Home for the holidays

As the holidays approach, I get sort of sentimental about Christmases gone by. I remember the days when I automatically expected my grown children home for Christmas. Sure, when they married, we alternated years with in-laws and frequently we went to Santa Fe, but still they sometimes had Thanksgiving and/or Christmas in my house. Those days are gone—my family has grown too large to fit comfortably in my house; their houses are larger, and I admit dinner for sixteen is an effort for me. It’s all part of changing family dynamics that have been on my mind lately.

I raised four children, as a single parent from the time they ranged in age from six to twelve—those years I call the “casserole years” when I was in the car chauffeuring more than I was out, years when I was still at the core of their world and I knew almost everything they did (okay, there were some stories I heard years later that singed my hair).

I remember what a great shock it was to me when I realized that my children, now scattered across Texas, were communicating with each other without going through me. One would tell me the other was traveling, and I would bristle: why hadn’t they told me? Or some such similar thing. I thought I was Telephone Central, just as I thought I was Holiday Central. But I’ve learned, sometimes the hard way, that they have their own families and their own loyalties—they love me, but I am not at the center of the universe.

Today I have seven grandchildren. Each in his or her own way shows me affection, but I know it’s not the same as when my children were those ages and I was the center of their world. I remember babysitting Jacob one night when he was maybe eight months old. He woke with a bad dream, so I rocked him and he clung to my chest tightly and eventually went to sleep there. I hadn’t had a baby sleep on my chest and so look to me for comfort in years and it brought tears of joy. But if his mommy had been there, he would have gone to her—no question about it. And I know as much time as I spend with Jacob and as much as he loves me, his parents are the center of his world. He’ll ask, “When are my mommy and daddy coming?” I can never nor would I ever intrude on that relationship. I’ve had my day and it was wonderful. Now I’m grateful that I am still so much a part of the family and still so loved by my children and grandchildren.

IF you ask me my priorities in life, I’ll tell you always I’m a mom and a grandmom first, then I’m an author, and my third role (in order of significance) used to be that I was a publisher. Today I’m grateful I have an independent life that doesn’t depend totally on my family—I rather imagine they’re grateful for that too.

Rethinking my world

Maybe the holidays are a good time to stand back, look at your life, and rethink what you're doing. I've been charging merrily ahead, eyes always on the mystery I'm working on or the next one, but suddenly I've begun to wonder if that's what I want to do, if that's what I do best. All sorts of questions arise--if not mysteries, what? I won't, can't, don't want to give up writing, and I'd like to make money at it, but do I want to be in the oh-so-competitive world of cozy mysteries? Don't get me wrong--mystery writers are more supportive of each other than any group of people I've ever known, but there are so many of us that all except the stars are little fish in a big pond. When I was at TCU Press, I focused the list on Texas literature because that ultimately made us a big fish in a small pond. Is that my problem? Is it an ego problem?
In this day when independent authors are so much more accepted, and some making big bucks, do I need a publisher? Can I do for myself what they do? The answer is I doubt it, unless I come up with a smashing, unusual idea for a series. So far my cozies are, if I do say so, run-of-the-mill--they fit the genre nicely, they have interesting characters, they are a good cozy evening's read--at least I hope all those things are true. But they aren't breakthrough, mind-bogglingly wonderful.
I've just read the second of Susan Elia MacNeal's Maggie Hope series, about a young woman in England in the early years of WWII who ultimately becomes a spy--first a private secretary to Prime Minister Churchill where, believe me, she's privy to all sorts of secrets, and then in the second book as a "maths" tutor to Princess Elizabeth (now the Queen) and a spy sent to protect the young Lilibet. The history behind these books is solid, the plots good, and I'm hooked. It's the kind of thing I'd like to come up with.
When I first determined to write a mystery, I wanted one published mystery under my belt. Then, I told myself, I'd be happy. Of course it doesn't work that way--I've published three, a fourth is at the publisher, the fifth is written in draft, and I have plans for the sixth. Is that where I want to stop? I have no idea.
But the holidays are a good time to put all that on the back burner, where I truly do believe things simmer in your subconscious. I've started wrapping presents, and tonight I did my first baking--chocolate banana bread. This weekend, with everyone else already out of town, I'll decorate the house. I do love this time of year, and I do tend to put everything aside and focus on the holidays.

