My Sister’s Paintings or It’s Never Too Late To Start

One thing about having your own web site is that you can put whatever you want on it.  Right now I’m pretty darn excited about my sister’s newly found talent as an artist. The reason I feel this story can be of interest to those beyond my family is that Liz started painting when she was 46 years old. She’s turning 48 next week, and I think you’ll agree that she’s pretty far along the scale for someone who’s painted for less than two years.

This must be something that runs in my family – at least among the females. My mother was a painter who didn’t find real success in selling her paintings until her early 60s.  She was a trained artist, having gone to the Ringling School of Art when she was a young woman, and then painting when she could while raising four children.  It wasn’t until she was 60 that she started to work in a focused, dedicated fashion and her work took on a whole new look.  More concentrated, meaningful, artful. And her paintings sold like crazy.

I started writing when I turned 50. I’m 53 now and still a beginner when it comes to how much I know and how much I have to learn, but still I’ve thrown myself into it, much as my mother did.  And I’ve had some success so far, enough to keep me going on this path. My mother died before I started writing, but I’d like to think she’d be proud. She admired hard work, even if she wasn’t a fan of lesbian mysteries and romances.

I think there’s no question Mom would be proud of Liz. She too has discovered her passion in middle-age and has made huge progress in such a short time. It’s inspirational, really, and the message I really want to impart is that it is never too late to find that which makes you feel passionate, that which makes the time go by as if it didn’t even exist, that which makes you feel intensely proud and humbled at the same time. And if you do find it, the other part of the message is that it – the craft, the art, the hobby, whatever – doesn’t develop itself.  Like everything else, you get out what you put in, and when you work hard at developing skill, the rewards can be enormous.  The reward, in fact, is the work itself.

I figure I’ll get to be a good novelist about the time I’ll be thinking of retiring from real estate.  And that’s just about perfect.  What better to do with my time? I sometimes wonder what things would be like if I’d discovered writing when I was in my twenties and not so much later. I can’t imagine, but I do know that had I not discovered this love at 50, I’d still be 53 but without a published novel and six or seven stories published in anthologies.  It’s never too late to start.

Back to Reality

It's hard to not feel a little gloomy these days.

After returning to civilization following my month long writing retreat, I’ve found myself strangely unconcerned by the rather horrible state of our economy.  Mind you, I am a real estate agent and my phone has virtually stopped ringing.  By all rights, I should be worried.  The money I put away while real estate was crazy hot has now lost a good deal of its value, but soon I’ll have to sell stock to have cash to live on while the market remains quiet.  My partner is in banking, and though her bank is one of the safest in terms of its overall stability, it’s still banking – a pretty vulnerable place to be.  As a couple, we are a ground zero of the new economy.

Why am I not worried?   I really have no idea.  I still am doing some transactions and there will be some closings along the way.  I’m staying on top of what’s going on in the business, staying in touch with my clients, and ready to be there for them when things pick up again.  And in the meantime, I’m writing.  Maybe that’s why I’m not worried.  I have something else I care passionately about and I can devote myself to that with the time I now have.  When real estate picks up, I’ll flip flop the ratio of time I spend on each.  I guess I feel that somehow I’m being taken care of – not necessarily monetarily, but in a broader sense.  Things are happening as they are supposed to, and I’m going to make the most of the situation as it exists.  This coming year will be a challenge to my bank account, but if I can get another book written, how much richer am I?  Richer in spirit, I mean.  I don’t see myself writing a best seller with the next one.

But you never know.

I was recently interviewed at an on-line lesbian fiction site called Kissed by Venus (kissedbyvenus.ca).  The editor of the site is Alexandra Wolfe, who lives in Quebec City but is a woman of the world.  It’s a great web site and I encourage you to visit it.  My interview can be read here.  Alexandra also published a story of mine on the site, Thirty Days Has September, which can be read here.  The story is about a woman who is bottoming out on alcohol, and the reaction to it has been so interesting.  Recovering alcoholics who read it can instantly relate to the cluelessness of the narrator.  Non-alcoholics who read it are amazed at the cluelessness of the narrator, but it’s my hope they have a little more understanding of the power of denial, and the power of addiction, after they read the story.  I recently heard from someone who took the story into a woman’s prison where she does service work.  Her group of recovering women read the story and had quite a lively discussion about it.  That’s the best feedback I’ve ever gotten.

Have a wonderful holiday season.

