Fodder For Fiction

Vacations, new puppy in the house, a short story deadline, preparing for back to school, and getting ready for High Holidays… These are the events and activities contributing to the beautiful happy chaos of my life. There is much fodder for fiction here and I promise to share more. I’m busy, busy, busy and can’t wait for a quiet moment so I can share here all the stuff that’s happening.

Stay tuned! Remember, it’s all Fodder for fiction.

Best to you,
Lisa Lipkind Leibow
Author of Smart Women’s Fiction

Family Bucket List Series. Volume 2. Issue 2

The idea for my summer vacation grew out of a family movie-watching experience. We saw the movie The Bucket List, starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. In the film, the two main characters, being treated for terminal illnesses, decided to carry out every adventure on their bucket list before it’s too late.

Luckily, my entire family is happy and healthy. But we do have limited time. My oldest is entering high school in the fall. We decided that since we only have five more years with us all living under one roof that we would each make our own bucket list of the places we would like to travel together. Then we compared our lists and came up with our family bucket list.

Last summer, our first bucket list trip was a trip to the Grand Canyon and more. We flew to Phoenix, spent one night in Scottsdale. Drove from Scottsdale to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, stopping a Montezuma’s Castle along the way. After a night and a full day at the Grand Canyon, we headed to Lake Powell for two nights. Then toured Bryce, Zion, and capped it off in Vegas.

As I write this, I’m getting ready for this year’s Bucket List trip. We’re off to the beautiful Hawaiian Islands. I can’t wait! We’re going to visit the Big Island of Hawaii to explore lava tubes, snorkel, see lava flowing into the ocean, and stand on brand new earth. Next, we’ll hop over to Maui where we’ll drive the road to Hana – one of the last undeveloped areas of the island. I’ll have a chance to spend time with the kids in a bungalow on the beach—completely unplugged! I can’t wait. I’m looking forward to having a few adventures with my husband and kids, exploring new surroundings, and reenergizing.

Tell me, what’s on YOUR bucket list?

Best to you,

Lisa Lipkind Leibow

www.LLLeibow.com

BOSCO’S GETTING A PUPPY!

by Lisa Lipkind Leibow, Author of Smart Women’s Fiction

After my post about my new hobby (trapezing), you already know I’m a little whacky. I spend my life with 3 sons, a husband, a dog, two turtles, and a slew of fictional characters gallivanting in my mind. I routinely characterize my life as happy chaos. Why then, am I compelled to add to the chaos by getting my dog a new puppy?

Well, look at this litter! How could I resist?

The breeder is the same woman we bought Bosco from. He’s six years old now and we thougth a puppy would perk him up a little.

There’s still another month before a little one can leave his mom to join our clan. In the meantime, we’re having fun trying to decide which pup will fit best into our family. Their personalities are still developing, so the jury is still out. We like the look of the one with the “meantball eyes” like Bosco’s. They’re ALL adoreable. We have chosen a name for the new puppy.

My writer’s tool kit cam e in handy here. Brainstorming! Hooray! Did you know brainstorming as a family is even more fun than it is alone? We started by thinking of white or fluffy things:

Chrystal

Powder puff

Snowball

Marshmallow

Fluffernutter

Snowflake

Cotton

Ice cube

Marshmallow seemed a favorite with a plan to call the dog “Mello” –the temperament of a typical clumber spaniel.

That was BEFORE the breeder chose her litter theme. She keeps track of the litters by choosing a theme. The mother of the litter is from a “lettuce” litter. Her name is Raddicchio and they call her Rita. Bosco was from a pasta litter. His registered neam is “Rigatoni di Bosco”

Are you ready? The theme for this new litter of pups is singers/dancers.

Immediately we thought of MC Hammer of Eminem, where the “M” stood for marshmallow. Nope! We missed the mark. The breeder had a nostalgic time in mind. She is looking for Fred Astaire of ginger Rogers. I suggested Mel Torme. She nixed it. Apparently, the Velvet Fog didn’t dance.

Back to the drawing board. My husband said, “Just choose anything. We can still call the dog Mello if we want.

“I guess you’re right. But it’s nice if there’s some connection.”

I mulled. I googled. I mulled some more. I lay in bed at night. Mind tapping through names of old singer/dancers. My imagination combed through Sammy Davis Jr., Fred Astaire, Zeigfeld, Al Jolson, Bob Fosse, Donald O’Connor …

Then it hit me… SINGING IN THE RAIN… melody. Gene Kelly’s Melody.. aka Mello. Perfect!

