Writing and Waiting

My search for a publisher for my first novel began and I became obsessed about checking email. It became my last activity every evening and my first each morning. Truth be told, I should do nothing requiring active brain cells before my first cup of morning coffee.

There was an unknown name in my inbox on July 1. Thinking it spam, I almost deleted it. Something stopped me. I got out of bed, drank a cup of coffee, read the undeleted emails. That unknown name, Jesse James Freeman, was an offer to publish my first novel. I danced around the kitchen. I wanted to celebrate, but I was afraid to jinx my luck. It was an offer not a contract.

By July 31 with no contract in hand, I decided I needed a change of scene. My friend, Barb, and I left on our annual camping trip. I was determined to leave my worries behind. But I took my cell phone.

We arrived at the state park. We set up the tent, the camp chairs and the Coleman stove on the red checkered picnic table.

"I think I'll send a picture home," Barb said. "I want to show them what a great camper I am."

"I wonder if we've got service out here," I said.

I turned on my phone. Unable to resist, I opened email. A month had passed since I received the offer. Waiting comes with the territory.

You wait for a response to your arduously crafted query.

You wait for an acceptance.

You wait for a contract.

You wait to begin the edits hoping against hope that they will be minimal.

You wait for a cover design you love.

You wait for a release date. 

You wait to hold your baby in your hands.

And through it all you keep writing.

At the state park in front of the tent, I scanned my email messages. I hollered. I laughed. I was stunned silent. There it was: Kenneth Shear, Booktrope, a contract. I tried to open and read the document, but I have yet to master the skill of reading a tiny screen. It was enough to know I had received a contract.

I enjoyed the lake, the sunset, the beauty with greater intensity. A state wide burn ban, a rare August rain, and a very noisy campground sent us home early. I arrived to an empty house, my husband in Ohio visiting family. Barb and I unpacked, cooked the steaks intended for the camp fire, shared a toast to my contract. Then I was alone. I read the contract, complete the electronic signature, and hit send. I sat in a happy daze trying to let it sink in. Running Secrets will be published by Booktrope, a Seattle-based indie press known for its team publishing model (see Seattle Magazine).

Now I wait for my team, for the editing and design to begin, for a release date. I remind myself of the bumpy road to publication taken by my first book. I began writing The Thirty-Ninth Victim  in 2002 and signed a publishing contract in November 2004. Later I learned that my publisher had been bought out. In October 2006 I signed a new contract and the memoir was released in April 2008. Four years from contract to release. I tell myself to be patient. I tell myself that it won't take four years this time. 

Running Secrets is under contract!

It's a novel about family secrets, attempted suicide, and racial identity. A suicidal young woman and her Ethiopian home healthcare provider forge a friendship that bridges their differences. Together they learn that racial identity is a choice, self expression is a right, and family is a personal construct.

I don't remember when I started writing this novel. Sometime in 2005, I think. The Thirty-Ninth Victim was under contract (the first contract). I knew if I was really a writer, I'd keep writing. I knew that the hardest story I'd ever write was behind me. So I began a novel. A first draft, a lousy first draft, finished, I set it aside. I was distracted by the editing and eventual release of my memoir, by my family's reaction, by my mother's gradual descent into dementia.

When The Thirty-Ninth Victim came out, I received questions about my mother from readers who wanted to know more about this woman in the shadows. I too wanted to understand my mother. Sometime in 2008 or 2009 I returned to memoir to explore motherhood, but I was unwilling to let go of Gemi and Chris, the protagonists in Running Secrets. I started a second novel and soon knew I had a trilogy. I kept writing and was relieved that my submissions of the early draft of Running Secrets had been rejected. I pulled the manuscript out of the proverbial box at the back of the closet, dusted if off and rewrote it. And rewrote it again. And then again.

I began another round of queries. I am happy to say I did not need to follow Joyce Carol Oates's questionable advice nor did I meet my self-imposed target of one hundred queries (See Summer Plans 2013). Twenty one was the magic number. After eight years of writing and waiting, my first novel is under contract.

I hope to have Running Secrets out within five years of The Thirty-Ninth Victim, but five months is a tight schedule. I may have to settle for a six year gap between books, and as I wait (and edit) and wait (and edit), I will write. Because writing and waiting is what writers do.

