Larry Benjamin's Blog: Larry Benjamin's blog - This Writer's Life, page 3

On Reading, Writing and Favorite Lines

I don’t read when I’m working on a book. I’m too easily influenced by what is happening around me when I write: events, conversations, songs, people—they all comes into play and get filtered into my work. So, I avoid reading to avoid another writer’s influence. Since In His Eyes was released on August 1, I’ve been trying to catch up on my reading. Most recently I picked up “The Best of Saki,” by H.H. Munro, a British writer whose witty, mischievous, and sometimes macabre stories satirize Edwardian society and culture. I fell in love with his prose. Often there were lines that were sublime: concise, biting. As read, I made notes highlighting those special lines. This post is about favorite lines from books I’ve recently read.

Saki's casual comments on marriage were a particular favorite of mine:

You’re married to him—that’s different; you’ve sworn to love, honour, and endure him: I haven’t.
–Laura

To have married Mortimer Seltoun, ‘Dead Mortimer,’ as his more intimate enemies called him, in the teeth of the cold hostility of his family, and in spite of his unaffected indifference to women, was indeed an achievement that had needed some determination and adroitness to carry through…
—The Music on the Hill

And art:

His “Noontide Peace,” a study of two dun cows under a walnut tree, was followed by “A Mid-day Sanctuary,” a study of a walnut tree with two dun cows under it.
—The Stalled Ox

And family relations and motives for staying close:

He’s a kind of distant cousin of my mother’s, and so enormously rich that we’ve never let the relationship drop out of sight.
—Fur

And this during a flood, when one character was asked if any lives had been lost:

Heaps, I should say. The second housemaid has already identified three bodies that have floated past the billiard-room window as being the young man she’s engaged to. Either she’s engaged to a large assortment of the population round here or else she’s very careless at identification. Of course, it may be the same body coming round again and again in a swirl; I hadn’t thought of that.
—The Lull

Other favorites of mine were:

I’m always having depressing experiences,” said the Baroness, “But I never give them outward expression. It’s as bad as looking one’s age… –The Way to the Diary

In Whitehall and places where they think, they doubtless thought well of him.
–Cousin Teresa

This bread and butter is cut far too thin; it crumbles away long before you can get it to your mouth. One feels so absurd, snapping at one’s food in mid-air, like a trout leaping at may-fly.
—Louise

This observation about the Salvation Army is easily my favorite of all:

…though I did get mixed up with a Salvation Army procession. It was quite interesting to be at close quarters with them, they’re so absolutely different to what they used to be when I remember them in the ‘eighties. They used to go about then unkempt and disheveled, in a sort of smiling rage with the world, and now they’re spruce and jaunty and flamboyantly decorative, like a geranium bed with religious convictions.
—Laura

I’m now reading the novel Shortcomings, by actor Darryl Stephens (Noah’s Arc, Hot Guys with Guns) and on page 6, I fell in love with this line:

His heartbeat echoes in his ear and slowly grows faint like a marching band drummer wandering away in a wide open field under a clear blue sky.

For me it was so evocative, so beautifully wrought. Later I came cross this line and read it over and over: it captures so much so simply, summing up a world of difference in just a few words:

He glimpsed the moment like a snapshot: one boy only saw two approaching girls; the other only saw the spot where the other boy had touched him.

I tend to remember these sentences, highlighting them, or writing them down. I’m a wordsmith. Or a word nerd, maybe. I was amused when I read a GoodReads review of In His Eyes and the reviewer referred to herself as a nerd because she included sentences she loved.

I don't think anyone ever really saw me until Reid looked at me. I sort of feel like I only exist in his eyes. And now that he's looked away - now that he only has eyes for...her - I may cease to exist.

I opened the door and he walked in, a dream from my past, and my every hope for the future.

She declared this one, perhaps her favorite sentence ever:

Though Calvin lived in the world of books and laws, his real home was in the corner of someone's eye.

