Lori Roberts Herbst's Blog, page 2

A Matter of Perspective

When life gets scary, wouldn’t it be nice to know events could play out like the plot of a book? (Some books anyway—remember, I write cozy mysteries, not apocalyptic dystopias.) The uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 creates so much anxiety that I found myself wishing some of my fictional heroes and heroines would come to the rescue, wrap things up, and give us all a happy ending. Of course, not all literary paragons view disaster through the same lens. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be sharing my interpretation of how certain characters would be dealing with the pandemic.

 

Lincoln Rhyme

I’ve read all of Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme books, watched The Bone Collector movie, and viewed the recent TV series featuring the character. The man’s mind is like the gum wall in Seattle—everything sticks. Here’s how I believe he would handle the virus.

“I’ve isolated COVID-19’S microscopic genetic material and determined that it originates from a single reptile found only in the remote jungles of Asia. I am dispatching Amelia Sachs to the location, where she will don protective gear and walk the grid. She is tasked with locating the species and bringing a sample to my lab in Manhattan, where I will immediately produce a cure and put a stop to the spread of the disease.”

 

Harry Potter

We followed the young wizard as he grew up and marshalled all his magical abilities to vanquish the dark forces and save the world. Who better to face our current daunting demon?

“I shall prepare for battle against The Virus Which Must Not Be Named. First, since I have no idea how to proceed, I will consult with Hermione, the brains of the group, and she will supply the appropriate spells. Next, I will expose my best friend Ron to The Virus. He will bungle around for a time but eventually display great courage at the necessary moment. We will fail several times to defeat The Virus before breaking it down to its component parts, searching those out, and destroying them one by one. After much hand wringing and self-pity, I will launch an epic showdown and ultimately conquer our mutual enemy. Then, in a nearly incestuous fashion, we’ll get married and have children, who will start the entire process again.”

And finally, Scarlett O’Hara

“Fiddle dee dee. I’ll think about that tomorrow. Social distancing my rear end. Let’s have a party!”

 

How do you think some of your favorite characters would handle the pandemic? Feel free to share your thoughts—I’d love to read them.

Same Song, Second Verse

When I had children, I remember thinking that so much of parenting was a matter of trial and error. No real “rights” and lots of “wrongs,” self-perceived ones, anyway. The same is true of giving birth to a book, as I’ve discovered the hard way.

 That’s why I’ve been off the radar for a while. I’ve been busy immersing myself in the craft: attending conferences, joining critique groups, reading books, and writing, rewriting, rewriting again. I’m learning everything I can about the genre in which I’ve chosen to write (cozy mystery), as well as structure, plot, characterization, etc. I realize now that, even if I write a hundred books, I’ll never master it. In that respect, I am oh-so grateful I discovered the Sisters in Crime, both the national and the local chapter, of which I am now serving as secretary. They’ve provided practical advice, critiquing, and wisdom. If mystery writing is something you’ve always wanted to do, I urge you to start there. 

 One of the main things I learned is that when I thought I was done, I wasn’t. I hail from a journalism background, and in that realm, when you’ve written your story, when you’ve proofed it and fact-checked it and tweaked it a bit, you turn it in and move on to the next thing. The process moves from start to finish in a matter of days—sometimes hours. I suppose that’s how I expected it to be with fiction. Not so. This book has been years in the making, and it’s still not anywhere close to perfect. I suspect it never will be.

 But as my friend author Nicki Huntsman Smith tells me, sometimes you have to let the baby fly from the nest. And so it is with Suitable for Framing. This baby is as close to grown up as she can be, so I’m letting her go. As the agent search commences, I’m on to the second book in the series, Double Exposure. Hopefully, the wisdom I’ve gained will make this birth a little quicker and less painful, but we’ll see.

 I am thankful for the support of family and friends. Wish me luck, send good vibes, create positive mojo for me—whatever you put into the universe for me, know that I appreciate it. And keep coming back. I promise to be more constant in my posts. 

What's Not to Like?

Truth is, I don’t find perfect people too interesting—though to be fair, I’ve never known any.

Nor do I care for righteous, holier-than-thou preachy people.

And don’t bother me with a syrupy sweet goody goody who can do no wrong.

I like ‘em flawed and funny and smart. And apparently, so do most of us.

 

My editor recently remarked on the importance of a likable protagonist, particularly when she is going to be a series character. So I have been considering the qualities I look for in people to label them “likable.” And it’s not what it would appear on the surface.

