The Virgin Spring

Ingmar Bergman died yesterday. All the retrosepctives and obits reminded me of the first movie of his that I saw, The Virgin Spring. Here was a film like none that had gone before--a toad in the sandwich, heralding disaster-- and in those days, at the little art houses in Denver and Houston, I saw La Strada, and even And God Created Woman (Brigitte Bardot) and later Fellini, and Antonioni and A Knife in the Water. It was as if someone opened the window and Doris Day and Rock Hudson and Charleton Heston and tired old Biblical epics and kitchy romantic comedies flew out and the Europeans drifted in, quietly, one at a time, not like gangbusters. We already had gangbusters. Sub-titles made you rush to the theater for a sublime experience. Wild Strawberries. Persona. Those were heady days of cinema, long gone. A treasury of American movies followed, (anything by Robert Altman) and then mediocrity landed on the window sill again. Of course there is Little Miss Sunshine, a movie with a Proust scholar. How cool is that? There are good films now, but you must hunt to find them, and probably drive to a theater 30 miles away. Where are the art houses of yesteryear? We had to trek to Cambridge to see Lives of Others, a riviting German film, best foreign film.

Lift your glass to Ingmar Bergman and his contemporay directors. We shan't see so many great ones again.
Grapeshot

More on Cleavage: Exhibits A and B

The Panzer Bra vs. the Lacy Camisole. Don't you just hate looking at all the bra straps under the tank tops these days? Gross!

What would Emily Post say?

Cleavage

Lots of focus on Hilary's extremely modest display of same. I noticed the last couple years at work that the underwear as outwear style had surfaced, and some ladies (?) were wearing lingerie under suit jackets. Well, O.K. One of them always wore thigh high skirts and stiletto's, so displaying a lot of chest seemed her thing. I always thought displaying thigh, breast or what have you (sounds like chicken recipes) at work was a bad idea.

But lately, these cleavage displays are everywhere, all the time, and the interesting thing is as cleavage comes to the fore, so to speak, ah god, the possibilities for puns are endless, the bras are getting less and less transparent and unstructured and more and more like (thank S.O. for this similie) Panzer tanks. I mean we are talking serious padding and thrusting. I am shocked when I walk by the display at Kohl's how fierce the bras look. Like they might jump off the rack and come after you.

So apparently one wears the wispy little camilsole's instead, if one wants to display cleavage. I got inspired when we went to the theatre Friday and also wore a camisole under my jacket, but all evening, whenever I looked down, I thought, holy shit! and pulled the jacket together. Suddenly the whole get up seemed like a bad idea. Cleavage is better left to formal dress and costume parties and young actresses. I dunno. I dunno.

Poor Hilary, lampooned in the press no matter what. It is good to fly below the radar. It is good to be anonymous. It is good to be Grapeshot.

Who is wondering if there is a middle line between wispy camisole and Panzer bra. Whatever happened to the "No Bra Bra." Whatever happened to anything?

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream

About a year ago, S.O. and I were shopping with a friend at the Williams Sonoma outlet at the Wrentham mall and discovered an ice cream maker that was really really reduced in price. I had always seen these really cool (!) recipes in Gourmet and Bon Appetit that require an ice cream maker and glossed over them. The time to purchase such a device seemed ripe.

Our friend told us that we were too fat already and why make ice cream and get even fatter, her somewhat flawed reasoning being that one would only eat ice cream one had made. Ha ha! Like the supermarket doesn't have it, or Boston doesn't have a bunch of super-yummy premium ice cream parlors.

We bought it anyway, but due to both guilt and all of a sudden no ice cream recipes in Gourmet and Bon Appetit (had they, too, bought her philsophy?) we never opened the box.

This week I volunteered to bring a dessert to a dinner party and thumbed thru some old recipes for something incredibly delicious, using fresh fruit in season. I found a plum pie with a streusel topping and lemon-lime ice milk. Hey! Ice milk--practically low-cal, right?

So we unpacked the ice cream maker and took it apart and washed it, as directed, read the instructions 16 times because this suddenly didn't look so simple. Anyway, I put the bowl in the freezer for 24 hours as indicated, and yesterday morning I made up the lemon-lime ice milk mixture, which was really simple, because I didn't have to make a custard. With that properly chilled, and the pie crust cooling in the fridge, it was time to make the ice cream, and we had to assemble the freezer again. I confess to being an idiot about following verbal and pictorial instructions, all of which are written by folks who can assemble the whatever in their sleep. After a number of false tries, we finally got the thing together before it thawed and the ice milk was made and popped into the freezer--no problems there. Then we had to disassemble the rest of the pieces to clean. We couldn't get the paddle out. More reading of the instructions and much cogitating and tentative pulling and twisting. The paddle was stuck tight. Finally, I told S.O. to give it a very strong yank, and voila! out it came.

