Once in a Blue Muse

Want to see a happy author?

2012-01-27T20:08:00.001-05:00

This is me at my first reading/signing for my debut novel. What you can't see is that I'm floating about 6 inches off the ground. Okay, not really, but it certainly felt that way.

Thank you to Mary Cotton and the wonderful staff at Newtonville Books for hosting me.

The Between Release Fun Continues!

2012-01-25T15:18:00.001-05:00

I've been busy obsessing. . . preparing for my reading tomorrow night. While I've done oodles and oodles of public speaking in my past professional life as a Physical Therapist, this feels somehow different.

This is me, reading the words I wrote, in the book I authored, standing front and center.

And even though I seem pretty confident and relaxed here on my blog, and even pithy in the world of twitter, in physical life, I am more than a little reserved.

Luckily, I'll have chocolate with me.

:)

Some more lovely and generous reviews have gone live:

In a Locked Room: Review
Grant is a former crit buddy of mine whose talent and creativity I respect tremendously. I am deeply honored by what he has to say about THE BETWEEN.

"Cohen, as I've previously stated, has the amazing gift of making prose smooth. Everything just always seems to flow forward and she makes it easy to keep reading and reading and diving into the story. . . . Choices are made and they have consequences and there is no backtracking from the path [Lydia] chooses. There was one scene near the end between Lydia and her little sister that made my heart ache."

Book Blogger and Fantasy writer, Terry C Simpson's review is also up.

"The world created here in Faerie was one of political intrigue, darkness, all things magical, and one that was so well thought out that you will believe you are there. You will believe in the glamours you see upon the pages. You will feel the tenseness of the world, the grip of its King, the fear those of power instill upon others."

Terry was also brave enough to interview one of the powerful Fae characters from THE BETWEEN, Oberon's mad gardner, Aeon. You can read the interview here.

If you are a book blogger and interested in reviewing THE BETWEEN, please feel free to contact me.

The Month of Letters Challenge

2012-01-24T16:59:00.001-05:00

Via Mary Robinette Kowal, I'm pledging to participate in her Month of Letters Challenge. So despite my epically terrible handwriting, I will be sending a letter/postcard out to someone every post day of the month of February.

If you want a letter from me (be warned, I may need to translate), feel free to send me an email with your snail mail address. (lisa@ljcohen.net). I'll also be sending cards and letters to friends and family who are most used to getting emails and FB updates or phone calls rather than letters.

I used to have a few pen pals, back in the dark ages of my childhood. Then, when my now husband and I were dating (also in the dark ages. Before Internet), we used to send one another cards regularly. I treasured them, and saved them in a box in our basement. Unfortunately, the fire was not kind to those kind of keepsakes, and they are gone now. Perhaps I can mail him a few cards under his pillow.

Author Spotlight

2012-01-21T15:41:00.001-05:00

Thank you to UK writer Morgen Bailey, who has graciously offered to host me today for her Author Spotlight.

Stop by to learn about my first writing love (hint, it's not fiction!) and what I compare orange juice concentrate to.

Newtonville Books & Web Sightings

2012-01-20T13:30:00.001-05:00

When I was a little girl, one of my big dreams was to some day see a book of mine for sale in a bookstore. Well, that dream is now a reality. Not only is THE BETWEEN front and center at Newtonville Books, but according to my son, there's a display inside with my books on it.

Oh. My. God.

I haven't let myself walk in there because I don't trust myself not to jump up and down and squee.

And the guest blog appearances continue, with the lovely and gracious writers at Black Ink, White Paper giving me space to talk about my writing process and why you will have to pry my GPS out of my cold, dead hands.

Some lovely 4 and 5 star reviews posted on Amazon this week, as well.

More Sightings for THE BETWEEN

2012-01-17T09:16:00.000-05:00

While it's officially been just 3 days since my debut released, it also feels like a lifetime. Perhaps this is because I have been planning and dreaming about having a book published since I was a little girl. Maybe because by the time a writer gets to publication day, she is already several years and book projects removed from the work being released. Regardless, it's been a thrill to see THE BETWEEN find its way into the hands of interested readers.

Nancy Lauzon of The Chick Dick Mysteries was a gracious host for a mini interview about my book in her "Book Shower" feature. Head over and find out how THE BETWEEN almost got derailed before it was finished.

Release week, redux

2012-01-15T11:43:00.000-05:00

Today, a mini-interview with me is live on one of my favorite writing blogs: Writer Unboxed. I've been lucky enough to have been invited to write several guest posts for their highly regarded site over the past few years and they are a must read when new posts come over my RSS reader.

Head over to find out where in the world my wonderful cover artist is from and how Aeon crashed his way into THE BETWEEN.

And the book blogger, Becky Raymond of Inquisitive Hippo is hosting a giveaway of a print and an ebook copy of THE BETWEEN. Check out her blog for details. Thank you, Becky!

There's still (a little!) time to enter to win free copies, either at Paperback Writer (AKA Lynn Viehl), or my Goodreads Giveaway!

Release Week, Continued

2012-01-14T10:47:00.001-05:00

It's a good thing I'm a writer because I take lousy photographs. This one does not do justice to the lovely flowers my husband had sent to me yesterday morning in honor of my publication day. (Orchids and not roses. I have a thing about roses--long story, including the fact the the florists brought the wrong flowers for our wedding. 23+ years later, it still irks me!) I am so fortunate to have such a supportive family behind me.

This has been quite a ride and I am thrilled to see so many people enjoying the world of Lydia, Clive, and my vision of Faerie.

Some more reviews have been posted on the internet. Becky Raymond, a book blogger at Inquisitive Hippo reviewed THE BETWEEN here. Thanks, Becky, for your thoughtful comments!

Some of my reviews have come from queries made to book bloggers, others have appeared 'in the wild'. One of those is this one, by Erin Searles, who looks for debut titles on smashwords for under $3.00 (US) in the fantasy genre. She samples several and chooses one to review any given week. She chose to review THE BETWEEN and her thoughts are here. Thank you, Erin, for your review.

Many writers say that reviews are their lifeblood, that they are the new word-of-mouth in the indi age. That may be so, and I am extremely grateful for them. I am also humbled and moved by the lovely comments I have been given by writing friends. Towers of Grey was part of my first ever critique group on Forward Motion for Writers. From the first work I read of his, I fell in love with his writing. He was also generous with his critique; honest, kind, and thoughtful. We have kept in touch, even thought the crit group dissolved (as many do) and he is a voice to watch. Thanks you, Grant, for your lovely post about my release day.

Release Week part 4: release day!!!

2012-01-13T09:36:00.001-05:00

When it became clear that my original plan to release THE BETWEEN on Halloween wasn't going to work and that I hadn't given myself enough time for the myriad details of a book birthday, I looked ahead on the calendar, looking for a just-right day. I didn't want to run into the insanity of the holiday season, but I was hoping to ride the coat-tails of folks who had gotten Amazon or B&N giftcards as presents.

So I saw mid-January as the perfect time. Then I realized we had a Friday the 13th. Not that the book has anything to do with superstitions, but I've always liked that poor little much-maligned day, so I asked it to the dance and it said yes. :)

Welcome to the world, Lydia and Clive, Aileen, Taylor, and Aeon, characters from THE BETWEEN.

Today, I am hosted by the gracious and lovely Lisa Didio. She and I seem to be writing twins: we both are named Lisa, both have sons, both write YA fantasy, and are both represented by the same agent!

Thank you, Lisa, for your kind words.

And seen in the wild, an amazing review from one of my favorite authors and bloggers: Lynn Viehl, AKA PaperbackWriter. As gracious and lovely as it was unexpected, Lynn's review brought tears to my eyes on this book-birthday morning.

Thank you, Lynn (and you should all buy her books--I'm sucked in the world of her Darkyn right now, but I have a soft spot in my heart for Cherijo Grey Veil from her Stardoc series. )

Release Week, part 3

2012-01-12T08:29:00.000-05:00

Today's guest post is on the #amwriting blog maintained by the fabulous Johanna Harness (@johannaharness). She created a twitter community of writers who support and encourage one another through the #amwriting hashtag.

Today, she graciously turned over the blog to me and my post, Learning to Trust Myself."

"Little surprise that I grew up not trusting my inner compass. If you didn’t express your fear, anger, or sadness because to do so would make them real, and you didn’t express your hopes, joy, and happiness for fear of them being taken away, then you were left with a swirling mass of self-doubt."

For me, the process of writing has been one of learning to listen to my true voice and not let self-doubt cripple me.

Thanks, Johanna, for featuring me today.

Release Week, part 2

2012-01-11T12:02:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Jackie At My Tower of Books for her review of THE BETWEEN.

It is always a risk, sending your work out to the world for review. When I was searching for book bloggers to pitch, I sought out thoughtful readers who were critical and honest. I am not so much a glutton for punishment as someone who values straightforward commentary. If all I ever wanted was approval, I would never submit anything further than my dear husband who is my unapologetic fan.

Which is lovely, but doesn't push me to work harder and make each story the best it can be. That's the job of a crit group, beta readers, and reviewers and I am grateful for them, every step of the way toward publication.

My Ideal Reader: Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour

2012-01-10T11:08:00.001-05:00

This month's topic for the FM Writers Merry-Go-Round blog tour is to explore your ideal reader. It pretty much a perfect topic with perfect timing for me this month. I've been participating in a lot of guest blog Q&A posts and 'who is your perfect reader?' is a question that has come up more than once.

I have struggled to answer it in a pithy, snappy way and I think the question does deserve serious consideration.

The bottom line is not everyone is going to love every book. Not everyone is even going to want to read every book, no matter how well written it is. If you don't like westerns, no amount of praise or recommendations are going to have you delve into the books of Larry McMurtry, books my husband adored. He is also a big fan of techno-thrillers. While we often share books, these books usually make my eyes glaze over by about page 7. I am not the ideal reader for a techno thriller or a western.

With my debut coming out this week, I am prepared for a mixed bag of folks enjoying it and folks just not feeling the love. It is nearly impossible to write the One Book to Rule them All. What I have written is a book aimed for teen and young adult readers, ideally with appeal to all genders. I don't have a specific reader in mind when I sit down to write. Rather, I write the books I wanted to read as a teen/young woman--books that speak to ordinary heroes finding and trusting their own power, set in a world with just a bit more magic than this one contains.

What are the characteristics of my ideal reader?

Perhaps the most important quality is the desire and the ability to be swept away into another world--that suspension of disbelief that is at the heart of any immersive experience. That is what I have always craved in my reading and what I look for in a book today.

It is the partnership between the reader and the writer that makes that experience come alive. As a writer, I promise to do everything in my power to create a story where you can bring the power of your imagination.

If I succeed, then you are my ideal reader.

Want to see what a whole group of writers think about their ideal readers? Take a look at the Merry-Go-Round blog tour hub.

Release Week, Part 1

2012-01-09T20:04:00.003-05:00

In case you've been living under a rock, or have been marooned on a desert island without wifi, you probably know I have a book coming out this week. *

As part of the book launch, I'll be showing up in various places around the interwebs, with a mixture of Q&A's, interviews, and guest blog posts. I'll be posting links to them here as they go 'live'.

Today, I was hosted by the lovely folks at the Adorning Schemes blog. Rachel Desilets is someone in my google plus circle and when she put out a call for writers to spotlight, I raised my hand.

You can read the entire Q&A with me here. If you follow the link, you will find out why A Wrinkle in Time is my favorite book from childhood along with other trivia and writing tidbits.

*THE BETWEEN is actually available now, even thought the official release day is Friday. Shhh. Don't tell anyone. . .

THE BETWEEN Book Launch & Signing!

2012-01-08T11:14:00.000-05:00

If you're local to the Boston, MA area, please join me for a book launch, reading, and signing at my favorite bookstore, Newtonville Books.

When: Thursday, January 26th, 7 PM
Where: 296 Walnut St. - Newtonville, MA - 02460

I'm thrilled that our own indi bookstore is supporting this indi author and even if you can't make the event, please do consider supporting your local bookstore.

10 days till my debut!

2012-01-03T19:44:00.000-05:00

If you're on Goodreads, you can pop on over and enter to win one of five signed trade paperback editions of The Between.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Between

by L.J. Cohen

Giveaway ends January 20, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

The Year End Writing Round-up, 2011 Edition

2011-12-31T14:00:00.000-05:00

2011 Writing Round-Up

2011 has been the year of coming home--and not just because we returned to our rebuilt house after the December 2010 fire. If 2010 was the year our lives were interrupted, then 2011 was our chance to reclaim it and move forward. After stuttering to a halt in my writing for much of first part of 2011, I returned to a new project with enthusiasm and energy. My YA Ghost Story in Progress (YAGSIP for want of a better name), stands at 30K, which is a little more than 1/3 of the way through its first draft.

My goals for 2011 were:

1. Walk daily. Now that we're living in an apartment while our home is being repaired, I have the perfect excuse/need to walk daily. Our dog. I had been getting lazy, just putting her out in our fenced yard rather than taking her on walks. Not good for either of us.

2. Plan out a sequel/series. All the novels I have written thus far have been independent of one another. Several of them have sequels that I would love to write. There is a difference between writing a standalone story and writing a series. I need to explore what makes a good series.

3. Write one short story my critique group gives its blessing to. I feel like there is a secret code to writing a complete and satisfying short story and I haven't broken it yet. 2011 is the year.

So, how did I do?

On goal number 1--I pretty much failed miserably. Well, not miserably, but if I had a long walk 2 or 3 times a week, it was a lot. I really need to work harder on my physical fitness in 2012.

On goal number 2--I have the bare bones structure in place for a sequel to THE BETWEEN. It came together while attending Readercon this year and I am really excited to start writing it.

On goal number 3--Again, not so much. Short stories continue to mystify me.

What else did 2011 bring?

Novels:

I made the decision to independently publish my Fae novel, THE BETWEEN. If you take a peek at the countdown timer to the right, you will see the most amazing cover art, designed and drawn by Jade E. Zivanovic and the number of days until the release!

The work of getting THE BETWEEN to market has been almost a year in the making and included a ton of learning new skills and finding the talented individuals who could make up for my lacks. I am proud of this story and am thankful for those of you who have cheered me on in this journey.

Poetry:

I filled several journals in 2011, but only completed a handful of poems. There were a number of difficult issues in our family and personal lives that made it difficult to delve into the place poetry comes from. I do hope to return to those journals and use that raw material in crafting poetry in the new year.

I also haven't been able to keep up with my moderator duties at Wild Poetry Forum, which is one of my hopes/goals for 2012. I miss the community of supportive and talented poets there.

Blog Posts, Guest Posts, and Op/Ed columns:

I continued to be prolific here at Once in a Blue Muse, with 114 distinct posts. One guest post was published at Writer Unboxed and generated a lot of lovely discussion. And 4 of my guest columns appeared in the Newton TAB.

As part of my outreach/publicity efforts for THE BETWEEN, I will be guest blogging in a number of places after the new year. Stay tuned for links and excerpts!

My Goals for 2012:

I should probably rename these 'guidelines' (Pirate code, anyone?) which would feel a little less onerous and a little more user friendly. :)

1. Shepherd THE BETWEEN to its ideal readers

2. Generate enough support and interest to write and release its sequel.

3. Finish the first draft of the "YAGSIP"

4. Return to my poetry roots

5. Focus on my physical wellness

All the best to you in the New Year. May 2010 bring you joy.

School Vacation Week Happy Chaos

2011-12-27T21:36:00.000-05:00

I have 5 teenagers in my house now between the ages of 13 and 18. Two are mine, one is our international student, the other two, my niece and nephew visiting from Philadelphia.

You might not think that moving from 3 teens to 5 is a very big deal, and for the most part, you'd be right. They all get along and they're old enough to amuse themselves. What it does mean, is nearly continuous food preparation/shopping/cleanup. Even when they help, it's a lot of work. 5 teenagers means someone is always hungry. LOL.

And it means less writing time, but also less time to brood about THE BETWEEN's upcoming release.

I will enjoy my time as the fun Auntie, and hope for at least a little snow around these parts.

The Calm Before the Storm

2011-12-23T12:09:00.000-05:00

In 20 days, THE BETWEEN will be published. It will be for sale in all the usual places. It will be able to be read by people who don't know me, who don't know how hard I've worked for this day, or how many times this story has been revised, polished, and edited.

All they will know is *this* story.

It will have to survive on its own merits, its own literary version of its own two feet.

This both terrifies me and makes me giddy at the same time. It's almost the feeling I get coming up to the top of a roller coaster. See, I have this love/hate relationship with roller coasters. I ride them wherever I can, but every single time, I question my own sanity as we crest the first rise before that first plunge.

I am questioning my own sanity right now.

What if no one reads this book?
What if all the reviewers hate it?
What if all the work wasn't worth it?
What if the stories in my head aren't as magical and compelling as I believed?

There is a fluttery feeling in the pit of my stomach that I suspect will only get stronger as I near January 13th. There have been so many people supporting me and encouraging me on this writing journey--I don't want to disappoint them.

I keep reminding myself that I've written the best book I know how to write, with the skills at my disposal. There is nothing to be gained by holding it back, other than to reward my fear.

Now I must hand over the story to my readers.

Take it. It is yours now, to make of it what you wish.

Mostly No Means Slightly Yes

2011-12-16T19:50:00.001-05:00

I describe myself as a relentless optimist. If you're wondering what that means, it's that I have this essentially belief that most things are possible. No, I don't think that positive thinking will win me the lottery or cure the common cold, but I do maintain a sense of positivism in the face of obsticles.

Two examples from this week have reinforced this for me. One related to my upcoming release of THE BETWEEN, the other from my personal life. (Which I won't talk about specifically here because it pertains to one of my kiddos.)

So I decided to write an email to our local indi-bookstore to ask if they'd be willing to stock my book. I knew at the outset that self-published books have an uphill at best battle to get into brick and mortar stores. But I knew it was worth asking the question. My family have been buying books at this store for more than 10 years.

This is the email I wrote (names redacted).

Dear #######

You may not remember me, but I think I may have been one of the first customers to welcome you to ########. I had been so worried when #### told me he was selling the store and was so thrilled to find that it was going to remain in good hands.

