Anita Black Goes On a Trip

I continue to stick with Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series because I read the first 15 or so books in several weeks two years ago. I can't seem to ditch a series when I have read all of them so far. A new one arrives and I have to read it.

The newest installment, Hit List - the 20th in the series - is one of what I call the 'journey' books. Anita is away from St. Louis and her menagerie of lovers - weretigers, werelions, werewolves and some vampires for fun. She's on the road with other US Marshals to track down a serial killer targeting weretigers.

The weakest books for me in the series have always been the journey stories. When Anita is away from the tension of her ever-expanding family, nothing seems as interesting. There are plenty of baddies in Hit List - the slippery serial killer(s), the Harlequin who want to steal Anita for a Big Bad, Otto the crazy US Marshal cum hit man cum serial killer who is in love with Anita. But the tension was never that high for me.

Hit List was low on the page count of sexual encounters which is fine. (Sometimes the multiple chapters to detail an orgy can become a bit stale, surprisingly.) We learn some new things about Edward/Ted, another US Marshal who's a bit whack-a-doo but also revealing a beating heart. I don't know if I needed a Ted/Anita road trip to learn this though.

What kept the tension low for me was the one of the traps of first person narration - I'm constantly watching Anita think about something, consider it and then she responds. Also, the rough and tumble men she works with seem to talk a lot in the book and Anita constantly remarks about their honesty and how nice it is. It felt repetitive by the middle of the book.

And a lot of dialogue is used for exposition. Since this series is so long and contains so much, a fight will begin (there was the potential for a great one between Otto and Anita when she was trying to get him away from his next choice in torture victim) but then it peters out into a discussion. In that Otto-Anita fight, by the end Otto wasn't even part of the conversation. That fight turned into a pissing match between Otto and one of Anita's weres which turned into another Marshal explaining how Edward/Ted will kill him if he lets Otto hurt Anita and then it turned into Anita making the were feel better. The tension just went away.

There was a lot of potential for the final fight against the Big Bad - the Dark Queen who wants to possess Anita's body in order to be back in the world in a tangible way. Even that felt a little quick and certainly anti-climatic. When I'm not reading the series in quick succession, it is easy to forget that Anita has been battling the Dark Queen for sometime now. This battle should be BIG and EPIC. It felt kind of easy. Maybe if I'd reread the last couple of books in the series ahead of time I would have felt the tension of fighting the Dark Queen better. I'm not sure.

Not every book can be a gem. Hamilton has written several in the series that were really exciting and fun. My preference are for the books based in St. Louis, not the road trips.

Of course I'll read #21 when that comes out. Otto has been set up as the next Big Bad and that could be interesting. I just hope that Anita is pushed to learn new things about her self, have new experiences. Hit List tasted stale and brittle compared to others in the series.

'Tis the season!

The 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award guidelines have been announced. The winner of each category will receive a publishing contract with Penguin and a $15,000 advance. Not too shabby.

So what should you do?

1. Dust off that 50,000 to 150,000 word manuscript and decide if it should be submitted under General Fiction or Young Adult Fiction.

2. Take a pretty picture for your author photo.

3. Then set a reminder on your work calendar, iphone, write a Post-it and stick it on your mirror for January 24th. That's a Monday. You might want to just stay up late Sunday night watching reruns of The Walking Dead in preparation for its return - you can submit at 12:01 am.

(Only the first 5,000 entries in each category will be accepted for review so you'll want to submit early. If you can't stop fiddling with word choices, you'll need another reminder that the window slams shut on February 6. That is, of course, if 5,000 people haven't submitted before you.)

4. Begin to bite your nails.

Good luck!

As cool as a winter wind

The cover for A Reliable Wife is deceiving. It was the sole reason why I kept moving past the book every time I saw it despite the note that it was a #1 New York Times Bestseller. A couple of people must have liked it but I didn’t give the book a chance because of that sassy red dress and midnight train.

There was no male arm snaking around her waist so it wasn’t a romance – at least not a typical romance. The author’s name threw me as well – Robert Goolrick. Men don’t write romances, do they? Maybe they do but use a pseudonym.

One time I flipped the paperback over to read the description.

He placed a notice in a Chicago paper, an advertisement for a “reliable wife.” She responded, saying that she was “a simple, honest woman.” She was, of course, anything but honest, and the only simple thing about her was her single-minded determination to marry this man and then kill him, slowly and carefully, leaving herself a wealthy widow. What Catherine Land did not realize was that the enigmatic and lonely Ralph Truitt had a plan of his own.”

The first time I read that, it did nothing. Then last week, while Christmas shopping at Target, I saw A Reliable Wife again, walked by it three times again, read the back and tossed it in my cart. I’m not sure what made my wrist flick and send the pages flapping but I am so glad I did.

If you haven’t already (one of those readers who sent it to the NYT list), go read it now. Buy yourself a Christmas present, find a blanket, and settle down. And trust me on the blanket.

