The Lipstick Chronicles

Cute Story, Cute Story...

By Cornelia Read

I am in Vermont right now for the weekend, because tomorrow is my Aunt Julie's seventieth birthday. And she is awesome.

This has been another intense week... turned in the final, final, final draft of my fourth book on Monday morning, have been unpacking in my new place in Inwood since, trying to figure out what happens next in my live in a lot of different ways... and drove six and a half hours today because I went up The Merritt and 91 instead of The Taconic and 7, like a sane person.

And I was thinking of a post I did after spending Thanksgiving last year (Good GOD, only a year ago? So much has happened since!) in Vermont with Aunt Julie and extended family type people, and reminiscing again about having been the flower girl at Aunt Julie and Uncle Bill's wedding in 1968... and, well, this is about the last time anyone took a photograph of me that I actually like, so here we go again.

This is reposted from last year on Murderati, and I hope you will all forgive me for blog-postos refritos... it's been that kind of week.

Mom and I

I have long been fond of and amused by George Burns' very wise observation that, "The secret to a happy life is to have a large, loving family in a distant city."

And that's pretty much why, I think, having cousins is so awesome--and aunts and uncles and all that goes with them. You get to hang out with people who totally get your jokes about family stuff, because you've all spent time keeping an eye on the big pot containing the soup of communal backstory. Taking turns stirring, keeping the fire going, occasionally adding a bay leaf, asking if everyone's okay with a little onion or garlic, and will the little kids want a small bowl of the stuff.

And a really fine and profound Thanksgiving is one at which everyone has taken their turn stewarding that rich potage, and you all get to sit down together around a long table and take communal strength from the finished product, breaking bread and pouring each other wine and sharing stories about the soups of years past and the soups yet to come. Gorgeous stuff, what the best parts of life proceed from when we are lucky.

This is the second year in a row that my kid Grace and I have been lucky enough to share in the Thanksgiving celebration of my Aunt Julie's extended family. Julie's my mom's sister--my aunt AND my godmother--and her husband, Uncle Bill, has long been one of the greatest mensches in my life, through thick and thin. Well, both of them have, since I am going to extend mensch-dom to chicks, because it's eminently true in the case of these two.

I was the flower girl at Bill and Julie's wedding, on September 14th, 1968.

I wore a little ankle-length organdy dress--through which you had a hint of of the ice-blue silk petticoat beneath--and a tiny pair of ballet slippers that had been dyed to match the rich, clear emerald green velvet sash tied around me at a sort of Jane-Austen altitude above my waist.

I remember tons of details about that day, although I was only five. Aunt Julie's bridesmaids, including my mom, getting dressed in a birdlike flurry upstairs in my grandparents' house. The little bouquet I carried, walking up the aisle of Christ Church in Oyster Bay...

 

My Grandfather Thurston gives away the bride

...standing in the receiving line with the large buoyant wedding party on my grandparents' verdant lawn, overlooking all the sleek boats that bobbed at their moorings on the sparkly cut-glass surface of the wonderfully protected little harbor below us... how young everyone was, in retrospect, though they were literally giants to me and so immensely sophisticated at the time, inhabiting the grownup world that seemed to shimmer at such an impossible distance I couldn't fathom ever assuming a place in it....

And I remember everyone gathered at the bluff-edge of that lawn, every last guest coming forth from the stripe-tented dance floor, laughing and egging on Uncle Bill and his brothers Charlie and Tony and all the ushers as they clambered and jostled and tumbled over one another for the traditional Hoyt Family wedding-day pyramid.

This effort was captured for posterity by the wedding photographer right exactly at the Hoyt-boys-et-al's final, brief, teetering moment of communal geometric triumph over the entropy of physics and gravity, high spirits and camaraderie and champagne--back when the latter was still served not in flutes but in those wide, shallow stemmed glasses which could themselves be stacked into a pyramid of celebratory translucence, allowing one of the white-jacketed bartenders to show off his professional chops by pouring from a magnum into the upper-most glass, the straw-gold liquid cascading downward from rim to rim until each vessel below veritably brimmed with its own portion of the bubbly.

Thurston and Julie

And both sets of parents were so happy, that day, because the moms had been friends since childhood themselves, and couldn't have been more pleased that Bill and Julie had chosen one another as companions for the bright road ahead.

Betty Hoyt (left) and my Grandmother Ruth

So--here and now--my daughter Grace and I have been staying at Bill and Julie's house in Vermont these last couple of days. Cousin Allison is here, and yesterday we all drove half an hour over to Uncle Tony's house--the place that was built by Great-Uncle Win and Aunt Lynn, no longer with us--for the day's official culinary event. 

I made the sweet potatoes, having been emailed the perfect James Beard recipe by Uncle Charlie's most fabulous wife Deborah. Uncle Bill took on creamed onions and the turnips. Cousin Victoria (Charlie's daughter) was there with her excellent husband John and their two little kids. John was perfecting the mashed potatoes as we all tumbled into the warmth of Tony's chic but cozy kitchen. Tony had brined the turkey and ordered the pies, then made hard sauce.

Bloody Marys were consumed, iPads shared and discussed (I shilled for a couple of pal's books, which Charlie downloaded from Amazon),

the little children were charmingly well-behaved, and various distant relations called up on various cellphones and landlines. We even Skyped with Cousin Winthrop and his sublime wife Barrie, who were in their new place in Brooklyn with their brand-new baby, young Master August Elias.

August Elias, last summer in Vermont. He just turned one this week...

The wine was superb, the white-linened table arrayed with candelabrum and beautiful plates, the forks and knives old family stuff polished to glory, and the talk was familiar and lovely and effervescent, overflowing with shared old jokes and joint beloved reminiscence of the two generations who'd come before all of us, now absent in body but never in spirit.

