Happy Mother's Day!

As a merchandiser for one of the major greeting card retailers in the country, I've been inundated by Mother's Day cards for over a month now. But this weekend is crunch time, so before I head out to put out the last of the cards for those who are late to the party, I thought I'd talk about mothers.

When I began thinking about writing a series of historical romances, I decided to create the perfect mother. Creating a 19th century American family meant lots of children, that much I knew. I figured anyone who could birth nine children would obviously love her babies to distraction, but I was pretty vague about anything else, except that she would be involved in her children's lives. Sometimes to their distraction.

From the first book, The Reluctant Debutante, Charlotte Fitzpatrick took on her own life. She is funny, at times clueless, loves to pull the wool over society's eyes, still flirts with her husband, and has made it her business to find good matches for her children as they get to marriageable age. I've been fortunate enough to have the same editors from the first book, and they know the characters almost as well as I do. During my last round of edits, my editor made the comment that Charlotte wouldn't say what I had her saying. The editor was right. I'd drawn my character so well, her personality is now known to all. Now, I'm thinking about a prequel to my series, about how Charlotte met George, and their family's journey began.

But that will have to wait a while. I've got three more books to write to finish up the Cotillion Ball Series. Valerian, Pepper and Saffron are each impatiently waiting for their turn in the spotlight. And you can bet, Charlotte will be in the middle of each one's story.

So Happy Mother's Day, Charlotte, and all mothers everywhere!

Easter Symbolism

As a romance writer, symbolism is of tantamount importance. It ties a story together and brings us, and the reader, to a logical conclusion.

Growing up in the Lutheran faith, I attended years upon years of catechism classes, so I'm very familiar with the use of symbolism in the Bible. The Easter story is my favorite. As a child, I thought "If Jesus would only turn his back on the course he's taken, his life could be spared." But then, of course, all the symbolism--the water turning into wine, the never-ending fishes, the stone not being able to keep Him in the tomb--would have been for naught.

I had my own bit of symbolism happen the other day. I had just written "The End" to my next historical. This time it's Rosemary's turn. She's a writer, long before the days of the typewriter, and her ink-stained fingers proved her undoing. With my head still in my story, I had to go put in my hours on my grocery job, which is restocking greeting cards. I went to the designated store, wrote down my start time in the log book, loaded my cart full of boxes from the warehouse, and rolled them to the card section of the store. I cut open the box and started to pull the plastic off the cards when I noticed ink on my fingers. I thought the pen I used to sign in had leaked, but a quick check proved it to be still intact. There was no explanation for the ink being there. Fortunately, the greeting card company had to foresight to provide each of us with a hand sanitizer, so I cleaned the ink off my fingers before I began putting away the cards. But it puzzled me for hours.

When I got home, I realized the symbolism my day had. I can't turn my back on the course my life has taken either. I'm a writer and, even though some parts of it are tedious, the sheer magic of having a story come together is still so cool to me. Rather than having the ink stains be my undoing, they freed me. I'm cutting back even more on my grocery job and will be able to spend more time putting my stories together.

Happy Easter, everyone.

How Writing Is Like Cleaning The Floor

A good friend of mine recently wrote an article about the things no one ever tells you to expect once you become published. One item that stuck with me is how, when you're editing your work,

you begin to notice how messy your house has become while you were in the giddy, creative stage of writing your manuscript. And your awareness of the filth and clutter becomes more acute the deeper into the editing process you go. Suddenly, corralling that recalcitrant dust-bunny becomes more important than eliminating that dangling participle. 

Case in point: I spent the weekend putting the final polish on my WIP. I'd painstakingly gone through the process of verifying every scene against my self-imposed checklist over the past few weeks, and I was finally able to dump it out of Scrivener and into a word document, where I set about formatting it and polishing it up. The final step in the editing process started yesterday, and I had a sudden urge to clean the kitchen floor. Usually housekeeping is so far down on my to-do list I can't see it because of the piles of rubble that build up during the exciting, creative phase. And my kitchen floor is probably as old as I am, and it takes forever to make it presentable. Kind of like me getting ready to go somewhere.

Kind of like the process of taking a manuscript and getting it ready to submit. Hmmm....

First, I sweep the floor. That's the easy, breezy part and I can actually see progress being made. The flash draft.

Second, I clean the floor, using a Swiffer machine and liquid cleanser. The first-read-through.

Third, because the floor is old and full of crevices to make it look like it's something it's not, I have to use bleach to really clean the nooks and crannies in the ancient tile. Then, I have to rinse. My checklist, where I am aware of the senses, duplication of words, words I overuse, or which are telling. That kind of thing.

Finally, I polish the floor to a healthy, clean-looking shine. Formatting the manuscript and the final read-through.

See what I mean? And, yes, I CAN make an analogy out of just about anything.

I'm In Villete

One of the ladies in my writing group is doing a book translation to English from Portugese. It's a story about a young woman who decides to commit suicide, but survives the initial attempt. However, her heart has been so damaged, she has only five days before death takes her. She ends up, for those five days, in a hospital for the insane, called Villete (Vee-eh-tay). People who inhabit the hospital with her excuse their behavior, however bizarre it may be, by the simple phrase "I'm in Villete."

If I stop long enough to think about things, I realize that I have an awful lot on my plate. I'm revising the third book in my series about the Cotillion--this one features Basil. I'm back at work on the book that's been dogging me for years, about Jedediah Smith. My critique group has decided to compile a Christmas anthology for next year, which also has a deadline. Sometime soon, I'm going to start getting edits on my second book with Crimson. And, I'm trying everything I can to keep the word out in the public eye about my first book, The Reluctant Debutante. The job that buys my groceries is coming up on its busiest season of the year. Card companies don't talk in terms of months. Instead, September is Halloween, Sweetest Day and Thanksgiving. October and November is Christmas, January is Valentine's Day, etc. So our busy season isn't October through March. It's Christmas, Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. Oh, yeah, and since it's fall in Ohio, there will be leaves to rake next month.

So what do I do to ease my burden? I nominate myself for a huge volunteer job for January and February. What can I say? I'm in Villete.