I am teaching my oldest daughter, who I have nicknamed Rebel Dancing Daughter, how to drive.

She is a bit of a rebel, and she does like dancing, so the name suits her.

I am not sure that driving suits her.

I now have minor whip lash.

My foot has darn near ground a hole into the floor of the passenger seat where the “second” brake should be.

We have driven through a stop sign. We have rolled up on a curb. We have come within an inch of demolishing our mailbox. Today we nearly hit a parked truck. We took a corner on almost two wheels. I shrieked. We flirted with driving straight into a ditch.

My hair is turning white, I know it.

When Rebel Dancing Daughter is driving she jokingly calls people walking on the sidewalk “Targets,” because she doesn’t want to hit them. She calls oncoming traffic, “The Enemy.” She calls any cars behind her “Stalkers.”

I remember when my late father taught me how to drive. I learned on a stick. It didn’t go well. We lurched, we stalled, I cried. Driving with me at that age could only be compared to a slingshot. Catapult forward, sling back. Repeat.

My father was endlessly patient. He talked in a calm voice. He was encouraging and kind. One time I was going too fast as I took a corner. I passed the island with the trees in the middle and careened up the wrong side of the road.

I got flustered and made mistakes. I was moody, temperamental, and snappy.

He responded with more patience. The man was a devout Catholic, honest as could be, and had at one time thought of becoming a priest.

He decided he wanted a wife and kids more.

He had a degree in engineering, specializing in nuclear engineering, from UCLA and an MBA, also from UCLA. He flew jets for the Navy and when his eyes went bad and he had to quit, he was devastated. But he met my mother, the love of his life, at UCLA.

He worked in information technology in management, starting when computers were as big as a room. I know the stress of working a corporate job wore on him, day after day, though he never complained. He believed that a man should provide for his family and protect, and that’s what he did.

And when it was time to teach his four teenagers to drive, some of us more wild than others, he did it.

In fact, he taught us more than how to drive a car. He taught us how to drive in life, if I can be completely sappy here.

He taught us about unending love, kindness, loyalty, and faith. He taught us to value hard work and academics.

He taught us how to treat others, especially others who had tough lives. He taught us how not to judge harshly, to speak with respect to everyone, and to never think we were an inch above anyone else, because we weren’t.

He taught us how to make homemade vanilla ice cream and buttermilk pancakes and to love camping and hiking. Into his sixties he could still run a seven and a half minute mile, so he taught us how to love speed – on foot.

My dad could always cut through the emotional tangles when I came to him for advice, which I often did. He could boil my problem down to simple answers. All of his answers circled around what was the right way to respond, the moral way.

He made it seem simple, but that’s because he came from simple goodness.

I still miss him, and I have been thinking about him a lot these past week as I teach Rebel Dancing Daughter how to drive.

It’s a frightening experience, but I hope she will look back at me, as I look back on my father, now long gone, and believe that not only did I teach her how to drive a car without hitting any “targets,” I taught her how to drive through life.

Meanwhile, I will hang onto the door handle as if my life depended on it.

Katie Rose Guest Pryal makes me tired.

I’ll tell you why.  She’s a novelist, lawyer,  AND journalist.

Her new book, Entanglement, which I highly recommend, is out now.

She writes textbooks.

She wrote a great book called, “Writing Isn’t Sexy.” I agree, friends. Writing isn’t sexy. It’s sweat and tears and, hopefully, no blood. Or not much of it.

Katie writes for Huffington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Dame Magazine.

She has a B.A. in English. A master’s in creative writing. A law degree (Obviously. See above. But Katie is a NICE lawyer.) and a doctorate in English.  She is married and has two young boys who like to laugh and run. 

She is also a wonderful and generous person. I know this first hand as we are bosom buddies.  Well, not really “bosom” buddies, but you get the point.  Before we begin our interview, I will sit down (tired) and have some coffee while we chat…

 

Cathy Lamb: Katie, I am always so curious about authors, so I assume others are, too. Before we talk about your book, Entanglement, tell us about you and your life, your former life as an attorney, how you came to be a writer, and all the writing projects that you seem to juggle so calmly.  

You are so busy with your writing career, it makes me want to lay down and take a nap FOR you. And I would nap FOR you, as we are pals.

