When Life Hands You A Derecho, Make A Wood Cord -- Or, Life Lessons from Irish Farmers

Those of you who follow me on Twitter, or Facebook know that I recently lost an entire building on my property to a nasty-bad storm. When I say nasty-bad, what that means is that there were very large items flying through the air at high speeds. One of them was a tree, and it hit my shed. The shed is no more. The good news is that I had recently toyed with the idea of turning that shed into a chicken coop and becoming a chicken-person. Because of general hem-hawing on my part, that never came about, and the would-have-been chickens were saved from being crushed by simply not existing in the first place.

The storm itself was a derecho - it's kinda like all the benefits of a tornado without the bother of a  funnel cloud - except I almost scored one of those, too. The boyfriend and I were peering at some rotation up in the sky when he suddenly bolted outdoors, camera in hand. This is one of the non-plusses of having a photographer for a boyfriend. Nervous for his safety and somehow feeling I could stop a funnel cloud from touching down if I were right next to him, I went outside too, and got stuck staring up at something really mesmerizing that had the ability to kill me in a split second if it felt like it.

Luckily for me it was feeling benevolent and passed over, but there was another cell that was taking some dance lessons from it, and decided to try out that whole rotation thing. It was right over my parent's house, which I can see from my house, and my sister can see from hers. Suddenly my phone rings and it's Sister, calling to say that there's a storm-spotter in her driveway and they're filming. So I rush inside, turn on the TV and there's Mom and Dad's house. Sister and I are so excited we call them to tell them to turn on the channel we're watching so they can see their house on the news. Oh, and also that there was a funnel cloud forming above them.

And that was the extent of our excitement for the evening. There was another line of storms coming at us, but it was loving on Illinois at the time, scheduled for a 1 AM rendezvous with Ohio. So I battened down the hatches, brought in wind chimes, pre-emptively put pets in the basement and then considered the ethical question of what to do with my car.

I don't have a garage. I always park in the driveway, directly under a big tree. My car is always covered with bird poop, but that's not part of this story. It's over 10 years old, makes noises it shouldn't, and is dedicated to going left of center when I'm not interested in doing so. So my moral dilemma is this - I know there's a storm coming, and I always park my old, insured car under a big tree. Can I conceivably leave it there when I have perfectly serviceable outbuildings?

My conscience won't let me. I put it in a big barn that was possibly built by a guy named Noah. It's that old, and that sturdy.

Sleep comes. Derecho comes. Sleep goes. Outbuilding goes. Barn stays. Car stays. Massive branch as thick as my body that fell over 30 feet lands where the car normally would've been. My conscience feels good, but my common sense is screeching.

Sister shows up with her husband and my cousin the next morning, and everyone gets out their toys. With our multiple chainsaws, machines to drag debris, and my log-splitter we clean up everything in about four hours. We feel good, we feel pretty accomplished, we have some beers. We make a wood cord that will keep my house warm for a solid month this winter, which is my revenge on the tree.

And yesterday the transmission went out on my car.

Conscience, I shake my fist at you.

Kate Karyus Quinn Talks Dark Themes & Another Little Piece

I'm lucky (or cunning) enough to have lured yet another successful writer over to my blog for an SAT - Successful Author Talk. SAT authors have conquered the query, slain the synopsis and attained the pinnacle of published. How'd they do it? Let's ask 'em!

Today's guest for the SAT is fellow Class of 2k13 member and Harper-mate Kate Karyus Quinn, author of ANOTHER LITLE PIECE. Kate has two college degrees - a BFA in Theatre from Niagara University and an MFA in Film and Television Production from Chapman University. In addition, her short romantic fiction pieces have been published in Woman’s World magazine.

ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE is a gorgeous, dark and daring story. There are so many elements involved that there are times the reader literally has no idea what is going on -- and personally I loved that experience. Too often our reader-brains are so good at discerning where the plot is going that authors can't surprise us anymore. But you certainly did! How did you manage to keep your readers in the dark, yet still entirely engaged in the story?

The twisty plot for ALP developed organically… which is to say that I was making it up as I went along. I wasn’t going completely by the seat of my pants, because I had a notebook where I would write little notes for the next five to ten scenes. Of course, sometimes something would happen in one of those pre-planned scenes that I wasn’t quite expecting, and I would have to adjust a little. The one thing I did to make sure the story didn’t go completely off the rails and stayed somewhat focused was that I made sure to coming back to Annaliese and what her goals were. Anytime I got lost, I brought it back to Annaliese trying to find the truth of what happened to her and understand exactly what she was.

My writer-brain was fascinated by the concept you present in ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE. It starts out feeling like a contemporary crime drama with psychological twists, then veers into paranormal elements and a sweet romance out of left field -- all with a very unreliable narrator. Did you ever wonder where the heck in the bookstore this thing was going to land, genre-wise?

I honestly wasn’t worried about where it would fit on the shelf, because I knew it was young adult and one of the things that I truly love about writing YA is that such a broad spectrum of books all fit together under one big umbrella together. However, I was concerned about my book ever making it onto any shelf at all due to language, sex, and violence (you can read more about that here. I knew that I was stepping pretty close to the line of what was appropriate for the genre and I wanted to make sure that I hadn’t gone soaring over it. So I started looking for other YA books that were pushing the boundaries to see how far they’d taken things… and maybe to also just feel a little bit less alone.