Uncle Bill had brought a big manila envelope of old photos that were passed from hand to hand, eliciting more stories and laughter and "Whatever happened to...." And at various intervals throughout this jollity, someone would pipe up with Great-Uncle Win's favorite way to introduce any anecdote, no matter how dire: "Cute story! Cute Story!"

But I think that my absolutely favorite part of this most excellent day was when Uncle Bill looked around us all at the table with a dry wicked grin and said two words: "Mr. Whitney..." then paused for a sip of wine.

Aunt Julie said, "Jesus, Bill..." from the table's far end.

And then Uncle Charlie said, "How is Mr. Whitney?"

And Uncle Bill said, "Oh, he died. Terribly sad. Hit by a car, dontcha know."

And Uncle Tony asked. "And what happened to Mrs. Whitney?"

Whereupon Uncle Charlie confided, "Oh, she married Mr. Knott."

Uncle Bill asked, "And Mrs. Knott?"

"She married Mr. Moseley," said Tony.

"What about Mrs. Moseley?" asked Charlie.

"Well, she married Mr. Shields," offered Bill.

"Mrs. Shields?" pondered Charlie.

"Married Mr. Galston," Tony replied.

"And Mrs. Galston?" asked Bill.

Tony lifted his wineglass, rolling the ruby liquid around in it. "She married Mr. Von Briesen."

"Good God," I said, unfamiliar with this cherished litany, "what became of Mrs. Van Briesen?"

"Oh," said Uncle Bill, twinkly of eye, "Mrs. Van Briesen lives down the road."

"Seriously?" I asked.

"Oh, yuh," said Uncle Bill, pronouncing that second syllable sound with the dryness of Old Vermont. "All happened over the course of a single year, when we were kids on Long Island. Quite a ruckus. You'd go to a friend's house and never know which other friend's parent you'd find there."

"Jesus, Bill..." Aunt Julie said once again from the other end of the table, the other end of the forty-two-plus-a-little-bit years it had been since we'd all spent the afternoon of September 14th, 1968, together on my grandparents' lawn on Centre Island in Oyster Bay. 

She was smiling, though.

Cute story... cute story...

I love these guys. They are awesome.

And of course, being me, I have to wonder whether Mrs. Van Briesen was driving the car that hit Mr. Whitney.

Tell me an old story you love, oh excellent TLCers...

 

Today's Pet Peeve

by Amy Hatvany

As an author, I don't really have many pet-peeves. I work alone, so really, the person's behavior who tends to annoy me most is my own. But I have to say the one thing that can wriggle its way under my skin is a common question: "Can you tell me how I can get published?" I always feel like the person asking believes there is some magical element to this process, some secret passageway to the promised land of publication. They ask about hints and short cuts; some of them more ballsy people even request my agent's contact information and if they can tell her I referred them.

Here's the deal. When I first decided to follow my writing dreams, I dove into research mode. At the time, the Internet wasn't quiet the gargantuan beast it is today, and while I found some practical advice online, most of what I learned came from how-to books I checked out from the library. I subscribed to Writer's Digest and studied it like a religious text. I figured it all out on my own.

Today, though, I'm going to tell you the gist of what I learned because I know most people are simply curious about how the whole process works. Some of it is relevant and some of it may not be, simply because with the dawn of self-publishing and e-books, there are various routes available to those who opt to take them. But if you're looking to go a more traditional path, for me, it went a little bit like this:

1. I wrote my book. I learned that in most cases, no agent will consider you unless you have a finished product in as stellar condition as you can manage. This is even truer today - the book market is incredibly tight, so it's worth it to consider hiring a freelance editor to help you get your manuscript as clean as possible before sending it out into the world.

2. I researched agents. I scoured the acknowledgement pages of books I loved for the names of the agents who represented the author. I reviewed Jeff Herman's Guide to Literary Agents so I would know exactly how the agents I was interested in wanted to be approached.

3. I learned to write a kick-ass query letter. One of the most important aspects, I realized, was grabbing the agent's attention with the first sentence. The hook - the sentence they might use to describe the compelling thrust of my novel to the editors to whom they pitch it. Find that sentence, and you're halfway there.

4. Don't. Give. Up. I went through a horrible first agent who basically threw my novel at every publisher out there to see if it would stick. After about six miserable months of this, I cut the cord and went back to my agent drawing board, becoming much more selective about who I queried. I picked the top ten agents I knew represented work similar to mine - work I admired and had actually read - and sent the queries out again. Nine of them passed, and one is still my wonderful, amazing, gifted agent today.

The last point is probably the most important. One thing I tell any aspiring writer is that it only takes the right pair of eyes, and there are SO many eyes out there. Believe in yourself and your work, because if you don't, no one else will. Like many authors I know, I also offer a "For Writers" page on my website. So when I'm asked for my agent's phone number, I can tell the person exactly where to go.

All right. My pet peeve vented. And yours?

Snooty Barbecue

 

Elaine Viets

Just holding an Economist magazine makes me feel smarter. Inside, along with serious articles about finance, I found a juicy tidbit about my hometown of St. Louis, tucked into a story called "Fire in the Hole":

The snoot sandwich is St. Louis’ contribution to barbecue.

Danny Meyer, the chef who runs Blue Smoke barbecue restaurant in Manhattan, said that.

Mr. Meyer is a St. Louis native, so he may be biased.

If most barbecue lovers knew mac and cheese cost $7.95 in Manhattan, they’d think I was blowing smoke – and not Blue Smoke, either.

As a St. Louis native, I was proud to see our pig parts get international recognition. Our city not only has pig snoots, we serve pig ear sandwiches. I had Josie eat a pig ear sandwich from the fabled C&K Barbecue Restaurant in North St. Louis County in my new mystery shopper mystery, "Death on a Platter." C&K attracts savvy locals as well as visiting celebrities. You can savor the experience second-hand in this scene:

Josie stared at the massive pig ear sandwich in front of her, a mound of food nearly five inches high. She was grateful the pig ear did not look like it had once been part of a porker – it was simply a deep-fat fried hunk of something.