The Colombian Coke Dealer’s 3-Legged Dresser

I never knew, will never know, if Felipe was guilty as accused or framed as he claimed. What I do know is that he was a friend at a time in my life when I was very short on friends. When we met, I still considered myself an ex-pat, was still married to a Mexican national, and though I was living and working back “home” in Seattle, I still had not made a definitive decision about the permanency of the move. But life has an odd way of turning us about.

I had landed a job in an English language school for internationals that encouraged teachers to participate in field trips and other social events. Being about the same age as my students, this was not only enjoyable but also filled a void in my life at a time when my husband had not yet made the move stateside and I knew almost no one in the city. As I was moving the few belongings I'd brought with me from Mexico City into an apartment near the school, I found a discarded sectional in the basement parking lot. After some serious scrubbing and lots of disinfectant spray, I had a faded velour sofa and was ready for my first class party.

I think my students felt sorry for me. Felipe’s first gift was a used hide-a-bed sofa. He insisted he was redecorating. He said it pained him to know his teacher was  sleeping on the floor. I tried to explain that I was a backpacker, that I’d spent a good number of years in Mexico and Venezuela sleeping on floors, that it was good for my back. He didn’t listen.

Felipe was a big man, a weight lifter. His second gift was the remaining months on a year-long health club membership. He wasn’t using it, he claimed. He didn’t like their weight room. Unaccustomed to Seattle winters, I was happy for the chance to exercise indoors.

Felipe’s third gift still stands in my bedroom. Frugal as I am, I’ve been unable to rid my life of a perfectly good 3-legged antique dresser. It’s a massive 5-drawer affair in dark mahogany with small brass medallions in the center of each wooden drawer pull, pillars on the front corners and heavy turned legs. By some feat of physics, it manages to stand solid despite a missing back leg. My husband and I joke that perhaps it wasn’t termites that ate the fourth leg, that perhaps the fourth leg was where the cocaine was hidden, that perhaps we should take off the other legs to check that they’re solid.

Thirty years have passed since that lonely young woman received three generous gifts. My first marriage ended, I made the decision to repatriate, I remarried, life went on. Last weekend my husband and I began a search for new bedroom furniture fearful that our old brass bed might soon collapse under the weight of our two hundred pound latex mattress.

“Are you sure you want to get rid of it?” He nodded toward the dresser.

“I’m tired of the old monster. It belonged to another life,” I said.

“I’m not sure how we'll get it out of here,” he said.

“Take the legs off?” I suggested.

“Might find enough in there to pay for the new furniture,” he said.

For thirty years I’ve stared at that dresser remembering Felipe’s generosity and wondering about his guilt or innocence. I know he was incarcerated. I don’t know how long he served. I don’t know where he is today. But I do know I will always remember his jovial laughter, his kind friendship and his 3-legged dresser.

Summer Plans 2013

Amy Tan filled Seattle's Benaroya Hall last Wednesday night. Svelte and glorious in a black dress and heels, she shared stories of her mother's fatalistic parenting advice with grace and humor. She didn't read from her latest novel, Valley of Amazement, scheduled for release later this year, but instead spoke of the deaths of her mother and her editor, both in 1999. Then she read a lengthy letter written in response to a new editor's request for a synopsis of this first novel manuscript she'd completed since the loss of the two women who shaped her writing world. In her letter she introduced herself, shared stories of her life and explained her reasons for writing. She said little about the novel other than a few closing sentences. As I listened, my mind floated to a dark place: I questioned how many editors would spend the time to read a letter of such length regardless how interesting and well-written without Amy Tan's name on the envelope. 

Later that evening I found a Facebook post in my inbox, an article attributed to Joyce Carol Oates published in The Onion. With over fifty novels and numerous other publications to her name, I was curious about Oates' advice to young writers. The title also intrigued me: If You Wish To Be A Writer, Have Sex With Someone Who Works In Publishing. In contrast to Tan's lengthy contemplative letter to land a publishing contract, Oates suggests fucking the editor. In fact, she suggests fucking any and all editors, fucking anyone with a connection to an editor, fucking anyone who might even have the ear of an editor. I laughed until my sides hurt. 