What a month away can do-November 2008

This is me reading from Sometimes Quickly, my first book. I

I have been back from my month long residency for over two weeks now, and still haven’t found the time or energy to write about my experience there.  My last blog entry was written the day after I arrived, and the feeling of deep satisfaction that I felt then only increased as the month of October rolled on. Let’s see if I can describe it briefly, without too much reverence.

A month can seem like an incredibly short or long time, depending on a host of variables. My month at the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts felt very much what I imagine a month is in real time – I was aware of nearly every moment, I was able to plan my day and then live it without distraction, I was never pulled away from what I intended to do, unless I simply changed my mind about doing it.  The four weeks was a substantial amount of time, but only in the most comforting of ways.  The time was not racing by me, throwing me into a state of fear that it was all going to be gone in a flash.  Nor did it drag on ad infinitum, throwing me into another type of fear – fear of boredom, fear of being too much with myself, fear of not accomplishing as much as I should.

My intention was to finish writing the first draft of my novel in the first two weeks of my stay and to edit during the final two week, and strangely, that’s exactly what I did.  The wonderful brick house that I lived in was occupied by only one other writer and the resident manager, it was quiet, my window had a gorgeous view, and the weather was sublime.  Everyday I woke up, drank coffee while I looked over the pages from the day before, ate breakfast, wrote, walked to the friary for lunch, wrote, hiked the trails in the woods.  Then I’d start editing what I’d already written that day.  Dinner at the friary, and then more editing followed by a TV show I’d downloaded onto my iPod during the day.  The internet connection was so slow that it took all day to download an hour long show.

On Monday nights I walked a few steps out the front door to one of the Friary buildings where yoga was held each week at 6:30.  On Sunday afternoons I’d drive twenty minutes into Louisville and go to the big Barnes and Noble they have there, and that was my outing for the week.  It was the simplest life I’d led since I was too young to complicate my life – let’s call that five years old.  I worked like crazy and felt completely energized by it.  I left the retreat with the book completed, amazed that I’d accomplished what I set out to do.  But even if I hadn’t finished the book I accomplished something in that month I think I needed to accomplish.  I proved to myself that at long last I am comfortable enough in my own skin to absolutely enjoy my own company, to know what I did and didn’t want to do, and to just accept every part of me as being the way it needs to be, at least for now.  I wish everyone had the luxury to do what I did.

The only problem, really, is that while a month away seems like a reasonable amount of time when you’re the person away, the people left behind have a different perspective.  It happened that it was a particularly bad month for my partner, with the financial crisis exploding early in the month and her father falling ill toward the middle of the month.  I guess it’s too much to expect that everything will go exactly the way I want it to.  It certainly wasn’t for my partner that month.

The other thing that was a little shocking is that a week after returning from MACA, I got an e-mail from them saying they’d shut down the whole program!  I got in and out in the nick of time.  I’m not sure why they closed, but it’s probably the same reason most arts programs don’t make it – lack of funds.  It’s really too bad, because I don’t think I really adequately described how conducive that was to my writing.

Now I’ve edited the book as much as I can see to do and sent it off to my first choice in publishers.  The waiting now begins, and it can be agonizing for a double Aries like me.  The only answer is to start the next project.

Mary Anderson Center for the Arts-October 2008

The acreage the retreat house is on is gorgeous, with miles of hiking trails.

I arrived yesterday at the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts, where I’ll be spending the ENTIRE month of October.  This is such a luxury.  I can only marvel at the fact that I’ve managed to craft the kind of life that allows me to do this, though I think no small portion of that is due to the fact that I’m a real estate agent and I’m just not overly busy right now.

This is the writing half of my room. The other half has a bed and a small sofa.

In any event, I’ll be here for the month, trying to finish my second novel.  Here is in the very southern tip of Indiana, about 15 minutes from Louisville.  The MAC is on land owned by a Franciscan Friary and Retreat Center, but it is completely separate from it.  I have a room looking out over acres of beautiful wooded land.  There are miles of hiking trails all around and a picturesque lake as well.  It’s unbelievably quiet, and the night is pitch, pitch black.  Kind of creepy to a city girl.  I’m the only artist or writer here, so the quiet is fairly complete.  No communing with others at the end of the writing day, which I had been looking forward to.  Another writer is coming next week, so I’ll try to remember how to interact with others once he shows up.

The house

The Friars who own the land have a sense of humor, I was delighted to discover.

