Sheila Curran's Blog

CRAZY

 

I was out to eat with some friends, one of whom had been going through a brutal divorce.  I attributed something to “my mental illness.” Tears welled up in my separated friend’s eyes.  She said, “My husband’s been accusing me of that.”

“Oh!” I apologized. “But I really am!”  Then I sang out my latest diagnosis, this time from a psychiatrist’s nurse practitioner, one of a long list of attempts to pin down my exact departure from “normality.” 

As I was telling my mom recently, after reading CHANGE YOUR BRAIN, CHANGE YOUR LIFE, about brain scans and techniques for overcoming ADHD, anxiety, depression, anger, OCD, and impulsiveness, “There was only one I didn’t have.”

She laughed, not because it wasn’t true but because I sounded so proud. 

And why not?  I’ve long treated my neuroses as amusing pets, to be trotted out for entertainment.  I’ve made my peace with the ups and downs of my brain, trying to chart them, trying to remind myself that this is how I feel today, it’s not a reflection of reality, not even a reflection of who I am. 

For example, because I fear going on trips, I pack just like Jack Nicholson in as Good As it Gets.

 

Also, when I take a walk in my woods, I wear what my husband calls my HAZ MAT suit: a huge buttoned white shirt of my father’s, black paratrooper’s pants, socks, shoes, and a large straw hat.   

 No, it’s not the sun I’m worried about.  It’s Lyme Disease, carried by tiny, tiny ticks.   My companions, wearing tank tops, shorts and TEVA sandals, think I’m hilarious.  I think they’re flirting with death, or worse, years of incapacitating illness. 

I have a niche in my brain that clings to details of catastrophe.  For example, you say “exotic island vacation,” I say “Tsunami.”  You say “Napa Valley Wine tasting,” I say “earthquake.”  You say “fabulous raw oyster bar,” I say “fatal hepatitis.”  You say “hay ride,” I say “recluse spider.” 

See how it works?

When my kids were invited to play at someone’s house, I’d call the parents with questions:  “Do you have a pool?  A pit bull? A gun?” 

And forget baby sitters.  I couldn’t.  Didn’t.

This is why I’m a novelist.  I can always see the jeopardy coming.  I’m like the kid in the movie, shouting, “No!  He’s under the bed!  Get out of the house!” 

If I were Stephen King on his fateful walk, I’d have been dashing into the woods at the very sound of a car.  Strangers driving by, especially in vans, they’re kidnappers.  They’re all kidnappers.  It’s true.  Especially the ones without windows.

So, you’d think this attribute of mine for spotting danger, you’d think it would make writing novels easy.  Because danger is essential to story.     

            Except, and here’s the difficulty, when you love your characters, you HATE to see them get hurt.  I can’t seem to stop my inner mother from calling ahead and inquiring about firearms. 

(By the way, that is not crazy parenting. Crazy parenting is not asking. The other child’s parent will either hesitate, or they’ll say, “No, of course not.  We’re not gun people,” or “Yes, but it’s in a gun safe, all locked away.”  It’s the hesitators you have to watch out for.  Invite their kids to your house.  Just sayin’.)

            Back to my characters—yes my ADHD brain scan just lit up the whole West Coast – I cannot stand to hurt them.  Even the bad ones.  Thousands of readers wrote me to complain when Ted, the vile husband in DIANA LIVELY IS FALLING DOWN got away with less than disembowelment.  (Of course, they couldn’t see what I could: into the future, aka, the sequel, but that’s another story.) 

You see, they’re not fictional. Not to me.  They’re voices in my head who take on weight and shape and scent and quirks.

One of Kurt Vonnegut’s eight writing tips, number 6, to be precise: is “Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.”

Well, Mom, news flash! A second disorder I now realize I do not have, thank you very much.  Sadism and me, we’re not an item. 

So, what to do?  Face the music?  Nah.  I prefer the indirect route, which is hinted at in Mr. Vonnegut’s writing tip number 5: “Start as close to the end as possible.”

For me, the least painful way to the heart of darkness is backward.  I try to see my story from the finale, when my characters are looking back on their difficulties and thinking “Whew! That was close.”

