Christina Lay's Blog: Nutshells & Mosquito Wings, page 3

The Prodigal Muse

As writers, I suspect we all have the memory of reading a book or story that made us stop and think for the first time, “I want to do this.”  Then there are the heart-breaking books that make us think, “I’ll never be able to do this!”  Then, if we’re really lucky, we find that little gem that reignites our soul and makes us jump up and say “I want to do this, I can do this and why the hell aren’t I doing this Right Now?!”

Let me back up a little.  I’m one of those geeks who knew since second grade that I wanted to write books.  The inspiring book was “Harold the Hermit Crab” (I don’t remember the exact title, but I remember watching a documentary about the couple who created it). Back then, drawing pictures was as important as writing in the story-making process, but it was the creation of my very own world that hooked me.  Writing became my little gift, the talent that set me apart, and I gloried in the joy of gold stars and teachers’ looks of relief as a student actually Took An Interest.

Flash forward to The University.  No more gold stars.  In my first creative writing class, I earned—ahem—a C.  No matter how hard I tried, I could not write like Hemmingway, Steinbeck or any of those other Great Men that my college instructors encouraged me to emulate.  How I struggled to make my writing elegant, pithy and profound.  The Great Men’s masterful skill at composing sentences and their brilliance at touching on deep and IMPORTANT topics led me to set an impossibly high bar for my craft.  Bowing beneath the pressure of academia, I repressed my natural inclination to create fantasy worlds full of dragons and wizards and stick to ‘what I knew’, which at 22 wasn’t much.

After four years of lackluster progress, on the cusp of graduation, I informed my writing professor that I was considering applying to the Creative Writing graduate program.  He sadly shook his head. “Oh, no, you’re not ready,” he said.  I even remember him putting his head in his hand, so deep was his despair at the thought.

He was probably right, I wasn’t ready, but back then, staring into the maw of a future that I had not prepared for, being single-mindedly intent on making a living as a writer and nothing else, his discouragement blew me out of the shallow puddle I was thrashing around in.

It wasn’t like I gave up on the spot, but the poison had taken root.  My spontaneous writing withered.  I dropped the age-old habit of carrying a notebook with me at all times.  I embraced alcohol a little too tightly (At least I could give Hemmingway a run for his money on that front).  Life passed, and a time came when I did not write at all. I was frozen, for I had nothing IMPORTANT to say.

Then some god-sent casual acquaintance, over several pints of dark stout, enthusiastically recommended a quirky little book called “Jitterbug Perfume” by Tom Robbins.

God bless you, Mr. Robbins.  First and foremost, your book was playful. It was joyful. It was irreverent and silly and yet somehow deeply touching.  It reintroduced sheer glee into the act of story telling.  The prose was wild and dirty and free.  As if the marbled weight of western civilization crumbled and slid from my back, I reveled in the reckless abandon of a world infested by smelly gods, magical potions, time travelers and divine bees.

Robbins played. He played on the page in full view of everyone.  The years between “Harold the Hermit Crab” and “Jitterbug Perfume” vanished and I remembered what I loved about writing.  If he could that, I could do that. And why wasn’t I?

My muse is a dirty old man.

I picked up the gauntlet that Jitterbug Perfume represented.  As if my AWOL, besotted muse had returned from a decade long bender and kicked me in the ass, I signed up for a novel writing class at the local community college and started to write that long delayed novel while finally learning about craft, story structure, and how to let ‘er rip. “Fix it in the rewrite’ was the teacher’s refrain.  No more perfectly crafted sentences!

I must have read books somewhat similar to Jitterbug Perfume, wild books, crazy books, silly books, but for some reason, Robbins was the one who busted through the shell of my self-conscious, overly serious writer facade.  A can of beans and a vibrator as point of view characters?* Why the hell not?  Tom’s not everyone’s cup of tea, (authorial intrusion might be his middle name) but he gave me permission to be my true self on the page.  And isn’t that all that any of us has to offer? Our unique, adorable, warty, imperfect, struggling, adverb-abusing selves? All the stories have been written, or so they say, but not by us.

So, do you remember a book, story or poem that ignited or re-ignited your writerly fire?  I’d love to hear about it.

