K.M. Updike's Blog, page 13
August 4, 2015
Would you like to read The Life and Death of Terry Dodd . . . For free?
So it’s almost been a month since I published my first book on Kindle! One thing that helps sell books is reviews. Today my book is Free on Story Cartel where you can download it for free in exchange for your honest review. But it's only available for two weeks. You can sign up for Story Cartel for free and you'll be eligible to win new e-readers, gift cards, and print books!
Follow this link to download your free copy: https://storycartel.com/bo…/the-life-and-death-of-terry-dodd
Have a lovely, summery day full of warmth and sunshine!
Love, Kayla
July 30, 2015
Favorite Books: The Always and Forever Edition
When I was writing The Life and Death of Terry Dodd so much of it came from my young adult and childhood experiences, and the books I read.
So many of the books I love are because of the magic they held for me as a child and still hold for me. And some of them go into "mood" book categories, which require a certain "mood" to want to read them.
I set out to write down a list of books that would go on my "Ultimate Favorite Books" list, high school to adult hood. Books I will love for eternity, that I will always be "in the mood" for, no matter what.
It came out surprisingly short.
In no particular order:
Margaret Craven is quite honestly the most beautiful descriptive writer I have ever read. This book only nurtured my growing desire to explore the Pacific Northwest.
Persuasion, by Jane Austen
My favorite Jane Austen. Always.
Sarah, Plain and Tall, Patricia MacLachlan
Loved it when I was a girl. Love it still.
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
My sister and I, one day in early fall, we make a pie, we make tea, set out the cream and sugar, and we watch the animated film of this book. It's like the beginning of autumn celebration for us. But nothing ever compares to the book.
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
I only read this book, the entire thing, for the first time last year. But the March girls have been an inspiration and a hallmark to both me and my sisters all our lives.
Savage Sam, Fred Gipson
Daddy read this to us, six bright eyed kids tumbling over chairs and couches, listening to the Texas drawl and Travis and all his fifteen-year-old courageous boy-man bravery. Loving dogs goes way back in my family, too.
The Hundred Dresses, Eleanor Estes
For all the shy little girls out there who are artists at heart and are too afraid to share it.
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
I think Father Christmas did almost die when the world lost Charles Dickens.
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
If ever I wanted to write a book, I decided I wanted it be like this one.
One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp
My mama said this book saved her life. And looking back, I think it saved mine, too. More like, it was a passage God used to turn hundreds of thousands of lives around to finding beauty.
Anne of Green Gables (the series), by L.M. Montgomery
Dear, wonderful Anne. She's really loved by this family of dreamers I live with.
And then there are some of which I have never read the book personally but know the stories so well! Books like Rascal and Summer of the Monkeys, Bridge to Terabithia.
What are your favorite books? The books you read when you're curled up in bed, sick with a cold, or just feel like reading all the time because you love them?
So many of the books I love are because of the magic they held for me as a child and still hold for me. And some of them go into "mood" book categories, which require a certain "mood" to want to read them.
I set out to write down a list of books that would go on my "Ultimate Favorite Books" list, high school to adult hood. Books I will love for eternity, that I will always be "in the mood" for, no matter what.
It came out surprisingly short.
In no particular order:
Margaret Craven is quite honestly the most beautiful descriptive writer I have ever read. This book only nurtured my growing desire to explore the Pacific Northwest.
Persuasion, by Jane Austen
My favorite Jane Austen. Always.
Sarah, Plain and Tall, Patricia MacLachlan
Loved it when I was a girl. Love it still.
The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
My sister and I, one day in early fall, we make a pie, we make tea, set out the cream and sugar, and we watch the animated film of this book. It's like the beginning of autumn celebration for us. But nothing ever compares to the book.
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
I only read this book, the entire thing, for the first time last year. But the March girls have been an inspiration and a hallmark to both me and my sisters all our lives.
Savage Sam, Fred Gipson
Daddy read this to us, six bright eyed kids tumbling over chairs and couches, listening to the Texas drawl and Travis and all his fifteen-year-old courageous boy-man bravery. Loving dogs goes way back in my family, too.
The Hundred Dresses, Eleanor Estes
For all the shy little girls out there who are artists at heart and are too afraid to share it.
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
I think Father Christmas did almost die when the world lost Charles Dickens.
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
If ever I wanted to write a book, I decided I wanted it be like this one.
One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp
My mama said this book saved her life. And looking back, I think it saved mine, too. More like, it was a passage God used to turn hundreds of thousands of lives around to finding beauty.
Anne of Green Gables (the series), by L.M. Montgomery
Dear, wonderful Anne. She's really loved by this family of dreamers I live with.
And then there are some of which I have never read the book personally but know the stories so well! Books like Rascal and Summer of the Monkeys, Bridge to Terabithia.
What are your favorite books? The books you read when you're curled up in bed, sick with a cold, or just feel like reading all the time because you love them?
July 20, 2015
How to know what you're fighting for
It was just Dawna and I, divided by a shower curtain, with dead Marines and ISIS buzzing in our heads, and leaving a home of ten years, and Mama maybe not getting a garden, and Ethan's sad, sad heart.
And I don't know how she understood, but I said this out loud, trying to remind myself, to not lose hope, trying to keep on trusting, to not go insane:
"There's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for." Just said it out loud, 'cause I felt like Frodo and wanted to say, "What are we holding onto? Why must we do it day after day? Why can't it just be over?"
