Alexa Jacobs's Blog, page 2

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A lot of people have seen me in my underwear.

At least, it certainly feels that way.

The first book I wrote, I didn’t tell a soul about. I sat at my computer day after day, knowing that this is what I want to do with my life, but I had no idea how to do it.

Every day, and every page had no destination in mind. It really truly was about the journey of being one with my keyboard.

And then I was done, and I had to take that next step. I had to give it to somebody to read.

While I love my story, and I know that THAT book was always meant to be my first, the idea of letting somebody else read it made me a little queasy.

I did what we tend to do in times of crisis. I put my need in the hands of someone I trust with my life and I asked them to tell me that I am okay. That it would all be okay.

And then I hid under the desk, in a ball, with my hands wrapped around my head until I was reminded (twenty five thousand times) to believe in myself.

All I kept thinking was that I feel like I’ve walked out on stage for all the world to see, in my underwear.

I’d like to tell you that this feeling of waiting for judgement goes away. I’d like to tell you that I can put my drafts into the hands of anyone anywhere and believe in myself the way I am constantly (and lovingly) reminded to.

Every story is a piece of me, and I am essentially giving it to you and waiting to see if it is loved. If it is liked. If it is good enough.

I am always going to worry.

What has gone away is the fear that I am standing on this stage, in my skivvies, alone.

In the summer of 2016 I joined a critique group. This group is made up of six other writers, all who range in experience, genres, and even age. We span decades, and represent all stages of life. We have a private network where we chatter online. Sometimes checking in every once in a while, and sometimes filling days on end with non-sensical chatter.

We trade work weekly, and that too is at all stages. Some of us have polished works of art and some of us are slinging out NANOWRIMO clay.

I’m a tough girl, and I’m smart enough to know that there is always room for improvement. There have been weeks where I thought that I handed in something that was going to get a standing ovation. Never in the history of ever has there been such a beautiful combination of words. And then I open my pages and I see a red-penned massacre. Even worse, the paragraph that I thought was the pinnacle of perfection had been highlighted, by all six, with various notes that collectively told me- What is the point of this?

There have also been weeks where I accidentally fell into brilliance. – That right there, best sentence. Way to bring it round back to X,Y, Z.

Yeah, because I meant to do that…totally.

To their credit, I think I am one of the harshest partners. It’s nothing for any one of them to open up their returned document and be flooded with hundreds of red lines, and notes in the margins. I’ve slashed, highlighted, and cut. I’ve rewritten and flat out said – this is what you meant to say.

I have to admit, I love beta reading/ light editing as much as I love writing.

My red pen shows no mercy. I know this, and I make no apologies for it.

Our jobs as writers is to stand at the edge of our limits. Our jobs as critique partners is to push each other just that one step farther. Because that is where we know our partners will shine.

And they do shine.

I didn’t think I could love these ladies more.

But then just a few weeks ago, two of my partners had the unique opportunity to have their works reviewed by industry professionals not yet in any of our grasps. They could have taken their notes, edited accordingly, and moved along with the next books. I really wouldn’t have been the wiser.

What they did instead was share their feedback. They were brave enough to not only share the intimate experience that is drafting a story from scratch, but they were kind enough to point out the weaknesses that had been exposed.

Not to benefit their own writing, but to benefit mine.

They are allowing me the honor of learning from their mistakes, and that is an enormously brave thing to do.

I’ve noticed this about not only my critique partners, but about writers in general. And it doesn’t matter how famous they are. A couple of months ago I went to a meeting where the speaker was an agent at a very prestigious publishing house. The point of the evening was to workshop our blurbs (the bit on the back of your book that tells you what it is about so you can make a ten second decision to buy or put it down). We went around the room, and anyone who wanted to could share their blurb in progress, and have advice from this agent as to how to improve it.

It took a bit of courage, but I shared mine. To my surprise, the agent had little issue with it. She smiled and said “That sounds like a really sweet story.” She said if I were to do anything at all to it, maybe tighten it up a bit. Cut out a few sentences.

The writer sitting next to me who was, is, and probably always will  be out of my league whispered to me- Email that to me, I’ll help you clean it up.

Just last month, our monthly meeting was simply a plotting workshop. I sat with three other writers, and we told each other about our stories and where we were stuck for ideas. And together we brain stormed to get each one of us up and over our “wall.” It was, essentially the grown up version of the story game where you go round and round, building a story one narrator and sentence at a time. It was great fun to imagine what I would do in somebody else’s book, and it will be even more fun to discover if any of my ideas will make the final cut. I came home with pages full of ideas for my next project. And several offers of – please e mail me if you need more help.

I have never met a group of people more willing to share their obstacles so that another writer can find the path of least resistance.

I have never met a group of people more willing to run down the road of success and turn back to make sure that those that follow don’t get lost.

I have never met a group of people more willing to stop, and pick each other up and dust each other off.

I am a better writer than I was a week ago. I am a better writer than I was a month ago.

A year ago.

I am better because I have a network of people who know that I can in the moments that I believe that I cannot.

Thanksgiving was just a few days ago, and for you I give thanks.

To my six, and the extended network that I have grown over these past few years, I am eternally grateful for the trust, and faith that we share in each other.

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The Edge of Seventeen

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The timing of life is kind of funny. Well, actually, the timing of life is often cruel but that is not for a blog. That is to be buried in the pages of what you call a novel and what I call free therapy. Regardless, timing likes to play little tricks to keep us on our toes. This past month my oldest child started high school. I found myself roaming the halls during an orientation and seeing all the familiar things that never seem to change in a school setting, making it hard to remember that it has been years and years since the halls were mine.

As the timing goes, this milestone in my life happened to fall during the same year as my high school reunion. High school reunions aren’t what they used to be, I’m sure. However, I have nothing to compare it to. Social media was born in the early years of my adulthood, and the warning of the generations before me of never seeing any of these people ever again became obsolete. I see them online all the time, and in person occasionally. And thanks to the beast that is Facebook, I’ve managed to keep a good number of my friends over these last couple of decades. Some of them it really would be better if they fell into the oblivion, but with the bad comes the good.

Before the reunion, there was much chatter among my high school girlfriends over what we were all wearing. We didn’t care if we went formal, or casual, but we wanted to do it together. We talked about who was dragging their significant others and what we were doing with our kids. We would often get side tracked by a comment and start making fun of each other, or the idea of going to a high school reunion to start with. Dude, I saw you last week for lunch. Do I really need to dress up, get a babysitter, and pay $100 to spend three hours with you?

Why, yes. Yes you do.

It wound up being a tremendously fun event. One of my former classmates closed down their restaurant for the evening and we had great food, excellent company and the worst of the worst and the best of the best 90s music playing all night. As one does, I made my way round the room and said hello to as many people as I thought would remember me. And even to some who I thought might not. It’s fun to watch a person feverishly look for your name tag as they are smiling and hugging you saying “Oh my gosh! How are you?”  You….uh…..what is your name?

It’s okay, I don’t expect you to remember me.

What was fun was to see where all of these people landed. Some were no surprise at all. Our Valedictorian is basically running Google, my guess was actually NASA but I was close enough. The guy who was running the Christian club is now a Pastor. The class clowns are successful salesmen. And there were a few surprises too. I got a few “No shits” when I mentioned I write romance novels. A classmate that shall remain nameless beat me out for the most interesting job, as he now sells legalized marijuana. A guy I thought would be dead by 30 for sure turned out to be steadily employed, happily married to a gorgeous woman, and a doting father of a brand new baby.

