Crossing Bridges

There are almost as many ways to get somewhere as there are roads, rivers and walls in the way. I grew up on a hill that overlooked Detroit's Rouge River and the bridge I used to cross it consisted of a willow tree--a very old one judging by the girth of its trunk.

I was about ten years old and had become accustomed to spending afternoons in the woods that flanked this creek behind my parents' home. The woods were remote and quiet and offered reprieve at a time when I needed it desperately. I was the oldest of seven and lived with our parents though my father, a travelling salesman, was rarely home. The river and its wildlife provided a sanctuary from the uncomfortable days I spent at school. Fifth grade was the beginning of my awareness that I was not a very social young lady and, as much as recess and lunch periods, I dreaded afternoons at home when my mother suggested I should be involved in more social activities.

I took comfort knowing the mallards, chipmunks and raccoons became so accustomed to my presence that they carried on with their business as if I belonged there. I would sit on this bridge to observe the choreography of the mallards' descent-- and the grace of their aquatic meanderings. How they dropped their tail feathers and spread their wings upright to steady their descent and to soften its impact. How they never missed their target, never sank and never showed concern that the mallards already swimming the river would shun them for who they were or weren't.

I don't know where I thought I was going after I crossed this river but I was determined to overcome the challenge. The trunk fell so that its span stretched five feet above the water level once it left the banks. Its trunk had peeled away to a smooth, blond veneer. It would have been simple enough to straddle but a number of intact limbs jutted up and out and down from it so that walking the bridge--what at first glance seemed the most difficult--was actually the only sure way of getting across. The thought of slipping off made my heart pound. Not only was the river-bottom thick with muck but the river was polluted by residential practices that still make my skin crawl.

For the first few weeks I could only muster the courage to crawl across on hands and knees, thankful that no one was watching. Then I was able to stand and take tiny steps while steadying myself on a very long walking stick poked into the muck below. By the end of the summer I could cross upright. I learned it was easier to cross that river if I didn't look back or look down--if I focused on the bank of lush, green ferns on the other side. And while the ferns offered a fine place to sit and contemplate what I had done--they were the end of it and after a month or so they succumbed to winter's frost and shriveled away and I had no place to sit anymore without getting covered in the same mud I'd just crossed over.

A more contemporary bridge spanned that same Rouge River and we crossed on the way to and from my elementary school. It was too narrow for more than one car at a time but I remember it more because of two separate conversations that took place while crossing it--conversations about two significant deaths...my parakeet’s and my Grandfather’s.

“We think it was old age,” my mother said about my parakeet as we headed home from school.

I had spent that week with my cousin's family while my parents were away on one of their many overseas vacations. And, I knew my sweet spring-green feathered friend had actually died at three months from neglect. The woman my parents hired to care for my siblings had more important things on her agenda.

“We can get another bird if you want,” she added in an effort to quench my sobs.

But I didn’t want another bird. I wanted the one I'd just taught so say 'thank you.'

Three months later on that same bridge my mother announced that my ailing Grandfather Miller had passed on. He loved his granddaughters especially myself and my two cousins. I often walked to his house for lunch because he lived with my Grandmother less than two blocks from school. He had a round bald head and much larger round belly and rarely left his family room chair. He spent so much time in it watching George Pierrot that his butt left an imprint in the leather. He drank a lot of whiskey in that chair and it smelled of urine.

Grandfather didn’t talk much but I knew he liked me being there. He’d wave me to his side and rest his large hand on top of mine. It was smooth and rainy-day gray. We'd watch television together, though I had little use for travelogues. Sometimes he would forget I was there and after a while, he’d fall asleep. I'd wonder what it was like to be him--to spend so much of each day asleep.

My Grandfather was very wealthy. His business was selling cotton and wool fabric to the automakers for car seats. When my father took it over, Grandfather spent his afternoons in Palmer Park at a long picnic table where he and other old men played cards. Grandmother didn't care for these men--they didn't own businesses. She convinced him to move to the suburbs when Detroit went through the change. They bought that house near my school. Every afternoon Grandfather would drive across that narrow stone bridge, back to Palmer Park, and play cards with his buddies. When he was too old to drive and had no one to take him, he stopped going. He didn't like to talk about it much and his eyes misted over when did. I felt sorry for my Grandfather. He was lonely and I knew what lonely was.

Every summer for as long as I can remember my mother would pile her gaggle of chicks into her station wagon and drive to her home in Dubuque, Iowa where we visited my other grandparents. About every five years my father joined us. The trip was two full days of air mattress battles, Dramamine, sour pillows, silly car games like 'My Grandmother's Cupboard' and heat...lots and lots of insufferable heat. My mother’s psyche usually burned out by Benton Harbor, about a five hours into the trip and we’d drag our sweaty and sugar coated little bodies into a hotel room for the night. Barring disasters like leaving a kid behind at a service station, it was another five hours of tangled torsos and tested tempers before our car reached the bluff and the majestic suspension bridge that took us across the Mississippi to Iowa. Grandma and Grandpa Hilvers were not rich. They shared their two story bungalow with my Aunt, her alcoholic husband and their three children. Adding our eight into the mix led to interesting memories but still, this bridge was one I recall fondly.

Happiness waited on the other side--days spent at Grandpa's river cabin fishing for catfish and smoking them. Afternoons spent jumping into the creek from the rickety bridge that took us to the cabin. We'd plunge to the swimming hole clutching a tractor's giant tire tube. No theme park ride could match the feelings in our stomachs.

Beyond and above this bridge was another--an ominous wood train trestle. Its massive timbers painted black with tar, it was at least four stories tall with a very narrow walkway flanking one side for workers to access the rails. The very presence of this bridge sweat danger. We were forbidden to go near it which only meant that when we got caught Grandpa would take us to the smokehouse and throttle our behinds. A number of shirtless, shoeless trailer boys who lived at the edge of Grandpa's property took great amusement from daring us to walk this trestle. They'd lead us to it like sheep then sit in their rowboats and watch and for many summers we never made it to the other side, certain we'd heard a train's whistle in the distance. I'm not sure whether their dares or Grandpa's threats released more snakes into our stomachs the day we finally made it all the way across.

