How To Knit A Love Song Release Day!!!!

More pics on the weekend but right now a quick shout out "CONGRATULATIONS!" to Rachael for the release of How To Knit a Love Song.




Lynn, Juliet, Lisa, Rachael, Gigi and the BOOK! :)

Revenge or Karma?

According to Dictionary.com
Revenge:
1. to exact punishment or expiation for a wrong on behalf of, esp. in a resentful or vindictive spirit
2.to take vengeance for; inflict punishment for; avenge
–verb (used without object)




Revenge makes great fiction...the burning desire to right a wrong, the character forsaking their wordly possessions, their comfortable life, and even their values in pursuit of that elusive balancing of the scales.

This is so not me. That isn't to say I don't occasionally have a moment (a tiny moment which I squash quickly 'cause I really don't want karma to come back to me!) where I wish something bad to happen to someone who done me wrong, but the truth is...I'm a Karma girl. I believe if you do bad things, mean things, even little minutia of snarky things...one day, your bad karma is going to come back and bite you in the ass.

And while I won't outwardly cheer, I'll take a moment of gleeful 'I knew it!' before returning to my regularly even-tempered life. It's my belief that Karma is far more dangerous than revenge.

Karma:
Hinduism, Buddhism. action, seen as bringing upon oneself inevitable results, good or bad, either in this life or in a reincarnation: in Hinduism one of the means of reaching Brahman.

The philosophy of karma appeals to me.



To live your life and act with others as you wish to be treated. To live as authentic a life as possible. To be your best. It's very easy to get caught up in the 'but she did this to me' frenzy. But the truth is, maybe she's just having a bad day. Or maybe all her days are bad and her anger and her meanness stem from her own feelings of inadequacy.



At the end of the day I believe that lurking in that mean soul is an extremely miserable person, who if they could only develop their own feelings of self-confidence and self-acceptance would be much nicer to the people around them.

So I pity them. Because when karma comes calling they won't have anyone to lean on and that is the best revenge of all.

Lisa

love's romance

how do i define this topic? how do i transcend the beautiful relationships that have already been depicted at pens fatales? I can't. Frankly, I'm not crazy about Valentine's Day. It annoys me that one day a year, men and women are supposed to honor something that should take precedence all year long.

i believe in romance. i believe in the power of love to transcend other boundaries.

but, you may be cynical. you may nay say. and that is your right. however, i believe that if you believe in the power of love, your life will be better, richer, and happier.

all i can do is offer my own examples and hope that you are open to my interpretation of romance:

romance is not giving a dozen roses on february 14th, it's impromptu delivery when life has thrown a curve ball, and you are down in the dumps.

romance is traveling thru a blizzard to buy a torchiere (that while beautiful was outside of a budget) to be waiting in the living room when you get home from a business trip!

love is refusing to let others take care of your spouse when she is beyond reasoning and really cannot function without care.

romance is picking up take out when life has totally kicked you in the butt and/or cooking dinner, even deciding what to cook for dinner, is beyond your capability.

love is spending four hours at the mall when all you want is to sit in front of the t.v.

love is taking out the garbage when you are tired but your loved one is exhausted.

i know that there are many other examples that i should be defining, but my husband is sick and all i can do is worry and plan how i can make his life easier. because ....
love is defined in all the little things. Anyone can be thoughtful one day a year, but for me, the true definition of love is a partner who cares for you, who tends to your needs and who looks out for you all year long....

Shoes: A Love Affair

Shoes: A Love Affair

Shoes in this author photo are stiletto heel, BCBG ankle boots with a chrome buckle




Shoes are a complicated subject. I have a weakness for shoes. All kinds. Sexy shoes with high heels and bits of ribbon and curlicues, comfortable shoes ergonomically designed, chunky-heeled boots, shell-decorated thongs, beaded mules, sleek suede pumps, peek-a-boo cut-outs in black patent, even my slippers are adorned with rows of fake jewels. But before you judge...my love affair with shoes was born of a desperate time in a young girl’s life.

When I was in fifth or sixth grade (I’m really not sure, I’ve pretty much blocked out this painful period in my life) I had to get corrective shoes. My arches were falling or my feet were flat or scoliosis was big back then, I don’t remember, but some such dire thing required me to wear corrective shoes. And yes, as you properly surmised, corrective shoes were ugly. One style. Lace up. You could choose your color--in either dirt brown or dock worker black. I got the brown ones. Seriously, seriously ugly shoes. And I didn’t have a choice.

I had to wear those hideous shoes for several years. Along about the same time, I got glasses because my eye sight was failing and braces because my teeth were crooked. You couldn’t get much more pathetic than me with glasses, braces and corrective shoes. At this formative period in my young life, things were NOT GOOD.

So fast forward to a few years later and teeth were fixed, contacts installed and that’s when my love affair with pretty and colorful shoes began.




In high school, it was all about my black and white saddle-backs with my pom-pom uniform, the fake wood heels and soft brown leather upper clogs with my pencil-legged Gloria Vanderbilt cords, high-heeled Candie’s in the hot color of the season.

