“True life is lived when the tiny changes occur.”  ─ Leo Tolstoy

 January trundles along and New Hampshire remembers, at last, that it is supposed to be cold here. Temperatures have been in the single digits the last few mornings. The icy draft sneaks in my office window and wraps itself around me in the late afternoon as I work huddled over my computers. The gaiety of Christmas has been packed into boxes and returned to the attic. It is easy to take a tally on where I am in terms of meeting the goals I set on the first day of the year and feel discouraged. But why?

 It is important to remember that most  permanent changes take place slowly.  Rarely are we allowed the luxury of altering the demands of the lives in which we are attempting to make these changes. My two goals: Become healthier and more fit and Publish Francesca’s Foundlings must take place against the same constraints that were obstacles to success last year, the largest of which is lack of time.

 It is important then to observe and celebrate the tiny changes in our lives as Tolstoy suggests. I wanted to go the gym five days last week but managed to find the time go twice. Instead of mourning over this, I have bought a package of shiny stars and  I slap them the on the calendar to mark the days that I have gone.  Childish and silly? Maybe but you should try it, it works. Each star is worth a dollar of mad money that I can collect at the end of the month and spend on whatever I wish.  

January, February and March can be discouraging here is New England. One way I have found to combat that is by making tiny changes. I try to read some poetry, buy fresh flowers and honor celebrations both large and small. As a nation we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. today.

At my house, we celebrate the birthday of our resident canine, Admiral Grace who is ten today. The joy she gives us is immeasurable.

Happy Birthday, Grace!

 “By perseverance the snail reached the ark.”  ─ Charles  Haddon Spurgeon

Today is the second day of January. This is the day that I’m glad that I no longer make New Year’s Resolutions. The word resolution sounds so final. Maybe that’s why it is easy to give up on them the first time we “break” them. People have told me that they don’t make resolutions because not keeping them made them feel like they had failed.

In my day job I am an Instructional Designer. The first thing I do for any training or communication that I’m working on is to set the goal. Part of the process is to actually formalize it: Upon completion of this training, the student should be able to…A goal is something that we work toward. We are not expected to get there immediately. This is why I like them. They allow for imperfections and are much friendlier.

I love the image of the two snails slowly making their way to the ark while being passed by thundering rhinos, zebras, gazelles and everyone else.  The point is that the snails got there.

My writing career is a lot like that. I took a long time publish MacCullough’s Women leaving it at the bottom of my desk drawer when life got busy. I set two goals for 2012. After thinking about it, I decided that two was enough for this year. The first was to publish Francesca’s Foundlings and the second was to get as fit as I possibly can be.

Think of 2012 as a diary filled with blank pages waiting to be written on. Life is a journey best enjoyed by moving purposefully toward your goals at your pace. The point is to get there.

Did you set any goals for 2012 ?

 “Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.”  ─ Mark Twain

Francesca’s Foundlings, the second book in the Lynton Series, is named for a doll shop bearing the same name. There is both a long and a short answer to the question why I chose this for the background of the story. The long answer is hidden in the character of Franny MacCullough. You will have to read MacCullough’s Women to discover what it is.

The short answer is that the writer (me) has always loved dolls. I had numerous dolls, each with his or her unique name and personality, when I was a little girl. As an adult, I, like Franny, collected dolls and have had the pleasure of visiting several wonderful doll shops like the one that Franny owns in Francesca’s Foundlings.

Here are some of the dolls that you will find in the window of the Franny’s shop in Lynton.

  The baby doll in this picture is wearing a christening dress and hat featuring lace that was made by hand by grandmother almost hundred years ago. My mother made this outfit for the doll and gave it to me one Christmas.

This picture is of   “Kathy” a baby doll made by the Alexander Doll Company in the 1950s.  I had a larger version of this doll dressed in pink given to me by Santa for Christmas when I was a little girl.  Unfortunately I no longer have my own doll, but I found this smaller one in a doll shop in Maine. “Kathy” will make a cameo appearance in Francesca’s Foundlings.

Do you have a cherished toy that you have kept from your own childhood?

 “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for?”  ─ Robert Browning

Brid, Franny, and Sofia all believe in the power of changing what doesn’t work. MacCullough’s Women is about the ability that women have always had to adapt to meet the demands of their lives.

This week, the very last of the year, is a favorite of mine because it allows you to set the stage for the year to come. I stopped making resolutions long ago but I am a firm believer in the power of setting goals. I have learned not to make too many. Here are some things that you can do in preparation for the first day of the New Year.

