Sharon E. Anderson's Blog, page 4

Rot Around the House

These last two weeks we have undertaken a major project around the house. Oh, we didn’t know it was going to be a major project at the onset, but it is turning out that way. Such is life.

New windows and new siding for our 1941 home. And it is going to look amazing. It really is. Okay, maybe not as amazing as this castle, but a girl can dream, right?

Our team of workers have been tearing off the 25-year-old vinyl siding, ripping off the clapboard underneath…and discovering ROT on corners and walls. On one wall, the only thing holding the window in place was the old siding. When our guy took the old window out and removed the old siding, and the studs and guts of the wall crumbled away. We also found a pipe that wasn’t connected to the drain…for how long, we don’t know.

 

I started thinking about how the vinyl was functional, but dangerous. It covered years of rot, dangerous stuff, and allowed it to continue eating away at our house for quite a long period of time. And then I began to wonder if whoever put the vinyl on in the first place, knew about the rot and just decided to cover it up. That’s a long rabbit trail to start down.

It got me started on the idea of rot in character building. When I write my characters, I try to make them as real as possible. Sometimes I start a story and the characters are already there, waiting to take over, telling me which words they would use, how they would enunciate, what their quirks are, who they are – it all comes flowing out on the page. That’s golden when that happens.

Afraid human hiding behind the dark board

But other times my characters are a little harder to uncover. It’s a process. It takes time. I begin to wonder what they’re hiding, where’s the rot…

In my novel, Curse of the Seven 70s, Varo’s brother shows up and brings with him the weight of a thousand souls he’s destroyed. He brings rot like no other. It’s stifling and horrific, and no one wants to get lost in the oppressive cloud of witnesses. Is there something underneath the veneer to make this character stronger somehow? Is there a softness couched behind the visible rot? Maybe.

Just for fun, here’s an excerpt…

 

VARO WRINKLED his nose. Something about the stench

made him nervous, like a thousand stakes piercing his heart

at the same time. He reached for Cassandra as much to steady

himself as to stop her from venturing any further into the

strange thickening mist. He grabbed hold of her arm a little

harder than necessary.

She turned and hissed, “What?”

“We should go back inside. Right now.”

Cassandra squinted into the shrouded dark. “But something’s

out there, and we need to find Howard and Taffy.” Her voice

sounded hollow.

Panic edged its way into Varo voice. “We need to get

inside!” He took a few steps backward, dragging Cassandra

with him.

“You’re hurting my arm!” She jerked away from him and

bolted into the mysterious fog, disappearing before his eyes.

“Damnation!” Varo cursed. A wisp of vapor curled by

him, then another, and another. Soon he was hemmed in by

a dense cloud. It morphed and split into ghostly susurrations

crying out in unison. Their accusations shook his bones. He

fell to the grass and covered his ears. “It wasn’t me!”

Out on the shrouded lawn, a woman screamed.

If you enjoyed this, uncover the rest of Curse of the Seven 70s at your favorite bookstore! 

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Blondie and the Brit Podcast Interview is LIVE, baby!

It is always good to surround yourself with like-minded people. After all, no one understands an engineer joke better than a fellow engineer. Cooks have their own brand of hilarity, too.

Creatives? Well, let me just tell you, I was recently interviewed by KJ Waters and Suzanne Kellman for their podcast, Blondie and the Brit, and that was the most fun I have had in a very long time!

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did:  Listen to Blondie and the Brit here!

 

It’s Raining, It’s Pouring…

The old nursery rhyme repeats over and over in my head as I watch the late summer showers drench the yard. Long dried up grass begins to turn green again and puddles appear in the street. This is my favorite time of year.

School begins again and I’ve do my best to prepare the children—who aren’t really children anymore—for the coming year. I love the smell of newly opened, college-ruled paper. Even more, I love fresh pee chees, new clothes, the getting ready to learn new things.

Across the street there used to be three enormous maple trees. They were dramatic and lovely especially in September. Wind would blow great dinner plate sized orange and read leaves across our path. It was great fun! When the children were little we used to walk along and pick up the beautifully colored leaves and decorate our house with them. The

trees are gone now, chopped down and taken out by the city. Too big, too large, rotten in the core, they had to go we were told. Everything changes. Sometimes for the good.

 

Autumn is the season of change, the season of discovery. I feel it in my bones, I’m far more creaky these days, sore around the edges, in tissues and joints. This time of year helps me evaluate the state of my own mortality. If it weren’t for the breath-taking sunsets, the dramatic clouds, the sun breaks amidst showers…the rainbows… I think I should have long packed my bags and headed to the beach.

