Category: Uncategorized

October 19, 2009 / Uncategorized / 1 Comment »

Experiments with Fiction

In today’s San Diego Union Tribune an obituary graced the top of page B4 that drew me in like a magnet to metal: Acclaimed writer known for experimental fiction. It was the headline for the obituary of a local writer and retired professor, Dr. Raymond Federman, who had just passed at the age of 81.

I’d never heard the term “experimental fiction” before, and while I quipped as I folded the page back that I experiment with fiction all the time, deep down I knew this man must have taken fiction for a truly unconventional ride and I had to see where it was he had gone with it.

Turns out Dr. Federman experimented with the conventions of fiction – writing non-linear pieces that defied every boring rule of Story – to make sense of what happened when he was just a boy, not to turn the literary world on its head. Federman, a child of Jewish parents, was living in Paris in 1940. His obituary states that “he was spared from death during the Holocaust when his mother pushed him into a closet to hide when the Gestapo arrived and took the rest of his family. Dr. Federman never saw his parents or two sisters again.”

Imagine being twelve and having to emerge from a closet to that kind of desperate situation. No wonder when he was older he experimented with how to tell a story like that one. His “Voice in the Closet” is apparently one, long poetic sentence with no capitalization and no punctuation. His latest work about his life, called “Shhh” is due to be published next year.

“Shhh” is what Federman’s mother said to him – the last thing she said to him- as she pushed him into the closet.

I can tell already I must add it to my bucket list of books I simply have to read. And not just to see what experimental fiction look like. . .

October 16, 2009 / Uncategorized / 4 Comments »

I am halfway through Richard Stearns’ The Hole in Our Gospel, a book that asks some of the toughest questions imaginable about faith and practice. I don’t usually comment on a book that I haven’t finished, mainly because most books are meant to be embraced in their entirety – phonebooks and dictionaries excepted.

But this one has me thinking. It’s one of those books you need to think and ponder on while you’re reading it.

Stearns was the well-paid CEO of Lennox, busy selling pretty dishes when he was asked to be president of World Vision a few years back. As you probably already know, World Vision doesn’t sell pretty dishes. They feed, clothe, and care for some of the world’s poorest and disadvantaged children. It was what some might call a huge career move, and a tough choice. But Stearns felt the call of God to make it, and has since come to the conclusion – based on his own experience – that Christians believe the gospel but largely fail to live it out, and that American Christians especially have the resources to make an incredible difference in shrinking poverty around the world.

His treatment of his subject matter is nothing short of blunt: If you are a follower of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, you will love the poor like he did, and you will care for them like he did. I totally get that.

But I am eager to see how Stearns helps us understand how much do we give? Do we give it all away except for what we need to meet our own basic needs? What are my basic needs? Must the Christian buy a used sedan if he or she has the money to buy a new Lexus? Does the prosperous Christian have no option but to give all his wealth away? Is what we do with our material possessions always more important than what we say with our mouths?

A reviewer on Amazon said this book is nicely paired with Randy Alcorn’s The Treasure Principle, about which one reader said, “Giving is the only antidote to materialism.” I don’t fully understand the scope of alleviating the plight of the world’s poor, but I do understand the snarky pull of materialism. That, I understand.

More when I finish. . .

October 5, 2009 / Uncategorized / No Comments »

She Reads, of course!

Proverbs 31 Ministries, a fabulous organization, has a new book club called She Reads, which launched in September with three new featured books, one of which is The Shape of Mercy.

I wrote a devotional for the main Proverbs 31 site that you can read right here. My publisher is giving away ten copies and one grand winner will receive a beautiful leather bound journal and fountain pen, ala Mercy’s diary. You can enter the drawing on the Proverbs 31 site today – the link takes you right to the She Reads blog.

Want to know more about She Reads? Sure you do! My good friend Marybeth Whalen is one of the key organizers of She Reads and she wrote a great blog post about it last week, which I have excerpted here:

So how does She Reads work?

Marybeth: Our goal for She Reads is for it to function in two ways: 1) as a place an individual can go get recommendations for great books to read and to connect with the authors who wrote them and other readers who enjoyed them and 2) as a place where book clubs that are already out there can get connected with an umbrella organization that provides suggestions for books, activities they can do, discussion questions, and a point of contact with the author. We are working towards accomplishing these goals and are learning and tweaking as we go.

That sounds great, so how can I get connected?

