The LadyKillers

The great cycle of life; pompous enough?

Writing at the end of the week is not easy.  Everyone else has covered the difficulties of beginning or ending a book or series.  However, I'm here to tell you that both have a way of reviving when least expected, so don't think that early work will ever be completely obliterated.

A few centuries ago, when I wrote my trilogy on Guinevere, I killed off everyone at the end.  I was tired of all of the characters.  So, what happened?  I was asked to write prequels, sequels and spin-offs.  I did do some short stories but at the time I felt I had said everything about the Arthurian world that I could. After thirty years, the darn things have never been out of print for more than a couple of years and are appearing again.

http://bellarosabooks.com/upcomingtitles.htm

Now, I'm grateful for this but I really think I could do a better job today and am thinking of telling the story from the point of view of Guinevere's parents, adrift in a dying society.  As with actors, embarrassed about early films, early books have a way of coming back to haunt. Paul Newman (no relation, darn it) was always embarrassed by his film debut in The Silver Chalice .the silver chalice

On the other hand, ealy books  are also like college photos, reminders of a time when I was young and had good knees and thought I could change the world.  And I wonder what someone who didn't know me now would think of the woman captured on film way back then. 

Beginnings?  Endings?  Not really.  We just go round and round.

Sharan on a Friday, looking forward to beginning another week or maybe just living in perpetual weekend.

 

The Beginning of the End

So, I'm just starting on the sixth -- and final -- book in my Underworld Detection Agency series when my agent sends me a benign little email, "BTW, forgot to ask: how are you feeling about ending the series? Happy? Sad? Somewhere in between?"

I had decided long ago to end the series on the sixth book, which will finish the natural arc the characters have been on for the past five. And in those past five I have pulled my hair out, swore up and down that I'd never write another series, wistfully dreamed about all the story lines I could write and molest once I wasn't tied to a town, a gang, a particular food choice (Sophie is a sucker for chocolate marshmallow pinwheels). But now that it's here... I'm not happy. I'm not sad, either. I'm somewhere in between, suspended in that "my children will never leave me" headspace, yet terrifyingly aware that in 70,000 short words, I'll have to type the two I'm beginning to dread: The End. Because it will be the end.

And I'd like to be all adult and philosophical and say something worthy of engraving or bellowing in impassioned speeches like, "A character, once inscribed, will never die!" But I'm hardly the bellowing type.

Sort of.

I also know that I've fallen in love with characters well past their prime -- like Anne, who had been in those Green Gables a good 75 years before I cracked that spine, and good ole' Freddie and Flossie Bobbsey who were probably tossing one back at their local while I was engrossed in their Red, White, and Blue Mystery (vol. 64).

But it's still hard to let go. I love answering fan questions about Sophie -- who she'll end up with (it happens in books six!), will she ever catch a break (not likely), will she ever look like the chick on the covers? (in her dreams). I like hearing, "Will would be so happy with the way Arsenal played today," and, "Steve the troll reminds me of my boss!" I know Sophie and the gang will live on -- literarily, through the series, and live actionally (no, seriously, they're totally words.) with the new web series based on Vlad's early adventures. (check out the UDA Channel on YouTube!)

I would love for someone to fall in love with Sophie's misadventures 20 years after the fact. I hope that I've created characters and story lines that connect with readers now and years from now. And for everything I write after the Underworld Detection Agency series, I'll have to thank Sophie for. I cut my fangs on the Underworld and if it weren't for that series, I wouldn't be able to crack open a new book, start a new series, turn the page in a new genre.

I'm still not sure if I'm happy or sad, but I am satisfied that Sophie and the UDA will end on a high note with a great adventure. And I'm happier still that we'll go out with a good title, never having to resort to the lowest common Under denominator -- Under Wear.

 

Julia and Me--Thoughts About Food and Life

By Margaret Lucke

Food for thought is anything that stimulates your thinking. Lately, thanks to a book I'm currently reading, I've been thinking a lot about … food. And also about life.

