Nicola and "The Writer Lady"

As of this month, I have entered my upcoming novel “Maypops in September” in several competitions, the results of which should be so exciting! Of course – and perhaps inevitably – the submissions have caused a bit of anxiety, which has spilled over into the lives of my characters . . . Well, here is a glimpse of what this looks like:

John Rush sits in the slatted sunlight leaking through the window blinds, guitar in his lap, cigarette forgotten in the ashtray. He’s working out the bumps to Heart Shaped Box and watching his wife, who lies supine on the floor in front of him. She’s in sweats and a dago tee, blonde curls haloing her head. Biceps flex and knot – she lifts the kettle bell over her head, lowers it again, slowly.

                “The Writer Lady’s coming over again today.” Bob O’Neill leans in the kitchen doorway, tall coffee cradled in his broad hand.

                “Ah God.” Nicola lets the weight drop over her head, rattling the floor, huffing her indignation. “She wants to work on me.”

                “Easy, babe.” Rush’s fingers pause over the strings and then find the melody again. “She’s just trying to help.”

                “I’m not sure I even want people to like me.” Nicola sits up, pushes her hair back with the flat of her palm. Sweat glistens on her shoulders and arms, darkening her firefighter tattoo. “Why do they have to like me?”

                “It’s all about her Amazon and Goodreads rank.” Bobby flops on the other end of the couch and bats at Rush’s cigarette smoke. “You’re holding the rest of us back.”

                “Bob.” Rush cautions his friend with one word, brows raised minimally. Picks his cigarette up and inhales deliberately.

                “Not true!” Nicola pulls an ugly mug, bottom lip thrust out. “And why the hell am I the main character anyway? I don’t even like talking to her.”

                “Work on it, sugar.” Rush exhales a nicotine cloud, ragged plume settling just in front of Bobby’s face. “Might be important, right?”

                “Not.” Nicola scoffs. “Look, the writer lady has a real job when she’s not hanging with us. Why doesn’t she just stay in her stupid fire station and leave us alone?”

                “I dunno.” Bobby has settled behind the smoke screen, cobalt eyes half closed behind his glasses. “She found Sophie for me. That was good.”

                “Yup.” Rush is strumming his guitar again, not looking at his wife. “And she lets us have all the booze and sex  and cigarettes we want. That’s worth a lot.”

                “Fine!” Nicola tugs her hair in frustration. “What do I have to do?”

                “Tell her who you are.”  Rush’s words flow over the music; in the next room The Writer Lady catches her breath in anticipation, and fumbles her Tablet out of her purse. “Just tell her who you are.”
 

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New to Lucy Crowe? Get to know Nicola and Rush in her first novel "Sugar Man's Daughter," and join the mailing list for blog posts and updates on "Maypops in September"

 Sugar Man's Daughter

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Maypops and Loblollies: Share Your Thoughts On My Query Letter

Maypop Flower Inspired Art by Liz9923

Today I typed the word “Loblolly” at the top of a page and took a deep breath. A big, lung-expanding breath like the one the captain of the swim team sucks before he dives into twelve feet of crystal blue water. 

 

“Beneath the Loblollies” is the third installment of my Rush series – wheeee! – and I’ve already typed the first word to the first outline, so I am well on my way. 

 

For me, there is no favorite aspect to writing. I have never not written, so I only notice the process when, for whatever reason it stops. Like an emphysemic gasping for air, I hunger – suddenly and acutely - for something not there. 

 

Until I open a new document and brush my fingers over the keys. And breathe again.

Book Two, “Maypops in September”, reached its conclusion about a month ago, and while that felt, on some level, like a death in the family, it also holds the promise of a new beginning. I am launching my beloved with all the oomph I can muster behind it, and I won’t be a bit surprised when it makes the NYT bestseller list. 

 

To that end  . . .  the search for agents begins! Query query query. Social media and conferences and online classes, and I am really enjoying this so much more than I had anticipated. Today I am sharing the joy by enlisting your help, oh loyal and awesome follower. Beneath, I have attached the query, which – minus its opening paragraph, which is uniquely tailored for each target agent - could also serve as a back cover blurb. 

 

Would you open my novel based on the following?

 

Detective John Rush knew well that nobody dies without complications. A death, any death, grew tentacles that strangled and bruised those standing closest to it.

