Rejection, kicking the cat, what to eat and sundry topics

Yet another rejection--this time for Promiscuous Mode which is climbing up there in reject count. This was was one of the first agents ever I queried for the book I gave up on, which was the only book that agents ever responded to in a more or less positive way, my first book. Stupid plot. All over the place. Oh well.

Results oriented
Everlasting hope
Just keep on querying
Excrement happens
Can't help kicking the cat
Thanks for every personal note
I must be crazy to keep doing this
Optimism is alive
No reason to set one's hair on fire

I would never kick the cats, they are such lovers and are always there for you. Thisbe plays the "foot game," which consists of nuzzle, nuzzle, lick, lick, nip, nip on bare feet and then repeats. If I say "foot game," she knows what it means. Also understands "catnip" and "do you want to go into the garage?" Also, "would you like to be brushed?" Well, with all the catering, why wouldn't she understand? To repeat a well-known maxim, dogs have masters, cats have "staff."

Congratulations to my buddy who has lost 2o pounds on Jennie Craig and looks terrific. Grapeshot has flunked out of every diet except Atkins, and currently we are having salad main courses twice each week and that seems to be good for losing the odd pound. We are doing bread sticks (grissini) or rye crisp and trying to cool it with the cheese.

Summer is good for fruits and vegetables: So far this week:
apples, oranges, lemons, limes, watermelon,cranberries,blueberries,raspberries, pears, bananas.

On the veggie front: lettuce, tomatoes, cukes,olives, carrots, zucchini, summer squash, peppers,parsley,dill, cilantro,oregano,mushrooms,garlic,onions,chives and scallions and green beans. Variety is good.

I fixed the first chapter of Festival Madness and it seems O.K. I drop a body on page one, paragraph one, but there's not a lot of action. Thinking about the dreaded prologue from the murderer's point of view. Opinion is divided about Prologues, but they can jump the reader into the action, get the pulse pounding, ask a lot of unanswered questions, then the story can start in a sedate manner. Dunno. Dunno. When a murder happens offstage, then the reader is distanced. No more computer crime novels. Apparently they have no appeal to agents and publishers and in theory readers, although I have heard differently.

My garden starting to swell with blossoms, and my heart beats a little faster each time I inspect it and see how the flowers and tomatoes have grown.

Raccoons finally figured out how to raid suet feeder. Thistleseed feeder on the ground this a.m., hummingbird feeder empty. Lots of extra tasks in summer. How had I forgotten?

Onward,

Grapeshot

Rejection is always personal

A quick e-mail rejection from an agent who purported to like foreign settings, a strong heroine and a good dose of suspense. Holy Smokes! She was describing World of Mirrors. I sent off a query and a few days later received an email "form" rejection, very like the written ones. One characteristic the written ones have in common is that half the rejection is apologizing for being so impersonal. I probably should have sent the first page of the first chapter and not the first page of the prologue, but what the hell?

Anyway, that makes something like 54 negative responses. There are also 17 agents who did not respond at all, which is a 24% rate of no response whatsoever. That seems to be increasing. I googled an agent whom I was considering querying, and the first thing that pops up, is a complaint that she never responded to the query. At 82 cents a whack, that brings a bit of financial pain into the equation as well as extreme frustration. What do do? Suck it up. Currently, I am hopeful that the crop of agents with a portion of the MS will come through, but then I am always hopeful.

This is really a fun book. Murder, betrayal, sex, all the good stuff along with humor, sailing, craziness, nude beaches, animal rescue. I dunno. Maybe it's a tossed salad with both fruit and veggies, an aquired taste.

My writing group trashed the opening pages of Festival Madness, which is good, because the opening pages are very important and I have to get it right. It's like a synopsis. The book itself is easy, it's the first 7 pages that are a bitch. It will be good to get away from crime fiction for a spell and try to write in no genre.

Onward if not upward.

Cemetery Stories

We visited two cemeteries in Sharon yesterday. At the one, there were lots of families, with little kids, even, looking at the graves, tending them and reading the markers.

At the West Burying Ground, we were the only visitors and there were no new flags put out for the veterans. I think I must made some noise about that. Take your life in your hands crossing busy Main Street to get into the old cemetery.