I have to imagine it’s all good, that they’re okay now.  Then I can muster the courage to view what happened, to distance myself and narrate the events as if taking dictation from survivors. 

I suppose you might say I’m lying to myself in order to persuade myself to witness horrible things happening to imaginary beings that exist nowhere but inside my head.  It might be the slightest bit touched, as we used to say.  To which I’d ask, but by what?  Inventiveness, creativity, outsized fear?  All of the above?  Who knows?  At the end of the day, you’ve only got the brain you’ve got, and you might as well love the one you’re with.

Author's note: I apologize to all of those who suffer from more serious, debilitating mental illnesses.  I know I've got "Insanity lite."  But I do wish it wasn't so shameful to march to the beat of a different drummer.  I'm not saying to stop taking your medications.  I take mine.  Every day.  And I can report that I've not lost my edge.  I'm just less likely to try and jump off it.

 

Crazy? Seriously? Why Women Like Me Embrace Entertaining and Funny Fiction

 

I tend to love my crazy.   Whether it’s obsession over invisible bedbugs we don’t have or certainty that it’s my attention alone that’s keeping the plane I’m riding aloft, I view my neuroses affectionately.  What’s the alternative?  Hating them, hating myself? 

 

Similarly, in novels, it’s the oddball I enjoy.   Think Flannery O’Connor’s wannabe Messiah in Wise Blood or Ignatius O’Reilly in Confederacy of Dunces.  I’m safely distanced enough to enjoy the ride, despite the fact that, in real life, I’d never in a million years stop along the side of the road to offer either of these unwashed protagonists a lift. 

 

They’re crazy but harmless.  Not Hannibal Lecter or Norman Bates’ kind of crazy.  Those madmen drive a whole different genre, the crime novels I haven’t allowed myself to read for decades.  Scary-crazy is too much like the headlines, it’s too much like the worst nightmare that we understand can happen to anyone.  This is a recognition that most of us might face, but only in bits and pieces before tucking it away and whistling in the dark. 

 

The older I get, the more I seek diversion, not doom, in my entertainment.  And I try to write what I wish to read.

 

My first novel, Diana Lively is Falling Down, is packed with quirky characters, only one of whom is evil. The rest, from the lovely Diana, whose fear of insects mirrors my own, to Wally, a widower certain his dead wife is sending him “signs,” has something she or he does which distinguishes them from the completely stable unimaginative mass of humans we call “normal.”  Humphrey, a strapping seventeen year old is an unlikely domestic diva, nurturing his mother through a bad marriage. Eleanor, his half-sister, is four years old and a talented kleptomaniac.  Her mischief will eventually cause her all-too-arrogant father to rue his haste in dismissing the intelligence of his wife and children.  Audrey, Humphrey’s love interest, is Wally the widower’s blond-haired blue-eyed adopted daughter, out to save the planet on behalf of the Native Americans she’s convinced were her birth parents.  It’s a bit of a lunatic asylum, when you take the ensemble apart, but such is the stuff of comedy.   It is also the stuff of real life. 

 

No one goes to her grave without having had a time in which she’s seemed to others -- well, let’s just say – just a bit off.  It might be the confusing roller coaster of falling in love, be it with your soul mate or your newborn child.  It might be the madness of grief, with its necessary delusions: denial, bargaining, all those “unreasonable” behaviors.

 

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” is not limited to epic battles or intercontinental pestilence and plague.   We will, each of us, find ourselves tested, and this is the “stuff” of drama.  We might be perfectly sane until we’re derailed by enormous sadness or exhilarating affection.  All stories focus on a time in characters’ lives when they’re drawn out of their stable existence and driven to the edge.   To their wit’s end.  Their last nerve.  Their crazy. 

 

In comedy, we have the pleasure of watching our protagonist adapt and learn and grow and heal.  In tragedy, well, not so much.  Too little, too late, or with the opposite effect he or she was seeking.  For eons now, the happy ending has been deplored by so-called ‘serious’ writers and reviewers.  Aristotle branded the comedic characters as less noble, less virtuous.  Shakespeare turned everything on its head, combining the two forms to great effect.  Even so, in his own day, the bard was considered vulgar, a playwright who pandered to the masses.  Jane Austen was dismissed as frivolous and Trollope was thought too concerned with drawing rooms and manners.  Oscar Wilde, too, caught his own share of “shite” for being too playful, too much fun, to be taken seriously.

