Category Archives: The Writing Journey

Blog Entries that have to do with the day to day struggle to put words on paper — or pixels on screen.

Character Interview- Charlie McCallum Redux

03 Friday Feb 2017

Posted by in Character Interviews, The Writing Journey

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Had a really terrific time the other day with author and interviewer Kelly Blanchard, who interviewed a character from my Coffee & Crime Mystery series, the inestimable Charlie McCallum.  Check it out and get a peak inside Charlie’s head first-hand!  Also, make sure you check out ALL her character interviews, with characters from many books and many genres, at her website, Meeting with the Muse.  They are a blast to read and I’ll bet, based on the characters you meet, you’ll find some books to add to your TBR (To-Be-Read) list!

Over the last year or so, I’ve interviewed many of Nan Sampson’s characters. One of those characters was Charlie. If you would like to read the first interview I conducted with him, you can find it on Nan Sampson’s site here: https://nansampsonauthor.com/2015/07/30/an-interactive-character-interview-meet-charlie-mccallum-from-my-ellie-gooden-mystery-series/. In this interview, I was able to catch up with Charlie and see […]

via Character Interview: Nan Sampson’s Charlie — Meeting With The Muse

Huzzah! Forest Outings, Book 3 in the Coffee & Crime Mysteries Debuts Today!

30 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in The Writing Journey

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Hello fellow babies!

dr-johnny-fever

Thanks, Dr. Johnny Fever!

Forest Outings, the third book in the Coffee & Crime Mystery Series, is now on Amazon for sale.  Whoo hoo!!!!  Well… the e-book is there.  It may be a couple of days before the paperback launches.  I’m very excited about this one and I hope you all enjoy it as well.

If you do read it, please consider leaving a review on Amazon.  Indie authors depend on those reviews for visibility and I would be eternally grateful.  Which means I would be predisposed to send you chocolate…  jus’ sayin’.  Look!  See all the chocolate you could have!

johnny-chocolat

Oh.  Wait, that’s Johnny Depp EATING chocolate.  Obviously, as much as we all might like it, I can’t actually send you Johnny Depp.  Eating chocolate.  Playing guitar.  Phew, is it hot in here?  Hang on, here’s the correct image.

chocolate-dinosaurs

Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal Chocolates

Anyhoo, hope you’re having a spiffy day!  I’m tickled pink about Forest Outings and it’s inevitable listing on the New York Times Best Seller List.  Hey now.  Be nice.  A girl can dream, can’t she?  And, as always,

Illegitimi non carborundum!

The Bambi Syndrome – Or How Walt Disney and I Are Alike

23 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in The Writing Journey

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“You’re as bad as Walt Disney,” my editor said to me after finishing a draft of one of my WIPs (Works in Progress).  “All your characters are orphans.”

“That’s not true,” said I, vehemently.  “I mean, okay, Ellie from my Coffee and Crime mysteries is, but Ellie’s parents’ murder is part of the series arc.  In my steampunk book, though, the main character, Jonathan… oh.  Still, his father was really old when he died.”

“Yeah, but his mother died when he was young.”

“Okay, okay, but in the space opera trilogy, Peder’s parents—”

“Are dead.  He was dropped off on the door step of his foster father’s estate when he was three.”

Hmm.  I thought back across my many myriad novels, both finished and unfinished and I had to admit, my editor was right.  I seemed to have a thing for characters with dead parents.  If not outright orphans, all of them seemed to have one dead parental unit.  Which got me wondering why.

The answer came almost instantly.  It’s all Walt Disney’s fault.  I remember when I was little, how I had to be taken, crying inconsolably, out of the theater whenever my mom would take me to see a Disney movie.  Bambi, Dumbo, Pinnochio.  Orphans all, and a plot line rife with personal loss.  Is it any wonder I have this template of the hero that includes the death of a parent?  The better question is, what the heck was wrong with Walt Disney?  I didn’t create this monster.  He did!

farewell-bambis-dad

Farewell, my son!

“One could reason,” I therefore proposed to my editor, “that the death of a parent or parents leaves an indelible mark on a character.  Those kinds of traumatic events make for great internal conflict and give the character depth and resilience.  Right?”

