can't help telling stories
I haven’t missed a post in a few years, but I’ve been on the road all month and have hardly turned my computer on. I’m between stops today, so, how about a few pictures from my travels?
(Well, I took all the pictures except the one on the Riverwalk boat trip in San Antonio. My friend (and host) Marsha took that one.)
Are you a take-it-easy-in-the-summer-and-jump-back-in-when-it’s-over type? Or are you an everything-else-slows-down-so-I-revel-in-summertime kind of person?
Personally, I always get antsy for a refresh when autumn gets close. I guess my rhythms are still tied to the school year. I want new books and new pencils and new calendars. And I want to think about new stories, which makes it hard to focus on the fixes I need in my work-in-progress.
This year, I’ll be on the road for my refresh-month. Instead of staring at my keyboard, watching words stretch across the screen, I’ll be squinting at my GPS and trying to get on the road early until I reach my destination–wherever that may be.
I am looking forward to the time at the end of the road, visiting family and friends. But I still hope to squeeze in some time on my writing. I hope that doesn’t sound too selfish. But I have been waiting all my life to put stories to words, to polish my prose until it resembles poetry.
I’m inspired by stands of corn turning yellow, and by leaves, curling and crimson. By vivid red sumac leaves. And those first days of rime on the marigolds.
I want a pinch of purple prose in my life. But a pinch every day.
When I retired–and I’ve said this before–I was so used to being busy I volunteered for a dozen or more “small jobs” for groups I belong to or thought I could help. It took most of my time for four years. (I can hardly believe I’ve been retired for going on five years. They’ve flown.) But last fall the inkling of “spare time” glimmered on my personal horizons. I’ve gone back to the beginning. (See my February and March posts for details, if you’re curious.) I’ve replanned the novel I decided to focus on at Bouchercon in New Orleans last September. And I’ve been inching toward a much revised draft since then.
Inching because I’ve still let a few “small jobs” slip into my life. One has had me looking for free (or reduced price) illustrations since last spring. I am reworking some small booklets, but even though I have words on the new templates, I have yet to find appropriate new illustrations. That’s the biggest new job I’ve taken on. And when it’s done, it’s done.
Another new task (Note to IRS: one with a small paycheck) is a feature story for a trade publication. That could go on indefinitely, but it’s not too time consuming so far, and I enjoy doing it.
But none of that sates my annual urge to curl up with a good book–even if I’m “curling” at my computer and writing my own book. And this year, as I gear up in my usual way, I will be putting the brakes on my progress.
I’ve talked with some of my writing buddies. They are supportive, encouraging me to try to write at least one sentence every day while I’m gone. We’ll see how that works. I’m hopeful. And my fingers would be crossed, but it’s hard to type that way.
À bientôt!
What could be more fun than celebrating mysteries in New Orleans?
I just got home from the World Mystery Convention, commonly called Bouchercon, in the Big Easy at the Gulf end of the Mississippi River, and it was a great gathering.
To say Bouchercon, for those who are unfamiliar with the event, start with BOW (like what the butler does), followed by CHUR (like church), then CON. (not pro). Bow-chur-con.
The event this year, I heard, drew something like 1,600 people — readers and writers, book sellers and book buyers — from around the world for five days of fictional murder and mayhem, with panels, interviews, awards, and more.
And swag! Lots of swag. I came home with a (buried in the picture) Mardi Gras themed tote bag in purple, green and gold, filled with books, book marks, jar openers, a bottle opener, candy, key chains, book marks, a pair of socks (because we adopted a “pound puppy” when my kids were young), pens — always a favorite of mine– and (also buried) a t-shirt celebrating Blood on the Bayou–Case Closed. Authors bring the swag to remind readers of their books, and I picked up a bunch of it during one of the two Author Speed-Dating sessions. I went to the early-riser event with my roomie, Sharon Michalove (“City Sharon” to my “Country Sharon”), who was one of the authors introducing her work to the fans who attended.
The New Orleans case was finally closed. I originally planned to go to Bouchercon in New Orleans years ago, but COVID cancelled that trip. I had my fingers crossed that we would see no resurgence in September, and that a relatively calm hurricane season would also pass us by. Thankfully, neither calamity struck the city and “City Sharon” booked us a huge room an easy trolley ride from the conference hotel. One generous trolley driver who had to wait for a light even took my picture for me.
We came early and settled in for a week. On our first day in town, she took a cooking tour while I volunteered to help with conference set up. She loved the tour to the city’s School of Cooking, with a traveling beverage tour afterward. I’m lucky enough that my first trip to NOLA was for a food writers’ conference, so I figured I could pass on the tour.
We had a few meals in and around the French Quarter. One night I joined a group of several Blackbird Writers at the Court of Two Sisters where I had a great steak dinner with bread pudding for dessert. A few in our group, though, ordered the flambeed Bananas Foster, which was a show in itself.
Another night, I went to Bourbon House, which was also good. The highlight there, I thought, was the red-gowned woman entertaining with her trained parakeets just outside the window where we sat. Sadly, I didn’t get any pictures of her birds in action.(I was plying my fork, not my camera.)
