So, what's your book about?

The picture you're looking at is a picture of the complete first draft of my first novel. It's in need of some serious editing, as any first draft should be, but it's done. I actually managed to put all the action that's been going on in my head onto paper.

I know you're probably thinking, 'Wow, big deal. We all write books. Hell those NaNoWriMo people do it in a month." And maybe you're right. But, have been working on this book off and on since shortly after I married my husband. In the time that it's taken me to get this plot out of my head I have;

• had two babies
• changed jobs three times
• been laid off TWICE (1 company went out of business, 1 eliminated my department)
• bought a house
• started a small business
• survived postpartum depression
• wrote and self-pubbed two short ebooks
• and beat myself up about eighty gazillion times for not finishing the book sooner

It finally took my younger child going to school to give me enough hours in the day to actually move the needle on this thing more than a millimeter at a time.  Once I was able to treat it like a job, albeit a part time one, it only took me a little over a month to fill in the blanks on this outline I've been toting around for the last year or so. And now, I've finally done it. Now my head is filled with visions of possible covers and book trailers and marketing plans.

"So, what's your book about?"

I confess I am frequently flummoxed by this question. Seeing as I've lived with these characters in my head for over a decade, I really should be able to sum it up easily. But if I say what the whole series is about, then I'd give away some major spoilers. If I say what inspired it, that would probably just be confusing to people who aren't Scotia-phile  genealogy folklore and politics nerds like me. That would also totally skip over the spiritual aspects of the journey that the main character is on. If I described it from that purely academic standpoint, you would never get that at it's heart it's a romance but not the kind that most people think of when they hear romance. There's a mystery, but it's not a mystery. There's paranormal stuff and some romance, but it's not a paranormal romance (No vampires or werewolves. I promise). There's danger, but I don't know that I'd call it a thriller. There's a love story...sort of.

Clearly, if I'm ever going to market this thing, I'm going to have to get a lot better at the 30 second elevator speech. I'm hoping that the editing/rewriting process will help clarify things. And I might want to settle on a title.

In the meantime, you can find some excerpts here.

October Reading List

I LOVE October. The weather gets cool enough to make our cheeks rosy. The leaves start turning. Harvest/Celtic/Fiber festivals happen every weekend, and it all leads up to Halloween.  As t

he weather starts getting colder, it's the perfect time to wrap yourself up in a blanket with a mug of warm apple cider and read a scary book. I know the horror genre often gets labeled as pulp and not worthy of literary notice, but I think there is no social commentary quite like talking about what terrifies us. With that said here is my October reading list.

 FICTION

The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson

One of my twitter people the other day asked twitter what the scariest books we've ever read were. Then on another forum today, someone asked what is the first "grown up" book posters ever read. I realized after a few minutes thinking that for me, these are in fact the same book.  You've may have seen the 1963 film, The Haunting, with Julie Harris or the more recent 1999 remake, but these movies have nothing on the book. Shirley Jackson was already known for terrifying short stories like "The Lottery" when she this book was published in 1959, but there is nothing more terrifying to me as the mind of Eleanor Vance and the tricks it plays on her.  The most incredible part of this story is that although she has some special abilities (I won't name them), there is something very human and familiar about Eleanor. She's that small, lonely, insecure part of each of us that we try to keep on the inside, and this book is what happens when that part gets stirred up and let loose.

The Mist - Stephen King

You hunker down at home as a thunderstorm rolls in. When it's over your little town is enveloped in a soupy, opaque mist that is filled with man eating monsters that scoop up your neighbors. Your job is to keep your son safe.  Need I say more? Sure plenty of other readers would pick different scary Stephen King books like The Shining or Pet Sematary, but as a mom the idea of trying to herd my children through this kind of situation is terrifying. King is such a pro at creating terror with what you don't see, and this book is a prime example of that.

House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski

I picked this book up after hearing a reviewer on NPR describe it at as "James Joyce and Stephen King meet at midnight in a clearing in the woods". Add to that the partial setting of a historic house in the Virginia countryside, and I was sold. I was not disappointed. In fact, my husband couldn't even wait for me to finish this book before he went out and bought his own copy. It's a labyrinth of psychological terror that is just too vivid and too good to be missed.  Don't skim, every word is worth it.  You might want to have extra bookmarks and post-its handy.

NON-FICTION

The Devil's Tramping Ground (and Other North Carolina Mystery Stories) - John Harden

As a Tarheel (in the diaspora) and a student of folklore, this book is right up my alley. The Devil's Tramping Ground is a round path in clearing in western Chatham County where nothing grows. Anything left laying across the path at night is found moved to the side in the morning. Legend has it that the Devil walks this path nightly pondering what mischief he will do. In addition to this legend, this book had other stories like ghost ships in the Outer Banks, the Brown Mountain Lights, and Theodosia Burr who may yet get a short story in Of Sound and Sea. Last but certainly not least the Disappearance of Peter Dromgoole who's story is mentioned in my novel in progress. You can see that the folklore of North Carolina has strongly influence what I write and some of it's just plain creepy.

