An Interview with Sue Ann Jaffarian

How often do you get to interview one of your personal heroes? The first time I saw Sue Ann Jaffarian, I was too afraid to even speak to her.  She breezed into the middle of our low-key seminars one day, a bubbly, confident woman with a terrific smile.  She talked about her work as a paralegal but I was blown away by her other career as a much-published novelist with editors, a fan-base and everything!  Book-nut that I am, my mouth and brain slammed shut in the presence of this "sure-nuff" novelist.  At least I had the presence of mind to pick up some of her books.

Since then I've had a lot of fun reading Sue Ann's work, particularly her series starring that plus-sized paralegal Odelia Grey (finally, a heroine that looks and thinks like me!) and the Granny Apples series set in Julian, Californa, a place near my grandparents' home.  Thanks to social media and a mutual friend or two, I finally worked up the nerve to (virtually) meet Sue Ann and she's been kind enough to answer some of the questions I didn't have the nerve to ask years ago.  How nice can a real author be?

I think your story of becoming a published writer is inspirational.  Would you mind sharing it here?

Although I’ve always dreamed of being a writer, I didn’t make a solid commitment to reaching that goal until I was in my mid-40s. At that point I sat down and wrote my first novel, a work of general fiction. I know a lot of authors who took years to find an agent but this book landed me a well-known NY agent within a month of being finished. My agent worked hard to send it out to publishers and it was short-listed by one, but in the end no cigar. So I sat down and wrote another novel. The same thing happened – my agent received a lot of positive feedback, and one publisher short listed it, but again, in the end, nada. At that point my agent suggested I try my hand at a mystery novel. I was in the middle of writing a book that would eventually become my first published novel, Too Big To Miss, and converted it into a mystery. And that was the beginning of the Odelia Grey Mystery Series.

At this point you would think that everything would be go smoothly, but no. My NY agent hated the book and refused to represent it. To quote her: “No one wants to read this crap.” She wanted me to toss it aside and write something else, but I believed in the book, fired her, and tried to find another agent. When I couldn’t find an agent for Too Big To Miss, I self-published it through iUniverse, and also wrote and self-published the next book in the series, The Curse of the Holy Pail. Both books did very well in spite of the then stigma on self-published books. They did so well that I landed a new agent and she landed a publisher who reprinted the first two books and went on to contract with me for a total of twelve Odelia Grey mystery novels, and also helped me launch my very popular Ghost of Granny Apples Mystery Series.

So, obviously, someone is reading my “crap.”

I'm curious, what were your favorite books as a child? Do you still re-read any of them now?

I seldom re-read books, but my favorites as a child were always fairy tales or mythological stories. I also read Trixie Belden and The Bobbsey Twins. In my pre-teen and teen years I discovered beloved classics like To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Good Earth, The Yearling, and The Count of Monte Cristo, to name just a few.  All of which I still remember as if read yesterday.

 Most writers I’ve met are certified book nuts.  Is reading an addiction or a religion for you?   

Neither. Reading is simply a common part of my everyday life, like brushing my teeth or making dinner, but way more enjoyable. Sometimes when I hear of someone who can’t read or who doesn’t like to read, I stop and think about how empty and unenriched my life would be if I didn’t have that basic skill or the love of reading.

[Writing is] a vocation, a calling, no matter which book or story I’m working on. Once in a while I’ll get totally frustrated with publishing and think about just stopping, cold turkey, but I know I can’t. It’s part of who I am and I must do it until I can't. I also see myself as an entertainer, with my writing providing enjoyment for my loyal readers.

 For several years you’ve maintained two careers simultaneously: paralegal and novelist.   How in the world do you do it?  Do any of the skills in one job transfer to the other one?

The skills for each definitely help the other. As a paralegal, I have to be organized both in my mind and on paper, which serves me very well when I’m plotting books and keep facts and events straight. Not to mention, I have great typing and computer skills developed over years of being in the legal profession.  As for how I juggle the two careers, I honestly don’t know. I just do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. Sometimes it’s very exhausting. It helps that I don’t have a husband or family that depends on me, so I can devote more time to my writing when not at work. And it helps that my employer is very gracious and understanding.

Thank heavens for that!  Although many writers are identified with a particular category, I notice your books can’t all be classified into a single genre of fiction.   Once you are known for creating one type of story, how difficult is it to re-establish yourself in a different area?

Okay, now you’ve hit a sore spot.  It’s very difficult, often frustrating, and it’s something that honestly makes me nuts. I’ve been pigeonholed as being a “cozy” writer, but many of my books and stories are far from cozy, and there have been some readers who have been very upset when they’ve read something that is different from my lighter fiction, even though the story was tagged as “non-cozy” in the cover art and book description. This definitely happened when my Madison Rose Vampire Mysteries were launched. This confusion is also one of the reasons why my steamy romance Winnie Wilde series is under the pen name of Meg Chambers.

