Fox and Hound

Certain sounds bring you out of a sound sleep, instantly. The twang of a body hitting your five-foot-high wire fence is one of them.

I'd thought I was immensely clever last night leaving the sliding glass door unlocked, so big dog Monty could open it when he needed to go out this morning. I was exhausted and desperately needing sleep (Lucy having awakened me the previous night during a thunderstorm, and I couldn't get back to sleep).

I bolt out of bed and pull on the first pair of sneakers I find, fly downstairs and into the yard, Lucy with me. Monty is running back and forth through the woods in my yard, clearly tracking something. A deer, I think. A deer jumped the fence, hit it on the way over, and he's tracking it. No problem.

And then I see something orange flash past.

A cat, I think at first. I call Lucy, the Obedient, and put her back in the house. I know not to try to call Monty, the Runner. Although right now he is being Monty, Wild Warrior Dog. On the Hunt.

The orange flash streaks past again. It's a fox, long and lithe, running fast.

And therein ensues an wild game of chase in my rather large yard (it's a two-plus acre lot), with me as a pajama-clad referee, futilely trying to grab Monty as he dashes past. The fox is smart, making huge laps, Monty significantly behind. I pull off the extra bit of fencing covering the bottom of the side-yard gate, hoping the fox will sense the opening as he dashes past, but two more laps and he doesn't. The fox is slowing, and I see him clearly as he runs past, bushy tail straight behind him, long and low to the ground. I resolve to pull a Boris Becker the next time Monty passes, to dive at him headlong and somehow, desperately, grab him.

Another twang on the fence, near the kitchen door and then wild barking, and I run around, fearing the worst: mangled fox or full-on battle. But no. The fox is cornered. He's sitting with his back against the corner formed by the kitchen sliding glass door and fence, eying us over the lawn mower I've left there. Monty, however, is the perfect gentleman, and lets me grab his collar and take him around the house and back inside.

Through the sliding glass kitchen door I eye the fox. It is beautiful and young and small, panting heavily, but seems calm. But I think he's calculating angles and odds, and if Monty had moved in, he probably would have springboarded off the lawn mower or off the fence and eluded him. (And yes, now I regret not grabbing a camera, but at 6 something in the morning when trying to avert mayhem, you don't always think clearly - so this isn't actually a photo of my fox.)

I consider trying to reach through the sliding door to open the gate behind him, but remember in time that Things That Can Go Wrong Often Do (it's been that sort of week). To avoid madness of fox running through the house with four dogs in pursuit, I retreat, exit the living room door and open the gate from the other side. Fox of course runs the wrong way, back into the yard.

I walk the yard and see scurrying, and pray the fox has found the gate. I go inside and wait a bit, and then walk the yard with Lucy and see where the fox probably squeezed under the fence in the first place. No sign of fox. I let out the other dogs, with Monty on a leash, and we carefully walk the perimeter. No fox.

I sleepily feed the dogs, drink a glass of water (fox chasing is thirsty business) and we traipse back upstairs to bed.

Welcome, Vermont morning.

In Translation

What people say isn't always what they mean.

Wow, you've gotten really skinny! Translation: You used to be rather heavy.

He's cute! (with emphasis on the cute, stretching it into two syllables) Translation: Whatever is he doing with you?

I'll let you go now. Translation: I'm dying to get off the phone.

You certainly can write. Translation: You can't plot worth a damn.

Isn't THIS the most marvelous news! Translation: It kills me to have to congratulate you.

Why My Office Still Isn't Clean

With a nice shiny new book deal, it seemed a good idea to clean my office and rearrange the furniture. A perfect time for a new start. Logical, right?

I begin moving furniture, doing rudimentary cleaning as I go. Once I've moved the furniture away from the walls, it seems stupid not to paint - this room had been needing repainting for a while. So I pull out my spackle and favorite spackle blade and sander, and carefully fill holes and sand uneven areas, working early and late because it's been horribly hot during midday, and in Vermont you don't have air conditioning for the one or two hot weeks a year.

I locate a can of ceiling paint plus the paint I'd bought for this room a couple of years back and shake and stir them, and then carefully paint the ceiling edging (the ceiling itself can wait, I decide - I do hate painting ceilings) and then paint all the trim with the new paint, along the ceiling and windows and floor. Then out comes the roller: I can't paint the entire room at once because of all the furniture and file boxes I'm working around, but get half of it done, and do the second coat the next day.

Then I move to the half of the wall adjacent to the closet, where the desk and hutch used to reside. I scrape lightly - and the old paint starts coming off, in jagged hunks and then finally in small bits, down to the chalky white builders paint the previous owners had used for some unknown, inane reason. This, I discover, comes off completely with hard wiping, but sends rivulets of melted chalky white paint running down the arms and onto the floor and clothing.