 

Now, as I reflect on these two approaches, weighing one against the other, I decide I'm the one who's fucked. I'm not famous and I'm too damn old to sleep my way into a publishing contract. So what's left? I ponder this question for endless hours, hours better spent saturating the indie market with that dreaded synopsis Amy Tan sidestepped. Determination, perseverance and seat time are the tools in my publishing arsenal. 

I promise myself I'll send out 100 queries. I decide I can stomach 100 rejections (or silences since many editors simply don't respond) before I turn to the world of self-publishing. That's not a slam against self-publishing - some of my best friends are self-published authors of wonderful works - I'm just not ready to take the leap. I enjoyed working with an indie press on my memoir and want a similar experience with my first novel. Of course there's also the agent and big five path to traditional publishing, the path taken by the likes of Amy Tan and Joyce Carol Oates, but they got in before the ground shifted under all of us. They were household names back when self-publishing was scorned as vanity press and e-books had yet to revolutionize the reading (and publishing) experience. Sans fame and youth, I'll keep my butt in the chair, my pen moving and wait for that 1 in 100 response. At least until the end of summer.    

MURDOCK TACKLES TAOS

I dislike reading manuscript PDFs on my laptop, especially if the manuscript is a good mystery and what I really want is to curl up and enjoy. Still, when writer, teacher and friend, Robert J. Ray, offered his latest Murdock mystery in pre-publication format, I was delighted.

Murdock Tackles Taos is Ray's sixth Murdock mystery. The first was Bloody Murdock, released in 1986. Matt Murdock moved to Seattle and Murdock Cracks Ice appeared in 1992. Ray says he writes slow. I say each new adventure is worth the wait. I've enjoyed every one of the Murdock mysteries and this is no exception. If you enjoy well-written mysteries, watch for Murdock Tackles Taos, scheduled for release by Seattle's own Camel Press next month. Learn more about Robert Ray's work at his blog, co-authored with Jack Remick.

Here's my review: 

Murdock Tackles Taos is an any-time summer read, a murder mystery fueled with action: a missing woman and a corpse, good guys and bad guys, love and sex, all flavored with evil I will not reveal. Also, Murdock Tackles Taos examines privilege and the extremes that mega-wealth can afford. When you can buy anything or anyone you want, what more is there? What games do humans play when the thrill is gone? When human life loses all meaning or value?

Through it all, Murdock makes me smile. He’s not a suave, sophisticated James Bond. He’s not a disheveled, bumbling Colombo either. He’s real. He’s kind. He’s somebody to share a good adventure with. Helene Steinbeck, retired town marshal turned successful author, is Murdock’s new sidekick and lover. She makes me just a tiny bit jealous. 

Robert Ray’s novel tossed me back and forth between the feel of a summer read and a study in human nature – either way Murdock Tackles Taos is a read you won’t want to miss.

Writing Groups

When I received Mindy Halleck's invitation to participate in an interview series for her blog, Literary Liaisons, I was intrigued and challenged. The questions were deceptively simple:

1. What, if any, benefits do you receive from participating in a writers group?

2. How does the Natalie Goldberg/Jack Remick/Robert Ray style of writing practice influence your writing?

I asked myself why I drive across town several times a week to write in the company of others, why I face Seattle's rush hour traffic when I could just as easily sit at home in my comfortable little writing room or walk to a local coffee shop. My answers appear on Mindy's blog, Literary Liaisons. 

Vigil

Thursday, February 21, 2013

I stand at my mother's bedside. I lean forward, kiss her cheek, stroke her hair. "Hello, Mom, Sally," I say. "It's me. Arleen. Your daughter. I love you." Her eyes seem to focus, a flash of something in the pale blue. Recognition? Connection? Love? And then it is gone.

I sit in this tiny room in the dementia care facility to await my mother's passing, desperate for an end to her misery, hoping it doesn't come today on my sister's birthday. I talk nonsense, grade student compositions, write in this notebook. I read aloud first from one book then from another as the hours layer one upon another. My mother no longer eats or drinks or moves. Even her eyes now seem frozen in place. Her small frail body is shutting down. Only her heavy breathing tells me she is still alive.

I am alone with the shadow of the woman who was once my mother, her quiet strength so often misunderstood. For eleven years she has been alone since my father's death. For eleven years she has been lost in the clutches of dementia, the memories of her greatest joys and her most horrific tragedies wiped away with an indiscriminate, cruel stroke of brain malfunction. In these eleven years I have felt closer to my mother than in all the accumulated years prior. An irony. My loss.

