Inconsequentia (Lynn Kerstan)

The world is divided into two kinds of people: Those who choose a path, and those who wander.

Nah. We’re all too complex for bumper-sticker distinctions. But if you go looking for me, don’t try the path. I’m over there in the woodlands, probably lost, not much caring.

There are so many fascinating things in this world. No matter what I set out to do, something invariably comes along to distract me. Yesterday I intended to skim the newspaper before setting to work on my book, only to come across a half-page, full-color picture of a mostly bare male. That caught my attention. Even before my second cup of Chai tea.

But what really interested me was the accompanying list of statistics about the human body. Now, I have had a human body all my life. You’d think I would know it better by now. But only yesterday, I learned that a human sheds about 600,000 particles of skin per hour. Yikes. And secretes 2 ½ quarts of sweat. Gracious. Must take more care choosing a deodorant. If I can manage to read the labels, considering I’ll have blinked about 25 times a minute during the attempt.

It takes 60 seconds for a drop of blood to circulate throughout the body. Our bone marrow produces . . . wait for it . . . three million blood cells every single second. And destroys the same number. Nerve impulses travel at speeds up to 200 mph. No wonder I’m exhausted.

By contrast, a sperm wriggles along at a mere 8 inches per hour. Heck, by that time I’ve shed 600,000 particles of skin. And every second of every minute of that hour, 100,000 chemical reactions have taken place in my brain. You’d think I would be smarter. Then again, I’m losing about 50,000 neurons from that brain every day. Pretty soon, it’s going to be the size of a raisin and about as functional.

Those "body clocked" statistics--the article listed about 40 all--ensorcelled me. So naturally I had to follow up on Google, hungry for more details. And once again, the better part of my work morning slid slowly down the drain of my curiosity.

Even with the best of intentions, I can never resist the temptation of information. And research is the greatest seduction of all, because for me, there’s no such thing as looking up a fact, making a note of it, and getting on with the writing. Oh, no. One little nugget leads to another, so I veer away from a needed detail (the map of the Inca Trail) to flora, fauna, the messages of coded knots carried from town to town by runners, the reign of Inca Pachacutec . . . and absolutely none of this will appear in the story.

Assuming I ever get around to writing the actual story. Keep in mind, I also have to breathe 23,000 times a day, produce 1.8 pints of saliva, and feel my spine compressing .59 inches. I’m a busy gal.

But there is comfort for ramblers like me who don’t always keep our eyes on the goal. As one of my favorite writers, Barbara Samuel, reminds us, "Not all who wander are lost."

We’re just taking the scenic route.

Now . . . The Joy (Patricia Potter)

Now For Joy . . .





The book is done!!!
Deadline hell ends.
There's a day of sleep, then another to clean a desk piled high with research books and old chapters that were rewritten. And now comes the reward, the joy.
The joy is, of course, is books. Books and more books. I'll take a week, maybe even two, and do nothing but read, read, read. In between, of course, promoting the book that has just come out. (Plug:”Tempting The Devil”).

Haven’t read lately. Been working on the book or visiting my 96-year-old Mom. Doing promotion for new book. No time to do what I love best.
Now, though, I plan to indulge.
I have a growing pile (no, make that piles) of new books to be read. But in my search for books for my garage sale, I renewed acquaintance with a number of wonderful books that have sat ignored for years. I have created a new pile of old favorites.

New or old? Decisions. Decisions.
Decided to compromise. Half and half.

The old half: One of my favorite books of all time is “The Proud Breed,” by Celeste DeBlasis, a family saga that starts with an a young girl growing up in early California until her death at age one hundred. She became a friend during the course of the 700-page book. I probably sold at least a hundred copies for her so enthusiastic I was. And now it’s time for another read. Then comes another old favorite: Helen MacInnes, the original modern romantic suspense author. Oh. but I loved every one of her books. And the wonderful Mary Stewart for extraordinary gothic romances and historical fiction..

And “Gone With The Wind.” Perhaps I feel a little possessive about Margaret Mitchell. I worked for the Atlanta Journal, and she was a legend there, having also been a staff member prior to writing the book. When the sequel was written, the Journal called me and asked me for my opinion as president of the Georgia chapter of RWA. Trying to be coherent, I reread the book I first read in junior high school. What a masterpiece of characterization! And what a travesty was the sequel (and this has nothing to do with writing, and everything to do with the the integrity of the author's vision). My judgment for the paper: a misappropriation of characters.

As for the new: I have so many fave authors, including my fellow bloggers (I love my company here, and I love their books), there's a surfeit of riches. I have been collecting them for months. They sit next to my desk, tempting and alluring. The gold at the end of the rainbow.

My idea of heaven is indulging in both new and old reading pleasures. And I love the mixture. It’s always instructive for a writer to go back and
read books from previous generations and decades. Books written in the 1950's, 1960's and even 1980's are different from those written today. More leisurely. Remember “Hawaii” and “Centennial?” They required a real commitment of time. Today’s books are more active, more of the page-turner variety. I think it has to do with television and what we expect in entertainment. We have less time, and our attention span seems shorter.

It’s not to say that either is better. Just different. Each with their own attraction.

So tell us about those books that you want to revisit. Those books that made you love reading. And those you love today. And keep you reading.

Maggie Shayne: Doggie in the Well!

Oh, what a traumatic event we experienced this past week! It was just an ordinary evening, and Wrinkles, my twelve year old bulldog, who's mostly blind and mostly deaf, woofed at the back door to go outside. Wrinkles and I have only been staying here in this particular house for six weeks and we're not entirely used to it yet. Wrink usually goes out the front door, but I saw no problem letting her out the back one, where there's a big porch for her to cross. I let her go, then sat at the computer, knowing she'd be ready to come in about three minutes later. About five minutes later, I got a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. I went to the door and she wasn't there. I walked around the lawn and she wasn't there either. I could just barely hear a very distant barking, but had a difficult time figuring out where it was coming from. It was going to be dark soon, and I got scared. Then I spotted a board missing beside the porch steps, and realized she must have missed the steps coming back, and walked underneath the porch instead. I pulled more boards off, laid on my belly and slid myself underneath. It was dark but I could see, and I slid under further, following the distant sound of her barking and knowing she was down way deeper than ground level. There was an old well under there. It had been covered but it must have been long ago, because apparently, one of the boards had broken when Wrinkles walked over it. I could hear her barking from the bottom of the well, but I couldn't see her. It was too dark. I talked to her, told her I was going to get her out, not to worry, then slid back out from under the porch, and got on the phone. The 911 operator said he wasn't sure if the fire department would respond for a dog in a well. I figured that was no problem, because they would certainly show up when I went down there after her and got stuck myself. I called everyone close enough to come, and within a few minutes two of my sons in law, and the local fire chief were also belly crawling under the porch, and a short while after that a whole crew of volunteer firefighters from the South Otselic FD were at my side.

It took an hour and a half. We had to pull floorboards up off the porch to enable us to have better access to the well. Twice, the firemen got a rope around Wrink, and began to pull her up, but both times she wriggled free and fell to the bottom again. I was nearly hysterical by then, and I don't EVER get hysterical. The well was so narrow there was almost no one who would fit down it. I kept trying to get them to let me go, but they were concerned the stacked stones that made up the sides of the well could come loose, and injure the dog, or worse, cave in completely. Finally, they sent their smallest-framed volunteer down, lowering him carefully with a harness. At the bottom he couldn't even bend over to pick up the dog. But he managed to inch her up onto her hind legs and eventually worked her up high enough to get his arms around her. At which point he grunted, "What do you FEED this dog?" Wrink is small, but weighs more than 60 pounds. Bulldogs are bulky.

Once he had a grip on her, the other firefighters pulled both dog and hero up to safety. Miraculously, Wrinkles was uninjured. Not even a scrape, not even a limp. She was fine. I took pics and thanked the firefighters profusely, of course, and they're getting a donation too.

