That Damn Little Voice

Here it is another Sunday to post and nothing is coming through, just like last week. That’s why that week is empty. The same thing is happening with my writing. I try playing “what if” and it falls on its face.

Did you really try?

Well I. . . .

Tsk tsk Be honest.

Hey my cat is sick. I’m worried.

You already took the cat to the vet and you’re bringing him back tomorrow. Besides this lapse has been going on long before Chester got sick.

I’m really busy being president of a writing group.

Excuse. Other presidents are able to write.

Yeah well, if the other presidents jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge does that mean I should too?

That doesn’t even make sense.

Sorry. It was the first thing that came to mind. See what I mean! My mind’s not clicking cohesively.

And whose fault is that?

My synapses! They’re having a block party somewhere and they didn’t invite me.

Have you invited them to your creative parties lately?

Yes but attendance is usually low.

Because. . .?

Well I . . .

Yes?

Because I tell them at the last minute and then we play computer games most of the times. OK, are you happy?

There’s no reason to get huffy is there? As long as you understand what’s going on, that’s what matters. I knew the real reason all along. I just wanted to hear you to say it.

You’re a smug little bastard, aren’t you?

Call it what you want. Now let’s talk about those excuses for not quitting smoking.

Oh, get the hell out of here.

Get Ye to a Nunnery!

Last Saturday the Long Island Romance Writers had their first annual writing retreat, of which I participated. Sixteen of us embarked on a day of uninterrupted writing pleasure held at a House of Prayer in Riverhead, N.Y..



At the begining, Sister Barbara told us the history of the house and how the Archdiocese had come to own it. Yolanda, one of our members who had been there before, asked about the walkway to the beach. The Sister said it was not the sturdiest and that's why it was roped off. This of course peaked my curiousity. So while everyone else went to claim a little patch of solitude, I went off to find this path.



Now you have to picture this. I look like a pack mule. I have a beach chair, that I borrowed from one of the ladies, laying across my back like a backpack. I also have my pocketbook and a tote bag slung on my shoulder and I'm trying to crawl under the railing onto the walkway. Graceful is not a word I'd use. I finally got up there and started my trek. The path had some rotten boards while others were completely missing, but I trudged on. Then came the steps. Two hundred and fifty steep steps. They looked daunting but hey after that there's the beach, right? Ah, no. Then came another fifteen feet or so of walkway that ended on a twenty-five degree tilt to the right. Now the beach? Guess again. The rest of the path had fallen away. That section rested in the sand listing at an even sharper angle to the left.



The part I was standing on swayed gently every time I moved and I realized, after looking, that the supports didn't reach the ground. Oh fun. I took off my baggage and slid off the edge to the unconnected section three feet below then grabbed my stuff and causiously made my way across the next test of dexterity. Made it. Beach? Not quite. The last part of my journey was comprised of ten steps of sand covered wood that had been laid at intervals.



Ta-da! There was the beach before me in all it's glory. It was perfect. It was deserted. I loved it. I put my belongings down on a large flat rock and stretched out besides them, using my jacket as a pillow. I turned to my right and noticed I shared rock with a dead spider crab. I decided to name him Floyd. He had barnacles on his carapice and his front legs were curved in a defensive stance. Call me strange but there was something about him I liked.



I was there to brainstorm ideas for a story so I didn't get much real writing done. Hey maybe I could write a story about killer crabs. No that was done in a movie in the 50's. Well anyway, the day wasn't a total wash. I did come up with an idea, wrote a couple of descriptions and got to lay in the warm sun while listening to the waves as they rolled onto the shore. To me that's a good day.

Authors and Vampires and NYC, oh my

Hi everyone.

Wednesday night I ran away from home and met up with a couple of vampires, authors and other eccentric beings. And where might this have taken place? At Michele Lang and Lucienne Diver’s book launching party held at the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art in N.Y.C., of course.

