Tag: novels

Button Sunday


Found this button online, a steampunk theme with cursive writing. I do so little writing by hand these days that my penmanship is atrocious. But I do know how to write that way, and I well remember all the handwritten letters I received in my younger years (truth be told, I still have most of them, though I hope all the males to whom I ever sent letters have thrown all of mine away–or could send them to me, so I can roll my eyes at my younger self).

I already had journals and journaling on my mind when I was looking at buttons today. Yesterday, as I searched for my original essential oils inventory list, which I never found (finally just started a new one and input it to a computer doc, so I’ll know where to find it when I need it again), I opened a file folder that contained a tangle of embroidery thread and a ticket stub. I suspect the embroidery thread went with a cross-stitch piece I started back in the 1990s of a white cat sitting in a window (you can read about that in an old post here).

When the stitching remained unfinished, I finally wrote a poem about it and put the partially finished piece in a frame with the poem. It hung on my wall at The Compound for years, and now I have no clue where it is. I added it to my list of inexplicably missing items.

In the same folder, I found a ticket to a matinee showing of Star Wars: The Last Jedi from February 2018. That faded ticket, at least, I could put inside my current Moleskine.

As you can see, I’ve rarely used my Moleskines for capturing my sloppy cursive writing.

Like the one above, the Moleskines (and some are Moleskine knockoffs) are filled with mementoes of all kinds, and they get very fat; too fat for shelving. So they have a bin they go into when they’re full. I do still journal from time to time, but I mostly scribble a day’s events or thoughts in whatever kind of day planner or daily appointment book I keep.

Do you still handwrite your letters? Do you journal or keep a datebook or diary?

P.S. I have now reread all five of the TJB novels. I was amazed at how many things I’ve forgotten and how moved I could still be by those characters and their stories. This book, in particular, required a box of tissues right next to me. I kept having to close the book and cry.

Now I need to get back to The Musician in the Neverending Saga before he writes mean songs about my neglect.

Thursday thoughts

A couple of days in a row (Tuesday and Wednesday), we had storms. On both occasions, the power has flickered but hasn’t gone out. One thing I’ve learned, however, is the bad weather a couple of weeks ago definitely had an impact on my dogs. When the sky gets dark and there’s thunder, they all have strong reactions. This didn’t used to be the case, and I feel sad for them. I try to distract them, let them be where they feel safest, and I talk to them (which I do all the time anyway) in my normal conversational voice.

Anime and Eva are hiding their heads, Delta’s trembling, and Jack seems to be in protect mode closest to the door, but I think he’s just sleeping.

Meanwhile, I am not writing, but I think what I’m doing is probably good for me as a writer. As I predicted might happen, after reading the first couple of TJB books, in between dog management, cleaning up after dogs in the backyard, and doing housekeeping, I’ve kept going and read numbers three and four of TJB’s books.

I’ve wondered sometimes about things we might have missed the mark on, plus there’s so much I’ve forgotten and wondered how I’d react to all of it. Every time I stopped, instead of the things I feared, I was caught up in the stories and only wanted to keep reading. Time and distance have been friendly, and I need to remember this when I’m being hypercritical of my new writing. Trust the process and trust that eventually, there will be early readers who’ll give me feedback before I hit “publish” on anything.

Looking forward to reading number five, the last of the TJB books.

On writing and looking back

Something else I did while the power was out was unplanned but not unprovoked.

From time to time, readers of the TJB books mention to its four writers, or on social media or book sites like Goodreads, that they’re reading the five Manhattan novels again (the fourth of those isn’t set in Manhattan but is connected peripherally with two or three cameo appearances by or references to the Manhattan characters). There are also people who say they reread my two Coventry books (especially A Coventry Christmas during the holiday season). There are still people who tell me Three Fortunes In One Cookie (written with Timothy) is their favorite of all the books I’ve cowritten (and some who contend that in The Deal, the main character chose the wrong man at the end, which always tickles me; as readers, we bring our own histories with us to the books we read).