And once pigeonholed in a genre, it can be very difficult to shake that tag even among your fellow authors, especially as a woman. I really enjoy writing my lighter fiction, but I’d rather be known simply as an author who writes many types of books, not as a “cozy” author. And I wish readers would pay more attention to the tone of covers and book descriptions. Any misunderstandings are totally on them, in my opinion.

Good for you for refusing to be limited!  You know, you’ve successfully created multiple book series each of which is based on a fascinating character.  Did these come from a conscious decision to create a series or did you find Granny Apples, Odelia Grey, Madison and Winnie all had more stories to tell?

 It was conscious on my end to make them into separate series. Each of those main characters has a different story to tell and view point to show readers. And each offers something different for readers to relate to and enjoy. I’m toying with creating yet another series that features a male protagonist. Only time is stopping me from doing that sooner than later. 

I'll look forward to that!  Last Question: Your fairy god-mother is allowing you to host a dinner party for five of your favorite writers and/or literary characters.   Who’s on your list of invites?

Just 5?!!!  Okay, here goes: Stephen King, Toni Morrison, Christopher Moore, Megan Abbott, and my good friend Naomi Hirahara.

It took me awhile to gather my nerve and interview a writer whose accomplishments I admire but I'm so glad I did.  It's worth it when the interviewee is as interesting and nice as Sue Ann Jaffarian.

Books My Mother Loved...

My mother loved historical fiction.  In the days when Erma Bombeck was the queen of domestic humor, and would be feminists felt caught between Betty Friedan (too serious) and Erica Jong (too randy) historical novels were a thinking woman's guilty pleasure.  More serious than Barbara Cartland's frothy stories, less licentious than the bodice and pants-bursting tales of the "Sweet Savage" series  and miles beyond the Harlequin romances, historical novels combined enough research and literary craft to create entertaining stories that someone wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen reading. About half of the stories were based on historic figures; the other stories were based around historic places and events.   The heroines weren't always beautiful (at least they didn't think they were) and while most of the stories still focused on a woman's quest to achieve a happy home, husband and family, the traditional ending wasn't guaranteed.  

Mama had a ton of these books and I ran through them all while I was a kid.   At the time I thought they were terribly boring; I was in love with "the classics".  The world must have have agreed with my teenaged self , because I don't see many historical novels these days.  Nevertheless, there were good stories in that genre, stories I'm glad to see back in  print these days.  If you're waiting out the winter and need the company of a resourceful person, take a look around for some of these stories:

		This is one of the “real person” protagonists, I mentioned and a poster child for the proposition that those who seek tolerance from others should practice what they preach.  Elizabeth Fones Winthrop was the daughter-in-law of John Winthrop when he became the first governor of the pilgrim colony in Massachusetts which should have given her some clout in the new world.  Instead her first husband drowned and Elizabeth was remarried off to Robert Feake, one of the weaker-minded men in the colony.  Elizabeth became a land owner so her family would have a steady income but independence wasn’t a trait Puritans looked for in their women.  Elizabeth got a colonial cold shoulder instead. Feake deserted his family and Elizabeth married her business manager next and was nearly hanged for her trouble; her fellow settlers weren’t sure she was divorced first.  Elizabeth had poor taste in husbands but she survived her bad choices, attacks by the indigenous natives, ostracizing and Massachusetts winters without central heating.  I love that my sister lives close to Elizabeth’s old stomping grounds.  Something in New England must strengthen a woman’s character
Norah Lofts could be considered Anya Seton’s British counterpart.  Like Anya, she was one of those women who fit writing around the other chores in her life and based many of her works around the place where she lived (Seton spent much of her life in New England, Lofts, across the pond, lived in Suffolk).  Lofts wrote her fair share of “real woman” stories, publishing stories about Eleanor of Aquitaine and Anne Boleyn but my favorite Loft series known as The Suffolk Trilogy.  The Town House, The House at Old Vine and The House at Sunset follow a building from its initial construction (in the late 14th Century) until the mid-1950’s by giving us the secrets and life stories of the people who live there.  From generation to generation we see them trying, failing, falling, getting up and starting again and a mystery that confounds one of the inmates of Old Vine may be solved by the next one.  It’s an engrossing story and well worth the read, along with her other books.
	If Anya Seton wrote American stories and Norah Lofts held the crown for England, than Catharine Gaskin was a citizen of the world.  Born in Ireland, she made herself at home in Australia, England, Ireland, Manhattan and the Isle of Man, always researching and writing about women and the need to make wise choices.  Gaskin’s best known is SaraDare based on an English girl who was transported to Australia after cross-dressing and  horse-thieving and lived to become a respected and honored businesswoman of Australia.  However, my favorite is The Lynmara Legacy, a story of a Russian mother, her American daughter and how they deal the English home and family both of their lives get mixed up in.  For both women, discipline is their greatest ally but ambition and regret almost steal their chances for happiness.  This is a 20th century story, starting just prior to the October revolution and ending sometime in the 1970’s but there’s a perspective of the 1930’s and 40’s that is worth seeing.  If anyone gets to the end of Downton Abbey and still wants “more story”, this would be a good book to choose.

