Cathy Lamb's Blog, page 62
March 1, 2014
The “I Should’s” And The Cat
I always have a lot of “I Should’s” going on in my life.
I should write more.
I should blog more.
I should write a thriller and scare myself to death.
I should eat more fruit, like a baboon, and less chocolate.
I should walk every day. (This has appeal. Then I can pretend I’m exercising when really I’m daydreaming like crazy.)
I should be a less temperamental wife.
I should lose weight off my butt.
I should keep my mouth shut more often.
I should help save the planet.
On and on. Endless.
Then I watch my cat.
KC has no “I Shoulds” in her life that stress her out, spin her up, and make her eat ice cream out of a carton with a spoon.
Currently, as I write, she is sitting on my lap, sporadically trying to lick my face. I don’t like cats licking my face, so I have to keep swinging my head back, again and again, like a bobble head. But still.
What KC likes to do is sit and relax. She likes to be in front of the fireplace. She likes to find a good place to nap before she finds a good place to sleep. She likes to sit on heaters and have warm air blown up her fur.
It’s quite the life of splendor, I think.
But what KC the cat loves the most is to be with our family, especially with the kids. When the kids were younger, and playing outside, she would hide under my old, rickety van and keep an eye on them. When they came in, she came in.
She will often sleep at the top of the stairs at night so she knows who’s coming and going, if she’s not sleeping in front of the kids’ bedroom doors.
She runs to the door to greet us when we come in. She meows at us and expects us to meow back, promptly, like we’re having a conversation.
She sits on our laps, lays on our chests. She’s in love with my husband.
Her whole life then, is basic: Eat, sleep, nap on a warm heater, hang out with the family and bring joy to their lives.
It’s a nice life. Prioritized. Organized. Family first. And there are no “I shoulds,” in it at all.
She’s a heckuva cat.
I should figure out how to be a little more like KC in 2014.
February 13, 2014
The Read Like Crazy Book Club
The Read Like Crazy Book Club begins this Sunday, February 16th, on my Facebook page.
Here’s how it will work.
1) Read one book a week. I know! That’s a lot for me, too, sometimes. But, you see, one of my New Year’s Resolutions was to read more. And here I am. And here you are, too. So let’s grab our coffee and chocolates and settle in together.
2) If you do not read a book a week you agree to be punished. You will be locked in a hotel room with Keanu Reeves for three days. I know. Torture. Get your reading done. (Keanu is a secret member of this group.)
3) The Read Like Crazy book group is for six weeks.
4) Read whatever you want.
5) Or read with me. Or read a book now and then with me. Here’s my list. Starting this Sunday, I will begin reading The Orphan Train. Next: Honolulu by Alan Brennert. The Hypnotist’s Love Story. The Poisonwood Bible. Labor Day. The Good Lord Bird.
6)On Sunday, on my Facebook page, look for the photo of the stack of books. I will post how my reading week went and, hopefully, I will have finished the book. If not, I will be HONEST, and keep my pathetic and whiny excuses to a minimum. I will review the book, then list the next book I’m reading. Do the same, on my post.
7)Treat this as you would any other book group. We all love books and reading, so let’s talk and share. However, feel free to chat about other things, too. Make new online friends. Laugh. Enjoy.
8) Be ready for Sunday. Choose your books. Read Like Crazy. Welcome.
The Read Like Crazy Book Club
Hello book lovers,
The Read Like Crazy Book Club begins this Sunday, February 16th.
Here’s how it will work.
1) Read one book a week. I know! That’s a lot for me, too, sometimes. But, you see, one of my New Year’s Resolutions was to read more. And here I am. And here you are, too. So let’s grab our coffee and chocolates and settle in together.
2) If you do not read a book a week you agree to be punished. You will be locked in a hotel room with Keanu Reeves for three days. I know. Torture. Get your reading done. (Keanu is a secret member of this group.)
3) The Read Like Crazy book group is for six weeks.
4) Read whatever you want.
5) Or read with me. Or read a book now and then with me. Here’s my list. Starting this Sunday, I will begin reading The Orphan Train. Next: Honolulu by Alan Brennert. The Hypnotist’s Love Story. The Poisonwood Bible. Labor Day. The Good Lord Bird.
6) On Sunday, on facebook, look for this same stack of books. I will post how my reading week went and, hopefully, I will have finished the book. If not, I will be HONEST, and keep my pathetic and whiny excuses to a minimum. I will review the book, then list the next book I’m reading. Do the same, on my post.
7) Treat this as you would any other book group. We all love books and reading, so let’s talk and share. However, feel free to chat about other things, too. Make new online friends. Laugh. Enjoy.
8) Be ready for Sunday. Choose your books. Read Like Crazy. Welcome.
January 30, 2014
A Writer’s Failure In The Kitchen.
