Auf Wiedersehen

I want to thank Chris for inviting me in the first place, and everyone else for being so kind and welcoming. I've enjoyed being part of this blog group, but after missing my last two appointed dates, it probably became obvious that something was going on. 

My life, at the moment, is a bit haywire. Okay, a lot haywire. I'm sure that's true of most writers and somehow, they manage to get things written nonetheless. I've been struggling a great deal, lately; 2014 has been a tough year and I finally told Chris that it was time for me to bow out of this blog group. I had to think about it long and hard, but I think it's a better idea to leave with some dignity instead of being invited out of the bunch for being unreliable!

Thank you, all of you, who were kind enough to read and comment to my little posts. I'm blown away by the amount of talent in this gathering, and I wish each and every one of you the success you so deserve. May all your writing dreams come true in the most resounding way possible.

Switching Hats

Like most of us on this list, I imagine, I have been writing since I was really little. Poems, stories, and later, novels. I have always been at work on something. This started in third grade and continued not only through high school and college, but also into my working life. I graduated with a degree I would never use and spent my life before the kids came along working at entry level jobs: clerk typist, receptionist, educational aide. I am not knocking these jobs or the people who do them. A lot of these positions require both juggling and mind-reading skills -especially depending on the manager- and I respect everyone who does this type of work.

My goal, though, was to find positions that paid well enough, but that would not accidentally spring-board me into a career. Entry level was my best bet. And I know I chose every job I ever had, even when I went back to the work force when my kids were old enough, for the conservation of mental energy. If I had had a career that demanded 100 percent of my attention 100 percent of the time, I would have nothing left for writing.

And writing has always been the thing for me, something always present, always at the back of my mind. I know you all understand what it's like to have characters living in your brain, to watch snippets of scenes in your mind, or catch a particularly brilliant line of dialogue running through your head. I needed my brain free enough to receive all of those wonderful creative impulses, so I took work that would not interfere with the signal.

Now, however, the old brain (and I do mean one that is aging) is not quite as agile and versatile as it once was. I decided to try something new, went back to school, and now have a part-time position in the health-care field. Although my responsibilities do not entail a person's life or death, they do involve accuracy, precision, and hands-on patient care. In other words, my mind needs to be totally focused on my work. All of the time.

Because of that, I need to shut down the creative signal when I am on the job. This is the first time in my life I have ever done this, and it is playing havoc with my writing when I am at home in front of my keyboard. It's driving me crazy. Switching the writing flow on and off is not easy for me, and when I do a day at work, it is hard to settle back into my story when I have the next day off. And vice versa. I sometimes go into the office with my head crammed full of story details and it is the devil's own work to clear that out so I can pay attention to my professional tasks.

So I am asking, no, begging for help. How do all of you handle this constant switching? If you are not home earning a living through your writing, if you are still holding down a day job, how do you do it? I'd sure love some advice or some tips. In lieu of a split personality, I could use some serious coping skills!

Point of View - Again

This topic was covered expertly by Kathy Sullivan back in June of 2011. But because POV is one of my personal demons, I thought I would take another shot at it. From my point of view, so to speak.

In the series I am writing, I use third person. I think it's more third person close than third person omniscient, but to tell you the truth, I'm not entirely sure. Whatever I'm doing, if I get any negative feedback from readers, it certainly has nothing to do with point of view!

Still, now that I'm working on book three, I find myself thinking about varying the points of view I use. The first two books were told from the two main characters' perspectives, one belonging to my heroine, the other to my hero. Now in book three, I have been tempted to start using the outlooks of other characters, but at the same time I keep thinking that it feels wrong to do so. In all of my favorite series, which tend to be murder mysteries or thrillers, the point of view has always been strictly from the protagonist except for occasional dark forays into the mind or minds of the murderer/s. Maybe because of this, I can't help feeling that starting to use any of my other characters' viewpoints seems somehow wrong. As if I should have started doing that in the very first book.

I recently tried writing a scene using someone else other than my two main characters, and even though this particular fellow has been in the series since it started, it felt wrong and awkward. So I guess they have let me know their preference. Never mind that I'm the author! I won't go against my character's wishes: I know better than that.

But I would be curious to know what other writers have done. Do any of you write a series that requires more than two points of view? And if so, did you start that from the first book? Do you find it easier to advance the story that way? Do you think it keeps the flow going a bit better? Have you ever tried limiting POV to just one or two characters or has it always felt better to use more than that? Most of all, do I sound like a crazy person???

Before I started the series, sweating out which point of view I needed was the worst thing about starting a new work. The WORST. When everything was new - the story, the setting, the characters themselves - trying to decide who got to carry the ball, and if he or she would be the only one to do so, was always terrible for me. Now that I have a universe in place and a group of people who return with every new story, I find myself once more in the position of trying to figure out who gets to carry the ball. Or will it always be the same two? I have a feeling it will be. That just seems to be the way I work.

But how do the rest of you do this? I'd love to know. Truly.

Writing Structure Upside Down

Normally, I try to address supernatural things in this blog: ghosts, cryptids/cryptozoology, ghosts, unexplained events, ghosts, and ghosts. But as I work on book 3 of the Bridgeton Park Cemetery series, I started thinking about opening lines for books. This is a common topic among writers and is featured (or should be) in writing classes because a story opening, which may be one line or an entire paragraph, is what is used to grab your reader by the throat so that they keep on reading. It is also to grab editors and agents by the throat for those working authors who submit their manuscripts traditionally. 

