My July Reads

peaches 001We’ve had a stellar peach crop this year. The fruits are so thick on our tree they’re crowding each other out. We’ve had to thin the crop to allow some of the fruit to ripen. I’m facing a similar problem with One Good Deed, the YA I recently finished. I have lots of good stuff on the page. But too much of a good thing is, well, too much. The words are so thick in places they’re crowding out clarity. I need to do some thinning there too.

In the kitchen, the peaches are being cut for the freezer so we can enjoy them in smoothies and fruit cups all winter. In the office, One Good Deed is being cut and shaped so readers can hopefully enjoy the story down the road too. And when I get a chance to take a breath, I pick up a book. Here’s what I’m reading this month:

At the gym:  What Came Next and How to Like It by Abigail Thomas

Beside the pond: The Sound of Glass by Karen White

Before bed: The Hand on the Mirror by Janis Heaphy Durham

 

Books Read to date in 2015: 46

A Different Perspective

firehaze-islandviewYou know that feeling when you come home from being away, take a look around your house and see it through fresh eyes? That happened to me last Sunday, only I hadn’t been away and my eyes were anything but fresh. They were scratchy and bloodshot from all the smoke in the air.

Extreme heat and record breaking temperatures have led to nearly 100 active wildfires in B.C. Half the province is sitting at a high danger rating, verging on the edge of extreme. It’s scary and worrisome, particularly for firefighters and for those living close to the hot zones. But it’s also impacting Vancouver and Victoria. A massive blanket of smoke has hovered over both cities for days. We’ve experienced wildfire smoke before, but nothing like this.

It started early Sunday. By noon, the sky was a dull, apocalyptic orange. There was a sense of expectancy in the air, a hush almost. The birds were silent. There were no bees buzzing, no flies flying. And the colors in the garden were . . . just off. The greens were almost fluorescent in their intensity. Our string of white LED patio lights, which are normally invisible during the day, took on a brilliant, otherworldly blue glow. My blue lobelia and blue salvia patens flowers turned a rich amethyst purple.

It was oddly surreal, like stepping outside the back door and landing in the Twilight Zone. Or waking up and finding a giant orange filter has been placed over your entire world. The smoke cover cooled things off and without the bees buzzing around gathering nectar, I spent some time outside picking raspberries, weeding the lettuce bed and doing a little tidying. It was a different perspective alright. A new look at old digs, so to speak.

The smoke is starting to clear – which is a good thing – but I hope the new perspective holds. I have a couple of manuscripts waiting for a set of fresh eyes. Maybe I should read them wearing extra-strength sunglasses. That orange glow worked wonders on the garden.

 

The End . . . is Really the Beginning

endandbeginningI’m doing the last bit of fiddling with Stepping Out before handing the manuscript off to the editor at Orca.  This book will be released as part of their Limelights Series. There’s always a sense of accomplishment at this stage of the game. And a feeling of completion too.

But, in fact, this particular end is the beginning of a process that goes on for many months.  From here, the next step is waiting for editorial feedback and tackling the revision notes. There are always revision notes, and there’s never any way to tell ahead of time how complex they’ll be.   I never sweat it. I happen to love revising (I usually revise at least once and often multiple times before sending a manuscript in), and I welcome feedback, so, for the most part, editorial revisions are a guaranteed good time. At this stage, the heavy lifting (fresh writing) is done; it’s a matter of fine tuning.

Once I’m finished with the editorial revisions, there’s generally a stretch of down time until I see page proofs and then get a glimpse of the cover. It’s always exciting to see what kind of visual the art department comes up with.

Some time after page proofs and the cover comes the actual release day . . . then the official book launch . . . followed by professional reviews . . . and the most important thing of all: reader feedback.

So as I type ‘the end’,  I can’t help thinking of my readers who, a year or two from now, will pick up Stepping Out and start at the beginning.

In my world, the end is the start of good things to come.

In the Middle of a Muddle

frontgarden30I’m half way through the first draft of my next YA novel, One Good Deed.

It’s a lot like my garden. Crowded, colorful, and slightly out of control. Words and plot threads are popping up where I don’t necessarily expect them, much like the weeds and flower seedlings randomly sprouting in the garden.

