In The Handbasket: The Spellbinding Tia Nevitt

From Writing Book Reviews to Reading Reviews of My Book

Hi, everyone, and thank you, Laura, for inviting me to your blog.

First, I want to state right away that Laura and I write in entirely different genres. She (as I’m sure you know) writes creepy horror stories, and my story, THE SEVENFOLD SPELL, is a sensual fairy tale retelling. But we both are eclectic in our reading tastes, and perhaps you will be as well. THE SEVENFOLD SPELL is the first in a series of fairy tale retellings, each standalone, which tells the stories of innocent bystanders who are caught up in the magic of the tale. The series name is Accidental Enchantments.

Laura and I have never met in person, but I’ve “known” her since 2007, when her first book, Isabella Moon, came out. Back then, I was running a book blog called Fantasy Debut, and Laura did a post on—guess what?—reading reviews as a former book reviewer. So when she invited me to write a post for her blog, she asked me to blog on the same thing.

The first week of reviews for THE SEVENFOLD SPELL was scary. The first review was a three-star review, where the reviewer liked the story, but didn’t love it. I was fine with this. I’ve written a strange little novella. However, the second review was two stars on GoodReads, and the reviewer had trouble with the sexual content.

GoodReads has a strange rating system, and two stars means “It was OK.” The only truly negative rating is a one star review. Still, we want as many stars as we can get! For a while, I was really racking up the two star reviews and my little heart was breaking. They all said the same thing—they liked it well enough, except for the sensual content.

Then, I got reviews challenging the historical accuracy of my setting, which is fair because I’ve been known to jump on writers who write about music while clearly knowing nothing about playing a musical instrument. Just desserts.  I got reviews complaining that there wasn’t enough sexual content. I got reviews saying my heroine, Talia, was shallow. And that the romance had no depth.

However, for each negative review, I’m happy to report, I received two or three positive ones. Night Owl Reviews loved it and gave it five stars, and RT Book Reviews gave it four. Soon, I had a nice little collection of reviews from respectable sites to showcase on my website. Those positive reviews became like armor for my writer’s soul until recently, when the first two star I had seen in a while popped up, I was able to stop reading after the first paragraph and shrug it off. They’re kind of like publisher rejections, of which I’ve received my share, only this time—if I care to—I can discover why the reader is “rejecting” my work. Perhaps all those publisher rejections helped burnish my author armor as well.

All in all, reading my reviews was much as I expected. I learned some things from the negative reviews, which I am already keeping in mind as I write the next book in the series.

Note from Laura:

I adored The Sevenfold Spell! Tia's tale is just plain beautifully-written, naughty fun. Love the cover, love everything about it. And given that it's an e-book, it's available in seconds at a very sweet price. Readers--Whatever your tastes (okay, if you only read Cormac McCarthy and have no sense of humor, adventure or romance in your soul...then you're probably not here to read this, anyway!), you'll get a kick out of The Sevenfold Spell. I have to laugh, though, Tia, at the notion of historical inaccuracy in your story. It's a fairy tale! The wonderful thing about fairy tales is that they're magical. Wonder if that reviewer had problems with the fairies as well?

Link to Tia's website.

In the Handbasket: Megan Kelley Hall

Not everyone has been as lazy as I've been this summer!

Last week Megan Kelley Hall released The Lost Sister, a follow-up to her 2008 YA suspense novel about mean girls, Sisters of Misery. But before you read Megan's amazing path to publication, you should know that she started out writing freelance for Elle, Glamour, Working Mother, Parenting and regional pubs The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, and the Boston Herald. When she's not writing prose, she's promoting bestselling writers like Jacquelyn Mitchard, Michael Palmer, Brunonia Barry, and Lisa Genova at Kelley & Hall Book Publicity and Promotion, the company she founded with her mother and sister.
She also has an "unwavering" fascination with Johnny Depp and a precious imp of a daughter named Piper who looks suspiciously like Suri Cruise. (If the Handbasket disappears from the net anytime soon, you'll know why....)

Welcome, Megan!

