Nancy Martin's Blog, page 11

The Idea Completion Consultant

Judith Greber (aka Gillian Roberts)

[From Margaret:   Please welcome my good friend Judith. Under her real name she's written four well-received mainstream novels. Using her Gillian Roberts' name, she's the author of the Anthony Award-winning Amanda Pepper series, two mysteries about Marin County detectives, a short-story collection and the how-to: You Can Write a Mystery . Either Judy or Gillian is currently finishing a novel set against the Inquisition in 17th century Mexico.]

 

 

This past year, I had the pleasure of spending a month in the sort of sleepy Mexican town we call "unspoiled" as we flock down there to spoil it.  So far, this fishing village is fairly intact with just enough appreciation for tourism to provide non-sleepy-Mexican-town comforts. Nonetheless, it's the kind of place that makes people ask: "But what do you do there?"

            Well…nothing. I've discovered a great talent for doing nothing.  It's quite enough to begin the day with an hour or two walk in the surf, observing what the tide brought in, talking with the fishermen getting ready to go out, talking with other beach-walkers, talking with each other.

            And of course we brought all the electronic vestiges of the 'spoiled' world: music, DVD's, computers, p-books and e-books, watercolors and cameras. There were friends and family to visit us, the leisurely old-world food shopping: first, to the vegetable and fruit man, then the chicken or fish market. Dining out was either the incredible taco stand set up on the sidewalk on a folding table each night or more traditional restaurants. And always sun, sand and sea.  Also margaritas, of course.

            And, yes, an unfinished manuscript to which the only word added was, 'manaña.'

            As I said, nothing.

            One thing that had not (yet) reached town was shopping as entertainment.  One overpriced artsy-crafty shop and one lovely clothing store for 20 year olds who wore size 2, and that was that.  Which is why, en route to the butcher, baker and such, I consistently ignored a storefront I passed on my way. One glance at the fading sign sufficed.  Surfing lessons. Souvenirs. Gifts. The town didn't have interesting shops but it had lots like this, so I walked on by.

 

            Besides, even if I had been ready to leap on a boogie board, or buy a t-shirt, the store was always closed.

For some reason (perhaps I really did need another cheesy souvenir key-ring?) right before we were leaving, I finally read the sign carefully, and would have given anything for the door to be unlocked and the store opened. It wasn't the 'coffee and snacks' or second-hand clothing exchange that got me. It was the final entry.

            An idea finishing consultant! Who would not be enchanted by the idea? I could think of a million times I would love to dial: 1-800-finish-the-damn-idea.

            "I have this idea," I'd say. "Actually, half an idea--a premise, and I have no idea where it's going.  Say…what if when a plane lands, there are three less people on it than boarded?"

"I have this novel I'm writing and I'm not at all sure how it should end."

"I have this great start to a short story but…"

"Finish it for me. Please." .

I've been told that everybody has a 60-page start of a novel moldering in a desk drawer.  An idea finishing consultant (I.F.C. hereafter) could inspire and dictate the remaining 300 pages. Desk drawers across America would be clean again.

This is the new industry—the job that needs creation to end unemployment.  Building a better mousetrap is nothing compared to knowing how to finish our ideas.

You don't have to be a struggling writer to need an I.F.C.  Too often, I find myself a stranger in a strange room. I know I bustled into the place but… why?  I had an idea, obviously, but now I have no idea. I.F.C. to the rescue again!

The whole world could use a qualified I.F.C. How many ideas are stillborn? Paintings and symphonies unfinished? Crafts, sweaters, home improvements begun enthusiastically and then…can't remember why we thought that was a good thing to do.  A top I.F.C. could even unstall Congress.

However, the consultant was never in. I assume she had a ginormous list of clients, and she was always out of her office, finishing up ideas.

She might have finished mine. I'll never know. I had to complete my manuscript the old-fashioned way, myself.

When we return this year, I'll have an answer to questions about what there is to do there: visit the Idea Finishing Consultant. That alone would be worth the trip.

Am I alone in being in love with the idea of such a service?

Stove Atrocities

by Barbara O'Neal

I have an old stove—a dull cream model with ancient electric rings and a black front.  It's serviceable, but little more than that.  I hate it when the sun comes streaming through my kitchen window and illuminates the splatters of grease across the control panel and the aged dust stuck to the inner hood.  I'm sure I must have wiped it all down when I cleaned the kitchen last night, but it looks like something out of a hoarder's episode.   Dust from the wings of cat-murdered miller-moths mixed with flutters of dog fur mixed with kosher salt mixed with that creeping cooking sludge I can never quite identify.   Thanks to the terror of a grease fire in a long ago, much older stove, I'm pretty methodical about lifting the cooktop to mop up any spills, but unless I bought a new pan for each burner every week, they always look battle scarred, too.  

And I cook there.

