Cynthia Harrison's Blog, page 8
July 13, 2020
Jane’s Cover!
I just got the finalized book cover for Jane yesterday. I have been slapping it up everywhere I can. I used the larger jpg they sent on this page. (We get four sizes). With my publisher, authors fill out a art fact cover sheet. You can list three images and mine were blue sky, white sand, palm tree. The artist, Diana Carlile, did such a good job adding to that very brief description. I really like how she used all caps in the title and all lower case for my name. And the nice coordinated colors.
There’s another thing authors can do on our art fact cover sheets. We can check a box for “no people” on the cover. Which I did. A few times, when I had people on a cover, they came as a shock to me, like, that’s not who I pictured when I was writing the story. The shirtless man was really a disappointment because he looked nothing like my husband. Next book, I requested “no shirtless men” and got one in a wife-beater.
[image error]
This cover is among my favorites. I love The Paris Notebook cover, which was my first with The Wild Rose Press. She’s a teacher so that apple just makes me smile. Paradise Fields is my only book of poetry (it was privately printed and is now out of print) and I have a photo from one of my sons on the front and another from my other son on the back cover. So that’s special, as is Sister Issues that has a post-it note with my daughter-in-law’s photo with her sister. And now this sweet Jane cover. Still no pub date but things should start happening pretty fast now 
The Crash
I had been writing all day and didn’t stop for lunch. When I finally quit, Al was home from golf and I put the chicken in the oven. But I was so hungry, I couldn’t wait. While Al showered, I ripped into a bag of chips and ate a few cookies, I finished off the last little scoop of ice cream. Then I was full and I didn’t want dinner. Still I chopped up the salad while I waited for the chicken to bake. I was on a high from writing and probably had a sugar buzz as well.
When Al reappeared, I said “When exactly are we moving to Florida next year? Next summer?” He said “I’m not even sure I want to move to Florida.” I was upset, but I knew what he meant. It’s so difficult to think about moving from a place you’ve lived all your life plus we have a really nice house here in Michigan; it’s the nicest house I’ve ever lived in. Still, we made a plan, and I love Florida, and he was backing out! My anxiety kicked in big time. He talked about everything happening with the pandemic and the economy, about how he will move there, have no friends, and what’s he supposed to do?
The friend thing is very hard. All my good friends live here too. We’ve met people in Florida, people we really like, but wow, to leave those friendships forged through decades. That would be hard. Al went to high school with his best friends. They go to Deep Purple and all those other aging guitar hero concerts together. They go to Lions games and NASCAR together. Well probably not this year, but I knew how he felt. I felt the same. We will miss our Michigan friends. Lucky for me my bestie from high school lives in Florida now and another of my best friends recently bought in Florida and is mulling a full time move. Plus my dad lives there. Al’s dad is here. And he’s almost 89. He lives with Al’s sister, but still. We will miss him.
I thought we were all set and in perfect agreement and here we were at odds over a very major thing. The oven dinged. Chicken was done. I said I wasn’t hungry and admitted I’d skipped lunch and snacked a little. He said “You’re out of shape and eating crap. You’re going to die from diabetes.”
On top of the Florida discussion, that was just too much. It didn’t help that I heard “You’re fat and ugly and a pig…you’re going to die.”
I do that. I turn on myself, make things more negative than they are. I read later that same night that 70% of most peoples’ thoughts are negative. I believe it. As much as I try to be cool, calm and collected, sometimes I lose it. But instead of yelling and screaming, I went inside and shut down and berated myself even more. We didn’t speak until later the next day, after I had calmed down and thought everything out. All our 35 years of married life, Al has never mentioned my weight or my eating habits.
We talked about that first. He reminded me that he never said I was fat, but yes, he was worried when I had chips, ice cream and cookies for dinner, especially as we both knew I had a doctor appointment this week and she’d been warning me about diabetes, how dangerous my sugar number was, how soon I’d need medication if I didn’t manage my diet. And I have tried! I usually don’t eat like but I’ve let myself indulge more since the pandemic hit and then I’d let myself get too hungry.
