Yes, yes I’m grasping desperately at straws here! It was a long, quiet yet exhausting weekend thanks to MS. Buffy the Vamp Slayer. Kara (other dog) is happier than a pig in shit while I”m still trying to recoup. It’s like having a baby all over again–albeit a sweet one that I left crying in the bathroom this morning. All this is to say, I’m rather thin on the blog topic but I started thinking about this book I started reading last week–and won’t finish.

It was a YA book–and you all know how much I love me some YA–set in Houston. And the author went to great pains…GREAT PAINS to let me know she’d done her research on the city of Houston. So much so, I found myself rolling my eyes at one point and finally tossed it aside. I would have been satisfied with much more general scene setting–ie. not having I-45 run the wrong way. Funny enough, I’d tried one of her adult fiction books a few years ago and it didn’t work for me but I can’t remember if it was for the same reason.

OTOH I also started Kelley Armstrong’s Bitten this last week. I specifically picked it up because I loved The Summoning so very very much and apparently, they’re set in the same world. Bitten is also a book with a lot of backstory to take in and sometimes I’m confused–I tend to be a fast reader but I find myself going back to reread to make sure I understand stuff. All that said, Kelley also dishes it out in small enough doses that I don’t feel terribly overwhelmed.

When it comes to worldbuilding, whether it’s paranormal, urban fantasy or contemporary fiction, we walk a fine line between painting a picture and overkill. Less is more in my opinion, but what do you think? And what are your particular pet peeves? Please let’s not make it personal, k?

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PS for those of you waiting with baited breath, Mercury is finally direct–can I get a hell yeah?

There are some folks you meet while on your writer’s journey who just make you laugh and cut-up.  But then *whamo* they move away. From Texas to {gasp} Missouri–just teasing, I do have kin-folk in the “Show Me” state. Then you get to see them at conferences or when they come down to speak at one of your meetings (or even better you get to call them and let them know their book came in first place in your contest–WOOHOO!). Tracy is one a truly sweet, sweet woman, who keeps me laughing every time I see her (and she has a *hawt* new cover!)

Meet Miss Tracy:

Tracy Garrett can’t remember when books weren’t a part of her life. Some of her most treasured possessions are books, given to her by her parents and grandparents. From bedtime stories to extra credit reading assignments, Tracy has always loved to disappear into the worlds created within the pages of a story.

As a descendant of William Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield – of the Hatfield and McCoy feud fame - history is a huge part of who she is. She even has two circuit-riding preachers in her lineage. Growing up in Southern Illinois, Tracy enjoyed studying the settling and growth of the western half of the United States: the Trail of Tears, ancient Native American civilizations, riverboat traffic… the past holds a wonderful fascination for her. She constantly pestered her grandparents for stories of their youth, their families and experiences. Even her first car was vintage: her Grandpa’s dark blue 1952 Chevy with a push-button starter.

(oh, but wait, there’s more…)
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well you can’t call Bill Maher because he’s my new boyfriend–I want his babes.

Raine’s out today so I’m posting this because the man is funny.

I recently watched one of my favorite all time tearjerker movies, and no matter how many times I see it, it ALWAYS makes me bawl like a baby.

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I first wrote about what it’s like to be sexually abused at the age of nine years old, when I confided in my diary about a family member fondling my just-developing breasts. I had to tell someone, but I was too filled with shame and embarrassment to speak it aloud.

Instead, I wrote the words in my diary and hid the book deep within a box in the back of my closet. I remember coming upon the diary when I was a teenager, and, horrified at seeing what seemed to me to be a confession of my guilt written in my childish handwriting, I burned the diary in our brick fireplace when no one else was home.

Terrified that a family member would return home and question why I used the fireplace in the middle of a sizzling Texas summer, I opened all the windows and rolled our sliding-glass door back-and-forth, back-and-forth on its track, telling myself that I was somehow hastening the clearing away of the evidence. I scooped the ashes out while they were still hot and dumped them in the flower bed, then swept the dust out of the hearth.

Just recalling the memory makes my heart race; I remember a deep sense of relief that the shame-filled words were destroyed. I had moved the diary, deep within that cardboard box, from the house I lived in when the abuse began, to the house I spent my teenage years in, always keeping it hidden in the back of my closet, out of view, as if that made what was happening to me less real.

I didn’t write about the abuse again for nearly thirty years, when I entered therapy for recovery from that same family member sexually abusing me for the majority of my childhood, into my teen years. Then, like the Thompson River Flood in Estes Park, Colorado, an historic, notorious flood of such wide-ranging devastation that songs have been written about it– the grief, pain, shame, and rage came pouring forth from the young child I had been when that flood occurred, in 1976. There was just no stopping it, any more than turning my diary to ashes could cause what had happened to me to NOT affect me for a lifetime.

