Anna Celeste Burke's Blog, page 4
April 15, 2014
It's a GIRL! Well, it's a book about a girl. Okay, a book about a dead girl: Happy Birthday!
April 14, 2014
A DEAD SISTER, book two in the Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery series, is out! My new baby is here! “Is it silly to feel that way about a book,” I wondered? Do other writers have similar feelings about “delivering” a new book?
Before sending out cigars or chocolate bars with little pink ribbons on them I decided to do a little checking. What have others said about the subject? I was stunned by what I discovered. It turns out the “birthing” analogy is a much-used one, but also controversial.
In a brief Forbes post (10/12/2012), Jacoba Urist wrote that Emily Griffin, best-selling author of Where We Belong, and a host of other books, found value in the analogy. According to Urist, Griffin asserted that:
“The first seed of a novel feels like a miracle, that early stage when the murky idea takes shape and characters slowly become real in my mind. Then I go through the enormous struggles— both physical and mental—and wonder if the book will ever really happen. Then, about nine months to a year later, the book is ‘born’ and I get to share it with the world.”
She wasn’t the only one. Urist also quotes best-selling author, Allison Winn Scotch, who wrote The Song Remains the Same and four other novels. In Scotch’s words:
“Writing a book is so similar to having a baby that it’s almost uncanny,” especially at the end of the process “when you just want to cross the finish line.”
So, now I know I’m not alone in making the connection between birthing a book and birthing a baby. What I found next was Sally Koslow’s post. She says:
“Writing a book is like giving birth to an elephant. A gestation period of approximately twenty-two months is followed by a baby that for a moment attracts glittering attention—readings, spiking Amazon.com ratings, and a shiny moment of admiration followed, soon enough, by someone else’s baby elephant.”
Whoa! I did not see that coming...a baby elephant. Having given birth to a couple of 8-pound human babies, at the end of 9 month pregnancies, there’s not much appeal to imagery of bigger babies that take even longer to produce. I’m not sure I would have had the guts to pursue the endeavor of writing a book—much less tackle the idea of spawning a series if that analogy had entered my mind early on.
While a surprising variant on the use of the birthing analogy, it’s not the most controversial issue I encountered. Far more stunning is the fact that some object to use of the analogy. They argue that writing a book is not nearly so messy or physically painful as childbirth. Nor does it produce the joys and challenges that motherhood bestows upon you for decades to follow. Melissa J. White points out:
“your book doesn’t think for itself, doesn’t talk back, doesn’t decide to wake up at dawn and bake a batch of butterscotch-bit scones, leaving two on a plate for you and the house smelling warm and lovely. No, your book isn’t generous or compassionate. Your book doesn’t bake for you.”
She goes on to add:
“A book doesn’t make you worry at 1 a.m. as you look out into the dark night hoping to see car headlights in the driveway.”
Tell me about it! Thank God I say, and I do get it. But that’s why it’s an analogy—a figurative reference and not a literal one to a creative process. A book is clearly an inanimate object. A tree, fallen unheard, in an empty forest unless, as Melissa J. White asserts, “someone else reads it and breathes life back into it.”
Harder to understand are objections to the birthing analogy because of its reference to female as nurturer. True, women writers bear the burdens of stereotyping and gender discrimination. Joanna Walsh who started the Readwomen2014 Twitter hashtag posts about issues women writers face.
“though women read more books than men, and female authors are published in comparable numbers, they are more easily overlooked: a smaller presence in literary journals both as reviewers, and the reviewed, they also account for fewer literary translations.”
That is only the tip of an iceberg, more the size of a glacier, lurking in the murky waters where women writers set sail. The debate surrounding so-called “women’s literature” has its roots in a longstanding quagmire of disdain about the “sentimental” or “domestic novel”.
Tangled in those roots are some of my childhood favorites: Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott, works by the Bronte sisters, Middlemarch by George Eliot, and even Jane Austen’s masterpieces.
The debate about the value of work by women, about women, rages on. Diane Meier, author of The Season of Second Chances, takes her lumps from critics after writing a book described as “contemporary and domestic”. She acknowledges the book is “very domestic.” What perturbs her is, not just the pigeon-holing of her work. She is dumbstruck when they find her book “surprisingly” intelligent and are amazed that a “book so domestic in tone might have been intended for—can you imagine—educated, intelligent readers.”
High art and the small struggles in women’s lives do not mix well, apparently, like oil and water. Women, who fear fat, have a love/hate thing with food, hide behind the latest fashions, makeup and spa treatments, struggle to find a place in the world, to marry the right man or free themselves from the wrong one, are still, too often, deemed to be inadequate protagonists. Their stories are too mundane to be told, and, supposedly, not the sort of subjects easily treated with wit and intelligence.
Meier suggests that it's about gender alright. She argues that a male writer, like Tom Wolfe, would be extolled for his attention to detail if he included, in the narrative of his protagonist’s life, minutia about clothing brands, shoes, accessories, and the like. In point of fact, he received great critical acclaim for Bonfire of the Vanities. The narrative about a bond-salesman who fancies himself a master of the universe, was chock full of such minutia. Right down to details about the man’s bloated household budget. Similar in so many ways to the ‘girly’ things found in women’s literature, or heaven forbid, so-called “chicklit’.
