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

Squee with me

In the two weeks since I posted my Duh Moment, I had a Squee Moment. Or two. Maybe more. Read on and squee with me.

First squee: Remember one of my new year’s resolutions was to submit my short stories this year? Since January 1st, I’ve sent out four stories.

Second squee: I received my acceptance on one of those four submissions. This is my first fiction credit and I squeed so loud my husby looked up from Law and Order to see what the ruckus was about. The Rose & Thorn, a distinguished online literary journal bought my story EXPERIENCED ONLY NEED APPLY for its Summer 2007 issue.

Third squee: My son received his first college admission letter last week. The following day he received a second letter from the college offering him an annual $5,500 scholarship. He’s also been invited to audition for a choir scholarship. This is the same college (a small, private college out of state) whose football coach had been calling on him. Jonathan decided to forego football in favor of music, but will be a pre-law major. Oh to be young.

Fourth squee: My short story STILL LIFE recently tied for first place in the Backspace contest that just ended. I’m sharing the spotlight with a fabulous author AS King, whose short story DOWN BOY is a kick. You’ll be seeing AS King on bookstore shelves one day soon, so drop by her site and get to know her now.

Fifth squee: I just finished reading a great business book. In my other life as a travel marketing consultant I am blessed to meet some of the most extraordinary people in all manners of life. John Klymshyn is one of those people. He is a motivational speaker who motivates from the heart, not just the mind. I’ve heard him speak on several occasions and each time I leave with new tools to strengthen and tune-up my business. Yet the spokes of his messages reach into other areas of my life—personal relationships, family activities, and yes, my personal writing. John’s recent book, THE ULTIMATE SALES MANAGER’S GUIDE contains some of the most practical, relevant, and doable tools for anyone leading teams of people, whether in sales, recreation, or life.

Sixth squee: Need to be pampered? I did. The night before last week’s SITE-SoCal/MPISCC event I spent a lovely night at the brand new Four Seasons Hotel Westlake Village. My room looked out on the hotel’s, oriental gardens, a lush carpet to the Santa Monica Mountains backdrop. Tucked away in a business enclave in The Valley, that legendary haven north of LA, the Four Seasons Hotel Westlake Village could become one of the most sought after conference and meeting properties in Southern California. Beyond business, though, the hotel houses the California WellBeing Institute which offers medical, dietary, lifestyle, and fitness services and activities. A colleague in my group suggested this jewel was poised to be the dream wedding location for every bride in The Valley. A second colleague seconded that by saying he was already considering it for his daughter’s bat mitzvah. Location-wise, it’s only a 40-minute drive up the 101 from LA, has easy access to Malibu beaches and fabulous golf, and is only a short hop to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.

Have you had a squee moment recently? Click the comments link below to share yours or to read about others. Now squee.

Flustration, Mind Muck, and the Duh Moment

Have you ever been troubleshooting something and you get out the manual to read something like, “Confirm that the power cord is plugged into the source.” You say to yourself, “Duh.”

Yesterday I had what I call a Duh Moment. I’d left my house in plenty of time to make it into Santa Monica for a SITE-SoCal meeting where Brenda Anderson, author of PLAYING THE QUANTUM FIELD, was speaking. I’d helped plan this meeting and had Brenda’s books and the meeting materials in the trunk of my brand new, fun and flashy, Camry SE—a very dependable car.

I’m streaming down the fast lane of I-10 listening to Wally Lamb’s SHE’S COME UNDONE through the iPod connection in the car, when the traffic slows to a crawl. But that’s okay, because I factored the traffic into the morning commute. Then it stopped. So did I. Then it moved forward again. I pressed my accelerator and my car went whoosh like it was in neutral. I checked the gear shift and it was in the drive position, so I moved it to park and then back to drive and hit the accelerator again. Whoosh, not zoom.

I look in my rearview mirror and see a frustrated face glaring through the windshield of the car behind me. I turned off Wally Lamb. Flustered now, I turned off the engine and tried to restart it. No clicking, no whirring, no audio.

I put my hazard blinkers on and called Husby, who called the Toyota emergency roadside service. They promised a tow out to me within the hour. The cars behind me began moving into the emergency lane to pass on my left. Several minutes went by; cars passing one right after another in their own rush to wherever. One kind couple paused beside me and asked if they could do anything for me and I was happy to tell them help was on the way.

