Why I Read the Classics: The Count of Monte Cristo

Alexandre Dumas is one of my favorite authors. No one does adventurous camaraderie underscored by deep relationship like my man Alexandre. His books are thick, substantial, weighty, easy to fall into.

My favorite Dumas books are his Musketeer books. I have a strong identity factor with D'Artagnan, and I love the complexity of the Musketeers. I read the books at sixteen, and read them again and again. I always avoided The Count of Monte Cristo, because people said that was Dumas' best book, and I so wanted the Musketeer series to be number one.

Two years ago, I read Monte Cristo. Everyone else was right, yeah, I admit it.

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Originally published at Writer Tamago. You can comment here or there.

Dark Inspiration

I'd like to thank everyone who's been kind enough to offer up support during my road to medical discovery. I appreciate it.

I was hit with some serious inspiration last night as we were driving back from Bryon's uncle's visitation. About anything familial gets me spinning right now, which is why my writing seems to be frenetic at the moment. I'm not wild about this. In general, I am tortoise steady with my projects. To be this frenetic makes me feel a poser, a bit.

In the dark of night, sitting in the car, the wind whistling outside my window, it occurs to me that now is the time to write a darker book than Gossamer can be. I continue to amass my Norwegian research. I'm enjoying that, and all of this will make good gumbo (good ludefisk? Is there such a thing?) eventually.

But no. This time in my life is a time to work on melodrama, anger, regret, and revenge; and I need characters who are going through those things. I thought I would return to The Empty Horizon. With a new dimension from how I first envisioned it, this retelling would include magic.

And the floodgates opened. And characters started whispering in my ears. And I realized I had a lot of work to do, but it seemed to me that this was a good path. So, that's what I will do.

For the curious, more information about The Empty Horizon follows.

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Originally published at Writer Tamago. You can comment here or there.