I am writing to ask you what your store's policy is on stocking independently published books. I am a local novelist (I also write an occasional Op/Ed for The Tab) and while I am represented by Nephele Tempest of The Knight Agency, I am releasing my debut YA fantasy novel independently. I'm sure I don't have to tell you about how difficult the world of publishing has become over the past several years. THE BETWEEN made the rounds of the big NY houses, garnered glowing praise by every editor who read it, but ultimately no one made an offer, citing fears of a large enough market to take the risk on an unknown writer.

So, with the blessing of my agency, I have done the hard work of bringing this story to market; hired a freelance editor, consulted with a book designer, worked with a professional artist for the cover design.

THE BETWEEN is set to be released on January 13, 2012. A brief blurb follows:

High school senior Lydia Hawthorne is less than grateful when Oberon has her snatched from the Mortal world and she finds out she's actually Fae. And not just any Fae, but a trueborn with enough inherent magic to tip the balance between Oberon and Titania's warring Bright and Shadow courts.

But that's their game and she doesn't want to play by their rules. Together with Clive Barrow, a Bright Court Fae with embarrassing family ties to the Mortal world, Lydia fights to regain her old life, fueling her magic with the very Human power of love and loss, challenging the essential nature of Faerie itself.

I would very much like to speak with you at your convenience to talk about the possibility of having ########### stock copies of THE BETWEEN. I would be happy to do this on consignment or in any other way that would work. I am also available for speaking/signing and would be happy to energize my network to attend a release event at your store. I have also run writing workshops for young writers in the ###### schools and if that is something ############# is interested in hosting, I would love to put a class together.

If you would like, you can read the first chapter of THE BETWEEN here, in mobi, epub, or pdf formats. http://www.ljcohen.net/downloads.html. I can also drop off a proof copy for you.

It was professional, specific, and I asked for what I wanted in clear language, and let the store owner know that I could bring my expertise in workshopping with young writers to the table for the store.

I gave it my best, most optimistic shot, even knowing that the answer might easily have been a polite rejection or a blanket policy that the store did not carry self published books. So why did I bother?

Because I believe that if there's even a small chance, even when others might say no chance, I will give it a try.

"See, there's a big difference between mostly dead, and all dead. Now, mostly dead: he's slightly alive".

I guess I'm like Miracle Max from The Princess Bride. Mostly no means slightly yes.

And the reply I received?

Here's an excerpt:

Congratulations on the book, and we'd be happy to host you for a release
party (and carry the book afterwards, of course.) We can work out a
consignment deal that benefits us both.

I know the publishing world is nutty these days, and I'm glad you were
able to find a way to get your book out into the world. Happy to help in
whatever way we can.

More than slightly yes.

Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour: Holidays

2011-12-10T17:51:00.001-05:00

This month's topic for the Forward Motion Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is Holidays. I've been struggling to think of an angle to write about that connects with my writing, but I really couldn't come up with anything that seemed appropriate. Then I reflected on all the Christmas lights in my neighborhood and remembered when my now 18 year old son realized that most people in our area were a different religion than we were.

I think this has relevance to my writing, particularly in terms of working with characters who feel outcast, different in any way.

I am not a deeply religious person. With a last name like Cohen, it's pretty apparent that I am Jewish. I do celebrate the major holidays, Rosh Hashonah, Yom Kippur, Passover, etc. We light the candles for Hanukah. I don't often think about living as a minority in a larger community of people who believe in a different faith except at Christmastime.

And it's almost always either in relation to seeing all the lights and displays or the insanity at the shopping malls

I actually love this time of year. The lights make everything so lively and bright as the days get shorter and shorter. I have always enjoyed helping friends decorate their Christmas trees. I do have a problem with the relating of Christmas to Hanukah simply because they occur at the same time of the year. Hanukah is a minor league holiday in the Jewish calendar. It has little actual spiritual significance, at least not in comparison to the high holy days. Certainly not anywhere near the importance of Christmas in the Christian faith.

When we lived in Southern Illinois many years ago, the people I worked with couldn't understand why we weren't going home for the holidays. I couldn't explain to them that our holiday wasn't really that important and not one where families traditionally gather. it was as if i was speaking an alien language. They were only satisfied when we told them we would be able to get home for New Years.

The message for me as a writer is to understand how it feels to be a minority believer in a majority culture. Holidays and cultural beliefs are a place for potential rich conflict and emotion and these are the elements that enrich stories.

Go to the Merry-Go-Round site for other FM Writers' interpretation of this month's holiday theme.

Things I had to Learn

2011-12-08T17:38:00.001-05:00

There were a whole host of skills I had to learn when I started writing my first novel in 2004. Sure, I had been writing my whole life, but knowing how to write isn't the same as knowing how to complete a novel. I set out to learn what I needed to know and figured out POV, how to construct a scene, how to lay out the major arc of a story.

But this isn't about those writing skills. It's about all the other skills I needed to understand and master in order to publish my work.

So here is a rundown of what I've learned in the past 6 months:

what the difference is between epub and mobi and which formats work with which devices
how to create styles in a document to avoid ugliness in later conversion to ebooks
why tabs are evil
why the spacebar is evil
that typography matters, even in the digital age
why one set of typefont/leading/kearning setting are better than others (also, what leading and kerning *are*)
how to use calibre to convert a file to ebook format and how to check those files on the appropriate devices
what an ISBN is and why I needed one (actually two)
how to sign up with Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords as a publisher (but not Apple, since I don't own a mac)
how to format for a print edition and move through the process with createspace
how to think like a publisher
why an editor is a writer's best friend
what *discovery* is and why it's crucial in the ebook world
what a *long tail* is and ditto
how to work with a cover artist and why cover art is so important
how to find book bloggers and query them to request reviews
how to get the word out about a release without sounding like an infomercial
how to take a deep breath

January 13th is coming!

A present from the UPS truck! W00t!

2011-12-06T10:57:00.001-05:00

This is what I got today:

The physical proof copy of THE BETWEEN. As much as I am a technophile, as much as I embrace the eBook and love my kindle, there's still a special thrill to holding your book in your hands.

37 days and counting!

A Shelter of Crows

2011-12-05T15:01:00.001-05:00

photo by picasocat2 http://www.flickr.com/photos/eltiedog/2704660845/sizes/l/in/photostream/

A Shelter of Crows

We shiver beneath a storm of wings. Contrail
ribbons across the twilight. Miles of solitary birds
arrow their black bodies overhead. There is no
hesitation, no uncertainty to their flight. Only we
have no idea where to go from here. I imagine
a forest filled with feathers, living leaves whispering
against bony branches. Thousands of crows
smudge into night dark sky. I watch you
looking up long after their harsh echoes fade
and I wonder how to break the spell
that keeps you earthbound, silent.

After the Fire: One Year Later

2011-11-30T12:18:00.001-05:00

A year ago tonight, we probably had an ordinary dinner.

In our household, that means eating at around 9 pm, as my husband's work hours are unpredictable. Most of the time, we eat around the big table in the dining room and the conversation often wings fast and furious around the room. Like a game of doubles tennis with words and puns instead of tennis balls.

Or we may have decided to curl up on the sofa and pillows in the living room, perhaps eating on the coffee table and watching a movie or show together. Often that's Top Gear or a Doctor Who episode. There is something wonderful in having a quiet meal together with family, being able to talk with your teenage sons and know that each of us is invested and interested in the other's conversation.

I can't even tell you what we ate. It was an unremarkable, typical evening in our household. By that I mean comfortable, relaxed, cozy. We usually hang out a bit in the living room after dinner, curled up with the dogs. The boys probably finished up their homework. My older son likely was working on finishing his college applications.

There was nothing to suspect that in a few hours, we would be profoundly changed.

The fire that woke us out of a sound sleep in the early morning hours of December 1, 2010 left me shaken, vulnerable, and deeply, deeply grateful for the love and support in our lives.

I am grateful to be able to honor this anniversary. I am grateful that my family is well, that no one was injured in the fire. I am grateful that we were able to rebuild and return to our home. I am grateful to be able to put these words out into the ether, to share them with you.

So many people were there for us in our time of need. From the neighbors who put us up and fed us, to our local communities who donated warm clothes until we could salvage or replace some of ours, to writer friends who made sure I had books to read and notebooks to write in, to friends near and far who called or emailed with their love and best wishes.

The best way I feel I can honor their caring is to continue to pay it forward and to spend time each day to be grateful.

My deepest and most profound thanks to all of you.

What it feels like

2011-11-28T20:53:00.001-05:00

So one of my friends asked me what it felt like in the run up to publishing my debut novel. Wow. What it feels like.

Right now, it feels like yet another step on a long journey; one I started about 8 years ago with a challenge that led to writing my first novel. That one is well and truly 'trunked' for now. While I still love the characters and the storyline, it will need an enormous amount of work to get it into reading-ready shape. But that's where my novel-writing path began.

THE BETWEEN is actually the fifth book I wrote. I started it in the fall of 2008, finished the first draft in spring/summer of 2009 and revised it in early 2010. A second revision came in late 2010/early 2011. It was that revision that my agent shopped for me, getting lots of interest and positive feedback from editors, but ultimately no sale.

In between (sorry, can't help using that word!) working on THE BETWEEN and deciding to self publish it, I wrote FUTURE TENSE, revised THE HOUSE OF MANY DOORS, and started the as-yet-unnamed YAGSIP (YA Ghost Story in Progress).

And once I decided to self-publish THE BETWEEN (after making sure I wouldn't burn any bridges with my agent and agency--and we're all good. Nephele has another novel of mine on submission now), I had to embark on a crash course in everything from formatting for an eBook to typography for print, to learning about all the different eBook marketplaces and how to become a publisher, to hiring a freelance editor, to working with an illustrator, to figuring out how to market/publicize the release.

:Deep breath: Yes, that's a ton of work.

So what it feels like now, with 45 days to go before the release, is exhausting. And exhilarating. I feel like I'm taking charge of my future career and taking the steps I need to take to position myself for the long haul. I have so many stories to tell. Stories that I want to share with the world. My goal for THE BETWEEN is for it to find an audience of dedicated readers.

I believe in this book.

I believe in myself.

45 days and counting.

The Litany

2011-11-25T23:41:00.001-05:00

"I will not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total annihilation." --From Frank Herbert's Dune

When I was a teenager, I read Dune on the recommendation of a middle school (We called it Jr. High on those days) English teacher. I remember being profoundly changed from the books in Herbert's series. I memorized the litany against fear that Paul uses in it and I used to chant it daily, using it whenever I felt overwhelmed by the world.

I used it a lot.

I was often afraid, though I suspect no one knew it.

I reflected on the litany just the other day, for two unrelated reasons. First, in channel flipping, we came across the movie adaptation of Dune and struggled to stand to watch it for even a few minutes. Yes, it was as dreadful as I remembered. It wasn't so much that the effects were terrible (they were), but having the characters whisper out their internal thoughts and feelings at every turn was both laughable and insulting to the watcher's intellegence.

But I digress.

This isn't about critique of a screenplay. It's about fear. The second unrelated reason I recalled the litany is that someone I love is dealing with significant fear. So I told him about using the litany when I was his age. And the more I thought about it, the more I came to believe the litany is wrong. Or at least not completely right.

Yes, fear can be corrosive. Yes, it can feel like it's going to destroy you. But to deny it, to push it away doesn't diminish its power; it only strengthens it.

So here's what I think: Everyone is afraid. No matter how old we are or how seemingly confident. Deep down, we all fear. We all wait for the other shoe to drop.

Some people are better at covering that fear than others. Some are really skilled at putting their fear in a blind spot and never looking directly at it. But the thing is, it's still there.

In my adult life, I've done things that have terrified me. I take emotional risks every day, in every social interaction. We all do. That's the crazy thing. We're all running around pretending that it's all under control. If we could all hear one another's internal dialogue, first, I think life would rival the sheer awfulness of the Dune movie, and second, it would also show just how pervasive the experience of fear is.

Ultimately saying "I will not fear" is like saying to the universe "I don't feel like dealing with the laws of physics. I think I'll fall up, today." That method didn't really work out very well for me. Now when I am afraid, I let myself feel it. I look at it. I say hello to it. Let it know it's not alone. Hello, fear. There you are again.

It's a different path. It's not easy and it doesn't make the fear magically disappear, but it sure is a shorter litany--a whole lot easier to memorize.

Preparing for Thanksgiving: gratitude and fear

2011-11-18T09:09:00.001-05:00

Thanksgiving is probably my single favorite day of the year. I bring to the celebration a lifetime of memories: waking as a child to the smell of turkey already basting in the white wine and apple juice my father used every year, mixed with the sweet sharpness of the quartered onions and oranges inside the bird. He used to get up early in the morning to start the turkey so that by the time 4 pm rolled around and all our relatives started to arrive, the main course would already be ready.

It was one of the few times in the year when we set the formal dining room table with the good dishes and cutlery and fancy glasses. All of the kids were even poured a smidgen of wine in a real grown up wine goblet. Now I understand how much work my mother and father put in to make those Thanksgiving dinners a reality, but to the child I was, they seemed somewhat magical, springing into elegant life for that one day a year.

Now that I am an adult and have a house and family of my own, I hope that my children have some of the same kind of memories to cherish. We rarely travel to either side of the family for Thanksgiving because my husband has to work on Friday and both my parents and his are a fair distance away. Some years, we have cooked a feast for just the four of us. Other years, we've had a table full of family and friends. Last year, for the first time in a very long time, we did travel--we went to my cousin's home in NH for a lovely Thanksgiving dinner that brought back echoes of my childhood. We came home Thursday night armed with leftovers and full bellies.

There were still some leftovers in the fridge a few days later when the fire started.

A year later, we are all here.

We lost nothing that could not be replaced.

Our house is rebuilt and we are preparing for a Thanksgiving feast. I get to spend the day cooking with my husband, doing our synchronized swim in the small kitchen where every possible inch of counter space will be filled. It is one of my favorite days, not only because of the traditions I grew up with, but because of the shared traditions I have developed with my husband.

And yet.

And yet I am afraid.

Amidst the joy of returning to our home, I think I have been quietly waiting for the other shoe to drop, that somehow there will be a price for our good fortune, a price that has yet to be paid.

Tonight, I will hug my family a little tighter. They will probably not know why.

I came so close to losing them last year. It is a thought almost beyond bearing.

So, for at least this year, and maybe for many years to come, there will be a place at the table for my fear. Perhaps if I invite it in, like Elijah at the Passover seder, I will be able to make my peace with it.

New words from the new story!

2011-11-13T21:49:00.001-05:00

After stalling on the "YAGSIP" (young adult ghost story in progress) for the better part of a month, I talked at my writing friends last night trying to figure out why I couldn't push into the 2nd quarter of the story. They were enormously patient, letting me fret and fume my way into some clarity.

Here is a brief snippet at the beginning of the second "act". Marco and Lorelei are both ghosts in an abandoned amusement park.

   I let myself drift through the park, letting the breeze carry me wherever it wanted. Yellowed newspaper skittered across the remains of the food court. They used to sell the most amazing fried dough. The powdered sugar coated everything, sticky fingers, your clothes, even the air and more than anything else, that was the smell of the park to me. Now it was gone and even my memory of it was failing. I could feel the seductive pull of oblivion.

    I floated away from the food court, shutting out the chaotic echo of competing music blaring from all the rides mingled with the laughter of a summer night crowd. Without memory, there wouldn’t be any pain. The spirit world promised peace. But then there wouldn’t be any Marco either. Anger boiled up inside me, its heat only an illusion, but a familiar one. Without it, I would be lost, with no way to find my killers.

    Besides, no one returned from the spirit realm. The few ghosts I knew about who were able to settle just vanished, with idiot smiles lingering after them like some spectral version of the Cheshire cat. What if it all was a big lie? Just like the whole heaven and hell thing I spent my life believing in, thanks to my mother’s obsession with the Church and all its saints. No, this was all there was: the unhappy dead, locked in an eternal twilight by their own misery. So be it. I’d be ready to let it all go and die for good if only Tess could help me get my revenge.

    The ever-present wind wrapped around me like a cloak made of ice. It siphoned the anger from me, tightening its grip as it fed and I struggled to slip free. Not wind, exactly, nothing that the living would feel except the most sensitive and even then, only as a momentary chill in the strongest of sunlight. It, too, made promises. The stronger it became, the clearer it whispered. Let go. Let us carry your rage. We can make it a beautiful weapon, far more powerful than your paltry specter could ever achieve.

    There were so many times over the past seven years I came close to listening to it, giving all my pain over to make the mordant field even stronger than it already was. But not now. Not when I could almost taste justice. I shuddered and stopped struggling, letting my body dissolve into fog. The coils grasped after me, but couldn’t keep me solid.

    "I’m surprised."

    I looked down. Lorelei stood staring up at where I had been. I didn’t want to talk to anyone now, least of all to her, but something more than simple curiosity pulled me back into shape. "What do you want from me now?"

    A brief sadness flickered across her face before she tightened her lips and narrowed her eyes. "You’re getting stronger." She didn’t look happy about it.

    "Disappointed? Maybe next time it’ll take me off your hands."

    Lorelei shook her head. "Every ghost it subsumes feeds its hunger and makes it harder for us to keep the balance. If you were going to sacrifice yourself, I wish you would have done it years ago. Before your rage could provide it a three course meal."

    "How sweet. Someone might even think you were worried about me."

    She clenched her teeth together, the muscles in her jaw bunching. Coils of mordant energy swirled around her ankles, stirring the dark fabric of her long skirts. "Watch yourself, Lorelei, or you might end up as tonight’s snack."

    "I think not." She kicked at the thickening fog. Where her boot touched it, the fog retreated.

    "Nice trick."

    Her hands tightened into fists. "I don’t know why I waste my time on you."

    That was a good question.

Q & A with LJ

2011-11-11T17:11:00.001-05:00

Well, I've done it again. Realized a day late that *yesterday* was my Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour posting day. Sigh.

This month's topic is a self-interview. So here's my go at a Q & A of things about me you might want to know. I wanted to do something pithy and ironic, but I don't have that sense of comic timing nor do I do irony well. I figured I'd just go with my typical earnest, serious self.

