Sandi Kahn Shelton

I know. I know. I’ve been a failure as a blogger lately. It’s not even because the New York Times, bless their hearts, has discovered that being a blogger is hazardous to your health and written this story about the dangers of it .I couldn’t bring myself to read the full article since I am very suggestible and would have to be taken to the hospital by ambulance almost immediately, but, according to the concerned folks at the Times, it seems that bloggers are having heart attacks, the implication being that they don’t know when to stop blogging and go eat nourishing food and get some sleep.

Clearly I am in no danger since I know how to not blog.

Actually, though, life has not been exactly a stress-free dream around here.

Things keep coming up.

April and May are always the months when the world seems to come out of hibernation, and things start filling up the calendar. Last weekend I participated in a writers’ conference, which was fun, but…well, talky. I think I spoke nonstop for about six hours on the topic of how you find characters to write about, and by the end I had nothing left in my brain.

And now that that is behind me, it seems I have to prepare for a 45-minute talk on the “challenges of my writing career” to an audience of students at the 5th Annual Writers’ Festival at Tunxis Community College on April 23. I laughed when the organizer told me that they would love if I could bring any photos to illustrate the challenges of this so-called career, which could be shown on an overhead projector. Perhaps I should take a picture of me slumped over my desk, still wearing my bathrobe at 4 in the afternoon, and tearing my hair out while I down cup after cup of tea. Oooh, or perhaps I should show this picture, of the true way my writing gets done. I outsource it to dogs.

At any rate, the good news is: spring is at last coming to Connecticut. There are buds on the trees, the grass is greening up, and at night now you can hear the wonderfully creepy sound of the peepers, sounding like space aliens have arrived.

Excuse me while I go get another Tums and remind that dog he has a novel due on September first.

I am pleased to tell you that I have yet another person willing to come on my blog and entertain you. I am always seeking fresh voices to amuse you.

She is Eileen Cook, who clearly knows how to use a vintage typewriter to great effect. She has written Unpredictable, which has been called “laugh out loud funny” by Romantic Times. And she also writes a blog, called Just My Type, which has led to me not getting work done on many mornings. I have also spit tea all over my keyboard quite a few times, just because I don’t have the sense to read her blog before I take a big gulp of tea.

She is hilarious and so much fun, and I have ordered her book and cannot wait to read it. In the meantime, here is the great cover, and the picture of Eileen herself, and if you can’t see either of these because of my lack of skills at moving things around on the internet, (they’re showing up here NOW, but by tomorrow, the internet, in its wisdom, may snatch them away from here)…well, if they’re not here, just do yourself a favor and go to her blog. And now, scroll down to the bottom, beneath these pictures, and read Eileen’s guest post. Enjoy!

And now here is Eileen:

There is debate on some writer discussion loops as to when you can call yourself a writer. Some believe anyone who has the dedication to write, to focus on their craft, should be able to refer to themselves as writers. Others believe that the term writer should be saved for those that have reached publication.

Here’s my theory, you can call yourself anything you like. Heck, you can call yourself Wonder Woman and run around in your red white and blue bathing suit with go-go boots if you like, but it doesn’t mean other people are going to go along with your idea.

Transcript of an actual conversation.

Other Person (OP): What do you do?

Me: I’m a writer.

OP: Really? What have you written?

Me: It’s a romantic comedy called Unpredictable.

OP (looking distrustful): I never heard of it.

Me: It just came out.

OP: Is it going to be on Oprah?

Me: Um, well she hasn’t called yet.

OP: What about on the Regis and Kelly show?

Me: No plans for that either.

OP: You couldn’t even get on with Kelly Ripa? (should be said with a slight sneer that is insulting to both Ms. Ripa and myself.)

Me: I’m really more of an Ellen fan when you get right down to it, but before you ask she hasn’t called yet either.

OP: (looking around the room for more interesting people) Well good luck with your little project.

