brianrayfiction.com Blog

Been busy, kids. But I have a plan. Although not all posts can be works of fine literature, I’m going to go with a down-dirty style to keep this thing updated even when sinking under the weight of work. Here goes.

Last Fri-Mon: Sick, but working. Finish proofing essay on Tim Burton in fairy tale film collection, Fairy Tale Film and Cinematic Folklore: Visions of Ambiguity. Resist rewriting two paragraphs.

Tues-Wed: Staying up late to grade papers.

This past Thursday 11 am – meet with committee chair to map out comp exam list, which will take place a year from now. We meet on campus. But I accidentally leave half my brain under the pillow at home.

Thursday 2 pm: Between classes, receive email saying that PERCIVAL EVERETT can meet up for coffee. In South Carolina.

Thursday 7/8 pm: After class, rush home to throw travel things into a grocery bag. Forget to pack my clothes. Book a Red Roof for $30. Drive to SC, arriving at roughly 11:30 pm. Drop my cell phone under car seat. Red Roof gives me a card, which doesn’t open my room. They give me another card, which doesn’t open my room. They give me another room. This room has neither alarm clock nor hair drier. But they do have nice cappuccino machines.

Friday 9 am: Miraculously wake up at 8:30 am with no alarm clock. Have coffee with Percival in a Starbucks. We talk about kindles, iPhones, and book stores.

Friday 12-4 pm: Check in to hotel. See that Free Times has put my book on their cover. Sleep. Wake up. Go to author’s reception on top floor of Thomas Cooper, where I once attended Bruccoli’s Fitzgerald seminar. Try to keep my drinks off the manuscript display cases. Have drink with friends, discovering that MOMA has had a Tim Burton retrospective on display for months. WHAT?

Sat: Listen to panels. Hope to make headway into Confessions of Nat Turner before more social what-notting.

PS – Accidentally posted this on the old blog (I don’t know if anyone goes here anymore). See the new blog here.

New post up on the new blog:

http://brianrayfiction.wordpress.com/

Crashed through 100,000-word ceiling on my new novel last night. That’s nearly double the last one. Coming up next in the process, another tough round of edits and revisions. (Round #4.) Wish I could hire someone to go through and iron out all my kinks and plot contradictions. After all, doesn’t a good editor stand behind every successful director? Where would Christopher Nolan be without his editors?

I’ve finally lost my patience with Yahoo’s bizarre interface with wordpress, so I’ve started another blog directly through wordpress. Not only does the new blog look a lot nicer, uploading and editing images has gotten a lot easier. So here’s the official unveiling. I’ve added three new posts on the new blog this past week, including one about Obama’s latest award:

http://brianrayfiction.wordpress.com/

Oooh. Ahh. I know.

I’m going to keep this blog running for a little while, until everyone updates, etc.

Just weeks away, Sarah Palin’s memoir has already outperformed a lot of other books out there. Called Going Rogue, the book apparently describes Palin’s journey from politics to celebrity.

In a feat usually reserved for the likes of J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown, Palin’s book was No. 1 on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com just two days after Harper announced it had moved up the release date from the spring to Nov. 17 and that the memoir’s title was “Going Rogue.”

Palin’s 432-page memoir, still No. 1 on Friday, has been given a first printing of 1.5 million copies and booksellers have begun fighting for sales. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. cut the $28.99 list price by more than half, to $13.50, and Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com are offering “Going Rogue” for $15.65, a 45 percent discount.

As my blog may have mentioned, I was tapped to join the team of ghost-writers for this project back in April. For promotional purposes, I’ve been asked to talk here about my experiences working for Palin and digesting her voice. Let me tell you. The editing process was hell. I’d write a chapter, the editor would send it back with a note saying, “Prose not circular enough.” One time I got a note saying, “Dam you, Ray. Be less clear. Less precise. I want more indirection! More circumlocution! More independent clauses masquerading as dependent ones! When you finish a sentence, I want you to have no idea what you just said!!”

