“Self-confidence is the surest way of obtaining what you want. If you know in your own heart you are going to be something, you will be it. Do not permit your mind to think otherwise. It is fatal.”  ─ George Patton

What is it that you haven’t done, that you always wanted to do?  Or is there something that you used to do and enjoyed doing that you no longer do because you: are too old, not in good enough shape, don’t have the time or the money to do or are afraid of looking foolish?

I am a firm believer in two things: evaluating where you are and reinvention. As we move through life we all make decisions that direct our path. Some are trivial and some alter it completely. It is easy as time passes to tell ourselves that we have let something slip beyond our reach. I have wanted to be a writer since I was a teenager. I have talked about (and no doubt bored friends and family!) writing a book for years. I always let something get in the way. Last winter with some help from my best friend, who also happens to be my husband, I realized that the time to do it was now.

 I had been working on MacCullough’s Women for a number of years but it still needed polishing to finish it. And it was WORK; getting up every morning, being in the chair (before reading email, or Facebook) by six and writing until seven thirty when I start  my day job.  Initially, this was hard. I am a “dawdler” by nature. My dad used to call me “The Gonna Girl” as in “I’m gonna do it.” After a few weeks it became second nature.  This last month, getting MacCullough’s Women out the door, has been crazy and I have not been able to write. I find that I miss it. The point is that I wanted to write and publish a book and now I have rather than relegating that dream to the “I wish I had done that but…” pile that it is so easy to build as we live our lives.

This got me thinking. Was there something that I wanted to do that I hadn’t done or no longer did because…Riding my bike immediately came to mind. I am fortunate to live in a pleasant neighborhood without a lot of traffic. I decided to do what I am calling social bike riding. It is easier to explain what this is NOT. It does not involve bright colored spandex with writing up the side, bike clips, special shoes, anything with the letters ATHON at the end. Unfortunately it does involve a red helmet because I think it is wrong to give a bad example to the little kids I pass and because I need all the protection I can get. I remember with longing the days of flying down the hill without a helmet.

I have a two mile loop that I ride every morning. I confess that I spend at least five minutes in the empty parking lot of the neighboring temple practicing because it has been a long time since I rode a bike. Yes, I know that saying “It’s just like riding a bike.” The truth is that I was never very good at riding a bike. But I am doing it again and loving it.  So what is it that you still want to do? Or to do once again?

“A picture shows me at a glance what it takes dozens of pages of a book to expound.”  ─ Ivan Turgenev

Here at last is the cover for MacCullough’s Women. Tina Foss Hickman has taken the place I created using words and given it a true face. It was a thrill to see it and I couldn’t be happier. My editor, Lisa Jackson, suggested Tina for the cover when we met to go over the edits. We all knew each other in another life. Tina and I had even talked about doing a children’s book together about my dog, Halsey. We both got busy with other things and it never happened. When I contacted Tina she remembered me and told me she was interested in doing the cover but first she wanted to know something about the book.  And then she asked what for me was the critical question: Can I read the book?

There is nothing more annoying to me than when the cover turns out to have no relation to the content of the book or, worse, reflects things that are not true. An example of this would be: the dog in the story is a chocolate Lab and the dog on the cover is black. I read a lot of books across genres and I see it often. Tina read the book and liked it. We exchanged several ideas, the first of which was a cover with all of the women (Brid, Franny, Lorie and Sofia) on it. We both decided that was too many faces on one cover. Choosing only one woman seemed to me to be misleading. You will have to read the book yourself to see if I am right. Our next thought was to put Drew MacCullough on the cover but, wait. The book is about the women, isn’t it?

I took a step back and analyzed the covers of the last fifteen books that I have read.  I was surprised to see that most of them did not have people on the cover. Instead, there were pictures of places or objects connected with the story. This turned my thoughts toward a cover with a picture of the bar on it. Tina did the rest. I consider myself very blessed to have Tina agree to draw the cover for my book. Most books today use photographs rather than actual art. Check out Tina’s portfolio.  Isn’t she great!

Ceol agus Craic, the Irish bar and restaurant, owned by Desmond Sheerin, on the corner Main and Dock Streets in Lynton, New Hampshire is the scene of much of the action that takes place in this story. This is not a Christmas book. We decided to depict the bar as it would look in winter because the story begins and ends in December a year apart.

