Tag Archives: Widow Woman

New Year, New Book

One of the great things about finishing Widow Woman is that now I can start working on other projects. I have two new novels in progress, and, thanks to no small amount of nagging–I mean, encouragement–from my children, who are in the target audience age group, I have chosen to focus on my YA novel. The working title is The Water Bearers, which my kids (a.k.a. my beta readers and toughest critics) really love. I’ve got a few others in mind, but I’m content to leave well enough alone at this point and see if any of them are better fits as the novel takes shape.

I just finished Chapter 10 today, and it was wonderful. I didn’t intend to finish it–there are, after all, other projects unrelated to writing that sit waiting for my attention. But, as always happens, I walked through my portal and I was gone. When I looked up again, two hours had evaporated.

I’m really excited about this new book, and I want you to be excited, too, so I’m going to start sharing short excerpts with you from time to time. I want you to get to know the characters a little bit, as they come to life in my head and on my laptop.

So here it is: the first excerpt. Consider it an introduction to some of the main characters. You may find a couple of them suspiciously familiar, but I assure you: this is an original work of fiction (though there may be just a teensy weensy “inspiration” from real life…I’ll leave you to figure out where. And yes, they’ve read it already).

Splat.

The sound of Lex’s waffle landing on the kitchen floor snapped Richard out of his semi-comatose state over the coffee pot. An immediate machine-gun barrage of insults erupted.

“Dad! Look what Nibble did!”

“I did not! I was just minding my own business—”

“You liar! You knocked it on the floor on purpose! How do you like it, you jerk?”

Splat. Nibble’s waffle joined Lex’s on the floor.

“Boys!” Richard crossed the kitchen in two long strides and grabbed an ear in each hand. “Knock it off! Clean that up! Now!”

“If you’re interested, Dad, Lex is actually telling the truth for a change,” Bibi said mildly, peering over Richard’s copy of Red Dragon. “Nibble was being a jerk.”

“I was not!” the jerk in question hollered.

“Bibi, mind your own business. All of you go brush your teeth; the bus will be here in a couple minutes.” Richard began shoving files into his briefcase, noticing, belatedly, the maple syrup drizzled across the front of them. He muttered a curse under his breath and swiped at the sticky mess with a napkin.

“I heard that, Dad,” Bibi murmured.

As Bibi slid off her kitchen chair, Richard reached out and plucked his book from her hand.

“Ouch!” Bibi cried. “You gave me a paper cut.”

“Sorry. I thought we talked about this last night,” Richard sighed.

“You only said I shouldn’t be reading it, not that I couldn’t,” Bibi pointed out on her way up the stairs.

“Well, I’m saying it now,” he called after her.

Splat. Richard looked at the tip of his shoe, where there now rested a large, syrupy chunk of waffle. He looked from Nibble to Lex, trying to determine which one had dropped it on his shoe. In a typical show of brotherly loyalty, they each pointed at the other. “He did it.”

Richard shoved them both in the direction of the stairs. “Go comb your hair and get your jackets on.”

He was on his way to the sink when Bibi yelled from upstairs. “Dad, there’s no water pressure again.”

“Ours either, Dad,” Lex, or maybe it was Nibble, bellowed.

Richard turned on the kitchen faucet. It sputtered briefly then hosed the front of his suit. He sighed heavily. They’d been having problems with their water system ever since they’d moved in. Faucets either dribbled grudgingly or sprayed with the ferocity of a firehose; their new sprinkler system either failed to turn on completely or flooded the yard; toilets mysteriously clogged or wouldn’t flush at all. Richard did suspect that the latter phenomenon could be the work of Lex or Nibble; on several occasions, he’d found tiny pebbles lodged inside one faucet or the other.

Richard had stockpiled a large supply of bottled water against such problems; he grabbed a bottle now and lobbed it to Bibi, who was waiting at the top of the stairs. “You know the drill.”

All the while, the watcher observed the family’s morning chaos in silence from the spot where he remained hidden. He would have laughed, if he had known how, had even tried a couple of times, unsuccessfully, if only to see what it felt like.

Just then the bus honked at the end of the Barnes’ gravel drive, throwing everyone into a frenzy of last-minute backpack-stuffing, jamming of arms into jacket sleeves, and high-speed, nose-bumping kisses. When all three children had safely boarded, the driver tipped his hat to Richard as he did every morning and drove away. Richard hung his head in relief, only then noticing the chunk of waffle still sticking to the toe of his shoe. He shook it from his shoe into the grass.

Splat.

Cover Story

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“You can’t judge a book by its cover.” We’ve all heard that expression, but unfortunately, for e-books, the cover may be as far as some potential readers ever get. If you can’t hook them with that, you may not have a chance to hook them at all.