I am so grateful to them for coming out and saving my poor old bulldog. They said it was a first for them, and all seemed to feel really good about a job well done. As well they should. Dogs are people, too!

Wrinkles is doing fine. None the worse for her trauma. I go outside with her every single time now and wait while she does her business and comes back. I'm just glad I've still got my little pal by my side. I don't think I knew just how important she was to me, until I thought I'd lost her.

Here's hoping next week's post is a little less dramatic!

Maggie

Drummers and Such (Tara Taylor Quinn)

I was told this morning by someone who's supposed to know me well that I better be careful because I'm off the beaten path. (My words, the other's sentiment.) Somewhere along the conversation something was added about me belonging alone in my office writing my books. I was left feeling very alone and odd - hearing my different drummer and all. Especially because the opinion I was expressing makes such total sense to me. Logical sense. I thought about what I was saying, and what else was being said. I went on with my morning. And I looked around - at the business people in their cars and on their cell phones on the freeway, the construction workers building a new shopping complex, the policeman directing traffic where a new freeway loop in going in, the kids waiting for the school bus, the parents waiting with them, the bus driver and the dog walker, the retired couple out walking - and I wondered, are they all hearing the same drummer? One I can't hear?

I don't think so. (But that could just be my drummer beating!) I think we all hear slightly different beats, that's what makes us individual. Very few people look exactly alike, no two people think exactly alike, no one experiences exactly the same situations in a day let alone a lifetime, no one's feelings and reactions are identical, no one's taste buds are exactly the same! It occurred to me that those who don't hear a different drummer aren't listening to their drummer at all! It also occurred to me that what I received this morning was a compliment. I'm listening to my inner drummer. I'm living my life.

I don't mean this in a selfish way, or mean to imply, in any way, that my drummer is better than anyone else's. That's the whole point. Every one of us has a drummer that is completely equal to the drummer inside everyone else. And like with everything else in life, there are going to be downsides to this. But if we can come together with open minds - and hopefully open hearts - we can join our beats to make a harmony that is so strong, so powerful, we can never be out beaten. Think of the show Stomp. If you haven't seen it, and have a chance to, you absolutely should! It's an entire show of nothing but different beats. Beats on trash can lids, feet stomping - bare feet, booted feet, feet with tennis shoes and feet with taps, cymbols and drums and contraptions I'd never seen before, all coming together in different beats that take over the auditorium and enter the veins of every single individual there. You start to physically feel the beat beneath your skin - truly, there's a vibration that you feel inside. The entire room is joined by this beat that consumes the room and enters each one of you. And isn't that what our own beats are about? If we stay silent, let others tell us how to think or what to believe, how to act, aren't we silencing a vital part of the show?

Not to say we should go around yelling and screaming at the tops of our lungs. There's that part about creating harmony, not deafening noise. We have to listen to the beat of others so that we can play with them. And I suppose there will be drummers whose beat just doesn't belong in our show and we must move on. I don't know. Maybe my drum is on overload as I'm on deadline three times over and the book that I think has a chance to make a difference in the world hit the stands yesterday and my local Borders 'lost it' so it's not on the stands.

But I hope I'm not on overload. I want to play my drum in the show. Not as a soloist, but as part of something that vibrates through everyone, joining everyone.

That picture? How does it tie in? That's me up there. I'm fifteen years old. How many fifteen year olds do you know who spend every minute of their free time reading? Moreover, if you look closely, you'll notice that there are two books there and yes I read them both in that 'lying.' Furthermore, you'll notice that they're Harlequin Romances. When I was a teenager, I knew one other girl who read Harlequin romances - my best friend. She lived in another state. And whenever we got together, we'd bring our collection of favorites and read non-stop. In the picture I'm up in the hills in the outback of Michigan. I was there on vacation with my family, staying at the cabin on the Pere Marquette river that we owned. We had 17 acres, and were surrounded by thousands of acres of undeveloped land. The only way to see another soul was to drive twenty minutes into town. It was heaven on earth - a place to go and read from dawn until dusk with cool breeze and sunshine and birds singing and absolutely nothing to interrupt. My best friend was there with me. She took that picture. A perfect perfect moment that I will never forget. And yet, all of my friends back home, when they asked what I did on my vacation, made fun of me. Just as they did when I'd pull my books out on break at school. My mother used to tell me to get my nose out of those books. But I couldn't. Even then, I was listening to my drummer.

And look at me now. Five million copies of my own books sold. In print in more than 30 languages. I go into a bookstore in Paris and see my book on the rack. (I couldn't read it, but it was there!) I'm thinking I have a book on some shelves (minus my Borders) right now that actually might make a difference. It's getting USA Today support, got a starred review in Library Journal, is a Bookreporter.com Thriller/Suspense of the month. Booklist loved it. RT, the review magazine that generally doesn't appreciate my stuff, gave it their second highest reivew and glowed about it. Because it's different.

So...yeah. I guess I'm not 'normal'. I hope none of us are. I hope we can open our minds and our hearts, speak our own beat, and leave plenty of time to listen to the beats of others, too. I want to feel our collective vibrations. Don't you?

IKIWIWWISI (Suzanne Forster)

Ikiwiwhat? I don’t have a clue what it means, either. Years ago, some practical joker signed off on an email to me with the above acronym, and I still haven’t figured out what it means. It’s been so many years I don’t remember who sent the email, but IKIWIWWISI has the distinction of being the acronym that inspired my Abolish Nebulous Acronyms List (ANAL). Sorry, couldn’t resist. Acronyms are addictive. (AAA).

Okay, I’ll stop, I promise!

The fascinating thing about acronyms is that they came into being to make life easier—and for the most part, they do. They’re shortcuts and anything that cuts down on keystrokes, especially when typing is your life as it is mine, should be a good thing. It’s not the helpful acronyms I want to abolish, just those pesky indecipherable ones. Like PYOP. What the heck does that mean???

Maybe it’s the dyslexia that I blogged about a few weeks ago, but I’m not the world’s fastest decipherer of strings of letters—or even single letters, in some cases. I can remember asking what (g) meant in my first chat room experience. I felt like the village idiot when I found out it was grin, but everybody was very nice about it. Possibly they were humoring me, but chat rooms were new, and I was assured I wasn’t the only one. Now, I know scads of acronyms and emoticons on sight, but at least once a week, I run into one I’ve never seen before. And the head-scratching begins.

Like NYLUYGT. Heavens, you could hurt yourself trying to figure that one out. I’m not even going to try. However, it may inspire me to come up with another list—some desperately needed rules for acronyms. RULE #1: To qualify as an acronym, the abbreviation cannot exceed six letters or digits. That would take care of Ikiwiwhat too.

Recently someone in my Yahoo group mentioned a website that’s a dictionary of acronyms, and I rushed right over there. It’s a great site, especially because that’s where I discovered what just might be the short version of IKIWIWWISI. Imagine my excitement! It’s IKIWISI, which means I’ll Know It When I See It. Aha! Let the head-scratching begin.

There are lots of other great abbreviations on the site too. Who knew that HC means Have Cats. Or that IBM means I Blame Microsoft. BANANA translates as Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone. And this one I love. BOHICA: Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.

How about CUOA: Compulsive Use of Acronyms.

Yeah, I know all about that one, lol.

With that I’ll say bfn and hagd!

Suz

Weepie songs (Anne Stuart)

So, as promised, a list of songs to wallow in pain with. Of course, it all depends on what your particular pain is. A broken heart is different from career pain which is different from my teenagers are going to kill me pain etc.
Sometimes things get sort of stuck inside, all that sorrow and anguish, and the best thing you can do for yourself is give in to a nice big crying jag. It's best to do it in the car so no one can hear you, so burn yourself a CD with these songs on it.

