LIVE! #48
5 March 2023
Agenda
- Why We're Here
- Literary Forensics
- - What do I bring?
- - What do I feel?
- - What do I notice?
- - What do I study?
- Next Month's Reading & Study
Why We're Here
We Writers want to improve our craft
by Reading like a Writer
through Literary Forensics training
we learn from each other
Roundtable Rules
Always refer back to the book
We practice active listening & serendipity
Every feeling and observation is valid...
but not every conclusion
Always refer back to the book
Meet today's author: Dan Fesperman
- Former foreign correspondant for The Baltimore Sun
- Assignments included: Germany, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East
- Author of 13 spy thrillers
- Awards include:
- 1999 The John Creasey Memorial Dagger Award for best first novel
- 2003 The Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for best thriller
- 2006 The Hammett Prize
- Lives in Baltimore, Maryland with his wife Liz Bowie, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun, and their two children
What do I feel?
What in the book elicited that feeling?
Every feeling and observation is valid...
but every conclusion should be questioned
We practice serendipity
- nothing is too crazy
Always refer back to the book
What do I notice?
- • Language and Grammar
- • Context
- • Point of view
- • Character & character development
- • Pacing
- • Horizontal structure
- • Layering of themes
- • Overall effect
Writing Winter Work
- Learned of Operation Rosenholz years after the fact
- Took advantage of classified nature to fill in the gaps
- Read Markus Wolf's memoir, The Man Without a Face and his cookbook
- - Wolf was John le Carré's inspiration for his Soviet spymaster, Karla
- Read The Main Enemy by Milt Bearden and James Risen
- Consulted fellow author Bill Rapp, who worked for CIA Berlin at that time
- Reworked some of the spy stories told to him by readers of his previous novels
- Grimm's name and foreboding forest inspired by Brothers Grimm fairy tales
- Wanted Grimm to confront his past: Magda Holbein incident
- Has used Claire in four novels; historically this is 2/4; next up The Cover Wife
Stats & Background
- Marketing: Espionage Thrillers, Suspense Thrillers, Suspense, Genre Literature & Fiction
- Genre: Realistic Historical Arch-Plot Long-Form
- Print Pages: 352; Word count: 108,005
- Reading Grade: 7th-8th; Avg. wds/sent.: 12.1
- Lexical Density: 45.74; Flesch Reading Ease: 72.46
- POV: Emil, Claire, Karola, Baucom, Dorn; Person: 3rd; Tense: Past
- Publish date: July 12, 2022
- Publisher: Knopf, Random House
- Audio book narr.: Dan Fesperman (11 hours 51 minutes)
- Recognition: Amazon's Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2022, Amazon Editor's Choice, Oprah Daily's Favorite Books of 2022
Writers Who Read: Up Next
April 2: The Candy House – Jennifer Egan (USA, 2022)
Required reading: Language and Grammar
Writers Who Read: Coming Up
May 7: Sea of Tranquility – Emily St. John Mandel (USA, 2022)
June 4: The Passenger – Cormac McCarthy (USA, 2022)
- Summer Break -
September 3: Stella Maris – Cormac McCarthy (USA, 2022)
October 1: Avalon – Nell Zink (USA, 2022)
November 5: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin (USA, 2022)