We decided to try the ice cream making again, real soon now, hoping to become more adept at the process.

I am pleased to report that the pie was scrumptious and the lemon-lime ice milk was sweet and tart and frosty and not too rich, almost low-cal. Almost. What's better, there are two pieces of pie left for dinner tonight, and a bit of the frosty stuff. All's well that end's well. I'm thinking of rum raisin or coffee next. And definitely some frozen yogurt, to balm the conscience.

Isn't that what one does with a conscience? Bad and guilty are bannable words. Shun them. To the back of the dictionary with you, I say.

Onward,

Grapeshot

In relaxation mode in robe du chambre

The Wall Street Journal had a long article yesterday about how hotel guests are trekking all over the hotel, esp. to the public rooms in the robes provided for use in the spa. Other guests do not take to the sight of hairy male legs, cellulite, exposed bellies, etc. during their brunch or cocktails. Some hotels are trying to be strict about this--others are apparently throwing up their hands and yet others are trying to find less revealing designs for the robes.

For years it has been de riguer to wear shoes and a coverup between the pool and your room, and not stroll about in your bathing suit. The idea that anyone would wonder around, and even sit in the bar in a bathrobe causes wonder in my (all right) somewhat conventional brain.

One guest told the reporter: "it alerts the world that I am in relatxation mode and that I am pampering myself becaue I believe I'm worth it. " So as always, it's "all about me." What Bullshit!

It's the Sonny B. syndrome. In suburban Chicago, we had a neighbor, Sonny B., who was very overweight and wore a too, too short bathrobe. Sonny B. used to sit on his freezer in the garage (door open) in his robe, a weird if familiar site. He also wandered out to pick up the morning paper in his robe, with nothing underneath, or course, and when he bent over, well, you get the idea, a horrible sight that the entire neighborhood knew and chuckled about. I guess he just thought WTF? It wasn't about Sonny; het just didn't care. Or as the Journal quotes, "It is about overtly displaying that you are 'at home' in such a luxurious environment, and therefore relaxed enough to be seen in public in your robe.'" More B.S.

I dunno. Or as Noel Coward asks, "Why Do The Wrong People Travel?"

I have to confess I have been known to nip out and retrieve the newspaper in my jammies, which are modest, and I'm not in the freaking hotel lobby, in fact I'm not in a luxurious environment at all, but in the front yard. Early in the a.m. But I am overtly displaying that I am at home, because I am at home.

Toddles on A Plane, The Day of the Killer Bathrobes, the Relentless Robed Ones. What do you think?

Grapeshot

A Marvelous Party

A photo of my cherry Clafouti. Our small guest ran around chanting, "shake your clafouti!"

Last night we trekked to Harvard Square, a feat in itself with the mess all day on Rte 128, to experience A Marvelous Party at the Zero Arrow Theatre. What a wonderful, indeed, marvelous treat. The cast really understood Noel Coward and what is amazing is that the actors were regulars from the ART, which normally does drama, and here they were doing fantastic musical comedy. Of course the audience was mostly over 50 and I wonder what will happen to these fantastic clever songs when this generation dies off. Alas. So hie thee to Harvard Square before August 8th and take in the music and giddiness.

Afterward we wanted a bite or three of dessert, not having had dinner. We nipped into Grendel's den but it was way to noisy and a bit too skanky for what I had in mind. But it did recall the evening my friend and I were asked to leave Grendel's Den. Years ago. We were drinking and smoking (ah the good old days) with a friend of hers called McGuirk who polished off 6 gin and tonics and when he ordered the 7th is when we were all asked to leave. My friend and I were on our 2nd white wine (how wimpy) and were not a little mortified, but later I thought about how cool it was to have been kicked out of Grendel's Den, a real feat at that time of life.

S.O. bopped upstairs at had a dessert that couldn't be beat at what used to be Upstairs at the Pudding and is now Upstairs at the Square. Or whatever.

Lots of posting to do today, so stay tuned. That's what getting out and about in the world does. Food for thought.

Grape Shot

Reading Proust

I feel asleep reading Proust last night, and woke up in the middle of the night with the book open and the light on. The thing about reading Proust is that you don't need to worry about a) too much excitement, keeping you awake, b) too much suspense, c) violence. Just beautiful sentences and descriptions.

I've been editing Festival Madness, because I thought I found some disjointed passages, but when I went back, I couldn't find them. The main character is in the process of putting all the clues together while dealing with her job, her colleague and her husband. Sometimes life itself is disjointed. Should fiction reflect? These are questions I can't find an answer to.

My small houseguest and I saw "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" in Mansfield this afternoon. The performance was truly delightful, and the cast, ages 10-13 was superb. We both enjoyed it a lot, a serendipitous find. If you're in the neighborhood, do go. Cheap tickets, too. Free cookies. Life is good. We've enjoyed Shreck III and Rattatouie.

