Happy Memorial Day

On holiday from the day job this week and busy writing, but wanted to take a quick minute to let y'all know that in honor of Memorial Day, Mist on the Meadow will be available for free download from selected sellers. I hope you'll take advantage of this limited time offer, and after you've had a chance to read it, leave a review at your favorite book source for other readers to consider.

Free right now at

Kobo Books

Apple/iTunes bookstore

Smashwords

Barnes &Noble 

and expecting it to show up at the Sony store as well. Unfortunately, Amazon will only allow free books under an exclusivity agreement (and not everyone has a Kindle), but you can download the Kindle version at Smashwords.

So what are you waiting for?  Go download a copy now! Can't wait to hear what you think of it.

Sportsmanship - "Basketball Jones"

Okay, I'm airing a grievance. Mostly because I don't have another brilliant idea for my blog today and this is something that annoyed me.

I'm a sports fan. I participated in sports when I was younger, and I still do occasionally  The sport du jour is basketball. I'm a fair weather Bulls fan. That weather this year has been partly sunny/partly cloudy. As such, I have not been watching every game, up to and including the playoffs. And now for the rant.

Basketball is a non contact sport. But I guess someone forgot to tell the NBA. I do NOT like watching the Indiana Thugs -er, Pacers for this very reason. Where the game calls for quickness and skill, they substitute body blocks and fouls. Granted, each player is allowed six cheap shots per game, but Indiana has players whose main goal is to foul the other team.  Not score, not block shots, but foul.

(Steve Mitchell/USA Today)

My Bulls gutted it out to the second round of the playoffs, where the Miami Heat were given free license to mug and abuse them. If that isn't enough, the fans have taken to abusing the athletes, too. That's just wrong. I'm not saying the Bulls are completely blameless, but certainly the referees are more willing to turn a blind eye to premier players who, rather than dazzling us with their brilliant play, have stooped to schoolyard mugging. And the fans support this by flipping off Joakim Noah for refusing to be mugged.

I watch professional sports to see professionalism. I understand physical play, but don't want to watch an athlete who is consistently a step short make up for it by being a brute. Take it like a man. If you're beaten, step up your own game. And then to have this behavior reinforced by classless fans lowers the level of this spectator sport one more rung.

Do you know how much they charge for seats to see the Bulls in Chicago? (A lot, in case you don't know the answer - I happen to know tickets are considerably cheaper in Milwaukee.) And they pack the stadium. But I have no interest in paying those prices for an exhibition in taking cheap shots from someone who can't keep up. The NBA needs to school the referees on calling the same fouls on all players, regardless of their "star" status.

Don't get me wrong, I admire LeBron's skills. The Heat has skill. That's one of the reasons I don't understand when they stoop so low. Play the game and stop the brawling.  The Heat plays the Thugs next. May the best team survive.

There.  I feel better now.

Kudos to the Bulls for their grit this season. Short handed, injured and then abused, they put on a good show.

And now back to our regularly scheduled program . . .

When Characters in a Book Die - Coping with Grief

This has been a sad sort of week. Two more souls have gone to sit beside God, and the superstitions/wives' tale that death comes in three is lingering. I lost a niece last week, she was the same age as my daughter, and then a friend from work who has been the epitome of grace through her struggle with cancer. My thoughts and prayers go out to those families as they deal with the loss of their loved ones.

I dealt with death briefly in Mist on the Meadow, letting a likable character die, but he was old and past his time. I'm sure readers expected it. As I write my latest, I also have a dying character in the book, and that is presented up front. Because I like to touch on those "what if" paranormal moments, in this book, the situation is designed for that paranormal moment. A sort of ghostly encounter. But as I write it, and also deal with the recent losses in my own, real, everyday world, it strikes me that with two books in a row where likable characters are dying, I need to make sure the next one is NOT about death and dying. Seems to me that looks a lot like writing Cinda's story (from Living Canvas). She's a spunky, over-the-top, semi-unlikable character, which is why I feel she deserves a chance for readers to understand her.

