May Gray

May Gray, That's what the locals call these wonderful foggy mornings. I love them. I get a lot of writing done. Which is good because I have a lot to do--several projects in motion. Sacred Scars is primary.

It's time to get back to work.

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I live in southern CA.

This is the Atlantic , Rabat, Morocco.

writing is so weird

The woods, the woods....

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I was flipping through old pic files just now and stopped to stare at this one. This is exactly where Sadima is, where I left her last night at midnight, not because I was tired, but because it hurt. These are the trees, the fading light. She is running, jerking her long skirt free, stumbling, running...

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The photo was taken in the Shenandoah Forest, several years ago at an SCBWI writers' retreat. Enlarge it and look at the horizon line, left of center. You can see her silhouette. I can.

gravity defying plants in Paris

This living façade was intended to be temporary, but everyone liked it so much that they kept it.


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Standing in front of it, I was astonished at how it made me feel. Then my analytical brain kicked in and wanted to pin the logistics, the how of the whole thing. I have two plausible theories for anyone interested. No one? Right.
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However it was done, it's just wonderful.




















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stone

The whole time I was in France, I was entranced by the long human relationship with stone. Who, I mean, really, who among us was the first one to look at a jagged piece of rock and think...I could take a year or two of my life, find some tools, chip away at it and turn it into something like these:

(as always, high-res pics, click to really see the sculpture)

It's an astonishing leap, isn't it? A leap of imagination, of mind, of concept, of art, of madness.

By the way,
French and Italian food IS better. Fresher, realer, riper, yummier...

Angela Cerrito ,whose lovely blog has the same color scheme as mine, tagged me. Tagged? Well, yes. Me and four other lucky souls. Here is the task I have been assigned:

The rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.

2. Open to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the next three sentences.

5. Tag five people and post a comment to Bish's blog once you've posted your three sentences.

So...Nearest Book: Sue Munk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees:

That night, when the darkness was weighed down with singing crickets and Rosaleen was snoring right along with them, I had myself a good cry. I couldn't even say why. Just everything, I guess.

It's a great book. I recommend it.

And now, to tag five others...mmmmm...off to facebook, I think, to victimize the kind people who have friended me there...

wonders of the world

The Eiffel Tower is a landmark of my childhood. Maybe yours, too? I remember staring at pictures of it in the third grade back-of-the-classroom library in my little Colorado town. The same book had the pyramids, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Majal...and it was proof that the world was big and mysterious. I loved knowing that. I still love knowing that.

Paris

I expected the Paris/Bologna trip to feed the plot and the atmosphere of the current project--Sacred Scars. It's set in a city with a long, murky history, knotted and curled so tightly that no one can unravel it. What I didn't expect was how easily and perfectly what I saw (smelled, tasted, touched) would fit into the book.
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This is a wash basin in a restaurant bathroom. On a busy corner with both tourists and locals at the tables, this is where you wash your hands. It's a high-res picture. Click on it. Please. Next time I wonder where artistic inspiration comes from, someone remind me, please: Simple things. Like bathrooms in Paris.

More later--it was a wonderful trip....
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paris and bologna...

I leave Sunday for a couple weeks to Europe. The whole trip is one long book and writers fest and I am really looking forward to meeting all the writers who have sent me their work for critique and the mentorship program. I'll get to see a lot of author friends--it's an odd thing, the writer tribe. We are tight, in a nomadic way.

Last week, at a literature conference at the University of Northern Illinois, I got to have a real conversation with David Wiesner for the first time, after loving his art and "wordless stories" for years. I got to see my friend literacy expert/librarian/author Michael Sullivan and watch him inspire a few hundred librarians and give them ways to en-literate more boys, Sylvia Barzei and her amazing science/grossology, the kind and peaceful Joseph Bruchac, whom I had never met, but whose work I admire, Mark Crilley, a very nice guy, who was spit-your-milk funny and Robert Burleigh whose presentation I missed half of , because I was freezing and had to leave to go fetch a sweater, then got stuck on the phone. I shivered much of the time. IL apparent has a season called winter?? I grew up in snow country, but southern California often skips cold weather altogether, it so I have become a weather wuss. . .