One of my all-time favorite TV characters is Hugh Laurie’s Dr. Gregory House, who is at first glance the antithesis of likability. He verbally bludgeons everyone with whom he comes into contact. His arrogance is boundless, as is his self-absorption. He rarely exhibits empathy or kindness or compassion. What’s to like?

But we do. We admire to his intelligence, his skill, his abilities, and the fact that he uses those talents for good instead of evil. We enjoy to his acerbic wit. He says things we wish we could come up with and find the courage to say. Though he doesn’t display it in an obvious way, House is loyal to his team, the closest thing to friends he has. A brief scene every so often convinces us that beating within that tortured soul is a good heart, and we stick with him in anticipation of its emergence.

Side note: I'm sure everyone else in the world knows this and I was too daft to see the connection, but I just discovered that House’s character was created as a medical mirror image of Sherlock Holmes. In hindsight, it’s obvious. House/Holmes. Wilson/Watson. Keen powers of deduction in cases no one else can solve. Drug addiction. Residence at 221B Baker Street (face palm—duh), and so much more. Now I need to watch the series again.

On the novel side,  I have fallen in love with John Sandford’s series protagonist Lucas Davenport. Though he softens as the series progresses, he is a fundamentally aggressive, take-no-crap, vigilante cop who believes the end is much more important than the means. But the “end” is always in the service of justice. Readers don’t mind him taking the law into his own hands. Plus, he’s witty and charming. What’s not to love?

Same with Sue Grafton’s private eye Kinsey Millhone. We admire her smarts, her cleverness, her loyalty. And her quirks. She is often conflicted, in some ways emotionally stunted, damaged by her past. She is far from perfect, far from sweet. But she gains insight throughout her journey, and she quests toward what is right, good, fair.

When I consider the people I am drawn to in the real world, it’s much the same. The people I enjoy most have depth, eccentricity, passion. Though I would cringe if any of them went around killing criminals in the name of justice, I can sense that potential in many of them. I like them because they’re not perfect, but they’re always trying to be better. 

And they almost always have a superior sense of humor. It’s critical.

After all this analysis, I re-examined Callie Cassidy, the protagonist of my upcoming Rock Creek Village Mystery, and I believe she fits the bill. I find her tenacious, humorous, flawed—interesting. She has made mistakes in her life, but she owns them and wants to grow into a loyal and loving friend, daughter, mother. She is a cynical optimist, an outgoing introvert, a hard worker, a fun person. Her friends and family members rally around her and like her, as do I.

I hope you will like her too.

Eternal, Infernal, Internal Dialogue

Sometimes—too often—my brain wages war on me. 

It goes a little something like this:

Me: Today’s writing went well. Some good scenes.

Brain: Let's be real. Today’s writing was amateurish and cliched. You won’t be able to use any of it.

Me: Maybe parts of it need work, but the section with Callie and her mother made me smile. I did a solid job developing their relationship.

Brain: It was shallow and trite. The humor fell flat.

Me: Hmmm. You could be right. But at least my first book was decent. I actually finished writing a novel. I’ll bet you never believed I could.

Brain: Nothing distinctive about your silly book. The plot plods along, the characters are dull, and the language is unremarkable.

Me: That’s not what my husband said. Or my daughters. They said they enjoyed it. My husband even said, “It was like I was reading a real book.”

Brain: Do I even need to dignify that with a response? What else would your family say?

Me: But the editor who read it said it was one of the best early drafts he's seen in a long time. Though now I'm remembering he added that it wasn’t perfect…

Brain: He was too polite to elaborate about exactly how “imperfect” it is. Perfection and your book exist in separate galaxies. No amount of revision can save it. Face it, you’re wasting your time. This writing thing is not for you. You might as well go watch another Dateline rerun. 

Me: I guess you're right. You’re my brain, after all. Why would you lie to me?

But it does. It frequently spins positive into negative, reality into disaster.

The lies my brain tells me are not unique to my pursuits as a writer; I’ve experienced similar exchanges in my head for as long as I can remember. In my mind, I was never a good enough student, or teacher, or mother, or wife. This mental tug-of-war can be as debilitating as any disease, and it has a name.

Perfectionism.

On the surface, perfectionism doesn’t sound like something I should fear or fight. I mean, what’s the problem with striving for perfection? 

Sorry to break it to you, but the problem is you’ll never achieve it. It doesn’t exist—not in real life.

My brain tells me that for my life to have any value, I must do more, more, more, better, better, better. It plays these messages on a loop I am often not even conscious of, beating against my psyche like persistent waves eroding the rocky shoreline.