Stop by again soon for updates on the clumber puppy project. There’s got to be a story in there somewhere!

Crash, Bam, Betrayal

by Sally Koslow, author of With Friends like These

For marriage, brides and grooms start with nothing less than the Ten Commandments to find practical suggestions for keeping things afloat. (“Thou Shalt not Commit Adultery.”  Just saying.) When we become parents, we’re smothered with advice. But with friendship, rewarding and as essential to good mental health as it may be—which medical studies confirm—we’re basically on our own, trying to parse this complex relationship from that first moment when some two-year-old creep in the sandbox steals our shovel.

At the bookstore, the non-fiction shelf about friendship has never held much sway for me. The best insights I’ve gotten about friendship have been in novels because, as a wise man I know once said, if you want to tell the truth, you write fiction. This is why I hope you’ll read With Friends like These, my tale of four “achingly real” (that’s Publishers Weekly talking) women who find their close bonds unraveling after ten years.

When the women in my new novel became friends, they were single. Now there are three husbands, one boyfriend and a couple of kids, which add layers of complications to friendships that were once as clear and golden as a glass of Chardonnay. When opportunity presents itself, should the women do what’s right for their friend or their family? Their loyalties start to conflict, and since none of these characters is perfect (who is?) each woman justifies her own behavior. Guilt, regret and, yes, forgiveness enter the picture.

I decided to write With Friends like These inspired by a bad patch with a good friend. A few years ago, my husband and I hoped to move. The morning after I saw what I was sure was my dream home I described its perfection to a pal. Later that day, our bid was accepted and a contract, drawn. But sooner than you can scream “No!” my friend’s boyfriend made a play for the very same place, thanks to the inside information she shared.

Crash, bam, betrayal! Let’s just say this put a serious crimp in our friendship. And yet, once again, we’re friends.

Readers have shared with me that With Friends like These made them think hard about friendships in their life, those that nourish them every day as well as ones that got snuffed out due to careless actions. Have you ever been or had a less-than-perfect friend? Then this, my friend, is a book for you.

___________________________

SALLY KOSLOW is the author of The Late, Lamented Molly Marx and Little Pink Slips. Her essays have been published in More, The New York Observer, and O, The Oprah Magazine, among other publications. She was the editor in chief of both McCall’s and Lifetime, was an editor at Mademoiselle and Woman’s Day, and has taught creative writing at the Writing Institute of Sarah Lawrence College. Her latest release is With Friends Like These. The mother of two sons, she lives in New York City with her husband. You can visit Sally Koslow’s website at www.sallykoslow.com.

With Friends Like These is available for purchase at http://www.amazon.com/Friends-Like-These-Novel/dp/0345506227

WITH THE GREATEST OF EASE…

by Lisa Lipkind Leibow, Author of Smart Women’s Fiction

Dinner at the Leibow home, February 18, 2010

I said, “I had lunch with my friends today.”

He said, “yeah?”

I said, “I told them about my Valentine’s gift. The coupon for trapeze lessons. You should have heard Donna. She said, ‘You wait. He’ll install a trapeze in the bedroom now!’”

“Ceiling’s too low.”

Well, there’s no trapeze in the bedroom. The whole idea of flying on a trapeze fascinated me but I needed to build confidence and carve out time. I worried that I could not even do ONE chin up/pull up/whatever you call it. I worried about stretching enough to maintain flexibility.

I started doing push-ups, a little weight training, and kept my eye toward the few weeks of summer when all three sons were busy with camp.

Still can’t do a chin up to save my life, but while my kids are at camp, I finally found time and guts enough to cash in on my Valentine’s gift and found a new hobby!

Turns out the momentum of the swing makes you weightless – no need to be able to lift my entire weight. What I didn’t consider was climbing a very tall ladder about twenty times in two hours! My butt was killing me the next day!

I did it! I have taken five lessons so far and I can’t wait to go back! It’s a blast. Here’s a video clip to prove it. Click on the hyperlink below. (Oh… How I wish I knew how to embed video properly!)

trapeze 1

Remember, this was taken during my second lesson! I’m still working on “the catch.” There’s much fodder for fiction in my new hobby. The diverse reasons people are attracted to this activity: facing fear, sense of adventure, working through life changes like a tough break up or job transition, and more.

As for gathering information for a unique setting, I have hit the jackpot!