But what? Were pig ears like rubber? Gristle? They sure didn’t look meaty.

Focus on the potato salad, she told herself. And the barbecue sauce. The red sauce smells delicious. The bread is plain old white. I like both of those. If I close my eyes, I can do this. Josie wished she could enjoy their picnic at Deer Creek Park. The sky was a blue china bowl and the trees were blazing with fiery color. But Josie didn’t notice the fall beauty. She didn’t even see Ted, who looked absurdly handsome with his square jaw and broad chest.

All she saw was that pig ear sandwich. It seemed to get bigger by the second, throbbing, morphing into a red-spattered monster. Josie had to eat it. She had a duty as a mystery shopper. Maybe she should just take Ted’s word that the sandwich was good. No, Josie wouldn’t chicken out. She would pork out or else. She lived by her code, and her code said she had to taste the sandwich. One small bite for the honor of St. Louis.

"What’s the matter?" Ted asked. They sat side by side at the picnic table. Ted was ready for his snoot.

"I’m trying to get up the nerve to eat a pig ear," Josie said.

"Just take a bite. You’ll love it. I promise. Doesn’t that barbecue sauce make your mouth water?"

"Yes."

"And the potato salad is amazing. Here, try that. We’ll approach the wild sandwich one step at a time." He scooped some potato salad with a plastic fork.

Josie allowed herself to be fed like a toddler. "That is good," she said. "I’m trying to get up the nerve to bite a pig ear."

"Please don’t keep me waiting. I want my snoot. We’ll dig in on a count of three. Come on. One."

Josie picked up the huge sandwich with both hands. Bright sauce dripped on the newspapers she and Ted had spread on the table. A clump of potato salad plopped out on her paper plate.

"Two," Ted said. "Three!"

Josie bit. Yum! She took another bite. It was even better. By the third bite, she was painted with barbecue sauce and splashed with potato salad, but she didn’t care.

"Fabulous," she said. "You were right. I thought a pig ear would taste rubbery, but it’s crunchy. Kind of like those pork rind snacks, only better."

"I told you." Ted chomped his sandwich with a resounding crunch. "Wanna try some of my snoot?"

"No, thanks," Josie said. "But you have barbecue sauce on your snoot."

"Before I finish, I’ll be basted in barbecue sauce," Ted said. "That’s why I wore this red shirt."

"Plaid shirts are chic," Josie said.

"So is barbecue," Ted said. "New York is finally discovering the joys of this American art form. Barbecue experts say the snoot sandwich is St. Louis’s contribution to barbecue."

"I thought it was our sweet spicy sauce," Josie said, licking her fingers.

"That actually comes here by way of Kansas City," Ted said. "Sweet tomato barbecue sauce is served throughout most of the Midwest. Barbecue is different in other parts of the country. North Carolina ’cue is mostly pork. They wait and add the sauce when they sit down to eat. They may use a vinegar sauce with pepper flakes. Or it might have some tomato. Some eat the barbecue plain.

"Memphis likes its barbecue with a rub of spices but no sauce. Texas goes for thick spicy tomato sauce and beef brisket. That’s cattle country."

"And this is based on your hands-on knowledge," Josie said.

Ted chewed thoughtfully, then said, "Some. The rest comes from The Economist. It’s important to have an intellectual foundation for personal experience. I’m prejudiced, but I like St. Louis barbecue best. We’ve been undiscovered and unappreciated for decades. You’d think there would be a shortage of food this good. Pigs only have two ears."

"Do you really think anyone in a rich neighborhood is going to demand pig ear sandwiches?" Josie asked.

"Why not?" Ted said. "Too snooty?"

Josie groaned. "I can’t see McDonald’s serving a McSnoot."

So what’s your favorite ’cue: beef, pork, chicken? Which state has the best barbecue? And have you ever eaten a pig snoot?

 

Hoping for the Best Doesn't Cut It Anymore

Hoping for the Best Doesn't Cut It Anymore

by Nancy Martin

A few weeks ago, I pulled into a parking space at my local supermarket. When I unsnapped my seatbelt and got out of my truck, I immediately noticed the car in the adjacent spot was empty, engine running.  Well, the front seat was empty, but the back seat had one passenger—a sleeping infant in a car seat.  The child had been left alone in the car.

            What did I do? I could have called the police.  I could have ignored the situation and gone into the store. I could have started shouting.  But what I did was wait in my car (about four minutes) until the driver returned—a harried young man carrying a prescription from the pharmacy. He got into the car and drove away.

            Did I confront him? No.  Should I have intervened? Probably so.  But I didn’t. Why not? Because I’m not that kind of person. I’m mostly polite. I mind my own business. I’m not confrontational. Yeah, maybe I was intimidated, too. Maybe I didn’t want to face hostility. I was chicken.

           My bad.

            If we have learned anything from the horrific stories that came to light at Penn State last week, it should be that we all have a moral obligation to intervene when we see something bad happening. Lemme tell you: This goes against my upbringing. And I've got to get over this.

            I talked about the Penn State situation with a woman (my husband's aunt, technically, who's younger than he is) who’s the former dean of women at a small college and now the person charged with overseeing whether or not her college complies with various regulations concerning the health and safety of students.  I’m going to call her DeeDee, although that’s not her name.  I thought DeeDee was the ideal person to shed some light on the events at Penn State, and boy, did she give me an earful. 

            Did you know that one in four women is sexually assaulted in college? This stat blew me away.

    Perhaps worse? Only 10% of women under the age of 18 report sexual asault. That astonished me.

    And 90% of rapes are committed by rapists who have either done it before or will do it again.  (Rarely is a rape committed by a guy who once just got a little drunk and carried away.)