So, should we shy away from writing about women and their lives? Oh hell no. That flies in the face of first principles: Write what you know. I'm not trying to write the Great American Novel. I hope you have fun reading about murder and mayhem, and give a damn about what happens to my flawed, but resourceful heroine, Jessica Huntington. She gives as good as she gets when tangling with scumbags. Nobody tries harder than she does to solve the riddles of life, large and small.
Is there a risk of tripping over unresolved issues by resorting to the birth analogy in celebrating my latest book about a girl? I guess so. But, there is something so fundamentally compelling and powerful in the use of the analogy, that I’m going to risk it!
Happy Birthday to my new book: A DEAD SISTER!
Want to read what these women had to say? Check out their original posts!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-m...
http://www.berfrois.com/2014/01/joann...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobauri...
http://www.dizzysushi.com/2013/06/how...
http://www.more.com/reinvention-money...
A DEAD SISTER, book two in the Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery series, is out! My new baby is here! “Is it silly to feel that way about a book,” I wondered? Do other writers have similar feelings about “delivering” a new book?
Before sending out cigars or chocolate bars with little pink ribbons on them I decided to do a little checking. What have others said about the subject? I was stunned by what I discovered. It turns out the “birthing” analogy is a much-used one, but also controversial.
In a brief Forbes post (10/12/2012), Jacoba Urist wrote that Emily Griffin, best-selling author of Where We Belong, and a host of other books, found value in the analogy. According to Urist, Griffin asserted that:
“The first seed of a novel feels like a miracle, that early stage when the murky idea takes shape and characters slowly become real in my mind. Then I go through the enormous struggles— both physical and mental—and wonder if the book will ever really happen. Then, about nine months to a year later, the book is ‘born’ and I get to share it with the world.”
She wasn’t the only one. Urist also quotes best-selling author, Allison Winn Scotch, who wrote The Song Remains the Same and four other novels. In Scotch’s words:
“Writing a book is so similar to having a baby that it’s almost uncanny,” especially at the end of the process “when you just want to cross the finish line.”
So, now I know I’m not alone in making the connection between birthing a book and birthing a baby. What I found next was Sally Koslow’s post. She says:
“Writing a book is like giving birth to an elephant. A gestation period of approximately twenty-two months is followed by a baby that for a moment attracts glittering attention—readings, spiking Amazon.com ratings, and a shiny moment of admiration followed, soon enough, by someone else’s baby elephant.”
Whoa! I did not see that coming...a baby elephant. Having given birth to a couple of 8-pound human babies, at the end of 9 month pregnancies, there’s not much appeal to imagery of bigger babies that take even longer to produce. I’m not sure I would have had the guts to pursue the endeavor of writing a book—much less tackle the idea of spawning a series if that analogy had entered my mind early on.
While a surprising variant on the use of the birthing analogy, it’s not the most controversial issue I encountered. Far more stunning is the fact that some object to use of the analogy. They argue that writing a book is not nearly so messy or physically painful as childbirth. Nor does it produce the joys and challenges that motherhood bestows upon you for decades to follow. Melissa J. White points out:
“your book doesn’t think for itself, doesn’t talk back, doesn’t decide to wake up at dawn and bake a batch of butterscotch-bit scones, leaving two on a plate for you and the house smelling warm and lovely. No, your book isn’t generous or compassionate. Your book doesn’t bake for you.”
She goes on to add:
“A book doesn’t make you worry at 1 a.m. as you look out into the dark night hoping to see car headlights in the driveway.”
Tell me about it! Thank God I say, and I do get it. But that’s why it’s an analogy—a figurative reference and not a literal one to a creative process. A book is clearly an inanimate object. A tree, fallen unheard, in an empty forest unless, as Melissa J. White asserts, “someone else reads it and breathes life back into it.”
Harder to understand are objections to the birthing analogy because of its reference to female as nurturer. True, women writers bear the burdens of stereotyping and gender discrimination. Joanna Walsh who started the Readwomen2014 Twitter hashtag posts about issues women writers face.
“though women read more books than men, and female authors are published in comparable numbers, they are more easily overlooked: a smaller presence in literary journals both as reviewers, and the reviewed, they also account for fewer literary translations.”
That is only the tip of an iceberg, more the size of a glacier, lurking in the murky waters where women writers set sail. The debate surrounding so-called “women’s literature” has its roots in a longstanding quagmire of disdain about the “sentimental” or “domestic novel”.
Tangled in those roots are some of my childhood favorites: Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott, works by the Bronte sisters, Middlemarch by George Eliot, and even Jane Austen’s masterpieces.
The debate about the value of work by women, about women, rages on. Diane Meier, author of The Season of Second Chances, takes her lumps from critics after writing a book described as “contemporary and domestic”. She acknowledges the book is “very domestic.” What perturbs her is, not just the pigeon-holing of her work. She is dumbstruck when they find her book “surprisingly” intelligent and are amazed that a “book so domestic in tone might have been intended for—can you imagine—educated, intelligent readers.”
