Kathy Lynn Emerson's Blog, page 33

The writing process: Don’t try this at home, kids

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Katahdin and friends at sunset from Route 11 in Stacyville. Busy doesn’t mean blind, after all.

My Crime Writer colleague Brendan Rielly a week ago confessed he’d been too busy to write. I was relieved. Misery sure does love company.

And I know the rule of writing is that YOU MUST FIND TIME TO WRITE NO MATTER WHAT.  Especially when you’re in the middle of a book that should have been done a while ago. And I totally agree with that, but when every minute of your day is pretty much filled up with things you have to do, it’s not gonna happen.

Side note: I posted the above photo just because I like it. I had to interview a couple in Millinocket for an article I was writing freelance, and one of them mentioned this view, which I was familiar with. As I left to go home, I was thinking about that great view, and realized maybe I could get it at sunset — it would mean adding another hour onto a long drive, but you gotta do what you gotta do. So I raced the sun up Route 11 and got there just in time. I don’t regret it. Busy has its limits.

Okay, where was I? Oh yeah, too busy to write. I’m not complaining, just explaining.

Part of the issue is the writing process itself. I’ve known writers who can steal a half hour here or forty-five minutes there and get a lot done. On one hand, I can sit down and whip out 5,000 words in ninety minutes. But I can’t stop, so lots of times I don’t start.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have writer’s block. When I’m in the middle of a book and it’s going well, it’s going on in my head all the time, whether I have the time to sit down and deal with it or not.

I saw a car drive down the street in front of the house the other day and thought it was a character from my book. But then I remembered he doesn’t really exist.

The problem with the book going on in my head — besides blurring the lines of reality — is that I come up with VERY IMPORTANT plot notes, dialogue, scenes, lines, that I don’t want to forget. I have notebooks everywhere so I can jot them down. I probably  have the whole book on legal pads scattered around my room and car.

Oh yeah, and my phone.

When it’s three in the morning and I don’t want to go through the huge ordeal of turning on the light (it’s not one, just seems that way at three in the morning), I grab the phone and use the note app.

Unfortunately, sometimes this is the result:

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I’m really hoping when I sit down to write and get back to that scene — if I can remember what scene it is — it all starts making sense to me, because whatever that brilliant idea was the other night doesn’t make any sense now.

And if any of you other Maine Crime Writers can figure it out, don’t steal it!

[image error]The good news is that next week I’m renting a friend’s camp on a very quiet lake in a very quiet place and I’m going to do nothing but work on my book. Some people may crave a Disneyworld vacation, or a whirlwind trip to Cancun. Maybe shopping and shows in New York. Not me, I can’t think of any thing I’d rather do.

No cabin or did, no doubt about it! Blackberry indeed.

 

 

To Market, To Market . . .

[image error]Kate Flora here, with a blog about marketing. Hang on, though, because I’m not really trying to sell you something. I’m just babbling a bit today about the trials of being graphically challenged. It began long ago. I couldn’t color within the lines or cut on a straight line. Still can’t. Being able to stray outside the lines in probably a good attribute for a writer, yes? But we live in those times when much of marketing, and the production of promotional materials, falls on the writer.

Even the challenged writer,.

Well, anyway, this past week, realizing that I had two books out I’d [image error]done little promotion for, and another co-written project coming next month, and I’d signed up for a number of book-related events this fall, I decided to try my hand at designing.

Have I mentioned, perhaps in past blogs, that I believe it is good for writers to try to do things that challenge them? Well, I mean writing a male character or a cop, or trying out a noir/fantasy crime story. I didn’t mean trying to create bookmarks; however, I already have written a middle-aged male cop and that noir/fantasy crime story. What I needed were bookmarks, and a poster, and postcards, and more bookmarks, and a giveaway for those events that take place at craft fairs.

[image error]So off to the internet I went. Some hours later, I emerged from my first battle with Canva with a simple design to put on lovely reusable shopping bags that fold into a pouch and store in your purse. (Man purses included, of course. Also backpacks, totes, coat pockets, or wherever YOU might want to store a reusable tote.) This is the result. In the fullness of time, perhaps the UPS man will bring a large box of these, and if you are the lucky person who leaves a comment admiring them, coveting them, or being kind and encouraging about my feeble attempts at graphics, you will be the first person to own one.