Then in college came the boots. Purple leather flat boots with the button on the side. Red leather flat boots with a small heel. If I had a brown pair, they hid in the back of my closet. For comfort, black canvas high tops, Converse tennies, and roman gladiator sandals.

When work came along, I was in shoe heaven. I wore funky suits almost every day and had the matching pumps to prove it. Hot pink, electric blue, metallic bronze all in a stiletto heel.

Nowadays, I stick more to comfort. But if you peek in my closet, you’ll still see a rainbow of colors and heel heights. I scour shoe sales and clearance racks so it’s a cheap affair. Give me a choice between a new pair of shoes and a new pair of jeans and the shoes will win every time.


Because I’m in love.

Lisa

Lisa says, "Muse, Shmuse".

I don’t believe in a muse.

Writing is work. Fun work, challenging work, exhilarating work, excruciating work. Our brains are constantly connecting neurons, rejecting or accepting plot lines, motivations, character traits, settings. And when we’re stuck, it is easy to say our muse has deserted us.



I reject that theory. We’re subconsciously working through a glitch in the manuscript. A hiccup in the flow of words. A working writer doesn’t shrug and think the muse is on vacation. A working writer writes around the blockage. We research, we write scenes in other points of view, we write backstory, we write pages and pages of extraneous description that will never see the light of day, we stare out the window (laptop on and in our lap) at the leaves letting our minds wander, we make color-coded charts and note cards, we revise and revise and revise.

Equally important, when the work is really pouring out of us, I refuse to embrace the concept of some nameless mythological entity bestowing their generosity upon us. We worked hard to get to the point where the story vomits out in giant technicolor bursts and the revisions will be minimal because every aspect that we normally labor over seems to be miraculously right. Giving the credit to someone else (unless it is a critique group for un-sticking us) rubs me the wrong way.


I own my work habits, both good and bad. And no stinking ‘muse’ is gonna take them away.





Lisa

Lisa's Work In Progress

I don’t do resolutions. No more half-assed promises to cut back on drinking while swilling champagne on New Year’s Eve (then reiterating New Year’s day while chugging a Bloody Mary to chase off the hangover and champagne still sloshing in my stomach).


No more resolutions to lose weight, which usually only held until I’d lost the five pounds I’d gained between Thanksgiving and New Years.

I left resolutions behind going for a more kinder, gentler type of resolve. And for a few years, I tried...intentions. They’re a little more friendly, a little less intense somehow than resolutions. Except, they didn’t really work. Unfortunately, for me anyway, intend comes off as a little wishy-washy.

What I finally discovered about myself is that I need cold, hard--black and white, bold-faced-–GOALS.

Awhile back I had a life coach which was a heck of a good decision www.kristincoach.com One of the first things of the new year was to come up with a Master Goal list in eight key areas of your life. (She recommends 5-15 goals per category). So for about two weeks, I would read thru her examples, ideas for the list sparking my own personal goals and create a Master Goal list for the year.

I like lists. I like being able to tick off milestones and small tasks equally. There is just as much satisfaction in a bunch of little tasks being completed as finishing off a big one. One of the other things Kristin recommends is breaking the large goals down into steps needed to achieve the goal. This makes a big goal seem not as daunting. Finally, post the goal list or keep it somewhere handy where you can refer back to it.

Looking through last year’s list, I did pretty good on some and not so great on others. However, there was improvement and I can feel good about those things I ticked off the list. Meanwhile, the goals that I didn’t meet will most likely migrate over to this year’s list. Nothing to feel bad about, after all, we are all just work in progress.

Lisa

A Bygone Era

by Lisa Hughey

As a kid--dare I say it-- a girl growing up I was always doing some sort of craft. X-acto knives and needles were my tools, my mom and grandma the instructors.

I did it all: The ubiquitous Holly Hobby painstakingly cut out with the sharp knife and decoupaged onto a miter-ed block of wood (that we enterprisingly stained ourselves). The cross-stitched pillow with some ultra-sweet and trite phrase like “Home is Where the Heart Is”. The crewel still life of flowers in a vase. Tie-dye, candle making, tissue paper and pipe cleaner flowers, sewing...frankly, I wasn’t very good at any of it. (I wish I had some pictures but somehow my ‘projects’ have not survived my many moves...possibly ‘lost’ on purpose)

My grandmother, Nellie, was a veritable queen of crafts well into her nineties, crocheting dish scrubbers out of netting and stitching Christmas tree ornaments.



Some ornaments made by Nellie







I remember asking her once how she knew how to do all this cool stuff. In her era, she had a ‘Ladies Club’ meeting once a week where they learned all sorts of crafty things.








She had an incredible eye for color. And she could take a length of any material, ribbon or raffia and turn it into an exquisite bow for a wreath or centerpiece. When I bought my first house, Grandma Nellie helped me make a grapevine wreath for the front door, using orange crinkled paper wrap and old sheets, we attached a beautiful bow and handmade ghosts. It was awesome and I still have it, even though it’s looking a little tired these days. (Sorry-but the Halloween stuff is stored in the garage and not at this time, easily accessible-so no picture!)


