Last Rebus mystery?

Some days, I really love the research aspect of writing. I'm reading an absolutely fascinating book called, Havana: Two Faces of the Antillean Metropolis.

I love the details of the individual neighborhoods and the genesis of their creation.

(Okay, so that tag never really closes, but still, I'll quit babbling.)

That reminds me--I have to read my copy of Havana Nocturne before going out to see my sister and BIL in November, since I'm going to give him my copy as an early Christmas gift.

(Christmas is going to be on the cheap this year--sis and Mom are getting cross-stitched Xmas pieces I've got to work on soon, BIL is getting the book, and Dad will get his bottle of B&B that he treats himself to at home on rare occasions. His current bottle is almost out, so I told him not to buy a replacement one. Brother and his family will get gift cards.)

Not totally on-topic...but I'm just awash with affection for Wizard Rock.

Seriously. Bless. Bless on toast, with little sprinkles of bless. Got to love the fact that there are so many people writing & playing & listening to songs about fictional characters, or indeed about the phenomenon of fandom/loving a fictional world.

Meanwhile, I've been mainlining YA lit the past few days, having wolfed through The Naming and The Riddle, and now munching through The Crow. These are 3 of The Books of Pellinor, a series that's more than a trifle influenced by LotR, but in more of a Lloyd Alexander fashion than a Thud'n'Blunder way.

...did that kid that wrote Eragon ever get around to writing a third book, I wonder? Not that I actually read the first book of his 'trilogy', but, by God, the movie was bad bad bad bad BAD.

...did that kid that wrote Eragon ever get around to writing a third book, I wonder? Not that I actually read the first book of his 'trilogy', but, by God, the movie was bad bad bad bad BAD.

Brisingr drops on the 20th of the month, I think, Fay. The books, from what I understand, aren't works of art-- shamelessly borrowing from Tolkien and Lewis and anyone else of that ilk according to a friend of mine who actually bravely read them with her son. My son read them on his own and he likes them well enough, although he likes the Alfred Krupp adventures better.

Biggest problem with Paolini is that by the time a large publishing house had signed him, he was already a fairly large success at the self-pubbed level and it would appear no one actually edited the kid beyond the line editing level in order to get the initial books out in a hurry.

Barb, my father was stationed in Florida during WWII and used to get three-day passes to Havana, back when Havana was FUN. He would occasionally tell carefully edited stories about some of the fun he had.

Toddson, that book I mentioned, Havana Nocturne, talks about the fun times in the 1940s and 1950s, but from the perspective of how the mob ran the country, and how Castro ended up winning in 1958.

There's another book, Kathy, called Tropicana Nights that recounts that particular heyday in Havana's history and touches on the mob involvement, since so much of it was through the nightclubs.

The thing I'm struggling most with in the manuscript I'm working on is weaving in just enough of that sort of detail-- the brutality of Castro's takeover, and taking literary license where necessary without either completely disregarding the history or turning the narrative into a "Look! Here's every! single! detail! I learned about the Revolution."

Too many authors want to show you the scope of their research and I want to avoid becoming That Author. (Diana Gabaldon did it in Dragonfly in Amber and it made me NUTS.)

If you want some further details on life in Cuba during the 1950s/early '60s for the average person, I might be able to get my BIL's sister to contact you, Barb. She was in her mid-20s when the family left Cuba in 1962.

Thanks, Kathy-- luckily, I've got my enormous family to draw from, many of whom came over at various times from the mid-fifties to the early sixties, but extra perspective is always good.