I’d all but forgotten about my childhood bridges until my three grown daughters set out to start their own lives. To visit I’ve had to cross the Chicago Lake Street Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge and Boston’s Longfellow Bridge. But I have no feelings of apprehension or loneliness when I cross these bridges. I know when I get to the other side there is always someone I love waiting for me.

I walk my three dogs along a river now--the same one that flowed behind the home where I grew up. With enough practice I could probably cross one of the many logs that have fallen across it. But I don’t need the challenge any more. I’ve married and raised three daughters and along the way learned to appreciate life’s simpler solutions, so I use the wooden footbridge.

Besides I am not as lonely now. Maybe it was knowing those bridges that helped.

Monday Musings--Designer Gowns and Journalists

Two good things in the NYT today. Both are upstarts that have thumbed their noses at this economy. The first that caught my eye is a company that is Netflixing (is that a word?) designer gowns. Called 'Rent the Runway', it intrigued me because, first of all, I am inherently frugal (some would call it cheap) and, second of all, because I've always been a tad envious of women who can carry off wearing one--both the expense and the savvy of it. The rental prices range from $50 to $200 plus $5 for insurance. With the holidays coming into view, I just might try this. Maybe once I wore a designer gown to a party that would be enough--I would be disappointed enough in the results that I would shift my envy (seems like the grass is always greener somewhere). I guess my only concern is whether the thing ( you have 4 days to keep it) fits.

So the second upstart is in Texas--called the Texas Tribune. It is an online news organization that has set its sights on monitoring news and policy coming from Austin. The non-profit (what news organization makes one anymore?) has already won financial support to the tune of 3.7 million dollars and is well on its way to making a fresh sustainable mark in the decimated world of journalism.

“I began to see journalism as a public good, like national defense or clean air,” said John Thornton, an Austin venture capitalist who has invested $1 million of the $3.7 already put up for the project. The theory is to pay good journalists well for serving their readers with healthy, clean portions of news.

Not too shabby.

You Say Goodbye and I Say Hello

Today Susan Dominus, in her BIG CITY column of the NYT, speaks to a topic never far from the lips of writers lately--the demise of the literary world as we knew it. She wraps her column in Joan Didion's famous essay, "Goodbye to All That," which as "an elegy to the passing of youth," talks to Didion's disenchantment with New York City and the literary culture that was her world. Written in 1967, Dominus writes that the essay still strikes many familiar chords.

Part of what has disappeared, Dominus says, is the "glittering, gluttonous self-indulgence" of the publishing business. It was a comment that struck home to me as I had been privy to the same self-indulgence by Detroit's corporate world back in the mid-eighties. As a florist, I was often hired to perform extravagant botanical feats for the conference and party tables of the executives--feats that often added up to $50 to the per-person tab picked up by stockholders and ordinary citizens. God only knows what the rest of the bill totaled.

It was, and is, the crux of our economic woes. The rampant wanton greed of the people in charge--often at the expense of the people at the opposite end.

Dominus comments that at least "The New York magazine and book-publishing scene is no Detroit." (How unfortunate that Detroit has become the metaphor for abject failure.) But, she goes on to mention the silver lining of all this. "People will keep making cars, only somewhere else; people will keep making literary culture, just not at the same scale, or in the same hallways, or for a living."

In part, I disagree. To the wanton greed I say, with relief, "Goodbye to All That." But unlike Dominus, who concludes that "even the most jaded among our ranks are not ready to say goodbye to all that," I say I am. and I am ready to welcome the era of the internet that will hopefully put more commercial endeavors on an even plane so that the executives and the foot soldiers are equally rewarded. The essence of cars--transportation--will not disappear; and the essence of literary culture will be just fine. People, by their very nature, crave to tell and read stories, to fantasize, to learn and to opine. So while the paper industry and the bookshelf industry might suffer, the new scene--the internet and the electronic media--will enable literature to thrive on an equal, if not larger, scale and it will be possible to make a living providing it. We just won't be able to gorge on the pocketbooks of the general public like we used to.

In November of the same year that Didion published her essay, the Beatles released their hit song, "You Say Goodbye and I Say Hello." Paul McCartney's summary of his lyrics was this: "The answer to everything is simple. It's a song about everything and nothing. If you have black you have to have white. That's the amazing thing about life."

That sums it up better for me. Life goes on and what we are passionate about will survive--might even get better!

Inspiration or Discipline?

Is inspiration or discipline more important in creating art?

This is an ongoing discussion in two of the online writing/reading groups I've joined--Backspace and Goodreads.

In my first life, as mother to three daughters and florist for 34 years, I followed the discipline road and reached some level of success despite frequently being singed by both ends of the candle. I hadn't placed much emphasis on inspiration mainly because I didn't have the confidence that it would take me anywhere. Don't get me wrong, I placed an extremely high value on inspiration and the art it nourishes. I just didn't believe I had any seeds to begin with. And I was extremely frustrated.

Then about six years before I retired I gathered the courage to create inspired floral creations rather than pump out cookie cutter FTD designs. I had admired for over a quarter century designs by florists all over the world but never thought myself capable of attaining that level.

I guess I liken this to the difference between works by Stephanie Meyer or Nora Roberts and those by Jayne Anne Phillips or Andre Dubus III. All certainly very worthwhile reads but I have to think the two former authors are more focused on discipline and are probably more commercially successful whereas the two latter focus on inspiration (no doubt combined with discipline) and are more artistically successful.

I will grant that floral designs are in a different world than fiction. But I learned something during those last six years--I learned that if I had the courage to allow inspiration a seat on my wagon I could, indeed, create more artistically successful designs. I had the seeds all along! What a surprise when that art was validated by my clients who then inspired me to reach even higher.