*(From Skinny Legs and All)

Love Thy Boulder

Every morning I do a little dance.  After getting my coffee I sit down at my desk and read the day’s page out of two inspirational readers, followed by a randomly selected poem.  I write in my journal about whatever strange dream I had, or I complain about my level of pain or about my finances. Sometimes I write bad poetry, or jot ideas for future fiction.  I fiercely resist checking my email. If I fail to resist, I forbid myself to get sucked into the abyss of Facebook. As the caffeine takes affect, I meander the house a bit, because this is the hard part.  I know that my manuscript is bad.  The prose is stilted, awkward and stiff. The plot is silly.  Much like me, the book is fatally flawed and hopelessly broken.  Once again I face the boulder at the foot of the hill and squint up the steep slope into a fog-shrouded distance, and wonder yet again how to pronounce ‘Sisyphus’.

My brain on a novel rewrite

Forcing myself to write again every morning is a bit like wading into a glacier-fed lake for the first swim of summer.  Though the refreshing weightlessness of the water beckons, there is always that extreme discomfort of frigid cold that makes my skin recoil and my brain shriek “No way! Am I crazy? Why am I doing this?” But then I jump or flounder or fall in anyway and off I go, sailing along and soon I’m no longer cold and miserable but floating happily on a sea of make believe.  One thing I’ve finally learned after years of doing this dance- the longer I linger in the shallows, the harder it is to go deep.

I plunge into the story, and my brain sighs. Oh, yeah. Here we are.  This is what’s happening.  Today, I’m at the crucial scene were my hero and heroine first meet.  I realize that everything my hero says is a cliché. How awful. And yet, for some reason, my heroine feels inexplicable drawn to him.  She’s leaning in, her mouth waters, because he is, of course, incredibly hot, even if his dialogue is hackneyed and dull.  As I encourage my heroine to go ahead and channel my- I mean her- inner slut, my two and a half hours of writing time flies by and now I type furiously, trying to get to the end of the scene before I have to go get ready for the real job.  Just a few more paragraphs, I can do it.  Suddenly I’m standing at the top of the hill watching the boulder roll away, right back down again.

As Camus advises, I stand up straight and enjoy the view on my way down.  Why do I dread the boulder so much?  Is my fear of failure really so great?  Is it because it is freaking hard, until the momentum gets going?  Every morning I have to remind myself of this moment that I spend once a day, wishing and wishing I could keep shouldering the boulder.  That moment when I nearly pee my pajama bottoms because I can’t stop writing.  The days when I’m late to work because my hero finally wakes out of his predictable slumber and starts having interesting things to say at exactly 9:27 AM.  The days when I’m really late because I have to keep stopping in my routine to hurry back to my desk to scribble a few more notes.  Days like today when I tear myself away from my imaginary world of monsters to face the real ones, in this, the real world.  Then life becomes the boulder, and writing the glimmering expanse of magical solutions, where goodness always prevails in the end, if only I can reach it.

The Franz Kafka Express

You know you’re in trouble when your traveling companion turns to you and says, “This will make great story material someday”.

I admit to having felt a vague uneasiness when I saw the name of the train on the ticket. The Franz Kafka Express, Prague to Munich. Oh, really?

Waiting for The Franz Kafka Express in Prague

To set the scene, you must be aware that the day before our departure on the Franz Kafka Express, I had turned over the keys to the rental car with the greatest relief known to Fretful Travelers everywhere.  I’d driven out of Prague and all the way to Opava on the other side of the country and then back again. And I only got lost four times, drove through no more than one pedestrian-only mall, and had only one fist shaken at me by an irritable pedestrian, but still, the stress levels had been high. Ah, the bliss of letting someone else drive. The relief of kicking back in business class and watching the world go by for five blessed hours.  No more trying to read Czech street signs while navigating the confusing meanderings of labyrinthine, medieval cities! Hurrah!  I looked forward to guzzling strong Czech beer, because if anyone had earned a splitting alcohol-induced headache, I had.

Just kick back and relax and . . . wait, what’s this? Why is a large, grease-stained man with his shirt tail hanging out shouting at us? Why are the Czech passengers scrambling for their luggage and exiting the train? We Americans and one Chinese guy look at each other in confusion.  The train has stopped in the middle of nowhere. Why in the world would we get off it?  No explanation is forthcoming so we too join the tide of passengers flowing into the empty field.  We drag our overstuffed bags across gravel and down a lumpy dirt road. Kafka begins to chuckle.

We stand around.  I’m pretty sure I hear wolves howling.

A too small bus comes and people start piling in.  I’m the very last to squeeze on.  Rumor has it they’re taking us to the next train station.  My imagination already has us bused to the nearest gulag. The communists and the Nazis might be long gone but I have not forgotten them, or maybe my paranoid genetic make-up hasn’t. Let’s say instead that, motivated by purely philosophical and literary interest, I contemplate sudden feelings of helplessness and confusion.

