Linda Collison's Blog, page 13

Writing Prompts: A single sentence can keep you afloat

Message in a bottle: Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! I’m a writer, adrift in a sea of words, with no wind to fill my sails. I’m still afloat but fast running out of fresh water. Perishing in this blue desert of words…

Ever felt this way?  Stranded, stuck, blocked, hard aground, adrift, shipwrecked far from shore?

As navigators we occasionally lose our way and get stranded on our crossings. Water water everywhere — so why am I dying of thirst? The wind that normally fills our sails and drives our fingers across the keyboard has disappeared. When this happens we tend to do one of two things: We give up writing (for a day, a month, forever) or we get out the oars and paddle, desperate to be moving again.  Paddling itself, can be a joy. We may not cover miles but we’re moving under our own power.

I’ve tried many tricks for overcoming writer’s block, with varying degrees of success. One exercise that I particularly find useful is building a powerful sentence — a single, broad-shouldered purposeful sentence.

Start by writing a sentence, any sentence.  The cat sat. The cat sat on a mat.

Now make it particular, not general. The old tomcat lay in the sun. The old, one-eared tomcat hunkered on the Persian rug.

Begin to experiment with your sentence, adding nouns, verbs, conjunctions, clauses, adjectives, to best describe a feeling or an image. Play with that image, feel free to recreate it.  The old feline nestled herself into the leaves and faced the warm morning sun, blinking her one eye, crusted with matter, kneading her claws and wrapping her once-glorious tail tight around her, like a stole, and in the way of cats, thought of nothing but was entirely aware, alive, and waiting.

Forget about correct punctuation (for now) and build it out. Once you’ve freighted the sentence in Faulkner-like abundance, pare it down again, to the barest essentials.  The one-eyed cat blinked, waiting.   The old cat watched and waited. The cat blinked. 

The only rules are, stay within the confines of a single sentence.

Now throw it away — this was just an exercise.  Don’t try to write anything else today. You have whistled up a wind, so get ready to raise sail tomorrow. A sentence is all-powerful.

Sometimes we try to hurry our crossings; we’re too intent on landfall. Slow down and delight in the words that lap against the hull. Sentences are the building blocks of literature, the carrier of images and ideas. Writing one true sentence can keep you afloat.  One sentence can save your life.

Keep paddling.

Resources:

Building Great Sentences:How to Write the Kinds of Sentences You Love to Read (Great Courses) by Brooks Landon. ISBN-10: 0452298601

Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style by Virginia Tufte.  ISBN-10: 0961392185

Water Ghosts #AmazonGiveaway

Chinese ghosts…

I have an abiding fascination in the long history and culture of China. My mother had a lacquer tri-fold screen with small shelves on which she kept some porcelain pots and clay figures of Chinese peasants, which piqued my imagination as a child. Mom was only forty-eight when she died, the autumn of my sixteenth year. The screen and the figurines were lost over the years, but I remember them quite vividly, as does my elder sister Bonnie.When I was a young adult I read Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth, which brought those clay figures to life in my mind.

My interest in Chinese maritime history came later, when Bob and I were spending time on our sailboat at Honolulu’s Ala Wai Small Boat Harbor, home to all sorts of craft, including Chinese-built junks.  There we saw Princess Taiping, a replica of a Ming Dynasty Chinese junk built for a trans Pacific voyage  from China to the United States and back.  The vessel stopped in Hawaii on the return voyage and we saw her tied up at the fuel dock, where she remained for several weeks.

The Princess was was struck by a tanker after she left Hawaii, on the final leg of her long voyage, sinking approximately 42 nautical miles  from her final destination. (See Wikipedia article Princess Taiping) Fortunately, all of the crew were rescued.

I drew on both Princess Taiping and Intrepid Dragon, also moored at the Ala Wai, to create the setting for Water Ghosts. As for the characters, I can’t really say where they came from, other than my imagination.  They haunted me for years, and still do.

