Ute Carbone's Blog, page 13

True Confessions #Christmas Edition

Image by Malene Thyssen Confession is good for the soul, right? So (deep breath), here's mine. I have a real love hate relationship with the Christmas season. Okay, in the interest of being totally honest, it more often swings towards hate than love.
It didn't always used to be this way.  I have wonderful memories of childhood Christmas, the smell of evergreen, the lights on the tree like tiny stars tucked into the branches, presents wrapped up with wonderful surprises inside. There were carols sung by the Vienna Boy's choir and star shaped cinnamon cookies.
Some wonderful things have happened to me in this season.  My husband asked me to marry him one  Christmas Eve, and a year later we were married in December. And a few years afterward, our eldest son was born three weeks before the holiday.
But these wonderful memories are mitigated by painful times. My husband's father, dear to both of us, died not long before Christmas. A few years later, my own father passed away quite suddenly, a week before he was to come and stay with us to celebrate the season.  Then there was the dreadful year when my younger son, at six weeks old, had to be hospitalized for pneumonia on Christmas Eve.  My mother had died a few months earlier, and so my first Christmas without her was spent watching over my baby as he lay struggling for breath in an oxygen tent.
The season, I suppose, is a microcosm of life.  All of us have sorrows and joys. Sometimes our days are infused with magic and sometimes our nights are so dark we cannot see our way forward.  For me, Christmas is a time of remembrance.  Flickers of the past cast a long shadow, but also there is light. This year will mark my first Christmas as a grandmother.  My children will all be home again. The house will smell of evergreen and the lights twinkling on the tree will be magical. I'll play that old CD, the Vienna Boy's choir singing Silent Night.
On these, the darkest nights of the year, it is love that illuminates the spirit. May your heart and home be full of light. 

Lumania

Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, WA January 2011 Photo: Dan Dzurizin, Creative Commons My husband and I plan on painting our kitchen soon and so,over the weekend, we went to the local Home Depot and picked up paint chips. We held the chips up to the light and pondered. Is this shade too light? This one too dark?
I don't particularly love sifting through paint chips, but I absolutely adore the color names. How can you resist a green called Secret Meadow? Or a blue called Charismatic Sky? You can almost feel the deep brown of Sweet Molasses. And the white, white of Falling Snow is soft and silent. 
I imagine it must be wonderful to name these colors. Is there such a job at Sherwn Williams? Can you imagine the conversations at a party? "What is it you do?" asks the bored stranger, not really interested in your answer. "I name colors," you tell her. "Have you ever heard of Shabby Chic Pink? Fabulous Fawn? Those were mine."
How wonderful that in this world we have Optimist Gold and Hopeful Blue and Artful Aqua. 
We decided on a pale yellow, my husband and I. Lumania, the color of the moon on a winter's night. It's a shade darker than Twinkling Lights and just a bit lighter than Champagne Wishes. Perfect. 

