This month's question asks me to imagine my writing life after 'success'. 
Only one problem--how do you define success? That slippery little goal post keeps moving. In the very early days of my writing adventures, I imagined success to mean finishing a novel.  Once that goal was accomplished, success became having a novel published. And once that goal had been reached, success was having either a best seller or a prize winner. That last goal? It's kinda half done, I have won a few awards, which of course moves the post to bigger awards. And best seller? Well, that one seems a distant goal at present...
Lately, I've been working on redefining the idea of success altogether. I've been trying to remember how very far I have come. Of course, I still have goals. Everyone does and probably everyone should. But, too often, we forget those old goal posts--the ones we passed by a while ago.   I can remember sitting in a writing class where, when we introduced ourselves, several of my classmates mentioned that they'd finished writing a novel. As a short-story writer and a poet, I was blown away by the very idea of such a feat. It seemed daunting. That older version of me would be incredulous if I told her she would be working on novel number 16 at some point in her future. I try to remember this when I fret over sales, or when publication doesn't go as planned, or when one of the million detours along writer road inevitably happens. Success, as some one wiser than me once said, is what you make of it. 
​How do you define yours? 

Speaking of  success, my romantic comedy The P-Town Queen has a new publisher, a new cover and a new 'author'. Well, not really a new author, it's being re-released under my pen name, Annie Hoff!
​Click on the cover for more info. 

I've got to say it. I kind of love this month's insecure writer's question--What's the strangest thing you've ever googled? I love it because I know writers and research. We often joke about the weird stuff we've looked up online. We hope the FBI won't show up at our doorsteps because we were trying to figure out how to make a bomb that would blow the roof off an imaginary city hall. 
I've had my share of strange google adventures over the years.  It's hard to pick out a strangest moment, really. Questions arise. I may be writing fiction, but I always try to be accurate with my details about how things work or used to work. There was the time when I had to figure out how to make sausage. Literally. The time I set sail on a clipper ship. Most recently, I had to do a google search for sex festivals. (Yeah, they're a real thing.)
Sometimes great ideas show up when you're looking for something else. While I was writing The P-town Queen, a romantic comedy about a down on her luck oceanographer and a chef who is running from the mob (which will soon be re-released under my pen name, Annie Hoff), I needed to know about beached whales. 
Nikki, my main character, is a biologist. As I was once a bio major, I understood that not much would gross Nikki out. Her research assistant, Parker--who is a chef (it's a long story) gets grossed out easily. Which makes for some good comedy. The story is set in Provincetown on Cape Cod. The summer before I wrote the book, there had been several whales beached along the bay. I did some research and discovered that, though every effort is made to save these animals, occasionally one dies.  Which leaves a large whale carcass on the beach. How do you dispose of such a carcass? My inquiring mind needed to know. And my muse was gleefully imagining that, whatever it was, it would turn the stomach of squeamish Parker.
I talked about the research with friends, and my friend Sherry wondered aloud if I'd ever heard about the blown up whale. I hadn't. I googled it. Sherry was kind enough to send me a you-tube link (which isn't quite google, but close). The video was diabolically gross and funny, perfect for the story I was writing. And so, the blown up whale became part of the book, maybe the funniest part of book.   

Here's a bit of the story from The P-Town Queen, as told by Nikki:

The cop stared blankly at Max. “Dr. Silva,” I said, holding out my hand. “Massachusetts Bay Commission.” I wasn’t part of the commission strictly speaking, but with Ned’s incessant need for publicity, who’d quibble
when there was a dead whale body stinking up the beach? The cop brightened as soon as I said the magic words.
“The fish folks?” he asked.
“That’s right. These are my colleagues.”
“Oh.” The cop glanced around as though trying to decide what to do with us. “I think we’ve got the whale situation covered.”
At that point, a guy in a jacket labeled SWAT came over. Our new cop friend introduced us.
“Oh, good,” said the SWAT man, a guy named Herman LeBlanc. “Just the experts we need.” Then he asked, with all due seriousness, how much TNT did we, in our expert opinions, think was necessary to blow up a
whale carcass. “We’ve got ten tons under her,” he said, “but we’re thinking we ought to put down another ten. We want to make sure we get her good, in small enough pieces so the tide can take her out. If we can manage it.”
Max looked like he was going to have an apoplexy. He put his hands to his head and called the whole idea  imbecilic.
I, on the other hand, realized that we could call them imbecilic all we wanted. Somebody wanted to blow up a whale and, come hell or high tide, they were going to blow up a whale. Besides which, I do have a little bit of bad girl in me. “Ten more ought to do her,” I told Officer LeBlanc

