Category: Laura Tobias

Book Buys for 2017

Books make awesome gifts. If you’re looking for the right title for that special someone, here’s a selection of books I’ve enjoyed reading this year. If my suggestions don’t resonate or if you’re still feeling uncertain, wrap up a gift card to an independent book store or on line book seller.

Books make awesome gifts. I know I said that already, but it’s worth repeating.

For fiction Lovers:

General Fiction: The Almost Sisters by Jocelyn Jackson. A timely southern drama featuring quirky characters, sharp writing, and a complex story that manages to deal with some heavy issues yet not get bogged down. I love Jackson’s writing and this was a satisfying read.

Map of the Heart by Susan Wiggs. A nicely layered, emotional story that moves between present day and World War 11 France. The setting is beautifully rendered, family dynamics (and the concept of a second chance at love) are deftly explored, and there’s a bit of a mystery that kept me turning the pages until the end.

Romance: Blood Vow by J.R. Ward. I’m a huge fan of Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series so naturally I wanted to dip into her Black Dagger Legacy series. This, the story of Axe and Elise, is book two in the series and it’s dark, sexy, funny and fast-paced. It’s the perfect read for vampire aficionados, or for those who need to be converted.

Dating-ish by Penny Reid is book six in Reid’s Knitting in the City Series though I read it as a standalone and it worked well for me. Fresh and funny with surprising depth and intensity, the character development and attraction between Matt and Marie was extremely well done. Reid was a new-to-me author and I’ll be looking for more of her books.

Young Adult:

Julia Vanishes by Catherine Egan. A thought-provoking young adult fantasy with touches of mystery and suspense, Julia Vanishes is book one in the Witch’s Child Series. Julia is an appealingly flawed heroine with the ability to make herself unseen, a skill that comes in handy since she’s a spy and thief. Clever, original and ideal for readers who appreciate strong female protagonists and fantasy fiction.

Autoboyography by Christina Lauren. A poignant coming-of-age novel about two boys who fall in love in a writing class, one who comes from a progressive family and the other from a deeply religious one. Beautifully written and a profound look at bisexuality, the love of family, religion and how we view right and wrong.

For the wee readers on your list, Stephanie Simpson McLellan’s The Christmas Wind is a gorgeous, just released picture book and a lovely reminder of what’s really important, not just at Christmas but throughout the year.

For mystery thriller fans The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter. Here’s the promo line for the book: Two girls are forced into the woods at gunpoint. One runs for her life. One is left behind. If you like thrillers, how can you not buy it? I did and I loved it. Anybody who appreciates a good, dark read will devour this book.

For the non-fiction lovers on your list, check out these titles:

Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening by Manal Al-Sharif. A gripping true story by Manal, a devout woman from a modest family in Saudi Arabia who was arrested by the religious police for daring to drive. While there’s no law forbidding women from driving, the religious police are powerful; Manal became the unexpected leader of a courageous movement to support women’s right to drive.

Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant. Sandburg, the COO of Facebook, faced the unexpected death of her 47-year-old husband while they were away on holiday. What followed was painful and raw as she tried to figure out what life could look like when it wasn’t what she had planned. Not always an easy read but one that lingered with me afterwards.

Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook by Alice Waters. Any foodie on your list has heard of Water’s Chez Panisse, the iconic restaurant which quite literally redefined North American cuisine for chefs and food lovers. This memoir recounts the events leading up to the opening of America’s most influential restaurant.

Since we’re talking about food, there’s always a time when you want to get in and out of the kitchen quickly, yet still want to eat well. That’s why Jamie Oliver’s 5 Ingredients, Quick & Easy Food is wrapped and under the tree waiting for a lucky recipient in my life. I may have to spring for my own copy; I have several of Oliver’s books and this one looks like a keeper too.

