TFW a Song Stops You Cold

I was short on my word count for the day and scrambling to get more of the story down. We'd finished dinner and the Big Guy turned on the television. The Masked Singer is on. LeAnn Rimes is singing, but I’m powering on with the work in progress until the song she’s singing sneaks it's way into my brain and triggers me. I’m immediately sucked out of The Zone. 

The impact was instantaneous - it made me cry. How Do I Live Without You took me back to "my grand adventure," when my life was at a crossroads. The funny thing is that I wasn't very familiar with the song or the artist (Trisha Yearwood, when I heard it) or even the genre (my country music knowledge is limited), but a good friend of mine had a Trisha Yearwood CD which included another song that goes hand in hand. That friend helped shape my life in ways I'll always be grateful for. You might even say that person saved my life, and that song will forever be a part of that memory.

A song can take me back to the lullabies my mother used to sing to me. I remember singing them to my children and, like a recent video I watched, I remember my babies trying to sing them with me before they could talk. 

I remember the song that was playing when I got my first kiss. I suspect the boy remembered it, too, because he commented on it at the time. 

I remember the song that used to motivate me when I was on the tennis team in high school. 

I remember whole soundtracks from my relationship with my first love, and one song we sang together that tied our hearts together - at least for a time. 

And there is a song that I relate to the man I married. 

That's the thing about music. Once it's tied to a memory or a feeling, it can immediately transport you back to a moment in time, to a special place. Good and bad. At least for most people. 

I've used the music connection in my writing (GATHERING MIST). The main character goes to a summer festival and is caught unaware when she hears a musician performing a song he wrote for her years ago. The impact was immediate, taking her back to happier times, another life. Because sometimes that's what it feels like, right?

Do you have a trigger song? One that puts you in another time and place? 

I'm a Subscriber 🎜🎝 (wait, that isn't how the song goes...)

Last week I got a notice that the subscription service that goes with my blog is going away. Or updating. Or I'm not exactly sure what. You know, the one where you sign up and it emails you that I have a new post? So I tested the sign-up widget and it threw me an error. Brilliant.

Instead of writing the next Hillendale book, which I have been working on, I spent most of my day chasing down options. For those of you who subscribe, the email you got this week will look just slightly different, but assuming I did everything right, it should still notify you in a similar fashion. For those of you who have tried to subscribe and couldn't (because I'm not sure what's up with the old service or when it decided it wasn't going to work anymore), there's a new option to do so in the right sidebar now. 

In updating to the new service, I had to learn "new stuff." Generally speaking, I like learning new things. I'm a closet techy, which means I like simple programming. I'm MOS certified for Access (not sure if that even means anything anymore). I used to write the HTML for my webpage years ago. I had a friend who helped me learn SQL for another application I helped design. The downside is that because I don't do that every day, I spend twice as much time figuring things out as I used to when I did it on a more regular basis. Now, my website is built with building blocks and templates. Much easier and faster. I don't have to worry about mis-typing a code or missing a closing command. 

And now that I've fixed the broken widget (or at least I hope I have!), I need to get back to writing. Anyone else looking forward to the next in the Hillendale series? Did you love the other ones? (Don't forget to leave a review. This author thrives on positive reinforcement!) 😁

"Definitely my favorite... Characters were well drawn." - Amazon review of INTERRUPTED MAGIC

Time Keeps on Slipping

I've been editing. The first draft of HIDDEN GRIMOIRE is complete, which means now I have to go back and fix the mess I made.

One of the most consistent mistakes I make is the passage of time. I'm one of those people who struggle with this in my daily life. When is your birthday? What day is today? Was I suppose to remember that? These days, I use Alexa to tell me every morning what's on my calendar so I don't forget. I thought I'd come up with a fail-safe way to keep track while I was writing, by adding days in my chapter heads as I write. #Fail.