The oven can be even worse.  The window is never less than slightly amber-speckled, scarred by casseroles baked in 1992.  I try to be careful, putting pies on cookie sheets and the like, but something always ends up spilling over, burning to a black concrete cinder at the bottom of the oven, staying there, growing harder and blacker until the next time I pull out the heavy-duty cleaners.  You know, the kind that require elbow length industrial rubber gloves and a face mask and if any of it touches your skin, it starts to sting immediately. Maybe it's understandable that I don't get around to this more than every seven or eight years. 

Of  course, that leads to the bottom drawer.  I used to keep lids in there, but no more. It doesn't matter how many times I wipe it out—there are always more crumbs littering the drawer like the remains of a picnic.

Now, I am not some monster slob of a housekeeper.  I don't like keeping house, but I like things to be relatively tidy (not counting that one kitchen counter—everybody should have one kitchen counter where things go until you can figure out where they really go), and I was assiduously trained in restaurants to keep food things clean.  And still that stove, always, always seems to look like that.  There is some little part of my 70's raised woman-self that berates me, insisting that if I were any kind of woman at all, I'd have a sparkling cooktop.  And a much, much cleaner fridge.

Luckily, the sane creative woman living inside of me says, "Oh, who cares what it looks like?  You have books to write! Get cracking."

Still, I want someone to invent a tiny stove-cleaning robot, armed with suds and polishers and brooms, that I can set on the stove every evening so I will awaken to a shiny, ad-worthy stove every single morning. 

Is there some task that defeats you?  What would you invent if you could?  

 

Me and John D.

Elaine Viets                    

 

Some 70 years before Travis McGee's houseboat, the Busted Flush, dropped anchor at the Bahia Mar Marina, Florida already had a rich legacy of fictional detectives.

It still does. I'm proud to be part of it.

My mysteries are in a museum exhibition, along with John D. MacDonald, Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard and a slew of other Florida mystery writers.

It's called "Sun, Sand & Suspense: Mystery and Crime Fiction in Florida 1895-2011" and it's at the Bienes Museum of the Modern Book in Fort Lauderdale. The exhibition features 116 years of Florida crime fiction.

The first Florida mystery was probably "On the Suwanee River," by Opie Read. This 1895 novel has a surprisingly modern plot involving Florida real estate and a young woman falsely accused of a crime. Sunshine State mystery writers have been working variations on that plot ever since.

"Place is as important as character in Florida mysteries," Lillian Perricone said, "and Florida is quite a character." Ms. Perricone, Bienes Museum cataloger and reference librarian, curated the exhibition. She's not afraid to show off some of Florida's colorful crime fiction.

The titles range from literary to lurid, including "What a Body!" by Alan Green, a Dell paperback with a lightly-clad lady on the cover.

"Murder shouldn't be fun," the jacket says, "but Sandra was luscious enough to eat, and Hugo's ideas about what to do with her were rather different."

Nothing subtle about that mystery.

    

Murder was prettily portrayed in pulp fiction. "Blood on Biscayne Bay" has a cover with the head of blond bombshell wearing full makeup and a Betty Grable hairdo. Not a hair is out of place. The mystery has a handy crime map on the back cover.

 

You'll see John D. MacDonald's mysteries, including his first Travis McGee novel, "The Deep Blue Good-by," and the poker hand that won McGee the Busted Flush.

Charles Willeford's leisure-suited cop, Hoke Mosely, is there. Willeford had a knack for catchy titles, including "Kiss Your Ass Good-Bye" and "New Hope for the Dead."

 
A boatload of books by your favorite modern Florida authors include Edna Buchanan's reporter-detective Britt Montero; Lupe Solano, Carolina Garcia-Aguilera's Cuban-American private eye, and Randy Wayne White's marine biologist, Doc Ford. Our own Nancy Pickard has found a home in the Florida mystery world with her "Truth" series. If you haven't read it, give yourself a treat.


My Dead-End Job mysteries are there, too. So is a hand-edited manuscript of my first novel in the series, "Shop Till You Drop."

Nowadays, most publishing houses use computerized editing programs. A manuscript marked by real pencils has become a museum piece.

                                                                    ***                                                                                                              

"Sun, Sand & Suspense" runs through Nov. 18 at the Bienes Museum of the Modern Book in the Broward County Main Library, Fort Lauderdale.

Can't make it to Florida? See the exhibition at www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgMmJ5gJAOY

Don't miss the amazing covers at digilab.browardlibrary.org/sunsand/ 

 

 

 

 

We Had a Blast

We Had a Blast

By Nancy Martin   

My husband fusses that he never wins anything.  I think he reached that conclusion after entering the Publisher's Clearinghouse three times---without winning so much as a wink from Ed McMahon.  A month ago, though, he attended a charity auction. (I declined to go.  To be honest? As soon as he announces there's a charity event he wants to attend, I start to worry about what the hell I'm going to wear.  I am not a size 4.  I don't fit into "cocktail attire" anymore, and the thought of putting on heels just gives me a headache.) Anyway, Jeff went stag, and while he was enjoying his Manhattan with the other men whose wives refused—er, declined to attend, the lady in charge drew his raffle number!  He was a giddily astonished winner of the grand prize. (He works like a fiend for this particular organization, so I'd say the karma was on his side.)  Anyway, the prize?

