!

At a loss for words?

We’ve commented on the tedious repetitiveness in Fifty Shades of Grey ("On the many layers of communication in Fifty Shades" and "Fifty Shades of Dismay") and the general lack of descriptive elements. But as Nik notes in Tools, todgers, and terrible metaphors, creating literary descriptions of genitalia and sexual intercourse isn’t always easy. When it comes down to it, the basic mechanics of the sex act are really nothing more complicated than inserting Part A into Slot B, right? So how can one describe Part A, Slot B, and various insertion techniques without sounding like either instructions for your kid’s Erector Set or a page from your husband’s stash of girlie magazines that he “reads for the articles”?

Well, unlike our forefathers, the internet provides the modern author untold numbers of sex euphemisms. Here are a couple of sites to peruse when the literary well runs dry:

• AMOG (Alpha Male of the Group) lists 165 ways to describe the mechanics of sex.  So instead of “making love,” “having sex,” or “f$&@ng,” characters can “ride the baloney pony”, “stuff the taco,” or “take the skin boat to tuna town.” Or for a less silly encounter, your characters can simply screw, shag, or bang.

• For describing the anatomical parts involved, The University of Finland provides a comprehensive Glossary of Sexual and Scatological Euphemisms.  In addition to the various bodily parts, they also list handy euphemisms for related terms, including:  
• STDs (“crotch crickets” anyone?); 
• Masturbation (“clean your rifle” or “nerk your throbber”);
• Menstruation (“entertain the general”); 
• Flatulence (“shoot rabbits”?), among others.  

As silly as some of these are, this list should be a must-read for any writer of erotic scenes, if for no other reason than to open one’s vocabulary to the sheer realm of possibilities. 

So take the bayonet to the ace of spades and get a crumpet!

Buy on Amazon! Be a Sex-Writing Strumpet

Different Women, Different Reader, Different Review

My six year old’s teacher has the kids use the “five finger method” for finding a “just right” book to read. Here’s how it works:

1. Choose a book that looks interesting.
2. Read the first page.
3. Hold up a finger for each word you don’t know or are not quite sure about.
4. If you have one finger up (or none), the book is too easy. Two to three fingers up means it’s just right.  Four, and you should give it a go (or try another page) but it might be a little challenging. Five or more fingers, choose an easier book.

Okay then. Nik's pick of Different Women Dancing by Jonathan Gash. 1998 edition, page one:

• Finger 1: Stringers - Not the type one uses in buildings, I’m guessing by the context, as these are referred to as girl stringers. Or maybe it’s a girl building? Or a boy building with girl parts?

• Finger 2: Temazepam flogger - Who is Temazepam and why is the poor guy being flogged? Or maybe he's read too much Shade of Grey and wants his turn under the flogger? 

• Finger 3: Yellow jellies - Mmm, jelly!

• Finger 4: Standers - Someone who stands? But it's used in a more sinister way, “the standers caught them," so like some sort of standing spider creature that catches people?

• Finger 5: Locum - used in different place as an adjective, a noun, and a verb! So one could have a locum doing locum at a locum locum?

So five fingers up and feeling very under-educated for this book. But Nik assured me it’s worth the read (see his post, "Different Women Dancing"), so I got a good night’s sleep, laid off the red wine, and tried again. And it was, most definitely, worth the read.

It turns out the reader isn’t supposed to know some of the words right away, like “stringers” and “standers.” These are particular aspects of the underworld syndicate upon which the story is based and their meaning comes out through the narrative. The story is captivating, following Dr. Clare Burtonall as she digs deeper and deeper into the workings of the city’s underground, trying to discover what her husband is hiding. The new words keep coming and coming, but the story’s so strong and the context so revealing that within just a few pages the new terms stopped tripping me up. (Plus Gash includes a definition at the start of each subsequent chapter for the slower folk amongst us.)

As for the rest of the not-just-right words from page one, here’s what the Google revealed:

• Temazepam is a prescription sleep medication, also used as no-go pills for military pilots.

• Googling flogger gets you mostly BDSM links but…umm…where was I? Oh yeah, informally it’s an aggressive salesperson.

• Yellow jellies brings up both Spongebob sandals and illegal drugs. I'm thinking Gash meant the latter.

• A locum is what we’d call a sub in the States, “a person who temporarily fulfills the duties of another.”  So a sub could be subbing as a sub teacher, got it.

Different Women Dancing

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I’m a big fan of Jonathan Gash. A recent post here ("Very Public Diary of a Call Girl") reviewed a book that’s rumored to be one of his first pieces of writing: an autobiographical account of prostitution. 

