Books I've read: Up With the Sun

 

If you know me, you know I have a thing about classic movies, Broadway shows and old-time celebrity gossip.  So when I saw this book that's a fictionalised account of the life (and death) of a decidedly C-list celebrity, I knew I had to read it.  Especially when I realised the celebrity in question was gay and hiding it like so many celebrities of his era.

Dick Kallman, the celebrity in question, is not the nicest character - something that is very likely the reason he didn't have the success he dreamed of.  Luckily, out POV character through the book is not Dick (who was murdered in 1980), but his friend Matt, a pianist whose life is actually more showbiz than Dick's, if less flashy.

Spanning a period from the 1950s through to the 1980s, the book offers a snapshot of the way gay culture and attitudes to homosexuality changed over the 30 years through the eyes of someone living that reality and disliking himself for it.  There are delightful little cameos from real life stars from the barely known to the top of the Hollywood food chain, and enough gossip to sink a ship.

The central mystery - how Dick Kallman was killed and why - is not the most interesting part of the book, but is a great premise to hang the rest of the story on and gives Matt license to dig into Dick's past through a scrapbook Dick kept of his showbiz career that Matt pilfers from the crime scene. It also gives Matt a romance of his own with a street-hustler turned police informant who quickly becomes central to his life.

Part true-crime, part social history and part celebrity dish, I enjoyed this one.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

A look back at the life of a little-known, C-list celebrity striver who met a bad end in New York City in the 1980s.

Dick Kallman was an up-and-coming actor—until he wasn’t. From co-starring in Broadway shows, to becoming part of Lucille Ball’s historic Desilu workshop, and then finally landing his own short-lived primetime TV series, Dick’s star was clearly on the rise. But his roles began to dry up and he faded from the spotlight - until his sensational murder in 1980. Told from the perspective of Matt Liannetto, Dick’s occasional pianist and longtime acquaintance, we see the full story of Dick’s life and death. Liannetto is a talented journeyman pianist, often on the fringes of Broadway history’s most important moments. He’s also a gay man who grew up in an era when that sort of information was closely held, and he struggles with accepting the rapid changes happening in the world around him.

Up With The Sun takes readers on a journey that spans more than thirty years, from the studio lots and rehearsal sets of the 1950s to the seedy streets of 1970s Manhattan. It is a busy, bustling world, peopled by a captivating cast of characters all clamoring for a sliver of the limelight. Readers will bump elbows with Sophie Tucker and gossip about Rock Hudson during intermission at Judy Garland’s comeback show. Newsweek has called Mallon a "master of the historical novel," and here he proves himself a veteran of the genre, doing what he does best: conjuring figures from history who feel real enough to walk right off the page. This is a crime story, a showbiz story, a love story, and a deeply moving story about a series of pivotal moments in the history of gay life in the post-war era.

Weekly Goals 29-7-24

 As I suspected, I didn't get any writing time over the weekend, so I've made no more progress on A Stranger to Kindness.  And I suspect this week will be much the same, especially since the Film Festival starts on Wednesday too.

I don't have a ton of films booked for the Festival this year - just 10 at this stage, but I may add a few more once we're in train.

Everyone in my house has a cold at the moment, so my main goal for the week is to try and avoid catching that.  I have far too much on this week to be able to deal with being sick!

And that's about it for me.  

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 26-7-24

 

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things...

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

Well, kind of...  We've got the semi-finals for the opera singing competition we're running happening, so I'm working all weekend.  But it is just in the evening, so I may get a bit of writing time during the day.  But I'm not counting on it.

Had a couple more query rejections for Guide Us this week.  I seriously don't know what's wrong with this one.  I've never had such a dire response rate to a query.  And this query has had more professional eyes on it than any previous one.  It's incredibly frustrating.

And that's about it for me this week.  What are you celebrating?

Books I've read: We Are The Light

 

I picked this up on my last trip to the library because I've enjoyed other books by Matthew Quick and figured I'd probably like this one too.  And while I didn't love it, I did enjoy it and appreciate what it was trying to do.

Lucas Goodgame has survived an unspeakable tragedy that has taken his wife from him and torn his entire small town apart. He manages to hold himself together with his belief that his wife, Darcey, has stayed with him in her angelic form, visiting each night to hold him and guide him through his grief and the fact his analyst appears to have abandoned him.

Through a series of letters to his analyst, Lucas tells the story of his grief and eventual healing, something that is brought about when a young man, the brother of the person who instigated the violence that tore through the town, sets up camp in his yard.  A former counsellor at the high school, Lucas is drawn to help this damaged boy, and through helping him, somehow manages to heal the entire town.

