Ute Carbone
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Inside the Writer's Garret

On writing and life, with a little chocolate thrown in from time to time.

Not a Nice Girl. A Good Woman

6/27/2016

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I grew up as a nice girl. I smile at people and hold doors for others. I’ve tried always to be likable. Nice is not a bad way to be. I believe in politeness, I hold that others may have different views from my own, I think we should be conscious of other people’s needs and wants.
The older I get though, the more I realize being a nice girl isn’t always the right thing to be. Nice girls never make waves. Nice girls never speak up. Not for themselves, not against injustice. Nice girls keep their own views and ideas out of sight. They swallow their anger; they smile at the world even while their hearts break. They take a back seat to those more vocal.
I’ve decided a better thing to be is good, to be loving, to be kind. Good women, loving women give comfort where there is little to be had. Good women don’t hide from emotions but face them head on. Good women strive to make the world a better place, which sometimes means being a beacon, which sometimes means speaking up against injustice or wrong.
When I think of my heroes, I see how many of them were not nice girls who did as they were told so as not to make waves. When Rosa Parks took a seat at the front of the bus, she made lots of people uncomfortable. It wasn’t very nice of her to rock the status quo, but she cared about people and the injustice done to them.  When Mother Theresa followed her calling to India, she stepped on few toes to get her work done. Some people didn’t much like a little nun telling them what to do. She did it anyway, because she knew in her heart it was right.  When Susan B. Anthony fought for voting rights for women, she upset a lot of people who figured women were better off at home. She did it anyway, because it was the right thing to do.
I’m not Rosa Parks or Mother Theresa, or Susan B. Anthony. Far from it, I’m just a writer who imagines things, thinks up stories and hopes you will like them. But I also aspire, with all my heart, to use those lives as an example of what I do with my own life. 
You don’t move the world forward by being nice. You do it by believing, by standing in the light, by trying hard to do the right thing. I’d like very much to leave the world a better place, to in some small way do my part in helping to move towards more understanding, less hate and divisiveness. This takes a certain amount of courage. It is easier to sit back and hide behind a smile. Easier to be complacent. Easier to be a nice girl.
Harder to be a good woman.
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The Least We Can Do. #Enough

6/25/2016

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I’ve been adamantly vocal about increased gun safety laws in my country.  It makes me angry to see all the nay-sayers who tell us we cannot change, no way no how, any of the laws around firearms. They have a million and one excuses and reasons: It will ruin America if we mess with the second amendment, it’s unconstitutional, it won’t do any good, other things (forks, knives, sticks, spoons, automobiles) are just as dangerous as guns. And wouldn’t it be better if we were all armed to the teeth? That way, the bad guys won’t get us. And the bad guys will have guns anyway.
I wasn’t sure why I felt so angry and so compelled to speak out against all this blather. I mean, there are plenty of issues to choose. Why this one? I don’t own a gun, so why is it important to me? I live in New Hampshire, grew up in upstate New York, both places where hunting is a part of the culture. I know when deer hunting season is and I’ve seen hunters in the woods all my life and never given it a second thought.
But I watched the shooting in Sandy Hook. Twenty-Six people died at the hands of Adam Lanza on that day, twenty of them were six year olds.  They died at the hands of a very disturbed young man whose mother, a responsible gun owner by all counts, had an arsenal of legal weaponry in her home. She never dreamed her disturbed son would harm her. She figured, somehow, that teaching him about guns would help him.  She figured wrong and twenty-seven people, twenty of them small children, died as a result.
I thought, after watching the terrible news out of Connecticut, after the tears and prayers and candles offered up for these families, that we would do something. Sandy Hook wasn’t the first mass shooting in my country. It wasn’t even the first in the year. Surely, we could see a connection between disturbed young men getting hold of assault weapons and gunning down innocents. Surely, we wouldn’t let these children die in vain.
We did nothing. The NRA and the gun folk said we could not.  They offered up all kinds of reasons why we could not and why it would do no good to do anything at all and why we should have more guns and not less.  Nothing was done and we had more mass shootings. In Oregon, in San Bernardino, in Orlando. Those are only the ones that come immediately to mind. There are more, twenty-three by a conservative count, so many that I’ve actually forgotten a few.
To say nothing was done is inaccurate, actually. Gun sales went up, particularly sales of AR-15 assault rifles. Some states made it easier for anyone to buy and carry a weapon. It did not, as the NRA suggested it would, make us safer. 
But something changed in the winds with Orlando, the largest mass shooting yet. Fifty dead and things got noisy again. Gun proponents rolled their eyes as they always do. But this time Democrats, at least, began to stand up (or sit down) for sensible gun laws. They fought for crumb so miniscule it was laughable. Not even for actual legislation, just to get a vote on legislation.  They did not succeed, but I hope they will continue to fight.
Yesterday, I got a link to this video from the folks at Sandy Hook Promise. It shows Chris Murphy giving a speech during the last few minutes of his historic filibuster last week.
Watch it and you’ll know exactly why I feel the way I do. Why we can’t give up the fight.  Because, in the end, it does not matter if you think it’s your American right to be armed to the teeth, it does not matter that you just say no to gun safety laws with excuse after excuse. It does not even matter that we cannot completely expunge the blood of gun violence from our country. What matters is that we put the lives of innocents first, that we do what we can to protect our children. 
Little Dylan Hockley, killed at Sandy Hook by a disturbed man who had access to an arsenal of weaponry, matters. Anne Marie Murphy was Dylan’s aide. In the last minutes of her life, she chose to comfort Dylan rather than run away.  She did the most courageous thing, the best thing, she could do, even as that very thing meant her certain death. In light of this, the least we can do is stop making excuses. The least we can do is our level best to turn the tide of gun violence. We begin by sitting in. We begin by not giving up.  
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To Write or not to Write. That is the Question