In the early days of winter in 1907 Wisconsin, Ralph Truitt waits at the train station to greet the woman who answered his advertisement for a reliable wife. He married once before, even had children, but they are all gone and he has been alone and lonely for twenty years. The small spark of hope that he refuses to call love still burns in him and he tells himself he wants a companion, that’s all.

He is rich and owns the town. He inherited the business from his father after gallivanting through Europe in search of pleasure, bringing his young Italian wife with him. Ralph is reserved and still and at times very scared of what his life has become.

Catherine Land steps off the train looking nothing like the photograph she mailed with her letter. That’s because she isn’t who she says she is. Catherine has lived the only life of independence afforded to women at the time and has the emotional scars to prove it. She dreams of a life of love and money, and Ralph Truitt will serve her purposes fine.

Only there is a twist. Ralph has finally found his son Antonio and wants his new wife to go fetch him. He hopes a woman’s touch will melt his son’s heart and coax him home. In a lovely twist, instead of Catherine being surprised by the identity of his son, she happily spends the week in bed – Ralph’s son is her lover who set her on the course of murder.

Goolrick continues the surprises as Ralph, Catherine and Antonio are surprised by the choices they make, the changes that shift in their souls. The ending seems inevitable but only after it has occurred. It is difficult to keep revealing new tricks while making each one seem fresh and appropriate.

On another small craft point, I loved how Goolrick used different sentence styles for dialogue and thought. His characters speak in short sentences, rough and abrupt and not at all forthcoming. But the paragraphs describing inner thought and intent can ramble and meander to circle the main point that character is obsessing over. The contrast between inner and outer speech is just one of many counterbalances that Goolrick employs to demonstrate his central theme that there are hidden depths in us all.

Much of the foreshadowing occurs through landscape and descriptions of the town. The action occurs during the long, blinding winter when bright snow covers everything. Catherine keeps the shades drawn during the day to keep the glare at bay. Items are lost in the snow. Feelings are buried. Fires smolder under the cold.

Which leads to how A Reliable Wife isn’t a romance but is a very sexy and sensual story. Ralph is preoccupied with his carnal longings. His memories of youth are riddled with drugs and orgies and no consequences. He also remembers his mother’s strict religious mores and how they were impressed on him. He imagines the people in his town and what must happen behind closed doors and is tremendously jealous.

Catherine is restrained with Ralph once they are married – she is trying to maintain her farce of a virginal missionary’s daughter. With Antonio, she is free and revels in her love of his touch. She allows him to do whatever he wants. His pleasure means everything.

The cold of winter melting into spring is the perfect metaphor for the building desires of all three characters. And it is the onset of spring weather that achieves the tragic climax. Goolrick did a wonderful job of marrying form and function. Instead of just describing the landscape to set a scene for a reader who has never seen Wisconsin, the landscape and weather is a key player in the story and conveys mood and thought.

In the back of the book, Goolrick cites Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip as a key inspiration for his frozen Wisconsin. Goolrick writes:

Its collage of words and photographs paint a haunting, cinematic portrait of a small town in Wisconsin at the diseased end of the nineteenth century. We had imagined the cities to be teeming with moral turpitude and industrial madness, and rural America to be sleeping in a prosperous innocence, filled with honest and industrious people. Not so. Lesy unlocks the Pandora’s box of country life to show us its dark and ravaged soul.

Goolrick’s Wisconsin is terrifying with crimes committed with no apparent reason, madness and suicides a regular occurrence. The house might be freshly painted white with windows warm from light within but that doesn’t mean everything is all right. A Reliable Wife is nerve-wracking and poignant and doubly chilling for me since I read it during a week of below freezing days.

*Winter picture via Earth Water Sky.

**For more information about Wisconsin Death Trip, visit the book's Wikipedia page and the Wisconsin Historical Society. Some photos are posted below. Can I tell you how much I want that book now?

A modern sort of witch

The long subtitle of Petty Magic by Camille DeAngelis lets you know what to expect: Being the Memoirs and Confessions of Miss Evelyn Harbinger, Temptress and Troublemaker.

Evelyn Harbinger is a 149 year old witch who lives in New Jersey. Apparently a large coven lives in her town, mostly women and mostly with regular jobs like running a B&B or a toy store. Since they live such long lives they age slowly and Evelyn finally looks like the old woman she is becoming. But sometimes, for fun, she casts a spell to change how she looks. She is her younger self with black hair and tight skin. She spends one night each with any man she fancies.

Until she meets Justin.

Justin looks just like Jonah, her true love who died during World War II. This is a world of reincarnation and she tries desperately to see if he remembers anything from his previous life. Because she does – desperately.

Evelyn’s love story is imperfect and cut short and she has the possibility to hope for his return. Her dead love is equivalent to a real life breakup. There is pining and frustration and unsatisfactory responses from family members who think you should just buck up and move on. She had found a man who knew her darkest secrets and loved her anyway. (Most witches just get knocked up by a regular man; their long lives and slow aging just become difficult to explain.) Don’t we all want to find that one person who accepts all the stuff you don’t like about yourself? No wonder she clings to Justin against her better judgment.

