Do Cliches Matter if You Got Imagination? -- Review Neal Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane

    Don't know what took me so long to read Neil Gaiman's heroic childhood fantasy The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Maybe I was afraid of having my mind blown by what Gaiman does with the cliche of the loner, bookish kid not liking the caregiver his working parents dump on him.

   Of course, Gaiman wrapped the plot in magic, including three powerful immortals who pretend to be human on the farm at the end of the land.  The heroic battle comes after the narrator becomes the means used by a malignant entity to invade our dimension.

   This is supposedly an adult novel, narrated by an adult who had just given an eulogy at a funeral and decides to kill some time between events by visiting some of his childhood haunts. In matter of fact prose, the unnamed main character tells his dark tale of heroic sacrifice. Yet, the whole story takes place during the narrator's childhood, when he was seven-eight years old.

   The beauty in the reading comes in Gaiman's writing. Yeah. The Gaiman gives the reader the realistic whimsey at the core of all his books. It continually amazed me with how he manages to get such preternatural suspense from such a mundane, suburban setting. Even so, the action doesn't seem to have had much effect on the character. You might even say the story lacks character development. The kid seemed much the same to me at the end as the two ladies who livied at the end of the lane.

   I felt the tale skimmed along the surface of some great thoughts. The story did become a lyrical poem to the wonders of childhood with all its mysteries and what ifs. The bottom line, I think, is that Neil Gaiman has written another modern fairytale in his spare style with depths buried in the action rather than the description.

   Writers can take lessons from how Gaiman creates his images without noticeable adjectives. His descriptions widen the possibilities in the reader's imagination. Most writers narrow down the possibilities within their story lines.

A delightful coming of age story, beautifully written, which will stick into the back of your mind and resurface at unexpected times. Gaiman's amazing imagination and story-telling make this a must read for fantasy readers. You can read more reviews and samples on

Amazon     &     B&N Nook

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A Writer's Tool Kit & Interesting Links

   Came across a blog: Write Small: 5 Ways to Make Your Readers Care on Writer's Write by Mia Botha. One thing struck me was that people react to social crises much the same. They pick one cause or the problem of one person to work on. It's the details that matter.

   This pipsqueak writer is far too small to worry about Hugos or Nebulas, but it seems to me everyone should be aware of the current nomination process at the Hugos, a popularity contest which has always ignored some of the most enduring writers in the fantasy/science fiction genres. The Passive Guy, my favorite writing guru, posted this blog: Some Sad Puppy Data Analysis.

   Don't know how many of you read historical mysteries, but Jeri Westerson recently wrote a blog about how she came to write medieval mysteries: Writing Was My Secret. It made me wonder how many readers are secret writers. It's no secret that writers are readers.

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    Did enjoy my sister-in-law and daughter's visit. She says she enjoyed it too--in spite of the cottonwoods doing their spring-thing. Barely managed to keep my emails cleaned. The break did energize my #writing. While my brain forgot about the plot of On the Run, the back stories and socio-magical-political structure fell into place. The action and time lines in the whole Andor series have become more coherent in my brain. Like Doom for a Sold Soul happens before the Celestial Wars. Surprising since I write by the seat of my pants. Maybe there's some scientific basis for automatic writing.

   Didn't get anything done on my website...though people seem to be visiting it before I get all the SEO done. Since I haven't gotten anything corrected for the public. Here's the first paragraph of the current version of On the Run, which happens after the Celestial Wars.

   The waitress chewed a wad of gum so large her white-coated tongue appeared each time her jaw moved. Pillar Beccon lowered her eyes at the sight. “I’d like extra cheese.”

   It does get a little more exciting when she and her friends encounter a stalker at the bus station.

What To Do with the New Writing Year

Are you staring at a whole new year
lying before you?
I hope you are quickly getting your writing grove back
after the holidays.
Of course, there's more to life than writing ... hope that's getting in gear too.

While we mull the future, it's a good idea to reconsider the pit falls that plagued us during the last year. No place is better for keeping tabs on publishing chicanery than Writer Beware, and Victoria Strauss wrote a great retrospective of the 2011 publishing year. I'm sure someone will re-try some of these tricks, so read and be aware.