I am having a very bad cooking week.
This is not unusual.
I don’t like to cook.
I am not very domesticated and have zero talent in the kitchen. This, despite the fact that my late mother, an English teacher, used to bake bread from scratch and make home made plum jelly that would make you think you were eating heaven.
Still, Costco and their ready made meals and I are very good friends. Perhaps a little TOO close. I do manage to get dinner on the table and none of my children, so far, have starved, though they do whine and complain that there is “nothing to eat” despite a packed pantry.
As a fiction writer, I will now say something bad about women who are cook book writers. Here it is:
I hardly know what to do with them or what to think. There they smile on the covers of their cook books, their hair tamed and brushed, in pretty outfits, not a blackened pan in sight. They wield a wooden cooking spoon, matching red mixing bowls nearby, with a full counter full of delicious meals or desserts in front of them. There is no mention that they just swallowed horse sized tranquilizers to get everything so perfect, so I’m going to assume they didn’t.
The cook book authors say their recipes are “easy” with only 125 ingredients, some of which I don’t even recognize. Perhaps the ingredients are in Latin?
If that were me on the cover of a cook book, my hair would be singed, there would be flour on my boobs, I would have a super pissed off expression on my face, and half the stuff on the counter would be burned.
They don’t have two foot tall fires on the stove like I did a few days ago when I was de – thawing some Chinese meal. They don’t have to get out the fire extinguisher like Tall Son had to. After the fire went out Oldest Daughter said to me, in all seriousness, with a pathetic, begging expression on her sweet face, “Mom, please don’t cook anymore. Please.”
They don’t make toasted cheese sandwiches that are burned on one side and hardly done on the other. They don’t break their blue and white dishes.
My husband says that I cook by fire alarm. As in, when the smoke billows around the room and the fire alarm goes off, that’s when I know to pull the meal out of the oven.
I try not get real personal about my twenty year marriage, so I’ll just say that if my glare could have felled a man, well, my man would have been on the floor, clutching his heart and his crotch and begging for testicular mercy.
Tonight I made a crock pot chicken recipe my sister from Montana gave me for tomorrow night. The whole thing is so simple, but I managed to forget it was cooking and let the whole thing melt in there for six hours, not four.
This was a dumb thing to do as I could smell the chicken and spices. It did not occur to me to check the timing on it, probably because I was in the midst of writing a hot love scene and forgot about it. (This guy, Josh, is sexy beyond sexy, ladies. I have created him for you.)
In fact, I often forget what’s on the stove because I get lost in my work. Or in my daydreaming. This is a problem I acknowledge.
Sometimes my lack of cooking abilities, I will admit, makes me feel like less of a woman. It does. I try to cook, but I just don’t like it, have no patience, and I’m not good at it.
What to do?
Well, that is obvious. I will simply go back to looking at overly done – up women on the covers of cook books and cursing them and their impossible creations. They’re probably on horse sized tranquilizers anyhow.
That should solve the problem nicely. And, if it doesn’t, I will employ a Cathy Rule I learned long ago, in the kitchen: When problems can’t be solved, they should be eaten.
Pass the frozen chocolate chip cookie dough.
January 28, 2014
Author to Author Interview: Josh Hanagarne
Cathy Lamb: Josh, I absolutely loved THE WORLD’S STRONGEST LIBRARIAN.
Here are a few of the reasons why, in no particular order: First, your love of books and your mother’s love of books. I grew up in the same type of household, with a mother who was handing us books when we were still babies. We all read. It was just what we did, so I related to you from the start.
Second, I appreciated your honesty about your challenges with Tourette’s Syndrome and how you wrote about it with sincerity and humor, and zero self pity.
Third, I liked learning about being Mormon and your faith trajectory, as I would call it. I’m Christian, but have questioned many aspects of my faith from day one, so your thoughtful introspection helped me to do some more thinking.
Fourth, your work as a librarian. I laughed out loud so many times.
Now I’m going to ask you a question instead of being a gushing fan. Why did you write the book? What was your intent in writing about your life?
Josh Hanagarne: It really happened by accident. I’d been writing a blog called World’s Strongest Librarian http://worldsstrongestlibrarian.com/ just to keep track of my workouts, because I kept losing my strength training notebooks. Two months into that blog, Seth Godin sent me an email and said “You should be writing a book! I’m sending this to my agent!” forty eight hours later, for no reason whatsoever, I had a literary agent, but no book, not even an idea for a book.
I hate to be bored, and writing a book sounded like an adventure, so away we went. It just took forever to figure out what it might be. I didn’t have any specific intentions except to see what might happen.
For the readers here who don’t know what Tourette’s Syndrome is can you explain it and then tell us what is hardest about having it?
