bad weather, good books

pic from  http://www.oregonlive.com/

Today marks the start of the big lit week here in Portland. With perfect synchronicity, our first typhoon o' the fall is swirling around me as I type. Water, wind, falling tree limbs and flooded basements heralding the beginning of curl-up-by-the-fire-and-read season. At the moment, the sideways rain has abated, but those nasty bands of radar on my phone's weather app promise more misery. That's why I plan on staying inside with my arsenal of reading material until it's time for the Breaking Bad finale--when I'll crawl downstairs and snuggle up on the tv-room sofa with a hot toddy. All that's missing are the bon-bons,(because I've already eaten them).

But, I've gotten a jump on book fever this year. I've been devouring novels and chain-toasting bread like crazy - the two go hand-in-hand. I'm feeding the carb-craving winter girl that surfaces right about the time pumpkins replace petunias outside the grocery stores. The crappier the weather, the more I read and the more I eat (usually necessitating some sort of fanatic cleanse come January).

I just picked up the new Lahiri after reading today's review in the Oregonian. I don't know what Knopf is thinking with the white-paper-wrapper cover. Is it a form of hubris? Or is it simply confidence that even if the book came with a little bag of shit stapled to the front, since Jhumpa Lahiri wrote it, it'll sell? Well, I have to admit, even at the princely sum of $27.95, I marched quickly to my favorite indie bookstore this morning and forked over the cash. I love Lahiri's writing, and the quandary described in the jacket "Two brothers bound by tragedy. A fiercely brilliant woman haunted by her past..." are the perfect ingredients to stoke my seasonal lust for books. And really, covers are only important if you've never heard of the author (so I'm hoping mine will be amazing!)

The other book on my desk is called "Writing in Community" put out by WriteLife earlier this year. It's a book on writing that encourages a deeper relationship with creativity and the act of writing in the spirit of Brenda Ueland's "If You Want to Write," and Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones."

Although I'm all for working on craft (I better be, I'm teaching one of my boot camp dialogue classes at LitReactor this week), I can't stress how important "generative" writing encouragement is in the process of producing work. WIC begins as a prescriptive - there are exercises and optional assignments, and ideas on how to start a generative writing group - but the book goes beyond "how to." It taps into that magical space. You know the one I'm talking about, right? Where you look up from your desk and the day is gone? Where you've immersed yourself so completely in your work that you cross over - the words on the page seem to have come from someone else entirely?

The book is a sort of love story. It's about self-investment as much as investment in a community of others. It champions the idea of peer-generated encouragement as a way to crystallize authenticity.

It's this sort of encouragement (for sustained, deep thought and time with the page), that we all too often talk ourselves out of. I'm going on record here - I'm for it. Words. Lots of them.

So, is it raining where you live? Do you write more or read more when the weather sucks?

smokin' hot news

Hi guys. Been quiet here, yes? Well, I've been busy. I have some milestones to report.Wait, milestones sounds too sanded down. Too grab and go. This last week? Let's just say that if a calendar had a heat sensor to measure bad and good news (freezing to burning), we'd be calling on those wildfire experts. There'd be helicopters dropping fire retardant all over our house.

To start: my son got married to his college sweetheart last weekend. It was an absolutely phenomenal event that included family and old friends-many of whom flew in from various cities around the country. The bride's extended family arrived from Brazil and Japan. Up at the altar, the couple was flanked by formally-attired attendants (including my younger kids). For many of their friends, this was a "first" peer wedding, and so there was this joy surrounding them, like the first time you take your kid to Disneyland? Before they're all jaded and have figured out Fast Pass and are "over it"? My son and his bride were completely present and elated--not to mention adorable. Love was in the air. Faces contorted in hours-long grins. We wore out the dance floor. There was branded cocktails:

• Sammy: Firefly sweet tea vodka and lemonade
• Tammy: Prosecco with a splash of elderflower syrup

Yes, their names really are Sammy and Tammy. Well, their nicknames, anyway.