Going After It by Megan Kelley Hall

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. And for some reason, most of my stories always had an unusual angle. For instance, in the fourth grade the girls were supposed to write a short story about a rose, the boys were supposed to write about a train. Most girls in my class wrote about princesses weaving magical roses through their hair or brides walking down the aisle with arms filled with roses. Boys wrote superhero stories about trains that traveled at the speed of light or in-depth descriptions of steams engines. I think boys are born with this innate knowledge of transportation vehicles. Well, I decided to combine the two stories and I wrote a story about a man who fell off the train and saw his whole life flash before his eyes. He realized how horrible he’d been to his friends and family, especially his wife. He screamed as he fell and by the time he landed on the ground, his whole body had transformed into a rose, his arms stretched out into wide, green leaves, his legs were thorns, his body an awkward arch of a green stem. And when his wife walked sadly from the platform, unaware that her husband had transformed into the dying flower, she stepped on the rose (her husband) and crushed it into the winter ground. Hmm… I’ve always had an active imagination, that’s for sure.

I’ve always been drawn to stories and authors that provide that unusual twist. In high school, I loved anything by Christopher Pike, Lois Duncan, Stephen King, and even V.C. Andrews. In college, I loved short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily.” I love the eerie, unexpected ending, the gothic elements, a great ghost story. That’s the type of story I wanted to tell in my debut novel, SISTERS OF MISERY. I had originally written it as an adult novel (entitled MISERY ISLAND ), but I wanted to write a Young Adult suspense, because that genre was what originally inspired my love of reading and writing. Plus, today’s YA has come a long way in terms of dealing with adult issues and themes.



My love of writing continued into high school and college—I took every Shakespeare course I could possibly take. At Skidmore, I studied under Professor Steven Millhauser, who would later go on to win the Pulitzer prize. I just thought he was a really cool professor at the time. But the pivotal point in my college writing career was having coffee with one of my writing professors, Tatyana Tolstoya (Tolstoy’s granddaughter). I was all excited to go and smoke cigarettes and drink coffee with my professor while we discussed my latest short story. I thought she was going to tell me I was doing a really great job in her class. Instead, she basically blew smoke in my face (literally and figuratively) and said, in her thick Russian accent, “You have too much vanity in your work. You think you’re a better writer than you really are.” I was shocked, because I didn’t think I was that good (and after that meeting, I really thought that I sucked). But what I took away from that meeting was that I can never rest on my laurels. I should always push myself to be a better writer. There is always room for improvement. I try to apply that motto to my writing, as well as other important parts of my life.

My journey to becoming a published author is kind of a dark, gothic story in and of itself. I was walking on the beach near my house one afternoon and suddenly my vision became blurry. I ran up the hill to my house and luckily my mother, my husband and my baby girl were there. They rushed me to the hospital only to discover that I’d had a series of mini-strokes (resulting in losing partial vision in one eye). This was not normal for a 32-year old in seemingly good health. So, for the next two years I had numerous medical procedures (carotid stent, CAT scans, MRIs, MRAs) and eventually I had open heart surgery. And I technically died for 96 minutes in that all brain activity was quieted and my heart was stopped. And then I came back.



After I was “fixed” (turns out the medical problems stemmed from radiation treatment I received when I was a baby with cancer), I was forced to do basically nothing for three months because I had to let my sternotomy wounds heal. It was at that time that I realized that even though I had written for some national magazines like American Baby, Parenting, Working Mother and even Boston Magazine, I’d never written for a major women’s magazine and I’d never published a book. So I used that time to revamp the book I’d been toying with for years and turned the adult suspense MISERY ISLAND into the YA suspense novel, SISTERS OF MISERY.

I actually started the book in 2002, while I was on bedrest for pregnancy (placenta previa). Piper was born 3 months early (weighing only 2.5 pounds), so the bulk of the original adult manuscript was written at the Mass General NICU, where Piper stayed for 60 days until she was allowed to come home at just under 5 pounds. (Side note: I’m happy to say that my daughter, Piper Elizabeth, is 6 and a half now, extremely healthy and is still confused as to why people ask for my signature at book signings. She had a small cameo in Paul Blart: Mall Cop, so she figures that she is the movie star, hence she should be signing autographs.)