John Rush arrives home from the city still bathed in the aftermath of a brutal car-jacking, certain that his new position with the rural Drug Task Force Team will be, in comparison, the proverbial piece of cake. He has failed to account for the tumultuous nature of life on the lake, and the reminder comes all too quickly in the form an unexplained death and a missing teenager.  Rush suspects that his new bride and her sister – recovering addict and sometimes ghost whisperer – are more deeply embroiled than they would have him believe, but when the girls close ranks nothing short of an arrest warrant will break them.

Life is further complicated by the arrival of Rush’s volatile daughter, currently on the outs with her mother and less than enthusiastic about building a relationship with Rush’s new family. When she steers unerringly into the midst of a drug dealer’s scam and pronounces herself in love with all the energy of her sixteen years, Rush is admittedly out of his depth.  While he would normally turn to his wife for commiseration, he is all too aware of her current devotion to her firefighter career and is reluctant to press her. Will family ties withstand the constraints of two unique and very demanding jobs? And will Rush prevail against the dark appetites a seemingly aboveboard town father?  

 

“Maypops in September” is a literary fiction work that unflinchingly explores that darker side of human desires even while it celebrates the resilience of love. At 85,000 words it is comparable in size – and the stand-alone sequel to - its predecessor, “Sugar Man’s Daughter”, which was published by Rainstorm Press in September of 2013. I am currently seeking representation - with high hopes of finding a new home for my work - and I believe that my experience has left me with an understanding of the publishing and marketing experience. 

 

Please feel free to search me out on the web. I can be found at my author’s site, http://www.authorlucycrowe.com, my twitter page, https://twitter.com/AuthorLucyC, and on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/AuthorLucyCrowe.  My first novel can be found for sale on Amazon, http://amzn.to/1Bhuy2Q  as well as Barnes and Noble, http://bit.ly/1oStP3a. Thanks so much for your consideration!         

 

Okay, don’t pull any punches, people! Let me know what you think!

Anatomy of a Bad Man

 “You gonna cut down a tree that size, you better be sure you bring a very big saw.” 

 He tips his head to one side and pins the camera with an emotionless stare, eyes like a cobra's fixed on a bunny. His voice? Pitch perfect, mellow as butterscotch schnapps. He has the smooth inflection of a Baptist preacher, utterly mesmerizing. A cruel mouth and a chilling intensity running just beneath the surface of his cool.

I give you Boyd Crowder. Whether he’s preaching the Good News or elbow deep in his latest massacre, we love him.

           

 

Who watches “Justified”? If you don’t, and you have even the teeniest creative bone in your body, I urge you to tune in. Just for Boyd. Here is a bad man the likes of which we haven’t seen since Bruce Dern gunned down John Wayne in front of God and everyone on the Sunday night movies. Except we hated Bruce. It was clear that we should – after all, he was The Bad Man.

            Boyd Crowder smudges those lines, and as a writer I find this feat most intriguing - not to mention well nigh impossible. Boyd came to us, of course, through the impeccable writing skills of the late Elmore Leonard, and has only been enhanced by the talents of Walton Goggins, who brings him to life on the screen - six feet of rangy height and hair-on-end.  Is that insanity in those cold eyes? Most likely.

            What’s to like? It may just be the voice. I am a sucker for a beautiful accent, and Boyd’s lovely southern tenor is to die for. But I think it’s more than that. The writers have taken great care to keep us, the viewers, invested in the life of this character. This is to say that they have gone to a good deal of trouble to make him a full-fledged, three-dimensional human being.

            Nobody did that for Bruce Dern, and I’m sure it makes all the difference.

             We have trailed Boyd now through four seasons, marking his progression from white supremacist to Born Again and finally to all out bad-ass. We’ve watched him gain and lose fortunes, find and discard religion and maybe even fall in love. Through it all, we have come to know him - and yes, even to like him – and I have come to believe that a shared humanity is the best possible feature a writer can bestow upon a bad man. The lesson, I think, is to make The Bad Man a Real Person. And real people suffer all sorts of real woes, from financial ruin to failed love; these tragedies allow us to bond with The Bad Man and even to sympathize with him.

            Not to mention, of course, if you make your Bad Man as cool as Boyd, everybody across the board is going to love him.

Even if he is rotten to the core.