    I remember knowing a woman who was raped when I was in college. (Okay, this happend 30 years ago--a different era, so bear with me.)  Within hours of her assault, all the female students on campus knew what had happened to her, but we kept quiet for the sake of her privacy and dignity. She left college, never to return.  The guy stayed, graduated, went on to do……well, I’m trying not to imagine what he did, but considering DeeDee’s statistics, I can assume.  The college hushed up the incident, because what college wants the world to know such things can happen on campus? (I bet you all have similar stories.) Fortunately, that particular angle of the story has been fixed.   Colleges are now required to report incidents that jeopardize student safety. Colleges are also required to create mandatory education for employees and students, too, to tell them what their moral obligations are. 

    Most workplaces annually require all employees to take an online test on the subject of sexual harassment.  But rumor has it that the people whose names appear high on the executive flow charts (at, say, big associations of, say, restaurant owners)  are more likely to skip the test or “have their secretaries take it for them” than others.  Which means, big surprise, they’re more likely to ignore the lessons.

            We live in an era when we feel obligated to take the car keys away from someone who’s had too much to drink, but apparently when it comes to sex and violence we’re still a little squeamish about intervening. I know I am.

            Have you ever intervened? Or do you walk away and hope for the best?

            Obviously, we have to stop minding our own business when somebody is in trouble. I need to get over my polite lady thing.

            We’d like to think we’d intervene if we saw a grown man raping an eight-year-old. But if that man is someone we’ve known and respected all our lives, someone who can control our employment and/or has the respect of even more powerful people in our world…….well, I guess some of us would slip away without saying a word. Or we’d wait until the next day to speak up—but not calling the police, just alerting a “higher authority” and hoping for the best.

            This has got to stop. We’re all going to have to get bolder.

            DeeDee gave me three “D” options:

1. Make Direct contact.  In other words, if you see something bad happening, you confront the bad guy yourself.  A lot of us don’t feel capable of being direct, or we fear repercussions, though, so the next option is:
2. Delegate.  Call a cop. Dial 911 or summon mall security or go around the corner and call your resident assistant—anyone who will step in. (I guess the important thing to remember here is to make sure the person who contact actually follows up!)
3. Distract.  If you see a young woman, say, being accosted by a drunk in a bar, spill your drink on him.

    Now, I gotta say, this distraction thing sounds right up my alley. Sure, it might not deter the evil doer for long, but hey, it would give me a minute to screw up my courage to go a step farther.  Or it would give the police time to arrive.

So I figure distractions are what TLC could excell at.

"Excuse me, sir, I see you're attacking that young lady, but could you tell me how to get to the post office?

I need some other ideas.  Suggestions, anyone? 

Because turning a blind eye and hoping for the best just isn’t an option anymore.

 

Wars, Bores and Whores

Wars, Bores and Whores

By Kathy Reschini Sweeney, with apologies to legitimate prostitutes

I am back on a "news" boycott.  Do I need to explain why?  My sanity dictates it.  Just when I think I have already seen the most grotesque, or the most idiotic or the most craven or the most inhumane behavior a human can exhibit, some sub-human disguised as a person surprises me.  And not in that good - hey, I found a $20 in last year's winter purse - way.  

We've had a rough couple of weeks in Pennsylvania.  One revelation after another seems to lead to more disgust.  So many victims and way too many people to share the blame.  Do I need to explain what would ensue if I walked in on someone molesting a child?  There would be many things broken. Body parts would be separated from other parts.  Talk about Thunderdome - only one adult would have been able to walk out of there - who are you going to bet on: (a) a sadist with a perverted hard-on or (b) a Mama Bear.  Please. I must also note that the lack of women involved in any high level in any investigation on this terror may prove to be significant.  No insult to men, but everyone knows that the Lion may be King of the Jungle, but a Lioness guarding cubs is the most dangerous. 

Tired of hearing about corruption and pedophiles?  Try changing the channel.  Oh look, more of our warriors are coming home in caskets.  Or on stretchers - we seem to have the money to send them out to fight and die, but when they get home and need support - I don't know - things like food, jobs, health care, housing - your basic luxuries - oops - no dough.

Well, that was more vomit-inducing.  Let's try another channel.  Gee, it's a bunch of people standing between podiums and giant flags.  Don't even try to listen to them - your head might explode with the horror of realizing one of them could be your next Commander in Chief.  I used to hear the Charlie Brown Teacher voice - wah, wah, wah wah - and now I hear hissing and snapping, more vipers trying to get into the nest that is our political system.

Good times.  Let's try the another channel.  Oh look - movies with funny names like "The Lovely Boner" and "The Devil Wears Nada".  I think actual porn is boring but a review of the titles is always good for a laugh.  My favorites are ones with numbers like 7 or 8, as in "Big Mamas Melons 7" or "Brazilian Babes with Balls 8".  This tells me that successful franchises need not involve Batman or even the Corleone family.  As a matter of fact, it should come as no surprise that the "Iron man" franchise has more than one rating category; ditto with "Die Hard/Harder/Hardest: the Oh Baby Do Me Trilogy".

It almost makes me long for the days when Anthony Wiener was the headline.  Those jokes actually wrote themselves.  If you ever get really bored, play the Movie Title Game.  You take a funny noun - like wiener - and substitute it for a noun in a famous movie - like "Saving Private Wiener" or "Cool Hand Wiener".  Keep at it until someone in the group falls off the chair from laughing too hard.  By the way - laughing can be aerobic exercise.  I think I might pitch that idea for a Dr. Phil Oz show. 

Well, so much for TV.  Stick to The Big Bang Theory and Modern Family.  Both sources of regular aerobic exercise.

"But Professor Sweeney," you may be asking yourself, "whatever shall we do with our free and stationary time?"  Glad you asked!  Read a book!  You get to pick the author, and the plot and the characters.  You can leave it and come back to exactly where you left.  You can use your own imagination to turn the words into mental images.  

We are into the holiday season and books make fantastic gifts.  Our own book tarts have new books this year that would delight someone on your list. Or start a new reader on the first in a series and be a hero for years to come.  

