No Nature Girl

A few years ago, in one of my monthly newsletters (now morphed into The Goodweather Report blog,) I posted a closeup picture of a rather attractive fuzzy caterpillar, calling particular attention to his cute little pink feet.

As always, I had some email comments on my newsletter and there was a memorable one from my agent who took exception to my calling the caterpillar feet (or, indeed, the caterpillar) adorable.

In fact,  my agent's response was so  amazing that I  copied it to a file where I keep ideas for future use. And when I came to write Under the Skin, I used the response pretty much verbatim. putting it into the mouth of Elizabeth's sister Gloria who -- like my agent -- is no nature girl.

In the following scene, Elizabeth and her sister are at the beginning of a spa and seance weekend -- rather against Elizabeth's wishes.

--- As we walked up the path leading to the inn, I stopped by a high-arching clump of grass to admire a fuzzy yellow caterpillar teetering at the end of a glossy green blade. He had reared up and his tiny pink feet – the front six of them – were questing in search of their next step.

                        “Glory, come look at this guy and his adorable little feet!” It was worth a try, I thought. I’ll learn to love Dead Sea Salt exfoliation and maybe Gloria can get a little appreciation for Nature.

            My sister leaned down to see my find, wrinkling her nose in fastidious disgust. “Adorable? Those creepy little feet? If you killed that thing and stuck it with pins to some sort of board and looked at it under a microscope, you would see that those feet are anything but ‘adorable’ – they are vile little buggy mutant feet that look really gross close up.”

            She glanced at her watch. “We’ve got forty minutes before dinner – you can stay and visit with your yucky little friend; I’m going to go have a bath.”  ---

The butterfly pictures are for my agent -- she thinks butterflies are gross too. You can imagine how she feels about snakes.

But that's one of the revelations about writing -- if one just pays attention, there's a whole world of interesting material out there!

At Long Last!

You may recall that I sent in Under the Skin back in mid-May. And that I haven't heard back from my editor as to whether she liked it or not. Though I've tried to remain stoical about it, I have been fretting. Just a tad.

I didn't want to email and ask if she'd read it yet. After all, I'd been very, very  much past my deadline in getting the book in -- how could I expect Herself to hurry with reading my manuscript? Besides, she was probably busy hanging out with her big, important guys -- you know, Lee Child, Karen Slaughter, Deb Crombie, Laurie King . . . that gang of NY Times bestsellers.

Or maybe, the voice of doubt said, Herself has read it. Maybe she hates it and is trying to find a way out of the contract. Or . . . or . . .

Finally my agent mentioned to Herself that we were wondering if she'd had a chance to take a look at Under the Skin.

What? says Herself, I read it back in May and accepted it and sent Vicki a note with a cc. to you. 

No, says Ann, my indefatigable agent, we didn't get a note.

Hmm, says, Herself, I'll have to check when I get back to the office.

Okay, now I knew that the book had been accepted. What I didn't know is how Herself felt about it.  And that matters rather immensely.

So I braved up and emailed Herself. And this is what she said.

 I think it's the best thing you've ever written. I was totally enmeshed in it--the characterizations were rich and fresh and the novel-within-the-novel was strong and instantly compelling. I hated for the book to end, I truly did.

Calloo, callay! Oh, frabjous day! I chortled in my joy!  

Herself went on to mention one plot line that needed reinforcing -- which I shall promptly give some thought to and address when I get the line-edited, copy-edited manuscript back.

But oh! what a weight is lifted!

Celebration!

Well, pin a rose on my nose! I did it!

Under the Skin is finished, all 11o,823 words of it as of midnight my time and ready ( after a quick tidying up) to be sent to my editor sometime tomorrow.  

Call me happy! Call me relieved!

I wrote 2, 457 words today (not counting this blog post.) I'm off to have a cider, take a shower, and fall into bed.

Many thanks for the cheering which was in my head all day long! 

How Much Longer . . . Oh, Lord?

Under the Skin update!!

 As of Thursday night, the main story -- the present day story about Elizabeth and her sister was completed.  Huzzah!

