I do truly believe that. But I have to say, I've never had this much trouble writing a story before. This is the twelfth time I've done it and something is different.
I'm at a different desk, in a different room, in a different house, in a different country. Could be that. I've now got two editors, at two publishers, in two different time zones and mine makes a third. Could be that.
But . . . all that was true when I wrote Dandy Gilver No7. last winter.
Since then:
I've plunged into online life, blogging, tweeting, and posting on Facebook. Could easily be that. This story occurred to me here not there, although the people in it belong there not here. Sounds vaguely plausible. But . . . there have always been distractions - estate agents' websites with virtual tours, Pet Rescue, Youtube - and I wrote DG2 in Ohio.
So who knows? Maybe this story is a turkey. Maybe I should scrap it. Maybe I've exhausted whatever it is I've been drawing on and I need to get a job now. I'm still writing; don't get me wrong. But usually by this stage of the game it feels as if some thermals have lifted the weight of the story off my shoulders and I'm just along for the ride. This time it's like shovelling setting concrete just a bit too slowly so that it gets harder and harder as you go.
To turn to happier areas of life, then. This month I've been reading Bird Cloud by Annie Proulx (house-doing-up comfort/schadenfreude), The Odds by Kathleen George (best family of kids since Noel Streatfield, with the social grit of The Wire) and Defending Jacob by William Landay (wow), and am now reading The Tommyknockers by Mr W. Block himself, Stephen King. Book of the Month for July is going to be a tough choice.
And in the garden, all is well and all is well and all manner of things are well. My only disasters so far this year are the chick peas. Out of a row of fifteen, two plants are alive and they're looking pretty dodgy.
And at least I can't ever get gardener's block. In fact, my devotion to the garden is boundless: I just drank a full half-pint of dark purple spinach water. Here's what happened. The beetroots needed to be thinned and couldn't wait. Dinner tonight is being brought to us courtesy of the courgette glut and no way to incorporate a wheelbarrowful of leaf beet thinnings. So I cooked them all up and froze them all down. And just before freezing comes squeezing. And so there was half a pint of spinach juice and I thought of stock and soup and even of pouring it away, but spirit of Granny Greta McPherson moved across the kitchen and . . . now I have the strength of Popeye and won't need any more iron for days.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
An Empire State of Wallet
So. Thrillerfest was fabulous, New York is fabulous, I have no money left now.
To deal with the first one last then. A three dollar banana? A sixty dollar walk-in manicure? An extra fifty cents for ice in your club soda from a cafe? New York has it all. Plus tax, of course. I'm a great fan of tax, let me say. Paying tax is one of the privileges of living well in a civilised country, but it does drive me gently nuts that a vendor won't tell you how much money you're going to have to hand over (which is all you really care about, right?). Instead, it's a taxi from the airport that's $50 + tolls, a hotel room that's a bargain + 8.875% sales tax, 5.875% city sales tax, $1.50 NYC hotel unit fee and $2 occupancy tax. I'm going to a book event tomorrow. If someone asks me how much the paperbacks are, I think I'll say they're 75 cents + a little something for the bookseller, printer and publisher.
Anyway.
Thrillerfest was worth it. Thrillerfest was wonderful. I met a crowd of inspired and inspiring writers - Kate Brady, Kathleen George, Sandra Brennan, Dani Brown (with an i), Jonathan Maberry, Jim Macomber, Matt Hilton, Steve Forman, Deb Lacy, Rick Helms, Rick Hutto, Karen Nikkel . . . and Willy. Here are some them.
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It was great to listen to the keynote speakers - John Lescroart, Karin Slaughter, Ken Follet and the incomparable RL Stine. All were funny, charming, still grateful, still striving, apparently without a shred of ego amongst the lot of them. RL Stine was the biggest surprise of all. I'm going to admit that I didn't know Goosebumps was a series, didn't know Stine was a person. I thought Goosebumps was an imprint and assumed that "RL Stine" was about twenty writers. Nope. He really has written 600 children's novels. I wish I were twelve now. Or maybe I'll just read some of them anyway.