Nowadays, among piano lessons, soccer, basketball, swimming, volleyball practices, tutors and the like, there is no time leftover for the pastime of crafting. It’s become a lost art.

But I try to find time to create beauty for everyday ordinary events. Nellie could take random objects and with floral foam, green wire, a few yards of ribbon, and flowers (sometimes right from her garden) and design a masterpiece for the dining room table. I like to think in this respect I inherited just a tiny bit of her artistic ability because my one talent is being able to set a beautiful table.


Happy Holidays to all!

Lisa

ps-I was going to take a picture of my dining room table (set for today's Pens Fatales holiday get-together but the battery on my table died) The good news is that we're going to try out our Flip camera thingy and hopefully take a fun video to post on Friday. Keep your fingers crossed! :)

What if?

by Lisa Hughey



I love research. I usually begin with an idea, a really, really rough premise. It might even only be that the NSA has a secret branch of field agents and my heroine is the ultimate extreme loner....



Then the fun starts. First, I research the research books, looking at online reviews, going to the bookstore and reading back cover copy. From there I choose three or four books about my subject.




And then I start reading. Using sticky arrows, post-its large and small, and colored pens, I notate any informational tidbit that I find fascinating and compile little facts in my head. And the seeds of the plot begin to take shape.

I like to find historical facts in my research and use them for the foundation of backstory. But then I twist and turn those facts, constantly asking...what if? From there the idea grows. And with every bit of knowledge I absorb, I think...what if?

What if?

From my ‘what ifs?’ the idea grows until I need to start doing research on the internet. Which I love. I double check everything. Even things I’m fairly sure I know, I re-confirm through the internet. (Which is why I will never write a historical romance. The research worry would kill me!)


When the World Wide Web was new, there wasn’t a lot of material uploaded but I distinctly remember looking at a list of contents of a library at Oxford, in England. I remember that moment of awe, as I realized I was sitting in my little suburban California living room, one son watching Barney and the other napping, and I was accessing a library at Oxford. The idea was so heady. Of course, at that time, the text wasn’t on the internet, but I knew one day it would be.

Sometimes I go off on tangents, bizarre little side trips that might not be related to my original search. And frequently within those tangents, a new ‘What if?’ occurs to me, spinning my story in another direction.

What if? One of the most thought provoking phrases I know. :)

With Gratitude

I love holidays. I especially love Thanksgiving.



And for me, it’s all tied up in the food. In our house we celebrate with both tradition and new experiences. Some dishes always stay the same, roasted turkey, old-fashioned stuffing (bread, celery, onion and spices), sweet potatoes mashed with marshmallows on top, pumpkin pie. And then at least one dish is always new, smashed cauliflower, bourbon corn pudding, fancy mashed potatoes.... I’m not sure what it’s going to be this year.

There is such satisfaction in preparing a meal of thanks. Bustling around the kitchen on and off all day, the warm air redolent with mouth watering scents: sage, butter, and onion from the stuffing, the savory aroma of roasting turkey when we open the oven to baste the bird (every twenty minutes) until the breast is covered in a crisp brown shell and the pan is replete with dripping juices, the overlay of cinnamon and nutmeg and allspice from baking pies. The sounds of the Macy’s parade and football drifting on the air.



When my kids were little, Thanksgiving was a difficult meal. They liked the sweet potatoes (really they liked the marshmallows) and maybe the mashed potatoes but not much else. As it is my favorite holiday, I couldn’t stand that they weren’t completely in love with it. So, as a way to get them involved in the process, I had each one pick a dish, and then we prepared it together. It took exactly one time to make this practice a standing tradition.

Now cooking the meal is a family affair. My husband does the turkey and the kids and I cook the rest. Every moment of the day centers around creating a banquet of thanks. Emotions swirl in the air as heavily as the scents, sadness for relatives far away, the loss of our loved ones, gratitude for our own health and happiness, and underneath it all, thanks for the abundance we are blessed to have.

Hindus believe that your body absorbs every nuance of the food you eat. So it is very important to cook with joy, to imbue every stir of the spoon and every pinch of spice with love and gratitude. As we cook the meal, so we celebrate the day, counting our blessings, be they big or small, trying to acknowledge and honor each one. And at the end, we have a really incredible meal together.

Happy Holidays!



Lisa

No, Yes, I'm a NaNo Mess

I have a little problem.

I try not to talk about it. I’ve been working on it over the last few years and I’ve gotten better. But I’m still not completely cured.



I have trouble saying NO.








My default answer (even when I reset) comes up, “sure, you need me to:

1. Moderate an online class for the month

2. Cook food for 20 people twice in one week

3. Buy and donate food for the high school barbecue fundraiser

4. Have my parents and sister visit for a week

5. Start an exercise challenge

6. Do Nano”




Okay, so I admit the last two are for me and I signed up of my own free will. But whenever I embark on NaNo I have the best of intentions and the desire to ‘win’. And every year other stuff comes up (you’re supposed to cut out everything but writing) and I feel guilty if I don’t say yes.


