I’m not a big fan of reality TV, but one show I love and never miss is Project Runway. I get such a kick out of the artistic personalities and seeing real talent ultimately rise to the top. More than anything, though, I’m fascinated by the process of creation. If you haven’t seen Project Runway, it goes something like this: the contestants are given an assignment, such as “make an outfit appropriate for a Times Square billboard out of things you can buy in a pet store.” Then they’re given, perhaps, ten hours to complete the task. Around hour five, Tim Gunn (who is impossible not to adore!) visits the workroom to check out what everyone is doing and offer helpful comments. Then around hour six, they throw a last-minute wrench in the works, such as: “You also need to add an accessory to your outfit and it must be in the color of Heidi Klum’s lipstick,” or something equally ludicrous. (Heidi is a pip. Seriously, how does a woman keep having babies and look like that? It’s utterly beyond me).

So what does this have to do with writing? It occurred to me as I was watching Project Runway the other night that the process of creating an outfit under a tight deadline is very much like writing a book under a tight deadline. There is the “make something from nothing” element, followed by the creation of the design or in the case of a book, the structure. Then there is the execution. Then there is Tim Gunn. When Tim spent time with the designers the other night, critiquing their half-finished projects, one of them said something like “We need you because we’re too close to our work and can’t see the forest for the trees.” Tim is very good at seeing the forest, and that comment reminded me of the reason writers need editors. (Listen up, self-pubbed people! Hire one if you don’t have one).

My editor is really earning her salary as she works with me on The Midwife’s Confession. What draft am I on now? I’ve lost track. Doesn’t matter. This is the one that counts. I’d mentioned that after my editor read my complete manuscript, she wanted me to add the point of view of the late midwife herself. I knew she was right, but that required rewriting the entire book, introducing a storyline  that added layers of depth to an already packed tale. I thought I was done then. I knew I’d have some tweaking to do, but I wasn’t quite prepared for my editor’s last-minute suggestion: “Now that the focus is more on the midwife, we no longer need Grace’s (the teenaged girl) point-of-view.” Ack! Once again, I knew she was right. I was so immersed in my creation that, like those Project Runway designers,  I hadn’t been able to see the forest for the trees.

So that is my task for this week. It will be the final major overhaul of this book, and it’s about as easy as creating an evening gown out of rawhide chips and dog food bags. See my computer screen above? The full manuscript is on the right, the new mansucript is in the middle. And on the left are the scenes from Grace’s point of view. I am going through them to see what information she gave the reader that the reader simply must know and which I’ll therefore have to seamlessly incorporate into other characters’ points of view. Even more crucial is the need to allow Grace to remain a whole and significant character in the story without allowing her to tell the story herself. Trust me, I have quite a challenge ahead of me!

I’m getting a kick out of it, though. Whenever a book feels like a puzzle to me, it gets my juices flowing. I feel as though Tim Gunn’s paid me a visit, shaken me up a bit, and then told me to “Make it work!” So that’s what I’m up to this week. I want The Midwife’s Confession to knock ‘em dead on the runway. You won’t even be able to see where I stitched the dog food bags together.

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!

Well, I’m bummed! I only now found out that today is National Ice Cream Day. It’s nearly 9 pm and I already had my Breyers light brownie ice cream sandwich for dessert, which frankly is no substitute for a bowl of Edy’s Slow-Churned French Silk. If I’d known it was National Ice Cream Day, I would have run down to the nearest store (which happens to be one of those little stores connected to a gas station. Not pretty.) and bought a couple of pints of Ben and Jerry’s and not felt guilty about it, but now I’m full and it’s too late. 

