A Thin Plot Can Be Thickened

I’m happy to announce that I am writing again. Okay, so it’s not “writing,” writing. But I am finally back to working on my current manuscript, which was derailed some months back when I realized I was running in place, going nowhere, and the book was getting downright boring.

The fiction-writing community likes to talk about two camps of writers: outliners and pantsers (i.e., seat-of-the-pants types). I definitely have the personality of an outliner. I’m someone who makes endless lists, plans trips months ahead, and knows what I’m going to make for dinner three days hence.

an example of my organizational tendencies

But when I sat down to write my current book, Such a Smell of Sulfur (the sequel to my first m.s., A Matter of Taste), I was so eager to get going that I started writing before I had a clear plot-line in my head. Sure, I knew “who dunnit,” and why, and even had a list of suspects and red herrings. But the story arc was still a jumble. In other words, I was pantsing it. Bad idea.

Back in Hilo and Time for Some Pork!

We had quite the summer. Robin and I returned to California from Hilo in June, expecting to spend five months catching up with our friends, taking leisurely walks with Ziggy along West Cliff Drive, working on our respective blogs, and generally enjoying the beauties of Santa Cruz.

It was not to be. By the end of October, we had instead accomplished the following: moving my parents and a bunch of their furniture from Santa Monica to an assisted care facility in Santa Cruz; dealing with 50 years of accumulated possessions in their old home; contracting and overseeing the refurbishing of the house so it could be rented (this fell mostly to Robin); and then, to cap it off, helping my mom recover from a fractured hip. (For those who know my folks, they seem quite happy in their new digs.)

example of stuff at my parents’ house
(don’t worry—I kept Paul and Ringo)

Everything has settled down again, thank goodness, and we are once again in Hilo. It took about a week to get this house back in order. We had had to move lots of things upstairs which had been stored in the basement while there were tenants in the house, and the garden required massive whacking back, as is always the case after a time away.

A Guest Post about Wagner and Tolkien

Yes, I have been remiss in posting for the past few months. But I have a good excuse. My folks moved into an assisted care facility this summer, and what with moving them and their stuff, and then dealing with 50 years of accumulated stuff in the family home, well, let's just say I've been pretty busy and have not had time for such fun tasks as keeping up my blog.

But I have written another post for Robin's Wagner Tripping blog. Since I've been a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien since the age of six, I offered to write about Wagner's influence on Tolkien. You can read it here.

Here's hoping I can get back to more custardy and clue-like posts in the near future. In the meantime, as goes the popular button from the 1960s, Frodo lives!

Wagner and Joyce, part 2

For part two of my guest blog about Wagner's influence on James Joyce, click here. In it, I discuss the Wagnerian themes and references in Joyce's work. There are some pretty pictures too.

A Guest Blog on RIchard Wagner and James Joyce

My partner Robin, in honor of the bicentennial of the birth of her favorite composer, Richard Wagner, is doing a year-long blog, Wagner Tripping, about him.

Robin asked me to contribute two posts about Wagner’s influence on James Joyce, since I’m a great fan of the Irish writer, and am part of a Finnegans Wake reading group that meets twice-monthly at a local Irish pub to sip Guinness and ponder Joyce’s encyclopedic romp through the history of everything.

Reading the Wake, it becomes clear from the very first page (“Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea”) that Joyce draws heavily from Wagner in the work. But what I didn’t realize—until Robin started telling me about it, and then I subsequently did the research for this post—what just how much of an influence Wagner had on so much of Joyce’s writing.

You can read the first of my two posts here. 

A Bastille Day Quiche Lorraine

My French conversation group has an annual luncheon to celebrate la fête nationale—Bastille Day as we Yanks call it—and there’s always a bit of an unofficial competition over the food. This year I offered to make quiche Lorraine, which I think contains the perfect balance of a light, creamy custard set off by salty, savory bacon.

I added not-traditional chives to mine, for added flavor and color

Although now known as a classic French dish, quiche originated in Germany (the word comes from the German word “Kuchen,” or cake). Of course, much of the Lorraine region has been passed back and forth between what are now France and Germany over the ages—only settling down permanently as part of France in 1919. So, not surprisingly, the cuisine of the Lorraine seems more German than French, with potatoes, sausages, and cabbage being among the popular dishes.

Crime May Not Pay, But You Meet The Nicest People!

One of my favorite aspects of writing mysteries is that I can be in complete control of the process, from beginning to end. Such independence was not possible when I was a songwriter back in the 1980s and ’90s. Although I could pen the lyrics and compose a melody line and chords to go along with them, the song was never “complete” until I got the band together and we worked out a full-fleshed arrangement. And unlike with fiction writing, a song doesn’t really exist until performed or recorded, which also (at least for me) requires the assistance of others.

But as with many things in life, there’s a downside to the independence inherent in fiction-writing: It can be a lonely calling. And discouraging, too, when those rejection letters start pouring in.

Luckily, there’s an antidote for us—it’s called a writers conference. I attended my first one last weekend, the California Crime Writers Conference, in my mom’s hometown, Pasadena.

Tournament of Roses poster in the hotel hallway

The main reason I signed up for the conference was to attend the classes. And, for the most part, they were terrific: lectures on how to bring your characters to life, crime scene investigation, and page-turning techniques; panel discussions on outlining vs. seat-of-the-pantsing, marketing, and the role of agents and editors.