I find a straight edge and carefully cut a line in the already re-painted area, straight down from the windowsill, and peel the paint only to that line, hoping the edge won't show too much, thinking that this corner area, previously behind the desk, had simply been damper in this extraordinarily wet Vermont summer.

Then I discover that the louvered closet doors and the closet door frame have a dusting of mold. To which I have a mild allergy. Clearly I cannot wipe it adequately from the door slats - the doors must come off to be washed. I try; they are set too snugly. I work on the screw on the thingy that keeps them in their track, but it is too tight to budge. Now I am hot, frustrated, and covered in melted old paint and with a snootful of mold. I consider crying.

Then I remember the power drill SO gave me one Christmas, which happens to have the right Phillips bit in place. Out come the screws, zip. Ah. Every woman should have a power drill. After some maneuvering, off come the stiff doors, and I wrangle them into the shower to scrub them , then wipe down the closet frame. Then I realize all the clothes stored within are vaguely musty and moldy smelling - and all must be washed. Three washer loads worth.

The next day I finish the touch-up brush work on the large area that has two coats of new paint, planning to move my desk there and start working in my office tomorrow. I notice an uneven area, some old blobs of paint near the heat register. Out comes my electric sander. Bzzzz. Off come the blobs.

But now the nice new paint is coming away from the wall. I tug tentatively, and it pulls off in giant hunks, entire huge stretchy pieces, like removing an enormous plasticine scab. I take a deep breath and continue tugging and it comes off, all of it, the entire wall and a half I have painstakingly spackled and sanded and painted with the lovely new paint, all the way up to the perfect line I've painted next to the ceiling. The previous paint comes, too, and I'm down to the chalky white builders paint. As there is decent, albeit ugly, paint underneath, I sand the heck out of the chalky white stuff, sending white powder over everything in the room, myself included, and curse the previous owners who applied this horrible cheap paint. When I glimpse myself in the bathroom mirror, it's like looking into the future and seeing myself as an old woman with wild white hair. It isn't pretty.

So now I have an office with melted white paint on one side of the floor, giant strips and squares of peeled-off paint on the other side, and white dust over everything.

I realize I am not going to have my nice clean office any time soon.

So I quietly close the office door, metaphorically and literally, and the next day begin my novel revisions propped up in bed, upstairs.

Note: I've purchased some primer and now plan to sand the chalky white paint, wipe it thoroughly, scrape the few remaining bits of top paint still adhering, prime it all, and try once again to paint it, this time after moving much of the furniture out. But not until next week or so.

Awards, I've Got Awards (Thank You!)

From the amazing Steph Bowe of Hey! Teenager of the Year (this kid is an incredible writer and reader, and if I were an agent, I'd have my eye on her now), the Let's Be Friends award. Steph reports:

Blogs that receive the Let’s Be Friends award are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers.



From Weronika Janczuk, another talented teen with a work ethic that would make most of you feel like a lazy slug-a-bones, the Kreative Blogger award. She says: I am passing this award on in the spirit of its title. These bloggers have done something uniquely creative that has caught my attention. (What I do is rudely critique her work and nag her about plot lines in her novel in progress.)

With this award, you're supposed to nominate seven other people and mention seven things about yourself that other people may find interesting. There's a certain chain letter aspect about this from which I recoil, but I am going to mention some of my favorite blogs (not including Steph's and Weronika's):

The QC Report
I See You
The Dog Lived (and So Did I)
Murderati
Bittersweet Blog
Vodka Mom
Editorial Ass
Miss Snark's First Victim
The Rejectionist

And from Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise, I got the Sisterhood Award (back in March, ulp). For this one I was supposed to nominate up to 10 blogs which showed great attitude and/or gratitude. Steph and Weronika spring to mind as having the best attitudes of many bloggers I know, plus of course Moonrat from Editorial Ass. And Cat Connor, who tackles child-rearing and crime thriller writing in New Zealand with relentless energy and a take-no-prisoners attitude, and Teresa Rhyne, who recently battled cancer with such perverse humor (and a wonderfully supportive partner) that it never stood a chance.

And Quinn Cummings, who gives us the gift of knowing ah-I'm not-the-only-one (... who walks into doors, says awkward things, wears the same dress clothes for years, thinks inappropriate thoughts, rescues animals we shouldn't, tries too hard to help others, and so on).

The seven things about me people may find interesting? I have no idea. You can fill those in, under Comments. Fire away.