High art and the small struggles in women’s lives do not mix well, apparently, like oil and water. Women, who fear fat, have a love/hate thing with food, hide behind the latest fashions, makeup and spa treatments, struggle to find a place in the world, to marry the right man or free themselves from the wrong one, are still, too often, deemed to be inadequate protagonists. Their stories are too mundane to be told, and, supposedly, not the sort of subjects easily treated with wit and intelligence.
Meier suggests that it's about gender alright. She argues that a male writer, like Tom Wolfe, would be extolled for his attention to detail if he included, in the narrative of his protagonist’s life, minutia about clothing brands, shoes, accessories, and the like. In point of fact, he received great critical acclaim for Bonfire of the Vanities. The narrative about a bond-salesman who fancies himself a master of the universe, was chock full of such minutia. Right down to details about the man’s bloated household budget. Similar in so many ways to the ‘girly’ things found in women’s literature, or heaven forbid, so-called “chicklit’.
So, should we shy away from writing about women and their lives? Oh hell no. That flies in the face of first principles: Write what you know. I'm not trying to write the Great American Novel. I hope you have fun reading about murder and mayhem, and give a damn about what happens to my flawed, but resourceful heroine, Jessica Huntington. She gives as good as she gets when tangling with scumbags. Nobody tries harder than she does to solve the riddles of life, large and small.
Is there a risk of tripping over unresolved issues by resorting to the birth analogy in celebrating my latest book about a girl? I guess so. But, there is something so fundamentally compelling and powerful in the use of the analogy, that I’m going to risk it!
Happy Birthday to my new book: A DEAD SISTER!
Want to read what these women had to say? Check out their original posts!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-m...
http://www.berfrois.com/2014/01/joann...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobauri...
http://www.dizzysushi.com/2013/06/how...
http://www.more.com/reinvention-money...
March 19, 2014
Am Writing A DEAD SISTER: Just not exactly according to plan!
Okay, so I am working really hard to get the next book in the Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery series ready to publish. As the title implies, the book is about the death of a sister. You’ll have to read it to find out whose sister. If you already read the first book in the series, A DEAD HUSBAND, you’ll realize who it is right away, from the prologue. That’s getting posted to my website, soon, I hope.
Last night I was wrestling with the fact that I planned to have this book out by March 1st and here it is the middle of the month and I’m still futzing with it. I was all set to chastise myself, as writers are wont to do, when I thought “Give it a rest!” I’ve been writing for decades now. True most of that writing was nonfiction, or at least I meant for it to be, and now I’m writing mysteries. In all that time, there’s one thing I learned: everything always takes longer than we plan.
So why bother to have a plan? What’s the point in setting goals and having deadlines if we’re not going to meet them anyway? As President Eisenhower said, when readying for battle, “plans are useless, planning is indispensable.” Planning somehow makes things happen, even if not exactly on plan. I’m not sure how it works, but planning seemingly plucks an ephemeral element or idea out of thin air and turns it into something tangible. It’s like creating a mold to hold the molten liquid of inspiration. Without that mold, the liquid would spill out onto the ground and cool into an amorphous, unrecognizable blob, or perhaps, vaporize disappearing altogether.
Not that molds always work. Artists and artisans who use them will often test them first. Perhaps create a smaller model, or they may fill the mold, initially, with something less precious than the bronze or gold that will ultimately be used to realize their vision. If it doesn’t work they break the mold and start again. Builders sometimes have to do the same thing, hopefully before, but sometimes even after the cement gets poured. So, too, for manufacturers who work from models and molds, casting and recasting samples before bringing everything from Barbie dolls to cell phones to market.
That brings me to one of the most vexing aspects of planning. Especially for those of us inclined to be control freaks. Planning requires that we strike a delicate balance between firmness and flexibility. A plan, often in the form of an outline, sketch or story board, provides a framework to hold the words that pour out when we put pen to paper, or more likely these days, finger tips to keyboards. These plans, like molds, are designed to pin down our mad schemes and wild ideas long enough to give them form. But, we may not like what we see as that form is revealed, so we have to be willing to ‘break the mold’ and try again. That’s tough, in particular, if our plan also prescribes a time frame. Getting from that first draft to the last requires that we develop both discipline and pliancy, and a whole lot patience.
Worth it, according to Benjamin Franklin who claimed:“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” I agree. Without a plan, not much would get done. On the other hand, my heroine, Jessica Huntington, her well-planned life in tatters, would have something to say about that. She would remind us of the Scottish bard, Robert Burns’, poignant admonition that:“The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.” So true, Jessica, so true: “squeak, squeak.”
Drop by for a visit!
http://www.desertcitiesmystery.com
Last night I was wrestling with the fact that I planned to have this book out by March 1st and here it is the middle of the month and I’m still futzing with it. I was all set to chastise myself, as writers are wont to do, when I thought “Give it a rest!” I’ve been writing for decades now. True most of that writing was nonfiction, or at least I meant for it to be, and now I’m writing mysteries. In all that time, there’s one thing I learned: everything always takes longer than we plan.
