From Someone Who Knows

Readers have told me that the atmosphere of The Palisades, the nursing home where my book is set, is remarkably similar to where their relative or friend lives—right down to the people who share Cora’s table and the aides who mop the floors. Last week I got a note from a woman who actually lives there herself:

“I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed reading your book. I currently live in a nursing home and the way you wrote it, it felt like you had been in my room with me! In fact, some of my aides were reading it and we took turns reading it together. I wish there were more books written like yours. Do you know of any? It sure helped passed the time away!”

The Wireless

I did three live radio interviews last month. Hit the prime time on Sunday morning: 1:00 am until 2:00 am. Who’s up then? People driving home after a night on the town, insomniacs, speed freaks, shift workers? Well, it could be anyone. Pat Thurston was a great host. She was informed and enthusiastic about Bedlam. It was fun. The hour flew by.

The other two hosts—Liz St. John and Jeff Schechtman were just as engaged and engaging. They take the art of chatting to the max and convey the intimacy of a two-way conversation to an audience of unknowns. They directed the interview to both the social aspects of Bedlam—where will we spend the latter part of our lives, who will make decisions for us, what are our options?—and to the actual writing. What’s my routine, how did Cora Sledge take shape in my mind, who is my intended audience?

Reminded me again of the great reach and potential of radio.

Dog Daze

Love dogs? Love coffee? Love books?

If you answer yes to at least one of these questions, check out Coffee with a Canine. The latest post features my own wonder dog Leyla.

Archives are categorized by breed so you can browse your favorites.

Follow Yours

Breaking Out of Bedlam got a five-star review in Instinct Magazine. What’s Instinct? I’d never heard of it, but the sizzling Brazilian he-man wearing nothing but a tiny bikini on the cover suggested a readership of either hungry cougars or boys of a certain persuasion. The sheerness of the briefs and what they revealed made me suspect the latter. Sure enough, inside the magazine were grooming tips, info about hip vacation spots, and plenty of celebrity gossip…for men.

I didn’t think a magazine like Instinct would review my book, much less give it five stars, much less call it “A fun—and inspiring—read that proves you’re never too old to really start living.” Wow. I had assumed that gay men would not be a targeted audience for a novel about an 82-year-old, 300 pound woman forced to live in an elder care facility. The book does have a gay character, a medical tech who’s in love with someone half his age and who befriends my protagonist. Naturally he’s done dirty, just like the heroine.

Which just goes to show you that alliances crop up in unexpected places. As the tag line on the cover of Instinct instructs, Follow Yours.

Oops, I forgot to blog. Again.

Nothing like a whacked-out back to make you turn to things you otherwise wouldn’t. Was it the 40 lb bags of Kirkland dog food? Over-zealous vacuuming? (Forgot to do that, too—for two weeks.) Or spending too much time cross-legged in my desk chair? Probably a combination. It’s depressing but a little nice to enjoy painkillers while wallowing in bed surrounded by coffee, the newspaper, books, the phone, pens, half-finished meals, and the cat.

Breaking Out of Bedlam will be on bookshelves next week. Advance copies, three boxes of them, are sitting in my living room. I have four readings, two workshops, and two radio interviews lined up in the next month. I had an anxiety dream that I had to lecture on cotton while crouching on all fours, and another that the 747 that was supposed to fly me to my reading decided to take the freeway instead of the sky.

It’s time to dream about movie deals, glowing NYT reviews, and of course Oprah. (Every writer dreams about Oprah, even the ones who deny it. Especially the ones who deny it.) Dollars signs in the eyeballs. Fantasies of home improvements, enhanced wardrobe, lavish vacations. Really, though, I’ll be happy if there are a minimum of five people at each reading, my Amazon numbers stay out of the seven figures, and no one rips me a new one in print. It's asking a lot, but it doesn't hurt to hope.

What’s on my desk?

Though I didn’t realize it until this inventory, most of the things on my desk are talisman that I hope will lend me their magical powers while I write. I try to cover all my bases with a variety of charms.

I’ll skip all the usual stuff—pens, paperclips, books. Here’s my list:

Photo of my dad. His wristwatch.

He’s very happy in the photo because he’s catching a fish. A big one. The watch has a black face and a black leather strap. It’s very worn. He used to take it off and let me wear it when I was a kid, but only for a minute. He died recently. I ask him to send help from the other side.

Deck of cards

Solitaire is a great way to waste time and to tap into your unconscious simultaneously.

Evil Eye begone (not pictured)
Obvious reasons

Toothpick holder with a different swimsuit-clad Mexican movie star on each side

My girlfriend Carla gave it to me. She included a photo of herself, poolside. Before I stopped smoking many moons ago, I toked constantly while I was writing. Now when the going gets tough, a toothpick is a good substitute.

Bar coasters, lots of them

For all the water and the many cups of tea and coffee. Plus they’re good to wing across the room when I’m frustrated. My favorites are Lagunitas (dog’s head), Aziza (light blue circle) and the Kona Club (mermaid in a martini glass).

Candle (not pictured)

Code Blue help for the worst writing crises

A clay stashbox

I made it in Art class in the 11th grade. It was San Diego in the 1970s. Almost everyone in the class made a stashbox. The ones who didn’t made ashtrays.

