The Moon of Lost Objects Found

I have no idea what to title this post. I've been up to my eyeballs in edits (Lord help me), alternately turning up the thermostat, then turning it down, practically running through my morning (now afternoon because I mistakenly believe it's warmer outside) walk (it's still cold out there!), working on tax stuff (not really, but I know where the box is with the receipts, LOL), and finding lost objects. I'm not kidding - came home from Florida, and couldn't find a darned thing, including my house keys and my fav bedroom slippers. Now, however, they're all accounted for, including a pendant for a necklace I misplaced years ago. I'd assumed it had been vacuumed up long before this. I guess I can name January "The Moon of Lost Objects Found." Been reading the books I have to judge for the RITA award. Interesting batch. Watching Gordon Ramsey bully restaurateurs into being better businessmen, and realizing that we artistic types don't like the business side of what we produce. Well, I do, but I think I'm probably the exception. My daughter the foodie turned me on to Ramsey, who I initially thought was a foul-mouthed bully, but I'm beginning to see the method in his madness. Personally, I'd do him bodily harm if he talked to me "that" way, but he has a knack for exposing the lazy, the arrogantly foolish, and the poseurs for what they are.

Ah, I now know what to title this short entry! I keep telling myself, the daffodils are coming, the daffodils are coming. . . .

Daytona Testing and Sun

We're back - some of us are more sunburned than others, but the good news is, we soaked up rays and watched the COT testing at Daytona until we were about to OD. Fanfest was a hoot - Gordon (both Robbie and Jeff) kidding around on a stage, Jimmie Johnson complaining he spent too much time on the couch stuffing his face over the break, and David Reutimann wishing plaintively he were in the top 35 and had the guaranteed car problems and that was all. Mark Martin looking like a munchkin with a big grin. It was all good.

Confession time: I goofed off. Read some of my TBR pile, including a stack of Sue Grafton I've been saving. It felt like eating Schwan's ice cream non-stop - but boy howdy, was it fun to do nothing but read someone else's work. I think I managed to turn off my inner-editor at least part of the time, LOL.

Will post some pictures once I figure out how to upload them from the camera I received this Christmas. My children were tired of being the officially designated Nascar photographers, so they insisted I learn to do digital. I guess it's time...

Farewell, O Christmas Tree, Hello, Daytona!

The Frasier fir dribbled needles, although with an amazing paucity, as it exited the house today. Lights are down, boxes of ornaments packed with a semblance of care, and the pine roping thrown into the go-to-the-dump pile. Christmas is officially over!

Which leads into the next great adventure, Daytona. We're heading down thataway for Sprint Cup testing and Fanfest, which we've never attended before. The truth is, these white legs need a beach in the world's worst way, and if I can get them into some rays and see Nascar at the same time, it's all good.

All this post-Christmas cleaning has me tackling closets with a fierce determination to weed and toss. My youngest daughter says it's manuscript-avoidance, and she's probably right. A clean closet provides instant gratification, whereas the manuscript-that-never-ends ....well, doesn't. I may have to kill off all the characters to find some closure!

Here's wishing everyone a great and peaceful New Year. I'm reading Barbara Kingsolver's ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE and feeling an environmental shake-down coming up, along with the clean-closet mania. Oh, and the new bio of Sam Ervin. Good books both. Happy reading in 2008!

December is almost over?

AARGH! How did that happen? I look up, and it's almost Christmas. Sheesh, give a girl a break!

The munchkins are home and the old Scrabble board is getting a good workout. They've become cutthroat players. Gone are the days when I let them win - now I'm fighting for my life, LOL! All the gifts are wrapped and mailed, the tree gets decorated tonight (a live Fraser, of course), and a red velvet cake is in the oven. Life is good.

Now if I could just find time to finish some proof-reading. I declare, I just don't have the patience for proofing. Even reading backwards doesn't help. Each time I look at a page I've finished, there's another typo. Heaven help me. Does Santa deliver proofreading gift certificates?

Gave myself a gift and read Barbara Kingsolver's ANIMAL DREAMS. I may have read it a long time ago, I've forgotten, but what a wonderful book. Her PRODIGAL SUMMER ranks up there as one of my favorites on the Keeper Shelf, and ANIMAL DREAMS belongs with it.