I look at this illustration and I want to open the door and find out what is going on in the bar. I hope you do, too.

“There is no use trying,” said Alice; “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”  ─ Lewis Carroll

August is here and with it, the launch date for the e-book version of MacCullough’s Women. The last ten days I have been tweaking the story and “straightening the collar” like the nuns in grade school used to do with our uniforms. This requires reading the book again and again because every time you add or subtract something you run the risk of leaving an extra “the” or “him” in your wake. It’s a lot like walking to the end of the diving board, looking down and then turning around and walking back. But, as I have not yet had my breakfast, like the Queen quoted above, I believe that I am finally ready to jump. The cover designer has told me that the cover should be available next weekend so we are on schedule. The book will go to an independent proof reader the end of this week who will hopefully catch any stray left-overs that I have not caught.

I am launching the e-book version first to take advantage of the rapidly changing world of publishing. This makes sense for a first time writer because it allows me to offer the book to readers at a much lower price than the print edition which will be coming out in October. If you don’t own an e-reader there are free applications that you can download that will enable you to read the book as an e-book. More on how to do that later…

I have been told that I have been a little cranky and distracted as I have slogged through this last phase of writing. Not to worry though, a scale check this morning assured me the self-medicating I have been doing with ice cream and molasses cookies is working! This weekend I decided to take a short break and read once again (Yes, I am a re-reader of books and have read this one several times.) one of my favorite book, The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher. I love this story. It encompasses everything, that as a reader I look for in a book, and as a writer I admire. I read many, edgy, critically acclaimed literary novels that have been awarded big publishing prizes. I am often left thinking that while I certainly admire the talent, and the imagination it takes to write one of these books, I would not have wanted to be the one to have sent that story or those characters into the world, not so with The Shell Seekers. I think I love this book because it is about very believable people, people like you and me, each with their own strengths and failings, who are doing the best they can living lives that just might remind you of your own.  First published in 1987, this is a wonderful way to spend your languid August days. I highly recommend it along with a plate of molasses cookies and a dish of pistachio ice cream. Enjoy!

                                                Molasses Crinkles

            1 cup brown sugar                                1 teaspoon cinnamon

            ¾ cup shortening                                  1 teaspoon ginger

           ¼ cup molasses                                    ¼ teaspoon salt

                 1 egg                                                    ½ teaspoon cloves

              2 ¼ cups flour                          2 teaspoons baking soda

Mix brown sugar, shortening, egg and molasses.  Mix in dry ingredients. Shape dough into walnut-size balls. Dip tops in granulated sugar. Place on greased cookie sheet and bake for 12 minutes at 375 degrees. Makes @ four dozen cookies

This recipe was given to me by magical my godmother, Viola Duggan, who could have stepped right from the pages of The Shell Seekers.

“I’ve been writing since I was six. It is a compulsion, so I can’t really say where the drive comes from; I’ve always had it. My breakthrough with the first book came through persistence, because a lot of publishers turned it down.” ─ J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ─ Part 2 is now in the theaters. I probably will not go see it. I have watched two of the movies on HBO and didn’t really like them. But I did sit in the parking lot of Barnes and Noble for five hours on July 21, 2007 waiting for the doors to open at midnight so that I could buy the book. What I remember best about that experience was how nice everyone was. The crowd ran the gamut of Potter fans: families sitting on blankets with sleeping babies, tweens dressed like their favorite Potter characters, teens who had decided that this was cool and adults like me, who just loved the books. Midnight came, the doors opened, and we walked into the store divided by the sections we were lined up in, and bought the book or books.

 My sister-in-law, Marian, introduced me to Harry Potter telling me, “You have to read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” It is a rare book that is recommended to me that I don’t at least look at. Of course, I bought the book, read it, and then joined the ever-growing number of fans who then spent the next ten years waiting for the next six books to come out.

 J.K. Rowling can be admired for many reasons. She followed her passion and triumphed over adversity, and in doing so, she instilled a love of reading, and being read to, in a generation of children who preferred their entertainment to be animated. But, I think her greatest achievement is that she gave us Harry and his friends and set them in a motion in a world that was magical in more ways than one, and because, now, like Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Scout Finch and Dill Harris, they will always be with us.

