Month: May 2011

Writing: The End

elizabethcaulfieldfelt Uncategorized

About thirty minutes ago I typed the last words to my fourth novel. What a great feeling!! I love finishing things.

Of course the words I typed might not be the “real” last words. The story is out, but I have many revisions to make. Today’s manuscript is not clean and ready to be read by a publisher / agent — but it’s close.

Wilde Wagers was both the hardest and the easiest book for me to write.

Easy, because Olivia Snow and Philip Lamb showed up regularly. I’ve never liked any characters as much as I like these two–really, they wrote themselves. The mystery and intrigue are complex, yet the tone is light-hearted. I was trying so hard to be literary and poetic in my first two novels that I think I struggled more writing them. Wilde Wagers is intended to be a fun romp, with mystery and romance thrown in.

Hard, because my mom loved this story. She loved Olivia and Genevieve, and every time we talked about the story and the characters, she always ended with one command: Write faster! I was writing fast, but not fast enough. After she died, I struggled with this story. How could I not? I had no one to talk to about these characters that she loved. Without her fire, my own spark went out. I couldn’t write anything, and when I did everything was flat and depressing.

I guess I have Olivia and Philip to thank for the end. They came to me and talked to me and pretty much demanded that the story be finished.

And now it is. I hope you get to read it some day.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

elizabethcaulfieldfelt reading

Last week I was at the library and looking for something light to read and remembered hearing about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Many of you know that Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite books. I’ve read it at least a dozen times and seen all the movie versions. Well, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies follows the original: all the same characters, saying the same things (word for word in many places), following the same plot, but every now and then the regular story pauses to accommodate a zombie attack. The Bennet girls have been trained in weaponry and physical combat, so the zombies pose no serious threat to the main characters.

This book is such fun! You know how when you re-read a favorite book, you know what is going to happen, but you re-read anyway because you enjoy the story and characters so much. Well, in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, you get to re-read a favorite and know everything that is going to happen, and you still get to be surprised.

I won’t pretend this book is for everyone. First off, I think you need to be a fan of Pride and Prejudice, and you also need to be open to having silly things happen to the characters in that literary classic.

Silly is sadly under-rated.