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Books Lining Up in the Queue

I cleared my plate of a few writing obligations recently. I keep talking about “that novel,” and my son thinks it’s time I deliver. He has high hopes that, when this book sells big, I will buy him a Hummer.

IMG_1094I tried to explain the reality of publishing, like first I have to finish the book and then I have to secure an agent who woos an editor who convinces a publisher who puts it on the shelf and we all cross our fingers and by that time maybe he’d be a lawyer and he could buy me a Hummer. Or, at least a new pair of boots.

Still, he would not be swayed. And, between him and my daughter, who drew her version of the book’s cover–eyes to the right–along with an encouraging note, I realized there’s no more messing around. I cleared my plate so I could get busy with revisions.

And, for the most part, I have.

I’ve spent more nights a week with the draft in the last two months than I did all last summer. Even if I don’t have big jumps in word count to show for it, this draft is expanding. Maturing.

What else is expanding is my TBR list of books (you thought I’d say waistline…that’s a post for another day).

Reading fuels the writing in one way or another, through creativity or inspiration or even good old fashioned mojo passed on from one author to another through the pages of a book. I’m excited to dig into five soon-to-be-released books by some of my favorite authors.

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THE MOON SISTERS by Therese Walsh
March 4, 2014

(from Amazon) This mesmerizing coming-of-age novel, with its sheen of near-magical realism, is a moving tale of family and the power of stories.

Read an excerpt from the book HERE. Take her Moon Sisters Personality Quiz to learn more about the characters. Then, stop back by the blog on March 26th for a Q&A with Therese that includes a book giveaway.

41SKzKiGmBL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_ONCE I WAS COOL by Megan Stielstra
May 13, 2014

(from Amazon) With storytelling chops honed over a decade of performances at Chicago’s 2nd Story storytelling series, these insightful, compassionate, gutsy, and heartbreaking personal essays explore the messy, maddening beauty of adulthood with wit, intelligence, and biting humor, tackling topics ranging from beating postpartum depression through stalking to a surprising run-in with an old lover at the symphony while on ecstasy.

You can hear Megan read one of her essays in this podcast interview with Willy Nast and Karen Shimmin on All Write Already. I dare you to listen and NOT pre-order her book.

51i+Ha3CFmL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_CHASING THE SUN by Natalia Sylvester
May 20, 2014

(from her website) Andres suspects his wife has left him—again. Then he learns that the unthinkable has happened: she’s been kidnapped. Set in Lima, Peru, in a time of civil and political unrest, this evocative page-turner is a perfect marriage of domestic drama and suspense.

I love reading about Natalia’s road to publication on The Debutante Ball. She recently posted about first lines in novels and how much they change from the seed of an idea to final draft. She also blogs about life and writing on her website. Read this post, Found Letters From My Past Self. Put this book on your list, too.


EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU by Celeste Ng
June 26, 2014

Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng

(from her website) Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet . . .
So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. . . . Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, exploring the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family, and uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

I’d like June to come early, and not just because the weather’s been mean around here. Celeste Ng is another of my favorite authors whose work online I have loved and bookmarked more than once. She’s a contributor on Fiction Writers Review and has an essay out in the Glimmer Train Bulletin this month, where she talks about how her experience as a teacher guided her decision to tell the story through an omniscient narrator. Word on the street is she’s presenting at the Muse & Marketplace Conference in May. I wish I lived closer to Boston.


EVERGREEN by Rebecca Rasmussen
July 15, 2014

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(From her website) It is 1938 when Eveline, a young bride, follows her husband into the wilderness of Minnesota. Though their cabin is run-down, they have a river full of fish, a garden out back, and a new baby boy named Hux. But when Emil leaves to take care of his sick father, the unthinkable happens: a stranger arrives, and Eveline becomes pregnant. She gives the child away, and while Hux grows up hunting and fishing in the woods with his parents, his sister, Naamah, is raised an orphan. Years later, haunted by the knowledge of this forsaken girl, Hux decides to find his sister and bring her home to the cabin. But Naamah, even wilder than the wilderness that surrounds them, may make it impossible for Hux to ever tame her, to ever make up for all that she, and they, have lost.

Set before a backdrop of vanishing forest, Evergreen is a luminous novel of love, regret, and hope.

I read Rebecca’s debut novel, THE BIRD SISTERS, set in Spring Green, Wisconsin. She writes with a keen eye on setting: place is as important a character as the protagonist. I can’t wait to discover what unfolds in EVERGREEN’s “vanishing forest.”

