Reunion

Such a loaded-for-bear word. What woman doesn't tremble at the thought of reconnecting with the past? Fortunately, there a few brave souls in my college class who are willing to show up for our, ahem, umpteenth, reunion this weekend. We're a tad bit older, but who cares? We've so much more to share these days than class notes, campus gossip, and boy friend, or the lack thereof, reports. I truly believe women get better as they get older, and we certainly have in my class of overachievers.

Attending a women's college was not in my plans. However, my freshman year at the American University of Beirut was blown up, literally, by protests on campus, a fire that took out the Registrar's Office, wars, and political upheaval. Hollins College took me in, primarily, because my mom was an alum. I though I'd landed in hell when I hit Roanoke, and this is from a girl who hid under her dorm desk as the Israelis bombed the Beirut airport. I was getting out of Hollins, Virginia, as fast as I could.

Wrong. With a campus packed to the gills with a cool group of women, the college hummed with intellectual electricity. Combine the two - smart women and great educators - and you have the makings of remarkable lives. I'm not so sure mine has measured up, but I'm not complaining.

My liberal arts education has stood me in good stead. Thank you, Hollins. Can't wait to get back.

Evolution

I love it when a book I sorta outlined ages ago jumps into my head, out of the blue, and demands some immediate attention.  This happened to me a couple of weeks ago, and in re-reading the synopsis, I thought, "hmmm, not half bad. Pretty interesting, actually."  From me, that's high praise. 

Pulling out a fresh notebook, I started to play with the story, and suddenly, I knew what the story needed.  A mystery.  Initially conceived as a work of women's fiction, I sensed it needed an extra kick in the rear to take it a notch higher.  The mystery element was perfect.

But how to work in a mystery in a story primarily about relationships?  Again, the solution was obvious. The structure of the mystery could undergird the relationships.  I wanted to begin writing, but life got in the way.

Yesterday, life played outside while I wrote.  A first chapter is seldom easy, but in my case, it was like finding gems in a bushel of words.  They came so quickly, I didn't even realize I'd been at my keyboard for several hours.  I love it when that happens, the first rush of meeting new friends and enemies, new places, new problems to solve.  The last chapter came to me as I was writing the first, so I have my goal.

Now if I can just keep it going!

Memorial Day

My father always said that the military was used when politicians failed. I'd like to use this as a call to elect the best people as our officials, those who decide when to call in the guns. Arrogance, ego, self-will, anything less than the purity "of Caesar's wife" will not be tolerated in those who hold the sacred trust of our elected offices.

This Memorial Day, let us resolve to diminish the number of graves in our national cemeteries by voting for people who take military action so seriously, it is a last resort.

My uncle, Robert Batten Dunham, is one who lost his life to a "military police action" in a foreign land. Today, that war is still ongoing.

Battleship

How could it go wrong? Peter Berg of Friday Night Lights, Taylor Kitsch and Jesse Plemons of the cast of FNL, and alien invaders. Yes! Add some great special effects, a real vet with metal legs in a hero's role ("I got this," says Mick as he faces down the alien monster), and my beloved and I had a great time. So some parts don't make sense (live bombs on the USS Missouri?), who cares? This is a movie-movie, with heroism, explosions, a love story, gutsy gals who kick ass (Rihanna? Really? Wow), and huge stakes, the survival of mankind. The story line follows the "make it worse" credo when it comes to the alien invasion, and we ate it up. So go! Ignore naysayers. Have some fun. You will, I promise.

We're trying to knock off some of our to-do list over the long weekend. Thankfully, the race in Charlotte gave us an excuse to sit. Kasey Kahne finally proved he deserves his seat with Hendrick, and I slept through the middle of the 600 miler. Awful coverage by Fox, but the race really is too long.

I may hide the to-do list tomorrow and pull out the Friday Night Lights DVDs and pull a marathon. Best thing that ever happened to TV. Except for season 2. Will skip that one. The rest are about relationships that seem so real, you would bet money you knew these people.

Everyone, fly your American flag tomorrow. Remember those who gave all for our nation. Say a prayer for peace.

Tweet Me

I get asked quite frequently why I like Twitter, while Facebook leaves me cold. Easy. It's short. Doesn't take much time. I don't have to interact, be friends, respond, or do anything at all if I don't want to. Like most Nascar fans now, I follow fav drivers (Brad Keselowski is a Twittering rock star), and people who "get" Twitter, like DeLana Harvick and John Daly.