Re-reading her choices, I as a bit surprised by …their brevity. I tend to write long, complex sentences (Hemingway, I am not.) I think my favorite sentence from In His Eyes is:

I suppose love is really just a patchwork quilt made up of random shared experiences, each in and of itself insignificant, but which, when stitched together by a depth of feeling, a determination to find peace, told a remarkable story.

That reviewer made me realize I am not alone in singling out specific sentences in the books I read. So, what about you? Do you have favorite lines from books you’ve read? If you do, feel free to share them in the comments below.

On Confederate Statues, Trump, and the Power of Words

“When he was young, he’d learned that words hurt, maimed, scarred. When he got older, he’d learned that words could also comfort, heal. But he’d never forgotten the first lesson. Perhaps that was why he’d chosen a career in finance: numbers. Numbers added up; they did not tear down.” From Black&Ugly: A Tale of Men & Wheelbarrows

I grew up in an era when our parents told us to remember “sticks and stones make break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”

Having been called faggot more times than I can remember, and once the N-word by an alcoholic white trash neighbor in our otherwise democratic, and progressive East Falls neighborhood, I know from experience our parents were wrong.

As a wordsmith, as a writer, I understand the power of words—I understand that words can strike with the force of a hammer. Words can also heal; they can bring us together. Or, tear us apart.

Let’s talk about the Charlottesville tragedy and Trump. From this writer’s point of view what was most offensive about Trump’s reaction—Trump’s words—about the Charlottesville tragedy is that he used his words to lay blame on “both sides” and described the proudly racist, and anti-Semitic, white supremacists as “very fine people.” Then he added insult to injury when he tweeted, “Also the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!” A statement I found baffling as I, like most people, I’m sure, find no beauty in racism, or the dream of an all-white America, or the oppression of millions. Is it any wonder Trump is, arguably the most despised president in history?

But back to the removal of those Confederate statues…To those hysterics who are shrieking removing Confederate statues is an attempt to obliterate our country’s history, I offer this: For Steve Bannon and Sean Spicer, Trump was a huge part of their history—indeed, would we even know who they were if not for their attachment to Trump? Yet do you suppose either of them has a framed portrait of Trump hanging on his office walls? A cherished photo of the two of them together tucked away in a wallet?

We must accept and remember the past; we don’t have to honor it.

As for the statues themselves, the historical record is actually pretty clear: The Confederacy was always about white supremacy, and so are the monuments dedicated to it. They were created and erected in the early 1900s when states were enacting Jim Crow laws to disenfranchise black Americans. In the middle part of the century, the civil rights movement pushed back against that segregation. In short, these statues were erected to intimidate blacks, to remind them of their place (see my earlier post, “Who You Calling Bougie?”). Make no mistake, they were nothing less than the less aggressive equivalent of a noose.

I read Charles Barkley said he doesn’t care about Confederate statues, that he doesn’t know many black people who do. There are, he said, more important things for us to expend our energy on, and he is probably right. But that said, I don’t know that this fight was never really about Confederate statues. It is more, I think, about what they symbolize—a racist president, pandering to white supremacists, neo Nazis and the KKK—in short, the worst among his supporters—and his weak-willed administration and their frightening but farcical attempts to intimidate, and erase People of Color, gays, trans men and women, and return us to an earlier all white, all straight, cis-gendered America. As if such a thing ever existed. Like I said, this administration is a farce, or would be if they didn’t pose such a threat to our country.

Even as arguments are waged on both sides there has been a rush nationwide to remove Confederate statues? Why? Because no one wants to go down in the history books as having once stood on the wrong side of history—that is, on Trump’s side.

For a list of the references for this article, visit the original post on my blog

On Writing Books & Dreaming of Movie Versions

A few weeks ago I was at the Authors Corner at the The Ask Rayceen Show. We were asked who we'd like to star in movie version of our books.

