I’m so tired of always having fur on my carpets! I’m even more tired of vacuuming, so I decided to try a Roomba. Here’s the first few seconds of its inaugural voyage across my living room floor (the clumps of dog fur were planted by me, I hasten to add, but there are days when my carpet does look like that all on its own). Keeper was a little freaked out, while Jet was mildly curious. After this initial reaction, they completely ignored the thing. I wish they would be so mellow about the mail carrier and the UPS guy.

Now that I’ve had my Roomba for two days, what do I think?

The Good: Wow, does it clean! I’m shocked and appalled at all it’s picked up from what I thought was a clean carpet. It zips under furniture to sweep areas that haven’t seen a vacuum in, well, a very long time. It sucks up big stuff and small. It covers the entire floor and has these little bristly things that reach into corners and along walls. It’s quite impressive.

The Bad: When a machine picks up so much stuff, the stuff has to go somewhere, and there’s the problem. I’ll be in my office while the Roomba’s in the living room, for example. As the Roomba zooms around the room, its bristle brush gets full of dog hair and other debris and the Roomba stops. A nice woman calls out to me from the living room: “Clean the brushes!” and the dogs begin to bark at the stranger in the house. Cleaning the brushes is not difficult but it takes about ten minutes and is going to get old fast. Roomba hasn’t made it through a single room without asking for my help. Now, maybe this is just a testament to the fact that the carpet was in desperate need of cleaning, but I have a feeling in my two-dog house, this will be the norm.

So I need to make a decision about whether to keep this little guy or not. I’m curious about the new Neato, but it’s significantly more expensive, especially since I purchased the Roomba at Bed, Bath and Beyond with one of their 20% coupons. As I walk around my house tonight, though, and see carpets that are very nearly spotless, knowing they can be that way every single day without me having to drag out the vacuum. . . well think of all the extra time I’ll have to write. Except for those ten-minute brushing-cleaning breaks. Hmm.

How about you? Do any of you use a robotic cleaner? I’d love to hear your experiences.

A few nights ago when I was getting ready for bed, I had a nighty-night pill and my earplugs waiting for me on my nightstand. Not thinking, I reached for an earplug and my bottle of water, catching myself when I had the earplug an inch from my mouth (which is much better than the time I nearly swallowed my dog’s pill; I really need to pay attention to what I’m doing!).

As I realized my error, the following scenario took less than twenty seconds to run through my mind:

I swallow the earplug. It gets its soft, foamy mass stuck in my windpipe and I can’t breathe. I run into the dining room where John is working at his laptop and try to demonstrate that I need the Heimlich maneuver. How would I do it?? Omigod! Could I ever make him understand what I need? Would I have time to write down that I had an earplug stuck in my throat?? Would there be a pen nearby? Would I try to Heimlich myself, throwing my midsection across the back of one of the dining room chairs? Aren’t the chairs too tall? Would John think I was joking around? Would he be so absorbed in his work that he never looked up at all? Would I have to beat on his head to get him to notice my duress? Would I eventually collapse and die? Would the article in the paper read Local Author Chokes to Death on Earplug? How totally humiliating!

This is what it’s like to live inside my brain. If you are not a fiction writer, enjoy your sanity!

Counting all the votes on my blog and Facebook page, it looks like this cover is the winner for the e-book reissue of The Escape Artist. First, I’ll play with it a little–soften the focus and tweak a few other things to make it more to my liking. But I do love this little guy. He is perfect for Tyler in the book.

Second place was this one, which I love as well, but she needs to have a little boy holding her hand and I couldn’t find any great stock images that convey both the feeling of this image but also have a mom and a little boy–plus the wonderful colors of her dress and suitcase.

Most of us agreed that this cover was just plain inappropriate to the story and the character who is a young and scared mom, not a slut.  When I spotted this stock image with the paintbrushes, though, I was smitten. It’s wrong for the book, however, so I’m tossing it.

Finally, several of you liked this one, which was my favorite but again wrong for the book. A couple of you mentioned the Goth/Twilight look of it and that’s an accurate assessment. I saw the timelessness, the pensiveness, the romance and the artistry. I just think it’s a pretty cover. Again, though, it’s wrong for the book, so out it goes.