So now here I am holding both ends of a new candle--the 'chronological one' that says I should retire, not rewire. The other--the one desperate to create. Does that mean I discipline my self to crank out fifty novels between now and the end of the rainbow (even assuming I find an audience!) or do I discipline myself to sit down every morning and listen to my muses and follow their inspiration?

Yep, you guessed it.

I'm an old friend to discipline--a newer one to inspiration. Who knows--maybe the three of us will be surprised with an audience. If not I have these two friends who've helped me enjoy the process of trying.

Be Curious, Not Furious

I attended a new yoga class today--the class was new for me, yoga is not. Actually I attended it several years back and have recently returned to the Y where it is held for free three days a week. Anyway, the young woman who teaches it relayed a mantra early on that she'd borrowed from another teacher whose name I did not catch. The mantra is, "Be Curious, Not Furious."

For the class it applied to some of the more difficult moves she was planning to impose upon us. But, of course, it has a wider range of implications. I can start with what makes me furious, the least of which is having trouble with a yoga move. What does make me more furious is my dog not obeying my requests, as if I don't exist or she has temporarily lost her hearing. What also makes me furious is someone who steals a parking place in a crowded downtown location after I've been patiently waiting for the previous driver to exit it. And, being furious about the incessant rain that has plagued us lately here in Michigan.

Now for 'being curious.' Why does my dog not obey my requests? If I might refer for a moment to a book I recently read, ANIMALS MAKE US HUMAN, by Temple Grandin with Catherine Johnson, the premise is that dogs don't listen to us usually because they don't understand our request and not because they are being stubborn. We need to think like a dog and to frame our expectations within what comes natural for them. The ultimate joy for a dog, Grandin says, is to satisfy their basic emotion of Seeking. The other three dominant emotions for dogs are Rage, Fear and Panic so clearly Seeking is their favorite. It leads to such behaviours as sniffing at the bases of trees, running like banshees in the woods, exploring the orifices of other dogs and chasing after a Frisbee. So when training our dog if we can turn our expectations into a Seeking activity they will delightfully latch on to it. So why doesn't my dog come when I call her? Because I haven't made a game out of it. Or, because (this is my most common resort) I'm not holding out a bowl of food (another bonus of the Seeking emotion).

If my request were to escalate to the level of inciting Rage, Fear or Panic in my dog I may get a positive response simply as her way of eliminating the stress. But, who knows what response I might get the next time--maybe she'd run away and what good would that do?

As for the parking lot event--I have to admit I was furious. How much more positive would it have been for me to be curious about what drove that soul to be so wicked as to steal my space? I might even have been empathetic determining that perhaps they had some kind of emergency or were late for a critical appointment or were about to lose their job because they were late for work.

And finally, the weather. What would being curious instead of furious accomplish? Perhaps it would lead to introspection on my own mindset. Why do I waste my energy on something I cannot control?

Back to Grandin's book--I'll review it in a later post and I highly recommend it!

GRACE NOTES Moves Forward

I am excited to report that I have reached a milestone of sorts with my first novel which I am entitling GRACE NOTES. After twelve drafts, I think it is decent enough to push it under the doors of some of my friends for critique. Meanwhile, I will work on my query letter to entice agents near and far to fight over representing it. This is what I have plan to send to them:

Dear Ms. Smith,

In reading your blog I see that you represent authors of works similar to my literary novel, Grace Notes. In it Billy Mann, despite a moonstruck mother and alcoholic father, is an attentive big brother, popular athlete and talented musician. He is also the heartthrob of his pretty next-door neighbor, Evvie.

When driving home in a snowstorm Billy’s car strikes and kills her little sister. His life goes into a skid that doesn’t stop until he’s lost everything--his promising band, his nurturing mother, his friends and Evvie, who’d become his bride.

Billy replaces them with drugs, crime and an eight-year prison term. Evvie’s decision to leave breaks her heart as much as his; but she is pregnant and fears that life with him mirrors the same abusive path that destroyed her childhood.

After thirty years, Billy discovers his daughter, a classical violinist, who teaches him what his mother could never convey. It isn’t drugs or a stage that will give him the strength to win back everyone he’d catapulted from his life--it is the huge heart he’s always had.

Grace Notes is set in Detroit where a dying auto heritage is shadowed by endless turbulence but also great music. It tells of heart-wrenching trials like those endured by Jodi Piccoult’s childhood sweethearts in The Pact. My theme of music as healing force takes its inspiration from Andre Dubus III’s Bluesman. And themes of undying love and forgiveness echo Kristin Hannah’s True Colors.

I have been an independent bookstore owner, reported for my university newspaper and edited a Detroit weekly. I have been published in Women’s Day and other national magazines.

At 106,000 words, Grace Notes is complete. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Jacqueline Carney

Book Review: Restitution by Eliza Graham

An historical novel is not normally what I pick up in a bookstore but when Eliza Graham indicated she was looking for persons to review her book I could hardly object. She is a member of the same online writing group that I am and my goal is to read and review as many members’ books as I can. This may take a while as the group, Backspace, is growing by leaps and bounds.

The main thrust of the novel takes place in eastern Germany during the end of World War II. It takes a few chapters to get into the complex story as it weaves from 1920 to 2002 in a series of flashbacks to Alix’s parents’ childhood and courtship, Alix and Gregor’s pre-war years as childhood friends, the War itself in eastern Germany and London, 2002, where Alix lives as an elderly woman.

It is a love story about childhood friends who are separated by the war but are reunited briefly, at which point they realize their affection for each other is more than a childhood fantasy. Alix’s father, a Baron, is a German resistance fighter who Alix suspects has been arrested after participating in a plot to kill Hitler. In a blinding snowstorm she is fleeing her homeland during the Reds’ invasion when she happens upon her friend, Gregor, now a member of the Russian army. Their night together is their last but what came of it, a baby boy; and the welfare of the boy’s father, Gregor, haunts Alix the rest of her life. Though Gregor was a reluctant member of the dreaded Russian army he helps Alix escape capture the day after their tryst and does not learn they had a child together until sixty years later.