[image error]The internet was not done with me. Then it was on to bookmarks. Being a thrifty Yankee, I wanted a bookmark that would do double duty, so I put one book on one side, and the second book on the other. When I bravely sent them off to MirPrint, my printer of choice, they told me that a) I needed a bleed on the darn thing (and no, they did not mean, since I am a crime writer and generally anxious persons, that I should drip blood on the sample); and b) that the color was wrong and needed to by different. (They used a term not in my writerly vocabulary.) I pleaded ignorance, and general Luddite-hood, resent with the bleed, and they kindly fixed the color. Of course, I have no idea what I’m getting.

On to the poster, and bookmark for the October book, where I got utterly stymied by which quotes to use, which font to choose, and when I had finally muddled through, discovered that I had used the wrong version of the cover.

 

 

 

And then some Moo business cards with my book covers on the back.[image error]

 

 

 

 

All of this reminds me why others are graphic designers, while I tend more toward graphic violence.

Now I am heading back to the WIP, where I am on page 206 and have no idea what happens next.

Dancing, with the stars and otherwise . . .

[image error]Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, pondering just why it is that the only television show I’m looking forward to in the new season is Dancing with the Stars, which premieres its twenty-fifth series tonight at eight. It certainly can’t be an interest in any of the “stars” because none of the names that have been announced mean a thing to me. Star is, of course, a relative term. Fellow cozy writer Ella Barrick (aka Laura DiSilverio) got it right in her three book series featuring a ballroom dance instructor when she named her fictional TV competition “Ballroom with the B-List.”

[image error]But that aside, just what is the root of this fascination? In general I don’t care for reality TV or game shows or competitions. This program should strike out on all three counts. Instead, I set aside time on a dozen or so Monday nights twice a year to watch a team of professional dancers try to turn amateurs into champions. Some of the celebs are so bad that you wonder if they were chosen for that reason. Every season seems to have “the old guy” (or girl, or sometimes both), the person whose movements are so stiff that they look like a puppet with the strings cut, the wacko (also most likely to get ticked off when being critiqued), and the one who can’t dance but is so popular with viewers at home (who get a vote) that they stay on weeks longer than anyone expects. The athletes, especially if the sport is football, gymnastics, or ice skating, are odds on favorites to win, but there are always surprises.

[image error]The pros vary from season to season but there are always familiar faces, as there are in the dance troupe that performs between competition numbers. The judges don’t change much either, and have distinct personalities to enliven the proceedings. But when you get right down to it, what pulls me back, year after year, is the dancing.

[image error]I’ve never done ballroom dancing, unless you count the lessons I took for a brief time in about seventh grade—those versions of the fox trot and cha cha have little in common with the dances as performed in competition. The closest I got was “modern” dance lessons, which led to doing some choreography for amateur theatrical productions in high school and college. I took ballet lessons until I was sixteen, and somewhere along the line learned to tap dance.

But you don’t need to be able to do a certain type of dancing to appreciate it. I’ve never done Scottish dancing either, but I learned enough about it to create Liss MacCrimmon, former professional Scottish dancer (until she blew her knee out and had to have a knee replacement—something I do know about first hand).

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rehearsal for Marian the Librarian number in The Music Man, 1965

Where was I going with this? Oh, yes. Dance is an art form. It is also a sport. In ballroom competitions, there are rules, just as there are rules in baseball, football, and other sports. Do a lift in a dance where your feet are supposed to stay on the ground and you lose points. The pros only make it look easy. The upshot is that those of us who are no longer limber enough to perform such numbers can still appreciate the athleticism that goes into them, and the artistry of the choreography. As a spectator sport, seen on TV, I’ll take Dancing with the Stars over watching baseball, tennis, basketball, or golf any day of the week.

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one of the two times I was cast as the hero because I was the tallest girl in the ballet class (1963)

What else am I watching regularly now that September is here? The Pats, of course.