The Ghosts of Fredericksburg...and nearby environs - L. B. Taylor

L. B. Taylor has made a career out of collecting and recounting stories of the paranormal from all over Virginia. If you like folklore and ghost stories I recommend any of his books. This one I find the most interesting and a little chilling because the stories come from my home town. There's a story about the church we attended when I was a child, another about the house across the street from my first apartment, and from local highlights like Kenmore, the Rising Sun Tavern, and Chatham. An area filled with as much history and war as Fredericksburg is bound to be loaded with stories and Taylor finds plenty. If you're interested in other parts of Virginia, Taylor also has books about Richmond, Williamsburg and multiple volumes of stories from all over the state.

In Search of Dracula - Raymond T. McNally & Radu Florescu

What would an October reading list be without at least one vampire book? Funny thing about vampires is that as fiction they're sexy and romantic and compelling, but when you look at the historical roots of our modern fictional vampires the reality is more terrifying and gory than any fiction. In this book two historians go in search of the historical Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, and how the history of a Wallachian Prince struggling to hold onto power in his country evolved into the a legend of terror and cannibalism.  It truly fascinating stuff.

The Shape of Fear - Susan J. Navarette

Speaking of exploring horror fiction as social commentary, Susan Navarette does that very thing with an eye toward the late nineteenth century. I was lucky enough to take Dr. Navarette's class when I was in college and our examination of Dracula was nothing short of mind blowing. No one analyzes literature quite as completely as she does. I can't recommend her work strongly enough. If you're lucky enough to be a student at Hartwick College, you'd be crazy not to take her class.

50 Shades of Ech!

Over the summer like many moms, I read the entire 50 Shades Trilogy. Yes, all three books because, a) I’m a sucker for a series and b) I love writers and always want to give them a chance to redeem themselves. Sadly, I don’t feel like E. L. James or her characters redeemed themselves by the end of these books. In true Film Sack style, (I think there should be a similar BookSack podcast.) here’s my twitter post (spoiler alert):

Insecure virgin college student w/ a burgeoning eating disorder is stalked by emotionally stunted billionaire w/ serious Oedipus issues.

Whew! 4 character to spare;)

Despite appearances, this is NOT a book review. I’m not going to comment on the level of writing or storytelling skills of Ms. James nor am I going to sneer jealously at their obvious marketability. I’m not going to criticize the (contrary to all the hype) rather tame sex in the book. I’m not even going to talk about how absolutely toxic and abusive the relationship between Ana and Christian is or how I hate the depiction of BDSM as only being attractive to people with emotional problems. Other bloggers have thoroughly covered that. Jennifer Armintrout’s blog on the subject is a tour de force.

No, the thing that bugs me the most about these books is all the women my age (the back half of my 30’s) creaming their collective panties over Christian Grey, a man who’s only redeeming quality appears to be his looks. I don’t consider his money a redeeming quality because it enables him to aggressively stalk his prey, namely innocent brown haired girls who remind him of mommy. Even his victim/lover Ana refers to him in the later books as being “stuck in adolescence” as if he’s perpetually 15 years old. And that’s just the thing that bugs me about this whole series. If you take out the sex, the emotions in these books would be better suited for a high school classroom than the corporate boardroom where Christian Grey is supposed to rule. Christian isn’t the only one who’s stuck in adolescence.  Ana is pretty immature herself. Granted she’s younger, but she’s supposed to be a college graduate. We’re incessantly reminded in the first book of her impressive GPA. Now, I’ll be the first to admit I was still immature when I graduated from college, but I was capable of feeding myself and conducting an interview without stepping on my own tongue. Most of all, I was capable of saying NO or ENOUGH when I knew a situation was unhealthy.

Make no mistake, minus the sex this is a Young Adult book. It’s no surprise at all that this started out as Twilight fan fiction. It’s loaded down with all the lip-biting angst and blushing insecurities of any teenage romance. The trouble is: IT’S NOT ABOUT TEENAGERS! That is precisely what gives me the creeps. I understand a little of the nostalgia that leads grown women to read and enjoy books about the first blush of teenage love, and sometimes that’s okay. Hey, I read the Twilight books and I didn’t hate them. But at some point, you do have to grow up, and just because a guy takes charge in the bedroom buys the company where you work and gives you a car, that doesn’t make him a MAN. What does it say about them that grown women are getting all hot and bothered over a guy that behaves like 15 year old? What does their fascination with a character like Christian Grey say about the actual men in their lives?

