The Full Blast from Pompeii

As promised, here are the collected tweets of Vibiana of Pompeii.  For some writerly impressions of first month of Extreme Writing, visit me @ Light Up the Cave

And don’t forget to check back here tomorrow to meet your narrator for the month of August! 

* Got new sandals @ the forum.  Exquisitus maior! Greek, of course. They always make the best.  $$$, but Caius says I have pretty feet : )

* Poor Arva.  Another marriage negotiation come to 0.  She sez she’d rather join the vestals.  Her pater sez not with his fortune she’s not

* The earrings Rufus gave Nicia -- sooo bellus!  Silver lilies with pearl.  Wonder if Caius will ever give me jewels.  Sigh.

* Walking by the Lupanare. Iulia stared @ the girls in coin girdles. Child thought they were princesses. LOL!  Sandals pinch, but still bellus

* The Oracle is spouting direness.  Nicia says nobody listens 2 oracles any more.  Banquet 2morrow @ Celia's

* Never NEVER hire those Frankish acrobats 4 yr banquet.  Total disaster!  I thot Celia wld die!

* Scandal! Rufus gave Daria the same earrings as Nicia!  Guess he thot they still weren’t speaking.  They r n’t now!  

* Still on the waiting list @ bibliotheca 4 that scroll of Silo the Younger.  Arva says it’s trash.  I can only hope, LOL!

* Went 2 gather wax for thread.  Bees are gone.  Weird. Logas says it’s a bad omen.  I say that’s slave superstition.  Thots, any1?

*  Nicia’s dropping Rufus 4 Zeno.  He may b old & lame, but has $$$ and wld never give 2 woman the same jewel. He has sweet smile.

*  Saw Caius & his Pater @ the forum looking v serious.  Talking about me?? Ye gods! I’m going 2 fast 2nite & make an offering @ dawn 

* No sleep last night. Caius outside temple - had 2 hide so he wldn't c me w circles under eyes. So much hope offering was pleasing.

*  Banquet @ the Satria.  Rufus with Daria. Nicia so drunk, she tried 2 dance w that bronze faun that stands by the impluvium.  Zeno not : )

*  Nicia's cousin Marius sez Caius' Pater doesn't think my familia is high enough 4 him.  How mean is that?!  I h8 Marius

* the Cassii are visiting from Rome. 1st time since Sextus died. So much sadness for that familia. There will be many banquets now :)

* I wanted 2 make an egg dish 4 cena 2day, but there were hardly any. The slaves says the hens have almost stopped laying. Very strange

* Many banquets indeed! Every1 is after new tunics. Eumachian stalls look like a sardine run. Pater must allow me or what will Caius think?

*  Ye gods! What is Pater thinking? ! don't care who his people r! Varus is a baby and his skin is like bad fish.  O Caius, save me!

* Arva’s reading Naturalis Historia – & liking it! No wonder her Pater is tearing his hair out.  She’ll never find a husband that way.

* Saw that new wrestler over @ the palaestra. Fervens maxiumus! Nicia practically drooling.  Thot  Zeno wld have a fit – then where wld she b?

*  The Vulcanalia games will b the best ever!  The Satria have asked me 2 sit in their box. Now Pater must let me have a new tunic!

*  Fresco @ villa of Julia Felix w a satyr that looks exactly like Rufus – swear 2 the gods!  U totally have 2 c this!  

*  Doleo!  Caius' pater has contracted him 2 Tertia of the Cencii.  That's why they came 2 town.  I hate the Cencii!  Caius 2! I want 2 die!!!

* Plume of smoke from the mtn. Not only Iulia sez so.  C if I care! What good wld the Cencii do Caius then? Mater sez don't b stupid

* Tertia of the Cencii is only 12 & flat as a boy. Arva sez since Sextus died last yr, dowry is plurimus maximus. O greedy Caius, U slay me!

* Dark circles from crying.  Mater sez if I appear in Satria box like this I'll never find husband. She told Pater I must have new tunic.

* More smoke. Mater worried. They're sacrificing 5 white calves @ Temple of Jupiter. Pater says that shld do the trick, esp w games so soon

*  Games will b torture!  Marius sez Caius is making public appearance with Cencii. Their box next 2 Satria. I will take poison & die b4 I go!

* Thx Mater 4 new tunic. Exquisitus maior! No1 wld ever take me 4 a boy - even Nicia wishes she had my shape. Caius will b sooo sorry!

* Games mirabilis!  Turns out I was invited 4 Satria cousin who looks like Apollo.  Talked 2 me the whole time. Caius burning. Who cares?!

* Something has happened. Sky is black with. Feel heat.  Must run NOW.  F U read this, pray 4 us!

Introducing your narrator for July!

Vibiana, the author of July’s Tweets-from-history, lives in a charming spot on the Mediterranean.  Like most of her friends, she spends her days helping with the numerous tasks at home, including keeping a watchful eye on her younger sister, Iulia.  Vibiana loves parties, shopping and the adorable Caius, who she dreams of marrying.  She’s a typical young woman of her time and place, the time being 79 AD and the place, a little town called Pompeii.

For more Worlds of Wordcraft, visit me during the month @ Light Up the Cave

New Blovel Project Starting July 1

Yes, you read that right!   My next adventure in post-digital fiction will make its debut on July 1.  The new project, like the last one, will run through Twitter.

I read three main categories of tweets.  There are tweets from companies (or people who are companies), which are out there for marketing, keeping a profile high and maybe occasionally giving some useful information.  There are rollouts, usually intense bombardments over a narrow period of time, to get the word out about an event/disaster/cause.

