Books

Defying Gravity News

I just signed off on the printer’s proofs for “Quiet Enjoyment,” my short story about haute couture and courtroom fireworks on Antigua.

Cover art for Defying Gravity
Cover art for Defying Gravity

It will be published by Paycock Press in November in Defying Gravity, the sixth collection in the Grace & Gravity series of fiction by women writers living in the Washington, DC area and edited by poet Richard Peabody.

Peabody founded Paycock Press in 1976 to publish the international literary magazine, Gargoyle.

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Bending Minds 1976-2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Quiet Enjoyment’ is a comedy taken from Aurore, Book Four of Tabou, to be published in 2014. Books One, Two and Three are available for all eReaders from Publish Green.

Whether coaxing out or damping down my inner Hemingway, I’ve been working slowly but surely on a collection of short fiction, Daughter of Michigan and Other Stories. “Quiet Enjoyment” is not the only piece featuring characters from my novel cycle. “Turban Boy” traces the dark origins of Tiffin d’Aileron’s mysterious and complicated relationship with her grandmother, Valerie Drummond, the fictional Anglo-Irish Countess of Tiffin and Ross.

Many thanks to Richard, a longtime champion of women’s fiction and the DC literary scene, for encouraging me along the way.

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Poet Richard Peabody edits Gargoyle and the Grace & Gravity fiction series.
With a feature film produced in 2012, award-winning screenwriter Suzanne Stroh’s period drama Scotch Verdict is in development at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Suzanne hails from Michigan, where her family brewed Stroh’s beer for five generations. She lives with her family in the Virginia countryside.
Tabou

Life Lessons from Book 3

 

Epigrams and aphorisms are making a comeback, going by the success of Fried and Hansson’s Rework, Taleb’s The Bed of Procrustes and other smartass non-fiction best sellers.

 

So I’m pleased to see that my people can keep up.

 

Here’s a fresh look at the state of things from Sylvie, Book Three in the Tabou quintet, now available for all eReaders.

 

Annihilate the enemy with acts of kindness only you can afford.
Patience Herrick
Owner, The Philadelphia Flyers

 

 

The only risk they acknowledged was scandal.

John Dobbs

General Counsel, Russet Brewing Company

 

 

Who chooses to spend the rest of her life building a dream with a girl who belongs to another woman?
Patience Herrick
 

 

Weak people will hide ignorance. I am not shocked, of course.
Marie Christine Aurore Faucigny-Lueur
de Scey-Brouillard, Princesse de Fillery
at age 15 in 1959, writing to her long lost sister
 
 
“I will tell you everything.”     “Oh please. Not everything–not yet. I’m still high on the mystery.”
Patience and Aurore
getting to know one another on Antigua

 

Patience steals more than her share of Oscar-worthy scenes in this volume:
 
On setting boundaries:
“Since we are to be cordial neighbors after you get off my property at once.”
 
On whether to book one hotel room or two:
Forget about less is more. More is more.
 
Unmatched in seduction technique!
“I remember you as a drug addict.”   “I remember you as an uptight bitch.”
Patience and Sylvie du Montclair Russet
chatting over a candlelight dinner on Antigua

 

And history comes alive!

 

On courting:
She was always off to the wars, “Like you, little one,” leading troops into battle and so forth while Louis dieted. “Now there was a woman with a big dick.”
Sylvie on the Duchess of Montpensier
On cooking:
“People don’t know how to make a real banker’s sauce anymore except in France. It’s impossible in America. I don’t ask my people to do it.”    “Nutmeg?” Patience put out her hand: Sylvie handed it over.     “Thank you,” said Patience.     “The banker’s sauce?”    “Béchamel. Court banker.” There was a long pause, with Patience not following. “I mean to the court of Louis fourteen.”

 

On cognac:
“So Cognac is like the ATM at the Royal Bank of Bastardy.”   Sylvie nodded. “A very stable financial institution. But a very volatile social organization.”