And meanwhile, a couple of days before the wedding, a quick glance at my iPhone announced an unexpected email from my agent. It seems the pub deal with Diversion Books was changing. Turns out they want to put out a physical paperback as well as the ebook. Would that be okay with me? It means that the pub date would be pushed back...was I available to hop on the phone and discuss ASAP?

Now, there is only one circumstance (other than death) that would cause me to suggest "next week" for such a call. And that would be the wedding of my first born.

But we did have that call early last week, and I am pleased - no, thrilled - to announce that RAISING CHEER will be published January, 2014 as an ebook and an original paperback.

So, after all these years as a bridesmaid, I finally get to wear white. Literarily speaking.

Stay tuned for more specifics - they'll be coming soon.

spannocchia

These are my very last hours here at Spannocchia, which, for the past week, has served as writing workshop, retreat, bed and board. From my top floor perch, each day I’ve taken in the expanse of the tenuta—the vast fields and forest of this amazing Tuscan farm—before trotting down to the common room for fresh vegetables, pasta, pork from heirloom pigs, wine and, um, more wine.

I brought one of my completed novels as well as something new to be workshopped, and got to weigh in on some pretty amazing writing. I did some writing. I also learned how to make pasta from scratch. I took side trips to Siena and San Gimignano, and met some terrific fun-loving people.

This place is 700 years old! How can you summarize  a week in a 14^th-century Italian villa in the heart of the one of the most romantic countries on the planet and even come close to doing it justice?

It’s gonna take me a while folks. Meantime, here are a few pictures. Ciao.

two kinds of weird

Ah, duality. Always my favorite literary theme. The interplay of light and shadow. Coffee or tea, today? Going up, or heading down? One of these things is not like the other. Is it the outside David or the inside David? Is it live, or Memorex?

Today I found out that there are two places one can purchase postcard stamps: the post office, or a tobacco store. And not just ANY tobacco store; it has to be the type that doesn't sell espresso and food. But when you purchase stamps from a non-post office vendor, and then scribble out a card and take it to a post office, you will be told that you are shit out of luck. Turns out, you must go back to the tobacco shop and slip your missives in a special box they have there.

Also, by the way, the second floor of a building is 1. A first floor is designated 0. You can imagine the infinite challenges to a person who has to mentally pick up a pencil before giving right/left directions.

A year ago, when my agent started schlepping RAISING CHEER around, with the characters still firmly in my psyche, I embarked on a sequel with the working title, TWO KINDS OF WEIRD. And guess what? It was set in Florence. I'm not making this up.

Well, I got a bit waylaid and downhearted about the whole project, and after the first three chapters of the sequel, I put it aside. The whole Florence-studying art abroad thing has been so done, right? Except that, in Brady's case, I sort of set up the ending of the book for a future one to take place right here in Firenze! Thing is, though I had a sketched out plot (thank you plotboard), I didn't really have the soul of the book the way I did right from the get-go with RC.

But now that's changed.

Yesterday, trekking through the Uffizi, I had a moment of clarity while taking in the various Madonna-and-Bambinos in the medieval art room (it's brilliant how they show the baby steps toward realism in these three masterful pieces). The paintings illustrate, like nothing else could, the influence of perspective on art and culture.

But it wasn't until I wound around the U-shaped former office building and then took in the galleries on the first floor (or was it the zero floor?) that the deal was sealed. Of course there was a boy involved (With YA, there's always a love interest, right?). In the corner of the Caravaggio room, there hung a quiet painting they believe is a self-portrait (not the Medusaesque one, a much more normal-yet-bad-boy one that isn't on any googleable webstie that I can find, and I'm therefore obsessed). Brady's journey in the second book will be complicated by a boy who embodies the essence coming off of that canvas. Does that wet your whistle? I hope so!

So, ya'll, something's brewing. And now I embark on the second phase of this journey. Off to the hills near Siena.