So here I am, once again, ten days into NaNo and all six of those things are on my To-Do list. And now I’m caught in the middle. As my parent’s visit starts tomorrow (my house is semi-clean), I’m going to exercise class once a day, and I’m writing every day, and monitoring and shopping and cooking and attending end of season, soccer, waterpolo and cross country banquets. I’m trying to squeeze everything in but something will have to give.

So I’m torn...do I continue on my path to physical health and wellness or my spiritual path to completing NaNo? And isn’t it amazing that the choice comes down to the two things I chose for myself?



Lisa

ps. I want to win but I always figure that every word I get down in November is a WIN

It's in the Blood

Thought about this topic since it came up in one of our creative confabs. There are so many ways to go, especially since it’s near Halloween. Blood, gore, violence, color red, genetics, all sorts of ideas have been spinning around in my head. I’d touch on one idea, think for a bit, and then move to the next one. But the one focus I kept coming back to is genetics.

I’ve been considering this subject a lot lately. Something about having teenagers causes you to contemplate yourself and your flaws more critically.

I have an extremely creative son who has, in the past few years, decided English is more trouble than it’s worth. Amazingly teachers require attention to details, ie. Punctuation and shit (his words, not mine :) ) and when you don’t comply with their rules you are penalized. Go figure.

So he has these creative ideas but they won’t see the light of day because he doesn’t want to put the time into getting the words on the paper, in making the action and plot revelation coherent, in developing his idea into a cohesive story. In other words, he doesn’t want to spend the time to make it work.

So what does this have to do with blood? I understand his frustration and his problem. For some, writing is a beautiful flow of words that "seem to" (and yes, I use the quote marks specifically because I know that the seemingly effortless takes work!) land upon the page like a butterfly alighting on a flower.

For me, part of writing is like a great big splat of paint on a clean floor. You can’t wipe it up, so you have to brush over and around and through that splat until it represents something pretty and hopefully thought provoking but it’s never going to be a masterpiece.

That’s how I feel about my prose. I’ve tried and frankly it just comes off as if I’m trying too hard. My strengths are in pacing and plot and character. And even those elements have taken lots of time and effort and education. I am constantly looking to improve my craft through workshops, reading other work and analyzing why it works, and reading books on writing. I love writing. I love creating. I love thinking about people and how they would react in the situations that I create for them.

There are so many pieces to the process that I think are fantastic but it is never going to flow effortlessly. And I am always going to have to work my tail off for the words to finally coalesce into a work I am satisfied with. But, I keep on. Writing, revising, editing, writing again, plotting, crafting. Over and over and over again. I can’t give up. It’s in my blood.

So now all I can do is hope that my perseverance and words of wisdom for my son will kick in. Because that’s what I’ve got going on. And frankly, I believe one day, he will too. As long as I show him how it’s done.

Lisa

ps--just to clarify, I am in NO WAY comparing my work to Jackson Pollack but he was the closest I could come to a splat :) :)

Living in the State of Grace

by Lisa Hughey

Grace is an ephemeral concept, a fleeting state which can elude us in moments of frustration or surprise us in moments of stress.

I live in a state of chaos most days.

There is order in my chaos (sort of) appointments, sports events, meetings, volunteering, reminders to do this or pick up that are faithfully recorded in my Blackberry. When I’m out I can check to make sure I’m not missing anything important and keep on target. The handy device holds my mind and my calendar, keeps me sane and on track.

The downside of this is I’ve moved to a place where writing is a chore to be ticked off, an item to cross out when I’ve met my goal for the day. And I realized that grace goes hand in hand with joy.

Whenever I’m frustrated with the world around me, I think, if I moved somewhere (Portland has been appealing to me lately) anywhere other than where I am, things would be better. Less frantic, less competitive, less expensive, less crazy, less everything and filled with more grace.

In lucid moments, I realize moving really isn’t the answer to my frustrations and fears. And that true peace will only arrive if I can find and hold onto that elusive state of grace.

Instead of chastising myself for being late because I got caught up in a scene, I celebrate the fact that I got caught up in writing. Instead of yelling at my son for forgetting about a cooking project due in fifteen hours, we trekked to the grocery store and cooked together and bonded over everything from literature to history.

Instead of lamenting the fact that I am an abysmal failure at belly dancing, I’m giving thanks for having access to a teacher, that I’m learning something new, and I’m doing something fun. I come home from class exhilarated and joyful. I’ve been trying to cultivate the appreciation for those moments of grace.

And slowly, but surely I’m moving to the State of Grace...anyone want to come with me?

Lisa's Theorems of Time (as helped along by Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison)

by Lisa Hughey

I’m a bit of a geek. I like science. I like solid, physical evidence and proof that things exist. So when I started thinking about our topic, Time, I decided research was necessary. Turns out that time is a pretty complicated subject. Possibilities hover in the metaphysical realm as well as the physical.