As I stand, leaning against the dashboard with nothing between me and the vast windshield except, well, nothing, I remember to be amused by my earlier relief at boarding a train.  Now I’m standing facing a busload of pensive people.  I wonder what happened to those who didn’t make it on the bus. Should I have stayed behind?  Thrown myself willy nilly to the winds of chaos?  This idea has a certain charm, a sort of let’s-run away-from-reality-entirely sort of appeal.  This idea comes to me as I’m still thinking we’re one bus trip away from continuing our train ride, that is, as long as a wolf doesn’t lunge under the wheels of the bus, sending me headfirst through the windshield, my last vision on this earth destined to be the array of squeaky toys dangling around the driver’s cockpit.

We disembark in Rockykany, a small station with no escalators, but plenty of stairs: an Escher-like traveler’s nightmare. Did I mention that my mom has a pink suitcase the size of Vaclav Havel’s presidential desk, and twice as heavy? To get from one platform to another we must go down a steep flight and then back up another.  Someone tells us to get on a train. We do. It’s the wrong train. We all pile off, down the stairs, up the stairs. Cue the Benny Hill soundtrack. Gallant men throw themselves in the breach and help us drag the steamer trunk. Rarely does the same man do this more than once. Alas, the next train is also wrong.  Off the train, down the steps, up the steps.  I believe it is on the third train that we finally hear the story from a native speaker.  Apparently, gypsies (his word, not mine) stole the copper out of the tracks and so we have to reroute to another line.  Well, I’m delighted.  It’s worth the tribulations just to hear there are still gypsies afoot in the world. Yes, I’m thinking Johnny Depp in a river boat on the Seine (alá the movie, Chocolát), but hey, I need some consolation by this time.

And now, this is entirely true, it’s the wrong train again.  The native speaker vanishes, no longer wishing to associate with our desperation.  Off the train, down the stairs, up the stairs. We (the foreign horde) nervously settle in as the train finally leaves Rockycany for no one knows where.

We disembark in Plzeň.  This is a grand old decaying station in a grand old city (I assume. We all know about the beer, right?) The waiting room is not grand.  Think bus station in a Twilight Zone episode. Think hard benches. Think tepid beige coffee out of a vending machine.  My cheapskate aunts don’t want to sit in the bar for four and half hours, our ETD. Where are we departing to? Anybody’s guess, really. Still, not one official (except for that guy in the blue sweater vest who told us to get on wrong train #3) has spoken to us.  This is when the ‘great story someday’ comment is made. Yeah, right. I do get to take some pictures of fading communist era murals and the great arched windows of the train station.

Plzen Station

But then Kafka rears his surrealist head.  In the restrooms. The last place you want to see anything of Kafka.  Within the restroom lives a bitter woman behind bars, selling, not just admission to the toilets, which we are used to by now, but scraps of toilet paper.  Twenty Kronings buys you about four wispy squares.  Starting to regret the vending machine coffee right about now.

Finally the train for someplace else arrives, half an hour late.  Our raggedy rabble assembles.  Those who spent the four hours in the bar are much happier than those who spent it in the Kafka Lounge, let me tell you.  We’re all so nervous waiting to get thrown off another train I can’t even describe it. The train pulls out and the whole car bursts into applause.

That’s not exactly the end.  Because the Plzeň train was late, our connection in Someplace, Germany, is being held for us. We have to RUN to catch it. More stairs? You betcha. My mom with her rolling armoire is now the pariah of the mob. The nice thing is, after we squat in the first class cabins, no one dares to throw us out.  My mom expresses a profound wish that someone will steal her luggage and we are able to laugh.

Disembarking in Munich, only nine hours late after all that, we bid a fond adieu to our fellow adventurers as they hurry away through the turnstiles, never wishing to view the pink monster again.

*My apologies to the Czech Republic, the Roma People, the memory of Franz Kafka, and train lovers everywhere.  However, this is a true story filtered through the keen memory of a paranoid, traveling writer.

Cleavage withdrawal? Fantasy writers can help.

Why bananas? Why not?

Awaking to the shabby light of a post-Oscar dawn, I am gripped by a general malaise.  Where have all the beautiful people gone?  Having so recently escaped the mesmerizing vortex of Halley Berry’s perfectly buffed and polished cleavage; I emerge to find my ordinary life . . . not nearly sparkly enough.

I don’t know how normal people cope with the post-Oscar blues, especially when it’s compounded by a four-hour peanut and champagne binge, but I suspect that any writer worth their salt stumbles to the computer and, as underpaid minions sweep the empty valium bottles and sodden silk hankies from the floor of the Dolby theatre, they pen their acceptance speech for Best Adaptation of their own original work.

