WriterWorking

Day Four: 7,175

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:14:00 +0000

Fourth day of Nano and I'm just simmering along at just above the daily minimums. My total is 7,175 of Rosalita, my urban paranormal YA novel.

I have a lot of paid work right now, which is tough because I have trouble concentrating on any of it fully, or Nano, or anything really. I just feel inefficient.

Reading Update:

22. Golden Fool, Robin Hobb
21.Black, White and Dead All Over, John Darden
20-22 Liveship Trilogy: Ship of Magic, Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny, Robin Hobb
18-19 Forest Mage & Renegade's Magic, Robin Hobb
17. Shaman's Crossing, Robin Hobb
16. The Book of Murder, Guillermo Martinez
15. The Likeness, Tana French
14. The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
13. Tales of Old Whitehaven, Leigh Anne McCorkle
12. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson
11. In the Woods, Tana French
10. Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kaye (should have been published as YA)
9. The Savage Garden, Mark Mills
8. What the Dead Know, Laura Lippman
7. The Magic Thief, Sarah Prineas
6. Savvy, Ingrid Law
5. Coraline, Neil Gaiman
4-4.5 A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows, George RR Martin
2-3. A Game of Thrones, and A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin
1. Jennie, The Romantic Years, the first volume of an old biography of Lady Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill's mother, an American.

Re-read.
46-47 Fool's Errand, Fool's Fate, Robin Hobb
45. The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope
36-44 Heaven to Betsy, Betsy in Spite of Herself, Betsy Was a Junior, Betsy and Joe, Carney's House Party, Betsy and the Great World, Betsy's Wedding, Emily of Deep Valley, Maud Hart Lovelace
30-35 Betsy-Tacy, Betsy Tacy and Tib, Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, Winona's Pony Cart, Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, Maud Hart Lovelace
24-29 The five books in The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper
8-23 All 16 books in Mazo de la Roche's Jalna series
1-7 Harry Potter, 1 through 7.

What a Writer Is Up Against

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:29:00 +0000

This is a brilliant assessment of the publishing industry today. The most chilling to me is number 4: if you are lucky enough to hit the target: "the corporation will see a spike in your profit and sort of autistically, or at least automatically, raise the profit goal for your division by some corporately predetermined amount for the following year."

The other chilling thing is that my husband, one of the readers Mr. Menaker prizes the most--the one who buys hard-cover literary novels when they first come out, before they've won the Booker or the National Book Award--asked for a Kindle. I didn't know what to say. But I said a lot anyway. Or maybe I didn't. I think I held up a book, ran my finger along its cover, opened it, sniffed the glue wafting up from its sturdy spine. He said, "I know, but I can buy a new book for $9."

And as a writer who has been pursuing publication for so damned long, these are hard things to hear, although I have heard them before and before and all the time. But but but

I write to keep my soul alive, and hope springs eternal.

Female Archetypes: The Divine Feminine

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:27:00 +0000

I am puzzling over female archetypes again in preparing for Nano. My WIP has mythic elements and I've been doing research, reading parts of The White Goddess, The Golden Bough, and The Hero with a Thousand Faces. I am troubled that female archetypes, and the feminine spiritual journey, are almost universally defined by their relationship to men, or male gods.

Robert Graves defines the elemental feminine archetype in The White Goddess as the three-faced female principle--lover, mother, crone. He describes the great war between matriarchal earth goddess religions and the patriarchal religions that won the war and have ever since stamped down any reemergence of raw feminine power.

This strikes an elemental chord in my soul. When the hero begins his journey it has absolutely no reference to the feminine. He goes on a spiritual journey to save the world. There is no equivalent heroic female quest.

As a writer I'm looking for those stories of the feminine that have the mythic power of the hero's journey that George Lucas tapped in Star Wars.

Reading Robin Hobb recently I can see how she's drawing on mythic female archetypes, as have other fantasy writers with female warriors, like Elizabeth Moon or Robin McKinley, or writers like Patricia McKillip or Gregory Maguire, who have been retelling the great fairy tales--like Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella and Snow White.

Amongst the gooey new age-y drivel online about wolves and Lemuria, there is some marginally useful stuff for writers beyond Freud and Jung and the Myers-Briggs test. For example, this listing of male and female archetypes. In 2000 I went to the Pikes Peak Writers Conference in Colorado Springs and the romance writers there had a similar list to the third one here. The one that has stuck with me ever since was "The Plucky Kid," or I think the Colorado group may have called her "The Buddy," the character played by Terri Garr or Jean Arthur, "come on, you can do it!" But who is she buddy to, who is she encouraging?

Thelma and Louise was so powerful because this was a female buddy movie. But once again, see, they launched their journey because of an attempt by the male to subjugate and dominate the feminine. Their journey ended with their own self-destruction. There was only one way out of the labyrinth and that was to jump off the mountain. They refused to submit to the masculine construct.

Like Anna Karenina who struggled for self-actualization and despaired. In fact, all those great 19th century novelists saw woman's predicament clearly. They brought their women to full, rounded, passionate and thoughtful life but could not bring them safely out of the labyrinth.

