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Review: Wendy, Darling by A. C. Wise

I hadn’t heard of A. C. Wise before a few months ago, when I read her story, “The Amazing Exploding Women of the Early Twentieth Century” in issue 122 of Apex Magazine. I loved it and started following her on Twitter, where I found out she would soon be releasing her first novel. I preordered it on a whim and I’m so glad I did.

Wendy, Darling brings us back into the life of Wendy, from J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, just has Peter has returned many years later to steal away her daughter, Jane. From there, the novel follows three lines: Wendy searching for her daughter in 1931; Jane, trapped in a darker Neverland with an ominous Peter Pan; and Wendy in 1917-1920, trapped in an institution by John and Michael, after refusing to give up her belief in the flying boy and his magic island.

The novel is well-paced and immediately gripping, but the thing I applaud the most is how Wise has made Barrie’s characters her own. She managed it beautifully, making Wendy, Peter, and the rest familiar, yet darkly different. Peter is both the boy we remember, and something shadowy and sharp-toothed, with danger lurking just behind his glinting eyes. And anyone who wanted to believe in fairytales as a child (or adult), whose imagination has ever run wholly wild, will empathize with this Wendy, unable to let Neverland go, even at the cost of hospitalization and a strained relationship with her brothers. The soft Wendy we knew becomes fierce and motherly, but in a real and raw way, not the playful pretend of her childhood. There a few other familiar characters prancing through the pages of Wendy, Darling (and some new ones to fall in love with), but I’ll leave you to discover them, yourself.

Not only is this new Neverland cast in sinister shadow and dark magic in a way that draws the reader in and brings them into its mythology and magic, but Wise also skillfully brings the reader into the adult lives and relationships back in London in a way that is heartfelt, deep and true. I’m not much of a crier, but a few of the scenes between Wendy and Michael brought me to the edge of tears.

If you’re hoping for a wonderful fantasy in A. C. Wise’s Wendy, Darling you’ll get it. You’ll also get a touch of horror and a bit of romance. It’s a story of siblings, a mother-daughter tale, and also a retelling of the dark side of fairy tales, of the terrible things that can happen when we let childhood go…or the things that happen when we don’t. This book has something for everyone who ever believed in magic, in monsters in the closet, or anyone who has longed for love and childhood lost.

Find Wendy, Darling in paperback, eBook or audiobook here.

Map Days

There are some days you trudge through your writing and each word on the page takes effort and consideration.

There are the good days where you get in the spirit, and the writing flows freely enough to keep the fingers typing or the ink flowing.

And then there are map days. Map days are when the story unfolds before you like a map, and you’ve got to jot down the directions as quickly as possible before the paper blows away.  These are the days where the ideas come so fast you have to go from actually writing the story to just sketching the quick details of each scene before they fade away.

For me, it’s like watching a movie in my head, and I’ve only got a few seconds (and words) to describe each scene. These are my favorite days because, when they happen, they usually unfold the rest of the story for me, so even if I don’t finish it that day, all the directions are already laid out, like a paint-by-number just waiting to be filled in.

Today was a map day for me.  The kids were away at the grandparents, and my husband was chugging away downstairs on his own work.  I’d done the dishes, folded some laundry, worked a little on my day job, and had just finished Neil Gaiman’s last Masterclass video, and thus had no excuses keeping me from writing.  So, I grabbed the story I’d been working on the night before and told myself I had an hour.

It was hard at first.  It’s always hard to start writing, at least for me.  Inspiration always seems to come when I’m as far as possible from being able to pick up a pen. When I sit down to write, it seems like a chore at first and I’m often talking myself into starting (even though deep down it’s something I __want__ to do).  By the end, it’s usually something I’m glad I took the time to do.

I chugged out a few paragraphs. I crossed out a few lines. I did it again. Crossed out an entire paragraph.  Then, suddenly I was on page two, and then on page three, and then my hour was nearly up, and the map was before me and I was scribbling the rest of the story on sticky notes as fast as it came to me, which was pretty damn fast. I didn’t have time to write the whole first draft, but the whole story is there, just waiting for the minor details.

Days like this are why I keep writing.  Days like this are __magic__.  Writing is the only thing that makes me feel this way.  Writing is the only craft I’ve ever done that gives me a feeling of __foresight__.  I painted and drew for years, but I was never able to ENVISION finished paintings the way I can sometimes envision stories. It really does feel like a muse is guiding me, like I’m pulling something from the other side of a veil.

I never know when my map days are going to come.  With some stories they don’t, and with some they come when I least expect it. (I barely liked this story when I started it yesterday, today I love it).

I hope every writer or artists reading this has some map days of their own.

Review: Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay

Paul Tremblay’s Survivor Song is technically horror, and if you go in expecting as much, you might be disappointed.  To me, the novel was a dramatic story of friendship and persverance that happened to have a horrific setting. As always, with Tremblay, the story was also much more literary than the average horror novel.

The book begins in Massachusetts as a violent and fast-acting strain of rabies is starting to spread through the human and animal population. Our main character, Natalie (“Nats” for short), eight months pregnant, loses her husband very suddenly to an attack by an infected man and is bitten herself during the altercation. She reaches out to her best friend, pediatrician Ramola “Rams” Sherman, to help her get medical attention. From there, the story traces the two in the short few hours that follow.

Survivor Song was much more down to earth and less supernatural than the previous Tremblay books I’ve read (Disappearance at Devil’s Rock and Head Full of Ghosts). Because of this and, perhaps, because I also found it more drama than horror, the story seemed slow to start, other than the nerve-wracking prelude. However, even with the slow beginning, the bond we have with Nats and Rams makes it worth it by the very end.

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

The best part of Survivor Song, for me, was actually the appearance of two ‘randos,’ Josh and Luis, whom Tremblay fans may recognize from Disappearance at Devils Rock. They sweep in to assist the women about two-thirds of the way in and take the reader on a little detour of their own, before departing from the story. If you haven’t, I highly recommend reading Disappearance before this book to better understand that side journey.

Unfortunately, this is also why Survivor doesn’t rate as highly for me. I found myself more engaged with these familiar side characters than I was to Nats and Rams by the same point in the story.  That said, the climax of Survivor, though expected, is still brutal, touching and well-told in a way that makes the climb to get there worth it.

Out of the three Tremblay novels I’ve read thus far, Survivor Song may rank third, but a novel that can keep you engaged–even when the eventual ending is inevitable from the beginning of chapter one–is worth the read.

 

Man, this is gonna take some work.

It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these. A website that is.

Isn’t that the damned thing about doing anything these days? If I want to be a successful writer, not only do I have to write stories and then edit those stories (I really hate that part) and then send out those stories, but I’ve also got to do this kind of stuff. Write about writing. Write about my life. I’m probably going to have to start an Instagram at some point. Boo.

Well, here’s the first post. Hopefully, it won’t be the last. Please excuse the mess while I’m figuring out how I want this thing to look.

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