 

Naturally, I started thinking about my own story openings. Here they are, along with the title of the work they open:

 

Mary Beth is dead. There won't be any more dreams. (Dead of Summer)

 

The madness started in September, and to tell you truth, I hope it hasn't ended yet.  (Saving Jake)

 

"Okay, then," I said. "First question. Can a ghost follow you home?"  (Hunting Spirits)

 

The four-year old girl looked up and saw Uncle Tee stepping through the front door and coming toward her, her mother a little behind him - AND - No one knew exactly who started the Thursday night ghost stories, or when.  (Haunted)

 

Michael Penfield awoke to a presence in his room.  (Dead Voices)

 

The first two openings, for Dead of Summer and Saving Jake, were enough to get my foot in the door with an editor. Teresa Basile, who edited Saving Jake, is an unusually generous editor in that if she likes an opening line, she'll read the entire first page of a manuscript. I hear most editors will read the first paragraph. If the opening line doesn't cut it, well, so long, Charlie. Getting published can be brutal!

 

But I digress. Opening lines set the tone of the book and sometimes can encapsulate a large part, if not all, of the story. Next time you read a book, go back and reread the opening and see what you think of it, now that you know where the writer went. I'm partial to Stephen King when it comes to this: "Once upon a time, a monster came to Castle Rock" or "Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick" or even "Here is what happened." 

 

When I teach writing classes, I always spend some time having students come up with opening lines, and then we share them. Invariably, we always hear at least three or four of them where we wish we knew the rest of the story. It's a good exercise but a cruel one, if you want to know what happens next. In situations like that, even the author can't usually answer that.

 

On the other hand, endings are a completely different animal. I'm beginning to think that a line that is good for starting a story might be good for ending it, as well. When you take an opening and end the book with it, you leave the reader wanting more. Sometimes you might be writing a series, but maybe not. There are good and satisfactory endings like "They lived happily ever after" or Dumas" "...the count just told us that all human wisdom was contained in these two words: Wait and hope" from the Count of Monte Cristo, or Gaiman's "But between now and then, there was Life; and Bod walked into it with his eyes and his heart wide open"  from The Graveyard Book. Great endings, all of them, that put a final cap on the story and leave the reader with a contented sigh.

 

Still, there is a part of me that enjoys endings that read like openings. I tried that with Haunted and for my trouble was told in no uncertain terms that my ending was really the start of the next book. I never saw it that way, but hey, if intelligent readers did, then who am I to argue? I'll write another book. Just to clarify things for myself, though, I put an ending on Dead Voices that made it stunningly obvious that there was another book on the way. I want my readers to come back!

 

But indulge me for just a second and go back up to the list of my openings. Reread them and pretend they are each the last lines of a novel. It's probably just me, but I think all of them would make really stellar endings. Really. It would invite the reader to keep going with the story in his or her own mind. I'm a writer. I like the idea of my characters taking on a life in someone else's thoughts. And I can't help thinking that ending with a beginning is a hell of a way to do exactly that.

 

(Originally published on the author's Ubiquitous Ghosts blog)

Finding Kindred Spirits

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to share a table at the Quad Cities 2014 Psychic and Paranormal Expo in Moline, Illinois. It was not the sort of event I would have definitely decided to attend, but I was invited to sell books (and read a few palms) by fellow supernatural writer -and paranormal investigator- Sylvia Shults. Sylvia was doing a presentation in conjunction with her amazing book, Fractured Spirits, a history, paranormal info included, of the Peoria State Hospital, a facility for the mentally ill that shuttered its doors in the 1970's and is haunted. Very haunted.

Since Sylvia also writes novels and short stories about the paranormal, and since I will happily do a short, five minute or so, palm reading for anyone who buys one of my books, sharing a table seemed both friendly and compatible. And what an event it turned out to be!

To our right sat a mother and daughter whose company hand-sews, knits, and crochets skirts, tops, and wraps in the most beautiful print fabrics and yarns imaginable. Directly across was a lady with two tables' worth of jewelry. Just past her were the people who do energy work on heads, as in scalps. And scattered throughout the vendor area, and it was enormous, were various tarot card readers, palm readers, psychics,  and mediums. Sylvia was one of a whole list of speakers who had been scheduled for the entire day. And the entire day ran from 10 AM to 6 PM.

I had figured if I sold at least one book I would be happy. Anyone else ever feel that way at an author fest? Or a literary festival? If I sell one book, I can walk away and feel okay. I was shocked when, shortly after Sylvia spoke, our table was mobbed. Oh, I wasn't surprised people wanted her books. She's a terrific and engaging presenter, and her topic drew a standing-room-only crowd. But when that enthusiasm spilled over to my side and people began purchasing my work I was thrilled and humbled. And I spent some quality time explaining various lines in peoples' hands and what they usually mean.

My husband, Jim, who is a good sport about my quirks and interests, helped out by watching the table for us if both of us ladies needed to be absent at the same time, picking up lunch, talking to people who were waiting in line, and just generally being another friendly face at our spot. He also disappeared for a while to have his aura photographed and interpreted, but hey, he earned it!

What was so much fun about this crowd was being able to say something like "The house I grew up in was haunted" and not having anyone bat an eyelid. Instead, they would just start exchanging stories with me. I haven't experienced so much ghost-story nonchalance since we were in Savannah last November where everyone discusses hauntings the same way they discuss the weather. No questioning, no skepticism, just a bland acceptance of a wider reality and hey, did you check out the people who were selling incense for only $1.50 a pack? They were great!

