Lisa Torcasso Downing has an interesting--and mostly favorable--review of Angel Falling Softly. I can't argue with her basic criticism, first because what a work of art ultimately means is what the consumer of the art says it means; and second because I can't really recall my frame of mind when I wrote it.

Call it the literary uncertainty principle, disentangling what people say about something you wrote from what you were thinking at the time you wrote it. It's like George Lucas learning that Star Wars was a retelling of the monomyth and then concluding, disastrously, that he'd done it on purpose.

I do know that my premise for the novel was that Rachel, having plowed through all the spiritual solutions and Kubler-Ross stages, had arrived at the "whatever works" stage, no matter how removed from reality (growing up, I witnessed a stalwart member of my Mormon ward hitting this wall and hard).

And third, because Downing makes a good point about the way the male mind approaches the world. As Chris (my publisher) comments,

I'm not saying the novel wouldn't have been enriched with developing the mother/daughter relationship a little more, but to me it's also a no-brainer that the relationship would be there, and it doesn't sound like something I want to read about.

There's a lot of truth in the Tim Allen school of male psychology: "I solve problems (preferable with power tools), therefore I am." When a man finds himself under assault by a tidal wave of emotion, screaming inside his head is the frantic plea: Is there a problem in here somewhere I can solve?

Though such preferences are equally influenced by by our subjective tastes when it comes to fictional representations of the world. Erica Friedman sums it up well:

What I want so desperately to see is stories of women who have made it past the scarring, have learned to not lose control of the situation, even when things are falling apart around her. A leader. A calm in the storm. Not the storm itself.

Alas, protagonists who are "the storm itself" have become a plague in action series and police procedurals, regardless of sex. Take the latest incarnation of Hawaii Five-O. Every male lead has "angst" and "issues." I much prefer Jack Lord's Steve McGarrett, whose only "issues" are with the bad guys.

Okay, I'm probably tilting too far the other way, but I'm totally on board with Kate that one of the most issue-free relationships on television is that between Major Samantha Carter and Colonel Jack O'Neill from Stargate SG-1, a big reason why Major Carter "falls into her own category of awesomeness."

Labels: angel reviews, books, criticism, television

Angel Falling Softly contains extraordinary writing and fine storytelling. Eugene Woodbury's brilliance and depth of knowledge is clearly evident. However, mixing LDS fiction with vampire fiction limits its appeal to a narrow audience. Congratulations to Woodbury for pulling off this bizarre combination of genres with flair and fangs. (Brett Wilcox)

A little less recently:

I was dubious at first - I've read a lot of rather bad vampire fiction. But Angel Falling Softly was extremely good. The characters were so real and believable, and the backdrop of the life of an LDS family was so unusual, I found myself riveted.

There was an undercurrent of how some people use faith in their lives, but not in a preachy manner--more that there was an honest insight into how some of the characters--like some real people--use faith not as a tool of blind belief, but as an inner compass to allow them to face practical worldly problems. (Coyote Osborne)

Labels: angel falling softly, angel reviews

A mixed but mostly positive review of Angel Falling Softly in the most recent Salt Lake Tribune entertainment supplement, In Utah This Week.

What is surprising is that Woodbury is also able to write convincingly from the point of view of a worldly vampire whose experiences are decidedly more carnal than that of any Latter-day Saint . . . . Woodbury did well to make [bishop's wife, Rachel] not too much of a stereotype . . . [and he] does a good job of letting us inside the minds of these two women.

The reviewer's main criticism is that the "novel comes off feeling more like a novella" that left her "longing for more complexity, more depth, and a fuller picture of the characters' lives."

Point taken, though I'm reminded of Michael Blowhard's arguments here and here that perhaps the novella format is what fiction needs to stay alive. "What an odd taste [novel reading] is," he observes, "staring at oceans of text, dutifully trudging from one page to the next."

He's describing what in Japan is called the "light novel," basically an illustrated novella. Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books are being subdivided and published in Japan as light novels. (And for the record, I finished the first draft of Angel Falling Softly back in 2001.)

Labels: angel falling softly, angel reviews, light novel, publishing

A very nice review of Angel Falling Softly posted by Maralise on Blog Segullah, who not only calls the book "a good read," but

would even venture to say that it's a great read. Having ardently stayed away from Twilight and almost all vampire related fiction, I was at the very least pleasantly surprised when I was captivated by the tight and nuanced writing in Eugene Woodbury's most recent release from Zarahemla Books.

Notes Maralise, "[The author] presents an unlikely story filled with real people and then lets human nature write the rest." Which is precisely what I set out to do. Nothing beats having one's intentions being taken exactly as intended.

