Writing and Leisure

June. Roses bloom, strawberries ripen. Graduating seniors swelter in their robes while somebody important urges them to do, to strive, to achieve. Nose to the grindstone, shoulder to the wheel, as graduating seniors have been urged since time immemorial.

Unless they happened to be from Hiram College, Class of 1880. No fiery speech exhorting them to get out there and give it their all. No, what they heard instead was this:

“It has occurred to me,” said their commencement speaker*, “that the best thing you have, that all men envy, is perhaps the thing you care for least. And that is your leisure. The leisure you have to think in, and to be let alone; the leisure you have to throw the plummet with your hands, and sound the depths, and find what is below… I congratulate you on your leisure. I commend you to keep it as your gold, as your wealth…”

The leisure you have to think in. Even then, a scarce commodity. Scarcer now, what with those 15,000 applications for our iPhones. (Hey, I bet it takes hours to sort through all those).

But what does this have to do with writing fiction?

Fiction requires space. Fiction requires time. What non-writers don’t know—and what writers ourselves sometimes forget—is that the writing itself is only part of the process. An even greater part is simply thinking. Imagining. Listening. Seeing. Paying attention to the story in our heads, paying attention to the details of the world. (Oh, not practical details, like when the phone bill is due. Please. No, I mean like how spiderwebs gleam gold in certain slants of sun. Like how a dog’s eyes dilate just before it bites. You know…critical stuff.)

The leisure to throw the plummet with your hands, and sound the depths, and find what is below… Is there any better description of fiction writing than this? Sound the depths, and find what is below…

The novelist John Gardner once described a scene he wrote in which a character is offered a cocktail. The character had two choices: accept the drink, or decline. It was a simple, trivial detail, with no impact on the action of the scene. But Gardner couldn’t decide if she should accept the drink or not, and it paralyzed him. Unsure if he could even finish the book, he left off writing and plunged into physical chores. After three days, suddenly he knew exactly what the character would do…not only about the cocktail, but about everything else, too. He’d figured out the kind of person she really was. But in order to solve the problem—in order to even realize what the problem was—he had to give himself room and time.

Leisure. Kind of a dirty word in our culture. Brings up a mental image of beaches and funny-colored drinks with little umbrellas in them. In our anxiety to produce—so many words a day, so many pages a week, so many books a year—it’s tempting to hammer out any contrivance that will make the plot work, even if it means selling our characters short. It’s tempting to race to The End and call it done, and ignore the deeper threads and connections that beg to be teased out.

Embrace leisure. Keep it as your gold, your wealth. When the story is stuck, when you feel something isn’t quite right, when you hear whispers of something deeper lurking, step back. Give yourself the luxury of room and time, and let the story speak to you.

Your fiction will be all the richer for it.

* James Garfield, then a presidential candidate, soon to be President of the United States…for four months, until he was shot by an assassin. Not a novelist, but a great lover of books. And, apparently, of free time.

An Interview...a Reminder...and a Star Trek Opera

Jone MacCulloch, the fabulous youth librarian who is organizing the auctions for Bridget Zinn, interviewed me for her blog. Thanks, Jone!

Also, to all ye merry Portlanders: the live auction is tomorrow, Friday May 29th, 6:30-9 PM at the Lucky Lab Brewpub at 915 SE Hawthorne. More information here. (If you missed my first post about Bridget and why an auction is being held for her, check out my previous post.)

And for all ye merry non-Portlanders, the online auction runs until Saturday, May 30th, 11 PM PST. Check it out, great stuff is up for grabs!

I wish I could be at the Lucky Lab tomorrow night, but due to my work schedule I'll have to miss it. (The upside of working every Fri/Sat: I get to write Sun-Thurs. The downside: I have no social life. Wah).

And now, for no reason whatsoever except it's my blog and this video made me almost fall off my chair laughing, I present to you: Le Wrath di Khan. A Star Trek opera. In Italian, with subtitles. And stop-action action figures. And if that last seems like a paradox, then let your mind be free, my friend, and struggle not to comprehend, but instead admit that yes, you wish you'd thought of it first.

Up a Tree

This was me a couple of weeks ago. You can’t tell from the photo, but I’m thirty feet up in the air, and I’m about to walk across this log to another tree.

Bear in mind that my natural habitat involves couches, novels, and central heating. At any given time, I have at least one knee or shoulder bruised from slamming into doorjambs and/or table legs. In my entire life, I’ve never been able to cross a log without falling off, and yes, this includes logs lying flat on the ground. Crossing one thirty feet up in the air on a cold Sunday afternoon is an act completely foreign to my inclinations, my sensibilities, and my talents (ie, anything requiring physical prowness and a sense of balance.) The number of people in this world who can induce me to do such a thing are few indeed.

Among those few, however, are my fabulous co-workers. So when it was announced that our annual staff retreat would involve a “challenge course” in the woods, I took a leap of faith. If anybody could make this fun, I thought, surely they could.

I was right. Little did I know, though, that the leap of faith would be literal.

First, though, the Camp Tillikum staff divided the forty of us into smaller groups, then led us into the woods to learn about teamwork and problem-solving. My group’s first challenge: move ourselves along a series of four small wooden platforms, using only two boards, neither of which was long enough to reach between any of the platforms. If a board touched the ground, we’d lose it. If any body part touched the ground, the person to whom it belonged would be penalized with a handicap.

We lost one of the boards in the first five minutes. Then Rob’s foot accidentally hit the dirt, and his penalty was having to negotiate the rest of the course blindfolded. But we did it! Here are the eleven of us on the last platform, about a millisecond before we all fell off.

Our challenge course leader told us we made it look too easy. And we were having too much fun, to boot. “My job is teaching people how to work together,” he complained. “You guys aren’t giving me anything to do.”