And it was sooo nourishing. Writing books is a lonely job, in the end. Sitting alone and working out stories on a keyboard, I am always up for anything that speaks to the ghost-inquisitor in me. I am not a ghost-hunter. Too chicken! But I will always be fascinated by a good ghost story and listening to other people tell them will always get my creativity going again.Not to mention validate my obsession.

Listening to all the talk, about ghosts, about spirit life, about what works to ban an entity from your home and what doesn't, was much like when I used to be actively involved in the Love is Murder mystery writers/readers conference. Then I could walk down a crowded hall listening to people describe various ways to kill someone and get away with it.

But that's whole 'nother story.

When All Else Fails - Research!

Currently at work on the third book of my Bridgeton Park Cemetery series, I just reached a point where the story branch I was following has disappeared into a wall, and nothing else is occurring. When I had a little less writing experience, this sort of speed bump would throw me into a panic. It took some time before I realized that getting stuck occasionally was not necessarily writer's block, but was more like a re-orienting to what part of the story needed to be told next. So now when inspiration becomes hard to find, I have learned that the best trick up my sleeve, my most efficient, fall-back, writing-related activity -  is research.

Now for me, that can come under the guise of googling a detail for my story (Lorado Taft's stunning but frightening grave marker "Eternal Silence"), reading (all writers must read, mustn't they?), or watching one of my favorite paranormal reality shows (Ghost Hunters, The Haunting of...., Celebrity Ghost Stories, Paranormal Witness, etc.), or -and best of all- looking up ghost tours for upcoming travels (we're going to Williamsburg, VA in a couple of months).

Because I am obsessed with the paranormal, I don't have a difficult time entertaining myself with what can easily be found, whether in books, on TV, or on the Internet. I happily waste, er, use up hours on my research.

The thing is, though, when I'm doing this sort of digging around, all kinds of details start suggesting themselves to my muse, whispering bits of inspiration into the back of my mind, giving me glimpses of the sorts of hauntings my characters will face, even just suggesting particular words and phrases that I know are good for giving me goose bumps, and therefore good for unsettling my readers.

I also find interesting items that just may turn up in the next book or, even better, kick off an entirely new story that will hopefully find a home in one of my future works. And once my mind is free to play with that, then the flood of details and dialogue and situations I have been seeking bubbles to the fore and I can continue working on my current project, excited all over again to sit down at the keyboard.

Research, like music, seems to help me find a way to tap into that part of me that sees stories and needs to share them. Sometimes when I am slogging away on a novel, I forget about that inner excitement and urgency that results in what I hope will be a great read for someone else. Research helps me calm down my inner panic and work my way back to productivity. Is that true for you as well?

Excavating a Scene

I take it as an amazing compliment when someone tells me that a sad scene in one of my books made her cry. (I have never had a male reader admit to that and don't expect I ever will.) I am equally delighted when a reader tells me that a scene I had written to be scary actually managed to scare her. Stephen King once said that nothing gave him more pleasure than scaring the socks off his readers, or something to that effect. I know what he means.

To that end, when I run across a particularly satisfying, well-written scene, whether it be scary, sad, funny, or poignant, I come back to it over and over to take it apart and see if I can figure out the magic. Particularly if the author is dealing with something that requires the reader to suspend any possibility of disbelief. Most of the books I love have story lines that would look preposterous written down on paper in plain sentences. A boy wizard whose destiny is to destroy the most powerful and evil wizard in collective memory? A ring powerful enough to enslave a world? A trio of outcasts in a boys' boarding school in England who manage to pull off retaliation after clever retaliation without ever leaving a shred of evidence -all at the ages of 15 and 16? Or a king with a magical sword whose kingdom has fallen through corruption but who sleeps until the time that his country should need him again? How is it that the writers of these tales are able to invite me into a world that is not geographically located but is easily as real as long as I am there?

I read to learn.

For sheer fright, I look to Mr. King, of course, whose books could make me so tense I would jump on the bus when someone hit the "stop" buzzer for their particular exit. I took note of how he paced the scene, the particular phrasing he used, and the situational elements that are universally unsettling: the chills up the spine, the approaching footsteps in an unoccupied house, the creak of a door or a sigh that may or may not be the wind. His word choices also left me in awe. I think one of the scariest tidbits he ever wrote was the phrase carved into a tombstone in the book Salem's Lot: God Grant He Lie Still. That still freaks me out, the implications are so deep.

For funny, I love Gordon Korman. No More Dead Dogs had me laughing out loud. Mr. Korman is an expert at capturing situational humor. The fun in his books arises from the behaviors his characters exhibit, and those behaviors are right on target, given the age group (eighth grade) and the gender (boys) the work focuses on. Of course, there is an equally funny parallel girl's thread running through it, but I don't want to go into that in case someone out there has missed this amazing work.

But for crying? I have wept over classics like Little Women and A Christmas Carol, but there is one particular work, the third book in an obscure series (about the O'Nolan Family and published in the 60's) by an equally obscure writer (Mary Wallace) that I cannot for the life of me figure out. She begins book three with a scene that is so spectacularly heart-wrenching that I can pick up the book, read those first 20 pages, and have tears running down my face by the end of that chapter. No matter how many times I read it, and no matter how hard I try to figure out how she worked that magic, I cannot deconstruct the scene to the point where I can say Aha! It's the narrative! Or, it's the dialogue!. But it still works on me every time I read it and I wish I knew how she constructed that spell. Sigh.