To read or not to read.
It's a question that has been asked and discussed in every writing group.  My opinion? Of course, you should read. Read a lot. Read all the time. Read cereal boxes and road signs and newspapers and blog posts (yes, especially blog posts!). Read poetry and prose and writerly essays and good books in whatever genre you write and good books in genres you wouldn't dream of writing. Read some bad books, too. But read. Then read some more.
As you can no doubt tell, I have a strong opinion on the subject.  When I started this writing journey, years ago, by writing poetry, I devoured the poetry of others. I wanted to learn the secrets of masters--how did they turn those words into something beautiful? How did they, to paraphrase poet Billy Collins, make deer magically appear on the lawn? By reading, I absorbed some of these lessons. I learned how to make rhythmic sentences. I learned the importance of precision--use the right word, and the world opens up, use the right words, and the phrases start to sing.  Oh, they don't always. On some days it feels the words sit lifeless on the page and don't even convey the right meaning. But practice, while it will never make you perfect, does make you better at putting words together. And who better to learn from than the masters?
The same is true of prose. Ever notice how authors like King and Roberts draw you into their worlds with such ease that you don't even know how you got there? Learn how they do it. Read them like a writer. What tricks did they use to immerse you?  Try those tricks for yourself. See what happens.  
We can learn from each other, too. In the creative writing workshops I taught, we would read our newborn work to one another. A big part of this process was to honor the writing, and to teach students to honor their words. But another part was learning from one another. Someone writes a great string of dialog, and soon another student is ready to try and do the same. Someone turns a beautiful phrase and we all get our socks knocked off and resolve to try and write something beautiful. Reading is contagious that way.
The argument against reading goes something like this--how can I be original if I am influenced by other writers? To me, this is a false argument because it assumes that creativity lives in a vacuum. It doesn't. You don't pull ideas from thin air. They come from somewhere, a seed, an idea. Creativity is how you spin it. Creativity is the quilt you create from the ideas and thoughts and images and music that make up your world. Why would you not include reading in that world?
To those who are afraid they'll be a bad copy of Hemingway, or a bad copy of (fill in your favorite writer) if you read them too much or too often, I say stop worrying. Even if you do, for a short time, seem to sound like these writers, your voice will be and continues to be your own. Because you are not a  man who lived in the early part of the twentieth century nor are you a carbon copy of whoever your favorite author may be. Your experiences, your life, your thoughts, are uniquely your own. They may resemble those of others, but they are not and will never be the exactly the same as others. And so, you can't write quite like Hemingway. You can't write quite like anyone else except the writer you are. 
So keep reading. And keep writing. 

Immerses the reader in the story and doesn't let 'em come up for air until the last page. "Gasping for air" Oh yeah. It's that good."  5 stars,  InDTale Magazine

     
Coming October 9

Dancing in the White Room was originally released back in 2014 with a skier on the cover. This seemed appropriate, since the book is set in a skiing world. The hero of the story, Bell, likes to push the envelope when it comes to descents on ski. 
But this book is  women's fiction at heart, it is about Mallory's struggles as a single parent while Bell is away chasing the next steep mountain, about her relationship with Bell, and the nagging question of how much that relationship has cost her and how much it is worth. This is certainly more central to the book than the idea that Bell is a skier. 
So when asked about covers for the re-release, I thought it would be good to emphasize those themes, particularly that one of motherhood. This new design is quite different from the old, but I think it says something vital about the story. I like it a lot. I hope you will, too.
​

Dancing in the White Room is the first of a series of Wild Snow Novels. It will be available for sale in October 2019. Watch this space for details.
For more information on the book, go to the Dancing in the White Room page of this website. 