A charming CHP officer arrived a few minutes later and stopped traffic in all four lanes and then pushed me across the freeway to the shoulder. I assured him that help was on the way and he took off to help someone else. Help arrived about a half-hour later when a knight in a shining white truck pulled up behind me. It wasn’t the tow-truck. It was Husby in his Ford F-150. We shifted the meeting materials into his truck and he sent me on my way with a kiss and blessing for safety.

Back on the road again, Husby calls me and says he got tired of waiting for the tow-truck and decided to try the car. You know the rest. The car started for him. Then he asks, “When you tried to start it did you…” I cut him off. “Of course. I tried everything.” He drives it to the nearest Toyota dealer and leaves it for a physical.

I pulled my big white truck into the Fairmont Miramar valet right behind a gorgeous red Ferrari 612 Scaglietti. I was a half-hour late to the meeting, but I was there. My dear friends and colleagues Louise Lyon and Brigitte Lundrigan had stepped up to the registration table and had everything under control when I got there.

Brenda’s topic was synchronistic to my day. Using examples from her book, Brenda spoke about how we operate within a gradient between the fear zone and power zone. When we’re entrenched in the fear zone, we take head trips that loop through our mind, criticizing, regretting, or reliving all our mistakes. The fear zone zaps us of energy and produces confusion, poor judgment, frustration, and fluster. When my car first whooshed instead of zoomed I got flustered. The more aware of the cars piling up behind me, the more flustered I became. I call this “flustration.”

After the fabulous meeting I’m driving home in more traffic, head-tripping about my reaction to the morning’s flustration. I replayed Husby’s role, my response to his insulting question, “When you tried to start it did you…” and how I am the type that never gives up on a technological challenge. Then something Brenda said floated to the top of all what I call mind muck.

Brenda said, when you’re in a head trip pause. Stop thinking. Look at it from outside yourself. I paused, which wasn't hard because traffic was snarled. I wondered what Husby was going to ask in the question I cut from him. So I called him and apologized for cutting him off and asked what he was going to say.

He was going to ask if I had enacted the anti-theft device when I turned the ignition. That was the duh moment. No I hadn’t. In my flustration, I’d forgotten all about the anti-theft device.

Have you lived through a day like this? Need to purge the mind muck? Tell us about it. Just click the link below to leave a comment.

Ode to Joy and Failed Resolutions

Well it’s three days past my first failed resolution. I did not finish the first draft of THE SWORD SWALLOWER'S DAUGHTER by the 15th. January has been a month of mixed projects, beginning with follow-up from the SITE-SoCal Holiday Event, to learning how to make animated banners for a client’s website design, to supporting my son in getting his stuff together for college applications, to getting myself back in the habit of gymercise, to nursing my 17-year-old cat, to just being me.

THE SWORD SWALLOWER’S DAUGHTER is five-thousand words richer than when I made the ambitious goal. Truth is, I lingered too long over a critical scene where Sheila is confronted with the ugliness of the world and chooses a new course for herself because of it. Some writers have a hard time at the beginning of a story; I have a hard time at the end. Maybe it’s because I’ve grown to love my characters so much I delay finishing their story.

Last week I got exciting news from my friend and fellow author, Karen Dionne, that her novel FREEZING POINT sold to Berkley. This news made my day and is still ringing into this week. I met Karen online about six years ago, commiserated with her when her first novel went the rounds in NYC. She buoyed me when my first novel met the same fate. Undaunted, Karen began writing a new novel and encouraged me to do the same. In the midst of writing FREEZING POINT, Karen co-founded Backspace, an online writer’s community that reflects her generous heart and her brilliant business sense. If you enjoy thrillers, watch out for FREEZING POINT.

It was on Backspace that I met Jackie Kessler, author of HELL’S BELLES. Like Karen, Jackie wrote a couple of novels that didn’t find a home. Until she got a hotter than Hades idea to write a novel about a succubus who’s kicked out of Hell and sent to earth to live as a mortal. Jackie wrote this novel in a matter of months and then polished it to perfection. I was thrilled to refer Jackie to my lit agent, Nephele Tempest at The Knight Agency. But by the time Nephele offered representation, Jackie had already signed with another agency. HELL’S BELLES was released by Kensington last week and I got my copy yesterday. Here’s to Jackie, who knows I’ll bring the chocolate to this summer’s Backspace conference.