Everybody Hurts by REM. Love Hurts sung by Gram Parsons and Emmy Lou Harris. Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses by U2. Fallen by Sarah Maclachlan. Held by ... I forget her name. Natalie Grant. It's Christian pop but you can just substitute the Higher Power of your choice.
Send in the Clowns by anyone. Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton. Hurts so Bad by Little Anthony and the Imperials (or Lynda Ronstadt if you can't find the original).

Anyone got more suggestions? For me a good weeper connects with something I'm feeling at the moment -- Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses makes me weep because I first heard it at the time my brother died. Fallen works when I feel guilty.


Fortunately next week we'll come up with happy songs to knock you out of your anger or depression, and there are a million of them.

Sunday Question of the Week

Names are sacred. At least, most of us authors think so.

And our pets are precious, too.

So . . . what did you name your pet(s)? And why?

Two Rants and a Rave (Lynn Kerstan)

I’m cranky. So would you be if, say, a leaf blower at full blast was set off a few yards from where you are sitting and left to run for six hours.

It happens that five major construction projects are underway in my neighborhood. And today, the sadists working about thirty yards from my apartment were using a machine that’s as loud as a leaf-blower and sounds like metal grinding through metal. For an encore, the workday ended with six guys on top of the wooden roof beams, hammering like marimba players.

But the worst part of the day came early, when I made what is always an error, although I never seem to learn. The thing is, I have been on a diet (or needing to be on one) since birth. I popped out plump. I was a fubsy infant. A pudgy toddler. A chubby child. It didn’t help I was born in the south (Motto: "Everything Tastes Better Fried.")

What’s more, my natural physical state can be described in one word: Inertia. I love to be comfortable. I am happy curled up with a book, or sitting in the recliner with my laptop. Moving just seems so . . . unnecessary.

Women can be proudly beautiful in all shapes and sizes. In my own life, I have been proudly presentable in any number of shapes and sizes, including positively slender. And these days, after several years of dieting and unaccustomed exercise, I’m holding near to normal weight (the new, revised high end of normal!). OK, I'm within a dozen pounds of near-to-normal. I definitely have a claim to energy and good health.

But I’ve stalled out. Despite disciplined dieting, walking, and hours of high intensity water aerobics, I’ve lost precisely one pound in five weeks. Yes, I’ve toned up a bit. And I don’t often weigh myself because it’s too discouraging. But this morning, feeling optimistic, I climbed on the scale and got shot right down.

Science is on my side, blame-wise. Help-wise, not so much. As researcher Dr. Neil King of the Queensland University of Technology recently said, "Our bodies have strong mechanisms to defend attempts to lose weight but very weak mechanisms to prevent weight gain. The research confirms that the human body is designed to strongly resist attempts to lose weight."

He needed research to figure that out?

Apparently our bodies are "programmed to cope with famine - not the current obesogenic environment which enforces inactivity and a plentiful food supply."

"Obesogenic?" Definitely a word I can do without.

Here’s the thing. We’re going into winter, even here in the land of always-spring, and just as it did last year about this time, my body’s hanging on to weight like a bear getting ready for hibernation.

Plus, according to Dr. King, comes a point where the body selects a plateau level and sticks there, never mind how little we eat or how much we exercise. His next project is to figure out how, why, and what (if anything) we can do about that. Work fast, sir!

Meantime, I’m all too familiar with that plateau. It’s name is Bootyland, and I’m sitting on it right now. My fat cells, like a tribe of occupiers, have massed in that area and dug themselves in to stay.

Tell you what. If NASA could harness and apply the technology that keeps fat adhering to my backside, the space shuttle would never lose another tile.

Meantime, it will be several more weeks of walking, water aerobics, and dieting before I risk another climb onto the scale. There’s only so much pain a person can stand.

Especially one who lives in a construction zone.

Oh. I also mentioned a Rave. My friends have been reporting in with their reviews and recommendations for the fall TV season. "House." "Bones." "Grey’s Anatomy." "Eureka." Lots more. But so far, no one has mentioned the show I most favor, shortly to launch into its second season.

It makes me laugh. It makes me shudder. It makes me cry. Poor Tosca! What will become of brave little Shakespeare? I’m all for a strong matriarchy, but Flower, must you have all the babies?

If you have nerves of steel, lots of curiosity, and a fondness for really cute animals, check out the Animal Planet schedule for "Meerkat Manor"!

Judgement Day (Patricia Potter)

Today (Friday) is Judgement Day.

Every writer has those. The day the book is due. Well, for me, really past due. But this is the day that is the absolutely the last day I can fulfill that nasty little delivery clause in my contract. The day my career hangs in the balance.

Some call it Deadline Hell.

There are two kinds of writers. The plotters and the fly-by-the seat-of-the-pants crowd. I am of the latter persuasion.

I do not say that proudly.


The simple fact is I am one of the latter because I am lazy. The plotter spends hours upon hours plotting out their characters, plot and conflict. It is labor intensive on the front side.

Our crowd goes in another direction. We figure that if we develop strong enough characters they will take over and do all the work. We are the optimists. Our characters are going to save us from ourselves.

I am here to tell you it doesn’t always happen. A funny thing happened on my march to this judgment day. A bit player tried to upstage my hero. He wasn’t even in the synopsis (which never bears any resemblance to the final product anyway). He was a device. Necessary to make a point. However, he became intensely disgruntled with that role and shouldered his way into a secondary role.

Not to be content with that promotion, he persisted. Then everything fell apart. The hero was not a happy camper. He rebelled. He stopped telling his story.
A week before judgment day I had a hero wanna-be, a resentful hero and a heroine bemused by the whole mess. No one was doing what they were supposed to be doing.

Time marched on. Unfortunately the story did not. I tried bribery. I will give that wanna-be a book of his own. He knew I was lying, though. I had already decided my next historical project was to be a western series, and my nemesis was a 16th Century blackguard.

Two days before judgment day, and the stalemate continued. Nearly eighty pages to go, and I have no ending. Too late to join the plotting crowd.
Try that and I would have to write a whole new book.

Probably no one knows panic like a writer does at deadline

So there I was. Three-thirty in the morning with two days to go. Staring at a blank screen. Remember all those movies about writers when they sit there and crumple pages in their hand and throw them into the waste basket? I wanted to throw the computer into that basket. Fortunately, it’s too heavy at that time of morning.

Okay. I surrender. I’ll give him a book of his own. As long as he stops outshining my hero and leads me into the path of creativity again. No, I will not wait until I finish the western series. He can be next. I swear.

The keys on the computer start to work again. Frantically. The hero has to shove the interloper aside in his rush to save the heroine, but all is well, and the heroine saves them both.

I know not sleep. I finish at 10:45 p.m. on the night before it HAS to be in my editor’s office. The Fed-Ex office is ten minutes away (thank the saints I live in Memphis, the headquarters of Fed Ex). They are my best friends. They are not surprised to see me roll up, tires screeching, as they start to lock the doors. This has happened before. Frequently.

Each time I finish a book, I swear to join the plotters. They do not have to cope with rebellion. They have matters under control. I am thinking this on my way home from Fed Ex tonight, having had six hours sleep in the past fifty hours.

My wanna-be, though is already banging on my brain. Give me my head, he says. And, sigh, I suppose I shall.

It is now three a.m. I hope you were not expecting much.

G'night.

Maggie Shayne--It Happens Every Time

Up until about a week ago, I was fine. My new book, PRINCE OF TWILIGHT, was slated for release, (I thought) on October 24th. I was gearing up for the usual bout of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, but I wasn't actually in it yet. Then I learned the actual on-sale date was September 26th. Still twelve days out, at that point. But then, the very next day, members of my fanclub started posting that they HAD the book. That it was shipping from the online booksellers already. And BAM! The OCD hit me hard right between the eyes.

(Sidenote: Just click on the title of this post to go to the book at Amazon, where you can order it and make that little ranking number go up.)