This aspect of Palin’s voice gave me the most trouble. Even after I’d learned a great deal about Alaska and soaked up her sports metaphors, even after acquiring a host of colloquialisms, I struggled with the syntax. Finally the editor shot me an example from one of Palin’s speeches. Think he tweaked it a little:

My choice is to take a stand and effect change – not hit our heads against the wall and watch valuable state time and money, millions of your dollars, go down the drain in this new environment. Rather, we know we can effect positive change outside government at this moment in time, on another scale, and actually make a difference for our priorities – and so we will, for Alaskans and for Americans…Let me go back to a comfortable analogy for me – sports… basketball, which I use it because you’re naïve if you don’t see the national full-court press picking away right now and because I think basketball is the way to bring our nation back together through its status as a national past time, about freedom, and democracy, and teamwork, because, you see, a good point guard drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket… and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can WIN. And I’m doing that – keeping our eye on the ball that represents sound priorities – smaller government, energy independence, national security, freedom! And I know when it’s time to pass the ball – for victory!

Of course, even before I began writing, our editor called us all to DC where we spent an entire week “getting to know Sarah.” Wish I could remember that week. I’m having memory blocks.

Now I sit here ponderous, neglecting other work. I wonder how many people who buy Palin’s book fall into the category of supporters, the category of critics, and the category of people planning to give it as a gag gift for Christmas. (I know one person on my list is taken care of.)

Here’s proof that we indeed live, as Voltaire liked to joke, in the best of all possible worlds. At least I do. (Not sure about the rest of you.) Of course, this assumes that in no world did I manage to avoid a big-time car wreck. Saturday morning, hoping to make a SIBA tradeshow signing in Greenville, I drove at the upper edge of the speed limit despite the obvious fact that rain had been falling on the roads for a solid day or more. Smart. Fortunately, I drive extra safe in light traffic. But with the road empty for a mile front and back, I was free to excel.

Already, I’d called people with Blair to let them know I’d arrive a bit late for my signing. It was 9 am, and I couldn’t push from my head the image of, like, a hundred people with long, weepy faces crying, “Where is the author of Through the Pale Door? I drove all the way from Charleston in hopes he’d be here to sign my book, or at least pose with me for a photo!” Well, that vision was more like three irate booksellers who would soon find another book and another author to fill their attention. Still, not insignificant for a first-time author.

Then the road took a hard curve and my wheels lost their grip on the asphalt. It was like navigating an exit, except it was a highway. The car spun and rolled to a stop in the middle of the two lanes. Contrary to what one might expect, I walked toward the roadside completely uninjured save a few scratches. Slouched against the concrete barricade, I scooped chunks of windshield glass out of my shoes. Meanwhile cars rolled past. Someone leaned out of a passenger window and said, “Hey, that guy looks like Robert Pattinson!” A first responder looked at a slightly bruised elbow. Then the highway patrol arrived and dealt with mounting traffic. As they approached, their expressionless faces seemed to say, “Hey, that guy looks like the dumb ass in question. But don’t make him feel too stupid.”

I called family.

Then I called Blair, to let them know I wouldn’t make it after all. Some confusion ensued. As many people who now me will attest, I’m dry and non-expressive at times (what some would call laconic). When the Blair people picked up, I said, “Looks like I’m not going to make it. I’ve got sort of a traffic accident up here.”

My contact said, “Well, we can talk about rescheduling when you get here.” Then she added, “Betsy’s here if you’d like to talk to her.”

Turns out they thought I was describing a traffic accident I was driving past, not an accident I was in.

Not sure how long I waited in the damp chill for the towing people. One officer pointed out that a motorcyclist had gone airborne at this section of highway last year. We know what happens to motorcyclists who go airborne. The tow-truck operator also brought to my attention that a van had spun out at this spot the week prior, plowing through another car’s windshield, with similar results. “Good thing you’re car didn’t go up over the edge of the bridge.” Indeed. What seems to be a hill is actually a bridge with dense trees and foliage growing up one side.

In a rental car, I drove back to Greensboro and began fishing for a replacement. The wrecked car now lies in a collision repair shop, and will soon make a final trip to the scrap heap.

