A new smaller skeleton joined the pack at Houndstooth Hall: young Ambrose’s twin sister Amarise (whatever century some variety of plague occurred was hard on this family). Here’s a photo from her first appearance on Instagram, wearing a “Who The Hell Is Ben Cote?” button that I let her claim because, as Lord Cuttlebone explains, “Never come between a girl and her devotion to a guitarist, songwriter, performer, and possessor of great hair.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. For more of my Instagram skeleton Halloween homages to music artists, check behind the cut.
Tag: novels
Mindful Monday
In 2019, when I began to rewrite what came to be called the Neverending Saga, I did a lot of research for a particular character who has a tendency toward anxiety, panic, and fear. An intensely private person, she isn’t the type who’d go to therapy or easily express those feelings even to people who love her and who she trusts. Somewhere in my research, I learned ways that “laypeople,” that is, untrained to act as teacher, guide, or mentor, can still help someone through a panic attack. I also found people who use art to help people develop coping skills.
I never anticipated all the ways the larger world, and my smaller one, would change in the years after that. I’m not sure who out there on the big Internet should get credit for the seed of an idea that developed into a self-soothing exercise for my character. It has also sometimes helped me when I have insomnia and my brain goes into overdrive.
You (the vague word that applies to anyone) trace your hands on a piece of sturdy paper, and as I developed it, my hands (with poor fingers misshaped by arthritis) take on two different manifestations. My left hand I connect to my heart and coping words. My dominant right hand is connected to the fears and anxiety my brain can throw at me. I always like color, so with watercolor pens, I gave my left hand colors that soothe me: blues, greens, purples. The right hand colors are the ones that stir me up (and rob me of rest and peace of mind): reds, oranges, yellows.
If I match fingers, my little fingers are “playful” versus “fragile”; my ring fingers are “loved” versus “painful”; my middle fingers are “strong” versus “worried”; my index fingers are “intentional” versus “assertive”; and my thumbs are “determined” versus “anxious.”
Just trying to remember and focus on those words, then process them as solutions versus crises, can pull my scattered thoughts into something either distracting or soothing enough to help me finally fall asleep.
Tiny Tuesday!
Every time I look at these tiny skeletons, I crack up. I’m only including the doll for scale. I’m not implying that any characters in the Neverending Saga–of which this doll represents one–have skeletons in their closet.
But sometimes they surprise me. BOO!
Early* Saturday post
*early as in 12:30 AM
I haven’t gotten done some of the things I wanted to this week. When I was taking care of at least a few of those things during Thursday errands, I spotted these on my way home.
A Little Free Library. Even skeletons like to read.
And they’ll also invite you over to shoot the breeze.
I’ve had my eye on this Jolly Grinning Giant for a while. If I ever saw his people, I’d have asked if I could bring my skeletons over for a photoshoot with him. But his people are never outside.
Friday had some sadness. The first time I let the dogs out, they spotted a young squirrel. He barely got away from them, just a few feet up a tree, where he rested in the V where the tree splits. It was obvious he was either injured in some way, or maybe dehydrated, or just terrified. With help from Debby, I was able to get my frantic dogs inside, while the neighbor’s dogs were very vocal on the other side of the fence. We coaxed the squirrel out of the tree so Debby could carry him in a cloth pillowcase outside the fence to the side of the house. Then Tim got him into a box, tucked inside a towel, to take him to the SPCA’s Wildlife Rehab unit. Unfortunately, the young squirrel died en route. At least he didn’t die from either my dogs or the large neighbor dogs attacking him, but in an air-conditioned truck with a kindhearted, calm driver taking him for help.
Also on Friday, I was able to finish this book. Another political thriller that I couldn’t put down. Now it’s time to take a break from reading and work on my own novel.
Mysteries and Politics
Reading is what I’ve been up to, and these books were purchased locally at Murder By The Book.
New this year:
I can’t believe Requiem For A Mouse is my friend Dean’s sixteenth book in his Cat In The Stacks Mystery series. I feel like I just started reading them! Writing as Miranda James, his cozy series features a librarian/widower named Charlie Harris and his helpful Maine Coon cat, Diesel. The books are set in a fictitious college town, Athena, Mississippi, and every time I read one of the novels, his characters make me feel like I’m spending time with old friends. There are other cats, the occasional dog, and enough bad guys and murders to keep Charlie busy as an amateur sleuth. Plus: a library and plenty of good Southern cooking!