Albert Einstein postulated that time is relative. It speeds up or slows down depending on how fast one thing is moving relative to something else. He also theorized that the closer we come to traveling at the speed of light, the more time would appear to slow down for us from the perspective of someone who, in relation to us, was not moving. He called the slowing of time due to motion, time dilation.

In the 1970's some scientists used atomic clocks to test Einstein’s theories. Two clocks. Both starting at exactly the same time. One clock set up on the ground. One clock flown around the world on a jet. When the jet landed back in the same place, it’s clock was behind the clock on the ground.

Einstein was right. Time had actually moved slower.

But I think the Einstein experiment missed an important fact. At the end of the experiment, both clocks ended up back on Earth in the exact same place. Proving Lisa’s first theorem of time: Even if the goal is to end up in the same place, everyone’s path (and the time to follow the path) is different.

Sophie (A Bad Day For Sorry) and Juliet (Secondhand Spirits) both have books out on the shelves right now. Their paths to publication were radically different. Not better or worse, just different. But they still ended up in the same place at the same time.

Lisa’s second theorem of time: Time is never wasted. The journey is as important as the destination because every experience we have leads us to where we are now.



Thomas Edison (to steal from National Treasure) tried and failed over a thousand times before inventing incandescent light. He has many things to say about failure but this one is most profound: "Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."

It is never the time to give up.

You’ve probably guessed by now, I’m also a very big fan of the power of positive thinking and the importance of motivation. Einstein and Edison are both examples of people who tried and failed over and over but also succeeded over and over.

Which leads to Lisa’s third (and final) theorem of time: Time passes. Whether you put your effort toward your dreams or you just keep wondering and wishing you could... take a class in anthropology, learn to speak Farsi, travel to New York City, do a hundred pushups (http://www.hundredpushups.com/), color your hair purple, or...write a novel. You won’t know unless you try. And whether you’re moving or standing still, you’ve got time.

Lisa

ps. I didn’t realize I had theorems of time until I started working on this blog post which helped me to define in my own geeky way, the relativity of time.

pps. The info on Einstein comes from a PBS show, Nova. www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/hotsciencetwin/

Explorer Fan Girl

by Lisa Hughey

My inner Fan Girl is expressed through traveling to new places. I love exploring cities, wandering the streets, absorbing the energy and immersing in the culture.

Kinsale, Ireland


I love thinking about where I’m going to go next (when the budget permits) and dreaming about the places I’ll see and the experiences I’ll have. And just so I don’t miss anything, I’ve pretty much reduced my obsession to a science.

I love to research every little detail. Yelp, TripAdvisor, AAA, Lonely Planet are all my friends. I spend hours reading and culling information so that I know exactly what is a must see, what is a if you have time and what will be saved for another visit. But I don’t strictly plan out a schedule and there are always surprises along the way.

I’ll admit to a weakness for luxury accommodations when monetarily possible. The modern swanky Sofitel in DC, or the grande old dame of the Waldorf in New York, or the quirky renovated Kennedy School House in Portland. Each unique, yet so totally perfect for the city they reside in.

I’m a sucker for history of just about any kind.



The sense of awe that accompanies standing in the Courthouse where the Declaration of Independence was signed, knowing that Ben Franklin, John Adams and George Washington stood in the very same place;




standing on the parapets of a fort in Ireland, where hundreds of years earlier, the Irish stood ready to defend their homes from the invading English;



standing in front of Monet’s Impression at Sunrise, knowing that the Impressionist period was named because of this painting.

Each place has its own feel, its own highlights and its own traditions. For me some of the musts were: tea at the Brown Derby in Denver and tea at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, Canada. A musical (Spamalot) on Broadway. Times Square. The Liberty Bell. Alcatraz.



Powell’s Bookstore. The Eiffel Tower. The Mall in DC. The Book of Kells at Trinity College. The Japanese Tea Garden.

I have itchy feet, always wanting to wander, and you know I realized it’s time to plan another trip.

Lisa

p.s. I’m also crazy about food and restaurants, researching five star, hot new places and local dives. Each city has their specialty dishes specific to the locale, but that is a topic for another day....

Exclusive Content (or the words formerly known as Deleted Scenes)

by Lisa Hughey

There’s a new buzz word, phrase really, in the book industry. Exclusive Content.

Exclusive content is an outlet for deleted scenes that don’t advance the plot or that need to be cut if your publisher says, “too long, darling, cut some” as if you’re snipping your bangs not cutting off the hair that took (sob) years to grow.


Now authors put the Deleted Scenes on their websites or blogs (loved Juliet’s from last week) and readers get a secret glimpse, a private peek into the lives of characters they love.



It’s somewhat voyeuristic in nature which makes them all that more delicious to read. And the Exclusive Content I’ve read has always been fun and taken me back to the story I loved--so much so I’m willing to go online and read the deleted scenes.

But, regarding my own work, I have a problem. I don’t have any deleted scenes. And no, this is not to suggest that I write a beautifully clean, fully-formed single draft (if only). No Jack Kerouac here. I have a ‘Leftover’ file for every book I’ve ever written. Pages and pages of notes, random thoughts, cut lines and paragraphs, but no full-fledged scenes. I do occasionally go back and cull a line or a paragraph of description from the file but by and large it’s just a jumble of sentences usually fragments, separated by line breaks.