The snowflake

On the Sisters in Crime listserv, I'm what's known as a pantser--I write by the seat of my pants. I start with a general idea of who the characters are, who is murdered, and who does it. And then I write, figuring inspiration will come as I write and the characters will reveal themselves to me. Well, this time, it isn't working, partly because I keep getting distracted by projects with more definite goals and partly because I got about 35,000 words, knew where it was going, and was completely stymied. Then someone on one of the lists I read mentioned the snowflake method, which is essentially starting with a basic shape and adding layers--it is the creation of a software engineer, who says it's akin to designing software.
Randy Ingermanson recommends several steps, and I decided to follow them carefully: write a one-sentence synopsis, then a one-paragraph. Then write a page about each of your major characters. That's where I am now, and it's been an amazing experience. I realized things about my characters that I never knew. I know lots of authors make lengthy outlines or notes about their characters, and now I can see why--what I'm finding out will profoundly affect the shape of the novel. I'm not rushing into this and dashing off descriptions of all the characters in one night--I do one or two at a time and take time to consider how they affect the development of the story. I'll go back to the novel with renewed interest--if a less speculative job doesn't intervene. I'm becoming a definite believer in some pre-work before  you write.
My family is already all abuzz with holiday plans, visit plans--we're going to have a lot of togetherness in the next couple of months, and I couldn't be happier about it. But oh those plans get complicated! Herding cats might be easier. Apparently I've missed a couple of emails, so I'm not up to the minute on the plans. I used to feel I had to be information central, and it startled me that the children were communicating with each other without going through me. Now they're apparently communicating with each other and leaving me out of the loop. Does age make you irrelevant?
I did have a senile moment this evening and was going to confess it on the blog--only now I can't remember what it was. Oh, dear.

The holidays are upon us

This is the time of year when I abandon writing, career concerns, everything except my office, which is blissfully quiet though I did a ton of work this morning--mostly breaking hearts with rejection letters. But at home I've been busy cooking--I have a freezer full of desserts and tonight I made sausage and cheese balls (washing the pans is more work than making them!). My dining room table is wrapping central, though I'll have to clear it by Monday when the contributors to Grace & Gumption come for a holiday happy hour. But I've wrapped presents for those children I won't see at Christmas but will see at Thanksgiving, and for others I think I'll see before then but am not sure. I've double scheduled myself with the TCU Press Annual Autograph Extravaganza on Friday Dec. 5 and my party on Dec. 6. I guess I'll collapse on Dec. 7.

It's cold here--close to freezing last night, so that I asked Jay, my handsome neighbor, to carry in my basil. I'll make pesto of it this weekend. But nothing else on m porch appears devastated. Freezing predicted again tonight, and it surely was a sharp wind today. Yes, I wanted cold weather so I could wear winter clothes, but maybe the 50s would do instead of the 30s.

In east Forr Worth, on the north side of I-30, there's a runty mimosa tree that is decorated every year for Christmas. The story is a once-homeless woman decorated it so the homeless in Fort Worth would have a Christmas tree. She did it for many years, but after she was unable to, the neighborhood took up the tradition--and now the little tree is decorated for Easter, Halloween and other holidays. Leslie Gordon wrote and self-published a great children's picture book about it. I first heard of it when Melanie called to say she'd heard about it on NPR and could I find a copy for Maddie and Edie. She said they looked for the tree every time they came to Fort Worth. I got them a copy. And now TCU Press has reprinted the book, because Leslie sold out her initial printing. We're excited about it, and I plan to give it to the other grandchildren in the family. Want a great Christmas gift for children? Try The Homeless Christmas Tree by Leslie Gordon. Even if you don't live in Fort Worth and drive by the tree, it's a heartwarming Christmas story.

'Tis the season--early

It's only early November, but I can feel the pace of things picking up. Maybe it's because we've all been in sort of suspended animation until the election, but now Obama has withdrawn to do his planning and Sarah Palin has gone home to Alaska amidst many stories, and we can put all that behind us. Well, maybe, sort of.
But the last few days I have felt overwhelmed by all I had to do, much of it office business, so that I worked until ten o'clock one night and 8:30 tonight on office business (with time out for a lovely dinner). But then there's a huge launch party next week and lots of review copies that should have gone out last week, and I feel like I'll never catch up or get back to my own personal work.
Thanksgiving will be upon us before we know it. We will all 16 of us go to my brother's, where there will be about 30 people. Such fun to watch all the little ones together. I presume my kids will spend the weekend, so I have to start thinking about meals. And then my annual Christmas party is Dec. 6, much earlier than usual, for various reasons. So I have to plan for that. Intend to get the invitations out this weekend and start on some cooking that can be frozen. It's the time of year when I give up being a writer for a while and turn domestic, but my office still is sooooo busy. I figure I might better enjoy than complain.
Betty and I went to a local bistro tonight, one where we usually split the tapas platter, but it had several things I didn't like, and Betty is always agreeable. We had Ceasar salad--a reall spicy version--and then split a linguini dish with goat cheese, spinach and artichokes--absolutely delicious, but even splitting it we each took home a portion. It was fun to relax and laugh and forget I had to write three tipsheets when I got home.
Now the tipsheets are done, and I'm going to have a glass of wine and read a book. I did my yoga today, hoping to slow down my motor. I think it strengthened my muscles--I can almost stand on my left foot without any bracing from the toes of the right. But I'm not sure what it did for my internal motor.

