One of the guilty pleasures that I find myself indulging is watching Marina Orlova, the popular Russian-American etymologist and HotForWords YouTube sensation, as she explains the origin of words and phrases. Check out the Google for an introduction to my favorite language teacher: “Not your typical philologist. Etymology, philology, word origins, origin of, hot teacher.”
Marina, who was once told that she could not be a model because at 5-5 she was too short, is now raising the language IQ of thousands of devoted students. A year ago she had 200,000 YouTube subscribers (as a blonde). This year, even as a brunette, Marina continues to shine and win more fans.
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Our guest blogger today is mystery/crime fiction writer and Oahu resident Deborah Atkinson.
A recipient of the University of Hawaii’s Meryl Clark Award for Fiction, she is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the author of Primitive Secrets (2002), The Green Room (2005), and Fire Prayer (2007).
Debby’s latest novel is Pleasing the Dead. I asked her to share her thoughts about romance and mystery. Welcome, Debby!
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Maureen O’Connell asked me a few questions about romance and Valentine’s Day for an article in this Sunday’s Honolulu Advertiser. Yes, I write romantic comedy, but I don’t pretend to be an expert on romance. I may be a bit less confused than when I began writing about romantic entanglements, but, like most guys, I still feel somewhat clueless and clumsy when it comes to questions of romance.
One of the questions Maureen asked me was to name my most romantic character. Excellent question, and for this one I had the answer in about two seconds. Donna Cooper, the title character in my first novel, Queen of the Rodeo, seeks true love and romance for herself throughout that story. Then, in the prequel, Chasing Cowboys, she’s a 19-year old who plays a supporting role as one of the two narrators.
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Please welcome our guest blogger, local romance writer Sally Sorenson, with something for the guys:
Do men read romance novels? The better question might be, do men admit to reading romance novels. Better still, why not?
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Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl. Ah yes, the old Hollywood formula. But what if it’s 1948, and you have Howard Hawks to produce and direct the movie, and John Wayne and Montgomery Clift and Joanne Dru to light up the big screen, and Borden Chase and Charles Schnee to write a powerful screenplay, and … since the story is about the first great cattle drive on the Chisholm Trail, let’s get a few thousand head of cattle to stir up the dust and challenge the cowboys, who aren’t boys at all but men, real men, tough men.
And let’s make the women strong and brave, and ready to face the hard life of the Wild West and the hard heads of the cowboys they love. Then let’s call it Red River, and make a classic that will take its place with Stagecoach and High Noon and Shane and Lonesome Dove and the very best examples of that great American invention, the Western.
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Right after Thanksgiving weekend Richie, my friend from up the street, came over to watch Monday Night Football. It’s been a great season so far. After another sensational second half comeback the day before, Peyton Manning and the Colts were still undefeated, and we wanted to see how the other undefeated team, the New Orleans Saints, would do against the New England Patriots in the Monday night spotlight. The Saints did just fine, and we knew they would give the Colts a fight if they happen to meet at the end of the season.
But at halftime it isn’t the Saints that Richie wants to talk about. Instead he begins telling me about what happened that Saturday night when he and Noelle went out to dinner. I turn the TV sound down and settle back to listen to Richie’s latest adventure.
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Apart from the everyday world that I walk around in, there’s another world I enter when I’m writing a new story. It’s like a dream world because it has elements of my everyday world, but transformed somewhere in my mind into something strange and new. Just how strange varies from story to story.
In this dreamlike world, I quite willingly suspend my disbelief, and trust that most readers will be willing to do the same. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner guy, was the one who came up with “willing suspension of disbelief” as a necessity in the dream world of storytelling. In return for entertainment—a good story—the reader agrees to accept some fantastic elements in the story.
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