I understand this compulsion to reread, because there are novels I’ve been rereading since I was a kid. They’re comfort novels, or novels connecting me to childhood, or funny novels that still make me laugh, or novels with love stories that I never tire of. There’s nothing like a satisfying ending to a love story. One set of novels I’ve reread more times than I could count, written in the 1940s/50s, is a series that tracks a family from the American Revolution to World War II. It connects me not only to my joy of reading as a young teen, but to my mother and sister, who also read, treasured, and reread the series. (Note: The last time I read these, I said, “Debby, these novels would be problematic now,” and she agreed. I guess they’re like early love: recalled with affection, but with awareness that it probably wouldn’t appeal to you at a wiser age.)

Additionally, beginning around 1990, I read a lot of gay fiction (and non-fiction, for that matter), much of it recommended by my late friend Steve, a bookseller and avid reader. It was Steve who said to me, “One day, when you write, please tell our stories. Please don’t let all these things be forgotten.”

In the early to mid ’90s, every attempt I made to do so (mostly in short stories) felt flat to me. It could be because I felt flat. There was a lot of loss to take in over a few short, intense years. I knew I’d rather write nothing than write it badly.

And then into my life came very much alive men who urged me to write those stories, and the three men who began to write them with me, with the outcome of that: books on bookshelves.

About those novels I wrote or cowrote: I read them so much when writing, editing, and proofreading them, that by the time they were released (usually about a year after the final manuscript was submitted), I didn’t have a lot of interest in revisiting them. As soon as a novel was released, I’d read it once, for two reasons: I looked for any errors that made it through all those sets of eyes (ours and our publishers), and I wanted to refresh my memory before I read industry reviews and reader reviews, and before I/we started getting reader email.

Not including short stories in anthologies, the nine novels I’ve written or co-written were released over the years 2001 to 2007. I likely haven’t reread any of them since their publication year, other than quick checks to ensure continuity (since characters are shared in the TJB books and they are linear, and the same is true of the Coventry books).

Upon the release of the TJB novels, I could say with pinpoint accuracy which of the writers wrote what scenes, as well as recall discussions of what edits were made by us to all of us. And now… I have discovered that’s no longer true. While the power was out, during daylight hours, I picked up the first Manhattan novel, It Had To Be You, and read it again. I was amazed by all the things I’d forgotten. I knew the general plot and how it would end, but mostly it was like reading it for the first time. The most startling thing was that I COULDN’T REMEMBER WHO WROTE WHAT.

All that made for a much more pleasurable read. I’d worried about a couple of things over the years: that the books would be dated (especially with how technology has changed); and that some things might seem insensitive, because we understand or are learning so much more about LGBTQ+ lives and issues in 2024 than we did when that first book was written (beginning in 1998 and up until publication in 2001). All of those concerns melted away as I got to read that book with fresh eyes. Would I rewrite the book? No. Are there word choices I might edit? Sure. Always. But none of that took away my enjoyment of the characters, the humor, the pathos, and the drama–because some characters are actors, female impersonators, or drag queens, of course there is drama. Drama is their profession. And after all, outside of novels, we are each of us the main characters/heroes/villains of our own ongoing stories.

I don’t know if I’m ready to reread all of the novels I’ve written or cowritten, but I don’t mind admitting that when I closed the back cover on this one:

I immediately returned it to the shelf and took out this one:

In both novels, though I couldn’t say for sure who wrote exactly what, there are points when I said, “OH, this sounds like me, and I hope I wrote that. Either that or part of it.” And points when I realized there are connections/similarities between things in those first two novels to things I’m currently writing. That leads me to believe those things were written by me, or if not, as I texted Timothy and Jim, “Don’t sue me.”

Holding out for a hero…

These are things that might have been posted on Tuesday, May 21, when we still had no power, and then Wednesday, May 22.

When I woke up Tuesday, I knew two things. We probably wouldn’t be getting our power restored today, and yet I still felt better than I had the day before. An appointment Debby had on Monday was canceled because the building had just gotten their power back, so they rescheduled her for this morning. Tom took her; he’d scheduled a vacation day for this appointment and because the two of them would be leaving sometime after noon to go to the airport. A couple of months ago, she booked a trip to see her kids and grandkids. Two of the grandkids are graduating from high school, and one graduated from college. What a perfect time to be leaving town (if she’d known we were going to be without power, she’d have preferred to leave last week!).

