A very early, perhaps the first short story of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Spalatro: From the notes of Fra Giacomo" by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1843, 36 pages)

I would like to invite everyone to participate in Irish Short Stories Month- March 1 to March 31

"Carmilla, as soon as you leave, I am the host"
Vorlidia

"Irish Short Story Month will
me mostly about my Daddy or I
will walk out"
Carmilla-

Last year I participated in the Venice in February Event 2012 hosted by  Snow Feathers and Dolce Bellezza through reading Henry James"s great short story set in Venice, "The Pupil".  I was glad to see they are once again hosting Venice in February for  2013.  Other works I have read set in Venice included two classics, Death in Venice by Thomas Mann and The Aspern Papers by Henry James.  Last week I posted on a very well done short story set in Venice by Edith Wharton, "A Venetian Night's Entertainment"     The story shows that Venice was seen by many as a city of exotic pleasures, decadent in the extreme.  I think some might see deeply buried in this anti-Catholicism.    If you need reading ideas you will find them on the blogs of the hosts for Venice in February 2013.

Today quite by luck while reading what I think maybe the first published work by the great Irish writer of  Gothic works, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814 to 1873-there is background data on him in my prior posts on his work), I was delighted to see the story was set in Venice with the famous carnival playing a central part in the plot line.   

The story is narrated as if someone were telling a third party a story which he acknowledges is so fabulous and strange that it will strain credibility.  It is the story of  Spalatro, who murdered over 200 people during his career as a highway robber.  (The highway robber, the highwayman, is often treated as a glamour figure in the literature of the period.)  He does not start out to be a robber and a killer.  He is driven mad by two things.   One is a mad monk who is not what he seems but a spectral entity sent by Satan to tempt him.  Monks are seen as potentially sinister figures in much Gothic literature and the certainly are treated in this fashion here.   The man barely escapes being not murdered by the monk but but being educed to cut his own throat thus insuring his damnation as a suicide under the prevailing views of the culture.  

There are a lot of strange encounters in this story and the prose is very exquisite  some would call it over so but I would not.    The real driving force behind this story is the mysterious city of Venice.  Venice was a place where a good Irish lad (forget about any Irish women going there alone on a grand tour as that did not happen at all) could do thinks he did not do at home and no one will be the wiser, especially when he is masked during Carnival.   There is a really good set piece where he chases a man he sees trying to kill a beautiful woman, the man is wearing a mask and when he falls off it is the mad monk but now he sees he is not actually human.   

As Carnival ends, the man is addicted to the pleasures of Venice.   So much so that he begins the life of a highway robber to support himself.   The story ends with the man executed by the legal authorities of Venice.

This is a very well written, exciting and entertaining story.    It is perhaps for fans of Gothic horror tales.  I quote a bit below so you can get a feel for the prose style of Le Fanu.

“In the heart of a gay capital, possessed of finds which, to my short-sighted inexperience, seemed all but inexhaustible, full of ardour, curiosity, and passion, I threw myself heart and soul into the intoxication and excitement of all the folly, vice and extravagance which revolved around me; with more of inquisitiveness than of depravity, I hunted out vice in all secure and secret haunts, where, undisguised, and maddening, and terrible, it ruled and rioted. The adventures and perils of the wild scenes in which I mixed, had for me a strange attraction; I panted to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; I longed to try and prove those old and mighty rulers of the human kind — the ancient vices of the world in the high places of their power; recklessly I courted danger: wildly I plunged into the unfathomable gulf of sin, and madly did time fly by."

You can read this story, and many more by the author, on the very well done webpage of the University of Adelaide or download it onto your e-reader. 

Mel u

"Roaring Water Bay" a short story by Lane Ashfeldt

"Roaring Water Bay" a short work of fiction by Lane Ashfeldt

I am very proud that Lane Ashfleldt, author of Saltwater has very kindly given me permission to publish a very moving short work of fiction, "Roaring Water Bay".  

  Saltwater by Lane Ashfeldt is a unique collection of short works of fiction, all inspired by the sea.  Ashfeldt, who was born in London to Irish parents but grew up by the sea in Dublin, understands as well as any writer I know of how a proximity to the ocean can permeate the mind. 

Listen to a very interesting interview with Lane Ashfeldt here

 It is as if next to your mundane limited life is something of great power and beauty which can destroy in a capricious or peevish moment.  I think the Irish psyche has been deeply affected by the Island nature of the country and the proximity of the ocean.  In Irish history, the ocean was the source of food, took people out of the country forever when times were bad, and was a wild power beyond human control.   It is these impulses that Ashfeldt deals with in the amazing stories in Saltwater.

