FROM HERMIT TO NON-FICTION WRITER

I’ve become a writing hermit. My publisher and writer friends urge me to join twitter. I don’t because I don’t want to devote time to tweeting when I could be writing. I don’t keep up with my FaceBook page, and my blog has about four posts a year. I’ve virtually stopped reading non-fiction. I have a life outside of writing. My wife and I travel, cook, go to plays and museums, etc. But in my professional life, I just write.

So when Tim Hallinan invited me to be a contributor for a collection he was putting together on how to plot a book, I thought to myself, if I I don’t read non-fiction because I don’t want to lose another chunk of time, why would I lose an even bigger chunk writing it? But it’s Tim Hallinan, one of my favorite authors, and he did all the work. All I had to do was write a small piece about my plotting (or lack thereof).

It turned out to be surprisingly refreshing task. But what was more surprising was I enjoyed reading the contributions of the other twenty writers. That’s when I realized I had become a hermit. So now the book is out, and I hope some writers will be helped by it and that it sells enough copies for Tim to recoup the time and money he put into the project. And I’m glad I did it because I learned a lot from the other contributors and enjoyed both the reading and the writing. Will I start doing daily blogs? Probably not, but I’ll try to get out of the cave more often.

Here’s a description of the book by Tim Hallinan:

MAKING STORY: TWENTY-ONE WRITERS ON HOW THEY PLOT

A bunch of fine crime writers who, among them, have written more than 100 novels, talk about their plotting process.  Following each essay there's a brief excerpt from a book by that writer and, at the end, a round table discussion about basic issues/challenges.  The writers are Brett Battles, Cara Black, Lisa
Brackmann, Rachel Brady, Rebecca Cantrell, Jeffrey Cohen, Meredith Cole, Bill Crider, Jeremy Duns, Leighton Gage, Gar Anthony Haywood, Wendy Hornsby, Debbi Mack, Mike Orenduff, Stephen Jay Schwartz, Zoe Sharp,Jeffrey Siger, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Kelli Stanley, Michael Stanley, and I.
I really think it's a good resource, even if I did edit it, and it's cheap, too.  It's at http://amzn.to/OmB1zO.

My Guest today is the fabulous Chris Redding talking about two of my favorite things cooking and writing.

        

            I like to cook. I love to eat. I married a man who loves to cook and likes to eat. We have two teen sons, so you can guess that there is a lot of food consumed in my house

            And cooked. I’m kind of amused by this “clean eating” movement. It’s a great idea, but for me it’s just called eating. When the kids were younger I used the occasional packaged rice or a can of soup in something. Most of the time they didn’t like it. My older son loves steamed rice. The kind you get from the Chinese restaurant. He’d eat a bowl of that all by itself.

            A few years ago, I decided to cut out all of those products completely. I make things of my own like enchilada sauce or even taco seasoning.

            The upshot of this is we have started our own binder of recipes. Our family cookbook you might want to call it. When each son moves out, he will get a copy of it. And, yes, both boys can cook basic stuff. Neither has taken to it, but I wasn’t a fan of cooking at that age either. In college I lived on boxed mac and cheese, Hamburger Helper and pizza from where I worked.

            I didn’t really start cooking until I got married.

            I find cooking to be a lot like writing.

            You have ingredients which are your character and your plot. You have to cook them, or in the case of a book, make those ingredients do what you want for the story. I usually finish a draft, then let it sit. This is the meat resting after it’s cooked and before you cut it. The revision process is the putting more salt or pepper if the dish needs it.

            Now, that I have you all hungry, I’m going to share a recipe. This is an appetizer, great for a party. Any  person whose house I have brought this too, asks for me to bring it the next time.

           

Cheese Puff Appetizers

Ingredients:

2C shredded cheddar cheese

2C shredded low fat cheese

1 cup butter melted

2 C all purpose flour

2 dashes any hot sauce, any heat level

1 jar pitted green olives

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease a cookie sheet

In a small bowl, mix together cheeses, butter, flour, and Worcestershire sauce. Knead the dough. Pinch the dough into small balls, flatten them in the palm of your hand, then wrap an olive in the dough. Arrange the wrapped olives on the cookie sheet.

Bake for 15 minutes or slightly brown.

You can use all regular fat cheese, but the texture is better with some lower fat cheese because of the moisture content. I found the olives from the olive bar stay too wet to use for this. A substitute if you don’t like olives would be a jalapeno pepper, but I’d cut down on the hot sauce then.