Today on my blog I list the actors I'd like to star in the movie version of In His Eyes: Darryl Stephens & Jensen Atwood from Noah's Ark and Benjamin Farmer from "The Falls" trilogy.

I'm missing one actor though. Read my blog post here and suggest an actor and you'll be entered into a drawing to win a copy of my latest.

Borrowed Voices

I have lived with dogs for 22 years. Channing, Coco, Toby of York (Toby), Victor Lorde Riley (Riley). But I have been with Toby the longest. Like an old married couple, we are familiars; we know each other’s quirks and preferences; we are comfortably with the rhythm of our life together as the tides wash us up against each other and pull us apart, secure in the knowledge that it will also bring us back together again. We take comfort in each other’s presence even when I am writing and he is sleeping at my feet. Our nearness is enough.

Channing, Coco, Toby, Riley. I have learned so much from living with dogs. This post is all about what I have leaned form the canine companions I’ve been lucky enough to know.

Approach every stranger as if he or she was a friend, a potential ally. If they respond by throwing shade your way, hike up your tail and walk away.

Help your friends. Coco used to always rush to the kitchen door to greet me when she heard the garage door open. After she went deaf, Toby would run to her bed, wake her and lead her to the kitchen door.

Live in the moment; don’t project your expectations and fears on every adventure. This was the hardest for me to learn/adapt. In truth, it wasn’t until my doctor started me on Klonopin that I gained the ability to live in the moment—Let he who has not needed pharmaceutical intervention cast the first Prozac—to not imagine the worst possible outcome of every adventure.

Allow no room for self-pity; be determined. Six years ago, Toby ruptured a disc in his neck. He ended up paralyzed from the neck down. We rushed him to Penn where surgery was performed 18 hours after the rupture. We saw him the day after his surgery. I am loud; stress and anxiety make me louder. I will never forget turning onto the ward, where Toby was being exercised to keep his muscles from atrophying. He couldn’t walk or stand but hearing my voice, he wiggled on his belly moving, painfully, slowly, towards the sound of my voice. I don’t think I’ve ever cried harder than I did at the moment I witnessed him, paralyzed, doing his best to get to me.

It’s not always in the words. Because dogs are non-verbal, I’ve learned to read non-verbal cues: is he feeling unwell? does he need to go out? Is he too hot? The hardest cue they give you is when they have had enough living, when they want you to let them go. People will break your heart regularly and for various reasons; a dog will break your heart only once and that is only because he can no longer shuffle alongside you on this mortal coil.

That brings me to the next thing I’ve learned from having dogs: the heart breaks; the heart heals. After losing Channing, after losing Coco, the pain was so great I didn’t think I could love another but then it occurred to me that they were each such wonderful dogs that the best thing I could do to honor their memory was to rescue another. I’d grieve for each of them whether I had another dog or not but how much less selfish to give another dog a chance while healing.

Be your best self. When we adopted him, Toby was…difficult. We were his fourth home in his 18 months on this earth. He was loud, determined, slightly out-of-control. In short, he was a canine version of me. With patience (and a very expensive trainer) he calmed down a little. About a year or two ago, a man approached us and asked what kind of dog Toby was. “Silky terrier,” I responded.
“Is he a good dog? he asked as my friend rolled her eyes.
“He’s the best dog he knows how to be.” I responded. “I can’t ask for more than that.”
I can’t ask for more than that from him and I can’t ask for more than that from myself. Thus, I try to be my best, most authentic self, every day. I am, the best man I know how to be. No one can ask more of me.

Never borrow someone else’s voice. What I’ve observed and what has had the most profound effect on me is this: dogs, learn. They learn from us, from each other, from other dogs they encounter. But, they never become another dog; they never borrow another dog’s voice. They may bark at the same things but it was always their own bark, their own voice, they add to the cacophony. When I started writing seriously, I was determined not to borrow another’s voice. It is always my voice, a bit too honest, too strident, perhaps, left-leaning, and determined, but always my voice.

