Category Archives: Writing

More lines I”ll never forget

I love to laugh.  I have two cats who do funny stuff,  a Tickle-Me Elmo and a deep love and imagesappreciation of The Big Bang Theory.   What I enjoy most about a good line, a well-written sentence, is that when repeated or thought about, the wording can make me laugh even completely out of context.  All someone has to say is, “Penny, . . . knock, knock, knock,” or sing “Soft kitty, warm kitty. . .” and I smile.

Here’s one of my favorites from The Amazing Race.   When we lived in Louisville, George and I used to watch this every Derby Day leading up to the Derby because, it was, about a race.  The cast was Tony Curtis as the Great Leslie, Natalie Wood, Peter Falk, and the marvelous Jack Lemon as Professor Fate.  The characters are racing around the world in an effort to win the race.  The evil Professor Fate attempts to destroy all the other teams.  In one case, he chases The Great Leslie across Europe and believes Leslie has been imprisoned in a castle.  When he finds out that Leslie has escaped with a priest, he has the following conversation with a military leader at the castle:

images

Professor Fate:  Leslie escaped?

General Kuhster: Yes, with a small friar.

Professor Fate:  Leslie escaped with a chicken?

Why does that make me laugh?  Why, after all these years, do I grin when I think of that?  Here are some guesses:    1)  I love a play on words    2)  It was in character   3)  I don’t know.  LaughterIt just amuses me still.

Do you have any lines you remember with a smile or that produce a guffaw?  I’d love to know. I’d like to laugh along with you.  And, remember laughing is good for you and contains no calories!

 

 

 

 

 

 

..They have tsetse flies down there the size of eagles. Really.

In the evening, I would stand in front of my hut and watch in horror as these giant flies would pick children off the ground and carry them away.

They shot my belly out.

Professor Fate: Leslie escaped?

General: With a small friar.

Professor Fate: Leslie escaped with a chicken?

Lines I’ll never forget

imagesDo you have a favorite line or two from a movie?  I bet you do.  I’m going to share two of my favorites, then I’ld love for you to share yours.  One more thing: my favorites always make me laugh.  Do yours?

One of the problems with sharing these, of course, is that   1)  everyone won’t enjoy my favorites and 2) quoting lines from a movie the other person hasn’t seen usually goes to prove that “you had to be there”.  Nonetheless, I’m going to do that.

From The Blues Brothers:   Everyone loves and quotes on line, “We’re on a mission from imagesGod”, but my favorite is when Jake and Elwood are sitting in their car and Elwood–in a neutral voice–says, “It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark… and we’re wearing sunglasses. ”  Describes the situation perfectly but why does that line make me laugh?  The absurdity of the situation?  The deadpan delivery?  The sunglasses?  Probably all of them but, like so much humor, you had to be there.

imagesIf you’ve read my book Taking a Chance, you know I love the movie The In-laws.  If you haven’t read Taking a Chance, I’m telling you now that I love this movie–the first one, the classic with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin.  One of the many sections that always make me laugh is when Falk, a CIA agent, describes a village in South America:   “They have tsetse flies down there the size of eagles. Really. In the evening, I would stand in front of my hut and watch in horror as these giant flies would pick children off the ground and carry them away.”  I know why that’s funny.  It’s absurd and it also created a really absurd picture in my mind.

Also from that movie, George would turn to me every now and then and say, “Serpentine.” Always made me laugh.

What are some of your favorite lines, scenes, etc., from a movie, book or television show?  Share the laughter.   images

 

 

 

 

 

Arachnophobia

“What’s the big deal? It’s just a spider.”

 

“They shot my belly out”

 

 

 

..They have tsetse flies down there the size of eagles. Really.

In the evening, I would stand in front of my hut and watch in horror as these giant flies would pick children off the ground and carry them away.

They shot my belly out.

Professor Fate: Leslie escaped?

General: With a small friar.

Professor Fate: Leslie escaped with a chicken?

tsetse flies  the size of eagles.

About passion

imagesTed Ligety is one of the best American skiers and an international skiing champion.  In 2006, he won an Olympic gold medal for the combined; 2014, he won another in the giant slalom.  In all, he’s accumulated twenty-three giant slalom world cup wins.   I think I know at least two reasons he’s so very good.