Throughout the afternoon my vigil is interrupted only by caregivers shifting my mother's position, teaching me to moisten her lips, offering their words of comfort. And by nurses checking her vitals.

The chair is plastic cold, the room too warm. I sit with my mother, this fragile dying woman who was once the vibrant mother of nine, the love of my father's life. My mother always shopped in the petite department. As a growing adolescent I wanted to be like her, petite and pretty, with blond curls and tiny feet, blue eyes and no glasses. But I continued to grow, tall and gangly, with dark frizz and big feet, green eyes and coke-bottle glasses. I was not my mother's daughter. I did not possess her quiet strength, a trait I came to appreciate only in these final years as dementia took her away from me.

I open the drawer in my mother's bedside table to find the hospice journal. The last entry reads: "Sally continues her dying process." My mother has been dying for eleven years. For the first seven of those years she insisted, demanded, fought to stay in the home she and my father shared on a lonely stretch of Pacific beach where the crash of waves lulled her to sleep after she checked and rechecked the doors and windows, after she raised the thermostat to warm her soul, after her tears dampened her lonely pillow. By 2009 it was obvious to everyone from the home health caregiver to the post mistress and the grocery cashiers that Mom could not continue to live alone, and we moved her into dementia care against her wishes. She adapted and gained weight. She walked the halls humming and smiling. But the disease kept picking away at her brain, stealing bits and pieces, memories and motor skills.

This room where I sit on this plastic chair, softened now with the padded cushion from her idle wheelchair, has been my mother's home for four years. This tiny room and bathroom. A single bed and bedside table. A dresser with a large oval mirror that once belonged to my paternal grandmother. The floor bare for easy mopping, the walls institutional white, the only personal touches are the family photos of faces she's long forgotten. Her husband of fifty years, her nine children and numerous grandchildren, her beloved parents are all strangers.

My mother has not eaten for a week. She is dying as I sit beside her my notebook open to record the close of her life. My pen moves across this page because I can do nothing more. I can only sit and soothe her occasional tremors with a hand on her shoulder and listen to the shallow breathing of a life at its end. I can only offer comfort with touch, word and song. I love you, a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck. My father's deep voice fills my head. I struggle to remember the lyrics and sing to my mother in a voice that even I do not want to hear, a voice that is not my father's voice. Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do. I'm half crazy over the love of you...

At dinner time I am served my mother's meal, the meal she no longer eats. Barley soup, pork roast, mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables. I do not push the lima beans around my plate as I did in childhood. I eat my mother's dinner at her bedside, her red cloth napkin spread across my knees, the chords of Andres Segovia filling the silence between her breaths.

As evening progresses I must decide whether to stay or go. "How much time is left?" I ask Nurse Erika when she returns for a 9:00 p.m. check. "I don't have a crystal ball," she tells me, her voice a caress. She teaches me about mottling as she massages lotion into my mother's cold feet. "It's only progressed to her calves," she says. "But I don't have that crystal ball." I decide to go home.

Friday, February 22, 2013

I drive north knowing that my brother and his wife are already with our mother. Later a sister and her husband join us. More chairs are pushed into the small room. Mom's breathing is rough. She's now on morphine applied to the inside of her mouth every two hours. The dosage increases as the hours pass. We fill the afternoon with memories and laughter as caregivers change shifts, hospice workers offer comfort, nurses administer medications.

Before my sister and her husband leave, we play with Mom's wheelchair and talk of my spending the night in it. By 8:30 p.m. Mom and I are alone again and I am still undecided. A half hour later Nurse Erika and I talk of Mom's labored breathing. She shows me that the mottling is now up to Mom's thighs. She decides to increase the morphine. When she leaves to get the medication, I notice that we've lost the classical radio station that's been our backdrop for the past two days. I fiddle with the dial and land on 88.5FM, music of the 40s big band era.

"Go dance with Dad," I whisper to my mother. "He's waiting for you. Put on your black velvet top and your taffeta skirt. Go dancing, Mom. I love you."

Her teeth clack two, three, four times. Her harsh open-mouthed breathing stops. "She seems too silent," I say as Nurse Erika returns. She places her hands on Mom's chest, a gentle searching for the movements of breath or heartbeat, the signs of life. I am at her side. I reach forward and place the back of my hand on my mother's cheek. She releases one final breath and leaves this world.

