Go to this link to find the video for my book. I think it's pretty good and I hope you will too. Let me know.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
From:THE FIFTH WOMAN - Change of tense
Brett’s Studio
The Third Floor
I am lying on the sofa but I am smoking a cigarette and thinking about everything that happened since I woke up in Paris.
Have I EVER been this alive, I wonder?
Have I EVER been this loved or cared about?
Have I EVER loved or cared about anyone the way I love and care about Brett and Adel and Gregg and especially Jeanette?
I thought it was important to remember being loved and learning to love but it’s not and I’m going to think about the novel Jeanette and I are going to write instead, and I’m not going to start feeling sorry for Joan.
Joan and Simon are going to live in the space we create for them for the rest of time but our only concern has to be attracting them to the space and the social life available to them and making them want to stay long enough for us to trap them there.
The living space won’t be hard and we know the kind of men and women Joan and Simon are attracted to so we can create characters in the manuscript for them to meet temporarily in the manuscript then move the characters somewhere else until they can be used by Brett or Gregg in a book. We don’t want any of them left behind or to end up in limbo once the novel we’re writing is sealed for good. (I have a vision of all the characters standing perfectly still together like mannequins waiting to be brought to life in a novel) But we’ll have to find a way to separate all the characters from Joan and Simon before we take them out of the manuscript and we ‘publish’ the novel. And I already know that Ihave to be one of the people Joan sees in the manuscript in order to convince her that Brett is there and to entice Joan to come in but I do not intend to become a character in the manuscript and I am going to have to ask Jessica to help me to appear to be there but not be there.
And there can’t be any mirrors in the space we create for Joan and Simon, none.
I’m constantly being interrupted by thoughts about what it will be like for Joan and Simon living alone in the space we create and I wonder if we shouldn’t/can’t create a couple to share their imprisonment with them?
I don’t even want to think about exiling anyone to Joan and Simon’s fate but I don’t want to be responsible for Joan and Simon being alone for all eternity, no matter what they’ve done.
The thought comes to me that perhaps we could create characters to stay with Joan and Simon who are different enough from Joan and Simon to make them interesting enough for Joan and Simon to at least like them. It’s not pity, its conscience and my conscience is what makes me a woman and different from Joan.
The door just opened and Jeanette has come in to ask for a cigarette.
“Mama knows I smoke but she wants me to ask for a cigarette so I won’t smoke too much.”
I grin and give her a cigarette and I pull my legs up on the sofa to make room for her. She’s wearing a white negligée and she’s going to fill it out nicely one day soon but right now she’s not quite ready for it.
“You didn’t get up and come to see me just to ask for a cigarette, did you?”
She smiles and lights her cigarette.
“I didn’t want you to be scared.”
“I’m not scared, Jeanette.”
She looks down at her cigarette and I know she’s going to stay and that she wants to talk.
“Maybe it’s me, maybe I’m scared. Or maybe I just need to be with you.”
She’s young but she’s growing up and I wish she had time to grow-up naturally but I can try to make the transition as smooth as possible.
I sit up and I put my legs down over the front of the sofa and reach out for her and we hug one another.
“We’re not going to be gone long and when we come back we’ll have the baby to take care of and we’ll have to find room in the attic for her nursery.”
“We’ll do it together and I’ll help you with her, Aunty Christina, I promise I will.”
I kiss her cheek to let her know that I know she will and because I love her.
“Now tell me what you’re scared of.”
She looked at me then down again.
“I was a character in the manuscript for longer than you can imagine, forgotten and anonymous except to the girls. I knew Joan and Simon though, the girls and I had dinner with them sometimes and near the end Simon told me to go to Arlette when I left the house. They were both…Bridget and Patrice were afraid of them but Bridget and Patrice were family and Joan and Simon couldn’t hurt them. I wasn’t family and they scared me right from the beginning and I was afraid every day that they’d find out how young I was and try to take advantage of my innocence and my anonymity in the manuscript. And now you and I are going to lure them into our manuscript to trap them and they’ll be there forever – alone – and they’ll know what we did and they’ll try to find a way out, I know they will and….”
I‘ve taken her hand to reassure her I’m not going to let anything happen to her and to let her know she’s not anonymous now and that she’s loved.
“They won’t be alone and they’ll never get out.
We’re going to write about a couple in the manuscript who are enough like Joan and Simon to attract their attention but who are different enough to be interesting to them. They’ll stay behind with Joan and Simon when we remove all the other characters and we send them somewhere safe to wait for Brett and Gregg to use them as characters in their novels. And there won’t be any mirrors in the space we create for Joan and Simon and the other couple and there will be no way out.
My conscience won’t let me condemn Joan and Simon or the others to an eternity of loneliness and boredom, but I won’t ever let them escape.”
Jeanette is smiling and now she’s giggling.
“You’re showing off.
You’re happy you’re a woman and that you have a conscience and I love you for being compassionate but I love you for other reasons too, and while you’re enjoying showing off I want to tell you something.
As characters in the manuscript the girls and I had no experience with loving anyone else until we came to live with Mama and Papa, and because we never loved anyone else before it was hard for us to let ourselves love them. Now we love Mama and Papa like our parents, of course, but we started to love you because we felt it deep inside ourselves and we never experienced that before. We’ never felt like that about anyone before.
It’s a…event for us because it’s something WE feel ourselves, not something written for us to feel or something we were told to feel. And we’re proud of loving you as our Auntie but I’m proud of loving you as a woman and I’m proud of feeling it because like you I know that it means I’m a woman and I’m trying to say thank-you for making me realize I feel this way about you and for making me feel like a woman.”
