The Grace & Gumption Project and other matters

My string of stupid mistakes continues. This morning I took my car in--yeah! repair of the top-lowering mechanism was covered by warranty. I separated my other keys from the car key (I have a simple pop-apart thing that does that) and went about my day. Betty picked me up for lunch at the Modern Art Museum, where I indulged in a charcuterie platter--I don't often allow myself to eat pate because it's so bad for you, but it sure was good. Then she dropped me off, I got the car and came home. Once in the garage I couldn't find the house keys. I tore my purse apart, called Jordan to say I was coming to get her key to my house (which she couldn't find) and backed out of the garage, thinking I'd tear my purse apart one more time. Found them caught in an obscure pocket. I think that's three things, so the spell should have run its course. Two thoughts on this: if I'd driven out to Jordan's house, 20 minutes away, I would really be mad, though I have no one to blame but myself, and I seem to have a fixation lately about losing my keys, which I've been known to do a lot, except that they always turn up.

Last fall TCU Press published Grace & Gumption: Stories of Fort Worth Women. I've mentioned it before on the blog but to refresh: 14 area authors each contributed a chapter to the first women's history of Fort Worth and, in the process, became a bonded, close-knit group. The book was a huge success, flew off the shelves in Fort Worth, and the project grew wings. Forthcoming is a cookbook, with what recipes we can find from women in the book (they were all deceased--a requirement for inclusion, for practical reasons). People began to write and call telling us about women who should have been in the book, and we toyed with a second volume. One day in a light-bulb moment it struck me that a blog would be ideal for continuing the project. So, as of today, the Grace & Gumption blog is live. Check it out at http://www.graceandgumlption.blogspot.com/. And if you have stories about Fort Worth women, send them to tcupress@tcu.edu. We'd love to have digital pictures too.
I mentioned that Fred Erisman's advice to me in writing is always to slow down. He also said Sunday that Patt, his wife, doesn't like books that are all dialog. She wants description, enough that she feels she is in the story--that is of course my ultimate criterion for absorbing fiction. I told her not to read Spenser novels, but I also took that caution to heart. I knew all along that I was getting lost in dialog, so last night I went back over the first three chapters, filling out description and also Kelly's thoughts. Amazing how in one line I finally captured just the feel I want. She's describing Claire, who has just come to her house, impeccably dressed, to announce she shot her husband in the derriere (not the way she says it). Kelly notices in the midst of this trauma that her outfit is perfect, down to color coordinated sandals, and reflects that she herself is wearing light cotton workout pants and a T-shirt and is barefoot. To me, that captures the essence of Kelly. I felt good about it and other revisions and was really quite pleased with myself. I also rescued from oblivion a column I thought was awful and got a good start on another, so I was full of work and proud of it.
And then I took a little time for myself, almost finishing a Diane Mott Davidson catering mystery, Sticks & Scones. I like Davidson, though the way she puts off cooking for large events until the last minute causes me heartburn, and her recipes are far too complicated for me. But the stories are good, the people engaging, and Davidson knows her fictional town of Aspen Meadows, outside Denver. In fact, I think her novels these days are much better than the first one or two in the series. But it struck me that a lot of implausible things happen to Goldy, the central figure. This time she's come across the theft of a multi-million dollar stamp collection, finds a body in the river, is attacked by a fencing master and then someone pours boiling water on her from a "murder hole" in a castle ceiling. This all made me think--I'm trying to keep Kelly's adventures within the realm of possibility--things that really do happen in urban areas, like hidden family secrets that can lead to murder, domestic disputes that can push someone over the edge, even serial killers. I'm toying in my mind with the distinction and not sure about it yet.
Excuse me, but I got up to the last chapter at the car dealership this morning, and I really have to finish it.

A Blogger Kind of a Day

You know those spells when you do dumb things and everything goes wrong? I think I'm in one. Yesterday I got in my car to go to the dentist and, dreading the appointment, thought I'd cheer myself by putting the top down and enjoying the cool morning air. Only the top didn't go all the way down--or it did, but the car's security system didn't know that. And it wouldn't go back up. So every time I started up after a stoplight or some other stop, the silly thing beeped loud and long at me. I tried pulling over, cutting the engine, and starting again--that worked once before--but nothing. Fortunately, when I got to the dentist's office, it decided to cooperate. I got the top up and left it. So tomorrow, I'm off to the VW dealer.
Then today in the grocery store I asked the check-out girl to make me some new keys, then promptly stood at her cash register and panicked because I didn't know where my keys were. Could I have possibly left them in the ignition? I turned to tell her I had to go to my car--and of course, there were my keys. We both had a laugh, but it was a bit rueful on my part.
But today was a blogger's day. One of our authors worries that his book is not getting enough publicity--there aren't the review outlets that he was used to ten, even five years ago, nor do the biggies like the New York Times or Publishers Weekly notice midlist books from small academic presses (they used to but this is a brave new world). So I wrote and suggested he consider a blog, even a blog tour--whereby an author offers himself to many other bloggers as a guest either for a posting or an interview. It's a big thing with mystery writers, and I thought it should work for a literary author if he put his mind to it. But he wrote with many objections, one of which was that he thought blogs were just personal confessionals gone public and nobody read them but the person who wrote them. He did say it apologetically, because he knows I have a blog. I didn't convince him, and he asked to be excused, which is ok.
But then I got an email from my oldest son's high-school girlfriend--now that's been 20 years or more. She'd stumbled across my blog, said she was interested to learn where all the kids were and what they were doing and about the grandchildren, but she was really interested in what I had to say about writing as process and as an integral part of my life. After a 15-year marketing career, she's trying some creative writing though I don't know what kind. She went on to recall dinner discussions at my table which were, she said, so interesting she often didn't want to leave the table.
Well, talk about make my day. This was a girl I was always fond of, and for her to share such memories and to think I might inspire her somehow was heartwarming to say the least.
I couldn't resist. After I replied to her, I wrote and told the blogger skeptic about it, and he agreed it was a "gratifying" response. Yeah, it was.