April Fools Circa 1967

Enjoy this April Fools Day excerpt from my yet-to-be-published novel, The Sword Swallower's Daughter. This scene is from protagonist Sheila as a nine-year-old girl. In later years Sheila pulls the same trick her grandmother uses here to get back at her sword-swallowing father.

Mama hated April Fool’s Day and let it be known she would not tolerate any jokes at her expense. She said that growing up with Uncle Teddy had been like April Fool’s Day every single day of the year. That didn’t stop us from pooling our tricks on Grandma.

A penny in a gumball machine had recently rewarded me with a black plastic spider about the size of a quarter. Holly and I tied a long piece of thread around one of the spider’s legs and placed the prop on the kitchen floor just under the counter in front of the coffee percolator. Holly held one end of the string while we sat at the kitchen table eating Cheerios and waiting for Grandma to appear in her fluffy robe and floppy slippers.

“Good morning, Grandma,” I said, as she stepped through the kitchen door.

Holly tugged the string just enough for the spider to appear out from under the cabinet.

Morning, girls.” She cast us a sleepy smile and headed directly to the coffee pot.

Holly tugged the string again.

Grandma’s face went white. She lurched forward and stomped onto the spider with her floppy-slippered foot, while Holly and I went into peals of laughter. Grandma lifted her foot and Holly pulled the string again. Holly and I doubled over as Grandma shrieked and repeated the stomp and twist. When Grandma pulled her foot away the second time, Holly pulled again and Grandma’s eyes followed the spider’s movement to Holly’s hand. Her face went hard, then soft, then relieved, then something I couldn’t read. She collapsed into a chair and exhaled.

“I’m too old for this.” Grandma shook her head at us. “Go on now. I’ll make your lunches today—just leave me alone to gather my wits.”

Grandma gathered her wits and put them in our sandwiches. Sitting next to Dorris and Tracy at lunchtime, I bit into my bologna sandwich and couldn’t pull the bite away. I drew the sandwich back and lifted it apart to find a slice of brown shopping bag cut in the shape of bologna. Printed in big black letters were the words: “April Fools.”

Later that afternoon I was up in the bedroom reading when the phone rang. Most of the time I raced Holly to the phone, suffering her shoves of the shoulder or elbows in the chest. Today I let the phone ring, immersed in the problems of Julie Trelling in Up A Road Slowly.

Holly burst into the room and said, “It’s for you. It’s Lee-roy.”

I laid my book aside, raced down the stairs to the kitchen, and picked up the receiver resting on the floor in a tangle of cord.

“Hello?” I accentuated the question mark, hoping to mask the exclamation points of excitement.

“Hey, baby. Wanna braid my hair?”

So off was the voice, so un-Leroy-like the question, that it took a moment to sink in. “Who is this?”

“Not that long-hair hippie freak. April Fools!” I heard a cacophony of laughter before the phone clicked on the other end. It wasn’t until I noticed Holly staring at me with mocking eyes did I get it.

Holly burst into laughter, doubled over, and pointed to me. “You should have seen your face! You can thank Cassius for that.”

I slammed the phone into the cradle and stormed back up the stairs and closed myself away with my book.

Valentine's Day Excerpt from The Sword Swallower's Daughter

This excerpt from my yet-to-be-published novel, The Sword Swallower's Daughter appeared in the October 2007 edition of Breath & Shadow magazine. In this section you'll meet my protagonist Sheila as a young girl, her two sisters, and her mother and father who are divorcing. It's a bittersweet glimpse of love and longing.

* * * 

Daddy’s motorcycle in our driveway on Valentine’s Day could mean only one thing; he was here without his girlfriend, Marnie. I rushed inside and wrapped him in a hug. He handed me a red, heart-shaped box with a picture of a girl whose eyes winked and her mouth kissed when you turned the box this way and that.

We sat around listening to Daddy tell us about the hospital and all of the people who came to see him, including a couple of newspaper reporters. He handed Mama a newspaper clipping with a headline saying, “Neon Tube Snaps inside Sword Swallower and Horrifies Crowd.” Underneath the headline was a photo of Daddy lying in the hospital bed, his index fingers pointing up and spread apart to show the length of tube the surgeons had removed.

“Never mind the crappy headline. You weren’t horrified were you, girls?”

Holly and I took cues from each other and shook our heads. Candy said what I wanted to say and I wished once more that I could get away with her unaffected honesty. “I was so scared for you, Daddy. I thought you were going to die.”

“Thing is, the doctor said there’s going to be some scar tissue in my gut. Could be a problem in the future. I’ve been practicing with knives.”

“Swallowing knives?” I said.

“No, no, no.” Daddy shook his head with each ‘no.’ “Throwing knives. Mario Morelli says I’m a natural.”

Mama brought Daddy a cup of coffee. Daddy blew across the top of the cup and then sipped up the cooled surface. “Perfect. You always knew how much sugar I needed.” He looked up at Mama with his flirting eyes and winked.

“Least I could do your coffee right,” was all Mama said back.

“You did a lot of things right, Edie. Damn, I miss your cooking.”

Mama almost smiled. Everyone said she was a great cook and a fantastic singer, but the only thing I think she believed was the cooking part.

“We’re having meatloaf tonight,” said Candy. “I helped Mama smush it together.” Candy held up her hands and wiggled her fingers. She turned to Daddy and asked what I wanted to ask, but feared the answer. “Can you stay for dinner? It’s Valentine’s Day.”

I glanced at Mama and sure enough, a red flush crept up her neck like it always did when she got flustered.

Daddy glanced at Mama. “Sorry, Candy-kin, can’t do that. But I sure would like to hear your Mama play and sing something.”

“Cum’on, Mama, it’s Valentine’s Day.” Candy jumped off his lap and opened the piano cover. “Play ‘Yellow Bird.’”

Mama dug in the piano bench where she kept her sheet music, and pulled out a folio. Candy sat on the bench next to her; Daddy relaxed on the sofa and lit another cigarette. I snuggled next to him, inhaling the mélange of scents that was Daddy in those days. Old Spice, Camel smoke, and Brylcreem lingered as incense to a god, forever sacred in my memory.