There are two graves each with a story I wish I knew. They are way in back of the cemetery, isolated from the others. The first belongs to "Diana B., with of George W. Drake. Born August 16, 1827, died Sept 20th 1865. Died young, as 38. Because I couldn't find any other Drake's buried there, I googled the name and up popped the marriage records. Diana Dean married George Drake on May 28th, 1842. Exactly 165 years to the day that I stood before her grave. Do the math. She married at fifteen. Think of that. Why is she all alone there without spouse, children, anyone? I'll bet there's a story there.

The other grave, a little to the right of Diana's, says, Manson Sturtevant, Drowned June 12, 1862, age 21 years. A freedman from VA. Another sad story.

The stories are lost to time. I wonder if it helps to visit these lonely graves and ponder the lives of the dead.

Grapeshot

Memorial Day

A sad today, especially this Memorial Day don't you think? I always send a check to my cousin for flowers to place on all the graves in Kansas. Such a sweet little cemetery there, but but encroached by industry, alas. In Kansas, it's always been called "Decoration Day," but maybe that has changed now.

Today we will visit a couple local cemeteries, old ones, with graves going back to the revolution. Then we will feed the Highland Scottish Cattle and come home to dawddling on the deck, cooking ribs on the grill and I hope a bit of writing and thinking.

Yesterday we visited the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA, and saw the Chinese House which was certainly worth the trip. It takes you into another world and culture, completely foreign to us. We also saw the Cornell boxes and collages. Very interesting and creative, but 'way too many to absorb properly.

We had a nice seafood lunch at Finz, and barely got our dinner grilled before darkness fell. I made a marinade from an ancient recipe in the NYTIMES, and grilled shish-kebabs (beef) and zucchini, summer squash, big thick mushrooms, red peppers and scallions. Dare I say "yum!" Simple and satisfying and not too much after a moderate midday meal.

It's so nice to use the grill and I hope to get out the smoker, soon. The smoker requires more time, prep, and planning, so one must be a least somewhat motivated.

Take some time today to think about our servicemen and what this day means. Forget television and celebrities and practice a little introspection.

Grapeshot

Ms. Snark Exits the Blogosphere

Today when I signed on for my weekly "fix" of Ms. Snark, she was gone-her blog is still with us, but there will be no more posts. She thinks she's done all she can for the Snarklings, avid followers of her every utterance. She has hung up her clue gun, taken off her stillettoes, poured herself a big slug of gin and retired. KY, also known as Killer Yap and Grandmother Snark will be only fond memories.

I have to confess I always wondered if she was a he, in spite of the romantic feelings for George Clooney. I guess it was her freewheeling use of the f-word and her down to earthiness. She dissed my pitch big time, and so I have changed my query on account of. Two queries, actually.

Since Thursday, I have sent out 6 queries. One email bounced back, but five are in play. Miss Snark said to quit after 100, but I may try 118 (see previous post).

Quite a few of my favorite blogs have wafted into the ether. It happens. But I have found more cool blogs to take their place. This feeling of being connected in some weird way to my fellow bloggers helps keep me sane. That and my cats and S.O. This writing game is a bitch.

And now to the Red Sox and the Texas Rangers.

Onward

Query, Query, Who's Got Your Query?

I'm starting a new concerted drive to query agents for World of Mirrors.
Just in time to have to suck it up and pay the new postage rates. Three packages going out today. The current wisdom as I know it is to query five at a time, and just keep rolling them out. At the MWA party two years ago, a write told me he found an agent on his 117th query. That was a man who believed in himself. It's hard.

So it goes, as the great man said.

So it goes.

Grapeshot

Forbidden Black Rice

Here is some information about black rice, served at Al Forno Wednesday night. It was delicious. Reserved for royalty in the old days, apparently. Small wonder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_rice

Al Forno's Web Site: http://www.alforno.com/main%20page.htm

Another South Beach Diet Salad for dinner as pennance. Chicken-Apple with celery and raisins. Sounds pretty good. Then it's on to the weekend with ribs, burgers and kebabs. Summer is officially here. Let's all raise a glass of lemonade.

Grapeshot

Rhymes With Orange

My orange rhododendrum is opening up to the world. Absolutely glorious. The rhoddy has eleven blooms and is three years old. Today I planted the last of the annuals and got the garden ready to grow. Sweaty and tired but happy.

