THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR

by Barbara Claypole White

How are you celebrating New Year’s Eve this year? I’ll be sipping champagne, enjoying a roaring fire with friends…and ignoring the loop-the-loops in my stomach. December 31, 2013 is release day for me, which means I get to kiss goodbye to THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR and wave my book baby off into the big wide world of one-star bashings and five-star raves. And, well, I’m having a little separation anxiety.

Maybe I never learned to share in the sandbox, but I want to hold THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR close and say, “Back off, people, this one’s mine.” You see, writing THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR helped me through a difficult moment in my personal life. That moment is long gone, but something about the journey of my quirky, messed-up characters still feels like a locket worn close to my heart.

The inspiration for everything I write comes from being the mother of a brilliant son who has battled obsessive-compulsive disorder for most of his life. OCD frames my world, even though it has never held back my son and has never defined him. (What can I say, the British war mentality flows in his genes.) But while I was working on THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR, he slipped into a dark place, and my mind stuck on the little boy who cried on my lap saying, “Make it stop, Mommy. Make it stop.”

As I watched him claw his way out, my son’s struggles reminded me that even in the darkest moments of anxiety and fear, there’s always hope. THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR is a story of hope.

The setting is my corner of the North Carolina forest. The land surrounding our home speaks to me. It echoes with history, with real-life stories from the past: there’s an old path worn smooth by Native American moccasins, a family burial plot, and a tumbled down homestead that’s surrounded by daffodils every spring. This is a place of memories, of hidden beauty, of deep shade and dancing light.

My favorite time in our forest is that magical hour at the close of day called the gloaming. An in-between time—neither day nor night—this is when the birds call each other home, the shadows grow long, and the sinking sun hits the treetops. For me, that golden light flickering between the leaves epitomizes hope, and it’s a recurring motif in the novel.

THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR is a story of light shining through the trees. My characters come from two broken families each battling unwanted memories and invisible disabilities—severe grief and clinical depression. Yet their coming together brings healing. Their story gives hope for a better tomorrow and isn’t that what we all wish for on New Year’s Eve?

In celebration of THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR’s release, I will be giving away one signed copy (North America residents only). To enter, just leave a comment below.

Happy, happy 2014, everyone!

 

Barbara Claypole White is the award-winning author of THE UNFINISHED GARDEN, a love story about grief, OCD, and dirt. THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR is her second novel. Visit her at barbaraclaypolewhite.com, or follow her on Facebook or Twitter.

The Diabolical Plotting of a December Date

By Laura Spinella

Don’t you love it when your name turns up on the GBC December calendar? For as much as we ALL love the GBC, I bet you cringed a little if you saw your name on this month’s weekly reminders. Are they kidding? I’ve barely started my shopping.  There are 47 various school and social functions to attend, not to mention kids coming home from college. Holiday cards are compounded by holiday food, and don’t even start with the house that needs to be scoured before Aunt Clarabel visits. And, sweet Jesus, DO NOT let me forget to put the cushy toilet paper in the guest bathroom. Did it sound something like that in your head?

Me too.  And I send out the GBC reminders.

I could have easily rigged the calendar with a replacement name. I confess; I thought about it. I could have slipped Maria Geraci’s name in instead. Maria’s so helpful and smart. But then I remembered that in addition to being a fabulous author, she also works fulltime as a labor and delivery nurse. And suddenly it seemed, well… unfair. Barbara Claypole White crossed my mind too. Barbara’s handy with a sticky widget. Is that British? Because Barbara is… British. She once told me I could use an ARC of hers to “balance a wonky table leg.” I still laugh at that.Then I realized Barbara is 11 days out from the pub date of her stunning new novel, THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR. I know this is a fact because I was privy to an early read. Privy.  Privy’s an English word, right?   Anyway, I figured Barbara has enough on her mind between her pub date and trying to get rural North Carolina to buy into Boxing Day, December 26th. According to Barbara, most Americans think Boxing Day is England’s homage to fisticuffs via a boxing ring. Made sense to me. But she assures me this is not the case. It’s the traditional day that house servants received “boxed” gifts from their, uh… masters?  Heaven knows, with the success of Downton Abbey, all North Carolinians may catch onto Boxing Day by the end of season four. 

Desperate and short on clever, I considered a hot-potato pass to Karin Gillespie. Karin is probably one of the nicest people I know and I’m, well… not. Surely, she would have graciously picked up my slack.  Then, yesterday, I read Karin’s brilliant GBC post and realized I was in twice as much trouble as I previously thought. I couldn’t be that insightful if I was sentenced to six months in solitary with nothing but a copy of THE GOLDFINCH, legal pad, and an entire Rosetta Stone series on How to Be a Better Writer.

 I even considered getting sneaky and inviting Susan McBride over to guest blog. Of course you all remember Susan, a card-carrying GBC member for a long time. With the birth of her sweet Emily and busy days, Susan moved on from the GBC, though we’d all love to hear from her. (See us waving from the GBC, Susan!) Then I remembered what it was like to have an 18-month old around during the holidays. Okay, so I don’t exactly remember, but there is video from that era that involves me and a spirited New Year’s Eve celebration. On occasion, my kids still threaten to hand it over to child welfare.

So here you are, stuck with me.

Originally, I had an elaborate post worked out in my mind. It had something to do with envisioning yourself as a writer in another time period. Do you see yourself as a Jane Austen imprint, Harriet Beecher Stowe wannabe, Flannery O’Connor, S.E. Hinton, Alice Walker, or Sylvia Plath? Well, maybe not Sylvia Plath. We all know how that ended.  But instead of an inspired piece about authors from other generations, I succumbed. I fell victim to the calendar and Christmas cookies and one of those college kids who turned up just in time to make my upstairs look like a ratings-sweeps episode of Hoarders.

In the end, I almost opted for the default blog. I do have a new book out. It’s a credible platform from which I could drone on about PERFECT TIMING and the incredible PERFECT TIMING giveaways going on right now. But since this is a season of merriment and giving, I’ll only direct you to my Events page and the above discreetly mentioned giveaways. So from here in New England, this is my December 20^th blog. I wish you all a joyous holiday season and a Happy Christmas! Happy Christmas… That’s British, right?

  

  Laura Spinella is the award-winning author of BEAUTIUFL DISASTER and the author of PERFECT TIMING, a love story about friendship, honor and a rock star. Visit her at lauraspinella.net. 

     

The Catalpa Tree

by Barbara Claypole White, author of The Unfinished Garden

In the summer of 2005, I accidentally discovered the novel that changed my life as a writer. I wandered into an English W H Smith to check out the buy-two-books-get-one-free deal, and picked up a novel with these words on the cover: “A story about love, loss—and surviving them both.”

The novel was The Catalpa Tree, and the author was Irish writer, Denyse Devlin. Seven years later The Catalpa Tree remains one of my favorite novels, and the hero, Oliver Sayle, still lives in my head.

When the reader meets Oliver, he’s waiting to tell his best friend’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Jude, that she’s been orphaned. Sitting in the office at Jude’s Catholic boarding school, squirming as the senior nun watches across the desk, Oliver is trying not to feel intimidated. And he’s desperate for a cigarette. That was the moment I fell in love.

Oliver is Jude’s legal guardian. They’re always been close, but everything changes once they’re thrown together through grief and tragedy. Oliver has his own family and a young son, but Jude has no one else. From the beginning you know these two people are tied in a bond that is unique and isolating and not always healthy. Over the next seven years, they test each other constantly. The push and pull of their messy, entangled relationship creates an emotionally gripping page-turner. You cheer, you cry, and when you put the novel down, you have to know where these characters are ten, fifteen, twenty years into the future.

And this is why I Iove The Catalpa Tree: Ms Devlin peels back the layers of relationships, taking the reader deeper and deeper into every twist and turn, every conflict. Stephen King talks about excavating a plot; The Catalpa Tree taught me how to excavate the emotional lives of characters. When I discovered The Catalpa Tree, the world stopped, my life went on hold, and I thought, “This is how I want to write.”

I reread the novel a few years ago and tried to be more critical. I couldn’t. Once again I was swept up in the turmoil of Jude and Oliver’s relationship.

