Inspiration

A Peaceful Scene

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1617677-bigthumbnailThis illustration makes me happy, so I thought I’d share it with you.

I think it’s beautiful on so many levels: the natural setting, the red barn, the deer, the stream, the tree with a few ruddy leaves clinging to its branches, and the cozy home with fireplace smoke spiraling up, and the windows lit so warmly from within.

But I think my favorite part of this is the way the light from the windows and the setting sun spills out onto the trail of footprints through the snow, gilding the whole area with a rosy glow.

It’s peaceful and lovely…and somewhere I wish I could be right about now! So I will visit there in my imagination. ❤

 

Seasonal Images From My Home To Yours

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The tree and decorated mantel in my living room. My chair is the one closest to the shelves; my husband’s is nearest to the camera

Now that my grades are in for the five weeks (even though I just got in another eight inch stack to grade over the holidays) I have a little time to breathe and enjoy the sights and sounds of the season. I thought I’d share a few images from around my house, since I’m a home body and I love to decorate for whatever occasion I can. 🙂

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A little glass of eggnog with nutmeg gets things going.

imageThis “mistletoe crystal” was a gift from a friend last year. I think it looks really pretty hanging from the chandelier in our dining room.

imageFor me, Christmas-time wouldn’t be complete without some old-fashioned, “clove” oranges. The tradition of using cloves stems back further than medieval times, but the use of clove-studded oranges for scent and sight became very popular in the Victorian era. I made these last weekend (it doesn’t take long) and used the old iridescent fruit bowl my parents bought for me at an old antique/second-hand shop a couple of decades ago, perched on the silver case my sister-in-law bought for my husband and me when we got married 24+ years ago.

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A close-up of the some of the lights and decorations on the mantel. I think this looks a little like a Christmas card design, don’t you?

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And a shot of our sweet English shepherd, Cassie, snoozing under the Christmas tree. So cozy!

I hope you’re getting some opportunities, whether you celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza, or nothing at all, to enjoy the different pace of the season.

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.

A Blatantly Christmas Post and Music Video

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As the title says, this is a post with an embedded video (just published this month) that I find incredibly beautiful, inspirational, and moving, with gorgeous music and images…and an ending that makes me tear up a little every time.

But it’s blatantly Christmas-focused (the focus is a traditional carol and the connection of the season to the history that inspired it), so if that is not your thing, or Christmas-related material bothers you, then feel free to go on to read someone else’s posting of the day.

For everyone else, I hope you enjoy this as much as I do. 🙂

 

Winter Wonderland II

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imageThis is the same tree I posted last night, in the early daylight this morning. It’s all sort of artistically monochrome outside at the moment.

It kept snowing and snowing last night (we finally got the 8 or so inches the weather people had claimed we’d be getting beginning on Tuesday, when all we had was rain and a little icing).

I love trees in general, and I love seeing them in all their phases, including dressed in lovely robes of snow. The dark branches and trunks make such a pretty contrast with the white of the snow, before the wind blows it all bare again.

Hope everyone has a great Thursday!

Tea Wisdom

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From my tea today – Good Earth’s “Sweet and Spicy”, which is one of my favorites at this time of year, for its lovely cinnamon-sweet warmth.

I love my dog, and, in the words of my sister-in-law, who helped me organize my pantry cupboards a few years ago, I “have more tea than all of China” because I enjoy it so much, it’s true.

But I also love my husband and wouldn’t have thought to make this kind of comparison.

What do you think?

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?

 

 

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?