Open Book: Where I Live

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

Dec 12, 2022 Tell us about something local to where you live. Have you ever made it part of your stories?

_______________________________

I live in a pretty standard American housing development. Neither the poshest nor the most rundown, with about 4 varying house designs from the 1990s throughout most of the neighborhood. We call our house "Sunshine House" because it has yellow siding and large windows that admit a lot of sunlight. 

So far, Sunshine House and the neighborhood she's found in have not made it into any of my novels, but I do have a set of short stories I'm planning to release in 2023 that take place in "Shadow Hill" which is definitely a version of my neighborhood and some of its denizens. 

They are weird tales, and I've really enjoyed writing them. It's fun to imagine less mundane backgrounds for the very mundane happenings of my neighborhood: 

A few of them have been published, so you could check them out now if you're interested! 

Lawn Wars was the first to be published, first in a magazine, and then in an anthology of works from that same magazine. I wrote it because my across-the-street neighbors were obsessive about mowing their lawn…in real life, they probably just were a little bored in retirement. In my story, the reasons are a little more sinister. 

The Girl in the Pool, my daylight ghost story, came about because another neighbor has a swimming pool that mostly sits empty and I enjoyed imagining why that might be. Prospective Press published it in one of their Off the Beaten Path paranormal anthologies. 

The Mind Plays Tricks appeared in Dark Recesses, an online magazine, earlier this year. You can read it on the site (no purchase necessary). I saw a couple of women walking together one day, and put it together with some of my musings about whether I was seeing things or not seeing things and ended up with a tale about the nature of reality that really pleased me. Luisa is one of my favorite characters. I might revisit her story someday and write more for her. 

Margaret Lets Her Self Go has been published twice. Once by Hinnom Magazine and again in an anthology from Abstruse Press: Outsiders Within. That one really came out word play: herself vs. her self (the space makes a difference), and surprised when it became a bit of cosmic horror that questions what is real and what isn't. 

Others in the collection haven't been published so far, so I look forward to getting them into the hands of readers. I'm hoping to make this my next project after I turn in the fifth and final novel in the Menopausal Superheroes series to the publisher. 

I'm not sure how the HOA will feel about Late Bloomer which suggests that there might be something paranormal going on at those board meetings. Maybe the H stands for Hecate, instead of Home. 

It's fun, though, and I expect I will write other Shadow Hill stories in the future. I enjoy the intersection of the domestic and mundane with the otherworldly and strange. 

(check out the other posts in this blog hop via the link below): 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

IWSG--Holiday Catch Up

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking. If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG. This month's co-hosts are: Joylene Nowell Butler, Chemist Ken, Natalie Aguirre, Nancy Gideon, and Cathrina Constantine!


December 7 question - It's holiday time! Are the holidays a time to catch up or fall behind on writer goals?
__________________________________________

This year Chanukah and Christmas intersect, which compacts my holiday season a bit (we celebrate both at la Casa Bryant). That's both nice and annoying. I think I like it best when Chanukah falls in early December and is complete before it's time to get ready for Christmas. It was really cool the year that Chanukah and Thanksgiving collided, but I think that only happens about every 7,000 years, so I probably won't see that again. 

image source

Now that my kiddos are a little more independent (at ages 15 and age 22), time off of the day job gives me more leisure time than it used to. I might be called upon to play Mom bus, or get an offer to go do something fun, but the kids can and do largely entertain themselves, giving me the chance to sneak off to my writing oasis and muck about in my world of words. 

An interesting shift here lately has been that I can't sleep past 8:00 a.m. no matter what (hurray? menopause!), but my kids don't want to do anything until after noon, which means I can get 3-4 hours without being asked for much--just dogs who want a walk and a husband who might distract me. I gotta say, it's pretty nice. 

image source

So for those of you struggling with younger kids and finding quiet time for writing, I'll offer that it has gotten easier with time. And for those of you who never had kids, I see what you meant about the freedom that affords! 

Assuming everyone stays healthy, I anticipate a little catch-up time this year, at least until the grandparents come to visit, then all bets are off! (But grandma and grandpa time is wonderful in its own right, so I'm not complaining). 