Martin Walker’s Bruno series includes 24 works, including novels, novellas, and a short story collection. There’s also a Bruno cookbook he wrote with his wife Julia. The series features Benoît Courrèges, aka Bruno, a former soldier turned policeman, enjoying the “pleasures and slow rhythms of country life” in the fictional village of St. Denis in the Périgord Region of France. The novels’ horses, dogs, townfolk, and meals are part of those “slow rhythms,” but Bruno’s romances, the crimes he solves, and the historical context Walker provides season the novels with delicious details, while the international intrigue adds a soupçon of suspense. I’ve learned so much from Walker’s books and his booksignings, and an offhand post-war diplomacy tidbit he once mentioned at a signing inspired me to research and develop an intricate part of my own Neverending Saga.
I got this one a couple of years ago and have finally raced through it in two days because I COULDN’T PUT IT DOWN.
I would hope anyone reading here knows who Hillary Rodham Clinton is, and Louise Penny is the author of the Inspector Gamache mystery series set in the fictitious Three Pines, Québec (the nineteenth novel in that series is due the end of this month, and I can’t wait). The real-life story of how the two woman became friends, and how publishing figures and life events brought them together to write a suspense thriller, is naturally fascinating to me–friendships having been not only a huge part of my adult life, but also because I co-authored novels with friends. Though I only occasionally read thrillers, political or otherwise, this one held me spellbound. It features a new administration in the White House, including a new president and his female secretary of state. She was the head of a publishing empire, and the president may have chosen her only to settle an old grudge and ultimately disgrace her. We get to travel the world with this one, and meet plenty of heroes and villains, though sometimes we’re not exactly sure who’s who. Though published in 2021, the themes and ideas explored remain topical, and I appreciated reading about strong, smart women, complicated and often painful family dynamics, and fascinating settings (the political leaders and figures throughout are fictionalized, though there are effective references to real-life international figures, as well). I also was delighted to find Easter eggs in mentions of Penny’s Three Pines village and characters (Clinton was a reader of the series before she and Louise Penny were introduced). I hope one day these two will write another together.
Plotting
Haven’t written in this journal in a while. It’s a gift from Lynne that I use as a sort of character journal when I’m trying to figure out things in the Neverending Saga. I blurred out the thoughts I wrote down, and tried to photograph it in such a way that you could see what the dragonflies look like with and without their shimmer.
I liked the quote from George Sand because the character I’m writing is making changes to her life, her home, herself. To me, she’s a person who shines, but not every character sees her the way I do. That seems true to life. When I was young, I wanted all my friends, however different they were from one another, to know and be friends, too. Experience taught me how unrealistic that is.
Today I watched a 2016 film called Maudie which came highly recommended by a dear friend of many decades. I think she realized I’d like it both as a character study and a look into the life of an artist. It’s an odd kind of…romance…and it’s quite sad. Really, it’s both sad and somehow not sad. The character Maudie is played by an English actor, Sally Hawkins, who won lots of praise and awards for the role. Interestingly, the male lead is played by Ethan Hawke. My friend didn’t know it was supposed to have been my Ethan Hawke summer, so it was a cool coincidence. Sometimes people who know and love us have an intuitive sense not only of what we’d like, but when we need it. It’s a great part of friendship.
Saturday fun
Last night as I was falling asleep, forcing myself not to think about the chapter in the Neverending Saga that has given me so much trouble, my brain suggested, “Fix the chapter BEFORE the one you’re working on.”
So I went back and eviscerated that chapter. Time will tell if it was the right choice, but I pondered my next move, next chapter while I played this game.
I finished in record time because author names will always jump out at me. If they’re there to find, that is. I worked longest looking for “Bronte,” until I finally glanced at the word list and realized Bronte wasn’t on it.
Something is wonky with our cable today. Since Tim isn’t home tonight, Tom and Eva went to his place to watch the Alabama-Georgia football game with Pollock. Meanwhile, Debby’s watching it at her place. I was in the mood for a little baking, so I took them both a sampling of my results.
Sausage and cheese balls are an ideal snack for football viewing. I have a big salad to eat, but I’ll definitely eat some of these, too.
Time for me to get back to see if changes in Chapter 14 will help my progress on Chapter 15.
Home at the movies, etc.
Recently I read an article featuring a well-known actor/director/filmmaker because I’ve always loved not only watching movies, but learning about the creative and business aspects of making them. This particular article wasn’t about this person’s celebrity but was more focused on how independent film processes, particularly marketing and distribution, have changed from last century to this one. The way I use this kind of information fictionally has included many facets of filmmaking, especially in the Neverending Saga in all its iterations through the decades. Sometimes my writing spills over into fictional television and live theatre. But primarily, the Saga includes two independent filmmakers woven into many of my other characters’ plotlines.