Currently I've been trying to get my hands on a copy of Cloud Atlas because the movie is having the same effect on me. Every time I watch the movie -and I've watched it a LOT- I come away with one more example of amazing symbolism, one more motif, one more detail that I missed before. And again I find myself scratching my head and asking, how'd they do that?

And can I?

Fictional Holidays

 

Back when I was a kid, reading voraciously and taking a stab at writing my own stories, I was always enamored with books that featured a chapter or adventure or even just a scene built around Christmas. Little Women has a Christmas chapter. So does The Four Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright, one of my all-time favorite children's writers. And if I want to go back to when I was an even younger reader, even Mary Poppins included a magical story about Christmas shopping with the Banks children.

Christmas was always my favorite holiday, and not for the obvious reason. Of course I loved presents! What kid doesn't? But I loved the season in its entirety, from the ever-present carols to the smell of the Christmas tree. From my mother's special once-a-year cookies, to the gift-laden, gold-brocade feel of honest-to-God goodwill in the air.

Much more cynical as a grown-up, and I'm sorry that I am, I look back on that wide-eyed joy with a bit of wistfulness. Christmas spirit didn't become more elusive because I learned that Santa Claus isn't real (I was one of those kids that was never brought up to believe in him in the first place, actually). No, for me the Christmas spirit started waning during grown-up life, when holidays worked around family-shattering issues or the recent loss of a loved one became more labor than labor-of-love. In the face of some of our experiences, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come didn't just knock on our door, he blew it open and made himself at home.

As a writer, I included a Christmas chapter in one of my first novels, written during my high school years. As an adult writing a series, I recently ended one book shortly before Thanksgiving and have found that my next book picks up well into the New Year, leaving Christmas out of the mix entirely. And I'm beginning to rethink that.

This year for Christmas, I have a new granddaughter, which brings our grand-kid count up to three. Yes, our family had a big loss last spring and that means this year's Christmas will be held somewhere new and in a new way. But our grandchildren will be just as gleeful over the presents they receive, and the food, using all those treasured recipes, should be just as delicious.

Maybe it's time to show Christmas Yet to Come the way out and welcome Tiny Tim back into our home. I've missed the blessed little tyke.

Merry Christmas to all of us and a Happy New Year!

BETWEEN THE LYNES BOOKSTORE, WOODSTOCK, IL

 

A very great friend of mine has talked a bookstore owner she knows into letting me have a book signing. (Thank you, Eileen Millard!)

This is phenomenal for many reasons: 1) No one knows me from Adam. 2) I am not a NY Times best seller. 3) Because of the first two reasons, I am not necessarily going to draw a huge crowd or boost store sales.

On the other hand, because of my subject matter, having a book signing the weekend before Halloween probably makes sense. There is always the off chance that someone will buy a book, even if it's not one of mine. Also, the signing is dove-tailing with the town's Haunted House in the middle of the square, so people may come in looking for a scary story. That would be lovely.

I am excited about this because for the first time, I actually have more than one book to put on display. I actually have three, not even including the one that's out of print, so at least people have a choice. I'm also excited because both the book store owner and Eileen-who-facilitated-this are going to market this event! This is something amazing, because I am *clueless* when it comes to marketing. I don't think like marketing people do, which is unfortunate, since that is a good way to drive book sales. But it's a hard thing to learn.I saw the results of a personality inventory once that put "writer" and "marketer" at exact opposites of a spectrum of personality traits, and I believe it.

Have you ever been to an author fest? The kind where they have about twenty authors you probably have never heard of all together in one place for a mass book sale/signing? (Or in my case, mass hope/depression. If I sell one book at one of these events, it pretty much makes my day.) If you've ever gone to one of these things, you will see there are some authors who are very comfortable meeting and greeting passers-by. And there are other authors who will either have the heads stuck in books or will be writing something, basically ignoring anyone in the immediate vicinity. Obviously, the latter model is not the way to sell anything, but I assure you, it is also the comfort zone of the average writer. Think about it. We are people who like to hang out alone in a room and write. I mean, what normal person does that?

But I have been trying to get better about marketing, and about meeting and greeting the public, whether they want me to or not. To that end, I smile, engage in small talk, frequently put out a bowl of chocolate candy to entice people to drop by, AND, if someone buys a book, I do a freebie-quickie palm reading.This may not be the most efficient or successful way to close a sale, but hey, shy, reserved, writer/hermit me can live with it.

If you're in the vicinity, Read Between The Lynes book store in  Woodstock, Illinois, owned by Arlene Lynes, is hosting me for the signing on Friday, October 25, starting at 7 pm. Drop by! And I'll remember to bring the picture of Michael Penfield...

Music as Character

Music is an important part of my life. It's also an important part of my writing life. I grew up in a musical household, although no one was professional. My father, a doctor by profession, schooled all of us in classical music because that was all he listened to in his car while he drove us to to various destinations. Being Asian, we also grew up with music lessons: piano for me and my sister, accordion and organ for my brothers. And most of all, my older siblings were so into rock and roll that some Billboard hits are part and parcel of my childhood memories. I was probably all of seven when I bought my first-ever 45 single.

That said, I found it only natural to include music in my writing life. There were certain albums I always listened to when I wrote, depending on what I was doing. Vivaldi was fantastic for school work as well as fiction, back when I was in high school. The current top 20 was what I needed for writing in my journal. And the Beatles went with just about everything.