See this #AmazonGiveaway for a chance to win: Water Ghosts. https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/f8f0ae2dd8180eca NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Ends the earlier of Sep 18, 2015 11:59 PM PDT, or when all prizes are claimed. See Official Rules http://amzn.to/GArules.

 

 

The death of Creativity?

My Labor Day reflections on creative writing:

Creativity is not dead, though we unwittingly conspire to starve it. We writers are killing our own children, and why? To conform to what we think readers want. To conform to what agents, editors, and publishers are demanding. In writing what we think others want we’re starving our kids, we’re pimping them into slavery. Yes, most of us are abusive parents.

Let’s say you’ve been working on your current project (at least in your mind) for some time now. Months. Maybe years. Decades. Maybe you’ve got an outline. Or not. Maybe you’ve written the first three chapters. Or maybe your story is still a wordless idea, vivid but elusive as a memory. Quite possibly you’re already a published author. In any case, you’re reading this because you’re afraid you’ve lost your voice; your vision is fading. The more you grasp at your idea, the more it slides between your fingers.

Or you’re writing in circles and it all comes out shit.

At this point you’re beginning to doubt your ability to write at all. You’ve thought about giving up the sport altogether, kicking the habit, like cigarettes or cocaine, but you can’t stop thinking about it. Your story. Your idea. You know — that book in your head? In your imagination it’s perfect but when you put words on the screen it doesn’t do it justice. You’re afraid it will fail. What if it gets bad reviews? Worse yet, what if it is ignored? What if…

All around you people are writing books, publishing books — the world is a glut of books.  So many books about how to write: about structuring, plot, voice, theme, scenes, how to create protagonists and villains, how to write great dialogue, how to find an agent, how to self-publish, how to market – and most of these are written by authors you’ve never heard of. Every social media site hosts writing groups and self-appointed gurus who tell you how to write better – what you should be writing and how.

I cringe at the word “should.” Let’s forget about “should” and concentrate on could. Or would. What would you create, if you could? What would happen if you just wrote what you felt like writing? What you were compelled to write? What if you wrote like nobody was reading but you?

Turn off social media. Put aside all of your “how to write” books. Take a break from reading  “how to write” blog posts and feed your baby with what you’ve got. Write Now. Write discover, to create, to nurture. Don’t edit as you write; just get the words down on the page. Gradually a theme will emerge, the heart will begin to beat. Automaticity is inherent in cardiac tissue.  Your job as a parent is to capture the messy essence of the story. Hard work?  You bet. Going through hell? Keep going.

Need inspiration? Read more of what you like. Infuse your mind with the stories of others. If you lose your wind and are adrift, get out the oars and row.  Brainstorm your story with a trusted writer friend. Try working with a co-writer. Read your work aloud. Have faith.

Creativity is not dead, though many are conspiring to strangle it in its infancy. Forget publication, forget sales, forget fame. If you want to be famous, change your name to Kardashian. Your responsibility is to write what only you can. Find your voice and take chances on the page. Write for yourself and it will be fresh and true and enduring. If one other human being reads what you’ve written and connects with you through it, you’re a success.

Bad choices make good fiction

Bad choices — we’ve all made them and they can affect our lives and the lives of others for years to come. Delayed repercussions can knock you to the ground when you least expect it.

An action can never be undone (well, maybe in an alternate reality it can be) yet a bad decision can sometimes be better than making no decision, taking no action at all.  Sometimes what seems like a bad choice turns out good in the end, though the transformation can take years. So called “good”choices can be the death of us or at least put us in a coma.

I love to write about the teenage and young adult years because the decisions are so momentous and the consequences equally so. What happens in our youth affects us our whole life, even if we are able to amend our transgressions. Even our little mistakes seem disastrous when we’re young because we have so little to compare them to.

Where would fiction be without characters making bad choices? It’s hard to let your characters screw up, but you must let them work it out.

They say write what you know. Well, I know a bit about being young and making bad choices. After all, I survived my teen years.  I survived my children’s teen years. Somehow we all survived — but some of our friends did not. I write for them too

One of these years I’m going to start writing about life from an older, wiser perspective. Someday, if I’m ever old and wise, maybe I’ll write a guidebook to aging. But right now I’m still exploring the choices young people make, in various settings and time periods.