And after the end of Thrillerfest, as an unearned treat, I get two days in one of my favourite places in the world - Manhatten. My hotel window looks out onto this:
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My publisher, St Martin's Press, is in here:
![]()
And looks out at this:
![]()
And perhaps most thrilling of all to a wee girl fae the 'Ferry, I sat next to a scary, skinny woman in a pale green suit who stabbed the buttons on her phone and snarled: 'I biked those affadavits over yesterday'. A sentence I've never snarled in my life, and never will.
To deal with the first one last then. A three dollar banana? A sixty dollar walk-in manicure? An extra fifty cents for ice in your club soda from a cafe? New York has it all. Plus tax, of course. I'm a great fan of tax, let me say. Paying tax is one of the privileges of living well in a civilised country, but it does drive me gently nuts that a vendor won't tell you how much money you're going to have to hand over (which is all you really care about, right?). Instead, it's a taxi from the airport that's $50 + tolls, a hotel room that's a bargain + 8.875% sales tax, 5.875% city sales tax, $1.50 NYC hotel unit fee and $2 occupancy tax. I'm going to a book event tomorrow. If someone asks me how much the paperbacks are, I think I'll say they're 75 cents + a little something for the bookseller, printer and publisher.
Anyway.
Thrillerfest was worth it. Thrillerfest was wonderful. I met a crowd of inspired and inspiring writers - Kate Brady, Kathleen George, Sandra Brennan, Dani Brown (with an i), Jonathan Maberry, Jim Macomber, Matt Hilton, Steve Forman, Deb Lacy, Rick Helms, Rick Hutto, Karen Nikkel . . . and Willy. Here are some them.
It was great to listen to the keynote speakers - John Lescroart, Karin Slaughter, Ken Follet and the incomparable RL Stine. All were funny, charming, still grateful, still striving, apparently without a shred of ego amongst the lot of them. RL Stine was the biggest surprise of all. I'm going to admit that I didn't know Goosebumps was a series, didn't know Stine was a person. I thought Goosebumps was an imprint and assumed that "RL Stine" was about twenty writers. Nope. He really has written 600 children's novels. I wish I were twelve now. Or maybe I'll just read some of them anyway.
And after the end of Thrillerfest, as an unearned treat, I get two days in one of my favourite places in the world - Manhatten. My hotel window looks out onto this:
My publisher, St Martin's Press, is in here:
And looks out at this:
And perhaps most thrilling of all to a wee girl fae the 'Ferry, I sat next to a scary, skinny woman in a pale green suit who stabbed the buttons on her phone and snarled: 'I biked those affadavits over yesterday'. A sentence I've never snarled in my life, and never will.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
all is forgiven in the garden
Okay, so I know I've been mumping on a bit about my new house and garden but suddenly a corner has been turned.
All twenty outlying acres are dealt with for the year: the big field - about fifteen of them - has been eaten down to ankle length by the cow lodgers, who've now gone somewhere shadier for the summer; the meadow - 3 acres - succumbed to the gentle ministrations of our midget tractor; the five paddocks - 2 acres in all - succumbed to a combination of the midget tractor, the strimmer, a rake, the old warhorse of a push-along and some wrestling and cursing (wrestling with hidden fence wire and cursing people who hide fence wire in long grass).
As to the garden: the digging is done; fourteen pick-up-truck-loads of muck have been applied (people get quite excited about the idea of gorgeous free compost until they hear that you have to shovel it up into your truck yourself, bring it home and shovel it out again (not me, I got my Dickies tucked into my wellies, spat on my hands and . . . met the events organiser of the Vacaville Borders who was shoveling from the same pile one day)); trees are planted - fig, pomegranate and gingko; trees are felled - sweetgum, eucalyptus and pine (all either dead or planted in the septic line) and best of all . . . the vegetables are growing.