Some people are going to say you can’t be a writer unless you publish, or only if you publish with a major house. Someone else is going to weigh in and say it depends on your print run or if you hit any of the major lists. Others are waiting to see if you show up on Oprah (or Ellen or Live with Regis and Kelly) before deciding if your accomplishment should count.

Defining yourself isn’t limited just to writers, I hear the debate about who should get to call themselves a good mom, about who owns the right to say they’re an artist (versus a mere crafter), who is an athlete, who is a success. What would happen if we didn’t wait for others to approve our definition and we decided for ourselves? What if we decided what we wanted to be and pursued it with our whole hearts without waiting for someone to say it was okay?

If you feel like a superhero, then I say throw on the cape and get going. The world could use more saving and you look fabulous in Spandex.

eileen@eileencook.com

• News

  The first review for Unpredictable appeared in Romantic Times.

  “Cook’s debut novel seems destined to climb to the top of the bestseller lists. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, and readers will immediately fall in love with her style. This book reaches a new level of comedy with its hilarious heroine, exhilarating plot and fresh new approach to this well-loved genre.”

You  might not think those two topics have anything to do with each other: haircuts and writing fiction.

I wouldn’t have either, until yesterday.

Yesterday was the day I suddenly couldn’t stand my hair another second. You know what this is like. It was either go to the hair salon or get the pinking shears out of the sewing box and have at it myself. The night before, my hair had been subpar but acceptable, and then Tuesday morning, it was unbearable. Go figure.

Luckily I see a haircut person who is not only wonderful, but she works a million hours and seems always to be able to get a person in if she hears that pinking shears might become involved. So I called up, got an appointment for 2 o’clock, and then spent the morning writing my novel.

By the time the appointment came around, I was lost in the book, totally immersed in the story–but, hello, this is a haircut we’re talking about. You have to go to a haircut! So I went.

“What are you working on lately?” asked the hairdresser, whom I will refer to as R, for her own protection. She took me over to the sink to be shampooed.

So I told her about my book. (I have to stop here and say that I knew this was very, very bad to do. Writers are not supposed to discuss the plots of their books with anyone, not even kindly, interested hairdressers. I have never understood this rule, but all the other writers will tell you this. It has something to do with spending the energy of your book in your excited retelling of the plot, when actually all that energy belongs on the page. Or something like that. You  just have to trust me on this: all your better writers won’t discuss their books.)

But there I go, blabbing away about my plot, which involves (here I go again, telling) a massive, almost unforgivable infidelity between a couple who has been married for a long time. The infidelity took place at the beginning of their marriage, and has been…well, smoothed over. So I’m telling her this story as she’s taking out the scissors and the combs, and she’s nodding and looking very, very interested, and so I’m telling more and more.

And then she says, “My father left my mother after 30 years of marriage, when I had just gotten married and was pregnant with my first baby. It turned out he had been having an affair, and he just left.”

Now is that fascinating or what? We got into such a wonderful conversation then–all the gory details of love affairs and how people find out, and how my characters find out and what happens next, and what happened to her mother, and how she wouldn’t speak to her father for years, and yes, he’s still with the other woman, but it’s very awkward, and how her mother tries hard to forgive him but can’t really, she’s broken now and has no self confidence…and we talk all the way through my haircut. By the end of it, we are so overcome with emotion that we have to HUG before we can go our separate ways.

And I go home and sit down and work on my book for the rest of the afternoon.

But then last night, as I was combing my hair before I went to bed, I noticed that…well, there’s a big chunk of hair that’s simply missing. On the right side. Like, ridiculously so. I can’t pull  my hair back anymore because on one side I seem to have  a pixie haircut and all the other sides are kind of regular…longish, even.

I have no idea what to do. The obvious lesson is: I should stay home and write my book, quietly, until my hair grows back in again. And when I go back to her later (as I will), and she asks me what I’m working on lately, I’ll say, “Ohhhh, nothing really,” and open a magazine. With a yawn.  

Today was rainy and raw. The wind seemed to be throwing water against the windows all day long, and the sky stayed twilight-dark.