The Magic Hat

Write down your goals on separate slips of paper. Be as specific as possible. Don’t write “I want to lose weight.” Instead, write, “I want to lose 10 pounds.”  Write down as many goals as you want.  Put them in a hat, shake it and pick out four slips of paper. Those will be your goals for 2012. You can decide to pick less if you wish but don’t pick more. If there is one thing you feel you must do, then write it down and don’t put it  in the hat. Instead, make that your first goal. Pick as many as three more from the hat 

The Vision Board

Create a vision that reflects your goals. Take a piece of poster board and cover it with pictures, words, cards, fabric, paint swatches, etc. You can use anything that illustrates your goals. Vision boards are highly personal and very motivating. Once your vision board is complete, place it where you will see it every day.

Make a Plan

Use whatever method works for you: a notebook, your IPad, an Excel spreadsheet, a calendar. You need some way to document what  to do in order to achieve a specific goal.

Gather Your Tools

This is the week to buy your sneakers, bathing suit, pedometer, or Rosetta Stone, find a piano teacher or a walking buddy, or open a saving account labeled “Trip to Paris”.  You get the idea.

2012 is going to be a great year. I can feel it.  Have you thought about your goals?

 “I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.”  ─ Maya Angelou

“Franny’s main concern tonight seemed to be the Christmas tree lights.” Neil answered. “I suppose she’s in shock. “She kept saying who’ll put the lights on the Christmas tree now?”

Decorating the Christmas tree is one of winter’s hallowed traditions and for so many of us is the storehouse for some of our most cherished memories. As the years pass and our lives change, when we place our treasured ornaments  on the tree, we often find ourselves surrounded by loved ones who are long gone.

I am hoping this holiday season finds you celebrating with the people you love and good book to read in front of fire.

“If you are not discouraged by your writing on a regular basis, you might not be trying hard enough.”  ─ Maxwell Perkins

I certainly have been discouraged by my attempts at blogging! What I have learned since I began last summer is:

• A lot of people blog, some more successfully than others.
• Blogging is NOT the same as talking.
• It’s really hard!

Last week I consulted with blogging expert and teacher, Wendy Thomas. She gave me some wonderful ideas that I will be trying out  in my blog over the next few months. I hope you enjoy them.

The week before Christmas can be full of magic if we allow ourselves to relax enough to see it.  

 Enjoy the anticipation of what lies ahead. Sometimes that alone can be enough to make the holidays special.

Look for joy in unexpected places.  This week you can find it where you least expect it.

One of my most cherished Christmas memories was creeping into the hospital shortly after dawn on Christmas morning with my sister and our families to surprise my mother who had fallen and broken her hip two days before. The laughter coming from her room brought an audience of doctors and nurses on the early morning shift peeking in the door see where all the fun was.

 We are surrounded by the artificial and the forced. Give yourself  a break from the mall and take a walk. Soak in nature’s way of celebrating.

 What is your own most cherished Christmas memory? Maybe this is the year to make one…

 “Honour the miraculousness of the ordinary.”  ─ Andrew Motion

People, real or fictitious, are seldom simple. All characters a writer creates are composed of layers. It is the task of the writer to flesh out these layers with details that are almost always composed of ordinary things such as Sherlock Holmes pipe or deerstalker hat.  When I begin to shape a character the first thing I do is select five words that help to show my readers who that character is. Here are the five items that I would chose to define me:

1.  Red Shoes

Red shoes make me happy. I usually have at least one pair in my closet. Currently, I own three pairs. The small pair of red double buckle sandals were my daughter’s. I keep them on my desk to remind me of how precious she will always be to me.

2.      Books 

Plain and simple: I love books and everything about them – the words, the covers, and the illustrations. Like many of you, I reluctantly joined the world of e-books three years ago. While I have come to appreciate the conveniences that e-books provide including buying them while sitting in bed and being able to easily carry a stack of stories on a trip, I confess I still love to hold a book in my hand. As a child, I would ask for a book rather than a toy. A short list of some of my favorites include: Gone with the Wind, The Wilder Sisters, All the Harry Potters, A Piece of Heaven and The Shell Seekers. It is no surprise that with the exception of Harry, these books all are about women who have stayed with me since I met them in the pages of these books. Scarlett, Rose, Luna, Lily, and Penelope have all become old friends who I revisit whenever I need a lift.

3.      Hats

I have always had hats, some decorated with feathers or fur, pilfered from my godmother’s attic and some purchased on a whim. As a teenager, I wore hats when nobody else did. Long before the expression “Signature Style” was in vogue, I was known for my hats. Like  my red shoes, hats make me happy and when I wear one, it is a sign that all is right in my world.  

 4.      Animals

I have shared a home with an animal (or animals) all my life. Dogs, cats, birds, turtles in college, and a lop-eared rabbit named Cornelius McSweeney. I loved them all. Unlike humans they offer unconditional love, never make you feel that you have screwed up and listen without interrupting. I can’t imagine my life without them.

5.  Dolls  

Francesca’s Foundlings, the doll shop in Lynton, comes from a dream that I once had of opening just such a store. Every year at Christmas, when I was a little girl, my clever mother would buy my sister and me a doll and make a trunk of beautiful doll clothes for the dolls to wear. One of those dolls, “Kathy” sold by Madame Alexander in the 1950’s plays a cameo role in Francesca’s Foundlings.

What five words would you use to describe yourself?

 “Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.”  ─ Edward Dahlberg

Last month I went to Ireland to visit my daughter and her husband. One rainy Sunday, on what the Irish call a soft day, I found myself in the small town of Scartaglen in County Kerry chasing the ghost of my paternal grandmother. A woman of many names according to the legal documents she left behind that list her as Kathleen, and Katherine, she is buried in Calvary Cemetery outside Boston as Catherine. A trip to the Irish Life Center on Lower Abbey Street in Dublin confirmed that it was as Catherine she was born on the 25th of November 1882 the daughter of Cornelius and Ellen O’Connor.

We drove white-knuckled through the Irish countryside on roads grudgingly forced to accommodate two cars to Scartaglen where the Post shares a home with the petrol station. We told the man behind the cash register we were trying to trace my grandmother whose name was Catherine O’Connor. He told us that we might try O’Connor’s Pub ‘just along up the road.”

It was now about 10:30 on Sunday morning. Opening the door to the pub, we took a step back in time. In a cramped dark space, smelling of peat we found three men who would not see seventy-five again sitting around the bar nursing their pints. The barkeep was a woman who identified herself as Joan. We told her that we had been sent there in search of Catherine O’Connor, daughter of Cornelius O’Connor who had once been the parish clerk. She conferred with her three patrons. In a conversation dotted with Irish, they decided we must mean Connie the Barrister who had been the  clerk at St. Gertrude’s, the old chapel. His house, they informed us, was up the hill. Joan disappeared for minute and then returned to tell us she had called a classmate whose mother lived in the house of Connie the Barrister. The lady had put on the kettle and was waiting for us. After a receiving a set of elaborate directions that included, passing a green field once owned by a lad who went to America where he died of a broken heart, we walked up the hill to find my personal piece of Irish history.  

The lady of the house, Julie Brosnan, (yes, indeed, she IS his cousin) was waiting for us along with her son, Paddy. Julie showed us the room where Connie died and she believed that my grandmother was born. The house was tiny. It was instantly clear why Catherine, James, Patrick and Mary had left for America. Walking back down the dirt road they traveled as they began their journey, I thought about the controversy surrounding immigration today. I realize that this is a complex issue. However, I think people often lose sight of the fact that so many Americans are descended from people who also came with only what they could carry in search of a better life. And if they had not made that brave journey, where would we be?  

A reader once asked me if I had to do much research into the Irish culture in order to successfully write MacCullough’s Women. In fact, I did no research as the ghosts of my grandparents have always been in the background of my life . Their courage and sacrifices created the foundation for the lives their grandchildren live today. As far as Catherine is concerned, the trip to Scartaglen brought this lovely dark-haired Irish woman who died when my father was a toddler a little bit closer.

 “’Writing is a dog’s life, but the only one worth living.”  ─ Gustave Flaubert

The three animals featured in MacCullough’s Women are real. I changed their names and dropped them into the pages of the book. They arrived there straight from my memory, one because of a promise I made to him. I loved them all. My life has been full of cats and dogs. By the time I am finished writing you might meet them all.

THOMAS (the cat)

Thomas’s real name was Patrick. My daughter decided he must be Irish because of his orange-colored hair. So of course, he needed an Irish name. He soon became “The Paddy Cat” or just “Paddy”. The first time we saw him he was curled in a ball sleeping in his water dish at the Humane Society. He exhibited (as does Thomas) all the characteristics that make orange tabby tomcats so wonderful. He loved to cuddle, tended to be clumsy, sounded like he weighed much more than he did when he came pounding up the stairs, had the ability to appear to be laughing and ruled the dogs he shared the house with no mercy. I hope you get the picture because unfortunately I couldn’t find one for you.