A free weekend at a very spiffy resort within driving distance of our home.  So we went.

A free, very plush room for two nights (oooh, the bathtub!) and free meals plus a free "activity."  The resort is famous for its golf courses, so I guess they assumed we'd golf.  Lemme tell you, friends, I'd rather poke myself in the eye with a hot marshmallow stick than chase a tiny ball around in the sunshine.  So when my husband gave me the list of other activities from which we could choose, I think he figured I'd pick something relaxing at the spa.

But my eye traveled down the menu of activities and hit this tasty item:

Shooting academy.

My husband was astonished that I wanted to shoot skeet.

"You're in favor of gun control!"

For me, gun control is needed for automatic weapons.  Sporting firearms are something else entirely—especially the kind that are used in controlled circumstances like gun ranges, and I'm even in favor of hunting animals. (There are too many white-tailed deer in Pennsylvania, not to mention hungry families who live in rural areas.)

Plus? Has Jeff not noticed what I've been writing for the last ten years? Of course I wanted to try a shotgun!

So we went to the gun club. It was a lovely September afternoon, and we were assigned an instructor who was very informative and safety-minded and downright sweet.  First, he gave us safety goggles and ear protection and showed me how to carry an unloaded weapon. Then he drove us in a golf cart to a stand and showed us how to shoot at incoming and outgoing "birds"—clay pigeons that are really disks of clay that break apart when hit with even a single BB—which is what's loaded into the shell that you fire from a shotgun.

My husband, who hasn't hunted in fifteen years and who gave away his rifle and shotgun before we moved here in the city, hadn't lost his skills.  He was given a 12 gauge automatic "over and under" (as opposed to the horizontally mounted "double-barreled shotgun" you see in the movies)  and he looks pretty great, right? And he managed to hit a respectable number of birds right off the bat.

My eyesight isn't great, so I figured I'd have some trouble. I was given a 28 gauge shotgun—much lighter than my husband's gun and with a shorter barrel. (It had some very pretty engraving on the stock, too, but apparently that's not what you're supposed to say about a gun.)  I put the gun to my shoulder and said, "Pull!"—the signal to launch the clay pigeon. Now, I must admit I wasn't a total rookie.  I'd shot at clay pigeons back when I was a teenager and my parents used to hang out with a group of outdoorsy friends. They spent weekends on a farm, shooting, grilling steaks, watching the kids chase kittens—that kind of thing.  But that was a long time ago. Lonnng time.

Well, dear reader, darned if I didn't hit the first six birds—bangbangbangbangbangbang—most of them obliterated.     Our instructor thought I'd been teasing him about my bad eyes.  But my accuracy was only good on the range.  When we rode the golf cart out to the stations in the woods, I was no Annie Oakley.  I even tried wearing an eyepatch, but I just couldn't discern the play pigeon from the trees and terrain.  I hit a few, but it wasn't until we tried the "rabbit range"—where the clay disks are launched sideways, hit the ground and skitter along like a frightened bunny—that I got my mojo back.  Bye, bye bunnies.

Needless to say, we had a blast. A couple of wonderful dinners, swimming at the spa, strolling around the art museum, an evening cuddled up at the firepit (s'mores!) and some quality time with the love of my life---a pretty great prize.

Do you win things?

Margie's Story Time: Sleeping Margie

Margie's Story Time: Sleeping Margie

By Me, Margie

It's time again for another tale from Margie's Big Book of Stories.  This one, like all the great stories in the world, has many lessons and if I were you I'd write them down because you are totally getting all of this for free.

It all started when one of my cousins returned from a trip to Coronado and decreed (that means rushed in, dropped her bags, and made a breathless announcement to the rest of us) that we were all getting our belly buttons pierced.

I barely looked up, because I was trying to finish a french pedicure and you have to focus or you'll mess it up.  It's this kind of ability to concentrate that would make me a great surgeon or maybe an astronaut, but alas I have to answer phones.  Which is why I am able to multitask and need my own office with a door.

Rocco was on board immediately.  He's been wanting us to get matching ink for ages, which I simply will not do while our Nonna is alive.  I mean, when you are blessed with a body like mine, all you need to decorate it au natural is, you know, another body, or maybe some red silk.  Anything else is overkill. Rita refuses to get a tattoo because she prefers to be covered in sailor.  That's right.  I could have said it but I am more clever than that, and I didn't even use a thesaurus, which is how I got Esteban the Phone Guy to help me set up my own private extension at the office that doesn't show up on the other phones.