Dinner last night at Al Forno in Providence was one for the books. The appetizer pizza defined pizza. They cook it on the grill and the crust is thin thin thin. It had cheese, a spicy sauce and those little Maine shrimp. I ordered scallops for an entree, and they came with something called "Black Rice," which tasted good and I couldn't quite figure it out. Plenty of little lardons of bacon and lots of good green Fava beans, perfectly cooked. A scattering of sectioned orange atop the plate. Everything somehow glorious. We shared a pear and walnut tarte for dessert. Crust flakey as crust can be. To die for. A crisp rose wine, admirably dry went with everything. The tab was appropriately high, because perfection comes at a price. Almost everyone ordered the appetizer pizzas. The Clams Al Forno are another appetizer sent down from the gods.

I have the Al Forno cookbook, but it's better to trek down to Providence and let the kitchen cook for you.

Grapeshot, who is still in foody paradise

It Finally Happened

According to writing wisdom, the word "finally" is not to be used except if a long string of events has occured, and then, "finally" something happened. What happened is I've been blogging "Suck It Up" for a while now, and late last fall I began a Proust blog, because I was planning to reread Proust (no finally required), and things were humming along. The Proust blog began (not finally) to get quite a few hits from all over the world, which was cool, and I discovered that LOTS of people were reading Proust and blogging about it which was even cooler. I'm on the final pages of Swann's Way, and have found the re-reading experience to be mixed, but on the whole positive.

In this blog, I've mentioned Clive James a couple times, mostly for dissing crime fiction with respect to Henry James. I have Google out searching for Proust mentions for me, because sometimes I don't open The Great Tome for a week or more, except to read while I am drying my hair (don't ask), and it's good to find something to post about, and lately I have been blogging Proust about Proust blogs.

So what pops up today but a mention of Clive James and Proust, and I have a moment of total confusion as to which blog this properly belongs in. Decided it was this one, because I had blogged about James before. Must read his new book. Must read everyone's new book. Some old books, too. Besides "Recherchez," which I'm reading in the old translation.

So what finally happened is that the blogs crossed paths.

Today is my birthday, and I just found out that May is Older American's Month. How altogether fitting and proper. We are trekking down to Nordstroms and then to Al Forno in Providence for a dinner that can't be beat. The big decision is pizza appetizer or Clams Alforno appetizer. And then entree and dessert, of course.

BTW, last night, in prep for tonight's feast, we had a diet dinner than wasn't bad. I did a riff on a salad from South Beach Diet. Grilled chicken, olive oil, lime juice, garlic, minced red bell pepper and black beans served on a bed of lettuce with a few slices of avocado. Very yummy. Sprinkled the salad with a bit of grated Mexican cheeses and some chopped cilantro. Got to have cilantro. I always do something to tamp down the diet aspect of the meal, like the grated cheese.

Beautiful Day in the Boston area. My orange rhododendrum is going to bloom. Photos anon.

A Demain,

Grapeshot

Spring is Lots of Work

Came home and had to replace the suet, the thistle seed, the hummingbird food, pinch off the dead blossoms, empty standing water so the mosquitoes don't breed. They've bred already. I have a matched pair of bites on each ankle. So spring is, like, work. And we have to finish buying the plants. This weekend. Maybe Friday.

I queried two agents today via email, and one missive came back as undeliverable. Had a feeling. Need to send a LOT of queries out. World of Mirrors and Promiscuous Mode. I'm whipping through the rewrite of Festival Madness, and pretty soon I will have three bloody books to sell. Arrrgh! FM is actually pretty clean, much cleaner than any of the other books which required endless rewriting. If I didn't know better, I might think I was getting the hang of it.

Beginning the California book is daunting. Don't know why. Just start writing. It can be awful. It can be fixed. I think the historical thing has me frozen. But onward. Simple declarative sentences. In New York at the photography museum, I discovered that Amelia Earhart made her first Atlantic crossing during the time of the new book. Interesting little details. She appeared in cigarette ads although she wasn't a smoker. It was great to see the Stephen Shore photos again, and the man himself was leading a gallery tour just as we were leaving.

http://www.icp.org/site/c.dnJGKJNsFqG/b.2106467/k.454D/Biographical_Landscape.htm

Onward,

Grapeshot

There was my character, sitting in a squad car

Enough of morose posts. They do clear the air, somehow.