New Year, New Goals for 2007

Have you made your new year resolutions? I have. I've never been much on making New Year resolutions, but this year I decided to shout out my goals.

• Finish first draft of THE SWORDSWALLOWER'S DAUGHTER by January 15th.
• Revise and send second draft to beta readers by March 1.
• Send polished ms to agent by April 1.
• Submit at least one short story each month to lit pubs.
• Read more good books
• Balance my personal life, my business life, and my creative life.

Are you a resolutionist? Do you want a place to shout out your resolutions? Feel free to post them here. The blogosphere is listening.

Four Words in Four Colors

Joy
Peace
Love
Hope

Four words in four colors
Wishes all
For now and for tomorrow.

Shout out for my daughter

Today on LitPark Susan Henderson gave readers the opportunity to shout out something of themselves. I chose to shout out my 19-year-old daughter's blog Bella Voce. Elisabeth, or Elle-chan as we called her when she was born in Japan, delighted me last year when she exercised the freshman tradition and changed her major from political science to English. She hasn’t lost her political charge—as you will see when you read her review of Blood Diamond in her blog—but she has found her voice through writing. You may also remember my proud mama moment when I wrote of Elisabeth here back in September.

Give yourself a hug this holiday season.

Writers are more than the words they write

We are so much more than the words we write, yet the words we write draw from everything we are.

Sometimes I'm amazed at what flows from my mind, through my fingers, and onto the computer screen. This morning I wrote the above quote in a welcome note to a new member of my Knight Agency group. After I typed it I paused and smiled.

NaNoWriMo Winner Here

Today is the final day for NaNoWriMo participants to finish their 50,000 word novels. Everyone who submits a manuscript of 50,000 words or more is considered a winner. I finished mine yesterday. Well, sort of. I hit the 50,000 word finish line. By my estimate, I still have at least 25,000 words to go before the story is complete. One of the authors in my online writer's group asked NaNoWriMo participants what they learned from their experience in the month-long writing marathon. Here’s what I said:

"Winning" NaNoWriMo takes a far second to the joy I have about this novel. Had I not taken the challenge by Lori Weinrott to join, propped up by Brian Howe's enthusiasm, I don't think I would have started this novel--just yet. Each paragraph, page, and chapter convinced me that this is the book I should be writing right now. I'm setting aside WHISPERING NIGHTS while I finish TSSD.

I started out composing at a genteel pace, but as the days slipped by and I got behind, I began to feel crushed by the approaching deadline. I don't think there's a switch to turn off my inner editor. I don't like schlocky writing when I read it and I tolerate it less from myself. Nevertheless, it's still a shi**y first draft. It’s going to need some serious editing in the second round.

In the beginning I was excited by the new story and the words came easily as the characters revealed themselves. As my word count lagged behind the daily goal, however, I became hyper aware of every word I produced, clicking the word count meter every few pages. Toward the end I reverted back to my normal writing style, which is imagining and framing scenes for content and plot progression, rather than word count sessions. This put the joy back in the journey.

This is the first morning I haven’t plunged myself into TSSD. I’m taking a day off from the story to do some other writing tasks (like updating Ovations). Not to worry though, THE SWORD SWALLOWER’S DAUGHTER is even now sitting on her bed in the doll room, glaring at me to come up and play.

A Sword Swallower's Daughter is Conceived

My friend EJ posted a comment to the previous blog entry, kindly reminding me the post was getting a little old. More than two weeks old. Truth is I’ve been busy. Everyone gets busy, but I mean buried with details. But you don’t want to hear about the two-day holiday event for 500 people that I’m coordinating for SITE-SoCal. I’m pumped up about this annual event, excited about mingling and jingling with industry friends, and most of all hoping to raise $200,000 for the three charities (Camp Alandale, La Calle, Oasis of Hollywood) we’ve chosen to support though this event.

It’s not like I’ve been holding out on you, but the holiday event is not what’s been filling my early morning creative hours. I’ve started writing a new novel. I’ve joined several of my writing pals for a month-long novel writing challenge called NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). NaNoWriMo is kind of like the Boston Marathon for writers. The course is 30 days of 1667 word writing stretches. Everyone who writes 50,000 words and submits their manuscript at the end of the month is a winner. Although I’m not a quantity over quality writer, and I haven’t met the daily 1667 goal every day, as of this morning I reached 22,297 words in 16 days. I’m behind the nano quota, but I’m confident I’m going to cross the finish line with a novel I am proud of.