So why bother to have a plan? What’s the point in setting goals and having deadlines if we’re not going to meet them anyway? As President Eisenhower said, when readying for battle, “plans are useless, planning is indispensable.” Planning somehow makes things happen, even if not exactly on plan. I’m not sure how it works, but planning seemingly plucks an ephemeral element or idea out of thin air and turns it into something tangible. It’s like creating a mold to hold the molten liquid of inspiration. Without that mold, the liquid would spill out onto the ground and cool into an amorphous, unrecognizable blob, or perhaps, vaporize disappearing altogether.
Not that molds always work. Artists and artisans who use them will often test them first. Perhaps create a smaller model, or they may fill the mold, initially, with something less precious than the bronze or gold that will ultimately be used to realize their vision. If it doesn’t work they break the mold and start again. Builders sometimes have to do the same thing, hopefully before, but sometimes even after the cement gets poured. So, too, for manufacturers who work from models and molds, casting and recasting samples before bringing everything from Barbie dolls to cell phones to market.
That brings me to one of the most vexing aspects of planning. Especially for those of us inclined to be control freaks. Planning requires that we strike a delicate balance between firmness and flexibility. A plan, often in the form of an outline, sketch or story board, provides a framework to hold the words that pour out when we put pen to paper, or more likely these days, finger tips to keyboards. These plans, like molds, are designed to pin down our mad schemes and wild ideas long enough to give them form. But, we may not like what we see as that form is revealed, so we have to be willing to ‘break the mold’ and try again. That’s tough, in particular, if our plan also prescribes a time frame. Getting from that first draft to the last requires that we develop both discipline and pliancy, and a whole lot patience.
Worth it, according to Benjamin Franklin who claimed:“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” I agree. Without a plan, not much would get done. On the other hand, my heroine, Jessica Huntington, her well-planned life in tatters, would have something to say about that. She would remind us of the Scottish bard, Robert Burns’, poignant admonition that:“The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.” So true, Jessica, so true: “squeak, squeak.”
Drop by for a visit!
http://www.desertcitiesmystery.com
January 30, 2014
HOW RICH IS TOO RICH?
“You can never be too rich or too thin.” That’s according to Wallis Simpson, an American divorcée who remarried and became the Duchess of Windsor. Buried too deeply in the past for many of us to remember or care, that marriage led her new husband, King Edward VIII, to abdicate the throne of England. The course of history changed by one man’s romantic attachment to “the woman I love.” Rather surprising that so enigmatic a figure as Wallis Simpson should have coined a phrase with such staying power.
Would most people agree with Ms. Simpson? I suppose they might with the “too thin” part, given the fanaticism that has swamped the conversation about obesity. Granted, occasionally some voice from the hinterland will raise a cry about a model or starlet in Hollywood who has fallen into the abyss of anorexia, but those cries are soon drowned out. Say what you will about the morbidly obese but apparently a lot of Americans find them compelling. Lured by the inveiglement of reality TV, millions flock to the latest episode of the “Biggest Loser.” They watch, in rapt fascination, as sadistic overlords torment the last group for whom there is no protection against persecution, even at recess on the playgrounds. My guess is that this shameful display will come to an end when some slick group of trial lawyers takes up the cause of folks injured or killed by following the “boot camp” strategies employed on the show. Of course, it’ll take a big, maybe even morbidly obese, settlement to drain the coffers filled by a show that rakes in something on the order of a$100 million a year. So much money!
Okay, so that brings me to the second issue—what about the “too rich” thing? That debate rages on as we still flounder around in eddies and whirlpools created by a Titanic-sized sinking of the U.S. economy. Did the excesses of “The 1%” take us to the brink of oblivion through the artifice of esoteric speculative investment derivatives like structured investment vehicles, collateralized debt obligations, and credit default swaps? Or was it the “irrational exuberance” of an overreaching, get-rich-quick-minded middle-class fueling a real estate bubble? Or did politicians push us over the edge by doling out mortgage guarantees to lower income homeowners ill-equipped to manage the true costs of owning such an asset? There’s plenty of blame to go around, but all the finger-pointing sure makes it hard to come up with a solution or a set of solutions that makes any sense.
As we continue treading water, we have yet to figure out how to prevent such massive economic disruptions. Case in point: a recent headline admonishes the soon-to-be ex fed chairman, Bernanke, for doing no more than Greenspan to manage the “bubble economy”, tsk-tsk. On his heels are mounting fears about a bubble or bubbles in currency markets around the world. Is there another crash and burn moment around the corner? Who knows, but it seems likely unless we can figure out how to set aside the trash talk and work together to rein in the forces that fuel bubbles, before they wreak havoc on us all. In the meantime the rest of the world will continue to ride the roller coaster with us, aggravating animosity already directed toward witlessly over-privileged Americans.
The heroine in my mystery novel series, Jessica Huntington, grapples with both issues in her efforts to right her world, which has gone haywire. She’s bedeviled by the fear of fat, even though she’s well within the bounds of what would have been regarded as normal weight a quarter century ago. Her husband’s thinner, younger mistress has put her on notice that she no longer measures up, somehow—is it that she’s not a size zero?
She has also begun to wonder about the limits of privilege, even as she throws herself, black AMEX card in hand, into “retail therapy” to cope with betrayal and disappointment in her 30-something body, her marriage and her career. She has all that privilege can buy: a late-model ‘bimmer’, designer goods, pampering, an elite education, and a multimillion dollar portfolio that survived the “Great Recession.” Yet, like the rest of us, she’s pressed to confront her vulnerability by things beyond her control, personal and political.
