Purple Passages

I am a (former) author, as some of you know!  If you've read any of my stories, you know that there were few—or actually no—purple passages in them.  Actually, I can remember a few; but they weren't that purple, really.

But I have mostly stopped writing, but I'm reading.  But when I see the word 'steamy' in the description of a story, I'm beginning to cringe.  Honestly, I've been turned off sex for more than a year, and as much as my active sex life has evaporated,  (which can be explained by a medical treatment I'm getting) my interest in reading sexy passages in fiction has also gone away. 

This is not a disaster, except that most writers feel obliged to have some degree of physical sex in the writing, which I mostly skip over.  I get the very strong impression that authors write this stuff reluctantly.  Furthermore, I think they crib these 'juicy bits' from each other, so much so that they all seem to look the same.  But don't worry; I'm not going to indulge in forensic reading.  As far as I'm concerned, the sex in WLW fiction is most definitely not the core of these stories, it is the emotional aspect of the sexual encounters when they happen. 

There is plenty to write about on this subject, namely the interplay between sex and emotion, and to what extent graphic sex interplays with it.  I don't think I'm the one to write about it.  But I ļike to write stories set in the nineties, where the US was just beginning to emerge from the old closeted world, and women and girls were being more courageous about expressing 'forbidden' love.  It certainly was a lot more romantic than it is today!

But the climax in many lesbian relationships was often punctuated with a physical encounter, a big emotional event, and often one or both of the girls were new to it, and that was part of what propelled them through into a different stage of their relationship.  Those are the stories I like best, and they're difficult to dig up. 

Well, regards to all of you, and here's hoping our semi quincentennial celebrations are satisfying, despite a green reflecting pool. 

Kay

A Memory I Can't Place

I have a memory of a dying person, writing to a friend, or a lover, saying that soon they would be together, and then they would have a good time.  But it never happens.

Where did I read this?  When did I read this?  It seems like a well- known situation that everyone knew ...

I give up. 

Kay

P.S.  I suddenly recalled where I heard those words!

It is from James Taylor's  'You can close your eyes.'  The second verse goes:

Won't be long before it's another day

We're gonna have a good time, 

No one's gonna take that time away from you

You can stay as long as you like

 

I think I confused the order of the words. 

An Episode of the Helen story that had been forgotten by me!

Here is the link, and I'll explain below:

Chopsticks

This is a 'page' on the Blog.  It is set at the time Helen had had her most recent, and most invasive, brain surgery, and had returned home with Maryssa, to the Primrose house (Maryssa's family home, from where they would move to the new, rented home near where Lalitha's family, and the instrument factory were situated).

I was just reading this page this morning, and I was startled at how well I had been writing at that time.  Many of the characters are illuminated beautifully by this episode, but I'm a little nervous about slicing it into one of the other stories, for fear of having to do some lengthy inspections, to avoid duplication, etc.  The painfully slow steps Helen took to become a functional adult again have been glossed over in Concerto.  This episode also highlights how Erin struggled with Helen's nemory loss.

A Scene from "On the Run!"

This weekend I ran out of stuff to read, so I re-read Helen On the Run, and I concluded that it must be awfully confusing, because there were so many plot lines being interwoven!

Firstly, Helen is trying to avoid being caught by the FBI, because she had picked up her two adopted daughters, and made a run for it. 

Secondly, she met up with a mother and daughter couple, soon after she had left home to go into hiding, and they wanted to come along with Helen and the little girls!  The daughter is Erin, who figures in all future stories. 

Thirdly, Helen is pregnant with a baby.  The baby's father is Geoffrey Gibson, a musician, and a recurring character.  Geoffrey keeps pestering Helen to marry him, but of course she,  being a lesbian, isn't going to. 

Fourthly, while in hiding, Helen disguises herself as a man, and takes up a job as a construction worker.  One of her co-workers—a woman—has a daughter in high school.  Helen is invited to their home, and the daughter falls in love with Helen.

Fifthly, Helen and company have to go underground again, because one of their party,  Michelle, is caught by the FBI.  They wind up in the vicinity of St. Paul, and Helen and Erin's mother get jobs at a private boarding school. 

