The Neurasthenic Go Go Dancer

There's a woman in my aerobics class that I don't much like. She's a backstabber, and has the most unpleasant smile. The always backs up three feet and screws up the rows while whoever has the misfortune (sometimes me) to be standing behind her scrabbles for floor space.



Worse, she doesn't have an honest movement. Her twee little butt shakes and hand flaps drive me crazy. The appears unable to extend an arm or a leg or move with any vigor at all. I don't know WTF she's doing, but it's not aerobics. There's 80 year olds in the class who exhibit more energy than she does.



Why do some people get under your skin? It's not even personal. Usually I like most everyone until there's a sufficient reason not to. Her I didn't like from the day I first set foot in the class. It is chemistry? Hard to say.



Enough about the aerobically challenged one.



Today is a frenzy of cooking I made french bread and a minestrone with Italian sausage. Not vegetarian of course, but muy delicioso. Tomorrow we're smoking some salmon and eating more bread and soup.



Annie the cat has escaped twice today, both times S.O.'s doing. She's enjoying the nice evening and the birds are batshit, esp the catbird. Well, whatchagonna do? She'll come in when she's hungry. Hope the cat-chasing dog doesn't spot her. The whippet.



Going upstairs to watch the Barefoot Contessta. Can't wait to see the new Julia Child movie.



Grapeshot, who expects those in an aerobics class to actually do aerobics.

Typical Day in the Life of a Retiree

Awake at nine and a half-hour in bed with coffee and the still-with-us Boston Globe. Cat comes up for lovey time. Plunks herself down in mid-paper. How sweet it is.

Down to the kitchen and make blueberry pancakes out of yesterday's waffle batter. Two slices of bacon per person, our idea of dieting. It warn't turkey bacon, either.

Clean up kitchen, spot clean tablecloth and throw in a load of laundry. Monday is still washday.

Give Thisbe her insulin shot.

Onto computer for email, blogging, and working on today's reading for the writing group. Wrote 4 pages yesterday. Good for me.

Shower, etc.

Off to Walmart for cat litter, insulin needles, cat food and a few assorted groceries. I used to scorn Walmart, before retirement and the cats many needs.

Looking for rhubard for rhubard bread later in week. Hope it's not $5.99 per lb. again.

Drop off key for cat sitter with instructions.

Baking food processor bread, and freeform blueberry tart. Dinner is a salad with grilled steak (cooked last night) on top.

Watch a little Wimbleton.

Water houseplants.

Print out reading for tonight.

Wine and cheese, then dinner. La-de-dah!

Off to writing group.

Blueberry tart. Maybe a little reading or TV. Insulin to cat again.

Read more of Eat, Pray, Love on Kindle. Lights out!

Writing Down the Nitty Gritty

You've always got to assume everyone in the English speaking world is going to read your novel. Well and good. You must also make the assumption that your readers will have an intimate knowledge of every place you mention, every intersection, every stretch of road, and the geography, flora, fauna, and all the details you have so carefully harvested in the research you do for your writing.

And the readers will all be critics and they'll be outraged in you don't have the most mundane fact correct.

That's why I made my trip to Florida which probably cost at least a dollar a word. Now my characters are leaving Florida in a motor home, heading up I-95 to Boston. Have I driven this road? Mostly. In a motor home? Never.

So I'm researching campgrounds like crazy, and all the little travel details of motor home life. We actually went to an RV show a few years ago when we wanted to rent an RV to go to Burning Man (book was Festival Madness, still looking for agent). I had no idea of ever writing another RV book. Shows what I know.

Now, the RV parks are all on the web, with photos and rates and amenties. The RV in question breaks down and I have to research where you can get these suckers fixed. And the distances, so everything makes sense. Jacksonville to Myrtle Beach. Myrtle Beach to Fayetteville, NC. Fayetteville to Philly. Philly to Boston and a huge backup on I-95 around New Haven. O.K., been there, done that.

Because, you see, I need to put the screws to my characters, make them late, make them sweat, make the crazy, so a few things can happen. Man, I've said it before, this plotting is hard work, and all the underpinnings, the towns, the campgrounds, life on the road, it's, well, it's work, so when I thought, I have to get the group from Boca Raton to Boston, that seemed easy enough, but plot points are huge and I better not screw up the versimilitude or the story.

Easier said than done. So we're slowly getting to Boston, one word at a time, and I'm surprised at how hard it is.

Because in a genre novel, every little detail is subservient to the plot and the whole story and of course, the characters, and I've just about forgotten about Lotto, by now in Colombia inspecting his fabulous drug sub kits from Russia. Ah, what a tangled web we weave!

