Writing

All things related to being an author, writing, reading, and the publishing world…

The Reason I Write

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inspire

This is what I repeat to myself with all of my fiction.

I don’t have any kind of agenda to “enlighten” anyone about anything (heaven forbid…no, I’m trying to entertain, provoke some thought, and perhaps provide some sense of connection or, on occasion, comfort).

My fiction is not for everyone (and I don’t expect it to be). But I do hope it will find those who need it, who want it, who might enjoy it, or who will gain something from it.

With Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven, I’m hoping to cross a bridge that couldn’t be crossed when I was writing medieval romances, because of the tight niche of that historical genre; let’s just say medieval readers are not a thronging horde (though I continue to appreciate every one of mine). 🙂

I hope to reach a broader audience with this more mainstream tale about real, poignant, humorous, and sometimes bittersweet life – my story about confronting loss and living through it, and about coming out stronger and with more understanding and peace on the other side of it.

Since it’s dressed up with some pretty funny material from real life, from having grown up as one of seven sisters living in a little house in the foothills of the Adirondacks in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, I hope it will provide some chuckles and entertain as well.

But it will only reach those ‘with eyes to see and ears to hear’, and I know that, like I’ve known with all my other books.

If that happens to be many people, that will be wonderful, but it’s not the reason I write.

Bestseller lists are great, and I’d love to be on some with this book, once it’s published on February 3rd – but only because that will mean the tale encased in those covers “spoke” to enough people and was meaningful, entertaining, and memorable enough to get me there.

For me, it’s about the meaning in a story…the sharing, reaching out to connect with other people, their challenges, tragedies, hopes, and dreams in a way that resonates and has meaning to them.

That’s the reason I write.

The Juggling Act

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superwoman4This is how many of us feel on a regular basis (or maybe it’s just me, but I’m going to phrase it like that because it makes me feel better to pull you all into my circus, LOL).

173093__new-year-new-year-holiday-girl-smile-mood-gifts-juggling_pThrow in some of this (because the holiday preparations are in full swing, with decorating, shopping, baking, cooking, and most important of all, spending time with each other, which is the foundation of good memories):

????????And this (because my five weeks grades are due Tuesday)…

 

Final Front Moose Tracks on the Road to HeavenAnd this (because final issues for the book always crop up and require attention, from setting up accounts to creating TOC lists, to creating cover letters and mailing out review copies and trying to build some promotional efforts)…

And I have brewing a perfect storm of craziness that quickly escalates stress to red-line levels. Like on a daily basis. Tempers can flare and cause reactions that definitely don’t add to the serenity of life. 🙂

perfect-mumsAs a mom (even though my girls are teens they still have a gazillion activities, sports, and social issues to navigate), it’s easy to start to feel like this:

What to do?

live-in-the-momentI don’t have any silver bullet, I’m afraid. All I can offer is an idea that occasionally helps me to slow down so I can process what’s happening. It helps me to deflate some of the intensity of stress when it begins to overwhelm: Just live in the moment.

Attitude affects everything, whether its the day-to-day grind or the challenges of facing illness and pain (when my father was undergoing chemo and treatment during his final illness, he reiterated that to me many times, and one of the moments he was most proud was when his doctor’s office staff pooled to together and gave him a little pin that said “Great attitude award”, because he had one of the best they’d ever worked with).

While we can manage some things (like schedules or what we add to them by saying “yes” to too many things), there is much we can’t control. Much that just has to get done and needs that have to be met.

They will be. It will all work out. Just consider what this poster says. It helps. It really does. 🙂

11568-Be-Free-Live-In-The-Moment

 

Anyone else have tips for getting through stressful times?

 

The Gift is Nothing Without Work

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You must want it…more than television, more than shopping and socializing and even sometimes sleep. It’s the work that brings the vision to life. And yet a balance must be maintained as well. Thoughts?

Pre-order Deal!

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FINAL COVER MOOSE TRACKSMoose Tracks on the Road to Heaven is now available for pre order in eBook at amazon and Kobo at a special lower price! On publication day (Feb 3, 2015), the cost will go up,  so if you think you’ll want an e-version to read, now’s the time to lock-in the preorder price.