And then there are the brain farts.  Sorry, but I've mulled this over for hours and there's simply no more elegant way to describe them.  This is what most of us do -- blurt out whatever is in our heads at the moment.  Off to the mall; fingers crossed they have the jeans!  Why do cafeteria's always smell like tuna and oranges?  Fat sweaty guys should have to wear shirts on the subway.  How can the beach be closed on the hottest day of summer??

Those kinds of things.

SO, figuring that while times change, people really don't, I started wondering about what people might have tweeted once upon another time.  For the new project, I'll be picking a different time and place each month, and putting myself in the head of someone who might have lived then/there.  Not rulers or genius or people who otherwise wandered into recorded history. Just ordinary people.  Like me.  Like us. And every day of that month, in the voice of that person, I'll be issuing one tweet.  Together, each month's tweets will have a story arc.  I'm committing to a series of three sets, to run over July, August and September.

Readers can follow me on Twitter (@loriberhon) and read the tweets as they're posted.  Alternatively, they can be read altogether, at month's end when the month's entire set of tweets will be gathered into a single post right here on the Blovel blog site.

The next post on this website will introduce your Guest Tweeter for the month of July.

be seeing you!

Good Night, Sweet Prints

So, once again, I haven’t been writing. I got bored with the “twitter novel” (I'm just not the 140 character type) There’s been no happy news about ‘The Breast of Everything’. And in my actual paycheck job, I’ve learned some new and incredibly discouraging things about Search Engine Optimization and have spent most of the last two work weeks churning out what amounts to spam (in aid of a corporate initiative tied to the aforementioned SEO). This is a pretty soul-killing task. I could rattle off a chain of comparisons, but as imagination isn’t much in vogue and as I don’t know who might read this post and therefore can’t guess which would hit the requisite “just like me!” note, I won’t bother.

All in all, it’s difficult to dredge up the energy to forge ahead with ‘Chasing Fireflies’, a book I very much want to write but which I assume (also very much) will be unlikely to ever find a publishing home. Then today I opened up the NY Times Book Review section.

Dear Reader, if you are a reader-reader, you’re now waiting for me to say that this issue completely changed my perspective and that I am now full to the brim with boundless enthusiasm and will be plunging into Fireflies with a hearty will to complete it by New Year’s Eve. That’s the literary conceit behind the way in which the last two paragraphs were set up, isn’t it?

Well, I’m tossing the conceit on its ear, which is the only sensible thing to do considering that there very soon won’t be any readers who would expect or understand such conceits. No, it’s not me being the voice of doom (for a change). It’s the June 5, 2010 NY Times Book Review.

Jonathan Franzen’s article ‘A Strindberg Family Robinson: Rereading ‘The Man Who Loved Children’‘ opens with the following gambit. “…haven’t we all secretly sort of come to an agreement, in the last year or two or three, that novels belonged to the age of newspapers, and are going the way of newspapers, only faster? ...novels are a curious moral case, in that we feel guilty about not reading more of them but also guilty about doing something as frivolous as reading them; and wouldn’t we all be better off with one less frivolous thing in the world to feel guilty about?”

He goes on to make everyone want to read the book, but by way of making it an exception. Franzen, who was quoted earlier this year in The Guardian as believing “It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction” apparently has extended that to apply to reading good fiction. An interesting stance for a man who has a new novel coming out this fall. And a grim prognosis for those of us who, unlike Franzen, can’t guarantee a publisher an audience cultivated over 20+ years to buy this now marginal form of writing from him.

Danielle Trussoni’s review of ‘The Same River Twice’, by Ted Mooney considers that “… readers must often choose between ‘literary fiction,’ understood to be works of well-written but meandering prose about the ‘real world’ of human relationships, and ‘commercial fiction,’ fast-paced novels in which plot is everything. The literary is assumed to be cerebral and artistic, the commercial mindless and entertaining. One suspects that nobody is completely happy with this divide. So it is a joy to discover, every once and a while, a writer whose prose and plotting take something from both camps.”

Trussoni goes on to give a joyfully positive review of this book, bolstering the possibility that a book can fall outside the market divisions and succeed (I wish she’d given a big thumbs up to Knopf for daring to publish such a shocking hybrid). This should have made me cheer. The inability to be easily categorized has long stood in the way of my own work (I’m not ‘commercial’ and, to quote at least one editor, I’m “not poetic enough” to be considered ‘literary’). For multiple generations, our citizens have been carefully trained to accept only that which can be understood of one of an easily identifiable group. A nation built on the myth of individualism now absolutely requires typing and labeling in every avenue of life. In positing that this might not be the happiest state of affairs in the neighborhood of fiction, Trussoni is waving a brave little handkerchief from behind the barricades. But her comments speak to the scope of issue. What she doesn’t note is that even when one of these slippery creations succeeds in the market the publishers, producers, etc. don’t take it as a sign to open the doors to more idiosyncratic products. Instead, they turn all their energies into finding copies of the first, because profit isn’t profit unless it’s a blockbuster (thank you, stock market). A “maverick” may have once meant an unbranded range animal, but now it’s one of the most Identifiable brands on the market.

For those outdated enough to care, this is the point where a well-written article is supposed to have a conclusion. This isn’t a well-written essay, it’s a rant. I know I share my frustration with thousands who love fiction, readers and writers alike. If the only new fiction being published comes in a can, readers at least can turn to 200 years of unique minds and voices, but what’s a writer to do except stop.