Please shop local.  I was going to do this blog on how Amazon is really dicking around authors, publishers and real book stores, but all that unmitigated greed makes me sick too.  Suffice it to say that the dollars you spend there cost more than you think in terms of lost jobs, revenues to authors and independent bookstores.  Think before you click.

Now, I am going to make sure the TV is off and curl up with a good book because it may be the only thing that keeps me from becoming a psychotic criminal.  The last thing I need is to have to watch myself on the news.

So - what are you watching and reading that keeps you sane these days?  Or just play the Movie Title game with me.  You know you want to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Play within a Play at a Play

by Heather

Having five children is not the brightest move to make in the world in which we live—so expensive! But it’s not the financial woes to which I refer—it’s the emotional. It’s so hard to let those little darlings go.

I loved it when they were little. I knew where they were. And three of the five are still near. One son, however, now lives in Connecticut with my beautiful little daughter-in-law. Little, really—she’s barely five feet tall, strange in our family, because I’m the shortie at five-eight and Chynna, our baby, is six-feet.

But anyhow, there they are in Connecticut where Yevgeniya Yerekskaya-Pozzessere (yeah, that’s a name, all right) has a job as a pop-up artist with Up With Paper. She’s done some spectacularly beautiful books as well as cards, and we’re delighted with her, but hey--home is Florida. Connecticut is way up the east coast.

And when it was time for Chynna to go to college? She’s been in magnet theater schools all her life, and she wound up at CalArts in California.

I mean, is that fair? Lord—couldn’t those who moved away have chosen the same coast?

But, sometimes, things oddly work out.

I love what I do. Writing for a living has been a probably most undeserved privilege for me. And it comes with great benefits—friends gained through the field.

For me, two of these are Harley Jane Kozak and Alex Sokoloff.

To make a long story short (too late, I know) I’m currently in L.A. because Dennis and I come to see Chynna’s play performances at CalArts. These shows are always interesting—it’s an amazing school where art, theater, music, film, and dance are studied and often worked together to provide the best of performances. It’s no hardship to be here.

Meanwhile, in my own world, one of the projects I’m working on is also a lot of fun. A few years ago, Alex and Deb LeBlanc and I did a paranormal series called The Keepers, based on the idea that if you were a bit . . . different, where would you live in order to hide in plain sight? (answer: New Orleans.)

Well, Harley, Alex, and I are going it again.

Where else would you go if you were totally whacked in one way or another and wanted to hide in plain sight?

L.A.—Hollywood—Lalaland!

So here we are, having a ball, making up creatures (such as Harley’s Elven, tall, good-looking elves with amazing mental powers, strength—and sensuality) And we’re lucky because we usually meet at conferences, but now I’m in L.A. and Chynna, who has known Alex and Harley since she was shorter than me, is having a play. So Harley and Alex drove out to CalArts where we ironed out a few situations with all our creatures. Mine is the first book in our new series, and it’s about an undercover Elven cop working as an actor in vampire play. So there we were  in the student lounge, discussing the play within the play of the book, and waiting to see a play.

Harley’s had a career as an actress, Alex as a screen-writer, and while my career was nowhere near Harley’s (she was working with Brad Pitt while I doing Trim-Twist commercials with my dog and selling ribs as a singing, tap-dancing waitress) we all come from theater backgrounds.

My daughter was thrilled to have Harley and Alex there.

And Harley and Alex were thrilled to get to watch their “writing niece” onstage, and I was, frankly, in seventh heaven, seeing my daughter perform, and getting to do it with two of the dearest friends in the world.

 

Tomorrow night, Lance Taubald and Rich Devlin are coming—two more friends met through the wonderful world of writing—and in theater. Rich has now written some incredible books, Lance is writing—and performing still in Las Vegas. It’s a small world somehow, and a spectacular one when your work, your passion, and your family and friends can come together.

It’s strange how we all meet in life. Where and how did you come across some of your most amazing friends? And, for you, as for me, do the miles that may lie between you mean nothing at all—when you’re together, is it as if you’ve never been apart?

 

What If?

Hank Phillippi Ryan:  So I had decided, once and for all, not to be timid at a convention. I was going to plop myself right down beside a STRANGER, and by gosh, I was going to MINGLE.

It was so difficult for me! But providence intervened, and the stranger--turned out to be someone terrific..someone who's turned out to be a close pal and and a dear friend and an instant bff. Hey, shows you what happens when you conquer your social fears.

So now, you plop down beside her, too. You'll love Rochelle Staab.  I do. (And a copy of her new book to one lucky commenter!) 

 
WHAT IF.....?

by Rochelle Staab

I pulled out a white blouse and my gray pencil skirt. Nope—back in the closet. Too businesslike. I know—a paisley wrap dress, black boots. No, too Barbarella-shops-at-Ann-Taylor.  Seriously, it’s slacks and a T-shirt because I don’t care.  Who was I kidding?  I did care. 

I settled for a soft black jersey skirt with a gray silk blouse and black teddy, and black silver-clipped pumps.  I set aside a black wrap sweater for warmth.  I dug out my rarely worn, sexy lingerie from the corner of the drawer.  Then I headed for the shower to shave  m y legs.  Not that I wanted or anticipated anything happening. Shaving was simply good grooming .

 In the above scene from WHO DO, VOODOO? my divorced psychologist Liz Cooper dresses for dinner with Nick, an old college friend she feels a new attraction to. The evening isn’t a date. Then again, it’s not really NOT a date. Could go either way. Liz goes upscale and adds her sexy lingerie—you know, the sachet-scented pretties we all have tucked in the back of a drawer waiting for a special occasion? It wasn’t as if Nick would see Liz in the lingerie. But slipping into sexy skivvies adds flair, only-I-know confidence, and a hint of enchantment. And what if?

 Why do we save our prettiest things only for special occasions? Why not wear our expensive, knockout designer pumps to the movies with our girlfriends? Throw on the lamé scarf to dash to the market? Slip into our most delicate lace bras and panties every day?