We’re a veterinary hospital, we told him. This is what we do all day long: solve problems as a team. As far as having too much fun, well, that’s the fault of the guy in the red jacket. He’s Dr. Don McCoy, boss of the whole dang outfit, and he has a couple of key philosophies:

1. Hire the best people and then get out of their way
2. If it’s not fun, why do it?

Dr. McCoy is also a believer in pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. So when, after lunch, we were led back out into the woods for the grand finale of tree-climbing, he was the first one in the safety harness scrambling up the pine. Then, one by one, the rest of us gave it a go.

...Climbing (that was the easy part.)

I’m not normally afraid of heights, but I’ll tell you—thirty feet in the air looks skyscraper-tall when you’re standing on a narrow, curving log with nothing but empty air below. Some of my co-workers strolled across that thing as if they were in the park on a sunny day, but me? Ha! After only five or six steps, I knew there was no chance I'd get across on my own two feet. So—bolstered by shouts of encouragement from my colleagues below—I reverted to quadruped form. Hey—if it works, it works.

But simply getting across wasn’t the end of the challenge. Leap of faith, remember? We were supposed to jump off the end of the log—yeah, that’s right—and grab a trapeze bar suspended about five feet away. So far, every else had fallen short (literally.) A few had been too nervous to try. I figured, I’ve come this far…and I thought maybe I could reach it, if I really jumped hard.

But I was terrified. My mind knew I wore a safety harness and that my team had firm hold of the ropes. I knew nothing would happen to me. But no amount of higher reasoning could quiet the racing heart, the shaking, the absolute gut-level conviction that I was about to plunge to my…well, if not death, then at least a whole lot of unpleasantness.

“You’ve got me, right?” I called down to my co-workers. Classic stalling tactic.

“We’ve got you!” they called back. “You’re doing great! Go for it!” Ten voices shouting with such sincerity and enthusiasm that even my gut believed them.

So I jumped.

And my fingertips brushed the bar.

And I fell. A second of sheer terror, and then the ropes caught me. Thirty seconds later, I had sweet, solid earth beneath my feet.

It took half an hour before I stopped shaking. Some folks have experiences like this, and they say, I couldn’t wait to go back up again! I knew I could do it even better the second time!

This was my thought process: I did it, yay, thank God THAT’s over. Is there any potato salad left?

But mostly, I was enormously grateful to my co-workers. Their support made all the difference. I’m incredibly lucky to work with people who are not only the best at what they do, but who are committed—every day, not just at a Sunday staff retreat—to pulling together as a team to get the job done right. Who look out for each other and care about each other. And who never let an opportunity for a good joke pass them by, because—as the bossman says—“If it’s not fun, why do it?”

Here’s to you guys, and to an outrageously fun staff retreat. And here's a suggestion for next year. I vote we push our comfort zones at sea level. Maybe even indoors. Surely, if we can just put our minds to it, we can come up with a challenge involving coffee. And doughnuts. And comfy couches. Don't you think?

With A Little Help

Last fall, I had the good fortune to attend the 2008 Kidlit Bloggers Conference. That’s where I found out that Portland is practically teeming with very, very cool people who write young adult literature. (Seriously—teeming. Watch where you step.) And now, this fabulous community is stepping out to support one of its own.

Bridget Zinn is a YA librarian and author who recently landed an agent to represent her debut novel. Days later, she was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. On her blog, she writes: “...I am a super super healthy non-smoking, non-drinking, carcinogen avoiding young vegetarian who wears sunscreen every day. I looked at the list of risk factors for colon cancer and it turn out that I don’t even have one. Not one risk factor. So that was a surprise.”

I think “a surprise” might count as the understatement of the year.

Bridget is currently undergoing chemotherapy. To help raise funds (another “surprise”: health insurance doesn’t cover everything), indefatigble YA librarian Jone MacCulloch has launched an online auction that will run the entire month of May. YA authors, illustrators, family and friends are donating items ranging from original artwork to signed copies of books to signed copies of books that aren't even out yet to getaway vacations. Take a look—I bet you’ll find something that catches your eye!

AND, if you live in the Portland area, be sure to pencil in “Bridget Zinn Live Auction” for Friday, May 29th. There’ll be tons more items up for grabs, including—thanks to my fabulous coworker and certified canine massage therapist Tammy Moody—two gift certificates for canine massage! Got a dog friend who could use some pampering? Then be sure to show up at the Lucky Lab brewpub, bid early and often! (Oh, and there'll be signed copies of Ten Cents a Dance and Tallulah Falls, too.)

To Bridget and her new husband (did I mention she got married the same month she got her agent and her diagnosis? If you want to know how that came about, read here), we wish you much strength, health, joy, and big-time cancer-ass kicking. Many kudos to Jone for organizing the auctions, Lisa Nowak for creating the auction blog site, and all in the kidlit community who are pulling together. You all are amazing.

Moloka'i

Best birthday gift ever?

Three days on the Hawaiian island of Moloka'i with my sweetie.

I'd never been to Hawaii before. My sweetie has, but only to Honolulu and Maui. Moloka'i is one of the smaller islands--38 miles long by 10 miles wide--and has about 7000 residents. No stoplights anywhere. One small town. Lots of pickup trucks. Anybody looking for the hustle and bustle of a tourist resort won't find it. But if you want peaceful, rural, and unbelievably beautiful--which we did--well, that's Moloka'i. People we met there said, "We don't want to be another Maui." And they mean it. The residents of Moloka'i have fought off development for decades...most recently, a proposed luxury home development on their southwestern shore. They want to keep Moloka'i, Moloka'i. A picture being worth a thousand words, and all that, you can see why we hope they continue to succeed.



This is Papohaku Beach. Three miles long, one of Hawaii's longest beaches. And in the middle of a weekday afternoon, we were the only ones there. It was still too early in the spring for swimming--the sea was way too rough--but it was gorgeous. One weird thing, though: look at how clean that sand is! In Oregon and California, we're used to kelp, driftwood, the occasional dead crab...but none of that on Papohaku. No idea why, but it was amazing.