Labels: angel falling softly, angel reviews

Thmazing reviews Angel Falling Softly as part of his Erotic in LDS Lit series. He notes some stylistic problems at the beginning. I'm not surprised. This is where we did the most last-minute editing to tighten up the narrative.

Lacking specifics, though, I've pretty much lost the ability to judge this kind of thing (maybe in a year or two when I've regained some objectivity). At any rate, "most of the book [is] fine." Thmazing's conclusion:

[Angel Falling Softly is] a good book and I liked it. Yes, the sex is over many people's tolerance levels--I can respect that. Yes, it asks some interesting questions--I demand that. But no: it's not evil, it's not destructive, it's not even badly written (once, you know, you get a few dozen pages in).

And he suggests a new word to use when categorizing paranormal "spiritual" fiction: spirinormal.

Labels: angel falling softly, angel reviews

A mostly positive review at the Rough Stone Rolling blog:

I enjoyed Angel Falling Softly, particularly for bringing the vampire into the Mormon environment, and because it was a genuinely entertaining page-turner. Make no mistake, though. Angel Falling Softly is not like the Twilight series, created for gasping teenage girls. The premise, the thought processes, the language, are all adult--not to say it's ADULT, just mature.

Shirley Bahlmann calls Angel Falling Softly "A highly imaginative novel" that was "hard to put down. No matter what I was doing, I felt drawn to it." The review also includes a tongue-in-cheek interview with me. (My sister describes the business about the bats here.)

Labels: angel falling softly, angel reviews, kate, lds

Briefly mentioned on the pilgrimsteps blog: "Another good vampire read (not so much romance, but a more sophisticated plotline and writing) is Angel Falling Softly."

Labels: angel falling softly, angel reviews

What's remarkable about Angel Falling Softly, says William Morris,

isn't just that Eugene does something new with vampire tropes (that in this case also involve the worlds of bio-tech and high finance) or that he provides a complex, touching portrait of a Mormon mother desperately trying to save her terminally ill child. It's that he weaves these elements together with well-deployed literary (often Biblical) allusions and quotations that add substance to the questions raised about belief, redemption, desire, sin and death.

And blogger Stephen Marsh points out that Angel Falling Softly is "mainstream writing, not fantasy, horror or erotica. In the end, the story is really about love, family, redemption and hope."

The book is something entirely different [than how it's been promoted or described], an exploration of the human condition with an LDS background (though for all it mattered, it could have been any group, kindly treated), and one of the modern vampire types who are likeable characters, with souls . . . who just happen to have knowledge, power, wealth and angst.

Labels: angel falling softly, angel reviews, lds

Doug Gibson of the Ogden (Utah) Standard-Examiner reviews Angel Falling Softly and with some qualifications declares it

a great read, better than 99 percent of Mormon fiction out there. It also takes our beliefs out of comfort zones, inviting analysis and debate. No matter what happens, we've learned something.

He thinks the details about Milada's financial dealings "slow the pace of the main plot." The guys at Writing Excuses note as well the tendency of writers to cram all their background research into the narrative.

In my defense, the first final draft of Angel Falling Softly had Milada acquiring two companies. We could publish it as Angel Falling Softly--the Wall Street Journal edition. But we decided it was just too much.

Labels: angel falling softly, angel reviews, lds

Moriah Jovan examines the TBM (true believing Mormon) blogs so I don't have to. I need to subscribe to the "your soul's being damned" mailing list so I can get clued into this stuff earlier. I feel in the mood for some Meat Loaf.

UPDATE: C.H. Hanson scouts out some more TBM blog comments. Picture me holding my head in my hands like John Dvorak. I just don't get it!

Luckily for Orson Scott Card, nobody but a few science fiction and fantasy geeks have read Hart's Hope or Maps in a Mirror. I've read that he's caught flack for making the women in his (Shadow Mountain, nee Deseret Book) "Women of Genesis" series human.

So I shouldn't be surprised, except that somebody who would be offended by books like that should turn away at the sight of the front cover of Angel Falling Softly (now being referred to as "AFS" in some quarters) alone.

But what springs foremost to mind is the same flabbergasted reaction I had when I first came to Utah from the "mission field" and encountered at BYU the thin scriptural and doctrinal comprehension of kids who had attended time-release seminary for the past three or four years.

I could imagine Evangelicals taking me to task for stressing Rachel's maniacally works-centered concept of grace (it's their number one beef, after all), but Mormons?