The terraces at the back of the house that were dead and brown last August:
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are now home to aubergines/eggplants, tomatillos, zinnias and marigolds for cutting, sweetcorn, courgettes/zucchini/thin-skinned summer-squash, okra, tomatoes, peppers, chillies, lettuce, rocket, beetroot and strawberries.
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(sorry the before and after aren't from the same angle - I hate that too). And there are watermelon, cantaloupe, Hallowe'en pumpkin, pattypans, butternuts and cucumber swelling up in little pots ready to go into the lower bed.
So as ever, it's Calling All Courgette Recipes time. I used to plant six courgettes every year in Scotland and the glut nearly buried us alive. Here, this year, I planted six green, six yellow and six crookneck. That's eighteen courgette plants. To feed two people. Who're also going to be tackling what comes of the 91 sweetcorns I put in.
And it's started already. One of them doubled in size overnight last night, but at least it was a yellow one. It's the sneaky, green, leaf-coloured ones you have to watch for. They can grow to the size of houseboats and the only clue is the way they snigger as you go past without noticing.
But that's what it's all about - eating what's ready to be eaten instead of what's on BOGOF in Tesco. Here's the first pre-dinner haul, from last week.
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![]()
All twenty outlying acres are dealt with for the year: the big field - about fifteen of them - has been eaten down to ankle length by the cow lodgers, who've now gone somewhere shadier for the summer; the meadow - 3 acres - succumbed to the gentle ministrations of our midget tractor; the five paddocks - 2 acres in all - succumbed to a combination of the midget tractor, the strimmer, a rake, the old warhorse of a push-along and some wrestling and cursing (wrestling with hidden fence wire and cursing people who hide fence wire in long grass).
As to the garden: the digging is done; fourteen pick-up-truck-loads of muck have been applied (people get quite excited about the idea of gorgeous free compost until they hear that you have to shovel it up into your truck yourself, bring it home and shovel it out again (not me, I got my Dickies tucked into my wellies, spat on my hands and . . . met the events organiser of the Vacaville Borders who was shoveling from the same pile one day)); trees are planted - fig, pomegranate and gingko; trees are felled - sweetgum, eucalyptus and pine (all either dead or planted in the septic line) and best of all . . . the vegetables are growing.
The terraces at the back of the house that were dead and brown last August:
are now home to aubergines/eggplants, tomatillos, zinnias and marigolds for cutting, sweetcorn, courgettes/zucchini/thin-skinned summer-squash, okra, tomatoes, peppers, chillies, lettuce, rocket, beetroot and strawberries.
(sorry the before and after aren't from the same angle - I hate that too). And there are watermelon, cantaloupe, Hallowe'en pumpkin, pattypans, butternuts and cucumber swelling up in little pots ready to go into the lower bed.
So as ever, it's Calling All Courgette Recipes time. I used to plant six courgettes every year in Scotland and the glut nearly buried us alive. Here, this year, I planted six green, six yellow and six crookneck. That's eighteen courgette plants. To feed two people. Who're also going to be tackling what comes of the 91 sweetcorns I put in.
And it's started already. One of them doubled in size overnight last night, but at least it was a yellow one. It's the sneaky, green, leaf-coloured ones you have to watch for. They can grow to the size of houseboats and the only clue is the way they snigger as you go past without noticing.
But that's what it's all about - eating what's ready to be eaten instead of what's on BOGOF in Tesco. Here's the first pre-dinner haul, from last week.
It made me very happy. True bliss won't come until I go out in the rain to dig up potatoes once the water's boiling, but a few courgettes, two kinds of lettuce and some rocket flowers was pretty good too. The second best thing that's happened in the garden since we came here.
The first you ask, reluctantly, hating the manipultion? Why of course. It's this.
My new potting bench, the seat of garden power. It's a dumpster-dived table, nailed to old fenceposts to give it some height (and a faint Wallace and Gromit look, to my mind), with a $2 bookcase on top and sidey-bits made of planks from an emergency refectory table (we had to build when we invited too many people to a Burns' Supper but then dismantled when we found a better one in a yard sale) to stop the compost falling off.
