Easy Bake Novel

by Saralee Rosenberg

 

Writing a novel is much like planning a wedding. The thought, preparation, creativity, time, frustration and patience can take years, while the pleasure and enjoyment last but a few hours.

So why do we subject ourselves to the torture of writing a novel knowing that a reader may finish in a day what took us years to perfect? Because as with planning a wedding it’s not about the day, it’s about the memories. 

With each novel we publish we hopefully leave our legacy.

Yes it's frustrating when a reader gobbles up our latest book and asks when the next one is coming out, as if we turn them out like pies. A few hours of prep time, another few hours in the oven and presto. Out comes an Easy Bake Novel.

But it’s also wonderfully rewarding to know that people are so in love with our work that they eagerly anticipate what we are serving up next.

The fact that the average reader has no clue what is involved in our process is not their fault. They don’t sit in the stands watching us like they do athletes in pursuit of a win. They don’t Skype with us while we wrangle with a difficult paragraph or page. They get handed a finished product and assume that we made a change here or there, but basically the book they read is the book we wrote.

Even my editor was astounded when I turned in my last manuscript and sent it along with a picture of me buried in draft pages. “Was all that for this one book?” she asked. To which I replied, “No. The other four garbage bags were already hauled to the curb.”

She had her doubts but every writer knows I spoke the truth. Every book project is responsible for the loss of trees in Oregon.

And at the moment, I am taking all of this to heart because I have been a slave to my latest project, HOTLINE TO HEAVEN. It is my first novel for a younger reader and when I started nearly three years ago, I was certain I could whip out a finished manuscript in a matter of months. After all, I was an experienced novelist and what could be easier than writing for children?

Sigh.

I thought that Harry Potter and Hunger Games aside, all young readers wanted from a novel was a few good laughs and a quick ending so they could resume texting and playing video games.

If I only knew then..

Writing HOTLINE has been the greatest challenge of my career. And in fact I have gone through so many different versions, I’m calling this latest attempt the anniversary edition.

What I have discovered through my "taste-testers" is that younger readers are perhaps even more demanding than adults. They expect the 4 E’s: entertainment, enlightenment, engagement and escapism. But to achieve that level of sophistication while telling an original and compelling story that resonates with a child's heart is no easy feat.

It only looks that way.

So once again I'm nearing the finish line and hoping for the magical outcome my new readers deserve. And how will I know when it’s time to throw a celebratory party? When they (and maybe even their moms) text me:  LOVEEEEE!!!! write another one!!!!

I'm on it... hopefully.

Saralee Rosenberg is the author of four novels from Avon (HarperCollins) including A LITTLE HELP FROM ABOVE, CLAIRE VOYANT, FATE AND MS. FORTUNE and DEAR NEIGHBOR, DROP DEAD. Visit her website: www.saraleerosenberg.com

Holidays With Magnus

     Under normal circumstances, the business of deciphering and transcribing the latest communications of Magnus Flyte and fashioning them into a novel takes place in two locations. Meg Howrey lives in Los Angeles, and Christina Lynch lives in a small town in the Sierra foothills. We work as a relay team: alternating chapters, and with our own individual processes remaining as mysterious as the current whereabouts of Mr. Flyte. However, we are currently under a deadline set by our esteemed Penguins at Penguin Books for completing the sequel to City of Dark Magic. This necessitated a combining of forces so that daily quotas of writing could be met, and certain yuletide revelries could be observed. Accordingly, Meg packed stocking, libations, mud boots, and computer and traveled north to Chris’s home for the holidays. We are happy to report that the writing is going well, and the Yorkshire pudding turned out fabulously! 

     Even though we are now working in the same house, we have not deviated from our methods. Too much chatter spoils the soup. So the emails still flow. Below is an edited transcript, which might illuminate how the collaboration has been faring.

From: Meg@(email address redacted)

To: Chris@ (email address redacted)

You are very busy typing right now. Type, type, type. My, how very busy and productive you seem to be. However, I am sitting ten feet away and by using a series of reflective mirrors I can see that you are not writing your chapter. You are shopping for a new shower curtain. I like “Splash Home Tree Mocha Shower Curtain” the best. Do not order that thing with stripes you were just viewing. It will clash with the bathmat.