The Creole House, next to the conference hotel, was handy for a breakfast, a lunch, and a dinner on different days of the conference. And the hotel, the Jung, where I stayed with my roomie, had a lovely weekend breakfast service, too. Next door to Tulane University Department of Medicine, and just blocks from the Superdome, the old hotel has a touch of elegance that newer hotels, for all their modernity, can’t touch. Our double-queen room would have been considered a suite in many other places. And the staff, who greeted us my name by the second morning, proved most helpful when we needed tips.
The meals and sidetrips were fun, but the best part of the conference was seeing old friends and making new ones. On most of those occasions I tended to get caught up in conversation and forgot to take pictures. But I really enjoyed them.
One new friend, Linda Amey, even helped me decide which of the many novel drafts I have to work on now that I’m home for a while. (Well, I will be heading to Stevens Point, Wisconsin, for the Wisconsin Writers Association conference next month. But that’s just a long weekend.) It’s lovely when a brand new friend helps you set a goal you’ve been dawdling about for months.
Next Bouchercon is in Calgary. I hope they have a great, big crowd of fans and writers!
In the meantime, I’ll be writing!
À bientôt!
In one whirlwind day this month, I attended a writers’ conference and met “Agatha Christie” in southeast Wisconsin.
When I heard about an Agatha Christie “evening” as a fundraiser for the Wisconsin Historical Society, I wrongly assumed it would be at the Historical Society Library on the UW campus in Madison. But when I figured out she would be performing in Lake Geneva, I bought a ticket anyway. The drive would be a little more than an hour from my house, not the forty-five minutes to Madison, but not a stretch.
A few weeks later, friends told me they were taking part in Book Fest in Janesville, Wisconsin, a faitly new summer event sponsored by the Hedberg Public Library. And it was free! Scheduled the same day as Agatha’s visit, I RSVP’ed for two of the Book Fest events. It was also about forty-five minutes from my house. (Lake Geneva would be about thirty minutes from there.) It was going to be a scorcher, so I was looking forward to a day out of the sun.
Happily, the drive over was a bit quicker than I though and I arrived in time to sneak into the end of a session I hadn’t signed up for. That was “Everything You Need to Get Started” with Ken Brodsy in the Fireplace room. The gatherine was in an almost living room-like meeting place at one end of the main library room. He had some great tips, even at the end, and a plotting handout I was happy to take home.
I’d signed up for “Bringing Your Manuscript to Port: Navigating the Varied Channels to Book Publication.” Two of my Wisconsin Sisters in Crime–Christine DeSmet and Peggy Joque Williams, were on the panel, but so was Kristin Oakley, a friend from a now-defunct writing group in Rockford. She’d moved to Madison and I hadn’t seen her in years.
The moderator and fourth panelist, Ken Humphrey, is also the man behind the Wisconsin Writers Association email, hello@wiwrite.org. (I love the domain name. After all, the only answer to “wiwrite” is why not?) Ken and I had been exchanging email about the WWA fall conference and my membership listing. He has resolved everything with aplomb.
Each of the four panelists followed different routes to publishing from traditional to hybrid to independent (self-), and they shared boons and banes of each path. They also had some great handouts.
I ordered the optional delivered lunch but got so busy chatting with the other woman at my table, and the morning snacks had been so good, that I barely ate it. She and I stayed put for the master class with Maggie Ginsberg, Madison author of Still True, which won the 2023 WLA Literary Award for Fiction and received an honorable mention for the 2022 Edna Gerber Fiction Book Award. Her talk on “10 Ways I Got Unstuck” was full of great tips for writers in any literary genre. And, of course, there was a handout. (Do you sense a pattern in my enthusiasm?)
I think my favorite was her reminder that it’s not fair to compare a work-in-progress to another author’s finished, published work. It’s messy before those final edits, no matter who you are.
After Ginsberg’s talk, authors lined the halls at tables piled with their books and swag, and library patrons had a chance to mingle, chat, buy books and get autographs. Kudos to Janesville’s Hedeberg Public Library for putting on such a great event for four years. Hope they can keep it up.
But, by now I was hungry, so I went downstairs to The Ground Floor, the Friends of the Library’s coffee and book resale shop. I bought some tea and finally had a chance to eat my lunch before heading toward Lake Geneva.
I detoured through Delavan, another cute southeast Wisconsin town, before following my GPS to a small country school that felt like it was in the middle of nowhere. As far as I could tell, I was nowhere near downtown Lake Geneva. The school was surrounded by fields, with nary a house in view.
The part I hadn’t noticed in my email with the ticket was that the school was a staging area for a shuttle to the actual performance location. Agatha was visiting Black Point Estate and Gardens on Lake Geneva, not someplace in Lake Geneva.
There were few enough at the talk that we caravanned through winding, shaded country roads to the estate. We had wine on the porch facing the lake before moving into the un-air conditioned 1888 home built for a Chicago “beer baron.” At that time, the rail service could get him from his summer retreat in Wisconsin to Chicago in about an hour.
