Not quite keeping up with the pace I was hoping for, but perhaps that shouldn’t be too surprising, given a wife going back to teaching and a teen going back to school, so we’re all getting used to the new norm for the next nine months. While September does offer a chance at refocusing, it does also shift the constraints on my newfound time, because suddenly those two aren’t around as much to be able to help out with chores, and such, so more tends to fall to me. But hey, one does what one can.
In any case, here’s how the month broke down:
Read
The Third Rule of Time Travel – Philip Fracassi
Tales from the Loop – Simon Stålenhag
Murder by Memory – Olivia Waite
Reading
Write Down The Bones: Freeing The Writer Within – Natalie Goldberg
I’d heard about Tales from the Loop in a few different places before finally trying to get ahold of it, and I regret not getting to it sooner. Stålenhag proves himself not only an inspired story writer, but a stunningly good painter. Tales is a collection of brief snippets, as if an oral history of an altered past, of a massive and long-decommissioned subterranean particle accelerator under Sweden that was so powerful it was rumoured to tear holes into other dimensions; what it was like living in that reality for people who now lived in a country with strewn and forgotten pieces of that mechanical marvel past. The paintings that accompany the brief bits of writing are gorgeously rendered, sometimes so finely wrought as to appear photo-realistic. It’s a great book that I discovered is the start of at least a trilogy. I’ve already got the following two in the series and I’m really looking forward to them.
Murder By Memory was something I came across in a list of recommended short books, and they weren’t kidding. Just over 100 pages. It’s a murder mystery set on a long-haul spaceship, and was a good lesson in how to tell an engaging story in so tight a format. Short stories were the first type I wrote, and largely focused on for decades, so I still appreciate a good tale done in a small package. It’s also reassuring to be reminded that I don’t have to look at writing 200+ pages for a project to be considered a publishable novel. Done well enough, just half of that will do nicely. Message received!
And speaking of writing, I’m finally getting around to reading Write Down The Bones after having purchased it earlier this year and then forgotten it on a shelf. I do love books that seem like they’ll be helpful in my pursuit of writing more, or in a more effective way. The trick is to not get bogged down with reading so much of such stuff that it cuts into time I should be using those lessons and writing more.
Hoping to get through more books in October.
Stay tuned!