Here's hoping your holidays feed your creative life, too, and give you the right balance of family and "me" time. 

Imaginary landscapes for my imaginary friends: An Open Book blog hop post

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

Nov 28, 2022 Do you use real or fictional cities in your writing? How do you incorporate them into the story?

My Menopausal Superhero series takes place in an imaginary southern city, sort of an amalgam of several cities in the region. I made the decision not to use one particular real city because I didn't want to be limited by reality in that sense, or stuck researching things I don't know about a city. 

So, I invented Springfield and have avoided saying which state its in, though careful readers could see that must be somewhere around North Carolina, South Carolina, or Virginia because of the travel times to other real places that are mentioned in the series. 

I named it Springfield because I was after that "this could be anywhere" kind of feeling--there's a Springfield in 34 of the United States, and 58 of them worldwide. Most ensemble superhero stories seem to center around a particular city, and I wanted to have that same feeling, but set it someplace smaller than a New York City analogue like Gotham or Metropolis. 

I used a similar strategy for naming each of the Menopausal Superheroes. I decided what year she was born and looked up most popular baby names for that year. 

So, Patricia "Lizard Woman" O'Neill was born in 1955. 

Helen "Flamethrower" Braeburn was born in 1950.

Dr. Cindy Liu was born in 1946. 

Linda (later Leonel) "Fuerte" Alvarez was born in 1965. 

Jessica "Flygirl" Roark was born in 1980 (she went through menopause early, as a cancer survivor). 

All their very common names are intended to give an "everywoman" feeling to the characters. All the heroes had in common that lived in Springfield, which put them in contact with Dr. Liu--the mad scientist who started it all. 

Springfield is a medium-sized city, big enough to have urban parks and urban crime. Museums, theater, restaurants, and local monuments, but not likely to have a large tourist trade. Probably Springfield didn't make the news much until some of her citizens developed unusual abilities. 

So, that's my imaginary city. Do you like writing and reading stories that take place in real places? Or do enjoy made up places? Or like me, maybe you love both! I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

My reading life since July

I started a new job in May. Not just a new job, a complete change in career, moving from classroom teaching to working mostly from home as a content strategist for a big financial company. 

Of course, that set everything else in my life topsy-turvy, too--from what time I get up in the morning, to when I do my creative writing, to what I eat for lunch, when and how I exercise, and of course, how much and what I read. 

Looks like I haven't written about my reading life since June! Unusual for me--since I usually do a monthly round-up of what I've been reading. 

As of today, I'm 2 books behind on my reading challenge (I always make a goal of 52 books a year, one per week).  Not too bad considering all the changes in my life. 

Screenshot from my Goodreads Reading Challenge 2022

I'm still reading primarily on audiobook (either on Audible or Chirp), on Kindle, or on audiobook with reference to the ebook edition, depending on whether I expect to want to take notes. Paper books continue to be difficult for me because of arthritis and eyesight. Another reason to love being a 21st century girl--my limitations don't have to constrain my reading. 

For a little while there, I was reading GIANT books. Partly, this is the fault of my First Monday Classics Book Club, which chose David Copperfield for August and Anna Karenina for October. We tend to do that--if the first Monday is a holiday, we don't meet that month, so this year we didn't meet on Independence Day or Labor Day. When we've got 2 months between meetings, we pick a tome. Each of these took me fully a month to read. 

Between those two tomes, I read one short one (The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle), one medium one (The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno Garcia), and yet another tome (The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish). 

Those three tomes were probably why my book count fell behind, but I'm really glad I read all three of them. The Weight of Ink was a work of historical fiction that pulled me into a world I had never really read about before, the immigration of Jews from Portugal to Amsterdam to London during the Inquisition, with fascinating main characters in both the past and present storylines. David Copperfield was a sweeping story of growing up poor and making something of one's self and Anna Karenina was a sweeping story of growing up rich and losing it all--proof that getting what you want isn't the same thing and finding happiness. 

