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Bill Maher exposing liberal hypocrisy about Islam

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There are many things on which I do not agree with Bill Maher. However, I have wondered for a long time about the issues about which he speaks.

Why do “liberals” throw hissy fits about so many things, but never about the gross human rights violations that are endemic to the Islamic treatment of women?

I think he’s right about Islam, and I’m glad he’s speaking out.

I’m also ashamed of my alma mater Yale for refusing to let a mutilated woman speak about the outrages that were perpetrated on her in the name of Islam.

Interview of me on Strand’s Simply Tips Blogspot
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Interview of me on Strand’s Simply Tips Blogspot

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Author Dr. Joyce Strand hosted BROKEN on her lively blog “Strand’s Simply Tips.” She asked cool, thoughtful questions, including this one:

Q: In BROKEN, how helpful is back story, ie, history of Nazi Germany, to creating a suspenseful story of tension? How important was historical accuracy?

 

Traci L. Slatton: I consider historical accuracy to be supremely important. Because this era was relatively recent and the population as a whole knows a lot about it, I researched this time in Paris thoroughly. Many of the details are accurate, such as the way Parisians were always hungry during the occupation. Several documents said that Parisians ate only about 800 calories per day at this time. Also, over a million French men had been taken into compulsory work service in Germany, so the Resistance drew on women, high school students, and the elderly. At one point, Alia the protagonist, who is a fallen angel, is walking down the street wearing a jaunty red hat. There are references to those red hats as a kind of subtle rebellion; French fashion continued during occupation.

However, sometimes I depart from accuracy to achieve truthfulness. Truthfulness and accuracy are different issues, and truthfulness is always the most important for me as an author. So, for example, in this novel, Sartre and Camus are together at a party at Alia’s apartment before the war, reading poetry and drinking wine. There are conflicting reports about when these great thinkers met, but it is generally agreed that they met after the war. However, for purposes of the themes of this novel, since they are not just people but also voices of their generation, I put them together at Alia’s before the war. This was a deliberate choice in which I diverged from historical accuracy.

Check out the interview here.

I was pleased to see that Dr. Strand supports her posts via tweets, and is quite successful doing so. Her tweets about BROKEN and the interview were picked up in the Twitterverse with kindness and multiplicity.  I’m very grateful!

Simply Tips Blogspot

US Review of Books reviews BROKEN
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US Review of Books reviews BROKEN

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The US Review of Books published a wonderful review of BROKEN:

“I come from a world of light, to which I will never return.”

Broken is the story of an angel’s journey when she chooses to take on human form during one of the most prolific yet horrendous periods in France’s history. Assuming the life of a poet under the name Alia Mercer, she claims that she is “an angel who threw herself away” so she could satisfy the lusts of the flesh. Aware that evil is about to overtake Paris and the Jewish race, the archangel Michael reminds her that she is an angel who just “lost her way” and has at her disposal one act of grace. It is up to Alia whether she will use this powerful healing moment or not.

Multi-novelist Slatton, has created a riveting story set within a dystopian society. Entering the earthly realm in Paris during the summer of 1939, Alia narrates her new life encircled by friends who are among the Golden Age “free thinkers” of existentialism and surrealism. Slatton incorporates into her storyline a rich host of notables that once frequented the cafes and bars of the Montparnasse district—such as writers Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, and artists Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali, to name a few.

Aside of Alia, Slatton focuses her characters on Alia’s closest acquaintances that have Jewish backgrounds—Pedro and Josef (her choice of lovers), Josef’s sister Suzanne and her daughter Cecile. Slatton’s use of contrast includes a complex mix of Alia’s graphic love jaunts and the lively parties with her elite friends that are often juxtaposed with the realities of impending war and genocide. In particular, Slatton’s contrast between Alia’s selfish thoughts and Cecile’s innocence are poignant, especially when Alia makes desperate attempts to protect her Jewish friends against Hitler’s enforcement to collect Jews. A wonderful balance of characters, history, and religious thought, Broken is earmarked to be an epic dystopian novel.

–written by Anita Locke

RECOMMENDED by the USR

US Review of Books

Writing Eros in BROKEN
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Writing Eros in BROKEN

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[This short article originally appeared on If These Books Could Talk Blog. ]

I’ve been married with children for my entire adult life, so, technically, I don’t know anything about sex. (Or, perhaps, birth control….) It’s true, I’ve had two different husbands, but I think it’s fair to say that I fall under the vanilla category.