 

I can’t help but notice the similarity between these elevated critiques from centuries past and current literary trends, when women’s fiction is derided for the inevitable happy ending, for the comfort readers take in the cushy world of fanciful shoes and pretty wallpapers.

 

  I would argue that women – far from being the naïve idiots these critiques imply – are all too familiar with death and decay, with poverty and loss.   Whether its nursing our failing parents, a frighteningly sick child, or suffering the blindsiding loss of a sibling or good friend, we’ve weathered the front lines of our emotional Waterloos, thank you very much.  We’re well aware that the nightmare scenarios will – like taxes – inevitably arrive at our doorstep.  Until then, or after the fact, we prefer to escape to a place in which the world is filled with laughter and forgiveness and, yes, even fashion.   Crazy?  Perhaps.  Delusional?  Absolutely.  Otherwise known as suspension of belief, a.k.a. willingly entering what John Gardener calls “the fictional dream.”   The point is, we’ll take what “she’s having,” in that famous line of Norah Ephron’s.  To choose pleasure over pain, diversion over doom, it’s the opposite of naïve.  We know what’s serious.  Serious is a heart attack, it’s cancer.  Perhaps those of us who write about other things do so not from ignorance about such matters but from a profound knowledge we keep tucked inside.   Let us amble down the garden path and whistle when its dark; all around us there are others who will hear and take heart.  They might even laugh, a sound which can, to the untutored, sound a lot like crying turned inside out.  A lot like crazy, just not the kind that kills you for the sheer mastery of it.

 

Girlfriends Book Club: HELP: I'VE FALLEN INTO THE INTERNET FISHBOWL AND I CAN'T GET OUT!

by

via girlfriendbooks.blogspot.com

I wrote this before Woody Allen published his letter on the matter. To be fair, you should read it in the New York Times, Saturday, February 8th.

Girlfriends Book Club

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via girlfriendbooks.blogspot.com

Parents, Teach Your Children Well

My daughter
turned 18 last month. She graduated from high school and leaves for college
(summer session) in eight days.  Did I
mention she’s my baby? 

            I had a rare chance to step back
into full-court maternal shoes last Sunday. 
AT&T, it seems, doesn’t care if you’re 18, doesn’t care if you’ve
got the credit card.  They want the
account holder of record to sign on the dotted line for replacement (#3) of
Steve Jobs’ prank on parents everywhere, the gift that keeps on giving.  Since when did iPhones become absolutely
necessary for daily life?  It’s hard for
me to argue too much: I have one (a gift?!) that I’m quite attached to.  I carry it around in an OTTER cover that is,
my kids tell me, a bit out of fashion, a bit on the bulky side. 

            “But it protects it!” I say, meaning so much
more. 

Meaning
all these things you take for granted, my lovely children of privilege, these
weren’t things I grew up expecting or having. 
Meaning, the world has changed and I’m fearful for you, fearful I may
have spoiled you with my tendency to err on the side of safety.  (We bought our teenage drivers new cars with
the latest in side-curtain air bags and 5 star crash ratings.  The luxury they enjoyed was incidental to our
need to know we’d done the best we could to protect them against the  #1
cause of death in teens and the # 2 cause of anti-anxiety medication in
parents.)

 The iPhone sort of came along accidentally, it
came as a celebration of being 16.  It
became the guest that would not leave. 
It insinuated itself into all of our lives with its charming features, the photos we
treasure, the music we adore, the texts saying “I’m safe!” Mine has my yoga
apps and my Audible books.  I use the
alarm.  I’ve come to rely on it.

            That said, I know it’s a
luxury.  So, what’s a mother to do when
her otherwise perfect daughter doesn’t use the suggested protective cover and
breaks (and soaks) said iPhone for the third time?  I felt some sort of lesson was in order. 

She
drove, I lectured.  Softly, but surely, I
pressed my case: taking care of her things, consequences. If this happened
again she was going to be on her own.  I
spoke about my own phone, how I’d had it for two years thanks to the OTTER and
if she wanted to keep hers, it really would behoove her to put it into a
protective case and watch it like a hawk.