Through all of those obstacles, I realized how precious life was and how if you want something, you really have to go after it (it’s not going to come to you). Using those three housebound months as “work” time, I was able to accomplish the following things within the next year: I finally had a feature article run in Glamour magazine, I got a literary agent from one of the largest agencies in New York , and I got a two-book deal from Kensington Books for the SISTERS OF MISERY series. And to top it all off, my essay about overcoming obstacles was included in former CNN Anchor Daryn Kagan’s anthology entitled, “What’s Possible!” proving that truly anything is possible.

For more info, visit my website at www.megankelleyhall.com.

Thanks for inviting me to the Handbasket, Laura!

______________________________________

So, Gentle Reader...Did you know some mean girls back in school? (If you haven't had the chance to read Megan's work, have you ever read Atwood's Cat's Eye? *shiver*)

In the Handbasket: Michael Palmer

At Thrillerfest this past summer I was thoroughly charmed by the devilishly handsome author/physician Michael Palmer. By the time a writer has published fourteen bestselling novels that have been translated into some thirty-five languages, one would think he might be a little, well, inaccessible. Not so, Michael Palmer. You can find out what he's up to nearly every day by writing him at his website, friending him on Myspace or Twitter, or even sending him a letter by way of the publisher of his latest medical thriller The Second Opinion. You'll want to check out this terrific interview that novelist Karen Harper did with him at The Big Thrill as well.

Michael has been publishing novels since 1982, and as his books have gotten more and more popular, so has he. He's dropped by the Handbasket today to tell us how he has (almost!) conquered contemporary technology so he can keep in touch with all of his friends and fans.

Welcome, Michael!





I just can’t keep up……




Greetings, everyone from the coast just north of boston….. for your entertainment, here’s the latest tweet I intend to post:

Look for my guest blog on wonderful laura benedict’s notes from the handbasket. It's about how lost I am keeping up with communication tech

There it is—exactly 140 characters – that’s all that is allowed in a tweet…..

The words in red are those I couldn’t have defined for you a year or two ago….there are other such words—many others, actually…..i am a communications/Internet dinosaur….

My writing career began in the late 70s, and in 1982 my first book (of 14), the sisterhood, was published by bantam…..a few weeks later, by way of the bantam mailroom (talk about dinosaurs!) I received my first “fan letter” from a kindly reader from Kansas…..it seems like a large proportion of those who write me and other authors (I checked) are from states with 2-4 right-angles……draw your own conclusions about why Kansans and wyomans and coloradans and Nebraskans read more and send fan mail more than other places…..anyhow, I still have that first note (think diners with their first 1, 2, 5, 10, and 20 dollar bills above the cash register)…… and of course, I ANSWERED IT right away……I even answered the note I got from the lady in return (of course putting my return address on the letter gave her that opening)…..

Over the years (and increasing sales) that followed, the volume of reader mail (not all were friendly, so I won’t call them fans) increased……I still answered every one…..my parents were sticklers for social graces, although my close friends might dispute the results in areas other than returning fan mail…..the point is, I kept up…..my editor told me it was crucial – each person who went to the trouble to write was likely to buy my succeeding books provided I wrote them back…..i still think that’s true….

Of course, there were what I came to call “yellow pagers”…..those were the “fans” who wrote me usually in pencil on yellow lined legal-sized paper, rambling through two or more pages dealing with…..well, don’t ask, because I never finished any of them when I sent a response…..some, though by no means all, came from prisons…..i guess those had something to do with “free time”

Anyhow, after years of scrambling to keep up with correspondence in the interest of social grace and my career…..along came the internet….i don’t think I really noticed it for the first few years and I didn’t understand exactly what it was for a few years after that…..in fact, I remember being sort of mystified with the drop off in written fan-letters, especially when my sales seemed to be on the rise….. then Daniel, the middle of my three sons changed my life forever with these words: “You gotta have a web site.” …..so along with some artistic, savvy friends of his, he built me one…..in no time at all, I found out why I hadn’t been receiving much in the way of written notes…..let the flood gates be open….

