The art of waiting

The book ready to go!!

It's almost impossible not to draw a parallel between the birth of a child and the birth of a novel into the world. As a mother, I mean. Maybe it's different for dad authors. The biggest similarity, for me anyway, is the waiting. The closer the day comes, (or in the case of the kids, the closer it came) the more antsy I get, the more nervous and excited. Normally it's easy to lose myself in the writing of a new story, but for some reason that only works sporadically in the final weeks before a new book--one so many have worked on so long and hard, one I've dreamed of long before I set down the first word--comes out.

It seems whether it's books or kids, I need a bigger distraction, one that's more physical. As time shortened before the childrens' arrivals, I cleaned obsessively. I made drapes. I stitched entire layettes, flannel gowns with silk-ribboned drawstring hems, little embroidered jackets, tiny overalls with puffy, decorative trapunto knees. T-shirts with snap shoulders by the dozen.

The distraction still under construction...

Now, as the day approaches for CROOKED LITTLE LIES to make its debut, I'm gardening like mad, making a miniature fairy garden this time to defray the anxiety of waiting. I think, if I'm not mistaken, a few fairies have come to scope out the location. Sort of like I hope a few readers will scope out this post and possibly even look for the book on Amazon. Oh, I can't even say how delicious the build-up is. You know what they say, anticipation is everything!

I can't wait to share CROOKED LITTLE LIES with the world! It's coming in August!

Just do something! What writing and gardening have in common.

Recently, as I finished a final round of edits on CROOKED LITTLE LIES, my novel that is coming out shortly from Amazon/Lake Union, I was also putting in the major elements of the garden that has been in the planning stages since I moved out to the country a year ago, and I was thinking how similar the two occupations are. Either undertaking begins with a thought, an idea, an image, some whisper of something that sends you out the door or to the desk. Notes are jotted down. Sketches are made. Plans are put into action. Sometimes you hit a wall. Out here in the country, in particular, where there aren’t the usual parameters, like sidewalks, driveways and privacy fences, to define the area, I’m often stumped. How far should I take the limestone dry-stack wall? What, exactly, should the cedar rail fence with its adorable peaked arbor encompass? I go outside and stare, trying to decide. It’s very like sitting at my computer, wondering which way to take a plot or a character in a story.

Gardener’s block and writer’s block have a lot in common. There’s a certain despair, rising levels of frustration and anxiety. I can almost see this little person in my head pacing the floor, wringing her hands. Until a voice speaks up, yelling: Just do something! In the case of writing it means type a sentence even if it’s gibberish. In the garden, it might mean getting a few rocks, adding them to the existing wall and stepping back to evaluate. Or it might mean digging up that entire clump of daylilies, because they’re in the wrong place. It can get complicated with crafting a story, too, requiring of anything from ripping out an entire plotline to totally changing an ending.

Built from cedar harvested on the property, this little arbor
 in January looks pretty bare, but it has lots of potential.

And the two processes also share similarities in the method by which either one is created. Both start with good bones. In the garden, I begin with hardscaping, a wall, a length of fence, statuary or a pergola—some focal point to build around. In story writing I begin if not with a fully fleshed synopsis then at least I will have the bones of an idea. And in either case, for me, anyway, the bones need to be strong and compelling. I need an ocean’s worth of enthusiasm, because either way, I‘m going to be lost in this muddy, unknown territory for awhile. Either project is going to take time to complete, and there are bound to be setbacks, small heartbreaks and jabs of disappointment, never mind the odd bouts of confusion, the times I grope around wondering wondering where I am. It’s as easy to garden your way into a corner, as it is to write your way into one. 