Lucas is a fascinating POV character in that he wholly believes what he thinks is happening, even though his interactions with the townspeople show us that he is not seeing everything as clearly as he thinks he is.  And what a town it is!  All the citizens who rally around Lucas have their own quirks and eccentricities and they are really what makes this book so delightful.

The eventual revealing of the truth of what happened the night of the tragedy, and Lucas's own acceptance of the truth make for compelling reading. And of course, the fact that there is a movie theatre right there in the centre of the story, doesn't hurt.  At least from my perspective.

So I'd recommend this one.  It is heavy in places, and its depiction of grief and grieving is very real and raw, so if you're in a fragile place or on your own journey through grief, it may be tough read.  You've been warned...

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

Lucas Goodgame lives in Majestic, Pennsylvania, a quaint suburb that has been torn apart by a recent tragedy. Everyone in Majestic sees Lucas as a hero—everyone, that is, except Lucas himself. Insisting that his deceased wife, Darcy, visits him every night in the form of an angel, Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former Jungian analyst, Karl. It is only when Eli, an eighteen-year-old young man whom the community has ostracized, begins camping out in Lucas’s backyard that an unlikely alliance takes shape and the two embark on a journey to heal their neighbors and, most important, themselves.

From Matthew Quick, the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook, We Are the Light is an unforgettable novel about the quicksand of grief and the daily miracle of love. The humorous, soul-baring story of Lucas Goodgame offers an antidote to toxic masculinity and celebrates the healing power of art. In this tale that will stay with you long after the final page is turned, Quick reminds us that guardian angels are all around us—sometimes in the forms we least expect.

Weekly Goals 22-7-24

 I managed to get quite a bit of writing done over the weekend and I'm quite happy with the scenes I wrote.  I feel like I may have sorted a few things out in my head about who knows what and that has clarified the way forward for me. 

Means I need to go back and change some stuff further back, but I'll do that later.  I know editing is going to take a long time; it always does.  One of the negatives to writing without much in the way of an outline or plan...

So my goal for this week is to try and write at least one more chapter.  It may not happen - I'm working the next two weekends because our next event is happening over that period.  Plus, the Film Festival starts at the end of July.  I haven't bought a ton of tickets for the Film Festival this year, but I got a ten-trip ticket for Christmas that I've redeemed, so I'm going to at least ten.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 19-7-24

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things...

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

I had two days off and did a bunch of writing on A Stranger to Kindness. I'm at that awful point in drafting where nothing seems to be hitting the page the way I want it to and everything I write feels like it's in the wrong place or happening at the wrong time.  

I know it's all part of the process and that this draft is all about getting the story onto the page and I'll be able to fix it later, but it doesn't feel great.  If feels like I'm not getting it right, that I'm not hitting the beats.  I think I'm struggling a bit with trying to show Harley's inner conflict between what he's internalised, what he's been told and what he's seeing in his new home.

Hopefully I'll be able to get that layered in once I've finished writing the thing...  I'm getting to the meaty stuff now, but can't help thinking that I haven't given the core relationships enough time to develop before getting there.  I guess we'll see how it comes out in the end.  I've written about 35K words, so it's not like I've got a bloated word count.  I can probably write another 10K or so building up those relationships before I need to get to the major turning point, so maybe I'm not in such bad shape.

I hope to get a bunch more writing done over the weekend. The weather looks like it's going to be dreadful, so a good excuse to stay in!

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've read: The Heart's Invisible Furies

A friend at work gave me this to read because she thought I'd enjoy it.  She was right...

It's kind of an epic story in that it spans around 70 years in life of Cyril from his birth out of wedlock in 1940s Ireland to the present day.  In telling the story of this one man, we get to see the way attitudes and ideas have changed over the years. And the ways they have not.

Cyril realises quite young that he's gay, even if he isn't able to communicate what it is he feels when the glamourous young Julian shows up at his house and wants to compare willies.  Cyril's attraction to Julian forms the backbone of his identity, even while Julian seems oblivious to his desires.

With Julian unable (or unwilling) to return his affections, Cyril is forced to seek satisfaction in the only places available to him in the repressed Ireland of the 1950s and 1960s.  It's only after escaping Ireland for Amsterdam that Cyril is finally able to accept himself and the love of another man.