Our cousin Rosie, who doesn't even have her ears pierced because of that thing when her mother sent her to the convent, was so excited, she was jumping up and down.  That girl is like a puppy.

I didn't even look up.  I just said:  "No. Way."  I didn't have to explain why.  I don't like needles.  Sure, I give blood, but that's a community service.  Plus, where else can you have someone warn you ahead of time: "You are going to feel a little prick."  

My other three cousins jumped on my laptop and started Googling or Binging or whatever to choose rings.  I focused on my last two toes.  Because that is where you can make a mistake, because you lose concentration and then you end up with a little toe that is all white and it ruins the whole damn thing.  It is this kind of single-mindedness that can sometimes lead to trouble and not just because you don't hear the doorknob until the door is totally open and you are busted.  Which is why I am getting Stephano the Locksmith to put a lock on my office door as soon as I get one.

By the time Stevie the Pizza Guy arrived (extra sausage) the three of them had changed subjects and were making fun of rich people's outfits.  We had to eat right away, because I had a dentist appointment in the morning and couldn't eat after 11.  This is because our dentist, who is also our cousin Dino, still uses the nitrous oxide, which is fantastic.  When Rosie was first in the convent and learning how to cross-stitch, she made him a sampler that says: "Just say N2O", which he has hanging in his private office, because he only uses it for family and he doesn't want anyone breaking in to get at it.  His office has a serious lock, and I took a picture of it with my phone so I could show Stephano.  Before they left, we confirmed that Rocco would take me to the dentist and Rita would pick me up.  No one lets Rosie drive yet. She's too easily distracted by the A&F billboards.

Everything seemed normal - I only had one cavity, so it was pretty quick, although it's hard to tell on the gas.  Before I knew it, I was in Rita's car having a nice Starbucks. It never even occurred to me to make sure Rita used my Gold Starbucks Card. Which should have been my first internal warning.

The next thing I knew, I was waking up in a strange bedroom.  Before I even opened my eyes, I realized there was something sticky on my stomach.  Uh oh.  Boys and girls, if you don't already know it, those two things at the same time can mean that something happened, and you need to proceed with caution.  Also - don't think that works because just ask our cousin Raven who had to get married in March - when no one wants to get married because the weather sucks and you can't get  a decent fresh bouquet to save your life.

Before I could even figure out which cousin to blame first, I heard Rosie whispering in the next room.  "I just love it, don't you?  Look at the way it bounces because it's happy!  I'm not even mad that it hurt even though you told me there was no way because the belly button is all scar tissue and has no nerve endings."  Boys and girls, I worry about Rosie.  Because that is just bullshit and she should know better than to listen to Rita and Rocco when they are on a mission.  Also, I could see that we needed to get Rita another book because she obviously didn't understand our illustrations with the half-peeled bananas.

When I was done rolling my eyes, I lifted my head up.  Sure enough, there was a gauze bandage taped to my stomach.  I am telling you, regardless of what is under there, if that tape messes up my tan lines, there is going to be hell to pay.  I took a moment to congratulate myself on the choice of the red silk set.  A lady does like to dress up for company, even if she is passed out and across town. It's just good manners, you know?

Just as I was gently peeling away a corner of the tape, Rosie bounced into the room with her t-shirt tied under her bra.  Good grief.  She had a cross hanging from her belly button.  It caught the light every time she moved. Swarvoski crystals, no doubt, because no way does that girl have the money for real ice. The way she was moving around, I was just happy it wasn't a bell.

Next came Rita and no surprise there, an anchor.  Same sparkle.  Rita has never been known for her subtlety.  Hers was bigger, no doubt because she was planning to replace it with a budweiser pin at the first opportunity.  I hoped the weight of it gave her a nasty scar.

Rocco brought up the rear, and I was afraid to look.  The possibilities were endless. It was an arrow. No crystals.  Just steel. He was carrying a glossy catalog with pictures of other charms. Good thing we have a cousin in the gold business who could get jewelry at cost.

I looked at them and they all took a big step back.  That's right.  Any Mancini worth her salt can fry a person at 20 feet with a look.  I learned mine from Uncle Sal, who is known in some circles at The Incinerator.  

"Now Margie," Rocco took point, palms up in a gesture of surrender, "if you don't like it, we can take it out right now and no one will ever know.  And it won't hurt a bit."  Where have I heard that one before?

I tried to sit up and winced.  No pain, my fine ass.  Someone had stuck a needle in my skin and then left something in there that was not part of the original equipment.  Plus, my mouth was all fuzzy. Rita rushed over with some water. "Dino said lots of water.  He, uh, was here a little bit ago when we couldn't get you to wake up.  I mean, I only gave you one Xanax which isn't even enough to get the Aunts to stop talking, so I guess you need to be more careful when you mix things but Dr. Etienne is on his way and he is going to check your vital signs and stuff."