            We had other errands to run after
the phone purchase.  She dropped me at
the grocery where I raced through the crowded aisles, efficient, driven toward
getting everything on the list.  I made
it through Publix in record time.  It was
only when I was asked to pay that I peered into my purse to discover the
deluge.  Everything was sopping wet.  My water bottle had exploded.  My iPhone was telling me my daughter had
called 3 times but when I pressed the screen nothing would work. 

            It just so happened I’d bought a bag
of rice.  Thank God and plans for risotto.

            I perched on the step outside the
store, hoping my daughter would soon drive by. I couldn’t release the catch on
the damn hard plastic casing, the merits of which I’d oversold only minutes
before.  I opened the bag with my teeth,
pressed my phone inside and hoped my girl would arrive soon.  I had left the house wearing yoga pants and teeshirt.  I looked like a New Age bag lady, a full
shopping cart next to my crouched form, muttering and laughing to myself.  I fiddled with the OTTER’s latch while
simultaneously praying that reverse osmosis rice trick was working despite the
plastic casing.

            Time was of the essence.  I knew my daughter couldn’t reach me.  When I saw her drive into the lot, I rushed
out, flagged her down.  “Pull over!” I
shouted, handing her the bag with rice and phone.  “Can you get the cover off?  You won’t believe what happened!”

            On the way home, I was still giggling.  She was too. 

I
said “Well, there’s this biblical saying. 
Pride goeth before a fall.”

            I think that was the real wisdom I
needed to impart.  Not that stewardship
and responsibility aren’t important, but that straight A student of mine pretty
much already knew that.   What she needed
to hear was that no matter how mature you are, no matter how learned, there are
times when life makes idiots of us all. (Apologies to the Bard.)  Forget consequences, remember this.  Just when you think you’ve got control, you
realize you don’t.  Better still, when
the going gets tough, there’s nothing better than to laugh outright at your own
silly self, knowing that in the end, there is only this, humor, frailty, human
interdependence, and the joy of knowing there will always be something new that
life has to teach you.

Spring Cleaning?

I’ve been crushing
on simplicity lately. Mostly this is an Internet Affair, reading about other
people’s efforts to purge their homes of unneeded dreck. The best on this
subject is our former girlfriend (Joshilyn Jackson)’s hilarious blog about getting her things in order and (not
coincidentally) how her brain works. I am similarly disposed. I love the idea
that I too could pare down my belongs to 126 items.

Graham Hill
appears even more minimalist (though actually only by 30 square feet per
human).

Both make similar
points. It’s easy to be consumed by your stuff.

My brain is both
obsessed and oppressed by the items in our house that require tending.
Somewhere between a curator and lion-tamer, it’s up to me to notice that the
roof is leaking, the doors are creaking, the toilets need cleaning and the pool
is greening.

I realized, on
Sunday, as I wrote down the plague of tasks crowding my brain, a catalog of
plebian demands that ranged from medicating the dog to replacing moth traps,
that I am married, not to my husband, but to my house.

That’s why they call
us housewives! Am I the only
idiot who never noticed this perfectly obvious and not at all accidental
phraseology?

Apparently not, for
when I repeated my ephiphany to several women friends, they too seemed
gobsmacked by the sinister accuracy of this seemingly tame term. We hadn’t
noticed. It was as if we’d signed a contract back when we were too delirious
with nesting instincts to notice what we were doing. I can just imagine Snidely
Whiplash asking, “But what did you think you were agreeing to, my child?
How much more clear can one compound word be?”

Worse than my giddy
dismissal of the terms of the initial contract was my collusion in acquiring
the items that now cry for dusting, ditching, folding, or mending. I had
Stockholm Syndrome except it was Ikea Infatuation. When the Pottery Barn
catalog arrived at the house, there I was, panting over it like a teenage boy
with the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. Both of my kids were dragged to
Target, on safaris for Real Simple organizing bins, Shabby Chic sheets and
lavender candles, all in the aim of creating a serene environment that once
created, would be self-tending and permanent.