Paris in the Aftermath

"Paris Shootings - The day after (22390818633)" by Maya-Anaïs Yataghène from Paris, France - Paris Shootings : The day after. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...- I wasn't sure I wanted to write and post this piece. No, not true. I was pretty sure I didn't want to post it. I try to stay away from religion and politics when posting here. It tends to be divisive and I don't want to scatter seeds of division. And it is difficult to talk about what has happened in Paris without skating awfully close to the thin ice of religion and politics. 
Also, I'm finding it hard to formulate the right words for this tragedy. I'm quite sure I can't write about it properly and that the writing will end up trite. Yes, we are very sorry. Yes, our thoughts and prayers are with the victims. I want to say something more, something that strikes to the heart of what I am feeling. I'm not certain I can.
What I do know for certain is I don't want to become one of those loudly opinionated people who hold court and espouse their point of view because they have a computer and an internet connection. Who am I to tell you how to think? Certainly you can form your own opinions.
And yet. I am a writer. I live in the world. And after events like the one in Paris, which seem to happen with such regularity these days, my heart grows heavy. I wonder how there can be so much hate. I wonder how people can justify the killing of innocent strangers and not see it as the profound evil it is.  It seems to me there is a cancer in the world, a terrible darkness that seeps in time and again. We try to eradicate it, we fight wars to root it out, we pray for deliverance from it. And yet it comes back. Time and again, since we walked upright and began to wonder at our existence, it comes back to torment us.
Perhaps there is no cure for this hatred.  I don't know how to expunge it and I'd guess you don't have the answer either. I do know that if we have any hope at all, we must first examine our own hearts. I do know this disease is born of fear and ignorance. It is easier to dehumanize those who we see as different, those we don't understand, those whose ideas we fear. 
And it is, in the aftermath of terror, only human to be afraid. It is only human to draw in and protect ourselves. There's been a lot of rhetoric here in the United States and in other places around the world about closing off our borders and not taking in any more refugees. We want to protect ourselves, after all. We don't want any more bloodshed.
And yet. How can we not shelter these refuges? If we turn our backs on thousands in need to protect us from the one who might do us harm, do we not risk turning our backs on what is best in our natures? Do we not, in some small way, lose our own humanity?
We cannot spread light by turning off the beacon. We cannot expunge evil by hiding away in fear. 
If we have any hope at all of moving towards a more humane world, we must lead the way with our own  humanity, we must find the courage to do what we know is just and right. Not because of evil, but in spite of evil. We must stand with the people of Paris. And also with the people of Syria, the people of Beirut, the people of Turkey. We must not allow ignorance and fear  to sully the corners of our hearts and minds. If we want to end darkness, we must shed light. We must be the light. If we want to end hatred, we must practice love. Not only when it is easy, but when it is hard. Especially when it is hard.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James, a #review

I had the chance to chat briefly with author Emma Hooper when she was in residence at McDowell Colony last summer. Warm and funny in a quirky kind of way, she seemed the type of person it would be easy to befriend. This alone was reason enough to put her book on my to be read list. That my new grandson is named Russell James added a bit of serendipity. How could I resist reading?
     Because my tbr list is long--stretched end to end, the books would no doubt reach to the moon and back, it took me until this month to actually crack the cover. I'm very glad I did.
     I read a lot, on average of at least a book a week. Quite a few of the books I read are thoroughly enjoyable, I wouldn't be reading if they weren't. But only a few make me want to thrust the book into a friend's hands while saying"Read this. You must read this book." Etta and Otto and Russell and James is one of those few.
     The story, infused with magic where the lines between what is real and  what is imagined are perfectly blended, begins with the  note eighty three year old  Etta has left behind for her husband, Otto: "I've gone. I've never seen the water, so I've gone there. I've left you the truck. I can walk. I will try to remember to come home."
      And so begins a journey from Saskatchewan to New Brunswick that is part actual. part imaginary, part magical, and most memorable. Etta walks through time as well as space, as the story wanders back to the beginnings of Otto's lifelong friendship with Russell, to the young romance between Etta and Otto, to Otto's experiences as a soldier in the second world war, to Russell, crippled in an accident that keeps him from the fight, and his growing love of  Etta. 
      There is magic in these words. Scenes stay with you, sweet as the icing on Etta's cinnamon rolls, compelling as the empty prairie with wind whistling through it. Reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera or Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate,  Etta and Otto and Russell and James is a book that captures the imagination and sends it soaring. 
   Beautiful words woven into poignant sweetness with a hint of nostalgia, a story laced with magic, I am pressing this book into your hands, dear reader. Read this. You must read this book. 