Reflection is a bitch. What a difference 5-10 mph would’ve made. If anyone would like to contribute to the help-a-writer fund, please go here.

It’s about time someone started lampooning the recent turn in pop fiction to vampires, wizards, and goblins. Vintage will soon publish Nightlight, a Harvard Lampoon. (Read about it here.) Not that Rowling or Meyer deserve satire, but because their work offers so much material. It’s easy to rip a bad film. Those almost rip themselves. You can’t really direct or write a riff on “Snakes on a Plane,” can you? Likewise, the original Darth Vader is much more conducive to parodic spin than the new one. Nonetheless, I’m surprised we haven’t seen more of this on screen, including a parody of the Batman films. I wonder if the lack of cinematic joking owes to Youtube, which has already sunk its teeth into the market.

And yet sadness fills my undead heart. In truth, I wanted to write the Twilight parodies. Had I not been working on this other novel…

So I’ll have to satisfy myself with a parody of the parody: a writer who desperately desires to satirize paranormal romance. But all she manages to produce are best-selling romances that readers take seriously. Fans show up to her signings, cradling her fat books, telling her how much they adore Vincent the teenage heart-throb vampire whom Belle Swanson falls for and who also turns out to be a woman pretending to be a man. “It was such a twist ending,” they’ll say as author Stephanie Mired scribbles her name. “Do you think Belle will overcome her heterosexuality?”

“No,” Mired will say. “It was a satire.”

“Do you think Vincent will have a sex-change operation?”

“It was a satire,” she’ll say.

Or possible I’ll write a book about a paranormal romance heroine – like a witch or something, or a vampire – who somehow crosses over into a satire. The heroine or hero try their best to flip humorous events into real action and tragedy. For instance:

Edwardo awoke to find himself in a strange new world. Instead of confronting a hoard of evil vampires who wanted to steal away his Bellatrix, he strode into Vermont High’s cafeteria and found a table full of black-shirted geeks playing Magic, their cards spread between milk cartons and soda bottles. There he saw the most beautiful girl in the world, as beautiful as a statue of Aphrodite, chained to the largest boniest goth he’d ever seen. Bellatrix reached for Edwardo, mouthing “Help, I’m dying of boredom.” Edwardo flew through the air and landed on the table, kicking their cards to the floor. But the Geeks wouldn’t fight. They simply unchained Bellatrix and gathered their cards. “Dude, you’re so lame,” the largest goth said. Bellatrix led him to the bathroom then and tried to undo his pants. “What the cross is going on here? Edwardo gasped. “We’re not supposed to be doing it this soon in the novel.” Indeed, it was only page five. Meanwhile Bellatrix threw her shirt over the stall and said, “Don’t worry, darling. I just turned eighteen yesterday!” Edwardo sobbed on the toilet. “You mean you’re legal now? But I’m supposed to wait and gaze at you while you sleep!” Bellatrix starts working on Edwardo’s shoes. “And you’re, like, 90 something. Come to think of itkind of kinky.” Perhaps we should stop here, the author thinks, and goes to refill his coffee.

Oh, irony. We know that Mark Sanford’s book ground to a halt this past summer, when he ruined his career for a Latina hotty. Now his estranged wife has secured a contract to write her own memoirs.

Oddly, I might plan to read this my-husband’s-a-bastard tale. Only Jenny S. probably won’t go in that direction. Here’s what The Washington Post says:

Jenny Sanford will follow in the footsteps of fellow wronged-political-wife Elizabeth Edwards with an “inspirational” tell-all to be released by Ballantine Books next May. The former investment banker will grapple with “the universal issue of maintaining integrity and a sense of self during life’s difficult times,” according to the publisher — so yes, all the fallout from South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s Appalachian-Trail-no-wait-I-mean-Argentine-mistress meltdown. Jenny Sanford moved out of the governor’s mansion with her four kids last month.