Finally, any gardener, no matter what they like to grow, will appreciate receiving a copy of The Bee Friendly Garden by Kate Frey and Gretchen LeBuhn. Winner of the American Horticultural Society 2017 Book Award, this book gives you all the information you need to create a vibrant and colorful habitat that will attract both honeybees and native bees. And with threats to our beloved honeybees on the increase, it’s a resource every gardener will utilize over and over again.

A Lesson in Patience, Persistence and Timing

The garden is one of my best teachers and I was reminded of that last week when we picked kiwifruit from our vines. Seventy-five of the fuzzy, egg-shaped fruits if you want an exact number. I planted the vines myself over a decade ago and this is the first year we’ve had any kind of harvest.

Kiwifruit typically take 3 – 5 years to mature and produce fruit, so we didn’t expect fast results. Being reasonably patient I was good with that; some things are worth waiting for. After the first five or six years with no sign of fruit we began to wonder. But we didn’t wonder too much because life was busy and we had a crisis-filled stretch there for a while. By about the seven year mark, however, when we had flowers but no fruit set, I began to fret.

Maybe I needed to augment the soil with more organics. Prune differently. Maybe I wasn’t watering properly. One cool spring I was convinced we had a shortage of bees at pollination time. Maybe I needed to throw a party for the bees and make sure they hung around for a while. In short, I was convinced the lack of fruit set was the result of an operational error on my part. I had to be doing something wrong. So I began to adjust and tweak and adjust some more.

Around the barren eight or nine year mark, Mr. Petrol Head noticed that the flowers on both sets of vines appeared to be identical. This was significant because kiwifruit need a male and female vine to produce. We hadn’t given it much thought up until then because we knew we’d purchased a male and female vine; they’d been labelled as such at the garden centre.

By now the stocky vines were half way to heaven and we needed a very long ladder to reach them. We plucked a couple of blooms, googled, scratched our heads, googled some more. Finally we took the delicate flowers out the peninsula to a famed tropical fruit grower who told us within seconds that we had unfortunately been sold two male vines. Mislabelling tended to be a fairly common risk with kiwifruit vines, he said, adding that he’d lost track of the number of customers who’d come to him with the same problem. And so what to do?

We considered digging up one of the two vines but I was reluctant. For one thing, the trunks were the size of a small child. For another, they were like my children. Barren or not, I was attached to the damned things and I couldn’t bear the thought of adopting one out or tossing it onto the compost heap. The grower suggested we opt for a graft. For a small fee, he’d be happy to make a house call and do the deed. Yes, we gave our kiwifruit vine a sex change operation, turning one of the males into a female. Twenty months later we were harvesting fruit.

Coincidentally (or maybe not because I don’t really believe in coincidence) while this was going on, I was circulating a YA novel that has yet to find a home. It’s a story I love, solid and well told. After yet another ‘no thanks’ I began to fret.

Maybe I needed to boost the story somehow. Or cut it down. Maybe the main character wasn’t likeable. Maybe there was a shortage of descriptive passages. Or one too many. Maybe the party scene out at the lake needed more bees! In short, I was convinced my inability to sell the novel was the result of an operational error on my part. There had to be something wrong with it.

Or not.

Maybe the novel is a little like the kiwi. Maybe it needs a period of dormancy before it’s ready to shine. It’s doubtful the story needs a graft or any kind of sex change operation but for whatever reason, it’s not bearing fruit quite yet. Selling a novel, like growing kiwifruit, requires patience, persistence, and timing.

In my enthusiasm to place the novel, I’d conveniently forgotten that. It took my first ever kiwifruit harvest to deliver yet another lesson – a repeat lesson – from my garden.

Elephant Love

Last week, Donald Trump ended a ban on importing elephant trophies into the United States. A few days later, he announced via twitter that he was temporarily reversing that decision, pending a review (and by the time you read this the ban could be off once again). It would be nice to think Trump bowed to the public outcry but I don’t think that’s likely. Public outcry doesn’t seem to sway him one way or another.

