Coming Soon to a Bookstore or Blog Near You: Me

 

Here we are (finally!), four weeks away from the print publication of THE QUALITIES OF WOOD! Starting tomorrow, I'll be here and there, out and about, squawking about the book to whomever will listen! From now until June 12th, you can read a little something about me and the book at the blogs listed below. More info about the tour at TLC Book Tours, here. I'll post links via my Facebook author page, which you can Like here to be in the loop. And there's still time to enter TLC's May Book Club of the Month Contest, featuring several books, including mine. Enter here.

And there's more! All my southern California peeps, please pencil in one of the bookstore events, where I'll be talking some more and signing your books. June 17th is launch day, so join the celebration in Irvine, or if you're closer to LA, come out to the incomparable Vroman's and say hello.

Bookstore Events

Tuesday, June 17th at 7pm
Barnes & Noble in Irvine, CA
13712 Jamboree Road
Irvine, CA 92602

Saturday, June 21st at 4pm
Vromans Bookstore in Pasadena, CA
695 E. Colorado Blvd
Pasadena, CA 91101

Mary’s Tour Stops

Wednesday, May 21st: The Ludic Reader
Thursday, May 22nd: Every Free Chance Book Reviews
Friday, May 23rd: BooksAreTheNewBlack
Monday, May 26th: Read Her Like an Open Book
Tuesday, May 27th: Chaotic Compendiums
Wednesday, May 28th: Sincerely Stacie
Thursday, May 29th: Literary Lindsey
Monday, June 2nd: Books on the Table
Tuesday, June 3rd: Patricia’s Wisdom
Tuesday, June 10th: Mel’s Shelves
Wednesday, June 11th: A Book Geek
Thursday, June 12th: Karen’s Korner

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The Waffle Analogy

I was reading an interview with Alexander Payne yesterday. He’s the filmmaker behind the hits Sideways, The Descendants and last year’s Nebraska. The interview was with Gia Coppola, grandchild of you-know-who and a fledgling filmmaker with her own Palo Alto releasing soon. Anyway, Payne was talking about making movies and how each one is a learning process. “I’ve made six feature films,” he says, “and I still don’t think I’ve made a good movie. I mean, they’re OK. I consider myself a 53-year-old film student; it’s just that now I’m being paid to continue to learn.” 

As I’m wont to do, I translated this to writing. And the statement is alternately encouraging and discouraging, isn’t it? Encouraging because we shouldn’t expect our first novel (or second, or sixth) to be the best we’ll ever do. Discouraging because it means we’ll probably never, ever look at a completed manuscript and think: “Now, that there, that’s perfect.”

He offers more food for fodder. Figuratively, with a food metaphor. He assures us: “Your first movie is like the first waffle—the iron isn’t quite hot enough; you haven’t put enough butter. The first waffle you always have to throw away, or you, the cook, eat it, but you’d never serve it. You know, the second waffle is servable.”

Waffles? But it makes so much sense, doesn’t it? And yet, I can’t stop going over all the possibilities inherent in this analogy. Don’t some people like cake-y waffles and some like crispy? Round or square? What about butter and syrup? Fresh fruit? Whipped cream? There are mini-waffles, whole wheat waffles and chocolate chip waffles. There are gluten-free waffles, of course. There are waffle cones—do those count? How in the world will you ever know if you’re serving the right waffle (book)? And now, of course, there are waffle-themed restaurants serving “artisan waffle sandwiches,” waffle burgers and waffles stuffed with lemon meringue pie. The apex (or perhaps, nadir) of all of this is the newly introduced Waffle Taco. I can’t even talk about that, it’s so wrong.

So don’t worry—you’ll never please everyone and there's no accounting for taste! Make your waffle however you’ve always been doing it. Serve it whenever you darn well feel like it and let everyone else decide what to do from there. They’re lucky you’re making them waffles in the first place. 

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The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope by Rhonda Riley

 

I’ve just finished reading The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope and by “just finished” I mean moments ago, because I had to sit right down right in the middle of the day and finish it, which is something I rarely do. Oh, I loved this book. But I find myself in the strange position of loving a book, wanting to share the book and yet, not wanting to say much about it at all. Because Rhonda Riley’s debut is like nothing you’ve read before and should be experienced without predeterminations. It’s a family saga, a bit of the supernatural, a touch of historical. Above all, it’s one of the most unique and compelling love stories I’ve read.

A short plot summary: When Evelyn Roe’s great-aunt dies, she is put in charge of the North Carolina farm she left behind. Evelyn is the eldest of the family and the only one who’s ever shown an interest in working the land. So at seventeen years of age, she finds herself living alone for the first time in her life. During a turbulent storm, she discovers what she believes to be an injured and disfigured solider, almost completely buried in patch of mud. She nurses the stranger back to life and thus begins the love story of her time on earth.