You can keep your rattan sectionals - that's my kind of garden furniture. I love both it and the undergardener who knocked it together for me.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
I live in the ugliest house in California
And can offer the following exhibits to support my case. Here is the view from the kitchen window:
Yes, the view from the kitchen window is the bathroom wall. The first time I came to look round this place I assumed it was a prefab that came in two bits and that someone had measured something wrong. Apparently not, though. It's a real house designed by an architect (who might have got their degree at Joe-bob's School of Architecture and Ribs-to-Go).
Now that summer's here, though, it occurs to me that the peculiar setting of this window might be "designed" to keep the kitchen cool by cutting down the amount of direct sunlight hitting the glass. That could also have been achieved with a pretty, vine-clad pergola of course but Joe-bob's School of Landscaping and Mufflers While-you-wait must have been away across on the other side of town.
And while we're on windows . . . if you've got a stretch of wall and you need a window in it, where do you put that window? In the middle, right?
Wrong.
But if you've got a stretch of wall and four windows to go in it, two big ones and two little ones, you space them out evenly and balance the sizes, right?
Wrong.
And if by some fluke you happen to put two doors side-by-side leading onto the porch, symmetrically arranged on a step, you make these two doors the same, right?
Wrong.
Every opportunity for symmetry, balance and order that this house offered has been wilfully ignored in favour of an architectural approach I like to call "fling the windows at it and where they stick, they stay".
Except one. This one.
Two windows, the same size, the same design, on either side of the apex of the roof, which is halfway along the length of the wall, giving the whole elevation the character of being "eye-sweet". And where was this care taken? Where were these simple classical rules of building design applied? Look closely; note the wheeliebins and the fuse panel. Yup, it's the garage. Just to rub salt into the wounds.
I'll spare you the inside (for today). The sunken chocolate-brown bath with carpet up the side and gold taps. The collection of centre-light/ceiling-fans, each one different and every one hideous (ripped out of Saddam Hussein's palace, perhaps, for being too ornate), and the Flinstones' climbing-wall of a fake fireplace.
So why did we buy it? Well, here's the view from one end of the porch.
Here's the view from the other.
Tell you what, though:- I'd rather be me, in here looking out at the view, than be some poor jackrabbit or coyote out there in the view looking in at this eye-sore.
Yes, the view from the kitchen window is the bathroom wall. The first time I came to look round this place I assumed it was a prefab that came in two bits and that someone had measured something wrong. Apparently not, though. It's a real house designed by an architect (who might have got their degree at Joe-bob's School of Architecture and Ribs-to-Go).
Now that summer's here, though, it occurs to me that the peculiar setting of this window might be "designed" to keep the kitchen cool by cutting down the amount of direct sunlight hitting the glass. That could also have been achieved with a pretty, vine-clad pergola of course but Joe-bob's School of Landscaping and Mufflers While-you-wait must have been away across on the other side of town.
And while we're on windows . . . if you've got a stretch of wall and you need a window in it, where do you put that window? In the middle, right?
Wrong.
But if you've got a stretch of wall and four windows to go in it, two big ones and two little ones, you space them out evenly and balance the sizes, right?
Wrong.
And if by some fluke you happen to put two doors side-by-side leading onto the porch, symmetrically arranged on a step, you make these two doors the same, right?
Wrong.
Every opportunity for symmetry, balance and order that this house offered has been wilfully ignored in favour of an architectural approach I like to call "fling the windows at it and where they stick, they stay".
Except one. This one.
Two windows, the same size, the same design, on either side of the apex of the roof, which is halfway along the length of the wall, giving the whole elevation the character of being "eye-sweet". And where was this care taken? Where were these simple classical rules of building design applied? Look closely; note the wheeliebins and the fuse panel. Yup, it's the garage. Just to rub salt into the wounds.