The book is an excellent biography called Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child, by Bob Spitz. Even though I haven’t mastered the art of French cooking, and saw her TV shows only on rare occasions, I've always felt
a kinship with Julia.

Two things draw me toward her. One is the fact that we share a birthday (the month and day, that is, not the year). The other is a story I heard about something that happened during the filming of a TV episode. As Julia was preparing the dish of the week, some ingredient or other slopped onto the floor. "Oh, don't worry about that," she trilled in her unmistakable voice. "The self-cleaning floor will take of it." Within minutes, the network received more than two hundred calls from viewers asking where they could purchase their own self-cleaning floor.

I don’t know if that story is true, but I hope it is, because
I like what it says about Julia's approach to cooking. Concentrate on what's important--the food--and don't let a little spill deter you. And keep your sense of humor while you're at it. All of which, when you think about it, is pretty good advice for life too.

Julia was more than a successful cookbook author and a TV star. She changed not only American perceptions of French cuisine, but also the culture surrounding food and the role it plays our lives. Given all that she accomplished, I was surprised to learn from Spitz's book that she wandered through life with no sense of direction until she was close to forty. That’s when she arrived in Paris with her husband, Paul, who'd been posted there by the US State Department. She was a bored housewife who lacked kitchen skills, unable to do much more than boil water. Looking for a way to pass the time, she wandered into Le Cordon Bleu cooking school and decided to take lessons. There she discovered her life’s work and from that point on, she pursued it with an unrelenting passion.

I find her story inspiring--not the cooking part necessarily, but the dedication, the enthusiasm and the joie de vivre. All of those traits are worth cultivating, in my opinion. On our mutual birthday last summer—her 100th, mine a much smaller number—I decided to bake her signature Reine de Saba cake in her honor. Chocolate, almonds, rum, delicious! As Julia would say, "Bon appetit!"

From Mary Anna--Diversions, the ones we take and the ones we don't

As I sat here looking at this week's topic, diversions, my free-associatin' brain took me down two paths, poetry and physics.  (But what's new?  I've both feet on those paths for years now, and it's been an interesting stroll.

One of the most famous lines in poetry uses the word "diverged," and its topic is the heartrending fact that we don't have the time to walk every path that life offers us:

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood...."  

Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken," 1916.

When confronted with the topic "Diversions," I immediately skipped over to a web page that gave me the full text of this public-domain poem for free.  Having barely absorbed it, my brain flitted off to thoughts of my fluid mechanics class, when a discussion of how a stream of water would diverge and recoverge when encountering on obstacle in its path.  Much energy could be (and has been) expended in examining how the behavior of that water would differ if it were moving with the turbulence of a river in spring thaw or the smooth, laminar flow of a slow, shallow creek.  (Lest your eyes glaze over, this problem is very important to anybody out there who occasionally drives over a bridget.)

Mother, lover, engineer, novelist, musician--I could probably have played any of those roles better if I'd been willing to pick one path and stick to it, but I'm not good at that kind of diversion.  I'm not good at letting go of the desire to stroll down all the paths.  Perhaps it hasn't been the most peaceful life plan, but it has been interesting. And it ain't over yet.

May all your paths be fascinating and all your diversions be pleasant.

Mary Anna

 

A Writer's Image? Perhaps imagination is at the heart of it.

We're talking about the writer's image this week on The Lady Killers.  When I saw that topic, I have to admit that my first thought was, "I have no idea what to say. I'm going rogue.  I'm going to talk about...um...this piece of chocolate here in my hand.  It's really yummy."  But I went rogue with my last post, and then Ann followed me down the garden path of rebellion.  If we keep this up, chaos will ensue.  Do you really want to live in a world where a bunch of Lady Killers are on the loose and there are no rules????

I don't.  So I intend to play by the rules today.  The blog wants me to write "A Writer's Image," so that's what the blog shall get.  But I freely admit that this is a ticklish subject.  Think about my average workday.  I'm sitting at home alone, working in a t-shirt and jeans, and this is only because I have a modicum of self-respect.  I could do what I do in flannel pajamas and bunny slippers.  (Well, it's Florida, so flannel pajamas would be overkill.  However, I cannot describe the flimsy stuff I usually sleep in, because my son might be reading this and he would then feel compelled to rip his mind's eye out by the roots.)  At least 95% of the time, I have no "image" to uphold, but there is that other part of my job.  Sometimes I have to go out and meet the public.

