Meredith R. Stoddard's Blog, page 16

Are Nook Readers Hopeless Romantics?

Recently on a self-publishing forum that I frequent, a much more successful indie author than I asked the forum if we had seen our Nook sales dry up. I was one of the few people who answered “No”. In fact, I have had a couple of months in the latter half of 2012 where Nook sales were all I had.  This prompted me to look a little closer at the difference between my Nook and Kindle sales and what some of the differences were. First, let’s review the ebooks that I have and the differences between them (in case you haven’t read them yet). I’ll try not to give any spoilers.

With that said, it’s interesting to note that 84% of my Kindle sales are of The White House. This isn’t completely surprising in since The White House was released four months before A Fond Kiss. However, 100% of my Nook sales are for A Fond Kiss. That’s right, I have not sold a single copy of The White House on the Nook. Which is a shame, because it’s a really good story (not that I’m biased or anything;)

This is what leads me to ask the question at the top of this post. Are Nook readers hopeless romantics? It’s pretty clear that my based-in-fact love story appeals to them far more than pirates, even famous ones. Is it because A Fond Kiss is a love story, or because it’s based on a true story? This of course has me wondering what’s different about Nook readers vs. Kindle readers.

After a little frustrated searching online the only information that I found about the demographic differences between Kindle and Nook readers is a couple of years old. Since the e-reader market has exploded in the last couple of years, I’m not sure how accurate that information is.  This article from ireaderreview.com shows that Kindle users tend to be older than Nook users and credits the Nook color/tablet with attracting a younger audience. It also suggests that the older audience prefers the Kindle because it’s lighter and therefore easier on arthritic hands (A dubious conclusion).  Given that this data is from 2010, before the Kindle Fire was released and was from a self-selected survey, the data isn’t exactly that scientific. In fact, based on my experiences both as a reader and author, I found the idea that the Nook appeals to a YOUNGER audience surprising.

Here is another article from the Florida Research Group that compares the demographics of all e-reader users, but again it’s two years old. There is no end to the number of articles comparing the devices themselves, and they’re great for consumers shopping for a device, but there really seems to be a limited amount of market research done for authors looking to maximize their sales on either one. If I were about to publish a romance novel and was trying to decide whether or not to opt in to KDP Select with its exclusivity requirement, I might like to know a breakdown on Romance genre sales on Nook vs. Kindle. Otherwise, I might lose sales from other platforms that have a large number of readers in my genre. For independent authors running their own show when it comes to marketing, this kind of information would be very helpful in targeting that marketing rather than the current throw everything against the social media wall and hope something sticks strategy or the increasing popular mimic the best-sellers (50 Shades of Fill-in-the-blank) and ride the wave of whatever’s popular strategy.

Maybe this is something that KDP, Pubit and Smashwords can offer as a value add to their authors. Maybe it could be another revenue stream for them. I can imagine that I’m not the only author who would pay a REASONABLE  fee for a timely demographic analysis of e-reader users or even monthly newsletter that goes beyond just the bestseller lists and looks at who is buying. I would think that this is all data that these e-publishing platforms have, it would just be a matter of putting it together in a form that people can read.

Admittedly, I’m new at this and I’ve been eyes deep in editing lately, but this doesn’t seem too much to ask. Maybe this is out there already. If it is, please point me in the right direction. I’m sure it’s a product of my corporate sales background, but I can get kinda nerdy about this stuff, and as the saying goes, Knowledge is Power.

My Big Chop

Shortly after I graduated from college, I stopped by my paternal grandmother’s house on my way to the beach and she asked me when I was going to cut my hair short, not if but when. The implication was that all grown women had to cut their hair short as some final rite of passage. Seeing as I inherited my curly hair from the woman asking the question, I thought it was kind of odd. At the time it just seemed a shame to me to cut those curls. They were part of who I was. I was Meredith, the one with the curly hair (I went to college with more than a few Merediths.) There was absolutely no question in my mind of ever cutting my hair short. 

Flash forward 17 years and my attitude was very much the same. Sure I had cut it up to my shoulders occasionally, but when you’re lucky enough to have curls like mine it just seemed a shame to cut them off. Until I realized a couple of weeks ago, that I wasn’t really enjoying having my curls anymore. Here I was with curly hair down to the middle of my back, but I was pulling them up into a bun pretty much every day.  Hair that long takes work and curly hair takes work, and as a mom, I just wasn’t putting in the work anymore. I was in a rut, and it wasn’t just my hair. Lots of moms go through this. We get so focused on getting things done, and making sure everyone else is prepared for stuff that we don’t really take care of ourselves.

So, I decided late last week to give myself a jump start, shake things up if you will. In my case, it starts in the form of a haircut. I know you’re probably floored, right? But for a curly girl like me this was a huge change.

Let’s start with a little background on my hair. First, I didn’t have hair until I was about 2 years old. As you’ll see if you scroll down to the pics, I’ve spent the last thirty-six years making up for that.  Once I started growing hair, it came in thick and curly. The trouble with that is that my mom’s hair is straight. This means that the person most inclined to help a growing girl with grooming tips and the like, had no idea what to do with my curls. So, the solution when I was about 10 was to cut it off.  So my mom took me to her hair dresser, a really very nice lady who worked out of her basement shop and loved to chat with my mom while she cut my hair. This would have been a lovely Steele Magnolias kind of moment in a a girl’s life, if the woman cutting my hair hadn’t been telling my mother about how she needed EYE SURGERY. In my mother’s defense she let the near blind lady cut her own hair too.  Thus began a rather strained relationship between myself and the haircare professionals of the world. Some have looked at my thick curly hair as their personal styling playground, some have just looked perplexed, and some have just completely half-assed it and cut it the way they would strait hair. Unfortunately, the result has been far more bad experiences getting my hair cut than good ones.