Ligety’s known for his all-out effort, taking the gates close and at an angles to the ground that defy the laws of physics.  As he cuts so close the the gate, he often drops his hand and drags his wrist on the snow around the turns.  November 22, he hit the gate with his left hand.  He’s had bones broken in the hand so often, he designed a glove to protect it.  Didn’t work this time.  He broke his wrist and tore many ligaments.  Four screws were inserted surgically into his hand.  He had to practice without ski poles because he couldn’t hold one in the left hand.  From that, he said, came a positive.  Skiing without a pole helped his balance.

A few weeks later, I watched an event at Birds of Prey.  Ligety had a slow first run–slow for him means he was only tenths of seconds behind the best time.  The announcers suggested that hand could be causing him not to be able to hold and move the ski poles as he usually did.  On the second run, he smoked everyone, even with the mangled hand, and won first place in that event.

How does he do it?  I said there were two reasons.  First, he must have an incredibly high pain threshold.  But I think the main reason is that skiing is what Ted LIgity does.  That’s his focus, his life, his passion.

Most of us don’t have that level of passion and commitment.  I have a friend who wrote a imagesnovel when she was hugely pregnant and had a broken wrist.   I don’t know if I would.  I don’t like pain.

I have no idea of what Ligity’s life is like but most of us have more balance than I assume he has.  As well as what we love to do–which could be being with family, working, cooking or skiing–one of those doesn’t dominate our lives in terms or time and thought and effort.

But I keep coming back to one question: what is important enough in my life that would lead me to hurl myself down a snow-coverd slope at an incredible speed while winding around posts stuck in the snow while facing constantly the threat of terrible falls and broken bones?  I can think of nothing but I admire the man for being so devoted to something so difficult.

I’d like to say I live my faith like this.  I’d die for my faith, but I’m not sure I’d live for it with so much depth and commitment and possible injury.

What is your passion?  Are you as devoted to it as Ligety?

The medicine is worse than the disease

imagesIf you’ve read my Facebook posts, you know I’ve been sick for two weeks.  I thought it was allergies until I woke up with a cough that hurt my entire body and a voice like a dying  buffalo.  Another hint I’m really sick is that I wake up in the middle of the night hearing a very soft, “Meow, meow,” and realize the sound is coming not from a cat but my lungs.  Finally went to the doctor who gave me a strong antibiotic, a steroid pack, codeine-laced cough syrup and several inhalers.  I think she was worried about me.

And for two weeks, I suffered not only the breathing/coughing problems but also the side effects of the drugs.

I don’t take steroids because I experience ‘roid rage.   Terrible, terrible ‘roid rage.  I’ll be chatting with a friends and, suddenly and without warning, flames come out of my mouth.   This time, I’ve stayed home and talked to as few people as possible because I do like to keep my friends and I don’t want anyone to gossip about the vicious woman in apartment 514.

With the antibiotic, I discovered two side effects after I looked them up last week: imagesconfusion and extreme drowsiness.  Not a surprise.  I was so confused and sleepy, I was barely able to google the side effects.   Add to that the cough syrup with copious amounts of codeine and I might as well stay in bed so I wouldn’t hurt myself or others.   In my confusion, I forgot the time change and arrived at church an hour early Sunday–just in time for Sunday school.   About the drowsiness:  Saturday I sat down to a full day of college football and slept through entires halves.  Once I slept through most of a game and woke up to see teams in uniforms I didn’t recognize.

DSCN0445One of my favorite times of the day is after breakfast when I sit on the sofa, drink coffee and watch the news with one cat on my lap and the other next to me.  The three of us slept all morning.   I tried editing a book and kept falling asleep on the pages.    When a writer falls asleep while reading her own novel–well, not a good sign.

And the confusion!   I looked for an early voting place and never found it.  I called about an electric bill which I don’t owe and never understood the explanation.    I worried I’d entered the zone of elderly confusion but, having taken the lat of the antibiotic on Saturday, I discover the fog has cleared.

I’ve lost two weeks but am well.  Thank goodness.  Excuse me.  I think I’m going to take a little nap now.

