Reading beyond your comfort zone

I’m a big fan of children’s stories. Funny picture books? Oh, yeah. Middle grade fun and adventures? Lovely. Teen angst, romance, and struggles? Definitely! But fantasy of any persuasion? No way!

As a reviewer for childrenslit.com, I receive five books every few weeks and I don’t get to choose which ones. In other words, I’ve been forced to expand my horizon. And that’s a good thing. Strictly a fiction reader in my previous life, I now read nonfiction and biographies as well; as a result, I’ve discovered some pretty interesting facts about people, places, and animals. I’ve also developed a better appreciation of historical fiction. Of course, not all of the books deserve good reviews, and I’ve had to grit my teeth to get through some of them.

To tell you the truth, I had low hopes for my recent shipment. Regardless of my newfound appreciation of books I wouldn’t normally read, did I really want to review two dystopian novels and a book about warring angels? Really? The mere idea made me groan, and I resisted reading them as long as possible.

And then I re-discovered the joys of reading great writing, no matter what genre. All three of the previously frowned-upon collection of unusual-for-me reads struck a chord. But the one that sliced me to the quick with its angel sword was Angelfall by Susan Ee. Ee had me perched on the edge of my seat with room for my wings to expand, hoping to save the day if Penryn couldn’t. Believe me, the mere mortal has her work cut out for her. Raffe, despite his lack of wings, is quite a feathery handful. The schizophrenic mother, with her cattle prod at play, doesn’t help matters. And you don’t even want to know what happens to Penryn's little sister Paige! Ugh! Does Ee tie Angelfall up in a nice, little package? No Way! Fortunately, the ending begs for Book 2!

So now, thanks to my highly paid position as a reviewer—what more could an avid reader want than to be paid in books?—I’m a fan of warring angels and interspecies love.

And to think I never knew such romance existed!

I'm seeing things. Again.

But they aren't mice. And they aren't real.

First, there were a few lightning bolts. I blinked. It was storming outside, after all. But then I went into our dark bedroom and continued to see the bolts. I hit the sack, hoping that the streaks would disappear and not return.

The next morning, they were there, but remained fleeting. And then another issue came to the forefront. I biked around the block. As my feet pumped and my face caught the wind, I spotted a web of branches in the corner of my left eye--disconcerting, to say the least. I couldn't help but shake my head in reflex. The web remained.

I called the eye doctor. The message I received: Don't mess with this; come in immediately.

After a brief exam and a photo of confirmation, the verdict was straightforward. I have a floater, and it's not floating anywhere.

I liked my doctor's explanation. The eye, made up of collagen, vitreous, and water, usually acts as plastic wrap. It's nice and taut and can be easily seen through. But, once in awhile, plastic wrap wrinkles. And once the wrinkle's there, good luck on getting it out.

No one tells you about this aspect of aging. When my doctor asked my age, she nodded sagely. Sixty-one? You have a sixty-one percent chance of this happening, and you probably haven't seen the last of it. Lightning bolts? Common. Webs or branches? Also common. This floater is part of you now, and you'll get used to it after a month or two. If you start seeing jellyfish, though, worry.

She also pressed home the fact that eye issues shouldn't go unaddressed. If a retina becomes detached, the longer you wait to see the doc, the harder it becomes to correct.

So the way I'm going to look at this is . . . I'm still growing and changing.

That can't be all bad, can it?

I'm seeing things. Really.

A rapid-fire movement caught the corner of my eye. I turned, dreading the approach of the all-too-often-sighted, southern-bred cockroach; instead, something even larger sped toward me! I screamed, scaring the critter into a hidey-hole, or so he thought, being only slightly camouflaged by the tangle of computer wires underneath my desk.

As I caught my breath after a couple of more screams, I began to talk to him: “You are so cute! You are SO cute, but you are a mouse.” And just in case he didn’t know it, I screamed, “YOU ARE A MOUSE!”

If only I had had a camera trained on me, I would be winning big-time on America’s Funniest Videos (or maybe not—no one would have been harmed in the making of this film, and that seems to be a requirement). Yelling at him to stay put, I ran to the kitchen, scrambled for a cracker, slathered PB on it, grabbed a large paper bag with handles, and tore off toward the den.

Shoving the cracker in the bag, I propped it open and urged the mouse toward the trap. He didn’t fall for the ruse.

I ran to the kitchen again to get my yardstick. Using it, I tried to herd the mouse into the bag. He started a mad dash around the perimeter of the room with me in hot pursuit. When he got close to the door, I shut it, thinking that the quarter inch at the bottom could not possibly allow exit. Ha! With me screaming, “Don’t! Don’t! DON’T YOU DARE!” that mouse wiggled through so fast, he made my head spin. I quickly opened the door. As he tried to hide underneath a corner table nearby, I handled that trusty yardstick with finesse. Luckily for me, his tiny feet had to shake off dust bunnies; they slowed him down, enough for me to successfully herd him back into the self-contained den.