THE SWORDSWALLOWER’S DAUGHTER is a coming of age novel about loving people despite their failures, faults, and fetishes. The title, which has boiled around in my head for years, is autobiographical and many of my character’s experiences are loosely—emphasize loose here—based on my experiences growing up with an unconventional father and an over-conventional mother. Set the turbulent 1960s of my white Southern California childhood, it was an era when divorce was a sin, negroes were untouchable, Vietnam sent bloody images into American living rooms, and the Beatles led the British invasion of rock and roll.

You can read the first chapter of THE SWORD SWALLOWER’S DAUGHTER on the fiction page of my website. Click the title above to get there.

I’m nearly half-way through with the NaNoWriMo challenge, but THE SWORD SWALLOWER’S DAUGHTER will end when the story has been told. Check my daily word meter to see the progress. And leave me a comment to cheer me on.

I've Been Tagged

Some children played tag, red-rover, and hide-n-seek. Perhaps my cousins and I did too, but the most memorable game I remember was called "Machine Gun." There were seven of us, plus a few neighborhood kids thrown in to make a fun group. One person was the gunner and the others lined up across the yard. The gunner would assume the machine gun position with arm outstretched and finger pointed and say, GO. As the gunner made the ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah sound the rest of us ran across the yard only to be slain by the gunner. Then the gunner would walk through the fallen and choose the silliest, wildest, creepiest death position. That person would be resurrected by the gunner to become the next gunner. The game would begin again with a new gunner, while the former gunner would join the soon-to-be corpses. There was no trying to make it to the other side or to bring down the gunner. The object was to be chosen for having the creepiest death position. It's a wonder that none of us became assassins.

While it's not exactly a game of tag, this memory was prompted by two things. Yesterday was Halloween, the creepiest day of the year, and my friend EJ Knapp tagged me in an online game of blog tag. To fulfill my destiny I must write five things about myself that are not commonly known. Then I must tag five others to keep the game alive. So here goes:

1. I was born in Los Angeles to a San Francisco bohemian father of Italian descent and a Midwest fundamentalist mother whose roots trace back to Benjamin Franklin. They were unhappily married for ten years, divorcing when I was seven. My stepfather, a latent beatnik who introduced me to Joan Baez, Isaac Asimov, and kite flying, stepped in as the father my birth father couldn’t be.
2. I was an in-betweener in high school. I wasn’t part of any single clique, but had friends in all the crowds from the existentialist intellectuals, to the pot-smoking loadies who hung out in the bathrooms. I was senior class president, wrote for the HS newspaper, and was editor of the yearbook my senior year.
3. I follow the Christian faith, not because of blind adherence, obligation, or the need for a crutch. There was an emptiness in my life that pursuit of knowledge, pleasure, romance, or creativity couldn’t fill. I explored intellectual atheism, mysticism, new age thought, and Eastern religions, but in the end, I chose the grace that my study of the peace-loving Jesus revealed.
4. I went to Orange Coast College in SoCal, but never got to the university level. If there are any regrets in my life, this is the biggie. I took an internship with Contemporary Christian Music magazine and loved the job so much I accepted a fulltime position with the expectation of taking night courses to finish my degree. I was promoted to assistant editor of the magazine and then life took off on a zipline adventure that was exactly what I needed at the time.
5. I can’t imagine anything more satisfying than being a mother. Creative endeavors like writing, music, and art nurture me, but I realize that I am a nurturer at heart. I have loved every age in the life of my children and now as they stand on the cusp of adulthood, I am in awe of who they’ve become.

It’s time to tag five more people: Lori Weinrott, Susan Henderson, Karen Dionne, Brian Howe, Danielle Schaaf, and one honorary family tag to my daughter, Bella Voce.

Guest Blogger: The Road to Peace

We have a guest blogger this week at Ovations. I'd love to introduce you to this wonderful lady, but she prefers to remain anonymous. Our guest is a dear friend of mine who I met through our work in the travel industry. She is a seasoned traveler, with an ear for the heartbeat of the culture in which she's working or visiting. She is not a professional writer, and yet her words flow as gracefully as any prose I've read by my favorite authors. Please read on and join the conversation by leaving a comment at the end.