Q: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
A: I've always loved words. Reading them as well as writing them. For years and years, my dad had something I wrote in 1st grade folded up in his wallet. It was a story using homonyms and I remember it had something to do with a new gnu. I've been keeping a journal since childhood and putting my thoughts to paper (or now screen) has always come naturally to me. Writing as a career wasn't something I really considered until I hit my 40s.

Q: Plotter or Pantser?
A: Well, I'm about the least spontaneous person I know, so you might think I must love to outline every last detail of my work. But the truth is, I think that dichotomy is somewhat of a false one. While I don't think I could sit down and put pen to paper without any sort of road map, I also couldn't see writing the story once it was fully planned. In reality, there is a balance in the writing between forcing the story to fit a plan and grabbing the tiger by the tail and riding it wherever it goes. I believe both elements--planning and serendipity--are needed for the magic that is story.

Q: Coffee or tea?
A: Both. I never drank coffee until graduate school. I was always a tea drinker. Coffee was kind of a rite of passage to adulthood in my household and I got quite a lot of flack for not liking it. Now I have to have my morning coffee. It's as much a ritual as the need for caffeine. But I still love my tea and that's what fuels my late afternoons, especially now as the weather is getting cooler. I'm lucky enough to have a small tea shop in my home town that sells a wide variety of loose teas.

Q: Have you unpacked all your boxes yet?
A: No. Quit pestering me. (We moved back home in August after a house fire that displaced us for nearly the whole year. Yes, there are still sealed boxes in my office.)

Q: Do you write to music? If so, what's on your writing playlist?
A: Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Lately, I've been obsessing over Florence + the Machine and The National. Placebo is good writing music too. In order to listen to music as I write, I need to be so familiar with the song that I don't get caught up in the lyrics. That's why I can't write to new music.

Q: What's up with your new dog?
A: Sigh. Dustin is a work in progress. I had hoped Tigger would be a good influence on him. Sadly, it's been the other way around.

Q: What are you working on now?
A: I'm splitting my time between developing a marketing plan for my first indi release (The Between, coming in January!) and continuing with novel number 7 ("YAGSIP"=YA ghost story in progress). The past month has been a blur of learning about eBook formatting and typography for a print book. One of the things I want to do is a long blogpost on the steps from finished manuscript to indi release.

If you have any other questions for me, just leave them in the comments.

To see what other Forward Motion writers on the tour have to say, return to the Merry-Go-Round page.

Insecurity, Redux

2011-11-07T14:55:00.000-05:00

photo by hjhipster, used with permission under creative commons license

So I've formatted my novel in epub and mobi formats and sent out the first chapter as a teaser to subscribers of Blue Musings, my e-newsletter. That means there's no turning back. I've made a commitment to publish this novel in January of 2012.

Then I ended up staring up at the ceiling a few nights ago wanting to chew my nails up to my elbows. My inner critic voice was in its full hostile glory.

Your writing sucks.
Who are you to publish a novel?
No one is going to want to read it.
Who are you kidding?
There are thousands of books better than yours.

It continued from there, leaving me feeling much like the poor dachshund in this photo.

All I could do was take big deep breaths. Directly confronting that taunting voice would only give it more power. But I could and did remind myself that it is not up to me if people read and enjoy my work. All that is up to me is to write the best story I can write with the resources I have in the moment. This I did in writing The Between.

At the end of the day, it is a story I am proud of and am eager to share. Whether it succeeds with readers or is ignored doesn't change who I am. Nor will it derail me from writing the next story and continuing to work on my craft.

That terrible insecurity can only harm us if we give it the power to do so.

#Occupy Halloween, 2011

2011-11-01T08:31:00.001-04:00

I adore Halloween. More than adore. Some would think it's an obsession. They would probably be right. We've decorated our home for Halloween eve every year since we moved in 19 years ago and have amassed quite a collection of decorations, lights, and assorted other scary stuff. Fortunately, we didn't lose much of our Halloween stuff in our fire last year and were able to fog the neighborhood yet again.

In past years, we've done pirate themed displays, a haunted house, a paean to Harry Potter, and a haunted pumpkin patch. This year, I was having trouble coming up with a theme. And then came my trip to Occupy Boston.

This year, we decided to create an #occupyhalloween encampment on our front lawn. I was worried that people might think it was done in mockery, rather than in solidarity, but the grownups who came trick or treating with their kids got it.

Here is our display. (Click here for the full album: Occupyhalloween)

Oh, How I Love XKCD!

2011-10-31T08:31:00.000-04:00

This morning's comic. Love it.

Randall Munroe is just brilliant.

The Between has a Cover!

2011-10-24T23:54:00.000-04:00

Drawn by the lovely and talented Jade (Jez Art), this cover captures the heart of my YA novel, THE BETWEEN.

It is everything I could have hoped for, and more, thanks to Jade's hard work and artistic vision. Stay tuned for news about THE BETWEEN's upcoming publication date!

Free Fall; a poem

2011-10-22T17:21:00.001-04:00

    Free Fall
    (for my son)

    I am no physicist to comprehend
    the forces that hold the cosmos
    from flying apart. My God is
    the God of small and fragile things,
    of memory, of laying down in a cold,
    wet field waiting for the meteors to streak
    across a pre-dawn sky, your astronaut
    body still tethered to mine. Much later,
    your confident voice reciting the names
    of all the planets that ring the sun
    in their precise order.

    You always worked hard to categorize
    things--dinosaurs, trains, books,
    beanie babies--as meticulous
    as any scientist. Now you study
    your own fault lines, watch the cracks
    spider across what was once solid earth.

    Darkness circles you, creates its own
    artificial gravity like an invisible
    satellite astronomers cannot map,
    only measure its influence by tidal
    flow or the way your orbit
    is knocked from its trajectory.

--ljcohen, October 2011

Taking charge, taking chances: publishing my first novel

2011-10-18T15:25:00.000-04:00

Sometime in early 2011, it became clear to me that despite my agent's best efforts and despite her getting my Fae novel in the hands of the big, coveted NY publishing houses, The Between wasn't going to be published. It wasn't because the story wasn't compelling, or the characters flat, or the writing poor. It was simply a market decision. I am an unknown quantity as far as the publishing houses were concerned. They would have to be certain of selling a certain number of books in order to make their profit. They believed the market for a Fae changeling tale was limited and thus they passed on my story.

Yes, I was disappointed. Yes, I was frustrated. After licking my wounds for a day, I began to think about my options.

Option 1: trunk the story and work on another. Well, I was already working on other novels. In fact I had written 2 others in the time since writing The Between. But trunk a novel that so many people believe is ready for prime time? That seemed wrong, somehow.

Option 2: take a leap of faith and publish it on my own. If you'd asked me 6 months ago, I wouldn't have considered self-publishing as an alternative. I wasn't sure that I could or wanted to handle all the details and the promotion that would need to happen going it alone. Nor was I sure I could find an audience in the crowded epub marketplace without resorting to the kind of hard sell pitch that makes me decidedly uncomfortable.

As the year wound on, I came to the conclusion that my path would be both options. That is, to continue to work with my agent on pitching my novels to the big publishers for a traditional type release AND release The Between on my own. But instead of throwing the ebook against the Amazon (etc) wall to see what stuck, I decided on a larger plan, a crazy plan, a plan that included working on a sequel to a book that didn't sell.

How Lisa Plans World Domination
(or a self-publication release plan)

I decided to give away The Between, hoping that readers would enjoy it and want to see more. (I promise, The Between functions as a stand alone. No cliff hanger endings, but there is definitely more to the story.) I hoped that readers would be excited to continue with my characters and world and want to read further. But I didn't want to write a sequel 'on spec.'

Well, along the way, I encountered Kickstarter and decided that this could be a model to help me fund my time to write and release the sequel I want to write for The Between.

One flaw in this plan was the fact that I am committed to working with my agent. I didn't want to abandon that publishing path for the world of independent publishing. I believe strongly that successful authors will be those who are flexible in getting story in the hands of readers. When I thought through my free release/kickstarter plan, I realized that I needed to let my agent know what I was considering and see how the agency stood.

Fortunately, my agent and the agency she represents are both supportive of my plan for The Between, even though my success with it would not mean any income for them. What it could mean, however, is buzz and a loyal readership, both of which might make me a more attractive risk to the publishing houses.

Over the past several months, I've been working with a cover artist (Jade's work is fabulous!) and a freelance editor (squee--she complimented my grammar!) to make sure The Between is polished to a high shine. I will be releasing the novel in various ebook formats through various outlets in the next 4-6 weeks. The novel will be free and drm-free, released under a creative commons license.

If you are interested in receiving a notice when The Between will be ready to read, please sign up for Blue Musings, my email list. Since I don't believe in asking someone to buy a pig in a poke, you can also read some of my short fiction to get a sense of my writing, also available to subscribers of Blue Musings.

I am so excited about getting this story in the hands of readers! I hope you will join me on this journey.

What does democracy look like?

2011-10-11T10:04:00.000-04:00

From the #occupyboston student march, 10.10.11, photo taken by P. Halin

I rarely talk about politics on this blog. For one thing, if you have a strongly held belief of any stripe, there is little anyone can say that will change that view. It's difficult enough to have a discourse amongst people of differing opinions in real life; on the anonymous medium of the internet it's nigh on impossible. For another, this blog is primarily an extension of my creative and writing life. And I'm no political pundit or journalist.

However, I am a writer, a poet, and an observer of people and the life that unfolds around me. I also live in the Boston area.

So Sunday evening, I went with my 2 teen sons to Dewey Square to see what the #occupyboston protests were about without the filtering of the news media. I also wanted to see my sons' reactions to a kind of public conversation that was very familiar to my growing up, but has been mostly absent from theirs.

I wrote about some of my reactions on my G+ page:

Tonight I spent some time at #OccupyBoston with my teenage boys. Sitting on the ground at the general assembly and watching this tenuous process unfold around me was both terrifying and incredibly heartening.

Terrifying because history tells us that the originators of great social movements rarely see the fruits of their labor; look to the civil rights movement. People, many people, died for what they believed in. And yet, I sat there feeling this great upwelling of emotion, of elation, seeing people of diverse ages, ethnicities, and social backgrounds caring enough to work on a process to build something they don't yet even know the shape of.

I want this to continue. I want this to become a wider conversation about what we value as a society. About what we want our society to become for our children and our grandchildren.

I think our founding fathers would have recognized something of themselves in the general assembly tonight. Maybe not the specifics, but certainly the process, even as messy as it can get. And to the cynics who dismiss the #occupy movement as chaotic and disorganized, spend some time with the protesters in your city. Listen. Listen with an open heart. Leave your cynicism behind. Perhaps you will hear something that you resonate with.

I certainly did.

Last night, after the protest spread and the tent city expanded to another part of the Rose Kennedy greenway, police were called in and arrested more than 100 protesters. I have incredibly mixed feelings about the arrests. On the one hand, I can sympathize with the greenway folks who have just finished a huge renovation and planting of this new open space in Boston and they pleaded with the #occupyboston folks to stay out of the garden and return to the original encampment.

On the other hand, these were peaceful protesters, gathering publicly in a time-honored (especially here in Boston--historic, even) tradition of dissent. This is what democracy is--the ability to have an opinion that can be unpopular without fear of reprisal.

FM Merry Go Round Tour Topic: Revision

2011-10-10T12:35:00.000-04:00

First, my apologies for my late post on the Merry-Go-Round-Blog-Tour. The holiday weekend got away from me and I completely forgot that the 10th of the month was my day to write. Ack!

So here are my thoughts on revision.

It may make me an odd duck amongst my writing friends, but I absolutely love the revision process. For me, most of the pain is in the first draft. No matter what I've tried to do for organization, from full on outlining to seat of my pants plotting, to somewhere in between, the initial draft always runs into problems.

Sometimes it's not trusting the reader. Sometimes it's not capturing the characters' voices fully enough. Sometimes it's plot holes. Sometimes it's pacing.

No matter what the issue is, I know I can tackle it in the revision. There's a precision and an elegance to revising that's rarely there for me on the first draft. I'm also an amateur potter, so I can use a pottery analogy:

First drafts are centering and pulling up the clay walls into the rough shape of what you want the piece to be.

Revision is the shaping pulls and the trimming process. The place where your vision of what the clay can be comes into tangible reality.

I am a serviceable writer, but I am a really dedicated and hard working re-writer. If you ask my critique partners, they might tell you that I am a glutton for punishment, aka, really strong no-holds-barred crit. Yes, that's true. Except that I don't see it as punishment. I see it as re (again) vision (seeing). To see my story through the eyes of a reader and understand what works and doesn't work to tell that story is a gift beyond measure. It is through the gift of that vision that I can return to a messy draft and craft something cohesive and whole from it.

That doesn't mean changing everything someone comments on. It does mean analyzing patterns in the writing to find the places that lack clarity and improve them.

Right now, I'm slogging through the first draft of the YAGSIP (YA ghost story in progress). The writing is going reasonably well, but I've run into a plot snag. How do I know this? I would rather edit something else then open the file for the new story. But I will forge ahead, comforting myself with knowing that no matter how terrible the words that land on the page are today, they will be vastly improved and sharpened when I wrap my editing/revision brain around them.

Happy re/vision, all!

Check out the revision thoughts of my fellow FMWriters here, where you will find a list of all the tour participants and links to their individual blogs.

Today's words from the ghost story in progress

2011-10-04T11:54:00.000-04:00

I love when characters tell me things that I hadn't planned. Yesterday I was writing this scene with my main character, Tess and her friend Nicole. I didn't know why Nicole had to be there and it's hard to get pumped up to write a scene that meanders around looking for its purpose. Then Nicole told me why she was important. Here's a snippet from the day's writing. Remember, this is ragged, first draft stuff.

      Nicoleparked by the broken fence. "Some people swear this place ishaunted."
      I jerked around in my seatto stare at her, my heart beating hard. "Did you ever see aghost here?"
      She laughed. "Girlfriend,the only spirits I ever saw in this place were the ones I brought with me in little bottles," she said.
      I ducked under the slit inthe fence and slipped inside the park. Nicole followed right behindme. "Jesus, Nic, I don't need a babysitter." I hefted mybackpack. "Look. All set. Juice, granola bars, andchocolate."
      "Hey, you called me. And this is a full service taxi."
      "Whatever." Iglanced back at her, watching out of the corner of my eye as wewalked across the abandoned midway towards the bumper cars. If Marcowas here, would Nicole see him? And if she didn't see him, did itmean he wasn't real?
      My bike was leaning whereI'd left it. The sun poured in through the broken slats of the woodlathe surrounding the pavilion, casting long think shadows along thefloor. I studied the patterns, looking for Marco but all I could seewas the rusting cars and dead leaves. Staring at the alternatingstripes of light and dark, I reached for my camera.
      "You didn't tell me youwere on a photo shoot."
      I shrugged. "I saidyou didn't need to stay."
      Nicole stood behind me andoff to the side. She was good about staying away from my peripheralvision and out of the path of the light. "What are you takingthese for?"
      She didn't know I hadn'ttouched my camera since Thomas died--until yesterday and I wasn'tgoing to tell her I was ghost hunting. "Independent studyproject."
      "Let me see."
      I turned on the display andshowed Nicole some of my shots.
      "You make it lookalmost beautiful," she said, comparing the pictures to thefilthy arena.
      I looked up, staring out atthe decaying place. "It is beautiful."
      Nicole snorted. "It'sa wreck. And an eyesore. And a dangerous liability for the city."
      "God, you sound justlike your dad." Her father was on the town council.
      "Well, get all yourpictures now," she said, shrugging.
      "Why?"
      "Next month this placewill be splinters."
      I grabbed the camera fromher and clutched it to my chest. "What?"
      "The council voted onit a few weeks ago. They're worried about getting slapped with alawsuit the city can't afford. This place is no man's land. Theoriginal owners declared bankruptcy and walked away. Some kid diedhere, don't you remember?"
      "What happened," Iwhispered. A chill walked its way up my spine and I looked up,certain I was being watched.
      "Well it was five orsix years ago. Just before they closed the place. They say it was apark employee who snuck in after hours. He fell into the log flumepool and drowned. Probably drunk or high. There was a biginvestigation and they cited the owners for all sorts of safetyviolations." Nicole shrugged. "That's why they canceledour 6^th grade class trip here."
      That I did remember. Iwasn't going to go, but Thomas was pissed as hell. "Do youremember who it was?" My throat was so tight I could barely getthe words out.
      She shook her head. "Somehigh school kid from Chicago."
      A bitter wind kicked up dirtand scattered the litter at my feet. I shivered, looking for Marco,not sure what frightened me more--seeing him or just seeing the dustscattering the early morning light.
      "Come on, you ready togo?"
      I took the camera off idiotmode and started playing with the f-stop and shutter speed settings. "Why don't you head out? I'm going to be a while." I keptmy voice as casual as I could. There wasn't any way I was going toleave now. Not until I could talk to Marco again. I didn't know howthe whole ghost thing worked, but you couldn't haunt a place thatdidn't exist, right? If Thomas was here somewhere, I needed to findout. Marco was my only lead.
      "You sure you're okay?"
      I tossed her my pack. "Goahead. Look inside. Portable meter, juice, food. I'm all set. Nocrisis today. Promise."
      "Pinky swear?"
      I smiled and nodded. Sheset the pack down without opening it.
      "Call me if you needanything, okay?"
      "Deal." My handswere twitchy on the camera. The icy breeze sliced through my thinjacket, but I wasn't going to give Nicole any reason to stay and tryto convince me to leave. I had to be here today and I had to bealone.

New Cards! New Tagline! More Dragonflies!

2011-09-28T11:52:00.001-04:00

I got an offer from moo.com to design and get 50 business cards for the price of shipping, so I thought I'd try my hand at putting something together.

I'm not a very visual person, but I wanted something that echoed my blog and website, and would have strong visual appeal.

These are the proofs of my cards. I look at this as a trial. If I like them and get positive feedback, I'll order more. If not, then I can redesign and try again.

If you can't read the copy, it says:

Where the mundane & the strange
collide. Where the familiar twists
slightly out of shape. Where ordinary choices lead
to extraordinary journeys.

I think that pretty well captures all of my work. What do you think? (Oh, and the moo.com banner is not on the finished product.)