The election--what else?

I was way too tired to blog last night. I had friends over to watch, because I was nervous and didn't want to watch alone. My neighbors, Jay and Sue, complained about the small size of my TV and wanted to move the party (I hate big TVs that dominate the room). They were so noisy, the rest of us were glad when they left. That left five of us watching, enjoying talking about what was going on. They left a little before ten, and I swear I went to brush my teeth and missed a historic moment. By the time I'd gotten ready for bed, let the dog in, and settled at my desk, they were saying McCain had conceded. I couldn't believe it! I had expected to go to bed with the election unsettled, but hey! I got to watch McCain's speech--he was incredibly gracious and charming and was the McCain I had once admired, not the mean-spirited man who campaigned. And then of course I watched Obama--as a child of Chicago, the Grant Park setting was sentimental for me. And the speech was wonderful. Most of my friends--why are all my friends liberal?--woke up feeling euphoric this morning, but I didn't. I felt relief but a certain uncertainty--Barack Obama has so much to prove now that he's gotten this far and he has such an enormous task before him. I desperately want him to be equal to it, but I know that nobody can turn the course of this country in months, perhaps even years. Yet I am hopeful, and I'm very aware of the importance of the historic moment--I saved the newspapers, probably for Jacob, because his parents don't subscribe to the weekday paper. Someone needs to remind those children that even though they were too young to remember, they lived through a historic moment.
I asked Mel if Maddie and Edie, being older, stayed up, but she said no, they were tired because of the time change. She put them to bed and told them when they woke up Barack Obama would be president. Then in an email this morning, she confessed she was a weepy mess last night--so were a lot of people.
One of the things that most impressed me was the expression on Jesse Jackson's face as he stood in Grant Park--almost tears, but a look of wonder, of quiet satisfaction. I've not always been a Jackson fan, but I tried to imagine what it must feel like, for him, for others like him, to see an African American elected president. It was truly a night to remember, and I think it will take time to sink in.
Everything else, including writing mysteries, seems to pale in the face of the election. I brought home an incredible amount of work from the office today, have made pretty good headway but don't expect to get anywhere near my own projects tonight.
And my thoughts are on Christmas, which will come incredibly soon. And so will Thanksgiving. Fun, but lots to be done.

The holiday weekend

Have you noticed that when you go back to work or out in the world after a holiday weekend, everyone asks, "How was your weekend?" I've thought about that, and my answer this time is that it was busy, but it was busyness of my own making. One of the women in my office said, "That's a really good thing," and I agreed. Last night my neighbors and some other friends came for a potluck barbecue--there were six of us and we had enough food for 15. But it was a lovely, convivial evening on the porch--casual, interesting conversation, good food, a tad too hot but who cared. I thought once again how blessed I am by friends and neighbors. And with everyone taking their serving dishes home and having used paper plates, cleanup was a snap. (Okay, I do try to save the environment and not use disposables, but there are some times when it surely is a blessing!).
One thing I learned this weekend, a lesson learned over and over, is that both cooking and yoga are hard work. I cooked for two hours yesterday morning--puttered really, but I did some freezer work (and need to do more), made a black bean salsa (soooo good!), brownies with chile powder and cinnamon added to the Ghiardelli mix (that mix is very moist and maybe the best I've ever had--and the spices were pretty good), and a baguette stuffed with pesto cream cheese, chopped sun-dried tomatoes, parmesan, and chopped spinach--good but messy and hard to deal with. When I got through I was really tired and ready to sit down. And then in the afternoon I did some of the yoga exercises Elizabeth is teaching me--and I was tired again. Today, as so often happens after a weekend of cooking, I had aches and pains that I usually don't have--but my feet didn't hurt.
The weekend was made even better because I really got into a P. D. James mystery--Devices & Desires. British mysteries are hard for me--they're slow to engage when I went the quick action and drawing into the scene of an American cozy. But when I force myself to persevere and stick with James or Martha Grimes, I find I really am hooked and want to keep reading. But, always, my own mystery--number two in my great series of unpublished--rattles around in my brain, and I have what seems like absolutely great ideas. I wrote some today and will do some more tonight. The plot that I thought was minor seems to be taking over, while what I thought was going to be the main story, is moving more into the background. Fun to see how it develops. I'm thinking of calling it No Neighborhood for Old Women, with a bow to Cormac McCarthy, because if it comes out as I envision, there will be a serial killer stalking old ladies. I doubt that, should I find a publisher, I'd get away with that title, but I think it's fun for now. I'm trying to keep a careful list of what agent and when I query, so I can follow up. They're pretty rude about not answering if they're not interested.
Meanwhile, the idea has come up that maybe Colin and I should go to Scotland this fall. My good friends from Omaha were planning for us to take a Santa Fe trip, but maybe Scotland will over-ride that. It's just a vague thought at this point, but I'm going to email him some places to google tonight.

