April 7, 2014

I went to the San Antonio Book Festival over the weekend to sign books at the booth of my publisher, Black Rose Writing. There were lots of reasons to go – my publisher asked, I have friends in the area, and San Antonio is one of my all-time favorite cities. Despite the cold, damp weather, I had a great time.

Selling books in a booth at a festival requires frenetic activity. You can’t just sit and smile. Like most writers, I’m a bit of an introvert. But when you’re interspersed among dozens of other writers and booksellers, you practically have to grab passersby by the lapels to get their attention.

My colleague, who was pushing his children’s book, got lots of moms and kids leafing through the beautiful illustrations. A novel is a tougher sell – people are much more uncertain if they’ll like it. I offered miniature chocolate bars and lollipops to folks. Since most people are polite, they’d listen to my quick pitch if they took a piece of candy. I described Saving Texas as a mystery featuring a newspaper reporter and a secessionist candidate for governor. I went into more detail if they seemed receptive. Set in Houston, San Antonio and West Texas! A love triangle, sex and killings! Only $16.95!

What you can’t tell buyers is how the book swallowed three years of your life. How you sat in a drafty kitchen on dreary London mornings and tried to write every day. How your characters overloaded your brain even while you swam laps in the local pool. How you wrote 60 e-mails to agents and book publishers who didn’t even bother to answer. How you finally found one perceptive soul who liked it. How solid and silky that first copy felt in your hands. Only $16.95? Priceless!

March 31, 2014

Last week, a big story dropped into the laps of Charlotte journalists when Mayor Patrick Cannon was arrested on corruption charges. It was the best kind of big story because it wasn’t a catastrophe. Nobody got killed, so there weren’t any sad interviews with grieving relatives. Bad behavior by a top politician even has a certain cachet this year, as evidenced by the popularity of American Hustle. The big story had some former reporters for the Charlotte Observer waxing nostalgic on Facebook about those special days in the newsroom.

I asked myself if I missed the days when a big story broke. The answer: Hell, no! In more than three decades in big newsrooms, I lived through so many big stories as a reporter and later as an editor. They started out exciting, quickly escalated to grueling and reached a zenith of never-ending. A big story that got covered pretty thoroughly on the first and second days in print went on ad nauseum, as the bosses ramped up pressure for bigger and sexier angles. The big story never dies – it never even fades away.

I feel exhausted just reminiscing about it. But I wouldn’t mind being the good fairy of the big story. I’d be in the newsroom, invisible, enjoying the inside details and the late-night pizza. I’d perch on the reporter’s shoulder, hoping that all the sources would return her calls, that she’d get a killer quote for her second paragraph and that she’d make her deadlines for print and online. I’d spray some fairy dust on the copyeditor to catch all of her errors and to come up with the perfect page-one headline. I’d counsel patience for the top editors, to remember that nothing ever reaches perfection and that the staff works really, really hard. Best of all, I wouldn’t have to hang around for days when the story gets old and boring.

March 24, 2014

Growing up, I looked forward to having children who would share my love of reading. I pictured myself reading Little Women to three rapt little girls, perhaps wearing smocked dresses in contrasting shades of pink and green.

But as most new parents learn, our offspring make monkeys of us and our rose-colored expectations. I had one boy. No pink smocked dresses would ever beckon, but I looked forward to reading adventures with the kid. I loved reading to Jeff the preschooler and buying classic books for him. At 4, I was thrilled when he began sounding out words in Dr. Seuss’s Hop on Pop. I rejoiced that I had a reader.

But as he started riding bikes and playing sports with the neighborhood kids, I noticed that the physical life was taking over. One rainy day during summer vacation, I remember asking the 8-year-old why he wasn’t reading a book. Jeff looked up at me innocently with his big dark eyes and explained it. “Mom, when you read, nothing moves.”

I still enjoyed reading to him at bedtime and usually picked out books that I’d loved at the same age. I got about halfway through Little Men, Louisa May Alcott’s sequel to Little Women, before he began to rebel. He found the saga of life at a boys’ school far too old-fashioned. Not much moved.

I still tried. When I was 14, I had loved the rebellious spirit of The Catcher in the Rye, so I recommended it to my own teenager. He was unimpressed. But about the same time, something wonderful happened. An older cousin mailed him a bunch of paperback science fiction novels, including Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. Jeff was hooked and started doing with science fiction what I’d done all my life – reading himself to sleep with a good book. I’d gotten the genre wrong, but he found his way to the books that spoke to him. Now he’s a scientist – a microbiologist – and still reading.