Even more adventure: During my first class, construction workers outside accidentally hit a gas main and we had to evacuate. Everyone stayed safe in real life. But you know me… the wheels are turning. I’m starting to envision a high action scene in a trapeze school tent, complet with explosions that send the students flying a little further than they anticipated. Who knows? This could turn up in my next story.

Running on Empty

by Sam Hilliard

Years of cross-country running greatly influenced the character of Sean, the young missing murder witness that Mike Brody searches for in the The Last Track. Fearful of capture, Sean runs ever deeper into the Montana wilderness. Like Sean, I’m no stranger to covering long distances through dense woods. Back in high school, I ran cross-country, and I still run to this day (though much less seriously).

Preparing for races back then meant regular sessions running over the most grueling terrain Upstate New York had to offer. My teammates and I did not seek these harsh conditions out of a love for twisted ankles and shin splints. No, we did this because we never knew what the next invitational course was going to look like, especially in the snow or rain. We just assumed a healthy mix of steep inclines, breakneck descents, and general slop awaited us.

While we may not have known what rigors the course might demand, we could anticipate it would be either very cold or very wet or both. Competition rules required that all members of a cross country team wear the same uniform during a race, without exception. Such homogeneity made identifying teams easier for both officials and competitors. The problem with this well-intentioned bit of regulation is that the odds of all the teenaged boys on the team remembering to bring matching thermals or tights to wear under the uniform were extremely unlikely. Somebody always forgot part of their gear or packed the wrong color. At least we all suffered together.

I remember running over snow-covered fields with ice hanging off my laces, dressed in a singlet, shorts, a pair of mud caked socks and some racing shoes, thinking the next mile might as well be one hundred. I also knew the only way out of it was to finish. No matter how uncomfortable it was, in the end, the problem was temporary.

So I worked that experience into Sean. Though his stakes are much greater than mine were, he uses a similar technique to persevere. As he becomes lost in the woods, disoriented by lack of food and water, he stays centered by remembering that his problems will pass.

As long as he can stay ahead of the killer.

________________

Sam Hilliard arrived during a very scary period of the 1970s. Currently, Sam resides outside New York City with his girlfriend, and an army of four cats—one feline under the legal limit. His first book, The Last Track: A Mike Brody Novel, a mystery/thriller, released this year. When he’s not writing, he’s the Director of IT at an all-girl boarding school where he gets to observe world-class drama firsthand and that’s also the reason he studies Krav Maga and Tai Chi.

Real Life Seeps In

by Steven Verrier

Very interesting. You come up with a few themes to be addressed, a few conflicts (possibly) to be resolved, and an alternate world in which your story is to take place. And then, months or years later when the story is written, you look back almost in amazement at how many details from your own life have seeped into the story.

In my second novel, Plan B:

1. Danny, the protagonist, gets an early start on driving when his father lets him get behind the wheel at age fifteen. My father did the same with me … though once I reached legal driving age I still managed to fail my driver’s test the first time I took it.
2. Danny meets an attractive, young, female missionary when he’s traveling in Paris. He learns that her sect view sex as a recruiting tool, and he knows he’d better say no while he still can. I was in that position once when I was a couple of years older than Danny.
3. Danny stumbles onto a topless beach while on vacation. When I was young I did the same, and my reaction was much like Danny’s.
4. A ‘chaplaincy center’ assumes an important role while Danny attends his local college. The ‘chaplaincy center’ figured big for me when I attended my first college, too.
5. Though Danny plays the violin and I don’t, my children have been violinists for years. They played for years in youth orchestras, as Danny does before moving away to attend university.
6. Danny composes music. I compose music.
7. Danny seems to have my taste in TV. He loves Leno and Seinfeld, and I do, too.
8. We have similar taste when it comes to food, too. We both love Indian buffets.
9. At the end of the story, Danny is about to begin a master’s degree program in Journalism. I earned a master’s in Journalism.
10. Danny decides to pursue his graduate studies at Columbia. Years ago, I studied there, too.

Those are just the first ten shared details that come to mind. There are a lot more.

I don’t recall setting out to apply any details from my own life to Danny’s. I guess the point here is that the line separating real life from fiction is often difficult, if not impossible, to see. When I write, I try to let my characters lead the way and express themselves as best suits them. If I learn along the way – or afterwards – that a character has a lot in common with me, or sees things as I do, there’s really not much I can do about it.

There’s one thing I want to make clear, though. Plan B takes off – his life starts to unravel – when Danny, unable to make it to the restroom – pees on a school locker. I never did that, and I don’t plan to.