 As a writer, I am in awe of what Rowling has done with her characters’ voices, growing them authentically from childhood to adulthood, and then reminding us in the end, through the voices of Harry and Ron’s children, that she hasn’t forgotten how to do it.

 I know that you might not agree with me, but from my perspective as a writer, the most complicated and evolved character is Severus Snape. I won’t say more in case you haven’t read the books, but Rowling does a brilliant job of showing you and not telling you why Severus is the man he is. 

 If you haven’t read the Harry Potter series, give yourself a treat for the rest of the summer and do so. I think I will ─ again!

“This you’ll call sentimental─perhaps─but then a dog somehow represents—no I can’t think of the word─the private side of life─the play side”  — Virginia Woolf

Writing practice went ahoo today because Grace had to be at the vet at 7:30 this morning to have her teeth cleaned. This involved negotiating the hour between Grace bursting exuberantly out of her crate and the time the car rolled out of the driveway without Grace having breakfast.

Breakfast is a big deal to Grace. All food is, but breakfast is paramount probably because it has been at least ten hours since she last inveigled a biscuit from some human in need of her approval. She made her mandatory visit to the back yard, returning to stand at the door, tail wagging,  ready to come in and EAT. It is a testimony to her joyful spirit that she is able to manage this level of enthusiasm every single day for the exact same cup of Wysong. She also shares a banana with her dad. Just to make sure that we don’t miss the importance of this event, she helicopters around twice in a circle.

This morning no food, no banana, no water, and no eye contact from her humans. Grace sits and watches us for a minute and then gets up and takes one furry foot and flips over her food dish. And waits. I break down and start apologizing. “You can’t have any breakfast today. You are having anesthesia, if you eat, you will die.” Grace looks at me and makes a small noise more like the sound a monkey makes than an English Cocker Spaniel. It all adds up to, “Huh? No way!”

She is gone all day and I miss her. She usually spends most of her day snoozing here in my office. Finally, I get a call that she is awake (phew!) minus two teeth and I can pick her up after four. I am reminded that I love this little black manipulator far more than is good for me, as I loved the ten who have preceded her in my life. My books will always have animals in them. My favorite writers usually have animals in their books. Writers are supposed to show and not tell. Nothing shows more about the humans in the story than the way they interact with their animals. Besides, writing about the animals is fun.

Grace is home again. Tomorrow morning, despite the indignities of today, she will bound out of her crate with nothing more pressing on her mind than breakfast.

“It’s funny. When it comes to memoir, we want to catch the author in a lie. When we read fiction, we want to catch the author telling the truth.” ─ Tayari Jones

MacCullough’s Women is a story about a young woman whose husband dies suddenly the week before Christmas. I suppose it is only natural that because I was once a young woman whose husband died suddenly the week before Christmas, I am asked if this is my story. The short answer is no, it is not. But I think the longer answer is more complicated and inherent to the heart of writing fiction. Last month I listened as Tayari Jones answered this same question about her novel Silver Sparrow in an interview with Michele Norris on NPR.

Writers use their own experiences to inform their fiction. What this means is that while the characters and the story are fiction, the experience that the writer adds lends the story its sense of authenticity. Being plunged into the world of young widowhood opened my eyes to the fact that for all of us existing in that gray half-life; it came down to one question: “How well did I really know my husband?”  What I learned from the conversations that I had with many women at formal support group meetings in church basements and informally in friends’ living rooms was that the answers and the stories behind the answers were as different as the women asking the question. In MacCullough’s Women, I try to answer to that question for Franny.  I set the story the week before Christmas because my own experience informed me as to how cruel the juxtaposition of a beloved’s death and the glitter surrounding the Christmas season is.

Amy Hatvany’s novel, Best Kept Secret is the story of a divorced mother who loses custody of her young son because she drinks. This is not a light read and for any mother who has ever gotten drunk or, less threateningly, “tipsy” in front of her children it will be thought-provoking and perhaps disturbing. Best Kept Secret is a beautifully written novel notable for its raw courage and ultimate sense of hope. The characters and the plot are fiction but the story is informed by the fact that Amy Hatvany is a recovering alcoholic.  I highly recommend that you read it.

“Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of bar-room vernacular, that is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive.” ─ Raymond Chandler

Having made the great pronouncement shortly after I started this blog that I planned to blog three times a week, I have been nowhere to be found. Be assured that I have learned my lesson and will no longer promise things that I can’t deliver. While I have not been blogging, I have been busy editing. It comforts me to read this quote by Raymond Chandler who, by anyone’s definition, was a very fine writer. Editing or to be exact doing something with the feedback provided by one’s editor is a tedious, painful, and essential part of the writing process. The problem arises from the fact that at the point you turn your manuscript over to the editor you have edited it yourself several times. In my case, my writers group and my husband have edited it, too. You are paying someone to edit the book but in your heart you are shocked when then do. “What do you mean you don’t like that word? What’s wrong with it?”

I have a day job which sometimes extends into being a night job depending on the need for me to meet with my clients in China. This leaves from six o’clock to eight o’clock in the morning as my best time to work.

So after the ‘cat alarm’ wakes me up (this is a real cat batting you aggressively in the head, not a cute plastic alarm clock that looks like a cat), I drag myself into my office and begin to incorporate (or not) the edits I have printed out the night before. My schedule is one chapter per day. I don’t usually take issue with my editor’s suggestions. I am certainly not going to raise a challenge in the war with the dreaded commas. When I do come to an edit I don’t like, I leave it and go for a walk or do battle with the weeds in my garden. Most of the time, upon second and third thought, my editor is right. Every once in a while though, like Ray Chandler, I stick to my guns. There are some words or scenes that I love and have written with “eyes wide open.” They get to stay in the book.

 “‘A book is so much a part of oneself that in delivering it to the public one feels as if one were pushing one’s own child out into the traffic.”                         ─  Quentin Bell

I met with my editor, Lisa Jackson, yesterday at a coffee house in Nashua to go over the edits to MacCullough’s Women. I can relate to Mr. Bell’s quote because the characters: Drew, Franny, Brid, Neil, Lorie, and Sofia feel like they are my children and I love them. I brought them to life and set them in motion through the pages of the book. Sitting with an editor is in many ways like sitting across from a teacher at a Parent Conference. You only want to hear good news but you usually know your child’s strengths and weaknesses before you sit down. Unfortunately, the characters you create in books, like the children you give birth to, are rarely flawless.

I learned from Lisa that I have raised some of “my children” better than I have raised others. No matter how a writer feels about her book, it is usually in the best interest of the book to listen to the editor. There are two types of edits: content and copy. I have asked Lisa to do both and she has done an excellent job. The content edit examines the book for inconsistencies in the story, the timeline, plot and characters. The copy edit prepares the book for publication checking for mistakes in grammar, spelling, formatting and spacing. She pointed out to me that two spaces are no longer used at the end of a sentence. She paused for a minute, smiled and added, “This applies to blogs, too.” You get to see how well I listened to her as you continue to read my blog. This will be a difficult habit for me to break as it appears that I am hardwired to put two spaces in after a period or question mark. “Or three,” Lisa would probably add. Over the course of writing this book, I have learned when it comes to punctuation (especially commas) that in my mind more is better and that is not always the case.

The next few weeks I will be sending Drew and Lorie to “summer school” as I work out the best way to incorporate Lisa’s suggestions into the story. The result, we hope, will be a better book.

I have a great read for you: Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones. Silver Sparrow is the story of a bigamist and his two families. Set in Atlanta, the book follows James Witherspoon, a complicated man shaped by an adolescent mistake, as he delicately juggles two wives and two daughters living only a few miles apart. Jones has created a story where it is possible to be feel sympathy for both families, especially for the two young women, born four months apart, who are at first drawn to and then repelled by one other. Enjoy it.

 “His life was gentle; and the elements
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up,
And say to all the world, THIS WAS A MAN!”   ─ William Shakespeare

I loved my father. “Huh? Doesn’t everyone?” You ask?  The answer is no, they don’t. Discovering this was probably the biggest shock of my college orientation week, when I heard more than once, “I hate my father.” Or, “My old man is such a jerk.”  It was a foreign concept to me and I thought less of the people who were saying it, no matter how cool they otherwise seemed.