This is, obviously, Weather to Outline A Novel In. And just in time! I settled myself down with the intention of plotting the last half of my novel. I had done the first half with great exuberance yesterday and the day before…but, well, there’s something about trying to tie up the end of this unwritten book that just made me want to curl up in the fetal position and take a nice long nap instead. Either that, or hyperventilate for a while after which I would look for a real job on monster.com. (Perhaps something involving only physical labor, nothing to do with words.)

I mean: how the heck do I know what these characters are going to do at the end of a book I haven’t written yet? All I know is that I am planning piles and piles of love and trouble for them, and now I’m also supposed to know how to get them out of it, without making it seem too cheesy or unrealistic?

But instead of heading back to bed, I built a fire in the fireplace and lit all the IKEA candles because it was DARK and cold. And then I sat down with the dog and my laptop…and, well, the next thing I knew, all these possible endings for the end of the book just started unfolding before me. It was quiet in the house, except for the dog’s breathing and the rain flinging against the windows, and the fire crackling away. That probably helped, the quiet.

I typed out all the possible endings, trying them on. Some I had to reject because they were dragging the story out too long, unnecessarily.  One ending seemed sadder than I wanted. And still another tied the loose ends up too neatly. I hate books that end with the feeling that you’ve just wrapped up a present with a big red bow, don’t you? I like something meaty to chew on after the book is done. And, like in real life, I think we have to work to find meaning in a set of circumstances. Novels need to give that feeling of possibility at the end.

It was actually hard to stop thinking about this when it was time to go cook dinner and feed the dog. When I looked up at six, the fire had died and the rain had stopped, and I was writing by the light of the laptop and the candles, which were down to almost nothing. Clearly it was time to turn on lights and music and cook the Jamaican chicken and rice…and to stretch.

All this evening, though, I’ve felt somehow suspended between two worlds, my own and the one I’d been living in all afternoon. It’s a wonderful feeling, like maybe you get two lives for the price of one.

And it reminded me of this great quote by the writer lee Smith, which I have taped on my writing desk: “When stuff in life gets really rough, I would just die if I was not writing a novel. Once you think it up, it’s like a whole other city with a little door and every time you sit down to write, you just open the door and there you are–a wonderful vacation for two hours.”

Or maybe eight.

It should be easy, starting a novel. This one is due in September, so it has the advantage of having very little time to incubate. (I posted a quote by Leonard Bernstein recently in which he said, “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.”)

I definitely don’t have much time, and until today, I didn’t have a plan either.

That’s because my usual way of starting a novel is to meander around with the character, as if I’m in a Polaroid picture that is slowly coming into focus. 

That’s what I’ve been doing. 

I know the main character, Cate. And her husband Grant. And I know what is going to happen to them. I know what Cate had for breakfast this morning and what she said to her daughter on the phone last night, and what she emailed to her son at college…and I know the unspeakable thing she did twenty-five years ago that she can’t forgive herself for, the thing that Grant won’t ever let her talk about.

Cate rides along with me all the time these days, a little companionly voice in my ear. If a song comes on the radio, she’ll say something like, “Oh, that song played the day that Grant and I got married. I listened to it on our way to the hotel, and it’s always reminded me of the way I suddenly looked over at Grant, frowning as he tried to sing along to the words, but he kept forgetting where he was and singing the same verse over and over again. That’s when I realized how distracted he always was, and it hit me what I had just signed on for. I looked at him closely and saw that the pants to his wedding suit were too short, his ankles stuck out…and he’d forgotten to shave on one side, and he was lost in his own little world, squinting one eye and then the other as if he were trying to decide if the whole world was all an optical illusion. I had always thought that the whole Grant shtick was just so adorable, the way he couldn’t be bothered to care about so many things. But now, at that moment, I remember there was this little chill, this one little nagging thought in my head: that this was going to be the thing about him that drove me absolutely insane. The way he was always solving math problems in his head, even on his wedding day.”

