The Best Imaginary Friends I’ve Ever Had

This summer I’m going to start rereading Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series, about life in the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. This isn’t the kind of fiction I usually read, and yet my first pass through the series was the best reading experience of my life.

I’m not alone. Director Peter Weir, who eventually directed the movie adaptation, Master and Commander, used to plan for certain trips by determining how many O’Brian novels he ought to pack. David Mamet finished rereading the eighth book and said to his wife, “This fellow has created characters and stories that are part of my life.” Everyone I’ve met who’s read these novels responds similarly. Used book stores frequently don’t have copies on hand; one store owner believed that people who bought the books tended to keep them. And I recently got to know a writer three-thousand miles away when we shared enthusiasm for the series on Twitter. Captain Jack Aubrey and his companion, the naturalist, physician, and spy Stephen Maturin, felt like mutual friends.

I would see these books on the shelf when I worked at Barnes and Noble during college — a long row of similarly sized novels with pastel spines — and wonder who on Earth read them…

Continue reading at FSG’s Book Keeping

And here’s a good scene from the movie:

Please check it out:

Emotions Bled Through, Almost Unexpectedly: Dennis Mahoney & Kate Southwood at B&N

It didn’t come with rope so my wife and I went to the almighty Tractor Supply. We bought polypropylene rope with a load weight of 420 lbs., so our son would have to do something really crazy to break it.

First off, cool trick: with this kind of synthetic rope, you can melt the frayed ends together with a lighter so it doesn’t unravel:

The tricky part was getting the rope tied to a branch thirty feet in the air. I learned how to tie a double bowline knot, which leaves a secure loop at one end of the rope.

Then I had to get the knot over the branch and pull it back down. Even with a stick tied to the throwing end, this was hard to do. The stick wasn’t quite heavy enough to compensate for the weight of the slack rope, which kept slowing the stick and preventing me from getting it over the branch. I finally did, and then the stick just dangled there. The easy solution was to snap-ripple the end of the rope I still had. Each ripple let the stick fall a little farther down, until at last I had both ends on the ground with the rope looped over the branch.

I slipped the loose end into the earlier knot loop and pulled.

The knot rode up and tightened itself on the branch. It was incredibly satisfying, as good knots often are.

After that I tied another double bowline at the opposite end and clipped on the hammock seat. Our son spent hours in this thing. He had his iPod at one point, but for the most part he was content to hang there, watching the dog and daydreaming. He even went out this morning when it was cold enough to need a puffy vest. Total success.

The weather was comfortably warm/cold, Jupiter was bright near the moon, and although I missed a huge green meteor that two friends witnessed from locations two-hundred miles apart, I made the enjoyable discovery that neighbors around the block illuminate their garage year-round with decorative pastel lights. The photo doesn’t do it justice. It made the whole little hill road cozy.

Every character in this tightly knit debut novel has a choice to make in how to handle the aftermath of the tragedy. What each one does affects the rest, bringing home the truth that ‘you’re not alone, even when you are.’

Read the review (halfway down the page), and please buy the book!

FELLOW MORTALS, while full of vivid interactions, is perhaps most moving in its subtle depiction of people alone, trying to find ordinary meaning amid disarray…. [It] will stay with me for its watchful portrait of people, imperfect in life as in art, trying to find goodness in one another and themselves.

Read the whole review, and please buy the book!

Read the article here

Twenty questions for authors, none about writing. Some questions are not in the form of a question. (Previous Q&As may be found HERE.)

This week we have KATE SOUTHWOOD, author of the novel Falling to Earth.

KS: Elizabeth Jarvis. This is from the “what is your romance novel author name” game. Take your middle name and the street you grew up in. I grew up on a corner, so I could also be Elizabeth Sheridan.

2. Satan hoofs up and says two words to you. What are they?

KS: “You’re up.”

3. Give us an A+ summer song.

KS: “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” [Youtube]

4. What is the worst injury you’ve ever sustained?

KS: A really dumb cut on my inner forearm. Basically dragged my arm across a rusty nail head and it never even bled, just unzipped the skin on my arm.

5. Form a supergroup using any four musicians, living or dead, that would be thoroughly awesome to experience, for better or worse.

KS: Does the Muppet Band count?

6. What was your best Halloween costume?

KS: Frida Kahlo. Complete with mono-brow and bike handlebar coming out of my stomach. This was when I was an Art History student, and one of my friends dressed as The Sack of Rome.

7. Tell us something you built.

KS: Drawing a blank, although I do know how to use tools and must have built something… Does Ikea flat-pack assembly count?

8. If you could safely have one non-domesticated animal as a lifelong companion, what would it be? (Fantasy creatures are allowed.)

KS: Tiger, please. I really want to pet a big cat before I die.

9. What do you like to grow?

KS: I have a balcony garden in Oslo, Norway where I grow what I can, which is mostly flowers and herbs. I want to grow potatoes.