Yesterday morning, we took a stroll along the bridal path in Central Park in NYC. On the way back to my friend's apt., we had to cross 5th Avenue. Yesterday was the Aids Walk, so the cops were out in force, even the canine corps and the riot police--I did the Aids Walk for years and believe me, we never had any occasion for the riot police--but they were there anyhow. As we crossed t 5th Avenue, I looked into a squad car stopped at the red light and there was Spike, my character, a female cop in Northern Wisconsin. It was Spike in every detail from hair to makeup.

It is really cool to see your character, one that came straight out of your head walking around (or in this case driving) out of the blue. Once I saw my character Petra (The Shadow Warriors) in Roche Bros. in Wellesley. Sometimes I write with a real person's physicality in mind, so of course, one is not likely to see them, (if a photo) or else it's someone you work with and you see them every day, noting all their little eccentricities to get authenticity into the writing.

Love it! So, yanno, life is strange.

We're half in diet mode this week, as we won't be the other half and were certainly not last week. My friend in NYC made the most fantatic wild mushroom lasagne. Can't tell you how good it was, because words fail. Although vegetable (are mushrooms veggies? Don't think so) it was not without calories. We ate at a Alsatian restaurant on 2nd Avenue, and that fare is not exactly low cal either.

I'm making a couple chicken salads for the diet days. Never tastes like diet food, even w/o mayo. Just tasty. I belong to a list server and recently the topic of eating healthy while travelling came up, and what lengths those women go to on the road was truly astounding.

My rule when travelling is "eat what is put in front of you, and you never know when your next meal may arrive." Carry a snack along, too. These rules have served me well. Travel is godawful enough without a growling stomach. The worse snack I ever had was on a Delta flight from Atlanta to Cincinnati. It was a low-fat strawberry Fig Newton and two other like-minded pieces of faux food. So bad I wrote a letter. I hate artificial flavoring and will do just about anything to avoid it. Yeccch! And I love the old-fashioned Fig Newtons. There are naturally low-fat and whoever the idiot was to take the rest of the fat out should be condemmed to eat them, esp. the strawberry ones, yech, barf, through all eternity.

Cripes, here I am ranting again. Time to go to the store and buy the healthy ingredients for the South Beach Chicken Salads. Then come home and write.

Grapeshot

Practice for Life

How treacherous is memory, or how true? This weekend, at an alumni event, I stared at a woman, remembering her 21 year old face, now ruined by sun and time and even life, I suppose.

She had been and was still tall and blonde. She had two friends, twins, who were also tall and blonde, and the three of them would sit in on a sofa in the middle of the student center looking like royalty. Stiff necks on unbending stalks. They didn’t talk to anyone, not even each other, and once a guy asked if they were deaf mutes.

I was amused.

At this university at this time there were the INS and the outs. The INS came from a good neighborhoods and good high schools and had money and the right clothes, the right cars, the right stuff, you might say and the outs did not. I had had an in/out relationship with life already by virtue of living in a small town without having been born there (out), and various other accidents of birth and circumstance which contrive to place one IN or OUT. Of course it was sometimes possible to be so far out that one was IN.

My scout troop was poor, and instead of going to camp, we rented a cabin in the mountains and the leaders came up and a woman cooked for us and we did scout stuff and froze our asses off in the cold night high altitude air. One day, on a 15 mile hike, all sweaty and tired, we were overtaken by a group of girls on horseback, from a Chele camp, girls who did not even deign to look at us, footsore, horseless, and consigned forever to be Out Out Out on the Far Side of the Universe.

I felt tears welling up in my eyes after all these years at the awfulness of having been quickly judged and found wanting. Rejection. Very much like trying to get someone, anyone, to look at your writing. Quickly judged and found wanting and excluded. Out.

So one gets practice for life early in life and one might think that familiarity would breed contempt and that the process might get easier, but it does not. In her 80’s, my mother joined a fraternal club and was roundly snubbed, which cut her to the quick.

One thing life provides in abundance is the ability to practice sucking it up.

Writers are best when they're failures and struggling and rejected. . .

Today's Wall Street Journal has an interview with J.P. Donleavy, writer, artist, and all round bad boy. He is quoted as saying, "Writers are best when they're failures and struggling and rejected. . . So that's been my history. Total isolation."