But there was considerable uproar over the plight of the elephants and that’s no surprise. The revered elephant exemplifies power and strength and stands for honor, stability and tenacity. To Hindu people, the elephant is the god of luck, fortune and protection.  In Denmark, there’s a religious group called the Order of the Elephant and in that context the animal stands for piety, gentleness and temperance. In Africa, the elephant represents cooperation, long life and devotion.

Whatever elephants symbolize to you personally, I think it’s fair to say these beloved giants have captivated us for centuries. Maybe that’s why they feature in a number of excellent novels. If you’re interested, here are a few books you might want to look for. The first two titles are mainstream; the third and fourth are for younger readers; and the final recommendation is a romance.

 

 

Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult

 

 

 

 

 

 

The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo

 

 

 

 

An Elephant in the Garden by Michael Morpurgo

 

 

 

 

 

 

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

 

 

My November Reads

Every year when we switch back to standard time and fall back an hour, the familiar cry goes out on social media: why do this? Why not stay with daylight saving time all year long? I don’t have an answer, but until this year I’ve always been happy to make the switch. I love getting the extra hour of sleep at the time of the change, and I also love that it’s lighter in the morning and darker earlier at night. I guess it suits my personal biorhythms or something, especially as fall rolls around. This year, however, Luna has had trouble adjusting to the change. Dawn – referred to around here lately as yawn – comes earlier than we’d like it to and crawling out of bed has been a bit of a struggle. I’m slowly adjusting. The coffee is set to brew even earlier and I’m taking advantage of the extra time to get in a little reading before the writing day starts. Here’s what I’m reading this month:

At the gym: She’s Not There by Joy Fielding

On the Kindle: The Copycat Killer by Lea Tassie

In the office: Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier

Books read to date in 2017: 70

Don’t Be a Plastic Flower

Plastic flowers are popping up around here like fall mushrooms sprouting in my lawn. And when something shows up repeatedly in a fairly short time I think the universe is trying to get my attention. I’m weird that way.

This summer after a friend finished staging her house she gave me the faux flower display she’d used to lock down the sale. It was an attractive, life-like arrangement and the colors were pretty. Despite the fact that I’m not a fan of artificial flowers and had an abundance of cutting flowers growing in the garden, I put them in the dining room thinking I’d enjoy them for a few weeks before passing them on to someone else. The faux flowers remain in their waterless vase, a testament to my over-committed schedule (aka laziness) and my inability to say no to a well-meaning friend in the first place.

Last month, the subject of plastic flowers came up again. A bride-to-be was discussing floral arrangements for her wedding and said she was probably going to use plastic flowers as they were considerably cheaper and flowers ‘really didn’t matter.’ My response was immediate, visceral and surprisingly strong. Flowers do matter, I thought to myself, and plastic flowers seemed so wrong in the context of a wedding. Better to have only a few real flowers than a boatload of fake ones I told the woman when she asked my opinion. I couldn’t articulate my reasoning, beyond the fact that I’m loyal gardener and ardent lover of all things floral, and that I almost always favor real over fake.

Last week, plastic flowers reared their perfect perky little heads a third time in a book called Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier. The authors have a fresh take on an entrepreneurial approach to business, and much of what they say (delivered in blog style chapters) is applicable to self-publishing. One chapter is called ‘Don’t Be a Plastic Flower.’

Intrigued, I turned to that one first. Their points were simple: in order to succeed and grow a business, be real, don’t fear your flaws and accept the beauty of imperfection. They go into more detail than that, and they tie it into a business sensibility, but it boils down to giving customers something tangible and genuine, and recognizing that in providing something of real value, there’s always the risk of flaws. In short, no plastic flowers allowed.

The Japanese have something called wabi-sabi. It’s an aesthetic based on the appreciation of beauty in a transient and imperfect world. Character and uniqueness are favored, scratches and fissures are okay. In that culture, many of the antique bowls used in the tea ceremony have cracks, uneven glazes, and imperfect shapes. And they are highly prized for their inadequacies.