I’m all for getting young adults to read more and I’m all for parents knowing what their kids are reading. What bugs me is grownups getting fangirl crazy over these books. The issue is much broader than this particular series. The Young Adult Romance sub-genre has exploded since the Twilight books came out and a good bit of their popularity can be attributed to grown women devouring them like so many skinny lattes.  Yes, they can be entertaining, but the emotions, like teenage emotions, are overwrought and the characters are frequently sterotypes especially the male characters. And I have yet to read a young adult book with a female protagonist that didn’t make me want to throw my ereader across the room because of her sheer obtuseness. So to hear grown-ass women going all weak-kneed for characters that they wouldn’t want their daughters within a mile of just gives me chills. Oh, I know there are moms out there who still behave like teenagers. I even know a grandmother or two that still behave that way. But are those the kind of adults we really want to be? Sure, it’s fun to remember being young and falling in love for the first time, but there’s really only one first time and eventually you DO have to grow up.

If you are grown up and want to read Erotic Romance, have at it. There are plenty of erotic books about real adult people who act like adults. There are even some steamy BDSM books out there about emotionally healthy people who engage in what E. L. James only hints at in her books. I guess what I’m saying is, it’s fine for adults to read erotic books but it’s downright creepy to read an erotic book about perpetual fifteen year olds. Erotic books have their place, and Young Adult books have their place, but Young Adult Erotica? Yech! So, gals, let’s leave adolescence to the adolescents...Please.

Yawn and stretch...

"Bye Sweeties, have a good day." The kids jump out of the side door of the minivan and the door slides closed. I smile and wave to the school staff and take one last look at T and see her trotting into the school all skinny legs and backpack. K is already halfway to the building. Third graders are just too busy and too cool to hang around with their little sisters. As I pull out of the school parking lot I breathe a deep sigh. It's the third day of school and I'm starting to relax a bit from the frenzy of getting all their supplies taken care of and their clothes cleaned and ready to go, all the anxiety of whether or not they'll like their teachers or have friends in their classes. We've already survived our first night of ADHD homework. T is adjusting to kindergarten and I think after she finishes testing the boundaries with her new teacher, everything is going to be fine.

So, I turn my steering wheel northward to town to spend some time with the characters in my book who have been sorely neglected over the past couple of months. I look forward with relish to the new change in my lifestyle now that both of the kids are in school all day, five days a week. Previously, I had to content myself with writing for a maximum of nine hours a week plus the rare exception when my husband worked from home and sent me off to write. These were the few hours while T was at her half day preschool. I would head to a cafe and try to produce as much as I could in the space of three hours before having to stop and pick her up. If I were writing non-fiction or a how-to book, I probably could have gotten some writing done at home, but it's hard to write a novel when little voices keep intruding to ask for snacks or juice or to inform me of what transgressions the other has committed. My children are wonderful and gifted and I could not love them more, but they are also extremely talkative. K is an auditory learner which means that to encode what he's learning into memory, he has to say it. T is sassy and independent and while she's not an auditory learner she is a talker.  So it  feels like it's been at least four years since I've completed a thought in their presence, and with the exception of those 9 hours a week while T was in preschool.

Now, I have a blessed eight hours, five days a week to myself and oh the things I'm going to do. My head is brimming with plans to thoroughly clean the house, get everything organized like a pinterest pic. I'm going to spend hours every day working to finally finish this book. I'll finally get John Campbell that feedback on his new project that he's been waiting for so patiently and start reading other projects on authonomy. I'll put together a marketing plan and really stick to it. I'll make audio versions of my The White House and A Fond Kiss. I'll get started on those book trailers for the novel. I'll once again be as efficient and productive as I was in my corporate days. I can just see it. So, I drive all the way to town with the taste of freedom in my mouth.

When I get to my favorite writing spot, I manage to snag my favorite booth in the quiet section at the back where people sit alone working on their laptops, not up front where groups like to chat and have meetings. I get a cup of dark roast coffee because only people who just pretend to like coffee drink anything else. I fold some junk papers that I dig out of my purse and stick them under the table's wobbly leg, because nothing is going to ruin this glorious return to work after my summer funk. It's not until I sit down and pair my Bluetooth keyboard with my iPad and open up the file for the chapter I'm working on that I realize I've left my headphones at home. Now, instead of my character's own soundtrack or my thought clarifying Chopin, I'm supposed to write to the cheesy cafe music and the buzz of half a dozen conversations going on within twenty feet of me. She's heartbroken at this point in the story and I just don't know that I can get into that head space with the musical equivalent of C-SPAN and overheard conversations from neighboring tables about what their children's Sunday School classes did last week in my ears. I try, I really do. Still after an hour, all I have to show for it is one paragraph that I'm not entirely happy with.

