Reflection

A Bittersweet Gift: The Dickens’ Village

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A photo of my mother-in-law and her late husband is perched right above the village she created

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The village all lit up

Last year I inherited my mother-in-law’s rather extensive “Dickens’ Village”. She built it over several decades, and some pieces need repair (like the gorgeous church, which isn’t pictured here because the steeple is broken). But it’s a beautiful collection, and my girls, when they were little, always used to love to go to grandma’s to look at it all lit up during the holidays.

It’s a little bittersweet now, to have it in our home. Her home was sold about a year ago because she suffers from Alzheimer’s. She lived with us for a summer and spent time with each of my husband’s siblings, but as she got worse, we had no choice for her own safety and well being but to move her to a constant care facility about 30 minutes from us. As of now, her disease has progressed to the point that although she usually recognizes that she knows us, when we visit, she doesn’t always know why or how, or who we are.

The village is one of the tangible reminders of what once was in our little family and can never be again.

So we will keep the village safe and put it out with love each year, in memory of all the happy times we spent together. Someday, I will pass it down to my girls, and they can keep the memories – and the remembered love – of their Grandma McCall alive and well.

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!

Winter Wonderland

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This is the view outside my kitchen window tonight.

I love winter snow; it’s so fresh and sparkling. I love to feel the flakes melt against my cheeks when I take our English Shepherd, Cassie, outside for a little walk around the house.

It definitely puts me in a December mood.

Sleigh bells ring….are you listening? 🙂

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?

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?

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?

 

 

Getting Ready For Thanksgiving

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A practice run, with a Thanksgiving-style lunch

Some of you who have been here a while have probably figured out that I like to get into the various seasons. This often includes decorating.

Since Thanksgiving (and autumn in general) is my favorite holiday, I tend to do almost as much in-house decorating as I do for Christmas (I’m sure some posts about that will be forthcoming in the next month). 🙂

The picture above is from a week and a half ago, when my sister -in-law and her friend, my older daughter and her fiancé, and myself and my husband had lunch before my younger daughter’s performance as Ursula in The Little Mermaid at our local community theater.

Because I won’t see my sister-in-law on the actual holiday, and she was feeling down, as this will be her first year without her husband, who passed away unexpectedly in May, I decided to throw an impromptu “Thanksgiving luncheon” and do a little decorating. A kind of “special occasion” meal.

imageA couple years ago, I purchased these plates (because they were on sale, and I was finally getting a chance to host thanksgiving dinner for the first time, after years of traveling to either my parent’s home or my in-law’s home for the celebration).

 

 

The way I will always remember Pa 2 and family dinnersIn fact, this picture is of the last Thanksgiving I celebrated at the homestead, with my father at the head of the table. It was the year before he died, and this happy scene is one of the ways I will always fondly remember him. This is pretty much what our table looked like most nights, in terms of people around it, when I was growing up, and my father was always the warm, steady, strong center of our large and lively family of girls (with a few males thrown in, eventually, as we brought home beaus or married). Another picture similar to this one is featured in Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven (which has  around 20 photos that are related to and sometimes inspired the novel’s scenes sprinkled throughout), so if any of you end up getting a copy of the book when it comes out, you can see if you find it. 🙂

Anyway, back to the reason for this post. Is there anyone else out there who just enjoys putting on a fancy meal once in a while – not where the food is necessarily fancy, but where you like to set a pretty table, or have things just look extra nice?

I’m hoping that maybe there are a few of you out in blog-land who have opinions about this one way or the other. So please share in the comments.

I’ll be sharing about something else that many find a little weird, in regards to how I prepare my turkey, in a future post, so stay-tuned! 🙂