From: Chris@(email address redacted)

To: Meg@(email address redacted)

I realize it’s 9:17 am and we’ve only been working for four minutes (three if you count the trip to the toaster oven for one more slice of cranberry cake) but what are you thinking about for lunch? How about http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Tortelloni-with-Mushroom-Sage-Sauce-108814 ?

I’d only have to make one little trip to the store.

C.

P.S. It would be more green to get the cream from the farmer up the road. Plus we could make a small detour to see the miniature donkeys again. Cream in Norwegian is “krem.” http://translate.google.com/#en/no/cream

It really wouldn’t take all that long if we left right now.

From: Meg@(email address redacted)

To: Chris@ (email address redacted)

Chapter going well. I should be finished by the evening. I apologize if there’s too much in the chapter about quail. Did you see the family of quail in your driveway today? Gosh, quail are fascinating. Wait. Are they quail? Quail is a funny word. Quail, quail, quail. It’s a good verb, too. “So-and-so quailed before her.” I don’t think I’ve ever made anyone quail before me. Meet me in the kitchen in ten minutes and quail before me? Just for fun? The chapter isn’t really going that well.

To: Meg@(email address redacted)

From: Chris@(email address redacted)

Look at that rain. Just look at it. I’m looking. It’s hard not to look at rain like that. The Latin word for rain is “pluvia.” Maybe we should go look for a rainbow. I think that would help our productivity. DH Lawrence wrote a book about a rainbow, and he’s pretty famous.

From: Meg@(email address redacted)

To: Chris@ (email address redacted)

No, I am screaming because I just saw your dog eat a gopher.

From: Chris@(email address redacted)

To: Meg @(email address redacted)

In Azerbaijani, gopher is “sünbülqıran.”

From: Meg@(email address redacted)

To: Chris@(email address redacted)

If I only wear a Helmut Lang dress while writing, can it be considered a tax write-off?

From: Chris@(email address redacted)

To: Meg@(email address redacted)

It’s 5:03. Chianti or Rioja?

From: Meg@(email address redacted)

To: Chris@ (email address redacted)

I like what you said on the hike this morning about the plot of the sequel. Suddenly, and for the first time, it all made perfect and complete sense. The character’s motivations were crystalline. The dramatic arc was like a jeweled rainbow. The plot twists were diabolically clever, and yet also revealed something incredibly profound and true and just and beautiful about human nature.

Can you remember what exactly you said? Because now all I can remember is that at very end we started talking about whether or not Paul Rudd would make a better boyfriend for you, or for me. And I’ve totally spaced on all that stuff about the plot.

From: Chris@(email address redacted)

To: Meg@(email address redacted)

Did you know that great frigate birds have the highest ratio of wing area to body mass? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Frigatebird

I have a killer page and a half here. Break?

The sequel to New York Times bestseller City of Dark Magic will be published by Penguin Books in December 2013, and may or may not feature Vienna, tortelloni, Mozart, gophers, Helmut Lang, and Great Frigatebirds. There will definitely be a shower curtain.

My Affair Goes Cold Turkey for the Holidays

By Cindy Jones

My beloved and I never meet during the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Not so much as one word between us for a solid month.  Even when we are both sitting in my office I cannot acknowledge our proximity or let my guard down for an instant or all would be lost.  No quiet mornings alone.  During these busy weeks I remember The Way We Were, but the clock is running and I am far too busy making decisions, shopping, and planning Christmas to wallow.

Two days before family arrives--the beds have yet to be changed, gift gaps filled, extra closet space cleared for guests--and my beloved whispers to me in the early morning.  I am surprised at the fully formed ideas flowing suddenly between us after weeks of silence.  I had forgotten that feeling.  But--Not Now, I say.  Do not come to me when I am unable to grasp you.  Do not play with me like this.  Such torture!  I reach for my planner and steel myself for another day of shopping, arranging, and list-checking.

