Bye Week

It’s bye week. No game. Time to rest up. Time to reflect. If I remember correctly, it’s still a few weeks until the beginning of deer season. If they’re smart, towns schedule their fall festivals during this off week. It’s Halloween, and it’s getting a little colder, and soon, Daylight Savings Time will end.
Last year, my team, the Alabama Crimson Tide, went 12-0 during the regular season, and was rated #1. The whole thing passed by in a blur. I didn’t even watch the games. It brought back too many memories of sharing that experience with my mother, who loved Alabama football. I am glad that so far this season, the Tide has been able to repeat the effort, and this year, I am watching and enjoying the games again, only a little sad sometimes. Mama would have loved this team, so tough on defense, with a good running back, like the Bear Bryant teams of years ago.
So I am a little nostalgic, maybe a little homesick. That makes me think of growing up, of my years at college, then the years I spent in Montgomery. Those memories lead me to think about my next project, a novel set in Montgomery during the decades leading up to the bus boycott.
But I am feeling that itch to begin writing the first draft. Have I done enough research yet? There are a couple of books still on my list to read, that I feel I really must have. But the urge is there, the need to put the first chapter on paper, to establish a clear tone, a base note that will stay in my ear and guide me through. I want to know what this new book will sound like. That is the dilemma, to contimue gathering facts around me like a huge pile of raked leaves, to toss them up in the air and see where thay land, or to cast off and begin fishing for that style and tone that will sustain me through the first draft.
Wow, did I just mix a bunch of metaphors, or what? That tells me that I really need to start writing, and soon.
The plan is to have the first draft completed by May, so that I can go to Montgomery and do some on the ground research, delve into archives, take photos, and just see with my own eyes the places I am writing about.
Read some more books, or begin to write?

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P Town and After

It is not often that authors from a publishing house get together. Women’s Week in Provincetown each year makes that possible for the writers at Bywater Books, as we join together for joint book signings and panel discussions. This was my first time, and I had so much fun, and it was so energizing to get to talk and eat and play with the other writers, all of whom impress me. It’s a good group, and we learned about upcoming releases, and shilled each other’s works, and the camaraderie was worth a host of seminars.

I had breakfast with editor and publisher Kelly Smith, and she couldn’t stop talking about Cynn Chadwick’s next book.

And coming out very soon, like the first week of November, is Jill Malone’s new book, Field Guide to Deception.

Then, there is Mari SanGiovanni’s next book, Liddy-Jean, Marketing Queen, which promises to be as hilarious as her first.

I also got to eavesdrop as Marcia Finical discussed her next book with publisher Marianne K. Martin, and with Kelly Smith, the FG.

I was so excited about all this news, that I barely thought about my own next book, What’s Best for Jane. The editing process will begin soon, and I’m not nervous about it at all.

Much. A little. I have complete confidence that What’s Best for Jane is brilliant.

Marianne Martin is working on her next book, a sequel of sorts to the wonderful Under the Witness Tree. It focuses on the character of Nessie Tinker.

A lot of big, important books are on the way. Bywater is establishing its reputation as a company that seeks out great new writers, and they have found some through their annual fiction contest. They are finding and publishing quality fiction. I am happy to be a part of that group, even if I am a tiny bit intimidated by all of my fellow Bywater authors. Not much. A little.

The plans are to have four of these major events each year for Bywater authors, with the new releases scheduled around them. If we have as much fun at all of them as we did in P Town, you can count me in.

Let's Put on a Show

lesficwritersguild
Mission Statement

The Lesfic Writers’ Guild is a professional association of writers of lesbian literature. Our goals are to advance work by, for and about lesbians; to advocate for the legal and artistic rights of our authors; and to collectively organize, advertise, promote, collaborate on and distribute the publications of our members. In our quest to promote the full spectrum of lesbian writing, we welcome authors, industry professionals and readers.

How cool is this? Every genre has a professional organization, from the Mystery Writers of America, the Romance Writers of America, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Horror Writers Association, you get the idea. There has never been a professional association for the writers of lesbian literature, a small niche, you might think, but I know how large it really is. It’s time the writers get organized and pool information and resources for marketing and promoting our work. Most of us are published by small independent presses with little or no budget for marketing, ads, certainly no money for book tours and the like. Mid list publishers are in the same boat. The economy has put virtually every publishing house, big and small, in the same boat, and some wonder if it is sinking, facing the monolithic amazon.com, which ofers huge discounts, cutting into publishers’ profits, crushing independent booksellers where our work lives, feminist and gay bookstores, with the rise of E Books, the used boook market that resides cheek-to-jowl on amazon’s site with new books, and the litany of woes and dire forecasts could go on. Shrinking dollars in every household budget, shrinking economy, the purchase of new, print books is a luxury.