Grapeshot

The Difficulties of the Genre Novel

Naturally you want your crime fiction novel to be exciting. The use of pacing is giving me fits right now.

I have been humming along alternating action and excitement with moving the plot along. There is a budding romance, a road trip, trying to escape from the bad guy, and setting up the story for the next scenes.

Just wrapped up some drama in Jacksonville, FL, and now the characters need to be sitting in the CVS parking lot in a Boston suburb. I don’t want to describe the rest of the trip in any detail, (alas, it's not a Road Novel), but need to tell the reader, notice I said tell, not show, that my trio stopped in Myrtle Beach and that the romantic relationship has now expanded to include sex. That the little girl has got one of her heart’s desires, that the motor home has broken down causing a day’s delay. That a short day's drive has expanded due to a nightmare mess on I-95 in Connecticut, a not uncommon event, making the characters almost late to get to the bank before it closes to get the account number for the Cayman Islands bank where huge gobs of illegal drug money is stashed. Remember this is a crime story. Suspense!

Now the characters have to get to Chicago on the double, but hurry to get to the bank has created a huge PLOT Point.

Man, this writing business is hard work.

So I think what I’m going to do is set the van down in the middle of the traffic jam and let the characters sweat a little and tell us about Myrtle Beach, and the prior two days in a few short paragraphs. Then the race to the bank. All hell breaks loose. Of course the way they’ve been robbing banks in suburban Boston, I could even have a bank robbery. Hey, that’s a good idea. A man with a gun comes through the door. Yowsa! Oh boy! Yes!

Grapeshot, who is closing in on 220 pages and lots of words.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

It's been raining since I got back from Florida on the 5th of June. We are growing webbed feet. The tomatos will have the flavor of rain water, or cardboard, or elements of both. Tomatoes need sun. Curses!

This weekend, peaches were on sale. Bought peaches, strawberries, bananas, etc. Now everything is ripe at once. Making a peach crisp, but it serves eight and we are two. Grapeshot and S.O. plus eight.

It took me the longest time to figure out who Jon and Kate were, and now they are getting a divorce with eight little kids. These reality show suck more than anything. But they are popular and of course, they're cheap to produce. Give me Entourage, or Damages or In Treatment any day. Hell, I'll even take Hercule Poirot. Love the golf, love the baseball. Even tennis. Real reality, real drama, real conflict, not a bunch of b.s. I like authenticity.

Writing a bit again. Much to do. Miles to go.

A friend sent a link to some flickr photos. Near Gerlach, Nevada, as the end of the road, but not the railroad. Fab. photos, and what a rainbow. Noah himself must have ordered it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tremain_calm/

Grapeshot

Blueberry Pancakes and the Cock of the Walk

One of the best places in Key West is Blue Heaven, a funky restaurant with chickens running about and blueberry pancakes to die for. The gift shop wasn't bad either. Someone on one of my "social networks" recommended Blue Heaven. Thank you. Thank you. Didn't look like much from outside, but once we found the garden with the shade and the chickens and the dynamite menu, everything was wonderful. Good bar, too, but we were just there for breakfast.

I gobbled down three big pancakes that must have had a pint of blueberries scattered throughout. Should have a photo of them, too, just like Stephen Shore photographed his breakfast and motel rooms. Damn.

Of course I was tempted to write Blue Heaven into the book, but it really doesn't belong there, so I'll have to blog it. The coffee was all right and the side order of bacon was cooked to my favorite crispness. Generous, too. Don't you just hate a puny side order or bacon?

I'm posting a few photos of the place. I was too enchanted with the curious chickens to photograph them, but they were a big part of the place, hens, young-un and a rooster, of course, who liked to crow. This was a warm up for Mr. Clucky in South Beach.

Key West in the summer is mucho hot, and we enjoyed the shade. It's tolerable with shade and/or a breeze. I am very fond of places at the end of the road and am hoping to get down to the tip of the Baja before I'm gone.

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Paranoids R' Us

So, I must have got out of the habit of posting while I was carooming around South Florida doing research on my novel. Of course getting home to laundry, shopping, mail, bills sucks up another day. Then it's writer's group, physical therapy (too many years at the computer has given me a permanent pain in the neck), MWA, and a weekend of company with some serious cooking and then recovering from that week, and so it goes.

I am all recovered except for one thing. The absolute mind-boggling wimpiness of our society. In a meeting, never mind which one, someone actually asked, "are we going to serve something that unhealthy?" when the unhealthy item was a skinless, boneless, chicken breast with a measly 1/4 ounce of cheese as coating. People, ease up.