Have I said that Al is a very healthy eater and he can have a bag of chips or box of cookies in the house for a month? Ditto ice cream. The way I keep a lid on my sugar addiction is to not have it in the house, but he’s retired now, and he can eat those foods moderately. Then with the pandemic, all my good habits went out the window. All my dance and yoga classes were closed. I was afraid to go for walks around the bayou, even though Al asked me every day. I’m sure I’ve gained weight but I am also afraid to get on the scale.
I asked Al a lot of questions about the way I look. I mean, I’m 65. I have grey hair. Most days I don’t do anything with it except let it fall into its natural curl. And I don’t wear make up plus dress more for comfort than anything. I hate wearing a bra, so at home I don’t. He said none of that bothered him and he said I’m pretty without make up! Shocking, because I am not. But it’s good he thinks I am. He also said he does not think I’m fat. He meant it. We talked about what exactly “out of shape” meant. He said “not getting exercise, sitting in a chair writing all day.” Guilty.
Then we moved on to Florida. I got him to promise we’d move there whenever this whole world, and especially the USA, gets a grip on this virus. Finally I said I’d stay with him here in Michigan if the housing market tanked and interest rates went sky high or any of the other financial things that can throw a retirement into chaos. Like disease. Like diabetes. He said he’d move and I said I’d stay, we are in this together all the way, either way. The truth is we just have to wait and see.
Writing about Al’s retirement has changed since the pandemic but this is the first time in six months we had a huge blow out fight. And we got through it. We even went to the park on Saturday and took a walk together. Because when he’s right, he’s right.
July 6, 2020
Another Cliff Dive
Working on the new manuscript, currently titled Book 2 Jane. It’s going slow as I don’t know everything yet. I don’t even have a solid subplot idea. It took me a week to think up a first scene that contained an decent hook. There’s still one pivotal piece of information I’m dissatisfied with in this scene. I just need to do a little more research. The placeholder clue I’m unhappy with is okay, it’s a cheap trick, but it works. For now.
Some days, starting a new book feels like diving off a mountain cliff on purpose. Why would I want to do that again? Why does anybody do that in the first place? I tell myself it will be fun once I know more. Once I get going. Once I figure out who the murderer is and also his motive. IRL murderers are almost always men. At least I don’t have to worry about that. Murderer is a man, case closed.
Meanwhile, did everybody get a bigger royalty check this quarter because of the lock down? Mine was much larger than usual, and I haven’t had a book out in almost two years. Nor have I done a lick of promo. I don’t usually look at my Amazon ratings or sales figures, because that can be depressing, so this uptick in sales came out of the blue.
I don’t write for money, which is a good thing, because I don’t make much. If it wasn’t for Covid, I could take my husband out for a fancy dinner on this “big” check today. And maybe leave the tip, too. Why do I write again? I can’t remember. I used to like it. I liked writing that scene yesterday. I’ll probably like writing again tomorrow. I didn’t write any new words today but I figured one or two things out, so I should be happy with that.
So here’s my list. I write because 1. I (usually) like it 2. it’s nice to have books with my name on them on my bookshelves. 3. writers are some of my best friends and we have lots in common. 4. I can’t read ALL the time.
Rereading #2, it’s embarrassing, because it’s an ego trip, but it’s true.
June 29, 2020
Adjustments
Sometimes, you need to close the bar. I applaud the states who are doing so, while still hoping for cocktails when I go out to a restaurant for the first time since the start of this pandemic. Adult beverages are part of the fun and they reduce Covid anxiety. We decided on a restaurant that has a large open air deck with a scenic lake across the road. We decided to go at 2:30 in the afternoon to avoid the both lunch and dinner crowds. We chose a day when no rain is expected. Naturally we will wear masks until seated.
These are minimal adjustments.
I thought flower shopping with Al would be better than going alone, a good adjustment, shifting some of the heavy work onto him. I was excited about not having to lift fifty pound bags of dirt. We bought petunias in red, white and blue for the front steps. I popped them into decorative pots, to be properly planted another day, while Al vacuumed the loose flower debris out the car.
