Category Archives: Seeking Troy Donahue

Out of My Dreams and onto the Page

Today I began the process of querying my novel This Tangle of Thorns. I could obsess, but instead I’ve let go, let my compass swing back to the novel I’ve recently started (my fourth). That’s my north while the agents do their thing.

Fourth novel…third approach. First novel I wrote the main scenes, then built bridges. Next two, started writing until it felt done. This time, I’m dreaming.

Dreaming is a very simplistic description of the process Robert Olen Butler offers in From Where You Dream, a candid kick-in-the-pants distillation of the literary  boot camp lectures he gives at Florida State. (The book is beautifully edited by Janet Burroway. whom I spent a few hours with recently in workshop at the Loft Literary Center.)

Pen and 3x5s nearby, I drift. Down I go, past the detritus of life—lists…and lists of lists. There’s Mighty Mouse and Foghorn Leghorn (you tell me!). I smell cumin and hear the clicking whir of Grandma’s hand-held eggbeater. My breath quickens, then falls, seeing her in the casket. I kick off from the fear of who will be next in the box and careen off the certainty that I have nothing left to give the page and then…

A man in a field watching another man bleed to death from the sharp, accidental swipe of a scythe…two ladies (and I’m the only man, jah!)…a hobo camp and man whose hands smell of a woman…a short, portly rural postmaster balanced on the edge of counter like Shamu begging for fish…a boy whose belly is clenched from hunger…a Indian child who can smell and foresee the end of safety…a lonely married woman enlivened by the call of the fiddle and a leading touch she just might follow.

Just 40 to 60 more of these dreams and then I’m ready to start seeing how they fit together. So it’s back to dreaming. Talk to you later…

Slingshot

SPOILER ALERT!

It’s the second act of my book, by which time Aggie has proved her capacity for rage. Enter Eugenia, the woman who will eventually steal from Aggie everything. Everything.

For the betrayal to pierce Aggie (and the reader) as deeply as possible, I’ve decided I must employ a slingshot—I’m making them friends. The triangle between the two mothers and the one daughter will be most strong if the two mothers can at times work together to thwart—even gang up on—Stella.

Oh how slow is the work of making Aggie trust. But the devil comes bearing many delicious pies…and sympathy.

“Girls are trouble, Aggie. I know. I’ve raised one who lives in England, and although you will never meet her or even see a photo of her past the age of 16, you must believe me when I tell you. Girls are trouble. And as mothers we must keep them safe.”

Beyond a friend, who can Eugenia be to Aggie? Someone to take the brunt of Stella for a while? Someone to keep Stella safe, and in doing so, keep Aggie safe from herself—from what she might next do in rage? For that’s what Aggie needed, and still needs. Someone to keep her safe.

I already know how much betrayal the slingshot will propel. The question now is how far Aggie’s trust can stretch—for that is what will give the slingshot it’s power to devastate her.

This post was originally written January 14, 2013 for the private blog of my writing group, Novel-ties.

Fingers on the Keyboard

It’s Sunday afternoon. The wind chill is seasonably cold and, at the same time, unfamiliar in this warm winter we’ve been having. Tonight Ed and I will go to a meet my 18-year-old nephew and friends at a comedy club (what a blessing to have such a nephew, and I will work hard to be cool enough to warrant the invitation, but I am a VERY loud laugher and sometimes I even snort and occasionally cry).

My fingers are on the keyboard, as evidenced by this post. I long to plunge through to the world of Willie and Stella. And yet I hesitate.

There’s laundry and a pile of papers that need filing and that tax return to prepare for. And there’s the knot of how to finish the book. I keep hoping I’ll untie this last by doing all the other things, but I think I may need a geographic fix…an afternoon away from the house in a quiet cafe with a large window that looks out on the blinding surprise of snow, which reflects the returning light so brilliantly. There I can gaze long enough to reach 1959, knock the white stuff off my shoes at Aggie’s door and hope to be asked inside to witness the love and horror and mischief that is the Fords.

This post was originally written January 15, 2012 for the private blog of my writing group, Novel-ties.

Solving the Puzzle of my Novel

I spent a good part of the last half of December working on a 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle called Packets of Promise. At 3′ x 4′, the puzzle took up all of my dining room table and the bowls of pieces—sorted by color—took up the buffet. A few hours each night I’d choose a side of the table, grab a bowl of color and hunch over the chaos I was trying to tame. Some pieces I could identify and place in seconds; others I must have touched 10, 20, even 30 or more times before realizing where they fit.

When I was working on my first novel, Adrift on the Dark Sea of Memory, I’d often describe the writing process as putting together a jigsaw puzzle where every piece could fit everywhere. (That’s what I get for writing a book with five POV characters, three of whom are ghosts who are not tethered to a linear timeline.) There was no “right” way to finish the puzzle of Adrift; instead I needed to focus on whether I had fit everything together in the most beautiful way possible. As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, making it even trickier.

As 2012 launches me into yet another year of work on Seeking Troy Donahue, I’m determined to hunch myself over this project like I did Packets of Promise. Yes, the pieces that are left to fit in are the trickiest, but those give the most satisfaction when they finally find their correct orientation and lock into place.

The next puzzle I plan to tackle is The Color of Money. But I think I’m going to hold off until the book is finished. It’s the perfect puzzle to be working on as I’m selling the book to the highest bidder!

This post was originally written January 2, 2012 for the private blog of my writing group, Novel-ties.

Growing Pains

SPOILER ALERT

The holiday and its visitors are past. It was wonderful to have my brother’s four very energetic children romping through our lives these past days but the quiet that closed in after they left is pleasant, too, if not a little sad. The next holiday looms with no children;  I feel the slowing pace that has become December for me.

It makes me think of Aggie. She had faced the end of 1959 not knowing where Stella was, faced having to make some sort of holiday for Willie and Horace. Faced her own part in what occurred. Faced how unstoppable the freight train of our fears can be.

I’m a little afraid to put my hands back on the keyboard and say to Aggie, “Speak.” I never have thought of her as me until now. Being Mrs G, who lost her child by accident, was so much easier.

The truth is that I am all three women in this book.

I am Stella—scared and alone and separated from the ones I really want to be with.

And I’m Mrs. G—well-meaning and desperate, seeking comfort (or redemption) in a well-baked chocolate cake.

And now I know I am most certainly also Aggie—broken, rageful, so very scared that the stones I’ve kicked off the cliff in a huff will have a murderous velocity by the time they find a target.

This post was originally written November 29, 2009 for the private blog of my writing group, Novel-ties.