So, we writers have decided to band together and pool our resources to help ourselves out. This is in the tartup stage, and for now, it exixts as a Yaho group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lesficwritersguild/

So new, we haven’t built the web site yet. This has happened in the past few days. We have a domain name, a logo, a mission statement, and server space for the web site. It’s sort of like Judy and Andy Hardy, let’s all pitch in and make a show in the barn.

We’ll buy ads. We’ll do things together and share the costs. We’ll promote each other’s work, we’ll act collectively to market and sell, we’ll do joint appearances.

I get a feeling like they must have had in the sixties, when women formed groups and marched and sat on committees and did things together to advance civil rights, women’s rights, peace, so many things. The energy and excitement is contagious.

I’ll keep you updated about the web site, and as you can see from the mission statement, readers are invited, and indeed, essential to that mission. It’s you we are trying to reach, after all.

Now I have to pack and get ready for Women’s Week in P Town. If anyone who reads this will be there, please catch one of Bywater’s events and step up and introduce yourself. We’ll talk.

How it Starts

From the foot of Dexter Avenue, looking toward the capitol.

Sometimes, it begins with an image in my head, sometimes, it starts with stumbling across an old photo, like this one.

I lived in Montgomery for 13 years, and worked in a state building behind the capitol. No one can resist being struck by the juxtaposition of so many interconnected and disparate reminders of Alabama’s past, and her role in history. Being surrounded by the physical emblems, the buildings, historic markers, monuments, forces one to confront, or at least contemplate that past, so at odds that it seems there were two paths, two states, two histories, and indeed, there were. Two peoples.

For some unknown reason, this old photo of what Dexter Avenue looked like in 1906, right about the time the dastardly state constitution was rewritten, the one that had such an impact on Alabama for the rest of the century, and still affects it today, this photo churned up emotions and feelings. I returned to look at it often, letting the feelings swirl and coalesce. I started looking at other photos, and I got some books on Montgomery and started reading. This place began to resonate, to hum, and I could feel a shimmer, a vibration of excitement, as I read and studied old pictures of what Montgomery looked like years ago.

The feelings got mixed up with my strained relationship with my home state. I love it, the places and its people, my relatives, and it will always be home to me.

At the same time, I am torn with exasperation, frustration, anger, guilt, shame, and real pride at some of the things my state has done, some things it has accomplished. I used to moan and wail that the only time Alabama ever made national news, it was bad news. That is simply not true, though. In accepting that Alabama is the starting place for some horrible things, I have to acknowledge that it is also the beginning and ending of some very good things, some accomplishments that helped shape the direction of the nation.

So the research began, with that photo and some very mixed feelings that I wanted to examine, if not resolve. Do I have a right to claim personal pride in the good things? Do I get to share in the legacy? Or should I stand aside, and let all the sense of achievement go to those who walked the walk, who were there? Does the color of my skin bar me from sharing the good?

Alabama is not the only southern state to have this dichotomy, the multiple personality disorder that is our history, but the case can be made that it was the epicenter of much of the good, and much of the bad, all the contrasting things that make southern history so tortured and fractured. We have gold stars embedded in marble, we have monuments and memorials that attest to our service on the highway to a more perfect union.

If the color of my skin doesn’t disqualify me from looking at this history and claiming part of it, does the fact that I am a woman shut me out? History is still, by and large, written by men, about men’s accomplishments. So where does my female image fit in Alabama’s twisted route to where we are today?

I found some excellent books that examine those things, fascinating reading, urgent stories that also made me think. What do I have to add, as a novelist, a writer of fiction? How do I speak of all that I am feeling and thinking, in a way that encompasses everything I’ve learned?




Written by Lynne Olson

I find a story, a simple story of one person, that I want to examine and explore. I think I have found it, and indeed, not just the story of one woman, but three.

I also found a bookstore, one located in Montgomery, a wonderful source for books about Alabama and Alabamians, that has been of inestimable value.
Emails back and forth to Cheryl Upchurch, the owner, with her husband, of Capitol Book & News on Fairview Avenue. Please drop by of you’re ever in Montgomery. “Cheryl, I can’t find this book anywhere, it may be out of print, can you help?” Cheryl writes back, having contacted the author, to tell me yes, or no, or she can get it, should she order and ship it? She recommends other books that might help. She waits until my payday. “Cheryl, I need to know more about Mary Stanton, the author of From Selma to Sorrow, and all I can find is about another Mary Stanton who apparently writes YA fantasy. Can you help me find the right Mary?”

And this is how it begins. A burning desire to see, really see, in my head, these women and their lives and the story I need to tell, because it will be my story too. And while it burns in my gut, while I feel it tingling, itching, forming, shaping, moving from the back to the forefront of my consciousness, that is when it is born, and lives. While it burns.