Lady Lazarus is Michele’s second book and the first in a series. Jim Butcher, who if I haven’t told you already is one of my favorite authors, gave her a stellar blurb. I can hardly wait to read it but first I have to finish The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Lucienne was also promoting the second in her YA vampire series book Revamped.

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself. It all started with a ride on the Hampton Jitney (a bus service) for I live pretty far out on the “Island”, Long Island for those who don’t know. I had to meet my friend Dawn on 39th St. because unfortunately when she made the reservations we couldn’t get the same bus. We took a taxi down to Sullivan St. but were an hour and a half early, so we went to Washington Square Park and hung out.

While sitting there talking, I hear “Psst, angel. Psst, angel.” I turned to see one of the two guys who had occupied a bench behind us standing about three feet from me. He said something else but I didn’t understand him. Since it seemed he was feeling no pain, I was hesitant to ask him to repeat it, so I just smiled. After he left I remembered that on the back of my shirt there were two large wings made up of tiny blue rhinestones. Aha, so that’s why he called me angel. Who says I’m slow?

We finally made our way back to the gallery to join the revelers. There was a guy there playing softly on an electric piano, a couple of vamps from a hosting company who interacted with the guests and other friends of the authors. They were fun. Throughout the night Michele and Lucienne posed for snapshots, signed books and mingled among the guests. (If you want to see more pictures, they will be posted on the LIRW blog on Sept 13). Michele and Lucienne looked like they were really enjoying their event.

While that was happening, Myra Platt, the treasurer for LIRW, her daughter and her friend connected up with us. We all moseyed around, Dawn drinking wine and me stuffing my face with veggies and dip as we partook in conversations. We met Keith R.A. DeCandido, a writer, editor and musician, who probably thinks I have some mental problem because I was pretty blanked faced silent (not the impression I was going for at the party) because I couldn't hear most of what he was saying for it was noisy. Diana Fox, who is an agent, was there as were many other interesting people. Then the clock turned to 9:20 and we had to go catch the Jitney back home.

I’m glad I went. I had a great time and it was a new experience for me. Thanks Michele (if you’re reading this) for inviting me!

Such is life

This past week I received another rejection letter. They stated that they were intrigued by the succubus heroine and mystery plot but felt the characters were flat and the writing style didn't engage them. Though this isn't the worst letter (for sure) and I'm know there are writers out there who would like to get one like this instead of some of the horrors they've been sent; I wish editor could have told me why they felt that way.

See I'm a little confused. I've had several compliments on my style. I guess it's like my fellow writers tell me, this business is very subjective. Don't get discouraged. As one editor I read said he would have passed on The Da Vinci Code. And we know where that book went. It all depends on the editor or agent who is reading your work. True, but after awhile you feel like the princess who kissed a thousand frogs and the only thing you ended up with is a pair of warty lips.

But life goes on. I have to change the master cylinder and do a tune-up on my car. I also have to get it inspected (it will be passed due on the 1st). Plus I go back to work on the 2nd - I work at a local college. But it's not bad, at least I have a job and a car, right?

Prather

It is 9:58 and it is now. Tomorrow at 3:00 it will be now.
On my deathbed it will still be now.
Since it will always be now, learning to respond now is the only thing there is to learn.
~ Hugh Prather, Notes to Myself, My struggle to become a person



Hugh Prather, after several attempts to get published, decided to write a book composed of a number of entries from his “diary”. A newly established husband and wife run company, who had no sales reps or ads, published it. It took three years for Notes to become known across the country and now has more than two million copies in print worldwide. He and his wife, Gayle, have published several other books while increasingly getting involved with counseling alcoholics, battered women, and parents who have lost a child. To help even further they founded The Dispensable Church. (From my understanding that church is now defunct.)

I had bought and read this book about thirty years ago. I was going to use part of the above info, which was vague in my memory, to write a blog about how the whole writing/publishing experience (and life) is fickled. Of course when I went to find said book, it was nowhere to be found. Thank goodness for libraries.

