Archive for July, 2010
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.
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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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Danny composes music. I compose music.
- Danny seems to have my taste in TV. He loves Leno and Seinfeld, and I do, too.
- We have similar taste when it comes to food, too. We both love Indian buffets.
- 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.
- 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
The Bali Terrorist Attack
by Lisa Heidke
I had already written the first draft of Lucy Springer Gets Even when I was in Bali, Indonesia, in October 2005 for a family holiday. My husband and I had been many times before but this was the first time we’d taken our three children. My mother and the in-laws also came. It was a family reunion, of sorts and coincided with my birthday and one of my son’s birthdays.
Bali had already been written into Lucy’s story so I looked upon the trip not only as a holiday but as an opportunity to make sure the finer details regarding Bali and the Balinese way of life were accurate.
On our first evening we ate at one of our favourite seafood restaurants in Kuta. As usual, the outside streets were crowded and the noise from nearby DVD and music shops, combined with the in-house restaurant band was raucous. We all needed to shout to make ourselves heard.
All of a sudden, we heard sirens and very quickly noticed police clearing the streets to make way for police motorbikes and ambulances. Then, silence. Unheard of in Bali. Meanwhile, restaurant staff and other Balinese chatted in hushed voices amongst themselves, many of them in tears. Soon after, we were told that Kuta and Jimbarran Bay had been bombed. The attack in Kuta had been barely 300 metres from where we’d been dining.
By the time we arrived back at the hotel, our cell phones were crammed with messages from relatives and friends asking if we were okay. We were shocked but devastated for the poor Balinese people and all the victims of this senseless act.
Back in Sydney a few weeks later, I was reading over the Bali chapters and decided to include the terrorist attacks to provide a turning point in Lucy’s life. However, I knew I had to handle the writing sensitively and whilst making the trauma as real as possible, I didn’t want to sensationalise it either.
Though those pages were difficult to write, I was pleased with the outcome. The Bali scenes became pivotal for Lucy and brought about her epiphany regarding what she needed to do in order to gain control over her life and family again.
If I had not been in Bali during those attacks, I would not have written about them. But being there and witnessing the destruction first hand, I felt I could write about it credibly. Bali is a beautiful island and the Balinese are peaceful, happy people. I hope I was able to achieve that feeling in Lucy Springer Gets Even.
Lucy Springer Gets Even is about Lucy, an out of work actress and mother, who is living through a renovation nightmare when her husband suddenly takes off and she is forced to get her act and life together. I wanted to write a light hearted story in diary form about a woman whose husband leaves her, day one, sentence one. I thought it would be interesting to look at a woman in her mid-thirties with a couple of kids who thinks her life is moving happily along and rip it to shreds. I plotted Lucy’s journey from the depths of despair and bewilderment on day one to her getting her life together by day sixty-five.
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Lisa Heidke lives in Sydney, Australia, and was a feature writer on several national magazines including Practical Parenting and Bride To Be, before deciding the time had come to write a novel. Lucy Springer Gets Even (Allen & Unwin, 2009) is her first novel and was quickly followed by What Kate Did Next (2010). Her third novel, tentatively titled Claudia Changes Course, will be published early 2011. Follow Lisa on Twitter and visit her website at www.lisaheidke.com.
Lisa’s books can be purchased at www.allenandunwin.com and www.amazon.com
Enjoying the sad
by Rebecca James
On reading my book, Beautiful Malice, several people have asked me why I wanted to write something so sad. Why would you want to even think about, let alone write about, such morbid stuff? And when asked such a question I always confidently answer:
‘Ah…oh…um. I don’t know?’
As much as I’ve pondered and wondered and strained my brain to work out why I enjoy writing about sad stuff I can’t come up with anything better than I like things that move me. Some of my favourite books have made me howl. I love nothing better than curling up on the sofa with a movie and a box of tissues. Lots of my favourite songs make my eyes well up – and I play them over and over and over.
