Writer Wednesday: Ann Pearlman

~*~ Winter Holiday Edition ~*~

Writing about Christmas
by Ann Pearlman

I stumbled on writing about Christmas. I didn’t mean to. For some time, thoughts of writing a novel about a party, women’s friendships, and compressing the time to one day tugged at my mind. These thoughts were all separate. And then, ten years ago, I was the Cookie virgin at a cookie exchange. I realized immediately that the party could be the perfect setting for a novel coalescing all three elements. The ice cream on top is the Holiday season enfolding the themes that are nascent during that time. And so the idea for the Christmas Cookie Club, a novel, was born.

When I came home from that first party, I wrote down my dream for the book. Twelve women from various backgrounds, dealing with diverse problems. There had to be issues about fertility and pregnancy and birth, and issues about death and endurance through hard times, the perennial darkness of winter.

However, I was finishing up a book tour, and then another project (a biography of a Crip gang leader…. As different from a cookie exchange as night from day) intervened.

Each December though, I returned to fleshing out the dream of the cookie club novel. I stole a way an hour or so on Christmas. Why Christmas? Because it is my birthday and dreaming of the book was a birthday present to myself.

Amazing how we forge ahead with projects without full awareness of the factors that motivate us, because I did not make the connection between writing a novel about Christmas and the fact that it was my birthday. I didn’t connect those dots until interviewers asked me why a novel about Christmas and I faced all my ambivalence about the holiday. As any adult whose birthday is on Christmas will tell you, it’s a difficult birthday. No one wants to be bothered when they’re busy with the requirements and pressures of the holiday. When I became a mother, my children’s excitement about the holidays dwarfed any interest in my birthday, which was so much in the way we couldn’t even figure out when to celebrate it. I thought about moving it to mid June, but then I gave birth to a daughter that day!

Such a change from when I was a child and thought the entire country was celebrating my birthday. My family, determined that I wouldn’t feel ignored by the holiday, made the day magical. My grandmother, who also had a grandmother born on Dec. 25, told me that for her, Christmas celebrated the birth of every baby and the importance of each one of us. Now to make the holiday season both more exciting and more complicated, my family was Jewish. My grandmother had embraced my grandfather’s people and religion, but shared her own interpretation of Christmas with her family and friends. So the season celebrated Chanukah, Christmas, and my birthday.

The cookie club contained the best of my childhood Holidays. The love and family friendship between the women were obvious. Because we take turns telling the story of the cookie that is always emblematic about the year, we’re aware of each other’s lives and appreciate our strength and enormous skills and talents. This openness creates bonding and love. The joy, celebration, and excitement are the best of the holiday. The cookies themselves are from the heart, not from a store. The fact that we donate to a charity during the bleakest time of the year enhances the importance of making something for anonymous others.

As 2008 started I could feel the country tumble economically, to fray at its edges. Warnings about another depression increased as the housing bubble burst, as companies closed, and people became unemployed. It affected us most harshly in Michigan. The novel about light regardless of dark times, people’s spirit to endure and enjoy, pulling together in spite of it all and giving to others beckoned, a spark of love in harshness.

I determined to finish it before the new year, hoping its message would be a salve for some of us. I wrote every day from Thanksgiving until Jan 2, each and every day. On my birthday, I wrote the acknowledgements, honoring all those who helped me.

So I write about the Christmas because it can be such a time of love, giving, family and community. In spite of all the darkness we need this beacon of light.

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Thank you Ann for this inspiring post. I love the idea of your book and the tie in cookbook. Christmas is my favorite time of year, but then again, it's not my birthday :) We have friends with that birthday and know how hard it can be to celebrate it properly during such a busy time of year. Anyone wanting more information about Ann or her books can stop by her website http://annpearlman.net/

Thanks to all you loyal readers out there. You know who you are. And thanks to all who are new to my blog. Welcome and I hope you enjoy. I wish you all a very happy and healthy holiday season.

Kristin *<( : )

Writer Wednesday: Phillipa Ashley

~ * ~ Winter Holiday Edition ~ * ~

DATING MR DECEMBER Journey

Phillipa Ashley

Many thanks to Kristin for asking me to tell you about My Writing Journey.


I actually took a very winding route to being a writer. You could say that I meandered along the byways for 40 years before suddenly jumping onto the freeway in a rocket-powered car!

You see, I never wanted, hoped or dreamed of becoming a novelist until 2005. Although I’ve always loved books and studied English Literature at university, the thought of writing a novel never entered my head. I thought that kind of thing was for geniuses like Jane Austen. I didn’t realise that ordinary people like me could do it too.

