Arleen Williams's Blog, page 26

Laying Bricks: A Wall of Knowledge

I am pleased to announce that Biking Uphill is on a virtual tour this week. I hope you enjoy this guest post I wrote for one of today's tour stops. Check it out HERE or read below.



My father was a steamfitter, not a bricklayer, and yet he built a house of red brick, a big square box of a house three stories tall with a chimney from basement to rooftop. As a child I watched my father lay those bricks, one upon next, mortar troweled onto one large side and each both short ends oozing through the holes.
The other day at a large supermarket in my Seattle neighborhood I saw a free-standing wall of stacked beer cases, and I could hear my father's snicker, see his head shaking in disbelief. I imagined what would have happened to this wall in the earthquake in the recent San Francisco earthquake. For you see, unlike the careful placed bricks in the walls of my childhood home, staggered by a half brick for structural stability, the beer cases were aligned one atop the next. I was tempted to give the wall a tiny push. I hoped no child would unintentionally do so. My father was not an educated man, but he was a reader and he had abundant common-sense and the ability to figure out most challenges he faced. Still, he and my mother were determined their daughters attend college.
Now I teach language and write books. As I teach, I think of grammar as the mortar holding vocabulary together and language acquisition as a wall of knowledge that grows one row of brick at a time.
As a writer, I think of strong verbs and concrete nouns as the bricks of a solid piece of writing, the mortar as the essential connections holding the story together. A bricklayer can lay bricks in a variety of patterns to create both beauty and utility, just as a writer chooses words to best express the action or emotion of a piece of writing.
But the author and the teacher must be alert so that unlike the wall of beer cases at my local supermarket, the language acquisition begins from a strong base and the story does not collapse upon itself.

With a Little Help from My Friends: RSVP 2014

I did it! I biked 189 miles from Seattle to Vancouver, B.C. in two days. The scenery was beautiful. The weather was perfect. The experience I will cherish always.

I couldn't have done it without the training, encouragement and friendship of an incredible community of women. Last winter, when my friend May and I decided to ride RSVP to celebrate our 60th birthdays this fall, it was all a lark. I signed up for a weekly cycling class, but that was all the training I did until Bike to Work Month in May when I decided to take my bike outdoors for a spin. Soon, May and I were doing weekly rides. Veronique joined us. We met Trish and Claudia on Cascade Bicycle Club rides. The Mercer Island loop rides included Sue, Lisa and Kristi, and "Tuesdays at the Roanoke" became a weekly event.
I met Wendy at the Tour de Peaks start line in mid-July. It was my first 100-mile ride with May and Sue. I was slow, we made too many stops, and we couldn't even drag ourselves across the finish line because they'd taken it down by the time we got there. But I rode a hundred miles and it gave me the confidence I needed to face RSVP. Day One: Chuckanut Drive (May, Sue, Arleen)That's not to say I wasn't scared. The first day went well. A thirty-minute massage loosened my muscles and I slept like a log. The second day was shorter and the hills weren't as horrible as I feared. Fear is often our worst enemy, isn't it? Day Two: Vancouver Finish Line (Wendy, Sue, Arleen, May)Next summer? I don't know yet. I do know I'll continue riding on a weekly basis for as long as the weather cooperates this winter and come spring it will be time to set a new goal.

Blog Hop: Writers on Writing

I've never participated in a blog hop, but given the opportunity, I'll try just about anything! Thanks to Tiffany Ems Pitts, author of Double Blind, for including me.

Now to the questions ...
Where do you like to write? It depends on the stage of writing and my state of mind. Usually I take the first jab at a new scene at coffee shop table surrounded by other writers frantically scribbling words on paper against a timer. Notebook in hand, I return to my wonderful little home office with a window to the backyard. There, I key those words into a running manuscript, piece by piece, like laying bricks, until a first draft is complete. Then the cycle repeats itself, over and over, draft after draft, until it's as good as I can get it.
Which part of researching your current novel was most interesting?My current novel deals in part with relations between African-Americans and African immigrants. The most interesting research I've done to date was to attend a colleague's sociology course at the college where we both teach. As an ESL instructor, I had a one-sided view of this situation. In contrast, colleague's classes tended to be a diverse mix of American born and immigrant students of different ages and religions. The group I visited was no exception. I prepared a survey that jump-started a conversation which continued after the class ended. The students' varied perspectives on the tensions between these groups helped tremendously. 
I also had the opportunity to view the film Bound: Africans vs. African-Americansat the Seattle International Film Festival. A film I hope makes it to your part of the world.
How important are names to you in your books? How do you choose them?
Names are important not only in what they portray about a character but also in making it easier for readers to follow the story. The other night I was talking about my first two novels in the Alki Trilogy with my husband and he was getting confused (it happens, right?). But then I realized I'd used two female names beginning with the letter C and two male names that begin with J. I'll be more careful in the third novel. Promise.
Do you read your reviews? How do you respond to the bad reviews (if you get them)?
I tend to read them in the beginning, when the book is first released, when I'm begging folks to post those much needed reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. I want to know how readers are reacting to the story, what they like, what touches them, what infuriates them. 
If a review is less than stellar, I remind myself that all readers are different and reviews are subjective. Then I have a gin gimlet and a good cry. And keep writing.
What are your favorite books to give as gifts? The age and interests determine my choices, of course. My latest favorite gift for young readers is Dancing on the Edge by Kit Bakke. And of course, I love giving my own books as well!  In Seattle we have this funny little free neighborhood libraries. Here's a Seattle Times article about them. I have great fun sticking in copies of my books around town!
Thanks for reading! To follow this blog hop check out K.M. Randall's blog: K.M. Randall
As a girl, K.M. always wished she'd suddenly come into magical powers or cross over into a Faerie circle. Although that has yet to happen, she instead lives vicariously through the characters she creates in writing fantasy and delving into the paranormal. When K.M. is not busy writing her next novel, she is the editor-in-chief of a blog covering the media industry, as well as an editor with Booktrope Publishing. She has a master's degree in journalism from Syracuse University and a bachelor's degree in English-Lit from Nazareth College of Rochester. K.M. lives in Upstate New York's Finger Lakes region with her husband and her extremely energetic little boy. Fractured Dream is her first novel.

