Suspense, from a worrier

As I declared to the audience at a panel on Suspense during last weekend’s Dahlonega Literary Festival, I’m a worrier by nature.

Just before the panel discussion:

“On the Edge of Our Seats: The Element of Suspense in Fiction”

I’m wearing gray, seated between two gentlemen authors.

The panel took place on Saturday at 4:00. All day, I had greeted and met readers who stopped by my table to ask about and buy my suspense novel, UNDERWATER. I’d also met many of the other authors. It was a beautiful day in Dahlonega, which only added to the cheerful mood of just about everyone.

The panel’s format was different from what I’d expected. I had imagined that (primarily) audience members would ask questions (“this question is for so-and-so author:” etc.). Instead, the moderator asked almost all of the (very good) questions, and each of us seven panelists then had the opportunity to respond. I hadn’t been able to attend any of the day’s earlier panels (if I had, I’d have known about the format). Néanmoins – nevertheless – I wasn’t too disconcerted.

First, we introduced ourselves individually. Then the moderator posed a question and asked the person on one end of the table to start the responses. Though each of us had authored a book(s) containing the element of suspense, our works represented a variety of genres, none overlapping (much), so we had different perspectives, and styles. No one’s book was similar to my novel, and I was excited to have the chance to talk about it.

As I said during one of my responses, since I’m a worrier, writing suspense seems natural. I pay careful attention to pacing. I start with the characters and the issues they face (the conflict). As I write, I strive to keep the reader on the edge of his/her seat, worrying about what will happen next. I plan for the tension to rise as the story unfolds, as things go from bad to worse. I want the reader to be a worrier about my characters.

It takes some work, and I ~~worry about~~ focus on it. But if you’re a worrier by nature, it’s really not that complicated.

March 11, 2014 1

From Typing to Skyping…

Last summer, I went to a local antiques store with my daughter. She saw an old typewriter for sale and walked over to it. A piece of paper had been inserted, and she tapped one of the keys.

“It doesn’t work,” she said. I walked over and typed my name on the paper. “You have to hit the keys,” I told her. “You don’t just touch or tap lightly!”

I took typing in high school for one quarter, and learned to type at a decent (but not very fast) rate. Mistakes counted against your grade, and I let speed suffer in my effort to avoid typos. In college, I remember having to carefully retype entire papers (before Liquid Paper came out).

Luckily, my French professors didn’t require typewritten papers – with so many accents, it was nearly impossible. So they had us turn in handwritten papers. A bit less of a hassle…but still.

How things have changed! Liquid Paper was a blessing in my first job at a downtown Dallas bank. Though I wasn’t a secretary, I typed a memo or two…

Fast forward to today. Though we still “type” on computer keyboards, things are different now. Communication has evolved. Writing business (and personal) letters is done via email and social media messages. People read books on their phones and tablets. To sum up a recent blog post by writer J.A. Konrath, ebooks are here, and there’s no turning back.

And people visit with each other on Skype.

That’s how I appeared at a Book Club meeting last night that had chosen to read my suspense novel UNDERWATER.* My contact there – far from my home – had invited me to Skype with the group to discuss the book and my writing. I was thrilled to have the opportunity, to meet such a great group of readers, and to answer their questions over a glass of wine.

Before our scheduled call, I set up my iPad to Skype in my home office and wanted to test it. But now I was the one saying to my daughter, “It doesn’t work!”

I texted her at her North Carolina university, and a few minutes later she had downloaded the app on her laptop. Then she called my Skype name…

Between “So pick up” and “Just finished and it went great!” (over 3 hours later), she helped me make sure my device was ready and that I was happy with how I looked onscreen.

She’s minoring in French, and sometimes (though rarement), that’s how we communicate.

Merci, ma fille! Tout s’est bien passé!

* If your Book Club chooses UNDERWATER and would like me to appear at your meeting via Skype, please let me know!

February 27, 2014 1

Getting yesterday back

Yesterday’s gone on down the river and you can’t get it back.

– Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

As a writer of fiction, I draw from my own experiences. But I also tell stories that I make up, out of my imagination. I don’t tell a story the way it happened, but the way I thought it should have. *

So “yesterday” is a good place to look for ideas, even though in life, you can’t get yesterday back.