Tonight it grilling weather, and we're doing a pork tenderloin on the grill along with summer squash and zucchini, and a risotto aux fines herbes (but not on the grill). Salad. Ice cream for dessert. Sounds good to me. French toast this a.m. My dad taught me to make French Toast and this is the secret: cream (or half and half) and a spoonful of sugar to make the toast brown nicely. I use half butter/half canola oil for frying, the yin and yang of fats.

While we're telling secrets, I put little quarter teaspoons of cream cheese into scrambled eggs to make them extra yummy. Also, not an original idea, but thanks to my old college friend Hester Finke Zimmerman for this idea. Cooks, like artists, pass on secrets to the next generation. When the time comes, I will tell our little guest about these secrets. I already told her about French Toast, but she is so young she'll need additional lessons. Today I told her about Mockingbirds, Cow Birds and how much fun it is to raise a baby robin. Nature lore is passed down the generations, too. At least I hope so. My mom lured fish worms to her garden with coffee grounds.

I told three secrets. How cool is that?

Grapeshot

Cherry Clafouti

I am too lazy to key my recipe into the blog, so I found one that's very similiar--even sounds better. Used 2% milk with no issues. I pitted the cherries, due to a small guest who might have swallowed a stone. Everyone agreed the clafouti tasted fantastic, in fact the four of us ate seven servings.

Here is a recipe:
http://msglaze.typepad.com/paris/2006/06/cherry_clafouti.html

This would make a wonderful simple family or company dessert while cherries are in season.

Do make an effort to cook something decent this week. I hope your garden has some basil. We have been eating fresh herbs for weeks and the patio tomatoes. Yellow squash and zucchini are great on the grill. Be creative.

Potato Salad Season

Ratatouille, Tomato Bread Salad, Insalata Capreses, and Potato Salad are all wonderful tastes of summer.

Cooking up a storm this week with the house guests. Catering to 3 people, one of whom is a super-picky vegetarian kid who doesn't like macaroni and cheese and spurns a lot of vegetables--a real challenge. I have basically given up pleasing everyone, but the adults were blown away by this potato salad:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/105282

I started making it years ago when we went to an annual house party in Easthampton. It never failed to please. Flavors are robust, so if Annie's macaroni and cheese is your idea of flavorful, go for something blander. Nothing against Annie, except that hers was most most tasteless, as in no taste, product I had ever eaten. Hold the cheese, hold the salt, hold the seasonings. Oh well, I guess that's why two year olds only eat plain plain plain. I say give them curry and salsa and Sichuan.

A new movie someone might consider is Toddlers on A Plane, sort of like Snakes on a Plane. They all scream and refuse to sit down and disrupt the safety instruction and pour their sippy cups down the flight attendants shirt fronts. I travelled with toddlers once, and they were taught how to behave.

The most amazing sight I ever saw was a woman alone boarding an overseas flight with four kids, a baby, a toddler and two older (9 - 13 year old) kids. Well, this will be fun, I thought, as they were sitting very close by. What happened was that the 13 year old took the baby, the nine (or thereabouts) took the toddler, and the mom read a magazine. It took a while to figure out that this was a military family, and the kids had always travelled, and the older ones took care of the younger ones. Not that Mom was uninvolved, but she had her leisure to read and there was not a single squawk, screech, or bawl all the way across the Atlantic. There was certainly no holding up of the aircraft's takeoff while the parents "tried to calm" the child. So not every toddler is a terror. I blame the parents for raising a little tyrant.

And it all started with potato salad. Now I am out into the garden to transplant some petunias who really don't like the shade and there is still a bare sunny spot in the garden.

Tonight we are eating potato pancakes (latkes)which everyone likes a lot. With bacon, sour cream and applesauce. Not exactly low cal. I'm making a cherry caflouti for dessert.

Last night we chowed down at Vinny T's in Dedham. Good food and lots of it at reasonable prices. We brought home about two meals worth. It's a good place to take kids, by the way. The salad with blue cheese, apples, walnuts and romaine got four stars in my book. Yum!

Onward with trowel and determination.

Grapeshot

Watching More Than the Whales

We went on a Whale Watch out of Plymouth yesterday. The weather forecast has been iffy here lately, with many threats of rain and thunderstorms, but yesterday's forecast was tolerable, so off we went.