~*~*~

Related Post and Video:  Tips on Character Development (video featuring clips from "To Kill a Mockingbird")

Murder, Romance, and Mystery: The Bare Bones of "Maypops"

Here’s What’s Coming! The tangible reward for all these long, long winter days spent indoors with nothing but time on my hands. What is it? Hmmm . . . A mastery of P90X and the resultant ten pound weight loss? Pursuit of online continuing education hours in my chosen profession? A Cleaver house complete with tidy cupboards?

These flowers are Maypops - aren't they the brightest, 

most bizarre flower you've ever seen? Also known as 

Passion Flower, and crucial to my story,

but that's all I'm saying for now!

Alas, none of the above. (Lol! How well do you know me?)  But rest assured, dear reader, December and January (and ahem, the previous year and a half) have not been wasted. And so, without further adieu, I give you . . . The Sequel.

Okay, this announcement may be somewhat premature, trapped as I am about two thirds of the way through. But I’ve become a firm believer in early promotions and so - well in advance - I want to set forth the bare bones of Novel Two.

I loved my people so much I couldn’t leave them! And, in fact, I hoarded them all away from "Sugar Man" and stuffed them into “Maypops in September.” (Don't worry, they fit.) Rush is classically cool as ever, tattooed and grungy and totally hot. And Benny is absolutely incandescent beneath her own spotlight, putting her “gift” to use in all sorts of dubious ways. Bobby has a much stronger role, and although I hadn’t intended for him to fall in love (he’s way too smart-ass and oh-so-jaded) when Sophie walked into the Valley Booze, he fell - as he would say - like a hammered sheep. There was no saving him, and very quickly I decided I didn’t want to; this side of Bobby has been so much fun to work with.

What else? Murders, of course. Plural. Romance – the sort of sexy, gritty, streetwise love that my characters seem to excel at. More EMS and fire! My crew got tired of not having enough to do, so they’re featured a couple of times in this novel, in some pretty major ways. I love these guys, such big heroes; Nic is up for lieutenant, so exciting!

Mystery, undercover narcing, and oh yes, Delilah. Johnny’s daughter has every bit of his smarts and cool, plus a heavy dose of angst and a lovely flair for dramatics. Fatherhood isn’t a role that Johnny has dabbled in as much as he should have, so he’s more or less on a learning curve.

Big crime, although I haven’t quite solved it yet.

But I will! “Maypops in September” should be reaching completion by summertime, and I’m so looking forward to dressing it up with a gorgeous cover and tossing it out there.  Get ready people, here it comes!

Contest Entry: Nicola and The Whopper

I love contests! So often, they are the key to meeting other authors and occasionally, even publication.  This one found me via Facebook, and I couldn’t resist. I apologize in advance for the decidedly unholidaylike theme, but I was on a deadline, and try as I might I couldn’t fit Christmas into the Horror category that I had decided to write under. Well, you’ll see – I’m including the links as well as the story. My contribution fits under number seven in the Horror section - not really horror at all, but lots of fun. Hope you enjoy!

Writing Contest Rules

Writing Prompts -Horror

                                         

              ~ Nicola and The Whopper ~

            Nicola’s affinity with frogs had long been established, even before she found The Whopper in the fire station on the day of the drowning - her childhood summers spent largely on the shores of Blue Goose Lake with spotlight and gig in hand, blonde curls caught back with haphazard butterfly clips. Bikinis Tap paid a flat ten dollars per pound for the unfortunate’s hindquarters, and Nicola had purchased books with the proceeds – Steinbeck and Burke and later Sookie Stackhouse.

            But she had never seen a frog the size of The Whopper. He emerged from beneath the gear rack while she was removing her helmet - nudged her boots crosswise and leaped past her, enormous legs trailing.

            “Good Lord.” Burwell passed a gloved hand over his bald head and left a sooty smear just above his eyebrows. “There’s a whopper, kiddo.”

            Nicola had already captured her prey - gray-green and greasy-wet, its warble more like death rales than anything else.

            “Look at that mouth,” Burwell bent close to peer into the pop-eyed visage. “Opens a little wider, he’ll eat you right up.”

            “I’ll put him in my car for now,” Nic twisted away from her coworker with the monstrosity clutched to her chest. “Take him home and turn him loose in the lake.”

            Nicola’s half-sister Benny called at lunchtime, when the EMS crew was still hashing the details of the drowning – her voice so agitated, Nic could practically see her finger- combing her cornrows and rolling her eyes.