Lots of things that happen in my novel MAKE THAT DEUX really happened (or a version of them did), but lots of other things didn’t. I did spend a year in France when I was young, and I missed my boyfriend back home. When I wrote the novel, I got to tell the ending of our story, not as it really happened, but as I wished it had.

My latest novel, UNDERWATER, isn’t based on an experience. But some of the characters’ internal conflicts are drawn from my own struggles. The water “down the river” isn’t always calm. Even if it looks okay, in my characters’ lives, there’s a lot lurking below the surface: Guilt. Lies. Jealousy. Hurt. Bitterness. Regret.

The tension builds, and as an author of suspense, I know that

worry = suspense.

As I wrote UNDERWATER, I knew that its “yesterday” had to be problematic at best. I wanted to keep you, the reader, worried about what was going to happen next.

And since by nature, I’m a worrier, I just had to let the river flow.

* to paraphrase Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: “A story was something you made up out of something that might have happened. Only you didn’t tell it like it was, you told it like you thought it should have been.”

February 13, 2014 0

Coffee + writing = a good read

Today I’m at my neighborhood Starbucks signing copies of my Suspense novel, UNDERWATER and my romance novel MAKE THAT DEUX !

Come sample the new pastries, have a cup of coffee or tea and pick up your signed copy! Valentine’s Day is only 5 days away!

February 9, 2014 0

The Road Not Taken: Part Two

According to Alison Wolf, author of The XX Factor: How the Rise of Working Women Has Created a Far Less Equal World, as a “graduate mother of four,” I’m an “extraordinarily rare beast.”

Not surprisingly, it’s a label that caught my eye. Having earned an undergraduate degree in economics, then taking several courses towards an MBA (the pursuit of which was halted, once I gave birth to twins), I’m not sure if I qualify in Wolf’s view as a “graduate” mom.

(But even if I don’t, I’ll say I do.)

For my first year of motherhood, I went back to a job I truly enjoyed and for which I was adequately (if not yet extremely well) compensated. It was the 1980s and the industry was IT: I worked for a software developer in Richardson, Texas. Day care was difficult to find (and hard to accept, after I visited the place). My solution: a nanny who arrived at my house at 8 am and left at 6.

Problem solved – for a while. I focused all my energy on my work, both in the office and at home. Of course, my husband helped; with two babies, he had to. But when he was offered a much better-paying position in a different state, I made a decision that Wolf says is rare for women with my educational background.

I took the road less traveled: I became a stay-at-home mom.

Even with my husband’s new job, it meant downsizing; as we simultaneously dealt with a home that was “underwater,” our stress increased. Not everyone understood our decisions, but we came up with a financial game plan (à la Dave Ramsey), and over time, it all worked out. We learned to live on one income – also something rare, according to Wolf – but something that “made all the difference.” *

That income increased over time, and so did our financial stability. We’d always wanted four kids, and our wish came true: when our twin boys were five, their brother was born; three years later, our daughter arrived. [I’ve read that “three is the new two” – as far as the “right” number of kids to have – but for me, baby #4 turned a crowd into a party.** And, well, I like parties.]

Now, our daughter is in college; “the boys” are all in their twenties. The road I took – raising kids (and managing/running a household, with no “outside” help ***) – has ended, and I’ve launched a new career as a writer. Abandoning my professional track years ago had its consequences (many of them described by Wolf), but it’s also had its benefits: more time with my family, [perhaps] less stress, and a happy marriage.

[I’m not saying my marriage wouldn’t be happy, had I kept working outside the home; I’m just saying I didn’t, and it is.]

As for being “an extraordinarily rare beast” – well, I find that to be a little pejorative, even judgy. I never engaged in “The Mommy Wars,” other than to defend my decision to stay home. Wolf refutes a New York Times article’s reference to a group of Atlanta mothers (that I don’t know, but who resemble lots of my friends) as representing an”exodus of professional women from the workplace;” she claims it’s statistically insignificant. Really?

Some (but not the vast majority) of my other friends and relatives, with various levels of education and compensation, continued in their careers when they became moms, without missing a beat, or much of one.

They chose to take the other road.

My jury’s out on Wolf’s latest book. My mother kept working because she felt she had to (while her mother provided free child care), and my daughter just began her university education. [Due to the rise of working women], is the world really far less “equal” for her than it was for me, and for my mom? Must all educated professional women be “like” educated professional men? Are there no other acceptable options? And is there only one route to a “successful” life – no exit or entrance ramps available?