The fence and gardens near the house reminded me of Monet’s Giverney in France, but the family wasn’t as interested in backdrops for painting as they were in fun at the lake. From the lawn near the house, you could see the sparkling water between trees at the bottom of the rolling lawn. Visiting during regula hours might be worth a trip back to the estate someday.
But I, and a couple dozen other folks, had come to meet Agatha. Local historian and actress Chris Brookes brought a circa 1950 Agatha to the event, sharing elements of her life and writing to that date. She’ll be doing another presentation Sept. 20 at Black Point, in case you’d like to hear her. It was fun. She read from a couple of her books, occasionally strolled back into the audience, and asked them questions.
After the performance, we could wander around the first floor and gardens. It made for a lovely evening, and I managed the drive home before sunset despite dawdling along the way. I even stopped in Sharon, Wisconsin, for a selfie. (I was tempted to bring a bucket of soapy water back to town, but I haven’t done it yet.)
Day trips can be lots of fun, can’t they?
À bientôt!
May is departing in haste this year. At least from my perspective.
I started the month by ending my trek from Malice Domestic in Bethestda, Maryland, to Alabama to visit my son and his family. The trip was generally uneventful, but I’m not a long-distance driver. Oh, I drive long distances, but I break up the trip over multiple days. Fortunately, the weather was generally good for all my spring travels.
I stuck around a week, had lots of fun with kids and grands, and got a Mother’s Day gift a week early when my son took me to Atlanta to see a wonderful production of Wagner’s opera, Siegfried. For those who don’t know the opera, think dark fairy tale with an evil, troll-like blacksmith; a youngish lad destined to become a great warrior who wields the sword of power; a wizard akin to Sauron who ruled Mordor in The Lord of the Rings; the wizard’s wife who is effectively a prisoner of the tower wating for the Fates to release her; and a female warrior who has fallen in battle and who needs her prince (hark back to the young warrior) to come and awaken her so they can fall in love. A perfect story for a kid who grew up watching “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” cartoons on TV.
In this production, the sets varied from dark views of what could be the interior of the Death Star in Star Wars complete with heavy steam punk overtones to mountaintop fantasies that only lacked dragons threating, and hosts of fairies circling, the lovers. I enjoyed every minute of the four-hour opera, even when I got caught up in the music and forgot to read the translations of the German. (My German was never good enough to get me through an opera, but I’m afraid it’s so rusty now I hardly picked up a single word.)
Ok, so that was just part of great week with my farflung family.
I’d been putting off so much during the three weeks I was away that I should have jumped in as soon as I go home to try to catch-up but I just vegged the whole weekend and didn’t plunge into my third short story draft for until Monday. Got that done and off to the critique group, then read the newest versions of the other writers’ tales with twists. Right before I dug into 140 pages of another friend’s cozy novel draft. I had critique meetings online for both sets of pages in Thursday.
But in the meantime, I also received the first 120-or-so pages of awards and judges’ commentary for a journalism organization I’m still part of. I have volunteered to proof the monthly newspaper, and the June issue is always devoted to the awards presented at the annual conference. Got those read by Friday, just in time to make my 10 a.m. dentist appointment.
The Saturday after I got home, I went up to Madison with my sister and women’s group from an area church. We strolled around the capitol square for the weekly farmer’s market. In addition to some amazing looking vegetables, garden plants, cheeses, and so much more, we got to listen to various protests groups (respectfully placed across the street from the market), and some musicians, including Cover Fire from the 132nd Army Band and the Raging Grannies. After a great early lunch at Barrique’s downtown, we popped into Grace Episcopal Church on the Capitol Square for a free noon concert by the local Ancora String Quartet. And finally, before we headed to the Overture Centure for a performance of Clue, a genuinely funny new comedy, we strolled down the block of crafters and I finally found a UW Wisconsin Terrace Chair to go with my Bucky Badger bobblehead.
The next week, I finished proofreading the last 287 pages of contest winners (see last week), and on successive days, I made it to my local writing group, my League of Women Voters International Studies discussion, my Shakespeare Society meeting, Temple Beth El’s annual Food O Rama fundraiser (to buy hot dogs, pickles, challah bread and blintzes–yum!), lunch with a writing buddy, and the next day with my daughter and friends, followed by book club. And that week ended with a Saturday drive to Dixon, Illinois, the petunia capiltal of the state and host of the annual Petunia Festival. (Mark your calendar for July 3-6.) I joined a few writing friends and we spent three hours at the library working on writing projects. (Yes! I got a new short story started!) We also looked at their Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan displays, the gorgeous 1899 building. While it resembles some Carnegie libraries, that is probably due to the architectural styles of the day, but Dixon’s benefactor was local resident, O.B. Dodge. His picture hangs above a fireplace on the main floor. We really loved the display of “hidden” book covers showing the first lines of several books. As readers, we thought it was a great way to lure folks to the books. As writers, we were reminded of how important those opening words really are.
Sunday, I shopped for our family cookout on Monday, which turned out to be a beautiful, sunny day.. Tuesday, I had an oil change and today I have more errands to run.
But, for those who have yet to celebrate Memorial Day, remember it was originally marked on May 30. So you still have a bit of time.
As for me, I am ready to flip the page to June. And keep working on that new short story.
À bientôt!