Are my novels “Young Adult?”  I don’t know, nor care. I don’t write for a certain market, I write for myself. I write to discover, to experience other lives. I write to connect with others, no matter their chronological age. I write for the teenager within, to tell her that to live is to make bad choices and to keep on living, keep on growing, keep on reaching, like a plant, toward the light. Don’t harden off too soon. Stay pliant, stay supple, stay green as long as you can.

Listen to young Aaron Landon read the first chapter of Looking for Redfeather.

 

 

 

 

Teenaged eunuchs

Water Ghosts took a long time to write, mostly because I got side-tracked with historical research, including Chinese maritime navigational techniques, Asian gods, goddesses, and ghosts — and court eunuchs during the Ming Dynasty.

If you’re a Game of Thrones fan, you might think of Varys when you hear the word eunuch. But what exactly is a eunuch?

A eunuch is a castrated male. That is to say, his reproductive glands have been removed or rendered inactive, much as we neuter horses, dogs and house cats.

Why did they do it?

Castration was done for various reasons but the purpose was to de-power males. To remove their ability to impregnate and procreate. It was often done to young boys, against their will. Castration was sometimes used to emasculate prisoners of war and to form a class of servants who would not be able to impregnate the women. Young eunuchs could be raised as the master desired and they were unable to knock up the ruler’s “property.” Men in power have always had to worry about who was sleeping with their wife or concubines and whose babies those women were really carrying. Men who abuse power can rape and castrate in an effort to manipulate not only those around them but to ensure their own genetic material gets passed on.

Eunuchs are not exclusive to imperial China.  The ancient Assyrians, Sumerians, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Ottomans all castrated young males as punishment and for court service. A few societies emasculated young boys to keep their voices from changing, for singing purposes. These castrati are known to have existed from the Byzantine empire.

The eunuch Narses was a successful general under the Byzantine emperor Justinian. In fact, many eunuchs excelled as military leaders (See Wikipedia list of notable eunuchs.)

Yet the practice of castration was developed to a fine art throughout the long history of imperial China and became deeply entrenched in court culture.  At the end of the Ming dynasty there were said to be 70,000 eunuchs!

Sun Yaoting the last imperial eunuch, died in 1996.

In China castration didn’t just remove a male’s scrotum — the knife took his penis too. Those who survived were deformed, humiliated, and plagued with incontinence. They had to use a plug to keep their urine contained. In spite of the trauma, many eunuchs went on to achieve notoriety. One such violated man was Zheng He, who rose to become a powerful admiral in the Yongle Court during the early Ming Dynasty.

Zheng He (a contemporary of Christopher Columbus) was born in 1371, with the name Ma He. Born Muslim, he became dedicated to  Mazu (also called Tianfei), Chinese goddess of seafarers. (As I began to read about the eunuch mariner I also began to learn about the Chinese pantheon, which includes an impressive array of gods, goddesses, deities, demons, and ghosts who direct or in some way influence the lives of millions of people, even today.)

The boy named Ma He was captured by the Ming army during the war in which the Mongols were defeated and his father was killed. He was castrated and sent to serve Prince Zhu Di, at first in the household and then as a soldier on the northern frontier. Ma He, renamed Zheng He, earned the young prince’s trust and later helped him usurp the throne to become emperor. The eunuch was made admiral, in charge of seven naval expeditions and in command of a fleet of ships to establish a Chinese presence and impose control over Indian Ocean trade.

These Chinese-built ships were enormous — larger than any wooden ships ever built in the history of the world — and are often referred to as the treasure fleet. Their primary purpose wasn’t to carry conquering armies, but instead to collect “tribute” from the societies they visited. The not-so-subtle message was, bow down to us, fill our holds with the best you have to offer, acknowledge us as your superiors — or else!