But there is one difference between the two occupations, one that I discovered only now, as I sent CROOKED LITTLE LIES back to my lovely editor for the last time. I went outside to the garden, my go-to place. It’s always been my sanctuary even as it can be the greatest source for distress, and as I

This is Sophia, my beautiful garden muse,
found this spring. 

was looking over results of my early spring efforts so far, and feeling impatient that the perennials are so small, that the shrubs haven’t filled in, that the trees will need their canvas-strap supports for another six months and I hate how it looks, the word STOP! popped into my head. A voice continued: You’re missing it, the beauty now. The beauty of beginning, of watching something grow. It often happens that I’ll hear this voice, my higher self, the one that knows how to find the joy in life. And I’m so grateful for it, to have cultivated it so it’s usually louder than the voice of my frustration. It’s this voice, what I’ve come to think of as the voice of my joy, that sees me through the hard places in life. It’s there whenever I care to listen no matter what I’m doing, and definitely whether I’m writing or gardening. But back to the difference between them, standing in the garden that day, while I did slow down and let my vision fill with the beauty that is already in evidence, that little voice spoke up again to whisper that while the book was finished, the garden, like so many other gardens I’ve begun in my lifetime, never will be done. I will always walk outside and see something I want to do there. In fact, I will quite possibly die thinking of the phlox or some other clump of whatever flowers, how tomorrow I will move them as they have overgrown their place in the border. And perhaps that is a garden’s value, that one is never finished conspiring with nature over its creation. It comforted me, even elated me, having that thought. And I guess it does share a similarity with writing after all. I can’t see how I’ll ever be finished with conjuring plots, either, for the characters that continue to get up and walk around in my head.

A bouquet of good news

I am thrilled to announce that the publication date for my latest novel has been moved up from the fall of 2015 to July 21, 2015!

Since before Christmas, I’ve been in revision mode, working long hours and so absorbed that there have been days when I scarcely registered the sweep of the sun. I would look up and notice it was dark. The work has been intense, but I love it. There’s something magical to me in the editing process especially when you have expert guidance, which I do in my lovely editor, Tara Parsons. With the input from her lighting my imagination, the story has taken on added nuance and layering. Everything about the characters, pacing and plot has become fuller and richer until the story is real to me. I often dream about the characters or find myself wondering if they’re okay now, and on the heels of such a thought, I’ll be startled to remember these folks are figments of my imagination. And that’s the second bit of good news. The revision is done!

Anyway, after being in the tunnel so to speak with this project all this time, I was elated to learn how quickly it will be out in the world. Just in time to slip into your beach tote. I’ve said it before and can’t help saying it again that I can’t wait to share this book with you!

Telling secrets

Oh, I've been keeping this one for so long it's been killing me! I have a new book coming out in the fall of 2015 from Lake Union Publishing. Tentatively titled ANYWHERE BUT HERE, the story asks this question: How well do you know your own mind? What if your family is convinced you're losing it? Maybe you want to believe it's not you, it's them. But how can you be sure? It's very scary when your reality, the life and routine you share with people you love begins to dissolve and become unreliable like a dream or a watery reflection. Then your sister shares her shocking secret, one that fits together the pieces of the mystery that has haunted you. It all makes sense now, and that is only the beginning of your nightmare.

I can't wait to share this novel with the world! And to add to my joy, I'm working with Tara Parsons. I got to know Tara when she was with Mira, and I'm excited to be working with her on this project at Lake Union. Heartfelt gratitude to her and to my lovely agent Barbara Poelle for everything she does, and a heartfelt thank you to readers of my books and all books everywhere. If it were not for you, my dream job wouldn't exist.

 

How I Write Blog Hop AKA Author Conga Line

I was tagged by friend, writing partner, and NYT bestselling author, Joni Rodgers to join a friends blog tour, How I Write.  It’s a blog hop where I’m to answer 4 questions (I put #2 & #3 together) about my process, then tag 4 other authors (I found 1, and he’s great, because together we’re gonna keep the plane in the air!) who will do the same, forming a kind of conga line of authors … one, two, three, four … hey! And a big fat Cha-Cha to everyone!

So, for the questions:

What am I writing?