Well, that's consoling. It is a hard slog, that's true. I'm rewriting 2 novels, planning a third, and except for my blogs, not writing much. I finally have a beginning for the California book, which will start on the train en route to California in 1928. Recently I read that every story is either the journey or the quest, and of course a story can be both. Certainly all of my books fall into those categories.

The "Burning Man" book is still such fun, and I'm on the final rewrite of the East German book, oh, yes and trying to cut words from the "Wisconsin" book.

There was a terrific idea for a short story in the local paper. A pig (I am assuming it was one of those Vietnamese pigs that were popular as pets a few years ago) escaped and ate the neighbor's garden. Not once but twice. I have so many ideas for animal stories that I think "Grapeshot's Bestiary" will come into being. Ideas are like kamikazees, always incoming.

So this strugging, rejected, failure is pretty upbeat. I'm sure with the postal increase that none of the agents will bother to put 2 cents on the SASE. WTF?

Grapeshot

Mother's Day

Mother's Day is always kind of a downer if one has lost one's Mom. That is an odd expression, isn't it? Like you misplaced her.

I've been thinking about my mother a lot lately, not because of today, but because my next book will be about an episode in her life and I'm trying to get inside her 22 year old head which isn't easy.

Something else that is odd is that at different stages of one's life, one resembles one or the other parent more closely. And it can change. I'm starting to look like my Mom and my mouth has turned into my grandmother's. This is really weird. The other weird thing is that Queen Elizabeth is starting to resemble my mom in her old age, and now I'm kind of wondering if one day I will look like Queen Elizabeth. Something to look forward to, I suppose.

A simple "Yes, Your Majestry" will do. LOL.

Today and yesterday we went to Briggs Nursery to buy plants. God, it's so beautiful there and they have so much wonderful horticulture that I want to swoon, and buy everything.

En route today, we passed a cemetery and there was a young woman standing by a grave blowing bubbles, and I just knew it was for her mother and that was so awfully sad.

Life is terrible and beautiful and occasionally at the same time.

Once you're committed a major indescretion at the nursery, then you have to plant everything and actually use the plant food and grass seed and ohmigod this is like work! It will take all week to master the situation, and then it's time to go back and buy more. They had some way cool garden figurines that looked like gargoyles. The little brown church on Jeckyll Island had gargoyes most unexpectedly. And a Tiffany window.

A cat's paw is useful for catching and tormenting mice, washing the cat's face, giving a disrepectful dog's nose a swipe. A cat's paw can also be used to open a sliding door and escape. Annie did this yesterday. Thisbe followed her out, looking kind of freaked. What was Annie doing outdoors? Thisbe ran in and out half a dozen times before deciding inside was definitely safer. Annie prowled around for an hour and then I caught her. Same thing today, except she went all the way down to the slough. Birds don't like that. Chipmunks don't either. A huge hawk was flying around, and I was glad then that the cat is seriously overweight.

We cooked a pork roast on the grill, recipe from NY Times Cookbook, Roast Pork with Thyme, world's best recipe. I never bother with another one since I found that. Fresh asparagus, fresh carrots, mashed potatoes and gravy and applesauce. Store bought strawberry and rhubarb pie that would have benefited from more fruit. You want it done right you have to make it yourself. Last I looked, rhubard was $5.00 a pound and the whole pie didn't cost that.

Bon Appetit and Happy Mother's Day and stop to consider how awful and awesome life can be practically simultaneously.

Clive James, at it again

http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2007/05/20070508_b_main.asp

I basically agree with him. Think about it. Spiderman outdid everything else at the boxoffice last weekend. Spiderman! What does that tell you.

American Idol makes headlines. Dancing with the stars?

Look at the supermarket checkout magazines. We are obsessed with celebrities and losing weight and now celebrities losing weight. Who cares?

I hate "wraps," "wellness" and the overuse of the word icon.

Enuff said.

Grapeshot

e-life in the rutted lanes

Putting back my e-life after the disk crash. Big nasty mess with Norton lasting endless hours and finally I had to wait on the phone for 1/2 hour to ask for a refund. Went to Staples, bought McAfee, installed in about 5 minutes with no issues.