Sacred Scars (with orchid)

So I am in a writing doldrums now--probably because I had such a great surge last week. It ebbs and flows. Sadima continues to amaze me, she is living through what no one should be able to live through, as least so far. 





Into this lull has come an idea for the next work. I had a notes file going and it is expanding faster than I expected. I love knowing what's next before each book is finished. It saves me panic, terror and poverty....

I get paid for this?

Writing can be hard, tedious, frustrating, bang-your-head-on-your-keyboard elusive. But when it flies, it flies, and you get to fly with it. Sometimes it feels like I am eavesdropping on the people in the book and just transcribing their lives. *Those* are the days when I am amazed that this is my job.

a childhood love...

No, not a person, an art form. Hand shadows. Richard just sent me this and it warmed up my whole day.

Raymond Crowe, ladies and gentlemen.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llI98n6rVJI

And now, back to work--doing critiques for the SCBWI Bologna and Paris events, then on to Sacred Scars.

Locus

If you don't know what Locus is, you will be very happy to discover it. Please enjoy the wealth of smart people talking about interesting books. And if you have time, read Gary F. Wolfe's review of my book. I will try to make it true...

writing is so odd...

I am taking a break--gotta eat something today--and am sitting here with my whole body thrumming. I can't type fast enough today. I can't keep up with the story. I have stopped twice to write notes for tomorrow and beyond. If I could figure how and why this happens, I would...

Actually I have some theories and am having more and more days like this. I will write about it soon. For now, back to work.

work,work,work, cough, sniffle, work,

Have a flu. BAD one. Started with stomach yuck, became a nasty cough, no energy *at all* for a few days. Not anything like normal yet, day eight. Lots of people have it. I was on a plane, coming back from Orlando, the night all the tornados hit in the midwest. The air traffic controllers took us up to 36,ooo feet. Still bumpy. So we were routed south and spent an extra hour in the viral soup that is airplane-air. I sat next to a nice mother and son. The boy was, maybe ADHD--very energetic, at the least. He was charming, smart company. His mother was really nice, too. Both were coughing every ten seconds...everyone was coughing and sniffling. Sigh. Back to work. Sadima is on the edge of a decision that terrifies me. I didn't think she would do this.

National Book Award

This is long looooong overdue...I have been buried in writing and other stuff. I read Sara Zarr's blog about it because I wanted to remember what she said, and it took me five minutes of previous, previous, previous...to find it.

That makes it pretty clear how belated all this is. But here goes, anyway. The NBA experience was wonderful.

First there was a floaty plane ride, during which I tried not to grin at every stranger who happened to glance at me. Then there was the amazing hotel. It rained off and on the whole time, the light shifting and changing the amazing view of the park. Then came a truly fabulous teen "press conference" with 250 or so NYC teens gathered to listen to the YA finalists read and ask us questions. And the finale was a black tie dinner, amazing speeches, amazing writers. (Amazing seems to be the best word for all of this.) Fran Liebowitz and I chatted on our way to the bathroom, for about a minute, but still, it was an amazing little minute... Joan Didion received a lifetime achievement award. Her writing, her exploration of the Santa Ana winds in southern CA, was ringing in my head a few weeks earlier when the fires were raging all around (and through) my little town.

One of the best things about the whole experience was the chance to meet the other writers. Brian Selznick is a friend and I get to see him now and then along the author-trail, but I had never met Sara, Sindy or Sherman. (the three s's) All three impressed me for different reasons. Sara and Sindy are both strong, interesting, very smart women. Sherman was a delight. He settled a little kerfluffle with style and grace at the reading that included all the adult authors. We sat in the front row, in order of appearance, left to right. It began with a remark by Robert Hass , who sat on my right, about the tragedy of the war in Iraq. Christopher Hitchens , with his politcally metamorphic background, was up next . He blasted Robert, and then the audience, for not supporting our forces in a fight he felt they were beginning to win. He was, ah, provocative. People began to hiss and, finally, boo quietly. Hitchens ended the remarks and slid into his reading in a way that settled the room, more or less. Sherman Alexie, followed him and opened by reminding us, in just a few words, that opposing views can be held in the mind, heard, considered. Then he began reading and the room felt whole again. Sara Zarr blogged it nicely, back nearly two months ago when it should have been blogged.

