Books I much enjoyed reading in 2013

Flute Lore, Flute Tales:  Artifacts, History,and Stories About the Flute is now available in paperback at Amazon.com.   It should be at Barnes & Noble and at Ingram’s by March.  The book contains 66 color pictures.  The Kindle and ebook editions are $3.99.

This last year, while I researched the flute and read what I could about it, I opened the pages of other books that concerned ancient history.  This blog post lists the books I most enjoyed in 2013.   One is ancient, some are classic, and others are more recent or newly published.  As a used book dealer, I usually read old and new.

The Bloodaxe Book of Modern Welsh Poetry  

Every once in awhile, I pull a book out of my internet listings.  This poetry collection is definitely one that I will open up in the future and I did not like to let it go.  The poems are translated from the Welsh, all first written in Welsh, so Dylan Thomas is not there. For anyone who likes Dylan Thomas, this collection helps to clarify the tradition of his poetry.   The poets are all from the 20^th century.  There is great poetry in the book, poetry that feels almost transcendental in its imagery and archetypes, poetry beautifully written.

Summer by Edith Wharton

I read Summer when I was about 26-years-old, and remembered liking it a great deal.  This was a re-read, to find out why this Wharton novel isn’t well-known.

The second time, Summer was so compelling that I wanted to read only that book until I was done.  Wharton took up the story of a young woman who was fostered by a small town New England lawyer, very different personalities from her usual affluent characters.  Charity’s love affair with a young architect is told in bittersweet style, and with many images from the time and place. What becomes dynamic is Charity's confrontation with her real parentage, her illegitimacy among the Mountain people, and her roiling feelings. These weren't handled with suddenness, they had momentum from the start of the book.  Although my reading experience was different many years later, I still think Summer is a great book.   

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

A very readable book and one that searches for and explores the powerful people that were a part of Cleopatra's reign. Also, the book attempts to balance all of the attitudes about Cleopatra and what kind of woman was beneath her trained exterior.    An interesting documentation for me was that Anthony was a full-fledged Roman with a history of violence that was not "Egyptian", making one wonder about his relationship, rather than his romance,  with Cleopatra.    Schiff can narrate history with fascinating details that heighten the plots inherent in it.

The Chronicles of Kale:  A Dragon’s Awakening by Aya Knight

Originality and humor, plot twists that followed from previous scenes rather than from sensation made the book feel solid, a world of its own. I also liked the characterizations, again how they developed naturally from their entrances into the story, and the dragon Kale's difficulties with his human role, his hotness. 

The Dream by Emile Zola

A girl is adopted by embroiderers who live near a cathedral and provide fine work for the priests. During her childhood, she is much affected by the sculptures of women saints.  As with Nana, Zola is slow in getting to his action. I didn't mind reading about so many saints because I didn't know alot about them.  However, this part and the detail about the cathedral might be very tedious to many readers today.

But the girl embroiders, has a haunting love experience, a difficult engagement, and then she becomes a saint without Zola saying that.   He sat at the last illness of Paris’s Marilyn Monroe, writing Nana into a great book that made him rich.  After reading about the courtesan, I was amazed at Zola’s ability to handle the spiritual female.

The Isis Stone by A. C. Grant

I've read The Book of the Dead and was very interested to see how this subject was handled. There was some very good writing and imagery in this. The protagonist falling into the Egyptian underworld and being mistaken as Isis continued as a mystery about her identity, and this was compelling. That theme didn't weaken.  The conflicts between the gods was a take-off from the ancient book but it is a part of Egyptian mythology. While some of the many characters didn't develop, Brooke's relationships with them were strong.  Although long (especially when you consider the spells for turning into birds in The Book of the Dead), the crossing of the Lake of Fire was visual and exciting.   I found this at BookGoodies for Kids, a new site that was worth exploring.

Tesserae by Denise Levertov

Terrerae did much more than to increase my acquaintanceship with this major poet.  She took vignettes from her life, each with events that were telling, odd events too, and they were fascinating.  These extend from her childhood in Wales and London where her Jewish father was a Christian clergyman, converted, and where her Welsh mother figured a great deal.

This is all written with a poet's eye for images so that reading it, I felt the setting constantly. It was very enjoyable, especially her profiles of people that had an effect on her life or were stuck in her memory.  As sometimes happened, I couldn’t finish the book because someone bought it from my internet store.  That did not surprise me.

