I attend a lot of writing workshops and webinars, and one perennial focus of the big presenters is, “Why should anybody read your book? Why read any book?” The answers to that question generally fall into two categories–we read for education (The Seven Secrets… The Insider’s Guide…. The Successful Person’s…), and we read for entertainment. (The Midnight Library; The Boys From Biloxi; Red, White, and Royal Blue…)

Those are valid answers, and one reason I love a well written biography is that it can do both–educate and entertain. But is that really all there is to reading? All there is to us as readers? We’re either improving our minds and lives with new information, or we’re indulging in a little recreation to fortify us/reward us for all the improvements and efforts lying ahead?

For me, it’s not that simple. How do you describe the feeling of coming out on top, after terrible disappointments and set backs, against all odds, when it really, really mattered, and you were terrified and despairing, because you had to change who you thought you were in order to honorably prevail? That plot has inspired countless tales, from The Mighty Ducks, to To Kill a Mockingbird, to It’s a Wonderful Life, to Sara Crewe.

We read those stories for entertainment, but entertainment doesn’t stay with you for decades, providing encouragement, inspiration, and fresh perspectives. The great spiritual teachers didn’t turn to parables, fables, jatakas, and myths because they hoped for a lot of positive reviews on Amazon. They wanted to impart concepts and viewpoints that couldn’t be accurately conveyed or given adequate impact without the mysterious power of story.

A young adult novel that captures the wonder and pain of coming of age, a romance that makes falling in love credible and lovely, a thriller that puts us in the shoes of reluctant super-spies taking on long odds… I believe we read these stories because they affirm that human experience is not, cannot be, and should not be reduced to a set of rational syllogisms or theories soon to be proven.

A sunset isn’t merely some colors that happen in the sky along certain wavelengths at certain hours in specific weather conditions. It’s a farewell, a surrender, a sigh, a symbol of mortality, a harbinger of respite, and much, much more.

The Enlightenment moved us forward in a lot of ways–technologically and socially– but it also cost us in the sense that miracles, mysteries, and numinous experiences all lost ground to the rational and measurable. I think it’s for precisely this reason that popular fiction (along with Protestant evangelical movements) blossomed just as Enlightenment thinking gained control of government, education, and commerce.

We are more than students in need of education, or economic drones who must be humored with escapist entertainment. To me, good stories affirm the wondrous potential of our nature, give it voice and inspiration, and resonate with that magnificence inside each one of us.

I read for entertainment and edification, but I also read for hope, for inspiration, for affirmation, and for reasons too big and too personal to ever find adequate expression in a few words. All I know is, when science, religion, and sheer determination have failed me, good books–a few of them now subject to bans in some jurisdictions–have kept me from giving up.

Why do you read?

NB: This post was inspired by an essay from the pen of newlywed Adam Mastroianni.

 

I’ve been trying to drop some weight lately, and it’s not going well. It never goes well. I am not a glutton and I have plenty of self-discipline, but as my dad once said, I also have a metabolism suited to weathering an ice age. “Just wait 12,000 years, Grace. Everybody’s going wish they had your metabolism.”

Thanks, Daa.

And we all know I don’t deal with summer’s heat and bugs. I probably  have the semi-annual version of seasonal affective disorder, but when the winter doldrums hit, I can just turn on my happy lights. There is no turning the summer sun down, no telling the dawn birdies to please save it for another couple hours.

So there I am, taking my grumpacious self out for a walk to get the old step count up, when I see my neighbor sitting on his porch. We’ve shared a property boundary for maybe twenty years, but we’re both quiet, keep-to-ourselves people, so I don’t really know this guy well. I know he has kidney disease, though, despite leading a very temperate and responsible life.

My neighbor was happy to report that his veins pass muster in terms of suitability for dialysis, but he was frustrated that Johns Hopkins can’t evaluate him for the transplant lists for another six months. He’s getting on as many intake schedules as he can, and hoping somebody can “work him in soon.”

Hmm.

Then I go to the therapeutic riding barn, where one of the lessons I assist with is for a young man who has cerebral palsy and scoliosis, both of which are likely to progress. I don’t know how he has the courage to get on a horse, much less how he stays in the saddle. But he does–every week.