What are you working on today?

david and the duomo, done and dusted

 The first thing that surprised me, were his hands. I'd read the guidebook, downloaded the Rick Steves' audiotour, but still. It's hard to get beyond those paws. Phrases like, Hand of God, and Gotta hand it to him, kept assaulting me. Wouldn't want to get on the dude's bad side. Which, I guess, is the response that Michelangelo had in mind.

So, I'm standing there in awe, like everyone else, circling this iconic masterpiece, when all of a sudden there's a clunk sound next to me. A bad clunk sound. Turns out this rather large woman has just collapsed in front of the David. A small group of us start fanning our tickets and guidebooks around her. Her husband stoops down next to her and starts rummaging through her purse. An attendant grabs her legs and lifts them up. (I'd never heard of that.) It was a diabetic thing, apparently. Low blood sugar. Dehydration. Maybe a combination. After a few minutes she came to, and was dizzily guided out the door by her husband.

I'm sure it's not the first time David inspired fainting. Plus, it's August in Florence.

Still, it more than freaked me out, in that I'm-a-woman-traveling-alone sort of way. Humans are more fragile than we think. And the way those Smartcars and motorbikes zoom around the cobblestones here. And me, and my daydreamy half-attention style. Doom could easily be just around the bend. Or tainted gelato. Or a falling brick from some renovation project.

So, I did the thing I always do when I start down the doom-trail. I manned up and strode toward the Duomo, intent on climbing to the top. Unfortunately, by the time I'd finished the Accademia Gallery tour, the line to walk up those 463 steps to the dome was a winding mile long. I don't know about you, but it seemed absurd to stand in a two hour line, and then pay money to climb the world's longest staircase. So instead, I walked across the piazza to the Campanile bell tower (413 steps, no line, 10 Euro), to sweat out my anxiety.

As with most huffing and puffing adventures, the payoff did not disappoint. It was a clear, moderate morning in Florence, and the view from the top was magnificent. Plus, I got to look down at the massive Duomo line from my perch.

Have you ever had a "plan B" experience that made you feel pleasingly cocky? 

and behind door number three?

I'm in the basement of Imbarchi C in Rome, laying over for a couple of hours until my flight to Firenze, wondering how many cappuccinos I can toss back in that time and not have a heart attack.  As I type this, sitting in one of several metal chairs that dot the long hall, there's a monk all garbed out a few seats away. The tourist in me is all, "Maybe he's from the Vatican! Think he'd be up for an autograph?" But, this holy man is dressed much more in the vow of poverty style than the Pope's entourage (but, then again, we did get that new Pope who's humble, right? The one who replaced the fashion plate Pope?).

Maybe it's a sign from God, because I'm here in Italy workshopping my legacy heretical novel, Blackdirt. Maybe I just better get on my heathen knees and beg for a blessing.

Hm.

Clearly, I'm a little rummy. I've slept about five broken up hours in the last two days. Ambien and all.

(Oh My God, a nun just walked up dressed in the exact same feed sack attire. Long canvas robes cinched with simple brown belts. Birkenstocks on their feet. They're sort of having it out. They seem perplexed. Their discussion is in Italian, of course, so I can't eavesdrop.  Damn it! The nun is taking out an old cell phone--pre-flip, even--and untangling the charger's cord, looking for a place to plug in. It just seems wrong, doesn't it? Monks with cell phones? Even dated ones.)

The Rome airport is a little surreal. Very gleaming and shiny. Long halls to nowhere. Poor signage (Even in the mother tongue). But it's so exotic. Fendi bags and perfume shops. Even the restroom doors (shown above) are intimidating and stylish. My only other trip to Rome, I was here about 72 hours, and I must say, it's one of my favorite cities. It's just so weird! I mean, the ruins, the mopeds, the hucksters, the holy places, the fountains, the gelati, the "everyone going home to fuck in the afternoon" thing. It's like an ant colony, constantly crawling with activity (unless it's the afternoon), and purpose that all very insidery. All so very Star Trek.