6/22/2016

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A recent blog post by Porter Anderson, about the response and responsibility of writers during difficult times, resonated with me. I’ve been wondering of late how much to write about politics and my personal beliefs on social media and here on the blog. In the past, I’ve always kept things neutral. If you are kind enough to stop by and read my musings, the least I can do is not offend you. I want, after all, for you to like what I write. I would like very much for you to buy and read my books. And, in truth, I am not a contentious person. I don’t get my jollies by pushing people’s buttons. I don’t like it when I’m confronted.
But lately, it’s been getting harder and harder for me to stay neutral. Because on some issues, I am not Switzerland. I do care deeply and profoundly about outcomes, about the paths we choose both here in the United States and around the world. To remain silent seems not only disingenuous, but also wrong. 
It is too easy to be complacent. Live and let live is a wonderful policy, and one I fully ascribe to. Except—and here’s the important part—when my complacency leads to the rise of tyranny or when it allows an injustice to go unchallenged. Because if I don’t speak out against wrong when I see it, if I remain silent, then am I not part of the problem?
Last week, I wrote a post about how I believe all assault weapons should be banned. This is a hot button issue for me.  A while back, I wrote about Syrian refuges in regards to the Paris attacks. Another issue I felt strongly about. I thought long and hard about posting either of these blogs, and then decided they were worthy of publishing.  I’ve decided I will post more such blogs.
I may lose some readers in doing this.  That will not make me happy. I would much rather build bridges than put up barriers. I believe in bridges. I also believe in open discourse. And I believe discourse means not only that I should write about those issues concerning me, but that I must.
Because the real reason I put pen to paper, the reason I sit at my computer every day to work on stories has very little to do with selling books. Make no mistake, I do want to sell books. The more the better. But the thing that motivates me to write and to keep writing has much more to do with examining the interiors of my own psyche, and my own imagination to uncover my truths than it does with commercial success. Most of the time, these truths coincide with the truths of readers. The very best compliments I’ve gotten are from readers who tell me my writing resonates with them.
To tell the truth, my truth, I must be honest. About who I am, what I believe, what I want for myself and for those I love and those I share this world with.  You may not always agree with me. That’s okay. I wouldn’t expect you to. I do hope, though, that you will appreciate the honesty. And that my one small voice in this big world, a world too often full of shouting and slogans and pithy sound bites, will light a small flame, somewhere, in someone else’s mind and heart.    

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Enough

6/14/2016

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Like most people, my heart was torn open after hearing about the mass shooting in Orlando over the weekend. This was the fourth mass shooting in the United States using an AR-15 assault style rifle in less than four years. I am frustrated at the rhetoric that has already started, the dance around the issue of gun control and safety.