A few miles away we found Kapukahehu Beach (aka Dixie Maru Beach) and its calm cove waters. Perfect for the likes of me, who can't see six inches ahead--literally--and therefore routinely get knocked over by waves. (I made a lousy Californian.) This was the most crowded place we experienced during our stay...all of about ten people sharing the sun, sand and warm water. I'm not much into sunbathing (not only severely myopic, but also melanin-challenged--yeah, I made a really lousy Californian) but yeah, this was bliss.

Driving the southern coast highway to the eastern tip of the island, we passed a sign warning us of a nene crossing. Nenes are the Hawaiian state bird, and endangered; only about 800 still survive on all the islands. A mile or so later, we came across a group of nenes, and sure enough--they were crossing the road. Now that's an accurate sign.

Looking from the rocky Halawa beach deep inland to the Halawa Valley and one of its waterfalls. Halawa Valley was the location of one of the earliest known settlements in all of Hawaii.

Kalaupapa Peninsula, on the northern shore. This is where Hawaii's famous leper colony is situated. Beginning in the 1860s, people in the Hawaiian islands diagnosed with Hansen's disease (leprosy) were taken away involuntarily from their families and quarantined here. For much of the colony's history, patients were kept on this almost inaccessible peninsula, in virtual prison, for the rest of their lives.

There's a daily tour of the colony, and we were eager to go. But getting to the tour, we learned, is a whole adventure in itself. Even today, the only land access is a 3-mile trail that drops 1700 feet from the top of a sea cliff down 26 switchbacks to the peninsula below. (Did I mention that Moloka'i has the highest sea cliffs in the world?) Two ways to tackle the trail: 1) saddle up with Moloka'i Mule Ride, or 2) hoof it on our own two feet. Since we're idiots, it didn't occur to us to reserve mule saddles in advance. So we showed up at the trailhead early in the morning, got our state permits (required to enter the peninsula), and started hiking before the four-leggeds were on the move.

A section of the cliff trail. This particular bit has a railing; much of the trail doesn't. And yeah, the ocean at the bottom is as clear as it looks. Absolutely spectacular.

A view of the sea cliff and part of the trail cutting across it.

St. Philomena was the first church built by Father Damien, a Belgian priest who ministered to the colony for sixteen years. He didn't just give sermons; he dressed patients' sores, built houses and two churches, and lived and worked alongside the banished outcasts of Kalaupapa until his own death from leprosy in 1889. Father Damien will be canonized as a Catholic saint in a ceremony on Kalaupapa peninsula on October 11, 2009. Our tour guide told us, in what I think is an understatement: "That will be a big day on Moloka'i."

A view of the sea cliffs from the Kalaupapa peninsula.

The cottage where we stayed. Just the most beautiful, welcoming place. From it, we could see the south shore, the islands of Maui and Lanai and--most exciting of all--whales spouting in the ocean between.

The view from our cottage, our last morning on Moloka'i: a rainbow over Maui.

And then: back home, far too soon.

Mahalo, Moloka'i, for reminding us to take it slow.

The resident goofballs. Yeah, we missed 'em.

All A Writer Needs Is A Little Freedom

All over everywhere, folks are squeeing about Freedom. Apparently, this is a computer program you download from the internet that gives you freedom from...

(wait for it)

...the internet.

Freedom from checking your email every few minutes. Freedom from checking the comment trails on your favorite blogs. Freedom from Twitter, Facebook, your book's Amazon.com ranking...

not that I ever look at my books...umm...hardly ever, I mean...*cough*

...in short: Freedom to do some actual work. The way Freedom works is, you set it for a specified time and during that time, the program prevents you from accessing the internet for any reason--even to check March Madness results (Cher bracket) on Go Fug Yourself. You can't argue with it...you can't reason with it. It knows no mercy.

If that's not a writer's godsend, I don't know what is. It's just too easy, when hitting a bump in the fifth circle of hell known as the First Draft, to say I must know, at this very instant, how to say "hurry up" in French! Before I even know it, Google is activated and I'm knee-deep in French-to-English translation sites. And then I remember that I wanted to know what sort of fabric is crepe, exactly, and by the way, wasn't The Road with Viggo Mortensen supposed to come out last November? Where hast ye been, Viggo? And then...

No! No more! Where do I get this Freedom? I cried, cursor poised, ready to click through to my deliverance. And then I saw the fine print. (Why, why is there always fine print?)

Freedom is for Macs only.

*foam quietly at mouth for a moment*

Fine. Maybe it's just that Mac users don't have the self-discipline that we PC-ers do. So yesterday, I devised a little Freedom of my own: I disconnected my laptop from the internet. (I was surprised at how long I hesitated before clicking "disconnect." As if the mouse was a cleaver held over my sole supply of oxygen.) Every hour and a half, I allowed myself ten minutes surf time. (Okay, fifteen. And once was thirty minutes, but that was lunch.) Overall, I was pretty pleased with myself. And today?

Mm. Well. But look: the 2009 Go Fug Yourself March Madness champion, with video!



And cute cats!




And...and...Aarghh! I can't make it stop! Fred Stutzman, savior of Mac users, hear us! Are we not also helpless in the face of a strong wireless signal? Do we not also have work to be done? Where's our PC Freedom?!

Chasing the Dragon

I once worked with a heroin addict (clean for many years, but he taught me that to say "former addict" is incorrect) who told me that the first experience of heroin is the best. Junkies, he said, are always chasing that ephemeral first time, which will never occur again.

Writing is like that. The first time I hit the zone--that state in which a scene unfurls seemingly with no effort, in which the characters take on life and act with no regard for the author's preconceived ideas, the state in which (as one author once put it) the writer seems to be taking dictation from God himself--I was hooked. Entirely and forever. That first experience was long before I began writing novels, long before I could reliably write even two pages a week for my writing class. But from that day to this, every time I sit down at the computer, I hope that lightning will strike.