I think it happens to every author with every new book. If it doesn't, they're way more Zen than I am. The first thing I do is panic, because if the book is released one week in one place, and the next week in another, and a third week somewhere else, my chances of hitting any major bestseller lists are way lower than if the book goes on sale everywhere at the same time. I am, however, Zen enough to know that's something that's out of my hands, so I have to let it go and hope for the best. Instead, I dove into other matters that are equally out of my hands, but easier to find information on. I began calling the Ingram's Distribution stock and order line, jotting down numbers. How many copies are in stock, how many on order, how many on backorder, how many have they sold this week, last week, total for the year? Then of course I keyed in the ISBN numbers from other authors' books to see how they compare. I spent time at all the online retailers, tracking sales and ranking numbers and obsessing about those. They go up and down hourly, so that's lots of obsessing ammunition for crazy writers.

None of this does any good, naturally. They say knowledge is power, but sometimes knowledge is just information gleaned from useless obsessing. It wastes time, it turns me into a nervous wreck, and it just gives me more to worry about. I've been so distracted with all this that I almost forgot to post today!

At any rate, I also make myself close to ill worrying about what the readers will think of the book once they get it. I get my copies, and start reading the story, trying to second guess the reader's reaction to every scene. Ohhh, they might get bored here. Oh no, they might get angry here. Hmm, maybe they'll like this part. Uh-oh, I bet I offended someone there. That kind of thing. And again, it does no good. The book is written.

This one may be giving me a bit more trouble than most, because it was written while my mother was dying, and then rewritten and then rewritten again. And also because it's about Dracula, and while it was a great idea in the concept stage, actually writing a book about a character I've loved and known and explored for most of my life was pretty daunting. I wasn't sure I could ever do him justice. It was a long, long pregnancy. But it's over, the labor is finished, the book is born. It's out there and it will sink or swim or maybe even fly on its own.

In a way it's good that I didn't know when the book would really go on sale, because it left me very little time for OCD once I did know. First I learned the date, and then it was shipping. Just like that. Not a lot of time to worry. However, I can cram a lot of worry into a very small amount of time, and that's what I've been doing all week long!

I think I'm ready for another mental health escape weekend. This coming one won't work. Important events I have to attend both Friday evening and Sunday. However, next weekend, the very first one of October, looks completely open. I think I'm going to plan something. I think it will include a body of water, an isolated setting, with good restaurants nearby, and possibly horses. I'll see what I can find. Planning an escape might be just the distraction I need.

Now, someone remind me, what night is it the Times sends the preview of the following Sunday's bestseller list to the publishers? Thursdays?

Maggie

Babies Cowboys and Brides

You've found me out. I'm horrible at titles. The words I want to say to you all today are running through my head and I'm looking at a blank page - late - because at the top of the screen there's this little box that says Title: And, well, I don't have one. As you can tell. I profusely apologize.

And now that that's out of the way...

My daughter turned 21 last week. (I had her when I was a baby.) And yesterday, after just flying in from five days in the Midwest, I rushed downtown to court to watch her in her very first trial. She's working at the county attorney's office even though she's still in her third year in law school (there's some funky law here called 38E that allows that.) Anyway, they've given her a criminal trespassing case and she's the prosecutor. She's a nervous wreck - my child. Still a kid. I sit there with butterflies in my stomach, wanting her to do well because she wants so badly to do well. Part of me knew she would. And the other part - the loudmouth - worried about everything that could go wrong.

At that point in the old and rundown courtroom in Superior court, sits the judge, the two cops who are testifying, Rachel, her supervisor, a bailiff, and a court recorder. Trial is due to start. We have no defense attorney. And no defendent. In walks the defense attorney. The judge says, "Counselor, your client refuses to wear his clothes."

I kid you not. That's what he says, the words booming out into the sacred silence. I'm sitting back on one of the three rows of scarred wooden benches where the observers sit and almost laughed out loud. Highly inappropriate. And embarrassing to said daughter, I'm sure. I grab my pocket pc and write the words down, knowing they'll be in a book someday. "Counselor, your client refuses to wear his clothes." I love it!

The defense attorney appears to be somewhat taken aback. It takes him a couple of seconds to respond, and then he says, "Uh, what clothes does he want to wear, Your Honor?"

Oh. Good. We aren't about to have a naked defendent enter the courtroom. He just doesn't want to wear his OWN clothes.

The judge says, "His pinks."

Okay, I'm really confused, until I remember that our nationally famous Sheriff Joe Arpaio (The Sheriff of Maricopa county where we live) insists on male jail inmates wearing pink underwear.

"He wants to wear his jail clothes," the judge added.

The defense attorney frowns, says, "I'll go talk to him."

The judge tells him where in the building the inmate is being housed. D. attorney leaves. We all sit and wait more. Rachel is writing something. Really fast. Completely absorbed. Or so it appears. If you don't look at the floor where her feet are bobbing, probably as fast as her nerves are jumping.

Ten minutes later in walks D. attorney. "Judge, I can't find him. I went up to the 8th like you said. They said he was on 6. He wasn't there either."

I'm taking copious notes. This is superior court. There's a huge seal of God and the state of Arizona looming over us at the front of the high ceilinged room. The scene is set - and they can't find the defendant.

I decide he's escaped. And a story begins racing through my head. But wait. In walks the judge's deputy. He's got the defendent. Who doesn't want to come to his own trial. He'd rather be taken back to jail. After the legal mumbo jumbo that allowed that to happen the jury who'd been picked the day before finally files in and Rach is on.

That's when her mom went slightly off. Do you have any idea how weird it is to watch your baby stand up in a court of law, face a seasoned police officer, and nail him with questions? What if the guy was mean to her? Or rude? What if she forgot what she wanted to ask? Lost her train of thought. An eight member jury was seated only a few feet away from her. Most all of them old enough to be her parents. But gosh, she looked good. I knew the suit well - my money had paid for it. The necklace she was wearing was one my mom had had made for her after my father died. It had her wedding diamond, set in the middle of my father's baby ring. And the diamond earrings were a twenty-first birthday present from my best friend, her second mother. I focused on those. They were familiar. And I love jewelry.

The trial goes on. Cross examination. Another witness. The state rests. The defense has no further questions. They do jury instructions (boorrriiinnnggg if you're sitting in the audience) and then it's time for closing arguments.

Rachel stands. I quit breathing. She opens her mouth to speak and I'm lost in her words, in the picture she builds, the clear and concise way she tells the jury why their job is to find the defendent guilty. As she delivers her last line, I have tears in my eyes. How did we get from diapers to here?

I don't remember anyone ever once asking me if I'd like to leave twos and threes behind. They didn't get my opinion about changing my life so drastically. Or hers.

The D attorney stands up to give his close. He's a little shaky. I'm not surprised. Before he can get to the part where he tells the jury that their job is to find his client not guilty, he starts to bluster. There's an objection. It's sustained. He huffs, says he's done, and returns to his seat.

Rach has the opportunity for rebuttal. She calmly stands, faces the jury of her parent's peers, and procedes to explain that they'd just been given a red herring and they were bound by law to ignore it.

The jury was out for twenty minutes. And came back with a guilty verdict.

My daughter's a felony prosecutor.

I can't believe it.

Thunder in the Bedroom (Suzanne Forster)

I first heard the thunderclaps around noon on August 12th of this year. Southern California was right in the middle of sweltering humidity and record-breaking heat. I had no air-conditioning and my suspense novel was due in three days. Yes, you read that correctly. Three days. Did I panic? You could say that. In fact, you would win a black belt in understatement for saying that.

I work in the master bedroom, and it sounded as if the thunder was some distance away, so I figured an electrical storm was on the horizon. Yay, the suffocating heat wave was breaking! Boo, an electrical storm meant I might have to turn the computer off.