When I write novels, I’m always careful to develop characters with flaws. Most writers I know are careful to do that too. We recognize at a deep level that flawed characters are more believable, more relatable, and more likable. And yet it can be a real challenge to accept and let our own imperfections show.

That, I decided, was the lesson of the plastic flowers. In a culture that favors the flawless, the perfect, the plastic flower, I need to honor the beauty of imperfection. And I also need to find a new home for the faux flowers in my dining room.

Endings and Beginnings

Tis the season of Halloween which many people consider a scary or spooky time. In fact, Halloween is based on an ancient festival of the dead called Samhain. At Samhain, it was thought that the veil between the physical and spiritual realms became extremely thin, allowing contact with ancestors and spirits. Given that, I decided it was the perfect time to release a short story about Adam and Eve, original ancestors par excellence. The Original Eve is a Laura Tobias title and it’s a very short read. If you’re interested, you’ll find the Amazon purchase link below this blog.

A fun fact: the ancient Celts marked Samhain as the start of their new year. It was the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter so they held celebrations to mark that turning point and the slide into the darker half of the year. By the 9th century, western Christianity had selected November 1st as All Saints’ Day, a time to give thanks for the saints who had passed on, and November 2nd   as All Souls’ Day, when departed friends and family members were honored. In time, Samhain, All Saints’ and All Souls’ merged to become our single celebration of Halloween.

Whatever you call it and however you choose to celebrate, it’s good to remember that every ending – be that a day, a season or a year – is also a new beginning.

Purchase The Original Eve on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076ZTJH76/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1509404942&sr=1-1&keywords=the+original+eve

Paper, Paper, Everywhere Paper

By Friday; Stack of Documents. Working or Studying at messy desk.

I have a thing for paper, specifically notes on paper.

Last week after a hectic stretch finishing up a book proposal, getting another project off to the formatter, and completing several editing jobs, I decided it was time to clean my office.

I’m a less-is-more kind of person so I rarely find myself buried by stuff. I’m also reasonably neat and moderately organized, which means my clutter is usually neat and organized too. If anything, that makes the whole damn thing more insidious because I can fool myself into thinking I don’t really need to clean up at all. Inevitably, I end up with neat clutter piles accumulating on surfaces, in files, between books and (my new favorite go to spot) under my keyboard. When that happens, it’s time to dig out and clean up.

It is a bit of a dig because cleaning and sorting resembles an archeological dig of my last few months. Scattered here and there like notefetti are titles of books I want to read, blogs I mean to visit, quotes I absolutely love, along with story ideas and plot points and bits of conversation I’ve overheard. I find three words on one slip of paper (Dianthus ‘Candy Floss’) and a short recipe on another (for coconut oatmeal drop cookies). Cookies I want to make . . . flower seeds I want to plant.

Why am I writing these things down? Why do I feel the need? Unless I file my notes right away – and I rarely do – it only means revisiting them down the road, and expending energy deciding whether they’re worthy of being kept or worthy of feeding the fire. In short, it creates more work. And I’m kinda sorta done with creating more work for myself.

As I sifted through my stockpile, it slowly dawned on me that taking notes isn’t necessarily a sign of an ordered mind. It can be, at its worst, the sign of an obsessive one. I’m not obsessive – at least I don’t think so – but there are stretches when I think my note taking could be considered . . . well . . .  moderately compulsive. I do it, I realized, because I’m afraid. I’m afraid if I don’t write something down I’ll forget it. I’m afraid I’ll miss reading a great book, I’ll forget a snappy bit of dialogue, or I won’t have just the right quote to share with a hurting friend.

I need to trust more. I need to trust myself to remember what I need to remember. I need to trust that if I do forget, the world will somehow bring to my attention the right book or the perfect story idea or that new seed variety just when I need it most. I need to have more faith and take fewer notes.

It’s working pretty well so far, although I have to admit grocery shopping without notes has been a bit of a challenge. We’ve ended up with twenty-two pounds of sweet potatoes. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with them all. I’d jotted down a recipe for a sweet potato pie with a rosemary cornmeal crust but I seem to have misplaced it . . .

