Microfiction Monday: Sales (sic) on the High Seas

Welcome to Microfiction Monday, at Stony River: a writing life, where a picture paints 140 characters, or even fewer.

[Hate counting letters and spaces? Try Design 215's character counter, which will count for you as you type. Microsoft Word will count for you too, of course, as part of its word count feature under the 'Review' tab.] Here's this week's picture, and my story to go with it.




In all her years as a Wonderbra sales rep, Zola'd never had such feisty customers. But how could she tell them they didn't need her product? (134 characters)


I'll be away from computers the next couple of MMs. Will miss you all, but will be back in mid-July. Happy trails, everyone, and thanks for commenting.

Where's your Favourite Book Shop?

I had a nice jaunt to San Francisco last week. My wife and I were celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary (yes, we were child bride and groom) and we decided to make a splurge of it. We stayed in the Union Street Inn, a lovely B&B, the best part of which was drinking white wine and sampling cheeses during the pre-dinner hours in the sun-dappled garden. At times like this I give in and admit I am a complete hedonist: I could spend my life sitting in gardens, reading books, and sipping tea and other libations. I swear to you I was switched at birth. If there is some Panamanian-born Duke somewhere who actually pines to do 8 loads of laundry a week, please contact me as soon as possible.

One of the other pleasures of the trip, beyond being in the presence of my beautiful wife and being free of the constant cries of "Dad?!" from every quarter, was a revisit to the City Lights Bookstore. City Lights was founded in 1953 by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. It has all sorts of Allen Ginsberg and Beat poet history and is a lovely warren of book stacks with a sweet, sweet selection of books. If you want your international fix--Japanese, Indian, Middle Eastern--you'll get it there. It's not the sort of place you see the likes of a Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck screed, nor anything mass-market--though they did stock Steig Larsson's Millenium trilogy. (Yay for them!)

I love grazing in indie book stores like this one. Nobody bugs you when you wander in (hello, Borders? Can you change your egregious policy of having your wired handmaidens stalk customers through the store with "can I help you find anything?" bleating like a broken record?!) and you get the feeling they wouldn't mind if you browsed for hours. In fact, I liked it so much I bought the t-shirt.

In Portland, we have Powell's which is, no joke, a city of books. Sometimes I come over a bit faint when I pass through Powell's--it's like falling into the world's largest smorgasbord after you've already had a substantial dinner. My own local, in Multnomah Village, is Annie Bloom's which is much more manageable--sort of the cheese and wine in the sun-dappled garden effect. I hope these type of book shops never go out of fashion. The world would surely be a much less lustrous place without them.

Where's your favorite book shop? Let me know so I can add it to my book tour itinerary. (One can but dream, eh?)

Microfiction Monday: Jumping the Shark

Welcome to Microfiction Monday, at Stony River: a writing life, where a picture paints 140 characters, or even fewer.

[Hate counting letters and spaces? Try Design 215's character counter, which will count for you as you type. Microsoft Word will count for you too, of course, as part of its word count feature under the 'Review' tab.] Here's this week's picture, and my story to go with it.



Dad was a character actor. When the kids gingerly suggested he might be jumping the shark, he took it literally. It wasn't a happy landing.

(From Wikipedia: Jumping the shark is an idiom used to describe the moment of downturn for a previously successful enterprise. The phrase was originally used to denote the point in a television program's history where the plot spins off into absurd story lines or unlikely characterizations.)

Hope all Dads had a happier Father's Day than the one in my story! Have a great week everyone.

WriteOnCon Unveiled

Here's a very bright idea from Casey McCormick and her band of blog friends. They are putting on an online writers' conference for those of us whose travel and conference budgets are on the skimpier side. Perfect timing too, as I will have to miss the Willamette Writers conference this year.

Here's all the info: http://caseylmccormick.blogspot.com/2010/06/writeoncon-big-reveal.html

Microfiction Monday: George's Curious Irish coffee

Welcome to Microfiction Monday, at Stony River: a writing life, where a picture paints 140 characters, or even fewer.