I went out to the deck to check, but all was clear, sunny and HOT. Ever seen that commercial with the fried eggs where they tell you this is what your brain looks like on dope? That was my brain after weeks of three-digit heat and deadline pressure, except the eggs were scrambled. The thing was I just didn’t have time to figure out where the thunder was coming from, and honestly with as little sleep as I’d had, I thought I was hallucinating. It wouldn’t be the first time.

I’m not sure when I realized the thunder was coming from my computer. Yes, you read that right, too. Technically, it was coming from the speakers, which were across the room from me. That was probably why it sounded like distant thunder. Okay, so one mystery solved. I knew the where—my desktop computer, but I didn’t know the why. And then it hit me. I’d signed up for the Weather Channel a couple weeks earlier—and this was the crazy Weather Channel’s way of announcing a weather alert.

I checked it out, and that’s exactly what it was. Which left me with a bigger question: What were these people thinking? Did they learn nothing from the mass panic caused by the original War of the Worlds?

I actually do most of my writing on my laptop, an ultra-small, ultra-light Sony Vaio. It’s a cute little lavender thing about the size of a makeup case with a hair-trigger keyboard and a built-in digital camera—and for months, I thought the machine was haunted. My first inkling that I might be dealing with a baby Hal came when I discovered the computer had been taking pictures of me without my knowledge.

Let me set the scene. I was traveling in the dead of winter, the wind howling outside my room as I worked late into the night. I’d just put the finishing touches on a spooky scene when I accidentally hit a button marked “Capture.” Imagine my surprise when a four-by-five window popped onto the screen and began a snapshot slide show of a ghostly creature that I eventually realized was yours truly. Yikes.

I’d never used the laptop’s camera. Still haven’t. I don’t have a knack for technology, which is probably no secret to anyone by now. But I’m certain I would have known if the camera had been taking pictures of me. All I can figure is I must have dozed off on one of the many nights when I was working late, fallen forward and hit the wrong button with my nose. And I used to laugh at people who put their faces in Xerox machines!

My haunted laptop also sends emails before I finish them, sometimes before I write them. It has not yet written an email for me, but I’m waiting. And speaking of email, why does the male voice of AOL say good-bye multiple times when he bumps me? It’s as if he’s in a canyon. He only says: “You have mail,” once, so why multiple good-byes? And for that matter, why is he bumping me? I pay $40 a month for my Adelphia high-speed connection. Those people should be kissing my behind, not bumping it.

Have any of you heard those eerie multiple good-byes? They wake me up from naps and in the small hours of the night when I’ve fallen asleep without turning the computer off. And here’s my favorite. How about the illegal operations messages? “You have performed an illegal operation.” My last computer was a Gateway, and I would get those in the middle of perfectly innocent online work. Really, I wasn’t doing anything bad, but suddenly my computer was slapping me on the wrist and shutting me down. That really got me wondering about the people at Gateway. I began to suspect they were having a lot more fun making the computers than I was using them.

Okay, yes, I write suspense, and maybe I’m a little paranoid, but that doesn’t mean Homeland Security isn’t involved in all of this in some way. At the very least, computers should come with warnings. My desktop should have had a sticker that said: IF YOU HEAR GUNSHOTS, CHECK THE COMPUTER FIRST. My laptop: WEAR CLOTHING. YOUR PICTURE MAY BE TAKEN AT ANY TIME.

Suz

Music to be Pissed-off to (Anne Stuart)

I'm in a thoroughly pissy mood for any number of excellent reasons. Spending five days in a studio apartment with my 92 year old mother, no matter how much I love her, is part of it. Being Not Happy about my print run is another. And being 58 years old and tired tired tired of being a good little soldier puts the icing on the cake.
I very seldom get angry -- it upsets my stomach and makes me nervous. But in the past year I've gotten quite gloriously angry. I told my sister-in-law to take a flying leap (though I put it more colorfully). I stopped enabling my sister, and got blackballed by my maternal relatives for it.
And I've revelled in it. Especially when you can just sing along with the music and not actually take it out on some poor slob who happens to wander into your landmine-strewn psyche.

So, for being pissed off about your career: Losing My Religion by REM, Heartbreak Town by the Dixie Chicks, Superman (It's not Easy) by Five for Fighting, You Can't Win by Richard Thompson, Dancing in the Dark by Bruce Springsteen ("I'm just sitting here trying to write this book"), I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (U2), Poor Poor Pitiful Me (Warren Zevon).

For general pissiness I recommend It's the End of the World as We Know It by REM, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life by Monty Python, Stop Your Sobbing by the Kinks, Not Ready to Make Nice by the Dixie Chicks, Keep On Rocking in the Free World (Neil Young) and my absolute favorite, Anarchy in the UK by the Sex Pistols ("I am the Anti-christ, I am an Anarchist").

Of course all this must be played very loudly. Dancing helps -- just a loud blast of rage and pain via music does wonders for the digestion.

Anyone got great pissed-off songs? I could always use more.

Next week I'll give you the weepers, for when you need a cathartic release.

In the meantime, rock on!

Question of the Week

What's "your" song?

Perhaps it has special meaning for you and a partner. Or it's a song you strongly identify with. Or do you have a "partner song" and a "personal song"? Tell us about the music that sings to your heart.

Location, Location, Location (Lynn Kerstan)

Yes, that’s me, striking a pose at Machu Picchu. More than a few years ago, I’m afraid, and well before I decided to try my hand at writing novels.

But as all writers know, everything we have ever experienced might someday find its way into a story. Even Inca ruins in Peru, although I hadn’t been expecting them to show up. Until now, all my books have been set in early 19th-Century England, with infrequent side trips to France, Spain, and India. I was really comfortable there. Maybe a little too comfortable.

Historical romance can’t be my playground any longer. . . at least for a while. I’ve changed course–or got blown off course–and while the journey is fearsome, the whole world is suddenly open to me. My imagination, after a bit of sputtering, has gone on fire with ideas.

Most of them suck, I am sure. But this is not the time for the dreaded Internal Editor to wield her whip. For now, the story sparking in my head has got free rein. The characters are having their way with me. I can’t wait to find out where they are going, or what will happen when they get there.

As it happens, Katia (heroine) and the currently nameless hero (see my 25 August blog) have decided to start their journey at Machu Picchu. She’s a gal on the run from a powerful enemy, trying to build a new life for herself. He’s an outlaw from a distant star system. Letting them meet in the produce section at Costco just didn’t feel right.

Besides, I’d roamed those Inca ruins. I knew the landscape, the history, the spiritual associations, the feel of the place. And what better location for a gorgeous male alien to land nekkid on the earth than atop the Intihuatana, the mystical stone known to the Inca as the Leash of the Sun?

Just one leetle problem. Times have changed.

The scene I was envisioning could easily have taken place back when I was at Machu Picchu. But now . . . not so much. With the decline of civil strife in Peru, tourist haunts are inevitably crowded. The government has instituted regulations designed to preserve the site. And rightly so. In 2000, during the filming of a beer commercial (!), the precious Intihuatana stone was damaged. Even the quirky back-packer hotel on the plateau is now a remodeled (and pricey) property managed by Orient Express. How could I possibly bring Katia and No-Name together, alone, in the locked and guarded Machu Picchu Sanctuary?

Give it up, dearie. I began having second thoughts about a Costco first-meet.

And then I remembered. I’m not writing an historically accurate Regency-era novel. This book is Paranormal Romantic Suspense. Otherworldly forces are in play. Which is, duh, the reason I locked onto Machu Picchu in the first place. Anything is possible.

Oh, yeah. I loves me some otherwordly forces. I’m freeeee!

Then again, this story is rooted in contemporary reality. Ooops. Not free. I’m walking a tightrope, balancing the believable with the incredible. My academic self has gone to war with the kid who started reading science fiction and fantasy about the time she was gulping down the adventures of the Bobbsey Twins.

