My Crazy Life

So is it true that women are better multitaskers than men? I know men who can get sidetracked by a beer commercial, a nice set of breasts . . . totally lose focus. So maybe, I don't know.
And is multitasking the key to my writing career? Or is it just a sign of my crazy life?
All I know is I somehow manage to write four books a year, deal with children from infancy to age 15, endless phone calls, reviewing galleys, running a household, remembering where child number two's science fair project is, scheduling four children and one significant other, which is the logistical equivalent of trying to stage a rocket launch to Mars . . . and somehow, someway, find it in me to be creative with baby puke on my shirt. Note: I am in the second shirt of the day and it's only 10:16 a.m.
So is it multitasking or insanity?
Either way, it's my crazy life.
And I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Dying is Easy. Comedy is Hard.

It's an old adage. Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.
Unless you go in your sleep, I don't know how easy dying is. But comedy is DEFINITELY hard.
I am knee-deep in writing INVISIBLE GIRL, due out next June, and even as I am readying to turn it in to my editor, it's still growing and morphing because it's such a complex book with so many layers. But at least it's not comedy.
Every time I finish a comedic novel, I am always so grateful to have a break from trying to write about real life only funnier. It's like every argument you've ever been in, every snappy one-liner you just WISH you had thought of--and then trying to convey that. It's hard. It's especially hard when life isn't funny but your novel needs to be.
So though Invisible Girl is dark and sad and has an epic tragedy of a mother and daughter, in some ways, it's a relief.
No death wishes here.
But a break from comedy is nice.

Rage Against the (Coffee) Machine

So I lit my candle this morning in front of my Buddha statue. I said my prayers. I took some deep breaths. I tossed some Mozart on my CD player. But in the end, I write best on a coffee-fuled high.
I make a 12-cup pot each day--all for me. My mug is what other people probably call a thermos. It's HUGE. And I write best when my mind isn't quiet.
I know some writers thrive on drugs and alcohol. I know some prefer serenity and quiet. And while I love to be ALONE (bliss!), I write best when I can't settle down. I wake at two a.m. in the throes of a scene in my mind and get up and write, and THEN, when I purge the scene from my brain, I can get back to sleep. Today I was up at 4:30. Is it any wonder I love coffee? With sugar and Half & Half. And frankly, it's not Starbucks. It's any old crap I can buy at the grocery store.
So yeah, I prefer to be really on the edge. I write best that way. Mrs. Folger's and Mr. Coffee . . . this one's for you.

The Zone

I'm in The Zone.
Not sure how I got there.
I had started my novel INVISIBLE GIRL, due out next June, a minimum of three times. And every time, though it wasn't BAD . . . something wasn't right. Dialogue would stiffen even as my fingers typed. I couldn't wrap myself around one of the major characters--a cop. A lifelong distrust of law enforcement (what can I say . . . the rebel in me) probably didn't help matters.
My editor also insisted that I add a mother character. I've always explored father-daughter relationships, but for some reason, the mother in most of my novels was dead. Or so difficult her daughter had nothing to do with her (as in Spanish Disco). Oddly enough, I really LIKE my mom a lot. So I didn't consider it some deep, dark Freudian thing . . . maybe just authorial laziness. With just ONE parent, it was one less thing to explore in the book. Who knows?
Well, I added a mother to INVISIBLE GIRL. Still nothing. It helped. It helped quite a bit, but still . . . like a chef tasting a sauce, something was missing.
My writers' group was helpful. Jon told me get lost in the past more, to not worry, when I wrote about the past in the book (which has scenes from Vietnam and Laos) about how long the scenes went on. Then I did something I NEVER do. I wrote a scene that I had no idea if it would make the book. I just wrote it because it happened to the characters. It wasn't a long scene, but it was sort of poignant. And I just tacked it on to the end of the working manuscript, this single scene in Atlantic City.
And then, a combination of those three things: adding the mother character, not worrying about the scenes from the past intruding on the present, and writing about something that happened without knowing if it would end up in the final cut of the novel . . . well, the dam burst.
Somehow I entered that zone when you just KNOW you are writing on all cylinders and the book is turning out the way you want--even better than you could have imagined. I've written some scenes that left me with goose bumps, and a scene or two that made me cry.
I wish I knew what it was that caused me to enter The Zone, but I am so glad I am there. I am writing 30 pages a day some days . . . and it's my last thought before I fall asleep and my first thought after morning prayers.
So I hope that the Creative Gods stamp my passport and visa and let me stay for a while . . . .

