Erika Mitchell's Blog, page 13

Run For Your Lives!

I wish I knew who to attribute this to, but I can’t for the life of me seem to find the artist’s info anywhere.

Thanks for sharing!

You Can’t Be Me I’m a Podcast Star…

I just had the pleasure of being interviewed for an awesome podcast (Writer 2.0, if you’re curious. It’s my friend A.C. Fuller’s show and it’s fantastic listening for anyone with an interest in writing) and learned a few important things from the experience:

I fidget when I’m nervous and no one can see me. I fidget a LOT. I did the interview from Wes’s desk and I swear I was like a color guard baton twirler with one of his pens. I must have spun that thing around my fingers the entire thirty minutes we spent talking.
After an interview, you will spend the hour afterward replaying every question you were asked. During this time, you will come up with at least a dozen far better responses that would have made you sound like a total rock star. These answers are, of course, completely impossible to formulate on the spot.
A good interviewer makes a big difference. I was lucky, A.C. Fuller is excellent at what he does and was very easy to talk to.
You should come up with a snappy description of your upcoming book BEFORE the interview. Duh, Erika. Learn from my mistakes, friends, and be awesome.

Nonetheless, it was a super fun experience. I had a blast, and can’t wait for the episode to go live next month. I’ll post links when it goes live so you can check it out!

Thanks for sharing!

Monsters Under My Head

A long, long time ago, I was a teenager. I stayed up late, I ate at Red Robin a LOT, and I played very loud music on my very lovely clarinet* for hours every day. I could watch horror movies with my friends, I LOVED Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter books, and I had only just discovered alternative rock music. I didn’t think I’d ever have kids, mostly because I thought I would suck at being a mother. I thought I’d get my master’s and be a therapist for the rest of my life.

Obviously, life turned out a bit different than I thought it would.

What interests me the most is that somewhere between graduation and parenthood, I lost the ability to stomach horror in any form. Movies, books, even spooky songs. They all affect me now in a way they never did before.

I remember seeing the original Saw movie in the theater with a bunch of guy friends. We had a blast! Now, though, I can’t imagine anything worse than being forced to fill my brain with any of those images.

Wes and I recently gave the show Hannibal a try, thinking it might be worth a shot thanks to my lifelong love of Thomas Harris’s books. We made it six episodes before I had no choice but to cry off and ask Wes if he’d be averse to stopping the show. It’s a gory, horrific show and, while the characters had started growing on me, I just couldn’t get the images out of my head. Walking down the dark hall to go help one of my kids became skin-crawlingly terrifying. Turning off the light to go to sleep filled my room with unseen phantoms waiting to hurt me. I suddenly felt unsafe in my quiet suburban neighborhood, thinking there was an insane psychopath lying in wait just around the corner.

Wes can watch scary movies and, as soon as the TV is gone, so are the images. I don’t know why, but they linger in my head and jump out at inopportune times. I have no idea how I was able to do this kind of thing in my youth, or what changed that now I can’t. All I know is, I’m now a huge wuss. My head in imprintable like carbon paper and I have to be careful what I watch.

After all, how am I supposed to comfort my kids when they have nightmares if I can’t even assure myself there aren’t monsters out there?

*Anyone who knows clarinets well will know this is a joke. Clarinets are among the more quiet instruments in a band, largely thanks to their small bells, which are pointed right at the ground. This might not be the case with professional musicians, but I remember a few times in high school where our whole section of clarinets could barely be heard over the other, louder sections.

Thanks for sharing!

All We Can Do

If you’ve been anywhere near a media outlet recently, I’m sure you’ve heard that there was a school shooting in Marysville north of Seattle this morning. Two kids will never hug their parents again, several more are gravely wounded in the hospital.

There’s no parent who hears that kind of news and doesn’t immediately ache for those parents who have to endure the loss of their children. All parents live every day knowing that a part of their heart is walking around out there somewhere, climbing too high on monkey bars or riding their bikes off the sidewalk. To be a parent is to love courageously, because having children makes you vulnerable. You want to make their worlds safe for them, but the older your kids get, the more you realize that the world is not a safe place. Not for them, not for anybody.

It’s full of wonderful things and dangerous things, wonderful and dangerous people, and every imaginable combination in between. Every parent knows this, and yet we still bundle our children off to school every morning anyway and hope for nothing more than to have the people in their lives confirm our suspicion about the best in people.

I think in a situation like this one, where the tragedy has struck so close to home and is yet one more heartbreak in the wake of too, too many others, the temptation is to get angry. Anger is powerful, it feels so much better than sorrow. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. I spent most of my teenage years feeling angry, because when you’re vulnerable and hurt, anger at least makes you feel somewhat powerful again.