“Yellow bird, up high in banana tree. Yellow bird, you sit all alone like me. Did your ladyfriend leave the nest again...”

Mama sang. Daddy drew in the cigarette and fixed his eyes on Mama with the exhale, the smoke lifting and twisting and reaching toward her like I wanted him to do with his arms. The smoke dissipated before it reached her, as the deepest part of me knew he’d never reach out for her again. Mama’s voice lifted the notes of the song with such sadness, like she was the yellow bird and someone was singing to her. Then I wondered if maybe Daddy had come here on Valentine’s Day because his ladyfriend left him and this was the only nest he’d known. I broke the spell when I asked him.

“So where’s Marnie on Valentine’s Day?”

Daddy looked at his watch. “Waiting for me.”

Mama finished her song, lifted her hands from the piano with the grace of a diva, and turned to him. “Now, don’t keep Marnie waiting.”

"Something's Different About Sheila"

An excerpt from my yet-to-be-published novel, The Sword Swallower's Daughter appears in this week's edition of MetroFiction. In this scene you'll meet protagonist Sheila, her sidekick Tommie, and their parents. Sheila's coming home from college with a secret her mother intuits the minute she walks in the door.

Read the excerpt, "Something's Different About Sheila."

Did you ever have a secret your parents intuited? Or perhaps, like the childhood secret that cuts through Sheila's core, one so painful and terrible, she both wishes it would be exposed, and yet fears the discovery.

Keyboard Creativity at Weymouth

Camellia garden at Weymouth.

Everything worth value takes time. Time to write, compose, paint, design, prepare, study. Practice. I left my home on Monday morning to join a group of three other authors for a writer's residency at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities in Southern Pines, North Carolina. I brought my work in progress, The Sword Swallower's Daughter, with intentions to find out why agents are turning down the manuscript. Some of the agents have written me notes saying how much they enjoyed my writing, that the premise intrigued them, the characters were endearing, but ultimately, they were unable to connect with the story in the 30 pages they read. As much as I've clung to the original opening, I realized that opening was blocking delivery, and I needed to cut deep in order to birth this book.

Monday night the group let me go first in our reading. After explaining the feedback I was getting from agents, I asked them to listen as I read the opening and then give me suggestions on how I could heighten the urgency and sharpen the stakes for my lead character, Sheila. As Billie, Dawn and Lela shared their impressions, lights went on in my head, confirming what I had already been suspecting about when to open the main storyline. Just before going to bed that night, I opened my email to find a letter from my friend Brian, who is now reading the manuscript. So close to what the other three writers said, his comments became a stamp of validation.

My sunny writing nook at Weymouth.

The next morning I awoke early and found a position in a sunny nook just under a window overlooking the camellias blooming in the gardens here at Weymouth. I opened the manuscript file and got to work moving sections, deleting whole paragraphs, and inserting new insights gleaned from the previous night. Sometime in the morning I became aware of vigorous classical piano music flowing down the hall of the old stately mansion. Thinking one of the other writers was playing something from their room, I swelled at what a wonderful group I'd been invited to join. Billie came down the hall a few minutes later and gestured toward the sound and told me the music was coming live from the Yamaha concert grand downstairs.

Live piano music is comfort food to my soul. My mother played piano while I was growing up and my daughter took piano lessons and studied for competitions and recitals all the way through elementary and into her senior year in high school. Her scales and repeats and fingering exercises filled the background of my writing. Now that she's moved on to her own life, I still beg her to play piano for me when she visits. You see, I was surrounded by piano, but never learned to play. As a child we were too poor for lessons and my mother was never able to defeat the demons of her past enough to teach us herself. I took lessons when my kids were young from my friend Barbara, but found the discipline of practice too demanding while trying to keep my toddler and preschooler clean, fed and intellectually stimulated.

Concert pianist Lynn Fonseca practicing for recital on the

Yamaha concert grand piano in the great room at Weymouth.

It's Thursday and I've had three productive days of writing. Each morning the pianist has been downstairs playing the Yamaha concert grand. Today I ventured downstairs to tell her how much I appreciated her playing. I snuck into the beautiful grand room of Weymouth and melted into a chair in the corner. When she lifted her hands from the last piece, I told her how much I enjoyed her music. She welcomed me over to her side at the piano and I couldn't resist donning my journalist's cap to ask questions. I learned her name is Lynn Fonseca and she is practicing for a recital she'll give at a luncheon here at Weymouth next Tuesday. She told me she's concerned, apprehensive even, because she hasn't played publicly for several years.

I thought, how like me. She's downstairs perfecting her music for a recital, while I'm upstairs perfecting my writing to get published. We're both using keyboards, each of us working to improve what we already know to do. She's full of music, yet must draw on the skill of reading music and expressing it through her fingers. I'm full of stories, but must apply the techniques of novel writing to bring the stories alive. Music must be heard to appreciate; novels must be read to be enjoyed. 

I hope she comes again tomorrow. Even if she doesn't I'll be up here, plunking away at my keyboard, practicing my craft and piecing together the life of Sheila, the sword swallower's daughter.

How to Cook a Turkey ~ Happy Thanksgiving

For your Thanksgiving enjoyment, I'm posting here a section of my novel THE SWORD SWALLOWER'S DAUGHER that has been cut from the final version. Here you'll meet my 9-year-old protagonist Sheila as she learns how to cook a turkey from her wizened old Grandma. This Grandma is so much like my own, I could name her Elsie.

~ Grandma Preps Matilda for the Thanksgiving Feast ~

Before my parents split we’d always spent Thanksgivings and holidays with my cousins at their house in the new part of town. Grandma would come with the turkey and dressing, while Mama and Aunt Terry made mashed potatoes and gravy, jello salad, green beans, sweet potatoes with miniature marshmallows browned and bubbled on top, and pies. We didn’t have just pumpkin; we had pecan and mincemeat too. Grandma made the mincemeat pie with real meat, not just fruit and nuts. Uncle Teddy and Daddy could polish off a whole mincemeat pie after eating three rounds of the Thanksgiving feast.