I don’t think I’m some kind of freaky masochist. Lots of us enjoy a good weep. But I do wonder why. Psychologically healthy people don’t welcome real tragedy into their lives. We don’t usually want to cry about real life, because when we cry about real life we feel bad, deep-down-inside bad, through-to-the-bones bad. It’s not the same when we cry in response to a book or a movie. What exactly is it about fictional situations that make a good wallow so strangely enjoyable?
I even used Google to try and find an answer. (I Google everything, everything!) One article I found suggested that we like movies and books that make us cry because it helps to release some of the repressed pain that is already there within us — reading and watching as catharsis. A certain blog I happened upon suggested that sad movies and books allow us to imagine our own worst fears, face them, cry a little, and move safely back into our comfortable reality without being truly hurt.
Both ideas seem feasible to me — and I reckon the real answer would involve a mish-mash of both plus a whole lot of other stuff that I haven’t even covered. The truth is that I don’t really care enough to investigate further because the important thing to me is that when I cry over a book or a movie or a song, it means I care enough about the characters or situation to have an emotional response. And that, to me, means that the book or movie or song works as a piece of art.
I’m not a cruel person but I have to admit that when people tell me that my book made them cry it always makes me smile.
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Rebecca James was born in Sydney and spent her twenties teaching English in Indonesia and Japan. She currently lives in Armidale, Australia, with her partner and their four sons.
You can visit Rebecca online at http://www.rebeccajamesbooks.com/
An Island Memory
by Fran McNabb
The Gulf Coast is my home. Its miles of beaches and line of barrier islands, and countless winding bayous and bays have been an influence on me, and now I find it’s an important influence on my books.
ON THE CREST OF A WAVE, my newest Avalon release, is set on the coast during the Civil War. Unlike Scarlett in GONE WITH THE WIND, my heroine didn’t live on a plantation. In fact, her simple life is that of the daughter of a fisherman. I can relate to that. I, too, am the daughter of a fisherman so I understand many of the feelings she had about her life. She finds herself helping a Union officer who is in charge of a prison camp on Ship Island just off the coast of Mississippi. The tiny strip of sand that housed thousands of soldiers, both Union and Confederate, has always been dear to my heart.
Because my mother’s family run the ferry boats to and from the island, I was able to spend one of my childhood summers there while my family worked. For six days a week I roamed the island, swam and played in the surf, and slept in the simple building that my grandfather built. On Saturday evening I took the ferry back to the mainland to attend church on Sunday morning. What a glorious way for any child to spend the summer!
One night during that unforgettable summer, we had to evacuate into Fort Massachusetts because of a high tide from a storm. I remember the night as if it happened yesterday, and when I used the fort in this new novel, I was able to pull from those impressions.
Granted, most authors don’t have the opportunity to personally experience all the places they write about, but getting to know those places and studying the lifestyles during those periods are important to form the types of characters we create.
Today, when my husband and I take our boat for a day or a weekend of fishing and swimming, we can see the fort from where we anchor. It’s hard to walk the island and not think about what happened there over a hundred years ago. For me, it’s easy to look beyond the fishermen and the sun bathers and see my hero and heroine. I was able to immerse myself in that time period when I wrote the story, and I think we need to do that with every story we write or read.
(As I watched the news this morning to see the oil spreading to the beaches of this island, my heart aches to think that even though the island has survived uncountable natural disasters, we could ruin its natural beauty with our man-made mistakes.)
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Fran McNabb received both her BS and an ME from the University of Southern Mississippi. After spending two years in Germany with her husband, they returned to the Coast where she taught English and journalism until taking an early retirement. She now lives on a quiet bayou harbor with her husband and cat and spends her time writing, working for her RWA chapter, and presenting writing workshops.
Besides ON THE CREST OF A WAVE (Avalon, Feb 2010), her writing credits include two contemporary tender romance novels and numerous articles in magazines and newsletters. Visit her at www.franmcnabb.com or at franmcnabb@yahoo.com.