thinking about
the meaning of life -
late night shopping.

Roma by Steven Saylor

I was delighted to win a copy of Roma in the Italy in Books Reading Challenge. It's a big book (650 pages) and covers 1000 years in the history of Ancient Rome, following the fortunes of the Pinarius family.


I really like the concept of this novel, using one family as an eye on history, showing the reader key points through the lives of that family.


In the first few chapters the concept worked really well - I enjoyed the weaving of myth alongside reconstruction of the very early inhabitants of the very early settlement that became the powerful city of Rome. I was engaged in the stories and interested in the characters. The story moved along at a good pace.


Later chapters though I felt rushed through a lot of very important events. In a sense this probably reflects how the pace of life has become more frenetic but we come to time periods where historical facts are much more well known and I wanted more depth.


Crafty Green Boyfriend reads mostly epic SF/Fantasy series of alternative realities. I usually find even the idea overwhelming but in this instance I found that was what I wanted! I felt that several of the later chapters of this novel would expand to make excellent novels in their own right.


And actually in a sense its not a criticism of a book to say you wanted more, is it? I can definitely recommend this as a very readable overview of the early history of Rome.




Roma by Steven Saylor, published by Corsair.

For Italy in Books

Hopeful Dystopia?

The novel I'm writing for NaNoWriMo is set in a future independent Scotland which has lost a lot of land to rising sea-levels, is recovering from a long war and is just welcoming thousands of climate change refugees into the country.

This is quite a dystopian view of the future Scotland, but I'm aiming to make the book ultimately hopeful. I really think that we need visions of hope for the future. Whether I can weave those visions successfully into a dystopic scenario, remains to be seen!

I've written a total of 12 353 words as I post this. I'm aiming for at least another 500 before the end of the day.

More NaNoWriMo

So my main character doesn't seem to want to be the main character any more, but that's fine because there's someone else who will make a better main character (and I don't mean the bunny!). The original main character is also refusing to fall for the person I had expected her to end up marrying! She knows her own mind! 3366 words so far today making a total of 9 473. I may leave it there until tomorrow...

NaNoWriMo update

I started my novel today! I've spent all morning on it so far and have written 2 551 words (the daily target is 1 667 to get to 50 000 by the end of November). I don't want to become boring about NaNoWriMo, nor do I want to give away too much about the plot of my novel, but I will post occasional updates here and on Facebook. I'm also thinking of sharing links that have been useful in my research over on Twitter.

So far the narrative is flowing reasonably well, some of my characters are developing well and i have a reasonably good feeling about the whole thing!

Any other NaNoWriMo people feel free to share your experiences in the comments below!

As ever, coloured text contains hyperlinks which take you to other websites where you can find out more....

NaNoWriMo

I was thinking about an idea for a short story, which was getting quite complicated and then I realised it is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November! So I thought, hey, why not? and signed up. So I'm currently plotting and planning my way to a novel, which will be about climate change in a future independent and fractured Scotland. The aim is to get a 50,000 word first draft completed by the end of November. As someone whose favourite literary forms are haiku and flash fiction this will be a fun challenge! Anyone else signed up for NaNo this year?

Foreign Flavours

I'm delighted to be part of the Foreign Flavours anthology, published today by Writers Abroad. This anthology includes fiction and non-fiction about food and cooking abroad (including my piece 'From My Malawian Cookbook'). Proceeeds from the sales of the anthology go to the excellent Bookbus charity, which supports literacy in Africa and Latin America and recently had a book drive for Malawi.


You can buy copies of the anthology from Lulu here.

As ever, coloured text includes hyperlinks which take you to other websites where you can find out more.

haiku

all night horror films -
the woman next to me knits
baby clothes


(this is a haiku / senryu from Crafty Green Boyfriend's perspective from a recent horror film festival he went to. I don't do horror films (nor do I knit!))

Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas

I was delighted to win a copy of this book as part of the LGBT Reading Challenge. I saw the film of Before Night Falls a few years back and was interested to read the book.

This is a memoir of a gay Cuban writer, who suffered badly under Castro's oppression of intellectuals and gays. Arenas describes in great detail the hardships he suffered in prison and the oppressive and invasive surveillance by the secret services. The conditions in the prisons were appalling, though the sense of community between some of the prisoners does shine through.

He also describes very well the community of writers in Cuba and how they met together to support each other, but how they never knew who would turn out to be a secret agent in disguise and suddenly denounce all his friends to the authorities.

He also describes his sex life in great detail, by half way through the book he claims to have at that age, slept with over 5 ooo men. The endless descriptions of sexual liasions actually becomes pretty tedious after a while.

This is only the third book I've read by a Cuban author, but they all have one thing in common. Everyone has sex. All the time. With as many people as they possibly can. And although gays have been badly oppressed in Cuba, it doesn't seem to stop a very vibrant underground gay scene from thriving.

Reinaldo Arenas left Cuba in 1980 and settled in New York, where he died of AIDS related illnesses in 1990.

Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas published by Serpent's Tail

Wikipedia entry on LGBT Rights in Cuba

Inspiration from Helen Keller

I've always been amazed by the achievements of Helen Keller, who lost her hearing and sight at 19 months and didn't start to learn to communicate properly until she was about 7 or 8. Her name has come up several times recently in things I've been reading and so I looked up more about her. You can read her life story and letters from her equally amazing teacher Anne Sullivan here. There's a lot of reading on that webpage but it is totally inspiring!

Not only is Helen Keller's story amazing in itself but her account and those of Anne Sullivan say so much about language acquisition, the importance of reading, natural approaches to education and joy for living - Keller seemed to always be enthralled by the world around her.

Helen Keller was entirely deaf and blind yet could speak English, French and German. She could communicate using a touch based sign language; by morse code or by touching people's lips as they spoke. She could read English, French and German in Braille and in text with embossed letters. Her writing was elegant and well constructed (which really gives the lie to those who say that deaf people can't learn to write properly, though of course some can't). She had a voice that some people found difficult to understand, but was well respected as a speechmaker and campaigner.

She became a renowned campaigner for disabled people's rights and for human rights in general. A totally inspirational woman!