Clearly, writing is not going to work today. I'll edit that last chapter I wrote, that'll help. I read into my bag only to discover that I have also left my little bag of post-its, colored pens and highlighters at home and every pen I have with me is black. Nice. Not ideal for editing. Finally, I pull out my little notebook that I like to use as a sort of journal, something I write in when my thoughts are as unfocused as they are this morning. I have to content myself with this. Sure, it's not the project I wanted to work on, but it's better than nothing. Right? As usual, I'm mentally kicking myself probably harder than I should for not being prepared.

Now that I'm home, I'm putting together a work bag so that next time I'll have all of those tools together and won't have another morning like today: Copy of manuscript & outline, markup tools bag, extra set of headphones, and an extra dose of patience with myself.

Just a little taste...

Summer is hard for me as a writer because my kids are home and there is much shuttling, feeding and referee-ing that goes on. While I do have a share of down time, it's super hard to get into that writing mindset when there is someone in the next room who any minute is going to need a snack or a mediation. On the upside, I'm almost caught up on laundry and am actually enjoying spending time with my little ones. With that said, I'm posting a short excerpt from my WIP for your perusal, feedback, titillation...

***

"This is Sarah MacAlpin interviewing Alex Budge, October 12th 1995. Also present, Randy Budge and Dermot Sinclair." Sarah said into the microphone before setting it down on the little table facing Budge. They had returned to their original seats on the porch each with a jelly glass of Budge's best stump water to sip while they talked.

"Simon Budge was my grandaddy." Budge said with great significance looking directly at Sarah. "And he did teach me that song you're talking about. But I'm not much of a singer, so I'll tell ya the story he tolt with it."

"Alright." Sarah would keep her talking to a minimum as long as Budge kept going.

"My people come from Scotland back in the colonial times, and they been passing this story down all that time. I can't say how much it's changed, but here 'tis as I learnt it." He leaned back took a deep breath as if he were gettting ready to sing after all. When he spoke again his voice had a far away quality as if he was in a dream.

"Long ago when Scotland was just a wild place with different tribes running their own territories, a family came over from Ireland and made to take over the place. They wanted control of the land. Now, some say they were more civilized than the tribes that were there before, but I don't know that that's true. They say that these fellers tried to get the tribes to all work together, but the old folk, that's what my grandad called the old tribes, they weren't havin' it. They fought over everything and some of 'em made friends with the new tribe and some of 'em resisted. The new people maybe didn't mean any harm, they just thought their ways were better, and they couldn't get why some of the old folk didn't want to change.

So one day the king o' the new folk goes out wandering to think. He's trying to figure out how he can get everybody to come over to his side and get along. So he gets tired and he stops by a riverbank. While he settin' there, up swims this girl. Now, she's about the prettiest thing the king's ever seen and she's wavin' to 'im, 'Come on in, the water's fine'." Budge gave a beckoning wave.

"So he goes in for a swim. Only this girl is so pretty he doesn't pay attention and they drift downstream to an island. Now, the king thinks they're lost, but she says it's her home and he should come and meet her family.

So, she takes the king to meet her father, but her pa is old and sickly and lame. The king starts to wondering who's gonna take care of this girl and her people when her pa dies. He thinks they've got to be pretty poor if they're just living on this island and he's never even heard of her tribe before. But then she takes him over to the hearth and shows him their cookpot. It's a big ole iron kettle and every time he sees someone go to the kettle and put in a bowl or a ladle, it comes up full of food. He keeps watching and thinking that kettle's got to be empty, but they still keep comin' up with food, and they're not even scraping the bottom.

Then she takes him and shows him a cave that's hidden under a hill, and in that cave is a big stone.   And she tells him, 'This is the heart of our people.' Only he's got a different heart in mind. Remember, she's the prettiest girl he's every laid eyes on. So, he kisses her right there in the cave and tells her that he loves her and wants to protect her when her father dies.

Now, just when that happens, a big storm like a hurricane comes up and hits the island.

When the king wakes up he and the girl aren't in the cave anymore, but on shore. And the island is gone. But they find that big iron cookpot on the beach too. So he takes her back with him and makes her his queen. They work to bring the tribes together. The old folk see that she's with him and she's one of them. And they see that he's got this cookpot that never runs out, and they start coming over to his side.

It goes slow, but by the time their son becomes king, all the tribes have come together and since his mother taught him the old ways and his father taught him the new way, he was a good king."

It seemed important to Budge that she understand that the king was good. Sarah nodded. "Did your grandad ever tell you any names for this king or the queen?"

Budge took a sip of moonshine from his glass and shook his head. He blew out a breath     so thick with fumes that Sarah had to blink fast to keep her eyes from watering. "No. He never said names. He did say that the queen's people were older than names. Old as the stone, he used to say."

It was an expression that Sarah had heard before, one that Granny had used. "Do you know where in Scotland your people came from?"