For my own part, I generally avoid reading Nicholas Sparks novels, because although his stories are moving, touching, poignant, someone always dies, and it's always quite heart wrenching. I like the HEA (Happily Ever After) type. So even when he writes HEA for his characters, it's only after surviving deeply crippling emotions.  Yeah, I don't like to go there. It's like picking at a scab for me.

So I got to thinking (as I'm writing this book) about ways to cope with grief, and I realized I need to add some levity to the situation. Have you ever seen an over the top reaction to grief? Someone that did something so bizarre that you had to laugh, or wanted to laugh but didn't out of respect for their feelings? Everyone has different coping mechanisms, and I know that in my most recent experience with losing someone in my immediate family, some of the responses I saw creeped me out just a little bit, but I understood that for some people, that's how they deal, or don't deal, with the situation.

I'd love to hear your experiences. They just might show up in this latest book! (which, for the record, is very tentatively titled Shoemaker and the Elf Counsel).

Spring has Sprung

I don't know about you, but every year, it seems to me like spring arrives virtually overnight. I wake up one morning and the trees are in bud, the flowers are in bloom, the grass is a brilliant emerald green.  Almost like the first overnight snowfall, it happens silently and presents you with a scenic wake-up call.

Spring is my favorite time of year. It's when everything returns from a long winter's nap, stretches and fills the world with color. It also feels, to me, like the time when I emerge from my own cocoon.

When I was young, I had an accident that happened right at the onset of spring which kept me in the house for a period of weeks. During my convalescence, the changeover from dull and gray and dead to vibrant and green and blooming had occurred, like a rebirth. That was the first time I "really" paid attention.  The transition is usually very subtle.

Now, I work in a seasonal job that takes over my life from February through the end of April (trumpet fanfare please, busy season is OVER), so the transition is just as miraculous for me now as it was when I was a kid.  For three solid months I have been sleepwalking through my life to meet deadlines, barely noticing the changes in the weather outside, and yet I've been snapping these pictures as Spring once again thrills me with its arrival.  The hyacinths in the garden, the magnolia tree in bloom, and the other picture (you're wondering what the heck that is?) was hail, but the significant thing about that picture was that after I snapped it to say, "hey, look at the hail," I noticed the lawn beyond the deck.  Brilliant. Emerald. Green.  Had I not snapped the picture, I wouldn't have noticed, but once I did, it was a stop and look moment.

Some people prefer the colors of Autumn.  Do you have a favorite season?

New Beginnings?

What a week last week, huh?  My heart goes out to the people of Boston.  I had a friend who ran in the marathon, thankfully unharmed. She was two miles from the finish line when the world went haywire, and had no idea what was happening up ahead. The city made America look good last week, showing us all how proud we can be to live in this country. The downside would naturally be the excess of media coverage. I REALLY hate when a reporter shoves a microphone into someone's face and says something stupid like, "tell us how horrified you were when you first saw all those bleeding bodies, etc."  I'm sorry, but if that person was me, I'd want to slug the reporter.  These are not things people want to relive. I saw the same thing with the Sandy Hill thing. It is my opinion you should NOT ask a child how horrible their best friend looked, lying on the floor next to them riddled with bullet holes. Leave the kid alone!

Alright, off my soapbox.

And then there was the explosion in Texas. Wow. These events make the overabundance of rain in my part of the country seem trivial. And in true Illinois fashion, after the five inches of rain, we got snow (just a trace, thank heaven). We were out today and the Fox River near where I live has lost track of its banks, but the sun is shining, a reminder that it's a new day, a new beginning. Prayers go out to all the people impacted by these disasters in hopes that they can find a new beginning, a place to start over.

And speaking of starting over, I'm eight chapters into the new book when one of my beta readers

Flora and the Zephyrs - John William Waterhouse

pointed out that I seem to be stuck on paintings. Living Canvas had a painting as part of the main plot. This new story also has a painting in it, although it is much less "front and center," it's more a point of reference. Like the movie "Laura," the hero compares a subject in a painting to a woman he meets, but the woman in my story is not dead, and until the hero meets her, he wasn't necessarily infatuated with the subject of the painting.  But I'm giving away all the details of my story and it isn't even done yet!