She didn't miss a beat.
She knew just what to say, always knows just what to say.
"And how do we fight? It's the little acts of kindness, love, that keeps the darkness at bay."
And I don't know how she understood, but I said this out loud, trying to remind myself, to not lose hope, trying to keep on trusting, to not go insane:
"There's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for." Just said it out loud, 'cause I felt like Frodo and wanted to say, "What are we holding onto? Why must we do it day after day? Why can't it just be over?"
She didn't miss a beat.
She knew just what to say, always knows just what to say.
"And how do we fight? It's the little acts of kindness, love, that keeps the darkness at bay."
July 14, 2015
Mama's Room
When the light still shone from their bedroom past ten o'clock, it meant my mama was still up reading.
Mama's door always stood open at night. 'Cept when company came and stayed the night.
I would stand in the kitchen looking at her light, the chair backs at the table standing before it, black slits against the glow.
The light from the stove clock behind me casting my faint shadow on the walls and refrigerator.
And I would just stand there looking. Not thinking of anything.
Sometimes that light and her reading went on a long time. It's home, Mama's light on at the end of the hall. There. For me.
She's probably the first person who taught me to love stories.
Happy Birthday to my heroine, Mama.
Mama's door always stood open at night. 'Cept when company came and stayed the night.
I would stand in the kitchen looking at her light, the chair backs at the table standing before it, black slits against the glow.
The light from the stove clock behind me casting my faint shadow on the walls and refrigerator.
And I would just stand there looking. Not thinking of anything.
Sometimes that light and her reading went on a long time. It's home, Mama's light on at the end of the hall. There. For me.
She's probably the first person who taught me to love stories.
Happy Birthday to my heroine, Mama.
July 13, 2015
First chapter of The Life and Death of Terry Dodd + audio file
Hello Monday!
I don't know about you, but I think I'm ready to get back into making some art and writing and normal blogging. How does that sound?
But before we begin, after some thought I decided I would like to make the first chapter of Terry Dodd available to everyone, not just my newsletter subscribers. I would like to concentrate everyone just as much love and attention as I am able.
So below is the first chapter of my story, now available for purchase on Amazon. And just in case you don't have time to read it, there's an audio file to listen to while you work, fold laundry, sweep the kitchen. And it's read by my mama.
When I was a little girl, she would gather all six of us kids into the living room in the afternoons and read us books. At night Daddy would read to us, and then sometimes Mama would come into the bedroom I shared with lil sis and read us American Girl books, among other things. My mama's been a story narrator for all of 20 years and more. She's my heroine.
Sometimes the books Mama and Daddy read weren't exactly thrilling to us kids, so when five of us shared a loft my big sister would read us Trixie Beldon after we went to bed. The loft was literally in the top of the house and I couldn't even stand up all the way. We each had our own mattress and we stretched out on our beds on the floor and listened to stories about '50s kids, cool night breezes fluttering in through the windows.
Chapter One Terry Dodd lived next door. And I liked him.
In the mornings he walked outside, a cup of coffee steaming. I watched him through the door on our porch—the one that leaked when it rained, the screen torn at the top. Dad always said he needed to fix it.
He looked like Clint Eastwood. Not Dad, Terry Dodd.
Bambi said he was at least thirty years older than us.
“Joann! Are you up yet?”
I opened one eye, the other buried against my pillow. Warm sun streamed past my curtains and onto my back. I looked up at my door, opened a crack. Dad sat at the table, reading The Hobbit and drinking his coffee.
I curled into a ball and rolled the covers up under my chin.
“Joann!” Dad called. “It’s past seven.”
Terry Dodd had lived there for as long as I could remember. In the white house with peeling paint. When I was little, I used to sit under our porch and watch him across the yard as I ate an orange. He and his friend Earl, the one with the cap on backwards, lying down in the dirt, taking wrenches to the 1953 black Chrysler Windsor on ramps in the drive.
“Joann!”
I lifted my face off the pillows. “I thought grown-ups believed in summer vacation, too!”
Dad leaned back in his chair and grinned at me, his sparse black hair combed over his head. “Only until 7:18 a.m.”
“Mrs. Caller will be expecting you around eight, Joann,” Mom said from the kitchen. I couldn’t see her. “She wanted to show you around the house before Monday.”
That Windsor still sat out in his drive. I was too shy to ask what parts he still needed.
“Andre! Julie! Wake up your sister!”
A knobby knee dug into my hip. I jerked to the side, and fingers poked my ribs. I screamed with laughter and pain at the same time and twisted inside the covers as hands attacked from all directions.
Terry Dodd didn’t live with anybody. He’d buried his dad back when I was ten. He didn’t come home with anybody. But he got home late on weekends, slamming his truck door and stumbling up to his house. Sometimes his Budweiser cans blew into our yard, and Andre and Dwayne threw them away.
A body landed square in the middle of my back, and the air whooshed out of me.
“Oh! Larry!” I cried. “Okay, that’s enough! I gotta get up.” I heaved up from underneath the quilt, and children tumbled off the bed, whooping and yelling.
“Time to eat, everyone!” Mom called.
I stepped over Larry’s fat little body on the carpet and tore my robe away from Dwayne.
“Do we have to eat everybody?” Andre asked, following me into the kitchen. It smelled warm and sweet. Like breakfast.