Except for win-zip, I have all my software (that I can remember) re-loaded. Lost all my "favorites" on AOL. Research for two books, technical sites, editors, agents, blogs, health sites, insurance, finance, people I do business with all the time. Gone, baby gone, in the blink of an eye. C'est la e-vie.

I have escaped into a weird novel, The Damascened Blade by Barbara Cleverly. I could see how she was setting up the story, no subtlely there, and most of the characters are stereotypes, but at least I will finish the book, now. On my nightstand are 6 books with bookmarks, all around page 30. Easy to pick up, easy to put down.

Anyway, the novel takes place in what is now Pakistan, then India. I had wanted to set a contempory novel on the "frontier" between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and decide it wasn't going to work without a collaborator and he turned out to be rather strange, and so I'm back to my California in 1928 novel. I found the "antagonist" in my artist, so now the cast is complete. A lot of things will work better. Isn't life crazy? You walk into an exhibit at the MFA and you find a character. Love it.

Scene at the vet's today: scrawny tortoise cat that belongs to the vet's office on counter, where she usually is. This cat has nerves of steel. Big dog on leash comes in with owner. Dog eventually notices cat who has already, long, long ago noticed dog and ignored. Dog does not ignore cat. This is something very interesting. . . something he would like to investigate, get closer to. Straining at leash, a bit of whining. Cat continues to ignore. Dog very curious. Is it a cat? A cat that doesn't hiss, run, fluff up her fur? A cat ignoring me? What an interesting thing this cat is.

Standoff continued. Cat can run into back room is necessary. One cool customer.

Back to the e-trenches.

Grapeshot

Arrrrggggghhhh! Hard Drive Crash

Sunday night my hard drive expired, and yesterday geeks for hire arrived and for a price, put everything to rights, except that my email filing cabinent is gone as are my favorites. Sigh. All my nice bookmarks, etc. have to be re-created, and the cookies are also gone, so Amazon and the bank and hundreds of others have to be reconstructed. This is a major major suck up and pain in the ass, quite frankly.

Took up the entire day yesterday and today I am loading all the windows patches, Norton, all that stuff back. I resent the time and the effort and the aggravation. Major bummer, but on a scale from 1 to 10 probably only a 5. Perspective.

In the meantime, ideas for the California book continue to come. My friend says it has something to do with the planets being in alignment. Somewhat dubious.

One of these days I'm going to suck it up some more and get an Apple. In the meantime, spring marches along apace and the slough is gradually assuming some color.

Spring peepers sound like the anvil chorus at night, so we are NOT having a silent spring.

Onward, if not upward,

Grapeshot

Horses and Chickens and Pigs! Oh My!

For what it's worth, which is nada, I like Scat Daddy to win the Derby today. Wonder if the queen is betting. Does she walk up to the window, use a bookie, or have someone else place the bet for her. She always carries a big mother of a handbag, but I have read she doesn't carry money. Life in the royal lane has its priviledges but no thanks.

Why was all the tainted pet foot fed to pig and chickens? Now, two things are possible-- either humans eat the then tainted pigs and chickens, and a chicken is not bigger than a cat or a dog, so they are bound to be adversely affected, or the tainted pigs and chickens are turned back into cat and dog food, and where does that leave the pets? Why wasn't the tainted food destroyed? Kind of makes you wonder. Vegetarianism beckons, doesn't it?

My grandparents fed kitchen scraps as well as chicken feed to their free range chickens. No chicken has tasted that good, ever. Something to dream about, like a perfectly tree ripened apricot.

Two days ago I put the Indian corn from last fall out by the bird feeder. The gray squirrel did a number of it. We have little birds eating the thistle seed morning noon and evening. One hopes the bird seed isn't contaminated. We have so many birds this spring. Lovely.

Off to get dirt under my fingernails.

Grapeshot

Edward Hopper at the MFA, etc.

The Edward Hopper show at the MFA in Boston was a revelation for several reasons. I had not known he was such stunning watercolorist. The watercolors were wonderful, and according to the text, done on the spot in one afternoon. The artist's notebooks contained small sketches and details of each painting in beautiful legible handwriting. New England scenery. Hopper was always a city painter to me, and he did great work in Gloucester, MA and on Cape Cod around Wellfleet and Truro. The show was on one level a restrospective of New England coastal architecture, from lighthouses to fish processing plants and beach houses.