"He can check my stuff too." smirked Rocco.  Rosie nodded and bounced away to get the door.  That girl needs to get better bras or she's going to hurt herself.

Etienne rushed in with his black doctor bag.  He says he only carries it for me, because I like surprises.  I guess most doctors don't use them any more which is a shame.  He took one look at me, propped up on my elbows with my jeans half open,  finished removing the bandages, and then sat back.  I was afraid to look.  But his eyes were very sparkly, and it wasn't just the reflection of the belly charm.  He didn't even turn around. He just said: "Get out.  She needs rest."  

"I am sleepy" I said, stretching and faking a small yawn.  "Uh huh," he said, leaning down to get a better look at my new, shiny gold letter M. "Hey! I observed - it's for Me, Margie." The Doctor didn't even look up.  He just said "Mmmmmmmm"  Then he licked his lips and said: "I think I need to check closely for any signs of infection. Nice tan. Lines."  Turns out it was a good idea I was already horizontal because, you know, doctors study anatomy and they know things.  Between gasps, I heard glasses clinking together in the next room and Rocco giggling: "The doctor is in."

The End.  Because the rest is private stuff which a lady does not tell unless there is lots of tequila involved.

This is such a good story that you get to pick your own moral:

1.  Never trust a cousin bearing Starbucks.

2. If anyone tells you it's not going to hurt, they are probably lying.  Your only option is to decide if the gain is worth the pain.

3. Always wear nice underwear because you never know who is going to see it.

4.  Beware of little pricks.  They can lead to big trouble.

 

 

 

 

 

Scary Story

by Harley

Last week a bloodcurdling midnight cry of "MOMMY!" sent me racing to the bedroom of my 9-year old daughter.

"Are you hurt?" I asked.

"No."

"Bad dream?"

"No." she shuddered. "It was a . . . story."

She wouldn't discuss it, but insisted I sleep with her, which I did, on her twin bed that accommodated most of me, although not my left arm.

 I'm used to Nightmare Patrol. One scary night last month my older daughter asked me to sleep on her top bunk. Our dog Cairo, not used to seeing me up there, began barking. I hopped out of bed to reassure Cairo, only I miscalculated how far it was to the ground, so my daughter woke to see me fly through air and crash into her desk, further terrifying both her and the dog.

Anyhow. The next day I asked my 9-year old if she remembered what scared her. "Of course," she said. "At recess, Jenna told us this story about a girl named Molly who went to a doll store and found this really ugly doll holding up two fingers, like a peace sign and the man who worked at the doll store told her never to take her eyes off this doll, but one night Molly forgot and left the doll in the kitchen, and she heard the doll on the stairs and it yelled out, 'Hey, Molly. I'm on the first step.' And then, 'Hey, Molly, I'm on the second step.' And like that all the way up the stairs and then Molly hears the doll say, 'Hey, Molly, I'm outside your bedroom' and then, 'Hey, Molly, I'm right here by your bed.' And then the doll cuts off Molly's head. Oh, yeah – and the doll guy knew that would probably happen, because the doll had already cut off two other girls' heads and that's why she was holding up two fingers."

 Okay. Leaving aside questions like "is being left overnight in a kitchen motivation enough to turn a doll into a murderer?" and whether the doll salesman had some moral or legal liability in the matter, what struck me about this story was its popularity. Among pre-adolescents in our neighborhood, "Molly's Murderous Doll" is the #1 scary story.

In my day it was "Dead Babysitter." You know, where the babysitter gets the phone call saying, "I'm three blocks away . . . I'm on your street . . . I'M IN THE HOUSE."

For my friend F. Paul Wilson, with whom I discussed this at Bouchercon, the story in the 'hood was "The Hook," featuring a one-handed killer who preyed upon teens parked on Lover's Lane, which ends with a satisfying . . . hook. Paul, who knows from horror, feels it's all in the ending (and recommends Ray Bradbury's short story, "October Game" as a case in point.)

It is all in the ending. I came home from Bouchercon to find that my son, perhaps to torment his sisters, had checked out a book called Scary Stories, on which the school library had slapped the exciting warning label: THIS BOOK FOR 4th and 5th GRADERS ONLY. Alas, the book was a bitter disappointment. Several of the stories ended with the word "Boo!"

Which wouldn't even scare a 3rd grader.

Here's my kind of ending: discovering that things that once frightened me no longer do. Like high school principals, driving on the freeway, soufflés, speaking French in France, clowns, root canals, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. Or Bob, our family mannequin who used to scare us all, even the dogs, but now only scares the Ukrainian dishwasher repairmen.