Cycling Memories

As we tackled the steep incline my family once called "The Big Hill" on the mile-long driveway, now paved, no longer the rutted dirt road of my childhood - dusty in the summer, muddy in the winter - I marveled at the memories of walking this route to and from the school bus stop on the Issaquah-Hobart Road from elementary school through high school. I remembered the box under the driveway arch where my siblings and I stashed our farm shoes before pulling on school shoes and racing to catch the bus. I remembered the huge puddle that froze at the foot of The Big Hill each winter where we took turns with Mom's high school ice skates. And I remembered my parents' warnings about the black bears every spring: "Never get between the mother and her cub."

May Toy Lukens and I are training for a 200-mile bike ride from Seattle to Vancouver, Canada now less than a week away. I've logged approximately one hundred miles a week since early spring and joined a community of strong, independent women cyclists who have challenged me to push myself beyond what I thought possible.  Those of you familiar with the environs southeast of Seattle as well as my long-ago Issaquah High School classmates will know the route May and I rode last Friday. Starting in Renton, we took the May Valley Road to the Issaquah-Hobart Road and out to Hobart. I smiled to see that Hobart is still nothing more than the store/post office/gas station of my childhood, the place where my siblings and I sold the buckets of blackberries we picked to earn money for the school clothes we later ordered from the Sears catalog.
As we rode, we passed the iron arch my father built over a half century ago to mark our driveway when our farm joined only two others on the southwest side of Tiger Mountain, long before developers began subdividing  the land adjacent to our neighbor's horse ranch to create Mirrormont Estates, before Highway 18 sliced through the mountains from Interstate 90 to Interstate 5, before Bonneville strong-armed the construction of a second massive power line destroying all in its path.
As a kid, I watched the construction of Highway 18 on horseback from the top of the ridge far above my childhood home. Fortunately, my family had moved and I'd left for college by the time Bonneville's destruction began. But by then the damage done to the community was complete. All that remained was the devastation of the environment.
From Hobart, May and I rode the hills to Ravensdale, and there we turned around. As we neared the white arch, now streaked red with rust, I made a decision. "Are you game to do more hills?" I shouted to May knowing full well she's a much stronger hill-climber than I am. After all, this is the woman who started our summer training saying "I love hills" in response to my moaning and groaning.
The climb was even steeper than I remembered, but then I never biked it as a kid. I walked it. I rode it on horseback. But never on a bike. I bought my first bike the spring of my senior year in high school. I'd landed a summer job in town and needed transportation. A classmate's father owned the only bike shop in Issaquah. I knew nothing about biking or 10-speed gears. It took a while just to find my balance. I have Awash in a flood of memories, I stood under the second arch Dad built in front of my childhood home at the end of the long driveway. The house is now remodeled in a feeble attempt to change a solid brick box into some sort of Tudor with a tower,  the endless clicking static of the Bonneville lines fills the air, and the view of Mount Rainier that filled the front windows of my childhood is now marred.
My heart filled with tenderness for the teenage me. That younger me would never, could never have possibly imagined, even in her wildest dreams and overactive imagination, that some forty years later a much older version of herself would be seating on a bicycle, sweaty and exhausted, in front of the house munching wild blackberries and remembering her younger self.

Bainbridge, Biking & Bellingham

Many thanks to Victoria Irwin and all the wonderful folks at Eagle Harbor Books on Bainbridge Island for their warm welcome and interesting conversation.  Maybe I should've biked from Seattle to Bainbridge, the ferry by bike is always fun. But then who wants to come to a reading to see a sweaty author in padded bike shorts?

Here's what I mean. I did my first century (that's 100 miles in bike talk) the day before the Eagle Harbor Books event. Lots of biking uphill and just enough downhill to keep me going. Not exactly what you'd expect to see when you go to a bookstore reading, right?
Next Saturday I'll be in Bellingham and Fairhaven sans bike.If you're in the area, I'd love to see you.

