STAYING BETWEEN THE LINES

This must be my week/month/year for weird things. The other day, I was pulling out of the driveway to run an errand when I noticed this little piece of paper stuck under my windshield wiper.

My first thought was that it was a parking ticket, so you can imagine my relief. But then what was it doing under my wiper blade? I flipped it over and found--

Another puzzle for me to solve. But it didn't take me long to figure out that this was a rather civil form of road rage. Obviously, I hadn't parked my car cleanly within the space marked. I tried to think, but couldn't even remember exactly where I'd been in the past few days. Just about every parking lot I go to has room for about a gazillion cars. The other thing was that if there's anybody who's a "between the lines" person, it's me. I took great pride (still do) in neatly coloring in my coloring books. This person must have been seriouisly ticked off to grab whatever was handy--some box--rip off part of it and furiously scribble "Yellow lines!" I'm assuming it was a male. I hope he didn't fire his secretary or something when he got to work. Sheesh. Get a life.

And by the way, if there are any of you still onfused by "entropy plaza," here's a picture of it. Notice the "order into chaos?"

OF SHOES AND DEAD MICE

Wow! It's been quite a long time since I tapped out a new message, hasn't it? Many things going on these days.

I was going on an errand one day a while ago and had come to an intersection onto the main highway. Lying in the street was a white sneaker. A fairly new one, and small, perhaps a child about six or eight. I chuckled as I thought of the kid who liked to go barefoot nonchalantly tossing the sneaker out the car window as the car rolled to a stop and how the mom would probably tear up her house looking for it later that day or the next. Of course, if it had been my kid, it wouldn't have been so funny. Socks not returning from the washing machine were bad enough.

On my way home from my errand, coming to the intersection again from a completely different direction and on a different side road about a half mile south of the other side road, I saw another sneaker. White. Small. New. Now my writer's mind kicked into high gear. Possible scenarios: Mom put both sneakers on the roof of the car as she was hustling everybody off to soccer practice. Then forgot about them. Sneakers eventually fell off. Except--how did the second sneaker survive the turn? Or did the kid dangle the second sneaker by the shoelace for a while before letting go? Was this an abduction and someone was trying to leave a trail? Better than breadcrumbs, certainly. Weird.

Of such everyday events are stories made. Perhaps the errant sneakers will eventually find their way into a book or story. One never knows.

The worms are officially dead. Well, actually, a couple survived, but they went into the compost heap to see if they'd fare better with even more neglect.

And the mice are gone. All four of them. We caught three of them--one still alive, but doomed to spend the rest of his days hopping around with a tiny crutch, like Tiny Tim Cratchitt. The last mouse had spent the last four years attached to my computer. When it didn't move anymore, I suspected foul play, especially when I took it to the computer store and it worked fine there. The tech, however, suggested I might want to get a backup, just in case. Smart man. Back home, the mouse still wouldn't work, but the new one did. I'm glad I got it, too, because I just purchased a new laptop and will need one there.

Hope you're enjoying the trans-seasonal weather wherever you are!

HAND TO MOUSE

Sometimes the "truth stranger than fiction" really hits home. It happened this week when I found little tracings of mice in my dishtowel drawer and butter dish, and tiny bits of pastel colored foil behind the toaster. Evidently, mice like chocolate Easter candy like the rest of us. But yikes! I thought. We can't have that. Really, we can't. A trip to Sears Hardware showed me there were all sorts of ways to get rid of Mickey and Company. I decided on a "no touch" trap that was reusable and was covered so you didn't even have to look at the end result. Not that I would have anyway. Sydney Carton was again on hand to take the far, far better course of tossing the body in the trash. We caught another one last night, but I've again left it for SC.

But I felt bad, you know? Here I am, all ready to publish a delightful Christmas story called Twitcher McGee and the Wonderful Tree--and it's all about a poor little mouse! I want to create such sympathy for Twitcher so readers will be hoping he gets his cupboard filled for the next year and here I am, not only taking away his food, but also his reason for needing it! I wonder if Walt Disney had that problem.