I am, however, still scared of those twin girls in The Shining, the Gregg Hurwitz novel with the severed head in the refrigerator and Don't Look Now (I can't even post those stills). Dead children who, for one reason or another, remain behind to haunt the new inhabitants of their old houses. Victorian clothing.

But Molly's Murderous Doll? Ha. I could take her down.

                                 

And you? Apart from cancer, war, or natural disaster, what scares you? And what do you laugh in the face of?

 

Guest Blogger, Tammy Kaehler -- Mantras

Take Good Advice Wherever You Find It

 

I've had mantras on my mind lately. Not the dreamy, inspirational sayings that make me think of beaches and yoga and striving for greater things (I'm a fan of those too, and I have them littered around my desk on paperweights or torn pieces of notebook pages). I'm talking about the words I sometimes have to chant to myself through clenched teeth to keep my competitive instincts—or maybe my murderous ones? sometimes they feel like the same thing—from kicking in.

You see, I'm an overachiever. I rise to meet challenges. But part of realizing I'm now a mature adult (since I'm the "old lady" at my day job, where the average age skews very young), is realizing I can't do everything. More importantly, I've learned to save my skills and energy for what's most important to me. This isn't always easy, when I'm aware that those young kids I work with are wallowing in their inefficiencies without my sage advice. Wallowing!

 

Or something like that.

Here's the audience participation part of this blog. You can all say my favorite mantra with me … first, pretend to be Chris Rock, assume an attitude (maybe with an incredulous look and some finger shaking), and repeat, "Just because you CAN do something, don't make it a good idea."

 

Well done.

 

For a couple years now, I've been attributing this quote to Chris Rock—which is part of the fun because I'm about as far from Chris Rock as you could get. I'm short, female, and very, very (very) white. I like to think of myself as kind of a badass sometimes, but I, yes, pale in comparison to him. And I've been carefully quoting those words verbatim.

But I should have known better, because I don't remember quotes correctly. Like, ever. (This is part of the reason why I can't tell jokes.)

Sure enough, I recently looked up the exact wording of my beloved mantra, only to discover it's not what Chris Rock said at all. Turns out what he said (more colorfully, of course) was this: "Yeah, you could do it … but that don't mean it's to be done! Shit, you can drive a car with your feet if you want to, that don't make it a good f&*%ing idea!" Moreover, he was talking about bad parenting, which has nothing to do with me trying to establish priorities in my life. 

Close enough. Take the good advice, Tammy. Don't worry about where it comes from.

What this mantra helps me remember is that what's important is not that I. Can. Win! It's that I choose to win what I want to win, and I let some battles pass me by. My day job? I really appreciate that it's there, I'm committed to doing good work, but I don't need to lose sleep over the problems. My novels? That's where I want to spend my emotional energy creating good plots, interesting characters, and a realistic picture of the racing world. Anything else that pulls my physical and emotional energy away from writing is just a distraction. 

My husband prefers Stephen Covey's version of the same message: "The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing." There's also the pithy "Pick your battles." But I find the insouciance—and the simmering potential for profanity, I'll be honest—of my version of Chris Rock does a better job of stopping my blind rush to Achieve. At. All. Costs!

Dr. Tammy's prescription? Repeat "Just because you CAN do something, don't make it a good (f&*%ing) idea." as many times as it takes to remain sane and correctly focused.

It's all about figuring out what keeps you on track, isn't it? So tell me, what's your mantra?

 

Before trying her hand at fiction, Tammy Kaehler established a career writing marketing materials, feature articles, executive speeches, and technical documentation. A fateful stint in corporate hospitality introduced her to the racing world, which inspired the first Kate Reilly racing mystery. Tammy works as a technical writer in the Los Angeles area, where she lives with her husband and many cars.

 

A Comedy of Airhead...

By Cornelia Read

Okay, I am all unpacked in Brooklyn, but now have bronchitis and haven't slept more than an hour at a stretch for the last three days, AND my new wireless hotspot thing just shat the bed AGAIN and t-mobile doesn't open for another two hours... Please forgive me for not having a post up. I will have something by early afternoon, pinkie swear!

Too Old for Peer Pressure? Never!

by Diane Chamberlain

 

Do I look like I'm having fun? You're right. I'm not!

Remember when you were a kid and all your friends started drinking, so you started drinking? Or when they sneaked out of their houses in the middle of the night to meet at the park and you joined them? Or they dove from the cliff above the quarry and you didn't want to look like a chicken, so you did it too? I guess that's why I now have a Mac. Almost every one of my writing friends uses a Mac. My grown stepdaughters and numerous other family members use Macs, too, and Mac users are zealots, oh yes they are. How they look down their noses at PCs! I figured I must be missing something. I'd been enjoying my new iPad immensely, so when my laptop recently died and my desktop started sputtering, I joined the lemmings and jumped into the Mac abyss. Never one to do things halfway, I now have an iPad, a Macbook Air and an iMac. And a week into this adventure, I also have a boatload of regret, matched only by my determination to conquer this bloody thing on my desk.