Sunrise over the ocean in Miami Beach, Florida. Spring sunrise at the empty beach.

 

Where do you dream of going this time of year?

 

Away

I’ve just returned from a ten-day residency at Captain Whidbey’s, through Northwest Institute of Literary Arts. Oh, it was good to be away, to sit with other authors in workshops, over dinner, spending all of my time in the focused pursuit of my craft.

I, along with five other women stayed around the Cove, in a grand house on the beach. It was stunningly delicious! Here’s a little bit of what I wrote while I was there – I only added the balance bit this morning…

Penn Cove stretches before me, gray framed in evergreen needles and yellowing brush. Coupeville sleeps enshrouded in mist, the gentle rhythms of the tide rippling the waters between us. What is it about this place that brings words through the haze of my subconscious and out onto the page?

It is always a good idea to write in the company of authors. One group of people focused on the same thing—to hell with dinner, to hell with schedules—we work best with deadlines and words. Give us charged computers and a space at a table. Give us room to bring our words from the sleepy hollows of our brains to the screen. Give us time to think. Give us room to be alone and ponder.

Still there is something to be said about balance—that tightrope we all walk through life—tipping too much in one direction will send a person toppling. And no one wants to see that!

I find that if I don’t carve out time to write, I am farther away from who I naturally am. I get cranky, refuse to do the laundry, people are liable to get canned beans for dinner. It’s unrealistic to sit and write the entire day, though, especially with children at home. So, a balancing act.

Or a weekend off from time to time, with other writers/jugglers.

What keeps your balance? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll send one of you a special gift!

If you’ve already read Curse of the Seven 70s and haven’t written a review, please go do that now! It helps us authors like you cannot believe –especially the good reviews! If you haven’t read the book yet – what are you waiting for??

 

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Walking with the Dead – Part 1

 

Detail of a more than 100 years old tomb dedicated to a married couple

 

It’s important to find your tribe. People who don’t think you’re strange for doing things you like to do… like biking from Blaine to Portland, running the Ragnar, swimming the English Channel, or scrapbooking…

Me? I like to visit cemeteries.

In fact, I have a hard time walking on the bed of a grave for fear of offending the person buried just six feet under. I talk to the dead lying there, excuse myself if I should happen to trespass upon their sacred turf, ask them questions about their lives—if they came up with that epitaph, or some hateful relative… basically I believe the dead are still in the ground with a consciousness about them, waiting for judgement.

It’s just one of my many quirks.

It makes me who I am.

Here’s what I found at Pleasant Ridge Cemetery yesterday…

This is a bench near a young woman’s grave.

 

 

 

 

 

Roush’s are a rowdy bunch… this is what makes me think those in the ground are not all that dead.

 

 

 

 

 

…and where exactly is Arthur?

Stone God’s Wife –Even More News!

I am delighted that Stone God’s Wife is receiving some attention. It makes me feel like the story has a life of its own…that it indeed is a living breathing entity set loose upon the world… If you would like to know where you can read it, drop me a line!

Lee Harral, an artist I met through my publisher, Booktrope, has made a promotional video for the story. I am in love with it! I hope you like it too…

Finding Ground

The floating island made in 3d software

There are many things that can kick a person sideways and make you wish you’d never gotten out of bed. For example, taking a sip of coffee wrong and spitting it all over your white t-shirt while driving to meet your mother’s care team is one such thing—here’s some other things in this category:

A flat tire on a rainy night.

Mysterious noises coming from: the basement, the attic, outside your bedroom window, the kitchen sink, your dog, your dog’s stomach, your stomach.

The neighbor’s dog barking at nothing…for hours.

The television coming up with the blue screen of death.

Your computer coming up with the blue screen of death…

Okay – ANY device coming up with the blue screen of death.

Your child throwing a tantrum in your car, in your friend’s car, in any car.

Your child throwing a tantrum. Period.

Your husband throwing a tantrum.

You throwing a tantrum…

Writing five chapters on a new book when suddenly you have to run to the potty, and come back to discover that your cat sat on the keyboard and, you guessed it, erased your work.

NOT writing anything and ending up with the same…

Allowing your child to play on your work computer only to have her change all of your access codes… (Yeah, that happened.)

The thing is life is messy. There isn’t any way around that one fact. The trick is to keep going, find your ground and stand on it. In other words, don’t allow situations to control who you are. Sure we can all learn from experiences—and we certainly should. I am far more patient today than I was before I had children, for example—but I’m still the same person.

