Old Houses

In the sequel to The World Undone, someone is going to buy an old house and renovate it, and that's all I will say about why I have a sudden interest in old houses.

My interest was sparked by the house you see above. In real life, this place is in Port Austin, MI. The property was bought by Charles Learned in the mid-1800s with money he made as a contractor involved with the Erie Canal. After making more money as a lumber baron and dairy farmer, he and his wife bought the house, enlarging and updating it in the 2nd Empire style. In recent times, it was a lovely restaurant/bed & breakfast, and on my first visit to the Thumb, Jerry and I had dinner there.

Sadly, something went wrong. Last summer I was dismayed to see the place had been deserted. The woodwork is deteriorating, the awing is torn, the garden is overrun with weeds. I wish I could buy the place and fix it up, but reasonably priced as it is, that's not going to happen. So I'm doing the next best thing: I'll have one of my characters do it.

Now comes the fun part. I've spent an inordinate amount of time in the past few weeks learning about 2nd Empire construction, the order of events for renovating a house, how to refinish a bathtub, and what sort of treasures might lie beneath someone's unfortunate ideas for modernizing an old home. Many thanks to my friends, Noni & Bill, for their advice and generosity in sharing the stories of their own experiences.

All I can say is if I'm this invested in the fantasy of renovating a house I will never actually own, I can only imagine how obsessed I would be if I were actually putting money into it and planning to live in it. Then again, given the intensity of writing a novel, I guess I will be living in it for the next year or two.

Kirkus Review

My Kirkus Review came through last week. It's a wonderful review, not only because I received some nice praise, but also because I learned a few things.
It's nice to read, "Driver-Thiel's well-crafted sentences unfold like a tight mystery..."
And I wish I'd thought of, "An inviting page-turner about turning the page on the past." Wow. Great line!
Because the review was so well-crafted, I also picked up on some subtler comments. There was a reference made to "empathizing with such a heartless character." Shades of my last blog post. I'd better start making my characters more likable. A few phrases quoted from the book now sound really clunky to me. I'm hoping that's a case of familiarity breeding contempt, but I worry.
Finally, one of the biggest frustrations for me as an author was coming up with a one-paragraph synopsis after I'd finished writing a 76,000-word story. My reviewer summed up the story, without giving anything vital away, in graceful prose that reads so effortlessly one assumes (probably falsely) that he/she dashed it off in a spare half-hour between a morning meeting and power lunch. While it's humbling to consider the reviewer's writing skills a good deal stronger than mine, it makes me appreciate the compliments all the more and look carefully between the lines for things I need to improve.
To read the complete review, visit: www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/mary-driver-thiel/the-world-undone/

Danny the Loser

Some time ago, I wrote a short story about a guy named Danny, a guy who goes to his 40th high school reunion mostly to see who else made as big a mess of life as he has. Danny's divorced, out of a job, caught in a quagmire of his own misfortunes. He's at the end of his rope, figuring he might as well off himself. (Just in case I ever publish this story, I'm not telling what happens.)

Danny is more of a loser than he'll ever know, poor sod. He's been shredded in my writers' groups and soundly rejected by half a dozen lit magazines. Even my agent spurned him. For the longest time, I couldn't understand why no one wants anything to do with Danny or the world he rode in on.
Well, here it it: he's a loser. Danny sits around taking all the shit life throws at him and never does anything more than whine about it.

He might be very much like more than a few people in real life, but he's not the material of real fiction. I wanted readers to like Danny, or at least sympathize with his plight. Instead, they hated him. One person even called him a "fucktard."

I still like Danny, in spite of his faults, and someday I'll figure out how to tell his story. For now, however, I've learned that fiction needs to be about people who do things, who face their demons, who suck up their mistakes and move forward. It seems that lesson also applied to writing.

Word Mayhem

Thank you to everyone who has come to my author events and bought The World Undone. One of the most gratifying--and terrifying--factors has been the number of people who have contacted me to say, "Read the book in three days! Loved it! When's the next one?"

Yeah, I'm working on that, as you can see from the state of my desk above. (And I teach organizational skills to kids?!?)

I'd forgotten how totally chaotic a first draft is--wait, amend that--how totally chaotic it is trying to come up with a first draft. My characters are amorphous, my plot threads are a hopelessly tangled web, and there are days (this being one of them) when nothing I write resembles standard English. Diversions abound.

Like blogging about the problem instead of working on it. So I return now to my version of what Chuck Wendig describes as "a steaming shit wagon of inelegant word murder." Wish me luck.

UW Madison Writers' Institute

I'm just back from a wonderful weekend at the University of Wisconsin Writers' Institute Conference. Laurie Sheer and her crew did a fabulous job putting together a great, well-organized weekend. The workshops and panel discussions were excellent, the hotel was lovely, and Madison is a fun place. I highly recommend this conference for writers at all levels.
Special shout outs to my new BFFs: Sally, Sola, and Connie!

Author Event

How cool is it that my book is in the window of Women & Children First Book Store!

Tomorrow, I will be doing a reading there at 4:30, which should be really fun. W&C is my new favorite book store. They have had my book on display for over a month, they've promoted my signing event on their website and in their calendar, and the staff have all been helpful and enthusiastic. I'm looking forward to meeting them in person.

It's quite interesting to see how various venues react to a new author, particularly a self-published one.
We all know that changes in the industry have happened very rapidly over the past couple of years, and there is still a lot of evolution (and revolution) going on. Some bookstores have embraced the changes, while others continue to cling to the old ways, automatically giving indie published books short shrift. That strikes me as ironic, since the indie book stores should be all about NOT letting the big guys, tradition, and status quo have the upper hand. Would it make sense to say an indie book store has poorer quality books because they aren't run by Barnes and Noble or Amazon?

In any case, Women & Children is obviously a place of vision and dedication to writers and readers. Let's all support this store.

The Dog Ate My Homework

Okay, I can't really blame Woki. Maybe it's spring fever. Though given the current weather, that's not likely. Whatever the cause, I've got unfinished writing projects up the wazoo, and I just spent the last hour googling restaurant possibilities for dinner Friday night. My thoughts drift to warm climates--Florida, Jamaica, the Mediterranean. This sluggishness must be the fault of the weather. I'm too damn cold and miserable to write. The Muse is frozen solid. Why didn't I book a vacation to get the hell out of here? Oh, yeah, because I have too many projects that need to get done over Spring Break. Vicious circle.