Finally, Helen begins to show, and she's taken to an obstetrician, where Helen is declared to be high-risk.

There are at least four more threads, having to do with Helen's work at the school, and the teachers, and the principal, and the music in the school chapel on the weekends.  I must have been mad when I wrote the story, but it seemed very plausible to me at the time!

Well.  I had to get that off my chest. 

Kay.

Lied?

People find it challenging to use the verb 'To lie' correctly.  It's super useful.  But if you make mistakes using it, your reader would know something was wrong, but would probably at a loss as to how to fix it.  (A little smile here, just to show that my heart lies in the right place!)

I want to lie down.

I lay down, or even I laid down.

I will have lain down.

I would have laid down, if not for ...

You know, looking back on these, I'm not sure they're all grammatically correct!  But saying "Lied down" is wrong. 

Louisa May Alcott

Just came across a post about this woman, the author Louisa May Alcott, and realized that I haven't posted about her in a long while!

I was given a book by Alcott when I was in grade school, soon after I had seen Little Women, the movie.  I'm not seeing (in IMDb) the exact version of the story I remember seeing, so I'm wondering whether I imagined the movie completely.   I imagine Jo March as a little like Helen Nordstrom, though the two characters are so different from each other. 

In the mini biography of LMA that was posted, it was emphasized that she was quite uninterested in writing a moralistic story aimed at women.  (Nevertheless, she was persuaded to write a story about girls, and she did.)

Then I was given the sequels Good Wives and Little Men, and what attracted me to them—and repulsed me at the same time—was how moralistic in tone they both were, the last one most of all.  It was so—moralistic, that is— to the point of being emotionally manipulative.  And now, not so many years later, I find that I have been influenced by these three stories so much, that sometimes I read a passage I've written, and think: jeeze, this reads just like Alcott on a really bad day.  And many passages have that dreadful earnestness that makes one cringe, but really, I don't mind that.  Earnest: OK.  Moralistic: Yuck.

Aside: One thing I really miss in our current federal government, is earnestness.  There are just a few people worth listening to: Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  This is a huge contrast with Obama and his administration.  And of course, the queen of earnestness: Michelle Obama.  By leaving anybody out, I don't mean to imply that they're cynical, e.g. Kamala Harris, or Hilary Clinton.

To get back to influences, another big influence on me is L. M. Montgomery, the author of the Anne of Green Gables stories, which I hadn't read until I had finished most of the Helen stories.  Those (Anne of Green Gables) stories are significantly more whimsical than the Jo March stories, so their influence is a little less—what's the word?  Strong?  Brutal?  Obvious?  Direct?—than that of the Alcott stories.  Contrasting the two authors would be an interesting exercise, but I'm not sure it would get one anywhere, except for being an exercise in delicacy of characterization.  Montgomery was Canadian, while Alcott was a Yankee, but I'm reluctant to base their contrasts on their nationalities.  In any case, the folks of the Canadian maritime provinces of those times can't have been very different from their American cousins, though they would have no doubt insisted that they were (quite different).

In my own writing, the interesting characters really made their appearance later on in the story: Nadia Vander Wert, Lalitha, Sita, Marsha, Sophie, Marissa, Olive Gibson, Polly and Evelyn Woodford, and Isolde Wells.

Anyway, if anyone accuses me of having copied the style of Alcott, or even Montgomery, I would humbly accept that there could be quite a lot of truth to the accusation. 

Kay Hemlock Brown

Telomerase Discovered on Christmas of 1984

I'm so excited!

I had remembered reading somewhere that there were lots of non-functioning nucleotides (is that the correct term?) at the ends of DNA strands, and wrote a sort of minor story line in The Galactic Voyager based on that observation.  Today, what should I see but that a graduate student, Carol Greider, discovered these 'caps' at the ends of DNA strands.  In addition, she discovered the enzyme that causes these caps to be attached: Telomerase!  I know very little biology, but the little I know has found its way into one of my stories!

Apparently these caps are instrumental in delaying aging, the natural process where a person's DNA frays at the edges, and causes imperfections in new cells.  The DNA caps try to keep the DNA intact.  But now, it's reported that these caps seem to keep certain cancer cells protected, too, which we definitely do not want.

Kay