Dogs and children

Sophie on the first day we got her

Sophie at two, with Jacob

 

We celebrated Sophie's second birthday over the weekend. Even had a dinner party at which she was showered with gifts--a huge rawhide bone, a soft toy with no stuffing for her to pull out, bright tennis balls, and other things--but, alas, there was no place for her at the table and she was excluded from the happy hour because we grilled on the front porch and nobody wanted to hold her on a leash. Still after all the excitement of extra people around all weekend (particularly two six-year-olds) and her birthday party, she was pooped last night, so tired she didn't eat for two days though I'm pleased to report she has eaten her dinner tonight

Two is the point at which people told me she would be mature and calm down. I saw one of those charts that puts dogs into equivalent human ages (the old theory we were all taught about seven years for one has gone by the wayside). Sophie should be the equivalent of twenty-four. I've tried to explain that to her, but, sigh, not all twenty-four-year-olds are mature, and I fear she'll be a late bloomer. She has calmed down a lot but visitors, kids, etc. still excite her. And she has a definite mind of her own. As the groomer said to me the other day, "She's feisty" (She only tried to bite him twice; otherwise she gave him kisses.)

Jacob is here tonight, and since it's a school night I've been much stricter about bedtime. He doesn't like it and can find a dozen things that keep him awake, though he's pretty much decided we won't have a tornado. But the washing machine, motorcycles (?), and cars kept him awake in his room, so he migrated to my bed. Next Sophie stayed by him and then left and he wanted her to stay all the time--not sure how to explain that to my newly mature (?) dog.

You'll pardon me I hope if my string is a little short tonight. Sophie and Jacob are both bright spots in my life but they can also try my patience something fearful.







A day in the life of ....

Wow! Today was a hectic, confusing, happy, noisy day with lots of fun and a problem. I spent the morning doing all those good things--watering plants, yoga, etc.--but since Colin, my oldest, didn't expect to arrive from Houston until noon I made German potato salad for tomorrow night and stuck it in the fridge. Just before noon, I pulled into Jordan's driveway--right behind Colin.
After a while Jamie arrived with Edie and we had a lovely time laughing and visiting, eating dips and tacos, and being the family that we are. But my nap was calling me, and I started to leave--until Jordan discovered a bubble on my passenger side front tire. She called Colin who said I could not even drive it home. So he, wonderful son that he is, took the spare to be aired up and then changed it, with help from his brother who arrived at just the right--or from his perspective, the wrong--time. I have great sons. Said my goodbyes once again and came home, caught up on a few details and crashed--slept soundly.
Tonight was Arts Goggle in Fairmount, and since I anticipated parking problems, Colin drove me. I was to sign books at State Representative Lon Burnam's office. With all the art displays and restaurants and attractions, I wondered how many people would go to a political office. Lon's wife, my good friend Carol, had put together an exhibit of historic photographs and had several books, not just mine, with authors present for signing. Oh, and food and wine. A steady stream of people filed through the office, and I sold enough books to make the evening worthwhile. In fact, Colin had to bring me more books. A successful evening.
I missed going to the trunk show at Urban Yoga where Elizabeth's friend from India, Uschi, had a display of the colorful tops she makes (I was wearing one tonight)--a big disappointment, but Elizabeth promised to bring some home for me to have my own private showing.
Now, everyone's gone except Colin and his six-year-old, Kegan, who are spending the night. Jacob is here tonight too to be with his cousin, and the three of them are watching a vampire movie. Such a joy to have at least one child and two grandchildren under my roof. Make me a happy camper. After this day, I'm tired but happy and counting my blessings.