The site has a “Contact Me” section, and I am astounded at how many readers do……still, I have committed myself to personally answering every note (I’m 250 behind right now)…..my parents are tough people to go up against when it comes to social grace…..no longer are senders limited to the square-corner states……try south Africa…..or the Philippines …..or Pitcairn island (how many of you know what/where that is….think mutiny on the bounty)…… anyhow, last week my site got 78,000 hits…..i have no idea what percentage of those write, but I’m answering a lot of mail, in addition to requests for signed bookplates (also daniel’s idea, I think)….

But the rascal wasn’t done……face it, dad, you have no cyber presence, he told me not so long ago…..that’s where it’s at now…..you need to be on my space…..then, you need to be on facebook….. and most recently you need to begin tweeting every day on twitter……forget about fixster and these other social networks for the time being…..we’ll do them later……so I hired a publicist (sisters and their mom, actually) and they began to create a cyberpresence, as in 1500 my space “friends” and 1500 or so facebook “friends” and 400 (and rising) twitter followers…..goodness!!

Not long ago, I called Daniel amazed because one of the book sites that reviewed the second opinion boasted that it had been chosen by some survey as one of the 100 most influential book review sites on the internet……A HUNDRED!!!!! I exclaimed……I can’t believe there are more than a hundred such sites all together……dad, Daniel said with the patience of a third grade teacher, the number is closer to a HUNDRED THOUSAND……

So now I have e-mails from my site, wall-to-walls (I still don’t know exactly what they are, but I answer them nonetheless) and other messages from ms, f, and t , and even an occasional paper letter via my publishers…..and of course there are amazon and barnes and noble “reviews” to stay busy checking……I CAN’T STOP BECAUSE OF MY PARENTS (now long deceased) AND MY FIRST EDITOR who has me fearful that every e-mail unanswered is a future sale lost…..

You know what I think I’ll try and do as soon as I’ve finished this guest blog and answering today’s quota of e-mails (I just got 2 from the Seychelles!!)…..

I think I’ll try writing a book!

michael

In the Handbasket: CJ Lyons

I can't believe it's already time to have my friend CJ back in the Handbasket. Her debut novel, Lifelines, came out last March, and her second novel, Warning Signs, was published on Tuesday. I'm thrilled to have her back at the blog, and totally psyched about seeing her at next week's Love Is Murder Conference in Chicago!

Welcome, CJ!

Tell us about Warning Signs and how it connects to your debut novel, Lifelines.

WARNING SIGNS is second in the Angels of Mercy series. It's a coming of age story about a young medical student facing her own mortality as she investigates the mysterious deaths of patients and then begins to suffer the same deadly symptoms herself.

LIFELINES, my first book, was definitely more of a thriller. It was the classic stranger comes to town story (I love old westerns) and the pacing is rapid-fire, the stakes raised until the entire city is at risk.

WARNING SIGNS, however, is more of a mystery, focusing on the whodunnit and howdunnit of a mysterious illness. It's still fast paced, but more about the medical student coming to her own as a healer.

The third book, URGENT CARE (due out in November, 2009), is back to the world of thrillerdom--it's darker and edgier than either of the first books. More emotionally complex and the plot is also more complicated.


What did you learn about yourself as you wrote Lifelines and Warning Signs?

That it's okay to take risks and expose yourself to the reader. Each of the main characters in the series struggles with a lot of the same issues I've struggled with either as a woman or as a physician.

For my own life, I've also learned that out of disaster comes opportunity. Something so simple, yet we often get so caught up in distractions that we forget this in our daily lives.


Every time you and I have a conversation, you make the most wonderful, relevant literary references. Who in your life instilled you with such a love of reading and learning, and how did you develop it?

Growing up we didn't have many toys--we tended to mainly run around outside like wild things, using our imagination to make up games/dramas. But living in central Pennsylvania means a lot of days when you're cooped up inside.

My mother was a great reader, so there were books all around--first, they became my playthings, then as I interpreted the little squiggles inside, they became my companions. I skipped "Dick and Jane" and went right to Agatha Christie and the like: Isaac Asimov, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tolkien, etc.