Clearly, I do chop from my manuscripts. So why don’t I have any Deleted Scenes? I’m too stubborn. If I like a scene for it’s emotion or it’s setting or the plot advancement or because it reminds me of how good of a mood I was in the day I wrote it...I will revise and tweak and labor over every sentence until the scene works in the book. It may take (whimper) five or six passes to get it right, in which time, I’ll have added exponentially to my ‘Leftover’ file but I will, by damn, have a completed scene that finally works in the manuscript.

My 'Leftover' file does not resemble a miniature meal to be re-heated later, it's no chicken piccata with a smattering of capers and a few tablespoons of sauce with a side of steamed broccoli. My 'Leftover' file looks more like a decimated Thanksgiving meal, plates littered with the bits and pieces of turkey, chunks of celery from the stuffing, and smashed sweet potatoes divested of their crispy melted marshmallows, all mixed together into an unappetizing mess that no one wants to re-heat.




So deleted scene? No. Do I have absolutely brilliant snippets of dialogue, snappy repartee or hard wrought similes (sometimes I’ll come up with a great simile that fits the scene and the tone and the plot perfectly....I’ll smile over my cleverness and then whack that puppy with a thunk of my fingers on the keyboard because it suits everything except the character’s voice, dammit) or even pieces of scenes written from an alternate character’s POV? Yes.

But nothing that would qualify as ‘exclusive content’.

Lisa

ps. I had an ending, but I deleted it. :)

Lisa Loves Lunch

I have a confession. When I was a kid I was the pickiest eater on the planet. After having my own children I apologized profusely to my parents for how freaking difficult I used to be. Example: when we went out to breakfast I would order boxed cereal. No eggs, no bacon, no waffle or pancake, not even oatmeal. Boxed. Cereal.

Once I hit my twenties, in a quest to expand my horizons, I forced myself to experiment outside the little food box that confined my life.

The result: I love food. I love to cook. I love to eat. Both food prepared by myself and food from restaurants. I love junk food and haute cuisine. Give me a Lays potato chip with French’s onion dip or a fried waffle potato slice with creme fraiche and caviar. A fried zucchini stick or a succotash of zucchini and corn. A burger from In-N-Out or a grass-fed Filet Mignon roasted medium rare with an accompaniment of bearnaise sauce. I love them all.

I have subscribed to Bon Appetit, Food and Wine, Gourmet. I peruse Vegetarian Times and Cook’s Illustrated. I have so many cookbooks that I have favorites and others I’ve barely even cracked open.

I love experimenting with different colors and spices and textures in pursuit of a particular taste. My current favorite lunch is a vegetarian pita sandwich. Green zucchini cubes and yellow bell pepper sauteed in a bit of olive oil and garlic. A chopped red heirloom tomato. A sprinkle of cheddar cheese. A modest slather of mayo. Stuffed into a whole wheat pita. Yum.

In my world, writing shares a common bond with cooking. The menu changes daily. Textures, moods, characters, quirks, conflicts both internal and external, a soundtrack. Each wonderful individually but when I mix them together the result is never quite what I expected. Sometimes the dish is so-so, that recipe never to be repeated, but sometimes after mixing and tweaking the end result is spectacular.

Some days, food is an artistic endeavor. Other days, it’s just lunch. But I love it anyway. Which come to think of it, is just how I feel about writing. :)

Lisa

ps. great cooking website for the culinarily adventurous = www.epicurious.com

pps. Blogger has decided they don't want my pictures so you are all missing out on the photo of one of my shelves of cookbooks....

Movie Lines

by Lisa Hughey

“Sarcasm is the refuge of losers.”

“Albuquerque. Snorkel. See I can do it too.”

“I hope you have Hobo stab insurance.”

“Buyers and sellers. Pimps and whores, pimps and whores.”

Out of context, many of these lines don’t have meaning. But give the line the right inflection and rhythm and suddenly it re-images an entire scene and feeling from a movie.

Movies are family time at my house. Movie night equals popcorn and Dots (you eat the Dot in the same mouthful as a big scoop of over-buttered popcorn and that taste of salty/sweet is out of this world) and all five of us snuggled together on the sectional sofa.

Our collective taste is eclectic. We watch everything from sci-fi (Serenity) to R-action adventure (The Movie That Shall Not Be Named–since I promised Martha) to PG-action adventure (National Treasure) to fantasy (Harry Potter) to quirky (Little Miss Sunshine) to sophomoric humor (Accepted) to animated (Titan A.E.). And if we all like a movie it becomes something we watch regularly. My favorites switch. For awhile, National Treasure was my go-to movie if nothing else appealed. All of the above are perennial favorites.

After watching a film over and over, some of those special lines, the zingers that amuse you every time, wiggle their way into your speech patterns like worms into your dirt. The quote is usually appropriate to the conversation but there is a moment where we connect on a deeper more intimate level.