A parallel plot is an investigation by the coven in to the death of her older sister’s husband. Henry might have died sixty years earlier but Helena can still be cast out if found guilty. Evelyn is determined to prove her sister’s innocence – partially because she hates the witch to brings the charges and partially because she needs to know there is some wiggle room for spells related to love.

I love all things spies but the WWII sections didn’t stand out as much as I expected. Evelyn meets Jonah while working for British intelligence. He discovers her turning from a bird back into her usual self and learns about a new world of opportunities for her skills. They go on missions particular to her brand of magic – changing their appearances for one thing – and fall in love.

I felt more drawn to the story of Evelyn’s involvement with Justin than her actual love story. I didn’t really get a strong impression of Evelyn and Jonah’s relationship – I had to take in on Evelyn’s word that she loved him and he loved her. But Justin took her breath away every time he did something that Jonah had done and that sharp pain was palatable.

You do find out whether or not Justin is Jonah in the end. That was a bit of a surprise. So many people like to be coy about endings these days so it was nice to know. The fact that it was a happy ending despite lots of tragedy – an added bonus.

The debate continues . . .

Over at The Guardian, Edward Docx throws another punch for literary fiction.

It's worth dealing with the difference again, since everyone seems to have forgotten it or become chary of the articulation. Mainly this: that even good genre (not Larsson or Brown) is by definition a constrained form of writing. There are conventions and these limit the material. That's the way writing works and lots of people who don't write novels don't seem to get this: if you need a detective, if you need your hero to shoot the badass CIA chief, if you need faux-feminist shopping jokes, then great; but the correlative of these decisions is a curtailment in other areas. If you are following conventions, then a significant percentage of the thinking and imagining has been taken out of the exercise. Lots of decisions are already made.

So it follows that genre tends to rely on a simpler reader psychology. If you have a body on the first page, then you raise a question: who killed it and how did it get there? And curiosity will power readers a surprisingly long way. As will, say, a treasure hunt (Brown) or injustice (Grisham) or the locked room mystery format (Larsson). None of this is to say that writing good thrillers is easy. It is still incredibly difficult. But it is easier.

Docx uses an excellent metaphor about a burger joint and a fancy restaurant. Patrons have different expectations of a greasy diner cook and world class chef. Failure by the anticipated 'better' packs a bigger punch than an expected so-so.

At least Docx isn't falling into typical argument against genre fiction (which he actually details in his article) - his thesis is that genre writers can't claim that the high sales of their books and resultant large paychecks indicate a high value to their work.

He uses Dan Brown and Stieg Larsson as his primary examples of wildly popular and successful genre writers. I have read books by both authors and thoroughly enjoyed them. I also think their craft sucks. But just as I can appreciate a beautiful image by Aimee Bender or a long, weaving sentence by Yates, I see the value in a go get 'um kind of book that practically turns the page for me. As I've said before, I don't always want to work when I read. Sometimes I like the story to do all the heavy lifting. And that can be very satisfying in and of itself.

To Docx's point, sure, certain authors should be aware of their limitations of craft even as they cash that million dollar check. I just don't see that happening any time soon. A high paycheck equals a high value, doesn't it?

A bit of British fun

Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, "Georgie" to her friends, is 34th in line for the throne and has many problems because of it. Her season presented no suitable suitors and her family is quite poor due to her father's gambling habits. She moves to the family home in London with no servants, learns to build a fire and begins a domestic service company to make ends meet. And that's before the Queen asks her to spy on the prince and his American amour, and a dead Frenchman shows up in her bath.

And so begins Georgie's quest to prove her brother Binky's innocence by discovering who would have killed Gaston de Mauxville. If he was blackmailing her family to get a hold of Rannoch Castle, who else might he have blackmailed and provided with a motivation for murder?

Her Royal Spyness is a fun mystery. It reads more like a drawing room comedy with a dash of intrigue to spice things up. The first person narration was an excellent choice by Bowen - Georgie's voice is wry and witty as she fends off unsuitable suitors like the rakish Darcy O'Mara, a minor royal who is both Irish and Catholic and Tristam Hautbois, a childhood friend who pronounces his r's as w's - both of whom might be trying to kill Georgie as well.

The surprises at the end were handled well. The facts that emerge to reveal the killer of the Frenchman make sense. Bowen even builds suspicion around a number of other minor characters to confuse Georgie and the reader.

An enjoyable read.

Literary Swag

I stumbled across Out of Print. It's awesome.

In their words, Out of Print celebrates the world’s great stories through fashion. The shirts feature iconic and often out of print book covers. Some are classics, some are just curious enough to make great t-shirts, but all are striking works of art.

They work closely with artists, authors and publishers to license the content that ends up in their collections. Each shirt is treated to feel soft and worn like a well-read book.

In addition to spreading the joy of reading through their tees, they acknowledge that many parts of the world don't have access to books at all. They are working to change that. For each shirt they sell, one book is donated to a community in need through their partner Books For Africa.

I am coveting the Pride & Prejudice sweatshirt - love the Flashdance style - and the Nancy Drew shirt. Christmas, anyone?