I also should note here that I think I killed my worms.

One Weird Week

I like to do my civic duty once in a while, so a few years back, I signed up to be a poll worker. Depending on what's on the ballot, it can be incredibly boring or else bustling with people eager to make their voices heard. Last Tuesday was the latter variety--all the more so because Ohio was in the national spotlight, especially for the Democratic Party. What made it a bit odd was that in this heavily Republican county, Democratic ballots outnumbered the Republican ones, 3-1. There was a little bit of "well, our side's candidate is pretty much sewn up, so let's see what we can do with the other side." One young thing asked what party one of the presidential candidates belonged to. Now, that's what I call a really informed voter.

Outside, meanwhile, the heavens had opened and rained down--well, rain. But the temperature was hovering around 32 degrees, so when I went out, I found my car looking like something by Swarovski. Fortunately, I had brought a thermos of hot water for tea during the day and had some left, so that went on the windshield and I was able to make it the short mile home.

Where I found the house lit by candles. No power. Shoot! That meant no American Idol--and no supper, either. (My husband had offered to cook something, but since the microwave was unavailable, the offer was off the table--literally.) For a couple of hours, we huddled around the fireplace, dreading the moment when we'd have to crawl into an ice cold bed. No electric blanket. No hot water, either. We're on a well and when the well pump doesn't work, the water doesn't flow. Like Sidney Carton, Pat decided that it was a "far, far better thing" to get in first. Smart man.

We struggled through the next day, or rather, I did. He went to work. I sat in front of the fireplace and knitted and read and listened to my MP3 and stoked the fire. I had a school presentation later that night a short distance away. Luckily, they had power. It was just hard getting dressed. It's truly amazing how cold everything gets--clothes, utensils, toilet seats--ugh! After the presentation, we hit a neighborhood restaurant and lingered over our dinner, enjoying the warmth. By the time we got home, the power had been restored--not soon enough for American Idol, though. The furnace was sounding a little grumbly, but it had been doing that for several days and we'd already gotten a couple of quotes for a new furace, maybe in the summer.

Forget summer. The next morning, the furnace was dead. Dead, dead, dead. And it was cold. Cold, cold, cold. Except for a small electric heater, which we set up in the office. The guy who was coming out with our quote was in the right place at the right time. He could do the job the next day, so it was his.

I'm still barricaded in the office while the snow (another blizzard thing expected) piles up outside. March has definitely come in like a lion. I've been going over manuscripts and checking out blogs and doing online jigsaw puzzles. Everytime I leave to get something in the kitchen, I'm reminded of how frigid it is out there. The furnace guys promised us heat by tonight. Winter. You gotta love it.

Why I Self-Publish

One of the difficulties of writing for children is that if you want to be published, you have to write for adults--the editors who select books to publish, the librarians who select books for the library shelves, and the adult who select books for kids to read. Left to their own devices, I'm not sure kids would have picked a lot of the books that are out there today. Thankfully, we have writers like the late and beloved Madeline L'Engle and J.K. Rowling who, despite enormous amounts of rejection letters, were finally able to convince some adult that kids would enjoy their books. And enjoy, they do and have and will. For a long time to come.

It's good to be published by a traditional house. They pay you money and produce (mostly) a product to be proud of. If they don't do a lot to promote it, well, that's business these days. It's even become common for the author to be required to come up with a marketing plan for his/her book. So, if you've decided to commune with the self-publishing muse, you might also look up SCORE, an organization that helps small businesses get noticed.

When I first had the idea for The Secret in The West Woods, I sensed right away that it would just be an exercise in futility for me to peddle it to the big houses. It was regional, and I hadn't even had much luck with things that were more general. But because I love books that are set in areas I know (Les Roberts' mysteries set in Cleveland, for some) and because The West Woods park was just beginning to be developed, I felt there would be a match. Turned out I was right. The Park District is one of my staunchest supporters and carries the book in their nature center.