No one could discuss the popular historicals of the mid-20th century without mentioning Forever Amber.  This Restoration Romance was the hot ticket of 1940’s, upsetting people and selling out everywhere by featuring one of the original hot-bodiced heroines: Amber St. Clair.   On one level, Amber is the first step into the “Sweet Savage” romances my mother deplored as “mind pablum” because it focuses a lot on sex.  Amber spends a big part of the book sleeping her way to the top of Charles II’s court in order to get back the man who intrigues and eludes her for years.  In the meantime she survives the Great Fire of London, the Plague and all the other “fun” of Restoration England. (The research on this started with a college thesis and ended up covering hundreds of books) Does the plot sound a little like Gone With the Wind?  Well, it is except Scarlett O’Hara had a reputation to lose and in the end, missed the companions and friends she’d dumped along the way.  Not Amber.  Never Amber.  Amber’s a round-heeled minx with no Melanie or Mother to guide her but she’s strong and has the survival instincts of a cat.  She survived and thrived despite society’s best efforts.  Whatever else you have to say, you must respect the resilience of Amber.

Now I see my mother had one heck of a ride on life's merry-go-round.  She grew up in a society that believed women who worked outside the home had some innate flaw in their lives. Then, after she joined the ranks of housewives and mothers, the Sixties hit and she was told her life was wrong.  Society's values flip-flopped at least twice more in her lifetime and she must have been exhausted chasing after the woman she was "supposed" to become.  So I can see why she loved these historical novels.  Like Mom, these heroines made mistakes, and at some point each of their worlds upended around them but they never gave up.  With a plot of land or a pretty dress or sometimes just gut determination, these heroines started over, determined to endure, if not prevail and they usually did.  Sometimes, they got the man they wanted, sometimes they missed that boat.  But they never gave up on themselves or the possibility of the future.  

And that's a lesson worth remembering.

The Future of Reading Stories

My friends and I like to debate the future of books and reading.  (For us, this has more appeal than politics or football.)  There are the pro-e-readers in the group who are looking to carry half of their libraries in their smart phones and there are the anti e-readers who are happiest with the traditional paper pages in their hand.   I enjoy the debates but until recently I believed the only difference between traditional and electronic books was the carrying case.  After all, they were both just printed words on a flat surface, right?  Nope.  When it comes to ebooks, words may be just the beginning.

My favorite ereader has a nifty gadget: an incorporated dictionary that lets me highlight any word in the text I don't know so the definition will pop up without me having to close the page.    There's an encyclopedia link there too.  Very helpful.  Now I've learned that someone has developed ebooks for little kids that have animated pictures mixed in with the text and links in the text (like my dictionary) that helps youngsters understand new words.  Kids with the interactive and animated illustration books gained more in story understanding and vocabulary than those with standard illustrations and no interactive features.

It occurred to me that this interactive feature could enhance books for grownups as well.  For example, Richard Adams wrote beautifully about land in Watership Down but most who initially read the book, had no idea he was describing an actual piece of land in Hampshire.  With some links to panoramic photographs of the area...

... you can understand why one of the characters exclaims "You can see the whole world from here!" Now imagine other ways to enhance the text.  With proper licencing and agreements in place readers could pause and watch video of rabbits running up this hill after reading the paragraph.  With a touch of a link, the sounds of wind in the hills could be added.   With such technology authors could do more than just describe a melody wafting through the room of the mystery; readers could hear the music while they read the paragraph. As technology matures and incorporates more sensory inputs, (touch and smell attachments are expected to be incorporated within the next ten years) books can take on the added depths.

Technology is also turning reading into something more than a solitary experience.  Finding a great book is a wonderful experience but it's frustrating when there's no one to share it with.  Social media sites like Goodreads and LibraryThing have started to bring bibliophiles together (they're the Facebook site for book-nerds) but a few other sites allow community reading.  That is, a member uploads the electronic book they own to the site and other members are able to read it, highlight text and make digital notes for other readers to see so you are engaging with others as you read the book. I haven't seen anything like that since the last Harry Potter book was published.  Those pre-midnight parties did more than allow people to dress up and have fun while they waited to pick up a book.  It was a rare time of community for readers.  We may not see a reading phenomenon like that in our lifetimes (the only comparable I can think of is when Americans gathered on the docks, clamoring for the latest installment of a Dickens story to be unloaded from ships) but technology allows readers to use their love of books to connect to others instead of isolating them.  That's got to be a change for the good.