Bio:

Chris Redding lives in New Jersey with her husband, two sons, one dog and three rabbits. She graduated from  Penn State with a degree in journalism. She teaches online writing workshops and a creative writing course for a local continuing education organization. When she isn’t writing or teaching, she works part time for her local hospital.

Buy Links to Blonde Demolition:

Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/7olwvhs

Blurb:

You just can't hide from the past...

Mallory Sage lives in a small, idyllic town where nothing ever happens. Just the kind of life she has always wanted. No one, not even her fellow volunteer firefighters, knows about her past life as an agent for Homeland Security.

Former partner and lover, Trey McCrane, comes back into Mallory's life. He believes they made a great team once, and that they can do so again. Besides, they don't have much choice. Paul Stanley, a twisted killer and their old nemesis, is back.

Framed for a bombing and drawn together by necessity, Mallory and Trey go on the run and must learn to trust each other again―if they hope to survive. But Mallory has been hiding another secret, one that could destroy their relationship. And time is running out.

Amazon in print: http://tinyurl.com/87qdaam

Chris Redding Links:

www.chrisreddingauthor.com

http://chrisredddingauthor@blogspot.com

www.facebook.com/chrisreddingauthor

www.twitter.com/chrisredding

An Exciting New Mystery

                My first thought after reading L. H. Thomson’s Quinn Checks In was I hope he doesn’t check out. This is the first in a promised series, and I’m looking forward to the next one. The Quinn of the title is Liam, a guy whose talent for copying paintings by other artists landed him in prison for art forgery. Naturally, I liked him instantly since the protagonist in my books is also a forger, but of ancient pottery rather than modern art.

                The similarity ends there. Liam is a boxer, a talent that is of more use to him in his new career as an insurance investigator than it was when he was copying canvasses. He’s a freelancer, paid on commission based on how much he saves the company, so he’s happy to draw the assignment of looking into the theft of a Vermeer insured for ten million. The assignment looks even better when he meets the museum’s director, the stunning Alison Pace, but not so good when he encounters the shady owner of the building next to the museum.

                Liam Quinn is an engaging character, witty, brash and self-deprecating at the same time, a younger hipper Spenser. Well, they’re both Irish, at least part, but Liam lives in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philly, an area which he quips, “is about as glamorous as the name sounds.” He’s embarrassed that he let his family down by going to prison, and he’s on the path to redemption. So who can begrudge him a little fun as he travels that path?

                A solid story, witty dialog, fist fights, beautiful women, art, stolen beer kegs, a mob connection and a surprise ending. What could be better? Well, it could be available in paper. I’m not of fan of reading on screen, but for Liam Quinn, I’ll make an exception. This is a terrific mystery with just the right balance of plot, wit, action and backstory.

 y

The Pot Thief Who Studied D. H. Lawrence, CH 1

Opportunity didn’t bother to knock. It just walked into my shop in the guise of a man with a broad face and pronounced epicanthic eye folds.

Of course I didn’t recognize him as opportunity. Nor did I think he was a customer. In the twenty years I’ve been in business, I’ve never had an Indian buy a pot.

He made no eye contact as he turned to the first piece of merchandise, an ancient olla from Santo Domingo. He studied it for perhaps thirty seconds. His movement to the next pot was so contained it seemed as though he was still and I was the one moving. Like when a boat moves away from a dock, something I never experience in Albuquerque.

I watched him survey the merchandise in this fashion for a few minutes then went back to The Wooing of Malkatoon by Lew Wallace, a book so bad I couldn’t put it down.

When my visitor finally approached the counter, I marked my place in the book and studied him. The heavy-lidded eyes looked weary, his face impassive. His sparse facial hair was unshaven. His worn jeans and stained chambray shirt gave him the look of someone who might ask you for spare change.

And yet… there was another layer, a sort of pentimento. What could be read as resignation might also be strength. Someone comfortable enough in his skin that he feels no need to demonstrate it to others. Did his countenance reflect five hundred years of white dominance or five centuries of quiet resistance?

He stopped four feet from me. His hooded eyes seemed to take in the entire room without focusing on anything specific.

“You don’t have any pots from my people.”

His sibilant words drifted across my eardrums like tumbleweeds over dry sand.

“Picuris?”

“Taos,” he said. “How you know?”

He probably counted Picuris as a correct answer because Taos and Picuris are the only two places that speak the northern Tiwa language. I thought I heard the accent. The southern version is spoken in the two pueblos closest to Albuquerque - Sandia and Isleta. A variety of Tiwa was also spoken in Texas, where it was spelled Tigua. The pueblo there – also on the Rio Grande – was named like the one near Albuquerque but spelled with a ‘Y’ in the little village of Ysleta, long ago swallowed up by the El Paso metropolis.