Hall of Mirrors

It's the question I hate the most as an author.
"Is this story true?"
Even Romantic Times, in reviewing The Roofer (MIRA Books) said it "could easily be mistaken for a true-crime story." But that's not quite the same as standing in front of a room full of people at a book signing and having someone ask, "Did this really happen?"
Welcome to my hall of mirrors.
Like a lot of authors, I do draw from real life for my inspiration. Unlike the character of Ava in The Roofer, I haven't been a party to a murder. At least not yet. ;-)
I prefer that my fiction be taken for fiction. Like a hall of mirrors, there may be bits and pieces of my life in there, but it's all distorted in the funhouse glass--and I like it that way. Otherwise, I'd write a memoir. Instead, I'm a novelist.
Funny . . . when Spanish Disco was released, I got my first ever fan letter. It was from a man, and he wanted to know how much like Cassie I was. My heroine was a take-no-prisoners kind of woman. She drank her tequila straight up, and she wasn't afraid to moon a man in public because he was being a jerk. She liked to curse, and she was afraid to fly--in fact, she downed a lot of valium in order to get on a plane, mixed with many shots of alchohol. But in spite of her flaws, she was brilliant and funny and maybe that was her appeal. That and her being a "bad girl." In fact, oddly, I got more fan letters from men for that book than any other I've written. But despite, like Cassie, sharing a fondness for Coke, and the ability to drink prodigious amounts of tequila, and my own fear of flying, I am not Cassie. If you come into my hall of mirrors, you may find bits of her, but it's fiction.
Writing, as it is, can be a bit like walking out naked in public. That said, I wish, more than anything, that my fiction could simply speak for itself. That the characters could exist safely in the hall of mirrors. And I could hide behind the glass.

No Stars

Just found out that my new book, The Golden Girl, got a four-star review in Romantic Times, which is wonderful. But it reminds me yet again not to get too caught up in reviews. Because if I'm going to get excited for a good one, it means conversely that I'm going to get down about the occasional bad one. And one thing I've discovered about the Internet. Opinions, as they say, are like a**h*les. Everyone has one.
A quick search of my name or one of my books reveals tons of reviews. Most are kind, some are glowing, and occasionally there's a bad one. But I have to say that the bad ones, inevitably, are snarky. It seems like reviewing has become its own "art form" and very often the reviewer is trying to sharpen that wit. The attacks even get personal.
A good writing pal of mine just had her first YA come out. It's a poignant, endearing debut. She's gotten some nice reviews. Then . . . she got a review on a site that said, "I'm sorry I spent my money on this book because it encourages the author to continue to write more bad YA fiction." Besides wondering if this anonymous reviewer (not anonymous, per se, but certainly hiding behind the name of her site) has recently been appointed by God as the Final Authority of what makes YA literature good or bad, I don't get why the review can't simply be about the book at hand and instead has to veer off into a personal attack.
So I don't get too caught up in reviews. I realize that very often, the person has an agenda--even if that agenda is as simple as ego-stroking. It reminds me of when my first novel came out a few years ago. Cosmopolitan featured it and called it a "hilarious" book. Well, my second book came out. US Weekly picked it as the Hot Book Pick. And an aspiring writer who has her own website noted the second novel, "was pretty good, which is a good thing since Orloff's first novel 'got trashed.'" Uh . . . I'm not sure where, but for me as a first-time novelist breaking into commercial fiction, I was pleased with the reviews I got. So it was my first taste of the world of personal zingers and snarky sound bites.
So now, instead of taking "the good with the bad," most of the time I don't take either. I continue to create and write and mentor new writers and have fun with my career. I respond to my fan mail and talk to kids at schools about being a writer. And I remember the adage about opinions. Everyone's got one.