The very first of these voyages may have been part of the usurper’s attempt to capture Jianwen, his predecessor who may have escaped.  I made use of this supposition in Water Ghosts, which is really two stories: that of young James and the eunuch Yu, who lived more than six hundred years earlier.

I don’t make this stuff up! Well, some of it I do. But there is a lot of truth behind the fiction. My copy of Louise Levathes’s marvelous book, When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433, is heavily dog-earred and underlined, as is The Eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty by Shih-Shan Henry Tsai. And there were many more sources.

Water Ghosts is a contemporary adventure, a psychological study, and a ghost story — but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the water’s surface lies the unseen bulk of history that supports it. I hope readers connect with James and with Yu, the teenaged eunuch ghost who is trying so desperately to take what James has.

 

 

Water Ghosts free for schools and librarians

“This books is everything I want in a YA read –intellect, self-discovery, action and adventure. James’s self-discovery plays out on a ship that is, for lack of a better word, infested with the spirits of long dead Chinese courtiers.”

–          J.A. Kazimer, author of the Deadly Ever After series

Old Salt Press has a limited number of copies of Water Ghosts — and a discussion guide — available at no charge for interested school teachers and librarians. The author is available for classroom and book club discussions, in person or via Skype. Water Ghosts ties in well with cultural and historical studies.  Contact us!

Water Ghosts is available through Ingram as well as through your favorite bookstore, on order.

Go Set a Watchman

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird influenced me greatly as a young reader. While Atticus was the hero of that book, I identified with young Scout, a tomboy (as I was) who revered her father (as I revered my own.) The book gave me a different perspective of racial inequality and injustice, but more than that, it was a story of the coming-of-age of a white girl in the deep South, raised by Atticus, her principled father and Calpurnia, his housekeeper/cook/nanny. I saw her insular town in Maycomb County, Alabama, through her eyes and learned of Southern manners, respect, ignorance, prejudice, bigotry, hypocrisy, incest and rape through her eyes – which is to say, through the author’s eyes. The fact that the story was told by a white girl does not diminish its importance. In fact, white people were instrumental in African Americans gaining their rights. Some of those white people were women.

Had Go Set a Watchman been published it would have set the world on its ear, back in 1960, less than a decade after Brown vs Board of Education and eight years before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. It was radical for its time – too radical.

Go Set a Watchman was written before Lee’s Pulitzer Prize winning “first novel” and was rejected. To me, it is a much more honest book, more straightforward, less crafted. From a writer’s point of view, it shows signs of being an early work, particularly the second half when Scout tends toward diatribes. Some reviewers have called it “flawed.” Of course it’s flawed, as are most books, particularly first books.

The art of writing — the craft of writing — is a process. Books don’t just spring perfectly formed, from a writer’s forehead. Stories have a way of morphing themselves and in fiction, even more so. A story – the same story – can be told from many different viewpoints. Stories are our parallel lives. They are all happening simultaneously, they are all true.

The best fiction isn’t about issues; the best fiction is about individuals. In telling one person’s story you tell a vital part of the human experience. Harper Lee allows Scout to do a little too much preaching in To Set a Watchman, but it does reveal the main character’s passionate idealism, which was ahead of its time. Harper Lee was at the vanguard of the great era of social change the sixties would bring.

On one level Go Set a Watchman is the story of a young woman’s separation from her father. Everyone sees the obvious racial theme but who’s talking about the other underlying theme?

In 2015, feminism is dead — or at least in a deep coma. In another version of the same story (Go set a watchman to kill a mockingbird ) an older Jean Louise returns home from New York — not a perfect place but a place where she has become an independent person. She comes back to the home she loves and the father she respects and she finds that he – and her boyfriend, the man who expects to marry her – are not the men she thought they were. She is ashamed of them. This is a theme not often explored in literature – daughter against father, daughter separating to become her own person, and turning down marriage in the process.

Had Go Set a Watchman been published it would have set the world on its ear, back in 1960, less than a decade after Brown vs Board of Education and eight years before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. It was ahead of its time.