My room has a comfy bed, nice big windows, a small couch, and a generous, L-shaped desk.  I got everything set up by last night and even edited a little bit.  Today I went for an hour long hike and wrote 1,500 words.  I’m going to shoot for at least 2,000 a day, but that all depends on what I’m writing.  Some scenes are easy, and some are dreadful, painful, slow and agonizing.  If I come out of here after a month with a good first draft and stronger legs, I’ll have achieved a lot.  I know I’ll be more relaxed.  I can feel that already.

Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writers Retreat-Aug. 2008

Fiction Workshop with Claire McNab

Some of the emerging queer writers

My buddy Susan hanging out on the patio where we all spent a lot of time writing and shooting the breeze. The view was spectacular.

It’s been nearly a week since I returned from the Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writers Retreat. The experience was the best of my writing life, and I include the publication of my book in that assessment. For one glorious week I was immersed in all aspects of writing, housed in a comfortable campus located in Bel Air, California, and exposed to new friends, new writing, new ideas. It was really amazing. And I am so grateful to have been one of the 20 writers picked to take part in what the Foundation plans to be an ongoing nurturing of the next generation of GLBTQ writers. The fact that I’m considered the next generation of anything is thrilling for me, but truthfully, I did not have any trouble at all connecting with the others at the retreat, many of whom were much younger than me.

Part of the week’s schedule was devoted to workshops taught by accomplished authors.  It’s worthwhile noting that these authors were not only successful as such, but had lots of experience as teachers, an important distinction.  My fiction section was taught by Claire McNab, author of some 60 books of various genres, most notably in our community the Carol Ashton and Kylie Kendall mysteries.  Claire also teaches at UCLA and I can easily say it was the best experience in a classroom I’ve ever had.  She was blunt, but she was also brilliant, and it was easy to see that she cared whether we learned how to be published writers or not.  She also has one of the driest senses of humor I’ve ever run across, so I basically liked being around her to hear what she had to say and how she said it.

At the end of the week the students read from their own work.  It was clear to see that the quality of writing was really high, and the teachers said as much themselves.  It really was a privilege to be part of that group.

Golden Crown Literary Convention-July 2008

Katherine Forrest posing for a photo with Lynn Ames and Ruth Perkinson

KE Lane and I signing books

I’ve just returned from my second literary convention of the year, the Golden Crown Literary Society 4th Annual Convention.  The GCLS is an organization founded solely for the purpose of championing lesbian literature.  The convention is unique in that it welcomes and celebrates the reader as much as the author, and the weekend of panels, workshops and events has as much in the way of entertaining fans of lesbian books and their authors as it does workshops on craft for the writers.  A particular thrill for everyone this year was the presence of Katherine V. Forrest, a true icon in the world of lesbian literature, a trailblazer in many ways and a very fine writer and editor to boot.  Her Kate Delafield mystery series saw me through a particularly bleak post-break-up period many years ago.  I would lose myself in those stories and forget about my own for awhile.  And many, many lesbians remember Forrest’s Curious Wine as the first honest to god lesbian romance they ever read.  By the time the two women in that book finally got together the reader – especially the reader of the early 80s – was practically panting.  Plus, there was no fall out in the way of older lesbian books.  No suicide, no ostracism, no arrest, no murder.

I enjoyed myself throughout the weekend, learned a lot, met some really nice readers and writers, signed some books, and enjoyed some of the Arizona sun.  Or as much as you can enjoy 110 degrees.  I hung out a bit with KE Lane, whose first book – And Playing the Role of Herself – won all three categories it was nominated in at the awards on Saturday night.  Kathy is a modest and delightful person and I was thrilled that she won.

Reading a sex scene from Sometimes Quickly, with Catherine Lundorff looking on.

My erotica reading went well, but I admit being upstaged by Nell Stark’s reading of a very hot and well-written story of her own.  Her delivery was sensational and taught me a little about how important that is, no matter what you’re reading for an audience.  I spent some time with Nell during the conference and thought she was delightful.

Now I’m home for a week and then off to L.A. for the Emerging Writers Retreat.  Lucky for me, I’ll get to spend more time with Katherine Forrest while in L.A.  She gave a terrific all-day workshop at GCLS and I’ll happily sit through it again while at the Retreat.