We can offer up thoughts and prayers for victims, we can light candles, but these acts are nothing but vacuous and meaningless lip service until we ban military style assault rifles. If we don’t, we’ll be saying prayers and lighting candles for yet another set of innocent victims six months or four months or two weeks from now.  We can have moments of silence but we cannot and should not remain silent on this issue. We need to ban assault style weapons. We need to make them illegal for civilians to buy and sell and possess. And we need to do it now.

 I’ve heard all of the arguments to the contrary, I’ve listened and tried to see it from the standpoint of second amendment rights and the rights of responsible gun owners. But today, I’m calling bullshit.

Because, really, most of the arguments dug up time and again range from utter crapola to totally insane.

The oldest and biggest argument is that it is your second amendment right as an American to bear arms. It’s hard wired into the constitution. And nothing, nothing is going to pull that sweet little pistol with the mother of pearl handle out of your hands. That little pistol is as American as apple pie, she is how the west was won and she is yours to put under your pillow if you so desire. Thing is, no one is taking her from your grasp. This is not an all or nothing issue. This is a matter of degree. The first amendment guarantees free speech, but you are not allowed to incite a riot, you cannot sell child pornography.  The first amendment also guarantees freedom of religion. But you can’t extend that freedom to include human sacrifice. I don’t need to explain these first amendment limits; they are simple common sense. Why can’t we use the same sort of common sense when it comes to the second amendment?

Then there’s “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” By this logic, we can assume that if some of the club goers in Orlando had been armed the body toll would have been reduced. Imagine it, a noisy nightclub, loud music, bright lights. Someone opens fire and, at first, people have no idea what’s going on. It’s chaotic and crazy. Adding more bullets to the already bloody scene, bullets that are discharged at split second speed and can easily stray helps how, exactly?  How does it help to start shooting wildly at a shooter in a dark theater? And guns in classrooms, particularly near curious little ones, is a recipe for disaster.   

Another argument I’ve seen recently is that terrorists will find a way. The Tsarnaev brothers used a pressure cooker filled with nails, Timothy Mcveigh used a truck load of fertilizer, the 9/11 terrorists used a fuel filled jetliner. It’s true, crazy people hell bent on the destruction of others will find all kinds of creative ways to carry out that destruction.  But what you’re suggesting here is that because some terrorists don’t use guns we can’t do anything at all about those that do. Would you like to explain how we must simply throw up our hands and accept whatever happens to Sandy Phillips, whose twenty-four-year-old daughter, Jessica, was shot six times in a dark theater? Or to Nicole and Ian Hockley, whose six-year-old son, Dylan, was killed in spray of bullets while sitting in his  first grade classroom?

Perhaps my favorite argument comes from the NRA. These semi-automatic weapons are used for home protection and for hunting, they opine. Only, AR-15s are bulky and they tend to over penetrate. So, if you’re using it to kill the baddie who’s stealing the silver, you best be careful the spray of bullets doesn’t penetrate the wall and kill the neighbor’s newborn instead.  As to hunting, if you’ve got to use a semi-automatic to bag a deer or shoot a pheasant, you’re not much of hunter. Might not be the right sport for you. As to just shooting off a load of bullets on a badass mofo of a gun for shits and giggles; sorry pal. You can’t have your fun for the same reason I can’t build a massive bonfire in my backyard or race down the highway at 150 mph.  Find yourself another hobby.
 
There is one argument that does hold water, though. “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”   The AR-15 is just a tool. It does not have a soul or a conscience. It was Omar Mateen who decided to take his vile spirited hate to the Pulse nightclub in Orlando early last Sunday morning. It was Omar Mateen who chose to murder forty-nine innocent people.  Omar Mateen chose to use an AR-15, a precisely engineered tool specifically designed to kill large numbers of people with quickness and efficiency. The perfect tool for executing his plan.


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One way to start now is to join Sandy Hook Promise
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Walking with Eyes Open

6/13/2016

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I wrote and scheduled the post below before the shootings in Orlando this weekend.  I wasn't sure I wanted to post it--I'm feeling hurt and angry and this moment of beauty post wasn't quite what I wanted to talk about. But then, maybe a moment of beauty is just what is needed, maybe healing begins with the small things.
​Make no mistake, I do have more to say on the mass shooting.  I'm still sorting those feelings and maybe, once I do, I'll write another post.