So, I was super careful this time when looking for a salon to cut my hair. I asked for recommendations. I checked Yelp and Google for reviews. And I settled on Salon 730 in Fredericksburg, mostly based on the reviews. Then there was the question of how to cut it. I had gone up to shoulder length in the past, but I was ready for something that required less maintance and more drastic. I wanted a pixie, a very short pixie. Now, I have two strikes against me when it comes to short hair. First there are the curls, and second I’m a big girl. So, while Anne Hathaway and Michelle Williams might look amazing with their pixies, I’m aware that I’m not going to look like that. But I was ready to take a chance, and I’m glad I did.

So, I got up Monday morning and went to the salon. I told them what I wanted and they steered me to Kristen, who is not listed on their website, but who I can now recommend. I told her what I was looking for, showed some pics and warned her that I’d been burned in the past.  She completely understood and after making sure that I was sure about what I wanted to do, she put my long hair into two braids and chopped them off. Here’s a picture of that carnage. We did the braids in the hopes of donating my hair to Locks of Love. Unfortunately, they do not take hair that has been bleached, and I did have strands in there that had been bleached.  Kristen thought they would take it anyway, but I called and confirmed after getting my hair cut that they couldn’t use it. Bummer.

After a quick wash, Kristen proceeded to cut and style my now short hair into just what I wanted. She stopped and asked questions and verified what she was doing. She communicated with me while she was cutting my hair and not  about her need for eye surgery (Thank goodness), but about the change that I was likely to see with short hair and how to achieve that style on my own. It was absolutely the best experience I have ever had in a salon.

And, I’m truly happy with the result. I love the ease of it, and the fact that I need less of everything when dealing with my hair. Less time brushing it. Getting the tangles out of curly hair takes a long time. Less shampoo and conditioner. Less weight on the back of my head. I actually stepped on the scale the next morning and found that I had lost an entire pound. Yep, we cut off a pound of hair. Just less work in general. Plus, I can wear hats now! I was never able to wear hats before because they would never sit right over my curls.

I confess, there are moments when I miss my long hair a little bit especially when I feel the cold January wind on the back of my neck, but overall I’m very happy about this change. We also joined a gym last week, so who knows, maybe one change will snowball into more changes for the better.

Sitting on it

It’s been a while since I’ve updated the blog. This is mainly because I was pushing hard to have the book ready for beta readers by Christmas. Unfortunately, the flu got in my way by running through the family not once, but twice since I finished writing the book. When you throw in holiday preparations and a rather slow Alpha reader, you have a recipe for disaster. So I missed my deadline (GASP!). I know, it was a self-imposed deadline and I was sick in bed or bowing down to the porcelain god, but still I have an innate aversion (or dare I say horror) to missing deadlines. I mean the “dead” in deadline is there for a reason, right?

On the upside, much of the time I spent in bed sick was spent thinking about my characters and the feedback that my Alpha reader, my husband, gave me and mentally plotting out the next book in the series. I also spent plenty of time thinking about my next move. Namely the question facing a lot of authors today; Do I zip this out to market via KDP and CreateSpace or do I attempt to sign with an agent and get a wider distribution and maybe a little marketing help (and yes I know that help would be very little)? On the one hand, publishers are loath to take a chance on a new author with a series, and they would take a bigger chunk of the pie so to speak. On the other hand, it takes a lot of work to get noticed out there in the big bad reading world and my little historical fiction shorts while getting terrific reviews, aren’t exactly selling like hotcakes. So, while my piece of the indie pie might be bigger, the pie itself (at least so far) is barely even snack size.

What’s a girl to do?

I’m going to sit on it. That is to say, I’m going to hold off  publishing this book until I have something more. Here’s the plan:

1) I’m outlining the rest of the series, or at least the rest of the series involving the main characters as they stand now. This will give me a clear picture of where it’s going and it will enable me to write a synopsis of each book.

2)Using the bird’s eye view of the series from Step 1, write a pitch for the whole series with which to query agents. I believe that this series could be very commercial. I also believe it will fit nicely into the newly minted “New Adult” category that seemsso popular right now. It has enough of contemporary fantasy aspects to appeal to a young audience, but the characters and subject matter are definitely more mature than Young Adult. Imagine a Twilight style love triangle (no vampires or werewolves, I promise) with DaVinci Code style themes and you’re coming pretty close.

3)Query, query query while working on my platform and trying to build an audience. That will likely include a trailer or two that I already have worked out in my head. Luckily I know a good filmmaker, my brother, who I might get to help me with that.

4) Write, write, write the second book. Hopefully, this one won’t take more than a decade to write.  But the writing/editing of it will most likely determine the timeline of the rest of the plan. I’ll keep querying until I get a bite or finish the second book. If no agents or publishers have bitten (I really promise there are no vampires in this series.), then I will likely publish them myself in close succession. That way I can hopefully whet the reader’s appetites with the first two books enough to get them to buy a third and fourth, fifth, and who knows by then I might even plan a series for the next generation of characters.