All of these lessons influence my life and my writing. You can read about my newest book, In His Eyes which incorporates at least some of these lessons here.

To see photos from this post, visit my blog here.

In His Eyes—Happy Release Day to Me

Today is the release of my third novel—my first full length work since Unbroken which was released in 2013. This is my fifth release in six years—still it feels like the first time I’ve ever released a book. It’s accompanied by the same worry, the same doubt: did I write the best book I could? Will readers like it? Will anyone read it?

On Saturday, we saw Diana Ross in concert at the Mann Center in Philly. The outing was part of our new effort to get out more, to do things together. Our therapist says that’s important—yes, we have a therapist; after twenty years together, the waters of matrimony are still sometimes difficult to navigate. Anyway, back to Miss Ross. I watched her closely, as I watch all artists—and let’s face it we writers are artists, too. I was impressed by her energy, her humanity: from the stage, she came off not so much as a diva as a person, doing her best and hoping to please a crowd. Her daughter opened for her and she brought her grandchildren on stage—yes Miss Ross is a grandmother. Not surprising at 73 but still I always saw her as the legend, the diva, Miss Ross.

I watched her closely. Her brand is remarkable, familiar, and flawlessly executed: the hair, the glamorous form fitting—but not vulgarly so—floor-length sequined gowns with modest trains and miles of organza wraps.

Recently an opportunity unexpectedly presented itself which allowed me to escape the work-a-day world—at least for a while. I wasn’t necessarily looking to exit the job market, but I’ve been around the block enough times, and seen enough horror movies, to know that when a door slams shut behind you, you jump through the nearest window. So, I’ve had the wherewithal and time to focus on the release of this new book. Which meant thinking about marketing and understanding my brand. If Miss Ross’ brand is elegant old school glamour, mine is a kind of unflinching, almost brutal, honesty. Love isn’t everything and it isn’t always easily won. And romance isn’t all sex and flowers and candlelight. It requires compromise and patience and commitment, and room for others and the demands of a life lived. All of this is reflected in In His Eyes. I like to think I wrote a grown-up love story, less a coming out or coming of age story, and more of a coming to terms story. For most of us, gay men, gay men of color, in particular, (though I think this is true also of women and people of color and pretty much anyone outside the ruling majority) it’s all a life lesson, a negotiation, a schooling in the art of creating a place at the table when none has been reserved for us from birth.

In His Eyes tells the story of four young men, friends, and lovers, who meet in college, and spans more than two decades. But, unlike my other books, this story is told from multiple points of view. So, we get to know each character intimately. We get to watch Micah, Skye, Reid, and Calvin grow into manhood and learn to navigate the world and their relationships.

From this writer’s stage, I did my best and I’m hoping to please my readers. And I’m hoping they will be moved by the honesty, the humanity, of my characters.

Happy Release Day to me! And a big thank you to Debbie McGowan and the entire Beaten Track family for helping me bring another book into the world.

In His Eyes—The Soundtrack

I’ve talked about this before but I believe every life has a soundtrack. My own life’s soundtrack is dominated by Donna Summer, Grace Jones, and Michael Jackson. Music is a marker—every song can take us back to a specific moment in time, or fix us to the mood we were in when we first heard it. Thus couples always have “our song.”

As I said, every life has its own soundtrack. The same is true, I believe of books. Songs referred to in books, can set a mood, it can also anchor the story in time, just as descriptions of fashion and hairstyles can. All of my novels have soundtracks and my latest, , which releases a week from today (August 1) is no exception.

This post is dedicated to looking at the songs from this book. I’ve included the Chapter headings in which the song appears for easy reference.

60. Independence Day

“Independence Day” by Bruce Springsteen. Each character is different so each has his own taste in music. This song sums up Reid’s inner tumult that leads up to the chapter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKzOH...