Alix had felt pressured by circumstance to give her baby up to the family that housed her during her pregnancy. It is not until sixty years later, the point where the novel begins, that Alix is oddly reunited with her son in London in 2002.

Eliza Graham’s writing is tight, her settings are detailed and her voice true, if a bit formal--which I took to reference Alix’s aristocratic background. Eliza Graham’s flashbacks are confusing at first as they jump back and forth. But the dates at the heading of each chapter and Eliza’s deft writing voice soon bring the different stories together into a cohesive and moving story of innocence, love and bravery. It is a story familiar to many who lived through the war. Reliving it through Alix’s eyes is enchanting, educational and endearing.

I want to thank Eliza Graham for the review copy of her novel. I enjoyed it thoroughly and look forward to reading her prior work, Playing With The Moon.

Book Review: Bel Canto

Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett, is a rewarding read on so many levels I can't begin to cover them all. I think what stayed with me the longest is that it is about boundaries and barriers and about how people cross them (or ignore them) is what defines them.

The book opens at the end of a private performance by Roxanne Coss, a renowned opera soprano's, for a host of dignitaries at the lavish mansion of a South American vice-president in celebration of the birthday of Mr. Hosokawa. He was an opera fanatic and the founder and chairman of Japan's largest electronics corporation and the hope was that he would build a factory in the host company.

The first boundary is crossed when the lights go out and the accompanist leans over and sneaks a 'strong and passionate' kiss onto Roxanne's lips and thereby crosses over, doing what 'all the men and women in the room...collectively' desire.

We soon learn the lights were extinguished by a band of marauding revolutionaries who look to kidnap the president who is not even in attendance at the event. A stalemate ensues that allows both the terrorists and the hostages opportunity to enjoy the music that Roxanne and others provide--a music that seems to cross the boundaries of the dangers present and unite everyone in a beautiful, harmonious existence.

Ann Patchett’s liquid language and unique tale about a likely but unlikely scenario as both the bad guys and the good guys become hostage to the rapture of music; hostages fall in love with their captors and untouchable opera divas fall in love with their admirers. It is as deceiving in its simplicity as it is simple in its message.

Bel Canto is a story about what constitutes barriers, what nourishes them and what happens on either side. There are many. First, there is the kiss. Then there is the wall that divides the mansion from the town--the dignitaries from the working class. There are the guns that separate the hostages from the renegades. There is the barrier of language among the 38 hostages and their captors. There are the barriers that the large corporations and governments put on their employees and citizens. There are the cultural barriers that forbid young female revolutionaries to fall in love with corporate interpreters; or, American opera stars to fall in love with Japanese CEOs; or, militant generals to teach chess to their teenage foot soldiers; or, entrepreneurs to play piano for militants. All of these are lyrically crossed.

Through it all we read about the beautiful music, which brings everyone together in appreciation and we come to love Gen, Mr. Hosokawa’s interpreter, who brings everyone together in language.

But all this happens in a most unlikely world, a Camelot given temporary sustenance by circumstance--a dream that can never come true.

Jaws of Death

This morning I sat at my writing desk determined to stay on schedule with my novel, the one I started two years ago about the love triangle between a young mandolin prodigy, his childhood sweetheart and his sister, who worships his childhood sweetheart. I want to finish my editing--have set the end of September as my goal and have to edit 15 pages a day to accomplish this. I am on track--was on track--until this morning.

I opened my laptop just I heard a massive iron beast pull into the driveway of the house two doors from ours. Rumbling and beeping its way to the back yard it appeared 100 feet from my bay window in its slicker yellow majesty. It stretched its sturdy neck, lifted its mighty head, dipped it, opened its jaws and ripped a sedan-size hole into the roof of my neighbor's house. After twenty minutes of tearing, pulling and shredding the dirty deed was done. I'm not kidding. That's how much time it took to reduce a two story, red brick, four bedroom structure to the size of a dumpster. Wow. Back to work.

I often have morning cramps--have self-diagnosed it as IBS. Enough information. Had it this morning--I thought. Not so lucky. Five hours later, here in bed under my comforter, I have awoken with the clear realization that the bug, which downed my husband this entire week, got me. Swine variety? I hope not.

Just as well. The house is gone but the 'Jaws of Death' have spent the last five hours ripping up the concrete driveway. I hope my own house survives the earth tremors and that tomorrow is a better day.

So much for keeping deadlines. The flu is just another reason to hate this time of year.

Did I mention I don't like September?

How Do They Do That?

Two fighters for the underdogs died yesterday. Crystal Lee Sutton was the humble, but tenacious, textile worker who inspired Sally Field's movie, 'Norma Rae.' She was 33 when she took on the national textile company, J.P. Stevens, to question their treatment of workers.
She went on to be a tireless advocate for women's equality in the workforce and the unfair treatment of workers in general.

Most of us were very familiar with the other, Patrick Swayze, who said at one time his goal was “to do something that will affect the audience in a positive way, make them feel better about their lives and appreciate what they have.”

Another thing Patrick said really stuck with me as a writer. “People don’t identify with victims,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press, discussing his “North and South” character, originally written as a more passive man. “They identify with people who have the world come down on their heads and who fight to survive.”

But I am also awed by the ability of these two people to pick their battles and stick with them with an emotional intensity that indicates total devotion. Patrick ignored the Hollywood lifestyle for the world of Arabian horses on his San Gabriel Mountain ranch. He filmed an A & E series while undergoing cancer treatments. He took roles that portrayed him as a serious actor though he is truly eye candy for any baby boomer.

Both Crystal Lee and Patrick recognized the dangers of crystalline lifestyles. Lifestyles that are shiny on the surface but empty underneath. Better yet, they fought to bring attention to the meatier lifestyles, the ones that mattered to the folks whose worlds had come 'down on their heads.'