Of course, everyone's talking about what they should do. Imagine my delight when I found Chuck Wendig talking about 25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing on his blog Terribleminds. [Loved the title of his blog too.] Thanks to Dean Wesley Smith for the link. Guess I should warn you that Wendig's mind is as profane as mine. Guess his mommy didn't pound politeness into him. Guess, mommies don't mind if guys don't have polite mouths.

Maybe I should mention how important it is to get your information right, and I'd say this is especially if you are creating a medievalish fantasy world. Way too many writers get caught up in anachronisms. Jeri Westernson,  who writes the Crispin mysteries set in medieval times, just wrote a blog about ten myths about the medieval world -- Top Ten Myths About the Middle Ages.

Westerman's blog's a very good example of a topic blog based on her writing research. If you are even remotely interested in the Middle Ages, she's well worth following. Pay special attention to the end of her blog.   

Progress?

Have been revising and cleaning table tops to look for the story beginning I hand wrote while the desktop convalesced from a virus. Found the pages, but haven't gotten close to typing them into the computer. Guess, I doomed to being a slow writer ... even though I tried NaNoWriMo to see if I could speed up.

Big accomplishment? Changed the name of the Half-Elven WIP from The Somant Trouble to The Troubles with Traitors.
 

The Mystery: Why Lukewarm?

The Read ...

It bothers me when a book leaves me lukewarm ... and not just because I'm a cheapskate.  Jeri Westerson's medieval mystery Veil of Lies did just that.  Oh, the characters are well drawn, even interesting, and the closed room mystery stands up well.  But ...

I decided I'd read too much Zoe Oldenbourg ... as will as Edith Pargeter/Ellis Peters (Brother Cadfael), Michael Jenks, and many others who create richer stages for their characters.  Westerson's style strikes me as too modern for her subject matter.  What works for Reacher doesn't necessarily work for Crispon.  That said, I'll probably buy the others in the series.

Yeah, I started reading about medieval times quite early -- like in the sixth grade when I shocked the head librarian when I returned Anya Seton's Katherine about the John of Guant's (the Duke of Lancaster just prior to the War of the Roses) mistress and third wife.

Web and Other Good Stuff ...

Bet lots of writers are happy Nathan Bransford still blogs even though he stopped being an agent.  At the moment, he's writing a series of blogs on Harry Potter and the writerly world, one of which was "Five Writing Tips."

Let's take a dose of optimism and assume we got an agent who has a publisher on the hook.  If you don't and wonder if you should wait for an agent's representation before you publish, you might want to read Rachelle Gardner's blog on what an agent does.  Click here for Contract Pointers.

Author, Brigid Kemmerer has a couple blogs on "Revisions Made Easy" which struck me as helpful.  Loved it when she said "The girl was running through the park" wasn't passive voice.  Can you guess which word she said you should watch for instead of a "to be form"?

Are you dreaming of an e-Christmas?  The Consumer Reports, a service that vets various products, has a short run down on buying a e-reader.  --  Yeah.  I'm looking, but there are too many basic problems remaining for me to buy one ... including not having WiFi.

Last but not least, I'd like to extend sympathy to Kim Mullican who is in the Throes of Revision.  At least, I don't have the jaws of Janet Reid chewing up my pitiful queries.  [Mostly, because she doesn't represent what I write.  I, of course, am among the multitudes would love to have her as an agent.  --  Have you even noticed how much Janet Reid promotes her author's on her blog.

Progress ...

"What's that?" she asks.   Need I say more?  I'm behind in everything ... including critiques.

One thing ... from now on, I think I'll be talking about my Half-Elven on the Half-Elven blog.  Did send Dark Solstice out to an e-publisher after I finished the edits, but I'm still hitting my head against the next Renna tale.

Trivia ...

Between snow storms at the moment and got the cat TV installed, but the birds haven't found the feeder yet.  As for the weather, looks like the storms are going to roll across the mountains rather frequently [for the moment, at least].

Publish Post