Wanting to keep the price competitive, I elected to publish the book myself, rather than going with a print-on-demand house. My science fiction novel, Me Two, republished by iUniverse, costs $14.95--a little steep, I thought, for a paperback. So, with a little nest egg I'd inherited from my mother, I jumped. Not completely knowing what I was doing, I might add.

But I learned. I learned about ISBNs and bar codes and paper and type face and typesetting and bindings and finding an illustrator (a very hard and expensive lesson). I found a class of fourth graders and had them read the manuscript. Their teacher was extremely helpful. While the class read the book and made their own notes, she made notes on their reactions. As a result, I lopped off about ten pages of the first forty. The kids' letters made my day. They were overall positive (one said he liked it better than Harry Potter!), but they also didn't mince words if they didn't understand something or thought a passage dragged. I owe them a large Thank You!

So, the book finally arrived--forty-some cartons of it, which we moved (where else?) to the basement. Over the years, I've managed to break even and then some. Through school visits and sales, I saved up enough to print a second book, The Christmas Dragon. I did a much, much better job finding an illustrator, but of course, you always fall down in some other area. No harm done. Well, some, but I'll know better next time.

Is my writing the stuff of legends? Of course not. But I like to think they're reasonably good stories that kids will like. I've gotten lots of nice feedback on both books. (Not that I'm likely to hear the other side, given that it's tough for the self-published to get reviewed.) And I'm probably going to do it again this year.

Making Up Reality

I remember grumbling to my husband Pat one night about a secondary character in a book I was writing who wouldn't do what I wanted. "He keeps taking over the whole story."

In that type of gentle voice usually reserved for talking someone off the ledge of an open window on the 28th floor of a skyscraper, Pat said, "Mary, it's an imaginary person."

"Tell him that!" I retorted.

It's fairly easy for anyone to understand what a person does who's a nurse, a custodian, a doctor, a taxi driver, a politician--well, maybe not that last one. Understanding writers takes a little more doing. It's hard to figure out what's going on with people who can stare at a blank computer screen for hours at a time and claim they're working. Or when you're having a great conversation with some guy (male or female--I think it's been degenderized by restaurant servers) and suddenly he/she appears to have gone off into space somewhere. One of Andrew Lloyd Webber's wives told how this would happen to the famous composer at a dinner party. No offense, but the guy probably just had a marvelous idea for the next Phantom of the Opera and everything else paled by comparison. I know. It happens to me, too, except I don't make so much money from mine.

When writers begin talking about recalcitrant characters, it's just part of the process. You care about them, so your readers will, as well. And it's also part of the process that sometimes you're so successful at this that characters develop their own voices, their own way of behaving (or not), their own way of solving their problems. How real is Winnie-the-Pooh? Scarlett O'Hara? Charlotte, the spider? Anne of Green Gables? This is the magic of writing and writers this happens to will know that they been gifted and feel appropriately thankful.

Excuses, Excuses

Time is perhaps the biggest bugaboo for writers. I guess there are people who can say they're going to get up at 5 a.m., write for three hours, then breakfast on dry toast and organic orange juice, but then world peace is a possibility, too. The rest of us struggle each day, trying to find a few minutes to pursue the muse and much too often failing.

The problem is, we do it to ourselves. For someone who professes a love of writing, I can find more excuses than Carter's has liver pills, if they still do. (It's too early in the morning to think. Sometimes cliches do come in handy.) Anyway, when it's time to write, it also appears to be time to:

walk the dog (even though I don't have one, I figure I can make one up. I'm a writer, right?)
take a walk myself (and convince myself that my mind will be fresher when I come back)
do the dishes (which I normally feel is the sole job of whatever gadget GE has placed in my house)
play the guitar (once I dig it out from under the bed and dust it off)
run a load of wash
knit
shred old tax receipts
call somebody on the phone (even if it's to hear my bank balance on the automated teller)
and this latest,
check my worms.

I'm afraid you read that correctly. Worms.

