Barbara Delinsky's Blog, page 10

On sale now! What do I feel?

For starters, I feel like it’s about time!  I finished writing Sweet Salt Air a year ago, and though my publisher needed these months to publish the book well – and they have! – I feel like you all have waited forever.  On one hand, I want you hungry, so that you’ll race out and buy the book on the very first day it goes on sale.  On the other hand, I hope you haven’t been angry with me for making you wait so long.  So, a huge thanks for your patience.

What else am I feeling as my on-sale date finally arrives?  Exhausted!  In addition to working on my next book, I’ve spent the last six weeks writing blogs, updating my website, bugging my publisher about the video they’re producing, posting Facebook updates, answering Q&A after Q&A, some of which were long and in depth.  Occasionally, I wanted to tell an interviewer to check out my blog for a particular answer – only one does not do that.  Politely, patiently, one writes answers to question after question, being grateful for the opportunity to be heard.

I also feel relieved.  Sweet Salt Air actually did leave the warehouse and, as far as I know, has reached the stores.  Trust me, this is no small concern.  One year, UPS went on strike the day before my books were due to leave the warehouse via, you guessed it, UPS.  Another year, a new Harry Potter came out the same day as my book, so that, I swear, every other book in the universe sat in a storeroom until Potter-mania played out.

So Sweet Salt Air is really going on sale.  Now I’m starting to get nervous.  My book is my baby, and this is its public debut.  What if people don’t like it?  Yes, there have been some wonderful early media reviews, but many reviews appear only after the on-sale date.  Will they be good, bad, mixed?  Actually, there is one thing worse than a bad review.  That’s a review that gives away the whole story.  I just got one like that and am hiding it away so that it doesn’t spoil the book for the rest of you!

Mostly, though, right now I’m excited!  I love Sweet Salt Air and am dying to have you all read it.  It’s dedicated to a very special person in my life.  I just signed and sent a book for her, and I told her parents that if my book turns out even half as well as this special little person has, I’ll be thrilled.

How’s that for a teaser?

 

Snapshots of SWEET SALT AIR

Last week’s blog talked about which character in this book is my favorite, but I have other favorites here.  Since Sweet Salt Air is a highly sensual book, I’m thinking see, smell, feel, hear, and taste.  I’m calling them snapshots, because they’re just quick little moments from the book.  I guess that makes this blog an album.

Favorite sight?     A ghost ship on the ocean in the early morning mist, as seen from Charlotte’s bedroom window.

Favorite smell?     Lavender.  Sooooothing.

Favorite touch?     Sand.  Around and about the toes.

Favorite sound?     The blend of soft rock, conversation, and surf that you hear when you lie on the beach.

Favorite taste?     Fiddlehead ferns.  Mind you, my characters aren’t eating a big feathery frond, but rather the tiny swirls of newly sprouted ferns that are harvested before they begin to unfurl.  The season is very short.  My supermarket has fiddleheads for maybe, maybe a week each spring.  Sautéed in a little olive oil and sprinkled with a dash of salt, they’re lusciously nutty.

So there are the five senses.  But there are five other things I love in this book.

Favorite flower?    Red clover.  Well, clover isn’t really a flower, it’s a weed.  But the red clover in Sweet Salt Air only grows in hidden forest places, and it has mystical qualities.  Or so Quinnipeague lore says.  Me, I love the fantasy that Leo’s red clover offers.  I’m such a sucker for magic.

Favorite animal?    Bear.  He’s scary.  Or is he?

Favorite scene?     Leo and Charlotte on the beach.  I can’t say more, or I’ll give it away.

Favorite book?     Salt.  (Sorry, guys, but you won’t find this on Amazon.  You’ll have to read the book to learn more.)

Favorite candy?    Chocolate almond ones the likes of which Isabel Skane keeps in a bowl on the big table in her yarn store.  We used to make these at home when I was little, but I can’t seem to find a recipe that’s exactly right.  The ones I remember have the texture of caramel but are chocolate, with an almond in the center.  We used to wrap them in  little squares of wax paper and twist the ends.  Am I ringing any bells here?  If so, send those recipes along.

Have you marked your calendar for June 18?  That’s when Sweet Salt Air goes on sale.  Yikes, that’s next week!  Check back here before then, and I’ll tell you what happens when pub date arrives.

 

Are you imaginative?

Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin, and writing …

I get ideas from what I read in the news.  Here’s a perfect example.  I logged on this morning to catch the headlines at cnn.com and saw this one, “How ‘GOT’ will end,” and immediately clicked through. GOT is Game of Thrones, and I’m addicted to it.  This Sunday is the Season 3 finale, but it was last Sunday’s show that stopped my heart.  The Red Wedding.  Bloody.  Unexpected.  Heartbreaking.

So there was George R.R. Martin, author of the books on which the series is based, talking about the fact that yes, he knows how the books will finally end.  He’s now working his way through writing the sixth book, which is 1500 pages, just like the fifth book, and he still has a seventh book to write before actually reading that end.

How do you do it? Conan O’Brien asked.

Imagination, he said.  He went on to describe growing up in a working class family in Bayonne, New Jersey, and wondering what the rest of the world, which he could not afford to see, was like.

Imagination is my answer, too, when I’m asked how I come up with my plots, only the origin of my imagination is different from Mr. Martin’s.  Mine came from a lonely childhood.  My mother died when I was 8, and I dreamed she hadn’t.  I imagined scenarios whereby she would come back, and they were a comfort.  Oh I did it more – not, mind you, to the point of psychotic delusion, but enough to add a little pleasure in hoping.

From the day I hit college, my life was much, much happier, but for those 10 years before, I honed the craft of imagining.

So George Martin used imagination to escape a narrow world.  I used it to escape a sad world.  But these two examples beg the larger question of what makes a person imaginative?  Is the talent inborn?  Or does life make us that way.

What’s your take on this?  Are you an imaginative person?  If so, why?  Or do you know someone whose imagination comes from an interesting source?  I’d love to hear!

My favorite character in SWEET SALT AIR

 

Do I play favorites when it comes to my characters?  That depends on how you define playing favorites.

For starters, I couldn’t spend a year writing a book about people I didn’t like.  That said, if each of them is totally loveable, the book is boring.  Also, I like to see growth in my characters, which means they have to start off being not-so-great in some part of their lives, right?

Sweet Salt Air presents a slew of characters needing to grow.  There’s Nicole, who has led a charmed life but suddenly finds herself and her marriage facing a monumental challenge.  There’s Charlotte, who has been running from life and is suddenly at a crossroads.  There’s Leo, who grew up in a slightly dysfunctional situation and doesn’t know how to deal with actual functionality.  There’s Angie, who, after her husband dies, has to figure out how to save her relationship with her daughter as she builds a relationship with a new man.  And there’s Kaylin, looking toward finishing college and panicking about what comes next.

Which of these characters is my favorite?  It has to be either Charlotte or Nicole, since they’re the major voices in Sweet Salt Air and the ones in whom I invested the majority of my creative energy.  Honestly?  I thought my feelings for them were pretty equal.  Then an interesting thing happened.  When my editor first read the finished book, she didn’t like Nicole.  At the proposal stage, she identified most closely this character, and while she did like her as written at the end of the book, not so at first.

This is a problem. If the reader is turned off by a character at the start, she may not read on.

So I went back and modified Nicole’s personality, but not without a significant amount of soul-searching on my part.  What I realized was that I personally identified with Charlotte, and in so doing, albeit subconsciously, made Nicole a lesser being.

Not so anymore.  Nicole rose in the ranks during the revision process, and while she does still have issues right along with the other characters, readers have a better chance of being drawn to her now than they did in the first draft of the book.

Me?  I still love Charlotte.  I love her for being headstrong and independent.  I love her for being a writer and a daring traveler.  I also love her for finding something that summer on Quinnipeague that has given her reason reconsider her choices.

How about you? Once you’ve read Sweet Salt Air, will you tell me which character you like best?

 

Learning about the ingredients in SWEET SALT AIR

I’m talking about doing research, so that I know what I’m saying when I write a book like Sweet Salt Air.  Okay.  This being fiction, technically I can do what I want.  But I pride myself on writing books that are realistic, and in cases where serious things are involved (like cord blood and stem cells and MS), I owe it to my readers to get it right.

The serious issue in Sweet Salt Air is a medical one that underlies the plot.  If you read my last blog, you know that as I planned this book, I connected with a doctor who is in the forefront of research using umbilical cord stem cells to treat various diseases.  He was my lifeline as I wrote the book.  Not only did he give me a ton of information at the start, but as questions cropped up during the writing, I could shoot him an email and know that he would answer ASAP.  Once, he actually answered me from Paris, where he’d gone to deliver a paper!  He really got into the characters and all, which made it fun for me.