The Noble House Restaurant where Grandma worked as a cook was closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’d never been around Grandma when she was cooking and the morning of Thanksgiving I got up early to find her wrapped in an apron with a cigarette burning in the ashtray next to a steaming cup of coffee. She turned to greet me with a kiss and then asked if I wanted a crusted crispy and some coffee.

“Eww, coffee?” I felt my face scrunch into yuckiness.

“My grandma gave me coffee. I couldn’t have been much older than you.”

“But Aunt Terry says it will put hair on my chest.”

Grandma unbuttoned the top two buttons of her housedress and pulled it open. “Do you see any hair on my chest?”

I saw the big white straps and cups of her brassiere, but no hair. I shook my head.

“Well then, how about a cup?

“If you say so.”

Grandma reached to the back of a cabinet and pulled out a tiny china cup with a matching saucer. I felt my eyes grow wide with the beauty of that little cup. It was nearly transparent, white, with pink rosebuds entwined around a pale blue ribbon. The rim was streaked with gold.

“Here’s the cup my grandma gave me. It’s a demitasse she brought with her from Ireland. I know you’ll be very careful with it.” Grandma rinsed it out, dried it and filled it half full with coffee. Then she added two spoons of sugar, stirred it with a tiny spoon dug from the back of the silverware drawer, and then topped it with cream. Grandma used real cream that the milkman left by our door every Monday.

I sat down at her red Formica table and stirred my coffee with the little spoon. My legs dangled from the chair in unison to the rhythm of my stirring. Grandma turned back to the sink, but I could tell she was watching me from the corner of her eye.

My fingers fit through the tiny handle with ease and I lifted the cup to my face. I looked into the circle of creamy brown and saw myself looking back. I smiled at myself and tipped the cup to my lips. The coffee tasted divine, almost as good as the ears of a chocolate Easter bunny. Grandma invested me in the family ritual that morning, the coffee ritual I would see enacted around the red Formica table for twenty years in real life and forever in my memory.

After my third cup of coffee, Grandma suggested I consider some orange juice because it being Thanksgiving and all, I’d need plenty of vitamin C to get me through the day. She slapped down a jelly glass with orange juice and disappeared out to the pantry room and returned with a huge white parcel.

“What’s that?” I pointed to the package.

“It’s the bird.”

I screwed up my face in a question mark. “Huh?”

Grandma unwrapped the huge white thing, then held it up by the wings and made it jiggle. “Ever seen a turkey dance?”

I laughed and giggled while Grandma returned the turkey to the sink.

“Want to give it a name?” Grandma said.

“Okay. But is it a boy or a girl?”

Grandma looked over the bird with a grin. “It’s not either one, if you ask me. So you choose.”

Then how about Matilda?”

Matilda she is. Watch this.” Grandma’s reached into Matilda’s rump, her arm disappeared nearly to her elbow and then pulled out a sack of bloody looking stuff.

“Yuck!” I jumped back as if the bloody stuff were alive.

“What do you mean, ‘yuck.’ This is the best part. It’s the giblets. The liver, heart, and gizzard.

I wrinkled my nose. “Double yuck.”

“Then I suppose you don’t want to do the neck?”

“There’s no neck on that bird.”

“It’s tucked away. Wanna dig for it?”

“Where?”

Grandma pointed to the caved-in area where the neck should’ve been and then pulled up a flap of pimply skin. “Just reach in here.”

I had to stand on my tip-toes to get to the bird. I ran my hand around the rim of the neck-hole to make sure it was safe, as if the bird’s gaping hollow had teeth. Easing my hand into the cold, slimy hollow, my hand caught on something soft and hard. Sliding my hand up and down the object, I encircled my fingers around the thing and pulled. The thing came free and I dropped it into the sink like it was a poisonous snake.

“There, that wasn’t so yucky was it?

“No, it was icky and yucky.” I stuck out my tongue and gagged. “So what’re you going to do with this stuff?”

Grandma pulled out a saucepan, tossed in the giblets and neck, filled it with water and set it burning on the stove. “I boil them down for the broth and then cut up the giblets and pull the meat from the neck bones for the dressing.”

“Sounds so icky, but it tastes so good.”

Grandma moved back to the bird lying naked in the sink. You want to pop some feather buds?

“Huh?”

“Huh? Is that all you can answer when you don’t know something? I sure would like it if you said, ‘What, Grandma?’”

My friend Jenny back in Santa Ana had to say “sir” and “mam” to grown-ups because her daddy was a Marine and had been in Viet Nam. I guessed that I’d been corrected kind of like Jenny was, but Grandma’s voice was a lot nicer about it than Jenny’s dad had been.

“What, Grandma?”

“That’s better. That’s how a girl drinking from a china cup would answer.”

More than anything at that moment I wanted to be that girl. I wanted to say, ‘Yes, Grandma, I’d like some coffee this morning,’ every day of my life.

Grandma pulled me up a stool and together we popped the feather buds. This was the funnest part of turkey making. The turkey skin was slick, not slimy, with pock holes where feathers had been. The feather buds were easy to find because they were swollen up kind of like a pimple and had a hard, white thing in them. Some of the feather buds actually had the tiniest spray of white blooming from the end of the shaft. Grandma showed me how to use my thumbs to pop out the feather buds, saying I’d probably use the same technique to pop blackheads on my face in a couple of years.

We finished popping the feather buds while my mind imagined huge swellings on my face with black buds sticking out, rather than the white ones on the turkey.

Grandma washed off the bird and patted it dry, then lifted it from the sink and set in inside an enormous blue and white speckled roasting pan.

