Ready for The Thirteenth Tale talk!

I'm back! Sorry about the prolonged hiatus, peeps.

I don't have any original excuses. Same old business: work, working with the Young Women, trying to write a book, helping sisters plan for weddings this summer, training for the Salt Lake half marathon. Yadda yadda.

About The Thirteenth Tale. It was part mystery, part romance, part tragedy, part drama, and part horror.

I actually prefer this cover much more than the one I posted at the top of the blog. This image captures the feel of the story a bit better.

Do you ever find yourself identifying with certain characters or narrators in a story? Of course you do; the stories are rigged that way. But do you ever feel more inclined to identify with certain characters? Maybe you've come across a fictitious individual that is startling similar to you.

The narrator, Margaret, is obviously the one to identify with in this novel. Told from her perspective, you feel all the mystery and questions and gaps in the story that Margaret also feels. It's kind of creepy, actually.

I did pick up on one clue that Margaret misses until practically the end of the book. And it wasn't the Jane Eyre clue that you'd expect (Jane EyreI is still on my "to read" shelf, actually).

The story's about twins, but there are a lot of mysteries surrounding them. Do they really have bipolar-like personalities? Is their house really haunted?

Spoiler:

Have you started reading "Life of Pi"?

I have. And so far Life of Pi by Yann Martel is rather slow-going. But that's okay, because I've talked to others who have read it and they say that it picks up.

So hang in there with me.

You may want to keep this interesting tidbit in mind:
Apparently, the story is not as true as it would lead you to believe. Even the "author's note" at the beginning is all part of the overlaying narrative. However, this should not be a deterrent from appreciating the adventure.

(I could go into an abysmal exploration of how the different layers of narrative affect the story experience - I wrote an interesting paper about narrative voice in college. Interestingly enough, that paper was about Ian McEwan's Atonement. I will forbear torturing you with geeky analysis, for now.)

I am still very near the beginning, but I have already found a few passages that I just love.

As a writer, I like to pick apart how other authors build their story and their characters. For instance, chapter 3's primary focus seems to characterize the man called Mamaji by the narrator. Yet, we also get a few quirky little nuggets that teach us about Pi's family and himself.

For instance, I am inclined to think Pi's father is a comical character. Pi says, "It was the talk that Father loved. The more vigorously he resisted actually swimming, the more he fancied it" (chapter 3, page 10). Does this sound like someone you know?

And in chapter 4, when Pi describes his father's zoo.... what a wonderful description! He not only gave me an original perspective on zoo animals, he made me appreciate the sensory experience.

And I am not just referring to what is probably a pungent smell.

Pi pummels us over the head with detail after detail. We get colors, sounds, and exotic animals listed with almost a feverish excitement. You can almost picture Pi waving his arms as he is describing the zoo to you and becoming more and more excited - trying to convey all the wonderful and intriguing details.

The abundance of imagery in words represents the abundance of sensory experience in person. Doesn't it make you feel like you are there, looking around you in wonder as fast as you can, trying to take in as much of the zoo as you can? It's almost overwhelming. It reminds me of how a child might feel upon entering Disneyland for the first time.

I told you I haven't gotten very far. How is it going for you?

Final thoughts on Uglies

Just in case anyone else out there has recently finished the Uglies series and wants a few more thoughts about it, here ya go!

I thought a lot about the interaction between the main characters in the books. Specifically, between Tally and her best friend, Shay. It seemed a little... ironic... to me that their friendship lasted only a short period of time before the conflict of their world pulled them apart.

To recap, they became best friends during just a few short months before their scheduled "pretty surgeries," in the first book, Uglies. Near the end of Uglies, they had a falling out that lasted all through the second book, Pretties, and even resonated into the third book, Specials.

Of course you could argue that when Tally and Shay both became Specials in the third book that they were technically aligned on the same "team" once again. They acted civil towards each other, right? Yet to me it seemed like the tension between them never fully dissipated.

About a Prologue

To prologue or not to prologue?

I like writing prologues myself. I think they are interesting, they draw you into the book, and they introduce a conflict. 

However, I have heard that many agents and editors will not even read the prologue.  Some of them are convinced that prologues are useless and so they will rip it out of the book without reading it and proceed to chapter 1.  There is an obvious and simple solution to this issue:

Call the prologue "Chapter 1."

I have written a prologue that I would like to make good on my promise to you by posting a sneak peak of it; however, since I hope to publish it one day under my name, I am not so sure that I want to post it online for anybody to copy and paste. I am working on making it into a PDF file that I will share with you.

Speaking of "starts," I have settled on a name for my main character: Sidney. I would give you her last name to be complete, but I'm going to wait for that part. Would J. K. Rowling have told you Harry Potter's full name before publishing the book?

I tried searching baby naming sites for meanings of names.  Particularly for a meaning that would fit with my character.  However, "Sidney"'s meanings are not too exotic:

"Sidney" could either mean 1) derived from "Saint Denis" in France, or 2) "wide meadow".

It just goes to show that sometimes you pick a name for no other reason than you like the way it sounds. I thought it sounded simple but pretty, athletic (it has actually been used as boy's name), and it spawns a number of possible nicknames.

It's a familiar enough name that people can relate to it and remember it, but it is not over-used either.

What do you think? Like it, hate it, have any suggestions?  Let me hear from you.