Therefore, the worried little boy is the winner. . . unless I find the perfect mom-and-son-on-the-open-road picture. Thanks for helping me make the decision!

As I’ve said so often on my blog, I love my readers!

I heard from one of them, Autumn Fenton, on Facebook today. Autumn told me that she named one of her dogs ‘Wilkes’ after CeeCee Wilkes! I think that’s a first. I’ve named a couple of my own dogs after my books (Chapel after the Chapel House in my first book, Private Relations, and Keeper after Keeper of the Light), but I’ve never before had the honor of a reader naming a pet after one of my characters. I love it!

Wilkes is the handsome Brittany Spaniel on the left, and the name of the Maltese on the right? Story. Don’t you love it?

Continuing the theme, here’s a picture of another one of Autumn’s Brittanies. Meet Ingalls. Yes, Ingalls. I’m sitting here with a big smile on my face as I type up this post.

Now, I think we need to meet Autumn herself. Here she is, decked out in a reproduction of the green drapery dress from Gone With the Wind. Autumn wrote to me, “Along with several other ‘Scarletts’, I wore the dress in 1989 in Atlanta and other places to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the film.” She also told me about the six week camping trip she and her husband enjoyed, visiting all nine locations of the Little House books. “Since my husband never read the books as a boy, I read them aloud to him as we drove west.” I have to say, her husband sounds like quite a guy!

I’d love to hear how some of you come up with names for your pets. Are you inspired by literature when it comes to naming your pups and kitties?

Thank you, Autumn, for sharing your pictures and for your great sense of humor. I hope Wilkes lives a long and happy life.

Hey, blog readers, thanks for hanging out with me this week! We’re sitting in our hotel room tonight and John just gave me a thumbs up and said “Good week!” and he’s so right. It’s been quite an experience in many ways, and I’ll never again baste a turkey without thinking of “the oven” (I’m still finding splotches of purple on my skin).  I fell in love with Rochester and the Minnesotans I’ve met and I’m so impressed with the Mayo Clinic.   Best of all, of course, was getting good news–a diagnosis I can most definitely live with and one that hadn’t before been mentioned to me as a possibility, despite the various docs I’ve seen for the symptoms. I’m very, very glad we made this trip.

On another note, I’ve been working on a difficult and crucial chapter in The Midwife’s Confession while we’ve been here. My concentration’s been a little off (understatement!) and it’s been slow going, but I’ve had this scene beautifully rendered in my mind for weeks. Tonight, though, I did a bit of research to help me flesh out the scene and learned something that totally destroyed my plans for the action. It has to do with how maternity units have changed since I worked in one. I keep picturing the unit I worked in back in the day. For the sake of moms and babies, I’m delighted so much progress has been made in supporting that post partum bond. For the sake of my story, though, bring back the old days! 

But every setback has a silver lining and the research opened up another approach to the scene–one that I think will be even better. So now I’m rewriting. Or re-re-rewriting. This is the book that just doesn’t want to end!

Have a great weekend, everyone. I can’t wait to get home to my pups!

Getting to Rochester, MN was a snap. No delays at all, and I love flying into little airports where you practically have the place to yourself and your baggage is sitting there waiting for you. I love flying, period. Sometimes when I think about the cost of airfare, I think how amazing it is that for a few hundred dollars, I can have a view of the earth from thousands of feet up. As long as the flight’s not too bumpy or too long, that’s sheer joy for me. It’s the same feeling I get when I look out at the ocean. It always reminds me of this quote: “We’re not human beings having a spiritual experience. We’re spiritual beings having a human experience.” I find that very comforting.

Flying over Minnesota was lovely–so green and, well, full of corn. Really pretty.

Years ago, I had to take a train across New Jersey for a book event. The train was called something like “The Atlantic City Express.” AC, of course, is where people go to gamble, and the train was full of folks who were getting an early start on the fun. Playing cards were everywhere, cash and chips were changing hands, and even the porters were participating. It was clear to me, a stranger to their world, that these people did this regularly and the train was their home away from home.

That was the feeling I had on the flight between Chicago and Rochester. Not that anyone was playing cards, but just about everyone seemed to be on that flight for the same reason–to go to the Mayo Clinic. The couple in the seats in front of my were on their way from Alaska. The woman across the aisle was from Texas. A young woman who slept fitfully for the hour flight was from Maine. When I disembarked, I saw a long line of wheelchairs and airport staff waiting to transport the passengers to baggage claim and I felt humbled, grateful for whatever good health I have. I only hope my fellow flyers find their answers here.  