My poet friend can’t walk without a cane because she has rheumatoid arthritis. When the weather, sunspots, medicine shortages, or stress cause her condition to flare, she can barely walk at all.

So yes, I’m frustrated with my inability to move the number on the scale, but… I can walk, for pity’s sake. I can stand up straight. I’m not hoping for good luck in the in-take appointment scheduling lottery,  just so I can win a place on the lists of people hoping a miracle might come along and save their lives.

I believe that preaching, “Count your blessings” to somebody who is gloomy and frustrated is unkind an unproductive, but I also know that genuine gratitude can help me re-set my outlook. So this is me, going out for another walk, minus the weight of (most of) my grumpiness.

Have you ever been handed a much needed re-set? Ever encountered a situation that changed your frame of reference when you felt stuck?

I’ve sent out my first batch of Miss Dashing advanced reader copies, but if you’d like one, just email me at [email protected] and let me know what device you’re reading on.

(And PS, Miss Dashing is already available in print!)

 

 

My mood lately is irritable.

Amazon has done something whackadoodle with its search capability, such that if I type “Miss Dramatic” into the box, more often than not, I get glamour beauty products instead of the only book in the whole store with that exact title. They say it’s a known glitch, they’re working on it. I say bad words.

I’m about done with summer, and I can only imagine how the many folks who have weather much worse than mine have been coping. In Maryland, we’ve reached the part of our program where every creature with the ability to sting is determined to do so, from hornets and wasps, to mosquitoes and biting flies. I hates them, I do. I hates them as only somebody spending a fair amount of time at a horse barn can (though I  know the bugs are necessary for life on the planet).

The adult me knows I’m very, very lucky, and my life is awash in blessings. The less philosophical part of me is looking (grumpily) for reasons to smile, and here is a little bit of what I’ve found this week:

In my neighborhood, the roads are all old logging trails dating back to about 1920, when a post-war building boom in Washington, DC, saw a lot of virgin forest harvested from western Maryland. The upshot is, the roads near me are narrow–fourteen-foot right of ways, no shoulder, no berm, no painted lines. (We do have potholes, though.) If you have to pass somebody, you both slow down, you both edge over as far as you dare. You pass, and as you pass, you nod, wave, lift a hand, or otherwise acknowledge your neighbor for putting safety ahead of speed.

I like that little ritual. It’s not taught, except by example, and it has persisted on the back roads since my childhood. It’s the smallest, subtlest example of “Love thy neighbor,” and anybody sharing these twisty little lanes is my neighbor for at least a moment.

I like that my most recent COVID booster–and all my COVID boosters–have been free. Yes, I know, our tax dollars paid for them, but a) the drug was available, and b) all I had to do was ask the nice pharmacist if I could be vaccinated, and within 24 hours, I had another little shot of safety. I’ve scheduled air travel in upcoming months, and this was a box I needed check.

The dahlias are starting. They lurk for much of the growing season, but their turn is coming, and they are spectacular. They give me a lift every year.

I found a guy willing to deliver a cord of firewood, and it’s sitting in a nice, fragrant heap in my side yard. I got caught with my pants down in terms of firewood last year, and by Christmas (as the single digits were bearing down), there was none to be had for love nor homemade cookies. I managed with what I scavenged from my own property, but I promised myself I would not let that happen again. Promise to myself (and my washing machine plumbing) kept.

These little glimmers of goodness are fortifications against setbacks, summer blues, and a chronic case of the creeping curmudgeons. Have you spotted any glimmers lately? Lord Julian’s first tale–A Gentleman Fallen on Hard Times–starts downloading on the web store this week, so I guess it’s time I started my ARC list for Miss Dashing!

I am finishing up my third manuscript in the Lord Julian mystery series, and one thing I enjoy about a recurring protagonist is that I can get to know him–really get to know him. I don’t have to say good-bye to his lordship as a protagonist just because one book’s worth of problems have been solved.

