A local news story this week just broke my heart. A young woman was sleeping in her bed, when her next door neighbor–with whom she shared a wall–inexplicably left his car running all night long.
She died.
How awful. A 23 year old woman, recently graduated from college, juststarted her first post-college job–which isn’t easy to find these days–goes to sleep one night and that’s it. She never wakes up.
She probably didn’t think much about death. Young people don’t–usually. As you get older, this changes. I don’t think about death every day–thank God–but I do thank God every day for every day I am given. Because I have seen so many times that death can come along and wipe you out like that.
My sincere condolences to the family of Rebecca Hawk. They want people to buy carbon monoxide detectors instead of sending flowers. Will do, and thank you.
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I’m finished with the first draft of my Snow White story, and I’m really plowing through edits. I took the last couple of days off, but I had a very productive weekend. I also have been reading books, which I will review here. Among them is Jennifer Estep’s Touch of Frost, which I think is her best book yet.
I’ve kind of had my head down all summer, doing almost nothing but writing when I’m on the computer. And I guess I ended up taking an unplanned blog hiatus. Thanks for sticking with me.
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You tell me–what do you think is the next big thing in fantasy fiction? The chatter is that paranormal romance is out, but steampunk fantasy is in. I have not heard of as many vampire fantasies as I once did, and zombies seem to have been a short-lived craze. I’m currently reading Eon, which is a secondary world fantasy that seems to be patterned after medieval China. Are nonwestern cultures in? I’d love to see a fantasy based in India, or a secondary world India. I’d also love to see a culture I know nothing about.
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I have to admit–I miss running Fantasy Debut/Debuts & Reviews. This blog has been kind of directionless since I stopped my debut fixation. Anyone got any ideas on things I can cover in this blog? I’m a bit stumped. I want it to be fiction-oriented, but I need a focus. Ideas welcome.
That’s terrible.
A few years ago I went to visit a friend of mine for a few hours and the place smelled like car exhaust the whole time. We couldn’t figure out why. Well, I got a call from her right after I left. Turns out the source was her adjoining neighbor, who had committed suicide in his garage via car exhaust. I was furious–judging from how much smell was in my friend’s house, he very easily could have taken her with him. She ended up lucky: she was OK, her girlfriend was OK, her pets were OK, the suicide victim’s pet was OK, even. And it was also a lucky thing that it stank so badly with other gases that it was noticed, because CO by itself wouldn’t have stunk.
I really hope they find something to send this woman’s neighbor to jail for.
Oh, man. Lesson for us all: if you ever smell unusual car exhaust, call 911.
That’s really rough. I wonder if the neighbor knew he’d left his car running. That’s be so awful for him if he didn’t even realize it was on, and here it accidentally killed someone.
You asked what we think the next big thing in Fantasy will be: I’ve been saying for a couple years now that I think it’ll be historic fantasy from non-western culture perspective. There’s such a hole in the market right now. Unfortunately, I don’t have the passion or patience to write such a book myself, but if someone else here wants to, I’d love to read it. (Hint, hint.)
Are those hints for little ole me? The next novel I’m working on is historical, but not nonwestern. I don’t think I could unless I actually lived in a place like India for a while, to absorb the culture and history.
The story I’m working on is a time travel historical that takes place in the Southeast, mostly Georgia and Florida.
Actually, they were just general hinting. 🙂 I know what you mean about actually having to live overseas and immerse yourself in the culture to do that sort of story justice. It’s why I haven’t tackled the subject myself. And I’m looking forward to your time-travel story. I’ve really enjoyed the snippets that you’ve posted.