Cynthia Harrison's Blog, page 53

Have Mini-Bar, Will Travel

I’m going to a writer’s conference. Have not been to one is so long, well, except the one I worked on for DWW. Just as I like being a student more than a teacher, I like attending conferences more than planning them. So I am greatly looking forward to this. In fact, I’m packing a mini-bar because the hotel doesn’t have one.

Here’s a nice basic mini-bar menu: ice, martini shaker, martini glasses, toothpicks and blue cheese olives, vodka, teeny bottle of vermouth, wine, water, and espresso pocket coffee. When I pack a mini-bar, it’s not for drinking and driving. It is for arrival at destination when you just want to relax.

Al and I took a road trip last year and I got so sick we unexpectedly had to stop for the night in Kentucky. I could not eat or drink; I couldn’t even read. So Al went out for food and a beer, and came back to the news that we were in a dry county. When I pack a mini-bar for Al and myself, I always throw in a couple of those cute Crown Royal shots. He was cheered.

Today, my friend is driving, which takes the pressure off me. The weather is not cooperating at all, and it feels like the kind of day I’d rather stay home. We’re not leaving until late afternoon, so I’m hoping the sun peeks out at some point. The conference is a couple hours away, and  right now there’s a powdering dusting of new snow plus a kind of hazy fog. The drive, for her, might be a white-knuckle adventure. She will surely appreciate a martini when we arrive safely at our destination.

Here’s the Plan

I realized yesterday that I’ve published a book a year for the last four years:) Today I updated my bio page. I remember so clearly wanting all those book covers on my website. And presto! They’re here. Now my plan is to publish two books a year, one paranormal like Gypsy, the other my Blue Lake series.

I am hoping readers will not get confused with same name/two genres. That’s assuming a lot. Like that I will have lots of readers who might read everything I write including this update. Blog needs an update. Or maybe it’s time to rest? Get it off the front page? Suggestions welcome.

The Mighty Book Blogger

Visit “A Woman’s Wisdom”

Before Twitter and Facebook, I read blogs like other people read the newspaper. Now, not so much. I might click on someone’s blog from Twitter, but my blog roll gets way less attention than it used to…except when it comes to book bloggers. There are so many good ones, and they help me sort out a good indie read from those that don’t make the cut.

I met book blogger Bodicia when she reviewed two of my novels, Blue Heaven and The Paris Notebook. These are both small press releases from The Wild Rose Press. I thanked her and after she reviewed The Paris Notebook, we continued our email conversation, and I became a firm fan of her blog.

“A Woman’s Wisdom” does more than blog about books. There are special mentions and guest posts. Always smart and funny people. Bodicia also posts her own musings. She’s fun to read. Her prose pulls you into her house, sits you at her kitchen table, sipping tea while she  chats about this or that.

While Bodicia is the book blogger I know best, there are others who do a fair and honest job of reviewing indie reads. I like imagining  a whole world of book bloggers out there, working away to make our indie reading pure pleasure.

Gypsy Live!

 

I’ve been working on getting Gypsy up on Kindle. If you’ve never done this, it is in some ways so easy and in other ways maddening. I was having a bit of a hard time convincing Amazon I’d like the 70% royalty rate when suddenly I get a message “Done! Gypsy will be live soon”

There were more things I wanted to do first, but hey, I got the important stuff done. Except that 70% which is pending. I’ll make it happen. I’m determined. But so hey another book. I just keep popping them out like a bunny having babies.

Memoir Update

I have abandoned the memoir project and feel better for it. To update other writers who may be considering entering this competition, some language in the rules concerned me enough to pull the plug on my not-progressing-anyway memoir. The first is that the memoir must be fully vetted by the entrant (you) for permissions from anyone who is mentioned in the work.

Ah, but my plan was to write it, and if by some miracle I became a finalist, I would then ask permission. My memoir takes place when I was 15-20, often homeless, shiftless, hungry. Just about everyone who made my life very difficult then is still alive. So…that solved my problem with what to write next. I do have this memoir, in a notebook, with many fictionalized stories of this fecund time in my life. Someday I’ll publish it, maybe, just not today.