I’ll admit, the coffee stains were embarrassing, but I couldn’t prolong the drive just to buy another shirt. Though there was a time in my past where I would have, I consider it great personal character growth that I didn’t need to. After all, meeting these people wasn’t about me—it was about my mother. Coffee stains on my shirt says I might very well be a slob, OR a regular person who spilled coffee. Big deal.

Life is short, stay focused, you may not get a second chance.

Carpe diem, baby.

A young woman is sitting on a pier by the ocean

So, I’m wondering, what keeps you going when life goes sideways?

Choices

The Sea of Cortez is a magical place:  humpback whales gather and have their young, hammerhead sharks swirl in the depths, and this week I saw a video about the flying Mobula Rays. It sounds like a punk band from the ‘80s, doesn’t it? Or maybe a circus act.

And they do resemble a circus act! Rays, fifteen to seventeen feet across, breach the waves and flap their wings, flying into the sky like gigantic bats.  Marine biologists tell us the rays do it to attract mates. (Of course they would say that. They are the horniest group of freaks on the planet.) Don’t get me wrong, sex is pretty fabulous… but what if it were something else going on here…some other reason besides making the most impressive leap to make the biggest boom to attract a mate?

What if they leap out of the water…

to reach for the sky

to see how things are going on terra firma

to get a closer look at things

to make a decision about their lives in the deep

to inform others what awaits them on the other side…

…to tell their mothers and grandmothers what has become of their ancestors – that branch of relatives that split off from the family to crawl through the mud and onto dry land?

Hundreds of thousands years ago we crept out of the mire onto dry land for good, leaving behind that branch of our family tree that decided to continue in the depths. It must have felt like going to Mars. To make such a journey, to know, yet perhaps not fully understand, we could never go back. From that time on we were a fractured family: each branch longing for the other, yet fragmenting further and further along our DNA chain.

We face choices every day: we can divert from the path set down by our ancestors or remain steady in the stream of things, going with the norm, filling our lives with the expected. It takes courage to be different, to shoot out of the water and into the sky.

The Fabulous February Grace!

I have known for a long time that writers are a rare breed of folk. From my volunteer work with Skagit Valley Writers League to Whidbey Island Writers Association and the Northwest Institute for Literary Arts to brick and mortar book sellers: authors create as much community as they can, helping each other, encouraging each other–making sure we all have a voice uniquely our own, and through our critique groups, making sure our commas are in the right places…

 

I was approached by an outstanding author, February Grace, recently for an interview. It’s exciting really – to be interviewed by such an amazing author! Here is the link to what we talked about on her vibrant and brilliant Clockwork Conversations. I thought you might like to get to know the author behind all the fabulousness that is February Grace.

So, without further ado, here is the dazzling Ms. Grace …

 

February Grace is an author, poet, and artist from Southeast Michigan. In previous novels, she has introduced readers to characters with clockwork hearts, told of romantic modern-day fairy godparents, and reimagined a legend, centuries old. Now, in her fifth novel with Booktrope, readers will board the special at WISHING CROSS STATION and embark on a trip through time. She is more than mildly obsessed with clocks, music, colors, meteor showers, and steam engines.

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be, and why?

FG: If I won the lottery tomorrow, I would buy a house in Golden Oak, which is a new housing development that is right INSIDE Walt Disney World. Yes, for a price (a pretty one LOL)  you can actually live at Walt Disney World. That would be my dream come true… to always be within fifteen minutes of EPCOT and The Magic Kingdom… I can’t think of anything that could be more amazing than that. Because I grew up on Disney, going back there always feels like going home.

What is the one thing that’s sure to make you smile and inspire you the most?

FG: When someone close to me say something encouraging to me about art or writing. It doesn’t have to happen often; I can go for ages on one positive, encouraging remark. Those times they say things like “Write what your heart tells you,” and “Paint what you want,” or “You don’t have anything to prove, tell the story you want to tell…” mean the world to me. As far as making me smile, my sweet little gray and white kitty hugging his favorite toy, a stuffed doll of Elsa from Frozen, never fails to do the trick. The cute, people. I tell you, it’s overwhelming, the cute.

Who’s your favorite author? What’s your favorite genre? Why?

FG: Tough to nail it down– but I have to say I think my favorite author of all time was the poet Tennyson. If you’d asked me that question before I might have said Charlotte Bronte or Douglas Adams (and different as they are, they are in my top three with Lord Alfred) but there is just something about Tennyson’s words that cast a spell over me. I am very fond of non-fiction books as well, especially those about Temperament Theory. In that instance, Dr. Keirsey is my favorite author. So it varies.