My review of her wonderful collection of short stories is here


During Irish Short Story Month Year III, March 1 to March 31, I will be featuring a very interesting interview with Lane Ashfeldt.

This story is protected under international copyright laws and is the sole property of the author.  It cannot be published or posted without her consent.  

"ROARING WATER BAY"

by 

Lane Ashfeldt

Auntie Rose was the vintage of the oldest penny that we found buried in our back garden. 1892. She wore her hair in a white bun. She made bread and scones, she planted hyacinths and forsythia, she scolded and comforted, clucked and sweetened. In her late nineties she went ‘home’ on a visit. Within weeks she was dead and buried in the cramped family grave, as if the land itself had killed her. Only then did I learn of her lost child, the ‘sin’ that made her leave, and understand why she used to say, defiant: ‘They can scatter my ashes over Roaring Water Bay.’

End of Guest Post

Author Data

Lane Ashfeldt is an award-winning short story writer, and a Dubliner. Her short fiction has been published in literary journals across Ireland, England, Greece and the US, and published in anthologies from ‘Punk Fiction’ to the rather more genteel ‘Dancing With Mr Darcy’. Her book of short stories, SaltWater (2013) has been called: A gorgeous collection by a bright talent.” (Nuala Ní Chonchúir) and A superb collection of powerful and evocative stories 

-Danielle McLaughlin

The ebook of SaltWater can be bought from Amazon. 

The Van by Roddy Doyle

The Van by Roddy Doyle  (1991, 193 pages, book three of The Barrytown Trilogy)

The Barrytown Trilogy

Please consider participating in Irish Short Story Month-March 1 to March 31-

My Prior Posts on Roddy Doyle

The Van is the eighth novel by Roddy Doyle I have read.   Obviously I like and respect his work  a lot.    The Van is the last in a series of novels, The Barrytown Trilogy, about a working class family in Dublin, the Rabbitte family.  In the final book of the trilogy the father of the family, Vernon, and his best friend Bimbo set up a food van selling fish, chips, burgers, candy bars and a few other things.   I think this is my favorite novel of the trilogy but I really enjoyed them all.

It was so much fun to see the lads take a horrible looking van and turn it into a very much profit making food van.   There are, as we always find in a Doyle novel, lots of great conversations, lots of drinking and lots of people using the word "f**k" in various variations.    I am assuming it is normal in the setting in which this novel is written for a father to use this expression with his children but it seems a little shocking at times and would be considered appalling in the Philippines.  

Watching the food van business develop was just great fun and really pretty exciting.   I felt great when they started making strong money and worried when hooligans attacked the van out of pure meanness   Watching the interplay of the characters was a great treat and Doyle is brilliant at that.   There is still a lot of life in the Rabbitte family and I hope to read more about them one day in a future book.

The next Doyle book I hope to read is his Booker Prize Winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha.

I really hope to see the movies made from his books one day also.

I will post on his short story "Animals" during Irish Short Story Month.

Mel u

Plans for Irish Short Story Month

Year III

March 1 to March 31

"Glad to be invited for my first Irish Short

Story Month -Verlidia

"I was born to the stink of whiskey and failure 
And the scattered corpse of the real. 
This is my childhood and country: 
The cynical knowing smile 
Plastered onto ignorance 
Ideals untarnished and deadly 
Because never translated to action 
And everywhere 
The sick glorification of failure. 
Our white marble statues were draped in purple 
The bars of the prison were born in our eyes 
And if reality ever existed 
It was a rotten tooth 
That couldn't be removed."   Bernard O'Loughlin

Event Resources-Links to lots of short stories, from classics to brand new works.  


Short stories go back further in history than novels, much further to pre-literate days.   They go back to the very start of what we like to call civilization and helped create the world’s major cultures and religions.  Newgrange is older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids.   

Anyone who likes is very welcome to participate in Irish Short Story Month Year Three (ISSM3).   Just write a post, however long or short, in whatever style you like, on anything related to an Irish short story.  It could be your thoughts on your favorite short story or a review of a related book such as a biography of Elizabeth Bowen.  Posts on Irish/Australian writers are also welcome.  ( If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact me at rereadinglives@gmail.com.)

"Good to back"
returning from
5000 years ago-
Eaadem

Ireland has produced as many great writers as England or the United States.   In an international literary shoot out, The Reading Life will be wagering on the Irish.  

During ISSM3 I am going to be focusing on posts on a large number of authors, from writers who published their first stories in 2012, to stories by the great commercial successes of contemporary Irish literature to works by classic writers of the 19th century like Maria Edgeworth, Thomas Crofton Croker, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, and Charlotte Riddell.  My goal for ISSM3 is to post on stories by at least 100 different Irish writers, I in fact have already written posts for the event on 50 writers, most new to me.   