Selfie on Bouchard's Bridge

I've stood on this footbridge many times. It has a name, Bouchard's Bridge, and it crosses the shallow water of Beaver Brook in a place where the beavers have engineered a dam,  turning running water into a standing pond. Look down from the rail and you can see the muddy bottom under tea colored water no deeper than the reach of an arm. 
     Tall marsh grasses rustle in the breeze and beyond them, the steeple tops of maples, pines, and oaks mark the edges of forest. 
     I've crossed the bridge in all seasons. In winter, on skis, when the snow is thigh deep and paints the world a blustery brilliant white. In early spring, where a delicat layer of ice covers the water like museum glass. In the heat of summer with iridescent winged dragonflies buzzing the water surface. And in the fall, perhaps the most beautiful time here in northern New England, when the trees show off flame reds and brilliant yellow against a peerless blue sky.
     Sometimes, I'll admit, I've made the crossing without stopping to admire the view, more concerned with the thoughts in my head and with checking off 'exercise' from my to do list. This time, though, I did stop and I did notice--my shadow floating like an alien in the water. 
     I took out my phone, causing my husband, who was walking with me, to ask what I was doing. Phone service in the middle of the woods is spotty at best. And, anyway, who would I call mid hike? 
     "I'm taking a selfie," I told him. 
     I"m not a fan of self photography. The idea of taking your own picture seems silly and maybe a bit self-involved to my mind. But there, just then, on the bridge I'd crossed more times than I could count, my shadow called me to take notice.  Maybe in snapping a picture I hoped to keep a small strange part of me afloat.
        So here it is, my first ever selfie; a shadow, a floating impression, already a memory in reflection. 

An Interview with Patricia Dusenbury

A wonderful character like Claire Marshall and an enticing city like New Orleans make Patricia Dusenbury's Claire Marshall Series a terrific read. The third and final book of the series , a House of her Own, was recently released and I'm pleased to welcome Patricia to  the garret today as we chat about the new book and the series. 
Ute:  One of the wonderful things about the Claire Marshall series is the setting. New Orleans provides a perfect backdrop for these stories. Why did you decide to set the series in the Big Easy?  

Patricia: I love New Orleans: the people, the music, the food, the attitude, the murky, sexy ambiance. It is, IMO, a terrific setting for any kind of drama. If a good fairy snatched you out of your bed and plunked you down in New Orleans, you would quickly figure out where you were. That's not true of many cities. Beyond that, the setting is pre-Katrina. New Orleans is recovering and may be in some ways be better, but that was a devastating event, on a scale that had to be seen to be believed, and I did not want to deal with it in my books. 
 
Ute: I agree New Orleans is a place like no other.  I can see why you'd want to set the book pre-Katrina. You go further back, though—the books are set in the early 1990s, not quite historical but not quite contemporary. What were the challenges of setting a book in, for lack of a better phrase, 'near history'?

Patricia: It wasn't a challenge; it was a necessity. The plot of A Perfect Victim was inspired by something that happened back then. If everyone had a cell phone, things would have gone very differently. I remember the 1990s, of course, but to be sure things were accurate, I researched the events of 1993 and 1994 - thank you Wikipedia. This proved extremely useful. A House of Her Own is organized, in part, around the 1994 Formula One schedule. Without that horrific racing season, it would not be the same book.  
 
Ute: I hadn't realized the Formula One portion of the story was based on actual events, it's seamlessly done. I'm always fascinated by the way fiction imitates life or sometimes, life imitates fiction. Did the idea for making Claire's love interest, Tony, a race car driver come first or was it the research into Formula One, which gave Tony such a great story line—and Claire another person to worry about?

Patricia: Tony is a racecar driver because I wanted a glamorous profession that put plenty of temptation in his path. The way the Formula One thread worked out was serendipity for the story, but I wish it weren't true.  That season was carnage. 
Your question suggests organization. I wish. I write with a vague idea how the book will end and not a clue about the sequel--or even if there will be one. This didn't start out to be a trilogy, but when I finished A Perfect Victim, I realized that Claire's story wasn't finished.  Ditto when I finished Secrets, Lies & Homicide. A House of Her Own completes Claire's story.  And I did not how it would end until I was writing the ending.  But once I figured it out, I knew it had to be.
 
Ute: It's good to know I'm not the only one who writes without knowing where I'm going.  The three books follow a single character and could be thought of as all of a piece, yet  each novel could be read  as a standalone as well.  Writing a series presents its own set of challenges, though. How is writing the same main character easier than using different characters each time? How is it more difficult? And would you—or will you—write another series?
 