 

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Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett is the author of more than fifty traditionally published books written under several names. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. Currently she writes the contemporary Liss MacCrimmon Mysteries (X Marks the Scot—December 2017) and Deadly Edits series (Crime and Punctuation—2018) as Kaitlyn and the historical Mistress Jaffrey Mysteries (Murder in a Cornish Alehouse) as Kathy. The latter series is a spin-off from her earlier “Face Down” mysteries and is set in Elizabethan England. New in 2017 is a collection of short stories, Different Times, Different Crimes. Her websites are www.KaitlynDunnett.com and www.KathyLynnEmerson.com

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Weekend Update: September 16-17, 2017

Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will be posts by Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson (Monday), Kate Flora (Tuesday), Maureen Milliken (Wednesday), Dorothy Cannell (Thursday), and Joseph Souza (Friday).

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

Our friends at the Topsham Library asked us to share information about their writing competition. Check it out here: https://joyofthepen.topshamlibrary.org/joy-of-the-pen-application/?utm_content=buffer7e8a0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

LOCAL WRITERS at THE LOCAL BUZZ



SEASON #7 Kick-Off!
Saturday, September 23, 2017
Kate Flora ~ Prose
Anna Wrobel ~ Poetry
4:00 – 5:00 PM
at
The Local Buzz
327 Ocean House Road
(at Pond Cove IGA Shopping Center)
 Cape Elizabeth, ME 04107
 
Come hear local area writers reading from their work, while enjoying custom blended teas and coffees, wine or cocktails, and delicious locally sourced food. More information at:
www.localbuzzcafe.com



 

Lea Wait: If you’re a fan of books for children .. or have children or grandchildren on your gift lists this fall .. don’t miss the “Nerdy Evening with Authors and Illustrators,” Friday, September 22, at Morse Street School in Freeport, Maine, from 6-8:00 p.m. Over 30 New England authors and illustrators will be there — including me. To find out more about nErDcampNNE. check out http:://nerdcampnorthernnewengland.blogspot.com. Both events are free and open to the public of all ages.

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business. Contact Kate Flora

After Rivalry, Sometimes Surprise

John Clark taking a break from trying to stay ahead of the garden goodies. Everyone knows about sibling rivalry, but what about sibling synergy? If it hadn’t been for multiple nudges by my mother and my sister Kate, I would never have become a writer. Kate and I haven’t always gotten along well. In fact, thanks in large part to me, she was lucky to survive her childhood. Dad ran over her with a garden harrow, she fell and the metal edge of the egg grader went through her cheek, I kicked her off the bathroom stool and she broke her collar bone, While racing back from the mailbox, I banged into her and she went through the glass storm door, I dropped a wooden ladder on her and she got poison ivy, an infected heel and a ruptured appendix all at the same time. Did I mention she was born six weeks premature? Anyhow, she became a Blueberry princess, class valedictorian and a lawyer. Me? Not quite as successful. Anyhow as siblings get older and things go right, there are some magical things possible. We had a bit of that last weekend when Kate stayed overnight after doing a book event with Roger Guay at the fly-in up in Greenville. After catching up on kids, grandkids/granddogs, we started talking about life, priorities and, of course, writing.

I’ll be the first to admit that I really like the freedom to do little or nothing as a retiree. Every time I look at how much time and effort Kate and my fellow authors on MCW invest in promotion and rewriting their next book, I cringe. Spend three evenings a week at events or sit on my deck until dusk reading a new book? Guess which wins every time. I’m being totally honest. Besides, I have a sneaking suspicion my brain doesn’t have the horsepower it used to and keeping stuff straight in a full length manuscript ain’t so easy any more.

Me in another life perhaps?

That brings me to one of the things we talked about last weekend-my two recently published short stories. Kate suggested I describe how they came about and what they’re like. In the course of discussing writing, our family and creativity, several other interesting thoughts entered my head. First, I’m beginning to suspect that my last three full length efforts might have been me trying to write the same book with different characters in different parts of Maine. When the weather gets colder, I’m going to examine that possibility more closely. For now, sitting on the deck letting the sun warm my cranky knee while reading has greater sway over me. The other realization came when I pulled up some of my older short stories, as yet unpublished. Most were rejected by Level Best. In revising one called ‘A New Wrinkle Down at the Mill’, I realized how much closer to horror than mystery it was. After pulling up a couple more, I noticed the same thing. At least now I know what market to aim them as.