Families are funny things

Jacob, between his mom, left, and his Aunt Dylan

I know families where siblings don't get along, where sometimes one person or another is totally estranged from the family. It breaks my heart, even in Ann Landers column, to read about children who are estranged from their parents--to me, that is a tie that binds. I am so blessed that my four children love me, care for me, and love each other. They jump at every opportunity to be together, and their children, my grandchildren, are growing up to think all families are loud, rowdy and lots of fun. They love it. And nobody ever leaves me out of the fun.
But I am blessed in another way. Divorce often muddies the water and complicates things, as it did in my life. When my ex left, he remarried and fathered a daughter, Dylan, who somebody told me is now twenty-nine. I can't believe that. But since she was a teen, Dylan and I have had a good relationship--she liked the fact that I am a writer; I like the fact that she has from an early age been interested in liberal causes and talked intelligently about them. A lawyer, she always works for non-profits (where she is probably almost non-profit) and does pro bono work. She cooks, and she grows vegetables on the family acreage. She loves to hear stories of her siblings.
Dylan arrived this evening, with her Aunt Karan, whom I've known forever--married to Dylan's mother's brother. I wish I could remember the convoluted way Karan once described our relationship because it was hysterical--something about her second husband being the brother of my ex's second wife, only more complicated. Today Karan hurried back to her home in the suburbs, and Dylan, Jordan, and I had a drink in the back yard with Jacob and Sophie running around. A good, happy time, talking about all kinds of things from dogs (Dylan is as much a softie as I am and helped medicate Sophie's scratched cornea) to cooking to stories about her dad. I think it's healthy that we can both talk about him without acrimony, and that we hug and tell each other, "It's good to see you."
I remember Dylan as a child. One night my children and I were all in Dallas--the kids to have dinner with their dad and me for a book event. When they picked me up, the kids asked if Dylan could come home with us for the night. I said of course, and in the car that child, who was maybe six, said, "I've been waiting all my life to do this!"
I'm not sure how to describe my relationship to her, except that she's my children's half-sister, but I know that our friendship is yet another blessing of my life. And Jacob adores his Aunt Dylan, was so excited about her visit. She has promised to sleep in his bed tonight--I tried to warn her but she just laughed.
Thanks, Dylan, for being who you are.

Stormy weather

As we say in Texas, it's "fixin' to come a gullywasher." We are under a severe storm alert until some time later tonight, and I have the TV on, muted, to watch for weather updates. Betty and I just had wine and crab cakes on a restaurant patio, and there was that wonderful sense of anticipation, with people glancing frequently at the rapidly darkening sky.
Several years ago, when there was a tornado in Fort Worth, she and I sat in a restaurant and watched the sky turn green. Then the heavy rain began, and we shrugged and ordered another glass of wine. The tornado that tore up downtown passed within a mile of where we were. Later, her husband looked at the two of us in amazement and said, "I can't believe you just sat there and ordered another drink." Even with all the windows, we were safer than if we'd ventured out, but I did think maybe the restaurant should have alerted customers. What if we had to dive under the tables?
I love watching a good storm, though Texas has taught me to be a bit cautious. Once when my children were little, there was a storm warning and the sky turned green. My ex- and I were running errands, and I called home and asked the nanny if she knew what to do with the children--we lived in a house with a basement, a Texas rarity, at the time. She said, "Oh, yes ma'am. What?"
When I was growing up, we spent two weeks every summer at a cabin perched high on a dune at the very foot of Lake Michigan. I loved to watch storms roll down the lake, gathering force as they came, churning up the water into high whitecaps. On the back side of the cabin was forest and all was always serene there even when it was wild on the lake side.
Jacob is terrified of storms. If he hears thunder, he rushes to look and see if the sky is green. On stormy nights, he says, "I think I better sleep with you tonight." I would love to share my delight in storms with him but I'm not sure how to do it.
I pray, of course, that we have no tornado, no damaging winds but a good heavy soaking rain. Texas, once again--or still--in the throes of a drought, needs it.

Getting lost in books

Benghazi, IRS scandals, kidnapped women--when the world seems to be going to hell in a hand basket, it's time to retreat into a good book...or three or four. I've spent the last week reading two books and sort of taking a vacation from the world and from my own work. Both of these are as yet unpublished, so I won't mention titles or authors but when the time comes I'll blog and post about them.
The first was a cozy, and I really really hated to finish it. I didn't want to emerge from that world and leave those characters, most of whom I already knew from previous titles in the series. I think one of the most important things an author can do is to create people you care about and a world you believe in. This was a horsey world of dressage, about which I have only a smidgeon of knowledge, but I liked it anyway. It was a cozy mystery--yes, people were killed and there was violence, but most of it was off-screen until the requisite final climatic scene where the protagonist is in grave danger.
For the last two days I've done little but read a thriller, intensely dark, utterly scary but riveting because as a reader I was desperate to know all the while how the victim was going to get away from the sadistic socioipath. Unlike the cozy, this was a world foreign to me--I don't live with violence, and I'm a bit in awe of authors who can create such dark evil. But still I cared about the good guys; I wanted them to survive. I think with such books you know it's going to be all right in the end but getting to that end is scary and has you on the edge of your seat. Instead of being loath to leave that world, I was anxious to read to the end, to the terrible climactic scene I knew was inevitable. It was everything I expected and more but I emerged from reading this one in a daze, struggling to come back to the reality of my own, much calmer, much more peaceful world.
I don't know whether or not having a vivid imagination helps you to be lost in a fictional world, but I am also a person who has vivid, Technicolor dreams (with sound), often bizarre, occasionally frightening but more often happy. But sometimes in the morning I'm reluctant to leave the dream world I've just been in and for a few minutes the routine of getting the dog out and getting myself ready for the day seems gray.
And then I turn on the morning news shows and there it all is--Benghazi, IRS scandals, kidnapped women. Who was it that wrote, "The world is too much with us, coming and going"?