“I thought you were making French toast!” said Julie. Her pigtails flopped as she traipsed in single file behind Andre and Dwayne, Larry pattering in after them. “Everybody doesn’t sound very appetizing!”
Mom faked a grin as she slapped French toast onto the platter.
I sat down beside Dad and looked out the living room window.
Terry Dodd held that cup of coffee in his hand, three fingers around the handle.
“Grace, Julie,” Dad said as chairs scraped linoleum and everyone else sat down.
I took his hand, and we all bowed our heads as Julie whispered out her prayer.: : : : : : “I’ll do the dishes when I get back!” I called.
“I can do them,” Mom said from the bedroom.
“Mom, it’s the 70s! California.” I grinned at her as she stepped out of the bedroom, laundry in her arms. “Moms have their personal dishwashers these days.”
“The electric kind, dear.” She dumped the armload into a hamper, water stains on the front of her dress.
“I am electric,” I said. “You send me to bed to recharge every night and—feed me breakfast every morning.” I kissed her smiling cheek.
“That really doesn't go with the electric theme!” she said as the screen door slammed behind me.
As I hurried down the steps in the morning light, Terry walked to his truck next door, and I shut my mouth, tight, staring straight ahead.
Crossing the street, blown over with California dust, I stepped up the metal steps in front of the faded blue house, squinting through the screen as I knocked on the door.
Terry Dodd's pickup roared to life, and I glanced over my shoulder at it, squeezing my fists.
“Ah! Joann!” Veronica Caller pushed the door open, a little chunk of a baby boy on her hip. “Please, you come in!” Mrs. Caller said. “You well this morning?” I stepped inside onto linoleum like ours, brown and white and flowered.
“Uh, yes. I am well. How are you, ma’am?”
“Yes. We are well.” Veronica smiled, nodding. “This Michael.” She hefted the little boy higher onto her hip. “He seis–six months. Very good boy.”
“He’s adorable. So smiley!” I wiggled his foot, and his mouth opened wide in a grin.
“Ah! Yes! Happy all the time.”
“He looks like he loves to eat.”
“Oh, sí! Loves to eat! Sí. Yes!” She brushed long black hair from her shoulder. “Come in, please. This way to the kitchen.”
I glanced outside once more before following her, and Terry Dodd lifted the hood on his pickup, looking in at the whirring engine.
“And how old you are?”
“Fourteen.”
“Ah, yes! You mother tell me; I forget. Jenita!” Mrs. Caller called, saying something in Spanish as little feet pattered across the floor in the living room.
A dark-haired little girl hurried to her mother and leaned back against her legs, staring up at me with big blue eyes.
“This Jennifer. She two years. And you no have to worry—she speak Español and English, but she love to get all words mixed up, so this word English, this word Español. Say hola, Jennifer.”
Jennifer hid a smile behind her thumbs as she bit into her nails.
“Hola,” she whispered.
“Hola,” I said. “It’s good you know English and Spanish. Can you help me brush up on them during the summer?”
Jennifer grinned and looked up at her mother. Mrs. Caller leaned down and kissed her on top of the head.
“Yes, you big muchacha, so you help. Would you like to see house, Joann?”
They led me through the living room. It lay bare but for a chair and a wooden rocker placed in front of a small TV set and a tall lamp in the far corner.
In the bedroom, just off the living room, Mrs. Caller said, “Michael sleep in crib, and Jenita no wake him, so she take nap on our bed.”
Jennifer climbed up and rolled around on the waterbed, the water sloshing at the sides.
Mrs. Caller took me around to the back, to the little yard with a tricycle and a doll. Jennifer climbed onto the tricycle and pedaled as fast as she could to the far end of the yard and back.
In the kitchen Veronica showed me the food, how to make a bottle with the formula, and where they kept medicine.
“And you eat lunch here,” Mrs. Caller said. “No have to bring lunch. We have plenty food, so you eat here.”
“Oh, thank you, ma’am.”
“And seventy-five cents an hour is okay?” I nodded.
“Yes. That’s great.”
Jennifer pulled at my hand.
“Come see. I show you my treasure.”
I trailed along after her into the living room. But as she dangled a purple beaded purse in my face I caught a glimpse of Terry Dodd through the window, still bending over his truck engine.
“Do you know him?” Mrs. Caller asked. “He get Steve the truck job and teach him how to drive, and he find this home for us, too. He is good friend to Steve.” She smiled out the window. “Do you know him?”
I looked away. “Oh, no. Not really.”
I’d never spoken a single word to Terry Dodd in all my life. Even when I was nine and I fell off my bike and scraped my knee on the pavement right at the bottom of his drive. He looked up from the empty gas cans outside his garage, a cigarette between his lips. I looked up wild-eyed, knee throbbing, as he squinted at me.
“You all right?”
I'd jumped as if a bomb had exploded and run home, leaving my bike in a pile in his drive, blood squishing out down my shin. My bike had leaned against the porch as I limped out to school the next morning.
“So you can come Monday morning to start, yes?” Mrs. Caller asked.
“Oh. Yes,” I said, turning from the window. “Monday will be great.”
“And three day week, eight to three?”
“Perfect.”
“Good! Gracias!”
Terry Dodd wore blue jeans and a white t-shirt most days and sometimes a white straw cowboy hat with aviator sunglasses pulled down to the end of his nose. And Bambi kept telling me how old he looked.
