Instant Karma

You know, I have come to believe that what you put out into the universe you get back like a boomarang. If you're a nasty S.O.B., it's going to come back and bite you in the ass. Now, being a nice person is no guarantee of things going well . . . but somehow I think, even when life really sends you a curveball, it also sends you people who help you along the way. Karma.
So I started thinking about writing. I have tried, gone out of my way, to help friends who dream of being a writer. I was never protective of editor names or my agent or . . . whatever little I had gleaned as a writer myself. Anyway, I read a blog today by Stephanie Feagan, a fellow Bombshell writer. It's an incredible blog about how she worked hard to get her two novels published: http://stephaniefeagan.com/blog/
But what stuck out to me were the people and editors along the way who took the time to help her--it was really poignant.
The longer I do this, the easier, as I've said in past blog entries, it can be to get weary. Snarky put-downs and reviews, backbiting among authors . . . professional jealousy. I just try to stay above the fray, to be helpful, peaceful . . . to remember karma. So it was neat to read about the kindness of editors. The kindness of people who tried to help a writer.
My pal Vicki Hinze is a wonderful mentor to me. She's a fantastic writer, also for Bombshell among others: www.vickihinze.com. Vic is also a marketing genius (I believe you can still download the DVD mini-movie for her book--like an ad for it, very, very unique!), and she gives me a lot of insight into the big picture of publishing.
And then there's my agent. He has believed in me from day 1, and always made clear he was in it for the long haul, not just one book sale. Nineteen books sold later . . . he's still my agent and he's still watching out for me.
So I like to think that doing unto others means you get special angels in your life. I realize that's a cobbled together bit of faith, but it works.
Here's to karma.

Music for the Muse

Sometimes I have to write in silence. But more often than not, something's on my CD player. When I was writing Urban Legend, which was largely set in a Manhattan club, I listened to techno a lot. Lately, Rob Dugan is often spinning. Kind of moody, love his voice, but he's not so distracting that I can't think.
A lot of times, I can't have music with lyrics. I get sidetracked. Next thing you know, I'm off on a tangent inspired by the music and not my own brain.
My classical tastes run to Mozart lately, or Beethoven's 9th. Can't listen to paino . . . don't know why. And New Age stuff annoys more than inspires.
And when I am REALLY tired . . . because hey, I have three books due before the end of the year, four kids, and frankly, I don't have time to eat let alone sleep . . . I have a CD of old faves, like "Stuck in the Middle with You," songs that get me energized.
Love the power of a music.

Pigs

Do you ever wish you could be a kid again? Run barefoot in the rain without caring if you drag mud into the house. Wish on a star and think it can really come true. Have problems that can be fixed by a cookie.
That is one of the gifts of children. They can cause you to take a deep breath and stop to look at the way a line of ants is marching across the pavement right in front of you only you were so busy you almost missed it. Life, in the end, is full of those freeze-frame moments we take out later and examinet, moments when we looked at our kids mid-laugh and just felt our hearts melt.
But by far, one of the best thing about kids when you are a writer is the way they can get you to think outside the box. They just look at things differently.
As we contemplate maybe relocating, I've told the kids it's so we can get some land, maybe a horse.
"What about a pig?" asked my second child.
"A pig."
"Yeah," piped up his sister. "Can we get a pig?"
"Like . . . a big pig or one of those little ones?"
"A little one," said son.
"Yeah, sure. If you want." What the hell, I thought.
"We EACH want one," said sister.
"Two pigs."
"Yes."
"OK."All right, so I had just said we could get two pigs (oldest child wants a car, not a pig; baby is too small to talk . . . I imagine by the time he is old enough, we'll be talking a goat or something). Anyway, I thought that was the end of it. Until time came to discuss KISSING pigs.
Yes, in the way kids just meander in conversations, I overheard the two future pig owners discussing whether, indeed, they would KISS their pigs.
"I'd kiss a pig any day," said one.
"Me, too. Like . . . I'd kiss 'em like five times."
OK . . . so when I write dialogue that involves children, I love to remember stuff like this. Because I couldn't make this up if I tried.