Or Fried Green Tomatoes, two women who love each other and protect each other and try to live independent fulfilled lives without the constant threat of men, in this case by quietly eliminating the male threat.

When a woman tries to escape, she cannot shake her male-referenced plight until she becomes the crone, the wise woman, the repository of tribal knowledge, like Jessica Tandy in Fried Green Tomatoes, beyond the lure and trap of sexuality. Or unless she bears a sickle and spills the bull's blood to make the earth flower, as Mary Stuart Masterson did as Izzy.

My friend and writing partner Susan and I worked with the Celtic selkie myth in our screenplay, Never Touched Her. The selkie is a shape-changing seal, who comes out of the ocean one night to sit on the rocks and change to a woman. A fisherman sees her and steals her skin, so that she cannot change back to a seal and return to the sea. She goes to his home, keeps his house, bears his children, until one night she finds her skin, and without a backward glance, leaves his house, abandons her children and returns to the sea, like Ibsen's A Doll's House. Another powerful example of the universality of myth that Campbell, Graves, and Frazer all elucidate.

The Greek goddesses, like the gods, were jealous, lustful, vengeful, generous at times, fickle. Artemis is a nice archetype, the huntress, the virgin, although of course the male is always hunting her, tempting, trapping, her with silver apples. It's interesting that Athena, wisdom, is a goddess, not a god, and not yet a crone. The Greek gods certainly think with their manhood for the most part. Aphrodite, of course, love, sex, beauty, fertility. Persephone, the embodiment of the rape and captivity of the female principle. Demeter, earth goddess. I am just rambling now.

I just googled female archetypes images. Pretty interesting. Marilyn Monroe, another Anna Karenina. A sexy nurse. A girl sucking a candy.

This anime one is the waif as white goddess perhaps? Anime in general seems turned on by waifs with super powers. In fact, what about female superheroes, like Storm? The White Goddess for sure.

Oooh, check it out. Sigorney Weaver in Alien. Angry mothers in a fight to the death. I love it! Now that's what I've been looking for!

This divine feminine principle is the mythic essence of ardent female friendship. And every actualized thoughtful woman I know attests to the power of those friendships. Like The Four of Us, best friends from college--Susan, Eva, Ginny and me. Or the passionate friendship of the women who went to Camp Miramichee as girls, where we learned to succeed or fail on our own merits and with our own strength and wits without any reference to men whatsoever.

Lionesses hunt while the male lions lie around and roar occasionally, when they're not eating their rivals' cubs. We should all tap our inner lioness and come roaring our of the dark night of the soul, ready to hunt.

Reading Update:

20-22 Liveship Trilogy: Ship of Magic, Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny, Robin Hobb
18-19 Forest Mage & Renegade's Magic, Robin Hobb
17. Shaman's Crossing, Robin Hobb
16. The Book of Murder, Guillermo Martinez
15. The Likeness, Tana French
14. The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
13. Tales of Old Whitehaven, Leigh Anne McCorkle
12. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson
11. In the Woods, Tana French
10. Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kaye (should have been published as YA)
9. The Savage Garden, Mark Mills
8. What the Dead Know, Laura Lippman
7. The Magic Thief, Sarah Prineas
6. Savvy, Ingrid Law
5. Coraline, Neil Gaiman
4-4.5 A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows, George RR Martin
2-3. A Game of Thrones, and A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin
1. Jennie, The Romantic Years, the first volume of an old biography of Lady Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill's mother, an American.

Re-read.
45. The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope
36-44 Heaven to Betsy, Betsy in Spite of Herself, Betsy Was a Junior, Betsy and Joe, Carney's House Party, Betsy and the Great World, Betsy's Wedding, Emily of Deep Valley, Maud Hart Lovelace
30-35 Betsy-Tacy, Betsy Tacy and Tib, Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, Winona's Pony Cart, Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, Maud Hart Lovelace
24-29 The five books in The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper
8-23 All 16 books in Mazo de la Roche's Jalna series
1-7 Harry Potter, 1 through 7.

Indie Bookstores

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:00:00 +0000

I have just returned from my annual camp reunion in Hardy, Ark., and was stunned and gratified to learn that a bookstore, coffee-shop, restaurant, caterer (they catered our Saturday night dinner) had opened. Words, and Afterwords.

This summer I have done a little short-haul traveling and made it a point to visit independent bookstores: Malaprops in Asheville, N.C., Lemuria in Jackson, Tenn. This is another aspect of the love affair with books that never fades. The excitement of seeing stacks of books, a section in Lemuria for Eudora Welty, a bookseller actually handselling when a customer asked for a good book to read at the beach, and she wasn't guiding him to Nora Roberts, but to the revolving shelf of recent literary releases. I recommended Netherland.

Booksellers who stock random Trollopes.