Tourette’s is a neurological condition which causes involuntary vocalizations and/or movements. It kind of feels like needing to sneeze, but all the time, everywhere, in every part of your body. The symptoms are called tics. I have a very extreme case, so the worst parts for me are the pain and injuries in my body, and the relentless challenges of being in public but not being able to control the noises I make or what my body does.
One of my favorite passages, “I learned that I could alter the speed of certain tics with some success. Especially with the big whiplash tics, this was a revelation. Sometimes having tics at half speed released me from the urges. That would save huge amounts of wear and tear.”
At the end of the book, you seemed to have gained a great deal of control over the Tourettes, and then you seemed to back track a bit. How are you now?
Worse than ever. I’m thirty six years old and it’s so much worse than it was at any time I described during the book. And it seems to be worsening every day. Not sure what to say about that besides it really sucks and I’ll grind my teeth and keep going.
I’m sorry to heart that, I truly am.
I’m sure you have been inundated with questions from parents of kids with Tourette’s. What are a few pieces of advice that you offer them?
All kids need the same things. They need to feel loved and safe and they need help finding whatever they can be good at. Kids with Tourette’s need those things, but it often takes the shape of parents learning about the disorder, being patient, and helping the child learn how to talk about the condition so it can be explained as needed.
When did you start writing THE WORLD’S STRONGEST LIBRARIAN, how long did it take, and how did you write it? For example, did you brainstorm, outline, organize, did you set daily word count goals, how many times did you edit it?
It took about four years in one way or another. The story kept changing. Then we’d submit a proposal that would go nowhere and have to retool based on feedback. I’m not really an outliner or a word count person. I love to write and look forward to it every day.
With the nature of Tourette’s, I’m rarely capable of sitting still long enough to write for more than fifteen minutes a day. Sometimes that would get me 1000 words, sometimes it would get me 100. My goal was simply to write every day and keep my fingers moving. I learned that I have to make a huge mess before I can clean it up. I don’t ask myself editorial questions on the fly.
I went through eight drafts myself, and three with the editor who bought the book.
I loved this sentence, “Whenever the teenagers are quiet, I assume it’s because they’re impregnating each other.” What are your top three reasons for being a librarian?
These probably aren’t my top three, but if you can count, you’ll concede that these are, at the very least, three reasons:
I’m not well-suited to anything else
I love the library’s mission – fight ignorance and promote curiosity and literacy
It’s fun
I know this question might be hard because you’re a book addict, but I must ask you for your top five favorite books EVER.
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
How much are you currently dead lifting and bench pressing now? How many hours are you in the gym per week? (Readers: Josh is six foot seven.)
Not sure about deadfliting; I don’t test maxes. I know I can deadlift 525 pounds for a set of 15, so my upper limit would probably be in the 600 range. I don’t really bench press much, so I have no idea. I don’t think I’ve ever benched more than 350, and almost certainly couldn’t do that now.
I usually lift three times a week for 20-40 minutes. If I’m watching TV I might work do some additional work on my hands while I’m vegging.
Your story is very personal. Were there challenges in that regard?
Yes. When you spend this much time thinking about yourself, you learn who you are. When you start turning over the rocks you don’t get to choose what’s under them. I learned to love and hate myself in ways that I never would have suspected were possible, prior to the book.
How have your family members and friends reacted to the book?
With wonderful positivity and support.
THE WORLD’S STRONGEST LIBRARIAN is so popular. How has it changed your life?
Ha! I wish that popularity translated to more sales! My life is still the same in most ways. Forty hours a week at the library. Family. Lifting and books. But I also get to go speak and meet people like Stephen King and have experiences that never would have presented themselves without the book.
More than anything, I like to meet people. Anyone. Everyone. And this book has put me in rooms with thousands of fine folks that I probably never would have met otherwise. I love that.
What are you writing now?
About to turn in the next non-fiction book. I’ll keep the subject to myself, but will give you the first line:
The French have a saying, but I can’t remember what it is, so we’ll speak no more of the French.
I love it. Can’t wait to buy it. Thanks for the interview, Josh. Happy writing and happy reading.
Author Interview: Josh Hanagarne
Cathy Lamb: Josh, I absolutely loved THE WORLD’S STRONGEST LIBRARIAN.
Here are a few of the reasons why, in no particular order: First, your love of books and your mother’s love of books. I grew up in the same type of household, with a mother who was handing us books when we were still babies. We all read. It was just what we did, so I related to you from the start.
Second, I appreciated your honesty about your challenges with Tourette’s Syndrome and how you wrote about it with sincerity and humor, and zero self pity.
Third, I liked learning about being Mormon and your faith trajectory, as I would call it. I’m Christian, but have questioned many aspects of my faith from day one, so your thoughtful introspection helped me to do some more thinking.
Fourth, your work as a librarian. I laughed out loud so many times.