All I can tell you. . .

. . .is that I’m back from San Antonio and the conference of the Romance River walkWriters of America.   It is an absolutely overwhelming and exhausting experience:  2,000 writers meeting together to network, chat, learn, meet and mingle–and some to party.   Okay, most to party.

The conference, from Wednesday to Saturday of last week, is like a space station filled with the friendliest, most helpful people you’ll ever meet, circling in our own universe.  Yes, 95% of those who attend are women so whole lot of talking going on.

Wednesday evening was the literacy signing.  Published authors sit at book and pentables filling a ballroom.  At five-thirty, the doors are opened and crowds rush in to buy and have their books signed by the writer.  The books are donated by publishing companies.  This year, $58,000 was made, all of which goes to literacy: creating readers by selling books.  I have to say this is, for me, an amazing experience and, every year, I’m so proud to be seated there and signing among all the amazing writers gathered.

Saturday evening is the awards presentation, a huge gala during which the best among published and unpublished novels and writers are honored.

In between, we attend workshops and meeting editors and do other signings and wear ourselves out greeting old friends and . . . and I’m so tired I can’t even think of anything exciting to write in my blog.

I’ll do better next week.  I promise!

 

Writers of the world. . . meet me in San Antonio

toenailsI got a pedicure Thursday and now look down at bright coral toenails that don’t look a bit like mine.   During that hour of pampering, I discovered my feet are a great deal more ticklish than I’d realized.   Everyone in the shop was laughing with me because–for a few minutes–I couldn’t stop.

Why did I have this, only my second pedicure?  Because I’m leaving for RWA  2014the national conference of Romance Writers of America today where I’ll join 2,000 of my best friends in San Antonio.  Probably half the writers in Texas and many from the rest of the US plus members from Canada and Europe and Australia and other places will gather there for days of networking, workshops, greeting old friends and making more.  I’ll be participating in two signings, several parties and will be “doing” breakfast and dinners with friends I’ve known through RWA for fifteen years or more.  What rwa book signingfun!

When I went to my first RWA conference in 1995, I entered the ballroom for the book signing.  Saw rows of tables, hundreds of writer with their books stacked in front of them  and hoards of readers  wandering through.  At that time, I vowed, “I’m going to be here someday.”  Six years later, I was.   After ten books, it’s still fun.

I’ve rested up for this and have nap time scheduled so I won’t wear out before I have to drive home, but I’m ready!   Just have to pack, take the kitties to the spa, and take off!

Hope you all have a wonderful week.  Hope to see some of you in San Antonio.

 

My obsession with words

POWer of words aI love words.   I roll them around in my mouth and taste each.    When I hear a new word, it tickles my ears and delights me.   Words carry history with them and emotion.   They are not formed only of letters but of  feelings and experience and much more.

My obsession began when I was in eighth grade.  In English class, the dictionary 2teacher would leave a dictionary on the desk in front of each row so we could look up a word and check spelling while we wrote a theme.   I usually finished my theme early and would spend those extra minutes in that front desk, reading the dictionary, learning new words, savoring them.

No wonder I majored in English and Spanish in college:  new words in two languages.    I loved the study of language, the history of words.  I could go on forever talking about root word, about how, in Spanish, words that began in F centuries ago changed to the letter H.  Consider yourselves lucky that I’m not going to discuss the verb satisfacer and how it’s conjugated.

My favorite word is from Spanish:  carcajada which means a deep belly laugh.    It sounds like what it means and has such beautiful rhythm.

words I loveI understand not all people love words as I do.  When I got excited about a word in Spanish and attempted to explain its origen or uses or something equally fascinating to my classes,  students looked at me as if I were absolutely nuts.   And, yes, I may be.

Do you have a word you like?  Perhaps because of meaning or sound?  Please share that.  I’d love to know and I won’t feel so alone.

 

 

 

 

The Evolution of a Cover

Matchmakers cover 2Readers always ask me if I design my own covers.  A resounding NO on that!

One of the reasons I like traditional  publishing–where a publishing company buys the book and puts it out–is that I prefer writing to all the techie stuff.    With both Steeple Hill and FaithWords, I sent in a cover art sheet on which I made suggestions about scenes for a cover and described the setting and characters.  Then the editors took over, sent the pages to an artist, and she–the editor–worked with the artist.   And, voila, the cover was created.  I was happy with every one of them–except one.