What You Do When the Power Goes Out

... at 6.30 am
-Call the power company to report the outage
-Be grateful you already made a pot of tea
-Remember not to flush the toilet unless absolutely necessary, so you don't run out of water
-Regret that you didn't charge your laptop up overnight after the battery ran down
-Try to read near a window, although the sun isn't fully up yet
-Give up and go back to bed

... at 3.15 pm

-Call the power company again
-Regret not having started your laundry - the electric rates are cheaper on Sunday
-Try to place a long-distance phone call, having added per-minute long distance on your landline after the last outage (normally you usually use your broadband Ooma phone for all calls and keep the landline only for outages - as cell phones do not work here) only to be told your phone is out of service
-Resolve to make irate phone call to phone company on Monday
-Finish scraping paint from office walls, mostly by feel
-Resolve to recharge all flashlights with rechargeable batteries
-Try to read by rapidly dimming light
-Begin to wonder if the food in your fridge is going to spoil
-Wish it would stop raining
-Resolve to buy an emergency generator and kerosene lanterns before winter sets in

And when the electricity comes on, you run about like mad flushing toilets, starting laundry, filling dogs' water bowls, ordering the book you wanted to order, using the electric sander on the office walls, and calling the people who have been trying to reach you all day.

Going to a Party in Vermont

Only in Vermont do your directions to a party read like this:

Go across the bridge and over the mountain road, left on East X Road, right on Y Creek Road; after it turns to dirt you'll see a big cow barn on the left; across from the barn is a driveway with a red house on corner, go up that driveway and to the yellow house on your left.

No, there is no address.

And then afterward, you drive your sturdy four-wheel drive car home in the dark across the narrow winding dirt mountain road, where the other few people on the road know to pull over politely when they see your headlights - the rule apparently being that downhill trumps uphill, except when you happen to be closer to a wider area of the road than the other person.

And you get home to your ecstatic dogs, and life is good.

And Now It's in Publishers Weekly

Somehow this announcement makes it seem more official.

Barney Karpfinger negotiated a two-book deal for debut novelist Sara J. Henry with Harmony/Shaye Areheart's John Glusman. Glusman took world rights to the works, the first of which, a suspense novel about a boy found in the chilly waters of Lake Champlain, is called Learning to Swim. Swim, which will be published under the Shaye Areheart Books imprint, is slated for fall 2010.

What Writers Need to Know About Queries

This is from a wonderful blog I've just discovered called The Rejectionist, on why manuscript queries are rejected.

We Are Not Objective. Sometimes we reject your query for good reasons, like: it’s bad, it is a thinly veiled plea for mental-health intervention, it’s bad, it’s really bad. Sometimes we reject your query because: it has a blow job on the second page, which creeps us out; it is about middle-aged white people and the Dissolution of A Marriage, which bores us; it’s racist; it's sleazy; it’s about twenty-year-old musicians in Williamsburg, which bores us; it is a self-help book, which the good Lord above knows we DO NOT NEED as we are just fine the way we are, thanks; it is a fine query letter but it is the 57th query letter we have received that day and we are grumpy and we need a snack. Sorry. No means no, but don’t take it personally.

I love the last one - "the 57th query letter we have received that day and we are grumpy and we need a snack."

But I have to point out that 9 out of 10 query letters I've seen are awful. Really truly awful. Meandering and off-point and pretty much the complete opposite of professional or anything that would suggest I am a competent writer who has written a really good book. (Refer to Rachelle Gardner's recent posts on queries.)

Yes, I Push Books

When I find a book I love, I push it like mad, whether or not I know the author. (And sometimes pushing a book like mad means you get to meet the author, because they do appreciate all this book pushing.)

I have vociferously encouraged all to buy Meg Waite Clayton's THE WEDNESDAY SISTERS, A.S. King's DUST OF 100 DOGS, Garth Stein's THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN, and Quinn Cumming's NOTES FROM THE UNDERWIRE. One real friend, one cyber friend, one completely unknown to me, and one cyber friend turned real friend. And of course all of Michael Robotham's books, who became a friend when I pursued him to Australia - no, not really. I was there anyway.

And I push Jamie Ford's HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET. I'm pushing it so hard today that I'm printing his entire touring schedule for the upcoming months, so you can mark it on your calendars. It's a lovely book; Jamie's a great guy, and having just attended his reading at Squaw Valley, I can tell you he's a wonderful presenter.

So get out your calendars and your pen. (If you come to the Brattleboro event, you can meet me, too.)