That was my
mistake. Nothing is permanent. Entropy happens. Towels fray, sheets tear,
upholstery wears and paint smears. It all needs redoing, and all the redoing
falls to the idiot who fell for it all in the first place. When they talk about
the great circle of life, they don’t mention the revolving door of daily
drudgery a.k.a “Sisyphus does dishes.”

In other words,
maintenance is a bitch. Whether its our writing or our roof or our dog or even
our children, one must give up time and the illusion of perfection to embrace
the fact that no one gets out of here without a few dents and scrapes. The old
saying, in the go-go Eighties was “He who dies with the most toys wins.” Now
it’s replaced by a more Eastern outlook, “True wealth is wanting less than you
have.”

I’m all for
that, except when it comes right down to it, decluttering takes time and
downsizing takes might, and in the interim, I’ll have to settle for imaginary
flight to a place in my mind hosting “all you can pretend, all the time.” Which
is why, I suppose, I am a writer of fiction in the first place. I wander my
roost sighing at the facts, all entropic, all the time, circling like gnats or
the belfry’s lost bats, seeking containment, a reorganization, into the
illusion of story where every thing is meant to be, and it will, at least on
the page, remain in its place for ever and ever.

Sheila Curran���s Time Management Secrets REVEALED!

It was extremely difficult for me to choose between the topics for this blog cycle. Should it be time-management or marketing?

 

How about Sumo Wrestling? Because I am sure that were I to suit myself up in that butt-cheek dividing diaper and go mano a mano with some huge fat man with sleek dark hair pulled back just so, I could seriously be better at that than either marketing my own work or managing my time. It's not that I haven't tried. I have purchased many products, the most recent of which is pictured below, the first pocket of which holds all the errands I planned to run Monday. Register the car, renew the daughter's passport, mail back the shoes that didn't fit. I got the idea from this extremely entertaining (I'm saying HOURS of enjoyment!) series on the organized home. I want to be this woman. The labels! The systems! Everything in its place. Except that when I set out to 'get things done," which has become an inside joke since I flunked the lessons of the extremely popular book of the same name, I discovered it was a federal holiday! So maybe today I will set out to GET THINGS DONE, unless my blogging takes forever or I blow it off for yoga. After all, there's something to be said for procrastination.

 

 

The BINDER system, unplugged.

So I'm trying. As my dear friend Jane Ulrich would say, "very trying."

I bought this thingie too.

That purchase was from November, when I was seriously going to change my life. Until I totally, seriously, hard-to-believe-but-true, forgot it was there! Yesterday my dear husband commented on it, saying, oh, so nice organizer and I looked at it and said, I can't believe I walked the aisles of Staples today and almost bought another To Do, To File, In Box divider.

 

Is it any wonder that I'm still doing this?

 

and this and this ??????????

I fear I am incapable of doing things the way other people, even the ones I want to emulate so badly, tell me to. My organizational theory is more like a containment of clutter in some places so that I can keep other parts of my life, th. e more visible ones, orderly. Like this.

But even in my somewhat symettric neatness, I'm prone to sabotage. For example, on that coffee table, I had to arrange things a certain way.

So sue me if I can't make a joke.

 

I also am a big believer in PRETTY.

So, for instance, the only folder system I've ever been able to follow, involves an accordian file I found in Florence. It's so pretty!

Not only that, but it hides piles of file behind it. A two-fer!

Best of all, because I love using it, I put things I love in there. Things I want to remember. Things the clutter experts would have thrown out years ago. Here are the contents of one sleeve, which obviously, I do not categorize.

From top left to bottom, here are its marvelous souvenirs. A picture from my daughter's first grade, my acceptance letter on my first manuscript, my premie son's birth announcement, a letter from my 8 year old daughter begging me to let her ride in a car that I wasn't driving to a dance competition, a card, a photo, the set list from a favorite Bruce Springsteen concert, a letter a wrote my brother a week before he died, in which I told him everything I admired about him, and a letter from my siblings in 2010 when I was recovering from cancer and my dad was dying of congestive heart failure and we were all gathered in New Hampshire to be with him.