Lost Illusions  by Honore de Balzac

Balzac can be tedious, especially when he writes about the French countryside, it seems. But if you don't like his description and characterization, he gives you the whammy at the very beginning of this book. A printer makes a tough deal with his son to take over the shop but after the son marries, he becomes more involved with inventing a new type of paper. That while his friend, now his brother-in-law, recklessly goes to Paris to become a poet. The French village is full of eccentrics and probably the most tedious but revealing section of the book has to do with a lawsuit for debts.   Fiction often skips money issues as if they can be guessed or don’t even exist; Balzac can show conscientiously how they can affect his characters and how nefarious this can be for the idealistic.

King Solomon’s Mines  by H. Rider Haggard

After reading Haggard's Cleopatra, I was enthused to read another book of his. But this was a book of adventure with male characters - two Englishmen who commission Quatermain, experienced with African safari life, to help find one of their brothers who had disappeared while searching for diamond mines established in King Solomon's time. They take two Zulu men, nearly die in the desert, and then encounter a huge tribe of Zulus close to the mine. 

This isn't my usual fare, especially with a long Zulu battle over kingship, but Haggard is modern in style and so involving with character.  I’ve already uploaded another book of his from Kindle.

The History of Herodotus I

I guess Herodotus wasn't always trusted but that is because his history is based on accounts from civilians, scribes, or priests where he traveled. The many changes in Mesopotamia while the Persians took over really reminded me of today. One of his first accounts is of Croesus ("Rich as Croesus"), which really pulled me in, however there is much inhumanity against man and specifically sometimes women in certain places that he covers from the 4^th century B.C.

He tells about the Amazon women, and the traditions of their nomadic community.  The story of Cyrus was a little like Arthur's but awful, and then there was his son. There were Pharaohs who drank and joked too much, and kings who were kind or horrible. India was the farthest eastern place then, where the sun rose, and with only desert beyond. Most of the people he talked to then knew little of the land of the North Wind. One Scythian people said that the air was filled with feathers. Herodotus is interesting in that he often doesn't accept these versions. With that one, he said that he believed they were speaking of snow. It's long and can be stultifying but I really had to laugh many times, reading this.

Flute Lore, Flute Tales: Artifacts, History, and Stories About the Flute

***Voting is on for the Top 10 Books at the Kid Lit Review.  The House in Windward Leaves is in the Middle Grade category.  At the bottom of the page is the link for voting. This is a wonderful blog for browsing recently released children’s books.***

Flute Lore, Flute Tales:  Artifacts, History, and Stories About the Flute is my new E-book published under Couchgrass Books.  It is aimed for YA, 8 to 18-year-olds, though it is for anyone. 

Explore the flute’s four types as they have appeared on most continents since prehistoric times. This book follows the discovery of artifacts and the historical impact of the instrument. Stories are included in many chapters. Myths, legends, and fairytales are re-told as they pertain to a regional flute. Sumer, the ancient Mediterranean world, Africa, India, the Orient, the Americas, and Europe are presented. The last pages cover eminent flautists, women musicians, jazz flutists, and finally, musical groups and performers who have made the traditional and folk instruments popular again.

Available at Amazon and Lulu Bookstore.  Soon to be available as a Nook Book at Barnes & Noble, and also in the iBookstore at iTunes.   The paperback is in layout phase and planned also, although because of the color photos, it will cost more than most paperbacks.

This is a book I had planned for years.  I began researching it in the 1980s, and while I established my used bookstore at eBay, I collected flutes.   I obtained them, tried them, learned about them, and then I would sell one and obtain another.  During those years, archeologists were publishing stunning new evidence of prehistoric flutes.  If I had written the book in the 1980s, it wouldn’t have included information about flutes older than anyone ever imagined.

I nearly went out for a career in flute performance.  As a teenager, I took from Minnesota Orchestra flautist, Sidney Zeitlin.  Although I didn’t go to a music  conservatory, I continued to play at college, and after that, played for weddings and for musicals until I was in my early 30s.   My mother was a string teacher and my paternal grandfather was a professional French hornist.  He played for Sousa when the great composer was an older man.  He wasn’t even sure Sousa knew his first name.  The story is that while they were traveling by train, Sousa came into his train car and addressed my grandfather by his first name, Burr.