Julian is better acquainted than I could ever be with what’s called an honor culture, as opposed to a dignity culture. In a dignity culture (the present day US somewhat qualifies), small insults are ignored or peacefully resolved between the parties, the rule of law applies to everybody (“all men are created equal…” -ish), and public institutions–the courts, the free press, regulatory bodies, the educational systems, churches and so forth–enforce norms of good behavior. That’s the theory, in any case.

The historical Scottish borders and the American Old West are often described as honor cultures. No overarching rule of law or social institution provides a bulwark against chaos or peril in such settings. No individual rights or liberties are considered universal. Every slight to a person’s good name has to be personally addressed, and personal integrity is highly valued. Personal status and personal accomplishments affect influence and standing–none of this created equal baloney. Whereas a dignity culture might become excessively litigious, an honor culture can descend into bloody feuds and vigilantism.

Regency society (and certainly American society of the day) was in transition between honor culture, which understood dueling, oligarchy, and bloody conquest, and dignity culture, which supported a free press, expanded suffrage, an impartial judiciary, and Thomas Jefferson’s lofty (patriarchal, and deeply hypocritical) rhetoric of equality.

That being the case, Julian is surrounded by people who still value symbols of honor. Signet rings, family titles, dueling scars, regalia of office, and military forms of address carried into civilian life all made sense to Julian before he became a prisoner of war, then an injured veteran. By the time we meet him, he’s a man in transition.

He has mustered out in disgrace, and doesn’t use his military rank if he can avoid it. He knows firsthand what it is to be stripped of all respect, and the idea that women, the poor, or children have no dignity worth defending strikes him as absurd, though it’s still entrenched in English law. His opinions on dueling wax profane, and he’s a far humbler fellow than the guy who bought his flashy regimentals and sailed off to teach Old Boney a lesson.

Julian still has a badge or two of honor, though. Because his eyes were damaged by a battlefield explosion, he needs tinted spectacles to deal with strong sunlight. He wears them with pride, always has a spare pair on hand, and soon becomes closely identified with them in larger society. They announce to the world (that feels entitled to judge him unfairly) that he’s suffered for his country. His specs also afford him some privacy, to the extent that the eyes are windows to the soul.

My yard flowers might be badges of honor. I developed the habit of flower gardening only as foster care advocacy rubbed my nose in some fetid truths about a society that professes to value families and children. I will put some beauty into this world, and I will put the pretty where anybody driving past can see it. Every year, for as many seasons as I can manage. I will.

Do you have any badges of honor? Mementos of accomplishment on display for all to see? On display for YOU to see?

 

 

If you try to look back past more than about a month of my blog posts, you will find I have de-published ten years worth of weekly material. I did this, because Google has declared, by virtue of a change to what it quaintly calls its privacy policy, that copyright no longer pertains on the internet. ANYTHING Google’s bots can get to is fair game for training Bard or any other AI program.

My books are all available on piracy sites because the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (largely written by Google lobbyists) ensured that on the internet, authors have no real copyright protection anyway. But my blogs are an even more authentic source of my voice than my books, so I scuttled them. I might publish them as a book at some point, in which case, we’re back to…

The situation with AI encroaching on creative livelihoods generally has me down. The wretched heat has me down, as does the thought that we might look back on this summer as “before it really got hot.” Summer is never a great time for book sales, and the stinkin’ Japanese beetles got after my little cherry trees before I even knew Japanese beetles liked cherry trees.

All of which is to say that my annual July case of the summer megrims has come around right on schedule. I know this too–all of this–shall pass. I’ve drenched the cherry trees in neem oil (very little threat to pollinators), I see some cool nights in the forecast, and everybody is suing the everlasting peedywaddles out of Google and company over the whole AI debacle. Winter is coming, thank heavens.

But my mood doesn’t lift just because being bummed out is tiresome and unproductive. It’s still hard to write a sparkly scene, still daunting to do all those danged daily steps. So I asked myself, “What’s one straw we can take off the camel’s back, Grace?” (Don’t ask me who we is.)

I was really not in the mood to get on the dreaded tread desk yesterday evening, so I… went to the pool.

I splashed around some, and then I noticed that very few people were using the diving boards. The pool has two boards–low and lower–and they have their own deep-water splash down zone. I was hopping off a 5-meter dive at the age of five (blame my oldest brothers), and yet, I haven’t gone sailing from a diving board for probably fifty years.

