...at least at this blog.

That's right, I'm down-grading to one blog. The archives will stay up here at RosettWrites, but for a weekly dose of my thoughts on writing and life in general click over to the Good-Girls-Kill.com on Wednesday. We're five good girls who just happen to write about murder.

I’ve switched gears from writing to publicity for the third Mom Zone book, Getting Away is Deadly.

One of the things I do for publicity is a blog tour with another group of female novelists, the Girlfriends Cyber Circuit. The girlfriends email me questions, which I answer, and then they post the answers on their blogs. It’s using the power of the Internet for good, not evil.

So, I’m in the middle of answering these questions when I get this one: “If you had to summarize your book as a bumper sticker, what would it be?”

I came up with “Vacations are Murder” since Ellie accompanies her pilot husband to a training class in Washington D.C. Instead of r&r, she gets mixed up in a murder in the Metro. Which brings up the question of backstory. How did I get the idea to write about a murder on a vacation? Have I had a vacation-gone-bad experience myself?

Not really. I’ve had typical vacation mishaps—cancelled flights, kids falling sick, and sibling bickering in the backseat. More irritants than disasters, certainly. In fact, the time my flight was cancelled turned into an excellent evening—room service and plenty of ice cream, just what I needed after a day of lugging my bags around the airport from one gate to another.

Now that I think about it, I realize that our family has gone on few “real” vacations. Our travels have been more like Ellie’s trip, a combination of work and vacation.

I ran across a statistic the other day that reported Americans are using less of their vacation time than ever. We’re taking shorter trips and canceling trips altogether. Our family hasn’t gotten to the point of abandoning holidays. We just…multi-task, I guess.

We’ve made the most of the work-related trips that have fallen into our life. Often our tourist sight-seeing is on the way from one assignment to another, but we’ve managed to check out some pretty cool places: Washington D.C. (obviously!), San Francisco, the Mariposa Grove of Redwoods, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Hawaii, the white sands of the Gulf coast, and even a few foreign destinations, including England, Germany, and France. Can’t really complain, can I?

So what about you? Where has your work taken you? Do you plan vacations and are you actually able to take them? What are you favorite destinations?

The Girlfriends' Cyber Circuit

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It’s time for GCC again. This Wendy Nelson Tokunaga drops in to discuss Midori by Moonlight.

About the book:

MIDORI BY MOONLIGHT is a comic, cross-cultural novel, out now, that has a mouth-watering pastry theme running through it. What happens when a young woman, fresh from Japan and too independent for Japanese society, finds herself suddenly lost in translation in San Francisco as she searches for her American Dream and the perfect

Cover:

 

About the Author:

Wendy Nelson Tokunaga was born and raised in San Francisco. She attended Lowell High School and San Francisco State University, and is now finishing up her MFA in Writing at University of San Francisco. Her short stories have appeared in The Abiko Literary Quarterly Review, The Plaza, and Yomimono among others. 

She is the author of the self-published novel, No Kidding, which won an award in the Mainstream/Literary Fiction category of the Writer’s Digest Best Self-Published Book Awards in 2002, and MIDORI BY MOONLIGHT, published in September 2007 by St. Martin’s Griffin. Tokunaga lives by the ocean thirty miles south of San Francisco with her Osaka-born surfer-dude husband, Manabu Tokunaga and their Burmese cat named Meow. Drawing on her extensive experience in studying the Japanese language and culture; living, working and playing in Japan, and her cross-cultural marriage, she explores the theme of why some people feel the need to trade their native culture for a new one.

Wendy’s Answers to the RosettWrites Q & A:

Dream vacation destination?

~ Maui

You’ve just won the lottery. What’s the first thing you do/buy?

~ Condos in Tokyo, Paris and Maui.

Favorite mystery/thriller movie?

~ “Michael Clayton”

Favorite junk food?

~ French fries

What’s one food you absolutely can’t stand?

~ Refried beans

Paper or plastic?

~ Paper

What’s one talent you wish you had?

~ Ability to draw

M&Ms or Godiva?

~ Both

Favorite time of day?

~ Around two o’clock in the afternoon on a warm, sunny day.

Tell us a little about your book. Did an event or idea inspire the book?

~ MIDORI BY MOONLIGHT is about 30-year-old fresh from Japan Midori Saito, who finds herself lost in translation in San Francisco searching for her American dream and the perfect dessert. It is inspired by my Japanese husband’s story of how he never felt he fit in Japan and ended up trading his native culture for a new one when he settled in the United States.

What’s your writing style? Outline or no outline?

~ Outline

What do you wish you’d known about either the craft of writing or the business of publishing when you first started writing?

~ That in the publishing business things move either very fast or very slow and there is no in between.

What’s up next for you? What are you working on now?

