Teaser Tuesday hosted by Miz B at Should Be Reading

I just started reading The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst. Parkhurst wrote The Dogs of Babel and Lost and Found, really great selections for reading groups. My teaser for today will be the first paragraph. A little long that normal but awfully good!

"There are some stories no one wants to hear. Some stories, once told, won't let you go so easily. I'm not talking about the tedious, the pointless, the disgusting: the bugs in your bag of flour; your hour on the phone with insurance people; the unexplained blood in your urine. I'm talking about narratives of tragedy and pathos so painful, so compelling, that they seem to catch inside you on a tiny hook you didn't even know you'd hung. You wish for a way to pull the story back out; you grow resentful of the very breath that pushed those words into the air. Stories like this have become a specialy of mine."  -- The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst (Release Date, June 2010)

Now, that's a teaser! Anyone can play. What's yours?

1. Grab your current read
2. Open to a random page
3. Share two (2) "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
4. Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I'm excited to welcome Elise Blackwell, author of An Unfinished Score. In Elise's fourth novel, she tells a story of marriage, music, infidelity, friendship, betrayal, and loss. Suzanne, a concert violist, finds out her illicit lover, a renowned conductor, has died. Suzanne grieves silently. But his widow knows about the affair and blackmails her into finishing his last composition. Elise intertwines music and her lyrical prose taking the reader through the emotional challenges to the unexpected end. NO SPOILERS -- you have to read it to the end!

Elise chats about reading group questions, marriage, and the inspiration for An Unfinished Score. Thanks so much, Elise, for writing this post for On the Bookcase!

When I visit book clubs, a question that comes up more often than not is “what’s it like to be a writer married to another writer?” Often lurking under the question is the assumption that it must be awful. Portrayals of writers (and their marriages) in movies such as The Squid and the Whale don’t help. We’re reputed to be narcissistic, difficult, childish, and prone to philandering. I recently laughed as hard at anyone with the online literary journal HTML Giant posted a piece titled “Reasons You Should Not Date Writer (if you are a writer),” including, of course, “You will be poor.” Some of the items on the list were amusing because they rang at least a little true: “Writing is not mysterious to writers, so they will not romanticize, mythologize, or idealize what you do” and “Critiquing each other’s work … may result in the laying of emotional landmines.” I still remember my husband’s initial response to a draft of my first novel: “You write very clearly.” Talk about damning with faint praise!

But mostly it works very well, and several other writers who are also married to writers confirm the positives. Who else would understand that you might want to spend a gorgeous Saturday inside, alone, pecking at your computer because you’ve just had a plot breakthrough? (Having dated non-writers before I met my husband, I’m sure the answer is “hardly anyone.”) Another writer understands the compulsion, as well as the ups and downs—why it’s important to celebrate a book acceptance the day it happens and how bad certain rejection letters feel.

Some items on that seven-point list of reasons not to date writers weren’t funny, suggesting serious relationship problems welling from ego, competition, and staking out the same autobiographical material. I feel lucky in this regard: my husband’s ego is both modest and solid, we’ve been in the writing life together from the beginning and genuinely celebrate each other’s successes, and neither of us write fiction that is autobiographical. That’s not always the case; I know enough writers to have seen the dark side of writerly marriage.

And so when I sat down to write a novel about two musicians married to each other, I pondered both the advantages and the potential emotional wreckage of a marriage between two people committed foremost to the same art form. What if they didn’t always admire each other’s work? What if they brought out each other’s professional insecurities? What if one was more successful in some ways but not others? What havoc might their travel schedules wreak? Might professional and personal jealousies ever blend? Can you betray your spouse with your creative work?

An Unfinished Score is about a lot of things, including how to make a life of art in a contemporary world defined by box stores and rapid-fire news and social media. Most of all, though, it’s about relationships between people. It’s about relationships among women as both friends and competitors. It’s about relationships between men and women. It’s a portrait of romantic love and of marriage, complicated by the fact that all the players love music a little more than each other. 

Elise's other books are The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish, Grub, and Hunger. Visit Elise's website!

Happy Teaser Tuesday!  

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

1. Grab your current read
2. Open to a random page
3. Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
   BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
4. Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

"Listen. The trees in this story are stirring, trembling, readjusting themselves. A breeze is coming in gusts off the sea and it is almost as if the trees know, in their restlessness, in their head-tossing impatience, that something is about to happen." -- The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell (April 12, 2010)

just finished this! loved it! This is the first paragraph. And, what an awesome cover! I read an advance uncorrected proof so there wasn't a cover just white manuscript paper.

Anyone can play! What do you have, today?

Booking through Thursday

Question of the Day.

Do you take breaks while reading a book? Or read it straight through? (And, by breaks, I don’t mean sleeping, eating and going to work; I mean putting it aside for a time while you read something else.)

Yes, I do all the time. Reading is my passion but always my business. So I need to read material that comes across my desk, sometimes very fast to get the feel and style of the book. Though, on vacation, I can read and feel the journey of a book one lovely period at a time. Heaven!

Do you take breaks?