...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.
E-mail me at my profile addy if you'd like, and I'll see if she's available online from BIL.
Too many authors want to show you the scope of their research
::coughNealStephensoncough::
I just posted a snippet over in GWW, to see if the approach I'm taking works. There was a reason I really didn't want to take on something with historical scope, but tell that to the story that wants out.