Let me explain. For Christmas this year, I got a worm farming kit, complete with a thousand little wigglers. I won't go into all the rather gross details, but it's something I've been encouraged to try by several gardeners who claim my garden will be an earthly delight if I use castings from the worms. (I'm not sure yet what castings are. They could be worm poop or dead worms. Either way, they sound awful.) These gardeners also claim that worms are easy to take care of. Dump them into a bin with a bunch of wet, shredded newspaper and a bunch of garbage. (Oh, yeah? Then, why do people feel the need to write books about worm farming, huh? If it was that easy, wouldn't a pamphlet do?) Well, I shredded and dumped and have been down in the basement a few times to see what's happening. As far as I can see, nothing. The worms don't seem to be trying to crawl out, which is good--very good. They might be dead already, although I doubt that. I have to assume they're munching away, happy as clams, making good dirt. (Yes, even for cliches that's poor, but I said it's early.)

Now, my gardens have always been an experiment in experiments. My general approach has been to toss seeds in the direction of the ground and wait until something comes up. I also use compost and often get interesting products from last year's rinds, skins, and cores. Tomatoes are the ones that most often show up, although I've also had cantaloupes, pumpkins, and decorative gourds. So, I have to ask myself whether the worms are really going to make a big impact, or whether they're better used as an excuse for not writing.

I'll keep you posted. Right now, though, this blog seems to be fulfilling the need just as well as the worms.

The Tax Man Cometh

One of the tough parts of self-publishing is dealing with taxes. They seem to be even surer than death. You only die once. You pay taxes all the time. So, you have to keep track of all your books--the inventory, where you sell them, how you sell them, ones you give away, your expenses, your income, and you have to pay state sales tax every six months. I inadvertently skipped one reporting period. They waited three years and then let me know I owed them $800! Luckily, I was able to knock it down to sixty dollars, but still. . .

So, now I'm knee deep in papers and records, trying to figure out what's mine and what's theirs.

Despite that, I have a few projects in mind for 2008--one involving a mouse and some cookies. Another Christmas tale. The Christmas Dragon was well received, even though we only had four weeks to get it out there. I think it looks great and many people have told me how much their kids/grandkids, nieces, nephews, etc. enjoyed reading it. That always makes an author's day. Susan Collett (the illustrator) and I are getting together soon to talk about new marketing strategies.

On the normal side of life, I'm trying to organize Christmas stuff, clean up the basement, get back to work, and promising this week to get back to exercising!

Entropy Plaza

I got this term from my husband, Pat, who once built a small stone plaza around our flagpole. He's always been interested in fractals and the chaos theory. (That's possibly why he married me.) Anyway, the basic definition of entropy is as a measure of the disorder that exists in a system. In physics, it's a measure of the energy in a system or process that is unavailable to do work. (Wow! That is so me!) I got this from the Microsoft Word on-line dictionary. If you understand it, let me know.

So, how does this have any bearing on the stone plaza? Well, he started off placing the stones very neatly. Eventually, he realized everything wasn't going to fit perfectly in the space he had defined, so he finished the job a bit haphazardly, with stones going off in all directions. He dusted off his hands and declared it to be Entropy Plaza--from order into chaos.

And that kind of sums up the way I function.

I Started Life As A Cowboy

I didn't really start life as a cowboy, but I wanted to. I haunted movie houses and drank in every scene where Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, or Hopalong Cassidy rode up mesas and down canyons to bring law and order to the Wild West. I owned my own pair of chaps. I loved horses. Still do, although I never learned to ride very well. I read every Zane Grey book I could get my hands on. I was, in general, the despair of my father who thought I was never going to grow up. I discovered that fact many years later, too late to show him that, in a way, I actually was living my dream of "catching the bad guys." Because isn't that what stories are all about? Bad guys don't have to be gunslingers. Bad guys are the conflicts in our lives--and conflict is at the heart of every story. Hopefully, my father knows I'm okay.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit New Mexico and Arizona. I felt as if I was finally home.