Never mind. I could find excuses to put off the actual writing of this story until the moon is colonized. The problem with every single book and novella always comes down to the same thing for me. In my imagination, the scenes are fluid and vivid and exciting. But translating the images into words always feels impossible.

And to a great extent, it is. But when I love a story, as I do this one, I’ll give it everything I have.

After a lot of research and many beachwalks spent fiddling with ideas, I think I've found a way to do what I want to do. Meantime, whenever I’m not satisfied with the results (which is always) and start thinking about another, maybe better, story, I’ll keep in mind what a fellow author once remarked after reading over the galleys of her latest book.

"This is good!" she said. "I wonder who wrote it."

Those words never fail to give me hope.

More Garage Sale Angst (Patricia Potter)

The garage sale saga continues.

In my last blog, I discussed my inability to surrender even a minimal number of books to our gigantic community garage sale.

As one reply suggested, I should probably look elsewhere for merchandise. I had, after all, signed up for the event in the prospect of weeding out books. I had forked over my twenty dollars plus another twenty for four long tables.

Since my search for unwanted books among several thousand resulted in a grand total of six, I turned to other sources. Lots of places to look. Mainly in the boxes stored in my garage. My 96-six-year-old mother recently went into a nursing home, and my brother and I boxed ninety years of memories.

My brother and his brood have taken what they want, and I have taken some items for my own use, but there are still boxes and boxes of stuff I could not bear to throw away but no one else wanted.

I decided to look through them in my quest for saleable items for my four empty tables.

One large box contained hand-embroidered dish clothes, table cloths and napkins that were crafted by my grandmother three quarters of a century ago, along with a ceramic teapot and tray that lived in my parents’ various homes for the seventy-plus years my parents were married. I remember them well.

There are wonderful painted vases picked up on their travels, a stock pot of a kind that are no longer made and had been once the source of “real” chicken and dumplings. I’ve never made chicken and dumplings but there’s always tomorrow.

Another box reveals paintings that I remember from childhood, and a set of silver plated knives, forks and spoons reserved for Sundays. As I unwrap them and run my fingers over their used surfaces, I remember how much they meant to my parents. How proud they were of the sterling silver tongs, and the lovely old dishes, and the crystal desert plates.

Sell them to a stranger? It would be like selling my soul.

But what to do with them? I am of the paper and plastic generation. Paper napkins. Easy-to- wash plastic place mats. Microwave and dishwasher proof 21th Century materials.

I replace the stuff and try another box. This time photos. The treasure among them is a small but thick leather-bound photo album dating back to 1864, according to the cover. Carefully inserted in the pages are wonderful but mostly nameless portraits of people I assume are antecedents. Their generation is hinted at only through their clothes and hair, facial and other. Someone cared enough to keep that album one hundred and fifty years. How can I be the one that breaks that chain?

Then there are the photos of my mother as a child. There’s a picture of her from 1915 in a Martha Washington costume for a Fourth of July Parade. She still remembers that parade. The latter, of course, is not suitable for a garage sale but the photos bring back memories and regret that really no one in the family – other than me – is really interested. How many of those precious photos will be lost because there is no room, or no interest?

So what do you do when a member of your family has to downsize to one small room, and you are faced with preserving cherished belongings and photos that were so dear to them? I will try to keep them, along with the books, all the time knowing that I’m really leaving the problem to someone else, someone who probably won’t treasure every one of those embroidered – and yellowed – table cloths, and hundred- year-old photos of people I do not know.

I am open to suggestions, though. Really. Any help gratefully accepted.
Psychiatric advice as well.

In the meantime, the sale is looming.

I think I will offer my four tables and loan of my driveway to my neighbor who was even more dilatory than I in signing up. To his stuff, I’ll add my half a dozen books, two elderly lamps, and an old electric typewriter.

Or maybe I should rethink that electric typewriter.

Autumn at the Gym, Maggie Shayne

Ahhh, Fall. It’s my favorite season. And yeah, I know, technically, it’s still summer, but Fall isn’t a date on a calendar. You feel it when it comes. And it’s here, folks. Just look at the signs. Here where I live in southern central New York, the leaves are already changing on the sugar maples. The kids are back in school. I closed up the pool at the old house last weekend. I’m gearing up for the October release of a brand new book, PRINCE OF TWILIGHT. The nights are downright chilly, and it’s too cold (for wimps like me) to go running first thing in the morning. But the afternoons are sunny and nice. Still, the local gym is looking better all the time.

And that’s the biggest sign of changing seasons for me. I’m back to working out at the gym, ‘cause it’s climate controlled and I’m a wuss. I don’t like to be too cold or too hot when I’m sweating. I haven’t been since spring, and I’m afraid it shows. Oh, the running keeps things from getting too far out of whack, but I can definitely see the difference in my arms and back and thighs when I’m not on those killer machines every week. So I’m back. I think the gym missed me.

But during the in between times, I tend to forget tiny details about the gym that irritate the hell out of me. Okay, for example, why is it necessary to have a mirrored wall running the entire length of the equipment room? Do I really need to see my face turning red while I’m pumping iron? (And by pumping iron, I mean pressing maybe 30 pounds until my liver quivers and then dropping by five pound increments until I just can’t do anymore. I told you, I’m a wimp.) And how distracting is it to notice that your ponytail is off center in the middle of a workout? You have to stop and straighten it. You have no choice. You cannot just keep staring at a lopsided tail. Trust me on this.

If you can get past the mirror issue, you have to deal with the gym’s other members. Personally, I think they’re a major detriment to the gym experience. Surely it would be better if I could have the entire place to myself. There will be two friends, sitting on the only two pieces of equipment I have yet to use, chatting and not even moving. For an hour or more. There’s always the anorexic one on the stair climber, pumping the thing at about a zillion miles an hour with legs the size of chicken bones. You just know she’s going to drop at any second. You do your work, but are constantly distracted by the undeniable urge to yank her off the thing by her hair and stuff a cheeseburger down her throat. There’s always some bulky hulk on the far end pressing barbells over his head and watching in the mirror to see if you’re noticing him. God forbid you accidentally catch that one’s eye in the giant mirror-from-hell. He’ll be sure your admiring his physique. Never quite as much as he is admiring it himself, of course. So then you’re distracted by keeping an eye on him, because if he comes this way, you need to grab your bottle of water and head for the nearest exit, pronto.

Then there’s the basketball court, which has a running track marked out around its edges. I far prefer real running to running on a treadmill or elliptical. So when the weather forbids running outside, this is where I run. Of course, if you don’t get there at a quarter to dawn, you are faced with gangs of men playing basketball as if their very lives are at stake, and you tend to get pounded, at least once, with missed passes. If you ever see me with bright red welts on one side of my face that seem to spell out the word “Wilson,” you’ll know I just came from that indoor track.

But nothing’s quite as upsetting as the locker room. Gym locker rooms have lists of rules posted on them. No men in the women’s, no women in the men’s, no kids in the adult locker rooms, no locks left on doors, no camera phones. But they’ve left out a few really vital rules. Like, “Do not undress until you’re ready to shower, and when you finish showering, please put your clothes back on as soon as possible.”

Women of every shape and size will wrap their heads in towels and leave the rest of themselves completely exposed, while traipsing back and forth and carrying on conversations. You’re sitting there on your bench, pulling on your clean socks and minding your own business when someone speaks, and you look up to find yourself face to coochie with a sweating, naked woman who doesn’t smell too good, but who has decided it would be rude not to say hello. You think you’ll be relieved when she leaves, but only until she turns around to go and you have to lean back fast in order to avoid having your face slapped by a butt cheek.

And what’s with the shower curtains? They’re never quite wide enough to cover the opening in the shower stall. I suppose that’s not an issue for the exhibitionists in the room, but frankly, I prefer to wash my privates in private. So you’re behind this half size curtain trying to shower without stepping too far to the left or right.

I tend to make quick work of the gym locker room. It’s a scary place.