Does that mean I think traditional books are bad or doomed?  Perish the thought, at least during the rest of our lifetimes.  Traditional books are an ingrained part of our lives.   That being said, I believe progress only moves forward and that technological advances may change the way we read.  As long as reading continues, I'm happy.

Books for the Mid-Winter Doldrums

February is a hard month to love.  Say all you want about the plucky groundhog, and rhapsodize on the romance of Cupid;  remember the Chinese New Year, American Presidents and throw in a good word for Leap Year but the truth doesn't change: February in the Northern Hemisphere is a difficult month to love.  The Holiday Season disappeared ages ago and the pastel head of Spring is nowhere near to being seen on the horizon.  We may be looking at wind or rain next month but right now the weatherman's two favorite words   are "freezing" and "snow" and the outside world almost seems drained of color.  In February, it's hard to avoid getting depressed.   To keep the wraiths of February Depression at bay, may I suggest picking up a few books?  In their own ways, each of the following stories helps me through these days of relentless cold.  I hope they can help you too.

	If the rest of the world had to describe Jamaica in three words or less, their list would be: Poverty, Music, and Hot.  Politics, Drugs and Religion make the next list but they seem to have grown out of a civilization where life is harsher even if the edges look like Paradise.  Marlon James mixes fiction and fact to remember the 1976 Smile concert in Kingston and plot to shorten Bob Marley’s all-too-brief life.  The Jamaica of this novel is not the island paradise tourists dream about: it’s as corrupt and violent as Grahame Greene’s Haiti in The Comedians but it’s alive, steaming with a Pot-au-feu of voices that overlap and contradict each other in a patois that you’ll hear coming off the page as you wipe the sweat from your face.  Critics have been falling over each other to praise this one since it came out  eighteen months ago and now there’s talk of an adaptation but there’s no reason to wait for a movie.  Get the book and pay attention.  There are dozens of people, living and dead, who have stories to tell and they’re talking.  Pick up the book and you’ll be mesmerized, transported and hearing the Wailers, while you sit in a cold, silent February room.  This may seem like a harsh alternative but you won’t be cold reading  ABH7K.  This book is hot.
If you can’t escape the cold, you need to find the good things in it and one of the best is the National Hunt racing season in England. Dick Francis competed as a championship steeplechase jockey before he became an author of popular mysteries and Bolt benefits from his background in British winter Hunt races.  You can feel the biting cold of the weather before the starting tapes go up and ignore it (like everyone else) when the excitement of the race begins.  Like a lot of good Dick Francis stories, it hinges on an individual’s response when the world piles on pressure: an old man is being bullied into a business decision, a engaged couple’s relationship is under stress because one of them holds a dangerous job.  While this is a second book in a series, (The first in the series is Break In) Bolt is easy enough to read as a stand-alone.  As a pep-talk about withstanding the stress and cold of a difficult season, Bolt is hard to beat.
	Two things I should admit up front: I love the prose style of William Styron and I’m susceptible to Depression.  Not little depressions either.  More than once my life came apart at the seams and I needed professional and pharmaceutical help to return to Everyday World.  It hasn’t happened lately and I keep a weather eye out for the triggers now because I don’t want to go back there again.  Depression is a long tumble down a funnel of despair until you pray not to recover (you don’t believe you can) but to hit bottom so at least you won’t fall any further.   Styron experienced this  and, faults and all, still managed to come out the other side.  Not without scars, but alive and that’s more than so many others.  Here he talks of his journey through this disorder of an unending February, the triggers  and the unrecognized clues that appeared in his fiction. Styron’s sentences beg to be read aloud and the content is as good as the style but this book has something extra; here is a novelist, without the disguise of fiction, writing so future sufferers will know they are not alone.  This book is a boon for any who don’t see a way out of February,

Three books to help you through the month.  Hang in there, kiddo and eventually we’ll read ourselves into Spring.

When True Genius Requires a Little Explanation

Some books are a hit for a day; some dominate the bestseller lists for a season.  One or two books can be considered touchstones for the decade but very few make it to true classic status.  But there is a work of fiction that seems like it never leaves the public consciousness.  In 150 years it has never been out of print, but it's been adapted into almost two dozen films, five comic books, countless plays and electronic media and it's probably the most quoted work of fiction in literature.  People either love it or hate it but everyone who reads knows there's something special about Alice and her Adventures In Wonderland.  They linger in the mind.

The joke of it is, this book has been loved and read for so long that a lot of the material Lewis Carroll referred to in this classic (and its sequel, Through The Looking Glass,) is no longer available to the regular reader.  We follow the serious-minded Alice through her nonsensical adventures and admire the imagination and poetry in the story so much we accept it without thoroughly understanding it.  So, I suggest you take the journey one more time and re-read Lewis Carroll's stories again... but read them through The Annotated Alice to gain new insights into the stories.  As a matter of fact, it could be argued that if you haven't read the "Annotated Alice", you haven't really read Alice at all.