“Cry me a river,” you might say. “She’s rich, too rich.” Maybe she is. She fought about that very issue with her ex-husband, who was never satisfied with their riches. But there are folks all over the world saying the same thing about all of us Americans, seen as “rich” because we can take for granted clean water, flush toilets, heat, AC and refrigeration. And omg, our grocery stores are food palaces that would have been envied by kings in earlier centuries!
Our riches also extend to health care and welfare systems, as well as systems that provide for public safety, national defense, elections, and the rule of law. None are perfect by any stretch, nor are they equally accessible to all. But they do make it possible for us to go about, day-to-day, in a bubble of privileged civility.
Yet think how fragile a bubble is. As Jessica’s fight for her life turns into a knockdown, drag-out, physical battle she sees how thin the layer of civility is that enshrouds her privileged life. How thin is too thin, in that sense, too? Thin or not our protective bubble is there—for now. Jessica turns out to be a tough cookie, outwitting and fending off her assailants. When our privilege is put to the test, I only hope we’re all as tough and resourceful as Jessica Huntington.
Would most people agree with Ms. Simpson? I suppose they might with the “too thin” part, given the fanaticism that has swamped the conversation about obesity. Granted, occasionally some voice from the hinterland will raise a cry about a model or starlet in Hollywood who has fallen into the abyss of anorexia, but those cries are soon drowned out. Say what you will about the morbidly obese but apparently a lot of Americans find them compelling. Lured by the inveiglement of reality TV, millions flock to the latest episode of the “Biggest Loser.” They watch, in rapt fascination, as sadistic overlords torment the last group for whom there is no protection against persecution, even at recess on the playgrounds. My guess is that this shameful display will come to an end when some slick group of trial lawyers takes up the cause of folks injured or killed by following the “boot camp” strategies employed on the show. Of course, it’ll take a big, maybe even morbidly obese, settlement to drain the coffers filled by a show that rakes in something on the order of a$100 million a year. So much money!
Okay, so that brings me to the second issue—what about the “too rich” thing? That debate rages on as we still flounder around in eddies and whirlpools created by a Titanic-sized sinking of the U.S. economy. Did the excesses of “The 1%” take us to the brink of oblivion through the artifice of esoteric speculative investment derivatives like structured investment vehicles, collateralized debt obligations, and credit default swaps? Or was it the “irrational exuberance” of an overreaching, get-rich-quick-minded middle-class fueling a real estate bubble? Or did politicians push us over the edge by doling out mortgage guarantees to lower income homeowners ill-equipped to manage the true costs of owning such an asset? There’s plenty of blame to go around, but all the finger-pointing sure makes it hard to come up with a solution or a set of solutions that makes any sense.
As we continue treading water, we have yet to figure out how to prevent such massive economic disruptions. Case in point: a recent headline admonishes the soon-to-be ex fed chairman, Bernanke, for doing no more than Greenspan to manage the “bubble economy”, tsk-tsk. On his heels are mounting fears about a bubble or bubbles in currency markets around the world. Is there another crash and burn moment around the corner? Who knows, but it seems likely unless we can figure out how to set aside the trash talk and work together to rein in the forces that fuel bubbles, before they wreak havoc on us all. In the meantime the rest of the world will continue to ride the roller coaster with us, aggravating animosity already directed toward witlessly over-privileged Americans.
The heroine in my mystery novel series, Jessica Huntington, grapples with both issues in her efforts to right her world, which has gone haywire. She’s bedeviled by the fear of fat, even though she’s well within the bounds of what would have been regarded as normal weight a quarter century ago. Her husband’s thinner, younger mistress has put her on notice that she no longer measures up, somehow—is it that she’s not a size zero?
She has also begun to wonder about the limits of privilege, even as she throws herself, black AMEX card in hand, into “retail therapy” to cope with betrayal and disappointment in her 30-something body, her marriage and her career. She has all that privilege can buy: a late-model ‘bimmer’, designer goods, pampering, an elite education, and a multimillion dollar portfolio that survived the “Great Recession.” Yet, like the rest of us, she’s pressed to confront her vulnerability by things beyond her control, personal and political.
“Cry me a river,” you might say. “She’s rich, too rich.” Maybe she is. She fought about that very issue with her ex-husband, who was never satisfied with their riches. But there are folks all over the world saying the same thing about all of us Americans, seen as “rich” because we can take for granted clean water, flush toilets, heat, AC and refrigeration. And omg, our grocery stores are food palaces that would have been envied by kings in earlier centuries!
Our riches also extend to health care and welfare systems, as well as systems that provide for public safety, national defense, elections, and the rule of law. None are perfect by any stretch, nor are they equally accessible to all. But they do make it possible for us to go about, day-to-day, in a bubble of privileged civility.
Yet think how fragile a bubble is. As Jessica’s fight for her life turns into a knockdown, drag-out, physical battle she sees how thin the layer of civility is that enshrouds her privileged life. How thin is too thin, in that sense, too? Thin or not our protective bubble is there—for now. Jessica turns out to be a tough cookie, outwitting and fending off her assailants. When our privilege is put to the test, I only hope we’re all as tough and resourceful as Jessica Huntington.
