Accuracy in the little things

Video of a reading of Motherless Soul.

An article in a writers' magazine made a point that stuck with me over many years of putting words on paper. The author had started reading a short story in which the protagonist, who was driving through Manhattan, turned onto Fifth Ave and drove uptown. That author tossed the story down and never bothered to finish it, because people who know New York know that Fifth Ave is one way downtown. In truth, a story can be about a man being chased by space aliens and giant fish people, but if that same man drives uptown on Fifth Ave. readers will think the writer is not writing realistically.

I just finished The Good Guy by Dean Koontz and I had a similar problem with that book. It is the story of man who, while sitting alone in a bar, gets caught in the middle of a contract between a hit man and an envoy from a group paying for that killer's services. This type of book almost demands that it be unrealistic. There are shoot outs and escape scenes and times when both the hit man and the people running from him take wild guesses that always turn out to keep the conflict going. I can live with all that. Characters that are almost super heroes (or super villains) are part of what makes that genre interesting.

But one scene in the book bothered me too much. A character was home alone with his dog, Zoe. The dog reacted as if something was wrong. She was pacing around and sniffing at both the front and back doors, but she wouldn't go out into the yard. She was clearly scared. So the man took his dog to his car, drove down the block, and watched his own house. After some time, about ten or fifteen minutes, a car of suspicious men arrived and broke into his home.

Dogs can hear things that we don't hear and through their sense of smell they are aware of an entire world of information that we can't know. They pick up signs from our actions that allow them to determine if we're planning to leave a house soon or if when we go up a set of stairs we plan to come right back down or stay up there for awhile. They can tell if there is a stray dog or deer running around in back of their homes. And some can even tell if a person has cancer, when that person doesn't know it. But, unless they have some odd form of animal ESP, they cannot know the future. They cannot tell their owners, "Watch out! Someone is going to be here within the next half hour and you don't want to be here when that happens."

A good story can be ruined if the writer isn't careful about the little details.

Sunday in the gallery with Toni

Last Sunday was Valentine's Day. It was also the opening for a show of pastels by the Pastel Society of North Carolina. So Toni and I celebrated the holiday with wine and cheese and a chance to enjoy some spectacular art. The show is in the Ambleside Gallery on Elm Street in Greensboro and will be there through March 14. It is a lovely gallery in a wonderful section of town that is filled with other galleries, coffee shops, clubs and a few theaters.

Toni had two pieces in the show this year. The picture I've posted above is one of those. It's part of her Orchard Apples series, number 8 to be specific. There were landscapes (Toni's second piece was one of those) and still lifes as well as a picture of a sea turtle and one of a blue heron. All the work was executed wonderfully.

I always have such a great time at these openings. I love to talk with the artists and hear descriptions of what they went through to produce their work. Every piece seems to have a story and all the members of PSNC are remarkably talented.

After the opening some of us went out for dinner and shared a few more stories. It was great way to spend a Sunday and a Valentine's Day.

The Authors Show

Video of a reading of Motherless Soul


There were times when I heard commentators talking about "living in cyberspace" that I felt they were over hyping the technology. After all isn't email just a quicker way to write a letter? That was before I had Motherless Soul accepted for publication by All Things That Matter Press and I began the process of marketing a book in the internet age. I am amazed by the amount of resources that are available for people interested in writing or reading the works of new writers. There are also social networks that are more than a group of people telling each other what they are planning for dinner that night. And there are different types of media that allow people to focus on what they want to hear. The Authors Show is one of those. I'm scheduled to interview with
Don McCauley next week (Saturday Feb 20). Our talk will be recorded and be available for my friends and readers to listen to whenever they choose.

These cyber groups of writers and readers are people who share my interest, but everyone has a place out there. Art is my wife's main interest. She can share critiques over the web and visit the websites for most of her friends. My brother had some health issues a few years back and needed a stem cell transplant. He and his wife use the internet to locate others in similar situations and provide support. It goes on and on.

I guess there is a down side to the ability to meet others who are similar to ourselve, since we may limit our exposure to new ideas. But in my opinion the up side of sharing our work and our dreams greatly outweighs that.

The birds at our feeder

Video of a reading of Motherless Soul.

The last couple of weekends have been cold and snowy. They were great days for writing and painting. But Toni and I took some time off from our work to enjoy the birds at our feeder. I love the way they look against the white. The black you see in some of these shots is a half sheet of plywood covered with sunflower seeds. In the cold weather we put out more seed than we can fit in the feeders, so we leave it on a board.




Jays and cardinals are our most common guests, but we get a few smaller birds as well, wrens and chickadees I believe.




Of course, birds aren't the only ones that show up at the feeder. We enjoy the squirrels and rabbits just as much. Sometimes the squirrels will feed from the feeders instead of the ground. It's amazing to watch them eating while hanging by their toes.