Sometimes Cate tells me so many things like this that I have to pull over in the car and write down what she’s saying. I have a whole little notebook now, filled with Cate’s opinions. And I have about twenty pages of the novel that contains her.

Meanwhile, September is like a speeding truck bearing down on us.

THE BOOK, I told her today, HAS TO BE WRITTEN.

And so I am going to try something new. I am going to simply sit down and outline the whole plot of this book, from beginning to end, the way I used to do with nonfiction books.

I am actually going to decide in advance what is going to happen, not just wander through the book waiting for the plot to settle on it like a nice blanket warm from the dryer.

There will be order. And chapter headings. Page numbers. Story arcs.

I have to admit that I am not a huge planning kind of gal. The truth is that I have lived a seat-of-the-pants kind of life, which has been my favorite way to live… but, well, now that it looks like writing fiction might actually become something of a career for me, perhaps I need to figure out a way to do it on my own terms, not just wait for characters to tell me stuff.

It’s going to be interesting. All you writers out there, please tell me if this is how you do it! Do you wait for inspiration, or do you outline and then stick to it? Which way causes the least amount of angst?

Maybe Leonard Bernstein really is on to something: a plan and not enough time. Key to getting anything done.

I am getting to be quite the party hostess, over here in my little blog. Maybe it’s the holidays, maybe it’s that I’ve learned just how to put out the right tea towels and make the little sandwiches with the crusts cut off…but lately people seem to want to come visit and write things here.

I’m flattered.

Today’s guest blogger is ROBERTA ISLEIB, who just happens to live in the same community I do, but perhaps because we’re both writers who are so self-disciplined that we do not go out in public when we are writing our books, we have rarely had the chance to see each other. Still, she signed on with Dorothy Thompson of Pump Up Your Book Promotion, who so wonderfully managed my own book tour through the blogosphere last May, and now here she is, on my blog.

  Here is a picture of Roberta, on warmer days. (We just had a major ice storm, so even looking at this picture is making me shiver). And here is a picture of her book, Preaching to the Corpse, a murder mystery set right in our own home town. It’s fabulous, believe me. I can’t wait to buy copies for everybody I know.

And here is Roberta’s blog post:

The OTHER advice column novel

About a year and a half ago, a month before I’d turned in DEADLY ADVICE, thefirst book in my new mystery series, I ran into Nancy, a writer friend in town. We exchanged news about our careers and I told her my latest book would be published in the spring.

“What’s it about?” she asked.

“The main character is a psychologist who lives in Connecticut and writes an advice column,” I said. “She’s drawn into the murder investigation of a neighbor who was pegged as a suicide because she feels dreadfully guilty about not noticing anything wrong.”

She congratulated me and wished me luck, as writer friends do. Though maybe her face looked a little funny…

Just a week later I read that Sandi Kahn Shelton would be reading from her new book, featuring AN ADVICE COLUMNIST WHO LIVES IN CONNECTICUT. I realized right then that Nancy had known about Sandi’s book. And she also knew that I’d BUST A GUT once I heard that an ESTEEMED WRITER like Sandi had BEAT ME TO MY OWN THESIS. Every writer’s nightmare. Sigh.

So I went to Sandi’s booksigning, bought her book, asked her to sign it, and slapped it in a drawer where I wouldn’t be tempted to read it and crib every good idea I found. Only after I’d turned in my own manuscript and gotten well along into the sequel, PREACHING TO THE CORPSE, could I allow myself to enjoy A PIECE OF NORMAL. All while trying not to say, “Oh, I wish I’d thought of that” more than once a chapter.

That said, my new character, Dr. Rebecca Butterman is a 30-something, freshly single woman living in Guilford, CT. She has a complicated family history (don’t we all) that colors her reactions to her life and her work.

And she’s still raw from her recent divorce. Which puts her in the funny position of giving advice to the lovelorn in Bloom! Magazine and conducting a psychotherapy practice, while struggling with her own issues. All realistic enough, I hope.