There were people I went back as far as you can go with, to the elementary school playground. One of my friends mentioned- It’s in my DNA to know you, I don’t know how to not love you.

Isn’t that sweet?

This particular girl I haven’t actually seen or connected with (somehow) all these years and we just picked right up as if we’d last seen each other a week ago at school.

I walked into that restaurant knowing I was different than I had been. I’d like to think I am a bit more organized in my writing now. I wait 30 seconds before I open my mouth to speak so I can think about (and hopefully stop) the stupidity that might fall out. I have a good marriage, and two (mostly) good kids. I volunteer, I participate, I drive a minivan. It’s really not that my life can be tied up in a cute little suburbia-inspired bow, it’s more that I’ve learned how to walk through life. I used to run toward my fanciful dreams, and I’d often trip and make a mess. Now I walk at my own pace. I used to say and do only what I thought was wanted from me. Now I listen to the voices in my mind. They’re pretty amazing sometimes. My one organized, and always beautifully put together friend laughed with me as I wound up winning the award for married the longest, and said “I’m so glad you won that, makes it all kind of worth it.”

Yeah, I was the girl who was in love with being in love. And I drove my friends crazy. But now I have an award, so it makes it okay.

I love her.

I’m older, I’m wiser. While I spent my teens saying no to wine and yes to drama, I’m happy to spend these later years saying the complete opposite.

I was among company directors, multiple Master’s holders, doctors, lawyers, social workers, marketing executives, activists…the list could go on.

But for one night, we were all a bunch of seventeen-year-old goofballs again and it was grand.

I realized this is the feeling that I have when I am with these people. I have a habit of dating my friends. Life gets so busy, it’s impossible to gather everyone round like this more than once every five or ten or twenty years. So for the past year I have been making the effort to just shoot one or two people a text or message and asking- Lunch this week?  I try to have a date on my calendar every couple of weeks, with somebody special. To grab two really good hours with an old friend on some random Tuesday afternoon is so much more rewarding than seeing them once for ten minutes that one time a year we can get everyone together.

My high school friends are among my favorite lunch dates. They know me on a level of such bullshit that it is impossible to try to put on airs. It’s freeing in a sense.  I can walk through life, and dress myself up in these fancy writer clothes, or the exact right suburban mom uniform, or the occasional fancy dress to play the role of my husband’s wife at a work function, but with this group of particular people, it all gets checked at the door.

They don’t see a husband and wife with a good life, two good kids, who are often participating in some town event in the small town they’ve lived in forever and love.

They see a ditzy, quirky, hyper teenage girl who doodled the same boys name in the margins of ever paper she ever wrote and the guy who managed to calm her down long enough so she could actually enjoy the future she daydreamed about.

You’re still you. Silly, amazing you.

As a writer, I get to explore all sorts of personalities. Just yesterday I was a male twenty eight year old wounded war vet for about three hours. I’m a southern bar tender, or a wise beyond her years bookstore owner. Perhaps a nine year old boy who loves his mama, soccer, and turtles. I have so much fun exploring the world through their eyes.

But what comes easiest to me are younger voices. At this past Baltimore Book Festival, I shared a panel with other New Adult and Young Adult writers and we talked about how easy it is to slip back in time.

How easy it is to be that age.

I thought about a book I might write about two people who passed notes to each other, and by then end of the afternoon I found myself sitting in a chair thinking about this boy I used to know. We passed notes to each other.

I have no idea whatever happened to him. I hope he’s married, living on a farm in Georgia, with a beautiful wife and fat, happy babies.

It seems like just yesterday.

I think I realized then, that though we age and we learn, there’s just this little something that never changes.

I feel it when I slip into the character of a love-struck teenage girl.

I am surrounded by it when I get together with the girlfriends who see me for who I am at my core.

It makes me smile when though years and years and years have past, a memory can be shared between two people with little more than a look across a crowded room, a song on the radio, or the casual mention of something not at all related but in that moment you both find yourselves thinking of the same funny little something.

I walk though the halls with my child and I hope that he is happy. He is so intimidated by this new giant school, and eager to get his turn at the most exciting stages of life. I wonder what of his now he will carry with him. What parts, what people, what feelings. What will be the funny little somethings that make him smile. I want them to be good. I want them to be worth it. I want to grab him and shake him and tell him to really, really pay attention.

Timing is such a funny thing. A minute of the day is just sixty seconds. But if it’s the right sixty seconds, it can last a lifetime.

The funny little somethings that make us all forever seventeen.

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Latest Blog

[image error]

The timing of life is kind of funny. Well, actually, the timing of life is often cruel but that is not for a blog. That is to be buried in the pages of what you call a novel and what I call free therapy. Regardless, timing likes to play little tricks to keep us on our toes. This past month my oldest child started high school. I found myself roaming the halls during an orientation and seeing all the familiar things that never seem to change in a school setting, making it hard to remember that it has been years and years since the halls were mine.

As the timing goes, this milestone in my life happened to fall during the same year as my high school reunion. High school reunions aren’t what they used to be, I’m sure. However, I have nothing to compare it to. Social media was born in the early years of my adulthood, and the warning of the generations before me of never seeing any of these people ever again became obsolete. I see them online all the time, and in person occasionally. And thanks to the beast that is Facebook, I’ve managed to keep a good number of my friends over these last couple of decades. Some of them it really would be better if they fell into the oblivion, but with the bad comes the good.

Before the reunion, there was much chatter among my high school girlfriends over what we were all wearing. We didn’t care if we went formal, or casual, but we wanted to do it together. We talked about who was dragging their significant others and what we were doing with our kids. We would often get side tracked by a comment and start making fun of each other, or the idea of going to a high school reunion to start with. Dude, I saw you last week for lunch. Do I really need to dress up, get a babysitter, and pay $100 to spend three hours with you?

Why, yes. Yes you do.

It wound up being a tremendously fun event. One of my former classmates closed down their restaurant for the evening and we had great food, excellent company and the worst of the worst and the best of the best 90s music playing all night. As one does, I made my way round the room and said hello to as many people as I thought would remember me. And even to some who I thought might not. It’s fun to watch a person feverishly look for your name tag as they are smiling and hugging you saying “Oh my gosh! How are you?”  You….uh…..what is your name?

It’s okay, I don’t expect you to remember me.

What was fun was to see where all of these people landed. Some were no surprise at all. Our Valedictorian is basically running Google, my guess was actually NASA but I was close enough. The guy who was running the Christian club is now a Pastor. The class clowns are successful salesmen. And there were a few surprises too. I got a few “No shits” when I mentioned I write romance novels. A classmate that shall remain nameless beat me out for the most interesting job, as he now sells legalized marijuana. A guy I thought would be dead by 30 for sure turned out to be steadily employed, happily married to a gorgeous woman, and a doting father of a brand new baby.

There were people I went back as far as you can go with, to the elementary school playground. One of my friends mentioned- It’s in my DNA to know you, I don’t know how to not love you.

Isn’t that sweet?

This particular girl I haven’t actually seen or connected with (somehow) all these years and we just picked right up as if we’d last seen each other a week ago at school.

