Category: Uncategorized

August 1, 2008 / Uncategorized / 1 Comment »

Sometimes there are no words

Most of the time I am of the mind that a picture is not worth a thousand words. That’s a very silly thing for an author to subscribe to ALL the time. A thousand words can indeed make you weep because of their combined beauty. I have to believe this or I am in the wrong business.

But I will admit that the vistas I saw while vacationing with my family in the Sierras deserve to be seen in their natural splendor – off the page and unfettered by human language.

I offer you today a small sampling of the creative mastery of God, captured by my 15-year-old son – all except the last one. That one is him.
The top photo is a snow-fed lake high up a trail known as Mosquito Flats. Do not be deceived by the title. My lungs assured me we climbed every vertical step to this glistening wonder. Definitely NOT flat. And the mosquitos – not so many – were easily tamed with tropical-scented Off.
The second one is a rest stop on a hike up to Crystal Lake. Everything was UP.

This third photo was taken from Duck Pass, a heady 10,800 feet above sea level. A four mile hike from the parking lot. All of it UP!

And lastly, the son who took these photos climbed a rock to enjoy the sun setting on the Mammoth Minarets.
My daughter shot this last one.

Beauty is sometimes best enjoyed without the clumsy addition of words. Sometimes.

This time.

But not always.
See you Monday . . .
July 18, 2008 / Uncategorized / 8 Comments »

Late, but oh, the delight

I am painfully aware of the many days that have passed since my last post. I have a string of excuses at my disposal and I am not afraid to use them. The truth is, though, “life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans.” I had to plans to post last Friday and again this past Monday. On Friday I was in Orlando at a writers retreat, which led to ICRS (the International Christian Retailrs Show) where The Shape of Mercy was introduced to a very nice crowd of book retailers.

I truly thought I’d be able to sneak in some blogging time during those busy days. It just didn’t happen. And I really did have some wonderful news to share, which I will share with you now.

Early last week I learned The Shape of Mercy, which hits bookstore shelves on Sept. 16, was reviewed in Publishers Weekly. I nervously headed over to its online home to read the review. This was the book’s first review and first introduction to the pubilc. PW is a discriminating general marketplace mag and I’d had yet to own the pleasure of fully impressing its staff of readers.

I clicked on the link to my review and scrolled down until I saw my name.

And there, much to my everlasting surprise, was a little red star.

Whoa.

I scrolled back up to the top of the webpage to make sure I had the correct URL and that I really was looking at a review of this book by Publishers Weekly. Yikes. I was.

With a shaking hand, I scrolled back down and just drank in the look and lustre of that little red star.

A starred review.

In Publishers Weekly.

They liked it.

Here’s what they said:
“Meissner’s newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic, the novel features the legacy of Mercy Hayworth—a young woman convicted during the Salem witch trials—whose words reach out from the past to forever transform the lives of two present-day women. These book lovers—Abigail Boyles, elderly, bitter and frail, and Lauren “Lars” Durough, wealthy, earnest and young—become unlikely friends, drawn together over the untimely death of Mercy, whose precious diary is all that remains of her too short life. And what a diary! Mercy’s words not only beguile but help Abigail and Lars together face life’s hardest struggles about where true meaning is found, which dreams are worth chasing and which only lead to emptiness, and why faith and hope are essential on life’s difficult path. Meissner’s prose is exquisite and she is a stunning storyteller. This is a novel to be shared with friends. (Sept. 16)”

Hey, it’s always nice to hear when you’ve done something right. I know someone else might read The Shape of Mercy and not like it at all. I know with a deadline looming and an unfinished manuscript calling me at every spare moment that this is no time to rest on laurels or pillows or anything else.

But affirmation goes a long way with me. It empowers me to keep at the craft, keep reaching for new depths and new possibilities. And the little red star? Hope it doesn’t sound sacrilegious, but that felt like a kiss from God. Like maybe He really likes this one, too.

Thanks for hanging around to hear this. I will endeavor not to leave you dangling on the Edge in future days.

On Monday, some great new titles from some awesome friends of mine. . . See you then.