It's Started

I knew it was coming.
The path to writing Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven (Red Dress Ink) took three years. I had a new contract for three books, and it was second in line. I had started it, revisited it, restarted it, re-envisioned it entirely and overheauled it yet again. All in all, it took me two or three years to write, with other books intervening in between. And along the way it morphed.
The novel was always about a woman's battle with breast cancer, and her created family with her best friend, a gay man, who helps her through it. She has a romance with a fellow cancer patient, and he falls in love for the first time. The two main characters alternate narrating chapters, and since both of them are writers, they also alternate sharing their work--she as a columnist writing about her life as mom/woman/humorist; he shares his novel, which reveals why he has difficulty with relationships.
While the book has garnered advance praise, I have had friends forward two different reviews in which I offended the reviewers by writing about Michael's love affair. One suggested that if readers were conservative, they could "skip over" his parts, particularly when he falls in love. Another said that the violence in his embedded novel was "unnecessary" (it covers an incident in which he was assaulted for being gay).
No one feels the need in a book review to say, "Skip over the heterosexual parts." And his sharing about his assault is a fundamental part of who he is. Characters and human beings are the sum total of all their experiences--both good and bad. If I sat down and told the story of my own life, I could gloss over the bad stuff and give you the rose-colored version, but it really wouldn't give you a fair depiction of who I am or more importantly WHY I am.
So I knew the storm was coming. It's okay to have gay male sidekicks in chick lit, as long as they are "queen"-like, funny, the "Jack" character in "Will & Grace." But the subtle message of the reviews is don't have one who is handsome, complex, loves baseball and sports, and who is in a real flesh and blood love affair with complicated issues of fidelity, trust, and family.
However, I much prefer character rather than cariacature.

The Quirk Factor

Seems like every character needs a few quirks. If you're going to create a detective, for instance, and you're going to compete in the very overcrowded genre, you have got to be able to make your character stand out.
On the flipside, you can read about characters that have such a set of quirks, it feels tacked on. Let me just add this quirk or that in the hopes of making this character memorable. Nothing feels organic. It's quirk overload.
I think, in writing--and my characters are as eccentric as they come--it boils down to digging deep for REAL quirks that are three-dimensional, not a laundry list of weirdness. Even in my more literary fiction, I strive to create a character whose eccentricities are grounded in something real. Because that's how we are as human beings. I am surrounded by statues of Buddha, but if I am speaking of something bad, or I've just avoided something horrible (like a near-miss accident), I always make the sign of the cross--a leftover gesture from my grandparents taking me to Catholic church. Odd? Yes. REAL? Decidedly yes.
In INVISBLE GIRL (coming out from MIRA in June), the mother is a Buddhist. But because of a horrific secret she guards from the Vietnam War (she is Vietnamese), when she marries an Irish-Catholic soldier and comes to America, she decides to, as she tells her two kids, "cover your bases." So each day when the children come home from school, they must bow to the Buddha altar their mother keeps and thank him for their blessings. Then they have to do the same to the Jesus statue. Their Ma wants both sides covered "just in case." Is it odd? Yeah. But the mother has such a deep-rooted terror based on the secret she carries, that it's completely understandable that she would ask for help from whichever faith can offer it.
Anyway, you get the idea. Quirks are wonderful. I've got characters who are drag queens who wear Tiaras on Tuesdays (Diary of a Blues Goddess), and characters who say "Good night, sleep tights, and whatever you do, don't look in the freezer" (the Westies gangland father in The Roofer), and I've got a new character in an upcoming Bombshell who has a brain collection in formaldehyde (he's a scientist). But in each case, I hope nothing about the eccentricities feels anything less than real and human--just like us all.

Misery

Like everyone in America, I think, I am feeling a sense of despair over New Orleans. I am so grateful and humbled to have heard from fans of Diary of a Blues Goddess, a novel I wrote set in New Orleans, that was released two years ago. People assumed I lived in New Orleans or had family there. I do not, but I am a huge jazz fan, and it is--was--a city that I felt embodied a multicultural melting pot, eclectic and vibrant. To see it drowning . . . I just cry.
When you write a novel, you write of the highs and lows of life. No one is going to read 350 pages of the mundane tasks of life--doing laundry, cooking, cleaning up after the kids, walking the dog. So novelists write of the moments that make or break a person's humanity, they write of triumphs and they write of those darkest hours that change a character forever. When we look back on our own lives, we remember the high points--the birth of a child, the day we got married--and we remember the low ones--for me, nearly dying 12 years ago, and other struggles, events that changed me. But what the people of New Orleans are going through is a national disgrace . . . and never in my wildest imaginings, could I have pictured AMERICA coming to this. I feel like I am watching something out of a sci-fi movie of the end of days, of the end of the earth.
In this atmosphere, the occasional stories of strangers opening their homes, of a baby saved, or an old man reunited with his loved ones . . . they are the only things that make me hope for something better.