We landed amid a cloudburst. Oddly, it's rainy and crappy out this August day. Grey like Portland in February. But muggy. Ay. Well, the monk couple seems to have worked out whatever they were upset about. I think I'll fold up my laptop and people watch for a few minutes before my flight to Florence. I hope the monks are on my plane.

florence

Anyone have a favorite place in this little burg? I'll be here three days, beginning tomorrow, and am partial to off-the-beaten-track sort of places.

(Of course I plan to do the must-see regular tourist stuff too.)

Have tips? Please comment!

Florence bound in ten, nine, eight...

book deal

Is there anything as pretty as a PM deal with your name on it?

Here it is folks, my plot board experiment. The book I finished on May 17th, 2012.

It's found its true home with the genius pioneer team at Diversion. I was telling my friend last night that I feel like I'm on the Oregon Trail, but I lucked into the covered wagon with all the good food, medicine and state-of-the-art horses.

RC was a weird beast. Editors would fall in love with it, want to buy it, and then the board would shoot it down. Kaboom! As most of you know, last year was a crazy year in the NY pub world. It felt like some sort of massive influenza epidemic--everyone hiding in their houses, masks covering their faces. Oh the fear! The uncertainty! Pink slips, divisions closing, the Big 6 no longer 6.

And in the wake of it all, emerged the e-book publishers.

Diversion's been around for longer than most. The two phone meetings I've had with the team have born out my hunch that they're hella smart, innovative, and forward-thinking. They came out of the gate with connections (check out their backlist), and tools, and a plan for growth. Of all the boilerplate details though, this is the one that means the most to me:

Founded by book lovers from the world of traditional publishing, Diversion is building the next generation publishing company, one great book at a time.

So folks, stay tuned for updates. It's looking like RAISING CHEER will be coming to an e-reader near you before the end of the year!

a literary one-night-stand

Some really cool pub news I can't wait to share is on the horizon. But I can't yet, because, you know, it's not inked.

So, meantime, I'm writing a short story. Yep. Something less than 2500 words. Okay, friends, this might be a stretch, but what it feels like is dating after a long-term marriage. The pacing, the pressure. The wondering if and when you should make out. The tentative plunge into scary? I'm peeking out of a hole, you know? Do you have any idea what I mean? Okay, maybe it's even worse than dating. Maybe it feels like a one-night-stand. A stranger in the night. I'm hooking up. No, really, I am. With these characters I'm not invested in. All I have is an idea. A wee arc. Some mayhem.

I haven't attempted a short story in, uh, five years maybe? I feel bereft of a skill set. I'd hoped that the old adage it's just like riding a bicycle would apply, but, sadly, no.

There is indeed a reason for it. I've been asked to contribute to an anthology, and like the do-be I am, I don't want to disappoint. I mean, it's a fund-raising anthology, so there's a wee bit of pressure. What if my story sucks so bad it ruins the whole book? That sort of thing.

Gah. Double gah. Are any of you writing stories? What's your experience?

52 at 52

Please welcome guest blogger, friend and colleague Sherry Stanfa-Stanley (or as I like to call her, SSS—one more S than Suzy Soulé). Her 52at52 Project was born as a way of shaking up her quotidian life in response to celebrating her arrival at age 52. She’s in the midst of a year of trying 52 things she’s never before done—a year of weekly experiences well outside her comfort zone. Today she’s going to share her adventures on her solo trip to Italy last—which sparked the idea.

While being interviewed for a newspaper article a couple weeks ago, I was asked how I got the idea for undertaking 52 new challenges. I initially answered the same way I have before: that it followed putting my house on the market and losing weight.

But as I gave it more thought, I realized the idea had been brewing longer. It actually started with a trip to Italy last summer.

I spent half of that trip with my youngest son, who was serving an assistantship there. The other half, I traveled the country on my own.

