Category / Writing

by Michael Janairo

Update: The Duck on Bartleby Snopes now live

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UPDATE: Fresh new fiction from yours truly now live on Bartleby Snopes http://www.bartlebysnopes.com/theduck.htm

I just got a note from the editor of the online journal Bartleby Snopes that my short story, The Duck, will be going live online next week at http://bartlebysnopes.com.

So be on the lookout for the story AND be sure to stay tuned, because the story will be in competition for Story of the Month, with voting done online by readers just like you.

I’ll have links to the story and to the voting site when they go live.

by Michael Janairo

That was fun

Today is my last day as a newspaperman.

When I was a kid, I was a paperboy.

When I was a college student, I was a journalism major.

As an adult, I’ve done lots of different things (teach English in Japan, teach college writing courses), but for more than 15 years, I’ve been working in newspapers, with most of that time spent at the Times Union.

Things change — and soon I will be the Assistant Director for Engagement at the Tang Museum.

by Michael Janairo

New on Goodreads: Veterans of the Future Wars

VFWCoversmAn anthology of military sci-fi that I am in — Veterans of the Future Wars — has just been added to Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20691034-vfw.

If you haven’t already seen it, go check it out today. It is being put together by Martinus Publishing.

Here’s what’s cool about the anthology:

It’s military sci-fi about veterans, to honor veterans, and several of these stories were written by actual veterans. Read these tales to share in the adventure, the triumphs and tragedies, and if you like your freedom thank those who have served to protect it. 10% of all profits will be donated to Disabled American Veterans.

Thanks!

by Michael Janairo

My latest identity upgrade: ‘Goodreads Author’

I just got this email from Goodreads:

Hi Michael,

Welcome to the Goodreads Authors program! We have upgraded your profile to an official author account. Your special status as a Goodreads Author gives you greater access to the millions of readers in our Goodreads community—so expect to get to know some passionate book lovers!

Here’s the link https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7796395.Michael_Janairo

I haven’t done anything with it just yet, but this next step is all thanks to being listed as one of the authors of the Long Reads anthology.

Anything you’d like to see on my Goodreads Author page?

 

 

by Michael Janairo

A little bit about ZZ on his birthday

ZZ (Times Union archive)

ZZ (Times Union archive)

I got to write a little bit about ZZ, our family dog who died a few years ago and whose ashes we have saved. The article is called “A human need to say farewell to pets,” and is more about readers’ comments on the web about a funeral home planning to offer pet funerals and cremations than about my dog. But it was nice to see his photo in the paper. You can see a video about ZZ here.

Anyway, ZZ died a few months shy of his 19th birthday, about six months after the photo of him was taken.

I’ve just been thinking about the little guy today and missing him.

by Michael Janairo

How to write a bestseller with ‘stylometry’


Scientists say they’ve uncovered the secret to writing a bestselling novel. By using a process called “statistical stylometry,” which basically means data mining an overload of printed matter — in this case 40,000 books and film scripts — to find patterns of wood usage.

The Stony Brook University researchers say that books that used more conjunctions (and, or, but) and thought-processing words, such as “recognized,” did better than books that had a higher percentage of verbs, adverbs and foreign words.

Do you believe them?

Here’s a quote from one of the researchers, which gives a sense of what it means to write about research (and maybe a good example of how not to write a bestselling sentence (look at those action verbs and a verb of being, but then again there’s that all-powerful “and”).

“Based on novels across different genres, we investigated the predictive power of statistical stylometry in discriminating successful literary works, and identified the stylistic elements that are more prominent in successful writings.”

by Michael Janairo

The love letters of Ms. Leyte ’27 and a young lieutenant

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The news out of Leyte reminds me of my grandparents. Here’s something I wrote about them nearly eight years ago.

Letters relate another time, other lives

Times Union, December 11, 2005

Janairo —

Here is a prayer book given to me four years ago today by a good friend of the family. Use it, and I know it will do you a lot of good. Will you make it your New Year’s resolution to attend Mass regularly every Sunday? Thank you ever so much.

AZR.

Tuesday, December 30, 1930.

This note and others like it are stuffed inside a greenish-gold box that says “La Jade” and “Paris” over an image of birds in flight. It doesn’t say that it contains the love letters of Lt. Maximiano Saqui Janairo and Amelia Zialcita Romualdez, as they were known in 1930.

I knew them decades later as Lolo and Lola , the Filipino nicknames for grandfather and grandmother, when they lived far from their homeland in Alexandria, Va. Being of Irish-American-Philippine descent, I had always been curious about my Asian heritage, even though (or perhaps because) my Lolo and Lola had seemed so distant, so regal, so “old world.” Continue reading →

by Michael Janairo

Big picture: Which Broadway shows would you like to see come to the Capital Region?

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Times Union Studio shot of Entertainment Editor Michael Janairo for his upcoming Unwind “Big Picture” Arts Column, shot on Wednesday, June 16, 2010, in Albany, NY. (Luanne M. Ferris/Times Union)

On Tuesday night, “Shrek: The Musical” opens at Proctors.

It’s the third production in the venue’s five-musical Broadway season. (“La Cage Aux Folles” started the season, followed by “The Addams Family”; later will be “Jersey Boys” and “Memphis”). Now that the season is around the halfway point, I thought I’d try my powers of prognostication about what may be in store for Proctors’ 2012-13 Broadway season.

Although nothing has been announced at Proctors, some current Broadway shows have already announced 2012-13 tours, even the biggest one of them all — “The Book of Mormon” — which last year won nine Tony awards, including best musical. The show, which satirizes organized religion and Broadway shows, comes from the same brains behind the TV show “South Park,” Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and Robert Lopez, who co-wrote “Avenue Q.” So the questions are: will Proctors be able to snag this hot ticket, and will the venue be able to sell enough tickets to fill its 2,646 seats for a run of a week or longer?

Of course, the matter of selling tickets is the big question for every show at every venue, but the kinds of shows Proctors brings in says something about the audience. Are Capital Region theatergoers eager and open enough for a musical about naive Mormon missionaries in Uganda, a production that Stone has called an “atheist’s love letter to religion”?

Continue reading →

by Michael Janairo

Big Picture: Writers worth seeing this spring

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Times Union Studio shot of Entertainment Editor Michael Janairo for his upcoming Unwind “Big Picture” Arts Column, shot on Wednesday, June 16, 2010, in Albany, NY. (Luanne M. Ferris/Times Union)

The New York State Writers Institute recently released its spring schedule, but in thinking about writers coming to the region this spring, my first thought goes to Darin Strauss.

His books include the memoir “Half of Life” (2010), in which he recounts how he killed a classmate in a car accident and its aftermath, which won a National Book Critics Circle award, and his 2001 debut “Chang and Eng” (2001), a fictionalized account of the famous conjoined brothers.

It was because of that book that I first heard Strauss give a talk in the common room of a dorm at Skidmore College. I was a student at the New York State Summer Writers Institute, studying with Marilyn Robinson and Russell Banks, and he was one of the alumni with a success story – the publication of his first novel. He said he had worked on the novel at the Writers Institute at Skidmore, and was especially impressed with the sharp-eyed Douglas Glover, who at that time would read manuscripts from students and offer a one-on-one critique that was both thrilling and terrifying.

What I remember best was how Strauss responded to the question of what it was like going from a writer working away, often alone, to having published a book. He said something like, “You know the saying, ‘the quiet before the storm.’? Well, it’s like the quiet after the quiet.”

Continue reading →