Deceit? Or clever writing?

What if you found out that a book you loved was somewhat deceptive? The White Horse, The Yellow Dragon was given a prestigious Czech literary award, and its 19-year-old female author, a member of the Vietnamese community, was praised by readers and lit-types around the world. And, indeed, the international Vietnamese expat community. The book deals with racism and is a commentary on Czech, and Western, society.

But she doesn't exist. She's a male Czech author, Jan Cempirek. He hired two Vietnamese girls to pose as the author; he only communicated with journalists and publishers via email. He turned down invitations to meet politiHe didn't break any rules, really, but he's embarrassed the publisher and confused members of the Czech-Vietnamese community.

Perhaps Cempirek was afraid to publish a book that was critical of Czech society. Or perhaps he knew that this sort of lie would make international news in the book world, resulting in translations and book sales. It's a manipulative, and perhaps brave, way to write. I'm reminded of the James Frey fiasco, and the recent exposure of Belle du Jour's identity. Do you expect honesty from your authors? Are the words enough?

The Knox trial

I've been following the Amanda Knox/Meredith Kercher case for the past two years with sympathy and horror. In a nutshell, Knox and Kercher were roommates; Kercher was stabbed to death; Knox didn't do herself any favors afterward. But the evidence isn't strong enough; the extraneous circumstances and shocking tactics used by Italian investigators were pointed and manipulative. (The most disgusting? Telling an incarcerated Knox that she's HIV-positive, asking her to write down every man she's slept with, then telling her oops, we made a mistake and passing the list of men to the press.) I don't think Knox did it.

I won't go into the whole 'it's anti-American' rant coming from Stateside, or the fuzzy circumstances surrounding the case. But what resonates most with me is how alone Knox was in this whole ordeal. She was 20 when this happened; an exchange student from UW; a wide-eyed girl abroad for the first time, tasting the newness and embracing the curiosities and independence of living in another world. I've been there; had I been there at age 20, who knows the trouble I'd have got myself into.

When I moved to Prague I was 27, but still naive; I'd been lucky, growing up in the Midwest and living in places where I had good friends and good people around me. I went to Prague with this same attitude. You trust everyone. You just assume nobody would do anything weird, or put you in a compromising or dangerous position. At parties, you ignore the guys shooting up in the corner, you smirk at the guy puking in the kitchen sink, you don't ask when you see a friend kissing a girl you've seen soliciting herself on street corners. You roll your eyes if something seems dodgy, chalking it up to a 'cultural divide'.

My flat in Prague housed five of us. Great people, all, but one had a boyfriend who hobnobbed with the neo-Nazi crowd, one brought a different guy home every weekend, and the drugs and booze were plentiful. After I'd left, the guy who took my place brought a girl home one weekend, and everyone woke up to find their handbags, wallets, iPods, CDs, and even their pricey underwear gone.

One of the flats where I stayed in Lisbon wasn't much better; my windowless room was in the middle of a 1960s block of flats, and only one of the doors to the room locked. The owner was a weird Portuguese woman who kept large bags of hash in the cupboard; I often found residue of cocaine in our tiny bathroom. I ignored her until she began to invade my privacy, asking where I was, who I was with, etc. Then one night I came home to find her rummaging through my things, and I moved out without telling her the next afternoon.

I'm not sure I would deal well with the legal systems of any country I've lived in. I never spoke the languages well, never really understood the relaxed manner of the police and their selective interest in broken laws. I feel for Knox, for her bewilderment after her roommate was murdered, her inability to understand the nuances of Italian or the misreading that can happen when two people attempt to solve a problem in two very different languages. Had the police raided either of my former apartments, I would have been an accomplice. How would I have fared?

A young British girl is dead, stabbed in the throat. A gossipy, drama-loving Italian town has now put three people in jail for the same murder. Now, a 22-year-old American girl will be in jail for the next 26 years.