“Now we have to season old Matilda. This is what turns a plain, old turkey into a well dressed bird.” Grandma chopped up a handful of garlic cloves and cooked them in a square of butter. Then she poured the garlic butter over Matilda and rubbed it all over her wings and legs and chest. Next she sprinkled salt straight from the pour spout of the carton, her wrist moving so fast the salt flung high into the air and settled on the bird. Next she grabbed her long wooden pepper grinder and dusted the bird with black speckles. She pulled bottles of spices from the cabinet and lined them on the counter and then took one at a time and sprinkled them in succession, saying their names as she went.

“Sage. A good sprinkling of sage; it’s the number one poultry seasoning. Now for some thyme.”

“How long do we cook it?”

"Not t-i-m-e, as with a clock, but t-h-y-m-e, an herb.”

“Ah ha. T-H-Y-M-E.” Delighted at the lesson, spelling was one of my academic achievements.

“Then you’re going to toss on some marjoram, some finely ground rosemary—not the leafy kind—if you can’t find the powdered kind, you’ll have to grind it up in one of these. Grandma pulled out a small jar with a stick in it. “This is my mortar and pestle. I look kind of like a witch using this, don’t I?”

Really she did. Her long gray-streaked hair that was usually wound in a sleeping snake on her head now crawled down her back in a huge braid. Her apron had crept above the hump of her big tummy and hung loose in the back. I’d seldom seen her without make-up and her wrinkly skin was dotted with brown spots. That she was fixing up a huge bird the size of a small child did little to wipe away the image.

“Finally, add a light dusting of nutmeg. Not a lot; just enough for a bit of sweetness to the skin.”

Grandma stood back and swept her arm across the bird. “Sheila, meet Matilda; our Thanksgiving feast.” Grandma put a cover over Matilda and shoved her in the oven.

“Let’s take a bit of a break, shall we?” Grandma poured herself a fresh cup of coffee and looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Do you feel like jumping out of your skin?”

My eyes flew open. “Huh? I mean, what, Grandma?”

“How about one more cup of coffee, Sheila?” Grandma made me a fresh cup of coffee, plopped herself into a chair and lit a cigarette.

My eyes followed the cigarette to her mouth.

“No cigarettes, Sheila. Coffee’s okay. It’s good. But don’t ever do this to yourself.”

“Then how come you do?”

“Honey, if I could stop, I would. These things have me by the throat. Don’t ever let anything—or anyone—own you like these cigarettes own me.

A gray spiral of smoke climbed through the air as Grandma drew the cigarette to her lips. She drew in a huge puff, waited a moment and then exhaled the gray plume above her head.

“How about a quick game of Yahtzee before everyone wakes up? We’ll use my quiet cup.”

Seemed Grandma had a cup for everything.

.

A Father's Day Retrospective

Two days past Father's Day and I'm now ready to write about it. My parents divorced when I was seven and my father lapsed back into the scalawag life he'd known before marrying my mother. She was supposed to be his savior, the one who'd keep him on the straight and narrow while he morphed into a husband and father. It worked for a few years, but his wandering eye caught another and he slipped back into his old ways.

Did I mention that among his many talents--and yes, he was quite talented--he could swallow swords and other long, sharp objects. After my mom packed up her two daughters, my dad hitched up with a circus in Hawaii and left us with my uncle and aunt. When the circus tent folded, he came home, begged my mom back and my younger sister Angela resulted.

My novel in progress, The Sword Swallower's Daughter, began as a love story about a daughter lamenting the loss of a father who bailed out of her life when she was seven. Sound familiar? The first version received adulation from agents who praised my writing, but wouldn't make an offer of representation. The story was just too soft for the edgy title. I let the novel sit for a year, then picked it up again last January and hacked out the gooey sections. In their place are new scenes, a protagonist who grows through the story with flashbacks that reveal a horrifying secret she's kept to herself for 30 years. The original version contained a lot of both my dad and myself in the characters. The new version is still much of him, but nothing of me. The protagonist in this story is scarred from something far worse than her father's disappearance from her life.

Here is the intro to the first chapter of the original version. It's still there, but it's no longer the opening paragraph. I love this section for how it truly describes the daddy I once had.

Other fathers looked like Ward Cleaver in suits with white shirts and skinny ties and drove huge cars with bulging bumpers to work in offices or stores. They took their wives out for dinner on Saturday nights and left the kids home with babysitters to watch TV and eat pizza. My father was Italian and had an eagle tattooed across his chest and a pierced ear. He drove a 650 cc Triumph Bonneville motorcycle to work at an Esso service station and went out nearly every night without my mom. Some kids went to the Colorado River and water-skied on weekends; my sisters and I hung out at the beach where Daddy entertained beach-goers with his sword swallowing act. When I think of my daddy, I remember him like this.

You can read a bit more of that opening on my author's website at www.carolynburnsbass.com/fiction.

So anyway. Father's day 2010 is behind us. It lingers in my heart always. What about you?

Travel With Me On A Mother's Day Blog Tour

Welcome to the Twitter Chats Blog Tour, organized by Mariana N. Blaser at mariblaser’s randomities and Anne Tyler Lord at Don’t Fence Me In. Today's theme is Mother's Day.