It usually doesn’t. But the promise of it always brings me back. Because unlike heroin, the first time for writers is not the only time. Who knows what the zone really is--self hypnosis? Endorphin rush? Whatever brain chemistry is percolating (biologist geek that I am, I'm certain that some physiologic process is involved) the zone is, for me, one of the strongest lures of writing.

This is how I chase the writing dragon: Unfold the scene, starting with the light. I read that once in an author interview, although I can't remember who--Anita Shreve, maybe. Imagine the light in the scene first, she said. How bright it is, where it’s coming from.

Then the sounds. Scents. The touch of upholstery, the humidity in the air. See the characters, set them moving, set them talking. Set a spark, see if it catches. Get it all down. If the zone starts rockin', hallelujah and roll with it. If not, then slog on. The dragon waits to be caught...

...if not today, then surely tomorrow.

Tough Times Call for Tough (Book) Folks

From today's Shelf Awareness, a daily booksellers' newsletter, comes this report on a new method of bookselling designed for these hard financial times:

"…Craig Wilkins of Best of All Possible Bookshops has an intriguing new concept for increasing sales at the retail level: smashmouth, trash-talking, in-your-face handselling.

Wilkins said he realized last summer, as the economy began to slide, that his problem as a bookseller was "the damned readers. They weren't listening to me and even when they came to the bookshop, they often slipped out with no purchase."

Instead of the traditional, cooperative, conversational, low-impact approach to bookselling, he began taking the fight directly to his opposition. "Essentially, I make them eat their words," Wilkins said. "We don't let them out of the bookstore until they've bought books."

And if his customers think they can avoid all this by simply not coming to the shop, Wilkins has a little news flash for them. "I know where they live and I have a van," he said... "We go to their houses just like Amazon and make them buy books, but with the added incentive of actually being there in person so they have to look us in the eye…"

I was fortunate enough to be in his bookstore during one of these smashmouth handselling sessions recently. A customer entered, and instead of the traditional greeting ("Good morning; may I help?"), Wilkins moved aggressively from behind the counter and rushed the newcomer with an all-out blitz, reaching his foe as the customer plucked a copy of Snow by Orhan Pamuk from a Staff Picks display.

"You don't deserve that book!" Wilkins screamed, snatching it away.

"Why not?" the customer asked timidly, looking for an escape route. But Wilkins had him cornered.

"You aren't smart enough, pal."

"But I want to read this book. I do!"

Now that Wilkins had his opponent caught up in the game, he went for the literary kill. Holding Snow just beyond the customer's reach, he said, "If you want to read this, you're going to have to buy five books by midlist authors, too."

"Why?"

"Because I said so and because if you're smart enough to read Pamuk, you're too smart to ignore these other books. Deal?"

"Deal." There was surrender in the customer's eyes, but also, oddly, pleasure. Was that the thrill of defeat?

Wilkins observed that while bookstore sales have slumped nationwide during the recession, his have actually held steady. Not one to be complacent, however, he recently sent out a threatening e-mail newsletter warning that if he doesn't see an uptick of at least 10% by the end of April, he will be making more house calls.

I asked Wilkins if he had any words of wisdom for prospective smashmouth booksellers, and he shared his basic, primal philosophy: "Our backs are to the shelf. We have to take this one book at a time. Reading isn't everything; it's the only thing."

At last, the world of bookselling has found its hero. And if you believe that, my dear...

...check the date. And then head over to Shelf Awareness for another April 1 story: the government bailout of the publishing industry.

Victory Garden Redux

Spring. Still cold, gloomy and raining (this is the Pacific Northwest) but at our house, spring means that sometime between the fading of daffodils and the blooming of tulips, the raised beds are gonna get planted.

The beds were here when we moved in. Four big rectangles set in a corner of the yard. We replaced sagging boards, shored up the sides, and amended the daylights out of the clay topsoil they were filled with. (We still occasionally have to take a pickax to particularly stubborn deposits.) The beds have grown everything from corn to catnip, eggplant to peppers, basil to zucchini. Every spring I look forward to planting them, and I say this not as a chlorophyll-addled health nut but as a lifelong vegetable hater. Yes, you heard me: I hate vegetables. On the other hand, I love anything deep fried, high in nitrites, or full of saturated fat. Preferably all three. As far as I’m concerned, the perfect food is bacon. Fried crisp, hot, and lots of it. Mmmm.


And yet I also love the raised beds. It’s primeval magic: plant a seed or shoot, water, watch grow and bear fruit. All in one season’s time, which also satisfies my need for instant gratification, and why I don’t plant asparagus, because it takes two years until harvest which is one year and nine months longer than my gardening attention span.

There have been lots of media stories in the past year about how more and more people are raising their own backyard vegetables. Which warms my vintage heart no end, because it’s like the victory gardens of WWII all over again. Only back then, it was the government urging Americans to get busy with shovels and seeds. Canned fruits and veggies were needed for the military, so the idea was to get citizens to raise and preserve their own food. It worked: during the course of the war, 20 million backyard gardens produced 8 million tons of food…almost half the fruits and vegetables consumed nationwide. Even city dwellers with no land of their own got in the act. Neighbors banded together, cleaned up vacant lots and planted their own community gardens. Grow More in `44!

I love the idea of the modern, grassroots-driven victory garden. Some people are getting into it to save money on groceries; some, because they’re inspired by the local/fresh/seasonal food movement. Here we have organizations like the Portland Fruit Tree Project, which helps people harvest fruit from their trees and also teaches them the arts of canning and preserving—skills that most of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers knew, and hardly any of us today do. (We once helped friends harvest apples from their half-dozen trees and make hard cider from them. Pressing, fermenting, and months of aging later, we held the ceremonial tasting. As hard cider, it was awful. But if you closed your eyes and pretended it was a strange, dry sort of Chardonnay—possibly from another planet—it almost worked. Hey, at least we tried).