Still, it’s greatest value to me, is the story of a young woman coming of age whose father has greatly disappointed her. Atticus is a man of his time. He’s not evil, he’s just a man, as is Hank, whose hand she refuses. Scout is her own woman and is guided by her own watchman. Scout is the hero of Go Set a Watchman, not Atticus. Apparently a lot of people were disappointed in that. I for one, thought it was an honest novel, with an autobiographical ring of truth that first novels often have. There are infinite ways this story could be written. Maybe someone can write it from Calpurnia’s point of view.

 

Go Set a Watchman To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird influenced me greatly as a young reader. While Atticus was the hero of that book, I identified with young Scout, a tomboy (as I was) who revered her father (as I revered my own.) The book gave me a different perspective of racial inequality and injustice, but more than that, it was a story of the coming-of-age of a white girl in the deep South, raised by Atticus, her principled father and Calpurnia, his housekeeper/cook/nanny. I saw her insular town in Maycomb County, Alabama, through her eyes and learned of Southern manners, respect, ignorance, prejudice, bigotry, hypocrisy, incest and rape through her eyes – which is to say, through the author’s eyes. The fact that the story was told by a white girl does not diminish its importance. In fact, white people were instrumental in African Americans gaining their rights. Some of those white people were women.

Had Go Set a Watchman been published it would have set the world on its ear, back in 1960, less than a decade after Brown vs Board of Education and eight years before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. It was radical for its time – too radical.

Go Set a Watchman was written before Lee’s Pulitzer Prize winning “first novel” and was rejected. To me, it is a much more honest book, more straightforward, less crafted. From a writer’s point of view, it shows signs of being an early work, particularly the second half when Scout tends toward diatribes. Some reviewers have called it “flawed.” Of course it’s flawed, as are most books, particularly first books.

The art of writing — the craft of writing — is a process. Books don’t just spring perfectly formed, from a writer’s forehead. Stories have a way of morphing themselves and in fiction, even more so. A story – the same story – can be told from many different viewpoints. Stories are our parallel lives. They are all happening simultaneously, they are all true.

The best fiction isn’t about issues; the best fiction is about individuals. In telling one person’s story you tell a vital part of the human experience. Harper Lee allows Scout to do a little too much preaching in To Set a Watchman, but it does reveal the main character’s passionate idealism, which was ahead of its time. Harper Lee was at the vanguard of the great era of social change the sixties would bring.

On one level Go Set a Watchman is the story of a young woman’s separation from her father. Everyone sees the obvious racial theme but who’s talking about the other underlying theme?

In 2015, feminism is dead — or at least in a deep coma. In another version of the same story (Go set a watchman to kill a mockingbird ) an older Jean Louise returns home from New York — not a perfect place but a place where she has become an independent person. She comes back to the home she loves and the father she respects and she finds that he – and her boyfriend, the man who expects to marry her – are not the men she thought they were. She is ashamed of them. This is a theme not often explored in literature – daughter against father, daughter separating to become her own person, and turning down marriage in the process.

Had Go Set a Watchman been published it would have set the world on its ear, back in 1960, less than a decade after Brown vs Board of Education and eight years before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. It was ahead of its time.

Still, it’s greatest value to me, is the story of a young woman coming of age whose father has greatly disappointed her. Atticus is a man of his time. He’s not evil, he’s just a man, as is Hank, whose hand she refuses. Scout is her own woman and is guided by her own watchman. Scout is the hero of Go Set a Watchman, not Atticus. Apparently a lot of people were disappointed in that. I for one, thought it was an honest novel, with an autobiographical ring of truth that first novels often have. There are infinite ways this story could be written. Maybe someone can write it from Calpurnia’s point of view.

 

Award-winning manuscript to be published 20 years later

Twenty years ago I wrote a novel, one of my first, and entered it in the 1996 Maui Writers Conference Contest — where producer/director/actor Ron Howard would be the featured speaker. The working title was “With a Little Luck” and it won the grand prize that year.   In September the book will at last be published through my imprint, Fiction House, Ltd. under the new title, Blue Moon Luck. Like Harper Lee’s recently published Go Set a Watchman (a novel that has been misunderstood and unjustly criticized), this story represents a stage in my development as a writer. I still find resonance in Chance’s telling, I still find the setting evocative and the themes of friendship, passion, hope, and the role of luck in our lives, pertinent.

Blue Moon Luck is being reviewed by Kirkus and Foreword Reviews. Other interested reviewers can receive an electronic advance review copy upon request to fictionhousepublishing@gmail.com or by contacting the author directly.

I’m sharing the coda to the novel here, of interest perhaps to other writers and to readers who would like a glimpse into the writing process, the roller coaster ride of a writer’s ambitions.  I chose the musical term coda instead of afterword to describe the autobiographical note because the novel, a fictional memoir, is about the power of music to drive and direct one boy’s life.

Blue Moon Luck

a fictional memoir by Linda Collison

Coda

 

Blue Moon Luck, one of my earliest novels, was originally titled “With a Little Luck.” I wrote the first draft in 1995 — it took me about six months — then entered it in the 1996 Maui writers Contest, judged that year by best-selling authors John Saul, Elizabeth Engstrom and Don McQuinn. Call it intuition, call it delusional thinking, but I had a good feeling about that story. I had a hunch that, with any luck, “With a Little Luck” could win.

The erstwhile Maui Writers Conference was a big deal. Held at Maui’s flamboyant Grand Wailea Resort, it brought together authors, hungry literary agents, top editors of the big New York publishing houses, playwrights, screen writers and Hollywood movie directors. In 1996 Ron Howard and Jackie Collins were featured speakers. All of this high profile razzle dazzle was funded by a thousand eager, emerging writers with disposable income who believed they too, had a manuscript that could, with the right agent and editor, win the Pulitzer, make the New York Times Best Seller list, or be optioned for a movie. Although there were lectures and workshops that were designed to help writers improve their craft, what really made the Maui Writers Conference seem magical was the possibility of discovery. Though chances were miniscule, that’s what we all dreamed of.

I was one of those hopefuls who spent $495 (not including airfare or hotel) to spend a long weekend on Maui, where I never once dipped a sandy toe in the ocean. Like most of the attendees, when I wasn’t attending lectures or workshops I was feverishly rehearsing for the coveted fifteen-minute pitch sessions with agents and editors – sessions we hoped would earn us an invitation to send the manuscript to their attention, with the secret code to put on the envelope that would get it past the hack assistant who was prone to placing brilliant manuscripts in the slush pile.

A few weeks before the Labor Day Weekend conference someone called to tell to me “With a Little Luck” was among the ten finalists — and to invite me to join the others in an intensive two-day workshop led by Saul, Engstrom and McQuinn. I was ecstatic. Yes! Maui, or bust! Since I was living on the neighboring Big Island at the time, it wasn’t such a long or expensive journey to get to the Valley Isle, though it was an emotional ride, for sure.

Ron Howard, one of my favorite film directors, started things off with his keynote speech about storytelling and timeless themes. I was truly star-struck, having followed his career since he played Opie Taylor on the Andy Griffith show. Author and screen writer Chris Volger’s sessions on mythic structure in storytelling was instructive and inspiring and has influenced my own writing in the years since. But where I really got my money’s worth was participating in the intensive writing workshop with the other finalists. Don McQuinn was particularly good at teaching the art and craft of writing. Through his Socratic method I improved my manuscript and learned to look at my work with fresh eyes and listen to it with fresh ears. I am grateful to Don and am a better writer for his insightful criticism.

The weekend flew by. Sunday morning we gathered together in the auditorium, an intimate group of about 1200, for the closing ceremony. Conference director John Tullius was about to announce the contest winners. Apparently there was a tie that year (1996) and two grand prizes would be awarded. I had been sufficiently humbled in the workshop, but still believed my story had merit. Now, nearly twenty years later, I can vividly recall sitting near the back of the auditorium listening as the names of the honorable mentions were called. My name was not among them but I was still hopeful. Tullius announced the name of the first grand prize winner and I clapped until my hands stung for the man whose name I cannot remember – the man who took his place on stage alongside the runners-up and received his award. My husband squeezed my hand tightly as we waited. Tullius then passed the microphone to Don McQuinn who began to read in his rich, slow voice with its hint of a Southern drawl, bringing young Chance Lee to life.