After university, I did become a writer, but of the non-fiction variety, working in advertising and in journalism. And so it continued until one night in November 2004…

Everything changed when I watched a BBC TV miniseries called North & South. This Victorian drama focused on the passionate romance between two strong characters, John Thornton and Margaret Hale.

It had a dramatic effect on me too. I was so transfixed that suddenly, I decided to write a modern fanfic based on the TV series. I posted my story anonymously on an internet fansite and to my amazement, lots of people wanted to read it.

By a strange quirk of fate, I’d stumbled through the magic door into the world of romantic fiction and I’ve never looked back since.

A year later, I’d written my first full-length novel – the book which eventually became Dating Mr. December.

Dating Mr. December focuses on the lives of a mountain rescue team. We have a holiday home in the Lake District of England, in fact there’s a base a few minutes’ walk away. The local team had just raised money for a new HQ and that set me thinking of how they might have raised the money – in my fictional world at least! I wanted to explore what might happen if a slick city girl entered that world with an outrageous proposal…

A year later, I’d sent the manuscript to a London literary agent and she sold it to a UK publisher. Then, a US TV producer saw it on Amazon and decided to make a movie out of it. Called 12 men of Christmas, the film my book inspired is currently airing on Lifetime.

Now Sourcebooks are bringing all four of my novels to the USA and I hope the most exciting part of the journey is still to come…


Phillipa Ashley studied English Language and Literature at Oxford before becoming a freelance copywriter and journalist. DATING MR. DECEMBER (called DECENT EXPOSURE in the UK) was the basis of last year’s Lifetime TV Movie “The 12 Men of Christmas.” She lives with her husband and daughter in Staffordshire, UK. For more information, please visit http://phillipa-ashley.com , follow her on Twitter or find her on Facebook!

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Thank you Phillipa for being my Writer Wednesday guest this week. I have seen the Lifetime movie, The Twelve Men of December with Kristin Chenoweth and loved it, so I'm looking forward to reading the book that it was based on, Dating Mr. December. Congratulations to you on your successes and with your future writing.

Also, thanks to all who took time out of your busy day to stop by. Hope the holiday season brings you happiness and good health.

Kristin *<( :o)

Writer Wednesday: Anne Perry

~*~ Winter Holidays Edition ~*~

My first Christmas novella, A Christmas Journey, was more or less an accident. I had a story of a murder mystery, inside a journey of expiation for a sin of spite. We all say and do things that result in something far worse than we intended. If there was anything we could do to wipe it out, we would. But how many of us would make that journey towards forgiveness if we don't have to, but to accompany a friend? Can you give anyone a greater gift?

I intended it as a short story, but my publisher preferred it as a novella, approximately a hundred and fifty pages. It was surprisingly successful, and I was asked to do another Christmas novella, with a similar theme suited to Christmas. I chose the three wise men, updated to the nineteenth century, willing to give one gift, and asked to give another, far greater, but which in the end would bring them extraordinary happiness.

I have written one each year since then, set in different areas of Britain or Ireland, and always on some theme such as grace, hope, redemption, compassion, a sense of belonging or homecoming. As time goes by it is getting more difficult to think of a different theme. But perhaps it only takes a little more time, and concentration on the multitude of gifts that lie in the meaning of Christ's life, and ultimately his death and resurrection – which to me is what Christmas means.

This year's novella is called a Christmas Odyssey, and was inspired by a kind of cross between the Prodigal Son, returning home after years of debauchery, and the journey through hell depicted in Dante's Inferno.

The three unlikely heroes and an elderly and highly respectable inventor, a reformed brothel keeper of unknown age, and a young man not fully qualified but into practices as a doctor among the poor and desperate. They are brought together by chance in the beginning, and their relationship strengthens and becomes a mutual understanding and respect by the end.

They go into an underworld of drugs and degradation in alleys, tunnels and cellars beneath London, in search of a 'prodigal son' of one of the mathematician's friends, now too old and too ill to go himself, and knowing that his sin would flee him anyway.

The journey is dangerous and at times tragic. They find that the young man appears to have committed a grisly murder, and in order to bring the young man home, the heroes must solve the crime, and prove the 'prodigal son' innocent. They must also defeat the 'Shadow Man' who holds many people in a kind of bondage to drugs and blackmail.

The end is dramatic, life-threatening, offering the 'prodigal son' a chance to choose again, and redeem himself. Christmas is sorrow and starlight, bells ringing, and a chance to come home and be welcome.

It was fun to write, uplifting to think about and extraordinarily satisfying to complete. I hope people reading it will think 'It's never too late to come home'.

I suppose after this Christmas I will know if at least for some people it worked.