Mother's Day thoughts

I've read lots of posts today about mothers, some so wonderful as to be angels and others pretty dysfunctional. It made me probe my thoughts about my mom, but that's for another post, another time, because the day got me to thinking about myself as a mom. I hope I was somewhere between those extremes--not an angel but not terribly dysfunctional.
I never thought much about having children. I just assumed they'd come along after I married. They didn't, and while it didn't bother me much, my then-husband was desperate to be a father. We began adoption proceedings after five years or marriage and too many fertility tests, and within a few short years I found myself the mother of four adopted children, two of mixed race. I loved it, reveled in it, adored those children, even though at one point I had three under three and all in diapers. There is nothing better than the child hanging on to your shoulder who is quite certain you are the center of his or her universe.
Flash forward a few years, and I suddenly was the single parent of four, ages six to twelve. Yes, I had envisioned life without that man but I was scared. I didn't know I could raise four children alone. I somehow did it, because today they are each happy, contributing citizens, successful in their chosen fields, loving husbands and wives and mothers and fathers. And so close to each other emotionally and to me. I am so proud I could bust my buttons. Other people heap praise on me for raising four wonderful children, but I shrug and say "It was dumb luck." And I think it was.
I was busy, working and trying to start a writing career. I thought they would put on my tombstone, "I remember her--she always said, 'Run ng now, I'm busy." They each began to work at sixteen--if they wanted cars they had to pay their own insurance. Then they griped, once doctor's children and expecting the world on a platter; today they are grateful for the experience.
I do know a few things I did right. Meals were always on time, well balanced, and home-made; chores were assigned; rooms were to be kept reasonably tidy (this was only successful with two of the four). But I think the biggest thing is that they knew I loved them and that I was there for them. I remember the spring night that my oldest didn't come home until daybreak--he found me, wearing a big t-shirt and undies, sitting in a chair by the door. His explanation that he'd been swimming in a quarry  brought a torrent of anger, but he knew it was fueled by love and concern. We struggled through the years when teen-age girls hate their mothers and survived, love intact. I heard stories later of things I wish they'd never told me--parties they gave when I traveled on business, etc. Then we were on to proms and too soon weddings, several of which turned into four- and five-day parties.
And then, belatedly, there were seven grandchildren, all close together in age.
Perhaps my proudest moment, the one that epitomizes the love and closeness of my family, was the party they threw for eighty of my nearest and dearest to mark my 70th birthday. Afterwards, many people commented on their strong affection for each other and for me.
I know I am blessed, but motherhood? I don't have a clue about it.

Book covers--my horror story and some good news

There's been a lot of discussion recently on Sisters in Crime about how much input an author has on cover design--or, more precisely, how much he or she doesn't have. I have loved all my covers from Turquoise Morning Press--three in the Kelly O'Connell series and the first Blue Plate Café Mystery.
But I do have horror stories. The worst was the cover on my 1994 novel based on the life of Elizabeth Bacon Custer, wife of George Armstrong Custer of Little Big Horn infamy. Libbie was a good-looking woman for her day (1850s-1860s) but never as sultry as the woman pictured above who, as one friend told me, looks like Madonna in nineteenth-century dress. She stands knee-deep in a lush field of prairie grass--Kansas, perhaps--next to a barbed wire fence. If you're a history student you spot the problem right away. Barbed wire was first demonstrated at the Menger Hotel in San Antonio in 1876; Custer died at Little Big Horn in 1876. No way was Kansas fenced before Libbie left the West and went east to build her husband's reputation as a martyr hero.
Besides, this is the ubiquitous West. If you have Kansas in the foreground, you have Arizona in the background--bare red earth. Trouble is though, there's a stockade fence. Forts in the West notably did not have any kind of barrier around them--Libbie wrote in one of her books how alarmed she was to realize the fort they were sent to was merely a collection of buildings with no perimeter fortification. If there had been a barricade it certainly wouldn't have been the sturdy log fortress pictured. There weren't enough tall, thick tree in the entire West to do that.
Libbie was my first book to be published by Bantam and only my second from a New York major house. I felt like a newcomer and, yes, I was cowed, so I said nothing. By the time I decided to say something, it was too late--publicity was done and production had been started. I guess it wasn't serious because the book sold well. (Can't resist a plug--it's now available, with a more suitable cover, in the Real Women of the American West series as an e-book only).