Damn.

Monday Musings--David Morrell

More Than Rambo's Father




For those of you who read thrillers and suspense fiction David Morrell's name is a household word. If you do not read thrillers and suspense you will surely recognize what he calls himself --'Rambo's father.'

But he is so much more than that.

David received the prestigious Bob Kellogg Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Internet Writing Community at Backspace's annual conference in New York city a week ago. As a member of Backspace I attended for my second time and was one of the lucky ones in the audience both for David's acceptance speech and his keynote address the following afternoon.

Among his many titles are the aforementioned Rambo story, FIRST BLOOD, BROTHERHOOD OF THE ROSE and more recently SCAVENGER and soon to be released SHIMMER. The last two are biotech thrillers. Haven't read SCAVENGER yet but my girlfriend who has read all his novels said it is really creeeeepy.

What David Morrell should have said is that he is the 'father' of all contemporary writers.

I am an avid reader and an occassional reader of thrillers. I love Marcus Sakey's books...as much because he is an awesome writer as because he is a dear friend of my daughter, Jennifer. I also enjoy Sean Chercover and have hosted an authors' party for both these men. I enjoy Karen Dionne, who writes environmental thrillers and have hosted her at my local Rotary Club. I also enjoyed books by Elmore Leonard, who lives nearby, as well as his son, Peter's, book, QUIVER.
Peter has a new one, TRUST ME, that I can't wait to read.

I hate to admit I had never picked up any of David Morrell's books but I bought three at the conference, have read two and loved them both. His characters are complex, his pacing is awesome and his plots are both exciting and believable. And I love his voice...like it's Halloween and you're sitting on his lap and he's telling you this scary story. I love this guy!

David shared his life story with us and it isn't pretty. It is a story he often shares so I won't repeat it all except to say that the man he is today is proof of his tenacity, internal strength and compassion. Born in Ontario Canada his father died in World War I before David was born. When he was three his mother drove him in a borrowed car to an orphanage in the country, dropped him off at the playground to join the other children, turned around and left. She did return for him after marrying a man who hated children and was abusive to both David and his mother. He attended school in Canada up until his PhD which he received at Penn State University and has lived in the USA ever since.

David has an obvious love for writing and for writers, and more than that he cares about both--so much so that he spends a large portion of his time helping young sprouts like me stay focused and inspired.

I'd like to summarize some of the inspiration he imparted at his Backspace Keynote Address.

First you have to love writing because if you are in it for the fame or the money you will likely be disappointed. He told about the disparaging comments one of his early mentor made about David's early stories.

Second you have to read a lot and write a lot because that is the only way you will improve.

Third (and this was the one that struck me hardest) you have to find your voice. Where? It's hiding out with your demons in the unpleasant basement of your subconscious. David suggested we explore our deepest emotions and then listen to our daydreams. Listen to the good ones but, more importantly, listen to the ugly ones; and never, ever, stop them until they have played out to the end.

More than one author has suggested that an unahppy childhood makes for a writer's gold and this is what they meant. And if you say your childhood was perfect so you have no inspiration--most likely you are lying!

Finally David said to keep your integrity and write the book you are intended to write. Write for the moment you are in. Don't let the market, or what others say is the market, influence you. All of that is, after all, out of your control.

Thank you David Morrell for your inspiring words and support.

Ashes to Ashes to ????

I had dinner with some sisters-in-law a month ago and a topic came up in the conversation that has come up many times before. What should we do with our parents' ashes? Dad died in 1996 and Mom in 1999. It took the past four weeks to even find Mom's ashes...they were still at the funeral home.

Now I know many of you will be horrified and I can understand that. But you have to understand my family. No, we are not dysfunctional in the literal sense of the word. We actually have two family reunions every year...summer and Christmas and most of us attend most of the time.

So, what is the problem and what are we going to do about it?

Stay tuned.

The whole thing got started because after that dinner I e-mailed my brothers and sister to determine, for certain, what had happened to the ashes. I wasn't pushing for closure...I was actually planning to write an essay and wanted to get the story straight.

I still plan to write the essay but will have to wait a while. Plans are brewing for this summer's reunion to bring closure after all.

10 Things I Learned This Week at Backspace

This past weekend I attended a conference in New York City sponsored by the online writers group I belong to called Backspace. This is the second year I have attended. Last year, having only been a member for two months and being the shy person I am, was wonderful; but this year I was able to put faces to the names of persons I have met online and that made a huge difference.

I thought I'd parody David Letterman by listing the ten best things I learned in hopes of:

A. Being able to remember them six months from now and
B. Passing them on to people who did not attend.

Ten Things I Learned at the Backspace Writer's Conference:

1. Love, Love, Love What You're Doing.

2. Write Well. Sounds obvious, which it is, but so is 'eat well' but most of us don't. David Morrell (Rambo's father, as he calls himself) spoke about finding your voice (he says it probably lies within your deepest fears) and letting your daydreams play out to their ugliest conclusions...they are clues to your essence.

3. A Golden Rule: Create an engaging character who actively overcomes tremendous obstacles to reach a desirable goal.

4. Query well...which implies you must understand your story and be able to pitch it in about 100 words.

5. Build a Platform. Even fiction writers can benefit tremendously from being experts in their field...not necessarily just writing but whatever they are writing about. If your story is about a blues musician, your platform could be blues musicians. If your story is about dysfunctional families, it could be about alcoholism. Then reach out to the persons (there are a million of 'em tied into online forums, etc.) to broaden your readership.

6. Be Nice to People. Another obvious one, right? Expand this to the persons you hope will buy into your book...agents, publishers and readers. Start by querying agents you have researched...learn their likes and dislikes...who they've represented and which of these books sold well and then personalize each query with what you learned.

7. Have an Online Presence. Agents universally said a website, blog or Twitter presence is extremely important because the print media is shrinking and with it the opportunities to have a presence with book reviews.