But my fascination with Taos stems not from their language but from their traditional pottery. It was unlike any produced in the other pueblos of New Mexico. Their utilitarian style made Taos pottery less popular with collectors than the elaborate polychrome works of San Juan or the black-on-blacks of San Ildefonso.

The reason I had no pots from Taos wasn’t a matter of taste. I specialize in antique pieces, and old pots from Taos are rare because they were often purchased by local Hispanics and Anglos for everyday use which led to their eventually being broken or discarded. Very few people collected them.

When I explained this to my visitor, he nodded.

There was a long silence. I knew to avoid small talk. I looked outside to the deserted sidewalk. Too late in the year for skiers, too early for summer tourists.

“I can get you three Taos pots from the 1920s,” he finally said, eyes looking through me.

I told him I was interested.

“First you have to get an old one for me,” he said.

The offer to get me three pieces if I got him one seemed odd. I asked how I could get an old Taos pot for him.

He finally looked me in the eyes. “You’ll have to steal it.”

Maybe he wasn’t opportunity personified. Maybe he was temptation.

Signings for


The Pot Thief Who Studied D. H. Lawrence
(The 5th in the series)

Mon, June 25, 1:00 pm       Books, Etc., Ruidoso

Wed, June 27, 6:00 pm  Collected Works, Santa Fe

Fri, June 29, 2:00                Moby Dickens, Taos

 Official Debut

Saturday   June 30   Noon to Four

The Gruet Winery

8400 Pan American Freeway NE, Albuquerque

Great Food and Drink Will be Plentiful and Free

Signed books are also available from the author, all postage paid. Email: ThePotThief@gmail.com

Pot Thief Tour 2010 - Days 43-44

The next-to-last signing was at Bookworks in Albuquerque, a great independent bookstore in the North Valley next to a Flying Star Café, a popular chain in the Duke City. I showed up early to check in and told the staff I’d be next door eating dinner and would be back by the start of the 7 PM event.

Halfway through my meal, a lady approached me hesitantly and thrust out a copy of one of my books. “I’m terribly sorry to interrupt your meal,” she said, “but the people next door told me you were here. Would you sign this copy of your book I just bought?”

Of course I did so and thanked her for buying it. The people at nearby tables heard this exchange, and I think a few of them showed up at the event. This is the sort of personal touch you get only at Indie stores.

The final event was at Tome on the Range in Las Vegas (the one in New Mexico), another Indie store in the home of New Mexico Highlands University. The manager, Michael, introduced me, and it was obvious from his description of my books that he had read them. I did a talk and a reading. Then there were cookies made by a woman from El Salvador whose baked goods have made her an important part of the community.

We spent the next day in Carlsbad where we descended 750 feet below the surface of the earth to do the hour-and-a-half walk around the Big Room of Carlsbad Caverns. We had intended to stick around for the bat flight at sundown when the evening sky is darkened by the thousands of bats emerging to feed. No wonder there are no mosquitoes in Carlsbad. But I was tired after the walk and perhaps also feeling the effects of too many days on the road, so we made an early night of it.

Today I stopped in to say hello to Julie at Front Street Books in Alpine, Texas because she had ordered some books a couple of weeks ago during the tour, and I wanted to say thanks. Also, I like her and her store, and Alpine was a convenient stopover. To my surprise, she wanted more books, and I left the last ones I had with her on consignment. I guess that marks the true end of the Pot Thief Tour for 2010. I’ll post one more time – a summary of the whole thing - after I get home and have time to organize my thoughts.

Pot Thief Tour 2010 - Days 36-39

We spent four days in Las Vegas, Nevada for the annual Public Safety Writers Association Conference. It was great fun because we knew most of the attendees from last year. I was on a panel dealing with promoting books despite the fact that I know little about the topic. That is part of the charm of the conference - beginners and pros share the stage. On my panel, Marilyn Meredith and Sunny Frazier were the pros.

We had a big-time writer as the keynote speaker. Simon Wood told us how to create suspense. I try to avoid suspense, so I didn’t find his talk useful. I did find it interesting, however. He is a bright and engaging guy.

If I were to rate the conference as a novel, I would say it was thin on plot, had a good setting, and great characters.

My favorite presentation was by Professor Lai Orenduff who talked about understanding visual images and how that applies to book covers. I confess to some bias, but the presentation was riveting.

The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy won first prize in Fiction Book category of the PSWA annual writing contest.

I managed not to lose a cent in the casino by using the foolproof method of not playing.