May 13th, 2021
I’ll pass the 10,000 word mark on the new novel today and this is where it starts to get harder. The first part of a story is all fresh, and new, and comes out quickly. Then it gets harder to make it look easy. This is when I remember a favorite quote from Maya Angelou:
“I try to pull the language into such a sharpness that it jumps off the page. It must look easy, but it takes me forever to get it to look so easy. Of course, there are those critics — New York critics as a rule — who say, Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer. Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.”
So it’s not just me. It’s work for even one of the very best. Better get to it.
Here are 3 crime fiction links, 2 quotes, and 1 question for this week:
3 LINKS
- Unfortunately, the WaPo finds that a lot of solid pieces don’t quite add up to a solid movie in the Sheridan/Jolie adaptation of Koryta’s THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD. Of all the Koryta books this would not have been in my top 5 to adapt into a film.
- The upcoming Apple adaptation of King’s LISEY’S STORY with Julianne Moore has a trailer. I remember really enjoying this book but I think I forgot how much was going on in LISEY’S STORY.
- Forget song of the summer, Crime Reads looks at the upcoming slate of summer crime fiction including new thrillers by Lippman, Cosby’s BLACKTOP follow-up, Meg Abbott’s take on ballet (yikes) and plenty more.
2 QUOTES
Two from LISEY’S STORY this week:
- “There was a lot they didn’t tell you about death, she had discovered, and one of the biggies was how long it took the ones you loved most to die in your heart.”
- “There were no ghosts. Only memory.”
1 QUESTION
- Do you have a favorite memory of reading one of the buzzy books of summer past? I can still remember reading Gone Girl in a frenzied beach weekend.
Until next Thursday, happy reading,
Mike
Author the Max Strong thriller series