I’ll use my first  published book The Mad Herringtons as an example.   I first contracted with a small, niche publisher in 1999.  The editor had an artistic friend come up with a cover.  The novel took place in England in 1812, during the dazzling Regency period, a time of waltzing, flirting, and house parties on huge estate.  That first cover started with a great idea:  a ball with the couples swirling around the dance floor.   Sadly, however, she had drawn a large chandalier on the ceiling of the ballroom that looked a great deal like an enormous pink spider.  The scene seemed like a horror movie with a mutant creature poised to fall on and consume the dancers.   Wish  I had a picture of this to show you.

That publishing house went bankrupt and I got the right back just as Mad HerringtonsAvalon opened their historical line.   Avalon sold our books to libraries so they were somewhat conservative and very lovely.  The plot took place at a country estate.   Here’s that cover.

A few years ago, I received my rights back from the-mad-herringtons-2Avalon which means I was free to publish this book myself.  It took me a while but I recently got in touch with By the Page.  The nice people there came up with this beautiful cover which will be sold to readers on Kindle, Nook, and most electronic readers.

Did that answer any questions?

Skipping Fridays for a month or two or six

Snoopy writingIn my efforts to get the taxes together–which I do not do well or happily but feel I’m not alone in that–and working on new writing projects, I’ve decided to write only one blog a week, my Tuesday blog.

I didn’t think I’d like blogging when I first started.  The publicist at my publishing company requested I do that and I enjoy it  During the time after George’s death when I didn’t feel a bit creative, writing, I found a short blog kept me writing.  Also, I’ve been amazed at some of the topics I came upon and I really love it when someone comments.

Please keep up with me on Tuesdays!

Words are magic

This is a blog I wrote very early in my blogging but it’s also one of my favorites.   I hope those of you who haven’t read it before will enjoy it.  And, to you who read this long ago, I hope you’ll enjoy the rerun.

Words have always fascinated me.  From childhood,  I’ve’ve read 200px-Anne_Frankvoraciously.  I’ve taken courses on linguistics, and, in the classes I teach, I bore my students endlessly by showing them the history of words and how words are formed.

Words!  They are amazing.  The words I’m typing now have never before been put together in this way.  Even more amazing:  when you read these words at sometime in the future, you’ll know exactly what I was thinking at this moment.

It’s magic.

The most exciting example of the power of words I’ve been part of was from 1985-87, when I taught English in a school for pregnant teenagers.  The majority of the students were African-American, most lived in poverty and many had struggled in school.  But, with the coming of a baby, each courageous young woman came to this program to complete her education and give her child a better life.

In tenth-grade English, I taught The Diary of Anne Frank.  We’d read Shakespeare, Mark Twain and F. Scott Fitzgerald, whom they enjoyed, but they really loved this play.  Even those who couldn’t read—and there were several–listened, spellbound.  The story of a Jewish girl who lived in the 1940’s and who hid from the Nazis in a tiny attic room spoke to my students like nothing else we’d read.

Through her words, Anne Frank, isolated in her ghetto created by prejudice, reached out over forty-five years, fromAmsterdamto these minority students shut up in a ghetto inLouisville,Kentucky.  My students understood Anne Frank and were astonished to discover that another young woman had suffered from the prejudice that surrounded them.  Anne Frank became one of them and they joined her in that attic.

This is what storytelling is:  reaching out over the years and through the differences and divisions between people to touch emotions and open the reader to new ideas.

And we are the storytellers, the ones who transmit the heritage, who transport our readers beyond the barriers of time and place, who deal with the truths of our experiences, who share and interpret the struggles we all face.

As writers, we are magicians.  We create worlds that have never existed before and populate them with characters that  spring from our imaginations.  We fiddle with our creation’s lives.  They get sick, suffer, fall in love–all with a few keystrokes on our computers.

The words we write make people we’ve never met laugh and cry and think and sometimes get angry.  What tremendous power words have.  What an amazing, awesome craft this is.  To be magicians.  To work miracles.