“I dare ya,” says me to myself.

“I will look ridiculous,” I replied.

“You look ridiculous staring at the computer, muttering to your cats, and wearing a wet towel on your head. That board is one meter above the water. You know you want to.”

I did want to. I wanted to do something that connected me to my more daring, adventurous, innocent, brave self, and I wanted that physical feeling of being unbound from the earth. Wheeeee!

I took about a half dozen turns off the one-meter board, though I didn’t have the nerve to do that one-two-three-bounce prep that presages a really good upward arc. For no reason I can explain, by the second dive, I was giggling at myself. I am no sylph, and when I leave that board, it doth bounce, but ye gods, I had fun. This is a joy I can still claim, a little micro-accomplishment (from when I was five) that still resonates.

Take that, ChatGPT… I cannonball you, Bard! A bellyflop upon thy house, Bing! And you blasted beetles SHALL NOT PASS!

What makes you giggle? How do you combat the summertime blues?

PS: A Gentleman of Dubious Reputation is also now available in print.

 

*

I’m writing a story now to wrap up the Mischief in Mayfair series (look for a new title on the Coming Soon page in a few weeks), and that turns my thoughts to What’s Next? More happily ever afters, of course! But readers like series, and I like series, and so that brings me to…. Mayfair Blossoms.

I’m pondering a group of tales built around Regency women with super powers (and flower names–Ivy, Rose, Iris, and so forth). One might have a photographic memory, another might have a highly sensitive nose, another might have a gift for encryption puzzles… Not supernatural powers, but powers some humans do have to an unusual degree–in a society that wants women to just be pretty and meek and have babies.

The ladies will also have super-fears or flaws too of course. A fear of heights, dogs, public speaking, and so forth. Though let it be said, I plot and my characters laugh. The gents will have their own issues.

I got to thinking about my dad’s super power, which was, in his words, “Asking elegant questions.” By this he did not mean, “Does my wife need a break from the kitchen such that I should take all nine of us out to dinner?” He instead excelled at experimental design, such that if you wanted to look for or rule out a causal link between, say, the flavor compounds in milk, exposure to light, and a certain off flavor in the milk, he could get that tested forty ways to Sunday and have fun doing it.

Mom had a lot of super powers–the ability to make any space tidy and comfy, and the ability to see the best in my dad, just to name a couple. I have some superpowers too, as it happens. I am gifted with a contrarian gene, such that I can play devil’s advocate or yeah-but almost any eternal verity. This is useful for plotting books, as in, “A gentleman never argues with a lady… except for when…” or, “It’s good to be the duke, except for when…”

This business of superpowers pops up frequently in books (St. Just and his horses, Valentine at the keyboard, Guinevere keeping secrets, Maggie being self-sufficient), but I believe it turns up in real life too. My sister Maire almost always defaults to compassion. If you don’t think that’s a superpower, wait until some fine day when you are expecting (and deserve) a lecture or snark, and instead you get understanding. Wow.

My sister Gail, who is also extraordinarily kind, has a talent for seeing fundamental truths. She gets a serious expression, focuses on the middle distance, does a couple deep breaths, and boom–the gravamen of the puzzle is succinctly and accurately summed up.

But if nobody ever names and affirms our superpowers, it’s hard to know they are super. It’s hard to know they are even unique strengths, or defaults that are so powerful, you might need to rein them in from time to time (like my yeah-but gift). So what’s your superpower?

Lord Julian’s first mystery, A Gentleman Fallen on Hard Times, is already available in print, and the e-ARCs are going out this week. If you want an e-ARC and don’t have one by the end of the week, please email me at [email protected], and let me know what kind of device you read on.

Yesterday, it was my happy privilege to assist at the therapeutic riding facility when some younger clients came in for a group lesson. The morning was hot, busy, and a little on the hectic side. These were not seasoned riders, and keeping everybody safe and happy–horses, volunteers, and riders–took some serious coordination and good will.

And a lot of reminders to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.