Remember Terminator? The plot of the movie revolves around androids created by humans to enhance their lives. Ultimately, though, the robots take over and declare war on their creators. My brain is like that—a useful tool when it lives under my control. But when I sit back and allow the brain to take over, destruction reigns.

So how do I win this war? To quote another favorite movie, War Games, “the only winning move is not to play.” With mindfulness, I become aware of the messages my brain is sending me and refuse to allow them to shape me. I replace those lies with a sense of gentleness towards myself, a calm acceptance that I am exactly who I need to be at this given moment. My value becomes attached to who I am, not what I achieve.

Easier said than done, yes. Sometimes I still trek down the dark and fearsome path my brain lays before me. It takes vigilance and awareness to realize when I’ve headed that direction, along with the determination to choose a different trail. I find I get better at it with every passing year. Patience and persistence are required, especially since these patterns have been with me for many decades. My brain craves continuity and resists change. 

When I was a kid, my mother used to say, “Your reach should always exceed your grasp.”

That sounded so wise, like such an honorable pursuit that I dedicated my life to the phrase. But now I understand it leads to a life of constant dissatisfaction and exhaustion. Of self-doubt and even, eventually, self-disgust.

What if, instead, I set an achievable goal? What if I can relax and allow myself to grasp it? 

That is not to say I shouldn’t push myself. If I don’t, I’m likely to give in to a sense of inertia and procrastination. I need goals. But those goals don’t have to be disproportionate to my ability and desire to achieve them. And I can nudge myself towards their completion instead of thrusting myself towards them with a violent intensity that leaves me wrung out—and destined to fail.

I’ll never be Shakespeare. Or Stephen King. Or JK Rowling. And if I examine my true aspirations rather than the ones my brain tries to convince me I should have, I don’t even want to be them.

These days, it’s enough to be me.

Imagination's Incubator

I gave birth this year.

I am fifty-six years old, yet I produced not one, not two, but over twenty human beings.

And a dog.

The extended labor was intensive and, from my perspective, the births were nothing short of miraculous. 

Just as Athena sprang forth in full armor from Zeus’ head, the people of my clan clawed their way from my mind and onto the computer screen, emerging as adults who had gestated in the womb of my brain for many months.

Some of these children are older than I am. Some of them are more fully developed than their counterparts. Some are more difficult to love than their siblings. And spoiler alert: some have already passed through my world and departed.

 

A friend asked me what it was like to create characters. Do I feel as if I know them? she asked. Are they based on real people?

I’ll admit I had given little thought to the process until she posed the question. Like a teenage tryst in the backseat of a Chevy, it just happened. Characters who hadn’t existed before were suddenly alive in my imagination, taking shape and adding layers of flesh and personality with each passing day.

I focused on them a lot—still do. When I go to bed at night, they sometimes keep me awake with their conversations, their problems, their dreams. As I drive to the store, they confide their deepest desires. It’s somewhat akin to being diagnosed with dissociative disorder, I suspect, except that I am never engulfed. They are with me, but they are not me.

And that brings me to the second question: Are they based on real people?

To a degree, I suppose they must be. How could I create human beings, even fictional ones, without knowing and internalizing human qualities from people in the real world? 

Callie Cassidy, the protagonist of my Rock Creek Village Mystery series, shares a few traits with her creator. Her idealism sometimes results in despair, and she occasionally struggles with impatience (all right, more than occasionally). Sometimes when Callie speaks (especially when she is being sarcastic), I hear my voice. But the similarities between us are less obvious than the differences. Callie proceeds more boldly than I do, and she makes choices I would never even consider. She is as unique as each of my daughters; like them, she may have initially learned how to look at the world at my knee, but I raised her to think independently and to make her own decisions.

Maggie, Callie’s mother, is about the same age as my mother was when she died, so it is understandable that traces of Mom’s quirkiness bubble into Maggie’s psyche. When Butch, Callie’s father, runs outside in the freezing winter weather to warm up her car, it’s something my father would have done. And the gentle good-naturedness and smoldering good looks attributed to Sam, Callie’s on-again-off-again boyfriend, obviously evolve from my own long-suffering husband. 

So the short answer is this: if I am acquainted with you, part of you either has or will someday worm its way into one of my characters. Whether that should serve as a source of anticipation or apprehension, I leave to you.

 

While characters incubate in my imagination, I try to remember Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote, “There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.” I hope you’ll come to experience my Rock Creek Village children as I do: a group of flawed people who are trying the best way they know to wrest a modicum of happiness out of life. 

Some of them just find more socially acceptable—and legal—ways of doing that than others.

 

I can’t wait for you to meet them.