Monday, July 27, 2009

Monday Mail Call


This was a slow mail week for me. That's not so bad, though. It gives me a little bit of a chance to get caught up on some of my reading!

Two items in my box this week:

1. The Lie by Fredrica Wagman
and
2. I'm Not Weird, I Have SID by Chynna T. Laird (this is a children's book)

Wednesday Word Skills ... on Monday

Well, this is the final installment of the words I learned from reading "The Magicians" by Lev Grossman.

These really were some interesting words and I'm glad I took the time to look them up in the dictionary.

I hope you enjoyed them, too.

Fantods = a state of extreme nervousness or restlessness; the willies.

Orrery = an apparatus for representing the positions, motions, and phases of the planets, satellites, etc., in the solar system.

Ponce = a pimp; a campily effeminate male.

Excrescence = an abnormal outgrowth, usually harmless, on an animal or vegetable body; a normal outgrowth, as hair or horns; any disfiguring addition.

Fealty = fidelity; faithfulness.

Plinth = a square base or a lower block, as of a pedestal.

Praxis = convention, habit, or custom; a set of examples for practice.

Golem = In Jewish folklore, a figure artificially constructed in the form of a human being and endowed with life.

Glaive = a sword or broadsword.

Cosplayer = One who takes part in cosplay, which is a subculture centered on dressing as characters from manga, anime, tokusatsu and video games and, less commonly, Japanese live action TV shows, fantasy movies or Japanese pop music bands.

Aeruginous = bluish-green; like verdigris.



Sunday, July 26, 2009

Wednesday Word Skills ... on Sunday


Here is the next set of words from "The Magicians" by Lev Grossman!

Disquisition = a formal discourse or treatise in which a subject is examined and discussed; dissertation.

Persiflage = light, bantering talk or writing; a frivolous or flippant style of treating a subject.

Bumptious = offensively self-assertive.

Limned = to represent in drawing or painting; to portray in words, describe.

Dysphoria = a state of dissatisfaction, anxiety, restlessness, or fidgeting.

Sine = a perpendicular line drawn from one extremity of an arc of a circle to the diameter that passes through its other extremity.

Meerkat = A small, burrowing, carnivorous mammal (Suricata suricatta) of southern Africa, related to the mongoose and having grayish fur and a long tail, which it uses for balance when it stands on its hind legs.

Poniards = small, slender daggers.

Babel = a confused mixture of sounds or voices.

Arugula = a Mediterranean plant, Eruca vesicaria sativa, of the mustard family, having pungent leaves used in salads.

Munificent = extremely liberal in giving; very generous; characterized by great generosity.

Scrim = a cotton or linen fabric of open weave used for bunting, curtains, etc.; a piece of such fabric used as a drop, border, or the like, for creating the illusion of a solid wall or backdrop under certain lighting conditions or creating a semitransparent curtain when lit from behind.


I'm a Daisy!


I am a
Daisy


What Flower
Are You?



"You are just a sweet person. When a friend needs a shoulder to cry on, you are happy to offer yours with a box of tissues as well. Once in awhile, you wish you could be a little more dramatic but then sensibility sets back in and you know that you are perfect the way you are."

I'm not sure if I agree with the description -- although I guess I could be described that way. LOL! Some people may say that about me, but I'm sure there are others who would just roll their eyes. Oh, well.

Anyway, click on the link and try the test for yourself.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Interview with Ben Tanzer

"Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine"

From the back of the book:

"This is a story about relationships, between father and son, friends, and most importantly between two newly formed couples. Following the lives and thoughts of four people in their mid-twenties, already experienced in dating but starting to wonder if that one person is out there. Taking a look inside the thoughts and conversations on both sides of the fragile world of romance and pain, friendship and fear, and life in New York."