I walked into that restaurant knowing I was different than I had been. I’d like to think I am a bit more organized in my writing now. I wait 30 seconds before I open my mouth to speak so I can think about (and hopefully stop) the stupidity that might fall out. I have a good marriage, and two (mostly) good kids. I volunteer, I participate, I drive a minivan. It’s really not that my life can be tied up in a cute little suburbia-inspired bow, it’s more that I’ve learned how to walk through life. I used to run toward my fanciful dreams, and I’d often trip and make a mess. Now I walk at my own pace. I used to say and do only what I thought was wanted from me. Now I listen to the voices in my mind. They’re pretty amazing sometimes. My one organized, and always beautifully put together friend laughed with me as I wound up winning the award for married the longest, and said “I’m so glad you won that, makes it all kind of worth it.”

Yeah, I was the girl who was in love with being in love. And I drove my friends crazy. But now I have an award, so it makes it okay.

I love her.

I’m older, I’m wiser. While I spent my teens saying no to wine and yes to drama, I’m happy to spend these later years saying the complete opposite.

I was among company directors, multiple Master’s holders, doctors, lawyers, social workers, marketing executives, activists…the list could go on.

But for one night, we were all a bunch of seventeen-year-old goofballs again and it was grand.

I realized this is the feeling that I have when I am with these people. I have a habit of dating my friends. Life gets so busy, it’s impossible to gather everyone round like this more than once every five or ten or twenty years. So for the past year I have been making the effort to just shoot one or two people a text or message and asking- Lunch this week?  I try to have a date on my calendar every couple of weeks, with somebody special. To grab two really good hours with an old friend on some random Tuesday afternoon is so much more rewarding than seeing them once for ten minutes that one time a year we can get everyone together.

My high school friends are among my favorite lunch dates. They know me on a level of such bullshit that it is impossible to try to put on airs. It’s freeing in a sense.  I can walk through life, and dress myself up in these fancy writer clothes, or the exact right suburban mom uniform, or the occasional fancy dress to play the role of my husband’s wife at a work function, but with this group of particular people, it all gets checked at the door.

They don’t see a husband and wife with a good life, two good kids, who are often participating in some town event in the small town they’ve lived in forever and love.

They see a ditzy, quirky, hyper teenage girl who doodled the same boys name in the margins of ever paper she ever wrote and the guy who managed to calm her down long enough so she could actually enjoy the future she daydreamed about.

You’re still you. Silly, amazing you.

As a writer, I get to explore all sorts of personalities. Just yesterday I was a male twenty eight year old wounded war vet for about three hours. I’m a southern bar tender, or a wise beyond her years bookstore owner. Perhaps a nine year old boy who loves his mama, soccer, and turtles. I have so much fun exploring the world through their eyes.

But what comes easiest to me are younger voices. At this past Baltimore Book Festival, I shared a panel with other New Adult and Young Adult writers and we talked about how easy it is to slip back in time.

How easy it is to be that age.

I thought about a book I might write about two people who passed notes to each other, and by then end of the afternoon I found myself sitting in a chair thinking about this boy I used to know. We passed notes to each other.

I have no idea whatever happened to him. I hope he’s married, living on a farm in Georgia, with a beautiful wife and fat, happy babies.

It seems like just yesterday.

I think I realized then, that though we age and we learn, there’s just this little something that never changes.

I feel it when I slip into the character of a love-struck teenage girl.

I am surrounded by it when I get together with the girlfriends who see me for who I am at my core.

It makes me smile when though years and years and years have past, a memory can be shared between two people with little more than a look across a crowded room, a song on the radio, or the casual mention of something not at all related but in that moment you both find yourselves thinking of the same funny little something.

I walk though the halls with my child and I hope that he is happy. He is so intimidated by this new giant school, and eager to get his turn at the most exciting stages of life. I wonder what of his now he will carry with him. What parts, what people, what feelings. What will be the funny little somethings that make him smile. I want them to be good. I want them to be worth it. I want to grab him and shake him and tell him to really, really pay attention.

Timing is such a funny thing. A minute of the day is just sixty seconds. But if it’s the right sixty seconds, it can last a lifetime.

The funny little somethings that make us all forever seventeen.

 

 

 

 

 

Waiting For A Star to Fall

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I’ve lived in my new house for a little more than a month now, and I feel like for the first time, the dust is starting to settle a bit. I spent these past few weeks unpacking boxes, looking at the contents and trying to figure out where they would go in my new space. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I’ve moved a few times, so I know this is not a process that can be rushed.

Depending on the day, I am either trilled with the progress made so far, or I am weighed down by the idea that I may never find the normal that must be in a box somewhere, still packed. All of my furniture is in place, but half of it doesn’t work here. Rooms will have to be reimagined as new routines emerge. The couch we sometimes sat on in the fancy sitting room has now somehow become the old sofa that we lay all over in the family room when there is TV to watch. The kitchen table that has spent its life under the protection of padded tablecloths and brightly colored placemats is now making a bold statement as the rich and bold wood centerpiece of a new dining room. Rooms have been painted, but the artwork has yet to be sorted out. The fork and spoon that made for fanciful artwork in my old kitchen looks oversized and out of place in the new one. The bold pop of red my husband was so fond of in the sea of Gobi Desert walls at our old house stands out like unwelcomed clown art in my new traditional, and very bright, white palace.

I have managed to hang up one piece of art. A piece I picked up in very dirty and smelly alleyway of Chatuchak Weekend Market in Bangkok, Thailand. When I look at it, it reminds me that life is only as small as you want it to be. Once upon a time, this small town girl had a very grand adventure. Maybe one day she will again.

I wasn’t looking to find a spectacular place to hang my spectacular souvenir. I know from experience that  I am not in charge of these sorts of things.

But when I walked into this house, and I saw this particular wall, I knew.

That’s where it goes.

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I have no curtains, I have no rugs, and the chandelier would be better used in my office. I could rinse, recycle and repeat that statement for just about every room we have.

I am not stressed about any of this because I know as long as I have the ONE thing that anchors the room, everything else will eventually fall into place. It always has, it always will.

This past February, I finished a very good first draft of a new contemporary called Waiting for Autumn. It was polished enough that I was able to shop it around to publishers and I got some good feedback. As publishers do, I got some requests. Change this, move that, throw in a secret baby. One publisher stated that they wanted me to wait six months before I sent it back in with my changes.

Why?

I can make the changes they wanted in a weekend if I needed to.

They said – to give you time to think. Writing is ever evolving.

Ultimately, this story is mine. I don’t have to change one word. I spent months and months with characters and I fell in love with them in only the way a writer can. If I so chose, I could introduce you to the world I created last fall, and hope that you’d fall in love with them too.

Despite the excitement that surrounds finishing up what you think is the best version of the book you can write, I did take that time.

To think.

 Writing is ever evolving.

I thought about my main character’s journey and realized she needed to be pushed far harder than I pushed her.

I thought about the man who walked into (and in this case out of) her life, and understood that he is far more broken than even I realized.

The friend that she depended on is not as perfect as she’d like to admit. The new faces in town needed to have deeper connections.

Standing in my shower a week ago, while I was minding my own business, the wild thought ran through my head that I could not let go of.

– He was there. He didn’t wake up to the news, he lived it. He survived it.

What remained was the core of my story. The history that put my two characters into each other’s lives, the thing that tore them apart, and the moment that brought them together.

Ultimately, this boils down to one mighty line in the book.

The one line said by the particular character at a particular time, I knew.

That’s where it goes.

I don’t know why I can easily accept the fact that when I move I have to unpack everything and let the things find the places they are supposed to be. Let the house decide what it wants to hold. Yet, I do not allow myself the time to discover the same about a story I have written.