So in the midst of all this newfangled victory gardening, what about the vegetable-haters, like me? Is it possible to turn us to the light side of the Force?

I’ll admit it: I have learned to adore a homegrown tomato. My favorites are the little yellow pear tomatoes, just picked, cute as buttons and still warm from the sun. And have you ever noticed how good a tomato plant smells? Like summer itself: green and fresh and delicious. And artichokes! Have I mentioned artichokes? Yummy in their own right but really—simply to do them justice, you understand—much better eaten with loads of melted butter. Mmmmm.

Baby steps. That's all I'm sayin'.

And what about you? Anything you're planning to plant this spring?

Bookstores and Babes

The last evening of my Chicago stay, I had a reading at Women and Children First bookstore. I came straight from the Back of the Yards event and so ended up arriving half an hour early: shucks darn, I thought, guess I just have to browse this adorable bookstore! Good thing I only had half an hour, otherwise I might have bought a dozen books instead of only four. (I think I’ve got this New Year’s resolution thing down…just make resolutions that involve doing something you already love. Like buying books. I’m such a genius!)

It’s a little nervous-making, having a bookstore reading not in your hometown. It’s just too easy to picture nobody showing up…especially on a freezing, snow-blowing night. But people did show up, bless their tough Chicago hearts. And among them came the Babes!

The Babes With Big Books, that is. Almost a year ago, this Chicago-area book club won copies of Ten Cents a Dance through BookMovement.com. They read the book and then invited me to call in to one of their club meetings. What a blast! These avid readers gave me a warm, open-arms Illinois welcome; it was so much fun to finally meet some of them in person. Thanks, Babes, for helping make the reading a success! Thanks too to my friend Jenny, a friend and fabulous writer whom I met at a writing workshop here in Portland, for coming out in support, and laughing in all the right places.



Here are the Babes and I: That’s Amy, Karen, me, Meredith, and Kimberly. I feel incredibly lucky that these wonderful women won my book—you all are an author’s dream!

A top shot of the victory rolls. (Thank God I didn't write a book set in the early `60s...no WAY I'm EVER doing a beehive!)


Chicago was over, but no time to rest; the next day, I headed to Cincinnati to spend a few days with my brother’s family and do a book signing at a Borders bookstore. A book signing is different from a reading: my role was to sit at a table at the front of the store, greet customers as they came in, and if anyone was interested, talk to them about Ten Cents. Now, most folks see someone in `40s getup at a table piled with books, and they get this kind of spooked-deer don’t make eye contact don’t make eye contact oh look at this incredibly interesting thing way on the opposite side of the store thing going on. Which I don’t blame them for, as I in all my introversion would undoubtedly do the same thing. But I was the author; this was no time to be introverted. I smiled at everyone and offered free bookmarks, and if people stopped to chat, I gladly (and gratefully!) chatted. Marjorie, the store manager, brought me coffee, which helped fend off the cold (twenty degrees outside, and me in front of the big double doors swooshing open and shut constantly; after forty-five minutes, I couldn’t feel my feet). In just over an hour and a half, all the books were sold. Whoo-hoo! Many, many thanks to my brother Matt, Marjorie, and all the staff of the Borders in Mason, OH—you guys rock!


And then it WAS time to rest. Tons of good food (my sister-in-law Janet is an awesome cook), hours of wonderful conversation, intense Scrabble games with my nephews, and my first-ever episode of The Bachelor, which happened to be the finale (Jason, you fickle, fickle man, how could you?)

And then—after a fifteen-hour three-airport two-delayed-flight odyssey—sweet home at last. For now, Chicago, goodbye…but I had an incredible time, and I'll be back--I know it!

Chicago!

In the last two years, I’ve done so much research on Chicago I feel like I know the city inside and out. But what I know is a black-and-white 1940s version: photographs and movies, maps and books. Which made leaping into the present-day Windy City, in all its glorious color, such an exciting prospect.

I put together a multimedia presentation, A Hepkitten’s Guide to the War: Taxi Dancing, Chicago, and World War II, based on Ten Cents a Dance. (Do I know how to do a multimedia presentation? Ha! I do now. Let’s just say there was a whole lotta learning curve going on. Thank you Jerrod Allen, computer wizard extraordinaire and tutor magnifique.) I went on the hunt and found the most darling raspberry wool `40s jacket and vintage black hepkitten-ish skirt. My fab publicist, Kelly Powers of ObieJoe Media, worked like crazy coordinating events…and on February 23rd, this show hit the road.

Eighteen degrees in Chicago when I landed. Thank heavens my mother, who grew up in New York, insisted years and years ago that I get a heavy wool topcoat. Nobody wears such a thing here; on the West Coast, we’re all about GoreTex and goosedown. But the streets of Chicago were teeming with wool, and snug in my own (thanks, Mom!) I have a deep new appreciation for sheep. Those suckers are warm.

First event: Norwood Park Historical Society. Their headquarters is the oldest house in Chicago, harking back to 1833 (in comparison, our 1906 Portland home seem positively teenagerish). Giving the Hepkitten presentation in its gorgeous rooms was a treat. Even better was discovering that a few of the attendees had danced to the same hot swing as Ruby, back in the day!

Next, the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council. The Back of the Yards is the neighborhood where Ruby grows up, and I practically had my nose pressed to the car window, drinking in all the streets I’d only seen before on a map: Damen, 47th, Ashland. That’s where the People’s Theater used to be! That’s where Ruby and Angie would have gotten on the streetcar! In Ruby’s day, the Back of the Yards was home to many ethnicities; today, it’s still one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Chicago. The BYNC is an amazingly energetic, vibrant organization buzzing with activities: children, teens, adults, seniors. They welcomed me with open arms, and a I had fabulous time talking Back of the Yards history with the wonderful group of kids who came to see Hepkitten.

