Russian Bride: free at last by Alla Crone Review by Jeane Slone: What was it like to be a Russian bride married to a physician in the U.S. Army Air Corps and immigrating to the United States from Shanghai? Nina is thrown into a world of new customs and left to perform hostess duties to her husband’s colleagues. She is surrounded by a mother and mother-in-law, both of whom have caustic and critical personalities. Fortunately, Dick is a delightful and understanding husband. This novel is a mix of humor, joy and sadness. A fast read! Jeane Slone is a past vice-president and board member of the Redwood Branch of the California Writer’s Club, a member of the Healdsburg Literary Guild, the Military Writer’s Society of America, and the Pacific Coast Air Museum. Jeane emcees the Dining With Local Authors program and distributes local authors’ books throughout Sonoma County. She has…
Tag: Alla Crone
How to write fiction based on fact. Prompt #41
Part Two of how to write fiction based on fact. Part One is Prompt #40. Alla Crone-Hayden began one of her first historical novels with this opening line: On the cold Sunday of January 9, 1905, the pallid sun hung over the rooftops of St. Petersburg trying to burn its way through a thin layer of clouds. The weather matches the mood of character, of story. Perhaps draws you in. Maybe you want to know more . . . does the sun succeed in burning through? Second sentence: By two o’clock in the afternoon the dull light had done little to warm the thousands of people milling in the streets. The second sentence answers the unasked question about the sun. Notice the word choices: cold, pallid sun, thin, dull light . . . words match the mood or tone of the day/event. Alla used weather to match the narrator’s…
Captive of Silence by Alla Crone
Captive of Silence is written with an eloquence matching the elegant author, Alla Crone. Alla captures the time period (1923-1940s) with a finesse fitting her stature and the nature of the times and locales. To tell this difficult story in such a compelling way is an art that Alla has mastered. Toward the end of the book, I could not put this roman à clef * down. Alla’s writing is honest, poignant and genuine. I highly recommend Captive of Silence, especially to learn history in a fascinating way and to be inspired from a woman who rose above an abusive and extremely difficult life. * roman à clef : French for novel with a key, a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the “key” is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction. — Wikipedia Note: …
Take a risk and go long.
In the January 2014 issue of Writer’s Digest magazine, Elizabeth Sims writes about “Miscalculations and Missteps.” One is, “take a risk and go long.” “The value of a relatively long description is that it draws your readers deeper into the scene. The worry is that you’ll bore them. But if you do a good job you’ll engross them. Really getting into a description is one of the most fun things you can do as an author. Here’s the trick: Get going on a description with the attitude of discovering, not informing. In this zone, you’re not writing to tell readers stuff you already know—rather, you are writing to discover and experience the scene right alongside them.” Sims continues with “Go below the surface.” “A gateway to describing a person, place or thing in depth is to assign mood or emotion to him/her/it. . . . The Bay Bridge was somber…