It wasn’t how he looked. It was the way he just plain did things and never needed to say a word while doing it.
I don't know about you, but I think I'm ready to get back into making some art and writing and normal blogging. How does that sound?
But before we begin, after some thought I decided I would like to make the first chapter of Terry Dodd available to everyone, not just my newsletter subscribers. I would like to concentrate everyone just as much love and attention as I am able.
So below is the first chapter of my story, now available for purchase on Amazon. And just in case you don't have time to read it, there's an audio file to listen to while you work, fold laundry, sweep the kitchen. And it's read by my mama.
When I was a little girl, she would gather all six of us kids into the living room in the afternoons and read us books. At night Daddy would read to us, and then sometimes Mama would come into the bedroom I shared with lil sis and read us American Girl books, among other things. My mama's been a story narrator for all of 20 years and more. She's my heroine.
Sometimes the books Mama and Daddy read weren't exactly thrilling to us kids, so when five of us shared a loft my big sister would read us Trixie Beldon after we went to bed. The loft was literally in the top of the house and I couldn't even stand up all the way. We each had our own mattress and we stretched out on our beds on the floor and listened to stories about '50s kids, cool night breezes fluttering in through the windows.
Chapter One Terry Dodd lived next door. And I liked him.
In the mornings he walked outside, a cup of coffee steaming. I watched him through the door on our porch—the one that leaked when it rained, the screen torn at the top. Dad always said he needed to fix it.
He looked like Clint Eastwood. Not Dad, Terry Dodd.
Bambi said he was at least thirty years older than us.
“Joann! Are you up yet?”
I opened one eye, the other buried against my pillow. Warm sun streamed past my curtains and onto my back. I looked up at my door, opened a crack. Dad sat at the table, reading The Hobbit and drinking his coffee.
I curled into a ball and rolled the covers up under my chin.
“Joann!” Dad called. “It’s past seven.”
Terry Dodd had lived there for as long as I could remember. In the white house with peeling paint. When I was little, I used to sit under our porch and watch him across the yard as I ate an orange. He and his friend Earl, the one with the cap on backwards, lying down in the dirt, taking wrenches to the 1953 black Chrysler Windsor on ramps in the drive.
“Joann!”
I lifted my face off the pillows. “I thought grown-ups believed in summer vacation, too!”
Dad leaned back in his chair and grinned at me, his sparse black hair combed over his head. “Only until 7:18 a.m.”
“Mrs. Caller will be expecting you around eight, Joann,” Mom said from the kitchen. I couldn’t see her. “She wanted to show you around the house before Monday.”
That Windsor still sat out in his drive. I was too shy to ask what parts he still needed.
“Andre! Julie! Wake up your sister!”
A knobby knee dug into my hip. I jerked to the side, and fingers poked my ribs. I screamed with laughter and pain at the same time and twisted inside the covers as hands attacked from all directions.
Terry Dodd didn’t live with anybody. He’d buried his dad back when I was ten. He didn’t come home with anybody. But he got home late on weekends, slamming his truck door and stumbling up to his house. Sometimes his Budweiser cans blew into our yard, and Andre and Dwayne threw them away.
A body landed square in the middle of my back, and the air whooshed out of me.
“Oh! Larry!” I cried. “Okay, that’s enough! I gotta get up.” I heaved up from underneath the quilt, and children tumbled off the bed, whooping and yelling.
“Time to eat, everyone!” Mom called.
I stepped over Larry’s fat little body on the carpet and tore my robe away from Dwayne.
“Do we have to eat everybody?” Andre asked, following me into the kitchen. It smelled warm and sweet. Like breakfast.
“I thought you were making French toast!” said Julie. Her pigtails flopped as she traipsed in single file behind Andre and Dwayne, Larry pattering in after them. “Everybody doesn’t sound very appetizing!”
Mom faked a grin as she slapped French toast onto the platter.
I sat down beside Dad and looked out the living room window.
Terry Dodd held that cup of coffee in his hand, three fingers around the handle.
“Grace, Julie,” Dad said as chairs scraped linoleum and everyone else sat down.
I took his hand, and we all bowed our heads as Julie whispered out her prayer.: : : : : : “I’ll do the dishes when I get back!” I called.
“I can do them,” Mom said from the bedroom.
“Mom, it’s the 70s! California.” I grinned at her as she stepped out of the bedroom, laundry in her arms. “Moms have their personal dishwashers these days.”
“The electric kind, dear.” She dumped the armload into a hamper, water stains on the front of her dress.
“I am electric,” I said. “You send me to bed to recharge every night and—feed me breakfast every morning.” I kissed her smiling cheek.
“That really doesn't go with the electric theme!” she said as the screen door slammed behind me.
As I hurried down the steps in the morning light, Terry walked to his truck next door, and I shut my mouth, tight, staring straight ahead.
Crossing the street, blown over with California dust, I stepped up the metal steps in front of the faded blue house, squinting through the screen as I knocked on the door.
Terry Dodd's pickup roared to life, and I glanced over my shoulder at it, squeezing my fists.
“Ah! Joann!” Veronica Caller pushed the door open, a little chunk of a baby boy on her hip. “Please, you come in!” Mrs. Caller said. “You well this morning?” I stepped inside onto linoleum like ours, brown and white and flowered.