What with preparing for events (victory rolls still take me forever to do), getting to events (and I thought L.A. traffic was bad), and doing events, I didn’t have a lot of time to go sightseeing. But I walked the Magnificent Mile, and one bright, bone-chilling-cold afternoon, took the world's fastest elevator up 94 stories to the John Hancock Observatory. Isn’t Chicago gorgeous?






























And OK, I can’t resist—I have to show you the kitchenette in my hotel room. It was the tiniest thing, but just adorable. I swear I cooed when I saw it. Bliss to come back from an event, brush out the victory rolls, and heat water in the kettle for a mug of peppermint tea.

More to come about Chicago—including a pic of me in my `40s getup—and my further adventures in Cincinnati. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with one of the video clips I use in my Hepkitten presentation. This is from Ten Cents a Dance—the 1931 movie. (That's Barbara Stanwyck, playing the world-weary taxi dancer!)

Where in the World is Christine Fletcher?

Honestly, I haven’t been slacking off. OK, yeah, it’s been three weeks since my last blog post—you got me there. So what have I been doing? Well…

On Febrary 22nd, I had the honor of taking part in the Northwest Author Series, a series of presentations by NW authors to aspiring writers. The NAS is the brainchild of Christina Katz, whose book “Get Known Before the Book Deal” is required reading for any writer looking to publish in today's competitive market.

And my topic for NAS? “Essential Skills for Every Fiction Writer.”

I had ninety minutes, so I distilled my list of essential skills down to three bottom-line, make-it-or-break-it abilities that every novelist or short story writer must master: building characters, building conflict, and building the fictive dream. Attendance was good, and the audience was great. As any of my former students can tell you, I get bored if I’m just up there rattling away; I like participation, and I’m not above randomly pointing at people and firing questions. But I didn’t have to with this bunch; every time I posed a scenario, they called out ideas and answers. Fabulous!

Many, many thanks to all who attended, and especially to Christina Katz for inviting me to speak. I had a great time, not only giving the talk but having the chance to chat with folks afterwards. The talk was filmed, and when I get a copy of the video I’ll post an excerpt or two here—keep your eye out for it!

And then I was done and headed home…only to pack the suitcases for a 6:30 AM flight the next morning. My latest Adventures in Book Promotion had only begun, and the next stop?

The City of Big Shoulders itself: CHICAGO.

The Cybils Winnahs!

The 2008-9 Cybils (Children's and Young adult Bloggers' Literary Awards) have been announced, and the winner of the Young Adult Fiction award is...

(drumroll, please)...

(waaait for it)...

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, by E. Lockhart!

If you're not familiar with The Disreptuable History (which was also a finalist for the National Book Award and a Printz Honor book) I can tell you it's a fabulous read. This is what the Cybils judges said:

It's a setting we know. It's a theme we're familiar with. But with The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, E. Lockhart takes common features of teen fiction and turns them into a smart, fun, multi-layered, action-filled, coming-of-age story with a unique treatment and fresh voice. Frankie's feminist-fueled and P.G. Wodehouse-inspired antics at boarding school are hilarious, but also tinged with the sometimes-harsh truths of growing up. A book complex and clever enough that wildly diverse readers will each take, and love, something different out of the narrative.

Congratulations, E. Lockart, and to all the finalists! I'm thrilled and deeply honored that Ten Cents a Dance was chosen to be in this stellar group. Many, many thanks to the Cybils panelists, who put in crazy long hours whittling almost 140 nominations down to the final seven, and to the Cybils judges, who had the unenviable task of picking only one title from the list. These are people with day jobs, families, and lives, who volunteer their time because of their dedication to children's and young adult literature. Kudos to all of you!

What Separates Humans from the Animals

Who hasn't watched birds, and wondered what it would be like to fly? Me, I always figured skydiving would be as close as a human could get.

I was so wrong.



I love how the first guy comments that jumping out away from the cliff got boring. Which I can totally see, because yeah, having all that space around you as you streak through the air at 100 mph would be so dull. As opposed to streaking through the air at 100 mph an arm's length from solid rock.

Anthropologists argue about what separates us from the animals. Language? Music? (It isn't tool-making or self-awareness; those got shot down a while back.)

You know what I think it is? Whatever thought process it is that leads somone to say, I want to fly. I can't fly. How do I fly? I know: I'll invent a wingsuit and then I'll put it on and jump off a cliff. Maybe I'll fly, maybe I'll crash. Let's find out.

It's just so like a human being. Reckless and creative and visionary and stupid, and from the safety of my couch, it warms my geeky heart. Crazy people, fly on!

What about you? Do you see this and say, Man, I wish I could do that! Do you think it's cool but you'll just sit back and watch, thank you very much? Do you think people who do stuff like this are certifiable?

YALSA Love!

Wonderful news: YALSA has named Ten Cents a Dance one of the 2009 Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults!

Fabulous!! you exclaim. Um...what's YALSA?

poll by twiigs.com

Clever, clever minxes! YALSA is the Young Adult Library Services Association, and YA librarians, I can tell you from experience, are the most enthusiastic promoters of literature and reading you'll ever meet. When my editor told me that Ten Cents a Dance had been nominated for their annual list of Best Books for Young Adults, I was thrilled. When I learned they'd chosen Ten Cents as one of their Top Ten, I wasn't just over the moon--I'm pretty sure I sailed out past Saturn somewhere. I'm only just now starting to feel the ground under my feet. There were so many incredible YA books published last year; I can't tell you how honored I am to be included.

Congratulations to Portland's own Lisa Schroeder; her novel I Heart You, You Haunt Me was named a 2009 Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers. You rock, Lisa (and the fact that you've written three books in three years makes me feel like an absolute slacker!)

Check out the YALSA awards site for all the winners, honor books, and lists: the Caldecott, the Printz, the Newbury (yay, Neil Gaiman!)

