Tag: authors

Thursday Thoughts

I did watch my Fried Green Tomatoes DVD yesterday evening, realizing that I’d never watched this extended version before. Then, before bed, I watched the extras including at least one filmed-but-unused scene (I loved it, and it was similar to a scene in the book which I’d found particularly moving), the director’s commentary, and interviews and thoughts of many of the actors. It triggered such a yearning for me to teach this novel along with the film, and all the ways I could encourage students to analyze and break down storytelling devices and choices. As a result of that yearning, I tormented Tom for at least an hour-long discussion of it after he finished work today (just one of who knows how many reasons our friends call him “poor Tom”).

There was also an interview with Fannie Flagg, and she spoke of the years a writer spends alone in a room with all those characters. You never actually feel alone; they are your people, your friends, always there with you, their level of enthusiasm at your same level. It’s why you feel protective of them when other people ignore, misjudge, and criticize them.

Then I went back to something I started last night and finished tonight. I thought of the kitchens in Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (novel and movie). I thought of the kitchens of so many women from my life… Mother, Aunt Lola, Aunt Drexel, Terri, Debby, Mary, Pollye, Granny H, Gran, Elnora, Lynne, Liz, Amanda, Lil, Audrey, Debbie, Juanita, Carreme, Helen B, Kathy, Helen L, Chris, Geraldine, Amy, Pat, Lindsey, Rhonda… There are, of course, also men like Daddy, Jerry, David, Timothy, Jim, Steve, Jeff, James, John, Craig, and Tom. I know I’m leaving out names (a couple even deliberately–they won’t know or wouldn’t care). These kitchens are where we cooked, baked, ate, shared stories, sat around the table, played games and cards, shared confidences, laughed–OH, the laughing–and even shared our tears and troubles now and then. I thought of the kitchens of my characters, who are carrying on that tradition, as I try to carry on the tradition of storytelling through them.

An homage to the kitchens that nourish our lives in far more ways than only the food they offer us.

As I colored, I imagined stories attached to items on that cabinet and realized I could write a novella using those.

Diversions


Since I’m still resting and not up to being creative and definitely lacking energy, I sought a comfort read sometime Monday and pulled this off the shelf, finishing it late last night. I’d guess I’ve read it more than once through the years, and I remember having questions AS I read it the first time, but not after I read it, and it surprises me the confusion people still discuss online about the plot and the characters. Fannie Flagg (actress, comedian, novelist, screenwriter, and director, born in Alabama, and has long made her home in California) does a great job of switching between narrative voices, including an omniscient narrator, as well as characters’ points of view, and newspapers and community bulletins from several locations. The timeline, non-linear, covers various years from 1917 to 1988. There are also a number of settings, some are fictional, most are not. Here’s a list for you to guess which is which: Warrior River, AL fish camp; Atmore, AL; Chicago, IL; Roanoke, VA; Birmingham, AL; Troutville, AL; Atlanta, GA; Whistle Stop, AL; Montecito, CA; Marianne, FL; Valdosta, GA; Slagtown, AL.


The book was released in 1987, and by the time I got a paperback version in 1990, probably highly recommended among the bookstore staff I worked with, there was already an abundance of love for it, including newspapers and literary reviews, and two significant Southern writers, Eudora Welty and, not shown here, Harper Lee, who said about it, “A richly comic, poignant narrative.”

One thing that happened as I reread it was that I constantly saw the faces of the 1991 film actors especially Cicely Tyson, Jessica Tandy, Mary-Louise Parker, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Kathy Bates. Tom, Mother, and I didn’t get to the movie early enough and were forced to sit too close to the screen. I never like this, to the point that I remember both times it happened in 1991: The Prince of Tides and Fried Green Tomatoes. It was very overwhelming to see Barbra Streisand’s intensity at gigantic size, and Kathy Bates, who was filmed specifically to look overweight because it’s part of her character’s storyline, was also visually daunting.


The novel and the film have many differences. It’s possible some of the confusion people express about “who did it,” or the way they blend two distinctly different characters into one, or gloss over truths about some characters, is because they only ever saw the movie, because those things are pretty clear in the novel. I’ve decided to give the DVD a watch today since I just read the book. Fortunately, everyone will be at laptop-screen scale.

Tiny Tuesday!


Doing research for the Saga yesterday and needed to find inspiration circa 1975. That’s how I came across copies of “The Game of Jaws.” I read about it and don’t remember what ages the game was marketed toward, but it probably included children who were too young to have seen that movie.

I did a deep dive into the film because even though it forever changed my relationship with water (and not just salt water, any water that wasn’t safely contained in cement), I was crazy about both the novel and the film Jaws. My research opened up an unplanned and light way to start the new section of the novel.

The summer of ’75 was a bit chaotic for me, and as is usual, the only person who was damaged in the long run was…me. One of my favorite lines from the remake of Freaky Friday is the mom (Jamie Lee Curtis) calling out to her daughter (Lindsay Lohan) as she drops her at school, “Make good choices!”

I made bad choices that summer. But I still remember it with great affection because of the big version of this wee shark taking a bite out of a coloring book, instead of me. It’s the way I prefer my sharks’ diets.

Complete! and sort of Circular


As noted previously, during the Beryl power outage, I began rereading romantic suspense novels by Mary Stewart that I’ve been reading since the dawn of time when I was a teenager. After I finished the lot of them, I wondered how many I might be missing, so I looked up her complete list of works. There are the King Arthur books I’ve never read, and some children’s books, but turns out I actually own all of her romantic suspense novels. I shared photos of all the covers in previous posts, up to these two. Even though I’d reread both since 2020, I read them again.


They have two of my favorite male characters, and many of their qualities inspired male characters I’ve written (humor, sensitivity, kindness, strength, intelligence).