My story ‘Relatively Annoying,’ is in Day Of the Dark: Stories of the eclipse. I saw the invitation on the Shortmystery group at Yahoo, but talked myself out of writing something until a week before the deadline. I had the pieces of a story about mutant parasites floating around in my head for at least a year and the possibility of an eclipse going bad was the perfect impetus to sit down and write something. Most, if not all my short stories are set in small fictional Maine towns and feature hardscrabble characters, often teens. This story features such a location and such a teen. I had fun writing it and the best part of the process was participating an a day long launch on Facebook where each author took an hour to talk about the book, their story and answer questions.

The other story ‘With Great Relish,’ appears in Level Best Books’ Noir at the Salad Bar-Culinary tales with a bite. This one was written five years ago when we were on vacation in Lubec and celebrating Beth’s 60th birthday. I was hoping it would make it into the first (or maybe second) The Killer Wore Cranberry anthology. After it was rejected, I forgot about it until seeing the announcement about Noir. I pulled out and edited it, shortening the story by a few hundred words. It also features a hardscrabble family, a son who has just been freed from a Guatemalan jail and a greedy lawyer who gets his comeuppance at a holiday gathering. Getting it published was not only a morale booster, but it was a reminder that rejection doesn’t necessarily mean something isn’t worthy, but it might be the wrong market.

I’ll answer the question if you give me a treat.

I’m curious, who are the people who help your creativeness?

Midnight Confessions

Forgive me father. It’s been several months since the last time I wrote.

I think about it all the time. I have characters, plots, settings scraping away inside my brain, demanding their release, but I physically do not have the time.

Life is always busy and it is always difficult to carve out time to write, but the past few months for a variety of reasons have been crushingly busy. I know I will get back to it as soon as I can and I’m very excited about a new thriller that is about 2/3 written with the rest banging about my head.

I write this midnight confession not for sympathy or absolution but to share this realization that we all suffer from this strange sickness where it is a necessity that we write. Most people don’t feel this, nor do they understand the compulsion, the absolute need to write. I feel horrible that I have left these characters I created, my characters, in unspeakable danger, waiting for me to return. For some, my delay is beneficial because not all of them will survive my return. But for the others, the clock continues ticking and there’s nothing they can do, except jab me when I try to fall asleep.

This stop in the action is maddening. It’s against nature. Thrillers are designed to build and build and build, to never stop. Soon, soon, I will return. And I will race along with my characters. We will struggle and fail. We will do bad things for good reasons. And we will try to save the world. And everything will be right again.

Thank you for hearing my confession.

Small Town Cops and Me–Part II

by Barb who is writing this in Milwaukee

The last time I posted here, I wrote about my interactions with our small police force in Boothbay Harbor this summer. Unlike the murders I write about in the Maine Clambake Mysteries, these incidents were entirely harmless (for us), if annoying or hilarious (for the police).

But there was one time in Boothbay Harbor when we were involved in a real crime and mystery. In January of 2012, a neighbor noticed that the wood frame around the back door to our house was damaged. He called my sister-in-law because he knew she lived in town fulltime. She came over and investigated and sure enough we had been broken into.

Bill went up to our unheated house with the water turned off and inspected. It’s a seasonal house, there was nothing of value there. It appeared that the thieves had taken my mother-in-law’s costume jewelry–almost exclusively. While in Boothbay Harbor, Bill learned from the police that ours was one of three burglaries all in the same area, including another summer residence, and the home of fulltime people while they were away. The same kind of items were taken.

Bill asked why the thieves would have broken the door frame instead of shattering the glass in the door, which seemed like a much easier job. The police said the sound of cracking wood wouldn’t attract any attention from the neighbors, who would assume it was someone splitting logs or doing minor repairs, but the sound of shattering glass almost always brought someone around to investigate or a call to the police.

Little did we know at the time we were the front end of the wave. Over the next fifteen months there were twenty similar burglaries at residences in Boothbay, Boothbay Harbor, Edgecomb, Southport and Woolwich, along with three businesses. On October 25th, seven Boothbay residences were burglarized one day. The thief or thieves continued to take a lot of costume jewelry, but also valuable jewelry, coin collections, comic book collection, sterling silver, binoculars, and a host of other things. People were on edge. There was a rumor that at a neighbor’s house, fulltime people who had been away visiting one of their kids, the thieves had taken guns along with the usual haul.