“Yeah,” she said, “but you kill them in such gruesome ways.  Remember in that fantasy novel how you killed the guy’s parents in a raid on their village?  And then, just when the kid was living happily with a foster father, you had the house attacked and his foster father eviscerated on the stairs.”  She shuddered.  “I mean, who does that?  Wouldn’t a knife in the back have sufficed?”

“I was going for pathos.”

“An arrow through the chest is pathos.  Evisceration is Roger Corman.”

Pah!  “It was dramatic,” I countered, and ended the discussion.

Still, it caused me to ponder.  Good books are rife with horrific events – not necessarily physically horrific, but certainly emotionally so.  The reader wouldn’t care much about the story if the stakes for the character weren’t high.  Yet even so… it seems to me that writers – or maybe just me in particular – find great joy in torturing our characters.  Again and again and again.  I mean, wasn’t it Nabokov who said that the job of a writer is to chase your character up a tree and then once they’re up there, throw rocks at them?

Think you’re safe up there now?  Hah!  I can fix that.

person-in-tree

Image via Flickr Creative Commons, courtesy of Charles Adcock

 

See, this is what it’s like to be a writer.  The goal is always ‘just how bad can I make it for this poor soul?’.  And then, just when the reader thinks it can’t possibly get any worse… heh heh heh.

That’s right.

You kill their OTHER parent!

My non-writer friends tell me it’s probably a good thing that I’m a writer, cuz otherwise I might do all these horrific things to real people (wait, these characters ARE real people…at least to me).  I always smile sweetly and respond with, how do you know I’m not writing from experience?  That usually shuts ’em up.

Illegitimi non carborundum!

What Weight Do You Normally Fight At?

10 Tuesday Jan 2017

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I’m ba-a-a-a-ack!

im-ba-ack

Greetings fellow Earthlings!

As some of you know, I took a rather spectacular fall just before Thanksgiving. Face-planted onto concrete right in front of a bunch of people from the Evil Day Job.  It was spectacular.  Blood everywhere, broken bones, including my hand and nose (and my pride), sprained things, even had to have stitches. I looked like I’d gone a round in the ring with Mike Tyson. Worst part? I spilled my entire large Coca-Cola, my special treat for that week!

I’d include a picture but you might bust something laughing – or try to blackmail me. Anyway, sorry to have been MIA for so long, but I’m back (just when you thought it was safe to go back on the internet!).

On the plus side, I’m once again able to type (and write), and Book Three in the Coffee and Crime Mysteries is due out in early spring, so there’s that to look forward!  I think this is the best Ellie book yet.  THings heat up for her both in town, with Charlie and even in terms of the death of her parents.  Lots of fun!  And the cover!  Oh, the cover.  My cover artist, Raven Blackburn, has knocked it out of the park again.  I’ve shared it on my Facebook page and here’s a sneak peek for all of you as well!

coverrevealbanner

Anyhoo, now that my tippy-tapping fingers are back in action, you can look forward to more idle ramblings, pithy musings and giddy babblings soon.  Oh, and as always, the peasants are revolting.

revolting-peasants

Illegitimi non carborundum!

How Carving a Pumpkin Can Change Your Life

05 Wednesday Oct 2016

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Yes, it’s true.  Carving a pumpkin can truly change your life.  Especially if you’re using a really sharp knife and it slips…

But seriously.  I spent some rather unproductive time last night attempting to create a pumpkin masterpiece.  Now, we ALL know I have no artistic ability whatsoever.  I can draw neither a straight nor curvy line, cannot paint, cannot sculpt, and am not in any other way artsy or craftsy.  I wasn’t only a pariah in gym class… art class was my second least favorite subject.

And yet, as Halloween is my favorite holiday, each year I desire to create that perfect, most sincere Jack-O-Lantern.  In my mind, I am imagining this:

awesome-jack-o-lantern

And each year, I pretty much end up with something like this.

ugly-jack-o-lantern

This year, I finally figured out how it happens.  It’s all about revision.  Yes, there, I said it.  A dirty little writer word.  See, what happens is that I keep feeling unsatisfied, so I keep trimming and deleting and refining and modifying, until… well, it’s like cutting your own bangs, isn’t it?  You want them to be even, but you’re not a professional stylist, so you keep making tiny adjustments when you find they’re not quite right on that one side and then you look in the mirror and you find you’ve got this:

bad-bangs

Yeah.  Stories, bangs, pumpkins, it’s all the same.  And it doesn’t stop there.  For me, anyway, since nothing is ever perfect, and I’m one of those people who need to fix/manage/control my world, I try to tweak everything.  Constantly.  Like, to death.