Now I’m going to ask you a question instead of being a gushing fan. Why did you write the book? What was your intent in writing about your life?
Josh Hanagarne: It really happened by accident. I’d been writing a blog called World’s Strongest Librarian http://worldsstrongestlibrarian.com/ just to keep track of my workouts, because I kept losing my strength training notebooks. Two months into that blog, Seth Godin sent me an email and said “You should be writing a book! I’m sending this to my agent!” forty eight hours later, for no reason whatsoever, I had a literary agent, but no book, not even an idea for a book.
I hate to be bored, and writing a book sounded like an adventure, so away we went. It just took forever to figure out what it might be. I didn’t have any specific intentions except to see what might happen.
For the readers here who don’t know what Tourette’s Syndrome is can you explain it and then tell us what is hardest about having it?
Tourette’s is a neurological condition which causes involuntary vocalizations and/or movements. It kind of feels like needing to sneeze, but all the time, everywhere, in every part of your body. The symptoms are called tics. I have a very extreme case, so the worst parts for me are the pain and injuries in my body, and the relentless challenges of being in public but not being able to control the noises I make or what my body does.
One of my favorite passages, “I learned that I could alter the speed of certain tics with some success. Especially with the big whiplash tics, this was a revelation. Sometimes having tics at half speed released me from the urges. That would save huge amounts of wear and tear.”
At the end of the book, you seemed to have gained a great deal of control over the Tourettes, and then you seemed to back track a bit. How are you now?
Worse than ever. I’m thirty six years old and it’s so much worse than it was at any time I described during the book. And it seems to be worsening every day. Not sure what to say about that besides it really sucks and I’ll grind my teeth and keep going.
I’m sorry to heart that, I truly am.
I’m sure you have been inundated with questions from parents of kids with Tourette’s. What are a few pieces of advice that you offer them?
All kids need the same things. They need to feel loved and safe and they need help finding whatever they can be good at. Kids with Tourette’s need those things, but it often takes the shape of parents learning about the disorder, being patient, and helping the child learn how to talk about the condition so it can be explained as needed.
When did you start writing THE WORLD’S STRONGEST LIBRARIAN, how long did it take, and how did you write it? For example, did you brainstorm, outline, organize, did you set daily word count goals, how many times did you edit it?
It took about four years in one way or another. The story kept changing. Then we’d submit a proposal that would go nowhere and have to retool based on feedback. I’m not really an outliner or a word count person. I love to write and look forward to it every day.
With the nature of Tourette’s, I’m rarely capable of sitting still long enough to write for more than fifteen minutes a day. Sometimes that would get me 1000 words, sometimes it would get me 100. My goal was simply to write every day and keep my fingers moving. I learned that I have to make a huge mess before I can clean it up. I don’t ask myself editorial questions on the fly.
I went through eight drafts myself, and three with the editor who bought the book.
I loved this sentence, “Whenever the teenagers are quiet, I assume it’s because they’re impregnating each other.” What are your top three reasons for being a librarian?
These probably aren’t my top three, but if you can count, you’ll concede that these are, at the very least, three reasons:
I’m not well-suited to anything else
I love the library’s mission – fight ignorance and promote curiosity and literacy
It’s fun
I know this question might be hard because you’re a book addict, but I must ask you for your top five favorite books EVER.
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
How much are you currently dead lifting and bench pressing now? How many hours are you in the gym per week? (Readers: Josh is six foot seven.)
Not sure about deadfliting; I don’t test maxes. I know I can deadlift 525 pounds for a set of 15, so my upper limit would probably be in the 600 range. I don’t really bench press much, so I have no idea. I don’t think I’ve ever benched more than 350, and almost certainly couldn’t do that now.
I usually lift three times a week for 20-40 minutes. If I’m watching TV I might work do some additional work on my hands while I’m vegging.
Your story is very personal. Were there challenges in that regard?
Yes. When you spend this much time thinking about yourself, you learn who you are. When you start turning over the rocks you don’t get to choose what’s under them. I learned to love and hate myself in ways that I never would have suspected were possible, prior to the book.
How have your family members and friends reacted to the book?
With wonderful positivity and support.
THE WORLD’S STRONGEST LIBRARIAN is so popular. How has it changed your life?
Ha! I wish that popularity translated to more sales! My life is still the same in most ways. Forty hours a week at the library. Family. Lifting and books. But I also get to go speak and meet people like Stephen King and have experiences that never would have presented themselves without the book.
More than anything, I like to meet people. Anyone. Everyone. And this book has put me in rooms with thousands of fine folks that I probably never would have met otherwise. I love that.
What are you writing now?
About to turn in the next non-fiction book. I’ll keep the subject to myself, but will give you the first line:
The French have a saying, but I can’t remember what it is, so we’ll speak no more of the French.
