Thursday's Child: An Epic Romance

An Endorsement

The attached filed is an unsolicited letter I received from the fellow who edited copy for 'Thursday'. I have not edited it, other than to remove his name and identifiers. I have appended a few comments of my own after the letter (which is actully an image, so scroll down.)

    

    I was, naturally, extremely pleased and happy with this unsolicited letter. I know that this is not the New York Times or Saturday Review. But even so, the obvious surprise and astonishment this professional found in the quality of the work gives me a great deal of satisfaction. The description of 'Thursday' as a 'full and sprawling [epic], yet tightly organized' is, I believe, accurate.

    The letter also provides the answer, if any of you wonder, as to why a book of this quality has had such difficulty finding its way into the mainstream.  Wisely or not, what I chose to do was to attempt to convert a sow's ear into a silk purse - to do something serious with a genre that most discerning readers dismiss as irredeemably schlock. There's an implicit paradox in the undertaking - the greater the success, the more potential for failure.

Just what motivated me to take on this particular challenge is a topic for another day.

Thursday's Child: An Epic Romance

    Hello, and welcome to the world of 'Thursday's Child: An Epic Romance'. This blog is dedicated to comment and criticism concerning that novel, of which - not to be at all mysterious about the fact - I am the author.(Why I chose to use a feminine pseudonym for this book is a subject for a later post. 'Josephine Wurtenbaugh' is a variant of my mother's maiden name.)

    'Thursday's Child' is what the subtitle says it is - an epic romance.This is a fairly unexpected outcome for a book that began life as an attempt to write a little pastiche on a Harlequin romance, with pretty much the same appeal as those bon-bons possess, but with just a tad more substance.  In no time, however, the project took on a life of its own - and then it exploded on me, to put it mildly. As it did, some other ambitions joined the first modest one -(1) to write a really exciting, but completely non-violent, melodrama; (2) to create a heroine truly strong in the way I have known strong women to be, not some ersatz faux masculinity, but genuine, altogether different than male, feminine in its essence; (3) to discuss some of the life problems that really gifted young women do encounter; (4) to draw in subtle and indirect ways from the considerable body of myth and folklore/fairy tale that treat of romantic love; and (5) to garnish all the various ingredients of the salad with a light sprinkling of some of the philosophical, moral, and life insights I have acquired during my own stay on this planet. I use the term 'light sprinkling' because, above all, I wanted the book to be fun, and lively. It is my hope (and belief) that I succeeded in all of this. But of course I cannot be the judge of that.

    So 'Thursday' became a book with all the trappings of a five-buck paperback romance, and with the same entertainment value multiplied several fold - but also a fairly serious (though lively) novel of ideas. Above all, in its largest scale, it is a parable about the uses and misuses of power. The journey implied in the title ("Thursday's child has far to go") is actually an exploration of these modes, and an education of the heroine to her own responsibility to her vast human potential.

    This blog is open to comment on all these themes and topics, or any thing related, or books or other works related to them, or really anything at all. I hope the blog encourages anyone who visits to read the book, which does repay the effort. But, more than that, I hope it encourages that person to think and comment, and share those thoughts and comments here.

    Thanks for visiting, and come again soon.