            “That thing I did last night, remember? With the frog eggs and the poppet?”

            Nonsensical magic, Benny’s forte; Nicola closed her eyes against a wash of real fear. She would not reply....

"The Nice Writer Lady"

 


"Once you use those quotation marks, it's not you the writer talking, it's you the writer listening."—Albert Ríos

  

“Okay, guys.” I’ve gathered my characters together in a corner of my mind resembling the dining room of Nicola’s big old inn. They’re pretending to listen to me. “The verdict’s in. Ya’ll swear too much.”

“Y’all,” Bobby corrects me. He’s a Tar Heel, after all; he knows. 

“You always fu.... misplace that apostrophe, darlin’,”  That was purposeful. He’s grinning at me, blue eyes laughing behind his Lennons.  At least he’s listening.

Rush and Delilah are at the piano, working on arrangement to “Everybody Hurts.” It’s gorgeous. And furthermore, it’s nice to see them getting along so well.I almost hate to interrupt them, but our meetings have become infrequent since publication; these are exceedingly independent individuals, and by now – seventeen chapters into the sequel - they are running their own show.

“Attention please.” I clear my throat in a futile bid for the spotlight. “About the swearing. You guys drop the F bomb way too often. You take the Lord’s name. Some of my readers are upset.”

“Then they ought to jump into my shoes for a day.” Bobby cracks a Budweiser and takes a long draught while I refrain from comment. “I spent four hours in a dumpster last night waiting for a bust that never happened. Came home stinking like moldy tacos and kitty litter. Sometimes ‘gee whiz’ doesn’t cut it, see?”

“Ha.” Sophie’s smile dimples her narrow cheeks. “Try tending bar if you want to test your tolerance levels, big guy.”

“No, the writer lady is right about this.” Help from an unexpected quarter; Delilah speaks to the piano keys.  “You’ve got kids in this house.”

“Give it up.” Rush elbows her without missing a note. “You’re worse than the rest of us.”

Delilah sacrifices harmony for retaliation, punches her father on the arm. “Angelo? Remember him?”

“He’s in bed. And the nice writer lady is only worried about her Amazon rank, kiddo.”

Not fair. I slink from the room, closing the door on their argument and leaning against it to get my breath.

We’ll take this up another time. In the meanwhile, gentle reader, try not to judge.

 Sugar Man's Daughter

November Tool Kit

January - at least in Illinois - requires a kit. Snow shovel, extra blankets, Carhartts. August is all about sun screen. Flip-flops and margaritas. April is umbrellas and rubber boots.

            But November, as far as I know, is the only month that requires a mental tool kit. From the dawn of the first gray day (with your optimism already circling and gasping like a goldfish in the toilet bowl) to the final death rales just after Thanksgiving, this month is a struggle.

            A lot of it has to do with sunshine. Which there tends to be less of when daylight savings time kicks in at the beginning of the month. There’s not much good to be said about living in the dark, but, well – shadows are good for hiding. Once my youngest leaped out at me from behind the oak as I came down the sidewalk after work. I splattered twelve ounces of pumpkin latte down my front and we laughed like loons for half an hour. 

            So, tool number one, and most important – laughter. Don’t lose it in the dark.

            Faith, people, faith. Play “Here Comes the Sun” on your iPod and try to believe it. Do not for any reason play “Bookends”. Simon and Garfunkel injected a downer into their harmony that seeps beneath your skin and lays there like a bruise for days. I’m sure there’s a warning label somewhere on the album cover.   

            Search out good winter fruits. Pomegranates are phenomenal! Which, okay, I know sounds absolutely overboard, but have you ever had one? Juicy and crunchy all at once, and what a gorgeous color, never mind the red stain beneath your fingernails. In salads, in desserts, or just out-of-hand, these are sweet and wonderful, and the best thing about them is that they don’t become available, at least around here, until several weeks into the fall. Welcome November!

            Oh wait, did I say that?

            Early evenings are made for reading. Go ahead and be greedy about it – it’s not like you can do yard work! This time of year is awesome for disappearing into a good Victorian mystery – the fog, gas lamps, horse drawn hearses, all so fitting. I can almost feel Jack the Ripper lurking in the shadows, and while there’s nothing uplifting about that, it makes for a great diversion.