Marybeth: Right now, the best way to get connected is to sign up for our seasonal newsletter and to subscribe to our blog, which is updated several times a week. You can also become a fan on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter. That way, as we make changes and create new facets to She Reads, you will know about it. To visit our site and learn more, go to www.shereads.org. There is a navigation bar at the top which will take you to different parts of the site.

What books have you selected so far?

Marybeth: We select 3 books a season. Our fall selections are Daisy Chain by Mary DeMuth, The Shape of Mercy by Susan Meissner, and eye of the god by Ariel Allison. These three different books all meet the criteria we created at the outset. Because this club is not set up by any one publisher we have the freedom to go to any Christian publisher to find our selections… and we do. We are reading, reading, reading right now to find our spring and summer selections. We have already chosen our winter ones but I can’t tell you what those are yet! We will be making our announcement towards the beginning of December but I can promise you you are in for a treat with these books!



Do check the devo out!

September 28, 2009 / Uncategorized / 7 Comments »

Autumn offerings!

With the arrival of all things autumn, there is a near-universal return among us booklovers to our To Be Read piles that somehow we just didn’t get to during the summer months, despite all that relaxed reading time the long nights are supposed to afford us. I’ve got five sure-to-be fabulous books for my Fall Reading Gala that I can’t wait to get to (down from 20 when I decided to take a more realistic approach). And here they are:

The Forgotten Garden: After I finished The House At Riverton by Kate Morton, I knew I wanted to get my hands on her newest. I’ve actually started this one already and am quite taken with Morton’s ability to let us time travel without getting dizzy. A four-year-old girl is found alone on a ship that sailed from London to Australia in 1913. The harbormaster and his wife take her in, and many months later – well after this couple has learned to love this child – someone comes looking for her. The harbormaster and his wife move far away from the port where they found her, convincing themselves that anyone who could misplace a child for months is not fit to have her. When the child begins to forget the little she remembers of her other life, the couple simply ceases to talk about it. The story takes us to the point of view of that child, Nellie, as an adult and now aware of her origins, to the point of view of her granddaughter some years after Nell’s death, to the point of view of the long-ago mother who lost her. Three time zones, lots of mental sailing, rich prose, clever storytelling, but hold onto the rail or you will forget where you are. And you don’t want to do that. It’s shaping up so nicely.

I am also many pages into A Slow Burn by my very dear friend, Mary DeMuth. I will actually set aside The Forgotten Garden for a few days to finish A Slow Burn, the second in her Defiance, Texas series about the affects of a young girl’s disappearance on a slow-moving Texas town. Mary will be my guest on Friday and we’ll talk about this book and its place in the series, which began with Daisy Chain, one of my favorite reads from 2009. Mary writes with depth and charm, a nice mix these days when it seems like many books sacrifice one for the other. Come back Friday for more.

Since it came out earlier this year, I’ve been itching to get into The Passion of Mary Margaret, the latest by one of my favorite authors, Lisa Samson. Publishers Weekly sez: “Samson mixes quirky with mysticism, seasons it with social justice, and the result is a page-turner with characters so fresh, funny and indelible the reader wants another 50 pages or so, please. Samson envisions a Jesus even an atheist would enjoy talking to, a Jesus whom the titular Mary-Margaret Fischer, a religious sister, talks to and gets direction from, as mystics quite naturally do. An even more compelling figure than Jesus, or at least someone with more lines and hence more characterization, is Mary-Margaret’s childhood friend, Jude Keller, a ne’er-do-well with a soul needing saving encased in a body so good-looking it’s hard for a body to resist. The required Christian progression to redemption is a natural in this story that slips between past and present-somewhat confusingly at first-and ranges from Maryland to Africa. The plot holds a few surprises that make some of the final, far-flung episodes more narratively and theologically satisfying. Quirk works; this is a deeply engaging book deserving of a broad audience.” I happen to LOVE quirk.

Despite its troubling storyline, I loved the way Audrey Niffeneggar wove The Time Traveler’s Wife together. It was a completely orignal story with highly memorable characters. You don’t see too many stories like that. You see memorable characters but they are by and large wrapped in a good plot we’ve seen before. So, I’ve been anxious for Niffeneggar’s next offering and here it is: Her Fearful Symmetry, which will release tomorrow. Her publisher sez: “Six years after the phenomenal success of The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger has returned with a spectacularly compelling and haunting second novel set in and around Highgate Cemetery in London. . . Niffenegger weaves a captivating story in Her Fearful Symmetry about love and identity, about secrets and sisterhood, and about the tenacity of life — even after death.” There is apparently a ghost in this story, and I happen to like intelligent ghost stories. Not the creepy kind. The “What if?” kind. . .