The Ballad of Black Tom had been on my TBR for quite some time, having come highly recommended by several friends who also enjoy horror and dark fiction with a Lovecraftian bent. It was excellent. And I picked up The Beautiful Ones because I LOVED Mexican Gothic by the same author. It proved similarly atmospheric and lyrical, so I'll definitely be seeking out more by Silvia Garcia Moreno. 

I read more nonfiction than usual this fall. My daughter had read Rage Becomes Her by Soroya Chemaly as part of a summer course, and recommended it. Reading it led me to A Girl's Guide to Joining the Resistance by Emma Rose Gray. Both books speak to the rage that has taken over a lot of women in the past decade or so, as certain elements of our society have worked to squash the gains we have seen in civil and legal rights since my grandmother's day. If you're looking to channel the energy of your anger in helpful directions, you can find some ideas in these two books. 

Also in nonfiction, I read The War for Kindness by Jamil Zaki. It's part of work-related book club I'm participating in (I know; I have a book club problem--I just love the experience of talking about books with other people who've read the same books SO MUCH).  I also started Atomic Habits and plan to pick up How to Make Sense of Any Mess: Information Architecture for Everyone and expect to finish those before the year ends.  All three of these are part of my attempt to connect with my new colleagues and understand corporate thinking. Even if I find some of the thinking simplistic, I do find that they spark good conversations. 

I think I'm a hard sell when it comes to "self help" and related genres--my skepticism is sparked when the solutions are too easy, and I'm over fifty--so some of the ideas are old hat for me. Hardly as eye-opening as they think they are. 

Beloved by Toni Morrison was the November choice for First Monday Classics, which meant I was reading it in October. Very thematic. This was my third or fourth time reading the book and it's still harrowing. Truly one of the best ghost stories I've ever read. It was made even better this time as my audiobook was read by Morrison herself. 

I also picked Weep, Woman, Weep by Maria DeBlassie as a bit of seasonal reading for my neighborhood book club. It plays in the mythology of La Llorona, and I'd been interested in it since last fall when I participated in a reading for Strong Women, Strange Worlds with the author. 

I also was a guest at Multiverse in Atlanta, Georgia this October--with guest of honor Mary Robinette Kowal. 

I was already an admirer of Kowal's Lady Astronaut books (The Calculating Stars, The Fated Sky, and The Relentless Moon). I was thrilled to get to meet her and participate in her Q&A (she talked about how her puppetry work feeds her writing and that was fascinating!). 

She described her newest release, The Spare Man, as "the Thin Man in space" and I was sold since I adore Nick and Nora Charles. 

I bought it before I left the con and started listening to it on the way home. Kowal also narrates her own work, and does beautiful voicework, so it was a real treat. 

Right as I finished that book was when I realized that I was behind on my reading challenge and started choosing short works that were already in my Audible library. So in short order (roughly one book per day), I read: 

• Lotería by Mario Alberto Zambrano
• Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor
• Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
• Unexpected Stories by Octavia Butler

All of them were well worth reading and left me thinking in different ways. I probably enjoyed Remote Control the most, and will probably spend the most time pondering Convenience Store Woman. 

So, that's where my reading time has gone since summer. How about yours? Anything I should add to my endless TBR? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

Cats and Dogs and other unexpectedly contentious things: An Open Book blog hop post

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

Nov 21, 2022 Big internet fight: Are you team cat or team dog? (or something else?)

People do like to squabble about silly things sometimes, don't they? I don't really have a side in this one, though. Currently, the non-human animals in my house include one snake and two dogs. But over the years, I have shared my home and my heart with a rabbit, four other dogs, some frogs, a hermit crab, a bunch of fish, and five cats (not all at the same time). I'm a grand-mum to my daughter's two cats. They've all had their good and bad qualities. 

I might lean slightly more toward dog-person than cat-person, but I think I would have both if they could get along together. No cats in my immediate future though, as the husband is allergic, and I like him more than I like cats. I'd love some more reptiles, and a goat if I had the yard for it. We'll see what the future holds. 

All in all, I feel pretty fortunate to have had animal love in my life. Pets have seen me through a lot of sadness and loneliness and brought even more joy to happy times in my life. They are better companions than many humans. 