Please, Ballantine, make old Jenny write something funny. Don’t let her take the high road. Cajole her to villainize him. Because in truth we’re dealing with a hilarious sequence of events. Sadly, I don’t want to read about Jenny’s suffering spirit or will to overcome. Such stories play on the Lifetime channel every afternoon. Audiences across America hunger for the dirty gossip that stained the walls of the Sanford mansion the past four years. We want to know, Jenny, what whacky things your man did while in office and how you managed to endure him. Did he sing the state’s anthem in the shower every morning, for example? What rushed through your mind when you heard his rusty voice wail out,

Throw thy bold banner to the breeze!
Front with thy ranks the threatening seas
Like thine own proud armorial trees,
Carolina! Carolina!

And we must know what you did upon discovering his treachery. What gave him away, by the way, strange messages on his machine? “Hola, Marco. I just wanted to say how mucho I love you tambien. Muah Muah.” We’d also like to know more about the pig incident back in ‘04. Please tell us he burst through the double doors of his study one night, hair frazzled and wild eyes, then grabbed you up by the waist and danced you across the Palmetto Ballroom, singing,

Now I know, my dear,
how I’ll show our spending’s pork-barrel.
Two cute little piggies’ll make it clear
how deeply our budget is in peril!
Carolina, Carolina!

And if you don’t mind, Jenny, tell us about all of Sanford’s kooky inventions for getting work done faster. Like the type writer that also opens letters. Or the necktie that turns into a hang glider so he could fly home and not waste tax payers’ money on gas to chauffeur his unfaithful bum to and from work. But above all, we’re eager to hear about the time you drove down to Argentina wearing an astronautic diaper with plans to give Sanford’s mistress what for.

SC Rep Joe Wilson finally broke his silence Monday morning, at a press conference in D.C. There before journalists he told a vivid tale about persecution and violence he faced following his bold move during Obama’s health care speech. (For those with short memories, he called Obama a liar. “You lie!” he shouted, jabbing the air with a finger.)

“I’m actually the number one target of Washington Democrats now, as well as a Communist groups like ACORN.”

It started the evening of his inflammatory remarks when, walking back to his office, he was spit-balled by Nancy Pelosi – who then gave them the universal “shove it” sign, grasping her elbow and giving a stern pump of the forearm. Appalled, he fled to the lobby. There he was splashed in the face with cold water by Sen. Chris Dodd.

“John Kerry wouldn’t even say good morning to me,” Wilson said, whimpering. “Harry Reid growled at me and tried to piss on my shoes in the bathroom. And someone planted a whoopie cushion in my office chair.”

Later last week, he was walking to his car in the VIP parking deck, where waiting for him were none other than Obama himself and his two home boys – Biden and Emmanuel. They proceeded to “step up” at Wilson, waving their hands in his face and calling him derogatory names like “cracker” and “Uncle Jefferson.”

Biden danced circles around Wilson as he patted down his coat for his car keys. Obama cackled and dangled said keys before his eyes and gave them a shake. “You looking for these, country boy?”

Biden snapped his fingers. “You try to tell the word my buddy Barack here lies. Well, now, we’re here to tell you it’s time to…fry!”

Emmanuel jumped onto the floor and spun on his back. “And pretty soon your career is going to die.”

Obama twirled on his heels and slapped Wilson on the forehead with his palm. “But maybe you’d like a little slice of pie, ’cause your end is nigh!”

“Why, you’re looking kind of shy,” Biden said and grabbed Wilson’s tie, yanking them face-to-face. “Don’t tell me you’re about to break down and start to cry.”

“You’re banality is making us want to sigh. Now we’d like to know why you’re such an unpleasant guy. What fills your head and heart at night when you turn your eyes to the sky? Do you think sometimes the way you live is sterile and dry, and that’s what makes bitter men tell emissaries of truth they lie? But, hey, maybe you’d like to give my job a try. The life of a prez isn’t always what you think, most of the time it’s a toss of the die. If you can’t answer me right now, that’s okay, we’ll just ponder the reasons why and forgive us – we don’t mean to pry.” With that, Obama kicked Wilson squarely in the rear toward his car. His keys landed at his feet. As he stooped to lift them off the cold concrete and fumbled his way into his car, he saw Emmanuel, Biden, and Obama all giving each other styling high fives.