Saturday, I gave a talk at a bookstore.  Tonight, I'm speaking at a library.  For such events, bunny slippers and a flimsy nightgown do not cut it.  Jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers would be less likely to get me arrested or institutionalized, but I don't think they convey the proper respect for my audience.  How I look  has no bearing on the quality of what I write, but there is an element of show-biz to what I do for a living.  People who enjoy my books can read them in the comfort of their home.  If they leave the house to come see me speak, it is because they are interested in me as a person.  I do not think they want to see a frumpy 50-year-old grandmother.  

I cannot do anything about the second and third descriptors, but I don't have to be frumpy.  I put some thought into how I dress for an event.  I wear makeup and a little jewelry and I fuss with my hair a little.  Probably more importantly, I try to reach out to the people who attend, making an effort to tailor my talk to their interests and to answer their questions with thought.

On a less personal level, I think it's important for me to present a professional image even when I'm not there.  I put a great deal of effort into my books, and I want to present them in a way that communicates that care.  So I paid a professional to design my website.  I also paid the best photographer I know to take my author photo, so that I would have a picture that did actually look like me, yet didn't scream "frumpy grandmother."  I have a few projects that I published myself, and I paid professionals to lay out the text and design the cover.  Again, if I don't project a professional image, how can I expect my work to be taken seriously?  You can't judge a book by its cover, but you can get a sense of the degree of importance its maker assigns to its public image.

But this is all icing on the cake.  First, you have to make the cake.  I spend 95% of my time putting together and polishing stories that are worth the reader's while.  My business is creating works of the imagination, and the worlds in those books are far more real than any surficial "image" that can be painted on them or on me.  My imagination is what I have to offer.  My image is merely a tool to get people to look more closely at my imaginary worlds as they decide whether to dive in.

From Mary Anna--I'm going off-script in praise of curiosity, despite the lure of sex and violence

I ordinarily follow rules.  If I'm supposed to write a blog entry about sex and violence, I do that.  If I'm supposed to write about a rock, I do that.  Today, I am a rebel.  If you want to read about sex and violence, watch this space.  My fellow LadyKillers will be talking about those things all week long.  I want to talk about the power of human curiosity

It has been a few days since the passing of Neil Armstrong and the media furor that reminded us of his remarkable life is dying down.  Let's face it.  As a species, we have a short attention span.  The fact that most of the world still knew Neil Armstrong's name, when he had spent 43 years avoiding the limelight that he had duly earned, is a fair measure of what he did and what his accomplishment symbolized.  When a thinking person considers the life of Neil Armstrong, he or she can only have one response.  "My God.  We sent people to the moon and brought them safely home ."

We forget so easily.  If you want a good face-full of NASA's accomplishments in the 1960s, take a trip to the Kennedy Space Center.  Stick your head inside a claustrophic command module and look at the controls.  They look about as high-tech as the dashboard of a 1960s Ford.  Then ponder the fact that this vehicle and the rockets that threw it to the moon were designed with slide rules.  Those spacesuits?  Were they molded from futuristic materials like the outfits worn by faux-heroes in today's comic book movies?  No.  They were made by human hands using sewing machines.  Ladies and gentleman, if Neil Armstrong and the team supporting him could do what they did in 1969, then we as a species can do anything.  We simply have to want it badly enough.  And, like Neil Armstrong, we have to possess the courage to risk everything in the pursuit of something worthwhile.

There are those who question our investment in space exploration, pointing out that the money could be used to take care of people who are in need.  I do not question the value of helping people in need, and I vote accordingly.  There are other expenditures I'd like to see cut in favor of funding science, but my intent here is not to talk politics.  And, though I believe that NASA has paid back our investment in terms of technologies and materials that make all our lives better in ways so pervasive that we have ceased to notice them, I am not going to do a cost-benefit analysis in terms of dollars and cents.  I would much rather balance the ledger that measures inspiration against the status quo.