 

On dynastic challenges:
In your case I am not sure how it is regarded in England. The legitimation aspect. Certainly let us hope with respect! He was not the one who got his head cut off.
Aurore at 15, in France
writing to Sylvie at 11 in the South Pacific
On going native:
I have attached a treatise on the South Pacific, with pictures I drew, it details outrigger canoes and the flora and fauna and some things you may not know about in France. I doubt your teachers know anything about our people, my father is making a study because he says the French are ignorant of this great culture. I am worried that perhaps you have never seen people naked? If it is shocking you can just fold over the page. Memorize it though in case they take it away from you in the convent. Everybody goes around like this here, it is breezier in effect, but my mother tells me that this is not the case in France. But I don’t believe it. It is not natural. And France is real civilization, no?… With my most distinguished sentiments, princess,
Sylvie Russet, age 11, on Hiva Oa
 
Eavesdrop on Greta Garbo’s lookalike hob-nobbing with Greek tycoons moored off the shore of Martinique.

 

“Ah, the scent of a woman. What can never be duplicated. The perfect fragrance.”

Sylvie Russet, lost twin of Greta Garbo

 

Have an affair with the world’s most talked-about woman? Was she crazy? No. It’s out of the question. Our children are falling in love, and besides, my husband will kill me. That made it even more exciting a thought, somehow, but she had to get Sylvie off the boat in case something else happened.

Appolonia Mavros, aboard her yacht Serena

 

“You were so cold, so offhand!”    “I’m not offhand now.” Apple put her hands on. Oh dear Jesus. She could see her marriage going up in smoke. Her whole life going up in smoke. Ostracized. All for Garbo. “But this room…”

Appolonia and Sylvie admiring a Titian

 

Visit Curacao and Caracas and learn from tales of treachery, tax avoidance, social gaffes and wardrobe malfunctions:
 
Think two generations ahead, the way Kate did naturally and had done since Macbeth.
Eric Leyden, insurance executive
summarizing business lessons learned from
Kate McKenna Russet
Scottish-born Virginia matriarch

 

“The boys had their first date, I’m told, in a desert hot spring….Anyway, Talloway’s a Scot and there have been terrible rows over how many skirts to pack. Lesbian couples always dress alike.”

Jocelyn Russet

 

‘Bail money,’ he said without irony. ‘Every good general counsel always has enough on hand.’

Esteben Ovéquiz de Castañeda y Bohorques Inigues

General Counsel, Empresas Glacial

 

Cooper looked Esteban over. He was wearing a fancy Italian suit and handmade Spanish shoes and about $50,000 worth of jewelry. Cooper had seen the wives of dictators flee their homelands with fewer accessories.

Gary Cooper off duty in Caracas, Venezuela 

 
Leyden knew Kate well enough not to be shocked by her violent sex analogies. Plain-spoken, horse breeding woman.
Eric Leyden as a houseguest
of Kate Russet in the 1980s
 
The bitch never sleeps, thought Leyden, and if nobody but me worries about that at night…well, they should.
Eric Leyden, Independent Director
Russet Brewing Company
appointed by Kate Russet
 
Sylvie Russet. Leyden imagined money like water falling in the bright sunshine over the sculpted ice of her face, her body.
Eric Leyden on Curacao, May 1993
 
His pink neck was rolling over his shirt collar. His fake smile barely covered his social aggression.
Rowan Rask, Governor of Florida (R-Fl)
 
A violent society is proof of its own ignorance.
James Russet IV, Chairman

Russet Brewing Company

 
Herrick’s cold rage was an enforceable warrant.
Ambassador Herrick on jealousy
 
 
Due to the incompetence of those around him, he was only ever thirty seconds away from rolling away to a violent death.
James Russet IV

 

Ah, Valerie
In New York, the Anglo-Irish Countess of Tiffin and Ross, Valerie Drummond, is back and better than ever, taking center stage with an Oscar-winning back story of her own.

 

 
‘I see by your sheepish grin and your Freudian slip that all’s well that end’s well.’
Valerie keeping the mental gears well oiled

 

‘Learn to accept the power of your attraction for others.’
J.O.P. “Oliver” Russet
Iunching with Valerie at the Café Royal, 1934
 
If one could have any girl one wanted at the drop of a hat, would one want one?
Valerie in Socratic dialog with herself

 

MORE FROM THE VALERIE CHRONICLES

 
On Natalie Barney:
“I do recall asking for half, but all I got was teatime.”
 
The pioneer strain:
‘All this fuss about the G-spot,’ she’d said to Helen Gurley Brown the other day when they met to walk their dogs, ‘and I’ve known about that for centuries. I mean why doesn’t anybody ask me anything?’
 