Being a Saturday, the boat was full. Very middle America with families, many like ours with 3 generations. We saw a skid load of whales, frolicking about in their feeding grounds. I am always on the lookout for characters and always see a few. Yesterday's was a woman, thin, red-haired and freckled, with a deep tan, wearing boat shoes, as was her husband, different brands, hers Sperry, his Timberland. When you look at people you really have to look. Maine t-shirt, denin shorts, two daughters, one son. They looked like a boating family. Husband in software from his baseball hat. We brought along a quart plastic bag of "snacks," - - granola bars, chocolate, nuts, water. Others brought SNACKS: big bags of chips, Goldfish, candy--that yucky red licorice eaten by the whole family. Details. Details.

Difficult to photograph the whales, due to their quick surfacing and diving. S.O. got one good tail picture and a few other so-so. Delay on digital camera not good for sudden unexpected whale sightings.

A HUGE lobster roll at the Cabby Shack on the habor afterward. Plymouth has beaucoup seafood joins on the waterfront, always a good thing. New England in the Summer to the max. The people, the weather, the smell of brine and fried seafood, young waitresses in short skirts, guys in tank tops hanging out at the bar. Not in Nantucket, of course. Bad wine, good lobster, how sweet it was!

I am finding things to fix in Festival Madness. A friend who was formerly a French professor is reading Promiscuous Mode for me and has some suggestions that I will seriously entertain. Reading a first novel which sounded like it had certain similiarities to mine (it doesn't), that is also not as good. I'm wondering if my character is "tragic" enough. She is conflicted, but she tends not to wallow in her conflicts, because she has a job to do and a busy life. Maybe this is too much life "real" life. She is a supreme pragmatist. Does that turn agents, editors and readers off? Dunno. Dunno. She doesn't let her pain dominate her life.

Off to make some excellent potato salad, get in the shower and then go to the pool. Looks like a good pool day. A faint tan is darkening arms and legs for the first time in years. All this time on boats and poolside and at the beach. Summer is a beach.

Grapeshot

Deja Vu All Over Again and Again

Cripes, I really must be losing it. I discovered I had blogged twice about Mary Seagull. Maybe it's time to pack it in, or else do the Proust bit and write a humongous tome on all these things which keep popping up.

Speaking of popping up, big class reunion soon, and the bathroom scale has gone weird and posts the weight du jour with no relationship to yesterday's. According to the scale, S.O. gained 7 pounds in one day! My god, I would faint if greeted with that news. Popping out, not up.

So, I will schlep a few copies of The Shadow Warriors to the reunion, since I suspect no one has braved Amazon or the publisher to buy any copies, or even made inquiries. I tell you this business of writing is strange. Some of my so-called friends totally ignore the fact that I am an author. One has even said she doesn't want to read my book in case she doesn't like it and would have to tell me. None of that crowd bought so much as one copy. I wonder if they think I have written about them. Sorry, gang, but no. God knows there is plenty of material, but the story has no shape, and so is a series of gossipy incidents, not a book. People are so vain. Why would I write about them? Others have at least bought a copy, and not read it or maybe were horrified that I didn't write about the Sunday school picnic. If I had, there would have been fornication behind the apse or some such nonesense. Maybe even swear words.

Of course other friends have actually read the book and had interesting things to say about it.

I am obviously in bitchy mode today. So far, all the class reunions have been fun. My high school is dead on where Michener set Centennial, and the tiny town seems kind of down and out, now, but at least there's a new Microtel. Microtel is pretty cool--a place for everything and everything in it's place, sort of like a sailboat's cabin. Bring your shampoo. Only soap is provided. None the less, I liked it. Liked the price, too.

Are we the only people who can't afford $600 a night hotel suites? Sometimes it seems that way. Maybe I should stop reading the NY Times and the Journal and the travel magazines. Like my cat, I'm not ashamed to wear the same clothes two days in a row.

Right now I have to: clean up the kitchen, put the towels in the dryer, finish the grocery list after a bit of menu planning, do something with my hair. Set it on fire? Now there's an idea that goes way beyond sucking it up. Isn't life exciting?

Not today, kids. Not a single dot.com moment and no quaffing of the kool aid.

Grapeshot

A Funny Feeling of Deja Vu

Today I wrote about our day trip to Nantucket, and when I saved the post, I discovered, eeek, that I wrote essentially the same post last year on our day trip to Nantucket. Last year, we spent even more money. Next year I'll suck it up and not say a word.

In downtown Nantucket, there was a mother duck and 4 very small ducklings paddling around where the harbor dips down and abuts the walk. Interesting how many adults walked on by and never noticed nothin, as opposed to the little kids who almost always noticed the ducklings.

When we first began going to Nantucket, back when God was a boy, an artist created a character called Mary Seagull, a middle-aged tourist with a large pocketbook and comfortable shoes. From time to time one still sees the prototype of Mary Seagull, not a trophy wife, but an indefatigable tourist. I googled all over the web and couldn't find any mention of this delightful but wooden (literally) character. We walked by the building that housed the gallery where the artist always displayed his scultpures. I always wonder where those sculptures are today? They must be somewhere. I'd love to have one on my deck.