Anyone with a fancy for the Victorian Age or a memory for those innumerable adaptations can tell you something of Alice.  She's the sensible, English child that falls down a rabbit-hole and into a world where animals argue,  nursery rhymes come to life and sentient armies of chess pieces and playing cards go to war with one another.  Unfortunately, (or not) sense doesn't stand a chance in such a whimsical universe and Alice's reliable memory for poetry often goes astray.  But did you know that Alice's recited poems were clever parodies of then well-known verses?  Since the original and Carroll's satire have entered public domain, I can present both of them here:

Original	Alice
How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour, And gather honey all the day From every opening flower! How skillfully she builds her cell! How neat she spreads the wax! And labours hard to store it well With the sweet food she makes.	“How doth the little crocodile Improve his shining tail, And pour the waters of the Nile On every golden scale! “How cheerfully he seems to grin, How neatly spreads his claws, And welcomes little fishes in, With gently smiling jaws!”

Carroll doesn't just imitate someone else's poem here; he subverts and satirizes it.  Instead of saluting the industrious insect with her "tidy" habits (anyone who remembers that honey is the product of bee spit will take issue with adjectives like "tidy) Carroll praises the lazy, malevolent crocodile that lies in the mud and snaps any unwary fish that swim into his open mouth.  By dropping the sugared "morals" that permeated children's stories at the time and upsetting the expectations, Carroll did more that write a story that would entertain children; he wrote one of the first children's stories that didn't condescend to its audience.  Annotated Alice's source material helps us understand the quantum leap Carroll made in children's literature when he wrote down these tales.

The footnotes in The Annotated Alice are necessary and as engrossing as those created by David Foster Wallace. (a writer whose footnotes any tangent-minded reader could happily dwell in) and can be read separately if you are familiar with the original text.  Here is where you will find the origins of the Cheshire Cat and why Alice had reason to doubt the taste of Looking-Glass Milk.  But the greatest "extra" is the re-printing of "The Wasp in a Wig" a chapter originally written for (and then removed from) The Looking Glass.  For Alice-fans, this is a boon worthy of the White Knight.

Lewis Carroll wasn't always a happy man, nor will his memory ever be untainted by controversy.  (Any unmarried man more comfortable with female children than adults will be viewed with a skeptic's eye.)  But he did respect the minds of children when he came up with these famous tales and he may have been the first writer to do so.  For this, he deserves respect and his stories deserve understanding.  So, pick up The Annotated Alice and look up some of your favorite references.  Or follow the Red King's directive:

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

A Series for A Long, Cold, Winter

The Winter creates strong readers.  While Spring and Summer weather go well with "light" stories that demand little focus, winter blizzards are perfect for stories that hold the reader's attention.  When the drifts are piling up outside and the thermometer plummets, I want a story with structure and design, one that commands my attention through the long, dark days.  For the like-minded readers who have already read their way through Dickens and committed Austen to memory, I would like to make a suggestion.  Stuff a copy of The Forsyte Saga into your pack of cold-weather emergency supplies.  You'll have a something good to read until June.

The Forstyes are an English clan who define themselves through their upper-middle class status and an uncomfortable status that is.  They've accumulated enough money to be preoccupied by it to but they lack the antecedents and Savior Faire needed for social success so every move of the first generation is ruled by two questions: 1) Will I profit (monetarily) from this action and 2) will this comport with propriety?  If either answer is "No", some Forsyte will veto the idea.  When Jolyon Forsyte and his children start basing their decisions on happiness instead of social mores or money, shock threatens to destabilize the family structure.  Before they can recover, the Forsytes meet Irene.

The watchful, possessive Soames Forsyte,
as played by Damien Lewis

Part of what drives The Forsyte Saga are the contradictions inherent in two central characters, Soames Forsyte and his first wife, Irene Heron.  Soames is the quintessential Forsyte.  Driven, judgmental and self-centered, he is "The Man of Property" in the first book's title.  For Soames to see himself as a success, one property he must acquire is a wife and he likes the look of young Irene Heron.  She's accomplished, she's beautiful and if she's not rich, that means she'll stay dependent on him.  Yet, the harder he pursues Irene, the more reluctant she becomes.  And every polite refusal she gives makes him want her all the more.

Gina McKee as the enigmatic Irene

Others are drawn to Irene because she is an enigma, a woman so passive we only see her through the eyes of other characters.  To Soames, she's a maddening cipher, the one goal that continually escapes he grasp.  To the conventional Forsytes, she's the creator of scandal.  Soames is an honorable, effective provider so why won't the woman settle down and be happy?  To the bohemian side of the family, Irene is a victim to be cherished and rescued from the inexorable Soames.  Without ever meaning to, Irene splits the family so completely that subsequent generations don't meet unless by accident. The results of those meetings can be predicted by anyone familiar with Romeo and Juliet and each meeting threatens to unearth the old, buried scandals.  It is a tribute to the author's skill that after four Forsyte generations, we still want to know what happens to them and we end up pitying Soames instead of hating him.