Katie Rose Guest Pryal: I was a writer, first, actually, before practical concerns got in the way. In college, I majored in English with an unofficial focus on creative writing, and after working for a couple of years, I went to Johns Hopkins for my master’s degree in creative writing. But then I had a moment of how-will-I-get-health-insurance fear and went to law school, and worked as a lawyer and earned a doctorate in English, too. (Those last few things happened rather quickly.)

I taught at UNC Chapel Hill for seven years before finally stepping back and writing full time. If you look up my name in Google Scholar you’ll find plenty of academic articles there, and I do believe my creative writing work made it easier to write them—the words just came easy to me. Writing textbooks, which I continue to do, is honestly a joy because they combine writing with teaching, but unlike teaching, I have the freedom to work on them on my schedule and I don’t have to grade stacks of papers.

Tell us about your book, Entanglement. Give us the guts of the book, so to (crudely) speak.

Entanglement tells the story of two friends fresh out of college: Greta, hyper-analytical and self-sufficient, and Daphne, empathic nigh to the point of extrasensory perception and effervescently beautiful. Both left behind unbearable families, and they are best friends. They move to Los Angeles together to start new lives, but quickly those lives fall apart.

I love the title Entanglement, and as I read the story, it fit more and more perfectly. People are a mess. Relationships are a mess.  Friendships are a mess. What did you find most interesting about the relationships you developed in this book?

The relationships in Entanglement really prove the truism that the harder we try to hold on to someone, the more easily we lose them. But if we let someone be the person she’s supposed to be, she’ll be loyal to the end.

I loved this line, “Everyone she’s counted on has betrayed her.”  So gripping. Did you know that betrayal would be a theme from the start? Also, there seems to be a theme of forgiveness, too, from Greta to Daphne. Can you address this? What were the other themes and why did you choose them?

At the beginning of the book, Greta sees the word in far more simple terms than she does by the end. So at the beginning, she has a hard time forgiving people who hurt her—who betray her. As she starts to understand peoples’ complexities better, forgiveness comes easier to her, because human weakness finally becomes a phenomenon that she can wrap her intellect around.

Love the depth of that explanation, Katie. I had to sit back and think about that…

Which character was your favorite and why?

I love my two main characters, Greta and Daphne, each for different reasons. Although neither one is perfect, each loves the other so completely.

Tell us about your writing process. For example, did you write character sketches on each of your characters first, before you started to write, or did the characters develop on their own? The dialogue sounded so realistic, the people felt so authentic, it made me wonder…Did you write an outline? How many times did you edit the book?

At the beginning, I had the idea in my head of a book about two friends whose lives fall apart, set in Los Angeles. I also knew the peak point of the book—but not how it ended. In fact, the exact ending that the book has now, which I love, I didn’t figure out until very near the end of the revision process.

Regarding character sketches: I love writing those, and I live for them when I’m writing. I create a document for each character and just make lots of notes about who she is, where she’s from—literally and metaphorically—and so on. I may never use the material in the document, but I know what it is, and the material helps me ensure that the character’s motivations stay true.

Katie, I understand. My characters are living, breathing, temperamental, crying, loving, scheming, desperate, joyous, screaming, laughing, falling in love people in my head who I watch and listen to. It’s the craziest thing, isn’t it, to have full blown people in your head?

But back to you.

What is your day like?  How do you blend being a mom and being a writer? Any tips for all the moms out there who are now trying to build writing careers on how to balance time and children and career?

My day is nuts. I have two small boys, ages four and six. During the school year we’re all up at six (or earlier) to get ready for school and work—my husband owns his own company, so the buck stops with him. I now own my own company, between writing books, freelance journalism, working as a writing coach and editor, and my other income streams.

I make sure my husband is able to leave for work by seven, then I load the kids in the car by seven-fifteen and drive them to their schools. (One more year, and they’ll be at the same school. One. More. Year.)

Then, I go to meetings, write whatever I have due that day, hold Skype conferences with clients or co-authors, and more.

When it comes to being a parent and a full-time writer, I just make sure that my family knows I love them all the time and no matter what, and I also take the time I need to get my work done.

