Chris McClelland's Blog
October 22, 2020
Moving Day, New Blog Address
This blog will be closing soon. I have begun blogging at my new blog site. The link is below. I hope you will make the move with me!
September 5, 2020
Blog #33, Sept. 5, FREE GIVEAWAY of In Love and War from 9-5 to 9-7-2020
August 30, 2020
Blog #32, August 30, 2020; FREE COPIES of UNDER OLD GLORY available
For the next three days, I will be offering my novella about two Mormon brothers in World War I forFREE! This will last from August 31 to Sept. 2. Simply go to the Under Old Glory cover picture below and click on it for a free download! It couldn’t be easier, it doesn’t cost anything, and, who knows, you might just find an interesting book/author out of it. Remember, theFREEoffer ends on Sept 2 at midnight.
August 28, 2020
Blog #31 New Short Fiction, Chris McClelland, Lord Byron, Romantic Poets
A new short story from my latest collection is now available for you to read for free under the Short Fiction tab above. Hope you enjoy it and please let me know what you think.
August 19, 2020
Blog #30, August 20, 2020; What are your favorite books and why? Do you prefer to read books with a more literary bent or ones with popular appeal? Would you rather be entertained or enlightened by what you read? Can a novel have both literary and popu
Hello, again. I don’t have a book review this time, but I’ve been thinking about a lot of things. I have written about one “literary� book, Snow Falling on Cedars, and one “popular� or more commercial book, Harlan Coben’s Run Away. Do you like novels with a literary bent or one with more popular appeal? My professors used to tell me the main purpose of books was to entertain or enlighten. What do you look for in a book? What do you look for in a novel, to be more entertained or does it have to have a “take away� that teaches you something? Perhaps a book like Run Away can entertain while teaching us something about the nature of being human? What is the nature of the relationship between parents and children? What could Simon in Run Away have done to protect his daughter from drug addiction? What are the keys to such questions as good parenting? What is good parenting?
What is entertaining in “literary� work? Is Snow Falling on Cedars a literary novel? Does it have to have awards, be critically acclaimed by the right people? Is a popular one simply one that is a best seller? Can a novel have both literary and popular appeal? Does a book have to be deeply moving to be literary? Does a book have to be deeply moving to be popular? What is the state of reading in the United States and globally? With the technological age, how has storytelling evolved? Can we find story in video games as well as books? Could a story within a video game be considered developed enough to compare with books?
Many questions can be raised here. I’ve gone into a lot more questions than I’ve first intended. What are your favorite books and why?
August 16, 2020
Blog #29, August 16: A Review of David Guterson’s Snow Falling On Cedars, Your thoughts on On Healing between warring nations? Can people from formerly warring countries heal? Does diplomacy work after a war is over?
Snow Falling on Cedars, taking place in a Pacific Northwest fishing village in the 1950s, is essentially a murder mystery with heavy race relation undertones. A Japanese American man is accused of a bloody murder, and the story is told through the point of view of the local newspaper editor who had a love relationship with the accused’s Japanese American wife before the war. It is gripping, well-told, heavily and richly imagistic. It is up to the newsman to save the fisherman, his former lover’s husband, from wrongful prosecution. It serves as an interesting study of how people adjust once a war is over.
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August 14, 2020
C Michael Curtis Interview
In celebration of his recent retirement, the following is an interview I did with Atlantic Monthly fiction editor, C. Michael Curtis
C Michael Curtis Interview
Chris McClelland: The Atlantic has been a bastion of fine fiction since forever, Twain, Crane, Norris, Hemingway, etc. When you first started editing in 1963, what was your vision for the fiction you published? Besides excellence of the work, what were other factors? How has that vision changed or grown over the years?
Michael Curtis: Like any editor of serious magazine fiction I look for distinctive use of language, memorable characters, a sense of place, and moral vision to name just a few of the identifiable virtues that make a story appealing. I also prefer the dynamic to the static, in story-telling, and usually look for a change of some sort, either in the circumstance of a major character, or in the reader’s understanding of what has transpired. Beyond that, my response is a mystery: some stories give me chills, a sense of completeness, a narrative of such originality and internal logic that I can’t escape a conviction that it deserves to be in print. Some don’t. Whether my “vision� has grown over the years remains to be seen. I started with what I think were good instincts, and, over the years, I’ve learned more and more about how fiction works—and doesn’t work, which stylistic approaches seem merely self-congratulatory, which are descriptive rather than analytical, which are self-defeating because they are circular or merely mundane.