So I started to page through and read excerpts. I decided not to do my original idea but to let one segment stand alone. Many of the writings, in this book, clicked in my brain while others were stopped with a - huh? It’s a New Age type of insightful thinking. I guess I’m not as enlightened as I think I am or maybe just parts of me aren’t. But don’t go by me – check it out yourself.

Touch Someone

Dawn, a good friend of mine, who writes Romance Puppy, had what I thought was a really good idea. She said when you visit other blogs, if they have 4 or less comments, leave one of your own. If it’s their birthday, congratulate them. Spread some cheer.

Blogging can seem so pointless at times when no one comments. Sure you might have visitors but if they don’t say anything how do you know unless you have a counter? The internet has connected us in so many ways yet we still hide, still resist contact. Ok so some postings aren’t interesting enough to leave anything. I know I’ve had my dull days. We all do. But if you follow them for a couple of weeks I’m sure they would come up with something you could remark about.

Another friend, Judi Fennell, has a separate page on her blog just for people to post random acts of kindness that either the poster did or someone did for the person who had posted. It’s a nice way to show that goodness and generosity is still out there among the populace.

So make someone’s day - say hi, you’re not alone. I’m here with you. : )

So who is this Chandler guy?

Last week I did a quickie post, on the LIRW blog, about Philip Marlowe. I've heard that name many times while growing up and decided to finally check out some of the books. My local library had Farewell, My Lovely and Lady in the Lake. Marlowe's wit, his tilted way of expression and pace are the points that kept me reading.

Then I thought, who's this Raymond Chandler who wrote this series? I was a surprise by what I found out and the couple of similarities between author and character.

Chandler was born in the U.S.A in 1888. Moved to London with his divorced mother in 1895.
Between 1905-1912 he moves to Paris, then Germany and then back to England In 1908 his poem "The Unknown Love" is published. And between 1905-1912 he worked briefly as a reporter in London and also wrote essays and poetry. (Poetry, in the typical Ode to a Grecian Urn sense, is not a style I would equate with him.) He finally settles in California where some of his jobs are stinging tennis rackets and picking fruit.

The U.S enters World War I and Chandler enlists in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He is sent to fight in France. He is also being trained by the RAF but the armistice cuts it short. After being discharged he took a correspondence course on bookkeeping and got a job with Dabney Oil Syndicate as a bookkeeper and auditor.

1924 brought him to the altar with Cissy Pascal, who was twice divorced and eighteen years his senior. By 1932 he had risen to VP of Dabney Oil Syndicate but is fired a year later for alcholism, and absenteeism. Now out of work he decides to go back to writing and in 1933 his first short story Blackmailers Don't Shoot is published in Black Mask magazine. Things move along and in 1939 The Big Sleep is published. In the next twenty years he writes seven novels, nineteen short stories and seven screenplays; two of which were unproduced. NBC airs "Philip Marlowe" as a 1947 summer replacement and CBS buys the rights to "The Adventures of Philip Marlowe" radio show in 1948.

After Cissy dies in 1954, he begins to drink heavily. (It seems he always had to wrestle with the bottle and his excess drinking shows up as one of Marlowe's traits. "So I got out my office bottle and took the drink and let my self-respect ride it's own race." - The Big Sleep) The years 1955-1958 have him traveling to London, Capri, Naples (where he interviews Lucky Luciano; never published), New York, Arizona, Madrid, and Tangier. He was hospitalized several times for alcholism. He had affairs with four different women, one of which was Helga Greene, his agent, whom he proposed to. (Marlowe was also a lady's man and appreciated the female form. "It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window." -Farewell, My Lovely )

In March of1959 he went to New York to accept the presidency of Mystery Writers of America but unfortunately on March 26 he dies of pneumonia at the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla.

It's kind of sad to see the struggle this man had and how it's reflected in Marlowe. "I was as empty of life as a scarecrow's pockets." - The Big Sleep. I haven't read enough of Chandler's work or of his life to make comparisons between all of his and Marlowe's demons but I have to wonder if Chandler felt he was as honest, loyal and forthright as his character.