I wonder if Cinderella wore the glass slippers again after she and the prince got home from the honeymoon. And if not, why not? They were killer shoes.

 

 

 I know when I buy something I love beyond words there’s a hint of fantasy attached to the purchase. Almost as if something magical will happen when I wear the shoes/lingerie/dress or use the dishes/candles/crystal. I’d be prettier, or my cooking would improve, or the air around me would sparkle. So why keep the pretties tucked away for “good”? What if the magic is there but needs airing and won’t fulfill itself until after the third or fourth or tenth use?

 For example, my favorite adorable shoes (or used to be) are a pair of pink-and-black plaid Miu Miu pumps I bought in the drop-dead-dazzling shoe department at Saks years ago. Maybe wore them three times. But instead of glancing longingly at those babies in their red box on the top shelf, what if I put them on with my jeans, kicked my heels together, and let the fantasy roll?

 
I wish I had this revelation years ago. I realize a few of my knockout outfits won’t work on me outside a banquet or ballroom or ever again. Could be time for the sexy fishnet stockings to bite the layer of dust in the back of my drawer. (The damned things always killed the bottom of my feet in pumps anyway.) My lace see-through blouse, celebrating its tenth year in the closet waiting to be worn, might be daytime adorable on a hot little twenty or thirty-something. On me? With my salt-and-pepper mop? Add smeared lipstick and I’d be a ringer for Betty Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

 

But there are plenty of former too-nice-to-wear outfits in my closet deserving a chance to escape off their hangers.

 Seriously, what are we waiting for when we save our best “for good”?  I say it’s time to open the drawers and let the pretties play. Light the etched candle, wear the leopard-print lace bra, cut loose and throw on the long strand of pearls over a T-shirt. Like Liz, I’m going for it. Why not?

 What about you? Is there something in your closet you’ve been saving to wear for far too long?

(And remember:  a copy of Who Do, Voodoo to one lucky commenter!)

*************************

WHO DO, VOODOO? features no-nonsense Liz Cooper, a Los Angeles psychologist forced to embrace the occult to clear her best friend of murder. When Liz's friend Robin Bloom finds a tarot card tacked to her front door, Liz writes the card off as a prank. But Robin refuses to ignore the omen—her late husband drew the same card in a reading the night before he was killed.

As more cards and darker threats appear, Liz realizes someone dangerous is upping the ante. She turns to old acquaintance and occult expert Nick Garfield. As Nick guides her into the voodoo community to locate the origin of the tarot deck, their mutual attraction is undeniable. When their search leads to a murder, Robin becomes the prime suspect. Determined to clear her friend, Liz has to suspend her disbelief in the supernatural and join forces with Nick to unravel otherworldly secrets—or risk being outwitted by a scheming killer.

 

Rochelle Staab, former award-winning radio programmer and music industry marketing executive, blended her fascination with the supernatural and her love for mystery in WHO DO, VOODOO? the first novel in her Mind for Murder Mystery series for Berkley Prime Crime. BRUJA BROUHAHA, the second novel in the series will be released in August 2012.

www.rochellestaab.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rochelle.staab

Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/rochellestaab

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4705211.Rochelle_Staab

 

Holding On

Hank Phillippi Ryan:  Margaret blogged about 'meeting cute' this week....and it reminded me so sweetly about how many new friends I've made in book world.  What I remember about meeting Sharon Potts was not where it was--do you remember, Sharon? I think it was a convention--but  her wonderful smile. Looking at the photo below of Sharon and her mother--now I see where she got that smile.

You'll also see Sharon got a lot more from her mom.

HOLDING ON

By Sharon Potts

My mom always used to say she couldn’t write. That putting words together on paper was a struggle for her.  Then she would tell me another story about her childhood. Wonderful, vivid stories that still come into my head.  About her doll with the porcelain face that she swung around the tiny kitchen in exuberance until its beautiful face smashed against the old gas stove and broke.

About her soft white cat Matilda who would climb up and down the fire escape stalking the neighbors’ dinners through their open windows.  About the exquisite taste of warm pumpernickel smeared with chicken fat that her mother would throw down to her from their third-floor kitchen window. 

My mom passed away a year ago, on October 23, at the age of ninety-three. She was determinedly independent, living on her own until the end. She was my confidante and dearest friend and I still reach for the phone every night to call her and tell her about my day.  Then I remember.

 Her apartment, a condo just outside of Fort Lauderdale has become my retreat, a place of solace. The thought of dismantling it feels like a violation.   And so, every week I drive an hour to check the mail, water the plants, and make sure the apartment is as tidy as she always had it.  But each week, I notice another plant is brown and shriveled and I realize I can’t go on like this indefinitely, any more than the plants can.  It’s been a year—perhaps it’s time to put certain things to rest.  

And so I’ve begun cleaning out the closets and drawers.  Piled on shelves behind hanging dresses and coats and buried in drawers beneath blouses and sweaters, I find old manuscripts of mine that I’d given her to read—short stories, early drafts of my novels. She’d kept them all.

Then there are the shoeboxes filled with birthday cards, Mother’s Day cards, letters from her grandkids, envelopes addressed to “Grandma Hecht” in clumsy childish print, scribbled letters, neat cursive writing.

DEAR GRAMMA, I LOVE YOU.

Dear Grandma Anna, I’m having a great time at camp. Today I went swimming…

Dear Grandma, Paris is soooo exciting!

Decades of words, expressions of love. She’d kept them all.

The bedroom walls are lined with bookcases, filled with books—novels, biographies, classics, even French and Spanish books from her college years. La Fontaine’s fables in the original French. A tattered copy of The Ancient Mariner.  She’d kept them all.

I’m overwhelmed by all these words, squirreled away by a woman who claimed it was such an effort to write her own.  She loved words, and I realize that although she had trouble putting them down on paper, her gift was in telling them.  Her stories swirl through my head as I pack up the photos of her childhood, her marriage, her own children and grandchildren.