I am already trying to hold tears in and when I can’t hold them in any longer I won’t know which ones come first the ones from a minute ago or new ones so I quickly put my arms around Jeanette’s neck and just cry and I feel her crying too and I hope Brett doesn’t come in and find us crying like this, she’d just start crying too.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
From:THE FIFTH WOMAN - Change of tense
The door has just opened and Jeanette has come in to ask for a cigarette.
“Mama knows I smoke but she wants me to ask for a cigarette so I won’t smoke too much.”
I grin and give her a cigarette and I pull my legs up on the sofa to make room for her. She’s wearing a white negligée and she’s going to fill it out nicely one day soon but right now she’s not quite ready for it.
“You didn’t get up and come to see me just to ask for a cigarette, did you?”
She smiles and lights her cigarette.
“I didn’t want you to be scared.”
“I’m not scared, Jeanette.”
She looks down at her cigarette and I know she’s going to stay and that she wants to talk.
“Maybe it’s me, maybe I’m scared. Or maybe I just need to be with you.”
She’s young but she’s growing up and I wish she had time to grow-up naturally but I can try to make the transition as smooth as possible.
I sit up and I put my legs down over the front of the sofa and reach out for her and we hug one another.
“We’re not going to be gone long and when we come back we’ll have the baby to take care of and we’ll have to find room in the attic for her nursery.”
“We’ll do it together and I’ll help you with her, Aunty Christina, I promise I will.”
Monday, March 14, 2011
The Fifth Woman
Joan and Simon have no redeeming qualities however when Christina is thinking about them being trapped in the manuscript of the novel she realizes they will have to have company and she wonders if they can create a couple who are just different enough from Joan and Simon to be interesting to them?
Once the manuscript is written and Joan and Simon are lured in the manuscript will be printed (One Copy) and put into a lead box that will be sealed and put in a safe for the rest of eternity.
Once the manuscript is written and Joan and Simon are lured in the manuscript will be printed (One Copy) and put into a lead box that will be sealed and put in a safe for the rest of eternity.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
The Women In Love Series
The fifth book will be Joan's story from the beginning, as a character in Jeremy Wosk's manuscript, to the present.If there was ever a story that needed to be told it's Joan's. She has been all four women in the third book as well as several others and she has gone from being a character to being a woman, a mother and a character again. But does she deserve the reader's sympathy?
The Fifth Woman
This book has two new characters, Christina Dean and Jessica, and when the book is finished the new book will have only one character - Joan. She will be narrating the story from the beginning (from her point of view) and the other characters will be mentioned but not heard from. Then it will be back to THE MEXICAN JOURNALS and Goyo, Justine and Kasha. A totally different series with a totally different momentum and story.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Editors comments on new book
. I see that you’re invoking Hemingway but I think you have taken his grammatical and romantic style to an extreme here. I even thought it must be a parody at first. However, you seem to know what you’re doing and if your audience likes this, I guess that’s good enough.
At first I wanted to scream when I read this, but then I felt good about it because I don't invoke Hemingway at all I write like this because the book discusses THE SUN ALSO RISES and the book takes place in Paris in 1925 and the heroine's name is Brett Ashley.
Romantic style?
I didn't know Papa's style was romantic. Mine is chick-lit.
Thinking of changing my profile name to Boogy Boy.
Monday, March 7, 2011
The Fifth Woman
Paris (1925)
Two of the characters have to go to the Château to start work on the manuscript of a novel that will entice Joan and Simon into the manuscript.
Heather is in Venice, California with her husband and baby and wasn't at the reunion after all???
And there's something about the painting by Heather and the painting by another character that provides a mystery.
This book more than most evokes the magic of the other side of the mirror rather than the physics of the multi-dimensional world on the other side but it's the physics that separates this mirror from Alice's. String theory etc.
Living in Bellingham, WA is living in another country and when I read something about Canada it really makes clear the distinctions without producing any nostalgia.
Two of the characters have to go to the Château to start work on the manuscript of a novel that will entice Joan and Simon into the manuscript.
Heather is in Venice, California with her husband and baby and wasn't at the reunion after all???
And there's something about the painting by Heather and the painting by another character that provides a mystery.
This book more than most evokes the magic of the other side of the mirror rather than the physics of the multi-dimensional world on the other side but it's the physics that separates this mirror from Alice's. String theory etc.
Living in Bellingham, WA is living in another country and when I read something about Canada it really makes clear the distinctions without producing any nostalgia.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
A Writers Journey
Sometimes the urge to answer emails and check on my social network pages is just a way of avoiding working on the book for an hour. This particular book is getting emotional on a progressive curve and I wasn't really expecting that, but it's the way the book has to be written.
I am letting it take me where it wants to go but sometimes it acts like an unruly child who wants its own way and I have to be more of a disciplinarian. (editing)
I am still waiting for the day off I promised myself, but I know that it was a fantasy I created to convince myself to work now and play later.
At least the autobiography is out of the way. I had to rename it for my publisher's sake. They have a lot of LIVING THE MOMENT titles apparently.
My Story - Chapter One???
It's hard to be original when you're in the midst of being so glad the book is finished and you want to move on.
Who will buy it anyways?
I'll put it in a time capsule and like a squirrel I'll forget where I buried it.
I am letting it take me where it wants to go but sometimes it acts like an unruly child who wants its own way and I have to be more of a disciplinarian. (editing)
I am still waiting for the day off I promised myself, but I know that it was a fantasy I created to convince myself to work now and play later.
At least the autobiography is out of the way. I had to rename it for my publisher's sake. They have a lot of LIVING THE MOMENT titles apparently.
My Story - Chapter One???
It's hard to be original when you're in the midst of being so glad the book is finished and you want to move on.
Who will buy it anyways?
I'll put it in a time capsule and like a squirrel I'll forget where I buried it.
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