The Road to Peace
By Anonymous

The other night when I was falling asleep, I was thinking, “How do we get from where we are in this distressed world to peace?” The end of a war brings a cessation of the strife and that is a relief for many, but it is not peace.

“So how do we get to peace?” And the answer that came. "Peace comes when all is forgiven, when compassion sees our shared pain, our shared fears and our shared hopes and possibilities.”

“Well that's great,” I thought, “but how do government and races and cultures forgive?” Governments, races and cultures do not forgive. People forgive, people generate and allow compassion. I am one person. How can I make a difference in the healing of our world? And the answer that came was, "I can begin, by looking at what I need to forgive in my life. I can begin by having compassion on others and myself.”

The world’s healing starts one person at a time.

I invite you to help heal the world by choosing to forgive people or situations in your life. Not just in broad terms, but specific people and situations. Today now begin to forgive and don’t forget to forgive yourself. All that is needed is the willingness to forgive even when we find it seems impossible. It can be instantaneous or take time. It only matters that you are willing to forgive and choose to see with compassion...

Peace and blessings to you.

Discussion: Are there people in your life who you can forgive? What can you do to help the citizens of our world find peace? Do you believe the world will ever know a true and enduring peace?

Notes on a travel show: Do you fear global tourism?

The Incentive Travel & Motivation Expo (IT&ME) is over for another year. Those attendees who contain themselves to a Monday through Friday work week are now following up on the business cards, notes, emails and to-dos that collect during this busy week in Chicago. I took Thursday night to myself in Chicago, where I had dinner with two of my author friends—Melanie Lynn Hauser (CONFESSIONS OF SUPERMOM) and Renee Rosen (EVERY CROOKED POT). Friday morning I browsed through shops on the Magnificient Mile and then took a late afternoon flight home to California. It’s Monday and I’m back to work with renewed vigor.

While I was in Chicago the FAA relaxed its regulations on what airline passengers could carry on for flights. This, of course, led to numerous conversations on the safety and security of air travel. While most of the people I spoke with at the expo had no fears about air travel and security while in foreign locales, they did relate concerns from their clients who aren't in the industry. Destinations such as Dubai had a large pavilion on the floor and despite the negative focus on the Middle East, the Dubai buzz was as positive this year as last.

The NoteWorthy Group, the UK destination management company and event planning house that I represent, didn’t have a booth on the expo floor this year. We found that last year I made as many contacts out on the floor as our managaing director, Susie Worthy, did sitting at the booth. This year we decided not to take a booth; Susie would stay in London, and I would go out and meet people on the floor. The strategy worked, for I met dozens of dynamic people who wanted to hear more about TNG and why we’ve been selected by Conde Nast Traveler magazine as the Top Travel Specialist for the UK and Scotland for two years in a row. This distinction speaks for itself.

I think London is a perfect location for a hip, exciting, culturally enriching destination for an incentive program, conference, or educational summit. Dollars for dollars, or should I say dollars for pounds, it’s a destination that works hard to compete with such tropical locales as Mexico, Costa Rica, and the Caribbean. Surprisingly, this year the number one objective I heard about travel programs in the UK was not the unfavorable exchange rate and expense of the UK, but the length of time it takes to get to Europe as opposed to our neighbors to the south. And golf. Proximity to a golf course seems to be a top priority for travel planners choosing a destination for their programs.

Foot traffic through the expo appeared to be down again this year. We noticed it last year, but nearly every booth I visited remarked the same. One tourism official suggested that the amount of workshops and sessions cuts into the time delegates would otherwise spend in the expo. Yet others commented that the sessions were their first priority and time on the floor was spent targeted to specific vendors, rather than browsing around drinking up champagne under the British Pavilion, genuine Café du Monde latte at the New Orleans booth, or sake and sushi with Japan. A Mexico vendor corroborated this theory, saying she had fewer visitors, but the ones who stopped were decision makers looking to do real business.

Business dominates talk on the travel floor, but our business is about showing gratitude, inspiring goals, and giving people a good time. Many of the vendors once again outdid themselves with their evening galas thrown to promote their services and say thank you to their clients. VisitLondon threw a brilliant party atop the Sears Tower on Tuesday night. The Mexico Tourism Board’s dinner cruise on The Odyssey served food flown in from Merida. The Las Vegas party at Crobar was once again the hot ticket with this year’s “super hero” theme. A significant aspect of this business is working hard and earning the perks of performance. My pals Madelyn Marusa and Denise Dornfeld are two ladies who mean business on the expo floor, but know how to have fun at the end of the day.

