Wednesday, June 16, 2010

This is just funny

From a male POV...

As is my want, I have continued to read other writer's blogs which has led me to find a very funny passage in a very old book - which persuaded me to break my silence and post it here for all of you to enjoy.

Over on Aaron's blog, he talks about KV Taylor's The Red Penny Papers, so I followed the link and read the submission guidelines. Being a closet writer, I sought out some old Penny Dreadfuls to refresh my imagination on the type of thing Katey is after and to see if any synapses misfired and caused an idea to come into being.

This led me to find Wikipedia's reference to The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis as an example of pulp fiction in the tradition of the Penny Dreadful.

Within this whimsical, and somewhat over-written rehash of Romeo and Juliet (this is how it is coming across to me at the moment, I'm only working my way through chapter one), I found this priceless paragraph:

Now Antonia had observed the air, with which Don Christoval had kissed this same hand; But as She drew conclusions from it somewhat different from her Aunt's, She was wise enough to hold her tongue. As this is the only instance known of a Woman's ever having done so, it was judged worthy to be recorded here.

I laughed out loud bringing strange looks from my fellow work colleagues. Can anybody imagine getting away with such a remark in today's publishing world - but it works in this story. All the characters are full of their own importance and station within society that it only seems natural that the occasionally intrusive narrator would also be somewhat chauvinistic.

Well, I thought it was interesting.

Don't forget that The Red Penny Papers will also be the place to find Aaron's serialised novella (or will find shortly) 'Black Medicine Thunder and the Sons of Chaos' described in the authors own words as containing:

undead buffalo
deals with the devil
all manner of facial scars
dental jewelry
and a very mean ol' bastard named Reaver

Can't wait!



6 comments:

  1. Okay, that is seriously priceless. If that showed up in a submission I would be so, so amused. (Hey, irony man! Historical fiction is awesome for just those purposes!) Thanks for sharing, that made my night :D

    In other news, thanks for the shout out. We aim for a good time!

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  2. I laughed at you're retelling of it and thought, right away, that it sounded like some of the WIP stuff Katey posts on her blog. I suppose one would get away with such talk today if one were writing a satire. He, he, he.

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  3. Gotta love it. I second Katey's "thanks" for the plug. (Dark Pages turned out great, BTW)

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  4. Katey - anytime I make a lady's night, I'm a happy boy :c)

    Al - If only this was satire and not an attempt at writing an erotic rip off of William's R&J.

    Aaron - You're both welcome and yes, Dark Pages did turn out well and everyone should buy a copy and let me know what they think.

    Jmaie - glad you enjoyed

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  5. I recently laid my hands on something I wrote over 25 years ago. I vaguely remembered parts of it that were good and parts of it that were bad.

    My memory was correct, but unfortunately the bad parts weren't bad enough to post in my blog (or yours) and mock ruthlessly. Curses! Foiled again!

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