But I still have to round off that other story -- the one about the DeVine Sisters back in 1887. One and one-half concluding episodes remain to be told, as of  Friday night.  And I MUST email the lot to Herself, my long-suffering editor by Monday morning.

I know what's going to happen in this story (always a plus). But sometimes the characters take so very long to get to the action.


Will I make the Monday deadline?

Bitch Wings and Bougainvillea

I am such a sucker for a new and interesting turn of phrase. 

In a recent post on his blog,  my friend Vic, who is cruising in the Bahamas, used the phrase 'bitch wings ' to describe the hands on hips, elbows out stance taken by his lady Gigi and their friend Miss Shirley to bawl out a bunch of  partying rowdies who'd kept the whole marina awake all night.

I'm familiar with the stance and have used it myself. But I'd never heard the phrase and it totally cracked me up.

So I immediately asked Vic if I could use the picture. (The ladies illustrate the stance so perfectly and just look at that glorious bougainvillea! Plus the complete absence of snow!)

I was, moreover, moved to write the term into the work in progress. ( A writer is something like a vacuum cleaner, taking up everything around.)

The scene is in Phillip's point of view. And Gloria, of course,  is Elizabeth's sister.

Now Gloria was on her feet, hands planted on her hips and elbows waggling in that old familiar bitch wings pose his ex-wife had majored in. Bitch wings seemed to work best, he thought, with short, strong-willed women -- the one like little feist dogs. Fuel them up with a pinch of righteous indignation and they could waggle those elbows and stare a big man down in no time flat.

Enter Nellie Bly

Look who's just walked into Under the Skin, my work in progress! It's Nellie Bly, investigative girl reporter herself.

I had decided to have the DeVine sisters, the twin mediums in my 1887 subplot, be the object of an investigative reporter's interest and I thought I'd read up on Nellie Bly for ideas.

What I found was that Nellie herself was available. In May of 1887 she was probably between jobs. She had left the Pittsburgh Dispatch, disgusted with having been returned to the theater and art beat after her exciting six months in Mexico, during which she reported on the life and customs of the people and ran afoul of the current dictatorship after daring to be critical of it.

Her next recorded stop would be New York, where she would gain fame as an undercover reporter for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. Her 10 Days in a Mad-House did a great deal to expose the brutal conditions of the asylums of the time and she would go on to challenge Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days by making the trip in in 72.

But what if, between leaving Pittsburgh and going to New York, Nellie decided to take a kind of working holiday by visiting the Mountain Park Hotel and participating on a seance held by the famous spiritualist sisters, Theodora and Dorothea DeVine?

I think it it sounds like just her sort of gig.

Something Happened Here . . .

. . . or so it seems to me.

Before my visit to the Mountain Magnolia (yesterday's post,) I drove into the grounds of what was once The Mountain Park Hotel, the grand resort that will be the main setting for the 1887 part of Under the Skin.

Nothing remains of the grand hotel (which burned long ago) but this odd clump of rocks caught my eye.

Looks to me like a perfect setting for strange goings on . . . with the DeVine Sisters in the past and with Gloria and Elizabeth in the present.

I can see I'm going to have to go back to Hot Springs.

Research, Research, Research -- Yet Another Tough Job

Research -- will it never end?

I have mentioned before this that the book I'm working on will have sections set in nearby Hot Springs -- both in the present and the past. Thanks to the yenta-like services of Suzanne, a reader and an email correspondent, I was put in touch with Karen Nagle, who, with her husband Pete, owns and operates the Mountain Magnolia Inn. Karen graciously invited me to come for dinner so they could answer my questions.

So off I went, ever willing to sacrifice in the name of research. (I didn't hesitate long; the Inn is known for its excellent food.)

The Inn is a beautifully restored home, originally built in 1868, and Karen and Pete told me its history, regaled me stories of its ghosts, and gave me a delicious dinner in the very charming restaurant that is a part of the Inn.

After dinner, Karen showed me around this lovely old house and I thought about how much Gloria would enjoy staying there -- beautiful decor, a room for massage, excellent restaurant. And if there's a ghost. . .