I'm about 1/4 through doing chapter summaries and tracking continuity, my first editing pass. In each summary, I put the day and date. And guess what? Even though I thought I was tracking the days, I missed one. SURPRISE! I'm nothing if not consistent. Keeping my fingers crossed that my missing day doesn't have a ripple effect, but the good part about the book is there isn't a critical time stamp. I just have to make sure Brynn isn't working on her day off, or that there isn't a place where a time warp makes a difference. This really is the hardest part, the documenting and tracking.

My next pass will be for overused and filler words, and then I can read through the whole darn thing to see how it holds together. At that point, it should be "editor ready."

Does anyone else struggle with the concept of time the way I do? I'm never late for an appointment, always early, but when it comes to days of the week? Personal holidays? I need all the help I can get.

Hey, one last thing. Have you read FAMILY ALCHEMY? UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES? If you have and haven't left a review, I'd love to know what you thought. HIDDEN GRIMOIRE will be book #3 in the Hillendale series, and I'm contemplating "what comes next." Do you want to see more of Brynn and Hillendale? As an author, I have dozens of stories in my head at any given time, including a potential Hillendale 4. Or "something completely different." So many choices! What do you think?

United We Stand/Divided We Fall

Anyone else remember the song?

I'm stepping off a cliff today and wondering if this is a discussion we can have in today's world. My experience lately says no. In fact, I'm fairly terrified to write this post because of people on "the other side of the fence." We've reached a point in history where people are not just divided, they are willing to kill other people to defend their argument, right or wrong.

When did politics become a competition rather than a polite debate over two differing sets of belief, designed to find the middle ground? People don’t seem to care about middle ground, only about being right. In a conversation the other day, I was fairly shocked to hear a friend denigrate a voice of authority simply because she disagreed with the stance. I did not call her out with my dissenting opinion, because, again, we are a country divided. There is no middle ground. People are refusing to see the other side, either with willful ignorance or because they have chosen a side and refuse to consider they might be mistaken. Families are at war with one another. My mother was worried greed would tear apart our family unit when she died (it didn't, we were raised better than that). I wonder what she would have thought about politics tearing apart families. Would she have taken the hard-line stance people are taking? Moot point, and I'm fairly sure I know the answer. Despite our political differences, family is more important. I've had explosive conversations with family members, until we agreed to disagree and not discuss it.

Because of the explosive nature of this topic, I'm not allowing comments. I don't need to hear you defend your position, I've heard it all. And isn't that part of the problem? No one wants to listen anymore. Friends are unfriending. We've become so embroiled in our positions that some find it necessary to lash out at those who disagree--some of them with guns. How does that solve anything? "If you don't agree with me, I'ma shoot you??"

I'm one person. What can I do? I'm certainly not going to be able to dissuade anyone, or convince them of the error of their ways. People know what they're doing. Their stubbornness to concede even one point is what prompted me to do the only thing I could think of, write this post. There is a middle ground. We can come together in spite of leaders who strive to divide us. We have a chance to make our world a better place, but we can only do that together, because...

United, We Stand. Divided, We Fall.

Ramble On

It has been a while since I used My Life Is A Musical in one of my posts. And yet the musical goes on.

Sidetrack - has anyone else been watching the Andrew Lloyd Webber You Tubes? The free shows over the weekends? I've see a couple, but of course I was late arriving and missed the one I STILL HAVEN'T SEEN.

Main track...

I'm diligently working on my next Hillendale novel. These are strange times we live in, and words are sometimes difficult to muster with all the distractions and anxiety that comes with every single news cycle. My critique partner just did a blog post on how to keep writing when it's hard to keep writing. For the most part, she was spot on, and I agree with her processes (You can read it here.) One thing I had to add to her lists is "just keep writing."

When the words won't come, I first try a change of scenery. A walk around the block with my characters. I talk to them, they talk to me. Except when they don't (or when I'm walking with the Big Guy, in which case, he drowns them out). When that doesn't work, I consider plot points - what I call "notes for what comes next." It gives me a direction to think, but there are still days when turning those plot points into paragraphs is a chore. So then what?