Only sixty-someodd days until Daytona and racin' starts again. Hanging on by my fingernails.

Thanksgiving and gratitude

I'd love to thank each and every person who has written me about enjoying the Tal Jefferson mysteries. You'll never know how much it means to a writer to hear she's entertained someone who picked up her book and couldn't put it down.

The Golden Oars mystery is moving along, despite the holiday and beautiful weather just begging for me to work in the yard. A pivotal scene worked its way onto the hard drive just today, and I'm tickled pink with it. Of course, I'm just trying to keep up with Kat Jorgensen's output. She's one chapter ahead of me, I think, so I'd better keep myself in gear and the engine running.

Have a happy and thankful Thanksgiving, and know that I, like most writers, appreciate each and every reader. What a great bunch of folks, to put it mildly.

Eighty-nine days and counting

Until Daytona. No, not the Cup race. I hate the COT, now the full-time, boring ride that makes the Cup chase an IROC race. At least IROC pitted champions from all kinds of racing against each other, which made for some excitement. Me, I'll be going truck racin'. Yep, the series where the Old Dogs like Skinner, Sprague, and Hornaday drive like demons, and the youngsters like Chad McCumbee try to figure it all out. NASCAR Cup has become the vanilla pudding of racing for me. I'll keep my season tickets for a while longer, but only because it's fun to meet the fans in the parking lot where we all tailgate and chat, swapping hamburgers and favorite race stories. I have a feeling the COT edict is driving out the nuts-and-bolts men like Robert Yates and Ray Evernham. Creativity isn't allowed, and technical edges are squelched by NASCAR faster than you can say "suspension." It's sad. Money men will run the teams and bring in drivers based on demographics and marketing (can we all say Jacques Villeneuve and Patrick Carpentier, oh, and Juan Montoya...), not guts and sheer talent. Where's Danny O'Quinn, Busch series Rookie of the Year in 2006? Todd Kleuver, former protege of Mark Martin? Only Joey Lagano is getting a free pass, and that's because he's so talented, the Powers that Be can't ignore the kid. Plus, he already has a lucrative marketing deal in place.

Sounds a little like the publishing business, doesn't it? Marketing can make or break an author so fast it isn't funny. Thousands of books pour into the box stores, and how many get that fancy, eye-catching set-up as you walk in the front door? Sure, I know publishers pay for that square footage, but who gets to be the chosen one? No matter how great your book, if you don't have marketing behind you, bonne chance. It's the same in racing - your sponsor's money puts you in the best equipment, if you have a good one like Budweiser writing the checks. The #4 car has State Water Heaters on its hood. I can only imagine the disparity in dollars. It's the same with a book that hits the market. Remember that the next time you pick up the first book that catches your eyes as you enter the bookstore. Marketing money paid to put it there. Take time to head for the back racks where everything is spine-out, and check out a few of them. I think you'll be surprised at how wonderful those non-supported books are.

The munchkins are home for the holiday, buried in homework and theses, which keep them glued to their laptops writing. Wish I could say the same. I need to finish The Golden Oars with my buddy, Kat Jorgensen, before the end of the year, our self-imposed deadline.

HoHumTheChaseisGone

Boring, boring, boring - Phoenix wasn't a bad race, but the coverage was. ESPN shows only the 48 and 24 cars, and let me tell you, there was a whole heck of a lot more going on deeper in the field than they covered. Want to know why ratings are down for the Chase? It's the coverage, the boring, blah announcers, and no new stories. There's one in Joe Nemechek's contract to driver for the team that dumped Kenny Wallace - there's another one in David Ragan's car control when he almost spun out - and a good one in Aric Amirola's jump into the 01 car. Do we hear them? Naw, we get more gushing about how Knaus has figured out the right setups for the COT. I doubt I'll even tune in to see Homestead. This is just sad.