You will be directed to your next stop at the end of this post. Please feel welcome here, and have a happy Mother's Day!

~~~~~~~

I’m sitting on an airplane enroute to Lisbon as I write about my mother. She’s been gone nearly seven years and I can still remember her face when she stepped from the jetway in Tokyo the year she came to visit me. She had never been out of the country and her excitement overwhelmed the jetlag from the 14-hour flight from Los Angeles.

My mother loved to travel. Did we go places much when I was growing up? Not really. We took one vacation during my childhood years, a road trip to Texas to visit the family of my new stepfather. Travel was something other people did, something she longed to do, but never had the funds or the freedom to enjoy. As the daughter of a railroad man, she’d hung out at train depots growing up and rode the rails from her home in Iowa to California when she was a young girl. She fell in love with California on that trip and decided she’d live there one day.

Coming of age in the post-WWII era, my mother was a victim of choices—her own and those thrust upon her from parental expectations. In her churchy Midwestern world, after high school the rich girls went to Europe, the smart girls went to college and the good girls got married. My mother was neither rich nor scholastically inclined, so she graduated high school and got married. She scandalized the town two years later when she filed for divorce, packed up her few belongings and headed to California.

Ten years later she was in a disastrous marriage to my father with three young girls and a piano. Three things got her through those years, that piano, her singing and her love of travel. Music took her places where planes, trains and automobiles couldn’t go. I remember her playing and singing pop songs that are now standards like, “Fly Me to the Moon,” “How Are Things in Glocca Morra,” “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” and “Somewhere My Love.” Music was the vehicle that transported her beyond the overdue rent, broken down car, and holey underwear.

I’ve drawn much from my mother and father in The Sword Swallower's Daughter, the novel I’m currently revising. Here’s an excerpt that captures the transformation that occurred within my mother when she sat down at the piano:

”We returned from school that day to the sound of her pounding out “Clar de Lune” on the piano. Mama’s piano playing was a barometer to her moods. When she played and sang sad love songs, she was irritable. When she played upbeat show tunes, we pretended we were the Lennon Sisters and joined in fun rounds of musical togetherness. Sometimes she played hymns, especially for wicked Uncle Teddy, who insisted she sing “How Great Thou Art” every time he saw her. But when she played from her big, brown classical music book, she channeled the tension of her life into the music, because when she closed the piano lid and stepped away, her face was smooth and her voice as soft as a soap opera star.”

Had my mother been raised in a family that dared to dream, she might have considered a career in music. Had she believed in herself, she might have listened to those in California who suggested she sing jingles for commercials, background vocals in Hollywood studios, even piano bar at one of the posh nightclubs of the day. As talented as she was, as much as she loved to sing, she simply had no confidence in herself. She didn’t dream of being famous, of stepping in and out of limos in exotic locations, her dreams were simple exhaustion borne of just getting by.

You’d think that this musical legacy may have led me into music. Sadly, we had no money for music lessons, or even renting a cheap student instrument during elementary school years. My mother, so broken from her past, didn’t have the confidence to teach any of her three daughters to play piano. I taught myself to read a melody line with my right hand and chord with my left hand. Sing? That gift skipped a generation, landing squarely in the voices of my two children. Elisabeth, who has perfect pitch and reveled in her piano lessons until 12^th grade, has no time for the gift right now while she works through grad school as an English major. Jonathan, who was born with a song in his heart, delights me with spontaneous songs emanating from the shower, across the house, from the stage of his college choir. But travel? They’ve got that bug, and good. But what do you expect from children born in a foreign country, whose passports were issued before birth certificates?

In 1989 my mother took her only trip out of the country to be with me for the birth of my son in Tokyo. As a teenager during WWII, she’d struggled with prejudices against the fearsome Japanese she heard about in newsreels and newspapers. Upon his return from the war in Japan her brother gave her a tiny gold ring he’d removed from the finger of a dead Japanese solder. I’d always felt that ring had bad juju and when we began planning her trip, I suggested she bring the ring back with her and we’d present it to the Japanese military commander on the base nearby. She agreed and we were both thrilled with this restorative action. Bad juju passed into other hands though, as her jewelry box with that ring and other family treasures were stolen during a home robbery only weeks before she was to leave on her trip.

I’ve often said that a visit to Hiroshima’s Peace Park and the A-Bomb Museum there should be a pilgrimage of every human being sometime in their life time (along with Auschwitz). We took my mother to Peace Park, where she was both horrified and healed. The destruction and human drama that was Hiroshima seared her mind like the images the nuclear blast put on the walls of the city. Yet her interaction with the friendly, helpful, humble Japanese people healed the prejudice she’d long harbored.

When she got sick from the cancer that claimed her life, she and I had been dreaming up a trip to England. She wasn’t able to take it, but I did it for her. I wrote about that trip in Ghosts of the Windswept Moors.

And so it is that she loved to travel. I always take a part of her when I go.

~~~~~~~

Thanks for stopping by! Your next stop for the Mother's Day Twitter Chats Blog Tour is Marisa Birns of Out Of Order Alice: http://www.marisabirns.com/2010/05/mothers-day-twitter-chats-blog-tour.html -- @marisabirns

The complete list of participants can be found at the host's blogs: Mariana N. Blaser and Anne Tyler Lord.

Clar de Lune, Susan Boyle and My Mother

My novel, THE SWORD SWALLOWER'S DAUGHTER, yes, the one I'm still revising, draws much from my childhood. My father really was a sword swallower and my mother was a closet chanteuse who played piano and sang with a voice that rivaled the divas of her day. In fact, when I hear Susan Boyle, I think of my mother. She had that kind of voice, but zero confidence.

The photo at right is my mother playing and singing with my younger sister, Angie, who inherited Mom's voice and musical abilities. Sadly, Angie passed away from melanoma in 1990 at the age of 29. My mother has been gone since 2003.

Some of my fondest memories of my mother are when she played piano and sang. My Mother's Day tribute this year is a short excerpt from THE SWORD SWALLOWER'S DAUGHTER, all of which is true to the point of memoir, rather than fiction.

Enjoy.

We returned from school that day to the sound of Mama pounding out “Clar de
Lune” on the piano. Mama’s piano playing was a barometer to her moods. When she
played and sang sad love songs, she was irritable. When she played upbeat show
tunes, we pretended we were the Lennon Sisters and joined in for fun rounds of
musical togetherness. Sometimes she played hymns, especially for Uncle Teddy,
who insisted she sing “How Great Thou Art” every time he saw her. But when she
played from her big, brown classical music book, she channeled the tension of
her life into the music, because when she closed the piano lid and stepped away,
her face was always relaxed and her voice as soft as a kitten.

After dinner that night, Aunt Cissy’s boyfriend, Ernest, pointed to the piano in the parlor adjacent to the living room. “Anyone play piano?”

My little sister jumped up, ran to the piano and began plunking out the right hand side of “Heart and Soul.” She turned and asked me to play the two-handed left side. I was not about to play this kiddy song in front of Ernest, so I declined, saying I couldn’t sit on the piano bench with a broken leg.