Two books later, I complained again to Bantam and got results. The first cover picture they sent for Cherokee Rose (based on the life of the first Wild West Show trick-roping cowgirl, Lucille Mulhall) showed a sultry cowgirl (again more sultry than Lucille ever thought about being) with a horse's head over her shoulder. The trouble was the horse had no body--it was, as it were, disembodied--only a head. I mentioned this problem and the horse disappeared.

My current publisher, Turquoise Morning Press, made it clear, by contract, from the beginning: the publisher has final say over the cover, though the author may have some input. It's worked well so far. The first cover she sent for Skeleton in a Dead Space had a full, stark white skeleton against a black background with bright touches of red--wait, this is a cozy and that didn't fit the mood of the book at all.

 

I wrote and said so and the publisher agreed. She herself came up with the cover that I still think is terrific.

 

But it's true--it's the lucky author that gets any meaningful input, and I feel lucky. 

Why do we write?

A little BSP (blatant self promotion)--I got two nice reviews today. One, for Murder at the Blue Plate Café, called it fast-paced and said it makes you think about your view of life and what is truly important. The other, for the older Skeleton in A Dead Space, called it very engrossing and fast moving with characters you can identify with and advised adding it to your must-read list.  Needless to say, both reviews have me floating on a cloud of happiness. Heady stuff, since I still consider myself a fledgling at mysteries. But the reviews got me to thinking about something that's been niggling around in the back of my mind.
The other day I saw on a post that an author wrote that any one who thinks writing is not a business is fooling themselves. While I fully recognize that it is a business, I'm not sure money is why I write. I'm not good at following sales number on Amazon or Smashwords, so checks from those sources always come as pleasant surprises. Checks from my publisher are often a bit of a letdown because I hope for my sales of my current and brand-new works though she assures me I'm doing really well. I don't check reviews on Amazon or Goodreads often (never have figured Goodreads out completely). I'm no good at worrying about Amazon's algorithms or whether or not it's worthwhile to post for Nook or which is better--traditional bookmarks or business cards. Marketing just isn't my thing. I do blog, post on Facebook and Twitters, try to do lots of guest blogs, order bookmarks, hold a launch when I have print books, and that's all fun for me. If any of it were a chore, I wouldn't do it.
But I'm fortunate that I don't have to write for sustenance. I'm retired, have a retirement income and have other assets. My earnings from writing allow me life's luxuries, like my recent trip to Hawaii and the deck I'm thinking of putting on the back of my house. Once, at a gathering of five women, one of them said to me, "Pretty soon you'll be so successful you can retire a second time." I told them that I'd recently gotten a royalty check and if they weren't too fussy about where they went, I might be able to take them to lunch. No wine with lunch, though.
I write because I cannot imagine not writing. I write because telling stories gives me great pleasure, even when I have to struggle to figure out what's next and where the story is going. I'm a longtime believer in listening to your characters and they'll tell you where your story is going. I write because working things out in words gives me as much pleasure as a mathematician gets from working out a complicated formula. My life would be empty without writing.
When I retired, I joined Sisters in Crime and the sub-group, Guppies (Going to Be Published or Great Unpublished, whichever way you want to think about it). Those groups have opened a whole new world for me and kept me busy daily. I've always believed in getting involved in groups you join, so I monitor the listserv one day a week for SinC and I'm on the Guppies Steering Committee. Nothing to do with mysteries, but I also edit the monthly neighborhood newsletter and weekly welcome first-time visitors to our church.
Plus I have family and friends to keep up with, go out to lunch and dinner, and a household to run, a dog to care for. Life keeps me busy, but writing gives it a center and a focus. If I weren't writing, I'd be cooking but that's not a full-time occupation for several reasons--who would eat all that food, since I sort of live alone, sort of don't (one of my part-time residents is a picky six-year-old). And my back is getting too old to spend hours on that lovely stone kitchen floor. No, I write...and cook occasionally.
Writing gives meaning to my life and brings me pleasure--especially when I have a new book come out or, like today, I get a good review. Do I want the income to stop? No way, but it's not my primary reason for writing.

