Wednesday, February 18, 2015

A NAME SHOULD FIT THE AGE

Oops. I said on Monday that I would continue the series on naming characters on Tuesday, specifically how to make the name fit the character, but I forgot and posted a review of Karin Fossum’s Eva’s Eye instead. I hope you did not misname a character while my brain and half-baked ideas were absent to guide you.

Sometimes I go to restaurants where they ask for your name so that they can call it out when your food is finally ready. “John” is a good name for someone who is old and bald and white-bearded and extremely good looking. I do not tell the child behind the counter that my name is John, though, because when they call that out later, half the old men in the place will jump up and try to get my food. A long time ago, John was a cool name, so that’s how all the cool babies were called. Now it’s a “forever” name, in that every generation will have some babies named John, but it’s not a cool or trendy name. It’s mostly an “old” name, so it fits characters like I. [“I” doesn’t sound right, but I think it is a predicate nominative, isn’t it?]

To protect my food from predator Johns, I give a different name to myself for the occasion, a name to the kid behind the counter, a name no one else will have. No one would believe me if I say my name is Dustin or Trent. Also there may well be Dustins and Trents there waiting for food. I need a name no one else has. So I tell the kid behind the counter, who is wearing a name tag that says Dustin or Kristel, that my name is Ambrose or Oscar. There is hardly ever another one of those in the place.

One day I forgot what I wanted to be called and told the college girl [Yes, I know she’s a woman, but at my age, she’s also a girl.] to give me a name. She immediately said “Rumpelstiltskin.” She enjoyed it so much that she kept bringing me free food so that she could sing out as she came to my table, “You forgot something, Rumpelstiltskin.” She thought that was an appropriate naming of my character. Or else she was a kit lit or folklore major, which explains why she is working in a restaurant.

A character’s name needs to fit the age. If I tell you a character is: Beulah, Betty, Barbara, Bo, Belle, Becca, you can probably follow right down the age range, from 90 to 15.

In addition, if a character is major, she needs a memorable name. When I wrote a book for my granddaughter in her senior year of high school, I chose Bronwyn for the heroine. It’s different, memorable, and cool. If she is an ancillary character, give her a name that does not compete with the main character, something nice but common, like Mary or Brunhilde. OK, maybe not Brunhilde…

Oops, too many words for a “high concept” blog. More tomorrow.

John Robert McFarland
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Well, “tomorrow” is a moving target at the moment. Sometimes you are short on time and internet connections, which may be true for me the next four or six days. I try to post here every day, for personal discipline and sanity and enjoyment. Also, I think that if you are kind enough to come by on any day, looking for something new, there should be something new. Feel free to come back by any day; there may be something new, if I have time and internet. If I don’t, I look forward to that “tomorrow” when we can share a few minutes.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I hope you never need a cancer book, but if you know someone with cancer, you might give them a copy of NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE. Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

EVA'S EYE--a review

Kate Atkinson and Karin Fossum are similar writers, similarly excellent writers, each from a north land, each with a similar detective, who, like every other crime novel detective is middle-aged, divorced or widowed, single but looking, jaded but still trying. Both Atkinson and Fossum are intrigued by how one event leads to another, but Atkinson wants to see how one event leads to another in action. Fossum wants to see what happens inside the character’s brain as one event follows another. Atkinson looks outside; Fossum looks with the inward eye, in this case, Eva’s Eye.

Eva’s eye has so many dimensions. She is a painter, with a unique way of trying to find light in darkness. She is also able to see many possibilities, how Michio Koku describes human identity, “the ability to simulate the future,” an ability animals lack. Eva definitely does not lack it. She sees so many possible futures, for her daughter, for her father, for her friend, for her self, for revenge.

This is the first of Fossum’s Inspector Sejer novels. Apparently daughter Mary Beth read my many whines about always receiving the 2nd in a series before the first when I receive a gift book, and so she went clear back to 1995 to get the first in this series, although I would not have been able to read it until 2002, because that is when James Anderson translated it from Norwegian.

