It's great to see a several really positive early reader reviews of The Raven's Seal over on LibraryThing.
This is particularly heartening because The Raven's Seal was intended as an entertainment, a text that would be readable, enjoyable even, and the reviewers seem to respond to this.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Slow reading The Lord of the Rings
I'm reading The Lord of the Rings again -- slowly. As a teen, and afterward, there was always time to read LotR at speed, to devour each page, chapter and volume, there and back again.
But I was always struck (as an author) by Tolkien's remark about the long period of time he took to write the novel and plodding on until stopping by Balin's tomb in 1940. Does that slow process of development, stops and starts and deep thought, reward slow readng? So I am reading LotR slowly, at a different pace, taking a page or a passages here and there, and months later the breaking of the Fellowship looms.
I've learned that it is worthwhile re-imagining Middle-earth, for its depth and strangeness, as well its familiarity. The movie trilogy is so strongly realised that there is a danger of its imagery effacing the books, and so rereading slowly is a way of restoring details, incidents and scenes and even the faces of characters from one's own inner vision. The long trek out of The Shire, the barrow-wight, even the wolves of Hollin are all encounters worth recovering.
The landscape of Middle-earth is still New Zealand for me, but I find it tinged now with the woods of the northeastern United States. After many shifts in landscape and setting, I find Galadriel's decision, 'I will diminish, and go into the West and remain Galadriel,' very moving.
It's sometimes the details, a camp, a song, a glimpse of the Brown Hills, that make the story. Slow reading is one way to get back to these details.
But I was always struck (as an author) by Tolkien's remark about the long period of time he took to write the novel and plodding on until stopping by Balin's tomb in 1940. Does that slow process of development, stops and starts and deep thought, reward slow readng? So I am reading LotR slowly, at a different pace, taking a page or a passages here and there, and months later the breaking of the Fellowship looms.
I've learned that it is worthwhile re-imagining Middle-earth, for its depth and strangeness, as well its familiarity. The movie trilogy is so strongly realised that there is a danger of its imagery effacing the books, and so rereading slowly is a way of restoring details, incidents and scenes and even the faces of characters from one's own inner vision. The long trek out of The Shire, the barrow-wight, even the wolves of Hollin are all encounters worth recovering.
The landscape of Middle-earth is still New Zealand for me, but I find it tinged now with the woods of the northeastern United States. After many shifts in landscape and setting, I find Galadriel's decision, 'I will diminish, and go into the West and remain Galadriel,' very moving.
It's sometimes the details, a camp, a song, a glimpse of the Brown Hills, that make the story. Slow reading is one way to get back to these details.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
An Actual, Authentic Review
Given the uproar over 'sock-puppet' - may we say 'author-led' - reviews, reported in The Guardian and duly repeated over here by the Brisbane Times, it's nice to see an actual, authentic early review of The Raven's Seal on LibraryThing this morning.
It's a very encouraging review, extremely positive overall, and close to what I wanted for readers. And a little criticism means that it's a balanced review as well. Will it come to pass that the trustworthy reviews will have to be salted with a little criticism, just to seem real?
It's a very encouraging review, extremely positive overall, and close to what I wanted for readers. And a little criticism means that it's a balanced review as well. Will it come to pass that the trustworthy reviews will have to be salted with a little criticism, just to seem real?
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
The Author's e-Book
I've had a chance to look through the e-book (preview copy only) of The Raven's Seal. It's a wonderful, strange thing for the author to hold his or her own book in electronic form. It's a file, no more or less than the words you wrote. It's ephemeral, but then, aren't the words what really counts?
The e-book version looks great, like all of Top Five Books' work. The font is elegant, with a slightly old-fashioned feel, and the page looks wonderful, especially in portrait. Of course, I think the print copies will feel even better, and there is something about the materiality of the printed page that still holds us, through memory or association.
Yet, I'm reminded of the light, almost onion-skin paper of the compact editions of Dickens I first read at home, and how the electronic page in iBooks (or Kindle) almost duplicates that lightness, and comes closer to the book that Borges speculated about: infinite pages of infinite thinness.
The e-book version looks great, like all of Top Five Books' work. The font is elegant, with a slightly old-fashioned feel, and the page looks wonderful, especially in portrait. Of course, I think the print copies will feel even better, and there is something about the materiality of the printed page that still holds us, through memory or association.
Yet, I'm reminded of the light, almost onion-skin paper of the compact editions of Dickens I first read at home, and how the electronic page in iBooks (or Kindle) almost duplicates that lightness, and comes closer to the book that Borges speculated about: infinite pages of infinite thinness.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
The ‘Dickensian’ and The Raven’s Seal
Novelist Martin Amis, interviewed in the Chicago Tribune, acknowledges a Dickensian influence on his new novel, Lionel Asbo: State of England.
Amis says Dickens ‘isn't really a realist. Accurate social criticism is not his great strength; his great strengths are exaggeration and melodrama and comedy. It's a melodramatic form, the Dickensian novel — a magical transformation, with a sort of fairy-tale vocabulary or furniture behind this amazingly vivid picture of London....’
Amis’s comment had me thinking again about the Dickensian. To me, this word summons up not just the rich texturing of character and place and fairy-tale plots, but an extraordinary imaginative density and energy of style. Accuracy is not the point; the range of his sympathies, his irony, anger and penetrating humour are what makes Dickens' social criticism not only pointed but universal.
This is what inspired me about using Dickens as a source for The Raven’s Seal. I aimed for a richness, and sometimes a complexity, of language that could create a lively sense of scene, which could be comic or melodramatic but never static. I wanted vivid characters rather than psychological portraits (although I hope that many of the characters are psychologically interesting). The prison was not only a Dickensian motif but an ideal setting for social criticism, still relevant because so much hinges on wealth and poverty, crime and punishment, the law and injustice, prisons and policing. And The Raven’s Seal is structured by at least a couple of Dickensian reversals of fortune which have that fairy-tale Romance flair about them. One of them, of course, is Grainger’s fall into the prison. The mystery hinges on the other. And the last thing I took from Dickens was a conviction that mystery need not just be a puzzle but the thematic core of a novel.
Friday, August 3, 2012
Coming in Fall 2012
More details of my forthcoming mystery novel, The Raven's Seal, are now featured on the publisher's website: Top Five Books. There's a sample from the opening and the back-cover blurb, here.
The cover design is great, but the sketch map of Airenchester (the fictional city where the story is set) is fantastic. More about mapping, imaginary spaces and The Raven's Seal soon.
The cover design is great, but the sketch map of Airenchester (the fictional city where the story is set) is fantastic. More about mapping, imaginary spaces and The Raven's Seal soon.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Mystery and the locked room
In The Raven's Seal, now on its way to galley proofs, I tease the reader with a locked-room mystery as a celebration of that venerable device. What is the locked room apart from a piece of machinery that can show us something about how plots work, as well as the gears and levers of reading?
BBC News magazine puts the locked room on display.
It occurs to me that all mysteries are versions of the locked room, except that the walls and door have been removed or, more precisely, replaced with the horizon.
BBC News magazine puts the locked room on display.
It occurs to me that all mysteries are versions of the locked room, except that the walls and door have been removed or, more precisely, replaced with the horizon.
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