Writer's Weekend 2007, Day 2

Unfortunately I had to bail from Day 2 of Writer's Weekend early--I wasn't feeling too well. So not too long after lunch I expressed my regrets to awritersweekend and took the bus home.

But I did have a good time while I was there. This morning local author Louise Marley was kind enough to chat with me, and we had a pleasant little discussion about Mary Stewart novels--since she's apparently also in the middle of a sweep through her books, which was quite amusingly coincidental. She's done a couple I haven't read yet: Nine Coaches Waiting and The Ivy Tree. I'll look forward to finding those.

Meanwhile I did also attend one panel--Louise Marley's, in fact, on the topic of Point of View, which was mostly familiar territory. It covered the basic concepts of first person and third person and such, and the advantages and disadvantages of each. It went a bit as well into the differences between an omniscient narrator and a limited one, and provided some examples of effective handling of different types of point of view.

( Basic notes from the panel... )

The most interesting part of that panel actually wound up being the brief writing exercise involving taking a concept and writing it using different points of view. The one I played with was "a girl wants to dye her hair an unusual color, and her mother objects." For giggles and grins, here are my two snippets.

( The Girl's POV... )

( The Mother's POV... )

And that's my report for Day 2, or at least what bits I was there for, of this year's Writer's Weekend. Hopefully I'll get to pay more attention next time around--and get Karen the various interesting panel ideas y'all shared with me on an earlier post.

(And oh yes--it turned out that I had one of Ms. Marley's books already on my To Read shelf, The Glass Harmonica. I picked up a couple more of hers on the way home, The Child Goddess and Airs Beneath the Moon (which is under the name of Toby Bishop). Looking forward to checking those out as well, especially after hearing that she's acquainted with Sharon Shinn; since I like Shinn's books quite a bit, I'm rather suspecting I'll like all of these as well. More on that as it happens!)

2007 Book Log #44-45: More Mary Stewart

Madam, Will You Talk?: This was a bit of an odd bird--the oldest yet of the Stewarts I'd read, I think, dating clear back to 1955. And this time around I really noticed it, more than with her other books. The thing that stood out most strongly for me in this thing was how many characters were smoking, and how often--the heroine especially seemed to do it a lot for comfort. Barely a scene went by without someone lighting up. Talk about your ways to date a novel, eh? Between that and the thing being set in the south of France, it really came out feeling for me rather like an old Cary Grant movie or something. All these sophisticated people in Europe, smoking and drinking and dealing with intrigue and murder, and there's even a couple of pretty impressive car chase sequences--with the heroine at the wheel, in fact. And with my affection for Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, especially first season, it was strangely easy to envision the setting in full Technicolor, with David Hedison playing the part of the brooding hero. Snicker.

Anyway, plot-wise, this one wasn't terribly surprising; of course you know, going in, that the Big Mystery about the hero is going to come out okay in the end. But I did like that this one also brings the heroine in almost on the very tail end of the overall plot; she only comes in as a pivotal player at that point, rather than being there for the whole thing. Kind of cool, that. Points off for having the heroine faint in the middle of a tense scene with the hero, though, just because he's being Skeery! Two and a half stars.

Wildfire at Midnight: This one was notable for me being set on the isle of Skye in Scotland, which was a refreshing switch from France, even if the obligatory Colorful Locales With Spelled-Out Scottish Accents were a bit tough to read (the trick of it, I found, seemed to be a bit zen--if I didn't try too hard to sound out the spellings, the accent clicked better in my brain). We get more characters smoking a lot in this story, and to add to that, the slightly out of the ordinary (for Stewart) tack of the heroine starting the story divorced. Three guesses who shows up on Skye shortly after she does. ;)

All jokes about Mystery Science Theater 3000 and "OH NO JOEL, ROCK CLIMBING!" aside, there are some neat tense passages herein where most of the cast go out in search of missing climbers. To a modern reader it'd probably be annoying that the women in the cast wind up playing support to the Big Strong Men Doing the Bulk of the Work, but I'll cut that some slack on the grounds that the heroine does still get to do pivotal stuff involved with the search. I pegged the killer beforehand, but not too terribly long, so points for not making that terribly obvious too soon into the story. Three stars.