I’ve always been more comfortable out in the woods than in a crowd. I often walk to clear my head, to reconnect with my spirit. There’s something to being out in nature. This is my church, I think, my connection to something bigger than myself.
But, face it, some walks are better than others. There are days when I’m too tired or preoccupied to really see the world around me. I suppose this post is a reminder to myself, to keep my eyes open. Because when I do, the world is full of beautiful moments.
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These wild irises decorated the bank of the pond, along a path I’ve walked so many times that I’ve lost count. Seeing them, I felt as though I’d been given a gift and maybe I had. I’ve been so worried about the state of the world, about how we abuse each other and our planet, about how little I can do to change this. I am, after all just one person, a dot, a blip.
No one planted these flowers, they were not carefully planted in a garden, not cultivated, not watered and weeded. And yet here they are, growing wild along the banks.  It’s true that I don’t control the world.  These iris, creating beauty along the banks, tell me I don’t need to.

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#WFWA Summer #Reading Challenge

6/11/2016

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Two of my favorite words appear in the title of this post—summer and reading. Yup, I know I’ve spent a lot of time writing scenes set in cold and frosty places. But I love summer. Warmer weather makes me want to relax in the lounge chair in my back yard. Or better, in a beach chair with an ocean breeze.  And what better way to relax than with a good book?
If you’re looking for some great reads for your summer down time, and if you love women’s fiction, I’ve got the perfect group for you. The Women Fiction Writers Association is having a summer reading challenge. There’s a wonderful long list of books to choose from, including a few by yours truly. The idea is to read as many as you can and to recommend the ones you love to your book loving friends.
The challenge began June 1, so there’s still lots of time to join in. There are weekly prizes to be won and when the challenge ends after Labor Day, there will be a grand prize.

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Joining is easy, just log into Facebook and join the group. You can find them here:
WFWA READING CHALLENGE
There’s a reading list for the challenge on Goodreads and you can find it here:
Goodreads WFWA Book Shelf
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#Book Thirteen #amwriting

6/6/2016

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PictureAlta, Utah is the setting for The Last 15. This pic of Baldy Chute by Baileypalblue -https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5778791is
Well, I’ve done it again. Gone and written another novel. This is my thirteenth book. I’ve always believed the much maligned thirteen was a lucky number, so I’m hoping this will be the one—the book that finally takes off and grabs enough readers for me to hit the top of the Amazon charts.
Of course, "done" is a relative term. Really, what I’ve finished is a draft. Now I’ve got to polish it and get a few good writer friends to read it over. Then I’ve got to do some rewrite, and write a blurb so irresistible that every agent and editor on my list will be clamoring to take a peek.  In the process it will get edited multiple more times—before it ever sees the light of day.
Still, I’m feeling pretty excited about my new baby. It’s called The Last Fifteen and it’s the third of a series I’m working on, a series I’ve called “Wild Snow”, at least in my own head. All three books are contemporary romances set in the world of skiing and ski professionals. The idea began with Dancing in the White Room, featuring patrolwoman Mallory Prescott and the love of her life, extreme skier PD Bell. The book was published by Turquoise Morning Press a few years ago. The Fall Line features champion ski racer Mia Whitmeyer and her love, ski coach Creech Crèches. Creech’s brother, Adam, is the hero in The Last Fifteen. He’s an avalanche patroller who gets buried when a control avalanche goes wrong. The story’s heroine, Gabi Rossetti rushes to his rescue and headlong into a love affair.
Sadly TMP, like so many small presses, had to close its doors last fall. This means Dancing is currently back in files and unavailable to readers. I had already finished The Fall Line when this happened, and begun work on the third book. I could have abandoned the project, I guess, but I’m far too stubborn to give in. So, now I have three books and whole lot of hope that I’ll be able to find a good place for them.
That is a project for another day. Right now, I’m kicking back with a little wine and toasting The Last Fifteen before I roll up my sleeves and get back to it.

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    This writing journey, this life,  is a long road full of pitfalls and wrong turns. Also, incredible beauty, kindness and friendship with those I've met along the way.I'm so glad you're here to share the road..


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