Spent Saturday at a Michael Hauge workshop in Maryland. I love to hear how other people analyze stories and how to make them better, and Hauge delivered. When I finally got how he was using his buzz words, things clicked. My new hero had been bothering me because I knew he was missing a crucial element, I just didn't know what. After Saturday, I know. He's now a complete person in my head, just in the nick of time. If Hauge comes anywhere near you, and you want to look at your work from a different angle, GO hear him talk! Many thanks to the WRW chapter that put on the program and ran it beautifully. More thanks to my travel buddies and partners in crime, Kat Jorgensen, Carolyn Greene, and Day LeClaire. We're a wicked team, LOL.

Of Martinsville, Mice, and Men

It's taken me a while to get back to the blog world because we've been on a pilgrimage. Don't laugh when I admit it was to race tracks. After Martinsville, and dropping the munchkins back at their respective schools, we loaded up the truck and decided against going home. So we wandered through Southwest Virginia, stopping at Morgan-McClure's headquarters (home of my fav driver, Ward Burton) in Abingdon, and then from there, farther into Tennessee to Bristol Motor Speedway. The leaves were lovely, despite the drought, and we stopped along the way whenever we felt like it.

Bristol feels like a Roman coliseum. The high seats, the small, short track (just a hair over half a mile) and the steep banks (up to 34 degrees) echo, even without the sellout crowds of 160,000, of screaming engines. As I tried to walk up the banking on the concrete track, all I could think was that it takes steel cojones to drive on that track. I wouldn't even try to rollerskate it.

The Martinsville race was a bit of a let-down. By now, I should stop complaining about the Car of Tomorrow (now the Car of Today), but it seems to me that the racing just isn't as wild on the short tracks like Martinsville and Richmond. It's kinda like when your favorite driver switches genres, and you're holding his or her newest book, going "what happened?" I remember vividly when David Morrell did that to me - went from westerns to Brotherhood of the Rose. The great part about Martinsville is that Ward made the race, the hot dogs are still bright pink, and the weather was perfect for racin'. The bad part happened after the race.

Carl Edwards didn't like something that happened on the track with his teammate, Matt Kenseth, and he went after him while Matt was being interviewed by Speed. The look on Carl's face, even though he wore sunglasses, was ugly. Shoving Matt around, he started to walk away, then swirled and raised a closed fist and thrust it in Matt's direction, pulling back just before connecting with Matt's chin. For those of you who don't follow Nascar, Edwards is buff. Built like a prizefighter. Matt is smaller and definitely not buff.

I've liked Carl. Admired his gusty driving. But the "incident" turned me off, big time. Battered women and abused children have seen that "look" before, as well as the bullying threat with a closed fist. In Virginia, it's against the law to lay hands on someone like that. It's called assault. Carl could scream at Matt all he wanted, and that's okay with me. Beat and bang away on the track. That's Nascar. But shoving and closed fists aren't okay. Carl deserves a hefty fine and probation. What he did in front of the cameras was not only stupid and illegal, it was also cowardly. Picking on someone smaller than you is for mice, not men.

Writing and Vogue Patterns

I've been reading what other writers have to say about maintaining sanity in a world where we who live in our minds are considered a bit ...odd. Exercise works for me - my two mile walk in the morning is more of a plotting session than a physical workout. Getting out into the real world helps - I do my share of volunteer gigs, teaching Sunday School, etc., but I need other forms of creativity to keep my brain cells perking. Recently, I re-discovered how much I love to sew.

I've sewn all my life. I know - it's an old-fashioned deal, but I was raised by women who could whip out a Vogue pattern in hours. Fabrics, their colors, their weight, how they mesh, how they will drape, all attract me. I wandered through a fabric store (a dying breed, I fear) the other day, fingering bolt upon bolt of fabric before I found the right one for a new pattern I want to try. Before the project was done, I'd adjusted the pattern, substituted my own ideas, and voila, produced a blouse that wasn't boring, didn't look as if it had been churned out in a sweatshop somewhere, and fit.

Even better, I'd thought about where to take this new book I'm playing with. Working with my hands frees my thoughts, and even though I'm paying attention to what I'm doing as my trusty Husquervarna runs like a Hendrick engine through layers of cloth, I'm living with my new characters. Talking to them. Listening as they lecture me. The conversation felt as productive as if I'd spent hours spent in my yard, planting, pruning and weeding. Plus, I didn't sweat as much, LOL.