Angry people, who have seen too many crying children and sobbing parents on news broadcasts that delight in monetizing suffering, cry out for a solution. They want someone to do something, to stem the tide of this anger that seems, so perplexingly, to be directed at children who should never have to know that kind of fear.

If I can, in my small, quiet corner of the Internet, speak any truth into the void, it would be that the most powerful thing any of us can ever do is to treat other people with kindness. I know this seems weak. What can kindness do against a handgun? But tragedies like these are never just one big boulder rolling down a mountain. They’re avalanches, where the weight of too many disappointments and hurts builds on itself until the momentum is too great and something integral is lost.

I have no idea who the shooter was, and I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know a single thing about that person. Instead, I want to treat every person I cross paths with as though that person is one bad day away from losing hope. I want to be kind, I want to be helpful. I want to reach out and show that person that despite what the news would have all of us believe, there is good in people and safety if you know where to look.

You can’t affect what others do. You can’t change someone’s mind and you can’t make someone do what you would do. But, you can be nice. You can be generous. You can be the one good example in ten bad ones in a person’s life.

That’s all you can do. That’s all any of us can do. Arguing about gun control or mental health procedures is all beside the point, because the point is, life is precious but some people have lost sight of that. To the detriment of all, I think.

So, to echo my friend Summer, “Hug your children today. Tell them how much you love them. Hug them with all your might. And pray for those who can’t hug theirs again.”

Go be kind. Be a good example. That’s all we can do. That, and hope that it’s enough.

Thanks for sharing!

Fair-Weather vs. True Fans

As you may or may not know, I live in Seattle, which is home to the Seattle Seahawks. The Seahawks won the Super Bowl last year, which was pretty exciting to be a part of. Seahawks fans popped up everywhere, spectators at CenturyLink Field broke decibel records by being the noisiest fans in the NFL, and every game brought a rush to Seattle that was contagious.

I think I, along with a great many people, fully expected the Seahawks to replicate their success this year. I’m not a football fan, really, but I’m married to one so I have a minor emotional investment in the team’s success. The Seahawks have had an uneven start to the season this year, and now we’re sitting on our second loss in a row. It’s kind of a bummer.

I’ve been interested to see the shift in attitude among the fans I know. When the Hawks are winning game after game, there’s a fierce pride and pleasure in being a fan. After a loss, or now second loss, no one is talking about the Seahawks except to complain about how not-fun it is to watch the games when the Hawks don’t play up to expectations.

Wes and I were talking about Sunday’s game on Saturday, and whether or not Wes would watch it later in the day since the game would be on while we were at church. He said that if the Hawks lost, he might not even want to watch the game.

Curious, I asked him why. Wasn’t he a fan of the team? I wasn’t judging him, I was just curious. I’d always assumed he thought of himself as a true fan, as opposed to a fair-weather fan who only cheers when the team is winning. I asked him whether my understanding of fandom is incorrect, and he replied that no, it wasn’t, and he decided to watch the game win or lose.

It’s interesting to think of sports team loyalty, isn’t it? Especially when it’s not as much fun or as rewarding. I have no idea how fan reactions affect professional football players. I have no idea why a team can play well one week and then be completely uninspired the next week. There’s a ton I don’t know about how the symbiotic fan/team relationship works.

All I can suppose, however, is that if you can call yourself a fan, that seems like a pretty big commitment to the team, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it mean you believe in the team, no matter what? So, then, shouldn’t fans be trying to cheer the team up after a loss? Organizing some kind of encouraging hashtag or something to let the team know they’re still awesome and people still believe in them?

I feel like that’s how I’d want to behave if I were a fan. Then again, what do I know? I barely know what a non-pastry turnover is, so I’m far from an authority on these matters. You probably shouldn’t listen to me.

Thanks for sharing!

What to Expect When you Weren’t Expecting Anything

You know you’ve been married for a good long while when having sole discretion over what to watch when you’re by yourself is somewhat…overwhelming. This is not to say that Wes is come kind of TV programming tyrant who rules our household with an iron fist. Far from it! It’s just that we usually talk about our options before settling on one, and I’m quite out of practice when it comes to having that conversation with just myself.

Wes was gone on business last night, and as I wrestled my children into bed, I couldn’t help but wonder: What to watch?

After ruling out anything too violent or scary, I settled on American Hustle. I’ve wanted to see it ever since one of the presenters at the FBI seminar I went to recommended it as being pretty accurate. I poured a glass of wine, got comfy, and then turned the movie off after about forty-five minutes because I just couldn’t get into it. It wasn’t for me.