John and I were starving, so we had lunch at the City Cafe, which was excellent. (So strange to order iced tea and not have to add the word “unsweet” to the request.) I ate plenty since tonight is a fasting night and now I plan to do a little work. Fellow author, JoAnn Ross, shared her own Mayo experience with me and told me not to even think of working, so tonight may be my only chance to hang around with the midwife.

Tomorrow, the games begin. I’m nervous and excited and grateful for good health insurance and a partner who just really gets what it means to be supportive. 

To be continued. . .

It’s so strange to be able to show you the cover of a book I’m still revising, but here it is! It will be in your hands May 2011. I hope!

Can we talk about sleep?

I’d love to know your falling asleep tricks, because I need some!

The first problem is that I’m a natural nightowl and always have been. As a little kid, I couldn’t wait to go to bed so I could lay awake making up stories. It probably took me two hours to fall asleep every night because I was busy weaving tales that would have curled my mother’s hair, had she known what was going on in my strange little head. When the alarm went off in the morning I was, naturally, exhausted. I had a bunch of pillows on my bed and I kept adding one to the pile behind my back until I was fully vertical. I’m not kidding. It was the only way I could make getting up bearable.

This pattern lasted well into adulthood, the only difference being I was now getting paid for making up stories, so at least my nightowlishness had monetary value. But in the mid-nineties, I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. One of the symptoms of RA is fatigue. Soon, all day felt like first-thing-in-the-morning to me. Only people who have suffered from some version of chronic fatigue really understand how debilitating this can be. It’s a sucking down, overwhelming tiredness and the only cure is to climb back into bed. I slept for about ten hours each night and added a couple of naps during the daytime. Then the drug researchers invented the good stuff and I got my life back. Ever since then (about ten years now), I feel as though I’m making up for all the time I lost to fatigue. I may nap twice a month, if that, and I hate losing the time when I could be doing something more productive. I also am once again a nightowl, staying up until one or two . . . or three. . . working or reading for pleasure. I get up around eight, so that’s not too bad. And I don’t get tired during the day, so I must be getting enough sleep.

So what am I complaining about? I want to be tired at night, like normal people. I want to turn out the light at midnight and fall asleep instead of thinking about my book or my life or my loved ones or everything on my to-do list. I’ve tried the typical relaxation techniques. I’ve tried meditating. Listening to soft music. Counting backwards from 100. Listing the states in alphabetical order. You name it, I’ve tried it.

Am I alone in this? Are you one of those lucky people who falls asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow? Or are you a nightowl who’s found the secret to beating your internal clock? How’s your sleep?

It’s been fun having Secret Lives available as an e-book and I’ve enjoyed hearing from those of you who are reading it for the first time. Now I need to figure out which of my out-of-print books I should make available next. Whether you read e-books or not, I’d love your help in this decision. If you’ve read my early books, which was your favorite? Or if you haven’t read them, which sounds most intriguing to you? I apologize to those of you who only read print books and wish I could accommodate you as well. I hope they will be reissued some day by my publisher. Thanks so much for your help.

 The choices (with the original bookcovers) are:

 The Escape Artist: A young woman, about to lose custody of her eleven-month-old son, takes the toddler and escapes to Annapolis, Maryland to start a new life, leaving behind the man she loves. In Annapolis, she’s befriended by a mural artist with secrets of his own. When she stumbles into a dangerous situation that could cost people their lives, she’s unable to turn to the authorities because she’s on the run.

From Library Journal: “. . . a moving tale of parental love and desperation.” From Kirkus Reviews: “A sure-fire grabber.”

Reflection: Twenty years ago, a tragedy struck the Pennsylvania town of Reflection and everyone holds one woman, Rachel Huber, responsible for what happened. When Rachel returns to care for her elderly grandmother, she discovers she has only one person in her corner–a Mennonite minister who was her childhood friend. As the story shifts between past and present, secrets unfold, a romance blossoms, and both the town and Rachel are put to the test.  