Writing a book is a complicated process. Like a good stew, there are a lot of ingredients that go into the mix.  We often talk about character, which is arguably the most important element of story. Without good characters, you have cardboard cutouts going through motions. In other words, not anything worth reading. We talk a lot  about plot too. It is, which is, in many ways, the easiest of the elements of a story to define. There's no doubt that having something for those great characters to want and/or to overcome makes for a worthwhile read. A third essential element, place, is often hidden in the background. Like the onions in the stew, it is seldom talked about, but vitally important if you want to tell a tasty story. The sense of place is, I believe, one of the most underrated and often underutilized parts of story writing.
Place itself can be a character—think of Jack London’s To Build a Fire, where the protagonist isn’t a someone but a something. The story is rooted in the artic and surviving the elements is what moves the character forward. The stakes are extraordinarily high: overcome the elements or die.   Change the setting to New York City, or to the rainforest in New Guinea, and you lose the storyline. Not that you couldn’t write a story about survival in the city or in a jungle, but it would be a far different story from the one London wrote.
Of course, place isn’t always as obvious in how it informs a story as in To Build a Fire.  I think of the small Maine town that Olive Kitteridge inhabits, or the down-on-its-heels mill town that is Empire Falls. The characters in these stories are deeply embedded with a sense a place, even if the place is in the background and the influence it has not blatantly obvious. Place is still essential, and as with London's story, remove or change the place and you irrevocably alter the storyline. 
To ignore the where of your story is to leave a large chunk of it on the cutting room floor. There is tremendous potential in space and time. Used well, it becomes more than a backdrop for story, it becomes an active ingredient, an integral part of a character’s makeup.  Sometimes, it even becomes a character itself.
When writing, I think long and hard about my character's  challenges and how they will meet those challenges. And I  also give a lot of consideration to  where they live in time and space.  
Does setting inform your WIP? How? If not, can you enrich your story by adding this important ingredient?

I've posted a new gallery of summer photos at my Life In Pictures website.  Check it out here
https://utecarbonephotography.weebly.com/
​

 while back, in the not-too-distant past, I had a chance to hear Toni Morrison speak at an awards ceremony. She was receiving a MacDowell award for lifetime achievement in the arts on a hot August afternoon. 
My friends an I had come for Ms. Morrison specifically. She was famous, after all, a big star in the literary world. A Pulitzer Prize winning author, a Medal of Freedom recipient.  As most, I was familiar with Ms. Morrison's work. I can't say I was a super fan,  but I understood how good those words were. How she could take prose and make it fly from the page, make it land hard in the heart, make it memorable. I suppose I wanted to know her secret.  How do you create flight in writing? How do you reach out and touch hearts? How do you fill words with such power, the power to shift the interior landscapes of people from all walks of life?
What I discovered was this. It is both simple and it is complex. Much like Ms. Morrison herself. What I found was a truly human human being, an older woman by then, up on the podium on that stifling hot August afternoon. She spoke about her own life and her struggles. She made it personal and in so doing, made it universal.
She talked about how the Bluest Eye came to be--once upon a time, a long time ago, she had a young friend who wanted blue eyes. Now, Morrison went on to tell us, blue eyes would have looked terrible in the young girl's black face, like a piece from the wrong puzzle. And the little girl had a beautiful face, with lovely brown eyes that fit perfectly. But blue eyed girls were better, you see. Blue eyed girls were beautiful and loved. So the little girl prayed to God each night that he give her blue eyes. And each morning she woke up, looked anxiously in the mirror and was disappointed. Until she decided that she could no longer trust God, because he wasn't giving her what she most desired.
The simplicity of this story touched me, a woman with blue eyes. I don't understand what it is to be black, but I surely understand what it is to want something you covet and cannot have. A stick thin twiggy-like willowy model of a  figure would have been my wish when I was younger, something I could never have achieved without resorting to Anorexia and growing a few inches. I knew what it was to have prayers unanswered and my faith shaken.  And, in telling the story, Toni Morrison allowed me to connect my own wants to that of the girl in the story. I understood blackness just a little better because of it, and the sadness of wanting so hard to be something you are not. Because the something you are is not is valued more than the something you are.
This is the heart and soul of good storytelling. Taking the specific and making it universal is an art form all in itself. It is a goal worth striving for. It is the art Toni Morrison perfected over her lifetime and we are all the better for it.
Toni Morrison died Monday, at the age of 88. A daughter of the great northern migration, she lived through segregation and civil rights. Her words flew into our hearts and into our minds. Where they will remain for a long, long time. God speed, Ms. Morrison. You once said that to fly you had to let go of all the shit holding you down. You're free now. Fly on.  

