Official Blurb for OracleAs the countdown begins, the body count rises.
With London gearing up to host the Olympics, the city doesn’t need a serial killer stalking the streets. They’ve got one anyway.
Leaving a trail of brutal and bizarre murders, the police are no closer to finding their latest murderer than Detective Inspector Kurt Lancer is in finding a solution for his daughter’s disability.
Thrust into the pressure cooker of a high profile case, the struggling single parent is wound tight as he tries to balance care of his own family with the safety of a growing population of potential next victims.
One of whom could be his own daughter.
Fingers point in every direction as the public relations nightmare grows, and Lancer’s only answer comes in the form of a single oak leaf left at each crime scene.
The first novel that leapt to mind was Andre Dubus III's "House of Sand and Fog," because it's about a well-educated immigrant from Iran forced to settle for a job as a convenience store clerk. But things don't end well for Genob Sarhang Amir Behrani. Another novel about an immigrant, Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Namesake," has a more hopeful outcome. The writing in both books is accessible (in Ms. Lahiri's case, it's often beautiful).
I looked online for lists of books recommended by librarians and teachers for so-called emergent adult readers. These books are also sometimes known as "high-low," meaning high-interest plots with lower levels of vocabulary. Many of the suggested books are short, which doesn't always make sense to me. One of the most demanding books I've ever read was "The Red Badge of Courage," whereas some of Stephen King's door-stoppers seem ideal for reading practice. Another short book that often appears on these lists is John Steinbeck's "The Pearl," which seemed like a tough slog to me when I read it in school, although I ended up loving it. Also, the idea of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" being a good book for emergent adult readers strikes me as ludicrous. Better one of Larry McMurtry's Western hulks, Pat Conroy's yarns or Herman Wouk's sagas.
February 6th - Monday: Characters on the couch: Have one of your characters answer the following questions (to make this work to your benefit, choose a character who is the hardest for you to write :) Max 250 words (Not including the questions—only the answers).
1. What is your biggest vulnerability? Do others know this or is it a secret?
2. What do people believe about you that is false?
3. What would your best friend say is your fatal flaw? Why?
4. What would the same friend say is your one redeeming quality? Why?
5. What do you want most? What will you do to get it?
February 8th - Wednesday - Dialogue Introduction: Have two characters introduce each other using only dialogue—no backstory, no internalization, just dialogue between the two. Max 250 words.
February 10th - Friday - Emotion Flash Fiction: Emotion is the engine of a story. Pick an emotion and in a flash fiction piece of 250 words MAKE us feel it! We want to connect with your character. This will be a challenge in 250 words.
But that is what I plan to do everyday this coming April, and add a word/sentence prompt into the mix, sort of furthering what I did last year during the A to Z Blogging challenge, which led to A to Z Stories of Life and Death. (The A to Z Blogging Challenge basically requires 26 posts in 26 days based on 26 letters of the alphabet, one post beginning with each letter.)So I'm asking you, my blogging audience, to challenge me with an interesting picture that you would like me to write on, and drop me story starters, each sentence/phrase beginning with a different letter (i.e. the first word of the starter must start with a different letter from A to Z). You can do this in the comments on this post. I'll keep sending out this call till I have 26 pictures and 26 prompts that really challenge me! Of course, when I post each prompt during April, I'll link to you and explain why I chose it. You may also mail me the pictures and story prompts at atozstories at gmail dot com. |
| Painting by Edgeworth Johnstone, titled, "Orchestra" |
"You must not use scissors to cut out hearts", she said, walking towards him in cold, steady steps, "you must use a surgeon's knife. You wear a surgeon's cap, so get rid of the scissors. Scissors are for paper, not flesh and blood."
They had met many years ago, him and her, both walking their dogs. They had taken the longer route home. Scissors and knives had little place in their lives, at the time. Those things lived in kitchen drawers, just like in every other home, useful, indispensable, harmless.
This was before they had figured out they shared dreams. A decade went by, the dogs that had introduced them died, and they did not get new ones. They pillowed their heads next to each other, less than an arms length apart, and watched birds as they slept, birds, and platypus, and sting rays and fish with beaks larger than their bodies. They saw the blood, flowing, spilled, congealed like flavored yoghurt in bowls, and neither spoke of it to the other.
They woke up, kissed, careful not to breathe on each other before they brushed their teeth, and went off to work, lunch boxes and train passes in hand, waving to each other, smiling innocuous smiles. They never spoke of the cranes that danced with their beaks open, sharp as knives, the cockerels dazzling them with their plumes, the buzzards that looked from high up above on pregnant mermaids, of tribal men dancing, their hands like pitchforks, glowing by the campfire.
Until that night when she found him at the kitchen table at 2 a.m, red scissors in hand, bending over blood. She leaned on him as he cut, and they spoke, in short words and long, shaky breaths, of their dreams. Now and then, they glanced out of the window, smiling at those shifting noises of the night that go unexplained.
Outside in the darkness, the night shivered, and grew afraid.
An innate gift and a certain amount of intelligence are important, but what really pays is ordinary experience. Bill Gates is successful largely because he had the good fortune to attend a school that gave him the opportunity to spend an enormous amount of time programming computers-more than 10,000 hours, in fact, before he ever started his own company. He was also born at a time when that experience was extremely rare, which set him apart. The Beatles had a musical gift, but what made them the Beatles was a random invitation to play in Hamburg, Germany, where they performed live as much as five hours a night, seven days a week. That early opportunity for practice made them shine. Talented? Absolutely. But they also simply put in more hours than anyone else.
The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call "deliberate practice." It's activity that's explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one's level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition.
For example: Simply hitting a bucket of balls is not deliberate practice, which is why most golfers don't get better. Hitting an eight-iron 300 times with a goal of leaving the ball within 20 feet of the pin 80 percent of the time, continually observing results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day - that's deliberate practice.
Consistency is crucial. As Ericsson notes, "Elite performers in many diverse domains have been found to practice, on the average, roughly the same amount every day, including weekends."
Evidence crosses a remarkable range of fields. In a study of 20-year-old violinists by Ericsson and colleagues, the best group (judged by conservatory teachers) averaged 10,000 hours of deliberate practice over their lives; the next-best averaged 7,500 hours; and the next, 5,000. It's the same story in surgery, insurance sales, and virtually every sport. More deliberate practice equals better performance. Tons of it equals great performance.