Ah, but it’s Fall. You have to take the good with the bad, I guess. =)

Life rolls merrily along. I'm still in the cabin in the cornfield. Still have no firm closing date on the new house. Maybe by next week.

Until then,
Maggie

PS: The second excerpt from Prince of Twilight and an update on my life and work goes up on my website Friday. Check it out at maggieshayne.com

Off To Chicago (Tara Taylor Quinn)

I was asked to speak at the Midwest Literary Festival. Not a romance writers convention. Or a school. But a festival that celebrates books in the 'real' world. They expect more than 10,000 people to attend. Did you catch the part about it being a litearary festival? There are many in the world of books who don't believe popular fiction is literature. I've never understood the debate. Or even the reason there is one. Is there some literature president who's been endowed with special sight and can spot a literary work? And why? What's the point?

Well, I'm glad I asked because that seques into my answer! I majored in English in college - specifically American literature with a minor in English lit. I voraciously read and analyzed every piece of work I was given to read. I loved those years. Just as I loved the years between fourteen and seventeen when I read a romance novel a day. To me, the loves were synonymous. I was living in different worlds, with wonderful people, who taught me things about life and living. Some lessons were global in scope, some eternal, and some were momentary. I got these kinds of messages during both sets of years.

I did my undergrad work at a small, private university where faculty and students developed close mentoring relationships. (Not the kind that crossed the line. In all my years there, I never heard about anything like that happening.) I felt a particular kinship with the head of the English department, Dr. Gary Elliott. The man didn't let up, didn't understand an excsue if one hit him over the head, didn't take less than our best - and that included our efforts to think. How he knew if we were thinking our hardest, I don't know, but he did. And if we weren't he'd challenge us, sometimes in front of the class, sometimes one on one, but by the time I was a senior, I knew I was going to college to think and to analyze and its a habit I've never been able to break. Nor do I want to. What he taught me is that if we look at things, think hard about them, analyze how they make us feel, we live life on a deeper, fuller, richer dimension. We live life smarter.

So...what does this have to do about the literature debate? I will never forget the time when Dr. Elliott fell from his pedestal. He was speaking derogatarily about - you got it - romance novels. To hear him speak it was as though they were less than dirt. As I'd been taught to do, I challenged him. I asked him what made literature, literature and romance novels less than books? He said that literature stands the test of time. That it lives through the ages. He said that you could pick up any literary work 100 years after it had been written and learn about the mores of the times. I nodded. And felt a little cheap. I didn't read a romance for a couple of years after that.

And I grieved. Something was missing from my life.

I graduated from college, I certified to teach. I taught. And I grieved. From the time I was fourteeen I'd said I was going to write a romance novel. I finally consoled myself with buying one. Reading it. And then I had to have another, and another. I started to feel emotionally healthy again. Strong. And I started to believe, once again, that I was going to write one. I'd been a writer all my life. Kept journals. Wrote poetry. I'd been a stringer with the Dayton Daily News since I was sixteen. I was a writer. So I wrote. A really really really horrible glob of words that in no way could be deemed a story. But I had a woman in my head and she wouldn't go away. Over the next six years I wrote. I submitted. I was rejected. I'd never heard of writer's groups. I thought I was the only writer in the world except for those who were published and famous. And then came the day I got the call. (A lot happened in between, but this is a blog not a book!) Harlequin Superromance was going to publish my first book. I thought of all the people I wanted to tell. Dr. Elliott came to mind almost immediately. And stayed on my mind throughout the year of revisions and cover art and thoughts of bookmarks and booksignings. The day my box of author copies arrived I dropped the box in the foyer, ripped into it right there, and held my first book in my hand. I cried. It felt so good, so smooth. The cover was beautiful. Because it had my name on it! The smell was disinctive. And fabulous. I had a box of 48. One of them went in the mail the next day to Dr. Gary Elliott. And in the letter I penned I told him that it wasn't Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It wasn't David Thoreau. It wasn't Louisa May Alcott. But if he wanted to pick it up 100 years from now, he'd learn about the times in which we were living. He'd learn the mores. And more. He'd learn how women struggled and felt, how men were emerging. He'd learn about culture and court systems. I sent the book off into netherland and promptly forgot about it. And him. I'd done what I needed to do and was at peace.

A few weeks later I received a brief note in the mail. Dear Tara, Thank you for sending your new novel. I read it one sitting. It was quite good. Dr. Gary Elliott.

He read an entire, 384 page novel in one sitting. That says it all.

Wonder if he'll be in Chicago?

To Confront or Not To Confront?

Sidetracked again! I had another topic picked out for this week, and then I read an advice column in the newspaper about confronting neighbors who allow their pets to wantonly poop on lawns and flowerbeds, and my thoughts processes were hijacked. Again.

What is this thing about confrontation? Apparently a few of us are great at it, but many, if not most, cringe at the very thought of the Cword and will do almost anything to avoid it. The man who wrote the letter to the advice column said his neighbors continually failed to curb their animals, even when he stood on the porch watching, so he came up with a “completely nonconfrontational solution that has worked without fail.”

Note the nonconfrontational approach. The man attached a pesticide dispenser to his garden hose, put some food coloring in the sprayer to make it look authentic and proceeded to spray in the evenings when the neighbors walked their dogs. He told the neighbors he had an invisible ant problem and was spraying poison on the lawn to control it, which meant it wouldn’t be safe for their pets to walk on the lawn because they would ingest the poison when they licked their paws. Worked like a charm, according to him.

He was clearly pleased with his solution, but the advice columnist wasn’t. She popped his balloon big time. “Fake poison?” she wrote in her answer to him. “Invisible ants? Lying in wait and then lying to your neighbors? Issuing phony warnings about faux toxins? Are you kidding?”

She advised him to speak to his neighbors directly, ask them to curb their pets and thank them. Easy as that. Done. Fini. Fait accompli.

Apparently she hasn’t heard of the Hatfields and the McCoys. Or the Forsters and the [they shall go nameless former neighbors to our left with the stereo system that rocked the common wall of our condo like The Big One. King Kong in Surround Sound made less noise than these people.]

The former neighbors were a workaholic single dad, who was rarely home, and his twenty-four year old unemployed son, who was always home, and who liked his music at nothing less than the decibel level of a sonic boom. Since I work at home and was on deadline, I didn’t really consider any other approach than speaking to them directly, and it never occurred to me that if politely asked, they wouldn’t do whatever was necessary to make the walls stop shaking, especially late at night. I’d found that earplugs helped slightly during the day, but as with most desperate measures, there’s a downside. Earplugs HURT.

The music was playing when I knocked on the door. Okay, that was probably bad timing on my part. It meant the son was home and the father wasn’t. The son had to turn down the music to hear me, and that annoyed him right off. You can imagine his delight when I explained the problem. Despite my gracious tones, I got a grunt and a door shut in my face.

The next day, still determined to be polite, I spoke with the father. He failed to understand the problem, not unlike the neighbors who failed to curb their pets, even under the watchful eye of the homeowner. This father was never home when the walls shook, so there was no problem as far as he was concerned. Of course, things didn’t stay polite for long. The dh got involved and the rattled neighbors on the other side joined the fray, and soon the police were making regular visits. Shortly thereafter, to everyone’s surprise, the man and his son moved. Apparently, they were renters, which proved to me there was Someone Up There watching over us poor can’t-catch-a-break neighbors. Think of the fun we could have had if they’d been owners.

To confront or not to confront? In our case, if a putting food coloring in a pesticide sprayer, lying in wait and pretending it was poison would have made any difference, I would have been happy to do it. I honestly couldn’t think of a clever nonconfrontational, nontoxic way to discourage the loud music, other than an online ad I found for one of those huge bass bins that emit low-frequency sound waves and can shatter glass. He he he. But of course the neighbors would have felt the need to one-up me, and we would all have ended up with no windows or in jail before it was over.