Reading Update

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 19:31:00 +0000

I'm still in the midst of this rich streak of upmarket mysteries. I'm reading the second Tana French novel now, The Likeness, which I like better than In the Woods, although it too is just a bit long-winded. There's a definite Donna Tartt, The Secret History, flavor to it. I love the tension.

This streak has made me go back and add a feral cat throughline to Meditations of an Animist, which is with two agents now, although it's probably the kiss of death for me to say so.

14. The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
13. Tales of Old Whitehaven, Leigh Anne McCorkle
12. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson
11. In the Woods, Tana French
10. Ysabel, Guy Gavriel Kaye (should have been published as YA)
9. The Savage Garden, Mark Mills
8. What the Dead Know, Laura Lippman
7. The Magic Thief, Sarah Prineas
6. Savvy, Ingrid Law
5. Coraline, Neil Gaiman
4-4.5 A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows, George RR Martin
2-3. A Game of Thrones, and A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin
1. Jennie, The Romantic Years, the first volume of an old biography of Lady Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill's mother, an American.

Re-read.
36-44 Heaven to Betsy, Betsy in Spite of Herself, Betsy Was a Junior, Betsy and Joe, Carney's House Party, Betsy and the Great World, Betsy's Wedding, Emily of Deep Valley, Maud Hart Lovelace
30-35 Betsy-Tacy, Betsy Tacy and Tib, Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, Winona's Pony Cart, Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, Maud Hart Lovelace
24-29 The five books in The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper
8-23 All 16 books in Mazo de la Roche's Jalna series
1-7 Harry Potter, 1 through 7.

Tomato Arts Fest

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:08:00 +0000

Trendy East Nashville has a quirky arts festival every summer--the Tomato Art Festival. An ode to the tomato. Went yesterday. Very very hot. Interesting dogs. Bought a little T-shirt for $3. Came home. But took a couple of pictures with my phone and then photoshopped them. I am loving this newfound tool for making crappy pix look cool. Click on the pictures if you want to see them larger and in all their glory.

Reading Update

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:30:00 +0000

I'm think that in addition to the books I've been listing, which are all books I've actually finished, I should list the books I start and don't finish for one reason or another. Like Secret Life of Bees is sitting on the nightstand because I can't make myself read the terrible part I sense is coming up in the next chapter. I should just get over it, because I'm 640 pages into 2666 and really terrible stuff happens, but Bolona's style is so mesmerizing and dispassionate that it's more like a dream than Bees, which is terribly personal somehow. That's part of the genius of 2666, he draws you into the dream where the lives of women don't matter. Where a few individuals struggle to the surface and gasp air, but are eventually sucked back down into the murk. And how can something this strange and awful be so readable? I'll devour 150 pages a night. I did stop for months though and then picked it back up.

And I've picked up a couple of other new authors at the library, writing literate mystery, which is where Meditations of an Animist, my latest novel would fall on a bookstore shelf. And put them down for one reason or another. It's a chilling lesson. How hard it is to fire a reader. How little time you have to do it.

9. The Savage Garden, Mark Mills
8. What the Dead Know, Laura Lippman
7. The Magic Thief, Sarah Prineas
6. Savvy, Ingrid Law
5. Coraline, Neil Gaiman
4-4.5 A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows, George RR Martin
2-3. A Game of Thrones, and A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin, epic fantasy.
1. Jennie, The Romantic Years, the first volume of an old biography of Lady Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill's mother, an American.

Re-read.
36-44 Heaven to Betsy, Betsy in Spite of Herself, Betsy Was a Junior, Betsy and Joe, Carney's House Party, Betsy and the Great World, Betsy's Wedding, Emily of Deep Valley, Maud Hart Lovelace
30-35 Betsy-Tacy, Betsy Tacy and Tib, Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, Winona's Pony Cart, Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, Maud Hart Lovelace
24-29 The five books in The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper
8-23 All 16 books in Mazo de la Roche's Jalna series
1-7 Harry Potter, 1 through 7. Amazing how little I remembered of Deathly Hallows.

G4 - 1 or Swimming at the Biltmore

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:43:00 +0000

We just returned from our latest G4 summit, the occasional coming together of my three best friends from college and myself. This year our legal eagle Eva couldn't come, but Susan, Ginny and I spent a glorious few days at the White Gate Inn in Asheville, N.C.

We had a whole little house to ourselves, which was composed of the two-bedroom Joyce Kilmer suite and the one-bedroom Oscar Wilde. Can you imagine how much the two of them would have hated each other? But both were pet friendly, so we hauled along my 95-pound Shiloh Shepherd, El Cid.

From the get-go, this was highly fraught and terribly amusing. For example, at every possible transition, including slowing down or turning on the windshield wipers, Cid began to whirl, screech and trumpet like an elephant. Seriously. A god-awful racket. And when he tried to jump into the front seat and Ginny's lap, it was dramatic indeed, especially because we were going 80 mph through Davenport Gap in the Smokies.

But we were flying across Tennessee and North Carolina to check into the inn and then go to Charlotte to pick Susan up at the airport when around Crossville, Tenn., I realized I'd made a critical miscalculation.