In this forced break, I have discovered something that I have already known for years.

This is not a process that can be rushed.

I will spend the next few weeks following instead of leading. I will let my characters tell me where they  want their story to go, and I will let the artwork call to the walls it want to be on.

I will not stress because I know I’ve got the one thing that will be the anchor for all others.

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Eventually I will walk the halls of this house and be pleased with how all the little things fell into place.

I’m hoping that will be right around the same time when you find yourself sitting down with Autumn and Nick, where just like the house, all of the little things have fallen into place.

[image error]

Latest Blog

[image error]

I’ve lived in my new house for a little more than a month now, and I feel like for the first time, the dust is starting to settle a bit. I spent these past few weeks unpacking boxes, looking at the contents and trying to figure out where they would go in my new space. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I’ve moved a few times, so I know this is not a process that can be rushed.

Depending on the day, I am either trilled with the progress made so far, or I am weighed down by the idea that I may never find the normal that must be in a box somewhere, still packed. All of my furniture is in place, but half of it doesn’t work here. Rooms will have to be reimagined as new routines emerge. The couch we sometimes sat on in the fancy sitting room has now somehow become the old sofa that we lay all over in the family room when there is TV to watch. The kitchen table that has spent its life under the protection of padded tablecloths and brightly colored placemats is now making a bold statement as the rich and bold wood centerpiece of a new dining room. Rooms have been painted, but the artwork has yet to be sorted out. The fork and spoon that made for fanciful artwork in my old kitchen looks oversized and out of place in the new one. The bold pop of red my husband was so fond of in the sea of Gobi Desert walls at our old house stands out like unwelcomed clown art in my new traditional, and very bright, white palace.

I have managed to hang up one piece of art. A piece I picked up in very dirty and smelly alleyway of Chatuchak Weekend Market in Bangkok, Thailand. When I look at it, it reminds me that life is only as small as you want it to be. Once upon a time, this small town girl had a very grand adventure. Maybe one day she will again.

I wasn’t looking to find a spectacular place to hang my spectacular souvenir. I know from experience that  I am not in charge of these sorts of things.

But when I walked into this house, and I saw this particular wall, I knew.

That’s where it goes.

[image error]

I have no curtains, I have no rugs, and the chandelier would be better used in my office. I could rinse, recycle and repeat that statement for just about every room we have.

I am not stressed about any of this because I know as long as I have the ONE thing that anchors the room, everything else will eventually fall into place. It always has, it always will.

This past February, I finished a very good first draft of a new contemporary called Waiting for Autumn. It was polished enough that I was able to shop it around to publishers and I got some good feedback. As publishers do, I got some requests. Change this, move that, throw in a secret baby. One publisher stated that they wanted me to wait six months before I sent it back in with my changes.

Why?

I can make the changes they wanted in a weekend if I needed to.

They said – to give you time to think. Writing is ever evolving.

Ultimately, this story is mine. I don’t have to change one word. I spent months and months with characters and I fell in love with them in only the way a writer can. If I so chose, I could introduce you to the world I created last fall, and hope that you’d fall in love with them too.

Despite the excitement that surrounds finishing up what you think is the best version of the book you can write, I did take that time.

To think.

 Writing is ever evolving.

I thought about my main character’s journey and realized she needed to be pushed far harder than I pushed her.

I thought about the man who walked into (and in this case out of) her life, and understood that he is far more broken than even I realized.

The friend that she depended on is not as perfect as she’d like to admit. The new faces in town needed to have deeper connections.

Standing in my shower a week ago, while I was minding my own business, the wild thought ran through my head that I could not let go of.

– He was there. He didn’t wake up to the news, he lived it. He survived it.

What remained was the core of my story. The history that put my two characters into each other’s lives, the thing that tore them apart, and the moment that brought them together.

Ultimately, this boils down to one mighty line in the book.

The one line said by the particular character at a particular time, I knew.

That’s where it goes.

I don’t know why I can easily accept the fact that when I move I have to unpack everything and let the things find the places they are supposed to be. Let the house decide what it wants to hold. Yet, I do not allow myself the time to discover the same about a story I have written.

In this forced break, I have discovered something that I have already known for years.

This is not a process that can be rushed.

I will spend the next few weeks following instead of leading. I will let my characters tell me where they  want their story to go, and I will let the artwork call to the walls it want to be on.

I will not stress because I know I’ve got the one thing that will be the anchor for all others.

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Eventually I will walk the halls of this house and be pleased with how all the little things fell into place.

I’m hoping that will be right around the same time when you find yourself sitting down with Autumn and Nick, where just like the house, all of the little things have fallen into place.

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Twist of Fate

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Do you ever wonder how much of your life is fate and how much of it is an elaborate game of chance?

I wonder all the time.

When I was twelve, I went to a party for a friend. Her parents had hired a fortuneteller. I remember clear as day walking up to this woman and asking her for a glimpse into my future. She took my hand in hers, and made a painful face. She rubbed a deep line that cut through my heart line and said- Oh boy, Ouch.

What does that mean?

I will never forget what she said to me. She gently rubbed that deep line and said she was sorry, because my heart was going to break. Only once, but I would carry the scar with me forever. She then smiled and said, but don’t worry because you’ll meet your man right after that and give him two sons. You will be happy. And then she refilled her punch glass and joined the party as if I had only asked her for the time of day.

Thanks, I think?

As an adult, I think telling any girl on the brink of teenage-hood that she would have her heart broken is a pretty safe bet. But this woman was right. It only happened the once, and oh boy, ouch.

The man I did marry walked into my life, as foretold, soon after. A friend of his wanted to ask me out, but didn’t know how. My husband played a very slick game of matchmaker and it would have been a genius plot, if only I wanted to play the part.

Instead, on a complete whim when I found myself alone with him for ten unexpected minutes, I turned to him and told him that he needed to be the one to ask me out.

He was wild, and nothing like me. I thought maybe it could be a summer fling worth remembering, because there was no way that he and I would ever be anything serious.

Naturally, we’ve been happily married for over fifteen years now.

And I did give him two sons.

Fate? Or chance?

Newly married, my husband and I talked about where we wanted to live our lives. There was a neighborhood that I liked, where there were sidewalks and a pool. It was in a small town that was mostly farms, but had enough decent shopping that I wouldn’t really have to leave town unless I wanted something special. We were very young and this neighborhood was not full of starter homes. I was full of family homes so it would have to be someday…maybe. He liked the idea, but part of him wanted to see more of the world and didn’t know how.

So I did what I normally do. I planned. We would see about that neighborhood in five to seven years. I made myself a map to get me from where I was to where I wanted to be.

But then there was a game of bowling and a bag of M&Ms that tossed all of my plans out the window.

My husband is the sort that when the door of opportunity opens, the first thing he does is look for an open window. In the first week of his first “grown up” job, he and I were chatting on the phone. I heard some men talking in the background and then my husband announced (out of the blue) that he would be home late. What transpired was there were some higher up suits who decided to take an evening of bowling up. It had been a long day, and they could all use a beer. My husband thought maybe it would be a good thing to socialize with the powers that be, and very skillfully made himself available and was invited along.

A conversation at a bowling alley about the desire to get a little travel in turned into him being selected for a particular business trip.

The guy that went bowling with us, send him. He said he wanted to get out a bit.