My nephew takes after me--by the age of nine he's read "heavy" books like At Dawn We Slept about Pearl Harbor--a book I myself didn't tackle until college. It's been such fun introducing him to the books I loved as a kid--it's hard because almost any other books engaging enough for his reading level have explicit sex, so I went back to the classics. He's plowing through Nero Wolfe and just finished the Lord of the Rings.


On your website, you describe yourself as "medical suspense author," but your work reaches beyond the usual suspense novels and delves deeply into the relationships between your characters. How do you keep that balance in a genre that demands almost constant plot action?

Thank you for noticing! Most of my reader mail comments on the depth of my characters and realism of the trouble I cause for them.

I guess that's the key to my pacing--staying true to my characters but also constantly creating havoc for them that forces them to push themselves to the edge and beyond.

Yes, I do love to torture my characters! And indeed, my characters drive the plot, not the other way around. I think no matter how action-packed a story is, the most compelling ones are those that have an emotional core based on characters and their relationships.

I feel so strongly about this, that I actually coined the term: Thrillers with Heart to describe these kind of fast-paced, high-stake novels that revolve around the personal stakes and relationships moreso than the action.


Your travel and teaching schedule is jam-packed. Not all writers are so motivated to teach other writers. What motivates you to teach and how do you balance teaching with your busy writing schedule?

As a pediatrician, I love teaching--it was part of my daily life when I was still practicing. It's been such a joy to find that I can still teach as part of my new career as a writer.

But, honestly, I learn something every time I teach, so it's a win/win for me! As for balancing, I have begun to limit my online classes to offering them only once a year and trying to arrange for my live appearances to coincide with my book releases. It's tricky, but well worth it since teaching is so rewarding.


What do you see yourself doing in five years? Ten years?

Tough question! I definitely want to still be writing, but I'd like to think that I'd be exploring new areas of character--both real and fictional. I like to dream that by then perhaps my books will have attracted the eye of some oh-so-brilliant TV or film producer and I would love to somehow be involved in adapting them to screen.

Basically, I guess the same as I've lived my entire life: exploring new ideas and sharing them with others through my work, either by writing or by teaching.


A question from Bengal, my nine year-old: What was your favorite thing to do as a kid?

Watch the Pittsburgh Steelers win Super Bowls!!! Second to that, reading a good book, collecting salamanders and racing them (hotwheel tracks are good for this), making forts in the woods near our house, and generally finding new ways to get in and out of trouble....

You can find out more about CJ at her website. She has some pretty amazing stories on there, plus links for writers.

In the Handbasket: Jenny Gardiner

Jenny Gardiner's debut novel Sleeping With Ward Cleaver came out in January, but for whatever reason Jenny and I never could coordinate our schedules so she could visit the Handbasket. I'm thrilled to have her here now to tell us a very timely holiday story. More about Jenny after her post. And be sure to visit her website as well as Channeling Erma, a grog that's near and dear to both our hearts.


Welcome, Jenny!

Christmas Tree
by Jenny Gardiner

I’m a sucker for the Christmas season. Always have been. Don’t know if it’s the deluded optimism the holiday thrusts upon us, or just a strange affinity for otherwise maudlin songs dressed up as cheerful seasonal chestnuts. I mean, let’s be honest, at any other time of year, who would actually listen wistfully to a yawner like “The Little Drummer Boy”?

Whatever it is, I have always ensured that my family gets into the holiday spirit, starting with finding the perfect Christmas tree.

When I was a kid, the search for the ultimate yuletide tree took us to the nearest gas station: hardly a romantic venue from which to choose the centerpiece of our holiday decor. We’d pile into the station wagon for the three-block drive to Buck’s Esso station, spill out onto the oil-slicked parking lot, mull over three or four already-netted spruce trees, and then dad would haggle down the price. End of story.

Ah, so I was determined to rewrite that tradition with my own family. Early in my marriage, we decided the most festive tree-acquisition could only be achieved by cutting down our own (plus you get the added benefit of the needles actually staying on the tree all month rather than littering the floor). Because we lived in citified Northern Virginia, the cachet of escaping to the “country”--i.e. the closest remaining patch of farmland untainted by greedy developers--only added to the allure.

