Reading Practically Everyone in Dedham

The weekend of the New England Crimebake in Dedham, MA, a conference for crime writers (and readers). Good this year with Charlaine Harris, Dennis Lehane, Catherine Hall Page, Julia Spencer-Fleming and other great New England Crime Writers.  And editors and agents, too.  Such fun to hang out at the bar and talk writing, shoes, robot vacuum cleaners, writing, New York, the Yankees, the Red Sox, various presses, writing, and well, yanno. . . . 


I pitched my latest almost complete oeuvre, which I had to go back and fix after the main character killed the bad guy.  Man, that changes everything.   


I realized that every manuscript I've ever written has a journey as big part of the story. The current novel is a road trip, racing up and down the Eastern seaboard and then off to Chicago and finally Reno and the Black Rock Dessert.  In Festival Madness, it as the trip to Burning Man.  In Promiscuous Mode, the character traveled to Wisconsin.  In World of Mirrors, the trip was to East Germany.  In the Shadow Warriors the characters congregated at a German university after bogeying through Singapore and Hong Kong.  

I just returned from San Francisco.  Who said every novel is either a journey or a quest?  Or both.  Think of On the Road.  Think of Canterbury Tales. 


An editor said the most boring beginning is to find the character setting out on a journey.  I dunno.  Sounds good to me. 


Marcel went to Balbec and to Venice.  And to visit Aunt Leonie.  I think Proust was a homebody, especially in his later years.  Finally he locked himself into his lonely room and wrote.   That is what I need to do to finish this book.  Why does it take so long? 


The Other Odette

Proust would approve

I am so close to the end of the Guermantes book, that I can almost taste it, smell it, definitely feel it. This week for sure I will finish. So long a slog. I could have walked across Spain in the time it has taken to read it. In the summer. Taking two seasons.

Speaking of smelled it, here is the story of a blogger who lost and regained her sense of smell. And the first smell that came back was . . . . but I'll let her tell her Proustian tale of smell regained. Thanks to an alert reader for the link

http://mollysmadeleine.blogspot.com/2005/12/unexpected-scent-of-chocolate.html

Thanks to one of my readers for the alert.

We were in Nantucket this week, an island I have visited since my youngest was in diapers. The island has changed and not changed, but the sunlight, the fog, the sweet smell of privet will always remind me where I am. The ferry coming back encountered "ocean swells," but not rough enough for a "Nantucket sleight ride." Google this phrase. It is Melvillian.

It's not at all like Balbec, but there are girls on bicycles and girls walking and money in the air and old boarding houses and restaurants and even artists who have been there since God was a boy. I think that in the old days, Proust would have felt at home there. No grand hotels, but a few classy resorts. Not a European experience, and not even an American experience, but the quintessential New England experience.

The other Odette