"Can't say I do." Budge shifted in his chair and took another sip of moonshine. "That museum in Franklin says the Budges are Lowlanders. Way I figure it, we been here so long it doesn't much matter."

It mattered to Sarah though. It could help her trace the source of the song. She tried not to show her frustration. She glanced over her shoulder at Randy. He was leaning against the post gazing out at the mountain. Turning back to Budge, "Did you teach that story to your grandchildren?"

"Aw most of em don't have time for an old man and his old stories. 'Cept for Randy over there. He likes learning the old ways." He gave her a wink and a devilish grin, "And you have a lotta time for tellin' stories while you're mindin' a still."

She smiled back at him. That was a fact she knew all too well. She'd learned many a song by the ever present beat of a thumper tank. She was glad she had found Alex Budge. Even if he hadn't known the legend behind the song, she'd have been happy to know him. She laid her hand over his knarled work-worn one where it rested by his glass on the table. "Thank you for talking with me. I appreciate your help."

He turned his hand over to grasp hers his face serious. "I'm glad you could record it. You'll make sure people remember."

She gave his hand one last squeeze before switching off the recorder and beginning to gather her equipment. Dermot pushed himself up off of the top step to help her. Sarah looked over to where he'd been sitting and noticed that his jelly glass was empty. She hadn't taken more than a couple of polite sips.  There hadn't been much in the glass but it was strong. Fortunately Dermot seemed pretty steady.

Sarah was just stepping down from the porch, Dermot by her side when a thought occurred to her. "Hey, Budge?"

"Mmm?" He had been looking into his jelly glass in deep concentration.

"You know a man they call Old Duff?" She realized that she missed the old man, and felt guilty for not having done more to keep track of him.

Budge let out a hearty belly laugh and slapped his knee. "Shoot, girl! Everybody in the hills knows Grant MacDuff! He comes round this way at least twice a year."

Sarah couldn't help smiling back at the man with his dirty worn clothes and missing teeth, and his jelly glass full of stump water. He and Duff and Granny were why she did what she did. Their beauty and their humanity hit her so hard sometimes it took the breath right out of her chest. They were people who lived and died in these hollers and without someone like her their culture would die in these hollers too. "Well, next time he passes this way, you tell him I was here."  She felt tears pricking the backs of her eyes.  and tried to swallow past the lump in her throat. "Tell him I remember everything he taught me."

The old man gave her a solemn nod. He knew what it meant to her. Sarah started to turn away again, but his voice stopped her. "Wait! You never did tell me the secret to your Granny's peach brandy."

Sarah gave him a knowing smile before walking back up the porch steps. Slowly, She leaned over Budge's chair and planted a kiss on his weathered cheek before whispering Granny's secret in his ear.

Budge looked at her closely as if he could verify the truth of what she said in her eyes. After a couple of seconds he burst into gusty laughter accompanied by more knee slapping. "Ha! I knew it! I just knew it!"

Sarah and Dermot climbed into Randy's truck for a ride back down to their car. When they pulled away from the house they could still hear the old man's cackling laugh.

Remembering two icons

Although I grew up in Virginia, I am the child of Tarheels, and we always knew who our fellow Tarheels in the world were. I knew that James Taylor spent a good chunk of his childhood in Chapel Hill. "Carolina In My Mind" was a song that I learned at a very young age. I knew that Charlie Rose, David Brinkley and Jim Lampley (Class of '71, same as Mom) were all Tarheels. My father was in New Orleans in 1982 when James Worthy and Michael Jordan et al took the Heels to the National Championship, and I was on Franklin Street enjoying the bonfire in 1993 when we did it again. There have been many iconic Tarheels since the founding of the Old North State, but today I have to talk about two that have touched me the most and have shown the best of us to the world. They are Andy Griffith and Charles Kuralt. My appreciation for these men and their work probably makes me seem older than I am, but they are a part of the North Carolina that I knew growing up, and they both shared a skill at telling stories that speaks to the heart of a story loving Tarheel like me. 

I mentioned that I grew up in Virginia, but every summer for at least 2 weeks my brother and I were packed off to our grandparents house in Wake Forest, NC. Not to be confused with Wake Forest University, I mean the town of Wake Forest which is just north of Raleigh and when we were kids was little more than a stop on US Rt. 1. It's a very different town now, but back then it was a world apart from the Washington D.C. ex-urb where we lived. At Granny's we had air conditioning in only one room of our nearly 100 year old house. It was a town of shaded avenues and old homes, homemade peach ice cream and sweet tea and late night drag racing down Main Street. We even had our own fishing hole at my Aunt Ruth and Uncle Joe's house where we learned to fish with bamboo fishing poles. In short, it was a lot like Mayberry which wasn't always fun for us cosmopolitan Northern Virginia kids.