“The trouble between Tollie and me all started the night we got our fortunes told, the summer I was twenty-two. That was the summer everybody was doing it, going down to the river to see the witch…”

Bob hugged me and I hugged him back, feeling as if I was in a dream. I floated to the stage amidst what sounded to me like a roar of applause. I remember thinking, here, now, my career as a novelist begins. Agents will be beating at my door, my inbox will be jammed with offers, Ron Howard will be calling to option the movie rights… That was in my waking dream.

None of that happened. Except, perhaps, my career as a novelist began in earnest.

I had been a writer all my life. As a fifth grader I wrote the winning entry the Daughters of the American Revolution Essay Contest for school kids. In high school I contributed self-absorbed poetry to the literary magazine and wrote a one-act play in French that was awarded third place in a state-wide contest that had only five entrants. Perhaps I was unduly encouraged by these small successes.

In college I studied to become a registered nurse and began freelance writing. I sold my first article to a nursing newsletter for ten dollars, won third place in an essay contest sponsored by the National Student Nurses Association and Johnson & Johnson. Throughout my nursing career I wrote articles and stories for magazines. With my husband, Bob Russell, I wrote travel articles and essays, and two guidebooks published by Pruett, a regional press in Boulder, Colorado.

This qualified me as an author (in my mind, if not on the IRS tax form) but I had always wanted to write a novel. Now I had accomplished that. If a novelist is someone who has written a novel, then I was a novelist. But although With a Little Luck had won Maui’s grand prize that year — it had no luck at all getting published.

I did receive some interest, initially. The late Wendy Lipkind, a respected New York literary agent who attended the Maui Writers Conference that year bought me a drink at the poolside bar, beneath a swaying palm tree. She was curious to learn why a middle-aged female living in Hawaii had written a novel with a young male protagonist about male friendship in West Virginia. The answer was complicated. I have family ties to West Virginia and I raised two boys who played in garage bands. As a young woman I left my home in Maryland to head out West to find my fortune.

“What else do you have?” Wendy wanted to know. “I’m not really taking on much fiction.”

I told her about my nursing memoir I was working on and she asked me to send her the full manuscript. She picked up the tab, congratulated me again on winning the award, then hurried off to catch her plane out of Kahului Airport, leaving me feeling ridiculously happy and hopeful – and slightly buzzed – under the palm tree at the poolside bar.

As it turned out, Wendy didn’t offer me representation. She turned down the nursing memoir, feeling it was a little too depressing (she may have used the term bitter) but she sent me a book one of her successful clients had written about the healthcare industry that was more hopeful and heroic, as an example of what she was looking for. I shelved the nursing memoir and began to send out queries for “With a Little Luck”, mentioning that my manuscript had won the 1996 Maui Writers Conference Award — which nearly always resulted in a reply to send the full manuscript. This is pretty much the only benefit of winning an award, I’ve discovered.

A year passed during which half a dozen agents read “With a Little Luck” and passed on it. Most said the novel was well written with real voice but was “quiet.” They were all looking for “high concept” stories and didn’t think they could sell it. I took a deep breath and soldiered on. Another year of sending out queries got me the same result. I grew weary of rejection and shelved the manuscript, then sank into a deep depression that lasted three, maybe four days before dragging myself out of the quagmire of despair. Clearly, the only thing to do was to write another novel.