As a writer, I check in with Publisher's Weekly, the Library of Congress, and assorted editors and publishers. Most provide links to the most up to date news and interesting blogs and articles about the biz. I learn stuff that could take months to filter down the food chain to the lowly author. For example, right now something odd is happening with Avalon Books. (Thomas Bouregy & Co.) If I wished, I could Tweet about it and alert any writers following me to keep their manuscripts in their drawers until the real story comes out. Unless you're on the private list for Avalon authors, you wouldn't know. Twitter opens up the dissemination of information quickly and concisely. And I can control who follows me easily.

So I guess the short answer is, Twitter is fast, easy, and my kind of shorthand. 140 characters, that I can handle.

Shame in Virginia

I'm truly embarrassed to be a Virginian. Once a Commonwealth of revolutionary ideas and progressive thinking (the American Revolution, anyone?), it's now a bastion of old white men who think they can keep everyone in the 19th century.  Don't get me started on the segregation  or sex laws that were on the books until recently.  Or the recent anti-abortion state law our milquetoast governor signed.


However, today records a truly low point in our recent legislative history. Our Republican controlled government has rejected a gay prosecutor for a general district court judgeship. The obvious reason is: he's gay.  Openly gay.  Former fighter pilot.  By all accounts, a really good prosecutor.  As a former defense lawyer, I'd oppose his appointment simply because he's a prosecutor, and I'm tired of prosecutors on the bench.  And that's the only reason.

A judge needs an even temperament, the highest ethics, good legal chops, and the ability to keep control in the courtroom. I'm not aware that being gay disqualifies you from possessing any of these characteristics.

For shame, Virginia. 

Periwinkle

Not the color, but the plant. I've just spent an hour attacking it, insidious, wicked plant that it is. Don't let those cute blue flowers fool you. It'll take over your garden, your yard, your house, if you let it. Nothing daunts it, not even the green worms from hell, who couldn't be bothered to munch on it when there were lilacs and azaleas to decimate.

As I jerk, clip, and dig at the periwinkle, I'm thinking, as I'm wont to do, about writing. First I'm working on a difficult character in my head, wondering if I'm being fair to him, and that leads, of course, into what do you do with the book at never ends? Like the groundcover I'm trying to eradicate, the story just wanders on and on, and you're wondering if you've created a nightmare and not a novel. The leap in logic here may have escaped you (don't worry), but it all came around in my head as I realized the character who had been worrying me was unnecessary to the story. He's getting ripped out by the roots just as soon as I can get him out of there, because he's just more ground cover.

I call this a successful morning. Clearing the garden beds and the WIP of extraneous bits at the same time is a good day's work.

Things I wish I'd known

I've been running Florence and The Machine's latest CD, CEREMONIALS, at full blast wherever I drive these days. The steering wheel actually shakes.  If you don't know Florence, and you're a Gracie Slick fan, check her music out. Killer vocals, lyrics you won't hear anywhere else, and a drummer who makes me feel tribal.   Who says old chicks can't rock? Not Florence, me, lol.

I was thinking the other day about all the things I know now about the writing business that I wish I'd known years ago.  I'd just read Ann Voss Peterson's blog on Jon Konrath's blog site, all about how she had to stop writing for Harlequin (the 6000 lb elephant of romance publishing) because she couldn't pay for her son's braces, much less make a living, even though she churned out multiple books a year that sold well into six figures. The advance and payout (i.e. royalty) structure was such that HQ authors must keep a day job, no matter how many HQ lines they've contracted for multiple books. 

That's something I wish I'd known. Back before I realized I'd never have the HQ "voice," I thought HQ was where you earned your stripes as a disciplined writer. It may still be that place. But I knew, from how hard some of my friends were working to basically just survive as writers for HQ, that it was a cold and master/servant relationship when it came to the business side. HQ has some of the best editors in the business. These people know what they're doing. But that's totally different from the contract side of the deal, and HQ just doesn't have to give anyone anything in writing it doesn't want to give her. And they don't, unless you're Nora Roberts. (Who got her start there.) I thank my lucky stars I never signed a contract with HQ. I've made my own share of contract goofs,but none that scary.

One of the smartest (and that was by accident) things I did was get a sample publishing contract from the Author's Guild before I even read my first contract from Walker & Co.  Every new author should be a member and get that contract and keep it handy when it's pen and ink time.

More later. Long blogs bore me, so I assume they do you, too.

Hurrah for the Upstarts!

My man, Bad Brad Keselowski, outwitted Kyle Busch to take the flag at Talladega! Yes! As Kyle Petty said, Brad outdrove and outsmarted the competition. Brad's talking like a pro on camera, and it's fun to watch him make his name. Bet Hendrick wishes he could have kept him in the stable back when Brad was running for Junior Motorsports in the Nationwide series.

Talking about upstarts, Young Adult books are definitely taking over from adult fiction as my fav reads. I'm starting BOY 21 by Matthew Quick, written in an athentic, low key style that sneaks in stellar writing like "The liquor on his breath was dank and smelled sharp as a razor." Ostensibly, it's a basketball story, but of course, it's much more. Good book.

Bummer

Yesterday never got above 49 degrees Fahrenheit, the rain fell from 12:30 p.m. on, and at times was practically horizontal. Yes, I'm talking about Race Day. That most wonderful of events.  Better than, well, most things.  Short track in Richmond. Track dancing with lights.  Packed stands.

That, of course, describes a normal Richmond Nascar race. Yesterday, everything fell apart, and we bailed.  Hate to admit it, but by 5:30 p.m., with rain dripping steadily through the seams of our pop-up tent, soaked and cold, and incidentally, miserable since we don't imbibe to the point of who-cares?, we loaded up the truck and headed for the barn, expecting the race to be run Sunday afternoon.

Wrong.  The rain stopped, the engines fired, and we slept through most of the race on the TV at home, all of us wrapped in quilts, lounging by the gas logs, warm for the first time that day. Not the getting warm part, that was heavenly.  But for the first in years, we weren't in the stands in Richmond. Major bummer.

So what happens when a much-anticipated (insert your choice here) bombs? When the book you thought was stellar dies on the mid-lists? When your editor/agent doesn't like the first draft much, if at all?  When you're eagerly anticipating diving into writing the next book, and the line is cancelled?  Yikes.  Even the thought sends prickles of horror up the spines of most writers. 

Or what if, as happened to Kiana Davenport, Penguin wants its advance back, the $20,000 they paid for a novel, because you have published short stories on Amazon, the arch enemy of Legacy publishers?  (Read her blog, www.kianadavenportdialogues.blogspot.com for more.)

You suck it up, get rid of the distractions, and get back to what matters, the writing.   And if you're a racer, you load up the truck and head for the next track, the next race, and pray for better weather.

The Killing

Like most viewers, I was more than a little frustrated with the ending of last season's THE KILLING. Love,love, love the way it's shot, the acting, even the rainy gray setting. The actor playing Holder is a marvel.

If you bailed after feeling cheated, go back. The story is twisting tighter than the knotted fists of a guilty man. It's seldom that a plot line turns and twists with so many surprises, at least on television.

Girly girls

While I consider myself feminine (I'm sure my beloved is happy to know that), I don't like furbelows and ruffles and all manner of fussy adornment. A good string of pearls, a nice diamond (thank you, sweetie), and a good haircut are all I really need. Oh, and mascara. And a quality, um, unmentionable undergarment. When a lady reaches a certain age... But when my daughters and I hit the Southern Women's Show, I stumble into another world. Big clunky costume jewelry that almost tempts me. Make up do-overs. Cute shirtless fireman on a stage, dancing to rockin' tunes, all of whom I ogle shamelessly. I wonder if this lipstick is the right shade. Should I buy this wonderful dip mix? Then I return to my senses and buy some great garden snips and a saw. In pink, so my beloved won't be tempted to borrow them. I feel much better. Then I line up some window salesmen to give me bids on new windows for the house. Yes, definitely more myself. I'm almost back to normal when . . . homemade creams grab me. My dry skin says stop and try them. Almost a hundred dollars later, I think I can escape the SWS, feeling as if I've gone over the line into female overload just a bit. For a few hours, it's okay. I'm sure my daughters wonder who the heck this woman is who calls herself their mother for the short time we're traipsing the pink carpet.

Worms

One morning a couple of weeks ago, our yard, and those of many others in our neighborhood, displayed an amazing layer of green, wiggling, inch long worms, squinching their way all over our house, our cars, and our oaks and maples.  With each successive morning, these (at first) cute creatures made our yard look like a scene from a science fiction movie.  We weren't too disturbed, initially, figuring they'd disappear in a few days.

Wrong.  They spread to the lilacs, the dogwoods in bloom, the azaleas, hostas, and ourselves.  We couldn't get out of the house without a broom to knock down the webs dropping the worms from trees like paratroopers invading enemy territory.  No one came back into the house without a partner to pluck the green, and now black and green, invaders from our backs and our hair. I used the garden hose, set on "blast," to drive them from the front of the house and our windshields. 