Package Contained Bobcat

2011-09-25T15:35:00.000-04:00

xkcd by Randall Munroe, "A Minus-Minus"

I adore xkcd. Day in and day out Randall Munroe puts out scathing social commentary, amusing visual puns, news of scientific oddities, and just plain weirdness in the guise of stick figure comics.

The man is brilliant.

I often find myself referencing something from his work in my day to day life and when I started to think about today's blogpost, I flashed on this comic. Strangely enough, I remembered it as 'contained live bobcat' and when I googled it, the correct day came up. Spooky that the search algorithm knew what I was looking for, even though I was wrong. Skynet, anyone?

So onto today's thoughts.

We adoped Dustin, a new dog, in August. On his petfinder's page, he was described as a 2-3 yo male Lhasa Apso. Well, 1 out of 3 is not bad. He is male.

But he's no 2-3 yo dog.

Nor is he a Lhasa Apso. At least not most of him.

No, our Dustin is likely not much older than 1, and has primarily terrier in his genetic makeup. Likely Jack Russel Terrier, with some long haired dog in the mix to account for his coat.

If you know anything about JRT's or terriers in general, you know they are high energy/high maintenance dogs. That can jump. And are smart and stubborn. Food motivated. Opinionated.

We started dog obedience classes last week, and let's just say that Dustin is a work in progress. We had to work in the hallway, away from the other dogs or Dustin would go through this Dr. Jekyl/Mr. Hyde transformation that begins with whimpering and tail wagging and ends with full-on snarling and lunging. Poor guy wants to be social, but just can't figure out how to stay calm enough to do it.

So we're working on clicker training and positive reinforcement.

And the reality of it is, he's a great dog who has the capacity to be a well behaved one. It's just going to take some time and some work. So, with apologies to Randall, I likely would adopt Dustin again, even knowing him as I do now.

Better than a bobcat.

:)

Playing in a New Sandbox

2011-09-20T11:22:00.000-04:00

Every time I start a new novel, it's a different experience. While many things about the process are the same, for me, there's no cruising on autopilot. Part of that is deliberately working on different characters and keeping the stories fresh with new voices and structures. Part of it is that every blank page is new and terrifying in unique ways.

I did think, in my more naive days, that writing the first book was the hardest and that after that you had the roadmap all set.

I wish I could say that were true. In reality, I still struggle with every story, trying to stay on that bleeding edge where I keep pushing myself to be a better writer.

This new story is interesting. It's not the first time I've done alternating points of view, nor is it the first time I've done 1st person, but it is the first time I've worked with alternating first person points of view. The challenge is differentiating the voices so that the reader never has any doubt who is speaking in any given scene or chapter.

First person is hard for me. It usually takes me some time to find the character's authentic voice and not find my own voice intruding. But I tried to work on this in 3rd person. The story decidedly didn't cooperate.

Here's a brief snippet of my protagonist, Tess. She's a 17 yo HS senior, mourning the death of her twin brother who killed himself and his girlfriend driving drunk a few months before. She's also an insulin dependent diabetic who just experienced a severe blood sugar crisis. The story largely takes place in an abandoned amusement park. (And this is first draft material--you have been warned! LOL)

Photo by Timm Seuss, used under a creative commons license

Wehobbled over to the bench, Nicole doing most of the work and I satdown more like a sack of potatoes than a person. But at least Ididn't slither back onto the floor. The world was more or lessstaying put. Nicole's face was a set of round circles, from her darkeyes to the worried shape of her lips. "Wow, I think I'm goingto live."

Nicole loomed over me, a redflush spreading over her dark skin. "Next time call a freakingambulance."

"I'm sorry--"

"You stopped speakingto me. Not one word from you since Thomas' service." Shepronounced it the Spanish way. Tomas. Her accent always got twiceas strong when she was pissed. "And then you drag me out hereto save your ass? You could have died." She crossed her armsover her chest, hugging herself. "If you get yourself killed,I'm not going to be the one to tell your folks."

She glared at me until Ilooked away and sucked down the last of the goo. I shook my head. It wasn't personal. Looking down at the wrapper in my hands waseasier than figuring out what to say. I smoothed it out against myleg, listening to the plastic crinkle in the strained silence. Raspberry Flavored Energy Gel Blast. It was what marathoners usedwhen they were running. "Where the hell did you get this crap?"

"It's mine. I startedrunning. After." She shrugged. "Quit smoking, too. Coldturkey."

"You? Run?" Nicole hated anything remotely related to exercise. She stayedskinny on a steady diet of caffeine, cigarettes, and not sleeping. Ilaughed, but it ended in a wheeze and my head started throbbing.

"You think you're theonly one who hurt because he died?" Nicole turned her back tome, but not before I saw her eyes fill with tears.

"I'm sorry," Iwhispered.

"It was like I lostboth of you."

A gust of wind kicked up thetrash at my feet, sending crumpled cigarette packs and condomwrappers skittering along the arena. The air sliced through my thinjacket. My body started to shiver so violently I almost tumbled fromthe bench. "Nic--I need to get home." It was hard to forcethe words out through my chattering teeth. I would have to figureout a way to make things right between us, but first I had to getwarm and dry and check my blood sugar.

Nicole turned back to me. "Shit, girl, your lips are blue. Here." She slipped offher hoodie and tossed it to me.

I couldn't bring my hands upfast enough to catch it. It pooled at my feet. "I'm sorry." I wondered how many times I had said that this morning.

"Crap. You're in badshape." She took off my raincoat and bundled me into hersweatshirt. The first thing I noticed was that it didn't smell likestale cigarette smoke. The second thing was how warm it was. "Comeon. Let's get you home." Nicole bent down to shove everything Ihad emptied back into my backpack. "My car's just outside thefence. Can you make it?

I gritted my teeth andnodded. "What about my bike?"

"You'll have to comeback for it."

I shivered again. The lastthing I wanted to do was to come back to this place.

A poem for my first born

2011-09-15T10:50:00.000-04:00

Because he is 8 hours away. Because we will not be together for his birthday for the first time in his life. Because I miss him. Because I am thinking of him. Because I am proud of him. Because I love him.

Unsealing the Records

When you were born blue
eyes owl round, dark downed
there was no one to ask if loss
too was passed through placenta and blood.
Sixteen now, when you meet my gaze, looking
glass familiar, no relative
wonders who you take after. Born
on your grandmother's birthday, one more
gift for a woman terrified of too much
fortune. I was far younger than you
when I learned some questions were weapons
even in the right hands. How words
could be strung on a necklace
or garrote. I swear there is nothing
you could say as sharp or shameful
as silence. I am here.
Ask me anything.

--ljcohen, April 2010

The Marriage of Image to Word

2011-09-12T07:00:00.000-04:00

I am in the final stages of preparing to release an ebook version of my YA Fae novel, "The Between." This is a story that I have worked hard to craft and revise over the course of the past several years. It's a story I believe in and one that I want to see find its way into the hearts of readers.

To do that, it needs more than what this wordsmith can offer. It also needs the right images to bring the book to life.

That's not my strength. Hell, I think it's safe to say that even my stick figures suck. I can draw a smiley face reliably well, but that's where it ends.

But lucky for me, there are amazing and talented artists out in the world. Jade is one such artist. (:waves to Jade!:)

I first 'met' her (met in quotes, as Jade lives in Australia and our group was online. Someday, I hope to meet her in person!) as part of a writing crit group hosted at Forward Motion for Writers. In those days, she focused on her writing and I always enjoyed her highly visual work. That group disbanded, as many crit groups do, mostly due to time and other commitments. I still chat/email/exchange work with some of the members now, even years after we stopped doing formal crit together. I re-discovered Jade on Facebook and found that she'd essentially stopped writing to devote herself full-time to her visual art. And that she was looking for subjects to paint.

W00t!

I quickly emailed her, asking her if she'd be interested in doing the cover art for "The Between."

Double W00t because she was.

And here are her first character sketches from her conception of my characters Lydia and Aileen from "The Between."

Lydia Hawthorne	Aileen of the Shadow Court

I love the fact that Jade works in oils. It brings a sense of capturing a portrait of a real person. I love that, despite these not being exactly what I might imagine the characters looking like, they feel right in a deeper way. I love that she is getting to know the characters through her brush the way I would through writing exercises. I love that seeing these images bring my characters to an even fuller life; as if they were waiting for Jade to put brush to canvas.

I can't wait to see what she puts together for the cover image.

Genre-Bending: when categories just don't fit

2011-09-10T17:30:00.001-04:00

For this month's Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour, we're talking about genre and what happens when writers ignore the boundaries of bookstore categories. Actually, I also want to talk about my experience as a reader and how genre can both inform and limit me in my search for something new and shiny to read.

I remember the days of my neighborhood library--the library card the color of manila folders--creamy tan with rounded corners. My signature scribbled across the back. I actually remember when I got my own adult library card. I couldn't have been more than 9 or 10 and had read through every book in the children's section.

We weren't allowed to take out books from the adult section without a parent present, and my mother was probably tired of schlepping with me to the library several times a week. So she petitioned the librarian to grant me an adult card. It was like getting a passport and a visa to any county in the world. But once out of the cozy confines of the children's section, I didn't know what to read.

The children's section was genre-independent. Nancy Drew sat happily in the same area as Judy Blume's books and Heinlein's juvenile SF titles. And I read them all. The adult library was separated into sections. New books. Mystery. Science Fiction. Romance. Adventure. Non-fiction. And the sheer volume of books was overwhelming to a young kid. So I asked the librarians for help and they steered me to the Science Fiction section.

What I found out as a young kid was that while I had the technical ability to read adult work, much of the emotional subtext was either beyond me, confusing, inappropriate, or some combination of all of the above. In SF, I found a body of work that challenged me intellectually while not presenting me (for the most part) with inappropriately sexualized or graphically violent content. (Remember--I was reading without adult supervision from the time I was about 10. I'm not proposing censorship or ratings on books here. Just relaying my experience growing up in the late 60's and early 70's).

Back in the day, there wasn't as well a developed YA literature as there is today, so the strong child reader really didn't have a lot of choices. SF was a safe haven for me and to this day, I have a soft spot for many of the books I loved as a child.

But I also worry that keeping books in the ghettos of genre artificially limits both the book and the reader. There are excellent books that won't be widely read because they are perceived as being inferior somehow to more 'important' literary works.

And perhaps the genre categories end up in some way dictating the kind of books that are being written and published. Paranormal romance, for example, is the 'hot' thing now, so that section is enormous in the bookstore and so many of the books look and read like clones of one another. Perhaps if genre wasn't used as a marketing tool, more rich and complex stories would be written.

I know that I am basically a reading omnivore. I read widely in many genres, or perhaps despite genres. What I choose to write may also not neatly fit in a genre category. I like to write YA fiction with typical, modern day teen protagonists facing obstacles that force them to find reserves and skills they didn't know they had. It's not realistic fiction--some of my obstacles are haunted houses, or the unwanted ability to see glimpses of the future, or unwelcome Fae visitors. It's not urban fantasy. Nary a vampire, zombie, or were-creature to be found. It's not high fantasy. No elves, dwarves, or wizards.

The next time someone asks me what kind of novels I write, I think I will just tell them I write stories.

(You can find a list of all the blog tour participants here and see the next installment by D. Anthony Brown here.)

Busy Time, Miscellaneus

2011-09-07T15:37:00.001-04:00

Dustin and Tigger

So my dear husband turned to me the other night and said, "you know, you haven't updated your blog in a week." So I guess he follows my online persona. LOL. Well, he's right. Sorry, guys!

I've been busy focusing on my email list, making sure I've crossed all the 't's and dotted all the 'i's before making it go live. I'm happy to say as of last night, I have 71 subscribers, most of whom I didn't have to guilt to sign up. :)

The other thing that's been claiming my attention is another new addition to our household. No, I didn't get a *third* dog. What I have done is open our home to a new foreign student. We have had wonderful experiences housing students from outside the US. A lovely young lady from Bejing, China will be staying with us through the school year as she finishes her HS career here in the states.

So far, she's coping with this odd family she's fallen in with.

Speaking of our new dog, Dustin is settling in to his new routine as part of our household. He gets along famously with Tigger, our 6 1/2 year old lab/hound mix. He loves people and wants nothing more than to be a lap dog. However. And it's a big however. He's not well socialized with other dogs we meet while on leash.

Sigh.

That's when this 12 pound ball of fluff turns into a snarling mess. He's going to be a work in progress. I really want him to be calm and comfortable around other dogs. To that end, we're going to start an obedience class next week. I never had to go that route with Tigger, but then again, she came to us as a 5 month old pup. Dustin is of indeterminate age, and without any clue to his history other than he was so badly matted when he was found on the streets that he had to be shaved down to the skin. I imagine that he had to be aggressive to survive.

And finally, I miss my college-age son. When I was his age and at school, I barely gave my parents another thought. I believe I am being punished for my callous self-centeredness.

Squee! Exciting Project! Stay Tuned!

2011-08-31T14:34:00.000-04:00

While I've been out of formal school for a good many years now, I still get excited about September. It's the time of new beginnings, of change and transition. Now that we're back home and the school year is about to start, it's time for me to get cracking on the new novel-in-progress. But that's not the only new thing coming.

Even as we speak, my lovely agent, Nephele Tempest, is shopping around "The House of Many Doors," a YA haunted house story. We both have high hopes that it will find a home with a publisher who will fall in love with it. But that doesn't mean I get to sit back and wait for the publishing gods to pour their blessings on me. That's so not how things work in the brave new world of the writer. (Though, to be honest, I'm not sure it *ever* worked like that, not for the vast majority of writers, anyway.)

So what am I doing that has gotten me all charged up?

I am getting ready to release "The Between" as a free ebook.

I have an artist working on cover art and am in process to have the book copy edited, now that it's been revised and polished with the input of my agent as well as critique buddies and beta readers. It's a story I'm really proud of and believe it deserves an audience of passionate readers.

Unfortunately, it's in a genre (a YA changeling/Fae story) that the publishers don't want to take a chance on with an unknown writer. (me). So publishing's loss is your gain. :) With the blessing of Nephele and of The Knight Agency, I will be self-publishing "The Between." I can't give you a release date until I've had a chance to check in with my lovely cover artist. If all goes well, I'm planning for a late fall kick off.

If you are interested in being one of the first readers, please sign up for my mailing list (also conveniently located at the top of the sidebar).

While "The Between" tells a complete story (no terrible cliff hangers, I promise!), it has a companion sequel I would love to write. The truth is, however, it makes little sense to write a sequel to a book that doesn't sell or have readers. So the really exciting new endeavor is that in addition to releasing an ebook version of "The Between," I am also going to open a kickstarter campaign to raise funds to support the writing and publication of the sequel.

If you aren't familiar with the kickstarter model, it's a crowdsourced funding mechanism for creative projects. There is no risk to potential backers because money pledged is not released unless the entire amount is raised within the project's timeframe. And each backer is offered rewards depending on the level pledged.

I'll be updating this blog and my website about the release of "The Between," as well as when the kickstarter campaign goes live. Please stay tuned, sign up for my mailing list (you'll also get free original short fiction for your reading enjoyment!), and feel free to ask questions.

For all you early-birds, there may even be sneak peaks of the opening chapters. . .

2,000 Miles

2011-08-29T22:09:00.000-04:00

In the past two weeks, we have traveled nearly 2,000 miles. From Boston to Maryland, back to Boston, to Rochester, to Quebec, and back to Boston yet again.

Along the way, we enjoyed family time, pretended to be pirates, cried as our firstborn left the nest for his first semester at College, hiked, rode horses, and watched cars race, and watched the miles roll beneath our tires.

We are home now. Some things are familiar here; the dogs happy to see us, our rooms waiting just as we left them, scary food to throw out from the fridge. Some things utterly strange: one son not living with us, his room quiet, his bed neatly made. He will always be part of our world, but there will be parts of his world we will not share.

That is a scary and bittersweet place for a parent to be.

Yet I know this is as it should be.

It doesn't mean I wouldn't drive every one of those 2,000 miles again if he needed me to.

Watching the news from afar

2011-08-28T11:37:00.000-04:00

There is a strange sort of ironic disconnect that a 24/7 news cycle and the internet allows. Here we are in Mont-Tremblant, Canada:

While the news is in an all-hurricane-all-the-time frenzy. Yes, I've lived through bad storms. We've dealt with wind, water, and flooding (not to mention fire) in past years, so it's not like I'm blase about disasters. It's only that the hype seems to obscure the real difficulty and danger of the event.

Ironic. Like I said.

We had to turn off CNN last night because it simultaneously made my anxiety ramp up and got me annoyed. The anxiety because my in-laws live right on the water on the Chesapeake Bay. They've already lost their home once to a bad storm surge during Hurricane Isabel. The annoyance factor was from watching reporters in their soaked raingear reporting live and on scene when really they should have been somewhere indoors. There's news and then there's just stupidity.

I've been following updates from my home town via social media and have found them to be less histrionic and more factual.

Hoping all of you in harm's way are safe and dry.

Call for action!

2011-08-20T10:25:00.000-04:00

Photo by Daehyun Park, used by CC license

Ahem.

Tap, tap, tap.

Is this thing on?

I'm dipping my toes into the self-promotion stream and let me tell you, the water is freezing cold! I'm an intensely private person and while I would like to think that I'm fairly self-confident, the truth is I'm often a bundle of insecurities.

But, like it or not, if I'm going to have any success as an author, I need to put myself and my work out there. I've certainly embraced social media with this blog, FB, twitter, and Google+. I've worked hard to keep the emphasis on the *social* part of the social media, making connections and contributing to conversations. I'm certainly not a 'me, me, look at me' kind of person and I hope I will never use the internet as a platform for annoying anyone.

I do, however, want to make a successful living at this writing business. And that takes reaching out to a tribe of interested readers. So here's my thinking:

I've written a dozen or so short stories over the past few years. I've made some half-hearted attempts at submitting them to paying venues, but have never really made the full commitment to getting them published that some of my crit buddies have done. My focus is on my novels. I write short stories and poetry because some ideas and images are best suited to more compact forms.

I'd love to have my short stories find homes in the hearts of readers. Along the way, I'd like to build a community of supporters who want to read what I want to write.