June 30, 2008 / Uncategorized / 3 Comments »

The artful wordsmith

Edgelings, here is the moment of fun I promised you a week ago. Ten lashes with a wet noodle for me for being late. This doggone deadline thing. (I have an ensemble of characters holding me hostage – sorry).
All the fun is right here on Wordle. You paste or type in a collection of words that are meaningful to you and the Wordle art engine will turn them into word art. Hit the randomize button to try more artistic combinations. You can save your Wordle to the online gallery – which, by the way, all the world can see, so don’t have artistic fun with the middle name you’ve managed to keep a secret all these years. ‘Cause it will cease to be one.
I made these Wordles using key words from my upcoming release, The Shape of Mercy. It was fun! Give it a try.
June 6, 2008 / Uncategorized / 5 Comments »

There’s no place like tome

For the past couple years there’s been this Grim Reaper-kind of specter lurking around the paper-and-ink world of publishing, moaning to us that that pages will soon be no more and images will replace them.

We’ve been commanded to start weeping and preparing for the brave new world where books of the three-dimensional kind will cease to exist. I duly noted the prophecy, decided it would not happen in my lifetime and went back to writing for the world of paper.

I still feel that way. Even after reading op-eds like this one, which appeared today in the NY Times. I know you’re busy – you don’t need to read the whole thing (though I suggest you do). The gist of the piece is this: Digital this is replacing paper that. It’s happening. Readers – and there are fewer of those than there were 20 years ago – will begin to want all their reading material on their Kindles and Sony readers, and other nameless reading devices being designed even as I write this (and I am keenly aware that I am writing, at this moment, on a paperless, digital medium).

And when this happens, so says the Reaper, the floodgates will open and writers of all kinds – those with talent and those with none – will be able to get their good words and sorry words into digital space because we already know there is no boundary to that. A good “book” will cost next to nothing and so will a bad one. There will be a proliferation of downloadable words with no end in sight. Writers of the good stuff will have to find auxiliary means for making a living at writing, like, as this author of this op-ed imagined, charging for appearances to read their good stuff aloud. Because everything that is digital starts out rare and expensive and soon becomes common and cheap. Remember how much calculators cost back in the ’70s?

Well, I concede it may be true. I even concede it may happen in my lifetime. I know how fast things can change. Twenty years ago the word e-mail meant nothing to me.

But I predict no death of books. And that is because books have dual lives: they are objects of information/entertainment – functional, if you will – but they are also objects of art and that makes them cultural as well. Especially the novel. There is something artistic about having a book in your hands, keeping it after you’ve read it, and placing it onto a shelf in your living room like it’s part of the furniture. Books are displayed, spine visible, like photographs, paintings, and Lladro figurines. No one’s going to place their Kindle on the coffee table next to a Tuscan bowl of decorative spheres. Novels transcend information. They are things we keep.

The volume of books produced may decrease, and we writers may have to start making tents to supplement a meager income, but our books will not disappear until art disappears.

And there is no cloaked Doomsday party-pooper prognosticating the death of that.

May 31, 2008 / Uncategorized / 2 Comments »

I feel stoopid

I am not a big fan of soduku. Actually, I’ve never played it. And that is completely intentional. I hear that once you start you become addicted to it and I simply have no time left for additional addictions.

But I do admit to be slightly hooked on giving rice away by means of a lovely little vocabulary game at freerice.com. You play it, and for every word you correctly define (no cheating allowed!) the site will donate 20 grains of rice to hungry people in Third World countries. Since its inception in October 2007, 34 billion correct answers have been tallied. That translates into, hey, 34 billion grains of rice!

I feel really good about all my correct answers but I have to tell ya, for someone who spends the better part of her day with words, it hurts that I can’t get past a score of 45. I hear only geniuses can make it to 60. But still. It’s a hurdle I want to hop over. I want to make 50. And it’s nice knowing that everytime I fret and fume to make it there, someone is getting fed.

Give it a try. Here’s the link. If you make it past 50, you have to tell me so I can cheer for you and plan your demise. And NO DICTIONARIES!

Have a great weekend.

May 23, 2008 / Uncategorized / 2 Comments »

Resilience in a jar

I was sitting with a friend earlier this week and we were talking about someone we both care about who’s having a tough go of it.

Somehow our conversation moved from the aches of one to the agonies of thousands — our thoughts had turned to the earthquake in China and the unspeakable number of people whose lives have been snuffed out. Lingering in the background was the unspoken fact that the dead and missing are still being counted after the cyclone in Myanmar and that the number was thousands upon thousands.

“You know,” I said. “You can only take your heart so far with this. And then you have to stop. You just can’t take it all in. It’s too much.”

Yesterday my thoughts ached with the knowledge that singer/songwriter Steven Curtis Chapman and his family are mourning the tragic death of a loved 5-year-old daughter, killed when another family member accidentally hit her while driving the family SUV.

It’s too much, too much.

And yet, we are forced, aren’t we, to keep breathing, to keep moving forward. The planet still spins. Somehow we have to find that secret place within us where resilience lies. And keep breathing.

Not long ago my husband removed a scorpion from the bottom of the pool. We had no idea how long it had been there. Overnight, for sure. My husband dropped its lifeless body into a jelly jar so we could show it to our teenage son. The dead scorpion was a big one, perfectly shaped, nasty pincers in their proper place, its curly tail a resting half-circle of golden brown. We don’t often seen them that big and that close.

Something happened between the time the scorpion was pulled lifeless from the water and six hours later when we went to look at the body. The tail was now hooked and poised to strike, and those lobster-like pincers were at the ready. The thing was alive and mad. I don’t think it even occurred to him that he’d been rescued at his darkest moment. We wished him well and let the ungrateful thing go – far from the house.

I’d never seen such resilience before. I don’t want to be like that scorpion. I don’t want to escape death by waking up from turmoil ticked at the world. But I had to admire the scorpion’s tenacity. I suppose it couldn’t really have been dead. Perhaps insects like that can survive hours submerged. I don’t know. I just know what it looked like when we first put it in the jar. Dead.

But inside the fellow must’ve been thinking. Just hold on, hold on. It won’t always be this way. It will get better.

Just hold on . . .

May 12, 2008 / Uncategorized / 1 Comment »

I’m the only one here

Picture this. It’s a new day and you have a destination to reach, a schedule to keep, and the means to get there. You are not addicted to work. You have every intention of relaxing afterward, just not right now. Right now, you are interested in moving forward at a pace that will allow you to get done what you need to get done so you can have leisure time later.
But ahead of you and blocking your path is the oblivious saunterer, sauntering. Mindless to anyone’s agenda but their own. They don’t see you. They never see anyone. They think they’re the only ones there. They saunter because they want to and they can.
I don’t consider myself an impatient person. I know we live in a world filled with rooms designed for waiting, that there will always be stretches of time when I will have to wait my turn. I’ve known this since kindergarten.
But I also learned in kindergarten that you have to share. This is what it means to be a polite person. You have to share the crayons and the swingset and the beanbag chair. And when you’re an adult, you have to share a lot of things, including the space all around you; specifically the busy sidewalk, the grocery store aisle, the airport corridor — every populated environment where you are not the only person around.
This is what the oblivious saunterer doesn’t get. My very patient husband says this kind of selfish ambler is afflicted with acute situational unawareness. They really don’t know they’ve become blind to the fact that their right to choose a pace and space for their choices ends where someone else’s begins. Perhaps they know but they don’t care.
The secluded path is a great place to saunter. In fact, I highly recommend it. The busy path is a great place to remember what you learned in kindergarten about sharing.
Look up the word “saunter” on dictionary.com and even this resource will tell you the best example of this verb is a stroll through the woods, not a busy sidewalk. If you’re in a busy place and you’re not busy, well, enjoy your day. But hey, you could politely move to the side. I don’t want you to disappear. That would be rude. I just want to move past you. And I promise I’ll say thank you. Learned that in kindergarten, too.
I don’t lose any sleep over this, I assure you. It’s a pet peeve, a quirky one, to be sure. I also don’t like wet socks, Christmas decorations still up after Easter, the non-word “irregardless,” and junk mail masquerading as important mail.
Oblivious saunterers don’t ruin my day. They just complicate it from time to time. And sometimes it just feels good to air a grievance even if you know it won’t change anything.
Have a great week. Saunter to your heart’s content on every lonely path. Be mindful of your place on the busy path. See you Friday.
May 9, 2008 / Uncategorized / 2 Comments »

No sauntering today

I know I promised you a treatise on why sauntering (of a certain kind, I might add) should be outlawed but I am saving that hot topic for Monday when I have more time to think.

I’ve been on jury duty all week, so I’ve had some mental gymnastics going on, not to mention an interrupted schedule (not complaining – I’m a good citizen and all that), and a weekly word count that is in the red (figger that one out!) And because this whole sauntering thing is a peeve that is my pet, I’m keeping it for when I have a brain that hasn’t turned to oatmeal. Hopefully, Monday.

In the meantime, I offer a few comments about a book I just finished, The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs. I gotta say, this one won’t make my top ten this year. It’s okay. But just. I don’t like saying that about anyone’s book, because I know what it’s like to hear that said of something you wrote.

But I think I know why this one didn’t impress me. I think it’s the same reason it didn’t grab some and totally grabbed others. Just look at the reviews on Amazon and you’ll see there’s plenty of reviews on both ends of the 1 to 5 scale. I think it’s because the book is written in omniscient narrator POV. Meaning the point of view is the narrator. We are looking down on these characters from the lofty mindspace of Almighty Know-it-All. It’s a point-of-view that I have never taken with any of my books nor can I imagine ever doing so in the future. When you opt for omnscience, you lose character intimacy. That’s what I missed with this one. I never developed reader empathy with this cast of characters. I didn’t cry at the Big Sad Thing that happened at the end. That kind of bummed me out. I felt nothing. I am sure for the 5-star crowd, this just wasn’t a problem. But it was a problem for me.

I doubt I will pick up another omnicient narrator POV book for awhile. It was exhausting trying to stay connected to these people. I wanted to care for them. I did. But there was nothing to pin my cares onto. This made it especially hard when the characters made really dumb choices. I just wanted slap their one-dimensional faces. Hey, I know we need characters with flaws, but only people I care about can exercise their faults and keep me cheering for them anyway.

So then. ‘Nuff about that. Enjoy your weekend, saunter all you like. Monday is coming. You have been warned.

April 28, 2008 / Uncategorized / 1 Comment »

A little bit of this, a little bit of that

Saturday found me and my 23-year-old daughter at UCLA for the LA Times annual Festival of Books.

Four hundred authors, tent after tent of books, thousands of attendees. The smell of ink and pages was everywhere. It was heady. It was hot. Probably 90 in the shade.

But I loved it.

At first I thought it was because, hey I’m an author. I fit that niche. I’m not Tom Wolfe or Joanne Harris or Mary Higgins Clark but I write books just like they do. But after just an hour of roaming the north campus in a haze of heat and bookly wonder, I began to realize who walked the pavement and lawns with me. Not authors. This wasn’t like the writers conventions and confereneces I’d been to. This place was teeming with strollers and trikes and dogs on leashes and red balloons. Families had descended upon the campus. Parents who like to read, who want their kids to grow up with that kind of adoration for books. This was a place for readers.

Very cool. Even on a hot day.

I have a little radio announcement to plug here, but after that, I’ve included a few photos of the Festival. Okay, so I don’t have pictures of the stacks of books. But you can see that in any library or bookstore. Here are pictures of the reason any of us writers write anything at all.

First, the plug: I’ll be joining Amy Hammond Hagberg on her radio show on Thursday and we’ll be talking, among other things, about my latest release, Blue Heart Blessed. It’s a call-in show, so if you want to chime in, here’s what you need to know: The 60-minute show airs live every Thursday at 12 noon Central time (1 p.m. Eastern, 11 a.m. Mountain, 10 a.m. Pacific). Callers are welcome to join the conversation and ask questions during the show by calling (347) 324-5425. You can also listen online by visiting http://www.blogtalkradio.com/godunplugged.
During the live show you can also participate in the chat room and ask questions that way. In order to join the conversation via chat, however, you’ll need to register (but Amy says it’s free and easy).

If you can’t join us live, no prob! You can listen any time by visiting the archives. Read more about the host and the discussion on Amy’s website, http://www.hesreal.com/.

Hope to “hear” you there.

And now, the photos!


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