And to all you fabulous YA librarians...Thank you! I think you just made my year. Woot!

Dear Eartha, Goodbye

Chances are you've heard the Christmas song, "Santa Baby."

Chances are, it was Madonna's version.

Which means you ain't heard it at all. Because nobody--nobody--can hold a candle to the the incomparable Eartha Kitt, who recorded "Santa Baby" first, in 1953. My parents had a record of it, and I grew up listening to Eartha every Christmas. Years later, when I heard Madonna's cover, I couldn't help but think--sorry, Madge--what a flat, thin thing she made of the song, next to Eartha's glorious, throaty purr.

As a kid, I was fascinated with Eartha Kitt. Her name, for one. Her accent. Her beauty and most of all, the air of wildness that came through our TV screen like a beating pulse. I was raised in a strict Catholic household, went to strict Catholic schools, and here was a woman who...how can I put this? It wasn't just that she seemed not to obey The Rules. It was more like The Rules wouldn't dare set foot in her universe. That was Eartha. She was thrilling, she was completely beyond my ken, and she was just the teensiest, tiniest, eensiest bit scary. Whenever I saw her on TV--as Catwoman, as a guest on someone's variety show or talk show--I couldn't take my eyes off her. She was mesmerizing. If you want a little taste of what made Eartha great, this is one of my favorite videos of her:

Eartha Kitt passed away on Christmas Day, at the age of 81. Performing to the end. In interviews, she said that as an orphan, her only family was her fans; she was grateful to them for embracing her, and she loved them.

We love you too, Eartha. We'll miss you.

Cybils Love!

I got an email from fellow Portland YA author Laini Taylor saying, "Congratulations on making the Cybils shortlist!"

I um, huh, What?

I sped over to the Cybils site and sure enough, Ten Cents a Dance is one of seven finalists for the YA Fiction Award!

*dancing wildly around the room*

When I say that just being named a finalist is an honor, believe me, I'm not being squidgy. I've read some of these books and been blown away by them. To be included on the same list is...well, it's freakin' unbelievably fabulous, is what it is. Unreal in the best possible way.

Many thanks to the Cybils panelists who read through all the YA Fiction nominees (almost 140 books!) to choose these seven. Now, the judges will read and decide the winner. Announcement on February 14th. I'll let you know. Meanwhile, if you're looking for some great reads, check out the shortlists for all the categories. To celebrate, I went on a shopping spree at A Children's Place Bookstore (because hello, the best way to celebrate anything is to buy more books) and came home with The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Foundling by D.M. Cornish (not on a list but its sequel Lamplighter is), and Boy Toy by Barry Lyga, which won the 2007 Cybil for YA Fiction. Plus the other YA Fiction finalists I haven't already read.

A stack of new books. Cybils love. No better way to start a new year.

*still dancing*

Resolutions, Shmesolutions. Where's My Cheese Popcorn?

The only New Year's resolution I've ever kept was not to make any more New Year's resolutions. Works for me. Why mess with success?

For the resolution-minded of you out there, though, I have a couple of suggestions. (You've heard the adage, "Those who can't, teach"? Well, this is the lesser-known corollary: "Those who don't, suggest.")

Feed the hungry by testing your knowledge. This is an armchair geek's idealist dream come true. Go to FreeRice and answer the questions. Every question you get right donate's ten grains of rice to the world's neediest people. The default subject is English vocabulary. Give you the shivers? Then click at the upper right to change subjects, from famous paintings to the periodic table to math to geography. Make it a web stop every day, and see how many grains of rice you can donate in five or ten minutes.


Want to do something for the four-legged among us? Then visit FreeKibble, answer the daily question, and, whether you get it right or not, you'll donate ten pieces of kibble to an animal shelter. Prefer cats to dogs, or want to do something for both? Then play FreeKibbleKat, too. This was yesterday's cat question:

One male cat and one female cat and their offspring are capable of producing how many cats in seven years? (answer below)

a) 420 cats
b) 4200 cats
c) 42,000 cats
d) 420,000 cats

(For the math-adept among you, a single female cat can produce up to 3 litters per year; the average litter size is 4 to 6 kittens. Calculate away!)

Flunking your FreeRice vocab questions? Sign up for A Word A Day. It's free, it's fun, it's geeky, it's a little piece of heaven in your daily inbox.

Been meaning to pop into that little independent bookstore across town? DO IT.

I know some of you live in towns with no independent bookstores (sometimes, no bookstores at all.) But if you do have an indie, go the extra mile. Browse around. Buy at least one of the titles on your list, and if you don't have a list (or you can't remember a single title on it as soon as you step into a bookstore--something that invariably happens to me) then chat up the bookseller for a recommendation. Indie booksellers are passionate book people and they're tuned into their customers; they know whereof they speak. If they don't have the title you're looking for, they'll happily order it in for you--and they'll get it faster than Amazon.com, with no shipping charges.

I fibbed about the resolution thing. I made this one a while back and I intend to keep on keeping it in 2009. Why?

Because ten years ago, there were about 3500 indie bookstores in the country. Today they're down to 1500...and the vast majority of those losses were before the economy tanked. 2009 is going to be a make-or-break year for many of the remaining indies, and they can only do it with our help.

Because the biggest national chain bookstores have a couple of people in corporate deciding which books to carry. They carry books they think will sell...which leaves thousands of fabulous books and authors out in the cold. Without independent bookstores, your chances of ever hearing about those books is virtually nil.

Because the more independent bookstores go under, the narrower our book choices will be.

If you take only one suggestion, take this one. Shop locally, and not just for books. Support your neighbors, keep those dollars in town. If you're not sure whether you have an indie bookstore nearby, check IndieBound and find out. Meet a bookseller in 2009. You'll be glad you did.


Answer to kittycat question is...d) 420,000 cats. A bit of mind-boggling to start your year off right. Spay and neuter in 2009...and Happy New Year, everyone!