83. Dry Kisses

“I’ll Tumble for Ya” by Culture Club. I choose this song for the particular scene it appears it for two reasons—one the song is one of joy. It is a reminder that even in sorrow we can extract joy. The other reason was because the lyrics can be hard to make sense of, much like the action that unfolds along with the song in this chapter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwb9-...

117. Piano

Gershwin’s “Love is Here to Stay.” Micah is a pianist who loves Gershwin. In my post last week, I talked about the role of pianos in the book. When Micah sits down and plays this song we, the reader, glimpse something we hadn’t quite seen before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zq7w...

135. I Am the Man for You, Baby

“I Am The Man For You Baby” by Edwin Starr. For me this was a sweet moment shared by two characters. It had a perfect nostalgic and hopeful feel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_yyf...

138. You Are My Friend

“You are My Friend” by Sylvester. I’ve always loved Sylvester’s version of this song. It’s joy, it’s gratitude, it’s acknowledgement. As people, we don’t always see what is right in front of us and this is true of the characters in this book as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryPpi...

On the Importance of Pianos

I am enamored of pianos—if not simply obsessed with them. It’s one of the few things we don’t own that I’ve always wanted. Even though I’m not at all musical.

I suppose that is one reason pianos always seem to appear in my books.

It is at a piano that Thomas Edward and Dondi’s brother, Matthew first connect in my first novel, What Binds Us:

I was wandering the corridors of that huge house when I passed by an open door. Light and music splashed onto the hall carpet. Someone was playing the piano. I stopped to listen.

“Don’t just stand out there,” the person said. “Come on in.”

So I did. A rosewood concert grand piano held court in the middle of the room. Its elaborately scrolled legs knelt on a Tabriz carpet the color of dreams. Matthew sat in a lyre-back chair in front of the piano. His legs were stretched out and his bare, pale feet curled around one of the piano’s massively carved legs. His hands rested on the pale ivory keys. He stared at me with his grey eyes.

If Dondi was an epilogue, Matthew was a prologue, a promise waiting to be kept. He seemed about to begin. He seemed to be waiting for something. I asked him once, years later, what he’d been waiting for. He surprised me by answering simply, “You.”

“Hi,” I said. “I was walking by and heard the music.” Then, when I realized he’d stopped playing, I added, “Oh, don’t stop.”

He withdrew his fingers from the keys. “You missed tea.”

I had taken one of their cars and driven into the village. I told him this.

“Oh,” he said. “We missed you.”

“That piano is beautiful.”

“It is, isn’t it? It was built by the Steinway brothers in eighteen eighty-eight.”

I looked around the room. The walls were painted a pale gold, the sofas and chairs covered in a pale gold damask. The late afternoon sun’s bounty piled at the windows like bullion. The only real colors in the room were his pink lips and his red silk pajamas.

There is a piano in my allegorical novella, Vampire Rising. In fact it is at a piano that we first meet one of the main characters, the 400 year Vampire, Gatsby Calloway:

It was a room of pearl grays and faded gold damask, dark wood and darker carpets, all shadowed in flickering candlelight. Gatsby was seated at an ebony nine-and-a-half foot Bosendorfer Concert grand piano—the one with ninety-five keys, rather than the standard eighty-eight—which dominated the room. Gatsby himself had a pewter finish: silvery hair swept back, eyes like pieces of ice, pale cheekbones that gleamed. He was cool and pale, champagne in an ice bucket. Playing selections from “A Chorus Line” for a crowd of stalwart admirers, he was radiant in that darkened room. He was gorgeous and charismatic, a charmer of snakes and men.

He looked up and, seeing Barnabas in the doorway, gasped, for Barnabas was as beautiful as he’d remembered: his caramel skin glowed with youth and vigor. His wide, innocent eyes were clear and his dark hair was cropped short; gone was the defiant retro Afro he’d worn in high school. Staring at him, the frisson of lust and love that shot through him caused Gatsby to miss a note, and frown. He bent over the keyboard; his face dipped into shadow, dissolving into triangles of violet and purple.