My point? I held onto these because I knew they were precious, and also because I really wanted to untie the ribbon and use my PRETTY folder. I love knowing my treasures are contained therein. So I guess if I were to advise all you wannabee sumo wrestlers out there, I'd say try doing what works for you, don't worry if it's not like everyone else's system, or if it's the opposite of a system. Some of us were born to organize, others to run. Others still are just holding on by the seat of our pants to the things we know we need to remember. And it's not the errands that so dearly need running, it's not the passport that must be renewed, but those parts of time that have fled so quickly, leaving in their place simply text on a page in their stead, photos we can't quite believe, or maybe a vase of flowers, long gone but not forgotten.

 

 

Sheila Curran’s Time Management Secrets REVEALED!

It was extremely difficult for me to choose between the topics for this blog cycle. Should it be time-management or marketing?

 

How about Sumo Wrestling? Because I am sure that were I to suit myself up in that butt-cheek dividing diaper and go mano a mano with some huge fat man with sleek dark hair pulled back just so, I could seriously be better at that than either marketing my own work or managing my time. It's not that I haven't tried. I have purchased many products, the most recent of which is pictured below, the first pocket of which holds all the errands I planned to run Monday. Register the car, renew the daughter's passport, mail back the shoes that didn't fit. I got the idea from this extremely entertaining (I'm saying HOURS of enjoyment!) series on the organized home. I want to be this woman. The labels! The systems! Everything in its place. Except that when I set out to 'get things done," which has become an inside joke since I flunked the lessons of the extremely popular book of the same name, I discovered it was a federal holiday! So maybe today I will set out to GET THINGS DONE, unless my blogging takes forever or I blow it off for yoga. After all, there's something to be said for procrastination.

 

 

The BINDER system, unplugged.

So I'm trying. As my dear friend Jane Ulrich would say, "very trying."

I bought this thingie too.

That purchase was from November, when I was seriously going to change my life. Until I totally, seriously, hard-to-believe-but-true, forgot it was there! Yesterday my dear husband commented on it, saying, oh, so nice organizer and I looked at it and said, I can't believe I walked the aisles of Staples today and almost bought another To Do, To File, In Box divider.

 

Is it any wonder that I'm still doing this?

 

and this and this ??????????

I fear I am incapable of doing things the way other people, even the ones I want to emulate so badly, tell me to. My organizational theory is more like a containment of clutter in some places so that I can keep other parts of my life, th. e more visible ones, orderly. Like this.

But even in my somewhat symettric neatness, I'm prone to sabotage. For example, on that coffee table, I had to arrange things a certain way.

So sue me if I can't make a joke.

 

I also am a big believer in PRETTY.

So, for instance, the only folder system I've ever been able to follow, involves an accordian file I found in Florence. It's so pretty!

Not only that, but it hides piles of file behind it. A two-fer!

Best of all, because I love using it, I put things I love in there. Things I want to remember. Things the clutter experts would have thrown out years ago. Here are the contents of one sleeve, which obviously, I do not categorize.

From top left to bottom, here are its marvelous souvenirs. A picture from my daughter's first grade, my acceptance letter on my first manuscript, my premie son's birth announcement, a letter from my 8 year old daughter begging me to let her ride in a car that I wasn't driving to a dance competition, a card, a photo, the set list from a favorite Bruce Springsteen concert, a letter a wrote my brother a week before he died, in which I told him everything I admired about him, and a letter from my siblings in 2010 when I was recovering from cancer and my dad was dying of congestive heart failure and we were all gathered in New Hampshire to be with him.

My point? I held onto these because I knew they were precious, and also because I really wanted to untie the ribbon and use my PRETTY folder. I love knowing my treasures are contained therein. So I guess if I were to advise all you wannabee sumo wrestlers out there, I'd say try doing what works for you, don't worry if it's not like everyone else's system, or if it's the opposite of a system. Some of us were born to organize, others to run. Others still are just holding on by the seat of our pants to the things we know we need to remember. And it's not the errands that so dearly need running, it's not the passport that must be renewed, but those parts of time that have fled so quickly, leaving in their place simply text on a page in their stead, photos we can't quite believe, or maybe a vase of flowers, long gone but not forgotten.