He packed his bags, everything he thought he would need and at the last minute grabbed a large bag of M&Ms. He flew over the big blue ocean and returned to me with a job offer.

Because when resumes were on the desk, somebody said- That guy who brought the M&Ms, what’s his name again? We liked him.

The rest is history. He still travels with a large bag of M&Ms for every office he visits.

This past month, we put move number eleven under our belts. I have lived in apartments, town houses, brownstones, and gated communities. From end to end, my zip codes have spanned three countries and 8,766 miles.

Trust me when I tell you the investment in the Mars Candy Company has come back to us a thousand fold.

And here I sit in my new office of my new home, in that very neighborhood we talked about fifteen years ago. All the while, my husband has seen nearly every country there is to see.

Fate? Or chance?

Even my writing career, I wonder.

I always wanted to be a writer, and I think I would still be in that boat. But one afternoon, my child was playing on the playground with the youngest child of Eliza Knight. We chatted, as moms do, but she’s not one to start out with “Well, I’m an award winning novelist.” No, she was just a regular mom that day. But then I ran into her at a party, and I discovered she was, in fact, Historical Romance Novelist Eliza Knight. Needless to say I had a million questions, and God bless her, she answered every one.

I decided right then that I would make this writer thing happen.

Me writing it, was fate.

You reading it, was chance.

Over a year and a half ago, a character showed up in my mind. I immediately knew he was lost. I write sweet romances. His story was anything but sweet. And as writers do, I talked to him. I told him that I am not the writer he is looking for. He is not in the right place. For a fictional guy, he took up a lot of space in my life. He was broken, and bloodied. The wings on his back were tattered. The sword in his hand too heavy for him to hold. He sat himself down in a corner of my mind and said he was in the right place. He would wait, but not for long.

Every time we crossed paths, I smiled and said I still don’t know what to do with you.

I went on to write one complete sweet romance, and plot out what should be my next project.

But as the song goes, there is a drumming noise inside my head, and it starts when he’s around.

So I took classes. A lot of classes. I threw plot lines around and he tossed them aside like a small greedy child feverishly unwrapping Christmas gifts. Next, next, next.

He frustrated me. I knew what his story was, I just didn’t know how to tell it.

And then I planned a fun weekend for my husband. I was fully prepared to be with him, but bored out of my damned mind while he geeked out at a local convention.

However, what I discovered was that I accidentally threw myself into a den of writers. Writers of the particular genre that my fallen angel could benefit from. I grabbed chance by the neck, and used every opportunity I had to ask questions and take notes. My husband’s geeky weekend away turned into a business trip for me.

My fallen angel finally stepped into the light, and he brought along some friends too.

I can see it on his face. See, I told you I was in the right place.

This fall I will begin to write his story down.

His is a tale of fates and chances.

I look at the lines on my hands and wonder what all my fortuneteller saw, what is fated to be mine and what will only be mine by chance.

The angel whispers in my ear- Now love, is there really a difference?

And then he smiles wickedly, and draws his sword.

[image error]

Latest Blog

[image error]

 

Do you ever wonder how much of your life is fate and how much of it is an elaborate game of chance?

I wonder all the time.

When I was twelve, I went to a party for a friend. Her parents had hired a fortuneteller. I remember clear as day walking up to this woman and asking her for a glimpse into my future. She took my hand in hers, and made a painful face. She rubbed a deep line that cut through my heart line and said- Oh boy, Ouch.

What does that mean?

I will never forget what she said to me. She gently rubbed that deep line and said she was sorry, because my heart was going to break. Only once, but I would carry the scar with me forever. She then smiled and said, but don’t worry because you’ll meet your man right after that and give him two sons. You will be happy. And then she refilled her punch glass and joined the party as if I had only asked her for the time of day.

Thanks, I think?

As an adult, I think telling any girl on the brink of teenage-hood that she would have her heart broken is a pretty safe bet. But this woman was right. It only happened the once, and oh boy, ouch.

The man I did marry walked into my life, as foretold, soon after. A friend of his wanted to ask me out, but didn’t know how. My husband played a very slick game of matchmaker and it would have been a genius plot, if only I wanted to play the part.

Instead, on a complete whim when I found myself alone with him for ten unexpected minutes, I turned to him and told him that he needed to be the one to ask me out.

He was wild, and nothing like me. I thought maybe it could be a summer fling worth remembering, because there was no way that he and I would ever be anything serious.

Naturally, we’ve been happily married for over fifteen years now.

And I did give him two sons.

Fate? Or chance?

Newly married, my husband and I talked about where we wanted to live our lives. There was a neighborhood that I liked, where there were sidewalks and a pool. It was in a small town that was mostly farms, but had enough decent shopping that I wouldn’t really have to leave town unless I wanted something special. We were very young and this neighborhood was not full of starter homes. I was full of family homes so it would have to be someday…maybe. He liked the idea, but part of him wanted to see more of the world and didn’t know how.

So I did what I normally do. I planned. We would see about that neighborhood in five to seven years. I made myself a map to get me from where I was to where I wanted to be.

But then there was a game of bowling and a bag of M&Ms that tossed all of my plans out the window.

My husband is the sort that when the door of opportunity opens, the first thing he does is look for an open window. In the first week of his first “grown up” job, he and I were chatting on the phone. I heard some men talking in the background and then my husband announced (out of the blue) that he would be home late. What transpired was there were some higher up suits who decided to take an evening of bowling up. It had been a long day, and they could all use a beer. My husband thought maybe it would be a good thing to socialize with the powers that be, and very skillfully made himself available and was invited along.

A conversation at a bowling alley about the desire to get a little travel in turned into him being selected for a particular business trip.

The guy that went bowling with us, send him. He said he wanted to get out a bit.

He packed his bags, everything he thought he would need and at the last minute grabbed a large bag of M&Ms. He flew over the big blue ocean and returned to me with a job offer.

Because when resumes were on the desk, somebody said- That guy who brought the M&Ms, what’s his name again? We liked him.

The rest is history. He still travels with a large bag of M&Ms for every office he visits.

This past month, we put move number eleven under our belts. I have lived in apartments, town houses, brownstones, and gated communities. From end to end, my zip codes have spanned three countries and 8,766 miles.

Trust me when I tell you the investment in the Mars Candy Company has come back to us a thousand fold.

And here I sit in my new office of my new home, in that very neighborhood we talked about fifteen years ago. All the while, my husband has seen nearly every country there is to see.

Fate? Or chance?

Even my writing career, I wonder.

I always wanted to be a writer, and I think I would still be in that boat. But one afternoon, my child was playing on the playground with the youngest child of Eliza Knight. We chatted, as moms do, but she’s not one to start out with “Well, I’m an award winning novelist.” No, she was just a regular mom that day. But then I ran into her at a party, and I discovered she was, in fact, Historical Romance Novelist Eliza Knight. Needless to say I had a million questions, and God bless her, she answered every one.

I decided right then that I would make this writer thing happen.

Me writing it, was fate.

You reading it, was chance.

Over a year and a half ago, a character showed up in my mind. I immediately knew he was lost. I write sweet romances. His story was anything but sweet. And as writers do, I talked to him. I told him that I am not the writer he is looking for. He is not in the right place. For a fictional guy, he took up a lot of space in my life. He was broken, and bloodied. The wings on his back were tattered. The sword in his hand too heavy for him to hold. He sat himself down in a corner of my mind and said he was in the right place. He would wait, but not for long.