Our larger urns, for herbs on the deck, were still full of last years’ dead leaves. The dried lavender still smelled like heaven. I pulled the withered plants out and popped in new lavender. Shortly after that, problems arose. I have a little gardening spade. If Al could just pick up the big bag of dirt and slowly fill the pot that would be great. He, however, was still vacuuming.
Al (I think I mentioned) is meticulous in all he does. But I convinced him to stop vacuuming the car and come over and give me a hand. I knew how I had to do this job alone in years past. Having him help would make everything easier. Eventually he came over and did the heavy work while I fussed with the plants, patting them into place.
What else? he said, eyeing his shop vac with longing. I gave him a list of what we needed to do, including him taking the large filled urns ten steps up to the deck. He looked up from the driveway, where we had unloaded and were planting, dropped the tool in his hand, and said “Call my committee man!”
I laughed. Al was in a union all his working life and he’s used that sentence before. Then he leaned against the garage wall and waited, arms crossed. And he wasn’t laughing. “That’s what I would do if I was at work. You call me away from the job at hand (I assumed he still wanted to vacuum some more) and then you tell me to do this, that and the other thing, and I can only do one job at a time!”
I didn’t remind him that he often watches television and reads his iPad at the same time, I just said “Shhh. The neighbor” as his voice was a bit loud. He settled down and we worked on the second urn together. He got the urns up to the deck, placed not where I would have, but I wasn’t going to press my luck. Retirement, like the pandemic, is an adjustment. For both of us.
June 22, 2020
Lucky
You may not know this about me, but I’ve been married three times. Once when I was 18, then at 20, then at 30. Third time’s the charm; we’ve been married 35 years. Retirement agrees with Al as you can see by the twinkle in his eyes. He was actually telling me not to take his picture but I had to, because it tells so much about him.
He does dishes. He makes coffee every morning. He cooks, he cleans, and he golfs. Golf may be the most important thing he does for me, as when he leaves the house with his clubs, I write. Working the second novel in my new series “Jane in St Pete Mysteries” and I’m loving it. So happy Al and I have naturally evolved into spending time together but also time apart. We are both of the same mind about that.
Yesterday he cleaned the basement, which is full of stuff, including furniture we thought we wanted from our old house, but then realized didn’t fit here.. He was down there for hours. Now I can gather up my smaller stuff, mostly for donation (books, knick knacks, old clothes, old decor). Our original plan was to get a booth at the Armada Flea Market but the virus has made that not such a good plan. This is better.
We’ve been home from Florida for five weeks and I kept wanting him to vacuum the spider webs and make space, but I didn’t say anything. I knew how busy he was cleaning the deck, bringing up the patio furniture, fixing his car, fixing the ice machine in the fridge, fixing the AC, installing a new humidifier, and a million other little things.
We came home to a fire alarm beeping, even though he changed all the batteries before we left. So there was that. Every day he didn’t golf, he was playing catch up with this house. But yesterday was the day! Never has the sound of a shop vac sounded more dear to my heart.
Oh and did I say he grocery shops? And reads the sale papers. And finds all the deals. When I was a single mom, before I met Al, I had to watch every penny. I kept a running tab in my head and scrutinized prices. It was painful but my boys were young so PBJ, hot dogs and mac and cheese all sounded great to them. After Al and I were married, I vowed to never look at a price in the grocery store again. And I haven’t. I just buy what I want.
The best thing about Al’s retirement is not that he helps me with chores (Although he cleans the bathrooms and polishes the wood floors and will pitch in on anything else I need help with.) or that he keeps the cars running and the appliances too. It’s his financial sense. He’s like my own personal financial consultant. I feel safe.
Also, he’s fun. And funny. Even during a pandemic.
June 15, 2020
Close To You
Last week I finally came out of the house for something other than groceries. My book group met in our host’s backyard, with chairs social distance, and pizza and salad at a table also away from the chairs. I’ve been in this book group for a long time. At least ten years, probably more. These women have all become good friends of mine.