Aunt Cissy stuck her head into the room and said, “Ask Edie. She plays and sings just like Rosemary Clooney.”

Mama rolled her eyes, but I could tell she liked the remark. She had a repertoire of songs she would sing and play in the evenings when Daddy was gone out to wherever it was that he liked more than home.

“Really?” said Ernest, looking to Mama with more than a little interest. “Oh, please play something.”

“Play ‘Moon River,’” said Aunt Cissy. “That’s one of my favorites.”

Mama groaned and then opened up the piano bench and dug through a bunch of sheet music. With an “ah ha,” she pulled out a warn folio and spread it across the piano.

I loved it when Mama played and sang. When she put her hands to the piano keys her face changed. The harsh lines around her eyes softened and her shoulders relaxed enough to let her arms flow up and down the keyboard.

She could imitate the sound of just about any singer I’d ever heard. Sometimes Daddy would hang around after supper and ask her to sing for him. Her music soothed whatever it was that drove him away.

“Play Unforgettable,’” he’d say, standing behind her, close enough to touch, but never touching.

Other times Daddy would recline in his chair and smoke, blowing smoke rings inside smoke rings while we ran around trying to catch them. Mama would play through her repertoire of pop songs while Daddy let us crawl over him. Those were memories I cherished. That was the Daddy I remembered, the Mama I wanted.

Seeing Mama unwind at the piano now lit a flicker of something I couldn’t wrap my heart and mind across.

From THE SWORD SWALLOWER'S DAUGHTER, copyright 2009 by Carolyn Burns Bass

It's all good

I love first drafts. The excitement of the story unfolding at your fingertips, the flurry of what-if and when-do, and the passion of new love. First drafts are like courtship. Revisions are like marriage. Still, it's all good when your heart's in it.

I just posted this on my friend Allison's Facebook page, a congratulatory note to her for finishing the first draft of her new novel.

Af for me, I'm back in revisions with THE SWORD SWALLOWER'S DAUGHTER, but like I wrote to Allison, it's all good.

Onto the Query-Go-Round

This morning I finished the revision to THE SWORD SWALLOWER'S DAUGHTER. I am now stepping onto the ride the publishing world calls the Query-Go-Round.

This is when you take your baby novel, wrap it up in a two page synopsis, tie it with a ribbon that says something like: Life is anything but a carnival when your father's a sword swallower, your mother's an Avon lady and their divorce sends you searching out family secrets. Once you have your baby wrapped up pretty, you then toss it out to literary agents and hope it doesn't get bucked off and sent back onto the next query-go-round.

I shall not speak again of this ride until I'm re-agented and ready for the next ride--the submission express. So say a prayer, light a candle, hum to the universe, cross your fingers, or think happy thoughts for me. If you'd like a peek at my query letter, you will get the gist of it here: http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/CABass/.

In the Tent of Revision

It's November. National Novel Writing Month. If you've been reading Ovations for more than a year, then you'll remember that I wrote the first 50k of THE SWORD SWALLOWER'S DAUGHTER last year during NaNoWriMo. Several well-wishing friends have emailed recently asking me about the status of last year's NaNoWriMo novel.

I finished the SFD (Shi**y First Draft) last May, set it aside for a month, then went back in to close holes, flesh-out characters, and clean up sentences. A couple of very trusted readers have given me some fabulous insights that I'm now working into the manuscript.

I'm not playing NaNoWriMo this year. Instead, I've dedicated the month of November to finishing the revision and getting this baby ready for the big top.

Oh yeah, the graphic at right is a mock-up I created last year using a photo of my dad (who really was a sword swallower) and a photo of me with my mom and sisters. Of course, I must finish and get the book published first, but should the book be made into film (most every novelist's dream) I'd love Johnny Depp to play the father. What do you think?

Breath & Shadow Update

Remember this post from last May? Thanks to many of you who sponsored me in the Breath & Shadow write-a-thon, you can take an advance peek at my novel in progress in this month's edition of Breath & Shadow.

The write-a-thon was a great success for Breath & Shadow, bringing in much-needed funds to operate this monthly literary website. Breath & Shadow is the only literary magazine written, edited, and published by people with disabilities.

Celebrate Freedom

The USA is mired in some sticky gunk right now, but it's my home. What a better way to say Happy Birthday America than with fireworks over Disneyland. Disneyland fireworks shoot in the distance in my novel, THE SWORD SWALLOWER'S DAUGHTER, also.

I took this shot at Disneyland's 50th Anniversary Happiest Homecoming on Earth celebration on May 5, 2005. If you're a Disney fan, you can read my post about the occasion in the May 2005 Archives.

More Synchronicity

A few weeks ago I wrote here about writers needing a platform. Last week I attended a SITE-SoCal meeting at the Four Seasons Resort Aviara and heard a talk from branding specialist and author Sandra Sellani. Sandra gave an hour packed punch from her brand new book, What's your BQ.

BQ: Branding Quotient. Anyone with any marketing experience knows that branding is the lifeblood of selling a product. Think Kleenex, Band-Aid, Clorox, Evian. Branding is creating a proprietary, visual, emotional, rational, and cultural image of your product. Buyers don't perceive the above five elements of branding when they reach for a bottle of Evian water, yet the subconcious effect has grabbed them.

Sandra said anyone who sells commodities must have a strategy to survive in this cluttered marketplace. My mind engaged to her talk on two levels: 1) as a business person with a company of my own, and 2) as an author competing for dwindling publishing slots in a market glutted with submissions.

When we hear commodity, most people think of a tangible product, like widgets, flankels, and jigs. Sandra pointed to the crowd and said, "You are a commodity." It's true. We may sell a product or service, but in terms of personal branding, we are the product. Successful salespeople understand they are not only promoting their product or service, they are selling themselves.