From the Richmond Times Dispatch: “. . .  as the plots interlock, the reader is swept into the town’s emotion and suspense.”

Fire and Rain: The tiny southern California town, Valle Rosa, is withered by drought and ravaged by wildfires when a stranger appears, promising he can create rain. He asks only for total privacy while he works, but he becomes the center of two women’s worlds–Mia, who falls in love with him, and Carmen, who vows to learn his true identity at all costs. Neither woman realizes that their involvement with him can jeopardize far more than the future of Valle Rosa.

From Publishers Weekly: “Nearly every chapter finishes with the sort of emotional jolt that keeps the pages turning.”

Brass Ring: Claire Harte-Mathias tries unsuccessfully to save a woman who leaps from a bridge in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. As she tries to understand the reasons for the woman’s suicide,  Claire is jarred by frightening, half-hidden memories. Torn between the love and support of two men–her husband and the brother of the woman on the bridge–she tries to make sense of the images that haunt her, discovering that the past, present and future are intertwined in a way she is powerless to change.

From the Chicago Tribune: “You’d think there’s nowhere for a story to go after a distraught woman plunges to her death in an icy river, but Brass Ring will prove you wrong.”

I turned in The Midwife’s Confession, my May 2011 book,  about a month ago and then waited a few weeks to hear what my editor thought about it. That’s always a nerve-wracking time.  A writer’s career is full of waiting to hear what other  people think — agents, editors, reviewers, and most importantly, readers.

I finally heard from my editor, and although she loved the book, she had some ideas. She always does, and they’re invariably good ones. Her idea regarding TMC was particularly good. The midwife, Noelle, is central to the story, of course, but she remains quite a mystery to the reader because she is not a point of view character. My editor’s suggestion (suggestion being an under-exaggeration of her feelings on the subject!) was to give Noelle more of a presence in the story. That should be easy, right? Just add one more point of view? Well, it would be easy if only Noelle didn’t kill herself in the first scene.

So I’ve been spending some time trying to figure out how to give Noelle more of a presence. I thought about the fourth book I wrote, Keeper of the Light*, in which Annie O’Neill dies in chapter one yet is undeniably the central character of the story. She had no point of view, but I made sure the reader knew her very well through the eyes of the other characters. Maybe I could make Noelle more central to the story through the eyes of others as I did with Annie? That wasn’t good enough for my editor, though. She really wanted Noelle’s voice in the story.

Then I thought about Kate in Secret Lives**. Kate is also dead in the beginning of the book, but she becomes a central character through her journal. Could I give Noelle a diary, perhaps? While it worked beautifully in Kate’s case, I thought it would have felt too contrived in Noelle’s.

Finally, I bit the bullet and did the only thing possible: I’m giving Noelle a point of view through her own chapters as I–and the reader–dig back into her past. As her creator, I knew her intriguing past and what led up to her confession,  but now the reader will get to be intrigued along with me.  As I write, I can’t believe I didn’t think of giving Noelle a more powerful presence myself. Sometimes we’re too close to our stories to see what’s obvious. This is what a good editor is all about. 

So now, it’s back to the storyboard (inspired in its current three act form above by my writing bud, Alexandra Sokoloff.) Changing a novel always reminds me of my days as a family therapist. When you change one part of the family system, it changes everything else. It’s no different with a story. To make room for Noelle’s voice, I first needed to cut some other threads and subplots. If you’ve been reading my blog for a long time, you might remember there were four Galloway Girls in The Midwife’s Confession–four women who lived together in the Galloway Dormitory at UNC-Wilmington. Well, now there are only two. I’m still in the process of killing the extraneous two off (figuratively speaking). Frankly, they were not serving nearly as good a purpose as Noelle’s story is going to serve. Yet it always hurts a little to cut off the heads of people you’ve nurtured and gotten to know, even if they are getting in the way.

At the same time as I’m ditching those subplots, I’m developing Noelle’s backstory. She’s in third person because I need to make some concession to the fact that she’s dead. I’m enjoying getting to know her even better. I’ve always liked her and now I like her more. Of course, she’s going to do something not very likeable eventually. Will I be able to keep the sympathy flowing for her? I can’t wait to find out!

* Keeper of the Light will be reissued in 2011

** Secret Lives is now available as an e-book for Kindle and all other e-readers.