So now I’m back to work, sorting through business cards, following up on contacts, returning emails, and looking forward to a productive season.

Readers of Ovations are an eclectic group of writers, travel industry professionals, blog-hoppers, and friends. If you read through this entire piece, how about answering a few questions. Tell me what global destinations you’d like to visit in the next couple of years, and why they appeal to you. And most importantly, in the political climate of the world today, do you fear air travel and global tourism?

Why Do You Live Where You Do?

Today’s post at LitPark got me thinking. Susan Henderson, the gracious host of LitPark interviewed author Amy Wilentz about her new book, I Feel Earthquakes More Often Than They Happen: Coming to California in the Age of Schwarzenegger. Amy lived in Jerusalem where peace on the streets is an oxymoron, and also in New York City during 9/11. As an author of two books and a journalist who’s written for The Nation, The New Republic, Newsday, Time, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, Amy considers her recent move to California a foreign assignment. I Feel Earthquakes More Often Than They Happen is a memoir informed by Amy’s search for safety and renewal after 9/11, yet dosed with California history and contemporary political reporting. I have not read Amy’s book yet, but the premise intrigued me beyond the surface. [Click the LitPark link to read more about Susan and Amy.]

While in New Orleans and the Katrina-devastated Mississippi bayou areas last summer, I heard several residents say how the media and other insensitive souls often asked them questions like, “why do you live here when you know it’s a hurricane zone,” or other less kind phrasings. Living in Southern California we hear such comments as, “Why do you live there with all of the [choose one] crime, heat, traffic, crowds, cost of living, liberalism, bad schools, earthquakes.”

Because it’s home. My father’s ashes are spread across the Pacific, my mother and sister lay side-by-side in the ground only fifteen miles from me. Because my children have roots in the same valley where mine have flourished. Because we like it here.

Being entirely fair to my husby, he stays here because of me. He’s a Carolina boy, raised on grits, fatback, and collard greens. The Marine Corps brought him here twenty-five years ago, he met me, and except for our three year tour in Iwakuni, Japan, we’ve lived here since. Given the chance he’d move back to North Carolina as quick as you can say suet.

A trend among retired California homeowners who sit on million dollar real estate they bought 30 years ago for the price of a Toyota today, is to sell out and buy into a community for active senior adults. They can buy a nice place with their house cash, invest the balance, and live off their retirement investments. Last Monday I was talking with a couple of my friends in that position: Gal One is selling her Orange County goldmine and moving to a retirement community in the desert and is trying to convince Gal Two to join her there. Finally Gal Two says, “Why should I sell the place that I love and move to a place where I don’t want to live?”

Why indeed? In light of Gal Two’s remark and then reading about Amy’s move to California to be rejuvenated made me wonder. Why do you live where you do? What took you there and what keeps you there?

Click the comment link below to tell us your story.

Remembering 9/11

It's midnight in New York City. It's time to remember.

I could write something to commemorate the fallen, to memorialize the tragedy. But someone I know already has. Read Bella Voce and leave a comment there.

A Daughter Grows Into Herself

My daughter returned to college this week. She’s a sophomore at a University of California campus only a half-hour drive from our home. Despite the nearby proximity, we decided last year it would be good for her to live on campus, not only because it’s more convenient, but because of the transitional value of life in a dorm.

She left for college as a political science major and came home as an English major. In between the change in her major she flirted with the sciences, having taken an oceanography class to satisfy her core requirements. The theory of continental drift fascinated her. She saw the whole of creation through the evolution of the earth. Yet she did not move into the sciences because the arts and humanities wooed her back through her first university level English class. Everything her teachers have been saying throughout her educational experience came into focus through this class.

Have I mentioned that she’s a scholar? A recipient of the university’s Chancellor’s Scholarship, among a list of other scholarships won during high school, my daughter craves knowledge. Not just trivia that makes good party chat, but the deep truths of how things work, why they work as they do, what happens when things break. She loves a research challenge and finding new ways to present time-honored truths. She has found an avenue of adventure in writing.

Had I tried to mold her into my own hopes for her she would have been a music major. I’ve been told by music teachers that perfect pitch does not exist, but near-perfect pitch does. She has it. Her soprano is clear and crisp, without shrill. When she plays piano and sings “Come What May” from Moulin Rouge, I get chills. All summer long she played selections from Phantom of the Opera while I worked. The house is silent now, the piano will collect dust again.

