Spires Quote #2

Another Spires of Stone quote of the day!

Yesterday I used one from Bethany.

Now it's Ben's turn:

"I thought I had trained him well and that the effects would last. Yet what does he do the first chance he has when we return? Fall over his own shoes because of a girl."

I Met My Artist

If I had known ahead of time how great today's signing would be, I would have been too giddy to sleep last night.

Signings in general are a tough animal. I'm an introvert. I'm shy. It's tough to get out of your shell and talk to perfect strangers.

Fortunately, I'm not as uncomfortable doing them when I first started out—and that's not just because in 2002 I was doing book signings 8 1/2 months pregnant, swollen like a beached whale—but they're still not exactly on my top ten list of favorite activities.

Frankly, they're exhausting—you have to be "on" for two hours straight, smiling and being energetic (if you know me, the gal who spends hours each morning in her PJ's, that should tell you something). Sometimes I feel like a used car salesman as I pitch my book to customers who really came in to buy a baptism gift and have no use for me. Or I feel like a carnival freak show that everyone's trying to avoid looking at. (There's just something about a book signing table that makes people avert their eyes and run for cover.)

But today was different!

For starters, it wasn't just me braving the crowds. Two tables graced the walkway where the BYU bookstore stationed me. I shared mine with the delightful Suzie Roberts who wrote a cookbook about freezing dinners beforehand (something I think I need with my family's growing hectic schedule!).

Down the way a bit was the second table, with Chad Hawkins (who I tried picking temple research brains with) and Matthew Buckley (a really funny guy who has a rather smiley countenance,which I didn't expect, since I had only ever seen his oh-so-serious picture). Then Marsha Ward, who is in town for Education Week, stopped by, as well as author (and now BYU MBA student) Rob Wells. Not only that, but my Relief Society president came over between classes to say hi.

I didn't feel lonely at all! And I even sold quite a few books. How many, I'm not sure, because I was really enjoying myself, so I didn't count how many this time. Usually I have a mental tally going on. Even better was getting a good dozen comments from people walking by who stopped after seeing my covers, then said something like, "I've read those. I loved them!" I don't think that has ever happened so many times in two hours. Hearing it was gratifying and yes, fun.

At one point over the PA I heard a voice announce that Al Rounds was upstairs. I about hyperventilated. I was unaware of his name three years ago, but since then it has meant a ton to me. He is the artist behind all of the temples on my book covers. (William Whittaker is the artist behind the women on them). I have loved and adored all of my historical covers, and for a long time, I've wanted to meet him and express my admiration for his work.

I ditched my table and ran to meet him. He had just left his table to be part of a presentation, but I was informed that he'd be back soon and that my signing ended well before he'd be leaving for the day. Pumped, I returned to my table. But when 1:00 hit, I went back upstairs.

Al Rounds is one of the sweetest men I've ever met, and he seemed glad to meet me after contributing three paintings to my books. (He had imagined me older. Yeah, I get that a lot with these cheeks . . .)

Over the course of our conversation, I dropped a few big hints about which two temples I'll need next . . . not exactly placing my order, but sort of crossing my fingers, because I'd hate to reach a point where my covers don't feature Al Rounds.

If you're interested in seeing the full painting that the the detail on Spires of Stone is from, visit here. The painting is entitled, "City Creek," but in my cover you can't see the creek part, because the girls are in front of it. I have a secret hope that maybe someday I'll own a small print of each temple of his that has graced my covers.

Speaking of Spires of Stone, no, it wasn't at my signing today. It should reach stores in a week or two. (Woohoo!)

And just for fun while we wait, from now until it's on shelves, I'm going to post quotes from the book.

Here's one for today:

"I will personally never understand the fascination with the other half of our species, but if one of them makes you happy . . ." —Bethany

Come See Me!

Really. Do.

Because is you don't, I'll be lonely.

This is BYU Education Week, also known as the time when authors do book signings for the hordes of people descending on campus. Theoretically, it should be a great time to sell books, because there are so many people.

But the trick comes in that Ed. Week attendees use the BYU bookstore as a highway. Sure, you get hundreds of people walking past your table, but 99% of them are bent on reaching the Cougar Eat or getting to their next workshop before it starts.

If you aren't careful, you'll get trampled. It's enough to make a writer want to wear a helmet.

I'm making it sound worse than it is, but that's to guilt my readers into coming to say hi. (Is it working?)

To sweeten the deal, here's a nugget:

The gal who scheduled me for the signing said there's a small chance that Spires of Stone will actually BE there!

How small a chance? No clue.

It might be infinitesimal (or not), so I'm crossing my fingers and toes just in case. Wouldn't it rock to have it THERE two weeks early?

Here's the specifics:

I'll be signing at the BYU Bookstore

THIS WEDNESDAY (August 22)

11:00 am to 1:00 pm.

I'd love to see a friendly face or two!

LDSBA

I spent most of Thursday at the annual LDS Booksellers Association convention. It was my second time there, and I loved every minute of it . . . except for when I was walking, because I had the stupidity to wear some shoes that, while incredibly cute (thanks for letting me babysit them, Mom!) pinched something fierce. I hobbled my way back to the car at day's end.

On the up side, this year I remembered to bring a camera. On the down side, I didn't remember to take it out very often, so I don't have pictures of things I really should have: hanging out with Michele Holmes and Stephanie Fowers at the Covenant breakfast, spending time with Josi Kilpack and Julie Wright, and chatting it up with the Covenant editors, especially my very own editor, the illustrious Angela (who rocks beyond measure and recently found my blog. Hi, dear!).

So we'll make do with the few photographs I did get.

First is a picture of the Whitney Awards booth, where I spent the time between the Covenant breakfast and my signing, helping to spread the word about the Whitney program and getting retailers and other industry professionals to join the voting academy. (The gent you see in the picture is BJ Rowley, one of the members of the Whitney Committee.) An example of the award is off to the left, but being as the award itself has no color and is transparent, it's hard to make out. It looks (quite fittingly) like an open book.

Next is the giant banner with my book cover on it. Last year when I saw At the Journey's End on such a banner, it was so dang cool to see it blown up so big that I vowed to be sure to bring a camera next time. So I did. :)

Lastly, there's a picture of me at the signing table with a stack of ARC's of Spires of Stone that I got to touch, hold, and flip through for the first time. On the right is a basket with white chocolate temples I made to give away with the books because I'm a total idiot and make more work for myself than necessary (hey, but I have fun doing it)!

This was the day that the reality struck home. Spires will be on shelves in a couple of weeks now! The road getting it to press felt long, and at the time the release felt a world away, so the fact that it's staring me in the face is wild. It crept up on me fast. I'm suddenly realizing all the promotional things I wanted to do and now need to get going on because it's TIME.

Funny thing is that I've been telling people that my fifth book is coming out, and then I have to stop myself and count to double-check. Yes, that's right. Five. A whole hand! The journey to this point has been amazing, and I'm so grateful to be where I am, writing the stories I do and having the chance to share them with readers. I can't tell you how gratifying it was to have book store owners get their copy yesterday and talk about my books in such glowing terms: asking how many more are coming, when the NEXT one will be done ("Hurry!" they said, even though one is just now coming out. I am trying to hurry. I am!) Several people had to be turned away from getting a copy after the 50 brought for the signing were gone.

One moment from the day stands out for me. Backing up: A creative writing professor I had in college warned the class that the chances of any of us getting published were pretty slim. He also said that most of us weren't good enough and really shouldn't be writing. He was just being realistic, trying to not inflate our hopes, I know, but I decided right then and there that I would prove him wrong.

Yesterday as I walked from one side of the hall to the other, I saw him. He was there because his own latest book just came out. He recognized me, and we had a brief exchange. I have no idea if he remembers what he told the class over a dozen years ago.

But he does know that at least one of his students defied the odds.

And that fact makes the success just a little sweeter.

Reading as Play

The past several months my muse has been sputtering. Due to rewrites, edits, and proofs—and several other items that constitute both my writing and personal life—I didn’t get a solid start on my Manti temple book until school let out.

Try writing with the kids home all day.

Haaaaaah!

Seriously, I could have gotten a lot more done than I have, even with my sweet little people needing attention. I even organized our days so I’d have some writing time each week. But even after I got off the (literally) stupid medication that made it hard to think, I’d sit down and wonder what scene I was supposed to write next—and then question each one I had already written. I felt like I was forcing each word of the story.

Worse, I was treading water rather than producing much of anything. Every so often I’d get a scene down that I was happy with, then think, “Yes! I’m on a roll now!” only to run into another sputter and stop the next day.

It wasn’t quite writer’s block—I was producing a bit on some level—but it was darn close.

Fortunately, I think I stumbled upon the reason and the cure this weekend: I had lost the joy of reading. Sound odd? It did to me, too.

See, I’m one of those people who believes that to be a good writer, you must read. This should be a good thing.

But with the hyper-controlling brain of mine, I turned reading into one more chore on my to do list.

Laundry? Check.

Dinner? Check.

Read today? Check.

Ick.

I’d find myself reading because I “needed” to. I’d open a book just to get through a few more pages so I could move on to the next one I “needed” to read. When I finished one, I’d mark it off on the trusty list I’ve kept for years of what I’ve read each year, and feel like I had accomplished something.

Then this last weekend, I took a book that (of course) I felt I needed to read to keep up on my market, and decided to (holy cow) throw caution to the wind and read for hours on end.

It’s sad for me to admit that I don’t remember the last time I did that. I’ve been fitting reading into the cracks of my life for months now. I made sure I found time for reading (because, well, good writers read)—but often (and I’m dead serious here) it would be while brushing my teeth or while eating my breakfast. You know, those snippets of time that would otherwise be wasted if I weren’t multi-tasking. ALL. THE. TIME.

I finished that book and put it down, feeling like my children look after they get to play at the park. My mind felt alive with new energy, words, images.

Yesterday I produced about twice as many words on my work in progress as I have in any single day for months.

Coincidence? I don't think so.

Note to self: Remember to play with books. Reading is not a job.

Life & Death

In some ways, after having enough children, mothers tend to think they've pretty much seen it all. And then one of them manages to surprise you.

This time, fortunately, the surprise from my almost 5-year-old isn't of the dump-a-bottle-of-maple-syrup-on-the-floor variety like when she was a year and a half old.

No, this time her imaginary play has gone places I never expected.

When her older brother was this age, he'd either act out entire episodes of his favorite PBS shows or pretend he was a sword-wielding character from just about any Disney movie. I hadn't realized how many sword fights are in those movies until my son imitated them with butter knives, wooden spoons, and anything else roughly narrow and long. Swords are in them all, from Peter Pan to Aladdin to Sleeping Beauty.

When older sister #1 was her age, it was Barbies.

When older sister #2 was there, she loved Fisher Price Little People.

And of course, both sisters did the usual playing House and Mommy with their dolls.

My youngest has done the Barbie thing. She's very much into Polly Pocket, and she loves playing House and Mommy.

But in the last week, she's added a level to her play, one that has made me take pause and wonder just what is going on in that little brain of hers. She's thinking, that's what.

Earlier this week, her grandmother bought her a Happy Meal with a toy teddy bear in it. My daughter loves her regular-sized teddy bear and sleeps with it every night. Holding both bears, she informed me, "Look. Teddy's having a baby."

I glance over, expecting to see perhaps the teddy bear cradling the miniature one.

Nope.

Instead, the baby bear is being "born." She's holding the little bear behind the big one and slowly pushing it between the big bear's legs. Sure enough, Teddy "had a baby."

I'm not entirely sure where she learned that; I don't think we've had that talk, but maybe she's overheard me discussing baby stories with the older kids or with other women?

Then the other evening, I came across her drawing her toy dog, Perrito (named after Dora the Explorer's dog). On the other side of the paper were squiggles that were supposed to be words, plus a picture of a lollipop. I complimented her on her artwork.

She looked at me with the most somber expression her cute little chubby cheeks could muster and said, "Mommy, I'm pretending that Perrito died. This is the newspaper telling about it. And this picture [the lollipop] shows how he died. He had too much candy."

I stood there trying my best to look solemn. I nodded gravely. "That's so sad," I said, trying my hardest not to smile or laugh.

She spent the next hour making additional copies to give to all the family members.

Where, oh WHERE, did she learn about obituaries?

It looks to me that she's entering that era of childhood that's coming out of the toddler phase and into big kid phase. She's grasping what life means and needs to experiment with both the beginning and the ending of life.

So in spite of my twitching mouth, I left the room pondering on how play helps her sort through her world, and how much that little mind of hers is always working.

And then I couldn't help but envy her a little bit. Wouldn't it be nice if we grown-ups could simply play our way through life's questions as we try to solve them?

What Is REAL

A new Best Foods mayonnaise commercial touts that their brand is "real" and that we should all eat more real foods.

Whether Best Foods tastes any better than other brands, I don't know, but I certainly agree with the sentiment. We live in such an over processed, nasty food world, that sometimes I ache for tomatoes just picked from the garden instead of their red, cardboard-tasting counterparts at the grocery store.

I'd give a lot these days for a bite of my dad's famous rainbow trout, caught and cooked the same day with his own special recipe. (Beats any freeze-dried halibut you're trying to pass off as food.) And for birthday cake? Mom's Finnish cake recipe, complete with moistening the layers with lemon juice and filling them with fresh jam. (Forget that artificially-colored atrocity at the grocery store bakery.)

I grew up with a mother who was way ahead of the health-food curve (and by way ahead, I mean something in the neighborhood of light years). My family was pretty much seen as the freaks of the neighborhood, and it wasn't unheard of for Mom to tell us not to mention that we ate raw honey instead white sugar, because people will think we're weird. (They did.)

She had read enough scientific literature to know well before the general public did that butter is better for you than margarine. (If I haven't mentioned it before, Mom is a bibliophile, only not so much with novels. The woman reads and reads every piece of non-fiction, especially about nutrition and health, that she can get her hands on.)

We never had margarine growing up (and I still can't stand the taste of it—I can hardly believe there are people in the world who can't tell the difference between butter and that nasty goo). But I had friends (even as an adult, I've run into them) who insist that margarine is better for you.

But we didn't even buy Crisco. "Shortening" to me meant butter. Most people I knew thought we were crazy.

It wasn't until about five years ago that the term "trans fat" became common when referring to the fat in margarine and shortening. At last, Mom was vindicated.

Like most of the country, Hubby grew up on margarine. It was cheaper and, as far as the family knew, healthier. For special occasions like Christmas, his mother would indulge in butter—and what a treat it was! So you can imagine his reaction when he married me and I put my foot down, insisting we'd always have butter, thank you very much. (Butter all the time?! Score!)

Recently, I asked a neighbor if I could borrow a cube of butter. She said yes, and I sent one of the kidlets to pick it up. He came home with a cube of margarine. I had half a mind to call her back and say, "I asked for BUTTER, lady! This isn't BUTTER." I didn't use the cube; I couldn't. We just made something else for dinner.

Same goes with other "real" foods. The fake variety just doesn't cut it. In addition to real butter, I grew up on homemade whole wheat bread that was so hearty it broke our toaster. (Dad, child of the Depression, jimmy-rigged the thing so it still worked. But you had to poke a homemade "key" into a special hole he drilled to make the toaster go down.)

Another real food I prefer is brown rice. It is real. White rice, while tolerable, is FAKE. You have to strip all the good stuff off the brown rice to make it white, just like you have to strip all the good stuff off the wheat kernel to make white flour.

My manic protestations to the contrary, hubby still prefers white bread and white rice. But I've converted him to other things over the thirteen years we've been married.

My biggest success has been getting him to genuinely appreciate—of course—REAL chocolate.

Whoops. As if one chocoholic in the family weren't enough.

My NEO

No, I'm not talking about the Matrix.

Many people have asked about my favorite writing tool, so I thought I'd finally get around to blogging about it.

It's a lifesaver for me. Without it, my last two books wouldn't have been written nearly as quickly as they were. It's how I squeeze writing into the daily chaos that is family life. It's also how I can sit beside my husband in the evening as he's watching TV without abandoning him for the computer (but still get some writing in).

What is it? It's my AlphaSmart NEO.

Begun as a way to teach grade school students how to type without the enormous cost of lots of computers, the AlphaSmart quickly found a cult following among writers, and for good reason.

At its most basic, an AlphaSmart is a portable word processor. It's got a sturdy shell, a small screen that holds 4 lines or so of text (depending on your model and the font size), and a full-size keyboard. It uses so little battery power that my rechargeable battery gets charged maybe three times a year. There's no saving involved. Once you type something in, it's there until you delete it. And there's no boot-up time, either. You push a button, and it turns on. You push it again, and it turns off (or just wait a few minutes; if you don't type for a while, it'll turn off to conserve power).

The earlier versions (the AlphaSmart 2000 and 3000, no longer available) had slightly clunkier keyboards and design than the NEO, which is sleeker and requires a much lighter touch to type with. As a result, I can type much faster on the NEO than I could on the 3000. The NEO also has a word count feature, which I really missed on the AlphaSmart 3000 I owned before.

It has 8 files you can write in, and each one can hold something like 32 single-spaced pages worth of material. I've never yet filled a file, but I like being able to have several things going at once. New with the NEO is the ability to remove (but save) a file from being active and use that spot for another work, essentially giving you several times more than 8 files to work with. I've never needed to use this function, because I always transfer my work to my computer pretty quickly after writing on the NEO.

The DANA version has a few bells and whistles, but also a few drawbacks, like how you have to save, and I know of DANAs that have had problems like fatal errors, things I've never heard of with a NEO.

If you're looking for a high-powered laptop, this isn't it.

But if you're looking for something light-weight, easy to transport, easy to turn on, that won't lose power after hours and hours and HOURS of writing, that keeps your work without any effort on your part, something that costs a fraction of a decent laptop, this is your toy.

I mean tool.

Mine has been dropped and stepped on (this happens with four children running around), and it's taken the abuse. I use it all the time.

We inherited a 2000 recently, and I passed it on to the kids so they'd stop trying to use my NEO. They love writing their own stories, and with 8 files, they each get to "own" two of them. It's perfect.

When it's time to transfer my work to the computer, I just launch the "get" utility program and push the "send" button on my NEO. The infared does the rest.

I can also transfer from the computer to the NEO, but since the NEO is best for drafting rather than revising (at least for me; that little screen is tough to revise on), I rarely send anything the other direction.

My NEO has let me draft on car trips, in hotel rooms, in the lobby of the dance studio, in the doctor's office, on the deck swing as the kids play outside, poolside while the kids are in swimming lessons, on a bench at the park. Without it, I wouldn't get nearly as much done.

For more information, here's their website.

Lucky Fours

Tagged again, this time with lists of fours:

Four Jobs I've had:
WordPerfect Beta Tester
HPRC/PE Secretary at BYU
R&D for Write Express
Assistant Director, Utah Chocolate Show

Four Places I've Lived:
Provo
Helsinki, Finland
Spanish Fork
American Fork

Four Favorite TV Shows:
Monk
Scrubs
Frasier (back in the day)
Pretender (ditto)

Four Favorite Foods:
-Karjalan Piirakoita (a Finnish holy cow yummy single-serving savory "pie" that looks sort of like a football. Made with rye dough outside and rice cooked in milk on the inside. Especially good with egg butter and sliced tomatoes on top.)
-Beef Strogonoff
-Fazer Blue milk chocolate bar (from—you guessed it—Finland)
-Chicken Parmesan

Four Websites I Frequent:
Meriam-Webster online
My Library's website
Wikipedia
Utah History Encyclopedia

(Man, I'm such a nerd . . .)

Four Places I'd Rather Be Right Now:
Getting a massage
Helsinki (to see Mom & Dad and visit all my old haunts)
On a writer's retreat somewhere beautiful
In the high Uintahs on a week-long hike

Four Movies I Love:
A Knight's Tale
Charade
Philadelphia Story
Strictly Ballroom

Four Bloggers I Tag Next:
I'll try to tag people I haven't tagged before . . .

Lu Ann Staheli
Janette Rallison
Alison Palmer
Tamra Norton

Sneak Peek!

It's August 1st, which means that the release of Spires of Stone is just one month away.

Woohoo!!!

For readers interested in reading the first part of the book, I've posted a sampler on my website.

Just follow the link on the home page. It'll take you to where you can download the PDF and then read the prologue and first two chapters.

One note: The cover image on the first page is pretty high resolution, so downloading the file might take a minute. (But of course it's worth waiting for, right? :-D)

If you know of someone else who might enjoy reading the first 30 pages (okay, the first 27), please, spread the word!

Help Me Sleep!

Now that my husband and I have officially reached the end of the Harry Potter saga, we're floundering a bit. We spent five months rereading the first six books aloud at night, then devoured #7 when it came out.

And now, well . . . we sort of put our heads on our pillows at night, feeling like something isn't quite right in the world. It's harder to get to sleep without our nightly read aloud.

Granted, we could just pick up another book and read that together, but we want something that'll last, not just a single title. Plus we want start something that we'll both enjoy and appreciate.

(Like, uh, Harry Potter . . . Dang. Did that.)

Now I'm looking to my blogosphere buddies to help us out.

I tend to be literary, female (okay, girly), or LDS Market-driven in what I read. He enjoys science fiction (LOVES Phillip K. Dick) and fantasty (especially Robert Jordan—it's thanks to him I got into reading The Wheel of Time). He's also into a lot of non-fiction, such as the Don't Know Much About series.

So what do you think, folks? Any brilliant ideas? What should we read together next?

I'm a Schmoozer

Check it out! I got my second blog award ever, the "Blogging Community Involvement Award," also known as the Schmooze Award, courtesy my good friend Luisa.

I don't know that I deserve the award; it's a little strange to think that someone as shy as I am might be involved in a community in that way. But I'll take it. :)

Considering I've met more cyber-friends because of Luisa than anyone else, and considering that she's the ultimate in blog community involvement and has been such a great person to know, I'm half tempted to throw it back at her. But I don't think that's how this award thing works.

Instead I gave it some thought and came up with a couple of bloggers to pass it on to:

Robison Wells
He's one of the funniest writers I know, and he is heavily involved in both the LDS writing community and the blog community. He's one of the six writers from the wildly popular Frog Blog, and he also keeps up his own blog at his website. I can't think of a blogger who has made me laugh, snort, and spit out drinks onto the monitor more often than Rob. (Most recently, check out his "spoilers" from Harry Potter 7. Just put your soda can aside while you read.) In addition to his blog involvement, Rob's serious about being involved in the LDS publishing world and has spent an enormous amount of time backstage working on his brainchild, The Whitney Awards.

Tristi Pinkston
This is a gal who has gotten herself so entrenched in the world of blogs that she might be able to get her mailing address switched there. It's amazing to me how many times I've discovered a new blog, clicked on the comment trail, and there's Tristi's comment already. She's very active in her own blog, and she even blogs as a media reviewer for Families.com She's the ultimate in blog community involvement.

There you have it. Enjoy, guys!

Harry & Yarn

I spent my weekend the same way several million other people did: reading the seventh installment of Harry Potter.

Even better, I spent the time reading it aloud with my husband, just like we've read all of the Harry Potter books. It's been a treat for me to get the new book and snuggle next to him as we take turns reading aloud, and every time we've read the last page and closed a cover, there's been a sense of loss for me. Not only because the book is done, but because we won't be reading another Harry book together for a couple of years. This time it was particularly poignant: we won't EVER get another Harry book. Sure, we can read other books together (and I'm sure we will), but this marks the end of an era.

Back in February we decided to reread the entire series so it would all be fresh in our minds. So for the last five months, we've been reading together at night before bed, a chapter or two here and there, gradually working our way through the books.

And then, of course, we got #7 on Saturday. We've done little else since. Our poor kids; it's been, "Make yourself a sandwich" for several days, since it takes longer to read aloud than silently. Monday night the kids slept at their cousins' house. We ordered pizza and stayed up until 4:00 AM trying to finish. By that point, the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. It was hubby's turn to read, and as he did, I kept dozing off for a paragraph here, then jerking myself awake, then falling asleep again, so we called it a night.

Yesterday we finished. I was a sobbing wreck. It was my turn to read during the emotional part, and it was not a pretty sight.

There are a few things I would have liked done differently, but overall I absolutely loved the final installment. Like so many others I've heard talk about the book, it is, in a word, "satisfying."

In addition to getting through Harry's story, however, I got something else accomplished too. Every time it was my turn to listen, I'd pick up my knitting. The joys! I haven't had that much knitting time in ages, and I got a lot done on my daughter's jacket that she's been waiting for. (It's still not done, but I'm definitely going to get it done so she has it before it gets cold in the fall.)

One bad part? As I listened to Harry, I'd get distracted and mess up on the design my cutie girl wanted on the back and have to unwravel it. This happened several times, to the point that I'd probably be six inches or so ahead of where I am if I hadn't gone gaga for Harry.

Fiction Fantasies

Luisa tagged me for what is, I think, my favorite meme ever.

It took me a long time to come up with the answers, and if I were to answer on another day in another mood, they might be totally different. Even so, it was sure fun to think back to books I've read over the years and come up with the answers. One trouble I had is that I'd think of books I loved but that I read a decade (or two) ago—and have forgotten details like characters' names and such, so I couldn't use them.

With all that as a disclaimer, here are my answers:

1. If you could host a party with seven literary characters, whom would you invite and why?

Valancy Snaith, for her wit and her zest for life, especially after looking death in the face.

Jo March, to get me inspired with my writing.

Guy Montag. At the end of the evening, I have a feeling I’d value the written word more. It would also be cool to hear him recite some of the works he’s been assigned to memorize.

Silas Marner. I'd love to hear him talk about how his life and treasure changed.

Aerin. To me, she is one of the first real power women. I’d beg her to tell her battle stories and show off her moves.

Henry V. His stories would rival Aerin’s, but he’s not just a warrior. He’s an honorable man and a romantic at heart.

Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. An intriguing person who I’d hope would be willing to spill the beans about more of her files.


2. Who is your literary role model?
I think this means someone fictional who I look up to.

Instead, I’m going to break the rule and interpret this to mean who is my role model as far as writing goes, and that means someone who’s real, not fictional. No surprise, I’m sure, that has to be L. M. Montgomery. It’s something I can’t help.

First off, I’ve always had a love of her books, well beyond Anne. Her characters are so rich and fun—sometimes the minor ones are as real and alive as the primaries), and her stories are delightfully refreshing.

But for me, she’s also a role model as a business woman. She had a vision for what she wanted in her writing career, plus a spine of steel that prevented people from messing with her or making her back down. They tried, but she fought back in court and won. That’s my kind of role model.


3. Which literary house would you like most to live in?
For hanging out for a long vacation, that would be Pemberly. But for actually living in? Tough call. Ingleside, maybe?


4. Which literary couple would you like most for parents?
This one’s tough. Every time I think of an awesome fictional parent, I realize they’re doing the job solo, having lost a spouse. For now, I’ll say Atticus Finch and his late wife. She had to be a way cool woman.


5. Pick three literary characters you would like to have as siblings.
Peter Pevensie, the best big brother in the world.
Meg Murray, the genius big sister who would do anything for her sibling—me.
Elinor Dashwood, who is much more like me than her "real" sister. I think we'd be close.


6. Who is your favorite literary villain?
Lanfear. In addition to being intelligent, she’s drop-dead beautiful, conniving, deceptive, and seductive. She’s also in it for herself, no matter what she says.


7. Name a character that most people dislike, but that you do not. Why do you like him/her?
Javert. In his heart, he truly thinks he’s doing the right thing by serving justice above all. I pity the poor, tormented guy.


8. Which minor character deserves a book of his/her own, in your opinion?
Crispin’s mother. She must have had quite a life. It would be intense (and sad) to read about it.


9. Which character do you identify most with in literature?
Emily Starr. Since she was a little girl, she has had a burning need to express herself on paper and has had a dream of being a writer. (Yeah, a slight parallel.) Fortunately, I don't identify with her childhood years as far as who she lived with and such.


10. If you could go into a novel, which one would it be and why?
The Eyre Affair, because from that book I could go into all kinds of other books. Besides, what a ball it would be to hang out with Thursday Next and bust the literary bad guys!


11. Name 3 - 7 books that you rarely see on people’s favorite book lists that are high on your own.
Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens
The Great Divorce, by C. S. Lewis
Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery, Volumes I-V
In a Dry Land, by Elizabeth Petty Bentley
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexander Dumas—unabridged
Much Ado about Nothing, by William Shakespeare (Okay, not a book. So sue me. Love this movie adaptation too.)
The poetry of John Dunne


12. Which is your least favorite book of those that are considered "classics?"
This one is easy: The Sound and the Fury, by William-I-think-I’m-amazing-but-I’m-an-idiot-Faulkner.

Thanks for thinking of me, Luisa!

I think I'll tag someone who is just as crazy about books as I am, the same buddy who co-wrote that Blue Castle screenplay as well as a fantasy novel with me so long ago and was in several of my English classes at BYU. Not to mention the year she went along with my insanity back in ninth grade and joined my writing/reading group based on LMM and Anne:

Sarah, I hope you'll play!

Pt. IV Answer

In my excitement over my new cover, I sort of spaced answering the final trivia question from the last edition of our Temple Trivia series.

Here goes:

What event briefly halted work on the Manti Temple?
A) The death of Brigham Young
B) The assassination of President Garfield
C) A stone quarry explosion
D) A grasshopper plague

The answer: B, the assassination of President Garfield.

For a couple of days, everything stopped in his memory, including the temple construction, as people mourned the loss of their president.

There's a chance Brigham Young's death stopped the work, too, but I found no record of it. However, the temple might not have had a full-time crew at that point, since Brigham Young died so early on in the construction, just four months after the ground breaking. So maybe there just wasn't any work going on to stop when he died.

The stone quarry didn't have any major accidents, just minor stuff like dropping a big rock on someone's foot.

Finally, the Manti settlers did have grasshopper plagues, but they happened before temple construction.

There you have it!

My New Wrapper

It's so close, I can almost taste it! In just over a month, Spires of Stone will be officially released.

Even better, I now have the cover image, which is always a moment to remember: first seeing how your baby will be "wrapped." This one's a bit different than my last two, being as it has two women on the cover instead of one. I asked for that, since the book really has two heroines, and I didn't want to pick between them as to who would be on the cover.

Do they look like the characters in my head? No. But that's okay; who can see into my head anyway? I've had the fortune to have all of my historical covers with beautiful artwork on them, so I'm not about to complain.

As for a little about the book, here's the backliner (that blurb thing you read on the back of the book!):

Bethany Hansen wasn’t sure when or if she would ever see Benjamin Adams again. She also told herself that it didn’t matter. But when Ben and his two brothers come home after more than two years of serving a mission to the Eastern states, her feelings of heartache and anger also return—fiercer than ever. And so do Ben’s feelings for her.

Good-naturedly, Ben’s brothers attempt to reunite the two, even as they separately vie for Bethany’s younger sister, Hannah. What follows is a charming historical romance complete with wonderful characters and witty dialogue that explores the redemption and power of finding—and rediscovering—true love.

And here are what some other authors have said about it:

In the spirit of Much Ado about Nothing, Spires of Stone is a wonderfully rich story that will linger in your heart and mind long after you’ve finished reading it.”
—Michele Bell, Author of Perfect Timing and A Candle in the Window

With intrigue, love, redemption, and characters you’ll cherish, Spires of Stone will capture your heart.
—H.B. Moore, author of the Out of Jerusalem series

The construction of the Salt Lake Temple provides an illuminating backdrop for this story of romantic love, scandal, sacrifice, forgiveness, and reunion.
—Kerri Robinson, coauthor of A Banner Is Unfurled

A witty and well-crafted historical romance that will leave you wishing it were twice as long.
—Jeffrey S. Savage, The Shandra Covington mystery series

I hope readers enjoy it as well. As Michele Ashman Bell pointed out above (and as I hinted in a previous post), the book is somewhat of a retelling of Much Ado About Nothing. That said, the characters took on lives of their own, so there are parts that veer away from the original, especially in the last half.

When the release date's closer, I'll blog about how I morphed Shakespeare's story and characters to fit 1867 Salt Lake City. Some people have asked me why certain characters have the names they do, and some of that is a misunderstanding of which Shakespearean characters they actually represent. So I'll clarify some of where my head was when I wrote it.

In any event, this is probably my most light-hearted historical, with more humorous scenes than any other. I had a ball writing it, and I hope readers will enjoy it, too!

Temple Trivia Pt. IV

Until I start researching a fifth temple, this is our final installment!

First, to the trivia question from last time:
When debating before construction began over what to build the temple out of, what material did Brigham Young lobby in General Conference for?

A. Granite
B. Oolite
C. Adobe
D. Stucco-covered Sandstone

The answer is one that made me laugh out loud when I first found it—and then I was seriously confused until I found something else that to me explains it.

The answer: C-Adobe!

Why on EARTH would Brigham Young want adobe for the temple? To me, it made no sense. He had SEEN the temple in vision, right? Couldn't he TELL that it was stone?

Apparently not.

He believed adobe was stronger than stone, saying that when all the other stones (San Pete rock, sand stone, marble, limestone) would be washed away by the river, "you will find that the temple which is built of mud or adobe, as some call them, still remains and in better condition than at the first day it was built."

Okay then . . .

Here's my theory:
In 1857 when Johnston's Army came marching into Utah to quell a supposed rebellion, Captain Tracy, one of Johnston's men, wrote, describing the homes and other structures in Salt Lake City, "The buildings were almost entirely of adobe, giving them the appearance of grey cut stone" (emphasis mine).

Aha! Turns out that their adobe LOOKED like gray stone! So when Brigham Young saw the vision of the completed temple, he probably thought he was seeing adobe, when in reality, he was seeing the rock that would eventually be cut from the Little Cottonwood Quarry.

Now for Manti!

1) The original plan called for the Manti Temple Hill to be terraced with walls of stone, so some major blasting of rock and leveling out the rough and barren hill was undertaken well before the temple was under construction. Eventually four walls were built up, terracing the hill, and then the temple construction began. Some people said that with the terraces and then the temple walls at the top, at times it looked like they were creating a major fortress. They planned to landscape the hill with the terraces, but that never happened.

2) The landscaping wasn't done for some time. Temple president Anton Lund compared the unfinished, sagebrush-covered hill with the gorgeous temple at the top to "a fair maiden of his native land, Denmark, dressed in a beautiful silk gown, but with clumsy wooden shoes on her dainty feet." The terraces were mostly ripped out in 1907, at which time the hill was graded to a cone shape and the landscaping was finally done.

3) The first winter spent in Manti was brutal. Many Saints dug out holes into the south side of what would become Temple Hill for shelter against the winds and storms. They even created vents to act as chimneys for their fires. The following spring they decided pretty quickly to move away from the hill, as they discovered it was infested with rattlesnakes. Fortunately, no one was bitten, even during the several days where pioneers used all kinds of things to try to kill the creatures, including torches, clubs, guns, and stones.

4) A few years later (before construction began), the hill became a place for children to play and young couples to spend their courtship. Sledding and picking wildflowers were popular past times, as well as hunting for arrowheads, fossils, and pretty stones the girls would collect.

5) In 1852, a stone was cut from the hill—the same stone used for the temple—and shipped to Washington, D.C. for use in the Washington Monument. The stone is there today near the top of the monument. Carved into it is the symbol of the Beehive and the word, "Deseret."

Now for the final trivia question:

What event briefly halted work on the Manti Temple?
A) The death of Brigham Young
B) The assassination of President Garfield
C) A stone quarry explosion
D) A grasshopper plague

See you next time!

Temple Trivia Pt III

Time for the next set of temple fun! That means we're moving on to the Salt Lake Temple.

But first, to answer the trivia question from last time:
Who served as the first St. George Temple president?
A. Lorenzo Snow
B. Orson Pratt
C. George Albert Smith
D. Wilford Woodruff

The answer: D-Wilford Woodruff (Very good, Brillig!)

During his time as temple president, Wilford Woodruff had the famous vision of the signers of the Declaration of Independence (and other early prominent Americans, including their wives) asking for their temple work to be done.

Years later, he was the prophet who got the Salt Lake Temple finished, pushing the Saints to raise the funds necessary and work their hardest so it could be dedicated at the 40-year mark. The capstone celebration took place at the 39-year mark, and it was then that he urged Church members to push hard to get the interior of the temple done within the next year. It was a close call (in fact, some of the murals inside weren't quite completed by the dedication), but it's thanks to him that they had the dedication when they did. He was also the one who dedicated the Salt Lake Temple.

So he's a fitting segue to move from the St. George temple to the Salt Lake one. (Photo by Bobak Ha'Eri)


1) One of the biggest reasons for the exceedingly long construction period was a simple transportation problem. Once the original sandstone foundation cracked and was removed, leaders decided to switch to granite, which was much farther away than the sandstone (3-4 miles versus about 20) and much heavier. Instead of getting a couple of loads a day, it now took 4 days to bring one stone from the quarry.

Church leaders tried several things to speed up the transportation process, including digging canals to float the stones to the construction site and a wooden railroad. Nothing worked until Brigham Young decided that a standard, commercial railroad would be the only way. He closed the quarry (which upset some people) so efforts could be focused on getting a real railroad. The line took several years to complete, but when it was done in 1873, they could deliver two dozen stones to the lot in a single day. Finally, real progress on the temple could be achieved!

2) On the first day of dedication, a large storm with intense winds kicked up. Many felt it was the Adversary's way of showing his displeasure with the completion of the temple. During the storm, a flock of seagulls hovered around the spires. If the wind drew them away, they'd immediately fly back to the temple.

3) While attending the second day of dedication, Emma Bennett of Provo went into labor. She was moved from the Assembly Room to a smaller one and gave birth to a son near the close of the evening service. Apostle James E. Talmage wrote of this event in his journal: "Some sects would hold that such an event desecrated the holy place; but the Latter-day Saints will take a directly opposite view."

4) By the time the temple was complete, so many modern innovations were available that weren't when it was begun. Some felt that perhaps the temple needed to have such things, and that's one reason why it took so long to complete. These items included electricity (even getting the temple its own generator), interior heating, and the ability to have better plumbing and boilers for sanitary purposes (the science of which grew in leaps and bounds during those 40 years).

The Deseret Weekly commented on this, saying, "Every hindrance ultimately tends to show that there is an overruling hand, and that in the order of God, through his servants, the house, finally completed, will be more worthy of its Divine character" (quoted in Every Stone a Sermon by Holzapfel).

There's a ton more I've learned about the temple, and much more that's included in Spires of Stone, including information about some of my personal favorite parts: the Earth stones. Watch for the book when it comes out in September to read more. I'll also be adding more about the temple to my website in future weeks.

Now for the Salt Lake Temple trivia question:

When debating before construction began over what to build the temple out of, what material did Brigham Young lobby in General Conference for?
A. Granite
B. Oolite
C. Adobe
D. Stucco-covered Sandstone

Up next: The Manti Temple.

Temple Trivia Pt. II

As promised, first I’ll answer the question I posed last time:

Which was a source of regular frustration in the early years of the Logan temple?
A) The heating system
B) The roof
C) The record-keeping system
D) The landscaping

The answer: B, the roof.

In 1883—before the temple was even completed—a windstorm blew holes into the roof of the Logan temple. And that was just the start. By 1906, the roof had been repaired five times, including once in 1896 when the tin on the roof was blown right off. The roof was replaced in 1909, but still had trouble. In 1917 it had so many holes that the temple presidency requisitioned sixty wash tubs to catch rainwater!

Now for the next temple: St. George.

(Photo courtesy Wikipedia user Ricardo630.)

Note that I’m posting about them in the order I wrote and researched about them, not in the order they were completed. St. George was the first temple dedicated in Utah, and Logan was the second. I’m totally backward.

Like last time, I won’t be discussing historical bits that appear in At the Journey’s End, but (also like last time), below is a photograph of something that is mentioned in the book: the original tower and dome of the St. George temple, much shorter and squatty-looking than Brigham Young wanted it. He didn’t insist the Saints fix it, since they had already sacrificed so much to build the temple. But about a year after his death, lightning struck the tower and they rebuilt it the way he wanted it.

The tower and dome look much more proportional now!

(Photo courtesy Darrin Smith.)

Now for the St. George temple trivia:

1) This was the only Utah temple Brigham Young dedicated, because he died about three months later. At the dedication, he was so weak that he had to be carried room to room inside the temple.

2) The original architectural drawing for the temple featured a tall spire instead of a tower/dome construction.

3) Getting enough wood to build the temple—in the middle of a desert—proved difficult. It had to be cut and hauled in from Mt. Trumbull in northern Arizona, some 70 or 80 miles away. But first the trees had to be lugged to the sawmill in Antelope Springs, about halfway to St. George. The mill was about two miles away from water, so according to the history of Robert Gardner who was in charge of the lumber needs, "it took one man with a team all the time hauling to supply the Mill to keep up steam, and for domestic purposes."

4) The baptismal font and twelve oxen that supported it were made in a foundry in Salt Lake City and then hauled to St. George via railroad and oxen. The font was transported in several pieces and later bolted together. On the way down, the ox drivers had a difficult time keeping US soldiers (who believed they were carrying cannons) and others from peeking into their load. The drivers had a charge not to show the font or oxen to anyone besides bishops and whoever the bishops deemed could see them. The transportation took place during the same time as the John D. Lee trial, so emotions were high.

5) In 1928, a fire broke out in the annex of the temple in the early morning hours and caused several thousand dollars' worth of damage. The fire began in the furnace room shortly after the morning fire had been lit. Without an organized fire department—and with low water pressure—the fire was difficult to fight. Fortunately, it was put out before hurting the temple proper besides smoke damage, but the annex was burned up completely, leaving nothing but the stone walls standing.

Now for the St. George trivia question:

Who served as the first St. George Temple president?
A. Lorenzo Snow
B. Orson Pratt
C. George Albert Smith
D. Wilford Woodruff

Next time we’re going out of chronological order again, because the temple I wrote about third is Salt Lake City, but it was the fourth one dedicated. It’s also the one that’s freshest in my mind because that’s the book I just finished and is slated for release in two months. (Woohoo!)

Temple Trivia Part I

With all the research I've done into early Utah temples for my books, I thought it might be fun to share some of the nuggets I've learned, a few lesser-known stories about the temples I've written about (plus the one I'm currently writing about).

So we're beginning a four-part trivia series for the fun of it. I'll pass along a few tidbits about one temple each time, including a trivia question that I'll answer in the next post.



We have to start with the first temple I studied, the one that set the entire project rolling: Logan. When I first began reading up on that temple, it was purely out of my own love for Logan and the building. I was married there, as were my parents, and my father grew up in Logan. Seeing the temple on the hill was a part of visiting my grandparents as a child, and the entire Cache Valley area somehow speaks to me. I have plans to revisit the area in my writing.

But back when I first read about it, I felt driven to write a story centered on the temple. At the time, I wasn't even published, and the idea of venturing into historical waters was terrifying, so I dragged my feet, but slowly made progress on the resulting book, House on the Hill. No one involved had any idea it would become be as successful as it was (it sold out of its first printing in a matter of weeks!) and that I'd end up doing an entire series of books based on temples. I'm loving it.

As for the trivia, I won't be repeating much information in the novel (and there is quite a bit IN the book. Read it! :D), except to mention a historical figure who appears in the book. Cache Valley historian Darrin Smith passed along a huge amount of information to me recently, including this photo.

While I left with a boatload of stuff, including a lot of photos, seeing this man's face was a major highlight. I felt as if I were finally meeting an old friend. For those who have read the book, this is a picture of Billie King, one of two men who died in a tragic snow slide connected with the construction of the temple. (The other was Nephi Osterholdt.) To learn more about why I feel so connected to Billie King and his wife, you'll have to read the historical notes in the back of the book.

As for other Logan Temple trivia:

1) One of the first deaths involved with the temple was at the temple hay baler. The reason there was a need for a temple stable and baler, of course, is that they didn't have power machines and cranes like we do today. Animals did a lot of the hauling, lifting, and so on, and there needed to be a place to house the worker animals and feed them. The baler had a big stone that would drop onto the hay and compact it.

One day the stone got stuck for no apparent reason. A young man named John Hincks put his head inside the baler to look up for anything in the stone's way, and right then it released, crushing his head. This is one of the stories that hit me hard, and I really wanted to tell it in the book. The problem is that I couldn't find a natural way to work it into the plot, and I didn't want to plop a real event into the book that had no purpose as far as the story and characters were concerned. So sadly, John Hincks was left out, which is why I wanted to mention him here.

2) A whopping 1516 yards of factory-made carpet were imported for the temple, effectively depleting any further supply. It still wasn't nearly enough. Superintendent Charles O. Card got permission to use homemade carpets and quickly got the Relief Society and Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association involved in making more.

The carpets were made from torn rags woven into lengths and then sewn together by hand to fit specific room measurements. To prevent the rugs from twisting in the process, they'd tie each end to door knobs to stretch it across the room to keep it straight. The last of the carpet was delivered after the dedication and installed at 8:00 am the same morning that the first ordinances were to begin. The women made 2,144 yards of carpet.

3) In the early years of the temple, they white-washed the exterior with white paint tinged with a little red, making a pale pink. The paint weathered poorly, however, and had to be redone within a few years. By 1905, the paint was mostly gone and the temple looked bad. At that point leaders decided to let the temple's natural stone alone. (Good decision, I think; the walls are so beautiful!)

4) The temple underwent significant remodeling in the early 20th century, finishing the fall of 1917 at a cost of $50,000. Three months later, a fire started inside the temple, destroyed one of the spiral staircases, some offices, decorations, windows, doors, casings, and much more. Initial estimates put the damage at $150,000. The cause of the fire was determined to be faulty wiring.

Firemen were stopped at the door to show their recommends on their way in to fight the blaze, where they found much of the interior destroyed, including some beautiful murals. The temple was renovated and open again within three months, since the damage wasn't as bad as initially believed.


The Logan Temple has so many stories connected with it, including some amazing miracles that I don't feel I can do justice to in a blog.

Now for a tidbit that IS in the book:

On October 1, 1976, the Logan Temple was closed for a massive renovation. Essentially, the interior was gutted, leaving a stone shell, and a new, modern interior was then constructed. In the process of the demolition, something was found inside one of the walls.

The epilogue of House on the Hill gives a possible explanation for
1) What that thing means and
2) How it got there.

And that's all I'm going to say. If you've read it, you know what I'm talking about!

Now for this week's bonus question:

Which was a source of regular frustration in the early years of the Logan temple?
A) The heating system
B) The roof
C) The record-keeping system
D) The landscaping

Any guesses? I'll reveal the answer next time and give an explanation, and then we'll launch into the second temple I researched: St. George.

Slammin' the Planet

Or: My brilliant hubby

Or: My re-labeling project

In case our "Writers in Heels" readers wonder why every so often one of my old posts pop up (like now, below, if you're reading this on the planet, a post I wrote back in January), I thought I'd drop a quick line and explain myself.

And while I'm at it, I thought I'd also explain this planet experiment we're doing and how it came about.

A few months ago, I was thinking about the fun several of my writer buddies have at what many of us affectionately call the "Frog Blog." Among them is critique group member and long-time friend Jeff Savage, and as I had watched the popularity of the Froggers grow, I kept thinking how neat it would be to be part of something similar. And yet different. But I didn't know exactly what or how.

At dinner one night, I was talking about it with my techno-genius hubby, just throwing out the idea of maybe starting a group blog of my own with some of my friends. (Not with Jeff; he abandoned us for the Froggers, after all.)

His response: "What you really need is a planet."

My eloquent reply: "A wha-ha?"

Honey tried explaining the concept to me, but I still didn't get it. Turns out that planets, or feed aggregators, have been used for a long time in the tech industry, but no one has ever really bothered using them elsewhere. (There's probably a good reason for this, such as people NOT in the industry have no clue how to MAKE them.)

We tried looking for planets not related to technology and couldn't find much of anything besides one for poets, of all things. (Surely made by some poet's husband . . .)

The basic idea of a planet is that the feed regularly checks a group of blogs and posts updates to one web site. (Ours checks hourly.) Readers can always click back to the original blog and read older posts, leave comments, and so on. But with a planet, you get to go to one place to check for anything new that's on several blogs instead of hopping to each individual blog.

Interesting, I thought. But not really "getting" it, and having stuff to do like putting kids to bed, I went about my evening business. A couple of hours later, hubby calls me to his computer to check out what he had thrown together. In no time, he had made a planet for me. All I had to do was decide what blogs I wanted to feed and what to call it.

We bought what I still think is a rockin' domain name, I hand-picked some female writer buddies, and my honey designed a terrific logo, which you see at the top of my blog. And the rest is pretty much history. Now readers can drop by anytime for a one-stop blog fest!

The trick now is that as I'm learning more about blog-land, I've decided to create better labels and post a list of them on my sidebar. As a result, I'm going back and re-labeling several of my old posts to better reflect what they're about before I post a that full labels list.

Every time I do that, the planet sees those changes as new posts and re-feeds them to the Writers in Heels site. That's why I'm doing it VERY slowly, so I don't slam the planet with 30 posts all of a sudden.

So there ya go! Mystery solved, in case you've been wondering (or might be wondering in the future) why I have the occasional random post from the past appearing on WIH, like the one below.

And Jeff, if you ever decide to try on a pair of three-inch eel skins, let me know. Maybe we'll add you to the group!

Rockin' & Famous

I feel so cool!

"5 Minutes for Mom" is a fun website with lots of great resources for moms, among them lots of mom blogs (including mine now!). And really, how many of us moms couldn't use 5 minutes in our day? :)

I've got a button in my sidebar that can take you there, but for today, click on that cute little button above to go straight to my interview, which is something I did several months ago, a long time before I met some of my favorite bloggers. It's now live, and I'm thrilled to be part of their growing list!

And to make today even more fun:

I've officially received my first ever blog award, from the illustrious Brillig the Great! Her blog is one of my personal favorites (I will never eat a bowl of Lucky Charms again without thinking of her . . . and laughing hysterically).

And now she's awarded me the "Rockin Girl Blogger" Award.

So that's the fun little graphic you now see down below in the sidebar. I'm new to this blog award stuff, but apparently when one is bestowed said award, one is thereby granted the power to pass along the award to five others. They all link back to one another until, as Brillig put it, "the universe is overcome with rockin’ girl bloggers."

Sounds good to me!

I hereby pronounce the following as Rockin' Girl Bloggers. These are all gals who have left me thinking, laughing, and who I think totally rock.

Novembrance

Janette Rallison

Mental Tesserae

Downstage Left

Josi Kilpack


Enjoy!

Connect the Dots

I know of several authors in this market (and by that I mean the LDS Romance market, although I don't necessarily consider myself a romance author per se) write books that are interconnected. They often do this on purpose to keep readers coming back.

Sometimes the books are in series, and other times they're what's called "spin-offs," where you take a minor character from one book and write an entire book around them in the next. Sometimes a series evolves from what began as a spin-off. Rachel Ann Nunes has said that every single one of her novels is connected in some way to another one, and if you go to her website, she has a page where she explains how all twenty-something are interwoven.

At first glance, you'd think my books aren't really connected. And you'd be right, with the obvious exception of House on the Hill and At the Journey's End, since one is basically a spin-off (or would that be sequel?) of the other. Actually, come to think of it, I'm not sure which you'd call it, since ATJE takes just one major character from the first book and continues with the story. The rest of the characters from HOTH are left behind. But it is a major character, not a minor one. So what do you call that?

Regardless, only my most astute readers will have caught the threads that connect my books to one another. I'm doubting whether anyone has caught them all, but I'm hereby revealing them, because I had fun planting them, and they were deliberate. :)

In my first book, Lost Without You, the main character, Brooke, performs in the play Into the Woods as the Witch. For the part, she ends up dying her hair red and getting it permed to match a long wig extension.

In my second book, At the Water's Edge, Kenneth comes home from Finland after falling for Annela but suddenly being asked for a second chance by his ex-girlfriend, who dumped him right before he left. On his first date after his return, they attend a performance of Into the Woods with a remarkably talented actress with curly red hair playing the Witch. (Got it? Good!)

Also in At the Water's Edge, Kenneth and Annela discover a bond from their pasts with some of their ancestors. They have great-grandfathers who both worked in Utah's Scofield Mine (where a large proportion of miners were from Scandinavia, including Finland) when it blew up. Kenneth's great-grandfather was rescued by Annela's great-grandfather, following which, he returned home to Finland. (Side note here: At some point, I hope to write a book about the Scofield mine disaster, which is another reason I mentioned it here.)

So how in the world does that connect with House on the Hill, a book set more than a hundred years previous with totally different characters and in a different setting? Well, I did manage to plant a thread:

In House on the Hill, Joshua goes to help his brother build a house in a new mining town: Scofield. (DING!)

And of course the connection between House on the Hill and At the Journey's End is screamingly clear, being as it takes an entire character from the epilogue and tells the rest of his story.

As for my next book? Yes, there's the continued temple connection. But there are a couple of other threads that connect it to At the Journey's End. (You know me; I HAD to include them, right?)

1) Near the beginning of At the Journey's End, Maddie has some of her students rehearsing a scene from a play. Spires of Stone is a retelling of that play. (Bonus points for anyone who remembers a) the play and b) the two characters in the scene.)

AND

2) Spires of Stone takes place in 1867, when the character who appears in both House on the Hill and At the Journey's End is only ten AND living in Salt Lake City. So I threw him into a brief scene for fun, along with his father. Only readers of the previous books will recognize the two characters for who they are.


As for a thread (or threads) connecting Spires with the next one? I'm not sure yet, being as I'm still very much in the drafting stage. But you can be sure there will be a thread or two.

Watch for them!

Big Sister Icons

I recently came across a blog that talked about older sisters' influences, and boy did it ever transport me back in time. The author of the post has a sister seven years her senior who molded the younger into a devoted Duran Duran fan.

I know from personal experience just how powerful an influence older sisters can be. In fact, my being a writer is essentially because of her.

Mel is about four years my senior, and while I’ve heard her scoff at the idea that she should be held on a pedestal, for most of my childhood, she not only was on one, but I buffed said pedestal daily.

If asked which flavor of ice cream I wanted, I’d have to think, Hmm. What flavor would Mel want? If she was present, I’d take a peek. Pralines and Caramel? Make that two, please.

She was so grown up, and I wanted to be just like her. She took advantage of this.

Such as when, in third grade, she learned the multiplication table and cursive. Ever the vigilant devotee, groupie, and/or apprentice, I wanted to know what she knew. She enjoyed playing school and recognized an opportunity presenting itself. She took the worksheets her teachers had already corrected, erased her marks, and made me do them.

Keep in mind here: I wasn’t even in kindergarten yet.

Yet Mel was giving me timed tests on the multiplication tables as I curled up with a pencil on the kitchen floor. Then, tongue sticking out of my mouth, I painstakingly tried to write my name in cursive—even though I could barely PRINT it.

But I was learning to be like Mel!

Enjoying our teacher/pupil relationship, Mel moved our "school" to other subjects. She gave me hands-on projects. I remember (and no, I’m not making this up) being assigned the task of creating a shadow box model of the solar system.

Once she pulled a volume of the encyclopedia off the basement bookshelf at random. It fell open to the anatomical drawings of a horse. She promptly informed me that I was to memorize all the muscles.

I did. And I LIKED it.

When I went into my kindergarten pretesting and Mrs. McKay said, "Can you write your name?" I happily complied—in cursive. "Alrighty then," she said, looking a bit puzzled. "Let’s try that again . . . "

We think my horrendous handwriting is due to the fact that I learned cursive before my motor skills were ready for it. To this day, Mel willingly bears the blame. I’m happy to give it to her instead of, oh, taking responsibility for being too lazy to write cleanly.

But I can thank Mel for getting me into writing because when she was in sixth grade, she had these brown notebooks that she’d scribble stories in. And of course, I thought that was an intensely cool thing to do, so I had to do it, too. I wrote stories and had her read them for "feedback." At the time, I didn’t actually want criticism. I wanted my icon to rave about my wit.

But being as we already had a teacher/pupil relationship, she wanted to mold my writing into Pulitzer material. After all, she WAS in sixth grade. When she told me my story about a sniffing cat wasn’t brilliant (it had too much smelling in it; it wasn’t funny), I was devastated. But I was bound to make her proud and try again.

Years later, she took a hardbound blank book and started writing about personal beauty and makeup. (She was a mature teenager of fourteen at this point and knew about womanly stuff.)

Naturally, I trotted in her footsteps. I purchased a hardbound blank book and wrote what I knew about—big kid stuff. She never finished hers, but I did finish mine. It was called Helpful Hints for Kids.

I mentioned recently that a screenplay was my first completed work. Looking back, I realize that’s not quite accurate. This little tip book was really my first one. Interestingly, Ardeth G. Kapp (although she doesn’t remember this) even took it to Deseret Book in the mid-80s and pitched it to their editors. They said no (being as there was zero market for that kind of thing at the time), but they thought it was a great effort from a kid.

So they contacted The Friend magazine, which did a feature about me. By the time it ran (a year or two later), I was actually a second-year Beehive (they got my age wrong), but hey—it was my first sort of published piece ever, and they even paid me to use some of the pages of the book in the piece.

So in some ways, I can thank Mel for setting my feet on the path of writing. What started out as a little more than copy-catting has become a life-long journey and passion for me.

I'm a big sister too, but my little sister Michelle and I are only two years apart. I attempted to play teacher/pupil, and she rebelled since instead of seeing me on a pedestal we were more like peers. We ended up playing bank/post office/grocery store, having eraser wars across our beds, and staying up late at night behind our parents' backs talking on our purple phones that really worked. But that's for another post.

Below is a picture of me with my sisters at the Gala (I think it's the only recent photo I have of the three of us). Mel's on the left. Michelle's on the right.

Snicket's a Nerd Too!

The latest issue of Writer's Digest (August 2007) has an article about various famous writers' offices, complete with descriptions, photographs, and interviews that describe some of their habits.

I discovered a fun thing reading it regarding Daniel Handler, better known as Lemony Snicket. I've read all of The Series of Unfortunate Events to my kids, and I've loved all thirteen books. My kids have mostly enjoyed the wacky stories, but part of my personal enjoyment has come from the humor based on the author's (or the "Snicket" persona's) discussion of words.

I'm a word nerd, pure and simple. One of my favorite writing toys in the world is my Oxford English Dictionary on CD, which I got for my birthday a couple of years ago. The thing rocks. I love browsing through it. My father, a retired linguistics professor, has a condensed version in his office. It's not condensed in the sense of less text; it's condensed in the sense of othe the text being nearly microscopic. FOUR pages fit on each regular-sized page so that you can buy the set in just a few volumes and devote a bookSHELF instead of an entire bookCASE to it. (They send you a magnifying glass so you can actually read the words.) Or you can subscribe to it online. Or you can buy it on CD. It's the most powerful dictionary in the world, and as a historical writer, I can't live without it.

Okay, I'll admit it. Even if I weren't writing historical novels, I'd still want it. I love looking up words and playing with it, finding out things like why the word "second" can mean both the second of something and also refer to time (as in sixty seconds in a minute). It was fun to dig up the derivation of the word "steeple" after driving along the road and my preschooler asked why that pointy thing on the church is called a steeple. ("I don't know," I told her. "I'll find out!" And I did.)

That's one reason I love the Snicket books. He uses fun words and discusses silly meanings for them.

Which is why after reading the WD article, I decided that Snicket's real-life identity, Daniel Handler, is a kindred spirit. According to the piece, "To facilitate contemplation, he turns to his 20-volume set of the Oxford English Dictionary, which sits on a nearby shelf. Today, he's got one volume out to look up the plague, a reference for a nonfiction piece he's working on."

DANIEL HANDLER OWNS THE OED!!!

Not only that, but he pulls volumes out at random and browses through them. For fun!

A quote from the article: "I don't use it [the OED] to define words I don't know as much as to figure out what I'm really talking about."

Now that's my kind of writing dude.

Peanuts Quiz

While strolling through blogospere today, I stumbled upon a fun quiz that was a great waste of time. Through the hugely scientific questionnaire, I discovered that of all the Peanuts characters, here's the one I'm most like:

Which Peanuts Character are You?

You are Schroeder!
Take this quiz!








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If I've ever pictured myself as a Peanuts character, it's been Snoopy, but mostly because whenever I want to celebrate something (like finishing a book or a deadline) I imagine dancing through the tulips like he does. Maybe it's also because I had a Snoopy stuffed animal as a kid.

Regardless, I suppose Schroeder's an apt character to describe me. He's quiet, shy, and creative. (Check, check, and check.)

From the description, I'm also apparently neurotic. Um, well . . .

He's a musical genius (playing Beethoven on that teeny tiny piano), so if I get to compare myself with that, I'll take it. :)

Grimley Fun

In high school I had a bit of a weird infatuation with the animated television show Ed Grimley.

For those not of the slightly distorted humor persuasion, Ed Grimley began as as character created and acted by Martin Short on Saturday Night Live. I didn't know this when I first discovered the cartoon show.

All I knew was that the Saturday morning show was hystercially funny. Everything from Ed's pet rat Sheldon to his neighbor Miss Malone to the Gastoff brothers (the scientists who interrupt when Ed's about to be smooshed by a piano or tossed out of a wrestling ring and then explain scientifically what is happening to Ed through the force of gravity, etc.), or Ed's favorite television show, which he always finds time to watch, whether he's in prison or in Europe: Count Floyd's Scary Stories, the one live-action portion of the show.

The whole thing is ludicrious and silly and, well, Martin Shortish.

I used to watch it religiously in high school, especially with one friend in particular, who I'll call (because it was her nickname even then) J.J.-Panda. (Hey, Babe!) We'd record the episodes and make sure that any time one of us started dating anyone that we'd show them Ed. If the new guy didn't laugh his head off, he was officially dead meat and deemed not boyfriend material.

Most of the guys figured out pretty quick that it was a test and nervously laughed their way through a couple of episodes, whether they understood the bizarre humor or not.

And then Ed went off the air. J.J.-Panda and I went into mourning.

I had outgrown the boyfriend "Ed Test" by the time I met my husband, but he did know all about my love for Ed. Once for Valentine's Day, several years after we married, he went onto E-bay and found me a pull-string talking Ed Grimley doll and—wonder of wonders—a VHS tape of every single episode of the series. Not the greatest of copies, but a copy nonetheless. I pulled that string to hear Ed say all his catch phrases over and over, sat down with my chocolate (of course I got chocolate too) and watched the whole tape.

Yes, I'm married to a romantic.

For years my kids have wondered what the funky-looking doll is on the bookshelf in my office. (And WHY can't they touch it?)

Not long ago I got my oldest daughter loving Anne, so I decided to try it with a few other things. My second attempt was showing her The Scarlet Pimpernel, another one of my all-time favorites. She has since watched it twice. So far so good.

After Anne and Percy were received well, I thought hmmm, maybe it's time for something totally different. Ed isn't exactly in the same category as the others, but maybe my kids will still like it.

So this week I dug into the old VHS tapes, found Ed, and popped it into the VCR. At first the kids weren't all that impressed. The recording was a bit grainy, after all, and they could tell as I hovered that I was hoping they'd love it. I was laughing and giggling, and they kept looking at me funny every time Ed said, "Now THAT'S a pain that's going to linger, no question!"

But the next day, unbeknownst to me, the KIDS put in the Ed tape and showed it to their friends, saying, "This is really funny. You have to watch it."

SCORE!

Now I feel like I'm rubbing my hands together fiendishly, thinking, what shall I try on them next . . . ?