Now THIS is a White Christmas!

Portland lies under a blanket of snow. A goosedown comforter of snow. This isn't our usual precious one inch, which releases gleeful kids from school and shuts down the entire metro area for a day. No, this is a history-making, record-breaking, eleven-days-and-counting Snowzilla wonder, and it's snowing again as we speak.

I love watching the flakes drift down. I love walking a mile and a half to the grocery store for provisions, seeing how magically my dear familiar neighborhood is transformed. I love how the snow makes people happy, so that everyone I meet smiles and calls hello. I love it that we're going to have lox and bagels for Christmas dinner, because that was what I could fit into the backpack. I love it that nature has given us a gentle kick, letting us know that no matter how hard we try, we don't have nearly the control over our lives that we think we do. It's a good reminder.

And now, a carol from our own Lisa Nowak, fellow Portland Kidlit writer and cat lover. (I also highly recommend her beautiful essay on snow, Christmas, and community...including some fascinating Christmas history, which pleased the geek in me no end).

A very merry Christmas to all!

The New Yorker Trashes...I Mean, Talks YA

Last week, while we were celebrating Girl Week on Reviewer X’s blog (strong YA heroines! Fabulous YA authors!) came this post from the pinched-nostrils section of the internet litsphere. As if Part I wasn’t enough, it was followed by parts II and III… because when it comes to disdain, ignorance, and wrong assumptions, more is of course better.

The posts discuss Kathe Koja’s latest YA novel, Headlong. This ought to have been exciting--one of the premier book-celebrating magazines in the country, talking YA! And yet, not five seconds into the discussion, I can tell you: none of the panelists knows anything about young adult literature. Unfortunately, they don’t let this stop them from spouting insanely incorrect generalizations about the entire genre.

Q: Did you have certain expectations of “Headlong,” given the Y.A. label? Did it confound or surpass those expectations—or prove them right?

A: The book totally surpassed my expectations. I tend to think of young-adult fiction as sort of facile—a straightforward style, uncomplicated themes and morals—but this had a complexity, an ambiguity, that surprised me, and I loved Koja’s sentence structure, how she interweaved dialogue and exposition so fluidly.

What?! Complexity and ambiguity in YA fiction? A YA author who is an accomplished writer? Shock and amazement! The mind reels! But wait…the panelist isn’t done:

It fit my expectations in terms of length and enjoyableness, though: I assume that anything branded “young adult” needs to have a plotline that captures a teen’s attention, and also needs to be not too long or challenging.

Honey, I’ll put this as gently as I can: You assume completely bats**t wrong. Have you ever set foot in the teen fiction section of a bookstore, even once? Ever heard of M.T. Anderson, Sara Zarr, Laurie Halse Andersen, E. Lockhart? Not challenging? Are you kidding me?

More amazement from another panelist:

It was far more subtle and experimental than I expected, and Lily is a complete character…A potentially boring heads-tails vision of morality is mercifully absent, and the book isn’t sanctimonious, much. And the plot was unpredictable. I don’t know that I’ll be reading a lot of Y.A. in the future, but I don’t feel that I wasted my time.

Well, thank God for that. Crisis averted! By the way, a “boring heads-tails vision of morality,” sanctimoniousness, and predictable plots went out with those 1970s After-School Specials…which you would know, if you read any YA fiction at all.

The discussion continues:

Well, of course we do demand of “great” writers—literary-fiction writers—higher moral and philosophical stakes. Like I said, I think the Y.A. genre is typically defined by very straightforward moral messages, ones that are deemed “suitable” for children, even if the subject matter deals with more grown-up topics (like sex or drinking).

At this point, I’m sputtering in incoherent indignation. The panelist “thinks” the YA genre is defined thus. She doesn’t know, but she has assumed, and therefore it must be so. And yet she is so wrong, on so many levels, it makes my head hurt.

From the third blog post:

Q: What did you guys make of the italicized sections throughout the novel, where different adult voices (of the swim coach, Lily’s mom, the dorm R.A.) would give their general comments…

A: I hated those sections…They’re perfect evidence of another characteristic of Y.A. literature: condescending to the reader.

My aching head has now exploded.

These people not only don’t know YA fiction, I doubt they know any actual live young adults. In my YA reading, none of the novels, no matter their sins, committed the sin of condescension. It’s not hard to understand why. Any YA author will tell you that teens have a fantastically honed bulls**t detector. Young adults expect a novelist to be scrupulously forthright. Any author who condescends to a teen audience is an author who is unpublished. Period.

Indeed, the only condescension I’ve seen in the YA world is the condescension directed at us from the so-called “serious” lit folks. Sherman Alexie, who has written nineteen books for adults and one YA novel, said, “I thought I’d been condescended to as an Indian — that was nothing compared to the condescension for writing YA.” This was after he won the National Book Award for young people’s literature for his YA novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Friends, he said, worried he was “dumbing down,” and asked him if he wouldn’t have rather won the award for one of his adult, “serious” books.

Look, New Yorker Book Bench blog: I think it’s fabulous that you’ve discovered the world of YA. Kudos to you for picking Kathe Koja, who is a lovely author, and for recognizing the quality of her work. But please—please—before you discuss YA in public again, do yourselves a favor. Know what you’re talking about, instead of blatting assertions that are to reality what sheep are to quantum physics. (No insult intended to sheep.) You’re New Yorkers, for God’s sake. Take a YA editor out to lunch. Peruse the New York Public Library’s annual list of Books for the Teen Age, and (gasp!) read half a dozen or so. Take advantage of this newfangled thing called the internet and touch base with an actual YA reviewer/blogger. Venture a tippy-toe into the Teen Lit section of the bookstore.

Scary, I know. Don't worry, we don't have cooties...and you won't lose IQ points. In fact, it's very likely you'll gain some.