Monthly Archives: February 2017

February 21, 2017 · 8:37 am

The Houseboat, Anaïs Nin’s Phantoms of Truth

“Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.”

—Anaïs Nin

Today, February 21, is the anniversary birth date of the legendary and visionary writer Anaïs Nin.

I became acquainted with Anaïs Nin’s work many years ago when I read her fiction, essays, and her inspiring diaries. While I researched and wrote my novel Greylock, Anaïs Nin made sudden appearances in one of my characters Lia Marrs. The above quote refers to what happens in Greylock, not only to Lia Marrs, but to the main character Alexei Georg—in a metaphysical sense. Anaïs Nin became a thread in the novel as I developed my metaphysical mystery.

Because I’ve always been fascinated by the mind, writings, and creativity of Anaïs Nin, I am proud and happy to celebrate Anaïs’s 114^th birthday anniversary , February 21st, and bring you this great writer and her fiction. She’s been accused by the elite of society of narcissism and sexual perversion; she’s been highly praised by her readership for her skills, bravery, and ruthlessly honest writings. What began as a failed writing career, nearly homeless and broke, she soared to success as a feminist icon in the 1960s with Spy In The House of Love and her 7 volumes of diaries published by Harcourt Brace. She died at the height of her fame in 1977. Her short story The Houseboat is considered a short story about her “voyage within.”

The Houseboat by Anaïs Nin (1930s)

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror February 21, 2017

This story is more like a memoir, a reminiscence, about people existing outside of normal life: the dispossessed. Those who have “walked and slept in counter-rhythm to the world.”

Our narrator is living in this beat up houseboat on the Seine in France. She is alone with her books, her diaries, her family photos, and her soul.

“Once inside the houseboat, all the voyages began. Even at night with its shutters closed, no smoke coming out of its chimney, asleep and secret, it had an air of mysteriously sailing somewhere … On the table lay a revolver. No harm could come to me on the water but someone had laid a revolver there believing I might need it. “

“But I was so averse to killing that even shooting into the water I felt uneasy, as if I might kill the Unknown Woman of the Seine again—the woman who had drowned herself here years ago and who was so beautiful that at the Morgue they had taken a plaster cast of her face.”

This prose is quintessential Nin—eloquent, deep, and a labyrinth into the mind. The haunting images will leave you wanting more of this author.

Read The Houseboat by Anaïs Nin at OhioSwallow.com (scroll down to story title)

Listen to the audio of The Houseboat (24 minutes)

Interview by Studs Terkel in 1972 (10-minute excerpt only)

Visit the Anaïs Nin blog site at SkyBluePress.com.

Listen to the podcast for her 114th anniversary at A Cafe in Space. Subject is Nin’s published diaries: http://skybluepress.com/podcasts/podcast24

View the Anais Nin Amazon Page.

Anaïs Nin (1903-1977) was born in Paris. She wrote The House of Incest, a prose-poem (1936), The Winter of Artifice (1939), and short stories collected in Under a Glass Bell (1944). Most of her diaries were published and are still popular today. Her most commercially successful books were her erotica published as Delta of Venus (1977) and Little Birds (1979).

“Before Lena Dunham, there was Anaïs Nin – now patron saint of social media,” Read more at

The Guardian.

And at Brain Pickings “Anaïs Nin on How Reading Awakens Us.”

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Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free Tales of Terror. This is a compendium of 200 short stories by over 100 master storytellers of mystery, supernatural, ghost stories, crime, and horror. Join me in reading one short story every other week!

Comments are welcome.

Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

The Kill Zone

Kirkus Mystery & Thrillers Reviews

Books & Such Bibliophilica Lovecraft Ezine Parlor of Horror

HorrorNews.net Fangoria.com

Slattery’s Art of Horror Magazine

HorrorAddicts.net Horror Novel Reviews HorrorSociety.com

Monster Librarian HorrorTalk.com

Rob Around Books The Story Reading Ape Blog

For Authors/Writers: The Writer Unboxed

EZindiepublishing

Thriller Author Mark Dawson http://markjdawson.com/

Dawson’s Book Marketing site: http://www.selfpublishingformula.com/

4 Comments

Filed under fiction, literature, mysteries, Reading Fiction, short stories, short story blogs, suspense

Tagged as Anais Nin, Brain Pickings, Delta of Venus, Diary of Anais Nin, erotica, Greylock, Henry and June, House of Incest, Lena Dunham, Little Birds, Sky Blue Press, The Guardian, Under a Glass Bell, women writers

February 20, 2017 · 3:06 pm

Mystery and Manners, The Nature and Aim of Fiction

Mystery and Manners, The Nature and Aim of Fiction by Flannery O’Connor

Review and Commentary, February 20, 2017

How does a writer write? Flannery O’Connor addresses this question in her essay The Nature and Aim of Fiction. O’Connor’s grasp of writing is 5-star quality. In her short 39 years, she wrote 2 novels , essay, reviews, and dozens of award-winning short stories.

O’Connor demands intelligence but also art. She says, “When you can state the theme of a story, when you can separate it from the story itself, then you can be sure the story is not a very good one.” So, we are left to understand that the meaning of a story must be embodied inside it. Clearly, we must experience the meaning of the story, not just state or label it.

The guidance in this essay is aimed at “story-writing” and offers precise insights about the creative process. No techniques here, O’Connor instructs that stories are organic and grow out of the material. If you are a seasoned writer, or a new one, this essay is a fast read and full of writing wisdom. I like her thoughts about “incarnational art” and the “process of understanding.”

She devotes a whole paragraph to “anagogical vision.” Curious about what that is and how it can affect your writing? Do you know how “dramatic unity” functions in a story? These 10 pages are invaluable!