There are a couple of other good things I haven’t mentioned. First, is that unlike when we have power outages in winter and our pipes freeze, this outage doesn’t steal the joy of running water (also, our hot water heater is gas, so a lack of electricity doesn’t affect it). Taking a shower every day (maybe even two, especially when there’s no air conditioning), helps my morale a lot. Also, our stove is gas, as are Tim’s and Debby’s, so we can continue to use our stovetops. Even though we lost the food in our refrigerators and freezers (except for some of our food that Rhonda and Lindsey are keeping in their freezer), we have canned food, pasta, crackers, etc., in our cabinets (or pantry, here at the Hall). Once many of the nearby businesses had power restored, we supplemented what we have on hand with breakfasts or light evening meals. This also means we can get coffee (not Starbucks, the closest of which are closed). Tom drinks a lot more coffee than I do, though I never turn down an iced mocha from anywhere. Because we were buying ice every day, Debby could still brew tea and drink it cold over ice. One of my meds that requires refrigeration was stored by one of Tim’s clients in their home until Monday. When Tim brought it home, I took the last dose, and the refill is safe at the pharmacy until I pick it up after our power’s restored. I’m so grateful for people who help.

When I think of the deprivations being experienced in other places torn apart by war, revolution, and climate disasters, I recognize how minor this incident is by comparison. I have better details now: Two confirmed tornados struck Houston last Thursday: one with winds of around 100 mph, the other 110 mpg; the path lengths were .71 and .77 miles; path widths were both 100 yards. Damage was to homes or other structures, and trees, with no fatalities reported. That feels like a miracle. They’re also saying now that the area experienced a derecho, a term I’d never even heard until one a couple of years back in the Midwest affected the area where our friend Nurse Lisa lives. I’m not about to attempt to explain the science, but it’s basically a long path of surface wind that causes a lot of damage.

I saw some of that damage when I left the house for the first time on Tuesday while Tom and Debby were at the airport. The road near us where Lynne used to live, once you get out of the heavily residential section, is lined with dense, majestic trees–you almost feel like you’re in the country for part of it. As I drove that road, I finally understood why I’ve heard the constant sound of chainsaws for almost a week. The curb is thick with the remains of downed trees and branches. I’m glad I didn’t have my camera with me; I’ve taken too many photos of damaged and felled trees after past disasters. Tom said the sight is the same on one of the other roads (opposite direction) we frequently travel. That mid-century neighborhood is beautiful with gracious old trees. I’m not eager to see it now.

After taking care of my errands, I came home, hugged my dogs, and felt nothing but gratitude for our house, with or without electricity. I started coloring again to help manage my thoughts, beginning with this one.

From the Uplifting Inspirations book, with the quote that went with this page:

We can complain because the rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.–Abraham Lincoln

Then I really cheered myself up by coloring this horse.

I gave her a name: Sunflower, out of Daisy, by Sheridan. Sunflower’s sire is a horse in the Neverending Saga, and her dam is connected to horses briefly mentioned a book or so previous to the one I’m writing now. My newly imagined Sunflower is a gift made to one of my major characters. Even though I’m not writing at the moment, my characters are always busy somewhere in my brain, so Sunflower is also a gift to me.

Sunflower came from this book. Though my dreams might have been a little random and crazy, and it was really hot, I managed to get a few hours of sleep Tuesday night.

Tom was back in the office for a half-day Wednesday, and Tim was home with Pollock between dogwalking and housesitting gigs. I’ve been cleaning the house as I could with no power–we have this dust mop kind of thing that really helps grab dust and dog hair, with an easy-to-clean attachment, and I’ve been relentlessly mopping our tile floors in the library (also known as Eva’s favorite place to leave wee puddles). After I cleaned, I looked for a coloring page that would make me happy. This one, with an affectionate couple, animals silhouetted in the distance, fit my requirement. I couldn’t understand what all that was at the bottom of the page. Whenever I looked at it, I heard Sebastian singing “Under The Sea” from The Little Mermaid. It made no sense, but I decided the couple is standing between a sea-themed fountain and nature’s panorama of sky and wildlife, and went with that idea.

The page came from this book.

