Let's Fall in Love

Though it's not yet up on Amazon or its own website, OakTara has listed the contributors and posted the cover of one of its two new collections of real-life love stories. OakTara claims the stories in Falling in Love With You are "The best real-life falling-in-love stories, guaranteed to make you smile and say, “Ahh…”

I'm delighted that my tale, "Good Bettor, Best," is included in this collection, even though my late husband, Ken Wilson, would grin at a cover photo of a couple leaping into the air. Ken claimed not to leap, with the exception of to an occasional conclusion. He prided himself, however, on his stylish saunter! Here's the list of contributors to Falling in Love With You: http://oaktara.com/anthologies

Not only do I love autumn for its crisp cool air and the long-awaited ripening of the apples on my trees, I also appreciate the book publishers who issue new tomes in this season, all ready for holiday sales. So I'm thrilled that I've got several stories coming out within this autumn in a dozen new anthologies:

Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Power of Positive, with "Eighty-Five Percent."
Not Your Mother's Book: On Being a Woman, with "Up Front" and "Egged On."
Whispering Angel's The Littlest Blessing, with "Light of My Life."
Seal Press, Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion, with "Elephants Never Forget."
Silver Boomer, On Our Own: Widowhood for Smarties, with "All of His Heroes."
Silver Boomer, A Quilt of Holidays, with "Easter Bloomers."
Jonna Ivin, Loving for Crumbs, with "Needs."
Tending Your Inner Garden, Summer, with "Maybe Tuesday Will Be My Good News Day." Hidden Thoughts Press, It's Weighing on Your Mind, with "Wheels and Deals."
God Makes Lemonade II, with Santo Domingo Sunrise
Dream of Things, Travel, with "Once in a Lifetime."
Hidden Brook Press, Chocolate Fixes Anything: A Loving Tribute to Mothers and Grandmothers, with "Special Yarn Blossoms.

 For Ken, a man who figured the odds and kept count...right now there's 58 anthologies between the "A" and "Z" bookends where I keep my contributor's copies. With this additional dozen, by the end of the 2012 there should be at least 70!  What's the odds on that, I'd have asked Ken. I can picture him shaking his head in amazement from The Great Beyond, and giving me his standard response..."At least one in three."

Baby...you're still remembered. Odds are that people everywhere will continue reading about you:  "Eighty-Five Percent," "All of His Heroes," "Wheels and Deals," as well as "Good Bettor, Best!" are all about you.



 

Do The Write Thing...My First Time

In 2000, just a few days before I married my late husband, Ken Wilson, I'd picked up a copy of Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul at an international conference on self-esteem in San Francisco. I'd presented on my work with adolescents in Arkansas, Belize, and Seychelles. Maybe twenty people dropped by, mostly to ask whether I  knew of any cheap hotels for backpack travelers in the tropical paradises where I'd worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer. A few wanted to know what the folks in Arkansas really thought of Bill Clinton, who seemed to be fending off endless scandals related to his way with women.

Thousands crowded into the room next door to hear Jack Canfield, one of the founders of the popular Chicken Soup anthology series. My soon-to-be spouse kept tilting his head towards the partition dividing our group from the revelers next door. After I concluded my remarks, Ken and I joined the throngs waiting for Canfield to sign one of his books. I selected the pet book because Ken loved Akitas.

Ken read the book, and commented on how heartwarming the stories were. I'd never read any of these books. They'd become popular during '90s, the decade I'd lived overseas.

Not long after we retired to Northeast Washington, one winter afternoon I decided not to risk the icy roads to drive to the Colville library to pick up something to cheer me up. I'd been sneezing and sniffling, and sought a little sunshine. My eye fell on the Chicken Soup book.

Coincidentally, I'd made homemade chicken soup that afternoon, and while Ken and I spooned some up at supper I observed that I'd been reading this book.

"You know what? I think I can write something for that series," I announced, full of bluster.

"Go for it," my amiable hubby responded. "I double dog dare you."

Ken Wilson was no bluffer. He meant business. So I located the Chicken Soup for the Soul website, and saw a call for stories about brothers and sisters. That week I wrote "Easter Bloomers," about my little brother when we were kids over half a century earlier. Months later I got a letter from the editors that my story had survived the selection process, accompanied by a contract. The book came out in September, 2007, Chicken Soup for the Soul Celebrating Brothers and Sisters: Funnies and Favorites About Growing Up and Being Grown Up. Dahlynn and Ken McKowen were the co-editors of this particular title.