Some of the books on that reading list were:
Twenty Boy Summer by Sarah Ockler
Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves
The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

I also read a trilogy of novels that some of you may have heard of, called The Hunger Games. By the third book when characters flesh was melting off, I felt fairly reassured that the level of violence in ALP was okay.

You take a brave step in making your love interest a not-so-dreamy dude. Your male MC has issues of his own, and doesn't have movie star good looks or a hunky hell of a body to make up for it. Were you worried that writing the less-than-perfect male love interest would be a problem?

As a reader I enjoy a hero with a healthy dose of hunk in him, especially when paired with the violet-eyed perfect size 2 wisp of a heroine. There is a certain amount of wish fulfillment that is really satisfying when reading that kind of romantic dynamic. However, when I sit down to write, my heroines turn out more like me – not the fairest in the land and not the warty-faced witch, but instead somewhere in between. Of course, you can still match the perfect guy with the less than perfect girl – and I love that dynamic as well (hello Twilight!). 

In the case of Annaliese, she is just such a messed up girl and broken in so many ways, that I think she needed someone equally messed up to match her. I guess that guy could’ve had a six pack and bulging biceps, but instead as I wrote, Dex came out tall and gangly and… oddly charming. I liked him. Annaliese liked him. I could only hope that readers would respond to his nontraditional brand of charm as well.

Self-awareness, deep-seated desires and wish fulfillment play a huge part in the plot of ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE. Are these elements that you think help draw in teen readers, or do you think that adults can fall under these spells as well?

I think half of my teenage years were spent lost in a daydream. I crushed on guys I barely knew, which was convenient because the reality of their teenage boy stuff never intruded on my fantasies. The handful of guys who showed interest in me, I couldn’t run away from fast enough. Even so, I often felt like I was missing out on the whole having a boyfriend rite of passage, but anytime I got close to it, it looked so different from the way I’d imagined that suddenly it didn’t look so great anymore. 

I’ve been guilty of this as an adult as well. I think anytime you get sucked into the idea of the perfect anything whether that be a boy, a dance, or a dream house – you’re setting yourself up for a fall. Annaliese’s fall, though, is a little rougher than most. And in the end she has to decide what is really the most important thing to her.  

So I think both teens and adults can find different things to talk about there, but maybe just approaching it in slightly different ways and with two slightly different perspectives. I also think some discussion between adults and teens can be generated by another big theme of the book. Annaliese has this feeling that she is a monster and doesn’t feel as if she fits in her life. I think teens can relate to that, and from the adult side, I think parents will nod in recognition of the feeling that their sweet little baby has grown into a (sometimes monstrous) teenager that seems completely different from the child they once knew. 

Overall, I think there are some themes that universal and that almost anyone can relate to them no matter where they happen to be in their lives.

Thursday Thoughts

Everyone knows I had eye surgery last week, so this week's thoughts are... related.

1) During most doctor office visits the doctors are always really big on letting you know what's going on. "OK, you'll feel a little pinch here as we draw the blood. Great, flowing well now... that's a great vein... one more vial and .... OK, you can relax your arm, you're all done!" Or - "Alright, there's going to be a little bit of pressure here. Now maybe a sting as you feel the novocaine going in... and you'll start to lose feeling little by little... and now you should be just about numb..."

Not so when you're getting eye surgery.

I laid down and it went like this. "Alright, look up at the light and you'll be able to see the little red dot of the laser. Just stay focused on that, and if it disappears for a second that's perfectly normal." And then... it just got quiet. And then the laser dot disappeared.

And I thought... "They're not really talking to me. I bet that laser disappeared because they're scraping my cornea off right now. Oh dear Jesus, they're scraping my cornea off right now!! NO WONDER THEY DON''T NARRATE!!!"

2) When you have your corneas scraped off you are compensated with drugs. Valium is your friend before surgery, morphine eye-drops that I suspect find other ways into your system are post-op BFF's, and there's also one hell of an effective oral painkiller to top it all off. So, having experienced all of these things within a small timeframe, I had... I'll call them mind pictures. I wasn't asleep, I just had an interesting series of visuals while my eyes were closed. And one of these, produced as a gift from my librarian brain, was a new addition to the How to Draw series.

Yes, apparently my brain wanted to supply me with a train of sketches for the How to Draw the Well-Adjusted Family, complete with cookouts, playing catch, picnics, and I think there was a canoe trip.

3) I had a VERY odd moment when a repo man showed up at my house while I was recovering. He was looking for a former occupant (I swear) and apparently had dropped by the day of surgery but I didn't even notice *cough* Valium *cough.* On the 2nd day he showed up my dogs went nuts enough to wake me up and I answered the door and explained that the person didn't live there anymore. He was a really nice guy who had actually had the same surgery I had so we talked about that for a bit. As he was leaving he says, "I'm really glad you answered the door today. No offense, I know you can't get around right now because of the surgery, but this is clearly an older home, the yard hasn't been mowed and your car hasn't moved since yesterday. If there's no response and no indication of activity at the home two days in a row, it's our company policy to call the police to let them know they might want to make sure.... you know... that someone hasn't died inside the house."

So I'm REALLY glad I answered the door too, because I definitely didn't want to explain to the cops why a mid-thirties woman is at home in the middle of the afternoon on a workday, answering the door in her nightgown and robe, wearing Stevie Wonder glasses and high off her gourd.