But what if you have a memoir that wouldn’t hurt anyone else’s feelings at all? What if it’s an internal struggle, like victory over depression, or a medical issue, like winning the cancer war? Nobody’s going to sue you for libel on that account. However, there is more language that might stop you short. The sponsors claim every entry as their property, and further, they can use it any way they want to. This is amazing! I thought AARP was in the business of helping seniors, but the “unconditional, irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to publish, use, adapt, edit and/or modify” a writer’s entry “without limitation, and without consideration to the entrant” seems very unfair to me.

And we don’t even get to be called writers, but “entrants” ~ I think that galls me the most. Anyway, my writing to-do list just got much shorter. And for that I’m thrilled. Not so thrilled that I need to find my way back to my WIP, but it’s time. My fingers have healed: the holidays are finished. It’s time to write.

 

The Necklace

This Christmas season has been sensational so far. And I’m not just talking gifts, or food, but fun shared and writing accomplished with a giant dollop of lazy reading thrown in. Add to that the fact that school is out, I have a free winter, and lots of plans. Plus the snow has been lovely.

It wouldn’t be life if there wasn’t some mischief in the mix, and as usual, I whipped up some of my own. We had the brilliant idea this year to do all our shopping online and not bother with stores and post offices. Daily, new packages would arrive. We had to sort out if it was in my name was this because it was my gift from Al? Or was it mine to him? Or was it one from the kids to Al that needed wrapping?

We had a pretty good organizational method for this, but one thing we did not reckon on was that not every e-retailer is as nice as Amazon when it comes to hiding the bill in a big yellow envelope saying to keep the surprise, do not open until after Christmas. One such package was delivered addressed to Al. My gift from Al was already wrapped and under the tree. It looked like the size of a book so I was thinking maybe a new tablet.

Al said the new package was just something for a house project. The receipt wasn’t in the box, but under it. All this on the porch, which is simply shoddy delivery. Hey at least they tucked the receipt under the box so it wouldn’t blow away.

I brought the offensive slip of paper inside and absently peeked. It was house stuff, not a gift. No problem. Except at the bottom of the listed items, it said ”amethyst necklace.” Al feigned complete ignorance, pointing out we’d said one gift each, and he’d gotten mine. There it was, under the tree, if I cared to look. My mind flashed to Emma Thompson finding the necklace in her husband’s pocket, thinking it was hers, and getting a book instead. I usually trust Al 100%. He is just not that kind of guy, not a cheater. He’s too shy, for one. Also, he’s loyal. And he loves me.

So he’s getting indignant about me going on and on about it, but finally he makes a joke “You’ll just have to wait to find out.” This was maybe ten days before Christmas. An eternity. The box sat unwrapped, still sealed, on the counter in the laundry room where he likes to let his junk mail and newspapers accumulate until I organize it all (while tossing the one crucial thing he had been specifically saving). I did my sweep of the countertop and put the box on his shelf in the wardrobe closet.

Al remained uninterested in the box and I grew more curious. I looked for the receipt. It had disappeared. Where had I put it after the shock of seeing that necklace on the invoice? This made my imaginary case against Al stronger yet. He wouldn’t? Would he? It’s true he’s hardly ever home. All that work. Or was it work? The package sat there until Christmas morning, where, before he had any coffee, before any gaily wrapped gifts were distributed, I brought it to him and said “open it.”

He shook his head. “Okay.” He opened the box and out spilled a little cheap necklace like thing, tucked among the household hardware items. “Is this it?” I was relieved when I thought I caught a glimpse of a tiny chip of purple. I took it out of the plastic packet. “Yes, this must be it.”

“But I didn’t order that,” Al said. “Musta been a freebie.” Case solved. Or was it? I certainly didn’t want that necklace. And why would a store include that type of freebie with hardware? Perhaps they thought that men who ordered house fixing things for the holidays needed a bit of help in the choosing proper gifts department.