And I’ve already mentioned in an earlier post that I am so looking forward to Anita Diamant’s newest, Day After Night. I read The Red Tent a number of years ago and enjoyed that book so much. And since I like stories that take me to the past, I am hoping to be swept away again by Diamant’s flair for storytelling from another time.

So that’s the line-up! Wish I could read them all and not have to do anything else . . .

What’s on your fall reading list?

See you on Friday. Mary DeMuth will be in the house. . .

September 25, 2009 / Uncategorized / No Comments »

Moments of brilliance. . .

I’m reading Robert McKee’s Story – a screenwriting book – and ran across this snippet yesterday. I really like it. . . . It’s from the Structure & Setting chapter and he’s talking about the value of research, especially as it relates to thoroughly knowing your characters, which I admit is a biggie for me:

“Research from memory, imagination, and fact is often followed by a phenomenon that authors love to describe in mystical terms. Characters suddenly spring to life and of their own free will make choices and take actions that create Turning Points that twist, build, and turn again, until the writer can hardly type fast enough to keep up with the outpourings. This “virgin birth” is a charming self-deception that writers love to indulge in, but the sudden impression that the story is writing itself simply marks the moment when a writer’s knowledge of the subject has reached the saturation point. The writer becomes the god of his little universe and is amazed by what seems to be spontaneous creation, but is in fact, the reward for hard work.”

I can’t express how much I like knowing that the magical moment when the story seems to possess me, is actually the moment I fully possess the story, so densely and completely, that the words just fly. I’ve had those moments when Ijust can’t type fast enough. Those moments are scary and wonderful.

And here I thought I was just a stooge for the muse at that mystical moment. It’s much nicer knowing she’s probably sitting off in the corner pouting because I suddenly don’t need her anymore. The moments of brilliance are actually mine. Nifty, that.

I’ll be at the San Diego Christian Writers’ Guild annual conference tonight and tomorrow doing fiction consultations. If you live within driving distance and you like to write, you should come! There will be a wonderful group of speakers and authors there, including Cec Murphey, Jack Cavanaugh, Lynn Vincent and Kathi Macias.

On Monday, I present the full fall line-up of books I plan to devour. . .

September 21, 2009 / Uncategorized / 1 Comment »

I’ve a great new release by Terri Blackstock to tell you about, but before we get to that, I just wanted to let you know that The Shape of Mercy was named the Book of the Year for Women’s Fiction on Saturday night by the American Christian Fiction Writers. I’m honored to have shared the nomination with six talented writers and floored that The Shape of Mercy won with its subtely-themed (in terms of Christian message) story. Thank you, ACFW, for the honor.

And now on to the newest by Terri Blackstock, a brilliant suspense writer who’s as gentle as a summer breeze and one of the kindest people I know. Terri Blackstock’s new book Intervention was inspired by her personal experiences with her daughter’s addictions. Six years ago she became aware that her daughter (then in her early twenties) had a severe prescription pill addiction that was killing her, and she hired an interventionist to convince her daughter to go to treatment. After a grueling few hours, her daughter agreed to go. As Terri put her on the plane with the interventionist, she was hit with the crushing feeling that her daughter was in the hands of a stranger, and anything could happen. That’s when this book was born.

Over the past few years, Terri’s family has been in a tornado of relapses and rehabs, with one emergency after another, and grace upon grace. But through all this, God has taught her to pray as never before, and he’s shown her how many other families are experiencing the same thing. He’s also shown her that many blessings can come from crises such as this. Terri has tried to fold all of those experiences into this suspense novel of desperation and hope. She’s also added a page to her web site: “Hope for Families of Addicts” which has tips on dealing with a loved one who has addictions.

Though the book is fiction, Terri poured much of herself into Barbara, the mother who’s desperate to save her daughter. And Terri’s own daughter has given her blessings for Terri to talk about this, in hopes of helping other hurting families and raise awareness about the perils of addiction. To see/hear Terri share her personal story about Intervention, don’t miss her interviews on American Family Radio’s “Today’s Issues” on September 24, Moody Radio’s “Chris Fabry Live on September 25, and “The 700 Club” on September 29.