I don’t ready many Norwegian crime writers, although if we lump Scandinavians together, as Americans tend to do, we could include Sweden’s late Steig Larrson, [The Lisbeth Salendar Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series], because there aren’t many, to my knowledge, besides Jo Nesbo, and yes, I write these convoluted sentences so that your brain will be exercised so well you won’t get dementia in old age. Nesbo is excellent, but dark. I like Fossum better. She’s certainly not “light,” but like Eva as she paints, Fossum thinks there is light that is worth looking for.

It’s tricky to read a translation. If you are confused, you’re not sure if it’s because of the author or the translator. I suspect translator James Anderson is British, for at more than one point the characters use the word “shan’t.”

It’s always a little harder to follow a foreign work. Unless you have been there, you don’t know the layout, and you don’t know how much a kroner is. When someone pays a thousand kroner for something, is that a lot, or is it like Italian lire?

That’s part of the fun of reading a foreign author, though. You get to be some place different, have to figure out how much a kroner is worth or if a Figueroa is a small or large car.

One of the confusing aspects of writing/translation in this book is the concept of size. Everyone keeps referring to the setting as a “small” town, but at one point the detective figures a trip to see a witness will take him 30 minutes. In my thinking, it will never take that long to get somewhere in a “small” town.

Inspector Slejus is appealing, but actually a minor character in this novel. Yes, it’s his series, and he solves the crime, but this book is really about Eva, and her eye. Note to daughters: I look forward to getting to know Slejus better in subsequent novels.

Eva’s Eye is a really good read.


John Robert McFarland

This started as an author blog, but writing guru Kristen Lamb says author blogs are counter-productive, that blogs need to be “high concept.” I have no idea what that means, but this blog is now high concept.

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

Monday, February 16, 2015

HOW TO NAME CHARACTERS 2

Yesterday, in response to Black Opal Books’ question on FB as to how we name characters, I told how I remember the names of my characters as I write. Today, how do we help our readers remember which character is which?

I don’t know how Alistair Maclean ever remembered the names of his characters himself. I certainly couldn’t tell one from another. He named them all alike. The men were always Henderson, Peterson, Swanson, Johnson, et al son. Maclean was a fabulous story-teller, especially his WWII novels, like The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare. I could never keep the guys straight, though, unless I read Maclean in German, like Angst ist Der Schlussel, which I did to try to improve my German. I was so busy struggling with the Deutsch that I didn’t care which son was which. Mein Deutsch is sehr schrelich.

Maclean’s women were even worse. He named every one of them, in every book, Mary. [In all fairness, I do think he had a Marian once.] In one book he even named a Mary and a Mary 2, and blamed it on the characters. According to Maclean, since they were both Mary, Nelson and Henderson and Johnson and Gunderson dubbed them Mary and Mary 2, as though Maclean had nothing to do with naming them both Mary in the first place.

The key to helping the reader is to identify each character, regularly, by something other than name alone. That’s especially true if a character has not showed up for a few pages. Rather than just Chuck Shaw, or Shaw, say: “County Sheriff Shaw,” or “Sheriff Shaw,” or just “The Sheriff.” His position, profession, tells the reader more than his name does, especially if he is “fifth business.” [1]

Sometimes physical description helps the reader. “Beulah, the woman with three eyes,” or just “the woman with three eyes” reminds the reader quickly just who you’re talking about.

Tomorrow, making the name fit the character, so that the reader has a better chance of identifying the character even without a job category or physical description.


John Robert McFarland

1] A phrase used mostly in play writing. There is the hero, the sidekick, the woman, and her best friend. Everyone else is “fifth business.”

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

Author guru Kristen Lamb says that author blogs are counter-productive, that a blog must be “high concept.” I have no idea what that means, but just forget about JUST WORDS being an author blog and consider it ‘high concept.”

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml



Sunday, February 15, 2015

REMEMBERING WHAT I NAMED A CHARACTER

Black Opal Books recently asked on Facebook how we go about naming characters.