My creative well is now swathed in some very nice lightweight wool and a lovely silk, and feeling quite full, thank you very much.

Fall is the real New Year

I've been hauling out the Halloween decorations and much to my horror, discovered that some of them must go. As in, to the trash can. How dare they? For years, I've perched the huge,ugly, fake black crow that bears down on trick-or-treaters with a malevolent eye, on the porch. Alas, its feathers fell off in the attic this summer. Other beloved decorations have taken the same path. Huge sigh.

This is the end of an era, I thought. No more munchkins to dress for the Big Day. No more sewing of costumes into the wee hours. That ended years ago, but still, as long as the decorations existed that we'd used when the munchkins did their scary bit, I thought of Halloween as fun. Now, I ruminated, no more buying huge amounts of candy. (Whoa, back up there...the candy stays.) After moping for a bit, I rallied and decided to go for it. Skeleton candles. More sound effects. New stuff! I've recuperated from my malaise, and am happy to say, the house is beginning to look a lot like...Halloween. To heck with Christmas.

The writing is ripping along wonderfully. The Golden Oars is half-way finished, and my writing partner, Kat Jorgensen, and I had a great brainstorming session for the next half of the book. We've always known the last chapter and how the characters get there, but this time, details fell into our laps like manna. We can't wait to finish it and get going on the next book for this group of unstoppable women who don't let anything - murder, kids, grandkids, old boyfriends, new boyfriends, or bad weather - stop them from their weekly session of rowing together on the Chesapeake Bay.

With ideas pinging, I wrote a detailed synopsis for my next solo project, an idea that's sufficiently cooked in my mind to put down on paper. Or hard drive, as the case may be. The first chapter knocked itself out, miracle of miracles. Some Kind of Wonderful is its working title. More later. . . .

So why don't we recognize September as the real New Year? January is just hunker-down-and-stay-sane, as far as I'm concerned. September is full of new beginnings, new energy, and all calendars should being with Sept. 1.

The Little Things

It's TLT that make life interesting. I've been fighting with my mouse (computer variety, no hair included) for so long, it's crankiness no longer registered on my annoyance chart. Until one day, I said "Self, this is silly. The World of Mouse has progressed since you bought this creaky, cranky critter. Go shopping." I'm proud to say a cool little mouse with all sorts of tricks up its roller ball (is that what it's called?), wireless to boot, works its little guts out for me. I love it! Why did I stick by my old standby for so long?

I think, in over analyzing it, it's because I want the same work environment. Even the chaos scattered around me has a method to it. Shuffle the order of one pile, and I'm instantly clueless. Shift another stack, and my favorite pen disappears. Lord help me, if I can't find my favorite pen. Forty others, all perfectly respectable and ink-filled, stick their noses out of the Mark Martin cup to my left, but that trusty good one, the one I trust, must be readily available to my right, just in front of the printer, hooked to its notebook filled with pages of ideas and plotting notes. Searching for something, anything, jerks me out of the writing frame of mind.

I must now switch topics and eat my words about COT racing. Yesterday's bloodbath at Dover was incredible. I don't know who or what went haywire (although Kyle Petty blames Denny Hamlin, without a doubt), but cars were bouncing around and off each other like crazy. Those who survived must feel like gladiators who lived to fight another day. Even pit row guys got carted to the hospital - the 55 gas can man was lucky that the tire that hit him didn't take his head off. I'll bet there'll be a lot of overtime for the fabricators, who have to put bodies back on the wounded Car of Tomorrow. BTW, when will they be the COT, Car of Today?

The Chase Begins!

The Richmond race was spectacular - only way to describe the whole evening. Montoya's engine on fire, Carl and Junior's engines blowing up with spectacular white contrails, Gordon fighting for the lead. Johnson's charge from "what happened to Jimmie?" to the fore. Loved it. The COT still isn't my favorite race, but at least it was under the lights with all its attendant magic.

The Busch race the night before was a snoozer - it's never a lot of fun when all the Cup guys raid the Busch ranks and play to win. In fact, Kyle Busch dominated the night, so much so, we called it an early evening and got out of the parking lot before the hoards descended.