I’ve just finished re-reading Different Women Dancing, the first novel in a series of four set in the world of crime and prostitution in a northern English city (it’s Manchester, though that’s never actually explicitly stated). In fact, I wish there were a lot more in the series. Gash wrote 20-odd “Lovejoy” novels, set in the world of antiques crime, and I think this is his only other series, other things he wrote being one-offs. Gash is retired now (he was a medical doctor when not writing great fiction), so maybe there’s no chance of more to come. If you’re reading this, Mr Gash, I’d really appreciate just one more, please?

Different Women Dancing’s a fantastic read. There’s various things I like about it:

1. The complete immersion in the slang terminology. Each Chapter comes with a definition: “Goer: a male hired by a female for sexual purposes”. The main protagonist is Bonn, a goer who was a former seminarian, which makes for some interesting narrative.
2. The fact that the book plays out almost as an assemblage of scenes, with the plot going on in the background. I like books like this: it somehow seems more like a reflection of real life.
3. The fact that the book is definitely the start of a series. I mean that in the sense that at the end of the book, there are still things happening in various plot threads. Very little has been completely resolved, and there is more still to happen. Again, a bit like life!

I only have one very minor niggle, which really mustn’t stop you reading the book. Towards the end, there’s a conversation on one page which a character plays back differently just a couple of pages later. I had to flick back and check “no, she didn’t say that”. So come on, Mr Editor. In fairness, if I’d stopped at the end of a Chapter and had a break I probably wouldn’t have noticed. It’s little glitches like that, “continuity errors” as they’re known on TV, that are rare enough to be surprising when they occur.

Jay read this one, too, so over to her soon for a better review than this!

So an adverb walks into a prologue...

“This is the account of six months in the life of Snip Freeman, a woman who turned her back on a man who was drowning. She was a painter with a waitressing problem, a wanderer…She wasn’t anchored, she touched the earth lightly, she’d visit a place and find a man and a studio and a scrap of a job until the zing of uncertainty pulled her on.”

Thus begins Alice Springs, the second novel (originally published as Cleave) by Australian author Nikki Gemmell.

And with these few lines - in a Prologue, off all places - I was hooked. Here’s why:

1. Curiosity: Who is the drowning man? Is the drowning literal or metaphorical? Why did she turn her back, and did he actually drown afterward? I’m insatiably curious and I need to know!

2. Resonance: Sometimes a book rings so true that I absolutely have to see what happens. In Alice Springs, the female wanderer, the woman who moves from place to place, pulled by the “zing of uncertainty,” that’s me! Before I had my children, I’d never lived in any one city or town for more than a couple of years, the longest stretch being college (split across two schools in different states). I’ve always been drawn to the lure of the unknown, the possibilities, the what-could-happens of a new place. With the arrival of kids though, my priorities have shifted and I now have a home base, a house in the suburbs in a good school district. And as they’ve gotten older we trek together on little adventures, slowly branching out from hikes through local parks to day trips to overnights to week-long excursions in exotic-ish locales. And I love it, I do, but to follow the siren song of the open road for even just a few hours, pure bliss.

3. Rebellion: I read a lot of writing advice, probably too much at times, using it as busywork when my writing doesn’t flow. And three of the many oft-repeated tips are  (1) no prologues, (2) no adverbs, and (3) show, don’t tell. Gemmell happily breaks every one of these “rules” in the first few sentences, and it really works. Had she chosen to plunge into the tale with Chapter 1 - a backstory of Snip as a kid - I’m not sure I would’ve been so drawn in. Sometimes you have to tell it how it is, in a prologue, with a carefully chosen adverb or two. You just do.

So roped in by the first few words, I brought home the book from the library and was mostly not disappointed. It gets a little bogged down in description - beautiful, poetic prose mind you, but perhaps a little too much of a good thing. But overall a good story with absolutely stellar intimate scenes, Gemmell’s forte for sure. Not raunchy or raw, for the most part - I’ll get to those in my review of The Bride Stripped Bare, coming soon - but expertly written scenes of basic human interaction and emotion. Loved it.

A Thousand Words is Worth not Having to Draw a Picture

I’m a dreadful artist, always have been. I always used to say, when writing stuff at work, that I’d rather write an extra thousand words than have to supply a picture. The graphic artists, after experiencing my attempts at sketching, tended to agree...

I rather felt that I’d discovered an example of too much information full stop when I bought a pair of noise-cancelling headphones recently. The arrived with a wodgy manual. Now, admittedly, it contains instructions in multiple languages, but it’s still 14 pages for each. 14 pages! I doubt that very few of the purchasers ever make it to the fact that the maximum operating temperature is 104˚F.

Compare that to the insert with an Amazon Kindle, bought about the same time. A bit of a difference here. Whilst I’ll admit that the Kindle has the advantage of being its own instruction manual, in these days of the Internet, are big thick paper manuals really needed for something as straightforward as a pair of headphones?