Her tennis coach thought she could have been ranked had we put her in competitive tennis early on. She picked up the game as a freshman in high school and smoked through lessons, burned up the court with her speed, but often defeated herself in the head play. Steve Kronseder, the tennis pro who took her under his wing, was an English major himself and did as much for her tennis game as he did her scholarship. I watched during lessons when he’d smash balls at her and then toss over questions about Beowulf, Chaucer, or Shakespeare. He’s the one who instilled in her the value that college is not a place to go to prepare for a job, but to explore knowledge.

Over the past year my daughter came home on weekends to do laundry, raid the pantry, see her local friends, and attend church with the family. When she went away in September of last year she was a girl excited to be out of the social cauldron called high school. She had no interest in joining a sorority, but made quick friends with her suite mates. The typical dorm hall dramas came and went and she often found herself the one doling out the psychic band-aids. It’s no wonder that this year she’s a Resident Advisor to a co-ed hall of 44 students.

She gave up her spring break last year to go on a service trip to Pass Christian, Mississippi, the gulf area most devastated by Katrina’s fury. She saved her money from her job at Starbucks to pay for the trip and came back a changed person. When we planned our summer vacation this year to include a week in New Orleans, she logged on with Habitat for Humanity and worked for three days in the brutal heat and humidity to build houses in the Ninth Ward area called Musician’s Village.

Only a few weeks ago she began a blog, Bella Voce. After 19 years of watching her attack and subdue anything she set her mind on I should not have been surprised at the depth of her writing. Yet I was. I’m glad I didn’t overbear my hopes on her in her early years with music. As talented as she is, I can see now that writing will be her destiny. She was born the spitting image of my husband; my genes seem to have been cancelled from her physical appearance. She’s blonde, I’m brunette; she’s blue-eyed, I’m hazel-eyed; she’s slender, I’m Reubenesque; she’s tall, I’m short. But as she gets older I see more of myself in her in different ways.

Elisabeth went away to college last fall as my daughter, but she came home as my friend. I’m missing my daughter, but I’ll always have my friend.

Do You Have Katrina Fatigue?

You may have heard the term “Katrina Fatigue.” Fatigue is a term used by the media to explain the indifference that creeps into the minds of the public when it is barraged with images, sound bytes, and sensationalist reporting that follows a catastrophe or prominent news event. You may have felt recurring Katrina fatigue as the one-year anniversary of the killer storm approached this week. If you’ve read my blog, you may have seen my on-location writing and photos from my trip to New Orleans this summer. But as I’ve watched the media coverage leading to the one-year anniversary of the storm’s landing, I’m haunted again at what happened to this glorious city.

Katrina Fatigue means something entirely different to those who live in the areas affected by Katrina. After a year of mourning, denial, and anger, there still isn’t resolution or acceptance for many Katrina victims. Katrina Fatigue hits them every day when they’re fighting with their insurance company over losses, hammering shingles and laying flooring, waiting for an “as is” sale on their water-ravaged house, listening to the occupants in the FEMA trailer next to them fighting over a drug deal and hoping they don’t pull out guns because those aluminum walls don’t stop bullets. While lights in the French Quarter are shining again, the shadow of Katrina is everywhere.

Spike Lee’s “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” spotlights the devastation of New Orleans’s Ninth Ward, a cramped section of old, wood-frame houses, occupied primarily by working-class blacks whose heritage in the city goes back generations. Many of the houses in the Ninth Ward have been scoured up and reoccupied, but whole neighborhoods were dozed and are being rebuilt. The orange search and rescue signs painted on the fronts of the homes remain visible, like graffiti tributes to survival. Habitat for Humanity has a rebuilding project going in a Ninth Ward neighborhood called Musician’s Village. The homes are going up two and three at a time, but they’re built from volunteer labor by people of all color from around the world.

The often conspiratorialized 17th Street Levee break is blamed for much of the flooding that hit New Orleans, but east of that Levee is St. Bernard Parish, where that levee break just as hard. St. Bernard Parish, and other middle and upper class areas were also destroyed by hurricane winds, storm surge, or levee break flooding. Like those chronicled by Spike Lee, these were working class people, too; second and third generation New Orleans natives who’d saved and saved to buy a dream house in the suburbs. These residents still battle Katrina fatigue and many will never again occupy their dream home or get the insurance money to rebuild.