John Galsworthy won the Nobel Prize for Literature based, in part, on his Forsyte Saga and it's been adapted for film multiple times.  However, nothing has the flavor of the books themselves.  They are easy to find but written for an audience with more time for reading than most people allow themselves today.  There are dozens of characters to keep up with and a narrative style that encourages readers to relax instead of rush through the pages.  "Everything in Life is here in the story" the author seems to imply, "enjoy yourself, don't rush for the end.

Authors aren't encouraged to write like this anymore; publishers and agents are searching for page-turners with first lines that grab you.  But Winter is something you can't hurry through and you'll need a book that can hold its own with the season.  So, before the next low pressure trough aligns itself aligns with a cyclone of snow, prepare to wait it out in style.  Lay in the firewood, locate the longjohns and as the first flakes start falling, open your copy of The Forsyte Saga.  Few books can make you so glad to be a victim of inclement weather.

A Woman's Life in Letters

Letters used to be gifts, rare and wonderful things.  They came, hand-addressed, through the mail and you were supposed to answer them promptly.  (I know because I rarely did.)  A good letter might remind you of the writer through the distinctive handwriting or the stationary he/she chose but the the act of writing letter was most important: it meant the reader was meant so much to the writer that he/she was invited into a direct channel of the writer's thoughts and feelings.  From personal letters, we went to electronic mail which was quicker and easier as long as you knew how to type and you could, if necessary, address it to many people at once.  After than came social media sites with ever-shortening messages to wider and wider groups of people and now we communicate by emojis, sharing news and opinions so quickly, we're back to communicating through pictures.  That's progress and I'm thrilled because I've managed to reconnect with friends I've owed letters to for decades but there's something missing in our e-correspondence that was present in in the old-fashioned letters.  My mother, aunts and grandmothers could mark the stages of their lives with their correspondence. That's what Lee Smith must have been thinking of when she wrote Fair and Tender Ladies.

Here is the tale of Ivy Rowe, in her voice and captured in a lifetime of letters.  The early ones are the greetings of an precocious and engaging child from her home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia to a world she's already longing to see.  Life is hard for those who live on the Blue Ridge at the beginning of the twentieth century but Ivy sees the beauty in the land and the people as clearly as the hard-scrabble existence that takes so much of their happiness.  You can trace the changing fortunes of the Appalachian folk through Ivy's letters.  They descend from the "hollers" and mountain cabins to the river towns of Virginia and then to the coal mines with their promise of greater income and danger for the men who tear the ore from the mountain.  Ivy sees first-hand the wealth of a mine owner's mansion and the poverty of devastated families of the miners killed in an explosion.  Ivy returns to the Blue Ridge mountains to face the good and bad parts of being grown, of making mistakes and getting old.  She watches electricity and the modern world make their way to the mountains and how they change the rhythm of isolated lives. She even learns to accept some of the values her parents had and then lost. All of this is recounted in hundreds of letters to strangers and friends, loving family and long-lost relatives.  While Ivy's early dreams of being a writer and seeing the world can only be fulfilled by her daughter, Ivy points the way with her clear-eyed appraisal of life and her never-ending letters

Ivy speculates that, in the end, the collection of recorded letters don't matter to the writer or to the recipient as much as the act of writing them does.  I'm not sure if I agree since this book (among many others) would not exist if written letters weren't kept.  But she is right about one thing: the act of writing is what makes the document meaningful.  It is the act that says,"I open my mind and soul to you so you know the real, inner me.  Here, I will do my best to capture and transcribe the truth." That act, whether it's done with parchment, paper or pixels is a generous, difficult one and one of the things that distinguishes our species.  We communicate through words and the words, once we release them, expand the universe with our ideas.  Our time here is short but when we leave, the words remain.

The Reading Format Grudge Match: Paper v. Screen

It's funny how often SF writers predicted the future.  Verne imagined exploring space and the ocean floor, Bradbury predicted earbuds and my favorite, Robert Heinlein foresaw the Cold War, the Internet and helped invent water-beds.  Still the development Heinlein predicted that I enjoy the most was in his novel Time Enough for Love.  In that book, Heinlein not only foresaw the development of the e-reader, he predicted the difference between the traditional "paper" book fans and the screen readers.  However, I doubt if he realized how silly that battle would get.