Then, IT HAPPENED. The sounds I’d hoped to hear for six nights and five days. It began with men’s voices, calling to each other. I looked up from the desk where I was coloring, then through the office windows, and I saw this.


Visible over the roof of Fox Den, at the condos behind our house: THAT is a bucket truck, or cherry picker, used by utility companies to repair power lines.

I went to my group text with Tom and Tim, telling them what I overheard: “See them wires laying on the ground over yonder from those trees? Them wires need to come up.” You may question the grammar, but that is the language of the two regions where I’ve spent my life, and it was pure music to my ears. Especially when Tom texted, “Only wires they’d be talking about are from our poles,” because he’d actually gone over and surveyed that area in the days before. Tim said, yep, they’d just moved the truck to directly behind Fairy Cottage, so I joined him at Debby’s and we watched the worker, in the bucket poised over her fence, as he lifted those two power lines out of her garden. At one point, he yelled something about the poles they were handing him being like frog-gigging, and I asked aloud, “Did I used to be married to you?” to make Tim laugh.

They then shifted the bucket to approximately the mid-point of our back fence, where he reconnected those two wires to the two lying in our backyard, and began lifting them toward the sky and their poles.

After more time, all those wires were straight and taut, back in their right places. We didn’t have power yet, but we knew there was hope.

Best of all, Anime, Delta, and Jack, along with Pollock, could run outside to explore their yard, UNLEASHED, without fear of downed wires, using the bathroom wherever they wanted, and Eva got to lie on the patio and bake for the first time in days. (It is the way of chihuahuas; we call it her pizza oven.)

Tom finished his half day of work and came home with Starbucks. I’d known he was bringing coffee, so the next (and final!) page of the No Electricity Coloring Frenzy was this one.

From a coloring book Marika gave me long ago.

I’m not as strong as I used to be, but neither is my coffee. It all evens out somehow. Tom talked to the guys as the utility trucks in front of the house were leaving, sometime around three, and they said they hoped power would be back tonight. Then, around 4:15, Tom and I were sitting in the living room talking when lights began to flicker on, then off. This repeated a few times, then they came on and stayed on. THE ELECTRICITY WAS BACK. We started texting family and friends to let them know–now that the phones’ battery power was no longer too precious to squander. Tim went through Debby’s and turned off everything that had been on when the power went out last week, and closed her windows, because the air conditioner was back in business.

Then, I took on my first project and got this ready to refill.

I think that refrigerator’s cleaner than it’s been since it was new back in 2007. It has been in two homes and known some crazy times, and the light in the refrigerator part hasn’t functioned in years, but like the rest of us, this Frigidaire’s still humming.

For dinner, Tom got us takeout from our favorite restaurant because I’d have a way to refrigerate half of the huge salad I can never eat in one sitting and its extra Ranch dressing. The edges of normalcy had returned…

Saturday with thoughts


Rewriting a good chapter that needs to be better. Thinking in between revising. Coloring when I think. Coloring something that has nothing to do with these characters. I’ve had fun coloring these simple pieces because of that publication on the bottom right.
Li
In
Th
Wi
Is it a tourist guide? A novel? Self-help? I kept trying to complete the title, and here are a few I came up with:

Lions In The Wild
Lice Infesting The Wicked
Lie In The Wisteria
Life In The Winnebago
Limeade In The Wineglass
Living In The Wind

All very fine, but not my winning title, which is Liars In Thorp, Wisconsin.

Wikipedia tells me: Thorp is a city in Clark County in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. The population was 1,621 at the 2010 census. Thorp is located partially within the Town of Thorp and partially within the Town of Withee. It is located between Eau Claire and Wausau. Thorp is known for some of its popular attractions, which include: Marieke Gouda Holland’s Family Cheese, Thorp Aquatic Center, and Thorp Area Historical Society & Telephone Museum.

If that isn’t the perfect location–a town formed of two towns?–for a cozy mystery involving the murder of a newcomer running for town council, I don’t know what is. Feel free to steal the idea and write a book. Don’t forget to stock up on things that can distract you.


The coloring page came from this, another of my favorite coloring books. I used colored pencils and various kinds of gel pens and markers.