How after losing her dad when she was six, her mother sold eggs from their Brooklyn apartment in order to survive with three young children. Sometimes my mom would answer the door wearing only an undershirt that she held together between her legs for modesty.

Or shortly after her dad died, how sometimes when singing My Country Tis of Thee, my mother’s throat would tighten and her eyes water at the line “land where our fathers died,” thinking it was about her own father.

And the joyous moments. How when she was around nine or ten, filled with good intentions, she decided to wash the sheets. She filled the tub with water, but the sodden sheets were so heavy that with the help of her younger sister Goldie, she dragged one into the kitchen. Then she began wrapping the sheet around her and told Goldie to do the same from its opposite end. The girls twirled toward each other, cocooned in the sheet, and met in a giant puddle in the middle of the kitchen. What a perfect opportunity to wash the floor!

The recollection of how my mother laughed as she told me that story makes me smile and my eyes sting.

I fill another suitcase, another carton.  Bit by bit, the apartment is losing its personality.

Then the obvious hits me.  I don’t need to hold on to her apartment to have my mother.  It’s okay to give away the clothes and furniture and knickknacks that my brothers and I don’t have use for.  It’s okay to sell her apartment and hand a stranger the key.  These are, after all, merely things. Not the important stuff.  My mother taught me what really matters.  The stories. The memories. The words.  She couldn’t write them down, but I can.  And I shall.  Because my mother knew that the words go on forever.  And I find comfort in that.

What about you? Have you had to cope with loss? How do you hold onto memories and those you’ve loved?

*************************************************

Sharon Potts writes novels about people—regular, ordinary people.  Sometimes, when the dark side of her brain can’t sleep, these “people” appear in novels of suspense like IN THEIR BLOOD (which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly) and SOMEONE’S WATCHING (called “shiver rich” by Publishers Weekly.) Other times, when Sharon feels like a good laugh, her “people” visit lighter, happier worlds like in her latest romantic comedy, SOUTH BEACH CINDERELLA.

But whether the genre is mystery or humor, Sharon’s novels are always about feelings—happy, sad and everything in between.  Because, after all, isn’t that what life’s all about?

www.sharonpotts.com

The Magic Day: 11.11.11

by Barbara O'Neal

Everyone is making a big fuss about the date today.  In my family, we definitely are, because I have a niece who is eleven today.  (Happy birthday, Jess!) 

But beyond our special celebration, this arrangement of elevens has been very exciting to some people, so I went out on the Internet to see what I could dig up the reasons why. I will poke a little fun, but honestly, it seems a magical sort of number, and why not indulge a little magic?  The world can always use some hope. 

Kundalini Yoga says it is a day to shed the shackles of the past.  According to one website, chanting the mantra “Ek Ong Kar Sat Gur Prasad, Sat Gur Prasad Ek Ong Kar” will create magic because it can shift the energies of the psyche so powerfully that new opportunities seem to materialize out of nowhere.”

Numerologists cite 11 as a magical number, charged and creative.  It is a number of beginnings, but
not just any old beginning.  This would be a birthday worthy of Harry Potter. Huge, world changing beginnings. 

In general, even the most outrageous speculations of the most exuberant of the eccentrics on the Internet (and baby, that gets pretty eccentric) agree that this is a date to usher in not only changes in ourselves, but changes in the world.  It’s change on a global level, a powerful opportunity to forge a new reality for centuries to come. 

The optimistic spirit of the day offers us a chance to usher in a more enlightened age, a more enlightened world, a more enlightened self.

So I wondered, what would that look like?  If I were to dream the best, most enlightened world I could think of, what would I want to see? It's a big task, to create a better world.  I had to think.  I came up with a pretty weighty list, but I believe they are all  possible because when I was a child people smoked in grocery stores and tossed litter out their car windows (while they smoked) and drove drunk. Some rivers were so polluted that they caught fire. Those things changed.  These can, too.

My wish list would include these things:

 ---Self-determination for women across the earth.  To study and find professions if they choose, to bear children or not, to marry spouses of their own choosing (I realize this does not always work out well.  But at least if you choose someone who ends up being a jerk, it was YOU shackling yourself to him, not your parents or your great uncle.)

--End hunger.  It’s ridiculous, with all the technology and understanding we have to deliver food to the table, that anyone, anywhere in the world should starve to death. STARVE to DEATH!  How is that even still possible? 

--End war. All war. Enough already. Can’t we find some other way to solve conflicts besides flinging human bodies at each other and ravaging landscapes and cities until one side gives in?   Yeah, I know.  But this is my wish list and this matters.  It’s a highly inefficient way to do things.

--Make sure anyone who wants an education can have one. Everywhere.  Education opens minds, creates solutions, makes better parents and citizens.  More, more, more education—and not just traditional education either. Not everybody wants to go to college, so let’s stop pretending they do and let high school kids who like sewing or food service or cars enroll in high school courses that will allow them to enter the workforce in a meaningful way so they don’t have to spend the rest of their lives working the cash register at Wal-Mart.

 

 

 

--Rationally discuss, across party lines, country lines, religious lines, etc, the problems that face us all.  Let’s have thoughtful, give-and-take discussions on the problems facing the globe and the nation and see if we can solve them without egos and grandstanding. 

--Heal the planet by finding solutions to the global warming crisis, like better food production techniques in the rainforest, and fewer cattle sending methane gas into the air (yes, really).  

--Change the food industry to insist upon humane conditions for animals raised for harvest.  Don’t misread that.  I’m not saying, “Turn The World Vegetarian” (although it would be good for the planet).  I’m saying, if we’re going to eat critters, the least we can do is make sure they have good lives before we bring them to the table. 

Big list, right?  

One of the websites urged me to “Be the change you want to see in the world,” which I also have as a bumper sticker on my car. So I came up with this list, too. These are things I can do right now, today, to take a step toward those goals.  