But every afternoon at 4:00 on the local UHF channel, there was The Andy Griffith Show. I rarely missed it. It helped me appreciate the simple goodness of where I was. It was a small town world free of fast food chains and smart phones and Starbucks, and in the 1980's it was a world that was fast disappearing. But the Andy Griffith show reminded us of the best of that world. Every little town in America had it's Floyd's Barber Shop, and it's fishing hole and soda fountain\drug store. It was a simple way of life that allowed the show's writers to distill things down to what's important. Even when the people of Mayberry got a little crazy and even if he got a little out of his depth, Sheriff Andy Taylor would always work his way around to the right solution with a patience and kindness that is sadly missing in much of the world today. Griffith used his incredible storytelling ability to create Mayberry and its people out of the the rural North Carolina where he grew up, but it could have easily been a small town anywhere in America.

I'm sure some folks will remind me that it was almost exclusively a white world on the Andy Griffith Show, and you're right. But we are talking about the 1960's here, and much of the South was still segregated. Although The Andy Griffith Show shied away from the racial issues of the day, it did however address many issues of the human condition and it showed a humanity in all its characters that is worthy of attention.  Andy Griffith showed similar grace in the rest of his career and life. One of my favorite roles of his is the cantakerous diner owner with the heart of gold in the film Waitress. He was curmudgeonly but sweet, much like a favorite great uncle. In fact, for many of us Tarheels he always sort of felt like a favorite uncle and I know I can speak for a lot of them when I say I'm so glad that we have his vast body of work to remember him.

I've been trying all day to sum up how I feel about his passing, but honestly it's been hard. I don't think I could say it better than my old  friend David Robinson.

Dear Andy Griffith,  Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Your passing saddens me. You are my favorite television childhood memory. Strangely enough, withstanding my own fallible nature, you are part of what has made me a man. Your character in the Andy Griffith Show should be used as an example of what a man should truly be. With authority comes responsibility and that power should not be used without wisdom and intellectualism. Gentle but firm, righteousness without indignation, understanding without escalation.  You are my secret Mr. McBeevee and the silver dollar you've placed behind my ear are the values and lessons taught to me through your show.  No doubt there is special place for you in the heavens; you deserve no less. Good night, Paw. We will miss you. 

Another Tarheel who held up a mirror to America was Charles Kuralt, who died fifteen years ago tomorrow.  It seemed so fitting to me that the man who spent much of his career highlighting the best of the American individual passed away on the Fourth of July. From "Charles Kuralt's People" at the Charlotte Observer to his "On the Road" segments at CBS to his books, Kuralt brought attention to average or even forgotten people of America doing great, amazing or sometimes just crazy things. There was Levi Fischer Amish postmaster, Billy Bird Steam Train Engineer, and Joseph Charles cheerful waver. All of them ordinary American people doing extraordinary or  even simple things with passion. Without Kuralt to tell their stories, we probably never would have known about most of these people. But Kuralt had a knack for recognizing the sublime in these hidden people and bringing us their stories with a generosity of spirit that I think few journalists today can afford. He showed us that even those who seem the most ordinary among us have stories worth telling.

Whatever your feelings might be about Charles Kuralt and Andy Griffith as men, their work stands up as love letters to the American people; not people waving flags and singing jingoistic country songs on the Fourth of July, but real people going about their business making the most of the freedoms we have. These two great storytellers did what great storytellers do. They held up mirrors to our society and showed us our own beautiful humanity. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you.

My love letter to a hunk of rust

I had planned to write a blog post about "Reminder" #2 from Strunk & White's An Approach to Style in which they say to "Write in a way that comes naturally." But I've got something else on my mind that would likely make my approach to that topic forced and unnatural. It's been weighing on my mind since I saw it yesterday morning, and I just have to vent about it. My Instagram followers (I'm "mrstoddard". Feel free to follow) are by now familiar with my love of crumbling, dilapidated, abandoned things. There is just something so evocative to me about an abandoned house or car that makes me want to speculate on why it's in such a state and who lived there or used it in its prime. These sort of daydreams are why as a child I loved long road trips and never minded just sitting in the back seat and watching the world through the window. I still love that.

One of the few things to love about where I live now is that it is rural and crisscrossed with narrow back roads that have been here much longer than the few highways that cut through the county. I would much rather take these back roads or even the near-mythical US Rt 1 to get where I'm going than get on I-95 and hurtle north or south at seventy plus miles an hour seeing nothing but trees and bridges.

So, my Instagram feed and my hard drive at home are full of pictures of the things I've seen on my back road rambles. There are houses being reclaimed by forests, abandoned furniture, bridges that no one uses anymore, and chimneys without houses attached. It was on one of these rambles that I came across Michaels Rd. This road is just barely two lanes wide and winds itself through tree farms and rolling hills. It goes from having a full canopy of trees to more open areas populated by a mix of well-cared-for homes and houses that have seen better days. For a nature/decay hound like me, it's paradise.