The excitement in the new book begins when Rebecca’s minister wakes her up in the middle of the night, about to be charged with murder. He begs her to join the committee charged with hiring a new minister. There she uncovers cutthroat church politics rather than the joys of the holiday season. It seems that “thou shalt not kill” has been qualified: “…unless thou art eliminating the competition.”

Rebecca has strong relationships with two women friends and her younger sister. She’s an amazing cook and much of her detective work is done while enjoying a good meal, either at home or out with friends. In fact, I can imagine Rebecca and Lily getting together for lunch one day. Maybe Claire’s in New Haven, or the Hidden Kitchen in Guilford. Anyway, I’ll leave that to them. I think they’ll like each other though…

I hope you’ll enjoy reading about her as much as I’ve enjoyed the writing.

Thank you thank you to Sandi for writing wonderful books and being such a good hostess!

Roberta Isleib

http://www.robertaisleib.com

I have never had a guest blogger before. I felt like I should clean up the joint a little bit, maybe do some dusting and vacuuming before she arrived, put out the fresh hand towels. At least get the internet connection to behave itself.

But of course everything went wrong–and after fighting with the internet for the better part of the morning, I’m pleased to introduce DIANA HOLQUIST, whom I met when she hosted me on HER blog last May. (Her blog was very spiffy, with plenty of clean hand towels, I might add.)

Diana is on a virtual blog tour with her new book, THE SEXIEST MAN ALIVE, published by Warner this month…and I would just like to say that it is a genuinely funny book, waaaaay above what you might be thinking just from the title alone. Lots of good, strong, solid characters and true situations and dilemmas. It combines the best of both worlds: it’s a fun book to escape your troubles with, while you loll in the bathtub with candles and a glass of wine (yeah, right)…and something you want to read because you love good characters.

And it’s so funny! (Nice cover, too!)  ;-0

Thanks for having me, Sandi. It’s great to be here. Secrets to writing funny? I’ve got one word for you: beer. No, not really. Well, sometimes. Anyway, I never try to write funny; I think that’s the trick. Most of the time, my characters are being completely serious, but they see the world in such unique ways, it turns out funny. Here’s the biggest secret to writing funny that an amazing critique partner once told me: no character may EVER react to humor on the page. If you type, “He smiled” or “he laughed” you’re dead in the water. Watch old classic movies and you’ll see, the humor is NEVER acknowledged. I think that’s the best advice I’ve ever gotten as to writing funny.

I love to hear how other authors get themselves organized to write their books. You’re a mom. Are you writing books between soccer games and ballet lessons, or between 2:30 and 4:30 a.m…or is your whole family trained to let you write every day, whenever you need to?

My kids are super old now (8 and 10), so they’re pretty independent. They trot out the door at 8:30 and don’t reappear until 4:00. It’s magical and lovely. I am carpool mom all afternoon, but to tell you the truth, I’m spent by then anyway, and I need the break. I spend at least half my day writing ad copy for various freelance clients. Then another few hours doing promo for myself: MySpace, blogs, videos, whatever. I maybe write two hours a day if I’m lucky. But when I have a deadline, I can up that to six or seven hours a day by cutting back on other stuff. Honestly, I do that maybe two months out of the year. But don’t listen to me. I’m considered a VERY slow romance writer, only turning in a book every nine months. I feel quite lazy compared to other romance writers, where two to three books a year is average.

Also, your videos–the headless sexy guy and headless author, and the one about your publisher not letting your husband be the model for the sexiest guy alive, made me laugh so hard I spit tea all over my keyboard. Now that my keyboard has shorted out and I can’t write anymore—no, no, never mind that. It was worth it for that kind of laugh, believe me. What I want to know, what all writers want to know is: Are those kinds of videos hard to do, and do you notice that they bring in readers?

