Welcome to week six
What do Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Helene Hanff, Dorothy Sayers, and Laurie King have in common? Apart from the obvious, of course? Maybe the titles will nudge your memory: Dracula. Frankenstein. 84 Charing Cross Road. What about, The Documents in the Case (got it now?) And “A Case in Correspondence.”
The short story unfolding at such a leisurely rate over the Twenty Weeks of Buzz is no Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, but on the other hand, it is epistolary, a narrative tale assembled out of letters and other pieces of writing. I found it a challenging writing exercise: laying out twenty disparate stepping-stones of plot, which at the end would enable a reader to turn and look back at the path with a smile of recognition—and maybe a quick eyebrow-raise of surprise when that reader then picks up The God of the Hive and realizes how it ties in.
Anyway, I had a lot of fun with it, and hope you are too. (And hope Mary Russell will forgive me, for yet again claiming to be the author of her memoirs…)
That’s what is proving so satisfying about this online extravaganza, how involved people get in it. Two people have come up with four puzzles between them, we’ve had a submission to the Beekeeper’s Gallery showing an evening at the American Colony (from O Jerusalem,) there are Illuminated MyStories both in and in the final stages, and one fabulous lady has sent in a description of how she adapted “A Case in Correspondence” to a church tea—I’m going to post that as a separate blog later in the week, the photos are too great to crowd. (No Russellscapes yet–if you want to better your chances for a prize, the directions are here.)
Thanks for playing along. We’ll give you one of those puzzles next week, since this week you’re all going to be so busy reading Folly for the book club, right?
And a giant thanks to Dana Stabenow, who joined the Virtual Book Club this past week to talk about writing, snow, Alaska, Kate Shugak, and of course, Mutt.
I hope you enjoy week 6 of the Twenty Weeks of Buzz, keeping you entertained as you wait so patiently for The God of the Hive.