What can I say about this magical and inventive novel? The language is beautiful and nuanced and the story is told with a patient and measured pace. Amidst the day-to-day toil and beauty of family life, glimmers of deeper meaning break through. Riley’s examinations of this extraordinary relationship raise universal questions about the nature of all relationships; her ponderings about what it means to know a person, to love a person, will lead you to contemplate your own entanglements. The novel surprised me again and again and never took a false turn. It operated on so many levels, it made my brain hurt. Riley’s debut has been compared to The Time Traveler’s Wife and The Story of Edgar Sawtelle—both books I loved, and you could certainly do worse than to be their hybrid offshoot. I loved this book and although it’s only still April, I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t included in my top reads of the year come December (book was first published in 2013, however). Warning: Don’t read lots of reviews before you dig in! Best to discover the mystery on your own, I think. Amazon link here, but available everywhere.

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Writers: Cover Your Mirrors

Recently, I was watching this documentary called Etoiles: Dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet. It’s sort of a day-in-the-life view of the way a ballet company is run and into the lives of its dancers—the politics, the training, the sacrifices. The discipline it takes to be a dancer always amazes me. Most start at a young age and are sent away for training. Most love their vocation passionately. At one point during the film, a dancer is discussing the challenges of working with different choreographers. He talks about switching from, say, a classical ballet one week, to a modern piece the next. He mentions a certain modern dance choreographer who likes to cover the mirrors in the studio, because the ballet dancers are accustomed to “correcting” themselves. That is, they are constantly checking in the mirror that the lines of each arm, each leg, are correct. They check their posture, the turn of their feet, the curve of their backs—basically, everything they’ve been trained to do from an early age. The choreographer of the modern piece wants them to focus more on feeling and emoting, and not worry so much about perfection.

I found this so interesting, and it leads my thinking in two directions. First, to an ongoing discussion I had with a friend during my college years. This friend liked to read mostly twenty-first century stuff, had a thing for ee cummings if I remember correctly, and didn’t hold a reverence for the literary classics. I, on the other hand, was resolutely working my way through a list I had found somewhere, something like 500 Classics You Have to Read to Be a Worthwhile Person, and I was finding many of them quite incredible, of course. So our argument was framed around the question of whether you should immerse yourself in what has come before to move forward, if there is a value to studying what the higher-ups have determined to be the canon. I have no answer for this, even now, although I’m happy to have read enough to feel part of the literary conversation. At least the American literary conversation, and enough to dip my toes, perhaps, into a discussion of worldwide literature. But when it comes to writing your own stuff, you really have to find your own way, without regard to what has come before. I would say that each writer’s path is probably different but as long as you’re reading something, all the time, you’ll be okay.

The other way my thinking goes, when I contemplate those covered mirrors in the dance studio, is towards what the choreographer described as emoting. There seems to be, for writers, a delicate balance between looking outward and looking inward. If you are too introspective, too self-aware when it comes to the world, you will probably write the same character over and over. This works for some writers. And I would say that tapping into your own experiences and emotions is very important in the process of writing. Sometimes, however, I think it’s helpful to cover the mirrors and try to look outward. Be a conduit rather than the source. Observe without applying it to yourself. Imagine another way of viewing a situation, another value system, simply perceive without applying your usual patterns of thought. This takes a certain discipline, I suppose, and eventually you’ll have to restrain yourself to a pen and paper or a keyboard, doing as so many who have come before have done. But if you love your vocation passionately, you’ll have no other choice but to keep bouncing from what you’ve learned to the brave new world you want to create, no choice but to keep showing up, day after day, to practice.

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Making Contact

 

I’ve always been quite taken with the opening of the movie Contact. First, there’s a swirly-blue-white-and-green view of Earth, then the camera slowly widens to show other planets, the whole galaxy, then countless other galaxies. The imagery is compelling, especially for 1997 when the film came out. If you saw Gravity last year, you can compare the special effects. This holds up pretty well, I think. The audio accompanying the images completes the experience. Our universe is represented as a hodge-podge of voices, broadcasted by television and radio, recorded for education and entertainment, and compiled in this opening shot as a metaphor for what “contact” is: communication.

We all have voices in our heads, don’t we? Whether it’s your conscience reminding you what you should be doing, your juxtaposed memories of childhood, that earworm of Beyonce’s latest, or just a confluence of random, meteor-like snippets—this is why we pay money for yoga sessions or The Power of Now books, or escape to movies or fiction (or alcohol!). We creative types often give in to the voices.

 

If your mind is like mine, it’s constantly buzzing with ideas. Most are half-formed, flighty things. That look given by a grandmotherly type to her dog; the way sunlight slices through palm fronds; the feeling of isolation while you’re watching that damn opening to Contact. Currently, I have two projects simmering and once in a while, things will occur to me. Sometimes I’m in a place where I can write them down; sometimes I’m not. But I believe this buzzing, this almost-background-noise, is productive in its own way. It’s like the galaxy of the book/play/whatever is existing out there, making its own declarations, expanding and contracting. Later, when I finally find the time to focus on one or the other, it will be like turning a radio dial to a certain signal. And I’ve been fortunate in that so far, whenever I’ve set that dial, the station comes in clearly and my outer universe seems to align with the task. At that point, all stimuli, all voices contribute to the one thing. Coincidences pop up, words in books I’m reading jump out to show their relationship, everyone I come into contact with says something helpful. But of course, there isn’t much contact at that point. Because I’m like Jodie Foster, sitting alone with headphones on, taking it all in and sending out hopeful missives through the keyboard.

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