My curiosity was piqued. What other holidays are coming up? I checked out this week and here’s the lineup: Tomorrow is National Daquiri Day, but since I’m a non-imbiber, I’ll sit that one out. Tuesday is lollipop day. Did you know that lollipop machines make nearly 6,000 lollipops a minute? Wednesday I’m definitely going to celebrate! National Junk Food Day! I am unbelievably neurotic about food safety in my kitchen. I drive John nuts with the hand washing, the not-using-the-same-utensils-on-raw-and-cooked food, the sniffing of the milk, etc. But put me in a Taco Bell (burritos!) or Bojangles (biscuits!) or Wendy’s (taco salad!) and I’ll never give their kitchen a thought. (Please don’t tell me horror stories. Let me live in blissful ignorance!)

Thursday is National Hammock Day and I wish I had one. When I need to go to my Happy Place in my head, it’s in a hammock hanging under tall green trees. Instant relaxation. Friday is National Hot Dog Day, and I have to admit that’s another edible that I eat without thinking about what’s in it and how long it’s been rolling on those long, hot metal tubes at Target.

I just realized that Wednesday–National Junk Food Day–is the day I’ll be part of an event at the Silver Coast Winery near Ocean Isle, North Carolina, so I think I’ll be sipping club soda and nibbling something very non-junky there. You’re all invited to join me! I understand it’s a lovely location. There’s no cover charge, just a chance to meet and chat and sip. There will be a few other writers on hand and the Pelican Bookstore will supply books for a signing. If you’re anywhere near the area between 1-4 on Wednesday July 21st, I hope you’ll stop by.

Right now, I’d like to proclaim this evening “National What Are You Reading Evening”. As for me, I’m enjoying Karen White’s On Folly Beach. Now I know how to answer when people ask who I write like! I feel as though I’m reading one of my own books, probably because Karen and I both love mixing past and present and we love to keep our readers guessing. Also the beach setting, of course, and dipping back into coastal Carolina history during World War II. I think Karen and I must have been separated at birth. Obviously, I’m enjoying this book a great deal and highly recommend it.

How about you? What are you reading now?

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.

My neighborhood bookclub met at my house tonight. We meet every other month, which is a very civilized schedule. Sometimes we have “supper club” on the off months, when we get together with our spouses/sig others at one of our houses. It’s a diverse group in terms of age and a lot of fun. It’s also quite a large group, although tonight we had “only” twelve women, since it’s summer and many people are away.

We read The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. We take turns suggesting books. The “suggester” brings 5 or 6 books to the meeting and describes a bit about each one and then we vote. (Next up is Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay). The Thirteenth Tale was my suggestion. I’d already read it, but enjoyed the rereading as much, if not more, than I did the first time. What a fabulous book! I love the timeless feeling, the Gothic atmosphere, the sense of “what the heck is really going on??”, the quirky characters, the poignancy and the unexpected surprises. Discussing this book tonight was a real mind twisting experience! I now feel as though I need to read it a third time and right away!

Do you have a book club? I’d love to hear how you operate and what your club is reading.  (Also, remember that I’ll speak to your club by speakerphone if you’re discussing one of my books. Just click on “Reading Groups” on my website.)

The year was 1989 and I was about to be published for the first time. I was at the notoriously exciting Washington Romance Writers conference in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia where  I gave a workshop on Innovative Characterization Techniques, something I still teach, albeit with modifications. Back then, I identified myself as a psychotherapist and still had my private practice, since I hadn’t yet made a dime off writing. (Not quite true. I’d made $150 for an op-ed piece published in the Los Angeles Times and I’d received an advance on my two book contract, less my agent’s 15%.  So as of that conference, I’d made $4,400 and wasn’t exactly ready to quit my day job. Nor did I want to. I loved my work).  But getting back to the conference.

I wasn’t nervous as I presented that workshop even though the audience was quite large. I’d been making presentations for years as a social worker and felt at home “on stage”. When I went to bed the night after my workshop, I was happy and relaxed. When I got up the next morning, though, anxiety hit with a vengeance. Why? That morning I was going to have an event writers both crave and fear: a pitch meeting with an editor.