Years ago, when I first started gardening, a friend who was a professional gardener told me I shouldn’t plant so heavily, that I would regret it, that it would lead to disaster as the strong, vigorous plants would crowd out the more fragile specimens.  I listened, I considered, and I planted. I planted heavily because while I admire the clean lines and austerity of, say, Japanese gardens (and I’m passionate about Bonsai) I gravitate to the lush, riotous color of a blousy and overplanted cottage-style garden.

In the garden, my mantra is ‘Look here. And here. And here.’

When I write, my mantra is: ‘Then this. And this. And this.’

My books tend to overflow with people and events and details, especially in the first draft stage. Though I always start with an outline or loose synopsis, at the same time I also like to follow my instincts and the plot threads that come from that.    One Good Deed has multiple plot threads. Some I conceived before I started and some are occurring to me as I write.  It’s exciting, but also somewhat nerve-wracking.

In the garden, I plant what I want where I think it will work. I put some thought into it, but I don’t overanalyze. Self-indulgent as it may sound, I’m creating the space for me. I know there’ll come a time – maybe in mid-summer when the rush of the garden season is over or in fall when I’m putting things to bed for the winter –when I’ll thin things out or reposition plants or dig up volunteers to share with friends.  If I don’t get to it, well there’s always next year.

I don’t feel that same sort of luxurious abandonment when I write. For one thing, writing comes with deadlines. For another, it’s not about self-indulgence, it’s about telling a story readers will love. So, even after 18 published books I fret about the tangents I’m creating, the various plot threads that may or may not weave together nicely. I’ll revise, I always do, but it’s not time effective to write so much that you need to dump a third of the manuscript in the rewriting process.

Writing a novel is a delicate balancing act. At times it’s a bit of a muddle. And I’m in the middle of it.  Wish me luck.

Transitions: Make Them Powerful, Not Harsh

152537949Here in the Pacific Northwest, it feels like we’ve gone from summer to winter in the space of a week. One day we were sitting by the pond enjoying 16 degree sunshine and two days later we were inside by the fire as a fierce windstorm brought plummeting temperatures, hail and a power outage. The transition was harsh.

Though the weather has stabilized to more fall-like norms, I’ve been thinking about transitions lately. I’m in the middle of revising a YA novel due out next year. As part of the process, I’m making sure the transitions from scene to scene, location to location, and from one point in time to another, are seamless.  But it occurred to me as I worked that if you want to get technical, novels themselves are one big transition. At least most of them are.

Transition, by definition, is the process or period of changing from one state or condition to another. In my novel, The Art of Getting Stared At, the teen protagonist must come to terms with a disease called alopecia areata and the subsequent loss of all her hair.  In the process, Sloane learns about judgement – the way she judges herself and others – and she changes significantly.  She literally transitions from one state of being (both externally and internally) to another.  While the editor was pleased with the way the story flowed, she felt Sloane’s journey from discovering the disease to accepting it – and accepting a particular truth about her own character – should have one big exclamation point somewhere. In other words, she wanted a recognizable point in the story where the character makes that leap, that transition, to realizing she isn’t who she thought she was.

I do have that. It’s a big, black moment kind of scene, and I quite like it. But since I’m more of a gradual girl myself (I don’t like going from summer to winter in a week) I built up to it. And in the process something was lost. So now I’m back in the story, refining and revising so the transition is seamless but the point of no return is clearly recognizable. I don’t want a harsh transition. I don’t like power outages, plummeting temperatures or hail and my character doesn’t either. I’m trying for powerful instead.

Wish me luck. And please pass the cocoa. It’s cold in here.

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Story Planting

 

Picture 005I’m working by the pond whenever I can these days. In between watching the dragonflies flit from lily pad to lily pad I’m finishing copy edits and revisions for Flavor of the Week. I’m also spitting out the first few chapters of a new YA, tentatively titled One Good Deed.

It’s busy, both in the garden and in the office (even the outside one), but that’s typical for this time of year.

As I plant seeds and seedlings in the vegetable bed and story seeds on paper, there’s a sense of anticipation in the air. Harvest may be many months away, but it’s coming. In the meantime, I’m enjoying the work.  Picture 009

 

Pink Confetti and Revisions

imageproxy.jpgcherrytreesNature often inspires me and it’s not unusual for me to find parallels between the natural world and the world of publishing.