So I’m trying to teach an old dog a new trick.  Maybe, just maybe, my crappy pumpkin carving, while still probably crappy, is okay.  Maybe the heart and soul that I put into it will trump my relatively paltry skill at carving.  Maybe, by practicing pumpkin carving every day in the weeks running up to Halloween I’ll improve my skill.  Or maybe, just maybe, I need to learn to let what I create be whatever it is and be satisfied with it, knowing that I am my own worst critic and that it probably isn’t anywhere near as bad as I think it is.  (Although in the case of pumpkins, I might have to accept reality… )

I mean, yes, we always want to improve and that’s not a bad thing.  But if we’ve tried our best, constant cutting and trimming and correcting may just end up destroying what we set out to create.  Not just in art, not just in writing, not just in pumpkin carving, but in everything.

So this year, I’m going to go buy another pumpkin.  And I’m going to carve it the best I am currently able.  I’ll even post pictures.  It might not be a masterpiece, but I guarantee it will be sincere enough to make the Great Pumpkin happy.  And for once, this year, I will be too!

Illegitimi non carborundum!

A Pithy Quote for the Day

27 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by in The Writing Journey, writing

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I was reading a blog by Maria Popova, who was quoting Ann Patchett from her memoir.  It rang so true for me, as a writer, I had to share it.  You can read the full blog post here: BrainPickings, and I highly recommend reading Ann Patchett’s book (available at Amazon here: This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage).

“For me it’s like this: I make up a novel in my head (there will be more about this later). This is the happiest time in the arc of my writing process. The book is my invisible friend, omnipresent, evolving, thrilling… This book I have not yet written one word of is a thing of indescribable beauty, unpredictable in its patterns, piercing in its color, so wild and loyal in its nature that my love for this book, and my faith in it as I track its lazy flight, is the single perfect joy in my life. It is the greatest novel in the history of literature, and I have thought it up, and all I have to do is put it down on paper and then everyone can see this beauty that I see.

And so I do. When I can’t think of another stall, when putting it off has actually become more painful than doing it, I reach up and pluck the butterfly from the air. I take it from the region of my head and I press it down against my desk, and there, with my own hand, I kill it. It’s not that I want to kill it, but it’s the only way I can get something that is so three-dimensional onto the flat page. Just to make sure the job is done I stick it into place with a pin. Imagine running over a butterfly with an SUV. Everything that was beautiful about this living thing — all the color, the light and movement — is gone. What I’m left with is the dry husk of my friend, the broken body chipped, dismantled, and poorly reassembled. Dead. That’s my book.

The journey from the head to hand is perilous and lined with bodies. It is the road on which nearly everyone who wants to write — and many of the people who do write — get lost… Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.”  Ann Patchett, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

Illegitimi non carborundum!

Don’t Think About Writing…

13 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by in The Writing Journey, writing

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How Not to Think About Writing

How Not to Think About Writing


After last week’s momentous book launch, I decided I deserved a weekend’s worth of down time. I’d been going 4-40 since January and felt exhausted. All I was looking for was two days of doing nothing. Makes sense, right? Recharge the old batteries, gather steam for the next project. All good.

What was it Bobby Burns said? The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley, wasn’t it? Yeah… turns out the old Scot was right.

So I blow off my WW meeting on Saturday morning because of a rum tummy. Tried to sleep in, but His Admiralship wanted breakfast at five freaking thirty. Got up, fed the pushy poodle, then tried to go back to sleep. Kept thinking about scenes I needed to add to Book 2 of the mystery series. Not wanting to lose the ideas, I grabbed my bed side notebook to jot them down — and promptly spilled my water glass into the open drawer of the nightstand. *sigh* Got up, cleaned up the mess (yes, thank you, Nelson, you were very helpful trying to lick up the water), then tried again to go back to sleep. Remembered I hadn’t made notes. Got up again and jotted down my ideas.