But one year, I found myself almost wishing for the chance to just pop down to the local gas station to buy a tree…

That year, my husband and our three children, all under the age of four, trekked to the Clifton Christmas Tree Farm, where awaiting us were candy canes, hot chocolate, homemade wreaths and the typical abundance of forced holiday cheer that we craved.

I had whipped my kids into a tree-chopping frenzy, and so they took their task quite seriously. For forty minutes, we foraged throughout the whopping half-acre “farm” until we found the perfect tree: seven feet of holiday splendor, as wide as it was tall, perfect to fill our cathedral-ceiling’ed living room and flood us with the Christmas spirit.

The kids took turns on the ground with the saw while my husband supervised the chopping honors. Their excitement was palpable. We dragged the tree back to the cashier stand where the farmer’s son coiled the netting around our white pine. The kids stood by, sucking on candy canes, sipping hot cider and petting the farmer’s dog, who’d recently wandered over. I was just about to retrieve the car to load on the tree, when Fido lifted his leg.

“No!” I shouted in what seemed like a frame-by-frame slow motion, as a steady stream was released onto our perfect tree.

For a moment we stood stupefied, not knowing what to do. But we weren’t about to keep a tree covered in dog wee, so we grabbed the kids’ hands to head back into the wilds to hunt for a replacement one.

Until our kids let us know in no uncertain terms, that this tree was the one, the only. They threw themselves on the ground, flailing and crying, thrashing and moaning, like something from a Greek tragedy. They wanted their special tree, and nothing else would suffice.

Their wails did not subside until we relented, and agreed to load up the tainted tree.

The farmer found a makeshift bucket, filled it from a nearby stream and doused the offending urine from the tree. We loaded it onto the roof of the car, and went home.

I have admit, I sort of detached emotionally from the tree that year. Couldn’t quite get over the psychological hurdle of having a tree the dog peed on in my living room. Somehow it clashed with the whole festive notion.

But for my kids, the tree was just about perfect, despite its incumbent flaws. And maybe that’s exactly why I like the holidays so much: because at this time of year, we’re all a little more likely to forgive the small things in order to see the bigger picture.


JENNY GARDINER's work has been found in Ladies Home Journal, the Washington Post and on NPR’s Day to Day. She likes to say she honed her fiction writing skills while working as a publicist for a US Senator. Other jobs have included: an orthodontic assistant (learning quite readily that she was not cut out for a career in polyester), a waitress (probably her highest-paying job), a TV reporter, a pre-obituary writer, and a photographer (claim to fame: being hired to shoot Prince Charles--with a camera, silly!). She lives in Virginia with her husband, three kids, two dogs, one cat and a gregarious parrot. In her free time she studies Italian, dreams of traveling to exotic locales, and feels very guilty for rarely attempting to clean the house.

In the Handbasket: Caroline Leavitt

Caroline Leavitt is one busy writer. Her ninth(!) novel, Breathe, is set to be published by Algonquin Books in 2010 (read her very revealing interview about it here). In the meantime, she reviews for People and Dame Magazines, writes a regular column for the Boston Globe, does freelance manuscript consulting, teaches novel writing at UCLA online and blogs at CarolineLeavittville.


When I asked Caroline about her writing origins, she surprised me with Ray Bradbury, one of my favorites.

Welcome, Caroline!


How Ray Bradbury Saved my Life
by Caroline Leavitt


Flashback. I was a gawky eleven-year-old kid who wanted to be a writer. I had reams of notebooks filled with my work, but none of my stories had really come alive yet, and I wasn’t sure why. One day, I was reading Seventeen Magazine, wondering why I didn’t look like any of the models, when my favorite model wrote that she carried a copy of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles in her pocketbook at all times. I had no idea who Bradbury was, or why she did this or what was so great about a book about Martians, but inspired and curious, I asked my father if he could pick up the book for me when he went to work. That night, he came home with a paperback copy and I began to read.

Oh. My. God.