The garden looks so good, and the patio tomatoes have been profilic and tasty. I pick fresh herbs every day. We had some in a risotto tonight and it was delicious. Grilled pork chops with a terrific fresh plum salsa. Summer food is wonderful. But then so is winter food. I'm going to make my corn and rice salad with watercress this week, and the potato salad with peas and chive aoli. Carbs anyone? Down with diets!

I'm crawling thru the hard copy of Festival Madness and finding lots of edits I missed on the screen. I don't know what I'll do with the book once I finish. Querying has become a nightmare, and definitely bad for my mental health. I'm thinking maybe a California publisher, since Burning Man figures so prominentaly in the book. I'm thinking heroin in the jugular. I'm really not thinking at all.

Grapeshot

Five Dollars and A Clean Shirt

Eons ago, when I first began travelling to Nantucket, the saying about "Day Trippers" was that they brought five dollars and a clean shirt and changed neither. A Day Tripper is, of course, someone who just visits the island for a day and doesn't spend the night. We were actually going to spend the night until I figured out that for four people in the beds we would require would be $400.00, and for that it seemed like we could make the 1 1/2 hour drive back to the Boston area.

Dunkin Donuts: $10.00
Ferry tickets: $105.00
Ferry Parking 12.00
Lunch: $127.00
Let me tell you about lunch. We like to eat at the Ropewalk because it is on the water, and there is a price you pay. We had 1 Bloody Mary, 2 beers, 2 fish and chips, 1 scallop lunch, 1 chowder, one order of frieds and one Caesar Salad. $107.00 plus tip. Yikes!
Beach bus: 6 dollars round trip
Souvenir Hat: 15.00
Lemonade at beach: $9.00
Alcoholic Beverages: 25.00
Ice cream cone, newspaper and coffee: $7.26
Yucko hideous Mexican cheapo food: $20.00

Folks, this looks to me like the better park of $350.00

We returned on the 9:00 p.m. ferry which had a really weird bunch of people who looked like they belonged on the wanted posters at the P.O. I won't say anymore.

The cheapest shack on Nantucket is now over one million, but you can get a one bedroom condo for about half that. Better get busy on those best sellers.

Grapeshot

ThrillerFest in the Big Apple

Ad hoc signings:

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/authors/scene_harpers_prethrillerfest_inhouse_62907.asp

More Thrillerfest happenings:

http://midnightwriters.blogspot.com/2007/07/thrillerfest-appearances-by-midnight.html

Wish I was there.

We aren't in Norton anymore

S.O. and I lived in Wellesley for many years, up the hill from Little Italy in Precinct B, in a neighborhood called, "College Heights." The neighborhood was friendly and although the houses were nice enough, it was still the kind of neighborhood where you could mow you own lawn. If you get my drift. . .there are plenty of neighborhoods in this country where you would not dare mow your own lawn. Too long to explain, so think about it.

We drove through the area today after a few months without a drive-by, so to speak, and found 4 tear-downs. The two on Pleasant Street, a street of modest homes, were all right, not too ungainly and set back from the street. Looked like they belonged there.

The two others were godawful McMansions, right up to the lot lines, like ugly on an ape. I am sure glad I don't live across the street from those monstrosities.

In Wellesley, we always shopped at Roche Brothers, and as Proust would be the first to tell you, habit is a powerful thing, and after we moved we diddled around in Shaw's and Stop and Shop and found neither to our liking, so we drove the extra miles to Roche Brothers in Norton. The first time there, we asked for something not in stock, and mentioned (bad mistake) that we used to shop at the Wellesley Roche Bros. After a couple of times of this faux pas, we sucked it up and didn't ask anymore. S.O. mentioned that the female shoppers in the store were not the trophy wives one frequently saw in Wellesley. Well, duh!

Today, before the onslaught of house guests who must be fed, including one vegetarian, we had an errand to run in Wellesley and decided to do the grocery shopping at our old stomping grounds. The women were really noticable. Young and skinny and totally unlike the Norton matrons. I got string cheese, frozen pizza dough and $167.00 worth of groceries (ouch), and found some really nice slab bacon at the deli counter.

I noticed an attractive elderly woman in a Gloria Vanderbuilt wraparound dress and spike heels shopping. Pony skin purse that probably cost a grand. Now even in Wellesley, nobody wears spike heels to the grocery store, and so I took a second look. Cripes, it wasn't an elderly woman at all, it was the most glamourous woman from the workout club. Eight or nine years ago, when I first saw her, she was beautiful: slim, trim, but with a few modest curves, you know, breasts, butt, calves. She could pump iron like nobody's business. Drove a fancy car and once I noticed dry cleaner bags with Chanel clothes hanging in the back seat. A couple years later, she had dieted herself down to no breasts and no butt, and didn't look nearly so cute. Now, she is so stringy looking that I thought she was elderly. I mean, who else is stringy but old women? This is really sad. I was shocked.