We’ve actually been very blessed when it comes to neighbors, like the lovely lady to our right (Hi, Mary!). But one fiasco like that is enough to make you gun shy. Before that, I would have said it’s all in how you confront. But clearly that isn’t the case. It’s also who you confront. Knock on Jaba the Hut’s door, and it doesn’t matter how polite you are.

I’ve never thought of myself as confrontational, but the dh tells me I have the perfect skill in my communications skill set. Apparently I’m a great little complainer. He’s in awe of the fact that I don’t share his qualms about sending food back in a restaurant. (He’s convinced the kitchen staff will spit in it.) I’m also the one who gets recruited to call the front desk if there’s a problem with a hotel room or if it becomes necessary to take defective merchandise back to a store. I can also be fairly tenacious (the term pit bull has been used, but I think that’s excessive) with customer service. However, that’s only if I feel some wrong has been done.

The dh cringes at that sort of confrontation, but he’s great at getting freebies, which is something I can’t do at all. He has no shame when it comes to asking for discounts and perks like room upgrades—and it’s amazing how often he gets them. Ask and ye shall, as they say. At the very least, we make a good tag team when it comes to shopping and traveling

Sunday Question of the Week

The fall TV season is getting underway. Help us out with recommendations. Any new shows you can't wait to see? Returning shows you'll be welcoming back?

Yeah, like we need more excuses to procrastinate. But then, we don't want to miss the really good stuff!

Cat on the Lam (Lynn Kerstan)

A warm summer night. I had company. Conversation flowed like wine. And sometime during the evening, my sweet and very sheltered indoor cat took a runner.

The blame is mine. I hadn’t made sure the latch on the screen door was firmly in place. And by the time I knew he was gone, he’d found himself a hidey-hole.

The picture is from his younger days. He’s five now, a richer caramel color, and has grown into his ears. But Lymond de Sevigny, despite his fancy name, is easily spooked and utterly naive. His worldly experience consists of perching on his cat tree by the bay window to watch people, cars, and birds. His only significant excursion beyond these walls involved a vet and the snipping of body parts that left him meowing soprano. Ever since, if I so much as open the closet where the cat carrier is stored, he scampers off like the hounds of hell are after him.

When it comes to certain subjects, cats have long memories.

So I think his escape was an accident. But I can’t be sure. Maybe he just got itchy paws. Or he might have been recruited to the dark side by the next-door cat, Timmy, an alpha rogue with fight-bitten ears who rules the neighborhood.

We searched, my guests and I. But they had to drive back to LA, so I took my ineffectual flashlight and roamed the dark streets, kneeling to peer under cars, scanning the branches of trees, speaking his name calmly. Sick at heart.

But not in despair. I figured that in the quiet of late night, he’d gather the courage to make his way home. So I sat up, doors propped open, playing mindless games of FreeCell until dawn. The only cat to wander in was Timmy.

Friends gave advice. I followed all of it. Checked Animal Control and shelters. Printed flyers, encased them in plastic, and tacked them up on telephone poles. Talked with the neighbors. Talked to the bushes and the spaces behind dumpsters and the openings to the spaces beneath houses and apartment buildings. I’d been told to converse in a normal voice, so that’s what I did. I’d mention Lymond’s name, but didn’t call out for him. Not after the first day.

Besides, I have garish memories of the lady who lived next door when I was in the fifth grade. Whenever her cat got out, she’d walk the streets screeching its name: "Kittykatink! Kittykatink! Heeeere, Kittykatink!" I think the cat was too embarrassed to come home.

I started to feel embarrassed, too, wandering desolately from house to house, pretending to admire the gardens while I chatted up the bougainvillea. So I started carrying my cell phone, even called a friend or two. But holding it to my ear was tiresome. Then I found a headset in a drawer, left over from one of the many technology products I’ve bought in a futile effort to become a more efficient writer. Stuffing the unattached cord down my jeans, I now feigned dictating into a non-existent recorder while furthering my acquaintance with the shrubbery.

And always, I kept the night watch, doors open and candles lit.

On the evening of the fourth day, I hung up more flyers and made the cat-seeking rounds until twilight. By this time, hope was no more than a flicker in my heart. That afternoon, I had even checked websites of Abyssinian breeders. Faithless wench! But even worse was the prospect of life without a cat.

Anyway. Entering my apartment, which felt emptier than ever before, I headed directly for the wine cupboard and was pouring a restorative glass of pinot grigio when I heard a low, loud feline vocalization. An announcement, like a trumpet overture.

And there was Lymond, striding in my direction with a Where Have You Been look on his
face. He paused then, the way Baryshnikov used to do when taking the stage, graceful and powerful, his limber body poised for a leap.

Like the song says, "I thought he was a goner, but the cat came back."

He was, and is, perfectly fine. I suspect he found an enabler out there, or Timmy showed him the ropes, because he wasn’t hungry, thirsty, or dirty. He did bring company, though, an assembly of mutant ninja fleas that ate me alive until Advantage did its work.

And he has a knowing look in his eyes now, the recollection of mysterious journeys, the triumph of an adventurer who stalked the shadowy corners of Coronado and lived to meow the tale.

Welcome home, Lymond. Don’t do it again!

Off With The Books (Patricia Potter)

Coming up shortly is my neighborhood’s Countrywood Garage Sale. Now it isn’t just a garage sale. It is a gigantic sale in which more than five hundred homes participate and thousands of people travel from six states to attend. Residents sell everything from antiques to used clothing to crafts to food. It is truly something to behold.

I don’t usually participate except for two fund-raisers my RWA chapter held several years ago. But lately I’ve been receiving hints from my family. “If you ever move,” they claim, “your house will rise four feet.”

That is in reference to the books that weigh it down, or so they claim. I have a lifetime of books. I do not believe in getting rid of a book. Any kind of book. But the house might topple soon and I thought perhaps I should consider a mild withdrawal.

The notice about the sale was in my mailbox. And family comments were becoming downright rude.

Garage sale. Books. A sign?

I found a cardboard box and decided to start in my office. I have eight floor-to- ceiling bookcases in my office alone. Those are my, ahem, research books. There’s one wall devoted to American western history, one to Scottish history, one to English history, one to murder, general mayhem, and various ways of tormenting people. The last area includes the general resource materials: costumes through the ages, guns through the ages, underclothes through the centuries, ships and sailing through the ages, and the all important “Encyclopaedia Britannica.” Then there’s the one essential book for all writers: Baby Names. I have four of those, each one absolutely necessary.

Okay, Pat, you can do this. You really can. After all, most of these books are no longer necessary because of the internet. Instead of using all that space, you need only a computer and mouse.

I start with the books under my desk. Surely I don’t need three Thesauruses. And four dictionaries. Start with the dictionaries. Well, this one has the dates of when each word came into use. Can’t dump that. This one has nice large, large print invaluable for midnight hours. The third, well it’s a paperback and light. Easy to hold. The last, well . . . I never know when I’ll lose the other three under piles of other books.

Maybe I’ll have better luck with the Thesauruses. No one needs more than one. Or do they? This one is big. Lots of words. But the second is better organized. And then the third is the Synonym Finder. Paperback again. Bright red cover. Easier to find when reams of paper cover my desk while I finish my final draft. Can’t give up that one.

Okay, let’s move to Scotland. “The Laird’s Table?” Food. Now how easy is it to find meals from the 15th Century in Scotland on the internet? Better keep that one. “The Steel Bonnets?” Nope, love that book. Fascinating history of the English/Scottish border in the 1500's. Hmmmmm, do I really need twenty books on clan names and castles and Scottish ghosts?

Aye, I do. I just tore out a page (ouch) of one to send to the art department of the publisher. They really don’t know a castle from a Virginia Williamsburg house. Never know when they’ll need another picture.

On to the western shelves. Haven’t written one lately. But there’s a stirring in my breast. “Diary of a