In stores everywhere September 22nd, here’s the teaser: “It was her last hope—and the beginning of a new nightmare. Barbara Covington has one more chance to save her daughter from a devastating addiction, by staging an intervention. But when eighteen-year-old Emily disappears on the way to drug treatment—and her interventionist is found dead at the airport—Barbara enters her darkest nightmare of all. Barbara and her son set out to find Emily before Detective Kent Harlan arrests her for a crime he is sure she committed. Fearing for Emily’s life, Barbara maintains her daughter’s innocence. But does she really know her anymore? Meanwhile, Kent has questions of his own. His gut tells him that this is a case of an addict killing for drugs, but as he gets to know Barbara, he begins to hope he’s wrong about Emily. The mysteries intensify as everyone’s panic grows: Did Emily’s obsession with drugs lead her to commit murder—or is she another victim of a cold-blooded killer? In this gripping novel of intrigue and suspense, bestselling author Terri Blackstock delivers the page-turning drama that readers around the world have come to expect from her.”

Watch the Intervention video trailer at www.youtube.com/terriblackstock

September 11, 2009 / Uncategorized / 2 Comments »

Hallways in the past

I’ve long been a fan of books that begin in the present world – the world I know – but at some point usher me into some hallway of the past, perhaps for just a short detour or maybe to abandon me there altogether.

I gave it a whirl myself with The Shape of Mercy and found I really liked weaving a historical thread into my story. I have done the same thing with the upcoming White Picket Fences and next year’s Lady in Waiting.

Earlier this week I finished Aussie Kate Morton’s stunning The House at Riverton, an international bestseller that earned her a starred review in Publishers Weekly. Morton deftly weaves a tale that billows in and out of the past, seamlessly, effortlessly, skillfully. Just the way I like it.

Here’s the book’s premise: Grace Bradley is a teenager when she takes a position as a maid at Riverton House just prior to World War I. An only child, she finds herself emotionally bound to the Hartford family, especially the two daughters, Hannah and Emmeline.

In the summer of 1924, at a glittering gala held at Riverton, a young poet shoots himself. The only witnesses are the sisters. When Grace is nearing her one-hundredth birthday and living out her last days in a nursing home, she is visited by a young director who is making a movie about the poet’s long-ago suicide. As Grace answers the director’s queries, the reader is whisked away in flashback to Grace’s youth, to the gilded days before the year and the haunting years after, and then gently led back to the present over and over to be tantalized by whispers of all that Grace knows about what really happened the night the poet died.

I loved how Morton eased the story along, planting just enough information to make me feel like a trusted confidant, but still itching to put all the pieces together. The scenes in the present never felt like intrusions, but rather moments to be let in on more of the dark secrets Grace has carried for eighty years.

Morton says: “The first part of the story that came to me was an image: a young man in the mid-1920s, standing by a dark lake on an English country estate. In the distance a party rages: fireworks, jazz music, people whooping. The young man closes his eyes, a gun sounds, and then the image fades to black. I knew that the scene would be the beginning of my book, and I also knew that though it felt like a suicide, there would be more to the young man’s story than that. That this would be the heart of my mystery.”

I liked the book so well (my mom recommended it to me) I started up with Morton’s second book, the newly released The Forgotten Garden a few nights ago.

And I just learned that Anita Diamant has a new book out. I loved The Red Tent and am looking forward to getting my hands on Day After Night.


Here’s the scoop on this one: “Anita Diamant’s new novel offers all the satisfactions found in her previous works The Red Tent and The Last Days of Dogtown: rich portraits of female friendship, unflinching acknowledgment of life’s cruelty and resolute assertion of hope, enfolded in a strong story line developed in lucid prose. She ups the ante here, chronicling three months in the lives of Jewish refugees interned in Atlit, a British detention center for illegal immigrants to the Palestinian Mandate. Based on an actual event—the rescue of more than 200 detainees from Atlit in October 1945—Day After Night demonstrates the power of fiction to illuminate the souls of people battered by the forces of history.”

Ah, SMBSLT!

(So many books, so little time!)

So what are you reading these days?

