Tag: muses

Hump Day Happy

People send me dolls.

That should be read as a statement of fact, not as if I’d written the command, “People, send me dolls!” Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

As I’ve explained before, many of my dolls are gifts. Whether they’re beloved dolls from a person’s collection that she (or he) donates to me so that I can include them in Beck’s Museum of Dolls, Dolls, Dolls in the Attic!, or dolls that people find discounted or for sale in a thrift store or online, my doll population grows. I’m not complaining about that AT ALL. I love them, from the most battered, dog-gnawed Skipper to the priciest designer Barbie never removed from her box.

These two Birthstone Barbies are recent additions to the collection. Mattel used the Model Muse body for them, and in Becky World, that can mean only one thing–you’ll eventually be seeing them wearing my designs. As models, they get names. Since amethyst is my sister’s birthstone and aquamarine is mine, I decided they should have names that are meaningful to us (and likely to no one else). Thus the redhead with the amethysts is now “Katie” and the blonde with the aquamarines is “Dandy.”

Here’s another gorgeous beauty. With apologies to those of you who love your super heroes, I’m not acquainted with many details beyond those most commonly known. So I don’t have a lot of inside scoop on Dinah Drake or Dinah Laurel Lance, the mother and daughter whose alter egos have been the “Black Canary” dating from 1947. What I do know is that this is one sizzling Barbie, and she got even hotter when she borrowed Christina Aguilera’s shiny pants and teamed up with…


The Harley Barbies! These were provided by one of my favorite motorcyclists/writers, Linda Raven Moore, who wrote the wonderful A Little Twist of Texas (which I once reviewed here). For a while, the Harley Barbies were misplaced within the mysterious labyrinth of the postal system, but now they’re free to ride. Today they’re ready to wheel their way through the pages of the happiness book just for you. All you need to do is comment with a page number between 1 and 611, and another number between 1 and 25. Happy trails!

Hump Day Happy

I usually pass parade beads to my great-nieces and -nephews, but not this throw. This one came from Greg last year when I made my February trip to New Orleans.

I’m using it here because even though I’m deliriously happy to be back at The Compound with my dogs and husband and Houston friends nearby, I’m still in that Crescent City state of mind, thinking of everything that happened at Saints and Sinners and how good my writer friends and long-distance friends are for my soul.

I’ll be sharing photos and stories in a lot of posts over the next couple of weeks as memories bubble to the surface. One of the VERY BEST parts of the long weekend was how I could see how vastly improved my mood and health were from last year. I laughed more, walked more, participated more, and relaxed more. I just felt lighter. Happier.

If you’re looking for something to be happy about, comment with a page number between 1 and 611, and another number between 1 and 25, and these Krewe of Muses shoes are made for walking through the pages of this book to get your answer.

Greg, if you ever again think I’m snubbing you, just remember that I brought your paperclip sculpture you gave me all the way home from New Orleans and shot a photo of it because it looks like a heart. I will be always grateful for the many kindnesses you’ve shown me, both professionally and personally. This event you and Paul have created, Saints and Sinners, has brought some amazing people into my life, given me more confidence as a writer, and provided the opportunity to meet in person other writers and friends I’d have otherwise known and admired only from a distance. You say the festival is your chance to get all your creative friends together and how happy that makes you. But we’re happy that YOU make it possible for all of us to converge. What a gift to writers, friends, and colleagues. You and Paul, and all the people who help you, including the one pictured below, should be SO PROUD of your work, your passion, and your amazing host city. Thank you.

 


Evil Mark, who’s not even remotely evil and whose enthusiasm and energy never flags as he does all his Saints and Sinners magic, including keeping us on schedule. Thank you, Mark! 

Button Sunday

When Greg was in Houston, we had an enjoyable discussion of New Orleans street names and Southern place names in general. We Southerners tend to find it charming to pronounce things the way we damn well please (the Alabama towns of Lafayette and Arab come to mind, as does Versailles in Kentucky), and New Orleans offers up a wealth of examples.

I hadn’t realized that all nine Greek Muses (Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia, and Urania) have New Orleans streets named for them, and considering some of the street pronunciations, the Muses themselves might not realize it.

Since that conversation, the Muses have been much on my mind (which means they will surely find their way into my fiction). I suppose over time, many of us have forgotten the Muses and which art or science they inspire, instead developing a more personal concept of a muse.

Who or what inspires you?

You know how it sometimes seems a day can’t get any better…

…and then it does?

Today I managed to accomplish every goal I set for myself. While I was doing it, I got to speak by phone to Lynne, Marika, my sister Debby, my friend Debbie, Jim–I feel like I’m leaving out someone, but at age thirty-five, a memory lapse or two is to be expected. I’ve missed calls from Timmy and Amy, but we’ll catch up soon.

I took some photos that you can see after the cut.