My father was always larger than life to me. His star never dimmed in the twenty-two years that I was privileged to share the world with him. You may find this surprising when I tell you that he lived an unremarkable life, typical of his class and his time. He was a first-generation American whose Italian father and Irish mother were both dead by the time he was five.  He grew up hard, money and opportunities were in short supply as he came of age in the heart the Great Depression. He left high school to find work, as so many others did, because money was needed, not for pleasure, but to eat. His formal education ended and he began a life of self-education, and inquiry.  He excelled at critical thinking and usually taught himself what skills he needed to accomplish what he was trying to do.

He went to war in 1943 like thousands of other American men because he was asked to.  He was not a hero and he never claimed to be one seeing what he did as fulfilling an obligation to his country and nothing more. Landing in North Africa and then going on to Italy, he followed the old Roman road and fought at Monte Cassino, running communication lines up the mountain. He served with the occupation forces in Vienna returning home in 1946.  He gave three years of his life, was thankful to have made it back in one piece and rarely talked about it.

He was thirty-eight when I born, coming to fatherhood late for his generation. I don’t think he gave much thought to the kind of father he was or worried about it. Unlike parents of today, who seem to be obsessed with how lucky they are to have their children, he understood only too well how lucky my sister and I were to have him. His values were old-fashioned ones, he practiced his faith quietly but ended each night on his knees. He gave us what I have read is the greatest gift a father can give his children; he loved our mother. He was a good man.

He was a high school custodian the last ten years of his life. He ran what today would be called outreach or intervention informally from the janitor’s room. Keeping his eyes on boys he thought were going to end up in trouble, he found small jobs for them, provided a place to hangout and let them know what he thought of certain types of behavior. His impact is unknown but some years after his death when one of these boys, grown to manhood, did some house repairs for my mother, he refused payment for his work saying, “If it wasn’t for Bud, I would be in jail today.”

My father was a dreamer who loved to read, both traits he passed to me.  He believed that I would be a writer and he told me so often, saying things like “You can use this when you’re a writer.” I am glad I have lived up to his expectations.  He was the classiest man that I ever knew. He never let me down. I can’t imagine a better father and I miss him.

It’s all fun and games until the flying monkeys attack. 

    Inspired by The Wizard of Oz

The word practice can be used as both a noun and a verb.  Today, we usually see it used as a noun: My Yoga Practice, My Meditation Practice and for me ─ My Writing Practice. We don’t often see it used as a verb.  I think this is largely due to the fact that we live in times of instant gratification. Everything is fast: food, instant downloading of music, books, movies and communication using email, Skype, Twitter and Facebook.  Let’s face it, we don’t wait for much.  Practice used as a verb tends to be sloooooooooooow, repetitive,  time consuming, often boring and a lot work.  I can remember practicing Palmer Method writing ─ endlessly! I had a hard time wth the letter “r”.

This is me practicing blogging as opposed to it being My Blog Practice.  I used this quote because it sums up what I have been doing here.  Setting up and announcing the blog was definitely all fun and games. It was great to be able to say, “Come read my blog.” But now the flying monkeys are attacking and I have to actually practice blogging. 

My approach has been to slink around a lot of blogs.  There are several that I was already reading regularly. I really enjoy The Hen Blog by Terry Golson .   Watching Terry’s chickens can make even the gloomiest day bearable.  Terry is a  professional chef  and food writer who sometimes posts wonderful recipes, too. She knows all about chickens.  There are lots of blogs out there and they are all different.  The key to successful blogging is discovering what makes the reader want to come back. So, of course, I return to the blogger book. In fact, now I have another book (but you probably already knew that.) Branding Yourself  by Erik Deckers and Kyle Lacy. Having already selected the platform (WordPress) which is part of the fun and games, I move onto the monkeys. I need to:

• Figure out what to write about – this is tricky because I worry that what interests me might bore you to death. I guess I will find out. I plan to post mostly about writing, the current state of publishing and the books I am reading but I am sure that other things will show up even a recipe or two. Unfortunately, one of the known cures for writer’s block is eating.
• Post often – My goal is to post at least three times a week.
• Use my own voice – Writers know about voice because you have to be able to give your characters distinctive voices.  I just need to dust off my own.

What is that you like to see in the blogs that you follow regularly? What turns you off?