 

 

Candy is Dandy, Liquor is Quicker, But I���ll Take the Java

The theme this cycle is NanoWrimo, in which one tries to write a full novel in a month.�� For those who know me (I call myself the founding member of the Slow Writing Movement) this notion is somewhat hilarious.�� I tend to lose myself in procrastination, as well as a fair amount of dithering, to say nothing of being the red-headed stepchild of the cybersphere.�� This last trait has resulted in today's post: a micro version of NanoWrimo.�� Normally I'd fret for at least a day or two over my blog post.�� But because of my own inability to access the new platform for scheduling, I discovered (surprise!) that my post was supposed to be up and running as of 7 pm. last night.

��

So instead of writing something lovely and meaningful, I'm going to be cheap, cheerful, crass and commercial.�� Starting with 7 pm last night, I was watching The Fitzgerald Family Christmas which I loved.�� It's Ed Burns' story of a large Irish Catholic family, and it's lovely.�� You can get it On Demand on Comcast (which, when I last looked, had taken over the universe. I presume you will find it wherever you are).���� After that, I read Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior, which I'm halfway through.�� It's fascinating and beautiful, and takes us into the life of a woman transformed by something she encounters on her way to an extra-marital assignation.

��

On Saturday I went to a book signing by Janis Owens, who I considered one of America's best kept secrets.�� Her new book, American Ghost is based on a montage of several of Florida's small town's best kept secrets, these kind being the ones that fester.�� As she talked about the "hanging" she'd heard of all her life, imagining it was a Western style cattle rustler getting strung up for theft, and discovering through a series of coincidental meetings that it was a lynching, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.�� I haven't read it yet, but I will say that MY BROTHER MICHAEL is one of the best books I've ever read that no one has heard of. Put out by a small southern press, this book has blurbs on the back from Harry Crews, James Dickey and Connie May Fowler.�� It's not out in digital form (though that's coming in a month or so) but if there's anyone on�� your Christmas list who loves Pat Conroy (who says American Ghost is a masterpiece) or Joshilyn Jackson or Flannery O' Connor or Kaye Gibbons, you can't go wrong buying this for them.

��

This month I also read Swamplandia.�� It took me forever to get into.�� I think I set it aside more than once.�� Then I made an amazing discovery.�� There are some books that go better with Coke.�� Or Coffee.�� As a working mom, reading, long my favorite form of entertainment, got shoved into later and later time slots.�� It's usually what I do right before I fall asleep.���� Swamplandia is brilliant and gorgeous but I wouldn't have found that out if I'd not gone away with my husband for a beach weekend and sat on the porch looking at the ocean with Voltaire's favorite beverage (he was reputed to drink 72 cups a day) and re-opened the novel.�� So now I realize my ability to enjoy so-called "literature" hasn't faded.�� It's just that there are books you need to do first thing in the morning with as much of a stimulant as you can.�� On the Voltaire Index (tm) Karen Russell's high, but she's freaking brilliant.

��

And speaking of brilliant, my dear friend Julianna Baggott's��PURE (which I INHALED) made the New York Times list of 100 top books written in 2012.�� I suspect it was written for young adults but like HARRY POTTER and Phillip Pullman books, it's appropriate for adults.�� The people who made the TWILIGHT movies are making this one into a movie and the next in the trilogy, FUSE, comes out February 19th.��

��

Last but not least, I greatly enjoyed Will Schwalbe's End of Your Life Bookclub, about a club of two, the author and his mother, as she was waiting for chemotherapy at Memorial Sloan Kettering.���� Even the closest of families, (and this one seems exceptionally functional) have trouble sometimes when it comes to sitting down and talking about certain things.�� Death, sex, betrayal, etc.�� Books, which the mother and son both adore, provide a perfect jumping off point for intimacy, and humor, and just plain companionship.�� They begin with one of my favorite books EVER, and that's Wallace Stegner's Crossing to Safety.

��

Any and all of the above books would make a great Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzai or Druid Fancier present.����

��

Sheila Curran's Diana Lively is Falling Down is available only as a digital book, unless you contact the the author who'd be happy to sell you a paperback copy.�� Her second novel Everyone She Loved is available in digital or hard copy.�� You can view a trailer about the book (and the author's television-watching-dog) if you'd like to know more.�� Merry Christmas all!