~ I just finished my second book and have sent it to the publisher. Here’s a brief description: After receiving a puzzling phone call and a box full of mysteries, 33-year-old fledgling singer Celeste Duncan is off to Japan to search for a long, lost relative who could hold the key to the identity of the father she never knew. She stumbles head first into a weird, wonderful world where nothing is quite as it seems; a land of gaijin worshippers, karaoke boxes, sushi fortune tellers, and unbearably perky TV stars. But when she learns to sing a Japanese song called “The Wishing Star” Celeste finds herself on a path to finding real love, understanding the true meaning of family and, most of all, discovering her own voice. 

One hundred thirty-eight.

That’s how many named characters I have in the Mom Zone books, so far. That number doesn’t include those anonymous waitresses, store clerks, and elevator-riders who people my books, described only in a passing sentence or two.

That’s one hundred thirty-eight different names I’ve used. When I wrote the first Mom Zone mystery, Moving is Murder, I intentionally avoided using the first names of close friends or family. I didn’t want anyone to think I was writing about them. Not that it really mattered. No matter what the character’s name, some people still thought that certain characters were people from my life, which surprised me since I went to great lengths to make my fictional characters different—in some cases, complete opposites—of real people. People see what they want to in fiction, I guess.

But back to my topic, names. I’m knocking around ideas for the next book, which brings up that task of thinking up new names. Now, I know there’s no shortage of names, particularly since Gwyneth Paltrow expanded the possibilities when she brought fruit names into vogue, but I’m wondering is there ever a point when you run out of “good” names? Think about authors like Phyllis Whitney, Elizabeth Peters, and J.D. Robb. Think of how many names they’ve come up with—the mind boggles! Do they keep a list so they don’t reuse names?

I’m sure there comes a point when an author has to start over with some of the more generic names, like John and Anna. After all, you can’t have a novel with only exotic names like Heathcliff, Clementine, and Philomena.

Naming characters is one of the most fun and, at the same time, most frustrating parts of writing a book. I love picking the names. I have fun reading the meanings and having that either work with the character or contrast against the character. On the other hand, it’s frustrating because I often have a subconscious favorite letter and end up with a string of names beginning with the same letter: Nick, Nadia, Nathan, etc. If that happens, I have to go back and switch someone’s name to something new and then I always stumble at the new name and think, “Who is that? Oh, yeah, he was Nick.”

So, I want to know…do you keep track of names? Do you use any name, or are there some you avoid? Have you every had your editor ask/tell you to change a name? What’s your favorite character name? Got any good name suggestions for me?

Oops, it happened again. Yet another author of a “memoir” has been exposed as a teller of fiction rather than fact.

Since these instances keep popping up, I’ve begun to think that the publishing industry may not care if the memoirs are, in fact, lies as long as the disclosure of the fakery draws plenty of attention. Remember that saying, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”

Case in point: the big brouhaha about James Frey. He was exposed as a liar, but his book is still on the shelves at Target and my branch library has two copies–of his new book.

Could it be that a faked memoir actually sells as well—possibly better than—real memoirs because of the publicity a fake generates?

I did a quick Amazon check during the week that the news about Margaret B. Jones broke. Love and Consequences was # 988. On the same day, James Frey’s, A Million Little Pieces was at # 1,438.

Now, I know that Amazon rankings can mean absolutely nothing when it comes to sales, but if nothing else, they show that people are interested in the books and looking at, if not buying, them.

There have been calls for publishers to fact check their authors, but it appears that as long as the books sell, publishers will keep publishing them. It’s like the debate about the tabloids. Most people agree they’re exploitive and trade in lies and rumors, yet people buy them. What are you gonna do? Besides, I think the whole argument misses the point entirely. Shouldn’t it be the authors who are held accountable for recounting the truth, not the publishers?

So, what do you think of the sudden rash of exposed memoir authors? Is it a symptom of our “I’ll do anything to get my 15 minutes of fame” society? Would you buy a memoir after you knew of the author’s duplicity? And, what’s your wildest memoir idea? Don’t forget, being raised by wolves has already been done.

The other day, I was thinking about how I view things a bit differently now than I did, say, ten or fifteen years ago.

One thing I’ve learned is that nothing is ever written in stone. I’m a rules girl—a by-the-book kind of gal. I am a Good Girl, after all. Generally, I drive the speed limit—or slightly over. If the sign says “NO PARKING,” I don’t park there. If the deadline is April 1st , I have my manuscript in by April 1st.

It’s ironic that I’ve picked a career field where NOTHING is written in stone. The publishing industry is as changeable as the West Texas weather. Even if you’ve got a contract and a pub date, as the song says, it “doesn’t mean a thing,” until you see the book in the bookstore. We even have a technical term for when things go bad, the kill fee.