So I suppose it should come as no surprise that there is, of course, a piano in my new book, In His Eyes, that is played by Micah, one of the main characters in the book. Actually, there are several pianos in the book; each one is as critical to Micah’s life as they are to his relationships. This following passage is one of the most telling in the book, I think.

Instead of going upstairs to Calvin’s room to rest as he’d intended, he found himself drawn into the music room. He sat at the piano and raised the lid. Soon, his fingers were skipping over the keys, teasing and tickling the ivory, to draw out their secrets. The room became filled with the music of his childhood, which, until then, had seemed very far away, lost in the distant past.

Dusk was gathering when he heard the key in the front door, followed by the sound of voices. He stopped playing abruptly when Calvin and another man walked into the music room. The man beside Calvin was dressed in surgical greens. He was diminutive and very light skinned. A thatch of chemically straightened hair lay across his head like roadkill. Though not altogether unattractive, he wore a pinched disapproving expression. His expression, combined with his extreme paleness, reminded Micah of spoiled milk.

“You play very well,” the man said grudgingly.

“I didn’t know you played piano,” Calvin said.

“I do. I have since I was three years old. My saddest memory is standing on my neighbor’s porch across the street, a week after my parents kicked me out, and watching as they had the piano my grandparents bought me when I was six years old, hauled away.”

In His Eyes officially releases on August 1, 2017, but is available for pre-order now.

In my next blog post, I will explore the music that makes up the sound track to In His Eyes.

Who You Calling Bougie?

Recently, a friend of mine called me "bougie". In case you’ve never heard the term, Urban Dictionary defines bougie, a hacked truncation of the word Bourgeoisie, which refers to the middle-class in Europe, as “aspiring to be a higher class than one is.”

Now, this wasn’t the first time I’ve been called bougie. And generally, being called bougie doesn’t offend me because it calls me out for daring to dream, for striving to accomplish something. I have, after all been called other, worse things. And I don’t particularly care much what other people think of me. But being called bougie does rather irritate me because it inherently asserts that I have no right to dream, to achieve, that who I was at birth is who I should be at death.

The word bougie seems to stem from a screwed-up thought process that defines a place for everyone, a place they must always remain. I remember as a kid, when I talked back, I would be told I was “out of place.” And that was often a punishable offense. The idea that one can be out of place is disturbing because it seems to immediately call for the out of place object (in this case a person) to be put back in its proper place. Thus, the pepper is eternally returned to the side of salt.

Today our LGBT youth who do not know their place is in secret, dark places, who dare to push themselves into the open, and declare themselves, are railed against, thrown into the street by the very people who brought them into the world and thus are morally obligated to love and shelter them; our youth are beaten and driven to suicide, and killed, all because they did not know their place, these bougie gays who thought they had a right to be seen, to hold their heads high in equality.

Labeling someone bougie is also an act of erasure. This occurred to me after more than 100 days of watching Trump and the GOP try to roll back anything from the Obama administration, most notably Obamacare and now the Paris climate accord.

President Obama, in the eyes of Trump and the GOP, was just another bougie Black who didn’t know his place and thus pushed himself into places he didn’t belong and right on into the White House. Dismantling Obamacare and withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, simply because it was Obama-driven, is just their pathetic attempt to forget he stepped out of his place. They want nothing more than to erase him and his accomplishments as if he’d never existed, hadn’t done, hadn’t pushed himself where they didn’t want him, into places they think he didn’t belong.

Just as the Trump administration has scrubbed all LGBT references from the White House website. Just as they are working to strip our public schools of their ability to teach our children because those kids whose parents cannot afford $40,000 a year for private school, should not be encouraged to overstep and push themselves where they do not belong—what more effective way to derail a future Obama than to make sure he, or she, never learns enough to dream, to push?