Self determination for women:  I don’t know what to do to help more women be free.  I honestly don’t.  There is the Afghan Women’s Writing Project.  I can support that, to start with.  I’m open to other ideas.

War? Oh, jeez. I have no idea.  It seems like I’ve been protesting one war or another since I was in the sixth grade trying to get my classmates to sign a petition to mail to the President.  And here we are, in Afghanistan after ten years, and there is no clear agenda that I can see, but then I’m just a foolish mother and woman who hates to see more young men killed, and sometimes even worse, grievously, horrifically burned, crippled, etc.

But this is supposed to be about positive action.  I’m a writer, so that’s often my answer.  I will keep writing about soldiers and their families and their lives and what they give to humanize the “conflicts.” 

Hunger: I will support agencies and organizations that help feed people.  Care and Share.  The local soup kitchen. Agencies that get food into drought-ravaged places.  I will learn more about food and how it flows, although this has been a slippery slope for me as a foodie-sort of writer.  Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

Sane thoughtful discussions:  I will LISTEN to my very conservative relatives when they talk about their fears and concerns and ideas for improving the world.  I will NOT loose my temper when they make fun of my ideas on Thanksgiving, but remember that if I want solutions and sanity, I have to LISTEN as well as talk. I have to respect them if I want them to respect me. 

Animal lives: I can chose to eat only food that comes to the table in humane ways, even if Anthony Bourdain makes that sound like a milksop’s approach to the world.  Maybe that helps feed more people. Maybe that, in turn, helps global warming. 

Maybe it won’t, but I can try. 

All I can ever do is try.  After all, I remember when everyone smoked everywhere.  And children died of leukemia. And the highways were covered with empty McDonald’s bags.  And Nelson Mandela was in prison.  

Change happens all the time, and we can make it so.  What better day to begin than the magical 11.11.11? 

What is something you’d like to change for the better? And what small act can you take to support that change?  What small thing can you do to be optimistic today, and offer something GOOD to the global consciousness on a day of such hope? 

 

You Say Potato, I Say Office

By Nancy Pickard

I'm writing this in my office.

Here.  See my rented office. . .

No big deal, right? Small space, functional furniture, bland as tapioca, although to be fair, it's not fully decorated yet. Waiting for arm chairs, for one thing. But still, who could get excited about this plain little space?

ME!!  This is major, man!

For the last four years, because circumstances don't permit me to work at home, I've motorvated from coffee shop to library to coffee shop to my friend Sally's porch to library to coffee shop to write. Every working day. Miles upon miles. Mucho gasolino. 

I pretty much loved it for most of that time. I wrote a whole entire book while doing that, and some other things, too. "Writing while driving," you could call some of it, for which no cop will give a ticket, though they probably should, because who could be more dangerous on the road than a preoccupied writer? "I'm sorry, Officer, I didn't see the light change. I was too busy killing somebody."

Well, times and writers change, lads and lassies.

After departing yet another library on yet another day of Writing While Driving, my soul rebelled on me, right there in my little car. It stomped its wee soul feet and it said,"No! Not going to another coffee shop! Not going to another library! Sick of doing this! Pick a spot and STAY THERE!" When I asked where, it shouted, "YOU NEED AN OFFICE."

Now this is where it gets interesting. This where we get to the conflict in the story, because this is where certain decision makers among you will line up on my side, while others of you will recoil in horror. . .

Here's how I made my decision about it: On Tuesday, I realized I needed an office. On Wednesday, I talked to friends about it. On Thursday, I told my realtor son what I wanted and he called me back in an hour to say he wanted to show me something.  I went with him to see it, realized it was exactly what I wanted and more, said yes, and looked no further. By Friday I was working in my new office.  Bliss.

Now see, that scenario looks ideal to me. It's also how I bought two houses in the past: first I figured out my basic needs and wants, then I set a good realtor onto the track of them, then I recognized those needs were met by the first property I was shown--because I was clear and definite and the realtor listened to me and knew her stuff--and then I said yes.

Some of you are nodding in happy approval about now. (Pets you.)

"Yes," you're saying, "that's how to do it. Easy, peasy."

But others of you are saying, "Are you out of your mind? You can't make a major decision so fast!  Are you serious that you really didn't even look at a single other office? Not one??!! How can you know you got the best deal if you didn't consider any others?"

Those of you who think that is a mind-bogglingly dumb way to make a decision would have shopped around, right? And even if you ended up going back to the very first thing you looked at, you'd still feel good for having gone to the effort to Be Sure. Plus, you might have enjoyed the whole process of looking at other possibilities. (Not me. I would have hated that by about the, oh, second office I saw.)

People who take their time deciding things call my kind of decider, "Impulsive." I really hate that, by the way. I was NOT impulsive. I was very careful when I drew up my list so that it was exactly what I wanted and needed, and so therefore I was able to recognize it when I saw it. It wouldn't have gotten any less perfect in a few days or weeks of looking at other places, even if some of them were, also, just fine.

My people call your people, "Ditherers." You drive us crazy. You probably hate it when people roll their eyes at you, just as you probably resent the label, "Indecisive." You need time to be sure of what you need, and you want to feel that you're making the best decision you can possibly make under whatever circumstances, yes? That sounds reasonable to me. For you. (We are not going shopping for wallpaper together, I can promise you that. Call me impulsive for making that snap decision.)

So here we are, lined up against two opposite walls, staring at each other like creatures in a zoo.  How very exotic we appear to one another! 

I'll confess that sometimes my quick decisions could Use More Work.  One thinks of certain men in one's past, and then one moves on quickly to the next paragraph.

But I'll also say that a person could grow old and die waiting for Careful Deciders to choose between a cheeseburger and a salad at a restaurant. And then they sometimes wish they'd picked the thing that first appealed to them.

I think it would be a pretty safe bet to wager that we ALL make mistaken decisions some times.  And sometimes our personal decision system gets it just right.

So what about you?