While holiday celebrations are underway: engaging in old traditions and new recipes, I am amazed how far I have drifted from my beloved.  The chasm appears so wide that I fear there will be no going back this time.  I will not remember how, or, I am changed, no longer privy to the Otherness, forever stranded in the real world.

Yet, two days after Christmas, my family travels 600 miles from home to a place where there are no more lists, shopping happens hardly at all, and food is something we eat to live.  My husband and my sons don ski boots and venture up the mountain.  I stay behind in the cozy lodge, alone with my beloved.  Surrounded by hundreds of tramping ski boots, swooshing jackets, and wet gloves, the world falls away and we pick up where we left off in November, needing no more than an electrical outlet and a place to work.  My novel-in-progress and I plunge deep into imagination.  Reunited at last.  Nothing will have changed between us.  It happens every year just like this.  

Cindy Jones is the author of My Jane Austen Summer as well as work-in-progress about look-alike friends who trade places while under dangerous influence of Romantic Poets.  Follow:    

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Sunday Book Review

THE PLUM TREE by Ellen Marie Wiseman

review by Barbara Claypole White

Tomorrow is the launch of Ellen Marie Wiseman’s stunning debut novel, The Plum Tree, which earned a 4.5* and a Top Pick rating from Romantic Times. “It's an original and important addition to the World War II canon,” says the RT review. It’s easy to see why.

The Plum Tree opens in an idyllic German village in 1938.  Seventeen-year-old Christine, a maid in the house of a wealthy Jewish family, is guarding a secret: She and the son of her employer are in love. They assume class is the greatest hurdle they will have to face…

I’ll be honest, I had mixed feelings about reading The Plum Tree. As the wife of a Jew and the mother of a teenager who would have been considered impure by the Nazis, I struggle with anything that circles the Holocaust. However, as a Brit, I grew up on firsthand stories of hardship during the Second World War. It was always the stories of everyday actions—some heroic, some not—that resonated with me: a tale my mother’s gardener told from when he was a medic on a Red Cross ship and a German U boat gave them safe passage; my mother’s memory of eating her first banana after rationing.

And here’s what I loved most about The Plum Tree—the level of detail with which Ms Wiseman takes us inside the lives of ordinary Germans during the war. (As a history major, I'm a sucker for research.) For example:

“They were sitting around the table, eating the bland meal that had become the core of their winter diets: watered-down goat’s milk, boiled potatoes and turnip soup. They missed the days when Mutti used to leave cow’s milk in an earthen crock on the cellar steps for three days, until it soured and turned into the consistency of pudding…”

But The Plum Tree is more than just a glimpse into rural family life during the Second World War. It’s also a thumping good read. Christine’s love affair creates a story of survival, courage, and resilience in one of the darkest moments of history. The Plum Tree spans the length of the war and is far from over when the Allies liberate Germany. Christine is a fabulous heroine—noble and kind—and once I hit the half-way mark, you could not have wrestled her from me with a crowbar. Really.

Even though the novel goes deep into the human evil at Dachau, the story is layered with the shades of grey that exist during war. Christine’s grandmother, for example, is wary of the Americans, and the American soldiers are suspicious of Christine when she asks for their help. Without giving away spoilers, events toward the end of the novel filled me with indignation for the treatment of German prisoners. As Christine’s father says, “War makes victims all.”

The Plum Tree is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and IndieBound. For more information on Ellen and the story behind the story, visit her website: ellenmariewiseman.com

Barbara Claypole White is the author of  The Unfinished Garden, a love story about grief, OCD, and dirt. Originally from England, she lives in the North Carolina Forest with her family and a ridiculously large woodland garden.

Writing Through Winter Break

by Amy Sue Nathan

While everyone is scurrying and scampering and wrapping and baking, I am not.  As a Jewish mom of two pretty-much-grown kids, this is a relaxing (dare I say boring?) time of year in our house. Hanukkah is over, and frankly, it’s not a big deal or important holiday.  It’s much more a reason to celebrate that my son is home from college and that my daughter finished her high school senior year finals yesterday.  (Whew!)

