Keeping an Idea Book, Guest Post from M. Laszlo, Author of The Phantom Glare of Day | Review ~ $50 Giveaway
A book blog tour from Goddess Fish Promotions.
Thank you to the author, publisher, and Marianne & Judy at Goddess Fish for providing me with the information for this tour.
Book Details
The Phantom Glare of Day by M Laszlo Published by Sparkpress on 11/01/2022
Genres: Coming of Age, Historical Fiction
Format: eBook, Paperback
Pages: 306
In this trio of novellas, three young ladies enter into dangerous liaisons that test each one’s limits and force them to confront the most heartrending issues facing society in the early twentieth century.
The Phantom Glare of Day tells of Sophie, a young lady who has lived a sheltered life and consequently has no idea how cruel public school bullying can be. When she meets Jarvis, a young man obsessed with avenging all those students who delight in his daily debasement, she resolves to intervene before tragedy unfolds.
Mouvements Perpétuels tells of Cäcilia, a young lady shunned by her birth father. She longs for the approval of an older man, so when her ice-skating instructor attempts to take advantage of her, she cannot resist. Not a month later, she realizes she is pregnant and must decide whether or not to get an abortion.
Passion Bearer tells of Manon, a young lady who falls in love with a beautiful actress after taking a post as a script girl for a film company—and is subsequently confronted with the pettiest kinds of homophobia.
Specific to their time yet unquestionably relevant for women today, The Phantom Glare of Day is a compelling interrogation of who gets to decide what is right and what is wrong.
Source: Goddess Fish Promotions
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Excerpt from The Phantom Glare of Day
London, 29 September, 1917.
Sophie paused beside a stock-brick building, and she listened for the unnerving rumble of an airship’s engine car. How long has it been since the last bombardment? Sometime before, as she had stood in this very spot, she had heard the Zeppelin clearly enough.
At that point, a Royal Navy carbide flare had streaked heavenward. Then, from the neighboring rooftops, fifty or more pom-pom guns had opened fire–and the night air had filled with the odor of something like petroleum coke.
Yes, I remember. Now she braced herself for a salvo of fire.
No deafening tumult rang out. Neither did any sickening, stenchful fumes envelope her person.
No, it’s just my nerves. She glanced at the sky, and she whispered a simple prayer of thanksgiving.
From around the corner, an omnibus approached.
She climbed aboard and rode the way to Mayfair Tearoom.
The establishment had never looked so inviting as it did that night. By now, the proprietress had decorated the tables with Michaelmas daisies the color of amethyst, and she had adorned the china cabinet with ornamental cabbage. Moreover, how appetizing the scent of the fresh Eccles cakes.
The tearoom had attracted quite a crowd, too, the young ladies all decked out in silken gowns.
I wonder why. Sophie removed her coat, and she suddenly felt underdressed—for she had not worn anything too fancy that evening, just a puffed blouse and a fluted skirt. At once, she sat down at one of the last available dinette tables.
An eclipse of moths fluttered through the transom, meanwhile, and even they looked better than she did. What beauty the creatures’ wings—a fine royal purple.
Don’t look at them. Alas, when she turned her attention to the doorsill, a dull ache radiated up and down her left arm.
Not a moment later, a tall, gaunt lad, his eyes a shade of whiskey brown, entered the tearoom.
For a time, he glared at the patrons—as if at any moment he might remove a musketoon from beneath his frock coat and shoot everyone.
Excerpt provided by the author/publisher for use in this post.
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Purchase Links for The Phantom Glare of Day
Amazon – OneLink for every country
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Guest Post from M. Laszlo
Author of The Phantom Glare of Day
Just What is an Idea Book, and What to Do with it?
For many writers, artists, and musicians, every instinct tells them to jot words and ideas down onto paper lest they be forgotten. Again, the process is utterly instinctive. However, when said thinker is ready to turn the material into a book or movie or whatever else, that process can be utterly confounding. Just how is it done?