9/15/2009 Country Bookshelf, 28 West Main, Bozeman, MT 59715 7 pm
10/2-4/2009 Brattleboro Literary Festival, P.O. Box 1116, Brattleboro, VT, 05302-1116 TBD
10/6/2009 Borders, 5871 Crossroads Center Way, Bailey's Crossroads, VA (703) 998-0404 7.30 pm
10/7/2009 Left Bank Books, 399 N. Euclid, St. Louis, MO, (314) 367-6731 7:00 pm
10/8/2009 Bloomsbury Books, 290 East Main Street, Ashland, OR (541) 488-0029 7:00 pm
10/10-11/2009 Wordstock: Portland's Book & Lit Fest, 1500 SW 12th Avenue Portland, OR (503) 784-9894 TBD
10/12/2009 Borders 1500 16th Street, Suite D Oak Brook, IL (630) 574-0800 7:00 pm
10/13/2009 Des Moines Public Library 1000 Grand Avenue Des Moines, IA (515) 283-4103 6:30 pm
10/14/2009 Prairie Lights Bookstore 15 S. Dubuque Iowa City, IA (319) 337-2681 TBD
10/21/2009 Third Place Books 17171 Bothell Way NW Lake Forest Park, WA (206) 366-3316 TBD With Garth Stein, Stephanie Kallos and Nancy Pearl
10/22/2009 Montana Festival of the Book Missoula Art Museum Missoula, MT (406) 243-6022 4:00 pm
10/23-24/2009 St. Petersburg Festival of Reading TBD St. Petersburg, FL (727) 420-4878 TBD
10/25-31/2009 Norwegian Book Tour Oslo, Norway www.jamieford.no TBD
11/6/2009 Books & Co 4453 Walnut Street Dayton, OH (937) 429-6302 7:00 pm
11/7/2009 Joseph-Beth Booksellers 2692 Madison Road Cinncinati, OH (513) 412-5700 1:00 pm
11/8/2009 The Learned Owl TK Hudson, OH (330) 653-2252 2:00 pm
11/10/2009 Ingram Book Company 14 Ingram Blvd La Vergne TN (615) 773-8747 noon
11/10/2009 Davis-Kidd Booksellers 2121 Green Hills Village Dr Nashville, TN (615) 385-2645 7:00 pm
11/11/2009 Carmichael's Bookstore 2720 Frankfort Avenue Louisville, KY (502) 896-6950 7:00 pm
11/12/2009 Georgia Center for the Book TBD (new library building) Atlanta, GA (404) 370-8450 7:15 pm
11/13-14/2009 Miami Book Fair Intl. TBD Miami, FL (305) 237-3564 TBD
1/14-17/2010 Pulpwood Queens 10th Annual Girlfriends Weekend Jefferson, TX (903) 665-7520 TBD

Going Home to Squaw Valley

Some time ago I'd planned to return to Squaw Valley Writers Conference this summer for my friend Jamie Ford's alumni reading (for his novel HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET) - I'd met Jamie when we both attended this conference in 2006.

Ironically, while I'd loved most of the conference, my session ended badly for me, with most of my fiction classmates being quite cool to my writing and the teacher (who admittedly had been virulently ill the evening before and whose temperament perhaps did not mesh with my eager-beaverness) not offering any words of encouragement.

I didn't write for a year. I couldn't get beyond the scribbled unkind (and anonymous) comments on my manuscript. They seemed to confirm all my fears: that I wasn't really a writer, that I had no business trying to write fiction.

But when application time rolled around the next year, a certain intrinsic stubbornness led me to reapply (there's a reason my dad used to call me L'il Varmint). Because I hadn't written anything new, I used the opening chapters of the same three manuscripts I'd used in the conference the first time: Novel 1, its sequel, and a memoir.

And this time all the stars aligned for me. On Day 1 my workshop leader took me aside and said You're a great writer. My one-on-one instructor, reviewing my novel chapters, said There's going to be a lot of interest in this. And my head spun.

And then I went home, and juggled jobs and life and obligations, and somewhere in there made the commitment to learn to rewrite and to revise and revise until I thought the manuscript was ready, this May, and started querying. And the stars aligned again, and I got a great agent, and we got a great publishing deal for the same two novels that had twice made the trip to Squaw Valley.

And now I'm back visiting at Squaw, with Jamie and a bunch of my buddies from my 2007 workshop, who are deliriously happy with my recent book deal. This is summer camp and reunion and a happiness so deep I can't find words to express it.

It's like coming home.

Yes, I Have a Book Deal

I made the decision late Monday night last week, but I didn't get to speak to my editor until late Friday - and didn't want to announce the deal until he'd given me the okay.

I've agreed to a two-book deal with Shaye Areheart Books / Random House with editor John Glusman.

Now we have some deadlines, which makes it all seem a little more real.

And today I realized that when someone asks what I do, it's no longer the convoluted answer of I used to write for magazines and write parts of health books and now I freelance edit and rewrite nonfiction books and do some web work and I'm working on my first novel.

Now it's just I write novels.

It sounds good. It feels good. It feels right.