I plan to stick with it. I plan to take all the workshops and the one-on-one classes. I plan to learn everything I can and become a Mac Whiz, but no one will ever be able to convince me that a Mac is more intuitive (give me a break) or simpler or more elegant to use than a PC. If it's so intuitive, why am I stuck staring at a frozen screen five times a day, with a mouse doing unpredictable things and a message that pops up saying something like:

 Simply click &*$@%F1-#$&*F12

Oh please. One click of the mouse on a PC and whatever I need it to do would be done. (I tried several ways to get the actual command in this post, but Typepad wouldn't allow me to put the command/option/control symbols, so I had to make do. Trust me, it looked nearly as silly as the above. So silly I laughed out loud.)

Where oh where is my right click?? I know where it is, but I resent having to press a keyboard button and the mouse at the same time when a right click on the mouse would be so much simpler.

My few friends who haven't yet been suckered into a Mac ask me "Why are you doing this to yourself??" Yes, there's the lemming factor, but there's something deeper going on. There's the challenge element--a desire to keep my mind supple and learning. Angry Birds and Sudoku just aren't enough. If you want to stretch your brain, try learning a new operating system. I can think of no better way. Just be sure you take your blood pressure medication before you start.  

There's also hope. The hope that Mac lovers are right and I will someday come to appreciate all that a Mac can do. One of those things is running Scrivener, a program many of my novelist friends use for organizing their books. I'm an obsessive organizer when it comes to writing a novel, so I'm excited about that possibility. Though right now, I have to admit the thought of learning a whole new program is not appealing. Scrivener will be on the back burner for a bit.

(side note: I just heard a yelp of surprise from my bedroom. I'm trying to train my dogs not to jump on the bed.)

Back to the Mac. A significant problem I'm having is the keyboard. I've used an ergonomic keyboard for many years. It's raised in the middle and the keyboard is divided. It's perfect for fingers and wrists with rheumatoid arthritis. But finding a truly ergonomic keyboard that works with the Mac has proven to be a challenge. There are a few, but the keyboards are not split. Instead, they have a faux ergonomic wave shape. I finally found a truly ergonomic keyboard by Microsoft (the 7000 model). Although it doesn't have the same functionality as the Mac keyboard, I can set it up so that it's close, as long as I remember the Alt key is the command key and the Windows key is the option key, etcetera. The mouse that came with the keyboard has a nice feel beneath my palm, but it's so heavy and clunky that I quickly reached the top of my cuss-ometer while using it and I'm now trying to use the Mac mouse instead. It's too thin, so I must prop it up to avoid hurting my wrist. (propping here with Bland Simpson's wonderful book on The Inner Islands of North Carolina, which I bought while doing research for The Lies We Told.)

I don't understand Mac's organization for pictures either. What's the difference between the pictures folder and iPhoto? Is iPhoto a way to organize them? I had all my pictures copied over from my PC and some of them came over in duplicate and triplicate and quadruplicate—enough so that I now have over 13,000 images on my hard drive. I have a little clean up to do there! In the middle of trying to clean up last night, the mouse suddenly developed a mind of its own and began selecting hundreds of pictures at a time. I couldn't get it to stop. Kind of frightening! Around that time is when a facsimile of the above message popped up on my screen (Simply click &*$@%F1-#$&*F12), but my non-Mac keyboard left me stymied. Since I couldn't stop the madness occurring on my screen, I reached for my iPad, thinking I'd Google for help. As I reached forward, the crazy selecting process instantly stopped and the mouse returned to normal. I have no idea what I did to start it or stop it, but the next time something goes kaflooey, I plan to reach for my iPad again and see what happens.

Oh, and those "notes" on the right of my screen above were another thing that "got stuck". Clearly I'm doing something wrong.

One of my biggest bugaboos right now are these boring "aliases". When I wanted to put a shortcut on my PC desktop—say I wanted to go instantly to my Facebook Readers Page—I'd just right click and create a shortcut—a simple Facebook icon, for example. But every icon on the Mac is the same and butt ugly. I know there must be a way to make them prettier and more useful, but it's certainly not, ahem, intuitive.

I know what you Mac users are saying: "If she hates the Mac so much, let her go back to her virus-ridden PC!" But please reread my reasons for the switch. I really want to do this. I just desperately need to wail and moan for a while, okay?

My dogs and I are about the same age, if I think in terms of dog years. They've spent all their lives jumping up on the bed. If they can learn to stay off the bed, I can master this machine. Then again, they don't seem to be catching on to the whole tinfoil thing too quickly.