The weirdest accusation is that this was some sort of nefarious plan to undermine the morals of the Youth of Zion. Okay, that was the plan, but it didn't fit into the fifty-dollar advertising budget (I kid, I kid, though not about the budget).

In any event, Zarahemla Books has a website. The catalog listing at Zarahemla points to my website, which in turn points to my blog. Note the tricky URLs I use. Google my name and both come up at the top of the list.

Yes, it'd be nice to fancy myself a mysterious, shadowy Dashiell Hammett type, slinking through the back alleys of the Big City. Alas, on the Internet, I am a literary open book.

And because this issue has been raised in counterpoint, I would also like to point out that nowhere in Zarahemla's listing or anywhere on my website is Angel Falling Softly described as "LDS fiction."

Labels: angel falling softly, angel reviews, BYU, lds, moral outrage

My novel, Angel Falling Softly, has purportedly caused an "uproar." (Start here and work backwards.) Well, to be proportionally accurate, a tiny tempest in the teapot of Mormon letters. Get out your microscopes. A Chad Hardy scale of controversy would be more useful in terms of publicity.

I wasn't even aware until I caught a mention on another blog. I mean, about five people outside my immediate family read the paperback version of The Path of Dreams.

And it's not like Parables and Zarahemla are straddling the LDS literary world like modern colossi. I wish it were so. Which is why I harbor the sneaking suspicion that my supposedly offensive book has escaped a truly close reading by those offended (if it's been read at all).

Though while composing this response, another element of orthodox "Mormon fiction" occurred to me: that the narrator must always be an objectively reliable source of the "truth." My narrators are always reliable about what they believe to be the truth. I see where this could prove problematic for some.

In that light, I would like to point out a few of the "orthodox" narrative elements that I do not consider "subtle," but seemed to have escaped the attention of some. Perhaps I should have underlined them.

1) There are two explicit references to Saul and the Witch of Endor. Rachel makes one herself, so she is aware of the thin ice she is treading on. Like Saul, Rachel is one big rationalizing machine. So is Milada.

2) Milada believes herself damned because she committed horrific crimes in her past, not because she is a vampire (her guilt argues for the existence of her soul). I use vampirism to illustrate the problem of a sinner "tak[ing] also of the tree of life, and eat[ing] and liv[ing] forever."

Note the references to "good vampires" in The Silver Kiss and Angel.

3) I didn't want to Milada to degrade into what Erica Friedman calls the "Evil Psycho Lesbian" character, but this is a facet of her personality she wars with (hence her conflicted reaction to Laura). She manages it by drawing lines for herself that she will not cross.

Frankly, she's come a long way in four centuries. And along the way, she has made some terrible yet noble sacrifices on behalf of her sisters. She is not unworthy of grace.

4) Kamilla stands as a stark contrast to her sister. Kamilla lives by a firm moral code. She is a genuinely good person. She despairs at Milada's obsession with their sire. In this case, a vampire's soul is the product of nurture (and personal discipline), not nature.

5) Jennifer's condition in the end is no less manageable than, say, type I diabetes. Her soul is not in jeopardy. Again, see Kamilla's example. Note who ends up as her guardian. (Hint: not the two people who rejected the possibilities of God's grace.)

6) My mom liked it.

Now, to be sure, King Lear shouldn't have been such a chump. It'd be nice if he could have patched things up with his daughters. And nice if Hamlet could have gotten some counseling to get over his "issues" and married Ophelia. But me thinks the plays wouldn't have turned out the same.

UPDATE: The controversy continues here.

Labels: angel falling softly, angel reviews, lds, moral outrage

C.L. Hanson at the Letters from a Broad blog reviews Angel Falling Softly:

In Angel Falling Softly, as in his earlier novel The Path of Dreams, Woodbury captures human relationships with realism and depth of feeling. He also paints a warm and homey portrait of Utah Mormon culture as seen from a sophisticated worldly perspective. All of this is woven into a suspense-filled tale of a dangerous friendship as two women--born lifetimes apart--find the desperate courage to bet it all.

This is somewhat off topic, but that last line and Hanson's description of Milada as "a master of the art of the deal who has put her centuries of youth to good use in pursuit of lucrative business acquisitions" reminds me of a fascinating interview series by Michael Malone called Betting it All.

The series profiles successful businesswomen who "risked everything to achieve [their] dreams." I've been watching it on the Utah Education Network. Unfortunately, it isn't available to the general public or from Netflix. But if it ever shows up on a PBS station near you, definitely tune it in.

The material in the documentary seems to be an expanded subset of the book.

Labels: angel falling softly, angel reviews, business, lds