About halfway between the tree farm and where Michaels Rd runs into the slightly wider Bath Rd is a section of road about 100 yards long that is so full of delicious decay that I have on occasion pulled over and walked around taking pictures. There is an abandoned garage with a truck and farm equipment under a lean-to. Just past the garage is an abandoned bus parked neatly next to a stand of trees that shade it from view unless you know what you're looking for. There is also a rusting abandoned trailer barely visible that looks so plain and narrow that even in its heyday must have been a dismal place to live. On the opposite shoulder about thirty feet away sits an abandoned armchair. It's nothing special, a contemporary style wide cushiony chair with soft arms. If I saw it in the lobby of hotel, I would probably think it was outdated, but comfortable. Except it's not in the lobby of a hotel, it's in the grass by the roadside, so it's upholstery is stained with mildew and the filth that comes off people's cars or creeps up from the ground.

Just past the chair surrounded by high grass, is an abandoned car so close to the trees that it looks as if whoever parked it there had hoped that it would go unnoticed. The first time I drove by it, it reminded me so much of my granddad's '79 Nova that I had to stop and snap a picture. It was on a later trip that I came back with no children and got out to walk over to the car for a closer look. That was when I saw it. Downhill where the ground fell away from the shoulder surrounded by pine trees and high weeds was a car. I have no idea what kind of car it is I'm sure some car person reading this can probably identify it, but it's one of the those beautiful art deco style cars from the late 1940's with the smooth sweeping lines. The doors were gone and the trunk was askew, but beyond that it appeared to be intact. It wasn't wrecked or on blocks or hidden under a tarp or lean-to.    To my daydreamer's eye, it almost looked as if someone as enchanted with the countryside as I am had just pulled off the road to enjoy a few quiet moments under the pines and left it there.

My mind immediately began creating scenarios to explain this beautiful car in the woods. First, it was just that someone had pulled into the trees to enjoy their beauty. Maybe they had gotten out and walked through the woods. That area is full of wetlands and black bears. Perhaps the car's owner had wandered off and gotten mired in a swamp or attacked by a bear. On a more romantic note, maybe the car was pulled off the road to that spot for a lover's tryst. It was just far enough off the road that it wouldn't be visible to the average passing driver. Maybe they argued, and one left the other forever nursing a broken heart under the pines. Maybe another jealous lover had come upon them and done away with them removing their bodies, but leaving the car and whatever evidence it held to rot in the forest. My mind created pictures of people in post-war dress getting in and out of the car, leaning against the side, looking under the hood, dancing to Glenn Miller under the trees in the beams of the headlights.

Over the months that have followed my discovery of the rust bucket, I have taken pictures of it surrounded by fallen autumn leaves, covered in a blanket of snow, and amid the impossible green of spring weeds that flourish in our fertile central Virginia soil.    It's been the wallpaper on my iPad since I first spotted it. I love daydreaming about this car.

So yesterday I was tooling along down Michaels Rd. T was in the seat behind me working on her latest heavy metal hit on Garage Band on her iPod. I came around the turn past the garage and I was gobsmacked to find my favorite rust bucket suddenly sitting just inches from the pavement on the shoulder. I hit the brakes and pulled to a stop behind it, and just sat there.  My favorite pile of roadside detritus was no longer in its little space under the shade of the pines, but sitting in the stark sunlight where everyone driving by could see it in its naked, decayed state. Part of me wanted to cover it up with a blanket to keep away prying eyes. Another part wanted to go home and get a better camera so I could poke around through all its nooks and crannies documenting every rusty worn out inch and angle.

It suffered for the move too. The rear window that had been mostly intact now sat at a right angle to its frame. The front seat was ripped and the stuffing hanging out. I could also see what had previously been hidden by a tree trunk. The hood was gone and so too it seemed was the engine. This was possibly the most heart-wrenching revelation for me. Suddenly all my scenarios of how the car got into the woods were shot out of the air. No one could have driven it there with no engine. Suddenly, it went from a wonderfully evocative rotting car corpse to just another piece of roadside junk.

No doubt the owner of the land on which my rust bucket was parked is the one who moved it, and they're naturally within their rights. Still, I can't help feeling like they've robbed me. They've taken a favorite item from the virtual cork board of my imagination and dropped it on the side of the road like so much trash.  And no matter how I love taking shots of roadside trash (and I do), I couldn't help feeling crushed.

As a rule, I don't get out to take pictures when T is in the car, so I pulled around and snapped a few shots through my window making a mental note to come back this weekend when the kids go to visit my parents. Hopefully, it will still be there.

