Laura K. Curtis's Blog, page 7

Possibly a New Story?

This afternoon, I sat down to start working on a short story I owe my friend Tommy for a charity anthology. I have no idea what it’s going to be about, really, but most of my short works are heavily mood-influenced, and I don’t think this will be any different. This may or may not be the beginning of the story. It may be something entirely else. It may be nothing at all. But it’s what I wrote today, so I thought I would share it with you.

It began with a dress. A white cotton affair with a tight bodice trimmed in eyelet and a full skirt that belled out around my knees when I pirouetted in the great hall at Rockhaven, it was the first newly store-bought item of clothing I’d ever owned. My mother gave it to me for my birthday that March. Fifteen was time to grow up, she said, to learn to be a lady rather than a ragamuffin. Mrs. Smithson, owner of the grand old Victorian ramble where my mother was housekeeper, had laughed at the comment. I think she quite liked my tomboy ways, but she bought me a string of lustrous pearls nonetheless, the most purely beautiful thing I had ever seen, to go with the dress.

 

We were a household of women. Male gardeners managed the small crop of fruit trees that blessed us with peaches and plums in the summer and apples and pears in the fall. Men tended the flowers, too—in the large cutting bed of annuals populated by geranium, snapdragon, larkspur, gladiolus, and zinnia—and kept the lawn and hedges neatly trimmed. But the separation of church and state had nothing on the separation of house and garden. The men rotated through, but the women in the house were my sun and moon.

 

Mrs. Smithson had hired my mother fresh off the boat to care for her infant son, Matthew. As long as wealthy American women had babies, my Aunt Eileen used to say, Irish girls would never want for work. But little Matthew Smithson died in a polio outbreak at only three years old and Mr. Smithson was shot in the back six months later walking home from his job on Wall Street. Mrs. Smithson sold their apartment in the city and retired to Rockhaven, their big, empty house in Roaring Brook, New York, an hour and a half north of the city she could no longer stand. She brought my mother with her to serve as housekeeper and companion, and gave her private quarters at the back of the house.

 

I was born after all those tragedies. After my mother’s own tragedy—the death of my father at the hands of Germans in a country so distant that even Mrs. Smithson’s money could not bring  him home for burial—had bonded the two women in a dark sisterhood. The two of them were my guides, my co-mothers, and they agreed on almost everything except when it came to me.

 

“Be careful,” my mother would warn as I tore through the house on my way outside to dig for the elusive treasure hidden by one of Mrs. S’s ancestors. “Remember your place. This is not your house.”

 

“But of course it is,” Mrs. S. would say. And once, when I was about twelve, she went even further. “One day,” she told me when we were alone in the sitting room, “this will all belong to you. You must promise never, ever to sell it; it has been in my family for generations.”

 

Naturally, I promised. For I knew nothing, then, of taxes or maintenance or the responsibilities of my own calling.

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Friendship in the Digital Age

Recently, I was talking to a woman I met several years ago at RWA. I don’t remember who introduced us or how we became friends, but even though we rarely see each other, even though on the surface we have little enough in common beyond being writers, we follow each other on Twitter and Facebook and chat now and then about writing things and regular life stuff. On Twitter, in Direct Messages, I said to her that I was really glad we were friends.

It was a strange moment because not too long before that, there had been one of those incredibly unhealthy things that happens in the publishing world in which the whole definition of “friendship” came into question. What makes someone your “friend?” How much communication, how many secrets do you have to share? What are the limits on friendship? How much can a “friend” go against your ethical code before you no longer consider yourselves friends? Is it possible that I am your friend, but you are not mine?

I’ve made some of my closest friends online. I started working for AOL in 1993, when I was living a very isolated life in a tiny town where I had no friends. In those days people were writing and talking about “Internet Addiction,” but most of the people I knew who spent hours and hours online weren’t addicted to “the Internet,” they were addicted to the relationships they found there. Depressives, insomniacs like me, we found support systems and communities of people who understood us as no one in our everyday lives did.

Even today, I am friends with the people I met on the night shift at AOL more than twenty years ago. I don’t see them often, but we are absolutely friends. In 2007 when I was really sick and needed someone to stay with me, one of my AOL friends lived with me for several months since he was on disability. Yes, when you meet your friends digitally, you can put your trust in the wrong people. But that can happen when you meet them in person, too. Still, friendship is a bit like porn—hard to define, but you know it when you feel it.

In all the years since I started at AOL, the Internet has become more and more social. And I, well, I have gotten less so. I moved from jobs where I dealt with the public to jobs where I see almost no one. I am a writer in the world of publishing which, as I discussed with someone on Twitter just yesterday, is an extremely unhealthy ecosystem. My friendships develop in that world, the world where insane levels of arrogance are set off by the deepest insecurity and even self-loathing, where sometimes it seems that the “happy medium” does not, cannot, exist. I have found good friends in the writing and publishing communities, people that I met in person. But I have met more of them online.

In a discussion online about the most recent brouhaha, someone told me that “exchanging a few emails and direct messages doesn’t make you friends. Friends are people you show pictures of your children to.” I left it alone because I knew we were not going to agree, but it raised a question for me. I don’t have kids. Although I am private and don’t share pictures of my lunch on Facebook, I don’t have secrets in the way most people think of them. What would I share with a “friend” that I do not share with the public?

I would contend that friendship is defined not by the quantity of communication but rather the quality. My conversations with friends go deeper, last longer. Which means that, indeed, that you can give your friendship to someone who is not your friend. You can believe that someone is your friend because you communicate freely and openly with them on the assumption that they are doing the same with you. The things they are hiding are things you don’t think to ask about because you don’t notice the absence. And yes, the Internet makes this easier. But liars and cheaters were around before the Internet, and they’ll be here when our computers crumble into dust.

Friendship, however, lasts forever.

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Photographs

peonies in a vase

I love to take pictures, so on the recommendation of the fabulous Penny Watson, I’ve added a new page to the blog. I will periodically post pictures on my blog, but now I have a little gallery page (it’s up there at the top under Photography) where you can see them all. I’ll be adding more as I take them. Enjoy!

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And the Winner of the 6 Romance Novels Is…

Sharon!

Sharon, please email me with your email address and which online retailer you like to get your books from so I can send them to you!

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The Positive People Romance Readers Giveaway

Once again, my online world is in a kerfluffle. And once I again, I am hiding in books. I figure I can’t be the only person who behaves this way, so I’ve decided to give away some hiding places! There are so many books out there, so many enjoyable books, that I had to narrow it down. I’ve decided to include ebooks by some of my favorite positive people. That doesn’t mean these women never complain, but they are always there if you need someone and they are never malicious. For great conversations, you can follow them all on Twitter: @MollyOKwrites, @CallahanLexxie, @PennyRomance, @IsobelCarr, @SarahMAnderson1, and @suleikhasnyder. (There are many, many others, too, but my wallet has a limit!)

To enter for your chance to win all six of the ebooks pictured above (in your preferred ebook format), just comment on this post and tell me one of two things–either name one of your auto-buy authors, or something you do to make you happy when you’re grumpy! I’ll choose a winner on Sunday, March 29.

(Also, if you want to win two pounds of delicious, delicious cheese, that giveaway is still going on…check out the last post.)

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The Cheesiest Giveaway!

If you follow me on social media at all, you probably know two things: first, that I love cheese in all its many forms and second, that my new book, Echoes, comes out tomorrow.

You may think these two things have nothing in common. However, Echoes is set partially on the island of Saint Martin/Sint Maarten, which is half French and half Dutch. And the French and the Dutch do have one thing in common…they make very good cheese. So to celebrate this release I’ve decided to do something I doubt any other author has done: I am giving away a couple of pounds of cheese from my favorite cheese shop, Murray’s.

What, you can’t have cow cheese? No problem. If you win, I’ll send goat cheese and sheep cheese! Can’t have dairy at all? I’ll send you a package of non-dairy cheese from fakemeats.com. So enter for your chance to win. And if you want to see what Echoes is all about, you can find an excerpt on my website.

Also, if you like winning things, and especially books, don’t forget to stop by the multi-author Facebook party tomorrow. Between 2pm and 10pm Eastern we are giving away a book every single hour from several different authors!

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Editors and Designers and Publicists, Oh, My!

Just a quick note to say that—for you author types—I am over at Women of Mystery today talking about the cost of putting out a book and finding the right professionals to help you do it. Echoes, which comes out next week, is a Penguin book, so I didn’t have to find all that much help, but I am in the process of writing a second self-published book, so I’ve been considering a lot of the aspects that did and did not go well with Toying With His Affections.

 

 

 

 

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For the Love of Poetry (a #prompts2015 post)

(One of the things I wanted to do this year was to keep in better touch with my pals who follow the blog. So I reached out over social media and asked whether anyone else wanted to get together and write up some blogging prompts that we could all share. We came up with a long list that I hope will allow me to chat with you all even when my own well is running a bit dry.)

One of the prompts contributors came up with was “For the Love of Poetry—share your favorite poets and poems.”

I’ll start with my smartass favorite, Dorothy Parker. Who doesn’t love Dorothy Parker, right? Especially since she wrote

Men don’t make passes

At girls who wear glasses.

I have a lot of favorite Parker poems, and I recite them at the drop of a hat (ask me at a conference sometime) but here’s one that’s less well known:

A dream lies dead here. May you softly go

Before this place, and turn away your eyes,

Nor seek to know the look of that which dies

Importuning Life for life. Walk not in woe,

But, for a little, let your step be slow.

And, of your mercy, be not sweetly wise

With words of hope and Spring and tenderer skies.

A dream lies dead; and this all mourners know:

 

Whenever one drifted petal leaves the tree-

Though white of bloom as it had been before

And proudly waitful of fecundity-

One little loveliness can be no more;

And so must Beauty bow her imperfect head

Because a dream has joined the wistful dead!

My other favorite is W.B. Yeats. Everyone knows The Second Coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

 

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

 

The darkness drops again but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

This poem has a special place in my heart, however, because of this song:

I also asked on Twitter for poetry recommendations, and I will be posting a list of the things I got one of these days soon.

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Assignment: A Hot Encounter (A Book Boyfriends Friday Post)

Over at the Book Boyfriends Cafe they have a Friday feature where you post a brief scene to suit whatever their weekly prompt was. I’ve never tried it, but I thought this week I might give it a shot! This week’s theme was “a hot encounter,” so here we go. In this scene from Toying With His Affections, Evie—a sex toy saleswoman for Goody’s Goodies—is…showing off her wares to her old crush, Sheriff Griffin Barstow.

~

Evie set the papers aside and reached back into the box. This time, she held up a pair of pink, fuzzy handcuffs. “Want to take these on patrol with you, Sheriff?”

“Uh…not particularly.” He grinned, though, imagining the faces of some of his deputies if he showed up with those hooked to his duty belt. The next item wiped the smile off his face. Black and almost evil-looking, it was circle with small rubber spikes all around and one larger protrusion so that it looked a bit like the symbol for Mars. At the end of the prong, however, a perpendicular spike gave the impression that someone had twisted the arrowhead of the symbol to stand straight up.

“What is that?”

Again, Evie’s fair cheeks reddened. The contradiction between the woman who could passionately defend the use of creams and toys and the one who blushed attempting to explain the actual use of such products entranced him.

“Uh, that’s for men. I mean, it’s nice for women, too, if the guy wears it, but it’s more designed to increase his pleasure than hers.”

“Please tell me this doesn’t sell.”

She’d regained her composure. And her starch. “Everything sells. But no, that’s not a top ten item.”

“Thank God for small favors.”

She handed him a tube of something else. “This is, though.”

He practically choked as he read the name aloud. “Staze-Long?”

“Yep! Between that and the numerous offers I get in my email every day, I can only assume many men in this country have a premature ejaculation problem.”

“I don’t think I can take this.”

She dropped her head and glanced up at him through the screen of her thick lashes. “I didn’t say you could. I need it.”

He dropped the tube and rubbed his hand against his leg. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“Yeah, but you’re so easy to tease. Who’d have believed that under the bad boy of Fairview High lay a closet prude? Your reputation has suffered here today, Barstow.”

“Is that a dare, Bell?”

She cocked her head. “It may be. I’ll think about it.”

His heart pumped harder and he felt more alive than he had since the day he’d moved home to Fairview. You’ve always been addicted to danger, Bub, and it’s never done you a lick of good. Stay the hell away. But he had a sinking feeling he wouldn’t be able to take his own advice.

~

Head on over to the Book Boyfriends Cafe to read some other fun and sexy scenes!

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TBR Challenge: Feeling Good by David Burns

This post is part of Wendy the Super Librarian’s TBR challenge.

What is the TBR Challenge? Simply put, it’s where readers pick up a long neglected book from their TBR pile, read it, and comment on that read on the 3rd Wednesday of every month. The idea is to read those long neglected books that you just had to get your hands on at the time, but have been languishing in your pile, all lost and forgotten.

This month’s theme is “Recommended Read,” as in, read a book that someone recommended to you.

If you’re reading this, you probably already know that I suffer from depression and anxiety. My life has been spinning out of control for the past several months and I turned, as I often do, to my friends on Twitter and asked what they did when they felt the pull of the vortex. Several of my tweeps recommended that I read Feeling Good which they said was much better than the corny title might suggest.

I bought this book about three months ago, which means it is far from the oldest thing on my To Be Read pile, but I was having a hard time concentrating on fiction, so this seemed a good choice. I bought it in paper, too, because I prefer not to read non-fiction that I want to focus on in paper, while I read fiction in e.

In Feeling Good, David Burns explains the tenets cognitive/cognitive behavioral therapy. I’ve had minimal experience with cognitive therapy in the past, though I studied it years ago. The basis of cognitive therapy is that negative “automatic” thoughts cause your emotional swings.

These automatic thoughts include things like all-or-nothing thinking or fortune-telling. For myself, the largest category of things I tend to do are over-generalizing and mind-reading.

So, for example, instead of saying “wow, that didn’t work out the way I planned. I’ll try something else next time.” I tend to say “nothing I try ever works.” Or instead of saying “she didn’t notice me over here,” I think “she’s deliberately ignoring me because she hates me [for whatever reason].”Does it work? I’m only about 2/3 through the book, so I can’t say. It takes a lot of practice to change the way you think. So even though this book doesn’t introduce me to any particularly new concepts, it’s useful because it reminds me that I have to keep practicing, and it tells me how to do so.

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