Seeds of book love

True confessions: as a kid, I was a bit of a rebel when it came to reading. I come from a family of anti-sports book lovers. Our coffee table was always piled high with magazines. Long car trips usually meant a read-aloud trip to Narnia. Dad devoured historical fiction, especially Civil War stories. Mom loved a good mystery or character-driven mainstream story. My brother gobbled through adventure stories. Me? I preferred being out in the woods, building forts on the stream bank and imagining my own adventures.

In seventh grade, my reading teacher picked up on my rebellious reluctance to read and had a sixth sense about how pre-teens think. She called me over to her closet chock full of paperbacks one day with a "Psst. Come 'ere. I hear you take horseback riding lessons. I've got a little something you might like. Our little secret, though, okay?" She pointed me to a shelf of Walter Farely books and the addictive YA horse stories by Patsey Gray (whose stuff is now considered "rare" and "collectible").

It took just one of Grey's books to get me hooked. From there I devoured every horse book in my small-town library and even re-read the Narnia books on my own. It surprised me to no end how captivating Lewis was in my own internal voice rather than my mom's external one. Perhaps the magic was more sparkling when I didn't have the mind-numbing miles between Pennsylvania and my grandparents' place in western Montana as a soporific backdrop to the experience.

Were you a reader as a kid? What were the gateway books that drew you in to a lifetime habit of reading?

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The cat's pajamas: slinging slang

Slang: do you love it? Hate it? Find you can't avoid it?

Using lots of slang can date your work, or at least your characters. That can be a slippery proposition in some genres. You can make it work for you, though. My title example, "cat's pajamas," comes from what era?

If you guessed the jazz age, you're right. Using old-timey slang in dialogue can be a fun way to suggest, for example, that Great-Granddad wasn't always a funny-smelling Jeopardy addict with dentures. Perhaps back in the day he was the popular guy every girl swooned over.

Slang can also suggest your character's ethnic background and class. How heavily you rely on it will, of course, depend on genre.

One of my favorite sites for slanging up scenes that involve British characters is the Peevish Dictionary of Slang and Colloquialisms Used in the United Kingdom (I also double-check with real people who live in Britain, just to be sure I'm on target). It's an especially useful site because it's searchable. Pop in a term like "crazy" and get useful results like "barmy," "nutter," "potty" and "totally hatstand." Even if you don't have British characters, it's an awfully entertaining site.

Do you use slang in your work? How? Any favorite sites you frequent to research it?

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Trauma, courage and antagonist insights

Sunday morning. I made my coffee palatable with ice cream, because we ran out of milk Saturday. A milk run was not top priority after a tiring day helping prep an apartment for a refugee family and trying to capture a stray kitten friends want to adopt. My husband returned from his jog. I finalized the "quick grocery run" list, called out my goodbyes.

"Don't go to the store," came a thin voice from upstairs. "I don't feel well."

I jogged up the steps. "Are you nauseous or something?"

My husband laid in bed with the laptop open, looking at cartoon chests. "It's my...I think it's my heart." He pointed to an image labeled "angina" and described the radiating pain, the sense of suffocation. I thought my eyeballs just might pop their sockets. He's only 40! I ran for the phone, called his doctor's office, worked through the endless menus until we got a live human, then handed over the phone. My husband described his symptoms to the doc-on-call and she urged him to take an aspirin and go to the ER.

After hustling our slow-moving 7-yo to dress and pack something to keep her occupied, we headed off to the hospital. In the next anxious hours, while my husband endured countless tests, I sat in the waiting room being as boringly normal as I could. I put finishing touches on my lesson for youth group that evening, admired C's drawing efforts and doled out snacks. I pushed the mute groans of prayer into the back of my head, off my face where they would terrify my child.

As the day progressed, we learned little of what had actually happened inside my husband's chest that morning. The "event" remained unlabeled. Cause, unknown. They would keep him overnight for observation. Run more and more and more tests.

Lunchtime was approaching. The milkless fridge at home called. My hubby would need an overnight bag packed and more things to read. So off we went, my daughter and I, to tend to the mundane. Food in the belly, groceries, clean socks and pajamas and toothpaste.

I'd forgotten how grueling the ordinary can seem. How anxiety can come not only from a health scare, but also from competing obligations and desires. How can I be the wife my husband needs and the mom my kid needs and the youth leader my teen girls need? And what of the lean, hungry lamb in me with her own needs, like hearing the voice of her shepherd, eating from his table every single week?

This strange mishmash of feelings I had to process opened my eyes to the many faces of courage. That at times it looks like asking the produce guy to check the storeroom for pomegranates because your kid needs to know you hear her, are for her, even though taking the time meant forgoing something I wanted (i.e. being with the youth group kids I adore). Later that evening, as we ate a quick bite in the hospital cafeteria, my daughter sang to herself as she assembled her tuna on rye. She felt safe. Wasn't worried.

And it hit me: this is what it feels like to walk in the shoes of my novel's antagonist, the mother my protagonist misreads again and again. Just because she won't publicly break down, it doesn't mean she doesn't feel every "barb and arrow of outrageous fortune." She has courage that looks like affect. Courage that's food in the belly, groceries, clean socks and pajamas and toothpaste.

Has life ever given you insight into your story's "bad guy"? How did it feel for you?

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Review round-up: Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oy, oy, oy!

Occasionally my library runs will open up some fantastic new world, or in this case, a new continent. My penchant for titles with religious resonances (in the off chance I’ll find someone publishing work like mine) led me to works by some fabulous YA writers from Down Under. The colorful slang alone will make you love the Aussies.