At least that’s my plan, and it feels pretty darn good to start off the new year with a plan.

Now for some details about the first book. The working title right now is THE RIVER MAIDEN. Here’s a working cover. 

And here’s the pitch:

Raised by her Scottish Grandmother in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Sarah MacAlpin grew up with one foot in the old world and one foot in the new world. She’s worked hard to get to where she is and at 25 she’s got her life planned out, that is until she meets Dermot Sinclair.

Plagued by nightmares of a tragic past and murky visions of the future Sarah pushes on toward finishing her dissertation. In spite of her hard work and planning the world around her seems to be spinning out of control. Her relationships with her boyfriend and her best friend are falling apart and the new guy in town seems to be dogging her every step. He’s friendly enough and can help with her research, but she can’t help thinking there’s something that he isn’t telling her.

 

If you’re interested in reading further. There is a large chunk of the book available to read on Authonomy. If you read it there, please leave feedback. It will only help me. If you’re interested in being a beta reader (kind of like a beta tester for software) and getting to read the whole thing once the edits are done (naturally in exchange for your feedback), please let me know in the comments here or through my Facebook page.

Thanks as always.

I hope you all will have as exciting a new year as I expect to.

Give back…My Hurricane Relief Pledge

I am an east coast kind of girl. I grew up in the Virginia Piedmont and now live on the inner edge of the Tidewater region just below the fall line of the Rappahannock. I like tall trees and walkways made of crushed oyster shells, and blue crabs. I like our history, the good parts that we’re proud of and even the bad parts that we’re not proud of.  I like to write stories about our history, more specifically our coast and as many people know living on the coast can be hard.

My great Aunt and Uncle owned a condo at Fort Fisher in North Carolina, and I spent many a summer there playing in the surf and learning the history and legends of the area. It’s those many summers that inspired my interest in the legends of the Outer Banks, and inspired me to write The White House and A Fond Kiss and the many other stories of the coast that are churning around in my head to be written in the future.  But like so many people along the Southern coast, we also dealt with our fair share of hurricanes. After getting hit three years in a row, my Aunt and Uncle sold their condo and our trips to the beach have gotten less regular. Hurricane damage is a fact of life on the coast.  Although it’s something that our friends up north don’t have to deal with as often. I think those of us who have been through this should stand up and help those who are dealing with it now.

So, I just made our family’s donation to the Red Cross for storm relief. I encourage everyone reading this to do the same. In fact, here’s the link to donate.

But I’m also going to take it a step further.

During my previous life as a corporate trainer, I worked for Intuit, the makers of Quickbooks and TurboTax (no, I will not help you with your bookkeeping or taxes). Intuit is a great company to work for because their Operating Values are as good as their products. One of the key Operating Values at Intuit is “We care and give back.” Which means that they make an effort to contribute to the communities around their facilities and they encourage their employees to do the same. I’ve been away from Intuit for four years now, I don’t even think about tax software outside of tax season,  and I couldn’t tell you what the newest features of QuickBooks are, but that Operating Value is one that I will never forget.

With that said, I am pledging 100% of my royalties from this quarter to the Red Cross. That’s right, 100% of royalties from Oct, Nov & Dec.

Admittedly, my books only cost .99 and I’m not exactly swimming in royalties. That’s where you come in. If you’ve been thinking about buying one of my books and just haven’t gotten around to it, now is the time. Tell anyone you know with an ereader, that if they buy my books, I will donate ALL the royalties to the Red Cross. This goes for all royalties from Kindle, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.

In case you don’t trust me. I will happily share pics of my sales reports and my donation receipt, once the donation has been made.

As I mentioned before, my royalties are not huge, so we’ve already made a personal donation to the Red Cross. If you want to be absolutely sure of giving more than the .30-.60 that I will collect from selling a book, then you too can make your own donation here.

Please keep all of the people affected by the storm in your thoughts (and prayers if you’re a praying person) as I can assure you they are in mine.

So, what’s your book about?

The picture you’re looking at is a picture of the complete first draft of my first novel. It’s in need of some serious editing, as any first draft should be, but it’s done. I actually managed to put all the action that’s been going on in my head onto paper.

I know you’re probably thinking, ‘Wow, big deal. We all write books. Hell those NaNoWriMo people do it in a month.” And maybe you’re right. But, have been working on this book off and on since shortly after I married my husband. In the time that it’s taken me to get this plot out of my head I have;

had two babies
changed jobs three times
been laid off TWICE (1 company went out of business, 1 eliminated my department)
bought a house
started a small business
survived postpartum depression
wrote and self-pubbed two short ebooks
and beat myself up about eighty gazillion times for not finishing the book sooner

It finally took my younger child going to school to give me enough hours in the day to actually move the needle on this thing more than a millimeter at a time.  Once I was able to treat it like a job, albeit a part time one, it only took me a little over a month to fill in the blanks on this outline I’ve been toting around for the last year or so. And now, I’ve finally done it. Now my head is filled with visions of possible covers and book trailers and marketing plans.

“So, what’s your book about?”