I love it. Can’t wait to buy it. Thanks for the interview, Josh. Happy writing and happy reading.
January 6, 2014
Author Interview: Graeme Simsion, The Rosie Project
Cathy Lamb: Your book, The Rosie Project, was one of my favorite books of the year, probably of my whole life. I so enjoyed it. I read it on my kindle, then bought it for my son.
Graeme Simsion: Well, many thanks! It’s great to see something I’ve created giving so much pleasure to readers.
I actually read your book when I should have been working on mine!
Readers are always curious about authors. At least, I always am. So, can you tell us about yourself? Where you live, your job, interests, hobbies…
I live in Melbourne Australia. My original career was in information technology, and I built up a consulting business which I sold when I decided I wanted to be a writer. I kept consulting and doing seminars on a freelance basis until December, 2012 when international sales of The Rosie Project allowed me to become a full-time writer. Hobbies? Who has time for hobbies? I enjoy things that fit around my writing life – travel, food and wine, reading. My wife and I walked 1250 miles from central France to Santiago in Spain in 2010.
That sounds like a very long walk. I hope you were able to sample excellent wine along the way. (Although not TOO much wine, as that could have made walking difficult.)
For those who have not yet read The Rosie Project (and you should!!) tell us about Don Tillman.
Don’s a 39-year-old professor of genetics who’s a little (OK, a lot) socially challenged. His life is well-organised, productive and just fine – except he wants a partner. Dating hasn’t been a big success so far, but now that he’s constructed a 32-page questionnaire to select the perfect partner, that’s under control too.
Don has Asperger’s but doesn’t appear to know it, though he’s clearly brilliant. He even gives a lecture to children with Asperger’s and their parents and studies it extensively. Yet you never let him get to a place of deep introspection and self – analysis so he could acknowledge it. Why was that?
Photo credit: James Penlidis.
For a long time I avoided the question of whether Don has Asperger’s – not just in the book, but when asked in interviews. I didn’t read up on Asperger’s to invent Don; I based him on people I’d met in IT and academe, none of whom had been diagnosed with Asperger’s (the diagnosis wasn’t really around until the mid 1990s, and those guys were already adults and doing well enough not to seek help.) But the general consensus from the Asperger’s community is that Don is one of them!
The people who inspired Don frequently don’t seek diagnosis. I recall Autism expert Temple Grandin being quoted as saying that half of Silicon Valley is made up of people with Asperger’s avoiding diagnosis like the plague.
So Don avoids confronting that question – at least at first. Later in the book, there is a moment where he ponders the advantages of a diagnosis and lets us know that it’s at least crossed his mind.
I also found, in workshopping an early short story I wrote to ‘work up’ the Don character, that labeling him with Asperger’s shifted the readers’ focus from Don the person to Asperger’s the syndrome. I wasn’t writing about textbook Asperger’s: I was writing about a person who had it.
Don’s goal is to find a wife. He says, “There is something about me that women find unappealing. I have never found it easy to make friends, and it seems that the deficiencies that caused this problem have also affected my attempts at romantic relationships.”
I think a lot of people feel like this – certainly not just people with Asperger’s. I could certainly relate to him. Was that deliberate on your part as a writer – forming a bridge from him to us?
I often write on books I’m signing, especially for men: “There’s a bit of Don in all of us.” In fact, when I workshopped that first short story, one woman said “Asperger’s? He’s just a bloke.’ I see Don first as a fellow human being, second (or fourteenth!) as having Asperger’s. So he shares problems, desires, insecurities with all of us. Some of the Asperger’s characteristics are simply stronger forms of attributes we all have to some extent – social awkwardness, discomfort with uncertainty, need for our own space. The desire for connection which drives the story is close to universal, and so too the fear that we will not find it.
The first paragraph of the book caught me immediately, “I may have found a solution to the Wife Problem. As with so many scientific breakthroughs, the answer was obvious in retrospect. But had it not been for a series of unscheduled events, it is unlikely I would have discovered it.”
Don is trying to combine finding a wife and science. Is there a link do you think? Or is there only a link for Don?
We use what we have! To a child with a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and to Don Tillman every problem looks like a science problem. Everyone who signs up for internet dating and fills out a list of what they’re looking for, or who tells a friend that they want a partner with a good sense of humor who likes wine is applying a bit of science to shift the odds in their favor. Don is just taking it a bit further.
Often in books, the best friend is a lot of fun. He or she offers humor, distraction, and lovability, so to speak. But Don’s best friend, Gene, is a real rat in some ways, especially in his goal, as a married man, to sleep with one woman from every country on the globe.
I thought it was a clever twist on the best friend angle. What was your goal in creating Gene, especially in terms of his relationship with Don?