8. Be Wary About Self-Publishing. We heard it both ways. That agents and publishers shy away from self-published authors because they carry the stigma of being unprofessional. Then there is the case of THE LACE READER by Brunonia Barry which she initially self-published sold to William Morrow with an initial print of some astronomical number for huge money. HUGE money. But, we were warned, this was a one in a million shot. Most agents and publicists suggested that if your book has regional appeal you might look to self publish; otherwise look to the bigger houses.

9. Writing Your Book (to paraphrase Hemingway) is just the tip of the iceberg. The other 85% of the process is selling it.

Be active in the writing community...network (read: Backspace!).

Hire a publicist if you have any extra money as some publishing houses never had marketing budgets and other have put all their marketing dollars into the big sellers.

10. Be Passionate About What You're Doing.

Reflections on Motherhood, Perfection and Forgiveness

As some of you know I took an emotional plunge this spring and entered my novel, now in its 8th revision and NOT really ready for pitching to an editor, in Amazon's Amazing Breakthrough Novel Contest. Theoretically they accept 10,000 entries though they don't say how many actually enter.

The first phase eliminates all but 2,000 entries. The second phase eliminates all but 500. This is where my novel landed and I was pleasantly surprised. True confessions---I wanted to get some feedback from total strangers, specifically to the plot's potential and generally to my writing...which I know is amateurish at best. My writing is, however, improving and I do see light at the end of the endless tunnel.

Anyway, one thing this little exercise taught me was the power of the written word to reach people in ways I never expected. My novel contains a fair amount of pretty uncomfortable issues--alcoholism, child abandonment, homosexuality and incest. I did not set out to address these issues --my characters took me there and I did not think it fair to deny them their soap box. You might think this is strange but if you are a writer you will have a better understanding of this phenomenon.

The biggest reaction came to the alcohol and incest issues--mainly because the excerpt printed on Amazon contained such scenes. I was taken aback by how many persons have had experience with both of these human problems.

So, what is motherhood? And more importantly, how does it fail those it is supposed to nurture? There are as many answers to these two questions as there are mothers and children.

The bottom line is that even mothers, human ones that is, are human--yes, children, I hate to be the one to reveal such an overwhelming truth, but we are. This is not to say I am excusing what horrific or less than horrific failings most of us have as mothers--it is to say we need you to forgive us.

We need our children (and this can be extended to the most generic relationships) to accept us for what we are, make peace with us, and move on.

I think this is the essence of Mother's Day.

As a florist, which I was for 35 years, Mother's Day is by far the biggest holiday. Everyone has a mother. Children may only sneak out from under the woodwork on the second Sunday of every May--but they do sneak out. Let's be honest, some are driven by social pressure more than anything else. And, these were the customers who, I can admit now being retired, as a florist I looked upon with no small amount of skepticism.

But much of the country, in a collective quest for inner calm, recognizes their mothers and Mother's Day regularly and with a sense of compassion and affection and perhaps only a pinch of resentment over the eighteen or so years of putting up with our shortcomings.

I am not saying go out and buy your mother flowers, although that would help out the few remaining shop owners I knew. What I am saying is, if you feel that pinch (or more) of resentment, take a good hard look at it. You'll have to look inside to find its source and when you do, toss a rock at it. Surely, as your mother's child, you're perfect and will not miss your mark.

Then, when you feel a little better take another look inside. You might just find something about yourself that isn't so perfect either--you have no idea how it got there, but it did.

Then tell yourself that's okay. "If it's okay for Mom to be imperfect maybe its okay for me too."

And before you move on with the rest of your day, pick up one more rock, maybe a little larger this time, and kill two birds with it...the ones named 'Mom's Mistakes' and 'My Mistakes.'

Happy Mother's Day!

Book Review: Story of Edgar Sawtelle

I recently finished reading a fantastic novel, "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" by David Wroblewski.

Books about dogs and their humans have abounded at the top of the best seller lists for the past decade and have warmed the hearts of readers for centuries. My earliest memory of a heart wrenching dog story is of Disney’s “Old Yeller.” Another favorite is “Shaggy Muses, the Dogs Who Inspired Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton and Emily Bronte.” More recently “Marley and Me” by John Grogan is a delightful read. And Garth Stein’s “The Art of Racing in the Rain,” promises to be another.

But I think far and away, “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” has them all beat on language, story, craft and depth. It is a work that will remain in the minds and hearts of readers everywhere for decades to come.

The novel’s forboding prologue tells of an American soldier who, while stationed in the Korean War, trades medicine to an herbalist for his dying grandson in exchange for a deadly poison in an antique cruet. It was 1952 and the soldier declines to reveal his reason for wanting the potion.

Edgar is the long-awaited child of Gar and Trudy Sawtelle who married in 1951. Trudy had brought to the marriage an uncanny ability to train and understand Gar’s dogs like none other while he focused on the heredity of their lines and the details of breeding. His goal was to create dogs like no other that was a cross of all the best dogs he could find and call them simply ‘Sawtelle dogs.’

Edgar is preceeded in birth by two miscarried siblings and a brother who is stillborn and tenderly buried by Gar at the base of a birch grove on his property. Edgar is born a mute but his condition never comes between him and either the animals nor the people with whom he communicates except for his nemesis, his Uncle Claude who is unwilling to learn to read or use sign language.

Edgar becomes an integral part of his family’s dog breeding business and one of his tasks early on is selecting names for the pups, a challenge that becomes another form of communication for him.

From the time he was conceived Almondine, one of the Sawtelle dogs, is Edgar’s mentor, his protector and his muse. The idyllic setting and peaceful routines are, however, shattered with the arrival of Gar’s brother, Claude. Claude is a ne’er do well, a dog fighter and the discontented sibling and the thorn is Gar’s side. But Gar’s sense of familial obligation makes room in his heart and on his farm for the prodigal brother.

For the emotionless imposer, a take on Hamlet’s Claudius, “It was never a question of whether Claude could learn to do something, just a question of whether it would be worthwhile and how long it would take.” So eventually he finds a way to get rid of Gar, marry his wife and take over the kennel.