LUCY (the English Lab)

My daughter dropped in to visit on the night of her 21^st birthday. She was in route back to Rhode Island with a group of her friends. When she called to tell me she was coming by, she mentioned that she had gotten a dog. I saw Teal’s blocky head and barrel chest coming through the door and I was convinced she was a Rottweiler. “Don’t be ridiculous,” my daughter told me. “She’s an English Lab.”  And so she was, as well as being a love. Teal never met a two-legged person that she didn’t like (small furry four-legged individuals were another story.)  She greeted everyone she met with a present, be it a hastily grabbed toy or, in a pinch, a spare shoe. She loved the car and had a horror of being left behind. In true boomerang generation fashion, she lived with us for four years sharing the house with a rogue springer spaniel who adored her. She put up with just so much of his antics and then would body slam him around the room to let him know who was really in charge. She holds the distinction of being the only big dog my husband has ever loved. We still miss her.

OLIVER (the English Springer Spaniel)

His grandfather, AM CH Sallilyn’s Condor aka Robert won Best of Show at Westminster in 1993. He was named for the last man to hold the rank of a five star admiral in the United States Navy. Halsey was special and he knew it. As an admiral, he outranked the retired Navy commander who paid for his dog biscuits. He was what is known as “typey” in the world of pure-bred dogs meaning he looked the way the standard for his breed said he should. He was funny, a wily thief, brave, stoical in the face of unrelenting pain from a  dysplastic right hip and he held my heart between his snowshoe paws. The winter before he died, there was an article in the Nashua Telegraph about New Hampshire writer, Jodi Picoult.  Her dog, also a springer spaniel, was mentioned in the article and was seated next to her in the accompanying picture. I promised Halsey that he could be in the author photo when I published my first book. Instead, he lives on as Oliver in the pages of MacCullough’s Women.

In case you are feeling sorry for the current occupant of the canine throne, you will be sick of her by the time you finish the third book in the Lynton Series.

“Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.”  ─ Orson Scott Card

Last Saturday night I went to the fights. I surprised even myself by going. It happened like this. My niece, Brigid, is engaged to the fighter Todd Wilson. Todd was fighting his eleventh fight (undefeated) and my husband and I were invited.  My initial reaction was to stay behind with the women and let the men go to the fight. My inner writer kicked me and said, “Whoa. When do you think you will ever get the chance to go to a fight in the ring again, huh?” So much to the amazement of many people who know me, I went along.

Our seats were high up and far enough way to be ideal for me. I had a panoramic view of the venue and was not spit or bled upon. I also didn’t hear any grunts of pain. There were several fights in addition to Todd’s. The one that surprised me the most was between two young women. And those girls punched.

Here are some interesting things that this writer saw:

• There were lots of senior citizens (men) at the event. Some with young children (their grandchildren?) usually boys.
• Many of the women were dressed in glittery dresses and very high heels and LOTS of makeup.
• One young woman was carrying an infant who could not have been more that two week old. (My inner writer immediately starts spinning a story on why this baby is there. Is the Dad one of the fighters?)
• Most of the fighters (called Warriors at this fight) walk in to their own theme music surrounded by an entourage
• If they were not hitting one another they could be dancing (I realize that you boxing aficionados know this, but I did not) so gracefully did they move around the ring.
• Some fighters have groups of supporters identified by tee-shirts. Todd’s are green. 
• The excitement and the need to yell things like: “Get him. Knock his head off! Etc…is catching. I was accused of being blood-thirsty by the person sitting next to me.

Todd won and is still undefeated. And I am pretty sure that there will be a fight in one of my books someday.  It was very informative and FUN.

I want to point you to some exciting new writing. If you like science fiction (even if you don’t usually read it, travel a little), another one of my nieces, Kate O’Connor, has just had a short story, The Sun Dodgers published in the anthology Pressure Suite – Digital Science Fiction Anthology 3. Kate introduces a great character, Amelia Redgrave, who I believe (and hope) we will see more of in the future. Kate is a talent to watch.

If you have read MacCullough’s Women and liked it, please consider writing a review on Amazon.com. MacCullough’s needs at least ten reviews to look credible and we are currently at five. As you will see when you read the ones that are there, the review does not need to be long. Thanking you in advance for your support.