Thank you for asking.

Anne Perry

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Thank you Anne for sharing your Christmas novellas with us. They sound very intriguing. I'm sure you will continue to create more inspirational stories. Anyone interested in finding out more about Anne Perry or her work can do so by visiting her website. Anne Perry

A special thanks to all of you who have stopped by. For many of us this is a very busy time. I appreciate you giving me some of it. I wish you and yours the happiest holiday season. I don't think it matters what you celebrate, it matters who you celebrate with.

Kristin : )

Writer Wednesday: Pat Brown

New writers studiously study how-to articles online, in writer's magazines and in the hundreds of books published on how to write in the belief that there is some secret that all published writers know and if only they could find it, they'd be published too. I'm afraid it's not true. There is no magic wand that can transform you from unpublished to published. The process is the same for everybody, for some it's just longer than others. Even when the dream is realized, it's not the end. You publish one book, one short story or perhaps an article. The next one is not a shoe-in. You might get more consideration for having been published, but you can just as easily be rejected again for you latest work.

It took me 33 years between the first book I wrote at 17 to having my first book published when I was 50. In that time I wrote at least 8 novels that were not published, in some cases probably weren't publishable. But each one was a learning experience I built on until I produced a book that someone wanted. But after that there was more rejection. The second book in the series was rejected and I ended up taking it elsewhere, to a small, independent publisher, which was a step down from the New York publisher I had started with. I'm still glad to be published by them and have continued with them since then. But I still want to break back into the New York publishing world and I've been pursuing an agent for the last 6 months. So far I have 95 rejections on one book I'm querying. That's 95 times I've had to read 'Sorry, not for us' since most of the rejections have been form letters. But I haven't stopped querying and I haven't stopped writing. I still send out queries on that book, and wait for a response. I have also started an even larger, more ambitious project, a noir historical which I will also be querying on when it's finished.

My point to all this is, though I have 8 fiction novels published and several short stories, I am no more guaranteed the next book I write will be published by anyone. Publishing is a business going through a lot of changes right now, and no one knows where it will be in 5 years, let alone 20. Publishers want sure things, and since there is no such thing, they compensate by being cautious. Which means more rejections to all but the upper tier of proven best sellers.

So why do it? I do it because I can't NOT write. Whether or not I get published I will always write because the stories are in me and have to be told. With that compulsion I will keep writing no matter if the next book or the one after that is never published or I decide to self publish an ebook, I will write.

As a new writer, only you can decide if this path is for you. No one else can make that decision or stop you from trying. If you want to write, despite the odds, then I say go, write.

My motto is taken right out of Galaxy Quest -- 'Never give up, never surrender'

Pat Brown

http://www.pabrown.ca/

Award winning author of the L.A. crime novels.

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I'll admit I held back on publishing this one. I thought it was too real to inspire new writers, but reading it again I have changed my mind. Writing and being published is not easy. It would be unfair to lead anyone to believe otherwise. Like any job, it takes dedication, incredible stamina, and thick skin to deflect criticism and rejection. And still, even with that some writing dreams won't be realized, while others will exceed all expectations. There's no way to predict which path your writing will take until you do the work and hand it over to the world. There are no guarantees, even for writers that have been published. These are depressing facts, but things all writers should understand. So thank you Pat for telling it like it is. I was wrong, this post is inspiring. It inspires me to keep learning, improving, and trying to reach my writing goals. It inspires me to never give up...

Thanks to all of you who took the time to stop by for another great Writer Wednesday.

Kristin : )

Writer Wednesday: Debra Moffitt

You know more than you think you do.

Those words are from parenting expert, Dr. Benjamin Spock, but I find them strangely comforting and applicable to writing. Of course, I have to balance them against the equally true statement: You don’t know anything at all. For me, writing happens in the valley between the two.

I chin up and soldier my way through the hard, early days of a new writing project, needing to remind myself that I can do characters, dialogue, and plot. But I also sigh and fret. I lament my inadequate education, my own laziness about reading the classics, and my general lack of worldliness. Where have I been? What right have I to spin these tales, which emerge from my imperfect memory and unchallenged point of view?

But, oh yes, I know more than I think I do. I know that I can’t have zero confidence and be a writer. So I have no choice but to rally and find the courage to put something down, to believe that my little squinty view of the world is worth sharing. I remember a decade ago at a writers’ conference, this woman asked the presenter how she could get beyond her internal critic. “Every time I write something, I say ‘Oh my God, it’s awful.’ So I just never get anything done.”