Bradbury’s Martians didn’t have two heads or speak weirdly or eat people for breakfast. Instead, they were real, fully realized people who had wants and needs like human beings and who acted accordingly. The stories, complete in themselves, stitched together to form a novel about one civilization co-opting another, even while it explored how alike, and how different we really were. The book began with Earth braced for war, and terrified humans headed for a new life on Mars (never mind the Martians were already living there.) Martians struggled to stop them, but were no match. As humans began to remake Mars in Earth’s image, nuclear war broke out on Earth, and the expatriates returned home, leaving only one family to stay, as the new “Martians.”

What knocked me out—then and now—is how Bradbury had no villains or heroes. The humans could be just as heroic, nasty, loving and conniving as the Martians. Written during the Cold War anti-Communist hysteria, Bradbury took on racism, religion, family life and love itself. I ached for the lonely Martian woman who fell for a human and was punished for it, but pages later, I was horrified when Martians tricked earth people into thinking Mars was like their childhood homes and then casually exterminated them.
What really got me though was how Martians could be as complex and sympathetic as humans. I began to realize that as long as you knew that character had to be king and you made the emotions true, you could write about real and important things and set your stories anywhere you chose. Bradbury taught me to put moral choices in my work, to push the edges and not give easy answers. And he showed me that you could wind a thread of melancholy throughout your tales and still give your readers hope.
Bradbury was—and still is—my hero. And because of him, there isn’t a moment I don’t look up at the sky and imagine his Martians, playing their instruments, admiring their beautiful blue canals, and trying to keep us out.


Thanks, Caroline!

In The Handbasket: Tish Cohen

The writing world is like an enormous, small town. So even though she lives north of the border, I got to know Tish Cohen this past winter when she generously pitched in to make our blog day for Patry Francis such a huge success. It's been a busy few years for Cohen. Even before her 2007 debut novel Townhouse sold to HarperCollins, the film rights sold to Fox 2000 and it's now in development with John Carney (Once) adapting it for the screen. Townhouse was also shortlisted for Canada's Commonwealth Writer's Prize "Best First Book" award. Her new novel, The Inside Out Girl, debuts today. You can find it everywhere, including Target, whose buyers wisely chose it as one of their famous breakout books! Then there's her charming Zoe Lama series for the preteen set.

I asked Tish to tell us what it's like to switch gears between writing for adults and those hungry little preteen minds. Welcome, Tish!

Writing for adults vs. writing for children is quite different for me. Although my two middle grade novels, The Invisible Rules of the Zoë Lama, and its sequel, The One and Only Zoë Lama, required every bit as much planning in terms of plotting, character development, etc., I tended to draw more from the lives of my children as well as my life growing up with siblings way back when. Also, the heavier plot elements such as Zoë’s grandmother having Alzheimer’s and children dealing with the death of a parent are handled with a very careful touch. That said, I think I am able to free up and have a bit of fun with the kids’ books, they tend to be more playful overall. The other advantage for me is I have live-in consultants—my children tend to pull up a chair and a bag of cookies as I’m writing and discover the story as I’m writing.

When I wrote Inside Out Girl I actually drew partially from my own experiences as a mother to two thrill-seeking boys who skateboard, mountain bike, snowboard, and invent all sorts of stunts that baffle the rational mind. (I should have guessed what I was in for when my oldest shimmied up on top of the stove when he turned one. Thankfully, the burners weren’t lit!) Not being the type of mother who handles countless trips to Emerg very well—it takes me a good two days to decompress, post-hosp—I tried as best I could to not only control their wild activities, but to insert my own voice of caution into their firmly helmeted heads.

Before my kids embarked on the next extreme activity, I would open up my great trunk full of worries and start laying out qualms on the table like the battered heirlooms I felt it is my duty to bestow upon them:

-they allow BMX bikers in this skatepark? Isn’t that dangerous?
-too many rocks on that forest path—and look at the size of that divot!
-The hills are sheer ice! Seriously—what’s to stop some hotdogger from losing control and plowing right into you?

Rachel Berman, the single mother in Inside Out Girl, raises her kids in a similarly demented fashion—though her fears are more based in life experiences as she unwillingly gave up a child for adoption in the past and now lives with the constant fear of life taking away another of her children. Rachel can quote injury statistics for any type of accident off the top of her head and refuses to allow her young son to go away to skateboard camp, because what kind of counselors would they have? Half-stoned, pubescent wild boys who could only encourage her son to take even more risks?