I’ll admit that when I dreamed of writing a book, I thought mostly about how wonderful it would be to see my name on the spine of a book. When I got serious about writing, I concentrated on capturing my words on paper and molding those thoughts into something sellable. I cleared the publishing hurdle and I now have a new perspective on publishing. I understand how delicate the whole structure is. One change in a company’s aims, one budget revision, one whim, and I could be done.

I often interview authors for another blog of mine. I usually ask them what they wish they’d known about the business of publishing or the craft of writing when they first started writing. Most authors say “nothing.” Many say they’re glad they didn’t know how hard it would be, otherwise they might not have attempted to write a book and get it published.

I think I’m somewhere in the middle. I wish I’d known more about craft—the ins and outs of plotting, how to write a synopsis without running through a ream of paper, stuff like that. I wish I’d enjoyed life without deadlines, but I wanted them so badly that I spent my time wishing I had them.

Well, now I’ve got them and they rule most of my free time. I’m glad I have a multi-book deal and the security of knowing my publisher wants my next book. But it probably is a good thing that I didn’t know what a fragile house-of-cards-type thing the writing life is because, in the end, even though there are so few things I can count on, I can’t resist the pull of those ideas, those characters in my imagination. The fact that I get to put it all on paper and then other people enjoy it—well, that’s priceless. So I’ll take the volatility. It makes for one heck of a ride.

What do you wish you’d know about writing or publishing?

I ran across a book called Cinescopes: What Your Favorite Movies Reveal About You. It looked interesting, so I checked out the website. The authors claim that if you give them your top ten favorite movies, they can pinpoint your personality.

A quick browse of the website reveals the concept is a clever updating of the traditional personality breakdowns with new monikers and illustrations from movies. For instance, the movies I picked put me in the “Vivacious Romantic” category. VRs are “witty, quirky, amiable, like to flirt, enjoy playing the game of love…” to quote the website.

Okay…I’m not so sure that the quiz reveals your true personality since most of my friends and family would tell you I have a large practical streak in me. Although, it is hard to argue with a result that puts me in the same category as Mark Darcy. I go to the movies to escape and like my movies to have large helpings of humor and romance, so I’d say the quiz does a great job predicting the types of movies you enjoy.

Anyway, getting around to my point—the rather long way—is that the part of the website that I find most interesting is the breakdown of personality types. I’ve used this sort of broad categorizing system to help me get a handle on characters when I start plotting a book. I’ve never used “Invincible Optimist” or “Magical Creator” as the starting point, but I think this website is a place I’ll go back to when I plot my next book simply because it gives me a new way to think about characters.

So what about you? Do you use personality types when you think about character? And, if you took the movie quiz, how close was it to your personality?

It's crunch time for me with Mom Zone #4. My deadline is at the end of this month (insert screams of terror here), so I'm buried in revisions and in agony over commas--should they go or should they stay??

In the meantime, here's some thoughts on an unexpected delight--a snow day.

It was like a real-life “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

One whole day wiped clean of all commitments.

It was a snow day! Or, more accurately, an ice day.

When I checked the news at six in the morning last week and realized all normal activities (work, school, karate, etc.) were cancelled, I’d felt like I had an extra “free” day dropped in my calendar.

An entire day to do anything I wanted—except drive, of course, because I wasn’t insane enough to get out on the slick roads.

I spent the day playing board games with my kids, making chocolate chip cookies, and revising 100 pages in my manuscript. It was a perfect day all around.

If you had a “free” day, how would you spend it?

I thought I'd share a post that I put up over at the Good Girls sight because I'm sure many of you will identify with it.

P-day is one week away. One week until the backboard, the bibliography, and the process paper are turned in. One week until the school project is finished and the whole family breathes a sigh of relief.

Until the next due date.

You see, we’ve got several long-term projects in the works. There’s something for everyone—history, science, language arts. Pick your poison, I mean pleasure, of course.

Last year my daughter’s teacher shared these rules for homework and long-term projects. Since they seem to apply to any grade or any school district, I thought I’d pass them along.

SCHOOL HOMEWORK POLICY:

Students should not spend more than 90 minutes per night. This time should
be budgeted in the following manner:

• 15 minutes looking for assignment
• 11 minutes calling a friend for the assignment
• 23 minutes explaining why the teacher is mean and just does not like children
• 8 minutes in the bathroom
• 10 minutes getting a snack
• 7 minutes checking the TV Guide
• 6 minutes telling parents that the teacher never explained the assignment
• 10 minutes sitting at the kitchen table waiting for Mom or Dad to do the assignment

LONG TERM ASSIGNMENTS:

These are given the night before they are due. This explains the name “long-
term”. It is a long-term commitment to time that begins at 9:30PM and ends
at 11:50PM—or later.