Hmmm . . . I think I'll have Gloria stay in the Buckeye Room . . . there's a nice balcony with a lovely view. And in the middle of the night, if someone were to come creeping . . .

Don't mind me, I'm just doing research. A rough job, as I mentioned before, but somebody has to do it.

Research . . . Somebody Has To Do It

I got up early yesterday with research on my mind. A few days ago I was writing a scene where Gloria has fixed beignets for breakfast (the show off!)

It's been a very long time since I've tasted these New Orleans delicacies and I was floundering around for a description. So I did what Gloria did -- bought a box of beignet mix.




It's so easy, even a non-cook like Gloria can shine.

Add water. Stir.

Roll out thin, using lots of flour.

Cut into squares and fry in canola oil.

Dust with powdered sugar; serve with cafe au lait.

I would like to acknowledge my husband's work as research assistant. He selflessly put aside his yogurt and granola to aid in my quest for authenticity in my writing.


!!!!!NOTICE!!!!

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Evening Roses

Yesterday was spent completely immersed in the next book -- John was away and, aside from letting the chickens out, filling bird feeders, feeding dogs and cats, scrounging meals of leftovers, and closing the chickens up again (at which time I took these pictures), I didn't get far from my laptop.

It's good to be able to get myself so deep in the story that the characters take over and start telling it. And that's where I was all the day.

As always with a series book, I have the wretched task of getting in all the back story -- who are these people and what do they look like and where did they come from -- so that readers new to the series won't be lost. But I don't want to bore those of you who know Elizabeth and her family as well as if they were next door neighbors.

Enter Gloria. It's a lot of fun to describe Elizabeth through Gloria's eyes. I remember when I first did that sort of thing in Art's Blood -- letting the patrician Lily Gordon describe her visit to Elizabeth's home -- how liberating it felt to see things through different eyes.

Onward and upward -- or rather backward. I'm moving into a chapter from 1887 and am going to delve into the life of Amarantha, a chambermaid at the Mountain Park Hotel . . .and an Appalachian witch!

The Sister Thing

"Sisters never quite forgive each other for what happened when they were five."

Pam Brown

I spent yesterday working on the new book, Under the Skin -- Elizabeth's sister Gloria has come for an indefinite visit and Elizabeth is, somewhat to her (and to my) surprise, becoming a tad bitchy.

Now I don't have a sister so I have no personal experience to draw on. But that doesn't stop me -- I've never (knowingly) encountered a murderer either but still I write about them.

Of course there are sisters who are best friends and always have been. But when one is writing a novel, high on the list of Must Have's is CONFLICT. Not just one big conflict but lots of little ones as well. So, Elizabeth and Gloria -- two very different people with very different world views are bound to clash.

Also, as I mentioned just a month ago, I'm writing Elizabeth in first person -- getting really up close and personal. In the past, sometimes I've thought that Elizabeth was just a little too good to be true -- so balanced, so kind, so good natured, so . . . rational.

Well, there's nothing like being around a younger, slimmer, richer sister, who also likes to tell you how you should live your life, to bring out the inner female dog in a protagonist.

I'm finding it interesting.

Pub Dates

Not the kind where you slope off to the local tavern for a cider and a Scotch egg -- but the dates of publication. I've just found out for sure that Birdie's book -- The Day of Small Things -- is set for a May 25, 2010 release -- quite a bit later than I'd originally been led to believe. Probably it was that second rewrite and getting rid of Myrna Lou that slowed things down.

But at least I won't be out trying to promote the book during the unpredictable winter months when there can be so much ice on our road that I can't go anywhere.

Why so long? I hear some of you asking. I thought the book had been copy edited already.

And so it has but they like to get out the advance copies to reviewers and allow plenty of time for those reviews to get published by the time the book hits the shelves.

There is a tentative pub date for Under the Skin --the one I'm working on now -- and it is March of 2011. But I've said I'll have it in by December 1 of this year -- if I do this and the rewrites don't take too long, it's possible that date could change. We'll see.

Meanwhile, I'm going to be hard at it to meet that deadline.