I thought about this last week. I was in Vancouver and the ornamental cherry trees were at their best – froths of brilliant pink against the blue sky (yes, it was sunny and that’s a rarity in Vancouver in spring). Those blooms don’t last long, even with sunshine. In fact, some had already dropped, carpeting the streets in swaths of pink confetti. But before they drop, they put on a dizzying, pull-out-all-the-stops dance that takes your breath away. And then Mother Nature, aided by wind and time, comes along and encourages those blooms to drop so the trees can leaf out for another summer. And those trees will provide places for bird’s nests, and shade for picnics, and branches for kids to climb.

Those cherry blossoms are a lot like the ideal first draft – over exuberant, wild and a little uncontrollable. And beautiful. Stunningly so. But then we need to come along and let the pink confetti fall. We need to let go of words, sometimes entire passages, possibly even characters. It’s hard. We’re usually a little in love with those words and those characters. We see their beauty. Almost always. But in order for our manuscript to leaf out and become a reasonably good book that actually holds someone’s attention, we need to play Mother Nature. And sometimes Mother Nature can be brutal. We need to remember that too. But she is inevitably wise . . . inevitably in tune with the natural order of things.

So when it comes time to edit my next first draft, I’ll try hard to let the pink confetti fall. After all, spring rolls around every year without fail. And without fail, there is always another book to write. 2553927251_b113bbf06d.jpgcherrycarpet

Being Present, Take Two . . .

P1000911My January vow to live in the present has taken a beating this last while. I’m planning a new novel, expecting a revision letter soon on another and fielding enquiries about possible spring author talks, so I’m very much looking forward. Besides that, February isn’t the easiest month to endure. It’s cold and rainy here on the Island. Today, the wind is so bitter that people are bundled up in hats and scarves and furtively whispering about the possibility of snow. The birds have deserted the pond. Even the dogs don’t want to linger outside.

But being outside inevitably brings me back to the present. And with the snowdrops blooming around the neighbor’s tree, and a field of crocuses putting on a show just down the block, the present is a good place to be. Because, yes, even February has its charms. P1000918

Chocolate School Ruined Me . . .

BeansNibsandChocolate3Well, almost. It turned me into a chocolate snob, plus I’ll never look at those heart-shaped chocolate boxes the same way again.

I spent eight hours in chocolate school last month. Chocolate isn’t a huge passion of mine, though I love a good, dark bar (and I can make one last a week if I hide it from Teen Freud and Mr. Petrol Head).

I went for story research. And also because the instructor promised to spill secrets about the industry, turn my understanding of chocolate on its ear and give us samples of fancy imported chocolate that you can’t find outside of Europe. Besides Mr. P went too and we had dinner first. So it was kind of like a date night with benefits. Research benefits.

I knew I was in trouble when the instructor started talking about his own personal chocolate cellar. Yes, he has one; he keeps his special chocolate there. While it ages. For years. (I have no patience for that. My aging limit is three months – plenty of time to let a manuscript rest between revisions or grow a decent tomato).

Things got worse when we were told we were eating chocolate wrong. Apparently you’re not supposed to stuff it in your mouth before your Sheltie grabs it from your hand. You’re supposed to break it off, piece by small piece, letting it gently dissolve between your tongue and front teeth. This should take at least five minutes. Only then can you appreciate the nuances of flavor.

And there are flavors. Plain chocolate can be flowery, fruity, spicy, nutty or a pile of other things. It can also have nuances of leather, hay, coffee, toast or wood. Mushrooms even. Who knew?

I knew about the problem of child and slave labor within much of the cacao industry, and that was troubling to hear again, but I didn’t know how hard it is to grow cacao trees or the intricacies of chocolate production. Nor had I heard the story behind those pretty, heart-shaped Valentine boxes. They were scandalous when Richard Cadbury introduced them back in 1869. The shape mimicked a plant known for birth control properties and the drawing was used as a signal from a man to a woman: get some; you’ll need it.

I learned plenty in chocolate school. I learned how the phrase ‘money grows on trees’ was inspired by chocolate. I learned that cacao is the second largest world cash crop after wheat. I learned that chocolate still tastes good when you eat it fast. That mushrooms work better in sauce than as chocolate nuance. That I’ll never have a chocolate cellar.

Mostly I learned that when Mr. P. buys me a sweet red heart-shaped box of Valentine’s chocolates I should smile and not let the kids know what it really means. But I doubt that’ll be a problem. Since the class, I’ve developed a Amedei-porcelana-50grtaste for Amedei Porcelana, a delicious Italian chocolate that retails for about $100 a pound.

It looks like it’ll be an expensive Valentine’s Day at our house.