There is a lot that goes into naming, starting with remembering which character has which name as you write.

I may rename a character later, but when shehe first arrives in the story, I use the initials of hisher role in the story for the name.

The physics professor is Paul Powell, county sheriff is Charlene Sellers, funeral director is Fred Davis, and so on.

I try to allow for age and ethnicity in those names. For instance, an Italian funeral director would be Franco De Fiore. That is not important in the beginning, though. I don’t want to slow down the writing by contemplating too hard on a name. When a funeral director suddenly shows up, I take the FD initials that come readily to mind. After all, the point of this initial naming is for ME to remember who is whom.

It’s easy enough to remember your main characters, but the lesser ones can be a problem. You don’t want to just guess and end up with more than one name for the same character, nor do you want to take the time to look it up in your index. The initials approach makes it easy to remember that the Spanish teacher is Serena Toscano. Of course, if you don’t normally use Spanish names, and thus Serena Toscano is really not easily conjured up, it’s perfectly okay to name her Sue Taylor. She still has the initials of Spanish Teacher.

More tomorrow.


John Robert McFarland

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

Author guru Kristen Lamb says that author blogs are counter-productive, that a blog must be “high concept.” I have no idea what that means, but just forget about JUST WORDS being an author blog and consider it ‘high concept.”

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/


Saturday, February 14, 2015

SLASHLINE

I read a lot of sports stuff. One reason is because sports writers tend to be really, really good writers… Bob Hammel, Frank Deford, Gary Smith, Mitch Albom, Rick Reilly, Jim Murray, John Skipper, Dave Revsine…

Also, I like sports. A lot. It’s a sickness. I don’t bet. I don’t do fantasy leagues. I’m always for the underdog, except on those rare occasions when the IU football team or the Cincinnati Reds are considered the favorites. My love of sports has no redeeming value. I do not think of sports as metaphors for life, or as training for other realms. I just like sports.

Also, I like new words. Sports writers try never to use a conventional word when they can find or invent a more “interesting” one. A basketball is a rock, or a globe, or an orb. A pitcher is a hurler. A home run or a touchdown is “taking it to the house” or “taking it downtown.”

I have read so much in sports, however, for so long, that I am always surprised when a new word appears in my reading. Should I not know all these words already? No, that’s the fun of it.

So it is with the “slashline” in baseball. For instance, Joey Votto’s 2009 slashline is 322/25/84, .322 batting average, 25 home runs, 84 RBIs [runs batted in]. I have seen those slashlines ever since I started reading the sports pages, but I have never heard them called that before. “Slashline” communicated immediately, though, as soon as I read it, because I’m familiar with the genre.

How should we use new phrases in writing, though, understanding that not every reader is up to date or familiar with the peculiar argot of the?

I read a lot of quantum physics and brain research. I’m not a scholar in either field. I have no background. So I can tell quickly which authors are trying to write for novices like myself, as well as readers more conversant in the field, by how they illuminate and illustrate the new terms as they arise.

It’s important, even as a fiction writer, to write for the novice, the new reader, as well as for the readers who are familiar with the ways of Miss Marple and her ilk.


John Robert McFarland

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

Author guru Kristen Lamb says that author blogs are counter-productive, that a blog must be “high concept.” I have no idea what that means, but just forget about JUST WORDS being an author blog and consider it ‘high concept.”

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml


Friday, February 13, 2015

The Opening Kickoff-a review

I often tell young people that if they want to learn how to write, read the sports writers, Bob Hammel [who mentored Michael Koryta] and Frank Deford and Gary Smith, and now Dave Revsine.

I usually mean it for fiction writing. Not that sports writers make stuff up, but they have to learn to tell stories in such a way that folks who already know the score still want to read about the game.

