Tag: 99 cent sale

Where did that character come from?

I sometimes feel as if characters come out of nowhere, fully formed, in search of an author. A few positive, likeable characters have been inspired by real people, but even then, I make changes so I’m not actually putting person X in a book.

Antagonist characters are usually inspired by one specific trait or behavior I notice in an individual. I use that trait as a root from which to grow a character. For example, in the short story Hidden Fish in Gifts and Thefts, I needed someone who would antagonize Mae’s boyfriend, Jamie. As I set up the opening scene, I had an image of a woman I’d noticed a concert a couple of years ago wearing an oddly fitted wig and carrying a small dog. (The wig puzzled me, because it seemed she intended to make it obvious she was wearing one.) Jamie is a musician with a fear of dogs. A woman who would bring her dog to a concert was the perfect antagonist.

Obviously, I couldn’t actually use this real person in my story, whoever she was, but I borrowed the dog—making him far less cute and far worse-mannered—for Hepzibah. I borrowed a variation on the wig, too, and invented a story behind it as the reason for her enmity toward Jamie.

When I was recertifying as a fitness professional in 2019, I took a continuing education course taught by a woman who said “Whoo!” after every segment of the workout. It drove me nuts. I took note of that idiosyncrasy for an antagonist in Mae’s in workplace, a fitness center. I thought it was the only aspect of this presenter I used, but the day Gifts and Thefts came out, I realized I’d used more. Her unprofessional behavior. She made overt sexual jokes, and she kept asking if it was time to have wine yet. I’d forgotten this. Consciously, anyway. In the short story Responsible Party, Sandra commits different offenses. But in retrospect, I see more of the presenter in her than I knew was there while I was writing.

I now wonder what else I’ve borrowed, beyond a wig, a dog, and a “whoo,” to assemble the characters who stand in the way of my protagonists.

*****

Download a copy of the second short story in Gifts and Thefts

Responsible Party

Mae’s internship in fitness management gets stressful when her supervisor starts accusing other employees of theft and tells Mae to find the responsible party. Her efforts bring results neither of them expected.

*****

The Calling is on sale for 99 cents through April 10th.

I’ll be interviewed and will read sections from The Calling on All About Books KTAL, 101.5 FM, Las Cruces, at 12:30 p.m.  Mountain Daylight Time, April 9th. Later that day, the show will be posted on the station’s archive.

Moments

In Jon Kabat-Zinn’s classic on mindfulness, Full Catastrophe Living, he quotes an elderly woman reminiscing. I can’t find my copy of it to cite the passage precisely, but she says something along the lines of, “Oh, I’ve had my moments. And if I had it to do over again, I’d have more of them. Because that’s all we have, really. Moments.”

Writing this made me stop and perceive my apartment in a new way. There’s no sound but the faint hum of the humidifier gently battling the total dehydration that is April in New Mexico. I look at my furniture, the quality of early evening light—all beautiful for being so ordinary.

Despite the shrivelingly-low humidity and frequent high winds, the desert smells like flowers. I can’t figure out which ones produce the scent, but I run through it in delight. Tiny yellow flowers grow wherever they can, in hard soil, in dust, in pavement, between rocks. Creosote bushes and claret cup cacti are blooming.

One day on my run, I noticed a peculiar shadow in motion near me and looked up to see a trio of huge black shiny bees flying in a sloppy little V. Another day, another trio. A bee-o. My inner Dr. Seuss can’t help rhyming this: Big black bees/ fly in threes.

I took my car out for her weekly workout to keep her battery charged. I drove her to a trail just outside of Elephant Butte Lake State Park, as close to my beloved park as I could get while it’s closed, and took a walk to see if it was a potential running trail. It wasn’t—too much lose gravel and then extremely soft sand—but it was a lovely walk. The deep soft sandy part of the trail was partially overgrown with flowers I’ve never seen before, purple clusters that sometimes curl over like fiddlehead ferns. The unique landscape of Elephant Butte is quite different from Truth or Consequences, just a few miles away. More gray rocks than red. More twisted, shaggy-barked junipers, fewer creosote bushes. Greater earless lizards rather than checkered whiptails. Sand rather than dust and dirt. The trail dropped off sharply into a dry arroyo, and I turned around, content with my exploration

On the days I would normally teach yoga, I’ve been doing my practice as if teaching, talking to myself with the cues I would give students, treating my own need for alignment , relaxation, and engagement as those of a student I was observing. It sounds crazy, but it makes me pay full attention. I can’t think about anything but the moment, as my body and my words meet in my focused awareness.

After today’s yoga immersion, I gazed out my screen door at the waving, rustling green leaves at the top of the tree that invaded our water line back in February. It’s a beautiful tree. And I have water.

*****

The entire Mae Martin Series is currently discounted. Book one, The Calling is free and will be through June 13. Shaman’s Blues is 99 cents through the end of April. The other books are $2.99, and when the promotions end, the first two books will be only $2.99 for the rest of the summer.