At that point, I was wide awake. But I had promised myself I wasn’t going to do anything writerly. So I went downstairs, put the kettle on, made some tea… and started thinking about a scene in my fantasy novel. Nope. Stop it. Not doing any writing today. Stood there for a moment and noticed that the kitchen cabinets needed cleaning. Got out the orange oil and did a spot of cleaning.

Two hours later, the kitchen gleamed. As did the bathrooms and the floors. And as I scrubbed I found myself wondering what my character Charlotte would use for degreasing since oranges weren’t available in medieval times… stop it. Stop thinking writer-type things! Maybe, I thought, as I got up off the floor, knees aching, I should take a little nap.

Oh, wait, not so fast. I needed to take the oriental carpet to this shop my husband found in Lakemoor for cleaning. Lakemoor? Where the devil is Lakemoor? Oh, says he on his way out the door to work, it’s just up 47, take a right on 120. Right around the corner.

Over an HOUR LATER, I finally located the small burb of Lakemoor, but the only thing at the address indicated was an autobody shop. I drove up and down the street for twenty minutes (I’m sure people thought I was either loony or casing the joint), but there is NO cleaners. So I drove back home. But the drive wasn’t completely wasted because I figured out the tricky escape bit for the fantasy novel. Oh damn. I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about writing…

So I got home shortly after noon, at which point, it was time to rouse the teenager and get some food down her gullet before she becomes an unholy, crabby mess. That accomplished, I thought, okay, NOW I can sit down and do… um… work on the fantasy novel? No. No writing. Okay, I’ll um… oh I know, I’ll dump book 2 of the mystery series into Scrivener and… oh, yeah, no writing. So… um… er…

I dithered on the couch for about twenty minutes, trying to think of something to do that wasn’t writing related. I even pulled out my Kindle to read something. But I couldn’t settle on what to read. Except that book about how to writer faster… but wait, that was writing related.

Bottom line, I’ve apparently forgotten how to just sit and do nothing. Well, at least anything that doesn’t have something to do with writing. And you know what? I’m pretty okay with that. Turns out, I LOVE writing. Even the icky revision part. I’m actually itching to dive into the editing of Book 2. Maybe this revision won’t take me six months, like the last one, now that I understand the process!

So today, Sunday, I took a breath, allowed myself to think a few writerly thoughts, then did my usual Sunday errands (grocery store, making a few casseroles for dinner during the week, putting my lunch things together for Monday, etc.). And for dinner, the family and I went out to The Claddagh for a good old faux Irish meal. I even treated myself to a pear cider. Yum!

Tomorrow, however, it’s back to work. Both to the evil day job and as a writer. And I can’t wait!

Is there a hobby or avocation you itch to work on when you’re doing other things? Is there a project you can’t wait to get back to or consumes your thoughts at any given idle moment? I’d love to hear about your favorite things. And thanks for dropping by!

Illegitimi non carborundum!

The Hero Returns (with the Elixir)… or “I’m Back”

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

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From the film "Poltergeist"

From the film “Poltergeist”

It’s true!  After over a week of radio silence, like the scary ghosts in Poltergeist, I’m back!  With a vengeance!

Not sure how many of you have read the incredible book by Christopher Vogler, called “The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers”, but reading it was one of those crystallizing moments in my journey as a writer. If you haven’t read it and you are a writer, I highly encourage you to do so. In it, Mr. Vogler utilizes Joseph Campbell’s concept of the mythic hero’s journey as it relates to story telling in an absolutely magical and instructive way. And for those of you who are NOT writers, I’d recommend Joseph Campbell’s book, “The Hero’s Journey”. I guarantee it will be paradigm-shifting for you!

But I digress (Golly, me? Digress? Impossib– Oh, look, a dog.).

The last stage of the Hero’s Journey is called “Return with The Elixir”. And it implies that the hero has completed her quest, manifested the necessary metamorphosis, and comes home victorious. Cue the feasting and the dancing.

Thusly have I returned, after a week of the most intense and focused work I’ve ever done on a novel yet, also victorious. My novel is complete, revised and out with beta readers. I have never been so excited – and yet so terrified – at any point in my career.