January 13, 2014
The mystery of goodness
Why we love mysteries is no mystery—life is full of them. Every day is brimming with conundrums, problems, puzzles and dilemmas. Pondering life’s mysteries is just what we do as a species imbued with the capacity to see ourselves reflectively and in a larger context. That context is often daunting—big, alright, and more complex than we can ever fully grasp. You might think the enormity of the challenge we face each morning would send us scurrying back to bed, eyes shut tightly, covers pulled up over our heads. Jessica Huntington, the heroine in my novel, A DEAD HUSBAND, thinks about that as she wakes to the enigmas in her privileged, but fractured life. She struggles with life’s mysteries, but for the most part, doesn’t let them weigh her down—nor do we.
Humans are a game little species, daring to face down the mystery of navigating our mortality in a world fraught with joy and sorrow. Bold and sassy, we shout, “Bring it on!” Dangle a riddle in front of us and we’re like cats watching a string wriggle or a feather flutter: fascinated and held in suspense until we rear up on our hind legs and pounce on the solution! Scientists among us, amateur and professional alike, pose questions, create hypotheses and research everything. How do things work (or not work) the way they do? News broadcasters and talk show hosts ponder with us, urging us to look at what happened today. How did this happen? Why did he say this or why did she do that? And we ask ourselves: Omg, why on earth did I do this or say that—again?
Riddle-makers as well as riddle-solvers, we embellish the world around us, energetically creating new mysteries to entice and perplex. I’m not just talking about the mystery writers among us.. Comedians write jokes—tiny mysteries with a punch line—and we laugh uproariously (when we get them), tiny mystery solved! We watch game shows and “reality” TV, play video games, do crosswords and Sudoku.
One of our favorite mysteries is: who will win? We play, or more likely, watch sports. Millions, mesmerized by a line-up of large beefy men setting upon one another with a small ball of one kind or another, shriek for them to solve the mystery. It’s not just who will win, but how will this year’s team win the Super Bowl? Will the runner at the Boston Marathon set a new record or a diver in the Olympics work in one more half gainer before slicing cleanly into the water? We create the games, set up the rules, and then watch as the mystery unfolds and we get our answer.
Perhaps all of this mystery-creating is a form of exercise—working out our “ponder-this chops,” so that when we are faced with a new challenge, not of our making, we’re ready. Maybe all the rule-making and game-playing is a great act of hope that the universe is governed by rules that can make our fate more manageable—if we can only divine and live by those rules. Perhaps someday we will even outwit the limits of our own mortality—win the game of life!
If this is a fundamental character arc for members of our species, it underscores one of the biggest mysteries of all: the mystery of goodness. All the tender mercies and grand gestures we bestow on one another. Those are as mysterious as anything else we do, considering the existential context in which we humans must make do. Where the hell does our goodness come from? Whether it is natural or supernatural in origin, it is a remarkable thing to see. Perhaps that is the greatest reward from all our daily ponderings and pursuits: the goodness of mystery is, ultimately, what it reveals about the mystery of goodness.
Find out more about my mystery series at http://www.desertcitiesmystery.com
Humans are a game little species, daring to face down the mystery of navigating our mortality in a world fraught with joy and sorrow. Bold and sassy, we shout, “Bring it on!” Dangle a riddle in front of us and we’re like cats watching a string wriggle or a feather flutter: fascinated and held in suspense until we rear up on our hind legs and pounce on the solution! Scientists among us, amateur and professional alike, pose questions, create hypotheses and research everything. How do things work (or not work) the way they do? News broadcasters and talk show hosts ponder with us, urging us to look at what happened today. How did this happen? Why did he say this or why did she do that? And we ask ourselves: Omg, why on earth did I do this or say that—again?
Riddle-makers as well as riddle-solvers, we embellish the world around us, energetically creating new mysteries to entice and perplex. I’m not just talking about the mystery writers among us.. Comedians write jokes—tiny mysteries with a punch line—and we laugh uproariously (when we get them), tiny mystery solved! We watch game shows and “reality” TV, play video games, do crosswords and Sudoku.
One of our favorite mysteries is: who will win? We play, or more likely, watch sports. Millions, mesmerized by a line-up of large beefy men setting upon one another with a small ball of one kind or another, shriek for them to solve the mystery. It’s not just who will win, but how will this year’s team win the Super Bowl? Will the runner at the Boston Marathon set a new record or a diver in the Olympics work in one more half gainer before slicing cleanly into the water? We create the games, set up the rules, and then watch as the mystery unfolds and we get our answer.
Perhaps all of this mystery-creating is a form of exercise—working out our “ponder-this chops,” so that when we are faced with a new challenge, not of our making, we’re ready. Maybe all the rule-making and game-playing is a great act of hope that the universe is governed by rules that can make our fate more manageable—if we can only divine and live by those rules. Perhaps someday we will even outwit the limits of our own mortality—win the game of life!