My advice for others is to figure out what organizational method works for you and then use it. Don’t hold back: use it like crazy.

I live for two pieces of software—my calendar application and my to-do list application. They keep everything organized. But calendars and to-do lists only work if you use them all the time. You have to use your method, whether it is a pen-and-paper planner or an online calendar, for it to work.

I also recommend, strongly, scheduling blocks of time for writing, and treating those blocks of time like you would any other event on your calendar—as scheduled events that can’t be rescheduled or scrapped. Those blocks of time are just as important as anything else someone might ask you to do.

That’s what I should do – schedule blocks of time to write. Often I get everything else done on my “to – do – now” list, THEN I write. I should do this the other way around. Thank you.

Any other advice for writers?

Don’t be afraid to work on multiple projects at once.

I always have more than one thing going on: some journalism pieces, a textbook (or two), and a novel. Sometimes you run out of fuel for a big project, but finishing a short piece can help you get back in the groove.

And having two types of big projects to work on, two types that are very different from one another, can really make a difference in both your productivity and your ability to stay fresh. You might only be able to work on your novel for 2-3 hours per day before losing focus. But you might be able to work on a different kind of book for another 2-3 hours in the day. Before you know it, you’re writing full time.

Love that. Very inspiring, Katie. I didn’t think of it that way, but you’re completely right. You can be done with a project for the day…and then you move to the next project.

Three places you want to visit in your lifetime.

I love to travel. Before we had kids, my husband and I traveled all the time. We’ve put our travel plans on hold while raising kids and saving money for retirement and college. Once the kids are older, though, we plan on traveling again.

The strange thing about me is, the location doesn’t matter; what matters is how the trip is planned. I like to go to one city, rather than city-hopping. I like to stay in one hotel, right in the middle of things. And I like to stay a while, at least a week. I leave my days completely unplanned. And then I just wander around, getting a feel for the city, for how people live there, doing the ordinary things that people do, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible.

If I had to pick three cities, at this point in my life they’d be Copenhagen, Berlin, and Athens. Once the kids are older and can come with me, we’ll go to Spain, because they speak fluent Spanish.

Three things you love to do.

I love to have a full day in front of me to write. I love being woken up by my kids in the morning, especially when they’re being particularly silly. I love going to dates with my husband when we end up at a place that’s completely empty except for us.

A snippet of Entanglement I loved for our readers here…you have to read that last line. So intriguing.

She blinks once to clear her vision, to refocus. She knows she probably won’t die of her head injury, although she had trouble maintaining consciousness when she first awoke twenty-four hours ago.

A concussion, the doctor said. You’re out of the dark, but this is going to hurt like hell.

She appreciated his honesty. It seemed to be in short supply in her life.

The hospital reminds Greta of her daily vigils at her dying mother’s bedside when she was in high school. She glances at the empty chair next to the bed, grateful no one sits there out of obligation or duty. Marcellus, her landlord, who came with her to the hospital, left soon after the doctors whisked her into radiology. Even Daphne and Timmy have left, sent away by Greta after she woke.

She couldn’t stand to see their guilty faces.

 

Another snippet I found intriguing…

But Daphne would never tell Sutton she grew up in a 900-square-foot manager’s cottage attached to a low-lying motel that looked like it would be swallowed by sand dunes during the next hurricane. That she grew up sharing a bedroom with her three sisters, and that the six members of her family shared one mildewy green bathroom. That their carpet was polyester shag from the late 1970s and smelled like old dog even though they’d never owned a pet.

She’d told Sutton she lived in Wilmington, in one of the new subdivisions south of Market Street…

 

Links to excellent articles Katie has written…

 

“Being Counted: Reporting My Rape at a School Under Title IX Investigation.” The Toast. 16 Sept. 2014.

 

“The Trouble with the ‘No-Matter-What’ Rule.” Chronicle of Higher Education Vitae. 13 Oct. 2014. (Co-Author Kelly J. Baker)

 

“A Manifesto for the Freelance Academic.” Chronicle of Higher Education Vitae. 31 October 2014.

 

“Letter from the Weird Mom at Kindergarten Orientation.” Huffington Post. 24 February 2015.

 

“Breaking the Mad Genius Myth.” Dame Magazine. 23 April 2015.

