Lynn Raye Harris

Hubby forced me to take NyQuil two nights in a row. I hate that stuff. Yuck! I wrote a nice entry yesterday, complete with the Reno dustup news, but lost it when the new router he recently installed decided to go offline while uploading. Pissed off I was. So, I no longer have the energy to write it all again, but if you want to know about it and maybe you’ve been in a cave somewhere, check out Alison Kent’s blog and the links therein. She’s got it all there. Read the last several posts and the comments and follow the links. If you haven’t heard it all before, it’s an amazing story of ineptitude, buck passing, and who the heck knows what really happened to create such a conflagration. Suffice it to say that I would not want the Queen of Romance, aka Nora Roberts, ticked off at me.

I have had a miserable week so far. This cold is kicking my butt. I am missing critique tonight, which is probably just as well. Saturday is the Aloha Chapter meeting. Our guest speaker is a local news reporter, Denby Fawcett, who is also one of the authors of War Torn: Stories of War by the Women Who Reported the Vietnam War. I’m gonna have to dig out my copy of Karnow’s Vietnam and refresh myself. I read that book for a graduate level history class, and boy am I glad I did. Best overview of the Vietnam War, what caused it and why we lost, etc. Extremely interesting parallels between what went on there and what’s going on in Iraq today.

Not much else to report. Read Gayle Wilson’s Take No Prisoners in one sitting and enjoyed it very much. I’m glad she’s the next RWA prez. She writes like a sensible, no nonsense kind of lady. Yes, you can tell that much about a writer by reading her books. Picked up Jamie Sobrato’s latest Blaze, Sexy All Over simply because the opening hooked me: “When Naomi Taylor found her boyfriend sitting naked at her computer in the middle of the night, she first thought he’d gotten lost on his way to the bathroom.” Now HOW can you put that down? I couldn’t.

It ain’t paradise when you’ve got a head cold from hell. The sun is shining, the trades are blowing, and I’m miserable. This is my second cold since I moved to Hawaii. Silly me, I thought cold germs would be a lot harder to catch here. I can’t think where I caught this cold, unless it was at Borders on Wednesday. No one around me seemed to be suffering, but then I had the telltale sore throat Thursday night and the sniffles on Friday. Saturday and Sunday were progressively worse. Today is full-blown cold. Maybe I should have stayed home over the weekend, but I didn’t. Went to the beach by myself on Friday, went to the windward side with hubby on Saturday (ate at a great place called Fatboy’s Local Drive In — kalua cabbage, yum!), went to a party Sat night, went to the beach on Sunday. I am paying today. This sucks.

Aside from surfing and bloghopping, I think I’ll do nothing but read today. Since I finished Carpe Demon, my options are open. I am still stuck in another romance, so I could finish that one, or I could start a new one. Not sure I can deal with Virginia Woolf or Simone today. Reading Woolf’s Three Guineas. Is it terrible of me to say I wish she’d get to the point and stop all the roundabout logic? Who am I to bitch, though? Virginia Woolf is Virginia-freaking-Woolf. I am nobody. And, I am quite sure the argument style was appropriate for the day. My 21st century sensibilities (i.e. give me the soundbite) are having trouble staying focused.

Gawd, what is happening to our literary traditions? Woolf, Lawrence, Joyce, Faulkner — they would look down their noses at me. I have been seduced by the dark side, aka popular fiction–and I’m not complaining! I love many of the stories by the aforementioned writers, but nothing tires me out more than someone trying to copy what they think is a literary style. I know someone who is writing a literary novel. The damn thing is lifeless and I can’t put my finger on the why of it. The writing is good, but the story is blah. It’s just blah. And, I suspect, an overdone theme within the literary novel tradition.

Who is good at the literary novel today? Hmm, my brain is clogged, so I’m sure I won’t think of the more obvious ones I should. I like Pat Conroy, not The Great Santini but Beach Music and The Prince of Tides. John Irving, The World According to Garp (the only Irving I’ve read, though there are many more I’d like to). Sue Monk Kidd, of course. Margaret Atwood. I loved both The Handmaid’s Tale and The Blind Assassin. I think The Handmaid’s Tale should be required reading for all women. Just my opinion.

Anyway, that’s my list for the moment, and it’s entirely too short and missing all sorts of good writers, but I’m tired and clogged and grumpy.

You know it’s a good book when you don’t have any clue where the time went. Started Julie Kenner’s Carpe Demon at the beach today. Just finished it a few minutes ago. Could NOT put it down. That is the mark of a darned fine book in my opinion. So what if there was one scene I thought didn’t fit (a short one about a playdate) or if I thought it was over too fast. It was GOOD. I will definitely read another book about Kate Connor. I did figure out the bad guy, but there were enough misdirections to keep me wondering. What a fun read! I want to know more about Kate, what happened to Eric, etc. I look forward to Ms. Kenner’s next Kate Connor book. I see where the movie rights have been sold. I’d love to see a movie, but afraid I will have to forgo it if it gets made. No doubt Hollywood will go the full monty with gore and demons and demon-slaying, and my delicate (okay, fraidy-cat) constitution can’t take that. I am like the only kid who didn’t go see those Nightmare on Elm Street movies. Or the Friday the Thirteenth movies.

I once risked extreme outcast-dom by going to see a stupid freaking Jerry Lewis movie when my friends went to the scary movie (um, not to seem old or anything, but I believe our movie theater back then in that particular place only had two screens — LOL!). We got to the theater, the choice was scary movie and Jerry Lewis, and I wigged out and went Jerry while they went for scary. Okay, maybe Jerry as a mailman is pretty scary too (that’s all I remember about that scarring experience). But I knew what I didn’t like and couldn’t handle and damn if any amount of peer pressure could get me to do what I knew would terrify me. Hell, they scared me bad enough talking about the dang movie afterward. I think all of this springs from seeing The Excorcist at the age of 8. My mom was so pissed at the neighbors who let me watch it, and believe me, I had nightmares and trouble sleeping for a year after. The funny thing was, I didn’t see the movie. I got so scared I left the room and my imagination took over, especially when my friends kept telling me what happened. Oh what a wimpy child!