"Oh, no, I just remembered something," I said.
"Is it bad?" Ginny asked.
"Oh, yeah." I'd forgotten the change to eastern time which made us two hours late picking Susan up, since I'd also miscalculated the distance to Charlotte. I cannot be trusted. It's clear.

But we finally were reunited and at one point I looked back and Susan had her head pillowed on Cid's back and was crooning to him. She's been dogless for a while and was clearly starved for doggish affection.

The next day we went to the Biltmore gardens. With Cid.

Which was ridiculous, but we did. It was blazing, blazing hot, and poor Cid kept drinking from and then jumping into every elegant formal fountain we passed. Some people beamed at him; others totally gave us the death stare. And everyone had to stop and pet him and ask what kind of dog he was until I felt like a Chatty Cathy doll: pull a string and "The Shiloh Shepherd was bred from old line German shepherds ..." recording played.

At one point we were walking down the middle of one of the estate's walled gardens, where banks of lavender hung down, booming with bees, when a woman came toward us shouting, "Is that a working dog?" I allowed that Cid was indeed a "retired" working dog, which is a nice way of saying that he trained as a search and rescue dog for a year and washed out and then herded sheep for another year and a half before his handler (me) decided we really couldn't go much farther without totally disgracing ourselves (which, by the way, is still I think the farthest a Shiloh has gone in herding). So I guess I wasn't really exaggerating.

"How could you tell?" I asked her. "I can just tell," she said. And we proceeded to have a very nice chat with her and her roommate. She had Delta Society Rottweiler therapy dogs.

And believe me, Cid really worked that day. He wants me to tell you just how hard it is to keep a flock of three women together. If I got ahead of Susan and Ginny, he'd walk in front of me and stop me, then look back anxiously, encouragingly, to get the other two moving. If we were close together, he wound himself around our legs. If they got ahead, he dragged me like a cart horse until we caught up.

Finally we started back toward the car and hadn't passed a fountain in a while. Cid was dragging; his tongue was lolling out of his mouth. So when we came to one of the main large terraced gardens with three giant formal circular ponds in the middle, I decided to let Cid have a drink.

I approached the fountain and before I knew it, Cid had jumped in and was up to his neck in water with a three foot stone curb above him and a look of total panic on his furry face. I screeched and Susan and I began to haul his heavy dripping, yipping, ass out of the fountain, while Ginny struggled in vain to find a point of purchase. It was all over in a few seconds, but we figured Cid had helped us establish our place as unrepentant revolutionaries. And imagined Edith saying to George, "Dear, I believe I see a large furry beast in the far pond."

We sneaked back to the car along a balustraded walk that had yet MORE fountains, lower and safer and each one sampled by Cid.

And that is the tale known now and forevermore as Swimming at the Biltmore.

Photos courtesy of Virginia Dzurinko, artist and musician

Filling in the Blanks

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:27:00 +0000

Our backyard is enclosed by a seven-foot privacy fence, the kind that alternates planks so that there is a narrow gap between each. On one side, our neighbors have two dogs who participate in vigorous fence-barking and running with our two dogs, especially 95-pound Cid, who learned this game from Kismet, the next-door dog back in Maryland.

After a few months, I noticed that as they all raced up and down the fence line I was seeing what I thought at first was Pongo's shadow through the fence. A few weeks later I realized, no, I was seeing Pongo's entire body, because my brain was creating a whole out of the pieces, like an animated film.

It reminded me of something my friend Michael Cook said after 9/11 when I sent him that famous photograph of the smoke pouring out of the top of one of the towers in the shape of the devil's face. He claimed he couldn't see the devil's face in the smoke, but said the human mind is constantly seeking to create order out of chaos.

So, I wonder how Cid senses Pongo. Probably as a vast odor and sound of barking and flash of white teeth (his nose is constantly slightly scratched now). Maybe that's why if he sees her in her front yard when he is on the front porch, he resolutely looks in the opposite direction. There are rigid conventions in dogdom and the fence game is one of them. What happens along the fence stays along the fence.

And what happens when we humans fill in the blanks, stays with us, even when it's really not the devil coming out of the World Trade Center, even when it's wrong, even when it's right.

Video: VUCast Commencement 2009: Watch the 40-year journey of one graduate

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:21:00 +0000

Video: VUCast Commencement 2009: Watch the 40-year journey of one graduate

Posted using ShareThis

It's Been a Long Time Coming, But a Change Gonna Come

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:20:00 +0000

Please watch this wonderful segment from Vanderbilt University's News Network, produced by my great friend Emily Pearce, about how Taylor Stokes, the first black football player to come to Vanderbilt on an athletic scholarship, was unable to finish school because of the depression and isolation he experienced. Now, 40 years later, he received his degree.

http://www.youtube.com/vanderbilt

He would have a lot to talk about with Eddie Russell, the hero of my Mr Touchdown, wouldn't he?

