Bedtime Stories

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: No matter how tired I am, I have to read before I go to sleep. This is a wonderful and lifelong habit, and I embrace it dearly. 

This is Melissa Jones Ragsdale's nightstand 

(I had thought we'd post photos of our own nightstands for this blog--with our piles of books. But then I got curious. Wonder what YOUR nightstands look like? So I asked my dear pals on Facebook to send me photos and Wow! Wait til you see them all.)

Anyway, back to reading at night.  Although it is wonderful for me, I am not sure it is wonderful for the book. I’m so excited to read when I start. Then, a few, well, I was going to say pages, but actually, often it’s paragraphs later, I feel my eyes fluttering and my attention evaporating.

I am, I have to say, able to persevere longer than Jonathan, who has just taken three months (exaggerating, but not much) to read Greg Iles fabulous Natchez Burning. He loved the book, loved it, but read about two pages a night before he fell asleep. I’d look over, and there he’d be, this huge book propped on his chest, eyes totally closed.

Wake up honey, I say. You’re sleeping. (Only wives can say this, even as I type it, I hear how absurd it sounds.)

I wasn’t sleeping, he insists. I’m reading.

Sure you were, I say. How’s the book?

And then I’d get the ‘look’. I don’t exactly remember, he admits. But I know it’s good. (He adored it, in the end. And one day spent hours reading it. “Wow, he said, “I can read so much more when I’m awake. And the book makes so much more sense.”

The best reading-at-nights for me are the ones where the book is SO GOOD it propels you through, far longer than is prudent. The Stand, I remember almost staying up all night to read. (I called in sick the next day, I guess I can admit all these years (32?) later. I did the same with Lisa Unger’s In the Blood. And Joe Finder’s Suspicion. And now, The Demonologist. (It’s very scary.)

Do you read before you go to sleep? Successfully?

This is Eleanor Cawood Jones' nightstand

HALLIE EPHRON: I'm with Jonathan. If I try to read in bed, it's a few pages and I'm out. Middle of the day, though, I LOVE to read as a break from writing. In the winter I make myself a hot cup of tea, in summer ice water, and lie down on the couch for a nice, if brief, vacation in someone else's book. I also love to read on airplanes. Now that's the test of an author's storytelling, if the book can make the trip "fly" by.

I used to listen to lots of 'books on tape' while driving but sadly I drive so little it would take me about a year to finish a book these days. And I haven't gotten the hang of putting a book on my iPhone and listening on the run. Why won't earbuds stay in my ears? Worse, having all that noise in my head makes me accident prone and forgetful... and dangerous.

This is Karin Carlson's nightstand 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I can't read at bedtime; not because I'll fall asleep with a book on my nose, but because I'll stay up until 2am. If the book is really good, I'll keep going on chapter after chapter, and if it's bad, I'll put it down and try another book until I hit something I like! So at bedtime, I do the Sunday NYTimes crossword puzzle. Not only is it engaging but still put-down-able, it also makes an auto gift for the kids: every year on Mother's Day or Christmas, someone gives me one of the Sunday Crossword Collections books. And yes, I do them in ink. Without looking at the solutions.

My favorite reading times? Early evening, after dinner. Holidays and vacations. Traveling in the car, either by audiobook or with a print book if I'm not driving. And am I the only person who relishes flying because it gives me a stretch of uninterrupted reading time? When my kids were small, my best (only!) reading place was the bathroom. I went through a lot of short story collections.

This is Vicki Berger Erwin's nightstand

 DEBORAH CROMBIE: I am a life long dedicated read-in-bed-er. No matter how late it is, how tired I am, hotel or flat or home, I read something. I'm trying to think of some occasion when I HAVEN'T read. Even the night my mother died last year, I read. If that sounds callous, it wasn't at all. I had just spent six days with Nigerian hospice nurses, and I pulled up an Alexander McCall Smith book on my Kindle. I wanted to keep the rhythm of those African voices in my brain a little longer, because they had been such a comfort. And I needed something to take me out of myself, even for just a few minutes.