Every time we crossed paths, I smiled and said I still don’t know what to do with you.

I went on to write one complete sweet romance, and plot out what should be my next project.

But as the song goes, there is a drumming noise inside my head, and it starts when he’s around.

So I took classes. A lot of classes. I threw plot lines around and he tossed them aside like a small greedy child feverishly unwrapping Christmas gifts. Next, next, next.

He frustrated me. I knew what his story was, I just didn’t know how to tell it.

And then I planned a fun weekend for my husband. I was fully prepared to be with him, but bored out of my damned mind while he geeked out at a local convention.

However, what I discovered was that I accidentally threw myself into a den of writers. Writers of the particular genre that my fallen angel could benefit from. I grabbed chance by the neck, and used every opportunity I had to ask questions and take notes. My husband’s geeky weekend away turned into a business trip for me.

My fallen angel finally stepped into the light, and he brought along some friends too.

I can see it on his face. See, I told you I was in the right place.

This fall I will begin to write his story down.

His is a tale of fates and chances.

I look at the lines on my hands and wonder what all my fortuneteller saw, what is fated to be mine and what will only be mine by chance.

The angel whispers in my ear- Now love, is there really a difference?

And then he smiles wickedly, and draws his sword.

[image error]

Roots

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A while back a friend of mine shared that she had recently gotten her DNA tested to find out her genetic background. Thinking herself to be mostly Greek with dark skin and dark hair, she was shocked to find out that she had quite a lot of Irish blood dancing a little jig in her veins. We laughed over the idea that everybody kind of wants to be a little Irish, and now she can proudly wear the Kiss me, I’m Irish button.

I decided I was going to have this testing done myself. After all, I have a blood grandparent that I know nothing about. A big, fat, endless trove of possibilities there. My father once told me that he had started to trace back his family tree, and he ran into Pocahontas along the way but he wasn’t sure where she fit in. We’re related to Pocahontas?!  How cool is that?

So I began to dig. I tapped on the shoulder of a good friend of mine, knowing that he’s a total dork about family lineage and the only person I have ever known who can accurately identify all the first and second cousins once and twice removed and actually knows what it means. I gave him all the information that I had, and he began the hunt.

It wasn’t too long before he found the Pocahontas link. It was the Native American equivalent to the Kiss me, I’m Irish button. Kiss me, I’m totally related to Pocahontas.

Not so fast…

What we found out was that along her journey, a very white brother of my great-great-great (etc. etc.) whatever married Pocahontas’ sister. Those descendants are related to Pocahontas, while my part of the family tree enjoyed being at the wedding.  Still counts, right?

I didn’t think so either.

I did find some Native American roots, all .4% of them. According to the paperwork, this would mean I have at least one relative (most likely a three times great grandparent) who was 100% native.  This would be the unidentified woman in some of my grandfather’s old photos (his family took an extraordinary amount of photos for it being the late 1920s) of him as a child at the knee of a rather tough looking darker woman. His great grandmother, who he remembered nothing about except that she had very dark red skin. Maybe she knew Pocahontas.

What wasn’t surprising to me was the amount of German that runs through my veins. My grandmother was a first generation American as her parents were fresh off the boat. Her name was as adorably German as a name can be, Von included, but she Americanized it as soon as she could to better fit on the Baltimore Streets she called home. I often think of throwing her name into a book, or perhaps even using it as a pen name but part of me knows she’d be shaking her head… begging me to please not do that.

I think that it’s everyone’s hope to be a little more diverse than they think they are. I am far less than I thought I was, with 99.6% of me hailing from all North Western European countries. I can see why people in my family hold onto that one brother that married Pocahontas’ sister. It very well may be the most interesting thing that has ever happened to us.

So after the eight long week wait, I won’t lie, I was quite a bit disappointed with the lack of diversity in my genetic swimming pool. But then I focused on something the paperwork said (most likely to soothe disappointed vanilla people like myself): This is where your genetic background comes from, it is not at all, who you are or who your family is.

What that blood test didn’t tell me –

My great-grandfather was a Baltimore City police officer who had five children. They lived in Baltimore until he retired and bought a big farm house out in the country. A big farm house that I remember because he lived there until I was about seven. I loved that house, it seemed haunted to me because it was so big and drafty and old. Hide and seek was a whole different ball game there. My grandfather stayed in Baltimore, where among his many jobs, he was a pretty well known local country musician. In my living room sits a 1950 Gibson Guitar in pristine condition, once featured in a giant photo of my grandfather’s band as a window advertisement for the Gibson store in Baltimore in the late 50’s. While on stage singing in his beautifully baritone voice, he caught the eye of a young German woman. She was finally breaking free of a terrible marriage, and would be on her own with a little girl to take care of. It wasn’t long before he slid on a wedding ring, and a uniform to represent the US in the Korean War. He took his young family to Europe, as he served in France for a few years. They arrived back in the States just in time to welcome my mother into the world. Stories of this time in their lives were rarely spoken of, as my grandfather once told me, it was a time of war. But over the years, stories did unfold as trinkets of that time showed up in our day to day lives. Dishes in the china cabinet, hand painted in Paris. Christmas ornaments, blown glass from Germany. Postage from old friends, written completely in French. A pocket watch that has a bullet still lodged in it from World War II, saving the life of its owner and given to my grandfather after this man wanted to repay my grandfather for his kindness with “all the good luck I’ve ever had.” Spare change in an old purse they’d give me to play with, from some country in between.

My mother now lives a seemingly quiet life, enjoying a happy and healthy long marriage to her second husband, and being all up in her three kids and three grandchildren’s business. One would almost forget that she fell madly in love and married my father before she even finished high school, and if you play your cards right, she might just finish the story about the one time she almost got arrested.

And of course, there is my dear old Dad. My father is one of the most brilliantly minded people I know, and what I think I admire most about his smart mind is that he is aware of the fact that we are always learning. He’s a funny sort, who had a strong love for God, Rock and Roll, and bad dad jokes. He’s in construction now, building some of the East Coast’s most exclusive and premier Golf Courses. But you just never know about that unassuming guy digging that hole on the back nine.

In high school, he was such a delinquent that most of his teachers made him deals. Don’t come to class all year, but pass your tests. Done. His music teacher tapped on skill. Come in and give private lessons to those students struggling rather than come to class. So all through high school, he was teaching his friends how to play the piano and guitar. The amazing thing is, he never learned to read music. He has had an award winning career, and to this day, plays by ear. He too was a pretty big deal locally. Among his credentials, he won best keyboard player and best front-man several years in a row. One year it was a year where he didn’t play but a few months with his band before they were no longer together, and he still beat out all of his competition.

I’m not sure if it was for an anniversary or for a birthday, but one evening the frontman from Crack The Sky showed up to our house and serenaded my mother with She’s A Dancer. It boggles my mind to know that every band who was anyone in the late 70s and early 80s, if they rolled through Baltimore, chances are my Dad was their opening act. His stories of those days are few and far between, because who wants to tell their kid about the age of sex, drugs, and rock and roll,  but I often wonder what life was really like for him then. While chatting with him about this very subject, he ended one of his thoughts (that he didn’t fully share with me) with “Man, Stephenwolf, those dudes know how to party.”