After having done this, the revived writer then moves on to cast the award-winning screen play with actors and actresses they’d most like to sleep, I mean, work with.  All in the name of making Great Art, of course.

As my contribution to world-wide cleavage withdrawal relief, I’ve posted a free excerpt from the soon to be award-winning novel, Death is a Star, because we all know that hair of the dog is best antidote, and so I offer my fantasy world as a humble comfort to your glitter hangover.

As an added balm for your over-taxed fantasy life, I offer Nicole Kidman in the role of Irene, the demon-loving sister.  I’ll give the role of Theda, the compassionate elephant-handler, to Angelina Jolie.  Jude Law will make the perfect manic-depressive Demon, and why not cast his sleuthing buddy, Robert Downey Jr., as the owner of the dysfunctional mud show circus, Edwin Striker.  They’ll be great fun at the after party.  And so very, very grateful, I’m sure.

All Valentine’s Eve

I let in a ghost last night.  I didn’t mean to.  Rousted by a general disturbance amongst the furry population of my house, I stumbled to the patio door in a sleepy grump.  That’s when it slipped in around me, the shadow of a shadow, a sort of manta ray shaped blackness.  I thought for a moment my black cat changed his mind about going out but no, he crouched nearby outside, basking in the glow of the blue Christmas tree lights still wrapped around the myrtle tree out back.  A sliver moon reflected a weird glow against low clouds, and I dismissed the ghost to the category of optical illusion.

It wasn’t until I was crawling back under the covers that I recalled the date; February 13th.  Valentine’s Day Eve.  And then I knew what, or who, that ghost was.

The past week has been so busy with the release of my first eBook, and the finishing of the monster project I’ve been up to my eyeballs in for the past year, that I’d forgotten to freak out about the impending anniversary of my partner’s suicide.  I knew it was coming, but I’d sublimated it, so gratefully overwhelmed by the present that the past had to wait its turn, lurking in the shadows as the past so often does, waiting for a soft moment, an easement in the clattering traffic of the head.  Those moments often come at night, when the defenses drop.  That’s when the ghosts slip in.

Perversely, in the light of day, the ghost became more real to me, took on a certainty I’d been able to banish by moonlight.  This shadow’s shadow, this wing beat from the other side, struck me suddenly as the sliver that remains of Michael’s consciousness.  I’ve never sensed the slightest trace of him since he took his life sometime in the wee hours of Valentine’s Day, 2010.  He flew the coop. Vamoosed.  So why return now, three years later?

I saw a ghost only once before.  Here, in this house, coming in through the same patio doors.  I didn’t know who it was at the time, but when Michael returned from work that day he told me his friend Joe had killed himself the night before.  I knew then that Joe had visited us on his way out of town.  I didn’t know why he’d picked our house, and now I wonder if it was a premonition, or a warning, or the call of a kindred soul across the divide of death.

Where are they going, the lost souls?  I don’t know, but I like to think that Michael’s sprit is finally light enough to roam free, released from whatever hell it’s been trapped in, was trapped in even while he still lived.  I imagine that this essential essence of the man is touring the places he once knew, no more than that. Maybe it’s a final good-bye.

I choose to take it as positive sign, even as I sit here burning white candles, both more and less alone than I’d like to be.  It’s a good thing, this movement, this traveling of the soul.  This searching for the light, for escape velocity.  It’s time for both of us to move on.

To all the lost souls roaming the earth tonight, embodied or not, I wish you God speed in your search for peace.

I live my life in growing orbits

Which move out over the things of the world.

Perhaps I can never achieve the last,

But that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,

And I have been circling for a thousand years,

And I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm,

Or a great song.

~~Rainer Maria Rilke

No Escape

I recently read a fairly innocuous statement in a blog by Iiona Andrews that made my blood run cold ~  “Reading had evolved into a social experience.”

Oh. Dear. God.  The introvert within me feels a bit sick right now.

This ‘social experience’ is not that mild-manner interaction of yore, when after reading a book one gathered with like-minded fellows to nosh and pretend to discuss the book. (This sort of gathering was referred to as a ‘book club’ and actual humans met face to face. Weird, I know.)

Now, the evolved reader (those with tablets or reader apps on their smart phones or perhaps Amazon one-click check-out widgets implanted in their brains) are apparently not content to waste precious moments merely reading, but must also check and send emails, texts and tweets, share impressions on Facebook. search the internet for reviews and opinions of the book they’re already reading and post their own, visit the author’s website and leave encouraging or disparaging remarks, go to Amazon, B&N, and Goodreads to do the same, watch the movie trailer (ha) and um, well, the possibilities are endless. This is assuming the social experience has anything to do with the book at all.