Reporters were all snickering as Wilson teared up. “Why’s everyone laughing? I’m telling you, I was fearful of my life. It was the most traumatic event I’ve ever lived through.” He then repeated his statement that his outburst during last week’s joint session of Congress was spontaneous. “I believe people should be courteous, be civil, I mean, except when moved by their passionate convictions and opposed to outrageous, leftist, liberal lies! Except when someone is a bald-faced liar, like Barack Obama!”

*Nobody Owens contributed to this report.

Finally posting after a helluva week. I’m in Myrtle Beach now after reading to a room full of voracious readers at a fancy country club kind of restaurant on Pawleys Island. Not too shabby. Accumulated some interesting stories, including that of one woman who’s gathered a nightstand drawer full of book lights – trying to find just the right one.

Getting to Pawleys Island wasn’t terribly hard, but finding which version of US-17 would lead to my hotel was. And so I arrived at Litchfield having not slept, having given up on finding my hotel buried in the neon magnificence of the Carolina coastline. Next time I come here, I’ll ask my hotel to shoot off fireworks near my ETA.

Many more interesting tales gathered at the NC Lit Festival, where I was this last weekend. Learned that John Hart, for example, quit his job for a year so he could write his first novel – and did so with the full support of his family. This is quite something. I’m not sure I’d even want my own kids, in the future that is, taking a year off to write their novels. “Don’t be such a sissy,” I’d tell them. “Just sleep less.” But it actually has paid off for one of us.

Being back in SC, however briefly, has got me thinking once again about Carolina politicians. We’ve wound up in the news at least twice this summer, thanks to our reps. Just recently, U.S. rep Joe Wilson shouted spontaneously “You lie!’ to Obama as he addressed myths and information about health care reform. Obama took the heat pretty well, and Wilson apologized later. But, if you ask me, people should ease up. He was just trying to take some heat off of Sanford. He was also speaking up for his beliefs. And, furthermore, he was doing his job! In the country! Now if he’d issued those marks from Argentina or France we’d have a different story altogether.

The Post & Courier reviewed my novel on Sunday. Hurray. That makes three big-venue reviews between my Booklist starred review, AJC, and this new one. The latest review completely neglects the role of Sarah’s father, steel mill incarnate and counterpoint to her crazy mom, while dismissing the importance of the industrial setting. But that’s fine. People get what they want or need out of what they read.

Hanging out at NC Lit Fest this weekend. Wish I had more time to go to the evening events. By then I’m wasted and still have to slug through postmodern and 18th-century rhetorical theory.

Did get to attend a reading by Fred Chapell and Robert Morgan. Before reading with his wife to celebrate their 50th anniversary, Chapell asked, “Can creative writing be taught?” No, but it can be learned, inspired, and-most importantly – edited. I found myself wondering what kind of spouse is overjoyed by reading poetry as an anniversary gift. Whatever kind of spouse that is, I’d like that kind of marriage very much. “Honey, I spent my last paycheck all on books. So I thought instead of that dinner at Al’s Upstairs we’d go to this poetry slam down at Art Bar. Sound good?” And she’d jump into my arms and say, “Why, that sounds even better. I love you, dearest!”

I’ve never mentioned my good war reporter friend on this blog before. But I will now. David Axe has written for The Guaridan, the Village Voice, Washington Times, Popular Science, World Politics Review. He also does documentary pieces for Voice of America and C-SPAN. Not to mention he has a slew of nonfiction books and graphic novels either published or in the works.

Axe is going to Afghanistan again followed by a trip to some god-forsaken place in Africa (my words, not his.) Of course, Afghanistan is pretty god-forsaken as well by our standards. The economy is getting better, but the recession has wasted the publishing industry and hasn’t been kind to freelance writers, either. So if you have, like, $2 to contribute to his fundraiser campaign then do it and save democracy and journalism.