J’aime la France


Oh, a hundred years ago, or thirty-something, I created a character and made him French. I think because I wanted to use the surname of my college French teacher who’d taught me a few years before. Her class was when I got those two books. (There’s a third book, but I must have stuck it somewhere else.)

This is my experience with other languages.

I had six weeks of German in tenth grade before I was moved to another school, where German wasn’t taught. It didn’t matter. I was born in Germany, but my only real interest in taking the class was because Lynne and other friends did, and I wanted to take classes with my friends. Didn’t we all?

I’m not sure which year of high school, junior or senior, I took at least one semester of Spanish. It was, as I recall, the only option for a foreign language in that school. In hindsight, learning Spanish would have been a great choice, and I did very much like the teacher, but here’s my problem with language classes. I was never one of the students who volunteered answers in ANY class. I never asked questions. I couldn’t stand to draw attention to myself. Giving any kind of oral report (even book reports, though I always read and loved reading) or reading anything out loud: absolute torture for me. Being called on for an answer? I usually pretended I didn’t know so the focus would quickly shift elsewhere.

So speaking aloud in a class using a language I was trying to learn? You might as well have escorted me to the guillotine.

ETA: Look! When I went to return the other two books to my reference shelves, I found this very thin volume (24 pages, which means a mere 12 pieces of paper) tucked among some other books. I took pronunciation seriously! Now, I can hear native French speakers teach me pronunciations online. Students these days have no idea…

Over the years, I’ve taught junior high and college students. I’ve read out loud to students. I’ve presented work-related seminars in several companies where I was employed. I’ve given talks at retreats, moderated discussions among small groups of people on various topics, and led guided meditations. I’ve spoken at book signings where my novels were being sold. I’ve done all that, but inside, I’m still the girl who didn’t want all eyes on her. And I STILL will almost never speak any of the phrases/words I know in any foreign language because I’m so uncomfortable about possibly bungling pronunciations.

And yet I love the country and the language. I don’t know a lot of French history, but I’ve done research on specific topics because… I still have that same character taking up real estate in my brain, and he, and France as a setting, play larger roles than they once did in his initial appearance in my fictitious world.

I have friends who speak French. Friends who love France. One acquaintance who is French, French-born, probably living in France again. I know when the time comes, there are people who can beta check what I’ve written, and who can make sure the online translator I’ve used when my characters (infrequently) speak French has done right by me.

Something that amuses me: I borrowed my character’s first name from a novel set in France that I read decades ago. (I liked him so much that I’d have fallen in love with him, too, just as the female character did, yet my character who bears the name isn’t a romantic lead in my series.) People I know who are familiar with the Spanish version of his name have questioned me, but I’m correctly using the French spelling. His name is the only thing I borrowed from that novel.

In addition, for the past few years, I’ve read a mystery series set in France, and I’ve tried very hard to use NOTHING from those books. (I recently realized that although I’ve bought and downloaded them, I’m two novels and one short-story-collection behind in this series. I need to spend more time reading.) I’ve met the author at book-signings and seen his online discussions of book releases during lockdown, and somewhere along the way, I was lucky enough to glean one bit of true information from him on international relations that vastly helped my plot. But other than that, my France and my French characters are all mine (with help from Google and Wikipedia), and all inaccuracies or unlikelihoods rest squarely on my shoulders (let the researcher beware…).

Though my writing brain right now is firmly in the U.S. because of the section I’m laboring over in the Neverending Saga, France is never far… And I’ve already chosen my next coloring page when the right character returns to getting page time.


Vive la République!

Tiny Tuesday!

I’m not sure what possessed me to put not one, not two, but THREE Aries characters in the Neverending Saga. I guess because I well understand the Aries nature and its range of manifestations. In my experience, Aries + Aries either tend to attract or repel–there’s no middle ground. With my characters, one is on the cusp of Taurus, one shares my birthday, and one falls only a few days after my birthday. Those last two repel each other. The Aries/Taurus character has a mostly good relationship with both of them.

That wee painting (above) uses a Shiner Wicked Ram IPA bottle cap. I’ve only ever had one of those come to me, and naturally, I held on to it because: Aries. I would really enjoy creating some more bottle cap art (and continue to accept bottle caps if you have them). On future Tiny Tuesday posts, I’ll share some of my bottle caps that haven’t made it into art yet, and maybe even some more bottle cap art I’ve done. To get a better sense of how wee the one above is, here it is with a bit more of the wall art in the writing sanctuary.