            So – laughter, faith, winter fruit and a good book. I think we can make it now. Let me leave you with these lyrics from Kimya Dawson, which I try to keep at the front of my mind on the really gray days. 

When I go for a drive I like to pull off to the side
Of the road, turn out the lights, get out and look up at the sky
And I do this to remind me that I'm really, really tiny
In the grand scheme of things and sometimes this terrifies me

But it's only really scary cause it makes me feel serene
In a way I never thought I'd be because I've never been
So grounded, and so humbled, and so one with everything
I am grounded, I am humbled, I am one with everything

 

 

            Oh, do look this up! There is much more to it, and the tune is as fun as the lyrics.

            Happy November!

911 Next Generation

I gave my blog over to a couple of my characters today to better address the issue of 911 Next Generation. This is Delilah’s first “Cop’s Kids” blog, and Bobby is her guest of honor. Let her know how you think she’s doing!

                                                                     Bobby Blogs

          

  I’m Delilah’s first victim. She’s managing a blog called “Cop’s Kid” and I’m her opening guest. “What the hell is a blog?” I say. “Sounds like something you slop down your front at the truck stop.”

            “It’s just little diary entries about your life.”  She doesn’t look up from her keyboard; her fingers are doing a crazed hunt and peck pattern.

            “Nobody wants to know about that. Why don’t you talk about something important?”

            “Such as?”

            “911. You can’t text it.”

            The fingers flutter and pause. “Of course you can. And besides, lame-o.”

            Delilah is fifteen. That’s the problem.

            “Your local dispatch center isn’t set up to receive texts. Or pictures. Or blogs.” I tap her head with my knuckles.

            “Shut up!” She swats at me. “What happens if I send one?”

            “Poof, it’s gone. How the hell do I know? But they don’t get it, okay?”

            “Seems like this should be national news so we all quit making mistakes.”

            “You don’t know the half of it, baby.” She’s got a picture of me up on her screen, looking tough behind my Ray Bans. Ha. “Your generation screws up the call all the time.”

            “Because we feel entitled and we have too much. Blah-blah, what else is new?”

            “You call for help on your little cell phones and fail to give an address or leave a call back number.”

            “Aren’t you supposed to figure all that out?”

            Delilah is an honors student. Scary, ain’t it?  

            “The best the dispatcher can do is to triangulate to the nearest tower. Which in your case is four miles away just outside Wapsi.”

            “Seems inadequate.”

            “Not. Just give them your address.”

            “My address is like a million digits long, thanks to you people.”

            Wow. Really? And this from a cop’s daughter.

            “It’s actually simple,” I tell her. “The roads are set up and numbered in a grid pattern, starting with 00 on the south and on the east and working up from there.”

            She’s stopped typing and her face is crinkled in consternation.

            “Or you can just read the number on the blue sign in your yard.”

            “Bite me,” she says. The fingers are tripping again; she’s brought a county 911 map up already. “All right, I see what you’re saying. But if I use my GPS I don’t need to know any of this.”

            “Until it fails.”

            “It doesn’t.”

            I give up. “What did you want to talk about?” I say.
            “Nothing, I’ve got enough now.”

            Trouble with girls that age? You can never tell if they’re pissed or just preoccupied.

Chicago Writers Conference 2013

I love Chicago! Lake Michigan was blue enough this weekend to have swallowed the sky, wide and flat and shimmering all the way to the horizon. Rachel and I ate pasta at an outdoor table, stood in the spray of Buckingham fountain with our shoes in our hands and sampled the best coffee in the world at Lavazza. 

Congress Plaza Hotel is stately and elegant, all plush blue carpet and antique light fixtures. It’s not hard to picture Al Capone in this setting, cocktail glass in hand, cigar poised between cruel lips in that big moon face. The doorknob on our bathroom rattled in the middle of the night, and for a full minute I couldn’t breathe, lol.

Much to learn at the conference! We brushed elbows with publishers and marketing professionals, and were relieved to find them so friendly and informative. Regular people after all! We scribbled notes like mad, and I had, for just the briefest moment, a sense of time just whooshing by us – only a day or two ago, I was coloring at the kitchen table with this little girl, and now here she is, a bright and lovely and so-grown-up college girl. But that’s another story entirely - and of course we took pictures! Enjoy!