The way to do it is to separate ideas into categories—something like the way my mom does jigsaw puzzles. She separates the corner pieces from the rest, and then she separates categories by color—on the off chance that like colors must go together.
Thankfully, my mom’s jigsaw puzzle obsession taught me how to make sense of my youthful journals and idea books.
A few years ago, when I revisited my youthful London diary written in the summer of 1985, every instinct told me what to do. At first, the process was entirely scientific: to make sense of all that teenage angst and rambling, indulgent content, I had to take up a pair of scissors and to literally cut lines into pieces—fragments not unlike those of a jigsaw puzzle. There was no better way to isolate the variables.
Having done all that, only the act of brainstorming could help to fill in all the blank spaces and to turn the disparate material into actual novellas. Of course, that aspect of the process was anything but scientific. Still, the brainstorming process proved to be fairly simple. By accepting the various piles of notes and their content, it suddenly became quite clear just what kinds of subjects and themes my unconscious mind or muse would have me write about and/or dramatize.
Take Live Aid, for example. From my 1980s teenage perspective, the big London event that summer would have been the benefit concert at Wembley. At the time, everyone was talking about and/or debating the efficacy of famine relief. Even now, the topic remains quite important. Part of the problem back then followed from the fact that the dysfunction in Africa had always been a tragic function of the Cold War.
At any rate, all those lugubrious conversations gave me at least a youthful understanding of just how omnipresent warfare is, was, and always will be. Thankfully, the eventual choice to put my novellas into the WW-I era gave me the opportunity to depict young people trying to come to terms with the same kinds of cataclysmic events that crept up in conversation during the summer of 1985.
Another big event/issue that emerged from isolating the variables was the AIDS crisis. Young people talked about it because many of our favorite bands talked about it. Anyway, the AIDs crisis inspired a novella in which the point-of-view character must confront the idea of sexually-transmitted diseases and the idea that at least some may prove to be lethal.
Another one of the novellas that grew out of my youthful diary hinges upon the question of obscenity and public morals. In that tale, a woman comes to see an art-gallery exhibition as the stuff of misogyny, objectification, and pornography. As such, the woman takes drastic action to rectify the problem.
At any rate, the honest-to-goodness reason why that issue crept up in my journals had to do with the notorious “Page-Three Girl” phenomenon. Before spending a summer in London, I never knew that the Sun took it upon itself to publish topless pictures. The issue became unavoidable, though, because the working-class family that hosted me that summer read the Sun religiously.
Years later, it occurred to me that a similar crime as the one described in my novella did in fact happen back in that era: evidently, someone attacked a Rembrandt nude at about that time. How impressive it would be had that been the impetus for addressing the obscenity/pornography debate. Alas, the thing that got me thinking about it as a teenager was actually no more prosaic than the page-three images staring back at me from my host family’s kitchen table.
Finally, it might be a good idea to mention Hyde Park. All summer long, the Speakers’ Corner fascinated me—both because of the political activists and the performance artists. That said, when cutting up my journals and putting things back together in a new way, I quickly realized that nothing dominated the Speakers’ Corner in the summer of 1985 quite like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even the anti-Apartheid speakers obsessed about it. At any rate, given all that time spent in Hyde Park, there could be no avoiding the issue of the Israel/Palestine conflict in at least one of my novellas.
One should also remember that London society was replete with anti-Israel passion back then. The kaffiyeh had been popular there for years, and the Human League had a big hit protest song about Lebanon. In addition, John Landis had a big hit movie back in the day, An American Werewolf in London—and it told of Americans with Jewish-sounding names (David Kessler and Jack Goodman) coming to London and turning into bloodthirsty werewolves. It always seemed like a meaningful coincidence to me that the film would be so popular at a time when London’s anti-Israel sentiments were becoming so ubiquitous.
