Why the best stories are lickable

I'm probably the last person on the planet to have read Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games books, but I finally did, over the winter holidays. Wow, what a ride. Out of so many things Collins did right, I want to talk about just one.

Food.

And no, this post is not in any way related to my New Year's resolutions or the calorie counter I just installed on my phone. Instead, it stems from a longstanding fondness for food imagery. From Katniss's efforts to forage sustenance for her family to Peter's too-tempting Turkish Delight in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe to the near-constant pizza runs and Cluck in a Bucket visits in Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books, food details really bring a story home for me.

Sometimes food is the centerpiece, such as in magical realism stories like Chocolate and Like Water for Chocolate, and I get that. But even when it ain't magical, the food references can move a story. Can't tell you how many e-romance bits I've read that feature chocolate or marshmallows or whipped cream or cherries. And yet I still keep reading 'em because the mastication masturbation symbology works. Even when authors make the metaphor literal, there really is something compelling -- visceral even -- in reading about food.

Eve and the apple, display cases where the voyeur glutton can indulge without ingesting a single calorie, the shape of a lollipop bulging through pursed lips...whetting the appetite? How about the libido? Because, of course, food is also erotic. In her book Female Desire, Rosalind Coward writes, "Cooking food and presenting it beautifully is an act of servitude. It is a way of expressing affection through a gift... That we should aspire to produce perfectly finished and presented food is a symbol of a willing and enjoyable participation in servicing others." D/s themes in food prep? Bingo.

You know the old adage that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. I'm beginning to think it applies to readers, too.

Short fiction: Dead Things and Magic

1,163 words
PG Rating

Summary: The last golden-born fae struggles to find a purpose in a life with no wings.

Once upon a time, deep in the thicket, below the curtain of bluebells and ash leaves, a fae princess was born, the last of seventeen sisters to emerge from shimmering gold chrysalids. Golden-born fae had long patrolled the glen, guardians of all the flowers and of light, but this one, the last princess, won no march of her own. Because she had no wings.

Short fiction: Wonderbeans

~800 words
PG rating

Summary: Evelyn has just moved in with her boyfriend, Dave, and finds that figuring out the toilet-seat situation and other cohabitation conundrums is much easier than breaking the news to her mother.

Mom stared down into the metal bowl of Kentucky Wonder Beans by the sink, snapping the prickly ends off. The snaps cracked like a whip in the otherwise silent kitchen. On a stool near the oven, Evelyn squirmed.

"It's not like I killed anybody, Ma," Evelyn muttered.

Snap.

Is that that and is?

November is a month of words. Folks participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) write their fingertips raw to log 50,000 of the suckers. NaQuaWriMo (National Quality Writing Month) players agonize over their 100 per day, searching for the best and most evocative.

We prep holiday cards, attempting to achieve that balance between chipper upbeat and just plain annoying. And when the weather turns crisp, we huddle indoors, reading words, writing words, speaking words, placing words on a board to get the most points and make our friends cringe in Scrabblenvy (a word: look it up).

However, in this season of word glut, might I suggest two that seem, to me, to be overused, that and is? After all...

That that is, is. That that is not, is not. Is that it? It is.

(And also, I lied about Scrabblenvy.)

Six Sentence Sunday: Sneaky

From the piece I'm working on right now, which will probably never be read by anyone but me. Sih is her duke's minister at a diplomatic conference and is planning on doing a bit of spying.

"My duke, you're so used to bestriding a battlefield that when you walk into a plain little room you take up all the air. Another body can barely breathe for your overwhelming presence. Have you ever even tried to sneak?"

"Yes."

"Have you ever succeeded?"

He figured it was safer not to answer that.

Thank you for visiting. I encourage you to read through some of the excellent Six Sentence Sunday offerings.

Difference between writer and author

From Webster:

writer (n.) one that writes

author (n.) one that originates or creates

The distinction is small but important. Writing is a technical discipline, not an art form. Anyone with enough diligence and practice can put words together and construct logical sentences. She can even get pretty good at what I call the microlevel of writing: strong verbs, lack of dangling participles, careful attention to word repeats and adverb avoidance and that kind of thing. The sorts of things that authors generally get smacked around about at FLEs.

An author, on the other hand, creates, births a whole story -- sometimes a whole world -- from flat nothing. Think about that for a second. In many respects, an author is a god, or at least a demigod, a mystical creature who can play a reader's emotions, make social arguments, change the real world... all based on some words.

I'm a damn fine writer who aspires to be an author.

Short fiction: Unqualified

~600 words
Rating: PG-13 for language and insinuation

Summary: Ali interviews a potential candidate.

Ali had him cornered on a balcony, seated opposite and facing her over a low patio table, poolside. She could tell he'd expected the interview to be in a typical office setting. He'd even dressed up, poor thing. She poked her glasses with her index finger till they sat more comfortably atop her nose, but she didn't let her gaze falter, not one bit. She wanted her latest candidate to squirm a little. Okay, a lot: She liked it when they squirmed.