It is important that the whole family is involved in the project. It is imperative that at least one family member races to Target/Walmart/KMart for poster board, and that at least one family member ends up in tears (does not have to be the student).

One parent needs to stay up and complete the project. The other parent needs to call the school and leave a message that the student is out sick.

It is not necessary to have the student’s name on the assignment.

Sound familiar? Anything like that ever happen at your house? What projects have your kids been assigned?

The Girlfriends' Cyber Circuit

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Did you know there’s an American Idol-like contest for writers? Today’s Girlfriend, Jenny Gardiner, author of Sleeping with Ward Cleaver, is the winner of Dorchester Publishing’s American Title III contest.

About the Book:

Claire Doolittle is not a happy camper. The married mother of five seems to have lost her way in life. Swept off her feet years earlier by Mr. Right, she’s dismayed that husband Jack has turned into Mr. Always Right, and the only sweeping happening in her life involves a broom and a dustpan. Jack’s officious, perfunctory way has left fun, spontaneity and laughter at the doorstep, and Claire is beginning to wonder if she’s actually married to a modern-day version of Ward Cleaver, the stuff-shirted father figure from Leave it to Beaver sitcom fame.

Cue a former fiancé, who re-enters her life when she desperately needs to figure out who she was, who she is, and who she wants to be. And if she wants to salvage her sagging marriage, or fall back on her old fiancé, who’s wooing her with promises of what could have been. Throw in a predatory hottie from Jack’s office who’s set her sights on Claire’s ho-hum husband, and you’ve got the recipe for a mid-life crisis of epic proportions.

The Cover:

About the Author:

Jenny Gardiner’s work has been found in Ladies Home Journal, the Washington Post and on NPR’s Day to Day. She likes to say she honed her fiction writing skills while working as a publicist for a US Senator. Other jobs have included: an orthodontic assistant (learning quite readily that she was not cut out for a career in polyester), a waitress (probably her highest-paying job), a TV reporter, a pre-obituary writer, and a photographer (claim to fame: being hired to shoot Prince Charles–with a camera, silly!). She lives in Virginia with her husband, three kids, two dogs, one cat and a gregarious parrot. In her free time she studies Italian, dreams of traveling to exotic locales, and feels very guilty for rarely attempting to clean the house.

 Jenny’s Answers to the RosettWrites Q & A:

Dream vacation destination? I LOVE Africa and would dearly love to get back there.

You’ve just won the lottery. What’s the first thing you do/buy?

Pay off my bills and fix my rotting front porch! Then a vacation with my family!

Favorite mystery/thriller movie? I'm a totally wimp and don't like to be scared. I do like movies with espionage, however. Just not blood/guts/gore and things that make you go ewwww...

Favorite junk food? Peanut M&Ms

What’s one food you absolutely can’t stand? anything with cilantro in it!

Paper or plastic? Definitely paper. Esp. the good shopping bags with the handles you can re-use all the time...

What’s one talent you wish you had? I wish I was a really good piano player (and also really want to learn to play the violin)

M&Ms or Godiva? Sorry, M&Ms, gotta go with European chocolate...

Favorite time of Day? Love pre-dawn to go to the gym, but love the color of light at the end of the day

Tell us a little about your book. Did an event or idea inspire the book?

I have always been a keen observer of relationships. Springs from being a product of a broken--make that shattered--marriage. Always fixated on that "what if?" factor--what if things had turned out differently, and how could they have turned out differently? I was always acutely aware of that fine line between love and hate. And I started to notice how conflict arises as couples approach middle-age. Women tend to experience a renaissance as their kids get older and they have time on their hands. They reinvent themselves by default. Men, on the other had, are quite entrenched in their careers, etc. By then marriages tend to be on auto-pilot. It's  a situation ripe for conflict. The title came to me and then I just had to write a book around it.

What’s your writing style? Outline or no outline?

No outline. Everything about my life is seat of the pants. I'm not a good planner LOL

What do you wish you’d known about either the craft of writing or the business of publishing when you first started writing?

Oh, I don't know. Everything has come to me in such an organic way, I think it's best that way. If my eyes had been quite as wide open, perhaps I'd have given up easier? So it's fine that I was clueless and made stupid newbie mistakes.

What’s up next for you? What are you working on now?

Just finished a novel tentatively called MARY KATE GOES OVER THE FALLS, about a sort of naive woman trapped in an abusive marriage who goes to pick up her husband's dry cleaning and instead picks up a handsome hitchhiker, the lure of whom reminds her of the lip of Niagara Falls, said to tempt people to jump in. They embark on a road trip of self-discover, en route to Niagara Falls, where she's planning to take the plunge as the first act of defiance in her life.

Thanks so much for having me, Sara!

You bet, Jenny. Thanks for dropping by!