I recall thinking, “Oh, you poor thing.” But rest assured, I was just beginning to write fiction, and my own insecurities were waiting for me around the bend. Right about then, I enrolled in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Writers Workshop. I prepared for class like a model student, wrote my first short story, and was secretly hoping it would get an unqualified A, even though the workshop’s leader was not a professor and the class was not graded.

The deft workshop facilitator had me read an excerpt and then raised so many questions that I felt nauseous. He never said it was a bad story, but he encouraged revision and deeper thinking about what I was trying to say. He asked, rhetorically, “What’s the emotional truth of the story?” Ugh, darned if I knew.

I worked and reworked, always feeling a little like an elephant doing ballet. But through several rounds of the workshop, I started to internalize some of his persistent, and now predictable, questions. It didn’t work miracles, but my fiction writing got a little better.

All the reading he had us do also helped. I stopped racing for the finish when I read, and started noticing the choices that masterful writers make. (Oh, how they tell us just enough and let that last sentence burn a hole in the page!)

Every writer has probably experienced the “I wish I’d written that.” moment. It’s infantile, I know, but I’m confessing. Now that I’m a little older, it doesn’t happen as much. Maybe it’s because I have created for myself a secret stash of encouragement from some fabulous writers. Lots of writers write about writing. But not all of them fill the curious space left by my own insecurity and doubt.

Here are three of my favorites if you need a reminder that yes, you can have a writer’s life, if you want one.

Anne Lamott: Bird by Bird, Lamott’s guide to writing, truly delivers. Ms. Lamott is one of the kindest angels you can have on your shoulder while you write. Need further evidence? She riffs brilliantly about procrastinating when you should be writing and recognizes “Shitty First Drafts” as an official step in the writing process.

William Maxell: I will gladly listen to Maxwell, who was both a fine writer and fiction editor at the New Yorker for 40 years. Maxwell, who died in 2000, had me at the preface to his short story collection, All the Days and Nights.

In it, Maxwell describes how at age 25 he decided to go to sea so he would have something to write about. He left his job as an English professor and got aboard a schooner near Coney Island. Thirty years later, he looked back on it like this..."(The captain) had no idea when the beautiful, tall-masted ship would leave its berth. And I had no idea that three-quarters of the material I would need for the rest of my writing life was already at my disposal. My father and mother. My brothers. The cast of larger-than-life characters - affectionate aunts, friends of the family, neighbors white and black - that I was presented with when I came into this world."

Billie Letts: Letts, an Oklahoman, is the woman you want to read if you’re raising kids and trying (and often failing) to fit in a little writing time. Tucked in the back of her breakout novel, Where the Heart Is, she describes her personal journey from wife and mom to college graduate, English teacher, and – at age 55 – novelist.

By her own description, Letts was not well poised to become a published writer. She was not born in New York, completed college only after having children, and was the traditional “woman behind the man” as her talented husband took a Fulbright Scholarship. She taught English as a second language for many years.

Only as she neared retirement, did she make progress toward her dream of being a writer. In her generous essay, she answers the question she must get asked most often: How did you do it? Her answer: “I don't know. I only know how I have written two books. I had stories to tell and I began typing.

You can read the whole thing here: Billie Letts on Writing
http://www.knowsouthernhistory.net/Culture/Literature/billie_letts.htm

I think of Letts’ essay as something that should be behind glass, like in one of those old fashioned fire extinguisher boxes. In case of discouragement, break glass. I’ve reread it numerous times and know I’ll reach for it again, whenever I need reminding that I know at least a little more than I think I do.

Debra Moffitt, a former newspaper reporter, is an editor at KidsHealth.org. Her first book, The Pink Locker Society: Only Girls Allowed, was published by St. Martin’s Press in September. The book is the first in a four-book series for tween girls.

An interactive website, www.pinklockersociety.org, invites girls to support each other and find answers to common questions about growing up. Moffitt lives in Delaware with her husband and three sons, ages 13, 12, and 4.

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Thank you Debra for being this week's Writer Wednesday guest and thank all of you who stopped by today. As an added bonus Debra has generously offered to give away a copy of her newly released book, The Pink Locker Society to a lucky reader. It could be you! All you have to do is leave a comment. One winner will be randomly selected after midnight tonight and will be announced tomorrow.

Happy Reading and Good Luck!

Kristin : )

Review: Sea Escape by Lynne Griffin

Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to meet Lynne Griffin in Boston and hear all about her new release, Sea Escape. The story and the excitement in her voice had me hooked even before I knew she had a review copy with her. I left the Saturday Saloon, on that Wednesday afternoon, with great writing advice, a copy of Sea Escape, and a smile.