One of my aims as a blogger is to support the work of emerging short story writers and I will be, hopefully doing this during ISSM3.  If you are interested in being featured during the month, please contact me.  If you have a suggestion as to a writer that I should include, please let me know.   Last year I posted on a number of Emerging Irish Women Writers and some of them have already begun to take their place on the world literary stage.   This year I am including men and women.  

"Carmilla, give into
your passion and admit
you love me"-Rory

I will be drawing on two long academic works I have recently  read,  Inventing Ireland:   The Literature of the Modern Nation by Declan Kiberd and Occasions of Sin:  Sex and Society in Modern Ireland by Diarmaid Ferriter.    These works have helped me understand the historical context of the Irish short story.  I have also read since ISSM2 ended several works on the history of Ireland, including works that focus on the seminal event of Irish history, the famines of the mid-19th century.   I have read biographies of Elizabeth Bowen,  Lady Gregory and Samuel Beckett in the last year.   

"Not for all the pots of gold in Ireland"-Carmilla

I am not an academic or a scholar.  I am not a member of any literary school of interpretation.      I read, other than for my online contacts, pretty much in splendid isolation.    I love short stories and have a special passion for the work of Irish writers.   I know one has to think clearly in generalizing about national characteristics of literature but I am  almost ready now to attempt this on the Irish Short Story.  

My co-hosts will return along with some new visitors.   

"Why can't we all just get along?"-
Ruprecht

Mel u

"In the Family" by Maria Elena Illano- Project 196 Cuba

"In the Family" by Maria Elena Illano  (1966, 4 pages)

Project 196

196 Countries, 196 Stories

Cuba

27 of 196

Project 196 Posts

Project 196 is my attempt to read and post on a short story by an author from each of the 196 countries of the world.  So far I have posted on stories from 24 countries.  I am discovering a lot of new to me writers, including some I for sure want to read more of, and learning more about the short story as a factor in differing literary cultures.

Yesterday and again this morning I read an interesting short story by a Cuban writer, Maria Elena Illano (1936).

María Elena Llano
1936-
Journalist by Trade Born in Cuba, María Elena Llano is a journalist who has won many awards for her writing. Among her award-winning works are stories that she has written for both radio and television shows. Llano has been recognized for the humor she interjects into some of her journalism, which she practices in the cultural department of a news agency in Havana called the Latin Press.

Range of Writing Llano writes in Spanish, but her stories have been translated into several other languages, including English. They occasionally appear in anthologies with stories by other Hispanic authors. In 1966, she published her first collection of short stories, La reja (The Plowshare). Since then Llano has written a second book of stories and a collection of poems. She also writes scripts for stage plays and art reviews. 

"In the Family" is in the tradition of Magic Realism, as are several of the other Latin American short stories I have read for Project 196.   The story turns on one idea.   That deceased members of the family reside in a large mirror in the main room of the house.   The family members accept this as normal and it becomes part of their routine.   One day cousin Clara comes.   She is the dominant member of the family because she has been to dental school, even though she does not practice.   She decides the mirror should be moved into the dining room so the living and the dead can eat together.   Clara asks a woman in the mirror to pass her a salad, it has a strange kind of gray look but Clara eats it and the next day she is dead and in the mirror.  The family soon shrugs this off and life goes on.

I suppose if you wanted to you could turn this into a political commentary on the disappearance of large segments of the Cuban population due to immigration or political killings.   I really think it is just a work to read and enjoy.

Mel u

Possession by A. S. Byatt

Possession by A. S. Byatt  (1990, 511 pages)

Possession by A. S. Byatt (UK, 1936)  is a joy to read for the sheer beauty of its prose and the luminous intelligence that shines through in its pages.   It won the 1990 Booker Prize Award.  There are lots of book blog posts on it and over 273 Amazon reviews.  It is in part literary detective story as old letters, diaries and journals are used to unravel a love affair between two Victoria era poets.  Byatt has even included several examples of their poetry for these created by her authors.   There are also extracts from biographies and scholarly papers.    It is a brilliant satire of academics.

This is a tremendously creative book with so much to enjoy.  This is my first work by A. S. Byatt.  I have a copy of her 2009 novel, The Children's Book and hope to read it in 2013.

I do have a serious issue with the Vintage Books paperback edition of this work.  I found it on the remainder desk of a big chain book store here in Manila marked down from 1000 Peso to 149 ($3.00).   This probably means it was shipped in from either the USA or UK when it was returned unsold from book stores there.  The reasons for the poor sales, which this edition warrants, is the extreme small size of the text of the portions of the book that are by the Victorian poets or from books about them.   The print is this size and it is no pleasure at all to read and makes you want to skip large portions of the book which would be s shame.   