For me, coming home, going back to work, has been wonderful. The major joy of having been given that silver medal for such an important literary award is simply this: I feel more able to write well. Silly maybe, but there is it. My belief in my ability has been upped. I am ever-grateful to the National Book Foundation and will will try to hang onto that.

California fires...

A thousand thanks to everyone who has written to ask if I am all right. I am. It came within about half a mile, we had to evacuate for most of last week, but we are home now.

My son and I were talking about Santa Ana winds yesterday--about how they scrape at the human nervous system. They have always made me uneasy. When he was little, he said, the winds were exciting, like there was some adventure coming, something just over the hill, something you had to be ready for.

The humidity was 5% for about three days--wind gusts peaked around 70 mph, consistently 25-40 mph. There were three days of a ruddy false twilights that came and went as the wind shifted, three nights of a vivid orange moon and fire outlining the shapes of ridges. Over half a million people were evacuated. Many are not yet home. Some will come home to rubble. We are in the second year of a dust and bones drought--which was preceded by a really rainy year. That year grew the thickets of brush and weeds that are now brittle, dry and still burning in sweeping fronts all over southern California.

It is still smoky at times, as the air shifts. It is just before sunrise here and I went outside and walked around to wake up--something I usually do--and saw clouds here and there--so the humidity is coming back up. I can see the glow on Palomar Mountain off to the east, too, and the smell of smoke is on the breeze coming from the northwest. So the Poomacha and Rice/de Luz fires are still alive. The Santa Ana winds, we are told, could rise up again over the next few days. Some places, that would actually help--driving the flames back toward the already-burned land. Other places, it could enlarge existing fire areas.

The firefighters are amazing, working 48 hours shifts, many from northern CA, many using older equipment, and all of them fighting walls of flame without air support in too many places for far too long. People have been helping neighbors, saving pets, donating time, money, expertise, taking in evacuees--doing all the things that make one proud to be human, at least for a while...

NBA finalist?? Thank you, S&S for the gorgeous flowers!!

The bouquet is huge, sweet and beautiful.

((the pix are hi-rez click for the real deal))

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I am just overwhelmed and I still can't quite believe it.

I am very very happy.

And there's this, too: As I work madly on the next book--Sacred Scars--I am feeling bolder and reckless and strong--that feeling you get after you jump over a fire, and land safe. But in the same instant, I am afraid (and by afraid, I mean terrified) that it was a fluke.

Newsflash: Writers are endlessly nutty.

National Book Award finalist?!?!!

The call came yesterday--now that the press release is out, I can talk about it.
I am beyond happy.

Skin Hunger--and the rest of the trilogy, in progress now--contains a lot of my heart and my intellect. It is so close to the bone for me that it has been hard to write at times...

I am so honored, so thrilled.

And if I had had ANY idea this might happen, I would never have written about my septic tank on this blog a few days ago.

Writing like crazy. No. Really. Like crazy. I am late with the second volume of A Resurrection of Magic. Long story why, there are personal and other reasons. Most recent (yesterday) and funniest: my septic tank died. I will spare you the details. No, I won't. It is ten long strides away from my office. Machinery, people digging ditches, yuckiness, olfactory torture and $ leaving my hands--all this is in my future.

The title came to me though. Finally. And it came to me when I was staring down the throat of this fern, enchanted/dizzy.

Sacred Scars.
It fits perfectly. Ferns are very wise. It took me half a day to realize that Sadima's home, the little hill farm village in the book is called...Ferne. It made me shiver, realizing that. When the story is dragging the writer along by her subconscious...that is usually when it is truly working.
back to writing. A thousand kisses to everyone writing to me about Skin Hunger. I am hurrying and I think Sacred Scars will be worth the wait.