The absolute worst was an article in the Globe (I think) about people who only exercise indoors and refuse to go outside because they are afraid of the sun. One woman was quoted as saying she gets all the nature she needs from the Nature Channel.

This obsession with health is not healthy. Actually, it's probably not an obsession with health, it's an obsession with WEASEL WORD ALERT-- "wellness." That word turns my teeth on edge. Wellness. What the hell does it mean? In sickness and in wellness so long as we both shall live? Barf. Urp. Gag. Wellness.

I am a red meat out-in-the-midday-sun kind of person, doing the Duvall Drag at noon with no sunscreen. I did have a nice hat.

So you have yourself an excellent evening and for God's sake, if you want some cheese, eat some cheese. Cheese has calcium and protein. Do not under any circumstances eat processed cheese food. Eat cheese, dammit. I'm very fond of St. Andre and of Cotswold Cheddar. And blue, any shade of blue.

So there.

Grapeshot

Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler

With company coming for Saturday night, I needed a dessert that wouldn't be too much trouble. I knew the guests were rhubarb fans. When I looked thru my rhubarb collection (don't YOU have a rhubarb recipe collection? No?) I found a page torn from Penzey's Spices catalog.

Anyone reading this blog knows I adore Penzeys Spices, http://www.penzeys.com/. The recipe was for Strawberry-Rhubarb Cobbler, and was simple to the point of learning to cook. So, we went to the supermarket and paid $5.99 per pound for rhubarb, the first I've seen. This is highway robbery, but by then I was determined. Strawberries, the next day, were on sale.

The topping consisted of ingredients from the pantry. I had some vanilla sugar in my spices, and the hardest thing about the entire recipe was laying my hands on the damned vanilla sugar. Finally found it. Made some more to be on the safe side.

This recipe received high marks from everyone, and can be served with either vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. I was the sole holdout for whipped cream; everyone else voted vanilla.

Here is the link to the recipe. Of course you can buy Penzeys vanilla sugar and save 20 minutes groping around the spice shelf. I love their rubs, as well. Yummo.

http://www.penzeys.com/cgi-bin/penzeys/recipes/r-penzeysrhubarbcobbler.html

Photo will follow tomorrow, when S.O. delivers it to me from his camera.

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Mr. Clucky and Wallflower

Right here where the photo was snapped! Ye gods! The rooster I saw on the bicycle, the one crowing his heart out, was Mr. Clucky, a famous South Beach denizen and one who is in trouble.

Mr. Clucky's owner keeps him in a closet, and apparently the neighbors complained about the crowing. Mr. Clucky's closet mate is a hen called Wallflower.

Mr. Clucky has been asked to vacate his residence by the Powers That Be in South Beach. What's a good looking studly rooster to do?

Apparently all the habituees of the Lincoln Road Mall have seen Mr. Clucky whiz by with his talons firmly grasping the handlebars of the red Schwinn. How do I know this?

My friend Joan who chauffered me around South Florida and kept me company being Barflies 'r us, sent me the clipping from the Miami Herald, the very same paper my drug lord reads. In fact I was at Lincoln Road Mall to find the Cuban restaurant where my drug lord ate a Cubano, but either we were in the wrong end of the mall or that cafe is gone. But we sure gaped at and heard Mr. Clucky, who serenaded the mall with his rooster voice. Coming from Key West, the crowing of roosters was a normal sound. But not in a mall. Nope.

I hope the city lets Mr. Clucky continue to reside in his owner's closet. The world needs more gentle craziness.

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Seasons in the Sun

So, there I was in Margaritaville, at the Green Parrot in Key West, pounding down the rum, and taking photos, because the bar is the model for one in my book, wherein the heroine skunks everyone at darts.

We did the "Duval Drag" and marched up and down Duval Street in the June heat. I thought of a winter long ago when the Village People had the hit "Key West" and I used to sing it driving through the snow of the coldest AND snowiest winter on record in Chicago. I was taking classes to learn computer programming.

We had a fab breakfast at a place called "Blue Heaven," with blueberry pancakes that couldn't be beat and the cute little (and big) chickens running all over the place as they do in Key West. They are protected.

The Royal Poincianas (see photo) were blooming their hearts out, and everything was so tropical, and we ate at Mangoes and pounded down some more rum. I thought we might have to crawl back to our lodgings, but we did the Duval drag back to the room.

I completed my research. Yikes! In the book, I had my character swimming and swimming across a canal, and when I saw the canal, she could of crossed it in three strokes, so now she is swimming across the waterway.