It is a fact that is never mentioned that big time weight loss after 50 usually results in big time bags and wrinkles on the face and elsewhere. Sometimes a few extra pounds (I mean a few), are not a bad thing in a 50+ woman.

Actually this time of year, grocery shopping in Wellesley is usually a leisurely pursuit, since everyone is on the Cape, the Island, their yacht or up in Maine. Where-ever-the-hell.

I hope you don't live in a McMansion like Tony Soprano. Actually, his wasn't as big as the new ones in Wellesley, and at least he had two kids and some relatives. Some of the McMansions are inhabited by a childless couple or one couple and a baby. Well, I guess the inhabitants just have to each have an office and a media room and an exercise room and a whatever. Probably no one cooks in the big fancy Viking kitchen. At least Carmela cooked.

Grapeshot is feeling a little bah-humbug today. A trip to see how the other "half" lives will do that.

Onward, but god help us, not upward, at least not upwardly mobile.

Rejection Revisited

Cripes, another rejection letter today--from a query sent out in 2006, so old I had consigned it to the "never gonna here from this agent" list. Believe it or not, I have such a list and for World of Mirrors it contains 17 agents.

World of Mirrors now has 73 rejections, including the "aint' never" queries.
Promiscuous Mode has 43.

I took a look back in history and The Shadow Warriors only had 39 rejections before I found an e-publisher with an editor, a copy-editor, a cover-designer and all that good stuff. Too bad they were underfunded and disorganized. The first and forever on the closet shelf book, Witness Be Wary, has about 40 rejections. They're in a file drawer, I guess. There's something about the number 40, be it age or rejections that strikes terror. At a prior Edgars Week in NYC I talked to an author who was rejected 113 times before he finally found an agent, and she sold his book. You gotta have the right stuff, which means persistence.

Still, sometimes, and this has been one of those weeks, persistence seems like stupidity, like cluelessness, like the inability to face facts. I've never been a Pollyanna-ish person. Does anyone remember Pollyanna? An upbeat young lady who never got down, who played something called the "glad game." Sheesh! I think I'll Google Pollyanna.

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

In case you weren't doing math, the total rejections for 4 novels are at 195. It's a wonder I can still sit here and write a sentence. Last night I cobbled together a new beginning for Festival Madness. Three short paragraphs that set the scene. I've noticed that most books start with "telling," not showing. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, I was a posthumous child, the sea is high again today, and so forth. As in Tell Me A Story. Never heard anyone say, "show me a story." Of course, one shows in the telling, but this showing business is kind of out of control. If you want to show everything, write poetry. Someones a couple of good telling paragraphs can do the work of whole scenes of showing.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust. Ponder that for a while.

Grapeshot

Thriller Fest

http://www.thrillerwriters.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=6&Itemid=53



No thrillerfest for me this year. We have a small houseguest arriving, and she wants to go on a Whale Watch, re-visit Nantucket, and chill in the neighborhood pool. And visit the new calf, of course. She is always interested in the cow dynamics: old Maggie, the bull of the woods (but female), and the others in the small herd.--the Sweet-Faced Young Bull, who showed a new and stubborn side (freedom now!) yesterday. There are firestarters for the fireplace to be made and flowers to pick. Bread to bake. And blueberry pancakes. The important stuff.

Dona Leon started her book with the weather. Another well-known writer (somebody good) began a flash back on page two. Why is it that only "beginning writers" can't break the rules? I've been scribbling for 15 years--am I still a beginner?

I play the Sopranos theme song over and over.

Treading Water

Two more rejections in the mail since we came home; one for Promiscuous Mode, and one for World of Mirrors. Promiscuous Mode was the novel the writing group absolutely loved, and one agent loved it but did not offer representation. World of Mirrors is my favorite right now, maybe because I have lavished so many rewrites and so much attention on it, and it takes place in an unknown corner of Europe at an interesting time in history. Well, that and and few dollars will get you a latte.

I have to confess the expensive coffee craze leaves me cold. A nice strong cup of plain old coffee with a splash of milk for me. A chilled sweet Starbucks Frappucino, quaffed right out of the bottle tastes great, and I mention it so often in Festival Madness that the Starbucks folks should pay me, but of course there is no real reason to believe that Festival Madness will sell either. Right now the beginning really sucks. I mean bad.

I am feeling pulled hither and thither by my writing group, how-to writing advice I read, "the market" and all of the voices a writer hears and maybe heeds. Mixed messages drive me crazy. So I'm think I'm going to do my own beginning, something I like, and everyone else can go suck eggs. Suck eggs, suck it up, makes little difference.

