Archive for December 2013

Sadly, It's been a Slow Year by Jacqueline Luckett

6:36 PM Add Comment

My reading list is very different from years past. Typically, it’s filled with fiction and a sprinkle of non-fiction books—all hardback and paperback.

Three things changed this year: I focused on books on writing craft, I read several books on my Ipad, and, since I spent a lot of time, in my car I “read” audio books (unabridged versions).

Here’s a sampling. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Audio Books
Chitra Banerjee divurakuni
The Palace of Illusion

Isabelle Allende
Island Beneath the Sea

Walter Mosley
The Fortunate Son

Dennis Lehane
Moonlight Mile


Hardback/Paperback
Harlen Coben
Live Wire

Luis Alberto Urrea
The Hummingbird’s Daughter

Ebooks
S.J. Watson
Before I Go to Sleep

Matthew Quick
Silver Linings Playbook

Jacqueline Luckett is the author of two novels: Passing Love and Searching for Tina Turner. She's currently working on her third novel, and though she resists sharing both the topic and the title, she admits that it will be as much fun as her first two books.

THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR

7:22 PM Add Comment

by Barbara Claypole White


How are you celebrating New Year’s Eve this year? I’ll be sipping champagne, enjoying a roaring fire with friends…and ignoring the loop-the-loops in my stomach. December 31, 2013 is release day for me, which means I get to kiss goodbye to THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR and wave my book baby off into the big wide world of one-star bashings and five-star raves. And, well, I’m having a little separation anxiety.
Maybe I never learned to share in the sandbox, but I want to hold THE IN-BETWEEN HOURclose and say, “Back off, people, this one’s mine.” You see, writing THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR helped me through a difficult moment in my personal life. That moment is long gone, but something about the journey of my quirky, messed-up characters still feels like a locket worn close to my heart.
The inspiration for everything I write comes from being the mother of a brilliant son who has battled obsessive-compulsive disorder for most of his life. OCD frames my world, even though it has never held back my son and has never defined him. (What can I say, the British war mentality flows in his genes.) But while I was working on THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR, he slipped into a dark place, and my mind stuck on the little boy who cried on my lap saying, “Make it stop, Mommy. Make it stop.”
As I watched him claw his way out, my son’s struggles reminded me that even in the darkest moments of anxiety and fear, there’s always hope. THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR is a story of hope.
The setting is my corner of the North Carolina forest. The land surrounding our home speaks to me. It echoes with history, with real-life stories from the past: there’s an old path worn smooth by Native American moccasins, a family burial plot, and a tumbled down homestead that’s surrounded by daffodils every spring. This is a place of memories, of hidden beauty, of deep shade and dancing light.
My favorite time in our forest is that magical hour at the close of day called the gloaming. An in-between time—neither day nor night—this is when the birds call each other home, the shadows grow long, and the sinking sun hits the treetops. For me, that golden light flickering between the leaves epitomizes hope, and it’s a recurring motif in the novel.
THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR is a story of light shining through the trees. My characters come from two broken families each battling unwanted memories and invisible disabilities—severe grief and clinical depression. Yet their coming together brings healing. Their story gives hope for a better tomorrow and isn’t that what we all wish for on New Year’s Eve?
In celebration of THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR’s release, I will be giving away one signed copy (North America residents only). To enter, just leave a comment below.
Happy, happy 2014, everyone!
 
Barbara Claypole White is the award-winning author of THE UNFINISHED GARDEN, a love story about grief, OCD, and dirt. THE IN-BETWEEN HOUR is her second novel. Visit her at barbaraclaypolewhite.com, or follow her on Facebook or Twitter.


Writing With a Beginner's Mind

6:38 AM Add Comment


This Christmas I spent far too much of my time with scraps of fabric and my sewing machine, constructing flannel gift bags.  I'm not a seamstress.  Not one inch of my ego cares about being considered one.  Thus, I think, I found myself released to enjoy the activity as a child does.  

That's how I once felt about writing.  That's how I feel when I paint, or draw, or sing out loud to the radio.  Because it's not how I define myself, not how I accumulate credit in the part of myself that's keeping track of my so-called life, I can enter it with an open heart.

My yoga teacher says everyone should, each class, enter with a 'beginner's mind."

This is my hope for my writing in the year 2014.  That I can somehow cast off all the expectations I've created for my words, and simply try to approach my work as getting to the heart of what it is I'm needing to express.  When we focus on that bit that's slightly elusive, that shimmering fish just below the surface, that's when we get into the flow.  When we tell the worry-wart on our left shoulder and the inner critic on the right to please pack up their things and depart for another location, that's when we can find our way back into the reason we, as writers, fell in love with the craft in the first place.

So this is what I wish, for myself and all of you out there, trying to create.  Become a beginner each day.  Focus only on getting it right, or a little more right.  Or, as Leonard Cohen puts it:

Forget your perfect offering.
There's a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in."


Sheila Curran is the author of Everyone She Loved, about a woman’s efforts to protect her own family even after her own expiration date has come and gone.  Her first book, Diana Lively is Falling Down, was a romantic comedy Jodi Picoult called warm, funny, inventive and original and Booklist called ‘a gem.’
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