"Sniffing the Flowers" : Writer’s Guide to Stress Management

Writing a book, I’ve discovered, is only the proverbial tip of the ice burg. Creating the story, the setting, the characters who live in your heart as surely as your own children do – all fluff compared to what follows. The search for a publisher (and yay, I found the most wonderful man in the world, Lyle Perez, and the awesome Rainstorm Press) the creation of a blog, a facebook page, a presence on Linkd, Twitter and oh dear, who else . . . all become a prominent fixation on your day-to-day horizon.

            Which brings me to the meat of this post, and what is likely to be a most unpopular approach to ultimately keeping your sanity. Here it is: take a breath. As when you’re doing yoga and you realize your chest is about to burst. Breathe. Understand that you are enmeshed in what is perhaps the loneliest and most self-serving profession known to man, and so, you are in danger of becoming isolated from, well, life. The very thing you are writing about.

            Steinbeck took Charley travelling for a reason.

            I have two very different jobs, and yet I’ve discovered parallels in the way that each encroaches on my existence, nearly to the obliteration of all else. A neighbor’s house fire, or an infant’s imminent birth can yank me from my home life at any time. Sounds horrible, but the truth is, I love this. I live for it. And my characters (who are lately crying for promotion) have the same demanding shrill as the pager; sometimes I can’t sleep for the noise in my head. I have to respond, and if you are a writer reading this, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

            In my EMT world, we say, “Breathe. Smell the flowers and blow out the candles.” Another lovely parallel because it applies to both of my professions. Candles and flowers are all about the passage of time, and taking notice of them means just that. Don’t let life run away from you – children grown, tasks abandoned, leaves turned to gold – without noticing its passage. Take time to recharge, and while you’re doing so, look around you and realize how beautiful everything is.

            Fuel for the next book.

Keeping Pieces (Short Story)

HIPPA demands that we don’t talk about our calls, except in a very generalized fashion, and I adhere to this rule strongly enough to have tweaked the call that this story is based upon very nearly into the arena of unreality. So, here’s what is real and true – the spirit of the child, the sorrow and shock, and finally, the redemption.

For me, this is a springtime story, and no matter how many springs go by, my mind still worries the memory; and I still see this boy when the air begins to gentle into long warm days. Every EMT carries a few pieces around with them – these are mine.

 

Keeping Pieces

I took a boy on the ambulance once, and he left a piece of himself there with me. I’ve been carrying it around ever since, and sometimes in the black early morning when I am on my way to work, he morphs out of that piece and sits beside me whole. On those days, the scent of spring in the air is only a trick of the mind, lilacs and pussy willows as far away as tomorrow.
            He shimmers in death, fresh from another world that my soul knew in infancy. A place that the cold and practical adult, the professional, has forgotten, and wants no part of now.
            But anyway.
 When I knew him, he was just one of us; on the last day that I saw him, the blood seeping through his wrist bandages was tangible and real - the only color in an otherwise gray day.  I knew him, I guess, in the way that most adults know their children’s friends. He was a familiar face, a bright redhead in my yard on beautiful blue football mornings, an easy grin and a maturity that set him a little apart from the other boys.
The kid on my cot that day bore no relation whatsoever to that other bright child. My boys – the boys who decorated my furniture with their lanky forms, ate my food, made me laugh - were at that age where they were as immortal as Huckleberry Finn, and they hadn’t cried in years. If the Jabberwocky lived under their beds, he did so unacknowledged.
            But I can tell you now that two weeks later, the monsters won, and this boy was dead. His mother found him curled in the tub like half formed reality, bled out, already gone.  And in my profession, helplessness is something that seeps beneath your skin; it lays there like lividity, a large black bruise that won’t go away. And so. The pieces.
            You carry them around with you, and you work at them a little, rubbing them the way that a worried thumb will smooth a lucky stone. Sometimes you take them out and look at them, turn them in your palm, and they still look the same. Your failure mocks you.
 I should have been able to save that one.

                                                                  * * *

            Spring.
If not this spring, then the next.
It will come when you are able to let it, and everything will smell so sweet that you have to stop crying. You can’t throw those pieces away, but they seem to weigh less now. Go outside, and look at the branches of the trees against a smooth dove colored sky. Take your little girl on a bike ride, and watch the magical play of sunlight in her hair. Listen and remember. Where you came from, to whom you belong.
            Understand that it’s all right to carry those pieces around; you couldn’t get rid of them now if you tried. They soaked into your skin and they course through your veins, and they live. In you.

