Robert's writing topics
Saturday, April 13, 2013
female author crime stories
http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/a-marriage-made-in-hell-20130222-2euw5.html
Monday, April 8, 2013
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Story about a writer
http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/a-marriage-made-in-hell-20130222-2euw5.html
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/a-marriage-made-in-hell-20130222-2euw5.html#ixzz2Od3Q0PmV
A marriage made in hell
- Date
Caroline Baum
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn is published by Phoenix, $19.99.
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Horror fan ... Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn.
Midway through our Skype video call, Gillian Flynn (in Chicago) introduces me to her cat, Roy, who wanders casually across her desk. He's very large and black, with glowing green eyes, the kind of cat you could imagine belonging to a witch in a fairytale. When she was growing up, Flynn, now 43, loved to assume the role of the witch while playing with her four female cousins, finding ways to torment and boss them around. Playing nice was not her style. It still isn't, as anyone who has read Gone Girl will tell you.
The most talked about and satisfyingly twisted psychological thriller of last year, it lifts the lid on a toxic marriage, taking the reader on a darkly comic journey as the narrator, Nick, an out-of-work journalist turned bar owner, tries to solve the mystery of his wife Amy's disappearance on their fifth wedding anniversary.
''I'd written two novels - Dark Places and Sharp Objects - about lonely, isolated people, so I wanted to tackle a relationship this time,'' says Flynn, who identifies with Nick. ''At first, I wrote the story entirely from his point of view, but then I decided a he-said, she-said battle between two characters who are both writers would be more interesting for the reader - whose version should you believe?'' The answer: two unreliable narrators means double the fun.
''The fact that Nick and Amy both have a sense of humour is their saving grace,'' says Flynn, who developed her own sense of the absurd doing a series of odd jobs as a student, including working at a frozen-yoghurt stand dressed as a cone in a tuxedo.
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Amy is quite a piece of work: an entitled blonde princess, the daughter of academic co-authors of a series of popular children's books in which their infant daughter is the central character.
Amy is not happy that Nick has dragged her away from her natural habitat, Manhattan, to a suburban backwater in Missouri, where their McMansion (a contemporary reworking of the large Victorian house featured in the Gothic fiction that Flynn enjoys) is surrounded by foreclosure properties and other signs of the recession.
''Amy's a snob, she's a bit ashamed of the fact that Nick has opened a bar in town.''
Like Amy, Flynn is the daughter of college professors. Her mother taught literature, her father taught film, enthusiastically exposing her at a younger age than film censors would advise to films such as Rosemary's Baby and Psycho.
''I loved to be scared, particularly by the supernatural horror that's contained within a house, rather than by zombies, but I also understood very early on that these stories were constructed.''
She thinks she has already passed on her appetite for horror to her two-year-old son. ''Becoming a mother has not made me neurotic or more fearful; I don't let demons into my mind. But I would never write about a child being harmed.''
Flynn had a nature/nurture advantage when it came to choosing her career as a journalist. At Entertainment Weekly, she wrote reports from film sets before becoming the magazine's television critic (favourite show: The Wire).
Her up-close experience of celebrity and the media gave her insights into public expectations of what grief and guilt look like, which she used in Gone Girl.
''In this sort of scenario, the wife is always sainted, no matter what, and the husband is always the number one suspect. But what does it say about us if we are only interested in the nice victims?''
Readers are soon disabused of just how nice Amy is by reading her diary, a convention that has a long literary history but which Flynn subverts with devilish delight.
''We see men like that all the time in fiction,'' Flynn says. ''Characters that are flawed, troubled, pissed off and abusive. I really dislike the idea that women are innately good.''
Flynn cites women who are famous for their vinegary take on the world as her favourite writers, including Lionel Shriver, Joyce Carol Oates and Margaret Atwood, who definitely don't sugar the pill.
While Flynn admits Amy is ''probably on the spectrum of sociopathy'', she didn't speak to psychiatrists or read up on personality disorders to create her.
''I thought it would limit, rather than inform, me; it might turn me back into a journalist,'' she says.
Being familiar with film and TV, Flynn tackled the screen adaptation of the book herself, but says she's tried hard not to cast the roles in her own mind. She's sanguine about the flak she's received from readers unhappy with the book's ending, and she's noncommittal about speculation that she might write a sequel: ''Never say never'' is her answer for now.
''One was never planned but I can see that it [spoiler alert] might be fun to visit Nick and Amy 10 years on.''
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/a-marriage-made-in-hell-20130222-2euw5.html#ixzz2Od3Q0PmV
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Friday, August 10, 2012
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Author friend of Kylie Johnson
My fabulously gorgeous and talented friend Justine Ford talking about her wonderful new book which has just been published.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Letter to mom
Dear Mom,
This is a difficult letter to write. I guess when Dude was a heroin addict, you were willing to give anything and do anything because his life was precarious.
I think that is what you would do for any of your kids.
I suppose if David's wellbeing was in threat, then you would do the same thing for him.
I know that what you do for your kids is your business.