Gosh, how to describe this book. Fun, interesting, fascinating, sad and frustrating -- perhaps.
This is the story of four young people, but the focus seems to mainly be on Jen and Geoff. They are both leery of relationships. Jen's father left the family when she was just becoming a teen. Geoff's mother also left when he was a boy.
Needless to say, they both know whoever they become involved in will eventually break their hearts. To compensate, they set up their relationships for failure. They look for clues that the other person isn't happy and offer them an easy out.
But now, they've met each other and are beginning to wonder if things could possibly be different this time.
This really was an enjoyable read. In fact, I had it done in one day because I just couldn't put it down until I found out what was going to happen to these kids. There were times I wished I could have knocked some sense into them (that's obviously the mother in me) and other times when I would have liked to be able to warn them not to treat the other the way they were (that's obviously the wife in me).
Ben Tanzer has given us a great read and one that teaches several lessons for life, love and relationships.
That said, I give this read four books.



And now, I'd like to welcome Ben to my blog. He has kindly agreed to visit with us today and I know you'll enjoy meeting him. He has a marvelous sense of humor that I find very appealing!


Welcome, Ben, please start out by telling us a little about yourself.

First off, thanks so much for this opportunity.

That said, I regularly claim to be a founding member of Wham!, but to be honest, that’s not true and saying this out loud, in print anyway, makes me feel a lot better about myself, like I’m no longer living a lie. That said, I was Rick Astley before immigrating to the states, assuming Ben Tanzer’s identity and getting a job at a 1960s era advertising agency. Outside of that though, I am a dad, husband, compulsive runner and nonprofit communications and messaging guy. I also write, all the time, fitting it in whenever those other things, as well as sleep and hygiene, don’t require my immediate attention.

Talk a little about your book.

My idea was to try and write a story about a couple who comes together very quickly, implodes just as quickly and then explores whether it’s worthwhile or even possible to pick up the pieces. I was interested in characters who were sort of hyper-articulate and even smart, at times, but still too emotionally limited, paralyzed or damaged at that stage in their life to actually have real conversations despite how much they talk about everything but their actual feelings. I also wanted to place the book in the early 1990s and in New York, which is when I lived there, to see if the time period and the city could also to some extent become characters in the story as well.

Are the characters in your book styled after anyone in particular?

I think they loosely resemble people I know who were in the twenties and single when I was at that age, though I wasn’t actually single then, which made it sort of fun to delve into these characters who have parts of their lives I cannot relate to on personal level. I would add that the characters sort of also strike me as being similar to the geeks, and maybe some of the freaks, in the television show Freaks and Geeks, but after going to college, when I foresee them as being far less geeky or freaky, and maybe even sort of cool, but still having a lot of work to do.

Why did you become a writer?

This is always a tough question to answer because it’s hard not to sound like you’re trying too hard to get this right. That said, I will say what I have said at other times. I became a writer because I didn’t have a choice. I got a taste of it in a required creative writing class my senior year in high school and I was hooked, hooked like the first time I drank or got into a fight, read a book, went running or shot pool. It was something I thought about all of the time and wanted to do all the time. In the case of writing, though, I didn’t really get started for maybe 10 years after that initial taste. I was too scared of something, failure maybe, but since I got started, I haven’t stopped, won’t stop, can’t stop and I will do anything to make time to do write. Time is my mistress. Some day, it might not be. But either way, I will write.

How did becoming a writer change your life?

You mean besides the grass being greener, the skies bluer and the endless rounds of groupies? Writing has given me something I always want to do, always, and having something like that in your life is awesome and it’s not better than being married to someone you love necessarily, not all the time anyway, or having wonderful, okay, mostly wonderful, kids or even a job you like, but in the other spaces in your life, those brief moments when your brain is not focused on a million other things and time slows down. It’s there and it’s begging for attention and it’s killer.

Who has influenced you the most in your writing career?