Family and friends and gratitude

Banner day--I got mail from two of my grandchildren--a sweet card from my oldest granddaughter sent from Hong Kong, where she's been with her dad while he had business. I gave her the National Geographic guide to Hong Kong and she wrote to thank me and say she'd seen places mentioned in the book. And, to balance it out, a sweet card from my youngest--six-year-old Kegan who wrote to thank me for his birthday present--a soccer jersey--and to say he misses me and loves me so much. Be still my heart!
This has been a week in which I think how blessed I am with friends. Lunch one day with a friend of 40 years, dinner the next night with a new friend who paid for my dinner before I got there--she knew what I'd order, lunch with another dear friend and happy hour the next day with my former neighbor who still calls me her Fort Worth mom, lunch again today and then I took dinner to a friend and her husband. She's just had a knee replacement and isn't getting around very well. Makes me think how blessed I am.
And I've thought about the blessings of friendship all week. I am surrounded by friends and family who know me well and care for me. If it weren't for that, I'd never know I had the TIA, but friend Jean who took me to lunch that day and on the way home said, "I want you to call your doctor. Something has happened to you." Then in came Elizabeth from the garage apt. saying, "Are you okay? You look really tired." What I didn't know was that there was a network of calls going on  behind my back. Jean called Elizabeth; Elizabeth called Jordan; Jordan called my brother and then came to take me to the ER; the next day, after the ER "trash" diagnosis, my brother called my doctor. And after I posted an incoherent blog I got days of messages of concern. My youngest son even came from Dallas to take me to lunch--a rare treat, but we had a good visit.
I'm not sure what I've done to merit all this concern, but I am so grateful--and so resolved now to pay it forward. I do think one thing is true: the more you reach out to others, the happier your life.
I'm now back to normal--what is that anyway?--feeling fine and almost free of the lingering fear or depression that followed the TIA. Nothing but good in the future.
 

Low Country Boil--well deserving of its awards

 

I just finished reading Low Country Boil by Susan Boyer (published by Henery Press), which won the 2012 Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery and was a finalist in the 2012 Romance Writers of America® Golden Heart Award®. This past weekend the book won the 2012 Agatha Award for the Best First Novel at Malice Domestic, a popular mystery writers con. One approaches a book so lauded with a bit of caution—what makes it so special?

I saw several things Susan did with great skill. Obviously she knows the low country, its culture, its people, and its food—some of which made me very hungry. Boyer created a small island community not far from Charleston, SC, called Stella Maris, which rings so true as a place that I searched on Google to see if it’s real. There are a lot of businesses (notably recovery centers, which is a puzzle) named Stella Maris but, alas, no such island community. Yet Boyer made it seem a real place, as though you could drive the streets, find the marina, eat and the local restaurant and have a drink at the local pub. And the people who inhabit Stella Maris are characters, from her father who can play southern redneck when it suits him, to her godmother, Grace, a grand southern belle. Liz Talbot, the protagonist, is a P.I., returned from Charleston to solve the unexplained death of her grandmother, and she keeps getting crossways with her older brother, Blake, who is the local chief of police.

Normally I’m not much drawn to the paranormal in a mystery but Boyer uses a spirit effectively for both plot and comic relief. Colleen was Liz’s best friend, but she drowned at seventeen. Now she reappears, insisting she is neither an angel nor a ghost but a guardian spirit on assignment to protect the island of Stella Maris. This of course sometimes puts Liz in a difficult spot, since she’s the only one who can see and hear Colleen, though godmother Grace, known for the psychic ability she claims, declares one day that she could swear there is someone else at the lunch table with them. Occasionally Colleen speaks out of turn, and Liz forgets herself, telling her aloud to shut up. In one semi-romantic scene, the man she’s with thinks she’s saying that to him.

There are other moments of high comedy, Perhaps one of the funniest occurs when Blake assigns an officer to watch his family while a killer, target unknown, is loose on the island. But the deputy gets a call about a body in a marsh, and the only thing he can think of to do is load the whole family, including Basset Hound Chumley, into the car and head for the crime scene. Blake’s reaction is comedy at its best. Liz’s mother epitomizes the southern belle, fixing luscious blueberry pancakes and chicken and dumplings for her family, running the local church bazaar, and admonishing her daughters that everything will be fine if they will put on fresh lipstick.

Sounds like a light cozy, doesn’t it? It is and it isn’t. Amidst all the atmosphere, there is much tension, moments of real danger for Liz and others she cares about, and some deaths. For a bit I thought this verged on being a thriller, because Liz knew who the killer was and it became a game of find him before he can strike again. But even P.I.s make mistakes!

Well done, Susan Boyer, and worthy of its awards.