Like mother like daughter:
She liked David, although she preferred Albert of Monaco. A principality whose name she pronounced roughly synonymous with the breath freshener Binaca.
Mercedes Russet, Valerie’s younger daughter
 
On the charm of Edwardian pleasures:
She hated the drama. She wanted them both to stop it, the girl and the young man. There was no need for all this drama. She would sit them down together and calmly explain what she was made for. She was fashioned for, built for, loving them both. She’d tell them she cared for them equally, tell them she’d treat them equally, draw up a schedule and make copies. It’s really only a question of management, like nearly everything else in life.

 

On guilt over the suicide of a lover:
For the first time in Valerie’s life, she found that everything was more than she could give.

 

On adventure travel:
If one wants to explore anything nowadays, Valerie felt she had no choice but to conclude, one should get down into a diving bell or up onto a rocket ship or deep into a viral molecule.
 
On the droit de seigneur:
Virgins deflowered by their true love are like that. Valerie knew from experience.

 

On lesbian appeal:
Valerie considered all the women who’d ever run from loving other women, going back 3,000 years. Well, none of them had ever laid eyes on her granddaughter.
 
On slipping standards:
“Spent marriages lying about all over the place. How are you going to tidy that up?”
 
On gratitude:
“Thank God for that girl at Bletchley Park, even though she sent me straight down the wayward path with her…her…” (Valerie blushed) “…comprehensive tuition.”
 
On dowager duties:
She had raised them to lead and be role models, befitting their position in society. Lead what? Model what? Society where? The gay world seemed so fragmented now. There was no more real underground. No elite, no social pecking order. Fewer and fewer exciting secrets. And deep confusion actually, when it came to society. You never knew if you were in it or not, to steal the words of Henry Adams…. So she had gotten what she wanted for her granddaughters, a safer world to live and love in, but Christ, how utterly mind-numbingly boring!

 

Suggestions for improving psychotherapy:
“Let’s have your muddle first. Then we can have mine.”
 
On the principal of No Surprises:
“Jocelyn, dear, brace yourself.” Yet Valerie made no pause. “I need to tell you that you’re to be cruelly disinherited by me.”
 
On prospects for the entrepreneurial generation:
Mastery of the physical world “merely” seemed central to their spiritual quest. They always wanted to be worthy of enjoying their luxuries. They were Epicures.
 
On looking at art:
It wasn’t androgynous in the sense of stripping away one’s identification with sex, but rather ultra-masculine and ultra-feminine at once, in the sense of adding to it.
Valerie watching her granddaughter
Jocelyn enter a room at 960 Fifth Avenue

 

 

Not to put down the every-day, tossed-off aperçus of family life:

 

On family planning:
These days it’s the mere announcement that two people are preparing to breed that’s the real excitement. The actual pregnancy’s such a letdown.
Tristan Canoncourt, Fourth Lord Crome
 
On chores:
“I never get bored of it. Watching their ass lifting a load.”
Jocelyn Russet, amateur alpinist

 

What becomes a legend most
Her exploits had invented the term starfucker.
Jocelyn giving credit where credit is due–
to her grandmother
 
On masculine appeal
He hasn’t a microfiber of investment banking in his body. Couldn’t manipulate a number if it was attached to his scrotum.
Astrid Kay
President, Art Students League of New York
 
On troublemakers:
One impossibly attractive and too-capable lesbian in my life was trouble enough. Two of them together is a menace.
Constance Canoncourt, Lady Crome
 
Economizing
Nobody has half a million to spare.
Phoebe, Comtesse du Montclair
 
Scrabble
An owner is the person with the most responsibility.
Phoebe du Montclair
 
Comme il faut
Never take a man’s car to St. Cloud.
Phoebe du Montclair
 
Every beneficiary is a minor for life.
Jocelyn Russet
 
“Not so fast, Narcissa dear. What about her own legacy? The one you share?”    “The one we what?”    “The one you share. Share, share, as in commingled assets.”
Jocelyn and Valerie
fighting over a pot au crème

 

All mixed in, of course, with pearls like these:

 

I hope you lead yourself to find yourself, Madame.
Natalie Barney’s male ghost
encountered on the rue Vignon
 
This river go to Mombassa. No! Shit! That was La Brea.
Darius Jones, UCLA film student
 