This is a tricky and great question. On the one hand, I need to say, Jim Carroll who wrote “The Basketball Diaries,” among other books, because after I read it for the first time, I really felt like I had experienced how writing can transport people somewhere other than where they are and I wanted to be able to do that. I would also say Don DeGrazia, who is the author of “American Skin” because after seeing him read “American Skin” and then reading the book, I really believed for the first time that writing a novel was possible. And then there is Lynda Barry, mainly because I have a big crush on her, but also because I once heard her say she doesn’t plan what she writes, she just writes whatever she’s feeling that day, which I love, and because someday, I want to write a book like “Cruddy,” which I also love. A lot.

I also need to mention the influence of the Ramones and punk music in general, keep it short and slamming, no fat; Bruce Springsteen, tell stories that are sparse and evocative; David Cronenberg, because of the way he described creating a “History of Violence,” particularly the violence itself, fast, intimate and up close, which is how I like to think people interact in relationships; and finally, the Beastie Boys, try to be smart, try to be interesting and don’t forget the humor.

What’s the best writing advice you ever received?

There are two pieces of advice that have been really helpful for me and they are not so different really, but they came at the right times in my career. The first piece of advice is if you think something is interesting, other people will, too. That’s been very helpful. And the second thing, don’t worry about whether something is going to be published, if you want to write it, do so, and then see how it shakes out.

What’s next for you?

First off, I am very much looking forward to the Wham! reunion at Lollapalooza this summer. Oops, there I go again. Okay, so what I am actually doing right now is shopping my new The Hold Steady-inspired novel around, “You Can Make Him Like You,” which is about a guy who is trying not to sleep with his intern, kill his neighbor or freak out about having a baby with his wife. I have a collection of humor pieces that are coming out as part of a larger collection of short story writers from Achilles Chapbook Press. And I’m working on a new group of somewhat interconnected short stories, which build on my recent short story collection “Repetition Patterns,” released by CCLaP Publishing. So, lots of good stuff, which is all really exciting, humbling and cool.

Thanks for asking and thanks again for this opportunity.

And thank you, Ben, for taking the time to visit with us. I really enjoyed it!

Wednesday Word Skills ... on Saturday

Can you believe the number of new words I found in Lev Grossman's book "The Magicians?"
Some of them are so interesting, I almost believed Lev made them up himself. But, no! These are actual words and I was able to find them in the dictionary!
Of course, I did have to look in more than one dictionary to find some of them!
Do you have some favorites? I'm kind of partial to "nimbi." I like the meaning and it's sort of fun to say!

Corporeal = of, for or having the nature of, the body; physical; bodily; not spiritual. Of a material nature, perceptible by the senses; tangible.

Declension = a bending or sloping downward; a falling off or away.

Didactic = used or intended for teaching or instruction. Morally instructive or intended to be so. Too much inclined to teach others; boringly pedantic or moralistic.

Excoriate = to strip, scratch or rub off the skin of; flay, abrade, chafe, etc.; to denounce harshly.

Glassine = a thin but tough, glazed, nearly transparent paper used as for envelopes.

Golem = a human being artificially created by cabalistic rites.

Gonfalon = a flag hanging from a crosspiece instead of an upright staff, usually ending in streamers.

Madrigal = a short poem, usually a love poem, which can be set to music. An often contrapuntal song with parts for several voices singing without accompaniment, popular in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. Loosely, any song, especially a part song.

Naiad = any of the nymphs living in and giving life to springs, fountains, rivers and lakes. Any of a family of submerged, fresh-water plants having linear opposite leaves. The aquatic nymph of certain insects, as the dragonfly or mayfly.

Chitinous = mutinous, tenuous.

Nimbi = a cloud or aura surrounding a person or thing; halo.

Faun = one of a class of rural deities represented as men with the ears, horns, tail, and later also the hind legs of a goat.

Susurrus = a soft murmuring or rustling sound; whisper.

Palimpsest = a parchment or the like from which writing has been partially or completely erased to make room for another text.

Verdant = green with vegetation; covered with growing plants or grass; of the color green; inexperienced, unsophisticated.

Subpar = not measuring up to traditional standards of performance, value, or production.