It was hard not to hug them! But I managed to keep my arms to myself. As for food, I think there was a method to it, but at the time, I just got up and got a plate with another person at the table and helped myself. Thinking about it later, after everyone went up one by one, I decided to stay in my chair the remainder of our time together.
We are a book group who actually reads and discusses the books. And we did some of that, but it was more difficult. More often than not, there were three groups talking to each other. This sometimes happens at other meetings too, before social distancing. I always want to hear both conversations and this time I knew there was no way to hear all three conversations.
It was nice to get out, nice to see friends, but I don’t care for the social distance aspect of it at all. Everyone has their own idea of how careful to be, and nobody knows what anybody else expects, so it’s a little awkward. Tomorrow, there’s a gathering in my community at a shared space we call the flagpole, because brick pavers surround a flag in the middle of a large circle. This area is larger than the gazebo in my backyard, so the planners of this cocktail hour thought it would be better to meet in the bigger space.
The plan sounds okay, but having lived through one much smaller group gathering at a distance, I know I’ll dislike it. They asked that we bring our own chair, our own food, our own drinks. We usually have a communal food table and hardly anybody sits. A cocktail party is for mingling, for catching up with everyone. This is not going to be that. It will be sitting in a chair at a safe social distance from everyone but the people on either side. And no hugging!!!
The Zoom workshop over the weekend had a similar disconnect. The content was fine, but I didn’t feel the energy in the room like I do with real people. It’s difficult to make eye contact with thumbnail pics, people’s mics were all muted so there were no impromptu questions, no give and take. Instead questions ran down the side of the screen, which distracted me a bit. It went okay, but this would not be my preferred mode of teaching.
Al and I have not gone out to dinner yet, but a friend who did go out to a favorite Italian place said it was just as if the pandemic never happened. Yes, it was just 50% capacity, yes, the waiter wore a mask, yes, there were clear Plexiglas shields further dividing the booths, but none of that mattered. It felt to her like things used to be. Before.
Also, still no answer at my hairdresser’s phone despite salons officially opening here in our part of Michigan today. They’re usually closed on Mondays, as are many salons, so I won’t go into a decline about that just yet. The book group were all saying they had booked appointments! Somebody made me laugh when she said she just wasn’t ready to be gray yet. We are all in our 60s and 70s. If not now, when?
I do know that many women dye their hair their entire lives. And leave instructions for the undertaker to touch up their roots, should there be any when they die. But I’m so used to being a silver, that part doesn’t bother me. I just want a hair cut. And I want small businesses to open again and thrive. But most of all I want to be close to people again.
June 8, 2020
Opening!
Golf is now open and Al has a league twice a week so that’s nice for me as I’ve been working on the Short Story Mystery Workshop I am giving online this coming Saturday. I sometimes write with Al home, but my office has no door to close, and he’ll stop by with random thoughts. So golf gives me time alone to build this workshop. Intrigued? You can register here.
A friend of Al’s stopped by for a minute last week and I refrained from hugging him. With things opening up, I worry I’ll hug my hairdresser when I see her. If I see her. The little shop in town I go to…I hope it has hung on through this. I called but the phone just rang and rang. I’m taking it as a good sign that the phone is not disconnected.
The friend asked me how Al is doing with all the time off. “Bored out of his mind, I bet,” he said. Nope. Not even a little. He’s always up to something. Yesterday he washed the windows while I finished up my notes for the workshop. I think, if you include the door windows, which he cleaned too, it’s something like 14 windows. That kept him busy
June 1, 2020
Welcoming the Unwelcome
I bought this book shortly after the coronavirus stormed into the United States. Pema is one of my favorite spiritual writers and this is her first book in several years. It was published in October 2019. Before the virus, before one hundred thousand American lives were lost in a few short months, before massive unemployment, before the nationally televised murder of George Lloyd by a police officer, before the peaceful protests that troublemakers turned ugly.
I’m so glad I’ve had it to read, had these words to hold on to, in such dark times. It helps. Just from the title, you’d think “Welcoming the Unwelcome” why would you want to do that? If the unwelcome knocks at your door, or smashes a window to get in, it’s there. The unwelcome is here. It is not only at our door, it’s in our house, it’s standing before us.