_____________________

Steven Verrier, born in the United States and raised in Canada, has spent much of his adult life living and traveling abroad. Publications include Plan B (Saga Books, 2010), Tough Love, Tender Heart (Saga Books, 2008), Raising a Child to be Bilingual and Bicultural (Hira-Tai Books of Japan), and several short dramatic works (Brooklyn Publishers). Currently he is living with his wife, Motoko, and their five children in San Antonio, Texas. You can visit his website at www.stevenverrier.com.

The Mysterious Green House

By Kelly L. Stone

I’m not one of those writers who typically gets ideas for stories from reading the news or hearing about an unsolved murder case. Usually my ideas come to me via dreams.  But once I had an unusual situation that combined both my dream world and an actual deserted house that resulted in a 10,000 word short story. Here’s how it happened.

My family owned a secluded waterfront lot that bordered another property that had a 120-year-old empty house on it. It was pine green, nestled behind sand dunes, and shielded from the harsh sun by oaks that draped moss covered braches over its roof.  One window had an intriguing shade perpetually pulled up, as if the occupants had been looking out and simply gotten called away for a moment.  I used to walk down the beach and gaze at the house, wondering who had lived there and what their lives were like back in the early 1900’s.

The empty house set my imagination on fire. The result was that one night I dreamt that I was in the back of a row boat, being ferried across the bay toward that green house. In the front of the boat sat a young woman with carrot-red hair and wearing a Victorian style dress. She was on her way to that house. As an observer in the dream, I knew only three things: her name (Riley), she was coming to the house for a purpose known only to her, and the secret to her trip could be found in a small tin box she carried in her bag.

That was it. When I woke up the next morning, I wrote all this down. I was enchanted by this mystery woman who was coming, in my dream world, to live in what I now called “my” house. That night, I asked my mind to give me more.

It did. Over the course of the next week, I got via a dream the next “scene” of the short story. Riley was an unusual woman for her day. She was unmarried and fiercely independent. She kept old letters in a tin box that she took out and read every night. She had an imaginary lover. Eventually, my mysterious Riley made a dangerous trip across the sound to a real Civil War fort in the area. There was an item there that she was determined to dig up, and dig it up she did, despite the hurricane that was coming. Around night eight, my mind gave me the final scene—Riley had found what she was looking for and she was leaving for the mid-west to continue her adventure. Her secrets had all been revealed.

The story was never published (although I tried). And that house is gone now, bulldozed down to make way for “progress.” But whenever I walk by that area of beach I still imagine Riley’s green house, and think fondly of the young Victorian woman who gave me a story.

______________

KELLY L. STONE (www.AuthorKellyLStone.com, www.ThinkingWriteBook.com) is a licensed counselor who started a successful writing career while working a full time job. She is the author of a novel, GRAVE SECRET (Mundania Press, Sept 2007) which was called “powerful” and “well-written” by Romantic Times Book Reviews. Her first book for writers, Time to Write: More Than 100 Professional Writers Reveal How to Fit Writing Into Your Busy Life (Adams Media, January 2008), reveals the time management secrets of 104 professional writers. Time to Write was nominated for The American Society of Journalists and Authors 2008 Outstanding Book of the Year award. Thinking Write: The Secret to Freeing Your Creative Mind (Adams Media, October 2009), describes how to use the power of your subconscious mind for maximum creativity. Her third book for writers; Living Write: The Secret to Inviting Your Craft Into Your Daily Life, will be released by Adams Media on Sept 18, 2010. Email Kelly at Kelly@KellyLStone.com

A STORY BY OSMOSIS

by Garasamo Maccagnone

The easiest story ever to purge its way out of me was my latest release entitled, The Note Giver. After a long sabbatical away from daily Mass, I began attending a local rural parish four or five miles from my house. After a month or so, an older man began frequenting the early Mass, usually a few minutes late, and always partaking in a sort of odd ritual.

The man would splash holy water on the back of his ears three times before genuflecting and entering his pew. After watching his eccentric behavior over time, my interest sparked and I consciously became aware that the man might be a compelling character in a story at some time.

On a night in October, I received a call from an estranged in-law that my father was dying. Estranged from my father and my entire family, you can imagine the difficulty of arriving at the hospital to see your father hooked up to the various support systems, while your family members stare at you with antipathy.  Though my father survived his surgery, an infection raged inside of him and his doctors thought that he would not survive the night.