Mindful Monday


Learn, from my One Word Art series, December 2005

ETA: For all its complications, I can’t regret the easy access the Internet offers. My fictitious pianist is diverting himself by playing the twenty-four etudes of Chopin’s Op. 28, and thanks to YouTube, I can listen to someone perform those as I write. So can you, if you’d like to be still and relax for about forty-two minutes. You can hear what he hears.

Revisiting a teller of stories

When we were flooded in 2017, I lost a lot of material I’d saved from my college years, including paperwork for courses, class notes, and references I’d continued to use for many years. I decided to look at it as nature’s way of making me purge things that became less relevant as the years went by.


I think I had this particular book for a college correspondence or short-term course I took during the interim between spring and summer semesters of one of my last two years as an undergraduate, but I have no clear memory about that. Mostly I don’t remember sitting in class and hearing anyone teach the course. I suppose it’s not really relevant. In some of my other classes, I often struggled when reading a couple of Southern novelists, so I probably sought a broader sense of the literature of my region from shorter works or excerpts, and this book covered (at the time of this edition) Southern lit from 1815 to around 1968. Though I remember my favorite story from this book, I can’t really remember what other works were part of the class or what papers I wrote about them.

After graduating from college and before I went back to graduate school a few years later, I read voraciously, trying to fill in gaps in my studies. I believe that might have been the reason I bought this beat-up paperback from a used bookstore for fifty cents. Had I read short stories by Welty in survey classes like the Southern lit class? Or did I just know she was highly recommended? I don’t remember. I did read it, and it didn’t really resonate with my reading interests of that time. In hindsight, I realize I undervalued it.


In time, I did respect people who read a lot of Welty and talked about her work to me, and when this 1988 limited edition came into the Houston bookstore where I worked several years later, and I spotted it on the shelf, I immediately purchased it.

It’s an oversized volume tucked into a sturdy cover; here’s the title page.

More to the point, in the back you can see why it’s a real jewel: It’s limited edition, numbered, and signed by Eudora Welty and the book’s illustrator.


Then, in 1993, Geoff, a fellow Southerner who I knew through our mutual friend Steve R, gave me this for my birthday. So I had Eudora Welty material, but I still hadn’t read most of it.

In copies of papers given to me by one of my mother’s nephews relating to his father (a writer, and one of the first who told me I could be a writer), there were a couple of copies of letters my uncle wrote to my mother. In a way that I understand all too well, he specifically mentioned Welty’s novel Losing Battles as a work that made him despair of ever being as good a writer. This so piqued my interest that I downloaded the book (this was last December), and I finally got around to reading it in April. Very long, lots of characters, and lots of stories within the narrative framework of a novel. It wasn’t an easy or fast read, but it kept me engaged.


When I mentioned the book to a friend, she decided to read her first Welty, and she chose Delta Wedding. I downloaded it, too. Also long, but not quite as long, also full of stories within the novel’s framework, and not as challenging for me to read because I’d started adjusting to this particular style of Welty’s. And as I told my friend, and also my cousin, one joy of reading Welty now is realizing that though I am by no means comparing myself to this highly acclaimed writer, I better understand my particular style that emerged in the process of working on the Neverending Saga. I was able to take some validation from the idea that I’m being true to myself and also honoring the way many Southerners have adapted the South’s oral traditions to their writing.

All that being said, I then reread The Optimist’s Daughter, had a whole new perspective and appreciation of it, and was reminded once more why I decided to take on my current works in progress in 2019. I’ve changed so much since I first began writing these characters as a teenager, then as a young woman, then as I neared middle age. This time around, I wanted to address topics which I’d simply ignored in the past because I felt inadequate to write about them; to use narrative skills I’d grown more comfortable with from 1998 on; to recognize how age had changed what I found interesting or romantic or sexy or culturally relevant; and to write in a voice that’s more true to who I am.

We’re never too old to learn and appreciate new things about art, culture, ourselves, and our creativity.

To end on a lighter note, I saw this online and thought, “Yep. That’s Tom and me.”