“Uh, yes. I am well. How are you, ma’am?”
“Yes. We are well.” Veronica smiled, nodding. “This Michael.” She hefted the little boy higher onto her hip. “He seis–six months. Very good boy.”
“He’s adorable. So smiley!” I wiggled his foot, and his mouth opened wide in a grin.
“Ah! Yes! Happy all the time.”
“He looks like he loves to eat.”
“Oh, sí! Loves to eat! Sí. Yes!” She brushed long black hair from her shoulder. “Come in, please. This way to the kitchen.”
I glanced outside once more before following her, and Terry Dodd lifted the hood on his pickup, looking in at the whirring engine.
“And how old you are?”
“Fourteen.”
“Ah, yes! You mother tell me; I forget. Jenita!” Mrs. Caller called, saying something in Spanish as little feet pattered across the floor in the living room.
A dark-haired little girl hurried to her mother and leaned back against her legs, staring up at me with big blue eyes.
“This Jennifer. She two years. And you no have to worry—she speak Español and English, but she love to get all words mixed up, so this word English, this word Español. Say hola, Jennifer.”
Jennifer hid a smile behind her thumbs as she bit into her nails.
“Hola,” she whispered.
“Hola,” I said. “It’s good you know English and Spanish. Can you help me brush up on them during the summer?”
Jennifer grinned and looked up at her mother. Mrs. Caller leaned down and kissed her on top of the head.
“Yes, you big muchacha, so you help. Would you like to see house, Joann?”
They led me through the living room. It lay bare but for a chair and a wooden rocker placed in front of a small TV set and a tall lamp in the far corner.
In the bedroom, just off the living room, Mrs. Caller said, “Michael sleep in crib, and Jenita no wake him, so she take nap on our bed.”
Jennifer climbed up and rolled around on the waterbed, the water sloshing at the sides.
Mrs. Caller took me around to the back, to the little yard with a tricycle and a doll. Jennifer climbed onto the tricycle and pedaled as fast as she could to the far end of the yard and back.
In the kitchen Veronica showed me the food, how to make a bottle with the formula, and where they kept medicine.
“And you eat lunch here,” Mrs. Caller said. “No have to bring lunch. We have plenty food, so you eat here.”
“Oh, thank you, ma’am.”
“And seventy-five cents an hour is okay?” I nodded.
“Yes. That’s great.”
Jennifer pulled at my hand.
“Come see. I show you my treasure.”
I trailed along after her into the living room. But as she dangled a purple beaded purse in my face I caught a glimpse of Terry Dodd through the window, still bending over his truck engine.
“Do you know him?” Mrs. Caller asked. “He get Steve the truck job and teach him how to drive, and he find this home for us, too. He is good friend to Steve.” She smiled out the window. “Do you know him?”
I looked away. “Oh, no. Not really.”
I’d never spoken a single word to Terry Dodd in all my life. Even when I was nine and I fell off my bike and scraped my knee on the pavement right at the bottom of his drive. He looked up from the empty gas cans outside his garage, a cigarette between his lips. I looked up wild-eyed, knee throbbing, as he squinted at me.
“You all right?”
I'd jumped as if a bomb had exploded and run home, leaving my bike in a pile in his drive, blood squishing out down my shin. My bike had leaned against the porch as I limped out to school the next morning.
“So you can come Monday morning to start, yes?” Mrs. Caller asked.
“Oh. Yes,” I said, turning from the window. “Monday will be great.”
“And three day week, eight to three?”
“Perfect.”
“Good! Gracias!”
Terry Dodd wore blue jeans and a white t-shirt most days and sometimes a white straw cowboy hat with aviator sunglasses pulled down to the end of his nose. And Bambi kept telling me how old he looked.
It wasn’t how he looked. It was the way he just plain did things and never needed to say a word while doing it.
July 10, 2015
RELEASE DAY - Announcing The Life and Death of Terry Dodd!
Today's the day! The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and The Life and Death of Terry Dodd is at last available for purchase on the Amazon Kindle Store!
Click here to claim your copy at the special release price of $.99!
Today, I'm also so honored to be featured on Author Spotlight, by Kimberly Afe.
I am very excited to be able to share this story with you and I am so very honored to have you here today! So many people have helped in so many ways, I cannot even begin to fathom their kindness. Without them, this day might never have come!
First of all, my family, for forever putting up with me and encouraging me.
Kelsey Kline, Christa Upton, Andrea Wiesner, Alyssa Tanner, Rachel Hauch, Jenny Shaw, Kimberly Afe, my dear friend Laura Brown, and the countless other writers who have taught me and inspired me.
Thank you all so much! You don't know what you mean to me!
And now for the final winner of our giveaway contest receiving a copy of The Life and Death of Terry Dodd:
Surprise-surprise! I know I didn't warn you about this ahead of time, but I decided to choose two winners for this final giveaway.
Tracey T.
&
Leah B.
Congratulations!I'll be sending your prizes out shortly!
I really enjoyed reading all your entry answers, so inspiring.
Thank you, everyone, who entered and has joined me in this launch week!
I am so grateful for all your love and support.