Traveling and the writer/realtor-July 24, 2008

One of the comforting rituals of home-Buddy bowing to Lucy

Right now I’m in Florida on a trip with my partner to spend time with her family. When I return I’ll spend a few days at home before heading to Phoenix for 4 days at the Golden Crown Literary Society convention.  I’ll be on a couple of panels there as well as attending workshops and hopefully meeting other writers and readers of lesbian fiction.  It should be great fun, and I may even get some writing done there.  Then it’s home again for close to a week before leaving for L.A. and the Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writer’s Retreat.  I’ll be in classes with Katherine Forrest, Claire McNab, and others, and it should really be inspiring.  I’m sure it will be intense as well.

In September I will be going up to Minneapolis for a reading at Amazon Bookstore, accompanied by some Chicago friends and meeting up with some Minnesota friends.  Amazon was recently purchased by Ruta Skujins, just in the nick of time.  It’s previous owners were retiring from bookstore life after years of providing a fantastic bookstore and community service.  I’m so happy that Ruta is having me up to read from Sometimes Quickly.

Finally, and most exciting as far as I’m concerned, is my month long residency at the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts in Southern Indiana.  MAC is located adjacent to a friary and is home to 8 visual artists and writers at a time.  There I’ll have nothing I have to do but write, a luxury almost too rich to even contemplate until I get there.  I hope I don’t freak out.

But wait, aren’t I a Realtor also?  How can I just keep going out of town as if I didn’t have any job at all?  That’s what distinguishes today’s Realtor from those of the very recent past.  Business is so bad, we are free to do almost anything we want!  I may be one of the few realtors who is viewing this as a good thing.  But then again, I’ve done well enough during the first part of the year that I can continue to support myself through the second part.  And what business I do bring in the second half of the year I will be splitting with my good friend and fellow agent, Alley Ballard.  I’m almost glad business is slow.  I’m just starting to get back into writing my Weston College book and I really want to finish that this year.

Traveling for me means moving away, physically and mentally, from being a realtor whose life is interrupted countless times a day and into being a writer, focused on the project at hand.  I don’t make my living by writing, so I have to respect and work hard at my real estate career.  By my real heart goes into the writing, something I’m learning and feeling passionate about.  I’m so lucky to have both things.

Beginning to feel like a writer-July 2008

The room most of my writing is done in

It’s been nearly two months since I last updated this blog, a performance even more woeful than I thought it would be when I set it up.  I can only plead the overwhelming time suck of work, and, in all honesty, the unbelievable time suck of obsessively watching the sales rank of Sometime Quickly on Amazon.com rise and fall like (fill in metaphor here).  One hour it will be #10 out of all lesbian fiction found on Amazon.  The next hour it may be #49.  It can easily fall off the top 100 and thus not appear to be of any particular category at all.  It shows itself a lonely book, the 189,328th best-selling book among all books sold on Amazon.  Then, voila, it is resurrected, in a matter of hours, to number 22 among the lesbian fiction books.  In other words, the ranking means next to nothing.  It has as much to do with how your competitors are selling as how your book is selling.  It has as much to do with the quality or worth of your book as oranges do to pea gravel, but I don’t know any new writer who doesn’t study the rankings as I do.  Or so I choose to believe.

Anyway, I’ve been doing that, selling real estate at a surprising clip, and trying to keep up with cooking, cleaning, exercising (not really), 12-step meetings, being with my partner, friendships, family, etc.  When do people write?  I’m not one of those who is going to get up at 5:00 a.m. so I can write for an hour before my day begins.  Why even say I’ll do that when I know I simply will not?  I did revise my outline a bit today, so that felt like some progress.

The other thing that has been going on is that I am more convinced than ever of the power of putting yourself out there, even when there doesn’t seem to be much point.  For a writer that may mean applying for residencies and grants that you don’t think you have a ghost of a chance of getting, and it certainly means sending your work out wherever there’s the slimmest chance of it being accepted.  I’ve had the most amazing response, mainly because my expectations are so low.  In the last couple of weeks I learned that I was admitted into the Lambda Literary Foundations Emerging Writers Workshop, set for one week in L.A. in August.  I’ll be in the genre fiction section studying with Claire McNab, and will also be in general workshops and lectures with the students studying poetry, general fiction (literary fiction, I imagine), and creative non-fiction.  This is a great opportunity for me to learn and I’m really excited.  The faculty is going to be great.  In addition to Claire McNab, Katherine Forrest, Dorothy Allison and others are going to be on the guest faculty.