‘That’s how marketing is done these days’, the wise Super Reader will inform you.  How nice.  But what I envision is said Super Reader getting perhaps a chapter or two in before the itch to interact seizes them and they decide to look up a word or investigate some terribly interesting fact in the book and end up on Travelocity checking the price of tickets to New Zealand because they’re reading a fantasy and hey, that’s where the Lord of The Rings Trilogy was filmed and don’t you have a Farmville friend in Perth? And let’s email him and see how Australia compares and, oh my gosh, look at the cute Koala pictures! It’s an entire website dedicated to Koalas and … how’s the book? Oh, uh, fun but it doesn’t really hold my interest.

For me reading a book has always been a solitary experience. An ESCAPE from the twittering, posting, tweeting, emailing, grumbling, gossiping, snidely commenting world at large.  It is a 3-D place to climb into and pull the cover shut against the outside hustle and bustle. This whole social experience phenomena is an anathema to my vision of the perfect book reading experience; on the couch, cup of tea at hand, cat on lap, phone unhooked, computer asleep, rain pattering the window. Quiet. ALONE.  No Distractions.  I suppose I am the reading equivalent of a Wooly, Saber-Toothed Cave Sloth.

My interactive reading experience

As a writer, well, I can tell you this image of the entirely connected, hooked-in interactive Super Reader is about as appealing as going out to dinner with someone who constantly checks messages, surfs the net, texts, watches Les Mis, and studies Yiddish, and when not doing these things, stares longingly at their screen(s) instead of you.  HEY, I just spent fifty gazillion hours creating this masterful work of suspense, intrigue, heartache and redemption, so is it too much to ask to Give Me Your Complete Attention for one freaking hour?  Wait. Did you feel that? Someone must have walked over my ego’s grave.

I know. I know. The big screechy reply from the internet to suffering artists is; Man Up, Cowboy Even More Up, Put Your Big Girl Panties On and suck it, writer.  With so many options, why should anyone dedicate one whole (shudder) uninterrupted minute to your measly mass of words?  They’re not adorable like Tard the Grumpy Cat. They don’t tell jokes. They just sit there. Waiting. Waiting for MY BRAIN to do all the work of conjuring this world that you, writer, sketchily tossed together in a few spare moments while drinking too much and playing hammock tag with super models in Jamaica, for crying out loud.

But really.  This all reminds me of a date I went on once. The reader, I mean, guy, went outside to smoke, got lured into the lounge by the boisterous crowd within, and forgot to return. Ever.  So my suspicion is that these ‘evolved’ readers are actually media-holics, sunk deep in denial and the World Wide Web of Infinite Distractions.  For me, give me solitude. Give me quiet.  Give me a well-written book and I will gaze lovingly into your eyes for as long as you can stand it.

But if you want to sneak off for just a moment to post a five-star review, I guess that would be okay.

Year of the Snake

Thoughts on Sloughing, part 1

Years ago I decided to put off resolutions, life realignment, new exercise programs, tarot card readings and other prescribed New Year activities until the Chinese New Year.  After running through all the hubbub and indulgence and enforced merriment that is our western holiday gauntlet, the last thing I want to do on December 31st is look critically at my life and decide what needs improvement.  I’ve reserved the interim, January first through February 10th, for a good wallow in sloth and unrepentant torpor.  In other words, the exact opposite of what the larger culture seems to expect of us in these fresh days of 2013. But as the New Year reboot approaches, inevitable reflection begins and once again I seek to slough off whatever shortcomings are truly at the root of my discontent.

The epitome of patience

This year I’ve decided to follow the example of my friend and heroine Elizabeth Engstrom and choose a theme, or über goal, if you will, for the year (check out her blog on the subject here).   Many lofty ideas flood the brainpan, like Growth, for instance. However, after two months of living on sugar cookies, chili cheese dip and devilled eggs, growth as a concept isn’t something I feel drawn to.  In fact, having had a small nonlethal skin cancer removed last week, I feel that having been reduced by a few millimeters is a good thing and so look around for other things the removal of which might prove beneficial. There’s the whole image of the snake shedding its skin to contemplate, after all, which makes me think of releasing the old and outgrown and funky. So, I’ll try on Release as a theme.