 

Katie’s Huffington Post Articles

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/katie-rose-guest-pryal/

 

Chat with Katie here:

 

katie@katieroseguestpryal.com

web: katieroseguestpryal.com

writing: katieroseguestpryal.contently.com

twitter: twitter.com/krgpryal

news: bit.ly/pryalnews

Purchase Entanglement:

http://www.amazon.com/Entanglement-Katie-Rose-Guest-Pryal-ebook/dp/B00YMKLAY4/

 

Blog

http://katieroseguestpryal.com

 

Book Website:

http://entanglementnovel.com

 

Newsletter:

http://bit.ly/pryalnews

 

Facebook Author Page
https://www.facebook.com/katieroseguestpryal

 

Twitter

https://twitter.com/krgpryal

 

Goodreads Author Page

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5768742.Katie_Rose_Guest_Pryal

 

Entanglement Pinterest

https://www.pinterest.com/katiepryal/entanglement-novel/

 

Katie’s bio…

Katie enjoys her three professions—novelist, freelance journalist, and lawyer—for one reason: her love of the written word. Fiction or nonfiction, Katie thrives on putting thoughts to paper and sharing them with the world. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where the energy of the campus and cafes inspires her writing. Her first novel, ENTANGLEMENT was published in June 2015 by Velvet Morning Press. You can read the free prequel novella now, LOVE AND ENTROPY, and grab a free copy of Katie’s writing guide, WRITING ISN’T SEXY, by subscribing to her email list.

Katie contributes regularly to THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, THE TOAST, DAME MAGAZINE and other national venues. (You can view her writing here.) She earned her master’s degree in creative writing from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, where she attended on a fellowship. Katie has published five books on writing, the most recent with Oxford University Press, and although she has impeccable grammar, she would never correct yours.

 

Do you know what this is?

It heats up charcoal when you’re out camping.

With Father’s Day coming up, I started missing my dad more than usual. I haven’t camped in a long time, so I decided to turn this, well, whatever it’s called, into a flower pot for summer. Sometimes ya find new uses for old things…I thought my dad would get a kick out of it.

He loved God, my mother, his kids, his grandkids, and his friends.

 

 

Hello everyone!

Wishing you a romantic beach vacation this summer.  Sun. Surf.  Coffee. Chocolates. And, an excellent beach read.

Can I suggest four short stories in our anthology, Beach Season?  This anthology is being re – released, back for ladies who like to read on the beach while sipping mimosas and eating brownies. What? Mimosas and brownies don’t sound good together?

The four authors of Beach Season, Lisa Jackson, Holly Chamberlin, Rosalind Noonan, and myself are interviewed below.

Yes, I interviewed myself. It was an odd experience, but one I’ve done before. I ask a question, then I answer it.  Not unlike how I write my books. I hear voices, I write down what they’re saying.

Anyhow, happy summer to all of you. We hope you enjoy Beach Season – the book, and the sandy beach.

 

Lisa Jackson

Cathy Lamb: Describe the best day you ever had at the beach.

Lisa Jackson: I live part time at the beach and I have so many great days. Especially with the dogs. Once my little pug, Jackie O No, jumped into a deep tide pool as I was taking a picture of a starfish on a rock. I had to drag her out of the frigid water and walk her over two miles back to the house.

Another time my girlfriend and I were walking and Bonzi, my son’s rescue pitbull, was galloping beside us. A little girl and her father, each on a horse, came racing by, chasing him and actually tried to lasso him like a calf in a rodeo! They requested my help and I flipped out. They thought Bonzi belonged to someone a couple of miles down the beach and I emphatically assured them he was my dog! They left, but Bonzi never trusted a horse again!

Tell us about your story in Beach Season

My story in BEACH SEASON is THE BRASS RING, and it’s a book I wrote a few years back. It’s the story of Shawna and Parker, about to be married and it seems, to catch the brass ring of life. However things are never as they seem. Tragedy strikes and the couple has to struggle to reconnect.

What are three things you love about being a writer and three things that are a challenge?

Writing the book is a thrill and a challenge. Writer’s block, looming deadlines and real life get in the way, but how much fun is it to create characters and a story around them? I have to admit, I love to write in the winter, but when the summer sun appears, I have a more difficult time staying inside with the characters I’ve created.