Last week I asked son’s friend if the girl hanging around his house was his girlfriend.

My son was suitably embarrassed. “Mom.” As in, it’s none of your business.

To which I replied, “Fuck you, I’m old I can do what I want.”

Alan Arkin couldn’t have said it better. Friend’s eyes got round and big, thinking we were on the verge of a fight, then son and I started laughing.

So, sure the images are great, but it's the words that I remember and the emotions they evoked that stick with me.



Finally, (I couldn't resist) when you’re in the mood for a Bruce Willis fix....

“Come out to the coast, we’ll have a few laughs.” I promise there will be no guns blazing, but look out for lines flying. “Yippee Cay-Yay Mother Fucker.”


Lisa

ps–Just in case you aren’t sure where these quotes come from:

“Sarcasm....” Greg Kinnear’s character, Little Miss Sunshine
“Snorkel....” Riley, National Treasure
“Hobo stab....” Jonah Hill’s character, Accepted
“Pimps and whores....” Lewis Black’s character, Accepted
“F-U, I’m old....” Alan Arkin’s character, Little Miss Sunshine
Last one is from the movie that shall not be named....

Honoring Your Creativity

By Lisa Hughey

So I’ve started and stopped a billion (okay, a slight exaggeration on the number, but this morning it feels like a billion) posts on this topic. I am not creative. At least not the way I’d like to be.

I think of creative writers as those who craft a line of prose so wonderful and lyrical that you’re forced to stop and marvel at it's beauty. But that’s not me.

Artists whose paintings/sculptures make you catch your breath at it's power. But that’s not me. I can’t paint or draw worth a damn (that was in an early version).

Photographers whose images stun you. But that’s not me. I take adequate photos with nice composition. (again earlier version).

I could go on and on, but I’m assuming that no one wants to read all the ways that I personally am not creative. I even started a post completely off topic because I wanted to re-cap the RWA conference, which was ‘oh so much fun’ this year.

I don’t have the creative gene needed to take an abstract concept and explore the meaning with beautiful language. My creative strength lies in pacing. In romance, in recognizing that unique and beautiful confluence of two separate people who because some characteristic of their psyche are perfect for each other and who become stronger as a whole.

And in plotting. In twists, in unexpected directions, in finding the universal truth in details.

Like the time there was a white banged up van with no windows (a kidnap van, my kids like to call it--uh yeah wonder where they got that from?) parked in my neighbor’s driveway, no lettering on the side and the driver was wearing a cap pulled down so far you couldn’t see his face.

Now, I know for a fact my neighbor is in Michigan for the summer. So of course I immediately think, hmm, perhaps they are being robbed. (hey, we’ve had a string of robberies in our community lately, I’m not completely paranoid!) I drive around the circle (we live on a circle) trying unobtrusively to figure out how to copy down the license plate number of the van without actually looking like I’m trying to copy it down, which never does work. I end up parking across and down the street, hovering behind my car, punching their plate numbers into the memo section of my phone, in case the police need it later.

But then I find out it’s merely a broken sprinkler main and their backyard is flooded. Okay. So perfectly logical explanation.

But now I might use that scene, the van, the driver and his passenger (who I’m sure are perfectly nice people), except in my work, the people aren’t perfectly nice, they are there to do damage in some way which I haven’t figured out yet. And when my heroine sees them, she will have the perfect method to get their license plate number, perhaps photographic memory (is there anyone in the world who *doesn’t* wish they had this capability?), but more likely she’ll use an intelligence surveillance technique that I’ve discovered in my research. And of course the license plate number will be registered to a fake company, and then...well now I’m getting tangential.

But hopefully I’ve taken that detail, that universal experience that everyone has had at least once in their life (of course if you are me, you have them all the time) and the reader connects with the heroine or hero over the shared experience, even though their method of dealing with the situation is completely different--assuming most of the readers out there are not espionage agents reading laymen spy novels on their day off.

Lisa

ps. If you want a recap of the conference, Rachael has a really fun one on her blog FYI, I was present at the ‘no pants’ conversation however *I* was fully dressed. We had a blast.

Summer's Bounty

by Lisa Hughey

For me, summer is inextricably bound with food.

Perhaps this stems from my roots, my great-grandmother worked a farm until she was in her late eighties and then still had a fairly large vegetable patch squatting and picking until she was ninety odd years old. Summer meant going to visit my MaMae on the Eastern Shore, eating her sweet custard corn bread and savoring an abundance of fresh strawberries and corn and eggs.

Maybe it’s from visiting my grandparents in Baltimore during the sweltering humid days of June, eating peaches and tomatoes so big, one slice would extend outside the edges of bread slathered with a mayonnaise and salt & pepper.



Growing up in Illinois, summer meant farm stand corn bought on the side of the road, the day it was picked. My dad would come home and shuck the ears and minutes later the corn would be in the pot. Steamed and drenched in butter with a smattering of salt, so hot it almost burns your fingers, but you can’t wait for that first mouth watering bite.