Let me tell you, there’s nothing like reading Thoreau‘s Walden at year’s end to inspire you to gather all your less-then-treasured items, drag them to the curb, and stick a “Free” sign in the middle of the whole ratty mess.  If only we could do that with our character defects.  But forget procrastination, the Netflix addiction, persistent depression, or conflict avoidance, I can’t even get past the old sock thing.

As if ridding myself of those seventeen single socks, with threadbare heels, would allow space for something miraculous or helpful to enter my life. As if by lightening my load, freedom would be obtainable. Who knows, I might be possessed by a very bearable lightness of being, which would then allow me to achieve my dreams, unhindered by a mundane life and the possessions that define and curtail it.  But standing before the overstuffed drawers of my life, doubt assails me. If I do make space, who’s to say what might come to fill it? Is it not better to live with the familiar useless pile of whatever then to invite in some unknown thing or force that might up-end my security and kick me out into the cold as surely as I’ve rejected these harmless items?  How embarrassing would it be if after throwing those socks in the trash, the dryer suddenly regurgitated one of the long-lost ones and I’m forced to face the fact that I’ve prematurely exterminated its mate?  Who am I to interfere in the fate of the prodigal sock and its twin?

You can well imagine the paralysis that grips me every time I’m moved to ‘organize’, and am inevitably confronted with some object, which although having no discernible use, hints at a potential destiny which I cannot begin to fathom or predict. Which leads me eerily back to the overarching theme of this blog in general, Nutshells & Mosquito Wings.  Here’s the quote from Thoreau: Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails. What to do, what to do, when one’s head is stuffed with tree detritus and insect parts?  I picked that quote because being thrown off the track is pretty much what I do. And besides, getting rid of “stuff” is only the tip of the iceberg.

This sloughing is serious business and so I’ll have to divide this blog into two parts.  Until then, enjoy the tail-end of the Year of the Dragon and continue to hoard accordingly.

The Next Big Thing

Cue trumpets and fanfare- I just finished the second-to-the-last rewrite on the current novel!  And with stellar timing, I’ve been tagged in a rolling blog which give us writerly  types an excuse to write about our WIP (work in progress).  Thank you, Jackie Hames over at the Spidereen Frigate, for the tap because, ironically, my WIP has kept me from blogging or doing much of anything else since October.  So, this is a nice way to get back into the groove of semi-normal life and hopefully spark your interest in what is sure to be:

The Next Big Thing

What is the working title of your book?

The Dark Side of Dreaming

Where did the idea for the book come from?

A combination of many things including the question “what would I write if I let myself write exactly what I wanted to?”, a failed experiment with anti-depressants which repressed my normally robust dream activity, and a ‘long dark tea time of the soul’ that led me to question my addiction to fantasy.

What genre does your book fall under?

Contemporary fantasy.

What actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition of your book?

Be warned, I am old. So very old.  I haven’t kept up with all with the new whippersnappers out there, so let’s just imagine these people in their twenties.  For my protagonist, Zoe, who is tough, feisty and properly screwed up as a protagonist should be, I’d go with Janine Turner in her Northern Exposure days. Tough, cute, tomboyish in a drop dead sexy kind of way.  For my main hero dude, Zander the shaman-in-training with the weight of the world on his shoulders, how about Johnny Depp? Not the bat-guano crazy Johnny but more like when he played a gypsy in that movie, Chocolat.  For Zoe’s cousin Mariah, Gwyneth Paltrow comes to mind.  Snooty, pretty, smart and tough beneath the cashmere cardigan and matching pearl set.  For Jake, Zander’s rival and the guy with the dangerous powers he doesn’t know he has, I’m thinking Orlando Bloom, as elf or pirate or crusader, because he is so damn cute I want him in all my movies!

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

As the ordinary world and the Dreamed realities hidden within it begin to collide, small town waitress and repressed Dreamer Zoe Tidwell must overcome personal and societal prejudice in order to reclaim her powers and stop a malevolent Dreamer’s nightmare from destroying both worlds.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

All the top publishers will be fighting over this one.

How long did it take to write the first draft of your manuscript?

About four months.  I was horrified to find it weighing in at over 600 pages. I just finished the fourth draft and am approaching the one year mark.  Crazy fast for a book this long!