Later I learned about the WOW Principles newsletter that their company, Publishing Syndicate, issued monthly for free, and I subscribed. It was always full of tips about how to write for anthologies. It's archived on the Publishing Syndicate website, dozens of copies of back issues.

Subsequently I became an in-house editor for Ken and Dahlynn, and now a co-creator for some of the titles in their new series, Not Your Mother's Book. A couple of years ago I became their first featured guest editor. Yesterday I drafted my fourth contribution to WOW Principles, "So What About Once Upon a Time," which will be published in the September issue.

It's been only five years since that first story of mine appeared in an anthology. I now have 57 anthologies between and A and Z bookends atop my entertainment center. There's another dozen or more to be published in the next several months, and an additional eight or ten pending "maybes."

When people ask me where I get my ideas or how I find time to write, I think of Henry Miller who had 11 commandments for writing. I just have one. Mine is "Don't wait for the muse. Sit down at the keyboard and start poking keys. The muse has been wondering where you were."

Don't wait. Start writing your true story now for Not Your Mother's Book: My First Time.

http://publishingsyndicate.com/publishing_syndicate/submissions/title_descriptions/my_first_time.html

And if you're in need of more prompting, here's Mr. Miller on  how he structures his writing day:
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/22/henry-miller-on-writing/

"Obsession, Instability and Malignant Coincidence"

Once again I've been living in the past, this time the English midlands in the early 19th century. I've skipped half a century, from Dickens to D. H., and am revisiting the world of the young Lawrence of Eastwood and Nottingham, as he struggled to make sense of the world around him. I've been reading John Worthen's D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider. Identifying with Lawrence, I've asked myself how different my life might have turned out to be if I'd never succumbed to the lure of literature, if my family hadn't left rural Oregon to return to Los Angeles, if I'd never continued with my education beyond high school.

I've just emerged from a lost weekend, too debilitated with pain from degenerative discs in my neck to clean house, weed the yard, attend to editing obligations. All I've managed is to sleep, eat and read. Consequently I've allowed myself to carry this book from room to room as I've fed the dogs, let the cats in and out, prepared shrimp creole and washed up after. My plans went awry, in a way I rarely allow them to do. I'd good intentions, but no. Instead I read, dozed on the sofa in the family room, read some more, dozed again, ate, read, dozed, read...and the weekend disappeared.

Today I'm anticipating a call soon from a local physical therapy department. I hope to learn some exercises to chase some of this pain away. In the meantime, I'm inspired by Lawrence's perseverance in tending to his writing and revising. Never mind that he spent a good deal of his life incapacitated by assorted ailments attributed to what, in those days, was called "a weak chest." Never mind that his truces with the women in his life never were long-lasting. Never mind that he teetered always on the brink of poverty. Lawrence took care of priorities: he wrote.

So today I'll revisit that neglected "to do" list, achy neck or no. Then tonight I'll finish the Lawrence biography.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring? I do...I've preordered for my Kindle Ruth Rendell's new psychological mystery, The St. Zita Society, to be released tomorrow. The cover contains a blurb from Stephen King, "Nobody surpasses Ruth Rendell when it comes to stories of obsession, instability and malignant coincidence."

I've been reading Rendell's novels since 1975. When I recommend her to other mystery fans, I've frequently received negative feedback.

"Nobody behaves like her characters," many claim. "Her plots and characters simply are unbelievable."

No? Having just reread Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, not-so-loosely based on the author's early romantic attachments, I'm not so convinced. That novel reflects those very qualities that King attributes to Rendell. Look at the life of its protagonist, Paul Morel. Obsession? Instability? Malignant coincidence? Think of his mother, his indecision when it comes to the relationship with Miriam, and lastly...meeting Clara, all, of course, mirroring actual events of Lawrence's life.

Perhaps some themes indeed are universal...and timeless.

What a Difference a Day Makes!

Late last summer I wrote a story, "Arrested Development,"  for a proposed Pinchback Press book, Caught: True CrimeTales of Scamming, Scheming and Sliding By.. Earlier this week I received an email from the publishers that the press was closing down. "This is a difficult letter to send," they wrote. "Independent publishing is a costly endeavor and one we can no longer afford to continue in these tough economic times."


I'd been saddened...first, because I'd so much enjoyed Pinchback's earlier effort, Tarnished: True Tales of Innocence Lost, and that it had included my story, "A Pair to Draw To." I'd looked forward to more books in this series. And second, because I didn't believe I'd get this particular effort published anywhere else. I dashed off an email to my writing partner and confidante, lamenting the loss of this venue...and griping that mine was a such a hard-to-place story, and regretting I'd spent so much time on fashioning it. She suggested I could revamp it, give it a happier spin, but I declined. I'd wrestled with this story, tried to tell it honestly, and didn't think I wanted to tamper with it. I'd resigned myself that it would languish forever in what I call my orphanage, the tales I can't find homes for.