Continue reading “You know how it sometimes seems a day can’t get any better…”

Two Spirits Dancing

So long ago.
Was it in a dream?
Was it just a dream?
I know, yes I know.
It seemed so very real,
seemed so real to me.
Took a walk down the street.
Through the heat
whispered trees.
I thought I could hear.
Hear. Hear. Hear.
Somebody call out my name (John)
as it started to rain.
Two spirits dancing
so strange…

Dream, dream away.
Magic in the air.
Was magic in the air?
I believe, yes I believe.
More I cannot say.
What more can I say?
On a river of sound.
Through the mirror go
round, round.
I thought I could feel.
Feel. Feel. Feel.
Music touching my soul.
Something warm, sudden cold.
The spirit dance
was unfolding…
John Lennon, “No. 9 Dream”

Last night, I was on the phone with Marika, looking back through my e-mail filing cabinet for something. I realized that I’d fallen completely silent and quickly told her goodbye. I’d stumbled across some e-mails from 2004 between Riley and me, and as usual with our interchanges, talk turned to John Lennon and his artistry–John Lennon being Riley’s forever muse, inspiration, hero…

Today would be John Lennon’s sixty-eighth birthday, and I try to imagine how many ways he’d have stayed relevant and rebellious as he aged. But mostly, I think of these two kindred spirits moving across the infinite dance floor.


      John Lennon         John Riley Morris

Riley archives for my reference

The first of I don’t know how many posts today

Or maybe it’ll be my only post today. We’ll see.

Greg Herren is supposed to read from James Joyce’s work at the Garden District Bookshop’s Bloomsday Celebration tonight. Wish I could be there.

On this day in 1904, James Joyce took a walk in Dublin with a chambermaid he’d met at a hotel. Their outing became the basis for Leopold Bloom’s fictional odyssey in Ulysses, another of those books I’ve never read. And the chambermaid, Nora Barnacle, became Joyce’s lover, companion, wife, and muse.

One of the most fun parts of writing fiction is when some chance moment from life–a meeting, an overheard conversation, a vignette told to me, a piece of art, a song, or a photograph–either inspires something I’m writing or gets woven into one of my novels. If the story hasn’t involved me directly, I generally ask and am given permission to use it.

Lynne has family in town, and last night I had a conversation with Aunt Lil. She’s never read Three Fortunes in One Cookie so it was fun to tell her some of the little stories I “borrowed” from her family for Phillip and his family. Though those things we writers lift from our lives may not have the impact on the literary canon that Nora Barnacle had, I think everyone’s fiction becomes a little truer and more alive because of them.


Aunt Lil with her great-great niece, Lila.

He is NOT Satan’s Kitty

I do have a lot of New Orleans photos to post, but the one below is my favorite of all those I took. When I got to the Lost Apartment, Greg gave me a strand of beads he’d picked out from his massive Mardi Gras bead collection. He also gave me a throw from the Krewe of Muses. And Nicky, who I’ve heard called Satan’s Kitty and The Vicious Beast, took my beads away from me and then went after my throw of Muses shoes.

Bead thief notwithstanding, Nicky’s really more the sweet little Skittle Greg and Paul sometimes call him–you can tell by that adorable face.

Musing

We are so close to finishing TJB5 that it’s making me crazy. I want to be finished, and I’m sure when I say goodbye to it, I’ll be relieved. The past has taught me, however, that some of the most difficult writing experiences are the ones that linger in my heart, that I don’t want to let go of. Maybe it’s because in the final analysis, all their difficulty means there was more of me invested in them.

Although I can’t honestly say that any of the novels I’ve written or helped write are less meaningful to me than any of the others. I think one of the easiest books–for ME, not necessarily for all of my writing partners–was HE’S THE ONE. It was written after 9/11, but it covered a time in NYC before 9/11. As much as I fell for Adam, its narrator, my real love affair in that novel (and this, I think, is also true of my writing partners and of Adam) was with New York City. Which is why we dedicated our book to the city.

HE’S THE ONE was a fairly uncomplicated love story and remains a novel we get a lot of reader mail about, even though it’s four years old. Almost all of that mail is positive. However, some people say it contains too many coincidences, and others say Adam just has things too easy. I say that coincidences are the magic of life and don’t have to be ignored in fiction, and Adam works hard for everything he has. If it seems effortless, it may be because Adam’s not a whiner and doesn’t focus on the negative.

I needed Adam when he came to us. In fact, there are times even now when I need a boost that I’ll daydream about Adam and what’s going on in his life. I know he’s happy, because Adam seeks and savors happiness. I adore him.

HE’S THE ONE will also always make me remember a reader who came to our signing for the novel and quietly shared the story of his lover, who had died, with Tim and me while our writing partners were signing for some other readers. I still cry when I think of that gentleman, and the memory that our novel touched him has gotten me through some moments when harsher critics made me second-guess my writing ability.

Last night I was looking at the web site of another author who was talking about one of her muses, a poet. Although I would not necessarily be inspired by that particular poet, I loved that she is. I loved the way she spoke of him and his work and what it meant to her. I felt for her when she said she was a little insecure about saying he was her muse because other people might not find her muse worthy. Bah, I say to that. Inspiration is always a gift, whether that inspiration is a wonderful or horrible experience, a great or mediocre artist, an enemy or friend, a lover or someone unobtainable.

What or who is your muse? What fires your creativity? Treasure it.

Riley and me

Riley and I started being friends when I was 14. Several shared interests brought us together, among them The Hobbit, that we both thought of ourselves as writers, and our love of music. In Riley’s case, he actually was a musician who could play any instrument he picked up. He didn’t have the greatest singing voice in the world, but that was okay, because after all, didn’t we love Bob Dylan?
Continue reading “Riley and me”