The habit followed me into adulthood and I can give you the soundtrack for every novel I have written, up to and including the "anchor song." My anchor songs relate to specific characters and listening to those songs gets me into a mindset at the speed of sound. Maybe even quicker -at the speed of thought. I think what I call a "soundtrack" other writers sometimes refer to as a "playlist." (Unless I'm wrong, which is entirely possible, and the playlist is actually what their characters are listening to during the course of a story.)

The important thing is that it's all about the music. I can write without it, but have a much easier time if my relevant tunes are playing while I'm composing. I know writers who think I am insane -that music would be too much of a distraction from writing and that they could not possibly get anything done with the stereo blasting. Steven King, however, writes to AC/DC so I figure I'm in good company!

Recently, two different musical-type people I know tried to show me that I don't appreciate music the same way they do since I am able to write while listening to it. They told me that it must mean that it doesn't move me or affect me or transport me the way it does them. I must admit I found the observations from both of them, although well-meant, to be hurtful. There are times I feel music so strongly that I'm sure I could climb into its very substance and live the rest of my life in its protection. In Saving Jake, I mentioned that "music saved both his life and his sanity." Since I tell people that Saving Jake is actually my fictionalized biography, I must have been writing about myself.

As I mentioned earlier, every single one of my novels has a soundtrack. I frequently wonder how many writers out there are doing the same thing. I would love to know the background music, the other "character", involved in creating those novels I've read by other music-oriented authors.

Product Placement - What Say You?

I have some very dear friends who are obsessed, a gross understatement, when it comes to product placement in either books or movies. Their opinion is that using real-life brand names in the middle of a novel, or showing real products in a movie, is nothing more than a commercial in the middle of the  entertainment. To a certain extent, I can see their point. But I beg to differ.

When I was writing Saving Jake and Jake Holdridge first introduced himself to me, there were several things about him that he told me right off the bat: he wore his hair long, he preferred an army green trench coat purchased at a thrift store over any other outerwear, he always wore high-tops, and his chosen drink -when he wasn't raiding his father's wine cellar- was Coke. And I named the brands in the book. I also used Denny's as a favorite dining spot, and mentioned Pop-Tarts as a breakfast of choice. Later on in the book, I used actual establishments, both stores and restaurants, up in Door County, Wisconsin for particular scenes in the story, but I had permission from all the owners to do so. The name brands, however, were a conscious choice on my part.

I don't mind seeing Nike shoes on a character's feet, or reading what he ate at McDonald's, or what soft drink is his favorite. I don't mind reading about it, either. Unlike my friends, I feel that using real-life brands gives the book or the movie a sense of reality. If I am reading a murder mystery and the detective is drinking an unnamed cola, or worse, an obviously fake cola, I am jolted right out of the story and back into the realization that I am reading a book about someone and not really sharing an adventure with that person. And the same holds true for me regarding movies. I like that sometimes the protagonist is eating Lay's Potato Chips or drinking something from Starbucks. For me, those products are a touchpoint of reality that allow me to stay in the moment instead of coming out of the fiction escape-zone completely.

And product placement is hardly new. When I was a kid, James Bond was specifically driving an Aston Martin and brandishing a Walther PPK. More recently, Inspector Morse had his Jaguar, and FBI special agent Pendergast had his beloved Les Baer handgun as his favorite weapon. 

So am I going to get pelted with tomatoes or does anyone else out there agree with me? Maybe product placement is free advertising for companies that may not need it. But hey, if eating at Denny's makes one of my random readers think of my book, you know what? I'll take it.

Writing, Non-Production, GUILT, and Trust

I have been stymied in my writing for some time now, and I realized recently that constantly chastising myself for being lazy and undisciplined, beating myself for not being more productive, and downright, well, disliking myself enormously for being such a slacker, was actually more damaging than helpful. Duh.

I come from a background that included a religion that is very big on guilt. GUILT. In caps. So when I don't do what that nagging little voice in me says I should be doing, I feel GUILT rolling down on top of me in granite boulder form. Or building up inside of me in energy-draining, soul-sucking cinderblock form. Or maybe even just a quick little stabbing pain somewhere in my innards, the old knife-in-the-gut form.. No matter what form it takes, I can't ignore it.  And it drives the writer inside me deeper into the cave.

After weeks and weeks of this, I decided to take a break. Not only that, I gave myself permission to do so. In the time that I have not been actively writing, I have cataloged information from my budding series into my own hard copy file (index cards in an index card box: can we say "old school"?), written out summaries of the chapters I've composed so far, and taken time to read a couple of wonderful books that my husband shared with me. Bliss.

I learned that in my desperate drive to get something done and to be all the writer I can be, I somehow lost sight of the fun I used to have doing this. I forgot how much I used to laugh, literally, while I was pecking away at the keyboard, because I couldn't wait to share my stuff with someone else. Sharing stories, I truly believe, is the only way that they can begin to breathe on their own. And they were meant to breathe on their own.

Sigh. So. Negative reviews, self flagellation, and GUILT aside, I am slowly coming back to my starting point and remembering how to integrate the writer back into the rest of me. Sort of like Peter Pan needing to get his shadow back and finding Wendy to sew it onto the soles of his feet. I needed to find my way back to the little kid with the pen and the notebook paper, composing little ghost stories and poems, and having the best time doing it. She would not have been blocked by negative reviews, and she would not have felt guilty about not writing all the time. Why? Well, because she always had a story going somewhere in her head, and she knew she wanted to write it down to share with her friends. And so she would.

Trusting myself to get the writing done and share it with others is probably the true foundation of my writing. And while I'm struggling to relearn that trust, I have also realized - the struggle for that feels much better than bearing the weight of guilt.