If so, de mon côté, I’m still glad I took the road less traveled.

* The last four words of The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

** “Two’s company, three’s a crowd, and four’s a party.”

*** I did have “inside” help: my husband has always done the cooking.

January 31, 2014 1

The Road Not Taken: Part One

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less traveled by..”

– Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

As the rest of the country – make that, world – knows, snow fell here in Atlanta on Tuesday, and we didn’t deal with it very well. A lot has already been written about why, including the following:

1. We don’t have enough equipment to clear snow and lay down salt on the roads. But snow- and ice-storms are rare down here, so that makes economic sense, even if it’s sometimes maddening.

2. Schools weren’t closed ahead of time for the day (though usually, this is done at the hint of a snowflake, tiny patch of ice, or even just very cold weather). When classes were finally canceled, parents (and buses) got on the road.

3. Everybody panicked, and left work at the same time to go home.

Normally, I would have been at home writing, able to watch the snow fall outside my window. But that morning, I was in a town twenty miles away, signing copies of my novel, UNDERWATER. At noon, I headed home as flurries began, [luckily] stopping for gas first.

I didn’t panic, but I drove cautiously as the flurries turned into flakes, the roads became treacherous, and more and more cars appeared. I wound my way using surface streets I know well, instead of highways often congested in the best of conditions.

(Side note: I survived six winters up north, all of them while driving my kids around: one in Michigan and five in Kansas – where it’s flat. But Atlanta is a city built within a forest, at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains; it’s hilly here.)

De toute façon, I did pretty well until I was 3 miles from la maison. The streets weren’t yet icy, and though traffic was becoming heavy, cars were moving. Then I got caught in a bottleneck of vehicles at a light, almost all of us turning right. After a frustrating period (I don’t know how long), I ducked into a neighborhood and came out of it a mile further along my journey.

Then, I came to a fork in the road, and had a decision to make. Both routes were equidistant from home, and both were hilly. My usual choice was the road on the left. I could see nothing but stationary red taillights on the right. I saw some on the left, too, but my iPad’s traffic app assured me that it was only for a short distance. So I took that road.

It looked like the road less traveled by.

Wrong. It was gridlock all the way, but as I inched along – literally – down a big hill, and then up the other side, I kept thinking, “It’ll get better!” *

At a certain point, I considered abandoning my car and walking. But that point was after I’d passed all side streets into which I could have turned to park. There was nowhere to ditch my car now (other than a real ditch), and I didn’t want to walk uphill in the cold, carrying my heavy bags. Inside the car was warm. I was making progress toward home at a turtle’s pace, but I was still making progress. And it wasn’t dark – yet – though it was getting colder.

My husband, who had taken the train home from his office hours earlier, kept checking on me. I knew he was considering walking over to rescue me, but what could he do? What I needed was for him to somehow remove the cars in front of me – or at least, get the one right in front of me to move forward. But where could that car go?

Nowhere, because the one ahead of him was barely moving. But that was better than nothing, and as I approached the turnoff for my neighborhood, I braced myself for its snow-caked and potentially icy streets. Without sliding, I made it up and down the steep hills and arrived at my destination just before six p.m.

I was grateful to be home, even though I’d taken a road ~~well~~ heavily traveled.

My view on Tuesday, for quite some time:

Next Post: The Road Not Taken, Part Two (A different kind of road, but honestly, the one less traveled.)

* Indeed, my iPad app (incorrectly) showed that it would.

January 30, 2014 1

Rendez-vous in the Big Apple

My husband and I spent a few days in New York City earlier this month, in between two bouts of record low temperatures up there, and (fortunately) days before snow fell in Manhattan.

As we walked from our hotel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the “Met”) one day, I tried to picture Candace Morgan’s apartment. Candace is the main character in my Suspense novel UNDERWATER, and she lives in Atlanta and New York. Undoubtedly, her place in the Upper East Side is tiny compared to the luxury penthouse condominium she owns down south. But it works, because she’s a minimalist – sort of.

In UNDERWATER, Candace spends most of her time in the city I know better, Atlanta (though she jets off to two exotic locations, only one of which I’ve visited). Relatively few of the story’s scenes take place up north, none during the winter; however, unlike me, Candace knows her way around “the City.”