What are the plusses of writing a short story versus a novel? I prefer writing a novel. I just need the time to develop the character’s plotline and subplot. I love to fill a town with characters. A short story is pretty condensed for me.

What do you like about writing romantic scenes, or creating romantic tension, in your books?

I only like to write romantic scenes if there’s a lot of tension involved so that’s what I work on, the tension within the romance, the reason these people can NOT fall in love; otherwise, for me, the scenes fall flat. So the more reasons they shouldn’t be together, the more angst of them aching to be together but knowing it’s a mistake works for me.

You can find out more about my books at www.lisajackson.com

Thank you, Lisa! Wishing you lovely days at the beach this summer!

 

 

Holly Chamberlin

Cathy Lamb: Describe the best day you ever had at the beach.

Holly Chamberlin: My best ever day at the beach? That’s a tough one but I can say that just yesterday my husband, Stephen, and I walked Scarborough Beach at mid-tide against an extremely strong and cold wind. We had the beach pretty much to ourselves, except for a few piping plovers, and it was just beautiful. That’s how I like the beach best, empty of other people and with sand scooting along in ghost fingers created by the wind.

Tell us about your story in Beach Season.

My story in this collection is called “Second Chance Sweethearts”. The heroine, Thea Foss, was separated from her first and greatest love, Hugh Landry, back when they were in college, due to circumstances beyond their control. Now in their mid-thirties, Thea and Hugh unexpectedly bump into each other one fine summer day. Thea is recovering from a disastrous marriage to a crook and an abuser, and Hugh is the survivor of a bad accident and a broken engagement. The big question for these star-crossed lovers is: Can a new reality ever equal the perfection of a remembered past?

What are three things you love about being a writer and three things that are a challenge?

Three things I love about being a writer? That’s another difficult question to answer because being a writer is just what I have to be. The deal is that I’m pretty useless otherwise! Still, there are plenty of challenges. One of the biggest is not succumbing to despair when the ideas aren’t forming and the words aren’t flowing. You have to learn how to keep soldiering on – not an easy lesson! – and trust that your sluggish creative mind will indeed wake up before your next deadline.

What do you like about writing romantic scenes, or creating romantic tension, in your books?

For me, writing a short story or a novella is far more challenging than writing a full-length novel. I can’t even read a short story without palpitations! I’m far more comfortable with the expanse of a novel. Maybe because given my particular strengths and weaknesses, packing a serious emotional punch takes more time and space than a novella allows.

What do you like about writing romantic scenes, or creating romantic tension, in your books? Honestly, I hate writing sex scenes and have to be prodded none too gently by my editor to do so! I enjoy, however, creating romantic tension, as long as there’s a playfulness to it. Verbal sparring is fun. I leave the real romance writing to the experts!

Thank you, Holly!  Have a wonderful summer. I hope you get long, lazy reading and writing days at the beach! 

Visit with Holly here: http://www.hollychamberlin.com/

 

 

Rosalind Noonan

Cathy Lamb: Describe the best day you ever had at the beach.

Rosalind Noonan: Ocean City, Maryland, some July day in 1970. The waves were cresting just over our heads, making a perfect curl for body surfing or using rafts to ride in on a clean line. And when we took a break from the ocean, we crossed the sand to the boardwalk for thick slices of pizza, cheese bubbling. And caramel corn. And boardwalk fries. And cool shops. Back then the beach boutiques had purple peace signs, hippie beads and psychedelic posters. I can still hear Neil Young singing “Ohio.” It was quite an era.

Tell us about your story in Beach Season

CAROLINA SUMMER is the story of Jane Doyle, a New York City realtor who is trying to escape a bad situation in the city for a safe harbor with her brother in Florida. Along the way, a car accident waylays her in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where the local sheriff becomes her protector.

What are three things you love about being a writer and three things that are a challenge?

Three things I love: working in my jammies all morning, having the chance to illuminate issues through storytelling, and that feeling — a bit of a buzz –when you’ve nailed a scene. Three things that are a challenge: getting out the door to exercise, finding my way out of a wormhole in my plot, making the muses sing when they’re on strike.