Reading Update

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Mon, 04 May 2009 18:20:00 +0000

Reading Update: Odd coincidence, just read The Magic Thief and Savvy, two top middle-grade novels, both fantasy, and both use this sort of off-putting style in places, of doubling words, like soggy boggy (Savvy) and black dark (Thief). It was most marked in Savvy and it took me a while to adjust to the style, but then I liked it. Read each in one day.

7. The Magic Thief, Sarah Prineas
6. Savvy, Ingrid Lawq
5. Coraline, Neil Gaiman
4-4.5 A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows, George RR Martin
2-3. A Game of Thrones, and A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin, epic fantasy.
1. Jennie, The Romantic Years, the first volume of an old biography of Lady Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill's mother, an American.

Re-read.
8-23 All 16 books in Mazo de la Roche's Jalna series
1-7 Harry Potter, 1 through 7. Amazing how little I remembered of Deathly Hallows.

Great New Books

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:05:00 +0000

Two of my dear friends have books coming out this month: Kate Marsh and Lynne Berry.

Kate's newest, The Twilight Prisoner, launches April 7. It's a sequel to The Night Tourist, which was a modern retelling of Orpheus and Euridyce, set in the ghostly underworld beneath Manhattan. Twilight Prisoner takes the story of Jack Perdu, a classics prodigy, and Euri, his ghostly best friend, a step forward, woven around the myth of Persephone and Eros. Publisher's Weekly gives The Twilight Prisoner a starred review and Kirkus raves, "The plot is lavishly draped with snappy dialogue, realistic teen characters and didn't-see-it-coming twists. An outstanding story with wide appeal."

Lynne's Duck Tents is the third in her series of picture books illustrated by Hiroe Nakata. This time the darling ducks go camping. "In a small backyard, by a squat stone fence, five little ducks pitch five duck tents." You've got to love it.

A Mess, a Gem, and Comfort Books

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:37:00 +0000

All right, I know I am arriving years late at the party, but I have to vent. At the recommendation of fellow writers on Verla Kaye's Blue Board, I recently started George R.R. Martin's epic fantasy Song of Ice and Fire series. First three books were ripping yarns,not the best fantasy I've ever read, but really good. Then comes the fourth, A Feast for Crows. Fool that I am, because this was a pretty old series (FFC was published in 2005) and that it had been highly recommended on the blue board, I thought it was finished. Bwahahahahaha!

First of all, A Feast for Crows is nearly unreadable. Unlike the first three, I kept putting it down, even reading whole other books, and then coming back to it. It literally meanders on and on (i.e., the characters are all on walkabouts), abandoning all my favorite characters (Danerys the dragon queen, Tyrion the dwarf, Bran the mystic wolf clan survivor and his bastard half-brother Jon Snow) to poke along with the least likeable and interesting characters for 500 f-ing pages. I'm thinking, how the devil is he going to wrap this up in the remaining...I check again the monstrous page count and see I only have about 200 pages of actual text left. Then we have the 100 pages or so of appendices listing everyone ever mentioned and their affiliations, and I'm so bloody bored, I even flip through some of this for a bit, and then to my horror, I find the fatal final few pages. A freaking preview of book five!

Furious, I race to Amazon to find that even though the novel I'm reading was published in 2005, book five isn't due out until this September. FOUR YEARS. To wait for the conclusion of a series that has pooled into a slab of melted butter. And then I discovered the voluminous threads of fury on Amazon. I am so mad. I slam the book shut. I will return it uncompleted to the library (thank GOD I didn't buy it). The speculation is that GRRM is a) senile, b) arrogant, c) undisciplined, d) suffers from Robert Jordanitis (named for the fantasy novelist who died 12 books into his series that showed no signs of wrapping up even after 12,000 pages); or e) (my choice) all of the above.

And you know what's the real pisser? It doesn't matter. The forthcoming Dance with Dragons is already, six months out, ranked at 1300 on Amazon, which I can tell you means best-seller. So it doesn't MATTER whether he finishes this stupid series in five books or 20. It doesn't MATTER whether he's so arrogant and self-indulgent that he just goes on auto-pilot and pours out stupid drivel. He will still sell books and can be as complacent and undisciplined as he likes and smile all the way to the bank.

Okay, I'm taking a deep breath. I'm letting it go. I am turning to the light.

To get over the above, I picked up Neil Gaiman's Coraline last night and read it in a couple of hours. A jewel. Finely written, beautifully conceived and admirably executed. Thanks, Neil.

And the books I turned to while trying to struggle through A Feast for Crows? I returned to Jalna, the Canadian estate conceived by Mazo de la Roche in the 1940s, about a vivid, eccentric family and their ups and downs. Such comfort food. I still love them and I must have read them every one five times when I was a teenager and in my 20s. I haven't read them in decades but they hold up for me.

5. Coraline, Neil Gaiman
4-4.5 A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows, George RR Martin
2-3. A Game of Thrones, and A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin, epic fantasy.
1. Jennie, The Romantic Years, the first volume of an old biography of Lady Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill's mother, an American.