“He can’t go back to Italy. I’ve already ravaged the entire country as you know.”
Valerie mulling over
her estate planning problems
 
One man’s son, and no man’s progeny.
Ambassador Herrick as a young man
in 1939 with money problems of his own
 
Never cross a Herrick. You could feel the murderous impulse throbbing across the table.
Sylvie Russet having drinks at the Ritz
 
A late entry I’m afraid. A very late entry. Oh I’d love you to read it, but in Denmark, you see, we don’t actually write the paper until it has been presented to society.
Alexander “Zander” Duffield
Hollywood screenwriter, Zen master,
rock climber and secret agent
 
We must deconstruct denial itself! How much of it is implicitly acceptance?
Zander gaining entry to an academic conference
under false credentials
 
You’ll meet numbers guys
Laughing like money going downtown.
Julien Russet, terror attack survivor

 

“Basically I do math, sir, not clandestine operations that severely deplete my mental resources.”
Kit Hemion, math genius, arborist, surfer

 

 

Patience is never happy with two-fifty, thought Joss, unless it’s followed by six zeros.
 Jocelyn on Patience

 

 

And literary posers
“I’m exploring the human heart. Taking all the borders off the maps.”
Jocelyn Russet
On insufferable dead poets:
Don’t take the fragment thing so seriously!
Jocelyn Russet, Hollywood screenwriter

 

Indulge your inner Peeping Tom!
“Oh please! Don’t believe everything I say in our pillow talk, for heaven’s sake.”
Jocelyn Russet

 

She can’t find the place on the map where she used to be comfortably wasted.
Jocelyn on Patience

 

And your hopelessly romantic side
Trying to forget her…that would be like trying to get the ocean out of her inner ear.
Sylvie on Jocelyn

 

“All people really want, Louise, is a bit of a dream.”
Witherspoon to his secretary
in HIRE WITHERSPOON!
screenplay by Jocelyn Russet and Alexander Duffield

 

“Please, be at leisure! At leisure! I can’t think in this atmosphere!”
Witherspoon to his staff
on taking over the family business
so his identical twin can elope with a courtesan

 

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. So that’s Sylvie in a nutshell. It’s a bit like a multinational DOWNTON ABBEY. Only sexier. How deep the wisdom? I’ll leave that up to you.

 

With a feature film produced in 2012, award-winning screenwriter Suzanne Stroh’s period drama Scotch Verdict is in development at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Suzanne hails from Michigan, where her family brewed Stroh’s beer for five generations. She lives with her family in the Virginia countryside.
Tabou, This Family Business

All For Love

Here’s Tabou in a nutshell.

In the history of love and dynasty, how often have the plots described this curve?

With a feature film produced in 2012, award-winning screenwriter Suzanne Stroh’s period drama Scotch Verdict is in development at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Suzanne hails from Michigan, where her family brewed Stroh’s beer for five generations. She lives with her family in the Virginia countryside.
Books, Tabou

Why POSH if it’s TABOU?

 

We all have our favorite French words to use in bed, and POSH wasn’t one of mine.

I was sitting around bullshitting with my pal, Wendy Pepper, like I always do. She was in her studio working on a new dress, reading an eBook, following a news feed, listening to a podcast, checking her email, touching base with a client on the phone, basically being creative. Then she turned to me.

“How are you going to promote your eBooks?”

I was like, oh.

One by one she switched off all other channels. I love it when I get the full intellectual benefit of eyes-on-me attention from my high octane friends. While I was still sitting there without a clue, Wendy leaned closer and said, “I AM your target reader. I read.”

You can imagine the roaring silence that accompanied this shocking American confession.

“Yes, read. As in books. Blogs, you name it. Yes, eBooks. And I would pay money for them. I’m even into the literary blogs. I hunger to know how the writer of today makes sense of his world,” said Wendy, very much in italics. She likes to tease me. “So how are you going to get my attention?”

Clearly by being a total screw-up, I realized. But instead I ventured out by stating the obvious. “Well in eBooks you don’t have the object. You have the machine, but not the tactile object, the talisman that will always harken to the book.”

Continue reading “Why POSH if it’s TABOU?”

With a feature film produced in 2012, award-winning screenwriter Suzanne Stroh’s period drama Scotch Verdict is in development at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Suzanne hails from Michigan, where her family brewed Stroh’s beer for five generations. She lives with her family in the Virginia countryside.