If this is a fundamental character arc for members of our species, it underscores one of the biggest mysteries of all: the mystery of goodness. All the tender mercies and grand gestures we bestow on one another. Those are as mysterious as anything else we do, considering the existential context in which we humans must make do. Where the hell does our goodness come from? Whether it is natural or supernatural in origin, it is a remarkable thing to see. Perhaps that is the greatest reward from all our daily ponderings and pursuits: the goodness of mystery is, ultimately, what it reveals about the mystery of goodness.
Find out more about my mystery series at http://www.desertcitiesmystery.com
January 6, 2014
I DANGLE MY PARTICIPLES
I dangle my participles. There, I admit it. And it’s not the only way I misplace modifiers. How do I know this? My sweet, long-suffering sister, who is voluntarily editing the second book in my Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery series, told me. She brought the manuscript with her and worked on it during our Christmas-in-Hawaii family vacation.
The middle child of five, she is a smarty. At a young age, she got it: in our family of origin, the ethos went a step further than children should be seen and not heard, and she perfected the art of invisibility. Today, a keeper of the peace and master of tact, she still prefers understatement and is reluctant to confront. Smiling sweetly as she looked at me over the top of her reading glasses, all she said was “You do get this dangling participle thing, right?” “Sure,” I replied. I was suddenly inundated by a vision of her handiwork on A DEAD HUSBAND—so many dangling participles and, oh, all those misplaced modifiers. The woman had saved me from so many inappropriate, misguided sentences. Any that remain are despite her best efforts to find them and fix them—hoping beyond hope that I wouldn’t introduce new ones as I “tweaked” the edited manuscript!
“But, I was more careful writing this second book,” I thought. Back home in the California desert, when I could muster the courage, I took a look at the Prologue to book two: A DEAD SISTER. There it was! Jumping right off page one—a dangling participle. I felt embarrassed then I thought about our family vacation in Kona. If only all I had done was dangle a few participles.
The oldest child of the five, I was born with a megaphone in my hands and an attitude to go with it. “I’ll show you ‘seen and not heard’—harrumph!” I shrieked as I challenged, defied and drew fire. That’s all half a century behind me now. If only I could learn to keep the peace, master tact, and avoid confrontation—in other words, shut up.
Okay so 2013 had been a bad year. Actually, the negative mojo hammered away longer than that. It had been rough going since mid-2012 when what was perhaps one of the best years in my life suddenly morphed into the worst. No, I didn’t catch a feckless husband in flagrante delicto with a blond, as my heroine, Jessica Huntington, did—but events were devastating, nevertheless. I won’t go into detail here about what happened, because I’m not wasting time feeling sorry for myself. Don’t feel sorry for my husband, either—he’s very much alive and just like me: oldest child, born with a megaphone in hand and an attitude.
Through it all, like Jessica’s beloved surrogate mother Bernadette, my sister was there listening to me as I ranted and raved. I call it “processing.” The problem about all that processing, with megaphone and attitude is that you often say things that have more than the modifiers misplaced. I’m lucky to have a sister in my life to offer comfort and peace, and to love me even when I dangle my participles, among other things. Thanks sis, I love you, too!
If you need a little help with your misplaced modifiers Grammar Girl can help, btw... http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/educ...
The middle child of five, she is a smarty. At a young age, she got it: in our family of origin, the ethos went a step further than children should be seen and not heard, and she perfected the art of invisibility. Today, a keeper of the peace and master of tact, she still prefers understatement and is reluctant to confront. Smiling sweetly as she looked at me over the top of her reading glasses, all she said was “You do get this dangling participle thing, right?” “Sure,” I replied. I was suddenly inundated by a vision of her handiwork on A DEAD HUSBAND—so many dangling participles and, oh, all those misplaced modifiers. The woman had saved me from so many inappropriate, misguided sentences. Any that remain are despite her best efforts to find them and fix them—hoping beyond hope that I wouldn’t introduce new ones as I “tweaked” the edited manuscript!
“But, I was more careful writing this second book,” I thought. Back home in the California desert, when I could muster the courage, I took a look at the Prologue to book two: A DEAD SISTER. There it was! Jumping right off page one—a dangling participle. I felt embarrassed then I thought about our family vacation in Kona. If only all I had done was dangle a few participles.
The oldest child of the five, I was born with a megaphone in my hands and an attitude to go with it. “I’ll show you ‘seen and not heard’—harrumph!” I shrieked as I challenged, defied and drew fire. That’s all half a century behind me now. If only I could learn to keep the peace, master tact, and avoid confrontation—in other words, shut up.
Okay so 2013 had been a bad year. Actually, the negative mojo hammered away longer than that. It had been rough going since mid-2012 when what was perhaps one of the best years in my life suddenly morphed into the worst. No, I didn’t catch a feckless husband in flagrante delicto with a blond, as my heroine, Jessica Huntington, did—but events were devastating, nevertheless. I won’t go into detail here about what happened, because I’m not wasting time feeling sorry for myself. Don’t feel sorry for my husband, either—he’s very much alive and just like me: oldest child, born with a megaphone in hand and an attitude.
Through it all, like Jessica’s beloved surrogate mother Bernadette, my sister was there listening to me as I ranted and raved. I call it “processing.” The problem about all that processing, with megaphone and attitude is that you often say things that have more than the modifiers misplaced. I’m lucky to have a sister in my life to offer comfort and peace, and to love me even when I dangle my participles, among other things. Thanks sis, I love you, too!