Re-read.
8-10 Building of Jalna, Morning at Jalna, Mary Wakefield, Mazo de la Roche
1-7 Harry Potter, 1 through 7. Amazing how little I remembered of Deathly Hallows.

March Madness

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 17:50:00 +0000

I am so hot. I'm 51 in the New York Times brackets. That's way better than any of their f-ing staffers! This is the best I've ever done in a NCAA bracket. I picked Sienna, Dayton, USC, Western Kentucky, and Wisconsin for upsets.

2009 Reading List

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 17:15:00 +0000

It's been a long, cold winter and I've been in a comfort mode. So mostly re-reading or reading the literary equivalent of Cheetos and chocolate croissants.

Read:

1. Jennie, The Romantic Years, the first volume of an old biography of Lady Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill's mother, an American.
2-3. A Game of Thrones, and AClash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin, epic fantasy.

Re-read.
1-7 Harry Potter, 1 through 7. Amazing how little I remembered of Deathly Hallows.

Rococo

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:16:00 +0000

A bit of good news! The screenplay I've been writing for the past couple of years with my BFF Susan Baronoff (Emmy-award-winning reality TV writer and producer) placed in the semi-finals (top 20) of a major screenwriting contest, Acclaim Films. This is absolutely fantastic.

Check out more about the contest and the screenplay.

I Am, A Man: Black History Month

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:52:00 +0000

My husband recently wore to work the "I Am, A Man" T-shirt he had purchased last year at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. He works mostly with 20-somethings and they were all baffled by the slogan. We were baffled by their bafflement but shouldn't have been. The civil rights era is rapidly fading into the remote past and we have elected our first African-American president.

Yet this slogan still gives me chills. That in my lifetime, growing up as I did in Memphis, black sanitation workers would demand to be treated simply as men. "Garbage men" in Memphis at that time made 25 cents an hour. The white man's dogs chased and bit them. At night, when they went home, they shook maggots from rotting garbage out of their clothes.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis in 1968 to support the sanitation workers strike, which escalated in late March after a policeman shot and killed a black striker. On April 4, King was assassinated as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. As the news went out that night, black communities across America went up in flames.

I have written about growing up during desegregation in my novel Mr. Touchdown. And I've also blogged about the time I was caught up in the March Against Fear and had a face-to-face moment with Stokely Carmichael.

But few middle-grade or young adult novels deal with that turbulent period in American history. Many kids today are so beyond racism that skin color is almost meaningless for them. And they find novels about "the black problem" preachy and depressing. I can get with that, yet ...

It's a cliche to quote George Santayana for the millionth time that, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." But it's true. And perhaps this era is becoming so remote that readers, students of history, can once again reverberate to the passion of that plea: I Am, A Man.

In the deep South in the 1950s and 1960s, a white man had the right to vote; a black man did not. A black man could not eat with white men, could not use whites-only restrooms, could not sit in the same waiting rooms in the train station with white people, could not send his children to school with white children. The injustice of this is incomprehensible now. Isn't it?

In the course of writing and visiting schools and book festivals with Mr. Touchdown, I have collected this list of novels for young readers that deal with Black History Month topics.

Let's keep reading about the past, lest we forget and are doomed to repeat it.

A New Era

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:00:00 +0000

Immediately after PEBO (President-elect Barack Obama) became POTUS, when he spoke the words, "So help me God," I sounded my Tibetan singing bowl four times, for myself and the three dear friends who gave me the bowl. We had agreed that we would all ring the bells for Obama, along with thousands of others across America.

And of course, that made me think of Edgar Allan Poe. So not having words sufficient to express how deeply I feel about this change of power, I give you the wedding bell portion of "The Bells," since this is a form of marriage, of a people to a leader,

Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells,bells,
Bells, bells, bells
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

Not Sure It's a Happy New Year

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:15:00 +0000

So a new year has begun and it doesn't feel like it. I am oppressed by the economy, by the rain. We didn't put up a Christmas tree for the first time in our married life, in Gus's life. I did not eat black-eyed peas on New Year's Day. My Christmas wreath is still on the front of the house, though I did take down all the decorations inside before I went down to Atlanta to spend New Year's Eve with my friend from the second grade and her family and friends. That was delightful although I was a bit reduced by the celebration the next day driving home. I fear the economy. We both had stomach viruses. I am troubled by a vast sense of dread, mitigated only by the upcoming inauguration.

My last two books of the year were A Lion Among Men, the third in the Wicked series, and I think my favorite so far. The Cowardly Lion was always one of my favorite Oz characters. And The Hearts of Horses, which Jeff so wisely gave me. Wonderful book, almost as good as Water for Elephants, until the author stopped focusing on the horses to tell the human stories and started focusing solely on the people. Without the horses to deepen the metaphors it became more mundane, but still, a lovely book.