In 1980s New York, that acceptance is turning to fear with the AIDS epidemic ravaging the gay community, yet it isn't AIDS that shatters Cyril's life but a random act of violence.  Broken, he returns to Ireland to try and reconnect with his past and find a way forward.  And in doing so, he may just find the family he's never had before...

I really enjoyed this book.  Cyril was a fascinating character because he is terribly flawed, yet still very relatable.  It was also fascinating to follow the ways attitudes toward homosexuality changed over the period of time, particularly in Ireland with its deep rooted Catholicism.

The author's note at the end was also a fascinating read, so if you decide to read this book, don't skip that!

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb: 

Cyril Avery is not a real Avery or at least that’s what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn’t a real Avery, then who is he?

Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamourous and dangerous Julian Woodbead.

At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from – and over his three score years and ten, will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country and much more.

In this, Boyne's most transcendent work to date, we are shown the story of Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of one ordinary man. The Heart's Invisible Furies is a novel to make you laugh and cry while reminding us all of the redemptive power of the human spirit.

Weekly Goals 14-7-24

I got another chapter written over the weekend, so this week my goal is to add another one (if I don't take those days off) or another four or five if I do.  I feel like a lot of what's happening in this story is happening in the wrong order, but I'll deal with that in editing, once I've seen the shape of the whole book.  The good thing about writing in Scrivener is that it's easy to move scenes around.

I got a few more query rejections last week too, so I'm going to try and send out a few more queries this week too.  Some of the agents I wanted to query in my first round were closed, so hopefully they will have re-opened now.

And that's about it for goals.  What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 12-7-24

 

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things...

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

And I don't have a lot on this week, so I'm hoping to get time to write another chapter or two of Kindness.  I may also be able to have a couple of days off during the week too.  We were all gifted an extra two days' leave for working on Light Cycles and they have to be used in July.  This week makes sense to use them because the following week is when things ramp up for our next event.

I snuck out of work a little early on Thursday to go and see Kinds of Kindness, the new film by Yorgos Lanthimos.   It's almost three hours long, but doesn't;t really feel long because it's broken into three parts, each of which is kind of like its own film.  Just all three have the same actors in them, just playing different parts.  And all three stories are about power - having it, not having it, relinquishing it.  It's interesting and absurd and makes you feel a little off kilter.

I loved it.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Loved - The Outsiders

I’ve been thinking a lot about my writing career, how it started and my influences.  And I can’t think about that without referencing the book that started it all for me.

I first read The Outsiders when I was 12.  I remember finishing it the first time, sitting there, stunned and reeling from what I’d just read and thinking ‘I’ll never be able to read another book again.’

Obviously, I have read other books since then.  I’ve been moved by other books. I’ve been influenced by other books.  But I’ve never again finished a book and felt the same way as I felt when I finished that one.  I’m not exaggerating when I say that book changed my life.  The Outsiders changed my life.

I always felt like an outsider growing up.  Because of my dad’s job, we moved to a new country every couple of years, so I was always the new kid in school, the one with a funny accent, the wrong clothes, the wrong age for the class.  Even when we came “home” I felt like an outsider because my references and experiences were so different from those of the kids who’d grown up there.  So I embraced my outsider status and revelled in being different, wearing it on the outside so there was no mistaking it.

And I started writing.

The Outsiders is the book that made me want to be a writer.  The book that made me believe I could be a writer.  And as a writer, it’s a book I go back to whenever I want to remind myself how I need my books to make a reader feel.  Because I want to write things that make my readers feel the way I felt the first time I read it.

I still have the first copy of The Outsiders I ever bought.  It’s a movie tie-in with Coppola’s film and the illustrated cover – now long gone – showed the characters looking very like the actors that portrayed them in the film.  It’s faded and discoloured now, the back cover and last couple of pages torn.  It’s a well-read book, one of only a few I’ve owned that I can honestly say I’ve read to rags.

I used to sleep with that book under my pillow.

In fact, I slept with all S E Hinton’s books under my pillow, arranged in the order I liked them most – The Outsiders, Tex, Rumble Fish, That Was Then This is Now. I think that lasted about a year.

Interestingly, while I still love The Outsiders, as an adult I’ve come to appreciate Tex more and would almost argue that I like it more than The Outsiders.  It’s more subtle, which makes sense when you remember that Susie wrote The Outsiders when she was 15.  My writing is more subtle than it was when I was 15 too. At least I hope it is!

It’s also less obviously influenced by The Outsiders.