We couldn't get the upper hand. The worst was that all the beautiful new growth, that sparkling green in the trees, the new shoots of peonies, disappeared.  The worms grew fatter and bolder. The oaks looked as if Agent Orange had decimated them.  Azaleas resembled brown lace. My joy in the new spring plummeted.  We'd jumped from winter into late fall, with everything bare and barren once more.

I decided to rally myself mentally. If  the worms were part of a strange cycle of these bloodworts (as the newspaper said they were properly called, not "those nasty things" we had named them), I had to trust reports that the trees would recover.  Everything would bloom again.  Sure enough, only a few worms remain, and I can see that the trees are beginning to recover. Tiny buds pattern against the sky when I look upward.

This has reminded me that we can't crumple under an onslaught of the strangely incomprehensible, the ugly, and the destructive.  Criticism of our creative work, coming from our own doubts or outside "critiquers," can eat away at our new growth.  Don't let it. The nibblers that want to eat our joy in what we do, as creative people, can only ingest so much, then they'll die away, naturally. Because we will bloom again. We'll keep on growing as writers and artists, despite any attempts to stunt our growth.

No Pulitzer for Fiction?

I am not the only one who is perplexed by the lack of an award for the Pulitzer prize in fiction. The three finalists rose from a field of three hundred. The volunteers put in countless hours to come up with the three best of the class. They get no thanks except from those in the know. They do it for love of books and the honor the prize bestows on the finalists. I have no doubt the panel took its job very seriously and worked extremely hard.

Been there, done that. I've been a judge in several genre contests, and it takes over your life. Your own work suffers because you don't want any of the voices from these contest books bleeding into your own work. You agonize and reread as many of the books as you feel need it. Lists dominate your desk, as you enumerate good points and bad for every entrant. It's work, and hard work at that. If the final judges in the contests in which I was involved hadn't picked a winner, I would have been royally, and loudly, upset.

I hope everyone buys the books that finaled for the Pulitzer fiction prize, and that they discuss which they liked best. Vote with your pocketbook. Don't let the Pulitzer committee get away with being so. . .namby pamby.(Is that still a word, or words?)

I hope next year the judges do the job they were chosen to do. The first round judges did. I applaud them and wish them the best.

Right Brain, Left Brain

I have never subscribed to the belief that if you're creative, you're a mess with business, numbers, and the like.  Creative people, more than all others, need to have an analytical side that can keep them out of trouble. Think of all those rock stars and actors who get robbed blind by business managers. It's not that they can't take care of their own business, they just don't want to.

Anyone can keep track of their accounts and contracts, if they care about it. And we all should. We who live in our imaginations need to be even more vigilant, because it's so easy to let that non-fun side of our writing careers slide into Scarlett O'Hara territory - I'll think about it tomorrow.  Not good enough.  If you're smart -if you're creative, you're plenty smart - you'll pay attention to your accounts, your investments, your contracts, and ride herd on the people you hire to keep you out of the IRS's clutches.

That's not to say I'm perfect. But I'm not afraid of a column of figures or filling out forms.  Contracts, which I happen to like because most of them are written in the most obscure legalese imaginable and they're like puzzles to me, need a professional to review them.  I've signed my share of bad contracts (Avalon Books being a prime example) but back in the day, I just wanted my westerns out in the world, and westerns have been a dying breed for a very long time. Lame excuse, I know. And I've learned my lesson well.

But at least I did the damage myself. I didn't hand over my business to anyone else to mess up.  Same with all my other business decisions. When they're a success, I gloat. When they're in the ditch, I figure it's time to move on.

But I'll never pretend I don't understand the business side of writing because I'm an artist.  That's the best reason in the world to educate myself about what's what.

.

Is everything in a novel real?

I've heard that all authors write about their own lives. That every story is, in its heart, autobiographical. Maybe, it's just that we writers live in our stories so deeply, they become our lives. That's what I think. No, what I know.

If I can't live in the book, see the characters, hear them talking to one another, it's doomed. Both as a reader and as an author, I long for that immersion. When it happens, I want to shout out loud to everyone I know, even to strangers, that they MUST read this book. It doesn't happen often. Themes of courage, honor, perseverance in the face of astounding adversity, when done even half-well, suck me in. When we live in someone else's skin through a book, we become them for the space of those words on the page. We are blessed by that experience.

I suppose that's why I decided in eighth grade to become a lawyer. (Despite my English teacher's lecture that women couldn't be lawyers.) Reading To Kill a Mockingbird showed me the power of an honorable lawyer, willing to take a case that wasn't, even in its best light, winnable. I took that lesson to heart.

