ABOUT THOSE IWSG ANTHOLOGY QUESTIONS

Earlier I wrote of Olga Godim's great idea 

of asking the main character of our included story 5 questions.


 Some of my fellow anthologists 

(sounds like we are associates of Indiana Jones, doesn't it?)


have voiced concern on just how to do that with their ominous protagonist.


Once I was hood-winked 

(ah, I mean asked) 

to do the same in a blog-hop concerning my then recent novel)


This is how I asked the given questions to my cursed hero, owner of the haunted jazz club, Meilori's.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004YTMNRG
 
Vivian Hightower wiggled without moving as she sat across the table from me. 

She was sure of her sex appeal. 

She shouldn't have been.

I was married to an Empress, of whose beauty sonnets had been written by Shakespeare and Keats.

"Captain McCord, I'm surprised you are agreeing to this taped interview. My last one destroyed the career of your policewoman friend."

She cleared her throat at my silence, turning on her tape recorder. 

"They say your jazz club, Meilori's, is haunted."

Vivian narrowed her diamond eyes. "You aren't speaking."

I looked at her from under the wide brim of my Stetson. 

That I had not taken it off when she sat down should have been a warning.

"You haven't asked any questions, Miss Hightower."

"Oh, in that case: What is your biggest vulnerability? Do others know this, or is it a secret?"

I smiled like the last wolf I was often called.

"Now, my hunch on that might be dead-on, Miss, or it might be full of worms. But Mama McCord didn't raise any sons dippy enough to tell it to a vicious reporter ... on tape."

"Be that way. What do people believe about you that is false?"

"That I am a hero. In all the ways that count, I am a monster."

She wet her lips. "Wh-What would your best friend say is your f-fatal flaw?"

"Father Renfield believes me not believing in God anymore is that. Coming from a vampire priest that is saying something."

Vivian snoted at the word 'vampire.' "What would Father Renfield say is your one redeeming quality?"

I smiled sadly. 

"That while I say I'm agnostic, I act as if I still believed ... which means to him that deep down I still believe, for what we do, we believe."

She outright sneered at that. "What do you want most? And what will you do to get it?"

I bled a sigh. 

"Not a what but a who, Miss Hightower. My wife. And I will do nothing to get her back. Love forced is no love at all. On either side."

She turned off the tape recorder, and I asked her a question.

"When I said that you could come to my table, did I ever say anything about you leaving it alive?"

I tore off my right glove that kept my cursed palm from touching innocent flesh. 

I reached out and grabbed her satin throat tight. She slowly withered before my eyes.


The plus side to that was that she would destroy no more innocents.  

The down side was the flood of her vicious, joyful memories of those cruelties.

"I am a monster, Miss Hightower, in all the ways that count. But I only kill other monsters."

***

If you want to see what McCord looks like:

WHAT DRAWS US TO THE FEMME FATALE?

Take the Dragon Lady

 

Oops!

Wrong One.

But if you knew of her struggles in

the small Slovenian railroad town of Sevnica,

you might feel compassion. 

The Right Dragon Lady

In our modern society the strong-willed woman has become desirable,

 

But our culture's insistence on continuing

to depict her

as a death trap

definitely shows

it remains a conflicted desire.

Femme Fatales are often the Crossroads

where the hero

learns there is more to women

and to life

than the surface.

But having stepped off the precipice into maturity,

 he can never be the same person again.

Femme Fatales have become

relevant again

after being thought tropes of the past.

Fed by digital technology and the Internet ,

 millennials

desire immediate gratification,

 jumping into adulthood quickly

without always considering

the consequences of their actions.

Used creatively,

the Femme Fatale

can be used to

investigate

what it means to be

a whole woman,

a whole man.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HIU5O38/

As a child, I wanted Flash Gordon to choose

Princess Aura

for the obvious reason.

As an author I had Samuel McCord

choose Meilori Shinseen

and found my novels took on

a depth and a fire

they might not have

with a traditional heroine.

Have you used Femme Fatales

or Bad Boys

in your novels?

And why?

Let me know, will you?

How did YA become YA?

When exactly did the YA genre begin?

Some might say with the explosion of the 

Harry Potter phenomenon. 

Not with the Brothers Grimm surely.

TREASURE ISLAND, OLIVER TWIST, and KIM 

all had youthful heroes back when children's books were written with adult sensibilities ...

So that you could grow up with them, learning new things about your old friends.

No.  It began oddly enough in a library ... or maybe not so oddly after all.


In 1906,  (not this year did YA begin )

 Anne Carroll Moore became the Director of Work with Children for The New York Public Library.