These are the things that get lost, the things that don’t show up on a family tree or in a genetic test. The blood test will tell me that I have a German Grandparent, but it won’t tell me that one morning she found herself at the breakfast table in a world of trouble. Her father sat waiting for her, with the local sports section in hand, where she could clearly see a beaming image of herself hanging over the finish line in a photo finish at the Pimlico horse races on an afternoon that she should have been in school. Oops.

It makes me wonder, what my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will learn about me. I wonder if they will see me as their 99.6% average European ancestor, with nothing interesting to know. A Maryland girl, born and raised. Or will there be a story floating around, about how their great-grandmother once found herself lost in a small city in Thailand, went to the river and paid a local fisherman to boat her back to the town she was staying in. Or how among her belongings they will find a drivers license that looks a little strange, because it’s from Russia (and how that was the day where she whispered to her bodyguard “this is where we die in the book”). Perhaps the once she found herself almost penniless in Paris. How she had been to Japan six times, but never once made it out of the airport. How she flew to London once and had a three day adventure with one of her best friends in the world, and let her youngest child climb the fountain in front of Buckingham Palace and got stuck in a tiny elevator with too many strangers. Who knows, maybe it will be as simple as I am where the “good” cookie recipe came from. What stories will come from the trinkets and treasures that I gather in my life?

Blood may be what binds us, but it is the stories that weave the fabric of our lives. I’m going to pay a lot more attention to the stories that I tell my kids, and hopefully one day my grandchildren and if I am very lucky, great-grandchildren.

Among every story I ever come up with between now and then, what I tell them of my own life will be my most valuable works.

In that way, I guess that makes us all story tellers.

Here’s to hoping the story you tell is a good one.

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Latest Blog

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A while back a friend of mine shared that she had recently gotten her DNA tested to find out her genetic background. Thinking herself to be mostly Greek with dark skin and dark hair, she was shocked to find out that she had quite a lot of Irish blood dancing a little jig in her veins. We laughed over the idea that everybody kind of wants to be a little Irish, and now she can proudly wear the Kiss me, I’m Irish button.

I decided I was going to have this testing done myself. After all, I have a blood grandparent that I know nothing about. A big, fat, endless trove of possibilities there. My father once told me that he had started to trace back his family tree, and he ran into Pocahontas along the way but he wasn’t sure where she fit in. We’re related to Pocahontas?!  How cool is that?

So I began to dig. I tapped on the shoulder of a good friend of mine, knowing that he’s a total dork about family lineage and the only person I have ever known who can accurately identify all the first and second cousins once and twice removed and actually knows what it means. I gave him all the information that I had, and he began the hunt.

It wasn’t too long that he found the Pocahontas link. It was the Native American equivalent to the Kiss me, I’m Irish button. Kiss me, I’m totally related to Pocahontas.

Not so fast…

What we found out was that along her journey, a very white brother of my great-great-great (etc. etc.) whatever married Pocahontas’ sister. Those descendants are related to Pocahontas, while my part of the family tree enjoyed being at the wedding.  Still counts, right?

I didn’t think so either.

I did find some Native American roots, all .4% of them. According to the paperwork, this would mean I have at least one relative (most likely a three times great grandparent) who was 100% native.  This would be the unidentified woman in some of my grandfather’s old photos (his family took an extraordinary amount of photos for it being the late 1920s) of him as a child at the knee of a rather tough looking darker woman. His great grandmother, who he remembered nothing about except that she had very dark red skin. Maybe she knew Pocahontas.

What wasn’t surprising to me was the amount of German that runs through my veins. My grandmother was a first generation American as her parents were fresh off the boat. Her name was as adorably German as a name can be, Von included, but she Americanized it as soon as she could to better fit on the Baltimore Streets she called home. I often think of throwing her name into a book, or perhaps even using it as a pen name but part of me knows she’d be shaking her head… begging me to please not do that.

I think that it’s everyone’s hope to be a little more diverse than one thinks. I am far less, with 99.6% of me hailing from all North Western European countries. I can see why people in my family hold onto that one brother that married Pocahontas’ sister. It very well may be the most interesting thing that has ever happened to us.

So after the eight long week wait, I won’t lie and say I was quite a bit disappointed with the lack of diversity in my genetic swimming pool. But then I focused on something the paperwork said (most likely to soothe disappointed vanilla people like myself): This is where your genetic background comes from, it is not at all, who you are or who your family is.

What that blood test didn’t tell me –

My great-grandfather was a Baltimore City police officer who had five children. They lived in Baltimore until he retired and bought a big farm house out in the country. A big farm house that I remember because he lived there until I was about seven. I loved that house, it seemed haunted to me because it was so big and drafty and old. Hide and seek was a whole different ball game there. My grandfather stayed in Baltimore, where among his many jobs, he was a pretty well known local country musician. In my living room sits a 1950 Gibson Guitar in pristine condition, once featured in a giant photo of my grandfather’s band as a window advertisement for the Gibson store in Baltimore in the late 50’s. While on stage singing in his beautifully baritone voice, he caught the eye of a young German woman. She was finally breaking free of a terrible marriage, and would be on her own with a little girl to take care of. It wasn’t long before he slid on a wedding ring, and a uniform to represent the US in the Korean War. He took his young family to Europe, as he served in France for a few years. They arrived back in the States just in time to welcome my mother into the world. Stories of this time in their lives were rarely spoken of, as my grandfather once told me, it was a time of war. But over the years, stories did unfold as trinkets of that time showed up in our day to day lives. Dishes in the china cabinet, hand painted in Paris. Christmas ornaments, blown glass from Germany. Postage from old friends, written completely in French. A pocket watch that has a bullet still lodged in it from World War II, saving the life of its owner and given to my grandfather after this man wanted to repay my grandfather for his kindness with “all the good luck I’ve ever had.” Spare change in an old purse they’d give me to play with, from some country in between.

My mother now lives a seemingly quiet life, enjoying a happy and healthy long marriage to her second husband, and being all up in her three kids and three grandchildren’s business. One would almost forget that she fell madly in love and married my father before she even finished high school, and if you play your cards right, she might just finish the story about the one time she almost got arrested.

And of course, there is my dear old Dad. My father is one of the most brilliantly minded people I know, and what I think I admire most about his smart mind is that he is aware of the fact that we are always learning. He’s a funny sort, who had a strong love for God, Rock and Roll, and bad dad jokes. He’s in construction now, building some of the East Coast’s most exclusive and premier Golf Course. But you just never know about that unassuming guy digging that hole on the back nine.

In high school, he was such a delinquent that most of his teachers made him deals. Don’t come to class all year, but pass your tests. Done. His music teacher tapped on skill. Come in and give private lessons to those students struggling rather than come to class. So all through high school, he was teaching his friends how to play the piano and guitar. The amazing thing is, he never learned to read music. He has had an award winning career, and to this day, plays by ear. He too was a pretty big deal locally. Among his credentials, he won best keyboard player and best front-man several years in a row. One year it was a year where he didn’t play but a few months with his band before they were no longer together, and he still beat out all of his competition.

I’m not sure if it was for an anniversary or for a birthday, but one evening the frontman from Crack The Sky showed up to our house and serenaded my mother with She’s A Dancer. It boggles my mind to know that every band who was anyone in the late 70s and early 80s, if they rolled through Baltimore, chances are my Dad was their opening act. His stories of those days are few and far between, because who wants to tell their kid about the age of sex, drugs, and rock and roll,  but I often wonder what life was really like for him then. While chatting with him about this very subject, he ended one of his thoughts (that he didn’t fully share with me) with “Man, Stephenwolf, those dudes know how to party.”