What’s lining up on your reading radar? Or, should I ask how your revisions are coming along?

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Taking It All In: Details in Writing (& a Prompt)

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Lately, I feel like I’ve blathered on and on about how we incorporate details in our writing:

Enough is enough, right?

Or, is it?

Every time I come across a new article on the way details work in crafting a good story, I learn something new, or I am reminded of a forgotten element of the technique. Either way, how I use details keeps resurfacing in my work and in my discussions about the work, so I’d best keep listening.

In her essay, “Everything Has a Name (Or, How Gardening Made Me a Better Writer),” on Grub Street Daily, Celeste Ng hits on why writers must continue to hone this skill:

[Y]our job, at its heart, is to give everything—objects, events, emotions—its precise name.  Not “flower,” but He was waiting for the geranium.  Not “summer,” but Heat. A baseball field. Yellow grass, the whirr of insects.  Not “beauty,” but this clean bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal tilted in the light. . . .To be a writer, you don’t need to have the name of every plant, or every tool, or every bird, at the ready.  But you need to find it, to point your finger and make the reader slow down, pay attention, look closer.

Slow down. Pay attention.

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Your work will translate into a better read for your audience.

The Prompt

Lost or Found. Write about something you lost or something you found.

Consider the specificity of your details. Don’t dress them in adjectives but give them names.

* Photo credit: Microphone, doctor_bob on Morguefile.com; Kids, me.

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Flash Fiction on Wednesday: Cold

There’s a new website in my Google Reader: Fiction Writers Review. Writers can find a plethora of information, stories, and great blog posts there. Plus, they have a blog series by Celeste Ng called “Get Writing,” where she posts an exercise to get your muse off the couch and back to some serious calisthenics. This week, Celeste suggests writers turn to the tabloids.

Looking through the tabloids is a lot like waiting for Wordsmith.org’s Word of the Day – you never know what you’ll get – and, seeing as it’s Wednesday, the timing was perfect to use the tabloids as a spark for a little flash fiction.

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Cold
(Based on this post, called “Magnetic Boy,” from Weekly World News)

Standing outside, Nicholas Baker – even at ten years old – could see that his mother had lost it. She used to get mad if he ran outside without a jacket, when the air was just a little bit cool. But now, she was insisting that he stand in the front yard, naked from the waist up, in the middle of winter.

“She’s looney,” his older sister, Emily, had said about their mother just a few days before. “Mental.”

“You are what you say!” Nicholas yelled back at first, because he didn’t want to hear her call his mother crazy. Though, he figured she might be right.

“Mom, Nicholas is shivering,” Emily said now. “He’s freezing.”

His mother adjusted his arms up and out to his sides and then stood back to look at him.

“Mom!” Emily shouted.

“Shhh,” she said. “Hold still, Nicky,” his mother told him. “I have to get this picture just right, otherwise we won’t win.” Then, she wiggled her hand toward, Emily. “Hand me some tablespoons,” she said.

Emily rolled her eyes and bent down to grab a handful from the silverware tray that sat on the ground. The wind kicked up. Nicholas’s teeth started to chatter.

“At least let me get him a coat, Mom.”

“No. If his skin is warm, the metal won’t stick. You know that. Now just be quiet and let me work.” His mother’s hands moved in swift diagonals across his chest. She shifted spoons around into various shapes. Her eyes flashed and she was breathing hard.

This wasn’t the first time he stood out in the cold while she lined him with kitchen utensils. Ever since they found out he was attracted to metal, or that metal was attracted to him, his mother had glued herself to the internet in search of contests on sites like Ripley’s Believe It or Not. She took picture after picture and drove to the post office every weekend. Nothing ever came of the pictures, so Nicholas started to wonder if it was really such a big deal that a set of keys sitting on a  table would jump into his palm if he held his hand over them.

“You’re like  Jedi Knight!” His mother had told him. “Like Luke Skywalker living in Cleveland, Ohio,” she’d grinned.

“Worth money,” he’d overheard her tell his Aunt Judy on the phone.

His stomach felt sick, and his head was frozen like a giant ice cube. He told his mother that his fingers were numb. She cupped each of his hands and blew on them, promising that in two more minutes she’d make him the biggest cup of hot chocolate he’d ever seen.

He didn’t like being a Jedi so much anymore, and he wondered if Luke Skywalker ever felt this bad. But, he did his best to smile for the camera, thinking maybe this would be the last time.