As I sit in my garret writing this blog post on a hot July day, I've got to say I'm feeling kinda hopey. I don't always feel this way. A string of rejections can cause despair, a project that just isn't moving forward frustration. But, once in a while, if you stay with it and you're lucky, something plus something actually adds up to something. And when it does, you start to remember all the reasons why you sat yourself down and began typing a bunch of words that added up to a bunch of sentences that, eventually, over time, got to look something like a real completed novel. You remember why you sat down and rewrote and revised and then revised again, until you got to the place where you'd taken it as far as you can go. And, even then, the story wasn't completely finished but you heard a little voice in your head--saying closer, your closer, you are almost there. 
You remember why you felt such despair when the book contract got cancelled, when you were left sitting in the cold with only a pile of novels and you, metaphorically at least, considered lighting them aflame because the conflagration might just keep you warm enough to continue.
Each book is a journey, some journeys more scenic than others and some more fun. Some are long and arduous. This is the story of one such journey.  The life and times of one book that I wrote a long time ago, a book that's been there and back again. 
The book is called Dancing in the White Room. For marketing purposes, it has been called both women's fiction and contemporary romance. 
It's  the second book I ever wrote and one I did not set out to write on purpose. Let me explain. A long time ago, I wrote my first book. I polished it and polished it again. As I was revising, I took a writing workshop, the same kind of workshop I would later go on to teach. The workshop's focus was on first draft writing, and since the book I was polishing was past the first draft stage, I decided I'd write a few short stories. So I played with a few ideas.
I get ideas everywhere, and the idea for Dancing in the White Room came, as stories often do, from a coming together of a few different ideas from a few different places. First, I wanted to use my experience as kid--I grew up at a mom and pop ski area--which had a big influence in my young life. I spent some time doing ski patrol work and I've been a lifelong ski enthusiast. So this was sitting in my pocket, saying use me I'm kinda interesting. Problem was, I had an idea but I did not have a story. Until...I read Into Thin Air, a book about a tragic climb gone wrong in Everest in the 90's. I knew nothing about climbing or the climbing world, but it struck me that it was related to the ski world I did know about. And something had struck me--a short paragraph written somewhere mid-book about what lousy spouses climbers make. And I began to imagine the woman left behind. A character named Mallory who was in love with a man named PD Bell came along.  I had my story idea.
I began writing. Short stories have pretty tight structures, beginnings, middles and ends built around a premise. After a while I released I wasn't working with just a premise. I was building a world. And building a world meant I was, gulp, writing another novel. I thought about scraping it as too much at the moment--I was still revising that first novel-- but I decided to keep on writing. And soon, I had two novels.
I was on a novel writing roll, so I wrote a few more novels. I'd send my manuscripts out, get some nibbles and ultimately get rejected. Until, one day,  I found a publisher. A book got published, then another. I dusted off Dancing, revised it yet again and....got a contract!
It was edited and revised again. It was published. I got excited about the story and wrote a few more books to make a series. The second book was just about to go to the editor when the little publishing company closed it's doors. I got the rights back and the book was back on my computer's unpublished file. It was not a good time for me. Sigh.
But, fast forward, and another publisher has popped on to the scene. It's a really tiny enterprise and it consists of people I have worked with before. I published a rom. com under my pen name with them last December. And, in October, Dancing in the White Room will get a second chance at a book life. It's been a long journey, but I'm feeling pretty hopey right about now. 