The next novel (working title “Orion Rising”) took six years to research and write. It was historical fiction inspired by my experience as a crewmember aboard HM Bark Endeavour, a replica of Captain Cook’s 18th century three-masted ship. When I was finished I went back to the Maui Writers Conference where I landed a crack agent, Laura Rennert, with Andrea Brown Literary Agency. Laura convinced me the sea-based historical novel was YA – Young Adult – the hot new market in 2004. I hadn’t written it for any market, I had written it from the perspective of a teenaged girl/woman in the 18th century, but Laura assured me she could sell it to a top publisher as a YA historical novel. Indeed, she did, to Alfred A. Knopf, who published it under the title Star-Crossed in November, 2006. In 2007 the New York Public Library chose it to be on their list, Books for the Teen Age.

Since then, I’ve written and published three more novels, all with protagonists who are teenagers or young adults. Maybe I’m in an arrested stage of development, perpetually a teenager at heart? In any case, I am drawn to characters who are coming of age. It’s a time of life fraught with uncertainty, when passions and hormones run hot and many mistakes are made. The experiences we have as children and as teenagers influence our lives for decades to come.

Recently I dug out the dusty old manuscript, “With a Little Luck.” As I read it for the first time in years, I realized I was still deeply connected to the characters and the sense of place. I could hear Don McQuinn’s southern drawl as he read the opening page. The story, a quiet one, still had a beating heart. The characters were alive, stuck in time, wanting out.

I edited the manuscript, added some sections, deleted some others, changed the title to Blue Moon Luck — but kept the essence of the story.

The Maui Writers Conference is no more and my former agent took a pass on Blue Moon Luck — but I haven’t given up on Chance and his memoir. Call it intuition, call it delusional thinking but I’m still waiting for Ron Howard to call.

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— from Blue Moon Luck, copyright 1996 Linda Collison. All rights reserved.  Projected publication date: September 25, 2015

Looking for Redfeather — Literary Fiction’s Spring Spotlight Award

Pleased to share the just-released review of Looking for Redfeather, recipient of  Literary Fiction Book Review’s Spring Spotlight Award.

“Some teens are just unmanageable – getting crazy ideas and making questionable, if not bad, decisions because they think they’re invincible and can do anything – right? Linda Collison’s young adult novel about three such teens gives us a brilliant look at what goes on in the world inside their heads as they deal with the world around them. Young readers will instantly relate to these characters and adult readers will be, or should be, enlightened. But these three aren’t kids just off to do mischief, they’re children on the cusp of adulthood struggling to put together a winning hand from the cards dealt to them by adults.

Ramie Redfeather, 15, leaves a note at home for his single mom while she’s at work and takes off hitchhiking from Cheyenne to Denver in search of the father he’s never met, and maybe to dodge a court appearance. In Baltimore, Chas Sweeny, 17, “borrows” his grandmother’s car for a chance to see the world, but really to escape dealing with a tragic situation at home. Faith Appleby, who possesses a mild learning disability, and whose parents think she’s with a friend counseling at a Bible camp, changes her name to Mae B. LaRoux and takes a wrong bus out of Baton Rouge on her way to sing in a blues music competition in Austin.

Collison is so adept at building characters by showing the reader who they are that by the time the three teens serendipitously meet up the reader already knows the family they’ve left behind and cares about where they end up. (Writers who struggle with the “show, don’t tell” concept could use this book as a master class.) The affable and talkative Chas offers to drive Ramie and Mae B. where they need to go, via the road trip of his dreams. He periodically calls his grandmother to say he’s out looking at colleges in order to keep her from reporting the car stolen and having him picked up. So, with clear sailing ahead and no firm plan other than to find Redfeather and get Mae B. to Austin in time for the competition, the adventure unfolds through several states. And, of course, nothing goes as expected.

Looking for Redfeather is an engaging, well told, often lyrically-written story that keeps moving and never falters. Collison reveals the depth of her characters by deftly weaving minor successes and major disappointments into this road trip of self discovery and acceptance. And, in the end, the pain that set each of the trio on the road sends the two boys back toward home and leaves Mae B. at the Austin Music Festival. And along the way, maybe they find Redfeather.

Verdict: An engaging, well told, often lyrical narrative that never falters.“

— Literary Fiction Book Review; July, 2015.