But there were other, lighter issues in Sweet Salt Air that I had to research as well.  Take herbs.  I add basil to Buffalo mozzarella and tomatoes when I make a caprese salad, but I buy the basil grown and packaged.  My spice cabinet has the usual dried suspects, like thyme, rosemary, and parsley.  Did I know how each one grows?  No.  Did I know the medicinal qualities of various herbs?  No.  As you see below, rosemary is beautiful and green.  Did I know the best ways to use it?  No!

I had to learn.  The Web was a wonderful source of information, but as I sit at my computer typing this, I can look over at the herb dictionaries I bought at the start of the writing.  And flowers?  Many have homeopathic value as well.  I learned, for instance, that passionflower is a mild sedative and that valerian is used to treat shock, as in PTSD.  Both of these plants appear in the book.  And most of what I learned about them came from a book.

I had to learn about roofing.  Got this from the handyman who was working here at my house at the time.

I had to learn about Chicago.  Used the Web for that.  Same with learning about the Aran Isles.

When it came to learning how one becomes a blogger, I contacted the friend of a friend, who is one, and she told me.

And little details, like the offerings of the small coastal town of Rockland, Maine?  Online as well. Rarely did a day pass when I didn’t Google one or two or three things!

Did I get everything right in the book?  Of course not. Sometimes the world changes between when I do my research and when the book comes out. For instance, as I wrote Sweet Salt Air, umbilical cord stem cell transplants were a character’s great hope.  It could be that next year they’ll be disproved for this purpose.  Or that a new and better method is found for putting shingles on a roof.  Or that one of the herbs I tout in Sweet Salt Air is found to cause a drastic reaction in allergy-prone children.

I’m human.  I make mistakes.  Please know, though, that I always try my best.

Next blog?  Favorite character in Sweet Salt Air.  Favorite scene.  Favorite food.

Where SWEET SALT AIR came from

Most of my books are inspired by things I read about in the newspaper. The inspiration for Sweet Salt Air was much more personal.  I have three sons, all of whom have recently had children, and when each of those babies was born, its umbilical cord blood was harvested, frozen, and stored. The premise is that cutting edge medicine is starting to use the stem cells harvested from such blood, and the closer those stem cells match to the DNA of the recipient, the better.

How did my kids know to do this for their kids?  The option was presented to them by the hospitals at which they were going to be giving birth.  Most major hospitals in the Northeast do this now, though I don’t know if it’s a country-wide practice yet.

But I got to thinking about that cord blood and wondering about the potential.  After a bit of research, I managed to connect with a doctor in the Midwest who is one of the leaders in this field.  I asked him what disease he thought cord blood stem cells would be used to treat within the next five years.  MS, he said.  So MS it is in Sweet Salt Air.

Of course, this is only one part of the book.  Another is reading, which I like to promote for obvious reasons.  Another is cooking.  I’m a lousy cook, but I love reading cookbooks.  I thought it’d be really cool to have two friends who haven’t seen each other in a while but reunite to create a book of recipes from their childhood summers.  My editor was the one who suggested making one of these women a food blogger.  The other woman is a writer.  Guess who suggested that?

And the inspiration for my Maine island?  I’ve been visiting the coast of Maine for as long as I can remember.  My husband and I make an annual pilgrimage there each spring.  So I was starting to work with my cord blood, my food blogger, and my writer, when we made one of these trips.  First stop was York and the Nubble Light.  See the red at the top of the lighthouse?  I had to work hard to snap that photo at just the right time (yeah, that’s my own shot)!

Then we continued along the shore to Ogunquit.  I feel peaceful driving down the narrow road into Perkins Cove.  At the parking lot adjacent to Barnacle Billy’s, I open the car door and step out, and there it is, the smell of salt air, tinged with the sweetness of candy from a nearby shop.  Sweet.  Salt.  Air.   How not to choose an ocean-side setting as the setting of my book?  To live it in my mind for a year of writing?  I’m no fool.  The ocean it was.

Coming next?  Learn about the ingredients in Sweet Salt Air – in plain terms, what research I did to make the book accurate.