Authors hear about platform in all of the publishing circles. I wrote about platform here. As Sandra spoke about branding, it clicked. Branding in the marketing world is the same as platform in the publishing world. Authors are a commodity; not just their books, stories, or articles. Authors who understand this early in their career: Stephen King, Nora Roberts, Tom Clancy, JK Rowling, become name brands, household words, the icon to which all their competition seeks to compare.

So we know that we are commodities. What then is our strategy for success? Here are a few of the notes I took away from Sandra's talk, peppered with my own insights:

• Create competitive differentiation. Prove why you are different.
• Go for the gut. Target the emotions and go for the gut reactions. Emotions connect.
• Be a Vulcan. Statistics impress. Look for logical points for those who identify with a purely rational approach.
• Gossip, heresay, and reputation. What do people say about you when you're not around.
• The eye of the beholder: You are what the consumer thinks you are.

Sandra gave us a peek at the VRIO model she covers in her book:

• V--Valuable. Are you valuable to your clients, readers, employers?
• R--Rare. Worker bees and hacks are a dime a dozen (so are cliches--but it works so well here). Be the diamond in a field of rhinestones.
• I--Imitate. Identify the best in your field and do what they do better.
• O--Organizational leverage. Make sure everyone in your company/team/agency understands your model and builds their strategy around it.

The Four Seasons Resort Aviara was the perfect setting for a talk about branding. This chain of luxury hotels and resorts has positioned itself at the top of its market. Four Seasons has city hotels all over the world, but this brand understands what travelers want in a resort away from the buzz and bang of a big city. Aviara is north of San Diego, set in a wetlands and wildlife conclave with spectacular views of the hills and lagoons. My room was spacious and overlooked the gorgeous Aviara gardens with a balcony and outdoor sitting area. I switched on the Bose wave radio, nibbled the chocolate-dipped strawberries delivered complimentary to my room, and worked in perfect serenity on my first draft revisions to THE SWORD SWALLOWER'S DAUGHTER. Chris DeVito and the staff at Aviara have a high Brand Quotient in my book.

Do you love what you do?

I’m sitting on the most comfortable hotel chair in the world. At least it feels that way to me. Traveling and staying in nice hotels is one of the best perks in my life. I say life, rather than job, because I love what I do.

The shingle above my business website says I do travel marketing, meeting planning, and business communications. My author's website says I’m a fiction writer. This blog is my attempt to synthesize both of these vocations into meaningful praise for the amazing people, places, and things that make this a wonderous world.

Last week I was looking out at the Pacific Ocean from Huntington Beach, California and today I’m watching the shadows fall across the rugged desert peaks surrounding Scottsdale, Arizona. We just checked into an amazing property—Hotel Valley Ho, a Scottsdale landmark and hip urban oasis since the late 1950s. This is our room.

Yes, that is an oversized bathtub in the middle of the room. When I said it was romantic; my husby didn’t argue. Ever pragmatic, he did voice a concern that I might get up in the middle of the night and fall into it. Our room has a separate glass-door shower and lush, Red Flower spa amenities for bathing.

Look closely at the shot to the right. See the 32-inch flat screen TV aimed at the bathtub? That’s a long, wall-length counter of luxury accessories like crystal wine glasses, a martini shaker and glasses, a magnifying make-up mirror. See the black bullet thing? It’s a pod expresso maker. Inside those cabinets are a fully-stocked mini-bar and quirky selection of gourmet snacks like Lucy’s “Predic-a-Mints,” Cracker Jacks, and chips and salsa.

You can’t see it in the picture, but I’m using it now: complimentary wireless internet in every room. Throughout the hotel, in fact. I can sit in a cabana next to the pool and work on THE SWORD SWALLOWER’S DAUGHTER.

Hotel Valley Ho is the kind of place this sword swallower’s daughter never would have stayed in as a child. She’s pinching herself right now, making sure she’s really here. I write about travel, beautiful places, and gracious people. I believe much of my travel writing is to a create permanent record of where I’ve been—not in a look-at-me-living-it-up way, but in gratitude--a reflection of how far I’ve come.

Now if they only sold this chair.

Do you love what you do? Click the COMMENT link below and tell us why or why not.

* * *

Special thanks to Jesse Thompson and Hotel Valley Ho for donating a stay at their fabu property to the SITE-SoCal Holiday Charity Auction. I bought the package and happy I did.

Between business and pleasure

I’m writing this morning from the glorious Hilton Waterfront Beach Resort in Huntington Beach, California. Although this hotel is only about an hour from my home, I’ve come to love this property for a number of reasons. The smartest reason is that the Waterfront has discovered that perfect blend between business and pleasure. I am here for business, but pleasure is what I’m getting right now as I sit in my room watching the famous Surf City waves peak and crest in the early morning ocean mist.

I arrived last night just after sunset and stepped out of my car to the scent of wood smoke, savory hotdogs, and crusty marshmallows rising from the firepits lining the beach. I couldn’t really distinguish the hot dogs and marshmallows, but having sat around those fire pits many times through the years, my memory filled in the details.

Poised on Pacific Coast Highway, along the Orange County Riviera, The Waterfront offers views of the wide sand and rolling waves from almost every room in the house. The first thing I do when checking into a hotel room is open the curtains (okay, this after tipping the bellboy). The lights along the famous Huntington Beach Pier had just lit, reflecting in the teal-blue ocean below.

This pier is one of my favorite childhood memories. My mother once dreamed she was standing on that pier watching me struggling in the water below, sucked under and swept out before her eyes. I don’t think I ever told her how that dream haunted me for years. Looking back, I think the dream was symbolic. She watched me go through some pretty rough times, unable to reach me from her motherly perch. The ocean of life threw me back, coughing and sputtering on the sandy shores of adulthood.

I want to thank J.D. Shafer and the fabulous Hilton Waterfront staff for making my stay in their house so fabulous. After my SITE-SoCal meeting today I’ll drive north on PCH a few miles to Seal Beach, where I spent many wild and carefree days as a child, and where my character Sheila’s daddy lives in my novel, THE SWORD SWALLOWER’S DAUGHTER.