While having everyone around all day long every day is wonderful—especially because they can cook and drive, it also messes with my mojo.  That is no one else’s fault.  Just mine. I am a creature of extreme habit (those who know me well can stop laughing NOW) so the before school/after school/before dinner/after dinner schedule doesn’t exist. 

Even if it ever only existed in my head.

If I tried to do what I do every day…it wouldn’t happen. Knowing that was half the battle.  Embracing it was the other half!

This year, I’m choosing to work on blog posts and essays over our winter break and read some friends’ works-in-progress.  I’m going to fine-tune the synopsis for my own. Even though I’m always writing posts and stories and essays, this will be a more concerted effort to get ahead, in anticipation of my debut novel in May.  I’m going to spend more time reading the books I’ve collected and more time watching the movies I’ve recorded.  Having big kids around means more time with them, but it also means plenty of time on my own.

Of course I’ll dabble in my new novel, but a short winter break from that project will probably do it—and me—some good.  I’ll jot notes, make lists, add to the new timeline I’m trying out.  But I’m not adding it to my schedule.  One of the most important things on my schedule will be to take this time during everyone else's frenzy, to relax. 

A rejuvenating change in my writing routine, extra time with my kids, a few midday naps, reading books by the fire, and if the weatherman is right…Chicago’s first real snow of the year—they're all gifts to be grateful for—no matter the reason or the season. 

Amy Sue Nathan’s debut novel, THE GLASS WIVES, will be published by St. Martin’s Griffin in May 2013.  Amy’s stories and essays have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times online, The Huffington Post, among many others.  In 2011 she launched Women’s Fiction Writers, a blog promoting the authors, books, and craft of women’s fiction.  Amy has also works as a freelance fiction editor. She is an unapologetic chocoholic who lives near Chicago.

Fa-La-La-La Fun

by Christa Allan

Okay, everyone think of a favorite Christmas memory. Go write it down. Now. Yes, now or you will surely forget it.

Write it on paper, not on your hand or the unpaid bill lurking near the keyboard.

Write every detail you can remember, every smell--even it's the clashing aromas of  seafood gumbo on the stove and pine-scented candles burning on the kitchen table—every touch of someone's hand on your shoulder, every tinkling bell, I'll wait for you to return.

This is me waiting………….

You promise you’ve captured it, right?

Christmas, 1999. The picture I have of the evening is one of my most cherished ones. That was the year of the "Charlie Brown" tree that my younger son John, who was fourteen at the time, and I had chopped down on our land. We lived on eight acres, seven of which were overgrown with towering pines and scrawny bushes and assorted wildness. We found a pine tree wannabe. We dragged it into the house, creating a trailing mess of needles, bark, and oozing sap. I loved every pain of it. And I think the tree loved it as well. After we decorated, I’m certain I caught a glimpse of it smiling for having been chosen.

We're all in front of the fireplace, except for Michael, my oldest. He was in the Navy and stationed in Italy. Ken, me, John, Shannon, Erin pregnant with Bailey, Andrae, John my brother, his partner Rick, Sarah. My Jewish husband, my African-American son-in-law, my gay brother, my daughter with Down’s Syndrome. We look like a politically correct Christmas card. 

We are happy. And that was everything.

So, now it's your turn to share your favorite Christmas memory.

Christa Allan is the author of Walking on Broken Glass, The Edge of Grace, and Love Finds You in New Orleans. Her next novel, Threads of Hope, will release in March of 2013. She and her husband live in New Orleans where they're learning how to take care of a home that's older than their combined ages. When she's not filling her trunk, doing "weed the garden" therapy or baking cheesecakes, Christa teaches high school English. She hopes to retire soon. Very soon. You can find Christa at Twitter (ChristaAllan), Facebook, and www.christaallan.com

I apologize for thee quality of the photo but you get the picture...and I searched for a photo of the tree, but it’s probably hiding out with the gold hoop earring I can’t find.  If it does turn itself in, I’ll be sure to post it.)