Holiday Weekend

What I dreaded as a long empty holiday weekend has turned busy. Today, Bino from the Star Cafe came and cleaned out my flower beds--he used to work for a landscaper. He carried away bags and bags of weeds and dead leaves, and he split my iris, which badly needed it. While he worked, Betty and I went to brunch, and then I came home to cook dinner for Jeannie (and kept some for myself).

I've also been reading lots of emails from Sisters-in-Crime and subgroups, like Senior Sleuths. I joined the Guppies group--Great Unpublished authors--where I reside with mixed feelings. I'm not unpublished, but I am in as a mystery writer. And I'm finding mystery writing is 70% promotion and 30% writing, if I'm to believe the emails I read. You can spend a full day following up on the emails and never have to put another word on the computer screen.

Yet the process of writing is going well. I'm into the second chapter of the second novel and have some ideas I like about where it will unfold--ideas that will I hope surprise a reader. I feel sort of --well, silly, maybe presumptuous writing a second novel when the first is unpublished (I never ever did that in the days of historical fiction) but on the other hand if I'm not confident about my writing, nothing will come of it (yes, Jamie, I hear you).

And I haven't once, as I feared, thought "Yikes! What am I going to do with the rest of the day?" Saturday night Jan said it didn't bother her if she didn't have anything to do. Charles and I both agreed we like to keep busy, and he said, "I'm good at manufacturing things if I don't have anything to do" Oh boy, is that me! Once again this morning I woke up with a head full of things I "should" do--laundry, cooking, linger over the paper (notice how I fit an unnecessary but pleasureable activity into a list of chores!) and I almost bounded out of bed. But I didn't.

Something about Fridays

Something about Fridays makes me tired. I would not try to tell you I work that hard--I have a desk job but I'm only there half days or a little more, and then I come home to my desk. But somehow on Fridays I'm tired and ready to relax and loaf. Maybe today it was because I went shopping at noon and lugged in six bags of groceries. It ws a hot day--well, 95, but the humidity was high and it felt hotter, and I was sweaty and tired when I got the groceries in. And now I feel a bit as though I haven't yet woken up from a nice long nap--which I did take.
My good news is that I'm writing. I decided to quit dithering and move ahead, so I'm working on the sequel to my first mystery. And tonight I sent out two more queries--I know stories of people who have been rejected by fifty agents, so this is sort of like a needle in a haystack, but I'm learning something about it everday. I've now joined Guppies (Great Unpublished authors), a branch of Sisters in Crime. I'm not exactly unpublished, but I'm a novice in the mystery business--and it is a field all unto itself. I've written one chapter of what is now called "Kelly Jones Novel Two," and I like it so far. I think I'll join a critique group.
What I thought would be a long, empty weekend will not be at all. Tomorrow morning I have to go pick up page proofs of my book on Great Texas Chefs, then go to Barnes & Noble, if I can find a parking spot (it's the weekend of the PGA tournament at Colonial Country Club and the bookstore is not that far from the golf course--I resent the tournament because it really messes up traffic in my part of town), and then on to Central Market. At noon, I have a yoga lesson, and then I'm going to the neighborhood Lebanese restaurant with Charles and Jan, a friend now retired from TCU. And, of course, I've got to read those pages and index the recipes, work on my novel, and keep reading the manuscript on Sacred Harp music that I brought home from the office. It all sounds pleasant.
American Airlines sent me a voucher for my ticket to Scotland--not the refund I'd hoped for. Jeannie doesn't think she'll be able to go in the allotted year, but Colin, my oldest child, has said he'll go. I don't know if that was a spontaneous offer or if he's serious, but I'll explore. I know I must go to Scotland--a magnet is drawing me. Meantime, tomorrow, I'm going to buy the three Scottish mysteries by Lillian Stewart Carl.
The garage renovation is moving ahead--I've ordered bunk beds and a futon, bought "unimaginative" light fixtures, and washed the sheets that had been on a shelf out there forever--whew, they smelled musty!
Back to writing. Have a good holiday weekend, everyone!