Here’s the link to amazon if you want it for your kindle, or to Kobo if you have that e-book reader.

Unfortunately, Barnes and Noble doesn’t have a pre-order function. When it’s available at iTunes and Google eBooks, I’ll post again so you can get the deal while it lasts, if your preferred e-reader uses those platforms.

The preview feature will be added soon at amazon and Google…but in case you’re eager to see some of the book now, you can go here and click on the cover for a look inside and a nice, long excerpt. 🙂

Everything in Life Is “Writable” About

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97bb327cf4cb4afe9ec1242699591388I love this quote by Sylvia Plath.

However, I have to acknowledge that the challenge of this – the self-doubt that can creep in by lifting the curtain and writing about experiences and people based in reality – was part of why Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven took so long for me to write. It’s loosely autobiographical, and the “bones” of the book are inspired by true experiences, feelings, and in some cases, people.

I learned that it definitely take some guts to fictionalize these real people, events, and experiences, and I faced a number of roadblocks (from myself and a few others), along the way. Sometimes it’s the worry of offending someone. Other times it’s the self-doubt about “getting it right” and capturing the feeling and moment the way I think it deserves.

It took me quite a long time to keep working the characters and situations in my head, to crystalize the important elements – the essence – of those events and people, but to also ensure that they remained fictional, as opposed to what they would be if I was writing a memoir as opposed to a novel.

Although it wasn’t easy, I also think it yielded a deeper sense of truth and emotion in the writing, for me at least. That this novel is based in reality gives it a foundation I know is authentic. I don’t need to question certain aspects of it as much as I would a book I was writing that contained entirely imagined characters and events.

Have any of you ever incorporated real life events into a work of fiction? Was the entire work based upon these things, or just a scene or two?

Have any of you read works that do this (that you know of)? Is there a difference for you in the reading experience, when you know that the author based it on real life experiences?

 

 

Inside the Head of a Normally Balanced Writer When Doubt Strikes

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So, I received my very first proof copy of Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven this morning (isn’t it pretty? LOL).imageimage

In the thirteen years since my first book was published by HarperCollins (Secret Vows, back in 2001), I’m often asked what it’s like to see one of my books in a store or hold it in my hands. The answer has never changed, from that first book to this, my eighth published novel: It’s a combination of pride, excitement, pleasure…and a tangled mess of doubt and worry.

I suppose it’s all part of the paranoia of any creative person. I’m not usually bothered much by the creep of insecurity, but there are moments when it pokes up its dark little head. Seeing one of my finished books for the first time is often one of those rare occasions…which is good for me, because it’s often tempered by those other, far more positive emotions I mentioned feeling at the same time.

With this book, the doubts are perhaps a little stronger, probably because it’s been so long for me since I’ve had a new book out (the last, “first-time-I-held-a-new-book-I’d-written” was back in 2006, in fact) and because this book is quite personal and a totally different genre from what I’ve published before.

So, where does the doubt come from, for authors who experience it? Continue Reading…

We’re Not “Normal”

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imageI don’t know why, but this little wall hanging has always tickled my funny bone. One of my older sisters (I have six of them, for those of you who haven’t been around here long enough to have seen other posts on it) purchased it for me up north around 10 years ago, during one of the years when several sisters, our families, and my parents would rent a great camp for a week up on Fourth Lake in the Adirondack chain of lakes.