Summer meant going strawberry picking, then making jam, canning jars in the hot steam, until you’re so tired you can’t see straight but not tired enough that you won’t sneak another berry, licking the juice running down your fingers from fruit so sweet it’s like candy. Hot summer nights where our entire dinner was salads: potato salad, skin on, celery, mayo, paprika, salt and pepper; egg salad; green salad with a little Parmesan cheese, garlic, olive oil and lemon juice; fresh sliced tomatoes.

Even though the farm is gone, my grandparents passed away, and the farm stands of my youth have given way to housing subdivisions and grocery stores, I’ve tried to carry those same traditions forward for my children. We get our produce locally, fruits and vegetables from organic farms and farmer’s markets. So while they won’t have the experience of going to the farm directly, hopefully they will remember the taste and experience of fresh produce picked and then eaten. And we planted our first vegetable garden this summer...together.



I hope you enjoy all of summer’s bounty.

Lisa

ps–Martha thinks I planted my garden because of the potential coming apocalypse, so please don’t tell her it had more to do with my farmer roots...although I guess I’ll be prepared. :)

Character Study

I am a perpetual student--always learning. I take online classes. I read books on writing. I attend workshops. Using all that information--packed into the tiny crevasses of my brain--I love to analyze books. Umm, not the plot structure (makes my head hurt!) or sentence structure (because no, parsing sentences is not my forte). I don’t do grids or Hero’s Journey outlines. But I do examine why a novel does or doesn’t work for me.

And before I go further, I’m talking about fiction–primarily romance or mystery. I love the payoff. I want a happy ending where the girl gets the boy, the hero(ine) gets the villain, or even better both occur.

A novel’s strength (for me) comes down to character. In my opinion, character is the single most important element the writer should labor over. Because without a memorable character–someone who makes us root for them, bleed for them, and even condone behavior that goes against our moral code–the story, the plot, the setting, the theme becomes unimportant.

Great characters are the key to great fiction. A high-octane plot is nothing without credible, larger-than-life highly developed en-actors to make it meaningful. Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass.

The best novels marry both intricate and deep character with a plot that will bring them the most heartache yet ultimately the most satisfaction. And when the character triumphs and vanquishes their enemy or overcomes seemingly insurmountable obstacles to true love--the reader is rewarded richly.

True Character can only be expressed through choice in dilemma. How the person chooses to act under pressure is who he is-the greater the pressure, the truer and deeper the choice to character. Story by Robert McKee (this is a brilliant book–to be read over the course of months because there is so much material to absorb)

Human beings are flawed. I doubt there are many people out there who would say they are perfect. I absolutely doubt there is anyone who would not change one single thing about their personality (and if you find one, they are lying! :) )

Most people want to be a higher form of themselves (and no I’m not talking about being skinnier or richer). They want to be more honorable, more generous, more kind, more forgiving, more honest, more heroic...more something.

Through works of fiction we get to experience that higher form of ourselves, making choices, performing sacrifices which will have a profound impact, without the fear of actually making the wrong decision and screwing things up. The author has already worked out the perfect course of action to make that ending the best and most creative and most rewarding for the character and ultimately for us, the reader.

Lisa

The Listmaker

I am the kind of writer who...makes lists. I make to-do lists; I make timeline lists (especially when cooking or when going out of town so my husband gets the kids where they need to be); I make plot lists, and research lists, and character lists...so when we decided to introduce ourselves with this prompt, I immediately started a list, thinking I would formulate the list into actual paragraphs--but then I changed my mind. :)

Lisa’s ‘Kind of Writer Who’ List:

1. Unflagging...determination. I refuse to give up.

2. Unfailing...optimist. If things aren’t looking up right now, they will be.

3. Unintentional...romantic. I tried to write a book without a romance and I failed. While it was definitely a thriller, the romance was integral to the plot.

4. Unafraid...to acknowledge the need to keep learning. I am dedicated to constantly improving my craft and willing to get guidance from those who want to impart their wisdom.

5. Unquenchable...thirst for knowledge. I love research. I am fascinated by so many subjects and I get a little thrill when I find that one small detail that completes the story.

6. Unfettered...enthusiasm for the entire process of writing, from research, to plotting, to drafting, to revising. I freaking love it all, even when I hate it.

7. Unconditional...cheerleader. I support my fellow writers without jealousy (or at least not too much). Actually I’m not jealous, envious, because everyone’s path is different and I never begrudge anyone their success. I just want my own too. :)

8. Unquantifiable...appreciation for my sister groggers. Here’s the thing with women. There are groups where you will mesh nicely with common bonds but no spark of connection. Other groups where despite a common bond discord reigns. And then there are those unions that blend seamlessly and almost effortlessly, and all you can imagine coalesces into an amazing, vibrant, fascinating collaboration...Because the stars align? Because you are all at the precipice of a new chapter in your career? I don’t know and I don’t care because it works.

9. Unequivocally...blessed to meet these women at this time!

Lisa

ps. Unrepentant about the Un thing. It’s a little cutesy, I know. But it just sort of happened and when I find a pattern I like, I go with it.