He painted what others avoided. When everyone else was busy painting the beach at Gloucester, Hopper was off in the neighborhoods, doing old houses. I was struck, too, by the loneliness of the subjects in all of the paintings, just like the Modernisme painters in Barcelona. Alienation in the 20th Century! Now there's a topic that would fill a warehouse or two with painting, poetry, writing, music, everything, mostly people.

Yet Hopper had a long and presumably loving marriage.

When we walked into the exhibit, I had a revelation. My California book could have an artist as a character, even a painter. Once I decided that this book would not be Crime Fiction, all sorts of possibilities have presented themselves, but this one I really liked. So I'm thinking hard about that.

No more ICONS. The word "icon" and "Iconic" are so overused that I may vomit the next time I see those words writ large. Please, spare me. "Icon" isn't quite as bad as "wellness," but it's right up there. Add to the banned list, please.

Speaking of wellness, I noticed the people at the MFA seemed to be enjoying themselves and a number were actually smiling, in contrast to our health, never wellness, club where everyone looks grumpy as a bear. Maybe we should all forget the weights and the treadmill which engender frowns and grumpiness and take off at a brisk pace for the nearest museum, look at the art, relax, smile and give our bodies a break. There were lots of infants and even a few toddlers at the show, all of them cherubic and/or asleep. Didn't hear a single squawk. Must have been the happy people and the alienated art.

So think on that. Tomorrow at the club, I promise to smile and say "Hi!" to every single person whose path I cross. Maybe some will even return the greeting. I'll let you know.

In the meantime, no icons, no wellness, but SMILE!

Grapeshot

Read in at the Atlanta Journal

More and more papers, like the Boston Globe, are decreasing the book reviews and even folding the Sunday review section into other parts of the paper. The Atlanta Journal is pulling this, and yesterday there was a read-in with some literary luminaries. I love it.

http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/2007/05/protest-at-atlanta-journal-constitution.html

The fox on the stool
Is very cool.

Hmmmm.

I'm a poet
And don't know it.

My old aunts in Kansas used to say that. Never hear it around here, except when I repeat it.
Today, Significant Other and I are tooling into town to see the Edward Hopper exhibit at the MFA. Globe praised and NY Times panned. Will the WJS cast the deciding vote?

Anyone for Tennis?

We all know that tennis is a competitive sport, and you don't have to be a tournament player. The most vicious cut throat tennis I've ever experienced was a social ladies round robin on the North Shore of Chicago. This was back in the day when most women didn't have careers, so a huge amount of status was tied up in advancing up the ladder. Smashmouth doesn't begin to describe the competition.

Last Wednesday, watching the Brownian movement of crime writers in the room at the Edgar Symposium and Cocktail Party, I was reminded of tennis teams, ladders and competitiveness.

There was nothing brutish or nasty going on, like the women's team tennis, but the competition was there. Tennis players only like to play with players on their level or better yet, players above their level. Who wants to hack around with someone who flings the ball into the net or the next court when you are way beyond that?

Writers have similar agendas. If you have three published books, why would you waste time talking to someone trying to get her first book to an agent or publisher? No, you'd want to talk to the big guns of writing, the panelists, the best sellers and the movers and shakers. So we had the A, B and C teams frantically networking and with a certain amount of sucking up occurring. There is nothing democratic about writing. Crime writers are are nice, funny, and talented. Stephen King has publicly recommended books by new writers and for that he is to be commended, but he's in the minority. With midlist writers being dropped and having to hustle, it really is dog eat dog out there, and the wannabes have their noses pressed to the window. After all, they could be the new competition.

Kinda depressing, because it's another form a rejection, and god knows, we writers are used to that in spades, so suck it up, talk to your peers, and go home and write better. Write best.

I might be in a better frame of mind, had a fierce bad rabbit not eaten the bloom off the only tulip that was still whole. They say Eastern Cottontails are endangered. This one will be if he keeps eating my bulbs. So now the spring bulb blooming is 100% bust. Nada. Zilch. But I see other stuff pushing out of the ground, the lilies, the iris and sedum, my solomon's seal. There is hope. Just. It's a good year for birds if not for bulbs, so maybe everything evens out.

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