I'll finish with a poem I wrote for the first dog I adopted in my adult life: Häagendog. 

A Woman Needs a Dog

A woman needs a dog

at times like these,

when she has watched too many sunsets alone

and, waking to an empty pillow

in the middle of the night,

cried.

Dogs understand

the desperation we all have

to be loved, how the need of love

can make you abase yourself

and be glad of the opportunity.  

A dog knows how oppressive

it can be to be alone,

yet how important it is

to be independent and strong. 

They appreciate that there is a time

to play in the sun, 

a time to sing to the moon,

and a time to rest your paws

on silken pillows

and wait.  They know

the beauty of indolence,

and the joy of comfort in their own skins. 

And a woman with a dog 

is never alone and never unloved.

Do you have a strong opinion about cats vs. dogs? Or just want to tell me about animals you've loved? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Dealing with feedback: An Open Book blog hop post

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

Nov 14, 2022 How do you deal with negative feedback? Do you have tips for critiquing other writers’ work?

I value feedback on my work. 

I'm a part of two regular critique groups--one in person and one online--because having other eyes on my work is so helpful to solving the puzzle. I learn a lot, too, from providing feedback. Having to examine my own reactions and be specific about where I got lost or why a scene isn't working for me helps me avoid falling into those same pitfalls when it's my turn. 

That's feedback in a safe environment, though, with people I have long-term relationships with and where reciprocity necessitates kindness, or at least professionalism. 

There's also public feedback, in the form of reviews or social media comments. That's a completely different kettle of fish, and sometimes it really stinks. 

image source

I accepted long ago that my work isn't for everyone, but a lot of reviewers and commenters do seem to forget there's a person on the other end of that work. They can be belittling or accusatory in their critiques, so it's important to develop a thick skin and learn to sort the wheat from the chaff. 

There's a balance to be found, as there is in so many things, both in receiving and giving criticism. 

image source

When receiving it, I try to listen without pushback or oversensitivity, to allow for the possibility that the complaints are at least partly legitimate. This is easy with my critique partners, because we have long-established relationships, but hard with random members of the public, when it can feel like an attack, especially if you run across the comment unexpectedly. 

That's why I only wade in and read reviews periodically, and never if I'm already in the throes of self-doubt and low confidence. I do still read them though. I know some authors don't, but I watch for themes, so I can learn and make each book better than the one before it. 

image source

When I'm the one giving critique, I make sure I come with a heart to help. I think about how I would want to hear a critique and try to give my fellow writers the same consideration. Whether I'm writing a review or offering feedback in a writing group, I try to be fair and balanced, explaining any biases I have that color my view and pointing out what is done well as well as what didn't work for me. 

How do you handle giving and receiving critique in your life? What makes it easy or hard? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments! Check out the rest of the blog hop in the link below. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

When Characters Text: An Open Book Blog Hop post

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

Today's question: Nov 7, 2022 There don’t seem to be any universal rules for indicating texting in books and short stories. How do you handle it?

Texting hasn't really come up in my books that much so far, though I've seen it in other books, where entire pages of dialogue represent a text conversation. 

In my Menopausal Superheroes series, I've mentioned that texting is happening, but summarized the conversation rather than quoting it. I've used ordinary dialogue conventions for the few bits I've quoted fully, like so: 

From Going Through the Change, book 1

It's an interesting question. I've seen books that present it in imagery, so that the page actually looks like texting screen, like these superhero group chat memes (I love these things). 

It could get confusing though, if the formatting got jumbled when you moved from reading on paper to reading on a digital device or something, and I'm not sure how that would work at all in an audiobook. 

image source

But if it's just a few quotes, I think I'd still just write it out using ordinary dialogue conventions, but add something in the sentence to indicate that it's a text. Texting is definitely one of the most popular ways that people communicate here in the twenty-first century, so I'm sure some kind of standard will eventually be settled on to represent those conversations in books. 

Jane Austen never had to think about things like this! 

Do you have any opinions about how texting should be represented in books? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. And don't forget to check out the other posts from my fine colleagues at Open Book via the link. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter