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 . . . ?

How Do You DO It All?

This is one of the most common questions I get from readers and writers alike.

What made me decide to actually answer the question here was when a friend (we'll call her Blondie) happened to let drop the fact that neighbors were asking her how I did it all, trying to get the scoop on me.

See, Blondie has known me most of my life. As in, I attended her fifth birthday party, we went to Girls Camp together, and we have pictures of one another and stories that we could use to black mail the other from high school and college. (Scary, huh? Good thing we really like each other.)

It so happened that about two years ago she moved into a house right around the corner from me, and ever since, her daughter and my youngest daughter are now best buds. So the ladies in our neighborhood went to Blondie asking her to unravel the mystery that is supposedly me. "How does she do it all?"

I laughed and laughed and laughed.

If I were being completely ridiculous, I would smile and make up something about how I've managed to be so organized and sleep only three hours a night.

Here's the truth: I DON'T do it all. Not even close.

My house isn't like Martha Stewart's. It's clean enough for me, but probably not for a lot of people. I enlist my kids to do a lot of the work. I figure it's good for them. I don't remember the last toilet I cleaned. That's their job. Sure, they don't always do it as well as I would, but I cleaned toilets when I was nine. It was good for me at the time.

I don't have a lot of hobbies. I used to scrapbook a lot. I don't anymore. Every so often I'll pull out a few supplies on a Sunday (because that's when I don't write) and slap a few pictures onto some cardstock so my kids will actually have a record that they existed, but their scrapbooks are woefully out of date now.

In the last year, I've gotten my hair done twice. Once was in August, once in March. The LDS Booksellers Convention is in August. The LDStorymakers Writing Conference is in March. You do the math.

As mentioned in my tag blog earlier this week, I rarely get dressed until lunch time. Show up at my door in the morning, and I look like a wreck. Doesn't mean that I haven't been UP before that, likely sorting laundry, cleaning up the kitchen, or whatever. I've been busy. But I'm still in my PJ's (as I am right now. Karen Neuburger light blue ones . . .).

It's not uncommon for me to go to bed with the kitchen looking like a disaster. I'm totally okay with not getting all the dishes put away before bed. I'll be cleaning up breakfast in a few hours anyway. Why not add some of the dinner mess to it too? At night I'm tired. I don't want to do more cleaning. I don't mind cleaning in the morning. Yet a lot of people would freak out to know what my kitchen looks like at midnight.

Once I had a neighbor watch me sweeping. He flipped out. "WHAT happened?!"

I stopped and looked around, thinking a child's hair was on fire. I finally realized that he was looking at the mess on the floor. To be honest, I think the guy is a bit OCD and isn't used to normal messes. (Or maybe I'm delusional and don't realize that my messes are a class beyond "normal.") I looked down at what the broom had collected.

"The kids ate Doritos," I told him. He was the father of small children. Surely he knew that when you give a bag of chips to little kids, they don't stay ON the table.

But I guess most people tend to sweep up immediately, and I often . . . don't.

Not that I'm a slob. I don't think. I do take care of the house, to a point. But I have my priorities. I once had a friend whose mission in life was to have a clean house. She woke up at 6:00 am to keep her home that way. That's pretty much all she did, from scrubbing the kids' toothpaste spit to vacuuming Cheerios from under the couches to cleaning grout with a brush.

Not worth it, says I.

For starters, I want a life. And I think kids need to learn to work, too.

So there's a balance. I let the kids work. I let a few things slip through the cracks. And I find a place for my writing in the mix, because it keeps me sane.

I learned once that if I don't write on a semi-regular basis, that, paradoxically, I actually have less time for everyone. The house is messier, I'm a wreck, the kids are worse behaved, my church work suffers. I struggle to find time for my husband. Go figure.

So I have to find a little time for writing if I'm to keep everything else in place. It really does help. (At least, when I'm not on deadline. Those are the times when everything else goes crazy and we start running out of food and underwear.)

Balance. That's how I do what I do. But I DON'T "do it all," whatever that means.

The Whitney Awards

Writing is such a solitary endeavor. You sit at your computer in a little bubble and peck away at your keyboard. Every so often you look up and realize that, oh yeah, there's an entire world out there aside from the one in your head.

And sometimes your family doesn't quite "get" you. They try. They really, really do. But sometimes only another writer can understand. That's where the LDStorymakers came in for me. They began as a small e-mail support group which, at the time, consisted of maybe 20 LDS writers that shared their writing celebrations and angst with one another.

Fast forward several years, and we number nearly sixty. We're no longer just a support group; we're a force to be reckoned with. We sponsor a number of events, including an annual conference, of which I'm the co-chair next year. We're practically a writers' guild.

Our latest innovation is actually the brainchild of novelist Robison Wells, who, at last spring’s writing conference told us his vision for a prestigious writing award, our very own "Oscar" of the LDS community.

Over the last several months, a committee has been put together, doing a ton of backstage work. And now, this week, the award is unveiled. The award is named after early Apostle Orson F. Whitney, who once stated:

"We shall yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own. God's ammunition is not exhausted. His highest spirits are held in reserve for the latter times. In God's name and by His help we will build up a literature whose tops will touch the heaven, though its foundation may now be low on the earth."

Amazing thought, that. Now, I know that his vision may take a long time to be realized. We're already more than a century out from the time he said that, after all. But LDS literature has already come a long way. Just in the last two decades it's grown lightyears, and we do have some remarkable books published, even if they're no Miltons.

But in the tradition of Elder Whitney's vision, the LDStorymakers want to honor those writers who are sincerely trying to raise the bar on the quality of fiction they write.

The Whitney Award will be given out annually at the end of the two-day LDStorymaker Writing Conference, honoring the best fiction in six categories published the previous calendar year. We hope that additional categories may be added in the future.

For now, this means that books published in 2007 are eligible for the first set of Whitneys.

(Which means—wow, a certain book about the Salt Lake temple will be eligible once it's out . . . hmmm . . .)

Visit the Whitney Awards site to see all the information and to nominate a book. Anyone can nominate a book and as long as they’re at least 12 years old, and once a title receives at least five nominations, it will be in the running to be on the final ballot. An academy of industry professionals will the voters. (See the web site for how it all works.)

I for one am thrilled at the prospect of such an award. It has the potential to create those "Miltons and Shakespeares" Elder Whitney dreamed about.

Tag! I'm It

My virtual blogger buddy Luisa tagged me for a new, sort of a chain-letter, getting-to-know you Meme. I'm playing along.

I'll be blogging about a very exciting development in the LDS fiction arena soon. Keep your eyes peeled for that!

In the meantime, here we go:

Remove the blog from the top, move all the blogs up one, and add yourself to the bottom.

42
Twas Brillig
Ennui in the Grocery
Novembrance
The Lyon's Tale

What were you doing ten years ago?
Ten years ago was 1997, which means that S. was just a few weeks old. She didn't have much hair, but what little she did have was bright red, and I always made a little curl out of it and KY-ed a little bow on the side. D. was almost two. We were living in Spanish Fork in our cute little split-level starter house, and I was in the YW presidency. This is about the time that my article stint began.

What were you doing one year ago?
Like Luisa, I figure out time by calculating my kids' ages. A year ago D. was closing in on his 11th b-day, S. had just turned 9, M. was almost 7, and A. was 3-almost-4. At the Journey's End had just gone to press (sound familiar?), and I was doing some Chocolate Show work here and there.

The biggest thing, though, was that Rob and I were getting ready to visit my parents in Israel for a week and a half, where my dad was in charge of the BYU Jerusalem Center and Mom headed up the Humanitarian work for the Church. Dad was also the District president of Israel. BYU students weren't back yet, though. Rob and I just don't travel. The most we have done is visit his grandparents in Idaho and maybe go up to Yellowstone. Last fall we made the trek (for the first time) to Disneyland. (Yeah, world travelers.) So this was a very big deal.

It was the coolest trip of my life. The hardest part was being away from my kids that long, especially my youngest. But it was the trip of a lifetime. All I can say is WOW. I'll never see the scriptures the same again. There was one interesting wrinkle. Mom and Dad had their itinerary and tickets and were supposed to return home in November after about a year and a half of being in the Holy Land.

While we were up in Galilee, Dad got a cell phone call, and excused himself to take it in the other room. We didn't find out until about a month after we got home what that phone call was (Dad apparently has a serious poker face; we had no clue). The speaker on the other end was one President Hinckley calling my parents to be the first temple president and matron over the Helsinki, Finland temple. They wouldn't be returning home in November after all. Instead, they jetted home for 6 weeks in September to get their affairs in order, flew to Finland, and are now there for 3 YEARS. But I digress. Here's a photo of Rob and me on the Dome of the Rock.

(I loved Rob's beard! Too bad he had to shave it off as soon as we got home to start his new programming job, which has a much stricter dress code . . .)

Five snacks you enjoy:
1. Sonic's strawberry slush
2. Training Table's cheese fries
3. Almonds and raisins mixed up together
4. Chips and salsa (but not Pace salsa; ick)
5. Apples or grapes or strawberries or, heck, any fresh fruit

Five songs you know all the lyrics to:
1. "Come What May" (Air Supply)
2. "Thank You For the Music" (ABBA)
3. "Heart to Heart" (John Denver)
4. "Lift Me Up" (VoiceMale)
5. "White Christmas" (Bing Crosby)

Things you would do if you were a millionaire:
1. Pay off that stupid mortgage
2. Travel
3. Save up for the kids' college, missions, weddings
4. Landscape the house so it's like the one in my dreams
5. Donate to literacy causes

Five bad habits:
1. I rarely get out of my PJ's until lunch time.
2. I consider chocolate the fifth food group. (Note how it's not listed as a SNACK.)
3. E-mail and blog-reading addiction.
4. Thanks to TiVo, I watch every episode of Dr. Phil and Oprah. I do this while I sort laundry and clean the kitchen, so I pretend I'm not wasting time.
5. I am such a freak about grammar and punctuation that I cannot read a book without flinching at the wrong use of lay/lie or snarling at a comma splice.

Five things you like to do:
(although I rarely get to do enough of any of these)
1. Sleep
2. Knit
3. Take walks
4. Camp in the high Uintahs
5. Take long, lingering baths

Things you will never wear again:
1. The 4-inch silver Latin ballroom dance shoes I met my husband in. (Took him weeks to stop looking around for me, since he knew me for two months as four inches taller than I really am as we cha-cha-ed as partners all summer.)
2. The blonde wig I wore as Rapunzel in the community production of Into the Woods my freshman year of college.
3. The royal blue maternity bathing suit I bravely sported for Mommy-and-me swimming lessons when D. was 3 1/2 and I was 8 months pregnant with M. He better appreciate the humiliation I went through for him.
4. Blue mascara. So I went through brief but strange phase my sophomore year of high school. All I can plead is the temporary insanity of the era, along with other things that matched the time period, like pegged jeans, sky-high bangs, and denim jackets.
5. My leather jacket. Sadly, it has gone the way of all the earth, so I can't wear it again. But I loved that thing, and I still would wear it if I had it. I had lots of great memories attached to it, most of which were connected with dating my husband.

Five favorite toys:
1. Alphasmart Neo. I CANNOT live without it. I highly recommend any writer invest in one. It's my #1 writing tool for drafting. Not so good with revising, but it's a massive time saver. So portable. Nearly indestructive. Battery lasts forever. I can write whenver, wherever. I couldn't have gotten my last two books written without it.
2. Dawn/Dusk simulator. Especially in the winter, it keeps me sane. Helps me get to sleep and helps me wake up in the morning. Since I'm not a morning person and I have children to get to school, this a good thing. Probably more of a tool than a toy, but hey.
3. An antique typewriter my sister bought me for my birthday last year. It's so rockin cool that I couldn't resist including it in my latest author photo on my website splashscreen.
4. Paper cutter. It's jumbo huge and a gift from my hubby. May sound weird, but it has served me well for many projects over the years. Love it.
5. The new porch swing. My hubby's latest gift to me. I enjoy sitting out there and relaxing, reading, and yes, putting my Neo on my lap and writing. Ahhhh!

Where will I be in ten years?
Scary, scary thought. Let's see . . . in 2017, D. will be closing in on his 22nd birthday, which means he'll be OFF his mission. YOWZA! He'll probably be close finishing up college. He may be about to meet a pretty girl (I met Rob when he was 22 . . .) and thinking marriage.

S. would be 20, in college. She might be thinking about a mission. Or not. I got married at 20. (FREAKY!) M. would have just graduated from high school. And A. will be 14, ready for high school.

I imagine my husband and I will still be in this house. Since he's no longer with the lay-off king of companies and is now programming software for the family history department of the Church, I think there's a good chance he'll still have the same job in ten years. I hope I'll still be publishing and have several more books under my belt.

Okay, this is all getting a little unnerving to think that far ahead and to imagine my little kiddies all grown up . . .

Five people to tag:
Michele Paige Holmes
Josi Kilpack
Julie Wright
Heather Moore
Tristi Pinkston

A Friend's Success So Sweet

There's almost nothing as exciting as holding your first book in your hands for the first time.

So it was a little weird to be feeling as giddy and excited as I was last Saturday when I held Counting Stars by Michele Paige Holmes in my hands. I mean, it wasn't my book.

And yet, in some ways, I felt a tiny bit of ownership in it, sort of like a midwife might feel. No, that's not right, either. That implies that I had more to do with the book than I did. Cheerleader, maybe? That's not enough. I watched this baby grow, develop, take its first steps. I feel like its mother, but I'm not. Great aunt, maybe?

I tend to wax long when I back-up too far in my stories, but this one goes back a long ways. Bear with me. :)

I met Shauna Andreason (hi, lady!) in a social dance class at BYU back in, well, the Jurassic Era, maybe. I had no idea at the time that our husbands had served their missions together. I also didn't know that we'd end up living next door to each other as newly weds. We're still awesome buds and close friends.

Fast forward several years: Shauna meets another great friend in her new Provo ward, Michele Holmes, an aspiring writer. At the time, I'm also an aspiring writer. I joined a critique group a few months prior, and thanks to Shauna, Michele and I meet at a League of Utah Writers meeting. Eventually, Michele joins our critique group.

We both have a very bumpy ride as we learn (the HARD way) that we aren't that great of writers (okay, to be honest, I had more to learn than she did), we had A LOT to learn about the craft, about how to put a book and characters and a story together. There are times when I've left our meetings frustrated because she's so dang talented and I feel like a hack. (I've even blogged about it, and I'm hereby revealing who MH is.) Our group has morphed and changed over the years. Seven and a half years later, though, we're still plugging along. What started out as mostly wannabes has turned into a group of polished, published writers. Every one of us has sold our work. Heather and I were unknowns when we joined, but we've managed to make pretty darn good names for ourselves in this market, as have Jeff and James. Lynda has sold several stories to the Friend. Lu Ann has regular newspaper columns and has sold articles and other pieces as well, and so on.

Michele has consistently wowed me with her talent. She's spent years pursuing national agents and getting fabulous feedback but rejections nonetheless, largely because she doesn't write the in the standard formula. (She's realizing that to GET INTO the national realm, you often have to write that way, and then you can break it, no matter how many agents say they're really looking for something different. Hah. No they're not.)

Jeff, Heather, and I (the three of us from the group who publish with Covenant) have spent the last year wooing Michele to the "dark" side (in other words, trying to get her to submit to the LDS market). She finally did. We knew that her talent is so dang amazing that she'd be a shoo-in.

We were right; Covenant snatched her newest book up in no time flat.

Now it's in stores. It's not your typical formula romance. But it IS a romance. A killer of a romance. It's poignant. It's drop-dead hysterically funny. It will make you cry. It has twists you won't see coming (because yeah, it's NOT that formula!). It's different than anything you've ever read in the LDS market. And it's GOOD. (This coming from someone who is notoriously picky in her reading material.) It pushes the envelope just a bit. It's refreshing. It's fun.

And by golly, I'm so dang excited to see Michele's face on the bio page and her name on the cover.

I've been working like crazy to get my book to press lately, but I've still managed to sneak in a few chapters of her book here and there. Even though I've already READ the thing in critique group (a couple of times) and know exactly what's coming, I still laugh. I still cry. I still shake my head and think, wow, Michele. You are one talented writer.

Congratulations, woman!

LMM 2nd Generation

It happened! I did it!

Or something.

At our first summer vacation trip to the library, Sammy, my oldest daughter, informed me that one of her friends at school was reading the simplified version of Anne of Green Gables, and she wanted to try it out.

My first reaction was mixed. Simplified? Ick. That's like saying you wanted to eat some dark chocolate, but on second thought, make it white.

On the other hand, Sammy knows I have always loved Anne and her creator. To have her mention the idea of checking out such a book was likely an attempt to win favor with Mom (yeah, it worked). I couldn't deny that it was tantalizing to think that my almost fifth grader (FREAK! My SECOND child is really that old?) might actually find a love of Anne and L. M. Montgomery.


We searched the library shelves and did indeed find a simplified version of Anne and checked it out. Sammy spent the next couple of days glued to it. She'd come in and show off how far she was into it. Then I'd gush to her about the story, she'd tell me her favorite parts, and I'd ask if she liked it when such-and-such happened (since, you know, I have the thing nearly memorized).

She'd look at me a bit confused. "That never happened." And then she'd realize that her simplified version had cut out that part. And that part. And that part, too. Annoyed, she decided that after reading the easy version, she'd need to read the REAL one.

To ease her way into it, though (because the "real" one is significantly longer, with tiny text compared to the easy version), I showed her the movie. She's watched the whole, rather lengthy thing several times on her own, curled on the couch with her little sister. And I walk by, laughing at certain spots. We talk about the movie and the book and our favorite parts.

She's read about five chapters of the real book now. It's harder for her to get through, no doubt. She's asked if maybe I'd use it for our bedtime reading instead of her reading it herself.

But when she was making a list of her favorite books the other day, the first one on her list was Anne of Green Gables.

Ever since she was born, I've been waiting for the day when I could lend her my LMM books, then cross my fingers and hope she could find a little joy in them like I do. The day has finally come.

Woohoo! I've created a Maud fan!

Month of Beauty

I've spent the last little while hopping over to one of my dear friend's blogs almost every day. She's spending four weeks focusing on the beauty in her life and letting those of us in cyberspace share it with her.

It's been a wonderful reminder to look at the beauty around me too. It's all too easy to forget to notice the small wonders in your life when you end up pulling an all-nighter like you did in college to meet yet another editorial deadline--but you no longer have that college brain or that college body that lets you pull out of such a marathon.

So I thought I'd point any blog readers I have toward my friend Emmelyn's blog so they can take a mini vacation during the day with her month of beauty right along with me.

It's been a good reminder to relish the hugs and kisses from my children, to notice the sweet things my husband does for me each day that could otherwise go unnoticed, and even to simply take a minute and look around and think, "You know, my life is pretty darn good."

Thanks for the reminder, Em!

Article Writer's Hat

In spite of the fact that my first foray into writing was a never-completed novel called Mean Marvin the Mouse, inspired by another fictional mouse while I was in second grade, my first completed work was a screenplay I co-wrote with a close friend (Hey, Sam!) based on one of my favorite books of all time.

And in spite of the fact that fiction is my first love, the first several items I ever published were articles. As I wrote novels, submitted them, and had them summarily rejected, I also tinkered with articles on the side. This is thanks to the fact that I attended writing conferences and subscribed to Writers Digest and read the magazine cover to cover. I soaked up every word and wanted to know everything there was to know about writing. Not just fiction, not just novels. But WRITING.

I bought writing books and read them. Yes, they included plotting, characterization, and structure, but they also included research, hooks, pitching articles, queries, and freelancing. Every so often, I'd submit a query to a magazine. At one point, an editor I had queried a few times called me back and asked for more on a particular topic.

Long story short, I didn't get that job (apparently it was between me and another writer), but she remembered me and a couple of months later gave me a job. It was a brand new special project for her magazine, a spin-off newsletter. I had no clue what I was doing, but by golly, I was going to do my best. I must have impressed her, because she turned around and assigned me more articles. And more. And more.

Each time, the check increased with each piece, which was awfully nice!

At the same time, a paper started up locally. It's now defunct, but it was a great learning experience for me. The new religion editor had a great nose for finding stories, but didn't feel comfortable writing them up. She happened to know me personally and remembered that I was a wannabe writer. In short order, she started dumping stories on me. Pretty soon it was "Hey, next week is the Jewish holiday of Purim. Research it and write it up," or, "Interview this Catholic priest. He's constructing a new building in Orem, and he's been in the area for like, forever." I also did book reviews. Several times I ended up on the front page, like the article that commemorated the 150th anniversary of the Miracle of the Gulls.

I eventually dropped the paper, because while it gave me lots of experience and published clips, they only paid $25 an article (and the magazine was paying me significantly more than that).

The hey-day lasted about a year, peaking when I did a five-article job in one-fell swoop that more than paid for Christmas that year. Following that, the editor got a major promotion, and the gal who replaced her had her own freelancers she worked with, so I never heard from them again.