March 17, 2014

I just finished a classic mystery novel that got me thinking about villains we love to hate.  The novel, In a Lonely Place, written in 1947 by Dorothy B. Hughes, is a corker. Though it was written before I was born, it feels as contemporary as the latest version of the iPhone, as suspenseful as an episode of True Detective.

In a Lonely Place was one of the first mysteries ever written from the criminal’s point of view, according to ImPress, which reprinted it in a series called “The Best Mysteries of All Time.” Hughes wrote it in a spare, hard-boiled style known as noir, more commonly used by male writers of her time.

Dix Steele, the novel’s antihero, is chilling from the first page. He’s standing on a Southern California cliff, exhilarated by the beauty of the evening fog rolling in. What does he do with this feeling? He looks for a woman to strangle. He follows a would-be victim, but she escapes – this time. We learn that Dix, a young, attractive man who was a pilot in World War II, is restless and damaged, with a Dark Secret.

He runs into a war buddy, who he finds, to his consternation, is now an L.A. detective with a beautiful, discerning wife. Eventually they will play a key role in his unmasking, but not until the reader has been thoroughly gripped by 222 pages of riveting  suspense. The book, written tightly inside the serial killer’s point of view, is irresistible.

Why are we so fascinated by a protagonist like Dix? And what makes some villains better than others? My novel, Saving Texas, features three major villains. Two are men who are brought down by their corrupt use of money and power. The third is a bisexual Peruvian woman with a sordid past who loves to kill. She’s a cold assassin who happily wreaks vengeance on men, but feels remorseful after killing a woman. For some reason, my readers generally enjoyed this character more than any other in the book. Like Dix, she’s a killer with outsize appetites, but she somehow remains appealing. As a veteran reader and a novice novelist, I’m still trying to figure this out.

March 10, 2014

Carol Wall, a wonderful childhood friend of mine, has written an extraordinary memoir called Mr. Owita’s Guide to Gardening. When it was released last week by Amy Einhorn Books, I read it right away and it has stayed in my mind and heart ever since.

A little background. We moved to Radford, Va. the summer I turned eight. Carol and her family were our backyard neighbors and she and I immediately hit it off. We both lived through our imaginations. Soon, the ditch in the alley between our houses became the Sacred River Nile, and the abandoned garage foundation next door became the Secret Rock Mine, where we’d pulverize rocks and keep the dust (precious metals) in jars. We happily spent most of our spare time together until my family moved blocks away. I was two years older than Carol and as children do, we drifted apart.

I moved and so did Carol, but we kept in touch through our mothers. Carol married at 20, taught school and wrote occasional articles for Southern Living. I was busy with journalism jobs and later marriage and family. I knew that Carol lived in Roanoke, Va. Her sister Judy found me on Facebook last year and told me that Carol’s first book was coming out, as was mine. Once again, I felt the kinship of storytelling that we had so enjoyed as children.

But our books are quite different. Saving Texas, a suspense novel, is fiction based loosely on my journalism background. Carol’s book is subtitled How I Learned the Unexpected Joy of a Green Thumb and an Open Heart. It’s a clear, insightful memoir that equally broke my heart and lifted my spirit.

Carol’s book explores her friendship with a Kenyan man who became her gardener and great friend. When the book opens, Carol has been successfully treated for  breast cancer, but thinks of herself as “damaged goods.” She’s angry, fearful and hurting and her friendship with Mr. Owita over the next few years soothes her soul. She learns from his enjoyment of each day and “gracious acceptance of the handicaps and afflictions life had brought him.”

The book unfolds with the suspense of a good novel. Carol’s cancer recurs, her parents’ health worsens and she gradually learns more about the sadness in Mr. Owita’s life. I don’t want to give away too much, but it’s a beautifully crafted book that will keep you reading, guessing and hoping for the best.

Five years later, Carol is battling Stage Four breast cancer, and the complications from her latest round of chemotherapy will probably make it difficult for her to enjoy the accolades she deserves.

I suspect that “Mister Owita’s Guide to Gardening” will be a huge hit, if the reviews so far are any indication. Buy it – for yourself and for Carol.