How much of me is in SWEET SALT AIR

June 18.  What seemed like a long way off a year ago is coming fast.  You all have been so patient.  I thank you for that.

I just reread Sweet Salt Air.  I mean, wow, I’ve been distracted from it.  I’ve probably read twenty books since I finished writing it, and now I’m working on my next book, so my psychic energy has been focused on that.  No, no title for the new one yet.  I don’t even want to talk much about its subject, because Sweet Salt Air is the one that’s going to take center stage now.

Rereading it, I felt right at home, and not only because the story came back so quickly, but because there’s so much of me in it.

How much?  I’m asked that a lot, but, honestly, no book of mine is ever totally about me.  I like being behind the scenes.  That’s a fiction writer’s place.  Still, I write about things I like, and, inevitably, little bits of me sneak through.  Four such bits crept into Sweet Salt Air.

First, the setting.  Maine was a second home for me growing up, and though I spent more time in the lakes region, the ocean always held a fascination.  It still does, hence the photos below, which I took last weekend in Kennebunkport and Ogunquit.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist the bathroom shot.  We spent the night at the White Barn Inn in Kennebunkport, and this has to be the most beautiful bathroom I’ve ever had!  Back on point, though, I’ve written lots of books set along the Maine coast, most memorably For My Daughters and The Summer I Dared.  And now there’s Sweet Salt Air, in which a fictitious island off the coast of Maine is a major character.  So that’s part of me right there.

Second, herbs.  I’m on slightly shaky ground here, because I don’t grow herbs myself, but there’s a whole lot of magic involved with the herbs on the island of Quinnipeague in Sweet Salt Air.  Magic is my thing.  I do believe in it.

Third, the blue-green décor in Nicole’s gorgeous beach house.  Maybe it’s because I do adore the ocean – and though the North Atlantic tends to be gray-blue, blue-green is watery, so this has always been my favorite combo.  The very first apartment my husband and I had was itty-bitty, but I did it all in blues and greens.  I still remember the coverlet on our bed, the large picture over the bed (an ocean scene that we bought in Rockport, MA), even the china on which we ate our meals.  All blue and green.

And fourth, knitting – specifically knitting in the Aran Isle style.  I made a fisherman’s sweater when I was in college and, let me tell you, I was as challenged doing mine as Charlotte is doing hers.  So all you would-be knitters who struggle to do it right will identify with this story!

Do any of the above items resonate with you?

If not, I’ll tell you about the inspiration look for Sweet Salt Air in my next blog.  It’s different from my usual inspiration …

 

The Boston Marathon and me …

I’m not a runner, never have been, but the Boston Marathon is in my bones.  I grew up along the route and have watched the race year after year.  Marathon Day is a holiday in Massachusetts, officially commemorating the battles of Lexington and Concord that sparked the Revolutionary War in 1775, but since we never had school on this day, we were ripe for cheering on runners.

Water stations?  Didn’t exist.  The luckiest of the runners had friends waiting at strategic points with water poured from thermos to cup and held out for easy grabbing.  Likewise, my friends and I would cut oranges at home, carry them down the street in a bowl, and offer slices for runners to snatch as they loped past without missing a beat.  Often, we brought the newspaper list of entrants with us, so that we could identify a runner by name and cheer him on.  Yup, him.  Back then, there were only guys – but what did we know about equality?  We were teenage girls, and some of those runners were gorgeous.

The marathon has evolved.  There are women now.  There are wheelchair entrants, entrants who celebrate having survived war and disease, even, this year, a self-described “little person.”  Way back when, there were 700 runners.  Now there are more than 30,000, but still it’s a highly personal event.  Participants and spectators alike feel the warmth, camaraderie, and excitement of the day.  They take it to heart.

No, I’m not a runner, never have been, but the Boston Marathon is a springtime ritual.  It’s part of who I am as a Greater Bostonian.  And now it’s forever changed.  I mourn those whose lives were lost this year, and pray for the recovery of the scores who were injured.  But I also ache for the innocence of Boston, and I’m angry that it’s been taken.

The anger will pass.  I know it will.  Soon there will be hope and a determination to recapture that warmth, camaraderie, and excitement.  Are you with me in this?

To e-read or not

A totally funny thing happened to me yesterday.  I was reading an actual, physical book, reached the end of a page, and tapped the right margin to turn to the next.