I was now contractless after turning in my second book, but I had an idea for a third that I was completely, utterly, head-over-heels in love with. I also had a problem: I was, and frankly still am, a terrible pitcher. I can never seem to sum up my stories in a neat package for an agent or an editor or even for a reader. I’d rehearsed what I would say, though, and was as ready as I could be.

   I waited in the ballroom for my appointment and soon it was my turn. The editor (I have absolutely no memory of who she was) and I met on the long glassed-in porch that runs along the side of the old Hilltop House where the conference was held. We sat across from one another at a small cloth-covered table overlooking the spectacular view of the rivers. Harpers Ferry is where the Shenandoah River and the Potomac River come crashing together. It’s one of my favorite places. But looking over the cliff from our table, I felt a wave of nausea.

   I began pitching.

   “It’s called Secret Lives and it’s the story of a young woman named Eden, she’s an actress, who wants to make a movie about her mother, who was a famous children’s author. She was odd. Her mother, I mean. Her name was Kate and she lived in a cavern, like the Luray Caverns near here, because she was agoraphobic. Or not agoraphobic exactly, but. . . Well, anyway, Eden wants to humanize her, make her sympathetic. But she has to live with her aunt and uncle while she’s researching her mother’s life and she hates them because something happened when she was living with them when she was a teenager. . . ”

Here, I had to pause because I was having some sort of panic attack. I couldn’t seem to breathe properly. I was swallowing in all the wrong places and the words sounded strangled as they rushed of my mouth. The editor was smiling kindly at me, nodding her head a little, but I could tell she was not catching my passion. I continued.

“But now the uncle is an archaeologist in the Shenandoah Valley and he has a partner, Ben, who Eden falls for, but Ben’s been convicted of molesting his daughter, but he swears he’s innocent and. . . ”

   Again I stopped. This time I was so freaked out that I had to excuse myself and get a glass of water, which I brought back to the table. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I seem to have something caught in my throat.” Like, the story, I thought. It wasn’t coming out right at all.

   “No problem,” said the kind editor.

   “I forgot to mention the journal! The uncle has the mother, Kate’s,  journals and they tell the story of her life, and–”

   “I’m afraid we’re out of time,” the editor said–words I’d said many times myself to my therapy clients. “I have another appointment.” She leaned toward me and spoke sincerely. “I can tell you love this story and that it means a lot to you on a personal level, but I think it’s too complex for the sort of book I’m looking for right now. Maybe you could simplify it, although I really don’t think it’s for us either way.”

Drat.  I’d blown my chance, plus made a fool out of myself in the process. When I told my agent about my failed appointment, she said I would have to write the whole book on spec. There was no other way, because every time I tried to describe the complexities of the story that were so clear in my mind, I failed, even with her.

So that’s what I did. I wrote the entire five hundred pages on the weekends and in the mornings before I headed off to work. I started with Kate’s journal, writing her story in first person, my heart breaking for her the whole time. I wrote her entire journal first so that I didn’t lose her voice. Living inside her head, I became so close to her that I could hardly bear to let her go.

Then I created Eden’s story, and Ben’s, and I filled them up with a complicated blend of love and anger toward Eden’s aunt and uncle. Yes, the characters’ stories were complex. I gave them a hundred and one obstacles to happiness. Then I threw them all together in the Shenandoah Valley and let them work it out.

   When I was finished, my agent sent the manuscript to Karen Solem, who was then an editor at HarperCollins, and I had my offer the next day. Karen saw what I saw in the book but had been unable to express to that editor in Harpers Ferry: a story too complex to easily describe, but not too complex to fall in love with.

I had a very small readership when Secret Lives came out in 1991. It sold a few copies in hardcover and a few more in paperback. Then it quietly disappeared, as so many books do. Although my current publisher is doing a nice job of reissuing my older books, Secret Lives and some of my very early books may never get to see the light of day again unless I take action myself. So that’s why I’ve arranged to publish Secret Lives in an electronic format. I apologize to those of you who prefer print. Creating an e-book is an inexpensive, relatively easy experiment. Self publishing in print is another matter, one I’m not yet ready to tackle. (You may be able to find old print copies of Secret Lives on ebay or used on Amazon or other Internet booksellers). If you are an electronic book reader, I hope you’ll try a free sample of Secret Lives on your Kindle or any other E-reader. And please let me know what you think. I’m sure you know by now that it’s one of my favorite books. Just don’t ask me to describe it to you!