Bywater Books/Women's week in P Town

Join us for book signings, a wine and cheese party, and an event with comedian/author Kate Clinton on Saturday, October 17, at the Paramount Showroom in the Crown and Anchor. From 10:30 am till noon, we'll have a lively discussion of our history, called Herstory/Yourstory.

I am so proud to announce the release os Beside Myself, a memoir written by Sandy Moore. It is a book about Moore's childhood, growing up on a cotton farm in Frost, Texas. Using the voice and perspective of the little girl, Moore gives us a remarkable look at a time and place, a community of people, of her family. Her obvious love of the land, her family, the animals, and the people of Frost shine. The book also contains photos and drawings by the author.
It is funny, original, insightful, taking the reader to a magical time of being a child. The stories are at times both hilarious and moving.
http://www.amazon.com/Beside-Myself-Sandy-Moore/dp/1448635063/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249893591&sr=1-3

Family

Family
Posted at 06:59 AM on May 15, 2007

You know, this past week has been amazing, and in many ways, life altering. I want to tell everything that happened, to leave nothing out, but as I sit here, back at home after the literary conference in New Orleans at which my novel Miss McGhee was launched, I find myself thinking of very personal things.

There's a page of acknowledgements in the book. I wrote it and rewrote it many times, for fun, for inspiration, over the years. It was like writing your acceptance speech for the Academy Awards before you ever land an acting role. It was a way to keep myself motivated.

Sometimes I began it this way: "It takes a village to raise an idiot."

Or there was the version that didn't really thank anyone at all, but in a back-handed way, sneered at those who never supported or believed in me.

Then there was the secret version, the one I never committed to paper, in which I thanked my family. The one I knew I'd never put in any book I wrote, because I didn't really believe my family would ever accept or appreciate what I write, because I write about lesbians.

So here's what happened: I met some amazing people, writers I admired, and signed my book and gave it to them. I sat in some wonderful workshops, listened to some pretty smart people talk about writing and craft; I gave a reading from my novel to a room full of people who laughed and applauded. I sat on a panel with three other writers and had a very interesting discussion.

I also had several meetings with my publisher and editor from Bywater Books, and really came to know them as people rather than scary, power-wielding types who hold my writing career in their hands to play with like a toy. And this is what I learned.

Kelly Smith and Marianne K. Martin are very smart, very concerned, and very, very good at what they do. They are committed to finding and publishing the best work in this segment of the publishing industry, books by and for lesbian women.

We talked at length about what I did wrong and what I did right with Miss McGhee, and even sat and went page by page through the editing decisions that were made and told me why and how they made those decisions. They taught me to look at my work differently and to do some of that editing myself. It was an intensive seminar with professionals who want to help make me better at my craft. I don't know of any other publisher that would do that. Most would probably say, your first book took too much work, so go away and get better before you submit anything again. Instead, Kelly Smith, who I have to believe is a brilliant editor, patiently explained what she did with my manuscript and exactly how she improved it and made it into a book.

Then, Bywater spent a couple of hours of time that is limited and precious at these events to listen to me tell the story of my next novel, then they told me they are accepting it!

I'm exhausted, but elated. Home, but still stuck back there reliving everything that happened.

Now here's the good part. I forgot to call my mother on Mother's Day. I was too excited, nervous, too caught up in what was happening. I lay in bed late Sunday night, and thought about that acknowlegments page, in which I did not mention the name of any family member, and I thought about those to whom I owe the most.

I called my mom very early Monday morning, told her all about the conference and the book, and she was so happy for me. My mother said she was going to have someone sit and read every word of the book to her. (My mother is virtually blind, distinguishing light and dark, some color, but is long past the point where she could read the book herself or even see my name on the cover.)

I hung up the phone, and my partner Sandy said, you want to go see your mom, don't you. I took a deep breath.

I thought, in a moment of clarity and courage very rare in my life, (through which I usually muddle by keeping silent about what matters most, hoping for good things but not expecting them, and by dodging important issues because I don't give anyone enough credit to understand what I need them to see) that my mother is proud because I wrote a book, but she has no idea of the subject matter. If anyone is going to tell her what it's about, it should be me.

I had chickened out over the years, and when anyone in my family asked what I was writing about, I told them it was a novel about the civil rights movement. It is, but it is also about two women who fall in love. It is a novel about what I know best, living in fear.

Folks, my mother is a champ. I took my book and put it into her hands and she held it up to her face. I read the title and my name for her and told her what it looked like. Then I sat down and read it to her. I told her the whole story. I read the inscription I'd written to her.

Ladies and gentlemen, I cried through the whole thing. My mother hugged me, and said she was proud of me. That she'd always been proud of me.

One by one, my sisters, my brother, and my nieces gathered as the word spread. They all looked at the book and hugged me, squealed and exclaimed. They promised to buy many copies, so it's destined to be a best seller.

They all were so pleased and happy. I sat there feeling like the biggest idiot in the world.

It's the best Mother's Day I've ever had.