 

 

My October Reads

The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting colder and the fields are full of pumpkins (I had my annual pumpkin pie feast about a week ago). Usually by now, the outside chores are done and I have lots more time to relax and read. But this year it hasn’t quite worked out that way. We devoted a few extra weekends to putting the garden to bed: digging, weeding, deadheading, cleaning, and covering most of the beds with black landscape fabric to discourage weeds from sprouting when the weather warms up. With luck, it’ll make things easier for us in spring.

Once the garden was tucked in for winter, I still had a few garden-related indoor tasks to complete. There were about three dozen plant tags to wash and put away (something else I often ignore to my chagrin come seeding time), the last few tomatoes to turn into sauce and a batch of Serrano peppers to clean and tuck into the freezer.

Now, finally, the garden chores are all done and that means I have a little more time to read. Given that Halloween is approaching, it’s only fitting that my tastes are running, at least in part, to the dark side these days.  Here’s what I’m reading this month:

Beside the fire: Victoria’s Most Haunted by Ian Gibbs

On the Kindle:  A Mind for Murder – The Real Life Files of a Psychic Investigator by Noreen Renier

At the gym: Here’s to Us by Elin Hilderbrand

Books read to date in 2017: 62

And the Final Question

What are the three things that trigger your creativity? That was the final question posed by Susan Wiggs at her writing workshop a few weeks ago.

Of all the questions she asked, that one was by far the easiest for me to answer. In fact, so many things trigger my creativity I found it hard to keep it to only three. But when I really stopped to think about it, a number of my creative triggers fall into the same category.

Nature.

I didn’t see the connection initially. Only later when I read my list did I realize how much inspiration I get from being outside. These were the creative triggers I noted down that fell into the same category: walking on the beach; hiking through the park; cycling into the country; planting, digging and playing in my garden. All of those things give my thinking brain a rest and let my creative side come alive.

Travel feeds my creativity too. Circumstances have been such over the last few years that most of my travel has been the armchair variety, but you’d be surprised by how much inspiration you can get from watching a great travel documentary, visiting an ethnic restaurant or reading travel literature.

That brings me to my final creative trigger: books. In my world, reading is not only a source of information but it’s also something I do for pleasure, for escape, for relaxation and for the sheer joy of it. A good book (and, yes, even a bad book) fires my imagination and fuels my creativity long after I’ve read the last page.

What fuels your creativity?

 

The Essentials

Last week’s blog about writing gurus was sparked by a Susan Wiggs talk I attended a few weeks ago. As I mentioned in that post, Wiggs had some questions for the audience. Question one revolved around our writing gurus. Her second question was this: What are your three essential writing tools?

I don’t need much. In fact, it would be pretty accurate to say all I need is either a notebook and a pen or some kind of word processor. That’s it. I’m a minimalist at heart. Less is more in my world.

Given the choice, however, I do like a nice pen. Black ink over blue, a rollerball over a ball point and it needs to feel good in my hand. I can’t quantify that; it either fits well or it doesn’t. It’s like pants. Some look great on the rack but you never really know whether they’ll work until you try them on.

I also like a notebook with pockets. Once I get rolling on a book I tend to make notes or collect pictures, bits of trivia, anything that might contribute something, however small, to the work in progress. Having a single place to keep everything saves me searching through piles of stuff later on.

Last but not least (and the hardest to come by) is quiet. I love quiet for first drafts especially. I’m not one of those writers who produces well in a coffee shop. I don’t want people peering over my shoulder, talking to friends, playing music. I like to create in isolation. Unfortunately, Team Sheltie doesn’t do quiet all that often. Neither does the band that moved in next door. They practise a lot. A LOT. During the day. When I like to write. If they don’t stop soon, I may be adding another essential to this list: a pair of headphones.

What essential tools do you need for your creative work, writing or otherwise?