I'll spare you the inside (for today). The sunken chocolate-brown bath with carpet up the side and gold taps. The collection of centre-light/ceiling-fans, each one different and every one hideous (ripped out of Saddam Hussein's palace, perhaps, for being too ornate), and the Flinstones' climbing-wall of a fake fireplace.
So why did we buy it? Well, here's the view from one end of the porch.
Here's the view from the other.
Tell you what, though:- I'd rather be me, in here looking out at the view, than be some poor jackrabbit or coyote out there in the view looking in at this eye-sore.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
deleting and weeping alone in a room
I was going to write about writing this week, but actually putting into words the process of trying to get a new story up and humming - the deletions, the pages of useless notes, the procrastination, the casting about for someone to blame, the realisation that if I blame my undergardener (he whose job forced this recent 7,000 mile flit) I'll basically be saying "I can't write in this quiet, comfortable house in this beautiful sunny valley" and I'll feel like a fool, the checking of email, the pouncing on and meticulous execution of any scrap of admin, the guilt of thinking about my characters sitting there cramped and abandoned in fewer than 20,000 words of story, the profound desire for a powercut or a heavy cold . . . laws, sausages and suspense novels, people, and I've decided to spare you.
So.
To turn to reading, then, since I don't have anything like the same trouble there: I'm sure the talented and delightful John Lescoart wouldn't mind me saying that even though I read two of his wonderful Dismas Hardy/Abe Glitsky novels last month - one of life's true pleasures is the discovery of a series with a dozen and more titles waiting to be read - neither The Vig nor Hard Evidence is my book of the month.
That's only because, mind you, I also read The Grapes of Wrath. Right here, in California, surrounded by fields and farmworkers, newly blown west myself (although thankfully not by a dust-cloud), so that I felt like the Joads' long-lost sister. And get this: at the end of the month I'm going to read East of Eden in Monterey! On a wee holiday by the sea. EofE and the new Michael Connelly, I'm thinking.
I'm sure, since I'll be on holiday, both of them will be utter bliss and not, as is more usual, bliss and torture mixed. The torture is- Hey! (I just thought of this) I can blame John Steinbeck for the fact that getting my current work in progress into top gear is like pushing a bus up a ladder. Quite simply, reading TGofW infected me with a case of the why-bothers.
Stephen King does that to me every time; so does Joyce Carol Oates. Both of them are such big-hearted writers - tellers of stories as well as wordsmiths - and they invent such fantastical tales with such honesty. Most of all, they are quite clearly -even after their astonshing outputs so far - still as enthralled as they are enthralling.
I'll never be Stephen King or Joyce Carol Oates but I do the same job they do and that's a blessing I'd be wise to remember. Right, must dash. There's a bus and a ladder waiting.
So.
To turn to reading, then, since I don't have anything like the same trouble there: I'm sure the talented and delightful John Lescoart wouldn't mind me saying that even though I read two of his wonderful Dismas Hardy/Abe Glitsky novels last month - one of life's true pleasures is the discovery of a series with a dozen and more titles waiting to be read - neither The Vig nor Hard Evidence is my book of the month.
That's only because, mind you, I also read The Grapes of Wrath. Right here, in California, surrounded by fields and farmworkers, newly blown west myself (although thankfully not by a dust-cloud), so that I felt like the Joads' long-lost sister. And get this: at the end of the month I'm going to read East of Eden in Monterey! On a wee holiday by the sea. EofE and the new Michael Connelly, I'm thinking.
I'm sure, since I'll be on holiday, both of them will be utter bliss and not, as is more usual, bliss and torture mixed. The torture is- Hey! (I just thought of this) I can blame John Steinbeck for the fact that getting my current work in progress into top gear is like pushing a bus up a ladder. Quite simply, reading TGofW infected me with a case of the why-bothers.
Stephen King does that to me every time; so does Joyce Carol Oates. Both of them are such big-hearted writers - tellers of stories as well as wordsmiths - and they invent such fantastical tales with such honesty. Most of all, they are quite clearly -even after their astonshing outputs so far - still as enthralled as they are enthralling.