(By the way, the idea of meaningful coincidences was a fairly popular topic of discussion back then due to the fact that the Police had an album out called Synchronicity. The title track of the album consisted of Sting more or less defining the whole Jungian concept. For what it’s worth, I think it’s great that Sting of all people was the one who really introduced Generation X to the great Carl Jung.)
Finally, it should be noted that many writers do produce perfectly lucid journals, diaries, and idea books—works that should NEVER be cut up. Still, not everybody writes cleanly. For angst-ridden teenagers, idea books and journals can be magnificently chaotic. The big challenge for me as a person turning a lifetime of idea books into fiction works is that every single diary that I have ever kept, even the ones written as an adult, are just as convoluted as the youthful one that I kept all those years ago, during that glorious summer in London.
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My thoughts on The Phantom Glare of Day
M. Laszlo’s The Phantom Glare of Day is a compilation of three novellas following three young women’s stories as they navigate World War One’s trials and tribulations.
Sophie, Cäcilia, and Manon each face their own unique challenges that reshape their worlds. From confronting the harsh realities of bullying, making misguided choices in search of a paternal figure, or experiencing the pervasive presence of homophobia, the three protagonists offer a candid and personal glimpse into their lives.
This book could be a perfect fit for you. If you enjoy WW1-era fiction, evocative language, and themes that provoke contemplation, you should consider reading this book.
I received a copy of the book for the tour. This review is my honest, unbiased opinion.
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I love my Amazon Kindle Unlimited Subscription. So many books, so little time!
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About M Laszlo
M Laszlo is the pseudonym of a reclusive author living in Bath, Ohio. According to rumor, he based the pen name on the name of the Paul Henreid character in Casablanca, Victor Laszlo.
He has lived and worked in New York City, East Jerusalem, and several other cities around the world. While living in the Middle East, he worked for Harvard University’s Semitic Museum. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio and an M.F.A. in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York.
His next work is now available from AIA Publishing. There are whispers that it purports to be a genuine attempt to explain the universe's riddle and is based on journals and idea books he made while completing his M.F.A. at Sarah Lawrence College.
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Purchase The Phantom Glare of Day online from a local bookstore.
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Easy Amazon Info Link
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Giveaway!
One randomly chosen winner via rafflecopter will win a $50 Amazon/BN.com gift card.
Visit more stops on this Goddess Fish tour for extra chances to win!
Official Tour Page for The Phantom Glare of Day
Full Tour Schedule:
December 27: Rogue’s Angels
December 29: FUONLYKNEW
January 3: Sandra’s Book Club
January 5: Lisa Haselton’s Reviews and Interviews
January 10: Kit ‘N Kabookle
January 12: Momma Says: To Read or Not to Read
January 17: B-Gina Review
January 19: Literary Gold
January 24: Fabulous and Brunette
January 26: Novels Alive – spotlight
January 31: Guatemala Paula Loves to Read
February 2: All the Ups and Downs
February 7: The Faerie Review
February 9: Beyond Romance
February 14: Archaeolibrarian – I Dig Good Books!
February 16: The Avid Reader
February 21: Author C.A.Milson
February 23: Celticlady’s Reviews
February 28: Hope. Dreams. Life… Love
March 2: Westveil Publishing
March 7: Let me tell you a story
March 9: Straight From the Library
March 14: fundinmental
March 16: The Obsessed Reader
March 21: Paws.Read.Repeat
March 23: Stormy Nights Reviewing & Bloggin’
March 28: It’s Raining Books
March 30: Gina Rae Mitchell – review
April 4: Long and Short Reviews
April 6: Harlie’s Books – review
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[…] have previously featured Mr. Laszlo on my website. Read a guest post from the author about Keeping an Idea Journal & learn about his unique set of novellas, The Phantom Glare of […]
This looks like a great read.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the book. Sounds good.
I think it is interesting that this book consists of three novellas with settings during World War 1.
Gina, thank you for hosting me. And thank you for the lovely review.
You are most welcome.
Thanks for hosting!