My garden is lovely now, except where the bunnies have been bad. The bunnies have been very bad this year, and they ate the entire lily after it bloomed, unless the bunnies are really deer. Always hard to know. The bunnies are going to encounter some cayenne soon. They can scamper down to the slough for a drink if they need it. The bull frog croaks regularly, but the tree frogs are silent. The baby chipmunk eats the thistle seed. The birds, squirrels, racoons, etc., and done a number of the thistle seed feeder AND the suet feeder, so I went out to Best Nest and ordered lifetime guaranteed thistle and suet feeders. Enough of this silliness.

The red squirrel found a mate and there are tiny squirrels chasing around. And the oriole comes and serenades in late afternoon. Tonight we had insalata caprese with homegrown tomatoes and our own basil. The basil had a strong taste. Invigorating.

In The Writer today I read about landscape terminology and how when used correctly, it can inform one's fiction, as in Cold Mountain. That was pretty cool. Barrows and swales and mesas and arroyos.

We (the neighborhood) have a new calf, a little brown critter four days old. Significant Other saw it yesterday. When we went over to feed the cows and admire the calf, we arrived just as the young bull had escaped, and the cows were going crazy, the farmer was trying to catch the bull who kept charging into the street, the partically blind sheep dog was not helping at all, and chaos ruled, so we left. Later I saw the bull, who is really a sweetie, back in the pasture. The cows were very upset. They are interesting creatures and have subtle differences in personality.

Let's hear it for bad rabbits, obstreperous Scottish Highland cattle, and the other creatures in my corner of the world. They give me joy, a commodity otherwise in short supply.

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The Porthole View

Gone are the days of tiny portholes. Now cruiseships have picture windows or even balconies. I noticed lots of balconies, very few populated. They are like decks. Most people never use them.

Anyway, we had a sea window, good for taking in the view while changing clothes, waking up, and so forth. It also revealed how little darkness there was in this part of the world so close to the solstice. The shot you see was taken Day One, when we were cruising north out of Vancouver. The scenery gradually segued into totally spectacular, but it was good to have it happen gradually. This day we saw lots of big fish jumping. Don't know what they were. I got my fill of salmon, cod and halibut, all delicious. The salmon were beginning to swim upstream and we saw one river just loaded with them.

Many of the rivers are fishless, due to the glacial melt and all the sediment and lack of oxygen in the water. Lots of silt, little wildlife. Some of the glaciers are really filthy, and others have beautiful blue ice. We saw some calving, and the thunder was stupendous, and it made a satisfying splash as well. One never grows too old for a really big splash.

Glaciers are abundant, and we had a map showing how they had shrunk in the last 100 years. The decline hasn't all been recent.

Not cooking (but eating) for two weeks has me all inspired. Last night I cooked a chicken breast in wine with an anise bulb and lots of lemon. Flavor was subtle, not licorishy. We also tried broccoli with garlic and toasted Panko crumbs, another winner. Cucumber salad with tomatoes and herbs from the garden. Lots of good veggies and lean meat.

Tonight is shrimp on the grill with grilled eggplant, zucchini, portabellas and red peppers. Yum! I'm making a diet rice pudding. Weight is starting to come off. I measure out the damn granola in the morning. Never seems like enough.

Worked on the ending of Festival Madness, and now it seems kind of tepid, so I have more work to do. Endless revisions--what else is new?

I am reading a Donna Leon book, my first. Nothing happened until mid-story. Lots of running around Venice and drinking of coffee and grappa. I like it all right, but am not sure what the big deal about her is. A perfectly nice little mystery in a Venetian setting.

Did I mention the agent told publishers are only buying "cozy-cozies" and thrillers from "new" writers. My next book is "Twenty-Five Years in Informations Systems," in which I tell tales out of school. Non-fiction. Then it's 1928 California, but not in the crime fiction genre. After that, well, we see.

After a rocky start, I am really savoring The Warlord's Son, and read little bits of it so I don't finish too early. Great stuff about Pakistan and Afghanistan. Sounds so authentic. I have to get back to Proust sometime this summer.

In the meantime, The Sunday New York Times and the Boston Globe await. A full day's work, at least.

Cats were estatic to see us. Annie escaped the house yesterday and ran all over the neighborhood for 5 hours. Bad cat. The garden is spectacular. Photos anon. I have everything weeded. My $2.50 miniature rose from the supermarket this winter now has 5 blooms. The geraniums I carried over the winter have fat, colorful flowers. Sometimes frugality pays off.

The Moose Vamoosed

I hate to confess this, but we did not see a single moose, except on Tee shirts, plush stuffed animals, ceramics, refrigerator magnets, paintings--well, you get the idea. I had really wanted to see a moose.