However, in the case of Revsine’s THE OPENING KICKOFF: The Tumultuous Birth of a Football Nation, [Lyons Press, 2014] I mean “write like a sports writer” for history, too. He makes me think of Bruce Catton or Shelby Foote writing on the Civil War, not like “history,” with all the dustiness that word induces, but as though it’s a really good novel. Revsine is simply a good story-teller.

Revsine uses so well the story of Pat O’Dea, the famous-then but forgotten-now U of WI kicker, as the red thread that runs through the book.

Revsine’s main historical conclusion is that all the ills that beset modern college football were there almost from the beginning.

Revsine writes just as he talks, as the chief studio anchor on the Big Ten Network, calmly, personally, thoughtfully, and reflectively—every word just the right choice, every word in just the right place. [Anyone who can keep Gary Dinardo and Howard Griffith under control, or almost so, is obviously a personage of considerable gifts.]

This story needed to be about more than O’Dea, so it’s not just a biography. Revisine rightly felt, though, the need to complete the story of O’Dea, beyond his college football years, so the book ends with the longest epilogue in the history of publication. I’m not complaining; the rest of the O’Dea tale is a good story, well told.

If you like football, or college, or history, or just good writing, you can’t go wrong with THE OPENING KICKOFF.

John Robert McFarland

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

Since this is a review of a sports book, I’ll suggest that you take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml

Thursday, February 12, 2015

THE VANISHING PAST


The past has vanished.

No, I’m not talking about history. It’s the past tense that has vanished.

“The past, present, and future walk into a bar. It was tense.”

Can’t tell that joke anymore, because the past tense no longer exists.

Have you noticed on TV, etc that no one uses the past tense anymore? It’s all present.

Putting a past event into present tense used to be an effective dramatic device. No longer, since it is used all the time, for every past event, including football games and court trials that were twenty years ago.

Then Moses sees this burning bush, and he says, “Hey, this is different.” And I notice that he’s taking his shoes off, so I take mine off, and we go…”

Yes, present tense is dramatic. But, you know, the past tense is there for a reason. So is future tense. They help to clarify. At least, they used to…


John Robert McFarland

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

Author guru Kristen Lamb says that author blogs are counter-productive, that a blog must be “high concept.” I have no idea what that means, but just forget about JUST WORDS being an author blog and consider it ‘high concept.”

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/



Wednesday, February 11, 2015

SEVEN FOR A SECRET-a review

FAYE, Lindsay: SEVEN for a SECRET [Putnam’s, 2013]

Timothy Wilde is a woman, even though he is a rough and ready cop. I mean that in the best way.

The author is a woman. She has given Wilde, one of the very first “copper stars” in NYC, when the police force was first formed in 1846, more sensitivity than a man usually possesses. She gets him to think like a woman, even though he acts like a man—fisticuffs and the whole thing. That’s a good combination, at least in a novel.

The new police force is a background for the story here, as is Irish Immigration, romantic longing, child abuse, the “underground railroad,” and political corruption via Tammany Hall. With all that going for it, what else could it possibly need?

Well, “blackbirding,” that’s what, slave “catchers” who kidnap free blacks and take them south to sell them as slaves. That ignoble part of our history has been brought back to consciousness recently by the film, “Twelve Years a Slave,” Solomon Northrup’s real experience of having been blackbirded.

The phrase, “seven for a secret,” is from a children’s rhyming game, what happens according to how many magpies you happen to see. If you see seven, it’s “…for a secret, never to be told.”

That secret is told here, though, an important and intriguing story, told well.

I like Timothy Wilde. When he is short on brains, he recognizes it and tries to learn what he needs to, instead of doing something stupid just to advance the plot. That’s a refreshing change from a long list of protagonists in novels like this, who are so self-destructive you hope they fail.

I like his brother, Valentine, too, so unlike Timothy in many ways, a man of strong appetites more than strong sensitivities, but they work well together.