Oddly, the next day at Church, when the Mass had ended, the story came to me in an instant as I prayed in the darkness for my father. As if it was meant to be, The Note Giver was written in a matter of hours when I returned home. The computer keys practically typed at their own accord as the words rushed out of me. Somehow, the sighting of the eccentric man at Church and my father’s bout with death all came together and forced a story out of me that, a few months earlier, I had not even a thought about composing. I suppose it was meant to be.

_______________________________

Garasamo Maccagnone studied creative writing and literature under noted American writers Sam Astrachan and Stuart Dybek at Wayne State University and Western Michigan University. A college baseball player as well, Maccagnone met his wife Vicki as a junior at WMU. The following year, after injuring his throwing arm, Maccagnone left school and his baseball ambitions to marry Vicki. After a two year stint at both W.B. Doner and BBDO advertising agencies, Maccagnone left the industry to apply his knowledge of marketing in a new venture in an up-and-coming industry. Maccagnone created a company called, “Crate and Fly,” and turned it from a store front in 1984 to a world-wide multi-million dollar shipping corporation by 1994.

In the mid 90’s Maccagnone decided to fulfill the promise of his writing career, by first penning the children’s book, The Suburban Dragon and then following up with a collection of short stories and poetry entitled, The Affliction of Dreams. His literary novel, St. John of the Midfield was published in 2007, followed by his For the Love of St. Nick, which was released in 2008. Maccagnone expanded the original version of For the Love of St. Nick and had the book illustrated for a new release in June 2009. My Dog Tim and Other Stories is a literary anthology of the author’s best work.

Garasamo “Gary” Maccagnone lives today in Shelby Township, Michigan, with his wife Vicki and three children. At this time, he is researching the location for his second novel, tentatively titled, He Lay Low.

You can visit Gary online at www.garasamomaccagnone.com

Happy Birthday, Henry!

By Kenny Luck

On July 4, 1845, when Henry David Thoreau moved into his cabin on the shores of Walden Pond, he was probably unaware that his abode in the woods, and the impact and influence of that endeavor, would forever echo through time. Thoreau was an uncompromising idealist; an ardent maverick who criticized his fellow man. He urged that man and women ought to live more simply, and more deliberately. “The mass of men,” he famously wrote, “lead lives of quiet desperation.”

Yet the scope of Thoreau’s message is much wider than social criticism. He speaks of spiritual transcendence in Nature and the unbounded potential of the individual. Thoreau is a dreamer and he speaks to dreamers. In a word, shun dogmatism and demagoguery; see beyond the immediate conventional religious explanations to reap a higher understanding. In our comodified contemporary American society, with the rise of religious intolerance and fundamentalism, materialism and mass consumerism, Thoreau’s message is needed now more than ever.

Approaching Thoreau from a devotional, rather than an academic point of view, I began collecting short quotes from his works for my own purposes. Most of the quote collecting occurred in the winter months of 2006, when I was a third year undergraduate student. I spent countless hours in my university library between classes pouring over thousands of pages. I cherished each quote and in a short time was able to recite long passages from memory. Commenting on society, nature, government, spirituality and love, there seemed to be a Thoreau quote for every season. After roughly one month my list had expanded into a plethora of pages. Then, I got an idea: Why not share these treasures with others? And so it began.

Choosing which quotes to include and which quotes to ignore is tricky. With the aim of trying to preserve Thoreau’s original intentions, I was careful to not take any passage out of context.   No precedent can dictate the proper course of action. However, Thoreau’s lyrical writing style makes it easy to find short, memorable truisms. Much of his best work lay not in the familiar, but in the unfamiliar. As dedicated diarist, he wrote incessantly nearly every day. I found that the wisdom contained in his journal entries rivaled the most complex systems of thought laid out by any philosopher before or since. His correspondences, particularly with Harrison Blake, are even more exceptional. As the two men swapped letters between one another, Thoreau always found new ways to transform even the most mundane subjects into brilliant pieces of insight.

Thumbing Through Thoreau, appropriate for the beginner or devotee, is my attempt to bring together the best pieces of Thoreau’s writings in one collection. It is the result of long hours of hard work by several people, and a determination constantly fueled by one inspiring idea: “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined,” Thoreau wrote in the closing of Walden, “he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” In the end, we could all use a dose of Thoreau from time to time.

______________________

Kenny Luck is a graduate student at Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in History/Political Science from the same institution. He writes for The Weekender – an arts and entertainment weekly – and The Independent. He is currently working on his second book. He enjoys recording music, book browsing, and travel.

ISBN: 978-0-9822565-4-1

http://www.tribute-books.com/thoreau/author.html