I don't allow myself to read often during the day, because I'd never get anything else done. And every day I look forward to the end of the day when I can get in bed and pick up that book--whatever that book happens to be. Some nights it's just a few pages and I have to reread them the next night, but I don't mind. Other nights I manage to get to bed early enough to read for an hour--or even two. Bliss! I'm not sending a photo of my to-read pile, because I'd have to decide which one:-) But as soon as I finish this fabulous non-fiction book on British undercover cops, I'm reading the galley of Rhys's new Georgie (can't wait!) and then the galley of Tammy Kaehler's new Kate Reilly, and then Kent Krueger's Ordinary Grace... and so it goes on. And I firmly believe it's better to have too much to read than too little.

This is Alyssa Renae White's nightstand

LUCY BURDETTE: I just finished Rhys's fabulous upcoming book--

(HANK: And more on that here tomorrow!)

LUCY: As well as MRS. HEMINGWAY and almost done with THE STORIED LIFE OF AJ FIKRY (so charming!) I read in bed every night. Who cares if I have to read a page or two over again because I was nodding off--makes a great pleasure last a little longer.

I have trouble giving myself permission to read during the day because it feels like such a guilty pleasure. But I read eight books on vacation--oh the heaven!

HANK: I guess we all read in bed right? Love that!

  

Here are a few more nightstands courtesy of the friends of Jungle Red!

Marianne Bowes

Kathi Gorecki Voskull

Michelle Tucker Reed

DFOJRW Mary Garrett! (very subtle, xo.....)

Fascinating, huh? And I'll post more all his week!

And our own dear Reine--also subtle!

Tomorrow we'll hear all about Rhys's new book, and Wednesday S.J. Rozan, and Thursday, Nancy Martin...and Friday, well--he's just amazing, so you'll have to come visit. And Saturday And Sunday--more surprises!

SO--do you read in bed? Let us know--and you'll be entered for an ARC of my new TRUTH BE TOLD!
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And talk about great contests: check this out! http://hankphillippiryan.com/newsletters/newsletter-7-14.html  

Yard sales of summer...

HALLIE EPHRON: It's Saturday and you know what that means, kids? Yard sales!! 

My husband was up last night trolling Craigslist and mapping his course. A yard sale with old books or paper ephemera rises to the top, and he's brought back some fantastic finds like a first edition of "A Farewell to Arms," sadly without dust jacket. Also Popeye Facemaker, a copy of which, in not nearly in as pristine condition as his, is listed right now on eBay for $100. He probably paid a quarter.

Not everything he drags home is a keeper, but still we end up keeping most of it. And every once in a while he brings me back something spectacular. 

Here are a few of my favorite things he's brought me.

He's really good at tin. Tins for tea, pretzels, peanuts, butter cookies, candy, "pure lard," and allspice. My favorite is one he picked up at a yard sale (or maybe it was a flea market) in France. It's got a very French looking squirrel on it covetously holding an acorn. 

Here's a tin Art Deco waste paper basket he picked up at a yard sale in our neighborhood years back. I've never been able to bring myself to throw a single item of trash in it. 

More tin. This Mail Pouch thermometer advertising chew tobacco must might once have hung in a garage or machine shop. Up to the right overhead is a nice green metal scale that might have once been used in a general store. And beside it, barely visible, is a mammoth can that once held Planter's salted peanuts -- "10 pounds of wholesome peanuts!" a penant across its top proclaimed. And I think the pencil sharpener hanging on the wall under the thermometer might have come from a yard sale, too.

He's not bad at ceramics, either. This magical looking pitcher with its landscape design in shades of lavendar and apricot looks like something you'd find on 19th-century a sampler, sits in pride of place in my dining room. My favorite thing is a white painted pathway, wide in the foreground and recedes to a point in the distance.

When I first saw this table, I thought it was ugly ugly ugly. It's made like a snowshoe with some kind of animal sinew lacing the oak top to its folding legs. I still think it's bizarre, but I've come around to its rugged good looks.


Finally, in the "useless but nice to look at" department, is this Victorian iron bracket. Maybe it once held up a shelf, or ornamented a porch? I have no idea, but I keep it (upside down) in a window where I can enjoy its spiky silhouette.

So 'fess up, are you a yard sailor? Did you go to one today and score? Do you have a sweetie, as do I, whom you humor by oohing and ahing over yard sale finds? Or does it seem to you that we're crazy, buying each others trash?