Ah, video. Since my background is advertising, I find video very easy. Much easier than, say, writing a book. I maybe spend two hours on each one. But I don’t think that’s the norm. I do think that every writer has got to learn how to concept, write, and edit video. It’s the future of book promotion; I’m sure of it. My videos have been watched thousands of times all over the web. That has to make a difference—although as we say in adland, half of advertising is effective, we just don’t know which half. That’s why you’ve got to do it all. Sorry about your keyboard…You can watch my newest video, “Conversations with the Sexiest Man Alive” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0bFYWrPC4c.

What kinds of book promotion are you doing for your book, and what seems to be working the best for you?

I think MySpace is the single most effective tool out there. I spend about an hour a day on MySpace, wishing “friends” happy birthday and blogging and such. I do a few romance-specific website promotions, but they’re hit and miss. I love video, and I’m starting to really push that by including other writers in my videos to spread the word (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_n5L3S9Jmk). Interactive is the key, I think. I always try to engage readers. Of course, I read all of Dorothy Thompson’s blogs religiously—I’ve learned SO much from her about the web and how to promote. And yes, I only do the web. It’s where the readers are.

Hey, what’s the deal with psychics? Any clues into that world? Was it fun to write the character of Amy, or did she show up and try to boss you around and take over the whole plot? She is such a dynamic character–I’m sure it was hard to make her stay in her place.

Yeah, Amy is a piece of work. I had to “rehabilitate” her for my next book, Hungry for More, and it wasn’t easy. I don’t believe in psychics except as a metaphor for empathy and understanding. I see Amy’s psychic power as emotional insight, and her struggle with her power as a struggle with herself. I loved your book, Sandi, What Comes After Crazy, by the way. Another psychic character who won’t stay in her place. They steal the scenes, and it’s tough to keep them balanced with other characters, especially in a romance, where the hero has to play an equal role.

Thanks so much for coming! And I beg all of you reading this: do go to her you-tube links. But make sure you aren’t drinking anything near your keyboard when you watch them. Go to her blog at http://www.dianaholquist.com to see even more of her videos.

I have finished my book. (I think I have made that statement here before; it sounds awfully familiar.) Ah, yes, on May 13, I declared I was finished with the book.

In fact, come to think of it, I was always going around, declaring that I had finished my book…and then I would wait a few days, and the book would somehow come unraveled, and I would have to go back and write other things in it, and then while I was fixing one part of it, another part would come undone. It was like my knitting projects: you fix one loosened part, and the whole structure needs retooling.

But now, I HAVE REALLY, REALLY FINISHED THE BOOK. And to prove it, I actually mailed it away to my editor…and as a reward, was taken out to dinner by my sweet husband, who was beginning to fear, I think, that I had some kind of psychiatric disorder that was going to prevent me from ever being able to actually submit this book.

But I mailed it–which, may I just say, is a little anti-climactic these days. You simply press the SEND button, and the book zips itself away.

It’s not like the old days when, suspecting you were nearing the end of a manuscript, you started looking around for a suitable box to place it in–usually a box that a ream of paper had come in. And then you found an envelope big enough for this to fit in (or else you had to look for brown paper and tape and maybe even string), and then you have to find the address of the publisher, and sometimes you even had to put in a self-addressed, stamped envelope just in case the publisher would like to send the book back to you. And then you went to the post office and stood in the line, and if you were in MY post office, one of the postal clerks was willing to rub the package against his Guinness Ale tie tack, for luck. (Sometimes you had to let other customers go in front of you, so you could have that specific clerk–most of the others in the U.S. Postal Service don’t know about the Guinness tie tack rub/book acceptance connection. I don’t think it’s something they teach them at the training school.)

But now these days–no need for Guinness for luck. Just the SEND button, and then out to dinner, where we drank to our own luck.

That was a week ago, and since then I’ve been talking to old friends I haven’t seen in months while I was working on the book. I have read other people’s blogs that I have missed. I even brushed the dog and trimmed his toenails. I have played with my grandbabies. I made dinner most nights. We went to the the beach. One day I didn’t get out of my jammies until 3:30 in the afternoon. I started going for long walks again with my friend Karen.

