The Pyrenees---Southern France

The Pyrenees---Southern France

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Twists and Turns

photo by Mamluke

            I was a thief on Friday.

        I stole from O Henry...

        In my story for Book Blurb Friday, hosted by the dishonest Lisa Ricard Claro ,* I wrote a blurb that mirrored a short story O Henry wrote. ("The Last Leaf" is the title, if my memory is not in its normal swiss cheese form.) In this story, a woman is dying. She says she will last until the last leaf of ivy (growing on the building outside her window) falls off. All of them dry up and blow away except for one. That lone leaf lasts through all of fall and winter as well; the woman's health improves, and ultimately she recovers.

       It ends up that a painter friend who lived in her apartment building had painted the leaf onto the wall of the building.

      (Lisa called me on my plagarizing. She recognized the way my story mirrored O Henry's right away...)

       O Henry, author of the better known "The Gifts of the Magi" and (one of my favorites) "The Ransom of Red Chief," was known for the twists he put into his stories. They rarely ended as the reader expected them to.

       Jodi Picoult is also quite adept at slipping the unexpected into her novels. I have just started her book Salem Falls and eagerly await the point where I start to lose my balance, when the earth under me shifts, and I get completely flummoxed.


           What are some of your favorite authors who surprise you/give you the unexpected, and in what ways are you surprised?

As the show "Mythbusters" has uncovered, the belief that Lisa Ricard Claro is a hardworking writer as well as  a parent of grown children has been debunked. She rents her kids (Rent-a-Rugrat) and sadly, her scheme has even spread...

Now Linda O'Connell has gotten on the kid rental bandwagon.  Since she is a teacher, she's too broke to pay the steep leasing fees. With no other option, she has turned to her little doll-of-a-granddaughter, Nicole.

(You don't believe me? Check out Linda's blog. Notice how many pictures there are of Nicole lately. Zero in on her tiny wrists...Clearly, there are marks, where the duct tape was attached, tethering this tot to Linda's computer. Focus on how large Nicole's eyes are...They are huge because only for these photos is Nicole allowed out in the light of day. The rest of the time she is hunched over a keyboard, as Linda dictates her stories.)   

        

7 comments:

  1. OMG, Sioux! On the part about Linda O.- - - I'm litterally LOL!!

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  2. I have recently discovered novelist Kristin Hannah. I read "Winter Garden", which was one of the best novels I ever read, then "Magic Hour" and have now started "Night Road." She throws quite a lot of unexpected turns into her stories. How I could have never heard of a woman who is a NYT bestselling author and has written, like, 18 novels, is beyond me, but I managed it until lately.

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  3. Becky---Since you know Linda, you know I'm speaking the truth...

    Fireblossom---I think I've seen her books on the shelves, but have never picked one up. One of the best you've ever read? I'll have to check out (probably literally--I'll get it from the library) "Winter Garden" because of your recommendation.

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  4. I have plenty favorite authors (EAP, Patricia Highsmith, Stephen King, Palahniuk) all of them great and suprising... but the master of surprises, even while re-reading, is Jorge Luis Borges (Argentinian literary icon) - his shortstories are something else! Soon I will write about him in my blog to render my absolute respect. Have a great weekend!

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  5. One of the things I've always loved about the Harry Potter series is that I could never-in-a-bajillion-years guess what would happen next or who would turn out to be one of the bad guys! I too LOLed about Linda!

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  6. Okay Sioux, you are asking for it. I am going to do an Enquirer equivalent on you. I know you know Josh A, don't you?

    Laughing out loud at this post. Thanks for the shout outs.

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  7. I must be the only lost soul here. I go to a recent post and am directed here to learn about floaters which are insects or liars? I have floaters that make it impossible for me to see anything white without dots before my eyes. I call those floaters. :-)

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