I spent all of last week virtually internet free. I took some vacation days from the evil day job.  I didn’t check emails, I didn’t check Skype, I didn’t log onto Facebook or Twitter or even WordPress. I just glued by ample posterior to the booth seat at my local Panera Bread, plugged in my laptop and worked. Six hours a day for five days. The only time I got up was to either refill my cup of decaf, to make room in my bladder for MORE decaf, or to vacate the booth in favor of a smaller table during the lunch rush. I had all my notes lined up (big shout out to Holly Lisle — for her HTRYN course!), had my copy of Scrivener open and I just jammed through it until I was done. BTW – Scrivener is an indispensable writer’s software tool.  Check it out at http://www.literatureandlatte.com.

Now, on the other side of the whole journey, I DO feel like the returning hero! It was a transformative process, unlike anything I’ve ever been through. It isn’t often these days that I get through an experience and really feel changed by it, feel a major sense of accomplishment. But this was definitely one of those moments for me. And now that I know I can do this once, I’m already gearing up to revise the second novel in the series after Camp Nano is over in August.

What have been some of your defining moments? What was the feat that brought you home as the victorious hero, bearing the magic elixir? I’d love to hear about them!

The Reason Geese Won’t Fly And Why Most of Us Never Live Our Dreams

12 Monday May 2014

Posted by in Stalking the Wild Muse, The Writing Journey

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Why don’t we all live our dreams?  I had an inspiration today on the drive in to work.  Here’s how it went (wavy fade to flashback):

So I’m sitting in traffic this morning.  It’s spring (FINALLY) here in Chicagoland.  And that means two things.  One, it’s construction season, so every east-west road across the Fox River is down to half a lane, making my commute ridiculous.  And two, it’s time for all those ex-pat Canadian Geese who never left over the winter to have their babies.  And of course, that means that all the momma geese are herding (can you say herding with geese?) their little fluffy bundles across every east-west road in the area, making slow moving traffic screech to a halt.

And while the rest of the drivers out there curse and scream at the waddling avians, wondering what the heck was wrong with the grass on the side of the road they were originally on and dreaming about Goose a L’orange, I’m thinking completely different things.  Like, given the fact that geese have wings, why don’t they FLY across the road?  It would be so much faster.   And there wouldn’t be nearly as many splatted geese on the pavement.  And it would sure as heck speed up my already stupid commute.

Now, before you go jumping down my throat in defense of the little fluffy bundles, I fully realize that the parents can’t fly with their babies, who don’t yet have wings.  But this slow waddle across the road, (which frequently involves stopping, standing there, staring at my car and honking at me as if I were the one who didn’t belong there) doesn’t just happen in the spring.  It happens ALL YEAR LONG!  I mean, think about it.  If YOU had wings, wouldn’t  YOU fly everywhere you wanted to go?

An ornithologist would no doubt have the scientific answer to this goosey conundrum.  But I’m not an ornithologist, I just played one on TV.  My guess is that, much like people, geese are lazy.  In their little pea sized brain, they’re thinking, “Man, it takes a heck of a lot of effort to run really fast to gain momentum and then flap my wings just to get airborne for a couple dozen feet.  It’s just not worth it.  Just think of all the grass I’ll have to eat to recoup that energy.”

I think it’s the same with most people.  I know for sure it’s the same with me.  It takes a heck of a lot of energy to come home after working a full day at the dreaded day job, after taking care of the family, after doing all my chores to then make the time to work on making my dreams a reality.  Until recently I let myself live on autopilot, waddling across the roads of my life because it involved the least amount of effort – and goodness knows (I justify to myself) I expend enough effort each day just dealing with all the regular stuff.  But I’ve had a re-awakening lately.  Maybe I realize that time is ticking away.  Or maybe I’ve been recharged by reading the blogs of some wonderful people who inspire me to be more.  Or maybe my Muse has come back from her decade long vacation in Bermuda.  But whatever it is, I know that now is the time.  I want to write.  I want to live to my fullest potential.  I want to FLY!

How about you?  Is there some dream you’ve been harboring, while you’ve been waddling slowly across life’s street?  Don’t be a goose.  Run as fast as you can, gain that momentum, flap your wings and take off.  As Mork once said, “Fly, my little hatchling brothers!”.  Cuz let me tell you, the view from up here?  It’s amazing!

Ilegitimi non carborundum!