Barnes and Noble - Bellingham4099 Meridian St.
Bellingham, WA 98226Saturday, July 26, 201412:00 - 3:00 p.m. 

Village Books 1200 11th St.Bellingham, WA 98225 Saturday, July 26, 20144:00 - 5:00 p.m.

There's More to the Story

I believe it's important to understand the degree of terror perpetrated by the Mexican government against its people, institutionalized violence not limited to our immediate neighbor to the south,  which could explain in part the influx of 50,000 children crossing the border into the United States. I would suggest that when a government mobilizes an armed force of 3,500 against 300 civilians, when of 106 arrests 47 are women, 16 children, 2 human rights observers, 3 independent news people, and 5 foreigners*, when there is no due process and violence and rape are accepted forms of control and intimidation, when state-controlled media perpetrates state-sanctioned violence, then perhaps we can better understand the flood of undocumented immigrants across our southern border as well as the possible consequences of deportation.    While the events documented in the attached YouTube video occurred in May 2006, the video wasn't released in 2012. A brief Internet search reveals continued unrest over land and water rights in San Salvador Atenco and Texcoco, Mexico.
DOCUMENTAL DE LA VERDADERA HISTORIA DE SAN SALVADOR ATENCO EDOMEX (subtitled in English) *The 2006 report from the National Human Rights Commission in 2012 puts this numbers higher.

Two Bits of News

News Bit #1
Are you on Bainbridge Island? 
If so, please stop by Eagle Harbor Books next Saturday at 3:00 p.m. I'd love to see you!

Eagle Harbor Books157 Winslow Way East Bainbridge Island, Washington 98110Saturday, July 20 @ 3 p.m.

News Bit #2
Have you had a chance to pick up a copy of RUNNING SECRETS? If not, now's your chance!

Right now, for only $0.99 you can pick up a Kindle copy!


RUNNING SECRETS is the first book in the Alki Trilogy and it tells the story of a unlikely friendship between a suicidal young woman and her Ethiopian home healthcare nurse which leads both on a journey of self-discovery. 

What a Ride!

My head still floats in a cloud of disbelief. For this Seattle writer, there was nothing quite like reading at Elliott Bay Book Company. To stand at the podium shared by the likes of Tom Rachman and Lisa See, Luanne Rice and Celeste Ng - and that's just June and July - was a breathtaking experience, a bit like cycling downhill as the odometer climbs to 30 mph hoping I'll make it to the bottom in one piece.
And what a ride it was! The BIKING UPHILL launch party yesterday was a joy. Booktrope CEO Ken Shear honored me with a generous introduction and the audience rewarded me with interesting questions and comments.  I am extremely grateful to Karen Maeda Allman for scheduling the event and to Greg Berry for hosting.
Thank you!

You're Invited!

This Sunday we celebrate the publication of BIKING UPHILL, a timely novel that invites the reader into a world of undocumented immigration, where parents are deported, and a young girl is abandoned to face life on her own. I doubt Gemi would approve of bottled iced tea, but I know she'd love the goodies from the Salvadorean Bakery and Restaurant in West Seattle.  If you're in Seattle and want to get out of the heat, zip over for some cool refreshments. And soccer fans, it's okay to slip in a bit late!

Elliott Bay Book Company  1521 Tenth Avenue
Seattle WA 98122 Sunday, July 13 @ 3:00 p.m.

The Burn

Summer has arrived in Seattle: my time to write and ride as much as possible. In an odd way, these two passions are similar. When I cycle, I plan the route, distance and time in the saddle. I set goals and sometimes I meet up with other cyclists. I set writing goals as well: a scene to be written, time in the chair, pages to key into a draft manuscript. And sometimes I join other writers.
I was recently asked what I think about when I cycle. Do I think about the novel I'm working on, plot scenes, visualize settings, imagine dialogues? Nope. Maybe some speck of my subconscious is there, deep with my characters, but then I wouldn't know, would I?
I've never been asked what I think about when I put pen to paper, and yet the response would vary little because once begun these activities retain certain similarities. In both cases, I fall into a deep, almost meditative state, and let the route or the pen lead the way.
And yet, there are times, like on my 50-mile solo ride last Monday, when I notice the world around me. I rode East Lake Sammamish from Issaquah to Marymoor Park. Then I followed the Sammamish River Trail north to Bothell. If you're in the Seattle area, you may know the route. An eagle soared. The lake and river, bridges and farmlands glowed. Mount Rainier reigned. The immense natural beauty took my breath away. And then the extremes of wealth and poverty slapped me in the face.
Who needs a private helicopter? I mean really. And though a rundown trailer court is not poverty by any international, or even national definition, it stood in stark contrast to the lake front properties less than twenty miles away.
Sometimes observation interrupts meditation, whether in writing or riding. If I stop to think about word choice or sentence structure, the story flows on without me. And if I stop to secret a few photos when I cycle, I become aware of more than the burn in my quads.