literature

More Books to Add to Your 2022 Reading List

December 17, 2021 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

I don't know about you, but my to-read pile of books is absurdly out of hand. Every year, I manage to knock a hundred or so books from the stack. This makes no dent in that ever-growing behemoth. It does, however, mean that I discover a few gems each year. (A few duds, too, but I'm here to give love, not to disparage. Sorry.)Anyway, this isn't a goddamn recipe blog, so let's skip the boring story leading up to the reason why you're here and get to the goods.Please note that these are not necessarily books published in 2021, just books I read this year that made such an impact on me that I want other people to read them, too. Books by Authors Not New to Me, Who Still Managed to Surprise the Hell Out of Me:Look, this book was published in 1997 and takes place during peak AIDS crisis in San Francisco. Yet, it feels current and chillingly relevant....

Read the First Chapter of Tied Within

July 9, 2020December 3, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

Chapter 1: Entering We’re talking about nothing again when someone asks if I know what terror feels like. A familiar voice, an echo, reaches through the smoke. Behind the guitar assault grinding and growling though a blown speaker, I know someone is talking to me. I summon the effort to focus my attention on the voice’s face. “So, do you?” One of the twins, the one who parts his hair to the left, passes me the joint. He looks like one of those guys from A-ha. His twin brother, who parts his hair to the right, looks like the other A-ha. Holding the joint out to me, he tosses his head back, shaking hair out of his eyes. “I don’t mean a little bit startled. I mean stark terror. Unable to scream. Shit your pants scared.” I take the joint from him without answering. “I know what that feels like,” Dom says, twisting the cap off a bottle of beer. “When they brought my...

Writing a Frankenstory: Reality in Fiction

January 7, 2013November 23, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

"My characters are fictional. I get ideas from real people, sometimes, but my characters always exist only in my head." -S. E. Hinton"Any writer’s work is a map of their psyche. You can really see what their concerns are, what their obsessions are, and what interests them.” -Kim Addonizio“To ask an author who hopes to be a serious writer if his work is autobiographical is like asking a spider where he buys his thread. The spider gets his thread right out of his own guts, and that is where the author gets his writing.” -Robertson Davies *** A few nights ago, Olivier, the cat and I were curled up in bed, enjoying our pre-sleep reading time. Me & Cat with a paperback; Olivier reading my latest short story published by an online literary journal.When he finished, he turned to me and said, "Yeah, I know where you got that idea from.""What? No you don't. I made it up.""Sure. Parts of it, but...

What Is & What Will Be

October 18, 2012November 23, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

“She was a published writer. I imagined how thrilling it must be living such a life, going around the world and making up things about it.” -E. L. Doctorow *** Well, not so thrilling, as it turns out. Interesting, yes. Fun, definitely. Boring... never. Most of the time is spent not zipping around the globe, but here in this corner, in this room, at this desk where I sit now. I scribble in notebooks, make faces at open documents in Word & lean my head on my hand as I read submission guidelines for one literary journal after another until my eyes go all googly. And research... entire days of reading, searching & asking questions. On really good days, I sit curled up in a comfy chair with my iPad while working on a piece of flash fiction. It's really not that thrilling, but it does make me feel glad & complete inside. I don't believe in sitting around waiting for "the muse" & I...

Survival is Triumph Enough

April 3, 2012 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

“Being a fiction writer is a good way to go crazy, it’s a good way to be a nervous wreck, it’s a good way to become a drunk. You continually pick at yourself, the little sores that you have. They scab over and you pick them open again. Other people not only let them scab over, they let them scar over. They leave it alone. Writers don’t do that. They can’t keep their fingers out of the sore. They’ve got to keep it bleeding. And it’s off that blood that they make their stuff.” -Harry Crews "You have to go to considerable trouble to live differently from the way the world wants you to live. That's what I've discovered about writing. The world doesn't want you to do a damn thing. If you wait till you got time to write a novel or time to write a story or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already...

13 Writers on the Screen

February 10, 2011November 30, 2020 by Rasmenia Comment Closed

1. Oscar Wilde Wilde, 1997 - Stephen Fry is just freaking brilliant in this movie that depicts Oscar Wilde's career, wit & torment as he struggled with a family, his homosexuality (represented by the jazzy pink suit) & the absurd trial that resulted in his being sentenced to hard labor - a sentence that eventually caused his death.2. Sylvia Plath Sylvia, 2003 - While I can't stand Gwyneth Paltrow (who can?) I really enjoyed this film about Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes. Of course, there's some other business about Bell Jars & sticking heads in ovens, as one might expect.3. Truman Capote Capote, 2005 - I went to see this movie at the theater & have a clear recollection of being bored more than anything. This film is really more about the conception of Capote's novel, "In Cold Blood" & is less about the writer himself. While Philip Seymour Hoffman isn't really capable of delivering anything close to a shitty performance, his acting...