Maybe Knox saw it happen; maybe she heard it; maybe she found herself in a surreal moment that felt more like a horror film than Roman Holiday. She admits to smoking weed on the night of the murder; depending on her reaction to the stuff, maybe she thought it was a bad trip, that the murder was happening in her head, not in real life. But 20-year-old exchange students don't just stab their roommates in the throat. Especially girls like Knox, who did stupid things like any 20-year-old girl (I am so thrilled that the internet didn't exist when I was a teenager; YouTube never dies.), but certainly wasn't harboring fantasies of killing anyone.

I feel for Knox; I can't imagine the fear throbbing through her body when she heard the verdict last night. I can't imagine the heady whirl of the terror of the past two years as she tried to make sense of a night she doesn't remember well. It's a cautionary tale to everyone living abroad, on their own. Yes, it's freeing; you can be whoever you want to be. And so can everyone else.

Living juicy

So M & I were invited to help chaperone 16 middle school kids on a Thanksgiving weekend ski trip to Zermatt, and the Matterhorn didn't disappoint. It's one of those Surreal Things that you know about throughout your life (like Venice, or the Eiffel Tower, or the Taj Mahal) and when you see it you've got to pinch yourself. It is a majestic sight, curling out of the Alps into the sunshine. Gorgeous.

Some teachers loathe middle school; I love them. The boys are dorky and goofy, the girls are desperate to kiss the boys and are just beginning to discover how nasty girls can be to one another (though they hold no grudges). They're awkward, silly, fun, desperate for freedom but long to be entertained. It's my very favorite age.

Zermatt is a charming little village with the typical chalets one associates with the country. Everything is immaculate, well-run, sophisticated, and I found myself wondering how much more efficient the world would be if Switzerland was in charge. This, of course, reminded me of a t-shirt sold in a restaurant in Stresa, on Lago Maggiore:

In heaven, the cops are British, the lovers are French, the food is Italian, the cars are German, and the whole thing is run by the Swiss. In hell, the cops are German, the lovers are Swiss, the food is British, the cars are French, and the whole thing is run by the Italians. Touche.

Living as juicily as possible...off to Edinburgh and Glasgow for the next few days to take in some Christmas cheer. Slainte!

Pop songs and telethons

I'm such a sucker for a cheesy pop song. Should preface with: I've had the flu since Sunday night; it's not swine (had that before the wedding), it didn't knock me senseless, but I was lethargic and useless all week. So the husbandia is out with the boys, and I'm staring at our ostentatiously large TV on the wall, singing along to cheesy pop songs. A little Beyonce "Crazy in Love" and Rihanna "Umbrella" and Katy Perry "I Kissed a Girl" and I'm feeling all sorts of better.

The other television option tonight is Children in Need, an annual fundraising event that the BBC puts on, Jerry Lewis telethon-style. People get really creative to raise money. One guy is cycling from Alaska to the southern tip of Chile (he's now in northern Chile and has cycled 8,500 miles so far), and BBC Scotland put an exercise bike in their studios and got radio and TV guests to do a few miles at a time; they did over 25,000. The BBC newsreaders learned a dance with a Britain's Got Talent finalist dance squad and performed it on national TV. An Edinburgh girl cut of 3 1/2 feet (!) of hair and raised £3K from her friends. Scotland locked up various personalities in a jail cell; the morning inmates raised over £30K, the evening inmates over £60K. The Dragon's Den crew re-vamped a community center for kids in three days. One guy learned to play guitar on Monday and went to every Scottish city and busked; he raised nearly £1ooo in Inverness alone, and totalled £5K for the week. The total for the UK as of 10pm: £12,691, 312. Inspiring stuff.

Pop songs and generosity make the world go round.

Oh, and I get to go to the Aberdeen Apple Store tomorrow. Yippee! (Preface that with my shiny-new iPhone...belated birthday pressie and I already don't remember life without it...)