A little about my writing story:
I began writing as a twelve-year-old in an old notebook my grandma gave me, inspired by Jo March and my favorite girlhood author, Lois Walfrid Johnson. I never finished anything except poems, a short story about a girl in a silver jacket, and a rather worthless, meaningless mystery about a horse camp. Not until I discovered One Year Adventure Novel and National Novel Writing Month did noveling really start to pop! I have now finished a book every year since I graduated from high school. You probably won't ever see half of them, but they all taught me one valuable lesson: how NOT to write a novel.
My inspiration for the story:
One day in 2013 while I was babysitting, carrying a chunk of a six month old baby boy on my hip, I turned on the tv, flipped over to TCM and caught a movie—California, a lone man in white t-shirt and blue jeans, who looked an awful lot like Clint Eastwood, walking across a sandy yard to a white house. I'll never remember which movie it was because my mind was a million miles away and stuck in the 70s.
The Terry Dodd story is the closest story to my heart thus far. Not only because I poured so much of what I love into it, it's because the very theme it is based upon is one very dear to me. In a culture filled with so much racial and social prejudice, I believe it is more important than ever to look past the obvious into the deeper regions of each individual, into their very soul, to accept a person based not on their skin or how much money they make in a year, but by who they are inside. People are so much bigger than just what we see on the surface, and because of that it is so important to love and to care, not just for the Terry Dodd's, but everyone. Because if you look closely, the one most important thing we can do as human beings is to love one another.
Thank you for taking part in my special day. Please check out my new website, www.kmupdike.wordpress.com, and join my mailing list to receive the first chapter of The Life and Death of Terry Dodd.
The Life and Death of Terry Dodd is available on the Amazon Kindle Store, and will be available in book form very soon.
July 8, 2015
Author Interview - Black Hills Picture Books
Today I'm honored to be featured on Black Hills Picture Books.
Secrets of a Fellow Writer
So today I am very happy to be interviewing my friend K. M. Updike, author of The Life and Death of Terry Dodd, written in the summer of 2013 and soon to be published!
Q. Could you tell us little about yourself?
A. I grew up in a homeschool family. We read books more than watched TV, and history was huge. My dad got his degree in history, and my mom was a teacher.
Q. Which writers inspire you?
A. Elizabeth Wein, L.M. Montgomery, Louisa M. Alcott, Catherine Marshall (author of Christy), and K. M. Weiland K. M. Weiland is a Christian and has a background similar to mine, and she has a website dedicated to helping writers become authors.
Q. Which actor/actress would you like to see playing the lead characters from your book?
A. Clint Eastwood (Terry Dodd), a very young Barbara Hershey (Joann), and a mix between Bruce Greenwood and Dennis Quaid and Robert Benigni's character in Life is Beautiful (Joann's dad)
Q. How much research did you do for this book?
A. For one thing, I watched Starsky and Hutch. It struck me that they always asked the homeowners if they could use the phone! No cell phones back then. I also found pictures from the 1970s. I researched when books were published [to know whether or not they could be in the story] and the names of clothes that are different from what we call clothing today. I did find pictures of California in which they had drained pools for kids to use for skateboarding.
Read more . . .
Secrets of a Fellow Writer
So today I am very happy to be interviewing my friend K. M. Updike, author of The Life and Death of Terry Dodd, written in the summer of 2013 and soon to be published!
Q. Could you tell us little about yourself?A. I grew up in a homeschool family. We read books more than watched TV, and history was huge. My dad got his degree in history, and my mom was a teacher.
Q. Which writers inspire you?
A. Elizabeth Wein, L.M. Montgomery, Louisa M. Alcott, Catherine Marshall (author of Christy), and K. M. Weiland K. M. Weiland is a Christian and has a background similar to mine, and she has a website dedicated to helping writers become authors.
Q. Which actor/actress would you like to see playing the lead characters from your book?
A. Clint Eastwood (Terry Dodd), a very young Barbara Hershey (Joann), and a mix between Bruce Greenwood and Dennis Quaid and Robert Benigni's character in Life is Beautiful (Joann's dad)
Q. How much research did you do for this book?
A. For one thing, I watched Starsky and Hutch. It struck me that they always asked the homeowners if they could use the phone! No cell phones back then. I also found pictures from the 1970s. I researched when books were published [to know whether or not they could be in the story] and the names of clothes that are different from what we call clothing today. I did find pictures of California in which they had drained pools for kids to use for skateboarding.
Read more . . .
July 7, 2015
Behind The Life and Death of Terry Dodd - Author Interview
Kelsey's the best.
She makes up good questions.Questions I didn't even know I wanted to be asked until she asked them.
I'm so very honored and so very excited to share this behind the scenes look at The Life and Death of Terry Dodd with you! I'd like to thank Kelsey for the amazing interview, and for agreeing to let me swipe the questions in the future. (Right?)
Please give her a lovely thank you in the comments if you think her discussion questions are as amazing as I do.
So without further garble, read on, dear friend . . .
What was the biggest unexpected challenge that came up while writing Terry Dodd?
For a long while I didn't know what it was going to be about. I wanted it to be something important, to actually mean something. I didn't want it to be a just a story with pretty words and turns of phrases that left you with nothing. So in my word processor I put the quote by Isabel Allende at the top of the very first page so I could see it every time I opened it up to write. "Write what should not be forgotten", hoping it would spark some sort of inspiration, some theme. The other thing that was challenging was the ending. I didn't want it to be melodramatic, I wanted it to be real and believable. I worried for a long time over the ending. But in the end it came out and I think I am quite pleased with it.