We all like to think that our fiction writing is an escape from reality with our fictional characters and fantasy worlds. Think again, says, O’Connor: “Writing fiction is a plunge into reality and very shocking to the system.” She reminds us that competence by itself is deadly. “What is needed is the vision to go with it.”

“One thing that is always with the writer—no matter how long he has written or how good he is—

is the continuing process of learning how to write.”

Provoke your writing! You can read the full essay The Nature and Aim of Fiction below (pdf).

The Nature and Aim of Fiction – Salem State University

Experience her short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.”

My Recommended List of the Best Writing Books I’ve Read.

How to Write Short Stories and Use Them to Further Your Writing Career by James Scott Bell (book review here)

Creating Characters, The Complete Guide to Populating Your Fiction, by the Editors of Writer’s Digest
(book review here)

Dialogue, The Art of Verbal Action for the Page, Stage, & Screen, by Robert McKee (book review here)

The Annotated Dracula (Bram Stoker), Annotated by Mort Castle (book review here) (Also The Annotated Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) Annotated by K.M. Weiland)

How to Write Like Chekhov, Advice and Inspiration, Editor Brunello and Lencek (book review here)

Steering the Craft, A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story, Ursula K. Le Guin (book review here)
Writing Wild, Tina Welling (book review here)
Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg (book review here)
Method Writing, Jack Grapes (book review here)
Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury (book review here)
On Writing, A Memoir, Stephen King (book review here)

More Craft Books I’ve Read and Recommend:

Writing Fiction, A Guide to Narrative Craft, by Janet Burroway. All the basics of how to write: the writing process, show vs. tell, characterization, fictional atmosphere and place, story structure and plot, point of view, theme, and revision.
Story, Robert McKee
Story Trumps Structure, Steven James
The Fire in Fiction, Donald Maass
The Art of Fiction, John Gardner (I reread this book once a year, it’s that good)
Making Shapely Fiction, Jerome Stern
The Art of Character, David Corbett
Getting into Character, Brandilyn Collins
The Secret Miracle, the Novelist’s Handbook, edited by Daniel Alarcon
Becoming a Writer, Dorothea Brande
The Faith of a Writer, Life, Craft, Art, Joyce Carole Oates
If You Want to Write, Brenda Ueland
Reading like a Writer, Francine Prose
Elements of Style, Strunk & White

Best Editing Books for Writers:
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Renni Browne & Dave King
A Dash of Style, Noah Lukeman
The Grammar Bible, Michael Strumpf & Auriel Douglas
Line by Line, Claire Kehrwald Cook
The Careful Writer, Theodore M. Bernstein
Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Second Edition, Ernest Gowers
Chicago Manual of Style
Words Into Type, Third Edition, Skillin & Gay

Comments are welcome.

6 Comments

Filed under fiction, Reading Fiction, short stories, short story blogs, writing craft books

Tagged as Aim of Fiction, Flannery O'Connor, Good Man is Hard to Find, Mystery and Manners, writing blogs, writing fiction

February 14, 2017 · 7:34 am

Backwoods Murder

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor (1955)

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror February 14, 2017

Dark fiction is known to be a broad category, but most agree it is the literary expressions of disturbing human nature. The stories are sometimes graphically violent. This story is not–it does have a dark truth and a riveting suspense.

Genius.com

We are in the 1950s. Grandma and her family are on a road trip from Georgia to Florida. Grandma’s son, Bailey, his ‘cabbage-faced wife,’ and their children—a bratty girl and boy—and a cat named Pitty Sing are headed through the deep South. Family dynamics here are intense as you might expect on a long car trip.

Bailey, the dad: “All right!” he shouted and drew the car to a stop at the side of the road. “Will you all shut up? Will you all just shut up for one second? If you don’t shut up, we won’t go anywhere.”

And then an accident happens. That silly snarly cat. They tumbled into a ditch. And as it happens, an escaped convict, a killer named “The Misfit” is on the loose in the deep South.

“Behind the ditch they were sitting in there were more woods, tall and dark and deep. In a few minutes they saw a car some distance away on top of a hill, coming slowly as if the occupants were watching them. The grandmother stood up and waved both arms dramatically to attract their attention. The car continued to come on slowly, disappeared around a bend and appeared again, moving even slower, on top of the hill they had gone over. It was a big black battered hearse-like automobile. There were three men in it.”

The story isn’t horror but it will horrify the reader. Tightly crafted, it’s a superb tale of literal and figurative turning points. What struck me was the presence of the bird ghost, “bright blue parrots” threaded in. Chilling effect.

This is bizarre Southern literature by an awe-inspiring writer, a master of form, Flannery O’Connor. She was an American fiction author and essayist, wrote novels and thirty-two short stories, and won a National Book Award and three O. Henry Awards. The famous Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction just celebrated its 30th anniversary at The University of Georgia Press. The award was established to encourage gifted young writers by bringing their work to the attention of readers and reviewers.

“The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place

and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.” Flannery O’Connor

O’Connor loved birds. As a child, she sewed clothes for her pet chickens. Peacocks were her favorite. She kept near 40 peacocks on her property. Visit her website: http://www.flanneryoconnor.org/

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Read A Good Man is Hard to Find (Finalist for the 1956 National Book Award in Fiction ) at Xroads.Virginia.Edu.

Listen and read along to the story (read by Flannery O’Connor) at Genius.com.

Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free Tales of Terror. This is a compendium of nearly 200 short stories by over 100 master storytellers of mystery, supernatural, ghost stories, and horror. Join me in reading one short story every other week! Comments are welcome.