During a therapy session one day, my psychologist suggested that I try writing a novel. It took me about four months of stopping-and-starting. Inevitably, it seemed, what started as a promising beginning kept dissolving into “Why did this happen to me?”– and there is no satisfying answer to that question. I realized that if I was going to be able to write my way through the experience of being sexually abused, I needed to do it from the perspective of being an observer of someone else’s experience.

When I gave myself permission to do that, Ashley Nicole Asher, age fifteen, came into being. Abused by her stepfather since the age of nine, Ashley is driven by rage to tell her mother what he has been doing to her. To her horror, Ashley’s mother turns her back on her, and does not act on Ashley’s report.

Ashley then confides in the only adult she can trust, a beloved teacher, who reports the abuse to Child Protective Services. CPS contacts her biological father, David, whom Ashley has had no contact with throughout her childhood. It is when David takes Ashley home with him to the tiny East Texas town of Patience that Ashley’s life begins anew.

Courage in Patience is a story of hope. Initially, I wrote it for myself, to prove to myself that I was going to make it through the darkest days of recovery and come out stronger on the other side. I gave Ashley a circle of friends in her stepmother’s summer school English class, and through knowing them, Ashley discovers that, as a good friend of mine says, “Nobody gets out of this life without a scratch.”

With the publication of Courage in Patience, I hope that those who read it will find a story of what it means to face one’s greatest fears and find out what one is made of.

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You can buy Courage in Patience at BN.COM or Borders.com

The MOnday holiday threw me. I’ll post our Behind the Book around Noon central time when I get home from work!

Amie

I haven’t been writing near as much as I should (not one word

Right. So I got back into the word doc and a little later needed to look up something else. Well given my penchant for wandering I decided to leave myself a big note (highlight AND comment) to come back and get the info later. Not really a big deal, it was more of something I had to describe and I was looking up accuracy, so skipping had no detriment to the plot. And I could move on. Only I couldn’t. My mind kept skipping back to it—okay I needed to look up poppies—the flower, no drug stuff—and subsequently a broach that looks like the flower, something so minute it shouldn’t make me fixate for the better part of a page trying to write.

I am sure you can guess what came next; I went to look up the dern flower. Wheshew, got that out of the way. Then again, half an hour later I have seen all sorts of purty jewelry that had not a one whit to do with the stupid manuscript—damnitall! I have NO SELF CONTROL.

I realized that I have been doing this more and more lately which in turn, was also a huge reason as to the “whys” of not writing. I get too distracted. I know, I know, take the stupid laptop somewhere were the wireless doesn’t reach. Better yet, turn {gasp} off the internet. You must understand the worrying about finding it takes up as much time as the tangents.

I know there are 12-step programs for writers—I looked them up—but they all are more for your powerlessness against the business. What about your powerlessness against your-damn-freaking-self! I need a learn self-control over your anal retentive, compulsive obsessive, ADD person intervention ASAP! Just let me research interventions …. oh look at the purty pair of shoes on Macys.com…..

So, I’m curious….after the last two or three weeks, with the economy in such upheaval, and the election around the corner, how have your priorities changed? Or have they? And I’m not just talking writing…I’m talking life in general. Save more? Spend less? Stock up on soup? No more credit?

Talk to me….

The news for today is that I’ve fallen in love.
Again.

Before anyone offers congratulations (ya’ll WERE going to congratulate me, right?)—don’t bother.

He doesn’t love me back.

He’s in love with one of my female characters.
Yup, that’s right.  I’ve fallen for another one of my own heroes.  Fickle much?

Can’t help it.  I’m crazy about this guy.  He’s not even the primary hero of the wip…which, of course, means I’ll have to write another story, just for him (I think I’ve been had).

I do this constantly.  I not only fall for my own heroes, but I love all the characters and their stories as if I knew them personally and had been through their hell with them.
And I’m not sure this is such a good thing.
It’s not only hard to be objective about the story, but VERY hard to accept rejection when it rears its ugly head.  After all, these people are WONDERFUL!  Their stories are CAPTIVATING!  How could anyone not see/feel/think likewise?!

I think part of the problem is that I haven’t learned to consider this writing gig a J-O-B.
It’s still my dream, my flighty fantasy, my little indulgence, especially when reality seems harsh.
Thinking of it as a job, a business (which it definitely is) would certainly be more sensible.
And I’m sure there’s a happy medium in some elusive, well-balanced zone  in between, but damn if I’ve been able to find it.

Where do you fall in the space between “it’s a dream” and ”it’s a job”, and are you happy there?

They say there are 3 things people should avoid speaking about in mixed company:

Race, Religion and Politics.

Well, guess what? I’m about to do something totally naughty.

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