If you are a reader, if you are passionate about the power of stories, then I want you in my tribe. If you sign up for my mailing list (also conveniently first on the sidebar right over there --->), I will send you a short story. If you hate it, you can unsubscribe. No harm, no foul. If you like what you read, let me know. At semi-regular intervals, I'll send out other stories. No charge, no obligation, no DRM. You will be free to share the stories with others, though I would ask that you don't change them or omit my contact information.

Sound reasonable?

I look forward to sending you a story.

Returning to the things I love

2011-08-19T22:30:00.000-04:00

We're on vacation this week at my in-laws' home.

It's quiet here on Maryland's eastern shore, where time is measured by tides and seasons rather than the pressure of the clock. Their house is filled with people and dogs and laughter and it is a balm to my weary spirit. We have come down here every August for years and returning to our normal routines is very much a part of returning to our lives.

Traditions are important because they ground us, link us both to the past and to the future. There are certain things we do when we're here. We eat mountains of fresh tomatoes with basil, dozens of ears of fresh corn, blue crabs cooked with Old Bay seasoning. And then there's the fruit.

One of the things I have missed this summer is preserving. It just wasn't something I had the energy or desire to do when we were living in our temporary quarters. Besides, all of my canning equipment was lost in the fire and needs to be replaced. Until now, we had no place to store it all, so no canning.

But one of the fun traditions of our August sojourn here is harvesting the neighbor's fig tree and going raspberry picking. We did both, and now we have 36 4-oz jars of beautiful preserves; golden fig spread and ruby red raspberry jam.

Preserving summer's bounty was certainly not anything I grew up doing: I have learned over time from friends and neighbors how to can, freeze, and dehydrate. It is extremely satisfying to realize that these skills are now in my head and in my hands. It is part of me and my life. I am so happy to return to it.

The other ritual I have happily returned to is the starting of a new novel during our holiday. I've barely written anything new in the 10 months since our fire. I have been working on my craft, editing and revising, but I didn't have the brain space available for creating new work. Now I do.

I'm thrilled to have started my next novel, a YA ghost story/murder mystery provisionally named "Manifest Destiny." Pre-writing and preliminary research is done, main story arc is plotted out, the first 3 chapters outlined, and I've written the first 1000 words. My plan is to finish a first draft by the end of 2011.

Why is the rum always gone?

2011-08-15T16:51:00.000-04:00

Pirates and Wenches weekend, 2011. This is part of our annual family holiday with my in-laws. Wherein grown ups and almost grown ups dress up like pirates and generally act like goof-balls.

In case you couldn't tell from the photo, we're having fun.

The beauty in the ordinary

2011-08-12T17:46:00.000-04:00

This afternoon, I spent an hour sitting at my desk sorting through paperwork and paying bills. Dreary, mundane work to be sure, and yet, I am unaccountably content. The National is on repeat on the mp3 player, the windows are open, a soft breeze is blowing through the house as the shadows lengthen toward evening.

I am home.

We have been back in the house a little less than 2 weeks and hour by hour the fear and uncertainty of last year fades.

My heart is full of gratitude over the simplest of things; the mailman who walks by gesticulating wildly as he talks via his bluetooth headset, the yellow blooms of late daylilies in my neighbor's yard, the dogs sleeping on the floor near my feet. I am surrounded by the achingly familiar.

Ideas are everywhere

2011-08-10T18:41:00.001-04:00

This month's merry-go-round-blog-tour topic is where our ideas come from. I've blogged before about where I found my latest idea here: three random images combined to turn into a story idea. In this story's case it was a girl who hated having her photo taken, an abandoned amusement park, and a murdered boy that have coalesced around a YA project that is part ghost story part murder mystery. So far, I have nearly a dozen pages of hand written notes and a few trial scenes to explore my protagonist's voice.

But ideas are easy. Listen to an hour of NPR and plot bunnies will come scampering out of your radio. Take a trip around wikipedia and you will have to fight them off with a stick.

It's not the idea that's hard. It's figuring out which ideas have enough sticking power, enough inherent conflict and interest to become a capital "S" story. How do you know? Haven't a clue. It's an in-the-gut feel for me. If the initial image or images that spark the story are the stone in the pond, then what supports that story are the ripples that move outward from the stone.

The more ripples, the more layers of 'what if' that emerge from the central images, the stronger the idea and the more certain I am that this idea will spin itself into a novel length project.

If the spark is just a shiny image that doesn't grow and change, doesn't twist in my mind in all sorts of possible and exciting directions, then I know it doesn't have what it takes. And that's a sad moment. I've spent time with shiny ideas, even written a bunch of chapters on several projects that weren't solid enough. I still have those fractions of novels on my hard drive, but I probably will never try to resurrect them as they are. It takes me about a year and a lot of hard work to take an idea from spark to finished novel. If an idea isn't stable enough to go the distance, I will get frustrated, the writing will suffer, and in the end I won't have a story.

My new idea? It's a keeper. That doesn't mean it will write itself or be easy in any way, but it has what it takes to be a Story. I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Return to the Merry-go-round-blog-tour site for a list of all our participants.

Party!

2011-08-08T10:26:00.000-04:00

The best way I know to ensure you have a clean house is to plan a party.

I kicked this up a notch. I set our welcome home open house less than 2 weeks after we moved back in.

It forced us to unpack (most of them!) boxes, hang up art, and generally make the place look less like the floor of warehouse 19 and more like a home that actual people actually live in.

And it worked.

All afternoon and into the evening yesterday, friends and family came to celebrate with us, tour the house, and generally hang out. And it was wonderful.

For the past 3/4 of a year, I've been holding on to the image of my happy house, filled with people, conversation, music, laughter. And this is a happy house. Yesterday was a living reminder of that, and also a celebration of the various communities who supported us during our ordeal.

We wouldn't have made it out the other side without all you guys!

Thank you for being there for us.

It's August--Time for the Postcard Poetry Fest

2011-08-04T09:37:00.001-04:00

For several years now, I've participated in the August Postcard Poetry Fest wherein poets get a list of 31 names/addresses and write an original postcard poem for each person on the list. In return, the poet receives 31 original postcard poems from 31 writers all over the world.

I still have all the postcards I've ever received.

This year, I have started a series called "Homecoming," using images from photos of our fire and reconstruction process. I'm not sure I'll be able to sustain this for the entire month, but I'm hoping to have a solid collection of related poems by the end.

For your enjoyment, the first several postcards that have gone out into the world:

Photo by Qubitso,licensed via CC. http://www.flickr.com/photos/29494283@N04/4088926648/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Writers and Agents: Understand your relationship

2011-08-02T09:30:00.001-04:00

Perhaps I am naive, but I am frankly confused by the vitriol spewing all over the internet in relation to agents and self-publishing. My own agency (The Knight Agency) recently came up with their policy statement on how to assist their authors in self-publishing their work and they, along with other agencies, have received a lot of sarcastic commentary along with some out and out nastiness.

As I said in my google + rant about this:

No one at the Knight Agency is holding a gun to my head and forcing me to use their services to self-publish. Nor are they threatening to drop me as a client if I take a rejected project out on my own. I don't understand the anger. If I decide that it is worth 15% for a specific term for a specific book to receive career guidance, editorial services (Nephele has been invaluable in reading and offering editorial suggestions on my novels), and promotion (among other things) than that is my decision. It doesn't mean I'm lazy or stupid or letting myself be used. I just means that given my current circumstances and the current landscape, I have made the best choice for me and for now.

I read a wide swath of publishing related blogs and I think I have a good grasp of the business side of writing. In addition, I have had a 20+ year career as a physical therapist, working in large academic and corporate structures as well as in my own private practice. I understand basic business concepts and potential conflict of interest issues quite well.

Many bloggers are talking about an agent's conflict of interest in terms of not trusting that the agent will do what's in the author's best interest when it is simpler to self-publish then to submit. (Admittedly, this is an over- simplification of the argument, but bear with me.)

This argument doesn't really hold up if you make the assumption that the relationship between author and agent is a symbiotic one. It is in the agent's best interest to nurture the writer's career for long term success. That means the best living for both parties. Perhaps that means advising the writer to self-publish project A, traditionally publish project B, and sign on with a small press for project C, (etc). Remember, the agent only earns money when the author does.

Self-publishing just provides another avenue for authors to get books in the hands of readers.

Agents have always made recommendations between publishing opportunities. Self-publishing doesn't change that--not in the symbiotic relationship between writer and agent. And that relationship is based on mutual trust: The writer trusts that the agent has his or her best career interests at heart. The agent trusts that the writer will provide the creative content and work professionally with editors, etc.

If this is not the case, then the writer SHOULD NOT work with the agent.

This is an unprecedented time of freedom and flexibility for writers. For the first time in modern publishing, the writer can forge his or her own path. It only requires some minimal computer competency and the willingness to take responsibility for the whole product.

For some writers, their best career path will be as independents. For others, continuing to work with the existing more traditional model is the answer. For the majority of writers, I believe a successful career will combine self and traditional publishing in a hybrid model.

What will an agent's role be in a year? In 5 years? In 10 years? No one knows. But I can tell you, based on my own experience, that having a professional who is invested in my career, my vision, and my writing is a valuable commodity. One worth nurturing.

As for potential conflicts of interest, that's where the writer needs to assess not only each offer, but the agent relationship on a regular basis armed with knowledge about publishing.

One thing that I do agree with: the day of the passive writer, letting the agent make all the decisions is long over.

Endings and Beginings

2011-07-30T12:18:00.000-04:00

My 15 yo son and I emptied out the last dregs from the apartment we rented after our house fire. We are officially home now.

Rented furniture, ready to go back on the truck.

Time for one final cleaning

The place we lived in for the past 9 months couldn't have been more convenient and the management more pleasant. But it was never home.

The next few weeks will be a continual surprise as we open boxes of our salvaged belongings that have been in storage waiting for us.

Dorothy was right.

There is no place like home.

Even my toes are tired

2011-07-27T00:17:00.000-04:00

For the past 5 days, I've been packing boxes, moving boxes, and unpacking boxes as we transition back home after being displaced by a fire nearly 8 months ago.

It's exhausting work, even with help.

And we adopted a new dog in the process, since, well, moving back home and getting my son ready for college wasn't stressful enough.

Meet Dusty, short for Dustin

He's a sweetie. (The dog. Though my kiddo is pretty great too). But he's a little insane. :) He never stops moving. Thank goodness our Tigger is keeping him busy!

We now have all the comforts of home: internet and the coffee grinder. Priorities, right?

I will likely continue to be scarce for another few days as we settle in.

It's good to be home.

Homeward Bound. . .

2011-07-20T07:00:00.001-04:00

In theory, our house rebuild is completed this coming Friday. In actuality, the punch list keeps getting longer and longer and I suspect the contractors will be in and out of the place for at least another week or two even after we move back in.

Some more photos of the process:

The alcove in the master bedroom

The upstairs hallway


Hubby's office--love the eggplant color

Looking down the stairwell

My office. Nirvana--my own space again!

Facebook and Twitter and Google+ Oh My

2011-07-19T09:21:00.001-04:00

Once upon a time, there was only dial up. Email was a relatively new thang for folks outside of the military or academia. Then there was compuserve and the lucky few who had the money to afford their own computer and the know how could have their own email address. Their OWN email. That it was a long string of numbers, nearly impossible to remember and that getting online meant knowing how to negotiate DOS, using a modem, tying up your phone line, and hoping not to get disconnected, was besides the point. It was gee-whiz amazing.

Holy early adopters, batman.

I didn't have a compuserve address, but my hubby was a beta tester for one of the first versions of AOL. AOL! Even the name meant something. America On Line. This was nothing short of revolutionary. You could choose a NAME for your email address. A name that would be simple for you to remember and to share with your friends. And AOL made it easier to find other people who you could communicate with through their message boards. You didn't need to know some random string of numbers to find an online community. (Yes, there were online communities in the dark ages of the late 80s, you just had to know the secret handshake.) AOL made it accessible. It was visually stunning, compared to what we had before.

I remember spending guilty and expensive (you had to pay for your phone time, remember?) hours on those message boards. That was where I found my first online poetry community. Do you have any idea how amazing that was? I could talk to poets from around the globe and we could share our words, work together.

And as is wont in anything technological, things accelerated. They evolved. Computers got faster and faster. Programs became more sophisticated and simpler to use at the same time. The web became the infrastructure we never really think about--like the water pipes that lurk under our streets that bring our water to the tap. It is just there. A given.

Now we have facebook, twitter, linkedin, foursquare, google+, etc.

Smart phones and ubiquitous wifi means there's an expectation of always on, instant interconnectivity. We narrate our lives in public.

My kids have grown up taking this landscape for granted. While I am no luddite by any stretch of the imagination, I didn't really have any interest in facebook when it was *the thing* for any teen, but joined so my kids could join. (Friending me was a condition of their accounts.)

I grew to appreciate facebook, and the way I could stay in touch with far-flung friends and relations in a casual, asynchronous way. Then twitter clamored for my attention. And I joined that too, knowing that social media was not optional for writers--even aspiring ones. I then grew to appreciate the way other twitterers had essentially curated the WWW and I could follow fascinating links that I would have otherwise missed.

And now, Google+. A friend who is an earlier adopter than I am sent me an invite. I wanted to claim my user name, so I hopped aboard. There are a lot of very smart features of G+, but that is not what I want to talk about. (Just search for Google+ and you will find a plethora of usability posts.)

What I want to talk about is my sense of overwhelm. Yes, I have met fascinating and lovely people via social networking. Yes, I enjoy being able to talk with folks from around the globe and share their perspectives. Yes, it's fun to participate and to share what I love with like-minded individuals.

Yes to all those things that are part of the social media world.

And yet, I am feeling for the first time the inklings of worry. Can I keep up with the pace? Is the conversation flowing so rapidly that if I don't swim with all my might, I'll be swept away?

There is also a cost to staying in that current. I worry about losing the ability to be in the moment and soak up an experience without feeling the need to interpret or mediate it publicly. Silence and stillness are vital to the creative process. In the background noise of updates and notifications, will I be able to hear myself think? Will talking about writing supplant my actual writing?

I don't have any easy answers to this, but I know I will need to find a balance that will allow me to both stay engaged with a community I have grown to appreciate and find enough private, quiet time to create.

This is not the fault of google+, or any particular social media system, it is only the latest pull on my attention. I suppose that in time, I will integrate g+ into my routine the way I have figured out how to follow blogs by reading my rss feed with my morning coffee.

So far, I have resisted the siren song of a smart phone. It's bad enough that a broadband always on internet connection at home means that I am always once click away from distraction. Some days, I am nostalgic for the inconvenience of a modem and checking my email once a day.

Insanity abounds

2011-07-17T00:43:00.000-04:00

So, in theory, our home reconstruction is slated to be finished this coming Friday, after which we will be moving back home after being displaced for 7 1/2 months.

This is not the time to be making big changes. We've had enough change and chaos to last a lifetime.

But. . .

But. . .

We saw a lhasa apso mix on a dog adoption website and we've been thinking for some time that Tigger could use a friend. We just couldn't cope with a second shed-o-matic hound. And our first dog, Max had been a lhasa.

Sunday afternoon, we're traipsing down to RI to meet this dog, see how well socialized it is, and see how Tigger reacts to him. According to the rescue organization, he is a lovely animal who loves other dogs. His name is Derby and he's 2 or 3.

Oh, and he looks goofy now because they had to shave him down, he was so badly matted. Frankly, with that snout, I don't think he's got that much lhasa apso in him, but we'll see.

What Books are on Your Nightstand?

2011-07-10T07:00:00.007-04:00

If you're a writer, chances are you were a reader first. I know that's true for me. I actually can't remember a time when I didn't know how to read. My mother remembers me pulling books out of her hand when I was still a toddler and pretending to read them rather than letting her read to me.

I do know that I entered Kindergarten already reading. And when I got to first grade, I was reading fluently, which got me in trouble with my 1st grade teacher. As my mother used to tell the story, the teacher had no idea I was a reader. She was busy up in front of the room teaching beginning decoding skills and I was bored out of my gourd. So I would fidget. Then tap my pencil on the desk. Then hum to myself.

You get the picture.

Teacher calls my mom to tell her I must be 'hyperkinetic' (what they used to call disruptive kids before ADHD. Ahh, labels . . .) and didn't belong in her class.

My mother, G-d bless her, politely gave her a dressing down. Then told her to sit me in the back of a room with a pile of books and she'd never be irritated again.

Thus began my reading career.

So what's on my nightstand? (Sorry, I digress a lot. Bad habit.)

Surprisingly, given my love of books, not that much. But there's a reason for that: we had a house fire on December 1 and we've been living in temporary (and small) quarters for almost 7 months now. Whenever I pass a bookstore or hear a review of a book I want to buy, I'm painfully aware that anything I buy I will have to pack and move.

Yes, I have a kindle. Yes, I buy ebooks, but I'm still a luddite when it comes to my love of tangible in-paper books and have missed buying them. So, back to what's on my nightstand (not even really mine, as all our furniture is rented along with the apartment, but I digress, again). I suppose listing everything that's on my Kindle doesn't count. LOL. I'll just reinterpret that questions and answer what I'm currently reading.

Story Engineering, by Larry Brooks
--Technically, I've already read this one, but since I'm working on edits to a manuscript, I keep this book open so I can flip through it to study certain concepts or review where I am in the process.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N.K. Jemisin
--I had never heard of this author, but picked up a copy for the kindle during a promo by the publisher. It's been sitting on my kindle for months and I am so glad I started to read it. I'm about 25% through and am enjoying the writing style very much. This is a breath of fresh air, considering I've abandoned 2 of the 3 books I've started recently. I'm surprised at how much I'm enjoying the book since it's told in flashback in a first person POV with several stops and starts where the narrator, in effect, breaks the forth wall and talks to the reader. Normally that kind of gimmick would really bug my need for narrative flow, but it seems to fit the story.

It's a fantasy, set in an alternate earth, where gods have been vanquished and imprisoned in human bodies, under the command of a ruling class. Into this political theatre, Yeine, granddaughter of the ruler is thrust when she is unexpectedly named one of three heirs to a kingdom she would rather not even know about. And the imprisoned gods start to take an interest in her.

So what's on your nightstand?

----

Today's post was inspired by the topic What Books Are on Your Nightstand? the opening question in the inaugural cycle of the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour, an ongoing tour where you, the reader, travel around the world from author's blog to author's blog. We have all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there's something for everyone to enjoy.