I used to spend much of my day around little people, and court days in particular were hectic, with this case being heard while that one was in recess, then the recessed case being re-called, until the judge declared a comfort break or some child had a meltdown right there in the courtroom…

I had about a 30-minute commute at the end of a court day, which helped me change gears, so what happened in court didn’t haunt me all through the night (though some of those cases still haunt me). I also made it a point to get out of my courtroom attire as soon as I walked in the door at home. No putting the kettle on, starting dinner, no nothing, until I’d donned my comfy clothes. In winter, building a fire in the wood stove helped–a simple, comforting, little chore that made the house cozy and got the potpourri steaming.

At the therapeutic riding barn, I’m not an old hand, but I’m not a complete beginner either. I’m a little of both, so the time spent there doesn’t qualify as relaxing (yet). I experience both confidence and anxiety in any given five minutes. Every little thing I do wrong-ish bothers me A LOT, and just being around new people is also an effort (though they seem to be wonderful people).

So it occurred to me that I need to reinstate, or maybe reinvent, those changing-gears rituals. To put in place some punctuation marks that end the barn sessions, and launch the “you’re home now” business. I need some little symbols on the page of my day that signal a scene change.

Yesterday, I did shuck out of my riding clothes, I checked the mail, I walked around the property collecting my flopped over gladiolus for a bouquet, I played Wordle (held out as long as I could), I did a couple jig saw puzzles. I’m not sure that’s the right combination of re-orienting activities, because too much of that list is what I do at the end of a writing session. The barn time is a different sort of challenge.

But it’s early days. Maybe stopping for a cold root beer slushie will make the list, or maybe I’ll stumble onto something else that works even better (hard to imagine). How do you shift gears, or put a challenge away until the next time it comes around on the schedule?

PS Lord Julian’s first three books finally got their covers, and I love them!

Last week’s comments, about how many of us are worried, anxious, and fretful, started me thinking about my mom. She used to say that she got stupid when she was anxious. She was right on the science, apparently (though she was never stupid). When we use up a lot of our mental bandwidth fretting–about money, about health, about housing, about headlines we can’t control–we lose cognitive ability to the tune of as much as 13 IQ points. We don’t problem solve as well when we’re worried. We become more impulsive, and we make more errors.

Which results in… more anxiety.

And this in turn led to me to recall a class I took about twenty-five years ago, “Sustaining the Peacemaker.” I was in a conflict studies master’s program, and my classmates were from South Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, the Baltimore slums, and so forth. They were coming from and preparing to return to areas gripped by deadly strife.

The idea was to give some thought then–in the midst of the academic oasis–to how to get the trauma, worry, exhaustion, and despair deflector shields up and how to keep them up so the peacemaker’s well being didn’t become yet another casualty of the conflict. We also looked at, “When do you know you’re beginning to stumble?” I learned some strategies for managing worry that I still use today.

I garden with my bare hands, because playing in the dirt makes me happy (I’ve got science on my side). Yard flowers make me really happy (and there’s science behind that too). I live where I can hear the birdies singing (more science). I walk for the recommended thirty minutes a day, usually more. I read good fiction.  I spend time at the horse barn, I consort with cats, I practice mindfulness when the worry gets really bad.

I avoid news and social media until after I’ve written the day’s scenes, and I never EVER let that baloney near me at the beginning or end of the day. Not. Ever. A quick skim in the middle of the day (unless I need to do a PR post at higher traffic hours), and then I bounce off to do jig saw puzzles, get after the weeding, or tend to my “one thing a day for the house.” I regard those activities as clearing the social media/news trash from my emotional buffers. I will be darned if I will let the bottomless greed of the Zuck’s of the world steal my fire.

This is only a partial list of my coping strategies, but I find the very act of looking over all the actions I can take to keep myself safe and sane–from simple stuff, like a gratitude journal or jasmine-scented candle, to not so simple stuff like professional body work–is empowering in itself. A worried author is not at her best, just as a worried, parent, spouse, teacher, neighbor, and so forth is not at her best. For myself, and for my readers, I want to be at my best.

I challenge you each to give some thought to the list of strategies and skills you have for keeping the Undertoads from stealing your fire. My guess is, the lists are long, creative, and powerful.