Visited the Miami Deli where the drug lord eats lunch, and Lincoln Rd. Mall in South Beach. A man was riding a bicycle with a rooster (crowing to beat all) on the handlebars. Do you think that will go into my book?

So I figure I found about 900 words and it will work out to about a dollar a word which is likely more than I'll get paid for the novel the way things are going. Whatchagonna do?

There was an article in the Sunday paper that bloggers are abandonning their blogs in droves, but Grapeshot won't leave her readers high and dry. Nope.

Sucking It Up is a way of life and the past year and a half countless others have learned to techique, or is it an art?

I am enjoying my new Kindle and reading Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time. Pretty good. A little known fact if that you can put your own documents on the Kindle, and make comments. My friend's manuscript is on the device, and mine soon will be. Now how cool is that? Our friends at Amazon only charge pennies for the service.

We are eating lettuces galore and herbs so fresh they ought to be slapped.

Onward,

Grapeshot

Novels and Work

Alain De Botton has a thought-provoking article in today's (Sunday) Globe about how few novels take place in an office setting or even a work setting. This is true even in the mystery genre. You have various cozy hobbyists and PI's who are usually in the office only for a customer to come in and get them out of the office. Cops are seldom seen at their desks. But in point of fact, maybe the work that police and firemen do are one of the few occupations that writer's dwell on. Oh yeah, and the movies.

The headline of De Botton's article reads Portrait of the Artist as a Young Data-Entry Supervisor.
Ain't gonna happen. My writing group is not big on "Office scenes."

In fact the pictorial book, A Day is the Life of America, if memory serves me, did not have a single photograph of the inside of a real life office. I was working at the time and felt the familiar pang of alienation. Invisible again.

I have beaucoup scenes set at the office in my as-yet-unsold novel Festival Madness. The office is a high tech firm and I try to portray how a consultant (yet another occupation) would work there. Of course the office experiences an FBI raid and some late night fornication and things that make (one hopes) the reader want to turn the page, and the fornication may not be so rare, but of course the raid is.

It is difficult to write about life in the office because people in meetings or sitting in front of computer screens, butt in chair--all activities that can be deadly dull and you need some conflict (also found at meetings) to move the plot along. It is harder than a dysfunctional family scene or cops at a crime scene. And many writers, as Botton pointed out, have had dumbed down day jobs allowing them to write, but not jobs which require a huge committment of mental resources.

I had the kind of job which required the intellectual committment, and yes, writing was hard. Promiscuous Mode also took place in an office, and, well, we know that it's still unsold, too. Not from a lack of conflict and interesting goings-on at the office. Well, maybe. What do I know?

Of course there is the television program, The Office, and cultural snob that I am, I don't really watch network TV, but the program seems to be popular. Maybe not with people who read. Oh dear, there I go again.

Botton's new book is The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, of which there are many.

By the way, I just finished Sue Grafton's T is for Trespass, and as a writer she spends quite a bit of time on Kinsey Milhone's work in her office, and nary a client showed up to distract her from her bookkeeping, etc. You really get a feeling for how a PI might REALLY work, including some of the boring cases which of course turn out to be not so boring.

Botton is discussing literary writers, not genre writers. His book sounds interesting.

Off to Florida to conduct research, part of a writer's (genre or otherwise) work. Not the "plant butt in chair" tedious part. I will see for myself for my drug lord works, eats and sleeps. Yes, I show him in an office and eating lunch like an ordinary office worker. Hey Alain, how cool is that?

Grapeshot

Elaine Viets, The Deadend Job series has lots of information about the heroine's dead end jobs. Hilarious, too. The books are funny and witty and altogether a good read.

Cyber Czar

All this news (you do read a newspaper, don't you?) about the Cyber-Czar has me thinking of The Shadow Warriors, the book about Information Warfare that I wrote in the late nineties, published as an e-book in 2001, and by Booksurge in 2003. Jeepers, that's six years ago.

One of the cool things that in the opening pages of the book the protag is reading a paper about the appointment of the new cyber czar.

When we actually have an "info war," perhaps a mainstream publisher will pick up The Shadow Warriors, give it a quick edit and put it out for the world to find and read. Maybe it will even be available on the Kindle.

The "Warriors" are really rather fun, a dark romp, with scenes from Singapore and Hong Kong to a university town in Germany and Boston's Fanieul Hall and Public Garden. The sweep of history, if you will. It was such fun to write and I still had a lot of passion for writing in those days.