According to that source of all knowledge, Wikipedia, e-readers actually started in the 1930's, long before the computer age (or I) was born and Project Gutenberg started digitizing texts 40 years later. Of course, the hardware wasn't really available to the public then to make the data easily accessible but once personal computers and access to the internet became a common household item, the times began a changing.  People began reading books on screens.  Then eight years ago, Amazon upended everything by coming out with the Kindle, first as a standalone e-reading pad and later as a software app that allowed the user to keep and use an entire library on any computer: from the CPU at home, to the hand-held smart phone.  The format grudge match was on.

Now I'll admit that reading off screens can give the dedicated reader a monumental case of eye-strain.  The night I realized the entire Anne of Green Gables series was available on Gutenberg's website, I strained my eyes racing through all the books in one night.  Of course, I am a card-carrying weirdo. Strained eyes and a headache weren't going to stop me from making sure Anne ended up with Gilbert Blythe.  Since then, screen texts have become a lot easier to read.  So what's the fuss?

Part of it, some friends insist, is the gestalt of the book reading experience.  No e-reader, they say, can compare to feeling the size and weight of a book and turning the printed pages; in a way they have a point.  For devotees to the act of reading, no delight is quite like lifting a hefty book that you've been wanting to read.  But when I'm lost in a story, I lose focus on minor details like the number of pages left in the book (or where I am).  I read until the tale is done or the book falls from my hand as I drop off to sleep (and I can hold the light e-reader in my hand longer than a heavy, traditional book).   Let's put it this way: if you're reading the books of Marcel Proust, an e-reader could save you from straining your wrist.  But if you insist on reading in the tub, paper is the only reasonable candidate. No e-reader I know has learned to survive a dip in the bath.

A real area of concern is comprehension: the e-reader has limited worth as a tool if screen reading results in lower comprehension.  As a teacher, my sis worries about that kind of thing and she sent this article that suggests that "deep reading", reading that involves contemplation as well as visual auditing, falls off when people read off of screens instead of paper.  However the studies in the article didn't list any hard data to support their worry - just the notice that people are more dis-tractable when they're reading off the screen. Since most e-reading is done from the same machine that handles the users phone calls, text messages and social media, it may not be the act of screen reading that creates the distraction but the inputs a user gets while using the machine.  And the question of comprehension is still in debate.  In 2012, a Norwegian study suggested the format made a difference in reading comprehension.  Last year, a French study came to the opposite conclusion.  

So does the format change how we experience or incorporate knowledge from reading?  I don't know.  I wish we could settle the question but I hope the medium is not the message.  To me, a great story is a great story and I don't care if I read those words from a page, a screen or painted on the sky by a plane.  The story is what matters, the prose and the characters, the narrative, themes and thought.  Without that we are arguing about the frame of an artwork; the masterpiece inside would be gone.

Or so says the card-carrying weirdo.

A Great Writer, Stealing

Some say T. S. Eliot came up with the quote, "Good writers borrow; great ones steal."  Others say the line came from Oscar Wilde.  Either way, every fiction writer knows that their finished work is based in part on the experiences and stories of others that they've heard about and read and the best way to avoid a copyright or invasion of privacy suit is to take the base material and then change it until it becomes something you can use for your story.  Do a good job and you'll win the lawsuit, (although you may not be forgiven).  Do a great job and academic types will study your work and reverse engineer it to detect the roots of the story you wrote.  That's what James Shapiro has done in The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606.   Whether you like history or theatre, this fascinating book puts a great man's work back in the context of his time.

Shapiro points out the author and the play are not the the creations we assume we know.  Younger Shakespeare is remembered for writing the comedies and historical plays that entertained Queen Elizabeth I but the times and the man have changed.  The author of Lear is an older man, retired from acting, and now writes full-time for the King, James the I.  A theatrical company like Shakespeare's was supposed to produce twenty new plays each year as well as revive twenty more old favorites (well, this was before TV and the internet).  So writers were scrambling for new material to fashion into plays that would divert the court and put audiences in the seats.  Everything was up for grabs including the play someone else invented last season.   Oh, by the way, did I mention Bill stole the basic plot and characters we thought he created for Lear?

The Most Famous Chronicle Historye of Leire King of England and his Three Daughters had been produced 12 years before by Shakespeare's company but it is wildly different from the Lear that we know.  The King still makes the moronic mistake of dividing his land between the daughters that lied to him and disinherits the dutiful daughter but in the original, the King is ultimately saved from his mistake.  The "Good Daughter", with the help of her husband, rescues Lear and his kingdom and puts Lear back on the throne.  All ends well.  Shakespeare wasn't only a brilliant playwright on his own, he was a collaborator and a first rate play-doctor in the bargain and he saw the weakness in this structure.  With Lear and Cordelia well and triumphant at the end, the whole episode lacks consequences.  Let one good character die and make the other one triumph is a standard formula today.  Kill both along with Reagan and Goneril (Stinking Sister One and Stinking Sister Two) and now the country has no government and is likely to fall apart.   That's consequences.  That's believable and (of course) that's our well-known King Lear.