If you want to get to know nearly twenty other writers and find out what's on their nightstand, check out the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour.

Tomorrow's Blog Tour participant is: D. Anthony Brown.

Three Random Things

2011-07-08T14:50:00.000-04:00

What does a young photographer who hates having her picture taken, a murdered boy, and an abandoned amusement park have in common?

I'm not sure either, but when I do figure it out, I think I've found my next YA story.

So many of my novels start out this way--with a few central images or phrases. I need to let these simmer, maybe do some free writes and see where it takes me.

I've always loved abandoned and forgotten places and ever since I discovered Julia Solis' work, I've been hoping to find a story to match the intensity of her photographs. Then, Neil Gaiman tweeted a link to an abandoned Six flags park in New Orleans, a casualty of Hurricane Katrina. Well, I haven't been able to get those images out of my head since.

And it reminded me that last Sept, when hubby and I went to Six Flags New England to ride roller coasters for our anniversary, we had brainstormed about a story with ghosts set in an amusement park. So a year later (and what a year it was) I am coming back to the idea.

Still don't have anything more tangible than those few images, but any idea that has the staying power to linger for a year, through loss, pain, and trauma has some serious writing mojo.

When in doubt, cookies

2011-07-05T23:42:00.000-04:00

The TARDIS is empty. Unlike in this picture, where it is full of chocolate chip cookies.
Last week, it was filled with cookies. But they got transported somewhere else. Probably into the gaping maws of two teenagers.

So, in the spirit of sharing, and because I couldn't think of a blog post for today, I will reveal to you my go to chocolate chip cookie recipe.

True confession time: while I am a good cook and a really good baker, cookies have always eluded me. Bread? Quick breads? Pie? I am so there, and from scratch. No problem. But cookies? Not so much.

Good cookie bakers have told me the problem lies in a lack of kitchenaide, or in my cookie pans, or the temperature setting of my oven. I've fiddled with a ton of variables and nothing seemed to make much of a difference.

And then a poetry friend sent me her recipe. I liked it. I could make decent cookies with it. Not long after that, Cooks Illustrated had a recipe for chocolate chip cookies in their magazine. I made that one as well. Really good, but a little fussy in preparation. They had you brown/carmelize butter in a saute pan. I'm lazy and didn't want to go that extra step/extra clean up.

So I experimented and combined features of both recipes, coming up with this one.

Makes 2 - 2 1/2 dozen (depending on size)

2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon table salt

3/4 cup unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks) melted/cooled
1/2 cup white sugar +
1 cup packed dark brown sugar (or 1 cup white sugar and 1/4 cup molasses)
1 TB vanilla

1 large egg
1 large yolk

1 cups chocolate chips

Melt the butter and let it cool (microwave works well)

Mix together flour and baking soda, and salt set aside

Add both sugars and vanilla to butter, whisking well.

Add eggs and whisk X 30 seconds. Let stand 3 minutes, repeat mix/rest 2 more times until mixture is thick, smooth, and shiny.

Stir flour mixture into butter mixture until just combined.

Stir in chocolate chips.

Refrigerate 30 minutes. (I always forget this step. Oh well.)

Shape into ping pong sized balls (scoop with a TBS) , arrange 2 inches apart on a cookie sheet, flatten slightly.

Bake 10-14 minutes @ 325 degrees, rotating trays halfway through cooking.
These cookies are slightly chewy in the center, crisp on the outside.

Enjoy!

Reading and the Investment of Time

2011-06-28T10:12:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about writing a post like this for some time now, but this blog post about a reader's investment in time vs money, by Jim Breslin got me nodding my head.

You see, I've been reading recently. I know--that's a shocker, right? Well, in the past 2 weeks, I've read several old favorites again, and cracked open 3 new ones. 2 fantasy books and a cozy mystery. I'm not going to name them for a slew of reasons. First, because so much is a matter of taste, that just because I had one particular experience with a novel, doesn't mean that another reader won't have a different one. Second, because I don't want to take on the role of reviewer while I have a writer's hat on. Third, because that's not the point of the post, really.

Of the three new books I started, I only finished one.

The two that I did not finish were both self-published books. Both highly touted in their genre, both sold at a very low price. It was not a matter of investment of money, but of time, a la Breslin's post. While the writing in both these stories was serviceable, there were clear pacing and craft issues that made them both clunky reads. In fact, I felt like I was reading for critique. It felt like work.

The stories were interesting enough, but the writing got in the way.

If either of these authors had been my crit group buddies, I would have finished the stories and made structural recommendations, primarily in pacing, characterization, and emotional stakes. But because I picked up these novels for my recreational enjoyment, I gave up on them. My reading time is too limited to spend on books that don't fully transport me.

The third novel I read, the cozy mystery, is the one I did finish. I bought it at our local indi bookstore. It was signed by the author, who is (I believe) local. It was an interesting idea, with a nice 1st person character's voice, but could have been so much more. I read it to the end to find out the 'who/why dunnit' and ultimately didn't feel like I had gotten my time's worth out of it.

I find that quite sad. Three potentially excellent tales, all hamstrung by craft issues that could/should have been addressed in revisions and with a strong editor. Were these books professionally edited? Once I might have assumed that the mystery was, as it had been published traditionally. Now, with the changes and panic in publishing, I don't know what the press provided. The self-published books? No way to know.

This is not any kind of dig at self-publishing.

This is only a reflection of one reader, one voracious reader of books across many genres and her realization that there are many more books to read than hours in a life to read them. So, writers (looks to self as well), do what you need to do in order to make your stories more than worth the investment in time for your readers.

Ch ch ch ch changes. . .

2011-06-24T22:39:00.000-04:00

This is the view from my front hallway down to the 1/2 bath at the end of the hall. The first picture is a little too close to that powder room window to see the arch into the living room (on the right) that you can see in all the other photos.

Gutted to the studs

Wow, walls

Walls AND a floor! Woodwork in the process of being refinished

Painted walls and stained woodwork. Next stop: refinish the new floors

You can make out a little of the very cool track light that winds its way along the ceiling in the entry way. We're counting down the days now: just shy of a month until we're home again!

"It will be all right"

2011-06-22T08:30:00.000-04:00

This is a song that has been playing on endless loop in my head these past few weeks.

"First night of your life,
curled up on your own.
Looking at you now
you would never know.

I see it in your eyes
I see it in your eyes
You'll be all right.
I see it in your eyes
I see it in your eyes
You'll be all right.
All right."

(lyrics for "Wires," by Athlete)

I think anyone who has been a parent can understand the heartache of feeling powerless when your child is in distress. I listened to the song this morning, tears in my own eyes, as he sings about tears in his.

I want to tell my son: "I see it in your eyes/I see it in your eyes/you'll be all right." But he's seventeen, struggling with things he can't even name, and these are shadows I can't banish with a night light they way I could when he was two.

Perhaps it is enough that I believe he'll be all right.

And I do believe it.

Everything Old is New Again: The Home Edition

2011-06-21T11:55:00.000-04:00

A little over 6 months ago, my house looked like this after the fire that displaced us on December 1, 2010.

In just a few short weeks, the reconstruction of our house will be completed and we will be able to move back into the place that has been our home for nearly 20 years.

It's a brick tudor, built somewhere shy of 100 years ago, and it will be both old and new. Old because the outside structure of the house was untouched by the fire. New because the basement and first floor were completely gutted and rebuilt, along with all of the house's infrastructure. New wiring, new plumbing, new heating plant, new floors, new walls, new windows.

What remains is the place we have raised our children, the structure that contains a good chunk of the memories of our lives.

Through the fear, that terrible day itself, in the days that followed when we were utterly lost in shock and dismay, through the months of displacement and rebuilding, I have maintained a steadfast belief in how lucky we are.

Lucky for surviving.

Lucky for the love and support of our communities, our 'tribes' that include family, friends, neighbors.

Lucky for the laughter and stubbornness that kept us moving together as a family.

Thank you, all, for your well wishes and your encouragement. Home is in sight.

Short story conundrums

2011-06-17T15:52:00.000-04:00

While I write primarily novels and poetry, I have also written some half dozen short stories that I am pleased with. I've submitted them through the round robin of pro markets in the SF&F world, and none have been picked up. (Some personal notes from editors, though)

I know that some advice would be to continue to submit the older work to other venues and continue to write and submit the new work to the editors with whom you've had near misses.

But the reality is, I am not fully comfortable with the short story form. And while I appreciate a well crafted short story, I don't go out of my way to read a lot of them. I gravitate toward diving into longer work.

It looks like my options are to continue to write/submit, working my way through appropriate publications from pro to semi pro to amateur journals, both in print and on the web, or release the stories I feel are good enough as free reads on an appropriate venue as a way to build readership and share what I've written.

I think if I were more drawn to short fiction as an art form, I would probably choose journals and contests. I'm just not sure that's where I should be spending my time, rather than focusing on novel writing.

I'd appreciate any thoughts on the matter from both readers and writers.

True Confessions of a Serious Doctor Who Fan

2011-06-14T11:47:00.000-04:00

I have been a Doctor Who fan since the Watergate era.

Truly. This is not hyperbole.

I was a kid during the televised hearings and there was nothing on network TV except the hearings. These were the days of 3 networks, 1 public TV station, and a few local channels that replayed syndicated content. That was it. No cable, no interwebs, no on demand. (Yes, I'm that old.)

So, there I was, a bored kid, channel flipping a hand-me-down black and white TV trying to get away from endless talking heads and I found this weird guy in an opera cloak flying around in a police box. It was so bizarre and so unlike anything else I'd ever seen and I was hooked.

Jon Pertwee was my first doctor, but I grew up in the Tom Baker era. (And yes, I wanted to grow up to be Sarah Jane Smith, sigh.) I watched faithfully through the Peter Davidson era, and then got lost into other interests and pursuits, but I never lost my love for odd old episodes of the show that I would catch time to time.

Fast forward a bunch of years, and I had the great pleasure to introduce my kids to the Doctor Who reboot with Christopher Eccleston. I hooked them too and we now watch as a family. I loved the interactions between Tennant and Simm and I love the complicated darkness they brought to the show's universe. And I enjoy Smith's incarnation of the Doctor as well. He has this ability to be absolutely goofy and absolutely deadly serious at the same time.

But I have decided I am not a Steven Moffat fan.

While he is wonderful at creating snappy lines and dialogue, he spends too much of the show's energy on plot twists that exist simply to shock and surprise the viewer. As a writer, I do not believe that is the way to raise the stakes. The viewer wants to feel the characters' shock and surprise and often this is best accomplished when the viewer knows more than the characters.

Think how much more suspenseful it is to see a character walk in a shadowy place when *we* know there is something lurking, stalking him in those shadows. When we don't see that, and the monster jumps out, we are startled, we get a cheap thrill, but there is no essential connection with the character.

I also feel as if all the stories are rushed and for the sake of getting to the 'gotcha' moment at the end. Slow down, Steven. Build audience tension by cranking it a milimeter at a time. Let us see our beloved heroes struggle as peril builds around them. We should be heartbroken with our heroes, not blindsided.

I think back on what was possibly my favorite story of the new Who: Tennant's "The Family of Blood" 2 parter. It was heartbreaking to watch "John Smith" fall in love as a human because *we knew* what was going to happen. That's what made it so heartbreaking, so absorbing and why I can watch that story over and over, seeing fresh nuance each time.

Please, Steven, less 'gotcha' and more heart.

What a Revision Looks Like

2011-06-12T10:39:00.000-04:00

As most writers learn, drafting a book is not the same as writing one. To write a finished story is to enter the world of rewriting, of editing; of revision.

Some people dread the revision process, but I really love it. For me, a first draft is like prepping all the ingredients for a lovely meal. It's necessary and it is a start, but it's not something I'd want to sit down and eat. Where it all comes together for me is in revision.

I recently completed a soup-to-nuts (to push the food metaphor. . . ) revision of a novel I initially wrote in 2005-06 called "MindBlind." A thriller that started as a series of what ifs (as most of my stories do): What if there were individuals so empathic that, in essence, they could read the emotional states of others? What if that 'hyper-empathy' was often so overwhelming to children that the state was classified as a disorder? What if the adults that "passed" as neurotypical felt they had to live closeted lives or be subject to radical treatment?

From there, came the central premise of MindBlind:

A lifetime of 'passing' as a mindblind has saved Isabel Jepsen from the treatment for hyper empathy that left her older sister Kathryn self-centered and emotionally stunted. When Kathryn becomes an unwilling subject in a government sanctioned medical experiment, Isabel must reveal the truth of her hidden nature to the man she loves and ally herself with the psychiatrist who pioneered the treatment she has been avoiding all her life. Isabel risks far more than her anonymity in the race to save Kathryn. If the man who took her sister discovers Isabel is also an empath, she fears she will become his next test subject.

My first few iterations of MindBlind was as a near future SF story. When I pulled it from the trunk this year to give to some of my crit buddies, their feedback made it clear that in the intervening years, time had caught up with my Science Fiction and the story sat well in contemporary time.

But that wasn't the heart and soul of what needed to be done in the revision. I knew there were pacing issues. I knew the ending wasn't strong enough. I knew some of the characters didn't shine. So I committed myself to solving the novel's problems. And for that, I needed some new tools.

One of the tools I used for this revision was Larry Brooks' "Story Engineering" book. I started out looking at what I saw as the flaws and did this brainstorming:


My very messy handwriting, first thoughts

Then came more thoughts about how to strengthen my protagonist, Isabel:


There is something about yellow legal pads that says 'editing' to me.

Added to the 5 pages of handwritten notes (I'll spare you more of my chicken scratch), I also dug into the story's structure with Brooks' template. I wrote my own version of his basic design of looking at the story in quartiles and used it as a worksheet.

What I discovered in my initial look at the quartiles was that my ending 25% of the story was more like 10-15%. It was too short. That's where my intuition about pacing came in. There were some places earlier where the story dragged out as well. Ultimately, I put it all together: enhance the characterization, sharpen the stakes, make each scene advance the plot cleanly, make the hero the primary mover/shaker of the conclusion for a net addition of 6K on the story.

That brought the balance essentially in line with Brooks' four part structure.

What did I learn from this?

1--that my structure instincts are essentially sound. For the most part, what I wrote through my first few drafts wasn't critically far off from the ideal structure.

2--that structure isn't confining; it's freeing. Once I was able to look at the architectural underpinnings of the story as a separate thing from the story itself, I could make changes easily, without feeling like I was tearing out the heart of the novel.

3--Having a lens to examine revision was extremely helpful to me. It helped keep me from getting caught up in sentence level tweaking, which, although part of the overall process, was a different mindset from structural work.

4--that revision is what can make a good story a better one.

Quick friday round up

2011-06-10T11:00:00.000-04:00

Top ten reasons why I haven't blogged much this week:

10. I've been laid out by a sinus infection. My heroes: motrin, antibiotics, and icepacks
9.    Two nights of sleep interrupted by pain. (worse than appendicitis, worse than labor; see above)
8.    Running hither and yon for my offspring (no time off for the mom-taxi)
7.   Celebrating my eldest kiddo's graduation from High School (Seems like yesterday, he was a baby. . . )
6.   Family visiting from out of town (see number 7)
5.   Dragging my sorry, congested brain out of bed to see my son's play performed (wow, these kids are talented!)
4. Swallowed up by the sheer number of details in getting our house inventory to the insurance adjuster (I loathe this kind of paperwork)
3. Working on edits to MindBlind in every spare moment (more than halfway through!)
2. Overwhelmed, and the top reason I haven't blogged much this week:
1. I'm overwhelmed.

Hanging in there.

Street Theatre

2011-06-04T09:24:00.000-04:00

Walking around Old Town Alexandria last night was a treat for the senses. It was a lovely evening--cool enough for walking, warm enough not to need a jacket and it seemed like everyone and his brother, sister, aunt, uncle, and cousin were out enjoying the night.

This gentleman was playing classical music using only water glasses and his hands. My apologies for the poor video and audio quality as I only had my ancient phone to capture it with.

Enjoy!

On Milestones

2011-06-03T08:26:00.000-04:00

my son as Blind Capt. Cat in Under Milkwood

In the years I have kept this blog, I rarely drag my family into the spotlight because of my preference to keep that part of my life more private. Today's thoughts are about my oldest son, because I think he's a pretty amazing kid, because he's graduating from High School in a few days, and because what I have seen in him these past few weeks is emblematic of how we can't see our own strengths and gifts very clearly.

Recently, we were invited to attend a celebration for the students at his HS who competed a Senior Project. In lieu of their final quarter of classroom work, these students chose to do an independent study on a topic of their interest and passion, and to present/defend that work in a closed door panel of teachers and advisers. Pretty big stuff for a group of 17 year olds.

Oh, but what 17 year olds! These young people are passionate, motivated, eager, and hard working. Their projects ranged from the artistic, to the scientific, to the political and social. 35 students, out of a class of over 500 elected to pursue a senior project, my son among them.

During the reception, several of his judges came to tell me how impressed they were with his presentation. That his dedication, knowledge and enthusiasm shined through to inspire them all. One of them even said it felt like they were witnessing a TED talk.

That's high praise, indeed.

And last night, we attended the senior awards night for the HS theatre program. This isn't your typical HS theatre group. This is something incredible, something many colleges would give their eye teeth to have its like. Upwards of 14 productions are staged each year, primarily student directed and student run, including a playwright's festival, showcasing the work of 10 student playwrights. (My son, among them.)

The program director said that my son was unique in the way he gave his all, not only to his own work, but to the work of others, even in giving detailed notes and feedback in peer audition workshops to help his fellow students (who were in competition with him for coveted roles) be better. That his generosity of spirit was evident in all that he did.

And, yes, I am extremely proud of him.

But that is not the only point of this post. What really struck me is how he looks around at his fellow senior scholars and actors and sees their strengths and talents, not his own.

It's as if he has a blind spot that only allows him to see out and never in. As if he's constantly certain that he got the invitation by mistake, or that the bouncer is coming for him, or that they named him by accident.

I look at the group of students surrounding him and think this is his tribe. I worry that he doesn't feel as if he belongs.

And I think many of us have that impostor sense.