I write. Cue the Led Zeppelin song. I Ramble On. I can't even tell you how I get started, I just put my fingers on the keyboard and let stream of consciousness run. Ramble on.

Sometimes, rambling results in something new and different than I wasn't expecting. That's always a bonus. But almost always, it is a blast of sentences strung together, sometimes repetitive, sometimes redundant, sometimes run-on. I throw in information that doesn't add anything. I throw in stuff that makes no sense. But there's always gold hiding inside the slag. When I've reached my word count for the day, I can go back and sift out the sludge. You can fix bad writing. You can't fix an empty page.

So my writing advice for today? Ramble on. There's a story hiding inside the influx of words, and once you get them down, you can find the gold.

While you're here, can I remind you that the new release will be out NEXT WEEK? (Yes, I'm very excited!) An enchanted weeping beech tree,  a white squirrel, a summer solstice festival. Calling on magic comes with UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES!

Click here to buy

The Sounds of Silence

I am fluent in silence. It's one of the things I learned from my big sisters. With four of us, and me being the youngest, I always had older, more experienced competition.

I remember when we were kids and my grandmother died. We went up for the funeral--I think I was ten years old at the time--and my aunt and uncle were there. Someone, I don't remember who, it might have been one of my sisters, made an observation about the "youngest sibling." My uncle, the "baby of the family," didn't say much. In fact, he rarely spoke in a group setting, but he was very conversant away from the crowd.

Likewise, I'm more likely to have a meaningful conversation with someone one-on-one than I am in a group. Conditioned response. This is something I had to overcome in my professional career. I had a dear friend who would recommend me for committees because I had such good ideas, but when I went to the committee, I didn't speak up. She called me out on that, saying nobody would ever hear me if I didn't say anything. So I fought against years of listening and observing and made a conscious effort to contribute to the group conversation. Guess what? They promoted me. And you know what they told me? Make sure you listen to what other people have to say when you're developing talent. In other words, don't speak. Go figure. Yes, I learned how to balance when to speak and when to stay silent. For the most part. Funny thing about using your voice, once you speak up, sometimes its hard to stop!

There are many days where I don't say much. I don't feel the need to hear my voice in every conversation. It makes some people uneasy, people who don't know me well, but as my daughter once observed, that's just my way. There are days when you can't shut me up, especially if I've been silent for days in a row.

I greatly value the conversations I have with my family and friends, but in the silence, I hear what people say. There is time to reflect. Time to appreciate someone else's point of view.

As the titled song says, I write my books in silence. If I don't share them (according to the song), that makes me a fool. If you read my words, I might teach you. I might reach you. Like my dear friend said, if I don't say anything, nobody will ever hear me, and I speak best "on paper." At the very least, my books give us something to talk about to break the silence once in a while.

Oh, I'm Being Followed by a Moonshadow

We had a supermoon this week. Did anyone see it? Officially, it was Tuesday night, but I happened to be up in the middle of the night on Monday night (Happy New Year!) and as I paddled into the bathroom, I looked out the window and saw...

Shadows. At three o-clock in the morning. The moon was casting shadows. Have I mentioned my life is a musical? Enter Cat Stevens.

Tuesday night I was watching the news with my husband and they were advertising the supermoon, and I told my husband I'd already seen it - or close to it - and I told him it made me think of Cat Stevens. This is where he turns to me, brow furrowed. So I sang for him. His response, "You were awake enough to think of that?"

Hey, if I'm moving, I'm awake, and I was moving. Yes, I was awake enough to break into song. Quietly, mind you, but singing at three a.m., nonetheless.

"Did it take long to find me? I asked the faithful light./Did it take long to find me? And are you gonna stay the night? o-o-o-oh..."

Songwriters: Cat Stevens / Yusuf Islam

Moonshadow lyrics © BMG Rights Management US, LLC

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