If our president were to announce, "We choose to be free of nonsustainable fuels in this decade not because it is easy, but because it is hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone," I believe we could do it, and I believe our country is not the only one that would take up the challenge.  (Picture me tipping my hat to President Kennedy as I type this.) If he or she were to say, "We choose to free humanity of hunger, because it is within our reach," I believe we could do that, too.  

Cynics believe that we are fueled as individuals by the desire for money and things, but they underestimate the power of the human imagination.  Money buys us the toys we use to distract ourselves when our lives are empty of dreams.  Right now, I think our society needs a dream.

I cannot tell you how happy I am that a human-made thing name Curiosity is running around Mars right now.

Mary Anna

http://www.maryannaevans.com

From Mary Anna--Existentialism? On a Monday morning? Really?

Our topic this week here at the LadyKillers literary salon is "Real Life vs. Virtual Life."  I don't know about you, but I'm not sure there's enough caffeine in the world for me to do this subject justice on a Monday morning, but you know me.  I'm always game.  I'm thinking of having a family crest designed with the motto, "I'll give it a shot.  How hard can it be? "  Except I think this new family motto will look much more aristocratic once it has been translated into Latin and inscribed in Gothic calligraphy.

The question of real life versus virtual life seems new to the current inhabitants of the planet, because computer technology puts it in our faces every day.  When we watch a movie, we ask ourselves, "Did the actor playing Spiderman leap off the tops of skyscrapers while shooting artificial spiderweb fiber from his wrists so that he could swing through Manhattan like a monkey through a jungle?"  When the inevitable answer is, "No," we ask ourselves, "Did he swing across a movie set with fake skyscrapers behind him, while wearing a safety harness?  Or did a computer generate the whole thing?"  For most the us, the answer to that question is, "I'm not sure."  In other words, somebody just reached in my head, grabbed the concept of reality, shook it up like a cup of Yahtzee dice,  then poured those dice back in my head and said, "Have a nice day."

I think we overestimate the newness of this phenomenon.  When Og and Olga the Cavepeople sat around the campfire and told stories about wooly mammoths they had slain, their fellow cavepeople were free to take them at their word.  Or not.  "You should have seen him!  He was taller than the trees and the ground shook when he walked and he had one big eye in the middle of his forehead!  This here mammoth we just ate is a monster, but you should've seen the one that got away!"

Much, much later, the printing press made it possible for the storytellers in our midst to reach far beyond the small circle of compatriots around our personal campfires. (And we thank you for that, Herr Gutenberg.)  

I routinely get emails from people who want to know whether a particular character or place in my stories is real.  I do not leap into the world of existentialism and ask them in return to define what they mean by "real" before I answer their question.  Why do I not ask them to do this?  Because I am not a first-class jerk.  I hope.  Otherwise, I would just quote some impenetrable bit of Sartre, "Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards," and leave them hating me, with their questions unanswered.

Do I have a point here?  Yeah, I do.  What was it?  I guess my Monday-morning brain is just trying to say that the imaginary creations that we call "virtual" in the video game and movie world are nothing more than the recreation of the imaginary things we've always held between our ears.  In some ways, a fearsome alien that has never existed outside a computer's brain or on a movie screen is no different than a fearsome beast that never existed outside the brains of Olga the Cavewoman and her rapt audience.  They both have a lot in common with the imaginary characters that I drop into Faye Longchamp's world.  Their population grows with every book I write.  

Olga's beast was independent of the magical science inside a computer and inside a printing machine, so it may have been the most virtual creation of all.  I raise my morning cup of caffeine to Olga and to you all.  Cheers!

Mary Anna

Knock, Knock

I've been writing since the second grade, and in that (unfortunately long) time, I've met amazing writers, taken some incredible courses and workshops, and garnered a huge amount of writerly advice -- some asked for, some not.