I no longer have the copy of The Catalpa Tree I bought in England. It fell apart like my favorite Dr. Martens. Now I have two copies: one that’s signed and sits on my desk, and a copy I graciously lend out—but only if people promise to return it unharmed.

The Catalpa Tree is published by Penguin Ireland and available in paperback and e-book through Amazon.com.  If you like women’s fiction with a darker edge—it’s the best book you haven’t read.

Transitions, OCD, and a Giveaway

by Barbara Claypole White

August 28^th 2012 is a date I’ll never forget. Yes, it’s my first blog for Girlfriends Book Club (yippee!), but it’s also the day I transition from daydreaming about becoming a published author to being, well, a published author.

In celebration, I’m giving away a signed copy of my debut novel, The Unfinished Garden. To enter, please leave your email address in the comment section, and a winner will be picked at random after 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, August 29^th.

So. Big day. Swear to God, I want to enjoy it, want to imagine driving across rural North Carolina with my sunroof open, screaming, “I did it!” Everyone tells me I must be thrilled. And I am. In a terrified can-I-throw-up-and-crawl-into-my-writing-cave kind of way.

Here’s my problem—I’m focused on the doubts that could turn my inaugural reading into disaster. Will my legs shake so much that I’ll trip in my high heels and nosedive onto the podium? Will I open my mouth and talk rubbish? Halfway through, will I need the potty?

Harlequin MIRA, 2012

This is awfulizing, a word I've learned through years of helping my son navigate obsessive-compulsive disorder. I’m not obsessive-compulsive—although, as a Virgo, I’m the next best thing. My son, however, has bravely battled the anxiety monster for most of his life. He’s brilliant, compassionate, and a published, award-winning poet. He’s also someone who, because of his OCD, struggles with transitions. OCD is all about control; OCD hates change. And this is senior year of high school.

Mom’s book launch + college apps + OCD = the perfect triumvirate of transition hell. But as Sir Winston Churchill said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” And he should know, since he was simultaneously fending off depression and the Nazis.

Me? I’m fighting back with a pledge. Today, I will focus on the book and nothing but the book. After all, public readings are really tiara moments for my love story about grief, OCD, and dirt. Yes, there’s a little of my life in The Unfinished Garden.

The story seed came from two separate what ifs—both dark and morbid. I know, what is my problem? The first what if came from helping my mother retreat into her garden after my father died, and in the weeks that followed, watching her change from a wife to a widow. I kept thinking, “Suppose that were me?”

I’m a Brit married to an American professor. When my dad died, I was a stay-at-home parent with no income and no citizenship of the country I called home. My mind stuck on a horrid dilemma: What would I do if something happened to my husband? That thought led to my heroine, Tilly. And it still entertains my husband, who loves to tell people I killed him off in the backstory.

The second what if came several years later. James was not my original hero, but as I sought escape from the hell of sharing our home with OCD, my mind veered off on another sick tangent: What if, once my son grew up, no one could deal with his quirky behavior? What if no one could ever love him the way I loved my husband? There’s a reason James is estranged from his family: OCD destroys relationships.

I didn’t set out to make a statement about OCD. I just wanted to create a believable character. Popular culture is littered with stereotypes of obsessive-compulsives. I love Criminal Minds, but the words obsessive or compulsive often creep into the show’s profiles of serial killers. And then there’s Monk, the television detective with the wipes-carrying assistant. Did anyone see the episode when school kids were laughing at him? Man, that one kicked me in the gut.

Imagine your worst fears. Now imagine living with them every moment of every day. In stereo surround sound. That’s OCD. To force back the worry demands incredible courage, and James is the bravest person Tilly knows. He isn’t a victim or a psycho. He’s a successful entrepreneur who happens to be terrified of everything…except snakes. Which gives him one up on Indiana Jones.

I have no control over what happens as my book launches into the world, but James and Tilly will always be my first hero and heroine. And I’m so proud of them. I think I might get in my car, open the sunshine roof, and throw out one “Yay for The Unfinished Garden.”

When she’s not gardening, Barbara Claypole White writes love stories about damaged people and blogs through the highs and lows of OCD at easytolovebut.com. To browse The Unfinished Garden, go to barbaraclaypolewhite.com or amazon.