Candy is Dandy, Liquor is Quicker, But I’ll Take the Java

The theme this cycle is NanoWrimo, in which one tries to write a full novel in a month.  For those who know me (I call myself the founding member of the Slow Writing Movement) this notion is somewhat hilarious.  I tend to lose myself in procrastination, as well as a fair amount of dithering, to say nothing of being the red-headed stepchild of the cybersphere.  This last trait has resulted in today's post: a micro version of NanoWrimo.  Normally I'd fret for at least a day or two over my blog post.  But because of my own inability to access the new platform for scheduling, I discovered (surprise!) that my post was supposed to be up and running as of 7 pm. last night.

 

So instead of writing something lovely and meaningful, I'm going to be cheap, cheerful, crass and commercial.  Starting with 7 pm last night, I was watching The Fitzgerald Family Christmas which I loved.  It's Ed Burns' story of a large Irish Catholic family, and it's lovely.  You can get it On Demand on Comcast (which, when I last looked, had taken over the universe. I presume you will find it wherever you are).   After that, I read Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior, which I'm halfway through.  It's fascinating and beautiful, and takes us into the life of a woman transformed by something she encounters on her way to an extra-marital assignation.

 

On Saturday I went to a book signing by Janis Owens, who I considered one of America's best kept secrets.  Her new book, American Ghost is based on a montage of several of Florida's small town's best kept secrets, these kind being the ones that fester.  As she talked about the "hanging" she'd heard of all her life, imagining it was a Western style cattle rustler getting strung up for theft, and discovering through a series of coincidental meetings that it was a lynching, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.  I haven't read it yet, but I will say that MY BROTHER MICHAEL is one of the best books I've ever read that no one has heard of. Put out by a small southern press, this book has blurbs on the back from Harry Crews, James Dickey and Connie May Fowler.  It's not out in digital form (though that's coming in a month or so) but if there's anyone on  your Christmas list who loves Pat Conroy (who says American Ghost is a masterpiece) or Joshilyn Jackson or Flannery O' Connor or Kaye Gibbons, you can't go wrong buying this for them.

 

This month I also read Swamplandia.  It took me forever to get into.  I think I set it aside more than once.  Then I made an amazing discovery.  There are some books that go better with Coke.  Or Coffee.  As a working mom, reading, long my favorite form of entertainment, got shoved into later and later time slots.  It's usually what I do right before I fall asleep.   Swamplandia is brilliant and gorgeous but I wouldn't have found that out if I'd not gone away with my husband for a beach weekend and sat on the porch looking at the ocean with Voltaire's favorite beverage (he was reputed to drink 72 cups a day) and re-opened the novel.  So now I realize my ability to enjoy so-called "literature" hasn't faded.  It's just that there are books you need to do first thing in the morning with as much of a stimulant as you can.  On the Voltaire Index (tm) Karen Russell's high, but she's freaking brilliant.

 

And speaking of brilliant, my dear friend Julianna Baggott's PURE (which I INHALED) made the New York Times list of 100 top books written in 2012.  I suspect it was written for young adults but like HARRY POTTER and Phillip Pullman books, it's appropriate for adults.  The people who made the TWILIGHT movies are making this one into a movie and the next in the trilogy, FUSE, comes out February 19th. 

 

Last but not least, I greatly enjoyed Will Schwalbe's End of Your Life Bookclub, about a club of two, the author and his mother, as she was waiting for chemotherapy at Memorial Sloan Kettering.   Even the closest of families, (and this one seems exceptionally functional) have trouble sometimes when it comes to sitting down and talking about certain things.  Death, sex, betrayal, etc.  Books, which the mother and son both adore, provide a perfect jumping off point for intimacy, and humor, and just plain companionship.  They begin with one of my favorite books EVER, and that's Wallace Stegner's Crossing to Safety.

 

Any and all of the above books would make a great Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzai or Druid Fancier present.  

 

Sheila Curran's Diana Lively is Falling Down is available only as a digital book, unless you contact the the author who'd be happy to sell you a paperback copy.  Her second novel Everyone She Loved is available in digital or hard copy.  You can view a trailer about the book (and the author's television-watching-dog) if you'd like to know more.  Merry Christmas all!