From time to time I was confused about which character was which in Seven for a Secret. Part of that is the setting. If most of your characters are Irish, they’ll have Irish names, and even though I’m Scottish-American, with an Irishised Scottish surname, Irish names tend to sound alike to me. If one character is named John Jones and the other Wing Fat, I’ll be able to distinguish them without the aid of titles, descriptions, etc. but if they are named John Jones and Bill Smith, or Wing Fat and Wong Foo, I’ll have trouble. It’s helpful if an author refers occasionally to “the sheriff, Bill Jones,” or “Mavis Maverick, the rodeo rider,” instead of just “Jones” or “Mavis.”

I am aware that it’s tricky to comment on the differences between male and female authors. Daughter Katie had a student in her college history class who did not like ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. “You can tell it was written by a woman,” he said. “You can tell she has no knowledge of war.” When told that Eric Maria Remarque was a man, who added the Maria into his name on purpose, and a five-times wounded WWI veteran, he decided that maybe it was a good book after all.

As usual, I read the 2nd book in the series first, because that is the one given by my daughters. The first Timothy Wilde novel is THE GODS OF GOTHAM. I think what happens is that one of my daughters reads the first book in a series by a good new author, likes it, so buys me the 2nd. Or something like that…


John Robert McFarland

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

Author guru Kristen Lamb says that author blogs are counter-productive, that a blog must be “high concept.” I have no idea what that means, but just forget about JUST WORDS being an author blog and consider it ‘high concept.”

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.


I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

LOCATION IS A CHARACTER

The location of a story is often more than a setting. It is a character in the story in its own right. Walden Pond. St. Mary Mead. [1] The mountains in Mark Helprin’s A Soldier of the Great War. Prison, in Keith Hollihan’s The Four Stages of Cruelty. Salzburg, in the eponymous The Salzburg Connection by Helen Macinnes, one of the great and interesting thrillers.

Maybe I like The Salzburg Connection, though, because I have been to Salzburg. [2] Or I appreciate [love would not be the right word here], The Four Stages of Cruelty because I have been in prison. [3]

I love books set in places where I have been. I love even more an author who can make me think I have been there when I have not. Like Eleanor Catton in 1845 New Zealand, in The Luminaries, or Ray Bradbury in Green Town, IL in Dandelion Wine.

I don’t feel like I’m there, though, just because the author names all the streets the character takes, whether chasing a murderer or going out for a beer, as Michael Connelly does with LA or John Lescroix with San Francisco. Yes, it gives an idea of how people live in their cars, and how long a detective has to drive to serve a subpoena, but that gets old and boring in a hurry.

The location is a character, but like any other character, it can make you want to read more, or make you take another trip to the library.


John Robert McFarland

1] Stay away from Miss Marple. People die when she shows up.

2] Helen and I even danced in the gazebo where “The Sound of Music” was filmed.

3] I went to prison as a chaplain, but you still feel that shiver down your spine when you hear the doors of “stony lonesome” clang shut behind you.

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

Author guru Kristen Lamb says that author blogs are counter-productive, that a blog must be “high concept.” I have no idea what that means, but just forget about JUST WORDS being an author blog and consider it ‘high concept.”

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml



Monday, February 9, 2015

Giving Up Life To Be a Book--an SK quote

The great, anguished, existentialist Danish philosopher and theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, said, “I have given up life to be a book.”

John Robert McFarland

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

Author guru Kristen Lamb says that author blogs are counter-productive, that a blog must be “high concept.” I have no idea what that means, but please forget about JUST WORDS being an author blog and consider it ‘high concept.”

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/


Sunday, February 8, 2015

WHEN MOOSE BECAME PIERRE

A woman from our past has recently been in touch. We remember her and her family fondly, for many reasons, including the tiny black poodle puppy her children named Moose. We moved away and lost touch with them shortly after they acquired Moose. As we caught up after not seeing each other for years, I asked about Moose.

“Moose was a disaster,” she said, and she told the story.

Moose bit everybody, tore up everything, peed on everything, would not cooperate in any way.