On a lark, I decided to give What to Expect When You’re Expecting a try, because a friend had mentioned it on Facebook, and I was surprised , SURPRISED, by how much I enjoyed it. I’m normally not one to enjoy “chick flicks” but for some reason this one was the right movie in the right place at the right time for me.

So now, in the cold light of day, I have no choice but to wonder…What does it say about me that I’d rather watch a Cameron Diaz movie than a Christian Bale movie? American Hustle was bursting at the seams with quality acting talent and yet…Snoozeville. What to Expect When You’re Expecting, on the other hand, was light and fun and enjoyable to watch. It wasn’t high cinema by a long shot, but it was entertaining and that was primarily what I was looking for.

So again I ask, Have I become some kind of Facebook-addicted, lowbrow Philistine who’d rather be entertained than challenged? And if so, why don’t I feel bad about it?

Heady questions, friends. Heady questions.

Thanks for sharing!

How to Write a Fight Scene

When you’re a thriller write, chances are pretty good you’ll eventually have to write a fight scene. When that happens, you’ll need to ask yourself a few questions:

Is this my character’s first fight? Second? Ninetieth?
How does my character feel about his/her opponent? How does that assessment of his/her foe affect his/her strategy for the fight?
Is my character a trained fighter? If so, what kind of training?

Photo credit Erric, Deviant Art.

Personally, I love a good fight scene, as a reader and as a writer. They’re a ton of fun if they’re done well, and informative to boot. After all, how many of us get into fights regularly enough to know good street fighting strategy?

When I was coming up with Bai Hsu, the main character of my Bai Hsu series, I had a really important decision to make: I knew I wanted him to be a skilled martial artist, but which martial art? Believe me, it is in no way sufficient to just say someone has a black belt and then leave it at that. A person with a black belt in Aikido is going to handle an attack a LOT differently than a person with a black belt in Krav Maga. You can’t write a fight scene unless you narrow the parameters a bit.

To do this, Wes and I watched a lot of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fights. We assessed Bai’s physical strengths and ran those against his personality type and decided he held a third degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and had picked up Krav Maga and Muay Thai after joining the CIA. This means I get to have a lot of fun with fight scenes.

Typically what I’ll do is I’ll get the bones of the scene down and figure out three things:

What is the eventual goal of this fight scene? (Meaning, is Bai fighting for his life, or is he trying to disable someone? Is he responding to a threat, or is he making a point?)
What are Bai’s limitations? (How is feeling physically? Is he armed? Is the other person armed? etc.)
What is the other fighter’s skill level? Is Bai fighting a marshmallow who’ll go down in two moves or is he squaring off against someone with real training? (It’s always trickier to, but more fun, to write fight scenes with skilled opponents because then I get to figure out the blocking twice!)

Bai is very smart and he’s a strategic fighter, so he’s constantly thinking about these three things whenever he faces off against someone. After I answer those questions, I watch tutorial videos and MMA bouts until I have a general idea of what sequence of moves I think will take place, and then Wes and I will work out the blocking for the fight in our family room. It’s hilarious fun, we look like two lumbering, oafish brawlers.

After all that is finally done, I write down the scene all bare-bones like and then rewrite it and polish it until it matches the rest of the manuscript. It’s a ton of work, but it’s one of the most enjoyable parts of my job. If Bai were here, he’d tell you it’s one of the best parts of his job, too! Good luck!

Thanks for sharing!

I May Not Know Why, But I Know What I Like

Photo credit Aaron James Imagery.

True confession: I’m not a “fancy” person. I can’t look at high art and ‘get’ it, I can’t really differentiate the nose of a Cabernet and a Merlot, and I can’t taste a gourmet dish and tell you what, exactly, I like about it other than that it tastes good.

That said, I do like things. I can’t always provide a fancy-pants high brow explanation of why I like things, but I definitely know what I like. (Unless we’re talking about writing, of course, about which I know enough to be exceptionally picky.)

When it comes to photography, I tend not to be interested unless the photo in question tells a story of some kind. I’m a storyteller, I like to be transported. I fully believe in photography’s ability, when done right, to take you somewhere new so you can feel something. It’s about freezing and preserving a moment in time. I like photography to be rich and textured, and can’t usually say I’m terribly blown away by what I see touted as photography.

Photo credit Aaron James Imagery.

Except when I look at my friend Aaron James’s work. There’s something magical about what he does with a camera. It isn’t anything fancy or contrived, he just has this natural ability to capture the exact images that define moments and feelings. The guy’s got great instincts, and it shows in his work.