The best friend is a classic way of externalizing the protagonist’s thoughts – Don tells Gene rather than us what he’s thinking. For obvious reasons, it’s used a lot in movies. In my earliest drafts, Gene was two people – the bad-advice-philanderer and the good-advice-lab manager. By combining them, I got a more complex character. Gene is also the dark side of Don – what Don might have become if he’d mastered the surface skills of social interaction without developing real empathy.
I found Don’s list of requirements for a wife to be so entertaining. He does not want a woman who wears make up or jewelry and her appearance is not relevant, which is the complete opposite for most men out there trying to find a partner. He also wants to weed out the “time wasters, the disorganized, the ice cream discriminators, the crystal gazers, the fashion obsessives, the religious fanatics, the vegans, the creationists, the illiterate…”
He does not seem to be looking for someone to love, though, or to be passionate about. He’s looking for a partner. From your perspective, is this true?
I think Don is looking for someone to love, but he (a) doesn’t know quite what that means and (b) can’t specify what that person might look like beyond ‘someone like me.’ But I’d suggest that the loving relationships that last are those where a partnership grows to supplant that original infatuation or limerence. Indeed, Don and Rosie’s bond develops through a ‘joint project’ – doing things together rather than some instant attraction.
I loved Rosie because she was so blunt, often rude, intelligent, emotional and temperamental…and because she saw the good in Don. Was it your intent from the first to draw a character who was the complete opposite of Don?
Not from the first! The story was originally The Klara Project and Klara was an obvious choice for Don – if only he could see it. I rewrote it with a character who was superficially the opposite to what Don wanted. She’s not the complete opposite deep down! She’s a bit of a loner herself, a researcher, a quirky dresser and she ‘gets’ him from the start.
I felt that you accurately portrayed how challenging it could be to be in a relationship with someone with Asperger’s. How did you research this part of the book?
25 years working in information technology and meeting colleagues’ partners! Seriously, I simply drew on real life, sometimes just exaggerating things that happen in all relationships because men in particular are emotionally unaware, literal, problem / solution focused, etc.
Ah, yes. There does seem to be a slight difference between men and women….
How did you write the book? Did you draw the character first and jump into a first draft? Did you outline the story? Did you set daily word count goals? How many times did you edit it? How long did it take to write? And, with a full time job, how did you find the time to write it?
The Don Tillman character and his search for a partner came first and drove everything. Almost everything else change over the five years I worked on the story, which for a long time was a screenplay rather than a novel.
I don’t try to write every day – progress is not just words on a page. Sometimes I’m outlining, sometimes working on a plot problem, sometimes thinking about a character, sometimes re-writing, sometimes thinking creatively about what could be different or better.
When I’m actually writing, I often go fast – several thousand words a day with limited breaks.
When I had a full-time job, I wrote (using that word broadly to mean ‘worked on the story’) in the gaps between assignments – when I could. I didn’t watch TV.
I know you’re an expert in data modeling and in information systems. How did your background help, or perhaps challenge, the writing of The Rosie Project?
More than you (or your readers) might expect. My approach to writing is strongly informed by my background in information technology and a PhD in design theory – plus my screenwriting studies. I outline first, and don’t write until I have an outline, but understand the outline may change. I treat creativity as something that can be managed and work hard on making as much of what I do conscious rather than relying on magic.
I did a TedX talk on this (it’s online) a little while ago.
The Rosie Project is an international best seller, as you well know. How has writing The Rosie Project changed your life?
Yes. I’m a full-time writer, I’m doing something I love but never thought I was capable of, I have a chance to communicate with people all over the world. The financial thing is not such a big deal but it does mean I can devote myself fully to my writing career.
What are you working on now?
A sequel to The Rosie Project. I’m also the screenwriter for the movie version of Rosie which has been optioned to Sony Pictures. And I always have a couple of short stories in the pipeline.
I cannot wait to see The Rosie Project on screen. I will anxiously await to see who plays Don. I can’t help but think of Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory…
Thanks for your time, and happy writing.
December 26, 2013
The Story Behind Julia’s Chocolates
Julia’s Chocolates, published in 2007, was the first novel I ever sold. I cannot tell you how thrilled I was when my agent called and said he’d sold it to Kensington Books in NYC.
When I was taking writing classes and desperately trying to publish, I was told that you should “write what you know.” I thought then, and now, that that was terrible advice. What did I know about anything? Not much.
I had been a fourth grade teacher. I was an at – home, exhausted mommy with three kids who freelanced articles for The Oregonian on homes, decor, and people. I did a lot of laundry and tried to keep the house clean and my mind sane. I was a lousy cook and totally undomesticated.
I had a crazy imagination and had tried to write category romance and failed miserably. I slept about five to six hours a night as I regularly wrote from ten p.m. until two in the morning.
So I flipped the “write what you know” advice. I decided to write about what I didn’t know.