Eventually Rachel comes allow Dustin to go to camp and drives three hours from home to drop him off for his first two-week overnight experience. Along with his duffel bag, she leaves him with plenty of well-intended warnings about extreme sports and plenty of extra water bottles. She drives home, proud of herself, only to be called back to the camp as soon as she arrives home because Dustin jumped a parking barrier and broke his wrist.

Even Rachel could never have anticipated such an injury.

Before this summer, I’d never let my son go away to sleepover camp either. But at ten o’clock this morning, we packed Lucas into the car with a Duffel bag full of labeled gear and a head full of his mother’s warnings (baby steps), and my husband drove him to sleepover camp. It might not be the skate camp he’s been dreaming of (hey, they want $900 a week), but it has a solid reputation and isn’t too far should he need to be picked up. Not that I’m hoping for that. Well, I kind of am—but not because anything bad happened! Anyway, the point is, I learned a little from my protagonist and her need to start letting go, even just a little. And I guess that’s where all my books meet up for me—there’s some issue in all of them that I need to resolve in my own life, whether it my for my adult self or that stringy-haired, knobby-kneed (seriously, check out the bio shot on my website!) kid that still lives inside me.

Meet Susan Arnout Smith!

I am possibly the only person on the planet who traveled to Anchorage, Alaska and didn't see a live moose. I may have seen Denali in the distance from my hotel window, but I really can't be sure. My week in Anchorage, back in September, was spent hurrying between the Sheraton(?) and the Convention Center during the Bouchercon mystery conference. *sigh* I'm a rotten tourist.

But I did meet wonderful writers and readers from all over the country. One of those writers was Anchorage native Susan Arnout Smith, who moderated a panel I was on. She was such a pro--I couldn't believe her first novel, The Timer Game, wasn't due out until January of this year. You can meet Susan yourself if you're attending Thrillerfest July 9-12 in NYC (I'll be there, too!) or at the Southern California Writers Association gathering on Saturday, July 19. You can visit Susan's website for details.

I love to have writers guest blog here at The Handbasket. (And not just because it gives me time to hang out with my kids!)

Welcome, Susan!

Already Gone, by SUSAN ARNOUT SMITH

Two things are happening this week in my family: my sister-in-law, Dossy, is using her pool for a commando toddler learn-to-swim program, where her grandson, Jack, will be tossed into the deep end of the pool by an instructor who routinely makes the mothers cry.

And my daughter, Martha, is home briefly this week from Stanford, on her way to Croatia and Romania where she’ll be teaching English for two months. She’s glossy, beautiful, only 19. It is an act of faith on our part to let her go. That’s not true, of course.

Faith has nothing to do with it.

She’s more than ready; our job is to buy the phone card and support her choice.

Still.

All over America, kids are graduating this week, poised on that edge.

They start small, these babies of ours. And in the beginning, we dream our dreams for them. It’s easy, before they come into our lives, to imagine theirs.

There’s usually a doctor in there, someplace, maybe a president. And then this baby arrives, insistent, demanding, better than any imagined dream, and we remember again how little we know and how much we already have.

They come into the world needing everything, and all we can give them is our love.
We guide. We direct. We stand on the sidelines and cheer.

We build peanut butter sandwiches and tents made of bedsheets.

And all the while, this miracle, this child of ours, is busy dreaming his own dream.
Busy reminding us that if—he is ours—he is also, most of all, his own.

A singular self. A child of the spirit. A voice in the vast cosmos of good that stretches back in time and links forward through all the times to come. And while we’re focused on car pools and permission slips, our child is growing up.

Until one extraordinary day, we look and see not just a child, but a young adult, poised on the edge of her own life. Confident, sure of herself.

Already gone.

Toddler Jack is there on that continuum, poised over the deep end.

Martha’s already jumped. Many times.

Only it’s not a swimming pool. It’s an ocean.

Swimming toward a far shore and a light only she can see.

And all Fred and I can do is stand here, arms linked, and wave.