I'll never be Stephen King or Joyce Carol Oates but I do the same job they do and that's a blessing I'd be wise to remember. Right, must dash. There's a bus and a ladder waiting.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
California 5 Scotland 0 (Garden Paradise #2)
To be fair, then, here's what's happening in my garden today.
There are tiny wee green tomatoes on the Sungold tomato plant:
And since it's a Sungold tomato plant - ie yellow when ripe - green is halfway there. So, to recap for anyone who hasn't had their heart smashed to rubble and their hope ground to dust gardening in Scotland, there are tomatoes on the way to ripeness, in May, outside, in the ground (not in a greenhouse or in a Gro-bag on the landing window).
Also, this:
Unimpressive, you say? Small and boring? Sidey-ways? Okay, I'll give you sidey-ways, but this - gardening friends - is a row of sweetcorn. And for Scottish people old enough to remember when sweetcorn grew in tins (like peaches) this is a choir-of-angels kind of thing to see outside your back door.
Not to mention this:
It's an orange, in a tree, and unlike in my childhood it didn't get there because someone sneaked it out of the fruitbowl and flung it into the branches to see if it would stick and then got a bad row for wasting food. For instance.
Which leaves the two big ones. Beyond exotic, the closest gardening ever gets to glamour, worth immigrating for, I give you . . .
. . . a prickly pear cactus, newly transplanted from a rooted cutting, bursting into blossom. A prickly pear, I tell you. A fruit so exotic it was never even tinned. A cutting not withering in the May frosts. A plant blooming days after being moved (instead of paying you back for your presumption by rotting and stinking and giving you something to skid on and break your ankle). I'll report on the pear harvest in ten days, I expect.
And finally. . .
. . . okra. [fanfare] Okra! It should always have the exclamation mark, like Oklahoma! Okay, I only eat it once every five years when it's on a no-choice menu and I have no idea how to cook it and every time I've ever had it's been slimy. But . . . Okra!
Toto, we're not in Kilmarnock any more.
There are tiny wee green tomatoes on the Sungold tomato plant:
And since it's a Sungold tomato plant - ie yellow when ripe - green is halfway there. So, to recap for anyone who hasn't had their heart smashed to rubble and their hope ground to dust gardening in Scotland, there are tomatoes on the way to ripeness, in May, outside, in the ground (not in a greenhouse or in a Gro-bag on the landing window).
Also, this:
Unimpressive, you say? Small and boring? Sidey-ways? Okay, I'll give you sidey-ways, but this - gardening friends - is a row of sweetcorn. And for Scottish people old enough to remember when sweetcorn grew in tins (like peaches) this is a choir-of-angels kind of thing to see outside your back door.
Not to mention this:
It's an orange, in a tree, and unlike in my childhood it didn't get there because someone sneaked it out of the fruitbowl and flung it into the branches to see if it would stick and then got a bad row for wasting food. For instance.
Which leaves the two big ones. Beyond exotic, the closest gardening ever gets to glamour, worth immigrating for, I give you . . .
. . . a prickly pear cactus, newly transplanted from a rooted cutting, bursting into blossom. A prickly pear, I tell you. A fruit so exotic it was never even tinned. A cutting not withering in the May frosts. A plant blooming days after being moved (instead of paying you back for your presumption by rotting and stinking and giving you something to skid on and break your ankle). I'll report on the pear harvest in ten days, I expect.
And finally. . .
. . . okra. [fanfare] Okra! It should always have the exclamation mark, like Oklahoma! Okay, I only eat it once every five years when it's on a no-choice menu and I have no idea how to cook it and every time I've ever had it's been slimy. But . . . Okra!
Toto, we're not in Kilmarnock any more.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Three sex scandals and a crime series
Try as I might, I haven't been able to concentrate on writing stories, reading stories and growing plants this week. (I mean, I've done it: the new book is underway, the adrenaline-soaked Save Me by Lisa Scottoline got read and my nasturtiums, sweetcorn, courgettes and okra have all germinated) but the newspapers and radio broadcasts have been full of sex scandals.