 She knew that there had to be a way to keep children, who weren’t quite adults yet,

 coming to the public library and not let all her hard work for children be for naught.


  In 1914 (No, not quite yet)

 Anne hired Mabel Williams, a young librarian from Somerville, Massachusetts.


 Mabel began working with schools and inviting classes into branches and finally 

in 1919 (Sadly not even then)

Mabel was appointed to Supervisor of Work with Schools and her groundbreaking work with young people (teens) began. 

Her official title (“Supervisor of Work with Schools and Young People”) wouldn't happen until 

1948.

Yes, it took poor Mabel that long to affect real change.


  To say that not everyone at NYPL was enthusiastic to have adolescents in their library branches 

 would be an understatement. 

Some librarians were resistant to change and the idea of noisy, chaotic young people in their libraries. 

Mabel, however, stood firm against the “old ladies,” as she called the older library staff, 

and strove forward in her mission to serve the teens of New York City. 

Mabel started by going out and recruiting other enthusiastic librarians, like herself,  

who understood her vision: 

that it wasn’t just about easing the transition from the children’s room to the adult room 

but doing actual distinctive work with teens and giving them the same equal space and services that children were getting through the children’s rooms. 


 Back in 1919, there wasn’t any literature being specifically written for teens. 

In order to create “browsing” collections for teens in the branches, 

Mabel and her staff would comb through books in the children’s and adults sections of the libraries 

for books they thought would interest teens and meet their reading needs 

for both schoolwork and free time. 

 One of those new, enthusiastic young librarians for young people was Margaret Scoggin. 

Margaret started as an outreach librarian but soon became the head of the new Nathan Straus branch, 

an innovative library just for teens that opened in 1941 and was located in the West 40s. 

Opened to help keep kids off the streets, 

Williams recalled “They had wonderful programs there… it got to be sort of a hangout, with those young people."

 One of Margaret’s keen interests was the selection of books for teens. 

 She started a radio program of teen book reviews 

and from 1933 to 1946 she wrote a column for Library Journal called “Books for Older Boys and Girls.” 

In 1944, 

she changed the title to  

“Books for Young Adults” 

and thus began the phrase “young adult literature."

So all of you who write YA thank Margaret!! 

She worked hard enough to more than earn your thanks!

HERO LOST QUESTIONS

Fellow Anthology Auth0r, Olga Godim,  

has a fascinating idea for a joint blog post among our group:

We each ask 5 questions of our main character from our fantasy.

Being a journalist, Olga said she would help with those questions if we had trouble with them.


Funny thing: 

there is a foolhardy reporter in my story.  

She learns that she was not prepared for the answers.


If I were to ask the Caretaker five questions, 

I would not get the first one out before his haunted eyes would breathe winter across my blood.

His eyes murmur of strange sins, longing for more than loneliness but expecting nothing less.

Such eyes halt shallow questions before they are even uttered.


Before Surt broke free from the earth's fiery heart, the Caretaker had spent centuries as an Einherjar --

the bravest of warriors who died in battle and whisked up to Valhalla.

Heimdall returned this most fierce of the Einherjar to both Midgard and Jotunheim 

with the purpose of killing giants, but he was forbidden to talk with the living.


The Einherjar did worse: 

He fell in love with the Valkyrie who had flown him to Valhalla.  

The Valkyrie returned that love.  

They married.  

Wotan exacted a terrible price on them both.  

But to tell more would ruin the story.


Caretaker's tiny friend, Mouse, rides in his safari jacket pocket.

Mouse owes his freedom to Napoleon's soldiers.  

The gust of bacterial air which breathed from the First Dynasty tomb they ransacked 

gave them the freedom of death.


Mouse might ask ME a question:

"You humans mock our limited minds.  But what have you done with your larger ones?"

IWSG ANTHOLOGY_HERO LOST

I was lucky enough to win entry into 

the Second IWSG Anthology/Hero Lost

My last involvement in an anthology turned 

into pretty much a nightmare.

The Winners of the 2nd Anthology

are trying to brainstorm

creative ways to market this book.

Do any of you have any cool ideas?

Let me know if you do!

I have so little free time 

with being a rare blood courier 

that I fear I will be little help to my co-authors.

Here are two images of my story

which won.

Which One Do You Like More?

Wish the 12 of us luck, will you?

FOR D. G. HUDSON

I was going to write a reflection on why men are drawn more to femme fatales than the angelic.

And no, it is not just that men think bad girls will be bad with them!  

But more of that another day.

 

I know how much D. G. Hudson loves Paris 

and soaring adventure.