Met a lot of nice people - the guys parked next to us Saturday in the lot, the couple running Ward Burton's merchandise trailer. Despite the heat and humidity, we survived.

My daughter gave me a new iPod Shuffle to wear when I walk in the mornings. I'm a convert, I must admit. Listening to Buddy Guy sing "Lay, Lady, Lay" as I chug along makes me smile. I just hope no one hears me singing harmony. Sad, really sad.

Racin' the Way it Should Be!

We're off to the Richmond race - the one that'll cinch the Chase. Junior fans abound, and it'll be interesting to see if he can pull off a win. Even if he does, Harvick has to DNF. Long odds . . .

At least it won't be raining, thank goodness. The college crowd is descending for the race (all Kasey Kahne fans, of course), and I've planned enough food to feed an army. Or college sophomores. That's half the fun of the race - the tailgating parties at Richmond. Everyone is friendly, and chatting about drivers and races helps pass the time until the night race.

I'll have lots of good pictures to upload, I hope. Taking some reading I've meant to get to - Thirteen Bags Full came highly recommended. My work on "voice" for a talk at the VRW meeting next week has made me highly conscious of how other authors achieve it. It'll be interesting to see if voice translates well from another language.

September is the new New Year

Perhaps it's because the neighborhood kids are trudging down the street outside my window, dragging backpacks as if they're filled with time bombs, that I've decided my new year is really September. I remember, every Tuesday after Labor Day, checking out my stacks of new textbooks, wondering how on earth I was going to learn everything, panicking, until I was old enough to realize that someone was going to actually teach me. Every September was a new beginning, a new adventure in knowledge, with books at its core.

So here I go, starting a new book. I've been playing around with several plots that I've thrown onto the screen, practicing getting into different heads, under chimerical skins. One is calling me more insistently than the others, so I'll give it a go and see if it still amuses me after the first forty pages. Although I've tried, in vain, to change my process, those first forty pages are necessary. They'll end up in the trash, but until I work through them, I won't know for sure if I like these people enough to live with them in my head for the next months.

The Big Race is the weekend after Labor Day - I need to gather all the tailgating supplies and shop for two days of food that'll work on a grill. Can't wait. While I'm not a big fan of the COT, I'll be happy to see a night race again. The spring race on Sunday afternoon was a bummer. No mystery, no glamour, no sparks flying in the darkness.

If you want to read a good western romance, check out Donna Dalton's THE CAVALRY WIFE at Wild Rose Press. It's available as a download now, paperback due in December. It's set during my favorite time in U.S. military history, when the black troops of the 9th and 10th Cavalry did yeoman's duty on the Plains.

Editing Yourself

I'm a terrible self-editor. No matter how often I've worked on a project, when it comes time to bite the bullet and read the work for accuracy, I'm hopeless. Falling into the story wipes out all attempts to be brutal with my grammar, word choices, and sentence fragments. I'm terribly fond of the whole thing by that stage. Probably, there's a part of me that worries that fooling around with the last draft will shift the stars and disrupt the magic that made it in the first place. Hence, my self-editing is really just another chance to fall into the story again.

Recently, I picked up EDIT YOURSELF by Bruce Ross-Larson, which is charmingly dedicated to "Goddard Winterbottom." Anyone with a friend of that delightful name must know what he's doing, I decided. And Ross-Larson does. He lists "overweight prepositions," ( the bailiwick of most lawyers, without a doubt), weak modifiers, and wonderful tips like "you should examine a noun ending in 'ion' to see whether it can be replaced by a concrete word." (p.9) For example, instead of "motivation," try to use the word "drive." For "origination," use "source." Ross-Larson seems dedicated to clearing up muddy writing and making sure subjects and verbs agree. I particularly like his advice to avoid the "ugly" words like "electricitywise and prioritize." I smell Christmas gifts in the offing....

Last week and this have been swallowed up in the flurry of shopping and packing it seems to take to get two girls back to their respective schools. One starts a week before the other, so at least the sweaty, time-sucking work is spread out. Wait, is that a good thing? Oh well - it's August. What more is there to say?