September 4, 2009 / Uncategorized / 2 Comments »

It’s always a strange day when I begin to clean up after finishing up a book. Precious yellow sticky notes get taken off every flat surface with a six-foot radius of my computer. Dogeared Google maps and images, curling at the edges from being tacked on the wall all summer, get pulled down. Research books that I’ve had at my feet for four months and have been tripping over, get shelved. Imaginary people whose birth dates and addresses and fears and quirks pepper my work space, are shooed away to some equally imaginary vacation spot so that we can have a rest from each other.

It is like the day after the wedding of someone you love. There are cake crumbs everywhere, and programs, and confetti, and sticky spots from unknown spills. It’s messy, but you had a great time. You want to get the place cleaned up and back to normal, but still, it was a beautiful wedding and you were glad to have been a part of it.

Today, I am cleaning up after the wedding. Finally. The book has been done for a week and I am finally feeling like I am back on the planet.

For the last several months, I have had a toe in present-day Manhattan and another toe in sixteenth-century England. My present day character, forty-something Jane, owns an antique store on the Upper West Side. Her world is beginning to crumble all around her and she doesn’t know why. My sixteenth-century character, Lucy, is a dressmaker to Lady Jane Grey, a teenager who sat on the throne of England for a mere nine days before her world also crumbled.

I dovetailed their two stories, linking them together with a token of the past; the kind of token an antique store owner might stumble upon. It was a wonderful odyssey, actually, writing this book, and even though there are cake crumbs everywhere and I am so ready to get out of these wedding clothes and into something comfortable, I had a great time playing time traveler.

Between now and the time this book releases (Lady in Waiting, WaterBrook, Fall 2010) I will post a few comments on what I learned along the way. Today, I shelved Tudor Costume and Fashion, an 832-page tome I stubbed my toe on more than once. But what a fun book to risk injury on.

Just listen to the description of a pair of gloves belonging to Henry VIII: “They are of soft buff leather, with cuffs or gauntlets of white satin divided into eight panels, each embroidered with flowers and leaves in coloured silks and gold thread. Each panel is edged with gold-spangled lace and lined with rose-coloured silk. Round the wrist is a ruching of the same coloured silk with gold lace.”

And those were probably just the everyday gloves.

Today, I can stop thinking of farthingale hoops and passamayne and stomachers and ruffs. Like I said, I am ready to re-enter the world of flipflops and capris.

But it was a lovely wedding. . .

August 28, 2009 / Uncategorized / 2 Comments »

When I was little, my older sister and I had what you might call a nightmarish aversion to the Flying Monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. For me, they were right up there with The Michelin Man (a grinning man made of white tires? C’mon. That’s totally nightmare material), crocodiles, wasps, and escalators. Those airborne apes really tripped me up – for several years. And the fact that they wore those lovely red capes? Well, that was downright fiendish.

But of course they were supposed to scare young ones like me. They were (were they not?) the willing minions of the Wicked Witch of The West; an evil psychopath with all the green-ness of Kermit the Frog and none of his gentility.

We were supposed to hate her. And her monkeys. Wickedness is to be hated.

I didn’t know the storyline behind Wicked the musical when I took my seat in the Upper Loge of the San Diego Civic Center last night. I just knew that everyone was raving about how good (no pun intended) it was. So I was ready for just about anything, storywise.

Behind every evil character is their past, not all of which we get to see. In fact, usually we don’t. What made the Grinch’s heart two sizes too small? The live-action movie-makers had to guess at the reason – societal abuse as a young Whoo – since Dr. Seuss didn’t provide any back story there. And he, interesting side note, was also green. The Grinch. Not Dr. Seuss.

But it makes you think, as Wicked asks early into the play, is a person born wicked or do they have wickedness thrust open them? In the famed 1939 classic Wizard of Oz, all we ever see of the WW of the W is her black heart. There is never a glimpse of her soul until she is melting. And even then, she departs with the oddest of oxymorons.

“Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness! Oh! Look out! Look out! I’m going . . .”

Interesting lines, those. Look out for what?

It’s a clever take, the storyline in Wicked, that the witch we grew up despising was someone’s little girl, that there is a reason why she wears a pointed hat, and that there’s a reason why her grief over her sister’s death brought out the worsty worst in her.

I didn’t expect to find a theme of redemption here. Nor to walk away from my seat nearly admiring those redcaped, flying monkeys.

What a world, what a world. There’s so much we just shouldn’t assume about the people who are green.

I know I told you I’d be sharing with you today the details of the writing project I’ve been working on. Pardon my wickedness. Let’s try for Monday.

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