So then the little devil re-started the perimeter run. Ending up where he started—behind the computer wires—I once again yelled, “Don’t you move!” and dashed toward the kitchen to grab the broom. Running past the front door on my way back, I opened it wide.

A determined woman, I pinned the terrified, little mouse underneath the broom, dragged him through the den, and swept him out the door in one big swoosh. He landed in a bush about five feet away. I imagine it dazed him for a short time.

I shut the door, locked it, and did a victory dance.

The next day, I found a mouse on the road. He was tiny. He was cute. He was dead. He was gray. My mouse had been brown.

While minding his own business the next day, my husband heard a sound. He yelled to me, “I think our mouse returned!” I joined him, only to hear what sounded like a beaver gnawing on a large hunk of wood. My husband slowly opened the drawer underneath the oven. Movement. He removed the drawer and crouched, spotting a cowering mouse. But we weren’t quick enough. The mouse sped here, there, and dashed underneath the dishwasher. At one point, he fishtailed around the corner with his tail high in the air, mimicking a cartoon critter.

We can’t have a mouse in the house, no matter how cute. Project Extermination was launched.

My husband set three traps with peanut butter; two of them were licked clean. He reset them, adding a fourth, and adding attic locations.

Bye-bye, mouse.

Hello, mouse family!

Buyer, Beware!

Famous quote from Sister Act: “Turns into a nuns’ bar, and I’m outta here.”

I hope my faithful followers, not all of whom are writers, also appreciate the entries that are writer-centric. (And, if you don’t, don’t worry. Future entries will, at times, be totally without  rhyme or reason—well, okay, maybe rhyme.)  The occasional focus on writers is the nature of the beast—the beast being I as a writer and the Local Liaison for Southern Breeze, a region of SCBWI. (For those in the dark, that’s the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. You can see why it goes by initials.)

In the next two weeks, I’ll be blogging about authors because I’m doing my part to promote them and their role in the upcoming Southern Breeze conference (Oct. 19-20).

I don’t wanna hear someone whining: “Turns into a writers’ blog, and I’m outta here.”

A woman possessed

Books, books, books. I cannot get enough of them.

Last week was typical. Outwardly, I appeared normal. After having reviewed the requisite five books given me by childrenslit.com, I got the dishes washed, dinners cooked, clothes ironed, toilets scrubbed, miles walked, zumba danced, even TV watched (which, apparently, did not squash my creativity as I wrote a new picture book and revisited four others).

But inside I seethed with the angst of a teenage girl having been bitten by a vampire. That doesn’t happen to just anyone.

Throat by R. A. Nelson introduces Emma. Just when she thinks normalcy is right around the corner—seizure-free for six months and she’ll get her driver’s license—she comes throat-to-teeth with Wirtz, the very worst kind of vampire. Luckily for her, his “dinner” was interrupted by the very thing she feared—a grand mal. So what will happen to Emma, now that she has super powers? What will happen to her family if Wirtz has his way? Most importantly, what will happen to her love life? Throat is just the kind of story a teenage girl can sink her teeth into.

And when Throat no longer had me by the . . . well, throat, Teach Me, also by R. A. Nelson, held sway. A story of a teenage girl falling head-over-heels with her teacher—blech! but oh-so-imaginable!—things get really interesting when he dumps her. One bad idea turns into one even worse. How can Carolina, Nine—just a number to those who know her—escape from the nightmare of her own making? Riveting. Edgy. A story that could be any one of ours if we’d just taken that one forbidden step.

And then Little Texas lurks, hoping to fill the spiritual space within me. A teenage evangelist persuades me of his unusual powers in Days of Little Texas. And R. A. Nelson convinces me, yet again, of his ability to tell a powerful story. The sixteen-year-old known as Little Texas can’t help but wonder if he’s meant to remain a minister. Wishing for normalcy, in a “family” like his, he’s anything but. Haunted by a beautiful girl he has “healed,” can he take her at face value? Is she who she seems? Dealing with saints and sinners alike take its toll on our hero.

There is no doubt about it—Nelson’s books stand out. The number of awards they’ve earned prove it. Teach Me even made NPR’s top 100 best Young Adult books ever . . . and “ever” includes some pretty impressive titles. Reading is like breathing to me, so, of course, I’ll soon be reading his remaining book, Breathe My Name.

I may sound like a one-woman fan club, but there’s a reason beyond the mind-boggling appeal of his works. R.A. Nelson is local. His settings take place in or around Huntsville, AL. I’m familiar with names like Rombokas, places like Madison Square and the Marshall Space Flight Center. (Are vampires lurking at the Space Center as we speak?) Being able to identify with the setting can be just as important as living within the main character's skin.

Best of all is that Nelson, a member of SCBWI Southern Breeze, will be part of a panel at the upcoming schmooze I’ve arranged.

After spending some time fighting demons, vampires, and one’s own conscience, it’s time I come back to earth. Meals to deliver, bingo to call, schmoozes to advertise, reviews to write.

Oh, heck. Those things can wait. Breathe My Name is doing just that. 

