a double-dip Sunday

From the NY Times Review of Books:

"A book itself threatens to kill its author repeatedly during its composition,” Michael Chabon writes in the margins of his unfinished novel “Fountain City” — a novel, he adds, that he could feel “erasing me, breaking me down, burying me alive, drowning me, kicking me down the stairs.” 

Yes, oh yes . . . too many distractions, too many overnight guests, too many 104-degree days to write convincingly. My WIP buried me alive and stomped on my shallow grave over the past few days.


On a totally different subject, here's what I'm missing by spending the summer in New England instead of the Bahamas. My friend and neighbor Marjolein (Abaco Artist) posted this on her blog. It's the sea out in front of our houses at Great Cistern. Oh, to be in a kayak . . .

quote for the day

Plutocracy too long tolerated leaves democracy on the auction block, subject to the highest bidder ~ Bill Moyers

 Politics has gotten awfully messy this week. Moyers has a way of cutting to the chase.

back from NYC

Back from ThrillerFest and SO delighted that I can hang around in my fuzzy robe and listen to birdsong over the marsh today

The highlight of the program was Ken Follett’s talk on Thursday morning. He was everything a good speaker should be: well-organized, clear, informative, and gently self-deprecating. He made a delightful contrast to some of the rather large egos wandering the halls.

But the absolute best part of ThrillerFest was the chance to talk to other writers. I keep saying that one of the reasons I love writing is that I really love solitude. I prefer sitting alone with my laptop and a story in my head to just about anything else. Just about. I guess it is nice to put on earrings and a nice dress occasionally, and it was wonderful to make new friends.

I garnered seven requests for material from the agent pitch sessions. And one very honest “I’m fried and have no idea if your project is right for me. Send me a query with ThrillerFest on the subject line. I need a Tylenol.” Me, too.

I’ll get back to work tomorrow, okay?

quote for thought

I read this in one of my morning blog-reads. It’s a quote from Toni Morrison’s novel LOVE:

“Love is the weather. Betrayal is the lightning that cleaves and reveals it.”

It reminds me that I ought to go back and dip into Toni Morrison again; it has been far too long.

change of plans

My WIP is proceeding in fits and starts. I had planned to drive to North Carolina in a few weeks to tune into the atmosphere where most of the story takes place. As I already hold a lot of that in my memory, I’ve changed my mind: That’s going to be my reward for a decent first draft. Instead, I’m heading to Thrillerfest in NYC next month.

It’s my birthday!

I was going to give myself the day off but the ‘another year older and what exactly have you done with your life?’ monkey jumped on my back. As I rehashed the early years, the bad years, the good ones . . . the recent bad ones, a quotation came to mind. I couldn’t quite remember the whole thing, but – thank God for google! – I found it.

. . . Years ago, when I was nearing the end of a painful divorce, I got away to Mexico for a week to stay with a friend of my mother. Unfortunately, our paths crossed at 30,000 feet as she had received news of the sudden death of her brother and was flying to New York while I was on my way to Oaxaca. She left another house guest to pick me up at the airport and show me around, a man about my age who had just become engaged to be married – for the first time. To make short and poignant story merely short, let’s say that we hit it off. The quotation comes from Michael Ventura, from a magazine article we read and then talked about until it was time for him to leave for the airport.

Here it is. Thank you, Randy, wherever you are.

We know now that our dreams are not going to come true. Are never going to come true. We have learned that our dreams are important not because they come true, but because they take you places you would never have otherwise gone, and teach you what you never guessed was there to learn.

love to see this

This would make a great cover for the dust jacket of The Black Desert - seashells in the Sahara.