So here is a great animated film from France 

with excellent voice narrators 

who will whisk you into 

a fascinating world of wonder.

Don't take my word for it:

This is one film that lived up to its name ...

at least for me.

Give it a try.

I hope you enjoy it, D. G.

MARK TWAIN CRITIQUES 50 SHADES OF GREY

It's hard to get any writing done with the ghost of Mark Twain, gasping between peals of laughter and holding his chest with tears in his eyes.

"Oh, kill me, Roland. Kill me!"

"I would," I growl, "but you're already dead."

He shakes his head, muttering, 

"I never thought my ghost would be around to see the day when gals get sunburned in places I only dreamed about."

Mark Twain flips another page of 50 SHADES OF GREY and reads aloud, 

" My inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves."

I pause.  "You're making that up."

Mark puts a pipe-holding hand high in the air.  

"I swear upon the prose of James Fennimore Cooper I am not!"

He looks down and reads out loud again, punctuating every few words with sputtering, "Anastasia, you are going to unman me."

Mark guffaws as he strangles out, 

"Listen to this -  

Why is anyone the way they are? That’s kind of hard to answer. Why do some people like cheese and other people hate it? Do you like cheese?”

He bends double as he gasps, 

"Oh, son, this line is wonderfully, gleefully bad - 'I can tell from his accent that he’s British.'"

Mark turns a page and sputters, 

"No, Roland.  I was wrong.  This here line beats them all - 'My inner goddess is doing the dance of the seven veils.'"

Wiping tears from his eyes, he turns to me and chuckles, 

"How much did E. L. James make from this travesty?"

"Don't remind me," I mutter.

Mark grins, 

"Of course, Ms James is not the first author to strike it lucky in a market where unpublished rivals are told to sweat over every word,

then write a perfect cover letter and synopsis so that they stand out from the pile of slush washing through agents’ doors.

 But, oh, no, she's successfully bypassed that route by piggybacking onto the fan base of Twilight.   Now, how Mormon Stephanie Meyers feels about this remains to be seen."

"What does Miss Meyers being Morman have to do with this?" I frown.

Mark Twain holds up the book.  

"Son, this sure ain't gonna be quoted from behind any Mormon pulpit!"

All laughter dies in his eyes as he turns to me and sighs, 

"Why, Roland.  Why?  Why do prose-ettes like this make tons of money?"

I knew what he meant.  

At the start of his literary life, he had been mocked and almost starved a few times writing books that now are considered classics.  

I pushed back from my laptop.

"I think 50 Shades hints at why certain books catch on whatever the quality of the writing.

The explanation is thematic."

Mark grinned, "You actually think in words like thematic?"

I happily ignored him and went on, 

"They tap into modern anxieties about our lives in a way publishers fail to predict."

Mark Twain scowled, "If they could predict them, they'd write them."

I nodded, 

"The Da Vinci Code hit the spot as distrust of global organisations and big government reached new levels of paranoia.  Twilight tapped into teen angst about sex."

I made a face. 

"On some level 50 Shades taps into their discomfort about the role of women and their relationship to power."

Mark Twain dropped his "Just Folks" manner and switched to the keen thinking revealed in his essays,  

"As an advocate of women's rights, Roland, I find the popularity of books like 50 Shades deeply disturbing as they represent a resurrection of the whole Madonna/ Whore archetypes of Freud,."

He lit his pipe.  

"Archetypes, which the overwhelmingly female fan base indicates, many women buy into."

I said, 

"What unites these and far better written global phenomena, such as Bridget Jones’s Diary and the Harry Potter series, 

is they hark back to traditional worlds. Whether sorted according to ability and class 

(Harry Potter in his boarding school) 

or gender – the idea that a woman’s ultimate role is wife or girlfriend 

(Bridget was doing this one long before 50 Shades’ Ana) – they inhabit a traditional universe."

Mark sighed, 

"What is behind these phenomena may not be deliberately misogynistic, Roland, but I do believe they offer a disturbing insight into wider attitudes towards women.

They seem to say,  

‘Try as hard as you like, sister, you’ll still be either a Madonna or a whore.’ 

That they are predominantly bought by women concerns me as much as it perplexes me.

Maybe conscious or otherwise, the fantasy of readers is that they will be thought Madonnas, even if they act like ‘whores’? "

As his ghost slowly faded, Mark Twain said, 

"Whatever the answer to that question, Roland, what they definitely tell me is that if you want to write a bestseller: 

forget the writing, remember tradition. That is what you need to tap into."

"Right," I said into the darkness.  "And after that, I'll start on world peace."

What do you think?