But I feel the need to alert you to some very concerning information that may be your business. It may be unpleasant information, but I think you need to be informed.
I was reading on the Oprah Winfrey website and there was an article about a failed marriage. The quote is
"I think a conspiracy is anything that's shrouded in silence". I think David is being secretive about some of his conduct with dad's property. If David wants to be silent, then that is one thing. But if I suspect that he is misleading you, then I am a conspirator with David, if I keep silent to you and dad's other heirs.
This is a difficult letter to write. I guess when Dude was a heroin addict, you were willing to give anything and do anything because his life was precarious.
I think that is what you would do for any of your kids.
I suppose if David's wellbeing was in threat, then you would do the same thing for him.
I know that what you do for your kids is your business.
But I feel the need to alert you to some very concerning information that may be your business. It may be unpleasant information, but I think you need to be informed.
I was reading on the Oprah Winfrey website and there was an article about a failed marriage. The quote is
"I think a conspiracy is anything that's shrouded in silence". I think David is being secretive about some of his conduct with dad's property. If David wants to be silent, then that is one thing. But if I suspect that he is misleading you, then I am a conspirator with David, if I keep silent to you and dad's other heirs.
Mom, here is what I am thinking. I think David is saying things to mislead me from the truth. David says, dad gave him first choice of properties to select from about two to three years before dad died. Now, what would prompt dad to make this decision so many years before he died? Why would David choose, the least valuable of dad's property? If dad took such action so far before he died, then why didn't dad put in writing somewhere that David was given his the house in Lake Havasu as his inheritance? David told us he knew about the transfer of title two to three years before dad died, but he told Becky, he didn't learn about the house being his until just after dad died in August 2011. Which story is the truth? Dad was so organised with his investments, his property, everything. How is it possible that such an organised man did not have a will?
David told you that Jeffrey disrespectful and accused him of making smart-alec comments. The truth is that David accused Jeffrey of bullsh_t and David called Jeffrey a prick. I was there mom. Jeffrey was attacked by David and Dude. What David told you was not the truth. David told Jeffrey and Becky that he was planning to buy the boat from dad's estate and then in May, David said dad gave him the boat. If you remember, on the Sunday morning after dad died, David divided up a bunch of cash. He told Jeffrey that he was giving Jeffrey $2,000 out of his (David's) share of the cash. The truth is that there was $22,000 of cash in dad's house. Everyone got $5,000 and there was $2,000 left over. Jeffrey got that money. Jeffrey's money did not come out of David's share of the cash.
Dad never appointed David as his executor. That takes a court action. Dad never took that court action. The only information we have is that David told us that dad has selected David as the executor. Dad never told me that David was the executor. We have all trusted and believed David who said he was the executor, but Dad never told us this.
In January of 2011, six months before dad died, me, dude and David met at a mexican restaurant in Long Beach. In that meeting, David and dude and I agreed that Jeffrey would be treated as an equal to Rick (as Rick's only child). But when dad died, David changed that agreement to me and claimed that it was dad's wishes that Jeffrey not be included as an heir in settling his California or Arizona property. David basically was acting to "cut" Jeffrey out of his inheritance and saying "it was dad's wishes", but nobody ever heard dad say that. And since there is no will, it's David's word that dad didn't want Jeffrey to be an heir. Mom, dad was smart. Dad would have known that the state of California would have made Jeffrey a one quarter heir to the California property. Dad would have known that if he didn't want Jeffrey to be an heir, he (dad) would have had to have written a will specifically excluding Jeffrey from any inheritance. But according to David, dad did not leave a will.
Mom, David was never declared the executor of dad's property in Arizona, but he has acted to divide up cash and bank accounts and acted to give Dude dad's Camry without telling any of the other heir's beforehand.
Mom, I have never been told, but Becky tells me that David has taken out a loan against your house. David has never told me about this. Neither have you. You are not obligated to tell me any of your business affairs. But you need to know that if David gets into financial trouble and can't pay off that loan when the bank "calls in" the loan, then the bank could potentially repossess your house - even if you are still alive and living in the house.
Mom, I had a meeting with David and and David mislead me about what his intentions were for Jeffrey. David also said he was going to help dad with a will and he said he would work with dad to get dad to write his will and establish a living trust. But David did none of those things and he never told any of us that he did not get the will written with dad until after dad had died.
Mom, I think David is withholding information from me, Dude, and Jeffrey about what he and dad discussed when David was given the house in Arizona. I think at that time, dad would have written something about David getting his inheritance when he got the Arizona property. But David claims that there is nothing in writing from dad.
Mom, I'm concerned that if you don't ask David to pay off the mortgage on your house, then the bank could force the sale of that house, and Dude, Jeffrey, and I will not be able to get inheritance from your home, and David will get the entire property. If that is what you want, then okay. But if you want all of us to get a share of your house, then David needs to pay off any loan balance he has outstanding on your property.
Dad's estate has turned out to be a mess and David was the central figure in settling dad's estate. It's been a year, and nothing has been completed. I think David is not getting things done
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