How are the WIPs going?
I was hospitalized last week for what I'm being told is just my asthma. I've had asthma all my life, but it has never been this bad before. As such, I haven't been able to go to work, but I have been able to sit around reading and writing.
I finished up the first draft of that fantasy story I was working on, and I'll hopefully send it off soon. I'm still a little worried about the ending, so maybe I'll change everything; probably won't.
I read Andrew Klavan's newest Cameron Winter book, Find Me Nowhere. It's hard for me to explain why—and it might be my current state of health coloring my experience—but this one is not among my favorites. I can't really go into too much detail here without going into spoilers, but it felt less grounded than the others in the series.
Winter has a habit of being passive in these books, or seeming to be; his whole modus operandi is to set the dominos and watch them fall. We watch the dominos fall, and whether to the south or the north, there each lies. Yet, this time it felt more like a game to me, one of those quick-time they play themselves games. I never felt the stakes, but like I said, I can barely breathe right now, so I might be too emotionally numb to appreciate this book.
One of the aspects of this book that I liked was the exploration of Winter's strange habit of mind; it is one of the most relatable and realistic parts of the world: very often, reason is a backtracking process of discovering what we know. Even Poirot, the herald of order and method, has to sleep on a problem. I find this is true in my life, though I'm not wrestling with international spy rings or gentleman murderers.
Still, to get back to Find Me Nowhere, I had a generally hard time with most of the characters and understanding where they were coming from; as a result, the conclusion, though reasonable, just seemed to be there, to happen. Before and after the mystery, the characters upon the stage felt like aliens to me; I never felt that, "Oh yes, that might have been me," moment. The conclusion made sense, but the players felt distant, weird.
Anyway, with those gripes mentioned, there is still a wealth of good in this book, even though they seem to be the peripheral elements. Lori Lesser's mustache twirling villainy is always a highlight, and Klavan sets up the moral problems present in Winter's personal life expertly, tying them all into a deep insight into the current world.
Anyway, I hope your writing is going well, and that your health is better than mine.