Anniversary Sale

Two years ago today, June 2, I was half-way across the country, moving from Virginia to New Mexico. I’d lived in Santa Fe previously and left for a job in northeastern North Carolina, where I found the setting for The Calling. I always knew I’d be back, and when I discovered Truth or Consequences, I was instantly caught in the vortex. I knew I would live here someday.

In Shaman’s Blues, Mae Martin moves to T or C. Unlike me, she’s never seen it before. Never been to New Mexico. Doesn’t know a soul in town except her father. Join her on the adventure and celebrate my anniversary.

Click here for 99 cent sale

Cactus Flowers, Colander Hats and Other May Musings

This is my first May in Truth or Consequences. I may have complained about the wind a little (or a lot) but there’s much to love, and when the wind stops, this hot spring/summer month is beautiful. We don’t have green grass and tulips and daffodils here, but May does bring out some amazing flowers. Ocotillo! It’s not a cactus, though it can be mistaken for one when its leaves have fallen off. In the winter, it looks like a spray of long, thorny sticks. In the summer, it wears small green leaves. And in May, scarlet blossoms flare from its tips, stunning against the bare blue sky, attracting bees and hummingbirds. Tree cholla displays purple-pink blossoms on the ends of its long, spiky arms, prickly pear cacti are blooming with orange or yellow cups, and ice plants, low-growing succulents with daisy-like flowers in a rainbow of colors, cover swaths of ground all along the streets.

A year ago, I was teaching my last college classes, grading finals, preparing to move, and somehow keeping up with writing and yoga. This year, instead of marching in commencement in hot black academic regalia, I was walking with a float in T or C’s Fiesta Parade. Fiesta is a celebration of the town. Local businesses sponsor floats, political parties and candidates join the parade, and of course there are horses and a marching band. My favorite part of the parade was the Stationary Parade on the sidewalk, where residents in extraordinary costumes waved at the moving parade. Some of stationary parade “marchers” were “walking” in no-impact Gazelle workout equipment, legs swinging back and forth on airborne pedals. One man wore a suit of big silver sequins. And they wore, of course, colander hats.

This is not a mere kitchen item on one’s head. It’s millinery art. The Colander Krewe has been part of Fiesta for eleven years, and it’s catching on. The prize-winning float sponsored by Desert Archaic Gallery, Don’s Den, and Truth or Consequences Brewing Company—a float featuring a pink-wigged woman in a top hat beating a large drum, pulled by the iconic Whatever-mobile—was followed by people in costumes topped by astoundingly strange and original hats, including at least one colander.

Fiesta also includes a car show at the Moose Lodge, music and vendors in Ralph Edwards Park by the river, and a junk boat race. By trying to squeeze in the car show and the boat race, I missed all but the final junk boat, a strange creation heading off down the Rio Grande with what appeared to be tiny wheels on long arms like spider legs poking out from its floating center.

The vendor who caught my attention for the longest time was selling crystals, some of them enormous, and he had tubs full of geodes, most of them not broken open, so one could purchase a surprise. I didn’t—crystal-bearing rocks cover a corner of my desk already, some plucked from local trails—but I liked the idea of buying that gray rough sphere, knowing it holds a crystal cave, and waiting until the time is right to open it and reveal the magic. It’s a metaphor waiting to be used. I hope I can find a reason to use it, and to write a scene that includes colander hats.

*****

Totally off topic, but if you haven’t read The Calling yet or want to recommend it  to someone, it’s on sale through May 21 for 99 cents all e-book retail sites.

 

Rain Salutations

I know I can’t make the sky rain. It’s like trying to make someone love you. When the right conditions have arrived, the change comes. Sometimes, however, I think it fails to rain when the world is out of balance, and that it takes dancing and meditation, yoga done as rain salutations, people showing compassion and affection and listening to each other with their hearts, to invite rain. Love and care for the earth will call rain. Earlier today, it rained in the alley behind my apartment for one minute. I went for a short walk at sunset, and a massive blue-black cloud was flashing lightning out toward Elephant Butte, revealing the rain as a sheer curtain in each orange flare. I did a little dance, spinning and then running backwards, asking the storm to follow me home. It did, but I don’t take credit.

When I was running in the desert around noon today, I encountered a mule deer. They often look you in the eye before they run. If they even run. We circled a juniper, checking each other out, making eye contact through the branches, then she turned her back to me, did two full springs straight up in the air with a graceful tuck of all four legs, and trotted off. If anything had the power to call the storm, she did. The deer did the rain dance.

*****

Unrelated, but perhaps of interest: The Calling, book one in the Mae Martin series, is on sale for 99 cents on all e-book retail sites through July 21st. If you’ve enjoyed my books, tell a friend. Thanks.

Shaman’s Blues e-book 99 cent sale

Now through April 5th,  Shaman’s Blues, the award-winning second book in the Mae Martin Psychic Mystery Series, is on sale for ninety-nine cents on all e-book retail sites. Click on the title for sales links and more about the book.

Fragmentation and Focus

I’m a guest today on Lois Winston’s blog, talking about trying to focus despite fragmented time. If you share that frustration, you’re not alone. Stop by the blog and let me know how you handle it.

At the end of that post, I mention a 99 cent sale. The Calling is discounted on all retailers through October 28th.