A couple of days ago I received an e-mail from Alyson Books and my story On Retreat was picked up by them for their next Best Lesbian Love Stories.  I’ve always admired that anthology and am thrilled to be in it.  With the publication of this story, I also realized something that really shook me up.  I’ve written exactly 6 stories in my adult life, all of them in the last 3 years.  Five of them have now been accepted for print publication, and the 6th is out being considered right now.  It shook me up because I have to realize that I may know what I’m doing more than I give myself credit for, and if I don’t start respecting my own abilities, how the hell am I going to continue on this journey?  Writing is not easy or particularly fun most of the time, and if you commit to it you have very little free time left over.  You can’t really pick up any other hobbies, you have to pace yourself with social commitments, and you get rejected and humbled all the time.  Writers are generally crazy and neurotic because they need to be.  So, I’m going to afford myself some room to start calling myself a writer, without following it up with a long string of qualifications.  And I’m going to be very, very grateful that I’ve found a home for my work.  And you know what else?  I’m grateful for the rejections as well, because they are needed to keep me on a learning path and I really need to grow as a writer.  I may be a writer, but I’m a baby writer.  (did I just qualify again?)

Book launch at Women and Children First-May 2008

The bookstore I’ve been shopping in for 27 years was the host site for my book launch and reading on May 15.  Women and Children First is not only a great bookstore, but a great cultural and community resource in Chicago, hosting a huge amount of events and supporting any number of worthwhile causes.

I may not qualify as a worthwhile cause, but the store did much to support me by hosting my event.  I asked another Chicago author, Kate Sweeney, to read from one of her recent books, and some of Kate’s fans turned up.  I was thrilled to see a lot of my friends and family in the audience.  My brother Chris even brought his digicam and recorded me reading.  As soon as I can figure out how to do so, I’ll post it to my website.

The most important thing I took away from the reading was that my book sounded better than I thought it would.  Authors become pretty jaded about their work – at least this author does – and after reading the manuscript umpteen times during the editing process, I could only see the flaws in the writing and the story.  It incredibly gratifying to read for 15 or 20 minutes and hear laughter in the right spots and see faces that look interested.

Remember, Sometimes Quickly is available at www.womenandchildrenfirst.com, amazon.com, www.scp-inc.biz, and in your favorite bookstore.  Well, it might actually not be in your favorite bookstore, but they’ll order it for you.  I’m working on getting it on the shelves of the area Barnes and Nobles and Borders.  If you have read the book, please send me comments.  I love (and need) the feedback.

Saints and Sinners Redux-May 2008

Reading at the festival from my new novel

Joan Larkin and I after my reading

From May 9-11 I found myself immersed in the world of queer writers and queer writing.  The Saints and Sinners Literary Festival is held in New Orleans each year, a celebration as well as an educational and networking opportunity for those writing everything from literary fiction to mysteries and romances.

This was my first time in New Orleans and my partner Linda and our pals Rita and Michelle joined me on the trip.  They enjoyed the city while I attended the festival.  It turns out that I didn’t see much of them, but we all had a great time.

Here are some of the highlights of Saints and Sinners for me:
•    Master classes with Aaron Hamburger, Val McDermid, and Dorothy Allison
•    Dinner at K Paul Kitchen on Friday night.  It’s true what they say about New Orleans food – it’s fantastic.
•    Panels throughout the day on Saturday.
•    Hanging out with my friend Joan Larkin.
•    Hanging out with my new friends from Bywater Books
•    Finally meeting my publishers face to face.  Linda and Barb of P.D. Publishing are truly above board, supportive people to work with.
•    My reading on Saturday afternoon, where a dozen or so were in attendance.  I didn’t flub anything!
•    Seeing Joan inducted into the Saints and Sinners hall of fame during the closing party on Sunday afternoon.
•    Dinner on Sunday night with Joan, Maureen Brady and her very lovely partner Martha, and Dorothy Allison.  Wow.
•    Last, but possibly first, coffee and beinets three mornings in a row at Cafe du Monde.  For $1.82 you get three large pieces of exquisitely fried dough, hot out of the pan and buried in powdered sugar.  The first bite is a bit of heaven, though it’s hell on the body. This coming week I’m eating nothing but fruits and vegetables.  I swear!
Also at the top of the page is  a picture of Joan and me.  I strongly urge you to pick up a copy of Joan’s most recent book – My Body: New and Collected Poems.  She is an amazing poet, and even though hearing her read is the best experience of her work, it works magic when you hold the book in your hand as well.