29. The Hearts of Horses, Molly Gloss
28. A Lion Among Men, Gregory Maguire
27. What Hath God Wrought, Daniel Walker Howe
26. Night of the Soul Stealer, Joseph Delaney
25. Brisingr, Christopher Paolini
21-24. Heaven's Net Is Wide, Across the Nightingale Floor, Grass for His Pillow, The Brilliance of the Moon, Lian Hearn
20. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, David Wroblewski
19. A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin
18. The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid
17. The Voyage of the Narwhal, Andrea Barrett
16. The Shadow Isle, Katherine Kerr
15. The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen
14. David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Coriloff Affair, Irene Nemirovsky
13. Th1rteen R3asons Why, Jay Asher
12. Five Go to Smuggletop, Enid Blyton
11. And Then We Came to the End, Fabulous, just like my experiences at a Nashville PR firm, Joshua Ferris
10. The Tenderness of Wolves, Cold, but no Cold Mountain, Stef Penney
9. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Paul Torday
8. Dragonhaven, Robin McKinley
7. The Tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo
6. The Asolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Alexie Herman
5. The Monsters of Templeton, Lauren Groff
4. Heart-Shaped Box, Joe Hill
3. Inkspell, Cornelia Funke
2. Riding Lessons, Sara Gruen
1. Summer People, Brian Groh

Reread:

16-20. The Eustace Diamonds, The Prime Minister, The Duke's Children, Can You Forgive Her, Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope,
13-15. LOTR, three volumes.
5-12 Island, Castle, Valley, Sea, Mountain, Circus and Castle of ADventure, Enid Blyton
4. Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz, Ruth Plumly Thompson
3. The Silver Princess in Oz, Ruth Plumly Thompson
2. Captain Salt in Oz, Ruth Plumly Thompson
1. Earth Abides, George R. Stewart

Coming Down to the Wire

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:19:00 +0000

So I'm drawing to the close of 2008 and I am catching up on the reading list. I think I may have forgotten one or two in the chaos of moving, but the total right now is 47 read or re-read which is darned close to a book a week. And I still have two weeks to go.

What Hath God Wrought was a fascinating 900-page survey of American history from 1812 to 1848. Howe's book was chosen to fill this gap in the Oxford University series on American History, after his former professor, Charles Sellers', survey of the same period, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846, was rejected. Throughout, Howe writes snide footnotes to Sellers' work, usually in sections most critical of Andrew Jackson. Like many historians, Sellers lionizes Jackson for his populism and support for the democratization of American society against the elitism of the New England monied classes. By contrast, Howe sees Jackson and the Jacksonian Democrats as white supremacists who practiced genocide on every ethnic group they encountered in the western expansion. The book was so fascinating to me because I have always been much more interested in international history than American, yet I have all these vague notions of the events of this period. WHGW filled in that impressionist canvas with concrete details--a constant refrain of "I never knew that." The heroes of WHGW are John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, whom Howe lauds for resisting slavery, Indian removal, and the Mexican War. Howe, who has also written a history of the Whigs, credits them for promoting federalism, infrastructure improvements, including public education, and emancipation rather than ruthless expansionism. Very compelling.

27. What Hath God Wrought, Daniel Walker Howe
26. Night of the Soul Stealer, Joseph Delaney
25. Brisingr, Christopher Paolini
21-24. Heaven's Net Is Wide, Across the Nightingale Floor, Grass for His Pillow, The Brilliance of the Moon, Lian Hearn
20. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, David Wroblewski
19. A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin
18. The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid
17. The Voyage of the Narwhal, Andrea Barrett
16. The Shadow Isle, Katherine Kerr
15. The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen
14. David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Coriloff Affair, Irene Nemirovsky
13. Th1rteen R3asons Why, Jay Asher
12. Five Go to Smuggletop, Enid Blyton
11. And Then We Came to the End, Fabulous, just like my experiences at a Nashville PR firm, Joshua Ferris
10. The Tenderness of Wolves, Cold, but no Cold Mountain, Stef Penney
9. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Paul Torday
8. Dragonhaven, Robin McKinley
7. The Tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo
6. The Asolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Alexie Herman
5. The Monsters of Templeton, Lauren Groff
4. Heart-Shaped Box, Joe Hill
3. Inkspell, Cornelia Funke
2. Riding Lessons, Sara Gruen
1. Summer People, Brian Groh

Reread:

16-20. The Eustace Diamonds, The Prime Minister, The Duke's Children, Can You Forgive Her, Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope,
13-15. LOTR, three volumes.
5-12 Island, Castle, Valley, Sea, Mountain, Circus and Castle of ADventure, Enid Blyton
4. Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz, Ruth Plumly Thompson
3. The Silver Princess in Oz, Ruth Plumly Thompson
2. Captain Salt in Oz, Ruth Plumly Thompson
1. Earth Abides, George R. Stewart

Agnes the Commodious

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:25:00 +0000

We have named our new house in Nashville Agnes. This connotes to both of us a kind, patient, capable female entity, who has enfolded us in her arms, happy once again to have inhabitants to shelter. She is commodious, which is defined as "adapted to its use or purpose, or to wants and necessities; serviceable; spacious and convenient; roomy and comfortable; synonyms: Convenient; suitable; fit; proper; advantageous; serviceable; useful; spacious; comfortable. Agnes.