Which character surprised you the most, and how?
Looking back now, I think Aunt El was the most surprising. I had no thoughts about her prior to her appearance in the story except that she was a rich woman who married a rich man for his money. When it was her turn to be written she just—appeared in the form she is as you read her.
What drew you to the setting? What interesting things did you find while researching, even if they didn't make it into the story in an obvious way?
Setting:Well, as I will tell you in another story on another day, the setting was inspired by what inspired the actual Terry Dodd. But when I think 70s I automatically think California, summer, hot and big. I grew up watching The Wilderness Family, about a family from LA. My family loved those movies! Lots of things drew me to the setting: my past, my love of all things historical, distant times and places.
Research: Skate boarding really took off in the 70s, which I hadn't really known before! I found a whole bunch of pictures of skate boarding and draining pools from the 70s. I researched a lot of music artists who were popular during the time and I came to really enjoy Joan Baez's genre. One thing that really stuck out to me when I watched Starsky & Hutch, was that there were no cell phones! It was completely foreign to me that they had to ask to use someone's phone or have to stop and use the pay phone! I felt quite inadequate, as I have never had to use a pay phone in my life! I am now resolved to make at least one call on a pay phone some day in my life.
What themes from Terry Dodd spoke to you deeply and resonated the most with you?
It took me awhile to actually grasp the theme! I knew it was in there somewhere, but it was so elusive. Only when I was explaining to a friend what the story actually meant did I FINALLY get what I was trying to say.
1. Everyone is important. Looking at your neighbor, the convict, the rich, the poor, and seeing them as your equal is one of the most important things we can do in our culture today. All my life I have looked at people and I have wanted them to be loved. I wanted them to know they were important, they were special, that I was not above or below them, that I was a person, just as they were. That though we'd made different decisions in our lives, we were in this life together and it was no mistake.
2. People are worth your time because they are a whole world inside themselves. We look at people and see only the surface things. Sometimes our assumptions are correct, but we cannot know everything aching in the heart of people. People don't fit one shape—you can't write someone off because of what you assume they are by their outward appearances. Writing Terry Dodd helped me grasp this concept I had been stumbling around trying to find words for my entire life.Was anything in Terry Dodd drawn from your own life?
Dad and Joann especially. Dad was inspired by my own dad because like Dad in the story my dad was a truck driver. My dad is amazing. He's a high school teacher, but he's been a construction worker, a truck driver, a carpenter, a salesman, but he's a dreamer, too, kind of a jack of all trades, and that's how I wanted to portray dad. Joann—I'm nervous about giving Joann to the world because she's more like myself than any other character I've written. I wrote Terry Dodd without any intention of giving it to the world at all. I wrote it because I wanted this story to be mine. So I wrote it from my perspective, how I know I felt when I was 14, how I looked at the world. And I hope other young adults will be able to relate to it as well.
What was the biggest thing you learned from your first publishing venture? What's been the biggest hurdle?
There is quite a lot! But the biggest thing I had to grasp, since I am a natural follower, was that I am my own boss. I'm running a business, and I'm in charge. Knowing that everything in the business begins and ends with my decisions is not very comforting when you're just starting out. Especially when you have no business experience whatsoever. The biggest hurdle is learning the business and learning it well enough to trust myself.
Were there any other authors whose work influenced this story, in subtle or less subtle ways?
Maybe not the story itself, but the writing. Ann Voskamp completely turned my concept of writing upside down after I read her blog and her book! I really love Lois Lowry and Sarah MacLachlan. Margaret Craven, Maggie Stiefvater, Elizabeth Wein, and my girlhood favorite, Lois Walfrid Johnson, who was the first author who inspired me write, have all inspired my writing over the years.
What appeals to you about historical fiction and writing for young adults?
I began writing for young adults because I was young adult and I felt I was not capable of writing something good enough for adults. I still feel this way! So through the years I kept on writing about young people. I want other young people to read and love the same kind of books I loved and still love to read! Historical fiction now—that is a bright spot in my heart that will never die! My dad's a history buff, my mom's the reader. So guess what we did my entire childhood and up into adulthood? My siblings I played Oregan Trail and cowboys and Indians more times than I can remember! We played we were hiding Jews and the Nazis were after us, WWII soldiers, Davy Crockett and Georgie Russell, we played so many things (but mostly we played cowboys and Indians). Historical fiction had a most glorious beginning in my childhood and I write it for the plain, wonderful reason that I LOVE IT. My parents taught me to love and appreciate history in general because it is important to how we live today. I love it because of the immaculate places I can go that are impossible today. I love it because of the people who lived and died. I love it for so many more reasons I do not have the words to describe them all!
What themes are you most interested in exploring in the future?/What's your next project?
I would love to continue writing about self-sacrifice and unconditional love, to me they are the most important themes in the universe. But war, injustice, hope, morality in the face of evil, beauty in ordinary, unexpected places are also of great importance to me.
My next projects are to begin rewriting my Great Depression Era novel, Like God n' Me: Reney Meyer and the Days of Chance Virtue, and to finish editing The Eloquent Life of Evelyn Crowe. Crossing my fingers that one or the other will be available in fall 2016!
A few words on God/creativity/spirituality:
It's hard for me to think in terms of creativity/creating stories etc. as weird as that sounds coming from a writer of fiction!