Shortly after that, I started focusing harder on my fiction, and my article-writing stint faded into the background as my novels (woohoo!) started coming to light.

It's really only been in the last year that I've dusted off the freelance article hat and put it back on again. I've sold close to ten articles in the last year to various magazines, including ByLine (a writing magazine), LDS Living, The Friend, Desert Saints, and Knitty. A handful of those articles are online, and you can access the bottom of this page of my website to read them. Some of the ones you can't see online I'll add to my website later (which I haven't done yet, alas).

As for how to query magazines, the format is generally up to the individual magazine. Some require a formal snail mail letter, while others allow you to send an e-mail query. But overall, the trick is finding what the magazine wants. Read the magazine and know its style, voice and readership. A sports magazine isn't going to want an article on cooking, obviously. And a cooking magazine that just ran an article on 10 top chili recipes isn't going to want another one on chili. Then follow the magazine's writer guidelines (often posted online) for queries.

I recently wrote about some of my tricks to getting article ideas on my Precision Editing Group blog here (I'm the Wednesday contributor). If you have specific questions about article writing, let me know, and I can blog about them there!

I Hate Faulkner

So that's a slight overstatement. I don't completely hate Faulkner. He has some works I like, and I do appreciate his skill and, yes, even his brilliance (hard not to as an English major, when you've read so much of his work). My personal favorite is "A Rose for Emily," one of the best short stories in existence.

But there are moments when I've had to wonder what the heck he was thinking and wish I could slap him upside the head.

Such is the case with The Sound and the Fury. With apologies to Oprah and everyone else who puts that book on one of their top five, such as a good chunk of literary scholars and university people (including English majors—so I hope my own don't disown me), the book sucks.

Here is my never-quiet opinion as to why.

I know some people think Faulkner was downright brilliant with it, as if he was seeing how far out on a limb a writer could go before the branch itself broke off.

But explain to me how it is brilliance to write a book where it's just a literary exercise, where the reader gets no joy in it? That's like saying a ballet is brilliance where the audience sits around and sees the ballerina do nothing but exercises like amazingly deep plies and grand jetes across the stage for an hour. The audience gets bored to tears.

Oh, wow. She's a great dancer. She's got an amazing turnout. But where's the ballet?

The Sound and the Fury, from what I've gathered, wasn't particularly popular in its day. It's much more popular now, when literary critics and scholars like to pick it up and tear it into pieces and say, "Wow! Look what a genius Faulkner was."

Pllllh, says I.

I personally think Faulkner was showing off rather than telling a story in the most powerful way possible, which is plain old bad writing. A writer's first responsiblity is to his reader: How can I tell this most effectively, in the way that will most impact my audience?

I want my reader to feel, to laugh, to cry, to love, to feel angry. Not to wonder what the heck is going on and be constantly pulled from the page, remembering that the writer in the one pulling the strings and that it's really a book, not another world.

Faulkner never once lets you forget that this is a B-O-O-K.

Plus, he was intentionally trying to confuse the crap out of the reader. There was no earthly reason he needed to name that many characters the same name, let alone characters of different genders. There was no reason he needed to jump around back and forth in time so much—especially without alerting the reader of the time transitions so the reader doesn't know when or where he is, and so on. He didn't need to have pages and pages of no punctuation or capital letters. (Call it a stream of consciousness style if you want. I call it annoying.)

Stupid, stupid book. I'm glad I've read it so I can say I read it. After I did, I looked up some commentaries to make sure I did, in fact, understand it—and was rather pleased that, yes, I did grasp what he was trying to do and he didn't pull the wool over my eyes, hallelujah.

(Although as I was reading it a couple of years ago, my son asked what it was about, and I told him I wasn't entirely sure, that it was kind of confusing. And he responded with, "Well, what do you THINK it's about?")

The author part of my brain kept thinking how much more effective some of these scenes could have been if he had just written them straight out normally—because Faulkner, when he wanted to be, really was a great writer.

But I think he got so in love with his own genius and skill that he sometimes also got caught up in doing acrobatics and forgot the power of telling the story and the responsibility he has to his READER.

End of rant. :)

Next time, I'll finally get around to answering a question posed by an anonymous commenter about how I got into article writing.

Until then, happy summer vacation!

Also, I just have to mention that my upcoming book, Spires of Stone, due out in September, is going to press in a few days. YES!