These are the things that get lost, the things that don’t show up on a family tree or in a genetic test. The blood test will tell me that I have a German Grandparent, but it won’t tell me that one morning she found herself at the breakfast table in a world of trouble. Her father sat waiting for her, with the local sports section in hand, where she could clearly see a beaming image of herself hanging over the finish line in a photo finish at the Pimlico horse races on an afternoon that she should have been in school. Oops.

It makes me wonder, what my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will learn about me. I wonder if they will see me as their 99.6% average European ancestor, with nothing interesting to know. A Maryland girl, born and raised. Or will there be a story floating around, about how their great-grandmother once found herself lost in a small city in Thailand, went to the river and paid a local fisherman to boat her back to the town she was staying in. Or how among her belongings they will find a drivers license that looks a little strange, because it’s from Russia (and how that was the day where she whispered to her bodyguard “this is where we die in the book”). Perhaps the once she found herself almost penniless in Paris. How she had been to Japan six times, but never once made it out of the airport. How she flew to London once and had a three day adventure with one of her best friends in the world, and let her youngest child climb the fountain in front of Buckingham Palace and got stuck in a tiny elevator with too many strangers. Who knows, maybe it will be as simple as I am where the “good” cookie recipe came from. What stories will come from the trinkets and treasures that I gather in my life?

Blood may be what binds us, but it is the stories that weave the fabric of our lives. I’m going to pay a lot more attention to the stories that I tell my kids, and hopefully one day my grandchildren and if I am very lucky, great-grandchildren.

Among every story I ever come up with between now and then, what I tell them of my own life will be my most valuable works.

In that way, I guess that makes us all story tellers.

Here’s to hoping the story you tell is a good one.

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Box Full of Letters

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Recently I was invited by some friends of mine to attend one of their book signings. This particular one just happened to be at Turn the Page Bookstore Cafe in Boonsboro, Maryland. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s owned and operated by Bruce Wilder. Now, while I’ve never met Mr. Wilder, I’d imagine he’s a pretty good guy. He owns a bookstore on Main Street in a pre-Civil War Townhouse. He sells unique trinkets, has a selection of good coffees, and offers a variety of his own photography on the walls. As soon as I stepped foot inside, I thought – Yeah, I could hang out here all day.

He also just so happens to be the husband to one Nora Roberts.

Her family has quite the stamp in Boonsboro, owning not only the bookstore, but an Inn and the local pizza parlor across the road.

I was so excited for my friends who had been invited to be part of the local authors signing with Nora that day. It was a thrill to no end to see their books, the books I’ve only heard about in developmental stages, lined across the table for readers to discover.

I arrived early with two more writers I know, with the intention of checking out the lay of the land and gabbing a bite to eat before the big hour. Our timing could not have been more perfect as it seemed the local pub was the go to place for everyone. Before entrees were served, we were pushing tables together and having wild conversations about not only the excitement of the day, but our own individual happenings in the writer world.

When the big hour happened, we wished our friends good luck as they took their places at the signing table. We took the time we had to browse through the vast selection of books the store had to offer. One of the staff members gave us a small tour, explaining how they organize everything. She introduced us to the Nora Room, which was an entire room full of Nora’s works.

An entire room.

As writers still early in our careers, none of us can imagine the day when we could fill a room with our books. Nora really meant it in the documentary Between The Sheets when she said to put your ass in the chair and write.

As we looked, my one friend admitted she had never read one of Nora’s books. She asked me which one I would recommend. I looked at the room full of selections and asked her what kind of books she liked. Nora has one for everybody. She asked me which ones, of all of them, have I read. I looked at one wall, then another, and another. I picked out four books, all published within the last year or so, and said–

These are the ones I haven’t read. Yet.

My friend looked at me, confused. She asked me if I meant to say that I have read every other book in that room?

Yes, Yes I have. I honestly don’t know how many she has but it’s well over the 200 mark.

She smiled, and said, “So you meeting Nora today…it’s a big deal.”

Yeah. It’s a big deal. There is no other writer in the world that I have read more books of. No other stories that I have loved more than I love hers. No other experience I’ve had reading a book to solidify that the Romance genre is where I want to be.

As I giggled with my friends and got them to autograph my copies of their books, I got in line to have Nora autograph a book for me. Now, I own many of her books and I could have taken the opportunity to buy a new book and have her sign it. But I didn’t do that. I combed through the books for sale and found Montana Sky, a book I have owned for over two decades.

This book was the first book I ever read written by her. I was in the middle of high school and a friend of mine gave it to me to fill an afternoon of boredom. I remember getting sucked into this book, into the story, into the characters. And I remember when I read the last word on the last page, I didn’t say that I wanted to read more of her works. I said THIS is what I want to do. I want to tell stories like this woman has, to make people want to be part of the story like this woman has.

This book woke up my brain to the idea that my heart already knew; I wanted to be a writer.

As I waited my turn, I watched Nora smile and chat with people. I watched her sign and pose for pictures. As I got closer and closer, I could start to feel my heartbeat in my face. Nervous was an understatement. I had a whole thing planned, what to say to Nora Roberts if I was ever in her company. What do you say to your career hero? I already knew.

What I had planned:

You know, I’ve been a fan of yours my whole adult life. I love your books, and I love the variety that you exercise in your writing. This book (Montana Sky) is the first book I ever read from you, and it changed my world. When I closed the book, I realized I had spent a week on a ranch I had never seen before in Montana, a State I have never been to. But somehow in these pages, with these words, this place was my home. These characters were my sisters. They were me. I walked away thinking I needed more jeans in my closet and cowboy boots for my feet. I was convinced that I could  run a ranch successfully now, and boy did I want to. But that’s not why I wanted you to sign this book. I wanted you to sign this book because it was the book that introduced me to what being a writer could mean. I’ve always looked to words to help me express myself, I write letters to people. I write letters, pages and pages long, laying my feelings out for them to see, and I never send them. Just the act itself is cathartic for me. Words have always been important.

After I read this book, I realized that I want to read more. I had never been a reader before because I had never found a story (with the grand exception of Anne of Green Gables) that I wanted to be a part of. I’ve never closed a book and was sad that I would not be spending more time with the characters. And they were people. Real people. After I read your book, I realized that I wrote letters to people because part of me has always wanted to paint my world with words.

In the years since, I have read almost all of your books. I have enjoyed every adventure right along with you. I have loved, and hated, and cried, and cheered. While I have never met you, your words wrap around me with the comfort of an old friend.

Watching you in this new light, as a learning writer myself, I enjoy what you have to offer on the craft. I love your blogs that celebrate new ideas, and taking chances on a different kind of story. I love when you admit that you get crabby, and that you just want to write the words and let the business people do the business things. I love that you want people to fall in love with your books, but you know that they won’t fall in love with all of them, and that’s okay. I love that you follow an idea to see what magic it has waiting. I even love it when you’re a bit snarky with the peanut gallery.

I value you. As a reader myself, and as a writer who is still finding her way. I value how much you’ve given to me, personally, without ever having even known me.

It is an honor to have met you today. I hope that one day, we will find ourselves in the same room again. Perhaps I’ll find you within the group at my dinner table. Celebrating what was, and what is yet to come.

___

 

What I actually said,–

Hi.

___

 

So here it is, one more letter for my collection of never sent. Thank you Nora, for all the words. Yours, mine, and all of them in between.

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