I don’t know if it’s because of how he uses light, or because his finger instinctively knows when to press down on the shutter, or because he’s just one of those people for whom these things come naturally. What I do know is that he’s serious about his craft and it’s a lot of fun to watch him do what he loves.

Photo credit Aaron James Imagery.

His real specialty is children. He’s a father of three and, as such, has this uncanny ability to take pictures that tell you everything you need to know about his subjects in a single image. Unfortunately for you, I can’t show you the incredible pictures he took of my kids because I’m protective of my kids’ privacy. Just trust me. They’re stunning.

In case you’re a Seattle area local and you want Aaron to make you look good too, he’s currently taking bookings and charges reasonable (read: affordable) rates. Check out his website here or just email him at aaronsbjames{at}gmail{dot}com.

He in no way asked me to blog about him or compensated me for this post, I just believe in him. A good photographer deserves to have tons of work to do, and you deserve to have terrific photos taken of you. You’ll be so happy you hired him, trust me.

Thanks for sharing!

My SciFi Utopian Novel Idea

What could go wrong with requiring people to do this for an hour every day?

I was at the gym this morning when I had a thought I’ve had many times: Why isn’t anyone harnessing the energy from gyms and using it to power stuff? I have to imagine stationary bikes, rowing machines, and the weight training equipment could provide the necessary friction to generate energy, why aren’t we using it?

In my head, I imagine a world where everyone is able to offset their energy bill by producing clean fitness-generated power at the gym. People could sign on for extra sessions to either eliminate their energy bills entirely or make extra money on the side,thereby solving two problems at once: Obesity and fossil fuel dependence.

Elegant, no?

Of course, in my alternate reality (science fiction?), the rich would go from being unattainably  thin to the extravagantly obese, because they can afford not to have to generate their own energy like the plebes. Overall, though, quality of life will improve as people exercise more, feel better, and our country is able to break its reliance on foreign oil.

Seems like a win-win to me. Then again, I write fiction for a living so what do I know about the real world?

Thanks for sharing!

Walking As a Contact Sport

Wes and I live in a quiet little suburb outside Seattle, a perfectly civilized place where you can probably leave your car unlocked in your driveway overnight and see it out there in the morning with all your stuff still inside. It used to be quite bucolic until property values started to rise. Now there are fewer trees and more houses, but even still it’s a pretty place to live.

One of our neighboring cities, Issaquah, is lovely as well, though, in my opinion, less homogenous. Every year during the first weekend of October, the city of Issaquah explodes into a massive festival called Salmon Days. There’s a salmon hatchery in Issaquah, adjacent to Issaquah Creek where the salmon have been running forever, and every year hundreds of people descend on downtown Issaquah to see the salmon, watch the parade, browse the vendors, and eat luscious fair food (read: fried everything).

We tried to take the kids last year but ended up waiting for a shuttle for an hour before calling it quits and heading back home.

This year, we planned ahead and made it just as the fair opened. It was just shy of crowded and perfect for walking around. By the time we left, though, the place was dense with humanity and pushing the stroller more often than not necessitated the kind of bold maneuvering you normally see in F-16 fighter pilots.

There was one incident, on a small bridge, where I was following Wes and pushing a stroller, that I feel exemplifies the kind of maneuvering I’m referring to here.

The bridge was so packed that it was barely possible to cross it. People were hanging off both sides of it to watch the salmon swimming in the creek, and the area in the middle was basically a human obstacle course made up of children, parents, and people in wheelchairs.

I was trying to stay close to Wes so as not to lose him in the crush, and happened to be moving at the same speed and in the same direction as this other guy. He was DETERMINED to cut in front of me so he could insinuate himself between me and Wes and then, who knows? Crowd surf to freedom? Catch a salmon with his bare hands? High-five a clown?

Every time I inched forward through the crowd, this guy stayed right at my elbow, close enough to spray me with a sneeze if he so chose, narrowing the walkable gap even further by his unwillingness to just let me pass. Annoyed enough to do something about it, I watched ahead until I saw a woman take one step back on the Close Walker’s side, forcing him to pause.

As soon as he hesitated, I cut across his path with the stroller, made deliberate eye contact, and said, “Excuse me,” making it quite clear that his days of walking ON ME were over. He fell behind us and our passage across the remainder of the bridge was much smoother.

Afterward, Wes remarked that my time walking around midtown Manhattan has served me well. He’s right. I’m not saying I walk like I’m in Manhattan all the time, but I can definitely pull it out when I need to. Especially with inconsiderate people who walk way too close to me in crowds.

Passersby be warned, I’m a super nice person, but I wield a stroller with fearsome, awful power and I will not hesitate to use it against you with extreme prejudice if you don’t behave yourself. Rawr.

Thanks for sharing!