[Hate counting letters and spaces? Try Design 215's character counter, which will count for you as you type. Microsoft Word will count for you too, of course, as part of its word count feature under the 'Review' tab.] Here's this week's picture, and my story to go with it.



This is George. He was a good little monkey and always very curious. He drank his friend Alice's Irish coffee and now he's in a wonderland. (139 characters)

Okay, I know it's obviously a tea party, but I wanted to get something Irish in there in honor of Susan--who has brought the sun to the Pacific Northwest! Have a great week, everyone.

Circumnavigating the globe at Sixteen

It seems to be the season for sixteen-year-olds to sail around the world. First it was Jessica Watson. Then yesterday, Abby Sunderland got blasted through the blogosphere because she lost her mast in 40 foot swells and set off her emergency beacons.

At 16, the most risky thing I attempted was to sneak into the local pub with my schoolmates in England and pretend we were all 18. If truth be told, I'm probably a 9.5 on the risk-aversion scale: no bungee-jumping, sky-diving, or helicoptor skiing in avalanche territory for me. (My brother got all those genes.) I wouldn't go sailing round the world--heck, I wouldn't go sailing round a farm pond, not with my history of seasickness--at age 47, let alone 16.

What surprised me, though, wasn't the fact of these particular sailors' youth. What amazed me was the vitriol spewed forth in those internet forums (should that be fora?) lambasting the girl for her stupidity and the parents for their recklessness in letting her go.

Now, ocean-going is not for everyone (c.f. above) but I say if a 16-year-old possesses the necessary skill and ambition to do such a thing, let her go. I'm sure everyone involved knows the risks, and I suspect that everyone involved has entertained the thought that she might, if unlucky, perish. I've had it up to here with these nasty types who erupt on the internet with all sorts of mean-spirited bromides. (The only thing I can see as a negative is that, if the sailor does need to be rescued, taxpayers are probably footing the bill. So provision should be made for that by the adventuring families.)

Squishing of people's dreams has become a spectator sport. It's a particular landmine for writers (and others with active imaginations) who are constantly being shown their shortcomings. To which I say Reach for the Stars. And to Abby Sunderland and others of her ilk I say, in Virgil's words (yeah, that was another thing I was doing at 16, plodding through the Aeneid in Latin class; no wonder I made haste to the pub.) Macte nova virtute, puella, sic itur ad astra. (The original has puer/boy, of course.) The translation: Blessings on your young courage, girl; that's the way to the stars.

Microfiction Monday: The Ponkey Whisperer

Welcome to Microfiction Monday, at Stony River: a writing life, where a picture paints 140 characters, or even fewer.

[Hate counting letters and spaces? Try Design 215's character counter, which will count for you as you type. Microsoft Word will count for you too, of course, as part of its word count feature under the 'Review' tab.] Here's this week's picture, and my story to go with it.

For Erasmus, it was just more bad luck. His "The Ponkey Whisperer" should have been a bestseller. But some twit beat him to it with a horse!

Have a marvelous week, everyone. And may Susan bring some sunshine to our soggy Pacific Northwest.

Happy endings, sad endings

I suppose it was a foregone conclusion that, sooner or later, I would blog about my favorite sport: tennis. Today was the women's final at the French Open, and two unlikely finalists played: Sam Stosur from Australia and Francesca Schiavone from Italy. Neither had ever been to a Grand Slam final, and for Schiavone, she was also the first female Italian Grand Slam finalist ever.

All the pundits favored Stosur. She's ranked 7th in the world (Schiavone was 17th) and had defeated Justine Henin, Serena Williams, and Jelena Jankovic on her way to the final. At 26, she was three years younger than Schiavone--who is a dinosaur in today's tennis world, turning 30 in just a few days.