Love stories and poems, of course, are my all time favorites to read but the good thing is that romance crosses genres so I can find it almost anywhere I want to. And if I can’t find the story I was looking for, sometimes I write it myself! :~)

When thinking about your own work, are you most like Virginia Woolf, Laura Ingalls Wilder, J.D. Robb, or _______? Give us an example.

Ooo, that is a hard one. I honestly have no idea. I don’t compare myself to other writers when I’m writing because my characters tell the story– I just take dictation. I guess I would have to leave it up to my readers whether or not my work reminded them of anyone else’s and honestly, I think that I would find it the best thing of all if it didn’t. It would be amazing to have my work thought of as having a voice of its own.

Who is your favorite character?

In one of my books or in any book in general? So difficult to choose. The easy answer is Jane Eyre but the more realistic answer is Arthur Dent from Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Arthur is every man/person, you can relate to his struggles in a very human way. And no one wrote humor like Douglas Adams could.

You work in two genres, fantasy and steampunk, is it fair to ask which one you like better? (sorry I had to ask )

I actually consider my main genre to be romance. I wrote a literary romance with Steampunk embellishments, (Godspeed) and I wrote a duology about modern fairy godparents (Of Stardust and In Starlight) and those were fantasy romance. Then I wrote a very romantic fairy-tale retelling and now I am writing a fantasy/time travel story that is more than anything else also a romance. So though I don’t write contemporary romance, romance is definitely my focus in all my stories, love is the point of it all, to me, after all!

Finish this sentence: I write because…

… I want to touch people’s hearts. I hope to give them something, or someone in the form of a character, to remember and treasure. If I can give readers a moment/experience like that, then there’s nothing more I could ask for as a writer or artist.

Thank you so much for having me as your guest!

~*~

You can learn more about February Grace and her writing by visiting her at www.februarywriter.blogspot.com or connecting on Twitter @februarygrace

Check out her books here – or go to your favorite bookseller!

 Barnes and Noble or Amazon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    Amazon or Barnes and Noble

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Amazon,  Alibris, or Barnes and Noble

The Gyroscopic Effect

The first of anything is a scary deal. I remember when I first learned how to ride a bike. My uncle and my dad ran alongside me as my legs pumped the pedals up and down. The bike went forward, wobbling and shaking and I couldn’t tell if the bike was doing that or if all the jiggles were from me. Eventually I got the hang of it, like a gyroscopic force propelling me forward, steady on my own. (Okay, you physics wizards, I know there’s more to it than gyroscopic force when riding a bike: force, angles, equations—good Lord, let me have this one!) Soon after that, got my very first bicycle.

I’ve heard it said that a person never forgets how to ride a bike.

I haven’t been on a bicycle for over three decades—and I would never want to say that I’ve lost the knack, that stuff that propels me forward, but it is hard to come by, once it’s been gone.

I’m going to ride a bike this year. I’m not giving up.

 

Riding a bike is a little like writing a story—a little shaky at first, I mean, after all, the characters are new, the plot’s barely visible, where is the storyline going?

When I am able to turn off my inner editor, my characters appear, one by one. Some are shy about introducing themselves. They reveal their innermost thoughts and motivations in a painfully slow way. Sometimes they come up flat—meaning, are they just wallpaper? Stick figures? A bookmark to hold a place, or keep another character in line?

When that happens, it’s a signal to me to spend a little more effort on them—maybe work up a character sketch, do an interview: What’s your favorite color? What do you like to eat? What are you wearing? It takes time, but the reveal is well worth the effort.

Other characters are rich from the start. They walk into my writing room and plop down on the couch and stare at me until I stop to listen…. What are they saying? Mostly these are primary characters, arrogant characters. These are the people who fill a room, engaging everyone. They talk loud—I don’t know why. They may start singing. They laugh and I laugh along with them. They’re in a word, contagious.

The next trick is to get these characters in a room together, put them in impossible situations, present them with outrageous odds. A writing teacher once said to me, “Be mean to your characters!”

So, I write scene after scene, shaky at first, not really knowing what might be happening, what my subconscious, the universe, the whatever—is attempting to do with the words on the page, and then suddenly my fingers are flying, the critic is turned off and something else takes over. The story is off and running, writing itself, you might say.

Gyroscopic Effect on Story?

Let’s just call it that for now.

Varo is an interesting character. He came to me in shadows, unwilling to show himself fully. Oh, he was handsome—as most of my male leads are—and he was dangerous. I could tell that from the

way he whispered in my ear… but that didn’t matter to Cassandra. I can’t wait for you to discover what she did when she first met him…

 

Curse of the Seven 70s available now on Barnes & Noble and Amazon