And it’s on to the next thing

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Hard on the heels of launching REMAINDER and filing taxes and the Easter holiday, I am scrambling to publish the third book in my Mackenzie Wilder/Classic Boat romantic mysteries, FLYING PURPLE PEOPLE SEATER. Working now on final revisions, cover, and formatting as I wonder if going in the direction I did was really a good idea. Ever have those moments?  The ones where you wonder if you just killed your own darling by being daring?

On the other hand, I can honestly say I like what I did with it, especially since it provided me with the epigraphs I love to write. And thanks to my writing group, they turned out pretty nifty. Here’s a couple from FLYING PURPLE PEOPLE SEATER:

Chapter 4

  “What a gas! Bootleggin’ on the river was nothin’ like by car. Bouncin’ across the waves, dodgin’ in and outta the islands… You could slip between two of ’em and no one would know you was there. Especially not the flatfoots they had mindin’ the border… I remember one time, there was this cave I found. I could slide alongside the shore and cut the engine. I’d pole in and angle behind the rocks inside… This time, I gets inside and I’m polin’ back there, and all of a sudden, I can’t go any farther. There’s already a boat in there, and there’s this boat is this guy and a swanky dame with gams that ran from stem to stern smoochin’ like there’s no tomorrow. They couldn’t get out past me, and I couldn’t get past them. We stayed like that for twenty minutes, not lookin’ at each other, just waitin’ to see if the coppers would find us.”

 

Chapter 7

“Me and Pop was never ones for religion. We went to Mass sometimes when Al insisted all the boys show up. But all that Hell and Purgatory stuff, I never believed in that. Irony? Now that I did believe in.”

 

Chapter 14

“I was always the guy everyone talked to – like Lindy. Gettin’ himself into trouble with some dame, which he was always doin’ . He’d come to me for advice on calmin’ the lady down and convincin’ her she’d got everythin’ all wrong. I had to teach him how to treat dames right. Did it, too. Enough so’s Lindy got himself married and had five kids, all girls. Served him right.”

 

I love writing chapter epigraphs. They’re like vignettes that drop clues to what’s happening.

What’s a favorite stylistic thing you do?

 

 

TIP….Resources

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In ‘A Return to Show, Don’t Tell‘ I shared information about a useful tool called the Emotion Thesaurus.

There is a now a coterie of such thesauri, practically establishing its own genre. If writing is what you do, you might want to check these out.

 

The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Psychological TraumaThe Positive Trait Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Attributes (Writers Helping Writers)

 

The Rural Setting Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Personal and Natural PlacesThe Negative Trait Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Flaws

Thoughts….

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REMAINDER (my newly-published novel) has as its background the firsremainderFrtcvrt year of war following the events of 9/11. It was the year when we tried to assimilate the shock, realized we were in a whole new world, and attempted to pull  together to cope, even as emotions tore at the fringes to rend us apart. It is one of the reasons, I think, that agents and publishers didn’t quite know what to do with it and so rejected it.

But I was intrigued by what we were going through, even as we went through it. We are a large family, and all the kids were in some form of school in 2001. We had a lot of holding and talking and loving and strategizing to do. At the same time, as any parent – particularly a mom – knows, despite everything, when the sun rises the next day (and it does), the laundry will need to be done, groceries will need to be bought, the car will need to be fixed, and (eventually) we will all need to go to school or to work. After all, they say a return to normalcy is the best way to get past a traumatic event. Maybe so, but there must be time for grief and adjustment, as well.

The people of Remainder have made their initial adjustments, and now they are learning that life does go on, and we must engage in it and cope with it. For people farther away from ground zero than New York or Washington, DC, the war could seem remote. Everyone had to decide for themselves how they regarded the war. Everyone had to decide how to incorporate the surreal with the real as they took up their live again apace.

REMAINDER is about what it’s like to face personal pain and local community trial while still reeling from blows dealt by a world gone mad. It’s about the path each of us finds through the mess we have to conquer in our own lives.

runyouthsil

 

I started writing REMAINDER some time ago, and I left it alone for a while before the final edits. I was surprised to find I’d done a little foreshadowing of reality as I was writing. While I missed where it landed our country, I picked up on the the distrust, the suspicions, the diminishing of others in our midst. I failed to see how far it would take us. Maybe just as well, because I don’t know that I wanted to write that book. But my hope is that we will come back together to be a different, a better people. That is something the people in Remainder could show us how to do.