In that moment, when the unwelcome stands right in front of us, there is something we can do. We breath it in with a prayer, we take this terrible truth in, hold it in our hearts, ask for it to be transformed and breath out hope, peace, calm. This is the Buddhist practice of tonglen. You do not have to be a Buddhist to use it.
It can be used in any situation, at any moment. Now, after the brutal week we have all had, is a good time to practice this simple way of being wide awake, fully human. It’s like a prayer, but it’s a little more active than a prayer. It’s just you, taking on this terrible time, taking it in, welcoming it, even. Holding it in your heart in the hope that one day all being will be free from suffering.
I finished the book last night and I’ll be starting it over again tonight. It is a book for our times, for people in pain. The last chapter “Mission Impossible” explains that by practicing tonglen, which is really the “longing to help all beings” is something that can “draw us out of ourselves, out and out, until we enter the realm of vast mind and vast heart.”
Vast mind. Vast heart. That sounds better than where I’ve been hanging out this week, watching, over and over, an innocent man be murdered by a cop, while other cops stood around and watched like it was no big deal. Instead of staying there passively watching that endless loop of quietly violent video, we can step outside a little. Instead of seeing the world as brutal and happiness as futile, instead of becoming depressed or anxious, we can, with practice, have hope, become optimistic.
This is the value of meditation and the special form of mediation called tonglen. This is how we welcome the unwelcome. It’s here anyway, we might as well use it to heal our hearts. And when we do this, we plant seeds for a peaceful future.
May 25, 2020
On Rules and Breaking Them
In writing and in life, there are rules. The words “creative” and “writing” don’t always coexist, even for fiction writers. Yes, it’s creative to come up with a great plot full of surprises and twists and insights, but in setting that plot down on the page, there are constant rules. Sentences! Spelling! Grammar! And so on.
Genre writers have even more rules. Happy Ever After for romance writers. The criminal will be captured and made to pay in mystery. Those are the biggest rules and there are so many more that, should you be lucky enough to find an editor or agent to read your manuscript, you’ll hear them all. There are also books and workshops and classes and blog posts that will give you the rules as they understand them. Many writers will attempt to abide by these rules because they want to be published.
Yet something strange happens if you adhere too closely to these rules as a writer. You lose the creative impulse that spurred you on to write in the first place. You paint by number. You give your publisher and your readers more of the same, book after book. Readers expect it. Publishers demand it.
The art of creating something new is the thrill and now it’s gone. But if you persist in your specific vision, if your work is both original and compelling, it might win you acclaim, prizes and money. Or not. So following the rules as a creative writer brings risk, just as, recently, gathering in public is a risk. Certainly if you are not wearing a mask, you pose a risk to others.
I hate the mask, but I wear it because I try to live by the rule of “First, do no harm.” If you are out in public in a crowd without a mask, you may be doing many people harm. I used to suffer with my mask and become annoyed, even angered, by those who went without. Why were they being so selfish? Didn’t they understand that the mask is not only to protect themselves, but to protect others?
There are several answers to this question of why people do not obey the health guidelines to wear a mask in pubic. There’s not a thing I can do to change a single one of these folks’ minds. I wouldn’t even try. So I simmer in anger and bitterness, which I dislike almost as much as the mask.
The Buddhists have a solution, of sorts, to my anger at people who refuse to wear masks in public. It’s not easy, but it works. Anger and other negative emotions are the perfect opportunity to practice compassion. The practice goes like this: you find yourself angry because the person is not following a rule, you recognize you are angry, you turn your anger into prayer for this person, and for all persons like them.
It’s akin to the Christian rule to love your enemy. Turn the other cheek. “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do,” said Jesus on the cross. “May all humans be free from suffering,” loosely translates the practice of turning your own anger into compassion. For a person not wearing a mask in a crowded public space, the prayer might be “May this person (or these people) awaken to the need to protect their brothers and sisters from this virus.”
On this Memorial Day, I give thanks to all the women and men who have lost their lives fighting wars for our country. And I honor all of those who have lost the fight against this virus. Namaste.