I'd never been to Europe. I'd never ventured outside the U.S. at all, except to Canada. And besides having to go through customs on the Ambassador Bridge, which is just an hour's drive away, that hardly counts as international travel.

I plotted an itinerary. I scheduled flights. I booked hotels in Rome, Florence, Siena, and Venice. I researched train and bus transportation, but was advised to wait and arrange that after I arrived. Here's an interesting tidbit about traveling in Italy: they seldom ask for your ticket or announce where that particular bus or train--on which you are already seated--is going. So you'd better be damn sure you're on the right one.

Somehow, I managed to arrive at all my planned destinations, find my hotels, and see all the major sights--without a tour guide or a travel companion to set me on track when I second-guessed myself (which was often). I also enjoyed fabulous meals and wine, without speaking a word of Italian.

In fact, I never did learn how to ask, in Italian, "Where is the bus station?" or "Where is the bathroom?" The only phrase I did master, by the end of the trip, was "Un altro, per favore." (Another one, please.") That proved sufficient.

I came away from that trip realizing I was far more independent, capable, and courageous than I'd ever imagined.  One of the things that stayed with me while I traveled solo was Cheryl Strayed's experience on the trail. I’d finished reading "Wild" the day before I left, and remember thinking throughout my trip that if she could get through that, I could manage several days in Italy on my own.

Most of us are, I would guess, more capable than we think, if only we choose to step outside our safety zones and challenge ourselves.

This year presents a new set of challenges in my life. Many are much smaller in scale than solo-traveling through a foreign country. But they're all exciting and enlightening, in their own way.

I hope a few of you are finding this 52/52 Project helps you to challenge yourselves. You may find that frightening or sometimes frustrating. But at the same time, you'll discover how reassuring and liberating it can be to push yourself beyond your comfort zone.

After the first couple times, you may just find yourself saying to yourself: "That wasn't so bad after all. Un altro, per favore!"

Sherry Stanfa-Stanley pens fiction, humor, and human interest stories. She was recently published in the anthology, Fifty Shades of Funny: Hook-Ups, Break-Ups and Crack-Ups, and received a national fellowship in 2011 by the Midwest Writers Workshop. She is currently changing her life through 52 enlightening, frightening, and sometimes humiliating new experiences. Follow along on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/The52at52Project.

the vine field

The post-school-year getaway trip is over. I'm in a holding pattern with a couple of clients while they decide the fate a line of products (for which I'm the copywriter), and I have a manuscript out to a freelance editor, and another out, via my agent, to a couple other editors. And a third, yes, a third, composting between drafts. I'm also letting a book I've just read muddle about in my head before interviewing the author, and waiting for another book I've been asked to review to arrive in the mail.

So. Instead of power-washing the garden shed, training for an iron man competition, or catching up on all the blogs I've bookmarked, I'm following my chickens around with my iphone in order to figure out this vine shit that all the youngsters are hot and heavy about. Y'all playing in my sandbox? Embracing the latest distraction because, really, we simply do not have enough of them?

Plus, I have a cold.  

How did you celebrate the Super Moon?

alt(ar) ego

So, as many of you know, I've been married a few times. With each trip to the altar (although, in honesty, an actual altar was only part of the first knot-tying episode), I embraced my new identity as Mrs. So-and-So with equal vigor and engagement.

And so it goes with my various long-term writing personas. Any of you know this person? Well, that's who I am Monday through Friday when I'm called into service for packaging copy or social media or the occasional press release.

Then there's me as a writer of dark literary novels and short stories. That's the voice I cozy up to in this blog.

But, like any Gemini worth her weight in salt, I became restless. Something was missing. I felt that my nicer twin wasn't getting much air time. That writer of fantastical tales. The daydreaming teenage girl that I still am sometimes. In marketing speak (I know, yuk), I needed another platform. A place where I could talk to teenagers and wax blabbily on  about YA books, authors and other topics of interest to the YA crowd.