Bear in mind that I’ve been reading fiction for a magazine that once published 24 or so stories a year, then 10 per year, then six or seven, and now as few as two. The number of stories submitted each year (once 12,000, now a trickle of some 6,000) obviously far exceeds our available space for fiction, and more than 100 of those are intelligently written and worth serious consideration for publication. Somewhere. So choosing what to publish, among worthy prospects, has become a process more arbitrary than we’d like.
Chris McClelland: The method of fiction offerings at The Atlantic has undergone some major changes in recent years, first with the introduction of the Summer Fiction Issue, then with its discontinuance. What is the state of fiction at The Atlantic today? Are there still opportunities for short fiction to be published in The Atlantic? Are there future plans to revive the fiction issue or provide readers with other sources of great Atlantic fiction?
Michael Curtis: The situation at the moment, where fiction is concerned: we are still reading fiction and hope to have room for stories in future issues. We might even revive the Fiction Issues, although that will depend upon economic matters over which I have no control. Importantly, the editors at The Atlantic have high regard for fiction as part of the editorial mix and hope better days are around the corner. In the meantime, all submissions are read, and we are building a small inventory with those days in prospect.
Chris McClelland: When you evaluate a piece of fiction, what makes it a rounded story, as opposed to a mere anecdote or sketch? How does character development play into this? Narrative voice?
Michael Curtis: We look for depth and complexity in Atlantic fiction. What we call a sketch or anecdote have neither, interesting though they may be.
Chris McClelland: You have experience teaching Ethics on the university level. How does this inform the kind of stories you tend to gravitate towards as an editor? Do questions of ethics or morality raised in a story innately make it more compelling?
Michael Curtis: I prefer stories that have moral weight, about characters faced with choices that test or refine their deepest convictions. Since questions of this sort occupy many of our waking hours, readers, I believe, tend to puzzle over such stories, and return to them.
Chris McClelland: I’ve once heard it said that a story needs an epiphany or character transformation of some kind. Do you agree? If not an epiphany, perhaps some kind of turning point?
Michael Curtis: Many stories work towards an “epiphany� or “transformation,� and that seems to me a sensible idea, since one of the things we find interesting about other people is the strength or flexibility of their convictions, and what leads to change. Whether a story “needs� such a thing is another matter. What a story “needs”� to do is capture our attention, and it can do that in several ways. Sometimes a close and sustaining glimpse of characters locked in their milieu is rewarding, whether or not they find a way out. And so on.
Chris McClelland: Much of what makes the best stories seems to be a kind of ineffable magic that works through the words and the voice. As an editor, what helps you to identify that magic? When editing such a story, how do you approach the magic without altering the magical quality?
Michael Curtis: Perhaps “ineffable magic� is a good way to describe the quality that makes a story seize your attention and then live in memory. As editor I look for it in every story I read, and then try to preserve it in every story I edit. Part of that has to do with preserving whatever is distinctive in the voices of the story, and in the writer’s diction. I edit for the occasional clumsiness that one finds in most skilled writers� work, for technical or descriptive error, unintended inconsistencies, and, very rarely, harmonic lapse. I try hard to honor what I take to be the writer’s intentions and mode of expression.
Chris McClelland: How does the element of compassion figure into your evaluation of a manuscript? Must a story elicit compassion of some kind in order to approach excellence?