At the moment, I’m between projects. SAFE KEEPING, the story of a family struggling to deal with the calamity when one of their own is charged with murder, came out from MIRA in March, and I have a completed manuscript, working title, ANYWHERE BUT HERE, which is currently on my agent’s desk. Briefly, it’s the story of Lauren Tate, a wife and mother of two teenagers, who while out running errands—and while still suffering lingering mental confusion from injuries she sustained in a recent fall—narrowly misses striking Bo Laughlin with her car. Shaken, she stops and is reassured to find he’s okay. Their encounter might have been the end of it, if later on that same day, Bo hadn’t gone missing. Now an entire town has turned out to find him—even Lauren who as it turns out was the last known person to speak to him. Joining in the search effort, Lauren meets Bo’s half sister, Annie, and although Lauren appears to Annie to be a bit unstable, to have issues with her memory, Annie is drawn to her, and the two form a bond. But then Lauren, incredibly, offers evidence that seems to indicate she might have had a hand in Bo’s disappearance. Lauren denies culpability, but even she has doubts. Where do you turn for help to find the truth, when no one trusts you, when you can’t even trust yourself? But there is more to the story than Bo’s disappearance, and while the resolution when it comes is shocking and life altering, in an ironic twist it reveals yet another secret that leaves Lauren questioning not only her sanity but her belief in all she has loved in her life.  

How does my work differ from others of its genre? Why do I write what I do?

I combined these two questions because they seem inextricably entwined to me. If I’m writing from my gut, which I do, then what I write comes from that very individual place and that  automatically makes the work different. I might wish I could write those lovely, literary and poignant novels, the sort that make you laugh and break your heart, but when I sit down to write what comes to me are stories about ordinary people—families—who abruptly find themselves in the midst of extraordinary and calamitous circumstances, who are then faced with the ultimate test of forgiving (or not) what in most of our minds would be unforgiveable, and then finding the heart to go on, to survive and find happiness again. So it’s the degree of realism, I think, that sets my books apart. What happens in them could happen to anyone, and the way the circumstances unfold is through the structure of actual family life and relationships. A lot of my readers have commented that they find themselves wondering as they read what they would do, they can see themselves that vividly in the situation. I get comments, too, that the endings aren’t what they’ve expected. As in real life, things don’t always tidy up into a pretty bow, but what the endings do reflect is the indomitability of the human spirit, the presence of hope, courage, and love through even the harshest struggle.

How does my process work?

Guts mostly. Persistence. Discipline. I write even when I would rather be somewhere else, doing something else other than pounding my head on the wall trying to work my way into, or out of some scene, or some character’s head, or out of a trap I wrote myself into. I’ve heard some authors say they have to write, that they couldn’t not write. In my own head when I hear this, I often think: Not me. But it must be so, because I’m very dogged about it. All this time, through what? 5, 6, 7 novels now—I lose count—some are in drawers! But throughout, regardless how many times I’ve been told no—and it’s been a lot!—I get up the next day, and I write, usually at least four hours. The whole thing starts with some question, a what-if sort of question, then a character starts talking to me, having this dialogue, saying well, if that happened, then I’d do thus and such. It’s not conscious, really. But the next thing I know, I’m writing it down.

Enough about me. Let’s talk about the other author who so graciously consented to take part in this conga line.

Robert K Lewis is a Bay Area resident who has been a painter, printmaker, and a produced screenwriter. He is a contributor to Macmillan's crime fiction fansite, Criminal Element. Lewis is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, the International Thriller Writers, and the Crime Writers Association. His Mark Mallen novels, the first and second, UNTOLD DAMAGE and CRITICAL DAMAGE are available now. Visit him online at RobertKLewis.com and at his blog, Needlecity.  Follow him on Twitter. About what he writes, Tales of a Book Addict had this to say: “If you like gritty, non-stop action, with a flawed main character that you want to succeed more than anything, then this book is most definitely for you!” I think that sounds just about perfect!