As smooth, satisfying, and delicious as vanilla is, sometimes, as an author, I need something more tangerine, or more pungent. Luckily I have a good imagination, and a husband who’s willing to experiment with me. In the name of art, of course.

Broken, set in occupied Paris from 1939-1942, is the story of a fallen angel who struggles to save her friends and lovers as the Nazis exert ever more lethal control over the city. The angel Alia falls from heaven because of a personal loss which shocks her out of unity thinking. As soon as she falls, she is beset with sensual desire, with temptation, with the lust that is embedded in flesh. She throws herself into the cornucopia of carnal delights offered by Paris on the eve of the second world war. Paris in 1938-1939 was a feast of entertainment, parties, and revelry, with many intellectuals, writers, and artists openly living a licentious lifestyle.

But I imagined that Alia didn’t start out completely human. Broken is also the story of her journey into her own humanity. So the sex scenes in this novel document her incarnation. They aren’t just gratuitous titillation. Alia begins the novel with a free-wheeling, casual attitude about sex and lovers because she hasn’t yet fully identified with her body. It’s a plaything for her, it’s not herself. So I thought of these early sex scenes in the vein of sex-as-frivolous-fun.

Sex changes as she begins to care for the bullfighter Pedro and the musician-mathematician Josef. Her heart is part of her body, too—her heart goes along with what her body embraces.

Alia also has a horrifying experience of sex used against her. She is manipulated into gratifying a Gestapo agent, and it sickens her. But sex as a power play is part of the human condition, so as an author, I chose to include it.

Finally she comes to be a partner with one man, and she experiences deep intimacy with him. The eroticism they share ripens. It’s based on a heart-connection as well as sensual pleasure. It’s not just about ecstasy anymore, it’s also about love; Alia has become fully human, fully identified with her physical being. She has experienced the full range of sexuality as she has evolved into the woman who would make the ultimate sacrifice for her beloveds.

Eros in BROKEN

Interview on Karen’s Book Blog
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Interview on Karen’s Book Blog

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Lovely Karen Banes, an editor and author herself, hosted me on her blog. She sent a list of thoughtful interview questions that I really appreciated.

Here are two of them:

KB: Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?

TS: The belief in an external, hierarchical, patriarchal God is one of the greatest sources of evil in human civilization. It is my firm belief that God as love is internal, inclusive, merciful, and non-gendered.

KB: How much of the book is realistic?

TS: As I said before, I researched this era in Paris thoroughly. Many of the details are accurate, such as the way Parisians were always hungry during the occupation. Several documents said that Parisians ate only about 800 calories per day at this time. Also, over a million French men had been taken into compulsory work service in Germany, so the Resistance drew on women, high school students, and the elderly. At one point, Alia the protagonist, who is a fallen angel, is walking down the street wearing a jaunty red hat. There are references to those red hats as a kind of subtle rebellion; French fashion continued during occupation.

Read the interview here and check out Karen’s informative books here.

Karen's Book Blog

My New HuffPo Piece: Five Questions You Must Ask Your Protagonist
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My New HuffPo Piece: Five Questions You Must Ask Your Protagonist

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…Before Writing Your Novel…

Here’s my latest piece on the Huffington Post, some advice for writers: questions you must ask your protagonist.

To pull off the herculean task of leading a reader through a few hundred pages of a book, that character has to be magnetic. Here are five questions to ask your protagonist, and the answers will lead to a fully fleshed out person who captivates your readers.

One. What do you do, and are you good at it? Americans always want to know what someone does for a living. Increasingly, because of the global economic situation, readers all over the globe are curious, how does this character support herself? The answers yield important information….

Two. What was your happiest childhood memory? This question helps create a backstory for the character….

Three. What is the biggest loss or regret of your life?  Real people are scored and sanded down and polished by failure and tragedy. Real people have regrets….

Four. What is your goal? That is, what do you want? This question goes right to the heart of your story, of course. The action itself revolves around the character trying to achieve something or avoid something, whether it’s to rescue a child, find a lost treasure, make a million dollars, arrive in the Emerald City, steal a fortune in gold bullion, or rescue a naughty billionaire with a penchant for kink. It’s the story itself. However, there are usually two levels, the concrete and the intangible.

These are questions that lead me into fuller character development, so I know my protagonist inside out, upside down, and backwards. The first person is my preferred person for writing a novel, and these questions help me feel as if I am slipping inside my character like falling down a chute. I think it helps storytellers to have tricks like these. Of course, it is most helpful to develop your own strategies….

Find the article here.

Questions You Must Ask Your Protagonist