I've learned that adverbs are a mortal sin (forgive me, writing Lord, for I have sinned. Repeatedly.)

That one character must die within the first five pages of a mystery, and the hero and heroine must meet by the end of the first page in romance or your entire manuscript is sunk (cue the iceberg).

A creative writing teacher once screamed that there was never a use for any dialogue tag other than "said." (See what I did there?)

I've been told that one should "write what you know" which either makes me a fascinating individual or the soon-to-be inhabit-er of a padded room with my very own straight jacket.

I've gotten advice on every writing habit, word choice, or career move I've ever made, but the best advice -- the advice I use on a daily basis -- came from a seven-year old kid. He was asked what he would do if, after coming home from a day of play, he found his front door locked. The kid shrugged and said, "I'd knock."

"What if no one answers?" the questioner asked.

"I'd just keep knocking until someone opened the door."

I had that phrase: "keep knocking until someone opened the door" taped in my office when I was querying editors and agents. I moved it to my computer when my manuscript was making the publishing house rounds. I rewrote it when my first book came out and I wanted people to review it. So why, four books later, do I still have that kid's wise words taped to my screen?

Because if you want anything in life -- to sell your first book or to become a New York Times bestseller, you could avoid all adverbs, kill and/or mate all of your characters, or write about your last trip to the dentist. All of those might help -- if you're willing to brave the elements, stand out on the porch, and keep knocking until someone opens the door.

From Mary Anna - Quotes to live by...now that's a tough one...

Today, my blogger's job is to come up with one single solitary quote that's strong enough to live by.  For a word person, that's a tall order.  For a novelist, it's well-nigh impossible.  If novelists did not all suffer from chronic logorrhea, we would say what we had to say and be done with it.  It would not take us 350 manuscript pages to get to the point.

Everybody has a cultural tradition and I think that's cool.  In mine, when pressed to come up with timeless words of wisdom, we look to Jesus.  For a man who lived a short life a long time ago, he said a lot of things that are still timely.  Taken to heart, these five words would change the world:

"Love your neighbor as yourself."

I'd feel a tad presumptuous in trying to elaborate on something so simple and so profound, so I just won't.

Mary Anna

Can I Choose Them All?

My favorite authors -- much like my favorite books -- are clear indicators of the stages of my life. Forget a photograph -- a book and it's author can sum up every memory needed for me.

• Elementary School (When I wanted to be a spy): E.L. Konisgburg's From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

 

-Thirty years later, I still find myself considering stealing away to The Met should this writing business not pan out.

• Junior High (When I wanted to be blond, named something like Jennifer or Stacie (dotted with a heart) and date a guy in a letterman's jacket): Francine Pascal's Sweet Valley High/Twins series

-Just a few months ago, I had the opportunity to sip coffee with Sweet Valley's amazing author Francine Pascal; when I admitted that I told everyone in school I wasn't too upset over Jeff Nichols' dumping me because my real boyfriend was "all-American-guy Todd Wilkins," she didn't seem all that surprised.

• High School (When the problems of an upper-middle class white girl with a Honda Accord are nothing short of smothering): Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar

-Because nobody knows the trouble I've seen (spiral perms! Color Me Badd! Stretch pants!).

• College (When I still believed that writing the Great American Novel and becoming rich weren't mutually exclusive): Jill McCorkle's July 7th and The Cheerleader

-The world was my oyster, and for some reason, I developed a Southern drawl (even after leaving Duke) and a desperate need to include a matriarch and a biscuit reference in every book. 

• Post college (When my life was all pink-and-ecru Martha Stewart Wedding magazines and olive boats): Anna Maxted's Behaving Like Adults

-I'm still reasonably proud of myself for not developing (or at least adhering to) a British accent at this particular stage. Also, I hate olives, so the need for them to become seafaring still eludes me. But it seemed really damn important when I was 22.

• Post-post college (When I realized that I am, quite possibly, the last single woman in America and informercials seem to be hocking some really useful things): Jonathan Hayes' Precious Blood

-Does that read as bitter/completly given up as I think it might?