A couple of Updates to this post: First, I'm sorry to say that when I went back on Saturday without child in tow to try to take more pictures, the car was gone. Likewise the other car that reminded me of my Grandad's Nova was also gone. It appears that whoever owns that land is in fact cleaning it up.

Second, after perusing photos of cars all over the internet from that era, I can just about confirm that this is a 1940 Packard 110 Touring Sedan. Here's a link to an ebay auction for one that shows some good photos for comparison. In case you're unable to look at the auction, here is also a link to a photo gallery of Packards from the 40's. It doesn't have the 110, but it does have some pictures of the similar but slightly larger 120.  However, this is a match made by my untutored eye, so if you happen to be an expert in old cars and you think I'm wrong, please feel free to set me straight.

Of Sense and Substance

Let's get started with a few quotes. "The boy's name was Santiago." Paolo Coelho - The Alchemist

"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four day now without taking a fish." Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man And The Sea

"When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out and touch the child sleeping beside him." Cormac McCarthy - The Road

What do these first lines from arguably very different books have in common?

It's simple. They get right to the point. They don't mess around with flowery description. They don't set the stage by telling you everything you need to know about their environment. They don't tell you the writer's opinion of the characters. They just drop you right into the action or emotion of the story. Coelho begins The Alchemist with a simple telling of fact and we are immediately attached to Santiago. This statement is evocative chiefly because it plays on the reader's ingrained sympathy for the young and the sparse language clues us in on the type of environment in which he lives. It's beautiful in its efficiency. Likewise, Hemingway effectively sets up the conflict that drives The Old Man And The Sea with one bare sentence. It conjures image of an old man at sea in a small boat and his desperation at not catching a fish for so long. We don't know Hemingway's opinion of fisherman. He doesn't tell us how we're supposed to feel about it, but the old man's desperation still comes through with the accounting of many days he's gone without a fish. McCarthy is a bit more descriptive in the opening line of The Road, but that description comes to us through the character. We don't know what he looks like, or what the woods look like, or that he's hungry. We don't even know what he's feeling aside from the physical sensation of cold, but we are gripped by the heart-wrenching image of a man in the rough caring for a child.

No, this is not a discussion of the importance of great first lines, though they are important. I'm more concerned with the very first of Strunk and White's "Reminders" from Chapter 5 of The Elements of Style. That is to "Place yourself in the background." I have no doubt that this was positioned at the top of the list because of its importance and because it makes the best starting point for developing your own style. They write:

"Write in a way that draws the reader's attention to the sense and substance of the writing rather than the mood and temper of the author...to achieve style, begin by affecting none--that is, place yourself in the background. A careful and honest writer does not need to worry about style."

The key take away from this when writing fiction is to let your characters tell the story. The story is the "sense and substance" to which they are referring.  A "careful and honest" writer is one for whom the story and not the style is paramount. By contrast a careless and/or dishonest writer is one who may become so enamored of a certain style that their story becomes overshadowed by the writing. This is a particular pitfall of genres like historical fiction, science fiction or fantasy. Where the story is set in a world not familiar to the everyday reader, writers may find themselves too caught up in creating the setting. Some writers become so concerned with the environment that they are writing in that the reader loses interest in the story. For example, I recently read  a piece of historical fiction (that I will not name) in which the writer was so interested in mimicking a circuitous 18th century mode of speech that her sentences were sometimes rendered incomprehensible. Compounded by the fact that the novel was set in the late 19th century, the story was buried under the writer's affected style. This is precisely what Strunk and White are exhorting us to avoid.

As a test, try writing your story as a newspaper article, not a feature article like you might find in your local paper, but pure wire service type news. Just the facts. This can help you separate the "sense and substance" from the "mood and temper". It can also give you a point to start from if you decide to rewrite something.

But, you may be asking, how am I supposed to distinguish myself as a writer without affecting a style? We read on:

"As you become proficient in the use of language, your style will emerge, and when this happens you will find it increasingly easy to break through the barriers that separate you from other minds, other hearts..."

In essence, focus on your story and trust yourself. YOU will emerge through the telling of your story. If you are honest and write naturally without affectation, your style WILL come out. You are unique, and no one but you is going to write with your voice.  In Finding Your Voice: How to Put Personality in Your Writing, Les Edgerton uses an interesting exercise to illustrate this very point. In the exercise you take a favorite passage from a classic book. Strip it down to the actions only, and then rewrite the passage in a way that is natural to you. Don't over think it, just write and trust yourself. When I tried this, I used a passage from Jane Eyre which I had read countless times. Despite the many times that I had read and reread and analyzed Charlotte Bronte's words, when I rewrote the passage in my own voice the "sense and substance" were the same but "mood and temper" were entirely mine. I highly suggest trying this exercise, it can be a real eye opener.

So, take a step behind the curtain and let your characters strut and fret upon the stage.