The police worked the case hard. More than once over the summer of 2012, they came to our house with lists supplied by Portland pawn shops to see if we recognized anything. But we assumed because we’d lost costume jewelry, and because the descriptions  from the pawn shops were general, “i.e. gold chain,” we never spotted anything.

Then, the case broke. The police linked three of the crimes to a local man using DNA and physical evidence. Then, the police chief got a call from the man’s sister-in-law, who said, “You better get up here.” She had discovered a cache of items in a storage area of the home used by her brother-in-law. The police transported forty boxes from the house. Here’s a quote from the Boothbay Register.

“As they sorted through, each find that corresponded to an unsolved burglary brought a cry of recognition and elation from the assembled officers. As individual burglaries were identified, police also began the satisfying task of notifying burglary victims of the recovery.”

However, as the police had dealt with securing the various warrants required to search the property and remove the items, the brother-in-law arrived, saw what was happening and walked away. He left without his wallet, keys, or car.

He was arrested in April, sixty miles south of St. Louis, Missouri. He had stolen a 1971 Chevrolet Chevelle from Woolwich, Maine. People in the town where he landed in Missouri had reported suspicious activity in the woods and police found the stolen car. They speculated that he wouldn’t have been noticed if he hadn’t called attention to himself with a vintage automobile. He was tried and sentenced to seven years, after he finishes serving various other sentences in other jurisdictions.

As a writer, I am fascinated by these crimes. Yes, the perpetrator was a career criminal, but he kept the items. He didn’t try to fence them, just hoarded them. The burglaries were frequent, almost frenzied. He probably spent the small amounts of cash he found, but hoarded everything else.

A small, local police force did a fantastic job on the case. They eventually held a series of open houses where they returned the stolen items to the victims.

Readers: Do you have a small town police story to share? It’s a tough job with a lot of tedium, and then crazy people call you when their printer starts up in the middle of the night (that would be us). Thank them for their service!

It’s a Pudding? Yup. A Quebecois Apple/Cranberry Pudding

Lea Wait, here. Many of you know that next June I will turn (part-time) into Cornelia Kidd, and write the Maine Café series, a food mystery series featuring two sisters who meet as adults and open a restaurant on a Maine island.

Since my own personal food preferences are … diverse … one of the sisters is Korean-American and one is a multi-generation Mainer whose grandmother, also a character in the series, was born in Quebec. The sisters will feature cuisine from all of those areas in their restaurant (and in their own kitchens,) and will also be sharing some research on “heritage recipes.”

Bob and I have had a lot of fun modifying, cooking, and taste-testing the recipes that will be in the book.

Here’s a sneak peak at some of my research — and one of our recipes!

In early 17th century North American puddings, or duffs, as they were sometimes called, were ingredients put in a cloth bag, hung inside or above a pot being used to cook other food, and cooked for four or five hours. They were basic parts of almost every meal.

After stoves came into common usage in the middle of the 19th century puddings were baked and usually served as desserts, with lemon, wine, or brandy sauces. New Englanders used molasses or maple syrup as sweeteners instead of sugar.

The recipe included here is a classic apple pudding, to which my cook has added cranberries. Similar apple puddings are called pandowdies, slumps, cobblers, or grunts in different parts of the United States and Canada.

Ingredients:

5 medium-sized Granny Smith or other tart apples, sliced as you would for apple pie. Peel or not peel — your choice.

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup dried sweetened cranberries

4 Tablespoons butter, softened

1 Cup white sugar

2 eggs

1 cup four

1 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter rectangular pan (approximately 7 x 12 inches). Mix apple slices and cranberries, spread evenly in pan, and sprinkle with brown sugar.  In medium sized mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar, then add eggs and mix well.  Add flour and baking powder; mix thoroughly. Drop large spoonfuls of batter on top of apples.

Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in middle of pudding comes away clean.  Service warm or art room temperature. (Tastes especially good topped with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.  Serves 6.

And – of course – enjoy!