Ghosts + History = Magic

Some years ago, I was in a college class and the subject of THE BIG earthquake in Missouri came up. Most of the class had never heard about it and the instructor herself was not sure of the year, but I knew it. 1812. (Actually, it was December, 1811 through January, 1812 since it was a series of upheavals, but I was close enough.) And why did I know that date? Because of a ghost story I had read during childhood.

Recently, while doing my "research" and immersing myself in the paranormal reality shows on SyFy, Biography, A & E, TLC, and the History Channel, I started taking notes simply because I was learning not only history, but lots of little factoids that tend to stimulate the writer in me. For instance:

- Casket plates were metal plates that were attached the tops of caskets as identifiers during the winter when the ground was too frozen to dig graves. Since the caskets were stored in a community location, the plates were helpful in keeping the remains of loved ones organized. (Some people collect these things- would you???)

- In the 19th century, there was such a thing as a "baby farm", where illegitimate and otherwise unwanted babies and youngsters were placed. As is so often the tragic case with this sort of thing, the babies were sometimes killed and the poison of choice was arsenic, because its symptoms mimic cholera.

-  I now know of at least two man-made lakes, Norfork Lake in Arkansas, and Table Rock Lake in Missouri. Creating Norfork Lake entailed flooding 400 farms, numerous small towns, and also required moving 26 cemeteries. I have been to Table Rock Lake: when the water is still, you can see some of the buildings down at the bottom. Very eerie.

-  Phenobarbitol was used to treat epilepsy in the 1930's and '40's.

- James Thurber lived in a haunted house at one time and wrote about it in his book of short stories, My Life and Hard Times.

I could go on much longer, but I'm sure you all get the idea. It's amazing how much history you can pick up reading and watching ghost stories! When I was a kid, I loved tales of haunted locations, and learned smatterings of history along the way. As an adult, I've also learned to love history. When the two come together - for me, it's positively magic.

The Cholera Cross

One of the things I like the best about writing is doing research for my current book. The book I'm working on right now includes the subject of cholera in Illinois, and this has turned out to be more fascinating than I could ever have expected.

Illinois suffered three devastating waves of this disease, in 1830, 1840, and again in 1888. Cholera is waterborne and highly contagious, and it traveled north on the Mississippi and west via the Great Lakes, thus catching my home state in its cross-hairs. Small towns were decimated. Even Chicago ran out of isolation shelters, and that is how Mercy Hospital came into existence. 

But the most touching story I uncovered was that of the Cholera Cross in Breese, Illinois. In 1832, a farmer named Joseph Altepeter prayed to God to save his large family from the epidemic. He promised that if God would spare his loved ones, that he would place a large cross at the edge of his property, close to the main road, as a sign of gratitude and devotion. The entire Altepeter family was spared, and Joseph accordingly built the cross right beside the main road. The first cross was made of wood and needed to be replaced from time to time. At some point, the wood was replaced by concrete, and if you drive out U.S. 50 and then turn south on County Highway 7, you can see this concrete cross on the edge of a farm, right beside the road.

My husband, who is always up for a road trip, agreed to drive from Glen Ellyn to Breese last February,  to see the cross. I don't know what I was expecting, but when I got there I couldn't believe how choked up I got at the sight of it. Now, 181 years after the first cross was placed, there still stands a monument of one man's hope and belief that he and his family could be spared from the terrible nightmare that besieged his homeland. I touched the cross with a gloved hand and felt, for just a moment, the turmoil of this man's desperation and hope. I don't know how to explain all that I felt, but if I can find a way to share even just a part of it, accurately, in the book I'm writing, the work will hopefully have the power, the juice, the vibe, to put the reader in touch, just for a few minutes, with a part of history that is nearly forgotten but that still calls out across time.

I have several pictures of the cross and of Farmer Altepeter's pledge to God, written on a plaque and mounted on stone at the foot of the cross, and if I were really technologically clever, I'd know how to share them with you. As it is, I hope that you will google "Cholera Cross" and see what pops up. I never knew the cross existed before I started writing this book, and now I know I will never forget it.

A Tale of Two Cons

Last month, I had an unusual opportunity: to attend two conferences, each devoted to a subject of my passion, within weeks of each other.

The first was the Love Is Murder Mystery Writers and Readers Conference. This particular con is held the first weekend in February every year, and while I am no longer on the board or the planning committee, I still make the time to attend at least the Saturday of this weekend-long event. This year, I got to hear incredible presentations by Bob Mayer, a best-selling author both traditionally and in e-books. I also got to hang around with e-book phenomenon Terri Reid (The Mary O'Reilly Paranormal Mystery Series), with amazing author and e-book formatter Donnie Light, and with a bunch of my cronies from past years. There is something to be said about spending quality time with fellow writers and renewing my faith in the written word. I had been needing a boost and Love Is Murder provided it. (If you're curious about the conference, check them out at loveismurderdotnet.

Two weeks later, I found myself at the Dead of Winter ghost hunter conference in an amazing place called Okawville, Illinois. The conference took place at the haunted Springs Hotel in Okawville, and featured presentations by four different writers/ghost hunters, a tarot card reader, a vendor that offered ghost hunting equipment such as EMF (electromagnetic force) meters, a $15 dollar fried chicken dinner, and an actual ghost hunt on the premises when dinner was done. And the event was free!

Now, most of us know what it's like to hang around with other writers. It's funny and informative, enlightening and rejuvenating (at least most of the time). It's also a great deal of fun.