There’s a lot of talk of white privilege, which I think is nothing more than a left-over, a remnant, like the Confederate flag, from the days when they had power over us. Today that power is mostly concentrated in the ability to stifle, to erase, those of us who are other, less than, who don’t know our place.
I see and recognize that white privilege exists and that those who have and exploit it think it is their birthright, but I don’t have to—No, I refuse to—bow down before it and let it, them, clip my wings and tell me how high I can fly.
My first book, What Binds Us, was turned down everywhere I submitted it. There was no market for a book like this, I was told. As a result, it sat in a drawer for seventeen years, until I gained the courage to submit it again. On August 1, my third full length novel (my fifth book) will be released. In large part because the world has changed, but also because I learned to step out of my place, to scream louder than anyone’s attempts to silence me, to erase me, and everyone like me.

A character in one of my unfinished manuscripts, when accused of being bougie, snaps, “Like Michael Jackson, I may have been born a poor black boy, but like Michael Jackson I intend to die a rich white woman!” His statement, though exaggerated, sums up a fundamental truth: Who we were, does not limit who we can become.

It's Mother's Day and I'm in the Doghouse

Mother’s Day. I know the drill.

STEP 1: Buy Card. CHECK.
STEP 2: Sign card. CHECK.
STEP 3: Mail Card. Aw, shit!

Now Meatloaf said, 2 out of 3 ain't bad, but he never met my mother. I’m in the doghouse for sure. Which, I suppose is better than ending up in the woodshed.

I would ask my brothers for help. But the youngest, Vernon, is the perfect son. He’s some sort of saint, I swear. (He takes after our dad.)

I used to go to my parents for Mother’s Day, but one year it took me 4 hours to get there and 5 to come home. I hate the George Washington Bridge!

So I started sending flowers to cover my absence. But there was always a debacle. One year, they delivered the flowers in a broken case. I called to complain and the florist sent out a second set of flowers—with NO VASE. I called to complain again. Yep, they delivered more flowers but no vase was to be seen. Another year, another florist. This time they delivered the flowers to the wrong apartment and as they had a signed receipt, they refused to redeliver. My mother called and said you know Vernon always sends beautiful flowers and there’s never a problem. I gave up sending flowers.

Then there is my older brother, Michael. While he’s not perfect, he is the father of my parents only grandchild. And that as we all know is a get out of jail free card.

So, I must ask you dear readers to take to the comments and plead my case for me. Explain to my mother I’m basically a good son (maybe thrown in “and a brilliant writer,” for authenticity?)

Thanks and Happy Mother’s Day to all.

The Eagle Has Left the Nest (Carrying a Book)

This morning at 2 am EST, after eight months, 61,000 words and eighty-three drafts, I sent my newest book to my publisher. I’m romantically inclined to say writing this book was a labor of love, but the practical me says it was just labor. Eight months is pretty good for me. Usually it takes me a year to write a book, though Unbroken only took nine months.

I am amazed I wrote 30,000 words in the last three months so essentially half the book was written in three months. Reading it though a last time this week before submitting it, I realized once again that the story I tell isn’t the story I sat down to write back in August. And months into the writing of it, I realized I had to restructure it because the way I envisioned telling the story—in flashback, starting at the end and working forward—just didn’t work for the story.

At first the idea of writing a different book and structuring it differently to my first idea, scared me, but this is my fifth book; I have learned to trust my instincts, to believe in my talent. With this one, I wanted to challenge myself, to write something a little different, in a different way. This story is tighter, more pared down than my previous books. It’s more like my blog series, The Corporatorium , than my other books.

Will readers like it? I don’t know. But I do and I’m rather proud of it. But I’m still checking my email every ten minutes to see if my editor, has sent any feedback yet.

In the meantime, I need to pick my life back up: respond to ignored emails and calls; bathe the dogs; tackle the inch of dust on every surface in the library; sort and file my notes from the book that litter the desk in my office, spilling onto the radiator and the floor.
Yes, leaving the writing cave is even scarier than entering it and setting out to tell the story in your head and heart.