Likely he is unaware of the terrible irony: that each and every one of the people around him, the people he lauds and looks up too, all feel that same terrible insecurity to some extent.

We are all of us outsiders.

We are all of us doing the best we can, moment by moment.

And it is those moments we need to stop and celebrate.

Congratulations to my eldest son; someone I am incredibly proud of, not only for what he has accomplished, but most importantly, for who he is.

Why Revision Makes me Fall in Love Again

2011-05-31T18:29:00.001-04:00

I may be an oddity among writers: I love the revision process. It is not unusual for me to revise a poem dozens of times and still not consider it finished. (Yes, I know there is a danger in getting in an endless revision loop and work hard to avoid that trap.)

This seems to have been the year for revisions. Since January, I have substantially revised 2 of my novels and am considering diving into a 3rd. The project I am currently working on, I initially wrote in 2005/6, revised in 2008, and then put away until a few months ago. It's been fascinating to look at this novel--the writer's version of an archeology dig--and see how my process and my writing has evolved.

The bones of the story are sound; the story needed work. At the time, I didn't have the resources to do the kind of revision required. Now, I believe I do. And I believe I can do justice to the story.

I'm really excited about it. And the tools I needed came in the mail last week. I read through Blake Snyder's "Save the Cat," and am currently working my way through Larry Brooks' "Story Engineering."

(Inevitable digression: I have an addiction to craft books. I figure it's like a chef's need to collect recipes.)

I think if I had read these books as a fledgling writer, I wouldn't have gotten so much out of them. Reading them now, I can apply them to the specifics of my own work and you know what? It's so cool! I have 5 pages of handwritten notes with a plan for sharpening theme, character, stakes, and pacing. At the end of this process, I will have a story that rocks the house.

Morning Pages

2011-05-29T17:38:00.001-04:00

The phone rings and I let it. Water boils in the kettle. The deep earth scent of coffee like loam on my tongue. I miss morning silence. The time before alarms and lists, time without dancing pixels and click here, the seductive chime of messages waiting, the mystery of comments and responses.

Too many hours spent flying from myself.

The water spills on fresh grounds with an eager splash. It takes patience and attention to make good coffee; water just hot enough, grind perfectly coarse, time, a slow hand on the plunger. I stand at a borrowed kitchen counter and simply wait. The smell almost as delightful as the first taste will be, dark, bitter. Coffee--a gentle punishment. A secret guilt.

A mug I spent weeks creating sits smoothly against the hand. I could pick out all its flaws: Lip too flared. Foot too shallow. Belly too thick. Glaze patchy and uneven. Handle too spindly. But I can also praise it, fill it with hot liquid softened the color of birch wood by cream.

One sip. Almost too hot is just right. The scald tingles, the warmth sears its way down my throat. The pleasure of the drink. The pleasure of the cup. The pleasure of the words flowing out of silence and stillness and no expectations.

The tar pit of envy and self-pity

2011-05-27T10:45:00.000-04:00

Photo of La Brea Tar Pitts by betsyweber, used under cc licence

If you've followed me for any length of time, you know this has been a very difficult year in my personal life. Loss and disappointments have been hard at our heels and we've been struggling to keep ahead of them as best as we can.

I say this not to start a pity party.

It's simply the backdrop to where my emotional state of mind is at, and since I strive for honesty in my writings here, I have to admit my less attractive qualities along with the more positive attributes I would rather highlight.

I follow a lot of writing blogs/twitterfeeds, etc. (Bear with me, this is connected). Lately, I find myself reading about someone's new release, not with joy and hopefulness, but with envy and malice in my heart. The inner voices start to agitate.

Why him? Why her? Why not me? It's not fair. I'm better. I deserve it. Stupid editors.

This is the La Brea tar pit of negativity. And the more I let those voices set my internal landscape, the deeper I sink into the sticky blackness.

Life is not a zero sum game. I know this with my head, but the fear isn't a rational actor. The fear says "If you get this cake/candy/publishing deal, there won't be any left for me." The fear is a 3 year old. The fear cannot be reasoned with. The fear just wants what it wants.

So I work hard to be honest with myself. To acknowledge my selfish, self-centered, whiny thoughts in an effort to move past them. Yesterday, I stopped by the ceramics studio. (Yes, this will be connected, I promise.)

A set of 4 bowls I had worked on were glazed and fired, ready to take home.

The image inside is a dragonfly, one of my 'totem' images.

I'm not a professional potter and these bowls are not perfect, but they represent over 4 years of practice and hard work and I am very proud of them.

I made them, as part of a request to be auctioned off to help a colleague of my husband's who had been diagnosed with a virulent kind of cancer.

I look at the bowls and see in them a kind of pure offering. Something done for another, without expectation of recompense or return, simply because it is needed and it is right.

And suddenly those voices full of fear are not so loud anymore.

"Advice & Assistance Obtainable Immediately"

2011-05-26T14:50:00.000-04:00

"Advice & Assistance Obtainable Immediately"

Everything you need is inside this poem. Open
it in case of emergency. Open it only
when the emptiness swallows the sky
at night. Open it if you are alone
and hear singing. Open it if you hear
a bird cry and think your heart
must break. Everything you need is inside
this poem. The way a blizzard
is a hurricane of stillness. The way you use
music, loud and pounding to beat back
the darkness. There is an oxygen mask
inside this poem. It will automatically open
when you lose cabin pressure. Place it
over your mouth and nose. Breathe
normally. I made sure there was a tennis ball
here too. Because you may forget
how it makes you laugh watching the dog's ears
flap as she chases it down. Everything
you need is inside. Tears
from raw mustard greens eaten on a dare,
Charlie still riding on the MTA. Belizean
chocolate, fiery with chili. Rosemary
for remembrance. Coriander for chicken in a pot.
Everything you need is inside this poem.
Open it. Open it. Open it. Everything you need.
Goodnight Moon is here. Redwall. Thomas
the Tank Engine. A blue box full of time. Everything.
I am here in this poem shoveling words,
great snowbanks of them, tall as the second story,
the roof of a house that nearly burned to the ground
on a Wednesday morning and even if it had,
even if it had, everything you need
is already here. Is
inside. Inside. Inside.

---LJCohen, 2011

A Facebook Quandry: how to balance the personal & professional?

2011-05-24T08:23:00.000-04:00

My guest post yesterday on Writer Unboxed talked about platform and how easy it is to get sucked into the sell, sell, sell mentality across one's online presence. I was floored by all the positive and affirming responses from like-minded writers, struggling to find the balance in their public voices.

It's comforting to know I'm in such good company.

Following on to that post, and the fact that several commenters sent me FB friend requests, I have a question/quandary. I joined FB a few years ago, primarily as a way to keep in contact with distant family and friends. I also needed to FB account because my kids wanted to join, and I made their friending me a contingency.

Most of my FB friends are people I have pre-existing connections with, either family, HS and college friends, and local writing buddies. A smaller subset of my FB community are writers I have workshopped with in several online writing groups and websites I have been members of for years.

Now, I'm getting requests from various social media connections, from people I don't have direct relationships with and I'm not sure what to do.

It's important to me to keep an appropriate boundary between my private and public lives, especially where my children are concerned, and I want to stay connected with other writers and readers I encounter on the net. I also don't think those folks really care about the play my kid's in or that one of my cousins is getting married this summer.

If any of you have more than 1 FB profile, can you share what your experience has been? Is it a hassle to maintain both? Does it help keep that boundary intact? And where do you draw the line between personal friends and professional friends?

The Funny Moment When You Forget What You've Written

2011-05-23T14:56:00.000-04:00

I have been fortunate to have been invited to write several guest blog posts on Writer Unboxed, one of my favorite writing/publishing related blogs out there. (If you don't already follow them, please do. Their information is well written, timely, with a good mix between craft, business, and encouragement.)

Several months ago, I submitted a piece for their consideration that emerged from my musing about writers and social media. They accepted it and I promptly forgot about it in the press of so much going on in my non-writing life.

Well, today, they published the post. And I figured it out almost by accident. I follow several dozen blogs on a daily basis via an RSS reader and have it set to show the headlines/titles of each post. I read the title of today's WU post and my honest to goodness first thought was 'cool, someone who thinks about social media the way I do.' And I clicked over to read it on the WU site.

Major "D'oh" moment.

It was my own post.

FacePalm at my own absentmindedness.

And thank you to the WU folks for their generosity in running my guest posts.

This is What It's Like

2011-05-16T15:19:00.000-04:00

This is What It's Like

When the boys were small, I changed
diapers full of shit and pee, marshaled baby
wipes out of their plastic box with crisp precision,
one after the other standing at scented, moist attention.
It was just an ordinary devotion, the same as today
with my mother's twisted spine naked under
the shower's pitiless spray. I kneel
by the open door, soapy washcloth
taking terrible liberties, steam condensing
on my face like tears. The water runs
in yellow brown rivulets, twining
down her legs. I wait until it clears,
my stomach heaving the way it never did.

--LJCohen, 2011

Craft and happy accident; the artist's way

2011-05-09T13:04:00.000-04:00

After struggling with bowls on the wheel in ceramics, today, I threw six of them, all roughly the same size, all from approximately 2 pounds of clay. While I won't say that I've mastered bowls, I now understand the process.

Up until now, much of what I threw on the wheel I obtained as a result of some beginning knowledge and happy accident along with lots and lots of practice.

Today, I was able to understand why the insides of my bowls had a step off instead of a smooth curve and why, because of that, so many of my bowls collapsed under their own weight before I could complete them. Now, my goal is to get the feel of shaping the inside curve in my hands so I can reliably repeat what I've done.

An interaction of craft and serendipity.

I don't want everything I make to be exactly symmetrical and exactly the same. That would feel artificial. What I do want is to marry the artfully interesting to the process of craft to create something that is clearly deliberate and clearly my own vision.

I think any art form follows a similar path. I see this evolution in my writing. After 6+ novels, dozens of short stories, hundreds of poems, pages and pages of critique, I am starting to understand not only if something isn't working , but why.

Stay tuned for photos of those bowls. They need to be trimmed, fired, glazed, and fired again--so from clay mass to finished bowl in about 3 weeks.

A world most of us never get to see

2011-05-02T00:21:00.004-04:00

My husband and I have been scuba certified since the early days of our marriage. In the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, as my kids like to tease. We haven't done nearly as much diving as we would have liked; being pregnant and raising kids doesn't leave a lot of ability, time, or money for hobbies like scuba diving.

This year, both boys were interested and old enough to get certified and we planned it so they could do their classroom and pool sessions in the great frigid northeast and do their check out dives in warm Belizean waters.

This is my youngest kiddo in a zen moment at 40 or so feet.


photo by N. Halin, used with permission

And a shot of the two of them after their official certification as open water scuba divers:

photo by N. Halin, used with permission

The undersea world is a world of great beauty and strangeness. Creatures that would be impossible on land, thrive here. Others who are awkward and lumbering on land show effortless grace.


Photo by N. Halin, used with permission

I have never tired of the quiet and the rhythmic pull and push of the current. It is the ocean's heartbeat; as rhythmic and as vital as our own. When we dive, we enter an alien world. One that is not fully welcoming, but one that tolerates us.

photo by N. Halin, used with permission

As peaceful and as hypnotic as the world of water is, I never forget, not even for a split second, that I am an interloper. The sound of my breathing is a harsh reminder that my equipment and my skills stand between me and either serious injury or death. Yet, I was not worried about letting my sons become divers. I want them to respect the part of the world covered by water; to experience the otherworldly sense of weightlessness, of quiet, and of the rich variety of life beneath the surface. I also want them to respect the dangers inherent in any activity. We take such insane risks on a daily basis. I think the chances of getting hurt while crossing a busy street or driving a car are far greater then in a no-decompression scuba dive. And the care we take in handling and maintaining our equipment will probably put any car owner to shame.

Diving as a family has to be one of the highlights of my year. I am extremely proud of the hard work my boys put in to earn their certification as open water divers.

(Kudos to East Coast Divers in Brookline, MA for running such excellent learning to dive classes and pool sessions, and to Tuff E Nuff dive shop in Belize for running our dives and doing the kids' check out dives.)

Random thoughts on the morning we return

2011-04-23T10:12:00.002-04:00

I'm sipping coffee on the verandah outside our room at the Cocoa Beach resort in Belize. We're mostly packed to leave; the small boat picks us up at 10 to take us to the little airstrip in San Pedro Town. From there, a hop in a 12 seater airplane to Belize City where we transfer to the jet that will take us back home.
This was the week we needed to step out of our lives and simply be.

The place we stayed is quiet, simple. There is no nightlife, no casino or disco. Just palm trees and native bushes, iguanas, magpies, swallows, and frigate birds, the ocean, the reef, two pools nestled among the greenery. And the Belizean people--welcoming, friendly ambassadors of their beautiful country.

I will have to add photos to this post after we get back home. For now, you will have to trust me when I say this is a beautiful place.

I fear jaded western eyes would not see the Belize we see. By Western standards, this is not a rich nation. There is one main road in San Pedro Town. Much of the traffic consists of golf carts and bicycles, not cars. Most of the buildings are concrete, painted with colors fading in the sun. There are no chain stores or what we recognize as fast food. Shops close in the evening.

In the interior, many people live traditionally in the Maya way with thatched roof houses. We went on a tour to the rain forest with several other Americans. I could almost hear the thoughts of one couple; wherever they looked, they saw poverty and slums.

I saw a people proud of their land and their lives. I saw groups of children, happy, well cared for, and so clearly loved.

This is a young country; just 30 years old. When I was in grade school, Belize didn't exist--it was British Honduras. In 30 years, the Belizeans have accomplished an amazing amount: much of the rainforest and the coral reefs that protect the coastline are reserves. It is a crime to harm the mangroves. There is a commitment to ecoturism that keeps development from turning into a runaway train.

This is also a nation where many cultures mingle. Where many languages meld and evolve together. The West has a lot to learn from this tiny nation.

I am grateful that we have had the opportunity to travel outside the US. I am grateful that we have been able to show our children to see other countries and cultures with open eyes, not judging, not measuring by some arbitrary, impossible standard. I am grateful we have had even this small taste of Belize.

Beautiful Belize

2011-04-22T15:55:00.002-04:00

Magpies strut and swagger, twig thin
tracks scratched across the beach.
I let the wind tangle my hair, lick my skin
with salt. A gecko, the length of my pinky
waits for me to move, but I am as hungry
for the sun on cool hide as he is.
Palm trees sway, indifferent to the distant
threat of hurricanes. I could drown
in the endless blue, slip inside the narrow gap--
that sharp edge where sky meets sea,
the curved line from a compass point, center
stabbed through my core. A storm
could swallow this place whole, spit
it out along some other, unsuspecting
shore. Maybe if I set down mangrove roots,
I could learn how not to fight tides, remember
how the full moon is only temporary.
ljcohen, April 2011

Tropical Paradise, part 1

2011-04-17T17:03:00.000-04:00

Today we did our first dive in a few years--our first dive with the new gear, bought to replace the gear we lost in the fire. The reef here in Belize is quiet, but alive. Today we swam with a sea turtle, ramoras, sharks, and all manner of small fish. I had forgotten how peaceful it can be underwater.

The boat bucks and I roll
backwards beneath the water's skin.
I am the alien here, bug
eyed, pucker mouthed, fighting
the gear's pull down always down.
Air thrusts up with each harsh
breath, flat and metallic on my tongue.
Ramoras eye me, align round
suckers to my seal black pelt
and swim on. I have nothing
they desire.

Ruminations on Publishing, Self Publishing, and Cows

2011-04-13T11:49:00.000-04:00

Photo by Neil Halin, Cow in Kyrgystan, 2009

(Rumination? Cows? Just my wonky brain and its associations. And cows are cool.)

So this morning, I had a very thoughtful conversation with my 17 yo son about digital publishing and the future of the book, in all its forms. It started out by him reading me a twitter exchange (more here) between Cory Doctorow and David Hewson on whether Doctorow's model is sustainable for the majority of writers.

While the conversation veered off into a discussion of career threads and whether/if Doctorow is a unique exception to the rule that writers, as a rule, don't make a living off their writing, it began a long discussion with my son about ebooks and the future of publishing.

I've been wrestling with the self-publishing/traditional publishing quandary for far longer than the stories of Amanda Hocking and her successes (independent to traditional publishing), and Barry Eisler's move into independent publishing from the traditional model have been burning up the internet. I've been writing novels for the past 7 years and have been thinking about the world of publication for most of that time.

And I've chosen to walk the path that leads to a traditional publication: the long, slow road that winds its way through a literary agent and to an editor at a publishing house. There are times when I return to question this decision. Writing friends I have work-shopped with have chosen the self or small epublisher route and have several novels out in the world; books they were drafting along with mine. Their books are published. Mine are still waiting on my hard drive for my agent to make that first elusive sale.

Am I envious of them? Partly, yes. Though, truly, I am thrilled for them and it's less envy than frustration at the slow pace of my own march to publication. I am not naive about the business side of publishing. I know what the numbers show: it's hard to get a book published and it's hard to make a living from writing. However, I do think that Doctorow has a vision of a model that can work even on a smaller scale.

It's relational.

Ebook piracy is not going to be able to be stopped, not without seriously stunting the growth of ebooks as a medium. For that, we only need look at the music industry. Despite the cry that digital music has killed the music industry, what it really has done is displace it. Indi bands have access via the internet to a potential fan base not bound by geography or controlled by relatively few record labels. The bands that have some kind of relationship with their fan base are the ones who have been successful.

I think the same will be true in the digital book world. I can see a future where I might email a friend a book file (DRM free, as physical books are, by design) the same way in which I once handed them the physical book and say 'you must read this.' In the dead-tree-version, that story could only reach one potential reader at a time as the book got passed from person to person. In the digital age, that same file can reach many potential readers simultaneously. And it is the readers who feel they have a personal connection to the writer who will spend both their good will and their dollars in supporting the writer.

That's the Doctorow model, albeit on a much larger scale. That's where social media becomes so important.

But we're not there yet for the vast majority of writers. Part of the problem is that the bar has been lowered so far that anyone with access to a computer can become an author. Basic word processing skills and the willingness to put in some time will net you an ebook on all the major platforms. (kindle/sony/nook/stanza/etc). And for some reason, it feels like more people believe they can be writers than believe they can be musicians, so a lot of drek gets put out there on the 'net for readers to wade through. That leads to the continuing stigma against self-publishing. A stigma that has not really been at play in the music world.