Because my husband and I had the pleasure of visiting Lousia May Alcott's Orchard House this past weekend, I thought it would be appropriate to write a post about her, and about my own writing struggles for ISWG this month.
My inner critic, Zelda weighed in against this choice of topic. For one, I am not a die-hard fan of Little Women. I liked the book well enough when I read it years ago, but I didn't fall head over heels in love with the book. Same goes for the recent PBS series, which I watched and enjoyed, but which would not make my best ever list. Also, Zelda  opined, it is rude and braggadocios to in any way compare yourself to a member of the literary canon when you so clearly are not of the same caliber.
Point taken. But there are similarities to my writing and Alcott's. Her words would likely be called 'women's fiction' today, because they are intimate portraits of family life. I like those themes and consider myself a 'women's fiction' writer.  
While touring the house, I felt a sort of kindred spirit with Louisa, who never really thought her writing, or her looks, or anything about her was monumental. In fact , Alcott's  publisher did not think Little Women was anything special and Louisa agreed. It took the publisher's 14-year-old niece, who read the manuscript and fell in love with, to convince both Louisa and the publisher to go ahead with the project. A good decision, it turns out, as it brought both fame and fortune to Louisa May Alcott's door.
Raised by parents who were strong believers in the greater good, she had little use for personal gain and used her money to support her family, taking no more than necessary  for herself.  Sadly, she was not in good health when fortune came her way. After contracting typhoid fever during a stay in Washington DC, where she worked as a nurse to treat the wounded during the Civil War, she was treated with calomel. This was standard treatment at the time, but the medication contained   mercury and it was later surmised that her continued ill health was due to mercury poisoning.
By most accounts, she didn't care much for fame either. When reporters and such came knocking on the door of Alcott's Orchard House, she often said she was the maid and that Miss Alcott was not receiving visitors. A portrait of Alcott hangs in the house's parlor. When Louisa first saw the painting, she suggested it be hung behind the door. 
Of course, beyond the words she put to the page, we can't know Alcott's thoughts. But from what I learned, I find they mirror my own and those of many writers I know. There is a need to write, even as you understand that whatever you write will likely not be earth shattering or brilliant. You write anyway, because the act of writing is so much more important than the promise of fame or fortune. And who knows? Like Louisa, fame and fortune might find you and catch you unawares. 

I got a message from facebook today that it was my friend Sue's birthday. Maybe I'd want to wish her many happy returns of the day? If only. The message, innocuous and obviously impersonal, left me bereft.
I'd never met Sue. Like so many of my writer 'friends', I knew her only online. She and I had been members of the same online writing community years ago. We got closer, writing wise at least, when we did a writing project together. It was Sue's idea--let's take a single premise, sketch out a couple of characters, and throw in a few odd facts and then retreat to our garrets. We'll each come up with a novella length story. Three of us took up her challenge. My take led to "The Whisper of Time" a novella-length story I never would have written but for Sue's bright idea. Sue wrote a horror story, Heway House, which was published after she developed it into a full length novel.   We'd kept in touch since then, each of us writing and publishing with small publishers.
There are quite a few people from what many of us now call 'the old place' that I would call online friends. They've often helped me along the way of my writing journey. Like real friends, they offer support for my work as I offer support for theirs. We've share some of our joys and sorrows over the years, too. But the truth is I don't really know them. They tell me, and others, only what they want known. I'm not being critical here, I do the same. Real, in deep personal stuff is often too raw to be shared online. I'm lucky to have a great group of real life friends and a very supportive husband for the deep dives. Online, you can never know the heights of someone's joy, or the depths of their personal despair.
​A few weeks ago, Sue took her own life.  I remember her, and will always remember her, as a kind and gentle spirit, always ready with an encouraging word, always willing to help out her fellow writers in any way she could. And, even though I never knew her, not truly, not really, she leaves an empty space behind--one of the candles that lights the way down my path has been extinguished.  I wish I'd known her better.  I wish I could have been a better friend, a real life friend. Maybe it would have changed nothing.  But I wish for it, none the less.