Fat Cat: 2010, you have now been served!

I saved Robin Brande's new novel, Fat Cat, to read as my first book of the new year. Why? Because I knew she'd deliver. 2010, you have now been served! Only books as good as Robin's, please.

What is my standard then?

1) Books with perfect pacing.  I'm weary of the high-tension read----the ones where you skip pages because you HAVE TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS RIGHT NOW. But I don't want a book to poke along either, causing me to push against it, trying to hurry the plot along as if it were a wayward kitten. I want a smooth, engaging, well-told story that I can sink into and read with pleasure.

2) Dialog so natural and funny you forget you're reading and think you're listening. (Robin writes screenplays. It shows.) Cat's friendship with her best friend, Amanda, is particularly winning.

3) Kissing. If there is to be kissing, please consult with Robin first.  In Fat Cat alone, she gives us THREE kinds of romantic kissing, and not all are fluttering doves and slow-melting chocolate. Furthermore, she did not embarrass me. Triple literary green stamps for that.

4) Friendship? Yes. Romance? Yes. Lots of books have these elements. But an interesting scientific idea played out in a creative way? Not many authors can pull this off. Robin knows that science is about exploring, and adapting to circumstances; it's a creative endeavor that is often personal. In Fat Cat, the main character, Cat, is experimenting on herself---and that's precisely what made this story work for me. Cat embodies the scientific outlook---always observing, always tailoring her project to new data, always seeking to ask the right questions----without falling back on that worn stereotype of the robotic, unfeeling science nerd. Cat feels everything---and deeply---and therefore, so do we.

 5) I'm going to wrap up this post because really, don't you think my standard is getting rather intimidating? But I can't help it. I have to squeeze in that Fat Cat also has a realistic resolution, laugh aloud moments, AND I learned stuff.

Fat Cat on Goodreads

The Future is Better Than You Ever Imagined

Robin Brande just had a big book launch, and she wondered, as it approached, why she was feeling a bit numb. I assured her (with the infinite wisdom of my vast publishing experience) that she would have many moments, not just The One on The Day.

One of those "many moments" for me was discovering that the Library of Congress had a copy of my book. Well, of course it does; they're required to own copies of every copyrighted piece of material in the U.S. But the fun thing is that because of where I live, if you put my zip code and the title of my book into WorldCat's search box, the Library of Congress shows up first!

And guess what else is cool? The Library of Congress has a blog. Well, maybe they're required to do that, too, but I doubt it. And look at what their college interns got to do over the summer---rummage around in the archives. The English majors---gotta love 'em!--- dug into the manuscript collection, and found:

"a 1902 copyright deposit manuscript for a musical titled 'An Extra Session: A Chimerical Satire on the Feasible Possibilities Which Woman May Attain a Hundred Years Hence.' Written by William D. Hall, the musical is set in the White House in the year 2002, with a woman president and her all-female cabinet."

Haven't read it. Can't review it. I just might, though, go see a performance of it if Emma Thompson were playing the Secretary of Defense.

By the way, how does a "chimerical" satire differ from a regular kick-ass one? Is that anything like how a celebrity book* is not, and never will be, the same species as a real one**?

*disclaimer: link does not, in fact, take you to Madonna's book (not in a hundred billion years)

**link will, in fact, take you to Robin's future best-seller: Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature

The Writer-Hating Bus

Robin, over at her blog, reminded me about Anne Lamott's famous writer-hating bus.

You know, the one that runs you down before you have a chance to fix all those problems in your crappy rough draft. The one that leaves you with a tombstone that reads:

(Thought)
she was a writer

Not to mention the obit that says:

"A sad, wrinkled manuscript
was found decaying on her desk.
There were massive doses of
literary Botox in her system."

Oh, Robin, now I'm going to have nightmares about that bus. Does it go by my street? What color is it? Are there terrifying ads on the side of it, like:

BAD WRITER, BAD.
YOU SHOULD NOT BE TRYING TO CATCH THIS BUS. YOU SHOULD BE HOME, REVISING THAT CRAPPY DRAFT.

Do you think school did this to us? Made us not want to show our messy assignments as if they were the literary equivalent of tattered underwear?

Robin also mentions gold stars. Oh, man! I can see the shiny little things now. How they poke your tongue with their sharp points when you lick them! How they twinkle when placed in a wobbly row!

It was one of the hardest things I had to face in writing my first book. No one cared if I finished it or not. There was no Gold Star Giver. Nope, there wasn't even a box of "Good Job" stickers to console me for a less than stellar try.

What finally got me writing was the thought of another powerful bus. The End of the Line Bus. When I reached the end of the line, where did I want to be? What destination would make me content to give up my seat?

The only answer, for me, was to have written a book. Okay, yes, I wanted to have loved, and been loved, a lot. But besides that? Nope. Nothing else but a book with my name on it felt like a Big Gold Star destination to me.

At that moment, I knew I was toast. I didn't want to live the rest of my life knowing that I could have made myself happy, but didn't. That I could have given myself a Gold Star, but didn't.

P.S. Look both ways before you cross the street this week. I'm thinking of learning to drive a bus.