Where did you spend your summers or your wild and carefree days of youth? Click the comments link below.

Good things are happening

It's true. I’m in the final act of the SWORD SWALLOWER’S DAUGHTER and excited about where we are now. Sheila’s Daddy just bought a sailboat to live aboard. Wouldn’t that be fun?

I got an email from an editor at a very nice print magazine, saying they loved my short story, STILL LIFE, the one that tied for first place in last month’s Backspace contest. She asked if she could use it in a future edition of the magazine. I’ll reveal more details when they’re available. But I’m happy to see this story placed in such a fine magazine.

In today’s LitPark, Susan Henderson, author and playground monitor extraordinaire, included a small memoir I wrote about my mom, and included a photo of her and me taken on my wedding day. Take a look here. (Can’t wait to announce your news, Susan!)

I finished reading Kristy Kiernan’s CATCHING GENIUS. This was one of those books that you can’t wait to find out what happens, but you’re sorry it’s over when you read the last page. The final chapter was a bittersweet finish on a glorious sonata. Here is the beautiful cover again.

Here’s something to give you a chuckle this week; this is from Bud Caddell, runner up to the Tech Brew/FeedBurner contest. Bud’s entry is a takeoff of the Bulwer-Lytton (Bad) Fiction contest.

From the moment she walked in the door and let down her hair, he was hooked, hooked on those warm blonde locks drenched in the sun filtering through the cheap plastic blinds, hooked on that shade of blonde that reminded him of the icons on the site he was feverishly posting and reposting his newest blog post, the one with the image of Britney Spears with the sign of the beast so artfully photoshopped on her bare skull, so hooked that he knew, from that moment, that she was the only real linkbait he’d ever known, and that he digged her.

The Reading List:

• THE KOMMANDANT'S GIRL, Pam Jenoff
• WHISTLING IN THE DARK, Lesley Kagen
• PROMISE NOT TO TELL, Jennifer McMahon

More than a week

It’s Wednesday and I’m writing my weekly Monday post. I’m my own publisher so I guess that means I’ll have to discipline myself. Maybe I’ll dock my pay. Wait. I don’t get paid for my blog. I’ll have to figure out something else, like depriving me of chocolate for a week.

I added 2,000 more words to THE SWORD SWALLOWER’S DAUGHTER and introduced my little Sheila to one of my favorite folk singers of all time, Joan Baez. By the way, on March 6th my daddy, who really was a sword swallower, would have been 77 years old. Sadly, he passed away in 1989 while I was living in Japan.

This month’s Backspace short story contest required a story about someone who came into a large amount of money, and the story has to have a river in it. This round may be tough competition because first prize is a signed copy of FINN by Jon Clinch. I have my own copy, of course, but if I win the contest and get this signed copy, I’ll run my own contest in Ovations to give away my first copy. (I won a signed copy of Sara Gruen’s WATER FOR ELEPHANTS in the last Backspace short story contest. I’ll have to think up a contest for next week to give away my original copy of Gruen’s wonderful book.)

So, after a week submerged in the brilliant darkness of Clinch’s FINN, I have returned to blue skies and heroes. Last week I called FINN extra-dark, Belgian chocolate. Having now finishing the book I’m suggesting it’s more like aged port wine. The prose is intoxicating and the story is addictive. The conclusion ferments the pith of Twain's river saga with Clinch's detached storytelling for velvet-rich satisfaction. Barnes & Noble's Online Book Club is discussing Twain's and Clinch's books side-by-side this month and Clinch has been logging in to talk with club members. He's a great guy, very approachable, and welcomes intelligent discourse.

And now I’m reading SUPER MOM SAVES THE WORLD, Melanie Lynn Hauser’s sequel to the acclaimed CONFESSIONS OF SUPER MOM. After a week on the dark Mississippi River of Pap Finn, the bright world of Hauser’s Birdie Lee is welcome contrast. Birdie Lee is the secret identity of Super Mom, who survived a Horrible Swiffer Accident that turned her into an apron wearing, mess-cleaning, crime-fighting super hero who wants to fly. Okay, so a Swiffer accident turns divorced mom into a super hero is kind of a literary stretch. But Hauser’s voice is so engaging, her perceptions of culture so astute, her bright voice never tries to convince you that stupidity is funny. Here is my favorite line in the book so far, when Birdie is fretting over her teenaged daughter’s new friend Vienna: “... if recent history has taught us anything, it’s that a girl named after a foreign city is going to be trouble.”

Still on my reading list:

• CATCHING GENIUS, Kristy Kiernan
• THE TEAHOUSE FIRE, Ellis Avery
• THE KOMMANDANT'S GIRL, Pam Jenoff

On a reading binge

This morning my word meter pushed past 60,000 words on THE SWORD SWALLOWER’S DAUGHTER. That I got any writing done this weekend is a big deal. Not that anything cool was going on, but my pre-orded copy of FINN by Jon Clinch arrived and I’ve been engrossed in reading it. FINN is the story of Huckleberry Finn’s father, the notorious Pap Finn who kidnaps, beats, and imprisons Huck in Mark Twain’s THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN. Those familiar with Twain’s story know that Pap Finn dies and Huck finds it no loss. Jon Clinch doesn’t make old Pap a sympathetic soul, so knowing he’s bound to die doesn’t ruin the storyline.

FINN is like extra-dark, Belgian chocolate. The prose is so rich, the matter of the story so weighty, you can’t take too much in one setting. I find myself reading a paragraph several times just to savor the mastery of tongue. How can someone write so beautifully about such horrible themes as child abuse, slavery, alcoholism, rape, murder, poverty, deceit? Jon Clinch can and does. That’s all for now. I’m off to read.

Books on my bedside table:

• SUPERMOM SAVES THE WORLD, Melanie Lynn Hauser
• CATCHING GENIUS, Kristy Kiernan
• THE TEAHOUSE FIRE, Ellis Avery
• THE KOMMANDANT'S GIRL, Pam Jenoff