Michael Curtis: Again, a story “must� do little more than be interesting and artful. I would call a story “artful� if it does one or more of a number of things: uses dialogue that captures a special vernacular, or manages to be oblique or opaque in unexpected ways; makes use of images with staying power or the capacity to induce an emotional response; makes use of juxtaposition both in language and event; follows a path of realism or suggests an alternative reality with symbolic or figurative depth; makes use of psychological complexity in exploring lives or representations that invite curiosity or wonder on the part of the reader; and no doubt other things. If it is compassionate, all the better. I admire “compassionate� stories, if they survive scrutiny on other grounds, but, some stories [“Hills Like White Elephants,� “Haircut,”for example] are notable for the harshness of their revelations. Some stories work best at exposing inadvertent cruelty, hopes unmet, virtue unrewarded. I wouldn’t reject such stories because they fail on the “good news� front.
August 8, 2020
Blog 28, August 8, 2020; Book Review: Harlan Coben’s Run Away
This blog is going to start a new series of book reviews intended to give back to the writing community.I am going to start by reviewing a suspense-thriller book by Harlan Coben.My wife introduced me to his books, which I really enjoyand I’ve been enjoying the more popular novels by Coben and Mary Higgins Clark and John Grisham for a while now.I still love character-driven stories, fine attention to detail, imagery and language, but as I get older, more and more I’m looking for story, compelling and clearly told.As a result, I give myself latitude to get more indulgent with idiom and over-used language or tropes in general, as long as it’s a good, clear read that keeps thepages turning. Depends on my mood.
In this series I will alternate between the more popular authors and the more character-driven “literary� ones. One of my friends said for a book to be literary it has to be boring. As a writer, which he is and I am, I can’t see how anyone would intentionally want to write a boring book. The next novel I review will be Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson, one of my favorites, a story as compelling as it is finely written. Not boring at all. Now, to today’s review of Run Away, by Harlan Coben:
RUN AWAY concerns a young woman, Paige, who has run away from home and the father who wants to find her. True to his super-contemporary style, he has people videotaping a viral video of the father trying to save the girl from a drug addict, with the unexpected consequence of Simon, the father, becoming an instant pariah on YouTube. You root for Simon, even though he is a wealthy Wall Street banker, because of the very real pain he endures at the loss of his daughter. As the story progresses, we follow Simon three months later, but suddenly, the narrative slams into a wall. It’s as if Coben decides to write a whole different book.
The chapters that focus on Simon and his dilemmas are engaging and well written, but when we start to get to minor characters, the characters that he attempts to deepen, like Ash, end up shallow because the “humanizing� factors just don’t equate with the character’s actions, and Ash’s actions tell a lot about him. He is a hit man for hire. A brutal murderer. No amount of sincerity that falls flat or “compassion� from the cold-blooded killer can change that.
Meanwhile, as Simon and his wife look for the daughter, Paige, the stakes get raised and the scenes become more intense. This is Coben’s greatest strength as a writer: he takes likable characters and puts them in intense situations of significant moral consequence. As he continues his search, Simon becomes more and more sympathetic, deeper, believable. The story becomes more and more moving emotionally as it progresses, and the plot begins to pace more quickly. At this point, the book becomes a real page turner. You start really worrying about Paige. As a reader, you’re invested. There are plenty of minor and major plot twists to keep you guessing, all the way up to the last page. A solid thriller whose only weakness is that it’s trying to do just a little too much with the minor characters.
More info on where to purchase RUN AWAY :
July 3, 2020
Blog #27: July 3, Comments and Suggestions
I have had moderate success in selling hard copies of the new book, SWIMMING AMONG THE OLYMPIANS, and am not going to be able to give away any more copies for a while, of that book or my other two. I wish Amazon would let me do that, because my main goal here has always been to gain readers and get reader feedback. Sales are nice, but not the main thing with me. So if you are reading this and have read one of my books, but have not yet commented, either on Amazon, ŷ, or on this website in the comments section, please do. One of the greatest rewards of writing is finding out how your writing affects people. Even constructive criticism is welcome, provided you are specific and accurate about your suggestions.
Until next time,
Chris
June 15, 2020
Blog 26, FREE SWIMMING STORY COLLECTION to be released on June 16
SWIMMING AMONG THE OLYMPIANS is a true life memoir with a collection of stories that will be available for FREE on June 16. Other stories include a swashbuckling long sea story, a continuation of the novella, UNDER OLD GLORY, and many other interesting and exciting stories from the award-winning writer, Chris McClelland.