Weekend Update: September 9-10, 2017

Next week at Maine Crime Writers, there will be posts by Lea Wait (Monday), Barb Ross (Tuesday), Brendan Rielly (Wednesday), Jessie Crockett (Thursday), and John Clark (Friday).

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

From Kaitlyn Dunnett: I’m running another giveaway at Goodreads, starting on Sept. 10 and running through the 25th. This one is for an advance reading copy of my December book. X MARKS THE SCOT. Liss finds a “treasure map” in back of a painting she buys at auction and can’t resist following up on the clues. Naturally, this leads her into trouble, and another murder to solve. The story takes place primarily in Moosetookalook, but there’s a side trip to Canada that includes a visit to the Gaelic College and to the Highland games in Antigonish. Here’s the link: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/253616-x-marks-the-scot

This Sunday, from 2-6 p.m., Maine Crime Writers Vaughn Hardacker, Maureen Milliken, John Clark and Kate Flora will be at the BikeMaine event at Manson Park in Pittsfield. It looks like it will be a fun event, so if you’re planning to be there, stop by and say hello. www.ride.bikemaine.org

 

 

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business. Contact Kate Flora

Present the Present

Inevitable, maybe, on the first day of September, that we all take a long breath and maybe the long weekend to calm ourselves after the usual too-busy summer and anticipate the rabbit-rabbit ratchet-down of social activity before we go into the long cold hunker. For as much as I love my friends and family, my own mental health depends on long stretches of quiet time with my work and my thinking. As an aside, one of the peculiarly cruel aspects of both writing books and trying to sell them these days is how it forces people who are mostly introverts into activities that are not necessarily our strengths: talking about ourselves, asking people to buy things from us, and generally trying to entertain people face-to-face when we’d prefer to be doing it on the page.

Which is mainly on my mind because I’m about to enter that stage of book life myself. In Solo Time, the second in the Elder Darrow series and the prequel to Solo Act, comes into the world officially on September 20 and starting with an appearance at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick on September 19th, I plunge myself into a round of, well, situations, including in October:

October 5 at Longfellow Books
October 7 at Autumnfest in Bath
October 11-15 at Bouchercon
October 27 at Murder By the Book in Bar Harbor

I know there are people who enjoy this sort of thing and I would never complain about actually doing the events.

As David Sedaris memorably said in a PSB interview: “People who come to hear you read your books and sign them are showing love. How can you not like that?”

But everything has an energy cost and when I’m expending energy on marketing and selling books, it’s energy I don’t have for writing. You could make a case that this could be good for your writing, a time away, but I got into this gig because I like making things up and the feel of ink scrolling out on the page. If I don’t have enough of that, I don’t have enough.

All of which made me think in this month where students and teachers get back to school, about what I’m most grateful for in my formal education and that would be one of my first mentors, the estimable Robert McNamara, an English teacher at Boston Latin School.

Mac was not any administrator’s idea of an ideal teacher—if there was a curriculum for our junior English class, I never saw it, nothing like a syllabus, even a list of books. What he did do for us was encourage us to read—whatever we wanted!—and write weekly reviews and essays about what we’d read.

I’d been reading since I was old enough to hide under the covers with my flashlight. For me, this was as good as an invitation to eat pie for breakfast for the rest of my life. Every week from January to May, I read at least two or three books and wrote a one or two page commentary on what I’d read. Mac would read our offerings and grade them with two grades, one for the idea and one for the execution.

I don’t think it ever occurred to me that actual people wrote the books I was so eagerly consuming until one of my essays came back with a a grade of A for the idea and a B+ for the grammar and writing. (Mac was also a pretty forgiving grader.) It was not a book report but a tour de force where I tried to imagine life inside a ping-pong ball. I believe everyone can trace his or her inciting incident to a small moment like this. I fear that was the point at which I started to fool myself into thinking I could entertain people.

Mac was long gone by the time I realized what he had done for me and I never had the chance to thank him in person. Maybe this little piece will help make up for that omission. Which reminds me also that a little more gratitude in our lives, especially these days, would be welcome. If you owe someone a smile or a word or a hug, now would be the best time to pay it, don’t you think? Bake a pie, buy someone a drink, write a note. There is no present like the present.