I waited anxiously for the trade paperback of Solitaire to come out—I just finished reading it yesterday.
I work in the corporate world, for a company that has been doing a goodly amount of layoffs. I so love that Jackal's struggle with the ideas of personal identity vs. corporate identity are as much a part of this story as mystery and plot.
The resolution she finds at the story's end was deliciously layered. Hopeful. It made me cry on public transit. So, so, good.
Please write more novels. Please. Please. :)
-naomi
Wow, public transit
tears! I do the happy dance. Nicola and I both have a fantasy of seeing
a stranger in a public place reading one of our books, and the notion
of seeing someone crying over one just makes me want to give you a big
hug. Thank you for such a gift.
Layoffs are hard, hard. The company I last worked for did its first major layoff less than three months after I was hired, and it was an unhappy, ill-planned process that taught me a great deal about things not to do in a similar situation. I hope your company is handling it better. There's never a way to make these things good news, but there are ways to deliver bad news that leave people with some measure of dignity and hope.
You may have read in an earlier pint that I'm actually cooking two novels at the moment, although not with equal focus. The Kansas book is in active preparation, and the mountain book is simmering. I woke up at 3:00 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so ended up in my office at 4:15 AM with a cup of tea and a cat sleeping over the heater, pondering the psychology of guilt (me, not the cat) and writing scenes of hamburgers in a diner and a serious two-in-the-morning argument (ditto). Got a lot of work done, and oh, the mixed feelings about that....if my peak writing time turns out to be 4:15 AM, I will be really pissed. And as for what Nicola would make of it, well, I won't even go there... instead I will go join her for a beer and some lovely Indian takeaway. I hope your day will include some equally nice treat.
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#52
March 4, 2004
from:
anonymous
I had caught the title and cover art among the thousands of books at B&N and picked it up, liked it.
I liked your poetic sense. To avoid seeing the plot too quickly, I selected pages at random to read, as I often do. It's good for me.
Finding science to be stranger than fiction, I'm looking for something to make sense of it. Your book helps by confirming some of my thoughts on the world stage. That's a relief, like a doctor diagnosing my novel disease with a traditional name.
Such a relief to know
the book is actually in B&N. Another thing writers worry about.
I'm glad it struck you out of so many, that's another piece of good news.
Thanks for taking a chance with your money.
I am not sure anyone has ever before characterized me as helping to make sense of science, and if you'd been my lab partner in high school you would find it as funny as I do. I'd be interested to hear more about your thoughts, confirmed or otherwise.
I was intrigued by the idea of Solitaire as an experience unmoored from plot, and did a little random reading in it myself. I'm not sure what I would make of it as a new reader, except that the corporate culture aspect of the story is more prominent than I expected, and they really do drink a lot of beer.
And then I got lost in the story right around the point where Jackal has her first aftershock and winds up on the floor in Solitaire. I've been reading for the last hour and a half instead of working. It's been lovely to spend time with these people again. They are all special to me. It means a lot to me to find that they are still themselves, that their story still carries me the way it did through all those months and years of discovering it and wrestling it down onto paper. I know it's not the done thing to say so, but I love my book.
