Beltane Early Growth Moon
Water and heat. Sun and soil. Roots, stalks and leaves. There you have it. And we’ve got 
it this week. Rain, rain, rain. Then some heat. Seeds germinating, bursting up, ready to transubstantiate. All for the great cycle of life, churning, moving, flowing, surging. I can feel it, smell it at this time of year. And I love it.
Just finished Dan Brown’s Inferno. If you read the NYT review, you will discover that Dan has a mundane talent for words. And that’s true. The reviews I read didn’t add, but they should, that he throws in potted art history and architectural criticism, not to mention some odd rant on transhumanism. Yet, did you notice, I finished it. Why? Well, reading like a writer, this guy knows how to plot. He can make you wonder what’s coming next.
He pulls off one big twist in this novel and it’s a dandy, but it feels very contrived even though he sucked me in completely with it. That’s sort of the thing he’s got going, you can see the holes in his works, where I wondered were the editors who could have easily fixed much of this, but you pass them by to find out what happens next. That’s story telling and it’s the true game which every writer plays.
(Lucifer, trapped in the 9th circle. Canto 34, lines 20–21 Gustave Dore)
Hey, listen! Have I got something to tell you. Clumsy sentences, wooden metaphors, filler pages, yes, they matter, but in the end not as much if you keep me interested.
coda next morning: I will buy and read your book if you can entertain me. Whether I remember it or learn from it and, most important, whether I will return to it, however, depends on those skills Dan Brown seems to shunt aside as unnecessary. No, I won’t be re-reading any of his work.