Patricia: I'm beginning another book with a very different, although still female, protagonist.I can see this character, who is still only partly formed, developing into someone who could go for more than one book.  I hope so, because I get fond of my characters. I am going to miss Claire--and Bea and Mike and Tony, etc..  
A trilogy suits me. Following the same characters for three books lets you get to know them better, which makes it easier to write about them. And I can keep track of three books. More than three--and some series go for twenty--is harder. You have to remember everything that has happened in all those books. I'd need a chart. A lot of writers create a "series bible" for that very task. 
 
Ute: A series bible is a great idea. Even in a standalone novel, it's sometimes difficult to keep minor characters and incidents straight.  I'm intrigued by this new character. Can you tell us a bit more about the new book?

Patricia: The new character, who I'm hoping will be worth more than one book, is a divorced woman in her late forties.  Susan lives in Brooklyn and works in Manhattan, doing research  for a criminal defense lawyer who specializes in capital cases.  But the case in this first book is very personal. 
 I'm still at the beginning, which means I'm still getting to know Susan and not too sure what's going to happen. I hope to finish the first draft by participating in NaNoWriMo - for non-writers, that is National November Writing Month where writers encourage each other to produce at least 50,000 words in the month of November. Which is a lot of words, and I'm clearing the decks for a writing marathon.  Have you ever done NaNoWriMo, Ute?

Ute: i have started, but never finished. I tend to write more slowly, and 50k in a month is a bit much for me. That said, I think it's a great idea and I'm cheering for all  the nano participants.
Thanks so much for coming to the garret today Patricia! 
As a child, Patricia Dusenbury read under the covers when her parents thought she was asleep. (She still reads into the wee hours but now uses a Kindle.) Despite sleep deprivation, Patricia managed to get through school and a career as an economic analyst/strategic planner. Now retired, she hopes to atone for all those dry reports by writing stories that people read for pleasure. Her first book, A Perfect Victim, won the 2015 EPIC (Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition) award for best mystery. The sequel, Secrets, Lies & Homicide, was a top ten finisher in the Preditors and Editors Readers Poll. A House of Her Own is the third and final Claire Marshall novel.  Learn more about Patricia and her writing at PatriciaDusenbury.com That house in that neighborhood for that price? Claire Marshall thought she’d hit the jackpot. Her company would restore the old house to its previous glory and sell it at a huge profit. She hadn’t counted on the runaway girl hiding in the upstairs bedroom, the brutal gang chasing her, or the angry ghost who may or may not be keeping the gang at bay. Claire’s business partner says they won’t be able to give this house away. He wants to write off their investment and walk away, her workers don’t want to go inside, but Claire doesn’t believe in ghosts or in giving up without a fight.  And she could use a distraction. Tony, her lover, is back on the Grand Prix circuit, driving in a racing season marred by fatal accidents, and, according the media, finding comfort in the arms of another woman. Just when Claire thinks that things can’t get worse, they do.

#8Sunday. The End. To the Wind

Welcome to #8Sunday, the blog hop where writers post eight to ten sentences of  their work. I've started a new #8Sunday series called the end, where I'm posting the final lines from some of my books. Last week, I posted the end of Sweet Lenora, the first book of the Sweet Lenora series. So to follow up this week I'm posting the end of To the Wind, the second book of this four book historical series. 
The story of To the Wind is told by Anton who has become the love of Lenora's life. In the end, the couple have settled in San Francisco. They're happy, though there are more challenges and adventures to come.  I should have expected no less from her. By day’s end tomorrow, she would be in charge of repairs. I minded only a little.
I minded less later that night, when she ran to the bed and jumped in beside me.
“You see, it all works out in the end,” she said, kissing my shoulder.
“It is not the end yet, I hope.” I touched my lips to the tender pulse at the base of her neck.
“Nay,” she whispered, unbuttoning the last button of her dressing gown. “It is just the beginning.”  Find out more about The Sweet Lenora Series here.  Be sure to visit Weekend Writing Warriors for more #8Sunday  snippets.