My friend's observation highlighted another similarity in some of my stories, which did make me stop and consider whether I should start over or continue along the path I'd begun. Writer's angst is common and to be expected, although generally not this early on in a novel.

Maybe a new beginning isn't what we need. Maybe what we need to do is carry on, through the potholes in life, through the horror and the pain. Starting over discounts all the trials and victories we have already conquered. So while I continue with my work, I am reminded that we can find strength in the things that have happened in our lives and as dark a day as we've had to contemplate, I have faith that there are brighter days ahead to chase the gloom away.

Peace.

Moments of Grace

Do you ever have those moments where Mother Nature catches you by surprise? Those moments where the world seems to stop and you have no choice but to enjoy the peace and the beauty contained in one moment?

That was what started me on my journey to writing Mist on the Meadow.  I was driving to work one cold winter day and passed a meadow when a stag stepped out of the woods. He paused, and I could see his breath in the air. He was beautiful, the moment was perfect. You can never get those moments back. But how do you write a story about one moment? And so I began to gather moments. Originally, there were going to be several different types of these moments in the story, until I settled on just that one, magic moment.

Some of the scenes that have touched me:

A buck emerging from the woods, his breath steaming in the crisp winter air.

The first snowfall over a ridge of pine trees.

Sunbeans filtering through the trees.

Mist/fog over the moor.

Clouds banking over the mountaintops.
The sea lapping against the beach.

Snow falling, a bonfire on the common, the silence was so crystal clear, then out of the darkness came a horse drawn sleigh and all you could hear was the clopping of their hooves and the ringing of the bells on their harnesses (one of my friends lent me that one). 

The moments sneak up on you, unexpected, until you find yourself staring off into space and contemplating the magnificence that is contained in the span of a few seconds. Often I will pick one of these memories out on a particularly stressful day, and it reminds me what a small part of the universe I am, and the greatness of the world around me.

Have you encountered a moment of grace? A few seconds when God opens a window to show you something beautiful in the world around you that you might normally take for granted?

Natural Born Artists

I had a young high school girl interview me the other day. Among the questions, and one of the most commonly asked questions I field, is "how did you know you wanted to be an author?"  It's a common question, not only for me, but for other authors/songwriters/artists, etc.

There are just some things in life you know. When I was in high school, I desperately wanted to be a professional tennis player, but that wasn't my calling. It was an ambition. I had talent, I did well, but there comes a point in time when you have to face the reality of it. One injury and your career is over, often before it even starts. But writing? I've been writing as long as I could hold a pencil.

I saw an interview with Billy Joel once where he'd been asked that question. His response was that if you weren't sure, then you should look for something else to do. Likewise, I have a very dear friend who has always wanted to be a musician, IS a musician. While he hasn't "made it big," there is no Plan B. That's all there is. Something he was born to do.

We aren't always able to make a living using the gifts we've been given. Being an author is not a financially lucrative field. For most of us, that's not why we do it anyway. We do it because we can't not write. It's inherent. Innate. Inborn. and a bunch of other "in" words.

I was actually surprised the first time I realized that other people don't see things the way I do. I was getting a haircut and my stylist was asking me about my books and she told me she couldn't begin to even name characters, much less the scenarios that go into plotting a story. Another frequent question, "where do you get your ideas?"  For me and most authors I know, it's a case of fertile, and often overactive, imagination. There is a story everywhere I look. It's hard for me to imagine that other people don't play make believe the same way - that's all it really is at the end of the day, make believe.

Still on deadline at the day job. Have to make it through the end of April. The unfortunate part about that is that it requires a lot of my attention, leaving little time for my imagination to go strolling (I still have to pay the bills). Oh, I have story ideas! There's no shortage of that, but right now, there isn't time to spend developing them. Just a few more weeks and I can open up the floodgates and let those ideas loose.