What I didn’t know a thing about was what it would be like to have a lousy mother. My mother, Bette Jean, was a kind, compassionate, smart woman. She was an English teacher at my middle school, then my high school.
Bette Jean was the daughter of a Texas southern belle who had lost both parents (one dead, one who ran off) by the time she was four years old, and a poor farmer’s son with an eighth grade education from Arkansas who went west to Los Angeles to build homes.
My mother moved eighteen times by the time she left home at seventeen, as her father was flipping houses. It built within her a life long understanding of what it felt like to be left out, to be the outsider.
She met my father, who had flown jets for the Navy, at UCLA, where he was majoring in engineering, specializing in nuclear engineering. They married when she was twenty one.
Bette Jean was lovely and my very best friend.
The mother in Julia’s Chocolates is exactly opposite from my mother in every single way. After I created the mother, I created Julia, her daughter, and gave her a wild, free thinking, fun Aunt Lydia. Aunt Lydia is the aunt I would have loved to have myself.
My parents, Bette and Jim
Aunt Lydia painted her house pink “like a vagina,” with a black door to “ward off seedy men.” Aunt Lydia had five concrete pigs in her front yard and she hung a sign on each one with the name of a man she couldn’t stand. She had a rainbow bridge on her front lawn and toilets overflowing with flowers.
I had my three main characters, then I added three more ladies, Lara, Katie, and Caroline. Lara was married to a loving, stud – man minister and had squashed herself into being the perfect minister’s wife, because that’s what she thought she should do. She was a closet artist and she was miserable.
Katie was a mother married to a raving alcoholic.
Caroline was psychic. I thought a magical element would be entertaining.
I had my story. I wrote my heart out.
If you read Julia’s Chocolates, I hope you love it, I really do.
Julia’s Chocolates
Chapter One
I left my wedding dress hanging in a tree somewhere in North Dakota.
I don’t know why that particular tree appealed to me. Perhaps it was because it looked as if it had given up and died years ago and was still standing because it didn’t know what else to do. It was all by itself, the branches gnarled and rough, like the top of someone’s knuckles I knew.
I didn’t even bother to pull over as there were no other cars on that dusty tw0 – lane road, which was surely an example of what hell looked like: You came from nowhere; you’re going nowhere. And here is your only decoration: a dead tree.
Enjoy your punishment.
The radio died, and the silence rattled through my brain. I flipped up the trunk and was soon covered with the white fluff and lace and flounce of what was my wedding dress. I had hated it from the start, but he had loved it.
Loved it because it was high collared and demure and innocent. Lord, I looked like a stuffed white cake when I put it on.
The sun beat down on my head as I stumbled to the tree and peered through the branches to the blue sky tunneling down at me in triangular rays. The labyrinth of branches formed a maze that had no exit. If you were a bug that couldn’t fly, you’d be stuck. You’d keep crawling and crawling, desperate to find your way out, but you never would. You’d gasp your last tortured breath in a state of utter confusion and frustration, and that would be that.
Yes, another representation of hell.
The first time I heaved the dress up in the air, it landed right back down on my head. And the second time, and the third, which simply increased my fury. I couldn’t even get rid of my own wedding dress.
My breath caught in my throat, my heart suddenly started to race, and it felt like the air had been sucked right out of the universe, a sensation I had become more and more familiar with in the last six months.
I was under the sneaking suspicion that I had some dreadful disease, but I was too scared to find out what it was, and too busy convincing myself I wasn’t suicidal to address something as pesky as that.
My arms were weakened from my Herculean efforts and the fact that I could hardly breathe. My freezing cold hands started to shake.
I thought the dress was going to suffocate me, the silk cloying, clinging to my face. I finally gave up and lay face down in the dirt. Someone, years down the road, would stop their car and lift up the pile of white fluff and find my skeleton. That is, if the buzzards didn’t gnaw away at me first. Were there buzzards in North Dakota?
Fear of the buzzards, not of death, made me roll over. I shoved the dress aside and screamed at it, using all the creative swear words I knew. Yes, I thought, my body shaking, I am losing my mind.
Correction: Mind already gone.
Sweat poured off my body as I slammed my dress repeatedly into the ground, maybe to punish it for not getting caught in one of the branches. Maybe to punish it for even existing. I finally slung the dress around my neck like a noose and started climbing the dead tree, sweat droplets teetering off my eyelashes.
The bark peeled and crumbled, but I managed to get up a few feet, and then I gave the white monstrosity a final toss. It hooked on a tiny branch sticking out like a witch’s finger.
The over sized bodice twisted and turned, the long train, now sporting famous North Dakota dirt, hung toward the parched earth like a snake.
I tried to catch my breath, my heart hammering on high speed as tears scalded my cheeks, no doubt trekking through lines of dirt.