I confess I am frequently flummoxed by this question. Seeing as I’ve lived with these characters in my head for over a decade, I really should be able to sum it up easily. But if I say what the whole series is about, then I’d give away some major spoilers. If I say what inspired it, that would probably just be confusing to people who aren’t Scotia-phile  genealogy folklore and politics nerds like me. That would also totally skip over the spiritual aspects of the journey that the main character is on. If I described it from that purely academic standpoint, you would never get that at it’s heart it’s a romance but not the kind that most people think of when they hear romance. There’s a mystery, but it’s not a mystery. There’s paranormal stuff and some romance, but it’s not a paranormal romance (No vampires or werewolves. I promise). There’s danger, but I don’t know that I’d call it a thriller. There’s a love story…sort of.

Clearly, if I’m ever going to market this thing, I’m going to have to get a lot better at the 30 second elevator speech. I’m hoping that the editing/rewriting process will help clarify things. And I might want to settle on a title.

In the meantime, you can find some excerpts here.

October Reading List

I LOVE October. The weather gets cool enough to make our cheeks rosy. The leaves start turning. Harvest/Celtic/Fiber festivals happen every weekend, and it all leads up to Halloween.  As t

he weather starts getting colder, it’s the perfect time to wrap yourself up in a blanket with a mug of warm apple cider and read a scary book. I know the horror genre often gets labeled as pulp and not worthy of literary notice, but I think there is no social commentary quite like talking about what terrifies us. With that said here is my October reading list.

 FICTION

The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson

One of my twitter people the other day asked twitter what the scariest books we’ve ever read were. Then on another forum today, someone asked what is the first “grown up” book posters ever read. I realized after a few minutes thinking that for me, these are in fact the same book.  You’ve may have seen the 1963 film, The Haunting, with Julie Harris or the more recent 1999 remake, but these movies have nothing on the book. Shirley Jackson was already known for terrifying short stories like “The Lottery” when she this book was published in 1959, but there is nothing more terrifying to me as the mind of Eleanor Vance and the tricks it plays on her.  The most incredible part of this story is that although she has some special abilities (I won’t name them), there is something very human and familiar about Eleanor. She’s that small, lonely, insecure part of each of us that we try to keep on the inside, and this book is what happens when that part gets stirred up and let loose.

 

The Mist – Stephen King

You hunker down at home as a thunderstorm rolls in. When it’s over your little town is enveloped in a soupy, opaque mist that is filled with man eating monsters that scoop up your neighbors. Your job is to keep your son safe.  Need I say more? Sure plenty of other readers would pick different scary Stephen King books like The Shining or Pet Sematary, but as a mom the idea of trying to herd my children through this kind of situation is terrifying. King is such a pro at creating terror with what you don’t see, and this book is a prime example of that.

 

House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski

I picked this book up after hearing a reviewer on NPR describe it at as “James Joyce and Stephen King meet at midnight in a clearing in the woods”. Add to that the partial setting of a historic house in the Virginia countryside, and I was sold. I was not disappointed. In fact, my husband couldn’t even wait for me to finish this book before he went out and bought his own copy. It’s a labyrinth of psychological terror that is just too vivid and too good to be missed.  Don’t skim, every word is worth it.  You might want to have extra bookmarks and post-its handy.

 

NON-FICTION

The Devil’s Tramping Ground (and Other North Carolina Mystery Stories) – John Harden

As a Tarheel (in the diaspora) and a student of folklore, this book is right up my alley. The Devil’s Tramping Ground is a round path in clearing in western Chatham County where nothing grows. Anything left laying across the path at night is found moved to the side in the morning. Legend has it that the Devil walks this path nightly pondering what mischief he will do. In addition to this legend, this book had other stories like ghost ships in the Outer Banks, the Brown Mountain Lights, and Theodosia Burr who may yet get a short story in Of Sound and Sea. Last but certainly not least the Disappearance of Peter Dromgoole who’s story is mentioned in my novel in progress. You can see that the folklore of North Carolina has strongly influence what I write and some of it’s just plain creepy.

 

The Ghosts of Fredericksburg…and nearby environs – L. B. Taylor

L. B. Taylor has made a career out of collecting and recounting stories of the paranormal from all over Virginia. If you like folklore and ghost stories I recommend any of his books. This one I find the most interesting and a little chilling because the stories come from my home town. There’s a story about the church we attended when I was a child, another about the house across the street from my first apartment, and from local highlights like Kenmore, the Rising Sun Tavern, and Chatham. An area filled with as much history and war as Fredericksburg is bound to be loaded with stories and Taylor finds plenty. If you’re interested in other parts of Virginia, Taylor also has books about Richmond, Williamsburg and multiple volumes of stories from all over the state.

 

In Search of Dracula – Raymond T. McNally & Radu Florescu

What would an October reading list be without at least one vampire book? Funny thing about vampires is that as fiction they’re sexy and romantic and compelling, but when you look at the historical roots of our modern fictional vampires the reality is more terrifying and gory than any fiction. In this book two historians go in search of the historical Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, and how the history of a Wallachian Prince struggling to hold onto power in his country evolved into the a legend of terror and cannibalism.  It truly fascinating stuff.

 

The Shape of Fear – Susan J. Navarette

Speaking of exploring horror fiction as social commentary, Susan Navarette does that very thing with an eye toward the late nineteenth century. I was lucky enough to take Dr. Navarette’s class when I was in college and our examination of Dracula was nothing short of mind blowing. No one analyzes literature quite as completely as she does. I can’t recommend her work strongly enough. If you’re lucky enough to be a student at Hartwick College, you’d be crazy not to take her class.

 

50 Shades of Ech!

Over the summer like many moms, I read the entire 50 Shades Trilogy. Yes, all three books because, a) I’m a sucker for a series and b) I love writers and always want to give them a chance to redeem themselves. Sadly, I don’t feel like E. L. James or her characters redeemed themselves by the end of these books. In true Film Sack style, (I think there should be a similar BookSack podcast.) here’s my twitter post (spoiler alert):

Insecure virgin college student w/ a burgeoning eating disorder is stalked by emotionally stunted billionaire w/ serious Oedipus issues.

Whew! 4 character to spare;)

Despite appearances, this is NOT a book review. I’m not going to comment on the level of writing or storytelling skills of Ms. James nor am I going to sneer jealously at their obvious marketability. I’m not going to criticize the (contrary to all the hype) rather tame sex in the book. I’m not even going to talk about how absolutely toxic and abusive the relationship between Ana and Christian is or how I hate the depiction of BDSM as only being attractive to people with emotional problems. Other bloggers have thoroughly covered that. Jennifer Armintrout’s blog on the subject is a tour de force.

No, the thing that bugs me the most about these books is all the women my age (the back half of my 30’s) creaming their collective panties over Christian Grey, a man who’s only redeeming quality appears to be his looks. I don’t consider his money a redeeming quality because it enables him to aggressively stalk his prey, namely innocent brown haired girls who remind him of mommy. Even his victim/lover Ana refers to him in the later books as being “stuck in adolescence” as if he’s perpetually 15 years old. And that’s just the thing that bugs me about this whole series. If you take out the sex, the emotions in these books would be better suited for a high school classroom than the corporate boardroom where Christian Grey is supposed to rule. Christian isn’t the only one who’s stuck in adolescence.  Ana is pretty immature herself. Granted she’s younger, but she’s supposed to be a college graduate. We’re incessantly reminded in the first book of her impressive GPA. Now, I’ll be the first to admit I was still immature when I graduated from college, but I was capable of feeding myself and conducting an interview without stepping on my own tongue. Most of all, I was capable of saying NO or ENOUGH when I knew a situation was unhealthy.

Make no mistake, minus the sex this is a Young Adult book. It’s no surprise at all that this started out as Twilight fan fiction. It’s loaded down with all the lip-biting angst and blushing insecurities of any teenage romance. The trouble is: IT’S NOT ABOUT TEENAGERS! That is precisely what gives me the creeps. I understand a little of the nostalgia that leads grown women to read and enjoy books about the first blush of teenage love, and sometimes that’s okay. Hey, I read the Twilight books and I didn’t hate them. But at some point, you do have to grow up, and just because a guy takes charge in the bedroom buys the company where you work and gives you a car, that doesn’t make him a MAN. What does it say about them that grown women are getting all hot and bothered over a guy that behaves like 15 year old? What does their fascination with a character like Christian Grey say about the actual men in their lives?

I’m all for getting young adults to read more and I’m all for parents knowing what their kids are reading. What bugs me is grownups getting fangirl crazy over these books. The issue is much broader than this particular series. The Young Adult Romance sub-genre has exploded since the Twilight books came out and a good bit of their popularity can be attributed to grown women devouring them like so many skinny lattes.  Yes, they can be entertaining, but the emotions, like teenage emotions, are overwrought and the characters are frequently sterotypes especially the male characters. And I have yet to read a young adult book with a female protagonist that didn’t make me want to throw my ereader across the room because of her sheer obtuseness. So to hear grown-ass women going all weak-kneed for characters that they wouldn’t want their daughters within a mile of just gives me chills. Oh, I know there are moms out there who still behave like teenagers. I even know a grandmother or two that still behave that way. But are those the kind of adults we really want to be? Sure, it’s fun to remember being young and falling in love for the first time, but there’s really only one first time and eventually you DO have to grow up.

If you are grown up and want to read Erotic Romance, have at it. There are plenty of erotic books about real adult people who act like adults. There are even some steamy BDSM books out there about emotionally healthy people who engage in what E. L. James only hints at in her books. I guess what I’m saying is, it’s fine for adults to read erotic books but it’s downright creepy to read an erotic book about perpetual fifteen year olds. Erotic books have their place, and Young Adult books have their place, but Young Adult Erotica? Yech! So, gals, let’s leave adolescence to the adolescents…Please.

Yawn and stretch…

“Bye Sweeties, have a good day.” The kids jump out of the side door of the minivan and the door slides closed. I smile and wave to the school staff and take one last look at T and see her trotting into the school all skinny legs and backpack. K is already halfway to the building. Third graders are just too busy and too cool to hang around with their little sisters. As I pull out of the school parking lot I breathe a deep sigh. It’s the third day of school and I’m starting to relax a bit from the frenzy of getting all their supplies taken care of and their clothes cleaned and ready to go, all the anxiety of whether or not they’ll like their teachers or have friends in their classes. We’ve already survived our first night of ADHD homework. T is adjusting to kindergarten and I think after she finishes testing the boundaries with her new teacher, everything is going to be fine.

So, I turn my steering wheel northward to town to spend some time with the characters in my book who have been sorely neglected over the past couple of months. I look forward with relish to the new change in my lifestyle now that both of the kids are in school all day, five days a week. Previously, I had to content myself with writing for a maximum of nine hours a week plus the rare exception when my husband worked from home and sent me off to write. These were the few hours while T was at her half day preschool. I would head to a cafe and try to produce as much as I could in the space of three hours before having to stop and pick her up. If I were writing non-fiction or a how-to book, I probably could have gotten some writing done at home, but it’s hard to write a novel when little voices keep intruding to ask for snacks or juice or to inform me of what transgressions the other has committed. My children are wonderful and gifted and I could not love them more, but they are also extremely talkative. K is an auditory learner which means that to encode what he’s learning into memory, he has to say it. T is sassy and independent and while she’s not an auditory learner she is a talker.  So it  feels like it’s been at least four years since I’ve completed a thought in their presence, and with the exception of those 9 hours a week while T was in preschool.

Now, I have a blessed eight hours, five days a week to myself and oh the things I’m going to do. My head is brimming with plans to thoroughly clean the house, get everything organized like a pinterest pic. I’m going to spend hours every day working to finally finish this book. I’ll finally get John Campbell that feedback on his new project that he’s been waiting for so patiently and start reading other projects on authonomy. I’ll put together a marketing plan and really stick to it. I’ll make audio versions of my The White House and A Fond Kiss. I’ll get started on those book trailers for the novel. I’ll once again be as efficient and productive as I was in my corporate days. I can just see it. So, I drive all the way to town with the taste of freedom in my mouth.

When I get to my favorite writing spot, I manage to snag my favorite booth in the quiet section at the back where people sit alone working on their laptops, not up front where groups like to chat and have meetings. I get a cup of dark roast coffee because only people who just pretend to like coffee drink anything else. I fold some junk papers that I dig out of my purse and stick them under the table’s wobbly leg, because nothing is going to ruin this glorious return to work after my summer funk. It’s not until I sit down and pair my Bluetooth keyboard with my iPad and open up the file for the chapter I’m working on that I realize I’ve left my headphones at home. Now, instead of my character’s own soundtrack or my thought clarifying Chopin, I’m supposed to write to the cheesy cafe music and the buzz of half a dozen conversations going on within twenty feet of me. She’s heartbroken at this point in the story and I just don’t know that I can get into that head space with the musical equivalent of C-SPAN and overheard conversations from neighboring tables about what their children’s Sunday School classes did last week in my ears. I try, I really do. Still after an hour, all I have to show for it is one paragraph that I’m not entirely happy with.

Clearly, writing is not going to work today. I’ll edit that last chapter I wrote, that’ll help. I read into my bag only to discover that I have also left my little bag of post-its, colored pens and highlighters at home and every pen I have with me is black. Nice. Not ideal for editing. Finally, I pull out my little notebook that I like to use as a sort of journal, something I write in when my thoughts are as unfocused as they are this morning. I have to content myself with this. Sure, it’s not the project I wanted to work on, but it’s better than nothing. Right? As usual, I’m mentally kicking myself probably harder than I should for not being prepared.

Now that I’m home, I’m putting together a work bag so that next time I’ll have all of those tools together and won’t have another morning like today: Copy of manuscript & outline, markup tools bag, extra set of headphones, and an extra dose of patience with myself.

Just a little taste…

Summer is hard for me as a writer because my kids are home and there is much shuttling, feeding and referee-ing that goes on. While I do have a share of down time, it’s super hard to get into that writing mindset when there is someone in the next room who any minute is going to need a snack or a mediation. On the upside, I’m almost caught up on laundry and am actually enjoying spending time with my little ones.

With that said, I’m posting a short excerpt from my WIP for your perusal, feedback, titillation…

***

“This is Sarah MacAlpin interviewing Alex Budge, October 12th 1995. Also present, Randy Budge and Dermot Sinclair.” Sarah said into the microphone before setting it down on the little table facing Budge. They had returned to their original seats on the porch each with a jelly glass of Budge’s best stump water to sip while they talked.

“Simon Budge was my grandaddy.” Budge said with great significance looking directly at Sarah. “And he did teach me that song you’re talking about. But I’m not much of a singer, so I’ll tell ya the story he tolt with it.”

“Alright.” Sarah would keep her talking to a minimum as long as Budge kept going.

“My people come from Scotland back in the colonial times, and they been passing this story down all that time. I can’t say how much it’s changed, but here ’tis as I learnt it.” He leaned back took a deep breath as if he were gettting ready to sing after all. When he spoke again his voice had a far away quality as if he was in a dream.

“Long ago when Scotland was just a wild place with different tribes running their own territories, a family came over from Ireland and made to take over the place. They wanted control of the land. Now, some say they were more civilized than the tribes that were there before, but I don’t know that that’s true. They say that these fellers tried to get the tribes to all work together, but the old folk, that’s what my grandad called the old tribes, they weren’t havin’ it. They fought over everything and some of ‘em made friends with the new tribe and some of ‘em resisted. The new people maybe didn’t mean any harm, they just thought their ways were better, and they couldn’t get why some of the old folk didn’t want to change.

So one day the king o’ the new folk goes out wandering to think. He’s trying to figure out how he can get everybody to come over to his side and get along. So he gets tired and he stops by a riverbank. While he settin’ there, up swims this girl. Now, she’s about the prettiest thing the king’s ever seen and she’s wavin’ to ‘im, ‘Come on in, the water’s fine’.” Budge gave a beckoning wave.

“So he goes in for a swim. Only this girl is so pretty he doesn’t pay attention and they drift downstream to an island. Now, the king thinks they’re lost, but she says it’s her home and he should come and meet her family.

So, she takes the king to meet her father, but her pa is old and sickly and lame. The king starts to wondering who’s gonna take care of this girl and her people when her pa dies. He thinks they’ve got to be pretty poor if they’re just living on this island and he’s never even heard of her tribe before. But then she takes him over to the hearth and shows him their cookpot. It’s a big ole iron kettle and every time he sees someone go to the kettle and put in a bowl or a ladle, it comes up full of food. He keeps watching and thinking that kettle’s got to be empty, but they still keep comin’ up with food, and they’re not even scraping the bottom.

Then she takes him and shows him a cave that’s hidden under a hill, and in that cave is a big stone.   And she tells him, ‘This is the heart of our people.’ Only he’s got a different heart in mind. Remember, she’s the prettiest girl he’s every laid eyes on. So, he kisses her right there in the cave and tells her that he loves her and wants to protect her when her father dies.

Now, just when that happens, a big storm like a hurricane comes up and hits the island.

When the king wakes up he and the girl aren’t in the cave anymore, but on shore. And the island is gone. But they find that big iron cookpot on the beach too. So he takes her back with him and makes her his queen. They work to bring the tribes together. The old folk see that she’s with him and she’s one of them. And they see that he’s got this cookpot that never runs out, and they start coming over to his side.

It goes slow, but by the time their son becomes king, all the tribes have come together and since his mother taught him the old ways and his father taught him the new way, he was a good king.”

It seemed important to Budge that she understand that the king was good. Sarah nodded. “Did your grandad ever tell you any names for this king or the queen?”

Budge took a sip of moonshine from his glass and shook his head. He blew out a breath     so thick with fumes that Sarah had to blink fast to keep her eyes from watering. “No. He never said names. He did say that the queen’s people were older than names. Old as the stone, he used to say.”

It was an expression that Sarah had heard before, one that Granny had used. “Do you know where in Scotland your people came from?”

“Can’t say I do.” Budge shifted in his chair and took another sip of moonshine. “That museum in Franklin says the Budges are Lowlanders. Way I figure it, we been here so long it doesn’t much matter.”

It mattered to Sarah though. It could help her trace the source of the song. She tried not to show her frustration. She glanced over her shoulder at Randy. He was leaning against the post gazing out at the mountain. Turning back to Budge, “Did you teach that story to your grandchildren?”

“Aw most of em don’t have time for an old man and his old stories. ‘Cept for Randy over there. He likes learning the old ways.” He gave her a wink and a devilish grin, “And you have a lotta time for tellin’ stories while you’re mindin’ a still.”

She smiled back at him. That was a fact she knew all too well. She’d learned many a song by the ever present beat of a thumper tank. She was glad she had found Alex Budge. Even if he hadn’t known the legend behind the song, she’d have been happy to know him. She laid her hand over his knarled work-worn one where it rested by his glass on the table. “Thank you for talking with me. I appreciate your help.”

He turned his hand over to grasp hers his face serious. “I’m glad you could record it. You’ll make sure people remember.”

She gave his hand one last squeeze before switching off the recorder and beginning to gather her equipment. Dermot pushed himself up off of the top step to help her. Sarah looked over to where he’d been sitting and noticed that his jelly glass was empty. She hadn’t taken more than a couple of polite sips.  There hadn’t been much in the glass but it was strong. Fortunately Dermot seemed pretty steady.

Sarah was just stepping down from the porch, Dermot by her side when a thought occurred to her. “Hey, Budge?”

“Mmm?” He had been looking into his jelly glass in deep concentration.

“You know a man they call Old Duff?” She realized that she missed the old man, and felt guilty for not having done more to keep track of him.

Budge let out a hearty belly laugh and slapped his knee. “Shoot, girl! Everybody in the hills knows Grant MacDuff! He comes round this way at least twice a year.”

Sarah couldn’t help smiling back at the man with his dirty worn clothes and missing teeth, and his jelly glass full of stump water. He and Duff and Granny were why she did what she did. Their beauty and their humanity hit her so hard sometimes it took the breath right out of her chest. They were people who lived and died in these hollers and without someone like her their culture would die in these hollers too. “Well, next time he passes this way, you tell him I was here.”  She felt tears pricking the backs of her eyes.  and tried to swallow past the lump in her throat. “Tell him I remember everything he taught me.”

The old man gave her a solemn nod. He knew what it meant to her. Sarah started to turn away again, but his voice stopped her. “Wait! You never did tell me the secret to your Granny’s peach brandy.”

Sarah gave him a knowing smile before walking back up the porch steps. Slowly, She leaned over Budge’s chair and planted a kiss on his weathered cheek before whispering Granny’s secret in his ear.

Budge looked at her closely as if he could verify the truth of what she said in her eyes. After a couple of seconds he burst into gusty laughter accompanied by more knee slapping. “Ha! I knew it! I just knew it!”

Sarah and Dermot climbed into Randy’s truck for a ride back down to their car. When they pulled away from the house they could still hear the old man’s cackling laugh.

 

Remembering two icons

Although I grew up in Virginia, I am the child of Tarheels, and we always knew who our fellow Tarheels in the world were. I knew that James Taylor spent a good chunk of his childhood in Chapel Hill. “Carolina In My Mind” was a song that I learned at a very young age. I knew that Charlie Rose, David Brinkley and Jim Lampley (Class of ’71, same as Mom) were all Tarheels. My father was in New Orleans in 1982 when James Worthy and Michael Jordan et al took the Heels to the National Championship, and I was on Franklin Street enjoying the bonfire in 1993 when we did it again.

There have been many iconic Tarheels since the founding of the Old North State, but today I have to talk about two that have touched me the most and have shown the best of us to the world. They are Andy Griffith and Charles Kuralt. My appreciation for these men and their work probably makes me seem older than I am, but they are a part of the North Carolina that I knew growing up, and they both shared a skill at telling stories that speaks to the heart of a story loving Tarheel like me. 

I mentioned that I grew up in Virginia, but every summer for at least 2 weeks my brother and I were packed off to our grandparents house in Wake Forest, NC. Not to be confused with Wake Forest University, I mean the town of Wake Forest which is just north of Raleigh and when we were kids was little more than a stop on US Rt. 1. It’s a very different town now, but back then it was a world apart from the Washington D.C. ex-urb where we lived. At Granny’s we had air conditioning in only one room of our nearly 100 year old house. It was a town of shaded avenues and old homes, homemade peach ice cream and sweet tea and late night drag racing down Main Street. We even had our own fishing hole at my Aunt Ruth and Uncle Joe’s house where we learned to fish with bamboo fishing poles. In short, it was a lot like Mayberry which wasn’t always fun for us cosmopolitan Northern Virginia kids.

But every afternoon at 4:00 on the local UHF channel, there was The Andy Griffith Show. I rarely missed it. It helped me appreciate the simple goodness of where I was. It was a small town world free of fast food chains and smart phones and Starbucks, and in the 1980′s it was a world that was fast disappearing. But the Andy Griffith show reminded us of the best of that world. Every little town in America had it’s Floyd’s Barber Shop, and it’s fishing hole and soda fountain\drug store. It was a simple way of life that allowed the show’s writers to distill things down to what’s important. Even when the people of Mayberry got a little crazy and even if he got a little out of his depth, Sheriff Andy Taylor would always work his way around to the right solution with a patience and kindness that is sadly missing in much of the world today. Griffith used his incredible storytelling ability to create Mayberry and its people out of the the rural North Carolina where he grew up, but it could have easily been a small town anywhere in America.

I’m sure some folks will remind me that it was almost exclusively a white world on the Andy Griffith Show, and you’re right. But we are talking about the 1960′s here, and much of the South was still segregated. Although The Andy Griffith Show shied away from the racial issues of the day, it did however address many issues of the human condition and it showed a humanity in all its characters that is worthy of attention.  Andy Griffith showed similar grace in the rest of his career and life. One of my favorite roles of his is the cantakerous diner owner with the heart of gold in the film Waitress. He was curmudgeonly but sweet, much like a favorite great uncle. In fact, for many of us Tarheels he always sort of felt like a favorite uncle and I know I can speak for a lot of them when I say I’m so glad that we have his vast body of work to remember him.

I’ve been trying all day to sum up how I feel about his passing, but honestly it’s been hard. I don’t think I could say it better than my old  friend David Robinson.

Dear Andy Griffith, 

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Your passing saddens me. You are my favorite television childhood memory. Strangely enough, withstanding my own fallible nature, you are part of what has made me a man. Your character in the Andy Griffith Show should be used as an example of what a man should truly be. With authority comes responsibility and that power should not be used without wisdom and intellectualism. Gentle but firm, righteousness without indignation, understanding without escalation. 

You are my secret Mr. McBeevee and the silver dollar you’ve placed behind my ear are the values and lessons taught to me through your show. 

No doubt there is special place for you in the heavens; you deserve no less. Good night, Paw. We will miss you. 

Another Tarheel who held up a mirror to America was Charles Kuralt, who died fifteen years ago tomorrow.  It seemed so fitting to me that the man who spent much of his career highlighting the best of the American individual passed away on the Fourth of July. From “Charles Kuralt’s People” at the Charlotte Observer to his “On the Road” segments at CBS to his books, Kuralt brought attention to average or even forgotten people of America doing great, amazing or sometimes just crazy things. There was Levi Fischer Amish postmaster, Billy Bird Steam Train Engineer, and Joseph Charles cheerful waver. All of them ordinary American people doing extraordinary or  even simple things with passion. Without Kuralt to tell their stories, we probably never would have known about most of these people. But Kuralt had a knack for recognizing the sublime in these hidden people and bringing us their stories with a generosity of spirit that I think few journalists today can afford. He showed us that even those who seem the most ordinary among us have stories worth telling.

Whatever your feelings might be about Charles Kuralt and Andy Griffith as men, their work stands up as love letters to the American people; not people waving flags and singing jingoistic country songs on the Fourth of July, but real people going about their business making the most of the freedoms we have. These two great storytellers did what great storytellers do. They held up mirrors to our society and showed us our own beautiful humanity. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you.