Then, this week I received an email from a Canadian publisher, Inkblotter, that a story of mine, "Elephants Never Forget," would appear in its upcoming anthology collection. Though this story already had been accepted for Seal Press's upcoming Hot and Heavy: Fat Girls Dish on Life, Love and Fashion, I'd sent it to this particular publisher that I suspected might have a different readership. The callout had suggested:

Think “Chicken Soup” with an edge. No gentle epiphanies while strolling on the beach or contemplating cloud formations. We’re looking for in-your-face, kick-in-the-teeth lessons learned—the kinds of stories you’d share with your friends over coffee.

I wrote in my last entry that sometimes it's tough to write about the hard stuff. Sometimes it's even tougher to find an anthology that's looking for material that isn't necessarily cheerful or upbeat. So when I read at the close of the email from Inkblotter that it still had room for a few more tales, I remembered "Arrested Development." I decided it just might fit the bill, and immediately mailed it off. Late yesterday afternoon I learned that this story, too, will be published in the new book, A Cup of Joe for Woe.

I've urged writing novice friends before not to despair if a story fails to make it to print right away. Last year I recounted on this blog, in my September 17, 2011 entry, Rejection, Dejection, Perfection! how "The Marvelous Mexican Parsley of West 59th Place" finally got published 21 years after I originally wrote it. I see I have to remind myself to pay heed to my own advice, and to remember that life, and anthology opportunities, are full of second chances.

Remember that old song....who knows what tomorrow may bring?

You Know It Don't Come Easy: Writing the Hard Stuff

For several years I've enjoyed writing about the lighter side of my life...the funny or inspirational incidents, usually involving family members, pets, and friends. But when I started to near the three quarters of a century mark, my own personal diamond jubilee, I reflected on telling those other stories. Go deeper, my inner voice urged.

I started a few years back with "Dreaming as the Summers Die," about the last time I saw my birth mom. "Not suited for our audience," said most of the traditional anthology publishers. When I read the rejections I nearly could feel the distaste, the pulling back, and I envisioned how I'd spoiled some editor's morning. Even a friend or two who read my story suggested I should concentrate on more cheerful topics, and that perhaps I'd better get over something that happened all those decades ago.

But I persevered and resubmitted. I wanted to see this story in print. It finally found a home in Dream of Things' debut anthology collection, Saying Goodbye. An online magazine, The Fertile Source, also printed it, and Five Minutes More picked it up here: http://www.fivemoreminuteswith.com/2011/03/dreaming-as-the-summers-die/ Additionally the story will appear this fall in Joy, Interrupted, from Fat Daddy's Farm. How encouraging to find that not every publisher shies away from more meditative pieces.

I continued with "A Ruffled Mind," about what it was like to be six years old and scared witless by crossing the street or going to the playground. This story appeared this past spring in Anxiety Disorders: True Stories of Survival by Hidden Thoughts Press.

Soon I found that I'd wake up at 2 a.m., wondering how I'd gather the courage to put other intrusive thoughts and feelings on paper. Did I really want anybody to know why I held on to a hopeless love for years and years? Did I really want anybody to know how diminished I felt when my tiny little adoptive mom called me an elephant? What about those feelings of resentment during my late husband's last weeks? Shouldn't I be ashamed? Filled with guilt?

Maybe there's others who've shared those experiences, I decided. So I bit the bullet, and wrote those stories, too. And now they're seeing publication.

"Needs" will appear soon in Jonna Ivin's book, Loving for Crumbs, "Elephants Never Forget" in Virgie Tovar's Seal Press publication, Hot and Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion, and "Wheels and Deals" in Hidden Thoughts Press, It's Weighing on Your Mind.

I don't dwell on the dark side a hundred percent of the time, though. Today I plan to write a story intended to elicit squeals of delight...but, hey,  it don't come easy. 

All Those Years Ago...June 28 and July 1

The kilted laddie above is Pat the Piper, who bills himself as the "Official Piper for the London 2012 Olympics." I left a pound in his bagpipe case in Trafalgar Square a couple of weeks ago...and ever since have been wondering what the old bromide, "He who pays the piper calls the tune," really means. Would Pat have changed his tune from whatever highland ballad he was playing had I suggested he switch to "Rolling in the Deep" instead? Somehow I doubt it. But he gave me a wink and a wave.