Mr. Shapiro points out that Shakespeare's Lear was political propaganda as well.   While Elizabeth was the Queen of England, her heir, James, ruled both Scotland and England and unifying the two countries (plus Wales and Ireland) into Great Britain was a thorny proposal James was trying to get Parliament to accept.  It wasn't a popular idea in Parliament or Glasgow (Given Scotland's referendum two years ago, the idea still has its detractors).  Shapiro points out that Shakespeare's tragedy starts when a King of Great Britain willfully divides his empire.  Unified, the country has a strong central government.  Divide it between sisters that can't and don't trust each other and eventually the whole island falls apart.  It's a subtle lesson but one that would have easily understood by the audiences who saw those first performances by Shakespeare's company, the aptly-named, "King's Men".  Their objective wasn't just to entertain the Court; it was to support and impart the King's policies.

Bill the Scribe

So much more of what happened that year appears in this famous play.  A woman pretending to be possessed is exposed  and the recipe of the potion she drank to create her altered state is paraphrased in the play.  An anonymous letter exposes the Gunpowder Plot (remembered now on Guy Fawkes day) and another anonymous letter kicks off the sub-plot of Lear where a powerful man chooses to believe the wrong son.  Shapiro recounts the episodes of paranoia, happiness, intrigue and change that Shakespeare witnessed during this year and then ties them to incidents in Shakespeare's Lear, Macbeth and the Tempest so a year in the life of the playwright becomes a key to understanding the man and his work a little better.

And, in the end, it is the work that matters.  We don't remember Lear because it started life as a play with a happy ending or that Bill the Scribe wrote his strongest, darkest pieces when he was old enough to see that older, more powerful men, can make larger, more disastrous mistakes.  We remember the work because it is good, because it moves us and the emotional truth of the piece informs our own lives. Lear is the story of families that come to grief after flattery is mistaken for love.  That is nearly a universal experience recreated in deathless lines that intelligent actors love to declaim.  The Year of Lear gives Bill's tragedy context that enriches our understanding of the play.   But Lear, even standing alone, is a devastating, brilliant gift that writers have been stealing from ever since.

Reading during the Worst of Times

A friend of mine died this week.

A brain aneurysm no one knew she had ruptured without warning.  She lost consciousness and passed away days later without ever regaining it.  She was only 51.

The morning after she passed away, I kept checking her Facebook page, hoping someone would post a retraction.

Oh God, I wanted someone  to post a retraction.

But they didn't.  They can't. My friend is gone and she isn't coming back.

Emotional pain on this level leaves me barely able to function at first.  I spent the first day wandering around in shock and crying.  I wanted to tell someone but I couldn't decide who to call.   There were  colleagues we had worked with years ago but how do you call someone, out of the blue, and say, "By the way, a woman you haven't seen in years died yesterday.  Thought you'd like to know."  I wanted to buttonhole strangers and say they'd missed knowing someone wonderful.  I wanted to share the pain.

I couldn't.

After I came home, frustrated and grieving, I looked up an essay William Allen White wrote when his sixteen year old daughter, Mary, died unexpectedly.  Like my friend, Mary White was enthusiastic soul who liked everyone she met and most people liked her right back.  As I read Mr. White's recollection of the child he'd loved and lost, a knot inside of me started to ease.  When I got to those final, beautiful sentences...

"A rift in the clouds in a gray day threw a shaft of sunlight upon her coffin as her nervous, energetic little body sank to its last sleep. But the soul of her, the glowing, gorgeous, fervent soul of her, surely was flaming in eager joy upon some other dawn."

...part of me could see the face of my friend joyfully moving forward toward her next destiny. 

That night I had trouble sleeping so my husband turned on an audio-book, hopeful that the reader's voice could lull me into dreaming.  The book was the much loved Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows and as the reader recounted Harry's walk toward Voldemort, I thought again of my friend and the premature end of her life. I found myself hoping that, like Harry, my friend felt the support and comfort of those she's loved and lost when she faced her final moments.  I don't know this happened but I hope it did.  I wouldn't want her to feel afraid or alone.

And I realized that although I was still grieving, at least I no longer felt stunned or confused.  Because of what Rowling and White had written about grief, I was beginning to come to grips with mine.     

Reading can be an escape from pain and that can also be therapeutic but greater is the book that helps us cope with it.   Some are fiction, like the ones I've mentioned and others, like C. S. Lewis's A Grief Observed, are not but their message is the same: they tell us we are not alone.  Someone else has climbed this hill before us, someone has known this grief and, through words, they reach out to help us.  They strengthen us as the memory of love may strengthen those who face the Dark.

Yes, I will remember and miss my friend for the rest of my life.  And I will spend a long time grieving. I know this from experience. But reading the words of others who've mourned helps me during the Worst of Times.  And their words will continue to be there until I can look with joy again at the dawn.