#8Sunday. TheEnd. Sweet Lenora

Welcome to #8Sunday, the blog hop where writers share eight to ten sentences of their work. Last week, I started a new series called the end, because satisfying endings are essential to a happy reading experience.
Today's ending, from the novella Sweet Lenora,  is happy, but it also leaves a lot unfinished. That's because it's the first part of a series and only the beginning of Anton and Lenora's adventures. They've escaped from Rio and sailed away, but with half a crew and miles of dangerous ocean between them and their destination, San Francisco. 



 “We have done it.” My heart, too, sailed on the wind.
“Aye the wind is with us. We have but half a crew and we may be pursued, but we will no doubt outrun them.”
“We are here, alive,” I took hold of his waist, “tis all that matters.” I meant those words with all my heart.
The land soon disappeared over the horizon. I had found my true place in the world. If I could sail on the wind with Anton at my side, commanding my ship and holding my heart to his, I could want for nothing. Find your next great read! Visit Weekend Writing Warriors for more #8Sunday snippets.

#8Sunday. The End. All Things Returned

Hi Sunday eighters. Over the past few months, I've posted the opening lines of my books. So what next?  A wise writer once said (and my apologies both for failing to remember who said it and for paraphrasing because I can't remember the exact quote, either) " Beginnings sell a reader on your book. Endings sell them on your next book." Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting some of my book endings.
I'm starting in the middle, though, with All Things Returned, the third novella of the Sweet Lenora Series. There is method to my madness--I'm celebrating this novella, because it recently came in first place in the colonial/Civil War/western category of Hearts Through Romance's Romancing the Novel Contest. 
Readers, myself included, love a satisfying ending. My books almost always end happily--if not forever after, at least for now.  Even though Anton and Lenora Boudreaux, the characters whose love story is at the heart of this series, will have more trials to face in Sweet Auralie, the last book of the series, they are content in each other at the end of this novella. 

“Three years perhaps. Enough for the gossip over Jacob Lowell to have faded.” Anton ran his hands along my back then circled them round my waist. “At any rate, we shall go to Edward and Meifeng’s for dinner this evening, to celebrate and speak further of our plan.”
“I should like that a good deal.”
“In the meanwhile, Mrs. Boudreaux, I should like to spend the day in my wife’s company.”
“Would you? What shall we do?”
“Make up for lost time,” Anton said, before putting his lips to mine.  Be sure to visit Weekend Writing Warriors for more Sunday snippets. 

One Step Back and Two Steps Forward

Earlier this week,  I signed a release form giving the rights to  three of my titles back to me. As has been the case with many small presses these days, my publisher, Turquiose Morning Press, has had to close its doors. 
I've loved working with Kim Jacobs and the staff of TMP. I am indebted to my wonderful editor, Karen Block, who made my work shine. I'm sad to see the place where I'd found a home for my women's fiction no longer in business.
Kim Jacobs has been gracious and generous throughout my TMP time, and she remains so even as she has had to step back. There are many horror stories of small presses closing shop in the middle of the night and running off with whatever remains in the coffers. I hear those stories, and am grateful to have a publisher who has made this transition as smooth as she possibly could and who keeps her mailbox open to those of us looking for advice and guidance.
Two books, Dancing in the White Room and The Tender Bonds, along with the short story trilogy The Lilac Hour, are impacted by this transition.  Kim was kind enough to revert rights to the fully edited books and gift the covers. So, soon as I'm able, I will self-publish them and bring them back to readers. 
I'm leaning towards, or being pulled towards perhaps, the hybrid model many authors are pursuing, with some books published traditionally and some independently. I've not decided yet, but I may publish more titles independently in the future. If there is a silver lining here, it's that I've found a wonderful support staff, a great editor in Karen and fine cover art from Kim, which I'll be able to connect with if I decide to go this route.
So, I ask your patience. Stay tuned and hopefully, I'll get these books back out quickly and then  move forward again. With luck, my books and I will  come roaring back. As long as you want to read my stories, I will continue to write them.   
Thank you for reading my stories and for all of your encouraging reviews, comments and notes. They mean more to me than I can say. They keep me going .
With Love
Ute