Pipes have been on mind today...but not necessarily bagpipes. I've been remembering marrying Ken Wilson a dozen years ago today, where we played a tune from my organist grandfather Jesse Crawford's cassette at the wedding, "Mendelssohn Wedding March." Grandpa during the '20s and '30s recorded for Decca, and played The Mighty Wurlitzer at Radio City Music Hall, the Rainbow Room and even at Wanamaker's in Philadelphia.

Here's a photo of Grandpa Jesse in his heydey...dapper, hey? There's lots more about Grandpa Jesse here, too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Crawford

I've always thought my son, Steve, definitely inherited the brooding Crawford good looks. What do you think? Here's Steve with the Stanley Cup when it made the rounds to the Los Angeles Times last week where Steve is chief copy editor for the Sunday Calendar.

But back to calling tunes and paying pipers. My son mails me cassettes that he records from his huge collection of CDs for my birthdays and for Christmas. This past week, as I turned 75 on June 28, I received several more tapes.

Steve wrote, "Here is the latest batch of birthday tapes: 1965, 1966, 1983, 1984 and 1985. I had thought this would be the end of the series, but it turns out I have most of the records from your 1986 and 1987 birthdays. So I will plug the holes of the half-dozen or so that I lack, and you'll get those next year. That will take you through to when you left for Belize in l987."

The birthday tapes go back to 1955, shortly after Steve's dad and I got married, include my 21st birthday in 1958, when Steve was still a babe in arms, and continue throughout the next several decades. The Christmas tapes highlight certain periods of my life...the years I taught at Jordan, when I first started to work for DPSS, and other memorable experiences.

Fortunately, my son makes these tapes for me out of love...I never could have paid anybody to do it, even if I'd wanted to call the tunes. As it is, Steve consults the Los Angeles radio show charts to pick the songs he then records...and there's always lots of surprises.

Here's a story I wrote a few days before an earlier birthday when I was thinking about Steve and the tapes. This tale originally appeared in Patchwork Path: Treasure Box. 

All Those Years Ago

                                                                            

“I’m talking all about how to give.” --George Harrison

As my birthday neared this year, I wondered what my son would choose this time. What events would he recreate…which of my life’s milestones would he bring into sharp focus through the medium of music? Heaven knows, and Steve, too, how much I need some cheering.

In l964, when I Wanna Hold Your Hand hit American pop charts, Steve was only six, but he listened raptly when I chattered about my high school journalism students dancing the Frug and the Watusi on the Lloyd Thaxton Show, airing from nearby Los Angeles.

Because his dad worked nights, Steve and I had evenings to ourselves. While I corrected homework papers, we listened on the radio to legendary sportscaster Vin Scully call the play-by-play for our beloved Dodgers. Or we strolled to the library to stock up on his favorite Dr. Seuss and Maurice Sendak storybooks.

Now we began to follow rock and roll. We tuned in the dance shows of the day, Shindig, Hullabaloo, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. Steve spent his allowance joining Beatles fan clubs. I heard empathy in his voice as he read to me from the newsletters about children in Kenya and the Philippines that the clubs sponsored for tuition and books.

Sometimes we brought our BLTs and lemonade into the living room, dining while we caught up on the latest scoop. “Listen to what George Harrison’s sister says!” Steve would exclaim, excited at having a personal connection with one of the Fab Four.

In the meantime my students too transitioned from the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean to the British Invasion. “Which side would you take?” I asked Steve, discussing debates on the merits of The Dave Clark Five versus Herman’s Hermits. Steve remained loyal to the mop top Beatles, his “fave raves.”  We lamented not securing tickets to the Hollywood Bowl appearances, and in l966 envied our neighbor who took her sons to the concert at Dodger Stadium.

By 1968, Steve hunkered down at the kitchen counter every Wednesday night as KHJ’s Sam Riddle counted down the Boss 30. He meticulously recorded the hits one by one in his blue notebook. He already had been collecting singles for well over a year. In the meantime, I had changed jobs, so now raced down the 405 towards the Cudahy Department of Public Social Services office, also tuned to KHJ, grooving on the Beatles, the Box Tops, Linda Ronstadt, and even all 7 minutes and 11 seconds of Richard Harris’ MacArthur Park.

“I hear music in my head,” Steve once confided. I asked if he wanted to take piano or guitar lessons. “No,” he confessed, “I just love to listen.”  Over the years his collection stockpiled. He turned from singles to LPs, and then to 8-tracks, cassettes, and finally to CDs. In recent decades he has shared some obscure cuts with Southland Golden Oldies radio stations.