I'm done being a curmudgeon for today. Thanks for letting me get all that out of my system! I'll spend the rest of the day 'learning by doing'. Putting this post together on the Mac is the first step. It's now 12:06 pm. We'll see how long it takes. Then I'd love to hear what new things you're learning these days. 

P.S. I think I'm finished. It's 5:26 pm. Sigh.

 

Home, Sweet Home

            Sometimes I think I could be a turtle and carry my home on my back--except for that crossing the road thing and not having a buddy to right me if I overturn.

 

            Peace Pilgrim did it, alone, and carrying only what she could put in her pockets, and with no money.  But even she tried to find a bridge to sleep under in a storm, or somebody's guest room, when she was invited. Even turtles like to claw a hole in the ground or find a hollow stump when it's time to hide and watch or snore and sleep.

          What if, like Peace Pilgrim, I didn't have a home at all?  Not so much as a (camper) shell of my own?

            Well, I'm living in a borrowed shell right now.  I share a condo with my mother, and as generous and sharing as she is--and she is--it's still her home, not mine.  It's simply the place I live and am content to do so for now.  But it's not. . .home.

            What is home?  Good question.

            I've been thinking about this a lot this week because I saw so much homelessness on a road trip I took to southeast Kansas and down into Oklahoma and across into Missouri.  The homelessness I saw wasn't the kind we usually associate with that word.  I didn't see a single person with a shopping cart full of her belongings, for instance; I didn't see a City Union Mission, a Salvation Army headquarters, or a welfare office.

* But I did see, in Picher, Oklahoma, a ghost town where everybody was bought out by the federal government because of toxicity in the air and water due to waste from lead mines.  All the little houses are empty now.  The ones who didn't leave during the buy-out were forced out later by a tornado. Maybe all or most of them have new homes now, but for a while they were home-less. The houses that are left, abandoned, are home-less, too.

* In Joplin, Mo., I saw block after block after block of shattered brick and boards where that monster tornado blew all their homes down.  The third little pig was wrong about brick, by the way.  Many of those folks are temporarily living in FEMA trailers now, on the edge of town, or they're squeezing in with friends or relatives.  I don't know what they'll do next, the ones without insurance.

* Everywhere I went and everywhere we all go we see foreclosed homes and farms and ranches and businesses, even if they don't always have signs announcing it so that we can identify what we're seeing. There are literally millions of foreclosed homes now in the U.S. of A., and still more coming.  I think about those people, those families, every day, and my heart aches for them because I know they're terrified and desperate. Many, if not most of our politicians don't care, from what I observe.  Even worse, they keep doing the very things that are most guaranteed to make life harder for, well, all of us.

* On my road trip I drove entirely on land that once was home to American Indians, but they were forcibly "removed" from it, swept down to Oklahoma like refuse that my own Kansas felt compelled to get off the dirt floor of our lives.  You should see the poverty where some of them landed in that state to the south of me.

            Empty towns, emptied land, empty houses, broken hearts.

            If there's one thing I know, it's that there's no such thing as material security, and the older I get the more astonishing it feels to me that we humans spend our lives trying so desperately to get some.  There isn't any.  Things come, things go,  sometimes with the shocking suddenness of an F5 tornado, as in Joplin.

            So, I have to ask, what is "home" when there isn't any structure to house it and to call my own, or to call anybody's own ? Some people go to a lot of trouble and expense to recreate the home they've lost.  On this trip I visited a "town" that consists of buildings a man has moved from his original hometown to another site.  He is nostalgic and wants life to go back the way he remembers it.

            But what is home if we can't, like him, take it with us?

            Maybe it's not a place, it's a moment--this moment, and now this one, and this one.  Maybe it's love and beauty and a willingness to ride with change instead of clinging to what doesn't exist any more.  Maybe it's comfort and kindness, which would help explain why I felt at home on the road, because I ran into a lot of those things--the beauty of a winding, tree-lined road, the kindness of a curator who let me work in her museum, the cat that stretched when I petted it and that pushed its head into my hand for scratching, the care a chef took over a perfect nut-encrusted catfish and corn muffin, the way the library director took her time to sit with me and let me ask her questions about her job, the way the B&B owner cared that the toilet handle was broken.  On this trip, my "home" seemed to be decorated by a full moon that rose over the building across the street from my hotel, and by the Spring River, and by a woman's smiling face, and a man's, and that girl's and that boy's.

            All of that took money, it must be noted, which made it easy for me in ways it is not easy for other people.  Money for the gas to get there, money for the B&B, money for the food, money for almost all of it.  Finding "home" gets so much harder when you have to create it out of the nothing in your pockets.

            I want people to have homes they love.

            I want our leaders to care deeply in ways that help that happen.

            But sometimes life doesn't co-operate in those ways, and we don't get what we want, and then we have to find "home" in other ways and sometimes we even make a home for other people in those ways, too. 

            How would you make yourself at home in the world, if you no longer had a home in the world?