Writing with "Voice"

I've been thinking about what constitutes "voice," and while I know it when I read it (think J.K. Rowling, T.S. Eliot, Dick Francis), I've never considered the issue of whether you can learn to write with it, or if it's embedded in your DNA. While browsing the bookstore the other day, I picked up a book that had an intriguing title, opened the first page, read it, and immediately, the author's voice came through loud and clear. Ah ha, I thought, and bought the book. Sharyn McCrumb's voice - sassy, sad, or outright funny - comes through as uniquely hers. All the authors on my "keeper shelf" have that certain way of telling a story that makes it uniquely hers or his. I may not like the story, but I sure liked the way it was told!

So, the question is, can you learn "voice," or are you born with it? It's probably half-and-half. The more you write, the more your own voice will evolve, if you're beyond the stage of trying to write like someone else. When you find the right fit of story and voice, the book will take off so fast, it's hard to stop writing it. Those days when twenty pages or more spring to life and your wrists are about to break off, you're writing so fast, are the days all writers crave. When I read a book with voice, it's almost as if there's this disembodied entity, whispering the story in my brain, and I'm there, in the moment, along for the ride as it happens. Those are the page-turners we tell our friends to buy, and we never lend them out because we're afraid they'll get lost. (SEP's Ain't She Sweet - keep your hands off my copy!)

How do we find our own voice? Write. Write some more. Drag your voice out from wherever it's been hiding, and tell it to get a life of its own. It will, if you care passionately about the work.

On Indy, &(%#, and Tony Stewart

Now I can say "been there, done that, bought the T-shirt." The ending to that phrase is "I won't do that again." The Indy race, while highly touted, is really a bit of a bore. While our seats were wonderful (on the start/finish line), it wasn't much fun for the minute and a half that we couldn't see the back side of the track during every lap. Sure, the Jumbotron was right in front of us, but still - - even the engine noise disappeared! What's the fun of a race with no rumble?

Still, we had a great time (every NASCAR race has its up side) seeing Ward Burton pull in 14th. What a triumph for Morgan-McClure Motorsports. Bless Tony Stewart for being emotional about his win. To heck with corporate correctness. So let he slip a common enough curse word - it had been a long, hot, grueling afternoon, and he didn't cross any line that offended me.

I've never been to a NASCAR race farther North than Richmond, and the difference in the crowd surprised me. Below the Mason-Dixon, everyone, and I mean everyone, sports a T-shirt emblazoned with a favorite driver or track. That wasn't the case at Indy. There wasn't the same camaraderie either - people didn't seem to want to talk to strangers. At a Southern race, there's no such thing as a stranger, and tailgaters invite anyone who strolls past a tailgating party to stop for a drink or a hot dog. Chatting about drivers, stats, and the day's prognostications is standard fare for the Southern fan. Not so at Indy. Half the people we tried to talk with didn't have the vaguest idea what a NASCAR race was about, much less who was driving what car, and why did Bobby Ginn give up and merge with DEI? Don't know why they were there, unless it was just the prestige of being at an Indy race.

On the writing side, The Golden Oars, about a women-only crew club, is rowing along. The characters, with all their quirkiness, live in my head at the moment, urging me to get them down faster. I'm trying, ladies! My good friend Kat Jorgensen and I are collaborating on the book, planning a series, and keeping ourselves immensely amused as we plot what happens next to our foursome of wild women over the age of fifty.

It'll be a huge relief when the Richmond race rolls around again, and we can rub elbows (and butts, LOL, in the too-small seats) with fellow NASCAR fanatics. Come on, September!

Off to Indy

Yes! Packing now for this weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Allstate 400. We'll catch the truck and Busch races at the O'Reilly track beforehand, but I'm really looking forward to our first forway to Indy.

I'm starting a new project with a friend, centered on a group of four women who all crew together - as in, go rowing in their shells - in Virginia Beach. Aged from 50 to 85, they have messy lives, crazy relatives, and a mystery to solve when the 85 year old's boy toy, aged 75, shows up as a floater. We're having such fun with it - I write the angst and murder, and my partner, Kat Jorgensen, writes the humor. We feel we know these women so well, they'll be good for a long series of books. We hope!