So, why did my husband and I schedule a trip there, with no thought to the January weather possibilities? Parce que we recently reconnected with an old friend from our college days in Chapel Hill, whom we hadn’t seen in decades. That friend and we decided to rendez-vous in New York (she lives in Boston), and she and we contacted three other UNC friends who live in and around New York and asked them to join us.

The Old Well on the campus of UNC in Chapel Hill, North Carolina:

We’d seen one of these friends a few times in recent years (although she, the Boston woman, hadn’t seen him since college), but we hadn’t seen or talked to the rest in over thirty years. Pourquoi? Because we had moved to Texas right after graduation and had simply lost contact. We hadn’t known their parents’ addresses or phone numbers – pretty much the only way, back then, to find each other.

But now, thanks to technology, social networks and just plain serendipity – well, I’m going to credit serendipity too, because it just felt like it was a factor – all but one of us met on a Saturday at a Greek restaurant on 7th Avenue. We caught up over lunch at a round table, then continued to share memories and news at a nearby Irish Pub. That night, it was a smaller group at dinner at an Italian restaurant on 51st Street.

The one who couldn’t attend that Saturday had previously scheduled a weekend trip. But – serendipitously – we had arrived on Thursday, and she happened to be free for dinner that night, so we met at a fabulous midtown restaurant. It was a wonderful kickoff to a great weekend.

It was a little weird to see each other again after so long and compare memories. On the other hand, it was somehow comfortable. We had all become friends without the benefit of instant and easy communication, and with the aid of serendipity. (Perhaps because we never did anything like it in college, exchanging emails and texts before and after our “reunion” in NYC felt a little odd – but only a little.)

I was glad the weather cooperated while we were there, and I’m thankful we dodged the snow and freezing temperatures (though ours down south have been pareil, lately). Next weekend, as I watch the Super Bowl, if it’s extremely cold (or worse) up there, I’ll be thinking of my northern friends.

With warm thoughts.

January 25, 2014 0

“Time Travel:” mon expérience

L’interview took place last August at the Carolina Coffee Shop in Chapel Hill, NC, right before UNDERWATER was released.I had just dropped off my daughter at college and was planning a Launch Party for my new Suspense novel. The interviewer was fellow Tar Heel Lucy Hood, who had studied in Spain just a few years after I returned from my year abroad in Montpellier, France on the UNC program there.

Fast forward to January 2014, and you have Lucy’s article, Time Travel, in the current edition of the Carolina Alumni Review!

You’ll find a lot about my first novel MAKE THAT DEUX, which Lucy and I discussed that morning, a little about UNDERWATER, and a few things about me (including a recent photo).

While MAKE THAT DEUX takes you back to the 70s (think: American Hustle, Argo and the Bee Gees), UNDERWATER is set in current times. It takes place in Atlanta and New York, with a scene or two in France.

I’m not a big “time travel” person when it comes to the movies, when that means the characters can go back and forth in time and try to alter or fix things that happened, then deal with the ramifications. But one movie that does it well, in my opinion, is the not-so-famous film that came out in 2000, called The Family Man starring Nicolas Cage.

In the movie, there was a boyfriend and a girlfriend, and one of them was going to spend time in Europe for a great opportunity, and then they…

Well, it’s a romantic, sweet story, just like (but different from) MAKE THAT DEUX. But if you want to take a different journey, filled with conflict, betrayal, despair and deceit, go deeper and dive into UNDERWATER.

You may have a hard time coming up for air.

January 18, 2014 0

Chez le coiffeur: Bernard Dugaud atelier de beauté

On Saturday, February 1, 2014, I will be at the Bernard Dugaud Salon in Buckhead in Atlanta from 1:00 to 3:00 signing copies of my Suspense novel UNDERWATER !

Come by the salon on Roswell Road just where it meets Peachtree, park in the back lot and find the entrance there. I will be looking forward to seeing you, Mesdames et Messieurs!

L’interieur:

January 17, 2014 0

Rendez-vous at a French Café!

I’ll be signing copies of UNDERWATER on JAN 20, 2014 (MLK Holiday) from 3:00 to 5:00 pm at LA MADELEINE Country French Café in Dunwoody, Georgia (Perimeter Center West)!

Come enjoy a pastry or two, have un verre de vin and pick up your copy!

January 12, 2014 0