A blog after long silence

Kauai at its lush, green best

Okay, the title of this blog is a silly take-off on the W. B. Yeats' poem, "Speech After Long Silence," a poem I remember writing a paper on in graduate school, fabricating a whole scene of a married couple who hadn't spoken to each other for years because they had nothing to say. That's sort of where I was with the blog this week: I had nothing much to say.

It’s been back to routine around here—Hawaii too far behind me, Jacob back in school so we’re doing homework every afternoon. What I thought would be a long week of stay-home-and-work days turned out not to be so. Lunches with three friends, and dinner at the Old Neighborhood Grill two nights in a row—ate a turkey burger each night. Think that craving is squelched for a while. Tonight I fixed chicken with a yogurt sauce for the Burtons and everyone had their own veggie—broccoli for Jacob because he loves it (or did until tonight), leftover zucchini for me, a salad for Jordan, and either salad or green beans for Christian. But Christian didn’t show up until it was time to be off to the school for Jacob’s first-grade program. He had one line, which he delivered masterfully. We just wished he would have smiled more the whole time. Sent dinner home with Christian.

Speaking of zucchini, it’s funny how a vacation can make you forget your routine. Once back, I bought zucchini when I grocery shopped. Rattling around in my mind was the notion that I’d found a way to cook it that I really liked—I just couldn’t remember what it was, so the zucchini sat. I was about to get out my file of vegetable recipes when I remembered: grate it, sauté in butter briefly, add salt and pepper. So easy and so good.
Today I downloaded the rest of the Hawaii pictures from my camera. When I got home, I got out the cord that connects camera to computer and found it had been chewed—who could have done that? Sophie isn’t talking. So, at a cost of $50-plus, I ordered a new one. It came yesterday and I retrieved the pictures. What I’d had so far were from my phone or Jordan’s phone.
Spent a good part of this week buried in a book—Faith Bass Darling’s Last Garage Sale. Look for the review on Story Circle Book Reviews soon, and I’ll try to post a review on Goodreads. I loved this book. It will make you laugh, look at your own life, and cry for Faith and her loved ones.
Next project: edits on the second Blue Plate Mystery, tentatively titled Murder at Tremont House. Catch up on Kate Chambers’ adventures from the beginning by reading Murder at the Blue Plate Café.

Let the good times roll!

Writer's Insomnia

Last night I woke at three-thirty and could not go back to sleep. My body was tired and comfortably snuggled in the covers, unlike some sleepless nights when I toss and turn like a washing machine. But my mind wouldn't turn off. Sometimes those three-o'clock-in-the-morning thoughts are pretty dark, and to distract myself from the dark side, I often think about what I'm writing. I can deal with the dark side better in the light of day. Last night, I roughed out a pretty good plot for a new novel--the first Blue Plate Mystery will debut in February--new settings, new characteers (no, I'm not abandoning Kelly O'Connell). But unexpectedly last night I found myself thinking about the second Blue Plate book. Mind you, I'm knee deep in writing the fourth Kelly O'Connell Mystery and that's where my mind might better have been, but there I was in Wheeler, Texas, sending Kate Chambers pellmell into a new advenutre. Actually I was pretty pleased with it, but I still could not turn my mind off.
All this has an upside and a downside--I emerged from that sleeplessness with a pretty good start on a plot for the next book I'll begin. The downside was by five-thirty I gave up all thought of sleep, knowing it wouldn't come. By six-thirty I was up and getting ready for the day--six-thirty? I wanted to shout, "What am I doing up so early." But I was to be out the door at nine, had to greet Jacob at 7:55 on his way to school and had to get my house running for the day. But I also knew that I had to write down the notes from my doze-induced plotting. And I did. It worked out pretty well on paper, as opposed to some schemes that I come up with during a long night.
The late Dorothy Johsnon, an award-winning author, wrote to me that if her muse was speaking to her, the writing flowed. But if the muse wasn't talking, she might as well give it up for the day. I'm a firm believer in that, and I always welcome the muse. But why does she speak at three-thirty in the morning? 

Caught between two fictional worlds

I know some readers keep two or three books going at once, and even some authors work on more than one manuscript at a time. I know authors who read five or six novels a week, even while working on their own--do they sleep? I couldn't do it. I can't even read two books at once, and when I'm working seriously on a novel, I don't read much fiction. I immerse myself in the world I've created for my characters--their reality becomes a sort of reality for me, and I guess I don't want too many worlds colliding in my brain.
Last week I did edits on the final draft of what I hope will be the first of a new mystery series--Blue Plate Mysteries. This will sort of salve my urge to write a culinary mystery, though it's by no means gourmet cuisine. The Blue Plate Cafe is in a fictional small town in East Texas, and they serve chicken-fried steak, fried catfish, smothered steak, and the like--oh, and turnip greens, which figure in the story. For many years, my children and I visited friends Charles and Reva Ogilvie at their guest ranch outside Ben Wheeler, Texas, and we usually ate at The Shed in Edom. By small coincidence, the grandmother of son-in-law Christian owns the house right next to The Shed. We once drove all over Edom looking for her house; he was chagrined when he got home and asked her and she said it was next door to The Shed--we'd eaten breakfast there that morning.
But back to my story. I was finishing up the manuscript which will, I think, be called Murder at the Blue Plate Cafe, not very original but a good place to start. But in my head I was in Wheeler, Texas, with a cast of characers including two totally opposite twin sisters, one of whom runs the cafe, a financial planner from Dallas, lawyers, a police chief, etc. These people and that town were real to me.
But I had to yank myself out of their world when I got final edits on the third Kelly O'Connell Mystery, Trouble in a Big Box. The deadline for going through the edits was tight, so I was quicky back in the Fairmount Historic District with Kelly, Mike, their daughters, and a host of other familiar characters. I'm still in that world, because, having sent the manuscript off, I'm re-reading every line of it. But I keep waiting for Kate, wearing her Blue Plate apron, to pop up or that nasty mayor of the town or maybe Dave Millican who runs the nursery. Nope, they're back in Wheeler where I left them. In a way, it's like playing with dolls and putting them to bed for the night.
Now I'm going to put myself to bed for the night. Big day tomorrow with a trip to Dallas for a signing for Fran Vick's new book, Letters to Alice, an edited compilation of the letters of Richard Kleberg (of the famous South Texas King Ranch) to his beloved wife. Oops, another world--and a fascinating one, but this one real, not fictional.