Music was part of my upbringing although my father never followed that career.  He tried the violin but liked playing baseball better.  Yet he could hum along with French horn concertos. 

I wanted to sing but I didn’t have a voice.  So the flute was a great instrument to learn.  It wasn’t until I was much older that I learned how ancient the instrument was.  Its legacy and its place in societies fascinated me.   I consider it a magical instrument because of a belief concerning its effect on the player.  Now when I play, it is to remember the flute’s personality and how it was good for mine.

At first, I wanted to collect stories about the flute.  But delving into its amazing history, I couldn’t help but tell its authenticated story.   And the flutes around the world – it is almost as if the instrument was a part of being human, usually the first melodic instrument in a society, developed apart from other world flutes.  Its sound accompanied many human stories which are couched into its history, enhancing it rather than conflicting with it.

© Volare2004 | Dreamstime 

Stock Photos &Stock Free Images

Fireplace, wastebasket, now internet process

Readers were hardly ever aware of a book’s stages before the internet. But they were used to cover art changes and publisher changes. Two of my books have been re-published with new cover and interior art.  The Swan Bonnet went through a cover and design change in its first six months of publication, being re-published by  Couchgrass Books.  It is now available again as a Kindle book, at Lulu.com as a paperback, and soon as a paperback at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Ingram’s.

As a creative writer who began in journals and as a used books dealer, I’ve encountered many ironies in publishing. Short stories and poetry appearing in smaller publications are often lightly edited. Readers of literary journals encounter material that is closer to being in the raw than that in book form. Published books receive much more editing. Authors - creators of whole books and seen in a different light by the public -  used to expect two years of editing and preparation before their book was released by a major publisher. Smaller publishers vary in these capabilities. 

Still, a book coming out might not be finished. First editions are sometimes identified by their typos or formatting errors.  One of my early investigations was Penrod by Booth Tarkington.  Its first 1914 edition, what I found I had, was identified by the typo “sence” instead of “sense” on page 19.  An imperfect book was more valuable than the corrected later printing. Of course, this occurs with books that garner fame.

The Chicago chef Charlie Trotter died recently. When working in a bookstore, I copied down a recipe for his chocolate brioche. Correct me if I’m wrong!  I remember re-checking the recipe after baking it with the questionable amount of salt.  I knew there was something wrong and changed the salt and the sugar amount for a great brioche. I wish I had bought that book because what might have been a typo in the recipe could eventually make that first edition valuable. Why this is interesting might have to do with the publishing process being mysterious before digital publishing.

In graduate school, I worked in a specialty children’s library, The Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota. This library acquired original illustrations and also manuscripts.  I was first directed to that library by the professor of my biography writing class.  I could use letters there for my biography project.  Working there later, I enjoyed looking at early and edited manuscripts and also the publisher letters. 

FreeDigitalPhotos.net  artur84

The only way a reader could see their favorite author’s writing process used to be libraries like The Kerlan Collection. This was all pretty hidden just as literary journals have some invisibility to the general public.  Sometimes a book such as Ulysses by James Joyce has a revised edition. These editions often include the notes where changes were made to the first edition. Usually this occurs with authors who have the aura of a Joyce or an F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Now the drafts of authors, their revisions, and the false starts in publishing are much more visible. Novels are a tremendous effort because, as John Gardner stated, the fictional dream can so easily be interrupted by clumsiness and even by a typo.  Consistency can feel easy when actually it’s a labor.

FreeDigitalPhotos.net   Stuart Miles

I guess I will always believe that a lasting author sets down their drafts better than I ever could.  We used to never see the mistakes of authors, only the mistakes of publishers. In earlier centuries, authors often sat near a fire and, instead of stacking papers at the back of desk drawer or tossing them in a waste basket, they probably just burnt them. The only story they might have kept was their best effort.

The Swan Bonnet is published again

The Swan Bonnet is now re-published by Couchgrass Books.  Paul Beeley of Create Imaginations has done this superb new cover. 

It is available as a Kindle book and priced at .99 right now.   That will be the price for some weeks, at least, to make up for any confusion about the book.  

Also, The Swan Bonnet is available in paperback from Lulu.com Store. The paperback is forthcoming at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Ingram’s. 

Since the book reached the HarperCollins Editor’s Desk at Authonomy.com in 2010, it has had its journey to publication.  I am very pleased to present it in its more permanent state.

Unbeknown to Dawn, her grandfather has shot an old swan out of mercy. In their coastal Alaskan town, her father buys the swan pelt, preventing her Uncle Alex, a fur trader, from selling it for export. Dawn’s father surprises her part-Aleut mother with a hat she helped to make and also with an idea to catch poachers. Shooting swans has become illegal but Alaska is a territory and Prohibition occupies the Sheriff.

Dawn and her mother become involved with suspicious inquiries about the swan bonnet besides its haunting effect. Because Dawn’s grandparents see the swans first, Dawn agrees to secretly watch the migration with the deputy sheriff’s son. But after she and her mother encounter women from a ship and find out about a hunting party, they ride to the inlet. There are townspeople roving the shore too but who is the vigilante and who is the poacher?


"What a relaxing, classic, and vibrant story."  - HarperCollins review at Authonomy.com

Where is The Swan Bonnet?

The Swan Bonnet is being re-published.  It is unavailable for a short period.  GMTA Publishing was not the venue for the book.  I have decided to continue its publication myself, rather than seeking another publisher.  The publisher will change to Couchgrass Books and the book will have another cover.

It was in publication for little more than two months.  GMTA has made changes in its policies and will be only a digital publisher in the future.  I did have a chance to drop out of their contract a few months before publication, as did the other authors, and I should have done so.    The contract was for only a year which was coming up in November.  But with their many changes, it was agreeable when they wanted to be released from it, though  inconvenient.

When I signed with them, they were listed at Preditors and Editors without much comment.  Not many weeks after I signed the contract, I was disappointed to see that their listing had changed to Not Recommended.  Preditors and Editors lists publishers for author edification however it is a trusted source for many people.  So I was relieved to be free of that.

The Swan Bonnet will be in paperback and also in Kindle format, probably in the next week or two.

In January 2009, I posted the first third of  The Swan Bonnet at Authonomy.com.  It reached the HarperCollins Editor’s Desk in 2010 where it received a positive review.  After that, it was tied up for a few years while I sought an agent, with three requesting the full manuscript.  As a historical book and an environmental mystery with a teenage protagonist, it doesn’t fit easily into a particular genre.  I would prefer to have it available soon.

Tall ships

Looking at these pictures, they are the ships of summer to me, superb in the port and gone too soon.  The tall ships came to our Duluth harbor for the last weekend of July.  They were going to parade in Thursday at about two in the afternoon.  So I posted my ebay packages downtown at 1:30 and strolled to the lakewalk.  There were sails on the horizon.

I really didn’t expect to see anything at first except for the crowd that showed up.   Those ships were on time and I had to trot to get closer while the first masts staggered past me.   It’s too bad that I didn’t have the camera I bought since for zoom power.  But maybe that’s like wishing to see a ship with a steam engine instead of sails.  I had to wonder how time goes on those ships because, after spying another on the horizon, it took less than a half hour for it to swell in approach.  One ship dropped out because of a fire on board during a Lake Superior storm.  The ships were grand. 

           Usually on Lake Superior, we see lake barges.  They are low, leaden, and business-oriented.  In the summer, there are white tour boats. And the sailors with their small crafts, out there that day to welcome the tall ships in.  The tall sails radiated on the waves all the adventure and expedition of the past.  Lake Superior is not a friendly body of water so anyone who has watched its moods had to cheer these sailors.  We don’t usually think Edmund Fitzgerald these days, however the courage to navigate  antiquated ships on those cold waves brought a crowd that kept me from getting close to the passageway under Duluth’s lift bridge.

         I had just had my historical novel The Swan Bonnet published and could imagine again what it might be like to see ships arriving along an Alaskan coast, albeit it steamships with high chimneys.   Lake barges are not as romantic as past ships to see, I’m sure now, although there was a winter some years ago when the lakers were threatened by late spring ice.   The city watched a stranded ship for days and the coast guard ice breakers freeing it.

        These are sights that stir the imagination and feed tall stories.  On vacation as a child, I remember walking up a rope ladder to a ship in the Duluth harbor.  And a sailor saying "Hello 'dere" in a British accent.  He was wearing white and probably bell-bottoms too, thrilling in my memory.  At the new and used bookstores where I worked in Duluth many years later, people from the lakers visited from other parts of the world.  The iron ore industry was over but there was still some commerce.  I was like my character Dawn, watching the ships come in although these were not passenger ships.  Ships materialize like dreams.  Usually they are on the waters between one place and another, symbolic of isolated ventures or escapades, skirting the everyday world.  Tall masts on ships came like clouds of the past when they heralded cargoes and passengers.

Five Ways to Jumpstart Your Story

After The Swan Bonnet reached the HarperCollins Editor Desk at Authonomy.com, I began a total rewrite.  An agent had expressed interest and I wanted to do something about my protagonist being among so many adult characters.  I made her a few years older and added chapters.  Never having added chapters to a work that way, I worried that I might not be able to jump in and imagine them.  These are ideas for jumpstarting your story. 

freedigitalphotos.com

1.  Sleep on it.  Literally doing that might help.  I haven't actually slept with the manuscript under my pillow but I've slept with it near my head.   I've found written notes in my bed.  Creative writing often emerges from the unconscious as dreaming does.  When I first began writing, I used to put my typewriter in its case because I tended to brood on my story.   Over a fresh day and during sleep, I collected thoughts about my WIP.  Often, the hurdle I couldn’t jump was no longer there the next morning.

2.   Revise into your blank page.  Ernest Hemingway said that he typed at least the last paragraph he wrote the previous day before writing a new paragraph.   It might seem wasteful but I often find that retyping a page or more improves the flow.  However perfect a writer is as a typist, they hardly ever write down the perfect paragraph the first time.  If a person has a busy day ahead, they might have trouble landing down to the next sentence in the WIP. 

What are those flowers?    Photo from freedigitalphotos.com

3.  Do some fact checking.   Solve some concrete details in the WIP. You have an idea of your character's taste in clothing, cars, or food.  Go shopping for her or him, even if it's in another time period.  Look up information about your setting or find facts that build on an event or scene.  Write it down.  Describe.  Did you know that Margaret Mitchell wrote a character study - an individual history of every character in Gone with the Wind - before she began the book?

4.  Free write.  Before I begin anything, I usually get out a pen and simply write on notebook paper about my project.  You can free-write at any time.   Take a fresh page and let yourself go.  Write around your next page.  Speculate on character responses or "might-have-beens" in your WIP.  Something behind the story might be preventing the story from simmering.

5.   Change your surroundings.  Some writers pick up and change place.  I felt unleashed when I first got a laptop.  I could write in any room and in comfortable positions.  Once, writers used portable typewriters but electric typewriters and PCs put them through a desk period.  Now with a tablet that came with a small keyboard, I can write anywhere, as long as I'm not trying for speed.  Alone, a writer might become too self-conscious.  In most jobs, we work around and with other people.  The solitary time of writing can become a lazy time.

          And here in Northern Minnesota, I often take time off in the summer.  Our summers are so precious that I can easily abscond from the writing habit.   Somehow, when school begins, I  focus again but I might need a jumpstart.  Looking back on writing I’d done, I wasn’t sure that the grind was a good thing.  Discipline is, but taking time to gather the thoughts and absorb the present is a part of the creative process.   Writing again, well, hopes are that the keyboard  is that bicycle and a writer might whizz on it when they want to.

The Swan Bonnet is on a blog tour this month!   Here are the blog stops from As You Wish Tours, blogs to check out for books, reviews, and new releases.

Tour Schedule

Aug 10	Julia	Hendrix	As You Wish Reviews
Aug 11	Crystal	Allmon	Out There Reviews & Stuff
Aug 12	Ann	Snizek	Rambling Voices In My Head
Aug 13	Cheree	Crump	Confessions of the Paranormal
Aug 14	Kelly	Powell	Kelly P's Blog
Aug 15	RaeBeth	Buda	The Writing World
Aug 16	Cassie	Chavez	Sassy Cassie's Reviews
Aug 17	S.Cu'Anam	Policar	Cu's Ebook Giveaways
Aug 18	Melissa	Baker	Buried Under Books
Aug 19	Andrea	Buginsky	Andi's Realm
Aug 20	Tina	Donnelly	Reading For Fun
Aug 21	Christina	Irelan	Intoxicated by Books
Aug 22	Itara	Sosa	My Midnight Fantasies
Aug 23	Katherine	Holmes	GMTA