            We carry each other until we get to the other side.

"Words Like Dandelions" : Breaking the Author’s Rulebook

           This week is devoted to new beginnings. Not only because it’s spring – blooming time, reaching time - but also because I have worn myself out with novel revisions and am ready to chuck aside the old in favor of tabula rasa, the clean slate. “Maypops in September” is my second novel, sequel to “Sugar Man’s Daughter” and ever-present thorn in my pride. Today, I am launching my third run at a cohesive manuscript, and am feeling thoroughly pig-headed about seeing it through. It will flow!

Copyright Karen Ahuja

To that end, I am reading James Lee Burke in my spare time.

And when I finish with him, I think I’ll go back to Steinbeck, and perhaps Harper Lee.

Here is why: when you study writing, you will very early on be bombarded with rules. “Never open a book with weather.” “Limit use of adverbs and adjectives.” “Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.” “Remain in one point of view.”  Etc, etc, etc. Paralyzing, you think? Ah yes, how on earth to write within these limitations?

            The answer, of course, is that you can’t. (Incidentally, another no-no is the word “that”!)  
Relax, kick back for a bit and read the masters.

            “Grapes of Wrath” opens, I’m afraid, with a very lengthy and detailed description of corn crops dying. Oh dear, the very first sentence – “To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma , the last rains came gently.” Sounds rather  . . . well, a-hem, weather-related. And exactly whose point of view are we in? Did he just use a pesky “ly” word?

            Who could forget Harper Lee’s lovely opening, “Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired town when I knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop . . .”? Uh-oh, rain again. Sigh. And truly, such over-use of descriptive words! “Old, tired, rainy, red”! Could she not have found a more subtle approach?

            I hold James Lee Burke in the same high esteem as the aforementioned, and I don’t think I’m alone in doing so. But in diving into his “Glass Rainbow” (a sensation, incidentally, akin to leaping into a cool, deep pond mid August - which is to say, an utter release of tension) the reader is immediately confronted with several sentences which are roughly the size of any normal paragraph. Run-ons, you say? Likely, but aren’t they beautiful? Do they not enhance the reading experience?

            And isn’t that what this is all about? I say, write the way you long to write. Pick your words with the abandon of a toddler in a dandelion field, and inhale their sweetness. Wring all that you can from them. We are writers, after all. Words are our currency; we should use them as such.

            Okay, enough said, lol! Here is the new revised opening to “Maypops in September.” I have begun with yet another taboo - a prologue, gasp! - and peppered it, I hope, with enough descriptive words to stupefy even the most seasoned critic.

  Prologue 

Benny Jones woke to the sound of rain, and the slow awareness of blood pooling in her mouth - a raw, salty taste, and there was far too much of it. She fought the strangle of airbag over her face, whimpering when her fingers encountered the slick gushing beneath her nose, and at last finding the seatbelt release. The thud of her body against the jeep roof made a sound like a sandbag slapping mud, and for a time she lay still, absorbing the blow and allowing the blood passage through slack lips.

Gasoline fumes, at first subtle, finally drove intrusive fingers down the back of her throat; she belly-crawled through the driver’s side window and onto the bridge, not noticing the bite of broken glass in her elbows. The night vibrated with the discharge of wind and water, lightning quick as strobes bursting blue over the swollen creek.

Rafe Giancoli was shrimped in the mud on the far side of the bridge with his chin tucked to his chest; Benny approached him, toes en pointe and breath trapped in her chest. His eyes were asymmetrical, the left lid drooping at half mast, and a lacy pink froth trembled on his lips before the rain washed it sideways; his breathing was ragged and moist.

            A turquoise bead bobbed in the puddle next to his head, and Benny hunkered down to reach for it, rolling it absently in her palm. Rafe had been beating her when he lost control in the back-road potholes. Big hand at the back of her neck, up beneath her cornrows, driving her face into the dash so that her nose popped.

            Benny stood slowly, pocketing the bead and sucking her bloody lip while her eyes rested on the dark swell of wet road going into town. At last she crouched again, fixed her hands in Rafe’s armpits, and tugged experimentally.

            His heels dragged, carving furrows in the mud, but overall the disposal was so much easier than it should have been; the black water swallowed him with barely a resulting ripple.