Now I carefully craft words, almost bloodlessly, although every now and then I work up a big push of enthusiasm when a scene that interests me needs to be written. Not true, really, but I had MORE enthusiasm in the old days when I thought a mainstream publisher would snap up my novels like carp after a worm.

Didn't happen.

I've been tweaking Festival Madness. When I wrote about Burning Man, the passion came back, because I could return to the Man, actually be there in my writing. I've been tweaking the beginning. Still not quite there. The queries weren't eliciting requests for the full manuscript or even partials. Zero interest. Sometimes I want to set my hair on fire.

Once more into the breach. Thank god the stuffed escarole is history and tonight we had black bean soup with chorizo and chicken and it was tastsy. I'm making composed salads from the garden and the supermarket and using my plane grater and they are good, good good.

Reading Sue Grafton's T is for Trespass. She's such a fine writer. Her writing never calls attention to itself, but keeps you on the page.

I loaded three more books and my friends manuscript onto my Kindle. Wheee!

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Report on the Kindle

It's actually a lot of fun to read on the Kindle. My first and so far only book is Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time. It's not what I expected, but her writing is sublime and I am enjoying it a lot. No way to lose your place. Shuts off when you get up to do something.

I'm still working on getting my novel downloaded to it, and the learning curve is a little, well, curvier. I'll definitely put another book or two on it before leaving for south Florida. Taking my new notebook as well. A high tech trip, along with the digital camera.

The trip is for research on my WIP. Work In Process to the uninitiated. I have travelled to South Florida for years and years, either on business or pleasure and sometimes both. However, I never thought I would find myself writing about it. Heaven knows, there are so many authors who use the setting, and it's a great setting. Carl Hiaasen comes to mind. John McDonald's Travis Magee (sp?) hung out, as well as many others. The Florida MWA is a large and productive group.

Nevertheless, my character headed to Florida and I followed her, and she went to Miami and Key West, locales I only had a passing acquaintance with, and now I need some telling details. My drug lord lives in Miami and the character makes a crucial trip to the Keys. Again, the plot follows its wimsey, in a controlled way, of course.

The web is good for research, but nothing beats being there. So I'm off. The best thing is the book takes place this time of year, so I should be able to nail weather, sunsets, what's blooming, how wilted one feels, and all that good stuff. Yes!

More anon.

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How Doth Your Garden Grow?

Eating fresh herbs and lettuces almost every day. The spinach looks promising. We had a cool damp day which is good for the cold weather crops.

The blankety-blank hummingbird feeder is leaking sugar water all over everything. Despair!

New bird today. Black and white with pointy beak, a little small than a robin. Lots of birdsong down by the slough.

I made stuffed escarole, a vegetarian, Italian recipe tonight. Stuffed with seasoned rice, it was pretty good. Enough for two meals.

Making preparations to visit South Florida to finish research on my fem jep novel. Very exciting.

Cats are back to normal, except Annie had a bad dream this afternoon. Now wouldn't it be incredibly cool to understand cat dreams?

I have a good cat story I want to write. Too many projects. No time to be bored. That is good.

More anon.

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The Big Birthday

Here we are in Boston on our "Staycation." Note the words "stay" and "cat." We stayed home for the kitties, who had enough trauma for one week with Annie's seizure. They seem to be back to normal.

Yesterday we viewed the Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto exhibit at the MFA, then had a lovely if expensive brunch in the main dining room. Obviously one pays for the live music, the luxurious banquettes, the serenity and the garden view. But nice. I think I liked Tintoretto best. Always a soft heart for rebels.

I got a Kindle which has provided awe that one small device could be so cool. I've always wanted an e-book reader ever since I first pubished the Shadow Warriors as an e-book, or rather RFI West did. I am still getting used to it. Downloaded a Josephine Tey book first as a great price.

About the birds there is the following to say: they are scarce, and I hope it's because they are feasting on those $#**!$ inch worms. The goldfinches are at the thistle seed feeder in force, and yesterday with three males, there were a lot of fights. The hummingbird is back at her feeder, so sweet. Sometimes I spy her in the tree. We finally saw a chipmunk. Something decimated them over the winter.

Carnage on Cocasset Street. Hope it wasn't the neighborhood fox. And the white geese are missing from Glue Factory Pond. I know. Horrible name. Whatchagonna do? I carry all the wildlife worries in my breast.

The beets and the spinach have been transplanted to their proper homes, and now the garden is officially "ready." We will still get a bag of impatiens tomorrow. Lots of work and many tasks this year.

How about that orange rhoddy? I am the proud mom.

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