This edition of the book is a tribute to the publisher's greed and contempt for readers.  A. S.  Byatt and her readers deserve better.  Before I bought the book I had no way of knowing as it was sealed in shrink wrap

Guest Post by Kathleen Shoop-Author of Love and Other Stories

Kathleen Shoop – How to Avoid the Rejection Blues

How to Avoid the Rejection Blues

by Kathleen Shoop  

How to Avoid the Rejection Blues—well, once you decide to go indie, you find the type of rejection shifts from agent/editor rejection to reader rejection. It’s hard when readers don’t like your work—actually that’s not as hard as the blanket, “I hate this, it’s the worst, most depressing thing I’ve ever read…” It’s so important to recognize everyone will not like or love or even tolerate your work. That’s what makes all this work. There’s something out there for every reader and dealing with the negatives is just part of the job. Again, I can’t say how glad I am to be able to participate. That’s what matters to me.

Why Book Covers are So Important—A book cover draws readers in, gives them a feel for what the book is about even if the image isn’t a literal representation of the content. A good cover is everything!

Practical Advice for Beginning Fiction (or other genre) Writers—Just write. Don’t worry about it being fantastic. It won’t be—the first draft won’t be. But you have to have a draft in order to mold and shape it. The first draft is akin to an artist formulating her own special clay to shape. Your first draft is your clay—the recipe is complete—after you have your clay you  need to actually sculpt, shape, mold…for me that’s the hard part. Just start.

Five Mistakes Writers Make When Querying Publishers

Booksigning Tips to Sell That Book—Pull a theme from your book and create an event around that theme. Yes, you’ll be signing books and that’s great, but make the day enjoyable for readers. With my first book The Last Letter, the tagline was “for every daughter who thought she knew her mother’s story…” And we had a pre-mother’s day signing complete with sets of books, stationery, letter boxes, mother/daughter stuff, relaxation baskets both for sale and for raffle. Find a theme and exploit it!

How I Made My First Sale—I put an ad in Mary Jane’s Magazine and I got an email from a woman who couldn’t wait to read it. She did and she loved it and she became my northeast territory sales person! She gave my book away, asked indie book stores to carry it and was just incredible to me. It was like something straight out of a movie. I will never forget that.

What Inspired Me to Write My Book—

My Publishing Journey or How I Became a Published Author

Why Blogging is Important—I’m not sure blogging itself is important. There are fabulous, wonderful, powerful bloggers who land book deals. But there are many more fabulous writers who stink or are unable to focus energy on blogging. There was a time I thought having a strong blog was important (and it can be for many, many people) but with Facebook and Twitter, I don’t feel the need to spend a lot of time blogging. I LOVE twitter because it’s not a mini-article that I have to proof and suffer over. It’s just fun. I’m probably wrong about this though, because I am not a marketing pro at all, in the least!!!

What Makes the Perfect Book Blog—one that is funny and reveals the true personality of the author…some authors have fantastic reader blogs and they converse with readers about all manner of topics and issues as well as their books. Others have sites more oriented toward writing and they draw an powerful following as well. For me, my blog is used to offer news, invite other writers for interviews, and to be a landing pad for everything related to my work. I don’t use my blog the way awesome bloggers do, but I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE having other writers and bloggers to my blog to talk.

How to be a Good Guest Blogger—Guest blogging is fun. You are exposed to new readers and often can entice them to pick up your work or follow you on Twitter, etc. Be sure to be gracious and have the owner of the blog guide you in what she wants to see in your post. However, if she invited you to her blog she probably understands your perspective, writing style and topics of interest for you.

Why Mentors Are Important I have too many mentors to count—writing mentors, marketing, pr, networking mentors. Even people in other fields who have started their own businesses are my mentors. Just like there’s never a shortage of material to inspire my writing, there’s never a shortage of people I can learn from. And, I return the favor. If someone needs help with any component of publishing I do my best to help them or find the person who can if I can’t. Mentors and mentoring is vital to being successful, I think.

Inside the Mind of the Author—it’s crowded, noisy, crazy…I hate the inside of my head and wish I was more organized and methodical in my writing. The only thing I can say is that I am exceptionally methodical in my dedication to the craft—I just wish the work came out in a packaged, neat form instead of the mess it does!!!

Buy Now @ Amazon & Smashwords

Genre – Women’s Fiction

Rating – PG15 

More details about the author & the book

Connect with Kathleen Shoop on Facebook & Twitter