Genre Horizons: RAOB

Random Act of Blindness is unlike any of my other books...I say that with a generous leeway in definition, because none of my books is like any of my other books.

But i was trying to do something that was not only different for me, but different for authors in general. I wanted to take a genre that is relegated to the fringes, and elevate it into a mainstream sensibility. I wanted to write an erotic book with three- dimensional characters, a recognizable plot, and a handling of the material that made a reader care about what happened to the people in the story. I think I accomplished that, and so it is a book I am very proud of.

I think that authors often underestimate their readers--authors and perhaps publishers, agents, editors and marketeers. If a writer gains fame with a breakthrough novel, he then seizes on that formula and begins to write the same story over and over again; the same people, dressed up in different clothes. There are only a handful of authors I feel write with a certain formula, but still manage to write something new each time. Those are the authors Ii continue to read. And I will read everything they write, with little concern for what genre it falls into; in this way, I believe that many formula writers do their readers a disservice. I remain interested in that author because of his/her command of the language, the ability to create characters I care about; the cleverness to keep me guessing, and the presence of mind to tie up the loose ends and give me a satisfactory ending that will not leave me feeling as though I had wasted my precious time. I want to come away from a book feeling good about something. That doesn't mean I need fairy tales, either (although, really, fairy tales are notoriously dramatic, gory and often filled with characters and deeds no child should be privy to--Hansel and Gretel anyone?)

I find it exciting to hear of a favorite author breaking out of one genre and leaping into another. I can't wait to read that book. It's like seeing your love in new clothes; like driving a new car; like a meal you only get to have once a year, but that you love above all other meals. Thus, I hope to see more authors expand their genre-horizons. There are enough clones out there--both stories and writers. Give me a new species and my interest will be as intense as it originally was with the one that preceded it.

Genre Horizons: RAOB

Reading Shakespeare

NOTE: this idea came to me after a thought of Shakespeare came into my head...and i recalled how it was so difficult at first, but then noticed how you develop an ear for it..and how i wish i had read ALL of Shakespeare's works. Most classics i could give a damn for, but Shakespeare was in a class all his own. Then i had the thought that the description of how it is to read Shakespeare is often how it is to understand something our brains don't at first comprehend...and a metaphor was born...like coming onto some scene or predicament that makes us stop, in dumbfounded silence, and we struggle to make sense of it. Then i thought how that would make a good scene, esp using the Shakespeare reference. And this is what came out in the freewriting. (Surprisingly, in 2nd Person, which I never write in, so that made me think maybe i need to write something that way)...



It was like reading Shakespeare: at first, you think it's a foreign language, for which you have no understanding, and then you recognize that it's English, just well-wrought. And then you develop an ear for its cadence, a clarity for its depth and humor, and finally, you wish you had read all his works, years ago, for they may have helped you avoid the current predicament in which you find yourself.

Your phone rings and the cat shoots straight into the air, landing wide-eyed on the mottled carpet. It wasn't that your cat was jittery, but she was sleeping on top of your cell phone. Usually, it was set on vibrate. And she knew that, and liked it when it rang. It sends her into paroxysms of writhing. But you had changed it to ring because you were in the other room, frying baloney for a sandwich. You wanted to be able to hear it, but couldn't carry it around. You had on your underwear and there were no pockets. And you wanted to remain in your underwear for a just a little longer.

But now.
Now there was this.
This confusing, shocking, Shakespearian tragedy on the floor in front of you.
And the niggling question at the back of your mind is, Since there is only one window, not much bigger than a porthole, and only one door, off the kitchen, where you were, which leads down the stairs from this attic abode of yours, how did this little surprise get past you and onto your bedroom floor?

Reading Shakespeare