Have you ever done this?  It wouldn’t happen, of course, if I read books in only one form.  But I’m constantly switching between hardcover, paperback, iPad, and Kindle.

For me, each has a purpose.  For instance, if I’m reading a serious something that I know I’ll want to add to my library, I prefer the hardcover.  There’s something about its weight, about the ease of going back to reread something that confuses me, about the heft of the thing if the subject is, well, hefty.

On the other hand, if the book I’m reading is for my book group and not one I’d choose on my own, but one in which I’ll want to highlight passages or lines for quick reference, I buy trade paperback.  They call it “quality paperback,” and, yeah, I like the feel.  I also like the idea of supporting independent bookstores, which often specialize in this format.

I e-read the rest of my things.  Going away for a weekend?  Take the iPad or Kindle, and if one book starts to bore me, I have another at the ready without the weight of multiple books in my luggage.  The Kindle is great when I’m reading outside and don’t want the reflection.  On the other hand, my iPad feels special.  And I do have a Kindle app on it, so I can access every last one of the books I’ve purchased on one device.

I actually just bought an iPad Mini.  Why?  Size, mostly.  My hand isn’t that all that big, and when I read in bed, smaller is easier to hold.  Also, smaller is more portable, easier to stick in my purse and take with me for waiting times wherever.  My iPad Mini charges in no time and holds its charge longer.  Yes, the screen is a little smaller, but the print size feels the same.  Bottom line?  I love my Mini.

If you’re wondering how the author in me feels about e-readers?  I feel like whatever gets people reading is good.  Kids nowadays grow up on electronic devices, so if they choose to e-read, I’d rather that than nothing.  Then again, since they’ll be spending so much of their time with electronics, they may welcome the novelty of holding an old-fashioned in-print book.

One other thought.  E-books are so easy to purchase that I buy more than I’ll actually read.  I don’t do that as much with print books.  So I don’t feel like quite as much of a traitor, since I’m certainly supporting more authors this way.

How about you?  What are your thoughts, e-book vs. print?

 

Two more book recommendations

What kinds of books do you like?  Do you switch between genres or stick to one?   Me, I usually avoid non-fiction.  Since I read the newspaper daily, I don’t want more of the same in my free time.  Likewise blood and gore; the real world has plenty.  No, fiction is definitely my thing, but, within that, I’m eclectic.  I’ll read anything that’s highly recommended and well written, though recommended or not, well written or not, if a book is boring fifty pages in, I’m done.  Likewise if a book is so dense that I have to struggle to understand it.  I’m past school.  The reading I do now isn’t for making honor roll.  It’s for intellectual stimulation, emotional gratification, and/or pure enjoyment.

So here’s my first recommendation – The Dark Heroine, by Abigail Gibbs.  I first read about it in the Wall Street Journal as an example of a self-published book that did well enough to be picked up by a mainstream publisher, which then offered the author a contract for future work. When I learned it was a vampire story, I bought it instantly.  I love vampire books and have read a slew of them, but I don’t think I’ve read one quite as colorful or imaginative as The Dark Heroine.  And the backstory of the author?  She was 14 when she started writing this – that’s right, 14 years old.  She is currently 18 and a student at Oxford, which I hope won’t teach her that vampire fiction is bad.

My second recommendation, The Last Runaway, by Tracy Chevalier, is at the other end of the fiction spectrum.  I picked it up because I loved Chevalier’s earlier book, “Girl With a Pearl Earring,” which is about a famous painting of the same name by Johannes Vermeer.  That one was set in the 1660s, and I thought Chevalier did a masterful job weaving fiction into history through a voice that felt totally real.  The Last Runaway may be set in 1851, but the weaving is as skillful, and the voice – ahhh, smooth and serene even in the most stressful of times.  This one focuses on a young Quaker woman in Ohio in the days leading up to the Civil War.  It is a thought-provoking book about the ways of the Quakers and the clash between their view of freedom and that of a government in which slavery is clinging to life by a last ugly thread.

As always, what I’ve written here isn’t a book review, simply a heads-up about books I think are worthwhile.  Both of the above have strong heroines, always key for me.  And both are exceedingly well written.  If you’re in the mood for paranormal fun, try The Dark Heroine.  If you’re in the mood for a thought-provoking read, try The Last Runaway.  BTW, it wasn’t until a week after I finished the latter that I realized the title didn’t refer only to slaves.  I’m still pretty awed by that.