I’m as guilty as the next reader. Over the holidays, I had a bounty of unexpected reading time. But when I scanned the covers on Amazon , nothing new caught my eye; I wound up rereading Gillian Flynn and Stieg Larsson instead. Maybe it was the flu; maybe it was the covers.

I had dandelions in mind for my cover from the very first draft of Widow Woman, when I wrote the following passage:

I realized how much I’d romanticized the concept of scattering Mom’s ashes: I’d envisioned her floating off into the sapphire sky, dissipating on the breeze, like a dandelion gone to seed.

Initially, it just seemed like a beautiful, wistful, sad image, a reminder of how fragile and ephemeral life can be. In a book that deals so much with death, it seemed like a fitting image.

But as the book began to take shape, another purpose for the use of the dandelion image began coalescing in my mind, a purpose I didn’t fully understand or articulate until I was already asking my trusted beta readers for feedback on the initial design.

One of them was blunt.

“Are you sure you want dandelions on your cover? I mean, you do realize they’re weeds, right?”

It was a legitimate question. Why were those stupid weeds calling to me so insistently? There had to be more to this than even I realized, and as I wrestled with a response for my very candid friend, I found I’d had the answer in my heart all along. Here is an excerpt of my actual response to her:

“Re [dandelion cover] concept–yes, dandelions are often thought of as weeds, but being gay has also historically been seen as something pernicious, to be weeded out. [Reading a fascinating book, Flagrant Conduct by Dale Carpenter; the first few chapters are a history of public opinion and the evolution of the law regarding homosexuality in the U.S. and specifically, in Texas. Incredible.]

Yet, for all that weed talk, dandelions are colorful, hardy, fragrant, even make great tea. But even if people are often quick to agree in principle with those assertions, they may still say “Sure, but not in my yard!” I think it’s a pretty good parallel for showing that whether you think something is good or bad, right or wrong, desirable or detested depends very much on where you’re standing. I just want people to start thinking…to plant a seed.”

That was all the response my friend required; dandelions it would be.

Yet even with the decision settled, I couldn’t stop thinking about them: dandelion images and reflections continued to pour into my brain.

How many mothers have received a dandelion bouquet clutched in a child’s plump little hand? Have any roses or orchids or gardenias ever smelled sweeter? And what of the stains the stems left on their tiny fingers—no amount of scrubbing seems to fade them, a days-long reminder of the love between mother and child.

Think of the anger, effort, and expense the battle to rid lawns of dandelions generates each year, the toxic chemicals and specialized dandelion tools that resemble medieval instruments of torture—all to eliminate something that our culture has randomly decided is bad, is wrong.

I don’t want to come off as some sort of hypocrite, so in the case of full disclosure, I confess: I, too, have used some of those chemicals and I’ve used some of those tools to try to get my own lawn to a dandelion-free state, one that conforms to society’s image of a well-kept home.

But—I’ve also tickled my children’s chins with dandelion blooms, just to see the golden glow on their skin. I’ve crawled around my yard with my children, searching for the perfect dandelion gone to seed. We’ve picked them carefully together, with tender care, so as not to disturb a single seed. We’ve squeezed our eyes tight, our faces to the sun, and made wishes as we blew those seeds into the breeze.

Our whimsical afternoons likely cancelled out the effect of any chemicals or tools employed (a fact which I’m sure did not escape our neighbors’ notice). But would I trade those magical moments for a pristine, spotlessly green lawn? Not for anything in the world.

How could something that brings so much beauty and such simple, sweet happiness, even if it’s not considered conventionally beautiful, or right, by our culture at large, be wrong?

As you look at my cover, that is my question, as you read Widow Woman, it is the seed I hope to plant in your mind.

Where do you stand?

“It’s a Woman’s World” with Betty Liedtke and Dara Beevas

How to Creatively Market Your E-Book [Interview with Wise, Ink]

Widow Woman Trailer (New Version)

I hate being a perfectionist. I’d be so much better adjusted if I could just let things go at “good enough.” Sigh. I know, I know, I wrote that post last week about mistakes, etc., but that doesn’t mean that they don’t keep me awake at night once I discover them. And yes, I did spend an hour this morning combing through the original Word file for Widow Woman, looking for more goblins to torment both my waking and sleeping hours. Argh!

But this, at least, I think is better. The audio seems a little smoother, though it still suffers in the conversion and upload process (not tech-savvy enough to know how to fix that). There is a tiny bit of new content, too; let me know what you think.

Because I’m done. I swear, this time, I’m done.

Just Scribbling

Writer Julia Tagliere shares work and other stuff