On the other hand, I have never hung around with a bunch of ghost hunters before, and I must admit I would file this experience under "different." (I'd go for "other-worldly" but that's too obvious.) I have a passion for the supernatural, but these people made my passion look like a passing interest. They live, breathe, and eat this stuff. They are familiar with the best sites to cut one's teeth on when getting started in the field. And they discuss paranormal entities, supernatural attacks, exorcisms, and other mind-boggling experiences with the ease and comfort of doctors at the CDC discussing pertussis or strep. And I do mean mind-boggling.

I learned a lot from both conferences: writing tips, marketing ideas, contracts to avoid, at one conference; and I also learned about EVP's (electronic voice phenomena) -if you've never heard one of these in person, let me just say they can make your hair stand on end- photographic anomalies, and self-defense against hostile entities, at the other.

I also learned a lot about myself. I am fascinated by the topic of ghosts: always have been and probably always will be. But when it comes to finding a peer group? I think I'll stick with the writers, thanks.

The Accidental Romance Writer - or- What Reading My Reviews has Taught Me About Myself

My last post here was titled "The Accidental Series" because it turns out I am writing one. That was a surprise. But here's a bigger one: apparently, I am also writing romance.

This is more than a big surprise. It's both jaw-dropping and hilarious at the same time. For one thing, I am nearly allergic to romance novels. Now, I don't knock romance novels or their writers. Clearly, there is a huge market for romances and I doff my proverbial cap to anyone who can create delicious works to ease the cravings of so many readers. I know I couldn't. So bless the writers who provide that enormous service.

The hilarity is for anyone who really knows me. While my friends were discovering Gone With the Wind, I was head over heels for The Three Musketeers. While most of the gal-pals I had in seventh and eighth grade were checking out Seventeenth Summer by Betty Cavanaugh (remember her???) at the library, I was checking out The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Count of Monte Cristo. And it's not that there was no romance in the works of Dumas or Howard Pyle, it's just that romance was incidental and not the point of the story. Which is the way I like romance in a book. So anyone who really knows me would find it funny thatI have been tagged as a romance writer.

And it gets funnier. Someone said my book had "too much historical romance" in it. Historical romance? Really? I'm not even sure what that means, but images of bodice-ripper cover art, as Stephen King refers to it, keep popping into mind when I think about it. Me? Writing historical romance? I have no idea where that came from, seeing as how my book is set squarely in the 21st century and revolves around two college-age kids who investigate a haunting and a thirty-year old murder case. Ah, maybe that's the history? A thirty-year old murder?

At any event, I am currently working on book two so that I can put it out there and find out if I am now writing paranormal historical romance mysteries with metaphysical overtones. Can't wait to see what I learn about myself next! As all writers ultimately work in solitude, feedback is a wonderful thing, I admit. But sometimes, when I read the feedback directed at me, I find myself wondering if the reader is accidentally posting about a different novel altogether. Or maybe I'm just too close to see, and I really am producing history and romance?

Huh. Who knew?

The Accidental Series

Last summer, I decided to try my hand at writing a series. The decision had been a long time coming. Editors and publishers frequently asked me "Is this the first book in a series?" when they would read (and usually reject) my submitted manuscript. I always had the feeling that if I had said, "Why, yes, this does just happen to be the first book in a seven-book story arc," that I would have gotten accepted sooner. And I would have been lying through my teeth, too.

I write stand-alones. Characters introduce themselves to me --when I'm lucky, that is; frequently getting my characters to talk to me is like trying to pull a hippo out of a river with a rope-- and tell me their story. Then they go away and I am on to the next group who shows up and rings my doorbell. Ah, but that old "Is this a series?" demon has caught up to me at last.

In October, I released a self-published e-book called Haunted, the first book in my new YA series. I am happy with how sales are going, but the feedback I get more than anything else is: "Can't wait to see what happens next!" and "The book ends with a cliffhanger so I want to know what happens next!" and "This was a fun read and I can't wait for the next one!" 

Yikes! When I started my series, and I think I even bored you all, er, talked about it here, the series was based on a geographic location, Bridgeton Park Cemetery, and not on specific characters. Certainly not the ones in Haunted. And I truly never thought of my ending as a "cliffhanger." But after hearing more than a few times that readers are expecting a continuation of the story I just finished, well...I guess I'm going to go that route. Now, this is really, really tough for me, since I don't think that way. I think of my books as one-and-done. The idea of going back to the same well repeatedly is, to put it mildly, causing me to freak out.

So, if any of you out there are currently writing a series, I'd sure love to know what makes you and your stories tick. At the moment, I'm pretending I'm fan-fic'ing someone else. I have no clue how else to do this!

Turkey Writing

Wow, I get to do an entry the day before Thanksgiving! And I can smell that turkey cooking now...

The reason I bring up the scent of roasting turkey--and I do love that smell, even though turkey is not always one of my favorite meals--is that I have one very specific writing memory entwined with it.

When I was a freshman at the University of Illinois-Chicago (Circle) campus, the school was on the quarter system: ten weeks of instruction, one week for finals, break, and repeat. Thanksgiving fell toward the end of the fall quarter so that was also the time all those pesky papers and projects were coming due. Being the queen of procrastination, the quarter system was very good for me because it didn't allow me to fall that far behind in my work. There just wasn't enough time to let things slide.

Fall quarter, freshman year, I was enrolled in an honors English class that basically had us studying Important Writers that probably none of us would ever read on our own. My reading list included Thomas Paine, Thomas Carlyle, and John Stewart Mill, among other deep-thinking heavyweights. There were times, that quarter, that I sat outside on a concrete bench in thirty-degree weather just to sty awake while I was reading these works. Rough quarter!