Sea Escape is a moving story about family and finding yourself. Lynne Griffin blends the past with the present seamlessly by using love letters written by the main character, Laura's parents. Through these letters, which had been tucked away for years, Laura learns the true history of her family; memories, secrets, heartbreak, and all.

In the beginning of the story you can sense the strains that exist between each character. Laura's need to please and break the emotional wall that her mother lives behind and brother's complete turn away from them both has blinded her to her own family's problems. Laura's mother, Helen suffers a serious stroke and every one's lives are thrown into chaos.

Laura feels out of control. She tries to take care of everyone, her children, husband, distant brother, and be there for her mother. As Helen's health slips, so does Laura's grip on reality. The love letters, which at first filled her with guilt to read, slowly become her escape.

My favorite part of this story is that it was inspired by real love letters written by the author's parents, which gives this story a true beating heart. Lynne Griffin's expertise in family studies is evident in the dynamics between the characters. She captures the subtle strains that exist in families and the ongoing desire to find resolution to life long issues. Sea Escape will keep your attention and your heart until the last page.

More information about Lynne Griffin and her other books can be found on her website.

Writer Wednesday: Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant

How We Do It

When it comes to writing, the question we are asked more than any other is "How in the world do two people write a book together?" Although we’ve been at this gig for twenty years, and the “how” of this process seems hardly noteworthy to us, it remains the thing people are most curious about. In the beginning, we were really surprised by the question—we hadn’t thought about the “how,” and were completely unprepared with an answer. For us, writing in tandem evolved in the same completely organic, and equally inexplicable way as our friendship had—so it seemed perfectly natural.

Although we met in a profession where we should have been rivals (We were both plus-size models—the only two blacks in our NYC agency and therefore direct competition.) but we realized quickly that we had a lot in common—including a love of books, and we cracked each other up. We cooked up a number of projects together (a fashion newsletter and a short-lived magazine) before we got around to writing Tryin' to sleep in the Bed You made, and discovered that we work seamlessly, almost like we shared halves of the same brain. When the magazine folded without any notice, (and we got over our pity party) we knew that we had to keep working together.

Months and dozens of ideas later, we found ourselves back at the beginning--something we each had fallen in love with as children--fiction. We had both been English majors in college, but more than that, after years of gobbling books like popcorn, we each had strong feelings about what made a good story—and what didn’t. And for reasons we still can’t quite figure out, we decided to attempt writing a novel together. Who had the idea first? Your guess is as good as ours. But no tried to talk us out of it, we talked ourselves into it.

Now seven co-written novels later, before we begin a book, we do the same thing---get together and talk--something we do endlessly anyway. Our conversations lead to a plot, and characters we end up knowing as well as we know each other and eventually an outline. And no--our stories are not autobiographical although we use our own emotions and experience to give the characters reactions that feel real.

In order to make the process work we have to be in the same place. That's how the vibe happens. Sometimes we're side by side at the desktop PC, sharing the keyboard---passing it off to whoever has the hot hand. Other times one is at the laptop and the other at the desk and we're both writing the same section. We come together, read each other's material and weave them together, a sentence or two at a time. We can also write within the same chapter, one going from the beginning to the middle the other from the middle to the end. Then, we exchange sections, add at least two cents to what the other has done, and finally join them. The crazy part is we never know how it will progress each day—we sometimes use all of these methods in a single session. Our aim is for the book to have one, coherent voice. People are often sure they will be able to detect a change in style, or guess who wrote a particular part, but so far, nobody has, not even our editor.

Both our personal friendship and our professional relationship hinge on caring, trust and respect. When we write, our egos are checked at the door. We shed our selves and move into the plot, characters and language of the story. The work is never about us, it's about crafting a story word by word, sentence by sentence, that makes the reader care, maybe even makes them angry with a character. And based on the thousands of letters and emails we have received we know how strongly readers relate to the struggles, life lessons and thick-and-thin relationships we give our characters. That means we’re doing our job. We know that each of us could write a book on her own, but it's a special gift to be able to do it together and we hope we’ll be tag team storytelling for a long time.

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Thanks Virginia and Donna for taking time out of your busy schedules to be this week's Writer Wednesday guests. I think it is amazing how well you both write together. After reading Uptown and then your writing process I was even more amazed. There is no point where I could detect a change in style or perspective.

More information about Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant:

Website: http://deberryandgrant.com/

Blog: http://twomindsfull.blogspot.com/

Facebook: http://Facebook.com/deberryandgrant

Twitter: http://Twitter.com/deberryandgrant

Thanks also to all of you who took time out of your day to stop by. Your support is always appreciated.

If you would like more info about this series, please see Writer Wednesday: The Intro

Kristin : )