Moving east, we traveled to Mississippi, stopping in Pass Christian, the coastal hamlet which got the full fury of Katrina on August 29, 2005. Residents of Pass Christian and other devastated areas along the Mississippi coast are the forgotten cousins of Katrina’s victims. Even New Orleans residents expressed concern and great compassion when we told them we were headed out to Pass Christian. We visited with several couples in Pass Christian whose homes my daughter worked on in a service mission last April during her college spring break. Their homes are nearly rebuilt, but the reconstructing of their lives is far from over.

Katrina Fatigue is an easy term to use when we’re sitting in our air conditioned homes, drinking our designer water, and wearing new clothes from a pre-season rack at Macys. News fatigue hits from over-exposure and sensationalized media coverage. It focuses on incidents, rather than issues; personalities rather than persons, and victims, rather than victors. Katrina Fatigue is a cop-out term for over-stimulated and under-involved people. If you’re reading this, you are probably not one of them.

You can view more photos from my trip through the Gulf Coast in my website's photo gallery.

Experiments in viral marketing: bookstyle

I am participating in a blogging experiment hosted at dearauthor.com. To enter the contest, put up this blurb, image, and trackback and you are entered to win the following prize package.

• $200 Amazon gift certificate
• Signed copy of Slave to Sensation
• New Zealand goodies chosen by Singh
• ARC of Christine Feehan's October 31 release: Conspiracy Game

You can read about the experiment here and you can download the code that you need to participate here.

SLAVE TO SENSATION
Nalini Singh
Berkley / September 2006

Welcome to a future where emotion is a crime and powers of the mind clash brutally against those of the heart.

Sascha Duncan is one of the Psy, a psychic race that has cut off its emotions in an effort to prevent murderous insanity. Those who feel are punished by having their brains wiped clean, their personalities and memories destroyed.

Lucas Hunter is a Changeling, a shapeshifter who craves sensation, lives for touch. When their separate worlds collide in the serial murders of Changeling women, Lucas and Sascha must remain bound to their identities…or sacrifice everything for a taste of darkest temptation.

Read an excerpt here.

Nalini is one of my author sisters at the Knight Agency, and SLAVE TO SENSATION was the first book my agent, Nephele Tempest sold. See this post for more.

My short story took first prize at Backspace

The guessing game is over at Backspace. The winners of Short Story Contest #15 have been called out and sorted. I'm thrilled that my short story SKETCHES took first place.

Do you write stories with soundtracks playing in your mind? I do, and did with SKETCHES. Music is a huge motivator in my life and there are songs I've always thought would play out to amazing stories. "Me and Bobby McGee," by Kris Kristopherson, is one of them. I think the longing for a simple life and a steady love reach into the psyche of the common soul. I was in junior high when Janis Joplin belted this song in my bedroom for the first time and I've been haunted by it since.

The song opens with, "Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waitin' for a train, feeling near as faded as my jeans. Bobby thumbed a diesel down, right before it rained, took us all the way to New Orleans." That song played unrelentingly in my mind while I watched rain fall every single day we were in New Orleans last month. I began writing the story while on the road from New Orleans to North Carolina. Every little town we passed had a Waffle House. Every Waffle House had a diesel truck in the parking lot. Rather than telling a story of the past with the MC and his girl Bobby, I made it a story for today with yesterday in the rearview mirror. I named the MC Kris as a tribute to the balladmaster himself.

This is what EJ Knapp said about SKETCHES: "Exquisite story, exquisitely written. The pace, the tension, the description. Connected to, yet never dependent on, a long ago tune, one possible future beheld, another unfolding, damn but you made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, brought goosebumbs to my arms. An absolutely beautiful piece of work."

I have, in fact, fallen in love with the MC and the broken girl. I just might keep this trip to California going for several thousand miles.

If you're a member of Backspace, you can read SKETCHES in Short Story Contest #15. If you're not a member, you can join here , or you'll have to wait until it's in print elsewhere. I'll be sure to let you know when and where.

MySpace is YourSpace

As if a blog and a website were not enough, I have set up camp in the biggest circus in cyberspace. If you're a denizen of MySpace, why don't you stroll on over to my tent. You'll find me in the Arts & Literature alley: Carolyn's MySpace Place.