I devoted my final paper about Carlyle because the man wrote a book about heroes and their importance to the fabric of society. When he published, he was hardly thinking about Spiderman, Mark Spitz, or Bruce Lee, but that was the direction I took when I sat down to write. And here's where the turkey comes in.

My mother had a second oven in our basement, and that is where she would roast our turkey so that she could use the kitchen oven upstairs for other equally tasty items. The basement is where we had the stereo, so when I wanted to write, I would head downstairs, crank up the tunes, and uncap my pen.If I needed to write a paper that had a page requirement, my modus operandi at the time was to take one of those huge newsprint pads of art paper and write enough to fill the entire front side and half of the back. My penmanship is small, so when I had covered all of that white space, I knew I would meet my page requirement when I typed up my work afterward.

That particular holiday, while I was in the process of doing this, the wonderful brown-butter scent of roasting turkey filled the basement and wafted into both my consciousness and sub-conciousness. This day, the heady smell of Thanksgiving in the making always conjures up images of my basement, Thomas Carlyle, and the sounds of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" Concerto.

I have never used the November holiday in any fiction I have ever written. I've used Christmas, Easter, Halloween (of course) but I don't believe I have ever written anything about Thanksgiving. So tomorrow I'm going to take a few deep breaths of that warm, buttery turkey smell and see where I can go with it. I"m working on a book now involving college students. Maybe one of them will write a paper under the same fragrant circumstances.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Adventures in Self-Publishing

Some time last spring, I must have become somewhat insane: the idea of self-publishing my most recent manuscript got hold of me and refused to go away. Why? Conventional wisdom advocates finding an agent, or at least shopping my work around to those publishers that accept non-agented submissions.

But there has just been so much scuttlebutt recently about the whole e-publishing phenomenon that I couldn't help growing curious about it. So I started conversations, some by e-mail, some face-to-face, with several writers who have gone this route and are happy with it. They all had their own lists of do's and don't's, some of which contradicted each other, but what I took away from these conversations was very hopeful: there is plenty of room for all of us. Good books will sell. Marketing is not much different than with a traditional publisher, since my name is not J.K. Rowling or Suzanne Collins. Most of all I found that every writer I contacted was more than willing to answer questions and give suggestions--and best of all, to a person they wished me luck. They couldn't have gotten any more generous short of offering me an actual limb or perhaps a first-born child.

So whether delusional or not, I decided to take the plunge and give self-publishing a try. I am no tech-head so luckily I had one or two writers who were willing to correspond with me almost on a daily basis about formatting. Also luckily, my engineering husband isn't afraid to try something outside his own area of technical expertise. After much trial, effort, and panic on my part, the manuscript uploaded, and Haunted is now available for Kindle with a print edition soon to follow.

I don't know if the book will soar or plummet, but at least it's out there. I have a firm belief that a story never really breathes until it has been released to the world for other folks to read. So now comes the next part of my journey: Adventures in E-Marketing!

(By the way, since taking a nearly full-time job at the end of September I barely have time to sleep so I apologize that I haven't been leaving comments on people's posts lately. I have read all of them, though, and was struck again by how diverse and talented this group really is! I'll try to do better as things settle down.)

Thank You, Peggy!

Thank God for Peggy Tibbetts. Those of us on this blog know who she is, and I was lucky enough to get her to review Saving Jake for me. Then I got even luckier when she read my next manuscript. She actually liked it, even though it needed all kinds of work, and offered to publish it at Sisterhood Publications, her current literary home. I was astonished. At the time I was in the depths of the I-have-no-talent and writing-is-just-a-pipe-dream nightmare I seem to subject myself to on a fairly routine basis. I don't know why, but this particular bout was the worst I've suffered in years. Enter Peggy.

She took the time to do an in-depth critique of my manuscript. (I admit it: I didn't look at it for weeks because I was terrified to find out what she really thought of it. I'm a coward!) And when I finally got past all of my own angst, I took her words to heart and made all sorts of corrections and revisions to get a final draft.

And then I flew in the face of all logic and decided to try self-publishing this thing myself on Amazon. Insane, or what? I had a legitimate offer from a fellow writer and here I was turning it down. One reason is that my fiction and Peggy's are not exactly cut from the same bolt of cloth. We both write YA and that's about it. I went onto the Sisterhood Publications website and was awed by the subject matter they house. They call it "edgy" fiction and it certainly is. Anyone who has read Pvt. Liberty Striker will know exactly what I mean.

Like Peggy, I will glean subject matter from current headlines, but then I go away and fabricate a ghost story out of it. My work reflects the way I see the world. I like to think it's scary when I need it to be, but it is not edgy. Not like the work I saw at Sisterhood. So I decided to give e-books a try independently. And Peggy, being the very gracious lady she is, gave me a huge hug by e-mail and wished me the best. (Talk about your class acts.)

So I hope to launch my newest novel very soon. The title is Haunted, it is a ghost story/murder mystery, and I hope people who read it will like it. I followed a lot of Peggy's suggestions and stubbornly left other areas untouched, but the book is all the stronger for her input, that's for sure. My goal is to upload it some time next week, just in time for the Halloween season, but life has gotten in the way yet again and I might be a bit delayed. But I learned something else from Peggy: don't give up (ya big wimp). Yes, the little aside is mine, but it was probably on her mind, too!

So thank you, Peggy. Let's see what happens next.