I’ve included for review two Aussie YA books from my library. If you’ve come across other quality Aussie YA that’s now available in the US, please drop me a note in the comments.

Finding Grace by Alyssa Brugman

College freshman Rachel takes a job as a live-in caregiver for a brain-injured woman, Grace, with an elegant home, weirdo neighbors and greedy sisters. Rachel uncovers a box of Grace’s belongings that hints at unfinished business. She soon finds herself drawn into the mystery of this strange, silent woman she bathes, dresses and feeds like a doll.

Interspersed are Rachel’s escapades interacting with Grace’s family and neighbors, and trying to fit in and find love on campus. It’s an engaging and enjoyable read, LOL funny at places, touching at others. Brugman creates a sparkling narrative voice that I found delightful. She definitely piqued my interest in reading other Aussie authors.

I was a little disappointed that a few of the subplots were simply dropped at the end, but knowing the austere word-count limits of YA publishing, I wonder if the author was forced to cut.

The Sweet, Terrible, Glorious Year I Truly, Completely Lost It

by Lisa Shanahan

This novel’s wordy title, bubble-gum cover photo and weird back-cover blurb with unfamiliar slang like “chucking a birkett” has probably scared off many an American reader. Had I not been on the prowl for Aussie YA, I might have taken a pass on what proved to be one of very my favorite reads of 2009.

This story of a shy teen, Gemma, who finds her voice in theater is both hilarious and deeply touching. Amidst the moments of zany comedy (really far-out farce at times), there are some beautifully lyrical scenes. The romantic subplot with the boy from “the wrong side of the tracks” was exceptionally well done—subtle and thought-provoking. Through Gemma’s interactions with Raven, one of the notorious, thuggish DeHead boys, Shanahan explores the socio-economic divide and exposes how community prejudice makes it exceptionally hard for a kid from a "bad" family to rise above his upbringing.

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Bellows of the imagination

"I am a great surmiser, a bellows, blowing life into people and things, though they already have lives of their own."
--John Hazard. "Signage." South Dakota Review 46.4 (Winter 2008): 6.

One of the luscious perks of my job editing a scholarly journal is the freebie lit mags that arrive each season through a journal exchange program. I'm more apt to thumb through the latest issue of Ploughshares or The Southern Review, but the less prestigious journals like SDR have their gems as well (even if their production cycle is an entire year behind schedule).

I had to share the opening quote above, because I think it captures so well the storyteller brain at work. The more I write, the more I imagine stories everywhere: in every gum-chomping co-ed on the train platform, every bored security guard I pass (and now wave to), every clerk who rings up my purchases. The color of their umbrellas, condition of their fingernails, day-dreamy expressions suggest character traits and personal history. Before I know it, my brain has pumped fictional life into random strangers. I'm sure I'm not alone in experiencing this phenomenon.

My question is, what do you do with it? I tend to see it as a harmless diversion most of the time, a way to pass the time waiting for the 8:03 to arrive. Have your people-watching fictions ever become something more? Do you jot them in a notebook? Turn them into whole stories?

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Recharging...and a review

Yesterday, I hit a point revising when I felt I'm losing the love for the story. Does this ever happen to you?

It was time to recharge. Nothing does it for me like a library run (I'd love to say a bookstore run, but after replacing a water heater, well...bound paper treats will not be in the offing for a while). At times like this, I need some literary Oreos. Double stuffed. Something cute, light and cheerful, like this sweet YA romance, In Your Room (2008) by Jordanna Fraiberg.

The inventive premise hooked me: a teen boy and girl strike up a long-distance relationship when their families house-swap and they have to spend the summer in one another's rooms. Told from alternating points-of-view (limited third person) plus e-mail and IM exchanges, the story clips along at a nice pace. I liked especially how Molly develops over the course of the book. Her yearning to become a fashion designer moves from a secret passion to something she throws herself into as she works hard to develop her skills. Charlie's voice is well drawn, though we don't get quite the same level of detail about how he spends his summer or how it changes him.

There are hints throughout of deeper psychological issues: Molly's grieving her father's death 10 years prior and adjusting to her step-dad, Charlie's struggle to be real and honest with girls when he lives in a female-dominated world (a two-mom household with twin sisters). The potential to go deeply angsty was certainly there, but Fraiberg's lighter touch was a breath of fresh air for me, and a good reminder to look for opportunities to lighten up my own work a little.

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Frankensteining severed scenes

I'm in the process of cutting 14,000 words out of my manuscript, which obviously requires more than simple line edits. Big, honking chunks must go: characters, subplots, dragging scenes, entire chapters. My main problems seem to be a story that started in the wrong place (so long, chapter 1!) and a saggy, draggy middle. But the solution isn't simply removing material--how simple that would be! Instead, I need to replace bloated sections with tightly-written, plot-moving NEW scenes.

Identifying problem areas was the first step. I bracketed a section of five chapters in which the scenes don't pull their weight. And then? KA-BOOM!

What do I mean by "Ka-boom"? Figurative TNT: I quickly dismantle a big section into components, some of which may still be usable. Like Mary Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein, I pick through an array of parts and sew together the strongest to create a new creature. Most often in my case it's settings/scenarios that stay, while the actions or actors or conversational tone or information revealed may need to change significantly. Zippy bits of dialogue and beautiful descriptions from otherwise plot-slowing scenes can find greater vitality when grafted into a new location.

Yes, revision sometimes requires "killing your darlings." Other times, it involves radical surgery or even "Frankensteining" (if I may stretch a strained metaphor) to give you darlings--and your work as a whole--health and vigor.

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