If you need a little help with your misplaced modifiers Grammar Girl can help, btw... http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/educ...
December 30, 2013
New Year Resolution: Make An Ass Of Myself At Least Once In 2014
WHY? Thought you’d never ask! If you talk to my friends and family they’ll tell you it’s not much of a resolution—I’m likely to do it anyway and in a year’s time way more than once.
How? Let me count the ways! I’m not just talking about the toilet-paper-on-the-shoe, the unzipped-fly, or the back-of-the-skirt-stuck-in-the-pantyhose kind of moments. Those qualify as ‘make like an ass’ moments, for sure. But I can do so much worse. Like my heroine, Jessica Huntington, I routinely get in over my head—stew and plan, plan and stew, then rush in where fools fear to tread.
In such a rush my mouth often gets way out ahead of the rest of me—blurting some deep dark secret, asking some impertinent question, or making a well-meant but off-the-wall suggestion to someone in my path. I am absolutely brilliant when it comes to jumping to the wrong conclusion, taking off on a wild goose chase, or jousting with windmills.
I don’t know about you but I carry around a lot of fear about such moments. No one wants to get caught looking stupid, exposed, or feeling a breeze up their backside. And, you’re probably no fonder than I am of making other people feel uncomfortable, either because they have caught me in an awkward moment or have become an unwitting victim of some faux pas I have committed in the act of being an ass.
So why make it one of my New Year’s Resolutions? Well in part, why not embrace the inevitable? It’s going to happen—guaranteed. Maybe if I’m not so squeamish about being an ass I’ll be better able to roll with it when it does happen and can help those caught up in the moment with me have a good, hearty laugh about it. And, perhaps, I’ll be better able to support others who find themselves in a similar situation.
There’s another thing though. Mindfully contemplating that I will make an ass of myself evokes an intriguing dissonance. It reminds me how often in the past when I have been a complete and total ass it’s because I have been pushed to stretch or change. A fish out of water, flopping around on the muddy river bank, I do something outrageous. Confronted by a challenge that has flung me way out of my comfort zone what do I do? I make a complete ass of myself. Years ago Anthony De Mello noted in his book Awareness there’s something liberating in that.
“That’s the most liberating, wonderful thing in the world when you openly admit you’re an ass...Disarmed, everybody has to be disarmed. In the final liberation, I’m an ass, you’re an ass.”
Okay, so maybe it’s not so much that I make an ass of myself but that for a short time, at least, I can see it. When I make a spectacle of myself and others witness it we are bound together in awkward recognition of our vulnerability—disarmed and connected in a way that’s not possible when we all have our game faces on.
In 2014 I will make a complete and total ass of myself at least once! It’s not my only resolution for the year but it’s one I expect I’ll keep.
How? Let me count the ways! I’m not just talking about the toilet-paper-on-the-shoe, the unzipped-fly, or the back-of-the-skirt-stuck-in-the-pantyhose kind of moments. Those qualify as ‘make like an ass’ moments, for sure. But I can do so much worse. Like my heroine, Jessica Huntington, I routinely get in over my head—stew and plan, plan and stew, then rush in where fools fear to tread.
In such a rush my mouth often gets way out ahead of the rest of me—blurting some deep dark secret, asking some impertinent question, or making a well-meant but off-the-wall suggestion to someone in my path. I am absolutely brilliant when it comes to jumping to the wrong conclusion, taking off on a wild goose chase, or jousting with windmills.
I don’t know about you but I carry around a lot of fear about such moments. No one wants to get caught looking stupid, exposed, or feeling a breeze up their backside. And, you’re probably no fonder than I am of making other people feel uncomfortable, either because they have caught me in an awkward moment or have become an unwitting victim of some faux pas I have committed in the act of being an ass.
So why make it one of my New Year’s Resolutions? Well in part, why not embrace the inevitable? It’s going to happen—guaranteed. Maybe if I’m not so squeamish about being an ass I’ll be better able to roll with it when it does happen and can help those caught up in the moment with me have a good, hearty laugh about it. And, perhaps, I’ll be better able to support others who find themselves in a similar situation.
There’s another thing though. Mindfully contemplating that I will make an ass of myself evokes an intriguing dissonance. It reminds me how often in the past when I have been a complete and total ass it’s because I have been pushed to stretch or change. A fish out of water, flopping around on the muddy river bank, I do something outrageous. Confronted by a challenge that has flung me way out of my comfort zone what do I do? I make a complete ass of myself. Years ago Anthony De Mello noted in his book Awareness there’s something liberating in that.
“That’s the most liberating, wonderful thing in the world when you openly admit you’re an ass...Disarmed, everybody has to be disarmed. In the final liberation, I’m an ass, you’re an ass.”
Okay, so maybe it’s not so much that I make an ass of myself but that for a short time, at least, I can see it. When I make a spectacle of myself and others witness it we are bound together in awkward recognition of our vulnerability—disarmed and connected in a way that’s not possible when we all have our game faces on.
In 2014 I will make a complete and total ass of myself at least once! It’s not my only resolution for the year but it’s one I expect I’ll keep.