Even though we're behind a window in a house that's about thirty yards away, the birds still take off if we move a little too quickly.








But they come back.










I guess that's enough action from our yard. I've got to get back to writing.

Publishing and J. D. Salinger

Video of a reading of Motherless Soul.


In the movie Field of Dreams Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner's character) was instructed by the voices he heard to seek out Terence Mann (a reclusive author) and take the writer to a baseball game. The book the film was based on, Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella, didn't pull punches. In the novel the author's name was J. D. Salinger.

The reclusive nature of this great writer is fascinating to me. Salinger was quoted in the NY Times in 1974 as saying, "Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure."

I can identify with beauty of the relationship between a writer and his or her words, but if that's where it stops then a great deal is missing. Although most of my writing is fiction, it is always an expression of my thoughts and emotions. I want my words heard and contemplated. A friend of my is halfway through my book (Motherless Soul published by All Things That Matter Press) and everyday she comes to me to talk about one of my characters, Michael. Novels should be for the readers more than they are for the writer. It's as if I am a cook and my readers are the diners. I work hard to make my words as perfect as possible, but the readers are the ones who consume them.

Hopefully they appreciate the flavor of my thoughts.

Yesterday's Book Signing

Video of reading of Motherless Soul

My book signing at Park Road Books in Charlotte was a wonderful experience. As expected, my wife and I sat at a desk in front of the store and smiled at everyone who came in. A few people stopped to talk. These were interesting people who wanted to know about my book but also took time to tell us about their own lives. There was man of about seventy who declared that liquor and a good book were the only true necessities in life and a fascinating woman who described a magnificent vacation she’d taken with her husband, hiking through New Zealand.

Most people who walk into a book store either know specifically what they are after or have a general idea based on authors they’ve heard of. The percentage of customers who are searching for a new voice is relatively small. I know this because I’ve been there myself. So my expectations were low and when I made a few sales and met people who were looking for new and interesting ideas, I was very pleased.


At five o’clock, when we were starting to pack things up, a wonderful thing happened. Pat J. Schultz, the author of the memoir Making Sweet Lemonade arrived. She had bought Motherless Soul at Park Road Books a few days earlier. She explained that she had lost her mother when she was a young girl, just as my character Emily had. The book spoke to her and left her with a positive feeling about the story I had told and also about her own life. Her only complaint was that the novel kept her up late at night, reading furiously. She brought her copy in for me to sign. It was covered with underlines and questions that reflected her enormous enthusiasm. My wife found Pat’s book on the shelves, so we bought a copy. The picture above is of the two of us holding each other’s work. I can’t wait to read it. I believe that talking to Pat was not only fun, but enough encouragement to keep me disciplined with my work on the next book. We’ll see what happens there.

The next step is to find another place to hold another signing. I’m thinking Raleigh, but I’ll keep everyone posted when I’m certain.

Troilus and Cressida

Video of a reading of Motherless Soul.


Next week is my signing at Park Road Books in Charlotte. If anyone is in that area it would be great if you would drop by between 3 and 5.

But this week I’m turning sixty and that has caused me to reflect somewhat on some of the interesting parts of my life. Perhaps I should say our life, since my wife and I have shared everything since we were married in our early twenties. Some of our stories are worth repeating.

We received an odd wedding present in 1972, a couple of months after the ceremony. The gift was a pair of Desert Iguanas that Toni’s cousin had brought back from a college trip with his biology department. At the time I had a minor role in one of Shakespeare’s plays, Troilus and Cressida, so we named the lizards after the title characters.

These Iguanas do not get as huge as the green ones and they certainly don’t have reputations for biting off fingers as the others do. Ours only grew about fourteen to fifteen inches long and that was mostly tail. As I remember, they existed on a diet of mealworms along with lettuce and a few other greens, so (except for vet bills) they weren’t very expensive to keep.

My wife used to move around our apartment with Troilus and Cressida riding on her shoulders and often climbing to the top of her head. If someone knocked on our door she would forget they were up there and at least once she gave our neighbor quite a fright.

I had fixed a home for them in an aquarium that had a light on a timer. T & C would walk around their glass house when the light was on and stay absolutely still when it was off. If one of the Iguanas was in the process of taking a step when the light went off he (or she) would stop immediately with his (or her) leg raised up for the entire night. When the light came on in the morning the lizard would finish the step.

Another odd fact about them was that they had holes in the sides of their heads that were covered by thin membranes. I assumed these were ears, but I don’t know that for sure. We could look through one of those holes and see light and blurry objects on the other side.

We heard that we could put them in our refrigerator if we were planning to be away for an extended period of time and they would go into hibernation. Then we could take them out when we returned and they would be fine. But we never had the nerve to try that.

It might be fun to write a story about lizards sometime, just a thought.