I am embarking on a new adventure. Might be a new phase of life, might be a blip on the screen. I did the volunteer training for a therapeutic riding program about thirty minutes from my house. I’ve known of this outfit for years–they are coming up on their five decade anniversary–and they are much closer to me than the barn where I was riding.

On of the concepts shared at the training was HALT. The instructor asked us to run through the acronym mentally when we paused waiting for the driveway gate to swing open. “Ask yourself,” she said, “am I Hungry, Angry, Late or Tired–HALT? If so, just be aware of it, and try to let that go before you walk into the barn and bring that energy into the horses’ space.”

Her assumption is that horses have great emotional radar (I concur), but we humans… we might be very aware of everybody else in the room, but we forget to take time to check in with ourselves.

Erm… Yes, well. My own acronym might be HAWT. I am seldom Late, but I am often Worried. Somebody else might prefer HATS–because Sadness dogs them more than a lack of punctuality.

I recall the exercise of “Stop and do a little emotional inventory,” from way, way back when I was regularly picking up my daughter from daycare. I’d turn off the car in daycare Mom’s driveway and think, “Be done with the office. Forget the meeting where you got talked over again and again. Set aside the deadline you missed. Detach from the frustrations of sitting in traffic. Stop revising the introduction to your presentation. You are a mom now, and delighted to see your child.”

I think many of us mentally suit up before we walk into the office, or use our commutes for a subconscious change in gears. I’m reminded of Sue’s comment last week, about taking a moment just to center before switching into work mode…

I wonder how much more peaceful and focused I’d be if I used the HALT exercise every time I prepare to make an entrance–walking back into my house after a day out and about, tackling the grocery store, venturing into the horse barn, showing up for a body work session, preparing to present a writing webinar.

HALT, HAWT, HATS… I will devote some thought to what my short list of baggage emotions would be, because the notion of regularly inventorying and emptying my saddle bags strikes me as a good habit to get into.

What dead weight chronically fills your emotional saddlebags and where in your day could you take a moment to set those burdens aside?

PS Lord Julian’s third mystery, A Gentleman in Challenging Circumstances, is now up for pre-order. Web store release will be Oct. 24, while the retail outlets will turn him loose Dec. 5.

 

 

From two different newsletters this week (one of them James Clear’s), I came across a version of this question: What is the single habit you’ve adopted–good or bad–that has had the biggest impact on your life? For one lady, it was checking her bank balance before leaving the house every morning. For another, it was doom-scrolling social media last thing before bed. One habit helped establish order in a chaotic financial situation, the other…

My “biggest impact” habit would be sitting down at the computer to write new pages immediately after tending to pets in the morning. No social media, no email, no jig saw puzzles, just fire up the computer, open up the work in progress, and go. Once I’ve written a scene or two, then I can let the world intrude, but new pages come first.

Neurology supports making creative work a first-thing-in-the-day priority. For about 90 minutes after rising, our brains are still trailing alpha waves, and we’re switching easily between task-oriented thinking and random mental motion. Associations between distant ideas are more likely in that state, and for many writers, this how we find plot twists, great dialogue, and other fun material.

Psychology supports tending to the creative work first, because the day will intrude–is snorting and pawing right outside the mental door the instant we rise–and if as a writer I yield to lower priorities (the day job, house work, exercise, all of which try to feel urgent all the time), then at days’ end, what mattered to me most–new pages–didn’t happen. If I planned some writing time, but let life (or solitaire) lead me astray, I end my day on a downer.

So my decision, years ago, to put new pages first thing in the day–even if it was a go-to-court day, even if the house was a mess, even if I hadn’t slept all that well–turned out to be a smart move. I am not hopelessly rigid about it. A migraine, a series of sleepless nights, company, and so forth can perturb my schedule, but I still try to get in at least five writing mornings a week.

If I tend to that, the housework, socializing, errands, grocery runs, and so forth don’t feel as if they are robbing time from the activity that makes my lovely little life possible.

And as for bad habits… I bought a scale. Let’s leave it at that.

Do a few critical habits help anchor your day? Are there some honored in the breech? Some aspirational habits? Time to start building the ARC list for Lord Julian’s debut mystery, A Gentleman Fallen on Hard Times!