I could still hear the dressmaker, “Why on earth do you want such a high neckline?” she had asked, her voice sharp. “With a chest like that, my dear, you should show it off, not cover up!”
I had looked at my big bosoms in her fancy workroom, mirrors all around. They heaved up and down under the white silk as if they wanted to run. The bosoms were as big as my buttocks, I knew, but at least the skirt would cover those.
Robert Stanfield III had been clear. “Make sure you get a wide skirt. I don’t want you in one of those slinky dresses that’ll show every curve. You don’t have the body for that, Turtle.”
He always called me Turtle. Or Possum. Or Ferret Eyes. If he was mad he called me Cannonball Butt.
Although I can understand the size of my butt – that came from chocolate eating binges – I had never understood my bosoms. They had spouted out, starting in fifth grade and had kept growing and growing. By eighth grade I had begged my mother for breast reduction surgery. She was actually all for it, but that was because all of her boyfriends kept starting at me. Or touching. Or worse.
The doctor, of course, was appalled and said no. And here I was, thirty four years old, with these heaving melons still on me. Note to self: One, get money. Two, get rid of the melons.
December 18, 2013
10 Things I Learned While Writing My Latest Book
2. The FBI is very helpful. When agents call back to offer help, they do not give their last names. This is mysterious! I like mystery! I should have been an FBI agent. Then I could have worn a trench coat and dark glasses.
3. The US Attorneys office has serious (and very cool) employees who answer all questions seriously.
4. Case workers for foster care kids are overworked and underpaid. That we pay people who play basketball a thousand times more than we pay these people is asinine, and completely in line with ridiculous pay scales for certain jobs in this country.
5. Being homeless is degrading, humiliating, and soul crushing. Living in a car is dangerous. I would prefer not to do it.
5. Being an artist is fun! I want to be an artist! (Must learn how to draw more than stick figures and hearts.)
6. Tall, dark, and handsome still rocks it. (I’ll give you a hint, ladies, on THE MAN, in my next book: His name is Kade. He’s smokin’.)
7. When I write through the eyes of a scary person I scare myself. I would make a horrible horror writer.
8. Some story lines are enormous. One must not cut down story lines just because one would rather laze around and drink coffee and eat chocolate no matter how bad the temptation.
9. Being in pajamas until three in the afternoon is never glamorous, this I have known, but my problem with this book was how little I cared.
10. Daydreaming is so healthy. Dream on!
11. (Extra credit answer. I used to be a teacher.) I still love writing.
Janet Dailey and I
Touch The Wind was a smokin’ hot love story, set in Mexico, and it about popped my young eyes out.
Perhaps I should write what is on the front cover page to show you what Touch The Wind was all about…
“HE WAS RAFAGA…Whose gun fed a hungry people…whose passion fed a woman’s hungering heart…A man as proud and fierce as the lions that roamed his mountain retreat.
SHE WAS SHEILA…As cool, beautiful, and unyielding as the modern towers that stood as bastions of the fortune that would one day be hers. Now she was Rafaga’s captive prize, held for a ransom in gold, struggling against the fire he set in her blood. She called her captor every name, and lived to take back all but one: Lover.”
I know, QUIT LAUGHING. It was bodice – ripping dramatic, but the drama hit me in my young, throbbing, hopeful heart. Rafaga was a sexy, strong stud. I was a tall, skinny, gangly, awkward girl and the thought of romance in my life, well, that dang near took my breath away. I lived through Sheila, Rafaga’s “woman.”
I remember every inch of this plot. Reading it today, I would see Rafaga as abusive, domineering, too controlling, and with a serious lack of humor. He would have to be in counseling for a long, long time. But I put reality aside a lot at fifteen, and I did it when I read Touch The Wind.
I am sure that this book had a huge impact on my wanting to be a writer. Other books, as a child and as a teenager, had a huge impact, too: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Pippi Longstocking, the Beezus and Ramona books, and writing for my high school newspaper.
Being a daydreamer, playing outside all the time, and having a mother who encouraged a wild imagination were hugely helpful, too.
But this book set the ground work for romance in my books.
In March of 2013, I had a short story published called, “The Apple Orchard,” in an anthology titled, “You’re Still The One,” with Janet Dailey.
It was about an apple orchard, an abusive father, a trailer park, apple pies, a long lost love and two painful secrets.
I was thrilled to be in the same book as Janet. I wrote to her, never heard back, and was not offended. I am sure she received thousands of emails a week.
But if someone had told me when I was a rebellious, insecure fifteen year old that one day I would grow up and have a story in a book with Janet’s name on it, I would have laughed till I wet my pants.
That was out of the realm of my daydreaming.
And yet, it happened. I can’t tell you how surreal it was.
I was sorry to hear of her death yesterday and hope that she had a beautiful life. She certainly brought beauty, and romance, and a lot of fun, to mine.