Including August 10, the day I decided to spend the rest of summer watching RomComs (mostly on my own DVDs, but at least two streaming), until September 22, when I declared RomCom Summer at an end (44 days?), I watched fifty-nine movies. It turned out not all of them were romantic comedies, and some were sadder than I remembered. Two of them I’d never watch again; that reflects no judgment as to their merit. Odds are all movies can’t appeal to me, and both these movies were first-time views for me.
In normal times, I wouldn’t dream of watching that much of anything–movies, television, videos, or even listening to podcasts (I rarely do podcasts; I’m not sure why). However, these weren’t normal months, and rather than constantly berate myself for the reasons why I couldn’t/wouldn’t write, I scheduled those movies around appointments, errands, dog care, household and family responsibilities, and a few hours-long phone calls with a couple of friends.
During this time, I’d also picked up two word puzzle books. Though I flipped through them and picked puzzles at random, over time, I realized I was defaulting to movie-related puzzles. Between the two puzzle books, there are many more movie-related puzzles remaining, as well as tons of other subjects, that I haven’t done, and this at least was slightly less passive entertainment. While I did film-related puzzles, I was also thinking of future writing for my Saga characters.
In fact, to deal with my frustration over daily news stories, I actually created my own puzzle. It took a few hours over three days, and I won’t share it in a public forum, but behind a cut, I will share the movie and theatre puzzles I completed from these books. You’ll likely see future completed puzzles if I relate them to photos I have or activities around Houndstooth Hall.
How Everything (except me, maybe) Works
I found this book a while back and grabbed it because it wasn’t expensive and it does provide a surprising amount of information on a variety of subjects that a person lacking scientific, engineering, and mechanical know-how (i.e., me) can learn from.
For example, here is interesting information I found about ants. The picture of the Australian Red Fox is just a bonus because of the beauty and was photographed about to walk in front of an urban wall with a fox painted on it (not shown in the photo).
The pages don’t have numbers, so a bit of searching has to be done despite a table of contents, but it’s a fun book to browse. I always believe things like this will find their way into my fiction some way or another. I hope random research counts as “work,” because my work-in-progress is not…progressing. That’s okay.
I’ve watched all six movies in this collection, although only Pillow Talk (1959), Lover Come Back (1961), and Send Me No Flowers (1964), all with Rock Hudson as the love interest, and The Thrill of It All (1963), with James Garner playing her opposite, count as romantic comedies. One of the two suspense movies, Midnight Lace (1960), with Rex Harrison playing the husband, is one I’d never seen, and it is indeed a thriller (though probably tame by today’s version of that genre, which I don’t watch, suspense and violence being too hard on my nervous system). I’d seen clips from the Alfred Hitchcock-directed The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), with Jimmy Stewart as the husband. It was good to watch the film in its entirety and know how it got to the scenes I’d already seen.
What are you doing when you’re not working?
Sweet dreams, Troubadour
I was already asleep last night when Jim texted the news that J.D. Souther has died. His text was the first thing I read this morning. I’ve tipped my hat to Souther before on this site. The songs he wrote, the songs he sang, his collaborations with other artists including Linda Ronstadt, the Eagles, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt… All part of the poetry that gave a soundtrack to the hopes, dreams, fears, and heartbreaks of my formative years. He had a tour scheduled with Karla Bonoff beginning later this month.
I’m sharing this photo by Henry Diltz and the following story, both taken from the Instagram feed lostcanyonsla.
J.D. Souther and Linda Ronstadt were inarguably one of the hottest and most talented couples in the LA canyon scene of the early 1970s. In the documentary on Ronstadt’s life, “The Sound of My Voice,” Souther tells a cute story of how their relationship began after meeting at the Troubadour. “I said, I think you should cook me dinner,” Souther recalls. “She said, okay and gave me her phone number. I went over and she made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I fell in love with her. The next day I said ‘Listen, let’s go get your stuff, you’re going to live with me.’”
It’s the kind of story I’d write* for the Neverending Saga, but it’s real. The romantic relationship didn’t last, but their friendship endured. And J.D. Souther’s music will endure.
*I DID write a PB&J sandwich story into a romantic encounter years before I read this real-life one. Timothy keeps reminding me that nothing is new and that’s okay.