Finally it was time to get down to the real business of Christmas, which was opening presents from the kids, sending texts, having Facetime. Tim had on the Red Wings jersey we got him. I unwrapped the cookbook they’d sent. This goes on for a bit because Facetime is not totally reliable so there’s much flickering out and calling back and finally giving in and just chatting in the old-fashioned phone way.

After the calls, we had coffee and tea and warm steel cut oats laced with sweet cherries and pecans. Okay, we had cookies too. Also Rice Crispy Treats. Finally it was time for me to open my tablet. I hazily warned myself to be pleased even though I’ve got a perfectly good iPad. White box. Inside that a red box. And inside the red box, this

Writing Again

Finally, almost two weeks after I sliced my writing fingers open, I am back to writing. Had a serious pen and paper session that lasted a few hours and blasted through a block that has been with me for most of my life. Finally, I’ve started working on a memoir.

I still plan to indie pub Gypsy on December 26, so I’m keeping the free document up until then. I also aim to finish ‘the novel of my heart’ which is very close to done. This is the next book I’m sending to my publisher and my first attempt to publish women’s fiction. I imagine that this winter will be waiting and  editing, but also working on the memoir.

I don’t want to say anything else except I am writing a memoir that I plan to publish and it takes place in the space of five eventful years of my life. You couldn’t make this stuff up. Anyway, now I’m going to take those first scrawled pages and type them into a Word document.

It feels so good to be writing again.

Happy Holidays

 

As promised, Gypsy is ready for reading. Access the entire novel here: gypsy 20131214. If you read the first 15 scenes, I left off a bit into Chapter Six. Enjoy!

In Stitches

I sliced some skin on my two favorite fingers the other day, requiring stitches and pain pills. Right hand, index and thumb. This morning I discovered that I need these exact digits to zip my jeans. Looks like yoga pants for the holidays. Not easy to type either, so keeping this short. I’ll be back when I heal. Meanwhile have yourselves a good holiday season.

MaddAddam

My book group is coming over tomorrow. We are not discussing the book, MaddAddam, the final novel in a dystopian trilogy by Margaret Atwood, because in November we decided to reread The Year of the Flood (Book 2 in the trilogy), since we had read it several years before and wanted to be fresh for MaddAddam. I was the only one who got through The Year of the Flood. Not only did I get through it, I loved it all over again and couldn’t wait to read MaddAddam.

It is fine that the rest of the group is done with dystopia for now. We’ve read several. Several series, even. However, now I have nobody to discuss MaddAddam with…there are just a few things I keep thinking about. One, it’s fiction. Liking the story does not mean I like depressing future scenarios in which almost everyone on the planet dies. I find them fascinating, horrible, possible. But as a story, this novel works like any other. There are good guys and bad guys. Who will win? What’s at stake? How will it end?

To say that Atwood’s novel is “like any other” in a conventional story way is not to say it is ordinary. It’s told with great skill and humanity and cunning  humor and honest reckoning. I loved it all, the characters, the world, the premise. Isn’t every dystopian novel at its core a cautionary tale? Yet it can be read on several levels. How deep do you want to go? She’ll take you there.

This is a woman who has written over 40 works. A lifetime of words. I went back to my collection and looked at her first photos in the earliest books and there is Atwood, fair-skinned and red corkscrewed hippie hair. Young and beautiful. And now her cover photo shows the passage of time. Her hair is silvery white and while her skin has aged, it is still soft and she is still beautiful. For some, aging is a thing to be disguised, perhaps because aging brings death closer. For Atwood, aging is a triumph. I’m still here, she seems to say, and I’m still writing. Still inventing new ways to tell the human story. 

I like it that she is not afraid to show her age. I like it that she is not afraid to face what might be a possible future for feckless humanity. After the book ends, she writes this note “Although MaddAddam is a work of fiction, it does not include any technologies or biobeings that already do not exist, are not under construction, or are not possible in theory.” Atwood calls this genre not science fiction but speculative fiction. What if… I won’t spoil the end of the book. It is too good, and comes around wonderfully in a way I would not have imagined when I started on this journey with Oryx & Crake (first in the trilogy).