Plus, I wanted a hipster look. My own Instagram account.

To the rescue came my fantastic daughter-in-law and graphic designer, Katie. After a few back-and-forth emails and discussions, she assembled the look and feel of what I was after. And, hey, my toolbelt comes complete with any number of names so I grabbed the one that the feds currently know me as.

It doesn't escape me, the narcissism in all these identities. In fact, I think I'll just up the ante in the arrogance category and keep wishing really hard for the day to expand to 26 hours. Two additional hours in which neither exhaustion, hunger nor sloth factor in my ability to keep up with all the various versions of me. Anyway, I guess this is my official launch. Suzysoule.com. Check it out.

the stages of building story

I’m between voices. As my latest draft of Blackdirt lies drying in the sun, and a desire to give another polish to both Raising Cheer and The Empress Chronicles pokes out like a tulip, my head is a ping-pong match, and the ensuing (disparate) imagery that accompanies the characters’ voices is keeping me in a sort of la-la land.

Here’s what it looks like: Lily (who, just to complicate matters has a split personality—so she’s really three voices) Liz, Sisi and Brady, when they whisper ideas to me, yanking me into their settings and conundrums, there’s this lovely period of disequilibrium. I’m in the broad expanse of an onion field. A quiet front porch of a summer-swollen farmhouse. I’m deep in Forest Park, damp from a spring hailstorm. I’m in a cold Bavarian castle.

In the POV class I just finished teaching one of the students made an interesting discovery about his process. He realized that how he develops a scene starts with plot point, and then invites a distant third-person assessment of the plot point:

When I hit a plot point that could be told from any one of a number of povs I start by dashing down the scene in objective 3rd and stay out of anyone's head. The scene sketch is rather thin this way, of course. Until this class I had no idea I was doing this--I only registered annoyance  at the thinness of some scenes. 

Now I see that I have just been delaying the move to 3rd limited until I understand the needs of the story and can dive into the right head. What's freeing is that now I don't feel like I'm "doing it wrong"--more that I'm doing it in stages.

I love that he shared this, and it made me think of my own process, which I always assumed was character-driven, but diving into the real chicken/egg scenario, I now see that it’s really landscape-driven. The sensual aspects of a scene tend to appear first, followed by a voicey commentary on those aspects, and through those elements, eventually an action emerges. An intent. So if we’re talking “stages” – that’s my natural process.

However, some of you remember that Raising Cheer was my plotboard experiment, right? I had this action-oriented framework into which I flowed the actual story. In retrospect, I’d have to say that a plot board may be a compensatory device I’ll need to rely on in order to force me into conflict, lest I hang out in the woods, the castle or the fields with Brady, Liz, Lily and Sisi all the live long and never take them to uncomfortable places.

So what does this mean in terms of “approach” to narrative? How can one blend a natural approach with a framework that leads to a satisfying outcome? Is this, after all, what is meant by craft? Interesting to ponder.

What’s your natural approach to story? What appears first?

get in while the door's still open

Hey all! My brand new class at LitReactor class kicks off tomorrow. As of this morning, there are still nine eight seven seats left, and the ones that are filled, I guarantee, contain the smartest, voiciest, kindest writing peers ever. I can't wait to jump in the deep end.

The subject we're covering this next ten days is point of view. Before you yawn too loudly, listen up. We're going deep with it. Really looking at the effect on the reader when we choose to filter our stories through a particular stance or voice.

Also, in this class you'll get a special treat. Those popular Portland authors (Chuck, Chelsea, Monica and LitReactor perennial fave, Lidia) have kindly revealed their own reasons/rules for choosing one POV over another, and those insights alone, I believe, are worth the price of admission (a very affordable price, imho).

A couple of other things. Eight "chances" for instructor critique on your pages, astoundingly generous peer critique throughout, one big assignment and several optional "mini" exercises, and a chance to win a signed copy of Monica Drake's THE STUD BOOK!

More info here!