While I was waiting to get feedback from my editor on The Midwife’s Confession, I was not goofing off. Not at all! Instead, I was preparing my third book, Secret Lives, to release as an e-book. It will be available on Kindle in a day or so and is already available on Smashwords. When it’s up on Kindle, I’ll post about the story (one of my favorites), but I thought you might find the process of getting a book ready for the e-world interesting or, for those of you interested in publishing an e-book yourselves, helpful.

First, why am I doing this? I have several books that have been out of print a very long time–about eighteen years in the case of Secret Lives. I’d love them to be available again, so I decided I would experiment by making this one available as an e-book. I had no idea what I was getting into! Here are the steps I followed, all of which I had to discover on my own.

First, it’s critical to be sure you have the electronic rights for the book in question. No problem there. I’ve had all rights back on Secret Lives for many years.

Second, I needed a manuscript to work with. I no longer had a document for Secret Lives on a disk anywhere (believe me, I looked). The choice then was to buy special OCR software that would allow me to scan the book (page by page…ugh)  or hire someone with that software to do it for me. Needless to say, I took the second route. I hired Seneca Brashear, sending her one of my two old yellowed copies of Secret Lives, which I knew she would have to destroy in order to scan. I wish now that I’d kept more copies of my older books!

Third, Seneca sent me Secret Lives in a editable Word document, which I printed out and read. Carefully. The OCR software is amazing, but it makes unpredictable mistakes. For example, the character “Cassie” occasionally appeared as ”Lassie,” and quotation marks were sometimes dropped. In addition, this was an opportunity to edit the book, although there was very little I wanted to change.

Fourth, I put the changes into the document and saved it. I thought I was finished with the hard part. Ha!

Fifth, I created a book cover. Covers don’t belong to the author, so I couldn’t use the original ones from the hard and softcover copies. Not that I wanted to! The original hardcover is not only dated, it wasn’t a good cover to begin with. (The hardcover is in the upper left of this post; this “stepback cover” is from the paperback. I never liked this man and woman. They didn’t look a bit like my characters). I have a tiny bit of skill with Adobe PhotoShop, so I began playing with stock images (check out istock.com or Dreamstime.com) and created three covers, none of which were very good. Through the feedback of my commenters, I realized my mistake: I needed to create a cover more in keeping with the look of my current books. I finally came up with the one you see here.  If you don’t know how to work with images and text, you’ll have to hire someone to create a cover for you. There are people who do this very reasonably, but I believe the cover is extremely important, so be careful in your search and be ready to work collaboratively with the artist.

Sixth, back to the book itself. Now it’s time to prepare the manuscript to be uploaded to Smashwords and Kindle. All I can say is, good luck! I found the formatting instructions daunting. Smashwords has a guide that needs to be followed to the letter. Even then, you will encounter problems. Guaranteed. I literally spent days fighting with Word and the finicky needs of an ebook manuscript, and what works for Smashwords doesn’t necessarily work for the Kindle. Once formatted, it was necessary to read the story yet again to hunt for mistakes. Suffice it to say, there are people you can hire to do the formatting for you, but I discovered a stubborn streak I never knew I had and I refused to give up. I’ll spare you the details, but I think I’ve succeeded in meeting the needs of all the different formats. Finally, I uploaded the document to both Smashwords (making it available to many different types of e-readers at once) and to Kindle (I’ll see if that was successful in a couple of days). 

If you’re an author trying to make your way through this process and have any not-too-technical questions, let me know. And if you’re a reader of e-books, I hope you’ll think my effort to bring Secret Lives to you was worth it!