We continued to show how “normal” we were as adults when we all were home for one of the reunions we used to have periodically, since several of us are spread around the country; Pa and Ma asked us all to participate in a commemorative family photo session, we shocked the photographer when Pa suggested we do one shot where we were all making crazy, funny faces. So there we all were, in dresses, stockings, and heels, with Pa in a suit and tie, sticking out tongues and making crazy expressions (except for the sisters who were laughing so hard they couldn’t do it). It’s one of my favorite pictures, and if I can scan a copy of it (and get permission from my other sisters to post it publicly, LOL) I’ll share it at some point. 🙂

So I guess that’s part of the reason why the little wooden plaque above just seems to capture the quirkiness and fun of life growing up as part of a pile of rambunctious kids. Being all females only added to the “color” of our lives (and having only one bathroom with the whole house on a well that would run dry periodically made things even more interesting. My father tried to institute really short “Marine”-style showers, but that didn’t fly).

tumblr_m08fgrLNES1qbrsgvI can still remember “counting off” when we got into the van (to be sure we weren’t leaving anyone behind). And I remember in the early 1970’s, watching my older sisters (I was second-to-youngest) in the back room, putting “dippety-do” on their hair and putting in big rollers.

The squabbling about who got the bathroom when was kept hushed and to a minimum, thanks to no one wanting to raise Pa’s wrath and have him institute a “schedule”. He did when necessary, but usually he tried to let us work it out, to learn how to work together. That was sometimes accomplished with talking, but other times it happened with a few well-placed pinches, body-blocks, pointed glares or raised eyebrows, LOL.

There was also an epic water fight, once, that happened when a group of us (all teenagers at the time) were supposed to be cleaning the kitchen but got into some kind of verbal conflict that escalated into physical battle with full-blown spraying of the water nozzle and thrown buckets of water. That particular incident is so amusing for me to remember that I memorialized it in the fiction of Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven. 🙂

I could write a book with all the hundreds of crazy, fun memories of those times to inspire me (oh, wait, I did, LOL).  Maybe I’ll post that scene as the next “sneak peek” from the book.

So how about you – are you from a prim and proper family, or a bit of a rough and tumble one? Any fond memories from family lore? I love hearing them, so please share in the comments!

Brainstorming

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Even though Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven isn’t out yet, I’m in the midst of what most writers I know are doing all the time anyway: brainstorming for my next book.

stock-photo-21657846-the-pressure-of-fame photoshoppedIt’s going to be a sequel to Moose Tracks 1, centering on a secondary character…one of Elena’s (the protagonist) sisters. This sister’s story is going to be really interesting for me to tell, because she happens to be a bona fide movie star.

200496241-011So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and image-gathering, which I tend to do with any new book. For this protagonist so far in my mind, the images are all about the glamor, the paparazzi…and a pretty huge fall from grace.

I’m not completely sure what that’s going to look like yet, but I’m getting there.

Brainstorming for me comes in very visually. I actually see characters and scenes, sometimes, running like a movie in my mind. Once in a while I’ll hear snippets of dialog inside my head (yes, I know that sounds a little scary…but it’s really kind of thrilling when it happens).

At this stage of the work, music is huge for me, and hearing a particular song can trigger an entire scene in my mind…but more often it triggers some kind of insight about my character.dT7z99ync

I listen and brainstorm best when I’m driving. It’s a 30 minute commute each way for me, which is some good time for thinking; the driving itself takes up my external attention, so the thoughts come light and swiftly, since I can’t get too deep into them. I also like to brainstorm while I’m using the elliptical at the gym, though, and piping nice, loud music right into my brain. I have to be careful there though. If I get too engrossed in what I’m thinking, I forget what I’m doing, and I’ve almost taken a header off the equipment a couple times. 🙂

I’m a percolator. I need to think and think and stew and stew about a story idea for quite a long time before it feels “ready” to begin putting on paper. Different things can trigger ideas: songs, tv shows, a picture etc…it’s different all the time.

So that’s a little about my process. Any other writers out there that have brainstorming processes?  What do you do to get the juices flowing?

 

 

Cover Reveal: Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven

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FINAL COVER MOOSE TRACKS

As promised in my last post…here it is, the cover art for Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven! If you click the picture it opens to a bigger size, so you can read the print.

I chose the image and concept, and then Bri, (of Bri Bruce Productions), designed the cover and pulled it all together to a finished product.

The e-book will be up for presale soon; I’ll post again when it’s available. The print book, unfortunately, can’t be listed for presale but will be available for purchase February 3, 2015.

I’ll be posting another “sneak peek” from inside the book in the next few weeks as well.

Thoughts?