“We just had to get rid of him. But we had paid a ton of money, so we wanted to sell him. He was registered and all that. But we are honest people, so we knew we’d have to tell the truth, and so we were going to lose a lot of money. Only one woman answered our ad. When I took Moose over and saw how nice her house was, I knew this would be tragic. I told her at the door she shouldn’t let us in, but she invited us in, anyway. Moose immediately ran over to her nice sofa and peed on it. But she said, Let me keep him for a weekend and we’ll see. Somehow it worked out. She bought him. They got along great.”

“Why do you think it worked out for her when he was such a disaster for you?” I asked.

“She changed his name to Pierre and they moved to California.”

In writing a story, as in life, a character just does not cooperate unless s/he has the right name and the right setting.

John Robert McFarland

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in early 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/



Friday, February 6, 2015

DON'T RECOMMEND TOO SOON

A follow-up to yesterday’s column on recommending books:

Helen started recommending Donna Tartt’s The Gold Finch when she was about 200 pp into its several thousand pp. [It only seems that way; it’s “only” 771. By contrast, the standard version of To Kill a Mockingbird has 296.]

Now she is sorry she did and is re-contacting the friends to whom she made the recommendation. She just got depressed by the main character’s downward spiral and decided she didn’t want to read any more about it.

I personally am glad I worked my way through all 771 pp. Tartt writes beautifully, both in style and use of words, and in ability to tell a story. I understand why it won the 2014 Pulitzer. I also understand why Helen got depressed reading it.

As usual with me, I read Tartt’s 2nd book, Gold Finch, first. I’m not sure I’ll read her first, The Secret History, which was published clear back in 1992.

Chase Mooney, who was history professor of The South at Indiana University, had never read Gone With the Wind, despite its obvious importance to history of the South, because he refused to read anything over 600 pp. He said, “If an author can’t tell the story in fewer than 600 pp, it’s not worth reading.”

To Kill a Mockingbird is also important to the history of the South, and Mooney could have read it twice.

I’m not sure I agree with Mooney, but Gold Finch might have been better at 599 pp.

John Robert McFarland

BTW, Today I am a 25 year cancer survivor. My first oncologist gave me “a year of two.” I report my 25 years not to brag, but because I remember that in those first 2 years, the best thing that happened was when we’d meet someone who said, “Oh, yes, I’m a 20 year survivor,” or “I know a 20 year survivor.” So if you know cancer patients, tell them about me! [Or give them a copy of the book noted below.]

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

Thursday, February 5, 2015

DON'T TELL ME I'LL LOVE IT

Recommending books is tricky, because reading is subjective.

I am reluctant to read a book that someone recommends with, “Oh, you’ll love it.” It puts too much pressure on me. What if I don’t love it? What if I read it and the book only confirms me in thinking you are crazy? No, say that you loved it, but don’t say I’ll love it. You can recommend it, but you can’t tell me how to feel about it.

Daughter Mary Beth recently called her mother and said, “Don’t read that book I recommended to you, mother. It’s awful.” It had been recommended to her by a usually reliable friend, and she had passed on the recommendation before reading the book.

She said the story wasn’t bad, but there were so many glitches. At one point a man stood up three different times without ever sitting down. And the clue was the unusual name of the villain, written by the victim in her own blood, but it turned out the killer was someone the victim did not know, and the villain’s name was unusual, but even while dying, the victim spelled it correctly. Etc.

Will Schwalbe, in The End of Your Life Book Club, tells how he and his dying mother recommended books to each other. Sometimes the recommended book was not enjoyed, but they read each other’s books out of love.

I suppose that sometimes we should read a recommended book, even if we don’t like it, because it’s a good way to learn about the person who recommended it. But, please, don’t tell me I’ll love it.

John Robert McFarland

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/





Wednesday, February 4, 2015

BIRTHDAY BOOKS

Today is my birthday. In our family, that means new books. So far, I have received:

Daniel Silva, THE HEIST
Kristen Lamb, RISE OF THE MACHINES
Jane Smiley, SOME LUCK
Adam Johnson, THE ORPHAN MASTER’S SON
Diane Capri, DON’T KNOW JACK
Stephen Hunter, THE THIRD BULLET
Anthony Doeer, ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE
Karen Fossum, EVA’S EYE

Birthdays are great!