“The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” seeks to reveal the answers to several mysteries besides who caused Gar’s death. Edgar obsesses over learning the true story of how his parents met. But when Trudy finally tells him had has lost interest. And on several occasions Trudy asks her son if he knows yet what is so unique about a Sawtelle dog which, until the end, he cannot answer.

After his murder Gar comes to his son as an apparition during a driving rain storm to warn him about Claude. And Ida Paine, the ancient proprietor of Popcorn Corners’ grocery, to whom God told a secret when she was born, gives Edgar a psychic vision about his uncle, the old man in Korea and the antique cruet. “’And if you go,” she whispered, “don’t you come back, not for nothing. Don’t let the wind change your mind.’”

In the end I was left with the sense that it would be the Sawtelle dogs, Gar Sawtelle’s vision, the mutts he bred for their awesome individual qualities they’d bring to the future, that would eventually inherit the earth.

Essay, Edgar’s alpha, was the one who understood the meaning of the devastating fire, who then led the other dogs “through fence after fence...They would follow or they would not, she had only made the possibility clear.”

That was the secret of the Sawtelle dogs, their ability to choose. And, in the west, Forte the ghostly forefather of them all, stood on the treeline beyond the field. Essay “looked behind her one last time...along the way they’d come...turned and made her choice and began to cross.”

Beyond the suspense, compassion and insight of the story itself is the skill with which David Wrobelwski spins it. His imagery, dialogues and interplay of characters and scenes is deft and delicious.

“The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” is the debut novel of a 48 year old software designer but I have a suspicion the literary world has, fortunately, not read the last of David Wroblewski.

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards (ABNA) Simplified

As you may know, my novel has made it to the semi finals in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards Contest. Now it is up to my readers to vote and give their comments.

So many of my readers have had some trouble with the Amazon website to read the excerpt, vote and write their reviews that I have tried to simplify it here.

To read the excerpt itself click on this linkhttp://tiny.cc/Q2SvV
Or, send me a comment in the area below this post and I will send you a word document with the excerpt.

Once you have read the excerpt you can return to this link http://tiny.cc/POrF4 and RATE MY EXCERPT and write your review.

Thanks a million!

Lastly, if you want to read other other wonderful reviews I have already received, click this link:
http://tiny.cc/Q2SvV

Exciting News about Amazon's Novel Awards--And a plea for your help!

I am very excited to announce that my novel, BREAK SONG, has made it to the quarter finals in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards!!!!

This is the writing world's equivalent of American Idol so now that I have made it past the original 10,000 entries to 2,000 and down to 500, I need your reviews to make it to the next level.

So, please, click on the link below and download the excerpt to my story and rate it. You can review it as well. My success depends on the number of good ratings. Hopefully there will be something in it that you find worth while!

My story is about a musician whose life takes a tailspin when his mother, Maria, abandons her family, but two things keep him on track--his childhood sweetheart, Evvie, and Maria's mandolin, which she'd taught him to play better than anyone in the Midwest. The band Adam forms has a promising future until his father destroys their recording contract.

The story follows Adam and Evvie in Detroit from the sixties to the present. Distraught after his band's breakup Adam turns to cocaine to soothe his soul and not even Evvie's affection can bring him back. He loses her to Michigan's north woods where she raises their child, and his addiction lands Adam in prison.

25 years later Adam is assaulted by his nemesis after a high school reunion and Evvie's lost letters surface. Now recovered from drugs, Adam reconciles with Evvie and his daughter he knew nothing about and he goes back to playing his music until his past has its final revenge.

So, here are the steps:

1. Click the following link to Review BREAK SONG
   
2. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001UG3CF8
   
3. If the link doesn't work copy and paste it into your browser.
4. The download is free and is accessible by clicking the button on the upper right corner. Sign up for free to become an Amazon member if you are not already.
5. Write your review.
6. After scrolling down to the bottom of the customer review section, click to create your own review.
7. Return to the above link to give me a review...hopefully five stars!
   
8. If you have any suggestions about my writing or the story line, I would love to hear your comments... write me at jacquelinecarney@sbcglobal.net.

Book Review: Water for Elephants

I have a thing about fog. While grey skies in Michigan take me into a hole that is difficult to deal with, fog intrigues me. Maybe it is its ethereal nature, as if by poking my finger into it the greyness disappears like air in a balloon. Maybe it is the calmness that it invokes.

Southwest Florida had a rare dose of extended fog early this month...it crawled in off the Gulf late one afternoon while I was driving home from the north and thought maybe a gigantic fire was raging in a palmetto forest but I could not smell smoke. It was like an opaque cocoon that both comforted and unnerved me and it didn't roll back out to sea for five more days.

About that time I finished reading Sara Gruen's WATER FOR ELEPHANTS, released in 2006,
which I would recommend to anyone. It is a delightfully romantic story set in the last depression
(to separate it from our current one!) told from the memory of 93 year old Jacob Jankowski whose parents are killed when he is finishing Veterinary School in New York. Though he had planned to join his father's thriving veterinary practice, Jacob learned not only that his parents had mortgaged everything they owned to send him to school but that even his father's practice was dissembled to pay their debts.

Penniless and unable to concentrate on his final exams Jacob runs off to seek solace and winds up on the train of a disfunctional circus at a time when any job at all, no matter how horrific, was worth keeping.

For seven years Jacob found his love of all creatures, his high moral standards and his passion for Marlena at life-threatening odds with his superiors whose personality issues ranged from
wanton narcissism to murderous greed.

Jacob is now a spunky old man whose mind is stronger than his body and who rails against the inane rules of the nursing home he calls home. He rarely recognizes his infrequent family visitors but remembers in finite detail his days in the circus. Sara Gruen deftly carries the story from Jacob's current frustrations back to his luscious recollections of what once was. His longing for his beloved Marlena, a beautiful equestrian and star of the show whom he eventually marries but who passes before him, sugar coats his memories that are not always so pleasant.