First, the ex-governor of my new state apparently had an affair which produced a child. He kept it secret from his wife until his stint was done, then he told her so she dumped him and at last the story broke. Pretty shabby behaviour. A scandal. But not one of the three that got to me.
Elsewhere, a businessman allegedly attacked a chambermaid in a hotel suite, attempted to rape her, leaving her injured, and checked out in a hurry to rush off to the airport after she got away. She reported it, he was arrested, and now he faces trial. This isn't a sex scandal. This is an (alleged) violent crime. The scandal is the deluge of articles calling it a sex scandal and calling him a charmer/seducer/womanizer who, this time, went too far.
Over the years, some priests in the Catholic church have attacked children, attempting to and succeeding in raping them, leaving them injured, and then running away. Sometimes the children reported it. Eventually some of the priests were arrested. There have been trials. These were terrible crimes. This week a five year study by Catholic bishops in the USA concluded that poor preparation and poor monitoring, stress, and the social and sexual turmoil of the 60s and 70s led to the abuse. This conclusion is a moronic, pitiful scandal.
Every day, men sexually abuse children, both boys and girls. They attack them. They rape them. They injure them and then they run away. Crime after crime after crime. This week, a British MP stated that if girls were taught abstinence there would be less sexual abuse. That any sentient human could say such a thing is a stinking, shameful scandal.
Which brings me to the crime series, at last. What I loved most about the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson was the escape into a cosy fantasy world where I'd love to live. Others have called The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels dark and disturbing. I don't see it.
In Larsson's world, all consensual sexual behaviour between adults is absolutely fine and dandy and all coercion,violence and paedophilia is wrong, is 100% caused by the decision of the perpetrator to do it and is 100% his responsibility. In Larsson's world, rape isn't caused by stress and hippies. Abuse isn't the fault of little girls who don't say "no" properly, and (alleged) attempted rapists aren't just charmers who went too far one time.
Next week, gardening and picures of kittens, Maybe even a recipe or two.
First, the ex-governor of my new state apparently had an affair which produced a child. He kept it secret from his wife until his stint was done, then he told her so she dumped him and at last the story broke. Pretty shabby behaviour. A scandal. But not one of the three that got to me.
Elsewhere, a businessman allegedly attacked a chambermaid in a hotel suite, attempted to rape her, leaving her injured, and checked out in a hurry to rush off to the airport after she got away. She reported it, he was arrested, and now he faces trial. This isn't a sex scandal. This is an (alleged) violent crime. The scandal is the deluge of articles calling it a sex scandal and calling him a charmer/seducer/womanizer who, this time, went too far.
Over the years, some priests in the Catholic church have attacked children, attempting to and succeeding in raping them, leaving them injured, and then running away. Sometimes the children reported it. Eventually some of the priests were arrested. There have been trials. These were terrible crimes. This week a five year study by Catholic bishops in the USA concluded that poor preparation and poor monitoring, stress, and the social and sexual turmoil of the 60s and 70s led to the abuse. This conclusion is a moronic, pitiful scandal.
Every day, men sexually abuse children, both boys and girls. They attack them. They rape them. They injure them and then they run away. Crime after crime after crime. This week, a British MP stated that if girls were taught abstinence there would be less sexual abuse. That any sentient human could say such a thing is a stinking, shameful scandal.
Which brings me to the crime series, at last. What I loved most about the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson was the escape into a cosy fantasy world where I'd love to live. Others have called The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels dark and disturbing. I don't see it.
In Larsson's world, all consensual sexual behaviour between adults is absolutely fine and dandy and all coercion,violence and paedophilia is wrong, is 100% caused by the decision of the perpetrator to do it and is 100% his responsibility. In Larsson's world, rape isn't caused by stress and hippies. Abuse isn't the fault of little girls who don't say "no" properly, and (alleged) attempted rapists aren't just charmers who went too far one time.
Next week, gardening and picures of kittens, Maybe even a recipe or two.
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