Reds Writing Rules: Our Hooptedoodle

HALLIE EPHRON: A few weeks ago I had the great pleasure of teaching a writing workshop at 30th annual Antioch Writers Summer Workshop in Yellow Springs, Ohio. I got to work with an incredibly talented group of up-and-coming writers and listen to experts offer up their wisdom on how to. (I also got to hang out with frequent Jungle Red commenter Cyndi Pauwels whose first published novel FORTY & OUT comes out in September and she'll be back then to talk about it!)

Even I don't have an MFA so I don't know the right lingo, most of what I heard was familiar. But I had a genuine Aha! moment when Tara Ison (author of "Rockaway," "The List," and "A Child Out of Alcatraz") wrote a quote on the white board. My memory of it is only approximate, and I can't even remember who said it, but here's the gist: 

Plot is about what a character needs and what he's willing to do to get it.

So simple.

Now for years I've taught that plot (aka story) is about what a character WANTS, and that conflict growing out of characters with competing goals. But somehow changing that "wants" to "needs" and combining it with: and what he's willing to do to get it, set lights flashing in my head.

So a character may WANT to win a contest, get the guy, find the treasure, destroy the broomstick on the wicked witch... but driving the want is a need. And if that character is going to risk life and limb, then the need has to be profound and personal.

After hours over glasses of wine, we talked about various 'rules' that are useful but should not be taken as gospel. Like don't start a novel with a dream or weather. Because lots of terrific novels start with nightmares and storms. (A Wrinkle in Time begins with "It was a dark and stormy night," just for instance.)

But this idea that story has to be driven by what a character needs does not seem to be to be one that can be ignored.

So have you found any rules that are sacrosanct (or at useful to follow); and are there others happily you break with impunity?

RHYS BOWEN:  It depends on the rules. There are some that are sacrosanct to me like playing fair with the reader, not switching point of view within a scene. Showing not telling. Not bombarding the reader with backstory or information. Not having two characters with similar names. Not introducing us to too many characters at once.

But there are many supposed rules for mystery novels that I break all the time. I don't mind starting a book with weather, with a dream, with conversation if I feel they are needed. I don't always have a body for a hundred pages or more.

I never manipulate character to fit the plot.

It comes down to whatever works for me.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I'm looking out the window, staring at the sailboats on the Charles, and wondering if there's a "rule" I would never break.

Huh, okay. I would never change point of view in the midst of a scene.  I often start a scene with one line of dialogue, but rarely two, because I am always careful to make sure the reader knows where the scene is taking place. 

I would never have a stupid secret, like missing twin, or sex change operation.

I won't have a phone call where someone says: I can't tell you on the phone, but meet me later. (You KNOW what's about to happen then, right?) (Although it's fine, and pretty funny, if the meeting goes as planned.)

I guess--I always ask myself: Is this believable, original and interesting? Do I care? And if I can say yes, I pretty much do whatever works.

Oh, that's what Rhys just said.

LUCY BURDETTE: Okay, just thinking off the top of my head, without any wine...I really really try not to insert a plot twist or clue just because I love the idea. If it doesn't work with the story and even more importantly, the characters, I try to deep-six that little bit of brilliance.

Second, also hard, is try not to have the heroine trot into dangerous situations without a damn good reason. Hayley Snow is a food critic not a police officer, so I try to keep that in mind.

Oh and one more little thing--try to make sure SOMETHING  HAPPENS in each scene, that it advances the plot or shows something critical about the characters.

My hub asked me yesterday: "So what's happening with your plot?"

Me: "They're eating bad Japanese food. That's it." Sigh, back to work...

DEBORAH CROMBIE: What Rhys, Hank, and Lucy said:-)

Interesting that we are all obsessive about changing viewpoint within a scene. I HATE that!! It will make me put down a book.

And I am VERY big on Play Fair in crime novels. I don't like unreliable narrators, and I think the readers must be given all the information available to the sleuths, be they amateur or professional.

Like Rhys, I've started books with weather, and with dreams, and often there isn't a murder until a good way into the book. So who makes up these silly rules, anyway???

I guess (without a glass of wine or two) that my big unbreakable rule is Everything Must Advance the Plot. And sometimes that mean throwing out things I really like. And not putting in things (and characters) I really like.

HALLIE: And there you have it! The Reds have spoken. But really, every writer has his or her own rules that they write by and rules they ignore.  

So what "rule" might a writer break that will make you put down a book?