10. Name a thing you love that nobody else you personally know also loves.

KS: Minimalism. I live with packrats, and even the cat has too much stuff.

11. How would you like those eggs?

KS: Scrambled, moist, and salty.

12. What’s the worst thing about your favorite holiday?

KS: Thanksgiving, and that I now live in Oslo. Norwegians don’t do it, don’t get it, don’t get that Thursday off, plus three members of my four-person family are vegetarians, so there’s no point.

13. You’ve just been turned into a lousy superhero. Who are you, and who is your nemesis?

KS: I’m Intergalactica, and I clean up space junk. Do I have to be lousy? My nemesis is NASA, who keep putting more junk out there, so maybe I’m just overworked.

14. Name a thought that has profoundly scared you in the night.

KS: That I would never publish a novel.

15. You’re stinking rich. What’s the first thing you add to your home?

KS: An office. View of trees, bookcases, big comfy chair with ottoman, and a door that stays shut unless you ask nicely.

KS: Hopefully something to do with St. Patrick’s Day. Again, difficult to do in Oslo. [Editor's note: this Q&A was done a few weeks ago, obviously.]

17. Which color makes you feel the most comfortable? The most anxious?

KS: Most comfortable, probably blue. Most anxious, red. My mother had red carpet in her bedroom briefly in the 1970s, said it was emitting energy and keeping her up at night, and got rid of it. I’ve been mildly suspicious of the color red ever since.

18. What is the strangest job you ever had?

KS: Part-time secretary for a State Farm agent in Chicago when I was 17. He never really taught me to do anything. His dad was the other agent in the office and his dad’s secretary would show me stuff occasionally. I felt I had accomplished something if I got him to put his cigarette in the ashtray before he accidentally ashed on someone’s policy.

19. I mean honestly: aren’t you better off living without ___?

KS: Oreos. But not really.

20. James Cameron discovers something new at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. What do you hope it is?

KS: Well, obviously, it has to be intelligent life sitting there with a smug took-you-long-enough smile.

Kate Southwood received an M.A. in French Medieval Art from the University of Illinois, and an M.F.A. in Fiction from the University of Massachusetts Program for Poets and Writers. Born and raised in Chicago, she now lives in Oslo, Norway with her husband and their two daughters. Falling to Earth, a Barnes & Noble Discover pick, is her first novel.

Kate Southwood Official Site
Kate Southwood Twitter

Previous Q&As may be found HERE.

Buy FALLING TO EARTH:

IndieBound
Barnes & Noble
Amazon

Bookmagnet: Your writing has been compared to that of Stewart O’Nan and Richard Russo.  How do such comparisons make you feel?

Theodore Sr.

Dennis: Honored, since I’m a big fan of both, and somewhat confused, as I don’t entirely see myself that way. I don’t mean that negatively or positively. I just don’t know who I’d compare myself to because I don’t really think that way. Take a parenting analogy: I try to raise a happy, well-adjusted son, but wouldn’t it be strange to compare my parenting style to that of more famous parents? “Mahoney’s fatherly lectures are reminiscent of Theodore Roosevelt Sr.’s inspirational words to young Teddy…”

Read the full interview here.

1. Do 100 consecutive pushups.

– I may have been overambitious here. A hundred in a single session will be doable, allowing myself breaks between sets. Right now I can manage a feeble twenty without resting. I slacked pretty hard in the exercise department so far this year, but I’m picking up steam.

2. Finish the first draft of my next novel.

– The Fellow Mortals release predictably derailed me for a month, but I’ve made terrific headway in recent weeks. I’m hoping to finish the first draft by fall. Here’s the current stack:

3. Learn to do that crowd-parting, taxi-stopping finger whistle.

– Still can’t do it.

4. Reread all of Shakespeare, for fun instead of duty.

– Progress. I’ve read:

1. The Taming of the Shrew
2. Richard II
3. Henry IV, Part 1
4. Coriolanus
5. Titus Andronicus
6. Romeo and Juliet
7. Hamlet

5. Washboard abs.

– I lost a few pounds. Long way to go, but I’m eating lots of vegetables and watching calories.

6. Straighten out my sleep schedule.

– I’m up at 5AM every day for a few weeks now. My bedtime varies, so I usually have to power nap during the day. My body’s finding a rhythm, though.

7. My wife is pining for an island in our too-small-for-an-island kitchen, so I’m going to build a wall of cabinets with an island that emerges from, and then returns to, the cabinet wall.

– This was always slated for the summer. I am mentally preparing.

Weather
Different birds around. Good sign.

Colonial-American Word of the Day
Doctor: (n) milk and water, with a little rum, and some nutmeg

Music
William Boyce, Symphony 4 ‘The Shepherd’s Lottery’, “Gavot, Allegro”