My dog Leyla as a puppy

The adult version is usually sprawled on the floor beside me. If I’m really stuck, I lie down beside her. Her animal energy pushes my reset button.

Various stones, shells, bits of glass, and plant debris
For creative energy and inspiration. I don’t dust them as often as I should.

Chapstick

I’m addicted

That’s me. How about you? I’d love to know…

Crystal Persuasion

I didn’t know much about crystals and their powers when I began Breaking Out of Bedlam, but I wanted my protagonist, Cora Sledge, to have—and lose—a powerful talisman from her past. Because stones and rocks play an important part in the novel, I chose a crystal.

While researching the Cora’s stone, I became absorbed with the folklore surrounding the crystals found in parts of Arkansas. Locals believe in their power, and many of them carry them around in their pockets. You can pay a $10 fee and spend the whole day in a hot dirt field digging crystals and filling as many buckets as you can. Each stone has unique characteristics that are described with intriguing words like keys, ladders, wands, fairy frost, etc. I had a lot of fun describing Cora’s rock and what she sees in it. I came to feel its power in the story, the way she drew comfort and strength from it and why she was thrown out of whack when it disappeared.

I talked to a woman who was sick from the chemo and radiation treatments she’d received for cancer. She was very ill when she began wading in a lake near the place she was living in Arkansas. Locals told her there was quartz under the lake and that Native Americans, as well as more recent inhabitants, believed in its healing properties. She gradually got better until she could write, paint, and live again. She became obsessed with the crystals, began digging them herself, and now sells them over the internet, placing each one (whose energy she intuits and describes) up for “adoption.”

I explained why I needed a crystal and she picked one for me—a pointed one called a hand-holder because it fits exactly into your closed hand. When I wanted to know how Cora drew comfort from it, I held it to my face like she did. The climactic scene where she finds her stolen rock signals the recovery her essential self, of the person she was before life intervened.

Here’s an excerpt from Breaking Out of Bedlam, where Cora talks about her crystal:


This rock came from my great aunt Alpha, who dug it herself in the Ouachita Mountains down there in Arkansas, where my daddy’s family’s from. They’re known for their crystals, some of the most beautiful in the world. People around there wear them, or carry them in their pockets. Say they’re sacred, with magical powers for healing, and for seeing into the past and the future.
Aunt Alpha, she used them rocks for scrying, or what you’d call fortune-telling. People came from all over to ask her advice or to talk with people who’d passed on. She had a room at the back of her house where she lit candles, burned some kind of smelly brush, and looked into those crystals to make contact with the other world. She smoked a corncob pipe and kept a thousand cats. Us kids were scared to death of her.
My crystal is what you call a hand holder because it fits right in your palm. It’s quartz, like a big lump of ice. One end is pointed and as clear as water. The other end, where it broke off from the ground, is frosty. It’s called phantom crystal because of the shapes inside it—pictures like the mountains it came from, a waterfall, and a fish. There’s a face with a beard and a broke-off branch. The more you stare into it, the more you see. Pretty soon you yourself are inside the rock, walking between icy cliffs, with that fairy frost swirling around you. Up toward the point, my crystal has two bubbles of water locked in it, like they’re dancing with each other, floating to the top. That water’s been in there forever. Millions of years.
My daddy gave me that crystal when I was seventeen years old, a few months before I married Abel. That was one of the blackest periods of my life. I was desperate, let’s just say that. Young as I was, I was backed into a corner I couldn’t see my way out of. It’s one of those things I never talked about. Too much pain, and too much torment. But that rock. He gave it to me as something hard, something to hold on to.
I like to hold it against my cheek or neck, or sometimes my forehead. If you’re hot or have a fever, it feels like a big chunk of ice. If you’re cold, it’s like a hot water bottle. I feel the life inside it, and the place it comes from, the place where I grew up, the rivers and lakes, and the springs bubbling up through the rocks. This far from home, way out here by this ocean that I never even saw ‘til I was all grown up, I remember the smells of my family and how my ma’s hands felt when she pulled the comforter up under my chin at night.
Sometimes when I stare into it I see the faces of men I might have married, children I might have had, or houses I might have lived in. I see storms moving in and the sun coming out. Lightning strikes, hoot owls, and car wrecks. I don’t have Aunt Alpha’s gift, but I’ve asked the crystal what’s going to become of me. Or I try to ask those that’s passed over to the other side what it’s like. If they’re happy and what’s in store for me. I hold the rock against my temple and ask the dead ones, my mother and father, to protect me. To use what they’ve learned to guide me and keep me safe.
Your rock Abel called it, and that’s what it is. He’d bring it out of the china cabinet to show people when they came to call. He drove me crazy. He kept a bone he’d found while he was digging out the backyard. Just a chicken bone as far as I could see, but that man acted like it fell out of King Tut’s tomb. He always had to show people something, even if it meant running out in the yard and pulling an orange off the tree.

I couldn’t help but tease him about the shapes inside. “You don’t see that elephant standing there by the circus tent?” I asked, and he’d stare into that thing ‘til his eyes bugged out. “And them fields with the cows grazing near a windmill?”
I swear, that man had the imagination of a newt. “Oh, yeah. There it is! I can make it out now!” he might say. He looked real hurt when I snorted and shook my head. Poor old bastard. He must have gone fishing the day they handed out brains.