The agent/publisher process was meant to filter the vast majority of what gets written so that what is published is quality work. However, because there's still no consensus of what makes a successful book and because the traditional publication process is so long and involves so much labor and cost, things are being chosen for publication purely on a commercial basis. Will it sell? Will it sell big?

That makes it even harder for the unknown writer, the writer of innovative, quirky, or hard to categorize work, and the midlist writer.

So why am I not moving into the self-publishing or small epub route? While I'm willing to do platform building/publicity, I'm more interested in making sure I have a strong backlist of books ready for publication while I'm focusing on building relationships with different constituencies on the internet. The hard sell is not something that appeals to me. Building up good will capital does.

For the unknown writer, I still think traditional publication offers some things that self-publishing does not. Access to retail outlets is still important, even as the book stores are shrinking in numbers. Whether it's true or not; whether it's fair or not, there is still an assumption that something published by one of the big houses is going to be better than something self published. (I do believe this will change in the future, just as it has in the music industry.) However, I also don't think it's an either/or proposition.

I believe that the most successful writers of the next decade will be:

1. those who are willing to keep revisiting the publication landscape and work flexibly within it,

2. those who keep working on their craft and know their audience, despite the changing landscape,

3. and those writers who maintain strong relationships with their communities.

I don't have any particular crystal ball prescience or control over where this whole messy business is going but I'm going to keep moving forward. For now that means working with my agent within the constraints of traditional publishing practice. As things evolve, so may my thinking.

Photo by Neil Halin, cows in Kyrgyzstan, 2009

Working through some things

2011-04-10T22:46:00.000-04:00

I've been quiet lately. Not just in the blog, but throughout my writing life. I've hardly journaled, my morning pages have stalled, and the WIP is languishing. I can beat myself up about it but I know that leads to less writing, not more.

No, this is another of the fallow times. I've had them before and I'll have them again. In my experience, these times are crucial to my work and my creativity. That's why I don't call it writer's block. I am not blocked so much as still.

I continue to work through the fear and loss from our fire, coping with the enormous change that it has brought to our lives. That in addition to the changes in my parent's health; the upcoming college transition for my eldest son.

In a time of such massive upheaval, I am trying to be kind to myself.

Our family is preparing for a trip away for a week and I am not bringing my computer. I will take a week of quiet, of laughter with my husband and children, of long hikes, swims, and scuba diving. I want to soak up silence along with the sun and notice whatever bubbles to the surface of my mind.

We leave saturday morning.

Be well.

The only way it can be said

2011-04-01T10:10:00.000-04:00

Sometimes poetry is the only way something can be expressed. At least I have found that true in my own life. There is something about the indirectness of poetic imagery, the way it mines elements from the subconscious that normally wouldn't be let out of its cell that makes what emerges extraordinarily powerful.

I have missed poetry in my life, these past few months. My poetry books are waiting in a warehouse along with all our other belonging, for the reconstruction on our fire-damaged home to be completed. But that is not the only reason I have lost my connection to poetry.

I have been afraid of what would emerge if I let myself write.

So I have cut myself off from reading, writing, or responding to poetry. In the process, I have both let down a community I care deeply about and have lost a part of myself that I have desperately needed.

It's April. National Poetry Month. It's time to take a deep breath and let what needs air and sunshine bubble to the surface.

I am hoping to share the drafts of new poems written this month here with you. It is a way to re-commit to the act of writing poetry. It is also a way to step back from the perfectionist practices in my life. This is raw, first draft writing. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't even have to be very good. It just needs to be written. And perhaps something I write will resonate with you, the reader, and you will write something in turn.

Unfolding

Fresh sheets always in the dryer, always
waiting for the door to open, waiting
to spill out on the floor of the laundry room.
White sheets on a dirt floor, indistinguishable
from the car wash towels, the dog
blanket, the once-white tube socks,
all uniformly gray. I try to bleach
my sorrow the color of boiled bone,
render it in the colander
of this grief. I lift the twisted mess
dripping grimy water
with the handle of a broom, snap
the wrinkles out of sheets
oblivion white. When I bury
my face to the folded stack
something still smolders.
--LJCohen, 4/1/11

Why I love local--a bank story

2011-03-30T14:42:00.000-04:00

So in the continuing effort in settling our insurance check issue, I need to send the mortgage company copies of all the checks I've written to the contractor so far.

Should be simple.

We have online banking and our statements are delivered as PDFs.

So I logged in, only to find that the images of the exact checks I need (okay, not all. To be fair, only 4/5 were not there) unavailable.

Sigh.

So I called the bank, hoping they could help me. Hoping that I could get the copies today.

And HUZZAH! they could. The customer service gentleman provided timely, efficient, and polite *service* (I know, what a shocker!) and copies of the checks I need will be at the branch office in 10 minutes.

No fuss, no muss, no bother.

And *that* good people, is why I bank with a local bank.

You Must Read This

2011-03-29T12:24:00.001-04:00

I just finished "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" by David Wroblewski. It's been on my TBR list for a while now. I don't know why it took me so long to buy the book. Then another few months to crack open the spine to read it.

I forced myself to move slowly through it, when my usual practice is to practically inhale books, but something about the language of this book practically begged me to savor it.

So I did, or as best as I can ever do with my passion for reading. I spent a week with this text. Mulling over the story and its meaning in my mind between reading sessions. And when I got to the final pages, I had to slow down even more, read and re-read them because I knew it was the end and I didn't want it to be.

I won't tell you about the plot. You probably know the basics anyway. I'm not even going to really review the book--the last book reports I wrote were in 4th grade. My parents kept them for many years because they were amused by how I ended them. It was always the same: "So if you want to know how this story ends . . . read the book and you'll find out." Probably with a bunch of exclamations afterwards.

What I will say is "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" is a terribly beautiful story.

It will wound you.

Read it anyway.

Read it because it will.

Just read it.

And if there were Sawtelle dogs, I would work harder than I've worked on anything to be worthy of one of them.

What is the sound of one hand tearing out one's hair. . .

2011-03-28T17:14:00.000-04:00

Not a zen koan.

Just a result of a frustrating phone call.

As many of you know, we had a house fire this past December. We were able to settle with the insurance company and received the check--all good things--in addition to having the reconstruction work begin.

But if you've ever had a loss, it's not as easy as actually getting the money and having it.

No. The check is processed by the insurance company payable to the homeowner AND the mortgage company. The mortgage company holds the money and disburses it out as the work is done on the house, typically in thirds.

The isn't a major problem EXCEPT we've already paid the contractor about 1/3 from our own savings while waiting for the check to be processed. Okay. Still shouldn't be a major problem, since the check came in today's mail. (Yippie!) HOWEVER, the mortgage company released the funds payable to us AND the contractor. (Crap!)

AND since we owe less on the mortgage than the settlement, not only did the mortgage company release the first 1/3, but added to that check the excess over what we owe on our mortgage. (Yippie!) To the contractor and us, jointly. (Oh, crap!)

But wait. Yippie, you say. More money is good, right? Shouldn't be a problem. Have the contractor sign off on the check, deposit it into your account.

Problem.

Our bank won't handle checks that are written jointly to a company and a person. (Crap!)

:head desk:

So I tried to explain this to the mortgage company: IF I endorse the check and hand it over to the contractor, it will account for 80% of the job, given that I've already paid about 1/3 from our savings. We are not 80% through the construction process. It's a big mistake to pay a contractor in advance for work not yet done. If they'd only payed out 1/3, then I would have been more comfortable handing over that amount, though I would rather not pay more than the percentage that the job is complete. But because they added so much to the check, I now have money I can't use.

The mortgage company will bump my claim to their exceptions department, but it will take approximately a week to make a decision, then likely another week if they release any of the funds to us alone.

In the meanwhile, we will likely have more money hemorrhaging from our personal savings to pay for the work on the house.

The Grace in Giving: A lesson from my dog

2011-03-27T15:50:00.000-04:00

I've mentioned before that I am the human half of a visiting therapy dog team, along with my gal, Tigger. She has been part of our family since we adopted her from a rescue organization when she was a puppy, 6 years ago.

Tigger and I have been members of Caring Canines for almost 4 years now. We tend to select therapeutic visits with kids and teens, as Tigger loves the more interactive visits over the more sedentary visits with an elder population.

We were at a facility for at risk teen girls today, bringing the kind of organic therapy that Tigger is a natural with. Really, it's just unconditional love and acceptance, the joy of earning a treat, in scrambling after a tennis ball, in a belly scratch, that reminds all of us to stay present.

The girls at this facility--they are there because of some difficulty in their lives. I don't know the details. I don't care to know. It's not important for me to know. It's hardly even important that *I* am there. What is most crucial is on the other end of the leash and the way that Tigger pulls an essential innocence from these girls. An innocence and gentleness I doubt they have much of a chance to experience in many other settings.

People often praise me for doing this. As if it's some great sacrifice. As if I deserve something for it. What is it that I really do? I take an hour out of my day, a few times a month, and drive my dog somewhere. And for that negligible amount of work, I get filled with a sense of joy, of purpose, of optimism.

It hardly seems like a fair exchange. I know I receive far more than I give.

Tigger in full tennis ball mode, summer 2006

Learning to let the story unfold

2011-03-25T15:48:00.001-04:00

Several of my stories are 1st person narratives from a teen voice. They are solid stories with compelling plots. One of them was what snagged the interest of my agent, Nephele Tempest. That book, though it garned a lot of editor attention, didn't sell.

The feedback we got from those editors talked about voice, but at the time, I wasn't sure how to fix what they saw as the flaw in what was otherwise a story they really liked.

Fast forward several manuscripts and several crit groups later. I'm in a small group with 2 other novelists. We've gone a few rounds of meetings and they've offered me priceless feedback on two of my 1st person novels. I think I'm finally seeing what I couldn't see before.

One of my writing 'tics' is to use narrative to summarize in order to get to what happens next. And that summary ends up sounding not like my character's voice, but like my own, in voiceover. My crit partners didn't put in in these terms, but what I think has to happen is that I need to let the story unfold, rather than drive it forward. The way to do that is by deeper immersion into my character; choosing critical aspects of the story and letting the reader experience what he sees.

Here is an example of putting that into practice:

I wasn't the only one not happy to be there. Devon Smithfield was in group and he was also in just about all my classes. I guess because we're both fatherless boys, that's supposed to make us buds. At least that's what Ms. Stanhope seems to think. And long after she's gone to some other internship, I'll still be trapped in therapy group purgatory with Devon.

No one's supposed to know, but his dad’s in federal jail for embezzlement. If he’s lucky, he’ll be able to see his son graduate from college. It would be a lot simpler if my dad was in prison.

"Langdon?"

God, I hate it when teachers call me that. Ms. Stanhope was looking down at my desk and frowning. I must’ve spaced out in group again and while my brain was busy elsewhere, my right hand was drawing. It was like last night's dream spilled out on the page. Somehow my pencil managed to capture the deep shadows lurking behind the windows and the danger twisted in the wrought iron railings.

I shuffled into the classroom and dragged one of the desks away from the semicircle Ms. Stanhope had carefully arranged. Devon Smithfield was right behind me. He sneered and took the seat at the opposite end of the room, both of us ignoring the rest of the kids. He pulled one of his earbuds out and pretended to listen to Ms. Stanhope struggle to get all of us talking. I felt sorry for her.

Devon Fucking Smithfield. He was in just about all my classes. I guess because we're a pair of fatherless boys, that's supposed to make us buds. At least that's what Ms. Stanhope seems to think. Long after she's gone to some other internship, I'll still be trapped in therapy group purgatory with Devon.

No one's supposed to know, but the feds sent his dad to jail for embezzlement. If he’s lucky, he’ll be able to see his son graduate from college. It would be a lot simpler if my dad was in prison.

"Langdon?"

God, it was bad enough that my mom called me that this morning. Ms. Stanhope was looking down at my desk and frowning. It wasn't a look that went well with her pink sweater and pearls, the blond pony tail, the sympathetic blue eyes. I was sure there was a course in social worker school on how to look completely earnest. She had probably aced it.

I looked down, trying to figure out why she was singling me out. I certainly wasn't the only one who spaced out in group. But while my brain was busy elsewhere, my right hand had been drawing. It was still gripping the pencil I didn't remember taking from my bag. I forced my fingers to open. The pencil rolled across my open math notebook until it hit the metal spiral. Even closing my eyes, I couldn't avoid the image of last night's dream spilled out across the page. Somehow I managed to capture the deep shadows lurking behind the windows and the danger twisted in the wrought iron railings.

The section on the left was an older draft. The section on the right, the result of this morning's work. Any thoughts?

Small Victories, Creative Process

2011-03-24T12:56:00.000-04:00

In the midst of frustrating phone calls and being trapped in endless phone-tree land (press 3 if you are ready to fling the phone out the window. . . ) I took a break to stop into the ceramics studio.

These were out of the kiln and ready for me to take home.

Wheel thrown

Hand built

I enjoy both aspects of ceramics. Throwing on the wheel allows for a smooth, symmetrical finished cup or bowl, and one of my goals has been to throw a set of something. While nothing made by hand will be perfectly identical, I think I've done a fairly good job of making a set of cups.

Hand building is both easier and harder than wheel throwing. Easier on my body, certainly. And harder? For me, that's because of the greater freedom I have in hand building. I also think it's more difficult to make something 'organic' and asymmetric look finished and intentional, rather than accidental.

That pitcher with the belly and the texture? That was my 3rd attempt, and I still see where I would do things differently another time. I find it far more difficult to make related sets with handbuilding.

But I do both, because both allow me a fuller expression of my creativity.

It is the same thing in my writing process. I try not to be too dogmatic in my approach. I am neither strict plotter, nor pantser, but I do practice aspects of both as the project at hand demands.

Perhaps when I am plotting, I should drink my coffee from the thrown mugs and when I'm pantsing, the handbuilt ones.

A giant game of Jenga

2011-03-19T15:28:00.000-04:00

Photo by Jonathan_W, used with attribution per cc license

A dear friend called this week and ask me how I was. In answer to her question, I came up with this image: I feel like the universe is playing a giant game of Jenga with me.

A lot of pieces have already been pulled out, but I am still standing.

I'm just not sure how many more pieces can be slid away without me falling apart.

The way some stories stay with you

2011-03-17T20:38:00.000-04:00

In my daily roundup of blogs, I read this post on Chasing Ray that really moved me. In it, Colleen Mondor reflects on a series of books she read in her 20s that had a profound influence on her life. She concludes with this:

We all have authors and books that serve as talismans; that are never forgotten. These stories were all of that for me and I'm ever so grateful to have had them. I hope they still have the same magic for whoever is standing before those shelves in the Noel Wien library today.

What she said really resonated with me and made me think of the seminal influences on my life that came between the covers of books. I left her a long response that I'm going to repost and expand on here.

This is what I said:

This is why I keep returning to write for YA readers. For me the book that changed my life was "A Wrinkle in Time." I read it at a time when I felt very much 'less than.' I was insecure, socially awkward, and out of sync with my peers. When I read that book and discovered Meg Murray, it was a revelation. She was like me; I was like her. We weren't perfect or popular or confident. Meg made mistakes and still she was the hero of her story.

And even beyond the characters of the book was the author: Madeline L'Engle. Someone wrote books like this, books that spoke to me. I wanted to do that. What's more, I believed I could do that.

It took a detour through a different career and 3 decades from that moment to write my first novel, several more years to really understand the craft, write the next few books, get an agent.

Some dreams just take a little more time than others.

Though all the events in my life "A Wrinkle in Time" has been a touchstone, a book I have re-read many times, well into adulthood. There is a little bit of magic in the books that speak to us in our formative years. I want to be part of that magic for someone else.

A few weeks ago, British writer Martin Amis incited controversy (again) when he said he'd "need to have a brain injury before [he wrote] for children."

It's a sentiment I have heard twice over. Not only do I write YA stories, but I also write (gasp!) genre. SF&F to be specific. Sophie Masson already did a phenomenal job in responding to Amis, so I won't try to duplicate her post on Writer Unboxed., but I feel sorry for Amis. I wonder about a writer who can't respect the importance of the stories that validate one's experience during a time of great upheaval.

YA stories draw me precisely because they are can be stories of finding personal power and agency. And in our complicated and often painful lives, isn't that a wonderful thing?

Because Home is Where the Puppy Is

2011-03-10T20:58:00.001-05:00

First things first:

This most epic of Tigger photographs was taken by my younger son. I (as I have confessed to on many occasions) take really poor photographs, much to the chagrin of the rest of my family.

But my youngest son has the 'eye' for photography. He takes after his father.

I think the kiddo took this last summer.

The little ball was actually a small plush toy that Tigger had found on a walk and 'adopted' as her very favoritest outside ball. Until she finally tore it to shreds in a moment of over-joy.

But until that moment, she would carefully leave it on the front lawn and whenever she left the house, would just as carefully pick it up in her jaw and toss it in the air only to pounce on the ball when it landed.

I love the look of focused intensity in her eyes and yet there is also a sense of perfect peace and balance in her expression, the way she lays with her muzzle resting on the lawn, its tip just touching the ball.

Tigger has been instrumental to our stress management these past several months. She has found a way to be at home in our temporary lodging, so we can find a way to make it home.

After all, if there are blankets to nest in, tennis balls to shred, and your favorite humans to lean against, everything will be all right.

Creation and Destruction

2011-03-07T14:35:00.000-05:00

Today has been an interesting day. It's Monday (that's not what makes it interesting) and I take a ceramics class on Mondays. I'm not a master potter by anyone's standards, but in the few years I've been playing with clay, I've gotten to a point where I'm not embarrassed to gift pieces to friends and family. And I can make a fairly matched set of cups and bowls now.

That's not what made today interesting either. But it provides the backdrop and contrast to what is happening to my home even as we speak (or more accurately, even as I write this, and you read it).

What makes today interesting is the contrast between creation and destruction.

This is what I brought home from ceramics class today.

And this is what my basement looks like:

Creation and destruction. Two halves of the same coin.

And I am thrilled about both processes.

That's what makes today interesting.