My early writing was basically S E Hinton fan fiction, if that term had existed.  My characters sounded and felt like her characters and I often didn’t even bother to change their names from Johnny or Steve.  I don’t think I ever wrote a character called Ponyboy, but they often sounded a lot like Ponyboy.  I also wrote a lot of boy characters.  Boys and brothers. 

I still write boy characters.  And brothers.  Always brothers.  I think I’ve only ever written one book where my protagonist only has a sister – An Unstill Life.  My other characters all have brothers, one or more. My protagonists’ brothers are often my favourite characters in the finished book too.  I love Finn in Stumped almost as much as I love Ozzy.  He’s such a complicated and layered character, even as seen through Ozzy’s eyes. And in Guide Us (the one I'm currently querying) Jason - Juliet's twin -  is a  character I enjoyed writing very much in that he's both a heo and a villain in Juliet and Iris's story.

I cannot stress how much of an influence The Outsiders has had on me as both a writer and as a human.  The book and the Coppola film (which I have probably seen at least 20 40 times ) have been constants in my life since 1985.  And I know I’m not alone.  Generations of kids have read and loved those characters in the same way I did, seeing themselves and their feelings reflected from the page. 

I can only dream that I’ll write something that will have the longevity and enduring popularity that The Outsiders has had.  Something that reaches in to touch the hearts and souls of readers because it so perfectly captures exactly how they feel in that specific moment.

A writer can dream, right?

 

 

 

 

Weekly Goals 8-7-24

 I managed to write another chapter of Kindness over the weekend, so I feel like I'm on a roll.  I have a couple of extra days off I need to use in July, so I'm hoping to take those next week and write a big chunk more.  This book might actually get finished before the end of the year!

And that's about it for goals this week.

What do you hope to achieve?

Celebrate the Small Things 5-7-24

 

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things...

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!  And I have nothing much on this week which makes me happy.  I'm planning to go to a movie - something I haven't done for a while - and to write another chapter of  A Stranger to Kindness.

I realised this week that I missed the 10 year anniversary of becoming a published novelist.  It was in January, but because my first publisher went out of business and An Unstill Life was re-published by my current publisher, I didn't have that date at the front of my mind.  It's kind of hard to believe it's been 10 years, but then, I do now have five published novels.

To kind of celebrate that 10 year anniversary, I decided to do something I haven't done before and go back and read those published books (except My Murder Year which only released last year so is still pretty fresh in my mind from editing) which has been interesting.  After finishing each of those books I thought I'd never forget a single word of them because I'd spent so long with each of them, but I was surprised at how much I'd forgotten about them. 

I thought I'd find re-reading some of the older ones a bit cringeworthy - I'm pretty sure I'm a better writer now than I was when I wrote them - but I was pleasantly surprised.  I found a rather embarrassing number of stupid errors in one of them, but I can only blame myself for that...  I've always said Stumped was my favourite of my own books and after re-reading it, it's still true. That one is good!  If it's not tacky for me to say that myself.

There were parts of all the others that I'd probably write differently now, but they're not terrible.  I was surprised at how much I enjoyed re-reading Chasing the Taillights which is probably the oldest of these stories in terms of when I wrote the first draft.  And I was surprised at The Sidewalk's Regrets - there's a lot more of me in that one than I remembered!

So here's to there being more, better books in the next 10 years!

IWSG - July

 

It's the first Wednesday of the month so it's time for the Insecure Writer's Support Group!

The awesome co-hosts for the July 3 posting of the IWSG are JS Pailly, Rebecca Douglass, Pat Garcia, Louise-Fundy Blue, and Natalie Aguirre!

This month's question is a technical one:

What are your favorite writing processing (e.g. Word, Scrivener, yWriter, Dabble), writing apps, software, and tools? Why do you recommend them? And which one is your all time favorite that you cannot live without and use daily or at least whenever you write?

Personally, I'm a Scrivener user for my longer-form work.  I love how easy it is to move scenes and chapters around, something that is really important when you write in the rather chaotic way I tend to write.  I know there are a lot of features of Scrivener I don't use - I've never been taught to use it properly, so probably don't really harness its full potential.  If anyone has any parts of Scrivener they particularly like and want to share, I'd be keen to know what I'm not using...

For short fiction, I tend to just use Word because I don't need to move things around in the same way, and I don't feel like working in Scrivener adds anything to the process.

And that's probably the long and short of it...  I used to like to handwrite first drafts and only move to the computer for editing, but these days I tend to hit the laptop right from the start because it speeds things up a bit for me.

What writing software do you prefer?