What are the plusses of writing a short story versus a novel? Shorter, for starters. It’s less time consuming, and it’s fun to keep the narrative a bit more sparse and crisp. The story has to take some quick turns. Keeps me on my toes.

What do you like about writing romantic scenes, or creating romantic tension, in your books?  There is something wonderful about puzzling together two people who feel that their lives are far beyond romance. When someone thinks they are too damaged for love and then they find it? That “aaaww” moment warms the heart.

Thank you, Rosalind! Hoping you have time this summer to sit in the sand, read a book, and drink a margarita! 

Visit with Rosalind here: http://www.rosalindnoonan.info/

 

 

Cathy Lamb

Here’s where I interview myself.  As I hear voices in my head all the time when I’m writing, it’s not really that different, right? Right?

Cathy Lamb: Describe the best day you ever had at the beach.

Cathy Lamb: The best day I had at the beach was last summer when my kids, three loud ones, and Innocent Husband, loud too, and I all went to the beach for the weekend. We walked on the beach each night.  Darling Laughing Son made us laugh, and Rebel Dancing Daughter regaled us with her quirky imagination and “interesting” thinking. Singing Adventurous Daughter dove head first into the frigid Oregon waters.  She comes up shrieking and it’s hilarious. Diving into the ocean each year is her tradition.

Cathy Lamb: Tell us about your story in Beach Season

My story, June’s Lace, is about a woman named June MacKenzie. She grew up hippie – like with a vagabond family that traveled all over Mexico and the states with various pets. It was a happy, non-traditional, free childhood complete with tie – dyed shirts, bare feet, and a VW bus.

At complete odds with her nomadic upbringing, June later became…sigh…an attorney. She hated it.

After quitting her soul-smashing job, she became a designer of unique wedding dresses, which is ironic, as she is in the middle of a chaotic divorce and vows that she will never, ever wear a wedding dress again.

At the beach, in a blue cottage over looking the waves, with two hilarious co-workers, she strives to find peace again, and herself, if possible.

Peace comes in the form of a country song singing cowboy…

What are three things you love about being a writer and three things that are a challenge?

I love telling stories. I love daydreaming, which leads to the stories. I love writing. Three challenges? It’s a tough business. The social media part can be time consuming.  When I’m on a deadline which, for me, is three months before a book is due, I look like hell, work all the time, and forget to wash my hair. Other than that, I love it!

What are the plusses of writing a short story versus a novel?

I love writing short stories for anthologies. Don’t tell anyone, but if I could do this year round, all the time, I would. I love how tight they are. How focused. I love the romantic piece of it and how they end happy. I love how you can develop quirky characters, different plot lines, angst and difficulties and challenges, but the focus is on the relationship between the man and the woman – imperfect and exciting and passionate and painful, all at the same time.

What do you like about writing romantic scenes, or creating romantic tension, in your books? 

Can I say I like to live vicariously through my characters and get away with it? (Don’t tell my husband – of 22 years !! – that I said that!)

Thank you, Cathy!

Oh, you’re welcome! Thanks to myself for interviewing me!

CathyLamb.org

Email CathyLamb@frontier.com

Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/cathy.lamb.9

 

Hello everyone,

Need a beach read? Our anthology, Beach Season, is being re – released today.

My story is titled “June’s Lace.” June is a wedding dress designer who lives on a cliff above the Oregon coast. Her dresses are wild, creative, works of fabric art for brides who want original fashion. June WAS married, she WAS an attorney, didn’t like either one, threw both out, and re – started her life. Her family is filled with ex hippies, her life filled with work and the rhythm of the ocean...and the tunes from the smokin’ hot country song writer who just moved in next door. Too bad she’ll never agree to getting married – trapped – again.

I recently asked this question on Facebook:  If you had a fairy godmother, what three – fun and TOTALLY indulgent – things would you wish for?

I’d wish for a “reading room” with Adirondack chairs in my backyard, a trip to Alaska to watch wildlife, and the ability to paint flowers. Do share, ladies!!

Here are their answers, please add your own if you’d like…I added a few of my favorite photos. 

 

This is a snippet of the scene where Jeanne Stewart runs naked along a river in Oregon.  “The Last Time I Was Me” is on sale, on kindle, for $6.64.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=merino+dyed+wool&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Amerino+dyed+wool

 

I was hesitant to run naked.

It is not something I can say is in my comfort zone.

It is not something I’ve done before.

I had told Emmaline and the others at anger management class that I would do so.

Now, the first thought racing out of your mind might be that being a naked woman outside your home isn’t safe.  You might also say that a naked woman running alone alongside a river isn’t safe. You might further say that a naked woman running alone by a river, at night, is asking for trouble.

You are right.

But, you see, I had agreed to do it to take me off my path of anger.  As life did not seem especially precious to me, I was feeling a little reckless.

So I had pancakes for dinner at the café with a bunch of chatting, cheery townspeople who somehow soothed my soul, and listened to Donovan sing his favorite three opera songs, dedicating them to his “secret love.” Afterward I promised to come to a retirement part for Bill Brayson on Friday night and a bowling tournament on Sunday.

I tried to ignore the warm gush in my body at these invitations. I was very rarely invited to do anything in Chicago except to get more work done, find more clients, and deal with artsy creative types who insisted on doing yoga in the hallways, brought their giant dogs to work, or hummed when they got nervous.

I did not share with my newfound friends my further plans for my evening.  Around 10:00 that night I pulled on sweatpants and my sweatshirt and headed to a private place along the river. Here, I could still see the trail, but there were no homes.

The rays of the full moon slanted through the trees. It smelled like pine and river water and wood and I sucked in a deep breath.

I took off all my clothes and put them in a small back pack. I retied my tennis shoes. I do not consider wearing tennis shoes as breaking the rules.  I knew I should feel embarrassed standing there naked by the rushing river, but I didn’t.  In one avenue of my mind I realized I’d lost my marbles.

I don’t have huge boobs, so it didn’t bother me that I would be bopping along without a bra.  I looked up at the star studded sky again, catching a glimpse of the full moon. It was clearly a wild night for werewolves and weird women on wacky quests of self awareness.

Overhead an owl hooted and somewhere on the other side of the river another owl hooted back.

I shifted my backpack and started into a slow jog.

 

Hello everyone,

Today I’m chatting with Kathryn Craft, who opened up a devastating part of her life to write The Far End Of Happy. Tough, gripping story. Life can be so heartbreaking….and beautiful, both.

Cathy Lamb:  Well, Kathryn, we’ll just jump in here to the guts of the interview. Can you tell the readers here about The Far End Of Happy?

Kathryn Craft: This novel is based on my first husband’s suicide standoff at our farm.

“Our little piece of heaven,” he called it, and we spent most of the fifteen years of our marriage renovating it as our forever home. My novelization explores possible reasons for his final decline into depression and alcoholism from the points of view of the three women closest to him—his wife, her mother, and his own mother—who try to sustain hope while awaiting word about the outcome of the standoff between this desperate, armed man and a huge police presence back at the farm.

Was it cathartic for you to write this story?

After toying with writing it as memoir over the course of seventeen years, I ended up writing it as a novel—in ten months, under contract. And I am not a fast writer.

I write in layers, interweaving new arcs and imagery through many drafts—and although basing the novel on familiar material, I was also adding new characters and figuring out a radical new twelve-hour structure.

In those final months I wrote fifteen hours a day, seven days a week. I fully immersed myself in that time in my life, in effect spending more time with my deceased husband than I did with the one who was lovingly tolerating this behavior. Coming out of it at the end was discombobulating to say the least. I think I have yet to learn its true influence on me, perhaps I will as I discuss the novel with book clubs.

I did experience another round of grieving, though, once my tether to this project had been cut.

What did you learn, how did you change after this very painful experience in your life?

Do you have moments in your life that stick in your memory as if illumined with golden light? One of mine was maybe a year after the suicide, when someone said to me, “Oh you poor thing, having to raise those boys and tend to the farm and run your business all by yourself.”

I knew in an instant that she had it all wrong. I had always wanted children, and it was my absolute joy and privilege to raise them, even if on my own.

I was trying to make that easier by finding good homes for the animals, but that’s not the kind of thing you can rush. Moving was not a consideration—a time of chaos and grief is no time to uproot your children and try to make new friends in unfamiliar surroundings. It’s a time to rely upon the familiar, and the friends who can lend support.

And I had started my desktop publishing business because I cared about effective communications and knew I could help organizations with their marketing—and thank goodness for it, because it was now my sole source of income.

In that golden moment I realized that I was living the life of my choosing, and there is no thought more empowering. We were going through hard times, no arguing that, but I learned that the life that had somehow become my husband’s personal hell was still my little piece of heaven.

And how is life today?

Five years ago, once my sons were well into college, my second husband and I left behind our country lifestyle, with its horses, ponies, goats, chickens, barn cats, dogs, and vegetable patch, and moved an hour east to a townhome in Doylestown, PA. We can now accomplish almost everything we need to do on foot. We love that.

For three months each summer we relocate to a lakeside cottage in northern New York State where my extended family has vacationed for generations. It’s a recipe for annual renewal!

And, as a writer, you need that annual renewal. Speaking of which, what do you like about writing?  What’s a challenge for you?

Does it seem too cheesy to say “everything”? Writing challenges me in all the ways I love to be challenged—from devising the larger story and character arcs down to final word choice and order, from initial research to the final, beloved editing, from motivating self for the long hours alone to reaching out to readers through social media and in-person events—I love it all. I’d say the biggest challenge is managing anxiety while coming up with that next great idea.

I know you teach writing. What are five pieces of advice that you have for people who are not yet published?

Ooh, great question! Let me see:

1) The old adage “Story is conflict” will lead you astray. Story is about a “specific kind of conflict,” and irrelevant inclusions will cause your reader to lose faith in your story.

2) There is a difference between an idea for a story (a woman has to deal with her husband’s standoff) and a story (a woman’s determination to leave her husband is put to the ultimate test on a public stage when he makes good on a previous suicide threat). An idea will peter out—a story will see you through.

3) You probably want to write because you love language—I get it, I love to write pretty!—but that won’t be enough. Love story more, and learn all you can about why classic storytelling structure works.

I once heard literary agent Gail Hochman deliver this truism: “Show me a beautifully written novel with a decent story and I won’t be able to do anything with it. Show me a fantastic story that is adequately written and I’ll make it a New York Times bestseller.”

4) Once she recovers from the incident that rocks her world, make sure your protagonist is engaged in goal-oriented behavior. The story question her goal raises in the reader’s mind (Can this character really achieve her goal?) creates that all-important psychological tension that will keep the reader engaged (“Yes! She’s doing it!” or “Yikes—not looking so good right now!”), and will keep her flipping pages until she gets the answer.

5) If you get stuck, try these measures: a) write about your story as if you were evaluating it for someone else and you will often uncover the problem; b) go back to the beginning and make the story more important by deepening motivation and raising the stakes of failure for your protagonist; c) back up to your last so-so plot point (the sprained ankle) and make it worse (need for field surgery). One of those will usually work!

Excellent advice, Kathryn.

I’d like to throw a little snippet of The Far End Of Happy to our readers….

The pages felt thick with life as they flipped through her fingers.  A long suffering friend, this journal, taking everything she’d throw at it. The questions. The tortured answers. The pros. The cons. Moments rich with beauty. The long, slow death of a dream.

At the top of each page, she’d centered her name: Ronnie Farnham. On the lines below, she’d centered herself.

Ronnie sat on the guest room bed, propped a pillow against the wall behind her, and waited for the jostle as her shaggy little dog, Max, repositioned himself against her thigh. She pressed her pen to a cool, fresh page. Today, more than any other, in these last precious moments before her sons awoke, Ronnie needed the ink to offer up its ever – flowing possibilities.

Her pen stalled after one short sentence.

Today Jeff is moving out.

THANK YOU, KATHRYN! Good luck!

Have a chat with Kathryn here…

‪http://kathryncraft.com (read excerpts, purchase links, sign up for newsletter)

‪https://www.facebook.com/KathrynCraftAuthor

‪https://twitter.com/kcraftwriter (@kcraftwriter)

 

 Cathy Lamb on Strong-Willed Women, Manly Men, And Lipstick

HAPPY EVER AFTER

Special for USA TODAY 12:03 a.m. EDT May 4, 2015