We did see: eagles, dolphins, whales, seals, a bear, mew gulls, big fish, salmon, swans, ducks and a beaver. Also, the "Alaska State Bird," aka the mosquito. One bit me in mid-morning in the middle of the lodge at Denali. I found out why Alaska is so full of mosquitoes. The tundra sits on top of perma-frost, so water doesn't seep into the ground. Instead, it sits atop the ground providing a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

Fleece and weird jeans are IN among the tourists. By weird jeans I mean denim pants that don't really fit like jeans, don't even look like jeans, except for the fabric. Avoid them. Our fellow travellers were an interesting lot. We had a family of women, four generations of blondes. Imagine that. Another family bunch that appeared joined at the hip, because they refused to separate even to the extent of all taking the same elevator. The native arts were very impressive, and the souvenir shops were uber alles, and my friend never met a souvenir shop she didn't visit. She searched everywhere for the perfect sweat shirt and finally bought something else, admitting she already had three hooded sweat shirts. She is a city girl and rarely has need even of one.

Restaurant recommendations:

In Fairbanks, suck it up and spend the cab fare to eat at the Pump House Saloon and Restaurant. The fish is incredibly fresh, and the sides are really yummy. Order extra scalloped potatoes.

In Denali we had fantastic fish and chips at Fish and Chips. Good slaw and tartar sauce too, and the fries were fresh and not cooked in the same fat at the fish. We ate cod, but halibut was also available.

In Anchorage, you can't go wrong at Sullivan's Steak House. Toothsome steak and delicious sides. We never made it to dessert. The waitress, Tammy, had only been in Alaska for 3 weeks and had seen a moose with her calf while she was walking the dog. Wags say that there are more moose in Anchorage than Denali.

There is also a young female grisly bear who fishes in a stream down by the train yard. "Hungry as a bear" took on real meaning, because "our" bear was up in a tree chomping down some fruit or pods. She was in the act of denuding the entire tree, and had no interest in gaping tourists. But that is a good thing.

O.K., I gained 4 pounds, which averages out to a pound every 3 days or an extra 1000 calories a day which seems about right. Let's face it, steak, eggs, potatoes, etc. is not a low-cal breakfast. Lunches were big, dinners had many courses and the liquor flowed. Sigh! All those walks around the deck didn't help much. On a big ship you walk a lot. Mainly to the bar or the dining room.

Now I'm back hacking away at Festival Madness, with a sort-of new ending. It seems weird to write again. I wrote a few pages in my travel journal, but really nothing much. Just gaped at all those mountains, all those glaciers, all that scenery. Words failed me. For a change.

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If this is Thursday, it must be . . .

Arrived back from Anchorage via SFO on the red eye with about 3 inches of leg room per person. Took a little nap on the living room sofa this afternoon, and when I woke up I hadn't a clue as to where I was. Not on the boat, the train, the hotels, the plane, then where? Home! My god. I'm staring at the living room fireplace and wondering how I got here.

Of course there were the various mountains to deal with: laundry, mail, and the trashman cometh today, so we had to quickly gather up the garbage and put it out. Another mountain. I have not been brave enough to step onto the scale and ponder the mountain of weight I gained. Clothes still fit, so how bad can it be? The problem is, there is a class reunion coming up soon, and we women still want to present our 112 lb. selves to the old gang. If I ate nothing for the next four weeks, I wouldn't weight 112. Besides, have you ever noticed that women who lose a lot of weight end up all wrinkly. Major bummer.

So how was the cruise and the land tour? Scenery, scenery, and yet more scenery. Enough mountains and glaciers and oceans and railroads to last a lifetime. Enough bar bills likewise. It's so nice to be pampered. We even had "towel animals" placed on the bed everynight. I came home with enough small toiletries to stock a homeless shelter, which is where I generally send them.

Fantastic flounder. Real salmon. The world's best fresh cod fish and chips. One night (just one) I ordered the "spa" menu and had fantastic scallops. Steak and eggs and potatoes for breakfast. Oink. Baked Alaska, natch.

I read Robert Parker, Sue Grafton and Harlan Coban after finishing my Alaska book. Now I'm reading the Donna Leon I found at the San Francisco airport. The quality of airport bookstores varies greatly. Some were great, others just carried the Usual Suspects. Some were so clueless they didn't know the diff. between fiction and non. Oh well.

I didn't find a "new book" or anything like that. Heard from an agent just before I left that he wasn't taking on World of Mirrors. He claims the market for "undiscovered" writers in crime fiction has pretty much dried up except for cozy-cozies and thrillers. So there. Lots more sucking it up to perform.

It was so cool to see glaciers "calve."

Our cats were delighted to see us. We ate the first patio tomatoes from the garden tonight. Good, but not spectacular. It will take a few days to catch up.

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