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

This is a tough one because I’m grafting an epic fantasy quest storyline with a snappy contemporary fantasy style and setting.  I have multiple characters with interweaving plots and traditional fairy tale tropes in the modern world.  I’m hard pressed to think of another novel quite like this.  Let’s just say it’s like The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks meets Magic to The Bone by Devon Monk.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I followed the advice found in Chris Baty‘s book “No Plot? No Problem!” in which he suggests you write down your personal writer’s Magna Carta, a list of what you love in novels, and then write that.  My list included; Adventure, Magic, Mystery, exotic locales, lost civilizations, eccentric characters, deep bonds of friendship (imperiled, naturally), silliness, sexy guys and tough girls, real danger, and an underlying sense of goodness in the Universe.  Okay, no problem!  Only I still had no plot.  Then, as I prepared for a trip to Germany and the Czech Republic, I stumbled on the book – Prague: The Mystical City, by Joseph Wechsberg.  Writing about the history of the Mala Strana neighborhood, Wechsberg describes it as an “aristocratic enclave of Baroque palaces, monasteries and churches, of astronomers, adventurers and alchemists.”

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Prague ~ “A big stone book, full of pathos and enigma” Julius Zeyer

So, I still had no plot, but I had a first sentence, which was and still is ” The alchemist, the astrologer and the adventurer walked along the winding cobblestone streets of The City, embroiled in noisy discussion.”  I had many ideas twisting around in my noggin, and just started writing from that point like a fiend, with no outline, no plan, only characters and a magic system based on dreams that can change reality.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Here’s a favorite little snippet of mine from the middle of the book featuring Federal Agent Wayne Grady, a Dream Tracker who’s mission is to track down and eliminate illegal Dreams:

The phone went silent, as if the dragon emitted phone-blocking rays.  It emerged from the tunnel, and despite his best intentions, he couldn’t help gawking at it.  It stood twice as high as the tunnel, and as it unfolded its wings, its belly flashed emerald green and gold in the faint light.  It stood on its hind legs and looked down on him like he might provide a tasty snack.

“Shit.”  He stared out to sea.  “Here be dragons, my ass.”  Anger swelled in him.  This was all so wrong.  Hadn’t mankind outgrown this nonsense hundreds of years ago, like in the renaissance?  The goddamn age of reason?  Hadn’t he outgrown it, the second he was old enough to say ‘no’ to his Dream obsessed dad? He looked at the phone, no more bars, and stuck it in his pocket.  No anti-dragon apps out here anyway.  He forced his breathing to calm, even as the bridge shuddered beneath the weight of the Dream.

“You do not exist,” he said, and began walking casually back toward solid ground.

The dragon made a strange bellowing noise and flames licked around his feet.  After a few moments of extreme discomfort, he could no longer deny that he was indeed on fire.

He fell to the wet pavement and rolled, cursing all the while. The dragon chuckled, puffs of black smoke chugging out of it like a train.  Wayne leapt to his feet and ran from the bridge.  The thing didn’t pursue.  Its job was to guard the bridge.  That much seemed obvious.  What wasn’t obvious was why.  What or who was hiding in Florence?  He stopped when he reached the end of the bridge.

The dragon stood in the same place, wings lifted like a cormorant drying its feathers.  It really was magnificent.  These were no ordinary Dreamers he was up against.  This was Black Forest, age of myth shit.  This was Pavlova’s realm of expertise.  As he descended the road to the park, he tried to think of what he might do to win her back to the side of reality.

Now I get to tag other people to keep this thing going. Luckily I know some amazing writers!

Lisa Alber, Pam Herber

Attack of the 50,000 Word Outline

Hey Kids, only two weeks until the time when we set aside our mundane lives to slip into a new personality, restock our candy hoard, shamble ghostlike through the daytime hours, frighten anyone who happens to come to our door and stay up very, very late.  Yes, that’s right, it’s NaNoWriMo time!

Writing by the light of it in November

National Novel Writing Month is creeping up once again and this time it looks scarier than ever. Why? Because even though I’m in the middle of rewriting a 160K word project and have two more already lined up in the queue, I can well imagine my Evil Other self dreaming up yet another entirely unnecessary project to add to my workload, just so that I can play along.  Yes, I love NaNoWriMo that much. I’ve done it and won it seven times now.  And how many of those wildly written first drafts have been turned into submission worthy manuscripts?  Hey look, something shiny over there!

But seriously folks, as of today, I’m nearing the completion of two NaNo novels, so yes something productive has been accomplished in those seven Novembers.  But really, it’s never bothered me to have a teetering pile of first drafts gathering cobwebs, because in NaNo Land, I really do believe it’s the journey that counts, not the marketable manuscript.

For me, NaNo is the time to clear the pipes, blow off literary steam and demolish the inner editor. Usually when November rolls around I’m hip deep in some long drawn out rewrite of a novel I’ve come to hate, and the idea of a no-holds-barred, fresh idea sounds like writing Nirvana.  November is when I get unstuck and remember how much I love the pure creation of a story.  NaNo gets me fired up to get back to the rewrite and Own That Thing. NaNo gets me bonding with writing friends, drinking way too much coffee, and freeing the wild dogs of my subconscious that are otherwise kept on way too short a leash.