I did find in my search a novella and a short story that were published under the guidance of Mary Stewart’s niece, Jennifer Ogden. I’d read neither of these and ordered this edition immediately, which I’ve finished reading today (after an eye exam and a long nap so my eyes could return to their undilated state).

The Wind Off the Small Isles and “The Lost One.” In The Wind Off the Small Isles, Stewart included an Easter egg via a reference to a character in her novel This Rough Magic, an actor named Sir Julian Gale. There’s also an excerpt from that novel at the end of the collection.

This Rough Magic ranks in my top-favorite Stewart novels because it draws from Shakespeare’s The Tempest in its plot. Thanks to the play and Stewart’s novel, my interest was piqued by the 1982 film Tempest. Like Mary Stewart’s novel, the film borrows a lot from Shakespeare’s play. The film is unseen by most people I know–unless I’ve made them watch it with me. (Of course, I own the DVD–do you know me?) Tim and Jim still quote from it.

Tempest was directed by Paul Mazursky and stars the late John Cassavetes (who has long served as a physical model, along with a few of his qualities as a film director/producer of independent films, for one of my secondary characters in the Neverending Saga); Cassavetes’s wife Gena Rowlands; and introducing the young Sam Robards (son of Jason Robards and Lauren Bacall) and future brat-packer Molly Ringwald. This was also the film in which I was introduced to the brilliant actor Raul Julia.

My Muses and inspirations can be found among many people, novels, films, music, and art.

ETA: Beautiful Gena Rowlands died on August 14, age 94. I will think of her reunited with her husband, the two of them making beautifully crafted films together for always. Thank you, John and Gena, for being muses to me.

In the box


Yesterday, I finished reading Louisa Morgan’s The Great Witch of Brittany, recommended to me by my friend Princess Patti. It’s the most recently written (2022) of a series that includes:
A Secret History of Witches (2017)
The Witch’s Kind (2019)
The Age of Witches (2020)

I haven’t read the others (yet), but I don’t think reading out of order will be a problem because this one provides a lot of context for the others. I always enjoy an author who has a compelling gift for world building and story telling. The Great Witch of the title is Ursule, a member of a Romani family that includes a line of witches. From childhood to matriarchy, the many-layered Ursule is an “outsider,” which is both curse and blessing–it puts her in danger, but it also leads her to discover her gifts.

Ursule is strong, brave, and almost always compassionate (and experiences a lot of heartbreak). For most of her life, she has one solid and trusted friend, a raven named Drom. Of course that appealed to me, corvid admirer that I am. Drom has his own way of communicating (though he actually does speak a two-word phrase, he’s not a talking animal). He’s guide, friend, protector, and supporter, and he has a sense of humor.

After I finished the book, I kept thinking about Drom, which led me to get out the box that holds my various animal decks and flip through them to admire the ravens and crows. The crow and raven cards pictured here are from Animal Spirits.

I either have to stop collecting animal decks, or I’ll need a bigger box.

Tiny Tuesday!

I just finished reading this novel from Ann Patchett, Tom Lake (which was really good and made me cry at the end), and in the process of reading, I discovered a small bookmark I’d forgotten (to add to the Sunday Sundries bookmarks I’ve already shared).

Lisa in Iowa (aka “Nurse Lisa”)’s two dogs (gone years ago to the Rainbow Bridge), featured front and back, from a holiday photo shoot. They were such good girls and provided a lot of stories and photos back in the day on LiveJournal.

Sophie

 

Phoebe

Sunday Sundries


The wind didn’t turn our patio table over. Tom removed the umbrella and put it in the Lean To, then turned over the patio so Beryl wouldn’t flip and possibly break it. We’ll be spending time cleaning up all the different patios and sidewalks over the next week or so. Tom’s work schedule should get back to normal. Houston will hopefully start also being more normal, and OH HOW I HOPE EVERYONE SOON HAS POWER. The temps will be higher in the coming week than they have been.


As for me, I’m still working to manage my anxiety, and along with hopefully getting back to my own characters and world of the imagination, I intend to continue reading Mary Stewart, though not one or more a day as I have been. I’ll try to savor them. I might even finish up with my two absolute favorites (not pictured here) that were in my original Coping Skills Toolbox, meaning I’ve already reread them once since 2020. But they are my favorites, so…

Beryl: Day 7


Sunday, and larger trucks from GMB, the West Virginia company, began pulling into our neighborhood in the morning. We could hear them behind us and all around us. Then we saw this:


Notice that cherry picker on the other side of our back fence? Notice that now-brown tree limb that was tangled in our lines has fallen to the ground and the power lines are beginning to look normal?


Tom dragged that bad boy across the backyard, through the gate, and to the debris pile on our curb.


To keep myself from going crazy hoping and waiting and wishing for electricity, I kept reading my Mary Stewart book.

Finally, our power was restored at around 2:20 PM. I finished my book and, along with Tom, spent the day trying to get our house in some kind of order. The return of electricity comes with a dash of paranoia. Other customers have had power restored over the past few days only to lose it anywhere from two to 24 hours later. It’s hard to feel secure.

In addition, it’s thundering. It’s going to be a while before thunder stops sounding more ominous than normal. To help keep my anxiety in check, other than reading and cleaning, I began updating and revising this website throughout the day. If you’re reading this, you know I’ve tried to add something to all the days. I’ll try to compose a Sunday Sundries post after the fact, along with a Mindful Monday post, and that should give me some record of how this week has been.

Mostly, it’s been a long seven days… Thank you to people from all over the country who’ve texted, messaged, and called us. It really helps to know friends and family are thinking of us and wishing us well. I’ll also be replying to the comments left here while I wasn’t able to be online.