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The Other Side of Dreams (New Literary Fiction Novel)

March 19, 2018

OK, picture this: you’ve just won the lottery. Imagine the feeling of unreality pervading you, the surreal knowledge that your wildest dreams are becoming true. Now, what if I told you that no fate is worse than seeing your dreams come true? Welcome to The Other Side of Dreams, my newest literary fiction novel.

The Other Side of Dreams is a book following my tradition of literary fiction novels that focus on the individual. If you take a look at my Goodreads profile, you will see that my work revolves around the themes of the repressed past, the impossibility of choices, flawed men and determined women. That was the blueprint for To Cross an Ocean: Apognosis and it is for The Other Side of Dreams as well. Furthermore, although this newest novel can be read completely independently from Apognosis, the reader will encounter some familiar faces and settings.

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Gender and Sexuality in Dracula

March 17, 2018

Criticism

academia, criticism, Dracula, sexuality

Note: the following article on gender and sexuality in Dracula is a modified excerpt (pp. 102-107) from my doctoral dissertation, “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic, which can be downloaded (for free) from the repository of the Tampere University Press. For a list of my other academic publications, see the list on the main website.

Productive and Non-Productive Sexuality in Dracula

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a text replete with sexual innuendos. More importantly, it is filled with hints at a non-normative sexuality.

Count Dracula makes it almost explicit, when he warns the three female vampires that are about to attack Jonathan to stay back, stating “[t]his man belongs to me!” (Stoker 2003, 46). Hindle notes that Stoker’s earlier drafts were even more revealing, as Dracula’s full warning originally was “[t]his man belongs to me I want him” (Hindle 2003, xxxiv).

sexuality in Dracula — Victorian sexuality is a misunderstood subject

In this regard, it is pertinent to underline that this kind of sexuality implied here is non-productive. Not only is it contrary to the normative heterosexual monogamy encouraged by Victorian society, but through this very lack of procreation it also becomes atemporal; by denying the children, it essentially denies the future.

In terms of homoeroticism and temporality, it is also worth noting that Baudelaire considered the lesbian as “the heroine of modernism because she combines with a historical ideal the greatness of the ancient world” (Benjamin 1983, 90).

Perhaps tapping into Stoker’s only-unconscious writings, Coppola’s film adaptation includes a fleeting scene where Mina and Lucy kiss in the garden during the storm.

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Over-Explaining in Writing and How to Avoid It

March 14, 2018

Literature

creativity, literature, over-explaining, patience, writing

Besides a linear narrative progression and not optimal narrative endings, another problem area for authors of fiction is over-explaining. By over-explaining in writing, we mean the tendency of a writer to provide too much factual information. This is usually detrimental to the overall pace of the novel, but it’s not the only repercussion, as we will see further below.

In today’s article I’ll show you where over-explaining in writing comes from (in other words, why fiction writers tend to over-explain), as well as how to avoid it. As a sneak preview, I could reveal that over-explaining in writing is very much related to an author’s relationship with their audience. In more detail, fiction authors who over-explain do so out of fear that their readers will not understand the story.

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