Talent abounds in the Huntsville area

Huntsville's known for its engineers. But guess what? Plenty of authors and illustrators live here, too. Find out more about them by clicking on the links.

I'm taking my new role as Local Liaison for Southern Breeze to heart. In arranging my first schmooze--a gathering of like-minded, children-book-centric individuals for the purpose of mingling and connecting--I've come to the realization that  success flows all around me. Starting with my own critique group, comprised of prior and current educators, an engineer, an artist, and an attorney, we can claim a few successes of our own. Annie Laura Smith has been published more than 250 times with her novel Twilight of Honor coming out in September. Mark Hubbs, with numerous magazine articles under his belt, will see his first historical fiction novel The Secret of Wattensaw Bayou in print in late 2012. Both Nellie Maulsby and Gail Hopson have read their stories on Public Radio, and one of Gail's stories appeared in a Chicken Soup book. Heather Montgomery, an author of fabulous kids' nonfiction books, has hit gold with Wild Discoveries: Wacky New Animals as Scholastic has targeted it for book fairs. Kay Casteel is a published illustrator. A prior member, Mary Ann Taylor, has to deal temporarily with family drama--no, make that family comedy. (Tune into National Geographic's Rocket City Rednecks, and you'll see her son and husband launch their acting careers--and various items!) And I personally have a  love/hate affair going with my only published book; Alicia Saves the Day is not my best work, but it filled a particular niche--that of a bilingual book with a moral--and won a prize of $1000--and, best of all, it's for a great cause! Besides the few articles I wrote for The Huntsville Times way back when, it's the only money I've netted in the publishing world, so who am I to quibble? The remaining members--and I--continue to write feverishly . . . because it's what we love to do. (And maybe the successes of the H's in Huntsville--Heather, Hester, Hubbs--will rub off on this particular H.)

Then there's the ever-expanding circle of success that surrounds me. Of course, you've heard me rave about  Hester Bass. (You'll find more about her "Show, Don't Tell" retreat in the Southern Breeze newsletter.) Her book The Secret World of Walter Anderson will represent Alabama at the Pavilion of the States at the National Book Festival on September 22 in Washington, D.C. What I hadn't been aware of before setting up the schmooze was the presence of two more very talented YA authors within our area: Beck McDowell and R. A. Nelson. (Be sure to read his very entertaining bio.) McDowell's exciting new novel This Is Not a Drill comes out on October 25. And Nelson's novel Teach Me made the recent NPR's Best Ever Teen Books list!

After sending out an initial enthusiastic flurry of emails in my new role as Local Liaison to a cast of a hundred, I was delighted with the many positive responses I received--and no negative, thank goodness. I connected with the illustrator, Danaye Shiplett, new to the area. And I discovered that my daughter's friend's father likes to write children's books. :-) I certainly didn't know that about him, and he wasn't aware of my interest either.

So being a Local Liaison has its pluses--ready-made friends and a window into the lives of some pretty exciting, talented, PERSISTENT writers and illustrators.

And that's just fun.

It's a small world

It's a small world, as verified once again by my son and me. He works at an architecture firm in Norfolk, Virginia. As part of the team chosen to research new 401k plans, he met with delegates from four different financial institutions. When a Vice President of Suntrust said, "Nathan? Remember me?" he looked more closely. He didn’t recognize her immediately because he hadn’t expected to see a prior classmate from Madison, AL. Being fourteen hours from their hometown didn't prevent them from a chance encounter.

Then there's the flurry of e-mails I exchanged with an SCBWI member from Ohio. Living equidistant from both Nashville and Birmingham, I'm a member of SCBWI Southern Breeze but a visitor to SCBWI Midsouth events. As such, I'm on both listservs. An Ohio SCBWI member, Kerrie Logan Hollihan, sent an e-mail seeking information about the Southern Festival of Books as she was invited to sit on its panel in October. (She’ll be signing her latest book, Rightfully Ours: How Women Won the Vote). Her name rang no bells, but I recognized her hometown and promptly wrote back, admitting my ignorance about the festival but commenting that I, too, lived in Blue Ash once upon a time. In return, she asked if I were Nathan's mom. When she told me her son's name, going on to tell me he majored in music, I knew exactly who she was. (Her son had played the lead in Oklahoma the year we lived there.) Our children shared the same grades and schools, and we mothers knew and liked each other. Our connection stemmed from 1996.

Traveling another path, I’ve been actively reconnecting with my friends from where I grew up, my small town of Arlington, Ohio. (There were 47 in my graduating class.) Although I attended most of the reunions and two of us steadily exchanged Christmas cards throughout the years, with the advent of e-mail, I reconnected with another classmate and then one more. The five of us are jumping onboard the friendSHIP that’s sailing down to Gulf Shores this fall. Five grown women, giggling over the past and cementing the friendship of the future—nothing quite like it.

My point is that it is, indeed, a small world. You never know when you'll reconnect with old friends. You never know where your journey will take you.

So keep your ears and eyes open for adventure.