Many years later, new law degree in hand, I was appointed, as young lawyers were in those days, to represent an indigent mentally handicapped woman that the state wanted to sterilize. Law school hadn't taught me about the difference between the purity of the law it taught and the real practice of law. The system in Virginia had been sterilizing mentally challenged
people for years. I'd never heard of such a thing, and was shocked by the proceedings. I was there just to keep up appearances. I wasn't expected to even say anything, I was informed.

It never happened again. I had plenty to say whenever I was appointed by the court again to some small proceeding. I can't say it made any difference, but I had to be truthful to my inner Atticus.

I just wished I'd been able to effect change. Time took care of most of it.

Right to Peaceful Assembly

Recently, nonviolent protestors publically voiced their objections to the travesty that is the Virginia Assembly's vote to force women seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound. They stood on the steps of the Virginia Capitol. They waved signs. And they were attacked and arrested by police in riot gear. This is old news.

Last Sunday, members of several churches marched down Monument Avenue, an old, venerated street lined with massive statues of Confederate generals and Matthew Maurey (look him up, he's cool), and one weird bronze of Arthur Ashe batting at grasping children with his tennis racket. They joined to commemorate Palm Sunday, and waving palm branches, they gave voice to their religious beliefs. They had no permit that I am aware of. Police in riot gear were nowhere in sight.

So you can proclaim your religion on a public street, but you can't protest a new law in the making on state property. I guess mainstream religion is okay, politics that aren't popular aren't.

I wonder what would have happened if Wiccans had marched down Monument Avenue to celebrate the Summer solistice?

Patience

I confess, patience is not my forte'. I've been sitting on my tush at the Toyota dealer while the computer in my Prius tries to converse with the computer in my remote control. I don't know if one is speaking Japanese and the other, English, but it's not a quick process. I'm trying to chill, but . . . .

I've learned the hard way to be patient with a book. If it's not flowing, I have a bag of tricks to figure out the problem. Re-reading from the first page will usually reveal the plot problem that's stopping the story in its tracks. Sometimes I have the wrong hero, the wrong setting, or the voice isn't right. If none of those are the problem, I keep on writing. I don't worry about the words or what's on the page, because somewhere along the line, I'll start hitting it out of the park. Those pesky story-stoppers can try to make me lose my mind, but they won't win.

Because keeping at it is the only way to work through the hard days at the keyboard.

Now, if only my remote would speak to the computer in my Prius.

Writer's Envy

I've found a few books recently I wish I'd written. My life has been in a stewpot of smelly mess recently (cleaned that one up, as the words that accurately describe what's been going on aren't used in decent society), and I've been striving to find time to read new authors for a contest I'm judging. A handful of these guys are gggoooodddd. Others are solid. All have talent. But good golly Miss Molly, how did some of them break out of the gate with such stellar debuts?

I re-read my debut novel, Morgan's Land, a Western published in the early eighties, and cringed at some of my rookie mistakes. On the flip side, I discovered pieces here and there that lit up the page, so it wasn't a lost cause. To cut myself some slack, I reminded myself that writing styles have changed a ton in the years since. But I had nowhere the level of sophistication of some of these new authors.

I am impressed. I want to write them fan letters. And I need to get back to my own writing before I forget all I've learned since that first novel was published eons ago.

Re-doing it

It's just been announced that Bruton Smith will resurface Bristol Speedway into the track's original confirmation and banking. Watching the Nascar race last weekend, it was more than obvious that the fans have had it with the "new" surface and its boring racing. I know we had. Haven't been to Bristol in four years now, I think, and it was once the hottest ticket on the Nascar circuit. Season tickets were family treasures. The empty stands proved that those season ticket holders have taken a hike. So Smith's re-do makes economic sense. If it kept on going the way it was, no one would be there to see a Sprint Cup race in a few years.

Speaking of re-dos, tomorrow my parents are being re-interred at Arlington National Cemetery. My dad was placed in the wrong grave last January, a fact I was able to prove because I had all his paperwork from 1952 showing the family plot and his place in it. Family plots are pretty rare at Arlington, but still, when there's a row of headstones all with one family name, why would you bury someone else in between two of them, someone who was no relation or even of a similar name?  It's been a long haul to figure out what to do, and a tree has had to be cut down to keep the family plots intact, but it was what my father wanted way back when this deal was set out and approved by the ANC superintendent.  This mistake was, I hope, a rare one. At least it's being rectified.

Even those with the best of intentions make mistakes. There's no shame in a re-do.