The third dominant character is Rosie, an elephant purchased for her promise to redeem the circus's failing revenues and who placidly endures her terrible abuse until her own sense compassion is uncontrollably violated.

What endeared me to this story was Sara's wonderful understanding of people and what motivates them to make bad choices. She juxtaposes horrendous cruelty against unbounded compassion but the last page left me with confidence that goodness is master and that all creatures, animal and human, deserve and benefit from it. Her research into a world of human and animal oddities that is foreign to most of us is thorough and her sense of humor softens the sharp edges of an often wicked world.

The circus world is a microcosm from our past but its 'rubes' and its stars teach lessons in WATER FOR ELEPHANTS that are universal and current with a pace that grabbed me within the first few pages and held me captive until the end.

Getting back to the fog...by the fifth day it began to unnerve me. The sun would peek out midday and then recede to let the greyness return. Maybe it was just to remind me of what I 'd escaped for two months of winter. Or, maybe it was to reassure me that fog is like a good read or the healing time spent writing--a lacuna that both embraces and tries to understand the sharp edges of the present.

Monday Musings #2--Light Fantastic

Saturday, I took a walk with my dogs (of course)...total of five,
including me. It was midway through our biggest snowfall yet this year--twelve inches over 24 hours--and it was after sunset, so I could feel the big, fluffy flakes tickle my nose but I couldn't see them. Not, that is, until I photographed a few scenes along the Rouge which rivers through our neighborhood. Then, magically, the flakes appeared like tiny Tinkerbells of light, floating across the front of my camera lens. At first I thought the flakes were on my lens and tried to wipe them away. When I realized they were actually drifting from above, I let my excitement carry me away and began snapping wildly to see how many I could 'catch' digitally.

And then I began to think about this phenomenom, new to me, but probably not to most photographers.

What other aspects of our lives do we know exist, can sometimes feel, but cannot see, until they reflect the light?

Emotion--love, regret, fear, joy--and the range between all these; the essence of our heart.

Spirit--the food of our soul, the invisible connection between ourselves and our world as it is now, as it has been experienced by those before us and as it will exist tomorrow.

Knowledge--the stuff of brains which sets us apart from animals and plants because it enables us, for better or worse, to remember our past, anticipate our future and contemplate our demise.

And from where does the light shine that illuminates these three, renders them visible?

It shines from us, from the way we live and the way we treat every living creature we encounter.

If these encounters are not brilliant, emotion, spirit and knowledge will still exist, but we will lose out--we will not enjoy the childish joy that they inspire.

Monday Musing--#2; Self Control and Religion

I know this is actually Tuesday but what are a few hours in the overall scheme of things? It will still be my Monday Musing.

In the New York Times today there is an article about a Dec. 29 post on John Tierney's blog, nytimes.com/tierneylab. His question was "Does religion promote self-control?"

I think his definition of religion is pretty open ended...ranging from Roman Catholic catechismic regulations to free-base meditation.

Anyway, the post they quoted in the paper that stuck with me was written by Guanshi Edyo. He says that "psychologists are only now starting to understand how a disciplined regimen of positive thinking can engender physical changes in the brain that increase health and well-being.'

Guanshi writes that religious practices such as yoga, pray, music and meditation are similar to techniques of cognitive-behavioral therapy. I'm guessing Buddha knew that intuitively as did Jesus and Mohammed and agree with this writer that our scientists and doctors are just now catching up to them.

I was with some friends last night and we were discussing the fact that a new archbishop, a local guy, has been appointed to replace Cardinal Maida; which led to a brief discussion of religion and fell on the final note that it doesn't matter where our children go to church as long as they go.

I would take that one step beyond to say it doesn't matter if we 'go' someplace physical as long as we take time each day, yes--each day--to stop and smell the roses. It's not only for our own benefit but to improve our connections with those around us.

Hence my photo with this post...not a rose but a beautiful passion flower that graces the left side of my writing desk.


So I'm adding this to my goals for 2009...daily positive meditation coupled with daily brisk walks.

Think I can do it?

Jacqui

Blog Improvement Challenge, Week 1

I have linked into a blog called 'Out of the Blue', http://alessandrasplace.blogspot.com/2009/01/blog-improvement-project-week-1-setting.html,

Alessandra is going to walk her visitors through a year of blog improvement. I have high hopes!

The first assignment is to look back on 2008 and set goals for 2009.

2008 was the first year for my blog as a writer. It has lots of room for improvement.

I set up my other blog two years ago to write about my other love, dogs. It is http://gone2thdogs.blogspot.com.

My congent goal for Words 'n Wags is to post at least three times a week about what is happening in the literary world. One will be a book review, one my Monday Musings and one a sporadic commentary on whatever comes to my feeble mind.

My mechanical goal for Words 'n Wags is to increase my readership and meet people from around the world who share my love for books (and dogs...hard to separate the two).

Good Morning 2009

Well, it's here--2009. I have the same old New Year's resolutions I've had since bread was sliced mechanically but this year I also have some anticipations--some things I hope will happen.

So, in no particular order, here they are:
--that my novel, currently titled BREAK SONG, will be good enough to send to some patient friends to read...ideally soon enough to polish it and find an agent. WHEW...that's a big one.
--that Barack Obama will have a smooth transition into the White House.
--that my daughter, Jennifer, will pass the Massachusetts bar.
--that my daughter, Julie, will get a dozen new private violin students.
--that my daughter, Rebecca, will sell a dozen paintings.
--that my husband, Don, will perform a dozen times with his re-created rock band.
--that our country will begin to withdraw from Iraq.
--that my 60th birthday, and those of my peers, slide by in the company of good health, warm friends, fine wine, inspiring music and great conversation.
--that the world will return to an upward economic trend.

Tall order but nothing impossible.

I'd enjoy reading about what the rest of you are anticipating. Please share in the comment section of this post.