John Robert McFarland

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

A PLUG FOR ONE OF MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

THE LUMINARIES-a review


In The Luminaries, [Little, Brown, & Co, 2013] Eleanor Catton is a very young author [born 1985] who writes in a very old way. The combination is illuminating.

Catton is the totally omniscient narrator, as total as it gets. She not only tells us the actions of each character, but why they are acting that way, from childhood on. It’s sort of like reading Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.

The Luminaries was published in 2013, when she was 28. She probably started writing The Luminaries when she was about 23. Considering the amount of research that must have gone into it, and the work to get the voices just right, it’s a remarkable tour de force for such a young author. It certainly deserved the Man Booker Prize it nabbed in 2013.

Her first novel, The Rehearsal, was her 2008 master’s thesis at Victoria U in Wellington. She also received a fellowship to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.

The Luminaries is set in the 1866 New Zealand gold rush. It is a combination historical, mystery, astrological, psychological… something. I don’t mean that in a bad way; I just can’t think of the proper word. It’s not mish-mash or confetti. Catton is a good string-of-beads story teller.

The conclusion is a bit disappointing, ragged and unfinished feeling, but most novel endings are a bit of a letdown. Maybe that’s why the book feels about a hundred pages too long. [Take out a hundred and it would still be a very long book for its type.]

Catton, in the old fashioned way, tells us at the start of each chapter what will occur in it. Toward the end the “contents” for each chapter are longer than the chapter.

I seem always to read the second book of a bright new author before the first, which in the case of Catton was The Rehearsal. This is because my daughters don’t give me an author’s first book. This 2nd book was a gift of Mary Beth. But Catton is a gifted author. I look forward to reading her first book second.


John Robert McFarland

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

My novel, VETS, about four handicapped and homeless Iraqistan veterans who are accused of murdering a VA doctor, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat:

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml



Sunday, February 1, 2015

MANY BOOKS-ONE BRAIN

My reading method drives some people, many of them in my family, crazy. I read 20 to 30 books at the same time. Many are literally “page a day” books. When I have a read a page from each of my books each day, I choose the one that I need to think about some more on that particular day as my “rest of the day” book.

I would probably do this just as a reader, because it’s the way my brain works, but it’s fruitful for me as a writer to keep a conversation going in my brain among not just many writers but many areas of thinking.

At the moment I am reading:

FICTION:
The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
The Four Stages of Cruelty, Keith Hollihan  
The Husband, Dean Koontz
The Lincoln Myth, Steve Berry
Death in Nostalgia City, Mark S. Bacon
Fear Nothing, Lisa Gardner

NON-FICTION
The Opening Kickoff, Dave Revsine
Pastrix, Nadia Bolz-Weber
The Journal of John Wesley
Stories that Have Shaped My Life & Ministry, John Killinger
Outsider Baseball, Scott Simkus
The World Until Yesterday, Jared Diamond
A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren
The Future of the Mind, Michio Kaku
The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Richard Rhodes

POETRY
Aimless Love, Billy Collins
The Pocket Book of American Poems, Louis Untermeyer, Editor

RECENTLY COMPLETED

The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton
Seven for a Secret, Lindsay Faye
The Boson at the End of the Universe, Sean Carroll
The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Burbery
The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair
Dubliners, James Joyce
Hummers, Knucklers, & Slow Curves edited by Don Johnson 
Run, Andrew Grant

My replacement method, when I have finished a book, is simple. I choose another of the same genre, or whatever my wife and daughters gave me most recently for Christmas or birthday or Father’s Day.

Try it; you’ll like it. Or maybe not.


John Robert McFarland

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2016.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in early 2015.

I tweet as yooper1721.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml