Dev Bentham's Blog, page 3

Have a happy, healthy New Year

In honor of Rosh Hashanah,  the Jewish New Year starting on Sept 21, Fields of Gold will be free on Amazon 9/22-25. Fields of Gold is the second in the Tarnished Souls series (you can get the first one, Learning From Isaac for free by signing up for my newsletter on Instafreebie). Tarnished Souls is a series of Jewish holiday romances. (yeah, I know, who knew that was a thing?). Learning from Isaac is the Passover story and Fields of Gold centers around the Rosh Hashanah themes of forgiveness and redemption.

Here's the blurb:

Politics has always been a dirty business. Avi knows all about that—after all, not only has he been studying historical compromises and intrigues, he has been sleeping with his very own corrupt politician. The affair used to be about love, but lately Avi’s going through the motions, waiting for the day when he completes his dissertation and finds a job far, far away.

Waiting for that day to come, he has put his life on hold and gets jolted awake when he meets Pete, a tall blond farmer who charms Avi with his dazzling smile and his straightforward life. Except Avi knows that even an organic farmer can have an agenda and if something is too good to be true, it is time to get suspicious. Is this just another nightmare or can Avi leave his doubts behind, learn to trust and find a life in the sun?

Check it out for free from Sept 21 to Sept 25. My New Years gift to all of you. L'Shana Tova.

Fall can be so beautiful

It will get cold here soon, but for now I'm enjoying the beginning of color. 

Helping out

I'm a diver and a swimmer and being underwater is one of my very favorite things. I live in a very part of the world - this county has 10,000 lakes. (Most are tiny, but still....) I love the taste of our well water and the greenness of our vegetation. Here, a heavy rain in the summer just means I don't need to water the garden for a few days. All in all, I love water.

Spending time on (or in) one of the lake up here it's easy to forget that water can be dangerous and even deadly. Then I turn on the news. It seems like the world is swamped in watery disasters lately. So I thought I'd dedicate this week's blog to reprinting information on how to help out victims of the flooding in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Texas.

The New York times has a nice article on donating to Harvey victims, listing national and local charities including the LGBT Disaster Relief Fund. Consumer Reports also has a list, and some tips for avoiding frauds. 

The flooding in South East Asia this monsoon season  has been horrific, over a thousand people have been killed. The Independent has some information on the monsoon flooding and some donation suggestions, including Oxfam. The Red Cross/Red Crescent is working on all fronts, a sort of one stop donation point.

It's hard to take in the devastation water has been wreaking this summer. And it's difficult to know how to help. I'll be donating a little cash to help out. It seems like the least I can do. 

 

Cooler times

It's still August and in most of the northern hemisphere, that means summer is still going full blast. Here in Northern Wisconsin, it's cooling down. Which puts me in the mood for bulky sweaters and boots and quiet. 

Our summer is short, but frantic. Folks visit, we swim and bike and walk and spend every possible moment outside. I love it. But I also love when the end of August rolls around and everything quiets down. For one thing, I can get back to my keyboard. It's hard to carve out the time to work when the house is full and the lake calls.

Fall must be coming because I started a new book yesterday. It's the second in the Bay City University series (the first - Making Home - is coming out sometime this fall). This one is a later in life love story and you know how much I love those. 

Every season has it's blessings. I'll miss the warm weather, but this is a sweet time, too. 

Interesting times

My inbox is filled with a wide variety of repudiations of Nazism and calls for everyone to renounce white nationalism and commentary on the need to resist fascism and, while I have witnessed the steps it took to get us here, I still can't believe it. 

I lived in the western US during the 1980's and 1990's and watched the rise and fall of groups of crazy, violent bigots. What a relief when the Southern Poverty Law Center took down the Aryan Nations and we could all breathe a little more easily.

Or not.

Because here we are 20 years later and I'm getting emails from people like my boss telling me they don't think it's okay to be a Nazi. You'd think that would go without saying. But I guess it doesn't. So just in case you were wondering, not only do I think Nazi's are abhorrent, I think Black lives matter and Trans lives matter and Gay and Lesbian lives matter and your life matters just as much as mine and vice-versa. I'm not sure that Anne Frank was right that we're all good at heart, but I know that it's what we should strive for.

As you all know, I like to garden. Growing food in my little organic plot has taught me that there's strength in diversity. Growing just one kind of plant breeds disease and attracts pests. And makes for very boring dinners. The same is true with people - too much sameness leads to the disease of bigotry and attracts violent, destructive pests.

Let's hope this is the final eruption of this shit. 

 

 

Shorebirds

It'll be better when it's better

I love a good redemption story. I go weak in the knees when the hero stumbles, makes big mistakes, and somehow finds his way back. There's nothing quite as satisfying as a generally good guy who self-destructs in a big way before figuring out how to make his life better than before, preferably all tied in with a nice romantic happy ever after.

Redemption stories, or at least the opportunity for that kind of story, are all around us. I've known plenty of people who made a big mess of their lives using alcohol or drugs or gambling or spending or sex or food. Modern life seems filled with addictions of various kinds. Sometimes addictions are benign, other times they're a train wreck. Maybe that's part of why I like redemption stories so much, most of the destructive narratives I see in real life don't end well. Thank God for fiction.

Studies show that novel reading makes us more empathetic. Maybe it's because they train us to believe that it's never too late, that love is just around the corner and it's all going to be okay. And in the end, even if everything isn't okay, isn't it better to believe in the possibilities of redemption for ourselves and for those around us? I think so. 

But then I would.

How about you?

A good predator is hard to find

 

There are rabbits in my garden. Lots of them. It's a community garden, so there are plenty of opinions about what to do. We tried live trapping, but some folks think that puts the poor bunnies at risk. I think not trapping them is endangering my beans, but that's a discussion for another time. In the meantime, we've reinforced the fence and are doing our best to keep the damned things out. What I'd really like to do is build a perch tall enough to attract a hawk or owl or eagle to eat or scare away all the bunnies and chipmunks and mice. 

Life isn't supposed to always be sweet and cuddly. The fox I saw trotting down the road with a small animal clamped in it's mouth was just another parent taking food back to the kits. I hope that dinner didn't involve a neighbor's cat, but I can't really blame the fox if it did. She's got to feed her babies.

All this death and destruction got me thinking about the editing process. It isn't always pretty. For the most part, I'd rather not add that extra scene or take out that wonderful anecdote or tighten up loose plot points or characters. But I know from experience that without a hawk-eyed editor, my stories can get as stunted as those half-eaten beans. If I insist that editors treat me gently, the story (and eventually the readers) will suffer.

I could extend this hawk metaphor further - talk about how editors can step back from a manuscript and see clearly just like eagles sitting on a perch - but I think you get the point. And I'm betting that those are the bits any sharp-eyed editor would pluck from this blog post anyway. I will say that anyone who tries to edit their own work is likely to end up running around in circles like I did the other day as I tried to chase a rabbit out of the garden. The slippery devil slid under a spot in the fence where I didn't know it could go. I did learn something that helped me plug one more hole, but I didn't solve the problem. At least not as effectively as a wise old owl would. 

Everything needs a little pruning. Even if it hurts.

 

Breaking habits

I've been going through line edits for my next book and the process has me thinking about my bad habits. Every time I go through this, there are a few mistakes that pop out as tics. No, I'm not going to give you examples because then they might jump out at you, too. Perhaps they already do. I am pondering the best ways to break myself of these little stutters.

They say the first step to fixing any problem is to become aware of it and I suppose that's as true for writing gaffes as it is for anything else. If only I could remember from one line editing pass to the next rough draft. Maybe I should make a list and post it on my wall. That would be sensible. 

I'm not that organized. Another problem I've identified but haven't yet solved.

When I was a kid we used to chant, "Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better." The internet says that phrase was invented by Emile Coue, not Brenda, the cool girl in my third grade class. Either way, I hope it's true and that someday I'll get a manuscript back with no editing suggestions at all. I suspect that the reality is more onion-like and that when one set of tics is cured, another will become more apparent.

One more time.... every day, in every way.....

All I can say is thank god for editors. And readers who forgive.

 

Happy Summer

Sorry I'm not around much but living up here where the summer is really only about six weeks long makes it tempting to spend as much time outside as possible.

I am working on the edits to Making Home, though, and picking away at a new story that'll be finding its way into the pipeline sooner or later. Don't worry, I'll keep you posted.

In the meantime. enjoy the summer while it lasts.