I tend to think of stories as beings, as real as the nose on your face, floating like particles in the sunlight, lighting upon anyone open to receive them.
And because I think of them as completely their own, I also believe they were never mine to begin with. Stories, especially stories of the past, stories about the important things in life, are great and awesome things. And we, the writers, are just that.
The writers.
The recorders, preserving and keeping for remembrance. The bringers-to-life of these immaculate characters, places and times.
K.M.Weiland describes us as, and I'm paraphrasing, “the channels through which the stories flow.” The music, the words, the people, the stories—we're merely the portals. The stories, the songs, none of it belongs to us, but to another world, another place and time, and to all who love and treasure them.
Every artist you meet, I'm betting, will tell you that they cannot NOT make art. They cannot NOT write, they cannot NOT make music, they cannot NOT do whatever it is they love doing. It's a compulsion, they cannot NOT look at the world without seeing it through their own eyes, their own perspectives.
But let's be clear about something: Art is the bringing of something new and beautiful into the world. Something genuine and good, something that does not darken the world, but leaves it a better place than it was before.
By that definition many things would be considered art, and rightly so.
That's why I love to make art, because there are so many different forms, so many ways to make beautiful things. I love photography and making music, redecorating my blog, the messiness of my desk after a day of work is even art to me.
Creativity is the collision of the love of beauty, a heart for God and people, and the desire to share these things with everyone and everything for their good.
Art should be made not only with the idea of the pleasure it would bring to you just being able to make it, but with the idea of the good it will bring to others.
Thank you for the interview, Kelsey girl! I can't tell you how much fun I had answering your questions! I must return the favor someday soon.
Don't forget to subscribe to get the first chapter of Terry Dodd and my future newsletter full of art, and stories, books to read, and tips for writers!
Love, me
July 6, 2015
Cover Reveal and FREE Scene
Welcome to today! Isn't it a lovely today?
I'm so excited to share with you the final cover reveal for The Life and Death of Terry Dodd.
After about three or four different designs, I at last hit upon one I actually liked.
Because finances were so tight this first time, and against all advice from every professional indie author you can name, I appointed the task to myself. *grimace* Yeah.
I am only very thankful that God, many years before, inspired me to try my hand at graphic designing. I learned so much from my friends and from lurking on Narnia forums for tutorials. I know I would never have been able to make it if it had not been for that.
Next time, if funds allow, I think I will bestow this task on a real professional graphic artist. As much as I love creating graphics, I keep thinking how blissful it will be to have a beautiful, professional design!
And because you guys have been so fabulous during these last few weeks, below is a free teaser scene from the story. Subscribe to my mailing list in the sidebar to receive a copy of the entire first chapter and audio file.
Summer doesn’t lazily drift upon Los Angeles. It rises with the sun, steaming and hot, and hangs in the air at sunset with smog over the city. It drapes itself over the houses at night, casting a hot sheet of air over the windows until cool ocean breezes push it away. The sun takes a long time to worm its way through the smog and down into the ocean for a cool dip in its waters. The light still hung drowsy in the air as I rolled my bike up the street to our house, the tires crunching sand against pavement.
Behind me a pickup roared around the corner. I squinted back into the headlights, the truck kicking up dust. It never slowed as it swerved back and forth in the street; it kept coming. Faster and faster. My hands stuck to the bike handles, and the car horn blared a long, dragging blast. All breathing stopped within me as the pickup sped closer and closer, the horn glaring louder and louder, deafening in my ears.
Then right in front of me the truck jerked to the side. Sand spewed from the tires, stinging my arms and face as the truck squealed past me and clunked up into Terry Dodd’s driveway. I stood frozen in the light of the dwindling sunset, the colors falling golden over the ridges of the truck. Around the block the neighbors parted curtains, looking out at the street now silent and still.
The driver's door squeaked open and strained against the hinges as Terry Dodd swung out. Grabbing onto the door he dragged his feet out behind him. He swayed backward and slammed the door in one vicious swing. The bang broke the humming of the horn still echoing in my ears. Standing there for a moment, he stepped forward and back to keep his balance. Then he just reached out and grabbed onto the side of the truck. He turned his head, looking back at me out of the corner of his eye.
I gripped my bike handles, cold rushing up over me. I held my breath.
“Sorry, Joann.”
And then Terry Dodd walked off, his head hung low. He ran a hand through his hair and he sighed, so deep.
Sorry, Joann.
I’m sorry I got drunk, Joann.
I didn’t mean it, Joann.
I could have helped myself, but I didn’t. I should have.
I’m sorry, Joann.
I watched him plod up the steps to his door. He leaned hard on the wall and pulled open the screen door, pushing himself inside. The screen door slammed.
Mom once said it wasn’t the getting drunk part that made a person feel guilty, it was the knowing they could have stopped themselves and didn’t that does.
One word, and my name. How could it mean ten thousand different things at once?
“Joann?”
I jumped and looked to the light coming from our kitchen door. Dad stood there.
“Come inside now.”
I took a deep breath and wheeled my bike up to the porch. Loosening my white-knuckle grip on the handles I leaned them against the rails. I walked up the steps, gazing at Terry Dodd’s house, and Dad put his hand on my shoulder, guiding me inside.
I didn’t know that summer would be different from all the others I’d spent living next door to Terry Dodd. I didn’t see it then, but I was to get what I wanted most of all. In the worst possible way.
Love, me