When I joined the Peace Corps in l987, Steve provided me with the first of his special gifts. He transferred to cassette all of the Beatles numbers from his albums. On balmy Saturday mornings in Belize City, I hand-laundered my towels and sheets, listening to Your Mother Should Know and Magical Mystery Tour.

Three years ago on my birthday, the first time capsule arrived. Steve went through his collection and made me a tape of the top songs from fall l967 to spring l968, my first year with DPSS. Now retired in the country, I played the tapes every time I made the seventy mile drive to Spokane. As I listened to The Cowsills, Lulu, and other chart toppers of that era, I felt the years rolling back. Once again I become 30 years old, driving around Los Angeles, waiting for my future to unfold with each song, each mile, each day.

At Christmas, another tape arrived. This time Steve chose my 21^st birthday, just months after he had been born. Until I played my gift tape, I had forgotten carrying infant Steve around the house, boogying to Bobby Darin’s Splish Splash, and two-stepping to Laurie London’s He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.

Shortly thereafter, my son’s dad died. When Steve visited me here, I dragged out a duffle bag of old photos to show him pictures of his father and me in l955, the year we got engaged and married. “You looked so happy,” he said. We had been.

 When I opened my package on my 70^th birthday, memories of 1955 flooded back. Steve had labeled the tape, “Terri’s 18^th Birthday—Plus,” and had recorded “a nice mix of the old music fighting for time with the new rock ‘n roll,” with highlights from that summer and fall.

And sure enough, there it all was, the songs that his dad and I courted to, Roger Williams’ romantic ballad, Autumn Leaves, following Chuck Berry’s Maybelline.  As if it were only yesterday, I remember getting seasick on the Catalina ferry as we sailed back from our Avalon honeymoon, decorating our first apartment with the wedding gifts, snagging my first full-time job at Pacific Tel and Tel.

My second husband died this past spring. Steve’s collection does not extend up to the late ‘90’s when Ken and I first met. Nonetheless, my son has promised some treats. “I’m going to take you through four decades this time, Mom,” he e-mailed. And when my birthday came, just weeks after my husband’s death, I found solace in listening to the tunes of happier days. Here were the June 28s of 1957, 1961, l971, l975, and l981, plus a note that promises more happy moments to come.

I play l981 first, what I should remember as a sad birthday, the first after Steve’s dad and I divorced. At first I sigh as I hear All Those Years Ago, George Harrison’s tribute to John Lennon, killed just six months earlier, but soon my heart lifts as the Oak Ridge Boys rock Elvira. I suddenly recall how songs that year eased me through a difficult transition. I believe that they will do it again through this year, as well.

The recollections of Marcel Proust’s hero in Remembrance of Things Past were triggered by the taste of a madeline cookie. Other people claim to remember best through scents. For me, though, nothing tugs the elusive shadows of my past into the shimmering sunlight of this current moment like the songs on my time capsules. Steve’s tapes are candid snapshots of my life, framed in melody.

Even Foolish Hearts Can Learn

Way back in the '50s one of my favorite songs was by Joni James..."How Important Can It Be?" If you're too young to recall it the first time it came around, or don't remember it from the movie LA, Confidential, here it is...song sublimely in the shuffle beat style by Joni:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEnGUG_Nhbk

Just a couple of weeks ago I sat trying to look as important as I possibly could at the Geffrye Museum of the Home in London. If you aren't in the mood to dash off to London this summer...perhaps you fear the crush of the Olympic crowds...or you haven't yet fallen in love with one of the world's greatest cities...then take a virtual tour here:

http://www.geffrye-museum.org.uk/period-rooms-and-gardens/virtualtour/

Today I've been sitting on another chair that sometimes makes me feel important...that's the one at my writing desk. I feel pleasantly important when I finish a story, but that isn't always the case. Today I only got half way through and then stalled. I've toyed with this stubborn story for three hours, but it's taking a turn I'd not intended. I'd foolishly set my heart on finishing it today...but it won't cooperate. So I'm putting it to bed for now, and will revisit it another day soon.

Sometimes stories can get unruly. They have to be disciplined by their owners, and shown who really is the important one. Oh, I know. It's them, of course. But shhhhhh....don't let on. If you give your self-important stories half a chance, they'll be sprawling over every chair, sofa, loveseat, bench and ottoman you have in your house. You know them...they move right in and take right over. Except when they don't, like my naughty story today. Perhaps in a day or two it will be more cooperative. Then I can send it out to find a home...and that's what's important.

Even foolish hearts can learn!