Nurse Erika and I look into each other's eyes, grasp each other's arms. "Is she really gone?" I ask. "She's gone." I look at the wall clock. 9:25 p.m. Nurse Erika's stethoscope confirms my mother's passing. "I'll call hospice," she tells me and leaves the room.

I am alone with my mother's body still expecting another rasping breath. My arm on her chest, I swear I feel movement. The hospice nurse arrives. Another stethoscope check. Another confirmation."I'll call Neptune Society," she tells me and leaves the room.

My sister and brother-in-law return. They've only just gotten home when I call. Another sister who's been in flight, ending a vacation early, arrives to say good-bye to Mom's departing spirit. We sit together. I hear a knock and go to the door. No one is there. Then it is over. Or so we think.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

I awaken to loss and fear. 2/2/02. Dad's death. 2/22/13. Mom's death. Eleven years of care end and I feel like I've just lost them both. Only memory remains and I am terrified that the day will come when my memories leave me just as they abandoned my mother. I know I need to write as I always write, to process and to remember.

I'm still in bed when the phone rings. "Swedish called," my sister says. "They have a kidney." My brother-in-law is admitted, the match is confirmed, and kidney transplant surgery is performed the following day.

Life ends and new life is given. The synchronicity is beyond comprehension. I choose to believe that Mom's gift to me was her final good-bye and her gift to my sister will be her husband's health and longevity. And as I continue to hold my breath, waiting and hoping, I realize that in giving these gifts, my mother has diverted attention from herself in death just as she did in life.

Marcella Adeline Huber Feeney

September 21, 1924 - February 22, 2013

Gabriela and the Widow on Kindle

Not long ago I heard a story on NPR about the effects of e-readers on the world of reading. People are reading more, particularly young people. The commentator suggested the increase could be due to anonymity: when you're on an electronic device, people might not know you're reading. Could be the kid on the bus next to you isn't just listening to rap or playing a game. He might be reading Great Expectations without fear of being labeled a nerd - or whatever it is kids call each other these days.

I was about to buy a copy of Jack Remick's Gabriela and the Widow in paperback because I'm old school, because I don't have an e-reader, because I like the feel of paper in my hands. But NPR made me question my bias against e-books, so I downloaded Kindle on my small Acer laptop, bought my first e-book and began to read.

I didn't like slipping into bed with a cold hard laptop. I couldn't float on the magic and mystery of Remick's lyrical prose. I was dog paddling with arrow buttons, unable to scan ahead or flip back to reread with the ease of turning a page. Still, the power of Remick's words kept me at it, pulled me to a computer screen long after my teaching and writing day was over. That screen became a portal and the story took me to the far side of my own life's mirror, a life I once lived and allowed to slip from memory.

“When you go through your reflection you become who you are.”

The Widow reminds us that we must never forget our past, for it is what makes us who we are and who we become.

“You must speak from inside the tears and you must smell the pain on your skin or you will never be whole again.”

Remick writes the tools of the craft into his story: a list of events and a stack of notecards, each labeled with date, place and object. Gabriela and the Widow use these tools to construct the List of the Widow's life and in doing so Gabriela experiences new ways of being, alternatives to the violent patterns that have marked her young life. Throw nothing of yourself away, the Widow teaches. Save your fingernail clippings, your hair trimmings, your life stories. A lesson on living. A lesson on writing. I see Gabriela with her notecards and her long list as I work the notecards on the storyboard of my current novel.

Gabriela and the Widow is a lyrical treasure that paints a magical mysterious world of two women, so close they inhabit each other's dreams and relive each other's experiences. In doing so the Widow leaves a bit of herself behind when she passes and Gabriela enters womanhood regaining a life tragically interrupted in childhood as an innocent victim of the atrocities of war.

This is a beautiful, horrific, captivating read full of the lights and colors, the smells and music of southern Mexico and central California. The story held me to the screen and that says a lot. I have no doubt some of you will point out that reading off a computer is not the same as using an e-reader. You may even insist that I give Kindle a chance, certain I'll love it once I get used to it. Maybe so, but I'm not ready to make the jump to an e-reader just yet. I still want a signed paperback copy of Jack Remick's Gabriela and the Widow for my library.