I’ve read some snooty comments about how there’s too much bad writing in the world as it is. These people seem to fear that everyone who writes 50,000 words in November will immediately dash over to Smash Words and throw up their horror of a manuscript online, thereby filling up all of cyberspace and ruining it for the slow writing snoots. Maybe some do and that’s what I’d call an ill-advised career move, because NaNo is all about first drafts, or maybe even over-elaborate outlines. I think the snooty naysayers are just jealous that so many people are having fun doing what the snoots like to imagine is an elitist, graduate student only sport.  Fooey, says I.

NaNo isn’t about getting published.  It’s about writing.  There’s a difference.  NaNo is about freeing yourself to write exactly what you want. It’s about proving to yourself that you can finish a novel.  It’s about discovering if you’ve got what it takes to push through the long dark tea time of your creative soul* to make it to “the end”.  Bright and shiny ideas are so easy to come by.  Wonderful first chapters flow easily from the fingertips.  It gets harder and harder, the rock you’re rolling uphill heavier and heavier, the doubts louder and louder as the words pile up.  NaNo is about persistence in the face of failure, because it’s so easy to mistake that smelly, incoherent, steaming pile of a first draft for a failure, if you stop to think about it.  NaNo is about not thinking. Thinking comes later, in December.

Why fight the irresistible lure that is NaNo?  Don your unwashed, up-all-night, wired-on-Snickers writer persona, and join me, if you dare.

*The long dark tea time of the soul is a phrase brazenly stolen from Douglas Adams’ novel of the same name.

What Stars Eat, And Other Important Questions

In my usual geeky fashion I am reading The Portable Medieval Reader, edited by James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin.  It is a collection of essays written by a wide variety of people who lived between the 11th and 15th centuries.  I’m reading it to get a feel for how people spoke and wrote back then, but of course the most marvelous aspect is getting a glimpse of how they thought.  This book is full of interesting tidbits, and yesterday I struck gold.  In an essay titled Questions of Nature written by Adelard of Bath in the early 12th century, there is a list of questions to be considered regarding the causes of ‘things’, things ranging from cow’s stomachs to lightning and thunder to why men get bald in front (some of the big questions never change).

This is what popped my corn, though. Questions number 73-75:

Whether the stars fall, as they seem to fall.
Whether the stars are animated.
What food the stars eat, if they are animals.

I was born in the wrong era.  Don’t get me wrong. I love science and greatly appreciate the wonders, fascinations and let’s face it, conveniences that it brings us. Personal favorites include hot water and Netflix. I’m a big a fan of Science, but wondering what the stars might eat if they were animals kept me busy for the rest of day and into the night.  The conundrum even inspired me to dream.  The Adelard in my dream said, “stars eat the same stuff music does, naturally”.  Trust me, it made sense at the time.

Living with so much mystery, while frightening, frustrating, and down right life-shortening at times, must have done incredible things for the fertility of the mind.  How did the medieval mind see the universe, I mean really? I suspect the Dark Ages were not as dark as we think, being lit from within by a boundless inner fire of imagination.

When I was a kid, and went camping with my dad, we’d get way out into the wilds where the visible stars multiply by the thousands. I liked to imagine each star was a campfire like ours and I pretended that people up there were looking down at us, wondering what we might be. I never thought to wonder what the stars ate- my story telling already being curbed by that accursed requirement called “believability” – and of course I knew that the stars were suns, and ate hydrogen or some such impressive thing, but I preferred to hold in my mind the image of stars as sentient, or at least, indicators of sentient life.

The moon, that white ermine, feeds on the chicks of the stars~ Zuzana Novakova

I still fall prey to the all too human compulsion to find myself reflected in the face of everything, for if Buddhism and quantum physics have taught me anything at all, it is that our separateness is an illusion, and that all is one.  That’s why I persist in wondering if agates miss the ocean once they’re washed ashore, or if the squirrels nesting in their branches irritate trees. Are the stars lonely?

Or perhaps the stars are animals, who feast on light (you are what you eat) and the little parasites have sucked all the light out of the ether, leaving us in the darkness so that we might make up poems about what we cannot see.  Though I must admit, even after seeing (thank you, Curiosity) it’s all still pretty neat.

“Whoever does not know or neglects reason should deservedly be considered blind.” ~Adelard of Bath