THE CALL!

Dear Dears, 

This blog is celebrating the magical, powerful, unpredictable, call of a good novel -- that summons, that lure -- the seductive promise of a sweet (if brief) escape. 

I read a lot. With each first page or first chapter, I hope to be swept up and carried off... But it has been quite a while since a book really grabbed me or called to me from the other room and made me look forward to our time together when all the chores are done. Being filled with that private, delicious, anticipation is such a lovely, simple -- but not at all simple, thing. 

Many books are good enough to pass those last moments between waking and sleeping and ease me from one reality to another. But that's functional, maintenance, better-than-nothing, small r, reading. 

Sometimes I fear that my own life is too dense for a novel to get through, that my inane inner-chatter drowns everything else out. Or worse, that book-lust, too, is a passion for the young. 

Reviews and recommendations are no guarantee. Even books beloved by soul-mates are as likely as not to miss. And so much is predictable and overly familiar.

But then it happens! A novel comes along and takes over my brain, erasing everything else. And even knowing that the words will wait forever if necessary, steadfast and patient on the page -- there is a sense of urgency. 

I know it's backwards. The God of Animals

It keeps me awake, turning pages, barreling through -- but dreading the end. A book that once I've forced myself to put aside, calls to me throughout my day. 
Yes! That's READING. ALL CAPS! 

xo Amy

P.S. This blog was inspired by the novel, 'The God of Animals' by Aryn Kyle which called to me for three glorious days. 
P.P.S. My wish for you is to get the call soon and often!

An Author's Homage to Librarians

You sit down to write a novel, and soon the characters are crowding around demanding attention with the urgency and self-obsession of 3-year-olds.


A few weeks in, you can no longer shake them. In fact, nothing shuts them up until the manuscript is ripped from your hands at deadline, when you go from total control to utter powerlessness with one click of the Send button.

Goodbye! Good luck!

After that comes the weird silence of the empty nest, with its combination of freedom and loneliness. The joy and relief are offset by the fear of a mean and indifferent world mistreating your defenseless characters. You realize how much you love all of them -- even the bullies and brats, and there's nothing you can do but hope the world will understand and love them too.

The first word that they've arrived safely in the outside world comes with the reviews. Then your friends start reporting sightings of your babies all dressed up in their new covers, snug and comfy on bookstore shelves.

If you're a first-timer, you continually check your Amazon rating and duck in and out of bookstores. You ricochet between elation and devastation, relief and panic. But that's largely a financial issue.

You don't really hear from your characters until readers write to tell you they've spent time with them and that they are still alive on the page.

Fan mail is your "Hi, Ma! We're OK!" And it is wonderful. Even the urgent e-mail begging for a plot summary to help some kid with a book report due in the morning is better than nothing.

Then the sad day comes when you get the "R" letter. The one saying, in essence: We're sorry to inform you that sales stink and we have to remainder your book. That is how the publisher announces his intention to stand your characters at the edge of a ditch, blindfold them and have a firing squad of sales execs and bookkeepers gun them down.

The horror of the "R" letter is mitigated by only one thought: Your babies are safe at the library! Were it not for libraries, there would be no safe harbor for characters and stories, nowhere for them to wait out disasters and economic storms. And were it not for librarians, there would be no one to introduce your characters to new children as the older ones grow up and move on.

And for this, I want to thank librarians, for the heroic work they do and for the many, many lives they save.

xo Amy 

P.S. This piece ran a few years back in the LA Times. Am running it again now as my local libraries and probably yours, too, are endangered. 

Join your Friends of the Library group!!!

Write What You Know: CANCER

When my daughter was 14 she was diagnosed with a blood cancer called Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Needless to say it was an unspeakably ghastly time, but beside a little lingering PTSD we all got through it. She’s 21 now, in college, worrying about other things. 

But when we were still in the thick of it, my friend went looking for cancer books for my daughter and her friends. What she discovered was that when kids in books, movies and TV shows get cancer, they die. 

I can’t blame writers or readers for loving a good tear-jerker, but if it’s your kid, your self, or your big sister who’s sick... well, you see my point.

And those story book sick / dying kids were invariably portrayed as saintly and angelic, more concerned with other people’s happiness than their own.  Peaceful, fearless, accepting of their fate.

This was not my impression. Mine was that snotty 14 year olds are snotty 14 year olds, sick, well, or on a Ferris wheel. The patients at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles were as bizarre and motley as any other huge group of kids. 

And another thing I learned and re-learned and re-re-relearned going through the whole cancer nightmare, was that people inadvertently say and do incredibly insensitive and cruel things. 

True no one knows what to do, and there is no one right thing to say besides, “OOPS! It’s all been a mistake! Your daughter is perfectly fine!”

So, once my daughter was in the clear, I set about writing a funny, teen, cancer survivor book based on her medical experience... Keeping these three things in mind,

1. Not all sick kids die. 2. Sick kids are no different than any other kids. In fact they ARE any other kids except they got sick. And 3. Sick kids, like the rest of us, are surrounded by idiots. 

The truly horrific reality (finding out you’re sick, getting chemo and the side effects of chemo, hospital stays, trying to return to normal, school, well meaning friends and strangers...) makes for a scary enough story without having to kill anyone. 

And I got to get back at all the stupid things people did by including them in the story! Pure spite and delicious revenge! 

When the manuscript was done, I showed it to my daughter. She gave it her resounding approval and off it went. 

  

SIDE EFFECTS was published in 2006, and the paperback followed a year or two later. The reviews were great and it still sells well... Although there have been complaints about the character's "language."  

But the best part BY FAR are the fan letters.

I like all my fan letters. Even the e-mails saying they have an author report due on me in the morning and need answers quick. 

But none compare to the letters I get from young people with cancer who thank me for writing a book that tells their story. 

So that’s why I agree, at least this once, with the old saw about Writing what you know.

xo

Amy 

Of Dogs and Books

Am staring down this novel, while vacuuming up the copious schmutz with which our new puppy covers all surfaces. 

His non-allergenic poodle fur doesn’t shed, so there is less fur to sweep.

BUT his curls act like Velcro for the crispy bits of twig, bark, leaves, and parched, withered death that this drought and I have created in the name of zero-scaping. 

His extremely effective dirt-delivery system, teamed with his enthusiastic interest in pinecones, shoes and paper products has effectively replaced the dirty dishes, wet towels, sticky wrappers, and smelly laundry with which my children filled the nest until quite recently. 

So, time-wise, I’m still cleaning.  

And writing? 

By way of encouragement, I tell my writing students that there is something learned by the completion of each book that makes it easier to write the fifteenth novel than the fifth... 

BUT I’m not entirely sure I believe that.  

In fact, if there is anything I am sure of, it is that each novel writes itself differently. 

You may learn the basics on the first one: How to carry it so you don’t bash its soft spot on every door jam. 

How to diaper it.

How to attach a car seat...  

BUT beyond that you must discover / re-invent on a per project (book / baby) basis.  

For example -- You could get Kid #1 to shut up by strapping it into that automatic swing, AKA the electric chair, and setting the timer for next Thursday.

BUT Kid #2 arches the back, goes ridged, and will have none of it. 

Novel #6 filled itself with jokes, whereas Novel #11 took itself very seriously.

And so I struggle against the encroaching squalidifying of my home, as much now with this filth-hound as I once battled the onslaught of Barbie shoes and lego.

And I wrestle the new novel as if I’d never attempted such a battle before.

Odd, ain’t it?

xo

Amy