But Schiavone came out firing. Though shorter and slighter than Stosur, and without the same power in her serving, Schiavone seemed to have a greater spring in her step. She played fearlessly and with passion. I have rarely seen such an unheralded tennis player look so at ease at such a major occasion. She skipped about, dashed fearlessly to the net, and didn't miss a volley the entire match. Racing through the second set tie-break, she looked nerveless as she closed in on the championship. Moments later, she was flat on her back in elation, kissing the red clay, and scooting off to her legion of supporters, most of whom were wearing t-shirts which read "Schiavo: Nothing is Impossible."

John McEnroe interviewed her after the trophy presentation. When he asked her if she had expected this result, she replied she hadn't expected it, but she had dreamed about it. (I wish I could quote her exact words.) For her, it was a happy ending--as it would be in most fiction.

And now, for something completely different: sad endings. This part of the story concerns two writers, both of whom died before they experienced great success. As a writer, I can't think of many things worse. The first sad ending concerns Stieg Larsson, the creator of Lisbeth Salander and what is being called the Millenium Trilogy. Just after his trilogy was accepted by a Swedish publisher in 2004, Larsson died of a heart attack at aged 50. He never lived to see the massive success of his novels.

The second sad ending is more recent. On May 12th, Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 crashed just short of the runway in Tripoli, Libya. Although one passenger, a 9-year-old Dutch boy, survived, all the other passengers perished. Among them was the Irish-South African novelist, Bree O' Mara, who was traveling to London to meet with her publisher. She had initially planned her London trip for April and the London Book Expo, but the Icelandic volcano played havoc with those plans.

These sort of stories chill me. (One of the themes in my fantasy novel is that life can change in an instant; none of us knows the time of our death--but my villain wants to find the mysterious book that contains the information. Armed with that knowledge, she reckons, she can prevent her own death.) I mourn for these writers and their unrealized dreams.

Life has both sorts of endings. Right now, I thank god for tennis and for stories like Francesca Schiavone's, believing that "Nothing is Impossible."

Why You Should Never Give Up

While relaxing at the beach this weekend, I took the opportunity of delving into my stack of waiting-to-be-read magazines. One of these was the May/June issue of Poets and Writers, a magazine which is well worth every penny of a subscription.

I came across the following article by Eryn Loeb. I had heard about Karl Marlantes in The Oregonian, but Loeb's piece was much more thorough. Briefly, the story is this: In 1968, Marlantes was shipped off to Vietnam to serve in the Marine Corps. While there he kept a journal of his experiences and used said journal to help him start a novel called Matterhorn. That was in 1975. He began shopping the novel around in 1977, but the general reaction was distaste about the subject. People wanted to forget about Vietnam. Marlantes stopped querying and got a job as a lumber salesman in Portland.

Fast-forward ten years. Marlantes once again started studying the market and sent out queries. Once again, the subject of Vietnam was a deal-breaker. He kept revising his manuscript. Another ten years went by. He queried again. This time, people responded by asking him to set the story in the Gulf War.

In 2007, Marlantes got a lucky break. He sent the manuscript to a friend to read and that friend mentioned it to another friend, a person called Tom Farber who was both a professor at Berkeley and the founder of a small non-profit publishing house called El Leon. It was El Leon's senior editor, Kit Duane, who fell in love with the novel. El Leon made an offer to print 1200 copies.

I guess Fate decided that such extraordinary patience should be rewarded because Marlantes sent several advance copies to book stores such as Annie Bloom's (yay! my local indie bookstore)and got a favorable response. That's when his story was picked up by the Oregonian. El Leon also submitted the novel to Barnes and Noble's Discover Great New Writers program. The folks at B & N loved it too and one of them brought it to the attention of Morgan Entrekin, president and publisher of Grove/Atlantic. El Leon and Grove/Atlantic came to an agreement, Marlantes found an agent (funny how that happens!) and the first print run of Matterhorn was set at 60,000 copies.

The moral: Write a good book; never give up believing that it will be published. You never know when that old friend will set the ball rolling and someone will fall in love with your work!

That's my feel-good story for the month. Feel free to add yours in the comments.