She is a craftsman bungalow, a style of architecture popular in America in the early 20th century but originating in Ceylon and India. They are typified by wide eaves, one-and-a-half stories, with a commodious porch having sturdy square or tapered pillars. Inside the rooms connect to each other without hallways, utilizing space more efficiently than earlier styles.

East Nashville is a treasure trove of craftsman bungalows, dozens of square blocks of them, all different, handsome or adorable or ugly as the case may be. Some are falling down, others done up to the nines. At some point in the 1950s in a fit of misguided urban renewal, hundreds of them were pulled down and little brick triplexes and duplexes were plunked down here and there throughout East Nashville. We have a triplex next door and two across the street. In a way it was deplorable, but it's part of what makes EV seem so real. Nothing is too perfect, there is a fairly consistent level of grit and poverty, which I like. The main drag, Gallatin Avenue, is like going back to the 1950s, with wig shops, pawn shops, dusty carpet shops, bunker-type convenience stores with bars on the windows and loud proclamations of Discount Tobacco and Liquor.

We live in Lockeland Springs or the Historic East End, which has been gradually gentrifying over the past few decades, with still a lot of way to go.

East Nashville embodies the anti-globalization No Logo ethos. There are no Olive Gardens, no Fridays around uber-hip Five Points. Instead, the best restaurants favor wood floors and artisan breads. Some don't even have signs, you just have to know about them. They are the ones I've only heard about so far and have no idea how to find. Or they move about, like the Mas Tacos Por Favor bus. Or stay put in a kind of mobile way, like the destination hot dog stand, I Dream of Weenie. The best fish sandwich can be found at King Fish on Gallatin Road, touted as the "crunkest fish in Nashville."

Lest this seem to be all about food, there are fascinating feuds about stolen dog poop clean-up business, long, weepy listserv conversations about stolen lawnmowers, lost pets, and endless discussions about the relative de-merits of the local Kroger (oops, back to food).

So I'm back in the Istanbul of the South (re: when I first moved here in 1989, the mayor had recently told the visiting Turkish ambassador that he'd always wanted to go to Turkey to see the original of Nashville's famous replica of the Parthenon).

And we are happily settling in. My bird feeders have been discovered. I am writing again, most days, at a good clip.

It's dark and dreary now, but the boy-boy has returned for the hols, we are all together again, human and canines alike, and all's right with the world.

New Cover, May Be a Star

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:02:00 +0000

So Mr. Touchdown has a new cover. I like it. It tells a strong story just in that fabulous, tough, courageous face.
Strange though that I have no idea now whether Mr. Touchdown is or isn't a Star book. It says Star on the back cover, it has a new ISBN (both hard and soft cover editions). But is it now returnable? Does it come with industry standard discounts? I'm afraid to ask for fear they'll realize they made a terrible mistake and take it all away again.

The Eagle Has Landed

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:01:00 +0000

I have finally moved into the new phase of my life, which has been in process for a year and seven months. Everything is now in our new house in ultra-hip East Nashville. A mountain of boxes is in the back yard, with more inside awaiting unpacking, which may take years. We've ordered 24 bamboo plants to screen our windows from our next door neighbors. We got wicker chairs for the front porch. We found the dog park.

After a week and two days, I finally am back connected with the outside world--Internet, cable TV, and a land-line phone. I started working at my new gig for BNA. But I haven't started writing yet. I agreed with my writing partner Kate that it was totally useless until after the election. She said everyone in DC is "mad with anxiety." I'd say that sums up my emotions.

Leaving DC was really wrenching. I only made it a little past Roanoke on Friday night. First it took an hour to get to the Beltway from Crystal City. Another hour to get to Front Royal. Then about dark it started pouring rain. At Wytheville, what with rain, traffic, and Cid jumping back and forth from the back to the passenger seat, I figured I'd best call it quits for the night.

Then on Saturday, I suddenly looked around in SW VA or NE TN and realized my little Matrix with the Obama sticker was surrounded by Ford F250 pickups with confederate flags and gun racks, literally. I had a nasty Easy Rider moment. However, my friend Ginny sent me this: I saw a photo of some house down South. Confederate flag flying on a pole, right beneath Old Glory. And an OBAMA sign in the front yard. Could this election be the end of the Southern Strategy?

So here I am, passed through the bardo, through the door at the other end of the hallway. I love my house, named Agnes. The dogs are sleeping off the nightmare. I can watch the Redskins on MNF tonight. I can do errands in half an hour that would have taken me two days in Maryland. I am back with my person.

If Obama wins tomorrow, all will be right with the world. And I believe he will.

My Little Pony

lydap@hotmail.com (Writerperson) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:31:00 +0000

I have a guest blog today on my friend Josie Sullivan's blog about creative blocks and how I came to draw this little horse.

Josie is a very talented artist, living in Columbia, Missouri.