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay. - Mark Twain

I took this photo at Shakespeare & Company in Paris, just inside the door. I love the chaos of this bookshop. A cacophony of stories makes the air heavy with the read and the unread, and it's a humbling experience to skim the authors' names, knowing each bound copy is a labour of love. And knowing that while some remain in infamy and others are still revered, hundreds of writers will be forgotten. Their words will live on for those who stumble upon them, in a bookshop like this one, but books, like everything else, will one day be replaced, by new stories, new ideas, or by the retelling of tales long forgotten.

I was directed to a recent post by my agent via Twitter, and found Therese's candid statements touching and difficult. Why does one write, if one has yet to reap the rewards (via emails, like Therese, or otherwise)? What motivates creativity, especially when your book might end up at the bottom of a clumsy pile on the floor of a Parisian institution?

Perhaps motivation lies in the simple desire to articulate the satisfaction of a moment. To share this experiment we're all living, to make connections as we find our similitude. We've got something to say, in our words and through our eyes, and for some reason we're presumptuous enough to think the world will care. A soft breeze, teenagers chatting and laughing by the sea, the sound of gulls circling overhead, clouds bouncing in a huge blue sky, the smell of fresh fish & chips. An idyllic moment in a village on the North Sea, until -

I try to leave out the parts that people skip. - Elmore Leonard

Oh, editing. This is the part where I do searches for adverbs and duplicate words on the same few pages, read all dialogue for each character to ensure the voice is consistent, ensure all hint of cliche is removed, etc. - it's tedious, but ensures that what my illustrious agent receives is in good shape. The problem is falling into the story, and editing isn't the time to rewrite. Supposedly. But playing god means embracing the muses on their terms. Hmph.

Snakes deals with domestic violence, which is back in the spotlight this week with Rihanna's 20/20 interview. This is a brave, disturbing interview. I find it fascinating that people still feel that abuse has to be provoked; that she must have done something to 'deserve' this. It was seeing message boards and hearing interviews of women accusing Rihanna of inciting this behavior that sparked me to write this novel, which had been brewing in my head for a decade. I began dreaming about these characters; I began seeing them on the street, hearing them in my head. Now, after their lives have been written, I must ensure that the book is both true to their stories and true to the stories of Rihanna and the millions of women who deal with domestic violence.

I hope there aren't any parts that people skip. I hope that this novel resonates without being preachy or sanctimonious. I hope that it works.

Camanachd, Iománaíocht

We ain't been out much lately - between finishing the draft of Snakes and M's exams it's been all about holing up inside beside the stove. So when we found out about the Shinty v. Hurling match last Saturday we had to go. I watched a hurling match ten years ago in Galway and promptly forgot all the rules, thinking I would have little need for this knowledge later in life. Shinty is huge in the Highlands - it has its own radio show and people line up for autographs from the players. It's also rumoured to be the inspiration for Quidditch. Hurling's a bit more widespread, and any Irish pub worth its salt will have a hurling stick on the wall. It was a fun match, violent and aggressive like any good sport, and with the added dimension of weapons. The occasional crack of the bat and broken sticks added excitement.

When I wrote for Squash Magazine, I was repeatedly amazed by the commitment the players had to their sport. They worked out for hours every day, played squash whenever they could, watched videos of themselves playing, analyzed videos of others playing - it really is an obsession for these players.

I was raised on Sunday afternoon football, college basketball in the winter/spring, and baseball in the summer. Where I grew up, soccer was the 'alternative' sport. Perhaps that's why I find it fascinating that people become obsessed with a minor sport, a sport that won't gain them Olympic glory or a Nike endorsement. People play because they love it, not because they want recognition.

I wonder if the arts is the same. My friend Joan is an artist, and she's often posed the question of whether she should create art for herself or for the market. The same with writing. I'd like to think that if you do something from your soul, the recognition will follow; or, is the process of creating, the ritual of warming up and playing a match, is that enough? Should it be enough?