And today–well, today, another character showed up in my head. Daria, she said her name was. She’s married to Will, who is a professor. And a long time ago she was in love with Will’s mentor.

“Uh oh,” I said to her. I was watering the plants. “Could you just hold off for a minute? I think I need to go and write this down.” 

It was a lovely time, really.

We all went to the Cape, rented the same little house we always rent, went to the beach nearly every day where we plopped down in the sand with our sand chairs and our new cooler (the kind that has wheels) and our umbrellas. We ate steamers and drank beer with limes in it, slept late, read books, played killer double solitaire, had long talks and walks, went to a county fair with Charlie, who is 3 and who loves the rides so much that he is in a constant state of grinning the whole time he’s there. Some people in my family ate FRIED TWINKIES. (I did not, not from any moral superiority but simply because I think that Twinkies are already an abomination…and frying them could only make them worse. However, I was hooted at when I mentioned this. So I had to console myself with eating a strawberry sundae that claimed to be the best strawberry sundae in the known world, according to an international panel of experts. This is true.)

It was lovely for the whole week, which alternately seemed short and then longer than forever. The children came and went. There were babies to cuddle and smile at. We ate more steamers, went to Moby Dick’s twice, took a long hike while flies pursued us and we had to run from them, flapping our arms around our heads, laughing and looking ridiculous, which only encouraged the flies to bite us more. There was sunburn. There was the required day of rain, requiring a movie. There was the night we cooked lobsters, and one lobster got out of the bag and terrorized us, a la “Annie Hall.”  

I thought about my novel and made tons of notes on it, and came home and spent today writing it with renewed passion.  New ideas have kept piling in. The main male character pointed out that he had said he was going to California three separate times, and that I really should have allowed him to go, since now he looked foolish for not going. Unmanly. The other boys in the novel were laughing at him and calling him a wimp, I suppose.  So now I am sending him to California–at least temporarily. He has to come back when he realizes he’s in love. He has promised to do that. The female main character, who is mad at him, thinks it would be fine if he stayed there, although she would like to sleep with him. These two are a mess, but now at least I know who I’m dealing with!

I may have gained 250 pounds on this trip, mostly from the butter from the lobsters and the steamers. They don’t call that restaurant Moby Dick’s for nothing. I have become the whale.

I am up in the middle of the night tonight, revising my novel–the one that I’ve been working on for a year, and which got done, and then, like so many of them do, somehow came undone. It’s a little like a sweater that someone pulled one stitch out of: I went to fix some plot thing in the middle of the book and suddenly found my characters facing whole new turns of events in their lives.

STOP! I said to them. GO BACK TO WHERE YOU WERE!

But you know how characters are. They are stubborn, and once you start fooling around with their plots, or yoyu’ve lost a row of their stitches, then they want to do all sorts of other things that you hadn’t planned on for them.

After trying to reason with them during many, many daylight hours and finding them uncooperative, I have decided once again to take them on in the middle of the night, when there is no email, no telephone, no panting dog, no mail delivery, no hysterical Weather Channel trumpeting that we are going to have IMMINENT THUNDERSTORMS–GO HIDE UNDER YOUR BED, PEOPLE WILL BE DYING! IT IS GOING TO BE THE WORST WEATHER YOU EVER EXPERIENCED IN YOUR LIFE! RUN QUICK!

Let me just say that I love the house in the middle of the night. Except for one thing.

There are, as I write, about 567,000 June bugs loose in here. They are bugs that, as my husband says, are ridiculous examples of the insect world. They look like evolution gone wrong, with their big heavy bodies being lugged around by these tiny little wings, while they crash into everything.

The whole room is filled with the clicking sounds of dive-bombing, misguided June bugs. Every so often one flies directly into my face. And just now one was walking on my neck. WALKING ON MY VERY NECK.  

A lot of people would see this as a reason to go get in bed and pull the covers up. But I will not be dissuaded.